Just a Mother by Roy Jacobsen

Author:Roy Jacobsen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2023-02-12T00:00:00+00:00

In Træna they load the winch at four o’clock in the morning. Lars is up in the village, making enquiries over the telegraph line, returns and says they have to go to Røst to sell the liver.

They sail to Røst on yet another calm day and drift into Glea, where they see, as expected, a basking shark boat from Hareide with an all-white crow’s nest, in contrast to the black band around the middle of the crow’s nest on whalers.

Lars and Felix take Bjørnar and the last bottle of spirits with them when they go ashore, board the Hareide boat, talk to the Sunnmøre folk for just short of an hour, after which they return contented.

However, by then the Barrøyers are either sitting on the foc’s’le or have sought refuge on land because of the stench, in the course of the rolling trip across the sea this precious gunge has become pure oil, and stinks worse than, well, shite.

But the Vestlanders are not affected by bad smells, they have tanks on board, and pay in ready cash. And the Salthammer steers its bow south again, after a short visit to the local Fishermen’s Rest, where everyone is served a dish of lobscouse and crispbread. They make a few purchases before heading back to Vestfjorden again. They hose down the deck and the hold. The pumps are going, they rinse everything down again, leaving behind a wake of blood and stench that attracts killer whales and dense swarms of birds, puffins, hawks, petrels, gulls . . . But not even a killer whale can rouse Lars. He is asleep in the chart room behind the wheelhouse. Felix is sleeping in his wife’s arms in the cabin. And on the wheelhouse roof Hans and Fredrik are showing Mathias and Kaja how to steer a whaler home.

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