The Last Boat Home

by Dea Brovig

  Else changed out of her Sunday dress when she arrived home and crossed the garden to the milking barn. Once the cow had been fed, she returned to the farmhouse to help prepare dinner. Her mother gutted a coalfish while Else washed the potatoes that she had carried up from the cellar. She scraped her knife under their skins and carved out the bruises before filling a pot and setting it to boil.

  When the carrots had been sliced and the peas shelled, she mounted the stairs to her bedroom and pulled on her bathing suit. Else skipped outside and bolted barefoot to the pier, wincing when she trod on the cherry stones dropped by magpies over the yard. This would be the last swim of the summer, she expected. There would be no more trips in Lars’s boat to the skerry. She let her towel fall onto the rocks that separated the lawn and the pier and, as she stepped over the planks of timber to the water’s edge, thought of the whirling in her stomach during those excursions, when she stood on the islands’ high ridges and the boys shouted for her to jump.

  Else dipped her toes into the fjord and drew them out with a sharp breath. She lingered in a patch of sun, anticipating the sting of the sea and glancing after her father, who was rowing his skiff inland to set crab traps in the shallows. In a single movement, she shut her eyes and pinched her nose and leapt. Her body plunged into cold that sealed around her. Her muscles seized up in the initial shock, until her foot brushed a slime of seaweed and she kicked and broke the surface. Near the Frøya’s anchor line, she paddled the feeling back into her limbs and swallowed air through teeth that chattered. Spreading her arms, she swam away from the splash of the waves against the stilts that lifted the boathouse from the water.

  Across the fjord stood the Reiersen shipyard, its graving dock still empty. Else propelled herself towards it and thought of Lars. She knew it would be foolish to meet him later. Her mother would catch the bus back to town after dinner for the evening’s prayer meeting at the bedehus, but her father would be home, smoking in the dining room as he did every Sunday on his night off. Johann was the last in a long line of shrimpers. He had been sailing the Frøya since the War, when the Gymnasium on Elvebakken was closed and requisitioned by Nazi officers for barracks. By the time the Germans had been driven out, his own father deemed he had learned more at sea than he ever would in a classroom. Day after day, year after year, the weather worked him over on his father’s boat. The sun and the wind and the salt and the cold cracked his skin like a battered fender.

  On most evenings after supper, Johann would put on his layers of wool and rubber and head outside to the trawler moored in front of the boathouse. Else would listen from the kitchen or dining room to the faint, thudding chop of its motor rupturing the silence. Its drum bounced off the mountains that climbed out of the fjord, echoing its farewell even after it had gone. She pictured her father rolling his first cigarette while he sailed under the eye of the lighthouse that signalled to the sea and, as the Frøya’s wheelhouse filled with smoke, unscrewing the lid of his thermos and treating his coffee to a squirt of homebrew. He would turn the radio off once he had heard the weather forecast and his boat would crash into the darkness ahead until, to the aft, beyond the trawl doors suspended like ears on either side of the net, there was nothing. No trace of land. No sign of home.

  Through the night, the waves would pound the cabin walls to wisps and the prow would plummet and pitch. All the while her father would consult his charts, studying the markings that had been her grandfather’s life’s work. The lamp would swing a thin light over the deck as his net dropped into the deep and, when the time came to drag it up, he would spill his catch into the receptacle on board and sieve off the shrimp at the bottom of the container. He would set them aside to be stewed in a vat of seawater before slitting the throats of the cod, ling and coalfish and wringing the intestines of each flounder through an incision below the eyes. One by one, he would toss the fish into piles that leaked blood over his boots. At the end of the night, after five or six drops, he would deliver his haul to the Fish Repository in town.

  Else had swum a hundred metres or more before she rested her legs and searched again for her father’s skiff. She spotted him in the distance, saw the orange of his oilskins against the water. As she began to circle back to the pier, she thought of his fingers crushing her thigh at church that morning and resolved not to meet Lars. She changed her mind as soon as she had decided. She would have to go to him. He would be expecting her.

  Else heaved herself out of the fjord, grazing her shins on the knots of mussels that were gummed to the bottom of the pier. She wrapped the towel around her shoulders and scrambled to the farmhouse. When she appeared in the dining room dried and dressed, the tangles combed from her hair, the food was already on the table. She took her seat next to her father, who had docked the skiff minutes before. Side by side, they bowed their heads and folded their hands.

  After the prayer, her mother served the boiled fish. Else stripped it of skin and cleaned it for bones. As she chewed, she contemplated the blade of sun that fell from the window, cleaving the room in two, downgrading each portion to cramped inadequacy.

  ‘I thought,’ she said.

  ‘It’ll rain tomorrow,’ said her father.

  ‘Do you think so?’ asked her mother. ‘There isn’t a cloud in the sky.’

  ‘The forecast said rain.’

  ‘I thought,’ Else said, ‘I’d go and pick blueberries after dinner.’

  ‘This evening?’ asked her mother. ‘But haven’t you homework to do?’

  ‘I’ve finished it.’

  ‘There aren’t any blueberries left now,’ her father said.

  ‘Ole Haugeli picked half a litre yesterday,’ said Else. ‘Solveig said so after church.’

  ‘Wouldn’t anyone like some more fish?’ her mother asked.

  ‘You won’t find any blueberries now,’ said her father.

  ‘I won’t see it go to waste. Else, pass me your plate.’

  Else did as she was told. She tried to eat the fresh helping of coalfish, though her nerves trampled her appetite. Each mouthful tasted of dishwater and she sipped from her glass to wash the flavour away. Her father reached across her for the bowl of potatoes and a whiff of underarms lifted off his jumper. Else put down her fork and jiggled her knee under the table until the end of the meal.

  When her parents had eaten the last of the fish, she scrubbed the cutlery and crockery in the kitchen and scoured the starch that had set in a film on the base and sides of her mother’s pots. Then she stooped to the cupboard by the refrigerator and found a short stack of pails. Her mother stood at the counter spooning the leftover vegetables into a smaller bowl.

  ‘Will you be going to the Aaby farm, then?’ she asked.

  Else nodded.

  ‘Don’t be late. You’ve school tomorrow.’

  ‘I won’t be late,’ she said.

  She eased a pail from the pile and, with her fist closed over its handle, retreated to the dining room, where her father had stationed his chair by the unlit oven. He glanced up from his rolling paper before she slipped into the hallway and through the back door. Else walked over the yard to the vegetable plot, past the lid of the old well and to the milking barn. She felt his stare like a fingertip poking her shoulder, commanding her to turn around. She almost did, but instead carried on to the hill at the end of the property. Under cover of the birch trees that bordered the path, she started to run.

  Lars was waiting in a bend in the road. He kicked the pebbles in the dirt by his moped, whose yellow paint was bright beside the grey crags of the mountain. He beamed when he saw her jogging towards him.

  ‘You’re late!’ he called.

  ‘Come on,’ said Else, ‘let’s go.’

  ‘I’m glad you came.’ He fumbled for her hand and knocked the pail with his knuckles. ‘Why have you brought that?’

  ‘I told my parents I was picking blueberries.’

  ‘If you say so,’ he said.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  �
��It’s a surprise.’

  Else climbed onto the moped behind Lars. With one arm looped around his waist, the other hand still clutching the pail, she buried her nose in the crook of his neck, breathing him in as the motor snarled awake. The wind whisked the smell of soap from his collar when he rolled the handle grips and the bike shot off down the track. Across the fjord, his father’s shipyard dipped in and out of view.

  The moped sped by the Aaby farm before it passed the public dock, where Else hid her face, though the last ferry had gone and the pier was empty. From there, the road pulled back from the coast. The fjord fell away as the bike veered inland. Else shut her eyes to the rushing countryside and leaned into the warmth that she felt through Lars’s jacket. When she next looked, the rock at the roadside had given way to forest. A gap opened in the trees ahead. Lars slowed down as they approached.

  ‘Hold on,’ he said and tilted his weight. The moped glided onto a path. Tree roots split the earth, coiling under their wheels like fossilised snakes. Above them, branches sewed up the sky.

  ‘We’re going into the woods?’ Else asked.

  ‘For now,’ said Lars. ‘You’ll see.’

  He planted his feet on the ground and cut the engine. He dismounted from the moped after Else and set the kickstand with his shoe.

  ‘This way,’ he said.

  Lars took her hand and led her into the forest, where the air seemed to clot around them. Chinks of sun filtered through the leaves to dapple the ground at their feet. With her free hand Else brandished her pail, swatting awkwardly at the insects that buzzed in her ears. She struggled to get her bearings among the firs that towered skywards, accepting at last that she had no idea where she was.

  Somewhere nearby, a brook murmured. A thorny pelt of pine needles covered the mud, where mushroom caps peeped out from under fern fronds. Else noticed blueberry bushes in the scrub but, instead of stopping, tagged along after Lars into a strip of tall weeds. Moss sucked at her heels, slowing her progress as the shadows between the trees brightened to blue.

  At the forest’s rim, they stepped into a meadow. There were no fences that Else could see. Wild grasses and dandelion stalks grew waist-high in the paddock, whose limits appeared to be set by the contours of the land. Behind a hill at the far end of the field, she could make out the peak of a black-tiled roof.

  ‘Who does it belong to?’ she asked.

  ‘Tenvik,’ said Lars. ‘He never comes here, though. Just look at it. It can’t have been grazed all summer.’

  He spread his arms at his sides and waded into the paddock, letting his flattened palms skate over the heads of the weeds. In spite of his assurances, Else met each rustle of grass in the wind with a nervous look. Knut Tenvik was her family’s neighbour. She had cycled to his farm many times over the years to collect the jars of honey that, early in autumn, his wife sometimes promised her mother after church. Else knew the Tenvik property was vast, though she had never guessed it stretched this far. They must have come full circle. She realised with a twinge how close they were to home.

  ‘Tenvik has more land than he knows what to do with,’ said Lars. ‘Pappa said he wants to rent some of it out. Did you know he went to Kristiansand some weeks ago?’

  To their left, a path broke off from the field’s perimeter and disappeared behind a copse. Else steered Lars away from it, pulling him deeper into the meadow.

  ‘He went to a circus when he was there. He met the owner afterwards and offered him a deal.’

  ‘A circus?’ Else said.

  ‘That’s what he told my father.’

  Lars’s eyes glittered like snowflakes in the sun. He wound an arm around Else’s waist and thoughts of home melted away.

  ‘Can you imagine it?’ he said. ‘A circus. Right here. Elephants. Lions, even.’

  At the heart of the field, the grass had sprouted so high that the tips of its stems drooped towards earth as if straining to return to the comfort of the soil. Else remembered the photos Lars had showed her as a child in the copies of National Geographic, whose yellow spines lined the bookshelves of Karin Reiersen’s library. Elephants. Lions. She almost laughed at the idea.

  ‘When are they coming?’

  Lars shrugged. ‘We’ll have to see it together, you know.’

  He tasted of oranges when he kissed her.

  ‘I can’t be late,’ Else said.

  He kissed her again. A wasp zipped by her elbow as she sank with him to the ground. Before long, her shirt was damp with dew and her head filled with the smell of the warm soil. Weeds swished around them like seagrass in a current. She vaguely wondered what had become of her pail.

  When Lars dropped her off on the road by the farmhouse, Else stayed where she was in front of the mountain, unwilling to give up the easy feeling he brought, though it was already slipping away. She watched his moped speed off down the road before she trudged to the bottom of the hill, still straining to separate the whine of his engine from the soft stir of the land. Across the fjord, the sun had dipped behind the chimney stacks of the shipyard. Else rubbed the cold from her arms and hurried over the garden.

  No lights were on in the farmhouse. She stepped inside and flipped a switch in the hallway. She pulled off her shoes and tiptoed to the dining room, where the fire in the oven was burning low. Else stopped beside it and held her palms to its embers, listening for her father through the floorboards above. The stillness weighed on the house. It smothered the relief she felt at finding no one home.

  She did not need to look to guess where her father was, but still crept to the window for a view of the boathouse. Its walls were ragged against the dusking sky. At the top of its stairs, the door was ajar. Else moved away from the glass. She stood in the centre of the floor, unsure of what to do, before she turned the radio on.

  The whispers started some weeks later, a shared breath of disbelief at what Tenvik had done that passed from person to person like an infection. Rumours of a travelling show that had stopped along the coast at towns no bigger than their own were exchanged at the butcher’s and bakery and carried home with cuts of pork and raisin buns. The mood in the Gymnasium shifted to one of celebration. Else stepped into the schoolyard on a Monday morning to find clowns’ noses strung to the branches of its trees. The corridors and classrooms buzzed with invention as students described what they hoped to see, whipping up a giddy sense of camaraderie that felt precious and fleeting.

  Else was standing between Lars and Rune by the caretaker’s shed when Petter came charging through the school gate. By then, the weather had turned; the sun had gone into hibernation and, in its absence, a damp wind hacked down from the north. As he rushed towards them, she freed her hand from Lars’s grip. She yanked up the zipper of her jacket and buried her chin behind her collar.

  ‘Hey,’ Petter said.

  ‘Why the hurry?’ said Lars. ‘Spit it out.’

  ‘You know how everyone’s been talking about the circus?’

  Petter placed his satchel on the ground and, after tossing back its flap, pulled a crumpled piece of paper from inside. His fingers trembled as he flattened it out. He presented it to Else, whose eyes grew wide when she realised what it was.

  ‘It was pasted up outside of Arnholm’s kiosk,’ he said. ‘I just tore it off.’

  In the middle of the poster, a cartoon clown bared his teeth in an open-mouthed grin. His gloved hands pointed to a title in the top left corner: ‘Circus Leona Is Coming!’ A camel’s neck popped up between splashes of purple and red. Four poodles stood on their hind legs in a row at the bottom of the sheet. To the right of the clown, there was a drawing of a man in a loincloth lifting a horse above his head. His arms bulged as round as the letters that proclaimed ‘Circus Leona Is Coming!’

  Lars let out a low whistle. He grabbed the poster from Else. ‘What did I tell you?’ he said. ‘The fucking circus is coming.’

  Three dates had been scrawled in black ink under the dogs’ paws: 3rd October, 4th October, 5th October.

/>   ‘Next Thursday,’ said Lars. ‘We’ll sneak in next Thursday after school. It’ll be busy on the first night, so it’ll be easier to hide.’

  ‘Won’t you be going with your family?’ asked Petter.

  ‘So what?’ said Lars. ‘I can go twice.’

  Else could not take her eyes from the poster that Lars had spread over his lap. The clown beamed at her beside the strong man’s swollen torso.

  ‘I’ll come,’ she said.

  ‘Of course you’re coming,’ said Lars. ‘None of us are missing this.’

  During the next week Else’s thoughts returned often to the poster, lifting off from familiar tasks and settling on a scene of poodles prancing on two legs. She would be doing her homework in the dining room and discover that minutes had been lost staring at the pages of a textbook, reading and rereading a single line but seeing clowns bouncing on the humps of trotting camels. Her excitement mounted with each day that brought the circus closer to town, quickening like a pulse under her skin whenever she overheard her mother muttering, ‘Knut Tenvik must be out of his mind.’

  The afternoon before the first performance, Else climbed Torggata on her way to the bakery. Petter tagged along, having just remembered that he, too, had promised his mother he would buy a loaf after school. He walked with his eyes on the pavement, skirting the puddles that had collected during the morning’s rain. His silence made Else awkward. She wished he had not come or, better yet, that Lars had come in his place.

  The bakery smelled of cinnamon when she opened the door. Inside, Ingrid Berge handed a paper bag to a customer.

  ‘Who’s next?’ she asked.

  ‘One loaf,’ said Else.

  ‘Kneip?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Petter ordered the same, as well as two raisin buns. He gave one to Else, who bit into its crust while Ingrid wrapped Petter’s loaf. A shout from Torggata made her turn to the window, but all she could see was a slice of the empty street.

  ‘In all my days,’ said Ingrid. ‘Someone is making a racket.’

  The second holler was nearer than the last. Petter pocketed his change and dashed outside after Else, who collided with a boy racing up the hill.