Resin

by Ane Riel

  Ever since that day the forest became my favourite place because I had learned that everything comes back, that nothing ever goes away for good. That one colour replaces another, going from light green to dark green to flame red to golden brown to the darkest black before turning into mulch. That the earth had to eat in order to push new life into the light. That darkness replaced the light, and the light replaced the darkness. That the hearts would grow back.

  Today I think Dad was happiest when he was surrounded by nature. He could breathe freely. We’ve never had as much fresh air and daylight as we had back then, and I’m sure that he got sunshine in his tummy just like me when we lay on our backs on the forest floor and watched the birds in the treetops. I knew every kind of birdsong before Mum taught me the alphabet song.

  I wonder now if it was all that fresh air that kept Dad alive. That and all the light. Perhaps you can store it inside yourself to use later, just like you can keep memories in your head – and stacks of crispbread and crackers in the pantry, and umbrellas and hubcaps and record players in the kitchen, and hose clamps and nets and tinned food in the bathroom, and rolls of material and iron girders and fertilizer and petrol cans and newspapers and carpets in the corridor, and engine parts and sprung mattresses and bicycles and puppet theatres and violins and poultry feed in the living room, and towels and aquariums and sewing machines and wax candles and piles of books and biscuits in the bedroom, and a stuffed elk head in the room next to it, and cassette tapes and duvets and sand bags and foil trays and sacks of salt and paint pots and basins and teddies and children in a big old skip?

  Even I can hear that it sounds weird when I say it like that, but that was how we lived. In time I learned we weren’t like other people.

  Dad was definitely not like other people.

  Mum knew it too. I’m about to start reading the letters she hid for me in a slim green file. ‘To Liv’, it says on it.

  That’s my name. Liv.

  I’m not going to read all of them at once. I don’t like the thought of them running out, so I’m only going to read one at a time. I have lots of time, that’s what the lady says.

  Dear Liv

  I’m putting this letter first. The others you can read in whatever order you please. I’m not sure there even is any order. But I want you to read this one first.

  I’ve never had the courage to tell you all the things I wanted to and, as my voice disappeared, I lost the ability. I never lost the need to tell you, though. But I can write and you can read – I’ve made sure of that – and one day you might read my thoughts here. Should that day come, I hope that you will be old enough to understand.

  I’ve already written some longer letters for you, and there are also shorter ones; some notes too, my thoughts. I’m not sure how many letters there will be in the end. Or what the end will be.

  I don’t know whether to call our life a fairy tale or a horror story. Perhaps it’s a bit of both? I hope that you can see the fairy tale.

  I’m hiding this file from your dad; it’s for the best. If I slip it in between the edge of the bed and the mattress, and cover it with a blanket, no one can see it, and in that way it will always be close when I have something to tell you.

  It has become harder for me to reach. I’m so heavy now that I can barely turn over. And I hurt everywhere. But I won’t ever give up writing to you, my darling girl.

  Please forgive me if the contents of my letters seem chaotic. But I suppose you’re used to navigating chaos so perhaps you’ll understand everything in that way that you have. Perhaps you’ll understand your dad too.

  Perhaps you already do.

  You need to know that I love him. You also need to know that he might kill me one day. If he does, I’ll understand that, Liv.

  All my love,

  Mum

  Jens Horder’s Story

  ONCE UPON A time Liv’s father was known as the most handsome man on the island, but over the years it grew increasingly hard to see why. Not only because his hair and beard grew wild and straggly, but also because it eventually became difficult to see him at all – not just behind the beard, but behind all the stuff piling up around him. No one had ever thought Jens would end up wreaking such havoc.

  People on the island had always known him. That is to say, they had always known who he was. They would see him when he drove through Korsted in his ancient pickup truck. People of a certain age, and that was most people on the island, knew it was the same pickup his father had once driven, usually piled high with newly restored wooden furniture or Christmas trees for sale. And with Jens. The handsome little chap would sit in the middle of it all, bobbing along happily, his face fresh and clear.

  ★

  His beginning was promising. Jens Horder was a much-loved child, as was his brother, Mogens, and in many ways the two boys lived a charmed life with their parents out on the Head. They were each other’s best friends, the island was their playground, and as their father showed them how to help him in his workshop, in due course it also became their place of work.

  Their father, Silas, was a man of many talents, but above all he was a skilled carpenter. Doing his best was a matter of honour for him, he regarded every tree as precious, a wonder of nature, and treated each one with the greatest respect from the moment it shot up from the ground, regardless of whether it ended its life as firewood, planks, furniture or a desiccated Christmas tree. Or outlived him. Certain chosen trees were turned into beautifully decorated coffins and would thus return to the earth from which they had once grown.

  Both boys inherited their father’s talent for carpentry, but that was where the similarity between them ended.

  Jens was the younger. The younger, the darker and more handsome, his mother used to think, when the boys played outside and she would watch them from the kitchen window. Mogens, however, had a much brighter mind in every way, and that reassured her. It boded well for the business when the time came for the boys to take over. Else Horder had such faith in her older son’s business acumen that she was privately convinced that Mogens would one day outshine his father.

  Because Silas might be a highly respected carpenter, but when it came to financial matters his talent was limited. The money came in but was soon spent on unnecessary items rather than to purchase the essentials, which should have been the main objective of his business. He was a frequent visitor to the main island’s two second-hand shops, and he had a rare talent for coming across barns full of stuff that people were keen to get rid of. Silas would invariably return with some find or other he was delighted with.

  His wife rarely approved, but Silas just couldn’t help himself. Besides, he was adamant that he would find a use for whatever it was someday. It was all about having an eye for things, he insisted. For their potential. Great treasures could be found among the lowliest of objects. After all, hadn’t he made a lovely chandelier from twelve old horseshoes? Else was forced to concede that indeed he had. It was incredibly beautiful and different. He had even sold a couple of chandeliers to tourists visiting the south coast of the main island and so been able to finance the purchase of more old horseshoes.

  Silas’s talent for woodwork extended beyond carpentry; he also knew how to look after wood before it came under his plane. In fact, he cared for all the trees on the Head as if he were their father. As far as his actual sons were concerned, he had shared his love and knowledge as best as he could: Jens loved the forest with all his heart and Mogens loved it with his mind. In other words, Jens would have a lump in his throat when he saw a tree being felled, while Mogens would be busy calculating its value.

  Silas Horder loved his sons equally, of course. But it was possible he loved Jens a little more.

  The idea of expanding the existing mixed forest with a small area of Christmas trees was the most visionary idea Silas had ever had, and certainly the most lucrative. It would enable him to supply Christmas trees and ornamental branches to the island’s permanent residents and the few peo
ple who spent Christmas in their holiday cottages, and thus make money for more treats on the Horder family’s Christmas table. That, however, happened only when Else Horder managed to keep hold of the money before Silas spent it on more junk.

  They had plenty of room to plant Christmas trees because the family had all the Head to themselves. No one else appeared interested in living so remotely, even before trees and bushes began to spread out of control and suffocate the open areas where animals used to graze. However, the locals were happy to visit the Head in order to have something mended or simply for a chat, even though it was a long walk or drive up the narrow isthmus. The island’s inhabitants respected Silas. They valued his craftsmanship and found his eccentricity amusing. It was common knowledge, for instance, that he talked to his trees, and his Christmas trees were always popular; customers especially liked to hear him whisper goodbye to the tree before selling it to them. Afterwards he would rub his hands in the December cold and look a little mournful while his wife took the money.

  So Silas was no ordinary man, but no one doubted his goodness, and the coffins he made were so beautiful that it was regarded as something of a privilege to be buried in one of them.

  No one apart from Silas Horder himself and his younger son knew that the coffins were tested before they were handed over to their rightful owners. On the night that followed the completion of a coffin, the pair of them would sneak out into the workshop when Else and Mogens were fast asleep. They would lie down in the coffin, Silas first, with Jens on his stomach, enveloped in the darkness and the scent of fresh wood.

  Jens knew no nicer or safer feeling. Years later, when the hours in the coffins had blurred into vague childhood memories, that feeling would remain. Darkness was a trusted friend. A loving embrace.

  They would chat about the bike-shop owner or the baker or whoever had just died and would soon be occupying the coffin. Silas knew most people on the main island, or he knew someone who knew them. Not that he was a gossip. He only ever spoke well of the dead. It might be something like how the baker had always been good to his rats, or how the postmaster had had such an excess of love for his wife that he had had to share his devotion with no fewer than three other women on the main island.

  Silas also confided in his younger son that for years the mayor of Korsted had hidden things around his farm which they were allowed to take, but only if they could be as quiet as mice and invisible and never talk to anyone about it afterwards, including the mayor himself. It was an amusing little game, which the mayor played with a few initiated people. After his death other people on the island carried on the game, but it was a big secret, and Jens must never say a word about it to Mogens or anyone else. Especially not his mother, who didn’t like that sort of game.

  What was said in the coffin stayed in the coffin. That was the deal.

  However, not everything that was put in the coffin stayed there. On the night they were testing out the baker’s coffin Jens had a sudden flash of inspiration just before he climbed on to his father. He spun around and started rummaging through a box behind the lathe.

  ‘What are you doing, Jens?’ his father called out from the coffin.

  ‘I want to put the baker’s rolling pin inside,’ Jens whispered proudly when he came back. ‘Don’t you think he’ll be pleased to have it with him in the coffin, even though the handle has cracked?’

  There was a small bang when one end of the rolling pin hit the bottom of the coffin. It took a while before Silas said:

  ‘Naaaah, I’m not sure about that. After all, I’ve had it for some time now, Jens, and I’ve grown very fond of that rolling pin – otherwise, why do you think I’ve kept it? There’s no need to bury a perfectly good item that’s still in working order. And it can serve to remind us of the old baker. No, it’s better that it stays here with us. The baker won’t need it where he’s going.’

  ‘You mean in the coffin?’ Jens whispered.

  ‘No, I was thinking more about afterwards.’

  ‘Afterwards? Where’s he going afterwards?’

  ‘Well, that depends on whether he has been good.’

  ‘At baking?’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean at baking. It’s more about whether he treated people properly while he was alive.’

  ‘He once threw a piping bag at me.’

  ‘Did he now?’

  ‘Yes, because I stopped to touch the doorframe of the bakery. It was the frame you made for him last spring.’

  ‘And did you take the piping bag with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good boy.’

  ‘So where is he going?’

  ‘Hard to know, but that’s for nature to decide. When his body decomposes in the coffin, his soul will leave and turn into something else. Whatever he deserves to become.’

  ‘What might that be? A butterfly? A blade of grass? A cart for a horse?’ Jens wondered out loud. ‘A fatted pig?’ He could easily imagine the baker as a fatted pig.

  ‘Who knows?’

  ‘Might he become a baker again?’

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘But he’ll stay on the island?’

  ‘Who knows?’

  Jens mulled over that night’s conversation in the coffin. He found it comforting to know that not everything ended when you died. But then again he didn’t like not knowing what he would become. He would prefer to carry on living as himself. And he certainly didn’t want to be a mosquito. He would rather be an ant; at least it didn’t fly around and sting people. Or a tree that might become a fine coffin in which someone might lie and have a chat someday.

  He pondered death at length, but there was one thought in particular that he wished had never occurred to him: that it wasn’t just him who was going to die. His mother and Mogens would also die at some point. As would his father. And regardless of what they became afterwards, they would no longer be his mother and Mogens and his father. He had a tummy ache for several days at the realization, and it made him wonder whether it might not be better to die before them so that he wouldn’t have to go around missing them. But then they might go around missing him and be sad about it. And if he became a tree or a horse or a scarecrow after his death, would they even notice? He couldn’t imagine anything more awful than being a scarecrow that no one recognized and was reduced to just standing there frightening the birds. And might he become a rolling pin? What if he cracked?

  The thoughts jumbled around his head, and he had the most dreadful nightmares about being taken to the junkyard. He had once visited the junkyard on the main island with his grandfather with a pile of broken things his mother refused to look at any longer. By the time they came back, Silas had returned from the forest. It was the first time the boys had seen their father angry. His face went puce when he realized they had driven off with the stuff without his permission. It took their mother most of the afternoon to appease her husband. But eventually the two of them sat holding hands on the bench while their relieved sons kicked a ball around the yard.

  Sometime later their grandfather died. To begin with, Mogens and Jens thought they were meant to be sad, but they were told that there was nothing to be sad about because their grandfather was an old man who was pretty much ready to die. Nor had they known him very well because he had lived in the southern part of the island, rarely visited the Head and barely said a word even when he was there. So it wasn’t as if he left a great void. Even so, Jens couldn’t help wondering what his grandad had hoped to become. And whether he had succeeded.

  On the night his grandfather’s coffin was ready, Jens could finally get his concerns off his chest. He was lying snug and comfortable on his father’s soft tummy, with his father’s big, warm hands on his chest. Every now and then he could feel Silas’s beard on his forehead, and though it was a little scratchy, it felt nice. They breathed in unison.

  ‘What do you think Grandad will become?’

  ‘He was a nice man. I think he’ll become something good.’

 
; ‘So not a mosquito?’

  ‘No, I would find that hard to believe.’

  ‘A tree?’

  ‘Yes, a tree is more likely. A big, tall pine.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to be careful that we don’t chop him down.’

  Jens could tell from the movement of his beard that his father was smiling.

  ‘It’s fine to chop down a tree if you value the life it has lived. As far as your grandad is concerned, he may not always have made the right decisions, but he was a good and loving person who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. We’ll remember him for that.’

  Jens had visited his grandad in Sønderby a couple of times. He had no idea that he had kept geese. All he knew was that his grandad had had a small dog that followed him everywhere and could play dead on command. That was fine until one day when it didn’t get up. Ever since then it was known as the most obedient dog on the island, and Jens’s grandad stopped saying anything. Then he, too, died.

  ‘He wouldn’t have been mean to his dog, would he? I mean, on purpose?’ Jens asked anxiously.

  ‘You’re also a good person, Jens. No, your grandad never hurt a fly. And now you’ve inherited his cap. You can wear it even if it’s still a little too big for you. That’s a nice way to remember him, don’t you think?’

  Jens nodded in the darkness.

  ‘Will I be someone’s dad one day?’ he asked out of the blue.

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘If I have a son, I’m going to call him Carl.’

  ‘Carl? Why Carl?’

  ‘The poet I chatted to down at the junkyard says his name is Carl and that he’s more than a hundred years old. He says he expects to live to two hundred.’

  ‘Is that what he says?’ Silas coughed.

  ‘Yes, if you count the rings in his face it looks about right. He has lots and lots of them.’

  ‘I see. Well, I’ll try to do that when I see him next. If I have enough time.’