Fault Lines. Nicolas Billon
Don’t talk to me about glaciology in terms of geophysics and geology; I don’t know what that means. Tell me you’re the Ice Whisperer. And I don’t care about carbon dioxide levels in the ice. I want you to tell me that ice is saying to us, to humanity, that we’re royally fucked. That’s a story, that’s a story I can sell. I need the, the … ’
‘Mythology.’
‘Yes! You give me that, and your message’ll get across to people.’
I confess, my first thought was, ‘Americans!’ But he was right. Mythology was the thing that, until then, I’d not understood. So my next interview …
‘I’m a glaciologist.’
‘Can you explain to our readers what that is, Dr. Fahey?’
‘Certainly. In the same way that each of us is the product of our history – where we’ve come from, our life experience, our social context, et cetera – ice is the product of its history. It has a story to tell, and that’s my job. To figure out what ice can tell us about its past, a hundred or even a thousand years ago. Where did it come from, why is it here, how long has it been here, what’s happening to it now? Ice, like us, has its own mythology, and we can learn a lot about our past from it.’
‘What is the ice telling us, Dr. Fahey?’
‘That we’re in trouble.’
Now that’s glaciology done sexy.
Jonathan smiles, then sniffs the air.
Do you smell that?
He realizes what it is.
The crazy thing about Greenland is that in summer, it’s light twenty-four hours a day. Sleep is hard, sometimes, and one thing that started happening was that I had waking dreams … There’s one, one in particular … It was more like a fantasy, I suppose … I thought I’d meet a woman – Danish, perhaps, tall, not necessarily beautiful but pretty, buxom, bookish. She, too, would be a stranger to Greenland, a visitor. Perhaps she’s an ethnographer, or a linguist studying Greenlandic. She’d be married, or maybe have a serious boyfriend back in Copenhagen. But she’d fall in love with the landscape, with the ice, and wouldn’t want to go home. We’d talk about it – we’d commiserate – until finally we both had the courage to stay, forget our creature comforts back home and live there, on my island, and spend the evenings reading together and have children who’d sleep in our bed, raise them as Greenlanders … She and I would grow old together, until one evening I’d return home and find her dead – peacefully, of old age – and I’d take her outside, but not to bury her, no, I’d set her there to freeze so that I could bring her back in every evening, to share a meal and read to her and pray …
Registers his word choice.
… no, wish that it would be my turn soon. And when I’d feel Death nearby, I’d take my lover to the edge of the island and bind her to me – like this, like a backpack, like an air tank, and throw myself into the Arctic Ocean.
Jonathan finishes his drink. He crunches an ice cube.
I remember now. The title of that book. It was One Hundred Years of Solitude.
JUDITH
Judith takes a long drag on her cigarette. She savours the nicotine, then blows out the smoke.
She takes in the audience.
Fuck the polar bears.
Fuck global warming, fuck the Kyoto Protocol, fuck seals and whales and penguins, okay? Fuck greenhouse gases and fuck Greenland, for that matter, and fuck you if you’re sitting there thinking, ‘Ever heard of cancer, bitch?’
Takes a drag from her cigarette.
I don’t really mean any of that. Well, except for the part about the smoking. Because if you think I don’t see the contempt in your eyes, well, actually, it glows in the fucking dark.
Hey. Hey. I’m gonna let you in on a little secret.
We know it’s bad for us.
Is that what drives you crazy? That we smoke even though we know it’s killing us? Yeah, well, we’ve all eaten a doughnut and we’ve all had fast food and we’ve all had questionable unprotected sex. So let’s consider before casting the first stone, okay?
Takes a long drag from her cigarette.
To answer your question: yes, I’m in a foul mood.
Stands the cigarette up on its end and presents it to the audience.
This was my wedding gift to Jonathan: that I would stop smoking. His to me was to start drinking.
She shakes her head.
The man wouldn’t touch a drop of alcohol. God knows why. At first I thought, okay, ex-alcoholic … but no. It didn’t bother me, to each his own, you know? But there’s a point when you get tired of having a boyfriend who orders ginger ale every time you’re out. So I made him promise me to start drinking – just a little bit, you know, to loosen up. Alcohol, after all, is the fuel of spontaneous combustion, right?
Takes a long drag from her cigarette.
Boom.
Judith smiles.
On the plus side, having a boyfriend who doesn’t drink means there’s no argument about the designated driver. But. But. There is a significant lack, a significant absence, a significant dearth of something very important: drunk sex. Sure, it can work if only I’m hammered, but let’s say there’s a certain abandon that comes when both partners are drunk.
Because what would happen is, we’d come home, I’d be three sheets, my hands are practically down his pants, I am, as they say, I am throwing myself at him, I am begging him to let me do certain things, I am implying in no uncertain terms that he can have his way with me, and he, he takes me by the wrists and says, ‘You are drunk.’
This is what I get for marrying a scientist. Such keen observations! To point something out that, clearly, must have escaped my notice … It’s a little bit like the non-smokers out there. I mean, thank you.
But I’m not about to be brushed off like that – okay, sure, we can play hard to get, and if I’m not exactly subtle when I’m sober, when I’m liquored up I make Louis C. K. sound like a Sunday sermon. He’s all, ‘Okay, let’s get you to sleep,’ blah di blah blah blah. I say, ‘Fuck! Me!’ because I am not letting him off the hook, I am working my magic …
Wiggles her fingers.
… and finally he relents, ‘Okay, okay!’ and he takes me up to the bedroom …
Judith rolls her eyes.
… and I can’t get my clothes off fast enough, he’s fucking folding his laundry, whatever, we get into bed and he …
She laughs.
He … he goes down on me.
Now normally, I wouldn’t object, but COME THE FUCK ON. I don’t want to be romanced, I don’t want to be wooed, I want to be fucked, okay?
Judith sighs.
I only tell this story to illustrate a point about Jonathan and me. Which I’ve forgotten.
Takes a long drag on her cigarette.
So this is how I punish him. My petty little revenge. He knows what I’m doing. He’s got a bloodhound’s sense of smell.
She takes a last drag on her cigarette then puts it out.