The Ice Shelf: An Eco-Comedy Read online

  We seethe down Molesworth Street like a silked Chinese dragon, the artists with whom I will go to Antarctica and me, plus my fridge. Although it’s unseasonably gusty—our clothes are all abloom—the evening has a dirty beauty, a storminess seasoned with cold dots of rain. It’s around seven thirty, still broad daylight. The air on Molesworth Street is hung with a green gauziness like the set for a production of Swan Lake, and it seems we are lost, the artists with whom I will go to Antarctica and I, in an endless moment and we go silent, not even a stray comment about my fridge as we ripple down the hill. Although the green air, the green street, the silence, are breathtaking, I’m scared, freaked like I was one time smoking strong hashish, when I’d thought I was receding from the world, never to return. That’s what I’m thinking now, that we all might (or I might) never come back from this Limbo but will walk forever down Molesworth Street caught in green. Nek thing, it’s over, the light has burst through its green phase to something with half-blue in it, and the chatter has started up again, the clever banter, and we are saved, the group of artists with whom I will go to Antarctica, and me, we are saved.

  This may sound a little far-fetched, but I think it’s appropriate here, having just described the dispersing of the literati on the evening of the state-funded awards, to thank New Zealand—yes, the whole lot of it. I wouldn’t be the person I am today, the writer I am today, if I hadn’t grown up in this amazing little country. For a start, we’re clean and green. In New Zealand you can drive out into the countryside and there is only the odd hydro-electric dam to mar the view of rivers, lakes and mountains. Sheep and cows graze in the fields. Clouds scud merrily by. The sun shines brightly down, and if it happens to be through a hole in the ozone layer, that’s not our fault; it’s the fault of the rest of the world where there are too many people. We’re fiercely proud of our little country, our do-it-yourself spirit, our social services, our human rights. You might’ve read news reports of people sleeping in cars, the pretty appalling infanticide stats. But we’re a great little country, and our size is part of it, making us fiercely independent. We punch above our weight in our films, our wine, our dairy products. It’s a good thing New Zealand isn’t the size of, say, America, because if New Zealand had 300 million people, we’d have three billion sheep and 400 million cows. With that number of sheep and cows farting, the methane in the atmosphere might have already reached the level they say will make the stratosphere of the entire planet explode. If that happened, I wouldn’t have written The Ice Shelf. I wouldn’t be writing my thank yous to people who’ve helped me along the way. You wouldn’t be doing whatever it is you’re doing. Even people out there with books of fifty pages or longer would be silenced. No one would be reading books. The few survivors would be thinking about things apart from literature such as scraping up the remains of their friends and families. It’s a good thing that New Zealand is so small. Smallness is its virtue. Thank you, New Zealand, for being so small.

  On that note, I have a very profound thank you to make, and that is to the earth, which may sound far-fetched too, but bear with me.

  Those first months in the apartment, it seemed that Miles and I had an incredible power. Something had been unleashed—a kind of chemistry, a cellular smash-up, like we’d both been put into the Large Hadron Collider, but also metaphysical—I can’t even describe it. I’m talking about sex and how it transformed everything phenomenally, indelibly. Sometimes it was as if we were one person joined into a two-headed beast, as if we were a new, monstrous species. It was both thrilling and terrifying. I suppose it was inevitable then that we started to bicker a bit, as I mentioned earlier, you might even call it fight. Yes, there were some fights. I found I was having to fall back on my calming method of count-to-twenty then pour a vodka and orange quite a bit, in fact, all through the day. Miles seemed to be using the calming method too. In fact, I was worried about Miles’s alcohol consumption; whereas I could’ve stopped drinking at any time if I’d wanted to (but I didn’t want to, and why should I?), I don’t think he could’ve at that point in time. Often he’d pass out on the bed at night. I might’ve too, on one or two occasions.

  One morning I found myself throwing up in the toilet, and when I went out to the liquor store to have a conversation about À Bout de Souffle, I noticed my breasts were aching in the cold wind. Although I didn’t think this could possibly be necessary, I bought a pregnancy kit and took it back to the apartment. I stood in the courtyard summoning my strength to ascend the Southeast Ridge which somehow, that day, seemed fragile, impermanent, like a pretty, glinting stack of sugar cubes that might crumble in the next shower of rain and topple all over me.

  Next morning, in the white tiled bathroom: the little pink plus-sign told me that a new thing was to be sprung from us. I called out, and there was Miles’s black square head offset by the white rectangular doorway, both of us speechless and just making arghh sounds. It was so complicated, you couldn’t fathom it. Meaning shuttled back and forth between a miracle and the most real, earthly thing you’d ever come across. The physical (action, chemistry) had made this mystical thing, this fate. Out of ferociousness, a delicate warm thing that hadn’t been there before.

  Miles and I were in agreement about getting rid of it.

  The bar is crowded with civil servants sculling back their after-work suds and we’re lucky to spy a table. As the artists with whom I will go to Antarctica make a beeline for it, I park my fridge in the corner and quickly join them under a huge papier-mâché caricature of a Member of Parliament, one of many that adorn the walls. You can’t tell which Member is which because they’re cartoonish, mostly lips. Incidentally, in this context I don’t think of the word ‘member’ in the same way as I think of Full Member of Feather.

  A narrow-hipped waiter with plus-sized ear gauges bounds over to our table and I order a vodka and orange, hoping there’ll be a tab operating courtesy of someone, a filthy rich visual artist for instance, you never know. Turns out the waiter hasn’t come to take our orders but to point at my fridge and to get, to be honest, ridiculously paranoid about it. He asks beadily around the table, ‘Whose is it?’ And the group of artists with whom I will go to Antarctica point to me in a not entirely friendly way, just saying. The waiter asks me what my fridge is. As I’ve already been through this with Tom Atutola et al. just a few minutes before, I’m all prepared with an answer. It’s a *fridge*, I tell him. He says he can see that, and I ask him why he asked then, but he just says I can’t have it in here. I ask why not and he says it’s the bar policy. I ask how many people bring fridges into the bar; in other words, what kind of precedent there is for patrons bringing fridges in that need to be banned? The waiter pretends he doesn’t hear my reasoning and tells me if I don’t move my fridge, I’ll have to leave. The manager is mentioned once or twice. ‘Fine,’ I say, ‘we’ll leave.’ He says my leaving can’t come too soon. I wait for the waiter to go away, but he doesn’t. I scan the group of artists with whom I will go to Antarctica, as if to say, ‘Let’s get out of here, let’s go to a bar with a less fascist policy on fridges.’ As I gather my things, I notice Tom Atutola taking a breath and there is a strange moment of vacuum.

  It’s in this vacuum, a black hole where matter does not exist, that a certain ennui sets in. Because of my prior knowledge, my reading of novels and watching of films and not least my cohabitation with Miles for two years and 364 days, I have no trouble decoding the passive shoulder-hunching of the artists. Read: ‘We couldn’t give a flying fuck about your fridge.’ But hey, what do I care? I’m not going to Antarctica to win friends and influence people, I’m going to find concrete significant detail for The Ice Shelf. I ask the group of artists to order me a vodka and orange while I’m sorting out about my fridge, and I leave them to their ontological New Zealand unease.

  By moving my fridge out onto the street, I’m not giving up; I’m not complying with the management of the Backbencher. I am making a choice so that events can progress smoothly. There is a big
difference between acting under pressure and making a strategic decision. As a writer, one makes decisions like this all day long; I’m well used to making policy decisions. So when I cock the fridge to 35 degrees and wheel it out the door of the Backbencher, I am not in the least defeated by the right-wing antics of the waiter, whom I can’t blame personally as he is simply the stooge of management. Negotiating the door is a struggle, especially with the crush of people pouring in and out while looking at me askance, but I don’t give a rat’s arse and eventually, one of them, a young civil servant-type boy in a suit with fashionably short Pee-wee trousers, holds the door open for me. I park my fridge outside and sail on through.

  I ask a party at the table in the window if they would kindly move so that I can keep an eye on my fridge, and I point outside. At first they pretend not to understand—they’re shrieking twenty-year-old women, all off their faces. After a bit of shilly-shallying, they get the idea and totter off on their four-inch heels. I race over to our original table and tell the artists with whom I will go to Antarctica that we have a new pozzy in the window. Clement de Saint-Antoine-Smith asks who would steal a fridge. Then he asks it again, more emphatically: who the *fuck* would steal a fridge? I reply that I might, given the opportunity. They shamble to their feet, scraping chairs, sighing, gathering coats and bags and making all manner of commotion. Honestly, you’d think that they’d taken out a twenty-year lease on that particular table at the Backbencher. After what seems like an eternity, we move together like a massive crab to the table in the window.

  But you know what? I am grateful for all the shoulder-hunching, the sighing and screeching, the wittering and whining, because when all is said and done, belonging to a community of artists is curtains for art. Read some Bourdieu and you’ll see how being accepted into a comfy friendly lovely band of artists is so *so* bad for art that if we were all members (and I mean members in the rudest possible sense) of cosy little clubs of artists in which everyone pats all the other *members* on the back, there would be no art.

  Finally we’re settled with our drinks and a Mediterranean platter at the new table, from which I have a spectacular view of my fridge outside. We all start talking about our work, of course, and I listen while getting down on the bread and hummus. To be honest, I’d never heard of Beatrice Grant or Clement de Saint-Antoine-Smith until I met them at Antarctica prep a month earlier. I share a piece of friendly advice with Tom Atutola, whom I *had* heard of: tone down the glitter. People are just the teensiest bit sick of glitter, and he has so much else going for him. Tom gets the wrong end of the stick and I sense a garage door coming down between us, but I am not going to be affected by that. I continue chatting amiably with Beatrice Grant and Clement de Saint-Antoine-Smith, whom as I’ve mentioned I’d never heard of until recently, but I don’t mind that they are so unsuccessful.

  The subject of Art School comes up. The artists with whom I will go to Antarctica have all been to various prestigious establishments and, in between olives, they humblebrag like crazy about it. I certainly don’t judge them for saying things like, ‘I was hopeless at music school; it was my amazing fellow students who got me through.’ The others chime in with, ‘Oh Clement, you were the top student!’ And, ‘My show at Elam wasn’t as good as I’d hoped, but I was blessed with the most stupendous luck.’ ‘Don’t be silly, Tom, you were a star.’ I’m not the least bit sickened by this show of false modesty, in fact, I find their fake self-effacement endearing. As our fourth round of drinks arrives and some bowls of kūmara chips because the hummus isn’t filling the gap, the conversation sets me thinking about my own degree—my BA, which I’m taking a temporary break from—and I go into a bit of reverie.

  Of course, I have massive thank yous to make vis-à-vis my studies. But before I tell that story, if you’ll bear with me, I just want to quickly finish my enormous thank yous to Miles. After the discovery of the amazing situation, but before we’d had time to do the ethical thing (and who in their right mind would want to bring a poor little baby into the world when it’s in such a sorry state), there was a development.

  With the high-concept news, it wasn’t surprising that Miles and I were fairly wound up the next night. We had a few drinks, which I suppose didn’t help, and we ended up having a bit of an argument about whose fault this was and a few other things were, like the dishes and money and I think the subject of Dorothy might even have got mixed up in there. Yes, a bit crazy. Quite late, I decided to go and stay with Mandy for the night, and Miles agreed. (‘Be my guest,’ was what he actually said, ‘and, you know what, um, probably don’t come back,’ but it was just in the heat of the moment.) I set off, it has to be said, at breakneck speed in the moonlight, and next thing I know, there I was toppling, toppling, down two flights of the South East Ridge.

  There was a lot of pouring and plummeting and a lot of red, which continued in the ambulance and thence at the hospital where they sucked out everything that hadn’t left of its own accord. It’s strange; I can’t remember the pain (they gave me drugs for it) in the same way that you can’t remember summer when it’s winter, and vice versa. You can’t imagine what the world would be like if it was intensely hot all the time and there was no escape; you can’t imagine permanent snow and ice.

  Miles kindly came to pick me up from the hospital next morning. I travelled, a little wan, in the passenger seat, and I could tell from Miles’s particular silence (different from his normal silence) that something was up. We pulled up in the courtyard of the apartment building and on getting out of the car and slamming the door and leaving me to trail after him, Miles said over his shoulder, ‘You know what I think?’

  I was gagging to know.

  ‘I think you probably killed that baby.’

  Following Miles’s rectangular frame up the Southeast Ridge, I was, I have to say, quite shocked at this accusation. On the balcony I said, ‘Probably?’

  Miles turned in the doorway. ‘Definitely,’ he said. And he went inside and began to cook a special chicken dish for dinner.

  After the chicken dinner, which I couldn’t eat because I seemed to have a trapdoor in my throat, he announced that he was going down to Courtenay Place to meet Dorothy, and on the way out the door he said, without any qualifications, ‘You’re a murderer.’

  At this moment I can’t remember what I was going to thank Miles for when I began writing this part of the Acknowledgments, but I’m sure it will come to me, and when it does, I will thank him.

  In the meantime, I will continue with my enormous thank you to a certain professor of English, a personage who had so much influence on my writing and whom I have already mentioned in relation to ENG 209: Theory of Creative Writing, without doubt the highlight of my BA so far. A part theory, part literature, part creative writing course, it was taught by none other than Big Julie the Pig—that was the affectionate moniker we gave Professor Julian Major. I’ve actually always had a soft spot for pigs, especially cute pink baby ones with curly tails and darling squeaks. This particular pig was a little bulkier, a little older, a little hairier and wrinklier, but still engaging, still adorable as he snuffled and snouted at the trough of male literature. Of course, Big Julie isn’t really a pig, no more than certain of his favoured writers are pigswill. And by the way, I bear absolutely no grudge for being waitlisted for the course, as alluded to earlier. You hear these stories—J.K. Rowling rejected by eight publishers, the Beatles by Decca, John Kennedy Toole given the cold shoulder all his short life and winning the Pulitzer Prize posthumously. The list goes on. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a little person in the English Department still insisting that *Janice Redmond didn’t present a good sample*. The sample I presented grew into the novel you are about to read, so I *think* I can rest my case in that regard. However, at about a minute to midnight on the 28th of February 2012, the day before the first day of term, I was accepted into the course. I never forgot that I hadn’t made the first dewy cut, but thanks a bunch to all concerned. That knowledge o
nly served to keep me on my creative toes throughout the semester.

  There was an incident—really it was nothing, and the only reason I mention it is that I’m truly grateful to the Pig for his fleshed-out example of anthropomorphism. I learned a lot about pigs that year; I could write a novella about them, and one day I will. On the first day of class, I arrived on the Terrace, slightly breathless after trekking up Church Street Steps, but excited at the prospect of another class. The wind was skittish, the sunlight sharp. When autumn hits Wellington, it brings an electric quality to the air. The incident I am about to relate involves an essay by Ezra Pound. The essay was quite a good rave about *making it new*. I had no problem with that, or with the fat reading packet dispensed by the Pig. I sat on my cushion. The class, I should add here, was populated by students who were all a little younger than me and, I was to find out, a little richer and more self-satisfied, mostly from Noa Valley, but a nicer bunch of people you’d never meet. The afternoon progressed drowsily. A fly buzzed in a lazy figure-eight, and the Pig, draped on the floor like one of the scholars in Déjeuner sur l’herbe, his grey beard wobbling and gold-rimmed glasses slipping down his nose, read aloud from the canon. The Pig was always jolly and inclusive, especially going out of his way to be pleasant (and I *don’t* mean condescending here) to the women and the person of colour in the class. He was a blast, often sharing his political views, which made us feel special to be so trusted not to report him to the university complaints authority. Besides, by the time they’d investigated, he’d be dead. There’s a wonderful freedom comes with old age. If the world were going to end soon, for instance, old people wouldn’t need to give a flying fuck.

  But I digress. On this day, Big Julie the Pig read aloud sonorously from the coursebook. He had an amazing theatrical voice. For some reason I found his charisma a little bit threatening, and during the semester I would get into the habit, before I set off for class each Wednesday, of topping up a bottle of orange juice with the wee-est slug of vodka, just to help me relax through the session—something I’d normally never do, I hasten to add. As I listened to the Pig’s fruity tones on the excellent notion of newness according to the antisemite, I browsed the coursebook and it occurred to me that this class did not encounter, nor did it seem it were ever going to, a single piece of writing by a woman, or person of colour for that matter, apart from the high colour that goes with a heart condition. So when the Pig’s reading was finished and he was pacing the perimeter of the room while the class had silent pre-discussion time, scribbling ideas in our notebooks and glancing up to see how much everyone else was writing, I half put up my hand (raising my hand felt odd; this wasn’t primary school, but neither were we quite grown-up here) and asked, ‘Um, are we going to read anything by a woman in this course?’