The Last Boat Home (20 page)

Valentin stares out at her from an ochre-tinted photograph. He is young – younger, she thinks, than when he visited her town. His hair curls away from a face as wide and smooth as a pie dish. One shoe rests on a dumb-bell, which lies idle on the ground while he grins and holds a medal in the palm of his hand. With the other, he clutches a flag that is wrapped around his shoulders. The tallest of the men beside him only reaches his chin.

Else begins to read the text that runs down the left side of the window:

Born in 1948 in Sofia, Bulgaria, Valentin Popov showed himself to be a weightlifter of promise early in life. At the age of 16, he made his debut in the Light-heavyweight weight class at the European Weightlifting Championships. He took gold at the same event the following year.

In 1967, Valentin joined the Moscow Circus and toured Europe as the troupe’s strong man. At the end of the season, he seized an opportunity to stay in the West, defecting from the Eastern bloc and joining a circus that was headed north. The next ten of more than twenty years performing as a strong man were spent travelling throughout Scandinavia. In total, he appeared in the manège in twelve countries with five different circuses.

His experiences fuelled a dream of one day starting a circus of his own. In 1989, together with his wife, Flaviana, Valentin began hiring acts for a breathtaking, breakthrough programme. The now famous yellow-and-red Big Top was erected in Bari on opening night and, for the very first time, Valentin stepped into the manège as ringmaster. The audience’s response to the show was overwhelming and Circus Valentino was born.

Every year since, Valentin, Flaviana and their children, Patrizia and Paolo, have taken Circus Valentino on tour, to the delight of the viewing public. With a reputation built through critical acclaim and commercial success, it has become Italy’s favourite circus …

An image among several arranged alongside the text catches Else’s eye. She stops reading. The purple and red swirls of the circus poster are faded with age. From the centre of the placard, a clown seems ready to burst from the display. His eyebrows glance off his hairline in two arched bows; his teeth are railway tracks that split and meet again on the other side of his nose. In the top left-hand corner, the declaration ‘Circus Leona Is Coming!’ shoots a chill up Else’s spine. Next to the clown, a man in a loincloth lifts a horse over his head.

Else blinks at the caricature of the strong man before continuing to scroll down the page, taking in the rest of the scanned memorabilia that Valentin must have collected throughout his travels. In one photograph he straddles the midpoint of a teeterboard, sporting a costume that complements those of the women he balances on his shoulders. In another, a circus troupe glitters against a Big Top backdrop. Valentin smiles next to a stilt-walker, who looms out of the shot.

The final picture shows the strong man – now Circus Director – posing proudly with his family. They stand together in the manège: three generations of dark, foreign beauty. Valentin is buttoned into a spangled coat and a shirt whose frills bloom at his chin. Helices of hair poke out from under the brim of his top hat. His moustache has been shaved clean. One arm encircles his
wife, who is striking in a peacock-feathered dress and an emerald dusting of make-up. Their son and daughter beam on the couple’s either side with their spouses, who each hug a baby to their chests. Between Valentin and Patrizia, a child volunteers a shy, milk-toothed grin. She holds her grandfather’s hand close to her cheek.

Else clicks the ‘X’ at the top left corner of the display box. The circus’s blaze snuffs out, clearing the way for a different photo saved to the desktop. It shows three generations of her own: Else, Marianne and Liv, so alike, all of them, with their uncertain smiles and hair a shade of summer gold. Her eyes find Marianne’s, which share her colouring, the grey of a winter morning that Liv, too, has inherited. That high forehead, the stubborn chin. Else presses the computer’s ‘Off’ button. The desktop goes black.

She is asleep in front of the TV when the snap of the lock startles her awake. She props herself up as Marianne enters the sitting room. Tonight her uniform is rumpled. Her hair is bunched in a knot at the back of her head and her make-up has lost its lustre, though a trace of kohl is still smudged under her eyes. Marianne drops onto the sofa by her mother’s feet. For the first time that evening, Else is restored to a fragile calm.

‘How was work?’ she asks.

‘Busy,’ says Marianne.

‘More than usual?’

‘Kjersti Nydahl had a birthday party,’ she says. ‘Twenty people, and all of them ordered sweet and sour pork. I think the manager had to go out back to slaughter another pig. What are you watching?’

‘I don’t know,’ Else says.

‘Why don’t you go to bed?’

‘Are you staying tonight?’

Marianne shakes her head. ‘Mads is picking me up in half an hour.’

‘You look tired,’ Else says.

‘We’ll take it easy,’ she says, ‘don’t worry.’

The glow from the TV bleaches Marianne’s features, but still Else sees the hardening of her jaw. ‘That sounds like a good idea,’ she says and rubs her eyes. She has had a long day herself.

‘Did you talk to Liv?’ Marianne asks.

‘She’s fine. She says she’s having a nice time. They went to the Oil Museum earlier.’

‘Sounds like a blast.’

‘You should ask Mads over for dinner.’

The crackle of gunshot pulls Else’s attention back to the television set. A wild man sprints across the screen. Another follows, as unflustered as the first was panicked. Else senses Marianne searching her face. She keeps her look even. She will manage this.

‘If you want,’ she says. ‘Whenever you want.’

‘You’re inviting him for dinner?’

‘It’s up to you, Marianne.’

Else pushes herself off the sofa and stoops to kiss her daughter’s forehead like she used to do when she was a child. A wayward curl tickles her chin.

‘It would be nice to meet him,’ she says.

‘You know he’s not going anywhere, Mamma.’

‘I know,’ she says.

Else shuffles away. At the top of the stairs, she flips on a switch to light her path down the corridor. She shuts the door behind her when she reaches her bedroom and leans against the wood. It is cool through her T-shirt. Tinny sounds from the TV filter in through the walls, their threat neutralised with distance. Else closes her eyes. She folds her arms across her chest and presses, trying to smother the familiar ache. In the darkness, she sees Victoria as she left her, crying alone in her yellow kitchen. She sees the strong man hoisting a horse above his head.

Then

1975

ELSE FLINCHED WHEN
she heard the knock at the door, but did not look when her mother stepped into her bedroom. Her legs, arms, back, neck throbbed from having spent hours folded up in this spot, her forehead pressed against the windowpane as she peered into the night. Now, the darkness had dulled to a flat, grey morning.

‘How did you sleep?’ her mother asked.

She did not answer. Her eyes strayed to the spring buds that blistered the bark of the morello cherry tree. If she were to stand and open the window and stretch out her arms as far as she could reach, her fingers would almost touch the tips of its branches. She knew, because she had tried it. They were still too far away to be of any use to her. The three-metre drop from the window ledge to the ground put paid to any ideas she had of jumping.

‘You haven’t spent the night on the chair, have you?’ Dagny said. Crockery clacked as a breakfast tray was set down on the bed.

‘I hope you’re hungry,’ Dagny said. ‘I opened another jar of strawberry jam. The last one is already finished.’

Else’s eyelids were heavy as she blinked and shifted her position to rest her forehead on a new patch of window. Behind her, the springs of the bed announced the lowering of her mother’s body onto the mattress.

‘Else,’ she said. ‘Please, you have to eat something. Are you listening?’

They sat in silence for a minute, then another, before Else’s tongue came unstuck from the roof of her mouth. Her throat was dry and so she swallowed, realising that more than a day must have passed since she last spoke.

‘Has he said when he will let me out?’ she asked.

‘I am doing what I can,’ her mother said.

Else nodded. Her gaze drifted to the fjord. The islets of ice that had deadened its surface during the winter months were all but gone, licked away from underneath by the steel-coloured waves. She would have missed the last of the skating at Elvebakken by now. Any frozen strips left on the water could not be trusted to take her weight. Else imagined gliding out too far and the ice splitting around her, one fracture giving way to the next in the shape of a trawler’s net. She closed her eyes and relented to sinking.

Her mother cleared her throat. ‘You’ll never guess who I saw at the market yesterday?’ The bed creaked. Else heard careful footsteps. ‘Lars Reiersen was buying sugar peas. He was asking after you. I told him you were feeling better.’

Her mother put an arm around her shoulder. When she felt fingers in her hair, she did not pull away. She opened her eyes and they settled again on the water. Lars had been at the market, asking after her. Lars had bought sugar peas with no idea of what was happening.

‘Your father can’t keep this up,’ Dagny said, ‘and I am trying. I promise I am.’

Her voice cracked and Else looked at her face. There were no new bruises, as far as she could tell. A scarf knotted at her mother’s
throat hid the fingerprints on her neck and, under the knobbly yarn of her jumper sleeve, a bandage swaddled the spot where her father had held the kettle two weeks before. Tricks and camouflage to hide her slow ruin; perhaps there were other injuries that Else could not see? She took her mother’s hand. Side by side, they contemplated the cherry tree through the window. Its branches waved in the murky morning.

The front door banged shut and her mother leapt to her feet.

‘There is your father,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back soon. Please, eat something.’

She left the breakfast tray on the quilt and hurried out of the room. Else stared after her before turning again to the window.

Lars at the market.

Lars buying sugar peas.

Lars asking after her, but not coming to her rescue.

Two weeks had passed and he had not come. He would not come for her now.

At the edge of the waterfront, the snow that remained was packed as tight as stone. Else wondered if she would still be here when it disappeared altogether. In the time she had been shut in her room, she had witnessed the shrinking, hardening, blackening of all of that white, exposing more and more of the smothered earth underneath. It stretched brown and barren from the farmhouse to the pier. Twice, she had imagined seeing the
Frøya
floating there, anchored fast and bobbing on the water, but when she blinked, the boat was gone.

Now, in the empty space, an eider duck beat its wings before settling on the water’s surface and propelling itself into the fjord. A light rain was starting. Its drops trickled in crooked lines down the windowpane, sketching a senseless blueprint on the other side of the glass.

It was night when the first pebble hit the window and Else was startled awake. She opened her eyes to a clear sky pricked with stars. From the next room, her father’s snores shook the walls of the house. Each intake of breath devoured the silence.

‘Else!’

Her name came from outside and she scrambled to her feet. She undid the window latch and peered over the sill, but saw no one.

‘Over here!’

The voice was closer than she had anticipated. Else looked across to the branches of the cherry tree, still visible in the moonlight. They sagged under her visitor’s weight. Without the cover of leaves to hide behind, his outline was plain to see. He clutched the tree trunk with one arm and waved his free hand at her.

‘Lars?’

‘It’s Petter.’

In spite of herself, Else’s heart sank. ‘Petter,’ she said, ‘what are you doing here?’

‘Oh, you know. Just felt like a chat.’

‘A chat? Are you mad?’

She heard a giggle. ‘Not as mad as all that. There’s a party at the paddock. I thought tonight you should come.’

It was not what she expected. Else wanted to laugh, but her relief was fleeting. She glanced down at the ground for what might have been the hundredth time that day.

‘I can’t get out,’ she said. ‘My bedroom door is locked.’

‘Your door is locked? Why’s it locked?’

‘It’s too high for me to get down from here,’ she said.

Petter was quiet. Else strained to see the details of his face but all she could make out were his eyes, glittering in the half-light like two pots of oil.

‘You’ll have to jump,’ he said finally. ‘Not down. Across to me.’

‘If I could have done that, I would have done it already.’

‘But now I’m here to catch you,’ Petter said.

‘You
are
mad,’ she said.

‘Maybe. But I’m a decent catch, too.’

Else shook her head and withdrew into her room. She sat on the bed beside the food tray that her mother had left for her earlier that evening. She had not touched the stew. It had congealed in its bowl and now its flavours mixed in the air with traces from her chamber pot, settling on her skin and weaving themselves with the fibres of her clothing. She blinked at the cold vegetables and a jolt of fury shocked her muscles awake. Her eyes skipped from the washbasin in one corner, still filled with dirty water, to the basket of knitting that her mother had brought for her distraction. Each object screamed of her captivity. Else imagined feeling the cold wind in her hair, slapping her cheeks, scouring her lungs, rinsing out her mouth as she bolted through darkness.

She listened for her father’s snores, then hurried back to the window.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I’m coming. Just give me a minute.’