I am a Christian person.
Indeed. It was I who christened and confirmed you, as I am certain you remember.
Not only have you taken my man away from me and saddled me with a bastard child, you have turned my home into Sodom.
Your home?
No more. I am leaving now.
Then farewell, said the priest. Take your bastard with you.
When Bertel was older he asked her about it and she told him it was because Oxbøl brought home with him the tender young girls who were under his instruction and slept with them. It was a weakness of many priests, not to mention traders, smiths and carpenters, and other good folk besides. It was their distraction in return for working in a land that destroyed their health, and that was why there were so many Greenlanders with pale faces. Like his own.
He hears a distant chatter of women’s voices, laughter, children crying. It seems to come from all quarters, but the sound is disembodied. There are no women to be seen, no children. It is as if the house has been emptied. Apart from the man in the chair. But even he seems like a ghost.
He looks at him and sees himself, his sister, his son, his niece. The face is freckled, pale and twisted; its eyes stare at him, as blue as water, a mouth that haltingly seeks to form words, perhaps a prayer for help.
Yes? he says and steps another pace forward.
A clock prepares to strike, but makes no further sound, merely ticking, ponderous and uncertain. The ubiquitous women’s voices have a calming effect on him. He knows who they are. Family.
The old man groans, a foot scrapes the floor in agitation, his head rocks.
Is there anything I can do to help, Pastor Oxbøl? He stands looking at him. He is beginning to realize what is wrong with the old man.
The priest jumps up and down in his chair, gripping an armrest to support his weight, the knuckles of his left hand whitening. He gobbles madly from the corner of his mouth.
What is the matter with him? Is he ill?
He extends a hand and the old man snatches it. Now they are bound to each other. Oxbøl thrusts himself back into his chair and then appears to relax slightly. A dribble of saliva runs from his mouth to stain the white frill of his shirt.
Do you know who I am, Priest?
Oxbøl looks up at him. His gaze is firm. He seems to be fully aware.
I was one of the children of your parish. I wanted to meet you and see how you are.
A muscle tenses on one side of the priest’s face, another relaxes; together they form an expression of what seems to be at once idiocy, doubt and bewilderment. His jaw begins to tremble, tears well in his eyes.
Don’t cry, he says and withdraws his hand. Don’t be a child.
He does it all the time, a voice says in Greenlandic.
He turns round. A woman has entered the room. Behind her follows the young girl, whose hair is now plaited. He approaches them. The old man’s hand reaches out, claw-like, grips his wrist, and when he pulls away the hand and arm follow. The old man sits tilted at an angle and looks like he is about to slide to the floor, yet he does not release his grip.
The woman comes, bends over the priest and pries open his hand.
My name is Bertel Jensen, he says, rubbing his wrist. I come from Sukkertoppen.
The woman considers the old man and lets out a sigh. This is the second time he has been like this. They say the third time is the end. Have you told him who you are?
I told him I was a child of his parish, now come back to look in on him.
A visitor, Lauritz! the woman announces in a loud voice.
The priest gives a start. Tears begin to roll down his cheeks. His eyes dart this way and that.
Take no notice of his crying, it means nothing, the woman says. Or else it means anything at all. He might be glad or disgruntled or hungry. Or he might need the pot. How lucky you are, Lauritz, to have a visitor, she says to him.
The priest’s arm twitches and his whole upper body follows suit. Convulsive sobbing contorts his face.
Look how glad he is, says the woman and pats him hard on the cheek.
Well, says Bertel. I’d better leave. I just wanted to see him one last time.
No, stay and eat. There is soup on the stove.
The soup is rich and salty, thickened with oats. He cuts off chunks of seal meat and puts them in his mouth, devouring them with spoonfuls of soup and fresh water. The women and children watch him as he eats. Pale and freckled.
We know who you are, they say. Do you know us?
He nods.
But why have you come?
I wanted to see him one last time.
Did you come to see him die?
I suppose. Why are you all here?
The same reason. If he will die at all. He is strong.
He stays in the priest’s house with the women and their children. In the parlour the old man lies in his filthy cot or else sits bound to his chair. He calls for them by beating on the floor with his stick. If he does so too frequently, they take it away from him, in which case he begins to howl or thrash about so violently as to cause himself to fall. Then they give back the stick. Bertel sits with him sometimes. He tells him about the life he has lived; about Sofie, who has gone away; the boy who died; his sister, who cannot find peace in life and who remains unchristened; and about her daughter. The priest appears to understand what he tells him and seems eager to pass comment. Clearly he is unused to remaining silent. Bertel likes to torment him somewhat. I do not believe there to be a single one among your descendents who does not despise you, he says. That is why they are here now. They are waiting for you to die. The priest weeps, his jaw trembles, he rocks backwards and forwards. But his eyes are enraged.
The priest will not die. He regains some of his mobility and begins to rise from the alcove, casting his wet underclothes to the floor and bellowing out for the women to come, as though to make their ears split. They go to him and wash him, scrubbing his body as he stands leaning against the table, putting clean clothes on him. They tie him to the chair with leather straps, so as to prevent him from getting up. Several women must hold him down; he lashes out at them, lunging fists as quick as serpents, but his attendants merely laugh and force him back into the chair. On a couple of occasions he manages to loosen his bindings; they hear a thud as he falls over and find him lying in the middle of the floor, bleeding from a gash in his head, bleating like a goat.
We must do something, they say, looking at Bertel.
Don’t look at me, he says.
He is getting lustful again, they say. And he is strong. If first he grabs hold, he will not let go until he has had his way.
The Missionary Oxbøl lies in his alcove and calls out his demands. He wants more and he wants it now! He will not give in. He clamours the whole night, hammering on the walls. His hands find the stool next to the cot: he hurls it across the room and it smashes against the door. One of the women goes in to him and he falls silent.
Bertel’s mother, Martine, moves in to the house. She takes on the task of his care. She has a way with him. She feels no hatred towards him and he senses it. He quietens. Bertel does not know what his mother does to settle him, but it is certainly effective.
His sister comes from the Eternal Fjord, where she has been living for some months. There is a radiance about her that startles him. Your old friend Maria Magdalene sends her regards, she tells their father. She would have liked to have been here herself, now that you are about to kick the bucket, but she has more important things to attend to. Later, his mother tells him that his sister has finally been baptized and confirmed by Mr Falck, who has even taken her as his wedded wife.
Now they are gathered. They sit at the deathbed and wait. But the priest grows stronger with each day. He sits tied to his chair and plays chess with Bertel. They can sit for hours with only the chessboar
d between them.
Check, say the old man from the corner of his mouth. He has begun to utter the occasional word.
Bertel moves his king. Oxbøl’s rook approaches. Bertel’s knight strikes at his opponent’s king and queen.
Check. Five moves, Priest, and it will be mate.
Oxbøl rests a finger upon his king. And topples it. Clever, he hisses in acknowledgement.
Bertel turns the board around and sets up the pieces again. They begin a new game.
The peace lasts a week, until they find Bertel’s mother unconscious on the floor of the priest’s parlour. She is half-naked, her thighs and back are heavily scratched. The priest pretends to sleep. They see that his fingernails are bloody. They wrap her in a blanket and carry her down to the Trader’s house, where she has a small chamber. One of the other women sits with her. In the night, she dies.
See what you have done! they say to the priest. But the priest purses his lips and will not utter a word.
For two days all is quiet. On the third night he begins to pound on the walls and shout.
Let me go to him, his sister says.
No, he replies. I won’t have it. He is your own father.
It’s the only thing that will quieten him down, you know that. Anyway, it’s not that bad.
Bertel goes to him instead and must duck as an object is flung through the air and strikes the wall behind him. The night pot. He can smell its contents of faeces and old man’s urine as they run down the wall. His father is already looking for new ammunition. Bertel promptly withdraws.
Mate! his father shrieks.
I told you he would not speak to you, his sister says, and goes to him in her brother’s place. At once the commotion abates.
The women begin to bicker, a couple of the children cry. The women chastise Bertel and call him cowardly; one of them waves a red-hot poker in front of him. But if he dies, what are the rest of us to do then? one of them wonders. As long as he is alive we at least have food and shelter for ourselves and our children.
Some noises are heard from the parlour. The women fall silent. Glances are exchanged.
Bertel takes the poker from the fireplace. He goes into the hallway and cautiously opens the door of the parlour.
He sees a reptile with arched back and a tail swishing from side to side. It is pale green. It rears up in the alcove and moves rhythmically, undulating and peristaltic. He sees the muscles of the reptile’s back as they tense, sees his sister lie resigned and staring out to the side, the stony look in the reptile’s bloodshot eyes, as he cries out: Leave her alone!
The reptile sees the poker with wide and frantic eyes. It opens its jaws mechanically and flicks its forked tongue.
He steps up to the alcove and prods at the reptile’s scaled skin with the glowing implement.
The priest screams. His face is contorted with pain and bewilderment. Why? he hisses. I love you both!
His sister yells: Bertel, go away! Don’t get involved in this!
But he prods again; the old man screams once more and collapses on to his side.
His sister extricates herself from beneath the weight of his body. Bertel brandishes the poker. She holds him back and twists it from his hand.
Enough! she says. You’ll end in the gallows. I won’t have such guilt laid upon my shoulders.
The priest lies with his face buried in the pillow. His breathing is erratic. When they turn him over, he stares at them with one eye. The other is closed. His lips move, and his left hand gestures.
What’s he doing? says Bertel.
I think he may be blessing us, his sister says.
Bertel attempts to wrest the poker from her hand, but she holds it tight.
No, she says. Give it to me. I shall do what is my right.
And then she lifts the poker and strikes. Bertel sees that the trajectory is well-considered, the delivery is angled so as not to be impaired by the ceiling of the alcove. The weapon is brought down with icy precision. At the same instant, the women spill through the door, the floor is awash with progeny; they cast themselves upon the priest, tearing at him, screaming and flailing, until eventually he slides lifeless from the cot to lie in a heap amid the blood that issues, as though in a flourish, on to the white of the bedclothes.
Those among the women who have children now lift them up and show them the bloodied priest, whose features are no longer recognizable or scarcely human, and they impress upon them the identity of the man and why he is dead, and they tell them that they must never, ever forget this sight, for this is the Devil himself, Lucifer, the Dane, the priest, their father, and now he is gone and will never again do harm to anyone.
Part Three
The Great Conflagration (1793–5)
Home
Morten Falck steps on board the good ship Charlotta from the rowing boat at Sukkertoppen, casts a final glance towards land and sighs, flops down on to his bunk below deck, digests a number of novels and biographies, rises and goes ashore at Bergen.
24 October 1793, a Thursday: he is standing on the wharf at Bergen. He sees himself in a drawing he might produce: a tall, dark gentleman placed within a converging perspective of houses, fells and drifting clouds, clad in threadbare and unfashionable clothing, transfixed among porters, seamen and travellers, who edge past him rolling barrels, carry ing sacks full of grain, flour and coal on their shoulders, pulling horses along by the bit, shouting and remonstrating and altogether knowing who they are, where they come from and where they are going in the short span of time they have at their disposal. Morten Falck is certain of very little beyond the knowledge that he is a stranger and cannot stand here for ever. But where should he go? He has never been to Bergen. This is the first time in six years he has been anywhere comprising more than a couple of hundred people. He feels he has stepped directly into a tempest, a maelstrom of jostling bodies and babbling voices, steaming horses’ flanks and wheels that rumble and clatter. Someone shoves him hard in the back, causing him to stumble and fall on one knee. He gets to his feet, apologizes to the furious face that is turned towards him, a red-bearded man with a barrel on his shoulder, and steps around to the other side of his travelling chest. His stomach complains nervously, a combination of expectation and trepidation as to his usual breakfast of mouldy hard tack and sour ale, the seafarer’s staple. His insides yaw and heave in protest at the cobbles after eight weeks of becoming accustomed to the rolling deck. He suppresses a rush of nausea and swallows his saliva.
Where to, master?
Already the porter – a young lad with a broad smile, a nose like a potato and fair hair sticking out like dry straw from under his cap – has a firm grasp on the chest and is, on his own initiative, manhandling it on to his cart.
I need lodgings, Falck says, looking along the wharf at the quaint and uniform fronts of the serving houses that seem alight in the morning sun as it reaches down from the surrounding fells. Puffs of cloud gather and spread, casting restless shadows on the slopes above the town. A place where a poor traveller may rest his head and find a good meal at a fair price, he adds.
Step up, sir, says the lad, with a gesture towards the cart, on which a simple crosspiece does for a seat.
Thank you, my child. I prefer to walk.
The boy grips the handles and sets off.
Indeed, says Morten Falck, who is for a moment hesitant. He finds it difficult to adjust to the sensation of having firm ground beneath his feet; and to the feeling of the breeze as it strokes his cheek, bringing with it the aromas of pine forest, wood smoke, horse dung, cooking smells and the filth and excrement of the street. Terra firma, he says to himself. My own country. My boot now stands upon the same land on which my father treads, if he is still alive. According to the letter that came with the ship by which he now is returned, his father is more or less in the throes of death, which probably means all is
as usual and that he is in good health. But in the meantime he might indeed have become properly ill, which cruel fate may befall any hypochondriac. There was something else in the letter that made him anxious, suggestions that nothing lasts for ever, one has become aged and infirm and misses the engaging chatter of a woman now that my beloved wife, your blessed mother, has departed, etc. Has his father grown melancholy in his dotage? Or was he trying to tell him something?
The land here is deeply incised by fords, it has reached out an arm and taken hold of Morten Falck and wrenched him from the claws of the sea. And here he now stands, without any idea of which way is up or down in his life. He will travel east, this much he knows, and by road, if there is one, and if necessary he will go by foot in the manner of the blessed Professor Holberg, a Bergen man by birth, who journeyed in the same way when he was Falck’s age. Even though it would surely be quicker to return home by the packet boat. But he has had enough of sailing. No more ships for me, thank you, no more hard tack and oats, or the stench of men and their pent-up desire. The land will embrace him, consume him, with its fair valleys, shady forests and small farms. I shall be bid welcome wherever I go, with a glass of fresh milk and shelter for the night. Of this he has lain and fantasized during the voyage. He has but vague conceptions of the landscapes east of Bergen. There will doubtless be fells and at this time of year most probably snow. None theless, snow is a thing he has grown used to these past years. And everywhere there will be people, countrymen! Indeed, he will go on foot!
Sir? The porter lad stands waiting; he looks back at Falck over his shoulder.
He follows the cart into the town. Soon he finds himself further from the sea than at any time in several years. The weeks on board the Charlotta have been peaceful and without event, apart from a single episode off the Cape Farewell, where they narrowly avoided collision with a wreck adrift on the waves. Its upper deck amidships was as yet above water, the masts snapped at the yard, stumps of rope and tattered sails flapping in the wind, from the hold came a foul odour of decay, and the sea around the wreck glistened with train oil. The rough sea gave them no chance of boarding her, and yet they came so close as to make out her name on the side of the bow: Henrietta of Aberdeen. The captain made note of it in his log and would inform the shipping company on his return. He believed the vessel to be a Scottish whaler that had made havoc along the coast this past year and which the colony managers had tried unsuccessfully to seize. Morten Falck held a service and prayed for the salvation of the souls who went down with her. The crew of the Charlotta were in low spirits for some days following the encounter, which they took to be an omen of ill fortune, and Falck, too, was quite affected by the dismal mood. He saw the face of the widow appear faintly embossed in the darkness between the masts; he awoke in his cot with the feeling of being touched by her putty-like fingers; he heard her voice speak to him, a monotone chunter devoid of recognizable lexis. He was certain she would not allow him to leave the vessel alive.
The Prophets of Eternal Fjord Page 49