Майя Лунде - The End of the Ocean

A childish lump pushed forward in my chest. They did not sing badly. Not at all. Their narrow faces glowed, their eyes shone. They had arranged it all just for me. And now they thought that they had succeeded. That they had pulled it off—they had gotten father out of bed. When the song was over they would release the cheer. They would run jubilantly light-footed through the freshly fallen snow into the house and tell me about their own homespun miracle. We sang him well again, they would crow. We sang father well!

A cacophony of enthusiastic girls’ voices would echo in the hallways, bouncing back at them from the walls: Soon he will return. Soon he will be with us again. We showed him God, Jesus—the born-again. Hark, the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn king. What a brilliant, yes, truly dazzling idea it was to sing for him, to remind him of beauty, of the message of Christmas, of everything he had forgotten while bedridden, with the thing we call illness, but which everyone knows is something else entirely, although mother forbids us to speak about it. Poor Father, he is not well, he is as thin as a ghost, we have seen it, through the cracked-open door as we have crept past, yes, like a ghost, just skin and bones, and the beard he has let grow, like the crucified Jesus. He is beyond recognition. But now he will soon be among us once more, soon he will be able to work again. And we will once more have butter on our bread and new winter coats. That is in truth a real Christmas present. Christ is born in Bethlehem! But it was a lie. I couldn’t give them that gift. I did not deserve their cheers. The bed drew me towards it. My legs trembled, my new-born legs were unable to hold me upright any longer. My stomach knotted again. I gritted my teeth, wanted to crush the pressure in my throat. So I slowly pulled away from the window.

And outside the singing subsided. There would be no miracle today.

The History of Bees

Originally published in Norwegian as Blå by Aschehoug, Oslo, 2017

First published in Great Britain by Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2019

A CBS COMPANY

Copyright © 2017 by H. Aschehoug & Co. (W. Nygaard), AS Translation copyright © 2019 by Diane Oatley

Published by arrangement with Aschehough Forlag

SCRIBNER and design are registered trademarks of The Gale Group, Inc., used under licence by Simon & Schuster Inc.

The right of Maja Lunde to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

1st Floor

222 Gray’s Inn Road

London WC1X 8HB

Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

www.simonandschuster.co.uk

www.simonandschuster.com.au

www.simonandschuster.co.in

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

HB ISBN: 978-1-4711-7551-0

TPB ISBN: 978-1-4711-7552-7

EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-4711-7553-4

AUDIO ISBN: 978-1-4711-7555-8

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Typeset by M Rules

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY