The Day is Dark (16 page)

‘That’s right.’ Matthew tried to smile along with Thóra, but his smile came out even less convincing than hers. ‘Let’s not waste time arguing about this; it’s of little use.’ He unwrapped the scarf from the little drilled bone. It was still moist from the ice that had melted off it. Then he lifted the idol gently. Tupilak. It stared back at them with its teeth bared; the figurine may not have been very big, but it was impressively hideous. ‘I think we should go down to the village and find someone who can help us sort this out. Maybe this little statue has a rational meaning? Maybe the villagers knew about the drillers and can explain the jacket and snowshoes, as well as the bone?’ He abruptly changed gears. ‘But it may well be that these things have no connection with the body in the ice. In any case, our only hope at the moment is that the villagers can explain some of it. We should visit them straight away.’

‘They’ll never help you,’ muttered Friðrikka. ‘The villagers turned their backs on us when we went to them for assistance after Oddný Hildur’s disappearance. They won’t tell us anything.’

‘We’ll just have to see about that,’ said Thóra. ‘We have to try.’ She recalled the empty streets and the baleful stares of the girls they had seen from a distance. She felt goosebumps on her forearms but did not know whether they were caused by the cooling temperature or the thought of a hostile reception in a village at the end of earth. She thought of the girls’ piercing black eyes again and realized that she was afraid to go to the village. The trip, however, could not be avoided.

Chapter 12

21 March 2008

The village turned out to be just as Thóra had been expecting – gloomy and hostile. It was as if the inhabitants were not of this world and feared coming out into the open air. The streets were still nearly deserted and a thin fog contributed to the unreal atmosphere. They had watched the fog cover the colourful village as they drove down the hill that separated it from the work site. It seemed as though the residents had ordered it to block the sight of these outsiders – with the assistance of nature, they were concealing what strangers were only intended to see hazily. The light was also peculiar: even though the sun hung in the sky it only gave off a dim glow, and was already preparing itself to sink back down into slumber. Three of them had come on this trip: Thóra, Matthew and Dr Finnbogi. Eyjólfur had decided to try to repair the satellite dishes in the hope of re-establishing a connection with the outside world, and Alvar had offered to help him. Bella had been asked to put her handwritten inventory of the camp’s technical equipment onto the computer and Friðrikka continued to assess the status of the project. They all appeared to be happy not to have to go down to the village, and Thóra felt that Friðrikka and Eyjólfur in particular were breathing more easily as a result. This did nothing to diminish Thóra’s conviction that things were not quite right in the village; the only ones in the group who were familiar with it did not want to go back there.

The doctor turned and looked at Thóra. ‘Where should we start?’ He had stopped the car on the slope while they silently watched the fog cover the area. ‘No one place seems better than another.’

Matthew pointed out of the front window. ‘There were two or three people down at the pier. Should we take the chance that they’re still there?’ A thick fog bank now covered both the pier and the foreshore.

They drove through the village to the little harbour, seeing not a single soul along the way. ‘I don’t know whether they’re avoiding us or whether the villagers generally remain indoors, but I find this very odd.’ The doctor drove slowly, thereby allowing himself the leisure to lean over the steering wheel and have a good look around. ‘I’ve been to lots of villages like this in Greenland and generally people are very friendly and sociable. If everything were as it should be, they would all be coming out to meet us instead of avoiding us.’ Neither Thóra nor Matthew said anything, contenting themselves with looking at the lonely street as it passed slowly by. Colourful curtains were drawn across all the windows. All the doors were shut.

‘Maybe they start the day very early and then take a kind of siesta,’ said Thóra, more to herself than to her colleagues in the car.

‘I’ve never heard of that.’ The doctor sped up a bit after they’d driven past the last house. ‘They’re not about to waste what little daylight they have at this time of year by napping.’ He suddenly slowed down as the fog became denser. ‘I don’t want to drive into the sea,’ he muttered. ‘You can’t see more than two metres in front of the car.’ When they caught sight of the pier’s woodwork at the end of the gravel path he parked off to the side. The slamming of the car doors broke the silence, then the only sound was the low lapping of the waves and a thump now and then when a loose ice floe bumped against a pier pillar. They looked at each other as if they were all waiting for one of them to take the initiative and lead them out onto the pier. ‘Just so it’s clear, I’ve never heard of Greenlanders attacking tourists,’ said Finnbogi, looking down the pier, which vanished before them in the fog. ‘We’ll just talk as we go so that we don’t catch anyone off-guard.’

‘If they’re still there.’ Matthew listened carefully and announced that he thought he heard some activity in the fog. ‘We got lucky,’ he said, but Thóra couldn’t tell if he was being ironic or serious. He walked out onto the pier and Thóra and Finnbogi followed him closely.

There was barely enough room for them to walk side by side down the jetty. It was built straight out into the sea, making it possible to dock on both sides. The villagers’ fleet appeared neither large nor elegant; it included three small, unsightly motorized fishing boats and several open motorboats tied to dock rings. There was not a kayak in sight. It was unclear how far the structure extended, because they did not need to walk far before they saw the indistinct shapes of two men. Both of them had stopped what they were doing and stood motionless, watching the party approach. Their expressions revealed neither anger nor enmity; they only appeared surprised at the visit and neither of them answered Finnbogi’s greeting. The man in the boat put down a battered knife that was covered in blood and his companion on the pier raised a gloved hand to his forehead and stroked back the hair from his eyes.

‘Good day,’ said Finnbogi in Danish with a strong Icelandic accent, bowing his head curtly. ‘Are you from here?’ Thóra had to make an effort not to burst out laughing at this absurd question. The men were dressed in sealskin clothing, had dark skin, black hair, and slanted eyes – they were as Greenlandic as could be. There was even a dead seal, its belly cut open, lying on the pier, just to complete the picture. The men said nothing and just stared, as silent as before. The smile inside Thóra withered as quickly as it had bloomed. Perhaps the men were offended by such a ridiculous question. She stared at the large knife held by the man in front of them. He was covered in blood from working on the seal. The doctor tried again. ‘We are visiting the work site to the north and we’re in a bit of trouble.’ The doctor’s Danish was decent, in Thóra’s opinion, but that wasn’t saying much as she had never been very good at it herself. She still had enough high-school Danish to be able to follow the conversation – if the Greenlanders wanted to converse with them. On the other hand, Matthew understood nothing; he had enough trouble comprehending Icelandic without having to compound his difficulties by tackling another language. However, no language skills were necessary to understand that the hunters weren’t happy to see them. Yet Finnbogi was unperturbed and kept on as if the men had happily acquiesced to his request for help. ‘We’re missing two men who were at the work camp just over a week ago, and we wanted to check whether you knew anything about them.’ He paused for a moment, but then continued when their only response was to stare at him. ‘Have you seen these men at all? They could possibly have come here in the hope of finding transportation by land or sea.’

Thóra held out a printed photo of the two drillers, which they had made especially for this visit to the village. In the photo the men sat side by side in the camp’s cafeteria, wearing thick woollen jumpers, their faces red. In front of them on the table were two heaped-up plates of food. The hunters made no move to take the photo, so Thóra turned it towards them. ‘These two,’ she said, pointing with one finger above the heads of the men in the photo.

The two Greenlanders looked at the photo with what at least appeared to be sincere interest. The one standing in the boat even moved closer to get a better look. Thóra extended the photo to him carefully until he took it. He looked over the photo without a word, nodded calmly and said something to his friend in Greenlandic. The friend took the picture and regarded it for a moment before returning it to Thóra. The image was now covered in blood but Thóra acted as if she didn’t notice, taking it back without any hint of hesitation. She suspected that the little sign of interest that the men had shown would disappear quickly if she frowned.

The men looked at each other and then at them. Both shook their heads. ‘Not here,’ replied the one on the pier. His Danish seemed as good as Thóra’s high-school Danish.

Finnbogi smiled from ear to ear over what he clearly considered an outstanding step in the right direction in their relations with the natives. ‘Can you refer us to someone in the village who might be able to assist us? Is there a police station here, municipal offices or a health clinic?’

The men shook their heads again. ‘Not here,’ repeated the man on the pier.

Thóra wasn’t sure whether the man still meant the drillers in the photo or whether he was saying that there were no public services in the village. She nudged Matthew with her elbow and asked him to show the men the objects that they’d brought with them: the drilled bone with the leather strap and the Tupilak figure. He pulled them out and showed them to the men – without handing them over. The men did nothing to hide their reactions. They started in surprise upon seeing the drilled bone and could not conceal their amazement. The Tupilak appeared not to surprise them at all, until they came nearer to get a better look at it. The man in the boat even clambered up onto the pier to get closer still, incredibly agile despite his thick clothing. Then they looked at each other inquisitively and exchanged a few incomprehensible words. The man who’d been on the pier at first then turned to Matthew and asked: ‘Where did you get this?’

Since Matthew did not understand a word, the doctor interrupted. ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Do you recognize this object?’

‘Where did you get this?’ repeated the hunter. His tone was determined and he continued to look stiffly at Matthew. ‘Where did you get it?’ He held out his hand, palm up. He wanted to hold the object. It was clear to all of them that if they gave it to him, they would not get it back. Thóra suddenly felt happy that the man who’d been standing in the boat was now on the pier, because there he was far from the knife that he’d set down.

‘I don’t think we’re going to get any help here,’ said the doctor suddenly but calmly in Icelandic, smiling at the men. ‘They don’t want to do anything for us and it’s unclear whether they speak any more Danish than what we’ve already heard.’

Although Thóra had no desire whatsoever to stand there on the pier surrounded by cold fog any longer than necessary, she didn’t want to give up so easily. ‘On the ice. We found it on the ice.’

The men stared at her. ‘Where? Where on the ice?’ asked the same man as before. He pointed up along the pier. ‘On land? On the sea?’ Thóra had so entirely lost her sense of direction that it took a great effort for her not to point out to sea. In her mind she tried to recall the position of the pier in relation to the foreshore and imagined the lie of the land on both sides of the hill when she had looked over both the work site and the village. ‘There,’ she said, pointing in what she thought was the right direction. ‘By the mountains.’ Her Danish didn’t allow her to provide a better description of the landscape around the drilling rig.

At first the hunters said nothing and instead looked again at the objects, apparently frightened. They both took one step back. ‘Leave,’ said the one who spoke for both of them. ‘We are working.’ He waved both his hands to indicate that they should clear off. ‘Leave.’ The red flesh of the seal lying at his feet on the pier gleamed, and for the first time Thóra caught the body’s iron-like smell of blood, which overwhelmed the suddenly mild scent of the sea. He didn’t have to tell her twice, and she walked away. Matthew and Finnbogi followed and the doctor didn’t bother to say goodbye to the men, since it would have been a waste of time.

As they walked back to land they heard the men speaking to each other, quickly and very animatedly. Their language was unlike any other that Thóra had heard and she had difficulty distinguishing where each word ended and the next began. There was no way to understand what they said to each other but she was relieved nonetheless that they did not simply watch silently as the three of them walked away, because if she could hear their distant voices she knew they weren’t running after them up the pier, brandishing their knives. She was enormously grateful when she got back into the car.

‘Greenlanders aren’t often like that, I can tell you.’ Finnbogi started the engine and turned the pickup truck around. ‘Generally, they’re extremely nice and can’t do enough for you. I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but I’m just so surprised at all of this.’

Matthew listened attentively, his expression revealing nothing other than that he highly doubted the doctor. ‘Hopefully we’ll meet someone friendlier in this strange village,’ he said. ‘We’d better go and see, although I don’t expect we’ll find anyone who can help us. Obviously, Friðrikka was right.’

Thóra’s desire to suggest that they simply go back to camp and continue to investigate the computers was overwhelming, but instead she stared silently out of the window. She watched how the fog cleared almost completely the farther it drew from their sight. It was a short trip and soon the houses reappeared, lonely and abandoned, or so it seemed. Her attention was drawn particularly towards one of the houses, rather ugly and ramshackle. It looked to her as if something had moved in the window.