The Prophets of Eternal Fjord

by Aitken, Martin, Leine, Kim

  He crawls over luggage and sacks, barrels, bundles of clothing and coils of rope to stand in the bow and crane his neck, then negotiates further obstacles until at the quarterdeck, where the bustle is less pro ­nounced, and positions himself at the wheelhouse. The ship’s wheel is lashed to a number of wooden dowels. He sees the ropes by turn become tense and then release as the ship strains nervously. Captain Valløe, a clean-shaven, corpulent man in a uniform that defies exact specification, approaches and greets him heartily.

  Magister Falck!

  He nods.

  Has the Magister received his cargo?

  Not as yet. But my chests are being loaded, I see. Is the ship fully manned?

  All bar my first mate. He’s dashing about to have the last of the docu­ments stamped. We shall set sail early this afternoon, I imagine.

  It looks like she is impatient to depart. Morten Falck points at the wheel that strains at its mooring.

  We all are, Mr Falck. The sea calls.

  Hm, he says, and thinks: Such banality! How is the wind?

  The wind is good. The wind is as the wind should be. We’re nearly fully laden and await only the Magister’s companion. He smiles wryly, puts his hand to his hat and straightens it.

  I’m certain she is on her way, he says. Perhaps the captain might send a man up in the mast to see?

  Captain Valløe ignores his request. He stands before him with a silent grin on his face. Then, after a moment: What does the Magister want with a cow in Greenland?

  A milch cow, he corrects him. A Holstein.

  Such a beast will piss and shite, says the captain in his accent, whose hard g’s and d’s and open vowel sounds indicate that he is of German descent. It’ll have to be kept alive and have its muck shovelled. I’m not keen on my ship being turned into a floating cowshed.

  I shall be dealing with these things myself, Morten replies. He needs only sail his ship.

  The captain looks at him along the length of his pipe stem. Do you know about such matters?

  I was brought up in the country. However, I know nothing of maritime travel and will confidently leave that in the hands of my good and capable captain.

  The captain has several objections. He believes that if there were any advantage in shipping farm animals to Greenland, then his hold ought to be filled with them, and yet he has never seen as much as a cat in those climes. And how does he intend to keep it fed?

  Hay and straw, says Morten. We shall bring with us compressed fodder with which to feed the animal.

  A shipload of hay? says the captain. And where might this be kept?

  On deck, he says. Where the cow, too, will have its place.

  It’ll be salty hay it’ll munch, says the captain.

  Morten Falck is fully aware that his plan is not without its weaknesses. Thus, in order to avoid further questions of a practical nature, such as what the cow is to drink, a matter to which he has forgotten to attend, he leaves the captain’s presence and goes to direct the loading of one of his travelling chests. The trunk is too big for his cabin, so, after he has removed some items he needs for his journey, the crew carry it into the hold. He lies down to read and keeps the door open at the foot end of the bunk so that some light may enter.

  A little later he hears cries at the side of the ship. The folk from Amager with his cow. They have brought with them broad leather straps to place under the belly of the animal and appear to be reassuringly used to shifting cattle in such manner. Two boats accompany them, fully laden with bales of hay and straw. Five seaman haul the cow on to the deck, where it lies and tosses its head a moment, though otherwise turns not a hair at its treatment. Morten pays the peasants the skillings owed and leads the cow to its place amidships. A makeshift byre is erected around the animal from the straw bales once they have arrived on board. It looks bizarre and gives rise to jocular comments from the crew, but seems to work well enough. Rope is lashed around the bales to keep the structure from blowing away. He spends a long time tethering and tightening. He keeps the leather straps, which he has purchased, and will use them to steady the beast in heavy sea, as well as to bring it ashore at their desti­nation. He orders the bales of fodder for which there is no room on deck to be carried into the hold, much to the captain’s annoyance. But he is allowed his way. He hopes they will be sufficient to sustain the cow for the duration of the passage. He stays with her, talks with her, feels to see if her muzzle is moist. A healthy creature. He knows how to treat a cow and how to speak to them. He pulls on the hocks, nudges the animal gently, and within a moment it lies down obligingly, its belly swelling over the deck. It munches on some hay and descends into rumination while he stands and watches. All would seem well. A thought has become action. A cow to cross the North Atlantic. He puts his hands to his nose and sniffs. They smell of childhood.

  They kept a small number of cows in the shed at home in Lier. He would go to them early in the morning if he could hear they were unset­tled. He would find the milking girl seated with her brow against the belly of a cow, her pale feet buried in a heap of steaming dung she had shov­elled together in order to keep them warm. Sluggish, binary spurts of milk striking the bottom of the bucket. His elongated shadow on the floor of the shed. The cows turning their heads, the girl turning hers, drowsy with sleep, strands of hair fallen down in front of her eyes.

  Come here.

  He steps closer.

  Open your mouth.

  He does so.

  And then she would twist a teat and send a jet of warm, fatty milk in an upward-reaching arc into the air, and, if he was lucky, it would all be squirted into his mouth. The girl would laugh. Afterwards they drank themselves full of fresh cow’s milk, sharing an udder and sucking until they could suck no more. If his father had found out he would have dealt a caning and the girl would perhaps have been sent away. Later, he real­ized the milk had most likely kept him from the deathbed in the parlour.

  Roselil. He remembers her name all of a sudden. He thought of her as an adult, though she could hardly have been more than a year or two older than him. Dark as a raven and filthy dirty. A tinker, whatever that meant. The family had probably been itinerant pedlars or swindlers, who had left her there for a few years to be fattened up. Certainly, there was something foreign about her. She slept in a corner of the shed and often he crept out and lay down with her. She smelled sweetly of cow dung and buttery excretion, and of the lard she rubbed into her hands to stop the skin from cracking. Her skilled milking hands.

  Then one day she was gone and he remembers how empty the place was then, despite other girls succeeding her, with wispy pigtails and silly faces and utterly vacant eyes. He cannot recall them individually, much less their names.

  So he calls the cow Roselil. This mingling together of cow and human, of the affection he feels for the cow and that which he holds for the recollection of the milking girl, does not bother him. It is a matter of circumstance, the cow a living embodiment of a memory he respects and appreciates. He pats the animal, and when he sniffs his hand it smells of Roselil.

  Shortly after, the first mate gives the order to raise anchor. The sails are hoisted. They unfurl brightly in the sunlight and catch the wind in a series of abrupt flaps. The ship heels slightly, they are on their way up through the sound. A representative of the Trade is to accompany them up the coast of Sjælland. Bottles are opened and a thick stew served in the mess. Later in the afternoon they reach Elsinore, where the representa­tive is helped into a barge, roaring drunk and singing at the top of his voice. The crew stands at the bulwark and bids him farewell, whereupon he is rowed ashore, together with the pilot. The wind has dropped. They cast anchor to the north.

  The days pass. The wind turns to the north-west and dies down again. The crew scrape and tar and carry out repairs to the ship both inside and out. Morten strolls in the town. He views the halls of the castle, eats his meal
s at an inn, walks down to the harbour, where the barge is moored, and is sailed out to the ship again. Life at sea is easy. Perhaps he should have sought a career in the navy? He reads his favourite works, pores over Bayle’s lexicon and spells his way through a couple of articles in the French text, reads an issue of Minerva that bores him, re-reads Voltaire in the German translation, his preferred foreign language, and laughs heartily at the frightful adventures of the foolish Candide. But Rousseau remains his favourite author. Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains! These two main clauses continue to affect him deeply, the recognition of an and rather than a but to join them together. The two statements are in no way opposed. Man is born free. And he is in chains. He shudders with each reading.

  Given his theories on man and nature, Rousseau, he considers, must be at least partly responsible for his present situation, beneath the deck of a small ship, on his way to a living as a missionary among savages. He yearns to meet people in their natural state, free and unspoiled. Perhaps also he yearns to find some natural state within himself.

  One night he is awakened by unfamiliar movements of the ship, the crew bustling about on the deck above. He ascends and watches the lights of the pleasant town of Elsinore grow small in their wake. The captain is on the quarterdeck. The wind is with us! he exclaims and smiles, a corner of his mouth drawn askew by the stem of his pipe.

  Ahead of them first is the Kattegat. The ship’s deck becomes unsteady under Morten Falck’s boots. He attends to the cow. It is lying down, munching. When he approaches, it turns its head and looks at him trust­fully. She is a beautiful heifer with black-and-white markings and great, dark eyes. He smiles at her. The byre is clean but for some wet hay he can remove in the morning. On the foredeck he stands sheltered from the wind by the fore staysail and looks out to sea. Behind them, the past draws back into the darkness along with the last of the lights in Elsinore. Ahead is nothing, only the sounds of the sea and the wind. He feels like he has emerged from a great void and is on his way into one that is even greater.

  He milks the cow each morning, when the sea is usually calm. Roselil seems to be well and gives a good yield of milk. No one, he considers, not even the sceptical captain, will deny that fresh milk is good for a man’s stomach and frame of mind on a long sea journey, when ship’s biscuits mould, meat barrels smell like latrine buckets, and the herring is alive with mites. He charges a sum for the milk he cannot drink himself, five skillings a half pint, and the crew pay willingly. They tease him with good-natured jibes and ask to what use the money might be put when they arrive? To frequent the Comedy House, perhaps? Or to purchase fine clothes? Or perhaps he intends to pay the savages to allow him to turn them towards the Christian faith? But the only thing that worries him is whether there will be sufficient fodder to keep the cow alive.

  Each time he goes inside the byre to Roselil, she stamps her feet on the deck, turns her head and rolls her eyes. Are you glad to see me? he says and gives her a pat. The cow’s devotion opens once again the old wound which he had forgotten, his loss of the dark-skinned tinker girl. He sits down on the stool, rests his brow upon the warm belly, pulls on the teats, two by two, and listens to the soothing squirts of milk, the sound grad­ually altering as the bucket fills. He is quite aware of what this action calls to mind and in part replaces. It is not something of which he is ashamed.

  The crew have seen it, too. They call the cow the pastor’s mistress, though plainly in jest.

  They receive their daily cup of milk. The captain, who shows himself to be a good-humoured and convivial man, states appreciatively that it may be on account of the milk that so little sickness is with them on the voyage and that the crew are so content. As yet, not a single fist-fight has occurred, nor even a heated argument. He will speak to the ship owner on the matter, and perhaps a milch cow will soon be the custom on long sea voyages. But how will the poor creature fare when we reach the cold? he wonders.

  We shall see, says Morten. However, it is my conviction that where people can live, so too can cattle, and where cattle cannot, people would do wise to avoid.

  You may be on to something there, the captain mutters.

  Late in the evening on the third day they pass Skagen on the port side. He stands and looks out towards the beacon of the vippefyr just south of Grenen, Jutland’s northernmost tip. He remains for several hours until it vanishes from sight beyond the stern. Then the final scraps of land retreat into the darkness and they are alone. The wind from the Skagerrak strikes them like a punishing hand. They must beat to windward, causing the vessel to heel considerably. Roselil is unsettled. She tries to crawl up the slope of the deck, tossing her head. More than once she succeeds in bringing herself upright, only to fall back onto her belly again. He is helped by a seaman to secure the leather straps under her abdomen. He tightens them well, and they pat her soothingly and feed her with hay. Their efforts seem to alleviate much of her discomfort, though still she rolls her eyes in fear.

  He, too, feels unwell. He is ravenously hungry, yet nauseous. His stomach swells, though he has eaten hardly a thing. He belches inces­santly, but is unable to release at the other end, which he feels would be of some considerable relief. He sticks his fingers down his throat and spews bile. He drinks a little milk, which comes up again. He is ashamed of his condition, having felt assured that he could never succumb to seasickness. The crew slap him on the back and ask him how he is feeling. Fresh wind and salt on the lips becomes me well, he replies and staggers away.

  I am aware that this will become worse than the present pitching and rolling, Morten says to the captain one day. But how much worse, I wonder?

  My dear Magister, the captain replies with a smile. This is fair weather. Has he never sailed on the open sea?

  I have sailed by the packet boat to Nakskov, he says, and once from Christiania to Copenhagen. I have experienced harsh weather in the bay of Køge Bugt. But I have never felt such unpleasantness as this.

  This is neither Køge Bugt nor the packet boat to Nakskov, Magister. Ships go down each year on this route to Greenland.

  I am informed of the dangers of the voyage. I am not afraid.

  He ought to be. Most certainly. A prayer or two would do no harm.

  Very well, he says. As soon as my constitution has returned, we shall say prayers in the forecastle.

  The opportunity occurs only a couple of days later. He speaks of the Saviour’s forty days in the desert without food or water, a fitting alle­gory, he considers, under the circumstances. The men thank him kindly when he is finished. They joke that the sun of the desert has done them good, and return to their work.

  They are eating medister sausage with cabbage soup when the watch calls through the hatch that they are nearing the Norwegian coast. There is a rush on to the deck. Some dark rocks become visible in the grey and then Morten Falck sees farmhouses, open clearings in forest, clusters of sombre dwellings. He swallows. It looks not at all like his native Lier and yet a sudden surge of homesickness nearly causes him to burst into tears.

  The captain decides that since the storm has blown them so far in to the coast they might as well take the opportunity to forage. They go ashore at a small settlement and spend a few days on land. Morten Falck purchases bales of hay and straw, and throws what is ruined over the side. He has barrels filled with fresh water especially for the cow. The crew are helpful, though he has to promise them free milk in payment. When night comes, he goes into the forest to sleep. One early morning he sits against a tree and seriously contemplates whether to be absent when Der Frühling sets sail again and instead settle once more in the country of his childhood. Such abrupt national sentiment catches him unawares, this pure-seeming fondness for moss-covered rocks, pine forest and dry stone walls, the embroidered garments of the peasants, and their dialect, regardless that it is so far from his own. The sound of cow and sheep bells in the forest. The feeling of pine needles between the fi
ngers, and of sticky resin, its fresh and pungent odour. For a long time, ever since he was quite young, in fact, he has learned to think of himself as a priv­ileged subject of King Christian and has not at any time questioned the matter. But I am not a Dane, he thinks to himself now. The thought of leaving the country again is dreadful, and yet he does. He tries to think of his sudden feelings on land as a fit brought on by seasickness and terror at the thought of being wrecked and drowned.

  He sails out with the ship’s boat and clambers aboard. He attends to Roselil, who munches on fresh grass and seems contented. Then he descends into his cabin and lies down to read. When he arises the next day the land has sunk into the sea. They continue towards north-west. He enquires of the first mate as to their position and route. The man takes him into the captain’s saloon and spreads a chart out on the table. He takes care to explain. His finger draws a diagonal line upwards and to the left.

  We’ll sail here, to the fifty-ninth, he says, then follow the latitude in a westerly direction, cutting between the Orkneys and Shetland, con­tinuing south of the Faroe Isles, if the wind and currents are willing to take us that way, to Staten Huch, here, his finger tapping at a headland, Greenland’s southernmost point, which we’ll sail close to or keep away from, depending on how the ice has pleased itself to lie this year.

  Morten Falck goes down into his cabin and notes it in his diary.

  His thoughts often dwell on the strongman von Eckenberg, although the reason eludes him. Indeed, there is much that catches up with him out here on the sea. He was young when he saw the strongman perform, sensitive and impressionable. Most likely he has forgotten the greater part of what he saw in the royal city at that time, or else he has seen through it as but superficial, vacuous frills. But von Eckenberg remains in his mind. He lies in his bunk in the creaking belly of the ship and thinks of this modest gentleman with his mild countenance and brown, mournful eyes, of how he meticulously waxed his twisted moustache after each turn and stepped to the mirror to neaten himself undemonstratively. Occasionally, a strangely enchanted mood descended on the audience – when he blew on his horn, when the musicians played their minuet, when the stone slab split into two. This, Morten thinks to himself, ought to be the effect of a priest upon his congregation. This is how the savages will receive the Word, if I convey it to them as skilfully as Master Eckenberg performed his tricks for pitiful convicts, seamen and merchants. But am I a Master Eckenberg?