The Weight of Water (14 page)

When next I was aware of my brother, he was tugging on my sleeve and trying to get me to stand up.

“Don’t be so dramatic, Maren,” he said curtly. “You’ll freeze to death.” He brushed tiny pebbles from my cloak.

And then, without any further words between us, Evan began to walk along the coast path south in the direction of the cottage.
It was apparent, from his gait, that he did not intend I should follow him.

I had never been abandoned by Evan in so horrid a manner, and although I did soon recover myself and think how distraught
my brother must have been to have wept in front of me and how truly sorry I was for his troubled nature, I felt bereft there
on the cliffs and also, I must say, quite angry.

I walked home with a furious step and, at a critical juncture in the road, I took a turn that I have forever regretted. At
the Jorgine Road, I walked east, toward John Hontvedt’s cottage.

My legs and hands were trembling as I climbed the porch steps of Hontvedt’s house, from the earlier disturbances on the cliffs
or simply the inappropriateness of my visit I cannot say, but as you may imagine, John Hontvedt was exceedingly surprised
to see me. After his initial shock, however, he could not hide his pleasure.

I allowed John Hontvedt to make me a cup of tea and to serve this to me in his front parlor, along with biscuits that he had
purchased in town. He had not fully dressed, and had no collar on, and in his haste to prepare the tea, did not put one on.
Perhaps it was only the absence of the collar and the sight of his braces, but I felt as though the entire encounter were
an improper one. Indeed, I could not easily have explained my presence in John Hontvedt’s house to anyone were someone to
come upon us. What was I doing unchaperoned in a single man’s living quarters on a Sunday afternoon? Possibly it was in an
effort to answer that query, even to myself, that I spoke to John.

“Do you remember that on our walk of several weeks ago you were speaking of some matters?” I asked.

He put down his mug of tea. “Yes, I do.” I believe I had surprised Hontvedt in the act of trimming his beard, as it had an
odd, misshapen appearance.

“And I insisted that you stop speaking of them?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“I have thought about the matters which you brought up, and it seems to me that these are subjects we might at some later
date continue to discuss. That is, we may explore them further.”

“Oh, Maren —”

“This is not to say at all that I find the idea acceptable at the moment. I am merely stating that I will allow further discussion.”

“You cannot imagine —”

“You understand, of course, that it is really too soon for me to think of leaving my father’s house… .”

To my horror, John Hontvedt left his seat altogether and placed himself at my feet. I made a motion with my hands to make
him rise, but he seized both of my hands in his.

“Maren, I shall not disappoint you!” he cried. “I shall make you the happiest woman in all of Norway.”

“No, John, you have misunderstood… .”

He reached forward to embrace me. I believe he underestimated his strength and his ardor, for when he put his arms around
me, he nearly squeezed the breath out of my body. In the next minute, he was covering my face and my hands with kisses and
had leaned his entire torso onto my lap. I tried to stand up, but could not move in this embrace. I became frightened then,
frightened of being overtaken by someone stronger than myself, and also quite hollow with the first sensations of a decision
so wrong as to threaten to poison my entire soul.

“John!” I cried out. “Please stop!”

John then stood up, and he said that he would walk me to the cottage. I protested, as I did not want Karen or my father to
see Hontvedt in such an excited state, nor did I want this excitement to carry over into any possible conversation between
Father and John.

“I shall make you very happy, Maren,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said, although I sincerely doubted that he could do this.

And thus it was that John Hontvedt and myself came to be engaged.

Hontvedt and I were married on 22 December 1867, just after the winter solstice. I wore the walnut silk I have mentioned in
these pages, as well as a fringed bonnet with braided ties that fastened behind the ears and under the chin. Professor Jessen,
who remained my friend, lent Hontvedt and myself his house in Laurvig for a small wedding party after the ceremony at Laurvig
Church. I confess I was not so gay on this occasion as I might have been, as I was somewhat fearful of the heavy responsibilities
that lay before me as the wife of John Hontvedt, and also because my brother, Evan, did not come to my wedding, owing to the
fact that he was home ill with a bronchial infection, and this was a distress both to John and myself.

After the reception, at which John drank a good deal of aquavit, which Professor Jessen had been kind enough to provide for
us, I was forced to leave the others, as was my duty, and to go away with John, to his house, where we were to spend our first
night together. I should say here that our initial occasion as man and wife was not entirely successful, owing in part to
John’s state of inebriation, which I had reason, in the event, to be grateful for, and also to some confusion, when John cried
out, although there was only, I am relieved to say, myself to hear, that I had deceived him. Since I had not given any thought
to these technicalities, nor had I been properly educated in that aspect of marriage, having only Karen, who, of course, cannot
have had any experience herself, to instruct me, I was alarmed by John’s cries, but fortunately, as I have indicated, the
drink then overwhelmed him, and though I anticipated some discussion on this subject the next morning, it was never again
raised, and I am not certain to this day if John Hontvedt ever retained any consciousness of the particular occurrences of
our wedding night, his memory having been expunged, so to speak, by the aquavit.

Torwad Holde’s hateful letter came to us shortly after the wedding. All that long winter, in the darkness, newly married,
I was engaged in numerous preparations for the Atlantic crossing. John wanted to set sail in the early spring as it would
allow us several months of mild weather during which to establish ourselves in a fishing community, find lodgings and lay
by enough food to see us through the following winter.

Though I had no inclination myself to take this voyage, I knew the value of having stores, as I had read many America letters
which attested to the necessity of bringing one’s own provisions, and in sufficient quantity, on the crossings. Sometimes
Karen assisted me in this work, but not often, as I was no longer living in my father’s house. All that long winter, in the
darkness, newly married, I made clothes for John and myself of wool, and of colored gingham when I could come by it. John
built for us barrels and chests, into which I put salted fish, herring, sour milk, beer, rye rusks, whey cheese, peas, cereal,
potatoes and sugar. In other chests, I packed tallow candles, soap, a frying pan, a coffee burner, kettles, a flatiron, a
tin funnel with matches, many linens and so on. Indeed, I believe I so occupied myself in the preparations for our journey
that I was able to put from my mind, until those last moments on the dock with Evan, the nearly unthinkable fact of the voyage
itself, which would mean my departure from Norway forever. To this end, I had not made any farewells, either to my family
or to my few friends, believing that to do so might weaken whatever small resolve I had in regards to my duty, which was to
accompany my husband on this sojourn.

Our sailing vessel, which was sloop-rigged, contained, belowdecks, forty bunks, each of which was to be sleeping quarters,
as well as storage, for two persons. So that John and I, for thirty-nine days, shared a narrow pallet with many of our provisions,
and owing to the fact that I dared not remove my outer garments in that crowded room, and also to the dreadful pitching and
rolling of that ship, I hardly slept at all during those interminable nights. Instead I lay in the blackness of that hold
listening to various persons praying and crying and being sick, with no hope of release until North America was reached, or
the ship sank, and there were nights of such wretchedness that, God forgive me, I sometimes wished for the latter.

We were not treated badly by the crew, as I have heard was the case on some Atlantic crossings, particularly aboard those
vessels that were owned by the English, but water was strictly rationed, and so much so that it was a trial to most of us
to manage on just one quart a day, although John and I did have the beer to drink when our thirst was almost intolerable.
I had the seasickness from the second day out, and I may say here that I believe there is no physical torment, which then
permits recovery, greater than the seasickness, which causes one to feel ill at one’s very soul. So wretched was this affliction
that I was unable to eat, and might have grown seriously ill as a consequence of this. I must, however, despite the misery
of those days, count myself among the lucky, for there were those on board who contracted the ship’s fever and the cholera,
and it is a wonder of God that these dreadful contagions did not spread to us all. During the fourth week of our voyage, which
was the worst in regards to illness on board, there were many burials at sea, the most trying of which was the burial of a
small boy, who had contracted the ship’s fever, which is also called typhus, and who was so thin at the time of his death
that, though he had boarded the ship fat enough, he had to be buried with sand in his casket, so that the poor child might
sink to the depths, and not stay afloat behind the ship, which would truly have been an unendurable torment to the mother,
who was already in despair. I believe this was the lowest moment of our journey, and that there was not one person on board,
who was still conscious and sensible, who was not sorely affected by this tragedy.

I am told that on the voyage, those who were not ill engaged in knitting and sewing, and some playing of the flute and violin,
and I think that John, as he remained in robust health the entire trip, may have participated in the music-making and singing
that sometimes spontaneously erupted out of the tedium of the crossing. We lost fourteen persons to illness during the journey,
and one woman from Stavern gave birth to twins. I have always thought this a grotesquely unacceptable ratio of deaths to births,
and had I paid more attention to the stories of fatal diseases on board these ships, I might have been able to persuade John
Hontvedt not to make the crossing at all. But this is idle speculation, as we did make the journey, did reach Quebec, where
we were quarantined for two days, and did travel further south to the town of Portland in the state of Maine, and thence to
Portsmouth in the state of New Hampshire, where we were met by Torwad Holde, who took us, in his schooner, to the island of
Smutty Nose, where I was to reside for five years.

In having undertaken to write this document, I find I must, unhappily, revisit moments of the past, which, like the Atlantic
Crossing, are dispiriting to recall. And as I am in ill health at the time of this writing, it is a twice-difficult task I
have set for myself. But I believe that it is only with great perseverance that one is able to discover for oneself, and therefore
set before another, a complete and truthful story.

I had been forewarned that we would be living on an island, but I do not think that anyone could adequately have prepared
me for the nature of that particular island, or, indeed, of the entire archipelago, which was called the Isles of Shoals and
lay 18 kilometers east of the American coast, north of Gloucester. As it was a hazy day on our first trip from Portsmouth
to the islands, we did not spy the Shoals altogether until we were nearly upon them, and when we did, I became faint with
disbelief. Never had I seen such a sad and desolate place! Lumps of rock that had barely managed to rise above the water line,
the islands seemed to me then, and did so always after that day, an uninhabitable location for any human being. There was
not one tree and only the most austere of empty, wooden-frame dwellings. Smutty Nose, in particular, looked so shallow and
barren that I turned to John and implored him, “This is not it! Surely this is not it!”

John, who was, at that moment, struggling to conquer his own considerable shock, was unable to answer me. Though Torwad Holde,
who was, the reader may recall, the author of the infamous letter that had brought us to America (and to whom I was perhaps
not as cordial as I might have been), yelled out with some enthusiasm, “Yes, Mrs. Hontvedt, these are the Isles of Shoals.
Are they not wonderful?”

After we had made anchor in the tiny harbor, and I, trembling, had been helped onto the island of Smutty Nose, I felt a deep
sinking as well as the beginnings of fear in my breast. How could I live on this inhospitable ledge in the middle of the Atlantic
Ocean, with nothing around me but seawater, with the nearest shore not even within sight that day? How could I accept that
this was the place where I should spend the rest of my life, and upon which shortly I was to be abandoned by all human company,
with the exception of John Hontvedt? I clung to my husband, which I was not in the habit of doing, and begged him, I am ashamed
to say, right in the presence of Torwad Holde, to take us back to Portsmouth instantly, where we might at least find a house
that was settled on the soil, and where there might be about us flowers and fruit trees such as we had known in Laurvig. John,
embarrassed for me and disentangling himself from my embrace, went to help Torwad Holde carry our provisions into the cottage
that stood on that island with the forlorn look of a child who has been abandoned or not ever loved. Although it was spring,
there were no inhabitants in any of the other buildings on the island, and there were no blossoms in the crevices of the rocks.
The soil, when I bent down to feel it, was not even three inches deep. What beautiful thing could possibly grow in such a
wasteland? Around me I could hear no human sounds, apart from the grunts and sighs of John and Torwad Holde as they went to
and fro with their burdens. There was, however, the steady irritating whine of the wind, for it was a cold day in early May,
not at all spring-like. I walked slowly eastward, as if in a trance, as if, having committed no crime, I had been sentenced
to a life in exile in the bleakest of penal colonies. I gazed out to the horizon line, imagining that my beloved Norway lay
in my line of sight. We seemed to have travelled half the earth! And for what purpose?