The Rope Eater Read online

  I was grateful to hear the doctor’s voice announce that it was time to break camp. Creely pulled himself from his bag, yawned, and stretched most infuriatingly, then slid out, pulling his boots on as he did so. I looked over at Preston and could tell he had slept as poorly as I—his eyes were bleary, his face pale and tinged with blue amid the waxy yellow.

  “I’ll make breakfast if you like,” I volunteered.

  “I’ll make breakfast,” he snapped. Then he added: “If you don’t move, we can put the stove on your bag and you can stay in.”

  I was more than happy to do this, and as my bag was frozen solid on the outside, I had no trouble staying still for the stove. Soon the tent was roasting. I sat deep in my bag, warm for the first time in many hours, and sipped my hoosh. Preston doled out the others’, then sat back smiling.

  “I was beginning to think I’d never be warm again,” he said.

  “Tonight Creely’s on the outside,” I said. “Both sides.”

  He chuckled and shook his head.

  We were interrupted by the brisk voice of the doctor.

  “Time to move.”

  We dragged ourselves from our bags, pulled on our boots, and headed out into the cold. The wind was blowing steadily, still from the east, and drifting snow had nearly buried the boat. Creely and Preston dug it out, and I loaded it and lashed our gear down. The doctor stood with an anemometer in one hand and he was spinning a thermometer around his head on a length of twine with the other.

  “Only way to get an accurate reading,” he explained.

  Our bags were heavy with moisture from our bodies and stiff with cold. The tent, at least, came down easily. We shoved our gear under the thwarts and lashed it in place, then struggled into our harnesses and headed for the water. Off we pulled, strong and steady, and sang through the rising wind. We chilled quickly when the doctor made us stop for samples, but heated up again comfortably as soon as we were under way. A day, two, through the brashy channels angling north, and then west again, stopping to draw ice, water, and air samples, and making excellent progress. Creely tried to set up a trolling line off the back for a while, but nothing bit. We settled easily into the nighttime routine even as our outer bags steadily froze stiff in the evenings.

  The rowing was difficult and the wind slid through our thin coats. My muscles were still stiff from the week’s work and nights out in the tent, and it took me longer each morning to warm up. Snow began to fall steadily and the wind began to blow in strong gusts. By the end of the first week, we continued to make good progress, though we were now hauling more than half the time— sometimes across ridged plains and sometimes sliding over sharp hummocks. The days were brief and gray, and the low sky sat dully over us.

  Visibility was much poorer with the snow. The ice we moved into was thicker and less even, a development that fascinated the doctor to no end, indicating that it was older ice, and likely remained through several seasons, perhaps many years at a time. We stood freezing as he drilled and scraped and measured, stomping our feet to stay warm. Preston cooked while we huddled in the lee of the boat. The howl of the wind made talking difficult, so we huddled miserably in the silence. Dr. Architeuthis, like Reinhold, seemed not to feel the cold. He stood in the wind and looked out with an air of mild curiosity, as if he were looking for an acquaintance at the train station.

  The ice got steadily worse. We had to find our way through high pressure ridges, or haul the boat over them—a delicate operation with only four men. The boat upset frequently and we had to reload it with numb fingers.

  After a backbreaking day, the doctor estimated that we had made only four miles east, though we had traveled two or three times that distance in our meandering. We had covered over a hundred miles east in ten days—good time through the ice, but as it got worse, we slowed to a crawl. Now we were pulling the boat up twenty-foot hanging cliffs over ridges that ran miles in both directions, or fighting through packed fragments too thick to row in but unable to bear our weight. We were forced to move obliquely, sometimes leaving the boat as we rigged a pulley to draw it up and then down, or extending the raddies out to firm ice on either side and then struggling to pull it forward. The steady cold slowed us also; rising in the darkness, it took us longer and longer to pack the boat. By the end of our two weeks out, we moved into a broad plain of firm ice with only windblown ridges to slide the boat over. When we had burst free from the hummocks, the doctor pushed us to haul late into the night for as long as the conditions held.

  When we set up camp, we all crowded into the tiny tent as soon as it was up. By staying very still, with the stove balanced precariously on my legs, we cooked the hoosh through numbed fingers without setting ourselves on fire—though I cannot say that it seemed an entirely unwelcome prospect. With the stove roaring, feeling soon returned to our limbs—stinging at first, then throbbing pain, then a fierce itching that, because of our balancing act, we had to endure unscratching.

  After dinner, we left the stove burning for a while. The tent was close and very damp and indescribably warm and pleasant. Turning our bodies to the side, Preston and I managed to light a candle in the hollow between us and its feeble light cheered us.

  It went out abruptly when the doctor came crashing in to check us for frostbite, and examined our faces and fingers with a lantern. Once he was satisfied, and settled into his own bag, we lit the candle again; Preston and I lay simply watching the flicker of the flame between us. Creely, impervious to the cold, was soon snoring evenly. I watched Preston’s eyes droop and close, his head falling forward slightly. I shifted my eyes to the dance of the flame and watched the rivulets of wax run down on my gloves.

  I awoke from dreamless sleep to the face of Dr. Architeuthis, smiling at the opening of the tent.

  “We’re splitting in teams, marching out for the morning, collecting samples, and back for dinner. Creely and I northeast, Kane and Preston southeast. We’ll keep the tent up here, save us some time. Now let’s get moving.”

  We headed off into the starlit morning, and there was little to complain about. Free of the boat at last, I felt like I could walk forever; Preston and I moved briskly over the ice as the low ridges caught the light from our lanterns. The sun blazed up in the east, dazzling us as we moved. At first the light was sharp, and bit like the cold, but as it rose it suffused through the low clouds and the light evened out.

  The wind had quieted and it was not so cold, but the problem was not cold. It was light. The sky was overcast and the light was bright and grew perfectly even—there were no shadows and the ice had no edges. As we marched, we found that we could not tell whether the ice rose or fell before us. I would reach out with my foot and stub it on an invisible rise; two steps later, I would pitch on my face in a depression I could not see. We tried using an oar like a blind man’s stick and tapping, but even that did little good. It would strike ice, and we still could not judge our steps.

  After an hour of falling steadily, and of cracking toes, barking shins, and bruising hands, I was furious and frustrated. The drift snow filled my coat and melted, getting clammy and heavy on the inside and freezing on the outside.

  Preston did nothing to improve my mood. He plodded along, grunting as he fell. He said nothing, offered nothing, and so we trudged in silence. We found a few narrow leads, nearly stumbling into them because we misjudged their distance and size. You had to touch them with your hand before you could be convinced that they were not several hundred yards off. I tried all sorts of tricks—squinting, blinking, throwing a glove a few steps ahead, then walking to retrieve it. They did little good. We blundered ahead, falling into each other or crashing into the ice; I gashed my hand on a sharp piece of ice and was relieved to see the dark red drops in the snow.

  My disorientation was compounded when I pulled out the compass to check our bearing. The needle wavered lazily from east to west without fixing itself. I shook it, but it continued to wave, like a drunken metronome. I showed it to Preston.

&nb
sp; “Is it frozen?” I asked.

  “It’s the magnetic pole,” he answered. “We are close. The compass is useless.”

  “Useless?” I said. “It can’t be.” I shook it vigorously and slapped at the surface. I warmed it against my skin and shook it again, but it continued to wobble.

  “Piece of junk,” I muttered. “Now how do we know where to go?”

  “This way,” said Preston and began to march away.

  I followed, but remained preoccupied with the treachery of the compass. It seemed so basic and essential a fact: the compass points north. North! It doesn’t wander, lie, equivocate. North! I wanted to shout at it. You bastard, point north! It was complicit in this whole maddening mess, this whole absurd joke of the ice— first we cannot see, and now our compass does not work. I would rather have the cold.

  I strained out into the whiteness, looking for water, a rock, anything with an edge or line—mountains, valleys, a pile of stone, anything. I became convinced that we were wandering in a circle.

  It is well known, I reasoned, in the desert or at sea, in a landscape without landmarks, men inevitably move in a circle. It is our peculiar inertia to circle unless jostled free. We are subtle betrayers even of ourselves to thus return to find our way and so become more lost—as I had determined that we were. I began scouring the featureless snow for signs of our footsteps but could not see even my own as we made them.

  Preston was marching ahead as if we were on a thoroughfare. Fool, I thought. Idiot. He doesn’t even suspect we are moving in a circle. He is trampling our tracks.

  I determined that we were circling in a clockwise direction, as we had naturally inclined away from the other parties as we moved, and so circled back to the south. We had only to go left to find our tracks. Once these were discovered, we could find our true direction and move off to the east. I moved to the left as I walked, straying diagonally away from Preston and peering into the featureless whiteness for some evidence of our passage. We should have dropped crumbs, I thought, or coal—the next time, coal for sure. I pressed some blood from the gash in my hand to form a spot in the snow. Preston plodded ahead on his errant way without taking notice of me. I resolved to overtake him and confront him with my conclusions before we wasted more time.

  “Preston!” I shouted through my layers. “Preston! Hold up a minute!” I ran forward, falling twice on my face before I reached him and grabbed his shoulder.

  “Preston, I think we’re circling, and we need to move to the left to return to our track.”

  He looked at me, eyes narrow and weary from squinting.

  “We’re moving southeast,” he said.

  “No,” I said, “we’ve started to circle, I’m almost sure of it.” I explained my theory about moving away from the others.

  He shook his head and started walking again.

  “Wait,” I said, grabbing his arm, “we should just head left a little—a half mile or so. Then we’ll see our tracks and can reorient. There are no signs—no sun, no compass. We can’t even see the damn ice. Just going does us no good at all.”

  He looked at me for a long moment, then kicked at the ridge of snow we had just crossed.

  “See the drift? The sastrugi—the ridges—run east to west. If we keep moving across it, we’re moving to the southeast. So shut your mouth and close your eyes, and maybe you’ll find everything a little easier.”

  He turned and marched off. I stomped sullenly behind him, punching my arms stiffly to try to keep my coat from freezing. How did he know the drift hadn’t been in another direction? I couldn’t see it anyway. The wind could have shifted. There could be a big mountain a hundred yards away that bends the wind, or forces the sastrugi into strange directions. The lack of magnetism could affect the snowdrift—maybe the snow adhered differently. He didn’t know. I stomped and stomped, but as I calmed, I noticed that the snow, though invisible, did seem to follow the same pattern: low, even snow about two or three inches deep, then thicker drift up to a foot, then a hard ridge, bare at the top, then the low snow again. The distances between ridges varied some, and the depth of the snow in the troughs, but the essential pattern remained the same. I shuffled my feet through the snow until I felt the edge of the sastrugi rising under it, stepped up, then shuffled down the other side.

  I still stumbled, to be sure, still stubbed my toes and wrenched my ankles, but order gradually settled back over that empty whiteness—drift, ridge, valley, drift, ridge, valley. I tried to resolve it into a rhythm, drawing out each stage until I reached the next one, but the distances between the hardened lines of the ridges were too variable. I tried closing my eyes and navigating by feel, but I still tripped. Even with my eyes closed, they burned white; my head was starting to ache.

  Preston finally stopped.

  “We’re here,” he said, dropping his pack.

  I dropped mine beside it and flopped down in the snow.

  “No sense in getting cold,” he said. “Let’s get the samples and head back.”

  He started chipping away at the ice by his feet. I struggled to my feet and started to do the same. The racket of axes on the ice was a welcome change from the silent marching. We had been instructed to try to get down to the water, if possible, test the temperature, and bring back samples from the ice at one-foot intervals. We got down about four feet when Preston waved to me to stop. I thought we had simply gone down enough and began to gather samples.

  “No sense in digging here all day, eh?” I said cheerily. I had pushed several chunks into a bag when I realized he was on his knees beside the hole. His body was racked with coughing. I moved up beside him.

  “Preston? Preston, are you all right?”

  He hacked and his body shook. He coughed again and the snow in front of him turned a violent red.

  “Oh God,” I said. I pounded him on the back. He coughed a few more times, rasped, and was silent. He rolled onto his back and struggled to catch his breath. I stared at the steaming red blot in the snow. After a day of only white, it seemed impossibly, hugely red; my own small spots of blood like nothing. He sat breathing shallowly as he recovered.

  “An infection,” he said, wheezing. “Got it in the tropics ten years ago.”

  “But the cold can’t be very good for it.”

  “Dr. Architeuthis says it’s my only chance—keeps it from growing worse, he says. If I go south, my lungs fill right up. I have to keep moving north. First it was outside of the tropics, then forty degrees north, then fifty. Driving me into exile bit by bit. Right off the top.”

  “Is there a cure?”

  “Doctor says in the archipelago, there might be something in those plants, about the lack of sunlight. I don’t know. But I don’t have much choice. Become an Eskimo.”

  He laughed harshly and coughed again.

  “That’s why you went before.”

  He nodded.

  “What did you find then?” I asked.

  He grimaced and coughed more before replying.

  “Ice,” he said finally. “We found ice.”

  I stared at his blood in the snow. It looked almost black now, like a hole leading downward out of this world of white.

  “Let’s finish here,” said Preston after a moment, hauling up his pack. “We have a long march ahead of us.”

  We dug out our samples and moved off. As we stumbled back, the wind picked up and the light faded. Fortunately, the wind was at our backs now, and seemed to bear us along. The lessening light was a relief also; though we could see no better, it did reduce the glare somewhat. Preston led and I tried to keep up. My feet were numb and my head started pounding fiercely. I have never been so happy as I was when we crested a rise and saw the light of camp glowing in the distance. I ran the last hundred yards and collapsed gratefully into the tent, nearly upsetting the stove, where Creely had a lovely hoosh simmering.

  nine

  I lay there and ate contentedly while I listened to what the other two had found: ice and snow. The doctor stumb
led into a lead at one point and Creely had been forced to fish him out—“and no fancy lectures this time, just some old-fashioned cursing.” By the end of the day, Creely had had trouble with his eyes—even now they were watering profusely. Dr. Architeuthis had finally forced him to cover them and roped the two men together—“We waltzed all the way back,” he told us, laughing. We fell silent and listened to the hissing of the kerosene. Tonight, it was my turn to be in the middle, and I lay with the stove on my stomach, watching the flame dance in the peak of the tent. Our clothes were all sodden, as was the thin silk of the tent, and we were well tangled before we all struggled into bed. Despite our fatigue, we managed a laugh, then said our good-nights.

  In the close air of the tent, I waited for Creely’s snoring to swell; he was restless and kept elbowing me.

  In the middle of the night he cried out; there was a rustling in the tent and a lantern flared. The doctor sat over him as he moaned softly.

  “My head—I feel like someone’s pounding spikes into it.”

  The doctor pulled open his eyes and put some drops in them.

  “Snow blindness. These drops should help you get to sleep.”

  I looked over at Creely in the lantern light; viscid drops rolled down his face like clear resin.

  The sun had not yet risen by the time we had secured all of the samples as well as our frozen bags, but the sky was golden gray and orange, and the stars retreating. The boat was completely buried so Preston and I began to shovel it out. The doctor bound Creely’s eyes as Preston packed gear and stowed the tents. Our harnesses were frozen solid, and it took twenty minutes of beating them against the side of the boat to loosen them enough to slide into them. At first Creely pulled along with us, but he fell so often that finally the doctor ordered that he walk alongside.