The house is just as silent as the harbor is now, because now everyone has left and I am alone.

I jump ashore, walk toward the cargo ship, a heavy vessel of iron with patches of rust along the seam welds. I hop lightly from the quay down onto the deck, landing almost without a sound.

The door to the wheelhouse is locked, but otherwise all the doors are open. They haven’t even thought about locking up, can’t imagine that something could happen, here, deep in the bowels of the fjord. Bowels, something shameful—a dark inside, where nobody really cares, where everything that has meant something to us has slowly been developed, exploited, where the rivers, waterfalls, and grazing lands have disappeared. Nobody cares. Neither do they care about whether Blåfonna is also destroyed—they don’t want to hear, don’t want to see. They are like him, all of them, his entire generation, my generation: they just want better wines, larger vacation cottages, faster internet connections.

I go down into the cargo hold—it’s cold, a freezer is humming. I find a switch, blink at the bright light, at the frost vapor from my mouth. The containers haven’t been properly secured, they have been left out on the floor. I walk over to the closest one, stroke the hard plastic. They must be expensive, cast in one piece, shiny, royal-blue, hard plastic. These will not decompose for 450 years, maybe five hundred years, maybe even longer, longer than a plastic bottle, longer than a disposable diaper, a pair of sunglasses, a Barbie doll, a fleece-lined jacket. Much, much longer than any human being.

I open the top one. I have to tug at the lid, already frozen shut. Inside it is the ice, vacuum-packed in an extra layer of plastic, protected by a thick lining of white insulation material. For a moment I run my hand across it, feeling the cold beneath my fingers; then I put the lid back in place.

The first container is surprisingly light. I carry it up the ladder, fling it toward the iron deck, feeling the reverberation under my feet when it lands. I don’t worry about trying to be quiet and take the lid off all the way, then yank the blocks of ice out of the plastic, my fingers tingling. I pull out a pair of gloves I remembered to bring along and then I hurl the ice over the railing, down into the fjord.

The second one also goes overboard easily, the third, the fourth, but then it becomes too difficult, I can’t manage any more. There are far too many containers.

I look at the crane on the quay—maybe I can use it. But there is no key in it, so I go down into the cargo hold again. I stand facing the containers, looking at them. I can’t manage all of them. I step closer, my gaze sliding across the broadside, and there I notice a splice aport, no, an opening—there is a hatch. Farther up on the bulkhead I spot a button. I press it, and the hatch responds immediately, sliding open with a loud creak.