Aurorarama (33 page)

He retrieved a watch that, still ticking, informed him that it was around two o’clock, probably
A.M
. though maybe he had already reached a latitude where the polar night still extended throughout the entire day. From where he barely stood, the unhelpful stars were invisible, and he did not feel like going out to check them just then. His idea was to hope for the crack of dawn that would come sooner or later, then use his sextant and, according to his bearings, either abandon ship, dragging the spare light sled he had in the hold, or stay there and send some flashing balloon message.

Rubbing his limbs through the extra fur clothes he had picked up, and using his flashlight as sparingly as he could, he Robinson-Crusoed or, rather, Allan-Gordoned his way through the following hours, trying to organize his anti-cabin in the most sensible manner while waiting for daybreak. The top of his bunk, seemingly solid enough to hold his weight, had been fitted with a mattress and a caribou fur–lined bag, inside which he could enjoy relative warmth. That way, he would make, he thought, one of those comfortably tucked-in corpses that rescue parties sometimes end up finding, a grin of welcome on his blackened face.

Using a wooden spoon, he ate clam soup from a half-warmed tin can and drank a little brandy straight from the
bottle, trying hard to think of a way out of his situation while trying equally hard to forget about it for a while. Outside, the ice snored uneasily, grumbling in its sleep, having nightmares, no doubt, about all the men it had killed, ready to turn violently and smother the
Kinngait
. Great, thought Brentford with a sigh. He understood he was not going to sleep, as deep down some primeval, childish fear had gotten hold of his guts. Even the faceless banshee whom he had followed so blindly now filled him with a retrospective awe. He was finally dozing off a little, though, when the voices woke him up.

He could be wrong, of course. It could have been some trick of the wind, some spillover from an interrupted dream, a classic Arctic hallucination. But as he pricked up his ears, now sure that he was awake, he could hear them again, not only the voices but also the steps that crunched closer to the ship. He could not believe it. People. Here. So soon. Grasping the flashlight, crawling out of the caribou sleeping bag, and banging his head against the lower edge of the upturned bunk, he managed to land on the ceiling and hurried toward the windshield. He had not dreamed. There were human shapes, all around the ship, all carrying hurricane lamps and cautiously approaching. He was about to flash his lamp when one of the shapes lifted its lantern to its own face.

Brentford recoiled in horror.

There was no face, nothing but a mummified grin and eyes bulging out.

Brentford’s stomach knotted and he felt himself melting in a prickly cold sweat. He closed his eyes and looked again, trembling. There were seven figures, moving closer, their bearded faces all visible now, some yellowish and cracked, some swollen and black. They wore ragtag clothes, woollen greatcoats heavy with ice, sealskin jackets with fur hoods, frosted welsh-wigs or leather hats with earflaps, duffel knee boots or
kamiks
, large woollen or fur mittens—all holding rifles. Some of them wore
wire snow-glasses that, thank God, hid their eyes. Their motley clothes, like their body parts, seemed to have been patched up and sewn together haphazardly.

The Phantom Patrol. This couldn’t be true. Brentford, trembling, fumbled for his rifle and then tried not to move.

The undead advanced slowly, silently, their rifles cocked. One of them stood a few feet in front of the ship, waving his lantern from left to right. Brentford tried not to breathe so as not to leave a blur on the glass that separated him from them. The phantom put the lantern at his feet, casting a long shadow behind himself, and then placed his fists on his hips.

“Ahoy there!” he cried with what seemed to Brentford an American accent.

Brentford crouched a notch lower, feeling as if he were being trussed up with ropes made of shivers.

“We expected a warmer welcome, sir,” the man continued after a moment, turning toward the others as if to gather their approbation. “What kind of man would have such a hardened heart as not to salute fellow travellers in such a wilderness? Especially when those travellers have walked a long way to meet him and are, shall we say, rather hungry.”

Some of the other men burst into a yellow, unpleasant laughter.

“Believe me, sir,” the man went on, as the others came closer to him. “We have spent long periods of wintering in cramped cabins or tents, and there is nothing that we understand and value more than a man’s need for a little privacy.”

The others nodded with conviction, some saying “Aye, aye.”

“But, as we have also experienced, there is absolutely no place on earth where a man can feel more desperate and helpless when he is on his own.”

A hum of approval greeted his words.

“Here, kind sir, here and only here, can you learn to truly appreciate the value of someone being there to lend you a hand. Or a fresh leg.”

The patrol roared, a sickly, grating laughter that curdled Brentford’s blood. The man silenced them with a gesture of his hand, before tipping his hat.

“We are unforgivable. We attempt to address a gentleman but we haven’t introduced ourselves. Maybe we should do this now, mates.”

Regrouping in front of the ship, the men all put their lanterns on the snow, in a row, a few feet from one another, and then, walking back together, formed a straight line behind the orator, who started his banter.

“As you know, there is nothing worse under these latitudes than the lack of entertainment. This is why we are happy and proud to present to you the best success of the famous Royal Arctic Theatre since
Harlequin Light
. Ladies and Gentlemen,
The Skating Rink Ting Ting
or
The Phantom Patrol’s Polar Pageant!”

The men applauded, while Brentford, now a paralyzed block of anguish, wondered if going mad would not be the easiest way out of this demented situation.

The master of ceremonies went and sat on a nearby block of ice, looking very comfortable.

“Come on, Geo,” he shouted, turning toward the back row. At that command, one of the men emerged into the circle of light, striding like an automaton toward the “stage” lamps. He had a grey, sideburned, sallow face under his Eugenie hat, and his bulk was made larger by a thick brown greatcoat. He turned, showing, painted on his back, a coat of arms and a motto: “St. George and Merry England.” This was, Brentford suddenly remembered,
what British sailors did to have some target to look at as they man-hauled sleighs in snowstorms. Having pirouetted again, the man psalmodied in a croaky, pathetic voice:

Another tall, bearded man, with a greyish hollow face, no lips over his square white teeth, and a U.S. Cavalry hat on his head, jumped into the lights and pretended to defy the English sailor:

The two men drew knives from sheaths inside their coats and, crouching on their creaky joints, exchanged murderous glares, ready to lunge at each other’s throat, until a third sailor, wearing a tartan sash across his sealskin jacket and a helmetlike worsted cap, interrupted them to declaim with a Scots burr:

The first two valiant knights turned at the same time toward this new opponent, but then there came up from behind them an older, bulky, yellowish fellow dressed in thick furs, carrying
what seemed to Brentford a huge piece of driftwood. In a stentorous Irish brogue, he declared:

Four men now stared at each other, weapons in hand, rolling defiant glassy eyes, threatening each other and not daring to make the first move. This sick pantomime went on for a while, until a smaller ashen fellow, with his nose fallen off, trotted quickly between them and announced himself:

As the others turned toward him, he put a black finger to his cracked lips, and winking a horrible wink, indicated to them the sixth protagonist, approaching slowly, like a ghost, into the mock limelight. This one was nothing more than a skeletal shadow, disappearing within a greatcoat much too large for his long bony limbs. One of his hands, cut at the wrist, had been replaced by wooden spoon tightly tied to the stump. He spoke with a hissing voice, as if in agony:

The five others suddenly jumped on him and pretended to slaughter him with large stabbing gestures, as he dramatically knelt down on the icy ground. Then, instead of sharing their spoils, the killers turned against one another, fighting like knockabout clowns, until, one by one, they all fell on the snow in histrionic agonies, except the so-called Saint George, who, his foot on the heap of corpses, addressed the master of ceremonies:

The master of ceremonies stood up and came forward to observe the agonized sailors, with his hands behind the back of his fur coat. Brentford, starting at the word
doctor
, thought he detected a passing resemblance to a portrait of Octave Pavy, the drowned doctor of the hideous Greely failure. His fear now blended with a strange feeling of fascination as he followed the dialogue:

He feigned to pour the potion from an invisible phial. One by one, the fallen men started to move, and, thus resurrected, painfully got up from the ice, their limbs stiff, but not suffering, it seemed, from the cold. Then, stringing themselves together, their arms around each other’s waist and their awfully mutilated faces lit from below by the row of lanterns, they chanted hoarsely:

Brentford, who did not know anymore whether he was trembling from cold, fear, or tension, thought it was over, but he was wrong. Another man he had not seen arrived in front of the improvised stage, his body entirely hidden under some hooded brown garment.

Then the Patrol bowed and saluted in the little circle of trembling lights. There was no applause save the crackles and growls of the ice all around. Brentford was still afraid, but most of all he felt invaded by a weary sadness that was beyond reason or words.

“Doctor Phoenix,” however, had started speaking again.

“Excuse us, sir, if our little spectacle did not amuse you. It seems we have developed a humour of our own that some may find unpleasant, and we are well aware that our overall appearance does not speak in our favour. We do not, alas, delude ourselves with the vain hope that we can obtain your sympathy. In that respect as in many others, as one of us once said, the only illusions we have left are our optical illusions.”