Майя Лунде - The End of the Ocean

The bathwater slowly turned lukewarm and then cold, my body got wrinkled, my toes turned red, soon fins grew between them. I became a water creature in the bathtub while they were screaming at each other outside, a tiny little water creature in a snow globe full of sticky, shiny fluid and plastic snowflakes. They lifted me up sometimes, shook me, looked at me, but then they put me down again and went away, back to one another, to share what they had in common, the big, evil, ugly thing, which was only between them, the two of them.

A few days later we heard about the explosion. It was Daddy who told us about it, Mommy had just come home. She had been away for a while, maybe she’d gone to Bergen—she went there often, to purchase supplies for the hotel. When she opened the door and came inside, Daddy was standing there waiting for her with the news.

“Svein Bredesen came by this morning,” he said. “The chief engineer.”

“Hi, Mommy,” I said.

“I know who Bredesen is,” Mommy said.

She stroked my hair quickly, without looking at me.

“He wanted to speak with you,” Daddy said.

“I can call him right away,” she said.

“But since you weren’t home, I took a message.”

“Yes?”

“Somebody destroyed the bridge over the access road. Last night. It was blown to bits.”

“What?”

“There’s nothing left of it. It will take weeks to repair it, maybe months.”

Mommy just stood there. At first she didn’t say anything and I tried to give her a hug, but she asked me to wait. Then she said that she didn’t understand how something like that could happen, how somebody could do something like that.

“The bridge and the road have to be there,” she said. “The power station and the pipes are going to be installed. It’s going to happen anyway.”

He didn’t say anything.

She stared at him for a long time. “Do you know something about this?”

Of course he said no. I remember how he stood there in the hallway with his hands in his pockets and said no, no, of course I don’t.

“But you must understand how angry some people are,” he said. “How angry people are. You must understand what you’ve started with people. Of course they’re furious. They’re so angry that they blow up bridges.”

“Are you defending it?” she asked, in a soft voice.

“I saw a nest yesterday,” he said. “A water ouzel’s nest. When the river disappears, we will lose the water ouzel.”

“There are thousands of them, thousands…”

“No, Iris. There are only a few.”

“There are thousands of rivers in Norway.”

“Many small rivers. But very few the size of the River Breio.”

“But do they know who did it? What did Svein say?”

“Svein? Are you on a first-name basis with him?”

“I mean Bredesen. What did he say? What do they know?”

“When the river disappears, the water ouzel will continue laying eggs there, in the old, dried-up riverbed,” Daddy continued, almost like he was chanting. “But the roaring of the river will no longer drown out the sound of their young when they cry for food. Predators will find them. They will be killed.”

“Bjørn, if you know something, you must tell me.”

“Daddy doesn’t know anything,” I said.

Maybe it’s not worth the risk.

“What did you say?”

She whirled around to face me, as if she had only just realized that I was there.

“Daddy doesn’t know anything.”

“Signe, you don’t understand this.”

“But he doesn’t know anything.”

“Of course I don’t,” Daddy said. “What would I know?”

Mommy was silent, looking at Daddy, then she turned towards me and tried to smile. “Are you hungry? Have you had dinner? Have the two of you eaten yet?”

“I just want dessert,” I said.

“I see,” she said.

“I said that I don’t want dinner. Just dessert.”

“Yes,” she said.

It was not until we approached the camp that Lou calmed down. Drawn-out sniffles, but no tears.

Summoning my resolve, I attempted once again to distract her from the splinter in her hand.

“Dolphins are really smart, you know,” I said.

She didn’t reply, but I could tell from her eyes that she was interested. “A lot of people claim they are just as smart as people,” I said.

“Smarter than the sailor, at least,” Lou said and sniffled one last time.

“The sailor?”

“You, Daddy!”

“Yes, smarter than the sailor.”

She walked in silence for a while. I could see that a question was brewing inside her.

“Where do dolphins come from?” she said then. “Do they lay eggs like birds? Huge, blue eggs?”

“No. They give birth to living babies,” I said.

“Just like people?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

She slowed her steps, looking disappointed. “But huge, blue eggs would have been nice,” I hastened to say.

She nodded. “Yes. That would have been nicer.”

The sun disappeared behind the trees. It would be dark soon.

I walked faster.

“How big are dolphins’ children?” she asked.

“Um…”

“How do they swim?”

“They kind of slide forward.”

“But how? How do they move? Do they flap, like birds do?”

“No, they just slide.”

“But how?”

“They wiggle their tails, like other fish.”

“Like wiggling your bum?”

“Yes.”

I kept trying to answer the best I could. I didn’t do especially well.

She should have had a teacher. Should have gone to school. But no class instruction was offered at the camp. I was all she had. And I didn’t know anything.

Nonetheless, we agreed to try to find out something about the swimming business. How they actually moved through the water.

Dolphins. I had been interested in them, too, when I was little, I remembered. There’s something about dolphins, it’s hard not to like them. Maybe because they smile.

“One day I’m going to swim with dolphins for real,” Lou said.

“Mm,” I said.

Then I came up with something about dolphins, something I had read once. That it wasn’t good to swim with them. That people who jump in with the dolphins to swim with them actually disturb them, agitate them, keep them from searching for food for themselves and their young. But I didn’t say that to Lou.

It was almost dark when we reached the camp. I was able to borrow a pair of tweezers and pulled Lou’s splinter out without any difficulty. She didn’t cry. Then we went to eat. Francis was sitting outside the mess hall holding his food bowl in his good hand. The bowl was completely empty.

“You have to hurry,” he said. “If you are going to get food for the youngster. They are running short today.”

My stomach growled loudly when we walked in and I smelled food. I was so hungry that I felt dizzy. I snatched up a bowl of brown stew and a few pieces of bread. And a glass of milk. We received one with every meal. But there wasn’t enough, there was never enough. We would have to go to bed right away—the only thing that helped was to try to sleep off the hunger.

I poured half of the milk into an empty glass and held the glasses side by side.

“Are they the same?” I asked Lou.

She leaned over to look.

“Maybe a little more in that one.”

She pointed at the one on the left.

I poured a couple of drops out of the glass on the right.

“Like that?”

She nodded.

“Then you can choose,” I said.

“But they’re the same.”

“Whoever divides can’t choose. That’s the rule.”