I was alone—almost entirely—for the next four years. Not quite four, but close. The first was an eternity. Of the years that followed after it, I remember little.
By the time Tapio left, in June, he had composed a list of tasks he thought I should perform. It was as heavy, and the pages as numerous, as a miner’s contract. Duties ranged from the obvious and essential (e.g., prepare winter stores, keep traps clean and oiled) to those that were maybe less so (e.g., lay in wood and furs for at least three years in case the supply should drop, scout traplines for future winters so no region is exhausted, maintain proper hygiene). To this day I am not certain whether he expected me to accomplish all of these things, or whether he simply wished to ensure that I kept busy for the sake of body and mind. He said I ought to have time for the first half that summer, and the second that winter, at which point I could make a new list. I laughed ruefully. He did not.
A squirrelly sort of panic gripped me when Tapio took ship, as well as a heaviness I could not shake for some days. Eberhard seemed depressed as well, though his views could be hard to interpret. I did a great deal of talking out loud to him, and when I did so he would look away, as though it were impertinent for me to address him directly.
But Tapio was correct, of course, and I found my way out of the darkest hole by engaging in difficult tasks. Distraction was not hard to come by. Summer in Raudfjorden is unparalleled in sheer beauty. One invariably forgets that green things can grow in a moonscape, and so the presence of any vegetation at all can make the place feel like a verdant woodland. The north and east of the archipelago are true Arctic, if one may permit so subjective a term. Along the west coast, in thrall to the West Spitsbergen Current, there are many places that look not unlike northern Sweden in summer—fields of grass, ferns, wildflowers, and willow. In the north one may find such thorough greenery only under bird cliffs, where the barren rock has been shat upon for millennia. The rest is sparsely vegetated even at the height of summer, for there are no warm Atlantic currents to quell the relentless polar excoriation, and ice damage is severe. Mountain avens grow in clumpy tussocks. In Reinsdyrflya one will find—for the reindeer have found it—semi-protected tundras with polar foxtail grass or, more commonly, the dun Arctic wood rush. They must eat something, after all. But even in Raudfjorden, there are fleeting moments of grace, for color erupts suddenly from isolated communities of alpine bistort, sulphur buttercup, white Arctic bell heather and purple saxifrage. Then a person may find some forgetfulness.
So I passed my first solitary summer in bittersweet reflection and frantic industry. The perpetual light would see me laboring (in my as yet inefficient manner) all day and well into the night, until it occurred to me that I should stop. Then I would recall my hunger, and Eberhard’s—it is unlikely he forgot—and eat and drink in a mirthless rush, only to be overcome by sudden fatigue and fall asleep at the table. But as soon as the days began to shorten noticeably in September, which one feels as surely as the first stages of a dire illness, I ran. A total of five ships had moored in Alicehamna that season—they came with mail and supplies, or to evade a storm, or to gossip, and generally I hid from them, leaving a note that specified my needs. So when a Norwegian ship from Longyear lay at anchor that fall, and the men prepared to push off from the beach in their dory, in my mind I saw them disappear behind Flathuken, heading west, and I feared that, weather depending, it might be my last sight of humanity for another seven months.
“Wait!” I called. “Do you have room for one more? That is to say, one and a half?”
They shrugged. Spitsbergen mariners are unsurprised by whim.
MacIntyre was genuinely surprised and delighted to take me in. I spent a restful week in his cabin and his company, listening to tales of the wider world, reading, talking about what we were reading, smoking, reading more. He had no news of Tapio but was characteristically unconcerned. MacIntyre himself seemed unchanged, if perhaps less restless in his movements. One of the traits that made him so calming to be around was his cheerful complacency. He had regrets, I am sure, as any clear-thinking person does, but he never appeared to dwell on them. He could be withering in his pronouncements, even caustic at times, but not cynical, in part because his demeanor was balanced by his cackling wit.
His cabin was the ideal place to hide for a while from my responsibilities. For what was responsibility but just another choice? One that could be unmade?
At last, however, as Eberhard’s eyes rolled and twitched in sleep, MacIntyre looked up at me over the rim of his book, peering through a cloud of blue smoke.
“Sven, my dear boy. September has nearly run its course. A ship departs in two days, bound for Woodfjorden. I do not know for a certainty that it will be the last, but it may. What will you do? Will you and the young master take sail?”
I groaned and closed my book. My hands were just beginning to heal from their mosaic of punctures and abrasions. I tilted my head toward the ceiling and closed my weary eye, for it was unused to the labor of uninterrupted reading.
“You are welcome to stay here as long as you need,” he went on, and I believe he meant it. “But only if that is an earnest decision and not the absence of one.”
“Would you ever visit Bruceneset?” I asked, as a child who is sent off to school. “It is stark and beautiful beyond measure.”
“No, I think not. My work is with the mines, and I have all the traveling I could wish within Isfjorden.”
“Then perhaps it is my fate to be alone, as Tapio said.” I struggled to bury the self-pity creeping into my voice.
MacIntyre studied me for a few long moments. “I doubt that is what Tapio said. Fate is empty. Any Arctic explorer or common sailor can tell you this. So you must make the best choices you can, knowing they may lead you astray, but proceeding boldly lest your life become one long monotonous drift between death and your last interesting choice.”