Walking Into the Night (5 page)

13

She sat up in bed and stretched a slender finger towards the window by her head. A sudden shiver ran through her when its tip touched the icy pane, but instead of withdrawing her hand, she wiped the mist from the glass and put the wet finger into her mouth. The room was warming up; she had been asleep when the maid came in and lit the stove. All was quiet and she lay back, pulling the down comforter up to her chin, turning her head so that she could see out of the window, and waiting as she did as a child for a bird to fly past. She guessed it would be a tern—no, a sandpiper—and lay still to see if she was right.

She had arrived home in Eyrarbakki yesterday morning after being abroad for a year and a half, having left in the fall of 1907. Her father came down to the jetty to meet her, while the maid, Katrin, hung back, half-hidden, peeping shyly now and then from behind a stack of empty barrels. She had been with the family since Elisabet was a small child and had missed her every day that she was away.

She thought her father had aged during her absence. His cheeks were wet when he hugged her at the foot of the gangplank, his hands cold and the look in his eyes more distant than before, as if some part of him had taken its leave.

“My sunbeam,” he kept saying. “My sunbeam has come home.”

She was home, yet her mind roamed ceaselessly. She smiled absentmindedly when Kristjan appeared in her thoughts, brushed the hair off her brow and stood still, remembering every detail of his face.

Wood crackled in the stove. The silence in the house seemed more marked after the dancing yesterday. It was heavier, more uncompromising than usual, as if making sure that the echo of the party would not dispel it. The celebration had gone on past midnight; Elisabet was tired after her journey but her father couldn’t contain his joy and gave the same speech three times, the last time standing on the long dining-room table, breaking off only when he lost his footing.

“And now my sunbeam has come home and it’s as if a light has been brought into the house and now everything will be bright and beautiful and good. Lisa, my dear, come here.”

“Father . . .”

“Now, now, come to your old man because I’m going to tell our guests—now I’m going to announce to our guests—that you’re engaged.”

The guests cheered with excitement.

“Don’t be cross with me, Lisa dear, I just couldn’t wait.”

“Who’s the lucky man?” called out Paulsen the pharmacist.

“Kristjan Benediktsson, he’s called, from the West Fjords, a fine lad. Fine lad, I say. They met in Copenhagen.”

“When you weren’t looking!”

“Hey, Paulsen, I’ll get you for that, you rascal!”

And then she was hugged and kissed.

“Dear Elisabet, my darling girl, who are his parents?” . . . “When’s the wedding?” . . . “Is he still in Copenhagen?” . . . “When’s he coming over?”

Her father flung his arms round his friend Paulsen and, waving to the harmonica player to strike up a tune, danced with him across the room.

The party guests linked hands and formed a ring in the living room. Placing her in the middle, they surged up to her and away again by turns. She closed her eyes, imagining he was there with her, and danced alone, or rather floated until her father broke out of the ring and took her in his arms.

The house seemed weary after the joyful night. Even the chimes of the dining room clock seemed slower than usual. But her room had warmed up and there was a comforting crackling sound from the stove; when she was small she used to believe she could understand the words it whispered to her as she was dropping off to sleep. It never failed to tell her what she wanted to hear.

A black house with open sea to the south, behind it the moors and bleak open spaces, around it huts, outbuildings, and the fishermen’s bunkhouse. Eyes in the window upstairs and a clock striking in the dining room below; otherwise silence. There was no one about, the gravel path along the shore was empty; there was no movement except when the wind flattened the pale grasses by the path.

A sandpiper flew by.

14

For centuries, Eyrarbakki, a small village thirty miles from Reykjavik, had been the main port and trading center for the southern part of the country. Elisabet’s father ran both the store and the fishing boats that operated from the harbor; Iceland belonged to the Danish crown and he held his agency direct from the king. He’d even persuaded Queen Louise of Denmark, wife of King Christian IX, to paint the altarpiece in the church that he’d had built in 1890. After a drop too much, he used to say that he’d done this in order to get an accurate picture of the Savior, for surely royalty must be better acquainted with Him than the great unwashed proletariat.

It was late in April that the first ships of spring arrived at Eyrarbakki, impressive vessels, two-masted schooners of eighty to a hundred tons, seldom crewed by fewer than six men. Lighters plied back and forth from their anchorage, ferrying coal, salt, and grain to shore. Rye was usually carried in the hold under the loose goods, while wheat and barley were shipped in sacks. Iron for horseshoes, roofing iron, and nails were packed in crates, as was cloth. Planks and boards were shipped separately. Floorboards and panels were hand-planed at her father’s workshop between the store and the warehouses where the coffee was kept alongside sugar and raw spirits. The alcohol was thinned with rainwater from the store roof before being poured into hogsheads with their three-way faucets; one for bottles, another for casks, and the third for barrels. One evening when her father visited the store after a drop too much, he mistook one of the hogsheads in the shadowy corner for an ox. Running home, he fetched a rifle, woke one of the workmen, and asked him to come with him. As they crashed through the door and rushed inside, he fired off a shot at the hogshead. After that, the hogsheads were known as ox-heads.

Landing the cargo took up to a week, and then, in turn, work began on ferrying wool, saltfish, and cod-liver oil out to the ships. The wool was transported to Eyrarbakki by trains of packhorses, and the farmers often had to camp by the shop wall for two to three days before their turn came to be served.

She liked the smell of the horses and opened the window by the piano to let it into the room. The music carried out into the stillness and the farmers edged nearer to listen. They caught a glimpse of a pale cheek in the window, through gauzy white curtains decorated with yellow flowers and butterflies flitting among them. Some of the farmers sat on the garden wall, silently chewing long-stemmed grass, putting their heads together now and then to whisper, so they wouldn’t drown out the rippling notes.

Sometimes she looked up, yet they sensed she wasn’t looking at them but out over the bay at the white sails which the mild wind flapped occasionally as if to amuse itself. For a brief moment— then she would look down again, and the long, slender fingers would continue to send their songs out into the quiet afternoon.

Her father had forbidden her to go out alone while the ships were anchored in the bay. Enjoying the sea and shore from the parlor window, she didn’t mind, she didn’t particularly want to go out. She knew the reason for this ban, though she never told him that she knew. She had been about ten when it happened.

She never knew the girl’s name. She was from the southwest, a fisherman’s daughter. It was her second summer loading cargo at Eyrarbakki. She had been stacking saltfish in the hold during the day and the men had been friendly and said something to her that she didn’t understand, so she just smiled because they had smiled at her. They appeared to be only a few years older than she was, of average height, one dark, the other fair.

Most of the day had been overcast and still but in the evening the wind rose and it rained. She had finished her dinner and was on her way to the bunkhouse when she met them. They smiled. This time she didn’t smile back because something in their manner made her uneasy. They had been drinking. The fair one took a swig and offered her the bottle. She shook her head and tried to slip past them, along the path by the shore, past the pump-house. It was at that point that they seized her arm and dragged her inside.

Later that evening when she sat in Elisabet’s father’s office she couldn’t for the life of her remember which of them had grabbed her first. She had been weeping but now sat silently, staring ahead with empty eyes. Her sister spoke for her and described the incident. She was a year or two older, and it had been her decision to come to the boss for help.

He sat in his office chair, at first staring out of the window at the fog hovering along the shore and hiding the ships and the breakwater beyond them. It was only when he lowered his head that he realized his hands were clenched under the desk, the knuckles white. He loosened his grip.

Elisabet was awakened by the commotion. She got out of bed and went downstairs in a white nightdress which covered her thin body down to her ankles. The office door was open a crack; she followed the sound, stopped outside.

She saw her father stand up, go to the girl, and get down on his knees with difficulty before her, touching her hand gently. She could see his face, but only the back of the girl’s head. Her hair was tied in a bun. She had obviously washed up before coming to see him.

“Could you describe them for me, dear?” she heard her father say.

The girl nodded but remained silent. Her father waited, shifting his weight from left leg to right.

“There, there, dear,” he said at last and took her hand.

She started to sob but then spoke. She remembered the cold, damp, mossy walls, the lapping of the waves in the fog, the rocks on the shore which could be glimpsed from the pump-house door before the fog hid them again. She remembered the singing of the water, the taste of blood in her mouth. And her feet making wet marks in the grass when she finally stumbled home.

Later that night, when her father had summoned the ship’s captain and the men had been brought ashore, Elisabet put on a blue cape and went outside. The wind had dropped. In the east there was a hint of red between the clouds. The sea was silent. She walked lightly down the path by the shore, not stopping until she came to the bunkhouse where the girl was staying.

The girl’s eyes were open, the others slept. When she reached the girl she drew from her pocket the locket that she had brought with her. It had been her mother’s; there was a picture of a meadowsweet inside. She leaned down to the girl and laid it round her neck. Then slipped out.

The next day the girl told her sister that an angel had visited her in the night.

On the way home Elisabet stopped by the pump-house and went inside. Blue light filtered through a slit in the roof; she put out her hand so that the ray of light illuminated it, then closed her fist. The cold silence was broken only by the clear, pure voice of the water. Elisabet listened. When she was convinced that its song hadn’t changed, she went back out into the dawn light and headed for home.

15

She stood by the kitchen fire, warming herself. A platter on the table beside her held two freshly caught haddock, their scales glistening. She wished she could follow the advice of Mrs. Andersen, whom she had lodged with in Copenhagen, and fillet and fry them with mushrooms and parsley, but she didn’t know how. She moved closer to the flames, stretching out her hands and listening in silence to the crackling fire.

She didn’t notice when Katrin crept in. Katrin had avoided her since she came home, as if shy of her. She stopped in the doorway and coughed. Elisabet turned round and smiled at her, then continued warming herself. She was still chilled after her walk along the shore.

Katrin spoke softly, muttering into her chest:

“Aren’t you going to finish embroidering the panel, then?”

“What?”

“The panel you were halfway through when you left for Copenhagen.”

Katrin had had meningitis as a child and people who didn’t know her well said it showed. Elisabet never thought about it. She and Katrin had always been like family.

Elisabet beckoned her over and shifted so that there was room for both of them in the warmth from the hearth.

“That embroidery with the little castles. And deer and trees.”

“Are there deer on it?”

“Big deer. Almost as big as the castles.”

Katrin stretched out her hands like Elisabet, though she had been warm all morning. Elisabet took them in her own hands and ran her fingers over them. They were rough.

“Wouldn’t
you
like to finish the embroidery?” asked Elisabet.

“Me? No, it’s yours.”

“You can have it. I’d forgotten all about it.”

“Thank you, Lisa. I’m so happy you’re back.”

Water trickled into the corner sink in a thin, faltering stream. Otherwise, all was quiet. Elisabet noticed a carpenter striding along the path outside, entering the storehouse by the garden wall and emerging with a couple of planks. He looked up at the sky. Life crawled forward. Nothing had changed. Almost nothing.

“Two weeks,” said Katrin.

“One week.”

“Until you get married.”

“Until he comes home.”

Each day was like the next, the sea in the morning and the sea in the evening, wood in the stove when she awoke, the piano in the parlor, the wind in the birch scrub and the smell of burning kindling from the store where they smoked sheep’s heads. Her father asleep in his chair at the end of the day, a book in his lap, his glasses perched on the tip of his nose, mouth open.

“Lisa?” said Katrin softly.

“Yes?”

“When you’re married . . .”

“Yes?”

“. . . and your father is dead . . . You know how much I care about him . . .”

It was on the tip of Elisabet’s tongue to say that her father was as strong as an ox, though he was getting on. He’s still very healthy, she was about to say, but didn’t.

“. . . then what’ll happen to me?”

“Katrin, dear Katrin. Please don’t worry. Father’s not about to go anywhere, but when it does happen, you’ll stay with me. Always. With us.”

“Do you think he’ll have me? Your husband?”

“Of course.”

“I’ve been so worried.”

She leaned against Elisabet, resting her head on her shoulder.

“Tell me about him . . .”