by Peter Geye
* * *
—
Marius Granerud had been writing as I spoke, dipping his pen in his well so often that even from where I sat, the ink splatters on his blotter were plain as day. When he caught up to my story, he glanced at me and sighed and flipped through his notes. “You mentioned Herr Mikkelsen’s knife, and how it was the most essential of his belongings you recovered that morning. Why was that?”
“I’d lost my own knife somehow,” I replied.
He leaned forward, expecting more, I reckon. But it struck me as too obvious a question to require elaboration. When I only sat there looking back at him, he cocked his head and again went through his notes and then pondered a new phrasing. “You quoted Herr Mikkelsen as saying all a man needs is”—and here he read from his papers—“ ‘a sharp knife and the love of God.’ Have you given any credence to such a thought?”
“I may as well tell you that by the time I was rescued, my use for God was much outweighed by my uses for that knife.”
“Who ever cut off a hunk of animal flesh with a prayer, right?”
“Indeed.”
He looked across his desk appraisingly, then pulled his pocket watch from his sealskin vest and eyed the time. “I suppose you’ll tell me how you employed that knife soon enough?”
“I can explain that in detail anytime you like.”
He raised a hand as though to quiet me. “I prefer my stories from start to finish, Herr Eide. Old-fashioned, I know, but I’ll wait. Just as you had to.” He tidied his papers and put them in his valise and then planted his hands on the blotter and looked at me. “I don’t know if it matters to you or not, but I find your honesty noble and your resourcefulness admirable. I’ve spent most of my life sitting behind a desk, living vicariously through the stories I’ve been lucky enough to report on. Through all the years of doing this, I’ve met any number of charlatans and cheats. You strike me as neither.” He stood. “I’m glad of that. It’s invigorating. And so far, your story is living up to its billing.”
Now I stood, too, ready to adjourn with him. He donned his bowler, shouldered his long coat, and checked his watch once more. “I’ve an appointment I cannot miss this afternoon, I’m sorry to say. What say we meet back here tomorrow morning at the same time?”
“Of course,” I said.
He ushered me to the door and held it open. In the antechamber, his secretary stood and handed him his cane and two envelopes that he deftly slipped into his valise.
“There’ve also been two telegraphs for you this morning, Herr Granerud,” his secretary said, handing them over his desk.
Granerud glanced at me. “All things in pairs today, ja?”
Holding the first telegram at arm’s length, he read it without reaction, upon glancing at the second he raised the monocle to his eye and read it slowly, carefully. A quizzical expression passed over his face as he folded the sheet in half. “Herr Eide,” he said. For the first time since I’d met him, his voice sounded uncertain. He tapped the paper on his chin and took off his monocle. “I’ll need to take your leave now. You can see yourself out?”
“Of course.”
“Very good.” He doffed his hat and then said to his secretary, “Herr Rudd, please step into my office.” Then he turned back to me while the man picked up his stenographer’s notebook. “It seems our dear Bjornsen is arriving on tomorrow’s boat.”
“Here? Why in the world?”
“He says he’s got business to attend to.” He shrugged, then added, “He is a man with diverse interests. In any case he won’t disrupt our interview, you can rest assured of that. Until tomorrow, Herr Eide.”
We shook hands before he stepped back into his office with his secretary.
* * *
—
I stood on the quay listening to the ruckus of gulls as they harassed a trawler coming to dock. Two men in coveralls were atop her decks, gazing across the water. Their aspect reminded me of the solemn work of pulling fish from the sea, and I felt a tug from my forgotten self. I would be very happy to get back home and put my faering to rights so that one day soon I might be sculling home with my fish boxes full.
Other boats were moored in the harbor, and across the sound, burrowed beneath the mountains and tufted by the green and gray scrub of the forest, a single farm and its fields lay ready for winter. A chill was in the air that the midday sun could not absorb, and I felt its faint galvanic force. This was a sense I hadn’t had before Spitzbergen, but understood now as though I’d conjured it myself. I knew that by dinnertime snow would be falling. There were other things like this, too, I was now attuned to, but the habits of my companions in life were not among them. The thought of Inger awaiting me at the hotel, of the conversation we’d need have about her confidence in Gerd Bjornsen, why, it gave me no pleasure to anticipate this.
We had planned to have lunch together following my meeting with Granerud, but when I returned to the hotel she wasn’t in the café. I checked our chamber and, finding it empty, went back downstairs to wait for her. A half hour later she still hadn’t joined me, so I stepped outside. Was this my new fate, to stand in a strange place and not know where to wander? At least here there were no glaciers to cross. No obliviating darkness.
At the end of the street a church spire rose above the rooftops, and I walked toward it. By the time I stood before the grand entry, peering up at the bell tower and clock, I was well beyond salvation of the sort the good book evangelized. But I was not without my hunches, so I opened the doors and walked in. Even from the last row in the church I could tell it was Inger in the front pew. She believed much in prayer, and usually whispered hers into her hands folded at her heart. But I was surprised to see her head tilted up, as if studying the cross above the altar. She wore her shawl and her bonnet and there was something about the quietude and the image she cut up there that gave me to think she was atoning.
I stood and watched her for some minutes before she suddenly looked around and stood quickly and came down the aisle carrying a parcel. Not until she’d nearly reached me did she notice my presence, which seemed to almost frighten her. She had to catch her breath, then said, “I lost track of the hour, Odd Einar. I was just coming to meet you.”
“When you weren’t at the hotel, I thought to find you here.”
She looked as though she’d been caught. How else to describe it?
“What’s in the package?” I asked.
She held it up. “I know I shouldn’t have,” she said. “But it’s been so long since I indulged in any pleasure, no matter how small.”
I wish I could describe how proud it made me to know that my wife had coddled herself, and that it was my own earnings enabling her to. My expression must have conveyed that happiness and pride, because now she took my arm and ushered me out into the churchyard.
* * *
—
We took our lunch in the hotel café, where she unwrapped the parcel and showed me a hairbrush and mirror, pewter handled and porcelain backed and painted with peach-colored cloudberries and their soft-lobed leaves. She presented them to me as if she’d stolen them, and when I said they were beautiful and she deserved such pretty things, she responded, “I can’t remember the last time I bought something for myself. And now that you’re home”—here she looked suspiciously around the café before reaching across the table to touch my hand—“I’d like to look my most charming for you. I hope it pleases you.”
“Of course it does, elskede.”
We ate cheese and bread and preserves and drank tea and chatted away, as though time and money were of no concern. I believe the easiness and ease of that afternoon was unmatched in our lives together, and I could nigh see her love for me retaking shape, like her affection had a physical essence that I could trace as it crossed the table. Akin to smoke or fog.
Toward the end of our repast, I risked ment
ioning the news that Bengt would be arriving the next day.
“That means Fru Bjornsen too, then.”
“Why?” I asked.
She paused, finished the last sip of her tea. “The marriage of Bengt and Gerd is complicated.”
“How are you privy to this?”
“I see it in the bakery. I see it in their home,” she said quickly. Perhaps even defensively. “Gerd confides in me. I confide in her.”
“She’s your friend now?”
“She is my friend. And Bengt my employer.”
“Not anymore he isn’t.”
She was still looking at me, her expression as changeable as the daylight on Spitzbergen. “These kroner Marius Granerud is paying you, they keep us afloat, Odd Einar. But they don’t excuse us from work.”
“I’ll work, Inger. You know that. When have I not? But I won’t have us indentured to that impostor any longer. That’s why we’re here.”
“And what will you do? When we get back home. Where will we live?”
“I’ll fish, of course. I’ll make the boat ready and climb back in it. We can see about a room in Iver Hauan’s place and save for something more. If the fish aren’t biting, I can apply for work in his lumberyard. We can make do.” I paused, rotten with the feeling of pleading again.
“Okay, Odd Einar. Okay.”
I finished my tea. Already the midday gloaming filtered out the light: it would be full dark in an hour. And how the onset of the polar night triggered in me some new dread.
I must have stared out for a long time, before Inger brought me back. “You’re watching ghosts dance out there, Husband.”
“It’s fair to doubt me. I know that. I deserve it. But this time I’ll make good.”
“Okay,” she said again.
* * *
—
Later that night, as we readied for sleep, Inger sat at the foot of the bed with her new brush, pulling it through her just-washed hair. She smelled like flowers from the shampoo and if the crew’s quarters on the Sindigstjerna was the foulest place I ever slept, this hotel was the freshest, not least because of that scent emanating from her hair. She wore her old nightdress but somehow even that seemed elegant in the light of the oil lamp flickering on the bureau. We hadn’t talked much since lunch, and I wondered if we’d finished our conversation or if Inger yet had more to say.
The brush. All day I’d been trying to recall why it seemed so special, and only when sitting there on the bed did it come to me. Inger had sent her hairbrush to America with our daughter. The night she left—it was in August, and the hut on Muolkot had been overwarm from an unseasonably balmy day and Inger’s urge to finish putting up the beets—Inger sat at the foot of our bed at home, her hair sticking to her neck and forehead. It was her habit then to brush it out before getting under the covers, but on that night and all of them ever since, she’d been reduced to using a wooden comb. As she sat there in Tromsø, I wondered if she was thinking of our daughter.
Of course I dared not ask. So while Inger finished her hair, I let my mind wander back to Thea. The next morning, I would ask the concierge for stationery and write her a letter about all these goings-on. I imagined her growing into a woman like her mother, possessing the same wisdom and verve. I hadn’t exactly known how much I admired those qualities in my wife, but the last couple of days had shown me.
I studied Inger again. Now holding the mirror, she was gazing at her reflection. I could see the left side of her face from where I sat, her eye and cheek and the corner of her soft lips. My goodness, never was there such a beautiful woman. She had the complexion of butter and eyes that still were, after all she’d seen, kind in daylight and suggestive at bedtime. I’d memorized her shape in three distinct ways: as it lay against me sleeping, as it looked from across the room, and how it felt in my own unworthy hands. There in the hotel room, I was taking all this in at once when I noticed that she was not staring at her reflection in the mirror but at me.
“It’s been a long time since you watched me brush my hair.”
“Too long.”
She put the mirror down and turned to me and ran the brush through her hair once more. “Tell me,” she said, “if it’s still nice to look at me?”
“I can think of nothing nicer.”
She lay the brush on her lap. “It makes me happy to have your tender eyes on me. I’ve missed the looks you give me.”
“I promise I’ll keep my eyes on you until the day I die, Inger.”
Her skin flushed, but she kept her gaze on me. “And what about the rest of you?” She stood and put the brush and mirror on the chest of drawers across the room and turned out the lamp there, then came back to the bed and lay down beside me.
“The rest of me?”
“Your eyes will be attentive, but what about your hands? Your lips?” She kissed me softly, then more passionately.
“Every bit of myself,” I said, pressing up against her. I could feel her lips curl in a smile as she kissed me.
[2017]
They hadn’t spoken for several minutes, not since Greta had commented on the cold and Stig offered her his sweater. The starlight had gathered in his eyes, which were upturned and smiling. Was she being as distant as those stars? Was that why he wasn’t talking? Had she gone too far away, lost in temptation as she was? She’d thought of declining his invitation to sit for a while on the shore of the sound. She certainly had practice in telling men no. But here she was, the water lapping on the rocks below them.
“What do you see up there?” she said.
His eyes fluttered, as if he were averting the sun’s glare. “It is funny, how the stars need the dark to be seen. Yes? There are not very many things that need the night.”
“I’ve never thought of it like that.”
“I have been reading books about the cosmos”—he looked at her and shrugged—“Yes? ‘Cosmos’ is the word?”
Greta spread her hands toward the sky. “The stars and everything?”
“Yes. I have been reading about how big it is. It is one way to find calm, I think.”
He looked down, like he was embarrassed, so she glanced up and felt the starlight fill her own eyes.
“How big is it?” she said.
“Oh. Well, it is too big to understand. And getting bigger all the time. This is what they say.”
“Why does that make you feel calm?”
He thought for a moment. “Maybe I like how small I am. All of us.” Now he was clearly embarrassed. “I do not know all the words in English. Vi er så ubetydelige. Våre menneskelige feil og dårskap har konsekvenser. Men de er færre hvis vi holder dem opp til universet. Samme med vår smerte og tristhet.”
Greta couldn’t understand a word of it, but felt herself inching toward him.
“But they are beautiful to see, also. Yes? And we will have nothing but stars until January. No sun or daylight. I am only one happy for this.”
“I suppose the stars are different in San Sebastián.” She wasn’t even sure what this meant. “Maybe fewer stars. And less night to see them.”
“This is why I am not already there. Maybe I do not go.”
Now clouds rose above the island across the sound. She watched as the crest fell into milky light.
“Sometimes I think I will live here forever. Just waiting. I have no idea what it is I am waiting for,” he said softly.
She understood this, too, and felt the pull of his modesty. She tilted her wrist up to the starlight and checked her watch. Just past eleven. They had been out there for an hour and said so little. Now she almost panicked. What if he got up and left? There were things she wanted to ask him. And other things she wanted, too, things she was afraid to admit. So she scanned through the obvious questions, none of which held up. Maybe she should just take his hand and ask him more about the stars. Maybe—p
robably—just get up and say good night. But she could no sooner stand up and walk off than she could swim across the inky sea.
“I used to sit here with my daughter,” he said. “Not so late, of course. But in the dark. She loved the stars.”
“Where is she now?” Greta asked. It was the first she’d heard of a daughter, and it made her think of the girl’s mother.
“Her name was Kjersti Anne,” he said, and now she knew this awful truth, too.
“I’m sorry,” she said, so softly she wasn’t sure he even heard.
For a long time he just gazed up at the sky. After a minute or two or three he took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, offered her one, lit it and then another for himself. After two long drags he said, “Only three years ago. Now Jorunn lives with her family by Bodø.”
“Jorunn?”
He took another pull on his cigarette. “Kjersti Anne’s mom. My wife.”
A strong wind came up off the sound, smacking her.
“A north wind,” he said, as though to announce it was to say everything about it. “It means the same thing here as it does where you come from, yes? Winter. Snow, maybe.”
“Mainly cold.”
“This wind brings the clouds too, yes? See?” And he pointed out to where she’d already looked. “And probably more cold. Like for you.”
