Jo Nesbo - Midnight Sun

‘How—’ I began, but was interrupted by another shriek. This time not a bird.

Knut.

We both leaped to our feet.

The Fisherman always finds what he’s looking for.

Another scream. We ran towards it. I reached the top of the island first. Saw him. I turned to Lea, who was running behind me with her skirt pulled up.

‘He’s all right.’

The boy was standing about a hundred metres away from us, staring at something on the shore.

‘What is it?’ I called down to him.

He pointed at something black that the waves were lapping over. And then I picked up the smell. The smell of a corpse.

‘What is it?’ Lea asked as she arrived beside me.

I did the same as Knut, and pointed.

‘Death and destruction,’ she said.

I held her back when she made to go down to Knut. ‘Maybe you should stay here, and I’ll go and see what it is.’

‘No need,’ she said. ‘I can see what it is.’

‘So... what is it?’

‘A pup.’

‘A pup?’

‘A young seal,’ she said. ‘A dead one.’

It was still night as we rowed back.

It was completely calm: all you could hear was the splash of the oars as they left the water, the drops sparkling like diamonds as they fell in the slanting sunlight.

I was sitting in the back of the boat, watching mother and son row. I was humming ‘Slowly We Walk Through the City’ inside my head. They were like a single organism. Knut — with a look of deep concentration — was trying to keep his body firm, using his back and hips, and maintaining a calm, even, adult rhythm with the heavy oars. His mother was sitting behind him, matching his movements, taking care to synchronise their strokes. No one said anything. The veins and sinews on the backs of her hands moved and her black hair blew to one side as she turned to look over her shoulder every now and then to make sure our course was correct. Of course Knut was trying to make out that he wasn’t hoping to impress me with his rowing, but kept giving himself away by taking sneaky glances at me. I pushed my jaw out and nodded appreciatively. He pretended not to notice, but I could see him put a bit more effort into his strokes.

We used a rope fastened to a pulley to drag the boat onto the wooden cradle and into the boathouse. It was surprisingly easy to pull the heavy boat up. I couldn’t help thinking about mankind’s persistent inventiveness and capacity to survive. And our willingness to do terrible things if need be.

We walked along the gravel road towards the houses. Stopped at the telephone pole at the start of the path. A fresh layer of posters had been stuck on top of the dance-band advertisement.

‘Goodbye, Ulf,’ she said. ‘I’ve enjoyed spending time with you. Get home safely, and sleep well.’

‘Goodbye,’ I said, and smiled. They really did take their farewells very seriously up here. Maybe it was because the distances were so great, and the surroundings so brutal. You couldn’t take it for granted you’d see each other again soon. Or at all.

‘And we’d be very happy to see you at the prayer meeting in the parish house on Saturday morning.’ She said this in a slightly stiff tone of voice, and her face twitched. ‘Wouldn’t we, Knut?’

Knut nodded, mute and already half asleep.

‘Thanks, but I think it’s probably too late for me to be saved.’ I don’t know if the ambiguity was intentional.

‘It can’t do any harm to hear the Word.’ She looked at me with those strange, intense eyes that always seemed to be searching for something.

‘On one condition,’ I said. ‘That I can borrow your car and drive to Alta afterwards. I need to buy a couple of things.’

‘Can you drive?’

I shrugged.

‘Maybe I could come too,’ she said.

‘You don’t have to.’

‘She’s not as easy as she looks.’

I don’t know if the ambiguity was intentional.

When I got to the cabin I lay down and fell asleep straight away without touching the bottle of drink. As far as I can remember, I didn’t dream. And I woke up with a sense that something had happened. Something good. And it had been a hell of a long time since that last happened to me.

The hymn rolled like slow thunder around the walls of the little prayer hall. It sounded as though the whole congregation, all twenty-something of them, were joining in.

I tried to follow the words in the little black book Lea had handed me. Landstad’s hymnbook. ‘Authorised by royal resolution, 1869,’ it said on the title page. I’d already leafed through it. Didn’t look as though a single syllable had been altered since then.

When the hymn was over, a man walked with heavy steps across the creaking wooden floor to a simple lectern. He turned towards us.

It was Lea’s father. Grandpa. Jakob Sara.

‘ I believe in God the Father, the Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth ,’ he began. All the others remained silent, and let him read out the whole declaration of faith alone. Afterwards he remained motionless, silently staring down at the lectern. For a long time. Just as I was convinced something was wrong, that he was suffering some kind of mental block, he raised his voice:

‘Dear Christians. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Yes, we wanted to start this meeting in the name of the Holy Trinity. Yes.’ Another pause. He was still standing with his head bowed, huddled in a suit that was slightly too big for him, like a nervous beginner, and certainly not the hardened, well-travelled preacher Knut had talked about. ‘For if one is to look at oneself, one’s own being, it is not good to step up to this pulpit as a wretched sinner.’ Stop. I glanced around. Oddly enough, no one else seemed to feel at all uncomfortable with the man’s obvious struggle. I managed to count to ten before he went on: ‘And this valuable thing we are gathered here for, the holy, pure Word of God — one must ask, how can this word be upheld? That is, why it is so difficult to step up to this lectern, because what is one to do?’ He finally raised his head. Looked straight at us. There was no trace of uncertainty in his firm, direct gaze. No sign of the humility he claimed to be afflicted by. ‘For we are naught but dust. And to dust we shall return. But we shall have eternal life if we remain true to the faith. This world in which we live is a world in decay, governed by the Ruler of the World, the Devil, Satan, he who seduces the flock.’ I couldn’t swear to it, but wasn’t he looking straight at me? ‘In this world we poor wretches must live. If we can forsake the Devil, and can spend the brief time that remains walking in hope.’

Another hymn. Lea and I were sitting closest to the exit, and I signalled to her that I was going outside for a cigarette.

Outside the meeting house I leaned against the wall and listened to the singing inside.

‘Forgive me asking, but could I have one of your coffin nails?’

The meeting house lay at the end of the road. Mattis must have been waiting round the corner. I offered him the packet.

‘Have they managed to save you?’ he asked.

‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘Their singing’s a bit too out of tune.’

He laughed. ‘Oh, you have to learn how to hear the hymns the right way. Singing carefully in tune, that’s the sort of thing worldly people think is important. But for true believers, emotion is everything. Why else do you think we Sámi became Læstadians? Believe me, Ulf, it’s only a stone’s throw from the drumming of a shaman and witchcraft to the Læstadians’ speaking in tongues, healing and emotionalism.’ I gave him a light. ‘And this infernal, ponderous hymn-singing...’ he muttered.