The Last Boat Home

by Dea Brovig

  At ten minutes past twelve, the Gymnasium’s students poured from their classrooms into the hallway. Else listened through the door to the current of footsteps that carried them into the yard. When the building’s hush had been restored, she crept from her hiding place to Paulsen’s classroom. He was liberating a packed lunch from a sheet of greaseproof paper. He looked up from his desk when she knocked.

  ‘I’m sorry for leaving in the middle of class,’ she said.

  Paulsen pursed his lips at the goat cheese on his bread slice. Else remembered the squeeze of his hand after her father’s funeral. ‘I think I’m getting the flu,’ she said.

  ‘Get out with you,’ he said.

  She turned away and drifted down the corridor, feeling dazed and unsteady on her feet. A blast of sun met her full in the face when she opened the door to the schoolyard. She shielded her eyes until her vision cleared and the caretaker’s shed came into focus. Else crossed into the shadow that stretched over the ground on the other side of the Gymnasium. At the rear of the building, she sank onto the steps by the staff entrance. The stone was cold through the cloth of her trousers. She kneaded her belly as she gazed down Elvebakken to the fjord. It was the second time that week she had vomited.

  Else stiffened when she saw Petter, who approached and sat on her step. He leaned his back against the door and rested his hands on his knees.

  ‘Were you sick?’ he asked.

  He scratched his chin and started again.

  ‘I heard you were sick,’ he said.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Else said.

  ‘You should have seen Paulsen’s face when you bolted.’ His laugh was thin on his lips. He bounced his heels in a frantic rhythm.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to say.’ His knees grazed his palms. ‘That night, when I came for you at your house. I guess your parents must have known about the strong man. They found out, didn’t they? That’s why they locked you in your room.’

  Petter touched her arm when she did not answer.

  ‘You said you wanted to go into town, but I took you straight to him. I made things worse, didn’t I? I shouldn’t have interfered.’

  ‘No,’ Else said. ‘You shouldn’t have.’

  His body sagged as if she had elbowed him in the gut. She felt better at once and then she felt worse. Petter stood and walked away, finally leaving her alone.

  In those days, her mother prayed with the urgency of a convert, as if she were making up for lost time. She kept the radio on and turned it up for the morning’s Bible reading, often opening her own Bible to examine the verse in its entirety. Else would wake to the sound of her bumping in the bathroom and would picture her bent over the laundry, sorting through her clothes and gnawing her cheeks as she checked the gussets of her daughter’s underwear. When Else was alone, she pounded her stomach with her fists. Still the bleeding did not start.

  She stayed at home on the Sunday when the new class of confirmands was due to answer to the minister in church. She milked the cow and marvelled at the thought that, only two years ago, it had been her turn. Dressed in a white gown with a crucifix stitched over her breast, Else had stood at the altar while her parents watched from their pew. Afterwards, there had been a party at the bedehus. Rune had eaten a piece of each of the six cakes donated to the cake table.

  May slipped into June. Apart from her journey into school, Else did not venture far from the farmhouse. She confined her walks to the fields nearby, where bluebells and buttercups sprang from the grass and the air was warm with the smell of horses. Daylight hours won out over the night, flushing the horizon in vivid colours that yielded to darkness for a few hours and no more. Else and her mother hung summer curtains in their bedrooms. In the yard, the green tops of onions and carrots nudged through the earth. Stacks of tinder – worn-out traps, used-up tables and chairs, sawn-off branches and hacked-up tree roots – appeared on rock flats that dipped into the water as their neighbours prepared for Midsummer bonfires. Else picked redcurrants from the bushes in the garden, looping her belt through the handle of her pail while she worked. The juices stained her fingers and she sucked them clean with a hunger that surprised and terrified her.

  On Midsummer’s Eve, she rowed the skiff into the fjord and pulled a coalfish from out of the water. It was a fine weight, a good two kilos, she guessed. She laid it down in the hull and rinsed her fingers and rowed home.

  In the kitchen she tied an apron around her waist and, after retrieving a knife from the cutlery drawer, sliced off the fish’s head and poked its belly with her blade, jerking it downward to the creature’s vent. Her tonsils burned with bile as she slid her fingers into the gash. She wound them in its entrails, which plopped pink and brown onto the counter. When she held up her hands, they were shiny with blood. The smell hit her, doubled her over. She fled into the garden through the back door.

  Her mother found her in the grass on her hands and knees. She had not made it to the outhouse in time. Dagny knelt on the ground at Else’s side and combed the hair away from her face. She held it in a bunch at the nape of her neck while she rubbed circles over her daughter’s back. Else groaned and gagged and sobbed until the nausea subsided.

  Afterwards, her mother brought a cup of chicory to settle her stomach. They had carried two chairs from the dining room into the garden, where they sat by the vegetable plot, which smelled spicy and rich in the sun. A seagull perched on the roof of the boathouse like a weathervane in the windless air. The knock of the skiff on the tide drifted up from the water. Else swallowed her chicory in quick sips.

  ‘We’ll pick the blackcurrants next week,’ her mother said. ‘There are so many this year, we’ll have squash and jam to last through the winter. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Better,’ Else said.

  Her mother nodded at the shipyard. The glare of the sun sharpened the new wrinkles around her mouth. ‘Ninni Tenvik has asked if I’ll sew her a dress.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Else said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is good.’

  Else lifted her cup and choked on the fish stink that came off her fingers. No matter how she scrubbed them, it would not wash away.

  ‘I could do with your help,’ her mother said. ‘It’s just as well that school has finished for the year.’

  ‘Yes,’ Else said.

  ‘And next year. Well. We’ll be busy with other things then, won’t we?’

  The seagull spread its wings and took off from the boathouse roof. Else watched it fly until it disappeared. ‘I don’t want it,’ she said.

  ‘Hush,’ said her mother. ‘A baby is a blessing.’

  When their chicory had been drunk Else carried the cups into the kitchen, where she washed them and put them away. Her mother changed her clothes and finished cleaning the coalfish before returning outside. From her seat in the cool of the dining room, Else glimpsed her moving through the window, scurrying back and forth in front of the pier. She tried to concentrate on the sewing. She chose a pair of trousers from the pile and considered the hems her mother had pinned up. She threaded her needle with dark blue cotton and pierced the wool with its tip. In and out she sewed, though the garment was old and shabby and beyond rescue.

  She was going to have a baby. Her father’s child.

  She caught her breath when her mother opened the front door. Else heard her on the stairs, her footsteps overhead.

  ‘What are you doing out there?’ she called from the dining room.

  ‘Preparing the bonfire,’ her mother said.

  She left the way she had come in and again the house was quiet. Else closed the circle around the first ankle, tied a knot in the thread and snipped it loose with her teeth. She imagined the quiet broken by a scream. A baby’s scream. Its clinging hands, its greedy mouth. What did a baby have to do with her? She sensed an aching in her breasts and poked her thumb with the needle, pushing it deeper until the pain was all she felt.

  The first bonfire was lit later that evening, after her mother had boile
d the coalfish and they had eaten supper. The sun had yet to set when a coil of black smoke rose on the other side of the fjord, dirtying the pink rinse of the sky. Before long, flames dotted the shoreline. Else carried two buckets across the yard behind her mother, who bore two of her own. To the left of the pier, Dagny’s kindling was heaped on a slip of rock between the lawn and the fjord. Else was able to distinguish solitary objects as she drew closer: crab traps, a lobster pot, twists of rope, a single oar. A sponge mattress leaned against the rubble, displaying its mildewed bottom through the holes of a fishing net.

  At the sight of the boathouse’s contents piled up and ready to burn, Else felt a sore opening in her chest. She hesitated at the foot of the pier, while her mother moved to its edge and crouched to dip her buckets into the fjord.

  ‘Come, Else,’ she said.

  She beckoned to her daughter and Else did as she was told. They took turns to pour a ring around the stack, isolating it from the pier and the lawn. When the rock base was slick with salt water, Dagny hurried to the boathouse, leaving Else to refill the buckets. Her mother reappeared with a Norges jar in each hand. She unfastened the lid of the first and tipped it over the traps. The stink of moonshine soaked the air. Else placed her bucket on the grass along with the others, ready to use in case a wind swept the fire out of control. She watched her mother splash the mattress, saw the flower-print sheet tucked amid a snarl of fishing wire darken with liquid. The hose from her father’s distillery curled around the sheet like an octopus’s arm. Its rubber dripped with homebrew.

  ‘Stand back,’ her mother said.

  Else covered her face when the match landed on the pile. The fire leapt with a roar and a shimmer of air. Wood snapped and split and fishing wire melted. The crab traps’ metal prongs glowed a vicious red. Against the disintegrating backdrop of the mattress the flames scuttled up the net, eating away its diamond threads. The distillery’s hose bubbled and spat. The fumes made Else’s eyes water. She stuffed her sleeve into her mouth while her mother fumbled something from her pocket. When Else looked, she saw the oil cloth blotted black with her father’s blood. Her mother tossed it onto the fire and, side by side, they watched it shrivel to ash.

  They stayed by the pier until late into the night, holding vigil over the bonfire. Its heat singed the grass at the lawn’s rim, but there was no need to use the buckets of water they had prepared. When the flames began to dwindle, Dagny stalked off to the boathouse and returned with another Norges jar. The homebrew kept Johann’s belongings burning as the sky dimmed over the shipyard across the fjord.

  THE SUMMER HAD cooled by the time Else returned to Tenvik’s paddock at the end of August. Her mother had spent the morning running errands in town and was not due home from the bedehus until later. In her absence, Else had milked the cow, dug up the potatoes and laid them out to dry in the sun. Now she sat at the dining table rubbing the ache from her spine. She felt a flutter in her stomach and rested her hand against the spot. This was a new sensation, one that she was beginning to recognise.

  ‘The baby is moving,’ her mother had said when she had asked her about it.

  Else imagined a foot stamping the lining of her womb and pressed back gently with her palm. Again there was the feeling, like bubbles popping. She stroked the swell of her belly through her blouse. Her clothes were getting tight. Her mother had already tacked fabric panels into the waistband of her trousers. The rest would have to be let out soon. In the two months since the end of the school year, she had measured the changes of her body with dread and wonder. Irresistible bouts of drowsiness had sent her dozing through July. She had awoken one morning to find a seam stitched from her diaphragm to her navel, an uneven line that had not been there the night before.

  Only her mother witnessed this metamorphosis. Else continued to shy away from public places and, at certain times of day, from fields and tracks where she risked running into their neighbours. Now and then Ninni Tenvik would call, bringing with her a jar of honey or a basket of eggs. Else would wait out her visits in her bedroom and listen through the floorboards while she and her mother exchanged news of the town. Sometimes their conversation would turn to fresh reports of the oil tankers docked in bays and fjords along the coast. More than once, they wondered whether anything would come of the shipyard’s talks with the oil fields.

  When she had rested her legs, she stood and crossed into the kitchen, where she sawed off two slices of bread and fetched the cheese from the fridge. As far as she knew, Ninni had never asked her mother about her father’s death. Still they must wonder what had happened that morning after Johann had showed Tenvik the barn and he had driven away in his Volvo. A sudden spasm had Else clutching her side. To calm herself, she thought about the paddock. She remembered Valentin on the floor of his caravan, his head propped against the wall between sips of coffee. She had not been back since the day he left. She had decided to go home.

  Else pushed away the plate with its slices of bread and cheese. She needed some air. A little air would do her good. She found a pail in the cupboard and headed outside into the yard and behind the barn to collect her father’s bicycle. She brushed the cobwebs from its frame and checked its wheels before walking it up the hill. On the road, she placed her foot on the pedal and kicked off, swinging onto the saddle while the bike rolled underneath her.

  Else cycled past the Aaby farm to the deserted public dock, where she rose in her saddle to meet the upcoming slope. The fjord fell away behind her, taking the shipyard with it as she followed the track inland. She pumped her legs and the pail swayed from left to right on the handlebar. She was sweating when the woodland appeared at the roadside. Up ahead, she saw the familiar gap in the trees.

  Once she had turned off the road and onto the path gnarled with roots, she dismounted from her bike. The forest thrummed with insects. Bees and midges collided with her as she pushed deeper into the trees. Leaves carpeted the earth, hiding the ground between tufts of heather and pine cones and mushroom caps. Among the stinging nettles, she saw the waxy green of blueberry bushes. She did not pause to check for fruit, though she gripped the handle of her pail. Instead she listened for the brook that would tell her the meadow was close.

  The light had already changed when she heard it. Else waded through high weeds and over beds of moss. At the forest’s edge, she arrived at the field where once Circus Leona’s Big Top had sprung from the mud. It was unrecognisable. A temporary fence taped off the perimeter, enclosing an expanse of cropped grass. A handful of horses grazed on the spot where the strong man’s caravan had spent the winter. By the mouth of the track that curled away to his farm, Tenvik was keeping watch over his animals with his hands on his hips. He straightened up when he saw Else. He waved and ducked under the tape and she smothered the urge to flee back into the woods.

  ‘Else!’ he called.

  He strode over the paddock and she scolded herself for being foolish enough to come here. The circus had left months ago. So, too, had Valentin.

  ‘Else,’ Tenvik said. He stopped in front of her on the other side of the fence. ‘How nice to see you. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? How are you feeling?’

  ‘Fine,’ Else said.

  She was barely aware of her hand on her belly, stroking as if to smooth out its curve. Tenvik smiled at the bulge and her arm fell to her side.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he said. ‘So will Ninni be.’ He nodded at the paddock. ‘It looks different, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Yes,’ Else said.

  ‘We can’t afford not to use it. Not now, with the economy being what it is. It’s hard to say if we’re catching up or if we’re being left behind.’

  Tenvik shook his head and turned his face to the sun. Else breathed in the smell of toasted earth. A wasp buzzed by her ear and she swatted it away, thinking of when Lars had brought her here last summer. They had lain in the grass where a piebald pony now wandered from the herd to rip a mouthful from the soil. A dandelion hung from its jaws. It fl
icked a gadfly with its tail. She knew that the circus would never return.

  ‘It’s good grazing land,’ Tenvik said. ‘It isn’t good for much else, but it will do for grazing land.’

  ‘The horses seem to like it,’ Else said.

  ‘You should come by to see us,’ Tenvik said. ‘With the little one, too. Ninni would be so pleased. We haven’t had any new life there for, oh. It feels like a long time now.’

  Else nodded. She thought of the graves in the churchyard and felt the popping in her stomach. ‘I’ll visit you,’ she said.

  ‘That’s good,’ Tenvik said.

  ‘I’d better get started,’ she said, ‘if I’m going to find any.’ She lifted her pail, gave it a shake in the air.

  ‘Are you picking blueberries?’ Tenvik asked. ‘There are plenty along the brook. Ninni picked a few tubfuls there last weekend.’

  Else thanked him and backed away from the paddock. She trod into the shadows that fell under the trees and followed the burble of the brook past crawling anthills and over leaves that covered the earth. The gurgling grew louder and then she was upon it. On either side of the water, blueberry bushes spread their stems. Else squatted and began to pick the fruits. Her hands moved quickly between the branches and her pail. She was surprised when she looked up, her knees and back aching, to find that her bucket was almost full.

  The first oil tanker arrived in the fjord later that day. Else saw it on her ride from the paddock to the farmhouse when she rounded the corner by the public dock, which was busy now with ferry passengers. No one seemed to notice her skidding to a halt on the road. She joined them in staring at the ship that had dropped its anchor across the fjord, not far from the shipyard and its empty graving dock. The tanker’s broad deck soared in a tower taller than any building in town. Taut lines secured its stern to the shore.