Peter Geye - Safe from the Sea

The label on the bag had a Duluth address under a Norwegian-flag logo. The beer bottle read, HANSA-BORG’S BORG BOKKøL. Noah tasted the beer. He looked at his father spooning the soupy black pot into his slack mouth, the look on his face giving away a deep satisfaction. “So you left Boston this morning, stopped at a Norwegian deli in Duluth, drove up here, and now you’re serving me a beer and something called black pot.” “And lutefisk, lefse , that cheese, krumkake for dessert.” “And radishes.”

“And radishes,” Nat confirmed. She set a plate of them on the table.

“Chrissakes, this is good eating,” Olaf said.

Natalie sat next to Noah. “Dig in,” she said.

A taste for these flavors had long been lost to Noah, but when he saw Natalie sprinkling sugar onto a buttered sheet of lefse , when he saw her slicing another piece of Gjetost cheese onto her plate, even when he saw her daring a quivering spoonful of lutefisk taken from a pan atop the stove, his appetite became tremendous. He ate everything. Olaf ate everything. Noah drank one and then another bottle of beer. Olaf suggested they turn on the radio, which they did, but when they found no station in the twilight hours they settled on old stories told around the table. Food stories all. Natalie recalled the always overcooked pork and dumplings stewed in cans of storebought soup from her childhood. Neither Noah nor Olaf could imagine it. Noah’s memories settled on Christmas cookies so fine they defied his power of description. And for Olaf it was Thanksgiving turkeys cooked in the cavernous roasting pans of steamship ovens; his own mother’s lefse , made of nearly rotting potatoes for their sweetness; her own antique krumkake irons; and finally her homemade butter on the lutefisk she made every Friday night.

Natalie, despite her labor in setting the table and the still too-warm room, wore her favorite sweater of Norwegian wool. She looked wholly native to this spot in the woods, so far from Boston and their life and her cautionary and conservative upbringing. She looked, Noah thought as he sat back for the last sip of his beer, more like his wife in that instant than in any other moment of their life together. It wouldn’t have been possible for him to say that he loved her any better, but neither could he remember a moment in their history to match the intensity of his conviction that here was the woman whose wisdom in all things made him a finer man, finer for the life with her and finer for the child she would — he was suddenly convinced again — bear to this world and to their lives. With this thought came another: that whenever that child did come, Noah would no longer reign in the boundlessness of her love, that that domain was forfeit to the child.

When Nat unpacked the krumkake and offered to make coffee, both men declined. Instead they nibbled at the cookies with waning enthusiasm, Olaf admitting that his mother’s old recipe had nothing on the cookies from Kafe Forny. Enough food still lay on the table for another such feast, the black pot congealing in its cream, the gelatinous lutefisk in the pan, the lefse stacked like tortillas in a plastic bag.

They talked for an hour as if such gatherings were a weekly occurrence. Natalie was the most garrulous, telling Olaf about her work with her usual seriousness on the subject. Her intelligence was on fine display, and Noah could see that Olaf was impressed. When the subject of Noah’s business came up — and when Olaf circled back to his original skepticism about the very idea of an antique map — Natalie offered her opinion, reiterating Noah’s point about them being artistic more than utilitarian but also explaining how purchasing the business fitted into their retirement years down the road and how, most importantly, it made Noah a happier man. Noah could tell her explanation was far more satisfying than his own had been those few days before.

It was well past dark when the conversation wound down.

“Well,” Olaf said, laboring up from the table after a lull in the conversation, “if I were younger, now’s the time I would have gone outside for a smoke. Might have finished the night with a finger of hooch. But I’ll be goddamned lucky to make it to bed. Natalie, I don’t have thanks enough. I’m off to bed if you two will clean this mess up.” He took a couple of steps toward his bedroom door, turned. “Noah could tell you how early I rise, but I sleep like I’m dead until then. Good night.” Noah and Nat said good-night together.

“Where does a girl go to the bathroom around here?”

“The outhouse is in the woods, up a path behind the shed. I’ll get the flashlight and go with you.” “You don’t need to go with me, just point me in the right direction.” WHILE NOAH CLEARED the table and put the food away, Natalie sat on the sofa with her feet tucked beneath her, a glass of water in her hand and the sweater folded beside her. She commented quietly on the inventory of the cabin. “What does he do up here?” “So far he fishes and tells stories.”

“Can you imagine living here?”

“There’s a radio show he listens to in the morning sometimes. I guess he reads a lot.” “Wouldn’t you get lonely?”

“Of course I would, but I’m not him.”

Nat looked at him. “You two aren’t so different.”

“Really?”

She looked at him again, a look to quell further comment if he read her right. “He was so sweet, Noah. While you were down at the lake we just sat here and talked like long-lost friends. We talked about everything. He’s got me scared of the bears and wolves. Did you know he makes himself pasties every Sunday night? I don’t even know what a pasty is.” Noah finished cleaning. He leaned on the counter, listening.

“He’s glad you’re here. That’s plain to see.” She took a small wooden box from the shelf behind the sofa. She opened it. Within were photographs, a pipe, a skeleton key. An old fountain pen.

Noah sat down next to her. “My grandpa carved that box, I’m sure of it. I think it was a gift for my mom. Maybe it was for Solveig.” Nat handed him the pictures. They were all of Noah’s mother. So beautiful. One of his parents on their wedding day. One with Solveig on her mother’s lap, little more than an infant. “Jesus, the things I’m finding around here,” Noah said. He put the pipe in his mouth.

Natalie took the pictures from him. She took the pipe. She re-packed the box and set it back on the shelf. She sipped her water. “So you’re not mad, are you?” Noah put his arm around her. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Now that I’m here, I understand. If anyone should apologize, it’s me.” Noah leaned in and kissed her neck.

“This is so weird,” she said. “That’s the other bedroom right there? There’s not much room for privacy.” “We can be quiet.”

But how to be quiet on that bed, in that house so used to its own silence? How to be quiet when the only other sound was the stove fire and a dying gale outside in the woods? Noah had lit a candle, its amber glow left the last corner of the bedroom in darkness. He set it on the nightstand. At the foot of the bed they undressed, hanging their clothes on the bedposts for want of anyplace else to lay them. When they kissed — there at the foot of the bed — the touching of their lips seemed as loud as a drumbeat.

Natalie said again, “This is so weird.”

But Noah put his finger to her lips and led her to the side of the bed. He pulled back the covers. When Nat lay down the ancient bedsprings tolled. When she put her arms around him she also put her mouth to his ear, “Your skin is cold,” she said. “You smell good. Like the air up here.” “WHAT TIME IS it?”