They spread two nets out on the harbour side, and the others have to weight them with slick black stones. Then, taking one at a time, Kirsten shows them how to work them into a fold that can be opened easily.
‘How do you know this?’ says Edne.
‘My husband taught me.’
‘Why?’ says Edne, shock apparent in her thin voice.
‘Just as well he did,’ snaps Kirsten. ‘Now the next.’
They are watched on all sides from windows and most keenly from the doorway of the kirke. Pastor Kurtsson’s slight frame is backed by the brightness of candles and the wooden cross glowering behind. They are being judged, unfavourably at that.
Finally they load the boat with the nets and themselves. Mamma has made Maren a meal, just as she used to for Erik and Pappa, of flatbrød sprinkled with flax, and a strip of dried cod from Pappa’s last catch. She told Maren this detail proudly, as if it is a blessing and not as Maren feels it, an omen. A skin of light beer sloshes over her heart.
Before she steps into the boat Maren does what she has been avoiding for months now, and looks directly at the sea, slapping the side of Mads’s boat with careless little touches. Waves, Maren corrects. The sea doesn’t have fingers, or hands, or a mouth that can open and swallow. It doesn’t watch her: doesn’t think anything of her at all.
She takes up an oar, and with Edne at her other side, begins to row. None of those watching cheer, or wave them off, and once the women are on their way they turn their backs.
Kirsten matched them according to size. Edne and Maren are of a similar height and age, though Edne is a little thinner. Maren has to temper her stroke to meet her, and from the seesawing of their path she can tell that others have not yet grasped the need to make allowances and adjustments for the rhythm of your partner. The calculation of it is so distracting Maren doesn’t much care that land is drawing further and further away, how soon they will be at the harbour mouth and how beyond that is the sea proper, full of whales and seals and storms, and men drowned and never returned.
Her arms ache within minutes. Though none of them live idly, this is a different sort of movement, this folding forward and straining back, all in your shoulders and arms and licking up your neck and down your back, the seat hard beneath your thighs. The birds begin to circle, feinting so low towards the boat that Edne squeals.
Maren’s breath has a song to it, a wheeze she can feel tracing down into her lungs and bringing up stale air, tasting like dust. Her hair is dripping sweat and sea spray down the back of her coat, face numb already, lips cracking around her foul breath. It is no wonder that the men kept their beards long: with her bare face she feels as unsuited to the sea as a newborn.
They reach the harbour mouth and suddenly are at open ocean. The wind comes stronger as soon as they leave the inlet, and a couple of the women cry out as the boat rocks against the strengthened waves.
‘First net,’ says Kirsten, voice still steady. Edne and Maren unfold it as the others continue to row. They spread the net as though they are making a bed with fresh sheets and throw it. It settles like a blanket over the waves, and drops down, tethered to the surface by regular plugs of cork. They keep it trailing from the boat with rope and throw the other net over the opposite side.
‘Drop anchor,’ says Kirsten. Magda and Britta heave it overboard and let the heavy metal fall. The men would cast off entirely and go further out to set more, but they are loath to travel beyond the jut of Hornøya island. The ache in Maren’s arms has pooled into heaviness, and she is working hard not to look at the stac crouching barely a hundred feet away.
With the boat secured and nets down, something close to joy spreads through them. Magda laughs at the swooping birds and this brings an echo to Maren’s own mouth. They fall silent almost as fast, but something has lifted. They slouch back into the curves of the boat and share their meals between them. The clouds sweep aside and though she can’t feel its warmth, the sun is starting to redden Maren’s nose. She feels tired and happy, and does not think of the whale at all.
After an hour or so, a shadow crosses the sun, clouds turning swift and the sea swelling once again. An awful quiet passes through, but there is nothing to do but wait. Spitsbergen, where Kirsten says the Lensmann fought back pirates, sits beyond a horizon sparkling with ice. It could be that they can see to the end of the world, here.
‘Nets,’ says Kirsten. ‘Come on.’
Maren knows it is good the moment they start pulling. The net is heavy and strains their sore arms, but as the first shift and flip of fish begin to break the green chop of the water they are shrieking joy through ragged throats. Pulling harder and faster, they soon spill a half-net into the bottom of the boat.
Aside from the skrei and other whitefish fit for tørrfisk, there are herring neat and silver as needles, and salmon that thrash until Kirsten picks them up, one by one, and smashes their heads over the sides of the boat. Edne shrinks back but Maren cheers with the others. The other net is nearly as full: a single redfish thrashes bewildered amongst cod. Maren lifts it almost tenderly, and takes firm grasp of its tail. The snap of its head against the boat sends a thrill through her aching belly.
‘Well done,’ says Kirsten, a hand on her shoulder, and for a moment Maren thinks she might blood her cheeks like a man after a hunt.
There is light enough for another cast-off, but they don’t want to stretch their luck. They turn for home, and now they are facing the open water, broken only by Hornøya island and its stac of heaped rocks. Edne whispers a prayer beneath her breath, and Maren closes her eyes, breathing the air in deep, feeling the drag of her oar.
The row home feels fast, all of them finding each other’s pace more easily, like a well-worn tune. There is no one waiting as they draw in. Kirsten jumps ashore to tether them, and Maren watches the dark water and thinks that maybe the whale was shadowing them all along, and will now rise to break the boat across its back.
But soon she is being helped onto the harbour edge, the ground unsteady beneath her. Land has been made strange from even their half-day at sea: Maren wonders how sailors can stand to come ashore at all. The other women start to gather when they bring the catch to the troughs, Toril at their head. There is a subdued cheer as the nets are emptied, and Maren can barely believe how many fish there are.
‘God provides,’ says Toril, though the ache in Maren’s arms tells her it was not God but they who brought this catch home.
Mamma comes to the harbour like an invalid, leaning on Diinna, and Maren can see baby Erik’s hat over her shoulder. Diinna’s lips are pursed. She doesn’t like being left alone with Mamma: recently Mamma has become absent-minded. She gets in the way and does household tasks wrong, darns already mended stockings, leaves the lids off jars so they spoil. Diinna would rather be on the boat than at home with her child and Mamma, Maren is sure.
Maren helps sort the fish, and atop the regular meting-out of their portion, Kirsten gives Maren the redfish she killed. She thinks to tell Mamma what she did but Mamma shrinks away from it, and from Maren. She says, ‘You have blood on your cheek,’ then turns and follows Diinna, laden with their share of the catch, back to the house, leaving Maren to seek out the smudge herself.
When Maren reaches home she lets Diinna help prepare all but the redfish. She scrapes it clean of scales herself, draws a line from its mashed head to its narrow tail, and brings out the guts. She settles them beside the board, and doesn’t let Diinna throw them away: they are blue and red and translucent. She throws them instead on the fire, watches them sizzle and dissolve.