The Sea Runners - Ivan Doig [28]
"Yes. Oblige me, if you will. Were these men parishioners of yours?' Rosenberg intoned through the list of four names his secretary had initiated this blighted day with.
Melander: incredible, that gabby stork of a sailor a plotter.
Karlsson and Wennberg: the governor could put vague faces to them; average slag among the seven-year force.
Braaf: this one he could not recall ever having heard of at all.
The pastor cleared his throat. "Wennberg was. Formerly, I mean to say."
"Formerly? Oblige me further."
The pastor housecleaned in His vocal box some more, then ventured into history. "Wennberg was in the group of artisans who arrived here with Governor Etholen—was it ten, twelve years ago? When I myself arrived to succeed Pastor Cygnaeus, Wennberg was a member of our congregation. He came of a God-fearing family, I believe. But you know how a Swede is, a hard knot even for God."
The pastor paused to sort his words with some care here.
"A turn of mind, you see, happened in him. The devil's mischief, always watching its chance. Sometime not long after my arrival here, it could be seen that Wennberg had slipped from the path of right. When I sought to—to show him the way of return, he cursed me. lie also cursed—God. Since then he has fallen, if I may say so, even deeper into harmful ways."
Rosenberg pinched the area between his eyes again. Had Melander's name been able to speak off the list, the governor would have been solemnly assured he had caught the morning-after affliction that they on Gotland called "ont i haret": pain in the hair, aye?
"Drink, do you mean, Pastor?"
"Actually, no. Wennberg, ah, gambled."
At this the governor pursed his lips and looked quizzically at the pastor, who himself was known at the officers' clubhouse as a devout plunger at the card table. The pastor hurried on:
"Wennberg, you see, is—was—long past his seven years of service here, his gambling debts have kept him on. Not the first ever to—overstay. Yes, well, what I mean ... Wennberg has become, may God grant that he see his erring way, a man destroying himself. Sullen, unpredictable. A loose cannon, I think the naval phrase is? If you would like my opinion, he is capable of destroying others as well."
Rosenberg rose, crossed to a window, leaned his forehead against the glass coolness, and stared out at the clouded coastline south across Sitka Sound. So, now. Send the Nicholas to alert Ozherskoi? If the damnable Swedes could paddle at all they likely were beyond the redoubt by now. No, the decision was fatter and homelier than that. Whether to order out the steamship to hunt down a canoe which could hide among the coves and islands of this coast like a mouse in a stable. Or let the bedamned Swedes go, let ocean and winter do the hunting of them. Vet this was no trifle of matter, thank you, the economics in the loss of four indenturees, two dozen or so man-years of service left in them—and the example to the other laborers could be treacherous. One thing certain, steamship or not: can't be remedied but can't be ignored, therefore paper it over. The governor knew the saying that paper is the schoolman's forest, and the governor had been to school. On quite a number of matters been to school, as a further saying had it. Months ago the dispatch had gone off to Russia requesting that he be relieved of his governorship—"ill health ... family reasons." In truth, a sufficiency of New Archangel and the declining fur trade and the grudgeful Koloshes and the inattention of the tsar's government half the world away. With a resourceful bit of clerkship, this matter of runaway Swedes could slide out of sight into the morass of inkwork his successor would inherit. For his part, Rosenberg would reap one further anecdote with which to regale dinner parties in St. Petersburg.
"Three fools and a lunatic in a Kolosh canoe," he intoned against the windowpane as if practicing.
Then, realizing lie had rehearsed aloud, the governor added without turning: "That will be all. Pastor. If you know a prayer for the souls of fools and lunatics, you perhaps might