“I’m so sorry,” said Charlene. “We didn’t really talk this through.”
“Please, please,” Leif said, holding out his hand. “He’s mad. Okay, no problem. Maybe I came on too strong. In Norwegian we have qualifiers, and I don’t know how to translate these into English. Sometimes I get carried away. But believe me, I understand the gravity of this decision. I don’t take it lightly, at all. Just keep in mind this is a valuable offer that I’m putting on the table. Think it over. Nothing has to be decided now. You’ve come such a long way. Relax. Enjoy the famous Finnmark air. There’s no pressure to do anything right now. You are my guests. My very special guests.”
• • •
A CABIN HAD BEEN arranged for their arrival. Radar played with a miniature troll he had found on the coffee table and sang quietly to himself.
“Billy clop gruff, trip trop goat come knockin’. Knock it up my bridge.”
Charlene walked slowly around the room, running her fingertips across all the old wooden surfaces. She washed her hands and face. Kermin was busy repacking their things.
“I cannot believe it,” he was saying. “What ever happened to Europe? Drkadžije! And how do these people make a living? Where does money come from? Kakvi ludaci jebo te!”
She came back into the room and ran her hand through her hair.
“Kermin,” she said, and she was about to ask why they had come all this way just to do nothing, but before she could even begin, Kermin looked up at her and said, without hesitation, “No,” and she knew that he was right. She put her wet hands to her face and tried again, halfheartedly, feeling the tears coming — she was not quite sure why; maybe because she knew it was already over. Her hands were cool and wet against her cheeks, and she knew it was madness. Suddenly she saw herself from a great distance, as though she were standing very still on a stage in an empty theater. How had it come to this? Why had she been so intent on coming here? What had she thought would actually happen?
“Trip trop knockin’ on my bridge, Mama!” said Radar, offering up the troll to her.
She took the troll and turned it over in her hands. “So what do we do?” she asked quietly.
“What do we do?” said Kermin. “What we’re always doing. We go home. We live our lives like people.”
“Okay,” she said. “Yes.” Breathing. “I should’ve told you. There was a telegram. .”
“Telly-gram,” Radar cried. “Machine say ‘Hello how are you?’”
“Don’t worry,” said Kermin. “We go home. We forget this.”
“Okay,” she said. “But we can’t just leave, Kerm. The plane is tomorrow. You can’t just wait by the door the whole evening with your suitcase. Be gracious. The man just wanted to help us.”
“The man does not say what he really wants.”
“Just be nice. For tonight, and then tomorrow we can leave. We don’t have to do anything. It’s a vacation, that’s all. Think of it like that. They paid for it. We’re on vacation.”
He stood still. “For you,” he said finally. “And then we go.”
“And then we go,” she agreed.
They embraced. It had been a long time since they had hugged like this. Radar came over and grabbed their legs. Charlene smelled the beginnings of her husband’s beard, the quiet and familiar symphony of waxen musk lingering in the neglected crinkles behind his ears. She had forgotten all this. Routine had a way of erasing intimacy’s quiet particulars.
8
The evening came, though the sun showed no intention of setting. Leif, now dressed in a crisp white button-down with yellow trousers and plush leather slippers, served them a delicious dinner of salted herring, a rutabaga-and-carrot puree called kålrabistappe, lamb sausage, and a small piece of whale meat, which Charlene tried but could not stomach.
“I’m sorry the others couldn’t join us,” said Leif. “We’re a bit swamped with all of the preparations.”
“What’re you preparing for?” Charlene asked.
“Probably a great disaster.” He laughed. “Would you like to try some aquavit? We make it here.”
Kermin refused the liquor, but Charlene warmed and opened with each glass. Radar gave a running commentary on the meal. With theatrical precision, Leif listened to the child’s words and nodded his agreement.
“Yes, yes, I’ll tell the cook,” he said. “I do apologize.”
Charlene smiled. She felt free. She wanted to tell this man everything. To kiss his bald head. They did not speak of Radar’s treatment. There was no need.
After dinner, they said goodnight to their host and walked into the strange, enduring daytime. On the path back to the cabin, they encountered an older man carrying a stack of books.
“Hello,” said Charlene, tipsy.
The man stopped. “You must be our guests,” he said and bowed. “Jens. Apologies for the mess. Although they seem to like it messy around here. They are artists, you see.”
“You’re Jens?” said Charlene. “Jens Røed-Larsen?”
He smiled at her mangled pronunciation. “I am.”
“Your son wrote to me.”
“Lars?”
“No, Per.”
He looked at her. “There must be some misunderstanding. I don’t have a son named Per.”
“Per Røed-Larsen.”
“I have a daughter, Kari. And Lars. That’s all.”
“But Leif said that Per was your son. He’s writing a history of this place. He sent me a telegram saying. .” Her words drifted off.
Jens gave her a kind smile. “Leif says many things. You must remember this about him: he’s a born performer. He has a tendency to inhabit others. The Per who wrote to you was not my son. He is another Per.”
“What do you mean? Which Per is he?”
“This I cannot say.” Jens bowed again. “Goodnight. I wish you a pleasant night’s sleep. It can be difficult if you aren’t used to the light.”
After he had left them, Kermin shook his head. “These Norwegians are such bullshit. They do not look you into your eyes. They are like a cat.”
“A cat?”
“They never say what they mean.”
Despite being utterly exhausted, Charlene considered taking a sleeping pill when they reached the cabin, fearing the midnight sun might keep her awake. This proved unnecessary: within minutes, she and Radar were both asleep, his head nestled into her belly. Kermin lay down beside her and closed his eyes, but the light seeping in between the blinds pinched at his retinas. The skin of his eyelids was not thick enough.
He shuffled out to the porch and softly twisted the dial of his portable transceiver. The frequencies buzzed and chattered; he tuned the squelch, and his radio locked on to some distant signal before settling again and again into a wash of static. He had expected as much. They were at the end of the earth. He had not brought the dipole multidirectional antenna kit that could reach the horizons beyond the horizon. Perhaps he could tap into the Wardenclyffe tower before they left tomorrow and take a quick peek into the concave Arctic radio spectrum.
Then, somewhere at seventeen meters, a channel crackled. A sign of life. Humans carving out an existence on the pole. It was a garbled Russian weatherman. The Slavic gutturals popped and exploded and then evaporated into the churning shallows of white noise. He kept twisting the dial and caught a snippet of the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back,” Michael Jackson’s young voice rolling up through the sleeve of static, exercising its magnetic pull before the song fell apart beneath the weight of its own interference, disappearing back into the tundra.