The Prophets of Eternal Fjord (12 page)

The crew grow mad at this wandering priest who insists on making use of the ship in all its length and breadth, which is to say one hundred times twenty-five feet. One hundred ship-lengths are thus the equivalent of some half mile, he tells the captain, which is the minimum a grown man should commit himself to walking each day if he is to maintain a healthy constitution and keep ever-encroaching melancholy at bay during a long sea voyage.

If the Magister falls overboard, it will not be beneficial to his consti­tution, says the captain, even less for good humour, be it the Magister's own or anyone else's. A ship is not a place for strolling. Can he imagine the men going about like that?

He asks permission to climb the rigging.

Mind he doesn't fall down and do his learned self a mischief, says the first mate, and laughs.

He clambers up the shroud of the mizzen, straddles the top and wedges himself between backstays and mast. But the sails obstruct his view and the danger of falling down constrains his movement. He real­izes the deck is the better place. Besides, there is nothing to spy, other than the monotonous sea and the no less monotonous sky above it. He remains in the rig for some time until he feels discomfort in his groin from the narrow top on which he sits, and climbs down.

The weather improves. He spends most of his days seated at the deck hatch, making notes for a treatise on the satisfaction of physical and spir­itual needs on long sea journeys. He intends to send the work, if ever it is complete, to a magazine such as Mr Lyne Rahbek's
Minerva
, an enlight­ened libertarian publication, if regrettably rather dull. He believes it will make instructive reading for travellers unfamiliar with the sea, and begins to draw up a list comprising two columns of healthy and detrimental aspects of life on board a ship. Clean air, he writes in the first column. Peace in which to write and philosophize. Satisfaction of natural curiosity. Comradeship. Learning to live frugally. He moves the pen to the column on the right, ponders a moment, then scribbles what enters his mind: Drowning. Scurvy. Spiritual sloth. He puts down his pen and paper, presses the bung into the ink pot and stares out at the horizon. There are things a man yearns for while at sea, things that cannot be written about, unless for initiated eyes only, but which any reader cannot help but think upon when reading an article concerning privation on sea journeys. Lack of female company, he then writes in the right-hand column. Lecherous thoughts. Self-abuse and, even worse, inappropriate relations with members of the crew.

Morten Falck has thought frequently of the hermaphrodite Gypsy boy while he has been patrolling the ship. The cabin boy is approximately the same age, run away to sea after his confirmation, though not an orphan, but from an impoverished environment somewhere in Jutland, so Morten has learned. He often sits opposite him when the men are gath­ered to eat in the mess, where the mizzen mast creaks and groans in its cylinder. His gaze meets the boy's across the soup, he smiles at him and the boy smiles back. The freckled and pimply face of the adolescent sticks out among the weather-beaten seamen. They make him blush with their stories, but Morten notes that the boy's presence also makes the men feel embarrassed. When they look at him they begin to boast and exaggerate, behaviour to which they are otherwise disinclined. They tell boisterous tales of escapades at sea and conquests on land.

When Morten Falck sits with Roselil, at her milking or merely keeping the ailing beast company, the boy often appears in the byre and offers to muck out. Morten gives him a cup of milk. My father had a cow, the boy tells him. It had no name, but I called her Karoline. A pretty name, says Morten. I call mine Roselil.

May I call her Roselil, too? the boy asks.

Of course you may. It's her name.

Is it her real name?

What do you mean?

What you're called is what you are.

And what are you? asks Morten Falck.

Carl Asger, the boy replies solemnly. My name's in a book.

A number of the men have never been to Greenland. There is talk about the natives and what they might expect. It is the captain's twelfth voyage across the ford, as he rather boastfully refers to it. The savages are decent enough folk, he says at the dinner table. More decent than many of the white people there, I can attest to that. But some of their habits are disgusting and abhorrent. They wash in their own filth and eat rotten meat.

Like us, says one of the crew, holding up a mouldy green slice of pork. The men laugh.

But they like it, says the captain. They don't use salt to preserve their meat. They prefer it rotten. The worse it smells, the better.

One man asks about the föhn winds of which he has heard terrible stories.

What are föhn winds? asks another.

Warm winds from the south, says the captain and releases a squealing fart.

The men roar with laughter. Morten Falck looks down into his pea soup. Something is moving about in it. A dung beetle, fighting for its life: he sees the flailing legs. He assumes it to have landed there by accident, perhaps on account of greed, and now it struggles so as not to drown in the same substance on which it intended to gorge. He fishes it out with his spoon, then hesitates, not knowing what to do with it. The insect solves the problem itself by springing down and scuttling across the table, where a seaman's hand squashes it flat.

They say the savages can kill a white man with their farts, says the ship's boy.

The captain replies solemnly: So very true, my boy. I've seen it with my own eyes.

The men around the table gape in anticipation.

One of my hands, says the captain, Iver, his name was. God rest his soul. He put his face too close to the backside of one of their women, and she bent over and blew the head off the poor man.

The ship's boy pales. The men fall about laughing and thrash their spoons on the tabletop.

Why did she do that? asks the ship's boy.

You see, boy, the native women are not to be trifled with. They will eat a lad such as yourself for breakfast. But you've no need to be afraid. I can outfart even the strongest of savages. He lifts his arse and lets out a thundering wind. The men roar still louder, tossing back their heads and hooting, howling at the ceiling like wolves and stamping on the floor in their heavy boots.

Thank you for the meal, says Morten Falck, and goes up on to the deck. He hears the mirth continue below. Shortly after, the boy comes and sits down beside him on the hatch.

You shouldn't believe everything they tell you, says Morten Falck.

I find it exciting, says the boy. I know they're only stories, but they're exciting anyway. When I get home, it'll be me telling far-fetched tales.

The deck inclines to starboard, the bow chops calmly through the oncoming waves. Tiny showers of atomized sea water pass over them and cling to their clothing.

She doesn't care for the swell, says the boy with a nod towards Roselil. Should I go in and keep her company?

Let's go together.

When they are sat with the ruminating cow, the boy asks: Does the pastor receive confessions?

We held a service and confessed our sins at the outset of the voyage, he says. Did you not take part?

Yes. The boy avoids his gaze.

Then why do you wish to confess now?

If something new happens, does the old confession still count?

On the ship, you mean?

I sin every day, says the boy. With the cook. We share a bunk, as the pastor knows. It's my fault. I make him lustful. But I don't know if it's wrong enough to have to confess to a priest.

Morten Falck says nothing. He does not desire to listen.

The cook calls me a wanton little devil, even if I don't much care for it, says the boy, and downs his cup of milk. But he says he can tell I like it, I can't run away from that. He has told the carpenter. And now Jensen wants me in his bunk as well. They fight about me.

Morten Falck gets to his feet. Say your Lord's Prayer and trust in God, he mumbles, and returns to his cabin.

In storms the crew go about the deck like ghosts. They bend their necks against the wind and rain, the sleet and the ice, and work stoically in the manner of sleepwalkers. He hears them talk behind the bulkhead when he lies in the cubbyhole of his cabin, though never are their voices laughing, nor do they sing, which he would have thought was in the seaman's nature. To bawl out shanties in season and out. The only one among them who occasions to sing is the ship's boy, pious popular ballads from his native home or psalms, sometimes an endless satirical song from a broadsheet, entire novels in verse. His voice is dainty and he has a good ear. The men hang upon his lips as he sings. And all the time the ship keeps its course along the sixtieth latitude towards worse and colder weather.

After a storm the sky unfolds above the ship, as blue as royal porce­lain. The air grows cold and still, exceptionally cold for the time of year, with frost in the night. The crew is sent into the rigging to chop ice. A pale yellow moon wanders its curved path across the colour spectrum, from violet to blue-green to orange to red. The sails flap in the lazy yet freezing gusts that send showers of ice on to the deck from shrouds and rigging. Morten remains standing, impervious to the frozen shards that rain from above. He abandons himself to quiet mortification of the flesh and daydreams of the place to which he is bound, and the one from which he came. He learns to appreciate the bitter wind that buffets his chest.

An atmosphere of sexual excitement arises on board, triggered by the circumstance that the ship's boy is now passed around among members of the crew. He seems to have become aware of the effects at his disposal, Morten muses, albeit he is unable to control them. Arguments flare, fistfights loom, tin mugs and plates fly through the air. The mood at table is leadened by poisonous insinuation and lowered eyes. Tales of farting are no more. Only the ship's boy seems happy. He takes liberties, shirks his work, teases the men and makes inappropriate innuendos. Morten knows that it is his duty as ship's pastor to bring him to reason, but he considers his words will make no difference. He is weak, he knows he is weak, he permits himself to be weak. In the night he hears stifled cries and laughter from other parts of the ship. He pulls his coat over his head and tries to sleep.

One day of wind and rain he hears a commotion on deck. Running and shouting, the tolling of the ship's bell. He ascends the stair and sees some of the men standing at the portside bulwark. He approaches as the ship's rowing boat is put into the waves and four men man the oars. They do not row far. A pair of ship-lengths and they retrieve something from the water and haul it aboard. They return to
Der Frühling
and the boy is pulled on to the deck. He lies motionless on his back, mouth gaping, arms splayed to the sides. The men gather around him. They stand in their heavy boots. Now they are calmed. They have regained their dignity. Morten crouches down and puts his hand to the boy's chest, then places his ear to it and listens, his fingers feeling at the artery of the neck. He gets to his feet and shakes his head. Someone tosses a sweater over the boy's face.

It began early this morning, the first mate tells him. The boy behaved like an unruly child at breakfast, commenting obscenely upon his ship­mates and flicking lumps of porridge at them from his spoon. The cook lost his temper and lashed out at the boy with his ladle, striking him on the side of the head. The boy screamed and called him a lecher and worse, whereafter he ran up to the deck, the cook after him with his ladle. They chased around the ship until the boy climbed the main mast with the cook on his heels, balanced his way out along the yard like a tightrope walker, and when the cook refused to retreat but crawled out after him, he plunged into the waves and was gone. A time passed before he floated to the surface.

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.