Helga thrived in adversity. She shone brightest when she was needed most. Therefore, shortly after I healed enough to resume the hunt and help with the baby, she took a nose dive. I later learned that she had always been prone to this. It had, in fact, been far more of a concern to her mother than any “wildness,” for it robbed Helga of the will to do anything at all. There was no meteorological cause to her ailment. For Helga the sun’s return was little more than a cruel mockery. She ebbed and flowed like a tide, or less reliably, like water sloshing in a bucket that is carried over rocky ground.
She called it melancholy, for there were no other words at the time, besides perhaps malaise, but neither did justice to the full weight of despair that would suddenly descend upon her and render her inert. She did not weep, or moan, or complain. She simply took to her bunk, or sat at the table, staring at nothing, seemingly exhausted despite the inordinate amount of sleep she achieved. Every little chore was monumentally difficult for her. It pained me to witness, but there was nothing for it.
In the beginning, I was afraid she was going mad, like all those before her who had succumbed to the long winter’s depredations. I often stumbled in my attempts to change the course, though at least I never spoke of her responsibilities, or how much Skuld needed her. At least I knew better than that. I tried to rouse her from it by arranging long ski routes in the growing day, by showing her esoteric wildlife patterns, by cooking experimental meals, and by making Skuld laugh. Nothing had any measurable effect. For she was wholly rational, and yet wholly in thrall.
She did not wish to discuss it, or hear my ideas for improvement, which sounded every bit as hollow to her as they did to me. We both knew I was no paragon of steadiness or constancy. So we settled into a pattern where I did the majority of work, in- and outside the cabin, as she had done when I was injured, and I took Skuld almost everywhere I went. Helga’s job was to heal, or wait, or whatever it took. Regularly, compulsively, I extracted promises from her that she would not kill herself in my absence. She always appeared to ponder the request, which was dismaying, because it meant the concern was valid, but also heartening, because it meant her answer was honest and considered rather than rote reassurance.
“It still seems worse to die than to live,” she often said. It was a sentiment I knew well.
Two things altered the course. The first was that a Norwegian ship came in early April and dropped anchor for a few days in Alicehamna. A sailor waded ashore to see if we needed anything. I was prepared to greet them and speak on her behalf, but to my astonishment, before I could pull my boots on, Helga was out the door in her stocking feet and off down the beach. I stayed in the cabin, yet left the door open out of concern. All at once I heard the sound of her laughter—so foreign, so absent these last several weeks—and the answering jovial bellows of the sailors. Apparently she knew them, or had made herself known in no time at all. When she returned after only a few short minutes, she was red in the face but otherwise just as grim as she had been before.
“I heard you laughing,” I said.
“A mask,” she said. But she was incrementally more alive.
She rummaged around in her crate, drew out some money I hadn’t known she possessed, and left again. After a minute I came out and, lo, Helga was gone. Then I saw her aboard the dory, sitting right in the bow, her long black hair flying this way and that as the wind snatched it, looking triumphant like the captain of a conquering host of fairies. I don’t rightly know whether I panicked, or what I thought in that moment. The feeling is lost to me, and I have no wish to recover it. But she wasn’t gone long—perhaps an hour. Eberhard and I sat on the beach, watching for any sign. Skuld napped in her furs, squinting against the sun even in sleep. Periodically I lifted my hand in a feeble wave in case Helga was looking back. Did I truly think she was going to leave? I don’t believe so. But if she was, I wanted her to know that I wished her well.
Then, stuttering across the water, came the sound of an engine starting. Automatically I cursed it, for I have always been appalled by the noise and the fumes. Now there were two little craft approaching. A few sailors rowed the whaleboat. Helga, unmistakable in her cloud of hair, was with a man in a different boat. They grounded at the same time and the sailors all jumped out to haul the second boat from the water. It was an ugly metal thing with one empty set of oarlocks. At the back was a little engine with an absurd little fan, now hovering incongruously in the air, for they had flipped the whole craft onto its gunwales. The man was giving Helga some instructions and she nodded in her brisk, impatient way. And then, in their typical flurry, the Norwegians were shoving off with shouts for her good fortune, and their fond regards to the baby, rowing back into the heart of Alicehamna, where their ship lay at anchor.
Helga beckoned me over to the boat, which she was inspecting with great complacency. She was wearing tall green rubber boots that looked several sizes too large for her.
“You left unshod,” I said. She glanced down, as if noticing her new footwear for the first time. “Oh. Yes. The captain gave them to me. He is the dearest man. He said he had an extra pair.”
She was the type of person to whom people like giving gifts—she was game for life, and yet always a little underprepared—and she received them handsomely.
“Let us take to the sea!” she exclaimed with surprising volume.
“What, now?”
“Of course now,” she replied. “I’ll gather a few supplies while you gather your wits. We shall make for Biscayarhuken. The captain says the cabins there are for sale. Perhaps we should spend the night and see how we like them.”
My mind could hardly keep pace with her. This was how things went with Helga. Her mood could flip in an instant, and then she was in motion. If a person didn’t catch up to her, he might be left in her frothy wake.
“Basque Hook is already part of my hunting grounds,” I argued as we pushed off, Skuld bundled in my lap and Eberhard curled in a disconsolate ball at the stern. “Why do I need the buildings there? Last I saw them, they were in ruin.” It had never occurred to me to buy someone else’s cabin. Why should I? Due to the vagaries of Spitsbergian policy, I could hold the hunting rights to a place without owning any structures there. The rules were baffling but immaterial. “And what about Skuld?” I said. “It isn’t safe to be in open water with a baby. When we leave Raudfjorden and head east for the hook, we’ll be subject to the ocean’s whims. In a skiff!”
“Calm yourself, uncle,” she said. “The bay is like a mirror. And the captain says he’s rarely seen the waters north of Spitsbergen so placid. Our principal danger may be that the gentle swells rock us all to sleep.”
“I suppose we live amid constant threat,” I conceded. “What’s one more?”
When at last we came near the mouth of Raudfjorden, Helga laid down her oars and fired up the miserable, coughing little engine. I was surprised to find that it performed admirably, keeping us from the lee shore as we puttered our way along the rocky coast, and we reached Biscayarhuken in the late afternoon.
The main cabin—the largest of three—was shabby indeed. After we prized off the log that had been braced against the door to keep it shut, the door promptly fell from its hinges. Inside it smelled of sour old tobacco and rats and rotten skins. There were greasy yellow curtains pulled across the single window. Apparently the last occupant had a whittling fetish, or perhaps an animal fetish, for he had left behind an unsettling menagerie of tiny creatures, intricately carved, some real and others fantastical. There were several walruses and narwhals, as well as badgers, centaurs, and dragons. Most bore expressions of anger or pain. It disturbed me that the whittler hadn’t taken these tokens with him. Had he died here, or nearby? Would his spirit be looking for them? Did he leave them to ward off evil, or just interlopers such as us?
Helga didn’t care. She snatched up a handful and deposited them in Skuld’s lap. The baby was delighted. Eberhard stood at the threshold whining until I barked at him to come inside. I hung a ratty old skin over the void and started working on the dubious woodstove while Helga unpacked. Typical to her sensibilities, she had thought to bring an esoteric collection of items—most of them designed for our sustenance and inebriation—but failed to pack other necessaries, such as oil for the lamp or clean breechcloths for Skuld, who was encrusted in filth. I carried the tiny creature down to the water to bathe her lower half, all the while cursing myself for having gone along with such a foolish impulse. I thought Skuld would protest her icy baptism, but she merely looked shocked for a moment, and then laughed as though she could imagine no finer amusement.
In the dim haze of the cabin, whose only redemption was that it had grown several degrees warmer and its noisome vapors were overpowered by chimney smoke, we passed an oddly merry evening. Helga was in fine spirits. I thought to myself that I would undergo far worse inconveniencing if that was all it took to return her from the black pit. I shivered, for anything of even marginal warmth that I had borne on my person was now piled upon Skuld, and I did it gladly. The benighted place seemed almost a refuge. Newness was worth something; change, nearly priceless.
“So, uncle, shall we buy this little outpost?” Helga said, after we had finished the bottle of wine and eaten all of our dried seal sausage.
“With whose money?” I said.
“Yours, of course. I used up the last of what Mother gave me on our skiff. I know you have plenty squirreled away. Charles told me. Now and again you must see fit to purchase more than a plug of tobacco.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “The cabins may come in handy. And if we fixed them up somewhat, we could rent them to tourists.”
“Tourists in Spitsbergen!” she exclaimed. “Oh, uncle, you are quite ridiculous.”