Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482) (56 page)

There were hardly any passengers left. Einar Sigvatsson remained, with his youngest son Arnvid, but his wife and daughter and all his brother's people had been taken, with ogres and trolls now snatching people right and left. Katrina felt very sad about little Ingigerd, but most likely the child was in heaven. Einar appeared half crazed. Øistein said to him: Now we know for certain that they mean us ill, so I propose that we attack them before they thin us out again.

Einar answered: That's all right for you to say, because you have no children, and your wife could get through life without you, but some people prefer not to leave their dependents alone in the world.

Then Kristina said: Let me go and speak again with Captain Gull, which everyone approved, even Øistein, because it postponed the moment when something must be risked.

So once more she crept forward, and there stood the captain, looking as ready and cheerful as ever, although most of the crew had disappeared, and just then the purser leaped headfirst over the side, burrowing greedily into the earth. As Kristina had borne him a grudge ever since the death of Reverend Johansen, this sight caused her less horror than one might have expected; and in any event she had come on business.

The master inquired how she was, and she could not but reply that she was well. Something about him put her at ease, as if even now matters must come out for the best. Aside from Øistein, he was the only one whom she now could see and hear without some sensation of distance. He smiled at her, and his blue eyes sparkled. Laying a hand on her shoulder, he remarked: Sooner or later, my good woman, emigrants discover that patience is better than hope. Because when hope is gone—

But I still have that, said Kristina, confidingly drawing out the blue jewel that Reverend Johansen had bequeathed her.

May I see it? he courteously inquired.

She placed it in his hand, and for a moment he closed his fingers around hers. Holding the lovely stone close to his eyes, he studied it for an instant. Then he blew on it, and at once it turned black.

Counterfeit, said Kristina dully. Who would have thought . . . ?

Not at all! laughed Captain Gull. But it was perishable. I've preserved it for you, in a less brittle form. Don't thank me. We're through the worst, my dear! Go encourage the others, for I've got much to do.

When he returned the stone into her hand, she discovered that it had grown heavy and cold. Nothing could be accomplished by complaining, so she slipped it into her pocket and crept back into that tight and chilly coffin where the last passengers lay, and all of them as utterly white as halibut-flesh. She had little to tell them; their voices came faint in her ears. The matter of the jewel confused and in some measure discredited her, so that it seemed just as well left locked up in her breast. Einar kept praying aloud with his son. When she offered to share the last piece of flatbread, they would not take it. She could barely hear her own husband, who whispered something about
this villainous Captain Gull, whom I hope to see hanged in chains.

Now came footfalls, and to avoid turning into figures of bygone people scrimshawed on cracked ivory they fell silent and lay very still. As usual, it was no use. This time, instead of sailors it was trolls who threw back the lid and reached in. They bit people's heads off and ate them right there. Then they went away, and only Øistein, Kristina and Einar were left.

They lay in silence until they heard someone coming. Desperately Kristina seized her husband's hand. He could feel the blood pulsing in her fingers. For his part, dread tightened down upon him like his dead father's great vise, the diameter of whose screwthreaded cylinder exceeded a grown man's clasp; for a moment it comforted him to remember those hand-planes and pulleys, the staves steaming, his father smilingly tightening the iron hoop on a new barrel, then shaking hands with Mr. Kielland's father, with the wooden-wheeled cart of crates, baskets and sacks all lashed down tight. Øistein encouraged himself: My father was never afraid of anything.

He stared at Einar, who kept watching him as if he were the sort who steals Bibles from a church.

Again the lid creaked back, and they saw the last worm-constellations overhead in that moldy dirt. Captain Gull bent smilingly over them. Remembering that pale face which had watched their embarkation from between the pairs of triple panes of their old home, Øistein could not
decide if there were one or two of those specters. What could he do but clench his fists?

From here on out, said their master, we'll only have room for two passengers. I'll return for your decision.

The instant he turned away, leaving their prison open, Einar rose up with an old-time ryting-knife
*
and attacked Øistein, who, expecting this, immediately struck him down with punches. Trolls gathered around, howling with laughter. Making use of their acquiescence, Øistein, who had not been wounded, began to drag Einar toward the railing.

Help me! he shouted at Kristina.

No, she said. I refuse to murder.

He shouted: Would you rather it was I?

Just then Einar got to his knees and stabbed Øistein in the thigh. The trolls applauded. Enraged, Kristina thrust her knitting needle under the man's ear. He fell more permanently, and the couple heaved him over, but not before they helped themselves to his ryting-knife. He had little time to rest, for the instant he landed, a greenish-grey hand burst out of the dirt and snatched him away.

The ship was neither more nor less than a large casket now, sliding down across the dark dirt by itself. The sailors were long gone, while the trolls leaped on and off the bowsprit as easily as walruses, and presently dove down into the ooze until not even their hairy feet could be seen. Øistein stood motionless. His good wife took his hand. She had come to resemble her mother, who in her last years grew stooped from carrying too many buckets, and grey-faced from malnutrition. Now for a long time the Pedersons stood clasping hands, and Øistein's heart grew hard and cold to anticipate the passage's next narrowing. He whispered: When he comes—

Turning toward them, Captain Gull gently said:
If you, Kristina, and you, Øistein, do not yet hate each other and yourselves, then you cannot continue on with me.

Oh, yes, Kristina assured him, patting her husband's hand. We hate each other.

At this the master laughed, and then, one by one, removed his eyes,
which until now the Pedersons had never realized were made of glass. He flung them up into the air. Two ravens swooped to swallow them.

The captain's eyesockets were a trifle horrible, to be sure, but so many peculiar things had already happened that Øistein and Kristina made no remark. Besides, Stavanger people have no time to be squeamish.

Now he was removing his face like a hood. When they perceived his true appearance, it seemed to the Pedersons somehow right, which is to say in accordance with his true nature—but if so, why had they not much sooner perceived what he was? A case may be made that the
Hyndla
's passengers should have seen through the captain at the outset, but I disagree, for the face of death, whenever it remains unveiled, is customarily concealed by the living. Six feet of earth, and then we turn away! Oh, but we know—or should know—but why bring little Ingigerd to nightmares and tears? True love defies “reality” for as long as it can—and besides, Captain Gull had always been such a pleasant old gentleman!

Until then, Øistein and Kristina had been prepared to give up everything simply to get through the narrow passage. But they declined to give up each other.

Well, said the skeleton, are you ready to decide? At this stage I like to invite the last pair to gamble—

The Pedersons knew what to do. Øistein gripped Einar's ryting-knife in his right hand, while in her left, Kristina held her cousin Eyvind's awl, whose end was as sharp as a marline spike. While the skeleton cocked its skull in a soothing grin, no doubt supposing itself still in command, they rushed over the railing and leaped straight down, Kristina comforting herself with the words of Christ,
Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.
This must be the end. Truth to tell, she felt much the same way that she used to on those black January mornings in Stavanger when she had finished making her husband's breakfast and must now go out into the miserably cold streets if she were to arrive at the cannery on time. As for Øistein, he likewise expected the trolls to tunnel up and devour them right away. They had not very far to fall. And so they struck the dark moss-riddled ooze.

Strange to say, perhaps because they had consigned themselves to the soil of their own volition, they did not sink; nor did any wound-eager entities wriggle evilly up. The coffin kept speeding away at a good pace, as if
it were still somehow a ship under benefit of tailwind, and the skeleton stood motionless on it, watching them. Soon they could no longer distinguish its dark eye-holes.— What became of Captain Gull? I myself ask this after every funeral. Reader, you might suppose that he turned into a seagull and flew away, for his purpose was completed this time; he had brought the monsters their prey, and could now return to fetch more, such being the weird which had been cast upon him; how disappointed he felt at the Pedersons' escape is another matter of which I feel uncertain, being unadept at reading the facial expressions of skulls. But there is no purpose in my going on about him.

Well, said Øistein, what now?

It's too far to go back, replied his wife.

Yes—

Then we'd better dig.

And with Cousin Eyvind's awl she began to bore them a crawling-hole. Øistein did his best to help. Feeling hard up in the clinch, as the saying goes, he kept muttering: No hope for it, no hope . . .— You may be sure that by now they both were homesick enough for the fish-perfumed grey cobblestones of Stavanger, but emigrants cannot take great account of sorrows and difficulties; they must keep right on; and so Øistein cleared away the dirt that his wife so magically loosened, while she for her part kept digging straight down, almost cheerfully as when she used to help her mother carry the family's dirty clothes to the pond behind the Domkirke; sometimes the melodies of choir practice would reach them as faintly as if elves were singing from under a mountain, and then she and her mother would cinch up their skirts and wade into the cold water, soaping and scrubbing, chatting at first, until they grew too chilled to speak; and other women and children dirtied the water all around them, so that one could not expect to get one's underdrawers much whiter than grey, which success being accomplished, Kristina and her mother walked shivering beneath the yellow-leafed trees, through the mucky meadows, circling the long steep spine of the Domkirke's roof, fronted by its twin turrets, silent now, commanding the grove around it, beyond which the first hints of wooden-house multitudes peeked here and there, loud children weeping and fighting, outhouses stinking; although Stavanger hardly went much farther than Sølvberggata in those days, the walk
home seemed to take forever, especially with the wet laundry so heavy, and they had to descend nearly all the stony narrow windings of Finklamauet Street to the house where they lived in those days, when her father was a herring fisherman and liked to be near the harbor; by then they would have warmed themselves into a sweat, and if her mother were cross she would stride on ahead as rapidly as the longhaired witch who bends her face toward the earth, while the girl struggled not to be left behind, but if her mother were in good temper she might tell the adoring child a story, for instance about the great fire, which broke out on Breigata Street and ruined more than two hundred homes; Kristina had been born before then, but of course she could not remember it; and by now they were nearly home, ahead of them the white sails shining in the silvery harbor, so her mother sent her with three copper coins to knock on the diagonal door cut under the corner of the neighbor's house, and buy eggs and perhaps milk or carrots, then rush straight back to help cook supper: herring, of course. What was there to do but work, and never complain?
The last shall be first and the first shall be last,
said her mother. Before she was forty-five, she profited the coffin-maker's shop.

Now they began to hear sounds below them, as if people were cutting up a stranded whale.

Kristina whispered: Dig more quietly, because if any of them hear us, we'll be hard pressed—

Wife, your advice is always good.

Holding her breath, she pricked their course downward with Eyvind's awl, which suddenly broke through into phosphorescence—at which point the dirt gave way, and the Pedersons tumbled down into a cavern where there were ever so many weird flames like the points of a skull's yellow smile. In the air, smooth old Saami ships kept swimming through the long diagonals like rain or sunrays which possibly had already existed in the rock; perhaps it was rock they were in, not earth; or might it be the case that when darkness gets dark enough, the atmosphere itself thickens into something approaching coal? Anyhow, it was certainly a wide open country they'd fallen into. As far as the Pedersons could see, tall grey she-trolls, naked but for necklaces of whorled silver beads, stood smoking corpses over bone-fires. Although she said nothing to her husband, Kristina thought she recognized Bendik Hermansson's carcass. In fact
she was reminded of the cannery, with the lines of herring hanging down from skewers passed through their heads.

Howling like dogs and seals, the monsters now rushed toward them, ready to scream and harry, to burn and bite. Their lank grey hair was fishy-wet, and their teeth resembled the cracked dark rock between glaciers. Kristina overcame her horror by pretending they were women with bad skin from the burns of the herring-brine; she had known many like that back home in Stavanger.

Well, goodbye, wife, said Øistein.

Squeezing his hand, Kristina pityingly replied: It may be worse than that.