Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Nann thought about this.
'You mean, like Ronald Reagan used to be?'
'More like the Queen Mother,' I replied.
Fortified by a dose of Bennett, which worked rather better than the oxygen, in the evening I
asked Eileen's permission to go over to the galley and sit quietly in a corner for the Present Ex-
change.
Everyone put a wrapped gift on a table and drew a number out of a hat. Number one would then
pick a present, which he or she had to open in front of everyone else. Number two could then either
pick a present from the table or steal number one's gift, at which point number one chose another,
and so it went on. Gifts ranged from knitted hats and an oil painting of the Southern Lights to a
box of cigars and a handful of rocks. Before leaving home, I had been tipped off about the gift
exchange and had carefully wrapped up a signed copy of one of my topics. Having been carted
halfway round the world, it looked as if it had been towed from Hercules Inlet on Susumu's sledge.
Nann got it - she stole it from someone else. I had my eye on a handmade journal someone had
already unwrapped. It had a felt cover bearing a white appliqué map of the continent with a red
arrow at the Pole bearing the words
You Are Here
. When my number was called, I stole it. I was
drinking weak tea while everyone else slurped buttered rum punch, but virtue did not save me. The
pain in my head returned like a freight train and drove me back to my invalid's bed. Eileen was
wonderful. She gave me a massive Demerol shot at two in the morning, and at four she came back,
telling me that she'd thought I might be dead.
The Demerol worked, and I dreamt of rain. I was able to walk over to the galley to sit in, at least,
on Christmas dinner. They were playing carols on the tape deck, and candle flames were flickering
in the foil bands around the crackers. It felt as if someone had cranked up the heating. When they
pulled the crackers, however, they did so unilaterally, I mean they each gripped their own cracker
with both hands and pulled it. Was this another quaint American custom? They obviously didn't
know what a cracker was. (Where the crackers appeared from, I never discovered.)
'Who's that?' I asked Nann as we put on our paper crowns. A tall woman with a weathered face
was sitting at the end of the table, engrossed in conversation. There hadn't been any planes. Where
had she come from?
'Didn't you hear?' replied the oracle. 'Her name's Liv Arnesen. She's Norwegian. Skied alone
from Hercules Inlet, pulling all her stuff on a sledge. Took her fifty days.'
'That's amazing,' I said. 'It's the
second
expedition that's arrived during the short time I've been
here!'
'Not a coincidence,' Nann replied, still grappling with the contents of her cracker. 'There's only
a small weather window in which you can trek on the plateau. Given the distances involved, that
means if more than one person sets out in one season, they're almost bound to reach the Pole
around the same time.'
'That's why at home we get a flurry of Beard stories in the press at Christmas,' I said.
1
'You got it,' said Nann. 'Hey, the joke in this cracker isn't funny.'
'They're not supposed to be funny. That's the point of crackers - unfunny jokes.'
