The Lighthouse Road

by Peter Geye

  Before then, Thea had never seen more than one hundred people gathered together. But even in the middle of the night there were thousands of people here. In the next slip two steamships, each twice as long as the Port av Kristiania, were loading, crowds of people tunneled into the shadowy quay. As Thea reached the gangplank, she noticed the taut ship lines crisscrossing the docks, the enormous nets hauling cargo onboard the steamships before her, and casks by the thousands ready to be loaded into ships’ holds.

  As soon as she was on the dock she was swept into a cordoned area where several nurses stood ready to examine and interrogate the passengers. One at a time they were led to tables. When it was Thea’s turn, a grim-faced woman signaled her to come forward. Thea was asked to provide her ticket for passage. The nurse confirmed the ticket against a list in her passenger log and proceeded to ask a series of twenty-nine questions.

  Aside from the routine questions regarding her final destination and place of birth and the promise of labor in America, she was also asked whether or not she was an anarchist or polygamist, if she was in any way crippled or had deformities, if she had ever been imprisoned. She spent fifteen minutes answering these and other questions, and when the interview was complete, the nurse took Thea into a curtained area and asked her to remove her cloak and hat.

  The medical examination that followed was cursory. After the nurse listened to Thea’s lungs with her stethoscope and checked her for a hunchback and diseases of the skin, she filled out a landing card and told Thea she could go aboard Thingvalla. As she ascended the steep gangplank, she could already feel the melancholy sea in the soles of her feet.

  Thingvalla was a three-masted, single-stacked steamship already some twenty-five years old when Thea sailed across the North Atlantic. She had a third-class ticket and found her berth on the aft end of the tween deck. There were four canvas bunks in a six-by-eight-foot cabin, but it was late in the year and a ship made to carry nine hundred steerage passengers had only three hundred aboard. So she bunked with only one other passenger, a rawboned pregnant woman with a ghost’s pallor and darting eyes. The woman’s belongings were even more pathetic than Thea’s: a filthy gunnysack not much filled and tied closed with a piece of balling twine. She had no foodstuffs and no purse and Thea, for all she’d seen, had never seen anything as sad as this.

  Aside from the people aboard her, Thingvalla also held a cargo of barreled fish: brisling, anchovies, herring, cod. The casks must have leaked because the smell seeped through the interstices of the floor and on warmer days put a stink in the air impossible to ignore. The stench especially disagreed with Thea’s bunkmate, who had trouble enough with the heavy seas and yawing vessel. Whole hours passed with a constant moan coming from the woman.

  On their third day at sea Thea had had enough, and she ventured to the main deck for fresh air. The deck was slick and crowded and Thea could hardly bring herself to move. She stood on the threshold of the gangway, making a slow inspection of the panorama. Though Thingvalla was only forty nautical miles north of Scotland, there was nothing but the brumous sea and its slowly rising swells to see. Thea was used to long views, but this was otherworldly. In Hammerfest, the tundra was locked and still. Here the sea roiled and splashed and went on forever. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

  She spent an hour walking from one vacant spot along the railing to the next, finally able to believe she was gone. In all the time she’d spent wondering what it would be like, she’d never envisioned a world this vast.

  She was standing at the prow when she noticed the western horizon. It was approaching with greater haste than the ship’s steady ten knots might have warranted. The swells were growing, too, and a stiff breeze came from nowhere and started sheering the tops of the waves. The gulls that had been careening above took a quick and certain refuge in the tangle of lines connecting the masts. A moment later one of the ship’s crew told her they were clearing the decks.

  By the time she found her cabin the boat was already bucking. The pregnant woman had lit the lamp and the shadows it cast on the wall swayed as if in a breeze. “I’ve had enough of the dark,” the woman said. The words surprised Thea, but she grabbed hold of them.

  “There is a storm coming.”

  “You mean it’s not already here?”

  “I guess it most likely is. I saw the thunderheads up on deck. I went for the fresh air.”

  The woman merely nodded. In the lamplight her pallor looked even more pale than normal. “Would you like something to eat?” Thea asked. “Or to drink? I still have a little sheep’s milk.”

  The woman hung her head. Embarrassed but eager.

  Thea removed her food basket from beneath her bunk and set it on the floor between them. The ship’s motion made each movement difficult, but she managed to get the basket open and remove the milk, which she offered right away to the woman.

  She drank with gusto, finishing half the jar before she realized what she was doing. She capped the jar, and handed it back to Thea, who offered the cheese in turn. The woman took only a small bite.

  “Please,” Thea said. “Help yourself to all you want.”

  She took another bite.

  “What’s your name?” Thea asked.

  “Ingeborg Svensrud.”

  “Is it very difficult with the child?” Thea gestured at the woman’s belly.

  She rested her hand on the unborn babe and took a deep breath. The ship had begun to complain, a sort of whining that accompanied the more violent waves. “This passage would be easier without the pregnancy, but I am blessed. I thank God every minute.”

  “I pray for you each night.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To meet my husband in North Dakota. He left in April. He doesn’t know about the child.”

  “He will be very pleased.” The woman smiled. “I hope so,” she said.

  Two days the storm. The Thingvalla beating against the sea. Steerage passengers had been ordered to stay in their berths, to keep their cabin doors shut and their belongings lashed. The stewards, instead of coming three times daily with their firkins of tepid water, came only once during the forty-hour blow. They ladled water into teapots and bowls and said they’d return when next the seas allowed. The general clamor had given over to a general moan, one heard even through the closed-up cabins.

  Ingeborg Svensrud was at once miserable and rejuvenated, first by the storm and then by the food Thea shared with her. They didn’t speak much, but whenever Thea removed the basket from under her bunk she offered some to her cabinmate.

  In the middle of the second night of the storm, after thirty-six hours of the yawing Thingvalla, Ingeborg fell into a hollering fit. Thea asked Ingeborg what was the matter, but the woman only folded at the waist and let out another shriek. Thea somehow knew instinctively what had taken hold of Ingeborg, and she hurried into her cloak and set out down the gangway in search of the ship’s surgeon.

  It took Thea ten minutes to find her way up to the main deck and ten minutes more to find a crewman at his midnight watch. She told him her purpose, that her cabinmate was ill. Desperately ill and in need of a doctor. They spoke Norwegian.

  “She’s full of sick folk, your boat. Back down to your bunk, now. This deck’s no place at a time like this.” He spoke loudly, over the storm.

  “Sir, I beg you. She’s with child. She’s in labor. She needs a doctor.”

  He removed his hat and pushed back his wet hair.

  “Sir, she’s desperate. She’s alone down there.”

  He responded with an about-face, and Thea followed him up a staircase and into a dim, carpeted gangway. They walked nearly the full length of the ship and then climbed another staircase before stopping at a wooden door. The watchman knocked softly and then stepped back, elbowing Thea aside. He stood with his feet spread and his hands behind his back.

  It took a full minute before the ship’s surgeon answered the knock. He was dressed
in his nightshirt, and as he swung the door open he was busy pinching his glasses on. Thea repeated the story of her desperate cabinmate and the surgeon, still more asleep than awake, reached behind the door for his bag and followed the watchman, Thea trailing the two men.

  By the time they returned to the steerage cabin, Ingeborg had stopped screaming. The surgeon swayed from foot to foot with the ship, the watchman holding a lantern behind him. It cast a nauseating, blurry light on the cabin walls and ceiling.

  “Well, now, what’s this business?” the surgeon’s voice boomed.

  “Ingeborg, I’ve brought the surgeon. He’s here to help you.” Thea’s voice was only a whisper, but it carried in that haunted cabin as much as the surgeon’s. “Are you all right?”

  The surgeon stepped to Ingeborg’s bedside and put his hand on her forehead. “She’s afire,” he said. To the watchman he said, “Fetch my porter, quickly.”

  The watchman fixed the lantern to a hook on the wall and nodded and left.

  Now the surgeon turned to Thea. “You say she is with child?”

  “Yes.”

  To Ingeborg he said, again in a very loud voice, “We’ll have a look now.”

  Ingeborg would not uncurl, her sorry blanket lay bunched around her.

  “Come, now,” the surgeon persisted, reaching for Ingeborg this time and pulling her onto her back.

  She was indeed unconscious, though clearly breathing, her chest rising and falling with each labored breath.

  “Your kind companion here has informed me you’re with child. Let’s have a look.”

  The surgeon removed his stethoscope from his bag and pressed it into the folds of her tunic. He listened closely, checked her forehead again, and stood erect with his hand on his chin regarding her.

  “How long has she been unwell?” he asked Thea.

  Thea explained how she woke to her wailing.

  “Is she family?”

  “No,” Thea said. “I’ve only known her since we boarded.”

  “Then I’ll have you step outside. For her privacy.”

  As he suggested Thea leave, Ingeborg stirred, a sudden and sharp movement that began and ended with her eyes. They were pouched, her eyes, and full of tears. She reached for Thea’s hand and when she did the blanket fell from her lap. The woman’s skirt pooled at her waist. In the folds of her dress her trembling hands held tight the lost child.

  The boy was still attached to the umbilical cord, his pallor the color of rotten meat. His visage, in the slewing lantern light, looked restful.

  In a voice altogether different than any he’d used so far, a voice far gentler, the surgeon said, “The child is lost, dear. Let’s not lose you in the bargain.”

  He did save her, though from what Thea did not know. When the surgeon sliced the umbilical cord and removed the still child from its mother’s lap, Ingeborg’s cry was as sorrowful as a cold moon.

  XI.

  (November 1920)

  Odd stared in wonder at the triptych of framed portraits of his mother. In the first photograph she stood outside the mess hall at the old logging camp up on the Burnt Wood River. A beldam and the handsome camp cook stood to either side of her. She wore an ankle-length dress beneath her apron and shawl, a man’s wool hat, mittens. Her expression was clearest in this photograph, alert and flummoxed. Sad. The snow on the ground was glazed and dazzling, and it cast a light as keen from below as above. A pair of wolf pelts hung above the entry door to the mess hall.

  In the second picture she sat up in bed, holding Odd himself in full swaddle. Her eyes rested on him, so her expression was less visible, but he could imagine how she felt. He thought it must be something like how he felt then, looking at those pictures. It was the first time he’d seen pictures of his mother, the first time he’d seen pictures of himself as a baby.

  The third picture gave him the longest pause. It had been taken upon his mother’s arrival in Gunflint in 1895. She rose in a blur behind the Opportunity’s mizzen shrouds. In the foreground, a sternline stretched taut to a cleat on the Lighthouse Road. In the background, the spanker flapped in the harbor breeze to accentuate the hoariness. Her hands clenched the rail and her face, split by one of the shrouds, appeared to be going in opposite directions. She was bent at the waist, in the act of standing.

  He closed his eyes, felt the urge to cry, and couldn’t tell whether those almost-tears were for him or for her. He knew he felt her fear and sadness and loneliness vicariously, could glean her kindness and gentleness from the simple cast of her eyes.

  “Was it a mistake? To give these to you?”

  Odd looked up at Rebekah, who stood with her hand on the dining table. They were on the third floor of Grimm’s, had just finished Thanksgiving dinner, the capon bones still cluttered a platter, the pot of congealed gravy sat on the middle of the table, the coffee cups were still warm. She had given him the pictures for a birthday gift.

  “No,” he said but heard the lack of conviction in his voice even if he didn’t feel it.

  “She was such a beautiful girl.” Rebekah put her hand on Odd’s arm, squeezed, then set to clearing the table.

  Odd poured another ounce of whiskey into his coffee and took a sip. When Rebekah returned from the kitchen she brought a pecan pie and a bowl of whipped cream.

  “I was an ugly runt,” Odd said.

  “Let’s see.” Rebekah stood above him, looked down at the picture of Odd and Thea.

  “Look at that bunched nose. My head looks like a squash.”

  “Mmm,” Rebekah said. She put her hand in Odd’s hair. “Babies aren’t usually born with hair like that. You came out looking like a young man. You were serious as one, too.”

  “Guess I foresaw my lot.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you.” Rebekah came around the table and sat opposite him.

  “These pictures are a hell of a thing to see. I guess I’m feeling a little squirrelly is all.” He folded the picture frame in thirds and smiled at her. “Thank you.”

  She smiled and took his hand. “Jesus,” she whispered. She took a deep breath, shuddered.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” she said quickly. “Let’s have some dessert.” And she started to quarter the pie.

  As she served it, Hosea came from the water closet, adjusting his suspenders, whistling, oblivious. Instead of coming back to the dining table, he detoured to the kitchen, where he packed his pipe and lit it with a wooden match. When he returned to the table he finished the dregs of his coffee and poured an ounce of whiskey in its place and lifted the pictures of Thea, of Odd’s mother.

  For a long time Hosea looked silently at the pictures, the smoke from his pipe clouding his face. When his pipe was finished he set the pictures down, put his pipe on his saucer, and lifted his cup of whiskey. “I’ve seen a lot of people arrive in this place. Lumberjacks and Lutheran pastors. Millers and petty con men. You name it. Not one of them impressed me the way your mother did, Odd. Not one of them.”

  Odd shifted his eyes from Hosea to Rebekah.

  “She was impressive, Odd,” Rebekah reiterated. “And such a cook!”

  “The bread she pulled from the oven.” Hosea said, almost a whisper, something wistful in his voice. He shifted the pictures in order to see them again. “Your mother, Odd,” he began again, but stopped. Took another sip from his cup. “Your mother departed this world as innocently as she arrived in it. That should tell you everything you need to know about her.”

  The tone of Hosea’s voice struck Odd as nostalgic. These holdings-forth were often easy to ignore, inflated as they usually were. But on that evening Odd sensed sincerity more than anything.

  Odd said, “She couldn’t have been all innocent. There’s me to account for.”

  “Yes, well, if we spent all night accounting for you we’d need another barrel of Canada’s finest to accompany our ciphering,” Hosea said. “Let’s take your place on this earth for granted. What say? Speaking of your place on earth, I hav
e a birthday present for you as well.” He stepped to the sideboard and brought back a large box wrapped in brown paper. He set the box before Odd, who had moved his coffee cup and plate aside. “Now, it’s nothing like what Rebekah put together for you, but I hope you’ll like it all the same.”

  Odd looked at the box.

  “Go ahead, open it,” Hosea said.

  Odd, speaking to Rebekah, said, “You know what this is?”

  “No doubt it’s some foolishness,” she said.

  “Hush, now,” Hosea said. “It’s no foolishness at all. Open it. Go.”

  Odd removed his pocketknife and cut away the wrapping paper. He cut open the box and flipped it open. He pulled out a boat’s bell, about six inches round. Circling the bell’s waist, a series of fish had been engraved in the bronze. Thirty, perhaps forty fish.

  “Goddamn,” Odd said.

  Hosea fairly beamed. “I ordered it from a bell founder in Bremerhaven, Germany. I thought, perhaps, after the motor went in. The last touch, you know?”

  Odd was speechless. He flipped the bell over, felt the smooth interior, the clapper hanging by a leather strap. Sure enough, the words bremerhaven deutschland were engraved on the inside lip of the bell. And the date.

  “My goodness,” Rebekah said.

  “This is something else,” Odd said.

  “Hang it from the cockpit, lad.”

  “I will. You bet.”

  “And now it’s fair to ask: What are we going to do with that crated-up engine out back?”