The End of the Ocean

Chapter 13 SIGNE

Up and down on the waves, in and out of sleep, I’m sitting at the map table, my head in my arms, sleeping, waking, drifting, while the storm pummels at Blue, I’m here, I’m there.

It was the night Daddy blew up the bridge. He and Sønstebø met up there in the dark, Sønstebø with his truck, Daddy in our car, or maybe he arrived on foot, walked up the mountainside. Maybe it was so dark that he had to use a flashlight, and maybe the cones of light from the truck’s headlamps were the first things he saw, two tunnels in the air, sharp disruptions in the darkness… Did Daddy think of me, did he think of Mommy? Did Sønstebø think of Magnus?

Time is elastic. Time and the memories that bind it are two sides of the same coin. Magnus and I, Mommy and Daddy, the glacier and the river, the Sister Falls, and there’s so much I don’t remember.

I’m just here, in this night. And I’m in another night, the last night Mommy and Daddy slept together, were together. I don’t remember exactly how much time had passed since the hike, but it can’t have been more than a few weeks. I woke up and my throat was scratchy. I coughed gently into my pillow, but it didn’t help.

I twisted and turned; I was hot, even though I was only wearing an undershirt, I turned my pillow over, turned the duvet over, lay on my tummy with one ear against the floral fabric, which smelled clean, and the other out towards the darkness, and then I heard something.

A faint, howling sound, something unfamiliar—an animal, was it an animal, someone outside, in the garden?

At first I just lay there, listening to the sound with one ear. The other ear couldn’t hear a thing because it was pressed down against the soft fabric of the pillowcase. But the howling continued; I sat up and then I could hear the sound more clearly.

It was not coming from the garden, it came from the house. It was inside, in my house, a wild animal, a night creature, maybe injured, it howled like it was injured and nobody heard it except for me.

I got out of bed, my undershirt went down to my thighs; suddenly I was cold, I got goose bumps, and wanted to be with Mommy and Daddy, even though I had stopped sleeping with them.

I opened the door, and as I did so the sound grew louder; I walked out into the hallway, it was even louder there, it grew louder because I came closer, but also because it, or the person making the sound, was howling louder and louder all the time.

I was afraid, but at the same time I thought, should I be careful? Should I bring something, a weapon, the fire shovel from my room, should I go get it? But I didn’t, because in one way or another I knew that I shouldn’t or needn’t be afraid, that the sound wasn’t dangerous, not in that way.

It was coming from Mommy and Daddy’s bedroom, I could hear it now, and it was not just the sound of one, but of several creatures, because a lower and deeper moaning had commenced, and it wasn’t an animal, it was a person, as if somebody were in a great deal of pain.

Don’t think, just look. I hurried towards the door, I wanted to see. Then I put my hand on the handle and pushed it down without making a sound.

They didn’t notice me, didn’t see that the door had opened a crack, didn’t notice that I was standing there, in just my undershirt and underpants, that I was watching everything.

It filled the whole bed, the whole room.

Mommy sat leaning back on her elbows, with her knees bent and pointing towards the ceiling and her legs spread apart as far as was possible; her breasts were splayed outward, resting on either side of her torso, as if overflowing, and the space on her chest between her breasts was slick with sweat, the part that in the male body is called the sternum, though in the female body it has no name, I thought, but the thought vanished immediately, because I just had to look at him, look at Daddy, who was on the floor, on his knees, with his head between Mommy’s legs.

I didn’t understand what I was seeing and at the same time I knew, because once I had heard two of the big girls at school talking and I knew that something happened between men and women in bed at night, something that had to do with children, but I had never imagined that it could be like this, because it was supposed to be about the man, the big girls had whispered, he was supposed to lie on top of the woman, he was supposed to empty something inside of her. But this was all about Mommy, all of it, the entire room, the house, it was all about Mommy, the sounds she made growing louder, rising and falling.

I didn’t move a muscle, didn’t even blink, while my mouth filled with water, so much water that I was unable to swallow.

Because Mommy was lying there, with him, and it was all about her, about them, and I hated the bed she was lying in, I hated the room, I hated the house. I hate you, I thought, while the black waves filled my mouth.

Maybe they heard the bathroom door or maybe they heard my retching, because when I had wiped away the last strings of slime and flushed for the final time, the house was silent, a pregnant silence.

But nobody came to the door, nobody asked me how I was feeling. Maybe they were ashamed. They should be ashamed, I thought, that they could do something like that, be like that, have something like that between them.

I sat on the bathroom floor shaking, in a cold sweat, with the door locked, as small as one feels only after having vomited. I was all alone, Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t be coming with a bucket and a cold washcloth for my forehead. I could dry off my vomit by myself, I thought. I managed it, because they had all of this together, this big ugliness that tore them apart and then this other thing I had seen tonight. I couldn’t understand how they could behave like that, how he could gobble her up when he at the same time so clearly cursed everything she stood for.

The next morning, at breakfast, they didn’t argue; they ate, as usual, drank their coffee, Daddy slurped a little, the way he usually did, as if nothing had happened.

“The water ouzel’s babies are going to die,” I said suddenly.

I looked at Mommy, addressing her.

“What?” she said.

“The freshwater pearl mussels, too. Some of them are more than a hundred years old.”

“Signe?”

“And Sønstebø, do you know how he feels? His summer farm will be underwater, where will the sheep graze now? His place is 150 years old. For 150 years he has had animals up there. Where are they supposed to go now?”

Nobody answered, so I shouted: “WHERE ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO GO NOW?”

They sat there, gaping, both Mommy and Daddy.

Finally Mommy started talking. She made the same excuses. Better schools, a new old folks’ home, a swimming pool.

“A swimming pool,” I said. “I would rather swim in Lake Eide.”

She tried again. She talked about the hotel, Hauger Hotel, which could barely make ends meet, how good it would be for us, for the hotel and for the family. But I interrupted her then and now I didn’t stop, I spewed it out, as if I still hadn’t finished vomiting. The river, I said. People have come here to see the river, see the rainbow, which is always there, to go fishing for salmon, and watch the snow melting in the spring. And the fish in the river, where are they supposed to go, and what about the water that’s released out into the fjord, it will be cold as ice, are you aware of that, and the water ouzel, what will happen to the water ouzel when there is no longer any waterfall, its nest, where will it build it, and all the stone you will dig up, it will take over, huge boulders. It used to be green, now it’s a scree, all the animals here and all the plants, they live around the river, around the River Breio, and you think you can just take over and do what you want to it, it’s a river, it’s nature, it’s birds, insects, plants, now there will just be scree and pipes and tunnels there, stone and steel, stone and steel.

“Everything will disappear,” I said. “Everything we love will disappear. And it’s your fault.” I almost couldn’t talk now. I leaned forward. “You destroy everything.”

Daddy said nothing, just looked at me across the breakfast table, over the hard-boiled eggs and smoked salmon, and now he would have to say something, I thought, now he would be forced to finish what he’d started.

But he was silent and I was a teeny-tiny water person in a snow globe. I pounded my hands against the glass and screamed and tried to get out and that’s why I also said the very last thing, what I knew that she didn’t know, which could be significant, which could break the glass.

“Daddy talked to Sønstebø.”

“Sønstebø?”

“He talked to Sønstebø up on the mountain, on the road, the new road, we were out hiking, they met up and nobody was supposed to know about it.”

Mommy just stared at me.

“They didn’t want anyone to see them,” I continued. “It wasn’t worth the risk, they said, that someone might see them together.”

“Bjørn?” Mommy said.

“It wasn’t worth the risk,” I said. “They didn’t want to be seen together.”

It was the night Daddy blew up the bridge, he and Sønstebø met up there in the darkness, that’s how it must have been. And maybe the lights from the truck were the first thing he saw before Sønstebø emerged, his black silhouette splitting the light in two. Sønstebø who had been a shot firer as a young man, he was probably the one behind this, or maybe it was actually Daddy, that could be, that my full-of-rage Daddy made contact with Sønstebø, that he was the one who planned the whole thing.

But I was the one who told on him, told Mommy, and after that morning Daddy was alone. He moved to the house by the harbor. His things, his books, wall charts, articles and lithographs of nature scenes, filled it to the brim; the smell of them filled the small rooms and made them into something familiar, even though the walls were alien.

The windows were thin. The sound of the boats penetrated them, the sound of cables striking masts in the wind, the thudding of motors, the banging of fish crates against the decks, skippers calling. The sound of his typewriter couldn’t drown out all of this.

I’m going to Mommy’s, I said when I left Daddy; I’m going to Daddy’s, I said to Mommy. My place was on the gravel road that went through the village, from the cramped house in the harbor to the hotel with its almost one hundred rooms and back again. I remember myself as being infinitely small, lonely, plagued by guilt, and impressionable. I was just waiting for Magnus, without knowing it myself.