The Prophets of Eternal Fjord (10 page)

You are young, he says. You will mature and change. Such is life. I am ten years older than you. I know what I am doing.

And this has only just dawned on you?

Her words are almost a scream.

Your father has written to me, he says with hard-won composure that must appear stony to her, which is his intention. I think it hardly likely that he would deliver you into my charge.

Indeed, he is angry. Furious. He took his sabre and thrashed at a chair until the stuffing flew in the air, and said, Look, here is your theologian! A smile appears amid the tears; she sniffles and lets out a giggle. But I don't care. I want to go with you, if you will have me. You can do with me as you wish, anything at all. When do you think you will receive such an offer again, Magister Falck?

How will you get a passport to board the ship? You are not yet of age.

Practical matters! Of no importance! We bribe the captain with my dowry. Take me with you!

No.

Do you not love me any more? She extends her hand again, but this time he does not accept it.

This is leading nowhere.

Some floorboards creak in the corridor. He hears muffled voices, as though in everyday conversation, sounds from the street, the sounds of a sunny day. A shaft of golden light falls upon Egede's desk. He sees that the shadow cast by the quills in his pen holder have moved the breadth of a finger since he sat down with Miss Schultz. She sits diagonally oppo­site him, a theatrical harlot. She cries quietly, blinking her eyes, tears streaming down the sides of her nose, halted briefly by the down of her upper lip, which also is made golden by the sun, then to release and fall onto her exposed bosom, where they trickle and dry. She ignores them. She wrings her hands.

I shall take my life, she says faintly. I know where my mother keeps her laudanum.

He sits quite still. Go now, he thinks to himself.

I can have you prosecuted, she says.

I know. You have the power to destroy me.

My sisters know. They know everything. They can give sworn statements.

Yes.

My father's staff know, too. I'm certain of it. They can bear witness against you. And then you will be neither a priest nor a missionary, unless you wish to preach in the gaol.

No.

She looks up and their eyes meet. How calm you are, Morten. How can you be so calm?

I place my fate in your hands, he says, unperturbed.

At long last, she takes a handkerchief and wipes her eyes, dabs her cheeks and bosom. She sniffles once or twice. I am glad to have come to speak with you one last time.

Yes, I too, in spite of the circumstances. I am sorry. Forgive me.

She looks up at him briefly and winces. I shall not forget you and I will not hate you. You cannot make me hate you. I shall keep what is ours inside my heart and cherish it. No one can take that from me, not even you.

Thank you.

She rises to her feet; he likewise. They stand before each other. They shake hands, she turns and leaves the office in a rustle of tulle.

Shortly afterwards Egede's face appears in the doorway. He wears a crafty smile.

Oh dear, Magister Falck, I fear you have missed your affixes!

He receives the call to Sukkertoppen in January of 1787, half a year before he is to leave. Egede takes him under his wing. They stroll in the garden of the seminary. Egede tells him of his experiences in Greenland, of his father and mother and siblings, of the sly and sullen heathens, of his childhood in Lofoten. They converse in Norwegian. Egede is proud of his Norwegian and Morten has not the heart to tell him it hardly resembles the language at all.

He meets one of Schultz's print workers in a serving house and learns that Miss Schultz has suffered a breakdown and become worryingly ill. The man does not know her illness, but the mistress has been taken from the city in a weakened state, apparently to some family in the country. They say she is not right in the head, the worker whispers. She called herself Støvlet-Cathrine and was improper towards us in the printing shop, tore her clothes to tatters in everyone's presence, we had to hold her still until Madame Schultz came and put a blanket around her. The man shakes his head. I can't forget the sight of her loveliness, so pure and fresh, and then the madness in her eyes. I can't put it from my mind. Was the Magister not betrothed to the young mistress?

It fell through, says Morten.

Oh, I see. How sad, says the man. But such a madwoman could never make a pastor's wife, it stands to reason.
Skål
, Mr Falck!

Man is Free! (June–August 1787)

Morten Falck steps down into a ship's boat at the Toldboden to be rowed through the forest of masts to the roadstead that is the Rheden. He stands erect in the stern. He is thirty-one, has belonged to the city for almost exactly five years, has become a part of it and it a part of him. The sea air wraps around him. He is leaving. He does not know if he will ever see the city again. He does not know if he will survive the journey. He feels exhilarated and strong.

The boat comes alongside a ship, and he is ushered up a rope ladder. A hand reaches down from the bulwark. He takes it and swings his leg over the gunwale to stand on the deck of the brig
Der Frühling
. The weather is clear, though here on the water the air has a chill. The sun is above Amager, twinkling in the swell of the sound. The wind makes the masts creak and click and rushes in the rigging, its tone an ebb and flow. The ship strains at its anchor rope; the keel groans. From the main mast waves the double-pointed swallowtail flag that bears the emblem of the Royal Greenland Trade, two crossed harpoons. He turns and takes it all in with his eyes. It is quickly done. His environment these next six to ten weeks is captured in a single glance.

A seaman shows him to his cabin below deck. The ship is a former whaler fitted out for the route to Greenland, which is to say to withstand drifting ice, to carry a small number of passengers as well as goods to the colony, and to bring home raw materials and barrels filled with train oil. His fellow passenger on the voyage is a cook bound for Godthåb. The cabin is a cubbyhole containing a stool, a hinged table that may be raised or dropped, and a bunk whose bedding is a mattress of straw.

Would there be anything else, learned magister? the seaman enquires. Can I bring you something? A blanket?

This will be fine, thank you. I have my own blankets.

And unlike yours, they are free of lice, he thinks to himself. But the mattress is undoubtedly alive with all manner of vermin and he considers it will be a battle against superior forces to endeavour to keep them from his person. Thus, he will not waste energy on what cannot be changed, but instead concentrate on what perhaps might. It is something Egede has impressed upon him, the first rule of the missionary.

The man bows and withdraws. Morten looks about. The cabin is neat and clean. Hm, he had prepared himself for a pigsty. Regrettably, it is without a source of natural light. The place will be too dim for him to remain undisturbed in his cabin to commit his observations, he assesses, and he will therefore be obliged to do so in the open. He is unwilling to ruin his good eyesight by the poor glow of a lamp or tallow candle. But so much the better! Of necessity comes virtue, and with virtue unex­pected gifts will often follow. He can look forward to lots of fresh sea air.

He tests the bunk, then seats himself on the stool and examines the mattress, prodding gently. The lice seep forth like water. He withdraws his hand in a hurry. Here I must sleep, he thinks with a shudder.

He raises the table and presses down on it with caution. The leaf yields perilously. He must keep his books in stacks on the floor. The table is unfit for writing. Never mind! Reading and contemplation will be on the deck and in the bunk, as the case may be. He is vexed for a moment by the cabin not being as he had expected, but then he dismisses it from his mind.

He goes up on deck to make sure his travelling chests are brought safely on board. And then there is the matter of the particular conveyance for which he has been obliged to purchase an additional passage from his own pocket, the greater part of his savings, as if it were a passenger like himself. Which in a way it is. It should be here presently, sailing on a barge from Kastrup by a farmer and his two sons. Morten looks out to the south-east, but the many ships at anchor obstruct his view. This is what he is most anxious about. Not the seasickness or the scurvy, nor the danger of drowning, or sea monsters, pirates or the many other perils of the ocean. He is most concerned that his precious cargo will not arrive in time.

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 meals 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.