Peter Stamm - Unformed Landscape

There weren’t many trawlers at anchor in the harbor. Randy was standing with a couple of other children at the dock, watching a fisherman greasing a pulley. Kathrine called Randy, and he turned and ran to her. Silently, he took her hand. Together, they walked back to their mother, their grandmother.

“Do you like going to school?” asked Kathrine.

“I’m the second best at gym,” said Randy.

“Were you learning a poem today?”

“All I can remember is the ending,” said Randy, and he stopped, as though he couldn’t walk and think at the same time. He stood in front of Kathrine, and breathlessly and earnestly recited the few lines he could remember:

I hope you stay there nice and bright!

Little flowers, I’ll move on;

I just want to pick a bunch;

That’s enough for me today,

Little flowers blue and white.

“Would you rather be blind or deaf or dumb?” asked Randy, as they took off their shoes outside the apartment door.

“What sort of question is that?”

“I’d rather be dumb.”

After lunch, he ran out to play with the other children. Kathrine went into the garage. They had sold the car after her father died. Kathrine’s mother couldn’t drive, and Kathrine only had to for work. In a corner of the chilly building, next to the Deepfreeze, were a couple of large cardboard boxes, which Thomas had labeled “K” with his tidy writing, “K — books” and “K — kitchen,” “K — kid” and “K — casual clothes.” Next to them stood her cross-country skis. Kathrine picked them up, took them out, and slipped them on. Her mother came out to tell her to be careful, there was more snow on the way.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be careful,” said Kathrine.

She set off in the direction of the lighthouse. Visibility was poor, but she knew the way. Once she had left the village behind her, and was over the first hill, she hit a track, almost covered over by the fresh snow. She followed it. Kathrine went for a long time. She wasn’t cold, only her face felt chilly from the snow that was falling, harder now than before. She couldn’t see the track anymore. It was getting dark again, and it wasn’t even two o’clock.

An hour later, Kathrine saw someone coming toward her from a distance. It was Morten. She stopped. He had his head down pushing into the wind, and only saw her when he was a couple of yards from her. He got a shock.

“Does your new machine work?” she asked.

“Battery’s gone dead,” he said, with a grin. Then he said, “Hey, I’m glad you’re back!”

They embraced, but didn’t kiss. Their cheeks touched. Very cold, said Morten. But I don’t feel cold, said Kathrine. You’re not going out to the lighthouse, are you, asked Morten. Kathrine said she had gone out to meet him, and would come back with him.

“If you’re hungry…,” he said. “And I’ve got some hot tea as well.”

“You go on ahead.”

Morten went on slowly, and kept looking around at her. At five they were back in the village.

“Do you want to come to my place?” asked Morten.

“Let’s go to Svanhild’s.”

When Svanhild saw Kathrine, she came out from behind the bar, and, with a beaming smile, shook her hand. She asked where she had been, and wouldn’t let go of her hand. She said Alexander’s wife and his two daughters were there. She pointed to a table, where a plump blond woman sat, with a couple of girls almost as big as her. Kathrine recognized them from the photos Alexander had shown her.

“It’s three months since he’s disappeared now,” said Svanhild. “On Sunday we’re having a service for him in the church. We collected money so that they could come.”

Maybe the woman would stay, she said. There was no shortage of work. The girls’ names were Nina and Xenia.

Kathrine and Morten sat down at the table in the corner at the back, and Svanhild brought them coffee and homemade cake. The place was empty, apart from themselves and a couple of old workers from the fish factory.

“I’ve got some French cigarettes left,” said Kathrine.

“And Paris is beautiful?”

“I’ll show you my pictures, if you like.”

“Why did you go to Paris, of all places?” Kathrine didn’t answer. Then she told Morten about Christian, and that she had slept with him on the train. Then it was Morten’s turn not to speak.

“You weren’t there when I went away. I went looking for you, and you weren’t there. Are you jealous?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t want to lie to you.”

Kathrine told him about Stockholm and Boulogne, and how she’d eaten shellfish for the first time in her life, and smoked dope for the first time. Morten listened and he laughed, but she sensed he was different from how he had been before.

“I have to get used to the fact that you’ve slept with him,” he said.

“I slept with Thomas as well.”

“That was a long time ago. Anyway, he’s your husband.”

“And with you. And you’re not my husband.”

Morten nodded. He said that, to begin with, they had thought she had done herself a mischief by disappearing like Alexander. Thomas had run to the Elvekrog, all excited, and said they had to help him find his wife. He really said his wife, as if they didn’t all know who Kathrine was. Then when they had gone down to the harbor and asked after her there, the harbormaster had said he had seen her leave on the Polarlys .

“And you just stopped looking for me after that?”

“You’re your own woman. You can go wherever you like.”

“I was afraid someone might try and keep me from going. I don’t know. I had the feeling I was doing something wrong. I felt like a criminal on the run.”

“I thought you wouldn’t come back. Most of them don’t come back.”

Morten said he had lately been thinking quite a lot about leaving. He knew some people at the national radio, and he could probably get a job in Tromso, or even in Oslo. Couldn’t she get herself transferred? If she got her job back, she might be able to, said Kathrine. Tromso, why not. That might have been the happiest time in her life, those months in the city, with her male and female colleagues, the parties, the cinemas.

“Why not,” she said. “Would you want me to go?”

“We wanted to leave together when we were kids.”

Then she asked him what had happened, when they had stowed away together to Mehamn. Ha, said Morten, and then he told her the story.

And then they stood around uncertainly outside the fishermen’s refuge, and Morten asked again if she wanted to come up to his place, but he didn’t seem to be too sure about it. Helge rattled past on his Harley, and Kathrine said, no, she’d better go home. She wanted to see Randy, whom she’d neglected for so long.

Randy was a funny boy, said Morten. “Two weeks ago, I had his whole class in the studio. I talked to them about how you make a radio program. We recorded a little show, and Randy was the announcer. He was really good.”

Kathrine asked Morten if he could make up a tape for her, and he said he would.

“Sometimes,” he said, “when I listen to my shows, I think maybe no one’s listening at all. And my voice goes past all the houses, and out of the village, and as far as the transmitter reaches. It’s a weird feeling.”

Kathrine nodded. Then they parted.

Kathrine went to the customs office. Her boss was still there. He was sitting in his office, smoking, and reading the newspaper. He was happy to see her.

“I’ve got my sister-in-law and her husband visiting, and their three awful children,” he said. “So I’m doing a lot of overtime.”

“Why don’t you go to the Elvekrog?”

“My wife doesn’t believe me. She calls here to check up on me.”