The Prophets of Eternal Fjord (55 page)

A right whale, says the boatswain. Make ready, Phantom.

The North Atlantic right whale is the species they catch most. It is a slow swimmer and easy prey; it does not fight as though possessed like some of the other whales, but is as gentle as a milch cow, and, it is said, just as stupid.

The whale is harpooned from the ship's deck entirely without drama; they have it firmly on two lines and it settles itself accommodatingly at the ship's side with a resigned lash of its tail.

Harpoon! yells the mate.

He leaps out and lands on its back, gets to his knees and crawls forward to the blowhole. He plunges the lance into the flesh; it quivers slightly, then settles.

An easy kill, says the mate from the deck. Haul him up, boatswain!

But as he is about to grip the ladder, the boatswain jerks the line at the same time as the whale thrashes one last time, and Harpoon is toppled into the drink. Somehow he finds himself underneath the animal; his hands claw at the cockle shells and tufts of sea grass that stick to the whale's exterior, but he finds no purchase and sinks. As yet he holds his breath, but the water presses down upon his mouth; his lungs strain. Why do I sink? he wonders, and sinks still. Why do I not float to the surface as usual? He realizes something is weighing him down, something in the folds of his suit. He fumbles with the buttons, but his fingers have begun to stiffen and the thirst for air intrudes upon his concentration. He gets a hand inside the collar, then another, and tears it open. He feels inside the sleeve and discovers several flat objects of metal, like beaten plates of lead to the touch. They are sewn inside the hem. A greeting from the boatswain, he manages to think, for having informed on him to the captain. He claws and tears and eventually the material loosens and he is able to remove the weights, to release them and let them descend to the bottom. He must have been propelled backwards, for he feels the rhythmic lashing of the beast's tail, the throes of death, and senses the vibrations from the long lances of the blubber-cutters, who have already set about the catch. If he surfaces now, he reasons, he will risk having his head chopped off or else be cut to pieces. But now it is too late to consider. He obeys the command of his lungs and opens his mouth, feels the rush of saltwater into his lungs. Drowning is not as bad as he thought; in fact, it is not at all unpleasant. His body is as limp and heavy as the lead weights he let drop to the bottom. He feels himself turn slowly backwards and descend. The urge to breathe has quite left him. The sensation is like placing one's head upon a soft silk pillow when most exhausted.

He opens his eyes. Above him rotates a ring of grinning faces with some sky in between. Someone is loosening his lifeline. He turns on to his side and spews seawater and blood.

What a splendid catch! they exclaim, laughing.

The captain takes the boatswain to task. I warn you, Boatswain, any more problems from you and you'll spend the rest of the voyage chained to the mast.

Yessir, says the boatswain. When the captain has gone he bends down over Harpoon, pats him on the cheek and says, That was for ratting on me. But you did well. Now we're quits, so why not be friends? He extends his hand. Harpoon takes it. The boatswain helps him off with his suit and fetches him a half pint of whisky.

Halfwit! Numskull! Nitwit! Chump!

The mate is having one of his frequent fits. The deck is covered in whale matter and he has fallen flat on his behind.

Who washed down this deck? the mate howls. Or more to the point, who didn't? I'll personally make sure he gets no bonus and is never hired again!

The men, with their backs turned, shudder with laughter. But all are edgy, all rather on the wrong side of each other. They want to go home to Aberdeen. But the captain has suffered a relapse of his North Pole sickness.

We must stop him, says the boatswain, or he'll sail us right into the maelstrom. And this time you keep your mouth shut, Harpoon.

Aye, says Harpoon.

On the quarterdeck stands the captain. Keep her steady, he says. Due north! His eyes gleam with the madness of midnight sun.

The fan of their wake is red with blood and punctured by partly butchered whale carcasses. The air is filled with the screams of the northern fulmar as they dip down to the carcasses and tear at them with their beaks. They no longer take the blubber, but go directly for the sperm oil, the most valuable of the whale's material, and the scarcest in volume. But if they continue to steer north they will have little to gain from their rich cargo and will be lucky to even survive.

Harpoon!

Another whale, another leap over the side. But the boatswain's hand is firm and Harpoon has found that he can trust him. He hacks a hole in the sperm whale's snout and bucket after bucket of spermaceti is passed over the bulwark. In the hold there is not even room for another barrel stave: now they have begun to collect the filled barrels on the deck, a matter that causes the men concern. They speak of the ship's displace­ment, that its centre of gravity is too high, that they risk turning over. The schooner draws much water, with a freeboard of only a couple of ells amidships in still weather. The matter is put to the mate, whose response is to have the messenger, one of the elder seamen, bound to the mast and lashed. The next morning it is the mate who stands there bound. He mutters faintly to himself, his shirtfront reddened with the blood that drips from his nose.

I see, says the captain pensively when presented with the sight. And what do you now intend?

We want to go home, says the seaman who was lashed.

Where's your sense of adventure? the captain enquires. Good Scottish seamen you are, one and all, or so I thought. I'm ashamed of you. What would your proud ancestors think!

Sail home or go the same way as your mate here, they say, loosening the man from the mast and tipping him overboard. There is a faint splash and some stifled protest, then silence.

The captain seems unperturbed and merely shakes his head mourn­fully, while clicking his tongue. We could make history, he says softly, we could sail further north than any ship before us.

There's a reason no ship ever went there before, the seaman says. It could be that ships have no business there.

Cowardly dogs, says the captain with a sigh. If you call yourselves Scotsmen, then from this day on I am no longer a Scot.

Harpoon hears some tumult, a scuffle on the deck. The men converge, then draw back. He sees the captain spreadeagled, with two men on top of him.

Now, says the boatswain, now it's your turn, Harpoon! He hands him the whaler's lance.

What do you want me to do?

Well, take a guess, says the boatswain, and grins.

The men step aside, the boatswain nudges him in the back and he stumbles a couple of steps forward. You're the only man on board who isn't christened. With a Christian man's blood on our hands we're doomed. But you can do it.

No, says Harpoon. I won't. You already have the blood of the mate on your hands.

My friend, says the boatswain in a low voice. Listen well. If you won't do it, they'll kill you, too.

He steps forward to the captain, who is on his back. The writing vanishes from his book, but a new book is in the making, the Book of Harpoon, the nameless heathen. Two men hold the captain down by his shoulders. Now they spring aside. The captain remains flat.

Harpoon, he says, his red beard pointing up at him. Will you let them make a murderer of you, my friend?

He does not reply. He takes another step forward. He points the lance at the captain's stomach.

No, not there, says the captain, not in the stomach. Much pain, a slow death. Further up, my friend. Here.

He moves the point to his chest.

You're a good lad, says the captain. You remind me of my son.

The men celebrate down below, blustering the songs of their homeland. Frequently they spill up on to the deck for fistfights, two by two, their knuckles bound with cloth, the others standing in a ring, cheering them on. Harpoon sits on a hatchway and gazes towards the land, the fells that at first are low and uniform, then steep. He tries to establish what feelings he has at the sight.

Hey, Phantom, say the men. Aren't you going home soon?

The boatswain sits down with him. He lights his pipe; they sit a while and smoke.

My good native friend, says the boatswain. Now is the time for you to take your kayak and leave us. If you don't go of your own accord, they'll tip you overboard and this time there'll be no rope around your waist.

Aye, he says.

Go home, says the boatswain. Do what needs to be done. Believe me, it's better than running away. And this comes from a man who has been fleeing for thirty years. Don't forget me now, my friend.

When shortly afterwards he is settled in the kayak they stand at the bulwark and wave. Bye-bye, Harpoon, Mutie, Phantom. Wish us well on our voyage. The good Lord knows we need it!

Holsteinsborg, 1793, spring. It is many years since he was here last and the colony has grown considerably, into an entire little town. Many of the houses are of both two and three storeys, staggered up the steep slopes behind the harbour, freshly painted and gleaming with the wealth that whaling has brought to the place. He well understands that Kragstedt has thoughts of something similar at Sukkertoppen. He wanders in and out of the lanes that run between the houses. People take no notice of him. He finds his way to the trading station office and speaks to the Overseer, who makes a quick appraisal of him and takes him on.

He can start right away, the Overseer tells him. Report to the quay-side. He points through the window. The constable there will get him started. Name?

Harpoon hesitates. Jens.

Yes? The Overseer's pen dips in the ink pot and hovers over the page.

Bertelsen.

Settle up once a week with me, Jens Bertelsen. Bed and board is his own matter. He puts the pen back in its holder. Don't just stand there.

He goes down to the harbour. The constable scrutinizes him. Blubber boiling, he says. Come with me.

The blubber house is situated on a promontory outside the colony. It is a two-winged structure, each wing some twenty ells in length. The smoke drifts heavy and fetid out across the ford from the tall chimney. The constable opens the door and calls inside. A young, bare-chested man comes to receive him and show him the ropes. They do not intro­duce themselves.

Furnace, says the man. Stoke here. He opens and closes the furnace door. Coal here. Make sure to keep an even temperature. Flues here. Once the blubber's on the boil, you need to tip the kettle to make it run out into the cooling vats. Here. But mind out, it's hot. He laughs and points out a number of scars on his upper body.

They enter the adjoining room. Through holes in the wall, wooden spouts run down to smaller cooling vats in which the blubber oil is left to stand for a few hours while the sediment settles at the bottom. Then it is led off to the next cooling room, where it is poured into flat-bottomed trays and cooled in the draught of the open windows. Eventually it is released through an outlet and siphoned into barrels, ready to be shipped. Questions?

Can I sleep here?

Haven't you any place to live?

I just arrived.

You can sleep in the loft, but I doubt you'll care for it.

Thanks.

He soon finds out it is best to be naked, or as good as. The air is thick with fat and steam, and so hot that he sweats pints in the course of a day. Blubber is brought in from the whole colony: kone boats fully laden; Danish whalers sending in blubber in exchange for lamp oil; natives bringing great piles of cut blubber on litters. The furnace roars all day and all night; he shovels coal and taps the oil. They are a handful of men, all working naked, all losing their footing on the slippery floors, all covered in blubber and soot and resembling the prints of Negro slaves he has seen in the magazines, with great, blinking eyes. Outside, large bays are filled to the brim with unmelted blubber, and more arriving all the time. The foreman harasses them. It is not a job that is ever finished; the purpose of the job is not to drown under yet more work. He finds a good rhythm and sticks to it. If a man is not quick enough to send the melted blubber onwards in the system, the constables will be upon him; and if he is too quick, unmelted blubber enters into the cooling vats and he must start again. To facilitate the process they must clean the copper of impu­rities six times a day, after which it must be rinsed with water, a highly perilous job, because the vessel is constantly red hot and the water explodes into boiling steam the moment it touches the metal.

The work soon renders him numb and empty. The Book of Bertel is now devoid of script, and the Book of Harpoon has reached its conclu­sion. He is no longer a narrative, but a man returned to his natural state. He sleeps in the loft above the boiling shop. It is a hot and malodorous place, and the noise from below seems even more deafening than when he is in its midst. And yet he sleeps soundly, naked on the rough planks. Sunday is their day off. He makes himself as clean as he can, and occupies one of the rear benches in the Bertelskirke, bowing his head whenever anyone enters. He recognizes several of the churchgoers and keeps his eye out until eventually he sees her.

She sits on the women's side, small and huddled. He studies her for a long time and she must sense it, for she begins to turn her head and cast glances over her shoulder. When finally their eyes meet, she stiffens. He nods deliberately. She stares at him for a long time.

He rises and leaves. He sits down on the slope below the churchyard and waits, then hears the soft pad of kamik boots behind him.

Bertel, is it you?

He turns his head and smiles over his shoulder. Mother.

I thought you were dead.

I am well. I work for the Trade.

The Trade? she says. Have you been chased from the Mission?

I have taken a break. How is my mother?

Well, she says.