The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 157
“You were my best friend,” I said.
“No long face there, Grim,” said Germanicus.
“All those dear folk, our South Georgians, why did they have to die like that?” I said.
“We none of us ken that,” said Germanicus.
“Are they happy in Heaven?” I said.
“O aye, be sure that the pastor sees to it. They be released. Give way, now, Grim, look to yourself,” said Germanicus.
“Abbie said that, do you remember? Save yourself, she said. I’ve always thought that was what she told Robby. ‘Save himself,’ she told Robby to tell me.”
“Aye, bonnie words,” said Germanicus.
“I’ve made a mess of it. And if I couldn’t save me, who would want to?” I said, looking away from Germanicus and down into the snow. I saw there Germanicus as he had been the winter before in my hall, broken and white, dead from wounds, a tired and good man released. He was the last of the sealers to leave me. No stories are equal for his courage, especially after Jane was murdered, and their baby boy. I mourned him so completely that I had denied my grief until then on the glacier. How happy I felt to be able to look up from the snow and find his black beard flecked with ice, his smile giving me warmth. I was not deceived.
I knew he was a ghost, or whatever he should be called—a realized memory. It still gave me great comfort. I built my fire up with my sled and the food containers, then cut free the team, keeping Iceberg’s great-grandson tethered near me to hold back the team’s hunger until it ruled them. By then, I would not need protection.
I lay down to die. There is no surprise as to the failure of that presumption. There is a final and small puzzle to my last days as King of Antarctica. I mean to say, I fell, but I was soon enough scooped up and returned to destiny. It was not just that way. I have waited twenty-nine years to figure out just what it was, however, and if it is not the most intriguing confusion in my narrative, it remains for me the queerest of inexplicable surprises. What was her mind? I have already rejected the one motive that would seem to explain such conduct. She could not have loved me. She must have hated me. Perhaps there is more to love than anyone can bear to know. Was it womanly secret on a scale that I cannot conceive that moved her to urge me to, and then to retrieve me from, Satan’s Seat? Love or hate, then, in all a great and abiding passion in the human heart, moved Cleopatra Furore to retrieve Grim Fiddle, moved the queen to dispatch her knave to fetch the king from his chatty, morbid, beauteous sanctuary. I report it as flatly as it happened. I lay down to die and Babe Furore walked out of the wind. I could not ask him, mute witness, so for the thrill it still means to me I shall close this abridged confession with a question that I shall endeavor to pursue after life: “Why Cleopatra, why did you save Grim Fiddle?”
My Sam
I CANNOT murder Grim Fiddle. This last writing has shown me what I have become in my ice prison, a curious old pilgrim, game for more, luxurious with memories that crowd my manuscript. It is six weeks since I pronounced my imminent departure from this life. I renounce my plan. No Babe Furore had to walk out of the wind this time. I have been nursed back to health by my delivery of the story of the People’s Republic of Antarctica. The patient is again patient with his destiny. Denial of the life I have been given, by love and accident, would be the most foolish sort of ingratitude. I forbid it. There is more to my decision, less philosophically abstract. I am now palpably reminded of Abigail’s advice to me to save myself, and of Cleopatra’s one queer assistance to the same end. It is time that Grim Fiddle took charge of that effort, the delivered stood up his own deliverer.
This is not to say that my apprehension about Diomedes’s letter was unfounded. A new letter has finally arrived, yesterday, obliging me to finish my fall from Satan’s Seat without detail. I had hoped to report my arrest and trial. There were some fine speeches. I suppress that now. Diomedes announces more immediate noise. I do not care to give the One World Reunion a voice in my last testimony. The sum of their endeavor is that, according to Diomedes, Grim Fiddle is reborn in green history. The Reunionists threaten the worst of my anticipations. Along with Diomedes’s letter, the supply ship—long delayed by happy storms—brought communication to Gardiner to prepare this place for extinction. They are all expecting momentary recall. The excitement here is cluttered, does not interest me. Grim Fiddle the goat becomes Grim Fiddle the lamb; it is the same, a lie.
What recourse for me? I am lucky for my genius. I talked with Gardiner this morning. He could not have been more obliging. I sense my conceit colors this report. I should scold myself for my deception of such a well-meaning, hopeful man. I shall not. I told Gardiner that