The Day Is Dark

Chapter 5

There is something about abandoned places; something unpleasant but difficult to put your finger on. In an abstract way, it was clear to everyone that those who had vanished from there would not be coming back. Several times Thóra had visited the home of a deceased person to take care of the division of their estate, and had experienced this same discomfort. Perhaps it was the ornaments that would never again be admired, or the open newspaper on the table that no one would finish reading. Although the camps held neither ornaments nor newspapers, Thóra was gripped by the same feeling; they were empty of people but full of signs of human activity. Above all, it reminded Thóra of a documentary on Chernobyl that she had seen several years ago, which gave a good view of how it looked when an entire town’s population has to abandon its homes and workplaces without warning. The difference was in the people. In Chernobyl, the residents had fled from something. Here it looked as though the earth had swallowed the two employees.

In the camp’s main office building computers whirred; desks bore signs that the workers had had no suspicion that they would never return. Half-empty coffee mugs were left here and there and fleece jackets hung on the backs of chairs. Everything was silent, except for the faint buzzing of the computers and the occasional beeping of the fire alarm system. When they looked at it, it seemed to be flagging up a fire in the smokers’ room, which they found near the main entrance with Friðrikka’s assistance. There was no fire there, but the window had been left ajar, which had let in enough snow to cover the floor. The men’s disappearance couldn’t be attributed to a fire. The geologist informed them that the security system was sensitive and could have been set off by the unexpected ingression of snow into the building. Likewise, the smoke detectors were very sensitive to cigar and pipe smoke. On the other hand, Friðrikka thought it strange that no one had shut off that intolerable beeping – resetting the system could not be that difficult. Most likely, the alarm had gone off after the two men disappeared from the camp. According to Friðrikka they both smoked, and thus could have left the window open after their final cigarettes in there. Bella was furious at the snow-filled room since it was now impossible to smoke inside the office building, but her anger was largely appeased when Friðrikka told her that there was another little lounge for smokers in the cafeteria and residential wing. However, Bella was prohibited from going there alone until everything had been checked out, which made her grumpy again. ‘Then I’ll just have to smoke outside on this fucking tundra,’ she muttered, putting on her coat to go out and do just that.

‘I don’t know how advisable it is for you to go out alone,’ said the doctor gravely. ‘We have no idea what occurred here, and there could well have been a polar bear outside that attacked the men.’ This warning seemed to give Bella no pause, and she continued wrapping herself up for her trip outside. ‘Not to mention how unhealthy smoking is,’ added the doctor, in the hope of a better reception.

Bella stiffened as she zipped up her coat. Her expression was not one of panic, but anger. She looked straight at the doctor, resentfully. ‘I can’t smoke in here?’ she asked. When she received no answer she bent down once more and pulled on her other boot. ‘I didn’t think so. Either I smoke in here or I go out.’ She finished getting ready as Thóra, Matthew, Friðrikka and the doctor watched in silence, and then stormed out after flinging them one last grumpy look.

‘I’m more worried about the polar bear, if they do cross paths,’ said Thóra as the door closed.

They continued inspecting the office building, and after looking into all the rooms Friðrikka declared that everything but the smokers’ room appeared normal. One thing struck Thóra as they rambled through the building – as far as she could see, the speckled linoleum was exactly like that visible in the video clip. She exchanged glances with Matthew and he nodded his head to indicate that he had also noticed this. On the other hand, there appeared to be no traces of blood in the rooms; although the group had only done a cursory inspection, it didn’t pay to arouse the suspicion of the geologist by inspecting the walls for signs of blood spatter. It could wait.

Although everything appeared normal in the office building, it was a different story in the employees’ quarters and the cafeteria. These were, respectively, little green buildings that most resembled container units and a larger building that had been put together from similar units. The larger building contained the staff’s communal facilities: kitchen, cafeteria, lounge, gym and laundry room. Attached to the large building was a long wing of rooms with simple sleeping accommodation. Friðrikka told them that the buildings with separate entrances were effectively apartments. Those who stayed here for longer periods lived in them; they had a bedroom, a bathroom with a shower, a little sitting room and a kitchenette. The rooms on the wing were more modest: a bed and a locker, with a shared shower and toilet at the end of the wing.

These rooms were occupied by those who stayed for shorter periods, and occasionally regular staff when storms raged and it was inadvisable to go outside, even to get from the cafeteria to the apartments. Thóra said nothing when she heard this, but was quite surprised, since the small apartments were only a few dozen metres away. If people couldn’t make it safely such a short distance in bad weather, she hoped that the impending storm would pass over quickly. She frowned when Friðrikka added that sometimes these storms could last for days. They decided to stay in the rooms on the wing, so as not to tamper with the apartments of the people who might conceivably return to work there. If they weren’t able to restore power to the sleeping wing they would set themselves up in the office building, since without power it was twenty degrees below inside as well as outside. The most probable explanation for the lack of heat in the employees’ quarters was that the generator supplying power was either broken or out of fuel, and Matthew, Dr Finnbogi and Alvar went to try to get it working again. Thóra, Friðrikka and Eyjólfur remained behind in the office, along with Bella, who had returned safely from her fag break.

The four of them stood in the little coffee room that had been set up in a nook in a corridor of the office building. The large coffeemaker was turned on and there was nothing preventing them from pressing a button and making coffee except that the doctor had explicitly prohibited them from doing so. He considered it unwise to consume anything in the camp while the fate of the two employees was still unclear. Thóra thought this unnecessarily dramatic; all of the rooms and living quarters had been inspected and had revealed no signs of the missing men. People did not simply evaporate from food poisoning or sickness, she thought privately; but she didn’t dare make herself a coffee, even though she was parched and knew that her hangover, which was finally decreasing in intensity, would disappear almost entirely if she had a coffee or something stronger.

‘The system was actually divided into two to ensure that the entire area would not lose power all at once,’ said Friðrikka, breaking the silence. ‘There is a separate generator for the office and another for the apartments and cafeteria. Everything here is heated with electric radiators, and even though the houses are well insulated, it gets cold quickly when the electricity goes off. But electrical failures don’t matter; we have a huge oil tank that is supposed to be enough to supply both generators through the winter, but if spring arrives late we have to shut one of them down until a ship can bring more supplies.’

‘Did that happen often while you were here?’ asked Thóra. ‘The electricity going off?’

‘No, no,’ replied Friðrikka. ‘At first there was some trouble with the exhaust pipe of one of the generators and the electricity went out when wind blew into the pipe, but that was repaired quickly. The system worked fine after that but I don’t know how things went after I quit. Maybe something was already going wrong then.’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ interjected Eyjólfur. ‘I was here two weeks ago and no one mentioned anything like that.’

‘Could the generator have run out of oil?’ asked Thóra, directing her question at Friðrikka. ‘And that’s why it shut down?’ She wanted to look outside, satisfy herself that the storm hadn’t hit yet.

‘No, that’s impossible,’ the other woman replied. ‘Spring’s still a long way off and there should be plenty of oil, unless someone badly miscalculated.’

It must have been odd not to be able to count on regular shipments except over the summer. The residents had to make arrangements for the winter at the end of that season. Thóra would have liked to see her own shopping list if she’d lived under these conditions. The hut that housed the generator was in view, but she did not see any of the men that had gone there armed with torches and a toolkit. The wind was starting to stir up the snow and Thóra shivered at the thought of having to go outside. She turned around.

‘How did it all work here, then?’ she asked. ‘It’s an unusual set-up, to say the least.’

‘I actually just made short trips here,’ replied Eyjólfur off-handedly. ‘I wouldn’t have stuck it out if I’d had to be here longer than a week.’ The answer hardly came as a surprise, since the computer expert was young and doubtless had a decent social life outside of work. Everything here must have centred on daily work tasks.

Friðrikka shrugged and looked down at her toes. ‘It was all right. You had to get used to it, but on the whole it was fine.’ She drew a breath through her nose. ‘Naturally it’s not easy living where you work and associating only with your co-workers, but once you’ve got used to it it’s no problem. The salary was good and made up for the isolation. I’m single and childless, so it was okay really.’

‘But still, you gave it up.’ said Thóra. ‘May I ask why?’ Eyjólfur suddenly became very interested in a little refrigerator and bent down to inspect it.

‘The atmosphere changed, you might say,’ replied the woman, pushing a red lock of hair that had fallen onto her cheek back behind her ear. ‘When we came here about a year ago everything was done professionally and all of our interactions were normal, but the group’s spirits deteriorated quickly. In the end I couldn’t bear the idea of being here any longer.’ She flushed, but then stuck out her chin and continued, focused: ‘I wasn’t even surprised when I was contacted and told that something had come up here. It was inevitable.’ She looked away from Thóra. ‘There was – and probably still is – a curse on this place.’ She added quickly, ‘And I’m not alone in that view, if that’s what you think.’

‘It must be okay to have a Coke,’ said Eyjólfur loudly, standing up with a can in his hand. ‘I’m dying of thirst and this fridge is full of drinks. The Coke can hardly be poisoned.’ Thóra wasn’t going to let him get away with changing the subject.

‘Do you agree?’ she asked, as he flicked open the can and swigged from it. ‘Do you think there’s a curse on this place?’ She choked down her own overwhelming desire for a Coke. They needn’t both become ill; it was better to wait and see whether he lost consciousness before she yielded to the temptation. She wondered whether a Coke could be counted as one of the doctor’s potentially contaminated canned goods.

Eyjólfur took another gulp and sighed happily before replying. ‘No, I wouldn’t say that.’ He looked at Friðrikka as he spoke. ‘Places aren’t good or bad. At most, you can only describe the people who live in them that way.’ He tipped the can as if toasting the geologist. ‘Don’t you think so?’

Friðrikka did not reply immediately, but looked disdainfully away from the grinning man and stared at the wall. ‘Doesn’t matter, because in the end it’s all the same. Maybe it was just all of you and what went on here that made the place bad.’

‘Could you be a little clearer?’ asked Thóra. She was in no condition to read between the lines. Maybe what had happened here was unconnected with recent events; perhaps it had simply been typical work stuff, like an extramarital affair or some other gossip, but it still wouldn’t hurt to know what they were talking about.

‘For God’s sake, it was a lot of fuss over nothing,’ replied Eyjólfur. ‘Friðrikka simply gave up and quit. She didn’t have the nerve for it, or the sense of humour you need under these conditions. There’s nothing wrong with the place itself, although the work arrangements were pretty fucked-up. This kind of workplace isn’t for everyone.’

He was hardly one to talk. By his own account he had only come here for a week at a time while others stayed for lengthy periods. However, Thóra decided to say nothing, to protect Friðrikka. The geologist might turn out to be a crybaby who had convinced herself everything was intolerable in order to justify her leaving. Thóra could find this out later if necessary. She looked outside once more. ‘There’s smoke coming from the chimney on the roof,’ she said. ‘That must be a good thing.’

Friðrikka peered out and nodded. ‘It looks like the generator is running again,’ she said. ‘Unfortunately it’s probably too late for the showers and water, but who knows. Hopefully it was shut off intentionally and the water drained from the system. Either way, it’ll be nice not to have to sleep in here on the floor.’

‘Why shouldn’t the showers be working? They don’t run on electricity,’ said Thóra grumpily. It was bad enough not being able to have a coffee or an ice-cold Coke. Bella’s expression suggested that she felt the same.

‘If the camp has been without heat long enough for the water to freeze in the pipes, most of the lines are probably broken,’ said Friðrikka. ‘Unless they left the taps trickling, but I didn’t notice that when we had our look around.’ Thóra said nothing, hoping they had simply overlooked this during their inspection of the site. But she didn’t hold out much hope. They would probably have heard the water running in the oppressive silence.

‘Fuck,’ said Eyjólfur, seemingly just as pissed off as Thóra. He didn’t elaborate, but took another huge gulp of Coke. He reached for the tap on the sink next to the coffeemaker and sighed in relief when water ran out of it in a dense jet. ‘Well, at least we can flush the toilet in this building.’

‘I guess I should go out and help them turn the lights on and get everything working,’ said Friðrikka. ‘I know where everything is, so we’d get it done faster.’ Thóra wondered for a moment whether she should be lazy and lag behind, but she pushed away the thought. They would all have to contribute.

The hunter Igimaq watched the four people emerge from the big building. Three females and one male, all dressed in colourful outdoor clothing that contrasted with the environment. Despite their thick clothing and their distance from him, the man realized at the same moment that all the women were too tall for his taste, and two of them too thin. The man was no good either: he was scrawny and weak-looking, though he was not exactly a runt. It was like that with all Westerners. Their worship of skinny physiques was the best example of how they had broken all ties with nature. Despite their winter clothing, those three women would freeze to death in no time if they were forced to fend for themselves without the food and shelter they took for granted. They probably ate meat, but would puke if he took them hunting and showed them how such food was acquired. That was in the unlikely event that he would manage to catch anything with them or their ilk tagging along. They couldn’t even see him right now, even though he did nothing to conceal himself. He simply stood still and allowed the blowing snow to play about his warmly dressed body. His hood shielded his eyes, but he still had to squint from time to time in the strongest gusts. He watched them walk over to the other big building, where others were standing, from the look of them two men and a woman. They spoke together briefly, but he could not make out the words and would not have understood them anyway. He did understand Danish, although he had difficulty expressing himself in that language; not because he didn’t know the words, but rather because they were not sufficiently descriptive for what lay in his heart. It was a language that had developed under different circumstances than Greenlandic, based on an easier struggle for life and different values. The faint sound of the people’s conversation died out and he watched the group enter the building. Shortly afterwards, one light after another went on inside it. He continued to stand there, expressionless, though he felt uneasy. This couldn’t end well.

Igimaq turned and walked away. It was useless to stand here any longer; he had heard the helicopter and wanted to find out whether those it carried were on their way to this area. It was bad, but following every single movement of the newcomers wouldn’t help. Although they were defenceless out in the open, they were on their home field indoors. In any case he could change nothing, any more than he could anything else in this life; things went their own way and providence was often unreadable and illogical. No one knew that better than him. More than ever it seemed to him that trying to grasp what mattered most to human beings was like grabbing at sunbeams; they disappeared at the same time as one was still enjoying them, and one could never get a grip on them. Similarly, whatever a man loved always disappeared; he would come to possess something only to lose it later. The hunter had hardened his heart regarding all the things that had disappeared from his life over the years, and thankfully he had largely succeeded; he was even starting to feel the same about the family he’d lost. Perhaps he had already succeeded there, too. Igimaq could not be sure, because the thought of his family’s fate was so difficult for him to bear that he had refused to allow himself to think about anything since the time just before it happened. Had he been left in peace, this would have worked; until just recently, his mind had never turned to the woman he had loved and lost, and very rarely had he given a thought to the daughter and son who had also gone from him.

The hunter grimaced at the broad expanse of ice and snow. These outsiders and those who had come before had torn open an old wound. Triggered memories of a son who had awakened in him such great hope, a hope that had felt so sublime that it was bound to fail. He still recalled the little feet sticking out from beneath the blanket when he saw him newborn; the thick, broad soles that suggested he would make his mark on the world. Nothing had come of this, any more than his wife consistently seeing to his needs following each good hunt, as she had promised. Yet he had fulfilled his obligation, had given her two children who appeared healthy and had seen to it that there was always enough food on the family’s table. He had doted on the boy, but without him being aware of it. A good hunter, a real man, had to learn certain lessons on his own and build his own character through difficult experience; otherwise he would never learn the interplay between land and animals. But none of this mattered in the end. His wife and their two children were lost to him. His daughter was dead, and the same could be said for his wife and son. They would never break free from the fetters of alcohol and although it would be no trouble to visit them, he knew he never would. To him they were as dead as his daughter.

He approached the snowdrift behind which he had hidden his sled and heard the regular breathing of the dogs. They were tired after their strenuous day, but when he appeared only one of them continued sleeping. That dog lay curled up with its tail over its nose to protect its respiratory system from the cold. The other dogs had cocked their heads and now watched the hunter with attentive eyes. They stood up, one after another, until finally the sleeping dog stirred. It immediately sprang up and growled, softly but deeply. The growl was not directed at the hunter; that much was certain. Perhaps it was to remind the other dogs that it was still their leader. It could also be that by growling, the animal was making clear its irritation at the fatigue it had exhibited. With good reason; its days would soon be numbered. It tired too quickly, and even though it was not particularly old, its behaviour was showing ever increasing signs of its age. The hunter did not know what caused this any more than he knew what had caused his son’s life to ebb away. Maybe the dog was simply one of those whose legs failed them early, or else the battles it had fought to become the leader of the pack were starting to take their toll. After its death another such conflict would begin, in which the dogs would fight each other until the strongest and cunningest assumed power with the taste of its fellows’ blood in its mouth. The hunter just hoped those fights would not cost him more dogs, as sometimes happened.

The hunter stood and looked at the lead dog and saw in the creature’s intelligent eyes that it knew what lay ahead. He saw questions glittering in its speckled pupils: had it done a good job? Had it not led the team diligently through the dangers that accompanied the thinning of the ice? Had it not always made sure that the rest of the team behaved and obeyed his commands? If this creature could have spoken, they could have discussed its situation and he could explain to the dog why he was going to dispose of it. It was better to die as a lead dog than let the team force you out. But the connection between the hunter and the dog was not strong enough for such debate: the man understood the dog and the dog understood the man, but some things they could never express to each other. The dog would never understand this decision, even though it was more difficult for the man than the animal, which felt nothing. He had seldom or never had a better lead dog; this was the animal he had waited for ever since his grandfather had told him in his childhood that somewhere he would find a creature to whom he could speak without words. A beast that would understand him and help him through his greatest trials. That would follow Igimaq into the jaws of death without any hesitation.

There was something in the dog’s eyes that encouraged him to wait a while before implementing his decision. It was not the creature’s instinctive will to live, but something different. The moment that his grandfather had spoken of had likely not yet come, despite everything that had already happened. He should put off the inevitable just a bit longer, that would scarcely change anything. Spring was around the corner, and perhaps the dog would be refreshed by the warm winds. Or it might gain strength if he upped its food ration. The hunter could surely spare more meat. There was no shortage of it at the moment. The dog seemed almost to follow the hunter’s train of thought, and it perked up proudly and glared at the other dogs. They cowered in submission, and the dog looked towards the hunter to check the man had observed its dominance over the team. The hunter smiled at the animal, his teeth gleaming whitely against his dark face, then turned and looked back at the green buildings in the distance. It was not his job to rescue full-grown children who came here on a fool’s errand. He would concentrate on saving the dog; it was far more important to him.