Answer: That we should fear and love God, so that we may not deceitfully belie, betray and backbite our neighbour, nor raise an evil report; but we should excuse and speak well of him and direct all things for the best.
Bertel decides to try his luck fishing while there is still ice on the ford. He gathers his tackle, lines, hooks, ice pick. Outside, on the roof of the house, he has left a pair of sealskin mittens, now frozen stiff. He cuts them into strips and puts them on the hooks for bait.
The boy wants to go with him.
You are not well enough yet, says Bertel. Promise me you will stay in bed. We’ll go out in the spring and then I will teach you to fire the gun.
Why not today? I promise to wrap up warm. There is an accusing tone about his voice, as if it is his father’s fault that he must stay in bed all winter.
Bertel is in dejected mood as he makes his way across the ice, but the cold air freshens his thoughts and quickly brightens his aspect. On his feet are the skis he has covered with sealskin, the hairs of which are faced to prevent him from sliding backwards. He makes good speed, rounding the promontory where the wreck of the Taasinge Slot lies, then entering the bay where sometimes the wolf fish gather in the shallow waters. The sun makes the sheer fell light up like a torch. He chooses a spot where he knows there is a good current and where the ice is therefore thinner, and begins to hack his way down to the water. With his bowl he scoops up the mush of ice that collects as he works, dousing the edges of the hole with water until a hard, smooth rim is formed. When the hole is nearly an ell in width, he drops in his line and hooks. A bundle of nails from the Trade is his plummet. He feels it touch the bottom, then stands and jerks the line, his back against the cold and his skin hat pulled down to cover his neck.
A raven circles at the fell, drawing figures of eight in the air; it turns with such ease, now and then raggedly cawing out, watching him. He smiles and realizes he is praying to it, the spirit of the raven, praying for a catch, a heathen practice in which he ought not to indulge, even in secret. He says the Lord’s Prayer out loud to make up for it, only then to add: Great Raven, give me a big fish and I shall leave its guts for you.
Presently he feels a tug on the line. He can feel what kind of a fish it is; each species has its own way of taking the bait; some do not struggle, others, the small ones especially, fight as though possessed. This one resists, then resigns and becomes but dead weight. He heaves it on to the ice without difficulty and is contented. A wolf fish!
It is a good fish, almost an arm’s length, perhaps ten pounds in weight; the head is large and knobbled, the eyes stare emptily into death. Ever since he was a boy and his uncle told him that if they manage to bite they will not release until they sense the bone is crushed, he has been afraid of the strong jaws and sharp, fang-like teeth of the wolf fish. Swiftly he stabs the knife into its head and watches the sullen mouth stiffen. He makes a long incision in the belly and allows the liver, stomach and intestines to spill out on to the snow as he has promised. Then he fastens the line to the lower jaw and drags his catch off across the ice with a cry over his shoulder of takanna! – dinner! He looks back and sees the raven descend in decreasing circles, then land.
A man does wisely, he thinks to himself, to stay friends with the raven. He hastens to say the Lord’s Prayer once more.
At home he hangs the fish by the door. Later he will boil it. His mouth waters at the thought of the thick layer of fat beneath the skin, how it will open between his teeth and the juices seep into his mouth.
The boy is lying with his book open, exactly as before.
You have not been up, have you?
No.
Stubborn. Defensive.
Have you been out, boy?
Silence.
He is afraid of being found out, yet he also wants me to know that he can defy me, Bertel thinks to himself.
He goes up to the bed and pulls the covers aside. The boy is fully dressed, the bedding wet with melted snow. The boy grins cheekily, eyes fixed firmly on his book.
You have been out to see them put the roof on the new colony house, he says, taking the boy’s chin in his hand, turning his face to make him look at his father. Then he strokes the boy’s hair. Was it exciting?
They fired the cannon, says the boy. Three times.
Yes, I heard the salute. Did they hit anything?
The boy laughs. They laugh together. Then Bertel shows him the wolf fish and they help each other prepare it. For the first time in a long while, the boy eats up.
All will be well again, Bertel thinks.
Question: How may the world be categorized?
Answer: Into the spiritual world and the physical world.
Spring, light, renewed hope. But also: thaw, wet floors, soaked stockings, dripping ceilings, cold feet and coughs. The boy has a fever; he lies staring up with eyes that are moist. On the now-returned Falck’s instruction, Bertel lays a cold compress on his forehead, a warm compress on his chest. He is not entirely convinced of the wisdom of such opposing remedies, but he is reluctant to do otherwise. He knows the priest has studied medicine; he speaks often of the lectures he attended and of how he only pursued theology to appease his ageing father. Bertel has no choice but to trust in his judgement.
How are you feeling? he asks the boy.
Well.
Oddly enough, the answer makes him feel even more anxious.
He asks Falck to come and attend to the boy again. The priest does not appear to be in the best of health himself. Besides his bad eye, which resembles fish meat, white and matt and presenting a lattice of tiny red veins, Morten Falck is rather sickly of appearance and has acquired the peculiar habit of frequently tipping his head to one side, as though he were listening out for something. He speaks much of his cow, the only decent being in the entire colony, he says, which presumably is why she is allowed to maintain such good health. The cook is laid up again, this time definitively so. Falck considers the man has but weeks to live at most. The Kragstedts have moved into the new colony house, though the Madame continues to wander about in search of her former belongings and seems unable to grasp the fact that they were destroyed in the fire. She speaks in torrents of nonsense; the Trader sits brooding in his chair facing the wall. Hammer has moved out into his workshop on a permanent basis; he labours at his anvil day and night, but no one knows what he is working on, perhaps not even himself. Constable Bjerg seems to have recovered from his burns, though appears consumed by religious longing and speaks of travelling into the ford and joining the prophets, no matter that it would hardly be good for him.
Even I, says Falck with a cough, who have always considered myself to be an enlightened and rational individual, have had certain, er, experiences of late.
What kind of experiences? Bertel asks.
Have you not heard or seen anything? Falck replies. Trumpet calls? Hymns? People who, er, ought not to be there?
I have enough with mortal matters, says Bertel curtly. But Magister Krogh did speak of such things before he did away with himself.
I saw my poor deceased mother last week, says Falck with melancholy. I wonder what it means? And the gold I washed from a river in the north has disappeared.
Gold? says Bertel.
Stolen, says Falck. While I was staying on the wreck. I don’t suppose you would know anything about it, Bertel?
I didn’t steal the priest’s gold! Bertel snaps. I didn’t know he had any. Was it not rather careless of him to leave it lying about in the Mission house?
Indeed, says Falck sadly. It is my own fault, I know. There was a whole new life there, Bertel, it was enough to get me settled back home, a fortune. And now it is gone.
He sits down next to the boy and senses their spirits lift. He asks him about his reading and the boy shows him the book he is on. Falck flicks through the pages; the boy stops him to point o
ut an illustration and read a passage aloud. Falck calls him Professor Bertelsen and they agree it is a fine title. He opens his medical bag.
The boy sits up, pulls his shirt above his chest and follows Falck’s instructions. They exchange banter and chuckle. Falck lets him borrow his stethoscope and pulls up his own shirt. The boy listens intently.
I can hear the pastor’s heart.
Oh, thank goodness, I must still be alive then, says Falck.
Wait, I can hear something else, too, says the boy.
Falck sits with his back hunched towards him as he moves the chest-piece about. He looks at him over his shoulder. What do you hear, Professor Bertelsen?
Music, says the boy and laughs. A whole brass band. It think it must be the royal musicians.
Bertel stands watching as they jest and speak of things he does not understand and is excluded from. He feels a stab of jealousy.
Falck takes back the stethoscope. He taps his fingers against the boy’s back, then his chest. He listens to his lungs, retracts the eyelids and studies the mucous membrane, feels his throat and under his arms. Bertel tries to infer something from the priest’s facial expressions.
Well? He looks enquiringly at Falck as he returns the stethoscope to his bag.
A minor case of consumption, says Falck. When the summer comes with warmer weather, it will subside.
He has been sick every winter for years, says Bertel.
Childhood is a perilous voyage, says Falck with a mournful smile. Once the beard begins to show on the chin, it will usually be overcome.
That will be a while yet, says Bertel.
Give him salt, Falck instructs.
Salt?
A tablespoon every day, to facilitate the flow of the bodily fluids. Moreover, plenty of fresh water. And fatty food, he adds. Do you make sure to eat what your father prepares for you?
The boy nods.
Liar, says Bertel.
The boy looks away.
He will hardly eat a thing, says Bertel. Not so much as a spoonful.
A little later Falck returns with a jug of fresh milk. He makes the boy drink a glass of it.
I don’t like it, says the boy.
Hold your nose when you swallow, Falck says, then you won’t taste it.
The boy pulls a face, but does as he is told.
Falck pats him on the shoulder. Professor Bertelsen, you must promise me to drink a jug of milk every day, otherwise you will not be as clever and wise as your father. Will you promise me that?
The boy nods.
He takes the salt as Falck has prescribed, swallowing it dutifully, though gagging with revulsion. But when Bertel pours him a glass of milk in the evening he will not have it.
The priest has told you to, says Bertel.
My stomach hurts, the boy complains.
That’s because it’s empty, Bertel tells him. If you drink a little or eat something it will get better, just like Pastor Falck said.
But the boy has turned his face to the wall and refuses to either eat or drink. Bertel sees the hint of a victorious smile on his face and knows this is a battle he cannot win.
Question: What may be noted in general about the true movement of the planets?
Answer: Any planet exhibits a double movement; that is: (1) Its orbit around the sun, and (2) Its rotation around its own axis.
He gets Lydia, his sister, to come and mind him while he is away with Mr Falck. She brings her daughter with her, the boy’s cousin, he reasons, and at the same time his father’s sister and her own mother’s sister, Oxbøl’s child and grandchild. An incestuous mess. How strange to have these new people in one’s family, he thinks. And yet he is in many ways glad to have met his sister. He sees that they resemble each other, in appearance and temperament, and that both resemble their secret father, old Oxbøl. She is the only person who knows who his father is, apart from Sofie, who has guessed. They are together in a shameful matter, something that has hitherto been silence and great solitude. Now they speak of it occasionally, he and his sister, and for this reason life has become somewhat easier.
The visit livens the boy up, and a couple of days later he rises from bed. The children sit at the table. The boy reads aloud for his cousin, explains to her the trajectories of the planets and that of the Moon around the Earth. The girl stares at him with a smile that is at once febrile, gormless and inbred. Her head nods with fatigue.
Are you listening to what I say? the boy asks.
Yes, says the girl. Her elbows lean against the edge of the table. They keep falling down. She puts them up again and rests her chin in her hand.
If you don’t listen, you won’t learn anything and then you will be no better than the savages.
I’m listening.
What was the last thing I said?
Something about water?
The properties of water, says the boy. What are the properties of water?
I don’t know what a property is.
What does it do?
Make you less thirsty.
The boy sighs. Go and lie down, you’re tired.
The girl shuffles over to the cot and pulls a blanket over her head. She coughs in her sleep. The boy remains seated at the table, turning the pages of the book in the lamplight. Bertel lies secretly watching him, with curbed affection. He has become long-limbed during the past year, but skinny too. If only all that reading could put some weight on him, he thinks.
His sister appears not to care much for her daughter. She gave her over to the natives while she was in the Trader’s household and could fill her belly every day. Now that she is no longer in their employ, the girl’s presence seems to annoy her. Bertel cannot understand her. He has considered adopting the child and thinks it would be good for the boy to have company. But he finds it unpleasant to think of who the father is and that his own inherited characteristics, so to speak, are doubled within her.
In May the girl falls ill with the fever and dies quickly and without drama. She is discovered by Sofie in the morning, stretched out at the foot end of the sleeping bench with her arms at her sides and wrapped in a blanket. The boy has prepared her. He sits huddled at the opposite end of the bench with his knees drawn up to his chest, arms folded around his legs, staring out of the window with his fringe falling down over his tired eyes.
Why didn’t you say anything? Bertel asks him.
She was dead. Can you wake the dead, perhaps?
The girl is buried the same day. She was unchristened, but had attended Falck’s instruction, so the priest prays for her and they are allowed to put her to rest close to where the carpenter lies. A handful of people stand at the grave. The sound of the hard soil as it strikes the small, bony bundle at the bottom of the hole is harrowing. Bertel looks across at his sister. She stares into the grave with wide eyes and looks as if she might jump in at any moment.
Now I suppose he will be glad, she says.
Who? asks Bertel.
You know who I mean. Her father. Our father.
Oh, him.
Yes, him. He hates his children. He hates us. It is our curse.
They stare at each other for some time without speaking.
He is old, says Bertel. He will die soon.
Ha! He will never die.
The Lord will punish him for what he has done, says Bertel, borrowing Falck’s standard response to any malice he can do nothing about.
The Lord would seem to prefer to punish his children, she says, her eyes seeking the grave again. And we are many. You know that, don’t you?
Question: What is a spirit?
Answer: A single being with intelligence and will.
The boy starts to feel better. He stops coughing; his fever recedes and he even begins to eat the hard tack that Bertel soaks for him in boiling water and sugar. He seems
cheerful. Bertel takes him out hunting for ptarmigan on the fell and they ascend two of the peaks behind the colony. He speaks chummily with him, but for some reason he is unable to strike the same chord with the boy as Falck.
This is our country, he says to him on the fell. Beyond those peaks lies the old colony where I grew up, and the fell the Dutchmen called Zuikerbroot, from which the colony takes its name. I will show you the place sometime. Further north lies Holsteinsborg and to the east is the mainland, which is very inhospitable because of steep mountains and ice, but which teems with reindeer.
The boy gazes out over the sea. What lies on the other side?
A foreign country, says Bertel. Foreign people.
Can a person sail to it?
People can sail everywhere, says Bertel.
The boy nods.
Do you still want to be a ship’s captain?
I don’t know, says the boy in truth. Perhaps, if I get better.
If you become a priest you could journey across and preach to the savages who live there, Bertel says, trying to make the prospect sound attractive.
Like Mr Falck? says the boy, and laughs. Then he says: Is it true my grandfather is a priest?
Who told you that?
Milka said so.
What does she know about it? Bertel snaps. That stupid girl. Your grandfather’s name was Jens, like your own.
But Milka said her father and yours were the same man, and that is why our skin is so fair.
Milka was just a silly child, says Bertel. With little reason. I tell you, your grandfather’s name was Jens. He was a true Greenlander, a great hunter.
But we don’t look like Greenlanders.
Enough nonsense! No one should be ashamed of what they are.
They exchange not a word for the rest of the day. When they return home the boy climbs silently into bed and opens his book. He does not eat what Bertel puts in front of him. Bertel regrets having lost his temper and can do little about the boy punishing him in this way.
Late in the month it is time for the spring voyage. Together with Falck he sails into the skerries and seeks out the natives who have settled for the summer on the outermost islands, where they hunt the smaller whales and seals. Sofie does not wish for his sister to mind the boy, so she has asked permission to have him with her in the colony house, a request the Madame has granted. Bertel cares little to think of the boy being in the Danish household all day. He does not trust Kragstedt and the Madame’s mood is unstable following the accident. Sofie says she often shouts at her for petty matters, and that afterwards she repents and falls on her knees, weeping, begging to be forgiven, which is every bit as bad.
The Prophets of Eternal Fjord Page 38