Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
had known of emptiness and loss, if you were minded to internalise the landscape in that way. I
felt the reverse. Even sitting in a base which resembled a small Alaskan mining town, I had similar
intimations about the cold southern desert to those which Thesiger had in the hot sands of Arabia.
'Here in the desert', he wrote, 'I had found all that I had asked; I knew that I should never find it
again.'
I finished the topic in my office late one night, and the light from the Anglepoise lamp spilled
into the dark corridor. Hans, a Danish fish biologist on Art's project, came in and installed himself
on the spare chair. We must have been the only people in the building, and it was as silent as a
mausoleum. He made small talk for a few minutes, but he was fidgeting, as if he were trying to
release an object that had got stuck between the layers of his garments. When he started saying
what he had come to say all along, it spewed out like a torrent of coins from a slot machine.
He had fallen in love five weeks before coming south.
'Britta is fifteen years younger than I, but one day after I met her, I was in love,' he said in
his musical Danish accent. 'The next five weeks were like rushing towards a waterfall, becoming
faster all the time. I find a branch to cling to and everything would be OK for a while, but then I
would be swept away again. Then comes the day when no branches are left.'
He wrote every day, and once a week he sent a present, too, a commitment which must have
tested his imagination as there weren't any shops except the navy store, and that offered a limited
range of out-of-date film, tampax and Y-fronts.
'I am an all or nothing man,' he said seriously, zipping himself into his vermilion parka and set-
ting off to write another instalment.
