Katherine Carlyle (31 page)

Later, when I’m standing by the electric kettle, waiting for it to boil, the man with the beard asks if I’d like to join them. They are scientists, he says. From Denmark. I thank him, then introduce myself and take a seat.

The fair-haired man pours me a vodka. “You’re American?”

“No, English.”

“Bottoms up!” He raises his glass. “That’s what you say in English, no?”

“Not very often,” I tell him. “Usually we just say ‘Cheers.’ ”

“Oh.” He smiles ruefully, then drinks.

“But it’s not wrong,” I say.

The man with the beard tells me he works as a botanist. The two men have been to Svalbard on many occasions, though this is their first visit to Ugolgrad. I’m surprised to see them, I say, transport being virtually nonexistent at this time of year. They were lucky, the bearded man tells me. Their university contacts in Longyearbyen managed to secure them a lift on the Russian helicopter. They are regular visitors to Ny-Ålesund, he goes on, the scientific community that acts as a center for research into climate change. I ask if it’s true that the Norwegian government have built a doomsday vault on Svalbard.

The fair-haired man breaks in. “It’s near the airport. You didn’t see it?”

I shake my head. “I didn’t know it was there.”

“That’s a shame. It’s beautiful.”

Since the materials used in the top half of the vault include mirrors, stainless steel, and prisms, he tells me, it reflects light throughout the summer, acting as a kind of beacon or focal point in an otherwise bleak landscape. In the winter it’s even more spectacular. A network of two hundred fiber-optic cables means it gives off a constant, muted white-and-turquoise glow. A Norwegian artist by the name of Sanne designed the installation.

The botanist takes over. Svalbard was chosen for the project on account of its comparative security, he says. Permafrost is one factor, but the absence of tectonic activity is also significant. The vault itself is located 130 meters above sea level, in the side of a sandstone mountain. Even if the polar ice cap were to melt, the site would remain dry. Locally mined coal provides power for the refrigeration units that cool the crop seeds to the recommended minus 18 Celsius. Four and half million seeds will eventually be stored inside the vault, to be used in the event of global catastrophe.

He hesitates. “You’re smiling.”

What he’s saying reminds me of my own origins. He might almost be describing me.

“Sorry,” I say. “I was thinking about something else.”

Worried that he’s boring me, perhaps, he changes the subject. The flora is astonishingly varied on Svalbard, he tells me, partly due to the warming influence of the Gulf Stream, and partly on account of the seabird colonies, which provide natural fertilizers. Roughly a quarter of the flowering plants are completely unknown in Scandinavia. There are twelve different species of whitlow
grasses, for instance, though he has only ever spotted seven. The fair-haired man interrupts. He works as a marine biologist, he says, but his real passion is bird-watching. On Svalbard you can see king eider ducks, gray phalaropes, and fulmars. You have to be careful with fulmars. If you encroach on their territory they spit a rancid liquid at you.

The two men are enthusiasts, and eager to share their knowledge, but after a while, inevitably, the conversation shifts. They are amazed to find someone like me in such a remote place, especially at such an inhospitable time of year. They couldn’t quite believe it when I walked into the bar. Am I alone? Surely not.

I tell them I have come to Svalbard for the peace and quiet.

“Peace and quiet?” the botanist says. “That is — how do you call it in English? — an understatement, no?”

The two Danes are laughing. They’re both a little drunk. The marine biologist is curious to know how I spend my days.

“I work as a cleaner,” I say, “and I’m learning Russian in my spare time. I’m keeping a journal too.” I talk about my drawings of abandoned interiors. The pink house near the quay, the old canteen. “Now it’s dark all the time, though, I’ve started writing.”

The botanist exchanges a look with his colleague. “We must be interesting. Then she will write about us.”

“I’ll write about you anyway,” I say.

The two men find this very funny.

“Ah yes,” the botanist says, shaking his head. “The English humor.”

The marine biologist lifts the vodka bottle. “Another drink?”

I thank the men for their company, but plead tiredness and rise out of my chair.

“Can we walk you home?” the botanist says.

“That’s very kind,” I say, “but there’s no need. It’s really close.”

Outside, the night is so cold that breathing is difficult. My throat and lungs feel scoured by the air. I tip my head back and the sky towers above me, layer on layer of blackness. The moon is a round hole, small and brilliant. Light streams through it from another, brighter world.

I take my usual shortcut, behind the back of the school, then through the playground with its warped collapsing hut and its marooned blue rowboat, and up past the new canteen. The vodka simmers deep inside my body. I’m already looking forward to being home and lying in the dark with the radio on. The botanist’s words come back to me.
We must be interesting
. Smiling, I climb the short flight of steps that leads up to the front door of my building.

I’m standing at the foot of the stairs, by the fire extinguisher, feeling for my key, when somebody grabs me from behind and clamps a hand over my nose and mouth. Without looking, I know it’s the man in the green jacket. Bohdan. He must have been waiting in the shadows just inside the door. His palm is rough, like the heel of a foot. It smells of nicotine. He wraps his other hand round my middle, trapping my arms, and drags me away from the stairs. I kick backwards. Catch him on the shin. He twists my head so violently that colors explode before my eyes. White, then purple. I can’t cry out, though. I can hardly breathe. I think about biting his hand but it would be like sinking my teeth into cardboard or leather. It’s hard to believe that his hand and my face are made of the same thing.

He hauls me back outside, into the dark. I let myself go floppy as a doll, as if I’ve passed out or given up. My weight doesn’t seem
to trouble him, though he’s breathing noisily, through his mouth. The reek of vodka hangs around him in a cloud. He’s drunk, as always. I have to use that to my advantage. He might be strong but he’s bound to be sloppy, careless, unsteady on his feet. I’m sure I’m faster than he is. More nimble. If I can just wrench free of him I don’t think he’ll be able to catch me. Where’s my door key, though? I no longer have it. I remember a chink and then a tinkle as it bounced off the fire extinguisher and landed on the floor. I see it in my mind’s eye, pewter-colored, lying on the concrete.

The sky tilts, its blackness sooty, dense. The moon is nowhere. It seems a different night to the one that hypnotized me earlier. The man drags me backwards across a stretch of wasteground. My hat has fallen off; cold air scalds my ears. Though I’ve been mapping the town for weeks, I can’t tell which way he’s going. Will anybody see us? Probably not. It’s too dark, too late. Their TVs will be turned up loud, their curtains drawn. Shouting won’t do any good.
It’s the wind
, they’ll say.
It’s just the wind
.

My heels bump and scrape over hard snow, and my neck aches from when he twisted it. I want to take a deep breath but his hand’s still clamped over my face. I glimpse a park bench, then a lamppost, then I seem to disappear into myself. Everything shrinks, and I turn inwards, crumple, drop away. I keep falling, but never land, and there’s a dragging, chain-mail sound, like waves on shingle. I can’t feel my body or the cold, and I’ve lost all sense of where I am.

I come to in a derelict room, the floor covered with sheets of paper, dust, and broken glass. A single beam of light shows me a doorway and part of a wall. At the far end of the room is an overturned piano, the rows of white hammers tightly packed as the gills on a fish. All manner of things are scattered about. A tin bowl, a
boot, a dumbbell. A red book lies facedown, its spine split open. There’s nothing that isn’t incomplete or out of place, nothing that hasn’t been tampered with or damaged.

All of a sudden I’m laughing.

I have just remembered a conversation with my father. I was staying with a family in an idyllic Alpine village as part of an exchange program. I would have been sixteen at the time. During the first week my father called from Libya.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

“There have been violent clashes between the security forces and the protesters,” I told him, “but we’re hoping order will be restored quite soon.”

My father sighed. “Are you learning any French?”

I notice, almost incidentally, that I’m naked below the waist, except for my socks. My trousers and boots lie in a tangled heap nearby. The man stands over me, swaying slightly. There’s no cut on his forehead, and his hair is not receding. He’s younger than Bohdan, with a bulbous nose. I have never seen him before.

It’s sometime in the future, late spring or early summer. The sky is a high hard blue, the sawtooth peaks still capped and patched with snow. The fjord is blue too, smooth and polished as a glaze. The coastal plains and tundra blaze with Arctic bell heather, purple saxifrage, and mountain avens. I have never seen a landscape that has such a clear empty beauty. People often cry at the return of the light.

My father has arrived by ship. He always scoffs at the kinds of holidays that are advertised in the windows of travel agencies or the back of Sunday color supplements —
Experience the Magic of the Midnight Sun
! — but as I watch him step out onto the deck I sense
a change in him, a relaxation of his principles. Lydia appears. Her red hair, long and loose, streams sideways in the breeze. When it blows across his face, half blinding him, he laughs. She tilts her head and twists her hair into a rope. Her ring finger glints. Ah yes. I see. He may have lost a daughter but he has found a wife.

The cruise ship anchors in the fjord, and passengers are encouraged to go ashore in Zodiacs. The museum is worth a visit. They can see a polar bear’s heart preserved in alcohol, a chess set carved out of driftwood by an early settler, a range of elegant harpoons. They can stop at the hotel bar and drink hot tea or local beer or sweet champagne. There’s also a shop that sells Russian souvenirs. Though my father disapproves of groups and tours it’s unlikely he will pass up the chance to explore such a strange and desolate place. Is it sheer coincidence that has brought him here? Or is he still looking for me, still following leads, no matter how tenuous they might be?

As he stands at the guardrail, a little girl collides with him, then runs on up the deck. A woman calls after her to be careful. In her late forties, she has sleepy eyelids and an erect, almost military bearing. She apologizes for her daughter’s clumsiness, then asks my father if he ever read the story of what happened here.

“What story was that?” he asks.

“A girl was murdered.”

“Murdered?”

“Yes.” The woman surveys the town. Her drooping eyelids give her a complacent air. “It was in all the papers.”

“Was she a local girl?”

“That’s just it. She wasn’t from here at all.”

My father frowns. “I don’t remember it,” he says half to himself. “Perhaps I was away.”

“She was English,” the woman says. “Like us.”

A sudden sickly churning in his heart. “What was her name?” But he keeps his eyes on the town, with its rusting containers, its gantries, and its messy coal spills. He can’t bear to look at the woman for fear of what she might say next.

“Her name? I don’t remember.”

Lydia takes my father’s arm. “Are you all right, David?”

He doesn’t answer.

I turn my head to the right, away from where the piano is. A door opens into another room. On the faded green wall someone has transcribed a poem in black felt-tip, some lines tilting upwards, others sagging in the middle. I feel the poem might hold the key to everything, but it’s too far away to read, and anyway it’s written in a language I can’t understand.

“I know this room,” I murmur.

I’ve drawn this room. I’m in the old miners’ canteen, on the first floor.

The man has rolled me over, onto my stomach, my left cheek pressed into the dust and dirt. I’m facedown, gagged with a cloth that tastes of bleach and oil. My locket is lying a few feet away, just out of reach. The chain must have snapped during the struggle. The man unfastens his belt. Everything is taking a long time but there are gaps too. Breaks in the continuity.

My father came to me one spring afternoon, while I was reading on the gold sofa in the living room. He wanted to know what I had done with my mother’s ashes. He seemed gentle, inward-looking, like a bird with its wings folded.

“I told you,” I said. “I scattered them.”

“Would you show me the place?”

We drove to Testaccio with the windows open. It was late afternoon. Warm air filled the car. As we turned right, onto the Ponte Garibaldi, I looked across at him. He glanced at me and smiled.

Once in the cemetery I took him to the cypress tree, its shadow like a spill of ink, darkening the daisy-studded grass. He asked if this was where I had put the ashes. He wanted to be able to imagine it. I had emptied them in a circle round the trunk, I said. I told him about my panic, and about the rain. He asked how I came to choose the tree. It was somewhere she liked to sit, I said. The sense of peace, and life going on just beyond the walls. She said it was like being cut off from the world but still a part of it.

He nodded, then looked away towards the pyramid. “It’s a good spot. I wouldn’t mind being here myself.”

“But it’s illegal.”

“Yes.”

As we left the cemetery, I took his hand. Neither of us spoke. When we reached the car he turned to face me.

“Thank you,” he said.

I wasn’t certain what he was thanking me for — I could think of at least three things — and I didn’t mind not being certain.

When summer arrives at last, with its endless days, its surfeit of light, I will walk in the hills behind the town and out along the shore, and I will search for the twelve types of whitlow grasses, and also for moss campion, its dense pillows scattered over the ground, and Jacob’s ladder, with its shadowy blue flowers and its thin fragrance. I will go fishing on the Isfjord at midnight and catch mackerel as long as my forearm. I will see barnacle geese fly overhead, with their black necks, the air full of the rush of their wings.
I will sail to the high needle-shaped rock in Hornsund, known as Bautaen, and to the ice cliffs of Austfonna, the longest glacier front in the northern hemisphere. I will see everything there is to see, know everything there is to know.