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CHAPTER 1
The meteorologists had lit cigars and were arguing about the world record for rainfall. At another table, two aphid experts finished their meal in silence, as did a group of Japanese seismologists. The cabin of the Marion Dufresne was decorated with pictures of palm trees and half-naked islanders, along with several maps of France's overseas possessions. Despite the constant rocking of the ship, the waiters managed to keep the silver-plated cheese trays steady with their left hands while cutting slices of Roquefort, Camembert, and Pont l'Évêque with their right.
The social divisions on board were very clear. The cleaners and stokers were black, as were the day laborers who ferried in from Madagascar: They were kept out of sight, and took their meals belowdecks. Meanwhile the ship's officers and the nearly one hundred passengers enjoyed their four-course afternoon and evening meals in the spacious dining room, which was furnished in a tasteful, modern style.
The uniformed crew members — military draftees, mechanics, and maintenance workers — were the first to be served, though the white-liveried waiters were quick to snatch their plates before the speakers blared: "Second seating for the afternoon meal. Second seating, bon appétit." This was the cue for those whose rank or seniority placed them among the most important passengers — the higher-ranking officers and the scientists. Evidently the maître d' had been informed I was an official guest of the ministry, since he greeted me by name — a courtesy otherwise reserved only for the captain and the administrateur supérieur.
From the dining room I looked out over the water. The sea was calm. We had been underway for some time, but it took much longer than I thought before the harbor of Saint-Denis faded completely from view.
*
We had each boarded separately, having said good-bye to our loved ones, who knew we were headed for the ends of the earth. When it was my turn to climb up the gangplank, I was welcomed by the secretary-general, who immediately grabbed me by the arm to introduce me to the administrateur. I had known the man would be sailing with us; still, it was a shock to actually see him in the flesh. I held out my hand as he climbed on deck. He gave it a quick shake and went on his way without so much as glancing at me.
This was the culmination of a struggle that had dragged on for years, which I appeared to have won; but I felt no sense of triumph, just a hollow wariness that, although I'd come farther than I ever dared hope, I had yet to reach my final destination. I assumed the administrateur would continue to do everything in his power to thwart my plans. Nevertheless, I now felt no one could stop me, that I would set my foot on that far-flung lost island and stay there, perched in the middle of the empty sea, when the administrateur would sail back to the Marion Dufresne's home port at Réunion, over the horizon.
The Greek philosopher Anaximander saw infinity as a concept at odds with order and hierarchy, and this led him to realize that the only way to understand the world was to first determine its boundaries. Was this what I was doing? Was I sailing to the ends of the earth to make sense of my own life? Was this what drove me to search out the highest peaks, the most remote villages, the most dangerous slums? Was this why I wanted to experience the hottest hot and the coldest cold, and why I wanted to record it all?
At night I would switch on my illuminated globe and they would appear — mysterious dots, far removed from any land, little black specks with names like Ascension and Ailinglapalap, Henderson and Mokil — floating in the middle of the ocean as if they'd been torn from their moorings and set adrift, abandoned to the elements. And out of all these isolated places, I was seeking the most extreme.
My eyes first fell on Bouvet Island, southwest of the Cape of Good Hope, and just past the northern limit of the Antarctic drift-ice. It had been discovered in the early eighteenth century by the French explorer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier, who struggled for ten days to come ashore before finally giving up. Peering through the fog, Bouvet was just able to discern a group of snow-covered rocks — and was immediately convinced he had discovered no mere island, but a promontory of the long-sought Terra Australis Incognita, the fabled last continent, a new land where "the torch of the Gospel" could be spread to the greater honor and glory of the king of France. This dream dissolved some fifty years later, when James Cook proved that Terra Australis was nothing more than a cartographic fantasy, and the tiny island was lost for another two centuries before anyone rediscovered what was arguably the most inhospitable, foggy, icy, and infertile spot on Earth. A patch of rock so forlorn that not even the British protested when one day a group of whalers finally planted the Norwegian flag on it.
Extreme as Bouvet was, it wasn't quite extreme enough. Although The Guinness Book of World Records called the place "the remotest island on Earth," I considered that a fraud since it was too close to the nearest landmass. So in the end I decided against Bouvet.
Saint Helena and Tristan da Cunha are without question two of the world's most famous isolated islands, but there are clearly others in the Pacific even more remote. And while the Marquesas Islands are about as far from any continent as you can find, that part of the Pacific is littered with archipelagoes — so they, too, were out.
I eventually discovered what I was looking for in the southern Indian Ocean. Nowhere else was the sea more bare; nowhere were the waves higher or the winds more fierce. And perched in the middle of this wild mass of water, equally far from Sri Lanka and South Africa, Australia and Antarctica, nearly two thousand miles from the closest continent, was a minuscule volcanic peak. There was no longer any doubt. I had fallen under the spell of a place surrounded by endlessness, the most far-flung island on the planet, where even the name seemed linked to my fate: Amsterdam.
*
The island of my dreams turned out to belong to France. Politically it is part of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands, which are governed by an administrateur supérieur appointed by the president in Paris. These territories comprise an all but imaginary realm that consists of a few volcanic peaks scattered thousands of miles apart, across a section of ocean the size of Western Europe: the Crozet Archipelago, the Kerguelen Islands, Saint-Paul, and Amsterdam. Another district, known as Terre Adélie, lies on the Antarctic continent; according to the advertisements it is "larger than continental France"— at least in winter — although in truth it isn't much more than an empty mass of ice.
Amsterdam has no airport and no harbor. A helicopter taking off in the inhabited world would never be able to reach it. The only way there is aboard the Marion Dufresne, the last surviving French mail boat, which, besides carrying mailbags and provisions for the southern islands, is equipped with a helicopter and a number of life rafts and dinghies, which are manned by Malagasies. Based in Réunion, the ship courses among the French islands, stopping at Amsterdam a few times a year, but to make the journey you need to have a special invitation.
The island has no permanent inhabitants, only temporary residents — meteorologists and other scientists who never stay longer than a year and a half at a stint. And this no-man's-land has been even less hospitable to women: Not one ever spent more than two days there in the course of the past century.
Amsterdam met all my demands. The island was remote to the point of being inaccessible; it was barely inhabited, although supplied with meat and wine; it was small enough to be taken in at a glance, but not without a variety of features. I could already see myself on top of the highest peak, gazing into the distance in all directions. There, high over Amsterdam, I would once again find happiness — and this belief was more than simple hope. It was my stubborn resolution, a personal manifesto.
*
Doubting that any French bureaucrat would be swayed by mere personal obsession, I wrote a letter to the administrateur requesting permission to follow in the footsteps of the Dutch East India Captain Willem Hesselsz. de Vlamingh, the first person to actually set foot on the island — some three hundred years earlier. I wrote that I would need at least a month for my research, though I was prepared to extend my stay for up to four months or half a year if the island's virtual inaccessibility left me no other choice.
Two months later I received a reply: cordial thanks for my letter, which had been duly received. Unfortunately the official Year of the Ocean had so disrupted the scheduled service to the Southern Provinces — which was minimal at best — that I was asked to write back in three years. The letter was signed "Respectfully yours" by one Madame Marie-Thérèse Clément, for the secretary-general, on behalf of the administrateur supérieur.
The prospect of having to wait so long did not dampen my enthusiasm. In fact, the opposite happened: I could feel my connection with Amsterdam growing from mere fascination into a full-fledged passion, a compulsion, a physical necessity. I was not about to give up; I was determined to pursue my goal as fervently as I had run after certain women I had broken up with and desperately wanted back. I wanted to overcome the sense I was adrift in life — and this was why I embraced Amsterdam as my very own, for now and forever.
*
Three years later I wrote another letter to the administrateur. This time I chose to proceed more cautiously, having been advised, by someone with personal experience, of a Gallic cultural "sensitivity to hierarchy." So I decided first to approach the director of the Institut Français in Amsterdam, via a mutual acquaintance. This man studied my "case," and at the end of December forwarded it to the scientific attaché at the French Embassy in The Hague, who in turn passed it on to the proper authorities, as he assured me, with a personal recommendation. The attaché also told me that all persons applying to stay on Amsterdam had to go through a rigorous selection process, as life on the island demanded exceptional social skills.
Although the attaché had told me a reply would not be long in coming, months passed with no answer, and at the beginning of March, I decided that the time had come to plead my case personally in Paris.
*
The rue des Renaudes was a long but unremarkable street not far from the place Charles de Gaulle, in the seventeenth arrondissement. Situated between a realtor's office and "Ed l'Épicier" was a building with a tall, narrow front that seemed more focused on itself than open to the outside world. By the door was a modest yet distinguished plaque that read Territoire des Terres Australes et Antarctiques Françaises. I pressed the gold-colored bell. The doorman showed me in to a dark-brown paneled anteroom, where I waited for Madame Clément, who managed the office, while she traveled in a teakwood elevator from the fifth floor down to the first. The room had three glass display cases with philatelic exhibits from the Southern and Antarctic Lands, and key rings in the shape of penguins. I looked at a building directory, which matched the departments of Sovereignty Affairs, Research, and Logistics to the proper floors and listed the rooms of the departmental secretariats and various branches. A series of photographs adorned the walls: bearded men in fur hats; ships against backdrops of icebergs and winter-blue oceans.
Madame Clément was wearing a suit, which made her look older than her years. She was charming but stiff, and didn't seem the least bit interested in the fact that a man from Amsterdam, Holland, wanted to spend time on Amsterdam Island. My request to be granted an extended stay was out of the question, she informed me; no outsider had ever stayed on the island. "But your petition was forwarded, and I am acquainted with what you wish to accomplish," she said, pointing to a folder labeled VAN CLEEF that she had laid on the table. She handed me a brochure with a picture of penguins on the cover. It was all about the Southern Territories: surface area, administrative organization, flora, scientific research, climate, algae extraction. Without asking me anything else, she turned on a video, and a man in an orange raincoat appeared on the large screen, who proceeded to explain how a herd of wild cattle came to be on Amsterdam Island. A storm was raging in the background. The sound quality was poor to begin with, and Madame Clément kept talking over the film. "I wanted to show you this to give you an impression of what it's like."
I began to talk her around by pointing out the unique ties between the two Amsterdams. By researching the traces of Willem de Vlamingh, I argued, I could make an important contribution to the historiography of the Dutch East India Company. Not only did I want to visit the island, I wanted to understand it, and this meant I needed to experience its silence, isolation, and seclusion.
"It's a closed community," replied Madame Clément. "Your presence could cause some tension." She took out the sailing schedule for the Marion Dufresne and highlighted with a yellow marker a box labeled AMS. "There are two crossings during the southern summer. The ship sails out of Réunion and puts in at the Crozet Islands and Kerguelen before reaching Amsterdam — that's three weeks. The return trip takes a week. Depending on the weather, of course. If you left in December, you could spend a month on Amsterdam and be back by the end of January." She smiled. "But it's all up to you, except for the permission, of course — that's for others to decide. Although it's unclear at the moment exactly who. The administrateur supérieur has just retired, and even though his successor has been appointed, he still hasn't taken office."
She asked for the secretary-general, a Mediterranean-looking man who made an aloof impression as he strode over to me, cast a tense glance at his watch, and said, "You have to realize that Amsterdam is nothing more than a meteorological station and a scientific base, with a minimum of comforts. No one there has time for you." He went on to say that, ever since 1950, when the French established a permanent presence on the island, no one who had applied without an official invitation had ever been granted permission to stay. The fact that I wasn't even French further complicated the matter. When I mentioned that Amsterdam Island was French territory, and that France belonged to the European Union, he conceded that I had a point. But my request was unusual, and the Administration of the Southern Lands was grappling with more important issues: The new administrateur had been charged with introducing some difficult reforms and extensive budget cuts. "But what do I care," the secretary suddenly blurted out. "I only wish to repeat that the island is wild and inaccessible: There really is nothing to see. Still, as far as I'm concerned, you can stay for a month. Provided you're prepared to cover your own expenses, and I can tell you: It won't be cheap. In about six weeks I should know more."
It was going to happen. I was sure of it. The secretary-general stood up and shook my hand. In the doorway he turned around. "Of course you understand that the new administrateur will have to authorize this decision after he takes office, but that should be nothing more than a formality."
*
Amsterdam was almost exactly as small as Manhattan Island, but for me it was of massive importance; I considered it the crown jewel of geography. Sometimes you could even find the place on the tiny world maps that showed only a few cities per continent. My favorite was an inflatable plastic beach ball-globe — it had enough space for the name to be printed in large letters, especially since the surrounding area was so empty. Any good-sized globe could be rotated in such a way that India, Australia, and Africa were mere margins, insignificant borders around a vast expanse of blue, with the island Amsterdam as its undisputed center. But what I liked most of all were the atlases, where the tiny island held its own alongside the geographical giants — its position on the planet firmly established.
Sometimes the island was mislabeled as Nieuw or Nouvelle; I even had a Neu Amsterdam in my collection. As far as I was concerned that was inexcusable: Not only did the unadorned Amsterdam sound better — that is to say, more radical and more extreme — it was also the island's official name. I couldn't understand why my friends were so unfazed about such egregious inconsistencies when I pointed this out.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Lost Island"
by .
Copyright © 1999 Alfred van Cleef.
Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
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