Читать книгу White Shadow - Roy Jacobsen - Страница 13

Ingrid made a hideaway out of the closet behind the door. It was flush with and indistinguishable from the wood panelling in the South Chamber and resembled a downy nest. And as he could walk without difficulty now, she led him out into the darkness, waited while he sat on the lavatory and heard him talking through the open door. They walked south through the gardens without a word, but she could hear him weeping. She pointed to the sky and the northern lights, unwonted cascades of rainbows at the wrong time of year, recited the names of pitch-black mainland mountains, taught him the words water, wind, snow, grass, of which there was none, seaweed, boat, fish, cat . . .

One evening she took him to the barn loft and pulled the horse cloth off the dead man and asked who he was, she had laid the uniform over him.

He didn’t look at the huddled-up mummy, but muttered Alexander twice. She looked at him in surprise.

He said Sasha.

She held up the uniform and asked if they were friends and had the same name. He nodded vigorously and shook as if indicating the cold, and she thought he must have stolen the uniform to keep warm, realising at once that also the wood shavings meant warmth and that they, too, suggested he was a Slav. She asked whether he was Russian and he said Da, but only after she had repeated the question three times. She asked if he was a soldier and he answered yes and no, she had never felt more attractive, and she stopped asking questions.

~

She got him onto the stern thwart in the boat, where he sat like a terrified landlubber while she rowed through the sound between the island and Moltholmen and loosened the anchor lines on both sides of the sound. They towed the nets after them in the silvery wake, lifted them and dragged them onto the quay without seeing what they were doing. But there were no birds now. And she tried to console him.

They walked home, undressed each other, washed each other and lay in the North Chamber like husband and wife. Ingrid didn’t give a thought to her childhood, her parents, Barbro, Suzanne, Lars, everything she had missed, all the things she herself had messed up and destroyed, it felt as if she lacked for nothing.

She mumbled to the roof beams that tomorrow she would row to the main island, buy some food, get a cat and find out what had happened.

She could feel from his arm that he was nodding.

She asked if he understood and decided he did.

She said cat and meowed. He said Koshka and she could feel his smile against her fingertips. She ordered him to stay in the hideaway she had made and not to leave whatever he heard, shots or screams, he was to lie low from the moment she closed the door to the moment she opened it again, it might be a few hours, half a day at most. He said spasiba and cat and hideaway.

~

Ingrid thought she had everything under control when she hoisted the sail and glided over to the main island in the thick drifting snow, filled with hope that she could rid Barrøy of mortal remains and suspicion, a hope only the occupying forces could realise, if she played her cards right.

She moored as usual below the trading post, ran up to the village noticing not only an unaccustomed stillness, but that some of its fundamental essence had been ripped away by force, guards, vehicles, horses, an emptiness caused by something she was unable to put her finger on.

In the store she heard from Margot that British planes had sunk a German troop carrier a few miles further south. Hundreds had been killed, maybe thousands.

Ingrid said:

“Hva?”

Yes, Margot had heard about it from her son, who delivered goods to the Fort at the north of the island.

“War thar soldiers aboard?” Ingrid said.

“That’s hva they seid.”

“German?”

Margot said yes, and her expression changed, she scrutinised Ingrid’s face, and Ingrid was no longer in control of matters; she asked if the camp behind the school had been abandoned. Margot said most of them had moved to the Fort, where the radio, the P.O.W. camps and the artillery positions were, but the Kommandant is here today.

Ingrid blinked and looked around. She asked if Jenny and Hanna still had any cats.

Margot said that was probably all they had, this mother and daughter, with whom Ingrid had salted herring since she was a young girl and who lived in a grey cottage north of the canning factory.

But when she left the store, her unclear mission faltered again, then she strode up to the camp behind the school, where she was stopped by a uniformed guard. She said she had to speak to the duty officer. He squirmed and said in broken Norwegian that this was not possible.

Ingrid said Tote Tote and flashed the fingers of both hands twice.

He lit a cigarette and stepped up close to her, made a few menacing gestures and fired off a tirade of searching questions, of which she understood not one word.

She repeated Tote Tote and held up her fingers again.

He huffed and glowered in the direction of some barracks at the other end of some open land, said “Follow me”, and took her to an office that was so hot it almost took her breath away. A bald, middle-aged officer was entrenched behind an imposing desk, a man with a blond moustache, a pink scar across his face and large, artless eyes, a man who was about to poke a spoon that was far too big into a boiled egg, while talking excitedly into a telephone receiver.

He looked up at her and nodded angrily at a chair.

Ingrid sat down and stared with fascination at the spoon in the hairy fist, it resembled a buoy, while the officer continued to talk on the phone as if she weren’t there and the soldier saw his chance to escape.

Eventually the officer rang off and shifted the spoon into his other hand. Ingrid repeated Tote Tote, again using her fingers, told him where she lived and said she needed help. He appeared to understand what she was talking about, shook his head as if to rid himself of some discomfort and said, “Jawohl, they had been struck by a disaster, eine riesige Katastrofe. Die Leichen sind überall auf den Inseln.” There were bodies everywhere.

Again Ingrid had the feeling she was searching for something that didn’t exist, a chill ran through her and she asked for permission to go. He blinked:

“Selbstverständlich. Ich hab’ Sie nicht eingeladen.”

Of course. I didn’t invite you here.

She staggered out into the cold and walked down to her boat, but by the canning factory she made a sharp turn north and entered Hanna and Jenny’s hot, ashen-grey kitchen, greeted them and said she had heard they had some kittens.

Hanna said yes, they did, and told her to sit down, to take it easy, Ingrid didn’t look well.

With a brief laugh Ingrid asked what she looked like then, realising she couldn’t say anything about the bodies here either, as though she couldn’t trust them, these people she had known all her life, as if they were from a different island. Hanna looked down at her knitting and asked if it wasn’t lonely out there now, on Barrøy.

Ingrid said yes, it was, that was why she wanted a cat.

Wouldn’t she rather stay with them for a while until Barbro returned?

And now Hanna looked straight at her again.

Ingrid said it wasn’t certain Barbro would be coming back.

Hanna looked dubious, but shouted into the adjacent room.

They heard Jenny’s voice and the clatter of doors. It was a clean, freshly scrubbed home, the chimney didn’t draw properly, there was a hiss under the washing boiler. Hanna said they had kept this kitten because of the checked pattern on its back, was Ingrid hungry?

Ingrid said she didn’t want to eat others out of house and home.

Jenny came with the kitten in a basket, over which she had placed a piece of herring netting so that it could stick a paw through the mesh. Ingrid held it in her fingers and asked what its name was.

“Hva tha likes,” Jenny said, before she too started studying her face, wouldn’t Ingrid like to stay there for a few days?

Ingrid smiled, said no, thank you, and left, hurried back to the store, as if there was hope yet, someone she could tell, in any event she needed to buy some items, and that was as far as she got, then she remembered she also wanted to redeem the clock, would Margot take ration coupons instead of money, for the time being?

Margot asked what in heaven’s name she should do with ration coupons.

“But just teik it. It’s not worken’.”

She went into the storeroom and fetched the pendulum clock, wrapped it in sacking and rolled the weights in a towel, put everything in the box of provisions and Ingrid walked out with a double-edged relief – it was like nausea – and down the road and clambered aboard the færing; she placed the basket with the cat inside on the stern thwart, as on a throne, between two net sinkers so that she could keep an eye on it during the journey.

The wind was still coming from the south-west, she had to row, initially at an angle to the waves, then head-on, the swell had never been greater and the day never shorter. She rowed too fast, became agitated and sweaty, rowed even faster and the sea splashed into the boat. In the lee of Oterholmen she had to bale water and drifted north. She rowed too fast again – the cat yowled beneath the spray from the sea – and rammed the landing stage on Barrøy only after navigating through waves that became smaller and smaller the closer she came to the island, and by then it was dark.

~

She ran up with the basket and lit the lamps in the kitchen and sitting room, lit the stove, then went upstairs, took a deep breath and opened the closet door, holding the cat in front of her like a shield.

He slumped like a sack in the sudden light. Ingrid stood there without speaking. He reached out for the kitten, said Koshka and smiled, and rubbed his nose against the kitten’s.

Ingrid asked if he was German, Deutsch . . . ?

He didn’t understand.

Distraught, she told him that a German troop carrier had been bombed and noticed he had removed the bandage on one hand, he must have used his teeth, his skin was healing, his fingernails looked like tiny pink shells.

She called out something she didn’t understand herself, went down and out again and put the boat away, carried the box of provisions back up and in the kitchen frenetically began to make a length of netting, which she suspended from the edge of the vent in the ceiling. The kitten climbed up a few feet and hung by one claw, let itself down again and sat meowing and striking out with both paws while Alexander smiled quizzically, at her – was his name Alexander?

She went upstairs and lowered the yarn netting, the cat sank its claws in it, she lifted it all the way up, it looked around the North Chamber, she carried it down into the kitchen again, went back up, repeated the process and Alexander clapped in silent acknowledgement as the cat at last realised it had been given a ladder.

Ingrid said she was going to call it “Koshka”.

He corrected her, pronounced the word twice and said ja, ja, when she got it right.

But she didn’t smile.

She asked him whether he was German or Russian.

He wrapped his arms around her, again she saw the far too small egg and the large spoon and began to scream and pummel him with her fists. He managed to push her down onto the bench and sat on her, speaking a language that still didn’t sound like German. Then he began to sing, a children’s song, which didn’t sound German either, lay down beside her and breathed in her ear until their breathing harmonised and neither of them spoke.

Ingrid buried her fingers into his short, black hair, sniffed and smelled only soap, kissed him and said he had to fetch some wood, she didn’t have the energy, she was dead, did he understand what that meant – dead?

He smiled and pulled on a jumper, went out and came in with wood and peat as if he lived there and stoked the fire as if he lived there, whoever he was, and he stood looking at her, he was such a shiningly beautiful monument of a young man that she had to look away.

Then he said something she interpreted as a question, and she nodded.

He began to cook some food, humming the same children’s song while mixing dough and rolling it into plate-sized round shapes and adding bits of cold, boiled fish and butter, folded them over like fat pancakes on a tray and put them in the oven.

He lay down beside her and let her do what she wanted with him as an unfamiliar smell spread through the room. They ate in silence, went to the loft and lay there together until the first storm hit the southern wall.

Ingrid said through her tears that now they didn’t need to get up. No-one would be coming to the island.

They fell asleep and lay at each other’s side the whole of the next day, and the night thereafter, listening to the weather and getting up to eat and play with the cat; the storm forced them to shout, even those things which should only have been whispered.

After the storm abated she asked if he could repair a clock.

He said yes and asked if she had any tools.

She said she had already shown them to him, didn’t he remember?

He looked at her questioningly.

She repeated “tools” and explained where they were. He nodded energetically and laughed, wrapped the eiderdown around him, went down and didn’t reappear.

So Ingrid also got up and went downstairs to see what he was doing. He was standing naked in the kitchen with the eiderdown around his feet and hanging the clock on a nail in the west wall, he pulled the weights on each chain to wind the clock and stood still until they could hear the ticking above the wind, which was now subsiding. The hands showed a quarter to nine, but it was night. He turned and seemed to be asking what time he should set it to. Ingrid said to leave it as it was. Then they went upstairs again, and no-one came.