The Prophets of Eternal Fjord (57 page)

We must do something, they say, looking at Bertel.

Don't look at me, he says.

He is getting lustful again, they say. And he is strong. If first he grabs hold, he will not let go until he has had his way.

The Missionary Oxbøl lies in his alcove and calls out his demands. He wants more and he wants it now! He will not give in. He clamours the whole night, hammering on the walls. His hands find the stool next to the cot: he hurls it across the room and it smashes against the door. One of the women goes in to him and he falls silent.

Bertel's mother, Martine, moves in to the house. She takes on the task of his care. She has a way with him. She feels no hatred towards him and he senses it. He quietens. Bertel does not know what his mother does to settle him, but it is certainly effective.

His sister comes from the Eternal Fjord, where she has been living for some months. There is a radiance about her that startles him. Your old friend Maria Magdalene sends her regards, she tells their father. She would have liked to have been here herself, now that you are about to kick the bucket, but she has more important things to attend to. Later, his mother tells him that his sister has finally been baptized and confirmed by Mr Falck, who has even taken her as his wedded wife.

Now they are gathered. They sit at the deathbed and wait. But the priest grows stronger with each day. He sits tied to his chair and plays chess with Bertel. They can sit for hours with only the chessboard between them.

Check, say the old man from the corner of his mouth. He has begun to utter the occasional word.

Bertel moves his king. Oxbøl's rook approaches. Bertel's knight strikes at his opponent's king and queen.

Check. Five moves, Priest, and it will be mate.

Oxbøl rests a finger upon his king. And topples it. Clever, he hisses in acknowledgement.

Bertel turns the board around and sets up the pieces again. They begin a new game.

The peace lasts a week, until they find Bertel's mother unconscious on the floor of the priest's parlour. She is half-naked, her thighs and back are heavily scratched. The priest pretends to sleep. They see that his finger­nails are bloody. They wrap her in a blanket and carry her down to the Trader's house, where she has a small chamber. One of the other women sits with her. In the night, she dies.

See what you have done! they say to the priest. But the priest purses his lips and will not utter a word.

For two days all is quiet. On the third night he begins to pound on the walls and shout.

Let me go to him, his sister says.

No, he replies. I won't have it. He is your own father.

It's the only thing that will quieten him down, you know that. Anyway, it's not that bad.

Bertel goes to him instead and must duck as an object is flung through the air and strikes the wall behind him. The night pot. He can smell its contents of faeces and old man's urine as they run down the wall. His father is already looking for new ammunition. Bertel promptly with­draws.

Mate! his father shrieks.

I told you he would not speak to you, his sister says, and goes to him in her brother's place. At once the commotion abates.

The women begin to bicker, a couple of the children cry. The women chastise Bertel and call him cowardly; one of them waves a red-hot poker in front of him. But if he dies, what are the rest of us to do then? one of them wonders. As long as he is alive we at least have food and shelter for ourselves and our children.

Some noises are heard from the parlour. The women fall silent. Glances are exchanged.

Bertel takes the poker from the fireplace. He goes into the hallway and cautiously opens the door of the parlour.

He sees a reptile with arched back and a tail swishing from side to side. It is pale green. It rears up in the alcove and moves rhythmically, undulating and peristaltic. He sees the muscles of the reptile's back as they tense, sees his sister lie resigned and staring out to the side, the stony look in the reptile's bloodshot eyes, as he cries out: Leave her alone!

The reptile sees the poker with wide and frantic eyes. It opens its jaws mechanically and flicks its forked tongue.

He steps up to the alcove and prods at the reptile's scaled skin with the glowing implement.

The priest screams. His face is contorted with pain and bewilderment. Why? he hisses. I love you both!

His sister yells: Bertel, go away! Don't get involved in this!

But he prods again; the old man screams once more and collapses on to his side.

His sister extricates herself from beneath the weight of his body. Bertel brandishes the poker. She holds him back and twists it from his hand.

Enough! she says. You'll end in the gallows. I won't have such guilt laid upon my shoulders.

The priest lies with his face buried in the pillow. His breathing is erratic. When they turn him over, he stares at them with one eye. The other is closed. His lips move, and his left hand gestures.

What's he doing? says Bertel.

I think he may be blessing us, his sister says.

Bertel attempts to wrest the poker from her hand, but she holds it tight.

No, she says. Give it to me. I shall do what is my right.

And then she lifts the poker and strikes. Bertel sees that the trajectory is well-considered, the delivery is angled so as not to be impaired by the ceiling of the alcove. The weapon is brought down with icy precision. At the same instant, the women spill through the door, the floor is awash with progeny; they cast themselves upon the priest, tearing at him, screaming and flailing, until eventually he slides lifeless from the cot to lie in a heap amid the blood that issues, as though in a flourish, on to the white of the bedclothes.

Those among the women who have children now lift them up and show them the bloodied priest, whose features are no longer recognizable or scarcely human, and they impress upon them the identity of the man and why he is dead, and they tell them that they must never, ever forget this sight, for this is the Devil himself, Lucifer, the Dane, the priest, their father, and now he is gone and will never again do harm to anyone.

Part Three

The Great Conflagration (1793–5)

Home

Morten Falck steps on board the good ship
Charlotta
from the rowing boat at Sukkertoppen, casts a final glance towards land and sighs, flops down on to his bunk below deck, digests a number of novels and biog­raphies, rises and goes ashore at Bergen.

24 October 1793, a Thursday: he is standing on the wharf at Bergen. He sees himself in a drawing he might produce: a tall, dark gentleman placed within a converging perspective of houses, fells and drifting clouds, clad in threadbare and unfashionable clothing, transfixed among porters, seamen and travellers, who edge past him rolling barrels, carry ­ing sacks full of grain, flour and coal on their shoulders, pulling horses along by the bit, shouting and remonstrating and altogether knowing who they are, where they come from and where they are going in the short span of time they have at their disposal. Morten Falck is certain of very little beyond the knowledge that he is a stranger and cannot stand here for ever. But where should he go? He has never been to Bergen. This is the first time in six years he has been anywhere comprising more than a couple of hundred people. He feels he has stepped directly into a tempest, a maelstrom of jostling bodies and babbling voices, steaming horses' flanks and wheels that rumble and clatter. Someone shoves him hard in the back, causing him to stumble and fall on one knee. He gets to his feet, apologizes to the furious face that is turned towards him, a red-bearded man with a barrel on his shoulder, and steps around to the other side of his travelling chest. His stomach complains nervously, a combi­nation of expectation and trepidation as to his usual breakfast of mouldy hard tack and sour ale, the seafarer's staple. His insides yaw and heave in protest at the cobbles after eight weeks of becoming accustomed to the rolling deck. He suppresses a rush of nausea and swallows his saliva.

Where to, master?

Already the porter – a young lad with a broad smile, a nose like a potato and fair hair sticking out like dry straw from under his cap – has a firm grasp on the chest and is, on his own initiative, manhandling it on to his cart.

I need lodgings, Falck says, looking along the wharf at the quaint and uniform fronts of the serving houses that seem alight in the morning sun as it reaches down from the surrounding fells. Puffs of cloud gather and spread, casting restless shadows on the slopes above the town. A place where a poor traveller may rest his head and find a good meal at a fair price, he adds.

Step up, sir, says the lad, with a gesture towards the cart, on which a simple crosspiece does for a seat.

Thank you, my child. I prefer to walk.

The boy grips the handles and sets off.

Indeed, says Morten Falck, who is for a moment hesitant. He finds it difficult to adjust to the sensation of having firm ground beneath his feet; and to the feeling of the breeze as it strokes his cheek, bringing with it the aromas of pine forest, wood smoke, horse dung, cooking smells and the filth and excrement of the street. Terra firma, he says to himself. My own country. My boot now stands upon the same land on which my father treads, if he is still alive. According to the letter that came with the ship by which he now is returned, his father is more or less in the throes of death, which probably means all is as usual and that he is in good health. But in the meantime he might indeed have become properly ill, which cruel fate may befall any hypochondriac. There was something else in the letter that made him anxious, suggestions that
nothing lasts for ever, one has become aged and infirm and misses the engaging chatter of a woman now that my beloved wife, your blessed mother, has departed
, etc. Has his father grown melancholy in his dotage? Or was he trying to tell him something?

The land here is deeply incised by fords, it has reached out an arm and taken hold of Morten Falck and wrenched him from the claws of the sea. And here he now stands, without any idea of which way is up or down in his life. He will travel east, this much he knows, and by road, if there is one, and if necessary he will go by foot in the manner of the blessed Professor Holberg, a Bergen man by birth, who journeyed in the same way when he was Falck's age. Even though it would surely be quicker to return home by the packet boat. But he has had enough of sailing. No more ships for me, thank you, no more hard tack and oats, or the stench of men and their pent-up desire. The land will embrace him, consume him, with its fair valleys, shady forests and small farms. I shall be bid welcome wherever I go, with a glass of fresh milk and shelter for the night. Of this he has lain and fantasized during the voyage. He has but vague conceptions of the landscapes east of Bergen. There will doubtless be fells and at this time of year most probably snow. None ­theless, snow is a thing he has grown used to these past years. And everywhere there will be people, countrymen! Indeed, he will go on foot!

Sir? The porter lad stands waiting; he looks back at Falck over his shoulder.

He follows the cart into the town. Soon he finds himself further from the sea than at any time in several years. The weeks on board the
Charlotta
have been peaceful and without event, apart from a single episode off the Cape Farewell, where they narrowly avoided collision with a wreck adrift on the waves. Its upper deck amidships was as yet above water, the masts snapped at the yard, stumps of rope and tattered sails flapping in the wind, from the hold came a foul odour of decay, and the sea around the wreck glistened with train oil. The rough sea gave them no chance of boarding her, and yet they came so close as to make out her name on the side of the bow:
Henrietta of Aberdeen
. The captain made note of it in his log and would inform the shipping company on his return. He believed the vessel to be a Scottish whaler that had made havoc along the coast this past year and which the colony managers had tried unsuccessfully to seize. Morten Falck held a service and prayed for the salvation of the souls who went down with her. The crew of the
Charlotta
were in low spirits for some days following the encounter, which they took to be an omen of ill fortune, and Falck, too, was quite affected by the dismal mood. He saw the face of the widow appear faintly embossed in the dark­ness between the masts; he awoke in his cot with the feeling of being touched by her putty-like fingers; he heard her voice speak to him, a monotone chunter devoid of recognizable lexis. He was certain she would not allow him to leave the vessel alive.

Now, striding along behind this young porter, whose voice rings out in song, returned to the land of his birth in a town edged by forest and benevolent fells, he gradually awakes from the stupor into which weeks of fatalism had thrown him. He can hardly believe it to be true. Yet the feeling of cobblestones and horse dung beneath his feet tells him it is so. He has come home.

The inn to which he is taken is called The Weary Dragoon. Here he is given a room comprising a chair, a table and an alcove made up with clean linen and deluged with pillows and a thick eiderdown that seem to him like whipped cream, and a mattress so soft he feels as if he floats upon it. Downstairs in the serving house he seats himself at a table and is served teacakes with fresh yellow butter and four soft-boiled eggs. He is offered strong ale, but asks for milk, and the landlady brings him a whole jug. He drinks the fatty emulsion with gusto. She addresses him with a mixture of deference and motherly tenderness, her bosom perilously close to his cheek as she pours the milk for him, a quivering, ample mass, and he senses her warmth and the rank smell of her perspiration. He eats too much and goes to lie down in the soft alcove, where he sleeps until midday. Then a lunch of pea soup with sour cream, yellow-white islands of fat, pancakes folded around satiny sugar and cinnamon, and two varieties of jam. Again, he must retire immediately afterwards. He lies groaning, a cold sweat upon his brow, clutching his stomach and chuck­ling with disbelief at such a sumptuous meal. Later he rises and wanders about the town, heavy with glucose and fat.

So many people on this autumn day of sunshine in Bergen; so many faces he has never seen, and which he will never see again, or at least not recall. This is something that had all but vanished from his memory: to be surrounded by people about whose lives and vices he is spared the trouble of concerning himself. They are and will remain strangers, dour and inscrutable, and he loves them for the fact that he need never have anything to do with a single one of them.

Later in his room again, floating on his back upon the fluffy luxury of the mattress. He loses himself in the buttery yellow of the descending sun, a rhombus intersected by the cross of the window's muntin on the opposite wall. The figure wanders diagonally upwards to the right, and the more it advances towards the ceiling the more its shadowy crucifix becomes distorted. Its panel turns crimson, eventually matt and colour­less, and finally vanishes. He cannot sleep and doesn't care to read. He lies awake, listening to urban sounds, and feels already that he has lived here for a long time.

The widow comes to him in the night. She steals silently beneath his covers, grins suggestively and nestles beside him with a contented sigh. He gets up and tells her to go, but she sleeps as if dead. He tries to push her hair aside to see her face, but no matter how much he grasps it remains concealed, pressed into the plump pillow, her body immovable on the mattress. I have eaten too much, he tells himself, and retires once more, elbowing the widow in annoyance, that she may give him room. In the morning he goes out into town and puts the dream from his mind. On his return he comforts himself with fresh-baked teacakes and eggs. He eats meticulously and without haste, licking his lips, dabbing his mouth with a napkin. For dinner are served thick slices of cold roast in jelly, with carrots, parsnip and kohlrabi, mashed and blended with fresh cream. The landlady hovers about him with her obscenely perspiring bosom and fastidious solicitude; she clucks like a broody hen and presses herself so close he cannot help but feel the warmth that is exuded from her body. He surmises the woman is in need of a husband, or else the one she has is at sea. Perhaps he is the weary dragoon, a fallen or deserted – certainly absent – soldier. He has no idea, nor does he wish to know. He yearns for the fells, away from the lust this woman will surely soon awaken in him, but which until now she has unwittingly kept suppressed by stuffing him with food.

He asks her about the eastbound mail carriage and is told that the route has been discontinued; now only the packet boat goes down the coast and puts in to some of the settlements inside the fords. But she is willing to make enquiries. If the gentleman really is intent on journeying overland, there is a chance he might be taken up by a private carriage. However, traffic in that direction is rare, she says sceptically. Mostly the land is mountainous and inhospitable. They say the roads are infested with Gypsies and Jewish rabble. I've only ever been as far as Ulrikken myself, and that was far enough, she tells him.

Falck says that his decision is made: he will go by road, irrespective of whatever hindrance it might present. He thanks her for the food, returns to his room and sleeps for the rest of the afternoon.

The good weather does not last; the fells to the east force the moist sea air upwards, where it cools and falls as rain. Yet it is far from cold, even if the wind is bothersome when it sweeps down from the peaks and is funnelled through the streets. His walks along the wharf and among the squares afford him constant, almost incredulous pleasure. To amble, without obligation, without fear of being waylaid by officious colony managers or persistent coopers eager to be married; to wander freely among the crowd, a face like any other. At long last he senses the liberty he has always espoused, the freedom of Rousseau.
Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains!
He has cast away his chains. He has returned home. From street vendors he purchases good autumn apples on which he munches as he goes; he jostles at the stalls with the servant girls and women of the lower classes, bargains and gesticulates, asking questions that give rise to mirth. From foreigners he buys what they refer to as earth apples, tubers that lie baking in small fires or else are fried in pig's fat upon a pan. These were a much-despised food when he was young; now they are commonly eaten, although no self-respecting inn would serve them. When poked from the fire by the ragamuffin merchants, they are put on a plate, split apart and served with a pinch of salt and a good dollop of butter that quickly melts and runs. He dips the pale flesh of the potato in the salty, rather astringent butter and devours it with much enjoyment and an occasional pang of guilty conscience. If his landlady should discover him, he imagines, she would surely be outraged. But his hunger is incessant; it is a hunger accumulated over several years; a room inside him that has stood empty and cold, and which now is being furnished with solid fare, and the three meals a day at The Weary Dragoon are alone insufficient. In a matter of days after his coming ashore, his insides are settled, his diarrhoea has ceased, supplanted by constipation, and he must exert himself to empty his bowels. He senses his girth has increased.

The landlady has spoken with a farmer, who is willing to give him a place on his horse-drawn cart. No other opportunity has been forth­coming and she recommends instead that he take the southbound packet boat that will bring him to Christiania within the fortnight. Or why not stay here in Bergen?

Why not, indeed? But he tells her about his father, who is waiting at the other side of the country, and she understands, sheds a tear and utters something about the love between father and son. There is nothing quite like it. He refrains from comment.

Morten Falck rejoices at the prospect of watching the landscape pass by, inch by inch, from a cart.

Tell the good farmer I shall be delighted.

She slings two large curves of boiled sausage on to his plate. Clear juices ooze from the cut ends. She comes with the bowl of steaming hot mash held against her hip and gives him several dollops. He digs spoon­fuls of mashed mountain cranberries from a jar and sets ravenously about his meal.