The Weight of Water (12 page)

On Star, windows are illuminated, and people walk through pools of deep yellow light.

“You’re trembling,” Thomas says.

The Magdalene Poems
are an examination of the life of a seventeen-year-old girl in the last four seconds of her life, written in the voice of
a seventeen-year-old boy who was clearly her lover and who was with her when she died. The poems speak to the unfulfilled
promise of love, to the absolute inevitability of that promise remaining unfulfilled. The reader is allowed to imagine the
girl as a middle-aged woman married to the man who was the boy, as an elderly widow, and as a promiscuous sixteen-year-old.
The girl, whose name is Magdalene, is — as seen from the eyes of the boy — extraordinarily beautiful. She has the long slender
body of a dancer, abundant multihued hair that winds into intricate coils at the nape of her neck, and full curved lips of
even dimensions with barely any bow at all.

According to the State of Maine, on March 5, 1873, six people lived in the one-and-one-half-story red cottage on Smuttynose,
and there were no other inhabitants on the entire island that winter. John and Maren Hontvedt had come in 1868. Karen, Maren’s
sister, and Matthew, John’s brother, had each come separately in 1871. Karen almost immediately entered service at the Laighton’s
Hotel on Appledore Island, while Matthew joined John on the
Clara Bella,
the latter’s fishing schooner. Evan, Maren’s brother, and his wife, Anethe, had arrived on the island in October of 1872,
five months before the murders.

At daybreak on March 5, Matthew, Evan, and John left Smuttynose and sailed northeast in the schooner to draw their trawls.

The Ingerbretson men from Appledore joined them in their own schooner. The plan for the day was to fish in the morning, return
for lunch, and then head for Portsmouth to sell their catch and purchase bait. But just before noon, an unexpected and swift-rising
wind prevented them from making an easy sail home to Smuttynose. Because they knew they had to have bait, they called over
to Emil Ingerbretson and asked him to stop at the island and tell the women that they would not be home until evening. The
three women — Maren, Karen, and Anethe — cooked a stew and made bread for the men in preparation for their return after dark.

Louis Wagner, standing at Rollins Wharf in Portsmouth, watched the
Clara Bella
come into the dock. Wagner, who was wearing that day two sweaters, a white dress shirt, and overalls, helped John and Matthew
and Evan tie up their boat. Louis told the men that the bait they wanted, which was coming by train from Boston, would be
delayed and wouldn’t be in until nearly midnight. Louis then asked John for money for something to eat, and John laughed and
said that none of the men had brought any money because they had thought they would go home first, and that they would have
to eat on credit with Mrs. Johnson, to whose house the bait was to be delivered. Wagner then asked John if he had had any
luck with his fishing, and John answered that he had been able to save up six hundred dollars. The three men of Smuttynose
said goodbye to Louis, leaving him on the dock, while they went to fetch their dinner.

Baiting the trawls was a time-consuming and slimy business. Each of a thousand hooks had to have its piece of baitfish, a
stinking sliver of herring that would have come in barrels from Boston by train, and did in fact arrive much later than expected
in Portsmouth that night, preventing the men from returning to Smuttynose at all. Each individual hook had to be separated
from the tangle, baited, then coiled into a tub so that the lot could be thrown overboard when the schooner, the next day,
had made it to the fishing grounds. To bait the trawls took three men six hours. When the work was finished, it was not uncommon
for one or more of the men to have stabbed himself with fishhooks.

Louis Wagner had emigrated from Prussia to the United States seven years earlier. He was twenty-eight years old and was described
by those who knew him as being tall and extremely strong, light-haired, and having “steel blue” eyes. Other descriptions of
him depict his eyes as soft and mild. Many women thought him handsome. He had worked at the Isles of Shoals off and on, loading
and unloading goods, and with John Hontvedt on the
Clara Bella
for two months, September to November of 1872. For seven months of that year (from April to November), Wagner had boarded
with the Hontvedts, but he had been crippled much of the time with rheumatism. After leaving the Hontvedts, he signed on as
a hand with the
Addison Gilbert,
which subsequently sank, leaving Wagner once again without a job. Just prior to the murders, he had been wandering in and
among the boardinghouses, wharves, docks, and taverns of Portsmouth, looking for work. He is quoted as having said, to four
different men, on four different occasions, “This won’t do anymore. I am bound to have money in three months’ time if I have
to murder for it.” While in Portsmouth, he resided at a boardinghouse for men that belonged to Matthew Johnson and his wife.
He owed his landlord money.

According to the prosecution, at seven-thirty on the evening of March 5, Louis Wagner stole a dory, owned by James Burke,
that had been left at the end of Pickering Street. Just that day, Burke had replaced the dory’s thole pins with new, expensive
ones. Wagner intended to row out to the Isles of Shoals, steal the six hundred dollars that John had spoken of, and to row
immediately back. This would be a twenty-five-mile row, which, even in the best of circumstances, would be extremely taxing
for any man. That day it was high tide at six P.M., low at midnight. There was a three-quarters moon, which set at one A.M.
On a favorable tide, it took one hour and forty minutes to row from Pickering Street to the mouth of the Piscataqua River
(which flowed through Portsmouth), and one hour and fifteen minutes to row from there to Smuttynose. This is a round-trip,
in favorable conditions, of just under six hours. If a man tired, or encountered any obstacles, or if he did not have completely
favorable conditions, the row to and from the Isles of Shoals could take as long as nine or ten hours.

County Attorney Yeaton reconstructed Wagner’s plan as follows: Maren would be asleep in the southwest bedroom, and Anethe
would be upstairs. Wagner would fasten the door that linked Maren’s bedroom to the kitchen by sliding a slat from a lobster
trap through the latch. Since the money would be in the kitchen in a trunk, he felt there would be no difficulty. Wagner mistakenly
assumed that Karen would still be on Appledore. He brought no murder weapon with him.

Wagner, who had the current with him, moved quickly down the river and past Portsmouth. When he reached the Shoals, he circled
the island silently to see if, by some chance, the
Clara Bella
had returned. When he was certain there were no men on the island, he rowed himself into Haley’s Cove. This was at approximately
eleven P.M. He waited until all of the lights in the houses on Appledore and Star had been extinguished.

When the islands were dark, he walked in his rubber boots up to the front door of the cottage, where an ax leaned against
the stone step. He entered the kitchen and fastened the door to the bedroom.

The dog, Ringe, began to bark.

Louis turned abruptly. A woman rose from her bed in the darkness and called out, “John, is that you?”

I take Billie below to get her ready for bed. She still finds the head a novelty, particularly the complicated flushing of
the toilet. She brushes her teeth and then puts on her pajamas. I settle her into her berth and sit next to her. She has asked
for a story, so I read her a picture-book tale of a mother and her daughter gathering blueberries in Maine. Billie lies in
a state of rapt attention and holds in her arms a threadbare cocker spaniel she has had since birth.

“Let’s say our things,” I say, when I have finished the book.

When Billie was a toddler, she learned to talk, as most children do, by repeating what I said to her. As it has happened,
this particular bit of repetition, a bedtime litany, has lasted for years.

“Lovely girl,” I say.

“Lovely Mom.”

“Sleep well.”

“Sleep well.”

“See you in the morning.”

“See you in the morning.”

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

“Sweet dreams.”

“Sweet dreams.”

“Love you.”

“Love you.”

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

I put my lips against her cheek. She reaches up her arms, letting go of the dog, and hugs me tightly.

“I love you, Mom,” she says.

That night, on the damp mattress that serves as a bed, Thomas and I lie facing each other, just a few inches apart. There
is enough light so that I can just make out his face. His hair has fallen forward onto his brow, and his eyes seem expressionless
— simple dark pools. I have on a nightshirt, a white nightshirt with pink cotton piping. Thomas is still wearing the blue
shirt with the thin yellow stripes, and his under shorts.

He reaches up and traces the outline of my mouth with his finger. He grazes my shoulder with the back of his hand. I move
slightly toward him. He puts his arm around my waist.

We have a way of making love now, a language of our own, this movement, then that movement, signals, long-practiced, that
differ only slightly each time from the times before. His hand sliding on my thigh, my hand reaching down between his legs,
a small adjustment to free himself, my palm under his shirt. That night, he slides over me, so that my face is lightly smothered
between his chest and his arm.

I freeze.

It is in the cloth, faint but unmistakable, a foreign scent. Not sea air, or lobster, or a sweaty child.

It takes only seconds for a message to pass between two people who have made love a thousand times, two thousand times.

He rolls away from me and lies on his back, his eyes staring at the bulkhead.

I cannot speak. Slowly, I take the air into my lungs and let it out.

Eventually, I become aware of the small twitches in Thomas’s body — an arm, a knee — that tell me that he has fallen asleep.

To get a landscape photograph at night, you need a tripod and decent moonlight. Sometime after midnight, when everyone is
asleep on the boat, I take the Zodiac over to Smuttynose. I use the paddle, because I do not want to wake Thomas or Rich with
the motor. In the distance, the island is outlined by the moon, which casts a long cone of light onto the water. I beach the
Zodiac at the place where Louis Wagner left his dory and retrace the steps he would have taken to the house. I stand in the
foundation of the house and replay the murders in my mind. I look out over the harbor and try to imagine a life on the island,
at night, in the quiet, and with the constant wind. I take two rolls of Velvia 220, seventy-two shots of Smuttynose in the
dark.

21 September 1899

I
HAVE BEEN
thinking this morning upon the subjects of story-telling and truth, and how it is with the utmost trust that we receive the
tales of those who would give them to us.

Not long after our mother had died, and I had recovered from my illness, Karen became, as I have said, the mistress of the
house, and Evan and I were sent out to work, me to a neighboring farm, and Evan to sea. This was not such an unusual occurrence,
not in that area and in that time.

Our father, having grown older and grieving for the loss of his wife, was going to sea fewer days than he had before and not
for long journeys as he had done in the past. Thus he did not have a surplus of fish to sell or to dry. All around us at this
time, there were other families in failing circumstances, some far worse off than we were, families in which the father had
drowned, and the mother and the eldest son had the responsibility of feeding many young children, and also families whose
livelihoods had been reduced by the economic troubles of the region and, indeed, of the entire country at that time, and there
were many indigent and homeless persons as a result. By contrast, I remember very few occasions when our family actually had
no food in the pantry, although I do recall at least one and perhaps two winters when I had only one dress and one pair of
socks to see me through to spring, and we could not get wool to spin to make another pair.

The decision to send Evan out to work was, I believe, an easy one for my father, since Evan was a tall and strong boy of sixteen,
and there were many youths of the same age in the environs of Laurvig who had been working for some time. It was thought that
Evan would make a better wage as a hired mate to someone else than he might by selling the herring and the cod he would catch
with my father; but because there was very little fishing work in Laurvig Bay in those years, Evan had to go to Tonsberg,
which was twenty kilometers north of Laurvig. There he was told about a man named John Hontvedt, who was looking for a mate
and who lived in a house with six other fishermen, one of them his brother, Matthew. From that day forward, which was 12 October
1860, until such time as Evan and John entered into partnership, Evan worked with John Hontvedt on his fishing sloop, the
Malla Fladen,
and lived in that house for six days a week.

As for myself, I stayed one more year at school, and then was hired out to the Johannsen farm. This was a grave time in my
father’s life, and I believe the decision to send his youngest child out to work was a wrenching one for him to make. Karen
could no longer go to the boarding house as she was needed at home, and since I was only fourteen and my father did not think
it suitable for me to work in similar circumstances, he inquired about work for me elsewhere, where the conditions might be
more gentle. As it happened, it was Karen who was advised of the position with Knud Johannsen, who was a recent widower himself,
and she urged my father to send me there.

Knud Johannsen’s dairy farm lay six kilometers back from the sea, an uphill climb on my way to work in the morning and, of
course, a downhill slope in the evening, which was just as well, since I usually was so very tired then that I needed gravity
to propel me forward to our cottage. My hours at the Johannsen farm were long and difficult, but generally, not unpleasant.
During the time of my employ at that household, which lasted two years and eight months, Evan and I did not have many opportunities
to see each other, and almost never alone, and this was a sorrow to me. Because of Evan’s hard work and prosperity, however,
our family’s fortunes did gradually increase, so that I was allowed to discontinue my work for Mr. Johannsen and re-enroll
in school, where I stayed for one year and seven months, entering a course of preparation for further study, though sadly
I was not ever to go on to university. It was my good fortune, while in school, however, to put my whole heart and mind into
my studies and thus command the attention of Professor Neils Jessen, the headmaster, who then took upon himself the bettering
of my language skills so that I subsequently found pleasure in the study of rhetoric and composition. I trust that while I
was lacking in certain rudimentary prerequisites for this challenging task at hand, I acquitted myself passably well, as Professor
Jessen spent many hours with me after school in hopes that I might be the first female student from the Laurvig School to
attend the university in Kristiania.