by Ane Riel
‘You can drain it from the trees in such a way that you get quite a lot. I might show you one day. Time to go home. Your mother will be waiting with dinner.’
‘He told you what?’
Jens had rarely seen his mother’s eyes so big and wide as when he told her about that day’s adventures. His father and Mogens were seeing to the animals, and he was helping set the table. She didn’t seem entirely happy to hear about the ancient children and the resin.
From that meal on Jens took great care to make sure that what was said in the forest stayed in the forest.
Stricken
Things went well until they didn’t. Silas Horder was found by his younger son, who dragged his dead father across the heather, through the forest and into the farmyard, where he laid him on the gravel under a blindingly bright noon sun.
Whereupon Jens himself collapsed from exhaustion next to his father.
No one could fathom how the boy had managed to drag his father that far. All right, so Jens had turned thirteen, but he was of slender build and not nearly as big and strong as his brother, who was four years older.
Despite his exhaustion, Jens refused to leave the body. He would grip his father’s shirt and scream whenever anyone came near. It was hours before his big brother could lift him up and carry him inside. At that point Jens was sleeping like a log.
It was thought that Silas had been struck by lightning while out on the common, because he had burns to his leg and back, beautiful, intricate branching that looked like the work of an artist. There had indeed been a short bout of thunder that same morning, but it had passed before anyone had really noticed.
A few days later Silas was buried at Korsted cemetery in a mass-produced coffin, witnessed by a handful of silent islanders, a deeply distraught widow and her older son.
Her younger son refused to attend.
After his father’s death Jens grew very quiet. When he skived off school, something he soon did on a regular basis, he would roam around the main island and secretly explore people’s outhouses and barns. He preferred to be alone in the workshop or in the forest before daybreak. Eventually he stopped showing up for school at all, and Else Horder didn’t mind. He worked hard in the workshop, took good care of the animals and looked after the trees with a sense of great responsibility; deep down, that was what really mattered.
On the death of his father, Mogens assumed the main responsibility for the carpentry business. The orders kept coming in. It was well known that the sons had not only inherited their father’s business but also his talent.
Not that many people were in need of a carpenter these days, though. Buying new things had become so easy, but the islanders tried to help. For that reason they were prepared to overlook the fact that Mogens had started to drive the pickup truck without it being one hundred per cent legal for him to do so. After all, he was a perfectly competent driver. And when one day it was Jens driving the pickup truck down Korsted high street, with a couple of newly fixed windows, it was simply regarded as a natural progression.
The years flowed into one another.
Else had always been able to see her husband in her younger son, but as Jens grew older the similarities became more obvious. His mouth took on the exact same shape as his father’s: a wistful line, rising to a hint of a smile at the corners, like the expression on a much-loved teddy bear that was delighted with all the hugs it gets but miserable that it can’t give any back. Jens had also inherited his father’s gaze. His warm, almost pitch-black eyes had the same dreamy light.
Jens, however, had grown more introverted than Silas had ever been. His remoteness and chronic silence bordered on avoidance of human contact, and this worried Else. She desperately wanted him to let her into his world, make her his confidante, as his father had once been. To show her the same trust. And at the same time she was oddly frightened of what she might find in there. In the darkness. It was as if something had broken inside him, and she wasn’t sure that it could be fixed.
Mogens didn’t appear to have been affected by the death of his father in the same way. He seemed to put grief and the loss behind him relatively quickly and move on. He was different to Jens; that much was already clear. His approach was more rational. He had dreams, of course. But he would see those dreams through. And he possessed a sense of order, which Jens lacked. Mogens’s corner of the workshop was as neat and tidy as his younger brother’s was messy and disordered.
Else Horder never stopped wondering how two brothers could turn out so differently. Ever since Mogens had been a little boy, she had sensed in him an urge to achieve, grow, expand and break the mould in everything he did. He ran and jumped, preferably in the light; he was in constant motion towards new adventures.
Jens didn’t jump. Nor did he break any moulds. He preferred to just be where he was, and preferably on his own. When he worked he became one with the thing he was working on; he could become so absorbed by it that he would carry on working even though it had long since grown so dark you’d have thought it would be practically impossible to do so.
Late one night Else found him sleeping soundly under the lathe on a bed of wood shavings. There was a profound innocence about Jens as he lay there in the darkness, breathing quietly. At that moment she thought that her younger son must be the gentlest person in the world.
In the time that followed Silas’s death, the knowledge of Mogens’s skill and sense of duty had allowed Else to hope that, together, the three of them would be able to navigate the future. However, she began to worry when, after a few years, Mogens started leaving the Head more and more often. In the end he was going off to the main island every day under some pretext or other; she could never quite fathom why. The pickup truck would usually be empty, whether he was coming or going. She began chiding him, but that only made him defiant and resulted in him staying away even more.
One day she called out to him as he was walking towards the pickup truck, before he had time to drive off. Jens heard them from the workshop, where he was hunched over a chest of drawers that needed new feet.
There was a bang as his mother slammed open the kitchen window.
‘Mogens, are you off again? Without any deliveries? Why don’t you lend your brother a hand in the workshop? Where are you off to this time? Is this about a girl? Why don’t you stay here and make yourself useful? Jens tells me you have spruces to fell today. You’re not going to let him do it all on his own? Again?’
Jens had heard it all before, more times than he could count, but today the sounds were different. Mogens’s footsteps in the gravel stopped before they reached the pickup truck. Then it seemed like he had turned around.
Jens raised his head and listened out.
‘Mogens?’ Else called out. ‘Stay right there. Who do you think you are? What do you think you’re doing? What are you doing with that bicycle …?’
‘I’m suffocating here.’
Jens heard a few small hops and then the sound of a bicycle being pedalled through the gravel. The crunching turned into a distant rattling and was soon eclipsed by the singing of a lark. When Jens looked out of the window, he could see nothing but the empty pickup truck parked in the blindingly bright noon sun.
Some months later they received a letter containing some money. There was an ‘M’ on the back of the envelope. The next month another letter arrived, and this continued month after month. Else Horder paid her bills on time; Jens didn’t say anything. Nobody asked any questions. Including the postman, who wondered privately about the widow and the younger son and the letters from ‘M’.
★
Else Horder’s health began to suffer. She suffered pain. In her ‘rectum’, as the doctor put it. At times she would bleed and she had to wear a device under her clothing, which embarrassed her. She struggled to manage the housework, something she had otherwise enjoyed and had made a point of doing diligently all her life. It upset her, and the bitterness, in turn, caused her even more pain.
There were days when sh
e couldn’t even get out of bed.
It became clear that they could no longer manage on their own, so Else decided to bring in hired help. As long as Jens continued making some money from repairs, they could afford it. The girl could live in the room that Mogens had furnished for himself in the workshop building; it even had its own entrance from the yard. It was known as ‘the white room’ because Mogens had insisted that it should be light.
Else never once doubted that the monthly brown envelopes from M would continue, and they did indeed arrive with a regularity which she appreciated. However, she didn’t have the energy to consider whether she should feel grateful to her older son.
A pretty young woman from the mainland applied for the position. She was the only applicant, incidentally, because the local young women preferred to travel to the mainland to look for work. Many of them had also started dressing in a way that made Else uncomfortable. She especially disapproved of the many of them who chose not to wear a bra under their blouse. Else didn’t regard herself as old-fashioned, and a pair of wide bell bottoms on the Head wouldn’t upset her, but she drew the line at the lack of a bra. There had to be limits to frivolity.
Maria Svendsen was a gift from heaven: she wore a modest bra and sensible trousers.
★
Maria normally wore her hair up so it wouldn’t get in the way, but when she didn’t her long blonde hair settled in small, soft waves around her face and neck. Jens happened to see it one day when he glanced through the window of the white room. He quickly looked away but was unable to forget the image of Maria with her hair down, smiling at him through the window.
Every now and then she would visit him in the workshop and they would chat about the weather and the furniture. She skilfully avoided speaking out of turn about his mother, but even so Jens soon surmised that Else was hard to please.
To begin with, however, they hardly spoke because Maria was by nature almost as monosyllabic as Jens had become over time. But in their mutual taciturnity Maria gradually found the courage and confidence to speak up. She started talking about her household chores and the tasks she had yet to do that day, and Jens listened to every single little detail with interest and gratitude.
Soon her stories extended beyond the Head, even beyond the island. She talked about her childhood on the mainland, about her hard-working parents. About school, which she hadn’t liked because everyone was so horrible – and yet she loved reading and writing more than anything on earth.
Then she talked about the books she had read, and the books she wanted to read. And she told him how she would copy pages purely for the pleasure of writing, and sometimes extend the passages she had copied just to write creatively. And how she would write down her thoughts, simply to get them out of her head. And how she would press her nose against the paper in order to smell it.
And when she had her nose pressed against the paper, Jens found something to contribute. ‘Did you know that paper is made from wood?’ he asked.
Jens’s fascination with Maria grew with every day. There was a lightness about her that he had never experienced with any other human being. Possibly because he hadn’t met many people from the mainland. Perhaps they were all lighter over there.
He listened to her bright voice, which said so little and yet so much. When she finally did start to speak, it was completely effortless. And when she breathed, she did it so calmly and so deeply you’d think she was conscious of it each time.
She wasn’t, but Jens was pretty much aware of every single breath Maria inhaled through her small nostrils and deep into her soft body. And although he didn’t dare look at her directly, he would still see her chest heave under her blouse, and hear the sound that accompanied it, and he was reminded of the waves rolling calmly on to the northern shore when you went there late in the afternoon with your father and your big brother. The quiet whoosh, the quiet swell and then the quiet whoosh again. A reassuring continuity.
Yes, that was exactly how it sounded when Maria breathed. At times it would make Jens forget to breathe.
And her mouth was wondrous.
It was as if a smile that could never be driven out by melancholy lived in the soft corners of her mouth. He was convinced that, even when Maria cried, she would still smile a little, in the same way that a horse always hides an inscrutable smile in its dark muzzle.
Jens sensed strength in her softness, a foundation of serenity behind her caution, but also gentleness in her inexplicable strength, which she demonstrated when she went about her chores. He saw her lug around basins and laundry and bedlinen and firewood and pots and sacks without ever stopping to wipe the sweat from her brow. And he saw her tend to the animals as if she had never done anything else. Without fear and without hesitation, with soft, strong hands and a voice they understood. The animals loved her.
Jens was with them in that.
He showed her the forest in September, and she laughed when he got resin in his hair. He showed her the sea in March, and she laughed when his socks got wet. He showed her the common in June, and she kissed him on the Virgin Mary’s bed straw.
Dear Liv
There are choices I should not have made. Perhaps I should never have met your father. Perhaps things would have been much simpler if I had stayed on the mainland and married my politician cousin, as my father begged me to. It would have ensured that the business would continue, he said. And I did love my father’s bookshop.
But I was young, far too young. And my cousin had the most revolting, intrusive eyes, and hands that were big and coarse, although all they ever did was write speeches or issue invoices. I was scared of him and his big hands, despite my father’s assurance that he was a good match – and that his party was a good party, which would look after small-business owners. Especially if you were related to him.
Yes, my cousin was a good match, and he was very keen on the bookseller’s shy daughter. He was a lovesick and enterprising man who stood to inherit an egg-box factory from his invalid father. I think his hands would have crushed any eggs they had gripped. And I felt just as fragile as a newly laid egg then. In those days I was just as slim as you are now, believe it or not.
I obviously shouldn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to do, my father said. But I could tell from his eyes that he couldn’t accept a no, and I could tell from my mother’s eyes that she couldn’t bear to see me in the hands of the egg-box manufacturer.
No matter how I chose, one of them would be broken.
I chose to spare my mother. And myself. Or I tried to. The year after I left, I heard that she had died from pneumonia. But at least I didn’t break her heart.
I have since read that the egg-box manufacturer went bankrupt but that the bookshop is still there. Long ago, when I had the chance to make a telephone call, I rang the mainland to find out. I didn’t say anything when my father picked up. He sounded old, but he did say, ‘Svendsen’s Bookshop.’
I like the thought that the books beat the egg boxes in the end.
So anyway, I travelled for a while, working as a shop assistant here and there, but I didn’t really enjoy it. One day someone suggested that I look for work on the island. Down by the ferry I learned that Else Horder and her son Jens were looking for help on the Head.
And that’s how I ended up here. With your father and your granny.
I’m happy to tell you, Liv, that your father was the most handsome young man I’d ever seen. And he was so gentle – with soft, tender hands and warm, dark eyes. There was nothing of my cousin about him. I felt so safe with him, and I didn’t doubt for a second that this was where I wanted to be.
Oh, I don’t know if I should tell you this – you’re just a child. But I so want to tell someone. I so want to tell you.
The first time your father and I made love was out on the common on a sea of yellow flowers. We were both terrified of vipers, and yet we lay down there. Can you imagine? He told me about the butterflies, I remember. And the lark. And the bees. And th
e birds … it was very important that we lay among the yellow flowers; it was nature’s bed for me, he said. It’s the only time I’ve ever heard him stammer, and the only time I’ve seen his hand shake. And it wasn’t because of the vipers. It was because of what we were about to do.
I can still remember how tenderly his lips met mine. He was quivering like a butterfly, and I felt like a fine and delicate flower gently unfurling. At times I still feel like that inside, fine and delicate.
No, I don’t regret meeting your father. I fell deeply in love with him, and I still am in love with him. Somehow that makes it all worthwhile. Even as I lie here today, big and heavy. Even the business with your granny. And Carl. And all the mess. The dirt that I pretend I can’t see. Everything.
It’s all too much to take, but this is the only place I want to be. Here, with you and your father. He’s a good man, Liv. I know you know that. But I want to make sure you remember it.
I don’t know how it’s going to end. After all, I only know what you tell me, and I have a feeling that you don’t tell me everything. That things are going wrong. I have a hunch that things happen outside this bedroom which I mustn’t be told about. Things should never have been allowed to get to this point. And yet I can’t regret my love for him.
Perhaps he’s not sick at all. Perhaps it’s me. Perhaps I’m sick, because I don’t regret anything.
Sometimes I think of your father as a butterfly trying to fly in the face of time and so he’s now pupating. But perhaps so am I.
All my love,
Mum
Happiness
To begin with, Else Horder and the young woman felt a lot of sympathy for one another. Maria was welcomed warmly with tea and home-baked cakes, and Mrs Horder gave the impression that the two of them would get along just fine. Maria had no doubt that the widow was an honest woman, and she had never felt luckier than when she moved into the white room with the family on the Head.
