The Prophets of Eternal Fjord (29 page)

It is dark when he loosens her ropes. She cannot get to her feet on her own and must reach up to take the outstretched hand he offers. He passes her her clothing, item by item, and she dresses. Her back is an open wound, but there is little pain from it, only a warm, burning sensation. The smith sees it, too.

Dab the sores with some of your husband's aquavit, he says. She wonders if it is meant to be a joke.

She makes do with putting on the damask gown and her boots. The smith accompanies her back to the colony house, carrying the rest of her garments gathered in his arms. Reaching the door, he hands them to her in a bundle that she snatches from his hands. For a moment they stand staring at each other. The smith has removed his hat. He is bareheaded before her, clenching it to his chest.

The Madame has no need to despair, he says solemnly. No woman has ever cared for it. It is painful to them, our old pastor told us so. I know very well that women are not lustful at all. So it is. Goodnight, Madame Kragstedt.

The chambermaid comes to her that same evening, silent and knowing. She extracts the metal shavings from her back with a pair of tweezers, cleanses and dresses her wounds. It takes most of the night. She prom­ises she will say nothing to her husband when he returns.

Sleep with me tonight, says Haldora.

They retire to the chamber and snuggle up to each other beneath the down. The girl has an odd smell and the thought occurs to her that she might bring lice into the bed. But she doesn't care. She clings to her and falls asleep with her arms wrapped around her.

Some days later she ventures outside for the first time since the encounter with the smith and finds the wooden gate of the vegetable garden replaced by one of wrought iron. The gate is perfect, the pattern exactly as intended, and all the letters are present and correct.
Semper felix
. Her family motto.

She opens the gate and enters the vegetable garden, then falls to her knees. All over the little patch, green shoots have appeared in the black soil.

The Fourth Commandment

A Visitation (1788)

The Fourth Commandment, as it is most plainly to be taught by a father to his family:

‘Thou shalt honour thy father and thy mother.'

What does this imply?

Answer: That we should fear and love God, so that we may not despise or provoke our parents or superiors; but to give them honour, to serve, obey, love and esteem them.

A morning in autumn, early dawn, September. The first sun bathes the fells of the mainland and warms away the fog. The ford is still.

Seven people leave the colony by kone boat and kayak; four oars ­women, three men. One of them is Rasmus Bjerg, constable of the Royal Trade. It is not without reluctance that he embarks upon this long, hazardous and in his view pointless journey. But the Trader has ordered him and there is nothing to be done about it. He sits in the stern, making use of the time by taking apart his flintlock and cleaning its components with linseed oil. He assembles and disassembles and assembles it again. It is a nervous compulsion; he cannot prevent himself from taking the firearm apart when it is assembled or from putting it together when it is apart. He retracts the cock, pulls absently on the trigger, and the cock strikes the pan with a snap that causes the women to jump. He retracts it once more, pulls again on the trigger.

Constable Bjerg, says Falck, who is standing upright in the bow, erect as a mast. For God's sake, man! You'll drive us all to madness.

Very well, Mr Falck. He puts the firearm down. His fingers itch to pick it up.

One of the mixtures from the colony, Didrik is the kayak man and leads the way. He sails some boat-lengths ahead of them, quite without sound. Bjerg wishes it was he who sat in the kayak, so that he might make more use of himself, employ his strength, propel himself through the water and be free. But he has never learned to sail a kayak. He has tried on more than one occasion and was almost drowned. They say that if a person does not learn it as a child, he will never sail such a vessel safely. Most likely it is true. Didrik certainly looks like he is at one with it, gliding swiftly along, parting the water in silence.

Constable Bjerg sits face to face with the oarswomen. They work in seamless harmony, leaning on their oars, rocking back and forth. In the follow-through of each stroke they perform a flicking motion of the wrist that causes the boat to dart forward abruptly, and the two passengers, he and Falck, to sway slightly at the hip. The blades of the oars ripple the surface of the water and the ripples dance like tops. His eyes follow them. Then he stares at the oarswomen, amusing himself by resting his gaze upon them one by one. They dislike it. Like animals, he thinks to himself. They don't care to be looked at either, at least not dogs; a dog can be provoked into attack by staring into its eyes. But these women are good-natured. He wonders if they are like other people under all their garments of skins. Like other women. He would like to find out. Their hair is tied up in a knot on top of their heads, bound with twine studded with coloured beads of glass. Their feet, in sealskin kamik boots, are placed against the crosspieces in the bottom of the boat, he sees the little kick they make with every pull, the almost imperceptible lift of their behinds from the thwart. They sit, two-by-two, one pair in front of the other. Their cheeks are large, polished surfaces mounted on high cheekbones; their mouths are small, teeth ground down, though not rotten, more honed by chewing on a diet of bones. Their upper garments are bulky jackets trimmed with leather straps laid crosswise to present their breasts, though not so as to give rise to arousal. Rather, the breasts are items of utility. It is said they wash in their own filth, yet they look clean enough to Rasmus Bjerg. Appetising, almost. A man is put in good humour by observing them.

Constable Bjerg, Falck says again, this time rather more sharply.

He realizes he has picked up his flintlock and sits tapping it against the powder keg. He grins sheepishly and puts it down.
Pardonnez-moi, monsieur le prêtre
, he says. Bjerg has learned a small amount of French on board large ships.

Give me that gun, says Falck.

It is my gun.

It is the Trade's gun. Give it to me. Then he will have no cause to be tempted.

Bjerg passes it over the heads of the oarswomen. They both stand, the boat rocks slightly. The constable sits down again, but Falck remains upright, spying ahead across the water. The women break into song. Their shrill, metallic voices cut to the marrow.

It is rather late in the year for a journey into the district, he says.

I beg your pardon? says Falck.

Autumn is upon us. Snow might fall at any time.

I'm sure we've plenty of time to do what needs to be done, says Falck.

He looks back and picks out coils of smoke from the houses of the colony, and one or two peat dwellings of the natives. To the left, steep, forbidding fells rise up, to the right are skerries of low-lying islets, and far into the mainland some snow-covered peaks. He wonders if it is where they are destined.

The fog still lingers in the bays and where the sun has yet to reach. It is as though the rocks are shrouded in gauze or tulle. It makes him think of death. There are people who live entire lives here, he says to himself, and is unable to comprehend it.

Rasmus Bjerg is twenty-two years old, the youngest man in the colony. He hails from the Horsens area, his father is a freeholder, but with five elder brothers he is so far removed from allodial rights that remaining at home was pointless. He went to sea immediately following the confirmation. He receives letters from his parents and thus assumes that they are still alive, but he has not seen them in many years. At one point he sailed the trade triangle, transporting slaves from the Gold Coast to the West Indies, though mostly he has worked ships conducting lesser trade on minor routes. This is his first time in Greenland. He finds it to be dark, insular and oppressive. He misses the open sea, the discipline of life on board, the comradeship, the freedom of going ashore, the lack of ceremony, the fistfights and the heartfelt scenes of reconciliation, the long voyages and all the routines. He misses a girl whose name was Ulrikka and whom he does not expect to ever see again, but to whom he would like to write, if only he could put words together on paper in a manner that is decent and proper. He is capable of writing and has written letters to his parents, but never to a girl. Perhaps the priest will help him, if he can bring himself to confide in him.

He leans back against the tent of skins and the sleeping bags that are stuffed away in the stern. His arm dangles over the side, his fingers trailing, making little whirls in the cold water. The boat is heavily laden with goods, among them ten flintlocks of poor quality, a keg of gun ­powder, lead, casting moulds, fuses and flints, twenty copies of the New Testament translated into Greenlandic, transported in a box lined with lead, and other merchandise. What Falck and the others are unaware of is the envelope Rasmus Bjerg carries in his inside pocket. It contains a warrant issued by royal decree for the arrest of Habakuk and his wife Maria Magdalene. Kragstedt has invested Rasmus Bjerg with the authority to do what must be done, and to do so with force should it be deemed necessary. He wonders what it will feel like if he is compelled to shoot another human being. He is confident that he wishes to do so, it being the secret desire of any man to kill another, and yet he is afraid at the prospect. The slaves died in droves and were tipped over the side as casually as the contents of chamber pots, but he has never actually seen a person be killed. And now he has the authority to do so. If necessary. It is a strange thought.

The song of the women rings out across the ford; the oars creak in time. Are they smiling at him? They appear stupid. They laugh too much and he is already rather tired of them. When they sing he can see into their mouths, all the way in to their flapping uvulas. Is there even a human thought in their heads? He sees their fat knuckles tighten and release on the handles of the oars, he sees their small feet brace as they take the strain. If he were to lie with one of them, which would it be? He studies them by turn. It is hard to tell the difference. The black slave women were hard to tell apart, too, but most likely on account of their features being obliterated, as it were, by the blackness of their skin. These Eskimo women are pale and yet they still look so utterly similar. It is as if the knot in which their hair is tied up has drawn their facial features upwards as well, lending them an odd expression of constant astonishment about the eyes. It must be strange to kiss one of them. How would they taste? He refrained from doing so with the slave women, though the opportu­nities were plenty and the crew all urged him: Get some practice in on one of the savages, Bjerg, so you know what to do when you get married. But the thought repelled him. He would often be put to work hosing below deck, a task that did little to stimulate feelings of any romantic nature. These women who now sit facing him, rocking gently back and forth, are not slaves and one cannot do with them as one pleases. As far as he knows they are, moreover, good Christians. And yet they are so very different from him, as different from him – and from the girl named Ulrikka of whom he still thinks from time to time – as the pitch-black women who lay like herrings in a barrel in the hold of the
Fredensborg
.

They make their way gently north; his head lolls; noon passes, then afternoon, with no change. He sleeps a little, the nodding of his head travels into his dream in which he is seated in a boat that is taking in water and no one else has noticed. He opens his mouth to raise the alarm and not a sound comes out. He wakes and lifts his feet abruptly from the bottom of the vessel. But the boat is dry.

Falck calls out to Didrik. He points ashore. Bjerg scans the landscape. He sees some nodules on a plateau; they look like molehills. A settlement. Didrik waits for the boat to catch up with him and takes hold of the gunwale. The women rest on their oars.

No people there, says Didrik. It would be a waste of time, Mr Falck.

Falck nods and stares at the land. Bjerg wishes they would go ashore; he feels a desperate need to stretch his legs.

Onward, says Falck. We shall put in soon enough.

They pass through a narrow sound that runs diagonally to the north­west, and the heavy swell from the open sea presses down upon them. They cross between small islands; the land becomes more varied. Here and there they see dwellings or what is left of them, but no sign of people. Eventually they go ashore on to a small island. All disperse immediately to crouch behind rocks, then assemble again a little further inland. Didrik says something to the women and they light a fire and make tea in which they soak some hard tack. Constable Bjerg stretches out in the heather and observes them. A packet of lump sugar is passed around. The women speak in lowered voices. Their cheeks bulge with the sugar. He is annoyed by their laughter.

When they have drunk their tea and eaten their hard tack, the men walk along the shore and look at what signs are left of humans: some tent rings, a pair of huts without rafters. No one has lived here for years, says Didrik.

Have they all gone to join these prophets? Falck wants to know.

Some, says Didrik. Many are dead. Some have gone north to Holsteinsborg or other big places.

Dead? Why dead?

Scarcity. A failed
fangst
. Hunger. Has the Magister not heard of these things?

Bjerg detects a derisive tone in the man's voice. He wonders if it is aimed at the natives' inability to survive, or the priest's ignorance.

Falck pokes at the site of an old fire. It would seem they resorted to preparing their garments as meals, he says pensively.

It is quite common among the savages, says Didrik. In the winter they eat their clothing; in the spring they must sew anew.

Ugh! Says Bjerg.

Falck looks at him. Hunger is a hard master, Constable Bjerg.

Forgive me, Magister, says Bjerg, but I am revolted by the thought of eating a shoe, even if it were my own feet that had been inside.

There are many graves on the island, marked by whale bones or decayed planks. Didrik translates the Greenlandic words that have been scratched into them.
Rest in peace
is popular and probably much welcomed.

So these are christened people? says Falck.

Christened and heathens, says Didrik. Death has poor eyesight, as we say. It cannot tell the difference.

Falck sighs. He takes a box under his arm and wanders up the fell. His botanizing box, he tells Bjerg. I enjoy looking for flowers and all manner of plants, and to make drawings of them in my sketchbook. It is my pastime.

Rasmus Bjerg walks inwards across the land; the slopes bring him to an elevated position. He turns and looks back. The camp seems very distant now, after only half an hour's trek; the boat is a mere wood shaving; the people resemble busy beetles. Smoke rises from the fire. From the shore the water stretches upwards and resembles a wall. The horizon extends at eye level. How peculiar! He cups his hands to his mouth and calls out. The beetles halt; they scan the fellside, but cannot see him. He calls again. They wave. He ducks. Spotted! He laughs.

He descends through a valley, eating berries from the bushes and arriving at the shore a little north of the camp. Here he meets two of the women who are out gathering berries and mushrooms. He gives them a wide berth, has no desire to speak to them. He is not even aware of whether they understand Danish. They straighten up as they hear him coming, shade their eyes from the sun and watch him as he passes. He affords them a formal greeting and walks on. They call out to him. He does not understand what they say, but he can tell they are up to some­thing. He turns hesitantly. They wave him back and he approaches them.

The flintlock slaps at his thigh.

What do you want? he demands to know, putting on a severe tone.