by Peter Geye
I pointed at the windows behind his desk, where snow made the wind visible by falling slantwise. “Weather of this sort puts me in mind of those hurricanes. In Hammerfest, during the storm a boat called Tifældighed ran aground. Right in the middle of town. If you can believe it, I saw the very same vessel attempting to dock this morning.”
“Men and ships—both persevere.”
“And daughters,” I said. “My Thea was two years old in ’eighty-two. But she knew enough to be terrified of those storms.” Now I paused to consider the lamp flame. “I guess it’s the storms we keep in our memories.”
“Yes, you’d asked if I kept them in mine.”
“And your answer was yes. Why is it we harbor those recollections?”
“I reckon ease and pleasure don’t go far in marking our constitution.”
“Yet, isn’t ease and pleasure what we strive for?”
“Do we?”
“Give me the choice, and I’ll take them every time.”
“So you could be a man like Bengt Bjornsen?”
“With a spacious home, with bounteous food, with money he’ll never even need?”
“But also a man without conscience, without integrity, without children. Without love.” He paused, weighing the rightness, it seemed, of what he’d say next. “Without any experience of loss or travail?”
“You overestimate the benefit of loss, I think.”
“Perhaps.”
“To say nothing of travail.”
“Suffering makes a man. My father taught me that, and I believe it to this day.”
“Then I’d be happy to think myself made by now.”
He gave me that segue grin of his, the one I’d already learned meant the time had come to return to our occupation. Without waiting for his prompting, I brought us back to Spitzbergen. “Now I will try your tactic, Herr Granerud. You said yesterday that you think our paths—however widely they disperse—converge again. I believe you’re likely right. How else to explain my sitting here with you?”
“So I’ve convinced you of something, then.”
Now I grinned. “Oh, I was far afield. As far as a man can get, I think. Then and now. So, let me tell you about the rest of my time up there without further digression. I’m a simple man, and I ought to let the story speak for itself. God, the Fonn, these things are like the weather or the polar night. I’ll now stick to putting one foot in front of the other.”
“I rather appreciate your digressions.”
“I don’t trust myself to make sense, sir. Besides, once I took my first step onto that inscrutable glacier, when I felt its great firmness beneath those komagers even as I looked across its jagged and crevassed shell, when I felt the strange, cold wind that seemed to come up from the ground as much as down from the sky, when I caught that otherworldly scent, one I can only describe as blue…why, then I gave all my thoughts to the path right before me. Or rather, what would become the path. You can believe I did.”
He started to speak, but I raised my hand before a word came out of his mouth. “I will tell you,” I said, “about crossing the glaciers. About those days of harrowing blindness.”
* * *
—
You might have thought, given my time on and around Spitzbergen—in the fog and in the snow; plying waters as far off as Nordaustlandet and Kvitøyjøkulen, closer to Franz Josef Land than to the Isfjorden; on the everlasting floes, where even the blue glacial ice had grown into something hoary and gray—that I’d been trained to have a second sight, one that comprehended and categorized the laws of polar whiteness, and saw through it. But that was not the case.
From a distance, the glaciers seemed little more than gentle fields of new fallen snow. But the first thing you should know about my maiden steps into the slud is that I was instantly cast into an invisible realm. It was one thing to witness the blankness of that snow-shrouded land from a ship at anchor or a killing boat or even a cairn of sheltering stone, and quite another to stand upon it. The mountain above me, whose base I’d traversed on the glacier line for a mile or more before venturing onto the ice, had disappeared as if it had never existed, or that some mix of fog and mist and snow and cloud had swallowed it altogether. So suddenly did this happen that I staked my hakapik in the ground before me just to know which way was forward. For each step I took, that planted stick guided me.
Oh, that godforsaken slog. I went along like this for an hour or more, stumbling in the deep snow, pitching down into troughs invisible in the gloom, rising again on the steel head of the hakapik. Sometimes even that bloodstained thing was invisible before me, at only an arm’s length. In the absence of sight, I attuned my other senses instead.
Do you know what it’s like to hear the exhalation of your breath or your weary grunts as you fall waist-deep into a skavl of snow, knowing those lamentable sounds will never meet the ear of friend or foe? Or, worse, to hear the echoes of the men from decades past likewise lost in the Fonn and know—to be almost certain—that your own grunts and gasps were merely joining the chorus of such lost souls? Why would you walk on? Why not lie down right there and welcome the inevitability of your fate? Why would you not seize what little dignity and control you had left?
My own thoughts ran this treacherous course as I plodded on. The only change in the atmosphere was that the smell of the sea, which had accompanied me since I’d first left Hammerfest under Otto Sverdrup’s command, now vanished. I had gone that far from shore. I wondered if ever in my life I’d been so distant from it, and probably I hadn’t.
Another hour, and still the murkiness would not relent. I moved on—hakapik, foot, foot—with my face upturned to the snow and drizzle, welcoming the cold sting on my face, for it served as solid proof I was still alive. And because I could not tolerate being so alone, I thought of my sweet Thea. I convinced myself that this ice and snow was the conveyance of her prayers for me. For as sure as I toiled upon that glacier, so would my daughter toil upon her faith; she was Inger’s daughter on that account, through and through. I thought that if I could recall her voice singing along with my hardingfele, I might be spared the awful ruminations about my solitude.
So I did. And for another hour, I moved along—hakapik, foot, foot, over and over—into my daughter’s voice guiding me, certain that I had found the middle of the Fonn and that here I would meet my end. Oh yes, I would die thirsty. Without having eaten a morsel in some three days. Without a single thought of my grace and salvation, or of the peace that might’ve attended it. But I was untroubled. Indeed, I might have already been lying down, the snow entombing me on that wondrous glacier. And this was its own kind of peace—that I could be dead without even noticing. Without pain or trouble. With only the memory of Thea as my parting vision.
But the Fonn wasn’t ready for me. Or perhaps I wasn’t ready for it. By then, I had paused in my drift across that old ice cosseted in new snow. Whether to rest my feet or take my death slowly, who can say? But I had stopped, of that I’m sure. And was sucking on a mittenful of snow. When in the brume above me I glimpsed four black smudges eddying in the whiteness, at first there seemed no logic to this movement. But the longer I watched, the more clearly I detected a pattern. Almost as if the specks were drawing a circle around me. What pleasure this thought brought me, that I would be granted this final respect. Here sits Odd Einar Eide! These are the bounds of his final rest! I was now more sure than ever that I would soon close my eyes and never open them again. I even made a small ceremony of this last act, bidding an eternal farewell to Inger and Thea and tearing up at my love for them.
But just as I was giving myself over I heard the unmistakable cry of the krykkje, so close it seemed like a kiss on my cheek. Again and again it called. I opened my eyes and saw, above the bird’s gray wings, a halo: the sun, relieving the Fonn. It called again. A familiar sound imploring, Get up! Get up!
No
w the krykkje circled low enough that I might’ve reached up and touched it. Low enough that I could see its black eyes and the gray shadow running along the tops of its wings. How often had these birds harassed my fishing boat? How often had I scorned this nuisance? A thousand times? Never once had I regarded this bird’s loveliness. Never once heard that cry and thought it a melody to the song of my life.
My life!
Unfolding myself from the snow, I picked up the hakapik and again planted it ahead of me and took another step. Then the krykkje did something I’d never seen one do before. It pulled its wings up and landed about ten paces before me. I fell toward its beckoning call, then rose, and fell again. When I got close enough to pet its little head, it took wing, circled, cried for me, and landed again another ten strides apace.
That bird led me to the far edge of the glacier. When my feet found the purchase of the mountain’s scree, my guide alighted on a ledge of rock just out of reach. Its yellow beak opened as if to loose another cry, but none came. It cocked its head, its tiny eyes prying. I lowered my head—in thanks and exhaustion—and looked up to the gentle whoosh of my bird taking flight. Its work complete.
I had crossed the first glacier. In a blinding fog, no less. Without food in my belly or water on my tongue. I closed my eyes again, longer this time, until I felt a warmth on my lids. When I opened them, the sun had come through the fog. I looked down the bay on which, three days afore, I’d merrily been slaughtering seals with Birger Mikkelsen. It was clogged with floes, all of them snow tufted. Slowly, the farthest shore came into the light of the sun. A white field broken only by the stone cairn under which I’d pretended sleep for two nights.
Now I looked at the shoreline I’d next have to travel. I knew a formidable mountain towered at the end of the headland, but the route before it—at least from where I stood—appeared passable, and not such an endless distance. I removed my mitten and held my thumb at arm’s length. I measured first the distance between the sun and the mountaintop toward which it fell. There might have been two hours of daylight left, which made the time somewhere near two o’clock. Ideal for afternoon tea. But the closest I could get was to suck more snow and sweat from my mitten, so I put it back on and did exactly that.
I took a last look around for my friend the krykkje. But again I was standing alone. I checked my gear and hefted the hakapik over my shoulder and went toward the flats, uncertain of everything except that I had not died on the glacier. And this thought itself spurred me on. I reached that evening’s resting spot with an hour of daylight left. An hour I used to build a mound of snow to sleep under.
[2017]
Later that day, she found Stig back at the Scandic Hotel. He was playing the piano again, but once Greta walked in he took his hands from the keys, lowered the fallboard, and steadied his gaze on her. He wore a different sweater. A gray and cable-knit turtleneck whose collar broke like a wave in the tangle of his beard, accentuating his strong jaw. She stood there as though waiting for a table, half of which were full and all of them flickering with candlelight even at lunchtime.
He stopped and spoke briefly to the waitress—not Ava, an older, almost matronly woman, kind-eyed, Greta could tell, even from a distance—who kissed him on the cheek and touched his forearm before letting him go.
When he reached Greta, he took her by the arm and kissed her on the cheek like the waitress had just kissed him. “Hello,” he whispered. “Thank God.”
He picked up her bag and led her out into the noonday darkness, under the streetlights, and stopped at his car. An old Audi wagon. He opened the passenger door, shut it behind her, and put her suitcase in the backseat. In the time it took him to walk around and get in himself, she’d noted two CDs on the dash, First Aid Kit’s The Lion’s Roar and Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues for Piano; a pack of mint gum in a nook below the stereo; an empty but stained coffee cup wedged between his seat and the parking brake; a pair of leather gloves; one of those hand grip exercisers; a handheld tape recorder. The car smelled of all these things. Her breath was visible in the cold.
He turned on the ignition before shifting toward her. She was already looking at his beautiful profile, and when he faced her she took a deep, catching breath. She wanted him to kiss her, but he only reached over and took her hand. She had still not spoken a word and found no desire to do so. She was more than happy just to sit there with him. To be in his company and set aside the thoughts that had been spinning in her like a windmill for several weeks. She felt easy. She felt ready. If he’d said he was going to drive her to Paris, she would’ve nodded and smiled.
Instead he said, “Can I show you my boat?”
“Hi,” she said. “Stig,” she said, then took a very deep breath. “After I saw you in the church, I went back to the hotel and had a drink sitting at the window. You know that sculpture on the harbor?”
“Of course,” he said.
“I imagined you on a boat. I thought you had good hands for a boat.”
“Good hands for a boat?”
She took one of his in hers, looked at it, and said, “Yes, show me your boat.”
He still didn’t kiss her, simply put the car in gear and looked over his outside shoulder and pulled onto the street. He drove ahead for two blocks and turned right and drove by the square—she saw the Hotel Thon, where she’d checked back in, and got the same room at the corner on the seventh floor—and then past the church and cemetery and out of town. She had no idea how much of a drive she was settling into, but when he didn’t switch the stereo on, she guessed it wasn’t long.
And she was right. Rypefjord was only a couple of miles over the hill, quiet and seeming almost deserted. He parked in front of a small, two-story house with a deck on the second floor and a gravel driveway and came around and opened her door and took her hand.
“Whose house is this?” The windows were dark.
“It is my mom’s house. Or it was her house. I guess it is my house now.”
“Is there something wrong with it?”
He looked at her, confused.
“Since you live on your boat,” she said.
“I am happy on my boat. I am trying to sell this.” He gestured at the house. “She did not leave me much. But this is at least something.”
Greta turned to scan the water and then back to him. “Well?”
They walked down to a dock where the Vannhimmel bobbed against fenders tied to pilings. There was another boat docked beyond Stig’s, a fishing boat with its cabin lit up and its engine idling.
Stig jumped down onto the deck, then held his hand up for her. She jumped, too, and he was quick to put an arm around her waist. “This is her,” he said, as if there might be some confusion.
He motioned toward the stern and she walked along the railing, holding the rigging to steady herself. As she stepped down into the companionway, the boat’s white decking caught the pearlescent reflection of the noon sky. She stumbled, and he caught her by the elbow. From behind, he used his other hand to unlatch the cabin door, his body pressing into her, a minty scent on his breath. And warmth. Even in the chill air, she could feel it exuding from him.
He lit a small lamp and the tidy cabin came into view: a galley and a sitting area, an electronic keyboard on a shelf above the settee, and a loo off the bedroom cabin. She sat at the table and surveyed everything again. For such a large boat, belowdecks it seemed awfully small. Especially given the size of Stig, who had to cock his head to stand at the counter.
Now she watched him take two glasses from a shelf above the sink and a bottle of aquavit from a cabinet. For all his bulk, he moved gracefully. Like he could perform any task aboard that boat with his eyes closed. My God, his eyes seemed to fill the two glasses with warmth even before he tilted the bottle, which he did then, holding it first in her direction to make sure she’d like one.
“Yes,” she said,
and then, “I was going to leave.”
“I know this.”
“I went to the airport this morning. I was in line to fly back to Oslo.”
He poured them each a finger of aquavit and brought the glasses to the table, handing one to her and offering a silent toast with his. She felt the almost imperceptible undulations here on the water, and could see, out the porthole window behind him, the boat seeking its level.
“Why did you not leave?”
Taken aback by the question, she picked up her drink and took a sip, then another. “How could I?”
He must have been embarrassed, because he put his own drink up to his lips.
“I’m married,” she said. “And I have two children.”
“What are their names?” he said from behind the glass, as easy as if he’d already heard about them.
“Lasse and Liv.” Just saying their names made everything more complicated.
“How old are they?”
“Thirteen and eleven.”
“How old are you?”
“Old enough to know better,” she said, and heard in this answer her mother’s voice. For an instant she regretted saying it, but then felt, as if her whole body wanted to come clean, that she was in fact herself. “That sounded glib and silly.”
“Glib?”
“Sarcastic. Or something. I’m forty-eight.”
“I do not believe you.”
She took another small sip of her drink. “Let’s not do that.”
“What?”
“Act like we’re supposed to. Say the things we’re supposed to say. Joke and make compliments.”
“I thought you were thirty-five. Maybe thirty-eight.” He sounded wounded.
“I bet you’re younger,” she said. “Forty-two.”
“I am forty-two.”
She drank the rest of her aquavit and handed him the glass. While he poured her another she glanced around the cabin again. Books on a shelf. Cushions on the settee. Cabinets. Windows. And a corkboard with photographs: polar bears, walruses, icebergs, reindeer, glaciers, kittiwakes and gulls, and one of a little girl. Greta walked over and bent closer to look.
