by Lars Mytting
I turned and looked at the car deck. Apparently only heavier vehicles were travelling to Unst. The family cars had stayed behind on Yell. Around the Commodore, there was a Bedford, a flaking Land Rover and a Toyota Hi-Lux with crab pots in the back.
Two bearded men sat in the Hi-Lux. They had been staring in my direction for the entire crossing. Now the driver leaned over to hear what the other was saying. I felt I had set something in motion.
A few more minutes, then we were there. I ought to have gone down to the car, but stayed to watch a man on the dock on Unst, an old man standing on his own with a walking stick.
We drove ashore. The old man climbed into the passenger seat of the Land Rover.
Since Yell, “northernmost” or “most northerly” had been the only distinction for businesses along the way. Most northerly school. Northernmost hotel. Northernmost bus stop. I arrived at “Britain’s northernmost grocery shop”, where the fluorescent lights were still on. I picked up some fresh food, a few cans of beer, and was amused by the foreign labels and the fact that one was able to buy spirits in a normal shop. A family of three had almost finished their weekend shopping and I strolled past them near the counter.
A freckled man in grey overalls entered the products into the cash till. When he was halfway through I asked about Einar Hirifjell, using the same words I had at the post office.
The assistant reacted strangely, his hand freezing in mid-air as he was about to enter a price on the till. He gave me a sideways look and said, “Isn’t he up at Norwick?”
Then it was my turn to react strangely; I dropped my wallet on the floor and fumbled for words. “Norwick,” I said quickly. “Where’s that?”
“At the end of the road,” he said, pointing north.
The family behind me began to unload their shopping trolley. A child was nagging his parents for sweets.
“Do you know Einar?” I said as I took my change. “Does he shop here?”
The assistant did not seem to understand what I had said. I thought to repeat myself, but then went out to the car to study the map. I couldn’t find anywhere called Norwick – could I have misunderstood his pronunciation? I waited until the family had come out and went inside clutching the map.
But the shop assistant was no longer at the till. He had gone into an office behind the dairy counter, and now stood with his back to me, speaking into a telephone.
I stepped outside. The island was saturated and quiet, numbed by the evening.
I had overheard something and it made my plan seem brash and egotistical. But perhaps I had heard wrong? Perhaps the swooshing of the fan above the dairy counter had jumbled his words. I distinctly heard “the Norwegian”. What had he said next? – “waiting”, or “wanted”? Or had he said what I had at first discounted as improbable: “Someone’s come at last”?
He said it as a warning, the kind that makes a turtle retract into its shell. Perhaps Einar did not want visitors. Perhaps the man who had made a name for himself in Paris with a jack plane and a surface gauge had become a grumpy old man who didn’t answer when someone came to call. Many years had passed since my tenth birthday, and his life may have taken a turn.
No, I told myself. For a man who fells birch trees with a bow saw, builds a coffin from its wood and sends it to his brother, life moves very slowly, or does not move at all.
I drove around without finding Norwick, but then I thought I recognised a view similar to that on the photograph Bestefar had taken. I followed a small road inland. What had made a middle-aged farmer with no interest in photography take one photograph of an insignificant stretch of coastline?
The road led towards the southernmost tip of the island. I climbed out, pulled on my anorak and tried to get the terrain to fall into place. The drizzle came and went as I continued my search for a photograph that had already been taken.
A dog was barking behind a ridge. Soon I heard it again, closer. A bedraggled, grey-spotted pointer trotted past with its tongue hanging out, its ears pressed back and wild eyes, and then it was gone. Down the side of the ridge a breathless, scrawny woman gave chase. She hurried towards me, opened her jacket and closed it again. Seemed even more restless than the mutt.
“It ran off that way,” I said, pointing.
She scratched herself roughly with her left hand. Her skin was scabby and inflamed.
“Is there a Norwegian living in the area?” I said.
“Not that I know of.”
She followed the dog, came back a moment later and shook her head. Caught her breath and pulled out a pack of Salem menthols. After a few drags she pinched the ember, put the cigarette back in the pack and scratched the back of her hand again. “Do you know where this is?” I said and handed her the photograph.
“Haaf Gruney” she said nodding, and pointed at an island that was barely visible in the background of the picture.
The dog came back wagging its tail and sprayed water against my leg. She attached its lead.
“Are you superstitious?” she said, forcing the pointer to heel.
“Not really.”
“People used to believe that you could see the Devil rowing across the strait from Haaf Gruney. He would arrive at night with a coffin sticking out of his boat.”
I stared at her.
“Coffins?” I said. “Did someone live out there who made coffins?”
She didn’t answer, pulled out the cigarette and was about to relight it when the pointer raced off again.
“Where’s Norwick?” I shouted after her.
She turned. “Where the coffins arrive.”
*
The map was getting wrinkled. Haaf Gruney was between Unst and the neighbouring island of Fetlar, and it wasn’t far. Gusts of wind tore at the paper. I put the Leica over my shoulder and started walking.
When I reached the waterline it was as if geomagnetism was guiding me forward, correcting me like the needle of a compass. The landscape fell into place; the ridge to my right had the correct height, the inlet to the left had the curve I was looking for, and soon I was inside the photograph.
Bestefar had stood here.
Instinctively I looked at the ground, as though his footprints were still visible. It was here, I even recognised this stretch by the focal length of his Rollei camera.
But everything was even less comprehensible. Because around me there was not a single house. Just the road, the sea, and a ramshackle boathouse built of grey stone.
I fetched Bestefar’s binoculars from the boot. The German optics removed all doubt: Haaf Gruney was uninhabited. Not so much as a drystone wall to be seen.
*
My last hope was Norwick, but it was too late in the day to be knocking on doors asking about Einar. I kept driving around, to discover the island’s perimeter and to find a place where I could sleep the night in the car.
Then I found Norwick. There was no sign, but as a Norwegian I should not need one. Because when I arrived at the north end of the island, I was met by the same sight that had made some Norseman give a name to that most northerly wick.
The broad mouth of a fjord into which the sea roared, six or seven houses on a hillside. A small cemetery at the tip of a headland.
Some kind of animalistic trembling took hold of me, as well as the acute certainty that something would soon be settled. He was here, somewhere nearby. I opened the iron gate, stepped amongst the gravestones, and walked towards the one that stood out.
A coffin made of flame-birch crossed the North Sea.
A gravestone made of greyish-blue Saksum granite arrived in exchange.
2
JULY 1986. I REMEMBER THE MONTH WELL. BESTEFAR had returned from town with the Star weighing heavy on its rear axle, like in winter when he would drive with sandbags in the boot to make the studded tyres grip. There had been a gravestone in the back, though his explanation was that a rear spring had snapped and would have to be repaired in Lillehammer. This would fit in well with the annual meeting for the Assoc
iation of Sheep and Goat Breeders, which had been moved forward a little.
That year Bestefar must have called me from here, perhaps using the phone box down by the ferry. But he hadn’t told me that he had buried his brother. Later we cancelled the P.O. box in town and started using the postbox along the county road.
I sat on a bench in the cemetery and spent a long time studying the gravestones. Weather-worn, covered with moss. Each one a memorial stone to everything I had hoped to discover. The truth about my parents. The four days of my disappearance had a gravestone of their own, contorted and bleak. Just beyond, a rusted cross. To commemorate what the inheritance might have been. At the edge of my field of vision, an arched stone, beneath which lay the answer to why, why, why Einar had to be concealed from me. At my feet, a small white stone with weathered dates, a monument to the mystery of how Mamma and Pappa had met.
And largest of all in the middle of the cemetery, a towering monument above a grave that opened up as I sat there, the hole inside me.
I went to Einar’s gravestone and crouched down. Norwick was a place so weather-beaten that even the flowers at the graves had to be lashed to small metal stakes. Beside Einar’s flapped a frayed piece of yellow string. A little way away, in the direction of the wind, orange tulips were scattered in the grass. I had thought they belonged to another grave, but now I saw the same yellow string around some of the stems.
Very recently, someone had left flowers at Einar’s grave.
I retied the tulips and stepped away. The wind still tugged at the flowers, but now it was as if the intention was to scatter the petals and spread the seeds.
*
The blue flames of the Primus swooshed to life. I set up camp with a view of slide 18b and now sat leaning against the rear wheel, eating pea soup. Apart from the boathouse down by the shore, there was nothing to see. A few sheep bleated on the hillside, but otherwise the landscape was lifeless. It was approaching eleven, I was exhausted and getting cold. The ferries would still have been running, I could have hopped in the car, checked in to a cheap hotel in Lerwick and gone to Agnes Brown’s the next morning.
My gaze came to rest on Haaf Gruney out in the strait. The fact that Einar had rowed coffins at dusk might correspond with what I knew of him, but he couldn’t possibly have lived there. Still, superstition had attached itself to the flat and peaceful island.
The fog began to seep in. I grabbed the Leica, walked down towards the rocky shore and found an overgrown path that led to the old boathouse. I positioned myself on the leeward side. It was low and constructed of grey stone with a rusty, corrugated-iron roof. The wall jutted into the sea a few metres so that boats could be rowed directly inside.
A few flat stones above the surface of the water led to the end of the boathouse. I followed them, holding on to a rope that ran along the roof, and down around the corner. The sea splashed at my shoes. A large wooden gate, splintered and chewed up by the sea and the weather, barricaded the entrance. In its centre, in flaking white paint, the traces of a large X, a saltire.
And a Norwegian Mustad padlock was hanging from the sliding bolt.
I ran up to the car and searched through my luggage for a torch and the key ring I had taken from the secretary desk. I looked up the road, listening out for people. Raced back down. Grabbed the rope and stepped towards the gate with the water sloshing around my shoes.
The key slid in. A small click and the metal loop popped open. Cradling the torch in my arm, I lifted the sliding bolt, opened the gate and slipped inside.
The evening light revealed an old rowing boat pitching in the water, in this confined continuation of the sea. The back of the boathouse was on dry land, like a cave, barely a metre to the roof, and I glimpsed something white and rectangular there. I closed the gate so that no-one could see me and switched on the torch.
The beam of light shone on a white coffin that had been smashed to pieces.
*
I do not know if I screamed or if I heard a scream. My heart was pounding like a rabbit sensing it was about to be slaughtered. The torchlight was fixed on the shattered coffin and I dared not move it, in case there were worse sights lurking in the boathouse.
An uneasiness passed through me, and a fear that the coffin might contain a rotting corpse. Not a body with bones and worm-eaten skin, but one I would never be able to bury. A truth I would not be able to handle.
I crept slowly past the boat and got down on one knee. The head of the coffin was crushed. The side panels remained intact, but the joints had slipped apart, leaving the coffin twisted and deformed. I pushed the lid aside.
Fishing nets and offcuts.
Perhaps it was not that disrespectful to store them in a coffin, especially if it was well made. Like the difference between hallowed ground and cultivated ground.
In style it resembled the coffin he had made for Bestefar, but it was barer and simpler, with only a thin frieze, like a braided rope, running along the lid. I shifted the beam towards the boat. Black as coal, simply made and large, almost like a lifeboat. Plenty of room for transporting a coffin.
The torchlight moved across the stone walls. A faded jacket. Coils of ropes. Smeared oil cans, rusted hand tools. Oars.
Amidst the incessant thumping of the sea against the rocks, I could hear the engine of a car changing gears. I switched off the torch, went out and glanced up at the road. A pair of headlamps was visible in the fog. A car idled by the Commodore for a moment before speeding off.
A little later I slid open the entrance gate to let more light into the boathouse. Everything was wet, the sea was sloshing against the stones. The boat was rocking gently back and forth, moored with a slimy length of rope, shaggy and overgrown with green algae.
I noticed a name on the front of the hull. At first I thought it was “ATNA”, until I saw the outline of a fifth letter. PATNA. It must have belonged to Einar. In which case it had been here for some years without sustaining damage. The woodwork was swollen together and tight, and covered with barnacles.
Across the strait I could make out the contours of Haaf Gruney. The boathouse was situated at the shortest distance to the island. Maybe an uninhabited island was not the same thing as an empty island?
*
The boat creaked, it sat low in the water and turned sluggishly. I headed for a crag silhouetted against the sky, plotted a course that kept Haaf Gruney to my back, and rowed. Never had I rowed something more cumbersome, but it was solid as a mountain, and perhaps that was how coastal boats were meant to be. A little reluctant.
More of Unst was revealed. Light shone from a cluster of houses at the tip of a promontory, and as I got further out, the lights from more houses gradually became visible.
I took off my shoes and sat barefoot so that I could feel if any water began to trickle in. But it was not necessary. Even though the boat was crude and bulky, I sensed that Einar had built it. I remembered the old defiance I had seen in the flame-birch woods, the perpetual competition between two brothers, my inclination to take Einar’s side whenever I was upset with Bestefar.
The sound of a boat engine drifted across the water. I raised the oars and looked around. Either the boat had no lanterns, or it was hidden behind Haaf Gruney. The sound bounced off the surface of the water and the surrounding islands, and for a moment it seemed to be heading straight towards me, then it veered off, grew fainter and finally I no longer heard it.
The island was close now. I adjusted my line, rowed quickly through the night sea.
Haaf Gruney loomed larger. I heard the sound of water lapping at the rocky shore. The moon broke through. From a distance the island appeared flat, but the approaching shore was four to five metres tall, lined with craggy rocks. I would have to row to a better landing spot.
Soon I found a shoal, tested for the bottom with the oar, rolled my trousers up and jumped in. But the boat did not tip as I expected, and I struggled to stay on my feet.
I tied the boat, pulled off my anorak and st
aggered onto the island. I found a pool of water and drank, then sank down onto the grass.
Fatigue began to drift in.
That morning I had come ashore in Lerwick. Now I was sitting out here. If things continued like this, I thought, I could be on the South Pole the day after tomorrow. I pulled a wet chocolate bar from my anorak. Now was the time to break out the emergency rations.
The lamps on Unst cast long, yellow shimmers across the surface of the sea. As I ate the last bit of chocolate I saw a new light, fainter, it did not reach the sea and must belong to a house further inland.
*
Haaf Gruney was covered in tall, bristly grass. I walked inland, climbed up on a large rock.
A view of night and wind.
I took off my trousers and wrung them out, put them on again, stiff and clinging, and searched for driftwood for a campfire. The cold began to take hold. I tramped about, looking for a place that could afford the best shelter.
If there was shelter on Haaf Gruney.
I walked the whole length of the island and found nothing. Nothing but pebbles, puddles, the sky above me, the surrounding sea. I turned back and walked to the southern end, following the curve of a slope, and expected it to end in an abrupt cliff above the sea.
But instead I found myself looking down on the roof of a house. The straight lines broke with the scoured terrain around me that seemed to have been untouched for ten thousand years.
Two, no, three small stone buildings. A small boathouse by the shore.
All invisible from Unst.
I staggered down the slope between the walls of the buildings, and came to the front of the largest structure. I fumbled in my anorak for the key ring tangled up in a mess of chocolate wrappers and soggy pound notes.
3
WAS IT EXHAUSTION OR A FOREBODING THAT MADE ME knock on the door of a house left by a dead man and shout Hello? Who can say? Perhaps it was simply meant as a greeting to Einar’s ghost, a ghost unable to voice its reply, but there all the same. I stepped inside quietly, my movements echoed in the empty hall, and it was as though I could feel his presence in the night.
