The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 156

upwind of the worst of the eruptions, yet the poisonous black clouds venting from the crater had splashed the snowfields with twisted geometric designs. It seemed a masterwork of a master abstracter, the master mystery-maker. The winds could sweep clear the slopes of the volcanoes, west to east, so from my vantage I could study the cycle. The earth would shrug; rockslides and ice ridges would jump once and then pour down the slopes in an avalanche that sent a gray-white wash into the valleys; the crater would then spew ever blacker smoke streams into the cloud cover above; finally, roars would pronounce a new episode, a glow building in the fumes. Instead of Satan’s Seat then heaving ashen fire into the sky, one of the stepping stones would vent, a demon’s seat evidencing obeisance. I saw this cycle once completely, saw it repeat just short of spewing continually. It was hypnotic, drew me into the process, humbled me, witness to a clockwork of ash and wind. I felt, feeding my own fire, eating the last of my food, that my end was privileged with secrets of creation. I watched myself die as I watched the earth tremble with cataclysmic renaissance.

It was humility before that splendor that returned me to cold reason. My delusions about conspiracies, treacheries, imminent world wars, gradually came to seem to me to be trivial, mean-spirited, proceeding from my vanity. More to the point of my being camped on that glacier, my deranged notions that Satan was my ally came to humiliate me. I saw my gibberish and was mortified. I taunted myself, told my team that their master was a pitiable, pitiless fool, unworthy of their muscle and devotion. I did talk to my wolves, but not as a berserker, nor as a madman, instead as a simple sinner, low and regretful, sane and ironic in reflection.

“Satan’s Seat, we call that one,” I told Iceberg’s great-grandson. “That gives more to Satan than to that mountain. No devil could ever be so grand! Look at the size!”

(This should be explained: On Anvers Island, the fumes from Satan’s Seat could appear an enormous figure, such as Christmas Muir had once described to me, a great ram’s head, horned and grinning. I had first dismissed this as sealer talk, then, as warlord of murder, embraced it as fitting judgment on the evils of men, as if Satan ruled the camps. Now, I rejected it again and for all time as gab. It was a volcano, a grotesque and terrifying one, and no more. It was the world in motion, only that, vomiting up the goods of elemental nature. If one were to look down into that volcano, one would not see Hell, or evil; one would see the future fields of bounty. And the cloud that billowed and glowed above it was merely windblown ash, in the shape of nothing but metaphor.)

“I called my master the God of Hate,” I told my wheel dog. “Israel, he would groan at me, call me a brat. God, yes, God most tender. The hate is my invention. God created this lovely world. Man made hatred, did so out of disgust for his own ingratitude. And what man has done wrong, he can do right. The God of Love, I see that, Israel, a lesson so simple.”

With my reason, I regained also one of the keenest defenses with which man is blessed, fear of death. I understood that a good measure of sanity is an acceptance of such a fear. I emptied of folly as I filled with fear. I did not want to die. I was cold and alone, yet wanted more of life, even if it was to be torment. I saw my end and wept. This journey had been suicide, I realized, and I was sorry for it. More, I blamed myself for my presumption to defy the knowable limits of nature, for my pride to be more than a man. Of all the sins I committed, this seems the worst. God had graced me with life; Lamba had given me birth; Peregrine, Israel, Guy, Earle, Thord, Orri, Molly, had given me childhood; Grandfather had given me chance; the Furores and the South Georgians and the wretched of the camps had given me everything they had. What right had I to return this trust with smug blasphemy? My fear of death blended with my anger at myself. I turned the fury that I had lavished on the Charity Factor onto myself.

“Stupid, extreme, cruel, lustful, faithless, small, small man!” I shouted to the dogs. “That is what sits here! All of life was before me! Look at the heavens, look at the earth, for me, all could have been for me! Selfish, rash, blundering Grim! You wolves have more dignity in your teeth than I ever managed in my life! Would you have come up here to quit? Before your sensible wants my learning is waste. I know why you don’t answer me. What could you tell such an ignoramus? You are beasts, and happy for it! I am a man, and sad for it! Not for good cause! Out of contrariness! Ludicrous, trivial, vain, spiteful, greedy Grim! The only decent thing I can do for you now is make myself your last meal. What is a man who feeds himself to wolves? A bootless fool, sour meat!”

I stress that though this seems ranting, it was not. I had to shout over the wind and the barking. Otherwise it was intimate intercourse, self-indulgent, true, yet it was my last meal and I permitted a feast of woe. I acted accordingly. I was despondent, not overmuch. I felt stupid, also very sanely ridiculous.

As I lay restless and chatting, the cold and the solitude joined to give me that phenomenon of life in Antarctica that is best described here as useful melancholia. I lost perspective. The window on Satan’s Seat closed. A new window opened onto my past. Memories beckoned me. I