mathematics needed to describe the universe would ultimately be shown to be elegant and relatively simple. But even in his lifetime, two new fundamental forces had been found, and ever since, the view had been complicated by a messy array of new particles and antiparticles, as well as various imaginary dimensions and all kinds of untidy accommodations. But Beard still clung to the hope that as yet more was revealed, a genius would arise to propose an overarching theory binding all in a formulation of astounding beauty. After many years (this was his little joke as he placed a confiding hand on Jesus’s frail arm), he had finally given up hopes of being the mortal chosen to find this grail.
He said all this over the rising din of twenty climate-change artists settling down to the wine as the plates were cleared away. Jesus failed or refused to detect the self-irony and pronounced solemnly, turning his sad, drooping face to gaze about the crowded quarters, that it was a mistake to abandon hope at any stage of life. All his best penguins, the ones truest to life and most expressive of pure form, had been carved in the last two years, and recently he had started on polar bears, creatures much threatened by rising temperatures and, at one time, well beyond the reach of his artistic powers. In his humble view, it was important never to lose faith in the possibility of profound inner change. Clearly, a scientist like Senor Beard should strive for this theory, for this beauty, for what was life without the highest ambitions?
How could Beard confide to Jesus that he had done no serious science in years, and that he did not believe in profound inner change? Only slow inner and outer decay. He was returning the conversation to the safer ground of penguin as compared to polar-bear ice carving, but as he did so he felt his spirits sinking back. The painkillers were wearing off, the wine, this same wine, now tasted thin and sharp, the cheerfulness around him was reminding him that his marriage was over. He felt weary, and too cynical for the company. His liveliness in conversation was revealed as a fake, a product of shock, drugs and drink.
He brought the conversation to an end and said goodnight to Jesus and, muttering apologies, squeezed along the packed rows to the aisle. All the conversations he passed through were of art and climate change. At the next table a choreographer, a woman he had not seen before, sleek and beautiful and brimming with goodwill, was describing through a French accent a geometric dance she had planned to take place on the ice. He could not stand it, the optimism was crushing him. Everyone but Beard was worried about global warming and was merry, and he was uniquely morose. He cared only for darkness and silence.
He lay a long while on his bunk in the airless cabin, kept awake by the throbbing in his groin – his heartbeat seemed to have migrated down there – and listening to voices and laughter, and wondering if his misanthropy would last all week. The helicopter idea he now saw was absurd. Coming away from his life in remote Belsize Park to this lifeless wilderness had confronted him with the idiocy of his existence. Patrice, Tarpin, the Centre and all the other pseudo-work he did to mask his irrelevance. What was life without the highest ambitions? The answer was exactly this, another night of unmemorable insomnia.
Two hours later he was on the edge of sleep when there came the sound of the guitar being tuned and he groaned and turned angrily on his side. But it was not strumming and singing he heard through the woodwork, but a tenderly played melody that sounded Spanish, reflective, with a touch of lightness and precision, like something of Mozart’s. In the morning he would learn that it was a study by Fernando Sor. Lying in total darkness on his narrow bed he did not doubt that it was Jesus who played, as if to him, and it was to this melancholy air that at last he fell asleep.
It was late in the morning, the sun was up and shining heroically at a slant across the brilliant fjord, while Beard moved effortfully through the dimness of the boot room, trying to find his stuff. He was standing opposite peg number eighteen, on which, the day before, he knew this for a fact, he had hung his snowmobile suit. Directly below the peg was a wire basket where he had stowed his goggles, helmet and smaller items, and below that, under a slatted bench, was the compartment in which he had placed his boots. Even from down here, directly beneath the wheelhouse, he could hear the roar of many snowmobiles – getting them started in the morning was, apparently, an ordeal. A party of six, plus Jan armed with a rifle, was about to set off up the fjord to investigate the glacier. Five and the guide were already out on the ice, stamping their feet and flapping their arms to keep warm, and Beard as always was last. Someone had taken his gear, or some of it. His suit was not on its peg, his wire basket had been shoved along to position nineteen, only his boots – if they were his boots – were in the correct position. His undesirable cracked goggles were lying on the floor.
He took a suit – it was probably his anyway – from peg seventeen. It turned out to be at least two sizes too big, but once it was on he was not inclined to remove it. The boots, however, were a size too small. Among the smaller items in the basket only a glove liner was missing, and he made it up by taking a spare liner from number twenty-three, and promised himself to return it. The crack in his goggles no longer troubled him. He stepped out on deck to ironic applause from the group waiting below on the ice and, wanting to get in the spirit of group life, he made a bow. Even in his hurry, he had time to take in the scene from the top of the shallow ramp of the gangplank. There were many figures scattered on the ice around the ship. The helmets transformed the proportions of their heads, the snowmobile suits swelled their rumps, so that from a distance they resembled infants in a nursery playground. The choreographer and three friends were marking out her geometric dance; two figures were building what looked like a snowman or a statue; a lone person, probably Pickett, was rigging a microphone between two cones of ice; a person with a chainsaw was helping another, surely Jesus, load four ice blocks onto a sledge; someone was kneeling to polish a lens of ice a metre across. Another figure was going about in circles with a red flag and a whistle for the benefit of a movie camera on a tripod.
He had amazed himself by volunteering so soon for another snowmobile ride. Claustrophobia had driven him out, and the tawny light across the fjord as seen from the mess windows, and the fact that it was not permitted to go anywhere without a guide and his gun. He sat astride the last machine and the group set off in single file across the ice in an easterly direction, deeper into the fjord. It should have been fun, to be skimming down a wide corridor of ice and snow, with mountains rising sheer on both sides. But once again, the wind cut through every layer, the cracked goggles fogged up and froze within minutes and Beard could make out no more than a greyish blob of the machine in front. He was directly in the wash of six exhausts. For ten kilometres Jan kept up a wild speed. Where the winds had stripped the snow away, the surface of the fjord was like ridged iron and the snowmobiles rattled and bucked.
Twenty minutes later they were standing in sudden silence a hundred metres from the glacier’s terminus, a broken blue wall that stretched for fifteen kilometres across the valley. The impression was of a ruined city, grubby and dissolute, with rubble, broken towers and giant fissures. At minus twenty-eight, it was too cold today, Jan explained, for displays of ice shearing away in the cause of polar warming. They passed an hour taking photographs and walking up and down. Then someone saw a print in the snow. They huddled round it, and stepped back to allow their guide, whose rifle was over his shoulder, to display his expertise. A polar bear’s print, of course, and very new. The snow was thin where they stood, and it was not easy to find another impression. Jan used his binoculars to scan the horizon.
‘Ah,’ he said quietly. ‘I think we leave now.’
He pointed and at first they saw nothing. But when it moved, it was clear enough. At a distance of a mile or so, a bear was ambling towards them.
‘He’s hungry,’ Jan said forgivingly. ‘Time for skidoos.’
Even with the prospect of being eaten alive, dignity prevailed and they only half ran to the machines. As he reached his, Beard knew what to expect. Everything about this trip had conspired to reduce him. Why would his luck change now? He pushed the button. Nothing. Fine. So let his sinews be stripped from his bones. He tried again, then again. Around him, clouds of blue smoke, and high-pitched roars, the proper expression at last of full-throated panic. Already, half the party was shooting away in the direction of the ship. It was every-man-for-himself. Beard wasted no energy cursing. He pulled out the choke lever, though he knew it was a mistake, for the engine was still warm. He tried again. And again, nothing. He smelled petrol. He had flooded the engine and he deserved to die. Now all the others had gone, along with the guide, whose dereliction of duty Beard resolved to report to Pickett, or the King of Norway. His agitation was steaming up his goggles, and, as usual, the steam froze. Pointless then, to look back, but he did it all the same, and saw frozen steam fringed with a glimpse of the fjord’s ice. It was reasonable to assume the bear was still coming, but he had clearly underestimated its speed over the ground, because at that moment his shoulder was struck a heavy blow.
