“Aud?” Julia, on the bottom of the five steps leading to the door. I joined her.
Urnes church smelt of wood, old but hale Scotch pine, beeswax, and fresh flowers. Light shimmered through windows three stories up, drenching the upper tiers of wood, turning them to gold, softening the second tier to rich honey, and dimming on the dark, massive uprights of the bottom tier. Here and there red or yellow or blue or green paint caught the light where centuries ago craftspeople had painted the carvings for the greater glory of god.
“I had no idea wood could be so beautiful,” Julia said. “So simple and pure. And it looks…well, it doesn’t look a thousand years old. I can’t see any cracks or woodworm.”
I laid my hand on one of the massive staves. “The people who built these churches understood wood, and they were not in a hurry.” Carpenters would have gone into the forest to select several Scotch pines, but they didn’t fell them, just cut off the tops and branches. While the trees still stood, the outer sapwood was scraped off. The trunks were left standing for five to eight years. The trees died gradually and the remaining heartwood became impregnated with resin—proof against damp and pests and aging. They built to last, which is why everything is made from wood. The brackets between stave and plank are made of birch. Most of them are taken from where the root joins the stem, so the curve in the grain is natural, and very strong. All the pins and other connectors are juniper, a dense softwood. There is no iron to rust and to rot the wood. I thumped the stave. “This church has stood for a thousand years and there’s no reason it should not stand for a thousand more.”
Julia looked at the flowers, at the new hymnal someone had left on one of the pews. “It’s still used.”
“Hjørdis brought me here to services several times.”
She sat at the end of a pew. “I can’t imagine how it must be to grow up with history all around you. To walk the same path your fifty-times great-grandmother walked, to baptise your child where you were baptised, and your mother, and her mother. To see life continue so clearly, to know that your child will see the same tree, fish in the same fjord, pick the same flowers at the same time of year.” She reached for my hand. “Most of us stumble along, making up the rules as we go along, but we’re missing so much…. When I was little, the Tutankhamen exhibit came through Boston and I went to see it. Wow, I thought, look, those pieces of jewellery are thousands of years old! I couldn’t even touch it, but it thrilled me to know that people whose bones turned to dust and blew away and was maybe reincorporated in some tree that died hundreds of years ago to make some boat or other, had made something I could look at. But this, this is something else. It’s part of the everyday, it’s part of ordinary life.” She turned my hand palm up, traced the lines there. “I’m beginning to understand, I think. All those things that make you you, your clarity and solidity and certainty, come from this. You can actually reach out and touch your past. It’s in the wood, in the cold, clear water of the fjord and in the hard rock of the mountain. And the wood and the fjord and the mountain are in you, clear and strong and massive.” She looked at me then, reached to trace the line of my cheekbone, my nose, my jaw. “Aud, Aud, Aud.”
A shoal of clouds, faintly violet on their undersides, swam slowly up the fjord behind us as we walked back to the seter. At this time of year I didn’t know if that meant rain.
Over a lunch of salad and cold cuts, Julia asked me what my name meant.
“Haven’t a clue. But I was named after Aud the Deep-minded, who was born not far from here, in Sogn, in the ninth century.”
“Oh, good, another story.”
The phone rang. We looked at each other blankly. There had never been a phone at the family seter. The noise was so alien it took me a moment to identify, and then another moment to find the phone. It was up in the loft, in my jacket pocket. I answered it.
“It’s for you,” I called to Julia, then walked it down and handed it over. “Edvard Borlaug. He sounds rather agitated—for Edvard.”
She took it. “Edvard, how are y—Slow down, slow down, I don’t understand. Wednesday? But—No, of course I can be there. Of course I understand.” What day is it? she mouthed at me. Monday, I mouthed back. “It will be—Edvard, take a deep breath, please. I’ll talk to them, I’ll be more than happy to talk to them. Once they understand the general concept I’m sure everything will be fine. I’ll drive in tomorrow and we’ll cook up a plan of action. Tomorrow. Yes. Oh, about two o’clock. Yes, I’ll come and see you then. Yes. Don’t worry, Edvard. Tomorrow at two. You’re more than welcome.”
She clicked off. “He was practically hysterical.”
“For Edvard.”
“For Edvard. The board met yesterday and he’s heard that his proposal might not get approval.”
“So I gather we’ll be going back to Oslo for a day or two for some hand holding.”
“You don’t have to come. I’ll drive down, see Borlaug tomorrow afternoon, stay at the hotel, have an informal meeting with one or two of the board in the morning, and be back early afternoon Wednesday.” She slid onto my lap. “Will you miss me?”
“No. I’m coming with you.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s an easy drive. I know the route, know the city and hotel, know my way to Olsen Glass, know my way back. I’ll be busy the whole time and all you’d do is sit around in waiting rooms. You’d be crazy to do that when you could be here. If you come with me I’ll feel selfish, spoiling your vacation.” She hugged me, then held me at arm’s length. “Is that okay?”
She was my hawk, built to soar above it all. You don’t chain hawks. At some point you let them go and watch them rise, and stand there with your fist out hoping they came back, that they don’t run into a keeper’s gun, or a bigger hawk, or a vast shadowy hand stretching across the ocean from Atlanta. No. A hawk’s job is to fly, not be afraid. I made my face smile. “I’ll just have to walk that glacier on my own tomorrow.”
“I’d forgotten about that. We could call Gudrun—”
“No need. I’ll go on my own, and when you get back, I’ll be able to show you the wonders of the ice. Just…come back quickly. And take the phone with you, just in case.” She felt so light on my lap. So precious.
“If I take the phone, I can’t call you.”
“Very true.” I kissed the side of her neck where the pulse fluttered. Skin was so thin, so fragile. One nick and her heart would pump that thick red blood all over the floor.
She arched and the pulse under my lips thudded. “Just think of the reunion,” she whispered, and outside the grass began to bend under fat raindrops.
Julia wore a grey-blue cotton dress and tucked her rich hair up behind a matching bandeau. I wanted to tear it off, let her hair fall over my hands, and carry her inside to bed. Instead, I held the door of the Audi while she climbed in, and closed it behind her. She poked her head through the window, kissed me on the cheek and started the engine. In two minutes, all that was left was a curling trail of dust up the track.
I shouldered my backpack and walked down to the farm. The veal calves in their wooden pens were fractious, and Gudrun when she appeared was distracted.
“I didn’t hear the car,” she said.
“No. Julia’s taken it to Oslo until tomorrow.”
“You’re still going to the glacier.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know if I have the time to drive you—”
“I can walk to Nigardsbreen. It’s a lovely day.”
“Nigardsbreen?” She gave me a dubious look. “Walking tours have been postponed until June, because of the late spring.” When spring came late, so did the thaw, when the ice is at its most unpredictable. The small tongue of the great Jostedalsbreen glacier would be less stable and so more dangerous than its more massive parent. I just waited. Eventually she waved a hand towards the south sheds. “The equipment’s in the usual place. I looked it over.”