The Unseen

by Roy Jacobsen

  35

  More than a year passes before the opportunity presents itself to have the question of brothers and sisters cleared up; this type of thing just doesn’t go away.

  It is a murderously hot summer, the hottest in living memory. The sky and sea merge in a thick stew that hangs over them day and night and scorches and stunts the grass and makes the potato plants go limp while the animals and humans sweat and pant. They walk around semi-naked in the swarms of flies on a tropical island by the Arctic Circle.

  Hans moves the stove in the Swedes’ boathouse onto the crag because it is impossible to cook indoors anymore. They sleep with the windows and doors open and bathe every day. In the sea. Even old Martin has a dip, he wades through the water, like Hans and Barbro, while Lars dives from the rocks and Maria and Ingrid swim over to Moltholmen and sit on the smooth rocks in the sun and close their eyes and think about nothing until they swim back.

  Barrøy is a paradise.

  But by the beginning of July the new rainwater tank is empty. Then the peat bogs dry out, one by one, after that the rock pools on Skogsholmen, this is becoming ridiculous. And as there is no wind, Hans and Martin have to row when they go to the Trading Post with their empty churns and buckets. But they have run out of water there as well. They have to go to the mountain stream by Malvika, how wonderful it would have been with some wind in their sails, here where at all other times there was never anything but.

  They do two trips a day, after which their backs ache so much that they can manage no more. Humans don’t drink much, but they drink more than usual, and the animals can’t get enough.

  Then the last patches of snow on the mountains disappear, the stream by Malvika dries up, the gulls don’t take off anymore, only waddle away when Lars chases them, and otherwise bob up and down on the sluggish sea that has become a desert.

  Hans conducts hushed conversations with Maria, will they have to slaughter some animals?

  Maria hedges, this is a question for a man, and for him to answer. And driven by a desperate impulse, he equips his family with pickaxes and spades, they have to start digging, at the bottom of the old well in the bog, which is also dry.

  Hans and Lars are down a black hole cursing and fighting off flies and clegs while the others pull up bucket after bucket of rust-red soil and spread it over hollows in fields and meadows. They are born of the soil and tied to it with indestructible bonds, but now it is not only under their nails and soles but in their pores and thoughts, in their ears, hair and eyes, the last area it conquers is the patch in the centre of their backs where frantic hands cannot reach in their hysterical battle with clegs and gadflies.

  But they can wash in a sea which for once is warm, their bodies give off brown clouds, which they swim away from, white and new-born, licking salt from their lips before they go up again to engage with the well. Even an island has to have ground water, it doesn’t flow like a ship of course, but is moored to the earth’s core, Hans has said it before, and water is down there, it has to be.

  A kind of desperation has entered his life, worry is written in the whites of his eyes, this is dangerous, a danger so unnatural it has not been possible to predict, when was there last such a summer as this?

  Was it this that wiped out the civilisation in Karvika?

  A drought?

  Out here?

  One afternoon they hear a distant scream from Lars deep down in the shaft, and the next bucket is full of mud, wet sludge.

  If they were covered in soil before, it was nothing compared with now. Lars and Hans strip off and work naked in the hole like a pair of stokers in a scene from the Bible, wet echoes of their curses resound, and when they climb up the ladder for a break the others can’t tell the difference between the two of them, except by their height.

  “Hvur’s it goen’ then?”

  “Ya-a . . .”

  When they walk back, nice and clean after the next wash, Hans suddenly stops in the meadow and says shh and puts a hand to his ear, he has heard something, the sound of water. His eyes trickle as well, and the others have to look away. He sets off at a run, they follow him and lie down in a circle around the gunshot wound in the island and stare down at a stygian eye staring furiously back at them, they don’t make a sound.

  The water smells of fart and marsh and oil, but there is no rainbow reflection in it. Hans orders bits of old bed linen to be stretched over barrels and buckets, to act as a sieve. They can see the bottom of the first bucket already. They give this water to the cows, which are standing around them gasping. The water in the next one is clearer, the trickling sound hasn’t become less faint but more pronounced, like a gurgling stream. And the following morning they are busy setting up a hoisting contraption over the well hole, a five-legged tepee of poles with a block and tackle and ropes and beneath it dangles a board which Lars can sit on. They lower him carefully, he scoops one full bucket of water after the other from the surface, they winch them up and give them to the animals, which moo and bleat, now the sheep have also flocked around them, panicky and relieved at the same time. They can make coffee with the water. By evening they can also drink it as it comes, it is icy cold and tastes of nothing.

  *

  That same night they watered the potato field. The following morning it was as dry as before, but the haulms were now up to their knees. They hoisted Lars up and down, he scooped and scooped, they watered the potatoes all day long and also the next night, the water pearled in the dusty furrows and evaporated, but the grass became even more erect. And so a week passed.

  Then the rains came.

  And hit them with the sensation of having gone through a week like no other, seven sacred days from when they found water beneath their own feet to the heavens opening above them. Rich, despairing days, the final proof that they themselves rule over their destinies. The island had been brown like a November day from the beginning of June to the end of July. Now it was greener than ever, even Rose Acre was no longer red. Then came sunshine and rain in turn, and they had a meagre hay crop. The harvest on the islets was poor, too, but it is still better to slaughter animals before Christmas than in the middle of summer. And one afternoon Ingrid, lying on her back beside her mother in the freshly mown Scab Acre, realised they had survived and the critical question could be asked, in a new atmosphere of freedom, why didn’t she have any brothers or sisters?

  Maria raised herself onto her elbows and said that children are not something you have, you are given them, they are gifts. Ingrid asked why some are given children and others are not, although something told her she ought to keep quiet.

  “Has tha missed haven’ someone?” her mother asked in a sharp tone. But immediately changed tack and asked if Ingrid remembered when Nelly had been here the previous year, how Nelly had cried when she had to return home, that was because they hadn’t teased her on Barrøy when she stammered, not even Lars had, Nelly could thank Maria for that, just so that Ingrid didn’t go getting any ideas.

  Ingrid looked at her, in puzzlement.

  “She’s got brothers ’n’ sisters,” Maria said pointedly. And Ingrid wanted to ask what she meant by that, as though she wished to hear it all again, that being on your own had some value, but a shadow had crossed her face, it was Lars, who had crept up on them soundlessly and was blocking the sun. Maria peered up and asked where Grandad was.

  “He’s haven’ a nap,” the boy said.

  His trousers were too big, Barbro had cut off the legs, they were held up by braces she had plaited with float line, he walked around like that all day, barefoot, semi-naked and wild, he had the body of an adult, was seven years old and about to start school.

  “Hvar?” Maria asked.

  “Thar,” said the boy, pointing in a direction that made her look towards a part of the island where Martin never went, where no-one went, over by Karvika and the ruins. But her eyes didn’t find what they were looking for, so she got up, brushed grass off her skirt and kept searching, until a little cry es
caped from her mouth and she broke into a run. Ingrid and Lars stared at her in astonishment.

  36

  Martin, a man who could not get enough of the sun, had stretched out in the shade to rest, he seemed to be sleeping as he always slept, all that was missing was Karnot, the cat, on his belly.

  Maria turned and stopped the children, spotted her husband, who had put down his scythe and was walking towards them at a leisurely pace. From the house came Barbro, not knowing what to expect, they all came, as if at a signal.

  Hans squatted down on his haunches at his father’s side and laid a hand on Martin’s cheek. Nobody said anything. He straightened up, fixed his gaze on Lars and said he should go with him to fetch something from the quay house. Ingrid heard them talking, Lars eagerly, her father explaining something, she couldn’t hear what.

  They returned with the ladder they had used when constructing the rainwater tank and two of the rugs the Swedes had slept on. Hans placed one of them over the ladder. He and Barbro lifted their father onto it, spread the other rug over him, carried the ladder to the boat shed and lowered it onto the rollers where the færing usually rested. After that they closed both doors and also the opening at the back so no birds could get at him.

  Next morning they left for the mainland in two boats. Barbro and Hans rowed the larger of the two færings. Ingrid and Maria sat in the stern. Lars was in the forepeak, crying his eyes out. In tow they had a rowing boat carrying Martin on the ladder, there was no wind.

  They put in at the small landing stage beneath the Trading Post. Hans went up and came back with Pastor Johannes Malmberget, who had to have assistance climbing down the steep steps. He took their hands in his, one by one, and spoke the soothing words he had uttered so many times, though he still managed to make them sound sincere. The steamer had just delivered ice, so they could put the body in cold storage.

  “Has tha minded th’ clout?”

  Yes, they had remembered to bring a bundle of clothes with them, Martin’s Sunday best.

  What about the coffin?

  Yes, they had the money.

  Hans and Barbro carried the ladder bearing their father up the steps and into the cold-storage room and put it down on two trestles between towering stacks of ice blocks covered in sawdust, which had been cut out of a lake last winter and had even survived the warmest summer in living memory, it was comforting and cold in there, and so quiet you could hear the drips.

  They went back out, onto the wharf, where a handful of people had collected in the sunshine. One of the Trading Post workers came and shook Hans by the hand and said something he wasn’t intended to hear. He also shook Barbro’s hand. The funeral was discussed. Pastor Malmberget apologised for not accompanying them down the steep steps. Hans said it didn’t matter. They shook hands once again and went down to the færing and rowed back home with the other boat in tow.

  *

  Karnot the cat and Lars mourned most. Lars howled and smashed everything in his path. Hans was silent. Barbro quietly wept when she thought nobody was watching. Maria’s face was stiff and pallid, like the time she feared they were going to lose the animals in the drought. And Ingrid discovered that some grief is more heartfelt than other grief, above all hers. She went to the Hammer near the quay house hoping a large hand would sweep her into the sea and hold her beneath the waves until she died, as she didn’t have the strength to jump, and she couldn’t go to pieces on land either, even though she was sobbing with all her heart, until Maria came and tore her away from the edge of the crag and told her to pull herself together, now maybe she understood what she had done when she went away with Lars in the færing, Martin was an old man, children are children, there is an ocean of difference.

  Ingrid twisted and squirmed away and became a snake and then a hard, silent knot. She was allowed to sleep next to her mother in the North Chamber, while her father lay alone in the South Chamber, and before her eyes closed, that old burning sensation was back, in her stomach, from the time when she wondered whether she could trust her father or her mother, or indeed anyone at all.

  *

  The day the funeral was to take place Uncle Erling docked at the new quay. With his boat full of relatives Ingrid had heard a lot about, but only seen a few of, her father’s four sisters, with their husbands, her mother’s three younger sisters, with two spouses, Uncle Erling and his wife Helga with her elderly father as well as all fifteen brothers and sisters of widely different ages, picked up from various islands and islets over the last twenty-four hours and sailed here, to Barrøy, to collect the remaining few.

  They climbed aboard and shook hands and greeted left, right and centre without a word being spoken, then a massive calm descended over this ark chugging over towards the Trading Post in the continuing sunshine.

  They shouted for a gangway and stood for a few moments witnessing a ship being securely moored before they moved off in a body, performing an unsteady jig, and made their way up to the Store and the houses, to the most windswept parish in all of the Lord’s Realm of Horrors, clad in their glittering black finery, a slow march to the church, where everything proceeded as it should with Pastor Johannes Malmberget at the helm, accompanied by his comely wife and two small sons, plus Thomas and Inga from Stangholmen, who had come over by oar power, as usual, and about a dozen other islanders, more people than Ingrid had ever had around her, all of them deferentially nodding at Malmberget’s well-chosen words about Martin’s forty-three winters in an open boat on the sea around Træna, that was why he had such coarse hands. With a life like that it was only by the grace of God that they had a body to commit to the earth, although the sea is also a heaven, we must never lose sight of this fact, especially not out here, nor should we forget that the old man passed away so peacefully, at the place where he would have wished to pass away, Martin Konrad Hansen Barrøy, on his own island, finally resting here beside his beloved Kaja, his somewhat prematurely departed wife, a storm-battered yearning has at long last come to fruition, that is how we have to look upon it as we stand here with quivering lips and our tears at high tide, sighed Johannes Malmberget, wiping the sweat from his scalp with a red handkerchief, whereafter he raised his eyes to behold the craggy mountains and give the sexton the sign to start lowering the coffin into what, in Ingrid’s eyes, looked alarmingly like the well they had dug a good month ago, amen, it was unbearable.

  *

  On the way back to the island Hans remembered something, grabbed the wheel from his brother’s hands and turned back to fetch the ladder and two rugs they had left lying on the wharf outside the cold-storage room, it was as good as new, that ladder.

  Ingrid was speechless.

  Not that she had said so much previously that day. And the priest’s sober words were further undermined by a noticeable change in the mood on board, the peace and calm of the churchyard was supposed to be eternal, wasn’t it, even the wind held its breath, but now laughter could be heard by the hold cover, by the port railing one of Ingrid’s aunts was hugging Maria, who was holding her hand to her mouth to stop herself laughing too. The smallest children had begun to run wild around the deck, unchecked by their elders. And through the window in the wheelhouse Ingrid could see a bottle of spirits balancing on the compass, the only perpendicular object in the heavy swell, as well as five green glasses which passed from hand to hand between her father and his companions.

  They moored the boat on Barrøy, the hold hatch was thrown open and crates of food and drink hoisted ashore, bed linen and clothes. And a swarm of strangers surged in over the island rediscovering its every long-forgotten nook and cranny.

  “Does tha mind th’ North Wind Ridge?”

  “Thar’s Kvitsanda . . .”

  The crags, the meadows, the coves . . . there was not an inch of this island these strangers didn’t know like the back of their hands and were overjoyed to see again. Ingrid was no longer a resident of her own island, with all her insights into its treasures and secrets, but a dumbstruck visitor
to the lives of others, as they once had been and always would be, for no childhood can be erased.

  One of her father’s sisters fell to her knees and dug up an overgrown eider-duck house, which Ingrid had never seen, then she found another, which Ingrid knew nothing about either, cleaned it up and wanted some slate tiles to mend it, Ingrid was told where she could find some. The guests didn’t need to be shown anything, they knew where the down was and where the fishing grounds were, where the eagles nested, all the shelves and secret drawers of the island’s larder. Even the children who had never been here before had an irritating tendency to feel at home, went into the boat shed and quay house and rooted around, two boys launched the rowing boat without so much as a by-your-leave and took Lars with them, he was whooping with glee and pointing this way and that and had forgotten what day it was, the best day of his life, while the girls stood on dry land like tiny black tents and didn’t want to join in, they just stared and acted as though they were sisters, presumably because their own islands lay close together, Ingrid’s was more remote.

  But a girl of Ingrid’s age was standing in front of her, looking at Ingrid with a sorrowful countenance beneath dark, heavy eyebrows, she also said something, but again came the sound of Maria’s laughter as she and her sister-in-law set about clearing Grandad’s room so they could scrub it and remove all traces.

  “Is tha Ingrid?”

  Ingrid nodded, it was too early to say anything.

  “A’m Josefine, fro’ Gåsværet.”

  Ingrid nodded again and spotted Karnot darting between the unfamiliar legs, having been banished from her own home, which she had refused to leave since Martin’s death, now she scuttled down to the boat shed, looking as if she was planning to take to the water.