Fair Play (3 page)

“Mari,” she said, “are you unhappy that we don't see people?”

“No, not anymore.”

“That's good. I mean, if we did see them, what would it be like? Like always, exactly like always. Pointless chatter about inessentials. No composition, no guiding idea. No theme. Isn't that right? We know roughly what everyone will say; we know each other inside out. But here on our videos every remark is significant, nothing is arbitrary. Everything is considered and well formulated.”

“All the same,” said Mari, “sometimes one of us might say something unexpected, something that didn't fit, something really out of the ordinary that made you sit up and take notice. You know, something irrational.”

“Yes, I know. But make no mistake: great directors know all about the irrational. You talk about things that don't fit—they use such things, with a purpose, as an essential part of the whole. Do you know what I mean? Apparent quirkiness but with a point. They know exactly what they're doing.”

“But they've had time,” Mari objected. “We don't always have time to think, we just live! Of course a filmmaker can depict what you call quirkiness, but it's still just canned. We're in the moment. Maybe I haven't thought this through ... Jonna, these films of yours are fantastic, they're perfect. But when we get involved in them as totally as we do, isn't that dangerous?”

“How do you mean, dangerous?”

“Doesn't it diminish other things?”

“No. Really good films don't diminish anything, they don't close things off. On the contrary, they open up new insights, they make new thoughts thinkable. They crowd us, they deflate our slovenly lifestyle, our thoughtless way of chattering and pissing away our time and energy and passion. Believe me, films can teach us a huge amount. And they give us a true picture of the way life is.”

Mari laughed. “Of our slovenly lifestyle, you mean? You mean, maybe they can teach us to piss our lives away with a little more intelligence, a little more elegance?”

“Don't be an ass. You know perfectly well ...”

Mari interrupted. “And if film is some kind of edifying god, wouldn't it be dangerous to try and emulate your gods, always knowing that you're coming up short? That everything you do is somehow badly directed?”

The telephone rang and Jonna went to answer it. She listened for a long time, then she said, “Wait a minute, I'll give you his number. Stay calm, it'll just take a second.” Mari heard her finish the conversation. “Call back if there's any news. Bye.”

“What's happened?” Mari said.

“That was Alma again. Her cat jumped out the window. It was trying to catch a pigeon.”

“You're not serious! Mosse? I didn't realize; you were so short with her ...”

“I gave her the number for the vet,” Jonna said. “You have to be short and matter-of-fact about accidents. You were talking about badly directed.”

“Not now!” Mari burst out impatiently. “Their Mosse ... Jonna, I think I'll go to bed.”

“No,” Jonna said. “We have to wait. She might call again and need comfort. You have to answer and talk to her for a while. You know, share it out fair and square.” She hung the silver cloth over the television set to protect it from dust and morning sun, and lit the last cigarette of the day.

T
HE SKERRY
was shaped like an atoll—granite surrounding a shallow lagoon or tidal pool with a narrow passage out to the sea. At low water, the lagoon became a lake. Seals had played there in the old days, before they were shot or moved on to quieter locations. Now eider hens used it for a nursery. The cottage stood on one side of the lagoon; the other side was sea-bird territory. Guano streaked the granite like snow, and white as snow were the nesting gulls and terns and the long, showy borders of daisies in every rocky crevice.

On the highest outcropping, a black-backed gull with a single chick had taken up residence, a huge bird with black wing feathers and a beak like a bird of prey. Their distinct separation from the rest of the settlement seemed to express superiority, contempt. Now and then, as if in distraction, the gull would make its way down the mountain to devour an eider chick. Hundreds of screaming birds would rise in a cloud each time and, one by one, dive steeply on the gull—but never come too close. And the lord of the island would snap at them absent-mindedly and return to his own territory, where he would stand stock-still, distinguished, statuesque on the atoll's highest point.

Jonna liked eider chicks, especially after one of them wandered up to the cottage and insisted on following her. Finally she got the chick into a basket and rowed around for an hour before spotting a likely eider family, distant enough from the territory of the black-backed gulls. “Someday I'll murder those black-backed gulls,” she said. “You just can't work in peace around here with all these stupid birds.”

One morning, Jonna was oiling her pistol out on the granite slope when, almost without thinking, she fired off a shot across the lagoon in the direction of the gull's stolid silhouette. Whether it was to scare him or to shoot him is uncertain. In any case, the bird collapsed and fluttered down from its mountaintop. Mari hadn't seen it, and she was used to hearing Jonna shoot at tin cans. Jonna went to finish off the bird. She was very upset, but at the same time proud of her marksmanship—it was at least a hundred meters across the lagoon. But the gull was nowhere to be found.

Two days later, Mari came running across the rock. “Jonna,” she called, “it can't fly and it can't walk, and the chick doesn't know where to go!”

When they came to the water, the whole shoreline was empty.

But the dismal morning inevitably came when Mari found the black-backed gull dead on the rocks, and by then it was full of worms.

“Typical,” Jonna said. “Of course you had to be the one to find it. Well, okay, I'm sorry. I shot it.” And she added, “At a hundred meters.”

“I might have known,” Mari burst out. “I should have guessed! You've killed the King. He was awful, but he belonged to the island, to us! You just love guns! You just can't stop! So now you can take the feathers. Take them. Go ahead, take them! They're just what you need for your blessed graphic acid bath, aren't they?”

“I didn't mean to,” Jonna began, but Mari interrupted and began speculating cruelly, thoughtlessly, about when the chick would eventually float ashore. Then she went down to the live-box and put on a demonstration by slaughtering perch, a job she despised and generally left completely to Jonna.

Jonna detached the long pinions, washed and dried them, and put them in her work drawer, farthest in. All day she waited for the unavoidable sequel, but it was not until they had laid out their nets that Mari began talking about the concept of the hunter. Somewhere she'd read that people could be broadly divided into hunters, gardeners, and fishermen. “The hunter type,” she explained, “is naturally the most admired. He's considered to be bold and a little dangerous. You know, a person who plays for high stakes, who can be ruthless and take chances that other people don't dare take. Isn't that right?”

Jonna went on whittling on her net peg, observing by and by that “There must be all kinds, but mostly people are a mixture of all three. Or all ninety-five, or whatever.”

“Yes, of course, but there are still typical cases of what we might call hunters. And they're born that way.”

“Speaking of gulls,” Jonna said, “do you remember the one that broke its wing and crawled to the steps every day? I suppose you were being a gardener when you tried to comfort it with food it didn't even have the strength to eat. And what happened? I threw the pike net over the poor thing's head when you were off doing something else and took care of it quickly with a hammer. I'm sure it was full of worms. You can't mend what's totally broken. And for that matter, you were relieved. You admired me. You said so.”

“Well, yes,” Mari admitted, “but that was completely different. That's anecdotal evidence.”

“There are times,” Jonna went on without listening, “there are times when a healthy ruthlessness is the right thing. What about that time those idiots came ashore in their horrible plastic boat—it was purple—and were going to shoot our birds before the season even opened?! And what's more they were drunk, though that doesn't excuse them. Remember?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“So you see what I mean. I went down to the shore and gave them a piece of my mind. No effect. They sneered at me and sauntered up onto the island with their shotguns.”

“They were dreadful,” Mari agreed.

“They were. And then I thought, the only right and just thing to do right now is to shoot holes in their boat. That would teach them, right? A couple of holes at the waterline, bang.”

“But how did they get home?!” Mari burst out.

“They had to bale. Or maybe they had rags.”

Jonna and Mari sat silent for a moment.

“Odd,” Mari said. “Did you say that was last year?”

“Yes. Or the year before. And the boat was violet. Lilac.”

“But are you absolutely sure you really shot holes in it, or did you just think about it?”

Jonna stood up and shoved the dinner dishes into the box under the bed. “Maybe I just thought about it,” she said then. “But the point ought to be clear enough. You have to realize that there always has to be an aggressor. Someone who attacks when no one else has the guts to get involved. To protect ...”

“Ha!” Mari cried. “You're very clever at getting me to go along with all sorts of things that are beside the point! The point is, you think guns are fun! Admit you think they're fun! At midsummer you shot the stovepipe on the tent sauna full of holes, and the smoke's been coming in ever since. Did I say a word about it? No. But let me tell you something once and for all: I loathe that pistol!”

Mari took the rubbish bin and went outside.

After a while, she came back.

“Jonna, they're here again. The purple plastic boat. Can you go down and talk to them?”

“The nerve!” Jonna said. “But maybe they've come to apologize. They might even have brought water. Or wood. Wait. I'll go down and see.”

When Jonna was halfway across the meadow, Mari came running after her. “Take this,” she said. “You never know.” And she handed her the pistol.

T
HE SUMMER
had moved into June. Slowly, thinking Mari didn't notice, Jonna went from window to window, tapped the barometer, walked out on the slope or out on the point, came in again with comments about things that needed attention, complained about the gulls screaming and copulating to drive a person crazy, and spoke her mind about the local radio, which had the most idiotic programs—for example, about amateurs who had shows and thought they were God's gift to art. And the weather was implacably beautiful the entire time.

Mari said nothing. What could she say?

Finally Jonna got busy. She built up her great unassailable barricade against work, against the agony of work. With small, polished tools she began shaping exquisite small objects of wood, tinier and tinier, more and more beautiful. She visited the islands to the west looking for juniper; she walked the shoreline gathering unusual kinds of driftwood, odd shapes that might give her an idea. She arranged it all on her workbench in symmetrical piles, smaller ones, larger ones, and every piece of sea-polished wood had its own special potential to keep her from making pictures.

One day Jonna was sitting on the granite slope polishing an oval wooden box. She claimed it was an African wood, but she'd forgotten the name.

“Will there be a lid?” Mari asked.

“Of course.”

“Have you always worked in wood? I don't mean woodcuts or wood engravings, but for real?”

Jonna put down the wooden box. “For real,” she repeated. “That's brilliant. Try to understand, I'm playing. And I mean to go on playing. Do you have a problem with that, maybe?”

The cat came in, sat down, and stared at them.

“Fish,” Mari said. “We ought to take in the net.”

“And what happens if I do nothing but play? Until I die! What would you say to that?”

The cat meowed angrily.

“And ambition,” Mari said. “What are you going to do about your goals?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“But what if you can't help it?”

“I can help it. Don't you understand; there isn't time anymore. It's all I do, just observe, observe to distraction, pictures that don't mean shit until I draw them, and redraw them. I've had enough for one life, my only life! And anyway, I don't see them anymore. Admit I'm right!”

“Yes,” Mari said. “You're right.”

The sky had clouded over and there was rain in the air. The cat meowed again.

“Fish,” Mari said. “The cat food's all gone.”

“We can leave it overnight.”

“No. What if the wind picks up? Nothing but seaweed, and it'll catch on the bottom. And you know, it's Uncle Torsten's last net.”

“Okay, okay,” Jonna said. “Your Uncle Torsten's sacred net that he made when he was ninety.”

“Over ninety. We laid it wrong. I know we laid it too close to shore, the bottom there's too rocky.”

The cat followed them down to the shore. Jonna rowed and Mari sat in the stern to take up the net. The float had drifted far out behind the point. The wind was rising.

“We're not getting anywhere,” Jonna said. “Can't you tell? We're standing still. Your uncle and his blessed net ...”

“Be quiet. It was the last thing he did. A little more out, no, no, turn! Backwater a little, backwater ... Now I've got it.” Mari pulled in line and got hold of the net peg. “Just like I thought, it's hooked on the bottom. Go upwind ... Back around. Don't row! Backwater! This is hopeless. And it's his last net.”