CONRAD’S HOME FOR the past year has been a small hut that he built himself on Monrad land down near the river. It is a cunning construction — everything Conrad makes with his hands is beautiful. The framework is of ponga logs, lashed together with stripped flax. Between these dark red and fibrous uprights Conrad has placed walls of river stones, so neatly interlocked that there is no need for a plastering of mud. The roof consists of many layers of ponga fronds laid over a sheet of stretched canvas.
‘I’ll not be staying long,’ he said when he arrived many months ago, ‘or I’d build something more substantial.’ But here he has stayed, missing the sea, dreaming sometimes of his other life on the Faroes, but content enough with the hard work — and with Anahuia’s company. Often Anahuia sleeps here with him. She comes and goes according to other calls on her time, calls that Conrad has learned not to question.
On this evening she is with him, and so is Napoleon. The three friends sit around a fire that Anahuia has lit on a hearth of stones at the entrance to the hut. They all sit close to the smoky warmth — the night is cool, and the mosquitoes are kept at bay by the swirling wisps of smoke, which Anahuia fans this way and that, making sure all three are protected.
Napoleon is laughing as he tells them of his day spent searching for the bishop’s sheep. ‘Even the sheep here are wild! Here I am stumbling over stumps and branches,’ — he jumps up to imitate his clumsy advance — ‘calling them by all the sweetest words I know, and they simply run further away! Back home, Ana, our sheep are more like members of the family. They love us. They come to our call. How can you manage sheep that run off all the time?’
Ana smiles at the lively fellow. ‘You use a dog to fetch them.’
‘A dog!’ Napoleon is horrified. ‘Surely that would drive them further away? At any rate, the bishop is surely losing his flock. I can count only sixty where there should be two hundred — or so he says. Two hundred is scarcely believable. I have never heard of two hundred sheep all belonging to one man.’
Conrad grins at his friend. ‘This place is full of surprises. Have you looked closely at the wool? Curly and fine all the way through. These sheep don’t grow outer wool at all. Nothing coarse and straight for coats or sails. And watch the way these people take the wool. Cut it right off the sheep’s back with huge shears. The whole fleece! For weeks the poor ugly things run around half naked, pink skin showing through. You wait, you’ll see.’ He reaches out a lazy arm to pull Ana closer. She leans against him, her blanket falling open to reveal one brown breast. Napoleon turns away at first, but then his eyes are drawn back. His look is anxious, though.
‘Enok, I don’t want to wait much longer,’ he says. ‘Even to see naked sheep. Friend, when will we leave?’
‘Use Danish, Napoleon. She should hear what you say.’
Napoleon frowns. He shifts a little, as if to shrug away some thought, but repeats formally in Danish: ‘Enok? Is my friend ready to leave? This wanderer cannot go without him. The mother at home says it is important.’ He looks away again into the night. A single bird calls, long and mournful, once, twice, a third time. ‘Others say it is important. You are needed.’
Anahuia gathers her blanket and stands. Even with the heavy weight of the baby she stands straight, her bare feet planted firmly. Her strange grey eyes are dark in the firelight, their expression stern, perhaps. Or calm? Difficult to read. She touches Conrad on the shoulder.
‘Talk to your friend in your own language. Make a true decision.’
Conrad rises and follows her. ‘Ah, stay, sweetheart. I thought you could stay tonight?’
‘I am able to, yes, but your friend is anxious when I am here. You are a hero to him in some way. Be careful with him.’
Conrad groans. ‘Ana, I am no good at big decisions. Stay and help me.’
She wraps her arms around his chest and holds him tightly for a moment, the bulge of the baby pressing into his groin. Conrad feels a small kick and then another more impatient one, and despite himself he stiffens in response.
‘Jesus,’ he murmurs, ‘my own child is enticing me. This is not proper, surely!’
She laughs and releases him. ‘Conrad Rasmussen — or whatever your name is — you are a good man and a true one.’ She grins. ‘And sometimes a foolish one. Let the true man make the decision, not the foolish one.’
‘I couldn’t leave you.’
‘That is what I hope. Then tell him. But gently.’
‘He should know your story.’
‘I will tell it. But later. Ka kite.’
Anahuia turns and walks steadily into the dark — downriver, back towards her kainga.
Conrad returns to the fire. He sits for a while, looking into the flames, then picks up a piece he is carving and begins to work.
Napoleon smiles in recognition. How many times has he seen his friend carving at bone or wood when he is trying to untangle a thought.
‘What is it?’ he asks.
‘This? A wood they call manuka. Hard and sweet-smelling.’ He hands the piece across to Napoleon.
‘No, I mean what will it be?’
‘A boat, I think. A little whaling boat.’
‘There — you see? You are missing your own island!’
Conrad laughs. Takes the piece from Napoleon and works again in silence. ‘That woman,’ he says at last, ‘she has become … important. Can’t you see that, Napoleon? How strong she is?’
‘She is very strange sometimes. Scary. The baby is yours?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I thought maybe they weren’t so … strict … as us about that sort of thing.’
‘Napoleon!’
‘But how can you know? I mean she is often down with her own people. Perhaps there is another …’
Conrad stabs his knife into the ground. ‘I know because she tells me so! The baby is mine. I am happy for it to be mine.’
Napoleon will not give the matter away. ‘She wants to keep you here, can’t you see that? She has cast some kind of spell over you. It’s uncanny. How can you prefer a … a half-caste like that, before your own mother? Before Clara? Before all of us?’
Conrad leaps to his feet, too blind with anger to notice the tears in his friend’s eyes. For a moment it seems as if he will strike Napoleon, who cries out and rolls away in fear.
‘Don’t you dare call her a half-caste! It’s bad enough they say those things down at Jackeytown. Leave it. Leave it alone, Napoleon!’
He snatches his knife from the ground and crawls through the low entrance to his hut. There he lies on the mattress of fern fronds, frowning up at the dark roof.
Outside, Napoleon cries silently. Again the low hoot of the morepork sounds; again it is echoed from further away, two-toned and lonely. The boy wraps his blanket tighter against all the pressures of this strange, frightening island — so large, so gloomy — which seems to have captured his friend. He thinks of the wide, grassy fields of the farm on Streymoy, the windswept sky, his mother knitting by the fire and his bright bossy sister, now assisting the teacher at Tórshavn. The excitement of the voyage has disappeared. His pride in accomplishing a difficult mission — finding Enok — has vanished among these dark trees. A harsh, rasping cry sounds somewhere nearby and he starts in fear. But before he can move back towards the security of the bishop’s house, a jaunty whistle comes from inside the hut — a seaman’s jig the boy recognises. Quickly he wipes his fist over his wet cheeks. His lips, though, are still out of control; they will not form the return phrase.
‘Ah, Jesus.’ Conrad’s voice comes out of the dark. ‘What are we doing, Faroeman, arguing? Come inside this minute. I have not heard even half of your story. My woman has walked into the dark so you will have to do for warmth, eh? Come on in and bring your blanket, Napoleon Haraldsen.’
Inside, the two young men snug down together. Conrad hugs the smaller boy to him, punches his shoulder. ‘God bless you, my friend. You have travelled half the world to find me and I repay you with curses. They should string me to the yard and flog my wretched temper out of me! You know what I am like, Napoleon. Forgive this mad fool. Eh?’
Napoleon is too happy to speak. The tears are flowing again, for a different reason. He returns the punch and hopes that his grunt of assent will pass for words.
Conrad whistles the tune again. ‘Did you learn that one?’
This time Napoleon manages a wavering return.
Conrad laughs. ‘We all learned that one! Join the navy and learn a new ditty every day.’ He sings the snatch of another tune and Napoleon responds immediately with the chorus. Soon the two are singing and laughing like young boys, vying to remember the rude sailor versions of the old folksongs.
Conrad stops mid-song to ask, ‘But, friend, I never once saw you! Every ship I came near I asked for you. You went into the navy?’
‘I did. For a while only.’
‘What ship?’
‘Frederik.’
‘Jesus, man, we were alongside at least twice! No boy aboard called Napoleon, they said. Did you change your name too?’
‘They drafted me out, the rats. It turned out I was a good shot with the rifle, and they were desperate for more land troops.’
Conrad snorts. ‘Why waste a Faroeman on land? What use would we be in the army?’
‘What use were any of us except to die?’
Conrad suddenly turns on his elbow and peers at Napoleon. ‘They didn’t send you to Slesvig? You were at Dannevirke?’
‘I was.’
‘The whole bloody mess. The bishop up there in his big house has a lot to answer for. Different orders every day, different leaders. Advance. Retreat. Hold fast. All we could do was die by the hundred.’
‘Napoleon Haraldsen, tell me the story at once. You are a bloody hero just to come out alive. Did you see the bishop’s son? Viggo? He was a captain there.’
Napoleon stretches, smiling in the dark, warm and secure now in his friend’s admiration. ‘They said he was there. I never saw him. Müller was there too — you remember our teacher?’
‘How could I forget?’
‘He caught the first ship back to Denmark to fight for his land. He came from Als, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, or somewhere in Slesvig.’
‘Well, he died there. On that retreat from the Dannevirke. Enok, I have never been so cold in my life as on that damned retreat. The officers had fired us all up to hold and fight for king and Denmark. They boasted that we had beaten the Germans before and had the best army in the world, that our brave navy had blockaded German ports so the enemy would soon be crippled. They said we had important allies who would come rushing to our defence — Sweden, England, France …’
Conrad laughs. ‘We got all those speeches too. Along with a measure of rum!’
‘And then,’ says Napoleon, still bitter at the memory, ‘this order comes to retreat. Not a shot fired! I was ready enough to get out, I suppose — not my war — but some of the Danish soldiers were furious. They wanted to stay anyway and questioned the order. Later, an officer told me that General de Meza had two sets of orders — one to hold the Dannevirke line but another to keep his army whole, to be ready to fight in the spring. The story was that the crumbling old Dannevirke fortifications were impossible to hold, so de Meza chose to save his army. Well, no one explained all that to us.’
‘Was he a good general to you?’
Napoleon laughs. ‘Good enough, I suppose. The older soldiers liked him, thought it a shame he was removed. But a dandy! Fuss fuss about his uniform. I saw him once tear strips off a man who splashed mud on his white gloves. But for all that, a brave man. Every morning without fail he’d ride out to inspect the lines. Right in front of the enemy sometimes. You’d think he was daring them to shoot. But after the retreat they recalled him. Had to have a scapegoat, I suppose.’
Conrad growls. ‘Isn’t it the same always? Who would want to be an officer?’
‘Surely,’ says Napoleon stoutly, ‘you would be officer material? You are born to lead people, Enok.’
‘I am not born for anything but to blunder around like a bat in the daylight. Knocking all hell out of my friends. Look at tonight! But the story, Nap, the retreat.’
‘God in heaven, that terrible retreat. You can’t imagine the blizzard. We never had anything like it in the Faroes, Enok. The ground hard as iron, no purchase for your boots. We had to drag the great field-guns uphill and down again in the dark, wind and hail cutting into our faces. Once I tore the skin off the palm of my hand when it froze onto some metal part I was pushing.
‘Two days and two nights we marched. I saw grown men just lie down and die, Enok. That’s how Müller went, they say. Never had a chance to fight for his beloved land. Just too cold to go on. But you couldn’t stop to help or you’d be the same. That was the worst time. Dybbøl and Als were awful too, but that retreat … no one understood. That broke our spirit, I reckon — not understanding. Feeling that our officers didn’t understand either. I still don’t really know why we were fighting at all.’
‘Ask the bishop. He’ll have his reasons.’
‘That’s what father says. There were important reasons, he says, and not to blame the bishop. He says Monrad believed it was the only way. That the ancient fortifications at Dannevirke were broken down, not able to be held. Father says the English are to blame — that those traitors let the Danes down, promising an alliance and then going back on it.’
‘Don’t talk to me about the English,’ says Conrad.
‘Why?’
‘That’s another story, friend, and a good one — happier than yours, at any rate. Let’s hear about Dybbøl, then. We heard you fought well but it was hopeless.’
Napoleon is silent for a moment. ‘Hope? I suppose you had to feel hope of some sort — that help would come, or that the enemy might be called off, or at worst you yourself might survive while others died. Mostly we didn’t think about hope. Just kept going day after day, doing what we were told, going where the officers said, eating when we could, loading and firing our rifles. It’s only looking back you can see it was hopeless.’