“You, little man,” she called, and he set down the sack and walked over to her.
“Alek,” he said.
“I need help in the kitchen. I’ll pay you with all you can eat for dinner—also for Ravnar and your father.”
“I just have to take the washing home first.”
The woman nodded, and Alek took the sack and hurried out to the cabin. Frid didn’t object and soon Alek was standing in the inn’s kitchen.
* * *
The side of beef was so large that he could barely turn it in the tub. He rubbed it with a mixture of salt and sugar and spices that he had ground to a fine powder in the big mortar. The meat smelled sweetly of blood and spicy from pepper and juniper berries. The door of the cool larder was open to the kitchen, where the innkeeper stood chopping onions.
“Tomorrow there’ll be moisture around it and then it has to be rubbed with the juice every day for ten days.” The woman rinsed her hands in the water basin and dried them and her eyes on her apron. She filled two pails from pots on the stove, put lids on them, and placed a piece of bread next to them. Then she sat down on a stool with her hands in her lap.
“That’s enough for today. There’s mutton stew in one and fish soup in the other.”
Alek stuck the bread under his arm, grabbed the pails by the handles, and walked out into the darkness. The faint glow from the inn’s window led him to the path over the cliff, but then everything grew black. He felt his way forward with the tip of his boot, but the gravel slipped under his feet.
The wind pushed him and let him go, then gave him a new push. One of his feet stepped into nothing, while he held himself upright on the other, swaying. His hands clutched the pail handles, and he spread his arms out, letting the bread crash down from the cliff, and managed to step back to safe ground and fumble on.
From the top of the cliff he could make out two yellowish squares farther down the beach. He knew that the cabin’s door was right between them and steered in that direction.
Ravnar sat with a blanket around him in the chair in front of the hearth; Frid sat on the bed mending one of Ravnar’s shirts.
“You were lucky to get work,” said Ravnar without turning his head. “She’s a good cook.”
“I think it was just for today.”
Alek placed the pails on the table and got out bowls and spoons.
“She hasn’t had any help in the kitchen since old Enver fell to his death. She’ll probably need you again.”
Ravnar turned his chair toward the table and lifted the lid of the soup pail. Frid pulled the end of the thread to the back of the shirt and came over and sat down.
They started with the pail of soup; they continued with the potatoes and mutton until nothing was left. Alek set the bowls outside the door so they could wash them in the stream the next day. Frid put more logs on the fire.
The wind grew stronger and shook the house, and only the heat of the fire prevented it from forcing its way down the chimney; the raindrops pounded on the windows, then the rain turned to hail that smashed against the glass.
“We probably won’t make it out tomorrow,” said Ravnar, and began to fill his pipe.
Alek found a burning twig in the fire and handed it to him.
“When the weather allows, we have to go back,” said Frid. “Do you want to come?”
Ravnar shook his head and sucked in the blue smoke before letting it drift slowly toward the ceiling.
“I have nothing more to do in Crow Cove.”
He had not been there since Myna chose Kotka instead of him.
Alek moved a bit closer to the fire. The flames licked up around the wood and sent a wavy light out into the room. The light rose and fell. It hit Frid on one side of his face and left the other in darkness.
“Since your mother died,” he began, “I may have been happy, but there has always been something in me that at the same time has been infinitely sorrowful.”
Alek sat completely still, Ravnar smoked, Frid cleared his throat.
“That’s how it will always be, I know that now.”
“That’s different; she died,” objected Ravnar.
“Is it?” asked Frid.
Ravnar bent forward and scraped out his pipe over the hearth. Then he knocked it hard against his palm so that the last bits of tobacco fell out. He turned his head and looked up at Alek with a gleam in his eye.
“And what about you, Doup? Do you have a sweetheart?”
“Alek. My name is Alek now.” He clenched his fists on the tabletop. “I was called Doup when I was little.”
“And now you’re big, and you haven’t found a sweetheart yet.”
Alek threw himself on Ravnar and managed to give him a couple of punches in the shoulder before Ravnar grabbed his wrists and held him in a viselike grip. Alek fought to get loose.
“Are you kicking?”
Ravnar got up, so the blanket slid down, and he lifted Alek up and hugged him to his naked body. Alek wriggled like a fish and hammered away on Ravnar’s back, but Ravnar threw him onto his shoulder and carried him over to the bed and placed his entire heavy weight on top of him.
“I give in,” panted Alek, and Ravnar stood up.
“You’ve gotten stronger since I saw you last,” he said, and stuck out his hand and pulled Alek to his feet.
Then he picked up his blanket and wrapped himself in it.
“Well,” he said. “Are you offering a mug of beer?”
* * *
When they woke up the next morning a yellow-gray light forced its way through the small panes. The sea was whipped to a froth that clung to the glass and flew in white clumps across the black stones of the beach.
There was a knock at the door; outside stood a little boy, asking if Alek would come up to the inn again today. All the ships were in harbor, and the inn was full.
Alek grabbed the empty pails and followed him. Up on the cliff the wind was so fierce that the boy reached for Alek’s hand in order not to be blown over.
“How did you manage the trip out here?” asked Alek.
“I crawled,” yelled the boy.
* * *
The inn’s parlor was thick with voices and smoke when Alek made his way through to the kitchen. Sweaty and red-faced, the innkeeper was sitting down, frying lamb chops in a pan on the hearth.
“Chop me off another ten!” She nodded her head in the direction of the larder. “And then you can start rubbing the meat!”
A rack of lamb was lying on the wooden block with a big meat ax next to it. Alek squared his shoulders and lifted the ax over his head and let it fall. He produced a very fat lamb chop. He fetched the big knife and split it in half. The next one turned out better, and the final one was exactly as it was supposed to be.
He worked without a break the whole day, and when it began to get dark, he asked the woman for permission to leave.
“Yes, that road isn’t good in the dark,” she answered. “But then you’ll have to come a bit earlier tomorrow.”
He promised. She ladled white bean mash into one pail and placed six lamb chops on top. In the other, there was potato soup with bread on the side.
He tied his scarf around his waist and stuck the bread underneath it and lifted the pails.
Far out to the west the cloud cover had let go of the sea, and a shining section of reddish yellow sky appeared. The storm had subsided and left behind a noisy swell. A star blinked from the sky island in the sea of clouds, and the cabin’s eyes greeted him.
7
“Come back with us!” pleaded Alek yet another time.
The day’s first gray light seeped in through the half-open door along with the smell of saltwater and seaweed.
“You could also stay here,” said Ravnar casually, and took his knife from the table and put it in its sheath. “Otherwise, goodbye.”
He quietly closed the door behind him. Alek tore it open.
“Goodbye,” he yelled after the dark figure, which lifted its hand wit
hout turning around.
The boards shifted in the bed, and Frid came over and stood in the doorway next to him. Ravnar was already on his way down behind the cliff.
“I don’t like leaving him,” said Frid. “But what can I do?”
“I could stay here.”
Frid shook his head.
“I could come back with Eidi in the fall.”
Frid looked at him.
“I could work at the inn. Then he would get some proper food.”
“I don’t want you to fish.”
Frid shut the door.
“I won’t,” promised Alek.
Frid walked over and squatted in front of the hearth. He poked at the embers and put more logs on.
“I’ll talk to the innkeeper and Eidi about it,” he said.
* * *
The flock of jackdaws was in the air and holding a conference on the rooftops. There was smoke in the chimneys and there were little urchins in the yards when Alek accompanied Frid to the edge of town. He would take the inland road and in a few days he would be back in Crow Cove.
“Take care of yourself!” Frid put a hand on Alek’s shoulder. “And take care of Ravnar!”
Then he pulled Alek to his itchy wool jacket for a short moment and let him go again.
Alek stood looking after him, and every time Frid turned around, they waved at each other. Alek sat down on a rock at the edge of the road, and there he remained until he could no longer see his father. Now he was alone.
* * *
During the day he was busy at the inn, but all too often when he came home in the evening the cabin stood empty and dark on the beach. Still he didn’t want to accept the innkeeper’s offer to sleep over on the bench in the kitchen.
Every evening he carried food home and started a fire and prepared for the next time that Ravnar would come home. He usually stayed home one night, at the most two, before he set off again.
* * *
“Tap, tap,” was the sound against the pane.
Alek sat up in bed with a start and listened out into the darkness. The wind whipped around the chimney and along the roof on a hunt for cracks. The smell from the sleeping fire hung in the air, and from somewhere the cold came creeping. He pulled his blanket closer and lay down again.
The pictures came and went: the big piece of beef in the wooden trough with the bloody juice at the bottom, Frid’s back on its way through the gray landscape, the jackdaws who sought each other out above the town, the gulls that fought at sea, Ravnar’s black hair against his folded arm when he sat sleeping at the table, wave after wave after wave all the way to the end of the world …
“Tap, tap.”
A ship goes down, a man gets lost in the fog, the stones roll out over the edge of the cliff. Wide awake now, Alek tumbled from sleep’s fragile shelf down into the pitch dark.
He lay stock-still so as not to reveal to the dark that he was there. But the darkness stared straight at his face and placed its heavy hand on his thigh. It breathed the smell of ash and dried seaweed into his nostrils. It breathed deeply, so that the cabin’s boards creaked.
“Tap, tap.”
And the ship went down.
* * *
When he left the cabin, he stepped into an even greater darkness. Everything was black: sky, sea, and the rocks under his feet. But in the black there was one little point of light, and when he came closer, he saw there were two fires that burned all the way out at the end of the point, all the way out at Last Farewell’s fingertips.
Alek bent forward against the wind and began to fight his way out there. Slowly his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, and he began to glimpse a line of planks and barrels, sacks and chests, that were being ground against the beach by the waves.
Then he caught sight of the wreck. It had lodged onto a reef and had broken in half. The waves threw themselves at it, pulling and tearing and tugging.
But the hull would not be budged, only the loose parts drifted toward land, and now Alek could see that one of them was a drowned sailor who lay facedown, staring into the deep. A moment later he disappeared.
Then Alek realized that the bonfires had been lit as if to show the entrance to a harbor. But here you did not sail into light and food and warmth; here you sailed to your death.
Once in a while it looked as if the wind would blow out the fires, but each time they took hold again. In the wandering light on the beach three men walked around wresting boxes and barrels from the waves.
Alek carefully slipped behind a big rock, where he could hide and keep an eye on what was happening.
A man came out of the sea, crawling on all fours up toward land. But the wave would not let go of him; it grabbed hold of his legs and pulled him down onto his stomach, yet he managed to get up again and continue crawling.
The largest of the three men on the beach walked over to him. But instead of offering him a hand, the man grabbed an oar and hit the shipwrecked man with all his might on the back of his bowed head. The man sank down, and at the same moment there was a scream by Alek’s ear.
He turned his head and glimpsed a pair of dark eyes in a pale, wet face. It had to be someone from the ship.
The figure attempted to get up, but Alek grabbed hold of it and pulled it with him behind the rock and placed a hand over the unknown mouth.
If the three men on the beach had heard the scream, they would both be finished. Nausea poured over him, and his heart beat so that his chest hurt.
For a long time Alek lay motionless waiting for the blow that would send him into the great darkness forever. But nothing happened. He moved his hand and the shipwrecked figure was silent.
Then he carefully stuck his head out and looked up over the rock. The shipwrecked man was gone; the wave had gotten its prey.
The three men were still busy salvaging wreckage from the water’s edge with long boat hooks. Slowly they worked their way closer and closer.
Alek pointed in the direction of the cabin and started to carefully crawl away, and the shipwrecked person crawled along behind him. After a while he looked back and could no longer see either the men or the bonfires. They must have extinguished them. Then he got up, pulling the stranger with him, and hand in hand they ran over to the cabin.
He slammed the door behind them and fumbled his way to the candlestick on the table and lit the candle.
And there she stood: the goatherd above the turquoise sea, with black curls from which the water was pouring, wearing a dress that had been torn. Blood trickled from the many scrapes on her arms and legs and face, creating a marbled pattern on her white skin.
He found a towel for her and a blanket she could wrap around herself, and then he turned his back so she could change in privacy.
With a little tap on the shoulder she told him that she was done. She had spread the wet clothes across a chair. He pointed to the alcove opening, and she sat down on the bed with her legs dangling over the side.
He was just about to sit down beside her when someone knocked on the door. He quickly pushed her into the alcove and pulled the curtain before he threw a blanket around himself and opened the door.
Sigge stood outside.
“I came by and saw that the light was on here in the middle of the night. Is everything okay?”
“I just had a nightmare.”
“Oh,” said Sigge. “What did you dream?”
“About a sound.”
Sigge glanced past him into the parlor.
“It can be scary to be alone. Do you want me to come in?”
Alek shook his head.
“I was just about to go to bed. Thanks anyway.”
“Well, good night then.”
Alek closed the door and hurried over to blow out the candle.
8
Alek’s shirt was too small and Ravnar’s old pants way too big for the young woman. Alek found her a belt she could keep them up with. Then he continued making breakfast.
“Would you like a fried egg?”<
br />
She looked at him completely lost. She must be able to say something. He pointed at himself.
“Alek.”
He pointed at her.
“Thala,” she answered.
Her voice was deep and soft. She dipped her finger in the pitcher of milk and wrote her name on the table. After that they ate in silence. When they were done, she picked up her torn dress and made some motions with her hand as if she was sewing it.
He nodded and found a rusty sewing needle and a spool of thread in a small bowl above the hearth. He couldn’t find scissors, so he gave her his knife.
Then he showed how he was going to lock the door from the outside so no one could come in while he was gone.
The remains of the wreck still stood on the reef, and there were many people on the beach collecting driftwood. All the boxes and barrels were gone. The thick cloud covering had opened up and let columns of light hit the surface of the sea. The waves had subsided, and only the swells hinted at their wildness in the night.
Alek hurried up over the cliff and down to the harbor. Many of the boats had arrived in the early daylight, and the women were already at work with their long, narrow knives. The air was spotted with gulls. But the boat that Ravnar had sailed with was missing.
He walked over to a boat where they were shoveling fish up onto the bed of a pushcart and asked after him.
“He got a hook caught in his hand,” they told him. “They went to Eastern Harbor to have it cut out.”
Alek thanked them for the message and walked to the inn. A big bucket of potatoes stood ready for him; they had to be peeled and sliced for the mutton stew. The innkeeper was sitting and cutting meat into cubes.
“The poor sailors,” she said. “No one thinks of them; everyone just thinks of wreckage and lumber.” She took a handful of meat and put it in the big iron pot. “And many go down, way too many.”
“There was a bonfire on the beach last night.”
She looked up at him, frightened.
“Don’t speak out loud about that,” she said. “I think that was what cost old Enver his life.”
Alek Page 3