Peter Stamm: Unformed Landscape

She walked through the village, and then along the road that led to the airport. She counted her steps up to a hundred, ten times, and then she gave up. Beyond the old airfield were the huts, the hut where Thomas had sat waiting for whatever he was waiting for. Kathrine wondered what would have happened if she had gone in to him. Maybe he had been waiting for her.

Now, at night, the distances seemed shorter than they did by day. The snow was light, it was as though the earth was glowing under the dark sky. Kathrine thought about Randy’s pinkish night-light. The bright spot in the dark room.

The air was very clear and cold. Clouds came up and moved over. Then she could see the stars again. And then Kathrine saw the Northern Lights. Like a fine curtain right across the whole horizon. Kathrine waited, watched as the wide veil grew narrower and glowed more strongly. Suddenly it was just a thin strip, a quivering green line, a snake twisting wildly in the sky.

Lucky me, she thought. She felt cold, and she went back.

On the edge of the village, she passed a group of Russian seamen, who were probably on their way back to their ship. As she passed the fishermen’s refuge, the lights were all off. Only one room on the lower ground floor still had its light on, that was the window to Ian’s little chapel. Kathrine looked in. She saw Ian walking past the row of empty chairs, collecting up hymnals. She knocked on the window. Ian jumped, but when he saw her face in the window, he smiled, and waved to her.

Linn sent Kathrine an e-mail as soon as she got back to Stockholm, and Kathrine wrote back to say she was fine again. Thereafter, they didn’t write each other that often, but every now and again. And once, when Kathrine and Morten were living in Tromso, they drove to Stockholm, and met Linn, who was now living with Johanna’s Eirik, and was complaining about him. And years later, when Linn was on her own again, she came to Tromso, and stayed with Kathrine and Morten for a few days, and they talked about their skiing holiday, and how they had met, and everything that had happened.

Christian never got in touch. He didn’t send any e-mails or any more postcards. Once, Kathrine wrote to him, and he wrote back, saying he’d got married, and he wished her well.

Then Kathrine visited her mother in the village. She took the Polarlys with Harald, who was going to change to a newer ship, and had separated from his wife, or she from him. He had grown a beard again, and there were even more burst veins on his cheeks now. Kathrine and Harald stood side by side as the Polarlys sailed into the fjord, and watched as the lights of the village appeared above the spit of land.

Kathrine counted them up. A trip to Stockholm, a voyage to Sicily, a honeymoon, summer holidays in Jotunheimen National Park, visits to the village.

Her mother had gotten old. She complained more and more about the darkness and the cold. Why don’t you move down to Kiruna, to your family, suggested Kathrine. But her mother didn’t want to leave the village.

“Someone has to stay here,” she said.

Ian, the Scottish priest, had hanged himself one night in the waiting room for the Hurtig Line. The harbormaster had found him the next morning. His body was cremated, and the ashes were sent back to his family in Scotland. That was what he had wanted.

“I don’t want you to burn me,” said her mother. “You must bury me here, next to Nissen.”

“Stop it,” said Kathrine.

Her mother only talked about Thomas when Kathrine asked. After the divorce, he had married a worker in the fish factory, who had left him a year later. There was some talk in the village. Then he had left the village. His parents were still there, but they led a very withdrawn life. They didn’t even say hello when her mother met them on the street.

Alexander had never been found. But his wife was now working in the fishermen’s refuge, helping Svanhild. The two girls, Nina and Xenia, helped there as well. They had both grown a lot, and were speaking Norwegian, as if they’d been born here. They were pretty girls, and for a time, more young people came to the fishermen’s refuge. Svanhild often sat at a table in the kitchen. All that standing around had made her tired. She sat at her table, and smiled, and wiped her cloth over the gleaming plastic surface without looking.

Alexander’s wife had saved some money, then a year ago, she had put up a stone in the cemetery, and the minister had held a service for Alexander. Now everything was fine.

Kathrine went to work. She took the car. She dropped Randy off at school. He got sick, and then he was better again. He got a pair of glasses. He grew tall. Kathrine earned money, and bought things for herself. She had another child, a girl this time. Solveig. Then she stood in the kitchen with Morten. They made sandwiches to save money. Later, they bought an apartment, and one day a house. They lived in Tromso, in Molde, in Oslo. On his holidays, Randy went up to stay with his grandmother in the village. He came back. It was fall, then winter. It was summer. It got dark, and then it got light again.