The Last Boat Home (16 page)

‘Be careful he does a proper job of it,’ Tenvik said, ‘or it’ll just go again. You can bet on more snow. You’re sure he wouldn’t like help? These boys would charge a fair price.’

‘Quite sure,’ Dagny said.

Without another glance in the strong man’s direction, she moved away down the ramp. Else followed after Tenvik, who escorted them as far as the road.

‘Don’t worry about the cow,’ he said. ‘Now, Dagny, you’ll let me know if you change your mind.’

‘I will,’ she said.

‘Else,’ he said, ‘we’ll see you tomorrow.’

Dagny and Johann argued about the roof late into the night. From her bed, Else listened for the smack of a hand against bone. Instead the quarrel ended with the back door slamming, but the relief she felt was fragile. Her father went on to spend the night in the boathouse – his first since starting the new job at the shipyard.

When she arrived at Tenvik’s farm, not even the chill of an early morning walk had dispelled the groggy feeling that came from lack of sleep. With dulled senses, Else closed the gate behind her and peered at the barn where the cow had passed the night. She half expected the strong man and his companions to come charging down its ramp into the yard. Its doors were shut. She crossed to the farmhouse, her boots snapping the crust that packed in the snow.

Ninni Tenvik answered the door to her knock. She smiled and ushered Else inside. ‘Knut told me about the barn,’ she said. ‘How is your mother? Never mind about your boots, it’s washing day.’

Ninni directed her down a corridor whose pine walls showed the
grain of the wood and into the dining room, where she pulled a chair out from under the table. ‘Have you eaten breakfast?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ Else said.

‘Wait here, then, while I fetch Knut.’

She left the room and Else sat on the chair and folded her hands in her lap. Her eyes wandered from the curtains that were like veils on the windows to the rickety cabinet without doors, whose shelves displayed plates painted with sailing boats. Dried roses were piled on its top ledge, giving off a whiff of summer’s decay which Else caught when she turned to study the photographs. On the sideboard, two black-and-white babies were captured in silver frames. She remembered the short graves side by side in the cemetery and looked away.

She jumped up when Tenvik came through the door.

‘Else,’ he said, ‘don’t you know where the cow is? You’ve brought a pail? No need to be so polite tomorrow, just help yourself. The doors aren’t locked.’

Tenvik saw her into the yard and she waded through the snow to the barn, her cheeks blooming in the cold after the minutes inside. She climbed the ramp and fiddled with the door’s clasp before pushing into the comforting lull of the stables. Apart from the cows, Else was glad to find that the barn was empty. She trod down the aisle to the furthest stall, flanked by Tenvik’s cattle with their plump bellies. The Dybdahl cow was feeble by comparison. Her ribs poked through her hide. Her joints bulged like nodes on a sapling’s bough.

Else stroked her neck, running her palm over cords of muscle. Someone had left a stool for her in the aisle. She set it on the ground next to the cow and began to milk with her eyes closed, losing herself to the inner workings of the animal’s body. Gases fizzed. Juices gurgled. An image of her father crystallised in her mind. She saw the hollows under his cheekbones. His angles had sharpened through the winter as if the cold were shrinking his skin, pinching it tight over his skull. Her mother had pleaded
with him the night before. If he did not mend the roof, the barn would crumble. Then what would they do?

‘Let it crumble,’ he had said.

When she was done Else carried her pail outside, where a miserly light hinted at dawn. Yakov Bezrukov was clearing a path from the farmhouse to the barn. He was some distance from the ramp but, on seeing Else, he let the blade of his shovel rest in the snow. He supported his weight on its handle as his eyes took her in.

‘Good morning,’ he said.

Else scurried down the ramp. She started for the gate, moving faster as he advanced.

‘Wait a minute now, I’m not going to bite you.’

She looked for Tenvik in the mute landscape, but she was alone with the circus man. Her heartbeat muffled the crunch of her feet. Yakov grabbed her arm to cut her off. A splash of milk slopped over the rim of her bucket.

‘There,’ he said. ‘We haven’t finished talking. I hear your mother is hiring.’

‘She isn’t,’ Else said.

‘That’s not what I heard. Tenvik was asking Valentin about fixing a roof.’

‘She isn’t hiring,’ Else said.

‘Well, Tenvik seems to think so. Who knows, maybe she likes having help? Maybe we all come to live on your farm?’ He showed teeth yellowed by tobacco. He let her arm go and the milk swished in her pail. Yakov’s scar drooped from his eye like a tear. He spun away when Tenvik rounded the corner of the farmhouse. The strong man followed behind him, his eyes narrowed to the wind.

‘Is everything all right here?’ Tenvik asked.

‘Fine,’ Yakov said. He thrust his shovel into the snow.

‘You’ve finished with the cow?’

‘Yes,’ Else said.

‘Now, tell me. How is your father getting on with that roof?’

‘Fine,’ she said and glanced over her shoulder at the road.

‘That’s good to hear,’ said Tenvik. ‘But they’ve forecast more snow. How much time do you think he’ll need before it’s mended?’

Else tried to guess how her mother would want her to answer. Before she had settled on a reply, the farmer was talking again.

‘I’ve come to an agreement with Valentin,’ he said. ‘I’ll cover his expenses for fixing the barn – not a full repair job, mind you, but enough to keep it standing until spring.’

‘No,’ Else said. ‘I don’t think. Mamma wouldn’t …’

‘She will, though, once she sees the damage is bound to get worse. All she has to do is feed him dinner. He’ll get on with the rest. Tell her it’s all taken care of.’

Else stared at Tenvik, unsure of what to do next, suddenly reluctant to go home.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘shouldn’t you be getting to school? Valentin, maybe you would carry the bucket for her.’

The strong man reached a hand for her bucket and Else let him have it and turned to the gate. In measured strides, he kept pace with her as she hurried down the mountain towards the fjord’s mercury drift. Wind whipped the branches of the trees, shaking icicles from their pines which smashed like glass or sank through snow, leaving prints to be plugged with the next blizzard.

Else pulled up her hood when they reached the Bjørndahl property; she could sense the twitching of the curtains in the windows. The strong man gazed at the fjord, where two figures in yellow tossed fishing lines from a rowing boat. When they had passed the spit of rock where the house nestled by the water, Else peeked at his profile, the curve of his ear. She saw his throat working when he swallowed. Long lashes grazed his skin when his black eye blinked. He seemed lost in thought and it occurred to her that he had forgotten she was there. His indifference made her brave. She clenched her hands, squeezing the wool of her mittens in palms clammy in spite of the cold.

‘My parents don’t know about the paddock,’ she said. ‘They don’t know I’ve been there with Lars. They wouldn’t like it.’

She braced herself for his reaction, but the strong man continued to watch the water. Perhaps he had not understood, he only spoke his own language. Then, ‘All right,’ he said in a voice that was too soft for such a body. A snow shower fell from the mountain’s ridges and Else skipped out of its way. They took the bend in the road where she sometimes met Lars and climbed down the hill lined with birch trees to the farm.

‘There it is,’ Else said.

She pointed to the barn, which squatted like a sentry to the yard. She pushed open its door, revealing the wintry scene within. Valentin handed her the pail and unbuttoned his coat, then moved to the centre of the room. He kicked a log whose ragged end poked out of the snow.

Else left him contemplating the ceiling and plodded to the farmhouse. Since she had set out earlier that morning, her mother had swept a path from the barn, a narrow trench with collapsing walls. She found her at the sewing machine in the dining room. Steam rose from a mug she had prepared. She smiled when Else carried the bucket through to the kitchen.

‘How’s the cow?’ she asked.

‘Somebody’s here,’ Else said.

‘Oh?’

‘One of Tenvik’s workers. He’s in the barn.’

‘Whatever can you mean?’ her mother said. The pulse of the sewing machine’s needle failed and then Dagny was on her feet and darting into the kitchen. ‘Are you saying that one of those foreigners is here?’

‘Yes,’ Else said.

‘But why on earth …’

‘The big one,’ she said. ‘He has an agreement with Tenvik.’

Her mother’s face was grey as she swept through the dining
room into the hallway. ‘We’ll just see about that,’ Else heard through the wall. She crept to the window to watch her mother swoop over the yard, her coat flying behind her. At least, she thought, her father had already left for the shipyard.

Else changed into her school clothes in her bedroom and lifted her satchel from the floor. She shouldered it to the bottom of the stairs, where she pulled on the coat whose lining still bore her heat. Her mother stood in the doorway of the barn, her arms folded as she shouted over the sound of Valentin’s spade.

‘I will not pay you an
øre
,’ she was saying as Else approached. ‘Tenvik must have lost his mind this time!’

‘I’m leaving,’ Else said.

‘Hurry up with you, then,’ her mother said, ‘before you miss another ferry.’

The scoop of the shovel faded as Else tramped to the top of the hill. She hooked her thumbs under the satchel’s shoulder straps and bowed her head to the wind that chased the snow over the road.

Else missed the ferry. The day’s German class was underway when she took her seat.

‘Else,’ Paulsen said. ‘Thanks and praise, you’ve decided to join us.’ He invited her to list the prepositions that require the
accusativ
. She stumbled through
bis, gegen, um
, while he scowled and shook his head at the class.

During lunch, Else sprang over the grit that studded the schoolyard’s ice to meet Lars at the shed.

‘Is it true?’ he called when he saw her. ‘Is the strong man working on your barn?’

‘Since this morning,’ Else said.

Lars whooped where he waited with Rune and Petter in a scrap of sun. He kissed her when she stopped beside him. She was too pleased to care who saw.

‘How long is he staying?’ Petter asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Else said. ‘Until the roof is fixed.’

‘Ask him what he lifts,’ Rune said. ‘I’d bet he could lift three hundred kilos.’

For the first time in months, Else felt the private thrill that united the boys in their dealings with the circus men. It had Lars twisting around during New Norwegian to share surreptitious smiles with her from his desk. At the end of History he walked her to the Longpier, suggesting questions she might ask the strong man if she had the chance. His approval soothed the worry that scratched behind her breastbone, distracting her from her mother’s distress, from fears of what her father would do.

When she arrived home, Valentin was still in the barn. She descended the hill towards the rasp of his saw. Her mother had abandoned her post by the door, though the snow told of countless trips she had made across the yard. Else tracked her footprints to the farmhouse, where she began to shed her layers in the corridor.

‘Else,’ called her mother from the kitchen, ‘is that you? Wait a minute there. Don’t take off your boots.’

Her mother bore a tray when she stepped into the hall and frowned at the puddle Else had dripped onto the floorboards.

‘Take this out to him,’ she said. ‘He can eat in the barn.’

She gave the tray to Else, who brought it outside. She took care not to let the meatballs roll off the plate as the water glass bumped a mug of chicory, releasing a gentle tinkling into the air. A lantern’s light seeped under the barn’s door in a weak challenge to the dusk. Else tapped the wood with her toe.

‘
Hallo?
’ she said. ‘I have your dinner.’

When the strong man opened the door, his brow was moist with sweat. He stood aside to make room for her to pass. He returned to his work while she stepped around the ladder he had raised in the cow’s pen and placed the tray on the milking stool. Valentin touched his saw to a log that balanced between two benches her mother had been saving for firewood. The lopped-off
remains of a tree were piled in a corner of the horse’s stall. Pine needles and wet sawdust covered the ground in a prickly mulch.

Valentin sliced a strip of wood from the log with as much effort as Else used to carve the morning loaf. Chips sprinkled the leather of his shoes like snow. A streak of perspiration stained the spine of his shirt. Rings darkened his armpits and collar band. The space smelled briny and bovine, of bogs and sap and, now, of chicory.

‘Aren’t you going to eat?’ Else asked.

He cut another plank from his log before he lay down his saw. Once he had wiped his palms on his trouser legs, he looked around for the tray and moved over to the stool. Else edged away until her back pressed against the wall. He lowered himself to the floor and lifted the tray onto his lap. She wondered if she should go, but stayed where she was as he began to eat. Valentin picked up the knife and split a meatball in two. While he chewed, his eyes flicked from his plate to where she watched him from the shadows of the room.

‘How was school?’ he asked.

Else shrugged. She heard the water in his gullet as he sipped from his glass. ‘When are you leaving?’ she asked.

‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot of damage. It’ll take a few days.’

‘I meant,’ Else said, ‘when do you go back to the circus?’

‘In the spring,’ he said. ‘The season starts in Haugesund.’

Else nodded as if that meant something to her. She made a note of the detail to tell Lars tomorrow.

When he had finished his meal and drunk the chicory, Valentin cleaned the grease from his lips on his hand. He stood and offered the tray to Else, then took up the lantern that hung from a nail sticking out of the wall. He held it high to brighten the snow once he had opened the door.