Ice Brothers (80 page)

EPILOGUE

Nathan and Paul did not meet again for thirty-seven years, and then it was by chance. Before that they often thought of each other and considered trying to get in touch, but like many men they were perhaps afraid to attempt to carry a wartime friendship into peacetime. Neither of them was a jovial backslapping type who enjoyed meeting people for old times sake. Perhaps they thought that some memories that were good, almost hallowed as time went by, could be ruined by an awkward reunion. Besides that, they were both unusually busy men who lacked the time for sentimental excursions into the past.

Still, Nathan often wondered what had happened to Paul in the Pacific, whether he went back to his wife and whether he found a way to be as effective in, say, business as he had been aboard the
Arluk
. And Paul wondered how Nathan had managed aboard the
Arluk
back in Greenland, whether he had seen Brit again, whether he had ever found out what had happened to his wife in Poland, and whether he had found a career suited to his unusual talents. Their memories of each other were like stories with the last pages missing, but that was the way most wartime friendships looked in retrospect. Both Nathan and Paul were thoughtful men, and they concluded that the fragment of each other which they possessed had a certain completeness in its own right. The past belongs to the past and was often ruined when dragged into the present.…

Nevertheless, Paul was delighted one morning in May, 1979, when he picked up a copy of the New York
Times
in his office and saw a small headline which said, “
DR
.
NATHAN GREENBERG TO ADDRESS N
.
A
.
M
.
ON SOLAR ENERGY
.” A photograph of a craggy-faced, balding man in his sixties removed any doubt that this was indeed Nathan of the North and Paul was not surprised to see that he had changed his family name back to Greenberg. The article said that Dr. Greenberg was a professor at M.I.T. who was considered a pioneer in developing solar energy, and it added that his address was going to be given at the Hilton Hotel at three that afternoon.

On impulse Paul called the hotel to see if Nathan was registered there, and when he found he was, telephoned his room. Nathan's deep, “Hello” seemed to echo unchanged across the chasm of thirty-seven years.

“Nathan, get your ass up on the bridge!” Paul said. “The fog is closing in. I need some radar bearings.”

“Paul! My God, that voice of yours still makes me jump. Where in hell is the bridge these days?”

“I'm not more than a dozen blocks from you. I'll come over to see you any time you're not too busy.”

“Come now. I'll order coffee and I'll see if I can get some croissants or some Danish pastry like Cookie's best.”

Nathan's suite was as impersonal as most hotel rooms, but he had arranged a feast on a fake marble table that would have done justice to Cookie himself. There was even a bottle of Aquavit. Paul found himself studying this before allowing himself more than a glance at Nathan. Stooped and gaunt even in his youth, Nathan had not aged well physically, but his craggy face, especially his eyes, still had the vitality of youth. He was dressed in a blue serge suit almost as rumpled as their uniforms aboard the
Arluk
, but his white-on-white shirt, his maroon tie and his shoes all looked expensively tasteful. He looked, Paul decided, more like Abe Lincoln than ever.

Nathan, too, found it hard to get accustomed to the appearance of his old commanding officer. Paul was fat—not grossly so, but he was huge. His full head of hair was white and still refused to stay combed. His face, though heavy, still retained a certain boyishness. He wore the clothes of a successful businessman—dark gray silk, a club tie of some sort, a delicately striped shirt, polished black shoes almost like jackboots.

The two men shook hands awkwardly and sat down on a couch by the coffee table. Nathan poured coffee, but they did not interrupt their words with food.

“I'm not going to beat about the bush,” Nathan began. “Damn it, I want a full report. What happened to you out in the Pacific?”

“I had a gas tanker. We were hit. It wasn't too much fun. How did you make out with the
Arluk?
”

“Mostly we just made milk runs up and down the west coast but we rescued some men from the
Dorchester
, and the crew of a wrecked plane. That made us feel pretty good. We never got back to the east coast.”

There was a moment of silence before Paul said, “Did you find out what happened to your wife in Poland?”

“She died at Buchenwald. I found the records.” There was a pause before he added, “I married again, a great Brooklyn girl. We have two sons.”

“I'm glad. I married again, twice, I'm afraid. I'm still lucky at cards. Still, I have a good son and two daughters who spoil me.”

“Do you mind my asking what happened to Sylvia?”

“She fell in love with a major from Texas while I was out in the Pacific. She wrote me a classic ‘Dear John' letter and I wished her well. I understand that she's a real Dallas duchess these days.”

“So the world made your decisions after all.”

“One way or another … I was worried about my brother, and he was shot down over Germany just a few days before the end of the war …”

They both were silent a moment before Paul said, “Did you ever hear anything from Brit?”

“I was over in Denmark about twenty years ago and I made some inquiries at the headquarters of the Greenland Administration about her. She came back to Copenhagen after the war, but after that they had no record of her. She wasn't in the Copenhagen phone book. I suppose she married and has a different name.”

“Did you ever hear anything about Cookie or any of the other men?”

“Not a word. Cookie must be an old man now. I hope he's retired to the Alps with a restaurant of his own.”

“Yes. He was one hell of a fine man.”

“I'd say they all were,” Nathan said.

They sipped their coffee. “Now let me guess what you're doing now,” Nathan said with a smile. “You're a banker. You have a big yacht on Long Island Sound.”

“Is that what I look like?”

“A rather raffish banker. I'm not sure I'd trust my money with you. You might sell one of the branches to buy booze for the president.”

Paul laughed. “You're partly right, but I don't have a yacht. I got my fill of the sea when I had to drink about half the Pacific.”

“But you are a banker?”

“Sort of. I have a little investment company that specializes in risk capital. It's no big deal, but I like to feel we help to start new kinds of business.”

“How about solar energy? God knows we need risk capital in that.”

“We're actually doing some research on it. Maybe we can help each other.”

“I sure would like that. It would bring us full circle.”

“Don't forget that if I put money in something, I want control of it,” Paul said with a grin.

“You bastard, I should have figured that. You'll have me saluting you all over again. No thanks, I can raise my own capital.”

“Maybe we can talk about it. I'll listen to your speech.”

“I'll send you some books that will tell you more. By the way, do you have any pictures of the
Arluk?
”

“Not a one. I wish I did.”

“I got some from the archives at Coast Guard Headquarters, and I even got copies of her blueprints. My sons and I made a model of her. If you give us time, we might make one for you.”

“I'd like that.”

Nathan put his coffee cup on the table. “It's surprising how much I think about the old days,” he said. “There's a whole section of my mind that's still Greenland. Sometimes when I wake up suddenly I still think I'm surrounded by all that glittering ice.”

“Me too.

“And the funny thing is,” Nathan went on, “I keep dreaming about something that never happened at all.”

“What's that?”

“I keep seeing myself dressed up as Nathan of the North, leading my Eskimo storm troops to the top of the mountain overlooking Supportup Fjord. I have whole piles of depth charges piled on the highest ridge. With freezing hands I adjust the fuses with fiendish cleverness and roll them down on the Krauts. I blow up the whole base with an explosion bigger than an atom bomb.”

“Still the Germans fight desperately,” Paul picked it up. “Then you lead your Eskimo storm troops in a magnificent charge while I bring the old
Arluk
into the fjord with all guns blazing. One blast of that monstrous five-incher on the bow wipes out the Germans to the last man.”

“Yes,” said Nathan with his still-familiar smile. “That was the way it was. That, no question, was our finest hour.”

That afternoon Paul went to hear Nathan's speech. There was a big crowd of important people and it was an impressive presentation of all the known facts about solar energy, including a great many that Paul couldn't understand at all. After the last question had been asked Paul went up to Nathan at the podium. “Could we get together some night? My children would like to meet you. They've been hearing stories about you all these years. They'd love to meet Nathan of the North.”

Nathan laughed, and they went to the hotel bar.

“You're famous in my household too,” Nathan said. “My sons know that if you hadn't seen that iceberg dead ahead that night before we got the radar, they wouldn't exist.”

“I've often said that without the radar you brought aboard, we would have gone missing like the
Nanmak
. In lots of ways we saved each other.”

“We survived,” Nathan said. “You know, of all the things I've ever done, I'm really proudest of that. We beat the Krauts and the ice.”

“And our own damn ignorance.”

“And seasickness,” Nathan said. “That was my real victory. But it's nothing I can explain to anybody. My wife understands everything about me except the way I feel about Greenland.”

“Greenland can't be explained,” Paul said. “I finally quit trying.” There was a pause before he said, “Would you and your family like to come to dinner some night? How about tomorrow? I'll round up my kids.”

Nathan smiled and there was some of the old hesitancy in his voice when he said, “We can't tomorrow. I have a meeting in Cambridge. But we'll make it soon. I'll be in touch.”

They exchanged home addresses, but somehow Paul had a feeling right then that the dinner for their families would never happen. The past was past and there was too much risk in trying to drag it further into the present. Like sunken iron cannon, memories could disintegrate when taken away from the sea. Old war stories should stay old war stories without having the heroes played by modern actors who could not possibly now have any resemblance to the originals. Perhaps Nathan and he were afraid that they could not live up to each other.

Paul did not think he would ever hear from Nathan again, and he was surprised when a few days later a messenger delivered a large cardboard box to his New York apartment. An envelope was taped to the outside of it and Paul opened that first. On M.I.T. stationery, Nathan had written:

Dear Paul:

As I said, my sons and I made a model of the
Arluk
. Building it was really even more fun than owning it, and we kept all the blueprints. We can build another. Meanwhile, here's our first effort at shipbuilding. You gave the original to me. I never would have got command of her without you.

It's a very real pleasure to give you this model. If you can ever figure out how this little fishboat took us so far in so many ways, let me know. This model always seems to me to be the real
Arluk
as seen through the wrong end of a telescope. Be careful. I found that sometimes when I stare at it, she keeps seeming to grow bigger and bigger. Hell, you were aboard her less than a year, and I served aboard her only about two years, a tiny part of our lives, but such a part! I guess it's true that Greenland preserves the past the way it preserves dead bodies. When I made this model, I found that I hardly had to glance at the blueprints. I wish I understood the rest of the world as well.

As ever,

Nathan

Paul opened the cardboard carton. He found a mahogany base under a glass box which had been elaborately wrapped in padded paper. In it the model of the
Arluk
rested on a cradle. The blue and white hull was only about twelve inches long, but had been wrought in such infinite detail that when he held it up to the light he almost felt as though he would find Mowrey there, Guns, Sparks, Cookie and all the rest. The ice camouflage glistened in the sun from the window. The five-inch gun barrel they never had fired still rested on the forecastlehead beside the three-inch twenty-three, which finally had sunk the German hunter-killer. The radar antenna was in place above the flying bridge. On the signal mast there was a tiny pennant, a little bigger than scale, but still Paul had to put his glasses on to see it clearly. It was of course the third repeater. The commanding officer was not aboard this ship.

Paul carried the model toward the mantelpiece in his living room. For a moment he had the curious sensation that he had grown to almost godlike size and was holding his ship in the palm of his hand. It was true that the ship seemed to grow larger as he stared at it. Soon he imagined that he could almost hear the rattle of the anchor chain and the voices of the men.

“Yale, Yale, where's that bastard Yale?” Mowrey shouted. “Where is that son of a bitch?”

The bitter wind was howling over the ice pack, and Paul was young again, young, ignorant, and scared to death, but finally, for a little while at least, victorious.

He put the model on the mantelpiece. It certainly was a nice thing to have.

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