Fault Lines. Nicolas Billon
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at some point, when I was a little older maybe, I’d realize that most questions have a single answer that must not only satisfy me but fill me with solace. The first thing I said was, ‘What’s solace?’ Comfort and peace. The next thing I said was, ‘What’s the answer?’ But she wouldn’t tell me. ‘You’ll discover it on your own,’ she said. ‘It’s a three-letter word.’
‘And it’s not “Dad.”’
Unfortunately for my mother, ‘God’ wasn’t the answer I came up with.
Raises his glass and shakes it.
Ice.
Jonathan smiles.
I can explain to you the reasons why ice is a fascinating material, objectively speaking, I mean, many of its properties are unique and quite astounding, but that won’t tell you what it does to me, what it makes me feel …
Jonathan rubs his forehead.
All right. Like the time the twins asked me to describe what a mango tastes like. (They’re allergic.) And the simplicity of the question belies the conundrum that it actually is, because my only point of reference is a mango. So I can only explain it tautologically: a mango tastes like a mango.
Jonathan shrugs.
Tanya and Thomas weren’t impressed either.
Anyway, that’s how it is with ice. It’s difficult to explain it if you’ve never … been there. On a glacier.
A couple of years ago, I read this book – uh, shit, I forget the title, I didn’t like the rest that much … Anyway, the opening line was about this guy who was about to be executed and the memory, the thing he remembers right before he dies, is the first time his father took him to see ice. And I couldn’t get that image out of my mind. Because the earliest memory, well, the earliest complete memory of my father is also ice.
Indicates his glass.
My father’s three-letter solace was rye.
After dinner, he’d move to the sofa in the TV room and watch the Habs or whatever else was on. I’d go to him, eager, a little spaniel, and I’d wait. He’d pretend not to see me – it was a game, you understand – and eventually he’d look in my direction and, feigning surprise, he’d say, ‘Why don’t you fix your dad a drink?’ I’d run into the kitchen and I had to use a stool to reach the freezer, standing on my tippy toes, and I’d take three ice cubes and put them in a glass – just like this one, and bring it to my dad. He had the bottle ready, and he let me pour but always kept his hands on mine, to make sure I didn’t spill any. And I can vividly remember the sound as the alcohol hit the ice cubes.
He called them Johnny Titanics, a reference to both the drinker – John – and its fixer …
Points to himself.
Jonathan.
I’d hand him the drink, he’d tousle my hair, or pat my cheek, and on a few rare occasions, he’d kiss me on the forehead. And then he’d say, ‘Down the hatch!’ and a few years later, the Johnny Titanics caught up with him and sunk his liver.
Looks at his drink.
He would crunch the ice cubes. One by one.
So, today, whenever I open the freezer … That sound? The whoosh of the door opening, the white mist, the smell … I think of my father. Oh, and when I sneeze. We sneeze in exactly the same way.
Takes a sip from his glass. A memory resurfaces.
Jonathan chuckles.
I once explained to the twins what I did in the field, and I was telling them about boring through ice when Thomas stopped me and asked, ‘What’s boring?’ I explained to him that as a verb it meant drilling a hole through something. And he said … Actually, maybe it was Tanya who said this, I can’t remember, one of them said, ‘Is boring boring?’
Jonathan laughs.
I thought it was pretty clever for a twelve-year-old.
Anyway. Okay. So where was I?
Right, so I decided to spend the night on my island, the island I’d just discovered … And I was boiling water to make tea, thinking about what the island meant, could mean, to our family. Here, at last, was something real, something concrete about what it is I do. That Judith would understand, maybe. Something that wasn’t mired in theories and ideas.
And I thought about the twins, well, about Thomas, about how I wished he were alive to see all this … I think he would have appreciated the … the Christopher-Columbus-ness of it all, you know?
Jonathan smiles.
So I was thinking of Thomas …
And that’s when I heard it – a sudden, wet exhalation. I looked up and a narwhal had breached not ten metres from the shore, its tusk gleaming in the sun. I’d never seen one before.
They’re called the ‘unicorn of the seas,’ but the etymology of their name is fascinating. ‘Narwhal,’ it’s old Norse and it means ‘corpse whale,’ because it looks ashen, like a … well, like a corpse.
Look, I know it was a coincidence that I was thinking of Thomas when it breached. Of course. But I couldn’t help it: I felt it was a sign. It was … There was … something profound about it. I mean, I felt connected to this place, to the whole universe in a way I’d never experienced before. And I’m not talking about God. At least, not in a religious sense, this isn’t about a conversion … Let me rephrase. On that island, I found the idea of God, an understanding of what God could potentially be. That may seem strange, not only because I’m a scientist and an atheist, but also because if you wanted to argue for a country that God left behind, I think Greenland would be at the top of that list.
So, when I woke up the next morning, I found myself with a swollen foot; it was frostbitten, and I was extremely lucky that I didn’t lose the whole thing.
Takes a sip from his glass.
Since word’s gotten out about the island, I’ve been getting phone calls from journalists – lots and lots of journalists – who want to hear about the newly discovered Thomas Morrissey Island, baptized after my nephew.
The first few interviews were … difficult.
I would start with, ‘I’m a glaciologist.’ And they would ask,
‘What’s that?’
So I’d explain: ‘Well, uh, it’s complicated in the sense that it’s an interdisciplinary branch of science that pulls together aspects of geology, geophysics, climatology, geography, et cetera, to examine the natural phenomena of ice in general and glaciers in particular and … ’
Are you bored yet?
Jonathan smiles.
Judith once said to me, ‘The only thing you’re good at communicating is your passion for things no one else understands.’
Jonathan shrugs.
The next question, invariably: ‘Oh. And how did you get into that line of work?’
‘Ah!’ I would answer, ‘Well, that’s an interesting story, because I initially wanted to be a physicist, you see, but I discovered that glaciers provide a kind of unified object to explain – in a simple way – many of the complex properties of physics … ’
By this time, most interviewers are ready to hang up the phone. I could tell, mostly, from their breathing and the way they’d ask questions with a kind of fatalism, that they weren’t going to like the answer. They knew what I discovered was important, but they didn’t understand why.
This one guy, though, from the New