The Weight of Water (18 page)

John would then go down to the beach and from there row out in his dory to his schooner. On good drying days, when he had
left the harbor, I would wash the clothes and lay them out on the rocks in the sun. I would bake the flatbed and prepare the
midday meal. I would have the task of cleaning the fish John had caught for drying or eating. I made clothes from bolts of
cloth I had brought with me or John had managed in Portsmouth. I spun wool with a spinning wheel John had bought in Portsmouth,
and knit various articles of clothing for both myself and for John. When I had finished these chores, and if the day were
clear, I would go outside with the dog John had given me, which I had named Ringe, and walk the perimeter of the island, throwing
sticks for Ringe into the water so that he might fetch them back to me. In time, John built me a hen coop and purchased in
Portsmouth four hens, which were good layers, providing me with fresh eggs.

When John arrived in the evenings, I would take from him his soiled oil clothes and undergarments, and he would have a wash
at the sink. I would have prepared a light meal for him. By then, he would have put on dry underclothes, and would sit near
to the fire. We had both taken up the habit of smoking a pipe, as it soothed us to do so. John’s face was weathering, and
he was growing many lines in his skin.

Sometime during the evening, usually when I was sitting near to the fire as well, he would put a hand on my knee, and that
would be a signal to me that he wished me to join him in bed. Regardless of the cold, he would remove his garments altogether,
and I believe that I saw my husband in a state of undress every night of our married life, as he always lit the candle on
the table by our bed. As for me, I would have preferred that our marital relations be conducted in the dark, but John would
not have this. I usually kept on my nightdress, or if it were very cold, all my garments. Except for one or two occasions
when I was bathing, I am not sure John Hontvedt ever saw me in my natural condition. I had, after a time, lost my physical
revulsion toward my husband, and tolerated these nightly relations well enough, but I cannot say there was ever any pleasure
in the event — particularly so as it became more and more obvious to me that there was something wrong with me that was preventing
me from conceiving a child.

Though our daily life on Smutty Nose was one of habit and routine, I would not be correctly portraying life on the Isles of
Shoals if I omitted to say that the winters there were exceedingly harsh. Of that seasonal desolation, I can barely write.
I am not certain that it is possible to convey the despair that descends upon one who has been subjected to the ceaseless
cold and wet, with storms out of the northeast that on occasion smashed fishing boats upon the rocks and washed away the houses
of the Shoalers, causing many to die at sea and on land, and imprisoning those who survived in dark and cheerless rooms for
so many days on end that it was a wonder we did not all lose our minds. It has been said that the fishermen who lived on those
islands at that time were possessed of an extraordinary courage, but I think that this courage, if we would call it so, is
merely the instinct to fasten one’s body onto a stationary object and hold on, and have as well the luck not to have one’s
roof blown into the ocean. I remember weeks when John could not go to sea, nor could anyone come across to Smutty Nose, and
when the weather was so dangerous that we two sat for hours huddled by the stove in the kitchen, into which we had moved our
bed, and the windows and door of which we had sealed from the elements. We had no words to speak to each other, and everything
around us was silent except for the wind that would not stop and made the house shudder. Also, the air inside the room became
quite poisonous due to the smoke of the stove and of our pipes, and I recall that I almost always had the headache.

Many fisher-families experience lives of isolation, but ours was made all the greater because of the unique geographical properties
of an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, which properties then convey themselves to the soul. There was no day, for example,
that the foremost element in one’s life was not the weather. There might be clear days with heavy seas, cloudy days with light
seas, hazy days when one could not see the mainland, days of fog so dense that I could not find the well, nor make my way
accurately to the beach, days of such ferocious storms and winds that entire houses were washed in an instant into the sea,
and one could not leave one’s dwelling for fear of meeting a similar fate, and days upon days of a noxious wind that made
the panes of glass beat against their wooden frames and never ceased its whistle in and around the cottage. So important was
the state of the elements that every morning one thought of nothing else except of how to survive what God and nature had
brought forth, or, on the rare days of clear skies and no wind, of warm sun and exhilarating air, of how thankful one was
for such a heady reprieve.

Because of the necessity for John to go out to sea seven days a week in season, and the equally strong necessity to remain
shut in for so many weeks at a time in winter, we did not have many friends or even acquaintances on those islands. To be
sure, the In-gerbretsons had befriended us, and it was with this family that we celebrated 17 May and Christmas Eve, sharing
together the Lt-tigmann, which, if I may say so, achieved a delicate and crispy texture in my hands, even with my crude implements,
and also the lutefisk, a fish which was soaked in lye for several days and then poached to a delicate texture. But as the
Ingerbretsons resided on Appledore and not on Smutty Nose, I had little occasion to spend time with the women in these households
as I might have done were there no water barriers between us. In this way, I was often alone on the island for long stretches
at a time.

At this point in my tale, I must hasten to explain to the reader that life on Smutty Nose was not entirely bereft of pleasant
moments. As even the barest tree on the darkest hour in winter has a beauty all its own, I eventually came to see that Smutty
Nose was not without its own peculiar charms, particularly on those days when the weather would be fine, that is to say, sharp
and tingling, with silver glints in the granite, every crevice visible, the water all around us a vivid aquamarine. On those
occasions, which in my mind are relatively few in number, I might sit upon a ledge and read one of the books I had been lent
in Portsmouth, or I might walk about the island playing with my dog, or I might pick some of the wild growth that survived
in the rocks and make a bouquet of sorts for my table.

In the five years I was on Smutty Nose, I ventured into Portsmouth four times. I had, at first, a great deal of trouble with
the English language, and sometimes it was a trial to make myself understood or to comprehend what was being said to me. I
have observed that such a lack of facility with a language tends to make others think of one as not very intelligent and certainly
not very well educated. And this used to be a great annoyance to me, as I could converse quite well, and even, I may say,
fluently and with some style, in my native tongue, but I was rendered nearly imbecilic when required to express my needs in
English.

And here I must say a further word about the American inability to pronounce any Norwegian at all, even, or especially, Norwegian
names that were not familiar to them. So that many of the immigrants were forced to change the spelling of their names to
make them more easily understood. Thus John, over time, changed his surname to Hontvet, omitting the combination of the
dt,
which Americans found queer in the writing of it and nearly impossible to enunciate correctly. And I also acquiesced to the
entering of myself on the church roll at Gosport as Mary S. Hontvet, rather than as Maren, as the Pastor wrote it that way
initially, and it was some time before I discovered the mistake. In addition, I observed that after the events of 5 March
1873, the spelling of Evan’s name was changed to Ivan in the American newspapers.

Putting aside the language difficulties, I did grow to have some fondness for Portsmouth. To go from the silence of Smutty
Nose to the agitation and bustle of Portsmouth was always unsettling, but I could not help but be intrigued by the dresses
and bonnets on the women, which I would keep in my mind when I returned to the Island. We would visit the pharmacy for tonics
and nostrums, and the public market for provisions, and there were always many curious sights in that city, though I confess
I was appalled at the lack of cleanliness on the streets, and by the condition of the streets themselves, as they were not
graded and were full of ruts and mud and so on. At that time, the main industry of Portsmouth was its ship yard, and always
in the background, there was the din of the ironworks. In addition, there were many sailors on the streets, as the Port attracted
ships of various nationalities. On three of my trips into Portsmouth, we spent the night with the Johnson family, Norwegians
who had come before us, and with them engaged in lively conversation through the night, which was always a joy for me, as
there was seldom any conversation of any duration on the island. On these occasions, I was especially pleased to receive news
from Norway, and even once from the area near Laurvig, since the Norwegian families in Portsmouth were the recipients of many
letters in America. More often than not, these letters were read aloud at table, and discussed at length. We always went to
Portsmouth in the summer, owing to the fact that John did not like to take the risk of ferrying me during the winters and
chance hitting one of the numerous ice floes that would sometimes block the passage between the mainland and the Shoals.

I did, in that time, receive three letters from Karen telling of our father (and full of vague complaints about her health
and the housework), but, curiously, with few mentions of Evan, who himself did not write to us until the second year of my
stay at Smutty Nose, and then to tell us of our father’s death from old age. In March of 1871, we had a fourth letter from
Karen, saying she would join us in America in May.

Karen’s letter was a great surprise to John and me. We could not imagine what motivation my sister had for leaving Norway,
as she had been quite parsimonious in her letter regarding her reasons for emigrating. She wrote only that as our father had
died, she was no longer obliged to stay in that house.

To prepare for my sister’s arrival, John purchased a bed in Portsmouth and put it in the upstairs bedroom. I made curtains
for that room, and sewed a quilt, which was of a star pattern and took all the scraps I had from my provisions. As I did not
have much time in which to finish it, I worked on the quilt all the long days and into the nights until my fingers were numb
at their tips, but when the quilt was done, I was glad of the result, for the room now had a cheer which had been entirely
absent before.

I remember well the morning of 4 May, when I stood on the beach at Smutty Nose and watched John bring my sister to the island
in the dory. He had gone into Portsmouth the day before to wait for the arrival of Karen’s ship, and I had seen them coming
across from Portsmouth in John’s schooner. It was a clear day but exceedingly cold, and I confess that I was apprehensive
about Karen’s arrival. Though it may strike the reader as odd, I was not eager to change the habits that John and I had shared
for three years, nor to admit another person, or, in particular, my sister, about whom I felt somewhat ambivalent.

As Karen drew closer, I examined her appearance. Though I knew she was thirty-seven, she seemed a much older woman than when
I had left her, even somewhat stooped. Her face had narrowed, and her hair had gone gray in the front, and her lips, which
had thinned, had turned themselves down at the corners. She was wearing a black silk dress with a flat bodice and with high
buttons to the collar, around which was a ruffle of fawn lace. She had on, I could see, her best boots, which were revealed
to me as she fussed with her skirts upon emerging from the skiff.

Perhaps I should say a word here about my own appearance. I was not in the habit of wearing my best dresses on the island,
as I had learned early on that the silk and the cotton were poor protection against the wind and sea air. Therefore, I had
taken to wearing only the most tightly woven homespun cloth, and over that, at all times, various shawls that I had knit myself.
Also I kept a woolen cap upon my head to protect myself from the fevers that so decimated the island population in the winter
and even in the early spring. And, in addition, if it were very windy, I would wear a woolen muffler about my neck. I had
not lost my figure altogether, but I had grown somewhat more plump in my stay on the island, which greatly pleased my husband.
When I did not have to wear my woolen cap, I preferred to roll my hair on the sides and in the back, and keep some fringe
in the front. The only distressing aspect of my appearance, I will say here, was that my face, as a consequence of the island
sun and rain and storms, was weathering somewhat like John’s, and I had lost the good complexion of my girlhood. I was twenty-five
at the time.

Karen stepped from the dory and clasped her hands to her bosom. She looked wildly about her, doubtless stunned, as I had been,
by the appearance of her new home. I went closer to Karen and kissed her, but she stood frozen in the sand, and her cheeks
were dry and chilly. I told her that she was welcome, and she said stonily that she would never have come to such a place
had she not been obliged to endure the greatest shame that ever can befall a woman. I was intensely curious as to the nature
of this shame, and asked her there on the beach, but she waved me off and said that she was in need of coffee and bread, as
she had been horribly sick on the boat and had not yet fully recovered.

I took her into the house, while John carried her trunk and spinning wheel and the mahogany sewing cabinet that had belonged
to my mother. Karen went directly to the table and sat down and removed her bonnet and heaved a great sigh. I could see that
in addition to graying, her hair was thinning at the sides and at the top, and this I attributed to the shock of having had
our father die, as any death of a loved one may cause the bereaved to age suddenly.