The Boatmaker (39 page)

The next morning at dawn he enters the main harbor below Harbortown. His boat comes into the wind shadow of the island. The sail empties and flaps at the luff. He
releases his jaw, reaches for the halyard and drops his sail, the gaff falling with a crack on the boom. He will paddle the few hundred yards to the gravel beach.

He reaches for his paddle, then stops at what he sees in the calm waters of the harbor. A seal has surfaced off his starboard bow, quite close, face sleek, nose and whiskers pointing to port. Off to port and close to shore, two seals emerge at the same moment and face each other. For a moment, it is exactly as it was on his mother's handkerchief: the buildings on the bluff, the curve of rocky shoreline, the three seals. Then all three seals vanish into their own ripples. The boatmaker paddles for the beach. On the bluff, no footsteps echo from the wooden sidewalk. He has lost track of the days of the week. It must be Sunday.

CHAPTER 28

On an ordinary Monday toward the end of summer, the small bell over the front door of the general store in Harbortown rings as the door opens. The woman of Small Island stops, her feet held to the floor.

His features are the same, but his face is different. He is dark from the sun, past burned, darker than she has ever seen him. Standing out, white against the skin of his nose, is a scar like an
X
. The drooping mustache is the same, but the baldness has expanded across his scalp.

She has never imagined she would see him again. At the beginning, she told herself he would return, but she didn't believe it; she has acted on what she believed. The opening of the door and the entrance of the boatmaker, looking like a stick hardened in fire, erases a large piece of what she thought she knew.

It is mid-day, and there are no customers in the store. The boatmaker sees the woman start. The high, bright sound of the bell fades away as he stands at the door waiting for her to regain her composure. She looks as if she's had a visitor from the spirit world. But the boatmaker is no ghost. Everything about him is solid: his boots, his hands, his sunburned face, his boat hidden in the woods that drop down below Harbortown.

The general store is not large, but it takes a long time for him to cross it: three years. Then he is beside her, taller than she is, though not by much. He takes her shoulders and pulls her to him, kisses her on her cheeks—first one, then the other. It is a gesture never seen before on Small Island.

“Do you have a package for me?” asks the stranger. “From the Mainland.”

There is a package for him. It is bulky, wrapped in tough paper, mailed from a place she's never heard of. The package arrived a few days ago. It's sitting in the back room, where they keep the things that come in on the steamer. When it was delivered, she ran her hands over the brown paper, examining the unfamiliar writing. Wondered what was inside. Imagined it must be a mistake. From time to time, parcels arrive for people who don't live on Small Island, or people who have died.

She considered opening this package from the Mainland. After all, how likely was it he was still among the living—a man who drinks too much, who sailed away in a boat he built himself? She thought about opening it, but she didn't allow herself. She wasn't certain he was dead. Still, she never imagined he would simply open the door and walk into the general store as if he hadn't been gone for three years without sending a single word.

“I'll go and look,” she says, already lying to him. She is giving herself time.

Moving her feet is like uprooting saplings. She parts the purple curtains that screen off the back room. Behind the curtains is a tall white set of shelves, with cubbyholes above for mail and larger shelves for parcels below. His package is on the shelf closest to the floor. The shelf for sorting mail extends out at waist level. She puts her hands on it and supports herself, chest trembling. She is afraid she will vomit on the mail. Then she begins to cry, silently. She doesn't know how to tell him. She had no idea he would return. She must tell him, immediately, what has happened since he left. She didn't think she had these feelings anymore. She wipes her face on her sleeve. Her breathing returns more or less to normal. She turns and goes out through the purple curtain.

“Yes, there's something here for you.”

He leaves the store with the package balanced on his shoulder, whistling. Harbortown is the same; he is different.

The bell rings again as he leaves. It may have been five minutes between the two times it rang. An hour later she feels as if she has not moved from the spot where she was standing when he entered the store. People have come into the store, she has served them, they have left. She has no idea what she said, though no one seemed shocked.

The bell rings, and the boatmaker enters again, this time wearing a suit.
A suit!
It is beyond imagining. Valter has suits, yes. The doctor. A few others on the island. But none of them has a suit like this one: in a beautiful brown tweed with a matching vest, cut by someone who knows his body as well as she does. Above the vest is a white shirt with a stiff collar and dark tie. He is shaved and wearing elegant brown boots. Even more than the one who entered earlier, this is a man the woman of Small Island does not know. Perhaps that will lessen her guilt. Still, what she has to say won't come easily.

“Let's take a walk,” says the stranger. “I want to show you something.”

“I can't leave. Gunnarson will be upset.”

“He works for Valter, doesn't he?”

“Yes.”

“Then it will be alright.”

He takes her by the arm, guides her out of the store and stops to wait for her to pull the shade and lock the door. As they walk, he looks sideways to see how she has changed and how she has not. Mostly she is the same.

Out where the sidewalk ends, not far from the top of the bluff, he takes her arm and they climb down over rocks and roots to the gravel beach where the longboat from the steamer puts in. The tide is far out among gray rocks, seawater swirling in the tidepools. He looks along the sweep of the harbor, sizing things up. He has had his plan in mind for a while; now he is sure of it.

“How is the girl?”

“She's fine. A bigger girl. You wouldn't recognize her.”

“I would.”

She knows she must tell him now. “We . . .” She starts to speak, then stops. “We . . .” The tears come again. He takes her by the shoulders.

“What is it, Karin? What's wrong?”

She buries herself in his shoulder and speaks, her voice muffled by brown tweed. Between each phrase is a sob.

“We've gone back to Valter. The girl and I. I'm so sorry. I didn't know if you were coming back. I didn't even know if you were alive. I never heard from you. It's been
three years.” She's quiet. Then she looks up into his face and says: “Forgive me.”

He pulls her closer. “Of course I forgive you. You never heard from me. You had to take care of yourself—and the girl. You've done nothing wrong.”

So that's why she looked stricken. He is relieved. All this can be easily addressed. There is no reason for her to feel guilty. He never intended to return to his life on Small Island as it was before. He decides not to tell her yet that he is married, his wife pregnant with their child. There will be time for that later.

Now he wants her to move beyond her sorrow and guilt. He needs her attention for something more important.

“Listen, Karin. I'm going to build something. Right here.”

“What?” This is so far out of the train of her own thoughts that she isn't sure she has heard him correctly.

“I'm going to build something here.”

“What are you going to build?”

“A boatyard.”

“A boatyard. What is that?”

“A place where boats are built and repaired.”

She steps back to take him in, this stranger with the sunburned face, the scar, the elegant suit, the Mainland manners. She hears him describe his plans for the thing
he calls a boatyard and the business empire it will be a part of, which he is involved with in some way. But she isn't paying much attention to his words. She is confused, her feelings shifting. All she hears is the steady, determined tone. As if he hadn't heard anything she just told him—or it didn't matter. She feels a first twinge of anger.

“I'm going to build it right here. I'll buy the land a parcel at a time. I'll find men to work for me. If I can't find them here, I'll go to Big Island—all the way to the Mainland if I have to. I don't care. I'll find men who want to work and know how to work.”

She says nothing, hugs her arms to her, feeling suddenly cold.

“And I'm going to change my name.”

“Change your name?”

“Yes. I'm going to be called Boatmaker.”

“
Boatmaker
. What kind of name is that?” She laughs.

“It's the name I will have.”

“But you already have a name,” she says. “A perfectly good name. Vilem Lippsted. The same as your father. Everyone here knows what your name is.”

“
Was.
They know what my name
was
. Now it's Boatmaker. Vilem, they can take or leave. Boatmaker is my name now. And there will be a boatyard on this beach. Called The Three Seals.”

What nonsense this man talks. If he stays on Small Island, she may run into him on the sidewalk in Harbortown. But it will be easy enough to ignore him, with his talk of boatyards and a new name. No one on Small Island will understand him. They will laugh at him. Call him crazy. The boatbuilder families will fight him with all their strength. No one will work for him. It is all a fantasy, some dream he dreamed on the Mainland. He is bound to fail. Small Island does not take kindly to change.

She will leave the stranger right here, have no more to do with him. But before she walks away, she has one more task.

“There's another thing I need to tell you.”

He says nothing, lost in his plans for The Three Seals Boatyard.

“Your mother.”

“How is she?”

“She's gone. A year ago, at the end of the winter. That winter was long and hard. They found her at her house. Pneumonia. She'd been dead a week. She's next to your brother.”

They turn and go back over rocks, under branches, over the roots of gnarled trees to the top of the bluff. He leaves her at the general store and turns off into the woods.
He isn't interested in meeting anyone he knows or answering any questions. In time he will reintroduce himself, buy the parcels of land he needs, explain the idea of a boatyard and begin hiring. He knows he will meet resistance. As he walks along in his suit and boots, he thinks of Sven Eriksson, who seems equal to anything. He will try to be like that. He is no longer a drunken young man with a feeling for wood. He is a force—a force backed by money.

He finds the path as if he had walked it the day before. It's sunny, the wind rising and dying in a nervous rhythm. The smell of pine is strong. The woods open, and he is in the clearing leading to the oak where his brother is buried. High above him, oak leaves rustle.

His brother's stone is in its familiar place. Someone has trimmed the grass around it. A few feet away, close to the roots of the oak, is another stone, with his mother's name and dates. He kneels, runs his hand over his mother's name incised in stone: a city man wearing a suit cut by a tailor who sews even better than his mother did. A man who has seen things no one on Small Island would understand or even believe. And is now back at the base of the tree whose roots go all the way down to where Small Island itself is anchored.

As he runs his hand over the stone, the tears begin without will or permission. He feels that everything he
has done has been for nothing. He has returned too late. His mother will never see him in his suit and boots, never know the man he has become. He will never be able to show her that he is as good a man as his brother would have been. His body shakes with loss, tears staining his face and new shirt. She is gone. He will never have the love he sailed so far for.

He finds himself lying in the grass, sobbing. Cheek against his mother's stone, he sees tiny flowers peering at him between the green stalks of grass. The flowers have six petals, each the blue of the blue wolf. He doesn't recognize them. Rachel will know their name, in Latin and in the language of the Mainland. He pulls two flowers, rubs them against his face, finds they have no smell. His tears begin to dry. Looking into the tiny flowers, he feels his mother present, but in a different way, not smelling of drink, tearing with fists and words. Instead she is smiling at him, shining silently through the blue petals. It is not too late, after all. What he has received is not as he imagined it would be, but it is much more than nothing. Even in this first moment of understanding, he knows it will take years to know just what it is that he has been given.

The boatmaker rolls over. Above him oak leaves move back and forth, allowing the fleeting Small Island sunshine to pass through. He shields his eyes, holding a
miniature bunch of blue flowers over his head, looking through them to the sky. He thinks about his other home, in the capital. Jacob Lippsted will rebuild. The men who were with them in the forest will again make the famous Lippsted furniture, using designs handed down from generation to generation. He will bring Rachel and his children—he knows there will be others after this first son—to Small Island. Rachel will spend time here, to be with him and see where he comes from. They will build a house in Harbortown, facing the wooden sidewalk, with a view of the curving harbor and the sea. But he knows she will never permanently leave the rebuilt townhouse with its beautiful tapering façade. The boatmaker will begin a new life, lived between these two worlds, old and new. He will travel farther, even past the Mainland, to Europe and beyond. But he will always return to Small Island, where he began: a rock in the gray sea, the visible tip of an axis that reaches all the way to the center of the earth.