The Unseen

by Roy Jacobsen

  It is not the first time such words have been uttered in this plain-speaking household, they have nerves of steel, but it is the first time Ingrid has understood their implications: you can leave an island.

  She starts crying, and it is a while before Maria realises that it is not the storm but her own words that have upset Ingrid, there is nothing to them, they are only sound and fury. But she can’t bring herself to say so, of course they are never going to leave Barrøy, it is an impossible idea, especially now that the First Winter Storm is in its death throes, beyond the creaking walls, in these situations people are not themselves and cannot see that once you settle on an island, you never leave, an island holds on to what it has with all its might and main.

  13

  In the following days they walk along the beaches in the south of the island, Hans Barrøy with a pitchfork, Martin with a boathook and the others each carrying a rake. They rummage through the piles of seaweed the storm has thrown up, huge brown swathes over the fields and stone walls, entwined like tough, slippery rope, they tear them apart and find bits of wood and line tubs and bailers and a mysterious tea chest with a scorpion on the lid, a wall clock without any works and a swollen book with the print gone, objects that they hold up and show each other with cries of wonderment, whereafter they carry them up on land and place them in the cart hitched to the stoop-necked horse which stands there chewing, then lies down because it can’t be bothered to stand any longer, it lies there between the shafts of the cart like an ox.

  The horse.

  It is not a young horse. It wasn’t when it arrived either. It came by boat, the biggest ship Ingrid has seen, and was hoisted ashore in a strap by a crane and deposited on the rocky ground by the Lofoten boat shed, where one day they are going to build a quay. At that time the horse was wild and had an evil look, it showed the whites of its eyes and kicked and whinnied and bit. All they could do was cut it loose and let it run free until it came to its senses. It was supposed to be a quiet horse, it certainly was when it had stood peacefully in a meadow at the Trading Post, where in truth it had had its day. That was why Hans got it so cheap. For a song.

  But it was amusing to watch this new islander. It galloped like a lunatic across the island, pulled up suddenly when it met the sea to the east and charged off south until it met more sea and turned in its tracks again and ran north and tossed its head and gave it everything it had, the old nag, until once more it met a wall of sea and carried on and on like this until it had visited so many nooks and crannies of its new home that it was forced to realise it was on an island which it, too, would never leave.

  But it wasn’t a good-natured horse.

  It was in the cowshed with the other animals, but had to be given its own trough and a partition between it and the cows because it bit and kicked, and only Hans could manage it, at first by dint of a stick and his boot. But gradually they came to a kind of agreement, whereby the horse could basically do what it wished, and there was no real problem with that, so long as it pulled the cartfuls of hay and peat and the mower, which they could only use on the four flattest meadows, and in addition a simple plough that Hans had been given at no extra cost, to make the potato plot bigger and easier to work, yes, on these conditions Hans could turn a blind eye to it lying down and sleeping a lot and tossing its head wildly which meant that his daughter couldn’t ride it, not even when he was holding the bridle. But it didn’t have a name.

  Everything on the island that was wild had a name.

  Bird’s-foot trefoil, clover, Aaron’s rod, stork’s beak, buttercup, heath-spotted orchid, meadowsweet, angelica, harebell, foxglove, saxifrage, mayweed and sorrel. Herring gull, auk, cormorant, guillemot, puffin, heron, sandpiper, curlew, wheatear and the white wagtail. Vole and sea urchin, razor clam, giant’s kettle and North Wind Ridge, crowberry, calluna, rhubarb, nettle and whooper swans which greet two seasons with mournful trumpet fanfares . . . And everything that was tame had two names, cows, sheep, cats and even the pig, which they had for only six months, but not the horse, and that is a double oddity as it is both a domestic animal yet so unlike all the others of the same kind, but that is how it is with this animal, it is like nothing else.

  Now the cart is full and Hans pokes the horse in the ribs with the tip of his boot and brings it to its feet, clicks his tongue and walks beside it up through the Acres to the boat shed in the north, where he gives it some dry hay in a canvas sack, which he ties to the door, so that the beast doesn’t take it and run away.

  They unload all the items the storm has brought to the shores, sort through them, it is mostly wood, which is sawn up and stacked, but there are also twenty-eight glass floats, which Martin will see to, five markers with or without buoys, one with sixty yards of rope in tow, which Hans rolls up and hangs on a hook in the boat shed. Four whole net pegs, with line, five fish boxes, some of which are taken to the Lofoten shed, three line tubs, one missing a single stave, to be repaired by Martin, enough poles to make half a drying rack, a ship’s hold cover that it requires two of them to lift, six sea boots, all left feet and only one that can’t be used because someone has cut off the heel, or else it has been bitten off.

  And a carnival mask.

  Hans holds it up in front of his face to frighten Ingrid, but removes it again quickly because it stinks and has to be washed in hot water.

  It is a devil’s mask, with red lightning for eyebrows and a black moustache and empty eye holes, a toothless mouth and high white cheekbones with red whirls which make it look both dangerous and genial. A stupid, vacuous face. It will probably be fine if they can get the slime and seaweed and barnacles off – a hue of its own, like crackled varnish, giving it an unusual depth – enough to secure it a place on the wall in the parlour where it will hang for an age before being discovered by a stranger to the house, who offers a high price for it. He says that of course it isn’t worth as much as he is offering, but a mask hanging here, a foreign body in a simple house on a remote island, that makes it especially interesting, it has to be a sign of something, the stranger says, without giving any further explanation.

  But this kind of talk makes the islanders sceptical, so they don’t sell it, this mask can stay on the parlour wall, now they also know it is French, it costs them nothing to hang on to it, they believe in God, not in signs.

  After the storm they also find five tarred posts, all with drill holes, many of the bolts are intact, all of them new-looking. This makes them suspect they are debris from the same quay. So someone has a lost a whole quay in this storm, a very new quay. And this someone can’t be far away, perhaps it is even folk they know on one of the islands to the south, so Hans and Martin pick up the posts and put them with the others they have collected for constructing what will one day be their own quay, but in a separate pile. They tell each other that such precious timber should be exempt from the rule that after storms finders are keepers, this is almost like finding a boat adrift, with a number and name, and that belongs to the owner, until further notice. But they have a lot of material now, so even if the posts can’t be used straight away, the idea has moved a step closer, the idea that they cannot live here without a quay.

  14

  In February the sea is sometimes a turquoise mirror. Snow-covered Barrøy resembles a cloud in the sky. It is the frost that makes the sea green, and clearer, and calm and viscous, like jelly. Then it can completely congeal with a translucent film on the surface and change from one state to another. The island has acquired a rim of ice, which also surrounds the closest islets, it has increased in size.

  Ingrid stands in woollen lugg boots on a floor of glass midway between the island and Moltholmen and beneath her she can see seaweed and fish and shells in a summer landscape. Sea urchins and starfish and black rocks in white sand and fish darting through a swaying forest of kelp, the ice is a magnifying glass, as clear as air, she is floating on the water and six years old, it is impossible not to walk on the ice once it has formed.

  She
has watched it become thicker and safer, she has smashed a hole in it with a stone, she has stolen one of her father’s axes and chopped at it, she has wriggled her way yard after yard from the shore, and whatever can’t be smashed can be walked on.

  Now she is walking in her sleep over to Moltholmen, which also resembles a cloud in the sky, she is sitting in the snow, taking deep breaths, she discovers it is no more dangerous on ice than on land. She ventures out onto the ice again and teeters back, there isn’t a sound in the world, no wind, no birds, not even the sea.

  She takes a run-up and slides, runs and throws herself onto her stomach and slides back towards the island and she is twenty or so yards from land when a voice cuts through the silence. It is her mother, who has seen her from the yard and comes racing towards her gesticulating wildly with her mouth agape, over wall and crag, powdery snow puffing up around her feet.

  But then she stops on the beach, as if she has met a barrier, and starts running to and fro, obstructed by a hindrance that isn’t there. That makes Ingrid laugh. She takes another run-up and slides, her mother screams no, no, continuing to run back and forth behind the invisible barrier until something in her eyes snaps and she takes a first step onto the ice, her arms outstretched like a tightrope walker, holding her breath and biting her lip, her fury doesn’t relent until she has grabbed her daughter, sure in the knowledge that both of them are safe.

  Maria stiffens and stands looking around, she can’t believe it, they are floating.

  “Come on,” she says.

  They take a few sliding steps, then a run-up, and slide the last few yards to the shore laughing and gasping for breath. But Ingrid pulls herself free and goes back on the ice. Maria screams no, no, again, but follows her. They hold hands and slide along the shore to the north, into coves and round promontories, between tiny skerries and islets until they hear a voice and spot Barbro walking from the boat shed with her chair, staring at them, horror-stricken. They return to the shore and drag her onto the ice, sit her down on the chair and spin her round, slide her past the northern tip of the island, but don’t go ashore here either because Barbro has acquired a taste for it now too, they keep whirling her round, she screams and dribbles, round Ytterneset and as far as the ruins in Karvika.

  There they walk up into the snow and carry the chair home. Barbro is not allowed to take it outside, not even when she goes to the boat shed to mend nets.

  *

  The only person not to go on the ice is Martin. He stays indoors refusing to believe there is any ice, even though they insist, there has never been ice here before, the tides make it impossible, no matter how hard the frost or how great the silence. He has no intention of going to look either. But when his son returns home safe and sound from Lofoten once again, at about the same time as the oystercatchers come back, and Hans asks if there is anything new, Martin tells him that they had ice here this winter, all around the island, it was only there for a few hours, but it was so thick that they could walk on it, until a gale broke it up and washed it ashore, where it lay like a rampart of broken glass for several weeks until it melted, that was at the end of March.

  The son asks if he has completely lost his mind. And old Martin regrets having told him.

  15

  Two days into the New Year they see lights in the winter darkness. Uncle Erling’s boat appears out of the night and bobs up and down off the sheer rock face, known as the Hammer, until the islanders have collected themselves. It doesn’t take long. They have been waiting for this moment.

  If the weather is good Hans places a wobbly plank between the Hammer and the railing on the boat and, like a circus performer, carries on board ten line tubs, three crates of floats, twelve sea markers, rigging and a heavy Lofoten chest, which one of the hired hands has to help him with, rugs and barrels of sour milk and oilskins, while Uncle Erling hangs out of the wheelhouse window inspecting the weather and chatting to their father, Martin, who is standing on the brow of the rock with his hands in his pockets, as though they had last seen each other yesterday whereas in fact it was eight months ago, in May, when Hans was delivered to this same place after the previous season in Lofoten. But nothing has happened since, no-one has died and no-one has been born, and our Helga says hello by the way.

  If the weather is bad Hans also puts out this plank, but it takes him much, much longer to get the fishing equipment on board. Uncle Erling hangs out of the wheelhouse then too, and yells the same phrases, which are borne on the wind before reaching land, while manoeuvring the heaving boat with his left hand so that it stays just clear of the rock face every time Ingrid thinks, this is it, there is going to be a disaster, and closes her eyes.

  Martin still doesn’t lend a hand.

  He stands there, the skipper of this island, leaving his younger son to struggle with the gear while he chats with his older son in the wheelhouse about something in exactly the same way he would do if there were no wind.

  Maria and Barbro are also present, their arms folded over their chests, leaning against the wind, their headscarves flapping like pennants. Maria sometimes shouts an amusing remark over to Uncle Erling, who grins and answers something Ingrid can’t catch, but which Maria laughs at and Martin ignores. Barbro would like to help her brother with the tubs, but she knows they don’t want women on a sea-going vessel. For safety’s sake, they don’t have waffles on board or brown cheese either, and they never whistle, whistle at sea and you are as good as done for, whether you believe in God or fate, it makes no difference.

  Ingrid is freezing cold, frozen to the marrow, she always is when she stands here watching her father leave. It is the second day of the year, the saddest of all three hundred and sixty-five, and it is brought to a close by the sight of the swaying aft lantern which recedes into the roaring night like a burning ember up a chimney stack.

  Then the gravity takes hold of them.

  Not the gravity of the storm, but the year’s and the island’s slow lessons in loneliness. Suddenly there are fewer of them, they walk around and have lost the head of the island. They talk in hushed voices or are silent, short-tempered and impatient. Furthermore, Lofoten is a place you don’t necessarily return from unscathed, you are dicing with death, where more than two hundred men lose their lives every winter, which they don’t say aloud, they only hint at it. Neither are there any cemeteries on earth with more graveless crosses than those Our Lord holds His hand over along this coast.

  And so the days pass, in January.

  Along with three more months. Of frost and snowdrifts and Old Nick.

  Until, strangely enough, this gravity is illuminated with new hope. It rises with the sun in the black sky. First, like a bruised eye at the beginning of January, then bloodier and bloodier through February, until it finally lights up in the sky like the crater it is to be; they have sent a man on a wing and a prayer into the seething darkness, now they are hoping to get him back alive, perhaps even with his pockets full of money, this after all is what gives the island hope, their head of family has his own fishing gear and a full catch share.

  They also receive word from him, one letter.

  Letters like this are delivered by Thomas from the neighbouring island of Stangholmen, or by somebody sent from Havstein, where the men stay at home in the winter and fish local waters, they normally arrive one fine day at Easter.

  But this letter is short.

  And it isn’t written the way they clearly remember their husband and brother and son and father used to speak, it is couched in ornate, biblical language, as though it has been penned by a stranger. They feel he has moved even further away from them, to such a degree that they would actually have preferred to be without the whole epistle. Maria says so too, though now at least they know he is safe and sound, for the time being anyway, the fishing has been as it always has been, they have been informed about his forced time ashore and a man who steams cod liver and is also a cobbler and has sewn Hans a new pair of hobnail boots, so he won’t freeze in hi
s old ones, and that is something, yes, it is indeed, upon mature reflection.

  Then at last he comes back home, as his own lean self, looking three years older with half-crazed eyes, from both an urge to be active and a lack of sleep, as though he can’t make up his mind whether to start on this quay they need straight away or simply go to bed, for ever.

  They are strange days, these days after the homecoming, the return of a father and a husband and a brother and a son. It is also the end of April now and the light has driven away the darkness for good, there is not even any night, only morning, the lambs have appeared with the first green shoots of grass and the eider duck has waddled ashore. The traveller can be content that everything is as it is and has been because it is always the person who has been away who gains the greatest pleasure from knowing time stands still.

  There is laughter in the North Chamber in the morning, after which Ingrid’s parents come down to the kitchen, where there is an aroma of coffee again, after a break of four months, women don’t drink coffee alone, and Martin is saving up, he says. Hans tells stories from his stay up north, anecdotes that have to be explained and embellished. He has to keep pointing out how much Ingrid has grown, she is almost too big to sit on his lap now, she sits there anyway and will be sitting there for a few years yet. It is all eggs and spring farming and eider down and the peaceful summer months, when they work round the clock, and then comes autumn, when the quay becomes a reality, not a quay of tarred posts as planned but one built of rock, this is because everything is not as it should be in Ingrid’s happy childhood after all, there is unrest in the world, it is ablaze.

  16

  They say that two things in life are inescapable, poverty and war. And this winter has not only been hard, but also mean, with poor catches. But today, in June, Hans is at the Trading Post, where he hears a foreign language, it is Swedish. Five men, unknown to him, are standing in a circle around Tommesen, the owner, and one of them is speaking Swedish. The others say nothing. But they are Swedish, too.