The Prophets of Eternal Fjord

by Aitken, Martin, Leine, Kim

  Now perhaps we can find peace to sail the ship, says the first mate, and spits into the sea. A dirty strumpet like that has no place on a vessel.

  In the afternoon the captain asks him to manage the funeral. He has been sitting in his cubbyhole, trying to read. Now he ascends to the deck. The weather has turned and is clear and still. The ship’s carpenter is at work knocking together a coffin, instead of the burial shroud more normally appointed to shipboard deaths. The young boy will be sent off well and good, he says, so they can be sure he does not remain on board. He drills a number of holes in the lid so that the coffin cannot stay afloat. He smiles at Morten Falck. He sticks a finger in one of the holes and winks at him with a grin on his face.

  Presently, some of the men carry the boy out, clad in the same clothes in which he drowned, and place the body in the narrow casket with sacks filled with lead weights. The coffin is lowered into the rowing boat that lies chopping at the ship’s side. Morten Falck climbs down after it with his Bible in his hand and remains standing erect as the seamen row away. Some hundred ells from the ship they pull in their oars and raise them aloft. They fix their eyes expectantly on Morten Falck. The waves glug beneath the keel. The coffin rocks with the movement of the boat. The wind rushes between the blades of the oars.

  Morten Falck clears his throat. Almighty God, he pronounces with vigour, but finds that the open space and exposure to the elements in the little boat causes his words to swirl away and become almost inaudible. He raises his voice. Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we hereby commend unto Thee Carl Asger Jørgensen as we commit his body to the deep. The Lord bless him and keep him. May his demise serve to remind us all, we who remain in sin, to reflect upon our own death and to prepare our house. For the sea shall give up her dead and they shall be delivered unto their judgement, as they themselves shall be permitted, each and every one, to make their grievance. Amen. He reaches into his pocket and retrieves the handful of soil the captain has given him for the purpose, and casts it on to the coffin. From dust thou hast come.

  But when he has rattled off his words, they continue to look encour­agingly upon him.

  What now?

  Usually we sing when one of us is committed to the waves, says one of the men. Perhaps the Magister would sing one of Kingo’s lovely hymns?

  He chooses ‘Vain World, Fare Thee Well’. His voice is strong, but he is no practised singer. The seamen join in, their crisp voices drifting out across the sea. Lord Jesus shall shine as my sun every day, in heaven for aye.

  The coffin is manoeuvred carefully over the side. They shove it away with their oars, remain seated and watch. Morten Falck stands upright. The coffin heels slightly. But it does not sink. One of the men curses.

  That bugger, the carpenter. I’ll drill holes in him when we get back on board.

  There’s not enough lead in it, says another. We should have given the lad a cannonball between his legs. It would have been fitting.

  The coffin drifts to sea, away from the boat. They pursue it, prod­ding with their oars, trying to force it to sink, only to see it bob up again and continue valiantly on its way.

  Let Jørgensen sail his own boat, says the man from before. He’s welcome, the poor lad.

  Back on the ship, the men and the carpenter squabble. Their bicker- ing swells this way and that and they come perilously close to blows. Eventually the captain intervenes and calm is restored.

  Morten Falck spends some quiet days sitting with Roselil. He leans his forehead against the warmth of the cow’s belly, which bubbles and seethes disturbingly from eating fermented hay. The dwindling stocks of fodder and water concern him, too. He drinks some milk, but finds it tastes of salt. It is not a good sign. He enquires of the captain as to the possibility of having her brought beneath deck, but Valløe refuses.

  We’ve had muck enough down below.

  The still weather continues. It gets on the seamen’s nerves and makes the captain irritable. The cook has retired to his bunk with a bad stomach and the carpenter has descended into the hold, where he entrenches himself and refuses to come out until the ship reaches land. The rigging is filled to the last jib and yet the vessel rocks gently on the sea with no forward movement.

  On the third day of the same weather someone shouts from the mast. He has seen something on the port side. The first mate studies the object in his telescope.

  It’s Jørgensen, he says. The lad won’t let us get away.

  The carpenter is plainly drinking himself into the grave down in the hold. He bellows out hymns, hurls bottles that shatter against the wall, and emits long and lamenting howls. Morten Falck descends and speaks to the man through the barricaded hatch of the hold. For his effort he receives invective, yelled in a voice demonically inebriated. Morten Falck refers the content of this exchange to the captain, who curses and orders the crew to break down the hatch and bring the bloody coffin-maker out so that they might deliver to him the thrashing he ought to have received from his mother. Four men go down and return shortly after with the man in their charge. They douse him with buckets of seawater, where-after he is lashed to the mast.

  First problem solved, the captain mutters, and lights his pipe. Now for the next.

  He fetches his flintlock and loads it, then wants to know if the unfor­tunate ship’s boy is still in sight. The first mate points to the port side, where the coffin is seen bobbing on the water. The captain nestles the firearm in the hollow of his shoulder, aims and delivers a round. He hands the weapon to the boatswain, who reloads and hands it back. The captain repeats the procedure a number of times. Eventually he takes the telescope from the first mate and looks through it for perhaps a minute.

  That’s the second, he mutters, and returns to his cabin.

  In the evening a pale and composed carpenter eats with the rest of the crew. No mention is made of the deceased. The captain announces that in spite of several days in the doldrums the vessel has reached the thirty-fifth longitude and that an area of low pressure is on its way from the south-west. If not, he will eat his hat. They may expect to round the cape of Staten Huch within a couple of days. He places the aquavit on the table and tells them that if they wish to drink to do it now, though the carpenter can keep his hands to himself.

  They drink. And Morten drinks with them.

  In the night he senses life in the ship. He sits up, careful not to strike his head against the ceiling. But there is no ceiling. His hands fumble and find straw. He opens his eyes and sees the cow next to him. He must have lain down here in a state of drunkenness. He totters, stiff-legged, from the byre and notes that the sails are taut and filled by south-westerly wind. Der Frühling heels and makes good headway. Roselil wakes and lows. He crawls back into the byre and speaks comfortingly to her. The captain puts his head in and says that now they had better make sure to hoist the beast below before she is washed from the deck.

  Two days later, in the afternoon, he hears cries and hastens to the deck. The boatswain stands pointing into the fog. A dark and looming density has emerged. The sea sounds different. Breakers at the shore, says the boatswain. Morten Falck stands for a long time, staring into the haze. He smells seaweed. A cloud of gulls swirls around the masts. He sees eider-fowl in plough formation appear and vanish among tall and foaming waves. But there is hardly a wind. Nevertheless, they sail at speed. Several knots, says the boatswain, and conditions are with them. The current is northerly and strong. A cliff comes into sight and retreats again. Some snow. Tufts of grass. It makes him strangely wistful.

  Greenland!

  At the cape the wind becomes a hurricane and all hatches are battened down. He is compelled to remain in his bunk, since no one is allowed on deck without express permission. He is buffeted back and forth between the bulkhead and the planks of his bed. When he wishes to sleep he must call on a crew member to lash him down with a rope of hemp, and he is exhausted enough to close his eyes
now and then for an hour.

  Time unfolds like a serpent, flicks its tail and curls up like a cat, distance is abolished, space consumes itself only to emerge again, over and over, dreams repeating in endless loops, fast-slow-fast, then are absorbed into crystal-clear moments of awakening, a soup of conscious­ness sloshing back and forth inside the cabin. One of the crew looks in on him, shakes his head and laughs, hands him a bowl of porridge with sugar and butter and forces him to eat. His inner fluids find a level. He hauls himself along the corridor, where salt water rains in from the hatches and the floor is awash with the slippery sea, to the bucket on which he crouches to empty his bowels, then hauls himself back to his bunk. He stares drowsily at the lamp that swings from its hook in the ceiling, squeaking out its sharp, thin discord. It is the Devil himself, scratching on a pane with long, yellowed nails. He sees his mischievous, malicious eye cast a sideways glance at him. He leaps from his bed, tries to walk, but strikes his head against a beam, his knee against an edge, and returns to his bunk. His legs feel as if they are melting away like hot tallow. He collects himself, forces himself to be sick and watches his vomit drift like thick plasma across the floor. He feels slightly better. He sits up. He stands. He lies down. He goes to attend to Roselil.

  She is tethered in the hold and lies trembling with cold and seasick­ness, coated in excrement. She turns a weary, sallow eye towards him as he approaches. She no longer has the strength to low. Long, viscous drools hang from her muzzle. He is overwhelmed with sympathy and the emotion restores him somewhat. He sits with her, indifferent to her excre­tions soiling his clothes. She turns her head towards him in gratitude as he pats her and speaks. Roselil, he whispers, Roselil, Roselil. He rubs her muck-encrusted belly and udder to make her settle. Some drops of milk seep from inside her. He tries to squeeze out some more, but she has stopped producing. Muscles and fat have retracted, ribs protrude, skin hangs loose. But his hands bring comfort. He feels his own body relax. He sleeps a while.

  And then he is back in his cabin, which creaks and heels like scenery in a theatre imitating a vessel in distress. A new bowl of porridge is brought to him. He eats, then dozes off and falls to the floor. He is tied down in the bunk and sleeps.

  Sixty-three degrees north latitude, fifty-two degrees west longitude .25 July 1787. Morten Falck fixes the horizon in the sextant he has borrowed from the first mate and writes down the position in his diary with a slightly trembling hand. He studies the coast through a telescope. Some days have passed since the last storm, the weather is clear and mild, and the fells south of the colony of Godthåb have been in sight for a night and a day. Roselil has been brought up on to the deck again, the captain predicting that they will have fair weather for the rest of the voyage. Only rotting, sopping wet straw remains, and the barrel of fresh water they have opened for her smells badly. But she has begun to eat and to produce milk, though as yet it is discoloured and poor in taste. Roselil will survive, he feels quite certain of it now. And at Godthåb she can come ashore and munch upon fresh grass.

  Morten Falck stands in the bow. He peers into the telescope, endeav­ouring to pick out portents of his destiny in the blurred contours of the land, suggestions of what this country and its inhabitants will do with him, and why at all he might be here. Will his bones end up some­where beyond those crags? Will he have the chance to accomplish anything meaningful? A short life is a fair price for good work carried out. But what could be said of him if he expired now? He left in the lurch a woman who loved him and abandoned those he loved him- self. He has achieved nothing yet that might offset the bad he has done. But he intends to do so. He wishes to accomplish something to justify his misdeeds. And Greenland is the means he requires to find meaning in his life. He has resolved to start work the moment he steps ashore, and not to idle. The natives must feel that someone has come to do them good!

  He stands leaning against the bulwark, one foot wedged firm so as not to fall overboard. His upper body sways gently, but measured against the horizon he stands absolutely still. He maintains this vertical protest, which is directed in part towards the present horizontal disorder of the world, in part to his own inner doubt. He yearns for solid ground beneath his feet. And he feels a tinge of anxiety that the voyage will soon be at an end and a new reality will require his undivided attention.

  Cries go up in the stern. Some members of the crew come running, pointing, and he turns his head to see what all the commotion is about. A shot rings out on the starboard side. From the sea in front of him a shadow emerges. It is as though it remains suspended in the air several ells above the surface, at the same height as the top or even higher. A raised finger, or rather a full fist, completely contrary to reason, as if a seaman’s yarn had materialized in front of his eyes. This is not happening, he tells himself, and blinks, only to see that indeed it is. The dark upright mass is as yet before him, and he is clearly not alone in his vision, for now the entire crew stands and points.

  Then the body descends, or the apparition, as the journal-writing part of his consciousness has already named it. At the instant it vanishes into the waves he has forgotten what it looked like. The men scurry back and forth, trying to ascertain where it will become visible again. Three times the beast rises up and each time he refuses to believe what his eyes behold. This is happening, he tells himself. Nothing shall remain unknown, I shall fix all details of it in my mind, so that I might later commit them to paper. And once I have written down what I have seen, I will under­stand it.

  Afterwards, the men are eager to discuss the monster. They are in good cheer and somewhat boisterous. The captain gives them a glass to fortify themselves. Magister, one of them addresses him. What sort of beast was that, does he think? Has he seen the like in his books?

  A whale? he suggests.

  I’ve seen many a whale, says the man, and shakes his head. This was no whale.

  Then it was a whale he has never seen before, Morten Falck notes. Next time he encounters it, he can tell his comrades he has seen it before and knows what it is. Then he will be held in esteem.

  But it laughed at us. Did the Magister not see? And wiggled its tail, the hussy.

  So what opinion have the men formed of what creature this was?

  Oh, it was just the Greenlander women bidding us welcome, says the man with a chortle. It waved to you, too, Magister Falck. Gave him a wink, it did. Just he wait and see how they’ll be lined up ready when we come ashore. All those lovely girls.

  I had the impression you preferred young boys, he replies unkindly.

  He descends to his cabin to make an entry in his journal and ends up composing a detailed description of the beast. Still wilder lapses of memory as to the whale’s appearance shove aside what he actually saw or thought he saw or categorically denies having seen. Moreover, he finds himself becoming physically aroused as he writes, his member straining against the fabric of his breeches. He tears the page from his diary and discards it, dips his pen in the ink and hastily scribbles: Leaping marine animal of great size and bulk observed July the 25th at 63rd parallel north, 52nd meridian west. Presumably whale.

  He reads the entry. He sees that hand and content are at odds. He wishes he alone had seen the monster. He would then have been able to write presumably hallucination instead.

  Der Frühling anchors off Godthåb, seat of the country’s southern inspectorate. He has become used to the deck and to keeping himself upright when the ship rolls and heels. Now as he steps ashore from the rowing boat into the old colony harbour, it is he who rolls and heels. The ground looms up before him, compelling him to halt or else trip a couple of paces so as not to fall. Then it rises like a slow and increasing swell beneath his feet and he must crouch down. All this is a disturbance of the fluids and the ossicles of his inner ear. He has exposed them on drowned individuals with his lancet in the vaults under the academy on Norgesgade. And yet his giddiness surprises him. On the surrounding rock are
people, people with dark faces, eyes that stare emptily. They find no mirth in his stumbling and staggering, but chew on something and gape. They must think him drunk.

  These natives, he notes, are not nearly as native as he had anticipated. Rather, they resemble hardened Danes more than even the colony folk themselves. Clad in knitted coats and anoraks, caps pulled down over their brows, shoddy footwear, stinking clay pipes in their mouths. Their proud smiles vex and offend him. Wide-bellied and smug they are. He addresses them in their own language, sentences he has learned at the seminary under Egede’s tutelage, but they appear not to understand and reply in Danish.

  What? What says the pastor? We don’t understand the pastor’s tongue.

  He finds them slovenly, aloof, unreliable, dirty, foul-smelling. They possess an ability, he notes, to stare utterly without expression at any person who speaks to them. It is like tossing a stone into a pond without making a ripple. Seemingly there is nothing within, no thought, neither joy nor anger, no bed of emotions. The stone descends into emptiness and gloom and the surface closes about it in silence.

  The colony is situated on a peninsula, which, seen from the top of one of the fells to its rear, which he ascends the day after his arrival, resembles a crippled hand extending amputated fingers into the sea. The Trade and the inspectorate command perhaps a score of houses, the Mission has the church, a provided residence and a storage house. There are a number of small dwellings built with peat and comprising some European features, such as doors, window frames and even gutters. Here live the christened natives, mostly families with an abundance of chil­dren, who play more or less naked outside. The place appears peaceful and cosy, at least from a distance. But much of it is in a miserable state. The savages live further from the colony, in tents made of hide, or in communal dwelling houses close to the shore. One sees a number of them on the water, passing in their skin-covered vessels on their way in to the ford or out to the sea. On the opposite side of the peninsula, in the bay between two promontories, lies the Moravian station of the German brethren and their large congregation of Greenlanders. He visits them and finds this stronghold of Pietism in Greenland to be properly clean and well organized, and the natives there to be far more hospitable and accommodating, and less corrupted, than those on the Danish side. Unfortunately, there is bad blood between the Brethren community and the Danish mission, a circumstance issuing from the elder Egede’s days, so although they inhabit the furthest wilderness and live only a quarter Danish mile away from each other, the two communities keep largely to themselves.