The Unseen

by Roy Jacobsen

  In the salting room Hans hears that the situation in Sweden is bad because of the war, the five men outside are bricklayers and willing to work for only their board and lodging, now they are going to lay the plinth of Tommesen’s new barn, and after that the foundations for the new stockfish store.

  Hans has actually come to the Post to buy salt and some herring barrels, but now he buys bolts, boards and six tarred posts, together with one hundred and sixty running metres of planking, two by five inches, for money of which he has only half. He has to have the materials delivered. He can’t afford this either, but he doesn’t give a damn.

  When he gets back to the island he talks to Maria in private and the following day sets about digging post holes on the shore, without consulting Martin. Not on the far side of the Lofoten Hammer. The posts are driven down in the cove on this side of it. This is the beginning of a boat shed, far too big, which is to stand on stakes so that it can be entered from the land on what resembles a gently sloping barn bridge, and there will be a large door in the west-facing wall, a platform jutting out with some steps down to the shore, so that at high tide small boats can moor. But this is only half of the dream, in the old man’s view, as if his son hasn’t got the nerve to go for the whole thing, or the money, as usual?

  *

  It rains all June. Night and day. May has been too dry, but now the tank is filled again, the ponds, too, and the rock pools which the animals drink from. The trenches in the bog, where they have excavated peat in recent years, are filled to over their banks and become square, brown lakes, they have to take care the animals don’t fall in.

  And there is no haymaking this year.

  But in the middle of July a steady easterly wind sets in, the weather clears up and everything dries out, the marsh-brown lakes subside, leaving a black, cracked crust. They manage to save half of the hay. Before it starts to rain again, non-stop. And the rest of the hay is lost. But at the beginning of September the new boathouse is finished. They don’t fill it with the fishing gear and tools they have had lying outdoors: there are five bunk beds there, with fresh straw and blankets, a table in front of the window, two chairs and a bench.

  Three days later the Trading Post cargo boat arrives with five Swedish workmen on board. They have walked all the way from their own country, through forests and over mountains, it has taken three weeks, each of them carrying a rucksack full of provisions and tools, during the summer they worked at the Trading Post, now they are here, and they are good.

  They blast the rocks they need from the Hammer and build, employing the same technique Hans used when he built the rainwater tank. After only a week they are above the high-water mark and can work in dry clothes, it has been a fine, clear autumn with colours which last and a föhn that sweeps over man and beast like moist breath. During this Indian summer they also salvage some of the lost hay, and the whole family spends a good week on the islets scything, they row the hay home every evening and dry it on the slopes to the south of the yard, then carry it straight to the barn, it is green, but dry.

  And the Swedes are another metre higher.

  But they eat an awful lot. Bread with rhubarb jam, which Maria and Barbro bake and boil. On Sundays they are also given butter and coffee. And every day Maria boils fish and serves up the last of their old potatoes, she empties the cellar and for the first time since she arrived on the island she seizes the opportunity to give it a proper cleaning. She washes and scrubs and finds three mouse holes, which Hans seals with cement. They repair a frost-damaged outer wall with peat, and they put in new stalls on the lower floor of the barn, then the potato harvest begins. They dig them up while the hard-working Swedes toil their way another metre upwards. Now the only question is whether the platform should be of wood or stone.

  Hans has used all the materials he has on the boathouse where the guests sleep, a little more in fact, the floor of the quay will have to be stone too.

  It is a masterpiece. He has tears in his eyes the day he can walk on the quay, a rock-solid mosaic of red granite in all Barrøy’s hues and shades, a church floor grouted with white shell sand. On the seaward side, eight bolted posts lead down into the sea, three of them rising about a metre above the quay so the boats will have something to moor to. They can accommodate a steamship. And they can hold it in place with two lines, a forward and aft spring. But now the proud Lofoten boat shed has become so pitifully small, it looks like an outside toilet, badly positioned and a mottled grey. Hans already has new plans in place for next year.

  *

  It has been strange having foreigners on the island. After all, the population has doubled. And the very first week they have to keep Barbro away from the building site.

  “A want t’ fuck,” she shouts, and Maria has to cover Ingrid’s ears. Her sister-in-law “isn’t all thar”.

  Barbro shouts some other things that Ingrid shouldn’t hear. But Ingrid doesn’t like her ears being covered, and in the end she realises what it is all about, Barbro tells her, and at the same time reveals that one of the Swedes is called Lars Klemet. He is no more than twenty and the only one of them who speaks in a way she can understand. Ingrid likes Lars Klemet, he is funny and jokes and talks to her when he is not working, and he can sing. Barbro can, too. She takes her chair to the Hammer and sits there like a vigilant queen watching the workers building, men doing their work, slim, naked bodies glistening with sweat and salt and getting browner and browner in the long late summer, sinews and muscles at play beneath the skin of a man at the peak of his powers. She bakes and takes them fresh bread and a new pot of jam, if there is one thing they have enough of, it is rhubarb. Lars Klemet is moreover the only one who washes in the sea, so he smells more of salt water and seaweed than horse, and also says that he has never had better food and pinches Barbro’s buttocks when nobody is watching, but how big is the island?

  It is a little under a kilometre from north to south, and half a kilometre from east to west, it has lots of crags and small grassy hollows and dells, deep coves cut into its coast and there are long rugged headlands and three white beaches. And even though on a normal day they can stand in the yard and keep an eye on the sheep, they are not so easy to spot when they are lying down in the long grass, the same goes for people, even an island has its secrets.

  Another factor is that Maria and Hans, and not least Martin, gradually lose interest in what Barbro gets up to, there is the haymaking and hay-drying to see to.

  When the Swedes finally leave – the islanders shake all of them by the hand, including Ingrid – they are each given a small sum of money in addition to the board and lodging they have received, it has cost Hans everything he has, and more, but he knows what he has in return, a quay of stone that will last forever, so he can’t send the workmen away without giving them more than they ask for. He should have given them what they deserve, but he doesn’t have that, so the result is a compromise, which is to the satisfaction of both parties. They leave in rain, it sets in at the beginning of October and stays, and even though the people on the island heave a sigh of relief at being back to the number they usually are, they think it is sad. Having visitors has its advantages. When they leave, the islanders are left with only themselves and feel this might not be enough. Visitors create a loss. They make it clear to the islanders that they lack something, presumably they did so before their guests arrived, and will continue to do so.

  17

  Hans has a telescope. What is special about it is that he just has it, somewhere, and never uses it. He doesn’t even remember where it came from. But now they are moving tackle and equipment from the jam-packed boat shed to the Swedes’ boathouse. He finds a roll of oiled canvas and stands with it in his hands, wondering. It has been in his possession for as long as he can remember. He unrolls the canvas and thinks, this is the telescope, yes . . .

  It is a telescope that can magnify forty times, a black lacquer- and leather-looking German model with four brass rings and an eyepiece, which is also m
ade of brass, and a screw to adjust the focus.

  He shows it to his father.

  Martin says the same, yes, that’s the telescope.

  To the question of where it came from, however, he can give no more precise an answer than when they discuss the ruins in Karvika, he must have inherited it from his father, who was both a ship’s pilot and reserve lighthouse man, when he wasn’t a fisherman, that is, the telescope looks as if it would be at home on a sailing ship.

  Hans takes it outside into the clear autumn light and inspects it more carefully, wondering why he never played with it as a child. Then he remembers. He wasn’t allowed to. He mentions this to his father. Martin smiles and says he wasn’t allowed to play with it either, his father didn’t let him.

  Hans sets it up on a sheet of slate they have placed on three stones outside the boathouse as a work table, squats down and focuses. He can see the mountains over on the mainland as clearly as if he were standing at the foot of them, they are already covered with the first snow, it glitters. But he can’t see the coast, where he knows there are houses. The buildings have disappeared, behind the sea, due to the curvature of the earth.

  Martin, too, takes a peek at the footless mountains.

  They smile.

  Hans trains the telescope on the main island, sees the church, the Trading Post, the rectory and the houses, one by one, mumbling that is where Konrad lives, that’s Olav’s place . . . He can see who has curtains in the windows and who has painted his house. But then he straightens up, feeling that he has encroached upon property where he has no business to be.

  He hands the telescope to his father. Martin takes up position and it is not long either before he looks away. Hans has an inkling that they are of the same mind, perhaps they don’t need this telescope. They take a pair of binoculars with them to Lofoten, they don’t use them either, as everything they can see through them vanishes as soon as they stop looking.

  But this telescope is heavy and solid, industrial workmanship of the highest quality, and must be worth a lot of money. Offhand, Hans can’t think of anything else he owns which might be just as valuable, the sextant maybe, or the compass in Erling’s ship, which is also an heirloom.

  Anything else?

  What does he actually have of any value?

  He goes back to the house with the telescope and asks Maria to go up to the South Chamber with him. He sets it up on the windowsill and tells her to look across at Buøy, her childhood island home. She kneels on the bed, catches sight of her house and gives a start. He asks her what she can see. She says she is not sure, closes one eye again and concentrates. He lies down on the bed and looks up at her. She says she thinks she can see people. He can tell by her facial expression that she is bemused, as if she has tasted something and can’t decide whether she likes it or not.

  “Let me have a look,” he says.

  He can see the buildings, and count them, eighteen, including all the outhouses and the boat sheds. A boat moored by a jetty, it slowly sinks until only the top of the mast is visible, then rises just as slowly again. It is the swell that makes it disappear, and the swell that brings it back into view. But he can’t see any people, though there is something, it might be sheep, or a horse, an autumn-ploughed field . . .

  Maria takes the telescope from him again.

  He lies back down with his arms behind his head and tells her they have no money. She removes her eye from the telescope and stares at him. He repeats himself, and this time he doesn’t look at her. She says she already knew, in a tone that suggests she wasn’t happy about what she knew. And both of them have lost interest in the telescope.

  She asks him why he is telling her this now. He says he doesn’t know.

  “Is it serious?” she asks. He doesn’t answer. She asks how serious it is. He is sorry he mentioned the matter. Something happens in her eyes. She strikes him with the telescope, across the stomach. He asks if she intends to kill him. She says yes, brandishing the telescope once more. He grips her hands, feels an urge to tear off her clothes and put a smile on her face, in the middle of the day, in working hours, in broad daylight. Instead he gets to his feet and ignores what she screams at him, he knows what she is screaming, and goes downstairs and into the yard, where his father and Ingrid stand looking at him.

  “Hva tha gawpen’ at?”

  Martin looks as though he has been caught red-handed, turns and walks down to the boat shed, his arms dangling by his sides. Hans stands watching him, the telescope in his hands, wondering whether to follow.

  Ingrid asks him what it is. He says it is a telescope. She asks what that is.

  Look, he says, walking over to the barn bridge, where he points it at a tuft of grass, and shows her. She looks into the eyepiece and recoils. That laugh of hers. It hasn’t always been a joy to hear. She has another look, at the houses on Stangholmen, and her smile remains until he says that’s enough and takes the telescope with him down to the boat shed. He and his father stare at each other as if they have some unsorted business.

  Not for long.

  Martin picks up a fish crate containing coils of haddock lines and bait trays and lumbers off towards the new boathouse. Hans rolls up the telescope in the canvas, then follows him and places it on one of the top shelves, where it can stay until the next time it is found by someone who says, yes, that’s the telescope, Hans muses that there must be a reason for the eye not seeing further than it does, that this might be an advantage for both the eye and the object it observes, now at any rate he has forgotten what he didn’t want to think about, money, the most depressing link they have to the mainland.

  18

  Ingrid could hear from the noises in the kitchen alone that something was not as it should be. A sound was missing, the sound of Barbro.

  What was more, her mother’s voice was too loud and it fell silent too abruptly when Ingrid came down the stairs. Outside it was wintry, dark, no wind. In a few hours the sky would be lighter, later in the day they might perhaps catch a glimpse of red sun in the south. But Barbro wasn’t there. She and the færing had disappeared, a search hadn’t been necessary, the footsteps led in only one direction, through the new snow to the boat shed and not only that, both doors were wide open. She hadn’t taken the sail, she had rowed, and on the sea they could see nothing.

  They had several boats, a big and a small rowing boat, and another færing, a Binsdal. But none of them had been put into the water.

  “Hvar’s Barbro?” Ingrid asked.

  “She’s gone,” her mother said.

  The day passed without any more being said. Not even Grandfather’s hands were as they usually were. His face was grey. At bedtime, Ingrid was allowed to sleep in her father’s bed, as she used to do when he was in Lofoten. Maria said they would have to give the sheep more birch twigs in the coming days, it took them longer to eat, the hay was getting short, she was thinking about the cows and the horse. She also said the frost would hopefully relent, then they could let the animals go down to the beach, perhaps there would be milder weather and rain soon so that they could graze on some old grass.

  Ingrid asked if she could knit in bed.

  Maria asked if it wasn’t too cold.

  Not if she had an eiderdown over her shoulders.

  Her mother lay beside her, explaining and showing her how to do it until she dropped off. Then Ingrid put down her knitting and fell asleep as well. When she woke up she saw that her mother was still asleep. So was the cat. From the pale light through the windowpanes she realised they had overslept. This was a new experience for her.

  She got up and went down to the cold kitchen, put wood chippings and kindling in the stove and then peat, the way Barbro had taught her, Barbro had been in charge of the stove. Now Ingrid was. She saw that the peat bin was empty and took it out with her to the shed which was up against the north wall of the barn. It was cold. She kicked away the snow, opened the door on its creaking hinges and filled the bin, decided it was too heavy and took out
half of the peat turfs, closed the door and returned to the house. By then her hands were frozen. She held them over the stove until they became red and began to tingle. Then she went to her grandfather’s room and saw that he was asleep too. She shook him. He got up as if from a bad dream.

  “What th’ devil,” he said when he saw the grey light behind the frosted window panes. “Is that th’ time!”

  Then he went back to sleep.

  Also the next morning. The adults overslept the next morning too. As though they had become lazy or were recuperating after a long period of strain. Or as though Barbro had been the clock in the house, the timekeeper, which had now stopped. But Ingrid got up, lit the fire and fetched peat. On the third day she heard her mother and grandfather arguing in the barn, where he hardly ever set foot. The argument was about the færing, they were angry with Barbro, who had taken the best boat when there were three others.

  But there was something else that gave Ingrid a lead as she stood listening to them: they didn’t appear surprised that Barbro had gone missing, even the most incomprehensible events can be anticipated, and consequently accepted. It was then she realised that Barbro was dead.

  That night too she was allowed to knit in her father’s bed. The yarn was sticky and smelled of lanolin, it was rust red and yellow and made her fingers soft and strong, she could bend them backwards until they cracked, she did that to hold back her tears. Maria told her to stop it. Then she said she could feel from the weather that the frost was soon going to break, and Ingrid, who was so good at knitting, she could make nets, cod nets, too, couldn’t she?

  “Mebbe,” Ingrid said, Barbro had begun to teach her, she had made a small square of thick seine netting, in which they used to carry firewood, a bag, a net basket, which she also used to collect eggs. But it wasn’t necessary, she said as every corner of her body grew warm, for they had enough nets, Barbro had done nothing else all winter, and now, soon, she would be back.