The Unseen

by Roy Jacobsen

  “Tha’s not rowin’ straight.”

  “A am that,” Maria says, resting one oar so the færing veers to the side. Barbro laughs again even though she knows what is going to happen, the same as last time, they are going to get rid of her.

  They moor by the Trading Post and walk up towards their destination, Hans with the suitcase first, then Barbro and Ingrid hand in hand, and Maria rounding them off, as it were, she too is dressed up today, as though to emphasise the seriousness of it all, their determination, it went so wrong last time, and none of them says a word.

  There is another stop at the Store, and rock sugar, then they continue to the rectory where they are received by the priest’s wife, Karen Louise Malmberget, who as recently as three years ago was called Husvik and looks strangely young at the side of the priest, Johannes Malmberget, who has contrived to be a widower twice before Karen Louise came into his house and life. She is childless, he isn’t, he has five sons, who all attend a seminary in a town somewhere, as if they left for good when they went and have since forgotten where they come from.

  Karen Louise is wearing a light-coloured dress and white pinafore, along with stockings and shoes, even though she is indoors. She greets Barbro – shakes her hand – and bids her welcome, and is talkative and light on her feet, as though she has been looking forward to the visit, takes them round the rooms and shows them the furniture and the sewing machine and the iron and explains where Barbro is to sleep, in a light, inviting room on the first floor with wallpaper, a dresser – a small vase on top – and a porcelain chamber pot with a blue stamp on the bottom.

  She explains what Barbro has to do.

  And it isn’t much, it almost seems as if the priest’s wife is on the lookout for company in the house, perhaps even a friend, there isn’t much difference between their ages. In the white kitchen she stands with a cookery book the size of a Bible in her hands and asks them whether Barbro can read.

  None of them answers.

  Karen Louise apologises and says it was stupid of her to ask, flicks through to the section about jam and starts talking about what Barbro will be making, pointing through the window to an army of variously sized fruit bushes lined up in six straight columns down towards a white picket fence at the far end of the garden, still brown after the winter, blackcurrant, redcurrant, gooseberry, and raspberry over there by the rock, which Barbro tells her they have on Barrøy too, they also have redcurrants and she knows how much sugar to put in . . .

  At this point Hans Barrøy has to find somewhere to sit.

  He plumps down on the chair standing pointlessly between two reception rooms, seemingly there just for decoration, it strikes him that no-one could ever have sat there before. And he doesn’t get up again. He leans forward and puts his face in his hands and supports his elbows on his knees as though searching for something in the deepest recesses of his mind, something he is unable to find, when he suddenly senses the others have stopped and are staring at him.

  He looks up and says something, he asks where the priest is.

  He’s in the north of the island, the priest’s wife says, some business to attend to . . .

  They talk for a while about these people whom Johannes Malmberget visits and whom, it transpires, Hans knows. When the tour of the house resumes and he is left alone on the pointless chair, he finally finds what he has been searching for, gets up, runs into yet another room after them, takes his sister’s hand and drags her into the yard, to wild protests, because Barbro wants to stay in this fine house. The others follow them and stand on the broad stone steps gazing at him in wonderment, Maria shouts something or other, she has an anguished expression on her face.

  “A wan’ t’ be hier,” Barbro howls.

  “Tha’s goen’ nohvar,” her brother says, manhandling her down to the gate, and bustling her onto the road, where he stands gasping for breath until Maria and Ingrid catch them up. Maria with the suitcase, she asks what the matter is, the same anguished expression on her face, it is almost like grief.

  “Nothin’,” Hans says.

  They walk silently past the Store, there will be no shopping today, continue down to the Trading Post and clamber on board the færing. Hans Barrøy observes that the wind has turned and picked up, it is now a south-westerly. He hauls up the sail and struggles to make a sharp tack homeward. Then the rain comes down. Harder and harder the further they get to the mouth of the fjord. Barbro and Ingrid shelter under the sheepskin. There is laughter coming from there anyway, and this time he has no plans to shy away from anyone’s gaze, what would be the point, not even from Maria’s, she is sitting with her back to the rain, the water running down her brown locks, which become blacker and blacker and resemble fluttering strands of seaweed. And he can find no sign of the smile which usually comes to their rescue.

  *

  It sheets down until far into the night, a gale has engulfed them. Reluctantly it veers west and north and becomes colder and less fierce. The sky lightens and the rain no longer lashes the windows as Maria opens her eyes and discovers that the bed beside her is empty. Her hand tells her it is also cold.

  She gets up, runs into Barbro and Ingrid’s room and instructs them to get dressed and go down with her to the kitchen, where no-one has lit the stove. They ask what is going on. Maria has no answer. They light the stove and eat with Martin, who doesn’t speak either, and thereafter go down to the boat shed, where the færing is missing. They mend nets with both doors open so that they can always see north, to the Trading Post, the church and the scattered houses, working silently and watchfully and painstakingly, until they finally spot the slanted sail darting up and down in the rough sea like the teeth of a saw, it is the færing pitching and tossing on its return, by now evening has fallen.

  Hans Barrøy drops sail, the færing hits the skids on the shore and comes to a halt. He staggers over two thwarts, bends down in the forepeak and grabs a squirming object, which he heaves ashore, a piglet that immediately runs around squealing in the white shell sand. It cost twelve kroner, has only one ear and a black patch on its forehead like a bullet hole. They can call it whatever they like. He also has some rock sugar in a brown bag, which he hands to Barbro, then he goes into the boat shed for some rope and makes a tether, ties a loop at one end and gives it to Ingrid, who is standing looking down at the piglet, it has started to eat grass.

  “That’s th’ last time tha does that,” Maria says, whereupon she turns her back on him and the piglet and walks up to the house to prepare dinner, leaving her husband with a smile on his face, a smile which Ingrid has never seen before. She notices that her mother is angry for the rest of the evening and all next day. But then there is an imperceptible change and the strangeness about her has gone. The piglet is named Grub.

  7

  The houses on Barrøy stand at an oblique angle to each other. From above they look like four dice someone has thrown at random, plus a potato cellar that becomes an igloo in winter. There are flagstones to walk on between the houses, clothes racks and grass paths radiating in all directions, but actually the buildings act as a wedge against stormy weather so that they can’t be flattened, even if the whole sea were to pour over the island.

  No-one can claim credit for the ingenious layout of the farmyard, it is the product of collective inherited wisdom, built on bitter experience.

  But in the winter time not even a stroke of genius stretching back through the ages can prevent a tidal wave of compact snow settling between the farmhouse and the barn, which they have to struggle through with buckets and milk churns to get to and from the animals. They call it the Wave and curse it like few other phenomena, for the Wave usually surges in when nerves are at their thinnest, in January and February, in December, even in March, a barrier of snow between animals and people, and there is no point shovelling a way through, even though they do, because the snow drifts back straight afterwards. It is the men who shovel and the women who carry the water and milk, so generally there is no alterna
tive for the women but to tramp the whole way round the house and the barn, and it is a long walk when you can’t even stand upright in the gusting wind.

  But the houses haven’t always stood where they stand now, towering up on the highest ridge amidst the clump of trees and fruit bushes, they were once lower down, in a cove a few hundred metres further east called Karvika. There are now only two foundation walls left and the remains of a landing place for boats, which are buried beneath seaweed and sand. And usually no-one thinks about this, the islanders are virtually oblivious to the fact that anyone has ever lived there. But even people who spend their lives tramping on terra firma have moments when they think in less than customary ways and then it strikes you that there must be an explanation for there no longer being any houses in Karvika, what happened to them, these houses, and why aren’t they there anymore?

  The explanation is doubtless tragic, perhaps horrifying.

  Old Martin has been here longest, he is the font of knowledge with the highest status, and of course he has his own opinions about why and when this civilisation came to grief, it concerns his own ancestors, he can also remember some fragments from his childhood, a few images and remnants of conversations and stories. But he is no longer the most trustworthy member of the family, because of his great age and natural degeneration, which not only eats up one’s memory, but also brings with it odd ideas and eccentricities that make an old man appear ridiculous in the eyes of the young, every generation goes its own way and remembers only those things it wants to remember. They undoubtedly lead somewhere, these new ways, at worst in the same circles, only to return, it just takes time.

  But even though they know nothing at all about the ruins in Karvika, nor the reason why the two houses that were once here no longer are, they still have respect for the ruins. They avoid them, the children don’t play in them, the birds don’t build nests there, either, not even the common eider, but people don’t even consider demolishing them and using the stones for other walls and foundations, for example, those that run between the Acres. They would rather find new stones, so the ruins can remain there like a monument or a cemetery, sinister, overgrown with nettles and willowherb, emanating a sense of something that is both too cold and too warm. If you look at the ruins from the high ground, they resemble two Chinese symbols, written by two different hands. In winter, snow lies on top, making them stand out even more clearly against the brown, decomposing grass, before it too turns white.

  8

  They have discussed it many times: which room shall we sleep in? In the north-facing one it is perishing cold and uninhabitable when the north-easterlies rage in the winter, but nice and cool in the summer. And virtually silent as the rain generally comes from the south-west, making an infernal racket in the South Chamber no matter whether it is summer or winter. When the summers are particularly wet and they can’t dry hay in the fields or on the racks, Hans Barrøy says:

  “Right, dear, let’s be moven’ up north, shall we? We can’t stay hier.”

  When the crystals of ice glisten on the eiderdown cover in winter, he says the opposite, now let’s be moven’ down south:

  “We’ll freeze t’ death hier.”

  They take the eiderdowns with them from north to south, and vice versa, allow themselves to be driven by the weather and the seasons since they have a large bed in each of these ceilingless rooms, which they call bed chambers, the North Chamber and the South Chamber. Ingrid sleeps in the small, west-facing room between these two, which is also sunlit in the middle of the night in the season which they spend the three others dreaming about, and Barbro uses the room facing east, where the good weather comes from.

  Old Martin sleeps in a little closet downstairs which is partitioned off from the sitting room. Sometimes he leaves the door open, and he has his own stove, which he keeps well stoked because he is always frozen, so the sitting room is often warm at times of the year when people in this part of the country don’t use the sitting room at all, which means that on an ordinary Sunday in October or March the Barrøys can have dinner in there. Then Maria lays a white cloth on the table.

  This cloth has narrow borders with tiny flowers, red and yellow, and green vines that connect them, her mother embroidered it, but it is predominantly white.

  And Maria prefers to sleep in the South Chamber – even if it is too warm when the weather is good in the summer and it is too noisy in the lousy weather, summer and winter – for from the window here she can see across all of Barrøy and the islets to the south, and on a clear day all the way home to Buøy, where she grew up, her point of comparison. The South Chamber is furthermore a little bigger than the North Chamber, so she can have her chest standing against the wall and also have room for the two bedside tables her father gave them as a wedding present, those pieces of old junk, as he called them; they were originally her mother’s, she died all too young, the victim of an epidemic that ravaged the local population with such vehemence that only the strongest survived.

  Aren’t we goen’ t’ settle down soon like proper folk, she says, instead of driften’ around like trav’llers?

  And after Grub, the piglet, arrives – it is housed in a peat shed which for the moment is empty – Hans feels he has to show some initiative, so when the eider ducks’ houses – “th’ ei’er huts” – have been repaired and the potatoes have been planted and for a short while the days become longer, milder and more pleasant and they really ought to be cutting peat, he takes along his chisel, sledgehammer and dynamite and walks to the sheer rock face of the cove to the north-west of the island, where tarred posts are sunk vertically into the seabed and bolted to the rock at intervals of half a metre so that medium-sized boats can put in when the weather allows, such as the Trading Post cargo boat or the one belonging to Hans’s brother, Erling, who comes by every New Year to pick up Hans and his fishing gear when they go to Lofoten. There is a boat shed here which they call the Lofoten Boathouse, it is closed all year, and contains his valuable Lofoten equipment.

  If there is something they really do lack on this island it is a decent quay. So now Old Martin, who has lived quay-less for almost eighty years, is in the farmyard looking north and wondering whether his son is finally going to confront the inevitable, they have been collecting driftwood for a generation, there is no shortage of material.

  But Hans Barrøy has other plans. He drills ten deep holes, loads them, primes the fuse and blasts out three cubic metres. The pieces of rock that are too large he smashes with the sledgehammer.

  He walks home for the horse and cart and asks Maria to come with him, explaining to her on the way that he prefers blasted rock for the foundations, it’s just a waste of time with those smooth boulders from the beach; blasted rock, on the other hand, has rough surfaces that grip better, then they don’t budge an inch. She says:

  “Foundations?”

  Yes, the solution to the problems of sleep and wind direction is obviously to extend their house to the south, it is a long single-storey building with a loft, ideal for an extension, three or four extra metres will shelter them from the sun and the rain, they can be in the South Chamber all year.

  He digs and chops and rakes away a good foot of earth, meets granite and carts in some blasted rock, he is well under way with the project the following day, now with Martin and Barbro’s help. Barbro likes hard graft, she grabs a huge lump of rock from the cart, lugs it five paces to where the foundations are and asks her brother where to put it, she won’t release it until he indicates the precise position. But he doesn’t answer immediately, to tease her, so she goes red in the face and starts screaming and has to drop it. Then they lift it together and place it where it has to go. He asks her how she is getting on.

  “Not s’ bad,” Barbro says, going to fetch another rock.

  Martin shakes his head at Hans and asks whether women should be helping to build foundations in the first place.

  Hans pretends not to hear, although he too has begun to wonder. But s
omething has dawned on Maria: if the house is extended, then the reason for her wanting to sleep in the South Chamber is no longer there, the view she has, of her childhood across the water. But she can’t bring herself to say anything until her husband has reached the sill along the top of the foundations and is about to start on the timber framework, what about the view, she asks, he has been grafting away for about a week.

  Then she sees something she has never seen before, he sits down on the plinth and looks as if he is ready to throw everything in, both as a husband and as a man. Martin walks away in disgust muttering for Christ’s sake. Maria cannot bring herself to console a man either, so she too walks across the yard, but there is nothing to stop Barbro sitting beside her brother and asking him what he is snivelling about, the way he used to ask her, when they were little. He waves her away, dries his sweat and without more ado resumes his work with the spade and adze, hacks off the layer of peat inside the foundation wall, loads it all onto the cart and runs it down to Bosom Acre, where it can be well employed to level the ground.

  “Hva’s wrong with tha nu?” Maria asks during dinner.

  “Hva does tha think?” Hans says.

  The next morning he rows to the main island and returns with the færing loaded to the gunwales with bags of cement, which he has bought on tick. He sets about carting in sand and starts concreting, a new wall on the inner side of the one that is already up, a concrete wall, then he cements a kind of floor on the rock base, it is uneven, but watertight. He nails boards to the timber sills and builds the wall a foot higher, as far as his cement allows. When the boards are removed what they have resembles a grey box of stone added on to the house, five by three metres and a good metre high.