Without answering him I picked up the alpine tent and we got down to work. It took us three hours to set up the camp. Two tents, one for living in and the other one for cooking had to be erected and the flaps weighed down on all sides by boulders gathered from around. The telescopic aluminum rods gave us some trouble. The radio aerial had to be set, the air mattresses blown and the two camp stoves assembled and filled with kerosene. After dinner we spread ourselves on the rocky ground in mild sunshine and talked of many things.
As he talked on I could gather that Karsten held several strong intellectual opinions. He seemed to dislike the accurate mathematically structured way in which Science defined the world and craved for an emotional aesthetic. His fantasies were formally exquisite, though curiously dwelling on very devious schemes of cheating the public and the like; he confessed that he was too much of a chicken to actually carry them out.
The next eight days were hectic. We would leave camp at seven in the morning after answering the radio roll call and return only at six. The trekking was tough going in the rugged terrain. For Karsten the exercise was all the more strenuous because the whole thing amounted to pure labour. He couldn't grasp the importance of the work and the rocks didn't interest him. There was always a danger of slipping on the smooth rocks, or placing a foot on an unstable boulder. Concealed crevasses covered by snow posed a problem. He loved to talk and I couldn't join in, for I had to concentrate on the geological patterns on the ground.
Field work in the rugged arctic terrain
On the ninth day a camp shift to an adjoining area twenty miles away became necessary. Both of us desired the change. The fringes of the Arctic were already becoming too familiar. The next camp offered no surprises and the same routine continued. Our conversations had for the last few days veered away from the 'theoretical', which had freshness when we were still unfamiliar. Later I initiated a new trend in our relationship by confessing trivial crimes and had sought him out as a confidant. It had always worked in the past whenever I was forced to spend any length of time with a stranger. Quite predictably he reassured me that I was not such a great wretch that I had made out to be and said that he was in fact quite disappointed.
He talked of his various misdeeds. He supposedly had a bull mastiff bitch procured as a gift from a neighbour who was emigrating abroad. He hadn't any interest in having pets but had acquired the dog with the sole intention of selling the pups and making money when she littered. His plans had gone awry as she grew up to be a sickly dog often vomiting on the carpet. He had almost decided to kill it and with that purpose, he had brought home a solution of gold cyanide from an electroplating plant.
"I dipped a slice of bread", he said, "in the cyanide solution and then I had second thoughts. I felt that I perhaps shouldn't do it. The slice, now soggy, could no longer hold on and dropped on the floor. Before I could stop her she gobbled up the slice and in seconds she lay dead!"
"God! That's horrid !"
He didn't think so. That encouraged me to come out with more serious transgressions of mine.
We had spent a fortnight and a day or two all by ourselves when the weather went bad. I had been forewarned about the bad weather that frequently occurred in Greenland, and it didn't belie my worst fears. There was a continuous downpour for the next four days; we were cooped up in the tent and forced to lay prone. In short we were thoroughly uncomfortable.
A reindeer surprised by our presence !
The strain and boredom was telling on our nerves. Sheer idleness aroused old frustrations and we started picking on each other. The food boxes labelled A, B and C and purportedly containing a slight variation in theme didn't prove very different: the difference was only semantic. I thoroughly enjoyed the orange concentrate and would pour out each day, half an ounce of the syrup into a flask that could be strapped on to my waist and dilute it with the near freezing water of the lakes. Karsten never partook of the bottle and I assumed that he didn't enjoy it.
The third day of the bad weather he ventured into the adjoining tent and came back in a few minutes with a frown.
"Where's the orange syrup? Hey!", He thundered.
"I think it's finished."
"That's very selfish of you!", he said sounding castigatory.
"What the hell!" I countered irritated. "It was lying there for the asking ! No one stopped you from using it!"
(To be continued ...)
No comments:
Post a Comment