A few onlookers sneer, but most watch in awe as the giant boards the schooner, grabs his blanket and disappears below deck.Ī week prior, a young, inept Captain Whistler ignored the advice of his crew and piloted the Impeccable into a strait filled with large, floating pieces of ice. Still nude, the swimmer follows his footsteps in the direction from which he came: back to the ship that is trapped in the ice. The titan retrieves his rifle and the ax he used to fashion the hole for his bath. Diaz describes his protagonist: “He looked like an old, strong Christ.”
The bowlegged, contorted swimmer has long white hair and a beard. Håkan Söderström stands on the frigid plain and is colossal, muscular and naked. Fingers claw into the snow around the edge of the hole and pull a swimmer emerges from the abyss. The only distraction is the chasm, until a pair of hands come out of the water.
The frozen sea surrounding the fissure is white, vast and devoid of life. In the opening scene of Hernán Diaz’s debut novel, there is a star-shaped hole in an immense stretch of ice.
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