Peter Stamm: Unformed Landscape

Sometimes Kathrine would visit a girl friend, or girl friends would visit her, and their children would play together until they were tired, and their mothers carried them home.

The older one became, the harder it was to bear the darkness and the cold. That’s what everyone said, and it might well be true. The old people didn’t say anything, they sat silently at home, watched television, and waited.

People went visiting, or they received visits. Front doors were left unlocked, and there were always lights on in the windows. They went out in their cars, and drove from house to house. They met in the fishermen’s home, or the pub, the Elvekrog. They drank tea and coffee, and told each other stories. They drank beer until they had forgotten the dark.

The men, as the joke had it, didn’t want to marry in winter, because then the wedding night would go on for three months. A joke that went around a lot. Why didn’t he get married in winter? Because then the wedding night would have lasted for three months.

They married in summer, and in winter they got divorced, and then you spent a night with another man, who would make an effort. A night in another bed, other hands, other words that still came to the same thing. Stay awhile, won’t you, come under my blanket, it’s cold, turn around. What is it you want? I don’t know. Don’t say anything.

Kathrine ate lunch with her customs colleagues at the fishermen’s home, where Svanhild cooked, and where the agents from the Russian fishing companies sometimes stayed, and the engineers and the seamen when the ships had to be refitted.

At a party in the Elvekrog, Kathrine met Christian, a Dane who was spending a couple of months in the village, to supervise the installation of a new automatic weighing machine in the fish factory. Christian looked exactly the way Kathrine imagined a Dane would look. Everything about him was bright, his eyes, his skin, his hair. He wasn’t fat, but his face and hands were soft and indeterminate. He had a mild voice, and a laptop with an Internet connection. Kathrine visited him a couple of times in his apartment on the edge of the village. He showed her his company’s home page, and Kathrine waited for him to kiss her, but he didn’t kiss her.

Christian left. By now, Kathrine herself had an Internet connection, and they exchanged e-mails for a while. Sometimes Christian’s e-mails came from other countries he was visiting to supervise the installation of other pieces of equipment in other fish factories. At first, he would always write enthusiastically about those countries, then he would only write about his work, and eventually his e-mails started coming from Aarhus again, where he lived and where the company he worked for was based.

Kathrine told Alexander about Christian. Alexander had never been to Aarhus, but he had heard it was a beautiful city.

“Why don’t you go and see him there sometime?” he asked. Kathrine laughed.

Alexander said, “You expect too much from other people. You’re responsible for your own life.”

“Did you study psychology?” asked Kathrine. “You sound like someone who’s studied psychology.”

“ No problem,” said Alexander, and he drank the vodka he’d poured for Kathrine, and hung the table up from its two hooks on the ceiling.

That evening the Verchneuralsk left, and for the first time in months Kathrine went to the pub. She had left the boy with his grandmother. She went home with a man, and spent the night with him. He was a former boyfriend of hers. Two weeks later, the Verchneuralsk came back, with its hold full of fish and ice.

Sometimes, when the weather was very bad, Kathrine would listen to the forecast on the radio. The wind strengths and the places, Jan Mayen, Greenland, Svalbard, Newfoundland, the Pole. Then she would think about Alexander and his crew. Even though she knew the ship quite well, she couldn’t imagine it in the darkness, somewhere far out to sea, with the waves crashing over her decks, and the men hauling in nets in the continual rise and dip of the waves, day and night. She hoped they were all right.

It got to be autumn, and winter. The year came to a close, and the next one began. Then it was spring.

This morning was silvery and clear. A strong wind blew off the Barents Sea, and the waves were topped with foam. Christian was working in Portugal now, and he wrote that the peach trees were already in flower there, and that the Portuguese women were quite different from the Danish women or the Norwegian women. Kathrine wrote that she was going to get married again, and Christian offered his congratulations. She was happy when it rained for the first time in the year, and overnight the blanket of snow was half-melted away.

Kathrine married Thomas, they had known each other for just six months. Thomas didn’t fancy a honeymoon, he had already been all over. He talked about Africa. He said Africa was his favorite country. When Kathrine said she had never been south of the Arctic Circle, he laughed and said he didn’t believe her. It was true, she said.

In the summer, Kathrine and her colleagues caught a Russian who had smuggled ten thousand Ecstasy pills over the border. They arrested him, it wasn’t difficult. He smiled, and kept apologizing for the trouble he had put them to. “No problem,” he said, when he was put on the ship to Vadso, where he was tried and sent to prison. When he was released, he disappeared, and was never seen in the village again.

Kathrine discussed his case with Alexander. She said that sooner or later every smuggler got caught, and it was dangerous to get mixed up with drug dealers. Alexander laughed and winked at her. She shrugged her shoulders, and ignored the vodka he’d poured for her, and drank the coffee. Alexander said he hadn’t been paid in three months. She offered him money, but he refused, and gave her a loaf of Russian bread.

Once, when it was winter again, and a violent storm was blowing at sea, the Verchneuralsk stayed in port overnight. Kathrine had visited Alexander in the course of the afternoon. He had given her half a codfish in a plastic bag with ice. That evening, on the way home, Kathrine saw Alexander and his men heading for the pub. She raised the bag with the fish in it, and waved. The men didn’t see her. She shouted something to them, but the words were blown away in the gale.

The snow fizzed horizontally through the light shed by the streetlamps. When Kathrine got home, Thomas was already there. He was sitting with the little boy in the kitchen. They were playing a game.

“Here comes Mama,” said Thomas, and he kissed Kathrine.

“I’ve got some cod for tonight,” said Kathrine, but the child made a fuss, and then so did Thomas. He said he was going to get hot dogs from the kiosk, and then he disappeared.

The boy was sitting at the table. Kathrine put her arm around his shoulder.

“Have you done your homework?” she asked. “Do you like Thomas?”

“He’s nice,” said the boy. “We played a game together.”

“Did you win?”

“We’re still playing,” said the boy.

Kathrine moved one of the wooden figures on the board forward a square, and said, “I’ll help you.” Then the child said, “God sees everything,” and moved the figure back, and held it there until Kathrine went out into the corridor to take off her shoes.

“And what shall I do with the fish?” she asked when Thomas came back.

The next day Alexander was reported missing. A woman everyone knew said she had seen him walking out of the village at half past one at night. She said she hadn’t been able to sleep. And he had been just the same as ever, not drunk. They looked for Alexander for several days, but didn’t even manage to find any traces of him in the snow, and eventually the Verchneuralsk left port without him.