The Prophets of Eternal Fjord (11 page)

He milks the cow each morning, when the sea is usually calm. Roselil seems to be well and gives a good yield of milk. No one, he considers, not even the sceptical captain, will deny that fresh milk is good for a man's stomach and frame of mind on a long sea journey, when ship's biscuits mould, meat barrels smell like latrine buckets, and the herring is alive with mites. He charges a sum for the milk he cannot drink himself, five skillings a half pint, and the crew pay willingly. They tease him with good-natured jibes and ask to what use the money might be put when they arrive? To frequent the Comedy House, perhaps? Or to purchase fine clothes? Or perhaps he intends to pay the savages to allow him to turn them towards the Christian faith? But the only thing that worries him is whether there will be sufficient fodder to keep the cow alive.

Each time he goes inside the byre to Roselil, she stamps her feet on the deck, turns her head and rolls her eyes. Are you glad to see me? he says and gives her a pat. The cow's devotion opens once again the old wound which he had forgotten, his loss of the dark-skinned tinker girl. He sits down on the stool, rests his brow upon the warm belly, pulls on the teats, two by two, and listens to the soothing squirts of milk, the sound grad­ually altering as the bucket fills. He is quite aware of what this action calls to mind and in part replaces. It is not something of which he is ashamed.

The crew have seen it, too. They call the cow the pastor's mistress, though plainly in jest.

They receive their daily cup of milk. The captain, who shows himself to be a good-humoured and convivial man, states appreciatively that it may be on account of the milk that so little sickness is with them on the voyage and that the crew are so content. As yet, not a single fist-fight has occurred, nor even a heated argument. He will speak to the ship owner on the matter, and perhaps a milch cow will soon be the custom on long sea voyages. But how will the poor creature fare when we reach the cold? he wonders.

We shall see, says Morten. However, it is my conviction that where people can live, so too can cattle, and where cattle cannot, people would do wise to avoid.

You may be on to something there, the captain mutters.

Late in the evening on the third day they pass Skagen on the port side. He stands and looks out towards the beacon of the vippefyr just south of Grenen, Jutland's northernmost tip. He remains for several hours until it vanishes from sight beyond the stern. Then the final scraps of land retreat into the darkness and they are alone. The wind from the Skagerrak strikes them like a punishing hand. They must beat to windward, causing the vessel to heel considerably. Roselil is unsettled. She tries to crawl up the slope of the deck, tossing her head. More than once she succeeds in bringing herself upright, only to fall back onto her belly again. He is helped by a seaman to secure the leather straps under her abdomen. He tightens them well, and they pat her soothingly and feed her with hay. Their efforts seem to alleviate much of her discomfort, though still she rolls her eyes in fear.

He, too, feels unwell. He is ravenously hungry, yet nauseous. His stomach swells, though he has eaten hardly a thing. He belches inces­santly, but is unable to release at the other end, which he feels would be of some considerable relief. He sticks his fingers down his throat and spews bile. He drinks a little milk, which comes up again. He is ashamed of his condition, having felt assured that he could never succumb to seasickness. The crew slap him on the back and ask him how he is feeling. Fresh wind and salt on the lips becomes me well, he replies and staggers away.

I am aware that this will become worse than the present pitching and rolling, Morten says to the captain one day. But how much worse, I wonder?

My dear Magister, the captain replies with a smile. This is fair weather. Has he never sailed on the open sea?

I have sailed by the packet boat to Nakskov, he says, and once from Christiania to Copenhagen. I have experienced harsh weather in the bay of Køge Bugt. But I have never felt such unpleasantness as this.

This is neither Køge Bugt nor the packet boat to Nakskov, Magister. Ships go down each year on this route to Greenland.

I am informed of the dangers of the voyage. I am not afraid.

He ought to be. Most certainly. A prayer or two would do no harm.

Very well, he says. As soon as my constitution has returned, we shall say prayers in the forecastle.

The opportunity occurs only a couple of days later. He speaks of the Saviour's forty days in the desert without food or water, a fitting alle­gory, he considers, under the circumstances. The men thank him kindly when he is finished. They joke that the sun of the desert has done them good, and return to their work.

They are eating medister sausage with cabbage soup when the watch calls through the hatch that they are nearing the Norwegian coast. There is a rush on to the deck. Some dark rocks become visible in the grey and then Morten Falck sees farmhouses, open clearings in forest, clusters of sombre dwellings. He swallows. It looks not at all like his native Lier and yet a sudden surge of homesickness nearly causes him to burst into tears.

The captain decides that since the storm has blown them so far in to the coast they might as well take the opportunity to forage. They go ashore at a small settlement and spend a few days on land. Morten Falck purchases bales of hay and straw, and throws what is ruined over the side. He has barrels filled with fresh water especially for the cow. The crew are helpful, though he has to promise them free milk in payment. When night comes, he goes into the forest to sleep. One early morning he sits against a tree and seriously contemplates whether to be absent when
Der Frühling
sets sail again and instead settle once more in the country of his childhood. Such abrupt national sentiment catches him unawares, this pure-seeming fondness for moss-covered rocks, pine forest and dry stone walls, the embroidered garments of the peasants, and their dialect, regardless that it is so far from his own. The sound of cow and sheep bells in the forest. The feeling of pine needles between the fingers, and of sticky resin, its fresh and pungent odour. For a long time, ever since he was quite young, in fact, he has learned to think of himself as a priv­ileged subject of King Christian and has not at any time questioned the matter. But I am not a Dane, he thinks to himself now. The thought of leaving the country again is dreadful, and yet he does. He tries to think of his sudden feelings on land as a fit brought on by seasickness and terror at the thought of being wrecked and drowned.

He sails out with the ship's boat and clambers aboard. He attends to Roselil, who munches on fresh grass and seems contented. Then he descends into his cabin and lies down to read. When he arises the next day the land has sunk into the sea. They continue towards north-west. He enquires of the first mate as to their position and route. The man takes him into the captain's saloon and spreads a chart out on the table. He takes care to explain. His finger draws a diagonal line upwards and to the left.

We'll sail here, to the fifty-ninth, he says, then follow the latitude in a westerly direction, cutting between the Orkneys and Shetland, con­tinuing south of the Faroe Isles, if the wind and currents are willing to take us that way, to Staten Huch, here, his finger tapping at a headland, Greenland's southernmost point, which we'll sail close to or keep away from, depending on how the ice has pleased itself to lie this year.

Morten Falck goes down into his cabin and notes it in his diary.

His thoughts often dwell on the strongman von Eckenberg, although the reason eludes him. Indeed, there is much that catches up with him out here on the sea. He was young when he saw the strongman perform, sensitive and impressionable. Most likely he has forgotten the greater part of what he saw in the royal city at that time, or else he has seen through it as but superficial, vacuous frills. But von Eckenberg remains in his mind. He lies in his bunk in the creaking belly of the ship and thinks of this modest gentleman with his mild countenance and brown, mournful eyes, of how he meticulously waxed his twisted moustache after each turn and stepped to the mirror to neaten himself undemonstratively. Occasionally, a strangely enchanted mood descended on the audience – when he blew on his horn, when the musicians played their minuet, when the stone slab split into two. This, Morten thinks to himself, ought to be the effect of a priest upon his congregation. This is how the savages will receive the Word, if I convey it to them as skilfully as Master Eckenberg performed his tricks for pitiful convicts, seamen and merchants. But am I a Master Eckenberg?

They sail in to the Shetland Isles and remain a few days in the bay of a fishing community. Morten Falck grasps the opportunity to collect fresh grass for Roselil. It is much needed, as the stock of hay has depleted faster than he has calculated, and much of it is rotten on account of the salt water. A cow can consume astonishing amounts, but on receiving new and succulent fodder the animal descends into a vegetative state of con ­tented rumination. Her yield of milk has been on the decline, but now she once more delivers nearly a whole bucket each day. The crew tease him and complain that they have been cheated of the fresh steaks to which they have looked forward to being served once he was compelled to slaughter the beast.

A couple of days after setting sail again, the wind gathers, something the captain had told him would happen sooner or later west of Scotland. The waves loom tall, catching up with the ship from behind and swelling past. It feels as if they are being sucked backwards, then forced into the air, before the deck abruptly disappears beneath their feet. But the captain is glad. The weather is with us, he says. If the wind remains where it is, we shall be at our destination earlier than usual.

Or else at the bottom of the sea, Morten says to himself.

Der Frühling
, a heap of mouldering, waterlogged oak from the forests of Norway, with a ballast of wet sand whose nauseating smell seeps throughout. The vessel is held together by a quarter Danish mile of rope, some thousands of wrought-iron nails, the pressure of the water against its sides, and the prayers and curses of its crew, among them Morten Falck. He curses and spews, spews and curses. Then one day he wipes his mouth and says the Lord's Prayer. He prays for forgiveness and absolution from his sins. Please do not let me die, Lord, without first having served Thee and atoned for my sins, committed in the wantonness of youth. Save me, Lord! Forgive my outrageous abandonment of Miss Schultz!

He knows it is imagination and hallucination, and yet it is as though the gusts of wind carry with them a fragrance of lavender.

He endeavours to read, but is overcome by nausea and feelings of guilt, and must leave his book until later. The oblong shape of the cabin and the sheer confinement of its space causes him to think he is lying in his coffin, about to be lowered into the grave. The rank smell of his own corpse sears in his nostrils. He hears the seamen shouting on deck and tilts himself out of the bunk to totter unsteadily into the air, only for them to usher him back below.

Down below, where you belong, priest!

He seats himself on the top stair and inhales fresh air through a crack in the door. It feels good. He hears Roselil lowing without abate­ment and thinks of how terrified she must be. But he cannot attend to her.

As the worst sea is upon them, his crisis ends. The seasickness is gone. He devours a large portion of dried fish, boiled with barley oats, is made deliriously thirsty by the salty meal and drinks several cups of the ship's beer, spews one final time and feels restored. The storm rages for a day, then dies down sufficiently for him to attend to the cow.

Roselil? He opens the gate into the makeshift byre and expects to find her dead or dying. She lies in her own filth, yet lifts her head to look at him as he steps inside. She stands up willingly to be milked, though her flesh trembles and she provides only half a bucket. Nevertheless, there seems to be little wrong with her. He mucks out and washes her, rubbing vigorously with a rag of linen. She settles and sighs contentedly in sleep. He takes his blanket and sleeps next to her. Stars and a violet night sky are visible between the masts.

The sea remains troubled.
Der Frühling
meets the waves as they rise before her bows, mounts them, rolls over their crests or else remains suspended within an elastic duration of time that is drawn out or squeezed together, at once compressed and elongated, eternal and momentary, then to emerge as the swell crashes down upon her decks, the sea breaking open to spew out its foam, rushing away over the sides and surging into her wake. The ship wrenches itself free and steers towards the next wave with the deepest of groans from its hull or masts. The cow lifts its head and lows.

The
Frühling
loves the sea, says one of the men. That's why she pitches the way she does.

Morten regards him with puzzlement.

She wants her nose into every hole, says the seaman.

The weather calms. Morten feels he has been on the breaking wheel for a month. An icy rain drums against the deck and will not be stopped by the good leather coat he wears, but continues through his clothing, pointed diagonals of cold that pierce the skin like small projectiles. He spends much time with Roselil, dries and warms her with blankets, rubs her hide, feeds her fresh hay. She still provides milk, though the yield has diminished. He no longer demands payment for the milk the crew receive, but reserves two cups a day for himself, heats it up, adds aquavit and drinks the mixture while it is still scalding.

Then the rain turns to snow. Midsummer snow! The captain announces that they now follow the sixtieth and presumably have the Faroe Islands on starboard. But the snow falls so thickly they can hardly see the point of the jib boom.

You'll have to take my word for it, says the captain.

With the snow the air becomes milder, or at least feels as such. Whether it is true or not, the cold no longer goes to the marrow. Roselil has also settled and gives more milk. But the deck is covered in slippery slush that makes moving about perilous to any man's life. He spends many hours each day in the mess, where a lamp swings from the ceiling and a stove burns. He reads his Voltaire, his Bayle, German poetry, some Montaigne and Rousseau. He sleeps a lot and the more he sleeps, the greater becomes his fatigue. Time is frivolous and unreliable. He blinks his eyes twice and half a day has passed. His entire childhood and the years in Copenhagen swirl by, scene by scene, and half an hour has idled away. He begins to wander, from bow to stern, from port to starboard. He abandons himself to the peripatetic joys in which he so delighted in Copenhagen.