Icefields (24 page)

Elspeth sees him off for the day on the chalet steps.

—You weren't invited? he asks.

—I'm sure the idea never entered Frank's head. He probably considered having me stand here, waving a silk handkerchief, while he and the boys rode off into glory.

—And here you are.

—Yes, but I only came out to ask a favour.

She holds out her hand. In her palm sits a green, egg-shaped stone.

—Yesterday a little boy brought me this. He was hiking around on the till plain with his father all day. Tourists from New York. You should've seen the look on that boy's face. He thought all the world's treasures were out there, and he wanted to share them with me.

—You're not going to keep it?

She nods towards the other side of the valley.

—That's where it belongs. For all the other boys to find.

27

Trask is present to welcome everyone, townsfolk, tourists, visiting dignitaries. He stands before the freshly-painted wooden gates of the bus terminal, conscious of the panorama of snowy mountains that forms the backdrop to his speech of welcome.

The cavalcade makes its progress from the bus terminal beside the chalet to the staging area in plush
new motorcoaches. Byrne sits next to a Japanese alpinist, the leader of the upcoming expedition to remote Mount Alberta. The story in town has it that the Japanese team plans to leave a silver ice axe at the summit, in honour of their emperor. Stitched into the high collar of the alpinist's coat is a tiny silver crest, the stylized image of a creature Byrne cannot identify.

The rocking of the motorcoach as it crawls across the till plain makes the two men bump shoulders. They turn and smile at one another.

The alpinist introduces himself with brisk formality.

—Allow me to break the ice, as you say in English.

His name is Kagami. His hand, when Byrne clasps it in a brief handshake, is warm and dry. He understands that the doctor is an expert on the glaciers of the region.

—I myself, he says quietly, have a keen interest in glacial dynamics. Perhaps too keen. I once spent a night in a crevasse, on the Mer de Glace of Mont Blanc. Purely out of scientific curiosity.

He smiles, adjusts the glasses on his nose.

—A foolish thing to do.

Byrne nods in agreement, and then, after a moment, asks,

—So what was it like? In the crevasse.

—Cold, Kagami says.

To his own surprise, Byrne laughs.

—Cold, Kagami says again, and Byrne wonders if any humour was intended in the reply. Kagami seems to be searching for words.

—There was a thunderstorm that night, he says after a long moment. The ice lit up, blinded me. When it was dark again I thought of my family. It seemed as if I could hear their voices, far in the distance. This was the way I would leave them. Cold and alone.

The conversation has fallen into an unexpected chasm. Byrne searches for a bridge.

—The symbol on your collar. What does it represent?

—This is Ryu, the dragon. The emblem of our mountaineering society. And a good luck charm.

—Why is that?

—The dragon has power over clouds and rain. In winter it hides in a dark blue lake, and on the first day of spring it ascends to heaven.

The motorcoach stops with a jolt. They have arrived at the terminus, where Trask has built a concrete platform for his ice-crawlers. The guests step off the bus dreamily. Lulled in the cradle of the machine.

The wind buffets them awake. Jacket collars are pulled up and gloves slipped on. Men who have neglected to wear any extra clothing stroll about casually in their shirt sleeves, hoping to appear unimpressed by the biting wind. Others gather together,
grinning and making jokes about the balmy weather, caught up in the aura of adventure and at the same time embarrassed by it.

Trask's four ice-crawlers have a military look. A boxlike metal exterior, tank treads, and a sliding panel in the roof where passengers can take turns with binoculars or camera. The slogan Road to the Sky is painted in silver on the side of each vehicle. The drivers stand impassively at attention by the doors, polished enough for a parade ground inspection.

When everyone is assembled on the platform, Trask gives another speech, cautioning his guests to remain in the staging area until it is time to board. He wants everyone to understand the risks before they set out.

—First the interpreter will tell you about what you will see on the glacier, and what precautions to take if you leave the vehicle, at your own risk.

It has turned out there are not enough places on board the ice-crawlers for everyone who has been invited, and so the interpreter must deliver his lecture before the tour departs.

The nervous interpreter steps forward, steers an inquisitive boy away from the edge of the platform. He claps his hands briskly twice, blushes, and begins.

—If you'll look to the left there, above the roof of that first ice-crawler. …

Byrne steps off the platform and does not hear
the expected voice calling him back. It must be his drab clothes, he thinks, that camouflage him from the sharp-eyed young interpreter. He blends in with the rocks.

28

This is his first visit to the terminus this season. Most of the lower glacier is still mantled in white. Mushroom caps of snow top the boulders around him. Byrne taps his alpenstock ahead of him like an ice axe, wary of the ice crust on the rock beneath his feet.

Away from the crowd and the rattling motor-coach, he can stand motionless, hold his breath, and hear the rushing of newly released water as though it were flowing through his veins.

Despite the cool weather the braided meltwater channels are already running swift and deep. He follows one of them upstream to the edge of the tarn, then stops and anchors his alpenstock with a sturdy jab into the wet clay.

He crouches, pushes up his coat sleeve, and lowers his hand into the bone-cracking cold water.

Wavering in the reflected sky, the ghost of the

moon.

He touches the rounded stones under the surface with his white, bloodless hand.

There was a seashore, he remembers, stretching out into a grey haze of distance. The young woman in the dream stepped out of his consulting room onto this shore. He had heard the cry of gulls as he woke, the sound of the waves.

Don't wade out too far,
a woman's voice calls to him. He turns. She is walking toward him down the strand, dangling her white canvas shoes by their knotted laces. Her hand holding the sun hat on her head. He moves towards her across the stream.

Freya? Sara.

Behind her stretches an embankment of grey sand, broken by a flight of stone steps.

She waves to him, and he remembers.
Mother.
A day long forgotten, given to him now in its fullness. He takes his hand from the water. Turning away from the sea, from the tide slipping out on Dublin Bay, he walks towards her, blinking, into the fierce sunlight.

29

Powdery snow whirls around him in a sudden gust of wind. The riffled water of the tarn laps at his boot. He stands, shivers. There is no longer any reason for him to be here. He glances back at the staging platform. Trask is waiting.

He turns, and retraces his steps along the shore
of the tarn. He slips his wet hand into his pocket and his fingers find the stone Elspeth gave him. He takes it out, sets it down in the dark clay, and walks on.

He blinks. Something gleamed there for a moment, amid the grey rubble just ahead, catching the sun. Byrne steps forward slowly. A mote of colour appears at his feet. He crouches, leaning on his alpenstock for balance, to get a closer look.

Peeking out between the halves of a shattered stele of limestone, a tiny purple-pink flower.
Orchidaceae.
The petals tremble in the icy wind.

An exceedingly delicate and lovely flower.

Quickly he takes note of sexual characteristics, number of petals, the single ovate basal leaf. There can be no doubt.
Calypso bulbosa.
The Calypso Orchid or Venus' Slipper.

He kneels in the cold muck.

An orchid. His scientific understanding contracts. Orchids do not grow here. Nothing grows here. The unceasing collision of ice and rock grinds away all life. Nothing can survive at the terminus.

Byrne gently nudges aside shards of rock, exposes the stem of the orchid. There must be organic matter of some kind beneath the surface. His fingers probe into the cold grit flecked with splinters of ice, slide along a flat surface, a straight edge. He scrapes further and exposes a dull glint of grey metal. The dented, punctured remains of a tin specimen box.

30

When he returns to the staging area, the crowd is lining up to board the ice-crawlers. One of the guests, a man girded in a display of shiny new mountaineering garb, complete with rucksack and hob-nailed boots, asks the interpreter how long it took to pile all those rocks alongside the glacier.

—No, that's natural, the interpreter says with a patient smile. It's a lateral moraine. As I mentioned earlier, the ice did all that work.

—We're waiting for you, doctor, Trask calls.

—Sorry, Byrne says. I've decided to pass on this trip. Go ahead without me.

—Suit yourself.

Byrne steps up close to the Japanese alpinist, who is standing apart from the line of boarding guests, and touches his shoulder.

—Aren't you going on the ice-crawler?

—No. Mr. Trask invited me to the foot of the glacier, but no farther.

—Then come with me, Byrne says in a whisper, glancing at the restless crowd with its panoply of cameras. I want to show you something rather extraordinary.

I would like to thank the following people for their help and encouragement: Kristjana Gunnars, Rudy Wiebe; Wendy Dawson, Liz Grieve, and Eva Radford at NeWest Press; Nana Avery, for her stories of Ireland; David Arthur, for sharing his wealth of mountain lore. A special thank you to Sharon and Mary.

Ben Gadd's
Handbook of the Canadian Rockies
(Jasper, Alta: Corax, 1987) was indispensable during the writing of this novel. Sexsmith's expedition is based on that of James Carnegie, Earl of Southesk, in 1859-60, as described in his book
Saskatchewan and the Rocky Mountains
(1875).

Other important works were:
Studies on Glaciers
by Louis Agassiz, edited and translated by Albert Carozzi, (New York: Hafner 1967); “Edward Byrne: A Life in Ice” by Yoshiro Kagami,
Journal of Alpine Exploration,
ii, 6 (1951);
Climbs and Explorations in the Canadian Rockies,
by Hugh Stutfield and J. Norman Collie, London: Longmans, Green and Co. (1903).