MacIntyre was the ideal sort of houseguest. I say this as someone who does not particularly care for guests—at least, not the sort who take up a great deal of space and air, who eat conspicuous quantities of food, be it vast amounts or nothing at all, who traipse in and out at all hours or never leave the premises, or who are otherwise disagreeable.
For one thing, MacIntyre brought gifts beyond measure. The skis were of the finest quality, and they were the least of it. Several crates were hauled in that first evening. One contained precious foodstuffs that he knew I favored, as well as four bottles of single-malt whisky—three Islay and one Highland (“for the sake of balance,” he said). MacIntyre did not think Speyside was worth the drinking unless a person was very hard up. I can’t imagine what it must have cost him to have those shipped to Longyear, or else how long he had been hoarding them, but I knew they were beyond price. And yet they were as nothing compared to the other two crates, for those contained books. Giddy with excitement, I scanned the stacks, handling them as though they were ancient artifacts.
MacIntyre and I were both seated on the floor, mildly drunk. Eberhard was half in MacIntyre’s lap. The room was full of smoke, and I kept glancing anxiously at the woodstove, thinking the door gasket had failed or the chimney had gotten uncaulked, then remembering that it was just MacIntyre’s pipe, a second chimney in itself. It had been long since I’d felt secure enough in my tobacco inventory to puff away so grandly, but several tins of MacIntyre’s favorite variety, which was also my favorite, of course—a proprietary blend of Virginias, Orientals, and Latakia—had eased my mind, and I puffed right along with him.
“Farthest North?” I exclaimed. “And a Swedish translation! How on earth did you come by this?”
“Not easily,” he said.
Some of the books had clearly come from MacIntyre’s own library. I recognized them from my haunting of those shelves. But he had given rather careful thought to each selection, and was in no way to be refused. A few were obvious: Nansen’s epic chronicle, for instance, a set of two large tomes that I had loved dearly when young and naïve in Sweden, skulking around the public library. But I had little or no recognition of many others in these crates. Some were in Swedish and Norwegian, others in English. There were histories, memoirs, and books of poetry. MacIntyre had even included several plays: a tattered compendium of Shakespeare’s tragedies, and a crisp new copy of Juno and the Paycock. He knew I would treasure these books, and evidently he meant for me to continue my education in arts and culture regardless of where I dwelt. It appeared to be a gift he’d been planning for years.
“When you are living the life of an Arctic explorer,” he said, “or Arctic hunter at the very least, you should read about people and places farther flung than the Arctic. And I don’t mean the Antarctic. Your mind will grow weary or, even worse, your curiosity will sputter like an empty lamp and go out. At that point, my dear boy, you may as well give up.”
I gazed about me at the neatly ordered pile. I ran my hands across an English translation of Michel de Montaigne’s collected essays. It was a volume I had pored over obsessively in the wake of the avalanche—struggling to see, struggling to understand the subtleties of the language, but finding great meaning nonetheless. Montaigne’s keen eye for the ways in which humanity will sabotage or redeem itself called out to me across the centuries—he laid it all bare by investigating himself. I opened the tome to a familiar passage, and read aloud now, haltingly:
To how much vanity are we driven by the high opinion we have of ourselves! The best-regulated soul in the world has only too much to do to stay on its feet and keep itself from collapsing to the ground through its own weakness. Out of a thousand souls, there is not one that is straight and composed for a single moment in a lifetime; and it may be questioned, given the soul’s natural condition, whether it can ever be so.
I flipped back a few pages to a cherished line in the same essay and continued: “If you make your pleasure depend on drinking good wine, you condemn yourself to the pain of sometimes drinking bad wine.”
“Ah yes,” MacIntyre said. “‘Of Drunkenness.’ A favorite of yours.”
“Charles, I cannot accept all of these. What if the sea should rise and drown this hovel? The books are irreplaceable.”
“No they are not,” he said. “I would be mildly put out, of course. Several of these have traveled with me rather a long way, dragged to and from mining camps that are now little more than footnotes in a geological history that scant few will ever read. But no, Sven, I’d be far more concerned about you if this blessed hut were overwhelmed by the elements. Books are, by definition, replaceable. You are not.”
I stared at him. His mind, as usual, was hard to read, even were he not obscured by tobacco smoke. How much did he guess of my travails? What did he make of my perforated smile?
It had been my solemn intention not to burden MacIntyre with any tales of near death. But as often happens when a child is reunited with his mother, or so I imagine, I was comforted and disarmed by this old friend who knew me too well. In a flood I told him everything. The paralyzing despair, the lack of preparations, the scurvy, and the wild frenzy of killing. He listened gravely. Periodically I circled back and offered clarifications, though he asked for none. When I finished my tale, we were silent for a few minutes. Eberhard’s head was kinked against a table leg and he snored like a man.
“My dear Sven,” MacIntyre said at last. He shook his head. “In a way it is good that I did not know. I worried. Of course I worried. But had I known how close you came, I might have called in every favor, quite exhausting my capital with the Company, in order to extract you.” He looked searchingly at my face. “Will you stay? Do you plan to overwinter again?”
“I believe I will.”
“For the love of God, please tell me you will take better care of yourself.”
“Yes, Charles. You have my word.”