Page 116 - The Midnight Library
P. 116
www.urdukutabkhanapk.blogspot.com
www.urdukutabkhanapk.blogspot.com
Svalbard
She woke in a small bed in a little cabin on a boat. She knew it was a boat
because it was rocking, and indeed the rocking, gentle as it was, had woken
her up. e cabin was spare and basic. She was wearing a thick fleece sweater
and long johns. Pulling back the blanket , she noticed that she had a
headache. Her mouth was so dr y her cheeks felt sucked-in against her teet h.
She coughed a deep, chesty cough and felt a million pool-lengths away from
the body of an Olympian. Her fingers smelt of tobacco. She sat up to see a
pale-blonde, robust, hard-weathered woman sitting on another bed staring
at her.
‘God morgen, Nora.’
She smiled. And hoped that in this life she wasn’t fluent in whichever
Scandinavian language this woman spoke.
‘Good morning.’
She noticed a half-empty bottle of vodka and a mug on the floor beside
the woman’s bed. A dog calendar (April: Springer Spaniel) was propped up
on the chest between the beds. e three books on top of it were all in
English. e one nearest to the woman said Principles of Glacier Mechanics.
Two on Nora’s: A Naturalist’s Guide to the Arctic and a Penguin Classic
edition of e Saga of the Volsungs: e Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon
Slayer. She noticed something else. It was cold. Properly cold. e cold that
almost burns, that hurts your fingers and toes and stiffens your cheeks. Even
inside. With layers of thermal under wear. With a sweater on. With the bars
of two electric heaters glowing orange. Ever y exhale made a cloud.
‘Why are you here, Nora?’ the woman asked, in heavily accented English.
A tricky question, when you didn’t know where ‘here’ was.
