'A Private Greatness' Chapter 8

-Chapter 8-

The wind was not ideal, coming at a strange angle that seemed to rush down both sides of the fjord. It converged in great unpredictable gusts and conflicting swells and I struggled to keep the boat on a steady heading out into the mouth of the North Sea. I was looking forward to rounding the last of the endless, even green slopes, their scraggly edges humbly descending into the sea, unaware of their own imperfection. The land was beautiful in a Spartan, Nordic way. Functional and surreal at the same time, it sat framed in strange muted colors and a lack of any apparent civilization, until a little red roofed cottage or fenced-in pasture materialized in the most unlikely location. You had to hand it to these people, I thought- they were tough fuckers. Descendants of a land of snow, ice and rain, the sea and land intertwined inexorably; it was difficult to distinguish nature and urbanscape here.

At the eastern edge of the fjord which should have been west, but was fouled in some sort of strange downeast meets arctic labyrinth geometry, I was met with his first unobstructed view of the sea since sailing into Bergen a week earlier. The sight of the open ocean resonated with me in deep magnetic chills. Like a wave breaking on a hidden reef, I felt the weight of my recent encounter lift slightly. The emotional aspect was still present, the myriad eccentricities magnified into painful caricatures now that I was alone. The wind was pleasant, favorable, tinged with cold northern elements, and it propelled me onward. The gusts built into a steady breeze, not quite a gale but approaching it, and I put a reef in the main. I’d relished the awkward tightening and knotting of the difficult sail, bent on its own obedience to the wind. The wind seemed aromatic almost, scented perhaps with coal and salt cod from the Faroe Islands- Norway's mythic outpost in the arctic, where a few thousand Nordic souls persevered and perhaps prospered, somewhere to the north.

Annika had successfully dredged up the last of my resolve to be indifferent, the private self-confidence that seemed to have withered under the hot sun on the French Riviera in the preceding months, only to be stirred inexorably here in the frozen north. The true frozen season was fast approaching, and I knew that successfully keeping this illusion of a trip going hinged on heading south. South to whence I’d just come it seemed, but perhaps in a new, more favorable light. I rode the now strong northwesterly all the way into Korfjorden to the little fishing village of Kleppevik. It sat tired and shabby, long suffering its subprime location on the outer highlands. These were the looming, grayish masses of coastal rock and grass that lay perched between Bergen and Oslo, where the more benign southern fjords eventually curved eastward and gave way to the sandy beaches of Swedish vacationland.

I had passed Hakansund, but, the memory of my Swedish father who’d traveled here as a restless young man and now sat worried and weary back in New England was too sharp, and I decided to carry on to the next harbor where suitable anchorage might be found. I found what appeared to be a public mooring easily, the boat breathing with the weight of newness. Seeing no objections, I dropped sail and approached the little convex cove at a slow, unobtrusive pace, the massive inboard engines humming in low complacence. The village seemed almost deserted. A few tawdry fishing boats last asleep in the steely gray water, and little rounded waves lapped at the pebble beach a hundred meters away. The whole place had an air of decided dormancy, almost hibernation, as if I would awake in the morning and curious, miniature people in little wooden clogs and pointed hats would emerge from their red-roofed stuga's to greet me. As silly as the thought was, coupled with the alarming silence of the place it left me feeling vaguely uneasy, and I busied myself with domestic tasks below deck to distract myself from such nonsense.

At around 10 PM and shortly before I’d planned on snuffing the last little antique kerosene lantern and submitting to another night of fitful sleep, a dull amber light shone from one of the nearer cottages. A young man likely only a few years younger than myself stepped out into the inky night. At first I was hesitant, looking suspiciously to both sides, but then I walked down to the beach with the bored familiarity of someone in the small town they live in and have always lived in. I’d misplaced my old tortoiseshell glasses- actually my father’s, as we shared the same prescription- somewhere in the forward stowage the other day. I fished out my favorite pair of brass plated WWII binoculars instead, which I promptly and unashamedly pressed to the dirty, salt-crusted glass of the starboard porthole.

I followed the young man as he turned away from the beach and continued his even, confident stride across the slatted wooden boardwalks that seemed to pass for streets in this village. His gait had become irregular and questionable; he was either lost in thought or uncaring. His face did not suggest any of the typical small town substance abuse [wasn't everything a substance!?]. Instead his eyes remained sharp and inquisitive, fixed on some distant vanishing point. He seemed locked in a sort of anticipatory gaze. My attention was now full and undivided- this beat evening television or radio any night, and I wondered what sort of small town scenario was about to unfold.

The young man had now stopped, standing in what appeared to be the village center. He was still looking forward, like a driver approaching a stoplight at an uncertain speed. While lost in deciphering the man’s facial nuances, an older woman- 65 or 70 perhaps- approached the young man at a slow, steady pace from a neighboring house. She was small in stature, but I could tell she was strong, probably permanently wizened in some regrettable way from years of packing salted fish into boxes or the like. She smiled dimly, distractedly, letting her eyes wander over the distant green hillsides, sublime in the inky black moonlight. She seemed to scan the landscape as if to make sure certain familiar scenes were still there. Given the otherwise deathly calm that presided over the village, it was certainly more than coincidence that they were both out on this late weeknight.

I relished this happenstance voyeurism, courtesy of international travels and some decent on-board optics. I was expecting some sort of grandmotherly exchange of a fish or some rice pudding for a young Lars and his down-on-their luck family back up the hill. Instead when the two convened, gestures and conduct were largely impersonal and business-like. They stood a meter apart perhaps, speaking in what appeared to be casual tones. I could almost pick up across the hundred or so meters of water the insipid excitement of their exchange. The young man, who I had now profiled as a Lars, 21, father of one, out-of-work fisherman, suddenly pulled a large wad of bright cash out of his overcoat pocket and handed it obediently to the old woman for inspection. Her vague, possibly senile smile was now broad and knowledgeable as she deftly counted crisp crown bills, glancing over her shoulder reflexively when a sleeping raven alighted from atop a nearby telephone pole.

She brought a small bag out of her own overcoat, an old faux-cashmere number with oversize buttons and unnecessary embellishments that spoke of church thrift stores and thwarted style. The bag itself was beautiful- deep purple velvet that looked like a cross between a Crown Royal bag and some obscure lord's satchel. She emptied the contents into the young man's awaiting hands, and Clark could see his grip loosen unconsciously for a moment, feeling the density of its contents. Small, rectangular bars of metal, perhaps a dozen of them, filled his cupped hands. About half of them appeared to be gold, and the rest something brighter and seemingly heavier than silver- platinum?

That this possibly criminal exchange should be occurring in a small, isolated village on the Norwegian coast in this unseasonably warm fall of 1978 did not occur to me. The past 6 months had blurred what was acceptable and the transgressions against normality that used to terrify me were now amusing and sometimes enjoyable. I did, however, duck my head back under the window for a moment when the money appeared. It was an almost instinctive act- the privileged, sheltered white boy who, caught in the face of crime, protects myself from the experience more than possible harm. My view seemed pretty benign right now though, I had to admit- the bars had gone back into the little satchel, and the two shook hands amicably. They parted ways, leaving the air still with the impossibility of the night. I shook the rather odd exchange from my mind, which was now fixated on the consequences of being the only witness. I looked forward to reading about ‘Grandma's Bullion-Laundering Circuit!' in the Oslo press in what would hopefully be a few more uneventful days sailing south.

The morning arrived with the distinctive chill of fall decided. No more of this bipolar arctic temperature swing- the brief, bitter fall had arrived for good, to be followed shortly by winter. White and austere in these parts; the type of winter that muffled ambition into warm content, only to let it thaw out again in the spring. The wind was weak such that I motored out of the little cove, glancing back at the little red roof cottage where the young man lived before I lost sight of it around the point, only to find the dull amber light still glowing feebly, never turned off. The next bit of sailing intimidated me somewhat, as it had a rather notorious reputation in both ancient and modern Norse maritime lore. My charts were rudimentary, ripped yellow copies of some twice-outdated series. They showed the big rocks though, I thought cynically, but the little ones were the dangerous ones. These would have to be put out of mind, knowing that the seafloor gradient in these parts was a veritable marine Himalaya. Peaks shot up out of a thousand feet of clean, icy water only to not quite pierce the surface, the type of unseen malice that made crusty old fisherman shake in their boots.

The weather was quite lovely on the surface, however, wispy little strings of cirrus clouds streaking across a porcelain sky, racing towards Sweden and the Baltic's on a bold polar jetstream. A jet passed overhead at a surprisingly low altitude, bound for Oslo or Goteborg from NY, judging by the angle of approach, I ventured to guess. My concentration drifted for a moment as I recalled the dream-like overnight flights to Stockholm from NY as a small child, cushioned by my lack of knowledge of the emotional and financial burden these cross-Atlantic trips put on my parents. I was a product of the 'American Dream', but not in the conventional way; my parents didn't 'escape' Sweden, where presently things looked more favorable on the whole than the war-and-spending crazed States.

Rather, they chose to come to the States, voluntary immigration such a rare luxury I didn't even recognize the significance of it until now. I relished the idea of being able to immigrate unrestricted, to start a new future in Vancouver or Buenos Aires, escaping pending criminal charges in the states per his theft of a million dollar yacht. [My parents had great lawyers and could probably get him off on a misdemeanor pending proof of my drug-induced psychosis] I decided though, from the luxury of an autonomous existence in a foreign land, that I wanted to face the full consequences of what I had done when he returned to the States. Jail time, humiliation, acceptance- all the incongruous aspects of legal persecution without any entitlement or 'family connections' to bail me out.

The thought terrified me significantly more than the possibility of sinking in icy water alone on the Norwegian coast, yet I knew that consequences were as necessary as they were unavoidable. Then I would have to face the fairy-tale farce I'd been living- 'on the lam' from loved ones, from diligence to others than myself, both amongst the brick and ivy corridors of Brown and here. A few turquoise halos of shallow water passed me as I motored the Stranger out into the open water of Lysefjorden, which stretched 15 or 20 bold kilometers across. Open to the south and conflicted in a maze of secret channels and rocky islands from whence he had come, it was an analogue to my present situation, it seemed. Seemingly free but in fact tightly wound around directions and wind, rocks and obstacles. The rest of the day passed blissfully uneventful; once clear of the ship graveyard in the north end of the passage, the channel widened into a looming expanse. Seemingly stationary ferries and oil tankers passed him at odd parallel intervals, their navigation tightly dictated by the large red and green buoys marking the deepwater channel. I beat upwind into the more narrow passage of Langnuen, anchoring off the swampy, dark looking forests of Flatraker, a sleepy hamlet at the southern end of this new channel.

Venturing into the village in search of some produce, eggs, and milk, I was pleased to find the young clerk at the local market spoke excellent English and was apparently fresh from an exchange year at Wesleyan; bless globalism. She had returned to Flatraker to care for her ailing grandparents, as her own parents had moved to Oslo a few years earlier. She was kind and receptive; her features notably broad and rounded. She was not pretty in the traditional sense, but somehow this made her all the more endearing and trustworthy, her eyes hiding no suspicion or ill will. Her name was Margaret, and as the store did not have eggs or milk, she offered to walk me the half kilometer of so inland to the local dairy farm, where I might obtain some. As we walked, I began to tell her the story of the previous nights episode in Kleppevik, but she stopped me, her face arrested suddenly in a pale fear. 'Do not make up stories, Clark; it is not wise as a foreigner, especially.'

Seeing as she was so suddenly affected by my description, I pried a bit and found that a mildly notorious conman and thief, one Maxwell Lundgren, 23, Oslo Technical University dropout and brilliant personality artiste, has been on the run from Norwegian authorities for some 3 months now. He was rumored to last been seen in the rugged hills south of Bergen, and was reportedly on foot, attempting to smuggle a large quantity of crown bullion and stolen Norse artifacts traced to the Bergen Museum out of the country. She said his usual act was to pose as a young PhD student in archeology, representing the royal institute for Norse Culture, and bribe small-town museum curators or amateur artifact-diggers out of their wares. This fit the description of the exchange I had witnessed so succinctly that I shivered slightly. Margaret, now understanding that this was not some American hooligan but a genuine witness, put her arm around me gently and offered part of her flowing gray wool shawl to me, which I gladly wrapped round my inadequate windbreaker.

'We must go to the authorities first thing tomorrow morning', she told me urgently, and I sensed she had some personal connection to this Lundgren character, more than just the typical citizen's goodwill. I agreed without thinking, and then chastised myself for being bent into some interpersonal conflict; why had I felt the need to divulge my bizarre experience with her in the first place? I imagined the police arresting me on some sort of international stolen-boat/missing-person warrant, but then dismissed the possibility as unlikely, and focused on getting food and making dinner, more immediate and gratifying tasks. As I predicted, the farmer spoke almost no English, and rather than stumble over poor syntax and garbled request for 2 dozen eggs and a gallon of milk, I let Margaret translate, and handed the smiling older man 20 Kronor in brassy coins.

As they returned to the waterfront, I worked up the nerve to pry a little deeper into her connection with the bullion thief, and found out that her own grandmother, the kindly matriarch of the village, had recently been duped into selling some old Norse family artifacts to the young man at a fraction of their value. This angered me, but at the same time, I marveled at Lundgren's unusual and on the whole fairly harmless brand of crime. If and when he was prosecuted, some sympathy should be given to the fact that he hadn't physically harmed anyone, and, if his encounter last night should speak to Lundgren's character at all, his 'customers' might have even liked him. I wondered what his story was, this smart and criminally bent 23-year-old dropout, was he obsessed with wealth? With power? The victim of a bad domestic situation as a child? Or maybe just alone, an outsider like me… where was all this precious metal going? Cashing in something that conspicuous and traceable must be difficult, I thought, remembering the strange bank insignia on the little metal bars. I sensed Margaret's betrayal, though, and decided to cooperate and refrain from further analyzing the criminal's motives or connections with her.

I bid her farewell for the evening and returned to the Stranger on the little gray skiff, which I hadn't even bothered to tie up, sitting on the beach alone and thoughtful, hardly any other boats in sight. Flatraker felt almost like a piece of the Scandinavian Midwest transplanted to the coast, the people all seemed vaguely wary of the sea and terrestrially-bound, probably relicts of an earlier age where sea serpents and whirlpools swallowed Viking longboats and the ocean was a place one went to escape or disappear. I scrambled 4 of the new eggs with potatoes and onions, the warm, healthy aromas filling the cabin and clashing deliciously with the cold evening air. I had forgotten to buy beer, but an old red wine bottle provided 8 or 10 ounces of cheap compliment to my meal. Lost in thought, I recalled my last real adventure before the 'escape', and the details rushed back into his mind like the release of a dam in the desert, flooding something dry and forgotten.