Friday, May 25, 2012

Chapter 2



She was having a heart attack. There was a weight on her chest that could not be dislodged. “I guess I’ll just die,” Gerd thought, ”since I don’t know where my phone is and no one could rescue me in this weather anyway.”
Next thought: “Is that weight purring?”
She opened her eyes to slits. All 12 kilos of Bamse were in her face pawing her nose and suggesting – delicately – that it was time to get up and feed him again.
“Get off, cat!”
With a mighty heave she sent him sprawling. Or tried to. Bamse never accepted any heaving: coming or going was entirely his choice. He stretched languidly on her chest and turned around once. Then, and only then, did he deign to gather his forces and jump off the bed.
“Goddamn cat.”
Bamse paid her no attention and started strolling in his slow regal way toward the kitchen, where he would meow up an ear-splitting racket for hours until she got up to feed him. Gerd gathered her senses about her and listened. She didn’t hear the howl of the southeast gale. In fact, the only thing she heard was seagulls cawing and maybe – yes! – the chirping of a few sparrows that had wintered over in her shed roof. She was alive – no doubt about it – and she was needed.
She had been so exhausted last night that she hadn’t bothered with a nightgown. Gerd ran a hand down her side: no, no nightgown. She was naked under the down quilt and all alone. Well, except for Bamse, but he hardly counted in bed. Her body felt watery, weak. She pulled a hand out from under the quilt and looked at it. It looked like her hand: brown, short fingers, very un-artistic, her mom would say. She pulled the quilt down a little; would it be cold? But her bedroom – actually her spare bedroom downstairs since she hadn’t dared to go upstairs last night – was warm and cozy.
Something bright caught her eye on the side of her bed. Her phone; she must have put it there just before collapsing last night. She grabbed it: 7am. Jonas would be just getting his breakfast before heading off to school. Skies or bicycle? She thought the latter. Gathering the phone and peering at the recent messages she touched his latest from the night before. On her end it was just rings, but she knew it played the hallelujah chorus on his end. Was he in the shower?
“Jenta mi.”
“It’s so quiet here.”
“Did the power go off?”
“Yeah. Bamse kept me company.”
“I should have been there.”
“Are you up? I’m still in bed.”
“I’m on my way out the door, Can I come out after school?”
“Please.”
“I love you, baby.”
“I love you, too. Don’t let the kids get to you.”
“No fear. I’ll be there around 5.”
Bamse’s howl of incipient demise from starvation registered in her brain. “OK, OK, I’m on my way.”
Gerd tentatively put one foot on the floor. Not impossible. The other foot followed. When she shucked off the quilt, she felt the cool of a fire she had let die the night before. No problem, she could stoke it back to life. Her soggy clothes from the boat-saving expedition were in a wet heap on the floor. She shivered and ran naked up the stairs to her proper bedroom, yanked open the armoire, and pulled out some pants, a T-shirt, and a sweater. Wool socks from the dresser. As she made it down the stairs a little more respectably, she realized she was going commando. Ummmm, feels good.
Bamse was nearly in hysterics about the absence of breakfast. She grabbed a can of whatever-catfood from her pantry. In usual circumstances, a gourmand like Bamse would turn up his nose at such fare, but this morning he was subdued. He fell upon the gelatinous mass like a sinner at his last confession.
She needed coffee. But the coffee maker needed power. Gerd flipped the light switch near the door to see if the power had been restored. The two 60-watt bulbs in the overhead light clicked on at once. Hello! 
Gerd ground some Fair Trade coffee and measured it into the basket. Water from the tap (she had city water!), and the “on” button glowed welcoming red. Gurgling ensued. 
When she had enough to steal one single cup, Gerd carried it to the windows in the living room. A pale February morning greeted her. Steel blue light on the water. The ocean surface was deceptively calm. Out there, the waves would top 6 feet, she was sure, but you couldn’t see that from the window. 
The blasted phone rang again. Gerd had moved to the island to get away from the constant commerce of people but at the same time she had wired the house for wi-fi in every room. Maybe it wasn’t so much that she wanted to get away from people altogether as wanting to keep them at a distance. Too many people knew her cell number; that was the problem. Change to an unlisted number? The phone rang the troll dance from Peer Gynt. 
“Hello mother.”
“Did you send the flowers?”
“I hope you’re well, too.”
“What? Have you lost your mind, Gerd? Did you send the flowers or not?”
“I’m sure I did,” Gerd thought this response would calm the Valkyrie.
“You don’t even know what I’m talking about, do you? The funeral? Hans Tobiassen? Yesterday?”
“Old Tobiassen died?”
“Good god, girl, have you completely gone to seed out there on that godforsaken island?”

Gerd through silently for a while. “No, I don’t think I have.”
“Did you send the wreath to his funeral like I asked you at least 20 times? Did you send a big wreath?”
“Of course I did, mother; would I forget a thing like that?”
Silence at the other end. Fru Katrine Amalie Ljoset would never know if the wreath had been delivered or not. No one in Storesand communicated with her any more. Most of her contemporaries were dead and those who weren’t avoided her like the plague.
“How are you, mother?” 
“Well, I’m, I’m, I’m OK I guess.”
“Still involved in that knitting club?” 
“Well, when you are my age, you’ll know that the arthritis will get you. I ache all the time, daughter. Knitting becomes pure torture at my age. You should know that.”
Yep, knitting is torture all right, thought Gerd. Aha – insight! That was why she hated knitting, why she mangled every knitting project while her weaving of the same yarn and thread came out like joy personified. 
“Are you there?”
“Yes. I’m just about running out of batteries, mother. I’ll call you later, OK?”
“You won’t,” responded her mother, somewhat subdued Gerd thought.
No, she wouldn’t, actually. Gerd and her mother had parted ways many years ago. After her father died of prostate cancer at the early age of 55, her mother had moved up to Lillehammer, “to be with family,” she said. Gerd was in Thailand at the time. The house on the island had come to her through the unlikely source of an uncle Andreas, a midshipman who never touched shore and whom everyone had forgotten. Turned out he was the first cousin of her father Fred Carlsson Ljoset, a first cousin who apparently had no other kin anywhere. She had learned of the bequest of the house a month after her father had passed away and she hadn’t been there for the funeral. At the time, an unknown uncle’s bequest meant nothing.
How she came to inhabit the old house was another story. She needed to finish the present.
“We had a southeastern gale last night,” Gerd said.
“What?”
“A storm.”
Her mother was silent. Nature was not her thing.
“Mother, I just got the electricity back. I need to charge the phone and make sure the freezer is on, OK?”
“OK”
“I’ll call you later.”
Her mother just hung up the phone. No “I love you,” no inane “take care.” Nothing. Well, if there is nothing, you can’t lose it, thought Gerd.
Her coffee had grown cold. Instead of reheating it, she gave herself the luxury of throwing the old coffee into the sink and pouring a new cup from the now-functioning coffee-maker. She really did need to get a generator. Not that power outages were all that common, but her life depended more and more on electricity. When she moved to the old house at the edge of the ocean seven years ago and had decided to stay, she had promised herself that no matter how far she was in miles from her friends and acquaintances around the world, she would be present in digital communication. The island had sprouted a cell phone tower the year she moved in, and she took every advantage of it. A couple of years ago, that connection no longer sufficed, and she had prevailed on the local council to budget a cable line to the island. Gerd was the first subscriber. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, she was connected to them all. However, with every receding year she cared less and less. How connected do I want to be?
Gerd looked out the living room windows to the south. The sky was clear, only a few high wisps of clouds. The storm had dumped a lake of water all over the island. What should be a February of glittering white snow was a muddy mess. Her salmon nets hadn’t been tended for two days now. Time to get your ass in gear, thought Gerd. While humans might disparage the loss of pristine white beauty on land, the fish in the water would thank god for his manna. The ocean would be churning with krill and other minute organisms. Every ocean creature would be looking at a feast.
Breakfast, that was what was missing. Funny how no matter how little she ate, her figure remained round. Voluptuous, said Jonas. But then, he’d say anything. Gerd was grateful for her strong back and solid legs. She was not one to be blown away by a gale.
She went into the kitchen and rummaged through the bread drawer. About ¼ of one of the four loaves she had baked a week ago remained. It didn’t look too moldy. She pulled out the toaster from under the counter, cut two slices, and shoved them into the slits. A good burn would surely incinerate any mold spores that might think they had a chance. When the toaster popped, she dug in the fridge for butter (the fridge was humming like the blackout had never happened) and found both butter and strawberry jam perfectly serviceable. She ate four pieces of toast with jam standing up at the counter.
Gerd began to get excited thinking about her salmon nets out at Bakkebåene. She had never quite figured out the laws and legal opinions, but somehow she had inherited the right to set standing nets at Bakkebåene, east of Ørneredet, the lighthouse. In the past, a man could feed a family on what he caught in the standing nets. There were four: one leading to the next to the next and finally into a corral no salmon could get out of. Why didn’t cod fall into the same trap? She never knew. She did pull up some ling cod and a few bewildered mackerel now and then, but in general all she got was kilos of ocean salmon and an occasional trout. She might keep one or two to smoke or salt for gravlax, but the majority went to Fiskebrygga in town to be sold to households all up and down the coast. She could picture a family in some inland valley gathering around a 3 kilo salmon fresh out of the oven, with potatoes and dill butter (if they had any left this time of year); the adults toasting one another with aquavit and beer and the kids saying “was there any roe? I want the roe!”
Well, the day was wasting. A February day is short as a butterfly’s life. Before you had gotten used to the light, it would be waning over Våget. Get going, girl.
Gerd went into the spare room where she had so cowardly slept the night before and collected her rain gear. It wasn’t raining any more but she would get plenty wet. Starting with wool leggings, she layered on long-sleeved T-shirts, a turtleneck, and finally a wool sweater. Wool socks. (Her knitting might not win any prizes, but she could keep herself in wool socks.) On top of it all she pulled on her rain pants, the rain jacket, and her southwester. She waddled out into the kitchen to get the rain boots. Some fishermen said that one should never wear rain boots because if you fell overboard they would drag you down and you would be fish food. Since the same old tobacco-spitting gents also swore that learning to swim was just prolonging the inevitable, she generally paid them no heed. Gerd liked her feet cozy warm.
When she opened the kitchen door it felt like breathing pure oxygen. The storm had pushed aside all yucky particles and left the world open for business. Gerd went into her shed, picked up a nearly full canister of gasoline and a bucket of dry ice for her expected haul, and hurried down the path. The still-wet branches kissed her hello, but there was not a trace of snow on the ground. 
She untied the extra stern line and loosened the pulley line just enough so she could pull the boat close. Her 1952 wooden sjekte was her first major purchase, and her best one, she thought. It had been owned by a series of fishermen and their families, who lovingly cared for the Volvo Penta motor and every single one of the boards inside and out. For an old lady, she was in tip-top condition. 22 feet, not big but steady as the granite rock the country was built on. Some generations ago someone had installed a key starter. Luxury! Gerd turned the key and the reliable motor at once came to life. Did she need to hand bail after all that rain? Nope, the self-bailer seemed to be able to take care of it once the engine was going. 
As Gerd was pulling out around Tørnforbi and into the west channel, she saw Henkie’s much larger fishing vessel coming in. He had the shrimp-poles out, must have gone out when the storm was still raging. He saluted her with his cap as they passed. She waved back.
She had been right; once she passed Tørnforbi the waves were indeed considerable. Up one hill and down the other side. Luckily Gerd had never suffered from seasickness. She could see the froth of spray at Bakkebåene, still at least one nautical mile away. But her nets were in lee of the skerries (couldn’t really call them islands), so she should be OK. The waves wouldn’t get any worse out there, she knew.
Out at the nets, Gerd idled the motor and watched for a few minutes to see how bad the drift was. Pretty strong; she would have to run the motor at trawl speed just to stay in one place. She nosed up to the nearest buoy with the boathook in her hand. Once she caught the lead rope to the buoy, she pulled it over the drum net hauler, securing it to the hook. Given her size and strength, she had had to install a motorized net hauler. She started the hauler and the rope soon gave way to the main catch net. Eureka! Even at the very beginning she saw a huge silver salmon. At least 6 kilos! The net hauler groaned; there must be quite a catch there today. Gerd hooked the first fish, expertly tossing it into the hold. 
An hour later she had emptied the nets and set them out again. She glanced at the hold. What do you think – maybe 80 kilos? Actually, it was probably more since the hold was nearly full. She’d get 40 kroner per kilo for fish like this; it was even sushi quality for anyone who actually wanted to eat raw fish. 4000 for 100 kilos. Not bad for a morning’s work. She thought of the gold yarn she had seen online. It was 500 kroner a skein, but of course you didn’t need very much. She would hold back one of the smaller, 3-kilo fish for the rakørret Jonas liked so much, but all the rest would go straight into her savings account. If her mother only knew what she earned! Of course fishing contributed only a minor amount. No, Gerd’s true income was from what her mother called her “artistic pretensions.” A one-of-a-kind Gerd Ljoset coat sold for 20,000+ kroner in Oslo’s most exclusive fashion venues. Not to mention Paris, Rome, New York, Tokyo ……… Gerd threw some dry ice on the fish; it wasn’t truly necessary since it was less than half an hour to town, but old habits die hard and all that. 
Right then the sun peeked out behind a cloud and Gerd saw a flash of light to the southwest. Another and another. What on earth? The flashes seemed to come from Treungene, a group of small uninhabited islands west of the lighthouse. She debated: could someone be in trouble? Gerd looked around to see if there was anyone else out who could drive over, but she was alone on the ocean this morning. Well, it wouldn’t take her more than 15 minutes to swing by just to take a quick look. Gerd turned the wheel and the flow of the waves hit her to port. At least they would be in front of the mid-line. She added a little speed to get this side-trip over with.
Closing in on the little islands she saw what had flashed and alerted her. The windows in the bow of an old fishing boat had caught the rising sun just right. An old boat – didn’t she recognize that boat? It was. It was the Annelise, Einar Iversen’s wreck of a tub. When had it last been seen? Had Einar been caught in the storm and taken refuge on the island?
Gerd pulled in next to him, threw out an anchor and made the painter fast in an iron ring on shore. 
“Einar!”
“Einar, are you there?”
His boat was tied up properly – what could be the problem? “Einar!!”
Oh god, he was lying on the floorboards. She jumped on board without asking permission. “Einar, are you all right?”
No, it was obvious that he wasn’t. One leg was folded under him and his right hand was clutching broken glass. Had he had a heart attack out here? She bent down to check his breathing. There was no blood, but if he had lain here in the torrents of rainfall from the storm, it would all have been washed away. She really didn’t need to check: Old Einar had gone on to the eternal fishing grounds.
But wait, there was a sound. Not from Einar, but from somewhere close – on the island?
“Is someone there?”
“Come help me!”
No answer, but the sound increased. It sounded like whining. Gerd crossed the bow of the dilapidated boat and went ashore. More whining. It sounded like – well like a dog. A dog out here? Einar didn’t have a dog; he had been a cat man. Gerd got closer to the keening sound but saw nothing. Finally she located a miniature cave behind some boulders. She bent down; the sound was coming from there. It was a dog; a tiny one. No, a puppy. A hungry and scared puppy, gold colored. 
“Where is your mommy, little guy?” Gerd asked the puppy, who of course did not answer. She stretched out her hand and received a tentative lick. “We have to see if your mommy is here as well.”
The puppy inched forward, finally allowing Gerd to pick him up. Yes it was a he. She moved carefully up and down the crags of the little island shouting, but neither she nor the puppy heard any other sounds. At last she gave up.
“Let’s get ourselves to town, little guy. We have to get Einar to the morgue and we can find out where you belong afterwards.”
Tying Einar’s painter to her stern, Gerd prepared to tow the old boat to town. She had some emergency supplies of canned food in a cabinet near the bow, found the can opener, and opened a can of Spam for the shivering little dog. He inhaled the food. She opened one of her 10-liter containers of fresh water and poured some in a coffee mug for him. He lapped that as well, made three turns on the sweater she had laid down on the floorboards for him, and promptly fell asleep.
Finally within range of cell reception, Gerd called the hospital and told them of her sad errand. They would have an ambulance ready in Vika when she came in. They did, and the ambulance driver told her he would take charge of the boat, notify the police, and bring Einar’s body up to the hospital. She gave him her cell number (one more person who had her number) and drove over to Fiskebrygga. The puppy slept through it all.
“Strange,” she thought. Something didn’t make sense. What was Einar doing out just as all the forecasts had said small-craft warnings, southeast gale coming, all unnecessary traffic suspended? He had a radio and he was an old salt: he didn’t need a forecast to tell him it was going to blow. And where did the dog come from? All the way back out to the island, Gerd brooded. Something was not right.

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