S2E10 Beyond The North Wind Chapter 10

The first chapter from Emil's point of view prior to his disappearance.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Beyond the North Wind Chapter ten Ah, my Hasselblood, lovely name, great camera. Took a great shot of Anna in her swimming costume on the beach, turned to jelly, fell in love. The two buildings I had visited near the coast on my latest trip, remnants of a farm once there, had interested me for a while. I looked forward to telling Anna all about it. With the naked eye they appeared to be merely a house and a barn set close together. When the shots were taken and the infrared film developed, the two buildings would appear as only one structure. The front of the house would be completely black, with three jagged peaks to the roof. The corrugated roof of the barn, with its stripes vertical to the viewer, would be in shades of lighter grey. I saw sharks breaching the surface of the sea. I wondered what other viewers would see, and that was the point of a photograph by Emile Gironde. Isolated buildings dominated my work. My photograph of the half ruined house was a favourite. Red bricks built up in thirty neat rows perfectly tied together with white mortar, the wooden roof made of twenty planks of various lengths. A complicated chimney with a large round hat and a pyramid on top of it inspired some to think it Russian, others Chinese. Once the process of interaction started, it became the viewer's chimney. Half of the wooden roof is shattered, planks skewed across the neat patterns. A once proud building has suffered damage. Did something crash into it? Has it been neglected? An idea flashed across the mind. No place like home. It is now the viewer's photograph. Another favourite photograph, the tree house shot through a fisheye lens, the entire structure captured and wrapped up inside a sphere. The reflection of the flashlight beaming back out from the tree house centre, frustrating and then adding to the photographer's attempts to capture the image idyllic childhood, long summer evenings, psychedelic music, or the feeling of vertigo. Imprint on it what you will. The simplicity of the image, the eye is drawn to one thing only and for a while it is the only thing of interest. Your personality makes it interesting. Take this photograph of a cuboid construction of large, rough hewn stones built on the high edge of this hillside. Trees surround the man made intervention. Now what is the purpose? What would the viewer have this thing be, if anything? A gun placement, a sundial, a famous hut overlooking a fjord where a philosopher once wrote in silence? As I skied along a trail on the western edge of the Great Glacier I thought of the future. Summer was ending. Anna would be thinking about the new school year. We would soon move to her sister's in Anari, even though Anna muttered every year about staying at home. But the summer farm was not made for the winter, however tough the occupants. Burgot had even agreed for Gunnar, our dog, to come with us. Nina and Solvier loved him. In contrast, marks of irrigation trenches on the surface of the Earth, asteroid impacts on the Moon, these are not gerons. These are tattoos, interesting maybe, but they are things that are and not things that could be. I had several more photographic assignments planned in the autumn and winter. The landscape was changing here, as it was in other parts of the county. The great glacier was retreating, leaving surprises as it went. The glaciated mountain passes were giving up their hidden treasure as the ice melted. In my pocket was a flat piece of grey metal, mottled in yellow and brown, which I had found on my trip. Was it an air ahead from a thousand years ago? The trail of packed snow meandered through small trees and headed down towards the river bed. Here I went west to get onto what I called the highway. It was not the most direct route back to the top of the glacier and down the hill to the valley, but it was the most fun. Basically a long track of packed snow, the highway allowed some high speed jaunts. The route also avoided some awkward terrain, a zone of crevasses that were tedious to navigate rather than impossible. Skiing fast through the pristine snow of the highway was worth the detour. When skiing, the movement was hypnotic, a comforting, long, limbed motion, and a person could truly forget the world. The highway was open for business with snow blown across it in a herringbone pattern. The Sami had so many words for snow and ice that I made a mental note to ask the word for this design. Across the fishbones were the ski tracks of others who had been this way and who could blame them. It was like a private flume or toboggan run, with rocks rising to surround the skier. I swished around one bend, shifting my weight to keep up speed and direction. I bent down, cocked my poles under my arms, and pretended I was in the Olympics. When the highway ran out, I slowed around another bend, ready to join a slower path through the trees. I was about to move on, when in the distance I noticed what appeared to be new debris from the retreating glacier, moraines, large rocks and boulders thrown up and discarded by the grinding action of the ice. Rocks were camouflaged in the green and brown khaki of lichen and weathered stone. The glacier was announcing a change. I had to look and investigate. I took off my skis and walked towards the stones. A tunnel suddenly came into view, the entrance through an archway. I followed the white walls towards the blue light and the huge cavern beyond. What a sight when I walked into that cathedral of ice and colour. A central blue mass of ice rose from the cave floor and spread its wings over me. This feathered canopy was licked yellow and gold from the sun shining through the thin roof of ice, the mythical winged animal, frozen in time, evidently presided over something on the white floor. It was up to me to decide what was being worshipped or protected, and I decided in a flash. Kneeling on the floor I imagined my own fingers curled around a small sun. The glow would light the black walls and reveal misty streams of water running across the ice strewn floor. I thought of the sun, then of a candle, then two candles in a candelabra, which made me think of dinner in a restaurant. There and then was born the notion of a surprise anniversary dinner for Anna, to be held in this very place. The cavern was left over from when the glacier had retreated, the ice had split off forming the tunnel. It seemed safe enough inside, safer than those caves formed from avalanches where the snow crashes down the mountain and over time enticing pockets of air form in melting hollows. Such places were traps for hikers looking for interest on the glacier. I was pleased with my find. Ice caves were an easy sell to editors of nature magazines. I decided that I would be back, with the right camera and lenses to set up the shots, and Anna would be with me. The idea of an anniversary dinner out here in this cavern captured my imagination. We would need a table and chairs to sit on, plates to eat off, I would need a candelabra, a silver one for twenty five years together. Other requirements formed quickly. There would be delicious food and wine served on a table with a tablecloth. There would have to be cutlery and wine glasses, although these might be awkward to carry, perhaps goblets would do instead. Two birds with one stone, I was delighted with this place. There was, however, the possibility that other people would find the cabin and damage it, especially the ice sculpture. I appointed myself its guardian and set about keeping the location secret. I uprooted a short pine tree nothing more than a sapling and then used it as a broom, walking backwards away from the cabin to erase my tracks in the snow. Back on the trail I walked a hundred feet away from where I had detoured and built a large pile of rocks to mark the way. The trail dipped at this point, making skiing a pleasure. The route onwards would look much more inviting than a detour into the moraines and the chance of difficult ground. I even stuck the tree in the can to make it obvious that this was the way to go. Life was good. I patted snow off my blue trousers and reattached my long pointed skis. The country looked beautiful, tall thin fir trees with feather branches and leaves dotted a wide expanse of white. The way home was marked with ski tracks old and new. A pine forest bordered the white slopes of a hill that rose to a sky in many shades of blue. Water from my canteen tasted as pure as the air. To live here was a privilege. It would be good to get home to Anna as it always had been. In the early days I worked long hours when editors wanted the earth and would pay little and late, if at all. I was working in Oslo amidst blocks of flats and other ugly buildings. Anna and I meant in Tromse. She was easily the most gorgeous girl I had ever seen. A teacher and a farmer, she said, which suited an old hippie like me. I said I was a nature photographer, which was how I thought of myself back then. One more thing about Oslo worth mentioning. I once saw mamma there when she was a young woman, before she had kids. How was this possible? The young woman who stood in for mana was looking at herself in a mirror in a shop. She was trying on sunglasses. She looked exactly as mamma would have done when young. The image has never left me. My room in that house in Oslo was tiny, far too small to entertain Anna. I slept on the top of a bunk bed so I could use the bottom bunk for my equipment. The house was at the end of a row and the subway line ran overhead. It was noisy at first, then I tuned it out. There were times when I wondered how I would survive with money, but I did, taking assignments here, there, and everywhere. I was working near Tromps one crazy weekend with three jobs on at once. I was out among the fjords taking shots for the tourist board, while also taking shots on the high grounds of the migrating birds, and somehow working on a composition for a competition deadline. I had no time to eat, wash, or look after myself. Anna came over and found me at the top of a hill. She had cooked a lamb and carrot stew with potatoes and a metal tin, which he heated up on a camping stove. I was stunned. That was easily the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me. She left me with the food and the rest of that day was easy. I took a rare shot of an eagle feeding its young. That one got a prompt payment. I turned the tourist assignment around and gave the tourists the camera to show me what they were thinking of when they came up the fjords. That one brought me some repeat work. For the competition I shot the fjord, blush green hills, black and white rocks, the blue and white sky, when all these elements were mirrored in the still water. Anna was my love and my touchstone. I skied for home eager to see her and spend the evening thinking about the anniversary surprise. Life with me started with Anna. I kept Mamma and Augustine nearby in a cozy gloom. But Anna turned the lights on.