My Last Continent(53)

“What the hell are you up to, Keller?”

“You’ll see.” He sits next to me, and I hold my breath for a moment, realizing how completely alone we are, for the first time so far on this journey—away from the ship, the crew, the passengers, with no eyes on us except the penguins’.

But Keller is looking straight ahead, at the gentoos, almost as if I’m not there. From this height, I can see past the iceberg skyline into the gray-green water beyond. The sun begins to poke through the fog, creating a silvery haze, and its blurred reflection appears on the surface of the water, illuminating the smaller chunks of ice that float like stepping-stones toward the icebergs.

“Nice spot,” I say. “I don’t think I’ve ever been here.”

He smiles and shoves his sunglasses atop his head, as if to get a clearer view. He nods toward the sharp, steel-colored points of the rocks, rising from the hillside like spires. “Like cathedrals, aren’t they?”

As the sounds of the penguins fill my ears, I think of the last time I’d been in a real cathedral, the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, during that last Christmas at home. My schedule makes it easy to skip holidays; I’m usually on my way to Antarctica, heading home, or on board. I send cards and gifts for my brother’s kids, and I leave a voice mail when I know they’re at Midnight Mass. The rest of the year, I stay in touch with each of them, separately, via e-mail and birthday phone calls. We live our own lives, and I spend my winters with those whose behaviors I recognize most—the chinstraps, the gentoos, the Adélies.

And Keller. He and I sit on this rock, quiet, right next to each other. After a few minutes, a lone gentoo, a male, emerges from the colony and begins to meander toward us. I watch his bobbing head—black, with two swirls of white above the eyes, flourishes of pale shadow. The marks meet in a thin band on the top of his head and are sprinkled with flecks of white, like spilled salt. He raises his orange bill in the air.

“Here’s the little guy I want you to meet,” Keller says.

I laugh. “You two know each other?”

“I call him Admiral Byrd.”

“Admiral Bird?” It takes me a second, and then I get it. “Oh. After Richard Byrd.”

As the penguin approaches, I remain still. My legs are stretched out in front of me, ankles crossed, and the penguin hops over to the toes of my boots and gives them a few curious pecks.

“I banded him last year,” Keller says. “He just came right up to me, climbed onto my shoes, nipped at the equipment.”

Byrd turns his head to the side to look at both of us. He begins walking around toward the edge of the rock.

“Sit back,” Keller says. “Here, put your legs up.” With his hands on my knees, he guides my legs into another position: thighs parallel with the ground, feet flat, knees slightly apart.

As I’m focusing on my legs, Admiral Byrd is hopping up, stone by stone, and, a moment later, he’s right next to me. He’s about two feet tall, and from where I’m sitting, he looks me in the eye. I notice the metal band at the spot where his left wing meets his body.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I say.

I drop my hands. Admiral Byrd takes a few more steps, then in one swift and inelegant move, propels his body onto my lap, belly first.

I gasp at the surprising weight of him; in all my years of research, I’ve never had a penguin sprawled in my lap like this, relaxed as a cat. I grip the rock with my hands to stay balanced, pressing my feet down into the snow.

“He looks a little heavier this year,” Keller says. He reaches for my hand and pulls off my glove. He covers the top of my hand with his palm and places it on Admiral Byrd’s feathered black coat.

Our usual contact with penguins is nothing like this; we touch them only to put on bands, to weigh them, to do the unpleasant but necessary things to learn about and, we hope, eventually to save them. I hate knowing that every time we come near, it could shorten their lives, that every contact must be pure terror, even if it lasts only a few moments.

Tentatively, I run my hand down the penguin’s back, his feathers smooth and soft and firm. I can feel his heartbeat through the thin skin of my waterproof pants.

“One day,” Keller says, “I was sitting in the snow making some notes, and he jumped into my lap. I couldn’t believe it. I snuck over here this morning, during breakfast, to see if he was still here. I knew it was him even before I looked at his band.”

“What happened? I mean, how’d he become so socialized?”

“I have no idea. I thought it was a one-time thing. When he climbed into my lap that first time, I thought he was sick, or dying. I wasn’t sure I’d see him again. And even when I saw him, I didn’t know if he’d do this again, until just now.”