Павел Хюлле - Cold Sea Stories

Bjorn listened in extreme concentration. And when the stranger had finished, he asked to hear the prophecy.

‘ Neither Ahuzat, nor Abimelech, nor Phichol, but still one of the three, a son of the Orient, a son of the Supreme Light, the one who, having made obeisance with the others lost the Book on the way, this one, I declare, who for all time has never set his bones to rest, will travel across the cold sea to an island. Its shape a wingless butterfly, its countenance rock and pasture, and girdling it the wall of an irascible king, that fawn nor hind may not leave it. ’

The stranger’s lips quivered as he uttered these words. Bjorn tossed another log on the fire and leaned forward to avoid missing a single word.

‘ You will take a lone shepherd from a foreign land, pure and just, who will not crave gold, who will break bread with you, and will accept your wine. By a spring at sunrise let him send forth a lamb to pasture; I shall guide it, and wherever it stops, you shall seek that which I sealed in the beginning, until you shall find and I shall open the gate, and wide will be your road again – so say I, whom you worshipped in the form of fire, before I opened the Word to you. ’

Bjorn furtively wiped away his tears. Although they contained so many mysterious things, names and expressions, he sensed that these words were referring to him. Someone, maybe as long as a thousand years ago, had known more than even he did about his life, a life which was like slavery, about the King’s stone wall and the pastureland, and about solitude. The stars were still shining overhead, but above the eastern side of Alvaret the first, narrow strip of dawn had appeared.

‘Can you tell me,’ he asked timidly, ‘about what was not destined for me?’

‘I must gather various books along my way.’ The stranger poured them both wine. ‘The one that you saw is the Book of Light. Some take it for the Jewish Zohar, but they are wrong. It is much older and comes from Kashan.’

‘What story does it tell?’

‘Not every book tells a story. This one contains the words of all the languages in the world, but only those in which there is the brightness of truth.’

‘And your face?’

‘You saw the real one. Old age, as it is. Among people I must look different.’

They fell silent. Then, when the sun rose, Bjorn tied on a linen belt and drove a young ram out of the flock. For some time they followed it together: the shepherd with a wooden stick, the stranger with his saddlebag on his shoulder, and the dog.

‘I’d like to go with you,’ said Bjorn, ‘to leave here for ever – take me on board your ship.’

‘Where I am going you cannot follow me. But one day you shall leave the island and you will be happy. As it is written in the Bible: “ I shall depart from a foreign land across a which the Lord shall build. ”’

These were the stranger’s last words. Bjorn called Harald, and blinking, watched as the man’s silhouette, heading after the ever smaller figure of the lamb, disappeared against the burning disc of the sun, somewhere in the middle of Alvaret.

Towards the end of September, the reverend pastor Jons, parish priest at Ventlinge, found Bjorn standing outside his door. He asked humbly if the pastor would possibly be willing to lend him a Bible. He promised to come to church on Christmas Day and to return the book undamaged. If needs be, he would work in the reverend’s field for as many days as he saw fit. The pastor said nothing, but told him to wait outside, and vanished into the house. He came back with a half leather-bound family Bible and handed it to Bjorn.

‘Open it at any page and read aloud, if you are able to!’

It was Chapter Twelve of the Book of Daniel. Bjorn, who had last pieced together the letters of Swedish script many years ago, stammered syllable after syllable, but with each sentence he found it easier, and when at the end he read out fluently: ‘ But you, go your way till the end; for you shall rest, and will arise to your inheritance at the end of the days, ’ the pastor, somewhat amazed, nodded benignly. Then he asked: ‘What do you need it for?’ and at once added, as if to himself, under his breath: ‘If such people begin to prophesy too, what will it come to?’ However, he lent the Bible, sternly instructing him to treat it like a treasure, for although he had not bought it, merely inherited it from his predecessor, it was still worth a lot of money.

When, like the others, he drove his flock to the great barns at Ventlinge where the sheep spent the winter, a different time set in for him. He only went to the estate to work off his debt five days a week, and had two for himself. Until the snow fell, he caught and smoked fish, and chopped a supply of firewood. After work he read by the fireside: first the Gospels, the Letters and Acts of the Apostles. He was a little disappointed that only Matthew wrote about the Three Kings. He mentioned gold, frankincense and myrrh, but did not say a word about the lost Book. And he only added that ‘ they returned another way to their own land, the land of the rising sun. ’ Afterwards, to find the sentence about the ‘ fragile bridge which the Lord shall build ,’ he carefully read book after book, starting from Genesis. Days went by, his eyes were watering from the flickering firelight, but so far there was nothing about any sort of bridge, let alone a fragile one. Sometimes, when he awoke after a short doze, fearing that he may have overlooked something, he went back two or three chapters and read them again – in vain. If not for the silver cup, he might have thought he dreamed it all one balmy summer’s night, when he fell asleep outside the shelter, stupefied by the scent of herbs and grasses. He set aside the Bible and picked up the vessel. The letters running around it in relief were intertwined with the leaves of a plant he did not recognise. He raised the cup to his nose and slowly drew in air, as if at the very bottom a dried-up drop of wine might give him any sort of explanation.

The day before Christmas Bjorn finished reading the Bible. In none of the books had he found the sentence with which the stranger had so deeply moved him. But the next day he did not return the book to the pastor. There was such a strong blizzard and the snowdrifts were so high that even in the village no one could possibly have dared to go outside. It continued to rage and to snow for the next few days, until finally the sun came out, the wind dropped and a biting frost took hold. Bjorn went out onto the cliff and saw a white expanse, stretching all the way from the island to the distant line of the mainland. The sea had frozen. Never before, since he had been on Öland, had he seen the strait ice-bound. He went home, wrapped some food, the cup, a shirt and foot cloths in a bundle, placed the Bible at the very centre of the table, put out the fire, tied some short, wide slats to the soles of his winter boots, put on his sheepskin coat and hat, called the dog and for the last time closed behind him the door of the house that had never been his property.

He glided across the creaking snow, occasionally sinking up to his knees, but the further he was from the island, the easier the going, because the drifts were smaller. He also crossed places where the layer of snow blown in by the wind was only a few centimetres deep. At those points he paused, swept aside the snow and looked at the ice, under which was the sea. Harald followed along the trail he cut, pleased not to be sinking up to his belly. The red sphere of the sun had passed midday when they came onto the mainland. Bjorn was not sure whether the trickles of grey smoke rising beyond the hill belonged to Brömsebro or perhaps another village, but it didn’t matter. He had no goal, he felt joy in his heart, and he never once looked behind him.