Unformed Landscape by Peter Stamm Read Free Book Online Page B

captain wore a fine uniform. He had a short reddish beard and lots of burst blood vessels on his cheeks, but he gave Kathrine a friendly smile. He didn’t talk much, and when one of the Germans, an old man in a sailor’s peaked cap, started talking in English about his war experiences, and how they had used the fjords to hide their submarines, he talked still less. The Germans had big binoculars, and after a while they started talking among themselves in German, and Kathrine didn’t understand what they were saying. She stood next to the captain, and from time to time he would hold the back of his hand against the horizon, and gesture, and say, seals, or rocks, or Risoyhamn at last. When Kathrine was the last person to leave the bridge, the captain shook hands with her and said she was welcome back at any time.
    The
Polarlys
made two stops in the Lofotens. They crossed the Arctic Circle on schedule the next morning.
    The captain refused to believe Kathrine when she said she had never been south of the Arctic Circle before. She had climbed up to the bridge again. They hadn’t had any money, she said, her father had worked in the fish factory, and if they went on holiday at all, they didn’t go any further than Kiruna. That was where her parents came from. The captain asked her if she was a Sami. Half, she said, through my father. She had attended the customs school in Tromso, and at twenty she had had a baby, and that meant holidays were out of the question. She was pleased she had been allowed to complete the course. Once, a couple of years ago, she had booked a week on Majorca, but then the boy had been ill, and she hadn’t gone. She still had to pay for it, though.
    “If the child had died,” the man at the travel agent’s said, “… It’s funny. I’ve been watching the borders for years. But I’ve hardly ever been on the other side. Sweden, Finland, yes, but that’s all… never even been to Murmansk. I had a friend from there, but I never visited him. A sea captain, like you.”
    “Things don’t look any different on the other side,” said the captain, and Kathrine said she knew. Then the captain asked her to have a coffee with him. They went down to the dining room together, which was almost deserted at that hour. A steward was just setting the tables for lunch.
    The captain said Kathrine’s crossing the Arctic Circle for the first time was something to celebrate. “Welcome to the world,” he said, and she laughed. When he asked herwhere she was going, and whether she was on holiday, she said she didn’t know, and no, she was just leaving.
    “My honeymoon,” she said, and laughed. She took photographs of the captain, and he laughed as well, and wanted to take one of her, but she refused. The captain’s name was Harald, and he lived in Bergen.
    “If you want,” he offered, “you can stay with me for a few days.”
    Harald lived in a small wooden house painted yellow. His wife had gone to Oslo for a few days with a friend. Harald wanted Kathrine to sleep in their bed. He said he’d be happy with the nursery, he didn’t mind. But she refused. He showed her the nursery, and said that his son, whose name was also Harald, had died three years ago in a sports accident. Kathrine was surprised by the term
sports accident
, and asked him what had happened.
    “It was while climbing. He fell. He was alone. The fall needn’t have been fatal. But he was alone.”
    Harald looked much younger out of uniform. The rocks were bad here, he said, they weren’t solid. A piece of rock had broken off, and buried his son under it.
    “He was eighteen. He didn’t miss anything. He did what he wanted. As for the girls…”
    “I’m twenty-eight,” said Kathrine, “I don’t know if I’ve missed anything or not. What about you?”
    “Forty-five.”
    “Did you invite me because you knew your wife was away?”
    “I wouldn’t have asked you if she’d been here.”
    Harald laughed. He said he had to run a