The Port was a small cut of land. A single street of roughly hewn timber and dark tile. Brick chimneys lain on occasional rooftop and standing in contrast to a place built more from necessity than comfort. Lining the snow-covered road where a row of steps, haggard and worn. They lead into each house and were each hacked into the earth as with a scythe. The snow here was compressed, coiled loops of metal were sown into mats and dug from the snowfall each morning so that they may be placed on the street, the road then able to be trodden without fear of buried ice.
It was not a large hill.
The rise was lilting as it rolled up to the station and held a trace of deception in its pitch. White snow and clouded sky, the true incline of the hill was hidden from the unwary.
Amalie walked toward town swaddled in the warmth of her father’s operator coat.
There was a time when operating the radio transmitters was something to be proud of. Brown and green wool, spun into a quality that just didn’t seem to exist anymore. It was stitched with his name, just above the heart.
She had once imagined that she would unpick the stiches one day, that she would sew her own name in their place and be done with shadows, it all felt like only a memory. But no, this was his coat: it still had his smell. It would be unfair to the past just to unstitch a name because of the mistake of pride obscuring the want to forget.
A rime laden wind blew from the south and Amalie drew the coat over her shoulders to feel a warmth billow upward. There it was, that dusty smell: burnt coffee, contact cleaner.
The world felt as though it were on a wave, Amalie knew she was exhausted as she trudged down the slope of her hill, her eyes ached from concentration, every step felt unfocused and dreamlike. She needed to sleep. Every bone in her body asked to lie down but her nose and stomach dragged her forward. Lefa was baking, the smell of bread wound its way slowly up the hill in the sea breeze.
From the station you could see the town and its namesake port beyond.
Edges of a grey beach were at each side beleaguered by a shale rock, fragmenting roughly into the dark waters of a natural harbour. Before the radio, before the static, the snow here would only fall through the winter. There was a fledgling town, a thriving mill and quarry. The mainland would send their ships and fill the harbour with people, making the town alive with movement. But now, the harbour was frozen. Ships withdrew and found warmer ports to the east, the people that remained were the ones too stubborn to see the sense in comfort.
Amalie often looked out to where the mainland was hidden behind cloud and horizon. She wondered if the water could ever be so frozen that the ice would form a bridge, she wondered if she could hide amongst the mail of Norrie’s postal ship and flee the town forever.
But there was the station. That over-complicated mess of wires and signal equipment that needed to be nursed and kicked in so many disparate ways. She loved the station. It had moods, conversations with itself: the clatter of relays that would argue against the scribble of the spectrograph, ammeters that would buzz and tick against their limits as the unreliable short wave received transmissions over-gained from far too much frequency.
Amalie could never leave, the station felt as much a home to her as fire did atop of a candle. She felt safe here; and she relented to a moment of levity that Ben, the mainland operator, would miss having her around to talk about the weather that was plainly visible from the station window.
Pushing against the recalcitrant wood of the tavern’s door, Amalie felt a buffet of smells escape into the street along with the warmth of the kitchen as partner. Slowly baking reindeer was at cook by the smoker, the cut of freshly sawn wood was a hint that Lefa was still yet to have repaired his axe handle.
‘Lefa? Are you in?’ Amalie called to the empty tavern.
It was early the old tavernkeeper would still be at his morning’s chores.
‘In?’ came a rasp-like voice from the depths of the unlit room beyond, ‘Bread to knead, cheese to turn, the floor is much too unswept for you to stand by an open door and be letting all the snow in, Olafur’s-daughter.’
Lefa often began with the good-humoured nature of natural storyteller as the morning bloomed and grew more pensive as the day wore on. He spoke of old times; knew songs of his time at sea; he was said to have known the name of every family who had passed through the town, able to remark on the history of their parent’s forbears as well.
He had become stout as the years still failed to weaken him. The old sailor, looked more and more like a barrel to Amalie, and she often wondered if his two weathered arms were made from teak rather than from bones and wiry muscle.
The noise from kitchen had grown into muffled swearing, so Amalie let herself in and looked for a broom.
‘What’s for breakfast?’ she asked, attempting to push the dust away from a puddle melting snow, settled by the doorway. Lefa would never admit to needing help. The old bugger was as stubborn as an iron stump but canny enough to know that a swapped meal could find the dust that his old eyes always seemed to miss. He had proposed an unvoiced agreement with the station operator and without ever shaking hands they both knew that their deal was as simply worded as a headstone.
‘Norrie had brought some bacon in along with the post, so, I won’t spoil you with oats again.’ laughed Lefa as he walked from the back rooms of his tavern, a smile on his face filling the room while the flour on his hands was dusted across his apron.
‘Salt the soil of my grave though, girl, you’ve not slept.’
Despite his fading eyesight, the old sailor could read a person’s mood in a snowstorm.
Amalie frowned and finally let the weight of the previous night give way to defeat.
‘I heard something,’ she began, still unsure if the slowly droning night had led her to daydream. It was quite common to mishear a noise trapped within the buzz of the static.
‘Someone yelled out from the radio, just my name.’
‘Oh?’ said Lefa, softening his smile, taking a seat by the taverns front window, and gesturing for Amalie to join him. He struck a match against the side of his pipe and smoked; drawing in thoughtfully and then slowly exhaling a plume of sweet-smelling tobacco that lingered by the old sailor’s grey moustache.
‘Many a name has be heard in the silent din, young Amalie. The ice traps the voice when it’s cold enough. I’ve heard tales long dead-on winds of whisper; I’ve heard the call of sailors so lost that they’ve not known of their own death.’
‘You called it rost once.’
Tired eyes were beginning to win against Amalie’s desire to remain awake. The cushioned bench seemed to grow wider as she rested against the faded cotton of its arm.
‘I did. And the misbegotten cry of ghosts and embers have all found their way to the still of icefall. On cruel nights at sea, I’ve listened to, and I’ve heard those calls. The shouts of those who still wander in the glare of somewhere far beyond.’
‘But nothing is said with single meaning. Wasted words can be so much more than the weight that we give them. If we listen, if we respect each voice enough to really listen, what they speak of can hold so much more meaning than any story ever could. So, what did you hear? Only your name?’
But there was no reply, Amalie had fallen asleep.
Tutting, Lefa extinguished the pipe with his thumb and went to fetch a pillow and blanket for his guest. Olafur would have been proud of his youngest.
No, Lefa thought with a faint memory of his own children. He felt the grit of ash sprinkle to the ground between his calloused fingers and closed his eyes to correct himself.
The first operator would still be proud, he still is proud.
J. McCray
2022
Sunday Short Stories 