It is good that I never came crawling back to Sweden and took ship as a fisherman. I am a middling seaman at best. And although ignorance can be remedied, I know almost nothing about boats and ill tolerate their unnatural motion.
There are some who will confine themselves to bed, or to the aft railing, where they vomit until their bodies shake, with nothing more to give, and lie prostrate in a sweaty pallor. I am not one of those, fortunately. But more than two days and nights of tossing and pitching have a malignant effect on my equilibrium, so that even once coughed up onto dry land, I weave like a drunken man, clutching at walls and posts, and the world seems to dip and roll in perpetual activity. I have heard this phenomenon described as “sea legs,” but fail to see how that jocular term accurately or sufficiently describes the nauseous, terrifying sensation of the earth not holding still beneath you, as it should.
I was deep in a state of stretched nerves by the time we threaded the strait of Smeerenburgfjorden, or the “Danish Hole,” passing, on our port side, Amsterdam Island, where once the beaches glistened and shone with whale fat, the blubber so thick that even the ferocious undertow could not wash it away. How the sky must have darkened with black smoke! How the glaucous reeking plume must have beckoned seabirds from latitudes away! But I was preoccupied with my own fate, such as it was. Not knowing what or who I would find when we arrived; not knowing if I was ready.
And then the boat began to pitch as we rounded the headland and started east across the northern limits of Spitsbergen herself. One night the anchor slipped its mooring as we were thrown this way and that. In my tiny cabin aft—for MacIntyre had insisted, bless him, that I have a place of my own—I woke from a miserable doze to the grinding of the heavy chain as the anchor hurtled toward the seafloor. It sounded as though only a thin wall separated me from the hawsehole, and perhaps that was true. Then the anchor fluke landed and bit, and we spun hard, the ship heaving and lurching in its truncated momentum. I thought all was lost. There was the sound of many feet, and a brief tumult of activity as the chain was reeled back in, much more slowly than it had gone out, so that I felt I could count every hand-sized link passing by my tortured ear. Soon the violent motion of the boat grew less. I never learned whether this situation had indeed been as dire as it felt to me, for I stayed huddled under my damp coverlet, cowering, and when I emerged briefly the next day, the sailors seemed to think the night’s doings merited no further comment.
My first sight of the cove of Alicehamna was not auspicious, or particularly clear. When we disembarked and I was rowed to the beach, I needed help stepping over the gunwale, and still I staggered absurdly and water surged over my boots. Stumbling toward land, the horizon swinging forty degrees from right to left and back again, I felt a wave of despair so powerful I thought it might drown me. What was I doing here? The sailors hurried past, for seamen are always in a great hurry, lugging my belongings and several other crates on shore. Helplessness shamed me. I tried to show my gratitude with a word or two, but the sailors merely grunted and shoved off. Peering around with a bleary eye, I tried to make out something—anything—that might give a sense of hope. There were no buildings, of course. Had I expected a village? Perhaps a few homelike cabins, or even just one? I believe I can be forgiven for succumbing to anguish.
I made my torturous way onto the beach, ice shards crunching beneath my sodden boots, and fell or collapsed in a pitiable heap. The sun careened over me like a swinging lamp. I felt a mild urge to be sick, but that was overpowered by the deep sorrowful conviction that I had followed folly into more folly. The ship, my one chance of escape, lay at anchor less than two hundred meters out in the fjord, but the dinghy had already been fastened and the boat was starting to make way. I waved feebly—a salutation or a plea for help, the gesture eluded me then and still does. It went unanswered in either case.
Fingers burning with cold, I fumbled for my tobacco pouch and my pipe. I thought the smoke might return me to my senses, or at least soothe my stomach a little. I wasted ten precious matches getting it lit. The rough-edged stones bit into my elbows as I leaned back, nearly swooning. Even the rocks were obstinate in this country, I thought, in a moment of bitter nostalgia, thinking of the river-smooth stones that washed up along Ulvsundasjön, where Arvid had his wharf.
I smoked for a while, and as generally happens when tobacco does its work, or when I am overwhelmed by the cruel vagaries of life, I fell asleep. I dreamt that I was in the miners’ mess in Longyear, standing in line for food, and I could not make up my mind as to whether I desired the stew. The ladle man glared at me in a state of high exasperation. Still I equivocated. It was an impasse. On went the indecision, and on went the dream, as though time had ground to a halt in the most mundane of places.
A rustling awakened me. I started up, thinking that in my foolish dozing a bear had crept up and ransacked all my supplies. I tried to rise but my hands and feet were numb. I blinked my eye, trying to clear it, but the world still swayed to and fro. A shape was hunched over the crates, which lay about twenty meters up the beach, safer from the tide than I was. The creature didn’t look like a bear but I couldn’t be sure.
“Hey! Ahoy!” I shouted absurdly.
“Yes?” the figure said. “Well rested? You were slumbering with a pipe in your mouth, looking for all the world like a stiff corpse. I was inclined to leave you there as an historical artifact.”
“Tapio!” I exclaimed. “What a delight it is to find you here.”
“Were you expecting someone else?” he said. “Now lend a hand with these crates, or at least get away from the water if you’re too landsick to help. Your eye is swimming in your head.”