The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 125
The Birth of the Ice Cross
And what was at issue in the Inaccessible Affair? I suppose the New Benthamites would hold bald-facedly that the republics of the North and South dispatched warships to secure the pleasure of overlordship of several million square miles of ice and volcanic ash, where nothing of consequence can grow, but where there is a bountiful sea, and where there might be a bountiful’ cave of minerals. The New Benthamites would hold that the pain of not holding the ice exceeds the pain of holding it. More ludicrously, the New Benthamites would hold that the republics of the North and South fought the Inaccessible Affair for the greater good of ruling what the Church fathers once named terra australis incognita. If one deciphers this New Benthamism, one is left with amazement that men went to war for their chauvinist claims over incognita. That war of shadows, that Inaccessible Affair, was a blood feud, without reason. Israel told me the truth of this, and I have seen it: Men will go to war for nothing. In the South, they did go to war for nothing. They feuded for feud alone, and nothing more.
Yes, there must have been claims that the rescue of wretches then pouring into the South Atlantic and Southern Ocean was also at issue: the republics of the North might have said they dispatched warships to administer charity; the republics of the South might have said they dispatched warships to determine if it was charity or imperialism. This was a sham. The victims of their crimes became an excuse for their crimes. My guess now is that the battles in the Scotia Sea were a spillover from larger blood feuds in both South America and Africa. The size of the area of conflict required more bluffing than combat, however, especially in the Antarctic. More, the wild weather in the Scotia Sea probably daunted all antagonists, and when that danger was combined with the threat of the fleet of the damned, the warring nations must have realized that they had to turn from confrontation to subterfuge. That is how the Norse conducted blood feuds—if there was a standoff, retire and wait for night. In the South the darkness was almost complete.
Before the end of the Antarctic summer (March 1998), the antagonists had arranged a cease-fire; the Inaccessible Affair was said to be done. A settlement was negotiated, outside of Cape Town, South Africa; hence it was called the Treaty of Good Hope. That was about the time of the British warship at South Georgia, and I assume that when the captain said there had been no war, he was being both disingenuous and defeatist.
I also assume that when the captain said there was just a bloody shuffle, he was thinking of one aspect of the Treaty of Good Hope, which established an international peace-keeping force to manage the flood of wretches into the South. I cannot be certain whether that peace-keeping force and the International Committee of the Red Cross Antarctica Relief Collective were one and the same, or separate units of a larger, world-scale construction. I have no library to certify any of my speculations. What I do know of those days, however, tells me that the New Benthamites—caught unprepared for the size of the war of shadows and its victims—amended their ways and once again applied the Charity Factor, this time to the whole of the Antarctic. What had been the British Falkland Islands Dependencies’ Antarctic claim (the South Orkneys, the South Shetlands, the Palmer archipelago, Graham Land), was reconstituted into a de-militarized zone, to be administered by volunteers of charity. The Ice Cross was born.
It cannot be accident that the Treaty of Good Hope, which was signed as I spent my third winter on South Georgia, heralded order among republican masters and chaos among the wretches. The camps on the South Shetlands were organized. The roundups, deportations, and transportations in the following summer were orchestrated. I swear it. There was a plan. I cannot prove it, but again, I have never learned anything to contradict my charge. And yet, after all these years, I recoil before the monstrousness of what was done. Could the ice camps actually have been a policy of men? Who could have given such an order? Could they have thought it the solution? There must be records. I have no proof.
I am certain that the British naval station at Elephant Island was transferred to the Ice Cross. It was quickly expanded into a huge warehouse of goods, and into a series of connecting camps that were then filled with wretches gathered from across the South Atlantic, the Scotia Sea, the Southern Ocean. The Ice Cross was mother mercy, and Elephant Island was her hearth.
Peter Grootgibeon
On Elephant Island, Cleopatra’s efforts at this point again seemed to have secured berths for my family on a relocation ship, to leave as soon as the ice broke up in late spring and sufficient transport was arranged for incoming and outgoing refugees. Something ruinous upset this plan. Peter Grootgibeon’s good offices failed. Grandfather said it was a Satan jest played on the Jew. I suppose from this that Israel lost his temper, did something vainglorious to compromise Grootgibeon. As a result, my family was punished. Also, Grootgibeon either resigned from or was transferred out of the British Navy. In either case, he was soon an officer in the Ice Cross.
Grootgibeon might have volunteered. He was a tall, quiet, mercurial man, born in Southwest Africa, raised in the merchant marine, a homeless soldier of fortune. It