The Navigator of New York (33 page)

He looked again at the curtain-covered porthole, then turned over on his side, facing the wall, staring at it, I was certain. For a long time I watched him as he lay there motionless.

One night, I was awakened in my bunk on the
Erik
by the sound of sled dogs barking on the hill. I had been listening to them for some time before I realized that they were barking in response to the voice of a man far below them on the beach. I couldn’t make out what the man was shouting or where he was in relation to Peary’s tent. The words, though unintelligible, had the cadence of English. The man was shouting, but not angrily, his tone that of a man making customary small talk with a distant neighbour. I would not have been surprised to hear it answered by a like-sounding voice from farther down the beach, but the only answer was an echo that rolled round and round like a marble in the bowl of the harbour. Was it Peary, amusing himself with echoes, perhaps even mistaking the echoes for replies? Peary having a reflective conversation with himself? I thought of going up on deck, but I knew there was no moon. On moonless nights in Etah, nothing was visible except the stars, a host of lights that illuminated nothing.

T
HE DAY AFTER
I
HEARD THE VOICE, THE SEVENTEENTH DAY OF
our anchorage at Etah, Dr. Cook and I were talking on the deck of the
Erik
when we saw several Eskimo boys running uphill towards the tupiks, shouting, “Pearyaksoah! Pearyaksoah!” We looked down the beach at Peary’s tent.

Henson was standing just outside the doorway, clearly waiting for someone to emerge. I wondered if Mrs. Peary might be in there, or if she was in her quarters on the
Windward
. Henson peered inside, then stood erect again. I was now sure from Henson’s posture and air of anxiousness that it was Peary he was waiting for. The Eskimos came running from their tupiks and gathered on the hill to watch. Crew members from both the
Erik
and the
Windward
came up on deck or stopped working to stare at Peary’s tent. Those who were on the beach did likewise.

I looked back at Henson just in time to see Peary stagger regally into the light, his legs wobbling but his upper body ramrod straight, his hands behind his back as if he had emerged from his tent for a customary stroll about the beach.

At first, there were shouts of greeting and celebration among the Eskimos, but they did not, as I half expected they would, run down the hill to greet him. The shouting stopped abruptly. The initial euphoria having subsided, they had looked more closely and were dismayed by what they saw. I wondered what he had looked like when they saw him last. Some of them, as if to spare him the indignity of being seen in such a state, went back to their tents.

Peary looked towards the harbour, stood for some time staring at the ships, one of which had not been there when he last looked out.

He was, it seemed, trying to project the image of a frail but past-the-worst-of-it, improving convalescent. He was wearing winter moccasins that came up past his knees. Thicker-soled than summer ones, they enabled him to stand on the rocks despite his injured feet.

With his hands still behind his back, so that his arms looked like a pair of folded wings, he began to make his way over the beach rocks, as much through them as over them, shuffling his feet, scuffing as though, shod in slippers, he was crossing a newly waxed floor. He moved his legs, which were bent at the knees, faster than normal to keep himself from falling.

I felt certain that he would pitch forward onto the rocks before he could reach the rowboat in which two crew members were waiting. Dr. Cook had to have thought the same thing, for he shouted to the men of the
Erik
to lower the rowboat so that he could go ashore. Henson, who must have heard him, put up his hand, and Peary shouted, “STOP,” the second word I had ever heard him speak.

“All right. For the moment, we will wait,” Dr. Cook said.

Peary towered by at least a foot over Henson, who walked beside him, discreetly solicitous, glancing sideways at him now and then, ready to support him should he begin to fall. He had clearly been instructed not to touch him unless absolutely necessary.

Peary wore a black peaked hat, a black double-breasted watchcoat and thick black woollen trousers.

It seemed that the only sound in all the world was the distant clattering of those rocks beneath his moccasins. Stretching behind him almost to his tent were the jagged pair of furrows he had ploughed with his feet. Then I heard another shout and, looking towards the other end of the beach, saw Mrs. Peary and Marie, Mrs. Peary walking as quickly as she could without dragging the little girl behind her. They were much farther from the rowboat than Peary. It was as though a race was taking place, with Mrs. Peary trying to make it to the boat before her husband did. She was urging Marie to walk faster,
now and then looking impatiently behind her, clearly hoping to intercept her husband before he reached the boat, as if she somehow knew what his intentions were and meant to keep him from announcing them to Dr. Cook.

From the quarterdeck, we watched in silence this convergence of the Pearys—watched Peary, whom Jo and Marie hadn’t seen on his feet in months, lurching down the beach like some black, weird-gaited bird with Henson at his side.

What
does
he want? I wondered.

Dr. Cook placed his hand very lightly on my shoulder and left it there, all the while looking at Peary, who, it was now apparent, would reach the rowboat long before his wife and daughter did. Dr. Cook’s hand tightened on my shoulder the closer to the boat Peary drew, as though he thought I needed reassurance. The crew members, and the passengers who had come up from below, were now gathered in twos and threes behind us, whispering among themselves.

As Peary and Henson reached the boat, Henson and one of the crewmen helped Peary climb aboard. The crewmen pushed the boat into deeper water and began to row at a furious pace, doubtless ordered to do so by Peary, whose back was to the shore. He did not so much as glance over his shoulder to acknowledge his wife when she shouted something to him that I could not make out. Mrs. Peary and Marie stopped walking and for a few seconds watched the receding rowboat, until Mrs. Peary called out to Dr. Cook to send a boat for them. Dr. Cook complied, so that even as Peary’s boat was drawing closer to the ships, another was setting out from them for shore.

Peary, sitting, held himself as rigidly, as upright, as he had while he was walking down the beach, head motionless, hands on his thighs.

I could see his face clearly now. It was a strange cherry brown colour, the combined effect, I guessed, of the elements and the deficiencies of diet. He must have shaved or had Henson shave him. He had a neatly trimmed Vandyke beard and a florid moustache, both bright red and all the more conspicuous because of the unvaried colour of his clothes.

His long frame served only to exaggerate his emaciation, as did the layers of clothes that he was wearing to disguise it. Even with others underneath, his outer clothes were far too big for him. The shoulder seams of his overcoat were just above his elbows. The wind gusted for a moment and his trousers became a pair of flags, so that I could see the stick-like outlines of his legs. I mentally compared the man advancing towards me with the one I had so often seen in photographs. His normal weight, of which I guessed he had lost more than one-third, was two hundred pounds. Newly coiffed, neatly attired—albeit in clothes that were all but rags—a physical ruin, he might have been the commander of some long-besieged army who had come out to offer to the enemy a ceremonial surrender. I would not have been surprised, once he came on board, if he had taken from Henson and presented to Dr. Cook some symbol of surrender like a sabre or a folded flag.

And perhaps that is it, I thought. He has come out to tell Dr. Cook that he has changed his mind. This is the formal end of Peary’s final expedition. He wants to make the announcement standing up, looking down at Dr. Cook, not lying on his back half delirious in a tent he hasn’t left in months. He means to put as splendid a face as he can on this defeat. And he
had
looked splendid, a towering, tottering wreck of a man, moving with a lurching grace along the beach, and he looked splendid now as he sat there in the boat, the epitome of military impassivity and composure. The boat that had been sent from the
Erik
for his wife and child passed within ten feet of his, but he gave no sign of having noticed it.

Dr. Cook’s hand tightened yet again on my shoulder. He seemed to be saying that just as Peary had Henson by his side, he had me.

I lost sight of the rowboat as it drew up on the far side of the
Erik
. I watched two crew members crank the winch, the ropes creaking with the weight. And then the boat came slowly into view—or rather its four occupants did, so it seemed that they were levitating, especially Peary, who, as the boat rose side-on to it, did not so much as glance at the ship but stared straight ahead, sightlessly ahead, it seemed. He
might have been in such a trance he did not know the ship was there.

Henson helped him from the boat and onto the deck of the
Erik
. Peary turned to face us, slowly shifting his body and his head at the same time, as though he could not move his neck. He began to walk towards us, and when he and Dr. Cook were perhaps ten feet apart, Peary extended his hand. Dr. Cook withdrew his from my shoulder, stepped forward quickly as if to spare Peary the effort of walking those last few feet and took his hand.

Peary smiled and, looking about, made an expansive gesture with one arm, but he said nothing. Anyone looking at a photograph of the scene would have assumed that the
Erik
had just arrived, that Peary had rowed out from shore to welcome Dr. Cook to Etah and they were now exchanging such pleasantries as were customary when two gentlemen met on board a ship so far from home.

With Dr. Cook following Peary’s lead, they talked as if, after a long and unavoidable delay that they had tacitly agreed not to mention, they were meeting for the first time.

“Summer in the Arctic,” Peary said. “We have not been here together, Dr. Cook, since 1892.” His voice, though powerful, quavered.

“I have not been here at all since then,” said Dr. Cook.

“I could not stand to be away from it for so long,” said Peary.

Dr. Cook watched Peary closely. Peary still stood fully erect, head motionless, hands behind his back—the very model of composure, it seemed, until I saw that his eyes were darting about like those of a blind person, as if he were attending to a host of inner voices. The pain of standing on feet from which all but two toes had been removed, on stubs that he had never rested long enough for them to heal showed in his face, even in his glazed-over, darting eyes. But he did not wince or move his weight from foot to foot.

“Have you changed your mind, sir? Will you be with us when we leave for home?” said Dr. Cook.

“I am afraid not,” said Peary, flashing a smile that pulled the skin on his face so tight it shone like it was waxed. “Of course you will see to it that Jo and Marie are returned home safely.” At the mention of
their names, I looked towards shore and saw that their boat had nearly reached them.

Dr. Cook stepped forward and, looking up at Peary, spoke in a voice much lower and more tender than before. “Sir, I fear that unless you leave with us, they will suffer the permanent loss of a husband and a father.”

“We will make one more dash for it,” said Peary. “If we do not succeed this time … well, there will be other times.”

Dr. Cook looked appealingly at Henson, who neither spoke nor looked away, though there was no defiance in his eyes. I heard the boat bearing Mrs. Peary and Marie being pulled into the water.

“I thought I had your loyalty, Dr. Dedrick. I foresaw you being my medical man on all my expeditions. Associates for life. I can’t think why such a small thing would have meant so much to you.”

“Lieutenant Peary, I am not Dr. Dedrick.”

“Indeed you are not,” Peary said, as if he had not said “Dedrick,” as if he had not for a second mistaken one doctor for the other. “Compared with Dedrick, you are a saint, Dr. Cook. The man is such a cur.”

“I must be absolutely frank with you, Lieutenant Peary,” said Dr. Cook, his voice almost a whisper. “It is not the risk of death but the certainty of it that I am warning you against. Sir, you suffer from an illness for which you are not to blame, an illness that is preventing you from thinking clearly. No one is conspiring against you. No one wishes you any harm. We are here to help you. I know it is hard to let someone else be the judge of what is best for you, hard to know when you need to entrust yourself to someone else. But I ask you to try to honestly assess your present state, and having done so, to trust me, to trust your wife and all the men who have sacrificed so much for you on both these expeditions. Will you let us take you home?”

As Dr. Cook spoke, Peary smiled, as if to say that mere words could not deceive him. He also smiled when
he
spoke, as if he believed that the real meaning of
his
words was lost on Dr. Cook.

Dr. Cook and Peary continued in this fashion for some time, Dr. Cook speaking gently, Peary smiling.

Dr. Cook stopped speaking when he heard Mrs. Peary’s boat
being winched up on the far side of the
Windward. Peary
went on smiling, his head cocked, eyes darting about as if the inner voices had begun again.

Mrs. Peary and Marie stepped onto the deck of the
Windward
. Marie, after a brief glance at her father, went straight below deck. Mrs. Peary crossed over from the
Windward
to the
Erik
, ignoring the rope rails of the gangplank. Dr. Cook looked at her entreatingly, then glanced sideways at Peary. “Mrs. Peary—” he began.

“Bert knows how I feel,” she said softly. But then she stepped forward and, standing on tiptoe, as though to kiss her husband’s cheek, whispered something in his ear.