Читать книгу White Shadow - Roy Jacobsen - Страница 14

There are many ways to row a boat, and he didn’t know any of them. He flailed irritably with the oars in the tholepins and wrestled with the wrist straps while Ingrid sat on a sheepskin in the stern laughing at him. She explained things to him and pointed out skerries and islands only just visible in the darkness. He tried to do better and wanted praise, like a child, and she gave him praise, thinking he was a child, and that he was getting more and more handsome by the day, and that it was unbearable.

She told him to row over the sound in the direction of Gjesøya, then south on the seaward side, where the swell was becoming increasingly heavy. His fingers were too short and he thrashed the oars against the breakers. They changed places and Ingrid took them around the island and into a gap in the rock face, where there was a natural harbour, moored the boat to a driftwood log and said there was something she wanted to show him.

They waded up through squeaking, snow-covered seaweed into the hollow, where the Barrøyers had once broken new ground and came to a haybarn they called the pavilion. Ingrid opened the door and told him to go in. They sat on some old, dusty hay listening to the sea. She said the weather would calm down before long, and sooner or later someone would be coming to Barrøy, so this would be his hideaway, words he understood, this is a different island, she said, they will have dogs with them, and he understood that, too.

They listened to the sea.

He laid a hand on her thigh, and began to talk in a new voice, it sounded like confidences, or warnings; he became excited and gesticulated, squeezed her and wanted to illustrate something or other, and Ingrid was pleased she didn’t have the language to ask him how old he was.

She clasped his mutilated hand and held it to her face and let him speak. Now it sounded more like he was trying to persuade her, which again she was pleased she didn’t understand, he was beginning to regain his strength, to rediscover something he had forgotten, something he thought was lost, and a new weariness began to make its presence felt, the beginning of a darkness she knew she could not bear, a life without him.

~

She forced him to row on the way back and sat in such a way that she could cry without him seeing. He saw nonetheless, drew in the oars and sat motionless. Then he placed a hand on each of her shoulders. She rested her cheek on the mittens, but without turning her head. She didn’t say anything, either. They drifted. Then he carried on rowing.

*

Next evening they went out again. She taught him how to use a hand line, how to hold a fish, cut its throat and gut it, forced him out into the heavy swell on the seaward side and showed him that wet mittens are warm, and how a rowing boat can be thrown into the breakers, but be sucked out again after a bit of magic with the oars. She said it was up to him whether he froze or was injured, and now his hair was a thick, jet-black mat in which she could bury her fingers. And that night she couldn’t sleep, he could, his breathing was as peaceful and regular as Nelly’s, and that made her even more afraid.

She got up and looked out: the sea was as smooth as oil in all directions.

She started packing eiderdowns, rugs and clothes, filled the food chest as if she were kitting a man out for a fishing season in Lofoten, woke him and told him to get dressed, in a whisper.

He looked at her in puzzlement.

She rowed them south through the sound and into the gap on Gjesøya. They walked up to the barn and lay together in the hay until the sun was high in the sky, and she said she would return every evening, with food and water, and herself, and took her leave. He held her back, they lay down in the hay and took their leave of one another, and when she finally rowed away she had never been a tinier stump of driftwood in the sea.

Back at the house on Barrøy she set about erasing his traces and tracks, and hers. She looked in the mirror and smeared soot on her face, went from one window to the next, peering north and east, nobody was coming.

She felt stupid and washed her face, tidied up and played with Koshka the cat, and now she couldn’t sleep in the North Chamber. She fetched the telescope from the quay house and lay in her parents’ bed in the South Chamber staring at Gjesøya, through the treacherous telescope without seeing anything at all, and she didn’t shut an eye until the night made her blind.

~

When next morning too the islands resembled specks of rust on a shiny mirror, she felt even more stupid and rowed south and took him out in the boat so the waves could make him seasick and they had something to laugh at. She set him ashore again, they waited until he had regained his balance, then they went out again. They fished and gutted the catch, she left him on the island and rowed home, turned and rowed back, mooring the boat to the log, and lay with him in the barn until darkness fell. And even though the new wind was no more than a light breeze, she decided that the sea was too rough and stayed there until yet another day dawned, before rowing home in thick snow and sleet and arriving for the second time in a cold house which she had to spend the rest of the day making habitable, fortunately it cost her all her reserves of energy.

She wound up the clock and adjusted the hands, played with the cat, made some food, and wanted to card and spin, but she wasn’t able to.

She lay in the South Chamber with the telescope and watched the day wane over Gjesøya, grey sea, the occasional flutter of birds, until they, too, passed out of sight.

She got up again, dressed, walked around the island in a snow shower and found nothing and went home again, intending to make some coffee. She stumbled on the even floor, got to her feet again and slumped into the rocking chair, fell asleep and dreamed of a pine cone she had drawn at school as a child. She woke up, feeling refreshed, her skin twitching as if someone had blown on her, went up to the loft and got out her old sketch pad and crayons, remembering the teacher who had once, with a triumphant expression, placed a huge pine cone on the desk and told the children to draw it, a gigantic seed vessel, the like of which none of them had ever seen. Ingrid’s cone came to resemble the shell of a snail, which the teacher laughed at. But then all of the children’s cones resembled snail shells, conches or seashells, to a greater or lesser degree, and Ingrid went up to bed determined to have him write something before he left her – for he would be leaving, he had to, that was the whole point – whether she could read what he wrote or not, one day she would understand.