by Agnes Ravatn
She rowed. She loved to row, her arms were strong and each stroke of the oars was long and slow. Outside the boat everything was still, the land and sea breezes had died down, the sun had dropped behind the mountain. We spoke in hushed tones so nobody in the cabins looking out onto the fjord would hear us, chuckling under our breath at each other. We sat like that in the twilight, me with the fishing rod, her with the oars, the most perfectly still night. The heat was finally beginning to subside.
I lay there, listening to his muffled voice, breathing as quietly as I knew how, not wanting to cut him off, not wanting to remind him that I was lying there. Concerts, I thought, she was a musician; how could I even begin to compete with something like that.
Of course, the conditions were all wrong for fishing, but I took the rod out for my own amusement more than anything, he continued.
But then the rod was tugged from my grasp, right out of nowhere, it must have been a huge fish, and out of pure instinct I leapt after it before it was dragged over the gunwale. Nor rose up just as instinctively, but the oars slipped from her grasp, she fell back, hit her head against the gunwale, everything happened so quickly. Suddenly she was under, in the black water, and I dived in but I couldn’t see her, had to come up to the surface again and again. And then finally I caught sight of her, way down below me, and I swam to her, pulled her up, heaved her into the boat, the oars floating away across the water all the while, and she just lay there as I swam out to fetch them, and I had no idea whether to row us back to land or try to resuscitate her then and there, out in the middle of the fjord … I was frantic, rowing us towards land, but even as I did so I knew that I’d made the wrong decision, Nor lying lifeless as I heaved at the oars, so I stopped, tried to resuscitate her in the boat, but I changed my mind and started rowing again, and every decision I made was wrong. Eventually I managed to get her breathing again, and help arrived, but such a long time had already passed. She was in the hospital for so long.
My God.
After a few months she was transferred from a hospital to a nursing home. There was nothing to do but wait for her to come round.
My heart raced, I was frozen, felt a lump in my throat.
And then what?
He didn’t reply.
Then what?
Then, time passed. Nothing happened. She wouldn’t wake up.
He sat in silence for a long while.
And then?
Then nothing. Not until the telephone call two weeks ago. She’d taken a turn for the worse. I had to decide whether they could retrieve her organs.
I let out a gasp.
And? Yes, he said. That was that. I went in. Sat with her for a day, then a night, and another day after that.
He faltered for a moment.
And then it was time.
I’ll stay here for as long as you want me to, I said, then closed my eyes.
The sun was warm on my face. I sat up in bed. My body was trembling slightly, my back stiff and sore. I rolled my shoulders back, my joints no longer ached. I had sweated out the last of the fever. I stood up and walked over to the window. The sun was shining brightly on the milky-white blooms of the cherry tree down below. I opened the window and felt a gentle breeze against my skin. The morning was sparkling-bright and mild. I took a deep breath. I heard the snapping of twigs in the forest and the sound of birds taking flight, flapping between the branches.
A new world.
I saw him walking up the steps from the jetty, his fishing rod in one hand. He looked up at me, then stopped and raised a hand, carrying on through the garden and stopping under my window.
How are you feeling?
Better, thanks.
He smiled at me, looking relieved.
Catch anything?
Nothing.
He stayed where he was and looked up at me, standing at the window in his wife’s nightdress. I gazed down at him. He drew breath as if to say something but instead just smiled. A certain reticence had come over him. He stood there, fishing rod in hand. I wasn’t sure how to let him know that I remembered everything he had told me, that I had taken it all in. I stood there looking down at him, leaned forward slightly. He looked up at me with surprise. I nodded, gravely, then stepped away from the window.
Just a few days earlier we had been up the ladder picking the last of the apples. Now, all of a sudden, there were tiny, dry flakes of snow in the air. I gathered the dirty laundry and made my way down to the cellar. Something dashed past out of the corner of my eye as I set the laundry basket down on the hard stone floor. I froze, listening intently. I was convinced that I could hear a rustling. I crouched down, leaning in close to the wall. They had managed to chew their way through; I could see a small, uneven gap in the floor in the corner. I bounded up the stairs and to the kitchen cupboard under the sink, where the steel wool was kept. How many could there be? They could be all over the house, disgusting. I stuffed the hole with steel wool and studied the wall, searching for any more gaps. For all I knew, there was a mouse nest tucked away in the insulation; the thought sent shivers down my spine. Behind the washing machine I found mouse droppings. There were more along the wall under the row of hooks where Bagge’s oilskins and work clothes were hanging. As I pushed the clothing aside to check for more gaps, a door handle came into view. It had never occurred to me that there might be a door here, but it suddenly seemed obvious; this room was just one small part of the cellar. I could almost feel the mice scurrying over my feet and I shuddered, pushed on the handle and used every ounce of my strength to shove the door open. It must have been sealed shut for a long time.
On the other side of the door was nothing but a cold, empty cellar space. It was dark, I fumbled towards the light switch, but the light wouldn’t come on. I was convinced that I could hear mice scampering along by the walls and around my feet. I held my breath. By the outer wall I glimpsed part of a staircase and a door, the door leading down to the cellar, of course, the one by the veranda that I hadn’t spent any time thinking about before now. I wasn’t supposed to be here. The bulb above me had been unscrewed. I screwed the bulb back into place and tried the light once more, it flickered a few times before dying. The cellar was empty, damp, and at the opposite end of the room was a small staircase leading up to the ceiling at an angle. I took a few hesitant steps towards it, constantly fearful I might step on something soft, thinking about how my weight would cause the thin skin to rip open. The staircase led to a trapdoor in the ceiling, I felt my way towards it with fumbling hands. A trapdoor. I tried to orientate myself, which room was above me, his bedroom, his workroom? Almost like a timid greeting, I knocked at the trapdoor, then again, a little more insistently this time. Nothing. He had gone in there after breakfast, but perhaps he was sleeping. No, not after breakfast. I pressed my palms against the trapdoor and pushed, lifting it upwards.
Hello?
I pushed it all the way open and stood with my head sticking through the hole in the floor. The room was empty, nothing there but a window, a door, a chair, a cardboard box and an instrument case propped up in the corner. There were several dark rectangular marks on the wall directly opposite me, left where pictures had once been hanging. I climbed up the final few steps. Bagge’s workroom.
I sneaked over and looked at the case, a violin case. His wife’s. A folded-up music stand lay on the floor behind the cardboard box. I opened the box: sheet music. My stomach twitched so violently that I found myself doubled over. A sob slipped out. A prickling sensation, white spots before my eyes.
Hurriedly I made my way back downstairs as quickly and quietly as I could, the sound of my pulse thudding in my ears. No desk, no tools of any kind, nothing but a violin. Did he play? No, impossible, I’d have heard him. There in that empty room, that’s where he spent those long hours, day in and day out. I crouched down, squeezed my eyes tightly closed, wishing that I hadn’t seen the things I just had. The fact that the room was as good as empty was more upsetting than anything else. Almos
t anything would have been better. I pictured him sitting on the floor, brooding, leaning against the wall by the violin case, staring vacantly ahead, agonising over his situation. Sitting there, thinking about his wife – the thought pained me, like a knife to the gut. And where was he now? In his bedroom? Was that where he spent his time? Each and every day, besides those he had been away, he had gone to his workroom after every meal, which he accessed through his bedroom, and he would stay there, saying he was working on something, that this was the reason he needed help around the house and in the garden. But now? I could never say what I knew. I hurried into the laundry room and loaded the machine.
I forced myself to take slow, deep breaths, again and again. It was almost one o’clock. I tried to steady my arms, my trembling fingers causing the plates to clatter, knives clinking against glasses as I set the table. I slammed the condiments down on the table. On the stroke of one, his door opened and he stepped out of the room just as I was moving between the worktop and the table, and I found myself frozen there, like a deer in headlights. I quickly turned to the worktop and clutched the teapot.
It’s ready.
Good.
He sat down. I poured him a cup of tea, my arm outstretched, the stream of boiling liquid missing his cup and dribbling into the saucer.
We ate in silence. I spent most of the meal looking down, trying to breathe normally, calmly, something that felt impossible. My breath caught in my throat, I wanted to divulge what I knew. He said nothing, behaved just like his normal self, but still I felt him watching me. Eventually he placed his knife down on his plate and cleared his throat.
Is something wrong?
No?
You’re very quiet.
There are mice in the cellar, I eventually muttered.
Bloody hell, Bagge hissed. It was the first time that I had heard him use such strong language, his words shook me.
Do we have any traps?
No, unfortunately not.
Then I’ll go out and buy some, I said, swiftly and decisively pushing my chair out from under the table. He looked up at me with some surprise as I strode past him and over to the veranda door, looking out, acting as if there was something that I needed to check, then turning and looking at the back of his head to check his hair, to see if he had been lying in his bed. It looked as it always did. I pulled on some extra layers and made my way to the bus stop.
I returned with forty traps. Better too many than too few. Each and every one of those mice was sentenced to death, not a single one was to be allowed to survive the winter. I placed half of the traps along the outside walls of the house, by the wood stack and in the tool shed, then the rest on the three floors of the house, most of them ending up down in the cellar. They were ordinary snap traps with steel springs – guillotines for tiny rodents. Bagge took great interest in my extermination operation, regularly asking for updates, and the fact pleased me. At night I dreamed of mice, checking each trap, gathering great heaps of mouse corpses.
The bait lay untouched in each of the traps for the first few days. I had stuffed every nook and cranny with steel wool. Even so, I knew they were there, inside and out. I had no idea how many there could be. I sneaked down into the cellar at the strangest of hours, as if to catch them off guard, acting as if I had errands to run. Silently I would creep down, pausing on the second-to-last step and flicking the switch at lightning speed—! But no. Nothing.
A blurry shadow bolted past as I stepped out of the bathroom, only to vanish into thin air. The rodents must have had another crack in the wall that I hadn’t found, or else this one had managed to sneak in under the door to the sealed-off room filled with his wife’s things. I inspected the wall where the mouse had disappeared but I couldn’t see a thing. I lay down flat on the floor and listened at various spots all the way along the wall. In the furthest corner I was sure I could hear a faint, almost inaudible squeaking – either that, or I was going mad. I sprinted down to Bagge’s room and knocked at his door, but there was no answer. I took a deep breath, opened the door and looked inside. He wasn’t there. Feeling emboldened and well within my rights, I crossed the room and grabbed the door handle. The door opened onto the empty workroom, the trapdoor inside flush with the floor. I bristled with palpable, prickling wrath, a combination of disgust at the mice and anger at the way he’d tricked me.
I ran outside and across the garden, pulled the crowbar from the wall of the tool shed, returned inside and ran upstairs. I put all of my weight behind the crowbar and eventually the plank of wood gave way with a loud creak. There they were, in the insulation, nestled away like a mass of transparent, rosy-pink testicles. I shuddered, motionless, indecisive, unable to settle on a plan of action. The tiny clumps of skin squirmed slowly, silently, blindly squeaking in my direction. Should I burn them, bury them, execute them one by one – and if so, how? Using what? I didn’t know what options were available to me, each seemed uglier than the last.
I slid the plank of wood back into position by the nest to prevent them from scurrying off or calling for reinforcements, then ran downstairs and knocked at Bagge’s door again.
Hello! Hello! Sigurd!
I poked my head out of the door leading to the garden and called out to him. I slipped my feet into my boots, stepped out onto the veranda and peered out. I saw tracks in the snow crossing the lawn, leading from the cellar door down through the garden. I followed them, not bothering to fetch a coat first, the snow drifting down, gathering in my hair and at the nape of my neck, tracing the footsteps through the white garden and further on, down the steps to the jetty, where they stopped in front of the boathouse. I didn’t dare do anything, didn’t dare call out to him. But I knew he’d realise I had been here when he finally emerged, provided the snow hadn’t covered my tracks by then.
I could hear muffled scraping sounds coming from inside the boathouse. Fine. OK. He worked in there. The boathouse was his bolthole; how could I have missed that until now? I suddenly recalled all of the times he’d come up from the jetty without me ever having seen him emerge from his room. It was so obvious now that he had been leaving through the cellar door. But why? I had to make my presence known. I stepped up to the door and knocked firmly, then took a step back. Waited.
Sigurd!
I waited, taking another deep breath.
Sigurd!
The scraping inside came to a halt. The door opened and he peered out. He glared at me, his face red, his hair damp, clad only in a light shirt in spite of the cold.
Sorry, but I—
What is it?
I’ve found a mouse nest in one of the walls upstairs.
He ducked behind the door and re-emerged wearing his coat. I followed him up the steps and planned what I’d say in case he pulled me up for cracking open the walls of his house.
I’ll take care of it, he said as we stepped inside.
But what will you do?
Don’t worry about it.
I took this as a clear order to keep my distance, so I lingered in the kitchen and started placing ingredients on the kitchen counter. I heard a few sharp slams from the attic, then he came back downstairs. I didn’t turn around to look at him as he marched through the hallway and out of the door at the back of the house. Not long afterwards he came in to see me.
There.
Is it done?
It’s done.
He smiled and I gave him an appreciative nod.
Good.
By the way, he continued, can you come up here for a minute?
We climbed the stairs. He had nailed the plank I had pulled away back into place, but the door to the room filled with his wife’s things was open.
I had forgotten all about this lot. Nor’s things, he said, everything in these boxes here. Please, see if there’s anything here that you like, anything you think you might be able to get some use out of.
Are you sure that’s what you want?
Of course, Allis. Otherwise it’ll all just sit here.
At around five o’clock, I went downstairs and started on dinner. I browned meat and braised root vegetables, sprinkled red wine over everything and placed the casserole dish in the oven on a low heat. I assumed that he’d gone back down to the boathouse. His workroom obviously functioned as his passage down there. Now I knew that, and he knew that I knew, if he didn’t voluntarily offer an explanation then it would be natural for me to bring it up. I had so few clues as to what he might be doing that my imagination was unable to come up with a single suggestion, though it had sounded like some kind of woodwork.
Checking on the meat before dinner I found him standing in the kitchen. He was straight out of the shower, steam still lingering around him.
This’ll be ready in ten minutes.
Then I’ll go downstairs and fetch us a bottle.
I set the table and made my way upstairs to change. When I came back down, he was already sitting at the table. He blinked when he caught sight of me, a momentary double-take. Self-conscious and immediately regretful, I approached him, the dress clinging to every curve.