The Nanny and the Iceberg by Ariel Dorfman

Author:Ariel Dorfman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2010-06-22T00:00:00+00:00

We set sail to capture the iceberg on November 1, el Día de Todos los Santos, All Saints’ Day 1991. I set out with my mother and my father from the southernmost city in the world with the secret purpose of lifting forever—I thought it would be forever—the curse that had been weighing upon my northern life. Bahía Paraíso was our destination, a particularly calm inlet nestled in the hook of the Antarctic archipelago, where securing that floating mass of ice would not be overly hazardous.

“Which does not mean it will not be hazardous at all,” the captain announced to our assembled group that afternoon in the mess hall as the island tip of America disappeared from sight, the last land of the Americas, which had meant the end of the line for the tribes descending from the Bering Strait, the end of the line for so many shipwrecked sailors who had not needed to venture any farther to die in a sea famed as the most treacherous in the world. Our captain knew what he was talking about. “This has never been attempted before. Most ships that go past el Mar de Drake are trying to avoid icebergs, not bring them on board. All of them thus far have considered ice to be their main enemy. Not just the icebergs that can gash into a ship but the ice that can rain down from above and the ice that can immobilize from below and the ice that can sleet sideways like a hurricane and capsize you. It would have been better to have left a few months from now, in summer, when even tourist ships navigate these waters. But our orders are to have this iceberg back by mid-November so it can arrive in Sevilla on time. And I follow orders. Just as I expect my orders to be followed by everybody on board this ship. And everybody, including our guests, may in fact be called upon to help in an emergency. Everybody.”

The captain, a member of the Chilean navy, looked disapprovingly at me, with my baby face. Who else would he express his anger toward when he was really furious at the imposition of a woman? To bring anything female on board was to court disaster, even if this one was hitched, romantically head-over-heels involved with the great McKenzie, who was doing his best not to hold her hand too tightly, making sure—my father, discreet as ever—that he was not provoking the envy of the surrounding machos, not rubbing it in that every night he would be entering that splendid ejemplar de mujer while they would be entering nothing more attractive than their bunks heaving under the ten-foot waves. I wasn’t worried. My father would charm them, he would try and disguise the glow of sex dawning on his face every morning, he would tell them stories and keep them entertained. As for Milagros, she had cut her hair short so it could fit under a ski mask,

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