Northernmost

by Peter Geye

  “Even if he’s a braggart,” he told me, “Bengt can speak with authority on rising up. I knew his mother. He got no help from her.”

  “I also knew his mother. She was a sickly thing.”

  “Sickly and overmatched. But also mean as a shark.”

  “My father used to bring her fish and reindeer. She came to church twice a week.”

  Granerud craned his fat neck to peer toward the kitchen. Satisfied that he might now speak freely, he whispered, “You have something he never had.”

  Bengt suddenly called for him to come.

  “More on that another time, Herr Eide. I’ll go see if his feast is ready.”

  And now he, too, left. I took a gherkin from the bowl, and my mouth gushed around the flavor. Next I reached my fingers into the caviar and ate a fistful. After another, I took a long draft of beer. I might have wolfed all the caviar down had my wife and Gerd Bjornsen not stepped into the dining room arm in arm, like old childhood friends. Inger wore a dress I’d not seen before. Her hair was pulled up on her head, and I could see the suppleness of her neck and the delicacy of her small ears. She told me where to sit at the table while Gerd called the men to dinner.

  When everyone was gathered around the table, Bengt offered a speech. “Just yesterday I stood in the churchyard, listening to the pastor intone the holy words meant to ease your passage. My God, we even buried your hardingfele, Odd Einar. And now”—he spread his arms expansively—“here we sit in the warmth of this fire, ready to sup, to pass an easy evening among friends. Fru Bjornsen, bless our celebration.”

  Gerd lowered her chin and closed her eyes and began by asking the Lord to consecrate our table. She thanked Him for His everlasting love and for the great good fortune of her name and kin. She asked for a blessing on the King and Queen. Finally, she said, “And we thank You for bringing Herr Eide back into our fold. Let him forsake wantonness and lust. Let him give thanks for Your leniency and love. And give him the strength to look on this reprieve as a chance to atone for his failures in his service to You.” She looked up and unclasped her hands and rang a bell, whether to call for the food or for hosannas from on high, I wasn’t sure.

  But soon enough two young servant girls hurried into the dining room with plates of tørrfisk and rutabaga. A pot of glogg was brought around the table and poured steaming into our mugs, and before I knew it, I was feasting with the wealthiest man in Finnmark and a scrivener from Aftenposten.

  I didn’t know which was more astonishing, the plate of food before me or Fru Bjornsen’s peculiar blessing. I studied her from the corner of my eye. Her hair was plaited down her back and her bangs pulled from her face by a kerchief, making her look even more severe and unpleasant. But for all her hardness, she was not unpretty. She had soft cheeks and svelte hands. The ruffles of her gown went over her, up and down, front and back, like frothy waves. She held her chin high and canted toward her husband, who had tucked his napkin into his shirt collar and ate like a bosun in the mess aboard the Lofoten. His wife was a study in contrasts. She cut her food into minuscule pieces and ate them without seeming to chew at all. Her eyes flitted about the table and then paused on my wife, who apparently had no appetite and whose gaze was cast down.

  What did Gerd mean about wantonness and lust? I thought of her shadow appearing in our doorway the night before. Had she deliberately set out to find us? It occurred to me that I didn’t even know where she slept. Surely in a bed beside her husband, but where in the house? Was it perhaps logical she would pass our chamber? No sooner did I wonder this than she turned to me. The firelight glowed on her face, which looked much as it had in the dark hallway.

  “I hope our dinner is to your liking, Herr Eide. Inger told me you were fond of this dish, so I added it to our menu.”

  “It’s very good,” I said.

  “Because if the fish doesn’t please you,” she continued, as though I hadn’t said a word, “there’s a pot of mutton and cabbage for our next course.”

  Feeling scolded, I immediately cut off a hunk of fish and scooped it into my mouth. I could tell without looking up that her gaze was still fixed on me.

  “Well?” she said.

  “I’m afraid I’ve been too long removed from respectable company.” I had another bite of fish. “It’s delicious, a godsend. I thank you, Fru Bjornsen, for all this kindness.”

  Now I looked at Inger, who had about her an air of exhaustion. I wondered how hard she had labored in preparing this meal, and what else besides her toil this dinner might be costing her. Despite this worry, I was still able to conjure the simple joy I felt in resting my eyes on her. It felt like a miracle, and I smiled shyly.

  A servant came around with a bowl of barley rolls veiled by a square of fine linen. Bengt snatched one and slathered it with butter and had eaten half of it before the girl stood beside me, offering the bowl. The bread smelled divine, and in my hand its softness made me blush.

  “I myself find the fish exquisite,” Marius Granerud said. “Same with the glogg. Same, too, with the bread.” He let a winning grin fill his rosy, glistening cheeks. “Tell me, Odd Einar, what it’s like to have the story you do?”

  “Beg your pardon?” I said.

  I saw Inger shift her gaze onto that fat, strange fellow.

  “Why, a man doesn’t spend a fortnight alone on Spitzbergen and come back the same as he left.” He looked around the table as though to ensure no one would dispute this claim.

  “Of course he doesn’t,” I said.

  “And isn’t the story of what happened to him up there chiefly about the change he feels inside?”

  “I never considered it like that.”

  “Certainly there are also outward signs,” Granerud said. “A little less flesh on his face, the scars that biting cold leaves behind, a vague but strident weariness. But all that’s just his body, and what does a man need his body for except to sleep and eat and dance a halling?” He winked at me. “What you have is your story, and that’s better than flesh on your bones or a song for your feet.” He took an excited drink from his mug.

  “Each night out there, I would have traded that story for a bowl of black pot and a bed to sleep in. Never mind a dance.”

  “And what man wouldn’t?” Granerud said. “Anyone who’s cold wishes he was warm, and when tired wants a bed. But now that the coldness and fatigue are behind you, well, now you have the bounty of your experience. You can look back with pride at what you did.”

  Everyone else was staring between Marius Granerud and myself as though in that space our riddling might come to life. Of those fourteen nights, I recalled mainly fear. “I find no pride in my surviving. None. When I look back, sir, I see only darkness and terror.”

  “That’s just the thing, Herr Eide. We ought to strike now, while that feeling still lingers. While it’s still fresh and fierce. Wait too long and time will muddle it. Before long it won’t be a story at all.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” I said.

  “I’m speaking now of the story you lived. The one I want to tell. The tale of your survival.”

  “Who would want to read a story full of foolishness and cowardice?”

  Bengt set his mug harshly on the table. “The world loathes a coward!” he said. The glogg was getting the better of him.

  “But you are no coward, Herr Eide,” Granerud said. “Why, if you let me, I can make you into a legend. I can tell your story so people all across the world will read it.” He fixed me in his gaze and said, very seriously, “Perhaps in places like Minnesota. Provided we get it all down before you lose the edge of it, before the terror you speak of becomes little more than the wind passing through the garden outside.”

  “I don’t see how time will dull what happened,” I said, though I wasn’t certain of that. Yet I knew I didn’t believe that what happened to me was worth the time it would take
to tell Inger, much less this man from Tromsø.

  Marius Granerud still spoke with great deliberation and thoughtfulness. “But it will dull, Herr Eide, I promise you. The first thing I noticed about you was the scar on your hand.” He gestured at it, resting there on the table with a fork pinched between my thumb and forefinger. “I’d venture to guess that mark goes back half your life, maybe more. Am I right?”

  “I was twenty years old. A hatchet wound.”

  “I imagine the pain was something awful.”

  “Of course.”

  “The first couple days were the worst, no doubt?”

  “Naturally.”

  “But then the pain lessened. The wound began to heal. And a month later, I’d guess you hardly remembered it. And now?” He looked at me from under his brows.

  “Your point is well taken, Herr Granerud.” This was Inger speaking, suddenly and firmly. I looked at her, thankful, but not at all clear myself about the point he intended to make. If he was saying that the hatchet wound had healed, of course he was right. But if he meant to further imply that the incident was forgotten, well, he was wrong about that. What’s more, if Marius Granerud ever had to haul nets in frigid water with this battered old stump, then he’d know what pain I carried with me daily.

  Now Inger continued, emboldened I’m not quite sure by what. “My husband has had a harrowing experience. Most men would have perished the first night. But he didn’t. And, as you say, in exchange for all his trouble he has a story to tell. Our question, sir, would be why you’re the best man to tell it.”

  Gerd sat up. “Fru Eide,” she scolded her. “Herr Granerud is one of the most important men in the Norwegian press. And beyond that, he’s a guest at my table.” Her lip twitched in anger as she gulped for more to say.

  But Granerud was quick to raise his hand. “It’s a fair question, Fru Bjornsen. Why, after all, would these fine people trust their story to anyone, much less a man they’ve only just met?”

  “I meant no disrespect,” Inger said.

  Granerud took another long sip of his glogg. “None taken. As I say, it’s a fair question. Perhaps I can offer an anecdote in answer. Two years ago, do you know who first was offered an audience with Nansen?”

  Inger and I both looked at him, his smooth confidence obvious but not ostentatious.

  “I was. Now, there was a man worse for wear. He was slack of cheek, himself. Not unlike you, Herr Eide. His eyes were sunken, too. His aspect had taken on the very hue of the place he’d just escaped. Ashen, I’d say. Scoured. But somehow vibrant. Somehow”—here he paused and glanced at the chandelier, considering his memory—“immortal. That’s what I thought. You could see, from how his suit hung loose over his shoulders and long at the cuff, that here was a man not all of who he once had been. But do you know what else I saw?” He looked around the table, from one face to the next. “A man more alive than any I’d ever seen before. Alive with the magnitude of his accomplishment.” He paused again before slipping his fork under the last bit of tørrfisk, chewing it carefully, then setting his silverware down and dabbing at the corners of his mouth with his napkin. We all sat there staring at him.

  He turned his attention to me once more. “Some men seek their destiny. Some have it thrust on them. We revere the former, but do you know what we see in the other, Herr Eide?”

  I shook my head, afraid to look away for fear I would miss something important.

  “We see ourselves. When people read your story, they will already know it.”

  “Why—” I began.

  “Because who among us has not been lost in the night? Who has not ever been frightened? Or stood on some distant shore and counted the miles home? Who among us has not fought the ice bears of our imagination, of our own worst fears?”

  At that moment the servants came into the dining room and began removing our plates. As quickly as they left they were back again with new place settings, and as soon again with a platter of mutton and cabbage.

  “I think that’s where we ought to start,” Marius Granerud said.

  Now I was the one who glanced around the table, the four of them peering intently as if expecting me to divulge some great secret. But of course I had no secret simple enough for these storytelling purposes. “With the bear?” I said.

  “Ja, sure, with the bear. On that very day. But how did you get there? Who was your employer?”

  “Svene Solvang, captain of the Sindigstjerna, a sealer out of Tromsø.”

  “And how many were in his crew?”

  “There were six of us, including Solvang himself. Two men each for two killing boats. Solvang stayed aboard the Sindigstjerna while we hunted.”

  “That fateful morning,” Marius Granerud said, his voice hypnotic, “you were in one of those killing boats?”

  I nodded.

  “And your partner, what was his name?”

  “Birger Mikkelsen.”

  “Birger Mikkelsen,” he repeated, as though our tablemates might not have made out my faint voice. “So, tell us where you were.”

  “Up the eastern tooth of the Kross.”

  “The Kross?”

  “The Krossfjorden, sir. In Spizbergen.”

  Marius Granerud wiped his glistening lips and again picked up his fork and knife, but then paused and pronounced, once more surveying each face around the table, “The mere mention of that barren place stirs the imagination, does it not?” He settled his gaze on me. “Now, about that day. Could you tell us about the bear?”

  I felt as I imagine a criminal might while being questioned by a keen and persuasive inspector—that is to say, compelled to tell the truth.

  * * *

  —

  The autumn ice was forming again and the glaciers were calving and the seals would be plentiful. This would be our last hunt before steaming back south to Norway. On that morning, an easterly wind boasted and I hauled my hakapik and duffle and a Krag-Jørgensen rifle into the killing boat and took the oars while Mikkelsen manned the tiller. We doffed our hats and steered for the shore, where floes clogged the rising tide.

  We carried with us a cask of fresh water and a sack of biscuits and after an hour Mikkelsen and I switched spots and I took my breakfast at the tiller. And what a fine desolation I saw from my post. The water had the appearance of quicksilver where it wasn’t clotted with ice. The dimming sky above the glaciers and mountains cast a hoary light. Everywhere was gray. All distance was inestimable.

  Two times I saw an ice bear picking among the floes. On the second I raised my rifle and aimed at him for sport, but the boat was unsteady and so was my shot and he only startled at the report from my rifle and ambled silently ashore to disappear among the ice. Another half hour passed before Mikkelsen and I beached the boat and threw our anchor onto the ice.

  Within three hours of landing we were flush with eight bludgeoned seals. Though the bilge was swamped with blood, we again took measure of the ice. Mikkelsen thought we might profit another seal or two. The Sindigstjerna was to meet us at Kapp Guissez an hour before sunset, which was still three hours away. Given Mikkelsen’s seniority, I demurred and together we set out with our rifles and hakapiks for one more round of slaughter.

  Already the ice was smeared crimson. The rich tang of death hung on the air like the gulls that had been jeering us all day. A man could not find bloodier occupation. Nor harder work. We sweat on those bergs like fiends, and by the time we finished lunch had drained that cask of water.

  If I was exhausted and worn to a nub, Mikkelsen was a man made for such labor. He was tactical and careful and he knew the habits of seal and gull and bear alike. All day he regaled me with tales of hunts past. He took pleasure in his work, both its lustiness and its rich reward. I took none myself. With each blow of the hakapik, each strike on the blubbered head, each stab of the pick, I felt myself recoil, and lon
ged only to be back aboard my faering, hauling fish instead of seals.

  But I was not, and as Mikkelsen and I hefted that last seal over the gunwale we saw our killing boat go keel side up, as though a rogue wave had shot toward us through the fjord. But none of the other bergs yawed. When the boat found her level again I could see the bear’s nose and eyes just above the opposite gunwale, its claws gripping the old wood like garden rakes. Can you imagine how sweet was the smell that had drawn him there? Nine dead seals, and not one of them with an inkling to swim away.

  Mikkelsen instantly jumped onto the berg and shouldered his rifle in the same movement, hurrying into position for a clean shot. The bear raised his paws and pulled down on the boat again, reaching in this time to swipe at the heap of seal carcasses. But there was enough freeboard to hold the boat upright and even this beast couldn’t quite pull himself out of the water. His forelegs must have measured eight feet from claw tip to claw tip, his neck three feet long and as big around as a foremast. He bobbed twice more and then was gone.

  “He’ll come aboard our berg,” Mikkelsen said, his eyes alert and searching. “I’d put a round into the barrel of that fine rifle you use, Odd Einar.”

  No sooner had he said this than the bear burst from the slurry onto our berg, his coat as slick as a seal’s. How fast and beautifully that ice bear moved! As smooth out of the water as the animals he hunted. I aimed and fired but missed, even as he rose there on his hind legs, twice my height. He roared his protest, and from my stance thirty feet away I swear I could feel the warmth of his breath.

  Now Birger, who’d hurried to shore and stood apace me, aimed and fired and winged the bear. If his anger had been roused by my shot that missed, he was now crazed. His eyes went wide above his gaping black mouth and his teeth showed like icicles, and I felt the roar that came from his belly in my tightening scrotum.

  “You damn devil!” Mikkelsen hollered. “Leave our haul alone!”

  As if the bear had the intelligence to heed Birger’s request, he did just that, but not before scrawling the ice with a massive paw, slicing the line that held the anchor. Mikkelsen fired another shot, which missed the bear but blasted into the killing boat now floating away. “Drit og dra,” he cursed, as the bear howled again, dropped to all fours, and started toward us. “Pluck him one. Now! Right in his goddamn cock!” I fired once more, and the bear heaved right and bounded up the shore.