The Prophets of Eternal Fjord by Aitken Martin Leine Kim

Author:Aitken, Martin, Leine, Kim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books Ltd
Published: 2015-05-19T11:54:20+00:00

The Fifth Commandment

An Expulsion (Autumn–Winter 1788)

The Fifth Commandment, as it is most plainly to be taught by a father to his family:

‘Thou shalt not kill.’

What does this imply?

Answer: That we should fear and love God, so that we may not hurt or afflict our neighbour in his body; but we should help and further him when he is in bodily need.

Haldora Kragstedt sees a woman in the large mirror of her bedchamber. She studies her profile, how she turns to the left, turns to the right, smoothes her hands over her gown, and she feels a tinge of nausea, acidic fluids that make her insides seethe and gurgle. Somewhere within her, in the contorted recesses of her female body, beneath the corsets and the physical exterior, the bulging abdomen and the extravagant flourish of pubic hair, the smith sits moping. She sees him, curled up and sleeping. He is inside her; it is not some feverish dream. He is real. He has entered her. Now he will not go away again. A whole life together with the smith, she thinks, the smith feeding from my breasts, the smith lying in my bed, seated at my table. To kiss the smith goodnight every evening for twenty years. There must be something to be done.

She has experimented with the laudanum she receives from her husband so that she might sleep and gain colour, though in small doses, so as not to become addicted. She downed the flacon in one gulp and slept like a log for a night and half a day. The smith sits there yet. She applied the substance locally, squirting it into her vagina, a difficult manoeuvre and moreover utterly without effect. Now she has ceased to take the medicine, which has triggered a rather promising bout of diarrhoea and a cheering sensation of being encased in pain from top to toe, as if she were wearing a heavy coat of chain mail. But the smith remains seated. He takes nourishment from her and grows. Still he sits, curled up, his cheek resting on his knees, in the deepest sleep. But soon he will begin to move. He will stretch out his legs, extend his arms and step into char­acter. The thought of it is unbearable. She has tried to incite Kragstedt to brutality; she has flung herself over the table and hurled filthy obscen­ities at him, with her bare, shining arse in his face, only for him to gape incredulously from within a fog of distraction.

Whatever is the matter, my dear? he enquires. Is it the impending months of darkness? Are you bored? Desist, you make me shameful. Stand up, arrange your clothing. The maid might come in at any moment.

She glares at him in fury. He pats her cheek. She says something about his manliness, or lack of it. He smiles absently, bent over his ledger. She smashes porcelain. He drums his fingers and looks out of the window. I think, he says, that if we establish a whalers’ guild at the old colony the catch would be most lucrative for the district.

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