He tries to brush it off. Standing like a man in one of those dreams when you think you’re awake, until the thought occurs to you that you might in fact be dead. No, better to hate the limp water and the men’s cur-like diligence. He hates their bearded mugs, the stench of rancid wool and old sweat. The sulphurous haze. He hates sleeping below deck, where the air is frowsty and wet with dead cod. Hates having to squeeze into his bunk and sleep like that, marinating in each other’s odours.

The hours pass. Most of all, he hates the fishing.

‘Chin up, matey!’

The usual Jegvan. In the litter of five brothers, of which Fritz is the second youngest, Jegvan is the middle 39child, the cosseted one. No one has mastered better than he the art of being hale and hearty—downright jaunty—when it’s least appreciated. He’s a phenomenon of the type nature sometimes produces in small isolated communities. Taller and more handsome than the other brothers, he possesses an unaccountable, inborn elegance, and has hair like Cary Grant. He’s light-footed, quick-witted, coarse-mouthed, but charming as the devil. Exactly like the devil, thinks Fritz.

Jegvan tosses back his mane of hair and jabs a boxful of cod heads into his despondent little brother’s chest. Less snivelling. A bit of ill health and adversity, surely he can cope with that? Fritz takes the box mechanically, barely catching a glimpse of the swarm of black eyes and small pointed teeth before the contents are thrown overboard.

The gulls appear around the boat in a flutter. Their wings weave a pall in the air and unravel it.

Another box follows.

The cod heads stare.

Fritz inhales through his nose.

A couple of the men have been ashore on the island. Not Fritz.

While they sleep, a little of its darkness trickles below deck. The big, ringing valleys. The coves that break the mountain’s wall, how to describe them: nature’s own solitary confinement cells, eaten into the rock, overshadowed by the mountain, alcove-esque, grey. 40

White figures have been spotted on the sand in those small coves. Luminous white. There are stories about that sort of thing. Whalers from a bygone age. The madness that can steal up on the men from the mining town in the black winters.

Fritz thinks of long thighs cold as fish leaving drag marks on the rock. The hatred that came blackened from the polar bear’s jaws as it roared at the boat and the wind took the sound. The birds dive in and out of the rock wall, in and out of reality, like flickering darts.

Jegvan whistles.

Fritz reaches for the box but finds empty air, managing to catch himself just before he loses his balance. Jegvan is gaping at the shore. His hands shadow his weather-beaten face. ‘Jesus, you see that?’