Somewhere Over the Sea by Halfdan Freihow Read Free Book Online

ship, or a vessel, because who’s ever heard of pirates in a boat? — is a sorry sight. The water inside and the water outside are almost on a level. It takes all my strength to drag it close, and a talent for balance I don’t even know I have to keep my footing on the thwarts while I fill the sea, bucket by bucket, with fresh quantities of new water.
    It takes an hour, even though we’re talking about a fairly modest fourteen-foot ship.
    I leave it to the sun to sip up the last drops and hardly dare to believe it when the motor makes a promising sound on the third attempt and starts on the sixth. Then I go ashore with a “No, not yet, Balder” to the tail-wagging enthusiast on the jetty, and fetch the blankets and foam mats and life jackets we’re going to need. Then I hurry up to the house, which you like to call a castle, or a fortress, because kings and princes don’t live in ordinary houses, do they?
    Victoria lies half asleep on the sofa in front of the television. She doesn’t want to come; she’s waiting for her boyfriend. Apparently the same one as yesterday and the day before, so it’s probably serious. Mom has a meeting straight after work and won’t be coming until later.
    In the fridge I find the chops I was hoping for, and even a bottle of white wine behind the vegetables. Into the cooler with them, along with the freezer elements, juice, a bar of chocolate, and the vanilla yogourt that was actually saved for school tomorrow. No need for water for Balder, he manages well enough with what he finds in puddles and cracks in the rocks. Into a plastic bag I put a roll of kitchen paper, cutlery, marinade, glasses, a corkscrew, paper plates, and two Thermoses, one with coffee and one with cocoa. I’m standing there thinking that the charcoal and the white spirit are in the shed when Balder announces an arrival. Through the kitchen window I can see that it is your taxi.
    I wouldn’t say a word against the council’s taxi service that makes sure you’re conveyed to and from school each day. It’s a generous service, I think, and not something I should take for granted. I also understand that the council has to save money, or that the council’s money has to be saved, or whatever. All the same, it gives me a little jab to the heart each day when the maxi-taxi drives up, mornings and afternoons. It’s cheaper this way, they say, and I understand that too, but I don’t like it, seeing you rounded up in the bus for pupils with special difficulties, along with multi-handicapped children who sit chained to their wheelchairs and are hardly able to communicate with their surroundings. Let them call it what they will — demanding, inappropriate pride — but I don’t like it, for I can’t help asking myself what you think. You rarely say anything, but do these daily drives in the company of those who are so much less endowed than you have any influence on your self-image? Are you gradually being driven to see yourself as you see them? Have you heard what the others at school call it, the spaz-taxi? Does that bother you? Do you find it hard and hurtful to talk about? One day they told us at school that you had pulled some poor girl’s hair and tried to tip her wheelchair over, because “she makes a mess when she eats and she can’t speak.” Was it your own hair you were pulling, Gabriel?
    But like I said: praise be to the council’s taxi service, we’d never have managed without it, and today the sun is shining and it’s a bright little lark of a boy who comes running to greet me.
    â€” Hi, Gabriel, how good to see you!
    I open my arms to receive you, but you have neither the time nor the capacity for such attention:
    â€” Yeah, yeah, I know, let’s not talk about it anymore. Do you know what Morten told me today?
    I don’t know who Morten is and answer only:
    â€” Morten