Unformed Landscape by Peter Stamm Read Free Book Online Page A

fished out, or the price of fish was going down, or because he was ill or not a good fisherman, who could say. When he went to work in the fish factory, not difficult work, but he was already sick. And when Kathrine went to visit him in the factory, she was about fourteen, and asked him, isn’t it boring to do the same thing all day long, he would say what’s done is done. As if it didn’t matter that he had once owned a boat. But it wasn’t true. In the village, nothing was ever done.
    Kathrine had sworn to herself that she would never work in the fish factory. That was later, when she was hardly speaking to her father, when he was drinking, drinking more and more. Never the fish factory.
    She sat in the German fortifications with Morten. It was cold, they were sitting there in wintertime, and they both swore, never the fish factory. They made plans, travel plans, plans for a life. Their plans were more real than their life. Morten went away. He went to Tromso to work, he went round the world. Two years later, he was back, it was as though he’d never left. He took a job inthe fish factory, a desk job, that was something else. And later on, he got a job with the council, he was responsible for the village’s home page, and the little radio station that transmitted for an hour or two each day. News, weather reports, the hour for the migrant workers, the phone-in. We congratulate Peder Pedersen on his sixtieth birthday. The male voice choir from Berlevag will now sing. And Kathrine went to work for the customs. Training in Tromso, three stints of three months, the best time of her life.
    I could get myself transferred, thought Kathrine. Start a new life. She could have gotten herself transferred, but she never did. And somehow the time had passed, she had hardly been aware of it. One village or another. Earlier, there had at least been a cinema. Now there were just bingo evenings.
    Slowly the lights of the village slipped by. The night wasn’t cold, but there was a stiff wind. Even so, Kathrine went outside, once the village could no longer be seen from the panorama deck. The further the ship steamed on its course, the larger the village seemed to become. Then it slowly disappeared behind a spit of land, and there was only the orange reflection of its lights visible in the clouds. It got lighter, and for a little while it almost looked as though an artificial sun were rising behind the rocks. The sea swellgot stronger, and as Kathrine went inside, she saw a couple of seabirds flying low over the water into the beam of the searchlights and then straight back into the dark again. Snowy rocks glimmered on either side of the fjord. And then the ship was out on the open sea.

 
    W hen the
Polarlys
docked in Hammerfest the next day, there was already the first hint of light in the sky. The layover was an hour and a half, and Kathrine left the ship to become a member of the Polar Bear Club. She had twice been to Hammerfest before, once with her father and once with Thomas, and each time she had wanted to join, but first her father, and then Thomas had said that was just nonsense and a waste of money. In the clubhouse, she paid her subscription, and was given a postcard, and a polar bear brooch in mother-of-pearl. Elvis had once wanted to join the Polar Bear Club, but they hadn’t taken him. You had to apply in person. Elvis Rex. Kathrine had had to laugh, each time she saw the sign in the CD shopin Tromso. She went back on board, and for a while she felt happy and cheerful.
    The next morning, she inspected the bridge, along with three German couples. A steward had asked her at lunch the previous day whether she would like to have a look at the bridge and the engine room. The usual program. He had asked how far she was traveling, and Kathrine had said as far as Bergen. Four days yet, said the steward, good, welcome on board the
Polarlys
.
    The bridge didn’t really interest Kathrine, but she felt lonely on the ship. The