‘Ha!’ Knut said jubilantly.
When I opened my eyes, a large cod was wriggling in the bottom of the boat. Its eyes were bulging, as if it couldn’t believe what it was seeing. Which was fair enough – this could hardly have been how it thought things would turn out.
CHAPTER 11
WE ROWED TO an island where the keel scraped softly against the sand. It was only a couple of hundred metres between the gently rounded island and the mainland, which tumbled abruptly and darkly into the sea from the heather-covered plateau. Knut took his shoes off, waded ashore and tied the boat to a rock. I offered to carry Lea, but she just smiled and made me the same offer.
Knut and I made a fire and lit it while Lea gutted and cleaned the fish.
‘Once we caught so many fish that we had to fetch the wheelbarrow to empty the boat,’ Knut said. He was already licking his lips.
I couldn’t ever remember being that fond of fish when I was a boy. Maybe that’s because it was mostly served in the form of deep-fried fritters or fish fingers, or shaped into balls in a white, semen-like sauce.
‘There’s a lot of food here,’ Lea said, wrapping the entire fish in silver foil and placing it directly on the flames. ‘Ten minutes.’
Knut clambered onto my back, clearly excited at the prospect of food. ‘Wrestling match!’ he cried, clinging onto me even when I tried to stand up. ‘The southerner must die!’
‘There’s a mosquito on my back,’ I yelled, and bucked, tossing him back and forth like a rodeo rider until he landed on the sand with a happy yelp.
‘If we’re going to wrestle, we’d better do it properly,’ I said.
‘Yes! What’s properly?’
‘Sumo wrestling,’ I said, then picked up a stick and drew a circle in the fine sand. ‘First one to make the other person step outside the circle wins.’
I showed him the ceremony that preceded each bout, and how we should squat opposite each other outside the circle and clap our hands once.
‘That’s a prayer for the gods to be with us in the fight, so we aren’t alone.’
I saw Lea frown, but she didn’t say anything.
The boy followed my actions as I slowly raised my palms, looked down, and then put them on my knees.
‘That’s to crush evil spirits,’ I said, then stamped my feet.
Knut did the same.
‘Ready . . . steady . . .’ I whispered.
Knut twisted his face into an aggressive grimace.
‘Go!’
He leaped into the circle and tackled me with his shoulder.
‘You’re out!’ he declared triumphantly.
My footprint outside the circle left no room for doubt. Lea laughed and clapped.
‘It’s not over yet, rikishi Knut-san from Finnmark ken,’ I snarled, and squatted down again. ‘First to five is Futabayama.’
‘Futa . . .?’ Knut quickly crouched down on the other side.
‘Futabayama. Sumo legend. Big fat bastard. Ready . . . steady . . .’
I got him in a body lock that carried him well outside the circle.
When the score was 4–4, Knut was so sweaty and wound up that he forgot the preliminaries and hurled himself at me. I stepped aside. He couldn’t stop in time, and stumbled outside the circle.
Lea laughed. Knut lay there motionless with his head in the sand.
I sat down next to him.
‘In sumo, some things are more important than winning,’ I said. ‘Like showing dignity in both victory and defeat.’
‘I lost,’ Knut whispered into the sand. ‘I expect it’s easier to do that when you win.’
‘It is.’
‘Well, congratulations. You’re Futa . . . Futa . . .’
‘. . . bayama. And Futabayama salutes you, courageous Haguroyama.’
He raised his head. He had sand stuck to his wet face. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Futabayama’s apprentice. Haguroyama also went on to be a master.’
‘Did he? He beat Futabayama?’
‘Oh, yes. Toyed with him. He just had to learn a few things first. Such as how to lose.’
Knut sat up. He squinted at me. ‘Does losing make you better, Ulf?’
I nodded slowly. I saw that Lea was paying attention too. ‘You get better –’ I squashed a midge that had landed on my arm – ‘at losing.’
‘Better at losing? Is there any point in being good at that?’
‘Life is mostly about trying things you can’t do,’ I said. ‘You end up losing more often than you win. Even Futabayama kept on losing before he started to win. And it’s important to be good at something you’re going to do more often, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose so.’ He thought about it. ‘But what does being good at losing actually mean?’
I met Lea’s gaze over the boy’s shoulder. ‘Daring to lose again,’ I said.
‘Food’s ready,’ she replied.
The skin of the cod had stuck to the silver foil, so when Lea opened the parcel up, we just had to pull off pieces of the white flesh and pop them in our mouths.
‘Heavenly,’ I said. I didn’t know what I meant by heavenly, but I couldn’t think of a better word.
‘Mmm,’ Knut purred.
‘All we’re missing is the white wine,’ I said.
‘Burn,’ he said, flashing his teeth.
‘Jesus drank wine,’ Lea said. ‘Anyway, you drink red wine with cod.’ She laughed as Knut and I both stopped eating and looked at her. ‘Or so I’ve heard!’
‘Dad used to drink,’ Knut said.
Lea stopped laughing.
‘More wrestling!’ Knut said.
I patted my stomach to show that I was too full.
‘Boring . . .’ His bottom lip drooped.
‘See if you can find any gulls’ eggs,’ Lea said.
‘Eggs, now?’ Knut asked.
‘Summer eggs,’ she said. ‘They’re rare, but they do exist.’
He closed one eye. Then he stood up, raced off and disappeared over the brow of the island.
‘Summer eggs?’ I asked, lying back on the sand. ‘Is that true?’
‘I think most things exist,’ she said. ‘And I did say they were rare.’
‘Like your lot?’
‘Us?’
‘Læstadians.’
‘Is that how you see us?’ She shaded her eyes, and I realised where Knut had picked up his habit of squinting with one eye.
‘No,’ I said eventually, and closed both eyes.
‘Tell me something, Ulf.’ She put the jacket I had borrowed under her head.
‘What?’
‘Anything.’
‘Let me think.’
We lay in silence. I listened to the fire crackle and the waves play gently on the shore.
‘A summer’s night in Stockholm,’ I said. ‘Everything’s green. Everyone is asleep. I’m walking slowly home with Monica. We stop and kiss. And then we carry on. We hear laughter from an open window. There’s a breeze coming from the archipelago, carrying with it a smell of grass and seaweed.’ I hummed inside my head. ‘And the breeze strokes our cheeks and I pull her closer to me, and the night doesn’t exist, only stillness, shadow, wind.’
‘That’s lovely,’ she said. ‘Go on.’
‘The night is short and light and slips away as the thrushes wake up. A man stops rowing to look at a swan. As we walk across the Western Bridge, a single, empty tram passes us. And there, in the middle of the night, in secret, the trees blossom in Stockholm as the windows paint the city with light. And the city plays a song for everyone who’s sleeping, for everyone who has to travel far away but will come back to Stockholm again. The streets are scented with flowers, and we kiss again, and walk slowly, slowly home through the city.’
I listened. Waves. Fire. A distant gull’s cry.
‘Monica, is she your beloved?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She’s my beloved.’
‘Ah. How long?’
‘Let’s see. Ten years or s
o, I think.’
‘That’s a long time.’
‘Yes, but we’re only ever in love for three minutes at a time.’
‘Three minutes?’
‘Three minutes and nineteen seconds, to be more precise. That’s how long it takes her to sing the song.’
I heard her sit up. ‘What you just told me is a song?’
‘“Slowly We Walk Through the City”,’ I said. ‘Monica Zetterlund.’
‘And you’ve never met her?’
‘No. I had a ticket to see her and Steve Kuhn in concert in Stockholm, but then Anna got ill and I had to work.’
She nodded silently.
‘It must be nice to be so happy with someone,’ she said. ‘Like the couple in the song, I mean.’
‘But it doesn’t last.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘True. No one knows. But, in your experience, does it last?’
There was a sudden cold gust, and I opened my eyes. Saw something on the edge of the cliff on the other side of the water. Probably the silhouette of a big rock. I turned towards Lea. She was sitting hunched up.
‘I’m just saying that everything could exist,’ she said. ‘Even eternal love.’
Strands of hair were blowing into her face, and it struck me that she had it. That same blue shimmer. Unless it was just the light out here.
‘Sorry, it’s none of my business, I just . . .’ I stopped. My eyes searched for the rock, but couldn’t find it again.
‘You just . . .’
I took a deep breath. Knew I’d regret this. ‘I was standing under the window of the workroom after the funeral. I overheard you talking to your husband’s brother.’
She folded her arms. Looked at me. Not shocked, but studious. She glanced in the direction Knut had disappeared in, then looked at me again.
‘I have no experience of how long love for a man can last, because I never loved the man I was given.’
‘Given? Are you saying it was an arranged marriage?’
She shook her head. ‘Arranged marriages are what families used to organise between them in the olden days. Favourable alliances. Grazing pasture and herds of reindeer. The same faith. Hugo and I didn’t have that sort of marriage.’
‘So?’
‘It was a forced marriage.’
‘Who forced you?’
‘Circumstances.’ She looked round for Knut again.
‘You were . . .?’
‘Yes, I was pregnant.’
‘I appreciate that your religion isn’t particularly tolerant of children outside marriage, but Hugo wasn’t from a Læstadian family, was he?’
She shook her head. ‘Circumstances, and Father. Those two things forced us into it. He said he’d expel me from the congregation if I didn’t do as he commanded. Expulsion means not having anyone, being completely alone. Do you understand?’ She put her hand to her mouth. At first I thought it was to cover her scar. ‘I’ve seen what happens to people who get expelled . . .’
‘I get it . . .’
‘No, you don’t get it, Ulf. And I don’t know why I’m telling all this to a stranger.’ Only now did I hear the sob in her voice.
‘Perhaps precisely because I am a stranger.’
‘Yes, perhaps,’ she sniffed. ‘You’re going to leave.’
‘How could your father force Hugo when Hugo wasn’t part of a congregation he could be expelled from?’
‘Father told him that if he didn’t marry me, he’d report him for raping me.’
I looked at her in silence.
She sat up, straightened her back, lifted her head, and looked out to sea.
‘Yes, I married the man who raped me when I was eighteen years old. And had his child.’
There was a shrill shriek from the mainland. I turned. A black cormorant was flying close over the water below the cliff.
‘Because that’s your interpretation of the Bible?’
‘In our home there’s only one person who interprets the Word.’
‘Your father.’
She shrugged. ‘I went home the night it happened, and told Mother that Hugo had raped me. She comforted me, but said it was best to let it go. Getting one of Eliassen’s sons convicted for rape, what good would that do? But when she realised I was pregnant she went to Father. His first reaction was to ask if we had prayed to God that I wouldn’t get pregnant. His second was that Hugo and I must get married.’
She swallowed. Paused. And I realised this was something she had told very few people. Perhaps no one at all. That I offered the first and best opportunity for her to say these things out loud after the funeral.
‘Then he went to see old Eliassen,’ she went on. ‘Hugo’s father and my father are powerful men here in the village, in their different ways. Old Eliassen gives people work at sea, and my father gives them the Word and eases their troubled souls. Father said that if Eliassen didn’t agree, he’d have no problem persuading someone in his congregation that they’d seen and heard a thing or two that night. Old Eliassen replied that Father didn’t have to threaten him, that I was a good match regardless, and maybe I could calm Hugo down a bit. And once the two of them had decided that was what was going to happen, that was what happened.’
‘How—’ I began, but was interrupted by another shriek. This time not a bird.
Knut.
We both leaped to our feet.
The Fisherman always finds what he’s looking for.
Another scream. We ran towards it. I reached the top of the island first. Saw him. I turned to Lea, who was running behind me with her skirt pulled up.
‘He’s all right.’
The boy was standing about a hundred metres away from us, staring at something on the shore.
‘What is it?’ I called down to him.
He pointed at something black that the waves were lapping over. And then I picked up the smell. The smell of a corpse.
‘What is it?’ Lea asked as she arrived beside me.
I did the same as Knut, and pointed.
‘Death and destruction,’ she said.
I held her back when she made to go down to Knut. ‘Maybe you should stay here, and I’ll go and see what it is.’
‘No need,’ she said. ‘I can see what it is.’
‘So . . . what is it?’
‘A pup.’
‘A pup?’
‘A young seal,’ she said. ‘A dead one.’
It was still night as we rowed back.
It was completely calm: all you could hear was the splash of the oars as they left the water, the drops sparkling like diamonds as they fell in the slanting sunlight.
I was sitting in the back of the boat, watching mother and son row. I was humming ‘Slowly We Walk Through the City’ inside my head. They were like a single organism. Knut – with a look of deep concentration – was trying to keep his body firm, using his back and hips, and maintaining a calm, even, adult rhythm with the heavy oars. His mother was sitting behind him, matching his movements, taking care to synchron-ise their strokes. No one said anything. The veins and sinews on the backs of her hands moved and her black hair blew to one side as she turned to look over her shoulder every now and then to make sure our course was correct. Of course Knut was trying to make out that he wasn’t hoping to impress me with his rowing, but kept giving himself away by taking sneaky glances at me. I pushed my jaw out and nodded appreciatively. He pretended not to notice, but I could see him put a bit more effort into his strokes.
We used a rope fastened to a pulley to drag the boat onto the wooden cradle and into the boathouse. It was surprisingly easy to pull the heavy boat up. I couldn’t help thinking about mankind’s persistent inventiveness and capacity to survive. And our willingness to do terrible things if need be.
We walked along the gravel road towards the houses. Stopped at the telephone pole at the start of the path. A fresh layer of posters had been stuck on top of the dance-band advertisement.
‘Goodbye, Ulf,’ s
he said. ‘I’ve enjoyed spending time with you. Get home safely, and sleep well.’
‘Goodbye,’ I said, and smiled. They really did take their farewells very seriously up here. Maybe it was because the distances were so great, and the surroundings so brutal. You couldn’t take it for granted you’d see each other again soon. Or at all.
‘And we’d be very happy to see you at the prayer meeting in the parish house on Saturday morning.’ She said this in a slightly stiff tone of voice, and her face twitched. ‘Wouldn’t we, Knut?’
Knut nodded, mute and already half asleep.
‘Thanks, but I think it’s probably too late for me to be saved.’ I don’t know if the ambiguity was intentional.
‘It can’t do any harm to hear the Word.’ She looked at me with those strange, intense eyes that always seemed to be searching for something.
‘On one condition,’ I said. ‘That I can borrow your car and drive to Alta afterwards. I need to buy a couple of things.’
‘Can you drive?’
I shrugged.
‘Maybe I could come too,’ she said.
‘You don’t have to.’
‘She’s not as easy as she looks.’
I don’t know if the ambiguity was intentional.
When I got to the cabin I lay down and fell asleep straight away without touching the bottle of drink. As far as I can remember, I didn’t dream. And I woke up with a sense that something had happened. Something good. And it had been a hell of a long time since that last happened to me.
CHAPTER 12
Holy Spirit, to Thee we pray
That we in the one true faith might stay,
And help defend it with all our heart
Until our final breath,
When we from earthly misery depart
For home with Thee upon our death
Kyrie Eleison!
THE HYMN ROLLED like slow thunder around the walls of the little prayer hall. It sounded as though the whole congregation, all twenty-something of them, were joining in.