The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 75
“You have heard that I come from America, and that Grim Fiddle, now baptized Grim Fiddle, is mostly American. I want you to know that this is not a curse. Among you here, I have discovered there are just ways to love, and they come to any man who is hard enough to accept his place. I count myself happy to be your schoolmaster, and Grim Fiddle, he just counts Frazer sheep. It’s a good life, while we have it, and if there are disagreements now and then, that is all to the good. Now with my Cleo, and Grim’s Sam, America has landed on South Georgia to stay.”
I remember the toasts, the men saying that Sam would become a champion like his father, since I had become legend to the Volunteers for what I had done at the Presbyterian church at Port Stanley. I remember Lazarus dancing with his tall wife, Violante, and then with Abigail, and with the young woman promised to Germanicus, Jane Gaunt. I remember Elephant Frazer gathering me around the waist, making the photographer stand back to get my head in the shot, and then Dolly Frazer pulling me aside to assure me in a quiet voice that she would not rest until she convinced Abigail to marry me. I remember the Volunteers gathered around a map of the Falkland Dependencies, tracing the route Germanicus was supposed to be following in his second reconnaissance of the Falklands. I remember Lazarus saying good night to me. “Do you miss them? I think of her. I thought naming my baby for her would make it better. It has, I guess. I want you to understand that I was wrong about you. You did what had to be done. There was nothing more you could have tried. Orlando and I talked about you last Christmas when he was down. You were still sick. They couldn’t have made it. It happened, and I don’t see what we could have done. We want you to know, whatever you decide, we’re with you. Stay here now. These are good people. To hell with that world out there.” And I remember crying that night, apart from Abigail while we cleaned up after the party, until she caught me, made me confess: “For the first time, I begin to see what has happened to me. It hurts.”
I speak of my luck. The ancient Norse had wisdom that applied to me on South Georgia, and I make it suit here by paraphrasing: Both good and bad luck, and plenty of both, must be endured in a life time spent in this troubled world. My baptism seemed the line I crossed from good luck to bad once again, and at everyone’s peril. Germanicus returned with dire news soon after. That was his second voyage around the Falklands. During my third summer, he had made his first, sailing the Frazer sealing schooner, King James, in a great arc across the southern Atlantic, bringing back sketchy news of a forbidding quiet on the mainland of South America and observed news that the beasties had taken over West Falkland from the Patties. After his return, in the early fall ending my third year on the island, a ship had foundered off the northeast shore, off Orlando the Black’s Shagrock, and the wreckage that floated ashore hinted that it was from Africa and that it either had been fleeing plague or had been a plague ship blockaded out of a South African port. This threat was kept a secret by the leadership on South Georgia. Germanicus was ordered to make a more military reconnaissance in my fourth summer, which was why he was away for the baptism party. His mission was manifold: mostly to investigate the possibility of plague, since any such threat would likely come on us from the west; partly to assess the state of the Falklands; partly to search for news of or the remains of Samson; and partly to look over Mead’s Kiss. This last he did not tell me about at the time, at Abigail’s anxious request, because she feared it would cause me a relapse. Germanicus did make a reckless landing on West Falkland, and a march to 2 de Diciembre. Otter Ransom, a mate on King James by then, and Wild Drumrul, a seaman, went along on that march, and the two of them visited me in my hut in the early fall.
“The Patties have divided the islands into zones,” said Otter Ransom, nervous, distracted. He was thought a fine figure in town, and I had assumed him happy. He continued, “More beasties on the northern shores, and that’s where they are sick. I’ve never seen it. I’ve heard of it. We found bodies in a ditch outside the village. Half buried, two or three. They were blue-black, chewed up by birds. I saw these boil things. I knew what it was. We took care coming back. Searched her top to bottom. None of us got it.”
I asked him if he was sure it was plague; it could have been a dozen diseases, including plain infection.
“How can we know, unless we get it?” he said angrily.
I asked Wild Drumrul if Germanicus knew, or the leadership was guessing, where it came from.
“Die Ratten!” said Wild Drumrul, gesturing in a Moslem way, cursing the earth. That was his way of saying that plague came from everywhere. He had grown to a cautious, faithful man—beautifully bearded, catlike. He said he had seen the plague in Asia as a boy. He said it was always the same. The rats died. Then the people