It's around the twentieth day, driving across the ice stretching off into oblivion, that you wonder, what if there's no one out there at all? What if you're the last man on earth? You've promised yourself that you'll only die with this monster of yours, and it seems as though you'll just on go living until the end of the world.
But what if the world's already ended and you're just chasing yourself across this barren wasteland into the distant depths of the ocean and this incredible, crushing loneliness is just the weight of the absence of everything.
In Chamonix, there was a steadiness and tranquility to the great and terrible beauty of the mountains, peace in their imperious summits that soothed your pain, and in the glaciers and snowfields you found an uneasy peace. Here the solitude presses in from all sides, wide-open spaces pressing in until you can no longer breathe and you're trapped here with your conscience and there can be no escape, not ever.
You squint at the horizon and the feeling passes. No, there is something out there. Your greatest triumph, darkest secret, dearest enemy, deepest hatred. Out there is the end of your quixotic youth and the beginning of this miserable adulthood.
The dogs run on, the sound of their breath and sled runners on snow carried away by the ever-present wind. At first you thought you would go mad from it, all sound swept away into a deafening cacophony of white noise, taking words from your lips and thoughts from your head, but you have come to like it more than the suffocating silence that settles in its absence. Words hang in the stillness, and it's difficult to tell whether it's you or your distant foe crying in that wretched way.
The days stretch on up here, and you're never sure whether or not you look forward to the blazing sunsets that paint the sky bloody red. Tonight it bleeds red into pink into purple into black, and unconsciously you wonder whether your monster thinks it's beautiful too. But who has the right to decide what is beautiful anyway? Certainly not you, for your fear of all things strange and different is what has gotten you to this point in the first place. You tried to create beauty, but all you managed was a jumble of pretty pieces, brought to life on a whim and discarded in an instant.
It's from here that all your problems stem. You are—we all are—human and petty, and we haven't the right, haven't the capacity, to create life because we are so caught up in the prettiness of the parts and forget that they even go together, have to go together, just as we must all stay together and forgive each other and that's just how it has to be. We forget that. Maybe that's what this is all about. Man forgets he can't play God, and God puts Man back in his place.
You hate the silence because it gives you room to think.
At night you lie awake and your breath hangs frozen above your face. Sleep comes slowly, and when you look up, Elizabeth is there, Clerval, William, your father, all bright and alive. Look up again and there is nothing but ice. There are no words for that feeling, empty and full, happy and sad. Tonight it is just Elizabeth, standing so close to you that when you wake up reaching for her, you can feel your fingertips brush her dress, hear her laughter ringing in your ears.
Times like these, you are not hell-bent on vengeance, just desperately, desperately lonely. Times like these, your thoughts drift backwards and all you want is to have died.
Memories are easy enough to deal with—just dreams, reminiscences, and the moments where you step back and wonder what they would think of you now. With memories, you know how it was and it will always remain that way. Regret is different—could, should, if only. If only you had not run from your creation, you should have stayed with Elizabeth, and it could have been good, could have been great, if only it hadn't gotten out of control, if only you had learned to love it. Regret gets out of hand and you find yourself staring it in the face at every turn and you bleed self-loathing and it breathes lost opportunities. Could, should, if only.
It is bitterly cold. The wind is back, and with it the noise. The dogs move slowly, belaboured by ice straining from the water below. The sky is a cruel blue and the sun gives blinding light but no heat. You can scarcely move your limbs as you urge the dogs up a mountain of ice. They will not last much longer, and neither will you.
With a sigh one drops to the ground and as you look down at the dog, up at the heavens, and out at the horizon you see it. Up against the blue-white expanse of the ice, the sledge is perfectly visible, and you're overtaken with a sort of desperate euphoria, hope flooding back into your frozen limbs, and you've never been so overjoyed.
Later, minus one dog plus hope, you think about that. All your youth, all your promise, and the happiest moment in your life is when you know you will finally be able to die.