He laid a hand on her thigh, and began to talk in a new voice, it sounded like confidences, or warnings; he became excited and gesticulated, squeezed her and wanted to illustrate something or other, and Ingrid was pleased she didn’t have the language to ask him how old he was.

She clasped his mutilated hand and held it to her face and let him speak. Now it sounded more like he was trying to persuade her, which again she was pleased she didn’t understand, he was beginning to regain his strength, to rediscover something he had forgotten, something he thought was lost, and a new weariness began to make its presence felt, the beginning of a darkness she knew she could not bear, a life without him.

~

She forced him to row on the way back and sat in such a way that she could cry without him seeing. He saw nonetheless, drew in the oars and sat motionless. Then he placed a hand on each of her shoulders. She rested her cheek on the mittens, but without turning her head. She didn’t say anything, either. They drifted. Then he carried on rowing.

*

Next evening they went out again. She taught him how to use a hand line, how to hold a fish, cut its throat and gut it, forced him out into the heavy swell on the seaward side and showed him that wet mittens are warm, and how a rowing boat can be thrown into the breakers, but be sucked out again after a bit of magic with the oars. She said it was up to him whether he froze or was injured, and now his hair was a thick, jet-black mat in which she could bury her fingers. And that night she couldn’t sleep, he could, his breathing was as peaceful and regular as Nelly’s, and that made her even more afraid.

She got up and looked out: the sea was as smooth as oil in all directions.

She started packing eiderdowns, rugs and clothes, filled the food chest as if she were kitting a man out for a fishing season in Lofoten, woke him and told him to get dressed, in a whisper.

He looked at her in puzzlement.

She rowed them south through the sound and into the gap on Gjesøya. They walked up to the barn and lay together in the hay until the sun was high in the sky, and she said she would return every evening, with food and water, and herself, and took her leave. He held her back, they lay down in the hay and took their leave of one another, and when she finally rowed away she had never been a tinier stump of driftwood in the sea.