Northernmost

by Peter Geye

  —

  The divorce had been made final in July. She and Frans went to the same Minneapolis courthouse where they’d applied for their marriage license twenty years before, this time sitting on benches across the hall from each other, not standing hand in hand. Despite all that had happened, for all the enormous changes those years had brought, she felt very much the same woman now that she believed she’d been then. She remembers looking across the hallway at Frans and wanting to ask if he felt different. But his faraway gaze told her that in this respect, as in every other one, they were moving apart now. It was up to her to figure things out. Twenty years ago, as they’d stood before the judge, she’d had no idea who she was. Regardless of all her confidence and intelligence. But on that next trip to the courthouse? She knew exactly.

  This wisdom had come at a steep cost, though, and from across the cold concrete floor she said, “I’m sorry we’re here.”

  Frans looked up slowly. “I know you are. Me too.” He buttoned and unbuttoned his coat and ran his long fingers through his hair. “Me too.”

  The mediator told them, at the end, after everything had been tallied and divided, that she’d rarely seen a divorcing couple so decent to each other, and their agreement reflected that. They would share time with the kids. She’d keep the house and he the bulk of their considerable savings. Their investments would be split. The household property and cars would be divided fairly. She kept her truck, he kept his Land Rover. He’d bought a condo downtown in the warehouse district. He planned on spending more time in Norway. She was going to do so in Gunflint. It still surprised her, even six months into their separation, that their lives could absorb so much upheaval. But of course they did.

  “Oh, I forgot to mention,” he said, “that trip has come through. I’ll be in Antarctica for two weeks in February. Remember? We talked about it.”

  “That’s great.”

  His face flickered alive, and she could almost hear what he was going to say next. But as quickly as that, he merely shrugged and looked back down. That was something else she’d have to get used to.

  The last night he stayed in the house with her—months earlier, he’d been sleeping in his office in the basement—he’d come upstairs after the kids went to bed. He poured himself a glass of wine and asked if she wanted one. She said yes and he poured it for her and they sat at the kitchen counter and he told her about the Antarctica trip. Asking, more or less, for her permission, a thing he’d never done before. “It’ll only be two or three weeks. And maybe another trip a couple months later. Real meaningful work again. At the Troll Station.”

  “Of course,” she said. “It’s a dream come true for you.” He’d wanted to go for so many years.

  He sighed, then got up and went to the bathroom, and when he wasn’t back ten minutes later she tiptoed to the door and held her ear close and listened to his breath catching as he sobbed. Then she went back to her stool at the counter and pretended to read the newspaper. Five minutes later, he returned and sat down. She could see him mustering up courage before he said, “Will you ever tell me why? Really why?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Was it all because of Alena?” He said her name more and more these days. “Or what else?”

  “I wish I could explain,” she said. And that was true. He’d asked some version of this question many times, her only answer always escaping further and further into the fog of her former self. She did know, with great clarity, that by leaving him she had saved herself, and that she would pay whatever the fates meant to collect. “But I’ll try. Someday.”

  He drank his wine in a long gulp. “Can I ask you a favor?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Can I hold your hand?”

  Greta pushed their glasses aside and took his hand and he wept freely, silently. What could she say? What was left to say?

  But it was Frans who spoke, just barely above a whisper. “I’m sorry.”

  Now she cried too. From sadness and happiness both. For the regrets and mistakes. For all she had gained, and all she had lost. For herself and for him. For Lasse and for Liv. For all the memories of nights like this last, there at the kitchen counter. After a while, Frans got up and hooked the dog on a leash. He stood at the back door zipping up his jacket, putting on his hat and gloves, then turned back to her. “Thanks,” he said, and took Axel out for a walk.

  “Frans,” Greta said. A group of photographers and journalists was crossing between them, a boom mic and bright lights and television cameras shining on the face of some notable litigant, she didn’t know or care who. “Frans,” she said again.

  When the crowd passed and the courthouse floor settled between them like a narrows on a still river, he looked across to her.

  “Which one of us will take Axel?”

  “Did we not talk about that?”

  She shook her head.

  “You keep him,” he said. “Okay? He’s your dog. He loves you the best.”

  * * *

  —

  Axel rests his chin on her foot and she reaches down to scratch him. Above and below his sweet bellows she can hear the wind changing directions, an easterly blow now. She dims the lantern and steps to the window and cups her hands close to the glass to look outside. That’s the Fonn, she thinks.

  She goes over and adds a log to the fire and returns to her desk. She opens her computer and plugs in her headphones and opens the file Stig had e-mailed her on Valentine’s Day, his recording of “Vannhimmel” made on board the Vannhimmel. Five hundred times she’s listened to it. So many times that she imagines she can play it herself, though never once has she sat down at the piano she bought him and tried. The song was his gift to her, after all, as the piano is hers to him. She will wait for him to play it.

  She clicks the cursor on the line beneath the title and closes her eyes. Before commencing her other work she listens to Stig’s performance, all seven minutes of it, then opens her eyes and plays it again. The music is also an invocation, and there with the lantern light and wind, with Axel under her desk and Liv asleep by the fire, she’s visited by Odd Einar one final time. He’s on his way to the cemetery, two cloudberry stems pinched between his thumb and forefinger, flowers picked on his walk down from the Gammelveinen, where he and Inger have lived for the past two and a half years.

  If Greta has worried from time to time that her communion with Odd Einar is peculiar, in these last days together she’s learned she was wrong about that. He’s taught her as much about love as her grandfather ever did. He’s taught her as much about perseverance and determination as her father, who’s no slouch in those departments. He’s taught her about patience. About forgiveness. About faith.

  When she sees Odd Einar reach the Kirkegata with those flowers in his hand and he turns back to face her and says, “I’m going one more time to say goodbye,” Greta bows and says, “I know.”

  “Then I’m going to see Skjeggestad about some sails.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “Inger would think me a fool. Anyone would. But Thea is all I have left.”

  This time he doesn’t wait for Greta to answer back. He just hums that old Christmas song his daughter wrote for her mother so long ago. Greta doesn’t have the heart to call after him. She can’t bring herself to tell him that his daughter died in 1896, less than a month after giving birth to her son, that the fever consuming her took three nights to do its work, that the last thing she saw was the empty cradle beside her own bed and the last thing she heard was her son cooing in the next room. How could she tell him any of these things? Or that this moment in her story is as close as he’s ever going to come to knowing what happened to Thea?

  Or is it? Maybe some part of him has known for a long time. Maybe he’s not going looking for her, but for the end of his sorrow. In any case, he’s walking away from Greta now and it
’s too late to ask him anything else, so she watches instead.

  * * *

  —

  At the cemetery gate I paused, as I did every time I visited Inger, and recalled the morning two and a half years ago when the pastor offered a prayer over my grave. Life between then and now had made me into a different man many times over, but none so absolutely as an evening this April when I returned from a day on the water. The kanelbolle Inger had baked the night before still lay under the cheesecloth on the board by the oven. The socks she was knitting were heaped in the basket beside her chair. A basin of bathwater sat beneath the window, cold. Since we’d lived in those rooms, I had come to know just by the quality of the air whether my sweet wife was home or not, and when I called for her that day the rebounding silence told me all.

  I found Inger in bed, her book in her hands, her eyes open and unblinking, her cup of tea on the bedside table every bit as cold as the water in the basin. She must have gotten up and readied her bath and made her tea. Must have felt unwell and returned to bed. And though it was not uncommon for her to pick up her Bible, she rarely did so of a morning, when much work beckoned.

  I stood there looking down at my wife and wondering had she known what was happening? Did she call my name? Or think of me at all? For the first time since Spitzbergen, I missed my faith. I wanted to pray for her. That she’d felt no pain. But how could I pray she had not suffered? Or was now at peace? How could I even consider raising my voice to heaven?

  Instead I went to her side and knelt. I touched her eyes shut and ran my hand down her hair. I folded my hands in hers and rested my forehead on her lap. And what I did instead of pray was hope. I hoped that her faith was a comfort to her until the end. I hoped that her last thought was of her daughter. And as I wept there beside her, I hoped that when all her thinking was over she had passed with the surety of my love, along with God’s, lighting the path to darkness.

  When I got to her grave on this last day, I stood above it in the brilliant shine of midmorning and took the sun’s warm grace to be her permission. I told her I would come back. That I would think of her every minute. That her love would light my path as I hoped mine had lit hers. And then I lay the two small flowers on her grave, and put my lips there too.

  I walked out of the cemetery gates and on down the Kirkegata and through the village and out past the stream and around the harbor. I went up the road to Skjeggestad’s and helloed into the darkness of his shop and when he emerged he was holding the new sail he’d sewn for me. He set it down on the workbench between us and took out his pipe and pouch, offering me a pinch.

  “May this one always catch a fair breeze,” he said, patting the rolled-up canvas. He struck a match and lit our pipes, then went back into his shop and came out with another roll of canvas that he set beside the sail. He showed me the brass grommets around the edge and the larger eyelet for the handle end of the extra oar I’d use to pitch this sheet like a tent.

  “It looks just fine,” I said.

  “You’ll be the driest fisherman ever to sail out of Hammerfest.”

  “Someday I’m going to build a new boat, with a pilothouse. But for now this will do.”

  “You’ve about remade that boat from tiller to tip, Odd Einar.”

  “She was in need of it.”

  He turned and gestured into the shop. “I can’t think of another thing you’d need.”

  “Have you got a good bail bucket in there?” I patted the canvas. “And I suppose I’ll need a rope for this.”

  “Ja, of course,” he said, then disappeared once more and came out with a braid of his fine line sitting in a two-gallon bucket that he plopped on the counter.

  “How much?”

  He took the pencil from behind his ear and the pad of paper from his apron pocket and ciphered out my invoice. “With the bucket and line, make it twelve.”

  I put my pipe between my lips and counted out the silver from my coin purse.

  “I thank you,” he said. “Could you use a hand with all this?”

  “You’ve helped more than enough.” I took a last puff on my pipe and emptied the bowl and put it back in my pocket. Then I shouldered the canvas, lifted the bucket handle, and said goodbye.

  “I’ll look for her full of wind,” he said, pointing at the sail.

  Down on the quay, I loaded my new supplies on board. She’d never been so well appointed and I was anxious to embark, but there was one more stop I had to make. I walked back up to the Strandgaden and into the bakery. A bell chimed as I entered, and Gerd was there behind the counter.

  “How are you, Fru Bjornsen?”

  “All ready for you.” She busied herself loading the baskets, stacking the bread and crackers carefully before closing the lids and lifting them from the wood counter behind her to the glass case between us. “Six loaves of rye, six dozen crackers, two pounds of butter, two jars of preserves, and enough cookies to finally fatten you up,” she said. “All of it in separate tins.”

  “I’ll be well fed, at least.”

  She came out from behind the counter and held the door open for me and we stood there outside, me with my baskets, Gerd shielding her eyes against the sun. “It’s a fine day for getting started. Have you said your goodbyes?”

  “Ja.”

  “Well, then,” she said. “I’ll keep you in my prayers, Odd Einar.”

  I put my finger to my lips as if to say “Shhhh,” said goodbye again, and went back to my boat. I stepped aboard, stowed the baskets, untied her from the dockside cleat, and took my seat at the oars. The only person in the village who knew where I was going had just supplied my larder. Free of charge, I should mention. She and I having come to an agreement after Inger passed, by which she kept me in bread while I helped with the heavy lifting in her life. That we had damn near become friends was proof that my allotment of miracles hadn’t ended when the Pobeg emerged from the fog on the Krossfjorden.

  And I was not fool enough to think that what I now endeavored would require anything less than another miracle. I would go north around Sørø and hope for an easterly breeze to push me across the Norwegian Sea and on to Jan Mayen. If the wind blew kindly, I might expect to pass that island in four or five days’ time. If I made it that far, I would consider the next thousand miles. And the thousand after that.

  Ah, but first I had to leave the Hammerfest harbor. I pulled on the starboard oar, steering the bow of my faering around to lead. With all my cargo, she went heavy in the water, but I’d never trusted another boat as well. So I rowed out past Skansen and on up Sørøsundet toward Muolkot. Before the church tower fell out of sight I stood against the mast, hooking an arm around it to steady myself against the gentle chop. I raised my hand in a final goodbye, and whispered my love across the water, then I sat and took the oars again, closed my eyes to quell my tears, and tilted my face up for the warm sun. I opened them at the sound of a krykkje landing on the masthead. Its yellow beak parted, but it whispered, too, and all I could hear—all I would ever hear again—was my daughter’s voice, beckoning me.

  * * *

  —

  She wakes with her head on the desk, her arms folded across her thighs. The lantern is out and the fish house wracked in darkness. Axel must have gone back to sleep by Liv, and when Greta stands up, she expects to see them asleep in the hearth’s glow. But the fire has burned to embers and she can’t see anything there, so she looks outside instead. The snow’s blowing with a ferocity she’s not seen since she installed the window. The Fonn in a rage.

  She picks her phone up to use its flashlight, but it’s dead and she opens her computer. The bright blue of the screen casts shadows across her desk and onto her legs. It’s 3:22 in the morning. My God, can she ever lose the hours. She closes the computer, and goes over to stoke the fire. There’s a chill in the air, and the house sounds like it used to, back when the wind howled in of
f the lake and through the interstices of the bowing boards with impunity.

  She throws a log on the bed of coals and stirs it with the poker and before she turns around the blaze is back up. She studies the flames’ lick, Odd Einar still on her mind as he so often is after she’s spent time with him. She can’t wait to tell Stig that she’s finished his story. That she’s set him on a course they themselves will be taking together in three short months, aboard the Vannhimmel instead of Odd Einar’s old faering. Stig is bringing his boat to her. Bringing himself too.

  One of the logs snaps and an ember flies out of the fireplace onto the hearth. She kicks it back toward the grate. Has all of her work telling Odd Einar’s story been frivolous? An exercise in wishful thinking? Does she await the same fate he found, or one similarly cruel? Of course she’ll never know, fate being unkind in the way of warnings. But she hopes not. Indeed, with this warm fire and this beautiful house, the story now finished on her desk, with Stig coming to her and Liv sleeping peacefully behind her and Lasse sleeping just as warmly up at Gus’s house, she realizes that even though Odd Einar’s life was difficult and beset by tragedy, the act of writing it down has restored to his memory a rightful dignity. But it’s brought her some dignity too. After all, his story has helped her through some of the longest hours. Hours she misses Stig with an indescribable fervency. Odd Einar’s been a companion during those lonesome times. Someone to walk with in Stig’s absence. Someone to show her how to love with fierceness. She’s getting good at it.

  Greta turns to Liv, the covers up around her head, and she almost lets her be. But she wants to see her innocent face, so she pulls back the heavy comforter and Liv isn’t there.

  Greta jerks the comforter right off the chair, where only the stuffed polar bear and pillow remain. But Liv is definitely gone. Turning to run upstairs, she passes the door at the bottom of the stairwell and notices it’s slightly ajar. She hadn’t registered the wind now inside, and snow has drifted over the threshold, the cold filling up the house. She pushes the door shut, and hurries upstairs to see if Liv has climbed into bed.