The Navigator of New York (45 page)

No one unfamiliar with his history could have guessed that he was only fifty years old. His skin was like that of a man who, just the night before, had stepped off a ship from Greenland after two years in the Arctic. He was but ten years Dr. Cook’s senior, but he could have passed for his father. His face did not revert to normal between expeditions, like those of other explorers. He had got to the point where the leathering of skin that derives from long exposure to sun, wind and cold was permanent.

There was something grand, almost noble, it seemed to me again, as it had in Etah, in his physical ruination. There was about him the splendour of a monument whose installation no one could remember. I felt more magnanimous towards him, more willing to forgive his many wrongs, than I ever had before. Lear, at the end, was more to be pitied than blamed, and Prospero, through whom Shakespeare bade to the world his own farewell, bowed out with a wistful grace born of old age and experience. Such were the thoughts I was having, thoughts that seemed appropriate to the occasion.

Finally, Peary began to sound as though he was leading up to his great pronouncement. He said that between 1903 and 1905 he had,
for the first two consecutive years since 1891, not been north of the Arctic Circle.

“How I missed the Arctic only those of you who have been there can understand. And yet, I felt stirring within me memories of what my life was like before I set foot in the Arctic, what it was like not only to live normally, but to have normal expectations, to not be hounded forever by the knowledge of a task not yet completed—a task many times undertaken which must be taken up again, which would not let me rest, no matter how I longed to be rid of it, to be free of it forever. Again, my fellow explorers will understand.”

He paused and drew a great breath, as though to stifle the urge to weep.

“Which brings me to the present,” Peary said and paused again.

There was a stir in the banquet hall. Here at last was the great pronouncement.

“Let no one doubt,” Peary said, “that I believe in doing the thing that has been begun, and that it is worth doing before shifting to a new object.”

There was much nodding and some applause. Then people throughout the hall began to stand. Soon everyone was standing in silent tribute and anticipation.

“The true explorer does his work,” Peary said, “not for any hope of rewards or honour. The fact that such names as Abruzzi, Cagni, Nansen, Greely and Peary are indelibly inscribed upon the white disc close to the pole shows that the polar quest is the most manly example of friendly international rivalry that exists. It is a magnificent galaxy of flags that has been planted around the pole, and when eventually some one of them shall reach the pole itself, it will add to its own lustre without in any way detracting from the lustre of the others or leaving any sense of injury or humiliation in its wake.

“But tonight, Mr. President, the Stars and Stripes stand nearest to the mystery, pointing and beckoning. God willing, I hope that your administration may yet see those Stars and Stripes planted at the pole itself.”

I assumed that this was the prelude to his abdication.

“This is a thing which should be done for the honour and the credit of this country.” He paused, looked up from his speech and surveyed the mass of delegates before him from around the world.

“This is the thing which it is intended that
I
should do,” he shouted. “It is the thing that I
must
do. It is the thing that I
will
do.”

There was perfect silence in the hall. I think we believed that we had misheard him, that he would yet say something to correct himself, to sweep aside the misunderstanding he had caused.

But Peary took up the pages of his speech and began to shuffle back across the stage towards his chair, beside which Mrs. Peary was standing.

I looked at Dr. Cook, who was staring at the tablecloth, his mouth slightly open, leaning on the table on the knuckles of his two clenched fists. I looked at Amundsen and saw that his eyes were filling with tears, which he left unchecked when they began to trickle down his face. Cagni was shaking his head in disbelief, looking at Dr. Cook as if he could not understand what was keeping him from falling to the floor. I looked around and saw that many people were looking at Dr. Cook, and at me—some with astonishment, some with undisguised pity, a few smiling.

How could we have so profoundly misperceived everything? Absolutely nothing was what, mere seconds ago, it had seemed to be.

I put my hand on Dr. Cook’s, and he responded by moving his hand and beginning to applaud, loudly, and at long intervals, as if he was the only person of the four hundred gathered to whom it had occurred that Peary’s speech had yet to be acknowledged.

Suddenly, there was an ovation that caused the floor to shake beneath my feet. Cups rattled and spoons jumped as men pounded on the tables with their fists. The word “hurray” or something like it was shouted in many different languages. Old men stamped their feet and applauded with their hands above their heads.

After a few dumbfounded seconds, I managed to join the others in applauding. “Without leaving any sense of injury or humiliation in its wake.” I was stung by the irony of Peary’s words.

I wondered if the great effort I was making to control myself and conceal my disappointment was apparent to those around me. I felt as self-consciously foolish as if my every thought since arriving at the banquet had been heard by the other delegates.

It occurred to me that in his announcement, Peary had slighted, if not Dr. Cook in particular, then that group of explorers who had done what Peary said he did not believe in doing: “shifting to a new object” before finishing “the one that has been begun.” Like Mt. McKinley. Like the South Pole. Peary’s ambition for the pole had been unswerving and remained so. Dr. Cook had been more versatile, more catholic in his pursuits. Now it seemed to me that he was being rewarded for his versatility by being lumped in with the gadflies of exploration.

I wondered what had gone wrong, why Bridgman had spoken to Dr. Cook the way he had, what speech it was that he had shown Dr. Cook. Might the whole thing have been a hoax engineered by Bridgman? To what end?

I knew that the man Dr. Cook had examined three years ago in Greenland would not, even if he regained all the strength it was possible for him to regain, reach the North Pole. How could anyone believe that the man who had hobbled and shuffled from his place at the head table to the podium would one day reach the pole? That the Arctic club members would unknowingly be wasting their money on Peary when they might have got the ultimate return for it from Dr. Cook and me was something I wished I could have stood up and shouted. I wished I could have told them all that Peary was in denial of what to all the explorers of the world was obvious. Yet Dr. Cook and I had been made to look like fools.

While the ovation was still at its height, Dr. Cook stopped applauding and again rested his hands on the table, this time palms down, though his head was unnaturally erect, as if he were fighting the impulse of his body to assume a posture of dejection. He began to applaud again, then stopped, again leaned on his hands, perhaps resisting a wave of dizziness or nausea.

The instant Peary made his announcement, Dr. Cook’s expectations, which everyone in that banquet hall had shared with him, seemed absurdly grandiose. Everyone had looked at him as if
he
had led
them
to believe that he would be taking Peary’s place—as if
he
had been spreading the rumour all week that he had been chosen to replace Peary, something that otherwise would never have occurred to them.

Amundsen was now standing beside Dr. Cook, and the two of them, though not looking at each other, were speaking, Dr. Cook nodding and somehow managing to smile, to convey the impression that he and Amundsen were conferring about Peary’s announcement just like everybody else.

As the ovation at last began to subside, I was able to hear what they were saying.

“I know,” said Dr. Cook, “but the speech I have prepared is entirely inappropriate.”

“Shall I tell them you are ill?” Amundsen said. “Shall I speak in your place?”

“No, no,” Dr. Cook said. “I must speak. I must say something. Otherwise they will see, they will know. Though perhaps they have already seen.”

“You are among friends, Dr. Cook,” Amundsen said fervently.

The delegates sat down. Dr. Bell invited Dr. Cook to give the closing remarks. There was vigorous applause from which a few, including Amundsen and Cagni, tried to work up an ovation, but it petered out. Dr. Cook rose and made his way to the head table and the lectern.

Eyes downcast, he acknowledged the head table, starting with President and Mrs. Roosevelt. He thanked Dr. Bell for his earlier tribute and thanked the National Geographic Society and the organizers of the congress. At last he looked up.

“What an extraordinary evening this has been,” he said. “In this room are gathered or represented all the great explorers of the world. I myself have gone exploring with many of you. May I say what a privilege that has been. I shall not forget it. Nor shall I forget the
camaraderie and fellowship that all of us have shared these past few days. Thank you, all of you. And until we meet again, goodbye.”

This time there was polite, bemused applause that ended quickly when the unseen orchestra struck up the anthem, after which the Roosevelts and the Pearys began to make their way from the head table to the doors, though their path was soon blocked by well-wishers.

When Dr. Cook took me by the arm and led me towards the back of the room, no one seemed to take much notice. I wound my way with him and Amundsen among the tables. Suddenly, our route became a gauntlet. Hands clasped Dr. Cook’s and mine, others thumped our backs. I heard myself addressed over and over but did not reply. It was all well meant, a sympathetic tribute of some sort. But I felt as though the whole assembly was extending its condolences to us. We might have been leaving the company of these people for good. I felt that at the age of twenty-six, I was being consoled for having failed.

By the time I made it to the door, it seemed that my life depended on my getting out into the open air within the minute.

I pulled myself away from Dr. Cook and Amundsen and, wearing only my hat and tails, hurried outside, where it was snowing heavily. I walked along the sidewalk at what, to observers, might have seemed to be a briskly cheerful pace.

O
N THE TRAIN BACK TO
B
ROOKLYN, WE SAT OPPOSITE EACH
other in our berth. Dr. Cook might have been returning from what he knew was
his
last try at the pole, so desolate was his expression. Gone was the kind, indulgent, faintly amused look with which formerly he regarded even a landscape devoid of people.

My mind was reeling. I had for hours been trying to raise his spirits. I would have been happy just to make him angry. But he merely stared out the window, watching as a succession of snow-covered towns went by, looking as if everything we passed was to blame for what had happened. To blame, yet irreproachable, remote, indifferent, oblivious to anything he said or did.

“There is no point denying that what happened changes everything,” said Dr. Cook. “They saw me fall, laid low. They saw me as no man should ever let himself be seen by other men. So vulnerable. So defenceless against scorn and pity. I was completely fooled. I have always, even when all signs pointed to success, prepared myself for failure. ‘There is many a slip / ‘twixt the cup and the lip.’ That has been my motto. Never presume. Never celebrate too openly, lest you seem and feel all the more foolish when your hopes are dashed.

“Yet I left myself open to be jilted in public, so certain did the outcome seem this time. There is something ominous about near triumph, Devlin. It is a rule of the universe that anyone who comes this close and fails will never get a second chance. Everyone in that banquet room sensed it. In the eyes of the money-men, I am tainted with bad luck.

“Even if Peary undertakes but one more expedition and, when he fails, gives up at last, I will not be chosen to succeed him. No one who was there last night will forget the way I looked. That I was in no way to blame for what happened, that I in no way brought it upon myself, will not matter. What will matter is that they saw me brought down from the height to which
they
had raised me.

“Last night I told myself that I could bear it if someone else makes it to the pole before me or you, as long as that someone else is not Peary. Last night, in my room, I said out loud, over and over, ‘Anyone but Peary.’ How absurd it seems. I have been reduced to bargaining with destiny by a man whose efforts are foredoomed to failure. I know he will not reach the pole, yet I cannot help dreading that he will.”

“It is not over for us,” I said. “If it is not yet over for Peary, think how much remains for us to do.”

He shook his head.

“Not everything is lost,” I insisted, fighting back tears, as I had been doing for hours, though I had let them flow freely in my room the night before. When we met in the morning, my swollen eyes made it so plain to Dr. Cook how I had spent the night that for a moment he took me in his arms. “We may have to do things some other way than we had planned,” I said. “That’s all.”

“I am sorry for what has happened to you because of me,” he said.

“Not because of you,” I said. “Because of … I don’t know who to blame.”

“You
should
know,” he said. “Who do you think started that rumour? By whom was I misled?”

“You might not have been misled,” I said. “Some people say that the rumour was well founded, that the speech Bridgman showed you was not a forgery, but that Peary changed his mind at the last second, in part because he was urged to do so by the president.”

“When do they say that Peary changed his mind? Are these the same people who started the rumour in the first place?”

“They say that he changed his mind just minutes before he arrived. That even Jo Peary, as she sat there listening, did not know
what he planned to say. You heard the speech. Right up to the end, it sounded like he was saying goodbye. Perhaps all he did was change the last few words.”