The Balloonist (29 page)

But these are childish disappointments, of no concern at all to a mature man of character whose two hands are firmly in control of his destiny. It is I who am in command of the expedition, I tell myself, and also the captain of my soul (Luisa is fond of reciting Henley's poem, which she knows by memory) and I can go any direction I choose through this thin whitish soup as long as it is downward. For two hours the Prinzess, with a regal dignity appropriate to her, has been descending a stairway of broad shallow steps: a half metre or so down, we throw something out, she glides level for a while, then a draft of cold air or a lazy notion strikes her and down she goes again. The guide ropes, as noted in our equipment book by Alvarez, weigh twenty-four kilos. We detach them—they unfasten with a quick-release device invented by Waldemer in case they should catch on a pressure ridge or hummock—and watch them fall to the broken slabs of ice below. The pack now resembles a large white cake which somebody has damaged through dropping. There are many gaps and cracks of black water—in places the irregular white shapes scarcely touch each other—and we must hope for luck enough to come down on the white and not on the black in this infernal checker game. Cast out something else!

“The Spiritual
Telegraph?”

“No.” This is irrational on my part since it is heavy and we have no more use for it. We must keep the second and lighter of Waldemer's two rifles too, and the primus, and a can of kerosene. All the tools can go, except for the old shears with the traces of red paint on the handles which we are keeping for a special purpose. Overboard with the medical kit, five kilos at least, and the wooden packing case we use as an all-purpose stool and navigation table. We are still sinking, although not so dangerously fast now. Our height, fifty metres. Stand by the maneouvring valve!

Theodor holds the valve cord ready in his hands, Waldemer prepares to leap out and hold the gondola from sliding along on this cake frosting, perhaps into a stretch of open water. The gondola touches the ice with a soft bump and rises, very slowly, a metre or so into the air again. Theodor pulls the valve cord to produce a hiss from overhead. The gondola bumps again and slants sideways, dragging over the ice. Everything in it—few enough as these items are now—tumbles to one side in a muddle. Waldemer is out onto the ice and so am I, but the gondola is not very hard to hold; the wind is light and the balloon has no pull to it any more. The great red and white globe that was so swelling and regal before now looks more like a dried fig; it droops to one side, twists drowsily, as though what it would really like to do is lie down and sleep on the ice.

This Prinzess will never take us anywhere any more. She must stay here. A dying friend; but oddly enough I find I have no more affection for her now that her usefulness is at an end. Ungrateful humanity! We will take care of the obsequies shortly. First we have a meal, concentrating on the heavier things we can't take with us: Potage Hodge Podge (a specialty of ours consisting of anything at hand thrown in), steak, a mixture of cocoa powder and tea dissolved in hot water, and hardtack with raspberry syrup. A good and nourishing dinner. Then, throwing away the pots and pans instead of washing them, we set to work constructing the vehicle that will carry us south in place of the moribund Prinzess.

The Faltboot,
a clever German contrivance supplied gratis by the manufacturer, fits into a kind of suitcase. There is a complicated system of struts which must be unfolded, then the oiled-canvas cover is fitted over it. When it is done it is five metres long and weighs no more than a twelve-year-old child; any one of us can easily lift it with one hand. Onto the bottom we screw oaken sled runners, and there are three ropes attached to the bow so we can fan out like Commander Peary's dogs and pull it over the ice.

All this takes an hour. Now to the Prinzess. I climb up into the gondola and grasp the cord of the bursting valve. Putting my weight to it, I pull down three metres or more of the cord. There is a ripping sound from overhead as the stitches pull out, and a sound like a giant sigh. Quick now! There is almost no wind and the mass of red and white silk falls directly downward. I manage to drop to the ice and get away before it covers the gondola in a soft smother.

Hydrogen is odourless; that whiff of the inferno comes from the traces of the sulphuric acid the gas was made from. Taking the old red-painted shears in hand, I attack this confused mass of silk with giant-size bubbles of gas floating and oozing here and there in it. In a quarter of an hour I have cut a large rectangle out of it which will serve us as a tent. It is light, folds into a small package, and is waterproof. We set it on the ice near the Faltboot and begin selecting and piling up the other things we will take with us:

primus stove

kerosene

small saucepan

sextant
and charts

compass

Faltboot

paddles

pemmican

Bovril

½ doz. misc. cans food

sugar

bacon

cocoa

Rousseau meat powder

three sleeping sacks

matches, in waterproof container

12—power binoculars

.256 Mannlicher rifle with ammunition

pair of bamboo poles, to hold up tent

1 set spare clothing, reindeer-skin

Can all this fit into that thin contrivance of canvas and struts? It seems unlikely. We set to work, experimenting with various stowage plans. The sleeping sacks are the worst problem; they are bulky. Everything finally goes in, by some miracle, and in a half an hour we are ready to leave. At noon GMT, the mist clearing a little, I manage to get a sun sight. It puts us at 82˚ 50' north, four hundred and fifty miles from the Pole and about a hundred and eighty from the nearest land, White Island in the strait between Cape Leigh Smith and Franz Josef Land. An afternoon's stroll, followed by a pleasant boat ride on the lake. Luisa and I have practiced for this in the Bois de Boulogne. We must remember the rules: MM. les clients are requested not to abandon their boats except in the places provided by the management. Or the deposit is forfeited by the Great Nobody.

We set out. Everybody's face is frozen; we are wrapped in various kinds of rags and cloths to keep warm. I hardly look behind at the wreckage of the Prinzess and neither do the others. All the junk, the stale hopes and dirty frying pans of our venture, is left behind. What a glory, to have no possessions but what will fit into this thin Charon's bark of canvas! We can wander wherever we want over this jumbled plain of ice blocks, the wind has no more power over us. We tug at our pulling ropes, I in the middle and my companions one on either side, and the Faltboot follows. Having referred once to the compass, I steer by watching the sun out of the corner of my eye.

As commander. I note that morale is good. Waldemer trudges along like a happy machine, bent against the rope, and Luisa is talkative.

“Do you know, there is a curious sensation. We are at the top of the world, and as we walk it turns under our feet. Like the bear at the circus walking on a large ball. But this means we will never get there. The ball turns as we walk, and we will always be at the top. Hör du mig, Gustav?”

“Ja, den är
intressant.”

I notice only after she speaks, and after I answer, that we are talking in Swedish. We are alone; Waldemer is only a large puffing sled dog some several metres away on our right. For some time now I have been aware of a curious sensation: that there is one more person in the party than my rational senses can account for, a ghost that melts in the air whenever I turn to find it. Now I understand it: there is a Luisa for me and a Theodor for Waldemer. The one and the other of us, looking at the slight figure in black with the shawl tied over the cap, sees or imagines something different. Which is true in all triangles of three persons, no doubt. But my case is different, because I see not only the Luisa of my own mind but also the Theodor of Waldemer's. With a little effort of the will I can make these two images merge, then separate, like the images in a badly adjusted pair of binoculars. Waldemer is dense! I had never plumbed the depth of his density before. It is the very exquisite density of intelligence. Like the density of a gas, it increases with the pressure applied to it. He is not subject to disquieting intuitions of our sort, sensations that the world is turning under his feet and so on. His insensitivity to such nuances is a quality greatly to be envied. It keeps him happy, the lucky fellow. He doesn't know that we are condemned always to remain at the North Pole.

“We will stay here forever, do you know, Gustav? We will go on walking over this whiteness and eat polar bears. It will be one long night, and we will dream in white. Nothing but whiteness and cold. And it will be pure, we will be pure, we will be the whole world.”

“Provided our ammunition lasts. We have fifty rounds.”

Luisa speaks slowly and forms each word with pain, not only because of the unfamiliar language, but because of the cold that has numbed all our faces and especially hers.

“We will sharpen polar-bear bones and use them to kill the others. And after we have eaten many polar bears we will become white too. We will blend into the air and become invisible. Won't that be nice, Gustav? Haven't you ever dreamed of being invisible?”

‘You forget that polar bears are red on the inside.”

“Not the
ones we kill. They will only be dream bears. Do you think we are getting anywhere, Gustav, stumbling over these white blocks? How do you know we are going in the right direction?”

“I am steering by the sun.”

“There isn't any sun just at the moment. And suppose we are going in the right direction, Gustav. What will happen then?”

“We may get to Franz Josef Land. The sealers from Tromsö call there sometimes in the summer.”

“That's what I mean, Gustav. Suppose the sealers from Tromsö find us and take us back to Paris. What will happen then? I think it would be better to stay at the North Pole and go on walking and walking and let the ball turn under us. Because, Gustav, there are all kinds of circles, and if you come back and find yourself at the same place again, you're not allowed to go around again.”

This childish-metaphysical style is caused, no doubt, by the paucity of her vocabulary in an unfamiliar language. The style is cryptic but quite clear, at least to me. Perhaps because I am fairly adept at cryptology, or perhaps because I myself have been thinking the thoughts she is trying to express.

“Did you know that when you came along?”

“That some circles are forbidden? Of course. It was to break the circle that I came.” She turns and shifts the pulling rope to the other side, her hands beginning to tire. “The world, down there”—with no hand to point she gestures with her head—“is a hell of circles, and each one of us is trapped in a different one. Millions of circles, millions of damned souls.”

“There are nine circles in hell. Do you know what the first one is, where they suffer the least?”

“Lust. Paolo and Francesca—were not so badly off, I think. But there are deeper circles. Knowledge is one. And betrayal, at the very bottom.”

This, no doubt, is to consign me to my fit punishment. I help her by quoting sardonically, “When lovely woman stoops to folly / And finds too late that men betray—”

“I don't mean that. We only betray ourselves. No one is betrayed, except by himself.” She tries it two ways in the unfamiliar grammar and is still not quite satisfied with the results. “If we are betrayed, it is only by ourselves.” She loses her footing and slips to one knee on the glazed ice, gets up without any expression on her face grey with cold, and bends again to the pulling rope. “One way to betray yourself is to try to be too many people at once.”

“How many
people should a person try to be, in your opinion?”

“One, at the most. Most people don't even succeed in that.”

“Whereas you and I—” She looks at me sharply. “You, Gustav, are all one thing. I am the sinner. If we were to go back—” She corrects herself. “When we come back, you will be in the first circle, I in the last.”

“Say, you two. Look where you're going. Even I can tell—there's the sun over there. That sort of lighter place in the haze.”

Waldemer has been doing most of the work with his pulling rope on the right, causing the Faltboot to steer badly. Our conversation is deflecting the whole expedition to the left, toward Siberia. “You fellows have been talking Squarehead for an hour now. Don't you ever get tired?”

Recalled to duty by his bluff jibes, we pitch in and do our share. The Faltboot slithers over hummocks the size of grand pianos, picks its way through gaps in pressure ridges. Setting one boot ahead of the other, at a pace of a nautical mile an hour perhaps, we progress over this junkyard and old-furniture warehouse of ice. Waldemer, still doing most of the work, grunts and emits an extraordinary amount of steam.

“Don't know what you find to talk about anyhow. Nothing up here to talk about. Probably recalling your happy memories back in Paris.”

“Ah, you don't understand Swedish?” Theodor is full of mock apology for not including him in the conversation.

“Heaven forbid. I can just barely parley-voo.”

“We quote poetry to each other, to pass the time.”

“Poetry?”

“Dante, Goldsmith.”

“Oh, bully. Save your breath to cool your mush. We've got a ways to pull this contraption yet.”