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- Herausgeber: Salt
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In Magnus we enter the world of heroes and villains, gods and monsters, good and evil. With a twist, of course, as one would expect from the author of The Book of Alexander. Per, Jonas, Mette and Linnéa are university undergraduates on their final year project with Professor Erik Nordveit. Magnus is the unwelcome guest, a student of grotesque appearance with a shady past who must complete the project to be awarded a pass degree. The group will live together for one week in a cabin on the remote island of Svindel off the west coast of Norway. The pressure cooker atmosphere soon increases – who will explode first? Who can really concentrate on monitoring environmental pollution under these conditions, when there is no contact with the mainland? What starts as the capstone of their university careers, slowly becomes more difficult for the Professor and the students. Events take a turn for the worse. True natures are revealed. Is there a need in all of us to escape, to maximise our freedom, to be ourselves? Do we naturally split into two sides and become either heroes or monsters? Can people truly govern themselves without laws and force of arms? The week culminates in a bonfire party to celebrate Midsummer's Eve. The neighbouring islands light beacons to celebrate the longest day with the sun still in the sky. In its hour of need who will answer Svindel's call? Are heroes made or born?
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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MARK CAREW
MAGNUS
To all the heroes – never give up.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
NOW WE SHALL hear the might of kings, and about time.
No more Mister Nice Guy, no more bleeding-heart liberal. Professor: sort this unruly individual out!
‘Magnus! For the last time. You are not to go up there!’ Professor Erik Nordveit was standing at the base of the weather tower, dressed in a green anorak and looking most unhappy. ‘Please come down.’
Please? Would Alfred or Bø, his illustrious ancestors, have asked so nicely? Magnus was disappointed. Where was the shotgun, or the whip, when they were needed? Didn’t the Professor know that his student had messed with the best of the country’s counsellors and still no-one had any idea of how he really ticked? The spinning cups of the anemometer at the top of the weather tower could wait. It was the first day of the field trip, and there was plenty of time for mayhem later in the week. Magnus began to descend the tower. Now he hung only a few metres above the Professor, a man whose patience and mental strength he would test to the limit. He formed a gobbet of phlegm in his mouth and considered dropping it on to the Professor’s head.
‘Come on,’ said Erik, ‘all the way down, please.’
He treats me like a child. Doesn’t he know that I am Magnus the Great?
The weather monitoring tower outside the cabin had fascinated him as soon as their party had landed on the island. The tower was ten metres tall, made of aluminium, and stabilised by six steel hawsers set into concrete blocks in the ground. There were various instruments sited on the way up, and at the top of the tower was the anemometer: a horizontal metal bar with four spinning silver cups on a short pole at one end. The device was attached to electronics which measured wind-speed. At the other end of the bar was a short vertical sprue with a black fin, which turned into the wind and gave its direction. Magnus dearly wanted to fondle those delicate revolving cups, and to stroke the tail fin, but the Professor was watching him.
The Professor’s attention was then diverted from Magnus to a dark green moss that had taken his eye by his feet. He bent down to investigate. Magnus was disgusted. Here was a grown man, a man of power, who with one stroke of his pen could make or break a student’s university career. But instead of driving a Lamborghini, or wearing the latest designer fashion, this man got excited about mosses: the most primitive plants on the planet.
Magnus formulated his plan. He prepared for the perfect moment to launch his glistening missile towards the Professor’s pate. Such a direct attack would have to be done with skill. A hit would have to be blamed on one of the seabirds, the gulls and petrels circling overhead. As an alibi, he spat first into his own hand and rubbed the spittle on the side of his face. He waited for another gob of saliva to form in his mouth. When it was ready, he adjusted for wind speed and direction. The disgusting dollop squeezed out from between his lips and landed on the green baize carpet of mosses by the Professor’s feet.
The alpha, the pack leader, the daddy, the big brain didn’t even move, but carried on with his botanical inspection. Mosses were a living detector of metal pollution in the air, a bio-indicator species, the field trip synopsis had explained, and Professor Nordveit was fascinated by the subject.
Magnus jumped down from the tower and landed with a thud on the ground. He scuffed up some of the mosses and kicked the stupid green and brown clumps towards where the Professor knelt.
Erik didn’t notice a thing and when he stood up, Magnus was towering over him. Erik stepped back. ‘What did you see from up there, Magnus? Was it something that you could not see from down here?’
‘Yes, Professor. I saw my future.’
Erik was intrigued. ‘What do you mean?’
Magnus the Great smiled inside but his mouth was set firm. In his future the island of Svindel was his alone and no others were allowed to set foot on it. ‘I saw myself as a giant eagle, flying high above the world, with nothing to worry about.’
‘Good!’ said Erik. ‘I’m really pleased to hear it.’
The Professor beamed at him and Magnus could not bear to look at his happy face. Why are clever people so stupid, he thought? Why do they always think the best of other people?
Magnus walked away until he stood on top of one of the many boulders scattered on the green carpet. The island was quite small and could easily be managed by one person. There was the cabin with its golden roof shining under the midnight sun. There was the white university motor boat bobbing gently at the jetty. A network of earthen paths ran east-west through the green carpet of precious mosses from jetty to boulder field, then on to the copse of trees above the fishing rocks. The eastern shore looked over other islands and back to the mainland. Just visible on a clear day were the fjords around the coast of Tromsø where they had departed from their alma mater.
Now when he looked out over the island it was as if Magnus had suddenly become Erik’s son. The thought hit him with quite a shock. Why had Erik handed the island down to him, and not to his wife or daughter? Magnus had not known his own father, so perhaps that had been the reason why? Or perhaps Erik recognised in Magnus the necessary qualities few people would have to manage a small island on their own? A tiny island, two kilometres off the coast of Norway, uninhabited because it was beyond the reach of telecommunications with the mainland. How many people would truly enjoy living there alone? It would be wonderful if you liked rocks, boulders, mosses and other lowly plants, because save for a few fir trees near the fishing shore, that was it for scenery. No other plants had the energy to move up the exposed mountainside and grow any taller. If it wasn’t for the folly of man, in the form of pollution and climate change, no-one would have been at all interested in the place.
But what Magnus was really interested in was at the northern end of the island. At seven hundred and fifty metres’ elevation, according to the map in the cabin, was a mountain called Trollveggen. What lay behind Trollveggen on its hidden, seaward side? Did the Professor think that Magnus was the man for exploring the place and reporting back? Had he been impressed so far with how his most interesting student had handled himself?
What about that moment of bravado from Magnus, when they had arrived from the west and landed at the jetty, the Professor at the helm. The sea had been choppy and of course Linnéa, the most annoying of the students, was terrified. Mette had sat next to her, trying to keep her calm. The two young women had been briefed on how their boat and their personal floatation devices were state of the art, but it hadn’t sunk in. So it was left to Magnus to stand up at the front of the boat, gulping in the sea breeze, arms outstretched as if he were the mast and sails, and shield them from the worst of the wind.
There was the noise of an immense flapping, as if a monstrous bird flew overhead. Magnus took a moment to dismiss such an idea and soon recognised the source of the distraction: the blue tarpaulin covering the boat was lifting off aft of the wheelhouse. The heavy canvas material had been tied up with rope through ringlets and guys, but somehow it had come undone at one edge and was blowing up in the wind.
Magnus watched the Professor jog down to the jetty. Erik would be questioning his own knots, which had been double-checked by Per, who was an experienced fisherman, and by Jonas, who thought he knew everything. The fools had trusted Magnus to be last off the boat, but perhaps Per wasn’t so foolish. He had caught Magnus with a look that said he knew his type. But no one would see the true colours of Magnus the Great until they had been revealed, and by then it would be too late.
The sea lapped at the shore and shoved at the boat, distracting the Professor and making his job more difficult. Magnus saw his chance, put one boot on the tower, climbed up to the instrument panel, and placed his hands inside. He groped and fumbled until he grabbed the leads going into the barometric pressure sensor. Then he pulled. The weather for that day was remarkably changeable. He stood up and blew into the air temperature sensor, a long white tube with a bulbous end, which was set two metres off the ground and level with his shoulders. For a few seconds, the ambient air temperature registered a huge increase. He found the solar radiance sensor and smeared the glass dome with soil he picked up from the ground. Today became a surprisingly dark day. Then he climbed up the tower so quickly that he felt the structure sway with his weight. At the top he took a great lungful of the lovely breeze and let the wind blow out his cheeks. Gulp in the breeze, eat it like raw fish, raw everything. His lips pulled back into a beak, and he blew at the spinning silver cups. Look out, world; a hurricane is coming!
There was laughter from the cabin. The other students on the trip were playing cards. Linnéa, Mette, Per and Jonas would be sitting around the table enjoying a game without him. Their jollity reached him through windows that were pushed open a crack for ventilation. Laugh while you can, Magnus thought.
Erik returned from the jetty. The blue tarpaulin was now even more securely fastened over the stern and midsection of the bright white boat. Magnus watched him make a point of stepping over and around the green mossy islands, as if it was bad luck to touch any of the ridiculous plants. He even used a hand-crank torch, which he wound up periodically, to show his path. The light in the sky had dimmed a little, it was true, although in June at this latitude the sun never disappeared entirely. Thor’s arse, exclaimed Magnus inwardly; he hated the way the Professor modelled acceptable behaviour.
Erik reached the tower and sighed when he saw Magnus above him. ‘Up there again? You look like King Kong!’ He placed his hands on his hips and laughed a little.
Very good, Professor, at least show a bit of spirit in battle.
The door to the cabin opened and Linnéa, the stuck-up trust fund girl, anxious for every mark she could induce by deploying her sweet smile, asked the Professor if he would like to play cards. Erik agreed. ‘Come on, Magnus, time to go inside.’
Magnus considered his options. It wasn’t time to be completely unruly yet. He was tired, and he needed a good night’s sleep. His broken boots clanged out a diminishing scale on the metal tower as he descended. The pain on the right side under his ribs came back. He knew his eyes would be bad already.
‘Thank you, Magnus. I’m glad you are taking such an interest in climatology, but the tower is not designed to be climbed upon. It actually hinges at the bottom and can be lowered for maintenance.’ Erik pointed at his feet. ‘Your boots need mending. The soles are coming away from the uppers.’
Magnus just shrugged. He stood outside the cabin door and waited for the Professor to enter first. No doubt his superior would think that Magnus was showing the appropriate deference and good manners.
The cabin door was oak and set in a frame that shone gold like the roof. Emblazoned in the centre of the door was the university crest: two seabirds passing parallel to one another. Erik pushed open the door and stepped inside the porch to remove his boots. Magnus contemplated the Professor’s bald spot as it presented in front of him; it was at such an easy height to strike with the side of his hand. He wondered also about the strength of the back of the human skull, and of the force needed to dislodge the skull from the spine, and then the moment passed. He tucked his own enormous head down inside the doorway and went inside the cabin.
CHAPTER 2
ERIK TOOK OFF his shoes and put them neatly in the rack by the front door. He padded in his socks into the main room of the cabin. Linnéa was talking with Mette, a happy student found in the middle of the university’s new café-style teaching rooms with her friends.
‘Professor, is it true that your family owns the cabin and the island?’ asked Linnéa.
‘Yes, it is true. I am fourth in the line of the Nordveits. My grandfather, a man called Bø, claimed the island for Norway, and defended it from Swedish interest.’
‘The cabin is wonderful,’ said Mette. ‘It’s so well furnished.’
‘Thank you. My wife and daughter are responsible, not me!’
The cabin was very spacious, with one long dining table surrounded by chairs in the middle of the central room. While the chairs were straight backed and local, the tablecloth was woven from a much more southerly country or continent, Spain or even Africa. Three curtained windows down each side of the cabin let in the ever-present midnight sun. The interior of the cabin glowed with a mixture of warm colours and was freshened with the greenery of many plants. One magnificent plant, with a tall flower stalk and thick fleshy leaves, dominated the middle of a hexagon-shaped side table. Each of the six windowsills had plants hung with red and white flowers. This was how Erik liked his cabin. A cupboard near the dormitory featured careful wooden fluting and was Nordic, a family heirloom.
Near the front door was the modern, well-equipped kitchen. At the far end of the cabin was the dormitory, and next to that the bathroom. Erik washed his hands in the basin, which, along with the toilet and shower, were supplied by a tank of rainwater collected from the golden roof. The lights on the four stone pillars in the main cabin flickered briefly. The diesel generator in the basement hummed a little louder. The two-bar gas heaters either side of the cabin were warming up, turning pink then red. This was his cabin and he loved it.
‘Did your ancestor Bø use the island as an ecological outpost?’ asked Jonas. He was a tall, slender young man, earnest in lectures, always in the front row with Linnéa.
‘No, that’s a very modern idea,’ said Erik. ‘Grandfather Bø lived in a cave on Trollveggen’. He indicated the mountain at the northern end of the island. ‘Bø was the island’s constant defender. Friends brought him in food and supplies. I don’t think he ever left the place. How he managed to further our line, I don’t know.’
‘Must have been a nice warm cave,’ said Per. ‘Must have got someone interested.’ He came out of the kitchen with a cup of tea. Per dipped in and out of lectures, but he did all the assessments and passed the exams. Linnéa followed him with a glass of drinking water, drawn from one of many blue forty-litre bottles stored in the basement.
‘My father, Alfred,’ said Erik, ‘was credited with the building of a rudimentary wooden cabin on this spot.’ He thumped the heel of his foot on the wooden floor. ‘He also carried on Bø’s paranoia. The island was continually manned during the last world war by a small handful of our men. Any enemy reconnaissance troops who arrived soon disappeared.’
Erik was holding court now, the students sitting around him. Even Magnus, standing behind him in the porch, listened intently.
‘The island began to get noticed because of the repeated loss of the scouts who landed here. It even led once to a direct aerial attack by the enemy. The bombs destroyed the cabin, but of course Alfred and his men were hiding elsewhere. The enemy landed, but soon lost interest and moved on. Alfred restored the cabin as a refuge, and somehow tempted my mother to stay with him. I was one of four children born to them.’ He showed them photographs of his ancestors on the stone walls, as he did every year to the students on the field trip.
Erik looked with pride around the well-furnished cabin. ‘I was always fascinated by tales of this place, a cabin on a faraway island in the middle of nowhere. But when the land passed to me, I had no idea what to do with it. It is too remote for livestock, and the soil and climate are not suitable for agriculture. Then, one day, I was sitting in my office on campus. I read a paper about an environmental monitoring network that needed sites to look for atmospheric pollutants. And that’s what put the island of Svindel on the map.’ He smiled at them all.
Erik left the students and walked the length of the cabin, which was long enough to hold foot races. In the dormitory at the back he had a view, out of a small window, of the sea. The mainland was a suggestion in the distance. Accommodation was five bunk beds, enough to sleep ten people. Numbers were down on this trip, obviously, because they had Magnus along, but at least Linnéa, Mette, Per and Jonas each had a bottom bunk. Magnus had decided to take the top bunk above Erik, which Erik hadn’t been that keen about, but rather him than anyone else.
Like the rest of the cabin, the dormitory was a homely place. His wife, Marta, and his daughter, Eva, had chosen the bedding. Marta had sourced thick blankets from the Sami people further north in Lapland. The bunk beds were made from a few pine trees native to the island. Eva had painted the room in restful shades of green, so that they all dreamed of mosses when they slept.
Erik changed out of his travelling clothes, still wet from sea spray from the boat ride in and put on jeans and a warm T-shirt. When he returned to the main room the pack of cards was still in the middle of the table, but no-one was playing.
Slumped by the main cabin door was Magnus, who seemed to be waiting for the group to acknowledge his existence. He had removed his boots, which were in a poor state, broken down, cracked and split. His socks were thin and his toes stuck out through ugly holes. He needed proper walking socks, not more designer-labelled gear that was not up to the job. Erik went over and asked Magnus to come and play cards, and would he like a cup of tea or spiced honey? Magnus just shrugged, so Erik left him to it. He noticed that a strange stale odour hung around Magnus, like that of cabbage stored too long in the open.
Instead of cards, Jonas started a round of storytelling with the other students. He placed a red baseball cap backwards on his head; a tuft of blonde hair stood up through the gap. Linnéa stood up and rearranged the cap to face forwards. All the students laughed at this modification, but Magnus remained po-faced.
Jonas brought the tips of his fingers together and thought for a moment. ‘We start on an island at the tip of an archipelago in the Norwegian Sea. The island is close to a famous vortex of water where the fishing boats never go. At the end of the island there is a beach. Oh yes, and there is also a salt water swimming pool surrounded by trees.’ Jonas leaned back on the sofa. ‘Your go next,’ he told Mette.
Mette, her face now partly hidden under the hood of a university sweatshirt, was sitting next to Linnéa. The two young women touched arms; Mette’s milk chocolate contrasting with Linnéa’s snow white.
‘Every morning a young man came along to the swimming pool for his early morning swim,’ Mette said.
The students waited for more, but Mette grimaced. She indicated that Linnéa should continue the story.
Linnéa bit her lip. ‘Every morning the man had his swim and did many lengths of the pool. Then, one day, something different happened.’ She nudged Per, who was sitting next to her eating a pain au chocolat.
Per scratched his head. He had little hair on his head, but the hint of a hairy chest rose up over the top of his grey T-shirt. He finished his mouthful. ‘One day the man went for his normal morning swim and saw a pain au chocolat floating on the surface of the water.’
‘Like it, Per,’ said Jonas. ‘Professor, it’s your turn.’
Erik nursed a mug of hot spiced honey in his hands. ‘The young man, whose name was Per, swam around the pain au chocolat he saw floating in the pool. He liked these French pastries very much. Finally, he took a bite.’
The story passed back to Jonas, who was thinking hard, but not getting anywhere.
Then Magnus spoke up from where he was sitting at the entrance of the cabin. ‘Per was raised up into the air. There was a hook in the pastry and the hook cut into his mouth.’
‘Ugh!’ said Linnéa.
‘No, that’s good,’ said Erik. ‘Who can carry the story on?’
But everyone was looking at the floor.
‘I will carry it on,’ said Magnus. He rose to his feet. His head bent against the roof of the cabin as if his neck was broken. ‘There was a noisy flapping of giant wings. An enormous bluebird held the line in its mouth. The bird hauled the man called Per out of the pool and up into the branches of a fir tree.’
‘Very inventive, Magnus, well done,’ said Erik, not realising that the other students looked dismayed.
Magnus carried on. ‘The enormous bluebird took the hook out of Per’s mouth with its beak.’ Magnus looked at Per throughout. ‘Then the bluebird picked up Per and knocked his head against the tree branch until he was unconscious.’
Linnéa covered her ears. ‘I don’t want to hear any more.’
‘How about a lovely ghost story?’ asked Jonas. ‘Or a whodunnit? I read a few English classics over Easter, they were really good.’
‘We’ve got a good murder mystery, right here, although it’s a little macabre,’ Erik said. He seemed impressed with Magnus, who remained standing, framed by the internal porch light. ‘All this talk of danger reminds me to tell you about the marsh on the island. It is behind the copse of trees near the fishing rocks. It’s not very big but it can be a problem for those blundering into it. Sometimes you will see it as an obvious bog with standing water, other times there will be nothing much to it. The area should be marked with several two-metre red and white poles as a warning.’
‘A real live challenge,’ remarked Per. ‘Who amongst us might lose their footing in the strange black bog?’
‘Perhaps we need a traditional monster story instead?’ said Erik. ‘There is a cold sea around the island with plenty of water to hide a monster. Maybe we will see a Draugen on this trip.’
‘What’s a Draugen?’ asked Mette. ‘Is it a dragon?’
Magnus boomed from where he stood and raised his arms by his side. ‘A Draugen is a giant man, covered in seaweed, who once drowned when out in a boat. The fishermen talk about him whenever there’s a storm.’
‘We do, it’s true,’ said Per, ‘it’s no joke. If the storm is bad enough then the Draugen will appear.’
‘What does the Draugen do?’ asked Mette. She was the only one who could look at Magnus at the front of the cabin.
‘A Draugen comes back to kill the living,’ said Magnus. ‘He smashes the boats and drowns the fishermen.’
‘Why does he do that?’ asked Jonas. ‘Is he a nutter?’
‘He likes it,’ replied Magnus, who had begun to scrape the top of his head back and forth on the ceiling, as if to scratch an itch. ‘He likes to share his pain.’
‘What an ugly monster,’ said Jonas, also rising to his full height of six feet. ‘Let’s hope we have no storms around here.’
Magnus remained standing with head askew, arms now limp by his side, as if he had been hung from the rafters. He took the story on again. ‘In some tales, a woman is chained to a post on the beach, where she is left to appease the Draugen.’
Linnéa whimpered in disgust, but Jonas wouldn’t stop. ‘The awful creature approached. He was seven feet tall, his face solid like yellow wax, with hairs sticking out of his nose and ears. He had yellow eyes, and an evil intent. His hands were impossibly large and calloused. The woman would rather die than become his plaything.’
‘So she called out for help,’ said Linnéa, ‘but no-one came to save her, especially not the useless men who had courted her for weeks before.’ She said the last sotto voce, but everyone heard her as intended.
‘She called out to Sif,’ boomed Magnus. ‘Goddess of the Earth, wife of Thor.’
The cabin was silent. Magnus fully occupied the porch and looked like he had been stuffed there but didn’t quite fit, he was so big. ‘Sif,’ she cried, ‘burn me like a sheaf of corn, turn my dress to white ashes, and my body to black soot. Leave my dress on the beach as a warning to others. Bury my body in the marsh, where I might grab the ankles of men who dare to create these monsters.’
Suddenly, Mette shrieked. Per had clamped a hand on her leg. ‘Don’t! I’m scared.’
‘Good,’ said Erik, ‘that’s the point. Nice work, Magnus.’
There was a noise outside the cabin. ‘What was that?’ asked Linnéa. She looked wide-eyed out of the window.
‘I don’t know,’ Erik said. ‘A giant bluebird?’
‘Professor! Come on, you heard it too,’ said Linnéa. ‘It sounded like an axe chopping wood.’ She got up and went to the window for a look.
‘Where’s it coming from?’ asked Mette. ‘Is it close?’
They all listened and heard another distant thwack.
‘That could be from anywhere, made by anything,’ said Per. ‘Sound travels a long way over water.’
Jonas stood up in the middle of the group as if he were in charge. Erik was sitting back, watching him take over. ‘I reckon someone on another island is chopping wood for the celebrations. It’s Monday today. Midsummer Eve is on Saturday. I’m looking forward to the party. Can we build a bonfire?’
‘Of course,’ said Erik. ‘We do so every year if the field trip coincides with Sankt Hans.’
They heard the cracking sound again. Linnéa was fearful. ‘That sounds like it’s nearby, maybe from up in the mountain?’
Erik watched the birds fly over the sea illuminated by the perpetual sun on the horizon. ‘It sounds like the chopping of wood. Somewhere a traditional Norse is chopping wood ready to build a beacon or a bonfire.’
‘I don’t like it,’ said Mette. ‘It scares me.’
‘I’ll protect you,’ said Per, putting his arm around her.
They all heard another sound and looked up to see Magnus grinding his teeth.
Linnéa turned to Erik. ‘Will you protect us, Professor?’
‘Of course he will,’ said Mette.
Erik appeared touched. ‘Of course. This island was claimed by my forefathers, and ever since then has been looked after by a Nordveit. It is my honour to carry on their good work and, like them, offer it protection. Even though things are different now, and much more comfortable, we are still in charge.’ He sipped from his hot mug of spiced honey.
There was silence as they listened for more blows of metal axe splitting wood, or boulders on the mountain side calving into smaller rocks.
‘The door is solid,’ said Erik, ‘the cabin is well timbered. We are well supplied.’
‘But we have no communications!’ said Linnéa.
‘True,’ said Erik. ‘You will soon forget what day it is, and how long you have been here. You will return a different person to when you arrived.’
The lights on the room pillars went out and, in the gloom, a giant shape emerged from the cabin doorway. The figure walked between the students slumped on their cosy sofas. The contents of Erik’s mug were spilt on the floor. He later said that it could have been much worse: Magnus’ hands could have closed around slender necks in the half-dark. Students could have been carried away to their fate, two at a time, all the way up Trollveggen! At least Magnus would finally have been happy!
They all heard what Magnus whispered as he walked past Per. ‘I want to stuff you into my sack.’
‘Arsehole,’ said Per, when the lights came back on. ‘That’s your monster, right there.’
CHAPTER 3
BERGEN AIRPORT WAS clean, modern, well sign-posted and easily navigated. I cleared passport control and walked through the “Nothing to Declare” channel in Customs. The Norwegian police officers were looking at me and one called me over. He spoke English and I explained that I was on my way to Ålesund and the art nouveau museum. Then there was some serious squabbling in the queue behind the policeman, so I was able to move on without having a conversation about where I was actually staying. Alexander Clearly was going with the flow, as usual.
I took a tram to the market and looked around. The market was full of customers browsing its stalls of fresh fish and other seafood. Roasted whale did not appeal; the thick, dark meat was an unnatural food to a visitor. Next to the dried, splayed and butterflied fish were animal furs and hides everted from eviscerated wolf, fox and reindeer. My hands ran over a wolf skin: it was soft, silver and warm in the weak sun, the whole pelt with the head still attached. I slung it over my back like a cape and set the wolf’s head upon my own head. The fangs came down over my eyes. If I had a stick and a drum I could be a shaman.
I took the wolf skin off and was going to give it back to the stallholder when I noticed a bear appear in front of me, a bear painted on the side of a metal hut. I stopped in my tracks, noticing a door in the hut where a person could sit and work. The bear stood on its hind legs holding a brush and a sign upon which was painted a single word: Bjørnekrem. The most powerful land animal in nature reduced to advertising shoeshine.
So why not wear the wolf skin and wear it with pride? This would be quite the fancy-dress; what great possibilities would come from this totem of virility and power? When needed in polite company, the head could be tipped back behind my neck. I raided the money my parents had given me and purchased the wolf skin.
The market holders worked quietly and efficiently. Knives flashed, sliced and slid fish off chopping blocks onto display boards. All around me this abundance of life was being laid out for its ending in a white bread roll. Fish fluttered in their holding tanks; then their heads were separated from their bodies and their guts pulled away from slowing muscles and arched spines. Flesh was pushed off bones with the back of a knife and scraped onto a board, and a sign denoting the price tag stuck in each fillet: fifty kroners for a sandwich that included some lettuce leaves. Then the board was dunked in water, run under a tap, and the process repeated by a member of the world’s dominant species, the one wearing the orange plastic apron.
I wasn’t hungry. I felt suddenly lonely; I was missing the warmth of Melanie and the excitement of our passion. But she needed rest, peace and safety; and most of all she needed her family. She didn’t need me.
I left the market, patting the bear on its snout as I passed, much to the amusement of a woman selling plastic Viking helmets to tourists. It was a short walk to the harbour and when I reached it, I stood by the railings near where the fishing boats were berthed and thought about my next move.
Modern travel was easy. Getting to Bergen was easy. All you needed was your passport, some cash and to be prepared to wait a few hours at the airport for the next available flight. I knew that Ålesund was a minor destination, but it was enough to send me on my journey again. One destination was as good as another when all you wanted to do was travel; I had decided to hitch-hike and see the country that way. I now had a map of Norway that I had taken from the seat rest of the chair in front of me on the plane. Bergen was in the south, and there were a lot of roads, islands and fjords north towards Ålesund. The true north was well beyond, starting at Tromsø, according to the ancient adventurers.
Nearer the sea wall, several fishermen were working on boats at the end of wooden piers. They hosed the decks clean of the blood spilled by the fish now at the market, and loaded baskets and lines onto boats with red hulls and white decks. Some of the men were mending nets, talking loudly, mostly complaining.
A skinny dude with a white shirt hanging out over slim jeans slung below his hip bones tried to pick me up.
‘English?’ he asked, offering me a cigarette.
Was there a sign on my head? I took the cigarette and crumbled it in front of him.
He laughed. ‘Yes, these cancer sticks are bad for you.’ He lit up his cigarette. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I live here.’
‘Really? What do you do?’
‘I teach karate.’
He coughed and dropped his cigarette, caught it in his hands, burnt himself. His smile was a mile wide. ‘OK, I’ll be careful.’
The fishermen were making a racket. ‘What are they complaining about?’ I asked.
‘There are problems at the dam. Something has affected the salmon.’ My new acquaintance listened on my behalf. ‘The ferry company is not stopping along the coast until some problem at the harbour at Tromsø has been cleared up. Some of the men are saying to forget salmon and think about lobster instead.’
‘Trouble in paradise,’ I suggested.
‘You think this is paradise. Have you seen my room?’
‘I also teach kung fu.’
He looked at me sharply. ‘You’re different from the others.’
A seagull flew past my head, wheeled in the sky and landed on the mast of a fishing boat. Other birds followed, pecking at the litter on the ground. I cannot fly, so I will have to sail. I will have to be clever again. I will go up the coast and find Ålesund and enjoy it. Then I will move on and find a place to live for a while. I have three months I can spend as a tourist. Something tells me the people of this country will not mind me living amongst them. I can earn enough money to get by and I will be careful about whom I meet.
‘Where can I get a boat out of here?’
‘Don’t you know? I thought you lived here?’
‘I did once, but the neighbourhood’s going downhill.’
‘Screw you, tourist,’ said my friend, and he walked away.
I found a newspaper stand and looked at the front page. Nothing in Norwegian made much sense. There were no English language papers on sale. I picked up the Norway Post and turned the pages. There was a large picture of a man wearing a strange pointed hat. He stood in front of a herd of reindeer with a rifle raised to his shoulder and aimed at a distant wolf.
I shivered, as if the wolf skin around my shoulders remembered the moment. Nothing was right in the world of the harbour fishermen, and there were other problems. The country was overrun with wolves, it seemed. Christmas would be threatened, owing to a lack of reindeer following their predations. I had jumped from the frying pan into the fire.
I walked around the harbour looking for a boat with a captain. Some of the fishermen I passed did not like my animal cloak: a man howled at me to make his point. So I wrapped the fur up around my arm and made no one else unhappy.
At one powerful-looking motor yacht, a dozen or more men were waiting. They were not fishermen, but climbers, kitted out in climbing gear. I heard some English words softened by French accents and figured that they were going up the coast to the next town. They seemed to be showing a lot of interest in the cliffs and did turn out to be some sort of mountaineering team.
A man with a white beard and a blue cap was doing the Norway Post crossword in the cabin of the boat. A sign on the quay said Taxi.
‘Hello. Are you for hire?’
‘What is your name and business?’ asked the captain, not looking up.
‘I am Alexander, son of Joseph, who married Harold’s daughter, Margaret, both of the land of the Angles in the ancient times. My business is adventure.’ I unwrapped the wolf skin and placed it back over my shoulders to make my point. ‘Any chance of a ride to Ålesund?’
The captain looked at the fourteen men on the deck draped with ropes carrying hard helmets. ‘Where is your gear?’
‘They have my gear for me.’
‘You do not look like a mountaineer.’
I leaned in. ‘I’m the cook. Cordon Bleu. Usually do the chalets in the Alps. But for this season, I have the task of keeping this lot fed with haute cuisine.’
The captain shrugged. ‘Fifty kroner.’
I pulled out the empty pockets of my trousers and placed my hands together as if I were pleading. Part of my brain acknowledged the comforting pressure of four hundred kroner strapped to my thigh.
‘No.’ The man shook his head and turned away. He put down his newspaper and walked past me to check on his paying customers.
