“Didn’t he fall?”
“It was foggy. They say he took a wrong step, but he built the cabin on the beach over twenty-five years ago, and he made the trip home in pitch darkness night after night. What does fog mean then?”
She got up and washed her hands and came over to watch him work.
“Try to take off less potato with the peel! I know it’s hard when they are so soft and mushy, but before long there’ll be a shortage.”
He tried. It took longer, but she had never rushed him. He looked up at her. She had sat down with a mug of tea and put her feet up on a stool.
“Help yourself to a mug if you like,” she said.
He shook his head and continued peeling; she sipped the scalding tea. Her cheeks were red from the cold winters and the warmth of the fire.
“What’s your name?” Alek asked suddenly.
She looked at him, surprised.
“You’re the first person to ask me that since I arrived in Last Harbor. Everyone just calls me innkeeper, and my husband called me Ma. My name is Jona.”
He wiped the starch from his fingers and poured a mug of tea for himself. She emptied hers and got up.
“And who will listen to someone whose name they don’t even want to know, so don’t repeat my words! And don’t tell anyone that you saw anything!”
There was a knock on the door. A couple of little girls stood outside with a big basket filled with strange orange balls.
“Mother told us to bring these to you, because she doesn’t know what to use them for.”
Jona picked one up.
“These must be oranges,” she said. “I’d like to have them.”
“There are a lot more down on the beach.”
“Then go get another basketful.”
Jona poured the fruit into a wooden trough and gave each of the girls a coin. Then she placed one of the oranges on the cutting board and sliced it like an onion. The thin, yellow juice spread across the white-scoured wood. She handed Alek one of the slices and took one herself.
The hard peel was bitter, the fruit tasted both sour and sweet at the same time. Alek had never tasted anything like it.
“What if we slice them and cook them with sugar?” he suggested.
Jona nodded.
“Let’s try. Maybe they can be used as filling for tarts.”
In the end, they decided that the orange, syrupy jam tasted best on bread.
Jona sent Alek to see if Eidi would like some for the store. Eidi agreed to try a few jars to see if people liked it.
“I need to buy something, too,” said Alek. “Fabric for a dress for Myna.”
“But she got fabric from me when I was there.”
“It’s supposed to be a present—from me.”
“Oh, I see,” said Eidi, and began to pull down the heavy rolls from the shelves. Black and dark-blue cloth, just one color or with a small pattern.
Alek caught sight of a roll with shiny, blue-green material, turquoise blue, with light-yellow fingers of seaweed that spread across it like filigree.
“That’s it,” he said, and pointed at the roll.
“I don’t think she’s going to like that.”
“Please,” said Alek.
“Well, it’s your money,” said Eidi, and measured the fabric.
“And thread and needle and scissors.”
“But she has scissors,” objected Eidi.
“She asked for a pair,” said Alek, and got it all.
He also bought a little brown notebook with blank, yellowish paper and a pencil.
* * *
The rest of the day Alek and Jona cooked oranges. The little girls dragged up one basket after another.
When it began to get dark, Jona cut a thick slice of the cold roasted spiced beef and gave him a pail with potatoes and onions that had been baked in the ashes in the hearth. They had not had time to prepare anything else.
“Take a couple of oranges, too, if you’d like!” she said, and stuck one into each of his pockets.
He did not go home across the cliff but circled it, following the stream that led out to the beach. It was dark in the cabin when he went in, and when he lit the candle he could not see her.
“Thala,” he called, and she stuck her head out from the alcove.
She came over to him and took his hand in greeting. She walked over to the door, knocked hard on it, and pulled at the handle, then ran back to the alcove and peeked out from behind the curtain. Then she pointed at one of the small, dirty windows, stepped out onto the floor, and made herself big and broad shouldered.
A man had been there, knocking. He had tried to open the door, but it was locked. Then he had looked in the window and had gone away again. It was good that she had hidden. And it was probably best not to clean the windows.
He handed her the package from Eidi’s store and pointed at her. She unwrapped it and smiled when she saw the things he had bought. She held up the fabric and hugged it to her body like an embrace. He took the pencil and wrote her name on the little book. She grabbed his hand across the table and squeezed it.
But when he pulled the two oranges out of his pockets and handed them to her, she burst into tears.
9
On the first page of the little brown notebook Thala drew a town that rose from the sea up the side of a mountain. The houses had flat roofs and the town was speckled with trees and vines. The ships in the harbor had sails and were heavily loaded with freight. A bright sun sizzled in a cloudless sky.
On the next page she drew a single ship. She was very careful with the details, and Alek recognized the wreck. Underneath the ship she drew the cargo: oranges, some plants in bunches that Alek didn’t know, perhaps herbs, large casks of wine, and jars and decorated ceramic bowls.
There wasn’t enough room for everything, so she continued along the sides of the ship and on top, so that the drawing eventually resembled a square frame with an oval picture in the middle.
On the third page a man and a woman appeared with a little girl between them. Underneath the girl she wrote Thala. The woman, who must be her mother, had a long thick braid hanging down over one breast; her father had black hair and a beard and was tall and broad shouldered. He had rings in both ears.
The last drawing showed the same man crawling up onto a beach. In front of him a dark figure had raised an oar. A tear landed on his head. Thala got up and dried her eyes and began to pace back and forth across the floor like a caged animal.
Her reddish brown dress was veined by long rents, which she had mended with thousands of little stitches. She had tied her hair with a leather cord that she had found in the little bowl on the mantel.
Alek found the shirt and pants and handed them to her along with a knit cap and pointed at the door. Seen from a distance she would look like a boy.
* * *
The beach had been plundered and abandoned; even the wreck was gone. The moon’s silver light made even the smallest stone stand out clearly. Thala leaned her head back and looked at the starry sky. Together they walked along the water while the waves licked the stones.
A bird’s cry cut through the clear air, and Thala pointed up at the seven sisters in the sky. Slowly she and Alek walked to the tip of the point.
Something blinked at the water’s edge. Alek bent down to pick up a blue and white jar. The water ran from it through a hole in the bottom. When it was empty he handed it to Thala.
They walked home along the other side of the point and ended at the stream, where they got down on their knees and drank from hollowed hands.
Thala washed her face, then she walked a little way along the water and collected some mud. She closed the hole in the bottom of the jar with a small, uneven stone, before filling it with mud.
At home in the cabin she took one of the oranges and carefully peeled off the thick skin and divided the fruit into segments. Alek followed her lead. The bitterness was in the skin; peeled, it just tasted sweet and sour. Thala took three of t
he pips and pressed them into the wet dirt in the jar and placed it on a saucer on the window ledge.
* * *
The bodies of the shipwrecked drifted to shore one after another. A man with gold rings in both ears and black hair and a beard streaked with gray must have hit the rocks with great force because the back of his head was crushed.
There was also a woman among the dead. Her clothes had been ripped off so she was naked as a newborn when they found her, but a strong leather cord had managed to contain her long thick braid. Her fingers were swollen and her ring finger was missing.
The strangers were buried in the cemetery at the edge of town close to the inland road that led south. Nine stone piles covered the bodies of eight men and one woman, and only the birds sang at the burial.
It was Jona who knew.
* * *
Ravnar’s ship returned, without Ravnar. He and the skipper had gotten into an argument, which had ended with Ravnar preferring to walk the whole long way from Eastern Harbor to Last Harbor rather than setting foot on the rotten old tub. One of the other crew members sought Alek out to tell him.
And Alek went out to the beach and threw stones at the cliffs and the waves and the gulls, at everything that lay still and everything that moved.
* * *
A couple of days later Jona came into the kitchen with a big, square piece of driftwood, beautifully rounded at the corners.
“Can you draw?” she asked.
“A bit.”
“I was thinking of hanging a sign above the door—with a picture of a plate of lamb chops, a glass of wine, and some oranges on a white tablecloth or something like that. Can you manage that?”
Alek promised to buy paint and brushes at Eidi’s and bring the sign home to see what he could do.
* * *
It was heavy and difficult to carry the paint and the wood and the food pail all down over the cliff, but the route around the stream was even longer. He staggered along, walking as carefully as he could.
A stone fell into the deep a bit behind him, down into the crack with water at the bottom where he had once dropped the bread. The stone hit the water with a hollow plop. Alek hurried on. The sun had set, and dusk had arrived. The light misty rain had brought the night closer and made the stones slippery.
He listened with his entire back, but didn’t have time to hear anything before he was seized from behind by a pair of strong arms that held him upright so that he could neither move nor turn around. He leaned forward and plunged his teeth into the sleeve of a wool sweater and bit as hard as he could.
“You rotten kid,” said Ravnar, laughing, and let him go.
* * *
When they stepped into the cabin, Ravnar halted at the door with a start. Suddenly Alek realized how odd it was for Thala to be standing there.
She looked so exotic with the deep, square neck of her dress, which was cut close to her breasts and then loosened and fell in deep folds toward the floor. Her hair was gathered high on her head and a bunch of small black curls had gotten loose and twisted down along her white neck. She had a big piece of driftwood in both hands and Alek understood that she had heard their voices and gotten frightened. He walked over to her and took the wood from her. Then he grabbed her hand and pulled her over to Ravnar. He pointed at him and said his name. She nodded and put out her hand. Ravnar took it carefully in his with the slightly grubby bandage.
“And this is Thala,” said Alek, while Ravnar blushed.
* * *
While they ate, Alek reported everything that he knew. Ravnar listened and became more and more angry.
“They’re murderers,” he exclaimed, and began to walk up and down the floor. “And you haven’t said anything to anyone?”
“No.”
“That’s probably best. We have to keep an eye on the beach so they can be caught in the act.” He sat down again and breathed deeply. “That’s the only thing we can do.”
Thala walked over to him with a basin of warm water. She pointed at his hand; then she sat down and carefully undid the bandage. A deep flame-red wound went through his entire palm.
“You don’t need to do that,” objected Ravnar, and pulled his hand away, but she took hold of it again and placed it in the water, where she cleaned it.
Afterward she dried it and tied a clean white strip of cloth around it. She got up and emptied the basin outside the door.
“She can’t stay here,” declared Ravnar.
“Why not?”
“I don’t want a woman in my house.”
“She doesn’t have anywhere else to live,” said Alek.
Thala sat down on the edge of the alcove.
“Good night,” she said gently in her odd accent, before she disappeared behind the curtain.
“And damn if she hasn’t taken my bed, too—the witch!”
Alek couldn’t help laughing, but stopped when he caught the dark look that Ravnar sent him.
10
Every night when Thala thought that Ravnar and Alek were sleeping she got up and stepped into Ravnar’s old pants and Alek’s too-small shirt, pulled the knit cap down around her ears, and walked out to the end of Last Farewell.
On nights with a moon Alek could keep an eye on her from the corner of the house. She was a small, insignificant spot surrounded by the dark sea and the starry night. When she turned to come back, he slipped under the blanket next to Ravnar again.
He only knew how she spent her days from what he could see when he came home. The cabin was so clean and nice. The floor and the table had been scrubbed, and there was always a little bouquet of spring flowers that she must have sneaked out to pick by the stream. The cabin smelled as fresh as the grass on a summer day.
She had painted the sign for the inn, and Jona was impressed by the three lamb chops, the glass of wine, and the three oranges, one of them peeled and halfway split into segments so it opened like a flower. The tablecloth underneath was cream-colored lace, which revealed dark spots of the table beneath it. The sign hung above the door, and Jona had named the inn “Three of Each” and was happy that she had finally come up with a proper name.
Thala had used the rest of the paint to decorate the cabin’s furniture. Orange and wine-red trim billowed along the backs of the chairs and around the little shelf Ravnar had built out of driftwood.
Ravnar’s hand was slowly healing but it still hurt when he moved his fingers, and he could only bend and stretch them to a certain point.
“Those skippers are so greedy,” he said. “They exploit their crews. If only I had my own boat.” He sighed while he sat, putting bait on the hooks on long lines, a job that otherwise was reserved for children and the old.
“There’s a boat in Crow Cove,” Alek reminded him.
“That little dinghy. Besides, I don’t belong there.”
And then he said nothing for a long time.
But Thala didn’t stay silent. She practiced conversing with Alek and he loved to hear her say: “Would you hand me the booter?” And “How it sturmed in the night!” The words tickled in his ears.
The pips in the little pot sent up three dark-green shoots. Thala nipped off the two smallest. The third unfolded a pair of leaves in the dusty spring sun. Thala took special care of the shoot with water and gull droppings, but she wasn’t really happy.
* * *
One evening Alek took her little book and opened it to the last blank page. With the pencil he drew Crow Cove as best he could: the four houses and the stable, the stream that ran across the beach like the stream behind the cabin, the ridge that circled the place, small sheep with stick legs and an eagle gliding high on the page.
“Little town, very beautiful,” said Thala, and looked for a long time at the drawing.
“That’s where I live,” explained Alek.
“No, here,” she objected.
“Just at the moment, otherwise I live there.”
“There, you like best?”
Alek nodded.
“I like best, too.”
“You can come with me.” But Alek wasn’t sure that she understood him, and Ravnar growled: “What on earth would she do in that crow corner?”
* * *
One night Alek didn’t hear Thala get up. Instead he woke to her tugging at his sleeve.
“Fire,” she whispered.
Alek opened his eyes to a bottomless darkness. It couldn’t be. The fire had to be covered with ashes.
“On the beach,” she continued, and he jumped up and pulled on his pants, then eased the door open and sneaked along the house wall to the corner of the gable. Out there, at the end of the point, the same place as last time, two bonfires flickered. He slipped inside again and woke up Ravnar.
“I’ll go get my old skipper. He’s a stupid swine, but he hates wreckers.” He reached for his pants. “He says it ruins the trade here.”
“Tell me where he lives, then I’ll go get him! You’d better take care of Thala in case they show up here.”
“You’re right. Third house after the inn. Ask him to bring help!”
Ravnar struggled with his clothes in the dark; Alek took his jacket and hurried out.
There wasn’t a single star in the sky. Once in a rare while the full moon appeared as a hazy shiny orb behind the racing clouds. The sea was in turmoil and the waves thundered against the beach. The wind came in gusts; suddenly it was still, then it tugged at him again.
He alternately climbed and crawled up the cliff, and he had almost reached the top when he heard someone coming. He let himself slide to the side of the path, and pressed his back against the cold rock, making himself as flat as a flounder.
The people who were passing were right next to him when his one foot slipped; rocks rattled into the deep, and his other foot began to lose its grip. Then he was grabbed by a huge claw and pulled up onto the path.
“Tell me, are you keeping watch?” said a voice, while the iron hand pinched harder and harder on his upper arm.
The voice was Sigge’s.
“Let me go,” cried Alek, and wriggled like a fish to get loose.
“Is that you, little Crow Cover?” Sigge loosened his grip but he didn’t let go.
“Let me go! There are bonfires on the beach, and Ravnar and I can’t handle the wreckers on our own.”
Alek Page 4