Midnight Sun

Chapter 10

Johnny had gone.

‘He caught the bus back south today,’ Lea said.

She had sent Knut out of the cabin to get wood and water. She wanted coffee. And an explanation as to why she had received a visit from a southerner who wanted to know where I was.

I shrugged. ‘There are lots of southerners. So what did he want?’

‘He said he’d really like to talk to you. About business.’

‘Oh, right,’ I said. ‘Was it Johnny? Looks like a wading bird?’

She didn’t answer, just sat there on the other side of the table and tried to catch my eye.

‘He’d found out that you were staying in the hunting cabin, and got someone to show him the way. But you weren’t here, and then when someone else told him you’d been at mine after the funeral, I suppose he thought I might know something.’

‘And what did you say?’

I let her catch my eye. Let her study my expression. I had plenty to hide, yet also nothing.

She sighed: ‘I said you’d gone back south.’

‘Why did you say that?’

‘Because I’m not stupid. I don’t know what sort of trouble you’re in, and I don’t want to know, but I don’t want to be responsible for things getting even worse.’

‘Even worse?’

She shook her head. That could mean that she’d expressed herself badly, that I had misunderstood, or that she didn’t want to talk about it. She glanced out through one of the window slits. We could hear Knut chopping wood energetically outside.

‘According to him, your name is Jon, not Ulf.’

‘Did you ever believe it was Ulf?’

‘No.’

‘But you still sent him off in the wrong direction. You lied. What does your book say about that?’

She nodded in the direction of the chopping. ‘He says we need to look after you. The book has something to say about that as well.’

We sat in silence for a while. Me with my hands on the table, she with hers in her lap.

‘Thanks for taking care of Knut after the funeral.’

‘Don’t mention it. How is he taking it?’

‘Well, really.’

‘And you?’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Women always find a way of coping.’

The chopping had stopped. He’d soon be back. She looked at me again. Her eyes had taken on a colour I’d never seen before, and the look in them had a corrosive intensity. ‘I’ve changed my mind. I want to know what you’re running from.’

‘Your original decision was probably more sensible.’

‘Tell me.’

‘What for?’

‘Because I believe you’re a good person. And good people’s sins can always be forgiven.’

‘What if you’re wrong, what if I’m not a good person? Does that mean I’d end up burning in that hell of yours?’ It came out more bitterly than I intended.

‘I’m not wrong, Ulf, because I can see you. I can see you.’

I took a deep breath. I still didn’t know if the words were going to come out of my mouth. I was inside her eyes, blue, blue as the sea below you when you’re ten years old and standing on a rock and your whole being wants to jump, apart from your legs, which won’t move.

‘I had a job that involved chasing drug-related debts and killing people,’ I heard myself say. ‘I stole money from my employer, and now he’s hunting me. And I’ve managed to get Knut, your ten-year-old son, involved in this as well. I’m paying him to spy for me. Well, not even that — he gets paid if he can report anything suspicious. For instance, if he sees the sort of people who wouldn’t hesitate to kill a young boy if it was necessary.’ I shook a cigarette out of the packet. ‘How am I doing on forgiveness now?’

She opened her mouth just as Knut opened the door.

‘There,’ he said, dropping the wood on the floor in front of the stove. ‘I’m starving now.’

Lea looked at me.

‘I’ve got tinned fish balls,’ I said.

‘Yuck,’ Knut said. ‘Can’t we have fresh cod instead?’

‘I’m afraid I haven’t got any.’

‘Not here. In the sea. We can go fishing. Can we, Mum?’

‘It’s the middle of the night,’ she said quietly. She was still staring at me.

‘That’s the best time to go fishing,’ Knut said, jumping up and down. ‘Please, Mum!’

‘We haven’t got a boat, Knut.’

It took a moment for him to realise what she meant. I looked at Knut. His face darkened. Then he brightened up again. ‘We can take Grandpa’s boat. It’s in the boathouse, he said I could.’

‘Did he?’

‘Yes! Cod! Cod! You like cod, don’t you, Ulf?’

‘I love cod,’ I said, meeting her gaze. ‘But I don’t know if your mother wants any right now.’

‘Yes, she does, don’t you, Mum?’

She didn’t answer.

‘Mum?’

‘We’ll let Ulf decide,’ she said.

The boy squeezed between the table and my chair, forcing me to look at him.

‘Ulf?’

‘Yes, Knut?’

‘You can have the tongue.’

The boathouse lay some hundred metres from the jetty. The smell of rotten seaweed and salt water stirred some vague summer memories into life. Something about having my head poked through a life jacket that was too small, a cousin showing off because they were rich enough to have a boat and a cabin, and a red-faced uncle swearing because he couldn’t get the outboard motor started.

It was dark inside the boathouse, and there was a pleasant smell of tar. Everything we needed for fishing was already in the boat, its keel held in a wooden cradle.

‘Isn’t that a bit big for a rowing boat?’ I estimated that it was five or six metres long.

‘Oh, it’s no more than medium-sized,’ Lea said. ‘Come on, we’ve all got to push.’

‘Dad’s was much bigger,’ Knut said. ‘A ten-oared boat, with a mast.’

We launched the boat, and I managed to clamber in without getting my legs too wet.

I fitted the oars in place on one of the two pairs of rowlocks, and began to row out away from shore with calm, strong strokes. I recalled putting a lot of effort into being better at rowing than my cousin during the one summer that I, poor, fatherless relation, was allowed to be a guest there. Even so, I thought I could see that Lea and Knut weren’t impressed.

Some way out I pulled the oars in.

Knut crept towards the back of the boat, leaned over the gunwale, threw the line out and stared after it. I could see the distant look in his eyes as his imagination roamed free.

‘Good lad,’ I said, taking off the jacket that had been hanging on a hook in the boathouse.

She nodded.

There was no wind, and the sea — or ocean, as Lea and Knut called it — was shiny as a mirror. It looked solid enough for us to walk towards the red cauldron of the sun sticking above the horizon off to the north.

‘Knut said you haven’t got anyone waiting for you back home,’ she said.

I shook my head. ‘Fortunately not.’

‘That must be strange.’

‘What?’

‘Not having anyone. No one thinking of you. No one looking after you. Or no one to look after.’

‘I’ve tried,’ I said, loosening the hook from one of the lines. ‘And I couldn’t handle it.’

‘You couldn’t handle having a family?’

‘I couldn’t handle looking after them,’ I said. ‘I’m — as you must have realised by now — not the sort of man you can rely on.’

‘I hear you say that, Ulf, but I don’t know if it’s true. What happened?’

I pulled the spoon bait free from the line. ‘Why are you still calling me Ulf?’

‘That’s what you told me your name was, so that’s the name I use. Until you want to be called something different. Everyone should be allowed to change their name every so often.’

‘And how long have you been called Lea?’

She screwed one eye up. ‘Are you asking a woman how old she is?’

‘I didn’t mean...’

‘Twenty-nine years.’

‘Hmm. Lea’s a nice name, no reason to change—’

‘It means “cow”,’ she interrupted. ‘I’d like to be called Sara. That means “princess”. But my father said I couldn’t be called Sara Sara. So instead I’ve been called cow for twenty-nine years. What do you have to say about that?’

‘Well.’ I thought for a moment. ‘Moo?’

At first she looked at me in disbelief. Then she started to laugh. That deep laugh. Slow guffaws. Knut turned round in the stern. ‘What is it? Did he tell a joke?’

‘Yes,’ she said, without taking her eyes off me. ‘I think he did.’

‘Tell me!’

‘Later.’ She leaned towards me. ‘So, what happened?’

‘I don’t know that anything happened.’ I cast the line out. ‘I was just too late.’

She frowned. ‘Too late for what?’

‘To save my daughter.’ The water was so clear that I could see the shimmering spoon lure sink deeper and deeper. Until it vanished out of sight in the greenish black darkness. ‘When I finally had the money she was already in a coma. She died three weeks after I had scraped together the cost of the treatment in Germany. Not that it would have made any difference, it was already too late. At least that’s what the doctors said. But the point is that I couldn’t do what I was supposed to. I let her down. That’s been the constant refrain to my life. But the fact that I couldn’t handle... that I couldn’t even manage when...’

I sniffed. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken the jacket off; after all, we were close to the North Pole. I felt something on my lower arm. My hair stood on end. A touch. I couldn’t remember the last time a woman had touched me. Until I remembered that it was less than twenty-four hours ago. To hell with this place, these people, all this.

‘That was why you stole the money, wasn’t it?’

I shrugged.

‘You stole the money for your daughter, even though you knew they’d kill you if they got hold of you.’

I spat over the side of the boat to see something break the terrible stillness of the water. ‘It sounds good when you put it like that,’ I said. ‘Let’s just say I was a father who waited until it was too late to do anything for his daughter.’

‘But it was already too late, wasn’t it, according to the doctors?’

‘They said so, but they didn’t know. No one knows. Not me, not you, not the priest, not the atheist. So we believe. Believe, because that’s better than realising that there’s only one thing waiting for us down in the depths, and that’s darkness, cold. Death.’

‘Do you really believe that?’

‘Do you really believe there’s a pearly gate with angels and a bloke called St Peter? Actually, no, you don’t believe that — a sect about ten thousand times bigger than yours believes in saints. And they think that if you don’t believe precisely what they believe in, down to the smallest detail, then you’ll end up in hell. Yep, Catholics believe that you Lutherans are heading straight down to the basement. And you believe that’s where they’re going. You really were pretty lucky being born among true believers up here near the North Pole instead of in Italy or Spain. Then you’d have had a very long road to salvation.’

I saw the line go slack, and pulled at it. It jerked, apparently caught on something; it must be shallow here. I tugged harder and the line came free of whatever it was caught on.

‘You’re angry, Ulf.’

‘Angry? I’m fucking furious, that’s what I am. If that god of yours exists, why does he play with humanity like that, why does he let one person be born into suffering and another into a life of excess, or one with a chance of finding the faith that’s supposed to save them, while the majority never get to hear a thing about god. Why would he... how could he...?’

Damn cold.

‘Take your daughter?’ she asked quietly.

I blinked. ‘There’s nothing down there,’ I said. ‘Just darkness, death, and—’

‘Fish!’ Knut cried.

We turned towards him. He was already hauling in the line. Lea patted my arm one last time, then let go of me and leaned against the gunwale.

We stared down into the water. Waiting for whatever he had caught to come into view. For some reason I found myself thinking of a yellow sou’wester. And suddenly I had a premonition. No, it was more than a premonition. I knew for certain: he would come back. I closed my eyes. Yes, I could see it quite clearly. Johnny would come back. He knew I was still here.

‘Ha!’ Knut said jubilantly.

When I opened my eyes, a large cod was wriggling in the bottom of the boat. Its eyes were bulging, as if it couldn’t believe what it was seeing. Which was fair enough — this could hardly have been how it thought things would turn out.