The Prophets of Eternal Fjord (48 page)

She stops. She looks at me. She is one of perhaps several who have cared for me during my infirmity.

How are your children? I ask.

My children are alive and in good health. She speaks her own language, having little command of the Danish, and I must ask her to repeat her words several times over before fully grasping her meaning. My deceased husband left me enough for our keep.

Say my name, I implore.

Palasi
, she says.

No, my name is Morten Pedersen. Say it!

My sister wants to speak with
Palasi
, she says.

Who is your sister?

Sofie. Bertel's wife.

Has she been here too, while I have lain here in my weakened state?

She lifts her eyebrows in the affirmative. So three women have attended to me during these weeks and I have made them into one.

Very well, let her come.

And so a third woman presents herself. Sofie. She wishes to hear news of her husband, the catechist. I am aware of neither his business nor his whereabouts, I tell her. I have not seen him in nearly a year.

She shows me her new little boy, born in January, so that I might bless him. A fair child with blue eyes, the image of my dear catechist.

I am no longer
Palasi
, I tell her.

She insists. She holds the child in outstretched arms. I place a hand upon its head and mutter some words. Grateful, she withdraws and turns to leave. But I call her back.

Say my name.

Morten Pedersen, she says.

I thank you, I say. I shall pray for your husband. Go now.

He is alive, she says. I feel that he is alive.

The Lord will protect him, I say.

She leaves.

Boiled meat, from which for lack of capable teeth I must suck the juices and then swallow whole. A cup of cold, fresh spring water.

I ask the widow if the poor, beleaguered
Palasi
might not be given a half pint of ale for his toothache, or better still some aquavit? She pretends not to hear me.

A comely backside. The skin of her bare arms and shoulders as fair as were Madame Kragstedt's, may the Lord have mercy on her.

The widow informs me of the date. Three months have passed. Where were my senses in this time? On the far side of the moon, perhaps, or at the bottom of the sea, like the angakkuqs when summoning the spirits?

17 April

A conversation, committed from memory:

MM: How is Magister Falck feeling now?

MP: Please call me Pedersen, or Morten if you prefer. Falck is now barely acceptable to me. I have forfeited the right to the title of Magister.

MM: You must not shun your responsibility and calling, Magister.

MP: I ask you, please do not address me by that title.

MM: Are you feeling better? Do you have what you need?

MP: I am highly indebted. All I miss is a cup of ale once in a while.

MM: We have no ale. We do not know how to make it and do not purchase it. The same goes for the strong drink that makes the temper flare.

MP: Praiseworthy indeed, Madame. From whom do you purchase your provisions?

MM: We trade with whoever will sell. It is no concern of the Magister's.

MP: I apologize.

MM: Once you are fully recovered I will show you everything and explain how we have organized ourselves here.

MP: So very kind of you. But once it is rumoured within the Colony that its priest of royal sanction and subsidy is being held against his will by false and insubordinate prophets, a delegation will be dispatched here at the double in order to liberate him.

MM: Each day must take care of itself. We place everything in the hands of the Lord.

MP: Moreover, I must warn you, Madame, that a warrant is still out ­standing for your arrest and that of your husband. Kragstedt has thus twice the grounds to make a raid upon your settlement and he will do so as soon as the ice is gone from the ford.

MM: I know of this warrant. We have a copy of it ourselves. What is it they want from us?

MP: I think Professor Rantzau of the Missionskollegium wishes to see you brought to Denmark to be put on trial and sentenced in such manner as may be found appropriate for your offence.

MM: Abduction? They wish to get rid of me and my husband in the expectation that this uprising will end?

MP: I shall not hazard any guess as to the motives of the Powers That Be, but it is by no means unlikely that you are correct, madam.

MM: Why will they not leave us in peace, Magister Falck?

MP: My name is Pedersen. Morten. Greenland is under Danish jurisdic­tion, you are subjects of King Christian the Seventh, just as I myself, and thereby governed by Danish law.

MM: They say the king is mad.

MP: But the law is not, madam. The law is not mad. We are all Danes equal under the law.

MM: This is not Denmark!

MP: Indeed it is, Madame. This is Denmark!

MM: I am not concerned for my own part, it is my husband's fate I worry about. He is not strong and would not survive a long sea voyage, let alone the air of your country, which they say is full of poisonous vapours and sickness.

MP: Such a death would spare him both trial and imprisonment. It would perhaps be the best outcome.

MM: But we have Magister Falck. If Kragstedt comes to put us in chains we shall not hesitate to make a sacrifice of you!

MP: Alas, dear madam, you do not know Kragstedt. If you did, you would be doing the Trader a great service!

18 April

She is a comely woman, it cannot be denied, and her reason is good. She has a keen eye and unrestrained self-confidence. When she speaks it is always with a smile on her lips and with good humour, as though she finds entertainment in me and my miserable plight, and in the folly of the world
in generalia
. Her husband is said to be a lecher who has slept with more virgins than the prophet Muhammad. In this respect he is neither worse nor better than any Danish man in the country, among them the good Missionary Oxbøl at Holsteinsborg. She informs me he has gone to hunt reindeer in the company of his mistress and that, should I wish it, I may meet with him on his return. Her own thoughts on her husband's infidelity and indecency are kept well hidden, so whether she is angry or sorrowful on account of it is purely a matter of conjecture. Nonetheless, she appears to me to be honest and proper, though I sense she may have something of a temper. Her eyes flashed daggers when I mentioned the warrant and the prospect of their deportation. I do not doubt that she will make good her threat of using me as a shield against the Trader and his officers.

She tells me it was the Missionary Oxbøl who instructed and chris­tened her. He is a good example of the Lord's unsearchable ways, she says with an angry glint in her dark eyes. Thus He can work through even the basest representatives on Earth. She speaks in a jocular tone of the old priest, but has little to say in his favour, which I find quite under­standable, judging by what the widow Lydia has related to me about the man and his inclinations towards his female catechumens, and, indeed, any female upon whom his lecherous gaze might fall. It is thus of little consolation, though consolation still, that if possible he is even more unworthy of the vestments than myself, not to speak of his salvation now that his days must be assumed to soon be running out. May the Lord have mercy upon his sinful soul!

19 April

The widow has become a stranger to me, which fact causes me pain, although I cannot ever be said to have known her. She comes and sits with me each day, albeit for a short time only, then goes away again, though not before having reminded me of my pledge and compelling its reiteration. I am to instruct her and lead her to consecration in Christ through the Baptism and confirmation. It is an obsession of hers. I tell her I am no longer to be considered a priest and that any christening or other ecclesiastical ceremony I might perform would be invalid, if not sacrilegious.

Palasi
, she says sternly. Remember your pledge. Do your duty!

And I shall do it, indeed, even if it should lead me to my own damna­tion. It is but a small token in exchange for what she has done.

She asks me about unchristened children and their prospects of salva­tion. I assume she has her deceased daughter in mind and tell her that small children are unhardened and that the Lord loves them and receives them, though only when they have spent some short time in what is called limbo.

So when I die I will meet her again? she asks.

You will indeed! I reply. If you are christened and then confirmed you will live for evermore together in Paradise.

By this she appears gladdened and contented.

Another matter is that my friend Maria Magdalene moreover wishes me to instruct and christen a large multitude of the natives here at her settlement. All of them feel themselves to be Christian, she explains to me they have received her own and Habakuk's instruction for a number of years and are now eager to be anointed and consecrated unto the Lord by a genuine
palasi
.

I harbour suspicion that this is the true reason for my being brought here.

I am
palasi
no more.

The Magister is soon well enough to go outside, she says with a laugh. My people are looking forward to seeing you again.

Again?

They remember you from the last time you came to see us along with Constable Bjerg, who became so enamoured of one of our girls.

To this I say nothing.

I have never before seen a person with such bright eyes or met a woman of such free and easy mind. Leading her to the confirmation must have been quite a challenge for the good Missionary Oxbøl.

My semen is no longer bloody. A further two teeth lost, molar and incisor.

25 April

For the first time since being brought to this place more dead than alive, I, Morten Pedersen, have been outside in the air.

An inhabitant of the settlement, an inoffensive fellow with the good Christian name of Mathias, though by himself called
Maliarsi
, accom­panied me and supported my gait, which as yet is uncertain and most unsteady. The air was thick with chimney smoke from the many inhab­ited dwellings of the place, and yet delightful to sense. A fresh breeze came off the ford and, as though I myself were a house with windows thrown open, the air blew straight through my head. Such was the feeling of it. Strongly invigorated thereby, I asked the fellow to lead me up to their church, though the effort quickly proved too strenuous, my breath running short halfway and causing me to sit down directly upon the snow.

They carried me home and put me to bed.

I have a slight sniffle, my feet are cold as ice, my chest chilled, and I am tormented by the most foolish fear of dying, which at one time was the thing I wished for most. But no longer.

All Prayers Day (I think)

How tragic

That life be the fear of death!

And such fear is sinful

And the absence of such fear is likewise a sin

For I was taught both to fear death and to be mindful thereof

Yet suicide is also a sin, one of the greatest

What then should a man do for his salvation?

And what is salvation?

Is it death

Or is it life?

Did the Lord make us that we should die?

With hope of waking again in the morning I retire to sleep.

I had stopped praying, but this evening I make exception and reel off my Lord's Prayer.

I feel like Judas

.  .  .

Febrilia

Coughing badly and spitting mucus

The widow is here

She watches over me

Her eyes do not leave me

She stares at me sideways

Like a black crow on its branch

I love her

But she will not love me

Nor will she let me die!

.  .  .

Roselil with me this night

Quite exhausted at morning

A small amount of blood gruel by which to be fortified, but then vomited

.  .  .

the day wanders across the room

seven ells in length

four in width

.  .  .

spoon food and improvement

yet dreadfully tired

.  .  .

cast is my frock

I shepherd no more my flock

tra-la-la, tra-la-la .  .  .

no, a poet I am not!

.  .  .

1 May

My constitution would seem to be better than I would have thought, for I have survived two attacks upon my life this winter and may thereby once more look forward to further prolongation of my futile destiny. The widow has mixed a concoction of Cochlearia and berries and melted seal blubber, a medication by which the natives have previously fortified me. What is to happen to me when eventually I have fulfilled my pledge and made a good Christian of her? Her twice saving my life is hardly due to personal devotion! I sense in her some antipathy towards me, as indeed towards all Danes. Why then did she take up with Magister Oxbøl? I ask her this and she replies as follows: My humiliation was his humiliation. By lying down on my back and committing the sin, I made him commit a sin many times the greater by lying on top of me, and this was my small revenge.

The woman is a riddle to me. In less enlightened times than these she would surely have been accused of sorcery and thrown upon a pyre.

And yet she is dear to me.

2 May

The prophetess MM honours me with a pleasurable visit. She is an enemy of mine and of the entire Danish presence in this land. This she tells me quite openly. Christ speaks to her in dreams in the night. He says – by her own account! – that this land belongs to the Greenlanders, heathens as well as those christened, and that they should take it back from the thief – i. e. , the Dane – who poisons her people with debauchery and filthy lucre. I put it to her that such talk is tantamount to heresy and may send her to the gallows. The Word of the Lord cannot be sent to any hangman, she replies. A brazen woman indeed.