My Last Continent: A Novel(11)
Dennis does not wait for me. I wake up alone in my tent, the gray light of dawn nudging my eyelids. When I look at my watch, I see that it’s later than I thought.
Outside, I glance around for Dennis, but he’s not in camp. I make coffee, washing Thom’s cup for him to use. I drink my own coffee without waiting for him; it’s the only thing to warm me this morning, with him gone and the sun so well hidden.
I sip slowly, steam rising from my cup, and take in the moonscape around me: the edgy rocks, the mirrored water, ice sculptures rising above the pack ice—I could be on another planet. Yet for the first time in years, I feel as if I’ve reconnected with the world in some way, as if I am not as lost as I’ve believed all this time.
I hear the sound of a distant motor and stand up. Then it stops. I listen, hearing agitated voices—it must be Thom, coming from Palmer, having engine trouble. He is still outside the bay, out of sight, so I wait, rinsing my coffee mug and straightening up. When the engine starts up again, I turn back toward the bay. A few minutes later, Thom comes up from the beach with one of the electricians at Palmer, a young guy named Andy. I wave them over.
They walk hesitantly, and when they get closer, I recognize the look on Thom’s face, and I know, with an icy certainty, where Dennis is, even before Thom opens his mouth.
“We found a body, Deb,” he says. “In the bay.” He exchanges a glance with Andy. “We just pulled him in.”
I stare at their questioning faces. “He was here all night,” I say. “I thought he just went for a walk, or—” I stop. Then I start toward the bay.
Thom steps in front of me. He holds both of my arms. “There’s no need to do this,” he says.
But I have to see for myself. I pull away and run to the beach. The body lies across the rocks. I recognize Thom’s sweater, stretched across Dennis’s large frame.
I walk over to him; I want to take his pulse, to feel his heartbeat. But then I see his face, a bluish white, frozen in an expression I don’t recognize, and I can’t go any closer.
I feel Thom come up behind me. “It’s him,” I say. “I gave him your sweater.”
He puts an arm around my shoulder. “What do you think happened?” he asks, but he knows as well as I do. There is no current here, no way to be swept off this beach and pulled out to sea. The Southern Ocean is not violent here, but it is merciless nonetheless.
ANTARCTICA IS NOT a country; it is governed by an international treaty whose rules apply almost solely to the environment. There are no police here, no firefighters, no medical examiners. We have to do everything ourselves, and I shrug Thom off when he tries to absolve me from our duties. I help them lift Dennis into the Zodiac, the weight of his body entirely different now. I keep a hand on his chest as we back out of the bay and speed away, as if he might suddenly try to sit up. When we arrive at Palmer, I finally give in, leaving him to the care of others, who will pack his body for the long journey home.
They offer me a hot shower and a meal. As Andy walks me down the hall toward the dormitory, he tries in vain to find something to say. I’m silent, not helping him. Eventually he updates me on the injured man. “He’s going to be okay,” he tells me. “But you know what’s strange? He doesn’t remember anything about the trip. He knows his wife, knows who the president is, how to add two and two—but he doesn’t know how he got here, or why he even came to Antarctica. Pretty spooky, huh?”
He won’t remember the woman he was fooling around with, I think. She will remember him, but for him, she’s already gone.
BACK AT CAMP, I watch for the gentoos who lost their chick, but they do not return. Their nest remains abandoned, and other penguins steal their rocks.
Thom makes a few attempts to ask about Dennis, and when I meet his questions with silence, he stops asking. We both know what lies ahead—an investigation, paperwork, corporate lawyers, questions from the family—and I don’t want to go through it any more than I need to.
Six days later, Thom and I break camp and ready ourselves for the weeklong journey back. Once we are on the boat, the distractions are plenty, and the hours and days fly past in seminars and lectures. The next thing I know, we are a day away from the Drake Passage.
I wander around the ship, walking the passageways Dennis walked, sitting where he must have sat, standing where he may have stood. I’m with a new group of passengers now, none of whom would have crossed his path. A sleety rain begins to fall, and I go out to the uppermost deck, the small one reserved for crew. As we float through a labyrinth of icebergs, I play with Dennis’s wedding ring, which he’d left on the floor of my tent. I wear it on my thumb, as I did when I’d first found it, because that’s where it fits.
It’s probably because of this vantage point that I see her—an emperor penguin in the distance, standing alone atop an enormous tabular iceberg. It’s uncommon to see an emperor this far north, and a good field guide would announce the sighting on the PA—the passengers aren’t likely to get another chance to see an emperor.
But I don’t move. I watch her as she preens her feathers, as she senses the sounds and vibrations of our ship and raises her head—an elegant, gentle pirouette in our direction. It feels as though she’s looking directly at me, and in that moment we are mirror images of each other, lone figures above the vastness of all this sea and ice. She’s so far from her breeding grounds that for a moment I wonder whether she’s lost, but when she looks away and turns back to her feathers, I sense instead that she is feeling leisurely, safe, enjoying a rare moment of peace before returning home.