Beauty could be found, but bleakness and oppression ruled.

Most would trade the freezing authenticity for the fake warmth of Las Vegas, but Irving found a match in this frozen wasteland, a reflection of his inner self. The misery just felt right.

Ice had attacked the shoreline with a beast-like ferocity, and the frozen abstractions looked menacing, reminding Irving of his precipitous life. The delusions, the covers, and the momentary achievements had no foundation, let alone permanence. 

Irving couldn't cope with the incongruity of neon, and the aphotic cloak felt more apropos.

“I have not accepted theology as a rationalization for oppression and murder as you have. Bulldozing villages and economic deprivation are not ordained by a higher power.”

Gray, inhumanly cold, Lake Superior frozen in anger, his drive from Bluff Harbor to Crediton echoed with death. Everything was devoid of color, stark, like looking at a faded negative.

Irving left the hotel and headed toward Karlův Most, the 14th-century Charles Bridge. Fog and mist hung in the air, and he peered through a veil obscuring the saintly figures lining the bridge. They appeared more ghoulish than holy on a night like this. An Eric Ambler novel came to mind, and he imagined a Peter Lorre-like character sneaking up behind him to ask for a light.

Irving pushed the leather door covering aside, and they entered a polar fantasy, making the dark gloom of winter a distant memory. Candles and oil lamps provided the light, creating a romantic, almost surreal ambiance inside the igloo.

“Does your wife want to bury her daughter?”

Silence again. “Point taken. How do you get to this Tristan da Cunha?”

“It isn’t easy. Fly into Cape Town in South Africa, and it’s a six-day journey by ship.”