The Prophets of Eternal Fjord (66 page)

Parallel worlds collide and entangle inside Falck's head, mingling improperly and disagreeably.

The hermaphrodite sticks the violin under his chin and plays a trill. Then he puts it down and looks at Falck with mournful eyes. Every ­thing's gone, he says. The music has stopped.

I know you, Falck says after a while.

Of course you do! We made each other's acquaintance one night many years ago. I owe you five marks, Priest. You rendered me the service you'd paid me to perform. He puts his hand in his pocket and produces a leather pouch. He tosses it to Falck, who catches it in the air.

You are a musician now?

Yes, I'm a musician. He picks on the strings of his violin. I was put in charge of the orchestra's instruments. But now it's all too late. Too late, too late. He places the violin under his chin again and walks off in the direction of Vestergade as he plays. Goodbye, Priest! he calls out. Falck watches the young man until he is gone. Or the young woman, he thinks to himself, calling to mind her grotesque and inadmissibly muddled gender lying naked in the shed at the ramparts. He realizes he still holds the leather pouch in his hand. He looks inside. It is heavy with coins, a small fortune. He recalls his last encounter with the boy at the Dyrehavsbakken, when he stood and watched him emptying people's pockets and refrained from giving him away. He stuffs the purse into his pocket. He will give the money to someone in need, he resolves, someone suffering on account of this catastrophe.

The fire jumps. A flight of stairs collapses on Rådhusstræde; windows and doors spew dust and smoke; and a horse panics, wrenches itself free and gallops away in the direction of Nørregade. The roof of the Rådhus is ablaze, the fire is at the clock tower, beams and rafters and gutters in its grip. The square is teeming with people. They stop what they are doing and stare up at the building.

About bloody time, they say.

The Rådhus clock strikes the half-hour agonizingly slowly. The onlookers jeer, clap and whistle. Falck loosens his collar, the heat is stifling. He remembers the Duke and runs back to the Missionskollegium. The portrait is where he left it, the building shuttered and abandoned. The fire reaches out from the Rådhus and will ignite the college's gutters. He picks up the painting and makes his way towards the perimeter.

A wide corridor of the city is alight now. Falck stands on the rampart with a good view of the blaze. On each side of the corridor the fire brigade battles to save the adjoining houses by putting wet canvas around them and keeping them doused with the fire pumps. Accidents are many. He watches them happen or hears of them, and he sees the results. Men who fall from rooftops, women trampled by horses or crowds, children trapped inside labyrinthine buildings; cowering in a loft when the roof collapses, many are struck by falling tiles and timber; some exploit the situation to stick a dagger into an old enemy; the militia opens fire at the slightest provocation, shooting at thieves or suspected thieves, and if they escape the rain of bullets they are beaten to death by the rabble or chased into the canal, where people in heavily laden boats seek to drown them with their oars to stop them from clinging to the gunwale and capsizing them. Hordes of drunks risk summary justice to steal kegs of aquavit, breaking them open to drink themselves senseless. When the fire comes, the kegs explode, blue beacons scattered about the streets.

It seems half the city has gathered on the ramparts. They have dragged furniture and mattresses with them, armchairs, chaises longues, tables and benches. Peasants and citizens, women in tight crinoline and servant girls in airy shifts, officers and enlisted men; the fire is democratic: all are homeless and sit now in splintered, water-damaged furniture, or else they break it into pieces to throw on the campfires. There is music and singing; alehouse keepers have rolled along their barrels and set up serving places in tents or under treetops; goats, pigs and hens are slaughtered and roasted on the spit, sizzling and crackling above the flames. Beneath the ramparts some men butcher a horse with axes and lug a hindquarter to one of the fires. Falck sees that the leather bit is still between its teeth. The air is thick with the smells of cooking and excrement. From the trees children stare down at him. All the time he hears the blaze as it tears down buildings and causes panes to explode. He listens to the music and the singing on the rampart. He sits by a campfire where a great hunk of meat turns above the flame. A kind soul offers him a slice. He takes it, along with some bread, and eats. He drinks fresh fruit wine and feels his strength draining away. The last thing he sees before he falls asleep is the Duke of Augustenborg leaning against a tree, looking down at him disapprovingly. The widow is there. She has snuggled up and lies spooned against his back. He is glad of her company.

It must be Sunday. Carrying the Duke, he proceeds down Vimmelskaftet in the direction of Amager Torv. A pack of dogs comes hurtling towards him in tight formation. He jumps aside, holding the Duke in front of him. They pass without taking any notice, like a sled team. It is becoming light.

He turns around. He has no idea where to go. All is quiet. He walks back to Gammel Torv and sees that the Rådhus lies in ruins. The Vajsenhus and the Missionskollegium have also burnt down, as have the majority of houses surrounding Nytorv. As he makes his way towards Lille Kannikestræde the bells begin to peal from the churches that have survived, calling the faithful to Sunday service. It looks like it will be a fine day.

He stops outside number twelve, puts down the Duke and raps on the door with the knocker. A maid opens it a slight crack. He says his name. He is not immediately admitted, but must stand and wait in the street while she announces him to the lady of the house. He has not encoun­tered a single watchman on his way and he has heard tell that the city swarms with prisoners who have absconded while taking part in the work of extinguishing the blaze. The residents are wary.

The door opens. Cathrine stands in front of him. She stares at him without recognition, then suddenly her face lights up.

What on earth happened to you, Morten Falck?

I have been to war with the Swede.

She lets him in.

My lodgings were in one of the houses that are no more, he explains apologetically. I have lost everything.

But not your life! she says. We were so worried about you. There were all sorts of rumours. I didn't dare go out.

I am quite unharmed. He realizes that she is standing with her hand against his chest. He takes it and kisses it, presses it to his cheek. She strokes his hair. He succumbs to tears.

She instructs the servants to make up a bed for him in one of the rooms and to prepare a bath. His ruined clothes cannot be used again; he must borrow from the professor.

He cannot let go of her hand, but clutches it in his own. There is something I must say, he says.

There is plenty of time for that. Now you must take a bath and get some rest.

I must ask your forgiveness, he says. Can you forgive me? On behalf of your sister?

Oh, Morten. It has all been forgotten, such a long time ago. My sister is beyond such thoughts now. She suffers not.

No, but perhaps I do. He who fails another fails first and foremost himself. Especially if, as I, he has entered into covenant with the Lord. This fire. So much has happened these last days. It feels like a dream. I have discovered there must have been something wrong with me all these years. I have not been a good person, Cathrine. I have committed many wicked deeds. Now I must ask forgiveness.

She stands quite motionless and stares at him. Her eyes are blue, her mouth hints at thoughts and emotions he is unable to determine. You are not a bad person, Morten Falck, and it is very arrogant of you to think that you should be so much more exceptional and abominable than the rest of us.

No, indeed. Yes. I suppose. Now you have made me confused. But you must forgive me, do you hear?

Some days pass. He resides with the professor, consumes three meals a day, strolls in Rosenborg Have with Cathrine on his arm. One day they take a carriage into the country, to the house where Buntzen has taken up residence, and deliver the undamaged portrait of the Duke. Abelone is with them. The sun shines on her face; she seems to savour the warmth and light. The engraver invites them to stay for lunch. He instructs the staff to set a table in the garden. They eat a roast marinated in honey. For dessert they pluck strawberries in the vegetable garden and eat them with cream and syrup. They spend a whole day in the engraver's garden. In the evening they drive back into the city. Falck senses he has begun to have feelings for Cathrine, feelings he perhaps ought not to harbour, or which were better directed towards Abelone. He tells her this and she is kind and understanding, but afterwards there is a distance between them, which he knows he must accept. The widow waits for him. He knows it.

Much of what happened during the two days and nights the fire raged feels unreal to him, not least his encounter with the hermaphrodite. But the heavy leather purse reminds him that it was real enough. He spends some of the money on a new cassock and ruff collar, some books and other items to replace what he had in his sack. He does not purchase a wig. The day of the wig is over, a new century is just around the corner. He still has a great deal of money left. Some of it he keeps, the rest he puts in the collection box of Vor Frue Kirke.

At the Missionskollegium he meets with Mr Friedrich, who recalls their encounter during the blaze, a chance occurrence that turns out to Falck's advantage. Shortly after they parted, a carriage came and Friedrich seems to believe it was at Falck's behest. Much of the furnish­ings and the archive were saved, Friedrich tells him. But alas, everything is in chaos. We should like to have had the opportunity to ponder the Magister's references and credentials, but it will take months to restore order to the archive. And, of course, some considerable part of it has been lost.

Quite, says Falck. Does this mean the Mission will not employ me?

We have a vacant calling at Holsteinsborg, Friedrich says. Our Magister Landstad there has regrettably come to grief. If Magister Falck is willing to accept the position, then it is his.

He accepts and yet remains anxious that his papers might suddenly turn up. But nothing is forthcoming. He continues to put off approaching the Trade as regards his debt. When finally he does, he is told the office has no record of any sum of debt to the trading station at Sukkertoppen and that a large number of documents were lost in the fire. And with that the matter is closed.

10 August 1795, Laurentiusdag, the Feast of St Lawrence. Morten Falck bids farewell to Professor Støvring and his wife. He takes Abelone's hand and kisses it. She smiles, an elevated, angelic smile, then withdraws her hand from his. The professor has arranged a carriage. He arrives at the Toldboden in the late morning and steps down into a boat that rows him out to the hooker, the
Hans Egede
. The sky is overcast; around him rigging and sails snap in the wind. He boards the ship by the ladder, swings his legs over the bulwark and puts his feet on the deck. The captain welcomes him aboard.

It's late in the year for a passage to Greenland, the captain says. We must expect bad weather.

I'm used to bad weather, says Falck, and smiles. I look forward to it.

Well, then, I think the Magister will have much to enjoy in the weeks ahead, says the captain with a laugh.

Falck goes below and installs himself in his cabin.

Epilogue

The Graves (14 August 1815)

The fog lies densely in the ford, though it is well into morning. I am seated on the stern thwart and recall the first time I sailed here. Then, too, the fog lay thick.

The kayak man is a mixture from the colony. They say he is the son of the former Trader Kragstedt, who returned home, following the death of his wife. Indeed, there is some resemblance. Most of them are gone now, returned home or dead. These are new times. Hammer, the smith, is still alive, though has been compelled to relinquish the tool after which he is named. He has become pious in his old age; an abiding inclination to absorb himself in the scriptures has taken possession of him, which I find praiseworthy, albeit rather comical. The present colony manager is Rasmus Bjerg, a man of substance who is kindly disposed to the Mission and moreover a friend of the Greenlander. It must be a lonely life for someone like him. He came to the country when quite young; now he is ageing and grey and has neither wife nor so much as an illegitimate child to keep him company. No one else is left from that time. Apart from myself.

The boy says something from the thwart in the bow and I am torn from my thoughts.

This Habakuk, he does not seem to be keen on visitors, he says with a grin. He has sent the fog out, so that we cannot come and disturb him. The fog is often thick here, I tell him. It has nothing to do with Habakuk, my friend.

Is it true he was a sorcerer and could conjure?

That is just talk. You should not believe such tales.

How do you know? I see he is rather offended at having been cut down to size.

I knew him.

He looks at me with wide eyes. You knew Habakuk?

He even held you in his arms when you were a baby. It is not that long since he lived. He was a tall man. And a skilled orator. Highly devout and saintly deep down. He could spellbind a crowd when he spoke. Of course, he had his good and bad sides like everyone else. There was no more to it than that. Actually, it was his wife Maria Magdalene who was behind it all. She had the brains. But they are dead and gone now, both of them.

People say they walk again.

That is just superstition. You should not be afraid of it.

I'm not afraid, he says, insulted.

We rock gently back and forth in time with the oars. The oarswomen look constantly back over their shoulders and keep the kayak man in sight. We stay close to the shore. Directly above us is the sun and a blue sky and yet the fog is at all sides, dense and dullish silver. It is indeed all very portentous and I am compelled to reproach myself, as I have reproached the boy, for being superstitious.

The kayak man says something and points. We are here!

The women hold their oars aloft. We glide into a bay. A raven caws from the esker. None of us speaks. The raven caws again.

Diavalu
, one of the women says. They laugh nervously.

Presently we jump out and pull up the boat. A handful of people come down to the shore and help. Welcome, priest!
Palasi tikilluarit!
I recog­nize one of the men: Habakuk's and Maria Magdalene's son Detlef, who shot his sister in the eye with an arrow and thereby caused her death. Now he is middle-aged with children and grandchildren, a renowned hunter, yet light of skin. Another one! We are shown to the family's house and fed soup. In return we give them tea brought from the colony. I offer my excuses before the food makes me drowsy and lethargic. I wish to go up and see the old settlement, I tell them. Afterwards, there will be devotions.

There is hardly anything left to see, says Detlef. It was an unusual place to live, Priest.

Indeed, I reply. They were unusual people. They tried to do things differently.

Yes, and look where it got them, he says scornfully. We Greenlanders belong by the ford, not in the fells like ravens and foxes. It's important we don't forget it.

I am an old man now, yet still adroit. My joints are hardly stiff. I ask my boy to come with me. We clamber up through the thick vegetation that lines the shore and emerge almost immediately above the fog. I stop halfway up the slope. The boy halts at my side. We look up at the plateaus that unfold between the rock.

Was it here? the boy asks.

Yes, it was here.

It's a splendid place.

Yes, I know of no other like it. It is so magnificent. In such a place a man feels close to God, don't you think?

I do, he says, gazing upwards with an obliging smile.

We stand for a while and enjoy the sun. Then we continue the ascent; he goes first, his steps light and springy.

By the time we reach the uppermost plateau the fog has been sucked from the ford and we can see the little cluster of peat dwellings where smoke coils from the chimneys, and the inhabitants themselves as they help the oarswomen and the kayak man carry our pack up the slope. I have told them it is best to camp above the ford, so as to avoid the fog in the late and early hours, and it would seem they have heeded my advice, though it is against their nature to dwell away from the shore.

Twenty years ago two hundred people lived here, I tell the boy.

And now nothing is left, he says.

I'm sure there will be something. All we have to do is find it. Come.

We pass a couple of dilapidated peat houses and the remains of the great oven in which they smoked their salmon. Otherwise, only some patterns in the light-coloured moss show where the dwellings stood.

While the boy explores, I sit down on a rock to catch my breath. I am in my fifties now, an old man, though sound in wind and limb. My wife and children and children's children keep me in vigour, I suppose. The Lord has blessed me. The boy has a wife himself and three healthy offspring of his own already. So I am rich in joys as well as worries. And yet I remember to thank the Lord for each day. I live in a healthy manner, drinking no other alcohol than the colony's fresh ale, and I stay well away from the Trade's mouldy meat. The parishioners of the colony, also chil­dren of a kind, who come to confess their sins or simply to talk with their priest, play their own part in keeping my mind fresh.

New times indeed. Following the unrest in Denmark, the war with the English and the state bankruptcy, Greenland had to look after itself. In many ways it was good for us. We learned to stand on our own feet. The clergy dwindled in number, some died, others were fortunate enough to find passage home. In these present years I am the only work ­ing priest along the entire coast between Godthåb and Jakobshavn. Oddly enough, such isolation has led the Mission to flourish and prompted many Greenlanders to move to the colonies to be christened and to sing their beloved hymns in the church each Sunday. I have myself composed a couple of them – this said in all modesty. I have developed quite a knack with the lute, an instrument I inherited from an old missionary at Holsteinsborg. Of him, the less said the better!

Following the deaths of Maria Magdalene and Habakuk, the people lost interest in religious reveries. Habakuk died in 1798, she four years later. May the Lord have mercy upon their souls. The settlement here has lain abandoned for twenty years. Everything usable – or nearly every­thing – has been carried down to the dwellings at the shore.

I take the boy over to the graves. There are no names on them, but

I know who lies beneath. I tell him about each in turn. I think he is incredulous that I am old enough to have met them.

My ancient father, he quips.

Here lies Habakuk, I tell him, and here Maria Magdalene. The graves are untouched; few people come here and those who do are mindful not to disturb the peace of the dead. Habakuk's reputation still lives and I consider it will continue to do so for a long time yet. I stick the toe of my boot under one of the flat stones, lifting it slightly and allowing it to fall again with a thud. The boy jumps. They can't hurt you, I tell him and chuckle. There's no need to be afraid.

I'm not afraid of the dead, he replies, disgruntled.

I ruffle his hair. He laughs and flaps away my hand.

He is grown now and has become a man. We work together in the Mission. He doesn't like me still calling him a boy. He says he wants to be a ship's captain, but he knows my hope is for him to be ordained as a priest like myself. A bright capacity would be wasted if he were to sail the seven seas. Besides, I would die of loneliness. He is my best friend.

It takes a while for us to find the last of the graves. They lie up on the esker, high above the tableland, on a plateau of the fell commanding a view to the east, west and south. Three together.

The boy flops down in the grass. He lights his pipe and puffs. Who lies here?

Old friends, I tell him.

There are no coffins in the soil, only three bodies wrapped in linen, two of them at each other's side, the third and smallest at a right angle at their feet. The grass around the gravestones is tall; it bends in the wind that comes sweeping from the fell. Rosebay grows at the place and small, hardy bunches of violet flowers, whose name escapes me in my old age. I pull away some tufts and the inscriptions are revealed.

I remember him, the boy says, smoothing his hand over the stone. He was kind and gave me books. Did you lay him to rest, Father?

Yes, I laid all three in the ground, though they died at different times. I felt they should lie together. But go now, let me sit here a while on my own. There is something I must repay. Afterwards I shall tell you the whole story. I think the time is right for you to hear it.

I watch him as he canters down to the tableland below. The further away he gets, the smaller he becomes and the more he looks like the boy I brought up with concern and love. The whole story? I wonder. No, perhaps not the whole story. Some of it must follow me to the grave. But the Lord knows the truth. He knows me and has blessed me. He is full of forgiveness to whoever prays for it.

I went to the smith, old Niels Hammer, to have the stones hewn and the inscriptions cut. He grumbled about the many words. I am a smith, he complained, not a book printer! And yet he carried out the work and I managed to ensure it was done without mistakes of spelling. I know something about the smith, as I know things about most people. On the other hand, he knows something about me. He it was who received the gold and forged from it a crucifix.

My hand is curled around its cross as I sit here at the graves on the south-facing slope. Gold washed from a river in the north. It feels warm and heavy in my hand. It is hard to give up. And yet I take it from around my neck and feel its familiar weight vanish from my chest. I have worn it for twenty years. I place it between the two graves where it belongs. It is a relief to be unburdened of it. On top of it I lay some stones, forming a kind of bridge between the graves. I brush away the dust from my hands and kneel in the heather. I say the Lord's Prayer. I bless the graves. It is quiet here. Lichen grows in the cracks of the gravestones, but the inscrip­tions can still be distinguished, tainted green on grey slabs of stone:

HERE LIES THE BODY OF

MR MORTEN PEDERSEN FALCK

BORN 20 MAY 1756

DIED 12 MAY 1807

Grey of Age, Toil and Endeavour in the Name of God

Depart in Peace, faithful Friend

And on the other:

LYDIA PEDERSEN FALCK

ARNARULUNNGUAQ

CHRISTENED JENSEN

Here laid to Rest

By her Brother Bertel Jensen

Ordained Priest of Sukkertoppen Colony