Norwegian by Night

It was written in 1912, and translated into English by a professor at the University of Minnesota. The university published it in an obscure collection of works called Poems of Modern Scandinavia, seven years after Norway secured its independence from Sweden.

Norway. A gift
to the wandering tribes who pressed
ever northward into the sea split orchestral tumult
of salty shores and cragged earth
sheltering the gods that time forgot.
Wine spilling like children
through empty halls echoing
waiting, neverly for distant guests,
the fire and the song rising,
still and bright into the ever darkening sky.
A proclamation to the eternal night.
A chorus of candles and spice.
We… they say. Children of the norlands,
with fathers buried in this earth’s cradle.
All memory conspiring to a single story —
This… they say.
This is our land.

This world is all around him now. He has never seen it before. They have been on the move for several hours. With a panoramic view from high on the tractor, he can recall the pictures from his own mind that the poem created. He doesn’t remember the exact words, but does sense its mood and the flow of its metaphors. It comes back to him now, because the wind blows against his face as the carriage shimmies beneath him, with Paul and the raft in tow. This land around him — so silent before — now begins to speak as Sheldon gazes out on it. He begins to sense that silence itself is a kind of language. There is more there than death and memory. More than the voices of the lost. There is something in Europe’s silence that he has not heard before. But he will not live long enough to fully understand it. And so he holds this new insight as loosely as a poem found by accident. One with no title and no author. One experienced and never found again.

Defying age and gravity, he stands up straight and tall on the moving tractor, and lets the world slip underneath him. He watches the trees approach him, slowly at first, and then speed past.

He takes them on to Husvikveien, then Kirkeveien, then Froensveien. He turns them down Arungveien and Mosseveien, and then eventually out to the Rv 23 and the E18 where there is nothing between them and the gentle land that sways like the sea and says so much that Sheldon cannot comprehend.

Mario was putting a cloth to Sheldon’s head as he opened his eyes.

‘Donny, you OK?’

‘I don’t feel so good.’

‘A medic bandaged your leg. And put a note on your shirt.’

‘What does it say?’

‘“Shot but OK.”’

‘That seems clear enough.’

‘How did you get here?’ Mario asked.

Donny thought about this. He had been shot on the water as he approached the sea walls. He shot back. Then he’d passed out. Now he had a headache. Can a wound migrate?

‘I got here by boat.’

‘What boat? By LST? I didn’t see you on the boat.’

‘No. A little boat. A life raft. I borrowed it from the Aussies. I must have washed up. Or someone pulled me. Who knows.’

‘That’s why you’re wet?’

‘Yes, Mario. That’s why I’m wet.’

‘Can you stand up?’

‘I think so.’

Donny wasn’t sure what time it was or how much time had passed since the troops had secured the three beaches. T-34 tanks were in formation, crouched still and low on the beach, cooling and hungry. A MASH unit had already been set up. Above him, he could see the Korean lighthouse at Palmi-do. It was high tide, and the sun gleamed off the hulls of the landing craft. Men were smoking. It was all rather calm.

Mario pulled Donny up, and they stood eye to eye for a moment and both smiled.

‘It’s nice to see you,’ Mario said.

‘Don’t get all sappy on me.’

‘We should take a picture.’

‘Of what?’

‘Us.’

‘Why?’

‘We’re brothers in arms! We take a picture, and show our sons someday so they’ll be proud of us.’

‘You actually think we’re going to meet girls?’

‘Me, yes. You… maybe a nice cow. Or a duck. They say ducks make excellent lovers.’

‘Do they?’

‘Yes,’ said Mario. ‘And when the relationship sours, you can eat them.’

‘Where’s the camera?’

Mario took off his backpack and took out a Leica IIIc. It was stainless steel and shiny, with a sharkskin grip. He handed it to Donny.

‘I don’t know how to use it.’

So Mario taught Donny how to adjust the shutter speed and f-stop, take the white balance, and set the aperture. All the while, the American, Canadian, and South Korean forces hustled to clear the debris of battle from the beach and the water. They hammered at supply centres and heaved hard at the docks. As the boys talked about the intimate clicks and clacks of the camera, Inchon was transformed behind them into a northern operations base against the communist forces.

‘You get it now?’ Mario asked.

‘I suppose.’

‘Take one of me first.’

There were some gunshots in the distance — some vague sense that fighting was continuing over the hills, engaging the last of the local resistance, as Mario walked backwards to his mark. Donny’s hands were sticky from the oily sea, and he wiped his sandy fingers on his wet lapel so he wouldn’t ruin Mario’s camera.

Donny put the camera to his eye. It occurred to him, in that moment, that he had never looked through a camera before. Perhaps sometime, on some distant day, he might have fooled with one. But he had never looked. Every time he looked through a viewfinder it was through the scope of a rifle. The first time was a target at New River, North Carolina, where he trained with the Marines near Camp Lejeune, and he always had an itch he was trained not to scratch.

It’ll give away your position and get you killed. Any questions?

His class of Raiders consisted of fifteen volunteers. They shot targets for five weeks. They learned scouting, patrolling, map reading, demolitions, camouflage, and how to shoot with a scope. They learned immobility, misdirection, balance, resistance to impulse, breathing, and control. Sheldon was taught to slow the beating of his own heart.

They learned range and wind and light. They talked about rifles and ammunition and gunsmithing and girls.