Читать книгу White Shadow - Roy Jacobsen - Страница 9

To survive on an island you have to search. Ingrid had been searching since she was born, for berries, eggs, down, fish, shells, sinker stones, slate, sheep, flowers, boards, twigs . . . an islander’s eyes are always searching, no matter what their heads or hands might be doing, restless glances across islands and the sea which fasten onto the slightest change, register the most insignificant signs, see spring before it arrives and snow before it daubs ditches and hollows with strokes of white, they see the signs before animals die and before children stumble and they spot the invisible fish in the sea beneath flocks of white wings, sight is the beating heart of the islander.

But when Ingrid went out this morning and saw from the weather that she wouldn’t be rowing to the main island today either, she had a sense she was searching for something that couldn’t be found, however hard, however intently she stared, it was like the feeling of making a mistake before you make it; and only the same jagged blankets of cloud gliding across the sky, releasing squalls of rain here and there over the restless sea, no life to be seen.

She walked south along the beaches in the east and found no seals and no clothes and was filled with a growing unease, which commanded her to talk aloud because sooner or later we need to hear a voice, even if it is only our own, every islander knows this, so she said out loud that she had to get this cat at all costs and started in surprise at the unfamiliar sound, repeated the words until they became ordinary and comforting, then she was stricken by further unease, the sense that she had lost her way on her own island, or that she was on a different island, or something even worse: the sense that she wasn’t alone on this island of hers.

~

She had observed how quickly the eagles had torn the seals to shreds, she had seen the blood on the snow, which was covered by fresh snow, and resurfaced like a faint memory. She walked faster, trampled through a pile of seaweed and came across more clothes, rags, brown and wet, with clusters of wood shavings like the stuffing in a doll, though with differing stages of wear, as if they had belonged to different people, with different customs and lives. She spread the garments out on the snow, plus a cardigan and a jacket, and tried to match them as they must have belonged together, making one big person and two slightly smaller ones, and she had one item of clothing left over, half a person, and they were all men.

She stuffed the clothes into the string bag she always carried with her, intending to burn them at the northernmost tip of the island. But they were wet, and they couldn’t be buried in the frozen ground either, so she hung them beside the man already on the rack and decided to walk all the way around the island again.

In the bay where she had found the first clothes, she spotted the eagles again, the white-headed giant and the smaller brown one, perched on a rock in the sea, beating their wings, pecking and clawing at each other as though fighting over prey.

But it was no rock, all around was open water, a hundred fathoms deep, and the rock was moving with the waves.

She ran out to the headland, was about to turn back to get the telescope, but slipped on a stone and caught sight of another rock where there shouldn’t have been a rock either, and it too was moving, disappearing and reappearing like a driftwood log, a whale’s back. And above them both hovered clouds of cackling, angry birds which converged and dispersed, dived and pecked and fought in a swirl of feathers and noise until everything disappeared from view in a fierce snowstorm.

Ingrid covered her eyes with her hands and cried out. Nausea rose and her heart pounded, she had to get down on all fours, unable to breathe as she realised what she had seen.

She pressed wet snow to her face and ran home, passing yet more clothes, two whole outfits and a pair of breeches without a jacket, a torn grey cloak . . . swept them along with her as she ran through the gardens and hung them on the rack, made it to the house and lit all the lamps, also in the sitting room.

She stoked both wood stoves and stood in her dripping coat staring at a headless army on the rack, flapping in the soundless wind, one with one leg, one with one arm, a torso, two gaily fluttering cloaks, one without an arm . . . when it occurred to her that she had actually bothered with them because they were personal effects, no matter how torn and worthless they might be, and the wood shavings?

Ingrid went down into the Swedes’ quay house and found the telescope, a heavy, extendable cylinder of something that resembled black moulded leather, with brass rings and two small focus wheels, she vaguely remembered that her father never used it because it distorted his vision, and now she decided she didn’t need it anyway, she knew what she had seen.

She put down the telescope as if it were burning her fingers, fixed the two dry nets hanging on the pegs until her fingers were cold, then dragged them through the snow, tied the anchor rope to the eye of the first net and watched the cork floats bobble out into the waves, attached the smooth slate sinkers, careful not to crack them against the rocks, tied on the next net and pulled, two nets, the usual fifteen fathoms from land, then her eyes rose from the line and the sea to Moltholmen and she saw the first body.

The line slipped from her hands, she plunged into the sea and grabbed hold of it, waded ashore and fastened it, placed the palms of her hands on her knees and straightened her back, stared across the sound and still saw what she saw, what she had seen the previous day, yet she had slept like Nelly nonetheless.

She smacked her mittens together and saw the man lying half way up on the rock with his legs dangling in the sea as though someone had moored him to the anchor peg.

But the sea was falling and he would soon be on dry land, until the next high tide lifted him loose again and carried him away, and flocks of screaming harpies would dive down and tear at this brown figure.

Ingrid walked north to the boat shed and reflected that she had been to the barn loft twice, once to check the sacks of down and once to fetch some wool; there, too, she had seen something without understanding what it was, and she had left the house countless times, but had not been round at the back where the fruit bushes were, they never went there in the winter, who would ever think of walking around their own house . . . ?

She ran past the fish rack and over the marsh, hesitated before opening the porch door, went in and stood stock still in her own home, then ran with the blood pounding in her ears from one room to the next and paused and ran out again, around the house, and saw the tracks just visible beneath the new snow, as though someone had dragged a sack through the garden and up the barn bridge.

She walked up and confirmed the doors were locked with the bolt drawn on the inside, she ran around the building and into the cowshed and remembered she had seen drops of water on the steps, thinking they had come from a leak in the roof, climbed up into the hayloft and in the dim light she saw two legs sticking out from under some old sheepskins. She pulled the skins aside and saw a middle-aged man, bald, with bluish-black bristles in a wasted, chalk-white face, a dead man. But someone had closed his eyes and arranged his hands on his chest, as though praying.

She went further in and caught sight of another man, under two sacks of down and an old horse cloth. She pulled it off him and saw he was wearing the same brown rags, padded with the same wood shavings that spilled out of the sleeves and holes, and above all this a uniform with badges and stripes, a German uniform; he, too, was hollow-cheeked, bald and lean, but he had no bristles, he was too young, and he was alive.