The men, with their backs turned, shudder with laughter. But all are edgy, all rather on the wrong side of each other. They want to go home to Aberdeen. But the captain has suffered a relapse of his North Pole sickness.
We must stop him, says the boatswain, or he’ll sail us right into the maelstrom. And this time you keep your mouth shut, Harpoon.
Aye, says Harpoon.
On the quarterdeck stands the captain. Keep her steady, he says. Due north! His eyes gleam with the madness of midnight sun.
The fan of their wake is red with blood and punctured by partly butchered whale carcasses. The air is filled with the screams of the northern fulmar as they dip down to the carcasses and tear at them with their beaks. They no longer take the blubber, but go directly for the sperm oil, the most valuable of the whale’s material, and the scarcest in volume. But if they continue to steer north they will have little to gain from their rich cargo and will be lucky to even survive.
Harpoon!
Another whale, another leap over the side. But the boatswain’s hand is firm and Harpoon has found that he can trust him. He hacks a hole in the sperm whale’s snout and bucket after bucket of spermaceti is passed over the bulwark. In the hold there is not even room for another barrel stave: now they have begun to collect the filled barrels on the deck, a matter that causes the men concern. They speak of the ship’s displacement, that its centre of gravity is too high, that they risk turning over. The schooner draws much water, with a freeboard of only a couple of ells amidships in still weather. The matter is put to the mate, whose response is to have the messenger, one of the elder seamen, bound to the mast and lashed. The next morning it is the mate who stands there bound. He mutters faintly to himself, his shirtfront reddened with the blood that drips from his nose.
I see, says the captain pensively when presented with the sight. And what do you now intend?
We want to go home, says the seaman who was lashed.
Where’s your sense of adventure? the captain enquires. Good Scottish seamen you are, one and all, or so I thought. I’m ashamed of you. What would your proud ancestors think!
Sail home or go the same way as your mate here, they say, loosening the man from the mast and tipping him overboard. There is a faint splash and some stifled protest, then silence.
The captain seems unperturbed and merely shakes his head mournfully, while clicking his tongue. We could make history, he says softly, we could sail further north than any ship before us.
There’s a reason no ship ever went there before, the seaman says. It could be that ships have no business there.
Cowardly dogs, says the captain with a sigh. If you call yourselves Scotsmen, then from this day on I am no longer a Scot.
Harpoon hears some tumult, a scuffle on the deck. The men converge, then draw back. He sees the captain spreadeagled, with two men on top of him.
Now, says the boatswain, now it’s your turn, Harpoon! He hands him the whaler’s lance.
What do you want me to do?
Well, take a guess, says the boatswain, and grins.
The men step aside, the boatswain nudges him in the back and he stumbles a couple of steps forward. You’re the only man on board who isn’t christened. With a Christian man’s blood on our hands we’re doomed. But you can do it.
No, says Harpoon. I won’t. You already have the blood of the mate on your hands.
My friend, says the boatswain in a low voice. Listen well. If you won’t do it, they’ll kill you, too.
He steps forward to the captain, who is on his back. The writing vanishes from his book, but a new book is in the making, the Book of Harpoon, the nameless heathen. Two men hold the captain down by his shoulders. Now they spring aside. The captain remains flat.
Harpoon, he says, his red beard pointing up at him. Will you let them make a murderer of you, my friend?
He does not reply. He takes another step forward. He points the lance at the captain’s stomach.
No, not there, says the captain, not in the stomach. Much pain, a slow death. Further up, my friend. Here.
He moves the point to his chest.
You’re a good lad, says the captain. You remind me of my son.
The men celebrate down below, blustering the songs of their homeland. Frequently they spill up on to the deck for fistfights, two by two, their knuckles bound with cloth, the others standing in a ring, cheering them on. Harpoon sits on a hatchway and gazes towards the land, the fells that at first are low and uniform, then steep. He tries to establish what feelings he has at the sight.
Hey, Phantom, say the men. Aren’t you going home soon?
The boatswain sits down with him. He lights his pipe; they sit a while and smoke.
My good native friend, says the boatswain. Now is the time for you to take your kayak and leave us. If you don’t go of your own accord, they’ll tip you overboard and this time there’ll be no rope around your waist.
Aye, he says.
Go home, says the boatswain. Do what needs to be done. Believe me, it’s better than running away. And this comes from a man who has been fleeing for thirty years. Don’t forget me now, my friend.
When shortly afterwards he is settled in the kayak they stand at the bulwark and wave. Bye-bye, Harpoon, Mutie, Phantom. Wish us well on our voyage. The good Lord knows we need it!
Holsteinsborg, 1793, spring. It is many years since he was here last and the colony has grown considerably, into an entire little town. Many of the houses are of both two and three storeys, staggered up the steep slopes behind the harbour, freshly painted and gleaming with the wealth that whaling has brought to the place. He well understands that Kragstedt has thoughts of something similar at Sukkertoppen. He wanders in and out of the lanes that run between the houses. People take no notice of him. He finds his way to the trading station office and speaks to the Overseer, who makes a quick appraisal of him and takes him on.
He can start right away, the Overseer tells him. Report to the quay-side. He points through the window. The constable there will get him started. Name?
Harpoon hesitates. Jens.
Yes? The Overseer’s pen dips in the ink pot and hovers over the page.
Bertelsen.
Settle up once a week with me, Jens Bertelsen. Bed and board is his own matter. He puts the pen back in its holder. Don’t just stand there.
He goes down to the harbour. The constable scrutinizes him. Blubber boiling, he says. Come with me.
The blubber house is situated on a promontory outside the colony. It is a two-winged structure, each wing some twenty ells in length. The smoke drifts heavy and fetid out across the ford from the tall chimney. The constable opens the door and calls inside. A young, bare-chested man comes to receive him and show him the ropes. They do not introduce themselves.
Furnace, says the man. Stoke here. He opens and closes the furnace door. Coal here. Make sure to keep an even temperature. Flues here. Once the blubber’s on the boil, you need to tip the kettle to make it run out into the cooling vats. Here. But mind out, it’s hot. He laughs and points out a number of scars on his upper body.
They enter the adjoining room. Through holes in the wall, wooden spouts run down to smaller cooling vats in which the blubber oil is left to stand for a few hours while the sediment settles at the bottom. Then it is led off to the next cooling room, where it is poured into flat-bottomed trays and cooled in the draught of the open windows. Eventually it is released through an outlet and siphoned into barrels, ready to be shipped. Questions?
Can I sleep here?
Haven’t you any place to live?
I just arrived.
You can sleep in the loft, but I doubt you’ll care for it.
Thanks.
He soon finds out it is best to be naked, or as good as. The air is thick with fat and steam, and so hot that he sweats pints in the
course of a day. Blubber is brought in from the whole colony: kone boats fully laden; Danish whalers sending in blubber in exchange for lamp oil; natives bringing great piles of cut blubber on litters. The furnace roars all day and all night; he shovels coal and taps the oil. They are a handful of men, all working naked, all losing their footing on the slippery floors, all covered in blubber and soot and resembling the prints of Negro slaves he has seen in the magazines, with great, blinking eyes. Outside, large bays are filled to the brim with unmelted blubber, and more arriving all the time. The foreman harasses them. It is not a job that is ever finished; the purpose of the job is not to drown under yet more work. He finds a good rhythm and sticks to it. If a man is not quick enough to send the melted blubber onwards in the system, the constables will be upon him; and if he is too quick, unmelted blubber enters into the cooling vats and he must start again. To facilitate the process they must clean the copper of impurities six times a day, after which it must be rinsed with water, a highly perilous job, because the vessel is constantly red hot and the water explodes into boiling steam the moment it touches the metal.
The work soon renders him numb and empty. The Book of Bertel is now devoid of script, and the Book of Harpoon has reached its conclusion. He is no longer a narrative, but a man returned to his natural state. He sleeps in the loft above the boiling shop. It is a hot and malodorous place, and the noise from below seems even more deafening than when he is in its midst. And yet he sleeps soundly, naked on the rough planks. Sunday is their day off. He makes himself as clean as he can, and occupies one of the rear benches in the Bertelskirke, bowing his head whenever anyone enters. He recognizes several of the churchgoers and keeps his eye out until eventually he sees her.
She sits on the women’s side, small and huddled. He studies her for a long time and she must sense it, for she begins to turn her head and cast glances over her shoulder. When finally their eyes meet, she stiffens. He nods deliberately. She stares at him for a long time.
He rises and leaves. He sits down on the slope below the churchyard and waits, then hears the soft pad of kamik boots behind him.
Bertel, is it you?
He turns his head and smiles over his shoulder. Mother.
I thought you were dead.
I am well. I work for the Trade.
The Trade? she says. Have you been chased from the Mission?
I have taken a break. How is my mother?
Well, she says.
How long have you lived here?
For many years. Ever since we moved from the old colony, I’m sure you remember it. The time your father died.
And the priest, do you see anything of him?
Oh, that was all a long time ago, she says. We are too old now to keep remembering it.
I am not too old, he says. Is he still alive? It was not he who gave the sermon today.
They say he is up at Godhavn, visiting his friend the inspector. Yes, he is alive, the old sinner.
He nods. I will pay him a visit when he comes home.
You do that. But it is by no means certain he will know you. He has become an old man.
Dear Mother, he says, rising to his feet and kissing her.
My sweet Bertel, she replies, and strokes his cheek. Mother’s little pastor. You were always my cherished one. I thought you were dead.
I thought so too, he says. But now I feel alive again.
He sees the sloop come sailing from the north, its square sail taught in the wind, like a knarr of the Viking age. He has been in the colony for two weeks; soot is etched into his skin; his body is speckled with tiny burns; he has become lean yet strong. He stands in the doorway and takes in the mild sunshine and the cool breeze of the ford, when he sees the priest clamber on to the quayside. He hurries to put on trousers and a shirt, then goes down to the warehouses. The new arrival straightens his back. He supports himself by a walking stick.
A small man with thin legs, bulging belly and the beginnings of a hunched back, a deformity that pushes his head forward and compels him to look upon the world along the vertical axis, from bottom to top. Bertel recognizes him immediately, the way he recognizes his own face in a mirror. The pigtail that hangs down over the collar, the mousy grey coat with its small pockets of white napped leather, an abundance of silver buttons and buckles, gold braid that seems almost to spill from the buttonholes. Under the coat, which hangs open at the front, he wears a red suit, buttons sparkling at the fly. Between the breeches and his boots a few inches of chalk-white stocking are visible. Yet the body and the clothing do not match. The garments look like they have been pinned together hastily by a tailor.
He cocks his jutting head to the right and to the left beneath his tricorne hat, fox-like eyes narrowed, as though on his guard. The wooden jetty creaks; it sounds like it might collapse under the priest’s misshapen form. He turns stiffly and barks something to the crew. Travelling chests are unloaded onto the quayside; two of the men carry them off. The priest watches them and must twist his entire upper body in order to turn his head, which sits firmly upon its stubby neck like a toad’s.
This man with the silver buttons remains standing for a moment, as though his legs are too stiff to move. The wind lifts the tails of his coat. He adjusts his hat, then proceeds unsteadily along the quayside, passing closely by the man with the blackened face who cannot stop looking at him. Peace of God, the priest quacks. He sees that his mouth droops to one side, small and bloodless, pursed into a sour expression. He sees the pale skin and the liver spots, the narrow eyes, the sly look on his face, the crooked matchstick legs that seem to be in peril of breaking under the otherwise inconsiderable weight of the waddling body above them.
Is this how I shall end up looking? Bertel muses.
The next day he hands in his notice and purchases new clothes for his wage, washes himself with soap, a by-product of the blubber-boiling, has his hair cut and is shaved by the colony smith, and approaches one of the town’s three catechists.
Nej, says the catechist, addressing him in Danish. Not a chance. Oxbøl will not take on anyone new, at least not a man. This latter comment would seem to be a joke; a grin flashes across the man’s face.
But the priest is surely available to speak with? he enquires. If one should have need to confess?
Confession is every Sunday, first public, then personal. But the old missionary hardly works any more. The catechist studies him warily. Does he belong to the parish?
My name is Bertel Jensen. I am a catechist myself. I need to speak to the reverend Pastor concerning a private matter. A matter of the soul.
Your soul is as much a concern of the new priest as of the old one, says the catechist rather more kindly.
The soul in question is that of the Missionary Oxbøl himself.
The man looks at him with a wry smile on his face. In that case you should go to the rectory and ask to speak to him. I cannot help you.
The rectory is a singular, whitewashed building four windows in breadth and boasting two chimneys. A palace. In front of the house stands a flagpole. He pauses and looks up at the flag. It flutters in the wind like a trout wriggling in the current of a stream. The flag is red and white, the flag of the Danes. It feels odd to be here again after so many years.
A young girl opens the door. She leans idly against the frame and looks him up and down with bedchamber eyes. Her long hair hangs loosely down one shoulder. She has been braiding it.
I must speak to the Missionary Oxbøl. Palasi. Is he in?
Who should I say is calling? she enquires, studying him still, a calculating look in the face of a small girl.
Bertel Jensen. I am family to the missionary. Tell him I am the son of Martine. He will understand.
Is he expecting you?
I imagine so. I’m sure he has been expecting me for years.
She goes off to find him, leaving the
door ajar. He pushes it open and steps inside, stands for a moment in the dark hallway he explored as a boy. Two doors lead off to the rest of the house and a stairway to the first floor. He hesitates, then reaches down and smooths his hand over the wood of the lowermost stairs. He decides on the door to his right.
His memories of his years at Holsteinsborg are few. His mother was taken into the priest’s employ at a young age; she prepared meals and cleaned for him. By the time winter came they were living together as man and wife. She had another man, Jens, but the Missionary Oxbøl told her she must choose between them, either the priest or the unchristened hunter. She chose the priest. This she told Bertel many years later.
The priest was a handsome man in those days, she said. And I was young and foolish. But then you came along, my boy, and something good came of it all.
He tries to recall the time he lived at the rectory with his mother and the missionary. These planks and walls and ceilings, each creaking door, the windows offering a singular aspect on the fells. All of these things make it return to him. He used to sit in the kitchen of the missionary’s house and read a book his mother had found for him. Always he was afraid the priest would appear. Now and then he would hear his voice from some room in the house, or the sound of the stick he rapped against the wall to summon his servant girl. Then he would know to remain seated and not to go anywhere until she came back.
In the evenings the priest would produce his lute and play and sing. Bertel would sit in a corner of the parlour and make himself invisible, until he was sent out. But his mother was there; it was she for whom he played, for want of a better audience. He still recalls the hesitant twang of the instrument, fingers scraped against the strings, the priest’s woolly voice singing the laborious and incomprehensible verses. Bertel never put his hands on the instrument. He knew instinctively he would be punished by the priest’s cane.
He remembers an exchange between the priest and his mother, on the other side of a door that stood ajar. He must have been eight or nine.
The Prophets of Eternal Fjord Page 48