Ice-Cold Heaven: a Novel by Mirko Bonne

Author:Mirko Bonne [BONNé, MIRKO]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000; FIC014000; FIC047000; FIC014000; FIC002000
ISBN: 9781468308426
Publisher: ABRAMS, Inc. (Ignition)
Published: 2013-08-09T00:00:00+00:00

26

THE ANTARCTIC CLOCK

AT A TEMPERATURE OF BETWEEN THIRTY AND FORTY DEGREES below, unexpected things start to happen. I pour out a beaker of boiling water and it freezes before it smashes on the ground. If you blink for too long, your eyelids freeze shut, a shock that’s momentary but terrifying. After spending a long time outside, we snuggle up to the stove like a gang of cats. And if you lick the clothes you’ve taken off and press that spot against the cabin wall, the jacket or the pullover stays hanging there as if by magic. You shouldn’t think that after a certain temperature it stops making a difference whether the air is at minus twenty or minus thirty-seven. It’s a difference equivalent to that between spring and high summer, just at the end of the scale where there are no seasons.

At the close of May and in the middle of June, between the 125th and 145th days in the ice, we put on two contests that draw in the whole crew despite the ever more bitter cold. For days, the men have been leveling a playing field on the lee side of the ship, and once the six storm lamps on deck have been directed onto it, Sir Ernest, who couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be the referee, blows the whistle for a full ninety-minute football match in the crepuscular floodlight: the Vahsel Bay Wanderers, wearing white vests over their snowsuits, versus Weddell Sea United, the strong favorites because their team has got one more pair of snow goggles.

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