The Last Boat Home Read Online Free PDF Page A

people. Women hushed butter-haired children, while their men adjusted suit jackets that some had first buttoned on their weddingday. Halfway up the aisle sat Lars, swivelled around on the Reiersen family’s pew, wearing a glazed expression while he scanned the faces of the latecomers. He grinned when he saw Else, who did her best to ignore him as she settled onto a bench beside her mother.
    The bells stopped tolling. In their wake, a shrill hum passed onto the air which the organist took up in a string of slow tones. The congregation stood and launched into the hymn that was chalked up on a board below the pulpit. While they sang, Pastor Seip thumbed through the pages of his Bible, glancing up now and then as if to measure their progress. Next to Else, her mother’s voice lifted and soared to the psalm’s final note.
    ‘May the Lord grant you mercy, and bless you,’ said the minister. ‘Welcome, all, to this Sunday’s service. We gather here in fellowship to praise Almighty God and to offer thanks for His wisdom and guidance.’
    As Pastor Seip’s greeting rang out in the church, Else ran her thumb over the weave of her psalm book’s cover. She fidgeted on the bench that was too hard under her thighs and waited for her thoughts to carry her away. She felt cold in spite of the sun that fell from the window onto her back and shoulders. It skimmed the sails of the model schooner that hung from a ceiling beam at the foot of the altar, quickening the bronze of its hull, lending it the illusion of movement.
    Pastor Seip began the first reading from the Book of Proverbs. ‘“I have taught thee in the way of wisdom,”’ he said, ‘“I have led thee in right paths.”’ The minutes became elastic as he spoke, like wads of chewing gum pinched at either end and stretched. ‘“Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away.”’ In the portrait nailed to the wall behind him, Jesus spread His arms in Gethsemane, beseeching the heavens with mournful eyes while His disciples slept. ‘“But the path of the just is as the shining light,that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. The way of the wicked is as darkness: they know not at what they stumble.”’
    The parishioners stood for the next hymn and Else read the words on the page, though she could have recited them with her eyes closed. She sensed movement across the aisle and, when she peeked at Lars, saw him rocking on his shoes. His mother placed a hand on his elbow and continued to sing. Karin Reiersen’s soprano aspired to the high notes. Her hair was tucked behind her ear, showing off a pearl as plump as a berry.
    When the psalm was over, Else took her seat. The New Testament reading passed her by in snippets of scripture.
    ‘“Destruction and misery are in their ways,’” said Pastor Seip and she wondered at how, after a summer spent anticipating her start at a new school, her journey to the Gymnasium on Elvebakken each morning had already come to feel ordinary. It no longer seemed strange to see Lars every day, nor did she notice the absence of those of her classmates from the old schoolhouse who had entered into apprenticeships. At the Gymnasium, students could come and go as they pleased in the breaks. So far, she and Lars had not ventured from the grounds.
    ‘“And seeing the multitudes,”’ began the Gospel reading, ‘“He went up into a mountain: and when He was set, His disciples came unto Him”.’
    Else thought of Lars’s hand warm in hers as he led her into the caretaker’s shed, where they tended to stay until classes resumed. There, pressed against the grit box with Rune and Petter standing guard outside, they were safe from the prying eyes of teachers and townspeople alike.
    ‘“Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”’
    They had come a long way from the days when her mother