He showed us slides of emperor penguins and their adorable chicks, and then slides of Adélie penguins, named for someone's wife. “Yes, they have feathers,” he answered, and I heard the echo of Aunt Serena's voice: “If it has feathers, it's a
bird. Anything with feathers, no matter what it looks like, and whether it can fly or not, is a bird.”
I took notes, thinking that Suzy would have loved such items of information as that Adélie penguins have seventy feathers per square inch. That's a lot of feathers, but the penguins need them both in the water and for belly-flop landings when they ride the waves into shore.
Lunch was a buffet of all kinds of salads, cheese, breads, fruits. I sat with Cook and Sam, and three older women from Alaska. Otto was on the other side of the dining room with the smokers.
“Is Benjy's wife with him on this trip?” Sam asked.
Leilia, the eldest of the three Alaskans, shook her head. “She died a couple of years ago. He'd have wasted away with grief if it hadn't been for his penguins. He's raised a lot of chicks from secondary eggs or eggs which were hatched too late for the fledglings to survive in the wild, and taking care of the eggs and the chicks is what's kept him going.”
One of the other women nodded. “If you want to feel loved, all you need is a baby penguin. They are the cuddliest creatures imaginable.”
“What's a secondary egg?” Sam asked.
Leilia explained. “Penguins lay two eggs, a large one and then a much smaller one, in case something happens to the primary egg.”
“You seem to know a lot about penguins,” Sam remarked.
“We”âLeilia looked at her companionsâ“worked with Benjy for a few weeks the year his wife died. He's a fine scientist and one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. This is my
third trip on the
Argosy.
I teach science in the high school in Fairbanks. We're all teachers.”
Leilia's two companions nodded. They were nice women, with sort of weathered faces, not ruddy like Benjy's, but crinkly and creasy with lots of smile lines. All three had frizzy permanents, as though they'd given them to each other and not bothered much about them because their minds were on other, more important things. They looked comfortable and competent and as though they'd be good teachers who'd know what to do in a crisis.
After lunch I curled up on my bunk to write in my journal and fell asleep. I think most people took naps. When I woke up, the postcard Esteban had given me had slid out of my journal onto the floor, and I picked it up. At least I wasn't likely to see either the pyramids or Esteban again, though he had really seemed nice, despite everything. Or maybe because of everything. Smitten with me, Sam had said, and he'd added later, “Don't worry about Esteban, Vicky. Just remember that Vespugia is at present a fascist country and be grateful that you live in a democracy.” I was. And grateful that we'd left Vespugia and were on the
Argosy.
At three we had another lecture, about whales and seals and other mammals. Todd, the mammal specialist, told us that the lecture room was familiarly known as the Womb Room, because it was low-ceilinged and warm, and darkened so that slides could be shown, and no matter how good the lecture was, people tended to fall asleep. He was right. I heard a couple of snores, even though Todd was fascinating, and not only about mammals. He talked about how important
it was to declare Antarctica a global park. It's the fifth-largest continent on the planet, much bigger than the U.S., and it's the last totally free continent on earth, and Todd was passionate about having it stay that way. His controlled intensity over what he cared about reminded me of Adam.
He talked about the pack ice, which can freeze far beyond the tip of the Antarctic peninsula and out into the Drake Passage. When the Southern Ocean freezes, it's a major planetary event. “The patterns of ocean circulation change,” he told us, “and affect the earth's climate by shifting the direction of the atmospheric convection currents. If the planet's weather warms too much, we won't have the sixteen million square kilometers of pack ice we have now. That's one-third of the continent which freezes and thaws every year.”
Someone asked, “Have you ever been here when the pack ice freezes?”
“Oh, sure. And it freezes audibly, with crackles and snaps.” Yes, I'd heard the ice in the brook at home freeze with a sound like a shot.
Someone else asked, “Do you know people from different national research stations?”
“Oh, yeah. We Antarctic freaks of numerous nationalities all get along pretty well together. We go to each other's parties, visit each other's stations, rescue each other in time of need. But our various countries bicker with very green eyes. See this map of Argentina?” The projector flashed a slide onto the screen, and he pointed with his wand. “See? It includes the Antarctic.” Click. “Chile. It includes the same prime piece of the Antarctic peninsula. Vespugia. The same. The British
claim a lot of it, too. I wish governments didn't think they have a right to own parts of the planet.”
A hand went up. “But hey, Todd, what about the U.S.? Don't we want our share?”
“Sure, but we don't include it on our maps, and we're willing to let the work that goes on at the stations be internationally monitored. The more enlightened leaders in most countries remember that the planet is home to all of us, and if we don't take care of it, we'll be in trouble. Big trouble.”
Angelique said, “My mother used to say that if we abuse the planet overmuch she will turn on us.”
Todd agreed. “Your mother's right. The planet has been sending us multiple messages, and the powers that be have ignored them. So it's up to us, and my guess is that when you finish this trip you'll feel as protective of this amazing land as I do.”
Then he explained how the great ice fields of the enormous continent reflect sunlight up into space, and that this is what keeps the planet from overheating. “If the ice fields should melt, the whole planet might turn into a tropical jungle, so hot that most life would turn to death. Or, conversely, it could start another ice age.”
Someone asked, “Is that likely?”
“I wish it weren't. I'm not crying doom”âhe shook his headâ“but I want you to love Antarctica, this remote continent, strange as one of the outer planets, as inhospitable as Mars. Only a little over two percent of the land is ice-free, and that for only the few weeks of summer. Of all the continents, it's the coldest, the highest, and the driestâwhich may seem contradictory, since it contains so much of the earth's
water. But it's true, the interior is as dry as the Sahara. No snow has fallen there for a million years.”
To my surprise, because I found all of this totally interesting and was trying to get it down in my notes, my eyelids began to droop and I jerked my head up as I started to fall asleep.
T
he light was so brilliant, sun sparkling off water, off ice, that my eyes were dazzled and I began to see black spots, and when I tried to blink them away, I saw what looked like snow on a bad TV set. It was a while before I realized that something black on the horizon was really there.
It was moving, it was coming closer to me and my iceberg.
Was it a whale?
What if it bumped into the iceberg?
Whales don't bump into icebergs. They use echolocation, the way dolphins do.
It wasn't a whale. It was a Zodiac. I thought I could see red, the red of our parkas.
I began jumping up and down and yelling.
I took off my parka and waved it like a flag and shouted at the top of my lungs, “I'm here! Here! Help! Come get me! Please come get me!”
I thought the Zodiac was coming nearer. I kept on shouting, “Help! Help! Come get me!”
Then the Zodiac veered, as though whoever was running it saw something, and it headed toward a very large iceberg on the horizon, far away.
It was going away from me.
Nobody saw me. Nobody heard me.
I sank down on the ice in despair. Cold ate into me.
I pulled myself together, scrambled to my feet, put on my parka. Even if the Zodiac hadn't seen me, even if it was now disappearing over the horizon, it meant that there were people looking for me. My manifest number was still turned to the red side, so Quim and the others knew I wasn't on the
Argosy.
They were looking for me. When they got to the iceberg they were heading toward and didn't find me, they'd turn around and come back.
Please come back!
Please!
Â
The next day we anchored off New Island, one of the Falklands. We were up early. Breakfast was at six-thirty. While I was waiting for my oatmeal, I said to Cook, “Just a little while and you'll be leaving.”
“You'll be fine here. I can leave comfortably, knowing that you're on the
Argosy
, and Benjy will take good care of you.” He held out his coffee cup for a refill.
“Did you tell Benjy anything about what happened in Vespugia?”
“There really isn't that much to tell.” Cook poured milk
in his coffee. “I've told him what little there is, and it's behind us, thank goodness.”
I added a big spoonful of raisins to my oatmeal. “I'm looking forward to meeting Seth when we get to Port Stanley, and I hope he's going to want to meet me.”
“I hope so, too,” Cook said. “He was terribly mangled by the seal, and he's been more than a little eccentric ever since, not wanting to mix much with people. He sings well, and oddly enough he enjoys performing, and he's made quite a reputation with his songs. He's worked hard at the little museum in Port Stanley, which we'll probably have a chance to visit, but he often takes off whenever a ship docks in town.”
“Even if he knows you're on it?” I asked.
“Even then. Seth is really very erratic. Sometimes he dresses like a penguin. He's my brother and I love him, but I feel I have to prepare you for how odd he is.”
The Alaskans joined us then, and we started talking about the rockhopper penguins we'd be seeing that morning.
After breakfast we lined up to get in the Zodiacs, all of us bundled in our red parkas, with rubber pants over our jeans. There were double doors leading out to a metal ladder going down to a small landing platform where a Zodiac was bobbing up and down. When it came my turn, I jumped down into the Zodiac and sat on the black rubber side.
The Zodiac's outboard motor started and off we went. I looked around at the other passengers. We were all wearing small life preservers over our parkas, much smaller than the bulky ones we'd worn for the boat drill, thank heavens. These orange oblong donuts would inflate if they were in the water,
and I hoped we'd never have to test them. I was going to be in a Zodiac at least once a day, and usually twice. I'd better get used to carrying around all that heavy equipment.
The captain himself ran our Zodiac, pulling us to shore with a flourish and a scrape of rubber against pebbles. We swung our legs over the inflated rubber sides and sloshed ashore, the water almost to the top of our boots. The sun was beating down, and I saw some of the others taking off their life preservers and placing them on the beach, so I did the same. Almost everybody followed this by taking off their red parkas and dropping them down by the orange donuts.
We had a tramp of about a mile across pastures of tussock grass, where we saw sheep wandering, with penguins hopping all around themâand I mean really hopping in the most amazing way. A penguin would be on the ground, and suddenly he'd be what seemed at least six feet up on a rock. Rockhoppers are well named. And they smelled. We smelled and heard them before we saw them. They chittered, squeaking and squawking at each other, at the day, at the sheep. Just being noisy in general.
Benjy had warned us not to go closer to the penguins than fifteen feet, and never under any circumstances to block a baby from its mother, or get between a penguin and its access to the water.
But the penguins hadn't heard that announcement. Otto came up to me, saying, “When we arrived in the Zodiacs, all of us still in our red parkas, I could almost hear the penguins thinking, âHm. Big red birds. They don't seem to be a threat. Let's investigate.'”
I laughed with him. “First time I've been mistaken for a
bird.” Even with our parkas off, it seemed to me that the penguins still thought of us as another species of bird. Benjy ambled over to us and told us that if we sat down on the ground and kept very still they might even come and peck at our backpacks to see if we had any food in them. At least the penguins here had never been threatened or hurt by human beings.
Siri spread her parka on the rough beach and sat on it, then took her harp, which had been slung over her shoulder with a wide canvas strap, out of its canvas carrier. She began to sweep her fingers over the strings. Then she hummed a little, softly, and finally began to sing. I'd half slept through the words when she sang in our hotel room in San Sebastián, but now I was paying attention.
All things by immortal power,
Near or far,
Hiddenly
To each other linked are,
That thou canst not stir a flower
Without troubling of a star.
Her fingers on the strings reprised the melody. Then she sang the last two lines again.
Thou canst not stir a flower
Without troubling of a star.
As I was drawn closer to Siri and her harp, so were the penguins, and three of them waddled right up to her.
“Hush,” Benjy warned as a couple of people began gushing over how cute the penguins were. It wasn't cute. It was wonderful. It was so wonderful that I felt a lift in my heart, a brightening as I responded to the beauty of the song, the penguins, the sky, the gentle air. I wanted the moment to go on forever, and even though I knew it couldn't, while I was in it, it
was
forever.
Benjy kept people back, and finally we all followed him, away from Siri and her music and the penguins. Greta said wistfully, “I wish I had a better ear for music. I think the penguins got more out of Siri's song than I did.” She walked on to catch up with Jorge and Jack.
I stayed mostly with Cook and Benjy. Each moment I was coming to like Benjy more and more. I had seen his face while Siri played for the penguins, and it reflected the same joy I felt.
Otto walked along with us until we arrived at a vast colony of rockhoppers with their young. Benjy said they were about five weeks old, grey balls of fluff huddled together in their crèche, so many and so close to each other that I couldn't begin to count them. For the chicks, company was safety; an isolated chick could easily be picked off by a skua.
The weather, Benjy announced, was extraordinary for the Falklands. It was hazily sunny, and the thermometer must have been in the low sixties. Of course, January in the Falklands is summer, but Cook agreed that this was unusual, and all of us were sweating in our winter clothes. Some of the baby penguins had their “hands” stretched out to catch the breeze and cool off. Penguin flippers, like those of dolphins and whales, have the bone structure of an arm and a hand, not
a fish's fin. A few of the fluffy little babies were flopped over on their sides as though they were dead, but Benjy assured us they were only resting against the heat. Their metabolism is geared for cold weather.
“Cookie”âLeilia, the Alaskan teacher, looked at him questioninglyâ“I've been meaning to ask youâwhen I was in Port Stanley before, there was a man who looks very much like you.”
Cook nodded. “He's my brother. I'm here on my biannual visit.”
“Fascinating man,” Leilia said. “I hope we'll see him when we go to the museum in Port Stanley. He's really put a lot of effort into that place.”
On the beach and up on the cliffs there were yellow flowers, which Leilia said were sea cabbages, and the tussock grass grew in coarse clumps and looked as though it had survived heavy winds and salt water. It was indeed an alien landscape, unlike anything I'd ever seen, but it had its own stark beauty.
Otto loped along beside me, chattering, informing. “A lot of this sod can be cut up for peat. It's used a lot for fuel here.”
“How do you know so much?” I asked.
“In my country we're seeking alternate forms of energy. But I don't think peat would work for us. Oh, look, Vicky, look!” In the midst of the rockhopper colony was a nesting black-browed albatross. “They have the longest wingspan of any bird in the world. Now, look over here!” And he pointed to two enormous vultures waiting on a promontory, looking sinister.
I shuddered. “I don't like vultures.”
“Most carrion eaters aren't pleasant. But here, where it's so dry that nothing biodegrades, they're useful for disposing of garbage.”
In the notebook I was keeping for Suzy, I'd jotted down, “Rockhopper penguins,” and now I added “albatrosses” and “vultures.”
Cook had reminded me to put on sunscreen, and I had on the safari hat he had given me, because the sun was glaring. Otto remarked that a few of the men who had baldish heads and who weren't wearing hats were going to be sorry.
Otto veered off to talk with Jorge. I wandered along, clumping in my heavy boots, thinking of the words Siri had sung.
Benjy had warned us not to bring anything ashore with us, not to leave anything behind, not a tissue, not an empty film box, not a plastic bag, and not to take anything away with us, not even a pebble. He explained the precariousness of the ecology, and that anything we did could upset it. “I'm not sure we should be here at all,” he said, “but it is so beautiful that I know none of you will ever be the same again.”
If I picked one of the yellow sea cabbages, that casual action might result in trouble to a star millions of light-years away. It isn't just that if you fall off a roof the consequence will likely be a broken leg because we live in a universe where gravity plays an important role, but that all actions have consequences far beyond anything we can imagine.
“Vicky!” I heard my name. “Earth calling Vicky!” And there was Sam, standing next to Cook and laughing.
“Oh. Sorry. I guess I was off in another world.”
Sam asked, “What was going on in the other world?”
“Consequences,” I answered. “Little things like leaving debris here. And maybe big things, bad things, but also good things, like Siri's music.”
Sam chomped on his cigar. “The penguins loved her.”
“Did they ever!” Benjy came up to us. “I've never thought of experimenting with music with the penguins before. Tomorrow I'm going to take Siri to a crèche and see how the fledglings react to her music.”
“She plays well,” Otto said.
“And what a gorgeous voice,” Benjy added.
Siri had a nice voice, I thought, but not really a gorgeous one. What Benjy was reacting to was the whole experience of Siri and the music and the penguins, and yes, that was gorgeous. And maybe he was reacting to Siri, herself. I walked along between Benjy and Sam. Cook and Leilia were behind us, chatting away. When we got back to the beach and the Zodiacs, Siri had her harp slung on her back again, and was walking with Greta. They seemed to get along very well, despite Greta's musical lacks.
In my head I began to write a poem, sort of inspired by what Siri had sung and remembering what Aunt Serena had said about penguins and intimacy. While we were waiting to get in the Zodiacs, I sat on the beach and scribbled, and waited for the last Zodiac, so I had something more or less finished.