{"id":1954,"date":"2019-11-08T22:32:46","date_gmt":"2019-11-08T22:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/?p=1954"},"modified":"2019-11-08T22:32:46","modified_gmt":"2019-11-08T22:32:46","slug":"the-month-of-the-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/?p=1954","title":{"rendered":"The month of the dead&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>steals in, breathing chill and dark over our lips. The fishermen haul in their boats and I wait for a contract. I dig out the front garden, setting fence posts and ordering in the Siberian Larch. The eccentric millionaire swinging his sledgehammer to smash the lilac stump. Scratching at the earth. &#8216;That it should end like this,&#8217; said the tank commander in Kolyma Tales, staring out at the taiga scrub from his escapee bear-cave hideout. I haven&#8217;t known cold like that. Only up in the Altiplano did I get a sense of cold that will kill you, cold to chrystalize your lungs. I&#8217;ve never seen an ice forest to every horizon, though I tried to write a tank duel in an imaginary one &#8211; the Kassan Woods. I had a German crew pursued by ghosts &#8211; it was cold and scary. But I don&#8217;t know real cold. I&#8217;ve only read London, and Albanov, and Cherry-Garrard, and the most frightening opening chapter I&#8217;ve read in years, Simmons&#8217; <em>The Terror<\/em>. I light a candle and count my luckies, curl up with the cat. I&#8217;m a fairweather scribe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/IMG_20191108_215920-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1955\" srcset=\"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/IMG_20191108_215920-1.jpg 640w, https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/IMG_20191108_215920-1-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>steals in, breathing chill and dark over our lips. The fishermen haul in their boats and I wait for a contract. I dig out the front garden, setting fence posts and ordering in the Siberian Larch. The eccentric millionaire swinging his sledgehammer to smash the lilac stump. Scratching at the earth. &#8216;That it should end [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-henry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1954"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1956,"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954\/revisions\/1956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}