Georg Letham (25 page)

Another writes letter after letter home, letters that can never arrive, another takes the discarded dominoes and builds a little house with them, another prays ceaselessly, tabulating the number of hasty Our Fathers and so forth and timing them with a stopwatch as though trying to break a record. And the terrible, sharp, rancid odor of the rats is driven away by thick clouds of tobacco smoke and the penetrating smell of the arrack and rum that the gentlemen and crew polish off in enormous quantities without getting a proper glow. It remains a grim delirium, a chortling, an idiotic grinning, an awkward, tense embrace of an equally delirious comrade, it is unclear if this is unnatural love or if the intoxicated man is confusing his neighbor with his beloved bride, his beloved father at home.

What does reality mean to these men now in the terrible arctic night, nearly four months long! They do not wash, they do not comb their hair, and they are becoming animals to such a degree that they can no longer muster true hate for the rats. The healthy are becoming ill, the ill remain ill, traces of blood are seen everywhere on board, it becomes a torment to sit at the table where the men chew their food with painful listlessness, their mouths filthy and toothless. Only a very few are still on their feet, my father, the geographer, the missionary.

But the dog is still the same as she was at the start. If a rat is bold
enough to sniff at the fur-lined, whale-oil-smeared boots of one of the stuporous gentlemen, Ruru dashes intrepidly after it. It went too far this time, and soon she has it by its darkly variegated, grayish brown, smoothly furred neck, a brief squeak, then she whacks its head three or four times on the deck and waits, growling faintly, tail wagging fiercely, to see if it has any fight left in it, if it is still kicking, then picks it up neatly with her shining white teeth and flings the carcass over the side and onto the pack ice. After my father has seen this I don't know how many times, he comes to a great decision. He will set a moral example. First he will prove to the slovenly men what a sacrifice he is ready and willing to make for the group, second he wants to teach the rats in the ship's belly a lesson so these disgusting animals know there is still something that is their equal. And through this moral demonstration he will inoculate his comrades with a new resolve: they will bravely drink rat's blood to get rid of the scurvy, and perhaps it will be possible to really bring the rats under control, to save the provisions at the last minute thanks to Ruru and rescue the fortunes of the heroic expedition.

What a foolish experiment! To part with all one has left in the world, the only thing one can be sure of, with so little prospect of success! Can man triumph over nature? Never. He, man, is only an experiment on the part of nature, the terrible.

The dog will be sent below, into the underworld. But first she is to fast for a day, in order to spread terror and despair that much better among the beasts below.

Most of the men are quite apathetic. The only one upon whom this experiment makes an impression is the geographer. He gives my father
his hand. If he is silent, that is not because he is punishing my father but because he is so moved that he is actually at a loss for words. The geographer strokes the fur on the animal's back. Ruru is so obedient to her master that she does not eat the table scraps thrown to her by the other scholars in the mess, but only sniffs at them. Hunger, fine! Ruru presses her flank against my father's boots, shakes her head so that her collar jingles, and determinedly lies down. But she resists being taken down into the magazine. Rats? No. She does not snap at her master's hand as he takes her by the collar and leads her down the steps, she only twists and pulls her neck away. So strongly that she chokes, she cannot draw breath. How terribly she must fear the world of rats down there. No use. The hatch slammed shut from above. Stamped on by heavy boots. A few words shouted down to the dog now madly charging about and barking: “Tally ho! All the best!” And then my father goes ashore, off to the hunt with shotgun on shoulder.

He returns an hour later. Even from far off, the piteous, almost sobbing, soul-lost howling of the dog comes to him from the recesses of the ship, horrifically amplified by the echo, like the voice of Hamlet's father from the bowels of the earth, his bad conscience.

The others are unmoved. Hell could open up beneath them and they, the scholars, would go on with their card games and eventually crap games, hour after hour, playing for bonbons found in a jar, preserved from the teeth of the rats. If Satan himself were howling below, the crew would not leave their bunks, where they have spent almost the whole day drunk and half asleep.

What is she in the greater scheme of things, what is she to the progress of the scientific expedition, this dog Ruru? Only one more victim, a needless one. She wails in her fear and suffering, accusing the man
in whom she believed, the man who at his own cost has conducted a would-be moral experiment.

No one dares to go down into the hold. My father least of all. The geographer and the missionary argue over who will do it, finally they throw for it, the winner has to pay two bonbons and the loser has to go down into the hold, but is allowed to make his bitter task a little sweeter with the two pieces of candy.

The geographer climbs down the steps, he calls Ruru, coaxes her with a voice now truly affectionate. Ruru was barking furiously just now, it must be possible to find her?! Yes, he finds her, stretched out unconscious from pain and loss of blood, the rats have taken up positions at the head and legs of the poor creature, and even this vigorous man is barely able to drive them off with the most savage kicks, wrest the victim away from them, and bring her on deck.

He carries the animal in his arms. She is covered with blood and wheezing heavily. She opens her gummed-up eyes, blinks through the bloody bits, extends her long, narrow tongue, and whimpers heartbreakingly. He lets her down. Ruru cannot walk. Head, belly, and tail pressed to the planking of the deck, bleeding from the mouth, bleeding from the paws, Ruru crawls about on the upper deck and howls her misery to the icebergs and the polar sky, now tinged with a mild blue, no longer so sternly wintry. Hints of spring are in the air. There is light again, and the time of the “midnight sun” is approaching. The icebergs are shinier than they were, the dirt has been washed off the ice floes.

What good is this to the wailing Ruru? The rats have nibbled at her heels, a bit of flesh between lip and nose is gone forever. Ruru howls and extends her tongue as far as possible to lick the wound. Ruru will not eat. Or cannot. She has to have food poured down her throat with
a wooden spoon. During sleeping hours she disturbs everyone with her belling, sobbing howls. Ruru is mean, scratches and bites all the men, including my father. She has willfully cracked the wooden spoon between her teeth, she refuses food, but lives on. No one wants to deal with her now, only my father comes every day, heart pounding rapidly, to the place where his pet sleeps, but he does not dare to come too close, speaks from a distance. His comrades laugh, a drunken sailor throws a glove at the animal's head. Ruru looks up and growls, bares her teeth. The sailor does not dare to retrieve the glove, which Ruru sits on and then tears apart in a frenzied rage.

The weather improves, the storms have abated. At night green-lit clouds in formations never before seen rush by under a soft twilight. Ruru barks to the sky, eyes closed. Her wounds glitter under the ship's lanterns, and when she moves across the deck, she leaves a trail of blood. But she is alive.

The gentlemen and the sailors have recovered. All who embarked are there. The symptoms of scurvy are almost entirely gone. Perhaps everyone has secretly shot a rat and gulped the blood as medicine. They are silent about that.

But the dog is in their way, they cannot get near her without being snapped at. They would like to snap at her, too, they hate her and scorn her because she has been beaten (for their benefit!). My father is very friendly, very gentle, and very unloved. The rations have become skimpier lately. It is not so easy to go into the magazine and bring up the provisions guarded by the rats. So the gentlemen would at least like an undisturbed night's sleep. This is not possible as long as Ruru is alive.

A ship's council meets. Now, since my father is the opposition, the gentlemen have found their voices, the silence is broken, they greet
one another with gravity and solemnity, their full beards quivering, like men who have endured hardship
together
and survived. They stop being childish–or have they become childish in earnest? They charge my father in his absence with cruelty to animals and resolve, with two votes against (reduced to one once the missionary has been softened up with alcohol and bonbons), “Ruru shall be shot.” Ruru is beyond cure and a burden on the expedition, a nocturnal disturber of the peace and a useless mouth. My father, summoned, eyes downcast, his mouth beneath his heavy beard twisted into an embarrassed smile, revealing his magnificent teeth, listens to the majority verdict that his dog be sentenced to a painless death on humanitarian grounds. He bows with the greatest respect, but he replies as the respondent that he will not fire the shot, and woe to him who lays a hand on Ruru. They believe him capable of anything and give up. Ruru lives.

My father sneaks out to Ruru in the cloudless moonlight and tells her, keeping at an appropriate distance from her sharp teeth, that those bad men have sentenced her to death. But that he will not hand her over. The wounds would heal and they would heal much faster if Ruru would just be sensible, if she would have the brains to let him near so that he could take care of her. Her only response is to growl, her sharp teeth are fearsome. Fur gloves can protect the hands, but Ruru could tear a person's face to pieces about the nose and mouth. She hates everyone, my father especially. She looks at him, her eyes burn, the once silky, now shaggy coat stands on end, particularly around the throat, and–most horrifyingly, Ruru wants to attack her former idol despite her wounded paws. Master and idol before, enemy now. And never has my father loved this animal more, never has he preferred her
company to that of his companions as much as he does
now
. Now he has a suspicion what man is. But he and the dog do not make up. Day after day my poor father comes away, his eyes distant, letting the somewhat unkempt mustache soak up the flowing tears, attempting to whistle a cheerful tune to deceive the derisively smirking sailors about his frame of mind. The dog has gotten up on her wounded paws and, eyes glittering evilly, growling softly but almost without pause, continues to watch my father until he has vanished into the galley, where he discusses with the cook how to snatch the provisions away from the rats and how to prepare the food for the gentlemen and the crew and the freeloading, but now particularly indispensable Eskimos and their dogs. They all eat the same thing, it is bad and not much, but the lot of them are happy as long as their hunger is satisfied.

Meanwhile the weather has been improving steadily. Suddenly it is here: the midnight sun. The indescribable joy of the men, previously so depressed, is a sight to see, for example when one sailor takes off another's fur hat and holds his hand between the sun and the man's flaxen-haired head so as to admire for the first time after so long a
shadow
thrown by an object onto a surface, and then the
shine
magically produced by the sun's rays on his comrade's tousled blond hair. And among the scholars, what faith in a happy outcome, what confidence in success! Who will dare to enlighten them! The animals in the underworld are now nearly masters of the ship. If they become its absolute masters, then all is lost.

Now everyone drinks in the lukewarm air. Clothes and furs are put
aside and aired out, pillows and covers spread out in the sun, under close watch.

The pack ice is moving. Vibrations have been passing through the now translucent masses of ice from time to time. A jagged fissure rips through the pack as it sparkles in the sun: a dark blue flash, and it splits thunderously. Great shards of ice send foam into the air as they plunge into the cobalt blue water covered with slabs of ice like fish scales. The ship is suddenly free–the sleeping passengers awaken, having felt it rocking beneath them. The ship? It is no longer a ship–everyone knows it, no one will admit while momentarily sun-drunk that it has become a traveling rattery. The warm weather has brought the animals out of its belly, they are literally ubiquitous, they are underfoot everywhere. They gleam in the sun, well fed and plump, their fur is smooth, and they actually have a kind of beauty, such as is produced even in ugly individuals by proper nourishment and a feeling of being at one with the world.

They hiss and snarl indignantly when stepped on. When wounded by carbine shots, they squeal bloodcurdlingly. Others remove the wounded creatures, whether to save them or eat them no one knows. The purser (unemployed missionary) and the ship's cook discuss the situation with my father, not revealing much to their companions. The rats allow no one near the casks and barrels, sacks and chests in which the last provisions are stored, except by force of arms. They are defending
their
property.

No more ship's council. There is only
one
solution. To temporarily take the food by force onto the immeasurably vast ice sheet, which stretches off to the east in front of the ship and which will break up in
a few months–with luck. But without the ship, all are lost, only
on
the ship can they attempt to drift poleward–or southward, toward their native soil, toward their “loving hearts,” toward home. Once the provisions are temporarily on the ice–up and at the horrible beasts with a vengeance. Carbon monoxide will be used. It
must
be possible to save the ship.