Resin

by Ane Riel

  ‘And if I have a daughter, I’ll call her Liv, just like the little newborn girl we saw yesterday.’

  ‘It’s a beautiful name.’ Silas smiled again.

  ‘Yes.’

  They lay for a while listening to the susurration of the trees which came in through a crack in the window. The sound was accompanied by a scent of spruce and wet moss that mixed with the aroma of the wooden coffin. Soon the honeysuckle would join in.

  Silas Horder began to stir.

  ‘Right, I think the coffin is ready for Grandad now. Time for us to go to bed. Mind you don’t wake your brother when you go back.’

  ‘I’ve never done that.’

  ‘No, you’re right. Then again, Mogens sleeps like a log.’

  That night Jens didn’t sleep a wink. He was thinking. What if a log was really a sleeping person who was too tired to become anything else?

  The funeral went well, Else told them when she returned from Korsted church. Mogens and Jens had stayed on the Head with their father. Silas might be fond of coffins, but he hated funerals, and he didn’t like the boys leaving home either. It was bad enough that they sometimes had to go to school rather than help him in the workshop, in the forest or with the animals. There were plenty of things for the two of them to do. Besides, Silas didn’t have much faith in the knowledge his sons acquired at school. Sometimes he didn’t understand a word of what Mogens was talking about. Whoever heard of square roots?

  It was enough to make Jens seriously doubt their education. Thankfully, both sons had a considerable talent for carpentry, Mogens probably the more so. Jens, however, had something unique about him which Silas couldn’t put into words but adored.

  The first coffin initiation had come about pretty much by chance. He had only intended to let the boy experience the thrill of being enveloped by the wood and the craftsmanship he would himself one day master to perfection. Let him experience the lines, the proportions, the smell of the wood. Tell him how the tree was still alive and working around the body. Stuff his son’s schoolteacher was unlikely to bother with.

  He hadn’t intended for their coffin inaugurations to continue but, lying there secretively, holding his younger son and listening to his thoughts and confidences and questions, imbued his life with a purpose it had previously lacked.

  Silas wasn’t interested in anyone else’s opinion on the matter. It never even crossed his mind that the ritual might seem a little bizarre in other people’s eyes. He cared only that this – their safe and trusted private place – should endure for as long as possible.

  Jens was careful not to breathe a word to his big brother about the important discoveries he had made in the coffin. One question, however, was pressing.

  ‘Mogens, what do you want to be?’

  ‘When I grow up? An inventor – an inventor, definitely.’

  ‘Sure, but what about when you die? Then what do you want to be?’

  Mogens stared at him for a moment.

  ‘But I won’t. I’m not going to die. I’m going to invent something that will keep me alive, and it’s going to make me so much money that I can make a living from it too. But don’t tell anyone. I promise to keep you alive as well.’

  There was so much that Jens couldn’t tell anyone.

  One autumn night Jens and Mogens were lying awake in their room, listening to the wind tearing at the roof tiles and knocking things over. It was a long-lasting, powerful northern wind that was now culminating in a furious storm. Over in the barn, the half-door squeaked on its hinges until a sudden gust of wind made it fly open with a bang, which was followed by a strange cacophony of whinnying and mooing and braying. Shortly afterwards they heard another door slam and the sound of their father calling out to the animals. And more noises. Something falling from the roof. The weathervane? Something rolled across the gravel and bashed into something else. Mogens guessed it was one of the barrels crashing into the pump, and quickly reassured Jens that the upheaval would have been much worse had the storm come from the south or the west. When the wind came from the north, as it did tonight, the forest would bear the brunt of it for them. Besides, the trees were so far away that they wouldn’t hit the house if they keeled over, so Jens had nothing to worry about.

  But Jens wasn’t comforted. On the contrary, he was horrified at the thought of the poor trees giving their lives to protect his home. A loud, ripping sound followed by a hollow thud from the forest made his throat tighten. He pressed himself against Mogens, who held his baby brother in a loving embrace while he fantasized about inventing an effective storm shield to the south and expanding the workshop to the west.

  The next morning they walked around the house and the outbuildings with their father to inspect the damage. Nothing serious had happened to the buildings, but stuff had been scattered all over the place, and they spent some time picking it up and piling it up along the walls – pretty much where it had all stood to begin with. The animals had long since settled down and were chewing the cud in their modest quarters.

  Afterwards they went into the forest to see the extent of the wind’s ravaging. At first they walked through the Christmas-tree plantation, which had survived remarkably unscathed, and then along the winding paths in the mixed forest, where a few spruces lay like fallen soldiers in the mist. One or two had ripped up whole chunks of the forest floor so it looked like a thick shield of soil and roots was rising from the yawning hole. Jens walked carefully up to one of them and stared into the underworld that had opened up in front of him: roots of varying shapes and sizes sticking out from the vertical soil in every direction like exposed tentacles, a few brutally snapped, others pulled out in thin, thirsty strips. At the bottom the most stubborn roots still clung to the soil, and at the top a blanket of moss hung over the edge like a waterfall that had changed its mind halfway down. Nothing remained of the forest floor’s usual natural order and quiet harmony, but even this unfamiliar chaos beckoned Jens with a shivering delight.

  Soon he felt a pair of familiar hands on his shoulders.

  ‘We’ll leave it alone,’ Silas whispered above him. ‘I bet a fox will make its home down there. It was a very old tree. Maybe she was ready to die.’

  Jens nodded. Mogens started measuring the tree.

  The boys followed their father down the narrow forest path that wound its way through spruce and pine and oak and birch and aspen, and every time Silas ducked under a branch Jens would duck too, even though he wasn’t in danger of being hit by it for a few more years. His stomach lurched when they passed the tall spruces and carried on northwards. The boys were under strict instructions to go no further than the tall spruces when they were alone in the forest, and Jens had never dared defy them. He stared, at once scared and mesmerized, at the forest of crooked pine trees that replaced the spruces. They seemed to be stretching out their branches towards him, and he couldn’t decide whether it was to embrace him or strangle him. Silas would appear to pick up on his younger boy’s apprehension because he stopped for a moment and put his hand on a long, twisted arm reaching halfway across the path.

  ‘Look, Jens. I call these gnarled old pines my troll trees. They’re very friendly trees that like to say hello.’

  Jens nodded happily. Then he too clasped the knobbly branch and greeted the trunk politely.

  The path curved and suddenly there was noticeably more space between the trees. The white mist which had lain across the forest all day had slowly drifted south. At that moment the troll trees ended completely and left the scene to the afternoon sun, which lit up the forest floor, revealing a myriad of life: glossy beetles struggling across steaming grassy mounds; insects dancing in the air between the tree trunks; a shrew’s ceaseless pottering between blades of grass. A rabbit darted past them as if it wanted to catch up with the fog, and in a quivering, silvery web a spider rushed towards its prey, seemingly oblivious to the cross it carried on its back.

  Jens held his breath when they passed the furthest trees and stepped out into
the open area that separated the forest from the sea. This was the common. The mysterious, large common he knew only from his father’s and big brother’s descriptions and from his own dreams at night.

  ‘Look how the heather blossoms,’ Silas said. ‘And try smelling it …’

  They heard him take a deep breath in through his nose. Jens did likewise as he looked at the purple carpet spread out in front of them. The scent was new and captivating: the fresh, salty sea air was scented with the heather and the coarse grass. Jens thought that this had to be the most peaceful spot in the whole world. He would love to lie here chatting to his father for ever and ever.

  ‘Look at those ones over there … They’re called devil’s-bit.’ Silas pointed at some round blue flowers balancing on long stems in between the heather and the grass.

  ‘Devil’s-bit?’

  All Jens knew about the devil was that, according to the vicar’s wife, he reigned in the postmaster’s home. Judging from her tone of voice, it was a sorry state of affairs, and Jens hoped that it would soon be handed in to the workshop to be fixed, so that he could finally get to see it for himself.

  ‘Yes, and this summer I’ll show you the other flowers that grow out here. There’s one called bird’s-foot trefoil …’

  Now he was talking. There were plenty of birds on the island, according to Mogens, but Jens still wasn’t altogether sure what made a girl a bird. Perhaps it had to do with being hen-pecked.

  ‘And the Virgin Mary’s bed straw …’

  Jens’s jaw dropped, and he looked at his father: ‘This is where she sleeps?’

  He had heard about the Virgin Mary at school and knew that she had a donkey and was married to a carpenter. He couldn’t remember anything else, but it had been enough for him to warm to her immediately.

  Silas smiled. ‘Not as far as I’m aware, but if she did decide to lie down here, at least she’d be comfortable,’ he said with a wink to Jens, who thought his father had got something in his eye.

  Mogens wasn’t listening. He was shifting his weight from foot to foot, eager to get to the sea. Once they were ordered to scare off any vipers that might hide in the heather, his shifting turned into enthusiastic stomping. Jens stayed between his father and his brother. The viper was the only animal apart from mosquitoes that he really hated.

  ‘Come on, Jens, come on,’ Mogens urged him as he raced down to the beach to the point where the sea had last drawn a line in the sand. He fell to his knees in his short trousers and waited. A moment later the water returned and trickled softly under his hands and knees and the tips of his shoes so that he sank slightly into it and got a little wetter than he had expected. Mogens grinned happily.

  Jens stayed put in the lyme grass, which tickled his legs like tiny needle pricks over his knee-high socks, but he barely felt it. He was mesmerized by his big brother and the sea.

  When the sea crept across the beach it resembled a thin, shiny tongue. But there was nothing ferocious about the tongue. It licked Mogens’s knees carefully, like a loving cat would have done. Jens concluded that the sea must be nice. For some reason he had always imagined that the sea up here would be scary. Now he felt safe about everything that lay to the north.

  He had often sat on the back of the pickup truck and gazed at the sea as a blue surface either side of the Neck when they rattled down the gravel road to the main island. And he had also seen it between the hills as they approached Korsted or delivered restored furniture to the islanders. It was always there, a surrounding danger and a distant sound. But he had yet to touch it. He had never taken off his shoes and socks and stepped out into it and felt it whirl softly past his ankles before it was pulled back with a small whoosh in the sand under his feet. And he had never bent down and felt it flow between his fingers – cold, soft, incomprehensible.

  Until now.

  While the boys played at the water’s edge they noticed their father walking up and down and staring intently at a ribbon of seaweed and pebbles lying like an uneven lace border along the sloping shore where the water and the beach exchanged caresses. Silas had his hands on his back and was leaning slightly forwards as he put one foot in front of the other. At times he would stop and rummage around in the pebbles before carrying on in the same, slow pace.

  ‘Perhaps he’s prospecting for gold?’ Mogens whispered.

  Perhaps he’s looking for Grandad? Jens wondered to himself.

  Silas was scouting for amber, and he found what he was looking for. More than he could have hoped for. The boys stared curiously at the small golden-brown nugget he held up to them. He explained how they could tell that it was amber rather than a stone and let them bite it gently.

  ‘Is it worth a lot of money? Like gold is?’ Mogens wanted to know.

  ‘Large pieces of amber can be valuable, as it’s also used for jewellery-making. But no, it’s not valuable in the same way as gold.’

  ‘So what is it? Where does it come from?’ Jens asked.

  Silas smiled. ‘I’ll show you in a moment, but first I want you to take a look at this.’ He stuffed his hand into his pocket and produced another golden nugget, this one slightly bigger.

  ‘In one sense this is worth more than gold. Take a look at what’s hiding inside it.’

  ‘It looks like … an ant?’ Jens whispered.

  ‘It is an ant. And the special thing about this ant is that it’s very, very old. People have found lumps of amber with animals several million years old in them.’

  ‘Big animals as well?’

  ‘No, mostly small animals, I believe. But just imagine: the amber preserves them. Amazing, isn’t it?’

  The boys nodded in unison, without taking their eyes off the ant. Suddenly Jens looked up at his father, wide-eyed.

  ‘But what about people? Small people … children? Have they also found ancient children inside a piece of amber?’

  Silas shook his head, ignoring Mogens’s giggles. ‘No, I’ve never heard of that.’ Then he scratched his beard, as he always did when he remembered something interesting. ‘And yet …’

  Mogens fell silent immediately.

  ‘A long time ago …’ Silas began. ‘No, come with me. It’s better that I show you.’

  Silas didn’t elaborate but led his sons across the heather and back through the forest. It had grown a little cooler but the sun was still in the western sky, squeezing long rays in between the tall spruces.

  ‘We’re looking for an injured tree,’ he said, finally veering off the path to wander between some pines. ‘Look for one whose bark has been damaged.’

  Seconds later Mogens found one. ‘Over here!’ he yelled, so loudly you would think he had struck gold.

  Mogens couldn’t have found a better tree. Silas Horder had known all along that there was a pine with a wound at a child’s eye level right there. He knew all his trees.

  ‘Good job. Now take a close look at it. Do you see those golden drops? That’s a kind of sap that exists inside the tree. When the bark is damaged, the sap runs to the cut, fills it up and thickens. It helps to heal the tree and so keep pests at bay. Try touching it … it’s sticky … then sniff your fingers afterwards.’

  ‘It smells gross,’ Mogens said.

  ‘I think it smells nice,’ said Jens.

  ‘You think it smells nice,’ Silas echoed in a kind voice. Then he took out the lump of amber with the ant from his pocket. ‘What you can see on the tree is called resin. And this small piece of amber here is ancient resin from an ancient tree.’

  ‘… in which an ancient ant was caught?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So what about the children?’ asked Jens, who hadn’t forgotten the sentence their father had started at the water’s edge.

  ‘Well, I remembered that the ancient Egyptians – they were people who lived a very long time ago – used resin to embalm their dead.’

  The boys looked at him blankly.

  ‘The Egyptians believed that the soul continued to live in the dead
body, you see, if you treated the body in such a way that it wouldn’t decay. And they tried to do that using resin.’

  ‘Are you telling me it didn’t rot?’ Jens had eagerly followed the decomposition of a dead fox cub on the roadside verge just below the Neck. It had turned very dark and flat over time. And swarmed with flies.

  ‘How could they prevent that?’ Mogens asked. ‘What exactly did they do?’

  ‘This is where it gets a bit technical.’ Silas laughed. ‘But, all right … first they removed internal organs such as the lungs, the liver and the intestines and so on from the body, just like you see me do when I gut an animal.’

  The boys nodded eagerly.

  ‘However, they left the heart in place; the dead person would need it. Then they cleaned the body thoroughly and dried it by putting it in a salt bath. Salt draws out all the moisture, and absolutely no moisture must remain in the body. It’s moisture that causes it to rot. Once the body was dry they coated it in liquid resin and various oils and wrapped it in bandages. Including the face and toes.’ Silas could not help feeling delight at the knowledge he was imparting. They were unlikely to be taught this in school.

  ‘Bandages?’ Jens said, tasting the word.

  ‘Yes, strips of thin fabric … like the ones I tied around your arm when you hurt yourself. They would also paint a portrait of the dead person and place it where the face was hidden by the fabric.’

  ‘But then what did they do with the body afterwards?’ asked Mogens, his brow furrowed. He was trying to understand all the details of the process.

  ‘They would put the body in a kind of coffin, which they left in a dry place so as to preserve it as well as possible. And it worked. Archaeologists have found embalmed bodies several thousand years old.’

  ‘Including children?’

  ‘Yes, I’m pretty sure they have also found embalmed children.’

  Mogens looked at the small amount of resin which the tree in front of them had produced. ‘But how do you get a lot of it?’ he asked, scratching his chin, for want of a beard.