Unformed Landscape

Would be crushed and squashed…

Kathrine left the school again. They all come through here, she thought. But when it’s over it’s over. Now he’s learning the same rhymes as we used to learn. What is my baby doing? What is my little deer doing? Now I’ll come to you once more, and then never again. A fairy tale, which one? Little brother and little sister. She had told it to Randy once. About the spring that whispers, who drinks from me will turn into a deer. Who drinks from me will turn into a deer. And then the little brother drinks from it, and so he turns into a deer. All afternoon, Randy was a deer, right until supper, when Kathrine told him deer don’t get to eat ambrosia-creamed rice.

Kathrine walked to the cemetery. It was snowing harder now. The houses all had lights on inside them, and some of the windows still had Christmas decorations up, straw stars, and strings of fairy lights, and lit-up plastic Santa Claus masks. They hadn’t had those when she was little. There were lanterns lit in the cemetery. You couldn’t see the individual tombstones under the snow, but Kathrine knew where her father lay. Her footsteps were the only ones to be seen. From a distance, she heard the school bell, and then the shouts and yells of the children as they ran home. Kathrine saw one or two from Randy’s class walking up the hill. The children greeted her as she passed them on her way to the main street.

There weren’t many trawlers at anchor in the harbor. Randy was standing with a couple of other children at the dock, watching a fisherman greasing a pulley. Kathrine called Randy, and he turned and ran to her. Silently, he took her hand. Together, they walked back to their mother, their grandmother.

“Do you like going to school?” asked Kathrine.

“I’m the second best at gym,” said Randy.

“Were you learning a poem today?”

“All I can remember is the ending,” said Randy, and he stopped, as though he couldn’t walk and think at the same time. He stood in front of Kathrine, and breathlessly and earnestly recited the few lines he could remember:

I hope you stay there nice and bright!

Little flowers, I’ll move on;

I just want to pick a bunch;

That’s enough for me today,

Little flowers blue and white.

“Would you rather be blind or deaf or dumb?” asked Randy, as they took off their shoes outside the apartment door.

“What sort of question is that?”

“I’d rather be dumb.”

After lunch, he ran out to play with the other children. Kathrine went into the garage. They had sold the car after her father died. Kathrine’s mother couldn’t drive, and Kathrine only had to for work. In a corner of the chilly building, next to the Deepfreeze, were a couple of large cardboard boxes, which Thomas had labeled “K” with his tidy writing, “K — books” and “K — kitchen,” “K — kid” and “K — casual clothes.” Next to them stood her cross-country skis. Kathrine picked them up, took them out, and slipped them on. Her mother came out to tell her to be careful, there was more snow on the way.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be careful,” said Kathrine.

She set off in the direction of the lighthouse. Visibility was poor, but she knew the way. Once she had left the village behind her, and was over the first hill, she hit a track, almost covered over by the fresh snow. She followed it. Kathrine went for a long time. She wasn’t cold, only her face felt chilly from the snow that was falling, harder now than before. She couldn’t see the track anymore. It was getting dark again, and it wasn’t even two o’clock.

An hour later, Kathrine saw someone coming toward her from a distance. It was Morten. She stopped. He had his head down pushing into the wind, and only saw her when he was a couple of yards from her. He got a shock.

“Does your new machine work?” she asked.

“Battery’s gone dead,” he said, with a grin. Then he said, “Hey, I’m glad you’re back!”

They embraced, but didn’t kiss. Their cheeks touched. Very cold, said Morten. But I don’t feel cold, said Kathrine. You’re not going out to the lighthouse, are you, asked Morten. Kathrine said she had gone out to meet him, and would come back with him.

“If you’re hungry…,” he said. “And I’ve got some hot tea as well.”

“You go on ahead.”

Morten went on slowly, and kept looking around at her. At five they were back in the village.

“Do you want to come to my place?” asked Morten.

“Let’s go to Svanhild’s.”

When Svanhild saw Kathrine, she came out from behind the bar, and, with a beaming smile, shook her hand. She asked where she had been, and wouldn’t let go of her hand. She said Alexander’s wife and his two daughters were there. She pointed to a table, where a plump blond woman sat, with a couple of girls almost as big as her. Kathrine recognized them from the photos Alexander had shown her.

“It’s three months since he’s disappeared now,” said Svanhild. “On Sunday we’re having a service for him in the church. We collected money so that they could come.”

Maybe the woman would stay, she said. There was no shortage of work. The girls’ names were Nina and Xenia.

Kathrine and Morten sat down at the table in the corner at the back, and Svanhild brought them coffee and homemade cake. The place was empty, apart from themselves and a couple of old workers from the fish factory.

“I’ve got some French cigarettes left,” said Kathrine.

“And Paris is beautiful?”

“I’ll show you my pictures, if you like.”

“Why did you go to Paris, of all places?” Kathrine didn’t answer. Then she told Morten about Christian, and that she had slept with him on the train. Then it was Morten’s turn not to speak.

“You weren’t there when I went away. I went looking for you, and you weren’t there. Are you jealous?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t want to lie to you.”

Kathrine told him about Stockholm and Boulogne, and how she’d eaten shellfish for the first time in her life, and smoked dope for the first time. Morten listened and he laughed, but she sensed he was different from how he had been before.

“I have to get used to the fact that you’ve slept with him,” he said.

“I slept with Thomas as well.”

“That was a long time ago. Anyway, he’s your husband.”

“And with you. And you’re not my husband.”

Morten nodded. He said that, to begin with, they had thought she had done herself a mischief by disappearing like Alexander. Thomas had run to the Elvekrog, all excited, and said they had to help him find his wife. He really said his wife, as if they didn’t all know who Kathrine was. Then when they had gone down to the harbor and asked after her there, the harbormaster had said he had seen her leave on the Polarlys.

“And you just stopped looking for me after that?”

“You’re your own woman. You can go wherever you like.”

“I was afraid someone might try and keep me from going. I don’t know. I had the feeling I was doing something wrong. I felt like a criminal on the run.”

“I thought you wouldn’t come back. Most of them don’t come back.”

Morten said he had lately been thinking quite a lot about leaving. He knew some people at the national radio, and he could probably get a job in Tromso, or even in Oslo. Couldn’t she get herself transferred? If she got her job back, she might be able to, said Kathrine. Tromso, why not. That might have been the happiest time in her life, those months in the city, with her male and female colleagues, the parties, the cinemas.

“Why not,” she said. “Would you want me to go?”

“We wanted to leave together when we were kids.”

Then she asked him what had happened, when they had stowed away together to Mehamn. Ha, said Morten, and then he told her the story.

And then they stood around uncertainly outside the fishermen’s refuge, and Morten asked again if she wanted to come up to his place, but he didn’t seem to be too sure about it. Helge rattled past on his Harley, and Kathrine said, no, she’d better go home. She wanted to see Randy, whom she’d neglected for so long.

Randy was a funny boy, said Morten. “Two weeks ago, I had his whole class in the studio. I talked to them about how you make a radio program. We recorded a little show, and Randy was the announcer. He was really good.”

Kathrine asked Morten if he could make up a tape for her, and he said he would.

“Sometimes,” he said, “when I listen to my shows, I think maybe no one’s listening at all. And my voice goes past all the houses, and out of the village, and as far as the transmitter reaches. It’s a weird feeling.”

Kathrine nodded. Then they parted.

Kathrine went to the customs office. Her boss was still there. He was sitting in his office, smoking, and reading the newspaper. He was happy to see her.

“I’ve got my sister-in-law and her husband visiting, and their three awful children,” he said. “So I’m doing a lot of overtime.”

“Why don’t you go to the Elvekrog?”

“My wife doesn’t believe me. She calls here to check up on me.”

Kathrine asked if anyone had been taken on in her old job. No, said her boss. She hadn’t given in her notice. He had asked for unpaid leave for her, first one month, and then a second. But if she wanted to start again before that time was up, that was fine by him. Head office had sent along this guy from Vadso, a real stickler, who didn’t get along with the Russians. He was staying at Svanhild’s, and would probably be relieved to be able to go home. “Tomorrow?”

“Thanks very much,” said Kathrine. “What about next Monday? I’ve still got lots of things to sort out.”

Then her boss asked if she was back together with Thomas, and immediately he apologized, it wasn’t any of his business of course, but…

“But what?”

“We wondered about your taking off just like that.”

“Hardly just like that.”

“You mean the letter?”

“I think we’ve said enough.”

Yes, said her boss, and got up. He said he was happy she was back with them, and she said she was too. They shook hands. He walked Kathrine to the door. When she was already outside, he asked, “Anyway, where did you go?”

“I’ll show you the pictures.”

On her way home, Kathrine thought about the journey from Paris to Boulogne. She had taken pictures out of the window of the train. Blurry landscapes, an overcast sky, now and then a few houses, a village. A narrow road that went along next to the track for a while, two women on horseback, a cemetery. But there were also things you couldn’t see in pictures: stopping in places whose names she’d never heard of. A place called Rue, which meant road. Then the landscape got very flat. The train crossed a river with hardly any water in it. When she went back the other way, it was full of brownish water. The floods, Christian had said.

Her free days went quickly. On the street, Kathrine was asked whether she had gone on holiday, and sometimes she showed people the pictures from her time away, and she barely recognized the places anymore. Once she saw Thomas coming toward her on the pavement. When he saw her, he turned and disappeared around the nearest corner. That night, his father called. Kathrine’s mother answered the phone. She was friendly in her submissive way, asked after the family, how they all were. Then Kathrine took the receiver out of her hand and asked him what was going on.

“I don’t know what Thomas has been saying,” she said. Then Thomas’s father talked for a long time. She listened, two or three times she said something. It’s his own fault. No. Yes. There are some things… I don’t want anything. He should just leave me alone.

“I don’t care if he wants a divorce or not,” she said. “He’s not my husband anymore. Doesn’t matter what it says on the piece of paper.”

Her mother stood next to her. Her alarmed expression made Kathrine furious. When she hung up, her mother started to cry.

“Stop that! You should be happy it’s all over.”

“But what will people say? Not yet thirty, and twice divorced.”

“He doesn’t want to get divorced. We don’t do divorce, his father said. We.” Kathrine laughed aloud.

“But think of Randy,” said her mother.

“I am thinking of Randy. And I’m not having him going up there anymore.”

“They want to have a birthday party for him.”

During that week, Kathrine and Morten didn’t meet, but Morten sent Kathrine an e-mail every couple of hours or so. He must have gotten hold of a French dictionary from somewhere, because he was writing things she didn’t understand that still made her laugh. In the evenings, they talked endlessly on the telephone.

“Was your grandmother really French?” Kathrine asked once.

“She was a Sami. So was my grandfather. My father still lived in a tent. He used to tell me about it a lot. How cold it was. When they built the house, he was five. And when they moved in, Father said, now we’re in Paradise. In the summer they went up in the mountains with the reindeer.”

“My father was a Sami as well,” said Kathrine. “Why didn’t you ever mention it?”

“My father had a cassette with songs. And if someone couldn’t sleep, he put it on. Voi, voi, voi…”

“Stop it,” she said. “Why didn’t you ever say?”

“What does it matter. Do you want me to go around in a red hat?”

The next day, Kathrine asked her boss about getting transferred, and Morten called all his friends in Tromso, to ask about work. On Saturday, he took the Hurtig Line boat. Kathrine came along to the harbor. Morten was the only passenger to join the boat.

“Finnmark Radio,” he said, “well, we’ll see. They’re not really looking for anyone. On the other hand, they liked my show. We’ll see.”

“When are you coming back?”

“When I’ve found a job. Shall I call you when I’m in Tromso?”

The next day, it was the service for Alexander. Kathrine went to church for the first time since her father’s death. The evening before, she had met the woman who had been the last person to see Alexander alive. Kathrine had asked her if she was coming, but the woman said, better not.

Her mother was coming along, even though she had never met Alexander.

“He was a fisherman,” she said, and Kathrine said, “We don’t know he’s dead.”

They took Randy with them. He sat between them, and was very quiet. The reverend talked about Jonah and the great fish.

“For thou cast me into the deep,” he said, “in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about; all thy billows and thy waves passed over me. The waters compassed me about, even to the soul; the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head. I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever; yet thou hast brought up my life from corruption.”

Kathrine looked at Alexander’s wife and his two daughters, who were sitting in the front row between Ian and Svanhild. Presumably, they didn’t understand a word. The girls shifted about. They had thin braids, tied with colored ribbons, and they wore clothes that looked as if their mother might have sewn them herself.

Then the organ played, and the preacher said, “Overnight we are created, and overnight we are unmade again.”

Kathrine couldn’t remember what the minister had spoken about at her father’s funeral. She had felt paralyzed the whole time, and had only been able to cry when they were back at home. “In the night Alexander Sukhanik left our village, and he has not been seen since,” said the minister. “We do not know where he is. But wherever he is, he is with God, and God is with him. Because no sheep is ever lost from His flock.”

Kathrine didn’t believe what the minister was saying, and yet his words were comforting to her. Perhaps it was enough if he believed it, or Alexander’s wife believed it, or Ian or Svanhild. Perhaps it was enough if the minister just spoke the words. Perhaps it was enough that they were all assembled here, that they were thinking of Alexander, that they would remember him later, and this day and this hour.

After the service, the minister and Alexander’s wife and Ian stood by the door, and everyone went past them, and shook the minister’s hand and the wife’s. Kathrine thought of saying something, but in the end she didn’t, and she just shook hands with the woman.

“My husband was a fisherman as well,” said Kathrine’s mother. Ian whispered something into the ear of Alexander’s wife, and she nodded and smiled.

After a week, Morten still wasn’t back. On Sunday it was Randy’s birthday. Kathrine hadn’t finally had the heart to put a stop to the party at Thomas’s parents. She took Randy there. She stopped at the garden gate. Behave nicely, she said, don’t eat too much, and say thank you for your presents. She watched Randy running across the big garden, and she thought he’s small for his age, but he’ll grow. As she was on the point of going, Thomas’s father stepped out of the house.

“Kathrine,” he called out, “we have one or two things to settle.”

Kathrine hesitated. Then she thought, I’m not going to run away a second time, and she went up to the house. Randy had slipped past Thomas’s father, and had disappeared inside. From the passage, Kathrine could see into the living room, where Thomas and his family and a dozen or so of Randy’s classmates were all sitting. Over the door was a banner, with “Happy Birthday” written on it in bright colors. The living room looked cozy. It was decorated with paper chains, and there were presents lying on the table, along with big dishes and bowls full of cakes and sweets. Randy was very excited. He had his hands clasped in front of his chest, and he was shaking them this way and that. He turned round to look at Kathrine. She nodded to him. The guests sang Happy Birthday.

“We’ll go in the study, shall we?” said Thomas’s father.

They sat opposite each other. Thomas’s father lit himself a cigar, rather fussily. It’s you who want something from me, thought Kathrine, not I from you. Nothing can happen to me. I’ll just sit through this, whatever it is, and then I’ll go, and I’ll never come again.

Thomas’s father told her not to be stupid. Thomas was a good man, and he meant well by her. He had spent weeks getting the apartment ready. He had ordered furniture all the way from Oslo. She must see how lovely everything was. Would she like to see it? And for Randy too. His room had been turned into a little boy’s paradise. Thomas had bought a computer for the kid. It was important that kids learned early on how to work on computers, because that was the future.

“The future is in the children,” said Thomas’s father. And when she spoke about Thomas’s lies, he said, “You must look to the future. Don’t always look back. We’ve all made our mistakes.”

The letter? A piece of nonsense. Thomas’s father apologized for it. Thomas had insisted she had done it with other men. Excuse the expression, he said, how could we know… That he was lying? That he wasn’t telling the truth. It must be in her to forgive a man.

“You who put your faith in Him will understand the Truth,” said Thomas’s father, “and the faithful in love will live with Him.”

“I don’t want to forgive him,” said Kathrine, “and I don’t love him.”

Thomas’s father said that could surely change. He and his wife had some difficult times behind them. Enduring love was the invention of romantic novelists. Marriage was an institution, it was what society was founded on, its smallest cell. And she should think of Randy.

“Thomas is ready to adopt him. Randy would be our only grandchild. The way things are looking with Veronica and Einar, he might well remain so. Think of what possibilities would be open to him. It’s not just the house. I’m going to be quite open with you. My fortune is much greater than just this house. We have papers, secure investments. And on my wife’s side, a lot of land. All that will belong to Thomas and Veronica, and then one day to Randy. Don’t be silly. What more can you want from us?”

“No,” said Kathrine, getting up. “I can’t ask for any more.”

As she stepped out of the study, she saw Randy kneeling on the floor in a pile of presents and brightly colored wrapping paper. He was just opening a present. He looked serious and intent. Kathrine went into the living room. The grown-up conversations all stopped, but the children went on talking and playing on the floor with those things that Randy had already unwrapped. Kathrine looked over at Thomas. He slowly got to his feet, beckoned to her to sit in one of the armchairs, and smiled solicitously. Kathrine went to Randy and said, Come on. Randy looked up at her. She held out her hand. I haven’t finished unwrapping everything, he said. Come on, said Kathrine. Tears were running down her cheeks.

“Come on,” she said softly, “we’re going now.”

Randy didn’t want to go. No, he shouted, and then he started crying and screaming. Some of the other children started crying too, and Kathrine snatched Randy up, pulled his jacket off the hook in the hallway, and left the house. Only when they were out in the garden did she set Randy down, put on his jacket, and take his hand.

“Those are bad people,” she said. “We’re never coming here again, do you understand?”

Randy was still whimpering, but he walked home with Kathrine.

Morten came back from Tromso two days later. The thing with the job at Radio Finnmark hadn’t worked. He had gone round to some other employers, and finally got a job at an Internet company. A good job, he said, they would like me to start right away, but I can’t start before the beginning of April. What about you? Next June, said Kathrine. A colleague is taking maternity leave, and I’m keeping her job warm. After that, we’ll see.

“I’ll get a room,” said Morten, “and when you come, we’ll look for an apartment together.”

Kathrine had gone round to Morten’s for the first time since getting back from her journey. They had cooked a meal together, and eaten and washed up. Afterward they sat at the kitchen table, and worked out how much rent they could afford, and they looked at ads in the papers that Morten had brought back from Tromso with him.

“Two children’s rooms,” said Morten. “What do you think?”

Kathrine was sitting in the fishermen’s refuge. She had finished her lunch. Her colleagues had gone back to work, but she was still sitting there, as though waiting for something. She looked out and saw the village, as though for the very first time. Morten walked by outside. She waved to him, but he wasn’t looking, and didn’t see her.

That evening, Kathrine was back in the fishermen’s refuge. She was looking out the window. In the parking lot outside, there were some cars with their engines running, with pale young men sitting in them, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs. She knew most of them but only by sight. They were too young, their parents too old. There were families in the village who never met.

In a red Volvo sat a man and a woman. The woman was talking and waving her hands about, the man was looking down, he was smoking a cigarette and listening to her. After a while he got out of the car, threw away the cigarette, and walked off. The woman in the Volvo punched the steering wheel with her fist, and then she drove off.

In the hall, one of the Russian seamen who was staying there was telephoning. He was speaking English. Kathrine could understand what he was saying. She smiled.

From the television room, she could hear an announcer reading out the lottery numbers. Five, eleven, thirteen, thirty-one… Kathrine wondered what Svanhild would do if she won the lottery. She herself had never played, she had no idea what she would do with the money. Perhaps go on a trip. Helge had used to play, Thomas too, even Morten occasionally.

April, May, June, Kathrine counted them off. Helge, Thomas, Christian, Morten. Three thousand kronor in her bank account, a few books, a few clothes, a few bits of kitchen equipment. A laptop. A kid.

Randy was eight now. Kathrine was twenty-eight. She had lived here for twenty-one years, almost a quarter of a century. She was afraid to leave the village. But Morten would help her. He had lived in Tromso once before. They would look for an apartment together, buy furniture, maybe a car sometime. They would go out to restaurants and films together.

Kathrine got coffee from the sideboard, left five kronor next to the till, and sat down at the window again. Goodbye, said the Russian seaman in the hall, three, four times, before hanging up. A door slammed shut, the television was switched off, and nothing was audible beyond the humming of the fridge and the quiet ticking of the wall clock. Svanhild stood by the door, turned off the light, and then on again. She apologized. I didn’t see you. That’s OK, said Kathrine. She finished her coffee, it was only lukewarm now, and she said good night, and went.

She walked through the village, and then along the road that led to the airport. She counted her steps up to a hundred, ten times, and then she gave up. Beyond the old airfield were the huts, the hut where Thomas had sat waiting for whatever he was waiting for. Kathrine wondered what would have happened if she had gone in to him. Maybe he had been waiting for her.

Now, at night, the distances seemed shorter than they did by day. The snow was light, it was as though the earth was glowing under the dark sky. Kathrine thought about Randy’s pinkish night-light. The bright spot in the dark room.

The air was very clear and cold. Clouds came up and moved over. Then she could see the stars again. And then Kathrine saw the Northern Lights. Like a fine curtain right across the whole horizon. Kathrine waited, watched as the wide veil grew narrower and glowed more strongly. Suddenly it was just a thin strip, a quivering green line, a snake twisting wildly in the sky.

Lucky me, she thought. She felt cold, and she went back.

On the edge of the village, she passed a group of Russian seamen, who were probably on their way back to their ship. As she passed the fishermen’s refuge, the lights were all off. Only one room on the lower ground floor still had its light on, that was the window to Ian’s little chapel. Kathrine looked in. She saw Ian walking past the row of empty chairs, collecting up hymnals. She knocked on the window. Ian jumped, but when he saw her face in the window, he smiled, and waved to her.

Linn sent Kathrine an e-mail as soon as she got back to Stockholm, and Kathrine wrote back to say she was fine again. Thereafter, they didn’t write each other that often, but every now and again. And once, when Kathrine and Morten were living in Tromso, they drove to Stockholm, and met Linn, who was now living with Johanna’s Eirik, and was complaining about him. And years later, when Linn was on her own again, she came to Tromso, and stayed with Kathrine and Morten for a few days, and they talked about their skiing holiday, and how they had met, and everything that had happened.

Christian never got in touch. He didn’t send any e-mails or any more postcards. Once, Kathrine wrote to him, and he wrote back, saying he’d got married, and he wished her well.

Then Kathrine visited her mother in the village. She took the Polarlys with Harald, who was going to change to a newer ship, and had separated from his wife, or she from him. He had grown a beard again, and there were even more burst veins on his cheeks now. Kathrine and Harald stood side by side as the Polarlys sailed into the fjord, and watched as the lights of the village appeared above the spit of land.

Kathrine counted them up. A trip to Stockholm, a voyage to Sicily, a honeymoon, summer holidays in Jotunheimen National Park, visits to the village.

Her mother had gotten old. She complained more and more about the darkness and the cold. Why don’t you move down to Kiruna, to your family, suggested Kathrine. But her mother didn’t want to leave the village.

“Someone has to stay here,” she said.

Ian, the Scottish priest, had hanged himself one night in the waiting room for the Hurtig Line. The harbormaster had found him the next morning. His body was cremated, and the ashes were sent back to his family in Scotland. That was what he had wanted.

“I don’t want you to burn me,” said her mother. “You must bury me here, next to Nissen.”

“Stop it,” said Kathrine.

Her mother only talked about Thomas when Kathrine asked. After the divorce, he had married a worker in the fish factory, who had left him a year later. There was some talk in the village. Then he had left the village. His parents were still there, but they led a very withdrawn life. They didn’t even say hello when her mother met them on the street.

Alexander had never been found. But his wife was now working in the fishermen’s refuge, helping Svanhild. The two girls, Nina and Xenia, helped there as well. They had both grown a lot, and were speaking Norwegian, as if they’d been born here. They were pretty girls, and for a time, more young people came to the fishermen’s refuge. Svanhild often sat at a table in the kitchen. All that standing around had made her tired. She sat at her table, and smiled, and wiped her cloth over the gleaming plastic surface without looking.

Alexander’s wife had saved some money, then a year ago, she had put up a stone in the cemetery, and the minister had held a service for Alexander. Now everything was fine.

Kathrine went to work. She took the car. She dropped Randy off at school. He got sick, and then he was better again. He got a pair of glasses. He grew tall. Kathrine earned money, and bought things for herself. She had another child, a girl this time. Solveig. Then she stood in the kitchen with Morten. They made sandwiches to save money. Later, they bought an apartment, and one day a house. They lived in Tromso, in Molde, in Oslo. On his holidays, Randy went up to stay with his grandmother in the village. He came back. It was fall, then winter. It was summer. It got dark, and then it got light again.