When You Can't Go Forward And You Can't Go Back

Tulid

She smiles like she wants to kiss me, slightly vacant eyes glisky. I suppose I was entranced, I managed not to stammer, but boastfulness aside, was rather charming, I hope. At least she seemed charmed. Answered little to my questions except with overrunning, uninhibited laughter, like a sudden flood.

The Svolvaer rocked a little to and fro, we caressed Zulaika. Such a calm and well-loved dog, she bears her name well; it means princess in Arabic.

Tulid was more or less the centre of my world at that moment. She has a round face, soft eyes like the ocean, long blonde hair flowing down her back.

We sat about in an alcove (the cockpit, literally a pit), a rectangular area of benches around the hatch to belowdecks, but fore of the coxwains controls. I suggested we all go for a walk in town and Tulid shyly agreed. Andreas also agreed to come and we took Laika. I never, ever saw Andreas and his beautiful dog parted.

We clambered from the the Svolvaer to the Nordmelavaering, a refitted shipping vessel with laminate timber hull, white painted iron topside and red-striped poop deck. I came up the ladder at the side of a dock and reached down a hand to help up Tulid, she gave me such a flash of white teeth then, as my hand clasped hers, she brought heat up through my organs.

She held my hand just a little longer than necessary when we were both safely on dry land. As we came down one of the grey streets leading to the centre, flanked left and right by disgruntled looking seagull chicks, we came across her family coming back the other way. I was introduced to her uncle, though the term of relation suggests a different image than the long haired, lumber-jack shirt wearing man, whose age must have been the same as mine. Also there was her mother and grandmother, both overweight red-heads, very similar in appearance to one another, but quite different from Tulid.

Did I dream Tulid into existence? Reveries of hot-tubs steaming deep in pines, where xanthrochroid women bathe and beautify their fleshy and well-nourished bodies, their hair long and streaming, wet and soapy, running fine combs through it, wringing it out, bent over, my minds eye following the curve of their golden bodies, gently stooped.

Could it be, I dreamed her and she came? I've heard tell of this, once while I was subjected to forced labour on a farm for my sins against the state, the supervisor took a sympathy to me and unburdened herself, telling me how she'd written down every aspect of the man she wanted to meet, her perfect man, and then he'd come, just appeared one day and now they were together. Could it be, I'd brought her about, in some unfocused, accidental way, breathed my dreams out to settle there like mist upon a cold window?

We walked into the square; past a bouncy castle, past a stall selling fish knives and one of wooden bowls and other implements. There was a broad stack of large sausages on one, and pictures by the side; moose, elk, caribou, bear, whale and seal.

The town square thronged. People were stood up looking at the stalls, people were sat down at tables with their beers. We wandered over to a lefser stand where a lady cut up samples of that sweet and salty cake with a pair of scissors. I can't get enough of it, a sort of creamy consistency all round, very fine dough, with that salty sweet layer in between.

Later, after dinner aboard the Svolvaer, I offered Tulid a walk. This time she held my hand for long after I'd hoisted her up the ladder. In fact she didn't let go until we'd got halfway into town and then it was to link her arm in mine. Through that thick red jumper I could feel her taut body, firm like warm marble.

She offered me a cigarette and I accepted, even though I'd given up. Nothing like a woman to make me return to all my old vices. Now, we were talking about almost nothing at all, just holding hands and joking, commenting on the town and its blandness, peering in through the window of an art gallery. Everything seemed ludic, everything seemed absurd.

As we walked along the coast to a high church, the steely grey sky blessed us with a little blue. A few enticing cracks in Asgard's floor to complement where these mountains gouge their holes in the firmament, and passing the church we came upon a little beach with boulders, and white sand, and more boulders rising out of the sea.

Then I laid down my coat and we sat on it together, this is the point where she began to tell me her story, it began like this;

"I'm just landing now, I've been up in the air for a long time. I was in Bodo, a lot of drugs and homeless until about two months ago now."

She had a distant way of talking like this, as if relating events a very long time ago. These were things she needed to say, to anyone without a judging ear.

"I woke up and someone was standing over me, torchlight in my face, he asked me where 'he' was and was hitting me. I just woke up like that. And I didn't know where 'he' was."
And she didn't elaborate on the identity of this mysterious 'he', but continued.

"We were taking these pills, like rohypnol, they make you forget, and you get so criminal. We would break into people's houses and not take anything but go straight to the fridge, and we took all their food and brought it back to our cabin. Then I woke up one day with a policeman standing over me, he hit me. But all I could say was I didn't remember. Thats what saved me, in the court, I really thought I would be in gaol this summer. All I could say was that, all these things that I'm supposed to have done are things other people have told me I've done, I really can't remember. And so I came back to my family, to get clean."

I joked that if ever I should want to commit a crime (I used squatting as an example) then I would have to pack along those pills that make you forget, as a perfect alibi.

And despite the dark clouds that seemed to settle round this girl when she talked about her past, she laughed and laughed as innocently and freely as if she'd just been born.

"There is more. My friend he was getting so violent. He had a big room full of knives, just knives covering one whole wall. He was getting worse and worse. Then he found out that every time he was going out, his girlfriend was going and having sex with someone, his friend. He called me up and said, 'I'm going to kill him.' and I said, 'Yeah, you should kill him.' Not thinking... Because its just something you say isn't it 'I'm going to kill him.' And I said, 'And I'll go and fight your girlfriend, show her.' And then he did it, he killed him. And now I'm trying to... help, he's in gaol, she's walking around like a ghost, she doesn't feel anything anymore."

I suppose you just have to scratch the surface of this hyperboreal paradise to find the darkness, the long winters of darkness, the resentment and bitterness building, the sudden outbursts of animal pain.

"Then just before I left Bodo, there was my friend I went to visit. He had all these different kinds of heroin, and he needed to test which one was which, what was strong, what was not. I didn't want to, but he said that if I didn't I'd have to go and sell myself in the street."

"That person's not your friend." I said.

"I know."

We lapsed into silence, watching the waves caress the shore.