I lean back and pull him with me until his head hovers just above mine. The lines sculpting his face look deeper in the tent’s shadowy light, and his lazy eyelids lift as if to see me more clearly. He blinks, slowly, languidly, as I imagine he might touch me, and in the next moment he does.
I hear a pair of gentoos reunite outside, their rattling voices rising above the night’s ambient sound. Inside, Dennis and I move under and around our clothing, our own voices muted, whispered, breathless, and in the sudden humid heat of the tent we’ve recognized each other in the same way, by instinct, and, as with the birds, it’s all we know.
DURING THE ANTARCTIC night, tens of thousands of male emperors huddle together through months of total darkness, in temperatures reaching seventy degrees below zero, as they incubate their eggs. By the time the females return to the colony, four months after they left, the males have lost half their body weight and are near starvation. Yet they wait. It’s what they’re programmed to do.
Dennis does not wait for me. I wake up alone in my tent, the gray light of dawn nudging my eyelids. When I look at my watch, I see that it’s later than I thought.
Outside, I glance around for Dennis, but he’s not in camp. I make coffee, washing Thom’s cup for him to use. I drink my own coffee without waiting for him; it’s the only thing to warm me this morning, with him gone and the sun so well hidden.
I sip slowly, steam rising from my cup, and take in the moonscape around me: the edgy rocks, the mirrored water, ice sculptures rising above the pack ice—I could be on another planet. Yet for the first time in years, I feel as if I’ve reconnected with the world in some way, as if I am not as lost as I’ve believed all this time.
I hear the sound of a distant motor and stand up. Then it stops. I listen, hearing agitated voices—it must be Thom, coming from Palmer, having engine trouble. He is still outside the bay, out of sight, so I wait, rinsing my coffee mug and straightening up. When the engine starts up again, I turn back toward the bay. A few minutes later, Thom comes up from the beach with one of the electricians at Palmer, a young guy named Andy. I wave them over.
They walk hesitantly, and when they get closer, I recognize the look on Thom’s face, and I know, with an icy certainty, where Dennis is, even before Thom opens his mouth.
“We found a body, Deb,” he says. “In the bay.” He exchanges a glance with Andy. “We just pulled him in.”
I stare at their questioning faces. “He was here all night,” I say. “I thought he just went for a walk, or—” I stop. Then I start toward the bay.
Thom steps in front of me. He holds both of my arms. “There’s no need to do this,” he says.
But I have to see for myself. I pull away and run to the beach. The body lies across the rocks. I recognize Thom’s sweater, stretched across Dennis’s large frame.
I walk over to him; I want to take his pulse, to feel his heartbeat. But then I see his face, a bluish white, frozen in an expression I don’t recognize, and I can’t go any closer.
I feel Thom come up behind me. “It’s him,” I say. “I gave him your sweater.”
He puts an arm around my shoulder. “What do you think happened?” he asks, but he knows as well as I do. There is no current here, no way to be swept off this beach and pulled out to sea. The Southern Ocean is not violent here, but it is merciless nonetheless.
ANTARCTICA IS NOT a country; it is governed by an international treaty whose rules apply almost solely to the environment. There are no police here, no firefighters, no medical examiners. We have to do everything ourselves, and I shrug Thom off when he tries to absolve me from our duties. I help them lift Dennis into the Zodiac, the weight of his body entirely different now. I keep a hand on his chest as we back out of the bay and speed away, as if he might suddenly try to sit up. When we arrive at Palmer, I finally give in, leaving him to the care of others, who will pack his body for the long journey home.
They offer me a hot shower and a meal. As Andy walks me down the hall toward the dormitory, he tries in vain to find something to say. I’m silent, not helping him. Eventually he updates me on the injured man. “He’s going to be okay,” he tells me. “But you know what’s strange? He doesn’t remember anything about the trip. He knows his wife, knows who the president is, how to add two and two—but he doesn’t know how he got here, or why he even came to Antarctica. Pretty spooky, huh?”
He won’t remember the woman he was fooling around with, I think. She will remember him, but for him, she’s already gone.
BACK AT CAMP, I watch for the gentoos who lost their chick, but they do not return. Their nest remains abandoned, and other penguins steal their rocks.