Karin, in Four Parts
Sarah Berbank Green
Sarah Berbank Green
"Landscape with Stars" Henri-Edmond Cross (Henri-Edmond Delacroix), Watercolor on white wove paper, 9 5/8 x 12 5/8 in., ca. 1905–1908. Open source from The Met.
Part One
The sun is just right at this time of year. Not that I’m troubled by the darkness, mind you. It’s only that I like it best now, with the evenings that last long into the night and the low sun warm and golden upon the fields. It’s on evenings like these that I think it’s OK to have never left this island and that if this is all I know of the beauty in this world, it’s more than enough for me. If I’d travelled more, perhaps I’d have found something I liked better, and I’d never have seen this island in the same way again. I’d always be lost in the memory of something else, like those broken men returning from war.
On evenings like this, the sky and the sea bleed together until they are one. I climb over the dunes to the flat plane of sand beneath, and I see that expanse and think what it must be to be lost there, no land in sight, with only a boat to stand on and the waves rocking all around. Our sea is large and long, but not limitless. It is small compared to an ocean. And yet it must seem that the water lasts forever when you are lost in the middle of it, the dark waves all around. There is nowhere to stand, nothing solid, nothing to give you comfort, and you are all — you and the other sailors on your boat — stranded there, each of you scared to death within your hearts, none of you brave enough to mention it.
The other islands protect us from the strongest winds, and our sea has no waves. If you didn’t know better, on still and grey days you might imagine the island ended in nothing but an endless mud plain, and the movement of light on the surface was only an illusion made with mirrors. It does not matter. I imagine the waves anyway and the endless roll of the open water.
I have been off the island many times. Of course I have. But not for longer than a few days at a time and never more than 10 kilometers from the ferry dock. Our country is a tiny one anyhow and not much changes from place to place. Even on the mainland, it all looks the same — flat, watery, green and blue and yellow, dark in winter, sometimes grey, and in summer, burning golden. The summer light is a gift from the old gods, maybe, thankful that we still care for the lands that have not been lost to the sea.
Much of the land has been lost to the sea and now the island is smaller than it was when I was a girl. That is fitting. So many of our men, our sailors and fishermen, have also been lost to the sea. Our history is one of getting lost, of setting out and never coming home, of women and children waiting for ships years after the ocean had already decided to put them to rest. What can one say? It was a fact of life then and still is one now. They still set out, these children of the fields and dunes, and never come home. Not because they are dead, of course, but because they want other things elsewhere. And what is there to draw them home? They’ve left, and the fields, the summer evenings have been spoilt for them.
All three of my daughters are gone. One to Oslo, one to Copenhagen, and one, for no reason I can tell, to Prague. I don’t know what she does there. I try to imagine what the city looks like, how it smells, what it must be to live among foreign people like that, to not even understand the language. I suppose she understands some of what they say, but it can’t be like speaking her own language, the words I taught her when she was a baby, that she’s known and understood almost her whole life. Prague used to be a poor place, but not anymore, so they say. I imagine things are more difficult there than they are here. To her mind, even difficult is better than this island. She can no longer see her home properly — not as I can see it, anyhow.
My husband left me, too, but he did not go far. He lives down the road, in a house newer and smaller than the one we lived in together. He has another wife now, but it doesn’t bother me. I have another husband, too. But, what I don’t tell anyone is that my first husband will always be my true husband. He was the first and we raised our children together and there was a time when I loved him best, beyond all things. I cannot say we are friends now, but we do not resent each other much, and when we see each other down at the shop or around the village, we talk just as anyone does, the past just a secret between us two, just a bag of old coins buried beneath a tree. Neither of us has any plans to dig it up, but we both know it’s there and feel better for it all the same.
My second husband, Jonni, works on the mainland, building roads. He takes a small ferry out each morning, along with the other people who work off the island, and comes back in the evening, tired and ready to be home. Before now, the men in my family were always sailors or fishermen, like my first husband. There’s not much of a need for sailors anymore, nor for fishermen, nor for anything the island is able to give to the world. That is all right — I have no sons to carry on the sailing tradition and if I did, I expect that they wouldn’t want to anyway, the world being such a different place from what it used to be.
I stay home, which is not so common anymore, but we have few wants and Jonni’s wages pay for them all. We have saved some money by and by, and we do not worry about growing old. One day we might have to sell this house, but no matter. It has been in my family more than 300 years — the land even longer — and who will be there to take care of it once I am gone? The girls won’t want to come back, not even for the house. They keep telling me I can’t sell it, never to sell it, but what am I going to do when I’m too old to get up and down the stairs anymore, when I can’t get to the bedroom or the bathroom or even clean the floors? They’re not going to come home to look after things. I’m going to find someone who will. It will make a fine holiday home.
I won’t be giving it to my sister or her children, either. When she left this island, I was more than happy to see the back of her. That was the last time I spoke to her, and I don’t care if I ever do again.
In summer, I spend my days in the garden. The garden is the only thing that makes me sad to think that one day I’ll have to leave this house. It’s not the plants I’ll be sad to see go, though I’ve nurtured most of them since they were seedlings. Sure, I love them like a mother now that I’ve no more children at home, but plants die in the way you hope children don’t, and I never get too attached.
It’s the earth I love — and not just the earth, but the gifts it gives me. And though each year I dig straight into the heart of it, right in the same places I dug the year before, it never fails to give me something new — a broken glass bottle, half a saucer, an old nail, leather stirrups, coins, the burnt remains of old timber. These are the things that belonged to my ancestors. These are the things that made up their lives. They threw them out, not because they didn’t love them, but because they had used them right up to their end and then returned them to the earth where all things belong. And the earth took them right back, grateful for the gifts. And now it’s giving those gifts back to me, thanking me for taking such good care of it and for sticking around so long.
Once I turned up a bullet. It was more likely to have been used for hunting than for anything else, but when I think of the way people lived back then, how dark it was in winter with no electric lights and how unpredictable life was, with ships setting off and never coming home, I can’t help wondering. I kept it, wrapped it in cotton batting, and put it in the empty space between the crossbeams of the storeroom.
I planted my garden right in the foundations of the old house. The house burnt down centuries ago and then they built the one I live in now just next to it. If I were going to do it, I’d have built the new house on top, used the brick and stones from the old walls, but I suppose they wanted to keep their distance. Maybe they thought it was bad luck, like stepping on a grave.
This land has always been in my family and it always will be in spirit, long after the sea takes it all back. I suppose there was once a time before my people lived here, but that was so long ago, you can barely imagine it. It is safe to say we have always been here, since time that far gone in the past is something no one can know the truth about, anyway.
In ancient times there was land out there, reaching far into the space covered by the sea, all the way to Sweden, to Norway, even farther, to England. Maybe beyond that, who knows? People lived there in great marshy forests and made their homes on the banks of rivers and ate fish. They also had children and got married, made their own clothes and cooked their own food, fell in love and cried after those who died. They lived whole lives out there, under what is now the sea, but the waters came up and all that past was buried, never to be seen or known once more. You can find their bodies in the marshes, sunken in the bog, and I’ve heard that sometimes the driftwood that washes up on our shore is from ancient trees, although I couldn’t tell the difference. It all looks like wood to me.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the people who lived on that land beneath the sea were my people, too. We have always been here, that’s what I’ve been told, and I don’t doubt that was true in ancient times, as well as now. If it is no longer true in the future, well, that can’t be helped.
The sun is just right at this time of year. Not that I’m troubled by the darkness, mind you. It’s only that I like it best now, with the evenings that last long into the night and the low sun warm and golden upon the fields. It’s on evenings like these that I think it’s OK to have never left this island and that if this is all I know of the beauty in this world, it’s more than enough for me. If I’d travelled more, perhaps I’d have found something I liked better, and I’d never have seen this island in the same way again. I’d always be lost in the memory of something else, like those broken men returning from war.
On evenings like this, the sky and the sea bleed together until they are one. I climb over the dunes to the flat plane of sand beneath, and I see that expanse and think what it must be to be lost there, no land in sight, with only a boat to stand on and the waves rocking all around. Our sea is large and long, but not limitless. It is small compared to an ocean. And yet it must seem that the water lasts forever when you are lost in the middle of it, the dark waves all around. There is nowhere to stand, nothing solid, nothing to give you comfort, and you are all — you and the other sailors on your boat — stranded there, each of you scared to death within your hearts, none of you brave enough to mention it.
The other islands protect us from the strongest winds, and our sea has no waves. If you didn’t know better, on still and grey days you might imagine the island ended in nothing but an endless mud plain, and the movement of light on the surface was only an illusion made with mirrors. It does not matter. I imagine the waves anyway and the endless roll of the open water.
I have been off the island many times. Of course I have. But not for longer than a few days at a time and never more than 10 kilometers from the ferry dock. Our country is a tiny one anyhow and not much changes from place to place. Even on the mainland, it all looks the same — flat, watery, green and blue and yellow, dark in winter, sometimes grey, and in summer, burning golden. The summer light is a gift from the old gods, maybe, thankful that we still care for the lands that have not been lost to the sea.
Much of the land has been lost to the sea and now the island is smaller than it was when I was a girl. That is fitting. So many of our men, our sailors and fishermen, have also been lost to the sea. Our history is one of getting lost, of setting out and never coming home, of women and children waiting for ships years after the ocean had already decided to put them to rest. What can one say? It was a fact of life then and still is one now. They still set out, these children of the fields and dunes, and never come home. Not because they are dead, of course, but because they want other things elsewhere. And what is there to draw them home? They’ve left, and the fields, the summer evenings have been spoilt for them.
All three of my daughters are gone. One to Oslo, one to Copenhagen, and one, for no reason I can tell, to Prague. I don’t know what she does there. I try to imagine what the city looks like, how it smells, what it must be to live among foreign people like that, to not even understand the language. I suppose she understands some of what they say, but it can’t be like speaking her own language, the words I taught her when she was a baby, that she’s known and understood almost her whole life. Prague used to be a poor place, but not anymore, so they say. I imagine things are more difficult there than they are here. To her mind, even difficult is better than this island. She can no longer see her home properly — not as I can see it, anyhow.
My husband left me, too, but he did not go far. He lives down the road, in a house newer and smaller than the one we lived in together. He has another wife now, but it doesn’t bother me. I have another husband, too. But, what I don’t tell anyone is that my first husband will always be my true husband. He was the first and we raised our children together and there was a time when I loved him best, beyond all things. I cannot say we are friends now, but we do not resent each other much, and when we see each other down at the shop or around the village, we talk just as anyone does, the past just a secret between us two, just a bag of old coins buried beneath a tree. Neither of us has any plans to dig it up, but we both know it’s there and feel better for it all the same.
My second husband, Jonni, works on the mainland, building roads. He takes a small ferry out each morning, along with the other people who work off the island, and comes back in the evening, tired and ready to be home. Before now, the men in my family were always sailors or fishermen, like my first husband. There’s not much of a need for sailors anymore, nor for fishermen, nor for anything the island is able to give to the world. That is all right — I have no sons to carry on the sailing tradition and if I did, I expect that they wouldn’t want to anyway, the world being such a different place from what it used to be.
I stay home, which is not so common anymore, but we have few wants and Jonni’s wages pay for them all. We have saved some money by and by, and we do not worry about growing old. One day we might have to sell this house, but no matter. It has been in my family more than 300 years — the land even longer — and who will be there to take care of it once I am gone? The girls won’t want to come back, not even for the house. They keep telling me I can’t sell it, never to sell it, but what am I going to do when I’m too old to get up and down the stairs anymore, when I can’t get to the bedroom or the bathroom or even clean the floors? They’re not going to come home to look after things. I’m going to find someone who will. It will make a fine holiday home.
I won’t be giving it to my sister or her children, either. When she left this island, I was more than happy to see the back of her. That was the last time I spoke to her, and I don’t care if I ever do again.
In summer, I spend my days in the garden. The garden is the only thing that makes me sad to think that one day I’ll have to leave this house. It’s not the plants I’ll be sad to see go, though I’ve nurtured most of them since they were seedlings. Sure, I love them like a mother now that I’ve no more children at home, but plants die in the way you hope children don’t, and I never get too attached.
It’s the earth I love — and not just the earth, but the gifts it gives me. And though each year I dig straight into the heart of it, right in the same places I dug the year before, it never fails to give me something new — a broken glass bottle, half a saucer, an old nail, leather stirrups, coins, the burnt remains of old timber. These are the things that belonged to my ancestors. These are the things that made up their lives. They threw them out, not because they didn’t love them, but because they had used them right up to their end and then returned them to the earth where all things belong. And the earth took them right back, grateful for the gifts. And now it’s giving those gifts back to me, thanking me for taking such good care of it and for sticking around so long.
Once I turned up a bullet. It was more likely to have been used for hunting than for anything else, but when I think of the way people lived back then, how dark it was in winter with no electric lights and how unpredictable life was, with ships setting off and never coming home, I can’t help wondering. I kept it, wrapped it in cotton batting, and put it in the empty space between the crossbeams of the storeroom.
I planted my garden right in the foundations of the old house. The house burnt down centuries ago and then they built the one I live in now just next to it. If I were going to do it, I’d have built the new house on top, used the brick and stones from the old walls, but I suppose they wanted to keep their distance. Maybe they thought it was bad luck, like stepping on a grave.
This land has always been in my family and it always will be in spirit, long after the sea takes it all back. I suppose there was once a time before my people lived here, but that was so long ago, you can barely imagine it. It is safe to say we have always been here, since time that far gone in the past is something no one can know the truth about, anyway.
In ancient times there was land out there, reaching far into the space covered by the sea, all the way to Sweden, to Norway, even farther, to England. Maybe beyond that, who knows? People lived there in great marshy forests and made their homes on the banks of rivers and ate fish. They also had children and got married, made their own clothes and cooked their own food, fell in love and cried after those who died. They lived whole lives out there, under what is now the sea, but the waters came up and all that past was buried, never to be seen or known once more. You can find their bodies in the marshes, sunken in the bog, and I’ve heard that sometimes the driftwood that washes up on our shore is from ancient trees, although I couldn’t tell the difference. It all looks like wood to me.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the people who lived on that land beneath the sea were my people, too. We have always been here, that’s what I’ve been told, and I don’t doubt that was true in ancient times, as well as now. If it is no longer true in the future, well, that can’t be helped.
Part Two
Karin worked her trowel through the earth with the calm certainty of one who knows her place.
It was mid-June, the planting was over. It was time to tend to the life that had been created, not to bring it forth. Many of the strawberries were already ripe and hung from their stems like droplets, fat and pregnant and deepening into a dark red. She would gather them up and put them in the thick iron pot her mother gave her, mix them with rhubarb and sugar and heat them until boiling, pour them into long-used glass jars to make a strawberry jam. The leftovers she would use to make a pie for Midsummer.
She stood up and brushed the dirt from her hands on the front of her pants. That would do for today. She had not noticed how late in the afternoon it had become. Her daughter would be leaving the next day. She did not want to miss these last moments together, the last moments that she would be a mother, a mother with a child at home and someone besides herself and her husband to care for.
Karin looked up and saw Line already walking towards her, eyes downcast. She had been such a happy, laughing child, but she had grown dark with age. Karin was not surprised that she was leaving. It had been hard on Karin, too, growing up in such a small place, with nowhere to run to, nowhere to be the secret self no one expected you to be. There were so few young people on the island that your friends were chosen for you, and boyfriends were not easy to come by unless you were prepared to make compromises. She supposed it had been hard on her other daughters, too. Both had moved away: her oldest to Oslo and her middle daughter to the capital. She imagined that it was the solitude of this place that had chased them away. But, wasn’t it lonely there, too, where they were? Surrounded by all of those foreigners, what did they have of their roots, of their kin to keep them company?
“Hi, Line.”
“He’s in there.”
“Who’s in there?”
“He is.”
She heard the two men talking inside. It was a stroke of luck that Jonni got on so well with her ex-husband. He wasn’t the sort to grow jealous or hold a grudge. That’s why she had married him: his even temper, his fairness, his dependability. In truth, they were never officially married. She thought of him as her husband and even referred to him as such, especially in the company of older people, but there had never been any real need or desire to finalize the whole thing. She had never been one to stand on ceremony, nor had her mother nor father nor grandparents been. Living this far away from the world, life took its own shape, and such a thing as marriage became less important than living in a simple way, one that brought you comfort and that you could endure. Whether he was her legal husband or not, Jonni was a good man, a good stepfather to her children, and they had a peaceful sort of life together, even when the whole land was consumed in winter darkness and bore like an anvil on the chests of every man, woman, and child who made their home on the island.
When Karin entered the kitchen, Jonni stood and left, kissing her on the cheek as he walked past. He had work to do, she knew, and had only been sitting with Jesper to be nice. She was grateful to him for this.
Jesper sat in a wooden chair next to the oak table where they used to eat their family meals together, her trying too hard to make everything just as he liked and him drinking just a bit too much to care. A mist of grey had crept in and settled on his yellow hair. His beard was beginning to grizzle. Otherwise, all was as it had been when they were married.
“Jesper, good to see you come around here. You never do anymore. I was beginning to wonder if you hadn’t died — or maybe got yourself a job on the mainland, bought a new flat.”
Jesper laughed. “Yes,” he said, “well, I’ve been busy. The catch was small this winter. I’ve had to make up the work with other things.”
She knew about the catch. Everyone on the island did. The fishermen had all struggled. They still lived by the rules of the sea and the tide, as all the islanders had, until recently. People had to leave to find work elsewhere and living on the island had become more and more of a struggle, a trial, a choice spurred on by stubbornness. There were long commutes by ferry to and from the mainland. In the winter, all was darkness and the chill whipped up from the sea, and the menial jobs the islanders had on the mainland became twice as hard as they would have been if they’d only packed up and moved to a modern flat in town, small, efficient housing paid for by the state, where it made sense to own a car and everything one needed was at a supermarket only a five-minute drive away.
“Well, it always was small some years. But it will come back around. It always does that, too.”
“I don’t know about that. They say the fish are almost done. And, then, with the British — now they control it all and no one gives a damn about the Danish fishermen — it’s all that Europe can do --”
“Ah, Jesper, none of that. I don’t care to hear any of that now. Keep your politics to yourself. What do you want? I know you want something if you’re here.”
“No, no, I don’t want nothing,” and he waved his hand in the air, brushing her away. He was annoyed to have been interrupted and he was beginning to remember why he had left. “I want to see the girl, that’s all.”
Karin gave a quick laugh. “Well, she doesn’t want to see you. Went outside as soon as you came in from what I can see.”
Jesper was annoyed. “Call her in, Karin.”
“She’s too old for that. I can’t tell her what to do now, no more than I can tell you what to do.”
“Just call her in, will you?”
“Line! Come in and see your father!”
They waited a moment in silence, but Line did not come. Karin called again and a few minutes later, they heard her familiar, reluctant step on the front porch. She walked to the threshold and stood there, scowling. The door had been left open to let the air in. The afternoon sun was behind her and it caught her hair — yellow, like Jesper’s — and set it afire. She stood silhouetted in the doorway like an apparition.
Line had always been a pretty child, the prettiest of all her daughters, but in the last year she had grown into a beauty, far more beautiful than Karin had ever been. She was proud of her, the way all mothers are of their children, beautiful or no, but she was afraid for her, too. Beauty is not an easy weight to carry. Line would never be able to slip away, hide in a crowd. The whole world would watch her, expecting her to be more than she was, more than any one person could be. Line was a musician and sang low, like a storm breaking on the horizon. It pained Karin to think that when she sang, people would watch her and think on her beauty, rather than her songs.
But these were not things that she could ever say. Instead, when Line told her she was leaving, Karin only said, “Ah, well, if it is what you want, go ahead. It’s what you all want now, and if you’re not happy here, no one can make you so. It’s a real pity, but I won’t be the one to make you stay.”
“I hear you’re going,” Jesper said.
“Yes,” Line said, staring at him unmoved. It was insolent.
Karin had never understood why Line hated her father so. He had always doted on her, singling her out from the other girls, setting her on his lap after dinner or when they stayed outside late on summer evenings. But, once he had left, she had never wanted to see him again. The other girls would visit him, and Line would cry and squeal, refusing to go. Karin could have made her, but she didn’t want to force it. She had expected Line to come around, but she never did. She was young yet — only 19 — and there was still time for things to improve.
“I suppose I should know more than to expect you to come tell your father goodbye before you left,” Jesper said.
“Yes.”
“It’s to Prague, isn’t it?”
“If you know the answers, why do you ask the questions?”
“Line,” Karin said, hushing her.
Line was quiet and looked at the floor.
“It’s dangerous there,” Jesper said, “They speak Russian. No one knows Danish, there are no Danes there. And with all the wars there — a new war every year. Life is nice enough here. You don’t have to go away.”
Line sighed contemptuously and looked away.
“I have to pack,” she said. “I have things to do.”
“Not a hug for your father, then?”
Line turned and left the room without looking at him. He watched her go with the most intense love — a love that Karin thought, for an instant, was almost unnatural.
“I don’t know why she harbors such anger against you,” Karin said. “Maybe because you left, although she never said anything about it.”
“Maybe something like that,” Jesper mumbled. She could tell that he didn’t want to leave, even though he had nothing more to do there.
“A cup of coffee, then?” she offered.
“No, nothing. I’d best be on my way.”
“All right, then,” Karin said. “Goodbye.”
And then she added, “I’ll let you know how she gets on over there, once I hear from her.”
“You do that,” Jesper said and then he was gone.
Karin stood there a moment, listening. Line was in her bedroom upstairs, shuffling around, either packing or pretending to do so. Soon, that sound would be gone forever and Karin would be left with silence, alone until the evening when Jonni came home from work. She would make herself a cup of coffee anyway, enjoy this last afternoon. Afterwards, there was nothing to do but return to the garden, if Line didn’t want her. There were still the strawberries for Midsummer and a bit of digging to do, besides.
Karin worked her trowel through the earth with the calm certainty of one who knows her place.
It was mid-June, the planting was over. It was time to tend to the life that had been created, not to bring it forth. Many of the strawberries were already ripe and hung from their stems like droplets, fat and pregnant and deepening into a dark red. She would gather them up and put them in the thick iron pot her mother gave her, mix them with rhubarb and sugar and heat them until boiling, pour them into long-used glass jars to make a strawberry jam. The leftovers she would use to make a pie for Midsummer.
She stood up and brushed the dirt from her hands on the front of her pants. That would do for today. She had not noticed how late in the afternoon it had become. Her daughter would be leaving the next day. She did not want to miss these last moments together, the last moments that she would be a mother, a mother with a child at home and someone besides herself and her husband to care for.
Karin looked up and saw Line already walking towards her, eyes downcast. She had been such a happy, laughing child, but she had grown dark with age. Karin was not surprised that she was leaving. It had been hard on Karin, too, growing up in such a small place, with nowhere to run to, nowhere to be the secret self no one expected you to be. There were so few young people on the island that your friends were chosen for you, and boyfriends were not easy to come by unless you were prepared to make compromises. She supposed it had been hard on her other daughters, too. Both had moved away: her oldest to Oslo and her middle daughter to the capital. She imagined that it was the solitude of this place that had chased them away. But, wasn’t it lonely there, too, where they were? Surrounded by all of those foreigners, what did they have of their roots, of their kin to keep them company?
“Hi, Line.”
“He’s in there.”
“Who’s in there?”
“He is.”
She heard the two men talking inside. It was a stroke of luck that Jonni got on so well with her ex-husband. He wasn’t the sort to grow jealous or hold a grudge. That’s why she had married him: his even temper, his fairness, his dependability. In truth, they were never officially married. She thought of him as her husband and even referred to him as such, especially in the company of older people, but there had never been any real need or desire to finalize the whole thing. She had never been one to stand on ceremony, nor had her mother nor father nor grandparents been. Living this far away from the world, life took its own shape, and such a thing as marriage became less important than living in a simple way, one that brought you comfort and that you could endure. Whether he was her legal husband or not, Jonni was a good man, a good stepfather to her children, and they had a peaceful sort of life together, even when the whole land was consumed in winter darkness and bore like an anvil on the chests of every man, woman, and child who made their home on the island.
When Karin entered the kitchen, Jonni stood and left, kissing her on the cheek as he walked past. He had work to do, she knew, and had only been sitting with Jesper to be nice. She was grateful to him for this.
Jesper sat in a wooden chair next to the oak table where they used to eat their family meals together, her trying too hard to make everything just as he liked and him drinking just a bit too much to care. A mist of grey had crept in and settled on his yellow hair. His beard was beginning to grizzle. Otherwise, all was as it had been when they were married.
“Jesper, good to see you come around here. You never do anymore. I was beginning to wonder if you hadn’t died — or maybe got yourself a job on the mainland, bought a new flat.”
Jesper laughed. “Yes,” he said, “well, I’ve been busy. The catch was small this winter. I’ve had to make up the work with other things.”
She knew about the catch. Everyone on the island did. The fishermen had all struggled. They still lived by the rules of the sea and the tide, as all the islanders had, until recently. People had to leave to find work elsewhere and living on the island had become more and more of a struggle, a trial, a choice spurred on by stubbornness. There were long commutes by ferry to and from the mainland. In the winter, all was darkness and the chill whipped up from the sea, and the menial jobs the islanders had on the mainland became twice as hard as they would have been if they’d only packed up and moved to a modern flat in town, small, efficient housing paid for by the state, where it made sense to own a car and everything one needed was at a supermarket only a five-minute drive away.
“Well, it always was small some years. But it will come back around. It always does that, too.”
“I don’t know about that. They say the fish are almost done. And, then, with the British — now they control it all and no one gives a damn about the Danish fishermen — it’s all that Europe can do --”
“Ah, Jesper, none of that. I don’t care to hear any of that now. Keep your politics to yourself. What do you want? I know you want something if you’re here.”
“No, no, I don’t want nothing,” and he waved his hand in the air, brushing her away. He was annoyed to have been interrupted and he was beginning to remember why he had left. “I want to see the girl, that’s all.”
Karin gave a quick laugh. “Well, she doesn’t want to see you. Went outside as soon as you came in from what I can see.”
Jesper was annoyed. “Call her in, Karin.”
“She’s too old for that. I can’t tell her what to do now, no more than I can tell you what to do.”
“Just call her in, will you?”
“Line! Come in and see your father!”
They waited a moment in silence, but Line did not come. Karin called again and a few minutes later, they heard her familiar, reluctant step on the front porch. She walked to the threshold and stood there, scowling. The door had been left open to let the air in. The afternoon sun was behind her and it caught her hair — yellow, like Jesper’s — and set it afire. She stood silhouetted in the doorway like an apparition.
Line had always been a pretty child, the prettiest of all her daughters, but in the last year she had grown into a beauty, far more beautiful than Karin had ever been. She was proud of her, the way all mothers are of their children, beautiful or no, but she was afraid for her, too. Beauty is not an easy weight to carry. Line would never be able to slip away, hide in a crowd. The whole world would watch her, expecting her to be more than she was, more than any one person could be. Line was a musician and sang low, like a storm breaking on the horizon. It pained Karin to think that when she sang, people would watch her and think on her beauty, rather than her songs.
But these were not things that she could ever say. Instead, when Line told her she was leaving, Karin only said, “Ah, well, if it is what you want, go ahead. It’s what you all want now, and if you’re not happy here, no one can make you so. It’s a real pity, but I won’t be the one to make you stay.”
“I hear you’re going,” Jesper said.
“Yes,” Line said, staring at him unmoved. It was insolent.
Karin had never understood why Line hated her father so. He had always doted on her, singling her out from the other girls, setting her on his lap after dinner or when they stayed outside late on summer evenings. But, once he had left, she had never wanted to see him again. The other girls would visit him, and Line would cry and squeal, refusing to go. Karin could have made her, but she didn’t want to force it. She had expected Line to come around, but she never did. She was young yet — only 19 — and there was still time for things to improve.
“I suppose I should know more than to expect you to come tell your father goodbye before you left,” Jesper said.
“Yes.”
“It’s to Prague, isn’t it?”
“If you know the answers, why do you ask the questions?”
“Line,” Karin said, hushing her.
Line was quiet and looked at the floor.
“It’s dangerous there,” Jesper said, “They speak Russian. No one knows Danish, there are no Danes there. And with all the wars there — a new war every year. Life is nice enough here. You don’t have to go away.”
Line sighed contemptuously and looked away.
“I have to pack,” she said. “I have things to do.”
“Not a hug for your father, then?”
Line turned and left the room without looking at him. He watched her go with the most intense love — a love that Karin thought, for an instant, was almost unnatural.
“I don’t know why she harbors such anger against you,” Karin said. “Maybe because you left, although she never said anything about it.”
“Maybe something like that,” Jesper mumbled. She could tell that he didn’t want to leave, even though he had nothing more to do there.
“A cup of coffee, then?” she offered.
“No, nothing. I’d best be on my way.”
“All right, then,” Karin said. “Goodbye.”
And then she added, “I’ll let you know how she gets on over there, once I hear from her.”
“You do that,” Jesper said and then he was gone.
Karin stood there a moment, listening. Line was in her bedroom upstairs, shuffling around, either packing or pretending to do so. Soon, that sound would be gone forever and Karin would be left with silence, alone until the evening when Jonni came home from work. She would make herself a cup of coffee anyway, enjoy this last afternoon. Afterwards, there was nothing to do but return to the garden, if Line didn’t want her. There were still the strawberries for Midsummer and a bit of digging to do, besides.
Part Three
“Lick it, lick it,” Helga said, her face screwed up, ugly with malice. “Lick it, or I’ll tell her what you did.”
Karin stood on the sand, the inch-deep water rising and receding around her ankles. With each pass, the water sucked a bit of the shore away with it, the sand beneath her feet lessening, becoming unstable.
A fish lay on the sand a few feet in front of her. Dead, swollen, it reeked of old water and decay.
“Lick it, Karin, or I’ll tell.”
Karin would not, but she was not brave enough to say so. Instead, she stared at the seaweed entangled mass, two fingers pressed to her lips.
It was not right for Helga to make her lick the fish. She had only crossed into the dangerous part because Helga had dared her to. She would never have done it on her own — not because she would have been afraid, or because it was forbidden, but because she never even would have thought of it. But Helga had urged her, had teased her for being young and small and too afraid, and so she went to the spot where the dunes had piled up over the fence and she crossed over.
It had been easy to climb over the dune; it took no more than an instant. When she reached the other side and stood on the hard earth below, she felt a tingling inside her ribs. Dangerous.
There were cliffs there — not made of rock, but of sand — and they jutted haphazardly above the sea, large swathes cut out from their sides where the land had crumbled away and fallen into the water below. If you walked too near the edge and stepped in the wrong place, the ground would slide out beneath you and you would go with it, with no way to stop and nothing to hold onto. The earth would simply give way.
When you stood on top of them, the cliffs didn’t seem very high, but Karin knew that the year before a child had been playing there and had died, crushed beneath the red earth and gravel for hours before anyone noticed he was gone. If Karin died, Helga would know, but she would never tell anyone. She’d wait for someone to find Karin by accident and then she’d pretend not to know anything about it, pretend she’d never been there in the first place.
Standing on the wrong side of the fence, Karin was unafraid. The ground seemed hard and solid beneath the fine sand. It was exhilarating.
“Now, jump,” Helga yelled, and Karin jumped. She was alive, intoxicated by her own bravery.
“Again,” Helga yelled, “more, more!” Karin jumped again and again, springing her legs up high against her body and pounding hard on the earth below. She slid a bit with each landing, but kept jumping, delirious. And nothing happened, the cliffs did not tumble, the earth did not give way. Helga seemed disappointed.
“Now run to the edge,” Helga said, delight in her voice. “Run.”
Karin hesitated — running to the edge of the cliff was the one thing she must not do. Exhillarated by the sense of her own bravery, she ran anyway, stumbling in the deep patches of loose sand caught between the hard ridges of the dunes. She did not stop until she was at the edge. She touched it with her fingertips and saw the thin beach littered with stones below. She turned and ran back towards the fence. She had not died. Triumph.
“No,” Helga said, “You were supposed to run to the edge and stay there. And jump.”
Karin looked at the spot on the edge of the cliff where she had just been. The excitement drained from her; she was limp, an empty sack. She shook her head no.
“I knew you wouldn’t,” Helga said.
Karin hesitated. She could not jump there. The land would fall out beneath her and she would die. But then Helga would tease her and call her small and stupid and cowardly. She would tell other children, too — even lying so that Karin seemed even stupider — and Karin would never hear the end of it.
Her legs tensed involuntarily, poised to run. She would do it. She would not be afraid. Helga would not be able to say that she had been afraid.
At just that moment, a half-meter of earth broke away from the cliff wall and slid into the sea, trails of gravel raining behind it. They heard the earth hit the beach below, dash against the ground. The ground had broken exactly where Karin had touched it.
The girls were silent.
Karin stopped breathing. She turned and ran back to the fence, desperate feet pounding the earth. The air opened and rushed up behind her. The earth was giving way, falling into the flat, cruel, open palms of the sea, where it would be pulled down, down into the depths, and never seen again. If she slowed, if she stumbled, she would fall with it, she would be crushed and drowned and lost forever. Karin scrambled over the sand, falling, sliding on her hands, but running, running, as though she would never stop.
She was at the dune, at the fence, she was clambering over it. Loose sand slid beneath her as she climbed, but she was stronger, faster than the falling earth. She reached the top of the dune quicker than she would have believed possible, letting herself fall, tumble downhill to the safe side of the fence, the part that was not dangerous.
She stopped running. Helga was holding her stomach, laughing, loudly — more loudly, perhaps, than what came natural to her. Karin turned to look behind her. Nothing had changed. The cliff had not given way. Besides the small chunk of earth that had fallen from the edge, all was as it had been before.
But now Helga wanted to tell mother and mother would be angry.
“Lick it or I’ll tell the police,” Helga said. “What you did was against the laws, and they’ll take you to jail on the mainland and you’ll never come home.”
The afternoon had already begun to fade and the fish glistened in the golden light. The tide was rising and in a few hours it would take the fish away, back to the belly of the sea where it was born, lived, and had died. Already the water had begun to cut into the sand beneath the fish, streaming past it in little currents that swaddled it like a blanket.
“The police will come for you and no one will be sad. Not mother — she will know you are a criminal. And everyone will forget you and not even care that you are gone. It will be like you’re dead and no one will be sad or even cry.”
The fish lifted one clouded eye to the sky. Karin turned and, for the third time that day, ran, feeling neither exhilaration nor fear, but relief, relief to learn that with all options gone, all doors closed, and the police fast behind her, she still had that, at least — the capacity to run.
“Lick it, lick it,” Helga said, her face screwed up, ugly with malice. “Lick it, or I’ll tell her what you did.”
Karin stood on the sand, the inch-deep water rising and receding around her ankles. With each pass, the water sucked a bit of the shore away with it, the sand beneath her feet lessening, becoming unstable.
A fish lay on the sand a few feet in front of her. Dead, swollen, it reeked of old water and decay.
“Lick it, Karin, or I’ll tell.”
Karin would not, but she was not brave enough to say so. Instead, she stared at the seaweed entangled mass, two fingers pressed to her lips.
It was not right for Helga to make her lick the fish. She had only crossed into the dangerous part because Helga had dared her to. She would never have done it on her own — not because she would have been afraid, or because it was forbidden, but because she never even would have thought of it. But Helga had urged her, had teased her for being young and small and too afraid, and so she went to the spot where the dunes had piled up over the fence and she crossed over.
It had been easy to climb over the dune; it took no more than an instant. When she reached the other side and stood on the hard earth below, she felt a tingling inside her ribs. Dangerous.
There were cliffs there — not made of rock, but of sand — and they jutted haphazardly above the sea, large swathes cut out from their sides where the land had crumbled away and fallen into the water below. If you walked too near the edge and stepped in the wrong place, the ground would slide out beneath you and you would go with it, with no way to stop and nothing to hold onto. The earth would simply give way.
When you stood on top of them, the cliffs didn’t seem very high, but Karin knew that the year before a child had been playing there and had died, crushed beneath the red earth and gravel for hours before anyone noticed he was gone. If Karin died, Helga would know, but she would never tell anyone. She’d wait for someone to find Karin by accident and then she’d pretend not to know anything about it, pretend she’d never been there in the first place.
Standing on the wrong side of the fence, Karin was unafraid. The ground seemed hard and solid beneath the fine sand. It was exhilarating.
“Now, jump,” Helga yelled, and Karin jumped. She was alive, intoxicated by her own bravery.
“Again,” Helga yelled, “more, more!” Karin jumped again and again, springing her legs up high against her body and pounding hard on the earth below. She slid a bit with each landing, but kept jumping, delirious. And nothing happened, the cliffs did not tumble, the earth did not give way. Helga seemed disappointed.
“Now run to the edge,” Helga said, delight in her voice. “Run.”
Karin hesitated — running to the edge of the cliff was the one thing she must not do. Exhillarated by the sense of her own bravery, she ran anyway, stumbling in the deep patches of loose sand caught between the hard ridges of the dunes. She did not stop until she was at the edge. She touched it with her fingertips and saw the thin beach littered with stones below. She turned and ran back towards the fence. She had not died. Triumph.
“No,” Helga said, “You were supposed to run to the edge and stay there. And jump.”
Karin looked at the spot on the edge of the cliff where she had just been. The excitement drained from her; she was limp, an empty sack. She shook her head no.
“I knew you wouldn’t,” Helga said.
Karin hesitated. She could not jump there. The land would fall out beneath her and she would die. But then Helga would tease her and call her small and stupid and cowardly. She would tell other children, too — even lying so that Karin seemed even stupider — and Karin would never hear the end of it.
Her legs tensed involuntarily, poised to run. She would do it. She would not be afraid. Helga would not be able to say that she had been afraid.
At just that moment, a half-meter of earth broke away from the cliff wall and slid into the sea, trails of gravel raining behind it. They heard the earth hit the beach below, dash against the ground. The ground had broken exactly where Karin had touched it.
The girls were silent.
Karin stopped breathing. She turned and ran back to the fence, desperate feet pounding the earth. The air opened and rushed up behind her. The earth was giving way, falling into the flat, cruel, open palms of the sea, where it would be pulled down, down into the depths, and never seen again. If she slowed, if she stumbled, she would fall with it, she would be crushed and drowned and lost forever. Karin scrambled over the sand, falling, sliding on her hands, but running, running, as though she would never stop.
She was at the dune, at the fence, she was clambering over it. Loose sand slid beneath her as she climbed, but she was stronger, faster than the falling earth. She reached the top of the dune quicker than she would have believed possible, letting herself fall, tumble downhill to the safe side of the fence, the part that was not dangerous.
She stopped running. Helga was holding her stomach, laughing, loudly — more loudly, perhaps, than what came natural to her. Karin turned to look behind her. Nothing had changed. The cliff had not given way. Besides the small chunk of earth that had fallen from the edge, all was as it had been before.
But now Helga wanted to tell mother and mother would be angry.
“Lick it or I’ll tell the police,” Helga said. “What you did was against the laws, and they’ll take you to jail on the mainland and you’ll never come home.”
The afternoon had already begun to fade and the fish glistened in the golden light. The tide was rising and in a few hours it would take the fish away, back to the belly of the sea where it was born, lived, and had died. Already the water had begun to cut into the sand beneath the fish, streaming past it in little currents that swaddled it like a blanket.
“The police will come for you and no one will be sad. Not mother — she will know you are a criminal. And everyone will forget you and not even care that you are gone. It will be like you’re dead and no one will be sad or even cry.”
The fish lifted one clouded eye to the sky. Karin turned and, for the third time that day, ran, feeling neither exhilaration nor fear, but relief, relief to learn that with all options gone, all doors closed, and the police fast behind her, she still had that, at least — the capacity to run.
Part Four
The air is muggy, sticky with sea breeze. The water is not salty, but one imagines the brine. In the midsummer light, everything is white gold, sparkling.
On clear evenings, the sun shifts from red to bronze to a blinding platinum. When it is overcast, all is dull, diminished. The colors remain, as they were meant to be, only quieter, less alive. The sea is painted in striations of brown and a pale and sickly blue, a vague silver sheen brushed along the surface. If the thin light breaks through the clouds, it lands upon the water in patches of abalone pearl that seem lit from within by a separate, distant sun, rising weakly from beneath the sea to meet its stronger twin above, a pale invalid wordlessly greeting a bedside visitor with outstretched hand.
Karin picks her way over the dunes. Although they are made of sand, they are hard, compacted by the sea grass. In divots and heaps, the sand rises up between green, dry fingers and makes little beds where fragments of shells, sea glass, old bottle caps have found their final place of rest. They will remain nestled there until the day the land is consumed and they are resurrected, made to tumble once again beneath the wash of the endless, crashing tide.
The beach is made in part by little oblong, dusk-colored stones. In other places, it is made of sand. Everywhere the driftwood piles up — branches pulled from an ancient tangle of heavy, waterlogged trees. The trees have not breathed for over 40,000 years. They have become indifferent to the taste of air.
On the beach they mingle with more recent things: timbers from broken boats, logs of half-charred firewood, trees felled in a storm. Smooth-surfaced, twisted, dark with water and history, they are indistinguishable from one another.
A scientist, an expert, might know which were ancient and which were not. To most people, they are what they are: pieces of wood washed up on the beach.
Karin is more interested in the stones. Perfectly milled, round and flat and deeper in color when they are wet than when they are dry. Take them home and place them on a windowsill and they turn dull and chalky. Leave them on the beach and they look best. It is where they were meant to be.
She picks one stone from among the rest. White, oblong, marked with grey, it fits her palm exactly, like a tool. And, indeed, one edge was chipped, as though knocked away by some patient, diligent hand into a serrated blade to be used, perhaps, for gutting animals — rabbits, maybe, or deer — and skinning the flesh from their pelts. But that is only fantasy. The rock is a normal rock, and the serrations a result of rolling around at the bottom of the sea and being knocked against other rocks.
Could those ancient inhabitants of Doggerland, the land beneath the sea, ever have imagined a world without their trees or rivers or stones? They could imagine, certainly, a world without themselves. They knew no less than we do that death will come for all of us. But a world without their land? A world where no one knew, could never begin to know, the places where they had lived and died? It would have been a world unimaginable to them, where they were unimaginable, too, even to their descendants who carried their blood and bones into the living present, tucking the secret of their lives into their own bodies, unspoken.
They each lived small lives that were, while they still drew breath, big and important, rich with meaning and history and place. Now they are no more. Their lives are no longer, their stories are no longer, nor their histories, nor legends, nothing they ever loved or valued in their world — all of it lost, a world no longer living.
The small artifacts of our lives wash out to sea and return, eventually, inevitably. We stumble upon them as if by chance, finding them collected along the edges of tidal pools or at the feet of dunes. They are rounded, shrunken, transformed by the vast, gentle, rolling waves and the violence troubling the sands beneath.
The air is muggy, sticky with sea breeze. The water is not salty, but one imagines the brine. In the midsummer light, everything is white gold, sparkling.
On clear evenings, the sun shifts from red to bronze to a blinding platinum. When it is overcast, all is dull, diminished. The colors remain, as they were meant to be, only quieter, less alive. The sea is painted in striations of brown and a pale and sickly blue, a vague silver sheen brushed along the surface. If the thin light breaks through the clouds, it lands upon the water in patches of abalone pearl that seem lit from within by a separate, distant sun, rising weakly from beneath the sea to meet its stronger twin above, a pale invalid wordlessly greeting a bedside visitor with outstretched hand.
Karin picks her way over the dunes. Although they are made of sand, they are hard, compacted by the sea grass. In divots and heaps, the sand rises up between green, dry fingers and makes little beds where fragments of shells, sea glass, old bottle caps have found their final place of rest. They will remain nestled there until the day the land is consumed and they are resurrected, made to tumble once again beneath the wash of the endless, crashing tide.
The beach is made in part by little oblong, dusk-colored stones. In other places, it is made of sand. Everywhere the driftwood piles up — branches pulled from an ancient tangle of heavy, waterlogged trees. The trees have not breathed for over 40,000 years. They have become indifferent to the taste of air.
On the beach they mingle with more recent things: timbers from broken boats, logs of half-charred firewood, trees felled in a storm. Smooth-surfaced, twisted, dark with water and history, they are indistinguishable from one another.
A scientist, an expert, might know which were ancient and which were not. To most people, they are what they are: pieces of wood washed up on the beach.
Karin is more interested in the stones. Perfectly milled, round and flat and deeper in color when they are wet than when they are dry. Take them home and place them on a windowsill and they turn dull and chalky. Leave them on the beach and they look best. It is where they were meant to be.
She picks one stone from among the rest. White, oblong, marked with grey, it fits her palm exactly, like a tool. And, indeed, one edge was chipped, as though knocked away by some patient, diligent hand into a serrated blade to be used, perhaps, for gutting animals — rabbits, maybe, or deer — and skinning the flesh from their pelts. But that is only fantasy. The rock is a normal rock, and the serrations a result of rolling around at the bottom of the sea and being knocked against other rocks.
Could those ancient inhabitants of Doggerland, the land beneath the sea, ever have imagined a world without their trees or rivers or stones? They could imagine, certainly, a world without themselves. They knew no less than we do that death will come for all of us. But a world without their land? A world where no one knew, could never begin to know, the places where they had lived and died? It would have been a world unimaginable to them, where they were unimaginable, too, even to their descendants who carried their blood and bones into the living present, tucking the secret of their lives into their own bodies, unspoken.
They each lived small lives that were, while they still drew breath, big and important, rich with meaning and history and place. Now they are no more. Their lives are no longer, their stories are no longer, nor their histories, nor legends, nothing they ever loved or valued in their world — all of it lost, a world no longer living.
The small artifacts of our lives wash out to sea and return, eventually, inevitably. We stumble upon them as if by chance, finding them collected along the edges of tidal pools or at the feet of dunes. They are rounded, shrunken, transformed by the vast, gentle, rolling waves and the violence troubling the sands beneath.
About the Author
Sarah Berbank Green is a writer, artist, and translator. Originally from south Louisiana, she now lives on a sailboat in Brittany, France, with her husband, dog, and two little kittens. You can read more about her sailing adventures at www.piedaleau.com or find her on Instagram @sberbankgreen. This is her first published piece of fiction.
About the Work
"Since I first began writing stories, the act of sitting down with pen and paper has become a practice in expanding my sense of connection with other human beings. Stories breed empathy. They take our preconceived notions of the world and throw them on end, forcing us to reconsider ourselves and others from new, often startling perspectives. In “Karin, in Four Parts,” I wanted to engage with a character from the inside out, sifting through the fragments of her inner and outer worlds, passions, memories, and misconceptions in order to explore the way in which the narratives we build around our personal experiences shape, color, and sometimes distort our perception of ourselves and our place in the world. In this way, I hoped to show how difficult, and yet how essential, it is to try to truly understand ourselves and those around us — not to mention the whole immense, unknowable, infinitely complicated mess that has composed the past 200,000 years of human life on this planet. We are simultaneously lost in the hugeness of the world and painfully, joyfully present in every moment of creation, and it is in the interplay between these experiences of isolation and connection that we find the purest expression of our humanity. Above all, I hope that this story conveys a deep compassion for human beings, with all of our intricacies and failings, and ultimately serves as a celebration of the connections we bear to each other, our ancestors, and our environment."
Sarah Berbank Green is a writer, artist, and translator. Originally from south Louisiana, she now lives on a sailboat in Brittany, France, with her husband, dog, and two little kittens. You can read more about her sailing adventures at www.piedaleau.com or find her on Instagram @sberbankgreen. This is her first published piece of fiction.
About the Work
"Since I first began writing stories, the act of sitting down with pen and paper has become a practice in expanding my sense of connection with other human beings. Stories breed empathy. They take our preconceived notions of the world and throw them on end, forcing us to reconsider ourselves and others from new, often startling perspectives. In “Karin, in Four Parts,” I wanted to engage with a character from the inside out, sifting through the fragments of her inner and outer worlds, passions, memories, and misconceptions in order to explore the way in which the narratives we build around our personal experiences shape, color, and sometimes distort our perception of ourselves and our place in the world. In this way, I hoped to show how difficult, and yet how essential, it is to try to truly understand ourselves and those around us — not to mention the whole immense, unknowable, infinitely complicated mess that has composed the past 200,000 years of human life on this planet. We are simultaneously lost in the hugeness of the world and painfully, joyfully present in every moment of creation, and it is in the interplay between these experiences of isolation and connection that we find the purest expression of our humanity. Above all, I hope that this story conveys a deep compassion for human beings, with all of our intricacies and failings, and ultimately serves as a celebration of the connections we bear to each other, our ancestors, and our environment."
