White Shadow by Roy Jacobsen

Author:Roy Jacobsen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2021-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

Ingrid swung herself up the two rungs to the wheelhouse and said she would guide him out.

“Foul waters ahead?”

“No.”

She qualified her answer: “A bit.”

He said:

“Thought you didn’t want to go home?”

“No.”

Then, staring rigidly ahead at the familiar fairway, she said he should go with her up onto the island and spend the night with her there, but have a wash first. He was silent for a long time and then asked:

“Where?”

“In the tub!”

He chuckled, and they said no more.

He took them north-west of Oterholmen and ploughed through an armada of eider ducks between the northern headland and the harbour, mumbled some complimentary words about the new quay, this mountain of hand-hewn pink stone built by foreign hand some time in Ingrid’s childhood, when there was also a war. She said, yes, it was a fine quay.

They left the boat in the hands of Ole and his mate, who had sabotaged his existence as a refugee and enlisted on the Salthammer for good. Something was said between the men, which Ingrid didn’t catch. She walked with Magnus up towards the unlit house, she at the front with the suitcase and the cake tin, her eyes bored into the thick snow, as if once more looking for tracks that weren’t there, he carrying the provisions and balls of yarn, into the cold, lifeless kitchen, here too she managed to keep herself blind.

She lit the lamps, and he got the fire going while she blinked her eyelids and found nothing to fear. When he had nothing more to put his hands to, she stood still in front of him until they were both embarrassed, and began to undress him, even though it was not yet warm in the kitchen, she ignored some strained witticisms about the zinc tub that had served the Barrøyers for generations, and washed him without a word, while she thought about Nelvy and water, running, purifying, soothing water, cold, hot, smooth, wet, salty . . . while she thought of soap that didn’t lather, of odours and muck, until finally she was able to give an exploratory sniff and detect not the slightest trace of a human body.

He said:

“Why are you doing this?”

She stripped down to her waist, showed him her back and asked what he thought of the scars. He said they seemed to be healing well. She changed the water, told him about Nelvy and those long, slender fingers of hers and then began to talk about water too, as though driven by some elevated form of purification, a ritual that had to be repeated in order to have any effect, while he sat swathed in a blanket in the rocking chair and asked his question once again:

“Why are you doing this?”

“I have to.”

She pulled him upstairs to the South Chamber and lay with him without a word, apart from repeating the answer to his question, and she thought that his asking no fewer than three times made him a better person.

After he had fallen asleep, she

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