In the Distance
Page 25
For most of the afternoon, the boy, enjoying the new status he had acquired after volunteering for the blasting team, was carried away by the cheery atmosphere and his shipmates’ tales of imminent wealth and fame. When he suddenly remembered Håkan, he could not find him. He thought that he might be taking an ice bath and spent a good while scanning the new breaks and holes in the ice in front of the ship. In the end, the boy found him in a nook below deck, squatting over his few effects. Like everyone else, he seemed to be getting ready to land. He got up when he noticed he was being watched.
“Can I come with you?” the boy asked. “When we anchor in Alaska, can I come with you?”
“I am not going to Alaska,” Håkan said, as he brushed by the boy and got out on deck.
The sun was low and red. Unlike the previous evening, land and sky were now split by the horizon. The men had started drinking. They were playing dice within a circle they had formed, crouching down around some chips and coins. Expectant silences were followed by loud cheers. Standing outside the ring, the officers looked on, smiling.
Håkan walked toward the quarterdeck, away from the gamblers. The boy caught up with him. They were alone in that part of the ship. Håkan felt the boy’s presence behind him, paused, glanced over his shoulder, and then kept walking sternward, all the way to the last port-side cleat. Once he got there, he threw his bundle overboard.
“Wait,” the boy cried. “Where are you going?”
“West,” said Håkan.
The boy looked confused.
“What west?”
“Now, I may be able to walk over the sea. Otherwise, next winter. Then, a straight line west. To Sweden.”
Perplexed, the boy turned to the solitary expanse. He seemed disoriented by the horizontal vastness—indefinite and bare, like another sky under the sky. When he looked back, Håkan was already straddling the ice-lacquered railing. The boy approached him, wanting to say something. Without pausing or looking back, Håkan started his descent.
A moment later, the boy, leaning over the deck, saw the colossal man pick up his bundle and stare at the icy extension ahead. Spindrift smudged the horizon. Although the wind had not reached him yet, Håkan fitted the lion hood over his head. The sky purpled behind plumes of snow blown up from the ground. He looked at his feet, then up again, and set off into the whiteness, toward the sinking sun.
THE END
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