Maratse 365

Biibi darted from her brother’s shadow, thrusting her arms across Naqiit’s lap as she clung to her leg, head below the table, bobbing up and down to peek at Gabin. Kuua slid onto the empty chair and reached for the glass of juice, draining it, and wiping his mouth before looking from Gabin to his father.

“I put the bag in the hall.”

“Thank you,” Gabin said.

“It was heavy.”

“It’s the clay.”

Iisaaq said something to Biibi, nibbling at her ribs with his fingers until she pulled away from her mother. “I told her to get a bucket,” he said. “The air is very dry here. Clay will turn to brick and dust before you know it. Biibi will get you a bucket of water. She’ll keep it full.”

“I can do that,” Gabin said, as Biibi darted out of the kitchen.

Iisaaq reached for his coffee, and said, “Biibi will do it.” He finished his coffee and stood up, leaning over the table to kiss Naqiit’s cheek, before tugging a crumpled packet of cigarettes from his pocket. “I need a smoke,” he said, nodding for Gabin to follow him.

Naqiit watched them leave, then spoke to Kuua. Her soft words followed Gabin and Iisaaq into the hall and out of the house as soon as they pulled their shoes on. Iisaaq tapped two cigarettes out of the packet and they smoked as they walked back down to the beach.

“The house on the corner,” he said, pointing with the tip of his cigarette. “Uularikka lives there. She mends clothes. All the women can, but Uularikka is the best. You can pay her in fish.”

Gabin laughed. “I haven’t got any fish.”

“I will teach you to catch more than you need.”

They stopped at the beach. Iisaaq rested against the gunwale of his dinghy, puffing smoke from the cigarette clamped between his lips as he slid his hands into his pockets. Gabin stood beside him, nodding when Iisaaq pointed to Biibi as she filled a bucket with lumps of brash ice from the fjord.

“That’s less than half a bucket, when it melts,” Iisaaq said, as Biibi struggled up the beach, too busy to look at her father or to sneak another peek at Gabin. “She’ll have to go many times.” He called out to his daughter, laughing at her reply.

“What did she say?”

“That she was too busy to talk.”

Gabin watched Biibi drag the bucket along the path and then finished his cigarette.

“You’ve been very generous, Iisaaq,” he said. “But you haven’t asked me any questions.”

“I don’t need to.”

“No?” The pebbles beneath Gabin’s feet crunched as he turned to look at out at the fjord. “Where I come from… Well, let’s just say people would have a lot of questions, and they wouldn’t be so helpful as you.”

“Don’t think about it.”

“But I do.” Gabin caught Iisaaq’s eye. “And I appreciate your help.”

Iisaaq plucked the cigarette from his lips and flicked the butt onto the beach. “I know you do. And I know you’ll do what you can to help me in return.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Iisaaq lifted his chin and looked Gabin in the eye. “Because I know what you did.”

To be continued…

Copyright © Christoffer Petersen, 2021.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

“My brother’s house,” Iisaaq said as Kuua carried Gabin’s kitbag to the door. “You can stay there.”

“And your brother?”

“Dead.” Iisaaq shook his head, stalling any further questions Gabin might have. “You can use his house. But first you have to meet Naqiit.” Iisaaq kicked the sand from his boots then opened the door to his house. He gestured for Gabin to go on ahead of him, tapping his shoulder and pointing to the scattering of shoes of all sizes just inside the door. Gabin removed his boots and padded into the kitchen.

Naqiit was taller than her husband, as slim as her daughter, with those same wild eyes, temporarily tamed or constrained by the kitchen walls, but with a spark of light suggesting she was eager to soar. She brushed her long black hair to one side, clapped flour from her hands and then greeted Gabin with a brief shake of the hand. She said something to Iisaaq before setting a pan of water to boil on the hob.

“Naqiit doesn’t speak English,” Iisaaq said. He gestured at the square table in the middle of the kitchen and they sat down. Naqiit leaned against the counter, picking at soft clumps of flour that had escaped her dough. She looked at Gabin, spoke, and then stared at her husband as he answered. “I told her you are a fisherman, that you arrived in Greenland on a trawler.”

“It was a container ship,” Gabin said.

Iisaaq discarded the detail with a shrug. “But you will learn to fish. I will teach you.”

Naqiit lifted the lid from the pan as the water bubbled. The steam evaporated quickly in the dry Greenland air blowing in from outside. Biibi clumped up the stairs and into the house. She hid behind one of Iisaaq’s fishing jackets hanging in the hall, pulling it across her body like drawing a curtain, hiding her mouth and nose as she looked at Gabin. Naqiit called out to her and Biibi twisted out of the jacket and onto the deck, calling for her brother.

Naqiit placed three mugs of coffee and two glasses of thin juice on the table. She sat down next to Iisaaq. Her eyes glittered with tiny squares of light from the kitchen window, capturing Gabin’s attention, so much so he had to wrestle his gaze from hers as Iisaaq started to speak. Gabin waited for him to switch back to English.

“Naqiit is worried,” he said after a sip of coffee. “But I have told her you are our guest, that you will stay in Sakka’s house for as long as you need to.”

“That’s kind of you,” Gabin said.

Iisaaq laughed. “You say that now, but you will have to work. You will fish with me. It will be a good way to get to know the area and some of the people.”

“Just a few,” Gabin said. He looked up as Kuua clumped into the house with Biibi close behind him, walking in his shadow, as if he was a shield.

“The people of Illorsuit at least,” Iisaaq said. “You can start with them.”

To be continued…

Copyright © Christoffer Petersen, 2021.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Chapter 1

August 1985

Gabin Bouchard shared a smoke with the wrinkled Greenlander in the stern of the oily fibreglass dingy, pinching his cigarette between his lips and stuffing his hands into the pockets of his thin jeans. The wind, sharper than he expected, cut through the weave of Gabin’s wool sweater and flicked at the fringe of his long hair – jet black, like the Greenlander’s. The Greenlander – Gabin didn’t catch his name – twisted the dingy between the icebergs in Uummannaq fjord, brilliant white behemoths rising up out of deep blue waters. Briny smells drifted off the ancient ice, prickling the hairs inside Gabin’s generous nose with a blend of fish, weed, and the indefinable smell of salt twisting into the smoke of their cigarettes.

“Illorsuit,” the Greenlander said, raising his bushy black eyebrows as he nodded at the humped island with a steep face leading down to a wide bowl of grass and rock sloping into the sea. Small square houses painted in faded reds, greens, yellows, and whites dotted about the grass, connected with dusty paths between tall strands of thick Arctic grasses.

The Greenlander cut the outboard motor and tilted it out of the water, letting the dinghy drift towards the beach. The small boat dipped to starboard as the Greenland lay back against the gunwales, finishing his smoke and flicking the butt into the sea as the bow bumped the brash ice blistering and bubbling in front of the beach.

Gabin finished his cigarette seconds before the bow crunched into the beach. The Greenlander stood up and clambered over the thwart seat clamped in the centre of the dinghy and leaped over the bow. He waved to a lanky teenager ringed by smaller children with bright faces burned a deep nut-brown by the endless summer sun. The boy wriggled free of the children and grabbed the bow of the Greenlander’s boat. They waited for Gabin to join them on the beach, before all three men dragged the dinghy onto land.

“Illorsuit,” the teen said.

“Yes,” Gabin said.

The teen thrust his hand forward and took Gabin’s hand in a firm but brief grip. “Kuua,” he said.

“Gabin Bouchard.”

The boy said something else in Greenlandic. Then pointed at his chest, at the cluster of houses in the settlement behind him, then at the whole fjord with a sweep of his thin arm. “Kuua Sanimuinnaq,” he said again. “From Greenland.”

Gabin laughed. “Well, Kuua from Greenland. I am Gabin from…” He paused licking salt from his top lip as he considered where he was from. His passport said Switzerland, but something about Kuua, the ice bobbing and bumping against the stern of the boat, and the thin breeze, slightly warmer now that he was on land, teased a new identity into Gabin’s mind. He smiled at the thought, and said, “From Canada.”

“Canada?”

“Yes,” Gabin said. And then, “Oui.” Just for effect. “French Canadian. From Quebec.”

The Greenlandic man reached into the boat to grab Gabin’s kitbag. He slung it over one shoulder and then pressed his palm into Gabin’s hand. “Iisaaq,” he said. “From Illorsuit.” He pressed his hand against Kuua’s chest. “Kuua. My son.” He pointed at the children and waved a small girl over to his side, pulling her close as he wrapped his arm around her. “Biibi,” he said.

“Your daughter?”

“Aap.”

To be continued…

Copyright © Christoffer Petersen, 2021.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

It’s been a year, and on the eve of a new one – hopefully a better one, I’ve been making some plans, pencilling in projects, and generally trying to get ready for the writing and publishing year ahead.

This blog is part of that plan.

But I don’t intend to blog, just like I don’t intend to post on social media. I find that I’ve never got anything interesting to say in a blog entry or a Facebook update. I’ve spent most of December 2020 wondering what I can do differently in 2021. I considered Patreon or writing more on Medium. But none of that feels right. I’ve also dumped all my social media as that hasn’t felt right for a long time now.

What does feel right, and what I’ve got a lot of is stories in my head, and I plan to do something with them.

Here, every day – at roughly the same time of the day (before lunch in Scandinavia) – I will post 500 words of a new story. It will be a long novel featuring Constable David Maratse, with another 500 words the next day, continuing the story until this time next year. If all goes well it will be a book ready to be published in January 2022.

The working title is Maratse 365, for obvious reasons. Each entry will be largely unedited. They will end abruptly. There will be chapter breaks when appropriate, and often in the middle of a day’s post. There will be mistakes, typos, all kinds of fun stuff, but it will be original and highly experimental, especially as I normally plan every novel and novella I write.

With Maratse 365 I’ll be writing into the dark.

For fun.

Every damn day.

As for the virus… maybe I’ll be vaccinated against covid-19 along the way. Maybe you will. Borders might open, and close, and then reopen. We know we’re in this for the long haul, so it makes sense – to me, at least – to anticipate another long haul until we’re out of the pandemic, when we might have learned from the pandemic, and thought about our place in nature, how closely connected we are.

Because, ultimately, that’s where Maratse comes in.

As one reader put it, he’s a renaissance man of the land, for the land and for the people. Before I had even heard of the new corona virus I wondered how Maratse would react to a virus outbreak in Greenland, which led me to write that novella a month or so before things really cooked off in the real world.

But Maratse 365 isn’t going to be a virus novel. I know that much, but I won’t know more until I begin tomorrow.

Beginnings are exciting and difficult, but after a year like 2020 it feels right to make a bold start to the New Year, writing as if nothing else mattered, locked down and locked in, with a blank page in front of me, and 365 more blank pages after that.

Let’s see what happens…

Oh, and Happy New Year!

Chris