Ice Reich by William Dietrich

Author:William Dietrich [Dietrich, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-12-19T04:30:57+00:00

PART TWO

1939–44

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Pain subsides, but memory just roots deeper. Greta was burned into Hart's brain like the after-dazzle of flash powder: her face framed by fur as she watched icebergs the color of her eyes, her body bathed by lantern light in the womb-like grotto of the cave, her fingers touching his sleeve as she asked him not to leave the ship— not to leave her. And that bright remembrance was shadowed by the darker tumor of Jürgen Drexler. Other mental images were etched by acid and sun fire: the bite of polar wind, the disease-contorted bodies, the tantalizing crack of light that made him crawl for the surface when muscle and will seemed utterly expended, the ominous disappearance of Schwabenland and the Bergen. Antarctica was a song so exquisite and so vile that he could not get it— could not get her— out of his head. And because of that he couldn't forget her, nor replace her, nor move past her. He'd lost her and yet somehow it wasn't over, he knew. It couldn't be over until they met again.

Initially he simply gave way to despair as he lay on a musty cotton mattress in a storeroom of the Aurora Australis, confined by the distrust of Sigvald Jansen. Lit by a caged bulb, the steel chamber mercifully prevented much contact with the Norwegian sailors, still furious about their confrontation with the Germans. "Murderer," one muttered at the pilot as he slid food through the doorway. One of the whalers had been killed in the gun battle and two wounded, Hart learned.

For a while the whalers waited grimly for him to exhibit symptoms of the dread new disease he talked wildly about, waited in both anticipation and fear. But no symptoms appeared. So he existed for a while outside of normal time, in a debilitating fog of grief and longing and regret. The sudden loss of Greta and Fritz was torment so great that at first he didn't think he could live, that he would ever again want to live. And yet he did live: numbly, automatically. And slowly— it was as if he was on a rack that was being ratcheted down day by agonizing day— the loss became more bearable. His choices became inevitabilities, never to be reversed, and his defeats a bitter peace. The alternative was madness. And as days turned to weeks— while the whaler finished its interminable season and then slowly steamed home— the hole in his heart began to scab over. The future began to replace the past and determination eclipsed despair. Even if the expedition had become a tragic fiasco— even if he'd been given up for dead— couldn't he get back into Greta's life? That must be his goal.

The Norwegians, who'd been so thirsty for revenge that they gleefully rammed the Boreas and sent the empty flying boat to the ocean's bottom, were puzzled. Was Hart a German spy, deserter, or the refugee he claimed? Nothing he said could be verified. The American claimed to have escaped from a new plague but had no sign of it.

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