by Roy Jacobsen
Ingrid said yes.
He went back on board and reversed into the gale.
*
In the kitchen at home they had opened Zezenie’s trunk. It contained a dinner service, on which the words KÖNIGZELT, MADE IN POLAND were written, it was stacked between pages of the newspaper Ingrid didn’t read when she was a maidservant at the Tommesens’.
They picked out one item at a time, piled them up on the kitchen table and saved the paper. There were twelve large dinner plates with a gold rim and a flower pattern, twelve large dishes, twelve smaller ones, twelve saucers and twelve bowls. There was twelve of everything except cups, of which there were only eleven, and one of those had no handle. Then there were two gravy boats and two dishes with lids to serve potatoes in and four large serving plates, two round and two oval, two cream jugs of different sizes, a sugar bowl with a lid, a coffee jug with a lid and a thick round bowl, God knows what that was for, but it was just as fancy as all the rest. Barbro said they could use it for gruel, a sort of halfway house between the cooking pot and the dishes. At the bottom of the trunk was a green velvet bag with a gold string and twenty-four tiny silver spoons, they were black. Barbro made room for them in the pantry. Lars and Felix carried the trunk up to the North Chamber. Ingrid boiled some halibut, with a few drops of vinegar in the water and two bay leaves, she had learned that from Zezenie. They ate off the new plates and had clotted sour cream to finish off. Suzanne broke one of the plates. Barbro went into the pantry and fetched another, and said that if Suzanne broke that one too she would get a slap. After the meal Ingrid tended to Felix’s sores and told him to keep them dry for a few days. Felix sent Lars a quizzical look.
45
They couldn’t go out in the boat for three days, but fished with nets from the shore and tied most of the cod in pairs by the tail and hung them up to dry, salted the rest, milked and fed the animals and let the sheep out until they gave up in the bad weather and huddled together in front of the barn door, they wanted to go out when they were in, and to go in when they were out.
And there was no trip to the Store.
Ingrid didn’t manage to wash Maria, either. But after the storms subsided and they had got ready to sail to the mainland, Pastor Malmberget arrived on the milk run boat, accompanied by a doctor. He examined Maria and decided they would have to take her back with them. Ingrid packed the little suitcase that she and Barbro had used when they thought they were leaving the island.
Once the three of them had left she told Lars the trip to the mainland would have to wait. Lars asked why, they were short of almost everything. Ingrid didn’t answer. So Lars didn’t say any more, either.
Ingrid removed the bedding in the South Chamber and washed it in the boiler they had in the Swedes’ boathouse and hung it up to dry in the quay house. She made the bed with fresh linen and said that Barbro wouldn’t need to complain anymore about not having enough space in her own bed, from now on Suzanne would be sleeping with her. Barbro said there was no need. Ingrid said she would be the judge of that. Barbro smiled and kept quiet. Suzanne’s bedclothes were moved to the South Chamber and Ingrid started to teach her to walk, systematically and mercilessly, dressed her and took her out. When it was pouring down they walked back and forth in the quay house or in the boat shed, or in the sitting room.
Lars and Felix went fishing, in a boat using the gill nets from land. Felix’s sores healed and opened up again, they were like swollen white mouths with tiny blood-red tongues. But he didn’t fall so much anymore and sustained no new sores. Ingrid and Barbro milked and fed the animals and cooked. Suzanne was walking better with every day that passed and had also started speaking.
“Stove hot.”
“Yes.”
“An’ th’ chimeney.”
*
Two days before Christmas the wind dropped enough for them to row over to buy some things, they didn’t dare raise the sail, and Felix was sick the whole way across, throwing up and wanting to die, but recovered as soon as he had terra firma under his feet. He hadn’t seen his home for two months. But there was the house, large and in darkness, with a creaking weather vane behind tall, leafless trees, he didn’t even seem to recognise it. But then he said:
“Thar’s heim.”
“No, it isn’t,” Ingrid said.
They went to the Store and bought a sack of carrots, Lars swore that this was the last time they were going to waste money on them, they were going to grow carrots themselves on Barrøy. And they bought paraffin and flour and the other items he had written down on the Thursday in November he had torn out of the calendar, without answering Margot’s questions, she had become friendly again, but Ingrid gave her the cold shoulder and Lars called her a bastard when they came out again.
Felix laughed, impressed. This time he didn’t even notice his childhood home. But Ingrid noticed something: there was no longer anything strange about the look in Lars’s eyes.
They didn’t hoist the sail on the way back either, they rowed, and there were Barbro and Suzanne waiting on the shore, both crying. Lars asked them what the matter was. Barbro didn’t answer, just swung the sack of carrots onto her back and walked off. Ingrid told Suzanne she wasn’t going to carry her anymore, no, never. She had to make her own way up, even if she had to crawl.
She did crawl too, the last fifty metres, but she was upright on the first two slopes.
The next day the sea was calm. The sky was bluish-black and as lustrous as a luminescent sea. The family rowed out to Skogsholmen to select the best juniper to use as a Christmas tree, as always on the day before Christmas Eve. Ingrid had read the handwritten letter that came with Zezenie’s things. It contained a secret Ingrid would never share with the others because it said in handwritten ink that Zezenie was in hospital in Bodø, but would soon be back despite both the Trading Post and the house having been sold at auction, though they were not yet occupied.
Ingrid didn’t know how to react.
On the trip over to Skogsholmen she said that when they returned home with the Christmas tree, Lars and Felix should have a bath, in the tub, in the barn, it couldn’t be helped that it was frosty. In addition, they should all get her father’s fishing gear ready for when Uncle Erling came over, so that he could take it to Lofoten, they would get at least half a catch share for it, and that was several hundred kroner. Ingrid knew how to set up a long line with hooks. So did Lars. And Felix could learn.
46
But they weren’t quick enough. The Barrøyværing moored at the quay on December 26, a few days earlier than usual, with one irate Uncle Erling at the wheel, the bloody priest hadn’t informed him about his brother’s decease until the 23rd, by telegram, which had to be carried by boat via far too many islands, now they hadn’t even had time to prepare for the new season. His wife Helga was also on board, and their eighteen-year-old son, Arnold, as well as three other fishermen.
But where is Maria?
My oh my, everythin’s goen’ t’ pot hier.
They had brought half a pig with them and a bucket of sausages. Helga and Barbro and Ingrid scrubbed the whole house and lit the fires in all the rooms, even in old Martin’s little room, where Helga installed herself with suitcase, Bible, embroidered tablecloth and a Christmas altar, while the crew slept on board.
Lars wanted to go with him to Lofoten, but that was out of the question, they were working a long way out in deep water, and he was only twelve. Lars argued that he could stay on land, work in the shed and bait the hooks.
“We got baiters enough,” Erling said, and ordered him to stay on Barrøy and look after the family. And, what was more, continue going to school. Helga would stay until Maria came back.
“She’s comen’ heim, A s’pose?”
They didn’t know.
The crew and Lars and Ingrid and Felix stood in the quay house setting up lines all Christmas, tied rope to the sinkers and prepared the floats and anchor ropes and tubs, managed to finish two sets in Hans’s distinctive s
tyle thereby qualifying for a full catch share in Uncle Erling’s generous profit-sharing scheme. They were ready on January 3 and headed north in another gale while Ingrid and Lars and Felix were left on the quay with their own plans.
This was because it wasn’t such plain sailing with Helga.
She was disappointed that Maria wasn’t there and made no bones about it. She was also annoyed that none of them would talk about their parents and they would turn their backs on her when she tried to find out what had happened. Not only that, she was God-fearing and a stickler for cleanliness and took over her sister-in-law’s role, as though Barbro didn’t know how to manage a house. And she wouldn’t let Felix go out fishing, a seven-year-old in an open boat in winter, that’s unheard of.
Barbro told their guest to be careful not to burn up the little peat they had in Martin’s old room. Helga knew nothing about the snowed-up stacks of peat and began to get cold at night and had to be given an extra eiderdown. Furthermore, she preferred not to go to the cowshed as she was the wife of a skipper and had her own maid at home on Buøy. Not even Suzanne would have anything to do with her, Ingrid made sure of that, and Felix didn’t say a word when she asked him to do something, instead he stood beside Barbro waiting until Helga occupied herself with something else. Then he did it.
Plans for Lars to start school again came to nothing, he simply stayed at home, walked around wearing the expression of a man for whom the new housekeeper was non-existent. Felix went fishing with him for as long as he had the strength, otherwise it was Ingrid. They hung up the cod and ate the pollack they didn’t salt, the haddock, too, which Helga made fishcakes from, they ate them off Polish porcelain, and they were no more than a couple of weeks into the New Year when, one evening when she was sitting in old Martin’s rocking chair watching Suzanne running to and fro across the floor, she said, well, it was time to go back home, there was nothing more to be done here.
Two days later she left with Paulus on the milk-run boat, together with her Bible and the altar and the whole kit and caboodle. Ingrid was the only person to give her a hug. But Barbro put on a friendly smile, as she stood with Suzanne’s hand in hers explaining to the tiny tot how to wave to a boat leaving an island.
“Nu tha can wave t’em.”
*
On the next visit Paulus moored again with both hawsers and clambered onto the quay, he wanted to have a few words with Lars, in future could they supply him with a few boxes of cod when he put in, there wasn’t a lot of milk now, they would get almost the same price per kilo as they paid at the Trading Post, which now had a new owner, one Bang Johansen, they had started buying fish again.
“An’ hvafor no’ th’ same?” Lars said.
“Transportation,” Paulus said.
“Tha doesn’t have t’ pay f’ that.”
“Pay f’ hvad?”
“Th’ oil.”
Paulus smirked and said they could sort out the price when the time came. Lars said he wanted a receipt every time Paulus got fish, with the number of kilos per box, they had a steelyard on the island, so the weight would be right, and they wanted immediate payment.
Paulus laughed a lot at that and said he had never heard the like, he wanted to talk to Ingrid. Lars went to fetch Ingrid, who came and said the same as Lars. They agreed terms, though Paulus didn’t have to pay every time but every third, in other words once a week, and he wouldn’t be burdened with any interest when the weather was so lousy he had to give them a miss. They all laughed at that. Ingrid and Lars exchanged measured looks.
*
In the course of the following week Paulus received 391 kilos, the week after 443, then they were right down to eighty kilos. That was because Lars and Ingrid, on a visit to the Store, had heard that Paulus wasn’t selling the fish fresh at the Trading Post but hanging it on a rack he had erected on the rocks below his farm, as dried fish commands a higher price than fresh fish, even though it constitutes only a quarter of the weight. They went to inspect Paulus’s drying rack and saw that it was as well situated as their own on Barrøy, on bare rock. So in the fourth week they gave him just two boxes with only eighteen kilos in each. He asked if they had been having time off in the good weather, heh heh.
Lars said they had lost a lot of their nets and got written confirmation of the thirty-six kilos, along with some caustic comments about their drying rack looking fuller and fuller. Unconcerned, Lars went home and announced that from now on they would hang all the cod themselves, the cusk as well, and sell it ready dried at the Trading Post when the buyers and graders came some time in June, that was how they used to do it, Hans and Martin.
*
But Paulus wasn’t to be fobbed off, now he wanted the fish ready split, for salting at the Trading Post, at a price they couldn’t refuse. Ingrid and Barbro stood in the quay house splitting cod, weighing it and putting it in boxes, spread snow over it when the good Lord provided, and Paulus paid promptly. Then he also wanted the cod heads and spines, dried the way they did in Lofoten. They got some bodkins and strung the heads together and bundled the spines and hung them on the rack too, it would be guano, and they would be paid for it.
Lars had begun to calculate, he had begun to take notes and plan and think in unfamiliar, new ways, and he wanted to manage the money himself. Ingrid didn’t agree to this. They yelled at each other. Barbro decided she would take care of the money and give them what was left over when spring came. Felix would get his share too. Lars objected, claiming he worked harder than Felix.
“Tha doesn’t,” Barbro said, and asked what they were going to do with the cod heads and spines hanging on the rack.
“It’s guano,” Lars said.
“Hva’s that?”
“A don’t reit know.”
“It’s manure,” Ingrid said. “F’r export.”
Barbro asked what export was.
“They sell it abroad,” Felix said.
They eyed him.
“Hvar did tha learn that?”
“At heim.”
Ingrid asked him if there were any other pearls of wisdom he had learned at heim. Felix didn’t answer. Lars called Ingrid an old trout, Ingrid threatened him with the splitting knife. Barbro told them to pack it in.
“Tha ’r bloody kids, all of tha.”
“No, we’re not,” Felix said. “We’re adults.”
Barbro laughed and walked back to the house. Ingrid carried on splitting and Lars said she wasn’t cutting cleanly enough, there was too much meat left on the bone. Ingrid asked him if he wanted some lessons. Lars hesitated and said yes. She taught him. Felix watched and asked her who had taught her.
“Pappa did.”
Lars asked why Hans hadn’t taught him to do it as well. Ingrid omitted to say that her father wasn’t his. Lars concentrated on the fish. Felix watched Ingrid and asked:
“Is tha my sister?”
Ingrid asked why he wanted to know.
As he couldn’t find a reason she replied that she and he were neither mother and son, nor brother and sister. But that wasn’t what Felix wanted to hear. And while Lars was on the quay hoisting up the rest of the catch she whispered to Felix that he was Lars’s brother, only Lars didn’t know, let’s keep it a secret between us. Felix’s eyes went moist. That was too much for Ingrid, she said that she couldn’t waste any more time here and went home and remembered Zezenie’s letter, she did that far too often, it came to her mind several times a day, like sudden jolts to the brain, this couldn’t go on, she would have to burn it.
47
February. Wet, driving snow and yellow foam swept over the island. And the sea turned white, but they had put the nets on the seaward side and had to get them in before the weather turned even worse.
“Hva does tha say?” Lars said. “Sha’ we go out?”
“Yes,” Felix said.
They climbed aboard the færing and rowed round the Skarve skerries. The conditions were atrocious, and they had just started pulling in the nets when Felix
fell head first into the sea. Lars pulled him back on board with the long boat hook, but he was himself so exhausted and numb that he wasn’t able to row. They drifted sideways towards the shore while he lay holding on to Felix, who couldn’t speak, and hit land on Barrøy’s coast in the sound between the island and Moltholmen. He got the young boy out of the boat and wanted to do two things at the same time, carry him home and save the færing.
He squinted into the driving snow and felt the ice. All the way in.
And how far in is that?
He hauled Felix up on his back and started walking. It was a long way, and Felix couldn’t hold on. Ingrid saw them from the house and ran down to help them the last part of the way. They manoeuvred Felix into the kitchen, where Barbro tore off his clothes and massaged and pounded him and laid him on the bench under an eiderdown and started massaging him again, while he gabbled, his teeth chattering. Lars stood at their side, his face a ghostly white, and said they had to save the færing. And the nets. Ingrid told him to shut up. So did Barbro, who ordered him to take off his clothes as well, at once. He repeated that the boat had to be saved, and went back out. Ingrid put on her coat and ran after him through the snowstorm down to the sound, where the færing was pitching in the water, a gaping hole in its side. The rudder was broken, too. But both pairs of oars were still there, as were the two empty line tubs. Lars tore off his jumper and stuffed it in the hole, they used the oars to lever the færing away from the shore and rowed through the sound with the sea flooding into the mid-section, coaxed it round the headland, where the Swedes’ boathouse was, beached it, bailed out the water and dragged it as far onto land as they could.
Lars screamed that they had to go out and find the nets, using the other færing. Ingrid asked if he was out of his mind. He was rushing back and forth like a crazy man. Ingrid shouted that he wasn’t normal, he couldn’t go out to sea again. He gave a shiver, grinned and asked whether she thought Felix was going to die. Ingrid said no.