My Last Continent: A Novel(81)

Even though Nick and I share a bed, I believe it was Kelly he loved first. He was often the one who heard her in the middle of the night; he’d bring her to me, and she’d fall asleep between us. He’d never been a parent before, but he slipped seamlessly into the role, as if the part had been waiting for him all along. And, watching him with Kelly, the way he’d hold her and feed her and sing her to sleep, I knew I’d found the right mate—that I would never come home to an empty nest, and, for the first time, I didn’t want to leave home.

But, three years ago, I finally returned to the continent; Nick urged me to go. I’ve been twice since. I hate leaving Nick and Kelly, so I don’t go for more than one voyage a season, and I can’t hike as far as I used to without feeling a twinge in my ankle, where the fractured bone never healed.

There is nothing in the landscape that doesn’t remind me of Keller.

The first time I returned, his absence was everywhere: in my new research partner, in the bodies of the oil-covered penguins, in the shimmering meltwater dripping from icebergs. I returned home not sure I could ever go back again. But then I did, because it’s where I feel closest to him. Where I can remember.

After the Australis disaster, my research had taken a new turn. It’s no longer enough to study the effects of tourism and climate change on the penguin colonies in Antarctica. Now we have a whole new field of study—the effects of the shipwreck: the birds dead and injured by the fuel spill, the amount of plastic and other refuse they’ve ingested, how all of this affects their survival and reproduction.

A videographer on board the Australis produced a documentary about a year after the accident, capturing events I’d witnessed only in the aftermath. He had been filming on the bridge the moment the ship hit the iceberg that tore through its hull. He captured images of calm, blue glacial ice; the crew’s easy chatter; the nervous jokes about uncharted waters. Then came the moment they knew they were going to hit ice, the captain yelling, Hard to starboard, in a desperate attempt to clear it.

And they nearly did. But this particular iceberg offered up a sharp underside that sliced a hundred-foot gash at the waterline.

The film’s viewers will see the moment the ship hit—the flicker and shake of the camera, followed by utter silence on the bridge. Even after those first long, eerie moments, when the camera turned and fixed on the captain’s face, he remained silent, his face so still it was nearly devoid of expression. He was not among the survivors.

We know that things got bad quickly—that the engine room flooded, that the malfunctions in the bulkhead doors caused four compartments to fill with icy water, that the electrical system and generators failed. The videographer filmed the passengers’ terrified faces, many of them covered with blood and bruises after the impact had knocked them down or into furniture. He filmed the lifeboats being dropped, and he continued filming after a crew member stuck an angry hand into his lens. He captured the severe pitching of the boat as it tilted into the sea, the abandon-ship signal and the haunting silence that followed, punctuated by the cries of passengers and explosions from somewhere deep inside the ship. He captured the passengers rushing for lifeboats through air choked with smoke and fog, and the capsizing of those lifeboats in the wake of a calving glacier that roiled the sea around them. And, among the last to evacuate, he captured what were many passengers’ last moments: sheets of fast ice shattered by the wave, flares drenching the sky and ice in a blaze of scarlet light, the creaks and groans inside the sinking ship.

I would not ever have watched the film unless Kate Archer had convinced me that it wasn’t a Titanic-like disaster film but an environmental manifesto. As the one who financed the documentary, she made sure it captured all that is good about Antarctica, all that is precious and beautiful: the penguins, the whales, the eternal sunsets. When people ask me about the Australis, I tell them to watch the film.

Richard had left Kate wealthy. After her own daughter was born, she moved to Seattle, where a donation in excess of $4 million earned her a seat on the board of the Antarctic Penguins Project and allowed the organization to expand its small full-time staff, which now includes me. Kate visits -Eugene frequently, often staying for weeks in my former cottage, and our daughters are growing up together. When I go to Seattle, Kelly and I stay with her, for as long as we can. When I’m asked to speak or teach, I try to bring Nick and Kelly with me. I want Kelly to be a good traveler, since I plan to take her south one day—and I want to do it before everything changes, before the ice melts, before we begin seeing the last of the Adélies.

In the airport, I hug her tight, until Nick touches my shoulder. “Final boarding call,” he says. I’m always the last one on the plane.

I let Kelly go and straighten up, watching Nick palm the top of her head with his hand, which is swallowed up by brown curls. I kiss them both one last time, then turn and hand over my boarding pass. I walk backward toward the gate, waving at them until I have to turn the corner.

While we’ve made a family, Kelly and Nick and Gatsby and me, I don’t think I’ll ever stop looking for Keller. When I’m on the peninsula, I tell myself I’m here to rescue the penguins, yet I know that, each time, it’s the penguins who rescue me. When the cruises visit Booth Island, I steal away in a Zodiac. I go to a desolate beach and climb up to a remote gentoo colony. There, I sit and I wait. Every time, I feel a moment of dread, wondering if this will be the season he does not appear. And then, I see him.