The End of the Ocean

Chapter 35 SIGNE

The house is run-down, he is run-down, the grandchildren have only been here on one single occasion, there is no swimming pool and Trine has left for good. I don’t ask why.

We go out into the garden. He serves instant coffee, stirring with an unpolished silver spoon until the powder has dissolved.

I sit holding the mug, watching the steam form droplets along the inside of the rim. I hold the other hand over the top and feel how my palm becomes damp from the rising warmth.

“I thought it was you. There’s nobody else who could do something like that,” he says. “And then I heard you’d been home, that someone had seen Blue in the harbor, so then I knew for sure.”

“I know of a lot of other people who could have done something like that,” I say.

“In your world, sure. You live in another world.”

“We live in the same world.”

“Do we?”

He smiles.

“Do you think it’s ridiculous?” I ask. “That I dumped the ice?”

“No… I don’t think so. I don’t think anything you’ve ever done has been ridiculous.”

“But it hasn’t done any good,” I say.

“You don’t know how the world would have been if you hadn’t tried,” he says.

Neither of us speaks; we drink the coffee. Slowly it cools off and becomes lukewarm.

“You’re running,” I say.

“Every day,” he says. “Had to find something to do.”

“What about the garden? The house?”

“What about it?”

“That’s the kind of thing retired folk like to do.”

“I don’t like carpentry. Or gardening.”

He studies me over his cup. Again there’s laughter in him; his eyes are shining even though he is serious.

“You still want to laugh at me,” I say. “You can’t stop. People laugh at what they don’t understand.”

“No,” he says. “No, I don’t want to laugh at you.”

“Well, what is it, then?”

“Signe, don’t you understand anything?”

I look at him, don’t know what to say, because no, I really don’t understand a thing.

“Don’t you understand that… every time I went out running, ever since I started running, no, long before that, for my entire life… every time I left the house, all the houses I’ve lived in, all the hotel rooms, every time I left them… I wished, not always strongly, sometimes it’s only been a flicker, but lately stronger and stronger… every time I wished that when I came back from my trip or from work or from a run, that when I came back… you would be sitting on the front stoop?”

And then he hugs me again, leans forward and throws his arms around me. I am still holding the coffee cup in my hand, it comes between us—a warm, hard lump of pottery in the middle of the hug—I try to pull it out, we are both clumsy, two thirteen-year-olds.

But when we let go of each other, he keeps his hand on my arm, just leaves it there, as if to confirm that I’m real, and I don’t pull away.

“Why did you do it?” I ask.

“What?”

“Why did you approve the ice excavation?”

He draws a breath but doesn’t reply.

“Was it so I would come?” I continue. “Was it to provoke me? So I’d come looking for you? Because you knew that I wouldn’t be able to resist?”

He hesitates.

“No, Signe, no. I wish that was why. I would like to lie and say that was why. I wish I’d had that idea. You… you’re capable of doing something like that. Not me.”

“But why?”

“Because… I’m the same person I’ve always been. Because the price of electricity has gone down. Because it was a chance to increase revenues. A chance for continued security. And it probably doesn’t make any difference when I say that I’ve stopped the excavation now. Because the damage is already done.”

“Yes,” I say. “The damage is already done.” But the wind has gone out of my sails.

“And it doesn’t help that I’ve stopped the excavation?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know yet.”

“…I’m sorry,” he says.

“Yes,” I say. “You’re sorry, but you’re still the same person you’ve always been.”

“I guess.” He nods. “Just older.”

“Me too,” I say.

We sit in silence for a while.

“But you’re aging well,” he says.

He startles me into a near-smile. “Was that a compliment?”

“No. A relevant piece of information.”

“Given the circumstances, I would say that it could be interpreted as a compliment.”

“So we’ll leave room for interpretation.”

“Interpretation?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Do.”

Again we fall silent.

“I brought ice,” I say then. “Twelve containers.”

We retrieve the ice and stack the containers outside his house.

“What should we do with it?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I say.

He places a hand on one of them.

“The containers are nice. Hard, solid plastic.”

“Petroleum,” I say.

“What?”

“They’re made of petroleum.”

“And petroleum is made of plants.”

“The plastic isn’t biodegradable.”

“It won’t break down.”

“For thousands of years.”

We leave the containers outside, beside the wall of the house. We don’t open them.

I often go to check on Blue after breakfast, to take care of her; there’s always something, a mooring line that needs replacing, a fender that has slipped out of place, a boat beside her that’s too close and banging against the hull.

One day when I get back to the house, the containers are gone. I run out into the garden, but he’s not there, I spin around in circles, search everywhere and finally I spot him, far away, on top of a hill he calls a mountain, the highest point in the landscape.

I run into the densely wooded forest, making my way through the trees and the tall grass. Then I reach a path leading upwards. I am out of breath when I finally reach the top.

He is bent over the containers, but when I approach he turns around and smiles. “Here you go.”

He has stacked the containers on top of each other—two containers high, two wide, three long—and buried them halfway underground.

He thumps his hand on the container beside him, a slightly hollow sound, and at the same time I can hear the sound of the water inside.

“Don’t you want to sit down?” he says.

We can see far into the distance and the landscape is peaceful and well-tended, fields in all directions; nothing is out of place here, there are no aberrations, the house is down below, half hidden amidst the trees. We can see only parts of the red roof, the yard, the brook, we can glimpse the canal amidst all the greenery, a ribbon running through the landscape.

And we just sit there.

Two old people on a bench.