Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: GET COLD FEET (10/12/17)
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TITLE: Perfidy and a Promise | Previous Challenge Entry
By Ann Stocking
10/19/17 -
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Who could blame me, coming from a kingdom of audacious wayfarers and explorers, bequeathing me with salt water in my veins? Yet my mother, she who’d suckled me on daring and determination from her own breast, held me fast, as a barnacle to a stone.
“Roald, my son, I am so pleased you are following your ambition.”
It was her ambition, not mine, that I become a doctor. So I studied medicine. That is to say, I enrolled at the university to placate her, but I loathed the thought of a future lancing boils and peering down festering throats. Of course, there were losses that contributed to her grasping hold on me. Losing her beloved Jens -- my father -- was my loss, too, and my brothers were immersed in their own enterprises.
I was her last-born and last hope.
And I was a deceiver.
She paid for my studies. In return, I promised to remain on shore forever. All the while, as I reviewed the maladies that plague mortals, I was preparing myself for a more rigorous life. I devised and designed, prepared and practiced. I slept with my windows open to the Norwegian wind; I hardened my body and strengthened my stamina by becoming steadfast friends with snow and ice and glacial air.
Like the ebb and flow of the tide, I vacillated between harbouring my secret and confession. I despised myself for accepting her financial support and allowing her to believe I was a diligent student; my studies had become nonexistent, a façade for her sake. I was unworthy, contemptible.
As if to confirm the wisdom of my choice, Mother recounted newspaper reports of shipwrecks, abandoned exploits, disastrous journeys, but these tales and accounts only inspired me. Failures, even the martyrdom, of others were my catalyst. I was enthralled by the sufferings of John Franklin, how he and his companions had eaten their own boots to survive.
“See how ships become locked in ice, like the Jeannette that fascinates you so? And thrown off-course. Fathers and sons lost. Lost and never found.”
I was familiar with such hazards. Had I not cut my teeth on a ship’s wheel?
“At the very least, they lose fingers and toes on reckless gallivants.”
Even the great Nansen fell under her criticism.
“Nansen is a fool.”
Fridtjof Nansen was no fool. He had impressed the Geographical Congress with his plans, his character, for he was wholly practical and wholly passionate.
I was no less fervent than he.
I’d applied to accompany Nansen to the North Pole on the Fram. I was one of thousands, but only twelve worthy disciples would be chosen to follow Nansen to the untravelled and uncharted.
“The isbjørn will devour them,” Mother said, wagging her head.
Isbjørn indeed. I shall eat the great white bear myself, if I am selected.
“My heart swells with pride for you, Roald.”
My heart will shrivel, without a plunging ship beneath my feet and untrodden land rising on the horizon.
“Mother,” I’d attempt, over a dinner of my favourite dishes that she’d prepared for me: pickled herring, multekrem, lefse.
“Yes, my son?” she’d say, adding another spoonful of lingonberry jam to my already heaping plate.
“I ... I want to ... thank you for supper.”
She’d smile, a doting and contented smile. Mine was duplicitous. A mask.
I tried again another day. “Mother? I would like to ...”
“Yes, Roald?”
“Take you to the theatre.”
“Oh, how lovely!”
And so it continued, day after month after year. My confession would be poised on my lips and then I could not. Dear God, I could not. The words would vanish, like ice crystals on a spring day, my resolution winging away like soundless gulls. I could face the most daunting sea, the wildest of beasts, the greatest of obstacles, but in this one thing I was terrified. I could not cause my mother grief.
And then there was no need to pretend. She was saved from discovering my deception and perfidiousness. Not even the skills of a certified doctor, let alone the illusory ones of her reprehensible and unlearned son, could heal her.
Though deeply sorrowed by her passing, I was hindered no more. I was free turn my face into the briny spray and the north wind and follow my destiny, my dream.
But that is another saga.
~ Roald Amundsen - First man to reach both the North and South Poles. He never accompanied Nansen, but used Nansen’s ship, the Fram, for his South Pole expedition. In 1928, while attempting a rescue, Amundsen’s plane crashed. He was never found.
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