The Whispering Muse

V

ON 13 APRIL I noted in my diary that the weather was fine though a little nippy. I imagine there’s a calm here most of the year round since we are enclosed by mountains and I have difficulty working out where the wind could come from. It’s as if we were in a funnel where only the upper airs are visible — and tangible, for here it can really bucket down with rain, as I discovered at noon when I came up on deck intending to fish for more cod.

Even if it hadn’t been raining, any further attempt at fishing would have been hampered by my inability to find my tackle, though I had conscientiously put it away in a box full of marlin spikes and other such paraphernalia that stood in the corner behind the big capstan. I suspect the purser’s lady friend of having a hand in this, as ever since our slap-up dinner yesterday evening she has been distinctly crabby, even actively hostile towards me. This morning when I came to the breakfast table she got up at once, asked the company to excuse her and walked out of the saloon without a glance in my direction.

Her change of heart occurred after she saw me give the ship’s cook (or ‘chef’, as he’s called) the big cod, which he then prepared and served according to my instructions. Today at lunchtime a soup was made from the head and bones, the chopped-up cheeks floating in stock with carrots, bay leaves, peppercorns and onion, and yet there was still more than enough left over to make a fish stew for tonight’s supper.

Anyway, the purser’s lady friend seemed to regard this contribution of mine to our little community on board the MS Elizabet Jung-Olsen as a criticism of her boyfriend’s job. And of course she was right that my actions were motivated by more than a mere appetite for seafood: I felt that on the maiden voyage of this new vessel of the Kronos line it would have done the purser credit to have been guided by Jung-Olsen and his son’s ideals when it came to buying in provisions — and he himself certainly took the hint and swallowed it without rancour. If anything, I would have expected his lady friend to be grateful to me for eking out their stores, thus enabling them to profit still further from the illicit trade in which they and the cook were engaged.

Last night I started awake at the sound of voices in the saloon. Although they were trying to be quiet, I overheard a business transaction that would not have tolerated the light of day: strange voices were haggling over the price of tinned ham but the purser’s lady friend wasn’t budging an inch. Apparently the problem is rife among the prosperous Danish shipping lines whose pursers and cooks make a killing by selling off provisions on the side; many of them even have regular customers in foreign ports. I don’t know what the woman would do if she knew I had overheard the couple’s secret commerce.

As luck would have it, three Norwegian police officers turned up here at coffee time to take statements from those of us who were on deck when the accident occurred at the factory. I voluntarily engaged the eldest in conversation, going so far as to appoint myself his escort while the visit lasted, thereby using an old ploy to alert the law to my presence on board the MS Elizabet Jung-Olsen. He was a man of about fifty, powerfully built and keen-eyed, with prematurely white hair, small ears and the familiar-sounding moniker of Knud Hamsun:

‘With a “d”…’ he said, explaining that he was no relation to the great writer.

I invited him to inspect my quarters and take my statement there, adding that I would like to offer him some Irish whiskey from a flask that the owner of Café Sommerfugl had given me as a parting gift when I set out on this voyage. As we went below I noticed that the constable had a limp and observed to him that it didn’t really matter once you were on board ship; it merely looked as if he were riding the swell and no one would notice that he was different from the rest of us.

The taking of my statement was performed with a civility that did the Norwegian constabulary credit. I gave Knud Hamsun a thorough description of all I had seen and heard, stressing, as was true, that Raguel Bastesen’s reaction had been far from admirable; the injured man owed his life to his workmate, who had been forced to knock the director unconscious before he could use the car that would carry them most speedily to hospital.

‘Yes, I’m not afraid to say it, though I’m no friend of the Communists and have played a personal part in the struggle against them!’

The constable finished noting down my statement in shorthand in his leather-bound pocket book, which he then closed, snapping on a red elastic band and pushing the pencil stub underneath:

‘I’m sorry to have to inform you that the worker Vidar Røyrvik died from his injuries this morning at the Kristiansand District Hospital.’

‘Oh…’

‘Yes…’

Finishing his whiskey, Knud Hamsun continued:

‘There’s always a danger of unrest among the ranks of the dead man’s fellow workers following incidents like this, so we’ve arrested the men who drove him to hospital and announced that they are being held in custody until the investigation into the theft of the car is complete. There is nothing to prevent the factory from returning to work now, so there should be no further delay to your business here in Mold Bay.’

On this positive note he concluded the taking of my statement, and we returned to the saloon where the purser’s lady friend, ignoring me, offered Constable Hamsun coffee and pancakes. I nudged him and made sure she was in earshot when I said:

‘Hark, hark, the hen crows louder than the cock…’

By this means I made sure that he would be aware of the bad blood between the woman and me. Should anything happen to me before we continued on our voyage he was bound to recall this little incident. And my odd choice of words might even arouse his suspicions that the woman’s generosity was designed to cover up some criminal activity. This didn’t escape her, cunning creature that she was, and I felt we were now even.

I struck my brow lightly:

‘Oh, I forgot! Would you excuse me? There’s something I have to finish before evening…’

I parted from Knud Hamsun with a handshake and returned to my cabin. Now he would have a chance to get properly acquainted with the woman, untroubled by my presence. Or would he? Perhaps it hadn’t been so clever to leave him with her after all? I realised all of a sudden how much the purser’s lady friend resembled the temptresses of Lemnos described to us by Mate Caeneus in his evening yarns. And it dawned on me that her erratic behaviour might indicate a breach in her relationship with the purser. Far from protecting him, as I had originally thought, she was on the hunt for a new man; someone who had more going for him than her unfortunate boyfriend — a man who could be her meal ticket to a better life.

So the bad feeling wasn’t connected to the cod at all but had in fact begun when she brought me the snack with my coffee the day before yesterday. She had been very friendly at the time and opened her heart to me. Perhaps she was under the impression, since I’m staying in a two-room cabin suite that’s almost the twin of Captain Alfredson’s, that I must be a wealthy man. Could the purpose of her sob story have been to kindle pity in my aged breast? And afterwards might she have intended to press her advantage and win both my love and my money? As soon as she made enquiries into my situation she would of course have discovered that I am only a poor Icelandic pensioner, a widower who has enough trouble supporting himself and lives alone in a poky rented flat in Copenhagen, and not in the best part of town either. At that point she must have felt she had put herself at a disadvantage by making a play for me, resulting in a feeling of resentment, even animosity, towards me.

As I shut my cabin door I saw the purser’s lady friend showing my ally Knud Hamsun to a seat at a table laid for coffee on the other side of the saloon. I only hoped his long experience in the police force would enable him to withstand her womanly wiles.

This evening it was at long last Mate Caeneus’s turn to take the watch and Captain Alfredson and I had agreed that after supper I would hold a lecture for the crew on fish and culture. The reason for this was twofold:

a) It was thanks to my publication of a journal on this subject that I was present on board as a special guest of the crew’s ultimate superior, the shipping magnate Magnus Jung-Olsen.

b) It was thanks to my efforts at fishing that we were enjoying nutritious cod for our third meal in a row.

I declined the starter — egg mayonnaise with grated vegetables on a lettuce leaf — taking the opportunity to go over the opening of my speech instead. Although I can, without recourse to notes, deliver lengthy impromptu lectures on the relationship between fish consumption and culture, this evening’s effort had to be rather better than that. After all, this was not my usual audience — the regulars at the Café Sommerfugl — no, this time my lecture was to be delivered on board the flagship of the Kronos fleet, the MS Elizabet Jung-Olsen, a ship named after the grandmother of my young friend, the late Hermann. Born and brought up in a fishing station on the west coast of Jutland, a fisherman’s wife to the end, daughter of Dogger Bank, Madame Elizabet had raised her son Magnus on a diet of nothing but seafood and Hermann had often remembered her with warmth and respect in his letters to the journal.

But to my consternation, the mate was sitting over his dinner at the high table when I arrived, his wooden muse lying on the napkin in his lap. Apparently my fellow passengers could not bear to be deprived of his ridiculous ‘anecdotes’. When he became aware of me the captain stood up, bowed briefly and silently motioned me to sit at his side, but the rest were so absorbed in the story that they paid me no more attention than a puff of wind. Mate Caeneus did admittedly break off for a moment as I took my seat (this evening we were colleagues) but his silence might just as well have indicated a dramatic pause at a climactic moment of the story as the intention to show me any respect. I was rather hurt by this but as I had encountered a similar reception in the months immediately after the war, I preserved an impassive demeanour, clasped my hands on my stomach and listened out of one ear. I kept the other tuned to the galley door as it would soon be time for the fish stew.

Caeneus was describing the dealings of one of his shipmates, a man by the name of Polydeuces, with a full-grown monkey who belonged to the third woman he took on Lemnos:

‘The woman used to dress the monkey in children’s clothes and called it Thekkus after her former husband. It had been accustomed to having its mistress to itself for so long that when Polydeuces became a regular visitor to their bedchamber the animal went mad from jealousy and did everything in its power to persecute the interloper. The hero of the sea had to poleaxe the monkey every time he made love to the woman, or the creature would spring on to his back and try to tear out his jugular.

‘In his battles with this shaggy, ill-tempered adversary, Polydeuces enjoyed the advantage of being one of the foremost boxers in the crew, as was subsequently revealed when we continued on our voyage and our way was blocked by Amicus, King of Brecia, who had the custom of knocking unconscious those who sought shelter from the winds in the bays of his land or went ashore there in search of water. As this was after Heracles had left us, Polydeuces volunteered to meet the king in single combat. Where King Amicus became maddened like a bull, Polydeuces, the son of Leda, was nimble as a swan’s wing. So Polydeuces triumphed in his bouts with both Amicus and Thekkus, for it is precisely this combination of agility and strength that is required when subduing vicious monkeys.’

The second mate continued with his story of a sailor who gets into fights with a monkey, a story that every mariner seems to have in his repertoire; why, I don’t know. Perhaps it’s an indication of the kind of audience they are used to? The present one was certainly amused — dear me, yes.

Caeneus went on:

‘Perhaps you noticed that I said the monkey belonged to Polydeuces’ third woman. For that is what she was, and only the third in a row of altogether twenty-seven sisters of Lemnos who made use of his manhood during the nine months or so that the Argonauts were guests in their land.

‘Yes, after the revelry in the palace of Queen Hypsipyle had lasted the equivalent of a lunar month, we awoke one morning to find the court ladies armed and ordering us roughly to our feet with a loud clashing of weapons. We thought at first that this was a game, that they intended to incite us to perform morning feats of love by dressing up as battle-thirsty Amazons, but anyone who tried to grab a slim ankle or caress a soft buttock instantly had his blood let with the point of a spear. No, this was no game inspired by the goddess born of the foaming waves on the shores of Cyprus, this was in deadly earnest; our handmaidens had been transformed into shield maidens.

‘To an accompaniment of harsh yells and evil threats from the women, we ordinary seamen of the many-nailed galley were forced to scramble to our feet and driven half-dressed and unwashed through the palace, through colonnades and passageways, right out beyond the encircling walls — and, please excuse my sailor’s language:

‘There we stood like idiots with our dicks in our hands.

‘As we began to find our bearings a low growling rose from the men: how dare they treat heroes in such a manner? Could it be part of a greater and more dastardly plot? And what had become of Jason and those who remained in the palace? Had the perfidious termagants murdered them in their sleep and were they now planning to send us without captain or helmsman out on to the barren sea where our ship would founder like an insignificant louse in the blue beard of mighty Poseidon?

‘Thus the Argonauts grumbled to each other as they girded their loins and rubbed the sleep from their eyes or combed their tangled manes with their fingers. Our displeasure did not last long, however, for Jason now appeared on the balcony of Queen Hypsipyle’s chamber and raised his hand, at which we fell silent.

‘“Comrades, it may appear to you that the hospitality of Lemnos has faltered, but things are not as they seem. Our task here is far from over: behold!”

‘He pointed to the city behind us.

‘The troop turned and at first we could see nothing but the street up which we had marched so boldly only a few weeks before, which ran from the palace down the hill to the wealthier citizens’ quarter where it formed a gully between the houses and continued through the soldiers’ and artists’ quarter to the marketplace, across the marketplace and through the quarter of the artisans and common people, before winding through the paupers’ quarter, after which it narrowed to an alley with hardly room to pass, known in everyday speech as the She-wolf Alley — from where it was but a short walk down to the harbour and our vessel, the Argo. But even as the return route was revealed to us, we noticed a menacing movement in the shadows beside the gully mouth close by.

‘Something huge and protean lurked there, something that seemed not to know whether to pounce or retreat — but was inclined to pounce. One moment its movements resembled a field of corn that sways in unison before the wind, the next it was chaotic, resembling nothing so much as an argument between the Hydra’s seven quarrelling heads. As we groped in vain for our weapons, we were reminded of our defenceless state: we would have to tackle this thing with our bare hands.

‘Captain Jason, standing on the balcony with Queen Hypsipyle at his side, laughed provokingly and tapped his nose. Then, as if a spell had lifted from the crew of the Argo, our senses were unblocked and we smelt again the stench that our lovers in the palace had formerly emitted, only now it emanated from the creature confronting us. The veil was stripped from our eyes and we found ourselves faced with ninety desperate women lurking in the shade of one of the buildings.

‘These were the finer ladies of Lemnos. They awaited us, silent and implacable — like the first steep hill in the path of a marathon runner.’

When Mate Caeneus had finished, he shovelled down his food and went out to attend to his duties, while Captain Alfredson tapped his glass and announced to his fellow diners that now Mr Haraldsson from Iceland was going to deliver an enlightening talk on an important topical issue. At these words the purser’s lady friend made to rise from the table (on the pretext that she had to help her husband with the stocktaking), but the captain made it clear with a sharp glance that this could wait and she was to show me the courtesy of staying put during my edifying lecture. She obeyed, though in a put-upon manner. From looking at ‘her husband’, the purser, moreover, we could tell that this fictional Wednesday evening stock count had taken him as much by surprise as the rest of us.

At coffee time the Norwegians had recommenced loading the ship and the work continued late into the evening, with the result that the machinery that inched the blocks of paper on board — cranes, winches and windlass — now played first, second and third fiddle to my talk, while the dockers’ shouts and calls — ‘Heave ho! Easy now! Right! Left! Oi, you stupid bastard!’ — formed my chorus.

Nevertheless, I began my lecture and immediately sensed that it was well received by those who had the wit to understand its content, although the speaker was rather put off his stride by the racket made by the loading crew. The talk itself was composed with consummate skill and delivered in the impeccable Danish characteristic of its author, though I say so myself. The fish stew, on the other hand, was a disaster. It was bland, contained far too little pepper, and instead of potatoes the cook had given in to his ridiculous whim of serving everything with rice. The resulting mixture was far from appetising and formed a grey gloop on one’s fork like spiky rice pudding.

In consequence my little cultural contribution to life on board did not have quite the impact I had anticipated. It did not rise to the intended heights of Gesamtkunstwerk — to resort to a concept that had been familiar to me during my years on the Berlin radio.