NOVEL
In a small boat
Chapter 12 The Love We Had
Chapter 12 In a small boat far out on the high seas.
I’m asleep. I have a dream. It is windless. I’m in a small boat far out on the high seas. I sit on the ahead in the boat, my hands resting in my lap. I’m uncomfortable not knowing what’s going on.
There is dawning unrest inside me. I do not know how deep it is under the thin hull. Do not know which direction the currents are carrying me now, dazzled by the white light from above.
Feel the wave lift me, lower me, lift me, and lower me again. It is the ocean that lifts me, the pulse of life that quietly moves me.
Far out there, I sense the powerful voice from far back, the great stir in life that speaks to me. Man, who are you, where do you come from, where are you going, what do you want?
I do not know who is asking, or why such questions. I stand in the middle of a dark forest the path has become indistinct and I feel growing unrest in me.
I want answers, I need to know where I am, what’s going on, where am I going. I feel the forest opening up a dark bay, a place for light, I wake up to a new day.
After I met her, doors have opened into new secret rooms inside me. It is as if it has become full of warm colours in the room around me, and warm rays flow through my body.
Eira and I, a new start, a new beginning in my life. The heavy and gray longing that I felt in recent years is gone. I have experienced love again, and I am very grateful for that. What she and I have together cannot be described in words, but I still try to describe it in words from the years far back north, when I was a fisherman in the Lofoten Sea.
No, it cannot be described in words, and when we are together, she and I, it is as if the light is flowing inwards, it is a quiet winter day and the long swell lifts the boat. When I lie next to her, when I taste her, I imagine the ocean, the Lofoten Sea. I feel the long swell that lifts us.
She lies on her back and smiles; she has a twinkle in her eye when she says:
“What are you doing with me, what are we doing with each other?”
She smiles full.
“This is so very very different. And I want you, want you forever.”
And I answer with such promises that sometimes come so easily, and I ask her:
“Are you sure about this? Can I trust it to be so?”
“Yes,” she replies, and I say nothing.
I think of the light on the Lofoten Sea and I look at her.
‘You, me. This is ours. We will be together forever.”
She smiles, dreamily in her eyes.
“Imagine the sea, Eira, you and I in a small boat. We are together, it must be freezing cold out there on the Lofoten Sea, it is a quiet, late winter day, the light flies down from the sky. And the long swell lifts the boat, lifts us in the boat, and it’s like when you receive me. You are the sea, you lift yourself, you lift me, we are together and it’s something we’ll have together, have forever.”
Who knows what it is like to be loved after so many years of lack? Who knows how longing it is for the light after so many years of searching blindly for the light within you?
Happy is the one who gets to experience love again waking up early to a shivering, steamy summer day or a clear, cool autumn day. One such morning when I walk barefoot across the floor going out into the hallway, open the door out, feeling the fresh air against my face.
Such a morning when nature holds its breath, when I am born again and my love lies under the warm duvet in there. Such a morning when she and I own together is something no one can ever take from us.
The light inside me, the light I bathe in when we are close and the world out there is erased. The moment when I do not feel unrest or fear, just a quiet joy. When she has her eye closed, when her face is resting and all the sorrows are put away, then I close my eye and see the light inside me.
No one knows everything, some know a little, some know much, and very many are insecure and would like to know.
Light is what we look for when it looks dark, light is what we long for when we walk in darkness and cold.
The longing for light, when it looks dark, is what drives us forward, upwards. The light within us, the light outside us is the force that can lift us out of the darkness.
Meeting her, reaching her, coming close to her — receiving her, feeling close to her is the force that can lift us towards the light.
The story that the novel tells takes place in a town that exists in reality, a small industrial town at the end of a fjord in western Norway. The story being told and the characters are fictional.
The Love We Had
Part 1 The Longest Night -chapters 1–3, told by Lars Part 2 The Light Inside -chapters 4–17, told by Aslak Part 3 Save Our Secret Love -chapters 18–48, told by Eira
Links to earlier and later chapters:
Part 1
Chapter 1 I Love It When Things Are Normal
Chapter 2 I Came Home as Usual
Chapter 3 I Believe in What I See
Part 2
Chapter 5 All we have is — ourselves!
Chapter 6 Coming together — escaping loneliness
Chapter 7 When I first met her
Chapter 8 An unskilled factory worker
Chapter 9 That Sunday morning we met at the parking lot
Chapter 10 At some point they gradually stopped listening to one another
Chapter 11 Going into the furnace hall to dig out shit from the smelter furnace
Chapter 13 The ugliest city can be the happiest city in the world
