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Report Bad Comment Man,It finally comes out and its soooo great but they put another catchy ... To Be Continued ... at the end, when will the torture stop!?
Report Bad Comment Lol I love this series and to the post above me, you never know, Tiger could've survived somehow, maybe forming and alliance with Manji?
Report Bad Comment Either way.. its gonna be out next year. o-o"
Report Bad Comment Didn't he say he was going to release 5 with 4?
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Exhibition on military drones now on display in Hampden Gallery
By Samara Abramson
An 18-foot-long rhinestone-covered replica of a U.S. Predator drone is the center of a new multimedia art exhibit that opened on March 1 at the Hampden Gallery in the University of Massachusetts's Southwest Residential Area.
Delia Barth/Collegian
The exhibition, called "Home Drone," was created by Heather Layton, a senior lecturer at the University of Rochester, and Brian Bailey, a professor of adolescence education at Nazareth College. It features several multimedia pieces representing the effects of drone strikes in Middle Eastern countries such as Pakistan.
The exhibit prompts viewers to imagine what would happen if a drone hit the state of Massachusetts through textual stories, photographs and video.
Within the exhibit, there is a map of drone strikes that have occurred in Pakistan superimposed onto a map of Massachusetts displaying what would be wiped out.
Anne Laprade Seuthe, Director of the Hampden Gallery, was greatly impacted by the superimposed map.
"Those drone strikes could have been on a playground, at a wedding, a funeral … It makes you think – any action that you take, you never know what the ripple effect will be," said Seuthe.
According to a University press release, in addition to increasing social awareness about the controversy, Layton hopes the exhibit will aid in creating cultural understanding between the U.S. and Pakistan, in addition to helping "to cultivate peaceful relationships between individuals, regardless of religion, gender, socioeconomic status, age, nationality and culture."
"Hearing the human stories of the strikes humanizes the situation. Layton and Bailey went to Pakistan and met all these people who have been impacted by drone violence. It's a moral dilemma but I think any time you deal with war it tends to be, because is it better to put American soldiers at risk?" said John Simpson, the manager of the Hampden Gallery and lecturer in the Art, Architecture, and Art History Department at UMass.
The Hampden Gallery doesn't usually host social protests or politically geared showings, but this exhibit seemed relevant enough for Seuthe to make an exception, mostly because of the high level of the artist commitment toward achieving a greater level of social understanding.
"This exhibit brings a topic to light that is intended to spark debate or conversations about the whole drone program. It helps you look at your own human scale in relationship to this object, as the artists call it, a 'killing machine,'" said Seuthe.
According to Seuthe, the drone replica has been catching the most attention at the exhibition, but once people look around they realize how much there is to learn..
"The human stories hanging on the wall are different than they would be in a book because seeing them showcased in a gallery is just different. It's more powerful," said Seuthe.
The exhibition also features a laptop opened up to a clip of the 2012 presidential debate that replays a clip of Mitt Romney saying he whole-heartedly supports the drone program.
"This is what the Pakistanis see – the leaders of the free world saying how great the drone program is while families are being killed," said Seuthe.
Seuthe hopes the exhibit will invite people of all perspectives on the campus and throughout the larger community.
"Home Drone aims to get people to talk and discuss critical issues that affect us each day," said Seuthe.
Senior Japanese and linguistics major Jenny McKeon has worked as a gallery guard assistant at the Hampden Gallery for about three years.
She said that the drone exhibit has helped her to better understand the impact drones are having in the Middle East.
"This exhibit is more powerful than many of the other shows we see in the Hampden Gallery. It has more of a political message, but it's also really informative," said McKeon.
According to the release, both Layton and Bailey were named "citizen diplomats" by the U.S. Department of State in 2012. Their previous works have included installations that challenge assumptions about urban gun violence, fears of other cultures, and consumerism and self-absorption.
The exhibit will be open until March 26 but will be closed during spring recess, March 17 to 24. The gallery is open from 1 to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and on Sundays from 2 to 5 p.m.
Samara Abramson can be reached at [email protected]
Hampden Gallery
Home Drone
3 Responses to "Exhibition on military drones now on display in Hampden Gallery"
Mike on March 6th, 2013 8:06 am
What's the point of having a clip of Romney sayign he supports the drone strikes? He doesn't have anything to do with it besides saying his opinion.
I hope the use of drones increases. The drones are highly effective in eliminating key members of terrorist organizations. In this type of warfare the hunter-killer model is what is needed. Drones are able to quickly react on kill oppurunities.
Kris on March 6th, 2013 2:41 pm
Why is it using a clip of Romney, when it's the Obama admin that's increased the use of them so much? Such a joke.
Pam on March 6th, 2013 4:15 pm
I too wonder why there is a clip of Romney saying he supports the drone strikes while it is still happening under Obama's watch. "This is what the Pakistanis see – the leaders of the free world saying how great the drone program is while families are being killed," BUT do they see what their radicalism has done to us? We must not forget that they hate America and our people and will strike both here and abroad. We MUST find the line between protection and murder.
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Q: How can I merge two objects to be used in an AJAX response? I have an issue where I'm using an XHR request, but it's breaking in IE8. My hopes is to extract the XHR call, and the AJAX call, merge them and add them to the $.ajax() function like so:
var loadingXHR = {
xhr: function () {
var xhr = new window.XMLHttpRequest;
xhr.addEventListener('progress', (function (evt) {
var parentWidth, percent, percentComplete, width;
if (evt.lengthComputable) {
width = loadEl.width();
parentWidth = loadEl.offsetParent().width();
percent = 100 * width / parentWidth;
percentComplete = Math.max((evt.loaded / evt.total) * 100, percent);
loadEl.stop().animate({
width: Math.min(percentComplete, 100) + "%"
}, 120);
}
}), false);
return xhr;
}
}
var ajaxResponse = {
type: "POST",
url: url,
dataType: "json",
cache: false,
contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
data: data,
error: function (xhr, textStatus, errorThrown) {
/* error */
},
success: function (model) {
/* success */
}
}
if (conditional) {
return $.ajax($.extend(loadingXHR, ajaxResponse));
}
return $.ajax(ajaxResponse);
However this option doesn't work and my only solution is to create two different AJAX calls and wrap that in a conditional.
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{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
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Investigative Announcement on Anti-Falun Gong Comments Made by Director of Olympic Media Center
WOIPFG: An Investigative Announcement on the Anti-Falun Gong Comments Made by Li Zhanjun, Director of Beijing Olympic Media Center
On November 8, 2007, Li Zhanjun, Director of Beijing Olympic Media Center, announced that the Chinese authorities would allow those athletes and tourists of major religions to carry religious-related items with them during the Beijing Olympic Games and that the Beijing Olympic Village would provide facilities to accommodate Christians, Catholics, Muslims, Orthodox Jews, Hindus and Buddhists. But Li Zhanjun added that this policy would not be applied to Falun Gong, a religious group banned by the Chinese authorities.
"We do not acknowledge Falun Gong because it is a cult. So Falun Gong texts, Falun Gong activities are forbidden in China. Foreigners who come to China must respect and abide by the laws of China." Li Zhanjun added.
Lately, China has been condemned for its worsening human rights abuses in China ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games and accused of supporting Sudan government on its genocide crime. In response, China announced to open doors for foreign media before the Olympics, but it has escalated its domestic control and repression. In April 2007, China's Ministry of Public Security secretly issued an order to require strict nation-wide background checks on all the people in China and from overseas that will be participating in the Olympic Games. The notice targets and will possibly ban 43 types of people during the 2008 Olympics. The secret notice went to security officials and agencies throughout China. On the other hand, China made a public announcement to open for foreign media during the Olympic Games to mitigate public criticisms from international society. Meanwhile, the Chinese authorities retaliated by denouncing that the public criticisms on its worsening human rights condition turns the Olympics into political games.
China's official media and the Olympic Games official website try to avoid public discussions on China's ban on specific group or people from participating in the Olympic Games, but Li Zhanjun has made a public announcement to comply with the Chinese Communist Party's policy on the suppression of Falun Gong by banning Falun Gong from the Olympic Games. Li Zhanjun's announcement has fully illustrated that no one except the Chinese Communist Party is turning the Olympics into a political game. More specifically, Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games is politicizing the Olympic games.
The Chinese Communist regime has been using the security of the Olympics as an excuse to arrest Falun Gong practitioners at will and throw them into forced labor camps. Officials from Beijing 2008 Olympics Games Bidding Committee and Organizing Committee are incorporating the Chinese Communist Party's political policy on the suppression of Falun Gong into its agenda. The World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG) will now release part of its investigation and will continue to keep a close watch on further developments on the issue.
Those Chinese officials that have openly attacked Falun Gong in the name of Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee are:
Liu Jingmin (male), Vice Mayor of Beijing and Executive Vice President of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games
He Zhenliang (male), Advisor to and Executive Member of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games
Li Zhanjun (male), Director of Beijing Olympic Media Center
Tian Yixiang (male), the head of the Military Department under the 2008 Olympic Game Security Command Center
In addition, Liu Qi (male), Chairman of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Organizing Committee and Mayor of Beijing was sued in the U.S. and Chen Zhili (female), First Vice-President of the Beijing Organizing Committee and former Minister of Education, faced a lawsuit in Tanzania because they both have been actively suppressing Falun Gong. In Liu Qi's case, the court entered a default judgment in favor of the plaintiff.
In addition, WOIPFG has listed Jiang Xiaoyu (male), Executive Vice-President of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games and former Department of Propaganda of the municipal CCP committee, and Zhang Mao (male), former Vice Mayor of Beijing, on it's investigative report for their roles in the persecution of Falun Gong.
WOIPFG hereby emphasizes that anyone who uses the Olympic Games as a mandate to slander, attack or suppress Falun Gong shall face his/her personal legal consequences ultimately. WOIPFG will continue to assist and cooperate with the criminal investigation agencies and all the righteous individuals around the world to thoroughly investigate all the individuals and organizations involved in the persecution of Falun Gong, hold them accountable for their legal responsibilities no matter how long it will take. We shall assist the victims of the persecution of Falun Gong to bring all the criminals to justice as a lesson to the world's people.
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{"url":"https:\/\/www.exampaper.com.sg\/questions\/e-maths\/transformation-of-the-moon-on-mid-autumn-night","text":"Close\n\n# Transformation of the Moon on Mid-Autumn Night!\n\n(22)\nTuition given in the topic of E-Maths Tuition Questions from the desk of at 12:48 pm (Singapore time)\n\nUpdated on\n\nWARNING: The following article contains extremely lame content which may offend you. Please DO NOT continue if extreme lameness disturb you or if it\u2019s illegal to view such material in your community.\n\nPerhaps it was that filling mooncake she had earlier, Miss Loi was struggling to stay awake on her drive home two nights ago, even with her thumping techno playlist on full blast. So in the interest of public safety and not wishing to become another Dumbass herself, she decided to turn off the main road and take a short break.\n\nIncidentally it was Mid-Autumn Festival that night. Miss Loi is never a \u2018moon\u2019 person, but nonetheless she stepped out of her car in an attempt to indulge in some \u2018moon appreciation\u2019, for lack of better things to do.\n\nAs such her eyes homed in on a bright spot of light in the sky she thought was the moon. But before she could even settle down, this \u2018moon\u2019 began to grow larger and larger till it became a triangular flying object that proceeded to dart several times across the night sky, subjecting itself to various transformations on each pass!\n\nUtterly terrified and fearful of becoming the next alien abductee, Miss Loi immediately called the Singapore Paranormal Investigators (SPI) on her handphone.\n\nThank you for calling SPI. To report a pontianak sighting, please press 1. To report a UFO sighting, please press 2 \u2026\n\nMiss Loi pressed 2, obediently.\n\nSorry, all our operators are currently engaged in a pontianak hunt at the moment. Your call is important to us. Please leave a message, describing the exact transformations the UFO made, after the tone.\n\nIn normal circumstances, it would\u2019ve been a breeze for her to articulate her thoughts in O-Level distinction-grade fluency. But she\u2019s now absolutely traumatized so \u2026\n\nThe diagram shows Miss Loi\u2019s mental map of the geometric transformations that took place for the UFO U.\n\n1. describe a single transformation that maps U to X.\n2. describe a single transformation that maps U to Y.\n3. describe a single transformation that maps U to Z.\n\nBut apparently the SPI answering machine was not done yet \u2026\n\nTo further help us identify the errant UFO, we would appreciate if you could provide the following information:\n\nFor Reflections:\n\nPlease always identify the line by which the reflection takes place. Provide its equation if possible.\n\nFor Rotations:\n\nPlease always identify the center of rotation. Please also state whether it\u2019s clockwise or counter-clockwise.\n\nFor Translations:\n\nPlease always state the translation column vector.\n\nFor Enlargements:\n\nPlease always state the center of enlargement and the scale factor. Remember that the scale factor can be negative.\n\nFor Shears:\n\nPlease always state the invariant line and the shear factor. Remember that the shear factor can be negative.\n\nFor Stretches:\n\nPlease always state the invariant line and the stretch factor. Remember that the stretch factor can be negative.\n\nMiss Loi\u2019s shock slowly turned to anger at the phone bills this call was chalking up, as the answering machine rambled on \u2026\n\nIn recent times, we have noted that many callers have had problems describing enlargements, shears and stretches. This is bad as our records show that typical UFO sightings usually come with five out of six of the transformations described earlier.\n\nAlso some callers have lamented that geometric transformations were only taught via e-learning during their school days. Which is a shame really as this topic will always appear either in Paper 1 or 2 (but not both).\n\nBy the way, they told us that Paper 1 will almost always involve questions requiring them to describe transformations in a given diagram, while Paper 2 required them to actually draw the diagrams themselves.\n\nOh, and did you also know that \u2026\n\nSeeing that her mobile plan\u2019s free talktime had just been completely annihilated, a hysterical Miss Loi screamed into the phone asking when can she start talking.\n\nYou may now leave your message after the tone. BEEEP!\n\n### Revision Exercise\n\nTo show that you have understood what Miss Loi just taught you from the centre, you must:\n\n1. Aaron commented in tuition class\n\n2007\nSep\n27\nThu\n12:59pm\n\n1\n\nHahaha Ms loi..\n\nThe people at SPI must have a most interesting answering machine system.\nEither that or you're overworked \ud83d\ude42\n\n2. Miss Loi Friend Miss Loi on Facebook @MissLoi commented in tuition class\n\n2007\nSep\n27\nThu\n1:24pm\n\n2\n\nAaron, given Miss Loi's lack of activity here these few days, it's probably the latter. Sigh.\n\n3. Aaron commented in tuition class\n\n2007\nSep\n27\nThu\n2:04pm\n\n3\n\nNot possible to take a break from it all for a while?\nJust 1 day to go forth and enjoy?\n\n4. xinyun commented in tuition class\n\n2007\nSep\n27\nThu\n2:06pm\n5. Miss Loi Friend Miss Loi on Facebook @MissLoi commented in tuition class\n\n2007\nSep\n27\nThu\n2:34pm\n\n5\n\nAaron + xinyun,\n\nDon't really have a choice during this period.\n\nIf you've seen the countdown clock to the top right, it's now O-Level crunchtime - the time when all true blue hardcore LMBFH Syndrome suffers surface. \ud83d\ude1b\n\n6. xinyun commented in tuition class\n\n2007\nSep\n27\nThu\n2:46pm\n\n6\n\nwell, that's true...\nO & A levels exam period...\n\nganbatte!\n1.5months to go :X\n\n7. retxed commented in tuition class\n\n2007\nSep\n28\nFri\n11:53am\n\n7\n\nmay i know where can i study for private o level candidate.\ni stop schooling since sec 3 am 19 this year completed my ns and wish to continue my studies pls guide me.\n\n8. HORNY ANG MOH commented in tuition class\n\n2007\nSep\n28\nFri\n4:18pm\n\n8\n\nStill very very blur! How cum a round moon turn into a rectangle, square or triangle???I really give up? So can give me the answer arr? OH BTW I really do wish u r my math teacher then my math will not be in a mess as explained on my post today! I must say all ur student r a lucky bunch! Have a nice weekend & don't drive like Michael Suchmacker!!\n\n9. Jacqueline commented in tuition class\n\n2007\nSep\n28\nFri\n10:38pm\n\n9\n\nOh my goodness Ms Loi...your post is so lame lah!!! Like, --.--\". Can't you just be like normal people and \"shang yue liang\" while eating mooncake...instead of thinking of funny things like this....LOL...I think you too stressed...\n\nBy the way, in case I haven't told you, I'm gonna fail my math exam...gone case already, minus ten thousand marks liao...sorry ah, confirm no A.... =P\n\n10. Miss Loi Friend Miss Loi on Facebook @MissLoi commented in tuition class\n\n2007\nSep\n28\nFri\n10:41pm\n\n10\n\nHello retxed.\n\nJ\u03c6ss Sticks welcomes another aspiring privatus candidatus here!\n\nAnyway on a more serious note, just to check if you're looking for a private school or guidelines on how to go about registering to be a private candidate?\n\nFor information on O-Level private candidates, you can view this instructions document from SEAP for a start.\n\nIf you're looking for a private school, well ... Miss Loi shall shamelessly request you to give her a call \ud83d\ude42\n\n11. kiroii commented in tuition class\n\n2007\nSep\n28\nFri\n11:25pm\n\n11\n\n1) reflection with x-axis as the line of reflection Sweet\n2)enlargement with center point being the origin and scale factor being -2.5 Yes taking any corresponding pair of points from the center of enlargement at 0, you'll get the scale factor = -5 units\/2 units = -2.5.\n\n3)er shear with scale factor being -2 and invarient line being y=2 (if im not wrong)\n\nFirst of all Miss Loi thinks you meant the line x=2. But either way, your invariant line is wrong. By definition, all points on the invariant line shall remain unchanged during the transformation. So looking at U and Z, there's only one point (0, 2) that didn't change. So your invariant line must be the y-axis.\n\nAlso to calculate your shear factor, let's take a point (2,2) on U and it's mapped point (2,6) on Z.\n\nShear factor = [distance moved from (2,2) to (2,6)\/distance of (2,2) from invariant line]\n= 4 units (note it's positive)\/2 units = 2.\n\nPS: miss loi to differentiate shear from stretch there's a technique..shear's area will be constant whereas stretch wil change juz to let others noe\n\nThanks for your contribution here \ud83d\ude00\n\n12. 123 commented in tuition class\n\n2007\nSep\n28\nFri\n11:40pm\n\n12\n\nOmg, 24 days to O,\nARRRRRRR!\ntake away the countdown timer!\n\n13. kiroii commented in tuition class\n\n2007\nSep\n29\nSat\n12:05am\n\n13\n\nNONONONO fiddle withthe countdown timmer change it to 800 days~ that means 799days to play games\n\n14. retxed commented in tuition class\n\n2007\nSep\n29\nSat\n2:34am\n\n14\n\nThanks, am looking for a private school Will give u a call soon.\n\n15. kiroii commented in tuition class\n\n2007\nSep\n29\nSat\n4:30pm\n\n15\n\nbtw if yer looking for a priv sch pls do not go XXXXXXX..the service is seriously lacking they dun even allow internet connection in the classes..\n\n16. Miss Loi Friend Miss Loi on Facebook @MissLoi commented in tuition class\n\n2007\nSep\n29\nSat\n4:59pm\n\n16\n\nHAM, Miss Loi is a safe driver okay? The most she could drive is probably the safety car \ud83d\ude42\n\n17. Miss Loi Friend Miss Loi on Facebook @MissLoi commented in tuition class\n\n2007\nSep\n29\nSat\n5:08pm\n\n17\n\nJac ah Jac ... since when your A-grade papers got 10000 marks to minus?! Don't worry lah, your time is still to come.\n\nNext time Miss Loi treat you mooncakes and we go \"shang UFO\" together ok? \ud83d\ude42\n\n18. Miss Loi Friend Miss Loi on Facebook @MissLoi commented in tuition class\n\n2007\nSep\n29\nSat\n5:35pm\n\n18\n\n123: Think it's < 24 days if you take into account your other subjects!\n\nKiroii: Miss Loi has marked your answers and also censored one of your comments. Let's not talk down on other tuition schools on this blog shall we?\n\n19. kiroii commented in tuition class\n\n2007\nSep\n29\nSat\n6:10pm\n\n19\n\ner im in tat particular sch n im trying to warn others not to go there spent almost 4k on tat sch and it wasnt quite *exemplary and im rather sure my classmates are with my assertion\n\n20. cutie commented in tuition class\n\n2008\nJan\n25\nFri\n3:28pm\n\n20\n\n?? what topic is this? lol like never learn before..\n\n21. Miss Loi Friend Miss Loi on Facebook @MissLoi commented in tuition class\n\n2008\nJan\n25\nFri\n7:33pm\n\n21\n\nHi cutie pie!\n\nThis belongs to the Transformation topic in 4017. It's already out of your syllabus by now \ud83d\ude09\n\n### One Reaction\n\n1. 2009\nJun\n9\nTue\n5:39pm\n\n22\n\nScot UFO - UFO sightings, news & events from around Scotland...\n\nI too fell prey to adolescent hysteria about UFO\u2019 s and the supernatural. From the TV show Project Blue Book and the movie Close Encounters to all of the so- called scientific tomes about the mysterious and unbelievable. I drank it all. 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Salina Christmas
Glossary, Glossary Q – Z
Tokyo Draft, Red Cross proposal, 1934
A draft initiated at the XVth International Conference of The Red Cross in Tokyo, Japan, in October 1934 proposing the protection of "enemy civilians". This was a response to the ill-treatment of civilians during World War 1, also a measure to protect civilians and prisoners of war in upcoming conflicts. Unfortunately, by the time the draft was to be discussed and made into law in 1940, World War 2 broke out. The consequences were grave, as history told us. The Tokyo Draft provided the basis for the Geneva Convention of 1949.
Part Two: The Tiger-Man and His Constant Companion
A visit to Yasukuni Shrine
The Constant Companion Tales are published by Story Of Books, an imprint of GLUE Studio Limited. © All rights reserved 2023. GLUE Studio are a limited company registered in England. Registered number 9924840.
BUY E-BOOKS
© Salina Christmas. All Right Reserves 2023
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Home » MCGT » MCGT Facebook Live CHAT: Perfectionism: What It Is, and How To Help
MCGT Facebook Live CHAT: Perfectionism: What It Is, and How To Help
Tuesday, April 14, 7-7:30pm on the Minnesota Council for Gifted and Talented (MCGT) Facebook page
Presenter: Tom Greenspon, Ph.D
This Chat will be pre-recorded. Please feel free to ask questions in the comments and we'll have Dr. Greenspon answer in upcoming days.
How do we encourage kids to "be all they can be," without creating perfectionists? Pursuing excellence, while leaving behind perfectionism's destructive anxiety, begins with an understanding of the psychology of perfectionism. Learn how to use this understanding to create perfectionism's antidote.
Join Dr. Thomas Greenspon, author of Moving Past Perfect and When Good Enough isn't Good Enough, for a discussion of perfectionism at a time when uncertainty is our norm.
Thomas S. Greenspon, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist and licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice. He earned his B.A. from Yale and his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Illinois. Tom lectures and writes on a variety of topics including perfectionism and the emotional needs of gifted children and adults.
Mark your calendars for our Facebook Live CHAT (Connect, Help, Advocate, Talk) – Tuesdays, 7-7:30 p.m. on the Minnesota Council for Gifted and Talented (MCGT) Facebook page
Missed the live chat? The video recording will be available on MCGT's website.
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4197-2531-9
eISBN 978-1-68335-096-5
Text copyright © 2018 Elsie Chapman
Cover design by Neil Swaab
Cover photography copyright © Ute Klaphake / Trevillion Images
Cover copyright © 2018 Amulet Books
Book design by Siobhán Gallagher
Published in 2018 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Amulet Books and Amulet Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.
**ABRAMS** The Art of Books
195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007
abramsbooks.com
To Jesse, Matthew, and Gillian. Once more.
## one.
This early in the summer, Marsden hadn't yet remembered how far sound could carry coming from an open window.
She half scowled as she looked back at the boardinghouse, the lights from the exposed bedrooms blazing into the near dusk like eyes from the shadows. Echoes of Nina's brisk instructions— _softer lipstick, bolder eyebrows, heels should be taller than four inches_ —swirled out into the air from behind mesh screens. Low murmurs as the girls fixed one another's hair, as they chose between dresses, as they wondered who would be the unlucky one that night, the one to end up with the oldest john or the ugliest. The cheapskate. The fetishist.
Her mother, she knew, mostly dreaded the old ones. Shine feared age as though it were contagious, the weakness she said it was.
"Marsden, you're tipping the bucket! We're losing berries!"
"What? I'm not."
"You _are_."
She glanced down at the ice-cream bucket in her hand, saw that her little sister was right, and tilted it back to save the rest of the berries they'd just picked. Saskatoon ones, purple as night, hard as gems—they would still be more tart than sweet. Marsden knew they could have used more time on the bush, but when Wynn had suddenly wanted to get her hair done with the girls, offering to take her out into the half-dark to pick berries for homemade strudels had been the first thing to pop into Marsden's head. Bribery: She would never be above it if it meant saving Wynn from the truth.
Still, she hadn't missed her sister's occasional glances back toward Nina's girls and the boardinghouse as they moved toward the berry bushes at the edge of the covert—wistful, still longing. She'd understood it, even, despite not wanting to—that strange wish to get to know them well enough to call them friends, the ache to be surrounded by their sheer number, to let herself be cradled and wanted and accepted.
Wynn tugged at more branches. Berries fell into the bucket, plunks like rain on a roof. Marsden sucked at her thumb, still pricked from when it'd met a thorn, and blood ran into the tastes of dinner—salmon with dill and cream, grilled tomatoes—still lingering on her tongue. As one of two cooks for the boardinghouse, she'd made the dish dozens of times before. It was one of Nina's favorites to serve guests.
Suddenly, her sister froze, her gaze locked on something past the line of berry bushes, and dread rolled into Marsden's stomach. Because she knew, even before her eyes chased Wynn's and saw what they saw deeper in the covert, lit up by the falling sun like a piece of shiny foil among all that dark green forest.
The body was a pale slash, and Marsden sighed—too late to try to hide it from Wynn. She'd checked the covert just that morning as always. But she'd been in a hurry—now that school was out, she had less time to comb the grounds before her sister was awake and up, wanting to play. She cursed herself for not being more careful, summer for existing, and Nina for wanting Wynn out of the boardinghouse in the mornings while johns were still slipping away.
"I bet she used a gun," Wynn finally said, no longer frozen but contemplative—nearly clinically so—as she analyzed the presence of one more dead person found in the covert. Seeing her like that dismayed Marsden, though she wasn't surprised. Wynn had grown up with the covert's secrets and not-so-secrets. This was all normal to her. "It's what I would use," her sister continued.
"Don't say that. It's morbid."
"What do _you_ think she used?"
Marsden sighed again. "Probably a gun."
"It wouldn't have hurt, right?" Wynn grabbed Marsden's hand. In the dim light, Marsden saw that berry juice had turned the tips of their fingers the shade of new bruises. The taste of blood on her tongue seemed to surge. "However that person died?"
Love flooded Marsden. In that moment, her sister was such the ultimate _kid_ —choppy black hair askew all over her head like upturned paintbrushes dried wrong from inside a jar. How she hadn't bothered changing her outfit from yesterday: a Jem and the Holograms T-shirt spotted with grass stains, a pair of baggy cutoffs, a striped rainbow belt with a drooping tail. She was even wrapped up in kid smells: sweat, cheap strawberry-marshmallow candy, the dusty outdoor burn of early July heat.
"Right, Mars?" Wynn pressed, needing to know, her fingers squeezing. Her bones felt as fine as a sparrow's. At eight, her sister was tiny for her age, as Marsden herself had been—and still was, at sixteen—both of them sparse and stunted and wiry. Like plants grown beneath strange light, the town sometimes still said. "It would have been quick?"
Marsden nodded, though she had no real clue. Wynn knew she had no clue. She wasn't really asking about _how_ , anyway—more _why_. And that was a question they could never really answer for sure. Suicide notes, if they were found, had little meaning but for the person they'd been written for.
Marsden got a glimpse of pale skin through the trees, of blond hair splotched with the telltale darkness of blood. "It wouldn't have hurt, no. Out like a light. Totally painless."
"You're guessing."
"Why ask if you're not going to believe me, runt?" She flicked a crumb from Wynn's nest of hair—buttermilk waffle. Her sister had brought one along with her, a leftover from breakfast that she had crumbled into the grass to feed the squirrels.
"I do believe you." Wynn chewed the plum-tinged thumb of her free hand; a sliver of nail coiled out from between her teeth like apple skin off a peeler. Bodies changed her covert, made it dangerous. She was never scared of the land, though sometimes Marsden wished she _were_ , just a bit—it would make life that much easier, her sister not wanting to play there. Wynn's expression was thoughtful as she looked up at Marsden. "But I bet Grandma wouldn't have had to guess. I bet she would have known for sure."
Wynn had never known their grandmother on their mother's side, who'd died before she was born. But she'd heard all the stories and was familiar with the legend Star Liu had been in town. How she could hear the dead. How she could connect with them as a service.
"If _Theola_ were here, maybe she could tell, too," her sister continued.
Marsden snorted. She pictured their dead grandmother's old friend: gaudy floral dresses, oversize feathered hats, a probing stare that tried to unearth all kinds of foul, shameful things from your mind. Old Theola Finney dressed bigger than the town, but her advertised psychic abilities said she fit Glory just fine.
"Theola tells _fortunes_ down at her café, Wynn. Looks deep into your eyes and tells you your future."
Wynn pulled her hand free. "I like her, even if you think she's a liar."
"I never said she was a liar. I just don't think she tells the truth. It's not the same thing."
"How come we can't hear the dead talk if Grandma could?" Her sister was staring at the body again. "Mom used to be able to, too, she says. So why can't we? Don't you wish we could?"
The summer heat—which was always bad in Glory, where it built into a thick shimmering wall that wouldn't tumble down until nearly October—suddenly seemed cold. "Not really, no," Marsden said.
"But—"
A laugh wafted out from the boardinghouse—a soft trill, perfectly crafted to appeal, their mother's when she was working—and Marsden found herself scowling again. Still, it meant that all of Nina's girls would soon be in their rooms for the night, and she could stop worrying about Wynn accidentally seeing what she didn't need to see.
"Listen, you know the deal, if we ever see anything in the covert . . ." She dug a dollar bill from the pocket of her shorts. "It's still light enough out, and the corner store won't be closed yet." Gwen carried Wynn's greatest weaknesses, Kraft caramels and elasticized candy bracelets. "Go eat some sugar. I'll come get you when I'm done checking."
Wynn eyed the money and moved on from chewing her thumb to her pinky. Her expression was torn. Marsden knew that look. It said her sister wanted to be old enough to face the ugliest parts of the covert. It _also_ said she wanted to pretend she didn't come from a family whose name had long become synonymous with death.
Finally, Wynn shrugged, spitting out another sliver of nail. "Want me to bring the berries to the kitchen first?"
Marsden shook her head. "No, we'll just grab them on the way back." Another day bought. Still, her relief at saving Wynn from one more body in the covert was already fizzling away. Wynn saw Glory's businesses during the day and assumed appearances were everything. Her sister had no clue that home—her beloved boardinghouse and the town's best-rated overnight lodging among tourists—was also the town's most popular brothel. She had no idea that Nina was more their captor than their savior. How much longer before she got old enough to decide Nina's girls were more fun than her dull, worried sister?
Wynn began to head down the path toward the shed for her bike. "Want me to buy licorice for you, Mars?"
"Sure. Black."
"Barf."
"Not the rope kind, either"—she grinned for her sister's sake—"but the kind that comes in big, fat chunks."
" _Double_ barf."
"And don't bother Rupert at the back of the store, even if Gwen says it's fine." Gwen's brother-in-law ran his bookie side business out of the staff room. "See you in a few minutes, runt."
She watched Wynn disappear from sight as she followed the wooden fence that separated the covert from the rest of the town, her family's property from the rest of Glory. Hewn and nailed together by the bare hands of their long-dead great-grandfather, the snaking chain of timber seemed as old as the earth. The _For Sale_ sign that was nailed to it was nearly so, the words on it faded away to nothingness. No one wanted land whose soil would always bleed red, that crawled with ghosts and strange stories and decades-old myths. The town itself had no reason to buy it from her mother when the covert—as morbid as it was—was nearly as much a tourist draw as the midnight casinos and gambling houses. Shine had long ago declared the place unnatural and unbearable; Marsden couldn't remember the last time her mother had set foot in it.
If there had been potential buyers for the covert, then none offered the price Shine wanted for the only thing she truly owned. This, Marsden could understand—the setting of a price for freedom was something she still did every day, calculating, wondering which corners could be cut.
She turned into the covert, toward the body, and hoped there would be cash for her to steal.
Cash: the one thing that would get them out of the terrible, death-ridden town they called Glory.
## two.
Marsden's sneakers broke through the ginger plants that carpeted the covert, turning the dusk air pungent with their scent. Their heart-shaped leaves ran rampant in the space, thriving beneath the cool shade thrown by the trees. Only in the covert, away from the simmering heat of town, would they not wither and die.
Once the groundcover had been nothing but crabgrass and clover and thistle. It would have been like that when her great-great-uncle had walked over it nearly a hundred years ago, when Duncan Kirby first came to this part of the world looking for gold. The stuff was first discovered in the banks of the Indigo River back in 1890, with the most generous amounts in the deepest, most crooked bend that eventually became the town of Glory.
When the gold began to disappear, so did most of the townsfolk who had come west for it. But Duncan stayed, waiting for the gold to come back. He built a cabin for his young family in the town's west end on land he won in an epic game of poker. And when the gold refused to show again, his sanity ended up lost with it, and he went on to shoot his wife and kids before turning the rifle on himself.
Glory decided to burn the cabin—and the bodies still within it—to the ground afterward. A cleansing fire, the townsfolk nervously called it as they stoked the flames until nothing remained but the gray and salty ash of bone. It would change the covert from a cursed place to one that was blessed, the place where sins could be left behind before going to heaven. Dying after touching its purified soil meant salvation—just a handful of the covert's dirt needed to be stuffed into a pocket or smeared onto skin.
Marsden decided long ago Glory's first settlers had no idea what they were doing, because her family's land still felt cursed. And all the fire did was turn the town into a spectacle. Nearly a century later, and still people came. Like the thirstiest of bees, the most vulnerable of them, the ones looking for understanding of some kind, were drawn in by the covert. The _Private Property_ and _Keep Out_ signs nailed along the outer fence might as well have been blank. Each body Marsden found was just another person fooled, lured by a promise that redemption could be found in its bloodstained and now ginger-scented dirt.
At least the sanctity of the covert's myth was strong enough that no murder had been committed there since those at the hands of Duncan. Or had yet to be caught, anyway.
She saw the gun a second before she would have stepped on it. It had fallen to the side of the body. In the covert's shadowed light, the black of it was harsh against the soft green needles, the pale gray stones.
The woman had aimed for her mouth.
Marsden had to fall into a crouch at the sight, dizzy as the covert spun. Not since her first body—a man hanging from a tree by his midnight-blue tie, his name had been Caleb Silas, he'd had ten dollars in his wallet—had she thrown up.
But she had to hurry to finish.
Private property or not, she wasn't the only skimmer in town.
She took a deep breath and moved over to the body. She pulled out the thin gardening gloves she always carried for just this purpose. There were ghosts everywhere in the covert—her own ancestors were but a few of them—and she felt their eyes on her as she ran her hands over the woman, searching for her own kind of gold.
There was a necklace, as delicate as spider webbing, its hue that of wheat in falling sunlight. A ring studded with gems.
Both were useless to her. She'd learned that the hard way when she brought a pair of cuff links she'd taken from Caleb Silas's body to Seconds, the town's biggest pawnshop. His widow had reported them missing, but the pawnshop owner at the time had already sold them for a nice profit to a tourist passing through—the only reason Marsden escaped. Forever scared into thinking the owner would remember her face, she never went near Seconds again.
She took the five-dollar bill she found in the woman's wallet, then placed the slip of cheap red vinyl back in the pocket. It wasn't much, but it brought her that much closer to the two thousand dollars she wanted to have before she could even think about taking Wynn and leaving Glory. It would be enough for two bus tickets to Seattle, a few months rent for a cheap apartment, and food while she looked for a job.
She had just over a grand and a half saved up, hidden in a pair of old boots in her closet. All of it from skimming—tens and twenties most of the time, the very occasional fifty—and from working in the kitchen in the boardinghouse, which never amounted to more than a few hours a week during school months. Summers were when she tried to make up for the rest of the year, to save the fastest. But summers were short; she could not add hours to the clock just as she couldn't add bodies to the covert. Some months saw a dozen if not more; some saw only one or two—the only thing she could count on for sure was never knowing.
She readjusted the fall of the woman's blond hair and fixed the patches of dirt still carefully scrubbed into the backs of her hands. Marsden made sure it looked like the body had never been touched. Glory police would be there not long after she called in the discovery. The department was small given that the town was also small—outside of tourists—so it wasn't hard for Nina to pay all the cops well to only patrol the area when they had to, and discreetly. It didn't make for good business, having cop cars driving around the boardinghouse all the time. And while dead bodies in the covert were worse, they didn't make any noise; their names printed in the paper the next day were easily missed, the print fine, the column small. The police would barely give the body a glance—head cop Hadley might even skim it himself—before taking it away, but Marsden had learned to always cover her tracks anyway. The covert was her best chance at escaping from Glory; she could never risk it.
Marsden tucked away the cash and her gloves and got to her feet. She was brushing off her hands and knees when the sound of a branch snapping nearby made her freeze. Her eyes went everywhere and nowhere, and her breath caught in her ribs like a fork clanging off teeth.
She saw Hadley coming over the dusk-dimmed rise, shouting at her to empty her pockets.
She saw Nina telling her that she belonged to her now, that she would always work for her, in whatever way Nina decided best.
She saw her mother, crying to never leave her alone, that their debt was Marsden's, too.
And then she saw Wynn, her black hair as messy as ever, her face full of fear as she slowly approached, and she knew her sister was the one who was real.
Wynn's gaze darted to the body, and through the gloom she paled, came to a stop. "I . . . the store was closed, there was a sign—"
Marsden darted forward and spun Wynn around by her frail shoulders. "You should have waited for me by the fence." She heard the fury in her voice, the fear, and tried to soften. And failed, because most of that fury was for herself. "Let's go."
They marched in silence, her mind racing, her eyes threatening to fill. Here she was, determined to keep her sister safe from who they were, what the town had determined them to be. But how to run from your own shadow? Your own name?
"Mars?" Wynn was working ginger leaves between her palms—crushed, their scent was strong enough to make Marsden's nose tingle.
"Yeah?"
"Can we go see Dad's grave?"
• • •
Their mother had had him buried on the west side of the covert, where the trees were thinner and sparser, their canopy less protective. As such, the one that marked his grave was about as expected, its branches wispy, almost fragile in the gray light.
Marsden wished Shine had chosen a more mature tree to watch over the man she'd met and fallen in love with when they'd both still been kids—one sturdier, more remarkable. She wondered again if it had been a final dig at him, his being buried in the covert. How it wasn't because it was family land, or because he'd died by suicide—and suicide and the covert went hand in hand—but because it was Shine's way to finally corral her useless, restless husband.
Wynn let her crushed ginger leaves fall to the ground and plucked clover blossoms from a nearby patch. She tucked them beneath a small rock at the base of the wimpy tree. After a long moment of silence: "I don't hear him like Grandma would have. Do you think it's because I never met him?"
Like their grandmother, Grant Eldridge was a stranger to Marsden's sister, too, having walked into the Indigo six months before Wynn was born. Shine had always told Wynn this was a blessing—memories could also be curses.
"Well, I have definitely met him, and I don't hear him, either." Marsden shifted on her feet. "Why are we here again?"
"It's Daddy—we should visit when we can."
"We do. But now it's getting dark."
Wynn decorated the rock with more blossoms. Her hand and arm glowed a ghostly gray against the murk of the forest. "Do you think Mom could hear them again, if she only tried?"
"You know she won't. And it's been too long since she's heard anything, not since she was a kid." Or so Shine claimed. Her mother had gotten good at talking without actually saying much at all. It came with her job, Marsden knew. Like a final polish that, over time, became hard to remove. "Grandma told me once that the ability's just like any living creature—it needs air, or it dies."
Her sister was watching her. "Do _you_ ever still try to hear the dead?"
Marsden's face stiffened with embarrassment, heat along her ears, and she was glad for the thin dark so she could hide.
She _did_ try, but she didn't think she could ever admit to Wynn her reasons. That she sometimes sat in the covert in front of a body, eyes shut tight against the quiet and the trees and the ginger, trying to extract from all of it the voices of the dead. Telling her how they came to be there, who they'd once been. Because she thought if those she stole from could be bothered to talk to her, then it couldn't be long before the voice she heard next was that of her father. Explaining to her why he did what he did. Assuring her he didn't leave because of _her_. That he hadn't hated life because of _her_.
Always, though, she heard nothing. From anyone.
"The dead are dead, Wynn," she said quietly now. "They came here to find some kind of peace. And I think, sometimes, we might be wrong in demanding they still be here, just for us."
Her sister poked in a final blossom and stepped back. "I still wish I'd known him, even for just a bit."
"Me, too."
"But you _did_ know him, Mars."
Had she, though?
She'd been eight when they found him drowned in the shallows of the Indigo. No explanation, no note left anywhere. It'd been classified an accident.
Marsden couldn't remember him well enough to still hate him for it. Memories of him were like cards in a deck, slowly shuffled away as time passed, moments of her childhood falling through some metaphorical hole in the pocket that was her brain. He'd spun in and out of her and Shine's lives like a shifty alley cat, unsure if it lived indoors or out, if he belonged to them, or no one, or just himself.
She recalled him once playing tea party with her, patient enough to sip pretend tea and eat pretend sandwiches. His aftershave had smelled of the outdoors, had made her think of cool, gray flannel and winter mornings. He liked loud movies and songs heavy with guitar. His hair had been Crayola chestnut brown, his eyes a tint lighter than midnight black. He'd been tall. His laugh had come from somewhere deep.
Of that last day, though, she remembered him and Shine arguing explosively. His one retort that had stuck—ravaged, with a desperation so bleak her own chest went hollow with it—about being trapped. _I never wanted this life!_ He'd looked right at Marsden as the words had ground from him. She remembered the sound of the flimsy screen door slapping back against the house as he slammed his way out, and how the smell of that evening's terrible spring storm had rushed inward seconds later.
"A squirrel!"
Marsden squinted, saw a fat black shape rustle free from a nearby bush and run toward the last of the sun.
Wynn clambered off after it, clucking her tongue as she made her way toward the entrance. "I'll meet you at the fence, okay?" she called over her shoulder. Her voice was muffled from the density of the trees, what had proven thick enough to swallow up the sounds of gunshots.
"Don't head off anywhere else," Marsden called back.
"I won't!"
She followed in her sister's wake, the scent of ginger freshened again from their steps. She wasn't exactly reluctant to go, but sometimes it was being out in the open that made her feel trapped. Dread packed itself into the corners of her heart and filled her head with the most miserable of thoughts.
The boardinghouse, where Nina's girls—including her own mother—wore clothes and makeup as colorful as candy, so they appeared just as delectable.
The town, bleached pale from the summer sun.
The future, laid out for her as surely as though it were already set in stone.
## three.
The next morning.
Dawn was still edging over into day—the sky from navy to lavender to the shade of robins' eggs, the air from cool to an inferno—when Marsden crept back into the kitchen from checking the covert. She yawned as she tossed off her shoes, a cloud of ginger wafting from her bare arms and hair. It'd already been proven that she couldn't hide the covert from Wynn forever, but Marsden was never going to accept it. That would be like choosing to sink into the quicksand that was the whole town.
When it wasn't summer, her job meant helping cook dinners, to be served in the common dining room, for the boardinghouse staff and its guests every weekend. When it _was_ summer, she worked every day and had to cook and serve breakfasts, too. The one thing that never changed during the year was the johns who stayed overnight. Unlike official guests, it was an unspoken rule that they never saw the inside of the dining room. Neither were they served food in the bedrooms with Nina's girls. Instead, they slunk out of the boardinghouse through a side entrance while breakfast was served to everyone else.
Marsden never felt bad that the johns had to leave the boardinghouse hungry. They hadn't come for the food anyway.
She was stirring eggs and milk and laying down sausages on the grill when footsteps sounded overhead. They were stealthy, secretive, and Marsden steeled herself. It wouldn't be the first time she'd had to make breakfast with some of the girls Nina employed right there in the kitchen with her, tired of listening to the snoring of the johns still taking up space in their beds.
It was never easy when they tried making conversation with her. Usually, all she could think about were the secrets she held and the way her hands still recalled the feel of cold, stiff limbs as she tucked away stolen cash. She'd gotten used to being lonely, she supposed; the town had long ago painted her with certain brushes and into too many inescapable corners. Letting Nina's girls get close was a waste of time, and dangerous—for her, for Wynn.
It was the main reason why Marsden minded them being in her space. But loneliness lingered, an echo that seemed without end—which meant she also didn't mind.
They descended the stairs and swarmed into the kitchen like butterflies—if the insects came in pairs, wore flimsy silk robes, and smelled more of perfume and old makeup instead of the outdoors.
Peaches puffed on a cigarette as she leaned over Marsden's shoulder to watch her cook. "Why do you even bother?" The other girl's voice was husky from smoke. Marsden heard the pointed sneer in it, the clear impatience. " _Cooking_ , I mean."
Early twenties, curves like the women had in one of those old-fashioned paintings and which Peaches wielded like weapons. Wild auburn curls, skin like porcelain. Her hazel eyes were always hungry, her smiles slow and wide—johns loved her, and she knew it. Originally a college student from North Dakota—or maybe it was South, Marsden could never remember—she decided one day she was tired of classrooms and dropped out of college. Meandering across the country in the name of alternate education had somehow ended up with her in Glory.
Of all of Nina's girls, Peaches was the one most comfortable in her skin. Marsden sometimes liked her but usually feared her—and always she wondered what it would be like to have even a bit of that confidence. Would it have already led her from Glory, or would she simply already be working for Nina?
"It's my job," she finally said. And she was good at it. Glory's best bed-and-breakfast—simply named The Boardinghouse _—_ prided itself on its breakfasts and dinners, and guests always rated them as one of the best parts of their stay.
"Just give it back to Dany," Peaches said.
Marsden would never. Couldn't. "I like it."
"Slaving away over a stove—over _eggs_ —when your face alone is enough to save you from this?" Peaches laughed, shaking her head. Her messy updo bobbed along. "Just how much is Nina paying you, anyway?"
So little it felt like she would be saving up forever to get herself and Wynn out of town. Especially since Nina made her own deductions: a cut for how much it cost for Shine and her daughters to live there, a bit toward the debt they still owed her for paying off the loans Grant Eldridge had died with. The two women had once been friends in high school, and Nina had offered Shine a job when no one else in town would. But Nina was, more than anything else, a businessperson.
Marsden had been fourteen the first time a john had asked about her. It was then that Nina had begun to eye her like property instead of the pseudo daughter Marsden had convinced herself she was.
That was when she wormed her way into the kitchen as staff, convincing Nina to be satisfied with owning her in that way, at least. The town's businesses had already decided she was off-limits; hiring her themselves would mean risking Nina's wrath as one of Glory's wealthiest, most ruthless businesspeople. Nina, with her rose-tipped thumbs jabbed in pies all over the place.
Fourteen was also when Marsden began skimming in earnest, with the goal of escape in mind.
"The eggs are going to taste like your cigarette smoke," Marsden said to Peaches, continuing to stir so she wouldn't have to look at her. "You can be the one to tell Nina that when the guests complain."
"Always so worried." Peaches blew out a thick stream of smoke. She took the spatula and poked at the sausages. "It's going to age you if you're not careful."
"Oh, leave her alone, Peaches." Lucy leaned in from Marsden's other side, peering closely at the eggs through her large tortoiseshell glasses. They were the same ones Nina had detested until she realized they held an appeal of their own. "Marsden covering the kitchen just leaves Dany more time for the rest of the house."
Despite being a couple, Lucy couldn't have been more different from Peaches, a subtle carnation to a heady orchid. She had long, blond Alice in Wonderland hair, complete with hairband; along with the glasses, there was a sense of innocence about her that kept johns coming back. A runaway, Lucy had hitched her way north from Florida five years ago. She had arrived at Glory with sad eyes and a quiet voice she rarely used. Both gave away nothing about why she'd run in the first place. She wasn't so quiet anymore, and her eyes weren't so sad, but Wynn had once whispered to Marsden that she didn't agree. _Lucy just hides the sadness better. And we've forgotten to look._
Peaches rolled sausages with the spatula's edge and smirked. "I guess Marsden _is_ the better cook."
"Don't ever tell Dany that, you'd break her heart." Lucy took a wooden spoon from the drawer and began to stir the eggs, yawning behind a hand.
"And risk having to do my own laundry? Never." Peaches squinted against smoke. "Hey, aren't these sausages done?"
Marsden felt hemmed in by how closely the girls stood around her, the easy way they spoke to each other. "Give them another couple minutes."
"You got a timer going?"
"I don't use one—cook enough of anything, you just know."
Life as a kid with her parents in their old duplex had been little more than a string of broken images—her father placing money on the kitchen table before leaving again; her mother screaming into the phone about late bills and not having enough, then smiling with empty eyes as she tucked Marsden into bed. By contrast, she remembered her grandmother's visits like entire shows.
She'd been the one to teach Marsden all about food.
And those times Shine was out of the house, Star had been the one to cook what Shine had declared too strange, too Chinese.
_Your mother, always wanting to pretend you two look the same as everyone else in this town_ , Star would mutter over setting chicken to steam as she stir-fried. _Pretending her grandfather didn't go on to marry a Chinese woman, that I didn't go on to marry a Chinese man. Don't be ashamed of looking different, Marsden. Don't be afraid of hearing what others might not._
Her grandmother's dying led to two things:
First, Shine decided that the covert—and the family ability to hear the dead—would no longer be subjects she was interested in talking about. Second, Shine became a housekeeper for Nina in exchange for room and board, a job that lasted until Wynn's birth six months later. When she took on another kind of work, as soon as she was able to.
Peaches gave the sausages another jab with the spatula. "I can't wait until my guy finally leaves. Older than Methuselah, swear to God. And he wanted to play teacher, because he found out this place used to be a boarding school."
The school had gone up after the state bought half an acre of land from Marsden's great-grandfather. Nina's family then bought it in turn, keeping bits of the original structure intact as they converted the school into the boardinghouse-slash-brothel it was today—pine-framed windows, gray velvet flocked wallpaper, navy tiled floors. The heart of the covert remained untouched, a swath of forest west of the place.
Lucy moved to Peaches's other side and kissed her. "Well, my guy smells."
They both laughed against each other's mouths, and Marsden, her face on fire, turned down the grill's heat so it only warmed.
How did that work, anyway? To love someone knowing that, at times, they were someone else's? To touch them knowing it would soon be someone else's turn? She wondered if such questions ever crossed their minds anymore, or if they just didn't let them because they were too hard to answer.
Down in the staff wing, a radio began to play. A song from that week's Top 40.
Marsden was sure Wynn had set it. Her sister had discovered that most of Nina's girls listened to the radio as they got ready in the morning. Which meant she would, too.
Peaches and Lucy danced their way back upstairs, and Marsden found herself moving in a rush now, struggling to finish before Nina stormed into the kitchen, demanding to know why breakfast wasn't in the dining room yet.
It left Marsden annoyed, being in a hurry. She should have known better than to let Peaches and Lucy distract her. It would never be worth it to risk Nina cutting her pay.
## four.
"Mars, can you make waffles for the squirrels again?"
Wynn was sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal, her usual place for meals when Nina wanted Wynn to stay quiet and out of the way. From the dining room just off to the side, there came the clanging of cutlery, the low chatter of guests as they ate the breakfast Marsden had just finished bringing out.
"Not today, since I've already made breakfast." Marsden scrubbed at the grill. "See, I'm cleaning now. You're going to have to make friends with the wild fur balls some other way."
"They don't like cereal."
"There might be leftover eggs coming back from the dining room, if you want to wait."
"Squirrels don't like eggs."
" _You_ don't like eggs."
"I'm serious."
"It's food." Marsden began to wipe at cold grease. "Of course they'll like it."
"I think they're vegetarian."
"Eggs aren't meat."
"But they come from chickens."
Marsden turned the stove back on and dropped a slice of bread onto the grill. The cold grease started to melt around it. "Toast will have to do, all right?"
"Can we check for more berries this morning? In the covert? We didn't pick enough yesterday to make strudels."
Marsden pushed the bread along the grease. It was going to be a long summer if Wynn wanted to go to the covert every chance she got. "Wouldn't you rather hang out with your friends? Where's Caitlyn today? Or Ella? I can try to bike you over later to meet them if you want." Both girls were her sister's best friends, and during the school year, they often played at one another's houses. More accurately, Wynn played at theirs, since neither of the girls were allowed near the covert.
"Caitlyn and her family are camping somewhere," Wynn said, "and Ella's cat is sick. She has to bring it to the vet."
Marsden bit back a sigh. "I think the berries need to ripen a bit more. Besides, the covert isn't going anywhere—and there are other places to play."
"Nothing that's like a whole forest to myself. I saw a whole family of mice in there the other day. And it's the only place where the trees and plants aren't all dried up from the sun."
"You know what happens in there."
"No one comes during the day." Wynn spooned Lucky Charms into her mouth. "And it's part of the family, so we're supposed to take care of it. How can you be scared of family?"
Marsden nearly smiled at how many ways she could pick apart the last of Wynn's words. "It's _not_ family," she said instead. "It's just land—that's all."
"Grandma wouldn't have said that. The covert is a part of us. Or we're a part of it—like it's in our blood."
Kirby and his crimes popped into Marsden's head. The covert would be forever stained with what he'd done, its soil and trees and air sown from it. More than one person in town believed some of that raging madness still flowed through his descendants.
Her sister picked out marshmallows from her bowl with her fingers. Watching her, Marsden saw the resemblance to their mother, though it was nothing compared to how she herself resembled Shine. While Wynn's hair and skin and eyes were all a shade softer than Marsden's—a kitty cat at the side of a lioness, Dany had once said about the two of them—they'd both inherited their mother's jawline, the broad sweep of her cheekbones, the slope of her nose, and her thick black hair. But the shape of Wynn's eyes, the slightly clefted chin, her paler skin must have been from their father.
"Don't you ever wonder if it's us making the dead talk or them thinking we should hear?" Wynn asked. "Because of our ability?"
Marsden flipped the grilling bread. "We've never heard anyone."
"We might one day. So don't you wonder?"
"People aren't parts of places," she tried again. "And I only go to the covert for a good reason."
"Death," her sister whispered, the suddenly ominous tone in her voice lifting up goose bumps on Marsden's arms. "So you can call Hadley as soon as possible if you see someone."
"Exactly. So finish eating, will you, runt? You know Nina will want you outside while guests check out or head for town."
"It's hot outside. And if I hide in here long enough, I'll get to see the others before they're busy for the day."
The others. Wynn meant their mother and Nina's girls.
"You'll see everyone enough later."
Wynn shook her head. "Not enough if we're leaving soon like you want. Can't we stay here longer?"
Marsden glanced over, dismayed. Her sister's hair was a crown of midnight cowlicks. Just a slip of an undersized girl who loved the covert despite its horrors, who had no clue what her mother did for work most nights.
She wasn't ready to lose this Wynn yet. She wanted her to remain unchanged for as long as possible, young and blind and trusting. Not like her, dealt, at eight, a dead father, a forest full of death and tainted riches, a mother's desperate decision. Then that one overly tall guest, his gaze crawling _—Is Shine's girl available yet?_
"Glory's small," she said. "Just because we won't be living in the boardinghouse doesn't mean you still won't see everyone in town." Of course if they left town altogether, they _wouldn't_ see them (which Marsden wasn't sure she was really sorry about), and it was what she was still secretly planning. She'd brought up the idea with Wynn once but her sister had only shaken her head and refused to consider it. So Marsden had retreated and Wynn believed what she wanted to believe. When the time came to finally leave, Marsden would tell her the truth.
"I _like_ living in the boardinghouse, though." Wynn stirred her cereal milk—turned chunky and blue—with her finger. "There's Mom, and Dany, and the girls. Even Nina isn't always so bad—she said Peaches and Lucy can show me how to do my hair and makeup. So I can look as nice as I want, whenever I like."
Marsden stabbed and gouged at the toast, something bitter on the back of her tongue. Nina had known exactly what she was doing, saying that to Wynn. "Seriously, you don't need to do any of that."
"But I _want_ —"
"You don't! And if you think Nina's that nice, you're just being stupid."
Wynn's mouth trembled, and tears sprang to her eyes. Her finger went stock-still in her bowl of milk.
Marsden could have kicked herself. Had she ever called Wynn stupid before, in a way that sounded like she meant it?
"Hey now, what's all this?" Dany swept into the kitchen, maternal and capable, a cozy blanket of a woman. Even her voice was comforting, big and warm enough that it seemed to wrap around you as she spoke. After Marsden, she was the person Wynn sought out in the boardinghouse—never Shine.
"Just blue cereal for breakfast, sweetie?" she said to Wynn, giving Marsden a sideways look. "I'd be upset, too. How about I go grab you some of the food from the dining room?"
"It's eggs on the menu today," Marsden said quietly, turning off the grill. "She doesn't like them."
"Ah. Well, let me go check what else there might be." Dany ruffled Wynn's uncombed hair and swept away, her expression expectant as she looked back at Marsden. _Don't forget which of you is the big sister_.
"Sorry, Wynn," Marsden said as soon as they were alone. "You know I didn't mean it."
Her sister began to stir her blue milk again and Marsden was stiff with guilt, unsure of how to fix things.
Then Dany was back, bearing nothing but a stack of dirty plates. "Too late, as everything's been eaten. But Wynn, I have an idea for us this morning—go around back to the outer shed and get the old manual ice-cream maker? Jack is bringing by a delivery of fresh rhubarb from the store. Be careful, though—one of the attachments doesn't stay on so great. Meanwhile, your sister and I will start cleaning up from breakfast."
Not needing to hear any more beyond the words _ice_ and _cream_ , Wynn was up like a shot and out the door without a single look back.
"You two all right now?" Dany poured coffee from the pot on the counter. "You don't often snap at Wynn like that."
Marsden began to scrub at the grill, working around the toast still on it. "Nina needs to stop putting ideas in her head about needing to dress up—she's eight. And Peaches and Lucy—" She felt nearly betrayed at how oblivious they seemed to be to her problems. But what did they owe Marsden when none of them were really friends? When Nina was the one whose roof they slept under? "They need to remember she's just a kid. And not like them."
"They're simply being nice, that's all."
She could argue with Dany all morning, but she knew the woman would never say a bad word about Nina. Same way she could never turn on her or Wynn or any of the girls. Her loyalty to the house was unshakeable. It was what made her so lovable. But it also made her no help at all.
"Nina wasn't just being nice when she promoted my mom from housekeeper to whore," she muttered as she scrubbed. "What's an old friend's reputation when it comes to her business bringing in money, right?"
" _Hush_ , Marsden." Dany's voice was low as she began to fill the sink. "She helped your mother when no one else in Glory would, when no job offers came despite the promises. And then Grant's loans . . . Listen, she was not a child when she agreed. She knew she'd make good money."
"She could have just said no to Nina. She could have left. She—" Marsden bit off the rest of whatever she was going to say. They would have been words she'd already said dozens of times before, and they still wouldn't change what her mother ended up doing.
And Shine _had_ left. Once. Or started to. Marsden had been ten and Wynn just a baby. Shine had gathered them one winter morning and they had taken the bus to the bus depot. Then they had sat on one of the benches inside for hours, waiting. Marsden had asked her mother over and over again where they were going, and her mother had simply sat there, staring up at the ticket board, her face pale and her hands clenched around her purse in her lap.
They had brought almost nothing with them, since all they really had was clothing anyway. Tucked into her carrier, Wynn had slept nearly the whole time. Marsden remembered how her excitement had slowly disappeared, the bus depot around her emptying of people and then filling back up and then emptying again. When she got hungry, Shine gave her five dollars for candy bars from the little kiosk by the ticket booth. By the time the sky was starting to go dark, she was no longer asking about where they were going but instead when were they going home. Eventually, Shine gathered up Marsden and Wynn and they took the bus back to the boardinghouse.
Nina had been cold to Shine for a few days, but then everything went back to the way it had been. Her mother wouldn't talk about it when Marsden asked, and soon enough, Marsden was no longer asking about it at all. Bits of that day still came back to her at times, but they seemed almost unreal, as if the whole thing had happened to someone else. A different ten-year-old girl with a sleeping baby sister and a mother who forgot how to speak, one who was heading out to a different city for real.
Dany slid dishes into the sink, her expression carefully patient. "Skill-less, with two little girls to take care of, and saddled with a bloodline and a skin color the people in this town were afraid of. Yes, she could have tried leaving again, but as bad as it was for her here, she came back because at least she knew Glory. Better the devil she knew than the one she didn't, was her thinking. Now, I'm going to go finish clearing, if you want to start washing."
"Sure." Guilt deflated Marsden's anger, and she watched Dany stride away. She picked up the cooled toast and tucked it into the front pocket of her shirt. The covert should still be empty from her check that morning, and she knew Wynn would want to feed the squirrels.
Then her mother walked into the kitchen, and Marsden braced herself.
## five.
She had always been told they looked alike, and it was fact. Both of them had olive skin that darkened to a gold by the end of the summer, the shades rooted in their Chinese blood. And while Marsden's straight black hair was usually down to her waist because she was often too lazy to get it cut, her mother always kept hers nearly as long because she said it made her look younger. _No matter how much certain men might want me for the shape of my eyes, it's youth that keeps them around._
Marsden's eyes were the same shape, too, but she liked that hers were even darker. So deep a brown they never altered, whatever the light—unreadable, hidden, a warning for others to not bother. Her being a skimmer would remain a secret, as long as she stayed careful.
Shine unhooked a coffee mug from the tree on the counter and filled it. Dressed casually because it was day, her makeup faint in the morning sun, she appeared too young to have a teenage daughter. Marsden had been unplanned, her parents both sixteen when she'd been born. As much as her coming along had derailed whatever plans they might have had, it had also forced them to stay together when maybe they wouldn't have, until it all ended with the river. That had been worse.
"Did I just see you hide toast in your pocket?" Shine asked.
Marsden wondered if her mother had overheard any of her conversation with Dany. "I'm supposed to go feed a squirrel."
"No pets." Her mother's reply was instant and automatic. "Nina's rules."
"Not in the house, Mom. Out in the covert."
" _Shine_ , not _Mom_." Her mother took a long sip of coffee and stared out through the window at the ever-muddy Indigo. "Not _Mom_ , not _Mother_ , and, Lord"—a shudder, as though her coffee had suddenly turned repulsive—"never _Ma_."
"Sorry." Marsden still remembered when she'd been allowed. Those words sometimes felt foreign on her tongue, and sometimes completely natural—she missed saying them, as much as she resented them for what they stood for. Wynn, though, rarely needed reminding. "Shine."
"I really wish you would stop going out to the covert so much." Her mother set her mug down, lit up a cigarette, and looked at her daughter. "You go there every day. You even let Wynn go with you sometimes, letting her see God knows what. The girls tell me you do."
_The girls._ Aside from Peaches and Lucy, the bulk of Nina's prostitutes—including Shine Eldridge—were starting to slide into what Marsden had once heard johns call "well-done" territory. The light switches in the bedrooms having dimmers was no happy accident. Suddenly, the sun flowing in was more revealing than kind, and Shine's face, beneath the careful makeup, showed the truth with each line.
Her mother did not know she skimmed. She did not know why Marsden would have any reason to make more money than she already did working in the kitchen. She might decide she didn't know about skimmers at all, if she really did choose to ignore talk of the covert.
She also didn't know that even as Marsden was on the lookout for bodies, her daughter strived to hear the dead. The sight of blood-splattered, heart-shaped leaves was easier to live with, it turned out, than the memory of a father saying he regretted her.
"I go there because it's quiet, Mom—Shine. That's all."
"Do you know how unhealthy that is? _Enjoying_ being in a place where people go to kill themselves?" Her mother blew out smoke, more anxious than angry. "Please, Marsden."
Guilt—familiar, hateful, Shine's most effective weapon against her—began to grind its way home, and Marsden sighed. She knew her mother had once actually mothered, that she would be better off simply forgetting most of that time. But Shine continued to try despite everything, and it only made it harder. Because crumbs still went toward hunger, still forced off starvation, even if that kind of mercy wasn't necessarily kind.
"I don't enjoy it," she said. "I could never. But I have to find them."
"Let the place be," her mother pleaded. "Whatever happens in there is Hadley's problem, not yours. You should be spending more time with your girlfriends, ones from school."
She could not tell her mother that most girls talked _about_ her, not _with_ her. It'd been that way for nearly as long as she could remember. By the time they moved into the boardinghouse, Marsden had already been struggling to keep the few friends she had, each of them deciding hanging out with her would be dooming her own reputation at school. She recalled them the way she did favorite toys she once played with, before they broke and she could no longer play with them. Jessica, who liked Barbies, Jillian, who preferred Hot Wheels. Mattea, who had a tree house.
Marsden stopped fighting their withdrawal after a while. How do you fight fact? Her family _did_ own the creepiest place in Glory, after all, had made it that way in the first place. What if whatever evil was in their blood could spread? She was the descendant of a madman, the protector of cursed land. She was one of the "Orientals" in town. Her mother becoming one of Nina's girls—simply one more of Glory's not-so-secrets—was, she supposed, the icing on a very ugly cake.
"It's summer," she said now. "People do stuff."
"Fine. I mean when it's _not_ summer."
"So ask me in the fall."
"Don't be glib. It's not an appealing trait."
Marsden's hand squeezed the piece of toast in her pocket. Compulsively, like a muscle cramp. "To johns? Then oh well."
Shine drew hard enough on her cigarette that it shook in her fingers. Her unending need for security filled her eyes, turning her expression both childlike and calculating. Marsden's father had put that look there, Marsden knew, had taught his wife to fear being left alone as she dealt with his recklessness and inability to be responsible. His leaving had pushed her toward Nina and the boardinghouse, too. For that, she saw how her mother could be unforgiving. Just as she saw how it made her mother need too much protection to ever be able to protect anyone else.
"Those johns are what keep us fed, Marsden." Ash fluttered to the ground from Shine's trembling cigarette. Her voice trembled along with it. "But soon I'll be too old for them. You know Nina knows this. And Nina . . . she's asked me to come talk to you. She says it's time you stop hiding in this kitchen."
Marsden's skin went icy, chilled with the revulsion of a touch she could already imagine. She'd known, but it was another thing hearing Shine say it out loud. "I won't."
"I know you don't want to, but we owe Nina. She's a business-person when it comes to this, not a friend. She covered those loans of your father's that we're still paying her back for."
"Then go back to housekeeping. I'll get another job somewhere else, on top of cooking here."
Shine tried to smile then, of all things, and it was even shakier than her fingers around the cigarette. Her eyes simmered with panic. They said she was trapped and that she knew she was trapping Marsden along with her.
Something too close to pity flooded Marsden. An image of her mother at the window of their old duplex, watching for signs of her husband, flashed behind her eyes. One of her carefully counting bills before triumphantly declaring to Marsden that she could pick out ice cream.
She knew some of her mother had become an act, but not all of her, and it was terrifying how she blurred. Just how much could she let Shine need her? How much could her mother beg of her and still let her believe it came from love, not resentment? Her own selfishness?
"Housekeeping doesn't pay as much," Shine said. "And no one else in Glory would hire you. We're not one of them, despite how long we've been here. Also, they know you're already Nina's; they won't risk her coming after them. I'm sorry, but please, you need to consider—"
"I'm not Nina's, and I'm not you. How can you not hate her for this?"
"Because we can't afford to. And this place is still home for Wynn. Think of her when you tell yourself you're too good for this town, when you're out there with no money and nowhere to go."
"I _am_ thinking of Wynn. And I _have_ money," she blurted in a low rush. Surprise flooded her mother's face. Marsden wondered if she would regret her slip; she'd never talked to Shine about her money before. But then she supposed it made no difference in the end—whatever her mother knew of her plans wouldn't convince her and Wynn to stay. "You don't think I've been saving as much as I can?"
"I just . . . I assumed you only _wanted_ to leave," her mother said faintly. "Not that you really could."
"Well, now you know."
Shine's eyes glistened. Cigarette smoke haloed her head. Her despair made her stunning. "Then think of _me_. How could you make Nina wonder if I'm getting so useless I can't even ask you to do this? How could you leave me when I was the one who stayed?"
Barely able to breathe, Marsden stepped back from the vortex that was her mother, the insecurity that turned her desperate. She didn't need someone's loneliness. And her mother was boxed into a corner of her own, forced there by her blood, her dead husband, her daughters.
"I don't care if you don't tell Nina no for me, then," Marsden whispered, "as long as you don't say yes. Can you at least do that? Until I think of something?"
Shine's arm continued to shake as she reached for her mug of coffee. It would be close to cold by now. She took a sip and showed no reaction. Her face had gone pale. She set down the cup again. "I'll see if . . . I will try—"
"Mars! Mars!"
Wynn's bellow broke into the kitchen like a riptide as she burst in through the back entrance. Cradled in her arms was the old ice-cream maker—Marsden could tell with one glance that an attachment was missing. The observation felt vague, coming from a distance, as though she were merely watching the unfolding of a scene from someone else's life. Her conversation with her mother still rang in her ears—her own plea, Shine's struggle to remember her daughter.
"What is it?" she asked Wynn, the sister that she loved too much and wanted to protect more than anything. Who, because of that, was now being used against her.
"The covert!" From the corner of her eye, Marsden saw Shine go stiff. "There's someone there!"
"You didn't touch it, did you?" _How much did you see? How much will you not be able to forget?_ "The body."
"It's not a body—it's a boy!"
A boy. The two words seemed alien in the room, coming from another universe. "What?"
"And, Mars?" Wynn was frowning, her expression thoughtful as she absentmindedly cranked the handle of the ice-cream maker. "He looks kind of mean."
## six.
Wynn hadn't been entirely right. It was more of a pissed-off, frustrated look than outright meanness on the boy's face.
Jude Ambrose.
Marsden knew him in an instant.
Not just because they'd gone to school together since they were little kids, making him a part of her life in Glory, no matter how small, but also because nearly three weeks ago, she'd been the one to discover the body of his older brother in the covert.
Rigby had been twenty-one. He'd left a note folded into the cash she'd stolen from his wallet. It'd been more than cryptic, was still hidden in her room even now, tucked away between books. She was stuck with it—to throw it away was unthinkable, but to give it back to Jude would be telling him she was a skimmer, the only explanation of how she'd come to have it. Even mailing it anonymously was too risky when only so many people saw a body after death by suicide in her family's covert.
As it was with most of the kids in school, she couldn't call Jude a friend. He was a senior and she was a junior; the times they passed each other in the hall were only occasional. If they'd ever spoken, she had no recollection of it. But she still _knew_ him, if only because they lived in the same town, had grown up within the same boundaries. So it was all too easy for her to picture him at his older brother's funeral, to imagine the events of the terrible day unfolding after reading the brief obituary in the local paper.
Seventeen years old, tall and lithe, his dark eyes both burning and hollow as he stood in a neat slate-gray suit next to Rigby's coffin. Beside him would be his closest friends from school, other guys she'd known since elementary and each of them just as much a non-friend to her as Jude. The school counselor would be there, wishing he could do more. Other mourners from town, as defeated as they were grieving, forever helpless in the face of the covert's strange, twisted lure. The promise of dark magic in its soil.
It would already be hot out, the late-spring sun a blistering yellow coin in the sky. The air would smell of fresh grass, bitter and sharp, of a coming summer already destroyed.
The service would be closed casket.
Marsden knew this. Had seen Rigby herself. Knew an open service could never be an option.
And she hadn't been wrong about Jude wearing a gray suit, though by the time she saw him outside the covert the day of the funeral, his tie was little more than a twist of mangled fabric, his dark pants dulled with road dust, his white shirt sleeves messily shoved up past his elbows. He hadn't seen her watching him from within the line of trees, but she'd seen _him_ , leaning back against his family truck parked on the shoulder of the highway, his eyes turned toward the covert's entrance. It came off him in waves, a thick grief and confusion that was layered into the June heat blanketing the entire town. She could sense it even from where she'd been standing, barely daring to breathe. From the time on her watch and what she remembered reading of the obituary, Marsden realized he must have walked out during the middle of the wake. She was still wondering what might have driven him to do so when he'd turned abruptly, climbed into his truck, and sped off down the highway.
He wasn't, she supposed, classically handsome, but he was infinitely memorable, made up of parts crafted with driven, relentless motions. His face, all sharp angles and wary, deep brown eyes. A mouth that looked like it hurt to smile.
How hard would those eyes go, how brittle that mouth, if he ever found out what she was hiding? Something she could never give up without giving herself up?
Jude wore a stretched-out black tee with a chest pocket, baggy olive shorts, sandals that were starting to fall apart. She'd always heard his family had money, but if so, he didn't make it obvious. He had some kind of booklet shoved into one of his side pockets. The sun was already in full force, making the outline of his figure shimmer in the heat. He was tall and broad-shouldered, slim but still muscular, his big hands the kind sketch artists live for—full of jutting bones and deep hollows, stories in every long swoop and arc.
He didn't belong here.
That was the thought that kept popping up in Marsden's head as she moved toward him. He met her stare head-on, something he'd never done in the halls whenever she saw him.
Well, that was more her own doing than his. It'd become habit a long time ago, the way she never really met anyone's eyes at school anymore. It came from too many years of being stared at, whispered about, snickered about.
Still, his gaze was steady on hers, intense, the cool eye of a storm. Different from she remembered it being, the ways she'd seen it before. In school, surrounded by his friends, his eyes had been warm, lit up; by himself, they turned unwelcoming, nearly hostile. And that was even before Rigby.
What could Jude Ambrose want with her now? When they'd been strangers for years and years? The last thing she needed was one more problem to deal with when her whole entire _life_ was a problem. A mess. A dead end.
She decided he was too tall. She also decided that his dark hair was way too thick and pretty, with its black-gold shine, its soft-looking waves. It half covered his eyes, was tossed all over his forehead, in desperate need of a cut. His skin was all coppers and bronzes, going a deeper hue along the top of his cheekbones, the slope of his nose—wherever the sun touched it. He wore a fat ladder of friendship bracelets—blacks, whites, neons—around one wrist. Their weave was careful and intricate and somehow feminine, and Marsden wondered who had made them for him.
From behind where he stood, past the fence her great-grandfather had built with his own hands, the smell of the covert bled loose and free, a roaming cloud of ginger. It drifted out and surrounded them, thick with spice and heat and other mysterious things.
She hadn't expected his eyes to be so dark. Which was stupid, because hers were just as dark, and Jude was as mixed as she was, except black to her Chinese.
It was another reason why Marsden had stayed aware of him in school. So that she couldn't help but glance over and imagine what it was like for _him_ , growing up in Glory half-black, while nearly everyone else was white, white, white. She wondered if he ever got paranoid over a lengthy stare, at a laugh that came from behind as soon as he moved past, whenever someone else got chosen for something with no real explanation. If he was sometimes confused about why the white half of him _didn't_ make him belong.
She also wondered why, just as she pretended she didn't care what anyone thought, Jude acted as though he wouldn't mind if someone did have a problem. Like he would welcome a confrontation.
Maybe that was the difference between them, she thought—hurt or be hurt. Maybe he'd learned something she hadn't yet.
"Hi." She didn't bother with a smile as she reached him. "Were you looking for something?"
"You're Marsden Eldridge." His voice was rough and rusty, like he hadn't spoken in a while. "From school."
She waited a beat, but he said nothing else. "And you're Jude Ambrose. From school."
His eyes narrowed as she said his name, a muscle along his neck jumped, and Marsden tried not to be irritated. He was on _her_ property—why was he acting like she were the intruder?
But then an image of Rigby popped into her head—grisly, scattered, still too fresh—and she decided to start over.
"I'm really sorry about your brother." Already, Jude seemed like a puzzle. The same way Shine was a puzzle, full of hidden doors, tricky passageways, dangerous traps. "Rigby."
"It was—you were the one who found him."
Marsden nodded. "The covert is family property. I try to check often enough that if someone goes in, they won't accidentally see something."
He shoved his wavy hair out of his eyes with one hand, his expression slightly less guarded now. "Thanks for not talking about it with anyone."
"I wouldn't do that." She couldn't stop her frown. "Why would I?"
"Sorry, I don't mean it that way. I just meant that I knew you kept it quiet because I never heard anything going around. And Glory—well, this place can talk. And it likes its stories. The covert has its share."
She tried to smile, hoped it looked even remotely close to natural. "Latest I've heard is that saying its name three times in a row, while standing beneath a true crescent moon with your eyes shut, means a year of bad luck."
There were other stories, of course, passing from ear to mouth, ear to mouth. Stepping foot over the property line at midnight meant dooming someone else to die that very same second. A breath breathed while walking past meant living one less year. Running through the place beneath a full moon bought three wishes—but only if you first outran the ghost of poor crazy Duncan Kirby. He with the still-smoking hunting rifle in hand, chasing after you in boots slick with blood and splattered with Indigo mud, bellowing the names of his wife, his kids, the river, the town.
Jude smiled in return, and it broke across his face slowly, carefully, like a newly formed wave shyly brushing over the shore. Marsden liked how it looked on him. She didn't know what to think about that.
" _Two_ years of bad luck," he said, "if it's a weekday."
"And if you do it too close to the covert?"
"You'll open your eyes to see Duncan's ghost right in front of you."
She nearly shivered, despite already knowing the tale. "I guess my ancestors don't play around."
"Makes you wonder how they'd punish skimmers."
"'Skimmers.' " The word, clumsy and ugly in her mouth—she flushed. How could she have forgotten who she was talking to about the covert? His brother's body was still imprinted all over its ginger plants, its soil saturated with it, her hands shadowed. "What are those?"
He looked surprised at _her_ surprise. "You know, grave robbers, tomb raiders. Looking for bodies to steal from before they're taken away."
"Steal what?"
"Money would be the first thing, most likely. Then jewelry, or whatever's valuable—Seconds pawnshop would resell it, even."
Marsden shoved her hands into the front pocket of her shirt to hide how they wanted to twist. The toast inside had gone soggy and cold—her fingers were colder. "People trespass, but you don't know they steal. Skimmers are likely just another story in town."
A hint of impatience played on his lips. "Because neither of us know any personally? Doesn't mean they're not around."
"The jewelry part makes no sense." Her nerves thrummed. She hoped she sounded steadier than she felt. "People would recognize pieces." But she knew that didn't mean much. Glory had long grown comfortable with death, and most wouldn't care where a good find came from.
"You can still steal money, though," he said.
"You can't prove it was stolen."
"Doesn't mean it doesn't happen."
"It doesn't mean it _does_." She knew she sounded defensive, but she couldn't help it. Whatever little ground they'd managed to gain together already seemed lost. "You can't believe everything you hear about the covert, you know. And this place is mine. I would know what was real or not, don't you think?"
Jude's gaze had cooled. His voice was raw again. "Look, I'm not here to accuse you or anything. Or to be told I'm stupid."
She saw his dead brother in his eyes and fresh guilt filled her.
Did he know? she wondered. That the anger she saw in him even before Rigby died was nearly all gone now, turned into grief? Was now something so bleak she felt it in her own chest just by looking at him?
From over his shoulder, the sudden piston of a small black form split apart the ground. The squirrel ran toward them, barely visible in the grass that rose up to cover her ankles, surrounding the covert's fence in a wide ring of pale green. Technically, this part of the property belonged to the township; it wasn't uncommon for Glory to let the grass grow unchecked for weeks before finally sending someone to cut it. More than once, Marsden had given in and mowed it herself, the grass bleached nearly white by the sun by then.
She took out the toast, recalling Wynn's pleas to go with her. _To talk to the boy with the angry face and ask him what was wrong_. Her little sister, with her weakness for things that she believed she could help—squirrels living with ghosts in the covert, boys with sad eyes and dead brothers. But Shine had said no, and only Marsden promising to feed the squirrels on her behalf appeased her sister enough to be satisfied with waiting with Dany for rhubarb and ice cream.
"You just pulled out a really disgusting-looking piece of toast from your shirt pocket," Jude said slowly, staring at her hands. Then he glanced back up to meet her gaze, lifted one brow, and asked with great care, "I'm guessing you must be hungry?"
A small laugh escaped before she'd even known it was there. "My sister's trying to bribe herself a pet. She's decided squirrels will do."
"Didn't know squirrels liked toast." His slow grin was back, making it hard to stay annoyed with him. Making him way too easy to look at.
"She says they prefer waffles, but I have to draw the line somewhere." She passed over half the toast. "Here—do you mind? I promised her."
Jude took it without hesitation, and Marsden sighed inwardly—how could she _not_ think he was okay, considering how he wasn't even questioning being asked to feed toast to a rodent?
She led him a few feet along the outer curve of the wooden fence, and he followed silently, taking this so seriously she admitted she found it endearing.
If Wynn were there, she'd already be head over heels at seeing Jude smile the way he proved to be able to.
Sudden memories of a very young Jude began to fill Marsden's head as she walked. Each image turned over on itself until it was clearer than the last, just as though she were searching for gold along the Indigo, shaking her pan, tilting out water and mud and silt—the fog of time, the messiness of her own childhood—until only the precious metal remained, finally revealed in full.
## seven.
He'd been a tiny scrap of a kid, not yet grown into his bones, so small and vulnerable, the way delicate birds seemed vulnerable. His hair, nearly as messy as he wore it now, a chaos of dark brown spikes and waves. Huge eyes dimmed with anxiety and dread—before he'd learned to turn all of that into fury.
Because Dany had reminded Marsden about Jude's father, hadn't she, after the news of Rigby Ambrose had spread throughout Glory? How Leo Ambrose had moved his young family out West after he lost his job due to his drinking. How his wife died of cancer not long after. How his drinking spun even more out of control and his sons met his fists. All of it, leaking throughout the town like bad gas, borne on whispers and sly glances and the kind of boredom so deep it almost welcomed danger.
A clumsily bandaged wrist as Jude walked around outside during recess.
A split lip as he entered the classroom.
Then, one spring weekend in the public library. Marsden had been seven and Jude eight. His bronze-hued cheek had been red and puffed, his eyes wet and streaming, as she watched him run between towers of books toward an older boy. His flight had been desperate and terrorized, full of fear. She'd felt all of that crash into her own heart, so that it hurt for him, too, this schoolmate she only knew by name.
She'd been in the next aisle, browsing the cookbooks—Star had promised to bake cookies with her the next time she visited, Marsden's choice of recipe—when the pounding of sneakered feet came from behind the racks of books at her side. She heard muffled crying, comforting murmurs.
She'd walked to the end of the aisle and peeked over.
There was Jude, crying into the shoulder of an older boy. He seemed huge by comparison, this other boy, his shoulders and hands and feet all oversize—only his soft cheeks and long, messy limbs gave away how young he was still. Marsden saw how his skin was the exact same shade as Jude's, all ambers and sweet molasses. They had the same eyes, too, full of glints and hidden hues that only peeked out depending. Her own eyes were like that, not wanting to give things away.
That older boy would have been Rigby, she knew now. Doing his best to protect his little brother from their father, even if Jude's swollen cheek told her Rigby had been too slow that day. And seeing Rigby's expression, the tears in his own eyes as he struggled to convince Jude he would be fine, she saw how he hated himself for it.
She knew that feeling now, too, didn't she? How each time she failed Wynn, it ate at her like a strange hunger, the kind that no food could fix? How it made her realize all over again that she was not good enough to make up for all the bad, not strong enough to save anything?
If she ever heard Rigby in the covert, she'd tell him she understood all of it. How lonely it was to save someone. How his leaving had left Jude hollow, but that his brother was still here, and alive, and so he hadn't failed at all.
And, maybe, then she'd ask something of him.
If he knew of her father. If somewhere in the covert, Grant Eldridge still had a voice.
Then Jude was grabbing her hand, jolting her back to the present and the covert, stopping her from walking any farther.
"The squirrel's right at our feet." His face was amused, wanting to laugh. And his voice was still husky, but no longer scraped or painful sounding, just full of valleys and low, soft slopes. He dropped her hand. "Hidden in the grass."
The ghost of his touch lingered like the long, measured stroke of a sure brush on paper. Marsden ignored the sensation and ripped up the rest of her half of the piece of toast, dropping the pieces onto the ground near where they stood.
Jude started to do the same. "Captivity for toast. Seems fair enough to me."
It didn't escape her, the way it was both strange yet completely normal to be standing there with him, just outside the place where his brother had shot himself weeks ago. In that moment, more than anything, she wanted to ask him if it really had been his dad who used to hurt him. If he was still being hurt. If that was why he always looked ready to hurt someone back.
"So you live at the boardinghouse with your family?" He tossed the last of his toast into the grass. "And work there as a cook? Your mom's a housekeeper there, right?"
Marsden's mind raced, trying to decipher if he was being sarcastic in pretending to not know. If unspoken facts were simply lies to him, or stories, or rumors.
"Who told you we lived there?" she finally managed.
"That girl who found me here outside the covert. I'm guessing she's your sister?"
She nodded. "Her name's Wynn." Who was now going to be served eggs every day for breakfast for the rest of the summer—for the rest of the entire _year_.
"I asked her where I could find you, so she told me you were still at home. Then she pointed to the boardinghouse."
Surprise wiped away all further thoughts of punishment for Wynn. She realized now that he never did say why he came to be there, waiting outside her woods as though he were guarding it. Or spying. "You were actually looking for me?"
A second of hesitation, then Jude pulled out the book he'd tucked into his shorts pocket. He unrolled it, showing her the front.
_Putting Together the Perfect Time Capsule._ The cover was worn and scratched up. He handed it to her, his expression uncertain again, vulnerable. "Open it, please."
Marsden did, even though she was lost. Why was he showing her a kids' book?
The pages inside were laminated, protection from sticky and careless fingers. Someone had written on them, the handwriting that of a child's. There were lists and arrows and charts.
She flipped more pages and dried blooms whirled free.
Leaves, palm-size, in the shape of a heart.
The familiar scent of wild ginger filled her nose as the leaves danced around them to land at their feet. It was the covert, leaving traces of itself on their skin, in the breaths they breathed.
She should have instantly thought of death, of sad, lonely things. And she did. But standing there with Jude, some of her thoughts also stayed with him—with the book he'd brought for her—so that she was curious, confused.
The grim expression had crept back into his eyes. It was now laced with a painful kind of hope, and she braced herself for anything and everything.
"Rigby had a time capsule, and it's buried somewhere in the covert," he said. "I need to find it. I need to dig it up."
## eight.
Marsden turned from him so fast, her hair spun out in a wild arc, as though to cut away his request. Her heart skated in circles in her chest, pounding.
She had to get away.
Jude's hand shot out and grasped at her arm. There was desperation in his grip, a panic of his own that nearly touched hers. She barely had time to consider that: the puzzle of why he'd be feeling something close to scared when he was only supposed to be mourning his beloved big brother. When he said her name, it sounded raw.
"Marsden. Please. Just hear me out for a second."
"No." Fury was the only thing that could contain her fear. "You've lost your mind to ask me that. And you need to leave." Each word had to be a hammer blow to his hopes, no matter how cruel each might be. She stared down at his hand, still on her arm, and grimaced. _Let go._
Jude did, quickly, as though her skin had burned him. He flushed, and for a second, she was ashamed for making him feel he'd done something wrong when, between the two of them, she was the only guilty one.
"Don't you understand why I need to do this?" His voice was a rasp. "It's my brother I'm talking about here. _My brother_. I need answers, and—" He stopped, his mouth snapping shut, his expression torn.
"Digging up the covert won't bring him back." Guiltily, she thought of Rigby's note. How it fell from the thin wad of folded-up bills when she was back in her bedroom, creased by her fingers as she shoved it away, hiding it.
"Look, it's not going to be me digging up the covert like I'm laying out the works for some new building," he said. "It's me looking for something he left behind."
"By digging up the covert."
"For a time capsule. Nothing like excavating, I swear. Rig would have done it as a little kid. We're talking about something the size of a shoebox, or one of those Kraft mayo jars. Small like that."
Something inside her wanted to give—she needed to fight it. How would she keep skimming? How could she not want to get her and Wynn out as soon as possible? "The smaller it is, the harder it would be to find. It would mean _more_ digging."
"He left notes." He opened the book and pointed to a scrawl on one of the pages. Now that she knew whose writing it was, she couldn't see how she'd missed seeing it the first time around. It'd changed a lot since he was a kid, but Marsden saw hints of future Rigby's handwriting: the fat, gaping _O_ s, the overly tall and loping _T_ s. "He wrote down right here that he was going to use a cookie tin, a metal one. And his old metal detector from when he was a kid is still in the shed. It's going to be easy."
She shook her head. Jude was reaching, nearly painfully, and his acute need for his brother to not be dead was warping reality. She knew how that was—didn't she still do the same with her own father?
"You don't know for sure that he ended up using that," she said. "He might have changed his mind."
"Maybe. And maybe he didn't."
"You're basing all of this on a book you happened to find in his room. On notes he could have written down for any reason." Marsden needed him to realize on his own just how far-fetched his assumptions were, to walk away on his own—she didn't need the guilt of having to say no on top of what she already carried. He'd apologize for disturbing her, tell her to have a good summer, that he might or might not see her in the halls at school, and then he'd leave.
Except he wasn't interested in playing along.
"If you'd known Rig," he pressed, "you'd know he never did anything half-assed. He was weird that way, okay? He spent one whole spring break doing nothing but watch Kurosawa films. Last summer was dead male author reading—nothing but books by guys like Faulkner, Steinbeck, Wells. Two years ago, he studied disco as hard as he'd ever studied for any school subject. _Disco_. Its rise and fall in the seventies. I had to listen to the Shindiggs for _weeks_."
"I don't mind the Shindiggs," she said mildly. Dany still had a soft spot for _Burn Out_. Whenever she played it from her room, the sound would come drifting down the staff wing—she was pretty sure Wynn knew the entire soundtrack by heart.
"Okay, but—" A smile flickered on his lips, then he grew serious again. He scrubbed at his thick hair, thinking. Rigby was etched in his eyes, a ghost lingering on. "Well, anyway, that was Rig, always looking for something to disappear into. Because the reality of home really sucked."
His misery was so plaintive, the ache of it lay in her own throat. Again, she heard the echoes of people whispering about his father's drinking. Dany had told her Leo had seemed to get better a few years ago, had apparently stopped hitting Rigby and Jude, but who really knew the truth, outside of the family? Outside of Jude, with his perpetually hard eyes; of Rigby, who was dead; of Leo, who would never have reason to talk about any of it?
"And then the dried leaves inside the book," he went on, "the ginger. You know that stuff only grows freely here in the covert. Nowhere else in town."
"Because of the shade inside."
He nodded. "The rest of Glory just burns."
She saw how he'd connected the dots—a book about capsules, containing physical evidence of only one possible location.
"Where would you even start, Jude? The covert is bigger than it looks."
"What, maybe the size of a basketball court?"
Marsden shut her eyes. Shine had papers with the actual measurements, but he wasn't really asking about numbers. He just wanted her to agree.
In her head, she walked through the space, measuring the distance between the trees, how far the smell of wild ginger traveled with her, the way the sun fell through branches and leaves and bounced off the ground. She sensed death in the echo of her footsteps, in the call of the animals as they skittered through the forest alongside her, but she wasn't all scared. She knew the covert, just as it knew her, and she could either fight that terrible connection or accept it for what it was.
Last summer, in the middle of a heat wave so intense the air was on fire, Marsden had lain awake one night, unable to sleep. She'd thought of the river and decided to sneak out, suddenly wanting more than anything to slip into its cool waters. It was past midnight, and the sound of cars along the highway was a distant, insignificant whoosh in her ears. The gravel beneath her bare feet had hurt; she smelled mud and silt and dampened rock in the air. Beneath the moonless sky, the surface of the river was an unbroken ribbon of darkness, its bottom on the other side of the earth. And in the instant before she hit the water, it'd been like leaping into a crevasse with no end, dooming her to fall nonstop. But then she'd splashed through, the terror fled as though it'd never been, and the relief of being cool was visceral, whole. She could have swam forever that night. Could have kept diving, again and again.
The covert was like that for her. The same way it embraced her even as it screamed a warning. The same way a fever had to climb in order to break.
"Try _two_ basketball courts." She opened her eyes. "And people _die_ in there. To go and start hacking through—"
"You make it sound as bad as if I were going in as a skimmer." Jude's eyes glinted. "I'm not an asshole."
It was true she already sensed he would be respectful. Nothing like Red and Coop and other skimmers. It was the place where Rigby died. Where parts of his brother were still soaked into the ground of the covert, were still coursing through the tissues of its plants and trees.
"My father is buried in there," Marsden said quietly.
He stilled. "I didn't know that. I'm sorry. Though I should have realized because—" His voice broke off. "Because it's family property."
"Because it was suicide, you mean."
"The papers said it was an accident."
"I know what the papers said." She crossed her arms in front of herself, like they could act as armor.
He twisted the book in his hands. "Look, I know this tin won't bring Rig back. But whatever made him do it, it's like a piece of him that's gone missing, and I want it back. Even if it's just Hot Wheels or hockey cards or marbles—they're still his, right? I always thought I knew him so well, but now I think there are parts of him he kept from me. And however it might end up, maybe I'm meant to try to find them."
"Or maybe not."
"Or maybe not."
Marsden gave in before she even knew she'd stopped fighting. Because she saw herself, and the need for answers, in his eyes. And if she was deluded enough to think they could come in the form of dead people's voices, then having them be buried in old cookie tins waiting to be dug up wasn't any stranger.
And that tin . . . It was a direct connection to Rigby.
If she found it, she might be able to hear him, talk to him, just as Star could, what people in Glory had gone to her for. Marsden could tell him what she wished she'd known to tell him all those years ago as she watched him cry over having failed: that he hadn't failed at saving Jude. Then maybe she would know, somehow, that she wasn't going to fail in saving Wynn. And maybe once she heard Rigby, she could finally hear her father.
"You'd be here every day?" She still had her arms wrapped around herself.
"I'll stay out of your face when you're in there checking for bodies, if that's what you're worried about."
"Checking for bodies?" Her skin was cold, and panic rose in her throat. What exactly had she given away?
"Yeah, so you can call Hadley and report them."
She exhaled. "Right." Then she realized why the image of him simply waiting outside of the covert had been so striking—because no one ever waited. "Can I ask why you didn't just walk into the covert on your own? The signs have never stopped anyone from going in. You could have started digging without me even knowing about it."
"I admit I thought of it. But then if I got caught, you'd be too pissed to hear me out for a second chance." He gave a small smile. She found her eyes falling to his mouth, circling back to his eyes, liking his face more and more. "And like I said, I'm not an asshole."
"I would have been too busy kicking you out to believe you."
Jude laughed, then glanced back at the covert. "You know, all that wild ginger in there—I never would have guessed it hadn't always been that way."
"How did you know that?" Outside of family, she didn't think the covert having changed was talked about much. It appeared on the town's timeline as stealthily as summer's heat snuck in each year—slowly, then so unrelenting it didn't seem possible to have ever been banked.
"I work part-time at Evergreen, the garden center downtown. Roadie—the owner, my boss—he pretty much watched Rig and me grow up since our mom took the two of us to his shop so often. She had a thing for filling up the house with flowers. Rig said living in Glory made her hungry for them."
Marsden liked that. Being hungry for flowers instead of things like answers, or escape, or a parent's love.
"Roadie used to drive along the highway right here as a teen—his nickname, right?—chasing down the squirrels. The smell gave it away, he said, because there never used to be a trace of ginger."
She nodded slowly, still feeling strange talking about the covert to anyone other than Wynn. She tried to imagine Jude at work, surrounded by flowers and delicate blooms, and couldn't. "He's right. It never used to grow in the covert. I don't know when it started."
"Anyway, finding those leaves in Rig's book . . . I had to come here."
"I'll make a deal with you." She kept her eyes on his to gauge his reaction. If he even suspected she was a skimmer, she would tell him to leave and never come back. "The mornings here are mine, alone. And once the sun's gone down, the place is off limits—you wouldn't be able to see anything without flashlights, anyway, and if my mom or her boss saw you moving around in there, they'd be upset. But you can have the afternoons and evenings, if you still want them. And I'll have to be in there with you. I can't leave you alone in the covert."
"Because you don't trust me."
"No, because it's not easy being alone with the dead. You'll see."
His gaze narrowed. "The trust thing sounds easier."
"Am I _supposed_ to trust you?"
"Maybe." His smile was nearly playful. "One day."
"Fair enough." Wind whistled through the trees in the covert, there was the slightest hum in the air, and the scent of wild ginger wafted out and stained them all over. "Okay, so those are my conditions."
Jude nodded. "You've got yourself a deal, Marsden Eldridge."
## nine.
However Marsden felt about what took place in the boardinghouse—within its walls, below its roof—she'd always loved how it looked. She knew she was growing up in the prettiest place in all of Glory.
By comparison, the town's lone public library—plain brown concrete shell, pitted concrete front walk, nonexistent windows—was a hopeless cause.
She would have preferred to live there if she could.
Wynn yanked open the heavy front doors and was already running toward the kids' section before Marsden had fully stepped inside. "Come find me when you're done!" she called out.
"Runt, remember where we are again, right? You can't yell in here."
" _Sorry!_ " A hiss of a whisper, and her little sister disappeared, swallowed up by old steel racks, by tens of thousands of pages. Her hair was everywhere, the butterfly clip she'd stuck in it that morning already lost.
Marsden went upstairs. It was where the library stored its research materials. Where she could read up on Glory's history. The nicest parts of it and the ugliest.
It was summer, so the study cubicles were mostly empty, the few scattered tables unoccupied. But the air-conditioning in the place was strong, which likely explained why it wasn't entirely deserted.
Yesterday's conversation with Jude was what brought Marsden to the library in the first place, and she found herself walking over to where she once saw Rigby try to right the world for his brother. The aisle was empty now, but standing there, the memory sharpened, got clearer. She remembered how there'd been books scattered all over the floor, in piles at Rigby's elbows. How all those cream-colored pages came together to form a pair of giant paper wings, ready to fly him away.
Jude would have seen them the second he came running, those wings at Rigby's side.
Would he have thought the same thing? That if he waited long enough, those giant paper wings would fly his brother far away from him, leaving him alone with their drunken father?
Marsden turned away and headed for the library's newspaper collection.
Rigby's death was just one more in a long, long line of suicides in Glory, but his father had been someone, once, out East. Maybe enough of a someone that his son dying meant an article, talking again about Leo Ambrose. She could have asked almost anyone in town, and they probably could have filled her in on Jude's father, but then her asking would become news itself. The last thing she needed was more talk about her.
Thumbing through back issues from three weeks ago, she picked out ones for the local and East Coast–based papers—the second of which always arrived in Glory a few days late—and carried them over to a free cubicle. She was more than curious about the history of the boy she was bringing into _her_ history. _Jude, meet the covert. But first, what are your family secrets, before you learn mine?_
The local write-up and obituary—she still remembered both from the first time she'd read. When both had been fresh, when the town had still been rumbling with news of Rigby.
But that was before Jude, a boy who could barely say his dead brother's name without sounding like it hurt, had come to her. Before she'd said yes to his being a daily distraction, to the possible unmaking of all her plans, to not being able to skim as freely or as quickly with him around. When she had yet to consider how his being in the covert—and connected to his own dead—could prove another way for her to reach her father, since she'd already failed on her own.
Reading it again, she felt a sense of purpose she hadn't the first time. Before, she'd felt nothing but the dull sadness she always felt reading about deaths in the covert. It was also how she felt whenever she skimmed, whenever she stilled over a body and listened to the covert and heard nothing. Her helping Jude—she could be something other than what the town already decided she was.
In the East Coast papers, only one mentioned Rigby, and it was a finance one—the tiniest, briefest note that the son of a former CEO of a stock company had suddenly and tragically passed.
Marsden returned the newspapers and went to the microfiche cards. She located the cabinet that stored the data for out-of-state papers, flipped through cards until she found East Coast ones, and then narrowed _those_ down to the time right before Leo Ambrose headed west.
She carried the cards to the microfiche reader.
Leo Ambrose hadn't merely lost his cushy job when the market turned, it turned out, but also the entire family fortune, which had been deeply invested in stock. His firm set up a satellite position for him on the West Coast, and so the Ambrose family moved.
That was all. But Marsden had heard enough from Dany and the town to fill in the rest. How Glory was close enough to Seattle and the firm's West Coast office that Leo would still feel important but far away enough that his drinking wouldn't be an embarrassment. How the death of his young wife on top of all that had turned his sons into targets.
Marsden returned the cards back to the cabinet, thinking about Jude, knowing he would have wondered the same thing: How much did Leo's anger affect Rigby's choice that day?
She was about to go find Wynn to leave when she glimpsed the cabinet that held the cards for the local paper. Sorted by year, from the gold rush to town establishment to present day, Glory's entire history, if she were interested.
Most of it she already knew, had learned all the facts and folklore and legends.
After Duncan Kirby bled his family and himself all over the covert nearly a hundred years ago, his brother eventually came to Glory to claim the land. That had been Asa Kirby, her great-grandfather. He didn't build a cabin for himself in the covert like Duncan had, but instead built a fence around the entirety of the land before buying a small duplex right in town, where he lived out the rest of his life. He sold off bits and pieces of the family property over the years, like chunks of bitter chocolate broken off the bar, until the duplex and the fenced expanse of trees and soil and ghosts was all that remained in her mother's name—at least until Shine had to sell the home where Marsden had lived with her parents.
Just as the covert's reputation as a place of redemption grew—Duncan's waiting ghost, taking your hand and leading you deep—the rest of the town grew, too. First as a humble tourist town, its folk—stubbornly sure gold would return to their river's shores—serving travelers drinks and snacks from stands along the highway while selling handmade protective charms meant to ward off spirits lost and wandering free of the covert. (The first time Marsden saw these charms—a stand of little Duncan dolls on key chains, their tiny fabric boots dyed red, thin rolls of black felt for their guns—she'd been with her mother, and Shine's face had blanched, her mouth had gone a bloodless, lipless line, and she'd led Marsden to the corner store and bought her dollars' worth of penny candy.)
But honest money came slow to the town, and still no gold showed. So casinos and game parlors opened, though the highest risk machines only came out at night. Card and gambling houses operated as car repair bays during the day. Pharmacies cooked up more than prescribed medicines between dusk and dawn.
Marsden's skin chilled from the suddenly too-strong air-conditioning. Her hand riffled through the stack of cards until she came to 1980: the year of the mysterious death of Grant Eldridge. Officially classified as an accident, but the town quietly believed it to be a suicide despite there being no covert soil on him.
Her heart thumping, Marsden fed the cards into the microfiche reader, and she was eight years old again, struggling to read about her father never coming back.
She scrolled over magnified black text, feeling sick as the words painted images of that night in her head:
Her parents' argument inside their duplex home.
The building spring storm outside as she and Shine waited for him to come back. And waited.
The Indigo finally giving him back up the next morning.
But she'd misread the news, it seemed, that first time eight years ago. Or not read enough. Or Shine had revealed more than a little girl needed to know, and Marsden had never even realized it.
She sat up abruptly from the reader, the walls of the library spinning just as her brain whirled with microfiche words. Her stomach clenched the way it always did when she'd failed with Wynn, when her sister saw real glimpses of a body or when she asked one of Nina's girls to do her hair instead of Marsden.
The articles she'd just read—they were bare bones, only the facts, dry as dust. What was one more death in a death-ridden town, after all?
Her father, more drunk than not after a night of blackjack at his favorite card house, making his way down the highway in the direction of the covert, the direction of home. Reports from other players at Decks that night had said he'd had a winning night. His pockets being empty when they pulled his body from the Indigo meant little, considering it was Grant Eldridge. Likely he'd stumbled somewhere else after Decks, made an impromptu bet, and then lost it all. Or, just as likely, that the tide had taken it, the river's muddy, silt-filled fingers greedy.
But years ago, before she refused to speak about her dead husband anymore, her smoke trembling between her whitened fingers as she whispered it was time to let go, Shine had told Marsden how he'd been with friends that night, all of them playing out the hours over games of blackjack. She hadn't been more specific than that—only _friends_ —or if she had, then Marsden had forgotten. The articles made it sound like he'd gambled on his own.
How could she have forgotten Shine telling her about her father's winning night? So that the knowledge had then slipped away from her as easily as he himself had? It didn't seem possible that her mother wouldn't have said anything, given that most of Shine's everyday life back then had revolved around money, or the lack of it.
Unnamed friends, whom the police hadn't felt necessary to report.
Missing winnings, which her mother might never have spoken about.
Marsden's skin rippled—and not just from the air-conditioning.
"Excuse me? Are you done with the reader?"
Marsden blinked, saw a boy standing in front of her, a stack of microfiche cards in his hand. Waiting for a turn.
"Oh, sorry. Yes, I'm done." She gathered her own cards and walked them back over to the cabinet, filing them away with fingers gone cold.
Her pulse was too fast and dread had lodged in her chest as she headed downstairs, looking for Wynn.
Because she knew what she needed to do.
She had to ask her mother—who'd become nothing more than an act—to tell her, all over again, exactly what happened the night her father died.
## ten.
It was late afternoon by the time Marsden and Wynn left the library. The sun remained blistering, pounding the dusty pavement with waves of heat. Marsden didn't welcome it, even after a solid hour of overpowering air-conditioning—and even though she was still chilled from the inside out after uncovering the unknown about her father's death.
She'd always had questions for him, but not for anyone else. Why would she when the truth was obvious, regardless of what the papers had to say?
Death by suicide, nothing else.
Her hand shook as she unlocked Wynn's bike, then her own, from the rack on the sidewalk.
"You ready to go?" She hoped she sounded normal, though her mind was racing. All these years of living with the covert nestled into her heart like another hollow chamber, the idea of death, whatever its form, should be something she was used to. "I have to stop at the post office on the way back."
"Who are you writing to?" Wynn leaned over and squished the books that wouldn't fit into her own bike basket into Marsden's. Her eyes lit up with curiosity. "Like a pen pal? Where are they from?"
_I'm writing to the dead. They come from places all over, just to see the_ covert _._
She kept her smile casual as she hopped onto her bike and headed down the road. "Not a pen pal, no. Just a payment I have to mail for Dany." A white lie, boring enough that Wynn wouldn't think twice about it. Through the gaps of the houses along the highway, the Indigo was visible. Marsden caught flashes of the setting sun, winking off the river like bits of lightning. The faint metallic smell of the water floated through the air and tingled her nose. And though it was getting close to dark, there were still rental boats and canoes out, their shapes black wedges of shadow cutting close to the shore. She heard distant hollers and laughter and the splashing of water.
"It'd be neat if you did have a pen pal, don't you think?" Wynn asked.
"Sure."
"Because you don't like the kids from your school very much."
Marsden was surprised enough that it took her a few seconds to respond. She showed a sudden prolonged interest in the buildings they biked past, the same tourist-friendly ones she'd seen all her life: Poseidon, where you could order takeout fish and chips _and_ rent fishing equipment by the day; Spokes, for bikes if you wanted to explore the town and the long Indigo coast; the Glory Heritage Museum, where they did slideshows of the town's historic gold rush four times a day, carefully edited to end before Duncan Kirby lost his mind. "Who says I don't like them, runt?"
"No one." Riding along on their bikes, there was the slightest of breezes, and Wynn's nest of hair was only getting messier, clip still missing. "But I can tell. You're never on the phone with anyone like I am with Caitlyn and Ella. And you're always home, working."
Her sister was shades of Shine, lecturing her, and it would have struck Marsden as amusing if she weren't already on edge. Wynn never seemed bothered by stares and slights, was still mostly oblivious—but that would slowly change with time, with age. When she knew the truth and began to view Glory through it. When the friends she had now learned to see her through that same truth, too.
"I'm always home because that's where I work," Marsden said carefully. "And just because you don't see me on the phone making plans to hang out with anyone doesn't mean I'm not, right?"
"I guess there _was_ that boy looking for you outside the covert yesterday." Wynn's earlier curiosity was back tenfold. "Does _he_ go to your school? What did he want?"
"Just—oh, there's the post office. Let's go."
Marsden was greatly relieved to bike a bit ahead, to avoid having to answer her sister's questions. Jude was more dangerous than not, his sudden presence in her life like the key to a change she wasn't ready for.
"Uh-oh, it's closed," Wynn said, coming up alongside her. "The windows are all dark."
"Dany had stamps at the house, so I just need the box anyway," Marsden said. "Wait here for me, okay?"
But her sister was no longer listening, was already reading one of her library books pulled from her basket as Marsden swung off her bike, leaving it standing alongside the curb.
She'd been prepared for the post office to be closed when they'd left for it. In fact, she'd planned it that way. For as long as she'd been mailing away bits of her guilt—and it'd been years now—she'd always used the after-hours box outside the entrance. She already stuck out in the town—she didn't need her letters to be remembered, too.
She slipped an envelope from her purse.
After skimming the woman's body in the covert yesterday, she'd taken the five-dollar bill to the boardinghouse's front desk and changed it for singles at the till. After the newspaper had been delivered that morning, she'd scanned the small column hidden deep in the local news section that was dedicated to covert updates, searching for the woman's name, then looked for her address in one of the phone books in the lobby (Dany kept both local and state ones for boardinghouse guests to use; beyond that, Marsden was sometimes forced to call the operator to ask for an address). She'd addressed a plain white envelope, slipped in a dollar bill—it was always a dollar whether she skimmed five or fifty—stamped it, and sealed it shut.
Where there should have been a return address, she'd left the envelope blank. As she always did.
Now Marsden dropped it into the mail slot, heard the shimmy of it as it slid down.
It'd started with Caleb Silas, of course, the first body that she'd skimmed. Her guilt, the letters.
She'd known skimming was wrong, just as she'd known she was going to keep doing it. At first, because it was rebellion—against her new home, her father being gone, her new life. Then it became a weapon, a means to an eventual escape. And soon, a compulsion, the only way she could ever understand why her father left. The only way how, given her blood and its dark magic, she could hear from him, be told that his death had nothing to do with her. How, as long as she kept going, she could also hear from those she skimmed, be assured they understood why she did what she did.
But he didn't speak to her. No one in the covert ever did.
So she talked to them with these letters, this money. An apology of sorts, sending back a portion of what was rightfully theirs. Or, even more than an apology, the absolution she would never earn. She would always owe a debt.
The problem was Wynn might end up being the one to pay it. Marsden's guilt was slowing down her saving, keeping them in Glory even longer.
Jude Ambrose. He might end up paying, too. Jude, with his hard slash of a mouth and so much fiery sadness in his eyes.
Away from him right then, safe from the spell of his face, she was nearly sure she was making a mistake agreeing to his searching the covert. She was risking him finding out she was a skimmer, after all. What if she couldn't make herself lie about stealing from Rigby? What if she had no choice but to show Jude what she was still hiding? Had to then make him see firsthand the proof and depths of his brother's misery?
The note. A simple and terrible handful of scrawled lines in Rigby's now-recognizable handwriting—those _O_ s, the _T_ s:
_I'm sorry, Jude, I never wanted you to know._
_I told myself it was Dad._
_I didn't want to stop._
_But I didn't mean to do it._
They were nearly out of downtown when Wynn caught sight of the pop-up kiosk on the sidewalk. Marsden saw the cheap souvenirs on display as she biked past—magnets, mugs, key chains, most emblazoned with some kind of symbol representing the Indigo. All false—blue instead of mud.
Wynn turned her bike toward it before Marsden could stop her.
"Hey, it's getting late, I've got to get started on dinner," Marsden called after her sister, exasperated. She'd already taken a look at the menu, knew exactly how much time she needed. She would be cutting it close—the library had taken longer than she'd thought it would. To be fair, she'd only planned on looking up one death, not two. Running late also meant she'd have to wait until tomorrow to talk to Shine about her dead husband. As with all of Nina's girls, her mother's evenings and nights were taken.
"But I need another hair clip, remember?" Wynn got off her bike and walked over to the kiosk. The vendor was busy talking up a group of tourists, leaving Marsden to roll her eyes more freely over the merchandise. No hair clips as far as she could tell, but stuff she hadn't seen from afar—snow globes, bottle openers, postcards.
And a row of protective charms suspended from display hooks. Little Duncan dolls, complete with blood-splattered legs and miniature guns.
Marsden drew back, both annoyed and flustered. She remembered Shine's humiliation at seeing the things, and felt touches of it herself, hating that it was one of the few things she still shared with her mother.
She wanted to get away before the vendor saw them. He might recognize them and back away himself. Even worse, though, was that he might not know who they were. Would then try to sell them charms. Would tell them all about the legend of mad Duncan Kirby. "We really should go, Wynn. No hair clips. And if dinner's late, Nina's going to cut some of my pay."
"These charms are so stupid," her sister whispered loudly, leaning in closer to the display to examine. She wrinkled her nose, as though they even smelled bad. "The covert's just a place. And how would having dolls of our great-great-uncle protect someone from his ghost, anyway?"
Marsden had to grin. She'd known Wynn had seen the charms for sale before—everyone in Glory had—but had never thought to ask how she felt about them. Disdain, her sister's not caring yet, was about as good of a reaction as she could ask for. Caring too much about anything, that was how traps happened.
"Well, they can't even get the color of the river right—we all know it's not the least bit blue." She shrugged. "Ready to leave for real now, runt?"
## eleven.
She was still pulling the pork chops off the grill when Dany found her.
"Marsden, have you seen Wynn? Has she eaten?"
"She has, and she's outside collecting ants in a pickle jar. I know, don't ask—and don't tell Nina, okay?"
"Don't tell me what?"
Her mother's boss strode into the kitchen. As usual, she was dressed as though she were going to high tea instead of dinner with sunburned guests who smelled of the river. A long slim dress the shade of pale lemons. Hair, a shimmer of a brown bob. Rose-tipped nails—claws in disguise, Marsden had realized long ago.
She pretended to check the doneness of the pork chops so she wouldn't have to look up. Her mother hadn't exactly been excited at the idea of telling Nina that Marsden wasn't going to become one of her girls, but she still said she would do it. Marsden wasn't sure she was ready to see if Shine had failed her.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Dany pick up the bread basket full of still-steaming rolls. "Dinner's going out right now, Nina—coming along?"
"Hmm, shortly. I actually came in search of aspirin. The bottle in the medicine cabinet is empty and a headache is starting."
"Extra supplies are in the basket in the pantry, top shelf."
Nina disappeared through the pantry's wooden doors.
Marsden began to move the meat over again. Her face was hot, and it wasn't all from the stove. Nina's voice said Shine hadn't talked to her at all. Marsden would have been angrier if she hadn't been grateful for one thing—from what she could tell, Shine hadn't told Nina yes, either.
Suddenly, Dany stepped close and spoke into her ear. The steam from the bread basket wafted up against Marsden's arm, warming her skin.
"For your information, one of the dinner guests is a longtime client, all right?" Dany kept her voice low. "So when you go in there, please don't react."
Marsden piled more meat onto the platter next to the grill, chilled despite the steam against her skin, the heat of the stove. "Shine's."
"Yes. But just do your job. Don't look over if it bothers you, and then you are free for the whole rest of the evening, all right?" Dany squeezed Marsden's arm and left the kitchen for the dining room, bread basket tucked beneath an arm.
Marsden turned off the stove and finished stacking the sizzling meat on the platter. She didn't want to think about Dany's news, which meant she could think of nothing else.
Johns were only ever around the boardinghouse from post-dinner onward, when they slunk in, did their thing, and slunk back out before breakfast. Anything to do with Nina's day business was free of their presence, and this included official meals in the dining room. It worked out for everyone—johns could go live their safe lives, and boardinghouse guests who had no clue they were staying in a brothel could stay happily ignorant.
Only the johns Nina called "clients" were welcome to eat with her girls. Clients were the repeat customers, the ones who kept coming back over the months, if not years, usually requesting the same girl each time.
Shine, despite being far from a young girl, had her share of them.
Nina emerged from the pantry, a new bottle of aspirin in her hand, and came to stand next to the stove. This close, Marsden smelled her perfume, the light and inoffensive floral that did nothing to soften Nina's ruthless heart. Nor did it mix well with the scent of meat that still lay heavy in the kitchen, and Marsden's stomach rolled.
"Before you bring that food out, I need to speak with you," Nina said. "Something that's been on my mind lately."
Marsden knew what it was, of course. Shine had already told her. "No, Nina, I don't think so."
"I'm merely asking you to consider it— _really_ consider it." Nina's voice was mild, as though she were discussing items for a new menu. She squeezed Marsden's arm, right were Dany had, but instead of feeling motherly, it was like a warning. "You and I both know you're only making a fraction of what you could be, choosing to stay here in this kitchen the way you have."
"That's because you've cut my wages so they're next to nothing."
Nina dropped her hand from Marsden's arm. "Your keep has to come from somewhere, as does your share of repaying my having settled your father's loans."
"Then talk to Shine about that—she works for you _because_ of those things."
"And your mother works hard. But she's only getting older, and she's simply not bringing in as much as she once did."
She couldn't meet Nina's gaze, which burned the side of her face. "So I'll take over more of Dany's shifts here. It should be enough to make up the difference."
Nina sighed. "What can I say to persuade you? Make you come to your senses? For your own sake."
"Nothing." Marsden carefully set the meat tongs down, untied her apron, and dropped it onto the counter in a heap. She was, at the very least, glad her hands weren't shaking.
"All these years, you've had a place to live, call home. The collection agency no longer after your mother, her actually having a job. Wynn, safe. There is a debt."
Marsden's hands did shake now as she lifted the platter. "Like I said, I'll take more of Dany's hours." How she would do this, she had no clue. How to create time out of nothing? "I'll work it out."
The small tight smile that Nina eventually offered did not reach her eyes, and it left Marsden far more uneasy than relieved.
"Fine," Nina said. "I'll speak to Dany about rearranging the schedule. It's just . . . such a shame, the opportunity you're passing up."
Marsden nodded, thought fleetingly of the money she'd sent away to the dead over the years, and wished the concept of guilt had never bothered her. "Sorry."
"We'll talk about this again soon, I think." Nina gave her arm another squeeze before letting go. "Your face, your youth—it won't last forever. And there's something to be said about having a certain kind of look, for those with a certain kind of taste."
Something sour crawled up Marsden's throat. "I'm going to bring out this meat now."
"Thank you, dear."
She followed Nina out to the dining room. Dany was finishing arranging vases of flowers on the tables, guests were milling about with glasses and plates full of tiny food in their hands, and Nina immediately began her rounds, her greetings full of welcome.
And her girls, they seemed everywhere, laughing and smiling and being attractive—part of _their_ job. Their filmy summer dresses floated. Their jewelry winked beneath the lights like stars. Their faces were those of dolls—lips glossy, cheeks ashimmer, eyes like paintings.
Vibrant hothouse flowers to her plain old weed, Marsden thought, standing there in her worn Heart shirt and sloppy cutoffs, food clutched in her arms, feeling as out of place as she almost always did. Her gaze sought and found Peaches and Lucy, and she could barely recall the rumpled girls who'd been in her kitchen just yesterday, kissing each other over the heat of a stove and through cigarette smoke, talking to her as easily as if she were one of them.
Shine's pleas to not be left alone came back to echo in her ears along with Nina's thinly veiled threat from just moments ago. The scent of ginger—of the covert—drifted in from the open windows, and the walls of the room suddenly pressed inward. She wanted to run—to the kitchen, to the covert, all the way across town lines, in whatever direction. It didn't matter, as long as it meant being elsewhere.
"Whoops, watch out, your tray's tipping." It was Lucy, swirling close, smiling and smelling of honey. But her celery eyes were watchful behind her glasses, the hint of quiet sadness she always carried also there in their green depths. She reached for the platter of meat to help steady it. "You want a drink? It's hot in here, even with the windows open—you look pale."
Walking over to the buffet table, Marsden waved her away. What had Lucy seen on her face? Fear? Desperation? Nina was in the room. If she saw Lucy acting like kitchen help, both of them would hear it. Marsden set the pork chops down and scanned to make sure everything was there—salad, quiche, dessert—so she could leave.
Peaches came up, her lips slicked in red, her auburn curls shining. She was scowling at her drink. "Tell Dany she can't make the sangria anymore. She forgot there's supposed to be booze in it."
Nina had asked them to cut back— _I want my girls sparkling, not tipsy._ "It's a new recipe, Peaches."
"Then use a different new one."
"Nina would still have to okay it."
Peached sighed. "I need a smoke." She scowled again. " _Nina_ needs a smoke."
Marsden let a half grin slip free. "Well, maybe the new recipe somehow gets lost and we have no choice but to use the old one."
"Thank God. I'll love you forever." With a wink, Peaches left in a cloud of musk, earth, and a kind of confidence Marsden knew she would never have.
A man laughed, low and appreciative, and she turned.
Her mother's _client_.
It took her only a second to recognize him, standing at Shine's elbow, his face smiling down at hers.
Brom Innes. He'd been coming to the boardinghouse for years, from the very beginning of Shine's time as one of Nina's girls. Every few months, he'd stay for a week or two before leaving again. She had no clue what he did, had no desire to know, had never even talked to Shine about him. With his average height, pale-blue eyes, and light-brown hair, he was like the oatmeal of johns, as placid as plain white bread. Dull, agreeable, and safe enough, she supposed—for a john.
A tug at her arm, and she was completely stupefied to glance down and see Wynn, jar full of roaming ants in her hand.
Her little sister, exactly where Nina asked her not to be during meals—and within spitting distance of their mother's steadiest john.
"You're supposed to wait for me outside," Marsden whispered.
"I wanted more dessert." Her sister's eyes weren't on her, though. Instead, they roamed the room, drinking in all the details. Wynn's gaze caught on each of Nina's girls, studying the art of their carefully powdered and curled hair, their pretty, glistening mouths. Her eyes traced the swing of their dresses, learned the studied, deliberate movements of their limbs.
Marsden grabbed a bowl from a table, heaved two scoops of pudding into it, and dragged Wynn toward the kitchen by one arm. "C'mon, runt. Before Nina bans you from the dining room for the whole entire summer."
"Where are we going?"
"Somewhere else. Anywhere else."
## twelve.
The sky was nearly fully dark, the air close to cool on her bare arms. An owl hooted from within the covert.
They could have gone back inside long ago.
Any johns checking in for the night would have long done so. Just as Nina's girls would already be tucked away with them in their bedrooms, ready to get to work.
The common areas would be mostly empty, guests off to enjoy the shady offerings of downtown Glory that came with sundown.
Dany would be in her room, probably watching _Dallas_ or _The Golden Girls_ or _Miami Vice_ on television, and who wouldn't mind at all if Wynn or Marsden wanted to watch with her.
Still, Marsden didn't move. She leaned back against the fence of the covert—the sunburned dying grass was nearly up to her elbows, she would have to cut it soon—and tasted the wild ginger that filled the air. It billowed from the woods, its fragrant fingers reaching out and stroking her hair, her skin.
She shivered. The covert was no sanctuary from the boardinghouse, either. Not from her mother, not from Glory as a whole. It grew a darkness of its own, its yield the regular harvest of bodies and the subsequent ghosts and legends that would forever chase her name, forever linger in her blood.
Beside her, Wynn, humming a pop song from the radio, was dribbling the last of her pudding onto the ground. Freed ants teemed over the pink rivulets, gorged on the pool of sugar, grew drunk on her sister's generosity.
"That's gross, you know," Marsden said. A part of her envied her sister's carefreeness around the covert, even as she saw exactly how it had worked out to be that way. Wynn had never seen more than a glimpse of a body there, had no dead to try to listen for, had never spoken of ever experiencing anything weird about their woods—for all the stories and tales she knew about the place, she was much more easily frightened by a scary movie or book. Duncan Kirby had been her great-great-uncle, too, but he was no more real to her than any dead historical person she might learn about in school. Given all that, why _would_ Wynn be scared of the covert?
"Ants need love, too," Wynn said as she watched her feasting insects wobble all over one another.
"How are you going to get them back into the pickle jar?"
Wynn shrugged. "I'm not. They look so much happier out of it, don't you think?"
"They do. See-through glass or not, that jar was still a prison."
"Mars, I need a dress."
Startled, Marsden looked more closely at her sister. It wasn't Wynn's topic hopping that made her suddenly uncomfortable—that she was used to—but where their conversation had turned.
She scrambled for an argument, even a bad one. "Dresses are kind of impractical—how would you climb trees? Hop fences?"
"And I wish I had curly hair." Wynn grabbed at a chunk of her thick black locks. "Mine's so boring."
"I like your hair just fine the way it is."
"That's because it looks like yours, except messier."
"Exactly." Marsden stood up. "Let's go in. It's getting late, and I'm thirsty. We can check if there's any juice in the fridge."
"Do you think if I asked Peaches and Lucy, they'd take me shopping? I have allowance saved up." Wynn laid her jar on its side, a makeshift shelter for any ants that felt like it. Marsden thought of telling her it'd be an oven come morning, baking any unaware occupants, but she was frazzled, a touch panicked. "I'd ask Mom, but she usually just says to wait for Dany."
" _I'll_ take you shopping, all right? We'll go to the bookstore and then get ice cream from Big Chill."
"Okay, but a dress first, one with—"
"I hear you, and we'll talk about it tomorrow," Marsden lied as she led the way back toward the house. Wynn chattered incessantly as she followed—about silks, curls, eyelashes. Marsden's mouth pulled into a grimace, concealed under dusk's thick light.
A low muffled giggle—barely trickling through from between the near-constant flow of her sister's ramblings—came from the side bushes.
Marsden took in the sound, the time of day, and that she and Wynn happened to be leaving the covert. And she exhaled to hide her irritation.
"Wynn, I . . . dropped my gardening gloves back at the fence, where we were sitting. Go on ahead and look for that juice, okay?"
Her sister raced past. "Hurry up, then, or I'll drink it all!"
"I'll just be a minute."
The second Wynn disappeared around the bend, Marsden turned and marched over to where she heard the giggle.
"Red and Coop," she said to the straggly bushes that were now starting to shake, "get out from there before I tell Nina you're on her property."
Both boys tumbled out onto the crisp grass, faces dirty and resentful as they got to their feet, eyes narrowed in humiliation at being caught. Their BB guns hung at their sides, and for a second, real fear filled Marsden's chest. The covert was the part of town that knew guns best, knew them most, but it didn't mean the rest of Glory was free of them. And BB guns, while toys, were still dangerous.
The brothers were fledgling skimmers, their mother a sufferer of early-onset arthritis, their father working the graveyard shift at one of the gas stations. Red was thirteen, Coop was fourteen, and both were on the low end of the brains scale. When they weren't failing classes at school, they spent their days shooting at birds, stealing penny candy from Gwen's corner store, or trying to trespass the covert to search for bodies to skim. Most of the time, they knew to wait until Marsden was actually in the boardinghouse before attempting, but only most.
"Who cares about Nina," Red muttered. His unwashed blond hair was thick with dirt. "This part is common land, owned by the town."
"Close enough that she won't care, and you know it." Marsden gestured toward the highway, unseen in the distance and through the dark. "Now leave."
Coop smiled—he needed braces, would never be able to get them—and it was somehow sly. She had to remind herself he was just a kid. "Maybe if you tattle on us to your mom, we'll leave, since it's her covert—and yours. Nina can't do anything at all. "
She thought of the brothers' sick mom, their work-beaten dad, tried to drum up some sympathy for them being as hardened as they were. She still couldn't. "Hadley's just a phone call away."
An empty threat, but she wasn't sure if Red and Coop knew as much about the corrupt cop as she did. Both brothers were already terrible, were on their way to being even worse, but they didn't live and breathe the covert like she did. Would maybe never even come close to what she was, BB guns and bird hunting or not.
Hadley, though.
She supposed it was only fitting that Glory's head cop was more crooked than the elbow along the Indigo the town called home. Lazy and greedy, too, a caricature of a villain she would find easier to laugh about if she didn't have so many dangerous secrets.
He skimmed, too. She'd seen it herself, silently watching him from behind the trees. Not just cash, either, but jewelry, leather wallets—anything he thought worth enough to take. Who would question a cop? Not Fitz, the guy who now ran Seconds after buying out the previous owner, who didn't bother asking Hadley where he got the pieces he was trying to unload. Not shoppers, who recognized them on the shelves and whose reports to Glory's police department ended up nowhere. Not families of the dead, who were told nothing else was found with their bodies.
After those times Marsden saw him in the covert, she'd hear of him hanging out at Decks' card tables playing blackjack, or at Prince's, where poker was played from sundown to sunup.
Worse, much worse, was him showing up at Nina's, his eyes greasy and eager.
"Hadley?" Red's mouth gaped open. He dared to seem betrayed. "You'd really call him on us? He'd talk to our folks, and we'd be grounded for weeks."
"Then he'd be doing his job." For once.
"Man, we were just hanging out, but fine." He gestured toward his brother. "Seriously, let's go."
Coop's eyes narrowed as he watched her, looked her up and down slowly enough that she wanted to cross her arms over herself. Again, he seemed much older than fourteen. Seemed much smarter than she knew him to be. And much too aware.
"Tell your mom we said hi," he said. "Sure must be tiring, doing all that cleaning, having to bend over all those beds. Hope you're picking up tricks of the trade. Because one day, you won't be telling me to leave, right?"
Long after they were gone, Marsden was still in the dark, her heart racing, winter in her blood.
• • •
She kicked off her covers, squinting at the clock.
Two in the morning.
Her skin still crawled with Coop's words. With what he didn't have to say.
Peeking over at Wynn to make sure she was still sleeping, Marsden crept down the stairs.
She flicked on the kitchen lights, the space still warm from the night's cooking, the day's collected summer heat. The air was fragrant with the scents of smoke, grilled meat, and the faint, perpetual hint of ginger.
Her hands moved surely—greasing and dusting pans, pouring and measuring and mixing. She melted chocolate, brought butter to a foam, dredged berries in flour. Shine and Nina and the secrets and shames of the covert—they all went away for a while. She baked them into oblivion, gone until her hands were done.
And when she sensed Star in the kitchen, Marsden knew her grandmother wouldn't speak. She never did—just stayed silent, a kind of shifting warmth that did not scare Marsden at all.
It was the closest she ever got to hearing the dead, anywhere.
It was no longer enough.
## thirteen.
She saw his careful approach through the grass and thought of wary feral animals.
Marsden left the shade of the trees and headed toward the fence that enclosed the covert. The tattered wood held together by rusty nails had always marked the line between what was hers and not, what was secret and not. Meeting Jude here and agreeing to him crossing that line—well, that fence might as well have finally disintegrated into nothing for the sense of safety it gave her now.
She'd wondered if he was even going to come that day. She'd mentally prepared herself for it and then she'd been anxious all morning, too restless to do much more than walk back and forth between the house and the covert. Being wired after being up half the night baking did nothing to help her nerves, either. Wynn had finally gotten bored enough to agree to getting groceries and then go raspberry picking with Dany. Dany herself seemed unaware of Marsden's mood, as had Nina and Shine.
So once noon hit, morning slowly becoming early afternoon, and still there was no sign of Jude, she'd assumed he'd either been busy or had simply come to his senses.
But it had bothered her—to be honest. To be counting time so carefully over him, the thoughtless carelessness of his absence after intruding on her life with his sharp-yet-lazy grin and eyes that hid less than she would have thought. She couldn't decide if she was relieved or resentful, and precisely because she couldn't decide, she'd gotten the pair of giant hedge clippers from the shed and spent more than a few minutes ferociously hacking away at the worst of the blackberry bushes overrunning parts of the covert. The scent of wild ginger mixed with ripening fruit bloomed like dust from her tracks as she worked, a tornado of things being crushed.
Last night, after she'd escaped Coop's too-adult eyes, she'd found Wynn in the kitchen, messily attempting to make punch. Marsden had broken a plate, then a glass, while finishing up the dishes, her hands so shaky that Dany had to finish. Then, at bedtime, Wynn had drifted to sleep while talking about dresses and makeup. And Marsden had lain there, absolutely wide awake, willing her sister to dream of childlike things such as puppies and ice cream and feeding toast to hungry, needy squirrels. She'd watched the moon shift shadows on the wall, listening to the clock tick away minutes of an endless dark, before finally getting up, needing to pretend things were different.
She was examining the worst of the blackberry scratches on her arm when she heard the growing roar of an engine from just outside the covert. It cut out with a deep rumble, and she walked over to look.
Through the trees, she saw Jude climb off a huge tank of a mower. The sight of his muscles working beneath his thin blue T-shirt had Marsden narrowing her eyes as something in her chest did a slow flip.
They met at the covert's fence.
"There's no real way to say this without it sounding wrong, but I'm here to mow your lawn," he said, smiling.
He looked tired and distracted, and that simmering anger he wore as an expression was a momentarily dampened fire. It made sense, though, his seeming on edge, perhaps even scared, considering where he was about to go. Maybe he hadn't even slept well the night before—the covert liked being a part of bad dreams.
She lifted a brow. "Not here to dig?"
"Afterward, I promise."
"You were supposed to be here by noon." She bit the inside of her cheek—she hadn't meant to reveal she'd noticed.
"I meant to be, but then a maintenance order came in from the town." He gestured to the area just outside the covert's fence, where the yellowing grass grew past the top of his work boots. "I had to put some gear together at work before I was able to leave." He frowned at the ground. "This area _is_ overdue for a cut."
"You really work for Glory?"
"No, for Roadie, remember? Evergreen, the garden center, right downtown. We get contract work, though." He glanced down at her. "You sound surprised."
"That you work at a gardening center?"
His mouth lifted. "That I work."
"I just thought—never mind."
"That I didn't have to because my family is supposed to have money?" Jude shrugged. "Not really. Maybe once, kind of. A long time ago. Before we moved here."
She lifted her chin at the mower behind him. "Is that your summer, then?"
"And being here."
"I guess you haven't changed your mind?" Now that he was here, right in front of her—too immediate, too tall, too not angry—Marsden wasn't so sure she was ready. His being angry if he found out her secrets would be memorable, blistering.
Jude pointed to what she was still clutching in her hand. "Is that for me if I say I haven't?"
She looked down, saw that she was still holding the pair of huge clippers, their blades and the skin of her arms a sticky, sweet carnage, and laughed. "This doesn't look good, does it?"
"Have _you_ changed your mind?" His voice was low and braced and not threatening, but she still shuddered. His desperation had slipped through, and it spoke to her in ways that smooth words and convincing arguments wouldn't have. She heard herself in it, an echo of her own need for answers.
"No, I haven't." She let her gaze slide from his—those slightly speckled eyes of his were too curious, demanding more than she could give. "I'll be back in a bit, if you don't mind waiting. I need to clean up back at the house."
"I have to finish this job first, anyhow, then get this thing back to Roadie—the guy won't relax until his baby is back home and resting easy. Then I'll race back in the truck. Meet you back here?"
Marsden nodded. "Here, right at the fence." She touched it, the wood raw and scraping against her palm. Someone had scratched a new row of crosses into the wood, and their edges were still raised and splintery, fresh as a wound. "Wait for me before going in. That was the deal, remember?"
"Until you trust me." There was a glint in his eye that said he was joking. Still, she saw seriousness there, too. Had she ever seen him not serious at all? Completely free? She already knew she wanted to; her curiosity had awoken.
"Maybe one day," she said, daring a grin of her own. He made it easy to linger, to believe they were both typical kids without wounds still wide open, without ghosts to chase. "Unless I make you leave first."
"I'll behave. I promise."
She stepped past him to get to the house. He smelled of herbs and clean earth and sun. He touched her arm just before she moved out of reach.
"Marsden?"
"Yes?"
"Thanks." Jude's grin was like a finger on her heart, stirring her emotions. "For the 'maybe one day.' "
## fourteen.
He wasn't playing fair.
Jude Ambrose was supposed to be an ass, a guy who walked the school halls with either ice or fire in his eyes as he observed everyone, deciding if they were worth his time or not.
That version of Jude would have been a lot simpler to deal with, Marsden thought, a lot easier to just dismiss or ignore. The one who couldn't hide his devastation, the one arranging to meet her in the covert, was way too easy to understand.
She tugged on a T-shirt free of blackberry stains and left her bedroom. She was about to go into the kitchen for the back door when she heard her mother.
Shine's laugh, coming from the lobby, was light and silvery and declared she didn't have a care in the world.
Both fascinated and dumbfounded—her mother _never_ laughed like that, not off duty—Marsden retraced her steps and peeked around the corner.
Shine and Brom, seated together on the love seat in the back of the lobby, half-shielded by a tall houseplant to offer a semblance of privacy. There was a pot of coffee and a plate of food on the table in front of them—two servings of the chocolate berry tart she'd baked just last night, she realized with a twinge of . . . what? Shock? Irony? Irritation? Brom kept talking, his hands moving animatedly from where he sat with his back to her, and Shine's face as she watched him was girlish, almost embarrassingly rapt.
If Marsden didn't know any better, she would have assumed they were a couple. An average, possibly even married, couple. Anger washed over her, a tidal wave of choppy ice.
Did her mother think what she did was merely a game? That she could set it aside and pretend she was anything but a whore whenever she felt like it? When her decision to be what she was still echoed in their lives every single day?
With no idea of what she meant to do or say, she walked over and simply stood there. Her mother looked up. Whatever was on Marsden's face made Shine stiffen. "Marsden."
Brom fell silent and turned toward her. His smile did nothing to make him less than repulsive to her. "Oh, hello."
Up close, his features were even blander than Marsden expected, an oval of oatmeal. Weak looking, his chin trembly and soft, and she wondered pettily how hard it was for her mother to work up such enthusiasm. Or if that blandness was actually his strong point—that he was, as far as anyone would say, easy to forget.
She couldn't work up anything close to politeness when she wanted him gone. "You're a john," she said to Brom. "This lobby is for guests. Unless you paid extra for day hours?"
" _Marsden_." Her mother's whisper was properly shocked, unfailingly proper—Nina would be proud. "Please."
She remembered, then, what she'd meant to ask her mother since yesterday. If she hadn't been waylaid with dinner, with Red and Coop, with Wynn and Jude, the boundaries of her everyday life, drawn by the boardinghouse, by the covert.
She stared back at Shine. "I need to talk to you about Dad."
Her mother got up, circled the table, and grabbed Marsden by the arm. "Excuse me for a minute," she said to Brom. "I forgot cream for the coffee."
She marched Marsden to the lobby bathroom, locking the door behind them. Shine leaned back against it and lit up a cigarette. "That was extremely rude."
"None of it was a lie."
Her mother sighed tiredly. "What is it? What do you need now?"
"The night he died, Dad was at Decks, right? His favorite gambling house."
Shine's expression hardened for a heartbeat before slackening. "You already know he was. Why?"
"Who was he with?"
"What? I don't know. Whoever else was there that night, playing blackjack."
"No, you once said he was there with friends. The news said nothing, but I remember."
"The news? What are you—?" Shine's confusion, if it was an act, was more than convincing. Her eyes roamed Marsden's face. "There's been some news?"
"Not _new_ news, no." Suddenly, she felt bad about not being more careful. Her mother's reaction surprised her, made her seem closer to the Shine she'd been, when she'd still been theirs and not yet Nina's. Where was the denial, the tears, the childlike pleading? "I meant from eight years ago. Sorry. I just . . . You said he was there with friends. Who?"
"Your father had a lot of friends—he was well liked in this town. It could have been anyone with him that night."
"But you must have known his best friends. Wouldn't they have likely been the ones with him?"
"Well, there was Eugene, but he's gone now, moved away." Her mother drew on her cigarette, recalling. "Casper, who's in jail. Quaid, who died of an overdose last year. And Fitz, down at Seconds."
Fitz. The pawnbroker who bought Hadley's skimmed pieces without question.
How much of that was because the corrupt cop gave him no choice? What if Fitz had been the one to suggest it to Hadley?
"Why didn't any of the newspapers mention they were there?" Marsden asked.
"They had no reason to, I suppose. He was never alone at places like Decks—that night was no different."
"Why didn't you ask his friends about what might have happened?"
"It was just one night out of hundreds, them gambling, all the same. I had nothing to ask. And if something _had_ happened, they would have said something."
"Unless he didn't leave alone. What if they followed him and—"
"Stop, please." Ashes trembled free from her mother's hand. Her face was tired again, shaky looking. "Your father's friends wouldn't have hurt him. They adored him, thought he was cool and brilliant. Grant was like that, making people love him too easily. And it's not like the police didn't investigate."
" _Hadley_ was the police."
"And he declared it an accident. I don't want to relive this. Let it go."
_I can't. I need to know it wasn't me._ "Did you ever tell me about him winning money that night? Why don't you care more about how it was missing?"
Her mother shut her eyes, and when she opened them—wet with tears, dark with the exhaustion of a daughter who wouldn't listen—she was again the Shine whom Marsden had come to know, her struggle everyone else's. "Don't you see? Your father _always_ had a winning night. Even if he turned around and then lost it all, he'd still won that night, right? It was always what he told people, what he told himself—that it would always be a winning hand, eventually."
Marsden was frozen, hearing how her mother had hated her father as much as she'd loved him. "So you think he just . . . bet it away again. Before he died." She didn't want to believe it, but she also knew it made sense. Her father had gambled away their family long before that night, again and again—why would he stop then?
Her guilt over his death shifted then, just the slightest bit, and made room for anger. How could he have been so stupid when winning that money would have gone a long in way in saving them?
"Yes, I do think that." Shine stood up unsteadily and dropped her still-burning cigarette into the toilet. "When he could have used it to pay off his loans, or even just bills. Anything but bet it away. But I can also believe it was simply lost in the Indigo—that was our kind of luck, you see. Now, I have to get back to Brom—it's not polite that I've kept him waiting this long."
"You shouldn't be with him out there." Marsden's face burned as she recalled the image of them sitting together and laughing, as though he were a _suitor_. And her father was on her mind, clearer than he'd been for a long, long time—yes, she was angry with him, but her anger didn't change how he'd once been so alive, and it was somehow so wrong that he was no longer there. How could he not be on Shine's mind? How could anyone want to be with someone like Brom? "You're not even working right now, and he's a john. Can't you at least _pretend_ you still plump pillows as a housekeeper instead of as a whore?"
Tears gathered and formed pools in the corners of Shine's eyes. "Let this town talk. You know it'll say what it wants, no matter what we do."
Marsden stared at their reflections in the oval mirror on the wall. The pewter frame was ornate, full of scrolling curls, completely feminine. Inside it, her face was young and smooth, her mother's pale and strained.
"Wynn's around, and she has no clue what you do," she whispered, her chest tight. "What would you say if she saw you and asked about him? That he's your boyfriend?"
Shine came to stand behind her. She smoothed her daughter's hair back from her face and leaned close. She smelled like smoke and a perfume that Marsden didn't recognize, something Brom must have bought her. "Look at us. We look so alike, don't we? More like sisters than mother and daughter."
They did, it was true. Beneath her mother's fine lines and her own flushed youth, their bones were the same, their features nearly identical, Chinese in their skin and hair, all gold and black. But her own eyes were wide and alarmed, while her mother's were glittery with desperation.
"It scared me so much, those men asking Nina about you, and not me. Because I remember what it's like to worry where your next meal is coming from, or if you're going to wake up to no heat, no lights. And I swore to myself I'd never live without security again. I would never be alone. I would always be taken care of."
"So _Brom_ is the answer?"
"He has a steady job."
"What does he even do? Where is he from?"
"He sells savings accounts for banks, for credit unions. He makes his own hours, which is why he can take a couple of weeks off every few months. He moved here from Seattle a long time ago. He enjoys me. And . . . I've known him a long time. From even before I started working for Nina. Your father knew him, too. They were friendly enough."
"And that's why he's been around for years." Marsden felt faint, and well-played—would she ever be as good as her mother at pretending? Did she want to be? "As soon as Dad was gone and you were free, he was there, waiting. He just paid his way."
More tears gleamed in Shine's eyes. "Do you want me to apologize? Would that help?"
"I don't know. I'm trying to not throw up." She knew how her father had barely been around, and how the family bank account never seemed to have enough. Shine had told her millions of times how he had promised to change, except he couldn't seem to give up Decks or any of the other card houses in town. _He wanted a different kind of reality, Marsden. We were just kids when we had you, and he wasn't ready to stop being one himself_. Marsden knew she was supposed to feel sorry for her mother, to say she understood. But how much longer could she be the reason for Shine's actions?
"It can't be shocking to you," her mother said, "that I needed someone after your father died. How I still do."
"And Brom's your way out." _From me and Wynn. How is that any different than Dad and his games of blackjack?_
Shine seemed to wilt. "What else am I supposed to do? I don't have a lot of options. I'm not getting any younger."
Marsden tensed. She kept her eyes on her mother's in the mirror. If Shine was still trying to trap her into her life, Marsden thought she might scream. "Don't put that on me again."
"I managed to speak to Nina for you," Shine whispered.
Marsden almost told her she shouldn't have bothered since Nina had already asked her again anyway. But she said nothing. Her mother had done something for her; she'd chosen her daughter over her boss. She blinked away tears—she had not really felt grateful to her mother since she was young. Since that futile trip to the bus depot, she supposed, when, for a day, Shine had managed to make the world seem bigger than Glory.
"Thank you," she said to her mother's reflection. "For trying."
Shine's fingers trembled just the slightest as she smoothed back Marsden's hair once more. "She was not . . . happy."
Relief washed over Marsden in a wave, and she nearly smiled. "No, she wouldn't be." And she didn't care. Nina could be as mad as she wanted, and it wouldn't make a difference at all.
"She said she wants to talk to you more about it before you make up your mind." Her mother lit a fresh cigarette; it shook like a leaf in a windstorm. "For my sake, can you at least pretend to consider it some more?"
Marsden got up, preparing to leave. She didn't miss the irony in her mother being the one to ask her to pretend. "She'll have to find me first, but okay, I can do that. And then let's not talk about this ever again."
## fifteen.
The boardinghouse and the covert were on the opposite side of town from where Jude lived and worked, at the other end of the crooked bend of the Indigo.
But the highway stayed faithful to the river's course as it hugged the length of Glory, and Marsden waited at the fence as the black truck approached. The shop name, Evergreen, had been painted on the dirt-filmed sides in an emerald hue that struggled to show. Road dust petered out from beneath the truck's wheels in puffy plumes the shade of wheat, lingering in the hot air, dry and smokelike.
Jude pulled onto the shoulder of the road, cut the engine, and climbed out.
He'd showered and changed while back at work—heather-gray T-shirt now, midnight-blue shorts, the same ladder of friendship bracelets—and his wavy hair was still wet, a deep black as he shoved it off his forehead. When he walked up to her, for a second, she smelled the Indigo on him, damp and marshy and metallic. And then it was all soap, all him, Ivory or Irish Spring or whatever it was he used.
Marsden forced herself to focus on what he was holding.
A metal detector, the length of it about the same as her arm, made of steel and plastic.
"I wanted one of those when I was little," she said.
Jude's smile was questioning. "Not so much into dolls?"
"Dolls weren't going to make me rich. I imagined walking along the riverbeds, finding buckets of change. I stopped believing in Santa the year I saw it in the Sears Christmas catalog and didn't get it."
He laughed. "I bet Rig had the same idea, but his wasn't a gift." He peered at the detector more closely, as though it was his first time seeing it, too. His expression switched between sadness and amusement, a leaf turning over and over as it whirled to the ground. "He found it behind the school field one day, just lying in the dirt. Still works, even now—I don't know why someone would abandon it."
She took note of the rust that bloomed at the screws, the dents that pinged their way along the handle, the warped sensor pad, and tried not to doubt.
"We're expecting a lot from an old toy, aren't we?" she asked as they walked toward the outer edge of the trees.
Jude smiled. "If I tell myself it's just an old cookie tin we're searching for, it doesn't seem so nuts."
_Instead of a part of your dead brother_ , _while I'm looking for a connection to finally hear the dead._ "I'm just here for the ride."
"And it starts here?" Glancing around, his face was etched with uncertainty. They'd reached the fence, and wild ginger was already at their feet. It furled outward from its roots inside the covert, a roaming mass of green. "But we can still see the fence. You don't think he'd have gone deeper to bury the capsule, just to avoid being seen?"
Marsden shook her head. "I think it makes the most sense to start from the entrance and work our way in. Rigby would have been just a kid when he buried it, and somewhere he wasn't supposed to be—he probably didn't want to hang around any longer than he had to." She pictured a little boy trying to stay upright on a bike while holding something close, something he needed to keep safe. "Do you think one of those cookie tins would have fit in a backpack?"
Jude held out his hands so they were about a foot apart. "Maybe? But it doesn't matter if he used a backpack or not. I just think he left something behind, however he carried it over. And I think we'll find it in here."
Rigby _had_ left something behind, of course. It'd been a note. The knowledge sat hot in her heart, uncomfortable. Well, whether or not he'd left more, they would soon find out.
Marsden watched Jude scan the part of the covert he could see and wondered what he was thinking, if he was aware of the fear that glimmered in his eyes like an odd light. If he could already tell that the farther they walked inside, the denser the trees grew, becoming nearly impenetrable in some spots. How soon the sky overhead would narrow into nothing more than thin slashes of blue. How sunlight would slide into shade, heat into a simmer. How once someone got past a certain point in the covert, it grew hard to remember the open vastness of a summer day.
He suddenly turned back to her. "Okay, what am I missing?"
"What do you mean?"
"You're more tense than I am, and you come in here in all the time. Should I be worried about something in there other than the given?"
"The given?"
"You know. Ghosts. Bodies. The police." One corner of his mouth twitched and his brows lifted. It nearly made her laugh, her nerves on edge as they were. "Your mom yelling at us to get out."
A laugh did slip free at that, but it didn't last. Marsden shook her head. _You forgot secrets, Jude. I'm so full of them in here, and I can't tell you any._ "I was just . . . seeing the covert through your eyes." This, at least, wasn't a total lie. "As if it were my first time, too."
"And?"
"I still think I'm right about Rigby staying close to the edge of the covert. Except maybe it wasn't because of the size or weight of whatever he was carrying that day."
"No?"
"I think it was because of fear of the covert. Same as what you're feeling now."
Jude nodded. "I'm about to walk into the place where my brother died. I thought I'd be mostly sad, or angry—which I am—but I'm definitely scared, too."
A few seconds of silence passed, and then he gave her an uneasy smile. "Also, you kind of have to admit this place has a distinct vibe."
_Vibe_. Like the covert was an energy field, something with its own life force. "That word nearly makes the covert seem cool instead of creepy."
"Nah, this place will never be anything but creepy to me." He pointed in the direction of the boardinghouse. "I was joking about your mom coming in, but can anyone really see us from there? What if she actually does? Or a guest?"
"Most guests are gone during the day, off fishing or boating, or walking around town. And my mom knows I come here." Marsden hesitated. "It's more after dark that we have to be sure to be gone. Being in the covert at night, it can be easy to lose your way. And—well, your imagination takes on a life of its own."
Jude swept the detector haphazardly over the ginger at his feet. "It doesn't even have to be at night for the impossible to get into your head. To try to convince you it's actually not impossible at all. Way too many times I've talked myself into believing that Rig was just going to walk out of this place, still alive, and tell me it's all been a mistake."
The presence of the hidden note fell from her heart and into the pit of her stomach. She said nothing. They continued to walk.
"Do you see skimmers moving in here at night?" he asked suddenly.
Marsden had to wait a few seconds to answer, smothered by the abrupt question, the quiet disgust she heard in his voice. She'd rather have been yelled at. "Trespassers, sure. Sometimes we see flashlights in here from the boardinghouse. Wynn says they must be like how fireflies move, darting throughout the trees."
"You make that sound nice."
She nudged at a dense bunch of ginger with the toe of her sneaker, not sure how to reply. She _had_ made the covert at night sound nice—a charming image, completely harmless—and had no clue why she'd bothered. To make Jude feel better about where Rigby had died? So that if he ever found out that she was a skimmer, he'd remember that she wasn't wholly evil?
The harsh truth was, however nicely she or Wynn painted it, the reality of the covert wasn't about lights at all. Instead it was about the shadows that existed in there, those that took the shape of fallen humans. It was about the people who had died and the people who crouched over them, pawing at their bodies for money and jewelry. Reality was Rigby never coming back. Reality was her father, also gone forever.
"Hey, can I ask you something about finding his body?"
Marsden glanced over at him, praying he saw nothing close to guilt on her face. "Okay."
"Do you think—" Jude broke off. Swore softly. Tried again. "Do you think his body had already been skimmed? That someone else had gotten to him first and stolen whatever he might have had on him?"
Her heart skipped, tapped at her throat. The silence surrounding them was now pointed, the covert at attention. "I really don't think so."
"Why not?"
"I just don't."
A muscle moved along his neck. "If you see skimmers in here at night, why don't you guys stop them?"
She slowly shook her head. A part of her wanted to run; another, to explain, in whatever way she could. "Even if we did, there's always going to be more."
"What if you knew it wasn't a skimmer or a trespasser, but someone who's there because they mean to die? Shouldn't you try to stop _them_ from doing what they came to do?"
She saw his dream unfolding in her mind as though he were asking for it to be her dream, too. And in this imaginary parallel world—made all the more painful because it couldn't exist—instead of walking out of their house in the middle of the night for the last time, Rigby was walking back into it. In this dream, he would still smell of wild ginger from the covert, but only a tiny bit, because the voices in the covert had refused to let him in. They had decided his sins, whatever they'd been, had to be fixed outside of it. In this dream, he would put the gun back in the kitchen drawer before shaking out the handful of covert soil he'd dumped into his pocket as his passage to peace. Then he'd go back to bed, and he would promise to try to get through another day once morning came.
"So?" Jude pressed. He emitted sadness like a warning, his grief acute—it hurt her to look him in the eye. "If you knew, would you try?"
Marsden thought of her father, of the insatiable pull of water, of a guy who liked games of blackjack more than having tea parties with his daughter, and said the only thing she could: "I think most people would try to stop them, if they knew, and if they could. The only thing is, sometimes we just don't know. And sometimes we just can't."
## sixteen.
They went deeper.
Sunshine faded, fell weak in the air. The trees soared and their dusty, feathered tops turned spidery, full of traps and tangles. Patches of shade on the ground played tricks on their eyes, appearing as blood. The calls of crows overhead ballooned into shrieks. The scent of ginger was everywhere.
Marsden knew if Jude dreamed anything that night, it would be of the covert.
As they walked, a question stayed on the tip of her tongue, threatening to ask if _he_ wanted to ask:
_Where did you find Rig's body, Marsden?_
But he didn't, and she was relieved. She knew he'd never unsee it once he knew. He'd replay what would have happened over and over again and would never stop questioning at what point his brother still could have been saved, at what point there could have been a change in angle or a turn of thought that Rig could put the gun down and still walk away.
A couple of hours in, taking turns with the detector, they'd finally settled into a rhythm on how to best use it—long sweeps across the ground, in wide, even arcs. Hold it too high and the sensor picked up nothing; hold it too low and it would catch on the brush.
The work was simple. And in between bouts of small talk, Jude fell silent and seemed utterly lost in thought. Marsden found her mind wandering, too, to this puzzle of a boy walking beside her, and the way he carried his tragic family around like a layer of invisible bruises set over being tough.
The dead of the covert remained silent, refusing to speak to her. Despite his brother being there with her, there was no hint of Rigby. No hint of her father, either.
Marsden wished it didn't bother her as much as it did, never being able to hear voices despite supposedly having the ability to. If anything, she should be happy—she was in the covert enough that the last thing she needed were ghosts trying to get her to pass on messages to the living. Or listening to them tell her just how wrong her skimming was.
And what if she did hear Rigby one day? And the things he wanted her to tell his brother only made Jude sadder? What if he wanted her to tell him about his note that she was hiding? What if she finally heard her father and he told her the thing she dreaded most was true? That he had hated being a father more than he wanted to be alive?
But all it took to make her keep trying was the single hope of hearing him tell her it really had been accident. And that he didn't regret her and hadn't meant to leave them.
She passed the detector over a stretch of dried-out dandelions, their blooms gone a mustard yellow, and tried to ignore how Jude stayed close enough that she could still smell his damn soap.
"Read any good books lately?" he asked, his tone deliberately flippant. It didn't make him appear any less tense. She knew he was imagining all the terrible things that would have happened around him, was seeing his brother in the covert's midnight corners and the depths of its strange foliage. "Or been to the movies? What do you do when you need a break from this place?"
Marsden kept her eyes on the ground. Dying dandelions disappeared as she and Jude moved on to crush a small patch of sweet woodruff. The detector rumbled in her hand, and she thought of trucks driving along the highway, shaking the beds of the Indigo (no signs of gold, though). "I don't. I'm here. I work. And summer means Wynn's home—I have to babysit a lot."
She couldn't tell him the rest. About having to fit in skimming, about juggling Wynn against the schedule of the boardinghouse. She didn't want to mention how going out for fun was the very opposite of how she liked to blend in. She dreaded running into groups of kids from school whose whispers to one another held echoes of Shine's name, who would cheerfully call out to her the same stupid questions about serial killers and people gone missing. Kids who only seemed whiter on account of her _own_ whiteness, the side of her that did nothing but emphasize the part that wasn't. She thought about people staring at Jude and, if they did, whether it was for the color of his skin as much as it was for Rigby and his father.
"My best friends, Owen and Karey, drag me out as often as they can." Jude ran the detector in long arcs over a raised ridge of ground. "But reality just sits there in my brain, waiting to remind me as soon as the movie's over. _He's still gone. The credits will roll, the lights will come on, and he'll still be gone_."
"They probably don't know what else to do." Marsden attached faces to the names of his friends, both of them white like nearly everyone else in Glory: Owen, tall and handsome, his face the kind made to gaze from magazine ads; Karey, with his long blond hair and drowsy drawl of a smile, America at its beachiest. She knew them, and yet she didn't, exactly as she'd known Jude before the forever absence of his brother drew them together.
"We've been to enough movies over the last couple of weeks that the food counter down at the Cineplex knows our popcorn orders by heart. There's an Eddie Murphy playing tonight."
"You like him?"
"Yeah, he's funny as hell. Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Steve Martin—I'll watch them all, but Murphy's my favorite. Dude's black, and he's on the big screen—it's cool seeing that."
Marsden heard it in his voice, the simple acknowledgment that he knew he was different, and found herself nodding. She could count on one hand families like theirs in town, had always been able to. The quota was low in Glory.
"You're Chinese, right?" he asked. "Half?"
"Yes." She was surprised but not surprised that he knew enough to guess. For years, they'd never had real reason to connect, despite having shared lots of the same spaces at school. But they were also two of a very small club, noticing each other the same way shy new kids in class couldn't help but notice each other, united in their not belonging.
To keep Jude from asking anything else about her family, she asked first. "You moved here from out East?"
He nodded. "I still have family out there, my uncles—my mom's two younger brothers—and my aunts. A couple of cousins."
"All on your mom's side?"
Another nod.
She waited for him to add something about his father's side of the family, knowing that Leo Ambrose had also been born and bred out East. But he stayed silent, and she decided the omission was purposeful.
Marsden went along with it, and decided to ask him about safe things again.
"Your friends are Murphy fans, too?"
"Yeah, but not like me. And not like Rig was. We used to make a point of watching his movies whenever they came on television, or we'd rent a bunch and just play them on a loop. And Owen and Karey know that. Which is why they won't let me get out of going tonight. They're worried I'll be especially . . . I don't know, fragile, I guess. The thing is, I'm still too mad to be fragile." Jude's features were drawn beneath the burnished brown of his skin. His words seemed pulled from him. "Like you said, I might not have been able to stop him, no matter what. But I can still be angry at him for getting what he wanted."
Marsden stopped walking, dragged to a halt—not by the fury she heard, but the plea for answers she knew too well.
"There were no clues?" She sensed the ghostly weight of Rigby's letter, as heavy and dangerous as a bomb. "Your father. Maybe he knows?"
"My father?" Jude's smile was cold, bitter. "Whatever drove Rig to do what he did, who do you think played a part in it?" He began to walk again, staring only at the ground as he swept and swept. "Not only him, but me, too."
The echo of her father blaming her for his misery, for being a trap, pounded in her ears. She walked alongside Jude, her throat dry. "What do you mean you played a part?"
"I was nine, it was the science fair, and I had this project, and . . . something happened that night, and it made Rig change." His voice had gone choppy, full of tiny little breaks. "He just kind of . . . faded or something. He was there, but he also wasn't, like he'd run out of things to say. I joked with him once, about living with a ghost."
Her father, also only ever half there. "What did he say?" she asked, her lips stiff.
"He said everything was fine and that nothing was going on. That I needed to quit imagining things." Jude was still sweeping the detector, circling over fields of ginger. The plants grew thick, turning the ground springy. "A kid gets first prize at the science fair—it's supposed to be a good day, you know? And a lot of that day _was_. Dad didn't even crack his first beer until we got home from dinner. But then I remember leaving to get root beer floats and falling asleep in our truck somewhere along the way. I remember Rig carrying me back inside the house, feeling safe as I slept against his shoulder. Then he and my dad, talking in whispers—I dreamed their voices were like fish, darting around in the river. I still don't know what they were talking about."
"Why can't you ask your dad?" Marsden recalled the stories about Leo Ambrose's temper, how it and his fists had been fueled by alcohol.
"I did, once. He also had nothing to say about it, just like Rig didn't." Jude's gaze lasered into the ground, his hair falling back down over his forehead as he used the detector. It made a high, thin buzz as it worked. "He actually stopped drinking for a long time after that night. Maybe it was what he and Rig were whispering about after we got back, but I don't know." He shrugged. "And he's drinking again, now that Rig's gone. So I can't ask him."
Everything he left unsaid rang throughout the woods, came back at them like a boomerang. She saw an image of a little boy with wavy raven hair and a bruised cheek, huge eyes streaming as he ran past shelves of books toward the one person who would keep him safe.
"But, I'm confused," she admitted. "Your dad did stop for a while, you said. From when you were nine until now—so why would that make your brother _un_ happy?"
"I don't know," he said. "Except . . . I remembered something else. It was when I first came here to ask you about the covert, and it happened while I was driving over."
The sudden gift of a memory, the crack of a seal—why did the air seem to chill? "What was it?"
"I passed by a broken-down car along the highway, so I pulled over to see if I could help or something. But the driver wasn't anywhere—he must have gone to call for a tow truck, I figured later—so I sat there in the truck waiting to see if he'd show, just looking around. I noticed how the part of the shore the car was on was really narrow, and how it seemed like the river could practically pull the car right in if it didn't get picked up soon. I thought about how the driver was lucky the car didn't break down at night, since being stuck on the highway in the dark isn't much fun. And how if there's a storm, it's even more dangerous." Jude let out a tight, humorless laugh. "I'd cranked the window open, and that metal stink of the Indigo rolled in, you know? I could taste it in the back of my throat, even. And hundreds of times I've driven past that point along the highway without . . . It came in flashes, Marsden. The memory. Science-fair night."
"Go on." She was rapt. Daylight had fallen away, the covert was gone, she was standing on a muddy beach watching a storm roll through the town.
"I was in the backseat of the truck, half-asleep. We were parked—from the smell in the air, I could tell we were close to the river. It was raining outside, coming down fast in sheets, I could hear it pounding on the truck's roof. Then Rig was there again, scrambling into the front seat, and we were racing down the highway toward home.
"He would have only been thirteen, but he was big for his age, and he'd learned to drive at Evergreen, spinning the shop trucks around the parking lot." Jude turned off the detector then, and the covert fell dead silent. When he spoke again, his voice was full of defeat. "Whatever happened that night, I was right there with Rig. And whatever happened, it took place out there along the highway, along the Indigo."
## seventeen.
The next day, the sun rose and attempted to burn the whole place down.
Townsfolk joked uneasily about Glory now being hell on earth for real, before darting back indoors, away from a heat that made the surfaces of buildings and cars ripple like water.
But still the covert called, and still guests needed to be fed.
By dawn, Marsden had made her way back to the boardinghouse. No bodies to report that morning, and she'd met this with her usual mess of emotions—relief, frustration, panic, guilt. She tried not to think about Jude just being there yesterday, how aside from a handful of coins and various metal bits, they'd come up empty, too.
He would be back tomorrow afternoon, ready to keep looking.
She couldn't deny that she wanted to see him again.
Breakfast was served in the dining room—eggs, toast, Canadian bacon, Bloody Marys—while she and Wynn ate in the kitchen. Not Lucky Charms this time, but Cap'n Crunch and strawberry milk. They ate like furtive mice, trying not to get caught. Like ghosts in the house, there but not there.
"Can you come shopping with us today?" Wynn asked, blowing milk bubbles with her straw. The pink spheres climbed the inside of her glass, threatening to spill over. "It's Dany's turn to make lunch, not yours, right?"
"Hmm?" Marsden was distracted. She was still thinking about Jude and how he was different from what she'd expected. Nicer. Easier to talk to. More open. She wondered if he thought the same thing about her. If she was less closed off than the person he knew from school and heard about in town. She wondered if, outside of the covert, he thought about her at all.
"Are you okay?" Her sister was leaning in close, her expression more exasperated than concerned. "You look funny."
_Because I'm thinking of funny things, Wynn. Waste-of-time funny things._ She had to remember that Jude was a blip during this overly hot summer, a once-in-a-lifetime disturbance that would soon be dealt with and eventually forgotten. "Sorry, just watching your bubbles die a quick death. What's up?"
"Can you come shopping with us this morning? I like Peaches and Lucy, but I want to go with you, too."
A shard of ice formed in Marsden's stomach. "You're clothes shopping?" Shine had promised to take her younger daughter to the farmer's market. Wynn had been excited, her mother's time a rare thing. Marsden had intended to go down to Seconds, armed with questions for Fitz, her father's old friend. _I need you to tell me about that night._
"Yes! For a dress! I want one just like the ones they wore last night to dinner. Mom said fine and gave me some money—I think she felt bad that she forgot she was busy. Peaches and Lucy also said that if there was time afterward, they'd treat me to the salon to get my hair and nails done." Wynn's grin was a beam of delight, huge and enveloping, and it left Marsden frozen.
"You already have a lot of nice clothes, you know," Marsden whispered through the hollow in her stomach. "Dany always finds them for you. And dresses—you won't be able to run around as easily, or climb—"
"Sure I can—why wouldn't I? So, will you please come with us? _Please?_ "
Marsden silently willed Nina, Peaches, and Lucy into aging massively overnight. She prayed all the johns in town would lose every single cent down at Decks. Finally, she pictured Shine, and she wasn't sure what to feel at all.
"I'll come," she said, trying to sound normal, doing her best to hide the panic that welled. Seconds and Fitz and her questions would have to wait one more day. "I just need to do the dishes first, okay?"
Her little sister beamed again, slid off her chair, and began to clear the table. "I'll help you so we can leave earlier."
"And Wynn?"
"Yeah?"
"I don't think Peaches and Lucy would mind if we ask them to come along another time. Just you and me, okay?"
• • •
She knew it was sabotage, and she didn't care.
Being heartless came easily when the alternative was losing her little sister to the clutches of Nina, to the desperation of their mother, to the clueless but obviously good intentions of Peaches and Lucy.
_Not that one, Wynn, the collar is too loose._
_No, the material is too shiny._
_The color is too bright._
_You'll get sick of the print._
It was close to noon, Marsden had seen enough dresses to last her for multiple lifetimes, and Wynn had gone mostly silent.
"We can look again when the stores get fall stock in." Marsden wheeled her bike along the sidewalk—beside her, Wynn pushed her own along, her face clouded. "But for now, how about some lunch? We have the money Dany gave us to buy coffee, remember? And if you don't care about saving the dress money, we can use that, too."
"We'll need that money for a dress the next time we go," her sister muttered. "And we're not supposed to spend kitchen money on ourselves, or Dany's going to stop trusting you with it."
"I'll tell her she can take it out of my pay." Marsden knew full well Dany wouldn't, not after she told her it was for lunch for Wynn. Dany was especially soft with her sister, indulgent when it came to making up for Shine as a mother. "The Burger Pit is right up the block—sound good?"
They rarely ate out, but when they did, and when it was up to Wynn to choose the place, it was always in the running. With its bottomless drinks bar, its long wooden tables covered with rolls of coloring paper, and the oversize cow jar at the front counter that mooed with the removal of each cookie from its belly, the Burger Pit was one of Glory's busiest restaurants with its locals if not its tourists.
What her sister didn't know was that each evening, halfway through dinner service, the Burger Pit's side entrance opened for business and the basement floor came to life.
Five dollars bought someone fifteen minutes with one of the viewing slots and his choice of peep video.
Ten meant a viewing slot and a live show.
A whole twenty meant a private booth and choice of live performer.
Marsden knew Nina's johns were frequent visitors of the place—they'd come crawling into the boardinghouse after they were done, smelling of fried cheese and the Pit's house beer, their eyes and hands especially friendly. On those evenings, she would drag Wynn even farther away from the premises and sit outside the covert, trying not to be horrified by the future while her sister played beside her, making houses of leaves and sticks for the bugs, for her much-longed-for pets. She would sit there and recall Shine sitting on a bench in the bus depot, frozen.
Now the sun was straight overheard, searing noon into their scalps—the Burger Pit would be safe for hours.
Wynn gave in, unable to sulk in the face of cheeseburgers and tater tots. "Can we get the bottomless sodas?"
"Fine, twist my arm."
Her sister scrambled onto her bike and took off down the sidewalk, weaving around other people on the sidewalk with a speed that had Marsden cringing.
"Hey, slow down," she called out, "you're going to—"
Too late. A group of guys stepped onto the sidewalk at exactly the wrong moment, and Wynn careened toward them like a rocket with too much fuel. There was a squealing of brakes and a muffled oath and Marsden blew out a sigh, climbed onto her bike, and rode over.
And she nearly turned right around when she saw who it was.
Jude.
He watched her approach with wide eyes, their dark depths flaring with surprise, and for a second, she thought of the boy she used to see in school, so good at warning everyone away even as he turned to his circle of friends with enough trust to seem another person. She'd learned to disappear in a different way, making herself small, shrinking into the crowd as much as possible.
Who was she to him now, after their time in the covert? Who was he to her?
Her heart pounded at she took in the scene: Wynn, her face red as she looked down at the blond boy still splayed on the ground; another boy, dark-haired and grinning, handsome as hell; and Jude—so tall, annoyingly magnetic, more unreadable than not.
"Don't worry about it." He gave her sister a half smile and smirked down at the blond boy. "Karey always walks around totally out of it. Bound to happen sometime."
"I'm sorry," Wynn strangled out. "I was going too fast."
"Nah." Karey waved from the ground and gave Wynn a smile so dimpled and charming it spread outward and had her sister smiling back. "I was just moving too slow."
Owen—the good-looking dark-haired boy—yanked him up by the hand. "Man, we keep finding ways to try to lose you, and you keep sticking around. What's it going to take?"
"I love you tons, too." Karey brushed off his board shorts, fishing for the sandal that had flown from his foot. Shaggy, bleach-bright blond hair; sky-blue eyes; and what appeared to be a fondness for actual beachwear—he really was California personified against the pale dust of Glory.
Jude was watching Marsden, apparently as uncertain as she was.
"Hi," he finally said.
Marsden lifted a stiff arm and waved. "How come you're not working?"
"I am, actually. Just getting Roadie and the others at work some takeout; I ran into these guys on the way." He glanced over at Wynn. "So your sister is also Evel Knievel?"
Wynn leaned toward him, her eyes widening in recognition. "You're the boy who—"
"I'm Jude, yeah." The panic that crossed his face came and went in a second, covered up by his smile. But Marsden still caught it.
So his friends had no clue about him going to the covert. She was still just another girl from school, instead of the girl helping their best friend find the last piece of his dead brother.
She looked over to see Owen and Karey both staring. They obviously had no clue how to take her. They'd all known of one another since they were five and started going to the same school, but out here in the open, she was brand-new to them.
"Hey, Marsden," Owen said, his voice careful but friendly. Beside him, Karey's expression was the same. "How's your summer going?"
She tensed as she waited for the rest, for him or Karey to hint that she wasn't fooling anyone by acting like her mother wasn't a prostitute. To ask her about being friends with ghosts. But when they just smiled, she made herself nod. "Good, thanks." Then she turned to Wynn, wanting to leave, sure it showed and unsure what to do about it.
Her sister was already pouncing, loving the idea of becoming friends with the boy who'd come all the way to their covert in search of her beloved older sister, of becoming friends with the friends of that same boy. "Can you eat lunch at the Burger Pit, too? With me and Mars? Jude, can't you stay and then just bring back takeout for your friends at work?"
Marsden's heart sank all the way to her toes.
If Jude and his friends agreed, there'd be no escape. She couldn't ruin this next part of Wynn's afternoon, given how she'd already fought—and won the battle—over buying a dress in imitation of Peaches and Lucy.
And her sister's eagerness to make friends with Jude and Owen and Karey was partially Marsden's doing—for years, she'd warned her to stay away from guys at the boardinghouse. Which meant _these_ guys were safe, because they were from Marsden's school, were practically oozing with cool and nice and funny. _These_ guys were friendly in ways that weren't frightening or wrong.
The deep clank of a large cowbell rang out, and the front door to the Burger Pit swung open.
A teenage girl, her face a just-as-attractive-but-in-a-different-way version of Owen's, stood in the doorway. She wore her black half apron and white _Burger Pit_ work shirt with a nonchalance that nearly made the outfit stylish.
Abbot, Owen's twin.
Just as with her brother, Marsden knew her, yet didn't at all. The other girl was all pixie-cut black hair, watchful dark eyes, and sharp-edged humor stuffed into a human form that radiated fearlessness. Abbot seemed everything Marsden didn't know how to be.
"Wow, you guys actually managed to get out of bed before three in the afternoon." Abbot grinned. "What happened?"
Owen mock scowled at his sister. "You promised us a free lunch, and that's the only reason why I can deal with you this early."
"You're such the lesser half it's not even funny. I saved a table in the back, by the way." Owen and Karey headed inside, calling over their shoulders that they were starving and to hurry, and Abbot turned to look at Marsden, her expression slightly quizzical before recognition hit. "It's Marsden, right? How's it going?"
"Fine, thanks. You?"
"Everything's great. Just hanging out?"
Marsden's shoulders stiffened a tiny bit. "Yes."
"Cool." Abbot turned and gave Jude a huge grin. Marsden saw how it reached all the way to her eyes, came blasting through all her features to make her even prettier. She also knew then, without a doubt, who had taken the time and care to make him those friendship bracelets he wore so faithfully. Loops of string and a few hours of effort, but they reminded Marsden of who she was not.
Abbot reached out and pulled him into a hug. "Roadie sent you out _again_? Maybe he doesn't trust you around the inventory but can't say." She let him go and winked. "Unless it's just been too long since you've seen me."
Jude smiled back. Marsden might have let her eyes roll.
"Just the regular lunch order from the shop, thanks," he said. "I already called it in. And it's a double order of the cheese tater tots for Roadie this time—dude nearly cried when I forgot the last."
"It's all probably nearly ready, anyway; I'll go check the front counter for you. Too bad you can't stay to eat with us, though—I'm on my break and everything."
Jude glanced at Marsden, who had never been more uncomfortable in her life. Were she and Wynn included in the other girl's invite? Was it her way of saying to please leave? She didn't know Abbot well enough to read her the way she could Shine and Nina and the rest of the girls at the boardinghouse, the way she knew how to be slippery to avoid being with them.
She _wanted_ to leave, and badly. But Wynn was still expecting lunch, not just with Marsden but also with everyone else—"everyone else" now including Abbot. Adding to the fun was the likelihood of Jude having to get back to Evergreen, leaving her to deal with his friends on her own.
Her sister was already locking her bike to the rack at the front of the restaurant, about to head inside.
And Marsden willed the Burger Pit's dried-up, sun-beaten sidewalk to crack open beneath her feet and swallow her whole.
"I don't have to take off right away, actually," Jude said. "Roadie got an emergency call about a shipment and had to go check it out—he's going to be delayed. I just figured it was already too late to call you guys and get you to hold off on the food."
"He won't care about a cold lunch?" Abbot slid her gaze to Marsden and then back to Jude again. Her expression gave away nothing.
Marsden couldn't decide if she was more relieved or skeptical or annoyed at Jude's rescue. Maybe she was all three.
Jude shrugged. _Well, what's the guy going to do about it?_ Then he flashed Marsden a grin so sweet that it momentarily left her disarmed. In that single second, he was neither the angry boy from the school hallways nor the boy in the covert devastated by a ghost, but someone else entirely, and she felt a wave of pity for Rigby, for what he'd never know.
"So let's go," he said to her, "before your sister takes off running through the restaurant and mows down half the diners."
## eighteen.
Sitting beside her in the booth, Marsden watched Wynn struggle happily with her Burger Pit Cheesebigger and grudgingly accepted that, over the course of a single lunch, her little sister had fallen head over heels in love with a bunch of teenagers.
Marsden poked at the tray of chili tater tots on the table in front of her, sipped her Coke, and mentally reviewed what she'd learned about Jude's friends, cheat sheets that hung in her mind like bright white laundry from a line.
One thing she'd discovered: If she'd ever wondered how much he'd leaned on them in the immediate days after Rigby's death, or doubted exactly how much _they_ needed _him_ , she needn't have bothered.
They loved one another like family. A real and normal one.
Owen, all dark eyes and summer-tanned skin and a jawline that might as well have been chiseled from stone. Seventeen years old on the surface but ancient underneath, he was the worrier of the group, the one who tended the foundation of their friendship. He was so protective of those around him that he was often the one left in danger, a mother bear charging a hunter without pause to save her cubs.
Karey, with enough dimples to prove that life was, indeed, unfair. His smile was beatific and blameless, nearly as bottomless as the sea. Marsden would have thought him a goof, a misplaced beach bum stumbling happily from one foaming surf to another, if she hadn't caught glimpses of his cutting intelligence, a keen awareness he seemed to not mind hiding.
And Abbot, who insisted their lunches be on the house, who gave her sister brand-new boxes of crayons to use on the paper on the table, who teased her the same way Dany sometimes did. She was, for Wynn, fun and lighthearted in ways Marsden could never be, as confident with her looks as any of Nina's girls—again, nothing like her dull and plodding big sister.
And she was close to Jude in a way that left Marsden envious, left her chest shot full of small holes and tiny aches. She knew it was jealousy and hated herself for it, for wanting that same kind of closeness to a boy she barely knew and wouldn't even _want_ to know, if she were being smart. And safe. And logical. She was hiding something from him that he would hate her for if he knew. Not that she had a choice about doing it.
And maybe she wasn't always those things.
Maybe, sometimes, she didn't really want to be.
Which bothered her—a lot.
She stuffed a tater tot into her mouth, relished the rude sting of chili pepper against her tongue, and prayed for Wynn to eat faster.
"By the way, Jude, listen." Karey burped behind a salt-dusted fist and poured more ketchup on his potatoes. "Langston is bugging me to get you to stay over for a couple of days. He says he's still waiting to beat you in that Atari tournament you guys started a while ago."
Jude stared at him, then lifted one brow. "Your little brother says he's still waiting to beat me at Atari? So I'm welcome to stay over at your place for a while?"
"Yeah."
"For a tournament. That we started. Last summer."
"Yeah."
"Don't," Jude said in a low voice. "It's fine."
"But he really—"
"You guys, just . . . drop it."
Just like that, the restaurant around their booth faded—the clang of silverware, the chatter from other diners at other tables, dialed to low—and a tension as thick as the river's mud swam in.
It carried with it the presence of Leo Ambrose. Marsden felt as if he were suddenly seated right there at the table with them.
Karey slowly shoved three tater tots into his mouth at once. She saw his eyes go to Owen—once, and quickly, as though unsure of what to do next—before going back to Jude. "C'mon. It's just Langston. And Atari." Beside him, Wynn drew another cat on the paper that covered the table, oblivious to the conversation.
"Except it's not," Jude said, sounding terse.
"I think it'd be nice for Langston to get to hang out with you." Abbot stirred her Fanta Orange with her straw. "Think about the poor kid, with someone like Karey as his only role model."
Karey coasted a tater tot along the table so that it fell into her lap. "I can re-create the periodic table in my _sleep_. Langston is _blessed_ , I tell you."
Jude picked up his burger and proceeded to not eat. "Tell Langston he wins by default."
"You'd get a break from your old man," Owen said quietly. "He'll have space to adjust."
The discomfort Jude couldn't hide . . . Marsden felt it herself. She hadn't known how much he hated being pitied. She wondered if her being there made it worse for him, or easier, or if it made any difference at all. If he would have walked out already, still bent on escape, if not for feeling bad about leaving her and Wynn behind.
"Home is fine," he muttered. "Leave it, you guys."
Suddenly, Wynn leaned forward, the hem of her Scooby-Doo T-shirt dragging through the mound of ketchup on her plate, and whispered loudly to Marsden: "I have to use the washroom, but I don't know where it is."
"I'll show you." Jude was up like a shot. His eyes met no one's. "Need a refill for my Coke anyway."
Wynn hopped down from the booth and followed Jude down the aisle.
"Hold up, dude, we're getting refills, too." Owen and Karey scrambled their way from the table to catch up. Their intentions—to corner Jude in another attempt to keep him safe from his father—were, to Marsden, as loud and clear as the clank of the Burger Pit's cowbell hanging over the front entrance.
"So, hey, I didn't know you and Jude were hanging out."
She turned and faced Abbot.
On Owen, the twins' shared beauty was a study in classic good looks, a painting where each stroke was preordained, made to flow only one way. Words like _handsome_ and _elegant_ and _smooth_ suited Owen perfectly.
But on his sister, that same beauty turned sharp, its edges hard and precise and without give.
"We're not really." Marsden knew the best lies were half-truths. She picked up a fork and toyed with it, hating that she was nervous.
The other girl nodded, absentmindedly tracing one of the doodles on the table. It was one of Jude's, a bouquet of flowers he'd drawn for Wynn at her request. Their lines were messy, and not too sure of themselves, but there were tulips, daisies, lilies—Jude's world when he was at work.
"Do you guys just know each other from school?" Abbot asked. "Or something else?"
The question shouldn't have bothered Marsden, but it did. Especially if she admitted she'd been wondering the same things about Abbot.
_And what about you two? Just how close are you guys? How close have you ever been?_
"Just school," she finally said, reminding herself Abbot was only worried about Jude, was as protective of him as Owen and Karey were. It wasn't her fault that Marsden found her intimidating. That Marsden was also painfully aware of who she herself was in this town, who Shine was, and all the labels that came with those things.
How could Jude ever consider anyone like her?
"Can I say something without making you feel bad?" Abbot's gaze held none of the subtlety of her twin. "Because I really don't mean to. And normally I wouldn't say anything at all, because it's none of my business, what Jude does. . . ."
It was clear that Abbot _did_ think it was her business. That she had a say in what Jude did.
And that Marsden did not.
But Abbot hadn't been there to see him that day in the library, when eight-year-old Jude had come running in to find Rigby, his cheek on fire. She wasn't the one he'd gone to see at the covert, his eyes miserable and vulnerable, needing something. She wasn't the one trying to hear the dead for him, even if her reasons for doing it weren't entirely selfless.
Marsden set her fork down. "It's not any of your business, no. But I know you're just worried about him, and that's why you're wondering how to tell me nicely to leave him alone."
The older girl's eyes went flinty and cold. "His brother just died. Jude doesn't need anything else to deal with right now."
It struck Marsden then, the particular construct of their group, the thing that made them work—if Owen was the foundation, Karey the brains, and Jude the heart, then Abbot was the fighter. The warrior.
She'd almost regretted figuring it out. Abbot being jealous was baseless; Abbot being protective was something else. Rigby's note, still hidden away in her room, was a grenade with a half-pulled pin.
"I know about Rigby," Marsden said. "Everyone does. Just like how I know _you_ guys know about his dad drinking again. Why you're just as worried about that."
She'd caught Abbot by surprise, her knowing about Leo—the other girl's eyes widened, and she sat back in her seat—but the victory was hollow, sour.
"I never thought he'd ever tell anyone," Abbot said.
"Outside of you and your brother and Karey, you mean."
"He never had to. We've always known everything, right from the start."
Except about her, and their searching the covert—another meaningless victory.
"Jude's not weak or anything." Abbot's face was softer than Marsden had yet to see it, more like her worrier of a brother's than a warrior's. "Even with Rigby not here for him. But maybe he should be, for a while. Just . . . don't be someone else disappearing on him."
The moment was over. Wynn slid back into the booth, a cookie from the cow jar clutched in her hand. Owen and Karey were arguing in thin code over who they thought were regulars of the Burger Pit's side business. Jude—dark eyes apologetic for having left her at the mercy of his most ferocious friend—passed Marsden a fresh soda.
Later, biking home with Wynn as the Indigo curled its way alongside them and with Jude still at the edge of all her thoughts, she considered what she would have said to Abbot before they were no longer alone. How she would have defended herself against being the one to hurt him. To explain her confidence in him being fine after she walked away. That he would barely even notice, once he'd gotten what he needed from her and the covert.
The answer, when it came, hurt.
She already knew she was going to be sad to see him go, would start thinking of reasons for him to stay the day he was finally free to leave what had never been anything but temporary to him.
Abbot assumed Jude was the one at risk.
The truth was, Marsden was the one who was no longer safe.
_Don't worry, Abbot._
_This time it's Jude who gets to disappear on someone else first._
## nineteen.
The shadows came in through the trees at a slant, hinting that daylight was leaving.
They would have to escape the covert soon, before dark arrived.
Marsden stepped over a gnarled, mossy root that stuck out from the ground like a finger from a grave. Likewise, Jude lifted the detector high enough to keep it from catching. Already, they'd mastered the odd dance the covert required for them to make it through while still being thorough—the contrived coordination of invading troops, the dogged determination of escaping ones.
It was their second search in three days, and it seemed as if they'd come to some kind of agreement with the covert. The anguished land agreed to let them in, but they would not be allowed to stop, nor go back, nor rush ahead. What happened, happened; the covert would decide what it would finally give to them, and when.
Time warped within that ancient wooden fence enclosing them from the world. Hours, like moments; moments, like days. It was like the story of Persephone, who was tricked into eating six pomegranate seeds, each seed cursing her to a month in the underworld. As the goddess ate those blood-red seeds, so Marsden's great-great-uncle had spilled his family's blood onto the covert's soil, and prisoners were born anew to them.
"Man, Rig coming in this deep?" Jude swung the detector over the wild ginger at their feet, the endless spools of spice. "As a kid? I bet most adults wouldn't come this far. Kind of amazing what you can convince yourself to do when you really want something."
Marsden thought of her mother convincing herself right out of her own ability. How Star had called her a coward for doing it. They'd argued about it once, and Marsden had been in the same room, the almond cookies her grandmother had brought for her gone tasteless on her tongue. _You're so full of fear there's no room for anything else_ , Star had whispered harshly to her daughter. _Fear of this town, of yourself_.
"He was probably still really scared," she said to Jude. "He just wanted to bury that tin even more."
"It made him brave. Braver than I was at that age."
"You were just a kid. You shouldn't have _had_ to be brave."
"Rig said Dad had a bad temper, even when my mom was still around," he muttered, swirling over a patch of clover. As usual, there were no bees in sight, the insects permanently shy of the covert. Their instincts had long ago warned them to stay away, to instead drink only from clover grown in light, grown from soil without traces of tragedy. "Later, having two kids to raise on his own didn't help it."
"Your mom died when you were just a baby, didn't she?" It'd been cancer that had taken Isabel Ambrose, its ugly pull stronger than any of that of the covert.
"When I was three. I can't remember much—I need pictures to see her face. Apparently, she hated it here—back East, she was Isabel Ambrose, but in Glory, she was the black lady married to the guy who used to have a good job, you know?" He shrugged. "My dad tried—small things, like he picked out the cherrywood flooring in the house to match what we had before—but that's just . . . surface stuff. Rig missed her all the time. I guess I got off easy, not remembering her."
Marsden held a tree branch to the side so it wouldn't smack him in the stomach as he followed her through a thick knot of pines. "I think we forget for a reason. If you remembered every single bad thing that ever happened to you, you'd never stop being sad."
Her words had been impulsive, almost embarrassingly revealing, and she wished she could take them back—they came too close to spelling out her secrets. How she was trying to hear the dead just to prove it wasn't her fault her father was gone. How that had made her say yes to Jude digging up the covert, but it'd been on top of feeling guilty about being a skimmer.
"When I think about Rig being brave for my sake, the worst part is it was because _he_ didn't have a choice." Jude swept, the detector a slow arc of silver. "My being around meant he had to be brave, all the time. What a damn heavy load for a kid to have to carry, right?"
She took the detector from him, felt the high buzz of it in her bones as she took over. "It's—you don't question a load when you're the only one who can carry it." Wynn had always been hers, and only hers, to watch over—there'd been no one else. Only in her weakest moments, or her angriest, did Marsden sometimes let herself resent it. She wondered if it'd been the same way for Rigby. She saw the image of his eyes in the library again, how shuttered they'd been as he held Jude. _Rigby, can you hear me? Are you here with us, anywhere? You weren't evil for sometimes wanting to run away on your own, only real._
"I asked Roadie once if he thought Rig was going to hell, handful of covert dirt dumped into his pocket or not." Jude plucked a vine of ivy off a trunk as he passed. "He said he didn't even believe in God, so how could he believe in hell?"
She didn't know what she believed. Because what kind of God would allow for a place like Glory, like the covert? "Do you agree with him?"
"I kind of have to, don't I?"
She led them over more patches of wild ginger, the plants' fragrance sitting on their tongues, the biggest component of their air. There was the occasional ping on the sensor that turned out to be coins or screws. And as they walked, her thoughts went from God to spirits. To the otherworldly. Special abilities had no place in reality now, not with technology what it was.
But her family owned the covert, in a town where most of its folk still believed in guaranteed passageways to the afterlife. She grew up listening to Star tell her stories about ghosts and mediums and the dead as though they were the most normal things in the world. She'd never talked to anyone outside of family about their ability to hear the dead. But most of Glory knew anyway, just as thinking of Leo Ambrose naturally led to thoughts of booze and a short temper. But unlike Jude's family's history, that of Marsden's was an older kind of knowledge, part of the town's very roots, from Duncan and his gun to Star Liu's death to Shine's shunning of her own dark magic.
Marsden slid Jude a sideways glance.
How much did he know? Or believe? If he ever guessed how often she stood in the covert, listening and trying not to fail again, would he ask her to listen for Rigby? What would he say if she told him she already was, but for her own reasons, too?
"Hey." He stepped up on a small outcrop of rocks, slid back down. He stuck his hands in his shorts pockets and looked nearly sheepish. "Yesterday, after the Burger Pit, I went to see Theola down at her café."
Marsden stopped walking, and he did, too. In her hands, the detector ran on and on.
Theola Finney. A reader of tea leaves and her grandmother's best friend when Star had been alive. Theola used to let Marsden pick out free muffins and juice from behind the counter of her café whenever Star dropped by with her.
Shine had kept her daughters away from the fortune-teller after her mother died. She warned them the old lady was full of strange stories, her head a nest of dangerous lies. That she would only try to fill their heads with those same lies if they weren't careful.
The tactic merely half worked. Wynn, by nature, was more curious than scared—being warned off Theola so consistently only made her enjoy walking past the café whenever she could, eager for a chance to speak to her grandmother's mysterious friend. As for Marsden, who _did_ do her best to stay away from Theola, her avoidance had nothing to do with Shine's reasons at all and everything to do with her own.
Her head was home to all her secrets.
She could never risk someone peeking inside.
"You went to see Theola Finney?" she finally said. "The town psychic?"
"Yes. Also the closest thing this town has to a resident witch, apparently." Jude stilled and then shifted his feet on ground made treacherous with its slippery layers of ginger plants. "I don't mean your grandmother was a witch, though. Since, you know, they hung out together."
Marsden wasn't surprised he knew about Glory's hearer of the dead and its psychic being friends. The fact was just one more piece of town history.
_And do you think my mother is a witch, too? Me? Do you think me and Wynn can hear the dead, too? What else have you heard?_
"I didn't know you were into the psychic scene," she said.
"I don't know if I am, to be honest—it all seems kind of ridiculous and pretty hokey most of the time." Fear flashed across Jude's features, before slowly fading. "But this is Glory—nothing's impossible."
Her grip tightened on the metal detector until her hands hurt. She swept low over weeds that were full of thorns. "You went to get your fortune read?"
His face flushed, obvious even in the falling light that turned his wavy hair a dense black. "No, I went because . . . I wanted to see if there was enough of Rig left in _me_ that she could read him still. If she could look into my head and see him there, so she could tell me why he did what he did."
"But, Jude, I don't think—"
"I know, I know. I just figured I might as well ask. She told me right away she couldn't, so not to waste my money with a reading."
It _would_ have been a waste. Theola was clairvoyant, her mind a tool that she used for a sixth sense, the same way one used a nose to smell. Reading leaves, or staring into someone's eyes, she could tell the future, dig into the past, figure out things in ways that defied logic and science.
But being clairvoyant didn't always mean one could do _all_ these things. And as far as Marsden knew, Theola had never claimed to see into the past, or to be able to read still-living minds as a gateway into those of people already gone.
And that was what Jude so badly wanted.
His disappointment must have been crushing.
"But Marsden?"
"Yes?"
"Then Theola told me something anyway—and it made me run."
## twenty.
His words were ominous in the half-dark—full of grim promise.
They made _her_ want to run—from his story, from the secrets the covert held for him, from the danger that he held. She had enough of her own secrets, didn't she? They filled her to spilling so she could barely keep up with hiding them.
"She told me Rig had had an old soul." Jude's voice had gone cold, floating out to touch her in an icy wave. "How he'd been haunted by some load of guilt that she didn't need to read to have figured out. 'We all have our brand of self-torment, Jude Ambrose,' she said, 'but your brother Rigby had stopped being able to breathe through his.'"
"We should leave now." Marsden turned off the metal detector. A cage-like silence fell around them. "The light in here—it's changed."
Jude ignored her. "She said she hoped people were being kind about his death." He was little more than a smear of color against the wavering gray of the trees, as much phantom as not. "Because Rig . . . Everyone who knew him had liked him, you know?"
She knew she would have. And everyone had liked her father, too, before they found him floating in the Indigo. But not enough to embrace his widow—her blood was still too mad, her ancestry too foreign.
" _Have_ they been kind?" she asked, suddenly needing to know, hoping Glory was mourning Rigby above anything when it came to how they were treating Jude and his father right now.
His laugh was low but real. "Lots of casseroles."
She had to laugh, too. "Did you leave the café, then?"
"I had to. Standing there, listening to Theola say all that about Rig like he'd actually told her stuff he couldn't have told me . . . I ran out of there like the place was on fire." Jude took the detector from her, fiddled with the knobs so he had reason to look away. "I was always supposed to know Rig best. But now, I wonder if I really knew him at all."
"You did know him. He was your brother."
"If I did, then it was only what he allowed me to see, and that's not the same thing."
"Don't we all do that?"
He pushed his hair back, watching her. Then: "I don't know. Do we?"
Marsden was sure she was sinking, the ground suddenly gone as soft as freshly tilled earth. What could have been kept from her when it came to her parents' relationship? Of her father and his demons and the moment of his death?
"Maybe, in this town"—a wind rippled through the covert and she rubbed goose bumps from her arms—"it really is only the dead who can tell you the truth."
"What?"
"Like with Rigby. Why you went to see Theola at all. And my dad."
"Your dad? It was an accident. In the Indigo."
She heard it in his voice, the town's doubt, how it had its own version of Grant Eldridge. "But I know what everyone really thinks. And it's what I think, too. You know why? Because the night he died, he looked right at me and said he'd never wanted the kind of life he was living."
In the dim, something brushed at her hand. It was Jude's, his fingers cool and sturdy, and they slowly wound their way through hers.
"Then your dad was a bastard for saying that." His tone was a slow burn.
Suddenly, there was a burst of sound—from behind, a sharp crack—and they both jumped a foot into the air before crashing back to earth. The detector flew free and landed on ginger with a soft thud.
"Christ!" Jude's fingers were still wrapped around hers. He leaned close. He smelled of sun and leaves and brisk evening air. "What was _that_?"
It took her a handful of seconds and a few deep breaths to unlock her throat so she could answer, to wipe away the scenarios that came to mind and know they weren't real. "A branch," she murmured. "And probably a squirrel. It's okay."
She was still holding his hand. Or he was holding hers. Whichever it was, Marsden knew she'd been right in deciding he had the kind of hands made for sketch artists. In her mind's eye, she painted slowly, languidly—the bumpy mountain ranges of his knuckles, the long plains of his bones, the deep lakes that were all recessed dips and smooth swoops.
Once she memorized him, she dropped his hand and took a careful step back. She couldn't tell if he was more relieved or disappointed, or if he cared at all. Then she decided not knowing was probably for the best, for the both of them.
"It's nearly dark in here"—she knew she sounded brusque, wanting to promise him he would be fine: _Don't worry, Jude, no one at school will ever have to know you touched me_ —"which means we really do have to go." After leaving the covert's strange, haunted woods—its trees all tangled up, their shadows as dark as ink—time would go back to normal. It would go back to being late afternoon instead of feeling closer to midnight. Hours, rewound. Glory's summer sun, still blazing hot and true.
Jude nodded, the motion a blur. "For a second, I thought for sure it was a trespasser, maybe even a skimmer. And then I thought it was a gun, and . . . well . . ." His voice was small, young sounding.
Marsden bent down, picked up the detector, and knew what she had to do.
It was entirely wrong, considering what Jude had already trusted her with.
But she'd only ever agreed to let him into the covert. Letting him into her head, to peek past all her defenses and weapons and discover what she had to hide? None of that had been part of their deal.
"Jude, what I said about my dad a minute ago, can we forget it? Because I've never talked about it, and I didn't mean to start now."
A long, long moment of utter silence, and then he finally said: "Okay."
She blinked. "That was . . . easy."
"Did you really think I would say no?"
"Not really, I guess."
"Because I'm not an asshole, remember?"
She laughed, making him laugh. And then his stomach growled, and they were both laughing again.
"Okay, you're right, we can barely see a thing and I'm starving," he said. "Let's get out of here."
Before Marsden could tell herself it was better to leave it alone—Hadn't she just decided they were a terrible idea? How she was doing him the bigger favor by giving him an out?—she shot out a hand and touched Jude's arm to stop him from moving past. Despite being in a place built solely on sad things, she couldn't keep from liking touching him. Her blood flowed heavy in her veins, her stomach fluttered. It made no sense. She was going to make things even more awkward for them.
In the half-dark, Jude had gone strangely motionless, an animal unsure of which way to turn. Which way was safe.
Still, he didn't pull away.
"I have to ask," she said. "What makes you so absolutely sure you're right about Rigby having a time capsule and burying it here? I mean, beyond that book. Because I know there's more than just you finding and reading it."
After so many hours of turning up nothing but junk, he only seemed more driven. She needed to know: Was pure faith really all it took, or was a touch of madness needed? How far could she let herself go in her own search for answers from the covert?
Jude sighed. "Beyond the facts?"
"Yes."
"You know how sometimes you just feel it in your gut? That it's something way beyond logic and probability yet somehow just _is_?"
Marsden nodded, wondered why she'd even questioned. Gut was why she couldn't stop skimming, why she kept Wynn close. Gut was what had her telling Jude Ambrose yes, despite logic and aside from her own selfish needs.
And gut was how she knew that however this summer ended, it was going to be hard to see him go.
"So has Wynn ever mentioned to you that I'm a pretty good cook?" she blurted out.
His surprise was whole, and then he grinned, his smile a flash in the dark. An ache flared to life in her chest, sharp and lovely and dangerous.
"She said you were terrible, actually. I think the cold, greasy toast for her squirrel pushed her over the edge."
Fumbling slightly, she let go of his arm and felt for his hand, not letting herself question her own motives or reasons. Why she was choosing a mistake for him.
"I'm going to make you dinner," she said. "C'mon."
## twenty-one.
Through the screen door, Marsden could smell food from the kitchen, heard the muffled clatter of cutlery. It was later than she thought, and dinner was starting. She wondered where Wynn had gone to wait for her. She'd been at Ella's all afternoon, but she'd be back for dinner now.
"Someone's already cooked and saved you the trouble." Jude peered through the dust-sheened mesh, trying to peek inside. She wondered what he was thinking. How much of the boardinghouse was simply the town's best lodging, the place where Marsden happened to live and work? Where her mother was supposedly still employed as a housekeeper? And how much more was it the brothel it became at night, well-known among those with reason to visit? Where her mother was a prostitute?
"It's Dany's turn to cook for the house tonight," she said, "but Wynn and I usually eat in the kitchen, away from everyone."
His hand was still in hers, and he squeezed it as she hesitated at the door. The press of his skin climbed all the way into her mind and lodged there. "Is this okay, my being here? I can go."
"No, I asked you." As long as they stayed in the kitchen, it would be fine. And she wanted him to see her in a place that wasn't the covert, for him to see past what the town had already decided she was. "Come in, really."
She saw Jude do his best to not wrinkle his nose at the smell—and fail—as soon as they stepped into the kitchen, and she had to grin. "Dany's on a health kick, which means her walnut cheddar loaf."
"What's that? Wait. Please don't tell me we're about to find out."
"I couldn't do that to us." The place was nothing but familiar, but she felt oddly adrift as she watched him look all around, just as he did in the covert, as though trying to connect what he saw to what he knew to be true. Boardinghouse, yet brothel; woods, yet death; the Marsden right then to the Marsden he knew from school, through the eyes of the town.
Other than its size, she thought the kitchen was a typical one. Touches of family, even.
Wynn's artwork taped to the front of the fridge.
The small potted geraniums and cacti lined up on the windowsill.
A cereal bowl full of rocks and wild ginger on the counter next to the phone.
"This is like the set of a television show," Jude said, walking farther into the room, "what kitchens are supposed to look like." His expression was carefully blank. She saw him comparing it to his own, how his own fell short.
"You guys don't cook?" she asked.
"My father does once in a while. Usually because he needs to assure himself he's good about spending time with us."
_Us_. A slip.
She made sure her face showed no sign she'd noticed.
Wynn was nowhere in the kitchen. Which meant her sister—growing bored as she'd waited for Marsden, getting hungrier and hungrier while listening to the sounds of a meal she'd been restricted from—had likely snuck her way to the dining room.
Marsden dropped Jude's hand, his fingers lingering on hers a second longer than necessary before letting go. What she'd wondered about earlier in the covert, then, when he'd touched her—he didn't regret it.
But would that change later, when the leaves fell and the heat went away and they were back in school? When he saw her in the halls and realized he'd forgotten who she was?
Then Wynn was barreling into the kitchen, braids flying, clutching a wadded-up napkin.
"Whoa, runt, hold up." Marsden went to block her way. "What are you up to?"
Her sister opened up the napkin, giggling now. "Peaches asked me to throw this out for her. She said she never puts anything gross in her mouth without getting paid."
Marsden sighed, avoiding Jude's eyes. "Of course Peaches said that."
"It _is_ gross."
"I know. Wynn, you should have waited somewhere else for me—not in the dining room."
"I was just in the hall. Then Peaches called me over."
Jude came close, staring at the contents of the napkin. His expression made Wynn laugh again. "Is that the walnut cheddar loaf thing?"
"I told you I couldn't make us eat it," Marsden said.
" _Really_ good call."
Wynn skipped over to the trash to throw it away, and when she came back, she was grinning widely, clearly delighted that Jude was there. "You're staying for dinner, right?"
"If that's okay."
"Yes. I guess you actually like hanging around Marsden?"
Jude laughed, a real laugh. Marsden was unable to look away as his face lit up, the way his eyes crinkled just a bit at the corners. "Your sister's been really nice."
"She is—most of the time."
He grinned. "I guess I've been lucky."
Marsden tugged one of her sister's braids. "Waffles tonight, remember?" She glanced at Jude, half-apologetic. "She picked this morning—sorry, I should have said something."
"As long as it's not cold toast, I'm good."
"Hey, that toast fed a squirrel." She plugged in a waffle iron to heat, took out the mixing bowls and measuring spoons, and placed bags of sugar and flour on the counter. From the bag of flour, a bloom of white puffed out through the seal and dusted the side of her cheek like a drift of snow.
• • •
Wynn dragged a chair over to the cabinet. She climbed up to stand on it to reach a stack of plates inside. "You should have let me go with you."
"Well, think of these as make-up waffles. And that was Mom's decision, not mine."
Jude reached over Wynn's head to help her grab the dishware. "Make up for what?"
"Mars wanted to feed them _eggs_." Her sister's expression said she was still disgusted.
He offered an exaggerated wince. "No way."
Marsden shrugged, enjoying that he bothered to banter with a little kid. She lifted a shoulder to wipe her face clean, knew she was making the mess worse. "You can also blame Jude for coming by when he did."
"Sorry about that—I've always had shitty timing." He reached over and slowly wiped the flour from her cheek with his thumb. His eyes danced. Her skin jumped. But whether he saw it on her face or it was simply his own survival instinct, he'd already dropped his thumb and backed off before she could warn him away. And then Wynn was talking again, letting them both escape, and Marsden was glad.
"You swore," her sister said happily. She began to set the small table, using oversize plates that made her appear even tinier than she already actually was. Marsden saw her own build there, the way she'd been at eight—skinny, with a shaky wisp of a frame, scabbed-over knees—and hoped her sister would take her time growing out of it. "But I won't tell."
"I did swear, didn't I?" Jude grabbed syrup from the fridge and placed it on the table. "My manners are also pretty crappy."
"If my mom heard you, she'd say swearing is only because you don't know a smarter word. And then you sound stupid when you have to talk to people."
"People people, like friends?"
"No, like guests at the boardinghouse. She says I'll have to get used to talking to them. Be entertaining."
Marsden, busy beating eggs and oil and milk to a froth in the mixing bowl, tightened her grip. She cursed her mother and Nina in turns, with each slap of the spoon. "Our mother is big on the art of proper . . . conversation." She heard how stiff her voice was and decided there was no point in hiding it. Whatever Jude picked up from it, whatever it might let him think, him knowing or not knowing didn't change Shine being a prostitute. "She says it helps make people feel important."
Wynn wasn't done explaining to Jude the finer points of decorum as dictated by the boardinghouse. "Now if _Nina_ heard you swear, she'd say you have to go outside to do it." She placed napkins on the table, laid out cutlery on top of them just as Dany had taught her.
"Who's Nina again?" he asked.
"She owns the boardinghouse and is Mom's boss. Did you know our mom is a housekeeper here? She helps Dany clean the guest rooms."
Marsden poured chocolate chips into the waffle batter and stirred, her hands on cruise control. She was strung as tight as a wire, all her nerves electrified. A small and bitter part of her wanted to yell the truth at her sister, make her see the lie. But the bigger, defeated part of her remained grudgingly grateful to Shine and Nina for keeping Wynn in the dark. For sticking to the script she'd written for them.
"It sounds like hard work," Jude said.
Wynn poured lemonade into three glasses and stirred additional sugar into each one—Marsden heard Jude whistle under his breath, knew he was already feeling his teeth thud in anticipation of the excessive sweetness. "That's why we live here now," her sister said. "It was like a trade, after our dad died. Nina gave our mom her job. "
"And you get your own personal chef, too."
"Are you going to be coming here to eat all the time?" Wynn narrowed her eyes at him. "If you like Mars's waffles?"
Marsden poured batter onto the iron and closed the lid to let it cook, relieved that the conversation had turned—all her secrets, safe for one more night. "Everyone likes my waffles, Wynnifred Eldridge."
"Way to be _gross_ , saying my full name out loud. You know I _hate_ it."
"The real question is whether or not I would make them for him again."
"You mean you wouldn't?"
"Depends—I'll have to really think about it." She made a show of deep and deliberate consideration. "And it's your name, _Wynnifred_ , so you shouldn't hate it. But fine, I'll save it for special occasions."
"Depends on what?"
"How many waffles he can eat."
"Because I like him." Wynn spoke as though Jude weren't right there, hearing every word she said. Her sister's childish earnestness made Marsden's throat ache with an odd kind of loneliness, at the inevitable passing of time. "Do you like him, Mars?"
"I like him," she managed, trying to ignore Jude—who'd gone absolutely motionless at her side—and the steady burn of his gaze that lit the side of her cheek on fire.
Wynn plunked straws into the glasses of lemonade. "And he's not old, like most of the guy guests around here. Peaches always complains to Lucy about the really old ones she has to spend time with. She usually doesn't know I'm listening, but she's also way louder than she thinks she is."
Marsden's pulse beat at her ears, and now her face was burning from the inside out. Jude still hadn't moved.
"That's . . . enough," she whispered. She'd been wrong to believe she didn't care how much he figured out, no matter how likely it was that he already knew.
_Spending time with a guest._
Was that how Wynn deciphered seeing Nina's girls walk into their bedrooms with men? Did she imagine Peaches keeping them entertained with board games? With cat's cradle and thumb wars?
Marsden scrambled for escape from the moment. "Run out to the dining room for me, okay, Wynn? I bet most of the guests are done eating and have already gone out."
"Now you _want_ me to go into the dining room?" Her sister was confused. Jude moved to close the bags of flour and sugar.
Marsden nodded and began to place dirty spoons into the sink. "See if you can sneak three slices of the fruit flan. I made an extra-large one for tonight—we had so many fresh berries—so there'll be leftovers."
"Her name's really Wynnifred?" Jude asked as soon as Wynn was gone, his voice light, nearly teasing.
Suddenly, she felt more defiant than humiliated. It was seeing him there, decidedly not judging, almost like a challenge of his own: _Why do you care so much about my caring, when I don't?_
She nodded, her hands clumsy as she lifted the lid of the waffle iron. She pried cooked waffles off the hot plates, piled them onto a baking sheet, and placed the whole thing in the stove to keep warm. "Wynn for short."
"The nickname suits her: _Win_." He poured more batter from the bowl onto the iron. He shut the lid and leaned back against the counter. "She doesn't seem like the kind of kid who likes to wait."
"She's not, so I like to keep her in check—hence torturing her with her full name." Marsden found Wynn being so headstrong maddening. Her little sister always charging ahead meant the risk of seeing too much, too fast. But if she wasn't just as she was—was fine being molded and guided by Shine or Nina—that terrified Marsden just as much.
She was watching Jude stir more chocolate chips into the batter, thinking about his name and wondering about asking if it'd been his mother or his father who had chosen it, when the answer clicked in her brain.
Her grin, she knew, was decidedly smug—she should have realized it a long time ago. "Speaking of names, I just figured out something about yours."
He answered with his own grin, even as he narrowed his eyes at her apparent glee. "You look way too pleased with yourself for me to like the sound of this."
"Your folks were Beatles fans, weren't they?" Her father had liked the Beatles, had blasted them throughout their old duplex on occasion—while fixing a loose floorboard, while adjusting the TV's antennae. Those particular images of Grant Eldridge were faint, hazy. But the notes of the songs? They'd been etched into her heart for life, were tiny little song cells in the makeup of her blood.
Jude softened, and his grin melted into a small smile. "My mom was."
"Because 'Hey Jude' and 'Eleanor Rigby.'"
"I know. It's kind of ridiculous."
She transferred more waffles, set more to cooking. "And if you'd been a girl?"
"Eleanor."
Her mouth twitched, and then she gave in and laughed. "No."
"I'm not kidding. Rig used to call me Eleanor whenever I really got in his face about something."
"He could have made it up just to tease you. I'd do the same thing to Wynn."
"Maybe. But . . . I don't want to stop believing it now. Know what I mean?"
Marsden nodded. Of course she did. The Beatles coming on the radio never failed to stop her in her tracks, to keep her drowned inside a past where her father was not yet dead. She'd lift her hand to hover over the dial, fully intending that _this_ time she'd simply be able to turn it off and walk away. But she always ended up listening to the whole song, her heart feeling light, then going restless, then back again. For the rest of the day, she'd swear she could sense her father nearby, telling her she'd been mistaken about what she'd heard, how he hadn't said what he said.
Jude poured even more chocolate chips into the batter and began to stir lazily. "So, how did you get your name, then? With a grandmother named Star and a mother named Shine, I would have expected something different than Marsden."
"Such as?"
"Something . . . celestial, I guess. Astral, astronomical . . . _zodiacal._ "
She laughed. "Seems Wynn and I broke that trend."
"I guess she _does_ call you Mars all the time. Planets count, right?"
"She's the only one who does. She never used to—I was always just Marsden before. But then last year, she got into my Roman mythology textbook from school and—" She stopped, unsure of how to say it out loud.
"Whoa, hold up, I think I get it." He dropped the mixing spoon into the bowl, where it sunk to the bottom, out of sight. "Roman mythology?"
She nodded, feeling absurdly and annoyingly tongue-tied. She reached over to the cutlery caddy on the counter and pulled out a fresh fork.
"Rig had had a book on mythology. Powerful gods and goddesses, tons of messed-up families. Fighting and blood. Lots of falling in love and then cheating. Misunderstandings and punishments that lasted for all eternity. Fun stuff."
"All of that, yes."
"Mars, the god of war." Jude's voice had gone gentle. "That's what Wynn calls you instead of Marsden."
She slid the baking sheet with its modest stack of waffles out from the oven, unable to face him, his unwavering stare and the curiosity in it almost too intense. "She said it was because if she ever needed someone to be on her side, it'd be me. That I'd fight for her no matter what, do everything I could to save her."
"Of course you would. She's your little sister."
Marsden nodded and opened the waffle iron. Steam hissed, warm against her cheek; melted chocolate chips clung to the lid, a crust of sweetness. She jabbed the fork into the cooked waffles, placed them on a fresh platter, and piled the ones from the baking sheet on top. She heard the sound of Wynn coming back down the hall. _But it freaks me out, too, her needing me. What if I was too busy saving myself and there was nothing left for her? What if I save her doing all I can and there is nothing left for_ me _?_
She passed Jude the full platter and unplugged the iron. "These are the best chocolate-chip waffles you'll ever eat, I promise."
## twenty-two.
Inside Seconds, the air of the pawnshop was the same as most of its merchandise—used, old, sad.
Waiting impatiently for the one other customer in the place to leave, Marsden looked around, not even pretending to browse.
Late afternoon sun burned in through the cheap Roman shade that partially covered the front window, a mellow gold. The light had an old-time feel, but it was more washed-out than nostalgic, and it glided over the shelves full of things now in limbo. A clock with wooden animals inside, loaded on springs. Assorted porcelain tea sets with apparent certificates of authenticity. Small televisions, lamps, dartboards.
She knew each item was supposed to be worth something, to someone, somewhere. Maybe some of them were even on the rare side, were treasures in hiding.
But she was pretty sure most of it wouldn't compare to a piece of jewelry, whether its value lay in being brought in and sold or carried out, newly purchased. Hadley would know this, too. She wondered how many times he'd stood where she was standing, waiting for the store to clear to show Fitz his latest find.
The bell over the entrance rang, and the lone customer disappeared through the door, a bad replica of a Tiffany lamp in hand.
Marsden walked up to the counter, where the shop owner still stood counting cash into the till from the lamp purchase. A small and wiry kind of guy, he was surrounded by a wreath of smoke from the cigarette clamped between his lips. Hair worn in a severe buzz cut, a blond fringe of a crown over a narrowed hazel gaze.
Marsden rarely came into Seconds—had no reason to, with nothing to buy and no money to buy anything with—but she knew who Fitz was, even if she'd never spoken to him before. Glory was small enough that not many faces went unnoticed. But now she was seeing him through different eyes, knowing he'd been one of her father's best friends. She wanted to reach into his brain, take out his memories of Grant Eldridge, and have them be her own.
The counter was the kind with a glass top, its interior hollow to make room for display shelves. Marsden peered down and saw rows of jewelry, the gold of necklaces and the platinum of rings.
If Fitz asked, she could have told him the story behind too many of them, about the people Hadley had skimmed them from.
A necklace with a ruby pendant, its former owner a woman named Nicole Dremont. She'd lived three states over according to the tiny print of the covert column in the paper. She'd dumped a handful of soil into her purse.
A silver bracelet. Gina Laldeen, from California. She'd had a road map tucked into her pocket, directions to Glory indicated in bright red marker; covert dirt had darkened its folds.
A ring fat with inlaid stones had belonged to Sebastian Walsh, a local whose parking tickets, found in his wallet, revealed how much time he spent outside the casino. Needle tracks skewered the insides of both elbows, showing how often he was at the pharmacies. His palms had been coated with the covert—just as there was no way to tell if that had been intentional or he'd simply caught himself before falling, there was no way to tell if the overdose had been accidental or if some voice had drawn him to the land.
"What can I help you with?"
She glanced up, unsure of how to start. She had never seen a script on how to ask a stranger what they might be hiding about their old friend's death. "My name is—"
"Marsden." Fitz shut the till and met her gaze with his own, his expression curious. "Grant's daughter."
It shouldn't have surprised her that he would know her, but it did. What else did he know? "Yes, I—"
"Does Shine know you're here?" His expression was wary now, too.
Had her mother told her father's friends to stay away after he was dead? Was that the explanation behind Fitz's wariness? "No. Does it matter?"
"Not sure yet. If you're looking for something specific, I can tell you what's in the store. Is it a gift, or . . . ?"
"I have questions, actually—about my dad. So I guess what I'm looking for are answers."
Fitz leaned back against the wall, exhaled cigarette smoke. "Your mom probably wouldn't want you asking me. After your dad died, she was pretty clear she wanted us out of her life, which also meant out of yours. To Shine, we were just as bad as Grant's gambling."
"She doesn't have to know."
"Can't you ask her whatever you need?"
"I have. She can't help. Which is why I'm here."
He shrugged. "Okay. Makes no real difference to me."
"You guys were friends?"
"Sure, good ones. And Casper, and Eugene, and Quaid, too." At the mention of the dead Quaid, Fitz crossed himself clumsily. "The five of us would go to Decks and just hang out, playing blackjack or whatever."
"My dad always lost money."
"We all did. And then we'd win some. That's the game."
"The night he died, were you there? With him, at Decks?"
"Of course." Fitz's face clouded and turned unhappy. "The four of us were with him, as usual. Why?"
"The papers never said. They just said he'd been there, gambling, before he ended up in the Indigo."
"Well, we were there often enough that whoever the papers spoke to probably never thought to mention it. Like when you talk about the sky, you assume it's blue, unless you say otherwise."
"Did he leave alone?" Marsden watched him, this man her father would have trusted, and found herself hoping he hadn't been wrong to do so. Fitz didn't seem dangerous or even much of a liar. But he was also one of Glory's, a product of a town built on stories.
"That night? No, we all left together. Or, more accurately, the four of us stayed while your dad was the one who left. Me and Quaid and Casper and Eugene turned back after we said goodbye to Grant out in the parking lot. The place was hopping, more so than normal—your dad had gone on a roll, and people had stuck around to watch. Dash came out and called us back, said it was too early to leave. But Grant didn't change his mind, said he needed to leave."
"That wasn't in the papers, either. The part about Decks being especially full."
Fitz smiled, but it was wry. "Sky's blue, remember? This is Glory. There are gambling and card houses on every other block—there's always someone having a winning night somewhere. Not news. Just like it's not news when someone's losing a week's pay somewhere else."
Marsden knew her father had had those nights. She'd seen Shine cry over them. "Did he win a lot that night?"
"Four grand."
She was startled. Eight years ago, four grand would have gone a long way for a family of three with another baby coming. It would have done wonders toward appeasing a young mother who had more things to worry about than celebrate.
"Grant kept talking about how he couldn't wait to tell your mom. I hadn't seen him that happy in a long time. And you know, the guy didn't win any more often than us, but it was sure something to watch when he did. As though those cards were talking to him directly. Or everyone else's had turned transparent, just for him. So, yeah, no surprise that people gathered to watch. Just as it was never a surprise when some of those people decided they knew Grant like a friend, talking him up, wanting to absorb some of whatever luck he was having. That night was no different."
She thought of that four grand. Her father's empty pockets. "Who were they?"
"Just the same old guys who clung to everyone who had a winning hand. And the few out-of-towners who always end up drunk enough to do it too, forgetting they're not locals. That night, there was this one guy watching Grant play, and I thought he was just one of those drive-bys. But then I overheard him and your dad talking. Turned out they knew each other, seemed to go back a bit together, even though I'd never seen the guy before. But that was Grant. Everyone claimed to know him."
Shine had said the same thing, Marsden remembered. _Grant was like that, making people love him too easily._
Shine had also said this of someone she'd known for a long time: _Your father knew him, too. They were friendly enough._
Brom Innes.
The man she'd chosen to save her.
Marsden shuddered. Was it possible it'd been _Brom_ there that night at Decks, watching those games of blackjack? Could he have waited for her father to leave, knowing he'd won big, then followed him along the darkened highway, the crash of the Indigo and the building storm keeping him faded, unnoticed in the background?
Brom, who had likely loved her mother in secret, because Grant Eldridge had been in the way?
The idea left her cold—robbery was one thing, murder something else entirely. She forced the ugly thought, the chance that for eight years she'd considered all the wrong things, away. "That guy, was his name Brom Innes?"
The shop owner lit a fresh cigarette. "Never asked, and he never told."
"What did he look like? Average height, light-brown hair, pale-blue eyes?" Even her description was bland and forgettable, the way she would describe a bowl of oatmeal. Just the way Brom was.
Fitz scratched his head. "I can't remember. I don't know. Maybe?"
"If I brought a photo, could you recognize him, do you think?" Peaches had an instant camera she could borrow.
"Yeah, maybe." He sounded doubtful. She didn't blame him. Eight years, and she was asking him to recall oatmeal.
"You look a lot like Grant, you know," Fitz continued. "He used to keep a photo of you in his wallet. Showed it around once in a while, like we all hadn't seen it before."
"He did?" It was such a normal thing to do, when their family hadn't seemed very normal at all, and Marsden's throat went tight.
"I mean, he never really talked about you or your mom all that much. It always left him moody or quiet. Everyone's got their fair share of demons, right? With Grant, they were all to do with family." Ash dropped from Fitz's cigarette onto the glass counter, a gray snowstorm. His face turned embarrassed. "Sorry. But it was what it was."
"No, it's . . . fine." And it was, though it was odd to hear someone talk about her father with more admiration than anger.
"They were his weakness, you know? Cards. Each time he walked out of Decks with less than he'd gone in with, he knew he'd failed you guys. He could go from feeling on top of the world to lower than dirt, all in the span of a game, and you'd just see his eyes change."
"You don't think it was an accident, him dying." She knew Fitz would hear it as an accusation, but she blamed herself, too, for also believing what the town believed—that her father had walked into the Indigo all on his own.
"I don't know what to believe. Just like we can never be sure what happened to all that money he'd won. Taken by the tide after the storm forced him into the river? Lost at some other gambling house that he stopped at on the way home, not knowing the blackjack gods had already turned their backs on him?" The heart of Fitz's cigarette flamed volcano red, then white hot, and over it, the pity in his gaze was nearly as searing. "The thing is, those gods might have blessed Grant that night, him winning what he did, but they still weren't a match for the demons your dad had living in his head."
Outside the pawnshop, the sun had fallen low, a wide, hazy band of yellow slung across rooftops. The dust that filled the air was now road dust, the dust of summer heat, instead of the dust of the used, the old.
Marsden biked home, thinking of this mysterious man she now had to find, so she could blame him for everything. Even if that man turned out to be the one her mother had decided she needed, the man her father had believed a friend.
## twenty-three.
Staring out of her bedroom window, Marsden rubbed her eyes hard to make sure she wasn't seeing things. Most people driving to her family's land were careful to leave their cars parked farther up along the highway, so it wasn't obvious right away where their owners had gone. Only once the covert revealed a body did a car get towed, the puzzle of the abandoned vehicle solved.
The brown sedan—sides filmed over with road dust, rust peeking out in spots—was parked only feet away from the gaping mouth of the covert.
She scrambled out of bed and into shorts and a T-shirt. After racing around to find them, she shoved her gardening gloves into her pocket. Wynn had stayed over Caitlyn's house last night, now that her friend's family was back from camping. It was why Marsden had let herself sleep in, delaying her dawn check of the covert, and now wished she hadn't. Because Nina would know, too, as soon as she saw the sedan, what it meant. She would call Hadley. He'd beat Marsden to the body.
Her breath came in gasps by the time she reached the wooden fence of the covert. Sweat dotted her forehead. The air was already blazing despite the early hour, singeing the town.
It took her only minutes.
She rounded a stand of pine trees and stumbled right over him. Her gloved hands landed on his front, her fingers sinking into the fabric of his shirt. An older man, with a lined face. Beneath the dappled sunlight, the covert's supposedly holy soil lay in a streak across his forehead.
Her hands worked quickly as she searched his pants pockets.
One held a handful of soil; the other, a wallet and two one-hundred-dollar bills. She tucked the bills into her own pocket with shaking hands. It was the most cash she'd ever skimmed from a single body.
The jewelry that he wore—a fancy-enough watch, a nice-looking gold ring—was likely worth something and yet completely useless to her.
For a moment, Marsden was furious that Hadley would profit. That Fitz would, too, however he might feel about it. She reminded herself that she only stole out of necessity, but her fury simply changed to a kind of queasiness that filled her throat.
And there was no gun in sight. No clear sign of injury. However he died would remain a secret, unless they revealed it in the paper or on the radio. They didn't always do so, but sometimes it was included with the reports of his name, something she still needed.
She figured out a long time ago that a lack of answers could be just as hard to think about as finality. Because uncertainty always made her thoughts circle back to Grant Eldridge.
In an alternate world, this man might have been her father, the meaning of his death always to be a question.
In yet another, his cash might have been Rigby's note.
_I'm sorry, Jude, I never wanted you to know._
Those were Rigby's words, what he'd scrawled on that small piece of paper.
Marsden could recite them by heart by now, so deeply were they burned into her memory from reading his note over and over again. She'd hadn't known him, had never even spoken to him. But in her mind, he was another version of Jude, with the same lightly speckled eyes that hid secrets, except he'd be less angry and more sad and doing all he could to keep his little brother from hurting any more than he was.
_I told myself it was Dad._
_I didn't want to stop._
_But I didn't mean to do it._
Jude reading those words might change him forever. Might make him think the way she thought. Might fill him as full of shadows as she was, so that he was as warped by the covert as she was. Because he would read those words about death and, instead of thinking about loss as anyone else might, he'd think of something darker, something closer to violence. It was what leaped into her mind—against her will, almost subconsciously—reading them.
It was also what convinced her that Rigby had never really meant for his brother to find his note, not deep down. He would have been distraught when he wrote it and then stuck it in his wallet, folded into bills like the secret it had been. He would have been confused and vulnerable, not thinking straight.
And what if someone else had found that note even before Jude or she had? Like another skimmer, who would have found it and discarded it.
She didn't think Rigby would overlook that chance. Him writing that note, it'd been as though he'd confessed to a priest and that priest had then sworn to silence forever. Rigby had intended to die as thoroughly as though he'd disappeared into thin air.
_So, fine, I'll be your priest, then, Rigby_ , Marsden thought as she finally got to her feet. _A_ n _d I will not judge._
Making sure the scene was as she'd found it, she tucked her gloves away and walked back to the boardinghouse, thinking of what came next.
First, she would call Hadley and tell him the news. He would come to the boardinghouse and talk to Nina about the tragedy of yet another body. He would go to the covert, more likely than not to skim the watch and ring, and she wouldn't be able to stop him.
Then she would find Peaches. She still needed to borrow her camera to take a photo of Brom . . . somehow. Marsden again heard Fitz's recalling the night her father drowned, his report of a faceless man who'd been her father's friend. The chill that ran its finger down her neck made her wish, for once, that the sun in Glory would burn even hotter.
She would make breakfast for the guests and then eat by herself—Wynn wouldn't be back until late afternoon.
And then Jude would be over.
Just the other day, she'd blurted out that she lived crippled with guilt and that her little sister called her by a name she could never live up to. She'd held his hand and pretended to not know a thing about skimmers. And then she'd brought him home and made him waffles.
Waffles.
When she could cook a freaking fantastic meal for more than a dozen people on any given day and barely break a sweat.
But he hadn't seemed to mind the meal in the least—or having Wynn around the whole time. And he'd been clear about not wanting to leave afterward. When they had finished eating and her sister had taken off to watch television to escape cleanup, she'd expected him to take off, too—Wouldn't his father be wondering where he was? she thought. But he hadn't, instead staying to help do the dishes. She remembered the shape and movements of his large hands as he washed and she dried, how nice his voice sounded in the wide depths of the kitchen, the laser beam of his eyes on her as she walked around, putting dishes away. And when Dany had come to tell him it was time for him to go home, his gaze—somehow devilish and soft and a bit perplexed all at once—locked on Marsden's as he'd said goodbye, his smile painting itself onto her brain as he finally turned at the last minute and disappeared into the night.
As soon as the door shut behind him, Dany had come over to where Marsden was standing by the sink, squeezed her arm, and smiled so knowingly that the skin on Marsden's arms prickled to life with goose bumps.
"Ever see a forest fire when it's just on the cusp of really catching?" Dany had asked. "Right before it takes on a life of its own and it's beautiful to watch but also frightening?"
Marsden shook her head and felt her heart twist.
"Watch Jude Ambrose's eyes the next time he looks at you, and you'll know what I mean."
## twenty-four.
Nina was in the kitchen, dressed as she always dressed, carefully and for company.
Sometimes Marsden forgot that the boardinghouse owner and Shine were the same age, each seeming older than the other for different reasons. They'd gone to school together, had been semi-friends as teens. Then her mother had gotten pregnant and left school, while Nina graduated and went to college; having once been friends must have seemed like another lifetime. It wasn't until her mother became a widow with nothing to her name but a piece of land no one wanted to buy, and Nina took over as manager of her family's boardinghouse that sat next door to that land, that they reconnected in the strangest of ways.
She was at the table with a cup of coffee at her elbow and a half dozen mini blueberry pies on a plate in front of her—more of what Marsden had baked that night when she'd been too full of dread to sleep.
The coffee in the cup would be, she knew, as black and unforgiving as tar, unsullied by even a single grain of sugar. The sweet, fragrant pies, which Nina would have pulled from the freezer, would be merely lusted after and breathed upon.
As slim as a willow, her mother's boss had begun to worry lately about losing her figure.
Marsden could have assumed Nina was sitting at the table waiting for her, knowing that she wanted to talk to her again about becoming one of her girls. So far, Marsden had managed to avoid running into her alone.
But she wasn't the company Nina was looking for that morning, because seated across from her at the table was Hadley.
Marsden had missed seeing the cop's car parked outside the boardinghouse. She'd been distracted and thinking of cameras and drownings and Jude.
" _There_ you are." Nina pressed a rose-tipped hand to her front, the nails like gems against the paler pink of her blouse. Her brown bob swung as she shook her head, concern all over her face. "Please tell me you weren't in the covert this morning—I know you like to take walks there, even now."
_Even now._
Marsden tried not to roll her eyes.
Nina's show of distress over Marsden having found Rigby's body—someone so close to her age, with people in common—was for appearance's sake. Her mother's boss knew she was more effective as a cutthroat businessperson by being selective about when she showed her claws; bodies in the covert bothered her only because it was bad for the boardinghouse, and a nuisance to deal with.
More than the bodies that bothered her, though, were Marsden's reactions to them. Marsden knew it unsettled Nina, the way she was able to report a body and then go about her day. But Nina didn't know she needed those bodies more than she could ever be scared of them.
"No, I was walking along the river," she said, trying not to fidget, feeling stained by the covert. How much did she smell of ginger when what she needed was the scent of the mud from the Indigo? "Why?"
"Did you see a car parked along the highway out there?" Hadley asked. He took a sip of coffee, slurping just the slightest. His coffee would be thick with cream and sugar and lazy indulgence. "A brown Buick?"
"Yes, it's still out there now." She couldn't lie about that. There was no way she could have missed seeing that car if she'd been where she said she was.
"It appears to have been abandoned. The owner . . . Well, unfortunately, we think he went into the covert. You understand what that means."
She nodded. "Suicide."
"Most likely." The note of sadness in Hadley's voice almost sounded authentic. "People don't go there for much else, as you know. It's a terrible state of affairs—not just for your family, but for Glory as a whole. We're not sensationalized in the news much anymore, but people still know, and they still talk. Unfortunately, we can't just block off the entire west end of town from the world."
"If you want to do something, patrol the area more. Get Glory to pay for a proper fence. Cement over the covert so people have no dirt to touch." It was a mistake to goad the cop, but the shame she lived with—actually needing the covert the way it was for her own purposes—was suddenly suffocating. She wanted Hadley with his too-sweet coffee to feel some of that shame, too. Nina paid the cops well to do as little as they did, at both their conveniences.
The money stuffed into her pocket seemed to grow heavier.
The head cop stared at her with flinty eyes. "Yeah, well, too bad we can't change town history."
Marsden fought to keep her expression neutral at the dig at her great-great-uncle. It stung being blamed, but it wasn't wrong. And she'd half expected it, knowing Hadley would recognize her own dig.
"I called the police as soon as I saw that car out there." Nina's bob shimmied again. "And I'm glad Shine's in town, as she'd be distressed to see this. She always is, each time this happens, considering it's her property—as you're affected, too, Marsden. I was so very worried of what you might see."
"Where is she?" Marsden asked. "Do you know when she'll be back?" She wondered if Brom was with her. If Hadley weren't there, she might have asked Nina, but she didn't want the corrupt cop to know any more than he had to.
"She's at the mall," Nina answered, "with plans to be back after lunch."
The revelation at Seconds—the possibility that Brom had been there with her father that night—had stuck deep, like something caught in her teeth, so she'd decided she would take more notice of her mother's lover. Until now, she'd never had reason to watch him, to even want to acknowledge his presence. But things had changed. She wanted to know all about his days (she already knew too much about his nights). Shine had said his time at the boardinghouse was when he had weeks off from his job. So where did he go during the days? What was he doing to fill his hours when he wasn't busy "courting" her mother, trying to be who her father had been? Or was he simply with her all the time?
Hadley lumbered to his feet, tugged his hat back on. "I'll tell Shine myself if I find anything."
Marsden eased away, her skin crawling as Nina saw the cop out. Of course he would tell Shine himself. He took three of the mini blueberry pies on his way, his hands soft and white and absurdly delicate as he slid them off the plate. She could imagine his fingers on the body in the covert, not being careful at all as he skimmed from it before walking back to his car.
In the bedroom she shared with Wynn, Marsden dug out the pair of old boots from the closet and slipped in the money—she would change the bills for smaller ones from the till later. She used to store her cash in between the pages of books, but then Wynn started wanting to read what she read. She considered putting all of into the bank, but the owner liked to gossip on top of being friends with too many people in Glory. So she'd bought the used boots from a garage sale a couple of years ago, realizing they were just ugly enough that no one else in the boardinghouse would even think about touching them. Beneath the pair of socks she kept pushed down into them, the boots held all the money she'd saved over the years. They held her and Wynn's escape from Glory.
She left her room and went upstairs. It was still morning, but late enough that Peaches would be alone in her bedroom, her john gone. Marsden needed to ask to borrow her camera.
She silently named the girls as she passed their rooms: Kim, early thirties, whose boyfriend lived overseas; Wendy, late twenties, who used to teach Spanish part-time; Bridget, mid-thirties, who talked about one day going to fashion school. Shine. Marsden remembered how once, when she was too young to know that her mother was no longer employed as just the housekeeper, she'd heard a man's voice come from behind her door. She'd thought absolutely nothing of it until later that night when she fell asleep wondering if her mother had actually met someone else and was going to get remarried. If he would ever be willing to drink pretend tea with her.
As she neared Peaches's room, she heard laughter from behind its closed door. Wynn's.
Marsden's heart sank as she knocked.
She really wasn't much different from her sister, wanting something from Nina's girls. But Wynn wanted to learn their secrets, while Marsden had too many to hide—she needed Peaches and Lucy and all the others to stay away.
## twenty-five.
_She said Peaches and Lucy can show me how to do my hair and makeup. So I can look as nice as I want._
Lucy came to the door. The scent she brought with her was not her own, but the heavy musk Peaches liked to wear. "Marsden?"
"I was just looking for Wynn."
Lucy opened the door wider and motioned her inside. "Oh, she's with us, in here. She was wandering around the house bored."
Marsden had seen Peaches's room before, but only in flashes, and only when she was helping Dany the times she was running behind—to drop off laundry or ask about bedding, to double-check about a spot on a dress. Sometimes, though, when it was just Peaches, Marsden was tempted to linger, to study the older girl and see past what she worked as. To pretend her room was that of a typical twenty-somethings, that she and Peaches were typical, too, and something close to friends.
Pale pastel floral prints and framed mirrors covered nearly every inch of the gray-papered walls. The bed was a king-size patch of yellow, topped with blue throw pillows, its headboard a panel of cream corduroy. A crystal chandelier sprawled from the ceiling like an oversized flower. Instead of a vanity, Peaches used a long wooden table that spanned the entire length of the back wall, a long mirror propped up on it so that it reminded Marsden of a ballet studio. Shoes and perfume bottles and sparkling coils of jewelry were scattered on nearly every flat surface in the room.
Everything was cluttered, overwhelming; she couldn't help but contrast it with her half of the bedroom she shared with Wynn, where her most important things were tucked into places no one could even see. As one of Nina's girls, Peaches's strengths were her exaggerated good looks, the way she swaggered in her femininity, her desires never a secret. Once, Nina had called her a barracuda, and Peaches had taken it as a compliment. But here in her room, her being a woman felt soft, not like a skill set. It left Marsden confused.
Who was the real Peaches? Where did the lines blur between person and performance? How far did she have to go before pulling back?
"Hi, Mars!" Wynn was sitting in a chair in front of the long table that doubled as a vanity. Her reflection waved madly. "Caitlyn's mom had an appointment this morning, so she had to bring me back early. But look—I'm getting my hair done!"
Standing behind her sister, winding a black lock around the curling iron in her hand, Peaches met Marsden's eyes in the long mirror. The cool smile on her face said she knew Marsden's wariness and was amused. "A royal coming to visit the commoners?"
"If you say so."
Peaches snorted. "It's going to be a bit before I finish, so you might as well sit. Your sister's hair is even thicker than mine."
Marsden sat tentatively on the edge of the yellow bed. She tried not to think about how Dany had yet to change the bedding for any of the rooms. "Thanks for keeping her company." She knew she sounded stiff, maybe even insincere, when she was only feeling awkward. "I didn't know she was home, or I would have found her."
"I don't mind. I've been meaning to do this for months anyway. I know she's been asking." Peaches winked at Wynn in the mirror. "And we'll do our faces together afterward."
"She's eight," Marsden said.
"And?"
"And she's eight. Take her for ice cream if you want to spend time with her."
Peaches sighed, released the lock of hair from the iron, and wound another. "It's lip gloss, not a career choice."
Marsden stared at her in the mirror. "Maybe if we didn't live here," she said quietly, "in this house, or if Glory was any different. Maybe if Shine was anything else."
In the mirror, Wynn's gaze darted from Marsden to Peaches, confused.
Lucy sat down beside Marsden on the bed. "Can I try something new with your hair?" she asked. "You have the nicest hair, and I've been dying to experiment."
Marsden lifted a hand to it, felt the thick, familiar strands. Aside from a ponytail, she hated fussing with it. It was a waste of time, and watching herself try to style it, it was always Shine she saw in the mirror. "No, it's okay."
"Mars _never_ styles her hair." Wynn bobbed her head despite the curling iron still attached to it. Her whole head was now covered with spiraling black curls. Marsden wouldn't have been able to do that for her, not in a million years. She would have burned both of them trying. "It'd be really pretty if she tried, I bet."
"Thanks, runt. Very sweet."
Lucy smiled at Wynn. "Your sister's hair is pretty as is."
"Pretti _er_ , I mean."
"Nice save," Marsden said. She got up, tired of her hair being the center of attention. "Here, I'll do yours," she said to Lucy. "French braid. I haven't forgotten, I don't think."
Lucy slid into the chair next to Wynn, and Marsden stood next to Peaches. In the mirror, the four of them made for a disjointed image, all different colors and desires. Marsden thought their eyes best said who they were: Peaches's bright, sharp hazel; Lucy's quiet pools of pale green; Wynn's sparkling, curious brown; Marsden's the same brown but wary instead of sparkling, careful instead of curious. She saw the window of Peaches's room in the reflection, too, thrown there by a mirror on the opposite wall. The trees of the covert filled it like a smear of gray shadow. It seemed nearly like another eye in the mirror, watching them, and Marsden dropped her gaze back to her braiding.
"Who taught you how to do that?" Wynn asked, sounding almost hurt as she watched Marsden weave sections of Lucy's hair together, as though a secret had been kept from her.
"Nina, actually, years ago." She'd forgotten until just that moment, and now she wondered about the undertones of the gesture, of the remembered feel of rose-tipped fingers smoothing out her stubbornly thick hair. How much of that had been a gesture of comfort, how much an early mark of ownership?
"Can you do mine like that one day?" her sister asked as Marsden's hands worked. It was taking a bit for her fingers to remember, but soon they were doing well enough that the braid stopped trying to fall apart.
She had to grin at the awe in her sister's voice. For years, she'd been keeping her from seeing dead bodies in the covert, but it seemed Wynn was more impressed with her ability to twist hair together. "Sure." It surprised her that she half meant it. That maybe she actually would. For the moment, the world of the night brothel, the future Shine and Nina threatened, seemed far away.
Peaches tugged at some of Wynn's curls. "Hey, I'm starting to feel like a third wheel."
"I love my curls, Peaches!"
"Another nice save, and _fast_. Didn't even blink, either. I smell a future politician."
"What's that?"
"Someone who works in the government."
Wynn shook her head. "I only want to work here when I get older. In the boardinghouse."
Marsden's fingers slowed on Lucy's hair, listening for more and absolutely dreading it.
"Like a cook, same as your sister?" Peaches's gaze met Marsden's in the mirror, and Marsden saw how she knew exactly what terrified her and actually sympathized. "Or a housekeeper like your mom?"
Wynn shrugged. "I just want to live here, like you and Lucy and the other girls do. Like forever guests—so I never have to leave."
"You know, it was the same for me when I was a little girl," Lucy said. "I couldn't imagine ever wanting to leave Florida. But then I got older, and I realized home was just one tiny part of the world."
"Do you miss it?" Wynn's eyes were on Lucy's in the mirror, curious against sad. "Home, I mean?"
Distress flickered across Lucy's face. "I miss . . . parts of it."
"Do you ever want to go back?"
"I don't think so, no."
"You don't miss any—?"
"Talking about Florida is giving me a headache." Peaches unwound the last of Wynn's hair from the iron and unplugged the appliance from the wall with a yank. She glided her hand down the length of Lucy's arm—Marsden sensed the comfort in the gesture, the need to soothe—then turned to Wynn. "Come help me make punch?"
After they left, Lucy swept her braid over her shoulder. "Just a hairdo, but you see Wynn's possible future." Her voice was soft. "The idea scares you."
Marsden stiffened. "Nina does. My mother. This whole entire town."
"Do we disgust you? Me and Peaches? The other girls?"
"No, I never said that."
"But our work does."
Marsden flushed. "I'm trying to remember they're separate things. I'm not always able to. Glory makes it easy to keep things mixed up." She would know.
It was a few seconds before Lucy spoke again. "Wynn doesn't mean it, you know. About never wanting to leave. She'll change her mind once she finds out about the boardinghouse, about your mom."
" _You_ chose to stay here," Marsden whispered, "and you didn't have to. You could have kept running."
Lucy smiled in the mirror. But her gaze was distant, as though she were already partially elsewhere. "Being here, I got used to it, I guess. And then I had Peaches. And Wynn has you, her big sister to watch out for her—how could she not be fine, right? How could you not make sure she escapes from this town?"
Marsden thought of the money she'd saved that still wasn't enough. She thought of what Nina wanted from her and of her mother begging her to stay.
She finally managed a smile in return, but she couldn't think of a single thing to say.
## twenty-six.
Marsden didn't care that the mayor's relatives were in town, or that they were from somewhere south of Glory and it was their first visit west.
She especially didn't care that out of all the hotels and motels in town, they'd chosen to stay at Nina's boardinghouse.
But Nina cared, which meant Dany had to care, which meant all of a sudden, nothing was good enough.
"Let's go over the dinner menu again." Dany pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and flipped pages in her binder.
At the sink, Marsden looked at the large assortment of mixing bowls still left on the counter, at the tiny dots of butter and sugar still sparkling on the backs of her hands. The entire room smelled of the lemon-berry pound cake that was now baking for that night's dessert. It was one of the kitchen's most popular summer desserts, and Nina had asked that Marsden make it specifically.
Marsden rolled her eyes and began to scrub dishes. "This is all because of the mayor's family, isn't it?"
"Yes." Dany sighed. "Sorry, but I'm now wondering about our choice of salad. And it's early enough in the day that we have time yet to make adjustments."
"What's wrong with a Caesar?"
"It's pedestrian. I know Nina would prefer something more refined."
Nina, wanting refined for the dining room while her prostitutes would be seated in it, dressed to the nines. "How about we just get more of that rocket? It's spicy enough to be different."
" _Too_ different, I think." Dany laughed, though she still looked slightly desperate. "What if they complain?"
"Okay, we keep the Caesar, but add avocados and grilled garlic shrimp, and then switch out the croutons for baked parmesan chips."
"That sounds perfect—mind heading out to town to get everything? I'll finish cleaning up here, and then I'm supposed to help supervise Wynn and her friends at a birthday party. I'm already feeling sorry for the poor mother who volunteered her house."
"Sure." And she would stop at Seconds afterward to ask Fitz about a certain photo.
After borrowing Peaches's instant camera yesterday, she'd gone into the dining room right before dinner and taken pictures of the food, telling anyone who asked that she was getting a mock-up for a new brochure for the boardinghouse. Brom hadn't even cared when she'd taken one of him, under the pretense of focusing on the table in the background—he'd been too busy telling Shine another story that had her mother laughing appealingly, appreciatively.
Marsden had hidden the photo inside a book in her room. She'd bring it today and show it to Fitz. _Was this him? The man who might have destroyed everything? Over money, over my mother?_
"Oh, one more thing." Dany wasn't done.
"Hmm?"
"Nina wants more flowers at the table tonight, and Evergreen has the best selection in town."
•••
She locked her bike at the rack just outside of the garden center, double-checked that the paper bag of groceries stuffed whole into her backpack hadn't self-combusted on the short ride over, and pulled open the door to Evergreen.
Her heart was pounding a bit faster than normal, and it sat in her throat like a tiny, nervous drum. She knew Jude was working, and she had no intention of disturbing him, but still. She'd never been on his turf before. Lunch at the Burger Pit had come the closest, but that had really been Abbot's territory, and Marsden had walked away sure she'd held her own. She'd never really considered Abbot an enemy, though, or the person who would cause her the most grief for having known them.
That person would be, she was coming to believe more and more, Jude himself.
Every second of the day she regretted saying yes to him being in the covert, praying he'd find Rigby's time capsule right then so he could finally leave her alone—just as every second she wanted to ask him if they were going to be friends come fall, if he was feeling safer at home and how his father was, if thinking about his brother was beginning to hurt less.
Inside the store, Marsden faced a sun-washed space, its yellow light afloat with bits of pollen and slow-wheeling motes of dust. Storefront window as wide as the room, crossed with panes. Blooms everywhere, their colors a spectrum that covered all ends of the earth: arrangements of dove-gray pussy willows, baskets heaped with pink and purple and blue cottage garden plants, a stand overflowing with freshly potted geraniums exploding into bursts of oranges and reds.
Used to the intoxication of wild ginger, it took a moment for her nose to react to the presence of other plants, and when it did, Marsden was positively steamrolled with scent, breathing in miles of it—lavender's plushness, rose's tang, the bright nip of sweet peas.
Evergreen wasn't the only florist in town, but it was likely the most memorable—no other place seemed capable of being both so riotous and calming at the same time.
Unsure of what to buy—Dany had said something summery and casual—and wanting to leave before Jude saw her, she looked around and hurriedly decided on sunflowers. There was a huge table display of them off to the side of the room, generous handfuls of their oversize yellow blooms stuck into old-fashioned milk pitchers. They sang of picnics and lemonade and kites on the breeze, all kinds of summery things—they'd be perfect.
That Marsden had once heard Nina say snippily to Dany that she thought they were cheap looking only made them even more perfect for the job.
There were other customers at the display, a group of women swarming over the flowers like bees over honey, charmed by the burst of sunshine-hued petals. She decided to wait them out and moved over to poke at a nearby display of tall ornamental grasses, a fountain of blue-green plumes that went higher than her head. _Pampas Grass_ , the label said, and Marsden wondered if it was Jude's handwriting. She could trace out Rigby's by heart, but she had never come across his brother's.
When the chattering women were gone, she turned back toward the table, determined to finally get Dany's flowers.
There was still another customer there, a tall, broad-shouldered man with a stern expression that was, at the moment, annoyed. Cool blue eyes, hair the shade of wheat, pale skin that had somehow escaped the sun. He wore a dress shirt and black pants and carried a briefcase, clearly about to head into an office somewhere. He looked at his watch and grimaced.
Leo Ambrose had never been a patient man.
Marsden's mind went blank, and before she could question what made her do it, she simply turned back around and ducked behind the stand of ornamental grasses.
Apparently, she didn't mind waiting him out, either.
Her bag with its ingredients for dinner was starting to pull at her shoulders, and over the scent of flowers that permeated the space, she could smell the garlic that coated the shrimp, the smokiness of parmesan.
Marsden nudged two fat, feathered plumes of grass apart and peeked through.
Jude's father, still surrounded by summer, was glancing at his watch again, his impatience now nearly a glower.
She could see Jude in the man's features. He'd gotten his tall, lanky build, his intricately sculptured hands, his easy-to-curl mouth from his father. From his mother, his dark skin and eyes and wavy near-black hair.
So it deeply confused Marsden how Leo could look at his sons, be reminded of his wife, and still be able to hurt them—as the story went in Glory, he'd been shattered when Isabel had died. She'd been everything to him—shouldn't his sons by her be just as important?
But maybe it wasn't so much about love as it was about hate—or, at least, trying to get over that love. After all, Shine looked at her daughters and was reminded of a man who'd left her in the worst position possible. Maybe it was just about survival.
"Roadie says you were looking for me?"
Through the blue-green grass, she watched Jude approach his father. His eyes were cold, letting Leo knew he wasn't welcome. Weeks rewound, spun back, and she was looking at the same boy who'd walked the halls at school.
"You've been making yourself scarce at home, so I had no choice but to come to your work. We'll talk here if we have to." Leo's voice was stiff, tinged with resentment for finding himself where he was. Still Marsden could hear the elegant clip of his accent beneath it, still hear its smooth, carefully cultivated tones. Leo, clinging to his East Coast roots despite more than a decade of living in Glory—or, perhaps, because of it.
Jude took off his work gloves and shoved them into his back pocket. "Well, I'm still on the clock, so what's up?"
"I admit I haven't been around as much as I could be, either, since your brother. But I think we should make more of an effort to spend time together as a family."
"I don't think so."
Leo sighed. "You're not going to make this easy, are you?"
"Am I supposed to?"
"Yes. Who else do you have left now?"
"I'm fine."
"You have to stop blaming me for Rigby."
Jude went still, the sudden silence heavy in Marsden's ears. Beneath it, she was vaguely aware of the rest of the shop, of customers continuing to linger over blossoms and blooms and other living things, their soft, approving murmurs a near chant. Her breath made the blue-green grass at her face shimmy and flutter.
"You beat the living hell out of him for years, Dad," Jude finally said. "Don't think you had nothing to do with it."
"I didn't pull the trigger."
"Then you held the gun."
"You'd have to be blind to believe him going to that damn covert with a gun wasn't a long time coming."
" _Eight years coming_ —science fair when I was nine, remember? Are you finally going to tell me what you guys argued about that night?"
"No. It's over. Let it go."
Jude shook his head, his face hard. "I can't."
Marsden had had the same conversation with Shine about her father's death, why _she_ couldn't let it go. The echo of that moment in the washroom of the boardinghouse lobby rang in her ears now, pushed right up alongside the echo of Jude's and Leo's words, until it all became hard to tell apart.
" _You need to_." Leo's knuckles were white around the handle of his briefcase, and his words came in a sawing kind of rasp, their elegance shattered. "There are far worse things than choosing to see only what's good and ignoring the rest. Some things are meant to stay buried, and some people should not have to be changed. Trust me."
"I can't do that, either."
"Will you just—"
"Hey, Jude—sorry, but where are these supposed to go again?"
Jude and his father turned to look at the worker who'd come up behind them. He was pushing a wide dolly full of flats of herbs, the colors of the plants all greens and silvers. Marsden recognized mints and basils and thymes, their branches starting to sprawl out of their individual baskets.
"Um, by the bedding plants." Jude gestured with his thumb toward the back of the shop. "Cleared off some space on the display unit for you already."
The worker nodded his thanks, and he wheeled the dolly away, leaving Jude and Leo still gripped by silence and Marsden not daring to move as she peeked at them through grass.
"You know, your mother used to grow plants like those herbs," Leo said quietly. Marsden felt a twinge of pity for him—his attempts at healing things with his remaining son were more than awkward. She thought it was like watching someone try to reach shore in a leaky boat while turned halfway around, and then someone standing on that same shore yelling at them to not bother. "After she died, your brother did his best to save them all, even though she had dozens growing everywhere, scattered all over the house and yard. He even went and planted one out in the covert when he saw that it needed shade, not sun, to thrive."
Marsden's pulse leaped at the words, knew Jude's was doing the same by the stunned expression on his face.
With a slightly shaky hand, she pushed the blue-green grass at her face a bit farther apart, leaned in closer toward Jude and his father, and learned how a seven-year-old Rigby Ambrose, in the name of mourning, came to be the one who changed her family's covert forever.
## twenty-seven.
As the front door swung shut behind Leo, Marsden crept from her hiding spot and approached Jude, wanting to see if he'd recovered from the discovery. Still thoroughly surrounded by a backdrop of golden sunflowers, the image of how he looked in that moment gained a surreal quality, like a painting from an era too innocent for the capacity for secrets.
He stared unblinkingly at the front door, as though he could reach through it and drag his father back and shake from him more facts, more details, more _Rigby_.
"Jude," she said.
His confusion at seeing her there was whole, his surprise making her feel bad for having hidden. "Marsden? When did you get here? You've been waiting?"
"I didn't want to interrupt you and your dad while you guys were talking, so I just . . . stayed out of sight. Behind the ornamental grass. The, um, pampas."
"Oh." He exhaled and shoved his hair off his face. His half smile said he was glad to see her, but it was also distracted, full of restlessness. "So you heard all of that, then. About Rig, our mom's plant."
She nodded. It had been his brother all along, the reason why her covert grew all its wild ginger. She pictured a little boy as he biked along the Indigo, how he would have felt the sun setting but kept pedaling anyway. He would have followed the curve of the river's crooked elbow to get to a place with way too little light and way too much darkness.
Rigby had been the beginning.
And fourteen years later, he would be back there again. Not with something to save, but instead with something to end.
Only one time had she known for certain that Rigby had gone to the covert, and it'd been with a gun. Whether he'd been there before that, with a cookie tin for a time capsule, she and Jude had ever only guessed. Now, knowing for sure that he _had_ been there before, but with his dead mother's dying plant tucked beneath his arm—it was all too circular, a fated chain of events too close to impossible.
Just how far back did her past coincide with Jude's? From how deep did her family's roots start pulling at his, his at hers?
"You know what this means, don't you?" he asked. "About your covert and how everyone in town says it's cursed, even as they say it's not?"
Marsden rubbed at her arms, nearly cold. Images of the bodies she'd seen in the covert flashed through her mind. "It _is_ cursed."
"But for one time, at least, it really wasn't. When Rig went out there right after our mom died to plant that ginger, to then come back and know he was ready to go on . . ."
She looked away, unable to face his need for his brother to have been anyone other than who he'd been. Because in the end, Rigby had thought the same as all the others who'd ever walked into her family's covert and not come back out.
That they were beyond saving.
She could blame them for having that hopelessness, for keeping the covert and its stories going the way they did, even as she was also sorry for them. But really she blamed the whole town of Glory and the scope of its misery. She blamed her great-great-uncle for his madness, her father for leaving, her mother for refusing to. The covert was built right into her, and she was no longer sure that escape was possible.
"Why do I smell garlic?" Jude was sniffing the air, confused again.
She had to smile. "That's me—or my garlic shrimp, anyway. I've got groceries in my bag, for tonight's dinner. Then I came here because I needed flowers for the table."
He glanced down at her empty hands. "Which you still don't have."
"I was just about to grab sunflowers."
"Are you in a hurry?" His gaze was intense, suddenly close to rushed. "I mean, garlic shrimp can wait, right?"
She _should_ get back. Dany would panic if she got back to the boardinghouse after the dreaded birthday party and Marsden wasn't already in the kitchen, prepping for a very important dinner.
And she still had to stop at Seconds to show Fitz the photo of Brom, which she'd tucked into the back pocket of her shorts before leaving the boardinghouse.
But Dany could start prep.
And what was one more day of not knowing on top of eight years?
"Shrimp doesn't really keep," she said, "but exceptions can be made."
He reached over and grabbed a handful of sunflowers from one of the milk pitchers. Their stems were thick and sturdy, their heads—frilled with thick yellow petals, centers clotted with seeds, all of it smelling faintly of nuts—wider than her palm. In Jude's oversize hands, the blossoms looked nearly fragile.
He held out the bouquet. Water dripped from stems onto their sneakers, the concrete of the floor.
"My dad's not going to give me the answers I'm still looking for, which means I have to ask someone else. Will you come with me?"
## twenty-eight.
For the first time in a long time, she knew she was making a mistake by not listening to her mother.
_Stay away from Theola Finney, Marsden. Do you hear me? I don't care if your grandmother was friends with her. The woman is nothing but a fraud, twisting lies so they look like truth._
Shine's warnings and distaste for anything to do with their abilities came as regularly as the tide, relentlessly and without real break. They, along with time, wore away Marsden's simple memories of the psychic as a chain-smoking old woman, her laugh like a rusty trumpet, until she became someone with hidden layers, who might or might not wear masks. And after Marsden began to skim regularly, her head filling with more and more secrets, her mind stained with the unforgettable, she began to avoid Theola with true terror in her heart.
And now, here she was, standing in front of the Finneys' café, risking the unraveling of all her work over the past seven years so Jude wouldn't feel so alone.
He stared at the front door, still working himself up to go inside, his face pale beneath its natural brown-gold tones. The afternoon sun blazed down on them, nearly alive in its ferocity, but Marsden saw how the skin of his arms was puckered and riddled with goose bumps. It seemed his need for answers still warred against his fear of what Theola might reveal.
He probably wouldn't have asked Marsden to come if he'd known the truth—that she was, for her own reasons, just as scared of Theola as he was.
On the sidewalk, the café's sandwich board advertised that day's discounted special of a muffin, coffee, and fruit combo. A customer just leaving walked past, carrying a grease-stained paper bag so that Marsden got whiffs of bacon, bread, and cigarette smoke. A strolling couple neared—she didn't know their names, but she recognized them from school, graduates last year—and looked at her and Jude a beat too long, giving them a wide berth as they passed. Marsden would have been more flustered than the annoyed that she was, but for where they were, and that Jude hadn't noticed. She knew that pause. It said she and Jude were lesser, were not like them. But Theola was their choice of battle today.
"You think Oliver might be around for once?" Jude asked now. He nearly had his nose pressed to the window, gazing at the last booth that Theola reserved for her readings. The psychic had never advertised her services, and no one had ever pointed them out. They didn't need to when everyone in Glory already knew where to go.
Oliver Finney was Theola's long-time husband. He co-owned the café with his wife, but no one in town ever saw him or had clear memory of last speaking to him. Stories ranged from his wife having secretly killed and buried him long ago to Theola keeping him locked up somewhere. Others said that he had simply ran one day, as likely to be completely mad as he was to be completely sane and carefully hiding from his wife.
Marsden thought Theola didn't mind it one bit—the rumors of a murdered or trapped or escaped husband only added to her allure as Glory's famed psychic.
"Oliver?" She shook her head. "I wouldn't bet on it. Why?"
"Just that I'm looking for an excuse, any excuse, to tell myself I don't have to do this right now," Jude said. "The sudden appearance of a phantom would work."
"Or, I could ask you out to lunch, at some place far away from this café," she quipped, not minding stalling at all. "Would that work?"
He lifted a brow. "It's a date. Where are we going?"
She had to laugh. Her cheeks burned. "You almost sound serious about wanting to leave."
"I think . . . I almost am." Jude frowned. Then his face lit up. "We could go to the movies. A matinee. Like a comedy."
An Eddie Murphy movie. The one Jude would have seen with Rigby, which he'd let Owen and Karey take him to, because they understood.
"You'd see that with me?" she asked, a small, sweet ache uncurling in her chest. A part of her knew it was just a movie, while another knew it was so much more—Eddie Murphy like this, right now, was . . . Jude saying he trusted someone. Even when he was fragile.
He smiled. And his eyes _did_ seem nearly serious, saying that she only had to say yes to continue the game, and he would play along and take her to the movies. He would damn whatever it might mean for him if kids from school saw, and Theola and whatever secrets she still had for him would be set aside for another day. Dark waves fell across his forehead as he nodded, as Marsden's pulse danced despite it all being not real.
"Of course I'd take you," he said. "Popcorn's on me, too."
She wanted to reach out and brush his hair away, for the excuse to touch. She had to stop letting her mind wander to the impossible. Her covert and Rigby's death were why they were even talking at all. How could their normal ever be about things like movies and dates? How could he see her as anything but the girl whose family made Glory the death magnet it was? Even _she_ couldn't see past that. The thought was bitter.
"I actually prefer candy at movies," she said, "and apparently the gross kind, according to Wynn."
"Candy also works." His smile was still there, still teasing, but his gaze was different now, more questioning, his eyes locked on hers. Was he feeling it, too? she wondered. Thinking about more, about what else there could be for them, when really they'd only come together to see about the dead? Thinking how once he found his answers, there'd be no reason to keep looking for her?
Marsden sighed and decided to save them from the moment. She did brush his hair back now, careful to do it briskly, with a purpose that said it was time. "Are you ready?"
He took a deep breath and pulled open the door to the café. "Probably not, but let's go."
It'd been years since she'd been inside, but little had changed—the same cracked, fake-leather booths; the black-and-white tiled floor; the chalkboard wall with the menu. She had vague memories of drawing on it while Star and Theola had gossiped, sketching out comically round moonlike faces with a fat stick of chalk—her mother, her father, their unsteady family of three.
The scents of the place were familiar, too, and they tangled in her nose—baked goods, cheese, coffee. The same kind of scents she knew from the kitchen of the boardinghouse, which tickled back to life the even fainter ones of the kitchen of their old duplex.
But there was also the zing of odd herbs, of fragrant tea with steeped leaves that told stories, secrets, truths. The smell of danger.
Theola was sitting at the booth in the back, doing a crossword puzzle and smoking. She looked absolutely harmless despite the eccentricity. An old lady with three cats at home, someone whose needlepoint was of swear words, whose collection of mugs had lots of Elvis ones. She wore what Marsden remembered as a typical Theola Finney outfit—oversize hat with feathers, a dress with a screamingly loud floral print, costume jewelry slabs of color around her neck and on her ears.
As a girl, Marsden had found her flamboyance amusing.
Now she found it deceptive, a disguise.
Theola Finney always had her finger on the pulse of the town—no one could read it as well as she could.
With dark eyes so sharp they seemed nearly shrewd, the town psychic watched Marsden and Jude as they slid into the booth across from her.
"You _did_ tell me to come back when I was ready to talk," Jude said mildly. "Though I'm still trying to figure out the invite."
She winked at him. "And I like your face—can't that be reason enough?" Her voice was pitted, a smoky rasp.
"Nope."
She shoved a menu at them. "My treat—whatever you feel like."
Jude picked it up, began to look at it as if he really did mean to eat, and Marsden wanted to kick him under the table.
"And haven't you made yourself a stranger since your mother moved all of you out there to the boardinghouse on the other side of town, Marsden Eldridge."
Reluctantly, she met the gaze of her dead grandmother's old friend. "Hi, Theola."
Theola signaled to the worker at the order counter with a hand while continuing to squint at Marsden through a billow of smoke. "How is your family? How is life working for Nina?"
Marsden felt about as scrutinized as the crossword puzzle on the table. She averted her eyes, folded her palms away, out of sight from Theola's eyes. "Everyone's fine, thank you."
Jude must have sensed her unease. He slid the menu back abruptly. "It's okay, we're not here to eat. Tell me why you asked me to come back."
The psychic blew smoke in his direction. The feathers on her hat bobbed—three of them, white as a dove's, fake promises of peace. "Did I do that, or did I merely suggest you were welcome to come back when you were ready? It goes against my principles as a medium to solicit customers—it's very pushy."
"I think _you_ want to tell _me_ something."
The worker brought over a teapot shaped like an elephant along with three teacups. Marsden felt a flush break out along her hairline as Theola poured out tea the color of weak grass. She placed a cup in front of each of them. "Thirsty?"
Marsden watched leaves swirl into the bottom of her cup, dancing as they sought to spin a tale. Panic was bees in her head, a thick roar—she had to remember to not touch the cup. To keep hiding her palms. "No, not really."
"It was never about me, was it, the first time I was here," Jude said. "All that stuff you told me about Rig . . . He came to see you."
Theola took a slow sip of tea and set her cup down. "I have two confessions." She held up a finger. "One: Rigby came to ask me about something, and it wasn't for a reading. And two: I didn't have to do a reading to see what I saw—that my telling him out loud what he already felt in his heart wasn't going to change anything."
The words sent a shiver through Marsden. Jude's eyes were as black as jet.
She reached for his hand beneath the table before she let herself think twice. His fingers wove through hers, clamped tight.
"What did he ask you about?" he asked Theola.
The psychic let her gaze slide in Marsden's direction before sliding away again. "He came to ask if I could hear the dead."
Marsden's whole body tensed up. Every muscle strained. Her hand squeezed Jude's.
"Who was he wanting to hear?" His voice had turned fearful, a little boy alone in the dark.
"I didn't ask, because hearing the dead isn't what I do. Now, if he'd asked _you_ , Marsden, then maybe he would have gotten the answers he needed so badly."
Marsden's breath was a knot in her chest. "I've never been able to hear the dead, even though I've tried. . . . A lot."
"Bless that stubborn mother of yours, but she didn't do you any favors, keeping you from using your ability when you were a child. Like pruning too early in the season, too aggressively—a plant might never recover."
"She just wanted to be normal, to not stick out."
"And yet she was born into a family whose main legacy is the covert." Theola's eyes flashed, reminding Marsden she was no harmless old lady. "Star was so disappointed that Shine wouldn't embrace her gift. How she was making sure you wouldn't, either."
_Gift._
_Or_ , Marsden thought, _curse_.
She would have done nearly anything to be able to walk into the covert and be given answers. To be told she was no more at fault for her father's death than she could have strode into the Indigo and pulled him out herself.
But what if the answers she got were the wrong ones? Ones she would never be able to unhear?
"What did you say to Rig, then?" Jude asked Theola. "Since you couldn't help him?"
"Do you think people come to see me because they are looking for help? To tell them which path to take?"
"Yes. They're scared of making mistakes."
"I think they come because they want to hear they are already right." Theola coughed her smoker's cough. "Because deep down, people already know what they're going to do. They just want me to tell them it's not wrong."
"Why couldn't you tell him he was wrong?" His fingers had become a vise around Marsden's, as though she'd become some kind of anchor. It paralyzed her, him thinking he could lean on her when she was as much of a fraud as Shine said Theola was, as much as Marsden said _Shine_ was. "Because he was. He just needed to hear it from somebody."
"Do you believe in God, Jude?"
"No, I don't," he said instantly. Marsden flashed back to the covert when he'd said as much, that his disbelief wasn't a choice.
"I think we might be our own gods," Theola said. "Our own voices will always be the loudest in our heads, telling us what we believe we deserve, deep down. And your brother didn't come here looking to hear mine."
"Then he heard the covert," Marsden said softly, "if you believe what everyone in Glory believes. A hundred-year-old story, right? Touch its soil before you die, and you'll still end up saved."
"Whatever seed was planted," Theola said, "it only grew because it could."
"Did you know what he was going to do?" The question seemed yanked from Jude's core, costing bits and pieces of himself he would never get back. "Even if you didn't do a reading?"
Theola shook her head. "But neither was I surprised. I'm sorry."
For a wild second, Marsden wondered if her mother had thought to ask that of Theola after her husband washed ashore, if she'd known. And if the psychic's answer had anything to do with why Shine hated her afterward.
"So if he didn't tell you anything, and you didn't do a reading, I don't understand why you wanted me to come back." Jude's confusion was encompassing, his frustration raw, swarming the room the same way wild ginger choked out the covert.
"Because what I saw in your brother's eyes that day I also saw in yours that first time you came to see me." Smoke from Theola's cigarette curled around the three of them like vines. "What I still see in them now."
"And what do you see?"
"Guilt. Enough of it to drown anyone if they go out too far." And Marsden couldn't mistake the message she saw in Theola's gaze as it slid over to meet hers. _And I see it in you, too, the guilt over your father._
But that was all she saw in the old lady's eyes, and she shuddered, relieved. If that was the only guilt she revealed, then she hadn't doomed Wynn—her being a skimmer was still a secret.
The psychic blew more smoke in Jude's direction. "So maybe I just want to tell you it's time you think about coming back in."
"I'm not my brother."
Theola's laugh was just as raspy as her cough. "Then, like I said, maybe I just wanted to see your handsome face again, Jude Ambrose."
## twenty-nine.
Marsden debated between making sandwiches and serving take-out chicken for lunch.
Because sandwiches were mostly harmless, without hidden meaning and inferred messages. They were like vanilla ice cream instead of soufflé, completely unassuming. But she would still be making them, and that said a lot. It said that she was happy enough to make food for Jude _again_.
Well, she hadn't cooked for him since that first dinner of waffles. After leaving Theola and the café yesterday afternoon and then searching the covert for a few hours, Marsden had had to help Dany prepare the house for the mayor's arrival. And so Jude had left, deciding he would invite himself to dinner at Owen's or Karey's house.
While his parting smirk told her he'd much rather have stayed.
Marsden kept frowning at the contents of the fridge.
But would using takeout be almost _too_ casual? She couldn't even put in _some_ kind of effort, especially after bragging about her cooking skills with still only waffles to show for it?
"Oh my God, get a grip," she muttered to herself as she finally reached inside for ingredients. "It's just a meal."
She'd already decided on the sandwiches—egg salad, she made amazing ones—when Nina stepped into the kitchen, a flow of pink, from painted fingernails to the blush-toned heels. Even her floral perfume smelled pink.
Marsden looked down at her own outfit of cutoffs and T-shirt, her hair loose and already a bit wild from the heat, and was immediately aware of how sloppy she looked in comparison. As if she didn't care about herself at all.
Other than Peaches, who brandished her femininity as her favorite accessory, and her mother, who clung to it as though it were her last remaining oxygen tank, it was Nina who constantly reminded Marsden of her own face and body. It made her think again about what she was, what she had on hand, how it had a best-if-used-by date.
Remembering now that Nina had been wanting to talk to her and why, her discomfort gained an edge. It sat in her stomach like a cold, greasy lump and her shoulders tensed. She took a deep breath. She'd promised her mother she would pretend. That she'd become an act at least as good as Shine was. To be better than even Nina.
"Marsden, you're alone," Nina said as she walked to the fridge. "I was wondering if Shine was making lunch for you." She pulled open the door.
The comment was unexpected enough that it left Marsden close to laughing. She didn't, but her shoulders relaxed a fraction as she shook her head. Was it possible Nina had forgotten? That she'd actually accepted her refusal to become one of her girls? "No, it's just me." Her mother had not cooked for her since she was a little girl. She remembered there being a lot of orange—semi-burned grilled cheeses, watery bowlfuls of boxed macaroni, tins of no-name mandarin orange slices steeped in thin syrup.
"That's right." Nina shut the fridge, though she'd taken nothing from it. "She was going out with Brom for the afternoon. And where's Wynn?"
"At a friend's house. Then the market, with Dany." Marsden put eggs into a pot to boil. The lump in her stomach melted away—Nina making small talk was convincing her the worst was over. She decided it was as good a time as any to find out if Nina knew anything about Brom's habits. "So when Shine's busy, does he just hang out around here?"
"Brom? No, he's either here with Shine or not at all." Nina seemed restless as she peered into a cupboard next. "I don't know where he goes otherwise."
Marsden frowned to herself, wishing Nina knew about Brom the way she knew about Glory. Wishing _she_ knew more, about what she was doing, and why she was even doing it. She still needed to find out if it was Brom that night at Decks, looking to rob her father, or worse. Because if not him, who? The passage of eight years without fresh clues meant anything was possible, as much as it meant nothing was.
Nina moved to stand next to her at the counter, boxing her in as she reached across to lift the lid of the dessert keeper. Inside was the remaining half of a raspberry crumble Marsden had baked. "Suddenly, I feel like something indulgent. Would you like some?" She reached for a plate from the cupboard and transferred a piece onto it.
"No, thanks." Marsden added enough water to cover the eggs and slowly placed the pot on the stove. As she watched Nina pick up a fork and take a single bite, the lump in her stomach came back, and her shoulders nearly hurt as they tensed again. Her mother's boss and keeper— _her_ boss and keeper—did not believe in momentary lapses like eating unnecessary sugar, let alone asking to serve her own kitchen help. She was lingering for a reason, and it wasn't for raspberry crumble.
She had not forgotten about wanting to talk to her after all.
Nina leaned in close, trapping her against the counter again. And when she spoke next, Marsden's world splintered apart.
"I know what you do out there in the covert. I know you're a skimmer."
The air went thin, Marsden's throat, dry. "No."
"Well, yes." Nina pulled away an inch, slipped another bite of raspberry crumble past her glossy lips. "I've been watching you for months, wondering how I could finally convince you to work for me. Then I saw you changing bills at the front desk, hours after you found a body in the covert. Not too difficult to see a pattern once I had all the pieces."
Marsden thought wildly of the times she'd heard noises in the covert, each time concluding it was animals. Each time thinking she'd gotten away with it, had pulled another one over Hadley and other skimmers. And yesterday, so worried about the town witch.
When all along it'd been Nina she should have been worried about.
"Why are you only telling me now?" She forced the words out, knowing she sounded guilty and unable to help it. "If you've known for months?"
"Because now Brom's in the picture, and Shine's getting older. And because I found the money you've been hiding in your room." Nina took another bite. "In those old boots of yours."
Marsden backed up almost reflexively, trying to get away from Nina. Her money. Wynn's. _Their future_. "That's not yours to take," she strangled out. Her lungs hurt with trying to breathe.
"You owe me," Nina said. "What's yours is mine."
Another bite of crumble.
Marsden hoped desperately Nina would choke on it.
"And if I refuse to work for you, you're going to tell Hadley about my skimming," she whispered.
Nina's mouth formed a moue of displeasure at the head cop's name, the same one she used to make over Lucy's glasses. "I think the man is thoroughly incompetent, but yes, I'll have to. Please don't get me wrong, Marsden. You're Shine's daughter, and I've watched you grow up—the last thing I want to do is threaten you with the police, to see you punished. But I had no choice except to take your money. I need you here, working for me. You can even keep skimming if you like, and I won't say a word."
Marsden's pulse boomed in her ears, a destructive rush of despair. Glory turned endless, time winked out, Wynn grew older. "How did you know where to find my money?"
"I didn't. I didn't think you had any at all, considering your wages here. But then Shine came and told me you wanted to leave instead of working for me. She said you had money saved up to go. And for me to catch you skimming on top of that? I knew then that you had to be hiding a good amount of cash somewhere."
Marsden's eyes burned. Her mother had told Nina. She might as well have given Nina the money herself.
Nina patted the corner of her mouth for crumbs with a slim finger before placing her empty plate in the sink. "I'll give you a few days before you have to start. Come find me when you're finally ready. And thank you for the dessert—it was exactly what I needed."
## thirty.
She should have known, though, deep down.
Not that Nina had had her figured out long ago, or that her mother would fail her, but that she was never meant to escape Glory. She'd long been bound to town through circumstance, through the family blood Duncan Kirby had tragically and madly shed in the covert.
Her life was closing in around her. She felt its teeth. Felt its glee. Felt whatever had been keeping her together as well as it had—delusion, blind hope, the very last bit of her childishness—starting to fall apart.
An image of the john who had asked about her at fourteen flashed across her mind, and she felt sick. Where would his hands leave her once he'd paid and gone? Who would she be? How much could she give and still be herself?
She was about to run to her bedroom to check for the boots in her closet, her desperation a sharp ache in her throat even as she knew how hopeless it was to think the money was still there— _Nina was only warning you_ , she lied to herself, _she would never take away all you'd worked for over the years, she's cold but not cruel, she helped_ raise _you!_ —when there was a knock at the door.
She looked up to see Jude standing on the back porch. Through the screen door, his face was blurred, softened, completely safe. He held a take-out bag from the deli downtown in one hand. "Hey," he said, smiling.
"Jude." Marsden blinked, trying to adjust from the fresh destruction Nina had just unleashed to pretending that nothing had changed at all.
"Look, I cooked for _you_ this time," he said through the screen, holding up the bag. "It was a lot of work."
Some of the dark lifted from her chest at seeing him there. This boy who drew her to stay close, even while she dreamed of escape. Who she would have left.
She walked over and opened the door. "You beat me to it. I was actually going to make us lunch today."
His eyes glinted, layers of dark browns, glints of gold. "What were you going to make?"
"Um, egg-salad sandwiches, spinach and strawberry salad, and double-chocolate brownies."
His expression turned stricken. "Please don't make me beg for lunch tomorrow. I promise I'll never think ahead again."
Marsden smiled. It surprised her that it felt real. How was he able to do that so easily? "You really messed up today, trying to be thoughtful." Suddenly, she felt the deep need to be away from the kitchen, from the boardinghouse altogether, her dismal future breathing down her neck.
And Jude with his careful arc of a grin was there to see her.
She stepped out onto the porch and instantly the sun began to sear her skin. She was very conscious of his gaze on her as she took the bag from him.
_Ever see a forest fire when it's just on the cusp of really catching? Right before it takes on a life of its own, and it's beautiful to watch but also frightening?_
Marsden kept her eyes on the food as she inspected what he'd brought. "Bottled lemonade, pizza wraps, and chocolate-banana waffle sandwiches."
"I wanted to bring you plain chocolate-chip waffles, but they didn't sell those."
"No," she had to laugh, "they wouldn't. I think it's a Wynn thing. Thanks for all this, really. It's perfect—e _specially_ the chocolate-banana waffle sandwiches." She dared a glance upward at his face, and below the smug shyness, she saw a twinge of irrational regret at not being able to bring her the one thing he'd wanted to. Her pulse beat heavily at her wrists.
That was when she saw the wide strap of fabric looped over one of his shoulders. "What's that?" she asked, pointing.
Jude cleared his throat. The skin along his cheekbones turned a slight pink as he spoke. "A picnic blanket. It's hot out, but I was thinking we could eat outside, if we can find some shade somewhere. And I promise the idea seemed much more innocent when I left the house than what it feels like now."
The pink had spread to his ears by the time he was done, making Marsden laugh again, her nerves rewired to an edginess that felt good. "And what does it feel like now?"
He grinned. It was slightly lewd, and she knew he knew it. "I feel the question is a trap, and so I take the fifth."
He really did need to stop being so appealing. "Pretty forward, considering we haven't even gone out yet," she said, smiling in return. "Not even a matinee."
His grin softened even as his gaze turned hot, full of cryptic things that made her skin feel just as hot, but from the inside. "So if I ask you again, I might not get shot down this time?"
"Unfair." She kept her voice light, even as her skin kept tingling. "The town witch was waiting, remember?"
"I remember wishing we could have gone anyway. How disappearing with you for a bit in the middle of the day would have been pretty perfect."
Marsden's heart did a slow, tortuous flip, and she narrowed her eyes at him. Why couldn't he have flaws that made him unbearable? Like hating small animals. Rudeness. Zero sense of humor.
"I wish you _were_ an asshole," she muttered. "It'd be a lot easier to not like you."
Jude laughed, low and quiet. "I like you, too. Even that whole 'gross candy instead of popcorn' thing. I can work with that."
"Commendable." She took a deep breath and stepped back, deciding to keep it— _them_ , whatever they might even be—from going any further. If there was a time limit on their being together, she didn't want it close to being over yet. "So, lunch, to be eaten on a highly suggestive blanket—do you care where?"
He laughed again, and his cheeks went pink _again_ , and Marsden could almost feel his heat beneath her fingertips. "Nope. Wherever you want."
"Even if there's no shade?" She knew where she wanted to go, but they would likely burn. Still, she'd already decided it was worth it, and she wanted him to think so, too.
"We'll handle it."
She led him to where the front drive met the highway. They waited for a gap between vehicles before crossing the road, and then they stepped off the shoulder into the embankment that dipped down toward the river.
At this end of the Indigo, dry land between the road and the river was at its widest, a good couple dozen meters. Weeds and crabgrass the color of pale hay brushed their ankles, and mud dried to a powdery dust crumbled even more beneath their shoes as they walked. The river gurgled and chattered in the distance, a low, constant non-quiet that reminded Marsden of how the covert sounded, how the wind blew through the trees like voices. The sun pounded down, baking their shadows into the ground.
"Here," she declared, coming to a stop.
They were standing on a particularly thick patch of grass, dense enough to cover up the mud beneath. From what she could see, they were equally distant from both the water and the highway, stranded between the two parallel arcs that cut into the earth. They could have been anywhere in the world, somewhere where neither of them was trying to bring the dead back to life, where they weren't who Glory said they were. Over a lunch, they could pretend.
Jude spread out the picnic blanket and sat down on it. "Finally. I was wondering if you were going to lead us straight into the river."
"Would you have kept going with me?" Marsden sat down next to him and began to take out the food.
"Depends on how deep it is." He lifted his gaze to the snaking current. "I wouldn't want us to drown."
Theola's words. "What if we could walk all the way across?"
"Still depends," he said with a quick grin. He glanced down at the waffle sandwiches spread out in front of them. "'I'll have to really think about it.' That answer sound familiar at all?"
She laughed, liking how he so easily remembered what she'd said about ever making him waffles again. She wasn't supposed to be able to laugh, given Nina's trap had just closed around her. And yet . . .
Jude pointed down the river, squinting in the sun. "If we followed that, we'd eventually end up in Idaho. Ever wonder what's in Idaho?"
"I don't know." The truth was, Marsden had always wondered _past_ it, farther away. "Mountains and lakes. Camping. Lots of potatoes. Why?"
"I used to think we moved from there, because I only heard 'back East' growing up. Eventually figured out they meant the East _Coast_. Boston."
Boston. It made her think of baseball stadiums, clam chowder, mazes of concrete freeways—the very opposite of Glory. And now it would make her think of Jude. "Maybe you could go visit one day. You have family there, your mom's."
"Yeah. And they have good schools, for when I'm done here. I could always apply for student loans."
"What do you want to study?" The idea of Jude living elsewhere was strange, difficult to comprehend, lonely to think about. Glory was a place not many people seemed to leave, even though not many ever arrived, either. Townsfolk were layered deep here, most families going back generations.
"Leaning toward sciences, just because I suck less at those." He watched her. "You?"
She wasn't even going to bother to lie. "I can't leave Wynn."
"All your family is here?"
"Yes." Marsden found herself glancing in the direction of the covert. "We got a taste for gold a hundred years ago and decided to stay." Even this far away from it, she still sensed the presence of her family's land, the smothering weight of all it meant. She thought of never finding out more, of never being able to hear the dead, her father and Rigby forever questions, and her chest grew heavy.
"Too bad the gold didn't," Jude said. "Stay, I mean."
"I can't imagine how different Glory would be." She blamed the rush of cars hurtling down the highway—a swoosh of sound, what ran along with the wind, stirring up her blood—for suddenly feeling glib, nearly spontaneous. "What would you say to Rigby right now if he were here?"
"This very second?" Jude smiled. "To stay. But if that answer's too much like cheating, I'd ask him where exactly in the covert he'd buried that damn tin."
She had to smile back. "That would be one thought."
"No kidding." He reached for one of the waffle sandwiches and tore it open.
"Wait, that's supposed to be dessert."
"Coming from the person who made me breakfast for dinner."
Marsden began to unwrap the other sandwich and hoped she could make herself eat some of it. The morning had left her stomach in knots, tied by Nina's rose-tipped fingers, even as the wind kept her impulsive. "Jude?"
"Yeah?"
"Remember when we were in the covert and I told you I didn't want to talk about my dad? Right after I kind of did?"
He nodded.
"It was because I never wanted to believe what he said, all this time. But now I know the believing part isn't what's important—because it doesn't change what comes afterward."
He crumpled his wrapper. "And are you okay with that?"
"I'm not sure," she admitted. "How do you accept being the reason why something turns out terrible?"
"Does it help if I tell you half the time I think I'm wrong to be looking for Rig's tin?"
Marsden remembered him coming to ask, all his hope. "So why do you?"
"I don't know. Maybe I'm just hoping to fill in those parts of him I never understood but thought I did. If he kept secrets, did he keep them to protect me?"
"You're talking about guilt." She knew it too well.
He squinted at her in the sun. "So are you."
"I guess I am."
Jude slid closer and took her hand. His was hotter than the sun, larger than the world. "Then let's not drown."
## thirty-one.
"Kismet."
"Say again?" Jude shut the shed door behind him, Rigby's metal detector in hand.
"Kismet," Marsden said again as they rounded the back of the boardinghouse on their way to the covert. "It means fate, or destiny—things being preordained. Your brother being the one to start all that wild ginger growing in the covert owned by my family, how that led to all of this."
"That kind of kismet means believing Rig was always going to kill himself, no matter what. I don't know if I can ever believe that."
And she didn't want to believe that she'd always been meant to drive her father away, that Shine was meant to be what she was, that her own path was never in doubt.
"Kismet about Rigby coming here to help him deal with your mom's dying, then," she said. "Because I really, really love the idea of that—the covert not always meaning something is ending. Or how something ending means something else is maybe beginning."
Jude's speckled eyes glimmered in the sun as he looked at her and then away again and Marsden thought of forest fires.
She swore he blushed.
As they walked along the fence, Marsden watched him examine all the carvings left on the splintery wood. Messages like _Think of your family_ and _We'll miss you_ and _God will save you_. Carvings of dates and names and crosses.
He touched one. The cross was particularly elaborate, his fingers tracing the carefully etched-out details. She wondered ruefully when the artist had managed to get it done, how fast he must have had to work to not be seen by anyone in the boardinghouse. Next, he touched a message about heaven. She knew he had Rigby on his mind, was so deep in thought that he seemed lost in himself, somewhere else. Marsden's throat ached for him and for the grief that came off him in waves.
"The part about heaven being easiest to reach from the covert, how you have to die there after touching its soil so you don't go to hell—do you believe it?" Jude's voice was jagged, as uneven as the Indigo.
She didn't know what to say. _Yes_ , and it would settle him over Rigby's choice, however much her opinion could mean. _No_ , and she could ask herself forever what her father must have seen in the river to have called him there instead.
Suddenly, he dropped the metal detector into the grass. He took out his truck key and began to carve into the wood of the fence, the biggest unmarked expanse he could find.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Changing things up. What's your favorite flower?"
She thought of his doodle for Wynn at lunch at the Burger Pit, his bouquet of tulips and lilies and daises, and smiled. People never just doodled on the covert's fence, they lamented, or wished, or mourned—but now it seemed Jude was doing just that. Doodling. On a fence that went back generations.
"Roses?" he asked.
Marsden laughed. "No."
"Too cheesy?"
"Kind of. And too . . . perfect, I think. How about—" She frowned. She didn't know flowers by heart, the way she knew spices, and salts, and sugars (death, even, she supposed). They had to be in front of her for her to name them. Her mind went back to yesterday. "How about sunflowers?"
It wasn't long before the blooms darted their way in between all the crosses and sayings about heaven. Jude stopped when he ran out of room, and he shook out his hand, its fingers gone tight from clutching his key. He'd added not just sunflowers, but also wavering lines of ivy, firework-like knots of dandelions gone to seed.
Finding a nail with the metal detector, Marsden had joined in, working on a different section of the fence. She'd scrawled nonsense—stick figures, tiny hearts, tic-tac-toe—and it was nearly cathartic how easy it'd been to mark up the covert that way. How she could almost forget how ancient the wood was, how heavy the years accumulated in it, the number of ghosts it'd seen into existence—it was just a fence, just a piece of a long-dead tree, and it had no real power.
"We might have just unleashed a monster, you know," she said, shaking her own hand out, leaving the nail on a post to be picked up on their way back out.
He laughed. "What, there's some kind of covert fence protector spirit? And I thought I'd heard all the stories."
She smiled. "Once Wynn sees this, she's going to want to do the same. We might be out here all summer, inscribing our way around the whole thing."
"I can't tell if you're happy about that or not."
She wasn't sure, either. To normalize the covert was dangerous, somehow almost disrespectful. But maybe she'd been wrong to never try to break down its odd legends, to try to lessen their grip. "Ask me this time next week. If you still need to be around."
Jude picked up the metal detector, brushed bits of grass from the sensor pad, and then looked at her. His expression was both amused and dead serious. "Like you said, this place is bigger than it looks. Sorry if I end up being here all summer."
"Well, there's shade in there, anyway." Marsden averted her eyes—she had no clue what he might see in them. That she really didn't mind so much, his coming by every day until the fall? That she also dreaded the idea of it, the proximity to his danger an abrasion on her nerves, working away at her heart? "Ready?"
They walked into the covert, and instantly the sunlight dimmed by degrees. The smell of ginger enveloped them as they headed to where they'd last left off in their search.
It didn't take long for Marsden to spot the thin white slash of kitchen twine in the half-light. It was tied around the trunk of a tree, and she'd gone back to mark off how much they'd covered the other day. She'd realized afterward how easy it would be for them to lose track, to simply end up going over old ground again and again. Jude never would be finished, then, forever caught in the covert's spell, its toy as much as she knew she was. It was a fact she couldn't change even if she wanted to—the place was in her bones, a part of her before she was even born. As tragic as Rigby's dying here was, it would eventually be crowded away by all the deaths still to come. And Jude could move on. He'd leave his grief behind. He'd go east, find somewhere else to belong, make a life. The covert would fade for him. But Marsden—she would continue to live it.
She was still teasing apart the knot in the string with her fingers when he called her name.
"What is it?" she called back, pulling at twine. "Hold on a second."
Silence.
"Jude?" She looked up to see how he'd gone just a bit ahead, that she could just see most of his dark hair, the jut of one shoulder, some of the wide plane of his back through the foliage of the trees.
"Marsden . . ."
He sounded farther away than she would have expected, his voice almost an echo of itself. As though the covert could bend space the way it could time, could stretch feet into miles the same way it made nights last nearly forever.
Her stomach lurched. She could still see him, but—
"Jude, wait up—this knot, I tied it way too tight . . ."
She trailed off as she watched him slowly back up. One step, then two. The metal detector was still in his hand, but forgotten, about to be dropped.
He turned to face her, and that was how she knew.
## thirty-two.
Such long, blond hair.
The very first time she'd seen it on the newest girl to sign on with Nina, Marsden had thought of it as Alice hair, what the made-up girl from the made-up world of Wonderland had had. She'd been eleven when she'd thought that, but she hadn't ever really stopped thinking of it that way, despite finding out not long after that the quiet girl's actual name was Lucy. That she came from the very real place of Florida. That the Wonderland that had been her life was something she refused to talk about.
Such long, blond hair, worn in nearly the same kind of loose braid Marsden had woven for her with nervous fingers just yesterday morning.
But its crown had since been dusted with a generous handful of soil, its end now tipped with blood.
It was the first time in a long time the covert smelled of something more strongly than wild ginger.
She fell to her knees in front of Lucy's body and tried to keep the world of the covert from swaying. Lucy's wrists, the blackened soil at her sides, all still glistening with wet. Marsden swept the scene with eyes that moved jaggedly in their sockets, desperate to be wrong.
Lucy and all her sadness, the depths of which only she could see.
"Who was she?" Jude asked, his words faint. He was standing beside her, only inches away, but he might as well have been speaking to her from the other side of the forest, her shock a thick cocoon all around her.
"Her name was Lucy," she whispered. "She lived at the boardinghouse with us. She worked for Nina." Her chest hurt, an ache stinging her throat. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying so hard to hear her. She sent out her mind as though they were fingers, feeling the covert, touching all its trees, testing the wind. It hurt, how much she wanted to hear.
_Lucy, you're still here, right? Please talk to me._
"I'm sorry." Jude's voice floated out from the darkness behind her lids, from the deep silence of the covert behind that darkness. "Was she your friend?"
Marsden nodded, opening her eyes. Though, she wasn't sure they had been, not really. Maybe at times, for moments and over the course of conversations, before Marsden hit reset. She knew no more about Lucy than she knew about any of Nina's girls, had never been able to ask, just as Lucy had never shown signs of wanting to share. Lucy, in her own way, had drifted through the rooms and halls of the boardinghouse, just as Rigby had lived yet not lived in his own home. As she and Wynn sometimes lived in the boardinghouse—hidden while in plain sight, their existence carefully portioned out between kitchen and covert and away from the whole place, time spent with Shine and Nina and all the rest spread out thin, easy to tuck away.
Ghosts, all of them.
Barely thinking, Marsden pulled her gardening gloves from the back pocket of her shorts and put them on. She reached out, her hand moving automatically like a dowsing rod over fresh and untouched land. She checked Lucy's clothing, saw the lack of pockets, saw how there was no purse or bag slung nearby. She turned the girl's hands over, pushed back the cuff of her sleeves—no rings, no bracelets, no watch.
Her necklace, though.
A dark silver chain that she'd worn for years, for as long as Marsden could remember.
She would have left it alone, the same way she always left jewelry alone. But because she knew the body, she knew the necklace—knew its meaning and significance. It was a match to the necklace Peaches wore all the time, the one piece of jewelry the other girl never seemed to tire of, for all the carefree ways she seemed to cycle through the rest of her belongings.
Marsden slipped the silver necklace from Lucy's neck and slowly placed it over her own, settling it beneath her long, black hair. She pictured soft, white, greedy hands gathering pies off a plate and shuddered. There was no way to prevent Hadley from the body—she would have to call as soon as she got back to the house—but she would not leave the necklace to him.
She pulled the hem of Lucy's dress lower over her legs and smoothed out the fabric.
She adjusted the dark framed glasses on her pale face so they weren't so askew.
She moved the thick woven braid so it draped over her shoulder again, the way she recalled Lucy wearing it.
Done, Marsden slowly stood up. Slipping off her gloves, she was momentarily startled to see Jude there. He was watching her, his eyes dark and hollow and shadowed with his brother.
Panic was a bow in her blood and strummed her pulse into racing. He had just seen her at work, the unfeeling way she'd flicked on autopilot. Who else but a skimmer could ever do what she just did without going insane? Had he imagined that day his brother had come? Saw it the way she knew it'd been, the day she'd found Rigby in the covert, and felt all of it like a blow? The way she'd bent over him and had calmly dug through his pockets, her face as blank as a fresh canvas even as Rigby's would have been blasted apart beyond recognition? How neither of them would have looked fully human?
She dropped her eyes as she shoved her gloves away. "I have to go back to the boardinghouse now." She heard the odd flatness of her voice, the cold void of her words, and didn't know how to sound different, better. Or had never learned, maybe, had always known what was required of her. "I have to call Hadley about the body. I have to tell Nina, Dany . . . Peaches."
Jude's expression was a slow migration of shock to confusion to a kind of quiet caution. Checking for bodies, skimming—she'd drawn the line between the two as fine as it could get. Only his being overwhelmed kept him from really seeing what she'd just done.
"Okay," he said. "Can I walk you over?"
"No, I'll be fine. I'll meet you here tomorrow, though. Right by the fence, same as always."
## thirty-three.
She kept pedaling, pushing the highway and the covert and the prison of her home behind her. The sun was getting lower, bouncing off the top of the river. She smelled the heat baking off the Indigo's muddy shores, smelled its damp, marshy, tinny contents.
Lucy had died with the covert all around her. She died knowing she would never get out of Glory, or see Florida again, or do anything different than work as one of Nina's girls.
Marsden pedaled faster, her legs burning. The echoes of Hadley's familiar questions rang in her ears, the dullness of her own robotic responses as she'd held the phone against her cheek and tried to not think about Lucy.
_Did you hear anything in the covert before you saw the body, Marsden? Or right afterward?_
_No._
_Were you alone?_
_Yes. I was checking, as I often do._
_Did you touch anything?_
_I . . . Her dress. I pulled the hem down. I knew her, and I didn't think she would want . . ._
_I understand. Can you make a guess of how she might have done it?_
_A blade._
_All right, I'll head over immediately._
_I'll tell Nina to expect you._
_And your mother, of course._
It was only after she hung up the phone that Marsden saw how she'd wound the cord so tightly around them that her fingers had gone purple. Behind her, the kitchen was empty, silent, chilled beneath the day's collected heat. Dany, upon being told the news, would keep Wynn at the market until the last possible moment. Shine, pale and pinch-eyed and unapproachable, had lit a cigarette with white-knuckled fingers and said nothing as she waited for Hadley's arrival. Peaches had barricaded herself in her bedroom. Nina was in the dining room with the rest of her girls, instructing them in hushed tones how business that night would go on as usual.
Marsden fumbled the cord away from her finger; the blood came back in a rush, and she wished it were as easy to sweep clean her mind. Those final images of Lucy—blue, bled-out, celery eyes forever shut—were embedded in her brain, splinters working their way in faster than she could pull them out.
She remembered that feeling, knew what it meant. As it was with Rigby, with Caleb Silas, she'd never be able to leave all of Lucy behind in the covert, would forever be marked with her tragedy.
Suddenly, she found the atmosphere of the boardinghouse absolutely smothering. She had to get away. She ran outside, grabbed her bike from the shed, and simply turned it onto the highway, almost dizzy with panic. The need for escape crawled over her, scraped at her insides.
Instinct, years worth of it, had her bike turning away from Glory, the front wheel wobbling as it sliced through the loose gravel on the road's shoulder. Glory was about feeling desperate and trapped. It was her parents and Nina and all the bodies in the covert. It was all her money gone.
But Glory was also Wynn, and her little sister still needed her.
And Glory, against all logic and anything that made any kind of sense, had also, somehow, become Jude.
Marsden swung her bike's front wheel free of gravel, turned onto the blistering pavement of the highway in the opposite direction, and began to pedal. The memory of his gaze as he'd watched her skim from Lucy, as she showed him just how mechanical she'd learned to be—sickness climbed her throat.
She got all the way downtown before realizing she didn't know where exactly Jude lived. Like everyone in Glory, he would live within blocks of the Indigo, situated somewhere along the river's curve like shingles along the line of a roof. He wouldn't be very close to her—the boardinghouse had the east end of that curve to itself, and only a handful of houses lay scattered between it and the rest of town. After Duncan Kirby's marking of the covert, Glory's townsfolk built outward from it, far from where disease first sparked.
Marsden biked to a gas station. It was the same one where Red and Coop's father worked the graveyard shift; the air hose on the side of the building was still out of order, his sons having broken it back in the spring. She saw the pay-phone booth on the side of the parking lot and peeked in through its dirty glass sides. There was a phone book hanging from a chain, and she went inside and found Jude's address.
It took her another twenty minutes to bike there.
A small house, one level, its beige paint age-stained. Poured gravel for a driveway, and weeds splitting open the yard. A wraparound deck that had seen better days years and years ago, its wood now weathered and gray. There was a wooden chair and table set looking so beaten she was sure the next windstorm would see all of it collapsed, nothing but a pile of kindling. She saw a stand-up telescope in the corner, gone beyond pale with pollen and dust. Its original color was a mystery.
Her heart sank a bit for Leo Ambrose. To have come from vast money out East, and an executive position in a powerful company, to this, on nothing much more than a bad turn of the economy. He'd moved his growing family out for a fresh start, even if that fresh start would have no cushion to fall back on, even if the first hints of a thirst for the bottle were starting to show more and more. And then his young wife had died, leaving him with two young sons to raise. Bottles became escape.
Marsden had already sensed it—the similarities between Leo and Shine, their shared terrible luck as parents, as individuals. But whatever sympathy she could still feel for her mother was only marginally greater than what she felt for Jude's father. Shine, like Leo, had become selective with her love for her kids—the amount of it, the price for it, the whens and hows and conditions of it.
The house had good bones, though, which still showed beneath the years. She imagined it with paint so pristine one couldn't find a scratch for searching. She pictured Isabel Ambrose on one of the wooden chairs, not dying. She saw Jude and Rigby beside her, playing, or hunched over the telescope. Nighttime, the sky clear, Rigby pointing out to his little brother all the constellations he'd memorized from a book.
Living at the boardinghouse, Marsden was sometimes still able to see past Nina's touches to the schoolhouse it'd once been: simple and uncomplicated—clean. Even Shine had her moments—when she sent Wynn to the store with a dollar for candy instead of a note and money and instructions to bring back cigarettes; when she asked Marsden to make Wynn's favorite dessert; when she didn't visibly flinch at being called _Mom_ or _Mother_.
She leaned her bike against the front of the house and knocked at the door.
From inside, there was the muffled thump of footsteps. And then it was Karey standing at the door, his eyebrows lifting comically high in surprise at seeing her. But he was grinning within seconds, his long, blond hair shaggy around his face and his blue eyes warm. Marsden found herself smiling back despite her nerves.
"Hey, Marsden." He opened the door and motioned her inside. "Jude's just in the kitchen. Me and Owen are helping him clean out his fridge."
Her mind scrambled, telling her she should reply even as she wanted a chance to look around the front room. This was Jude's home—how hard would she have to look to see the things he wished he could hide? What he was okay with his friends knowing?
She saw the dents in the lemon-yellow wallpaper right away, like shifts in the late afternoon light—they would match the shape of fists. That same traitorous light glanced off the top of the coffee table and revealed the raised, blurred damage of old moisture rings, kissed from the bottoms of too many wet beer bottles. A pair of old, nautical-themed canvas couches, their cream stripes for the beach, blue for the ocean, cigarette burns on the fabric like boats blistering their way to shore. The dark cherrywood floors Leo had once ordered for Isabel in an attempt to make her feel at home, gone splintered and scraped in spots.
"You guys are cleaning out the fridge?" Marsden looked up at Karey, knowing she'd only repeated him, wondering what she might have missed.
A sun-kissed grin. "Too many well-meaning casseroles from too many well-meaning ladies—they're going bad."
Of course. After Rigby's funeral and wake, the days immediately following would have been too full of difficulty and pain for his brother or father to even think about cooking. The town would have kept Jude and Leo fed out of the goodness of their hearts, because that's what people did; they would have also wanted to get a glimpse of the tragic Ambrose household for themselves, because that's also what people did. Glory brand kindness—it came with a price.
Karey motioned for her to follow him down a hall. "Ironically, Rigby hated casseroles. He'd be pitching in and helping us toss everything."
Marsden heard some of Jude and Owen's conversation as she and Karey neared the kitchen.
Jude first. "—talk about it. Not yet, anyway. It's . . . complicated."
"Isn't it always?" There was the sound of cutlery landing in the sink with a plunk and then Owen continued. "She's got a sweet face, but man, she sure does keep to herself."
"Can you blame her?"
"Not really. So, when are you going to ask her out for real?"
Someone shook out what sounded like a large trash bag. "Drop it."
"It's not like we can't already see it happening from a mile—"
Karey cleared his throat loudly as he stepped into the kitchen. Marsden followed, her face feeling like she'd just consumed an entire ball of fire.
"Marsden?" Jude held a casserole dish in one hand and rubbed his eyes with the other, as though he were just waking up or was seeing things. He blinked at her, his expression thoroughly confused. She thought he looked childlike, innocent, way too beguiling. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm sorry, I should have called first." She took in the mess that made up the room. Black garbage bags were strewn all over the floor, some of them lumpy with contents, some still completely flat. The kitchen counter was covered with tin-foil containers full of food, the table with a plate and fork and even more containers. "I was just . . . out for a bike ride. And thought I'd drop by. To say hi." She couldn't have thought of a flimsier excuse if she tried, and she stiffened with embarrassment.
"And we were just leaving." Owen, even more handsome than she remembered him, slid a pointed look in Karey's direction and smiled at her. It was a nice one, real and open, but she didn't think she was imagining the question there, the slight wariness that made her recall his twin's words: _Don't be someone else disappearing on him._ "Hey, sorry about this mess. Make sure Jude cleans it up on our behalf."
She waved, did her best to smile back. "Really, it's okay, you guys don't have to leave."
"Yes, they do," Jude said mildly, his gaze on her blatant and direct and making her stomach slowly curl up in a semi-painful knot. He threw the entire tin-foil dish he'd been holding into one of the garbage bags, moved on to do the same with the rest of the containers on the counter, and smirked. "But first, Owen, tell Karey what you found."
"Dude." Owen picked up the dirty plate from the table and placed it into the sink. "That bacon and zucchini melt you just inhaled half of? We found blue fuzz on what was left."
Karey snorted unconvincingly. Then he muffled a burp with the back of his hand and looked so queasy Marsden nearly laughed. "Seriously?"
"Like you wouldn't believe." Owen gathered all the garbage bags from the floor and finished clearing the table of tin-foiled sympathy. "How are you feeling? Want to go grab some air?"
"Air? I don't want air. I want to puke my guts out."
"Not in here, you're not." Jude shoved the now very full garbage bag at Karey. "Mind tossing this into one of the cans by the back door on your way out? Thanks."
Karey took it with an overly morose look. "Can I at least grab my basketball? I left it over by—"
Owen shoved him toward the front room. "Tomorrow."
Karey slung the bag over his shoulder and grinned at Marsden and then Jude as he headed into the short hallway. "Behave yourself, kids. And, please, Jude, keep my basketball safe until I can bring her home, where she belongs."
"If you don't stop," Owen said as he walked out after him, "they're going to give your basketball to the neighbor's kids. The scissor-happy ones."
Then the front door shut. Their voices faded through the open kitchen window. Other typical summer sounds trickled inward, breaking up the fresh silence that filled the kitchen—a dog barking in the distance, the faint shouts of kids running through a sprinkler, the low buzz of a neighbor's lawn mower.
But there was a quiet that went deeper than that now, and it was wrapped around Marsden and Jude. It was the quiet of a house forever changed, its makeup altered without repair. It was also the very opposite of the boardinghouse, a hive kept busy with meals, Wynn, Nina's girls, the push and pull of Marsden's schemes against those of Shine's and Nina's. Jude must have noticed it over their dinner of waffles and too-sweet lemonade, and she wondered what had gone through his brain. If it'd been close to pain, or simple grief—if he'd even been able to let himself care either way.
Small but sure signs of Leo's drinking also riddled the kitchen—missing panes of glass from the cabinet, a fist-size dent in the pantry door, a small, crescent-shaped gouge bitten into the outer corner of the wall that led to the hallway.
"A thrown beer bottle," Jude said. She'd felt him watch her as she'd looked around the room, had seen her notice the curved indentation, had then obviously felt the need to explain. "My father's way of asking Owen and Karey to leave. It'd been a long day at work."
Marsden peered more closely at the drywall, and her stomach flipped. "Good thing he has bad aim."
Jude touched the back of his head, the motion so practiced it seemed done without thought. Then he leaned against the kitchen counter, his hands sliding into his pockets. His face said he was still utterly surprised to see her in his house.
"Owen and Karey love thinking they're funny," he said, smiling, "but it's pretty pathetic, right?"
She smiled back. "They _are_ funny."
"They wouldn't even try if they thought you weren't cool."
Marsden knew she had never been cool. "Sometimes I forget we've known one another since we were all kids."
His expression was neutral as he shrugged. "We all hung out in different circles."
He wasn't saying what they both knew—she hadn't hung out in _any_ circles except the one she kept closed to everyone else at school but herself. It'd been too crowded already, with her mother, her sister, everything to do with the boardinghouse and the covert.
Longing swept her then, an acute ache that beat painfully at her wrists, in the back of her throat, as she dared again to imagine the upcoming fall. They would be strangers to each other. Jude might wave as he walked past, or he might not. She might meet his eyes, or she might not. He would be thinking about schools in the East, how to best put distance between himself and Glory; she would keep stealing from the dead and surviving life in a brothel. How could there be room for anything else?
"Your dad's at work?" Marsden guessed. Now that she saw firsthand how Jude lived, she wondered when Leo would be back. How long Jude could breathe freely each day.
"He works late on Mondays—catching up after the weekend."
Her shoulders relaxed a fraction. Still, the rest of her remained as tight as a wound spring. She hadn't pinpointed her reason for coming over until she was already here. And she still hadn't figured out how to wipe away the person he saw in the covert, the monster who could touch the dead so coldly. She recalled the weight of Lucy's blood-soaked braid and shuddered.
He moved from the counter to stand closer to her. Marsden smelled ginger and earth and him. "I didn't know if you wanted me to say anything earlier, with Owen and Karey here, but I'm really sorry again. About Lucy." Jude's eyes were dark as he held hers, soft with concern. She felt them like a touch. That kindness—it could almost make her cry again.
"They'll find out soon anyway," she said. "If they know to look for that column about the covert that's in the paper."
"I don't know if they do. Or they do, but they don't check it."
The idea of not checking was alien to her, but she also understood it. They didn't live with the covert as she did—it didn't shadow everything they did. Sometimes, she forgot that. How her land, as much as it colored and shaped Glory, was still only a single physical part of it. Why would two regular guys like Owen and Karey ever want to know what was happening in the covert unless they had no choice? They would have done it for Rigby, but that was all.
"Lucy . . . She and Peaches loved each other," Marsden told him. Nina had insisted on being the one to tell her, and Marsden—cowardly, the feel of Lucy's skin still on her hands—had let her. "And they were best friends."
"How is Peaches?"
Broken. Lost. "Not really here."
"I'm sorry." Jude sighed. "She could talk to someone."
Marsden knew he was remembering his own first days, after his brother. The way time must have stopped, even as it didn't. How it might have been like trying to find your way out of the dark, with your eyes shut. "Who did you talk to?"
"No one, really. I didn't want anyone but my friends. It hasn't changed." His gaze sharpened. "You, too. I want to talk to you."
She nearly smiled. "Do you think you might need someone later?" Glory had its share of doctors hoping to help people like Rigby before it was too late, to help people like Jude when it was. They left flyers all over town.
He shrugged, frowning. "I don't know. Maybe. I have the number for the school counselor if I need."
"That's really good." Marsden pictured the school counselor, how she would see him at assemblies and in the halls, his expression as overwhelmed as it was welcoming, and somehow helpless. She wondered about Peaches talking to someone like that. Peaches, who always used clients as much as they used her. Now that Lucy was gone, Marsden could imagine Peaches coping simply by developing more teeth.
But Marsden hadn't talked to anyone, either, after her father washed ashore. Or been made to talk to anyone, anyway, since she'd been a kid. She'd eventually gone to the covert, seeking answers there. Jude's anger with his father had been shattered by Rigby's death, and so he sought out his friends. He went to Theola, to _her_ , to the covert to search.
Sometimes, Marsden felt the place _breathe_ , made so alive by how much they needed it.
"Rig could have talked to me." Jude's voice was a harsh whisper. "Do you know how many times I've wished I'd been better at saying something to him when he'd been alive? How many times I said nothing at all when I knew?"
Marsden was the one who moved this time. She stood so closely, she could see each of his lashes. "I don't know, but I'm sorry." Had her mother sensed it in her husband? Had she, even as a kid, sensed it in her father in some small way?
"God, we're both so full of sorrys right now." His eyes crinkled just the slightest at the corners when he smiled, she saw. "I can't imagine how hard it must be to listen to us."
She had no choice but to smile back. "I'm counting on not having to say it much soon."
"Hey, so why did you come over? Is it about tomorrow? I totally get it if you want to stay away from the covert for a while. I just feel bad that you didn't call. You could have saved yourself a trip."
"No, tomorrow's fine. The covert—it's always there, and so am I. It's just . . . I was already out."
Slowly, Jude leaned his forehead down against hers. "Marsden, why are you _really_ here?"
The light in the kitchen had gone weak, melting its way toward dusk. It let shadows dance over Jude's face and her head run wild with all the things she could not say but longed to.
_What you saw today in the covert, I'm not the monster I might have looked like._
_But when you find out what I'm hiding from you, I might as well be._
She fumbled for his hand and held on. "I felt like making you listen to some Shindiggs with me."
## thirty-four.
"I know he's just a fish, but I think he's lonely," Marsden said as she peered through the glass. The beta's blue-and-black fins flashed in the water, iridescent and hypnotic, a bruise come to life.
Jude tapped gently on the outside of the bowl. "Nah, Peeve's a fighting fish. It's safer for him to be alone."
"Poor guy. Unless a Mrs. Peeve comes along?"
"No can do. He's just going to have to be satisfied with seeing my pretty face from now on instead of Rig's. I was always the better-looking brother anyway."
The fish had been Rigby's, and now he was Jude's. Marsden leaned down and looked at Jude through the fish bowl. His dark waves became a blur, his features smears of burnished amber, someone familiar and yet not.
"So you know what you're doing as a responsible new pet owner, right?" She sat up again. In the background, his stereo played a Shindiggs song. They'd gone to Rigby's room and found his _Burn Out_ tape.
"Being a pet owner, I think I'm good with—it's the responsible part I'm still working on." Jude slid the fish bowl farther along his desk, away from the edge. "I keep thinking I've forgotten to feed him, so I'll rush in here, sure he'll be belly-up, too late to save. If you dream more than once about a fear, does that make it a full-fledged phobia?"
"Technically?"
"Sure."
"No clue. But I don't think it really matters."
He looked at her. "Because the dream's still there."
She nodded.
Too many times she'd dreamed her fears, in all their different forms. The dead suddenly not so dead as they caught her skimming, as they buried her beneath heart-shaped leaves. Her father, stumbling from the river, soft and gray and still hating her. A teenage Wynn in Shine's clothes and makeup, telling Marsden she could leave Glory, there was no point in staying behind for her any longer.
A new restlessness filled her, as strong as a tide, and she walked away from Jude's desk, scanning his room to take it all in. She didn't even care if her curiosity bordered on nosiness, or that he would notice. She wanted him to notice, _wanted_ him to be aware of exactly how much she longed to see, examine, not miss a single detail about him. That she could be selfish enough to no longer care what it might mean for him, being with her.
_Want_.
Was that what it was, then? To get close enough to someone that it would be hard to breathe, even as it also, somehow, got easier?
His desk at one side of the room, with Peeve in his bowl and papers and pens and one of his friendship bracelets on top of it. The bracelet courtesy of Abbot, Marsden still assumed, with her pixie hair and loud laugh and blazingly protective eyes.
A chest of drawers next to his closet, with textbooks from just that past school year piled on top—Jude had forgotten to return every single one before school let out for the summer.
A single framed photo sitting next to that pile of textbooks. In it, Isabel Ambrose, her eyes huge and luminous and not entirely happy, her brown skin shades richer and darker than her son's. Marsden thought it was Glory she could see in her gaze, doing its best to crowd out what she'd left behind, maybe making her feel as out of place in the town as Marsden still often did.
At her side was Rigby, a much smaller version of the teenage boy Marsden had seen that day in the library. Her being a witness suddenly felt fated, her memory of those moments what convinced her to let Jude into the covert, with the hopes of then hearing Rigby, to then hear her father. How else to explain where she was now, standing in Jude's room and looking at a photo of him as a baby sleeping in his mother's arms, and feeling not in the way at all?
"Wait, sorry." He grimaced, started scrambling to pick up dirty socks, an open bag of Pirate cookies, a damp towel from the floor. "This place is kind of a landmine, lately." He grabbed a plate with a half-eaten sandwich on it, then a jug of Tang, mouthed the word _sorry_ again, and piled everything into one corner of the room.
She laughed. "It's fine. I'm no inspector."
"If you were an inspector, I'd be lighting up quality control with hits." He shoved his hands into his shorts pockets and watched her watching him.
He looked, Marsden decided, like someone thoroughly cornered, dissecting the best way to turn.
Guilt nibbled at her. She'd given him no warning about showing up, was clearly being nosy. "I'm so rude, I'm sorry."
"Why are you sorry, and how are you rude?"
"For intruding. I'm actually kind of wondering if I should leave."
"I was wondering how I could convince you to stay."
Her chest went achy with knots, and fire painted itself along her cheeks. "That was pretty smooth."
"Trying."
Marsden walked over to his bookshelf, trying to act casual. "You have a lot of books."
"Most of them are Rig's." He came over to stand next to her. "He usually gave them to me once he was done reading."
She ran her fingers down the spines, wishing she could have asked Rigby about his books. Why he'd chosen to read one over the other, why he kept the ones he did, how he decided which ones were then good enough for his brother. Horror, lots of sci-fi. "King, Adams, Butler—have you read any of them?"
"Most. Some of them—like those Gibson ones on the side—I got from one end to the other all right, but that's about all."
She pictured Jude lying on a couch with a book, his expression completely lost and close to furious, and laughed. "They're your books as much as they were Rigby's, you know. Not just because he gave them to you, either."
"What do you mean?"
_You said_ are _Rigby's books, not_ were. _When are you going to start feeling okay saying_ were _?_ "They're just . . . more Eddie Murphy movies that you guys saw together."
Jude's grin held a trace of sadness. "I like that. I bet Rig would have liked it, too."
Marsden moved along the shelf, saw piles of old Archie and Richie Rich comics nestled alongside the books. Bundles of hockey cards, a bright blue yo-yo.
"You've got as many toys on this bookshelf as you do books," she said.
"Hey, comics are books."
Then her eye caught on something that made her smile.
She wrestled out the Magic 8 Ball. The black sphere was covered with scratches and scrapes and dust, a hand-size planet with a liquid core. "For example."
"Wow. I'm ten years old, seeing that again."
"Now you can give Theola a run for her money." Marsden sat down on his bed, already flipping the toy.
"That was my plan all along." Jude sat down beside her, rumpling the already rumpled sheets, and she tried not to think about that fact and where they were and that they were alone in the house.
"I used to have one of these," she said, "but one day the die just stopped showing." The sloshing sound was deeply familiar as she tilted it, as was watching faces of the small die appear through the viewer window, the tiny blue bubbles that accompanied it like froth from a surf. Star had given it to her, too amused with such a thing to not bring it home from the store, she'd told her. Shine had given the Magic 8 Ball a look of disgruntlement but had otherwise left Marsden alone, refusing to say a single word.
Jude reached over and wiped off the dust from the small viewer window with a swipe of his thumb. She passed it to him, and he tilted it. The die inside slowly floated up through blue liquid. IT IS DECIDEDLY SO.
"What was your question?" she asked, realizing she wasn't even joking.
He flushed all the way to his hairline. "Uh, something about dinner."
She laughed, was aware all over again of that word _want_ , how it'd infiltrated her brain, her blood, made her reckless. "You're an incredibly bad liar."
"I know." His gaze turned hot. She felt it on her skin.
Acting on absolutely nothing but instinct, Marsden moved to lie down on the bed. She turned on her side, inhaled his scent from his pillow, and tried not to think. "Come here." She touched the bedspread next to her.
He opened his mouth to say something but abruptly stopped. He shut his mouth again, then simply peered down at her on his bed.
Her pulse was a jackhammer, and she felt the first stirrings of a terrible and long-lived embarrassment.
"I asked if you being here was a good idea," Jude said quietly.
IT IS DECIDEDLY SO.
Marsden took the toy from his hand and placed it on the bed in front of her. "So come here. Magic 8 Ball orders."
"I can't." His voice was low, rough as fresh timber.
"Why not?"
"Because. I might never get up again."
She felt her own skin flush all the way from her toes to the top of her head. "There's something to be said about you going all out with the honesty thing."
Jude twisted over until he was lying down facing her, his face only inches away from hers on the pillow. Marsden knew, then, what it was like to have self-control slowly and definitively become untethered.
From the stereo, the Shindiggs song that had been playing suddenly surged into full chorus— _She likes the city but hates the maaaaan_ —shattering the odd, delicious tension of the moment, and they both began laughing, hard.
"God, this song is _awful_ ," Jude finally choked out when he could speak again. "I don't know how Rig did it for all that time."
She wiped an eye. "Didn't you end up having to listen to them, too?"
"You're right, let me fix that. I don't know how _I_ did it."
"Hey, they were big for a reason, you know."
"Well, it wasn't taste."
She grinned. "I like them. Don't make me challenge you."
He picked up the Magic 8 Ball. "Do the Shindiggs suck?" He flipped it. "MY REPLY IS NO."
It took them longer to calm down this time, to just let the music play without breaking out into fresh laughter. Marsden knew it had nothing to do with the Shindiggs and everything to do with the strain of the last few days, the covert having slid into their hearts like an uneven beat, into their minds like a nightmare for the day, the pain-pleasure question mark of whatever she and Jude were becoming. That moment of loosening their grip, just a bit—it was like coming up for air before the final plunge.
She cleared her throat and gestured to the Magic 8 Ball. "I have a real question for this thing now."
"Sure. Go."
"Ask how many days until we find your brother's time capsule."
Jude smiled, uncertain. "What?"
"I'm serious." And despite still being half-breathless from laughing, from lying so close to Jude she could feel his body heat, she now also felt a strange chill along her skin, the dance of skeletal fingers straight out of a graveyard. "Because even though it's just a toy, we're also in Glory. And Glory has its own rules."
He nodded, though his eyes remained hesitant. "Only yes or no questions, remember?"
"Oh, right. Okay, so ask if we'll find it."
"Will we find Rig's time capsule?" He flipped the Magic 8 Ball with one hand. "ASK AGAIN LATER."
Marsden frowned. "Ask again."
"I think later means _later_ later."
"Humor me."
"Will we find Rig's time capsule?" Two flips. "CANNOT PREDICT NOW. See?"
"Stupid toy."
Jude snorted.
She shut her eyes. Her brain was on overdrive, fueled by the oddity of lying on his bed and needing to find some kind of truth from a toy. She saw the covert, the river, her father, each image seared into the back of her eyelids.
"Can you please ask if I'm ever going to hear the dead, so I can know for sure why my father left that day?" she whispered.
"It's a toy, Marsden." His voice was soft, infinitely understanding.
"I know," she said, still whispering, staying in the dark. In her head, she was running, hands out, soil flying beneath her shoes, ginger as thick as mist in the air. Her lungs hurt with exertion, her heart burst with her wishes— _I'm listening, I've always been listening!_
She heard him ask and then read out the answer. "REPLY HAZY, TRY AGAIN."
"Am I _meant_ to hear the dead?"
"BETTER NOT TELL YOU NOW."
" _Now_ I know what really happened to my Magic 8 Ball," she muttered. "It didn't stop working—I just threw it away because the thing refused to give me the right answers."
"At least you weren't a demanding kid?"
Marsden opened her eyes. She was staring at Jude's mouth, hovering so close to hers, and decided she wanted, more than anything else at that moment, to taste it. Him. Them, together.
She laid a hand on the side of his neck, let her fingers slide up and around to touch the back of his head, and stopped when she touched a curve of scar tissue.
"Stitches—the doctor never questioned Rig's story about my falling off my bike." His gaze was clear and unflinching. "My father never has bad aim."
She saw in her mind's eye the crescent of a dent in the kitchen wall, smashed in by a flying beer bottle, and knew she could hate Leo Ambrose forever. "Anyone ever tell you the scar's in the shape of a horseshoe? Which means it's a sign of luck."
Jude smiled. "I knew the shape, just never thought of it as a good-luck thing."
"Saving it. For one day."
"Today."
Marsden moved her hand to push his black hair out of his eyes, all thick waves between her fingers. "Ask if we're ever going to kiss."
The Magic 8 Ball slipped from his grip. It careened off the bed and smashed onto the floor behind him with a distinct crack.
He swore, loudly and without restraint.
She felt herself melt, felt her heart ache. "Well, now we'll never know."
Jude leaned up onto his elbow, wound one hand into her long, dark hair, and found her mouth.
## thirty-five.
From where she sat on Peaches's yellow patch of bed the next morning, Marsden watched Nina's proudest worker and knew they'd both changed.
She wasn't supposed to be anything but happy to hear that Peaches was leaving. Peaches was Peaches. She'd always been abrasive, overly blunt, half enjoying Marsden's discomfort over the years. She had a hard heart, and only Lucy had been able to break it down.
But Lucy was gone, and Marsden never thought she'd see Peaches the way she was now—smaller, faded, beaten, made strangely vulnerable with brittleness. This Peaches, if Marsden squinted in just the wrong way, could easily remind her of her mother.
"Are you headed to Seattle, then, or just wherever?" She plucked at the blue pillow she held in her lap. On the bed next to her knee was Peaches's camera, returned.
Brom's photo was in her pocket. She'd tucked it there before coming to Peaches's room, thinking she would simply drop off the camera and then leave for Seconds. But then she saw Peaches packing, preparing to leave the boardinghouse and Glory. And because she didn't tell Marsden to go away, Marsden had come inside and sat down, wanting to say goodbye but unsure how.
Also in her pocket was a letter addressed to Adam Lytton with a dollar bill inside, no return address. It was the name of the last man from the covert. She'd found it by flipping through the newspaper that morning. She would mail it that afternoon. One more absolution she would never earn.
Peaches fished in the depths of a worn duffel bag she'd placed on top of the bed. It seemed out of place with the rest of the room, and Marsden guessed it was the same bag she'd arrived in Glory with, hitching a ride into town with Lucy five years ago.
"Just wherever." Peaches tucked sneakers into the duffel. "But first, I'm going to Florida. There's someone there I have to see."
"Lucy was from Florida."
"Yes, I know."
She heard cool danger in those words. "Would she _want_ you going to see this person in Florida?"
Peaches smiled, but it was hard and miserable, her eyes too shiny; Marsden couldn't help but think of Jude as he was when he first came to her. Standing at the fence to the covert, nothing but bleak anger in his eyes. Not the Jude who'd kissed her last night like he couldn't get enough, but the Jude who'd already seen too much and no longer cared.
"Ooh, no, probably not." Peaches's wink felt perfunctory, part of an old performance that was hard to shake. "But she always knew I had a hard time backing down from a fight."
"Who is it? Someone in her family?"
"There's a reason why Lucy never talked about her past."
"You know about it, though, don't you?"
Peaches nodded. "It only took about three years of being friends for her to finally tell me. But I'd kind of already guessed, putting together all the little things she'd let slip."
"She said when she got here, working for Nina seemed like her only option. So she couldn't go home, even if she wanted to?"
"There were no legal reasons why she couldn't go back. But she didn't leave home on a whim, the way I did. Lucy left because she no longer felt safe." Peaches carried over a plain jewelry box—like the duffel, it didn't match the room, and Marsden wondered if it'd been a gift from a john—and began to go through it. Her painted nails caught on earrings and flashed through paste gems. "Just because someone is blood doesn't mean they won't hurt you." Her voice was tired, desolate—Marsden heard the anguish of Lucy's absence in it. "Sometimes someone being blood means they think it's their _right_ to hurt you."
The image of Jude as a little kid, damaged. Her own mother, begging Marsden to save her. "Lucy was beaten?"
Peaches said nothing, only looked harder at her. "You're sixteen now, right? And Wynn is eight?"
Marsden nodded.
"Well, Lucy was twelve and defenseless, and I guess I'm feeling the need to let a particular someone know exactly what happened to that little girl."
"So they can feel guilty?" Her stomach churned with growing awareness of what might have happened. And she thought of Wynn, who trusted way too much. How she was the one who'd kept her that way.
"No, because guilt means getting to feel sorry, and they don't get to have that. Straight-up shame is what I have in mind."
"Don't get hurt." Don't _be_ hurt, Marsden wanted to say, wished could be true.
Peaches's laugh was flat, entirely humorless. "I'll be fine. And I might even be back—I've never hidden that I don't hate my work. I'll decide later, when this is done, when things might start feeling bearable again." Her gaze sharpened, turned knowing. "Has Nina asked you to work for her yet?"
The blue pillow shrank down within the sudden clench of Marsden's fingers. She said nothing. Couldn't.
Peaches moved over to her bedside table, pulled open the drawer, and took out a small handgun.
Marsden sat up straighter. In Glory, guns—real guns, not just the toy ones Red and Coop carried with them—were about as common as bad debts and hangovers, and she saw her share of them in the covert, left behind by their owners. But she'd never held one, was always careful to leave them untouched. "Have you always kept a gun in there?"
Intense grief crossed Peaches's face. "Lucy told me once that she thought she should get one, too, dealing with johns, but I convinced her not to. I was worried she wouldn't know how to use it, or she'd get in trouble if something went wrong. But I think another, smaller part of me also worried she'd use it for another reason, one that had nothing to do with protecting herself."
"She didn't use a gun, though," Marsden said quietly.
"I know. It doesn't change how I wish that that small part of me hadn't been so small." Peaches inspected the gun more closely. "If you decide to surprise the hell out of me by accepting Nina's offer, just know what you're getting into. And remember, aim to maim and go for pain."
"Seriously?"
"It'll be enough to stop them, and in the end, they'll probably still lose it. How very unfortunate."
"Who you're going to see in Florida—you're not going to take the gun, are you?" The possibility had hit Marsden like a slap. Imagining Peaches holding that gun with Lucy in her eyes.
"No." Peaches's lips curled into a scowl. "Though I considered it, because it felt good to. But if she wouldn't want me going in the first place, there's no way I can convince myself that she'd be okay with me killing him." She slid the gun back into the drawer, her shoulders seeming slumped with defeat. "And I only ever got it for work—it seems right that it stays here. I'll have to let Nina know about it before I leave."
Marsden slowly pulled Lucy's necklace from around her neck and off over her head. "I took this when I found her. I know she'd want you to have it."
Peaches reached out and took the thin silver chain. Her eyes narrowed. "You make it a regular habit to lift jewelry from bodies you find in the covert, Marsden Eldridge?"
"I didn't want it getting lost."
"That's not really an answer to my question, is it?" But Peaches slipped the necklace over her head, smoothing down her auburn hair—it looked right on her, just as right as it'd looked on Lucy. Her eyes were wet. "She bought this when she thought she'd finally escaped the past and could stop blaming herself. But I guess you don't really, not entirely. You can knit broken bones back together, but everyone knows they're still not the same. And Lucy felt those breaks more than she didn't. I should have been better about those times she didn't. I should have helped her make them last longer."
But Lucy had heard the call of the covert, Marsden knew, the one made powerful by the dark magic that ran in her family's blood, that twisted Glory into what it was. And whatever guilt Lucy hadn't been able to shake, it drew her to the land's promise of being saved.
It made Marsden hate the covert all over again, for being not just a place of tragedy, but also one of trickery. She hated her name and blood for having written that story, the town for not fighting harder against reading it. She hated herself for still needing the covert anyway.
## thirty-six.
She said goodbye to Peaches and left the bedroom. Walking down the hall toward the lobby, Marsden shivered despite the summer heat that simmered through the walls.
Since yesterday's discovery of Lucy's body in the covert, a kind of uneasy edginess had burrowed its way into the boardinghouse. It was as though whatever invisible boundary had kept the two places distinct was slowly falling away, letting both sides bleed into each other. Nina's girls, normally a chatty, giggling group, went quiet and thoughtful. It'd been Lucy who had fallen prey to the covert, one of their own, a reminder that living in the boardinghouse didn't mean they were any safer from the woods' darker side than anyone else in Glory.
Reactions inside the house varied.
Peaches, of course, was leaving.
To keep Wynn from the covert, their mother signed her up for afternoon swimming camp. Wynn had barely reacted to the sudden loss of freedom, she'd been so shocked about Lucy.
Aside from quietly serving last night's dinner after returning from the market and then eventually emerging from her room that morning to help serve breakfast, Dany claimed migraines and asked to be left alone.
And Marsden had gone to Jude's house and kissed him until he filled her mind and left her incapable of thought.
Only his father coming home had separated them.
The sound of the front door had barely swum through the haze in her brain, until she finally pulled away enough to say, "Someone's here."
"No, there isn't." His mouth was heated and everywhere.
Her skin was equally hot as she chased him back down, wanting to block out the world that existed outside his bedroom.
Then the louder slam of the front door, followed by the muffled sound of Leo's voice. _Jude? You home?_
They had hastily climbed off his bed, doing their best not to laugh, their hands smoothing down each other's clothes.
Jude's father's face was absolutely blank as they'd gone out to the front room to meet him, as Jude introduced her in a rough rasp of a voice that told her he would have given anything to be back in his bed with her, that he would have rather kept her from meeting Leo Ambrose entirely.
His father slowly set his briefcase down on the coffee table, rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, loosened his tie. She looked at his fists and winced inwardly for the little boys Jude and Rigby had been. Family bonds could be ugly. Sometimes they were chains.
"Hello, Marsden, it's nice to meet you."
She would never have guessed—Jude's father could have been talking about the weather, his tone was so indifferent.
"Nice to meet you, too," she lied. A partial lie, anyway. It _was_ good to finally see him face-to-face, to finally be able to paint him as the mere human being he was instead of the nearly mythical power he'd grown to be in her head.
Still, she tried not to squirm as he glanced from his son to her, and then back again. Two minutes in his presence, and she longed for escape.
Did Jude feel as trapped living here as she did in the boardinghouse?
But he was no longer a little kid. He was just as tall as Leo, his shoulders as broad. Rigby had waited for that. He'd waited until Jude could hold his own.
"It's a work night for me, Jude," his father said. "No one over in the evenings, remember?"
Jude's mouth twitched. "We were . . . reading."
Marsden coughed.
"Well, it's getting late now," Leo said.
She didn't miss the hint.
Before Jude could say anything that would likely make things harder for him later—that he would take her home, that she could stay for dinner, that he actually didn't give a crap if it was a work night—she strangled out an explanation about having to leave anyway, touched Jude's arm, and stumbled her way through the front door. She grabbed her bike from where she'd leaned it against the house, headed down the block, and turned onto the highway in the direction of the boardinghouse.
The just-about-cool evening air had washed over her as she'd biked along the river, calming her inflamed and wound-up nerves deep inside even as it tortured her still-tingling skin. She kept looping it over and over again in her mind—the press and feel of Jude's mouth on hers, his gently curious fingers.
He'd tasted like cinnamon.
She hadn't seemed able to get enough. And it had relieved her, that intense and delicious want. Living at the boardinghouse and knowing what Nina's girls did every night with their johns, a small part of her had always been unsure, full of questions. What if she'd come to hate kissing and being touched and just hadn't figured it out yet? What if having sex one day only disgusted her instead of being something she wanted?
The ache that filled her at having to stop kissing Jude—it was as good an answer as any.
It wasn't until she'd caught sight of the boardinghouse down the highway, its peaked roof sharp in the fuzzy evening light, that thoughts of Lucy began to creep back into her head, unraveling the thick knot of sadness in there so that it started to seep again. Marsden had barely known her, considering they'd lived in the same house for years, but Lucy's absence still loomed large, paving paths full of questions and regrets.
Once inside, she'd found Wynn watching television with their mother, the scene so rare Marsden had had to stare for several moments, processing it as real. Then she went to bed early, trying to forget about Nina's heartless ruthlessness in the name of business, how she didn't have long before she had to go to her mother's boss and admit she was hers. The gaping emptiness of both her boots left matching hollows inside her gut. By the time she'd fallen asleep, it'd been to thoughts of life and death in other ways—of a tall boy with a wicked slash for a grin and whose eyes contained a forest fire, of a girl with Alice in Wonderland hair whose wrists spilled blood onto heart-shaped leaves.
•••
She'd spent longer talking with Peaches than she'd thought, and the lobby was already filling with guests waiting to check out by the time Marsden left the boardinghouse.
Brom's photo burned like a brand from inside her shorts pocket.
Seconds. The one question she intended to ask Fitz. And if his answer didn't bring her any closer to the answers she so wanted from her father— _Why did you leave? Was it me?_ —then she told herself she would let it go. Just as Shine wanted. And then after Jude was gone, the covert would be simple again, even more so than before. No more trying to hear voices. No more wondering about her father. It would just be skimming from bodies and keeping Wynn away. There would be a new race to get away from Nina and their mother.
And she would be touched now. She would change and become someone different, someone she didn't want to know. She had no clue how to stop it from happening, and she could already feel a scream building up inside of her.
She'd gotten her bike from the shed and was headed down the front drive when she got a glimpse of Wynn just outside the covert. The top of her sister's head was a dot of black ink against the green of the forest.
"Mom's going to be so mad if you pull a no-show on your first day at camp, runt," she said as soon as she got close enough to be heard. "Aren't you looking forward to it?"
"You mean swimming lessons in a wading pool in Mrs. Clements's backyard?" Wynn made a face and swung her skipping rope harder at the ground. Shorn grass and dandelion bits littered the ground beneath her feet, a cascade of destruction. She was wearing her favorite blue terry shorts and a ThunderCats T-shirt—no hint of a swimsuit in sight. "No thanks."
A smile nearly escaped from Marsden. "It's not a wading pool—it's got real stand-up walls. And it's behind the school, not in Mrs. Clements's backyard. Just because she's a teacher there doesn't mean it's her backyard."
"Who wants to go swimming in the river, anyway? It's mostly mud."
"It's in case you fall in, to make sure you can swim out. Not everyone who goes in can come—" She thought of their father and let the warning peter away, unfinished.
"Mom just wants me to stay out of the covert." Wynn looked up, and Marsden was surprised to see a hint of tears in her eyes. "Even though it's not any more dangerous than it was before."
Lucy, on her sister's mind like a lingering nightmare. "She's just worried about you seeing something in there one day."
"She doesn't stop you from coming here."
"Because I'm older." Because Shine knew she'd do it anyway.
"Dead bodies can't hurt anyone. Besides, it's the house that feels more dangerous now, not the covert."
The hair on the back of Marsden's neck stood up. "What do you mean?"
Wynn whipped her skipping rope and decapitated dandelion heads flew everywhere. "Because no one killed Lucy. It was her own voice, in her own head." Now tears were streaming down her sister's face, coursing over the speck of grape jam clinging to Wynn's chin like a tiny bruise. "I wish she hadn't listened to it, Mars. I wish she'd asked for someone else to start talking over it so she couldn't hear it anymore."
"I really wish she had, too," Marsden said softly.
"Remember how I said I never wanted to live anywhere else in Glory but the boardinghouse? I changed my mind. Do you have enough saved up yet so we can move? We can share a bedroom again, if you want. I promise I won't be so messy."
Marsden's heart twisted and sank at the irony. She'd always been terrified, waiting for the day Wynn would fight her in earnest on the idea of leaving. Now that her sister was all for it, Marsden couldn't make it happen—not with Nina having taken all her money and nowhere else in town to get a job. Even giving in and becoming one of her girls didn't mean Wynn would be going anywhere anytime soon.
They were stuck, tiny, awkward flies caught in a jeweled web.
"I don't have enough. I won't, not for a while." The words lodged in her throat, weak and bitter. "I think . . . we have to stay. For now."
Wynn stopped slashing at the dandelions, the carnage coming to a halt. "You were the one who wanted to go so badly. You even wanted to leave Glory altogether, remember? But then I said no so you said we'd just leave the boardinghouse. And now we're not even doing that?"
"I know I said that. But we can't go just yet. I'm really sorry."
"Is it because of Jude?" The corners of Wynn's mouth turned down as she lowered the skipping rope. Her dried paintbrush hair was wilder than ever that morning, and Marsden itched for a comb and barrettes—not so much to make it pretty but more to calm and soothe.
"Couldn't he just visit you, wherever we move? Besides, he's just a boy—they're always around."
"It's not because of Jude." Except that wasn't entirely true, either, Marsden realized, something in her chest twisting anew. She didn't know when exactly it happened, the idea of staying in Glory becoming acceptable as long as they didn't have to also live at the boardinghouse. But she had to admit a lot of that changing _did_ have to do with Jude. And she didn't think it made her a bad sister as much as it made her human.
"We _have_ to leave," Wynn said. "If we stay here, what if _you_ end up sad? And dead? Like Lucy?"
"I don't know that kind of sadness, Wynn. It's more complicated than that."
"She always acted fine on the outside, but she wasn't, not deep down."
"She was really hurt, from a long time ago." Marsden touched the fence and felt the rough edges of carvings of well-meaning messages press against her palms. She saw the flowers and nonsense doodles she and Jude had put there just yesterday—in the bright early sun, they already seemed faded. "And she felt alone, I think, even when she wasn't."
Wynn flung the skipping rope aside and ran to throw her arms around Marsden's waist. "Don't be sad like that. Ever."
Marsden smoothed her sister's hair as best as she could with her hands, her heart now squeezing with worry, with the future, and lied:
"I'll think of something, okay?"
A muffled _okay_ against her side.
"Keep away from Nina, and I won't tell Mom you're here hiding from swimming lessons."
And that was how, while Wynn disappeared into the covert to avoid being dragged to Mrs. Clements's wading pool—near the back, where she always insisted the wild ginger started growing in the first place; not because it was the thickest there, the leaves the largest and darkest that could be found, but "because that's where the roots fight me the hardest when I try to pull them out"—Marsden biked toward Seconds.
The wind pushed her along.
A photo in her pocket fanned into flame.
She biked faster.
•••
Between Jude and their afternoons searching the covert, the work schedule that required her to be in the kitchen of the boardinghouse, and the times she spent with Wynn, Marsden supposed it wasn't entirely unforgiveable that it'd taken her this long to get back to Seconds.
The urgency she felt now made up for it. As though the past eight years hadn't even happened, as though her father could still be saved, as long as she finally got her answer.
Marsden opened the door and stepped inside.
It took her eyes five seconds to adjust to the dim lighting and make out Fitz behind the counter, leaning against the back wall. He was puffing away on a cigarette and reading that week's _TV Guide_. When he looked up and saw her, he waved her over.
"A photo, right?" He set the magazine down on the counter and blew out a stream of smoke. "To see if I remember that one guy back at Decks."
She nodded. "The one who knew my father." She could only hope that Fitz would remember one way or the other as soon as he saw the photo: _Yes, your mother's lover was there that night; no, never seen him_ _before. Yes, he might be involved in your father's death; no, he couldn't have been, he wasn't even there._
Marsden tugged the photo from her pocket. It came out half-creased, rumpled. But still, Brom's face was more than clear, even his oatmeal features made distinctive. She handed it over.
Fitz took the photo, stared at it through a cloud of cigarette smoke, and nodded. "It was him."
## thirty-seven.
Marsden's legs stayed shaky as she left Seconds and headed toward the post office.
She couldn't stop from making ugly connections, all the possible scenarios sprouting to life in her mind like bad spots on fruit.
Brom didn't look good in any of them.
He followed her father after Fitz and the others had already gone back inside, unnoticed. Had then robbed him. Had then left him for the river.
Or he'd followed him, saw him in danger from the river, and had done nothing.
Or he'd followed him, killed him, and the river had swallowed up the signs of murder.
Or he hadn't followed at all. Had stayed at Decks, or even gone elsewhere.
But whatever had happened, he'd stayed quiet to Shine about ever being there that night. He'd hidden it—and for eight years. And that, most of all, proved he was guilty. Of robbery, at the least. And maybe even of murder.
She'd wanted to leave his photo behind at Seconds for Fitz to throw away with the rest of the day's garbage. The idea of Brom's face swarming around her father's, and his money, and his night of luck—her stomach rolled.
Instead, Marsden had asked to see Seconds' phone book. She looked up Brom's address and scrawled it onto the photo—directly on his face, admittedly—before slipping it back into her pocket. She would mail Adam Lytton his cash and then she would bike over to Brom's. Shine had a hair appointment in the afternoon, and according to Nina, Brom was never at the boardinghouse without her. Marsden wanted to catch him at home, while he was still alone. She wanted to ask him what he remembered of a night eight years ago, when there had been a terrible spring storm, and as it'd been building up, how he'd been in Decks, watching her father have a winning night.
The mailbox was just up ahead, and she was already holding the envelope of cash in her hand when the sound of her name came from behind.
"Marsden?"
Her heart flew into her throat and she spun around to face him.
His eyes, lit with a smile that made her pulse go uneven, teasing her mind back to his bedroom and his bed and his hands. He held a take-out tray of coffee. Against the backdrop of the dusty road, the sun-beaten buildings and storefronts of Glory, he stood out like a beacon.
"Jude." She hurriedly stuffed the envelope back into the rear pocket of her shorts with fumbling fingers as he came to meet her. Panic and heat danced a tango in her stomach. "What are you doing here? I thought you worked in the mornings."
He took her hand with his free one, tugged her closer. She smelled coffee and lavender, planting soil, the savory sting of rosemary. "I used to. I just quit. The coffee at Roadie's sucked too bad."
She laughed and he leaned in, kissing her until they both needed to breathe and still they kept going. It was impossible to melt from the inside out, as indisputable a fact as laws concerning gravity, combustion, the speed of light—but she might very well be the first to do so.
He eased away and said against her lips, "That thing you said once about kismet, remember?"
Marsden swam up from through the clouds. _Kismet_. Meaning things being preordained, things meant to be. Fate. "Is your being out here kismet?"
"How else do you explain the coffee machine in the staff room finally busting this morning? That sucker's been on the verge for _years_. Add in my being the only one around for Roadie to force on a volunteer caffeine run and"—another slow kiss that Marsden felt in her toes, the tips of her fingers—"kismet. The good kind."
The presence of the letter in her back pocket turned sharp, a nest of brambles against the denim that poked through to her skin, and she flushed against Jude's lips.
She could easily have been holding cash meant for Rigby instead of Adam Lytton. If not for her involvement with his brother, if she'd somehow been delayed over the weeks in sending it, maybe Jude would have gotten it in the mail that very morning on his way to work. Would have seen his dead brother's name on the envelope and been torn apart all over again.
Maybe it was the fate that simply hadn't happened yet.
Marsden sighed against Jude's neck and pretended that fate was also the wrong one.
"What are _you_ doing out here?" He leaned back and peered at her more closely. "I thought you had to check the covert in the mornings."
She stiffened, then forced her shoulders to drop. "I already did. And now I have some errands."
"The post office, right? You were holding a letter."
Marsden shook her head so fast she got dizzy. "No, not—It was something else, actually. But I was just about to head home. I _did_ promise someone lunch, if he wants to come over early."
"About yesterday, your friend . . . Well, are you sure you're still okay with my coming over in the afternoons? I can always look on my own, if you'd be okay with that. If you really don't want to be there."
She leaned against him, tried to believe allowing him to be in the covert was some kind of atonement. "The covert is the covert. I just have to deal with it."
Jude bent down and kissed the side of her neck. "Okay, now I seriously have to bring back coffee for Roadie or the guy is going to put me on manure duty again—last time, it took me over two days to stop smelling crap everywhere I went. Want to come over to say hi before you head home?"
"You want your boss to meet me?" she asked, sure she'd misheard. Everyone in town had already met her, more or less. She had a label, a box in which to stay, making her easy to figure out.
He smiled. "Yeah, I _do_ want that. Roadie's a good guy. And it feels wrong that you haven't met him yet."
So it bothered him, then—that she'd met Leo before Roadie. Marsden pictured the garden center from the last time she was there, its stretch of sun-washed display floor, the splashes of color and fragrance and everything that was somehow the opposite of Glory. She'd wondered if she'd see Roadie inside, if she'd get a glimpse of the man Jude thought of as a father. But instead, it'd been Leo who'd showed up, the last person she'd expected to see, his presence like an errant thorn.
"Did Roadie love your mom, you think?" she asked. What made a person love someone who wasn't theirs? Brom and her once-married mother. Her wanting Jude, when she already had the world working against her.
"Maybe, yeah." Jude didn't seem bothered by it at all. "I could never ask, but . . . maybe. When I was kid, I once asked him to be my dad. I was seven, and I remember his face and how I could tell he'd _wanted_ to say yes, but couldn't. Seeing him so torn was almost harder than hearing the no."
She thought of her father, who'd said to her face he'd never wanted her. She thought of Shine, who couldn't seem to make up her mind between blaming and loving her.
Meanwhile, Roadie would have taken Jude for his own.
"Sure, I'll come say hi," Marsden said impulsively. "Should I prepare myself to hear really embarrassing kid stories about you?"
"He's going to say me and Rig were a couple of shits, that's for sure," he said, laughing.
"Well, were you?"
"Absolutely. Me crawling around eating garbage off the display floor and giving him heart attacks, Rig drowning out the inventory with too much water. Really, thinking about it, he _must_ have loved my mom to have that kind of patience with kids who weren't his own."
And it'd been Roadie who'd given Isabel that first ginger plant, the very same one that Rigby would later save by bringing to the covert. Which still grew there now, so thickly and deeply she could never imagine the place without it.
Just how much did Roadie know about her family? Raised in Glory and as old as he was, he'd be no stranger to the history of the covert, the stories and legends that went with it. Jude had said as much when he'd told her Roadie still recalled the place without ginger, before it'd gained its signature spice, the scent that anointed its bodies. He would have read all about Grant Eldridge's tragic death, the reports about Nina buying the boardinghouse at the east end of the Indigo. And whether he chose to believe or not, he would have heard the rumors about Shine no longer working there as just a housekeeper.
What if he took one look at Marsden and assumed she was doing the same?
What if Jude read that in his eyes? Jude, who'd revealed everything to her in asking for her help?
Marsden was suddenly painfully aware of just how many secrets she was still keeping from him. Rigby's note. Being a skimmer. Trying to hear the dead. Her mother's plans for her.
"Jude." Nerves pulsed in her throat. She felt sick. "You know about my grandmother being able to hear the dead, right?" She didn't see how he couldn't. It was like Theola being a psychic: basic Glory knowledge.
He nodded.
"What do you know about my mother hearing the dead?"
"I assumed she couldn't, since I've never heard of anyone going to her for that."
She took a deep breath. "What else do you know about my mother?"
A second's pause. "She's a cleaner at the boardinghouse."
"You've heard nothing else about her work there?"
Jude looked, she saw with a sinking heart, distinctly uncomfortable. "I've heard the stories, Marsden."
"And if I said they were true?" Her words came out bitterly, pills being yanked back to the surface. A dread that bordered on fear danced on her tongue, pushed the dusty storefronts and dirty concrete pavement all around them further into the background. "How much would that bother you?"
"It doesn't. I admit it did at first. But now I know you, _really_ know you, and it's like . . . You're you, and whatever your mom wants to do is just . . . everything else. The rest doesn't matter."
_But you_ don't _know me. Not really._
"Think of it this way." He shifted the take-out tray to his other hand. Marsden had the vague thought the coffees would be nearly cold by now, and wondered if it meant Roadie would stop asking Jude to go on food runs. "Does it bother you to hear stories about my father, or when people keep trying to guess why Rig killed himself?"
"It bothers me for _you_."
"So, okay, then."
"But what you hear about _me_ —that doesn't bother you? How I'm not going to inherit a house or money, just the creepiest piece of land in all of Glory? That I'm destined to forever work at the boardinghouse in some way?" She thought about Nina's threat and shuddered. "I know everyone at school talks about it—about me, who I am, who I'm meant to be. A lot of it won't be wrong. A lot of it might eventually matter to you."
Jude narrowed his eyes a fraction, and when he didn't speak right away, Marsden's heart sank further.
"Going to see you at the covert that first time, all I could hear were those stories," he said quietly. "I didn't know you, so what everyone else said, I listened to all of it. And no, not all of it's wrong—your folks, the covert, those are a part of you, too. But you're also way more than just those things. You are outside of them. You are beyond them."
She blinked so the world didn't blur, but it blurred anyway. He was saying everything she wanted to hear, but he didn't know how she had no options left. How could she tell him the person he'd come to discover was going to change again? That the person he thought was better than all those terrible things was really nothing _but_ those things?
Jude leaned close to kiss her, and Marsden let herself pretend again about that one kind of fate being wrong. "Now c'mon, before Roadie refuses to let me back into the shop."
## thirty-eight.
"Okay, what's this one?" Marsden held out the flower, unable to keep from laughing at Jude's blank expression as he struggled to come up with the name. "Seriously, shouldn't you know?"
He grinned at her. "But you don't know, either."
"I also don't work here."
His grin wasn't even a bit sheepish. "It's a daisy?"
"Jude!"
The bellow came from across the display floor, and Jude winced, laughing, as a man strode up to them. "Damn, guess that was the wrong answer."
She'd known what Roadie looked like, but only in the same way she knew what all the locals in town looked like when she'd never met them. Seen from across the street, while on her bike, through a store window.
Up close, he looked like he could run any business _except_ a plant shop—personal bodyguard, home security, slick casino dealer.
Beard a broad smear of peppered stubble, head shaven clean as a whistle, build as solid as a truck. Tattoos peeked out from his T-shirt sleeves, dragons and hearts and women, all meandering about his arms in shades of smoke and teal and ruby. His eyes were a warm brown, his scowl full of bluster, and he was balancing a honey cruller on top of the coffee Jude had left for him on his desk in the staff room.
Marsden liked him immediately.
"You work in a garden center!" Roadie yelled, inches away from Jude's face. "With plants and flowers! You should at least know the items on the display floor!"
His voice was a sonic boom in volume, each word explosive, and she barely managed to keep from instinctively covering her ears.
"Sorry, I forgot to warn you about him going deaf," Jude said to her in an exaggerated whisper, smiling even as he pointed to his ear, cupping it with a hand. "He insists he just likes being so obnoxiously loud, but really it's because he's getting old. He can't hear so well anymore."
Roadie smacked him on the back of his head. The gesture was affectionate, careful not to hurt.
Jude rubbed the back of his head, turning to his boss with his own mock scowl. "Is that for the daisy answer or the deaf remark?"
"Both, kid. Didn't hear me coming, did you?"
"I was distracted."
"And if I can't hear, then how'd I know you messed up?" He took a bite of the cruller. "It's a gerbera, kid! _Gerbera_. Be a good boy, write it on a piece of paper, and put it under your pillow for tonight!" He took a sip of what had to be ice-cold coffee and nearly spit it out. "Jesus, how far did you have to go to get this? You cross state lines or something?"
"Or something. And daisy, got it." Jude grabbed Marsden by the hand and gently pulled her to stand right in front of him. Her face warmed as Roadie's expression turned scrutinizing, as Jude tugged her even closer, her back resting right against his chest. "Roadie, this is Marsden. I wanted you to meet her and see why I was distracted."
She watched Jude's boss's eyes flicker as he realized who she was—Marsden Eldridge, daughter of Shine, the boardinghouse's delightfully exotic prostitute, and Grant, the man who drowned under mysterious circumstances eight years ago. Even if her name hadn't given her away, her looks would have.
Roadie did a little bow that somehow wasn't absurd, given his size and that he was still carefully balancing his doughnut on top of his coffee. Neither was it, she sensed, condescending or scornful, given what he must have known about her family.
The vise that had been closing tighter and tighter around her chest ever since Jude asked her to meet Roadie loosened a bit.
"It's good to meet you, Marsden!" Roadie bellowed.
"Same here. Um, Jude talks about you a lot."
He barked out a laugh. "Too much, I bet. The kid never shuts up at work, either. Too bad it's usually him complaining about something."
Jude snorted. "Roadie knows I barely say jack at work. Because, catch his attention, he sends you out on food runs—he likes to call it ' _volunteering_.'"
Roadie smacked him on the back of the head again. Then he ruffled Jude's hair as though he were three years old. Marsden watched him turn serious, how he was full of love for the boy who'd once asked him to be his father. "I tell you, he's a pain in the ass, but it seems I'm stuck with him." His voice was at nearly normal volume—rock-concert level instead of an airplane taking off.
"So, all it took was coffee—and cold coffee at that—to make you quit trying to smash apart everyone's ear drums for a few moments?" Jude sighed. "Even shoveling manure wasn't good enough for you."
"No, it was the doughnuts that did it. And I had to order those in myself." Roadie crammed a huge bite of cruller into his mouth and started talking around it. "Okay, I sent Kelly out on delivery, the others are wheeling in inventory, and I can cover the floor. Why don't you take a few minutes and show Marsden the rest of the place?"
The "rest of the place" was the back entrance and the large, semi-secluded workroom off to the side. Jude told her it was where all the flowers and plants came through for inspection before hitting the display floor—domestic, imported, "whatever happened to catch Roadie's eye that he wanted for the center." Not the hard inventory, things like the giant potted trees and hedges and planters that came into the place on wheeled dollies, but the soft merchandise, what Roadie assumed a girl would like most. "Because deep down, the guy is a total romantic." Everything was already neatly labeled from the supplier, saving Jude from messing up that task. She drank in rockets of color, the feel of velvet against her fingertips: hydrangeas, orchids, and tulips; snapdragons and tea roses; catkin and cherry tree and magnolia cuttings.
"It's _incredible_ in here." Unable to keep her hands to herself, she stroked open boxes of blooms, caressed fat stands of bouquets, all of it the very opposite of Glory's hidden prickliness, the town's layered darkness. "I think if I worked for Roadie, I'd never want to leave this room."
"You work with _food_ , Marsden. Bacon. Cake. Cheeseburgers."
Jude's voice was surprisingly terse, and she looked over to see him shoving bunches of chrysanthemums across the long butcher's block of a table, making room to toss down bundles of wildflowers to be cut. He seemed set on not meeting her gaze, at concentrating on his hands and his work and being too busy to notice her.
And she wondered if it was because it was the same for him—what she couldn't ignore, had come to accept.
That despite the hundreds if not thousands of flowers in the room, all he could really smell was her.
She went to stand next to him and waited. Her skin felt too alive, overly sensitive, run through with an electric current, needing to be touched. It made her brave; it made her stupid. "Hey."
"Yeah?" He finally looked up, and Marsden thought of how much of himself he'd already entrusted to her, and she nearly pulled back.
Nearly.
"I . . . Thanks for bringing me here," she started. "For showing me this amazing room. And . . . for not freaking out about my mother, and all the things I haven't really been able to tell you yet." She knew it sounded more like a confession than anything to do with gratitude, and she knew that was right, too.
"Don't thank me." His voice bordered on ragged. "You don't need to. It's just baggage, what you're talking about, and I have that, too."
She nodded. Baggage. Together they both had ghosts, a paralyzing need for closure, guilt—what would he say when he saw she had lies on top of all that?
"Do two wrongs ever make a right?" She grasped for words to best shape the ache in her chest, to paint how she wanted him even as she knew she shouldn't. "When it comes to people?"
"Depends." His eyes were midnight, full of raw nerves, as he slowly set the flowers aside. "On whether or not they're making it worse by being together."
"Worse for others, or for themselves?"
"Either."
"And if it's neither?" Marsden slid her hand along the side of his face. Her heart drummed; she saw the echo of its beat in his pulse along his neck.
"Then it's right."
Jude drew her to him, and she pressed her mouth to his, letting herself slowly fracture into pieces
## thirty-nine.
Brom's place was about ten blocks from Evergreen.
She'd left Jude behind at the garden center, in that fragrant, semi-secret workroom, petals crushed onto his skin and fire still lit in his eyes as she made herself step away and out the door. The floor had been covered with a wild sprawl of flowers and stems, the layers of blossoms and leaves that they'd sent scattering across the room as they'd lost themselves in each other. Her lips still thrummed; she could still taste him there.
Later. She would let herself think about him again later.
Marsden jogged back to her bike, still in the alley behind Seconds. She wheeled it out to the sidewalk and turned it in the direction of the address she'd written on Brom's face. She rode past buildings bleached pale with sun and dust, and the heat burned its way into her brain until she was nearly light-headed.
Four grand.
The amount kept flashing behind her eyes, was nearly a visceral flavor in her mouth for how real it was beginning to seem. Four grand, when she'd always thought two would be enough to get her and Wynn away from Glory for good.
Was it also the price her father paid to end up in the cold, muddy waters of the Indigo?
When she reached the house, Marsden got off her bike and leaned it against the tree in the front yard. The place was a duplex, what might have been a cookie-cutter copy of her family's old place, except that it wasn't run-down at all and neither was it very old. The neighborhood was also one of Glory's better ones. Brom was doing well enough.
The outside of the building had been painted a putty shade, tasteful and discreet. A trail of small paved stones split the dandelion-dotted rectangular lawn in two. Brom's half needed a cut, but the whole thing was dried out and crispy from the sun. A pair of large picture windows faced the street—Brom's was covered with a plain blind from the inside, while the other had long patterned curtains.
Marsden walked up his front steps, her hands skimming the black painted banisters that lined them. She had the vague memory of her own house once having the same kind, but that they'd been splotched with rust. She looked at her hands and was almost surprised there was no powdery orange residue on them. Just as she was almost surprised they didn't smell of metal.
She knocked at the door, questions already on her tongue:
_Did you follow my father that night?_
_What did you see?_
_What did you_ do _?_
But no one answered, and Marsden hesitated, uncertain what came next. If she waited even just a couple of hours, she would find Brom at the boardinghouse. His reservation always lasted at least a couple of weeks, and she was sure he'd only checked in days ago.
But then Shine would be there, shielding him, picking him over her daughters again. Marsden would find out nothing—even worse, if Brom _were_ involved, he would then know _she_ knew. And then what?
Unable to just walk away now that she was here, she circled around until she was at the rear of the house.
The backyard was a wide swath of wheat-like grass, and Brom's half here needed a cut, too. The other side was strewn with water guns and overturned flip-flops and the occasional patch of grass burned even lighter by dog pee. An empty wading pool sat deflated and dejected near the center, a rawhide dog bone alongside it.
She went to Brom's back door and knocked. Silence from this end, too. Wherever he was, it wasn't here.
She turned to go and saw a little boy watching her from the side of the house. His thumb was in his mouth, and he had a bad sunburn.
"Hi," she said. "I guess you live here?"
He didn't move, and then a woman appeared around the corner. She was holding a baby in one arm, a bag of groceries in the other, and looked about done in for the day. A dog bounded onto the lawn, panting and running in circles, the tag on his collar jangling.
"Oh, hello," she said. "Who are you?"
"Um. I was looking for Brom. He lives here."
Her eyes got wide. "Oh, you must be his daughter! Funny, I always thought you'd be younger. Are you here for a visit?"
Marsden felt herself nodding along, even as her head spun. Brom had a daughter? Did her mother even know that?
"Yes," she said. "A surprise visit." Her own words shocked her. What was she thinking? What was she getting herself into?
"I thought he was out of town again, the place has been so quiet," the woman said.
"No, I'm here to see him. But, uh, I forgot my key."
The woman slung the baby over her shoulder, set her bag of groceries on the ground, and began to fish around in her purse. "Here—your dad asked me to hold on to one just in case. You can just give it back to him when he gets home."
"Thanks." Marsden took the proffered key. Well, now she'd done it, she thought as the woman watched her unlock the back door. She had no choice but to go inside.
Blinds all pulled—the walls glowed like a sunset, all ochres and oranges. The air smelled musty, unused and staid. So Brom wasn't even coming home during the days. The boardinghouse—and Shine—had become his life. Until his next week off from his bank job, anyhow, a couple of months from now.
She stood there for a moment, guilt leaving her unable to move. What was she doing? Could she slip away yet without the neighbor noticing?
Her curiosity grew as she debated, and soon she was walking around, inspecting, _gathering_. She didn't know what she was looking for, specifically, or that she was even really looking for anything. Just being there was the closest she'd come to dissecting this man, who now wanted in on her mother's life, without being protectively filtered through Shine's desperation.
The place was small, but tidy; not dull but not interesting, either—basic kitchen, front room, short hall leading to bedrooms and bathroom. Perfectly fine, just like Brom.
Would her mother be living here soon with Wynn? While Marsden stayed with Nina, paying down a debt passed on to her as much as the covert would be one day?
She went to the main bedroom—people slept close to what they most wanted to stay hidden. She would know. And if Brom had secrets going back eight years, he wouldn't let them stray.
The space was sparse and spare: a bed, a chest of drawers, a nightstand—nothing strange, nothing incriminating.
In the drawer of the nightstand, she found blank envelopes, some late bills, receipts. A Michener paperback, the kind sold on racks by the checkouts in grocery stores, reminding her of Jude and his admittance of struggling through Gibson, the mix of pride and sheepishness on his face. Her hand touched a box of condoms, which reminded her of Jude _again_ , but this time of his mouth and fingers. With her pulse uneven and a slight flush climbing up her neck, she slid the box out of the way.
Tucked in the very back was a small pile of notebooks. All identical, the covers faux brown leather, the kind people carried around to jot down lists. She pulled one out and opened it.
Names and numbers, in neat columns down the page:
02/12/87–02/25/87
Rm3 0938174 Citi
Rm4 1370322 WM
Rm11 038611 Union
Rm13 275891 BoA
Confused, she took out another book from deeper in the pile. Flipped it open.
06/03/85–06/13/85
Rm4 127890 BoA
Rm5 788994 GWB
Rm6 241417 HSBC
Rm12 080411 WM
Marsden had no clue what any of it meant. She thought _Rm_ might mean "room" and that some of the shorthand at the end of each row might have been banks—Brom was in banking, after all—but she wasn't sure.
She placed the notebooks back into the drawer, changed her mind a second later, and tucked one into her pocket. There were so many of them—one being misplaced wasn't impossible. And she felt better having it—as proof, or insurance, she supposed, in case she ever needed it.
There was one last thing inside the drawer. A small stack of photos, held together by a rubber band.
She slipped the band off with fingers suddenly gone shaky and began to flip through the stack.
And felt her heart go small and withered at what she saw. She recalled with a kind of dull, pathetic insistence that she'd always known Wynn had inherited Shine's jawline, cheekbones, nose, hair. How she would have gotten the shape of her eyes, her slightly clefted chin, her paler coloring from her father.
She'd been right.
But Wynn's father wasn't Grant Eldridge, as she'd assumed.
Because he was Brom Innes.
## forty.
Marsden biked along the highway so fast, her tears dried on her cheeks before they could fall. She tasted the mud of the river in her mouth with each gasp for air. Rocks flew from beneath the wheels of her bike, bouncing back off the shoulder of the road like loosed scattershot.
But she couldn't move fast enough. She could never outrace the truth of Wynn and who her father was, what he might have done. It shamed her, too, that so much of her _wanted_ her father's death to be on Brom's hands instead of hers, whatever that might mean for Wynn. Shamed her to the core. Her mind stewed over the idea of bonds drawn by blood, the supposed sanctity of those links. She and Shine, Jude and his father, Lucy and her family—no wonder she questioned. Even her connection with Wynn now felt strained and odd.
A honk from an approaching vehicle startled her, and she slowed down a fraction. A truck passed her and pulled over to park crookedly on the shoulder of the road. _Evergreen_ emblazoned on the side, forest-green paint on black, all of it sheened over with a fine layer of dirt. Behind it, the river coursed brown and the sky blazed blue.
Her pulse leaped.
Jude.
They'd just been with each other, fingers driven into each other's hair, the crushed perfume of too many flowers adding to their light-headedness. His skin had been searing, his mouth and tongue the hottest.
Marsden should have been scared to let him get that close. She knew he saw things in her that she'd always been so careful to hide before. She didn't have to ask to see the truth of that on his face, the way his eyes couldn't hide a single thing when he looked at her.
Forest fires.
Maybe, even, kismet.
And she wanted him.
Now, as she listened to him cut the motor of the truck, the need to tell him everything came in a flood. Her future at the boardinghouse, being a skimmer, that she'd taken a part of his brother from him—all of it. The relief of finally wanting to admit everything she was eased some of the tension in her gut, told her how wrong she'd been to not do it earlier.
Jude stepped out from the truck and headed toward her. She heard the sound of tiny river rocks crunching beneath his shoes, the dried-out weeds that had blown over from the riverbanks snapping and screaming.
There was an envelope in his hands, white and creased, as though it'd been worked over by disbelieving hands.
Marsden recognized it instantly. It must have fallen from her back pocket. She instantly felt sick. The expression on Jude's face was pure, miserable fury.
She recognized that look, too.
It was the Jude from before the covert. The one still reeling from damage, made raw from the people he needed, the same ones who kept falling short.
And she'd been the one to do that now.
"Adam Lytton," he said as soon as he reached her, staying an arm's length away. His voice was steel, pounded flat and sharp. "I recognized the name from the covert column in the paper. Why would you send a dead man money?"
"Where did you find that envelope?" Her own voice was dull. Delaying the burn.
"I found it on the floor at Evergreen. After you left. Why do you have this?"
"Why did you open it? It wasn't for you."
"I couldn't help it. Seeing his name on an envelope you were just holding made no sense at all, so I needed to—Marsden, why do you have this?"
"I was going to tell you." There was a ringing in her ears.
"I guess I beat you to it." Jude's gaze was unmoving from her face. "So tell me."
"I got the money from Adam Lytton's body when I found it in the covert." Each word was supposed to have come easily. She thought she'd been prepared, hadn't she? But she'd never been more wrong as each one slowly scraped itself to life, proving her horrible. She paused, her longing for time to stop so acute it nearly hurt. The quiet around them blistered; her next words crawled from her slowly and painfully. "I'm a skimmer. I've been one since I was nine."
He sucked in a breath. "For money?" His cold revulsion hung in the air, as thick as the tan silt that made up the river, the mud that birthed it. "Doing all of that just for money?"
"It was our way out of Glory—Wynn's and mine. I had to get us out of the boardinghouse. Watching her get older there, seeing what people did—I had to."
"I'd be the first to tell you that money only goes so far."
"I was running out of time. I still am." _I'm_ already _out of time._
"Why were you sending away money if you need it so badly?"
"It was my way of saying . . . sorry, I guess. Asking for forgiveness, in a way."
His face seemed to break. The wind came off the water and tossed the waves of his hair, dashing grit all around them. The warm breeze was cold against her skin.
"You lied right to my face," he said. "Back at the covert, when I asked you outright if you thought a skimmer could have gotten to Rig before you did. When all along it'd been you."
She said nothing. What could she say that would change that truth?
"Did you take something from Rig? When you found his body?"
"Money."
"That's all?"
Marsden closed her eyes. "A note. It was in his pocket. Four lines, handwritten." She opened them to see Jude's completely torn apart. The colors in them were wild, chaotic, dangerous.
"This whole time, you didn't tell me." His voice was molten. "You made me trust you and want you, and you kept that from me. You knew how badly I'd needed more from my brother. I would have taken _anything_."
"Not this," she whispered. "You wouldn't have wanted this."
" _Bullshit._ That was _never_ your decision to make. You were just trying to hide how you had it in the first place, because then I would have known about you being a skimmer. You chose that over what you knew I was looking for."
"I didn't want you hurt, having to read it, seeing it for yourself. Doesn't that matter to you? That I cared?"
His expression darkened, became cutting and cruel. "Not nearly enough. _You_ don't matter nearly enough. You barely matter at all."
A series of cars slung themselves along the highway, and Marsden heard a catcall from one driver's-side window. It meant nothing and the sun was useless and something in her chest felt splintered.
"Tell me what he wrote," he demanded bitingly. "The note."
She knew he would hate her, would never forget the sound of her voice saying Rigby's last words. "Jude—"
"Goddamn it, Marsden. _Please_."
"Your brother . . . he wrote, 'I'm sorry, Jude, I never wanted you to know. I told myself it was Dad. I didn't want to stop. But I didn't mean to do it.'"
She watched his eyes absorb his brother's words, try madly to untangle the puzzle that they were and make sense of them. "What was he talking about? Do what?"
She remembered how she'd thought of violence, reading those words, and how she hadn't been sure what that meant. "Killing himself, what else could—"
"No, because he _did_ mean to do that—he walked into your covert all on his own." Jude shook his head. "So he told himself _who_ was Dad? He never wanted me to know _what_? It doesn't make sense."
Suddenly, his fury died away, and his expression turned uncertain, and Marsden felt it in her own bones—the other ways Rigby's words could be read, if you dared to. And the image that bloomed in her mind wasn't how he'd looked as she'd stood over his dead body in the covert, but how _he_ might have looked standing over someone else's.
She watched that same image cross Jude's face like a shadow, linger there like a bruise. One dealt not by his father, but by his beloved brother.
"What else did he write?" His eyes, emptier than she'd ever seen them, utterly desperate. " _Those were not my brother's last words_."
She shook her head slowly, unable to say a thing.
Marsden watched him be devastated, be buried beneath the depths of her and his brother's betrayals, and was absolutely numb as he got back in the truck and sped away.
## forty-one.
She waited there for a few moments—heart in her mouth, pulse thick and painful in her veins—and heard nothing but her own shallow breathing. The summer sun was a ball of flames, but she was so frozen, she wondered if she'd ever thaw out. Alongside her, the river gurgled and giggled and made her shiver.
When she'd read all the old fairy tales as a kid, she'd sometimes imagined herself as one of their princesses in trouble. Just waiting, sure she would be rescued by her special prince, whether it be from a dragon-guarded castle or moat-encircled tower or forest thick with poisonous trees. All she had to do was wait, and he'd come.
But no tale had ever covered being rescued from the shore of a river that was the color of mud. Or a covert stained with old blood. Or a town that was pitted with greed, made into a trap by its own people.
And Marsden especially couldn't think of a single story about someone being rescued when they were the ones who messed things up in the first place.
She was the dragon, the moat, the poison.
Jude wasn't coming back. His fury had been alive, absolute, his certainty of her guilt without a single doubt. He wasn't suddenly going to understand what she'd done, turn around on the road, and say _Marsden, you've been lying to me ever since I came to you for help, have just destroyed what I have left of my big brother, and made me think you were someone you weren't just so I wouldn't hate you, but I'm actually okay with all that. So you want to keep digging in the covert together?_
She got on her bike, swung it out onto the shoulder of the highway, and headed toward the center of Glory, moving as fast as she could.
To find him.
• • •
By the time she got downtown, road dust in her mouth and on her skin like a coating of ash, the sun had dropped past the midway point, shining down on the back of her neck instead of the top of her head.
Late afternoon. She should have been at the covert with Jude, dragging Rigby's old metal detector over the ground. Her chest pounded, was spiked with nerves as she biked along the streets and down the blocks, her eyes looking for him. She passed Evergreen, passed Seconds, and nearly rode right past the café, where his work truck was parked.
Theola.
Resentment for her grandmother's old friend rose in her, black and tidal. Wasn't it bad enough that Marsden had been born into a family with an ancestor so infamous that simply saying his name aloud gave people the chills, sure they'd just invited the devil into their homes? That her grandmother also had to be friends with a person who gazed at palms and read their secret lines? Someone who glanced at mushed-up dregs in the bottoms of cups and then claimed they spoke of the future?
She leaned her bike against the outer wall of the café and strode inside.
It was the business lull between lunch and the late-afternoon snack rush, and she was the only customer in the place. No sign of Jude at all.
Theola sat in her booth in the back, her ever-watchful eyes fixed on Marsden. As though she'd been waiting for her, had known she would return to hear what had been left unsaid in the presence of Jude. The thought came bitterly, her wondering how Theola kept it all straight, the desperation of the people who came to talk to her, how to best price their ghosts and guilts and tragedies.
The psychic beckoned to her—her hat was especially flashy today, gold and wide-brimmed, and the smoky black feathers on it bobbed deeply with the gesture—and Marsden, sure she was making a mistake, walked over.
"Phoenix feathers," Theola said, pointing at her hat as soon as Marsden sat down. "The man who made this hat for me—Lewis, who owns the costumer's shop a few blocks away? He still has such a crush on me, the old sweetie—said he did it after dreaming of the sun being set on fire, before it let itself be burned up so that it could glow even brighter. How coming from ashes only made it stronger."
"I'm not here to talk about the sun." Why _was_ she there when she should be looking for Jude? He wasn't there—she should have turned right around and left already. Had she really wanted a reading but couldn't admit it to herself? Did she need to find out what was in store for her now? "Or about phoenix feathers." Or the ashes of her past.
In her smoker's rasp, Theola called to the order counter for banana smoothies. An old man emerged from the kitchen, cursing someone named Darby for calling in sick and griping about how the hell was he going to get any of the paperwork done if he was out there cutting up damn bananas.
The mysterious Oliver Finney, Marsden guessed, finally willed into existence in order to work the blender. She would have to remember to tell Jude about the rare sighting, then she realized he wouldn't want to hear anything from her at all.
Theola pushed aside her crossword puzzle—it was the same one she'd been working on last time, Marsden saw—so that only the elephant teapot and a set of cups sat between them. "You're looking for Jude."
"How did you know?" Her dark eyes already giving up her thoughts, when she'd always counted on them.
"His truck's parked right outside," Theola said.
"Oh."
"And you wouldn't ever come to see me on your own. I have come to be, thanks to your mother, somewhat of an enemy to you."
Marsden's face flamed as she wondered again just how much her eyes were revealing. Hadn't she just had hateful thoughts about the psychic before coming inside?
"Shine wouldn't approve of this visit," Theola said.
"I'm not my mother."
"No, you aren't. You're much more like Star."
"I am?" Because Marsden had never heard the dead, not even once in all her hours spent in the covert.
"You're sitting here, aren't you?"
The storm in Marsden's stomach churned. Could anyone ever really be ready to hear about the rest of their life? "I want to request a reading. Because I have something to ask you."
Theola moved the elephant teapot to the side. The white ceramic cups, too. "I don't need to do a technical reading to answer your question. And I can't ask you to pay—not for something so obvious to me."
More than uncomfortable now, it was all Marsden could do not to avert her eyes. Was Theola prying into her brain right that very second? Seeing through the tops of her hands right down to her palms and all their telltale signs? What did she think she was going to ask?
"I'm not asking about my father," she said. "You were hinting at him the last time I was in here, remember? Not with words, but I still knew."
"Of course I remember that. I also remember how on edge you were, skittish as a mouse. And you're that way now, but over something else altogether."
"I'm not . . . on edge."
Theola laughed, a rough tinkle of sound. "You might have your father's eyes, full of secrets you're too good at hiding away, but Jude Ambrose is written all over the rest of you."
The old woman's gaze was sharp, too aware, and Marsden couldn't meet it. She glanced out the window, saw a portion of Roadie's work truck, and considered again why she'd chosen to stay after she'd realized Jude was nowhere to be seen. From behind the front counter came the sound of the blender, the sweet scent of ripe fruit, a hint of what she recognized to be star anise.
She'd have to try that one day, she thought distractedly, however reluctant Wynn was at trying anything new. Maybe the next time she asked for homemade muffins.
Her little sister _had_ to get used to trying new things. The realization came with a spurt of annoyance. When they left Glory, they'd be leaving everything behind, after all. They'd already talked about it, dozens of times once Marsden knew Wynn could keep her plans a secret.
It'd been hard to wait as long as she did, since she'd needed to spin her reasons to suit a little girl simply tired of too many rules. Having to eat hidden away. Not being able to stay inside. Living in a house where certain areas were off limits. Marsden guessed if she waited too long, Wynn would begin to poke holes in all those reasons and demand better ones before agreeing to leave. It would make Marsden have to tell her more about the boardinghouse and how Nina really ran it. She would have to consider telling her sister about their mother.
Wynn was still mostly excited about leaving. Marsden knew she thought of it as an adventure, and that she liked Marsden secretly planning with her. They spoke of how they would decorate their bedrooms, and how they would stay inside all day long if they wanted to. Wynn could finally have pets. And Marsden would cook Chinese food for her. She'd bake Wynn egg tarts, exactly how Star had showed her to make them.
"He's stronger than he thinks he is, you know."
She looked at Theola.
"Rigby dying the way he did is leaving him feeling about as helpless as a newborn deer stumbling along the highway. But Jude will get his footing and, eventually, walk away just fine. Same as how you've grown beyond Shine by refusing to be blind—by working with the covert instead of fighting it."
Marsden felt like she'd been fighting her family and its history her entire life. Because if she stopped, she would become her mother, and so would Wynn. If she stopped, she would have to let go of Jude for good, the ruined specter of Rigby forever between them.
"I wish we had nothing to do with the covert," she whispered. "Just like my mom wishes."
"Shine ran, has run from the very beginning, and will keep on running. You never have. So however much you hate the covert, you also accept it. Just as some people might always hate their scars, but without them, they'd be different people."
Marsden heard the echo of Peaches's words in Theola's. The idea that someone could fix pain and even settle scores, but it didn't mean the damage never happened.
Oliver Finney came over to their table, smoothies in tall glasses on a silver tray. His appearance said nothing of his unique ability to hide from a town with too many eyes. He wore a Seattle Mariners baseball cap, an annoyed frown on his face, and impatience in the line of his shoulders. But he'd thoughtfully topped the drinks with a sprinkling of crumbled banana chips, and a dab of almond butter anchored an oversize star anise to the lip of each glass. His eyes were full of affection for his wife as he set the tray down.
"Don't choke on the garnish," he grumbled. "Christ knows I can't run this place myself."
"I wouldn't do that to our customers, darling."
Marsden waited until he was gone before speaking again. She pulled her drink close, let its spice tickle her nose—not wild ginger, at least.
"What does Jude one day accepting Rigby being gone and my not being like my mom have to do with anything?" she asked. "What are you trying to tell me?"
Theola pulled off her star, shoved the sliver of almond butter into her glass with her straw, and stirred alive a milky, fragrant tornado. "I'm trying to tell you, Marsden Eldridge, that you and Jude Ambrose are far from done."
Marsden's eyes stung. "You already knew my question."
" _You_ already knew my answer."
The taste of sugared fruit still lingered in her mouth as she left the café. She climbed onto her bike, turned it onto the road, and slowly began to pedal home. If Theola was right, she and Jude would meet again soon enough.
She knew choosing to believe the psychic even just a bit was the beginning of a slippery slope. After all, Theola never guaranteed anything, for anyone. She had no real way of knowing if Jude would forgive Marsden, or if they'd ever even be anything close to friends again. Just as there was no way of knowing if Theola was simply a fraud, through and through, and always had been.
But Marsden didn't think so.
She needed to believe.
And because the world had never been kind to her, she took in what she saw next, and humiliation washed over her, telling her she was still a fool.
Stopped on her bike at the light on the corner, Marsden watched Jude and Abbot in front of the Burger Pit, their faces close together as they held each other, and wanted to disappear.
## forty-two.
Marsden rounded the corner of the front drive, sped toward the entrance of the boardinghouse, and swung off her bike.
She left it leaning against the side of the building, the side that led to the covert, not caring if guests saw it, not caring if their eyes followed the line from it to the covert and they wondered about the forest and its bloody soil. Nina would have a fit, too, that the bike wasn't stored in the shed the way she liked it. She kept the landscaping as tidy as she could, as though doing so kept the boardinghouse more distant from the covert than it actually was.
Marsden simply didn't care. She wasn't scared of hearing the lecture, would even invite the anger, actually, let it stir into a rage. It'd give her the chance to yell back at someone. If that someone ended up being Nina, then she'd probably enjoy the argument even more. If it convinced her to think she could get her money back by simply breaking into Nina's room and tearing it apart to find it, she would overlook how Nina had the whole boardinghouse in which to hide anything she wanted.
The memory of Jude on the street corner ensnared her mind, shoved it toward places she didn't want it to be, made her map out the world's cruelest corners. Her pulse hurt.
A single argument between them and, minutes later, he was off with Abbot, needing to be consoled, soothed. The image of them wrapped around each other—his fingers knotted in her cool, carefree pixie hair, her arms around his neck, pressed so close they would have felt each other's heat—was a giant, livid tattoo smeared across Marsden's brain, behind her eyelids, everywhere she looked.
_Asshole_. He was an asshole to the nth degree.
Yet, whatever he'd been proven to lack, she knew she was just as much to blame for him needing to fill that void—for helping _create_ that void. And it hadn't felt like just another argument, either, standing there with him as the Indigo raged and ran alongside them, his expression broken. It'd felt like . . . ruin.
She needed to keep moving. Keep going. Do her best to hate him when she knew, deep down, she never could. Abbot had been there from the very beginning, had built up a history with him and closeness to him that wasn't based entirely on misery. Jude had only come to Marsden out of necessity, needing to go through her to get to the covert. Maybe whatever she thought they'd built on top of that—above it, beside it, _other_ than it—would have never been enough. Maybe it wouldn't have even come close.
She entered through the kitchen, as she always did. But instead of staying there to look over the menu for that night's dinner, or to check what Dany might have brought back from the market, she went upstairs and headed for her mother's room.
Marsden had questions for Shine—about Brom, about Wynn, about whether or not she'd known her husband had been with friends other than his best ones at Decks that night. She wanted to know why she'd told Nina about her daughter having a means to escape.
She knocked at the door, her heart thudding. Again.
No one there.
Then she remembered that her mother had had an appointment. The salon was downtown—she could have gone shopping or to eat afterward if she had no reason to rush back.
Marsden's mind raced as she backed away. Where next? Who to ask? Her questions were suffocating, and time, Nina, Shine—their demands pressed harder.
She started walking down the hall again, knowing then what had to be done.
Peaches's room wasn't locked. The scent of her perfume still lingered, much fainter than before. Most of her things had been left behind, and Marsden remembered how lightly she'd packed. It was hard to tell what it meant—that Peaches had left enough to quickly slip back into an old life when she returned or that it was easier to keep going the less weighing her down.
She moved over to the bedside table and opened the drawer. It would come down to whether Nina had been more efficient than Peaches had been forgetful, or if she'd been rushed.
Marsden wasn't entirely sure she wanted it to be there still.
It was.
She picked up the gun. Her hand trembled. The metal was strangely slick, almost oily—definitely unfriendly.
Could she really use it? She had no real idea how, only that if she went by books and movies, the recoil alone would be difficult to control. But she was not Grant Eldridge—she would likely need more than her poker face when it came to bluffing.
Peaches's closet was still nearly full—clothes, shoes, jewelry—so Marsden had no problem finding a purse.
She dropped the gun inside, slung the purse over her shoulder, and left the room.
The lobby was largely deserted, which was typical in the hours right before check-in. Nina was at the front desk, fussing with a fresh bouquet in a glass vase, releasing its fragrances into the room.
Marsden's throat went tight. The flowers had come from Evergreen. She recognized the hydrangea cuttings, the thin spires of quince, the puffs of pure color and scent. She wondered if Jude had put it together. Had delivered it. Had touched it. She again felt the echo of his skin on hers.
Her stomach twisted as she approached Nina, considering the last time they'd spoken it'd been over blackmail and raspberry crumble. Instinct told her to turn and go the other way, but she had no choice now.
"Are you here with good news?" Nina stroked a blue hydrangea blossom with an elegant finger. Her eyes were cool and probing and hard as diamonds.
"You said I had a few days."
"Well, I'll be here waiting—don't make me wonder if I should be worried."
"Nina." Marsden's voice was stiff, full of taut wires. "Someone's at the back entrance, wanting to talk to you about an advertising opportunity for the bed-and-breakfast."
Her mother's boss's mouth curled up into her moue of distaste. "You should have told them to come around front."
"I'll watch the desk for you while you talk to them."
Nina set aside the vase. Marsden got a whiff of deep, earthy sweetness, was instantly back at Evergreen—that back room, that sprawl of flowers on the floor, Jude's mouth—before mentally dragging herself back.
"Fine," Nina said with a huff. "As if I don't have better things to do. I'll be back in a minute."
As soon as she left, Marsden opened the guest log and flipped the pages until she found his name and room number. She shut the log, fished out the corresponding room key from the front drawer, and turned down the guest wing.
Ignoring the _Do Not Disturb_ sign hanging from the doorknob, she made herself knock before she could think too hard about what she was doing. Did it count as a real plan when all she had were questions she didn't know how to ask and a gun she hoped she wouldn't have to use?
When there was no response, she unlocked the door and stepped inside.
It was decorated as the rest of the bedrooms in the boardinghouse: gray-flocked wallpaper, navy tiling with a faint fleur-de-lis pattern, pine-framed windows. There was also a television and an electric kettle on the desk, a clock radio and lamp on the bedside table—standard for all the guest rooms. One of Dany's welcome baskets still sat on the dresser, and Marsden knew that it would hold packaged mini soaps for use in one of the two communal baths down the wing, coupons for the local movie theater, and a package of the homemade rocky road brownies that Marsden baked and froze by the panful just for those baskets.
Already nervous, her breathing uneven and too loud in the room, she placed Peaches's purse on the bed and pulled out the drawer of the bedside table.
A notepad, a pen, a leather-bound Bible. More of the standard.
Marsden slammed the drawer shut, suddenly full of fresh doubt, despising her own desperation to finally be free of guilt.
What _was_ she expecting to find? Her father's four grand from winning blackjack eight years ago? If Brom _had_ taken it that night, it would be long gone, spent or saved or lent out—anywhere but there in the boardinghouse, she was sure. And even if she did find the money and could somehow prove it was her father's from that night, it _still_ wouldn't mean Brom had anything to do with his actual drowning.
_You know how sometimes you just feel it in your gut? That it's something way beyond logic and probability yet somehow just_ is _?_
Heat rose behind her eyes at the memory of Jude's words. She wondered where he was right then, what he was doing besides hating her.
She pulled out the drawer again, this time careful to look more thoroughly.
Gut feeling.
And humans were creatures of habit.
In the very back was another notebook, identical to the ones she'd found at his house. It was only half-full, the most-recent section dated just last week, with more rows of _Rm_ s and what she felt more and more to be shorthand for names of banks.
And neatly printed in the far margin: _Nina's cut 30%._
A rush filled her ears at seeing the name. Whatever Brom was doing, he was paying off Nina. She remembered her earlier guess of _Rm_ meaning "room." Nina somehow being a part of it meant it would have to be rooms of the _boardinghouse_.
Those rooms came with guests. Guests who, unless they were paying up front with all cash—which almost never happened—had to provide some kind of bank info to secure their stay.
And Brom was in banking.
The rush in her ears grew louder as all the pieces tried to fall in place to become an answer.
Could Brom and Nina be working together to steal money from boardinghouse guests? Brom must have access to all kinds of accounts through his work, and it was Nina's policy to get that bank info so she could use it if a guest's payment didn't go through.
If the two had a system and were careful, Marsden could see how they might have been scamming people for years.
It was all still just a guess, she knew, even if most of it felt more right than wrong. And none of it explained what Brom might be hiding when it came to the night of her father's death.
But Marsden was no longer a stranger to blackmail.
## forty-three.
By the time he entered the room, a bag of takeout in his hand, she was sitting in the chair at the desk, holding Peaches's gun and pointing it directly at his face.
"Shut the door, please." Her voice was smooth and cold and hid the fear that floated like ice in her veins. For an instant, his shocked eyes were Wynn's, and she nearly wavered. "Now."
A full second before he could speak. "Marsden? What's—?"
She dropped the gun until it was aimed at his crotch. "I said shut the door."
He pushed the door shut with his foot and dropped his lunch onto the bed. The bag, stained with grease, had come from the Finneys' café; the smells of chicken and balsamic vinegar and bread rose in the air. "Does your mother know you're here?"
"Considering where I have this gun pointed, you sure you want to bring up my mother right now? I really preferred her as a housekeeper."
His hands slowly lifted. "What do you want?"
"I'm going to ask you some questions, and you're going to answer them. That's all I want from you. Just simple yeses or nos." _I'm going to shake you like a Magic 8 Ball, Brom._
"Questions?" Confusion pulled his features tight.
"You and Nina are working together to steal from the guests here. She gives you access to the bank information the boardinghouse collects from them and you then access their accounts through your own work." _Bluff, bluff, bluff._ "And don't bother denying it—I found your notebooks. The one here and the ones at your house."
Brom's eyes went narrow and knowing, his mouth clenched at the corners. Wynn's face, Marsden couldn't help thinking, how it would look once she saw too much, knew everything.
"It's true," he finally said.
"Unless you want Hadley coming around to talk to you, then I need to know one more thing."
He said nothing, only waited.
"You were there the night my father died. At Decks. You knew he won four grand. You followed him home." More bluffing. She prayed her poker face was as good as her father's had been. "You robbed him, didn't you?"
Being suddenly asked about Grant Eldridge, a long-faded memory from the long-ago past, disoriented Brom, left him fumbling.
"He was my friend," he managed. "For a long time. Of course I didn't. Rob him, I mean."
"But you knew he had that money."
"I did. But I didn't take it from him."
"Don't lie. And don't forget where I have my gun pointed." She heard her voice break, took a deep breath. "A friend told me to shoot to maim because it's more painful. That in the end, they still have to cut it off."
Brom swallowed so loudly she heard the click of it in his throat. "I . . . followed him for a bit. After he left his friends outside of Decks. Because, yeah, I was thinking about stealing it from him—it was so much money, and he was going home to Shine, and—I just couldn't do it in the end, all right? Believe me or not, but I didn't touch him. Last I saw, he was walking down the highway toward home. And I let him go. He was my friend, so I let him go."
That night came to life in her mind, what she could remember of it, how she'd imagined it as she struggled through the article in the local paper. She saw the Indigo, a wild, foaming curlicue. The sky, sooty with clouds, shot through with white lightning like veins on the back of a grizzled hand. The air would smell like something burning on the stove, hot and humid and brimming with electricity.
Marsden stared at Brom and noted the way he met her gaze, took in how she'd always be connected to him through Wynn. She felt her heart ache for her own father, the mystery of his mind. And knew she couldn't force a truth that didn't exist.
"And now you're sleeping with his wife, after chasing her for years," she said. "What kind of friend does that?"
Contempt scrawled itself across Brom's features in a fast-moving wave. It wiped away his fear.
"I've always been Shine's second choice—first with Grant and then with this damn boardinghouse," he snapped. Her question had broken open some kind of floodgate, she saw. "She'd rather have had him and all his failures than me. Even our own kid—she knew Wynn was mine, but still she wouldn't leave this place. Do you know how _infuriating_ that is? She chose _any_ paying guy over being with me. And _here_ , in this town full of people who are never going to stop wondering if she _really_ understands them when they talk to her. She's lucky I'm better than all of them."
His rage had her flinching, left her as cold as the Indigo in deep winter. Only the thinnest of lines separated the mess of what this man felt for her mother, the way both love and hate existed in his heart for her. What existed for her father, too.
"Still, she's kept me strung along for years, and now she's finally chosen me." Brom's eyes glittered, the pulse at his temple pounded, and Marsden tightened her grip on the gun. "Thinking I'm her way out, me and my money, now that she's realizing she won't stay young forever. Well, I'm just returning the favor while I can—my turn to string _her_ along. I'll break her heart later, just when she thinks I'll never say no."
"You're pathetic."
"And your mother's a whore."
"She still chose my father over you, however weak or stupid he was. He's dead, and you're still nothing more than a last resort."
He made a forward motion, kind of a half leap, and Marsden's arms twitched, letting the gun jerk wildly for one single second before she steadied it. "Don't think I won't use this. The covert's my backyard, remember? Dead bodies mean nothing to me."
Brom fell back on his heels, suddenly beaten, his confession the draining of some pent-up poison from an old wound. "Are you done yet?" he muttered.
She tried to picture her father this defeated, how he must have been the instant he'd decided he would greet the terrible pull of the river, and instead she saw only the man who'd once smiled his way through drinking pretend tea with her.
Marsden lowered the gun. "I have one of your notebooks—show up here again and I'll pass it around for all the dinner guests to see. And stay away from my mother."
"Wynn. She's my kid. What about her?"
"Eight years, and you've never said a word. You really want to start being a dad now?"
His silence, woven through with resentment, was answer enough. Then he nodded, and Marsden got up. She dropped the gun back into Peaches's purse, pulled the strap back onto her shoulder, and left the room.
She found Nina less than a minute later, perched on the same love seat in the lobby where Shine and Brom had pretended to be people they weren't. She only had paperwork on the table in front of her, though, and for one giddy, delirious second, Marsden wondered if she should bring over a slice of raspberry crumble from the kitchen before breaking the news.
Nina glanced up as she sat down beside her. Her expression was cautiously triumphant, a gloat barely held in check.
It slid away like butter off a hot pan as Marsden spoke.
"I know you're helping Brom steal from the guests here," she said in a low whisper. From across the room, there was the ringing of the boardinghouse phone before one of the staff picked it up; from the kitchen she heard the muffled clatter of ceramic and water being run into the sink. "For a thirty-percent cut. I don't think even _you_ could keep the boardinghouse going once word spreads about you being a thief. Don't you agree?"
Nina's rose-tipped nails—dug deep into her palms, like blades into fruit—went even deeper with each passing second, each uttered word. Her eyes tried to burn holes into Marsden's, invisible fingers gouging invisible holes. "Perhaps."
"Here's our new deal now: I'll keep quiet about it, and you give me back all the money you stole. The debts my family still owes you from taking us in are now paid off. And you won't ask me to work as one of your girls again—if it's all the same to you, I'll just keep working in the kitchen, and back to full wages."
A slow hiss from between her teeth, like that of a spent grenade. "Fine." Nina bit out the word as though she'd been close to choking on it. "Are you done yet?"
Exactly what Brom had asked her. She hadn't been done then but she was now, and she nodded. Without another word, Nina went back to her paperwork, and Marsden stood up, headed for the front entrance of the boardinghouse, and walked out.
## forty-four.
The covert.
Shine had said it was unhealthy, her being there as much as she was, and maybe that was true. But Marsden had been drawn to the woods as soon as she saw Caleb Silas hanging from the tree, by the knowledge that her father was buried in its soil. And right or wrong, Duncan Kirby's mad blood ran in her veins, as thickly as the wild ginger that grew in the place.
Still shaken from Nina and Brom, she turned from the boardinghouse and headed for the dark heart of Glory.
She saw the truck from Evergreen before she got there. It was parked haphazardly along the shoulder of the highway, just beyond the entrance to the covert.
Then she saw Jude, and the earth pitched.
He was clutching the open door of the truck as though it were the only thing keeping him from falling. Raw and bruised and clenched white, his knuckles unfurled over the window frame, shattered, adrift. One eye was puffed completely shut, his lips split, his cheek slashed open along the bone. His dark hair looked wet from blood, freshly varnished with it. She tasted it—hot and coppery, battery in liquid form—in her own mouth as she ran up to him.
While she'd been holding a gun to the man she'd thought responsible for her father's death, Jude had met the drunken fists of his own father all over again.
Her eyes blurred, turning his face into streaks of garish color, pinks and reds and purples. She wanted to touch him, was deathly afraid to. "God, Jude, what happened?"
He shook his head, but just once, as though he hurt inside there, too. His eyes were absolutely hollow, their depths littered with shock. "You should have seen _him_." Then he attempted to smile, and his lips started to bleed again, and he swiped at them with his hand. " _Damn it_."
She pulled his arm away. "No, you're being too rough." She tried to blot away the blood with her fingers and felt a fresh wave of disgust for his father. "How could he do this?"
Jude tugged at her hand, turned it over, and lifted it to his mouth. "What I said to you earlier, back at the river . . ." His voice was hoarse, as though it'd been beaten along with the rest of him. "I'm sorry. I was an ass. My anger—sometimes I can't control it. Sometimes I don't stop it from getting that way." He took a deep breath. "Sometimes it feels good."
In her mind, the images were ugly and raw: Adam Lytton's note in his hand, Rigby's last words spilling from her mouth as he faced all the lies she'd spun, Abbot in Jude's arms . . .
Marsden fell back a step, breaking his grip. Her heart pounded its way up along her throat, and the earth was still pitching.
"I did something terrible when I kept Rigby's note from you," she said. "I had no right to do that. So I'm sorry for that, too."
"That part about you not mattering. That wasn't okay to say."
"It was, if it was what you felt."
He narrowed the gap between them. Up close, his swollen eye was livid, awful, his father's nursed rage collected into a single explosion. His other eye was hot with guilt, what she recognized in too many forms. "It wasn't what I felt. Not even close, okay? You _matter_."
"And if I told you I can't stop being a skimmer? Wynn's getting older, and I can't hide everything from her forever." An image of her sister popped into her head—grin a mile wide, telling Marsden she was the best cook ever, pouring achingly sweet lemonade for the first guy who'd ever come to the boardinghouse who she hadn't been warned away from. "I can't hide _her_ forever."
"She calls you Mars for a reason. And I know why you skim now. I do."
She felt his understanding reach out for her, try to tell her things could be all right again.
"I saw you with Abbot," she said softly, hating herself for still wanting everything, simply unable to stop. "Outside the Burger Pit. You literally went from me to her in minutes."
Jude shut his good eye, swore under his breath, and opened it again. "I was upset after leaving you at the river. I drove back into town, not thinking straight, and decided I'd go see Theola again, bug her some more about what Rig might have said that she'd forgotten. But then I ran into Abbot, and she was just—We're only friends. We've only ever been friends, and that's all we'll ever be."
"I'm never going to make friendship bracelets for you."
His brow wrinkled. "What?"
"You guys have this history, years and years of it. I'm not saying I want it, but I'm saying it's never going to be ours. Should I be worried about never being able to catch up? That I'll never be her?"
He made a sound like he was still being punched and his jaw went tight. "I don't want you to be Abbot. I don't want Abbot, period. I just want you."
She stared at him, heart like thunder in her chest. She'd never wanted to believe words so badly. But the smells of blood and ginger filled her head and left her confused. His fury when he'd left her along the river, his regret now—which was more real?
"You can't just do that," she said.
"Do what?"
"Say you hate me and then decide to take it away. Because whatever made you change your mind about hating me could easily change it back again."
"I won't change my mind."
"So what happened? What's going on?"
Jude opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again. His eyes were dazed, defeated looking, even as they flickered with heat. "I . . . I found out something. After I left you."
The air in the covert stirred, running through the trees, along her skin. "Tell me."
"Did you know that you being a skimmer has actually kept Rig safe in this town? You taking his note and hiding it—if anyone else had found it, everything would have come out. Hadley would have gotten involved, there might have been an investigation, and everyone in Glory would know."
"Know what?" She was completely bewildered. Rigby's note—the meaning of his words, what he'd really been saying—was still a mystery to her.
"What he'd done."
"What could your brother have done that would let you stop hating me?"
Jude swayed on his feet, pain written all over him. The sun glinted off his blood-streaked hair, and her stomach clenched.
"Marsden, I can't ever hate you, but the thing is—" His voice broke, then split wide open like he was just as injured inside as he was on the outside. Tears turned his eyes wet as he stared at her, his expression suddenly helpless. "The thing is, after I tell you, _you_ might hate _me_."
• • •
She made him wait by the fence while she ran inside the boardinghouse for bandages. Not because she still didn't trust him alone in the covert, but because she didn't trust the covert alone with him. It was her woods, and she knew its trees and soil and concealed paths, could close her eyes and sketch out the entirety of the land. But hundreds of hours she'd waited for the dead to talk to her as they were supposed to, and still they never did.
The covert, sly and secretive the instant that Duncan Kirby's mind broke and he picked up a gun. Who knew what games it would play with Jude, alone?
And now he finally had a secret. One he was compelled to tell her. Whatever it was, it had to be bad enough to make her no longer so terrible. So many responses were immediately on the tip of her tongue when he said she would hate him: _What are you talking about? What do you mean? I could never hate you_. But something had kept her from saying any of them before she'd stumbled away, whispering that he needed something for all his cuts. How she would be back in just few moments.
His secret terrified her.
Marsden was grateful to find the kitchen deserted, though just. A crumpled napkin and a smattering of crumbs still littered the top of the table, there was a dirty plate and fork in the sink, and the last of her raspberry crumble was gone. She imagined Nina, raging over her lost business investment, trying to drown out her bitterness by finally indulging in more forbidden dessert, and was coldly glad.
Jude was sitting against the fence when she got back. At the sound of her approach, he straightened up to face her. Beneath the bruises and cuts, she watched his skin pale with the motion, all its umber and amber tones washing away.
"You need to move more slowly." She knew she sounded stiff, but she couldn't help it. Her nerves rippled in preparation for what he might say. "Sorry, it'll take me a bit to use all this stuff on you." Unsure of what she needed, she'd grabbed towels, bandages, a bottle of water, and aspirin.
"This is all going to hurt, isn't it?" His voice was just as stiff as hers, but she also heard guilt there, etched all the way through, and it left her cold. He rinsed out his mouth, spat into the grass.
"Probably," she said, knowing he was stalling and not caring—she wanted to stall, too.
She poured water from the bottle onto one of the towels and began to carefully dab the blood off his face, from his lips. Her hands shook as she touched him.
He sucked in a breath, and she passed him the aspirin and the rest of the water. The smell of ginger wafted over them, spicy and barbed and dizzying. The sight of pretty heart-shaped leaves everywhere only turned Jude's injuries starker, more painful looking.
"Wynn always runs and hides when she cuts herself," Marsden said. "I end up having to chase her down."
Jude stared at her as she worked, his uninjured eye blinking at her like an inquisitive owl's, a blaze of brown flecked with amber. "You're comparing me to an eight-year-old?"
"You _did_ ask." She poured antiseptic on the towel and touched it to his face gently. "I'm sorry."
He hissed through his teeth. "Damn, that stings. Tell Wynn she's smart to run."
Marsden smiled, and it felt about as hollow as her stomach. _She_ wanted to run. She also wanted to stay, to be able to kiss him and keep him from telling her whatever he needed to tell.
He picked up her hand and wove his bruised fingers between hers, and she braced herself. "Rig's note and what it meant . . . Marsden, my brother killed someone."
She froze. The world swelled and receded in waves as she stared at Jude in shock.
But, deep down, she'd known, hadn't she? Had recognized in each of Rigby's last words the signs of a guilt so great it could only come from the ugliest of crimes? Had sensed shades of that same kind of guilt when she stole from the freshly dead in her covert, when she stood over her father's grave and wished not so much for him to come back but to be told she wasn't at fault for him being gone in the first place?
"How do you know?" she asked, feeling her heart ache for him as the loss of who his brother had been—was supposed to have been—turned his face bleak.
"My father finally told me." His good eye was far away; in it, she saw him replay the horrors of the day. "After I left Abbot, I went home. He was supposed to be at work; but as soon as I walked in, I could smell the booze. Turns out he knew the entire time what Rig had done and wasn't happy with the secret suddenly seeming close to being found out. He was waiting for me, wanting to tell me that." With his free hand, he gestured tiredly toward his swollen eye, his split lips, his raw cheek.
Marsden's thoughts ran rampant, entered Jude's house alongside him as it might have happened. She saw every detail, heard every sound, smelled each scent. Leo's temper an explosion and his elegant eyes gone a red-rimmed, galvanized blue. The reach of his huge, frustrated hands. The sound of knuckles against bones and flesh, the bright cascade of broken beer bottles, the smell of wet steel.
"You asked him what Rigby's note could have meant, and it scared him that you knew?" she asked. "And that's why he beat you?"
"No, I never got a chance to ask him about the note. It was seeing _you_ , when you were over, that scared him all over again. You reminded him of how he'd been hiding my brother's secret for years, ever since science-fair night. How Rig's secret might not stay buried forever, no matter what he did."
Marsden was lost.
What did _she_ have to do with Rigby while he'd been alive? Even after he'd died, she hadn't known anything about him, other than being the one to find his body. Even now, with this discovery that he'd actually killed someone, she didn't understand how she was connected. Rigby would have been thirteen to Jude's nine, big for his age but still a kid. And she would have been eight, and she was still living in their old duplex, and her father was still—
A single sliver of dread, sharp and cold in her throat, hammered out a steady pulse. She could taste it, thin and metallic and of the Indigo.
And she knew.
Jude's hand tightened around hers to the point of pain. His eye, ablaze and despairing as he watched her understand. "I'm so sorry. What happened to your dad—Rig killing him—it was an accident. Just listen."
## forty-five.
The covert swelled and swam, and Marsden thought she was going to be sick.
"I wanted root beer floats that night, remember?" Jude's words came fast, like he was worried she'd run before he could finish. "But it was already late, and there was that storm, and my dad had already had too much to drink. But Rig insisted that we should celebrate because of my project. He said we could go on our own, he'd just take the truck and he'd be extra careful about driving. But my dad lost it, the way he always lost it back then, and Rig just grabbed me and the keys to the truck, and then we were driving on the highway, along the Indigo.
"He just drove and drove, wanting to run away with me and not come back. And the storm—it was bad that night. I remember the wipers going so fast, this wild kind of drumming. I'd already fallen asleep in the backseat when Rig saw the man walking along the shoulder of the road. And that's when he thought of money—if we were going to run away, we'd need money."
Marsden shut her eyes. Her stomach was heaving, just like that same storm. Her father, coming home from Decks.
"My dad used to keep a pocketknife in the glove compartment," Jude continued quietly. "For emergencies. Rig pulled over, got out of the truck, and told your dad if he didn't give him his wallet, he'd have to hurt him. He was bluffing, he had no clue how to use a knife, but he was desperate. Your dad saw how he was still just a kid despite his size, and he said no and began to walk away. Rig decided that he was already in too deep to go back. So then he _did_ try to stab your dad."
She could see it. The thundering rain, the way it would have made the river roll and crash. A moonless night, a slippery road, a young boy's blind need for escape in order to save his little brother—all of it coming down to the single stranger who stood in his way. Would she not have done the same for Wynn?
"It was along a part of the highway where the Indigo nearly came right up to it, the shoulder was so thin," Jude said. "Your dad managed to wrestle the knife away, and then he tossed it into the river. He told Rig to go home or he'd call the cops, and then he turned to leave again. And Rig—he panicked. He'd just pulled a knife on someone who knew what his face looked like, and he just . . . panicked."
Jude's eye was a huge dark moon, and he was nine years old again, and Marsden saw him relive her father's death as Rigby would have witnessed it. Rigby, who had now joined them at the fence of the covert, his ghost sitting beside Jude, telling him about the wild summer storm of Glory eight years ago.
"But just as your dad couldn't have guessed how strong Rig was for a kid, neither did Rig. And when he pushed your dad to stop him from leaving, your dad's head hit the ground hard enough that he stopped moving. Stopped breathing. So my brother . . . he dragged your father's body over to the edge of the Indigo and waited until the river took it away.
"Then he drove home. He carried me into the house, and I kept sleeping. I kept dreaming about root beer floats and drumming windshield wipers and families who never fought. He told my dad, who was scared sober by the idea of anyone finding out—sober for a while, anyway. And then your dad's accident was in the local paper, and that's how everyone knew who was the latest to die."
Jude finished talking then, the last of it an echo that rolled throughout the covert, as thick and heavy as the ever-present scent of wild ginger. Silence fell between them, an invisible wedge of shock.
Her father, dead because of Rigby, the one person Jude had ever relied on—not possible. It needed to be a lie. Better that it'd been Brom, an old friend willing to murder for money, or Grant Eldridge himself, who was already drowning while on dry land. And if Marsden had any part in his decision—well, the worst of the town's madness circled back to her own blood, didn't it?
There was no way she and Jude could ever be okay with Rigby and her father between them. He would change his mind about not hating her, the same as Shine did, as her father had, as even Wynn might one day, tired of having her life controlled.
"You're wrong." Her denial burst from her like a dam breaking. She felt unwound somehow, all parts of her trying to escape the moment. "They found his body. Washed up, drowned. They said it was clearly an accident. _They said_."
"It _was_ an accident."
"There were no signs of that kind of struggle. There was nothing."
"The rain, though. The storm. It would have washed everything away." He dared to move closer. "I wish it hadn't been Rig, either, but you need to know that whatever your father said to you before leaving, you had nothing to do with him dying."
She let out a shaky breath, then another, unable to speak. She'd been waiting for years to hear those words, except always from the dead, not from Jude. Closure was a dream, still. How were they going to shake the ghosts they carried like a disease? Marsden felt the pull of the covert, of Glory as a whole, promising her and Jude they would never escape. She heard her father, his voice nearly drowned out by the storm. She heard Rigby, calling out from the woods for his brother.
"I don't blame you if you hate Rig," Jude said. "If you hate _me_ for it being him."
She shook her head, suddenly newly exhausted, all the way down to her bones. Rig had been made to live in a corner for most of his life, had only done his best to escape. And deciding to hate Jude would be like saying _he_ killed her father—by always needing Rigby, by making his big brother think he had no other choice.
"He was just being your big brother," she finally said, "and he was thinking of you. How could I not understand that?"
"It doesn't change what he did. I'll always love him, and he didn't mean to do it, but it doesn't change what he did."
"I know." Just as her father hadn't meant to leave the way he actually did, hadn't meant his last words to be the ones he actually said. "If I could, I would tell him I forgive him."
Rigby, her father—she needed to forgive both.
And so she returned them—to her family's covert, to the Indigo, to the places they'd chosen to rest—and she let them go. Into the trees, into the tide—the weight of years slid free of her heart and she blinked away tears.
Jude let out a soft sigh, tugged her closer. "Don't do that."
"Don't do what?" She saw the way his gaze searched hers, as if trying to read her eyes the way Theola might have tried to read her thoughts.
"Make me no longer give a crap about moving carefully with you."
She slowly slid her arms around his neck. She'd lived with caution and fear and the darkness of the covert for most of her life. But for this boy, who looked at her as if none of that mattered, she was tired of being careful.
Still, he was hurt, his mouth cut and bruised, and she hesitated.
Jude pulled her close and kissed her. She tasted the singing rawness of his lips, the taste of him beneath that, and didn't want to stop. Couldn't. So she didn't, and neither did he, not for the longest time, and—
"Hello!"
From within his arms, Marsden jumped. She tugged her mouth free and looked up. "Wynn!"
"Hi, Mars." Her little sister was smiling, frank curiosity all over her face. "Hi, Jude," she said to his still-turned back. "Does this mean you guys are going out now?"
"Hi, Wynn," Jude said mildly, his gaze remaining unmoving from Marsden's face. "Come back later, okay?"
"But why? I just got here," she said, laughing.
Marsden heard the affection for Jude in her sister's laugh, liked how safe it sounded, and peered more closely at her. It was her first time seeing Wynn since finding out about Brom, and she couldn't help but notice now. That where she and Wynn looked the same hadn't changed, but where they'd always been different stood out more clearly now, more obviously. She wondered if, over time, she'd forget to notice, would unconsciously smooth out the fresh jaggedness of those differences until they blurred, became soft once again.
The corner of Jude's mouth twitched as he continued to watch Marsden. "Just because."
Aware of her little sister's intense scrutiny, she gave Jude a fast kiss and got to her feet, adjusting her shirt while hoping her face looked nothing but calm. The whole time, his good eye continued to burn her skin, and she flushed at the unspoken words inside that flame— _That's not enough, not nearly_.
Wynn was holding Rigby's old metal detector.
Marsden frowned. The metal detector had come to represent too much of the covert—seeing it in her sister's hands looked wrong.
"Where did you get that?" she asked.
Jude got to his feet beside her, swept aside her hair, and kissed the back of her neck. "It's okay, Rig wouldn't have minded. It's meant to be used."
Flushed again, Marsden looked over and saw Wynn, in no rush to answer the question, staring at Jude. She hadn't seen his face with all its cuts and bruises yet. Her expression was a mix of surprise and awe.
"You got beat up!" she exclaimed loudly.
He grimaced as he reached up to touch his face. "Oh, yeah, this. Uh, I fell. Playing basketball."
"So you aren't very good?"
"Sure I am."
"But you fell. And pretty badly, from the way you look."
He laughed, and Marsden's heartbeat did a little flip at seeing him so at ease with Wynn, when he could have chosen to merely tolerate her. "The pavement won," he said. "But it's okay to fall once in a while—just makes you tougher."
"Did you need stitches?"
"Nope."
"That's good. I heard getting them hurts. Once, I cut my knee and I cried for hours because I was so worried I would need them. You know, if Nina had seen you and Mars kissing like that inside the house, she probably wouldn't have liked it."
"We thought ahead," he said, smiling. His bruises and cuts rippled, the surface of a lake with a strong wind on it.
"Actually, if you'd even walked into the house looking like that, she would have asked you to leave. Mom, too—you really do look kind of scary."
The mention of Shine reminded Marsden about Wynn's new afternoon schedule, which her sister had obviously chosen to ignore.
"You're supposed to be at swimming camp," she said. "You already missed the first class. Maybe you should just tell Mom you really don't want to go. I bet she's looking for you right now."
Her sister shrugged. She mimed sweeping the metal detector over the mix of ginger and grass at her feet. "I was in the covert, but then I got hungry and went to eat. I told Dany to tell her."
She wondered how long Wynn had been sneaking the metal detector to use on her own—it was clear she'd been practicing for a while. _How long do you stay in the covert on your own? What have you found? Who have you heard?_ "How often do you use the detector?"
"I don't know. Just once in a while." Her sister clicked it on and started scanning around her. Marsden saw the way she held it perfectly, neither too high or too low, and her unease grew, a kind of buzzing in her veins that matched the low hum of the thing's motor.
"It was my brother's," Jude said. "His name was Rigby."
Wynn glanced up, her expression suddenly fearful as she remembered just who Rigby was. "I'm sorry, I didn't know it was his," she half whispered. "I just thought it was yours."
"It's okay. He would have been happy to see you use it. He used to try to find coins with it, most of all. Every summer for a few years, he talked about trying to save enough for something big."
Wynn nodded, concentrating. The motor hummed, ginger swirled, the sun shone clear and sharp. "I like finding coins, too, and old buttons. I even found an old bullet once—"
Marsden sighed. "Oh, Wynn."
"—stuck in the base of a tree. Oh, and an old metal tin."
Her nerves went taut and tense, and a current ran along Marsden's spine—her pulse flew. Beside her, Jude froze.
"What kind of tin?" he asked Wynn, his voice tight.
"A cookie tin. Blue. You know, those round tins of butter cookies that everyone buys at Christmas. They're not even that good, you know. Mars's are way better." She glanced up from the ground to search Marsden's face and then Jude's. "Is that what you guys have been looking for? I knew there had to be something since you were using this."
"Something like that, yeah," Jude said.
"I left it in there, if you want to go see."
"You didn't open it?"
"I couldn't." Wynn shrugged. "I was going to ask you or Mars to try later."
Suddenly, Marsden was cold. "Where did you find it in the covert?"
"Near the back. You know, where the ginger started growing in the first place." _Where the roots fight me the hardest when I try to pull them out_. Wynn wandered off around the fence, still waving the detector. As her small form disappeared, Marsden imagined Rigby as a little kid walking beside her, holding dying ginger in his arms, telling her it needed planting deep in the covert.
Jude touched her arm, and she turned to look at him, already dreading the question, knowing she couldn't protect him from it anymore.
"The area Wynn's talking about." His eye was steady on hers, as dark as the Indigo at midnight. "It's where you found Rig's body, isn't it?"
Marsden took his hand, careful of the cuts there. "Yes."
## forty-six.
Even if she'd doubted the existence of the time capsule, she shouldn't have doubted its location.
She should have known right from the start.
Rigby had never been about fear, even as a kid. He'd protected Jude from their father. He risked and lost everything over root beer floats. He'd biked across town to go to a place filled with ghosts and perceived sins of all kinds.
She should have known it wouldn't have been fear on his mind when he came into the covert with his mother's plant. He would have found the best place for it, even if it meant walking all the way through. To the very back, where it was darkest, the shade deepest. Why wouldn't he do it again with something he buried as a treasure? And then when he was saying goodbye for good?
Marsden pushed aside branches as she walked.
"I can practically hear you beating yourself up still," Jude said. "You couldn't have guessed where he would have buried it."
"Even if I never would have guessed he'd go to the very back, it being where he shot himself should have been a clue."
"That's like trying to connect the dots when the dots don't even exist yet. Rig buried that tin sometime when he was a kid. He probably didn't even remember where it was when he came back."
Whatever trail Wynn had taken earlier had already filled in again, disappearing entirely. Wild ginger swallowed Marsden's and Jude's sneakered feet as they continued to cut through, gave them glossy green shoes with a heart-shaped leaf pattern, reeking as it rolled off their skin.
The sun peeled back and away, taking degrees of warmth and light with it. It could have been sunrise in the covert, or sunset, October or April. It was nothing like the late afternoon of the broiling July day that actually existed just beyond the fence.
She heard Jude mutter under his breath. She caught the words _creepy_ and _goddamn it_ and _stupid Rig._ It was almost enough to make her grin.
Almost. Because she pushed aside a final handful of branches—filigreed, delicate, a gentle protest to their presence in this least-navigated and most-untouched part of the covert—and knew they'd reached where they'd been meant to go.
It was the only part of the covert not burst through with trees and bushes. Negative space, a gap between the trees, a mini meadow of wild ginger. Out in the open, it would have called for picnics and dozing beneath the hot sun. Here, walking beneath the shade and nearly cool dampness, Marsden could almost believe someone would sink in and never come back out.
Rigby had shot himself through the temple. The results had been devastating and destructive—she'd shut her eyes at seeing his body and had to steel herself to approach. She hadn't fully looked at what was left of his face, and now she wondered if she would have seen some of Jude there. How much had they looked alike? How much of Jude had Rigby taken with him? How much of Rigby did Jude keep?
Then the covert spoke, and she _felt_ it through her feet, in her hands. It was like a rumbling of the ground, even as the earth didn't shift an inch, and her entire body seemed to tingle.
Was this—?
"Do you hear that?" she asked. Her mouth was dry. "The covert. It's . . ." Her words trailed away. She couldn't explain it. It was like trying to describe a color only she could see, a flavor only she could taste. How could she define something she didn't hear with her ears but felt along her skin, in her teeth, that was a quiver in her veins? She thought wildly of stories of animals that sensed earthquakes long before they came.
Jude was confused, staring at her with dark, startled eyes. "No, there's nothing."
"I think—"
The echo came again—a trembling of the air, an unseen ripple that ran throughout the wood—and she hugged herself, chilled.
She was listening to all the covert's _bones_. All its blood. All its sins and guilt. From Duncan Kirby to his wife and kids and all the others who'd ever taken the passage of the covert—she was finally hearing the dead.
Telling her what, though?
"You're hearing them." Jude's whisper was half-frightened, half-awed. He took her hand. "The dead. Their voices."
"I think so."
"What are they saying?"
Marsden shook her head. "I can't tell. I'm not—" She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and focused, trying to grab on to the invisible fingers she now sensed reaching out from the covert. A meeting of the minds.
There were no words, but she heard them still. They washed over like water, like the wind, and she read them the way she might read the weather, a fever, a face.
_We speak now only in echoes, in traces of what once was—ash and dust and salt, from blood and bone and tears. And you hear us now because you've let us go. Because you know no answer will change us back from being that ash and dust and salt._
_Why can I hear you, if you have nothing to say?_
_You hear what you are ready to hear._
She opened her eyes when the covert's fingers danced away from her brain. "No less cryptic than a Magic 8 Ball, really," she muttered.
Jude's fingers squeezed. "Tell me."
"They're saying whatever answers we might find in here, it doesn't change what's already happened. How finally figuring out how to be okay with that _is_ a kind of answer."
He glanced around as though expecting ghosts to show themselves from within the trees, out of the air. "So they're really here in the covert with us?"
"No. More like"—Marsden laid a hand on his cheek—"I'm touching you, there's no mark on your skin, but you feeling it is absolutely real, right?"
"Why can you suddenly hear them now?"
"Because I finally let the dead be free."
He tugged her close, kissed her. "I prefer the living, too."
They saw it a moment later, just a few feet away.
The edge of a round blue tin poked out from the thick mat of ginger on the forest floor.
They approached it as though it were alive, a skittish creature that would up and leave at one wrong move. Wynn's squirrel came to mind, that first day at the fence outside the covert. When she'd shoved buttered toast into Jude's hand and asked him to feed a wild animal, and he'd done it without hesitation. He'd been so lost, his face battered in invisible ways as he asked her for permission with a plea in his eyes. And then he'd grinned with that overly generous mouth of his, and she'd forgotten how he was supposed to be a stranger.
They fell to their knees.
"Holy shit." He picked up the tin and slowly rubbed dirt from the rounded edge of it with his hand, a blue of velvety, glossy night skies gleaming through. "Can you believe it? I owe your sister _big_ -time."
"Don't tell her that, or you'll never hear the end of it." Then Marsden opened her mind to that tremble and _felt_ for Rigby's voice. Filled her head with her own message: _Jude is okay. He loved you. You didn't fail him._
A single frisson that raced along her spine before it was gone. The sensation it left behind was like cobwebs on her hands, more unreal than real, almost impossible to gather back together and form into words.
But she did, and that they left her almost cheered meant something, too.
Jude was waiting, his hope reluctant and careful but still there, written all over his face. "Well?"
"Rigby just . . . wants you to be fine. He knows you thought he was the best brother."
His eyes filled. "I miss him."
"He knows that, too. I could tell he knew even before I heard him."
Jude swiped at the flat surface of the lid. There were drawings of butter cookies on it—some with sugar on top, some iced, some twisted into knots. A strip of masking tape slowly appeared from beneath the veneer of old soil. Scrawled on it in faded childish handwriting was _Property of Rigby Ambrose. Top Secret!_ For a single second, Marsden saw four scrawled lines echoing with desperation, of being haunted.
"Should we take bets on what's inside?" Jude asked. "I really have no clue what he might have put in here. I remember this tin now—our mom used it to hold her sewing supplies. After she died, he kept it for storing toys and stuff. But I don't think we're going to find baseball cards or marbles." He shook it gently. There was little to no sound. "Definitely not marbles."
"It depends on when he buried it, what was important to him at the time. So it _could_ just be baseball cards."
"But you don't think so."
"I don't think so." Rigby's life had been a landscape of deep hurts and sharp terrors, with only his love for his little brother keeping him from being buried beneath the two—he wouldn't choose to leave behind anything that wasn't equal in terms of feeling. She didn't think he could, even if he wanted to. Feeling would have been all he knew, even the slow dying of that feeling as he got older, as his guilt begun to overshadow everything else.
She touched the tin. The circumference of it was no bigger than a side plate, the kind Dany would set out in the dining room for dessert. But looking at it there in the deepest shade of the covert, the way Jude held it as though it were made of glass, it seemed much larger, oversize with significance.
He pulled at the lid, but it didn't budge at all. She watched as he kept trying to loosen it with no success and remembered how Wynn had also been unable to open it.
After Jude swore loudly again, she held out her hand. "Here, let me take a turn before you start shouting at it."
She'd expected to struggle just as he and Wynn had, but the lid twisted loose from the tin nearly as soon as she touched it. The thought came and went, fleeting and disturbing: that the tin had _wanted_ her to be the one to open it first. Not Wynn, and not even Jude. _Oh, Rigby, what_ is _this?_
"You got it," Jude murmured. His eyes were wide as he stared down at the still-covered tin.
Marsden nodded. Then because she was scared and because it was Jude, she placed it between them. "Open it with me?"
"Together?"
"Together."
The lid hit the ginger-covered ground with a soft rustle. The hollow seep of stale air being released emerged from the tin, the final gasp of something dying.
And time reeled back. Years disappeared. Rigby was alive with a knife and a bluff; Jude was nine and sleeping in the back of a truck; Marsden was eight and crying while her parents hated each other in the front room, while her father told her he'd had enough.
Jude's face was completely unreadable as she reached inside.
A letter.
And four thousand dollars cash.
• • •
_I don't know if this will ever be found. A part of me hopes it won't be, because then I can keep telling myself none of it happened. Maybe I'll_ _even believe it one day. I'd wanted it for me and my brother, but not this way. The money feels full of bad luck, like there's magic in it but none of the good kind. It tells me if we try using it anyway, we're doomed. So that's why another part of me_ does _want someone to find it, especially if they can really use the money. Because I know it's only cursed for us._
_I can't keep it in my room anymore. Sometimes it feels alive. I see his face all the time, everywhere. I hear the knife splashing into the river. His skull when it hits the ground. I feel the water pulling at my shoes. It's not just when I'm sleeping that I have nightmares._
_It happened so fast that I can't remember much of it. I know I was supposed to walk away after he gave the money to me, that's what I promised him. But then I couldn't do it. It was like someone else was inside of me, telling me to not let him go. The same way I found myself lying about just accidentally hitting him with our truck. No one knows anything about this money either. Just like how no one knows that when I pushed that guy down, I had been thinking about Dad. That if he were somehow gone, life would be so much easier for me and my brother._
_I wish I could take it back, more than anything. That if I said I was sorry enough, it would change the past. Most days, I want to be dead, so it'll stop replaying it in my head, except that I can't leave my brother alone. Dad says he's never going to drink again, and I want so badly to believe him. And he hasn't broken his promise yet. So maybe this time he really means it._
_I saw a movie once about blood money. The idea is that a victim's family gets repaid for their loss by the person who hurt them, or by the_ _person's family. So while this money isn't really blood money, because it was his in the first place, maybe somehow it will still make it back to his family. It's why I'm burying it here on their property, in the deepest, darkest part of the covert._
## forty-seven.
There was a sound at the bedroom window.
"Mars!" Wynn's voice, sounding panicked from across the room.
Again. A series of small, dull thumps.
Something was being thrown at the window screen.
"What _is_ that, Mars?"
Marsden opened her eyes to see Wynn sitting up in her bed. Moonlight shot in through the window and everything was tinted grays and blacks, smears of smoke. The outline of her sister's bed hair was again the wild bristles of an oversize paintbrush.
The sound came once more, still soft and now more than insistent.
Marsden climbed out of bed, kicking aside the blankets she'd been using despite the heat of the day lingering in the night air, turning it soggy and full. Her pulse raced, her heart crept into her throat. She supposed it should have been caused by fear, but she knew it wasn't.
Jude. It could be no one else.
She peered out through the mesh of the screen.
He was standing out there just below the window, a mere blur against pale moonlight. His face was nearly hidden in the dark.
Still, she would have known him anywhere.
He must have seen her move behind the mesh, because he lifted his arm in a wave.
Marsden pushed open the screen and leaned outward, letting the slightly cooler night air wash over her skin. The moon had left a thin silvery sheen on everything, wiping away the hot, dry dust of day. Farther beyond him, she could see the swaying treetops and scraggly brush of the covert, the shadowed line of the fence that encircled it. It was just hours ago that they'd walked through it, holding a tin full of cash and with the knowledge they could finally stop listening for the dead.
"What are you doing?" she called down in a loud whisper.
"I was trying to be goddamn romantic." There was embarrassed, disgruntled laughter in his voice. "I wanted to wake you up by tossing pebbles at your window."
The corners of her mouth twitched. "You were aiming wide—you kept hitting the screen."
"Crap, sorry. I have a good arm, I swear—I blame only having one eye. Anyway, I couldn't sleep—I forgot that Karey _and_ Langston snore like hell when I said I'd stay over. And . . . I wanted to see you."
Heat rose along her cheeks. "It's the middle of the night." She tried to sound like boys coming to her window after midnight was an ordinary occurrence.
"I like nights. Plus, chocolate-chip waffles, if you're up for it?"
She laughed. "Come to the kitchen door."
"Okay."
She pulled the screen shut and turned around. "Go back to sleep," she said to Wynn. "I won't be long."
"I wasn't sleeping—and neither were you. I could tell by the way you were breathing."
No, she hadn't been remotely close to sleeping. Thoughts of Jude and the day had crept into her brain and wouldn't leave.
Her father's winnings were in an envelope, folded into an old winter scarf tucked into the highest shelf in her closet. She could have stuck the bills into her boots as she'd done with cash from the covert since she was nine, but it felt wrong. Like going backward. Even the money that Nina had already returned—silently, coldly, her mouth set in her familiar moue of displeasure as she handed it over—was now stored elsewhere, a coffee container Marsden had taken from the pantry that she'd emptied of its fragrant contents.
After finding Rigby's tin, Marsden had led Jude to where her father was buried in the covert and listened for him. Eight years, and she'd never guessed the truth of his dying—she wanted him to know she would no longer wonder about him, all her questions had been answered. _I don't hate you. I've never hated you. I'm sorry you're no longer here._ His voice had rolled in like soft thunder, so that for a handful of seconds, the woods blurred and the air felt full of echoes. She'd cried at his understanding, at finally accepting what was.
A part of her still hurt to think that he'd died for that money—that in a way, his life hadn't even been worth the four grand, since Rigby had panicked anyway and still ended up killing him. But she understood panic, too, understood desperation and how it could make someone do things that could lead to the unthinkable. When she thought about her father from now on, she wouldn't always automatically think of the river or of rainstorms at night. Instead, she'd think about how he liked the radio loud and his pretend tea spiked with pretend sugar.
She grabbed a T-shirt from the closet to wear over her tank top. "I _know_ you were sleeping, Wynn, because of the state of your hair."
"It's Jude outside, isn't it?" In the half-light, her sister resembled their mother more than Brom, more Marsden than a stranger of a father. "Do you like him?"
"Yes, I do. Is it okay if I do?"
"He's nice—and he likes your waffles. But he sure gets into lots of fights. I guess because he looks like he _wants_ to fight a lot of the time."
Marsden grinned and pulled on the shirt. "He doesn't really want to fight all the time."
"Was the cookie tin his brother's?"
"Yes. Now go back to sleep."
Wynn slid back beneath her covers. Marsden noticed she hadn't bothered to change out of her clothes from the day, as was typical.
"He killed himself, just like Lucy did," her sister said.
Images of Rigby and Lucy, each covered in blood, a boy named for a song, a girl with Alice in Wonderland hair.
Marsden sat on the edge of Wynn's bed, unsure of what to say. Until Lucy, her sister had never known any of those who died in the covert. And until Rigby, she supposed, simply because he'd been Jude's brother. "He did, yes."
"He listened to that voice in his head, then—just like Lucy listened to hers. If he'd been like Grandma, he might have had someone else to listen to, since he was in the covert." Wynn drew the covers to her chin, sounded sleepy again already. "Sometimes, lately, I hear them. I wonder how close it is to what she used to hear."
A chill ran through Marsden's blood. "You can hear the dead?"
"Not words or anything. But a really strong feeling that tells me something."
"Finding Rigby's tin out there today"—Marsden shivered, remembering how she'd heard the dead with her bones, with her _teeth_ —"was it not because of the detector?"
"It was. But it also wasn't. I just . . . knew where to go. And then it was there."
"Wynn, I can hear them now, too."
Her sister sat up like a shot. "Really?"
Marsden nodded. She wasn't sure if she _wanted_ Wynn being able to hear the dead—not that it was up to her—but she felt better that neither of them was alone in it. "Let's keep this our secret—you know Mom doesn't like you in the covert anyway."
"Have you talked to her?"
Marsden had not seen Shine since Brom and his confession about his stealing, the admittance of his strange and twisted love for her and her dead husband. The topic of why she'd told Nina about the money remained untouched and was an eruption in the making. Now, Marsden was no longer sure she _wanted_ it to erupt. What could she say that wouldn't just be making things worse between her and Shine? She didn't know if she could trust her mother to ever pick her or Wynn over Nina—worse, she didn't know if she cared that it didn't really matter anymore. "Talk to her about what?"
"About us moving from the boardinghouse, remember? We still need more money."
"Actually, Nina's going to give me a raise, so that'll help a lot." _And we also have an extra four thousand dollars. That'll help a lot, too._
Shine would still fight them leaving, Marsden knew. Maybe she would even threaten to turn her back to them if they didn't stay, her love for her daughters as volatile as a storm over the Indigo.
But things had changed. Brom was over, no longer her mother's prince. And Nina would be more than happy to see them gone from the house, considering what Marsden knew about her. Which meant except for her daughters, Shine would be alone. How far would she go to prove her desperation was greater than theirs?
That was something Marsden didn't know. But she was no longer going to pay for her parents' decisions—or be the excuse for their failures.
Wynn went to lie down again. "And Jude can still be your boyfriend, wherever we end up living in Glory."
In the shadows, Marsden had to smile. It was hearing it stated so naturally, how Jude Ambrose was very much her boyfriend. She liked how it sounded, those words put together in just that way. She liked it a lot.
"Okay, I should go, or Jude's going to start throwing more rocks at the window." She slid off the bed and stood up. "Don't tell anyone about him showing up here so late, all right?"
"Only if you make waffles for breakfast."
"With chocolate chips, I know. Hey, we should try something new next time, okay?"
"Like what?" Wynn said through a yawn.
"I don't know. Banana anise muffins." Marsden shook her sister's foot through the blanket. "Rice porridge. Steamed buns."
"What's all _that_?"
"You'll see, runt. Now, good night."
Downstairs, she flicked on the light above the stove before quietly opening the back door.
Jude closed the gap within seconds. His mouth was hot, the thrill of his tongue against hers both primal and sweet. He still tasted like cinnamon. She didn't give an inch, pushing back even as she felt she was barely holding on.
Then his stomach growled, and they both laughed, their lips still tangled together.
He pressed his mouth to her neck, making her ache. "Christ, it's late, but I'm not sorry at all for coming over."
She pulled back and did a onceover of his injuries.
Beneath the porch light, he was a palette of colors, from pink to red to purple, his bad eye at the dark end of the spectrum. Cuts everywhere that were properly scabbing now. She thought he looked like he'd challenged an entire gang—a gang made up of his father, his fists, and bottles of alcohol—to a fight and was lucky to have walked away in the end. She had a hard time connecting the image of that man to the one she'd met, the one with the cool blue eyes and cultured accent who barely looked at her as she stood in his kitchen beside his son.
Marsden held the door open, and Jude was about to step inside when he suddenly stopped.
"Wait a second, I almost forgot him out there." He stepped back out and lifted something from the floor of the porch.
_Him?_
He held a water-filled glass bowl, and inside, Peeve swam in circles. In the half-lit kitchen, the beta's fins were minute flashes of deep color, glowing and winking.
"I was thinking your sister could adopt Peeve." Jude shut the door with his foot. His cheeks had taken on a hint of blush. "You said she's always wanted a pet, and he'll just be sitting in a bowl in her room, so she can't get into trouble for that."
"But Peeve was Rigby's." Her pulse in her throat hurt. She knew how much it all meant, him bringing Peeve.
"I keep worrying I'm going to forget to feed the poor sucker." He placed the fish bowl on the table. "I'd feel guilty forever. And Rig—I bet he would have gotten a kick out of Wynn. I was going to give her all his Shindiggs tapes, too, but I figured you guys already had that covered."
He said all of this with a new kind of ease, the acceptance of his brother being gone, of Rigby being an imperfect person. Jude had been anger that had nowhere to go, a bird smashing its own wings as it battered at an unbreakable cage. But even the worst of cages had its weak spots, bars that could be bent away to lead to escape.
Marsden had escaped with him. She could never leave the covert entirely behind, but it was no longer all she saw ahead. She'd bent bars of her own.
She leaned up and kissed him, more gently this time, thinking of his cuts and bruises. "She'll love Peeve. Thank you."
Jude pulled her close. "More." The word was soft, rough, and desperate against her mouth. "I won't break."
"But you're hurt."
His eyes said he thought _she_ was, with everything they now had between them that would never be simple or go away completely. "You'd tell me if you weren't okay, wouldn't you?"
Marsden ran her hands through his hair, touched his lucky scar. "I won't break."
"So, then, more. Please."
## Acknowledgments
I wrote the book, but _Along the Indigo_ wouldn't exist without every single person on this page. My thanks to all of you.
My brilliant, passionate, and tireless agent, Victoria Marini. I'm so very lucky to have you in my corner, and I wouldn't be here doing any of this without you.
My wonderful editor, Anne Heltzel, who believed in this book from the start. You saw all the things I couldn't, and that's why you're a genius.
The rest of my team at Abrams—my copy editors, proofreaders, and publicists—and your endless enthusiasm and support for this book. I will always be grateful.
Author and writer friends Ellen Oh, Mindy McGinnis, Caroline Tung Richmond, Dhonielle Clayton, Mark O'Brien, Bethany Morrow, and Camryn Garrett. For helping me get this book on track and for sharing with me all your talent and wisdom. I owe you guys so very much.
Bak and Hing, Wendy, Ray and Peggy, Heather and Terry, Ashley and Steven, Dallas. Your constant encouragement means the world.
And, of course, Jesse, Matthew, and Gillian. I once thought dedications were a kind of thank you. But I was mistaken, because I can never say it enough. So thank you, for every single thing.
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{"url":"https:\/\/stats.stackexchange.com\/questions\/414826\/logistic-regression-log-odds-to-probability-issue-in-r","text":"# logistic regression log odds to probability issue in R\n\nI have the following issue in R.\n\nI perform logistic regression in R:\n\nlogitMod <- glm(dependent_var ~ var1, var2, varN, data=traindata, family=binomial())\n\n\nThen, I run predict on the first record of the testdata set, to get the log odds:\n\n>predict(logitMod, testdata[1])\n-44.81362\n\n\nThen I calculate the probability from the log odds:\n\n> 1\/(1+ exp(-predict(logitMod, testdata[1])))\n3.449006e-20\n\n\nThen, I check with the predict function what the built-in probability-conversion would yield, and the result is very different:\n\n>predict(logitMod, testdata[1], type=\"response\")\n2.220446e-16\n\n\nSo my question is, what am I overlooking?\n\n\u2022 Both are basically zero. Surely not \"very different\" in my book. (I haven't made an effort to check whether you got things right though.) \u2013\u00a0Lewian Jun 26 '19 at 12:56\n\u2022 I'm with Lewian on this. Sure, it looks like you're off by many orders of magnitude, but your numbers are so small that a tiny rounding difference could make for considerable differences. Maybe there's an issue, but try your predictions with testdata[2], 3, etc to see if you get matching results. Your probability calculation looks right. Maybe try $\\dfrac{exp(x)}{1+exp(x)}$ and see if the numerical precision improves for testdata[1]. \u2013\u00a0Dave Jun 26 '19 at 13:04\n\u2022 I see no error in your code and it indeed looks like predict(logitMod, testdata[1], type=\"response\") produces erroneous predictions. But maybe there are good reasons for this behaviour of predict.glm. \u2013\u00a0Jarle Tufto Jun 26 '19 at 13:07\n\u2022 @JarleTufto Why is that prediction erroneous? \u2013\u00a0David Jun 26 '19 at 13:11\n\u2022 @David Well, there is certainly an unexpected numerical difference. While the difference may not have any practical consequences, it is worth asking why predict.glm was implemented to have this behaviour. Btw, 2.22e-16 is the same as .Machine\\$double.eps. \u2013\u00a0Jarle Tufto Jun 26 '19 at 13:32\n\nThose two results are exactly the same: zero! Try to see if the problem persists when using a more \"normal\" number, i.e: predict(logitMod, testdata[1]) in a range like $$(-2,2)$$ or $$(-3, 3)$$\n\u2022 For testdata[2], the result of predict(logitMod, testdata[2], type=\"response\") 6.653410e-01 = 0.665341. With the same manual formula as above, the results indeed seem to be matching. Thanks for this tip! In the end, even though the difference between those approximately zero numbers are 4 orders of magnitude, this issue is probably related to decimal conversion indeed. \u2013\u00a0itarill Jun 26 '19 at 15:05","date":"2020-08-13 17:42:36","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 2, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.6340687870979309, \"perplexity\": 1751.3433216388014}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2020-34\/segments\/1596439739048.46\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20200813161908-20200813191908-00087.warc.gz\"}"}
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Q: Using * with awk I have a file with things like serialno, userid and password. When fetching column 3 using awk, a problem crops up for user id jij because of the "*" in the password. How to retrieve the password properly?.
cat testfile
1 abc bnmj134
2 fff u7Tdff
3 jij Qm6Pn*w
a=`grep jij testfile|awk '{print $3}'`
echo $a does not output, showing error as echo : No match.
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Legend Saravanan to debut in JD-Jerry directorial - Here's the entire list of cast and crew- Cinema express
Legend Saravanan to debut in JD-Jerry directorial - Here's the entire list of cast and crew
On Sunday, his debut film was launched under the aegis of legendary producer AVM Saravanan, and veteran director SP Muthuraman
Published: 01st December 2019
Legend Saravanan, the owner of Legend New Saravana Stores, who shot to fame by starring in advertisements for his chain of stores, alongside Tamannaah and Hansika, has been in the news for some time now for planning his big-screen debut as the lead.
On Sunday, his debut film was launched under the aegis of legendary producer AVM Saravanan, and veteran director SP Muthuraman. The yet-to-be-titled film, which is set to be directed by the filmmaker duo JD and Jerry, will have music by Harris Jayaraj. Debutante Geethika Tiwary has been cast opposite Legend in the film, which also stars Prabhu, Vivekh, Vijayakumar, Nassar, Thambi Ramiah, Kaali Venkat, Mayilsamy, Latha, Kovai Sarala, and Devi Mahesh. It is also said that another popular heroine will be part of this film.
The director duo, who debuted with the 1999 Ajith-starrer, Ullasam, last helmed the 2003 crime thriller, Whistle, starring Sherin and Gayathri Raghuram. The film is planned to shot in Chennai, Pollachi, Himalayas, and a few other foreign locations.
The film, which is also produced by the actor himself under The Legend New Saravana Stores banner, will have cinematography by Velraj, editing by Ruben, art direction by SS Moorthy, and the dialogues are written by Pattukottai Prabhakar.
Saravana Stores LEgend Saravanan
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SEA OF THE CALIPHS
_The Mediterranean in the Medieval Islamic World_
CHRISTOPHE PICARD
_Translated by Nicholas Elliott_
THE BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England
2018
Copyright © 2018 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
This book was originally published in French as _La mer des califes: Une histoire de la Méditerranée musulmane, VIIe–XIIe siècle,_ copyright © Editions du Seuil, 2015.
Jacket design: Jill Breitbarth
Jacket illustrations: ( _above_ ): Sailing boat on the Euphrates, from _The Maqamat_ (The Meetings) by Al-Hariri, c. 1240 (gouache on paper), Al-Wasiti, Yahya ibn Mahmud (13th century)/Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France/Photo © AISA/Bridgeman Images; ( _below_ ): detail from the Catalan Atlas, 1375 (vellum), Abraham Cresques (1325–1387)/Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France/Bridgeman Images
978-0-674-66046-5 (alk. paper)
978-0-674-98318-2 (EPUB)
978-0-674-98319-9 (MOBI)
978-0-674-98266-6 (PDF)
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE PRINTED EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Names: Picard, Christophe, author.
Title: Sea of the caliphs : the Mediterranean in the medieval Islamic world / Christophe Picard ; translated by Nicholas Elliott.
Other titles: Mer des califes. English.
Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018. | "This book was originally published in French as La mer des califes: Une histoire de la Méditerranée musulmane, VIIe–XIIe siècle, copyright (c) Editions du Seuil, 2015"—Title page verso. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017025099
Subjects: LCSH: Mediterranean Region—History—476–1517. | Islamic Empire—History, Naval. | Sea-power—Islamic Empire. | Abbasids—History, Naval. | Shipping—Mediterranean Region—History. | Navigation—Mediterranean Sea—History. | Muslims—Mediterranean Region—History.
Classification: LCC DS37.8 .P52813 2018 | DDC 909/.0982201—dc23
LC record available at <https://lccn.loc.gov/2017025099>
To Manuela, Benjamin, Alexandre
My profound gratitude to Annliese Nef, Françoise Micheau, and Patrick Boucheron for their support and advice
# CONTENTS
1. Introduction: The End of the Moorish and Saracen Pirate?
2. **I. The Arab Mediterranean between Representation and Appropriation**
3. 1 The Arab Discovery of the Mediterranean
4. 2 Arab Writing on the Conquest of the Mediterranean
5. 3 The Silences of the Sea: The Abbasid Jihad
6. 4 The Geographers' Mediterranean
7. 5 Muslim Centers of the Western Mediterranean: Islam without the Abbasids
8. 6 The Mediterranean of the Western Caliphs
9. 7 The Western Mediterranean: Last Bastion of Islam's Maritime Ambitions
10. **II. Mediterranean Strategies of the Caliphs**
11. 8 The Mediterranean of the Two Empires
12. 9 Controlling the Mediterranean: The Abbasid Model
13. 10 The Maritime Awakening of the Muslim West
14. 11 The Maritime Imperialism of the Caliphs in the Tenth Century: The End of Jihad?
15. 12 Islam's Maritime Sovereignty in the Face of Latin Expansion
16. Conclusion: The Medieval Mediterranean and Islamic Memory
17. Notes
18. Glossary
19. Chronologies
20. Selected Bibliography
21. Index
#
# INTRODUCTION
## _The End of the Moorish and Saracen Pirate?_
By He who sent Muhammad with the truth,
I will never let any Muslim venture out on it [the Mediterranean]...
How could I allow my soldiers to sail on this disloyal and cruel sea?
_—'Umar b. al-Khattab (634–644)_
THIS STATEMENT, attributed to the man seen by Muslims in the Middle Ages as the greatest caliph of Islam and the initiator and organizer of the Arab conquests, has led to a lasting misunderstanding regarding the history of Muslims in the Mediterranean in Islam's first centuries. Indeed, when Fernand Braudel opened his classic study of the Mediterranean by declaring, "I have loved the Mediterranean with passion," he was not thinking of a Christian and Muslim sea but rather of that of the Latin merchants responsible for capitalism's first stirrings. Braudel recognized Islam as one of the great Mediterranean civilizations but saw it as only a minor player in the maritime and economic development of the Middle Ages. In his wake, histories of the medieval Mediterranean have pushed Islam's sailors into the background, generally relegating them to the status of pirates. Beginning with the scholarly works of Henri Pirenne, the Arab conquest (634–732) was held responsible for the crisis of the Roman Mare Nostrum triggered by the plague in the middle of the sixth century. According to Pirenne and those who followed, Muslim expansion resulted in a long economic, demographic, and cultural depression in the Mediterranean basin, sustained by the permanent war between Muslims and Christians. Only the great tenth century stood out as the moment when the Muslim world flourished in the Mediterranean: taking advantage of the effects of economic recovery, the two Mediterranean caliphates of the Umayyads (931–1031) and the Fatimids (909–1171) successfully adapted the power, splendor, and glory of the Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad (749–1258) to the Islamic West, in order to compete for control of maritime space with the Macedonian emperors of Byzantium (867–1059). This ushered in the second period of the Mediterranean Middle Ages, beginning in the eleventh century, an era built on the foundations of Latin capitalism, which now allowed Italian, Provençal, and later Catalan sailors to take over the maritime routes and markets of Byzantium and Islam. The Muslim period in the Mediterranean appeared to be over, at least until the rise of Ottoman power. According to this view of history, conquering Islam's encounter with the maritime space coincides with the period of crisis. As for the Latin period, it is closely tied to the phase of economic expansion.
The accepted version of the sea's medieval history holds that before the tenth century, Muslim expansion on "the Sea of the Romans" ( _al-bahr al-Rumi_), as it was referred to by the Arabs, was limited to piracy; that only the Fatimids and the caliphs of Córdoba took the initiative of developing economic and military activity on the sea; and that, with the exception of the Almohad caliphs of Marrakech (1147–1269), Muslim authorities then turned away from a sea now dominated by the great Latin ports. This version of history has generally been elaborated from a chronology imposed by the legacy of historical works on the Latin world, whose tools of evaluation were those of economic measurement, based on figures totally deficient before the eleventh century. Above all else, the first medieval period was one that lacked documentary resources and has largely remained so: the economic situation was not bad, but it was initially impalpable, at least until the active, complex, and varied world that existed before the tenth century was revealed by archeologists ranging from Peter Brown to Chris Wickham, then historians of the medieval Latin world, and more recently those of Byzantium and Islam.
This is how the Muslim pirate came into existence in the annals of Greek and Latin monks, for the victims were the only ones to bear witness to his assaults on Christian coasts. He is present in most histories of the Mediterranean, up to and including those of the present day. Yet, at the same time, a succession of leading works, starting in the period of the remarkable German school in the late nineteenth century and extending to significant texts such as Shlomo Goitein's _A Mediterranean Society_ (1967), reinforced new convictions that Islam held an undeniable place in the historical construction of a medieval Mediterranean Sea that was shared, multiple, and complex.
The two half millennia after the fall of Rome and before the discovery of America and the Battle of Lepanto (1571) cannot be separated, for they were both medieval: the rupture that was originally perceived between the High Middle Ages and the time of Latin expansion has been replaced by an infinitely more complex cycle that dismisses any evaluation opposing the two medieval periods. It is equally impossible to partition the medieval Mediterranean into religions, dynasties, naval powers, and especially societies, as defined by Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, and this despite the political and religious divisions and the effects of a specific environment on the molding of the Mediterranean man dear to Braudel: due to the constant relations between the Byzantine, Latin, and Muslim worlds, the sea remains a central space, both separating and connecting the three imperial areas as of the seventh century. It is also impossible to interpret the medieval Mediterranean without taking into account three continents and two oceans. The Middle Ages saw the opening of the Mediterranean to a larger world—the Sahara, continental Asia, the Indian Ocean, and the areas of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. Islam contributed significantly to this phenomenon. It was in Baghdad and Iran that the Mediterranean was first described in Arabic, far from the shores of the Sea of Rum, as the Byzantine Mediterranean was known.
The most difficult challenge for those interested in the Mediterranean as seen from the Islamic world is in accessing information on the sea from the initial centuries, ranging from the Hegira in 622 to the middle of the ninth century. Aside from two chronicles by the Andalusian Ibn Habib (d. 854) and the Egyptian Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam (d. 871), both of which have little to say about maritime activity, the first Muslim and Mediterranean accounts of Islamic maritime pursuits come from the capitals of the Fatimid and Umayyad caliphates. To make matters more complicated, like the Iraqi men of letters before them, the Mediterranean chroniclers rewrote the history of the Islamic times that preceded their own at the request of the tenth-century caliphs, specifically concentrating on the areas governed by the two sovereignties, using previous versions that were then eliminated. The chroniclers of both Mediterranean caliphates were very effective in shaping the timing of the Muslim occupation of the Mediterranean for posterity: according to them, the Muslim "pirate," left to himself, prospered in the ninth century and disappeared under the two caliphates, to be replaced by sailors enlisted on the ships of the Commander of the Faithful.
After the twelfth century, the caliph's sailor was once again said to disappear from the history of the Mediterranean, this time due to the Latins. Venice, Pisa, and Genoa gradually chased the "Moorish and Saracen pirates" out of Mediterranean waters and imposed their remarkable naval and commercial organization throughout the entire Mediterranean world. Joined by the Catalans, they developed the practice of international trade with the Byzantines and Muslims and by the thirteenth century had secured a monopoly on maritime trade, at the expense of Islamic and Greek sailors. At this stage, Muslim and Christian piracy no longer appears in Mediterranean sources, as it were, outside of minor pieces of news. A different history of the Mediterranean is imposed, shaped by Latin endeavors and most often relegating Byzantium and Islam's role on the sea to a passive one or that of a victim, particularly in questions of trade.
Since the publication of the works of Braudel and his disciple Maurice Lombard, who returned the Muslim Mediterranean to a central place, the region's history has enjoyed an intense historiographic decompartmentalization, which has modified approaches to a history of the Mediterranean now told in three voices: Latin, Greek, and Arabic. Going beyond the monographs on Italian and Catalonian trading cities and the many scholarly works on their commercial networks, studies of the merchants of Muslim countries and Byzantium have allowed history to reveal an economic and, more specifically, commercial world that is far from limited to the major Italian networks.
Over the last half a century, the study of the lands bordering the sea in the first centuries of the Middle Ages has opened the door to a far different approach to the Mediterranean context. Archeologists are now finding traces of human settlements from every period of the High Middle Ages on a significant proportion of the Mediterranean's shores. There are signs of uninterrupted human activity, including during the worst periods of plague and war. At the same time, the diversity of scenarios revealed by excavations invalidates the idea of the development of an economic situation measured on the scale of the Mediterranean, replacing it with regional, urban, and village contexts. In fact, there can no longer be any question of a lasting economic crisis said to have affected the entire Mediterranean from the sixth to the ninth centuries. While there are numerous references to crises and catastrophes, these have an uneven impact on cities and rural areas across the region and at different times. The fragmented periods and spaces of crisis brought to light by numerous archeological digs dismiss the argument carefully elaborated by Pirenne.
The focus on social changes connected to a state of lasting conflict or the crisis arising from the breakdown of power, particularly in Italy in the ninth to eleventh centuries, has shown that war was no longer the area's sole agent of destruction and crisis. The change in the status of populations and the social reorganization driven by the new forces resulting from the collapse of earlier states, adapted to economic conditions and leading to the disappearance of slavery and serfdom in the countryside, are now considered the principal catalysts of a restructuring of rural societies and landscapes, as seen with the _incastellamento_ in Latium. In the tenth century, a new hierarchization of elites benefited local aristocracies born of the former Carolingian and Lombardian structures. Thus the permanence of the Muslim threat to Christian shores no longer appears as the principal reason for regional developments, outside of isolated instances. In addition, accounts showing that commercial navigation was maintained all along Mediterranean shores throughout the High Middle Ages, and, particularly, during and after the Arab conquest from the seventh to the ninth centuries, suggest that activity on the sea was not limited to the misdeeds of Moorish and Saracen piracy. Yet no serious speculation is possible at this stage.
At the same time, the foundations for this regionalized history remain fragile insofar as sources are rare and nearly exclusively come from palace circles or the spheres of the military, merchant, judicial, or ecclesiastical aristocracy. Despite the fact that archeologists have allowed us to penetrate deeper and deeper into the private world of every kind of medieval home, Horden and Purcell argue that this narrow perspective deprives us of direct access to the history of the vast majority of Mediterranean societies, which were incontestably the prime actors of the Mediterranean's development, at least before the tenth century. The two English historians, who seek to break down the barriers of Mediterranean history and get outside the restrictive context of leadership circles, are no different from Braudel in putting aside the part played by the people of the Islamic world in building and developing the medieval Mediterranean, despite the commentary provided by two leading sources on Islam, the letters of Jewish merchants discovered in Cairo and the Arabic geography text by al-Muqaddasi (d. ca. 1000), a native of Jerusalem.
The collection of thousands of letters written by Jewish merchants discovered in the Geniza—the storeroom for writings containing the name of God—in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo shows that the Muslim world's written sources do not exclusively come from chancelleries and judicial circles. Nonetheless, Goitein's remarkable study emphasizes the exceptional nature of these documents in the context of the written production of medieval Islamic cultures, despite the fact that other stores of letters by merchants have been found on the shores of the Red Sea. Al-Muqaddasi's passages devoted to the Beqaa valley in the mountains of Lebanon detail a land admirably put to use by the low mountainous region's rural communities, though this is not the geographer's aim, other than to associate the region's prosperity with good government by the Fatimids. The geographer traveled the world as a purported Ismailist missionary, but he kept his mind open to any display of Muslim superiority: "The depiction of the world is limited to Islam, even more strictly than with the predecessors." This description fits into the unique framework of the Mamlakat al-Islam, the Islamic empire. Al-Muqaddasi described and hierarchized the different parts of the empire that he visited, particularly those east of the Mediterranean; like his fellow geographers, he provides a report on the state of the Muslim world, which includes the Muslim Mediterranean—in this case, that of the Fatimids. Its stated prosperity is the proof of good government, but it does not yield a picture of the agrarian society's structure or of the connections between communities too conventional to be used by a historian seeking to make an economic and social assessment of the region.
Before we ask Horden and Purcell's question, "What is the Mediterranean?" we should perhaps first ask ourselves which Mediterranean and what history of the Mediterranean writers and geographers of the time wanted to leave to posterity, as well as for whom their descriptions of the territories of Islam were intended. Regarding Islam, the answer is provided by André Miquel: "Arab geography is the daughter of the caliphate of Baghdad," and it "is primarily interested in the role and place, in the world, of the new man created by Islam," specifically as it applies to the political and religious context and above all else to the demonstration of the legitimacy of the universal caliphate, in this case the Fatimid.
The Arab scriptural environment had a major impact on the types of documents and content produced by Islam's men of letters. Our perception of the maritime societies of the Islamic coastline is therefore affected by the knowledge that the fleets presented in Christian sources as belonging to pirates—a term justified on the part of the victims—were, in the minds of Muslims, squadrons under orders from the Muslim sovereign to conquer or weaken Christian infidels. These "pirates" lived off privateering, most often under the control of the state, but also from trade, which was active along Muslim shores and, more often than has been acknowledged, all the way to Christian coasts, where Muslim merchants were heartily welcomed by the Greeks and Latins during periods of truce. These sailors, seen by Muslim authorities as defenders and conquerors for Islam and remunerated for their booty, were recognized as pious and worthy men for having pillaged infidel monasteries and shores that had to be depopulated to stock the palaces with slaves. In the same spirit, the Mediterranean described by al-Muqaddasi appears either as a Roman sea, and consequently as a space to be conquered, or as an Islamic sea, generous and open. The geographer was himself indebted to the way the caliphal chancelleries had imposed a view of the Mediterranean developed "under orders from the Caliph," beginning in the earliest times of the Abbasids.
Whatever scenarios one adheres to regarding the formation and development of a politically divided medieval Mediterranean in a permanent state of war, the populations that appear in the documentation left by the three empires are not ones that were allegedly ruined by the plague and raids of the High Middles Ages until the maritime and merchant Latin powers took over the now-prosperous area. Looked at as a whole, these sources offer another version of the Mediterranean's development: for all the regions, the men of letters more often describe societies increasingly well adapted to mutations, beginning with the crisis of the sixth century and related to permanent confrontation on the vast land and sea frontier. This socioeconomic context, often idealized by administrators and religious men, does not provide an overview of Christian or Muslim society, let alone a comprehensive picture, but it does occasionally allow one to understand how these hardworking populations adapted to constantly changing worlds.
The texts written by the first generation of Muslim men of letters were the fruit of a civilization that was not seeking to turn the Mediterranean Sea into a new Mare Nostrum but rather intended to cross it to impose Islam on the European continent. These writings focused on the description of the state supervision of a coastal and maritime space that was constructed for defense but also to develop profitable activities. War is constantly present but appears as an essential instrument for the organization of border regions, under the control of the Latin, Byzantine, and Muslim states, thus underlining the role played by those in power. As seen in the texts, the sea remained an affair of state throughout the Middle Ages. Perhaps the real medieval rupture, having started with the Italian city-states in the twelfth century, began when the references to a military and imperial environment were replaced by those to the bankers and merchants who were able to impose their "capitalist" ways on the church.
While Arabs produced a tremendous quantity of writing, particularly beginning in the tenth century, across the entire vast Islamic area, very few of these texts concern actual maritime or trading activity on the Mediterranean. As for the archives assembled by the great Italian port cities of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice or kept by the Crown of Aragon, they do not contain the notarized agreements, wills, contracts, or other written documents that would allow us to delve into the closed circle of trade networks, notaries' offices, and dockyards, let alone into the crews—pirates or sailors of the caliph—on ships' decks. Nearly all of the Arabic documents resulting from Muslim naval activities on the Mediterranean are by writers in princely entourages, all perfectly familiar with the ins and outs of Muslim palaces, but rarely with maritime techniques, in which they had no interest. In most cases, only the legal and fiscal perspective or military framework was of interest. With the exception of Sinbad the Sailor on the Indian Ocean and a few heroes who built their reputations by leading Muslim fleets to victory over Greek or Latin ships, Muslim seamen were rarely popular subjects, for the record of the construction of Mediterranean Islam was devoted to men of the caliph, emir, or sultan or to the circles of jurists and Sufi saints, countless figureheads who fill the many biographical volumes written by scholars. As for the Sea of the Romans, often referred to as such in Arabic sources, it remained a boundary first and foremost and thus a space over which was exercised the sovereignty of the Prophet's successors.
Unlike the literature of the Indian Ocean, none of the available literature on the Mediterranean Sea originates from the world of sailors, with the exception of indirect references via jurists or employees of the sultans' administrations. Documents on the sea, the navy, and sailors were indeed written or drawn by and for seafarers, at least since the tenth century on the Mediterranean, but all that survives is the production of Arab geographers and encyclopedists who took this prose and removed technical details considered useless to produce a literary work for a general audience, intended to be read in the lounges of the capital and leading cities of Islam. The sorting of copied texts led these same men of letters to remove from shelves and offices works considered obsolete or unrelated to the definition of the standards of Islam. Muslims archived documents, but then they threw out parchments or used them to make palimpsests, washing the paper and erasing outdated text to use the paper for new text. More generally, a palace's archival documents disappeared as soon as they were no longer useful or when the palace was destroyed or vacated by successors or usurpers who had a new residence built and amassed new archives, which were equally perishable if they did not serve to prove or demonstrate the ruler's legitimacy. Only those documents containing the name of God, like the letters in the Geniza, had to be preserved. Like all the information that would allow us to piece together the organization of Muslim navies, orders regarding dockyards, crews, the requisition of supplies, and the recruiting of oarsmen—discovered "by chance" on Egyptian papyri dating from the beginning of the eighth century—were kept only as long as they were useful.
Does this indicate that Muslim sailors and merchants sailed and traded less than Latin sailors? Not at all. Muslim sailors certainly roamed wider than the Muslim documents suggest. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that Muslim "pirates" are known to have existed merely because Christian victims spoke of them, while the Muslim authorities did not deem it useful to record every one of the raids actually carried out by crews under orders from the caliph or the emir, which left the sailors and their actions to vanish into oblivion. Did the Muslims engage in less sea trade? Anyone who takes the time to read the Arab geographic and legal sources will see this is far from the case, and the discovery of the Geniza letters has shown that the Muslim world's trade networks could be as structured as those of the great Latin ports.
Most information on the sea is nearly entirely drawn from a chancellery literature devoted to supporting the sovereigns. Even critical, independent minds such as al-Muqaddasi could not avoid thinking and writing like men trained in the circles of scholars and administrators. However, this Arab geographer's description of the Mediterranean reveals how well he knew that world and navigation. While most of his information on the sea, fleets, sailors, and commerce was intended to advance the naval and trading policy of whatever sovereign was in power, it also included references to many aspects of maritime life and revealed the extent of the Muslim occupation and exploitation of the sea and its riches, for sustenance and other uses. It even reveals the sea's Islamic universality and humanity, as praised by the Almohad caliph 'Abd al-Mu'min in a speech to his officers in Marrakech.
This brings us back to the question raised by Horden and Purcell and many other historians before them: What is the medieval Mediterranean? If we take into account the Arabic records of the time, it is not the sea of the Muslim pirate but rather the domain of the sailor, whether military or commercial, in the service of his own fortune and the caliph. The sailor competed for control of the Mediterranean with the Greek and Latin peoples and was honored for it, though not on the same level as the other heroes of Islam.
We must give credit where credit is due: this period in history belongs first and foremost to the caliphs, buttressed by scholars and particularly jurists. According to the precept that it is the time of writing, rather than the time described in the writing, that marks the first historical time period, we must follow the pace set by the texts written for the caliphs.
The first period to yield an Arabic description of the Mediterranean was that of the Abbasid caliphate, beginning in the middle of the ninth century. Recorded accounts come from oral and written traditions that reached the capitals and other cities of the Dar al-Islam, or territory of Islam, through a series of transmitters and were passed down from the conquerors and those who succeeded them: nothing is invented or supposed, subject to discredit, but the texts are shaped by the period during which they were rewritten. The use of these selected versions orients the narrative according to a logic that most often leads back to the Iraqi caliphs' Mediterranean strategies.
Beginning in the tenth century, the written production of the Mediterranean caliphal capitals in Córdoba, Kairouan, and Cairo rivaled that of Baghdad, at a time when the caliphs were losing both actual power and prestige. The texts produced by the Andalusian (756–929) and Aghlabid (800–909) emirates were later adopted by writers working for caliphs in al-Andalus and Ifriqiya, for the same reasons that the writings concerning the sovereigns of Iraq were adopted. This caliphal production suffered the effects of time; only a very limited part of this literature has reached us. Most of the Mediterranean production on the first centuries of Islam is found in the histories that proliferated in the major capitals from the eleventh century onward.
We can therefore assert that it was the Eastern men of letters, from Iran to Egypt, who imposed the forms of so-called classical Arabic literature. To a great extent, the outlines of the Mediterranean as depicted by Eastern men of letters are found in the geographic and historical descriptions of the scholars of the two Western caliphates in the tenth century, as well as in the Arabic descriptions and chronicles of the last centuries of the Middle Ages. However, both the Fatimids and the Umayyads imposed new outlines of their sea's history and geography, geared to the new context and the sea's importance in establishing their own legitimacy. The men of letters in the circles of the Almohad caliphs, the last sovereigns of the Middle Ages to conceive of the sea as a full-fledged Muslim imperial space, produced an even more voluminous literature on the sea.
At the same time, the features of this caliphal literature of the Mediterranean had a profound impact on descriptions of the Sea of Rum, particularly in the Maghreb and Cairo, until the end of the Middle Ages. Though the Ottomans did not deny this past, it fell to them to impose their own view of the sea, as seen from the palace terraces of Istanbul after 1453. All the other Islamic powers that shared the shores of the Mediterranean, particularly the sultanates of Egypt, left traces of their own literary commitment.
The sea holds a significant place throughout the extant texts and appears in every kind of Arabic written expression, as long as it is in the service of "imperial"—and consequently restrictive—promotion.
It is through this construction of a Muslim and Arab world on the Mediterranean, mobilizing every form of expression of the prolific Arabic literature, that one can understand a profile of the Sea of the Romans as written by Arab writers, more rarely by Persian writers, beginning in the ninth century and continuing throughout the medieval period. The chronological framework we find here is primarily the one imposed by successive caliphates. Their representations of the Mediterranean must therefore serve as a fundamental basis for the history of the Muslim Mediterranean: The Arab conquest of the sea and its shores from 634 to 749, led with an iron hand by the Rashidun caliphs of Medina (632–661), followed by the Umayyads, is only known to us through the Abbasid versions of the maritime region's history and subsequent texts. Al-Tabari's history, completed around 915, was considered by his peers to be the greatest Arabic chronicle of all time.
References to the expansion onto the sea and its shores beginning in 750 are limited in the sources produced in Baghdad and Samarra, but they are sufficient to observe the Iraqi caliphs' constant interest in the Syrian coast and, additionally, in the maritime space of the Mediterranean as a whole. Rather than focusing on actual strategy, most references to the Mediterranean area in caliphal and legal literature deal with the caliphs' involvement on the Byzantine frontier in Anatolia from 754 to 945, to a lesser extent with military policy along the coasts of the Near East, and especially with the updating of jihad made necessary by the lasting stabilization of the fronts. Beginning in the ninth century, several dissident powers in the Muslim West took over from the Abbasids, drawing direct inspiration from the model of the caliphs. The Iraqi sovereigns thus imposed the practices of jihad, which were adapted to every Mediterranean frontier until the end of the Middle Ages.
The Mediterranean caliphates of the Fatimids and the Umayyads picked up where their predecessors left off. Their scribes took great care to describe involvement in the war against the Christians, particularly on the sea, in the context of a demonstration of their universal legitimacy on the path to seizing Baghdad. Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) declared that this period was marked by Islam's near total domination on the sea. However, the impact of the rivalry between the two Mediterranean caliphates on both caliphates' maritime strategies extended far beyond the aspiration to conquer Iraq until al-Mu'izz (953–975) moved his dynasty to Egypt in 971. Once al-Mu'izz settled in Cairo, his policy evolved with the establishment of good relations—primarily commercial—with the Byzantines, then the Latins. Following the crisis that starved the Nile valley from 1065 to 1072 and during the time sailors from Pisa, Venice, and Genoa were coming to trade in the Egyptian capital and Alexandria, the development of maritime and commercial activities on the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean allowed the Shiite sovereigns to reinforce their control over traffic between these two maritime regions.
Beginning in the eleventh century, Latin offensives forced regional powers, and, in particular, the Almoravids of Marrakech (1072–1147), then the Almohad caliphate in the West and the Egyptian caliphs (971–1171) in the East (until the loss of Ashkelon to the Crusaders in 1154) to maintain their military presence on the Mediterranean to deter attacks from the sea. The Berber caliphate was to be the last Muslim maritime power able to compete with the Latins. After the defeat at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, the crises faced by the Almohad state beginning in 1215—and the maritime and commercial ventures of Latin ports—turned the Mediterranean into a Latin sea once and for all. In Egypt and Syria, neither the Ayyubids (1171–1250) nor the Mamluks (1250–1517) presented the navy as an emblem of their power, though they were able to fit out galleys when they needed to. Saladin (1171–1193) acknowledged that only the caliphs of the Maghreb could rival the Latin enemy on the water.
The Marinids (1258–1465) in Fez and the Hafsids (1229–1574) in Tunis paid sufficient attention to their fleets to mostly resist Christian pressure and maintain control of the Strait of Gibraltar, at least until the fourteenth century. Was this the end of the Muslim Mediterranean? Muslim sailors were now only found in a few zones along the African coast and, beginning with the Turkish settlement of Anatolia in the eleventh century, the Asian coasts of the Sea of Marmara and soon the Dardanelles. Until the sixteenth-century exploits of Hayreddin Barbarossa (d. 1546), admiral of the Sublime Porte, and especially the Ottoman domination of the Mediterranean, as of the thirteenth century neither the caliph's sailor nor the Moorish or Saracen pirate could claim to compete for the sea with the Latin world's maritime forces, outside of carrying out a few raids that announced the return of the Muslim pirate.
# I
THE ARAB MEDITERRANEAN BETWEEN REPRESENTATION AND APPROPRIATION
#
THE ARAB DISCOVERY OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
THE MEDITERRANEAN SEEMS to have a very limited place in the history recorded by Arab men of letters in the first centuries of the Hegira. The two Mediterranean authors to have left Arabic chronicles before the tenth century, the Andalusian Ibn Habib and the Egyptian Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam, practically make no reference to the inland sea, other than to mention the crossing of the Strait of Gibraltar by Berber and Arab troops to invade Visigothic Spain. Before the prolific geographic production of the tenth century, the chroniclers and geographers of Baghdad seemed to want to cultivate the Mediterranean's marginality, treating the sea and its shores in the same manner. From the earliest Abbasid record of the conquest, a reconstructed text by Sayf b. 'Umar (d. 796), to the "books of conquest" of the late ninth century, little information appears regarding the Umayyads' maritime activity; what traditions these authors did collect are unclear. As for firsthand accounts of the Sea of the Romans, they are virtually limited to the Aphrodite papyri in Egypt. One has to wait until the end of the tenth century for the maritime and mercantile world of Mediterranean Islam to truly become visible, thanks to the letters of Jewish merchants discovered in the Geniza of the synagogue in Fustat. In the same time period, the advent of the Fatimid and Umayyad caliphates in Kairouan and Córdoba apparently broke Western Islam's silence, with the Muslim Mediterranean becoming one of the most fertile centers of Arabic literature. The great Muslim capitals of the region now rivaled Baghdad and the large Asian cities of Islam that had previously monopolized the majority of Arabic production.
Nonetheless, the texts by Muslim authorities offer the richest resources to understand the relationship of the first generations of believers to the Mediterranean: expeditions, treaties, the organization of governments, and coastal defense are among the favorite subjects of the Arab chroniclers who reported the facts of the conquest. The first generation of Arab chroniclers to whose work we have access drew from the primitive Arab histories ( _akhbar_ ), probably produced at the time of the Marwanid caliphs (692–749) and themselves indebted to traditions that could date back to the second generation of Muslims. This work of collecting and writing texts, updated in accordance with caliphal affairs, came to an initial culmination with the historian al-Tabari (d. 923). Having emerged in the ninth century from the offices of the Abbasid caliphate's administration, cartography and descriptions of the world were also devoted to demonstrating the legitimacy of the Islamic religion and its guide, the caliph. Naturally, Baghdad was placed at the center of the ecumene. The capital's prestige proved so durable that this choice would extend to the entire Islamic koine, no matter the period or place of production. This cartography of Islamic universalism led to an impressive series of maps and accompanying descriptions of the earth. Beginning with the first works of geography, the Mediterranean was logically included alongside the Indian Ocean and the Caspian Sea.
The chronicles and geographic studies complement each other in providing a picture of Islam's domination of the world, particularly under the pen of multifaceted authors such as the geographer and historian al-Ya'qubi (d. 897). It is hardly surprising to find that these documents offer a reconstruction of Arab history and the representation of Islam, produced by men of letters in the ninth and tenth centuries after the sorting of previous histories geared to the periods of successive caliphates.
In the Arabic texts describing the beginnings of Islam, the maritime space of the Mediterranean remains in the background, to the point that one might think the caliphs, established in Iraq, had not had any reason to take a particular interest in the distant Sea of the Romans. Having given up on the conquest, the Baghdad caliphate had presumably left the sea to the Christians. In contrast, the Indian Ocean, which was described as a sea of sailors and merchants, would be seen as the Muslim maritime space par excellence, and was all the more familiar given that the Arabs of the Hejaz were in the habit of roaming it long before the Hegira. As early as the ninth century, descriptions of the Indian Ocean could be found in the capital. The beginning of the narrative of Sinbad's exploits in _The Thousand and One Nights_ seems to confirm the mercantile atmosphere in major ports of Islam on the Arabian-Persian Gulf such as Basra, at the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates, in the ninth and tenth centuries:
> I collected the remains of my estate. I sold all the furnishings I had at auction in the market. I then fell in with some merchants who traded at sea. I consulted those who seemed able to give me good advice. Finally, I resolved to make the most of the little money I had left and as soon as I had taken this resolution, I did not take long to execute it. I traveled to Basra, where I embarked with several merchants on a ship, sharing the expenses of fitting it out. We put out to sea and followed the East Indies route through the Persian Gulf.
Descriptions of the Indian Ocean, which began to appear in Iraq in the middle of the ninth century, provide an idea of the role played by the trade networks that drove long-distance maritime commerce beginning in the Abbasid period.
Only the creation in Egypt of a Muslim naval force and a few specific military events such as the expeditions toward Cyprus in 645 and the naval victory over the Byzantines at the Battle of the Masts in 655 drew the attention of the writers in the caliph's circle. Information on Muslim activity in the maritime space was exclusively focused on the legal conditions of relationships with islanders or, after negotiations, on their submission. Another area of special interest was the division of booty and its irregularities, which often led to a summons from the leader mandated by the caliph. Indeed, the conditions of conquest and the status of conquerors and populations subjected to them were of direct interest to the sovereigns, insofar as the foundations of the government of the provinces, particularly in regard to taxation and land statutes, were set or justified by these agreements with the defeated and the conditions for the division of land and booty among the soldiers of the army ( _jund_ ). The sea was a route for fleets; it was neither a space to be shared nor, strictly speaking, one to be governed. Consequently, the use of the maritime route, for instance to go attack Constantinople or enemy islands and shores, could hold the authorities' attention, but most references to the maritime space concern the defense of the Dar al-Islam's coastlines from terra firma. The open sea is most often left aside.
The history of the first believers on the sea and on its shores was therefore not distorted but rather exploited to explain and justify the caliphs' policy, a policy that was legitimate as long as it was in keeping with what the companions of the Prophet, the first conquerors, had accomplished under Muhammad's guidance and then on the authority of the first caliphs, particularly 'Umar b. al-Khattab. The Abbasid historians' Mediterranean was not a forgotten or rejected sea, but one that had become a specific space for war. The Mediterranean was also confusing compared to the Arabs' sea of reference, the familiar Indian Ocean, which had been free of imperial enemies since the fall of the Sassanids in 652 and was now left to converted merchants.
Curious about this Roman world, Arab geographers and encyclopedists took over the representation of the spaces of the ecumene, naturally doing so in the service of the caliph, at the very time when the Latins and the Greeks were forgetting the sea—the latter beginning in the eighth century—probably to preserve the memory of the Mare Nostrum. The number of Arab descriptions and maps is unrivaled before the thirteenth century, particularly among the Christians. In the Latin world, travel narratives written by pilgrims abandoned any representation or description of the sea after the period of Orosius and Isidore of Seville and until the Crusades. The few accounts of travel to the Holy Land, such as the eighth-century text by Willibald, remain focused on pilgrimage sites. During this period, representations of the world were limited to a cartography that "iconizes space."
Within the actual Dar al-Islam, the appearance as of the tenth century of a geography composed by men of letters native to the Mediterranean, in Córdoba, Kairouan, and Cairo, was a turning point in that the sea now held a preeminent place in descriptions: as a favored space for the expansion of the two Western caliphates, both rivals of the Abbasids, it was now represented as the other central maritime realm of Muslim civilization, including trade activities and travel descriptions. _The Book of Curiosities,_ a tenth- or eleventh-century cartographic manuscript, particularly its map of the Mediterranean, embody this readjustment of Arab geography's focus toward the Mediterranean world, now on a par with the Indian Ocean, in the Umayyad and Fatimid periods.
However, the geographers' attention was primarily drawn to the regions bordering the sea, such as the Maghreb, which was described on behalf of the caliphate by the Andalusian geographer al-Warraq in the tenth century. This description has partially reached us through the revised and updated version by the Andalusian geographer al-Bakri (d. 1094). During the same period, the production of geography books, including maps and text, constantly enriched the libraries of Islam. New descriptive forms such as chapters and books devoted to "wonders" ( _'aja'ib_ ), derived from narratives of the Sea of the Arabs, began to appear on the shores of the Muslim Mediterranean. At the end of the twelfth century, personal accounts by traveling men of letters, known as the _rihla,_ supplanted caliphal works of geography as Islam lost all control over the maritime space in the face of the Latins' unstoppable domination. However, during the same period, the commission received by geographer al-Idrisi (d. ca. 1172) from Roger II of Sicily (1115–1154) for a world map whose geographic center was not Sicily—though the island does appear excessively enlarged—but Baghdad proves the extent to which the Arab model of cartography and astronomic geography, born in Iraq, had become a universal standard.
The proliferation of these Arab representations and descriptions of the world is not the only reason for an increasingly precise recognition of the Mediterranean space as measured from the Islamic world. Arab encyclopedists and geographers, in both the East and the West, used a descriptive form— _masalik wa l-mamalik,_ "roads and kingdoms"—to constantly update the situation of the world; their cartography was first and foremost a hymn inspired by the ancient geography that put Islam at the center of the world and thus above other imperial spaces in the hands of the infidel. By reporting situations witnessed by geographers, who were nearly always also travelers, these accounts reveal constantly updated perceptions of the Mediterranean basin in an Islamic framework that remains connected with infidel spaces.
**The world in** **_The Book of Curiosities_** **(Fatimid area, eleventh or twelfth century)**
The map is a representation of all inhabited land areas, including the two seas that separated them, the Sea of the Arabs (Indian Ocean) and the Sea of Rum (Mediterranean). _Kitab Ghara'ib al-funun wa-milah al-'uyun_ , MS Arab c. 90, fols. 23b–24a, The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.
Portraits of the earth, whether in part or in whole, are not limited to geography or to the Arabic language. They make up countless analytic pictures of the situation of the Islamic Mediterranean in the Middle Ages. Three of the most well-known Arab men of letters will serve as our guides to summarize them. Indeed, the works of al-Mas'udi (d. 956), al-Idrisi, and Ibn Khaldun reveal three Mediterranean seas at different times, while conserving an identity stemming from the authors' shared education, which dated back to history's Iraqi roots.
# A GEOGRAPHY OF TRAVEL
Maritime experiences made a deep impression on the Eastern polymath al-Mas'udi, as he reports in _The Meadows of Gold_ and _The Book of Notification and Verification,_ both written shortly before the middle of the tenth century. A scholar "concerned, as we imagine him today, with completely pure knowledge and truth," he also wanted to be a "popularizer, driven his whole life by the desire to make his work accessible." This precept is particularly applicable to his descriptions of the seas. More than a century after the beginning of the Arabic literary ferment born of the Abbasid environment, al-Mas'udi's vision is certainly one of the most accomplished examples of the spirit of the travelers' geography.
**The Mediterranean in** **_The Book of Curiosities_** **(Fatimid area, eleventh or twelfth century)**
The map shows the Mediterranean, with the islands (captioned circles) in the maritime space, without regard to their position, and the names of the ports around the shores. _Kitab Ghara'ib al-funun wa-milah al-'uyun_ , MS Arab c. 90, fols. 30b–31a, The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.
Al-Mas'udi wrote _The Meadows of Gold_ around 943. This encyclopedic description of the world is presented as a digest of his lost monumental work, the _Akhbar al-Zaman_ (The history of time). The two surviving works by this prolific author were the last he wrote, and they sold very well from the time they were issued, which may explain why they are the only works of his to have survived.
The method al-Mas'udi used to discuss the world and man was one employed since the ninth century by every Baghdad man of letters steeped in the atmosphere of the _adab,_ a literary current comparable to the spirit of the encyclopedic culture of the _honnête homme_ —the well-educated, nonspecialized man of the French seventeenth century. It relied above all else on quotations from the ancients. The first stage of al-Mas'udi's work as a writer was to consult texts in the libraries of the capitals he visited, initially to gather the ancient wisdom the Arabs had considered worth preserving, in particular that of the Greeks—starting with Ptolemy—who were considered the greatest experts on the sciences of the universe and the earth. At the same time, it had become indispensable for any geographer embarking on descriptive writing in the tenth century to roam the world, which in practice was limited to the Arab world.
Al-Mas'udi's two encyclopedias contain 165 discrete references to the sea. The many references taken from ancient works are reminiscent of the education of everyone of the ulema in the law and science of Muslim tradition (Hadith). These disciplines, fundamental to the believer, had produced a rigorous process ( _isnad_ ) adapted to all fields of knowledge embraced in Baghdad. Citing one's sources served as proof of the accuracy of one's argument, unless one chose to contradict them by comparing them to information from more recent or reputedly more reliable texts. The rhetoric of the _adab_ was another methodology to distinguish between truth and falsehood. The writer made particular use of personal interpretation and the controversy born of comparing contradictory opinions to draw out what became the "truth."
The other source of knowledge was the fruit of the writer's own observations and the accounts he collected during his travels. These statements were considered reliable because the people the writer questioned were experienced sailors. Some are well known, like Leo of Tripoli, whom al-Mas'udi could not have met in person but who was famous enough that his opinions were passed down and collected by the polymath. Al-Mas'udi knew and deeply appreciated this maritime world; he sailed extensively, particularly on the Indian Ocean, but also on the Caspian Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. It is extremely unlikely, however, that his claim of having reached the China Sea is true. Given that a traveler's direct observation was considered the most reliable source, al-Mas'udi did not hesitate to bolster his writing's recognition by replacing his library research with a probably fictitious journey beyond Sri Lanka. For example, he states, "I have sailed on many seas, the China Sea, the Mediterranean, the Caspian, the Red Sea, and the Sea of Yemen, I have run countless risks on them, but I know of none more dangerous than this Sea of Zanzibar of which we have just spoken."
The polymath borrowed the method used by his precursors, particularly al-Ya'qubi and Ibn al-Faqih, both of whom died around 900. This was a method essentially characterized as "the very act of seeing." The approach was closely tied to travel, which had become indispensable for the geographer to become personally aware of the realities he discovered on his travels. As an outgrowth of the pilgrimage to Mecca and the ninth-century narratives of merchants on the Indian Ocean, travel had become a necessity to deliver a truth only accessible through investigation. Wandering was instructive and enabled the gathering of direct evidence, lending the description a hint of reality: "[The traveler] no longer proceeds by literary borrowing, but works from memory, based on the observations recorded during the journey." The journey ( _rihla_ ) was a preliminary stage that was practically indispensable for lending credibility to the opinions expressed. As one of the first representatives of this movement, Ibn al-Faqih reminded the reader of the educational virtues of travel and its constraints in a chapter called "In Praise of Traveling Away from the Native Land": "Ask for your daily bread by traveling far abroad, for while you will not make much money, you will acquire much reason." Al-Mas'udi, who was himself a great traveler, perhaps as an Ismaili missionary and likely as a merchant, made this guideline his own:
> All the sailors who frequent these waters [take advantage of] winds of which they perfectly know the periods. Among them, this science is the fruit of habit and long experience, and they pass it on to each other through oral [teaching] and practice. They guide themselves based on certain indications and particular signs to recognize the period of agitation, the quiet times and those of excitement. What we say here about the Indian Ocean is also [true] of Roman and Muslim sailors who travel the Mediterranean and of the [seafarers] who cross the Caspian Sea [to go] from Khazaria to Gorgan, Tabaristan, and Daylam.
The organization of his work borrows that of the Baghdad chroniclers, which had become classic thanks to al-Tabari's _History_ (915), and adapts it to the encyclopedic form. Al-Mas'udi identifies two major periods of Muslim history: the pre-Islamic period and the period initiated by the Hegira. The first section includes a general description of the earth, the ecumene, and the seas. Additionally, one finds an explanation of the ebb and flow of the tides and remarkable facts about the maritime spaces. As set forth here, the time of Creation precedes the time of the prophecies, up to and including the last prophecy, the prophecy of Muhammad—essential stages that had to be included in any encyclopedia. This part of the book covers the Greeks' knowledge of astronomy, which was passed down by Arab translators, and that of the Persians. From libraries, Al-Mas'udi took the Arabic treatises that contained all the learning translated from ancient works. Similarly, he took an interest in the traditional tales of the earliest Arab era, whether moral or secular, and particularly the "wonders," without neglecting the knowledge accumulated by scholars.
Accounts by renowned seafarers also allowed him to call into question certain assertions of the ancients, to which he preferred the experience of Syrian sailors under Abbasid command, considering it more valuable than any book knowledge:
> I have noticed that the seafarers of Siraf and Oman... provide information about the Indian Ocean that is for the most part different from what the philosophers and other [scholars] say.... I have made the same observation in the Mediterranean, with sailors and captains of war ships and trading ships, with commanders and officers, and finally with those who are appointed to organize the military navy in this vicinity, such as Lawun [Leo] who was the governor of Tripoli in Syria, on the coast of Damascus after the year 912.... Additionally, the truth of this has been confirmed to me by 'Abd Allah b. Wazir, governor of the city of Jableh, on the coast of Homs, in Syria; today [943] this man is the most knowledgeable on the Mediterranean—as well as the eldest—and there is no captain of a war or trading ship sailing on this sea that does not submit to his advice and pay tribute to his intelligence and his skill, as well as to his devotion and [his service to] the jihad.
The subjects al-Mas'udi chooses to discuss in his chapters on the seas in general and the Mediterranean in particular also draw from the shared base of the literature of the _adab,_ which marked his era. In referring to the Mediterranean, which then represented the western march, he made use of the "wonders" to mark out the boundaries of the ecumene. Narratives pertaining to Solomon's cities of copper and to statues located on the shores of the western sea, intended to help seafarers navigate, played a pedagogical role, with a moral slant, by making it possible to characterize these regions by "particularities" that personified each zone, like the lighthouse of Alexandria, the symbol of Egyptian antiquity still standing in al-Mas'udi's time. The scholar made his own contribution to the knowledge of the world's boundaries by discovering new sources, which sometimes originated in the regions concerned. For example, he informs the reader that the conquest of al-Andalus gave rise to a series of traditions of which Baghdad had kept a record in the libraries he visited. He writes, "It is to this place [the city of copper] that Musa ibn Nusayr went in the time of 'Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan and here he saw all the wonders of which he gave a description in a book that is passed from hand to hand. Others say that [this city] was in the deserts bordering al-Andalus and called the _Vast Land._ "
The Okeanos of the Greeks, or the surrounding ocean that encircles the ecumene, was another essential boundary of Islam, particularly along the coasts of Iberia and western Maghreb. To describe it, first of all as a "marvelous" space closed to man, the scholar could draw on traditions from the Iberian Peninsula: "It is quite a common opinion that this sea [the ocean] is the source of all the other seas. Marvelous things are said about it, which we have reported in our _Akhbar al-Zaman_.... Thus, an inhabitant of al-Andalus named Khashkhash, who was a youth of Córdoba, gathered a group of young people of the city and sailed with them on the Ocean on boats which they had fitted out. After quite a long absence, he returned loaded with booty. Furthermore, this story is known to all inhabitants of the region."
At first glance, al-Mas'udi's view of the Mediterranean does not seem particularly original; the material and method used, like the objectives of his encyclopedia, are derived from the education related to the _adab,_ which André Miquel defines as a "human geography" established in the tenth century, of which the encyclopedist was one of the most notable representatives, along with Ibn Hawqal (d. ca. 988) and al-Muqaddasi. Innovation was not al-Mas'udi's goal. Like al-Tabari in the previous generation, he intended first and foremost to report the opinions of the ancients and compare them with his own experience. The polymath's approach thus appears quite classic, primarily resting on a conception of space that blossomed in Iraq and took advantage of the exceptional collections of the libraries of Baghdad and neighboring cities.
# TWO OBSERVERS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
Al-Idrisi and Ibn Khaldun share a geographic background: both came from the western part of the sea. In that sense, they were both "true" Mediterraneans. Yet they had very different, if complementary, ways of observing this maritime space. Al-Idrisi was probably born in Norman Sicily to a prestigious family related to the Prophet, which entitled him to use the honorific "Sharif." Working in the service of King Roger II, he became an eminent representative of Islamic culture in Christian lands. His body of work is entirely within the Arabic tradition and his geography is directly descended from the discipline born in the East.
Born in Tunis in the fourteenth century, Ibn Khaldun also came from a prestigious Arab family. His Himyarite ancestors had settled in Seville during the conquest of al-Andalus. While he never traveled beyond Islam's borders, he explored the Islamic regions along the Mediterranean, from Granada to Damascus, in the service of the grandees of his time, even visiting Tamerlane (1336–1405) in the recently conquered Syrian capital. He later lived and worked in the Maghreb before settling in Egypt, where he served as a qadi (judge) and lived out his days. His remarkable knowledge of the Muslim Mediterranean was an insider's view, developed by spending time in nearly all of its chancelleries. He lived in a period of crisis, during which the Muslim Mediterranean region suffered the double blow of plague and the threat of Latin imperialism. The conditions of the period had a significant influence on the way these two thinkers placed the Mediterranean at the heart of their work.
Seen by his peers as the greatest geographer, the Sicilian al-Idrisi was the only scholar to describe all the regions of the Mediterranean, having had access to both the Latin sources and the Arabic and Greek sources in Palermo. He was also set apart from other Arab geographers by his remarkable knowledge of the Latin world beyond the shores of the Mediterranean, reaching all the way to Toulouse and other Frankish cities. He himself visited several regions, notably the Maghreb and al-Andalus, but also Palestine. The rest of his information was brought to him by researchers who had traveled through other areas thanks to the generosity of Roger II. His treatment of Latin and Slavic countries, which had previously been ignored or hastily depicted by Arab geographers based on the notes written by the traveler Ibrahim b. Ya'qub, a Jewish merchant from Tortosa, around 965, was unprecedented. While these countries are hardly given equal treatment or as much detail, the Sicilian geographer was nonetheless the first to attempt to provide a complete picture by putting descriptions of Muslim and Christian regions in the Mediterranean on an equal footing. The treatment of the Latin part of the Mediterranean makes his _Diversion for the Man Longing to Travel to Far-Off Places,_ also known as _The Book of Roger_ ( _Kitab Rujar_ ), the most humanist, comprehensive medieval description of the Mediterranean world. The section devoted to Norman Sicily and Italy is particularly thorough, which proves that his description of the world was in every respect descended from the Arab geography of Baghdad. Indeed, it is remarkably well adapted to the Sicilian sovereign's ambitions in the Mediterranean and further differentiates the Norman kings' sovereignty from the other Latin dynasties.
The sea has a prominent place in the Mediterranean part of his description—one could say it is at its center. The combination of al-Idrisi's Sharifian background—he was related to the Quraysh of Mecca—and his highly classic Arab education in Palermo and through his travels makes him the archetype of the "medieval Mediterranean man," as Leo Africanus would be, in his own way, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. This aspect of his identity largely explains the quality and specificity of his description of the Mediterranean area in his universal geography and the importance the islander gave to maritime space. For instance, his work reveals an intimate knowledge of fishing activities, especially those of his homeland. He considered the sea to be the heart of a single region divided by his predecessors into the infidel Christian North and the Muslim South. Without denying his Islamic background and beliefs, the geographer describes the remarkable human density of its three shores in the middle of the twelfth century, as well as the vigor and richness of its activities, the epicenter of which was the sea itself, joining the Christian and Muslim worlds into a whole that was the fruit of relationships then primarily forged by Latins with Byzantium and the Islamic regions.
Al-Idrisi had a talent for demonstrating Sicily's centrality based on facts that could at first glance seem insignificant: "To the west [of Palermo] is a very pleasant destination, known by the name of Tribia, where waterways keep many mills turning; there is a plain there and vast fields. They make a kind of vermicelli there that is exported in large quantities to the rest of the world, to Calabria, the Muslim provinces, and the Christian countries."
Along with this picture of the Mediterranean garden, al-Idrisi's work also focuses on maritime itineraries, which were found in all Arab geographies, and a considerable number of facts about the sea. The geographer also consciously exposes the reader to another side of twelfth-century reality, that of unprecedentedly devastating war. He initially touches on the subject when describing activities specific to the frontier, oddly similar on both sides of the border, and focuses on al-Andalus: "[Trujillo] is a large city that looks like a well-defended fortified town, surrounded by solid outer walls, endowed with well-stocked markets. This city's cavalrymen and foot soldiers constantly launch incursions against Christian localities. Most of the time, they engage in armed robbery and resort to ruses."
Al-Idrisi describes the ruinous situation of the coast of Ifriqiya, plagued by incursions of Arab tribes, particularly those of the Banu Hilal, who were sent by the Fatimids of Cyrenaica to what is now Tunisia to punish the Zirids (973–1148) for declaring independence. According to al-Idrisi's account, the Norman conquests launched by his master beginning in the 1030s had exacerbated the desolation of Ifriqiyan ports and their surroundings. He emphasizes the Mediterranean contradictions of which he was a privileged witness and creates a complex picture in which cultural fault lines did not prevent ties between the two enemies. He reveals this other Mediterranean paradox by describing commercial relations between Latins and Muslims. At a time when the clash between Muslims and Christians was at its fiercest, the two sides were bound by their desire for shared benefits. As a whole, his body of work, dedicated to the Norman king Roger II of Sicily, represented "a vast attempt to construct a new scientific object, the world captured as a whole, without exclusion."
Nonetheless, this body of work consisting of two volumes remains the heir to the universal geography born in the Abbasid capital. One first notices this through the unanimous recognition of al-Idrisi's colleagues, particularly Sa'id al-Maghribi (d. 1274) and the Syrian Abu l-Fida' (d. 1331), and all the way to Ibn Khaldun, who proudly copied him. One of the reasons for their esteem was that al-Idrisi had respected geographic tradition, which produced an _imago mundi_ based on a division of the seven inhabited regions into seven latitudinal climates, the _iqlim_ of Greek geography, and ten longitudinal sections. The seventy maps that formed the basis of his geography more or less respected these divisions and, once stuck together, composed one vast world map representing the earth and its seas, waterways, and mountains, with an accuracy revealing the progress that had been made. Nevertheless, al-Idrisi left Baghdad at the center of the ecumene, contradicting his text and the reality of his time.
Indeed, the richness and profusion of information on the Mediterranean space led the geographer, whether consciously or not, to put the East's place in perspective and to give the Mediterranean increased importance within the Islamic world. This shift appears all the more clearly in his description of the rivers and mountains of the north, particularly of the Alps, and in the number of Latin toponyms used. His descriptions of regions such as southern Italy and Sicily are as detailed as those of the Arab countries. Al-Idrisi shifted fault lines by combining the densely inhabited worlds around the sea, whether Islamic or Christian, and pushing the boundaries of the marginal zones farther toward the north of Europe than his predecessors had. By doing so, he freed himself from the political and religious borders imposed by the Abbasid geographers and embraced a shared Mediterranean polarity. Consequently, he highlighted the networks of economic relations that connected the two shores and did not hesitate to underline examples of syncretism like shared Christian and Muslim pilgrimage sites such as Cape Saint Vincent, at the very time when both religions' authorities were increasingly rejecting such practices.
# IBN KHALDUN'S MEDITERRANEAN: "GEOGRAPHY AS THE MEMORY OF HISTORY"
The sweeping geographic description provided by Ibn Khaldun at the beginning of the introduction to his _Book of Lessons_ ( _Kitab al-'Ibar_ ) was openly inspired by the geography of al-Idrisi. Ibn Khaldun implicitly admitted that he could not find a better foundation for a subject that was not central to his own book: "All this [description of inhabited zones, seas, and rivers] is indicated in Ptolemy's book and in _The Book of Roger_ by al-Sharif al-Idrisi.... All the mountains, seas, and rivers of the inhabited world are depicted and dealt with exhaustively."
While geography allows the historian to verify or invalidate "history in the name of the constancy of the possible and the impossible," he later goes beyond the traditional context of Arab geography and includes his history of the Mediterranean and the rest of the world in a spatial context that is no longer that of the traditional seventy sections by which the world was organized in Arab geodesy, but now that imposed by the history of mankind. Here, Ibn Khaldun explains the age-old reasons: the East and West, which had been divided and set against each other from time immemorial and which only the solidarity ( _'asabiyya_ ) of the Arabs had succeeded in uniting at the dawn of Islam, were once again divided, after caliphal unification was lost in the tenth century. Nonetheless, Islam remained the unifying instrument of this space that brought together two extremes and the source of all the forces standing against the infidel. Another constant was the pattern by which arid Bedouin countries gave rise to the impetus that drove hardened tribes to conquer and dominate fertile lands. These areas then witnessed the flourishing of the governments of civilizations established throughout the territory controlled by the _madina,_ the capital where wealth converged over the course of three or four generations. The dynasty born of the conquest prospered thanks to revenue from the predominantly rural population, until a new momentum led to the establishment of a power that eliminated the current rulers, now corrupted by the capital's solicitations.
According to Ibn Khaldun, these patterns were also responsible for the changes of the Mediterranean Sea, which is described in the third part, devoted to "universal states, power, caliphate, governmental functions," and particularly in the chapter on "command of the fleet." This choice alone is an indication that the sea, constantly fought over by Christians and Muslims, is in the category of sovereign spaces whose history was shaped by the changes in the balance of power between Christian and Muslim adversaries. Roman in its essence, but mostly Byzantine if one agrees with Ibn Khaldun, the Mediterranean could be dominated by Islam when regional authorities—in this case, the three Mediterranean caliphates—made the necessary effort to harness the extraordinary potential of the sailors living on the coasts of Islam, particularly those of the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb. Ibn Khaldun continues by disclosing the reasons for Islam's decline on the Mediterranean, attributing the shift in favor of the Latins not to the energy of the Christian powers, which would have implied acknowledging and thus legitimizing a Christian solidarity stronger than that of Islam, but to the Muslim sovereigns' inability to keep up the necessary commitment to maintain a naval force. Without a proper naval force, they left the entire sea to the Byzantines and Latins. This highly original explanation in the context of Arabic literature could only have taken shape in the mind of someone with intimate knowledge of the crisis of the Muslim Mediterranean unfolding before his eyes.
Ibn Khaldun based his reasoning on the close connection between the power of the sultans and the domination of the seas, thanks to numerous fleets built in the dockyards of the caliphates' major ports and commanded by celebrated admirals such as the Banu Maymun, who embodied the skill of the Andalusians, and, under the Almohads, Ahmad al-Siqilli, who Ibn Khaldun believed was from Djerba. The weakening of the Muslim presence on the Mediterranean was not due to the quality of the sailors but rather to the shameful shortcomings of those in power, who went to pieces after a few successions. The example of the Western caliphate is explicit: from 1147 to 1198, the first three caliphs, up to and including Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur (1184–1198) and his triumphant reign, produced the most formidable fleet of Islam, which dominated both the Mediterranean and Atlantic shores of the Muslim West. After the defeat at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 and Caliph al-Nasir's premature death in 1214, the caliphate's naval power disappeared amid the upheaval of a long dynastic crisis. Maritime domination, which required the constant investment only a stable state could provide, was by nature the work of governments at the height of their power, just like the strongest land armies, which were composed of Bedouins drawing their energy from tribal cohesion and their strength from the pressures of life in an arid environment. It is conceivable that because Ibn Khaldun had lost his family in a shipwreck, he considered the sea an environment as hostile as the desert. Finally, he offers a lesson in sociology—one forgotten by some contemporary historians—by explaining how the Arabs of the desert were able to build a naval power capable of getting the upper hand over experienced Christians: "Once the Arabs had firmly established their power and demonstrated their might [around the Mediterranean;]... once every experienced man came to offer them his services in exchange for their protection; once they had employed foreign navigators for the needs of their navy and that, in this manner, they had acquired skill and experience, they had their own experts and aspired to fight on the sea."
Only learning and experience are relevant, not geographic origin. The desert people attained the ability to teach themselves the art of seafaring through the experience they had acquired from sea people. The same causes producing the same effects, Muslim power is condemned "due to the weakness of the State and the oblivion into which the customs of the sea had fallen." By reasoning this way, Ibn Khaldun seeks to indicate that the Mediterranean Sea, tamed and exploited by man, was the actual space in which the fate of Islam in the West was decided, going back to the period when "Carthage made war on the master of Rome." The sea he describes appears as the ultimate site of the secular confrontation between dynasties ancient and medieval, Christian and Muslim.
As his entire body of work reveals, the Mediterranean Ibn Khaldun contemplated was a mirror reflecting the trends of his era: it had once again become a zone abandoned by Muslim sovereigns, allowing the Latins to dominate it. His sole reason for focusing on the Mediterranean was to use it to find reasons for Islam's decline. Once he settled permanently in Cairo, he turned his attention to the East with the new hope of an Islamic future brought by the Mamluk sultanate and, a little later, Tamerlane.
The works of these three great Arab men of letters do not encompass all the sea-related subjects in the body of Arabic descriptions, but they do provide an idea of the creative richness of Arab geography, particularly regarding an Islamic maritime space that remains marginalized by contemporary historians of the Mediterranean and medieval Islam.
#
ARAB WRITING ON THE CONQUEST OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
IN THE ISLAMIC ERA, the earliest Arabic references to the sea are those found in the Koran. Yet neither the Mediterranean nor any other sea is referred to as such. The first generation of Arabs to describe this maritime space was therefore that of the conquerors. However, accounts of the conquest are only accessible in the versions gathered in the chronicles of the third century of the Hegira (816–912), which were the first to be preserved, according to a principle described by Ibn Khaldun: "The great historians of Islam exhaustively collected the accounts of the glorious days." In these stories, the Mediterranean appears as the sea of war.
# THE ABBASID CHRONICLES
These stories, which are presented in the form of annals setting forth events year by year, were established from traditions that could date back to the second generation of believers and were preserved and passed down in the same way as the deeds, teachings, and sayings (Hadith) of the Prophet. Most of the historians of the first generations of Muslims were primarily specialists of the _isnad,_ the chain of authorities attesting to the authenticity of the Prophet's sayings, and their transmission by those who had heard him speak. This implies that the historical facts of the beginnings of Islam, as reported by the Arabs, were filtered through several generations of transmitters before being recorded in the form in which they have reached us.
Thus, the Arabic sources cite more than two hundred titles by about ninety-nine authors of traditions, produced before the first preserved text was written. The list of these titles provides an idea of the earliness and strength of the writing movement initiated in Medina. However, the complete disappearance of this body of work continues to raise many questions about the conditions of its production, particularly in the case of the texts relating to the Mediterranean.
The first accounts to have survived date from the middle of the ninth century, at best: the first chronicles available are those by the Andalusian Ibn Habib, the Egyptian chronicle by Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam, and the Iraqi narratives by Khalifa b. Khayyat (d. 854), al-Baladhuri (d. 892), al-Ya'qubi, and al-Tabari. These authors had themselves repeated as their own the narratives of the conquest gathered and recorded by traditionists from written and oral "drafts" dating back to the events described. The chroniclers also drew from the annals of Christian authors, primarily the millenarian tales, which had a particular influence on Ibn Habib and al-Khwarizmi (d. 847), the author of a lost "History Book." Wherever their location in the Islamic world, the chroniclers mostly repeated the traditions and certain narratives, which were composed in the form used to report the battles of the Prophet, the _sira_ or _maghazi._ These writings were initially collected in Baghdad and the large cities of the Abbasid realm by men of letters in caliphal circles, particularly Sayf b. 'Umar, al-Waqidi (d. 823), and his secretary Ibn Sa'd (d. 845), the authors most frequently cited in the Iraqi chronicles. The period during which these works were produced corresponds with several phases of turmoil in the history of the caliphate, such as the ousting of the Barmakid viziers by Harun al-Rashid (786–809) in 803 and the war of succession that brought al-Rashid's sons al-Amin (809–813) and al-Ma'mun (813–833) into conflict. These rewritings were intended to give the events a specific significance and provide a basis for caliphal legitimacy. This historiographic cycle ended with "the chronicle of Abu Ja'far Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari[, which] shines among all (historical) compositions and is superior to them." Narratives by regional authors, such as those of the Egyptian Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam, were inspired by the same early ninth-century texts, particularly since al-Hakam wrote his chronicle in Baghdad.
The way in which these narratives were written implies that the caliphal authorities and their provincial governors had a very significant influence on this production. Indeed, as early as the death of Muhammad and especially beginning with the succession of 'Umar in 844, the caliphs felt it necessary to strictly control not only the writing of the holy texts of Islam, the Koran and the Sunna, which were the foundation for the development of Sunni Islam, but also the history of Islam's beginnings. The written account of the Community of Believers from its origins was the basis for the caliphs' legitimacy, to the point that, starting with the reign of 'Abd al-Malik (686–705), which began with a civil war, the caliphs insisted on having control over any historical writing on Islam. This task was entrusted to scholars, the ulema, who were specialists in the transmission of the prophetic Hadith, and, increasingly, authorities on jurisprudence, the _fuqaha'_.
Similarly, the emergence of an early scholarly environment in newly conquered provinces with long-established state traditions, such as Egypt, Ifriqiya, and Iberian Baetica, fostered the appearance of a local historiography to rival that of the caliphal capitals. The same kind of ferment was found in the former eastern provinces of the Sassanid Empire beginning in the late ninth century. Provincial governors like 'Abd al-'Aziz b. Marwan (685–705), who was appointed to Egypt by his brother the caliph, were essential players in encouraging the development of productive, autonomous literary centers, particularly in Fustat and Kairouan. As with the caliphal centers, none of this first generation of writing has survived, but a good deal of it was passed down and can be found in the texts—histories, biographical works—written as of the beginning of the ninth century and especially after the advent of the Mediterranean caliphates in the tenth century.
With the exception of Ibn Habib's chronicle, in the Maghreb (including al-Andalus), only a few legal rulings made by Sahnun (d. 854), a chief qadi of Ifriqiya, and his successors, later collected by jurists, have survived the centuries. Despite the existence of prolific centers of production, at least in the two capitals, the writings of the generation of the Aghlabid and Umayyad emirates have not survived the passage of time and the radical filtering of the Kairouan and Córdoba caliphates. These regions' ulema circulated the first doctrinal formulations of the law, but they were also responsible for other forms of writing that brought about a historiography parallel to that produced in the caliphal palaces. Early on, the ulema of the Mediterranean assembled the lives of the pious and worthy men of these regions in biographical collections ( _tabaqat_ ), of which the oldest surviving examples date from the tenth century, thus contributing to reinforcing a regional tradition that could sometimes produce a historiography different from or even contradictory to that left by the men of letters in the sovereign's circle. For instance, the narratives of the conquest of Egypt include contradictory information about the personality and policy of 'Amr b. al-'As (d. ca. 663), which was circulated very early and, despite strict censorship, was not entirely filtered out by the sovereigns' circles.
# UNDER THE CONTROL OF THE SULTAN: THE MEDITERRANEAN AS WRITTEN BY THE CHRONICLERS OF BAGHDAD
The various chroniclers of the ninth century generally approached the history of Islam by using the same themes and often by drawing on the same traditions. They imposed the chronological divisions and subjects found from one chronicle to the next, which continue to be included in most histories about the beginnings of Islam. However, there are certain differences in conception and interpretation in the chronicles: though Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam and al-Baladhuri both wrote histories of the conquests ( _futuh_ ) inspired by the traditions devoted to the Prophet's battles, their respective versions diverge. Al-Tabari wrote the first universal chronicle to cover a far more extensive period, from the time of the prophets to that of the Abbasids. From the traditions to the chronicles, the accounts of the times of conquest were updated for each generation of believers, though the events reported are most often derived from the same transmission. At the same time, the events of the conquest were interpreted differently from one region to another: aside from strong Egyptian regionalism, al-Dinawari (d. 889), a historian of Iraq and Iran, bears witness to a "localist" spirit that asserted itself with those regions' Islamization. As a result, al-Tabari was, on several occasions, in a position to provide different versions of the same event, citing the channels through which they had been passed down: "There is a difference of opinion regarding the date of the conquest of Alexandria. Some say it was conquered in 646, two years after the beginning of the caliphate of 'Uthman b. 'Affan, under the command of 'Amr b. al-'As. According to Ibn Humayad, Salama, Ibn Ishaq, al-Qasim b. Quzman, a native of Egypt, Ziyad b. Jaz' al-Zubaydi, who reported that he was one of the soldiers of 'Amr b. al-'As's army when Misr and Alexandria were conquered: 'We conquered Alexandria during the caliphate of 'Umar b. al-Khattab, in 21 / 642 or 22 / 643.' "
The great historian's ambition to be historically rigorous highlights the aim in Baghdad literary circles to unify the historiographic versions of Islam's beginnings in a single, universal current.
## The Development of Narrative to Promote Abbasid Universalism
The loss of the original strata of reported accounts of the century of the birth and conquests of Islam complicates the task of studying the first forms of the historical narrative. The biographies of the Prophet and the accounts of his battles, written in Medina as of the beginning of the eighth century, probably made up the first generation of stories whose form would be adapted to the texts accompanying the community's expansion. The impetus provided by the Marwanid sovereigns coincided with the appearance of chronologies of the sovereigns' reigns, with varying amounts of commentary, under the title "history" ( _ta'rikh_ ).
Shihab al-Zuhri (d. 742) may have written the first history of the caliphs, commissioned by Caliph al-Walid I b. Marwan (705–715). It was reportedly presented in the form of a dynastic chronicle going back to the earliest period of Islam. Al-Zuhri is also credited with a history of the Arabs. Caliph 'Abd al-Malik, after having lost control of Mecca, then in the hands of the anti-caliph 'Abd Allah b. al-Zubayr (d. 692), is said to have asked al-Zuhri to collect the traditions that would make it possible to present Jerusalem as another major pilgrimage site, at the time when he was ordering the Dome of the Rock to be built.
Al-Zuhri's knowledge of the Sunna and his background as a jurist—he was appointed a qadi under 'Umar II (717–720)—made him the best possible expert on the history of Islam's past and the most apt to write historical treatises commissioned by the Umayyad caliphs. His art of transmission provided him with the necessary command of gathering traditions. This close relationship between the development of the two channels of traditions designated the men of letters, well versed in religious matters, to take on the role of historians. This explains the absence of history as a specialized field in the first centuries of Islam: even al-Tabari was initially recognized as a great jurist by the Arab scholars of the Middle Ages. Al-Zuhri's role as a historian of the Marwanids before the generation of traditionists and chroniclers of the Abbasid caliphs was an essential stage in the development of sultanic historiography and would have a powerful influence on the caliphs' approach. During the same period, the Arab historiography of the second century of the Hegira was enriched by the texts left by traditionists of Persian background and those Christian traditionists who joined the sovereigns and the authorities in the regional capitals, particularly the men of letters of the monasteries of Upper Mesopotamia in the area of Harran.
## A Historiography of Conquest in the Service of Abbasid Legitimacy
As of the reign of al-Mansur (754–775), the second Abbasid caliph, the Byzantine frontier became the primary scene of the jihad led by the sovereigns of Baghdad. In the expert hands of the chroniclers, the previous caliphates' policy of expansion consequently became an essential argument for reforming frontier defenses, particularly as encouraged by Harun al-Rashid. This takeover initially concerned the aristocracies and tribes who guarded the Umayyad front, then the Barmakid viziers in charge of the frontier at the beginning of the ninth century. At the same time, the history of the Umayyad conquest in Syria and Anatolia and as far as the Bosporus was presented as the most important area of the war of the caliphs. The construction of the warrior images of Mu'awiya (661–680), founder of the Damascus dynasty and universally recognized as a great strategist both on land and at sea, and Maslama, despite his defeat outside Constantinople in 717–718, was largely due to the necessity of connecting the Abbasid jihad to that of the first conquerors, for as long as the Iraqi caliphs personally led or supervised the campaigns against the Byzantines. Thus, the glorious feats of arms of the caliphs and their representatives could rival the exploits of their predecessors' armies.
The legitimization of jihad had to be based on the government of the previous caliphates, which had led the conquerors all the way to the Atlantic, while the Abbasids had to take responsibility for the effective end of the conquests and find other expressions of the jihad incumbent on the Prophet's successors. Traditions reporting governmental decisions by the Rashidun and Syrian caliphs were judiciously selected with a particular emphasis on jihad and the government of conquered provinces, all with an eye to reinforcing the legitimacy of the sovereigns of Baghdad.
The authority of 'Umar b. al-Khattab, who was presented as the greatest of the caliphs, was largely called on for anything relating to military operations and the administration of the conquered provinces, starting with Sassanid Iraq; al-Tabari provides a detailed account of the episodes leading to the foundation of Kufa, the first Iraqi capital and one of the bases from which the Abbasid conquest was launched. The Syrian caliphs' displays of force were also potentially powerful reminders that the caliphs' authority extended to all the conquered regions. Thus, the announcement of the nomination of governors in the provinces, by both the Rashidun caliphs and the Umayyads, had a particular resonance at a time when the western territories were slipping out of Baghdad's control in favor of dissidents who had left the East to escape repression: regions inaccessible to the caliph's armies were taken over by the Umayyads in al-Andalus as of 756, the 'Ibadi Rustamids (777–909) of Tahert in the center of the Maghreb as of 777, and the Idrisids (789–984) farther west as of 789. Other weapons were necessary to condemn and reject these groups, in particular the writing of the history of the beginnings of Islam, which served as a reminder that the only legitimate authority was that of the successor to the Prophet.
In the same spirit, traditions reported the numerous convictions of governors and generals accused of misappropriating booty while leading the conquest, including Musa b. Nusayr, despite the fact that he had conquered the kingdom of Toledo. Others were dismissed because they were a potential threat to a sovereign's authority, such as 'Amr b. al-'As, who was appointed by 'Umar, then recalled by 'Uthman (644–656) along with his lieutenant 'Uqba b. Nafi'. Despite his successes, 'Uqba was removed from command in Ifriqiya after his first campaign, then returned to his post and rehabilitated under the following reign. Reports of these indictments served as a reminder that the regional administration was always under the direct authority of the sovereign, even if the caliphate's seat of power was located thousands of miles from the theater of operations.
# THE UMAYYADS AND THE CONQUEST OF THE MEDITERRANEAN IN THE ABBASID CHRONICLES
The events of the conquest appear like a continuous movement that brought together the caliphs of Medina and the Umayyads until 749, with the caliph conducting. Only 'Umar II appears as a caliph who broke with the past. Strategic development was dictated by the facts of war, with the principle of global conquest remaining unchanged. Thus, after the collapse of Iraq and the Sassanid Empire following the Muslim victories at al-Qadisiyyah in 636, then in Nahavand in 641, the caliph turned his principal efforts toward the Mediterranean and against the emperor of Byzantium. The end of the Sassanid dynasty in 651 put the heart of the Persian Empire—its men, riches, and culture—in the hands of the caliph. It also made the basileus, whom Muslims saw as the head of Christianity, Islam's only true adversary, since the emperor of China was too far away to be made a direct enemy among the earth's great sovereigns.
On the other front, in Central Asia, the Muslims had remained highly active since the conquest of Mesopotamia, but the ties between the Arab and allied tribes of the region had loosened with the caliphate, in particular under the Marwanids, to the point of crystallizing discontent within the eastern _jund._ The _jund_ formed the core of the army of Abu Muslim (d. 755), head of the revolt that won the decisive victory over the Umayyads in the name of the Abbasids in 749 on the banks of the Great Zab, in northern Syria. Conversely, beginning under the reign of Mu'awiya, the Greek border served as the caliphs' principal military buffer, particularly during the period of offensives against Constantinople.
Under the Abbasid caliphate, this vast zone of marches remained the principal front line. More than ever before, relations with Byzantium were the crux of the war. Al-Mansur, the first caliph of the new dynasty who was able to reorganize this frontier, took back control in Syria, where several Abbasid clans were established, in order not only to eradicate the Umayyad presence but also to consolidate the position of Islam's new masters on the frontier, particularly by entrusting its defense to the most powerful clan in the region, the Banu Salih, who supported the new regime and won the Qais tribes over to the caliphate's cause, entrusting them to become the main defenders of the marches of the Taurus Mountains and the Caucasus.
The caliph was faced with an urgent crisis. Taking advantage of the civil war between the Umayyads and the Abbasids, the Byzantine soldier-emperor Constantine V (741–775) had recaptured a considerable amount of territory and was directly threatening Syria. The caliph appointed his uncle Salih b. 'Ali to head Jund Qinnasrin, the strategic border district of the Bilad al-Sham (Syria). The Banu Salih clan's patrimonial and economic power was such that Salih was able to strike coins. He also had significant military resources at his disposal, to the point that he posed a serious threat to the caliphate when internal rivalries over the succession broke out within the caliphal clan. The potential danger the clan posed to the caliphate led to the arrest of its last chief in 803 on orders from Harun al-Rashid and the dismantling of the rule of the Banu Salih lineage, which had become a real "viceroyalty" in the frontier area. Meanwhile, the three sovereigns had been able to rely on their Banu Salih cousins to fortify and organize the defense of the Anatolian front against the powerful army of the Isaurian emperors.
With the pressure from Byzantium remaining intense, the caliphate's intervention on the frontier reached a new level beginning with the reign of al-Mahdi (775–785). The caliph took over the frontier territory to turn it into the scene of caliphal jihad. Unlike their Umayyad predecessors—with the exception of Marwan II (744–750), the only caliph of the Umayyad dynasty to take the helm of the army against the infidel—the Abbasid sovereigns personally took part in the war, first as the heirs to power, then as the heads of Islam until the end of the reign of al-Mu'tasim (833–842). Al-Mu'tasim's move to Samarra in 836 and the relocation of the caliphs' army of Turkish slaves after turmoil in Baghdad coincided with the suspension of the sovereigns' personal engagement against the Byzantines. This lasted until 892, by which point the caliphs had resettled in the former capital and headed back to the frontier. Meanwhile, Caliph al-Mutawakkil (847–861) made plans inspired by the memory of the Umayyads and decided to return to Damascus in 852 to prepare to move the caliphate's seat there. Yet it is worth considering that the decision to restore the Syrian capital might also have been due to the stature of al-Mutawakkil's ancestors, who had led the jihad in Anatolia. After his assassination, the caliphs lost their grip on the Syrian frontier. They began to regain control of frontier affairs as of the reign of al-Mu'tamid (870–892). In 902, Caliph al-Muktafi (902–908) regained full control of the region, and particularly Tarsus in Cilicia, the principal port of the border zone with Tripoli. The frontier then remained under the caliphate's dominion until the crisis of the 930s, shortly before the Buyid emirs (945–1055) seized power and left the frontier under the command of the Hamdanids (905–1004), a Shiite dynasty from Aleppo, to face the Greek emperors.
The depiction of the ghazi-caliph in the chronicles of Baghdad served to underline the personal commitment of the sovereign and members of the dynasty. Thus the Abbasid jihad was viewed as superior to that of the Umayyad caliphs who had remained far from the frontier, with the exception of Marwan II, who sought a new kind of legitimacy and inspired the Iraqi sovereigns. For this reason, the chroniclers gave their full attention to the caliphal frontier's Mediterranean space, but they did not neglect other fronts, in particular those in the east, though these areas were not the scene of caliphal jihad. Harun al-Rashid proclaimed that during one of his campaigns he had reached the Bosporus, like the Umayyad general Maslama before him; consequently, it was necessary to keep alive the memory of the Umayyad campaigns.
## Mu'awiya, the Abbasid Historians' First Conqueror of the Mediterranean
Al-Baladhuri and al-Tabari describe the stages of the rise of Mu'awiya, a companion of the Prophet, in Syria, first under the protection of his older brother Yazid b. Abi Sufyan, then, after his brother's premature death, under the protection of 'Umar. The traditions emphasize his gifts as a tactician and a leader of men—"a man above men," as Caliph 'Umar reportedly said of him—particularly on the occasion of the conquest of the port of Qaysariyya / Caesarea, which was resisting thanks to supplies and reinforcements brought by the Byzantine fleet. Due to Byzantium's unrivaled domination on the sea, the seaboard was the hardest part of the Bilad al-Sham to conquer.
Mu'awiya pleaded with 'Umar to raise a naval force to prevent the Byzantines from launching raids and supplying the besieged cities. If the Arabs were unable to counter the Greek naval force, they ran the risk of ultimately compromising the conquest of the Near East and Egypt. The temporary recapture of Alexandria in 644 proved the Umayyad chief right. According to some traditions, he took the risk of personally leading the fleet that brought him to Cyprus in 645, embarking with his wife at 'Uthman's request and putting his own fate and that of his descendants on the line. On the other hand, the chroniclers of Baghdad avoided mentioning the majority of Muslim maritime offensives referred to in the Greek and Latin chronicles, beginning with the Umayyad caliphate and extending to the end of the dynasty. Even the maritime components of the two offensives against the Byzantine capital from 668 to 677 and in 717 are ignored, with the exception of a reference to the sending of reinforcements from the port of Tunis. The historians of the Iraqi caliphate were only interested in heroizing Maslama. The only accounts of the naval battles are found in the work of Theophanes the Confessor (ninth century), representing the winning side.
## The Marwanid Umayyad Era (685–750)
With the exception of Khalifa b. Khayyat, chroniclers ranging from the Egyptian Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam to the Andalusian Ibn Habib did not pay much attention to the Marwanid caliphs' naval policy, despite the fact that these caliphs took advantage of the military navy left by Mu'awiya to resume maritime offensives, including the attack on Constantinople in 717–718. After having reinforced their authority, 'Abd al-Malik and his successors picked up their predecessors' maritime program and their plan for an attack on the Byzantine capital, beginning no later than the reign of al-Walid I b. Marwan. The other major project implemented by the Marwanid sovereigns was the conquest of the Mediterranean West.
Texts dealing with the conquest of the West—from Tripoli to Narbonne—were basically limited to the deeds of the "heroes" who led the Muslim troops. Yet some maritime operations were recorded, particularly in Andalusian texts: an account of the founding of the dockyard in Tunis, which was ordered by Caliph 'Abd al-Malik, was included in al-Bakri's geography text. The caliph's son appointed Musa b. Nusayr governor of the western province, which was now independent from the government of Egypt; he was charged with conquering Byzantine territory as far as Tangier and the islands. Though some traditions mention the caliph's skepticism, it was also under his reign that the conquest of al-Andalus began, with the help of Tariq b. Ziyad. This same sovereign is identified as the initiator of the second expedition against the Greek capital, which was eventually launched by his brother Sulayman in 717 and 718. Whatever the outcome of these unfinished conquests, the Arab traditions could not avoid mentioning Islam's extraordinary expansion under the Umayyads, both to the west and, even more so, to the east, in Khorasan and Sindh. The Baghdad chronicles' selective reporting of Umayyad undertakings in the West only confirms that their authors took practically no interest in the conquest of the part of Islam unknown to them: the western Mediterranean.
## 'Umar II and the End of the Conquests: The Premises of the Abbasid Program
After the second failed attack on Constantinople in 717, the jihad against "polytheists" continued to be presented as an indispensable objective in all caliphal programs. In the eleventh century, al-Mawardi (d. 1058) stated in his treatise on caliphal government that, along with the Turks on the eastern border, the Rums of Byzantium were Islam's principal enemies. The description of the acts of war carried out by the caliphs' predecessors on the Syrian front reinforced the legitimacy of the caliphate's waging war on this same frontier. At the same time, the military defeats of 717, as serious as they were costly, were responsible for the first reversal in the policy of conquest, which was initiated by 'Umar II, the only Umayyad caliph venerated by the Abbasids. The apocalyptic traditions that began to appear during this period justified postponing the conquests to a later era, thereby also putting off the time of eschatological reckoning.
Yet under the reign of 'Umar II's successor, Yazid II (720–724), offensives to conquer new territories picked up again and would continue until the end of the Umayyad period. The soldiers of the frontier zones continued to lead expeditions on land and at sea. Even after the change of regime and the subsequent establishment of the caliphate, the conquest of Constantinople was always presented as a major objective and both Harun al-Rashid and al-Ma'mun ordered preparations to be made to launch a new assault on the Byzantine capital.
However, 'Umar II's decision to prioritize the administration of the empire, at the expense of conquests that had become too costly, especially after the disastrous double defeats outside the walls of the Greek capital and on the banks of the Indus, was perfectly in keeping with the future policy of the Iraqi sovereigns. Their military program would consist in establishing a frontier buffer zone, rather than implementing an offensive strategy. The sovereign's larger-than-life personality was certainly an excellent means of legitimating the caliphs' new jihadist policy. As early as the years immediately following his death, the historiography devoted to his sanctification presented him as a model administrator, often associated with 'Umar b. al-Khattab. In particular, 'Umar II's personal approach, which was closely tied to his piety and scholarly knowledge, and his reforms aimed at boosting the managerial nature of the empire's administration enabled historians of the dynasty to depict him as the caliph who broke with his predecessors' ways. The chroniclers did not lack for traditions about this exceptional figure, which were used to create a hagiography later magnified under the Iraqi caliphate. Indeed, 'Umar II's political decisions, both to give up on a conquest that had become too costly following the defeats of 717–718 and to advocate for sound administration of the empire based on the model of his illustrious homonym, provided an ideal basis, among other programs, for the sovereigns of Baghdad to promote a break in the conquests and the reform of the frontiers on the Taurus front.
Probably as early as the reign of Hisham (724–742), during which the Muslims were experiencing severe setbacks on the frontier, texts with apocalyptic resonance showcased the deeds of 'Umar II and the "hero" Maslama, the successor to Alexander. 'Umar II was praised as the ruler who called for an end to the cycle of conquests and Maslama as the one who implemented the break. The instrumentalization of these two remarkable figures' roles by historiographers of the period led to the appearance, in numerous traditions dating from the dawn of the Abbasid caliphate, of a history of the Hashemite caliphate dedicated to the defense of the Muslim territory from behind now relatively stable borders in order to prevent the gates of Gog and Magog from reopening and letting through a flood of barbarian invaders, an event described as heralding the end of times. The advent of the Abbasids did not bring the end of the jihadist caliphate but rather a new kind of jihad that profoundly transformed the role and place of the Byzantine Empire and the maritime spaces of the Mediterranean in the representation of the space of war and, consequently, of the Muslim zone as a whole.
# THE GATHERING OF TRADITIONS BY THE ULEMA: THE EGYPTIAN EXAMPLE
The Iraqi sovereigns' flatterers were not the only ones to make use of the traditions reporting the stages of the conquest of the Mediterranean area. The men referred to as "ulema," a term used for scholars in science and transmitters of traditions, were themselves "historians" who were very active in promoting the legitimization of Islam as a whole by listing companions of the Prophet and "those who followed them" and, in subsequent generations, those Muslims who played a major role in the spread of Islam.
## Regionalism's Role in the Development of the Historical Tradition of Islam
Early on, the Nile valley was home to a strong Islamic cultural identity that developed from the local populations' reaction not to a new imperial power but rather to the early and vigorous Arabization and Islamization of zones occupied by Arabs. The initial centers of this diffusion were Fustat and Alexandria. The personality of the governors appointed by the Rashidun and Umayyad caliphs played a role at least as determining as that of the Arab tribes: 'Amr b. al-'As (641–646, then 649–663), Maslama b. Mukhallad (668–681), and especially 'Abd al-'Aziz b. Marwan were responsible for the development of a highly productive Arab cultural center comparable to those in Syria and Iraq. Similarly, the departure of the Byzantines, who were expelled once and for all after the second conquest of Alexandria in 646, hastened Greek and Coptic authorities' adhesion to Arab government in the region, which is notably visible in the papyri and the chronicle of the Patriarchs.
## The Role of the Tribes
The discovery of the papyri, which were annotated in Arabic as early as the third decade of the Hegira, and of a large number of administrative documents written at a later date, confirms that Arabic spread in the region early on. One also finds proof of Arabization in a reference to seven recorded local histories written at the beginning of the second century of the Hegira. The authors of these histories were all notables, members of Arab tribes that had settled in Egypt. These tribes had a well-defined role as a military force within the _jund,_ initially on the battlefield, then as administrators spread over the territory as far as Middle Egypt and the Sa'id. The roughly forty thousand individuals counted by Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam were established in the districts of the capital and the delta, in the coastal towns of the Mediterranean as well as the Sa'id.
The large number of Egyptian traditions, written early on, must be connected to the tribes' need to assert their place within the empire, which put them in competition with the Arabs who had settled in Syria and supported the Umayyad caliphs, as well as in Iraq and even Iran, rather than a product of the "parochial" patriotism suggested by André Miquel. These traditions enabled Egypt to become one of the most, if not _the_ most, prolific centers of writing in the Muslim Mediterranean until the end of the Middle Ages.
## A Regionalist Tradition
The construction of the highly distinctive stature of the personality and policy of 'Amr, a companion of the Prophet, by Egyptian authors such as Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam, who borrowed an Iraqi tradition to do so, is thought to stem from 'Amr's attitude, often interpreted as the result of his desire to implement his own policies without referring to the caliph. The development of 'Amr's singular profile began with the description of his role as a military commander under the caliphate of 'Umar b. al-Khattab, in which he particularly distinguished himself as the first victor of a decisive battle in Palestine, at Ajnadayn in 634, before embarking on the conquest of Egypt and pushing Islam's boundaries back to Tripoli (644). At the same time, the traditions about 'Amr create a contradictory image: a protégé of Abu Sufyan (d. 653) at Mecca, he was an eleventh-hour convert; during the first unrest ( _fitna_ ), he joined Mu'awiya against 'Ali. During the same period, he was presented as one of the favorite advisers to Caliph 'Umar, who is said to have authorized him to conquer Egypt. As a Quraysh, a companion of the Prophet, a conqueror, and an administrator, he was in every way the "hero," liable to singlehandedly embody Islam's legitimacy on Egyptian soil, thus allowing the rich province to rise to the level of its rivals, Syria and Abbasid al-Sawad.
In 'Amr's wake, the governor ( _wali_ ) appears in the texts as "the most important figure in the life of the province [Egypt]." _The History of the_ _Patriarchs of Alexandria_ highlights the role of these figures drawn from the Umayyads' inner circle, who acted at times as benefactors to the Copts, as was the case with 'Abd al-'Aziz b. Marwan, governor of Egypt, and at other times as oppressors. References to a large number of works produced under the government of 'Abd al-'Aziz confirm that it was inconceivable to regional elites that their country not participate in creating a historical memory that placed the region at the very heart of the caliphal realm; accordingly, very close ties had to be maintained with the capital of the sovereign of Islam.
The ulema, and particularly the jurists among them, followed a similar pattern, playing a leading role in the spread of traditions on the history of the Muslim community by making the land of the Nile an essential way station between the eastern centers where major doctrinal currents were taught and the western regions that were home to students who traveled to hear Egyptian masters such as Malik b. Anas (d. 796) of Medina so they could later spread their teachings in their native areas.
## The Egyptian Ulema's Major Role in Circulating the Traditions
Egyptian ulema such as 'Abd al-Rahman b. 'Abd al-Hakam, grandfather of Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam, author of the _Conquest of Egypt,_ and renowned, like several other members of his family, for being a "man knowledgeable in Hadith and Akhbar," played a major role in the propagation of the law in Egypt. The first of these ulema, 'Abd al-Rahman's own grandfather 'Abd al-Hakam ibn A'yan ibn al-Layth al-Ayli (d. 787 or 788), was a native of Ayla in Jordan. After the Abbasids took control of the region, he fled the city on the shores of the Gulf of Aqaba and settled in Alexandria, where he held the position of qadi. Living under the protection of the Umayyad caliphs, he spent time with Malik b. Anas. He acquired a solid reputation as a jurist, which was passed on to his descendants until the family was disgraced in the inquisition (Mihna) over Mu'tazilism under the reign of al-Wathiq in 842–847. Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam's son 'Abd Allah became known as the author of a _sira_ about Caliph 'Umar II ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz. Having inherited his father's position, he himself wrote several judicial treatises. After listening to the teachings of Malik, he became the renowned leader of a current already brought to prominence by his fellow student Ashhab; 'Abd Allah also trained several eminent jurists, beginning with his own sons, Muhammad (d. 881) and 'Abd al-Rahman. He also played a prominent role in the spread of the Maliki school in the West by holding discussions with most of the apprentice jurists passing through from the Muslim West, particularly those going to Mecca who would later return to teach in Kairouan and Córdoba. His son Muhammad picked up the torch and 'Abd Allah's reputation grew steadily: several centuries later, al-Suyuti (d. 1505) would still declare that scholars "made the trip from the Gharb and al-Andalus to [learn his] knowledge and the law." The great Andalusian polymath and poet Ibn Hazm (d. 1063) compared 'Abd Allah to Sahnun and several major masters from his own country. According to the Western biographers al-Khushani (d. 981) and al-Maqqari (d. 1632), 'Abd Allah trained several well-known Andalusian qadi and numerous eminent Ifriqiyan and Eastern jurists. At the time, he was far better known than his brother, the author of the chronicle of the conquests. Al-Tabari was probably his most famous disciple.
Though remarkable, the example of the Banu 'Abd al-Hakam is nonetheless representative of the role of Egyptian jurists in the transmission of Malikism to the West and is a fair representation of the place held by ulema in the process of reception and recirculation of traditions in the western zone. Looking in the opposite direction, these same figures contributed to the Eastern chronicles, particularly those of Baghdad, by making oral and written records of the traditions of the conquests and Islam's first steps in the West.
It is not surprising that these accounts were disseminated in Ifriqiya as elsewhere by those invested in the promotion of Islam in new lands. Kairouan played a role similar to that of Fustat and Alexandria during the first Muslim centuries in the regional transmission of traditions dating back to the conquest. The life of Sahnun b. Sa'id was recounted in a text by his son Muhammad b. Sahnun, who had himself become a renowned jurist and the author of a lost history of the emirate. This account of the career of the qadi recognized as the man who introduced Malikism in the West began with his long stay in Egypt with Ibn al-Qasim (d. 806), a close companion of Malik b. Anas; the Egyptian master's decisive influence can be felt in Sahnun's _Mudawana,_ the pillar of Western Malikism. Sahnun made his own contribution to the judicial current, distinct from the teachings of his master. As can be seen, at the dawn of the ninth century, both Fustat and Alexandria had become active centers for the teaching of Islamic law.
## The Mediterranean of the Conquest, the Cemetery of "Heroes"
The primary reason for the recording of traditions and biographies ( _tabaqat_ ) was the creation of a memory of Islam going back to the time of the companions of the Prophet ( _sahaba_ ) and their "followers" ( _tabi_ ' _un_ ). Ifriqiyan biographers like al-Maliki (d. after 1072) wrote about those who participated in the conquests and were buried in the region. There followed the lives of those Muslims whose merits justified a biography. In the eyes of the ulema, this living chain represented the real memory of Islam and included certain representatives of the caliph. The Aghlabid emirs could benefit from this recognition and, consequently, reinforce their legitimacy. The value of these works was primarily based on the author's stature, which guaranteed the validity of the criteria and the selection of figures chosen.
In consequence, the first generation of Muslims was an essential link in the chain, both as a record of the first believers made in the soil with their martyrs' blood and, in the context of the _isnad,_ as a guarantee of the validity of the diffusion of the divine message in new territories.
> ## The Enviable Fate of the Martyr
>
> Lead me as far as you can into the land of the enemies, for I have heard the Envoy of God say that a holy man would be buried beneath the walls of Constantinople, and I hope I will be that man.
These words in memory of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, one of the most venerated companions of the Prophet, who died in about 668 on the path to Constantinople during the expedition led by Yazid I (680–684), reveal certain companions' desire to be buried on the site of decisive battles, far from the ancestral homeland. One even finds references to fictional interments of eminent figures, generally companions of the Prophet. For instance, the tomb of Abu 'Ubayda b. al-Jarrah, who had distinguished himself in combat at Muhammad's side, was reported to be located under the battlements of Constantinople, where he was said to have been killed during the siege led by Maslama. Yet it has since been shown that he died of the plague in Syria during the epidemic of Amwas in 639. More generally, the wish for burial on or at the edge of infidel soil was closely connected to the desire to die a martyr ( _shahid_ ). To refer to the site of the 732 battle known as the Battle of Poitiers, the Arab traditions used the single name Balat al-Shuhada', the "path" or, more likely, the "palace" of the martyrs, thereby uniting all the Muslims who died during the clash, saber in hand, but more particularly focusing on their leader, the governor of al-Andalus, 'Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi, who "threw himself into a new incursion, but perished, a martyr of Islam, with all his companions."
The sites of martyrdom and burial thus marked out the boundaries of Islam, providing another explanation for the provisional end of the expansion. Locating the tombs of the companions of the Prophet in specific places with a strong eschatological aspect, such as the Greek capital, delimited a sacred frontier of Islam, now a territory for jihad, and identified objectives for volunteer combatants of generations to come. It is notable that beginning in the Umayyad period, in a pantheon well stocked with war heroes, specific attention is paid to volunteers who fought at sea. Men such as the first admiral of the Muslim fleet in the Mediterranean were considered particularly valiant: "[In 648, Mu'awiya] appointed to the command of the sea 'Abd Allah b. Qays al-Jasi, an ally of the Banu Fazara. 'Abd Allah led fifty maritime campaigns, both in winter and in summer, and no one was drowned or wounded. He appealed to God to bring prosperity to his troops and to protect him and his soldiers against ill fortune. It continued this way until God decided to afflict him alone."
Al-Baladhuri left a list of the companions of the Prophet who accompanied Mu'awiya during the first Arab maritime campaign against the island of Cyprus in 648. These men were all the more worthy given that "this was the first time the Muslims sailed on the Mediterranean." Tradition granted a fighter who had died at sea the death of a martyr with twice the value of that of a fighter who died on solid ground, insofar as the former could not be buried.
## The Conqueror-Hero, Flag Bearer of Islam
Alongside the martyr, the figure of the conqueror, as embodied by a few individuals raised to a level above the ordinary, played an essential role in the texts of the Abbasid period in marking the limits of the conquest under the caliph's responsibility. For the same reason, the Iraqi caliphs called on the merits of the Umayyads and those who pushed Islam's boundaries to the ends of the earth. Judging by the contradictory traditions about these extraordinary figures, the memorial stakes were high.
As we have seen, 'Amr b. al-'As is one of the "founding heroes" to whom the caliph delegated his authority in order to allow him to establish Islam on infidel soil: the foundation of Fustat and the building of the mosque bearing his name served as the first acts to anchor Islam in a new land. It is less often reported that 'Amr b. al-'As was the first of the Muslims to establish relations with Berbers, the Luwata of Barca. The treaty signed with the inhabitants of the pentapolis reveals the way that an entire people, the Berbers, allied itself with the Muslims, marking the beginning of a distinctive relationship between them:
> 'Amr b. al-'As progressed at the head of his cavalry until he reached Barca. He made a peace treaty with its inhabitants, in exchange for a tribute of 13,000 dinars, on the condition that they could sell whichever ones of their children they chose in order to pay this contribution.... In the clauses of his peace treaty, 'Amr b. al-'As prescribed [the following convention] to the Luwata Berbers: "You must sell your sons and daughters to pay the tribute."... Antabulus [the pentapolis] submitted following a treaty made by 'Amr b. al-'As....'Abd al-Malik told us...: I heard Amr b. al-'As pronounce these words from the dais: "The inhabitants of Antabulus have a peace treaty ( _'ahd_ ) which we must scrupulously observe."
The treaty infers that the Arabs are superior, but simultaneously announces an alliance, as well as the Berbers' specific place in the world of Islam, at the side of the Arabs. This alliance would be renewed when the Prophetess—the Kahina, the incarnation of the Berber people before Islam—decided on the eve of the decisive battle to entrust her sons' future to Hasan b. al-Nu'man, the conqueror of Ifriqiya. The attitude of the Kahina and the Arab leader, who would bring about her death and adopt her sons, symbolized the Berber Maghreb's adherence to Islam by giving up a bygone world and adopting the new law.
When presented as a hero, 'Uqba b. Nafi' provides a fairly good illustration of the distinctive figure of the man who was considered the real conqueror of Ifriqiya, though he was not the first Muslim to penetrate its territory. This tradition promoting the "national hero" thus eclipsed the deeds of the generals who preceded or succeeded him, particularly those of Hasan b. al-Nu'man, despite the fact that it was he who permanently established Muslim authority up to Carthage in 698. 'Uqba, who belonged to the prestigious Qays clan of the Banu Fihri, was placed on the same level as 'Amr b. al-'As. Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam considers him the first Muslim to have reached the edges of the "Land of the Blacks," by which he made his own contribution to pushing back the boundaries of Islam. He rose to fame by founding Kairouan in 670; the account of the setting up of a new camp, _misr,_ on vacant land identified him as the real founder of Islam on Ifriqiyan soil, simultaneously erasing from the collective memory 'Abd Allah b. Sa'd's victory over the Byzantines in 647 and the setting up of a camp by Mu'awiya ibn Hudayj, an earlier Arab general, probably in 660 or 663. This first Muslim settlement completely vanished from the historical memory. The Arab-Muslim tradition imposed 'Uqba as the real conqueror of the western regions, while, at the instigation of the Aghlabids, the new city became the primordial site of Western Islam. The Aghlabids chose the city as a capital and had the mosque rebuilt, making it the most venerated site in the Maghreb. Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam writes,
> It was a valley covered in trees and bushes, a real den of fierce beasts, wild animals, and snakes. "Inhabitants of the valley," 'Uqba called out with all his strength, "leave this place—may God have mercy on you—for we are going to stop here." Three days in a row, he proclaimed this invitation to depart. Then without exception all the wild animals, all the fierce beasts, all the reptiles cleared out. He had the site cleaned up and it was divided in lots. 'Uqba then had the people of the place where Mu'awiya ibn Hudayj had settled transported to Kairouan's current location.
After having temporarily fallen into disgrace, 'Uqba recovered his command under Yazid I's caliphate or, perhaps, as early as his father's reign. He led a second and final expedition, which brought him to Ceuta, where, according to a tradition recorded by al-Waqidi, he allegedly met the Byzantine emperor Julian. After having conquered Tangier, the westernmost city in the Byzantine Empire, he pushed to the south into the Sous and reached the ocean: "Having thus reached Maliyan [?] on the Atlantic Ocean, he cried out: 'O my God if I were not stopped by this sea, I would continue my conquests by fighting in Your path.' "
The statements attributed to 'Uqba clearly indicate that he believed he had reached the boundaries of the inhabited world, as set by God, thereby legitimating the Arab conquest and the domination of Islam to the outer limits of the West. The producers of historical memory turned him into another hero of the closing of the world, like Maslama in the Caucasus: because 'Uqba had been the first Muslim to reach the Atlantic Ocean and the world's other boundary in the West, his campaign's failure, his defeat at the hands of the Berber chief Kusayla in 683, and his death in combat were turned into the triumphant path of a martyr. In several capacities, he was considered the man who imposed Islam, establishing by his status as a "follower"—certain traditions even refer to him as a companion of the Prophet—the link between the city of the Prophet and the West, as early as the second generation after the companions of Muhammad and as far as the surrounding ocean. The site of his tomb, which is still venerated in Biskra, near where he was defeated, became one of the region's first official "places of visitation" ( _ziyara_ ).
Sometimes the figure of the conqueror-hero is murkier. This is the case with Musa b. Nusayr. As was allegedly reported by Tariq b. Ziyad, whom he met up with in Córdoba, Musa was indeed the designated leader of the expedition that led Visigothic Spain to submit to Islam: "I am nothing but your client, this conquest is yours." Other versions even suggest that he took the initiative to launch the conquest without the caliph's agreement. However, according to Ibn Habib, he was told by a "wise old man" that the Berbers were the true conquerors of Hispania. According to the Eastern historian Ibn al-Athir (d. 1223), who was highly knowledgeable about the traditions from al-Andalus, Musa met Muhammad, who told him he was the chosen one charged with carrying out the conquest. Also, after a dream, the Berber chief himself appeared as the one who would have the honor of "opening" Spanish soil to conquest. On the beach where they landed, Musa told him, " 'There is a statue, an idol of a bull. Destroy that idol and use a tall man, in the prime of his life, with brown eyes, whose hands are struck with paralysis. Put him at the head of your army during your entry into al-Andalus.' When Tariq read the letter, he wrote back to Musa b. Nusayr: I will come where you order me to go and, as for the man you described, I find him in none other than myself."
Another tradition gave a darker image of the conqueror, despite the success of his conquest. The two most serious accusations leveled at the caliph's representative responsible for establishing Islam on the Iberian Peninsula had to do with his attitude toward the Berber chief who defeated the Visigothic king Roderic on the Rio Barbate in 711 and seized Toledo, the capital of the Visigothic kingdom, and, especially, the misappropriation of part of the spoils (namely the table of Solomon). When the Umayyad chroniclers took over the telling of Andalusian history, the image of the conqueror was turned into that of an antihero, ultimately giving the Umayyad caliphs sole credit for the actual Arab conquest of Hispania by the chiefs of the Quraysh tribe. However, other traditions made a case for the chief's merits. In Ibn Habib's chronicle, he appears as the real strategist behind the landing and the organization of the conquest, but he was especially recognized as "being among the people the most well-versed in astrology." The latter quality naturally made him the one on whom it fell to close the Muslim space, marking the end of Arab expansion in Europe: when he reached the edge of the world, possibly at La Coruña, where a statue of Hercules was said to mark one of the ends of the earth, he found the inscription that warned him of the end of the expansion, inviting the sons of Ishmael to turn back. According to other versions, the Muslims discovered this warning after the taking of Narbonne, in a place considered another extremity of the Muslim realm: "Sons of Ishmael, this is your extreme point, and you must turn back." As an Islamic capital on Gallic soil, consecrated as such by the Syrian caliphate, the city was permanently part of the Dar al-Islam, even after it was lost: this may be the reason why Narbonne continued to mark the limit of al-Andalus in most geographic descriptions long after it was conquered by the Carolingians.
# THE EMERGENCE OF AN EXCLUSIVELY ISLAMIC MEDITERRANEAN
From the beginning—and despite the mobilization of the prestigious pantheon of legendary heroes—narrators limited the Mediterranean landscape as it appears in the sources on the Arab conquests to an exclusively Islamic space. Only what concerned Islam was deemed worthy of a place in the chronicles recounting the conquest, which basically erased anything representing previous domination, with the exception of the ruins Muslims exhibited like trophies of Islam's victory over the Christians. Only the populations that converted to Islam, such as the Berbers, now the Arabs' allies, were granted the honor of being included in this new world. However, this alliance had to rest on shared origins. The Berbers were considered a people who had been exiled from the East to seek shelter on African soil, now rediscovering their roots thanks to Islam: "These peoples [of the central Maghreb] formerly lived in Palestine—at the time when Jalut ibn Daris ibn Jana reigned—ancestors of the Zenata of the Maghreb, sons of Lawa b. Barr b. Qays b. Ilyas b. Mudar. David—peace be with him—having killed Goliath the Berber, the Berbers passed into the Maghreb and here they spread."
An opaque silence prevailed regarding non-Muslim populations. The objective was for their past to be forgotten: only judicial sources mentioned the presence of the "protected" ( _dhimmi_ ), in order to emphasize the residual trace of the error lodged in them.
Having made a clean sweep of the past, Arab authors described an exclusively Islamic and caliphal Mediterranean space. The chroniclers of Baghdad only referred to the infidel spaces as territories to be conquered in order to finish the task bestowed on believers before the end of times.
#
THE SILENCES OF THE SEA
## _The Abbasid Jihad_
ENOUGH ACCOUNTS HAVE survived to prove that, contrary to what was long asserted, the Abbasid caliphs did not abandon the Mediterranean. In fact, representations of the Mediterranean in medieval Arabic literature owe practically everything to how the Sea of the Romans was described and represented by the Baghdad men of letters. Indeed, once the conquest of Byzantium had become an impossibility, the writings of Iraqi men of letters reflected an evolution in the notion of the frontier ( _thaghr_ ) and the forms of war associated with the areas bordering Christian territories and the Muslim shore of the Mediterranean. The Iraqi writers updated the connection between the caliph and war in accordance with a strategy now based on the balance of forces and the setting of lasting frontier zones. The vocabulary used, taken from the Koran, had been the same since the beginnings of Islam, but the meaning of the terms changed according to combat practices on a stable front.
The caliphs of Baghdad formed diplomatic relations with the Byzantine emperor early on. However, references to these contacts were totally recomposed for the Basileus by Greek scribes and for the caliph by Arab scribes. These literary adjustments to grandiose receptions, which are not limited to the diplomatic sphere, served the dynasty's universal legitimacy. As we shall see, knowledge would be a key issue of Islam's universal domination.
> When 'Umar b. 'Abd al-'Aziz became caliph, he said: "I see in the mosque of Damascus riches inappropriately spent.... I will remove this marble and this mosaic."... As it happened, Byzantine ambassadors came to introduce themselves to 'Umar; they entered the mosque of Damascus to see it. While they were raising their heads to look at the mosque, one of their leaders lowered his head and grew pale. He was asked why and he answered: "All we people of Byzantium say that the Arabs will not last long. But having seen what they have built, I have recognized that they have before them a period of time that they will fill." Once told of these remarks, 'Umar declared: "I see that mosque irritates the infidel." And so he gave up on what he had planned to do with this edifice.
The Marwanid caliphs had already developed a form of discourse on the superiority of the Islamic Prophecy, which accompanied their military campaigns and relied on the highly publicized Dome of the Rock, built on the order of 'Abd al-Malik after 692 as a sensational tool to affirm the oneness of God and implicitly condemn the Trinity of the Holy Sepulcher. In similar fashion, it is reported that Byzantine workers were sent to participate in the building of the mosque of Damascus, following a request by al-Walid I, as a kind of tribute the basileus was forced to pay by providing mosaicists. The geographer Ibn al-Faqih devotes a long passage to the mosque, taking the opportunity to reveal the controversial nature of the edifice's decoration and some of its inscriptions, addressed to Christians and particularly to Byzantium.
# SASSANID UNIVERSALISM IN THE SERVICE OF ISLAM
Al-Saffah (749–754), the first Abbasid sovereign, and particularly his son had found a strong clan to support them in Iran, which had in turn led them to power. Surrounded by Persian men of letters converted to Islam such as Ibn al-Muqaffa (d. 757), known for his many translations into Arabic from Pahlavi (the official language of the shahs and the Zoroastrian liturgy), the caliph encouraged the diffusion of the culture inherited from the Sassanids (224–651). In the Persian Empire's state religion of Zoroastrianism, knowledge was considered a divine emanation, transmitted to man according to the will of Ahura Mazda through the Avesta, the sacred book of Zoroastrianism containing all the knowledge accessible to humans. These ideas had a profound influence on those in power under the first Abbasid caliphs, who wanted to apply them to Islam. Abu Sahl b. Nawbakht, himself a convert, replaced his father as the official astrologer to al-Mansur and al-Mahdi and translated an astronomical history of the Persian emperors into Arabic from Pahlavi, making particular note of the fact that Khosrow I (535–578) had been the last of a long line of sovereigns of the dynasty who collected the Zoroastrian books containing the substance of all knowledge. Persian tradition held that the Greeks had co-opted this universal knowledge after Alexander the Great pillaged and destroyed Persepolis and sent back to Greece all the books containing the scholarship the Greeks would later claim to have discovered themselves.
## Presenting the Acquisition of Knowledge to Undermine the Basileus
The description of the ceremony welcoming the Byzantine ambassador to Baghdad under the reign of al-Muqtadir (908–932) is another classic example of the way the Muslims represented the superiority of the caliphate—and thus of Islam—over Christianity and the emperor of Byzantium. Ibn al-Faqih and other Islamic men of letters report protocol similar to that used in Constantinople, but they twist the scene to proclaim Islam's superiority over Christianity. Thus all the information regarding utterly normal, commonplace diplomatic relations was distorted in service of a war of religions fought through messages and descriptions exclusively addressed to subjects of the empire, and particularly to the caliphate's Christian subjects. The rivalry over the acquisition of knowledge was based on the same principles.
In the eleventh century, the Toledo scholar Sa'id al-Andalusi wrote a book identifying "the categories of nations." He used as his reference the relevant populations' degree of knowledge and ranked nations according to those that were learned and those that remained ignorant. Fittingly, al-Ma'mun's achievement was to invigorate universal science by having it studied by the people of Islam, who were alone in being able to identify the fields of knowledge that would allow the nation of believers to approach the truth.
## Al-Ma'mun's Achievement: The Stigmatization of the Christian World
The translation movement was apparently initiated by the Umayyads, later to be taken over by the Iraqi caliphs, who gave it a breadth far exceeding that of the Umayyad endeavors. Translation work appears to have begun under the reign of al-Mansur "at the time of [his] adoption of the salient aspects of Sassanid ideology... which was also visible in his choice of personnel for the civil service." Persian ascendancy and the influence of Zoroastrianism explain why the first translations were of works in Pahlavi. This phase also corresponded to a transfer of learning, probably from Gundeshapur, the Sassanids' former city of science, to Baghdad.
The translation of Greek works on a large scale is thought to have begun at the instigation of Caliph al-Mahdi, motivated by the need for a method of dialectic like Aristotle's _Topics._ This work coincided with the beginning of the polemics organized by the sovereign in the form of oral debates between Christian clerics and Muslim scholars. The rise of Islamic proselytism, with sovereigns encouraging the growing number of Christians in the alcoves of the caliphal palaces to convert to Islam, provoked or accentuated a defensive reaction on the part of Christians in the region. This led to theological debates for which Christian scholars educated in Aristotelian logic were well prepared. Muslims therefore had to be given access to the treatises on logic that would provide them with the rhetorical abilities to demonstrate Islam's superiority over other religions of the book, as well as Sunni Islam's superiority over dissenting currents within Islam.
For his part, Caliph al-Ma'mun wanted to ensure that only the emir of the believers had the power to dictate Islamic doctrine, at the expense of the ulema. By doing so, he wanted to give knowledge—originally taken from the Greeks—a dominant role as a symbol not only of political but especially of religious authority, embodied by the Prophet's successor. In the spirit bequeathed to the Arabs by the Persian Zoroastrians, this appropriation of knowledge included every discipline. The first step in using these disciplines to promote Islam required the acquisition of texts, many of which could already be found in the Christian monasteries of the Muslim area, from Alexandria to Iraq, and including the region of Harran. However, Constantinople's collections also needed to be included, at least in official discourse, in order to proclaim scholarly Islam's victory over Byzantium, stripped of its most precious books. The works selected were gathered, translated into Arabic, and placed on the shelves of the capital's libraries and, especially, the palace library, which may be the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma) mentioned by Ibn al-Nadim, who left an invaluable inventory of its holdings.
According to Ibn al-Nadim, the rivalry between the two imperial cities led the caliph, inspired by a dream encounter with Aristotle, to vie with the Byzantines for control of knowledge, the prerogative of civilizations bearing a universal culture. It was the sovereign's obligation to wage this war, in the same way that it was his obligation to wage jihad. Indeed, the Prophecy of Muhammad had given the Arabs, then all Muslims, the responsibility to promote knowledge, to the exclusive benefit of Islam. Even if apocryphal, the Hadith encouraging the people of Islam to go looking for knowledge as far as China if necessary basically authorized the caliphs to try to monopolize the disciplines of which the Greeks claimed to be the guardians: "This dream was one of the most certain reasons for the appearance of [new] books. While al-Ma'mun had achieved a victory over the Emperor of Rum, the two rulers began a correspondence. Al-Ma'mun wrote to the Emperor of Rum to ask him to send him [books] of ancient science selected from those kept in the country of the Rum. He initially refused, then agreed.... When the envoys [of the caliph] brought them back to al-Ma'mun, he ordered them to be translated, and this was done."
This account must be considered in the context of the war, with the issue at stake being the victory of Islamic universality over the Christians (as represented by the Byzantine emperor). Since the Muslims—in this case the Umayyads—had been unable to seize Constantinople, the honor of achieving victory over the Greeks fell to the Abbasids. This they did by forcing the Greeks to yield—or, from the Persian perspective, to return—the knowledge their ancestors had taken from the "Eastern" civilization that now held the true Prophecy. By shifting the crux of the struggle between the two universal religions from the battlefield to the field of knowledge, the sovereigns could claim to replace their predecessors' victories with the one for which al-Ma'mun took credit, with the help of the great Greek philosopher. This victory appeared far more commendable in that knowledge allowed for the revelation of the only prophecy that could trigger the eschaton: the quill prevailed over the sword once and for all, particularly since the latter had failed to destroy the second Rome. The acquisition of the Greek texts was accompanied by growing philhellenism, which was presented as a symbol of the universality of knowledge. This philhellenism was carefully distinguished from Byzantine and Christian culture, which was charged with ignorance both religious and cultural.
# THE NEW CONDITIONS OF WAR
The Arab chronicles covering the first centuries of Islam identify two distinct periods of Muslim naval activity in the Mediterranean. For the period up to 752, there are references to several maritime expeditions taking place at a sustained rate, suggesting a relatively heavy maritime commitment. Despite phases of inactivity imposed by internal problems and a few defeats, the number of naval expeditions recorded is impressive, particularly for a nation said to fear the sea: more than fifty major expeditions have been counted in the sources—not exclusively Christian sources—covering the years 643–752. While the objectives had changed, the coherence of the Umayyads' maritime strategy characterizes their naval investment as a carefully considered initiative, effectively supported by logistical organization.
Consequently, the contrast with the Abbasid period, after a last reported foray into western waters in 752, seems all the more striking. During the period that followed, no naval expedition is mentioned until 779, whether in the Arabic sources or those of the opposite side. There were a few reported launches of the fleet from 779 to 838, from the reign of al-Mahdi to that of al-Mu'tasim, during land raids in Anatolia led by the caliph or his sons, with ships following the Anatolian coast to accompany the land expedition headed by the sovereign, but these naval deployments did not have much in common with the Umayyads' naval war effort, particularly since the fleet stayed back to prevent any potential attempt on the part of Byzantine units to attack the Arab column from the rear.
The Mediterranean during the height of the caliphate would thus have been considered a territory located outside the domain under the jurisdiction of Islamic law. Consequently, since the activities of Muslim sailors on Mediterranean waters did not have to be recorded, only the victims—particularly Greek and Latin monks—and the Latin authorities made any reference to naval raids. This line of demarcation between those territories covered by the Arabic annals and those that were not led most historians of the Mediterranean to believe that the sea had become a no-man's-land. Consequently, Muslim attacks could only be the work of "pirates." The sense that the Sea of the Romans had been abandoned was reinforced by the fact that, during the same period, men of letters in Baghdad were describing naval activity on the Indian Ocean, driven by merchants of Muslim ports such as Siraf and Basra. The Indian Ocean was open to sailors and merchants of Muslim shores, who sailed along the coasts of Swahili Africa, India, and as far as Canton (Guangzhou) in the ninth century. Meanwhile, on the shores of the Mediterranean, the great coastal cities of antiquity—Antioch, Alexandria, Carthage—had been destroyed or were on the decline, while all the Muslim capitals were cities founded or captured inland. The Mediterranean naval space, which had been in crisis since the sixth century and neglected by the authorities on every side, with the exception of the Byzantines in a few ports, was becoming an ideal setting for commerce raiding.
This quick reading of Arabic and Christian sources raises questions about the caliphs' policies regarding the Sea of the Romans. At the height of their power following the defeat of the Umayyads, the Abbasids shifted every effort of caliphal jihad to the Byzantine frontier, including the Mediterranean shores of the Near East. Yet is it really conceivable that they had no maritime policy and settled for reinforcing coastal defenses? After all, during this same period, the Abbasids were hiring historians to describe the naval policy of Mu'awiya, the founder of the reviled dynasty they had brought down, asking them to try to justify his engagement on Byzantine waters. These interpretations gleaned from the information drawn from Arabic history's omissions regarding the Muslim powers' maritime policy in the eighth and ninth centuries, thus exclusively considered from the Greek and, especially, Latin victims' perspective, are in total contradiction with the Mediterranean ambitions displayed by the Iraqi caliphs at the time when they were personally leading their troops in Byzantium's Anatolian territory.
Once the caliphal armies seized control of Syria and the Anatolian marches, Caliph al-Saffah and his successors got involved in frontier policy. Between the second half of the eighth century and the middle of the ninth century, a new generation of fighters appeared on the frontier landscape alongside the "aristocratic" armed forces and military men to support the caliph by supervising jihad in the field. These were "armed scholars" competent in legal matters, some of whom were involved in the development of the quickly disseminating major schools of jurisprudence ( _madhhab_ ). Beyond that, the presence on the Anatolian front of the forces of the _jund,_ of volunteers, but also of groups close to those in power and even of members of the caliph's own family ( _abna'_ ), while admittedly rivals, is a good indication of the vitality of the commitment of Muslim troops to the frontier under the caliphs' banner.
The chronicles covering the dynasty's first century included accounts of the campaigns led by the caliphs and their sons. The real reason these expeditions were mentioned was the sovereign's presence, even if it meant pushing the achievements of the experienced generals who organized them into the background. The chroniclers were particularly interested in demonstrating the sovereigns' legitimacy in acts of war. Difficult successions and civil wars provided opportunities to emphasize the caliphs' involvement in the field, to the point that "in terms of historiography [these chronicles] mark the birth of a new type of official historical narrative, financed by [caliphal] power,... [and retaining] the idea that the principal objective of jihad no longer consisted in conquering the _Dar al-harb_ [territory of war], but establishing the authority and legitimacy of the leader of the Muslim community."
In the official sources, the sea itself never appears as a territory of the war of the caliphs. However, the sovereign remained responsible for the maintenance and fitting out of fleets, the mobilization of crews referred to by al-Baladhuri and the jurist Qudama b. Ja'far (d. 948), and the installation of defensive measures on the Egyptian and Syrian coastlines. To do so, the sovereign delegated his authority to the governor of the coasts and ports. The sovereigns' concern with the sea appeared early on, from the moment Caliph al-Mansur ordered the seat of the admiralty to be moved to Tyre from Alexandria, where it had remained throughout the Umayyad period. Well protected by its defenses, the port of Tyre had become the caliphate's maritime capital after Hisham ordered the Umayyad caliphate's dockyard to be moved there from Acre. This probably explains why the Abbasid caliph praised the administration of the Umayyad caliph, who was otherwise heavily criticized by the Baghdad writers. To reinforce the basis of maritime policy, the same chroniclers made a point of repeating that it was the great caliph Mu'awiya who had founded the victorious, conquering Muslim naval force. There is no doubt the Abbasids had adopted and claimed as their own not only what was considered the effective coastal apparatus put in place by the Umayyads but also their policy of maritime investment. The only change the Iraqi dynasty made to the Umayyads' maritime organization was to move the naval command. By doing so, the Abbasids put an end to dual Egyptian and Syrian management and placed the entire chain of maritime command under the direct control of the caliphs.
# SPACES OF MEDITERRANEAN JIHAD IN ABBASID DISCOURSE
The first caliphs' military policy, which was applied at least until the reign of al-Mutawakkil, was widely commented on by administrators who had become historians. While the chronicles have taught us the defensive tactics and strategies advocated by successive caliphs for use along the coasts and in the marches, it was the jurists and armed scholars who described the rules of war.
Al-Mahdi, Harun al-Rashid, and, after the civil war, al-Rashid's sons al-Ma'mun and al-Mu'tasim took measures that led to an extensive reorganization of the frontier zone as far as Armenia. Like the Aleppo writer Ibn Shaddad (d. 1285), who described the fortified sites on his region's frontier, when describing the caliphs' accomplishments on the front, Arab men of letters primarily focused on the fortifications they built. Yet there is no doubt that, beginning in the Umayyad period, both the zone of the Taurus Mountains and that of the coast ( _sahil_ ) were provided with defenses: al-Baladhuri and al-Ya'qubi made a list of the measures implemented by Mu'awiya, the region's governor under the caliphate of 'Umar and 'Uthman. This has been confirmed by excavations in the fortresses of the Syro-Palestinian coast. This policy was carried on by Mu'awiya's successors, particularly in the region of Upper Syria, with the redevelopment of Qinnasrin, and along the front in Upper Mesopotamia, around Harran, which had been chosen as Marwan II's capital. The relative stability of the zone separating the two empires fostered a certain continuity in the policy for defending the Dar al-Islam under the Abbasids.
The reorganization of the frontier credited to Harun al-Rashid owed its innovative character to the discourse disseminated by the caliphate, rather than the actual scope of reform. The texts the chroniclers drew on to report changes on the frontier were taken from sources written by the caliph's administrators, such as Abu Yusuf Ya'qub (d. 798), the author of the first known work of its genre, _The Book of Taxation._ Terminology sheds some light on these changes, but the words' meanings remain unclear. From the first years of Islam, the word _thaghr_ —often used in the plural, _thughur_ —referred to the mountainous "thresholds," a rough equivalent of the Byzantine _kleisourai_ and the Latin marches. These frontier zones were now doubled up at the rear by _al-'Awasim,_ which referred to Qinnasrin and Antioch, the strongholds in which were stationed troops and their command. Despite the details provided by the Aleppo writers Ibn al-'Adim and Ibn Shaddad and the findings of recent excavations, which have provided increasingly precise knowledge of the region, this organization remains hard to reconstruct.
## The Caliph and the Armed Scholars Redefine Jihad
Now that sovereigns were directly involved on the front, the system of government had to be adapted. The caliph made changes either before or on the occasion of the elimination of the Barmakid viziers in 803. These changes coincided with the point when the caliph returned to the head of operations beyond the border. The caliphs replaced the Syrian patrimonial system and the mobility of Umayyad power with personal involvement that connected them to the war zone. This was manifested in the construction of two caliphal residences on the Upper Euphrates—al-Rafiqa under al-Mahdi and al-Raqqa under al-Rashid—which brought the caliphs closer to the front. Following al-Mahdi's accession to the caliphate, the caliphs or their sons—primarily those destined to succeed their fathers—took the leadership of several expeditions, marking a new development and a change from the Umayyad period, before the reign of Marwan II, the last caliph of Syria: the participation of the sovereign, waging jihad against the infidel in a personal capacity, was intended to counteract the effect of the distance between the center of power and the caliphs' principal war front. Al-Ma'mun took this logic to its conclusion by choosing Tarsus as his residence for the last three years of his life. Along with al-Massisa, Tarsus had become the principal stronghold on the Byzantine front, a center for the men of the ribat as well as an active port.
This unprecedented configuration of the relationship between the sovereign and the war required the development of a vocabulary to define the new forms of caliphal jihad and terminology to refer to the new spaces of war. The legal treatises reveal a constant evolution in the interpretation of the legal forms of war. Under pressure from the caliphs, the jurists in the sovereign's entourage defined the outlines of jihad, generating a new definition of caliphal war. The Koran still provided all the terms necessary, but the sense of the terminology had to be redefined based on conditions in the frontier war. Beginning in the Umayyad era, other jurists had come to settle and fight on the frontier and wrote works on the law of war ( _kitab al-siyar_ ), defining its rules based on the Hadith and the accounts of the Prophet's battles, the _maghazi._ The most famous treatise was probably the one by Abu Ishaq al-Fazari, "master of the sunna and the _ghazwa_ [raid]," who was inspired by the great Syrian jurist al-Awza'i (d. 774). Al-Awza'i had himself been appointed a qadi by the last Marwanid sovereigns and retired to the maritime frontier in Beirut after the accession of the Abbasids. His opinions on the role of volunteers in war were in keeping with the tone of the times, proposing that they "perform the campaigns of the Prophet again."
## Redefining the Frontiers
The jurists changed the sense of terms such as "jihad," "martyr," and "ribat" by taking into account their meaning in the Koran and adapting it to the strategic and ideological evolution of the conduct of war under the first caliphs. However, this formalization of combat remained closely tied to the practical aspects of war. First of all, there was no conflict between divine reward and the material rewards of booty. The combatant's status and remuneration, and the obligations entailed in voluntary engagement, already occupied an essential place in the _maghazi_ and the Umayyad management of the conquests. Using this framework, jurists in the service of the caliphate changed the combatant's material status in a space of war confined to the Taurus border zone. The treatise by Qudama b. Ja'far, jurist to the sovereign, emphasizes the obligations brought about by the organization of frontier jihad, describing the conception of war developed by the caliphate over more than a century. Similarly, the influence of Byzantine treatises on strategy can also be felt in these chapters devoted to the organization of frontier war.
A century later, al-Mawardi, both a jurist and a close adviser to a caliph who had lost actual military power to the Buyid emirs (as well as control of the Syrian region), repeated these same rules in his treatise on the "ordinances of government" ( _Ahkam al-Sultaniyya_ ). Though he followed the example of the deeds of Muhammad, his references to war were borrowed from the treatises by the jurists of the dynasty. In the chapter devoted to "command of the jihad," which was carefully kept apart from internal military operations, the enumeration of "methods to be used in war" shows that military movements were limited to the frontier, a space for combat defined as licit or illicit; there followed rules on conduct with regard to polytheists during razzias. Next, al-Mawardi presents articles on war in enemy territory that concern the volunteers who participated in jihad and, more specifically, their duty of obedience to the sovereign and his emir. Al-Mawardi then goes over the emir's duties. The emir commanded the armies in the name of the sovereign and was responsible for the fate of the defeated and the populations who had come under Muslim law according to the rules of capitulation and the _dhimma_ (pact of protection), either on the battlefield or after a siege.
The frontier zone marked the boundary between the Dar al-Islam, a peaceful territory inhabited by populations who obeyed Islamic law and where war was normally prohibited, and the war zone, which was pushed back into infidel territory and exclusively accessible to Muslim soldiers and sailors through the marches ( _thughur_ ). In the enumeration of the ten duties incumbent on the caliph, the fifth and sixth articles specify those that fell under Islamic religious authority: "To supply the frontier stations and man them with sufficient garrisons so that the enemy cannot take advantage of some negligence to do harm there or to spill the blood either of a Muslim or an ally; to fight those who refuse to embrace Islam after they have been invited to do so, until they convert or become tributary, to this end, to establish the laws of Allah by giving them superiority over any other religion."
The second article, based on three verses from the Koran (9, 33; 48, 28; 61, 9), dealt more specifically with the conditions under which summer expeditions were to be conducted. Areas were defined not by the faith of their populations but by the religious law in force: the border had to clearly separate the zone of Islamic law from the zone of the infidel. For enemy lands that it was the Muslims' duty to attack, al-Mawardi used a legal tradition dating back to the time of the first Abbasid sovereigns, here too distinguishing areas based on their populations' status in regard to Islam: "In enemy territory, the polytheists are divided into two categories: those who live where the preaching of Islam has been carried out, who have refused to hear it and fought it. To fight them, the emir can... harass them day and night by using weapons and fires or declare war on them and attack them in pitched battle. As for the polytheists who have not been reached by the preaching of Islam... we are forbidden to attack them by surprise... before having called them to Islam."
These distinctions between territories of war, _dar al-harb,_ and spaces of the infidel, _dar al-kufr,_ reveal gradations distinguishing the different zones beyond the frontier. The era of an undefined space, open to conquest from the base camp ( _misr_ ), was long over: jihad had been redefined based on the military reality of the period.
## The Ribat on the Frontiers and the Syrian Coasts
The work of Ibn al-Mubarak (d. 797), one of the great armed scholars and an inhabitant of the region of Cilicia, possibly of Tarsus, moved away from the models of jihad adapted to the martyrdom of the conquest period. Instead, Ibn al-Mubarak was one of the first to define the forms of a jihad adapted to the position of the volunteer on the frontier. As the author of a book on jihad and one biographical text, Ibn al-Mubarak defined voluntary engagement as the fruit of an individual process, based on the Hadith, that combined the two forms of the Muslims' fight, known under the general terms "major jihad" and "minor jihad." He argued that these volunteers should be integrated into the frontier army, either to monitor enemy territory from frontier cities or to participate in razzias on the territory of war.
This close association between relatively strict forms of asceticism and combat or frontier monitoring would blossom with the practice of the ribat. To refer to the practice of the two forms of jihad, texts about war most commonly used the verbal form _rabata,_ "to make ribat," rather than a reference to a specific place. The exercise of the ribat could only be performed on the frontier and required believers to remain more or less stationary, in a place where they could theoretically see the enemy and isolate themselves to meditate. It appears that the importance of asceticism, combined with combat and sometimes pushed to excess and criticized, was one of the armed scholars' principal contributions. Now the _murabit_ (one making _ribat_ ) perpetuated the memory of engagement in combat in the spirit of Medina and since the time of Muhammad, but in the context of combat rooted on the frontier in a single location where one could withdraw to pray and practice asceticism, rather than in the context of the conquest, which entailed mobility.
Among the practices of war that appeared on the Anatolian front and the Syrian coast, the ribat was certainly the institution that best symbolized the changes marking the beginnings of the Abbasid period. Antioch was referred to as both a fortress ( _ma_ ' _qil_ ) and a ribat, which implies that the city was suitable for the individual practice of jihad. Its reputation drew many. According to a maxim attributed to Abu Sa'id al-Khudri, a companion of the Prophet and traditionist who died between 682–683 and 693–694, "A year of devotion in this city is worth a year [elsewhere]. To those of your community who die here, God promises the day of resurrection as the reward of the _murabitun._ " This connection to the earliest period of Islam made it possible to trace the practice of the ribat back to the prophetic period. Descriptions of this practice in coastal cities such as Beirut and border cities such as Antioch and, especially, al-Massisa and Tarsus, where many _murabitun_ spent time, are found in numerous literary accounts as of the end of the eighth century, as well as in the first written accounts by volunteer scholars.
In the process of rearranging the frontier, Harun al-Rashid turned the ribat into a caliphal institution and launched its spread on the empire's borders. During the same period of 795–796, two of the sovereign's officers were sent to be governors at the outer limits of the caliphal domain: Harthama b. Hayyan was posted to the border of Ifriqiya and al-Fadl b. Yahya to the border of Khorasan. Both soldiers had garnered experience as commanders on the Taurus frontier. Harthama had been charged with supervising the rebuilding of Tarsus, which became the ultimate city of ribat. In 796, Harthama ordered the construction of the first Ifriqiyan ribat, in Monastir, while al-Fadl built the first ribat on the eastern border, in Paykent.
Both structures were part of a much larger program aiming to protect frontiers attacked by the Byzantines of Sicily on one side and the Turks of the Oxus region on the other. This religious and military institution, developed in Syria in the context of the reorganization of the frontiers, was imposed on all of the caliphate's frontiers, as it were. A parallel can be established between this institutionalization of voluntary service in the context of jihad and the caliphs' desire to channel and, if possible, control the energy of voluntary combatants. In this way, the Abbasids "reinvented" a frontier in the places where they were waging a war, while trying to control the manpower responsible for its defense. The ribats' immediate popularity is revealed by the presence alongside the soldiers, at least as of the Umayyad period, of many pious men, who were now supervised and whose energy was thus channeled. Regional particularities in the institution of ribat and its evolution can be explained by the need to adapt this religious and military practice both to conditions of war that varied from one end of the Mediterranean to the other and to the needs of the states concerned.
## An Active Defense
At the beginning of the tenth century, Qudama b. Ja'far reported the obligations incumbent on the governor of the maritime regions, then based in Tyre. This text shows that the Sahil—the coastal region of Bilad al-Sham, between Cilicia and the Sinai—was considered a strategic march under the direct control of the caliph, as it had been in the Umayyad period:
> He [the caliph] ordered him [the governor] to continually review his troops to know them and to be aware of their actual state and the maintenance of their ships. He ordered him to supervise the observation posts and look-out posts; to be generous with them [the look-outs] and the soldiers by paying them regularly. He orders him to inspect the ships, [to make sure that] they are solid and well fitted out.... When the government decrees an expedition, the governors of Egypt and Syria receive the order to make the necessary preparations. The meeting point for the fleet is Cyprus. Its commander in chief is the governor of the Syrian frontiers.
At the end of the ninth century, the geographer al-Ya'qubi listed the moorings of the fleets defending the coastline in the name of the caliph. These included Tyre: "Tyre, maritime city, [is] equipped with a dockyard, in which they build naval vessels of the empire, intended for the war against the Rum."
The caliphs of Baghdad personally got involved in the war against the Byzantines. They presented their commitment in such a manner as to impose the image of the caliph fighting in the name of jihad and to outdo the conquering Umayyads. With a program of coastal defense and naval offensives intended to cover the empire's maritime frontier, their exclusive commitment in Anatolia reinforced the identification of the Mediterranean with the frontier and the caliphate's war zone.
# THE GHAZI-CALIPH
Chroniclers focused on the sites of jihad, chosen by the caliph or those who headed razzias in his name—his sons, often the heir to the throne, or the generals who represented him—at the expense of other fronts. References to border combat follow in the sovereign's or his representative's footsteps. This distorted view excluded practically any information about most contact zones with the Christians and most of the players in this frontier war, unless it was reported by the Muslims' adversaries.
The emergence of regional powers brought the image of the ghazi sovereign to the other fronts, in the East but also in the western regions. To prove their legitimacy, the Aghlabids presented themselves as the caliph's representatives; far from Baghdad, however, they enjoyed total autonomy. Thus, the decision by Emir Ziyadat Allah (817–838) to entrust the leadership of the conquest of Sicily, which was essentially motivated by sedition in the Ifriqiya _jund,_ to Qadi Asad b. al-Furat in 827, marked a change from the Anatolian campaigns led by the caliph, his sons, or the generals: "This episode... allows us to observe that within the Abbasid empire, political, judicial, and institutional innovations are in fact constant on the regional level and are the product of extremely varied instruments." Nonetheless, the model created by the caliphs on the Anatolian frontier became the standard for all Muslim powers waging war on the frontiers, at least in regard to their discourse. Even dissidents such as the emirs of Córdoba drew heavily from this caliphal model, the only one recognized to be in compliance with the laws of Islam.
The caliphs' particular interest in the frontier can also be measured by the position of the governors of the marches and the "protector" cities. 'Abd al-Malik b. Salih, the uncle of al-Saffah, the caliph who had eliminated Marwan II in Egypt, was the first governor of the Syrian march under an Abbasid mandate. The clan's power rested on significant assets and its ability to rally Qais tribes formerly in the service of the Umayyads and now placed under the command of the caliph's uncle. This regional base allowed him to develop his autonomy and plant the seeds of a real "local sub-dynasty." The caliph used the governor to stop the destructive raids of the Basileus, thereby ensuring the stability of this sensitive zone, then eliminated the dangerously powerful rival. Al-Mahdi went a step further by appointing his son Harun to the command of the frontier zone in 779. The future caliph headed two expeditions toward Cappadocia. In 780, his father personally took command, leading troops to Dorylaeum for the first time and possibly to the Sea of Marmara, during a second expedition.
Harun al-Rashid became caliph in 786 and left the government of the marches of Syria and Azerbaijan to the Barmakid viziers until 803, in other words for the entire period they were in power. At that point, the sovereign brought his sons closer to exercising power by deciding to involve al-Amin and his eldest, al-Ma'mun, in military activity on the border. Al-Ma'mun was appointed to Khorasan, an appointment long considered compensation for the fact that his younger brother al-Amin, born to an Arab mother, had been chosen as heir to the caliphate. In fact, al-Ma'mun had not inherited the caliph's frontier. On top of the succession to the caliphate, the younger son inherited the government of the entire western region, from Iraq to the Atlantic. Aside from Baghdad, the Bilad al-Sham, Arabia, and the Maghreb, his actual authority now extended to the frontiers of the Taurus and the Sea of Rum, frontiers that had revealed the legitimacy of the ghazi-caliph since the Umayyad period and, even more so, under the following caliphate. The command of the Byzantine frontier fell to Harun al-Rashid once his father designated him as his successor, at the expense of his elder brother al-Hadi (784–785), who had previously been chosen by the caliph. While the details of the difficult succession to al-Amin are unknown, there is no doubt that the frontier of the caliphs, which legitimated the future ghazi-caliph, was not the eastern frontier but the one facing the other emperor's territory. Harun's participation in the expedition of 805–806, now as the caliph, further reinforced the connection between the caliphate and the eastern frontier. After having defeated his brother and reestablished control of the capital in 819, al-Ma'mun also sought to establish his authority as a war caliph by expanding the scope of the battle against the emperor of Byzantium, rather than going to fight the Turkish tribes beyond Khorasan. He entrusted the command of his armies to his brother, the future caliph al-Mu'tasim, and his son Ali, who pushed into Cappadocia on three occasions beginning in 830. That same year, the caliph settled in Tarsus, using it as a base from which to supervise these expeditions. He also prepared to head an expedition in 833, but he died before he could realize his wish. His son and successor, al-Mu'tasim, saw the raid through to Amorium, which would be the last triumph against the Byzantines under the command of a caliph.
#
THE GEOGRAPHERS' MEDITERRANEAN
AS WE HAVE SEEN, Baghdad was the cradle of a discipline that came into being in the ninth century, at the same time that the surviving Abbasid chronicles were written. Geographic and chronographic texts are in fact inseparable, for both proceed from the will to prove Islam's universal legitimacy. Contrary to long-standing opinion, the Mediterranean found a singular place in the heart of the Muslim domain, once again as the favored space for caliphal jihad.
# THE LEGACY OF BAGHDAD
Arabic tradition established al-Ma'mun as the founder of geographic science: among others, al-Mas'udi reported seeing in libraries a "geography" ( _jughrafiya_ ) that had no text but featured the climates ( _iqlim_ ) in a table of astronomical readings, along with a map bearing al-Ma'mun's name ( _surat al-ma'muniyat_ ). This map represented "the world with its spheres, its stars, the land and the seas, the inhabited regions and those deserted, the habitats and the cities." Arab geography was one of the many disciplines that had pride of place in Baghdad during the blossoming of "encyclopedic" studies that drew on every type of knowledge that could showcase the image of Islam desired by the caliph and the men of letters in his circle.
Before becoming "the study of the earth's physical features, resources, and climates," Arab geography as it has reached us was primarily aimed at representing Islam at the center of the ecumene and including the power and legitimacy of the caliphate on world maps. Translations, particularly of Ptolemy's _Almagest_ but also of Marinus of Tyre's _Geography_ and many other treatises of Hellenic geography, were at the root of a geography of astronomical figures and calculations, long before geography represented the parts of the earth and described its physical features and human activities. Astrolabes and astronomical spheres were the first objects collected by the capital's sovereigns, a practice then followed by the city's upper classes. During the same period, the maps of Greek antiquity, particularly those by Ptolemy, became the models for the first world maps, which were divided into segments or climates by which the location of specific sites, regions, rivers, seas, or mountainous areas could be identified.
References to Arab geography, both cartographic and descriptive, were a cultural and propaganda tool of Islamic and caliphal sovereignty, unrelated to guides or itineraries used for orientation, which were known through other (primarily oral) vectors of transmission. Yet the same concerns are found in administrative geography, in references to the itineraries and stages leading to Mecca or crisscrossing the empire: this justified the choice of the Abbasid administration's epistolographers to apply the terms "paths" or "itineraries" ( _masalik_ ) to their descriptions of the land and maritime routes to the various cities and other inhabited areas within the space controlled by the sovereign ( _mamalik_ ). However, usage of this practical geography was transformed to meet another requirement: representing the space under the prince's authority in works written for the edifying education of the caliphate's future elite. This brought forth an encyclopedic type of geography that was far from a travel guide but gave the curious enough information to make conversation.
In keeping with the precept that, for Arabs, "science cannot be divided," the "sciences of the earth" were a major source of inspiration for geography, but in the same way as medicine and other disciplines: through what they could contribute to knowledge of the earth's origins, physics, and climates, and man's adaptation to his environment. The birth of Arab geography is closely connected to the development of the _adab,_ embodied by Jahiz (d. 868) and Ibn Qutayba (d. ca. 883–889), whose influence on the writing of geography was decisive. The _adab_ is defined as "a literature of technicians, in the sense that it is made by administrators and is also addressed to administrators," but refuses "to let itself be exclusively confined to technical concerns." Geography was not conceived of as a science in and of itself but, unlike history, as a full-fledged discipline that made it possible to set out what was known about physical space and was part of general culture; it was only significant if it was put in the service of Islam, that is to say, of the caliph and those who served him.
In parallel, geography developed into what would become a more specifically descriptive genre used to promote the imperial space. It is during this period that one finds the first appearance of administrative geography, under the title "book of roads and kingdoms" ( _kitab al-masalik wa l-mamalik_ ). Over the following centuries, administrative geography would become established throughout Islam. Initially composed of traditions in which travelers' recollections were recorded in the form of a succession of tales and stories for the pleasure of lettered circles, the inventory of the world became the concern of those in the _diwan_ (government), who transformed these descriptions through a more elaborate, less spontaneous approach in which the same types of stories were now arranged to serve the Abbasid cause. The will to make Islam as it was seen from Baghdad appear as the only universalism in the human space pushed geographers to always speak of the entire universe: the cosmos, the earth, the ecumene.
# THE MEDITERRANEAN IN THE LIGHT OF THE INDIAN OCEAN
The geographers of Baghdad used the Indian Ocean as the reference by which to measure the Mediterranean. Their oldest sources of maritime descriptions were the oldest descriptions of seas available to us today— _The Account of India and China_ (ca. 851); _The Book of Roads and Kingdoms_ by Ibn Khurradadhbih (d. ca. 885), which largely borrows from the _Account_ to describe the ocean; and _The Wonders of India,_ the surviving edition of which dates from the middle of the tenth century. The Baghdad geographer al-Mas'udi used the Indian Ocean as his principal reference to describe the Mediterranean and Caspian Seas. Whatever genre these descriptions combining "wonders" and itineraries fell into, they were addressed to a cultured circle whose principal readers were people of the chancellery like Ibn Khurradadhbih, al-Mas'udi, and al-Muqaddasi. They used the traditions ( _akhbar_ ) drawn from marine and merchant circles to describe the Mediterranean, but, contrary to depictions of the ocean, they presented it as an imperial space dedicated to jihad. For instance, the reference to the Mediterranean and European itinerary followed by Rahdanite Jewish merchants from Iraq in Ibn Khurradadhbih's book of geography does not provide a single example of merchants' maritime activities, though there is some discussion of the traffic in eunuchs between Verdun and Baghdad. Instead, it features the remarkable example of merchant networks that brought to the caliphs' palaces the rarest and most precious "products" from the most distant lands. The subject here is not the merchant but the caliph and his capital, which receives all the products on earth, to be enjoyed by the sovereign and his circle. This was another way of underlining the universality of the caliphate, which could thus claim to control the Sea of the Romans and extend its influence beyond the borders of the Dar al-Islam. For the Mediterranean as seen from Islam to be considered a maritime space for merchants, one has to wait until the eleventh century and the treatise by the merchant al-Dimashqi, which offers the first description of the commercial products circulating on the western sea, and, especially, the letters of the Geniza.
There are two known versions of Ibn Khurradadhbih's book: the first dates from 846, while the second, which is actually the same work with some additional passages, was written before 885, the probable year of its author's death. The book is the work of both a technician and a man of letters, in keeping with the _adab._ Its definitive version is presented as an educational text intended for administrators in the author's circle: it defines what must be known of the empire for which the author is said to have been responsible, outside of al-Sawad, as the vizier of the _barid,_ the imperial postal service. The book's influence was therefore decisive, not only on regional geography but also on that of other areas of Islam: "A picture appears: that of the world inventoried, the world of Islam, seen from the inside, with a few glances thrown to the outside, toward the [Byzantine] neighbor, through a more or less legendary tradition." Ibn Khurradadhbih names all of Islam's parts, relying first on his knowledge and the information gleaned through his work in the heart of the _diwan;_ the Muslim empire is represented as a whole through its cities, its itineraries, and the assessed tax in al-Sawad, all of which were signs of imperial authority. He also reports the existence of regional dynasties unreachable by the caliphs, such as the Idrisids of Fez: "The son [Muhammad al-Muntasir] of Idris [II] b. Idris b. 'Abd Allah b. Hasan b. Hasan b. 'Ali b. Abi Talib—May God have them all in his Mercy—is master of Tlemcen, 25 days by foot from Tiaret on a territory everywhere cultivated; he also possesses Tangier and Fez, his residence 24 days on foot from Tahert.... This prince is not greeted by the title of caliph but only the formula: 'May salvation be upon you, son of Allah's Envoy.' "
He also includes references to the sovereigns and great states outside Islam, such as the Byzantine Empire, and the itineraries of merchants.
## The Traveling Geographers' Marginalized Mediterranean
While the geography of Baghdad benefited the caliphs by legitimizing a single Islamic space, it did so by establishing a hierarchy of space within the Mamlaka (the Islamic empire), highlighting its center and both the land and maritime sections of the East, at the expense of the western margins. Persian-inspired maps more or less reproduced this qualitative division by placing al-Sawad at the center of the world map. It was also a Persian tradition to describe the ecumene as an animal, often a bird: "The appearance of the world here below is divided in five: it is like the head of the bird, the two wings, the chest, the tail. The head of the world is China.... The right wing is India and, beyond India, the sea after which there is no one; the left wing is al-Khazar; the chest of the world is Mecca, Hejaz, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt; the tail reaches from Dhat al-Humam to the Maghreb, and the worst part of the bird is the tail."
In the tenth century, the advent of a geography based on "a study of the land of men" coincided with the rise of a generation of particularly gifted writers. The school of Balkhi (d. 934), a scholar whose work has been lost but who is considered the founder of this geography of humanist travelers, produced geographers like al-Istakhri (d. after 951), who endeavored to describe and draw maps of a world in which man had become the principal subject. These descriptions were also intended to express the brilliance of the civilization of Islam by drawing on the legacy of the geography of the previous generation's Abbasid administrators. Following the example of al-Muqaddasi and, even more so, Ibn Hawqal, who preceded him by a few years, these great travelers proved more sensitive to the evolution of the situation in the regions of Islam than their predecessors.
## The West Marginalized
Al-Muqaddasi's book is organized in a classic fashion, opening with a general presentation of the earth and its parts. The ecumene appears divided into fourteen climates, with the empire therefore separated into two large wholes by an axial line that follows the pilgrimage route to Mecca, from western Iran to Arabia, through Iraqi, Syrian, and Arabian steppes and deserts. In the chapters devoted to each of Islam's land regions, al-Muqaddasi emphasizes the disparity between the West and the Mashriq, though he notes the latter's decline under Buyid rule: "Be aware that Baghdad, formerly magnificent, is now headed for ruin and lives in discord, its splendor buried. I do not appreciate or admire it, and if I praise it, it is to [conform to] the custom."
The chapter on the seas plays an important part in the general presentation of the world, in particular to give the author's opinion on the varying number of liquid bodies reported in the Quran: two, seven, or possibly even eight. (This figure was obviously the subject of intense debate among exegetes.) It was especially important to reconcile Quranic tradition with the tradition inherited from ancient geography. Al-Muqaddasi paid particular attention to the contrast the Arabs perceived between the two seas bordering Islamic soil. The Sea of the Arabs or Sea of Fars (Persian Sea), which was bordered by the coastal regions of the Arabian-Persian Gulf up to the Indus on one side and the Sea of Yemen, then the Red Sea, on the other, was far more familiar than the Mediterranean, which remained the Sea of the Romans. To better mark this difference, al-Muqaddasi repeats the words of a pious man calling on the judgment of God, the implacable arbiter who separated the two bodies of water here personified:
> God, when he created the Sea of Sham, made the following revelation to it: "I created you and am going to leave you to my servants who, wanting some grace from me, will say: Glory to God! or God is holy! or God is great! or there is no other divinity but God! How will you treat them?"—"Well, Lord, answered the sea, I will drown them!"—"Away from me! In truth, I curse you! I will make you less beautiful and less filled with fish!" Then God made the same revelation to the sea of Iraq, which said: "Lord, I will carry them upon my back..."—"Go! I bless you! I will make you more beautiful and more filled with fish!" This proves there are only two seas.
This story invites one to consider the two seas as the symbols of an insurmountable opposition between two civilizations, with the Mediterranean permanently belonging to Christianity. At the same time, al-Muqaddasi provides one of the most complete descriptions of the Mediterranean by an Arab geographer. He displays an excellent knowledge of the Sea of the Romans and its shores as they were in his time, revealing for this sea, on which he had sailed and interviewed sailors, an attraction reminiscent of that felt by al-Mas'udi:
> I have heard many people of the Maghreb say that this sea narrows in the vicinity of Tangier; they were unanimous in saying that, when you pass into Andalus, you can still see this continent as the other one appears before you.... This sea contains three living and populous islands: Sicily, across from the Maghreb, Crete, across from Egypt, and Cyprus, across from Sham [Syria], as well as famous gulfs; on its shores, many countries, prestigious border-cities [ _thughur_ ], _ribat_ of the first order. One of the sides of the sea marks the boundary of the land of the Rum up to the borders of Andalus. Naval supremacy belongs to the Rum, who are greatly feared, and are, along with the Sicilians and the people of Andalus, the most familiar with this sea, its boundaries, and its gulfs, for they roam it to attack those who come within their reach; their routes to Egypt and Sham are across this sea. I sailed long enough with them, asking them constant questions about this sea and everything pertaining to it; I submitted to them everything I had heard about it, and rare were the times when they did not agree.
Al-Muqaddasi insists on the image of a sea dedicated to jihad by recalling that Byzantium competed with two caliphates, the "Sicilian" Fatimids and the Andalusians, for supremacy over the Mediterranean.
# IBN HAWQAL: THE MEDITERRANEAN AT THE HEART OF ISLAM
Ibn Hawqal was the first Eastern geographer of the Abbasid generation to truly free himself from the mental borders that separated the East from the Islamic West: he did not reject the geographic works of the past, but was the only one of the Iraqi authors of the _masalik wa l-mamalik_ to give the Mediterranean zone a central place in the heart of a prosperous and populous Islam.
## A Space No Longer Focused on Baghdad
The geographer traveled a great deal, particularly in the West, claiming he got as far as Sijilmasa, a desert city in the south of present-day Morocco, and reached the European limits of Islam at Santarém, the Gharb al-Andalus's sentry facing the Latins on the Tagus. Ibn Hawqal's account of this part of the Muslim world is his most important contribution to the work of al-Istakhri, his master and model, and contrasts sharply with the way previous Eastern geographers presented the Muslim West. More than anyone, Ibn Hawqal took note of the historical situation of the moment, which was favorable to the Shiite caliphs, whom he, a fellow Shiite, considered the legitimate imams. A native of Nusaybin in Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia), he observed that under Buyid rule the traditional political center of Baghdad and Iraq no longer played the unifying role that had allowed the caliphs' power to extend into the Mediterranean. He made apparent the influence of peripheral areas that had become cradles of Islam's dynamism. The future of Muslims was now decided in these "new" worlds; Iran remained the center of Islam, but Ibn Hawqal already observed or foresaw the role that would be played by the Turkish peoples. As depicted by this traveler, Islam had become a multipolar world.
## Ibn Hawqal's Mediterranean: A Rich but Threatened Area
Ibn Hawqal foresaw that a change in Islam's destiny would be decided in the Mediterranean, first because the Muslim world's major players were now based there, and second because he thought the war between the Greeks, Latin, and Muslims would be decisive:
> I have described this sea, the cities and regions located on its shores, from the region of Tangier to the territory of Egypt, from the end of Syria, that is to say of the Marches, to Aulas, which was once in the hands of the Muslims and belonged to them. I represented all that and added to it the frontiers of the Byzantine empire, the countries located on this side of the canal [the strait of the Bosporus] and on the other side of the Bosporus. I have specified most of the regions that are found beyond the canal, such as the territories of Constantinople, the lands of the Peloponnesian, the gulf of Venice, the lands of Calabria, Lombardy, France, Rome, Galicia, and the neighboring Spanish regions.
Ibn Hawqal was the first to deal with the Mediterranean area, both Muslim and Christian, as a singular and coherent whole. A merchant by trade, he discovered a world that was sufficient unto itself. Exchanges around the basin had led to the area's enrichment, which was also stimulated by a population density greater than that in other regions and particularly in Asia. Ibn Hawqal changed practically nothing in the part of al-Istakhri's work that covered the "old world," for he believed that his master's inventory of the East remained relevant. In fact, it was said that al-Istakhri himself had suggested that Ibn Hawqal visit and discuss the part of Islam that he had been unable to study. While Ibn Hawqal updated passages about a few places he visited in northern Syria, then under the control of the Hamdanids, and Transoxiana, another region he thought was full of promise, the major changes he made were to the image of the Mediterranean. He was the only Eastern author of the _masalik wa l-mamalik_ generation to represent the Muslim West using the same criteria as for the East.
Emulating al-Istakhri by keeping his "roads and kingdoms" structure as the thread of his progress, Ibn Hawqal followed the itineraries, passing through the cities—representatives of authority—to reach the frontier zones. This allowed him to give his often critical opinion on the state of defenses on Islam's boundaries. The geographer drew from the Eastern tradition of maritime itineraries to enumerate ships' ports of call, getting his information from nautical rutters possibly found in the "archives" of the Fatimid or Umayyad admiralties. In this way, he leads the reader along the African coastline, continuing along the Anatolian and European coasts to end up in al-Andalus. His final remarks show that he did not hesitate to combine this data with accounts of the little-known boundaries of the northern Mediterranean, which he found in Baghdad's libraries: "It [the Mediterranean] goes beyond Almería, the districts of Algeciras and Seville, and meets the ocean at Santarém, the outer limit of the territories of Islam near al-Andalus and the frontier of the European domain."
Ibn Hawqal's choice to give a political reading of the boundaries of the Mediterranean, which significantly spilled over into the Atlantic Ocean, led him to follow several of his predecessors in setting the inner sea's limit not at the Strait of Gibraltar but at Islam's maritime frontiers, which extended from Santarém on the Tagus in the north to the territory of Nul Lamta in the south. Similarly, his choice to identify the three port cities as the capitals of the maritime districts was not happenstance, since they were also the three principal Umayyad dockyards: a political vision of the maritime space was more significant in his eyes than one based on physical criteria.
Having had access to information from the archives of the states he visited, Ibn Hawqal uses administrative language, specifically the language of taxes, as was the practice of all geographers when they named localities: the enumeration of cities ( _madina,_ pl. _mudun_ ), fortresses ( _hisn,_ pl. _husun_ ), villages ( _qarya,_ pl. _qura_ ), and other types of secondary habitats, located on roads converging in the state's capital, reproduced a hierarchy found in administrative and fiscal classifications. As applied to the Fatimid and Umayyad caliphates, the hierarchization of the living environment demonstrated the order and power of Muslim states bordering the Mediterranean. Far from merely enumerating tribes and cities, he applies a critical mind to painting an updated picture of each sovereignty ( _mamlaka_ ). His sources enable him to evaluate the power of the two caliphates based on each state's revenue and military organization and their capitals' wealth: "One of the details most likely to give an idea of this enormous opulence [of Caliph 'Abd al-Rahman III in al-Andalus] is the amount of money collected by the tax office, which in dinars and dirhams, reaches 200,000 dinars a year.... Add to that the country's contributions and revenues, property taxes, tithes, leases, tolls, head taxes, customs taxes on the numerous goods that enter and exit aboard ships, and the duties paid for taverns in the urban markets."
His analysis was uncompromising, particularly when he asserted that the prince was poorly managing his principality by choosing non-Muslim viziers: "The productivity [of Egypt] was interrupted with the coming of the Maghrebis, and this must be attributed to the accursed Abu l-Faraj b. Killis, the vizier [of Caliph] al-'Aziz [975–996], for he ruined this industry with harmful measures, with taxation."
## Islamic Forces in a Mediterranean Shared with Byzantium
Another highly original aspect of Ibn Hawqal's work was his ability to grasp the importance for the whole of Islam of the role of the Mediterranean Sea. He views the sea as a homogenous and shared space, despite the recurring confrontation between Christians and Muslims. He reveals the existence of networks connecting the Mediterranean's northern and southern shores and observes the tremendous potential of regions richer and more heavily populated than many Muslim countries of the East: "There is no sea whose shores are as intensely populated as this one: inhabited regions stretch on both sides, uninterrupted, easy to access. The other seas are bordered by uncultivated and desert plains."
Taken as a whole, this information allowed him to evaluate the forces on the field. He piles on the superlatives regarding Córdoba, which he depicts as a model of the sumptuous Arab capital at the outer limit of the West. However, it was Fatimid Egypt that he saw as the embodiment of Muslim supremacy, now located on the shores of the Mediterranean and headed by the Ismaili caliphs. Ibn Hawqal's position, while influenced by his support for the Shiite caliphs, is based on their economic track record, of which he details certain aspects using precise data about the Nile delta, particularly in the area of taxes. His description of the coastal cities is accompanied by a relatively systematic list of sources of revenue from production and trade and in connection with the hinterland: here too, the merchant was highly attentive to the management of potential. Though his analysis was critical, he believed that Muslim power was now equally divided between the West and the East.
He devoted an important passage to the Byzantine administration, citing the account of one of his compatriots who had long been held prisoner in Constantinople. This report on the Greek world, his remarks on Italy, and recollections of his stay in the region of Antioch, where he fought as a volunteer, allowed Ibn Hawqal to assess the situation on the frontiers with his own eyes; he was very critical of the Sicilians facing the Christians and more divided on al-Andalus, which was at the height of its power during his stay under the reign of al-Hakam II (961–976). He insists on the importance of maritime relations, from one anchorage to another and between the major ports; he does not lack for opportunities to mention the commercial networks between north and south, or the many reasons for nonviolent encounters between enemies, for example on the occasion of prisoner exchanges on the coast of northern Syria. However, he recognizes the essential role that the confrontation between Muslims and Christians played in the evolution of relations in the region: he notes that while Byzantium was not as powerful as the Muslims seemed to think, the Macedonian emperors had been able to seize the territories of "Islam[, which is] morally disunited in the state of hearts and minds. Disorder, the frequency of revolts and rebellions, the internecine strife to which Muslims devote their time leave the way open to Byzantium."
#
MUSLIM CENTERS OF THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN
## _Islam without the Abbasids_
ONE OF THE DISTINCTIVE features of al-Bakri's work of universal geography, _The Book of Roads and Kingdoms,_ completed in 1068, is that it was composed without its author leaving his native Andalusia. Aside from what he wrote about al-Andalus, the renowned botanist relied entirely on texts he found during long stays in Córdoba and Almería, taking the opposite approach to his Eastern colleagues who considered it necessary to travel in the regions they wanted to describe before writing about them. His description of the Maghreb, a highlight of his work, provides the first detailed picture of the region in the Middle Ages. Al-Bakri had access to the descriptions of al-Warraq, as well as information provided by Maghrebis, whom he is the only one to cite. His book, the title of which indicates a kinship with Iraqi geography, is one of the most remarkable examples of the cultural change that marked the western Mediterranean to the west of Egypt as of the tenth century. Accompanying a more sweeping movement, the flourishing of an Arabic chronographic literature made this region, once mocked by al-Muqaddasi for its inhabitants' ignorance, one of the most prolific in the field of Arabic literature and science.
# AN ABBASID FRONTIER ON THE SHORES OF IFRIQIYA
Ifriqiya's separation from the Eastern caliphate was brought about by three major events. A reassessment of the status of the Berber regions, which had been integrated into the Islamic space after the Arab conquest, was ordered by Caliph Hisham with the aim of providing Berber women for his palaces and led to an uprising of the tribes beginning in 739. This revolt would reach as far as the Iberian Peninsula. The return to calm, which coincided with the Abbasid "revolution" of 749–750, provoked chronic anger in the _jund_ by preventing soldiers from continuing to reap profits from raids. At the same time, the Khawarij movement of the Sufris and 'Ibadis—an Islamic movement born in the East that rejected the legitimacy of the Sunni and Fatimid caliphates—began to cause problems for the caliphate's governors. Officers close to the caliph were charged with restoring order until Ibrahim b. al-Aghlab (800–812) was appointed by Harun al-Rashid. While the Aghlabids never officially broke with the caliphs, who guaranteed the emirs' legitimacy by sending a diploma of investiture at each enthronement, the Kairouanian dynasty was de facto independent.
Aside from the caliphate's formal recognition of governors, the maintenance of strong ties with Iraq is borne out by the way the Ifriqiyan emirs conceived their military strategy against the Byzantines. In terms of jihad, both al-Ya'qubi's quick but explicit enumeration of coastal defenses at the end of the ninth century and the information found in the Ifriqiyan texts unmistakably confirm that the organization of the armed forces and coastal defenses was heavily inspired by the structure put in place by the caliphs in Syria and the valley of the Nile. The governors sent by the caliphs were all career officers who had served and acquired experience in military command on the frontiers of the Abbasid world in Anatolia. They were therefore in a position to bridge the gap between the region where caliphal jihad had begun and the two frontier provinces, particularly Ifriqiya.
It was in these circumstances that the ribat of Monastir was built in 796, during a period when the coasts were under attack from Byzantine "pirates." Soon backed by the Maliki ulema, the authorities promoted jihad to reinforce the maritime front. However, a tradition dated the foundation of the first fortified edifice in Sousse to the period of Yazid b. Hatim al-Muhallabi's government (772–788), decades before the ribat financed by Ziyadat Allah was built there in 821. Like the volunteers in Syria some time earlier, the Malikis had become increasingly committed to the practice of ribat as of the ninth century and even tried to date the founding of Monastir to the period of the holy caliph 'Umar II.
The prominence of these two ribats underlines the preeminence of jihad in the Ifriqiyan emirate's coastal defense system at the time. These sacred places developed a widespread reputation, drawing a large number of pilgrims every year, to the point that the ulema had to rule on the proper way to receive the visitors.
The diversity of names used for places of ribat and the recent discovery of new sites along the coasts of al-Andalus confirm the varied forms taken by this pious exercise, here and in the East and Ifriqiya. They also reveal the profound influence of the Near Eastern frontier, which was under Abbasid control, on the other Mediterranean fronts. As in Syria, "to make ribat," an expression that recurs frequently in the texts, referred to varied forms of the personal and collective practice of jihad. The only essential aspect was the Muslim believer's position in relation to the marine or land horizon from which the armed infidel could suddenly emerge. The spatial setting referred to by the word "ribat" was clearly defined by the _murabit_ Abu l-Ahwas in his remarks to Emir Ibrahim II (875–902). Abu l-Ahwas believed that a place located in a zone facing the enemy became a ribat if people withdrew there to practice the two forms of jihad: "This country [Ifriqiya] is populated, it is a frontier region and it is the destination of the people of Ifriqiya; it is their place of ribat. The people of Kairouan perform ribat there every Friday; the mosque cannot hold them all, I would like you to make it bigger.... In the city of Sousse at this time [according to al-Maliki], there was nothing blameworthy.... Its inhabitants were busy making war, standing guard for the Muslim men and women, praying at night and fasting during the day." The introduction of the practice of ribat in Ifriqiya, which was contemporary with the erection of the first edifice specifically dedicated to ribat on the caliph's orders in Monastir, closely followed its appearance on the coasts of Abbasid Syria. Sultanate in its essence, the practice of ribat was carried on and developed by the emirs who built the ribat in Sousse some twenty-five years later, as laconically mentioned by al-Ya'qubi: "It takes eight days to walk from Sfax to a locality called Bizerte. At each stopover, there are small forts ( _husun_ ), close together, to which the pious men and _murabitun_ would withdraw." Twenty-five ribats built by the Aghlabids, mainly under the reign of Ahmad (856–863), have been identified along the coast between Sousse and Sfax. Most were forts ( _qusur_ ); the word "ribat" was more specifically applied to the edifices in Monastir and Sousse. However, the practice of ribat was not limited to these edifices: watchtowers ( _maharis_ ) and especially small towns—those of the two ribats, but also Sfax, Gabès, and others, which accommodated many volunteers—were themselves places of ribat. Another area of ribat, the Cap Bon peninsula, which was particularly exposed to Christian attacks launched from Sicily, still bears traces of several defensive structures that served as retreats for the _murabitun_ along the coastline. These sites were fortified thanks to the generosity of the princes but especially of devout individuals who had become wealthy and financed the construction of defenses to accommodate volunteers. However, the authorities remained constantly in control, as seen in these remarks by Qadi al-Qasibi (d. 1012): "The castles ( _husun_ ) cannot be modified according to individual initiatives but one can make changes intended to increase the number of those who retreat there without spending the pious donations ( _habus_ ) gathered for these institutions. Women cannot live in ribats and coastal fortresses, which are to be distinguished from ordinary fortresses [when ribat is performed there]."
According to a fatwa decreed by Sahnun, the wives of those who performed ribat could accompany their husbands, but only in safe and well-populated places such as the cities of Alexandria and Tunis; their presence was not desired in Sfax and Sousse, and there could be no question of them residing in a fort ( _qasr_ ) where volunteers mixed with soldiers of the _jund._ Also in the Aghlabid period, a notable who wanted to demonstrate his piety followed the advice of the chief qadi and paid for the construction of the Qasr ibn al-Ja'd, better known by the later name of Qasr al-Kabir, in the city of Monastir so that the city could welcome more volunteers during the annual gathering ( _mawsim_ ). During busy periods, the city contained a wide variety of places of ribat, including rooms rented to volunteers in private homes. When the city ran out of room for worshipers, the outskirts also became areas of retreat, with tents occasionally serving as places for isolation. Similarly, during busy periods, both the Friday mosque and those in the neighborhoods became places of retreat for the _murabitun._
The practice of ribat evolved throughout the Middle Ages. For instance, Dunas de Guardamar, located on Spain's Levantine coast in an isolated area near the mouth of the Rio Segura, was devoted to ribat from its foundation: the first structure, which has been dated to the end of the ninth century, consists of long cells with a mihrab placed in the middle of the oblong wall, facing Mecca. Neither the site nor the built structure has fortress-like characteristics like those of the two Tunisian edifices. In fact, the places where the people of ribat withdrew could be very different according to their locations, as al-Idrisi confirms in his discussion of a ribat in the eastern part of al-Andalus: "From there (Mojacar) to Rabita, one day. It is neither a village nor a fortified town, but a castle in which the guards are charged with ensuring that the road is safe."
## The Aghlabid Emirs' Jihad, a Continuation of the Abbasid Model
The Aghlabids carried on the military policy of the governors who had preceded them, initially out of necessity. Attacks launched from Byzantine Sicily were probably one reason for the expedition to Mazara in 827, which would mark the beginning of the island's conquest, against a backdrop of political crisis and rivalries between Byzantine leaders, but also of internal problems in Ziyadat Allah's emirate. The installation of coastal defenses and expeditions into Sicilian and Italian territory quickly became useful tools for promoting the emirs' legitimacy. The publicity orchestrated by the emir, particularly regarding his ambitious religious and military architectural program, demonstrated this desire to be seen as following on from the Abbasids in every respect. The emir, occupied with subduing the _jund,_ did not make any secret of the reasons for this display: "I do not have to worry about what I will find on the day of resurrection, for on my sheet of paper four good works will be written: the construction of the great mosque in Kairouan, of the Abu Rabi bridge, of the fort ( _qasr_ ) of the city of Sousse, and my appointment of Ahmad ibn Abu Muhriz as qadi of Ifriqiya."
Aside from courting the _fuqaha'_s support, the achievements with which the emir credited himself in his funeral oration for the qadi made up a program for claiming legitimacy: there were reminders of Abbasid policy in the extension of the sacred mosque of Kairouan; the maintenance of the capital's defenses and improvements to the city itself, as symbolized by the large Aghlabid basins; the construction of fortifications in Sousse overlooking the sea; and the exercise of sovereignty, which gave the emir authority to appoint jurists to rule on the law and even to innovate by appointing a jurist to head the expedition to Mazara. Jihad figured prominently among the emirs' merits; once Palermo was taken in 831, the invasion of Sicily could be seen as a continuation of the glorious period of conquests.
The fortification work on the port during Ziyadat Allah's emirate and especially under Ahmad, if one is to believe the men of letters' praise for his work as a builder, turned the coastal city into the capital's principal military and commercial port. Kairouan now overtook the port founded in 702 in Tunis, where the _jund_ so often clashed with the government that control of the city was uncertain. The construction of the great tower of Khalaf at the corner of the citadel ( _qasaba_ ), which probably took place under Ahmad's reign, reinforced defenses on the seaside. Muhammad I (841–856) built the port's dock, which was protected by a surrounding wall and two towers flanking its entrance. His successor was particularly attentive to reinforcing coastal defenses: "Abu Ibrahim Ahmad [I] built 10,000 forts, in stone and mortar and reinforced with iron doors." This figure indicates the sovereign's commitment to defending the Ifriqiyan Sahel. Ahmad had a reputation as a very pious man and was considered the best of the princes. He was even compared to 'Umar II, and not only for the brevity of their two reigns or because of his reforms. Even Ibrahim II, whose long-serving government weathered profound crises, was credited with great piety, largely for his contribution to jihad and in particular for having reinforced coastal defenses: "He had forts and guard posts built on the maritime coastline, so that it only took one night to get news from Ceuta to Alexandria, by using fires lighted from one place to the next; he surrounded Sousse with walls."
The war waged against the Christians not only remained under the control of the Ifriqiyan authorities but was constantly presented as one of their major actions, under the control of the sultans, throughout the entire Aghlabid period. The sovereigns of the dynasty coordinated the emirate's defense and encouraged naval operations in Southern Italy in order to be recognized as "ghazi emirs." However, the most significant act of jihad was the entire Sicilian conquest, carried out under nine of the dynasty's eleven sovereigns. Among these rulers, the disturbing figure of Ibrahim II, who distinguished himself from his predecessors by personally leading the jihad in Sicily and southern Italy, where he died of disease, produced a historiography composed of two opposing currents. One current, which was primarily spread by the ulema, praised the piety of this sovereign presented as a martyr, while the other, which may have been circulated by the Fatimids' supporters, emphasized the signs of the apparent insanity that marked the end of his reign. It is also conceivable that the periods of his reign led to a synthesis of contradictory traditions.
The fleet was an indispensable instrument of war, if only to defend access to the coastline. The maintenance and construction of ports and dockyards, particularly in Tunis and Sousse and primarily as of 827, supported the conquest until the end of the reign of the Aghlabids. Based in Palermo, the fleet played an essential role as of 831, sending reinforcements or backing the siege of coastal cities such as Syracuse, the Byzantine capital of Sicily, which was impregnable without naval support. While nonquantifiable, the scale of the Aghlabid maritime investment was sufficient to sustain nearly constant offensives on the island and the seasonal launch of razzias on Italian coasts and islands. The Latin sources confirm the scope of the maritime raids regularly launched against the Italian coasts.
Other signs reveal that the Ifriqiyans made a maritime commitment to commerce, which had nothing to do with demonstrating the emir's legitimacy. Trade activity had continued on the sea, particularly during the first two decades of the Aghlabid ninth century, and despite the breaking of the truce with the Byzantines. As of the ninth century, the Ifriqiyan jurists began producing maritime jurisprudence inspired by Byzantine law—the _lex Rhodia_ —and adapted to the Islamic context. Sahnun was the first Maliki jurist to adapt the rules of maritime commerce to Islamic law, taking into account the existence of both piracy and trade with the Christians. He wrote on the subject in his seminal work, the _Mudawwana:_ "As for Christian ships captured at sea, either close to our ports or far off, it is necessary to distinguish two cases: if they are merchant ships which are known to trade with Muslims, it is illicit to capture them, unless it takes place in the [waters] of their own country, as they are traveling to other shores than those of Islam. If they are ships not commonly known to specialize in trade with Muslims, their capture is licit."
The clues left by contemporary geographers such as al-Ya'qubi and Ibn Khurradadhbih and, one century later, Ibn Hawqal and al-Bakri regarding seasonal shipping between Ifriqya and al-Andalus via Ténès confirm that merchant activity survived and developed, specifically on the western coast of the Mediterranean, at a time when the regional governments were able to supervise these exchanges. During the same period, in al-Andalus, 'Abd al-Rahman II (822–852) sent a fleet to bring the Balearic sailors to their senses and stop them from disrupting maritime commerce in the area. However, whether commercial or military, naval activities did not yet warrant being mentioned in the literature dedicated to the emirs' most remarkable deeds: despite the qualities for which he takes credit, Ziyadat Allah mentions neither the sea nor the fleet as a prop or symbol of his sovereignty.
The sovereigns strove to leave a trace of their piety, particularly as emirs of the jihad. Nominally faithful to the Abbasids, they adopted the same modes of representing the war sovereign, the only ones then held to be a source of legitimacy in Islam. The sea occupied an important place here, but it was not yet a setting for the representation of caliphal legitimacy.
## Malikism, Another Zealous Agent of the Spread of Jihad in Ifriqiya
The Fatimids continued the Aghlabids' work by maintaining and building forts to defend the coast. Despite this continuity, the Maliki opposition in the tenth century transformed the practice of ribat into a form of passive resistance to Shiite power, which was spread by al-Maliki and other Ifriqiyan biographers. More broadly, the edifying depiction of venerated figures practicing the two forms of jihad in the context of ribat made it possible to turn one of the symbols of jihad against the infidel Fatimids, who were considered illegitimate sovereigns by the Malikis. The author of the _Garden of Souls_ quotes Jabala b. Hammud al-Sadafi (d. 909), one of the renowned ascetics of the Ifriqiyan Sahel, saying that "we used to be in garrison facing an enemy from whom we were separated by the sea [but] today we have abandoned him to be in garrison facing an enemy now in our midst." Probably the most famous anecdote concerns a highly respected ascetic, Abu Ja'far al-Gammudi, who had retreated with other _murabitun_ to the Qasr Ziyad: "['Ubayd Allah] chased away the _murabitun_ settled there and turned the place into a warehouse for naval equipment. He drove out all those who lived in the fort, with the exception of Abu Ja'far al-Gammudi, whom no one dared to chase away. [Having noticed that the fort was empty], he took his goatskin and a woolskin and went to settle in Qasr al-Tub, near the city of Sousse."
The Shiite imam did the same thing at the ribats in Lemta and Jimma, which he emptied of occupants to resettle them in Mahdia. Ibn Hawqal, a supporter of the Fatimids, gives a similar reason to explain the decline of the institution of ribat in Sicily: "[Those who lived in them] caused uprisings and revolted against those in power."
These accounts attest to a rivalry over collective memory, pitting a tradition that strove to emphasize the role of the Aghlabids and was passed down by Arab historians against the tradition the Malakis spread by recording those deeds of pious men worthy of being immortalized. This production of memory coincided with the period when the Malikis of Kairouan regained their position of power after the departure of the caliphs, taking advantage of the situation to launch a series of proselytizing missions. The most famous of these missions was undertaken by Ibn Yasin at the beginning of the eleventh century and led to the founding of the Almoravid emirate in the Western Sahara.
Additionally, both the formation of small Muslim principalities on the Italian coasts, particularly in Bari and as far as Fraxinetum in Provence, and the conquest of Crete by Andalusian sailors revealed that a spirit of "private" enterprise survived, making the Mediterranean, then poorly defended by the Christians, an environment still conducive to razzias, which could lead to martyrdom and, if fortune smiled, lasting conquest. The ulema therefore saw no discrepancy, let alone conflict, between a tradition of jihad tied to the war of conquest as it had been waged by the first caliphs and a tradition of jihad on the coasts, adapted to the defense of Islam's territory. This now-universal model traveled well, including into the territories that rejected Abbasid legitimacy.
# ABBASID JIHAD IN AL-ANDALUS, THE MARITIME FRONTIER
After defeats in Gaul, at Poitiers in 732 and at the river Berre in 737, followed by the Berber Revolt that erupted in 739, any hope of conquest was eradicated, all the more so given that, until the accession of 'Abd al-Rahman I (756–785), the government of Córdoba was wholly absorbed in the struggles between Arab clans and parties. After the Carolingian offensives and the stabilization of the front against the Asturians, the emirs organized the defense of the frontier march but encountered strong opposition from the military aristocracies, which were emboldened by their relative autonomy and ad hoc alliances with the Latin sovereignties. Despite these difficulties, the front was more or less stable to the south of the Pyrenees until the eleventh century, facing the Asturians—whose kingdom aligned itself with the Visigothic tradition—Navarre, and Catalonia, a march organized by the Carolingians, after the fall of Barcelona in 801.
A long phase of border clashes began in the ninth century, some of which would extend into the maritime realm beginning under the rule of al-Hakam I (796–822). During the same period, the emirs used the principles and terms of the treatises written on the Anatolian frontier to spread propaganda about their commitment in the name of jihad. In the tenth century, these same references were borrowed by Ahmad al-Razi, a self-described faithful disciple of al-Tabari and official chronicler of Caliph 'Abd al-Rahman III (912–961) who imposed the only known version of the history of al-Andalus "dictated by the caliph." In fact, this work of history is only partially known to us, through the version transcribed by the eleventh-century Andalusian scholar Ibn Hayyan, which has itself reached us in an incomplete state. Other "histories" of al-Andalus appear in later chronicles, notably that by Ibn 'Idhari of Marrakesh (d. after 1312), which is the only universal chronicle—covering all the periods of Islam—to have survived in its entirety in the Islamic West, and that by Ibn al-Athir, a historian from Mosul.
The western Mediterranean stood out as a sea on which the Andalusians had no enemies, beginning with the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula and ending with the arrival of the Vikings in 844. Indeed, with a few rare exceptions, the range of the Byzantine fleet, the only enduring Christian naval force until the end of the tenth century, did not reach beyond Sicily, the Ifriqiyan coasts, and Sardinia. Despite a few naval operations backed by Charlemagne and Louis the Pious and carried out in Corsica and Sardinia early in the ninth century to repel Muslim raids, the Latin coasts under the rule of the Carolingian empire were most often left defenseless, prey to the razzias of Islamic sailors as far as Italy. The situation for the Latins only got worse as the Carolingian empire gradually fell apart.
The jihad on the frontier marches was described using terminology similar to that found in the other regions of the Mediterranean frontier, the origins of which extend back to the Syrian march of the Abbasid period. As in the East, the recording of combat practices here had become a specialty of jurists. Their accounts are as economical as those by the Iraqi historians: references to border expeditions are limited to _sayfas_ (summer expeditions) led or directly backed by the emir of Córdoba, to the exclusion of seasonal razzias by frontier soldiers (outside of extraordinary events). In reality, until the reign of al-Hakam I, campaigns were primarily directed against internal dissident movements; most took place in the regions of the marches and were often followed by incursions onto Christian soil. Ultimately, it was the Asturians and Carolingians who succeeded in pushing the border to the Douro in the west and to Barcelona in the east. Once 'Abd al-Rahman II came to power and put an end to the major period of revolts in frontier cities, the image of the ghazi sovereign began to spread, heralding the policy that 'Abd al-Rahman's illustrious homonym would uphold beginning in 912.
During the same period, the Arabic sources never mention naval expeditions carried out by communities of autonomous sailors, which theoretically implies that these sailors enjoyed total autonomy. In short, the situation here is the same as the one described on the land frontiers, in that nongovernmental expeditions are only referred to when Christian victims had cause to report them, in general due to issues of internal policy. Since the Umayyad emirs never set foot on a seagoing ship, only the Latin and Greek sources about the eastern Mediterranean provide any information about naval operations that set off from Andalusian and Maghrebi coastlines: the presentation of the emirs' naval commitment is practically identical to the record left by the Abbasid historians.
As the first Andalusian sovereign to be confronted with an enemy from the sea (the Vikings), 'Abd al-Rahman II decided in 844 to make use of a fleet. Like his ancestors in Syria, he put in place infrastructures necessary to realize this new initiative: after the sack of Seville, he had a dockyard built to cover the Atlantic maritime front, as well as a Friday mosque, an emirate souk ( _qaysariyya_ ), and fortifications to defend the city.
The report by Ibn al-Qutiyya, a tenth-century Andalusian man of letters, on the founding of the Seville dockyard repeats the comments made by al-Bakri, another Andalusian man of letters, in an account of the founding of the Tunis dockyard in 702:
> Then, to guard against all eventualities, 'Abd al-Rahman [II] ordered the construction of a dockyard ( _dar al-sina'a_ ) in Seville and the building of boats. To this end, men of the seas were recruited on the coasts of al-Andalus and were given good salaries, and tools and machines for spitting naphta were obtained. This way, when the Vikings ( _Majus_ ) made their second incursion in the year 858–859, under the reign of Emir Muhammad (852–886), men went out to meet them at the mouth of the river in Seville and drove them away; a few ships were burned and they left.
Defensive measures taken on Andalusian shores were very similar to those on other Muslim coastlines of the Mediterranean, leading in particular to the founding of ribats. The sovereign also took advantage of this structure to attempt to put the Balearics under Umayyad control: "He sent troops charged with fighting them [the Majorcans] to punish them and subdue their pride, since they lacked any respect for the treaties and interfered with the Muslim ships that passed in their vicinity. 300 vessels attacked them and God, heavily favoring our side, gave our troops victory, so that they conquered the greater part of these islands." Simultaneously, Andalusian and probably Maghrebi sailors followed the sovereigns' orders to hammer away at the coasts of Provence, a campaign that peaked with the sack of the Saint-Césaire monastery in 850. However, neither these campaigns nor any of the razzias against Christian coasts were mentioned in the Arabic sources, while the scope of the attacks coordinated by the Muslim sovereigns suggests that the same crews participated in the razzias on Provence and in subduing the archipelago, and that their moorings were in ports on the eastern rim. The chronicles also credit 'Abd al-Rahman II with spreading the institution of ribat on the Iberian Peninsula. One states, "Once the Normans had advanced all the way to Almería and had gone around the coasts of al-Andalus, the Arabs used Almería as an observation point and built watchtowers there. The Muslims performed ribat there."
To be legitimate, the description of the coastal defenses had to connect these measures with the principles on jihad stated by the caliphs of Baghdad. However, the implementation of defensive measures also allowed the dissident prince to assert his autonomy by taking responsibility for defending the territory he controlled.
# THE SILENCES OF THE COASTAL MAGHREB
Due to the absence of emirate chronicles, we do not have enough information about the area west of Ifiriqya to complete the already tenuous picture of Islam's Mediterranean policies in the ninth century. However, thanks to al-Bakri, we know that the appearance of ribats along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of western Africa was a consequence of the first two Viking invasions, in 844 and at the end of the following decade. The ribats to the south of Tangier in Asilah and on the coast of the Rif in Nekor, the capital of the Salihid emirate, were founded after the Norsemen's attack in 844, which was the first assault on this region beyond the reach of Byzantine ships since the Arab conquest. However, al-Bakri's slightly more detailed account of the development of the ribat of Asilah suggests that the appropriation of the port, which had been abandoned since or perhaps even before the Arab conquest, was not undertaken by the Idrisid emirs but rather by the Lawata tribe. One of the emirs, then in control of the area of the strait, seized the ribat long after these events. This type of operation was frequent throughout the Muslim regions of the western Mediterranean and indicates the limits of the sovereigns' actual power.
#
THE MEDITERRANEAN OF THE WESTERN CALIPHS
"IN THE TIME of the Islamic Empire, the Muslims controlled the borderlands of the entire Byzantine sea.... But later, when the 'Ubaydi [Fatimid] and Umayyad states were overcome by apathy and impotence and entered into a phase of decline, the Christians set out to conquer the islands." This assessment from the introduction (al-Muqaddima) to Ibn Khaldun's masterwork _The Book of Examples_ establishes Muslim naval supremacy in the Mediterranean in the tenth century. Contemporary historians frequently quote Ibn Khaldun's words, for the tenth century is often presented as the only period during which the Muslim states gained the upper hand at sea, at the expense of the Christians. The tenth century is also considered the period when the Islamic Mediterranean was at its most prosperous. The historian associated Muslim superiority with the advent in the region of caliphates far more powerful than the emirates they replaced. Owing to their greater wealth, the caliphs were able to conduct a naval policy that gave them the means to control the maritime space for which they competed with the Latins and the Greeks. This shows the extent to which the fourteenth-century Arab scholar believed that control of the Mediterranean was a crucial issue in the clash between Islamic and Christian countries, at a time when the sea had practically fallen under the exclusive control of the Latins. Ibn Khaldun attributed Arab decline to the sovereigns, rather than to the communities of sailors that populated the shores under Muslim domination.
The contrast between the century of the Mediterranean caliphates and earlier periods seems all the more pronounced given that the advent of the two sovereignties marked a historiographic leap that shifted the Mediterranean out of a long period of silence into a production that would constantly increase from that point: as of the tenth century, chronicles, works of geography, legal texts, and also documents from commercial activity—in particular the letters of the Cairo Geniza—provided a far more imposing body of data on naval activities. Amid the general development of seafaring and trade, this production fed on the rivalry between the two caliphates and their ambitions on the scale of the Mediterranean and Islam as a whole. This media war broke the silence of the Muslim regions' maritime world. Now competing with Latin and Greek versions, Arab texts revealed the relationship between the Muslim sovereigns and the sea in a new light.
# THE AGE OF THE UMAYYAD CALIPHS
The advent of the Umayyad caliphate in 929 also marked the advent of geography in al-Andalus, a geography "[imitative] of, certainly, but not a slave to the Iraqi tradition." This geography would reach its peak with _The Book of Roger,_ written by al-Idrisi toward the middle of the twelfth century. The Umayyad caliphate generated the production of a geography alternative to Eastern geography, dedicated to the Umayyads' domain and neighboring regions, in particular the Maghreb, the major objective of caliphal expansionism. Having spent most of his time in the region, al-Warraq wrote a _Book of Roads and Kingdoms_ in which he clearly affirmed his attachment to the Baghdad tradition but devoted himself to the description of western North Africa; his analysis of the region was reportedly completed by several "reports" sent to Córdoba. While his entire body of work has been lost, a significant part of it was reproduced by the Andalusian geographer al-Bakri.
Ahmad al-Razi and 'Isa al-Razi wrote the official chronicle of the reign of the Umayyad caliphs 'Abd al-Rahman III and his son al-Hakam II. These dynastic annals were preceded by a general presentation of the Muslim Iberian space, which despite its brevity became a reference for the geographers of the peninsula. In the following periods, the Andalusians' descriptive literature remained faithful to a "provincial geography," thus creating a new center of the Islamic space, in competition with Baghdad and Kairouan and later Cairo. As we have seen, a reevaluation of the spatial balances of Islam in favor of the Mediterranean was under way during the same period in Eastern scholarly circles, particularly in the hands of Ibn Hawqal, a contemporary of al-Warraq. Chronographic literature produced under the Umayyad and Fatimid caliphates considerably increased the amount of Mediterranean production.
By devoting some fifty pages to a description of the regions under Umayyad control, Ahmad al-Razi isolated the caliphal space from the rest of the Dar al-Islam. His geographic study served as a preamble to the chronicle, which was itself devoted to the history of the space governed from Córdoba, from the Arab conquest to the caliphate: "The love of history and historical investigation prevailed in his case: it was not then a discipline to which Andalusians devoted themselves.... He was therefore the first to codify the rules of historical composition in al-Andalus.... Between the two of them [the father and the son], they provided the Andalusians with a science not previously successfully practiced by that people."
In this tribute to the father by his son, the work's innovative character does not exclude the major influence of Baghdad: Ahmad, who died in 959, wrote his chronicle a generation after al-Tabari, whom he considered his master, wrote his. He too drew on the _akhbar,_ the traditions he quotes to cover the history of the period before the reign of the Andalusian caliphate. This version of history adapted to the caliphal era led to the disappearance of earlier, now obsolete traditions. However, unlike his model's universal chronicle, Ahmad's history was limited to his masters' territory. In this way, Ahmad al-Razi, known as al-Ta'rikhi, "the Chronicler," imposed the annalistic genre in his homeland, adding a personal touch adapted to his sovereign's wishes.
By beginning with the Peninsula's geography, Ahmad could first present the state of the territory reigned over by the caliph, succinctly enumerating the Andalusian realm's riches, cities, and administrative framework. Nonetheless, the few lines devoted to each district are sufficient to appreciate the order and wealth that reigned under the caliphs' iron rule, and they set up the short geographic introduction as a preamble to the chronicle of the reign of the two caliphs. The chronicle first describes the age of the emirs (756–912), following the conquest—the description of which has been lost—and until the accession of 'Abd al-Rahman III, whose reign opens the second part (912–976), devoted to the reign of the two caliphs and written in a style very different from that used to recount the earlier period of the emirate. The history of the reign of al-Hakam III, written by Ahmad's son 'Isa, is presented as the continuation of the father's work. Here, al-Andalus is shown as the perfect model of caliphal government, to be reproduced throughout the Dar al-Islam. Consequently, it appears as the center of the world, sufficient unto itself. This picture, presented in the form of a final assessment, was completed by a history of Córdoba, also written by the younger al-Razi and now lost. Though there is a significant imbalance between geography and history here, these two parts should be seen as a single whole.
## The Assertion of Umayyad Sovereignty on the Mediterranean
This objective is clearly expressed in the chronicle through the reproduction of letters and panegyrics addressed to the sovereign, particularly those by the representatives of the communities of the Maghreb al-Aqsa (Morocco), who rushed to Medina Azahara to make official their peoples' support for the Umayyad cause. Among them was Muhammad al-Jazar, "the emir of the Zanatas," whose tribute to the caliph was read before the sovereign: "Obedience [due to the caliph] against disobedience, until God has opened to the caliph the east of the earth and its western part, its plains, its steep regions, its deserts and its seas, by our favor and our hand, and extended his power, if God wills it, to the end of Iraq, thus reclaiming the legacy of the caliphate [of his ancestors], pious and noble fathers."
Vital control of the maritime space became one of the major means of demonstrating the universality of the Umayyad sovereignty. The struggle with the Umayyads' Fatimid rivals for control of the maritime territory and especially the Maghreb considerably enhanced the strategic importance of the Mediterranean. The Strait of Gibraltar was the first objective on an itinerary that was set to end in Baghdad and that the caliph's ancestor 'Abd al-Rahman I had followed in the other direction to Córdoba after the fall of the eastern Umayyads. The Muslim West thus became the principal battlefield of two rival caliphates. And now that the Mediterranean had the potential to become the fastest route to the East, naval supremacy was decided in the western basin.
Direct maritime clashes were rare, though the sack of Almería in 954 illustrates how violent the struggle could be. Consequently, the Latin coasts were what was crucially at stake for the two naval powers of Islam as long as the Shiite sovereigns remained in Ifriqiya. In the zone running along the Peninsula's land border, the sea was the principal theater of operations for the razzias launched by the Umayyads in the name of jihad, to the point that the commander of the fleet was considered equal to the commander of the caliph's armies on the land frontier. Muhammad b. al-Rumahis, then 'Abd al-Rahman b. al-Rumahis, both admirals of the caliphate, acquired a position and a level of prestige that put them on equal footing with Ghalib, the caliph's general-in-chief:
> The most important business that the Umayyad caliphs had to deal with was only settled after they consulted three people: the general of the army of Saragossa, administrative center of the Upper March..., the qadi of Córdoba, capital of the caliphate and gathering place for scholars..., finally the head of the fleet at Almería, because that city contained the naval shipyard for al-Andalus and because it was in the central part of the empire; to a certain extent, under the Umayyads the command of the fleet shared sultanate power with the caliph: one commanded on land, the other [in the name of the caliph] on sea.
Defending the coasts remained another major obligation. This required the maintenance of a fleet, particularly to face the Vikings, who were a threat until 975. Naval operations against Christians or Norsemen were now exclusively decided on by the caliphate, while such enterprises on the part of the emirs in the ninth century were obscured. Only their engagement against the Norsemen, who had attacked the coasts of Islam, was not to sink into oblivion. In the context of a media competition with the Fatimids, several formats praising the Umayyads' naval mastery were mobilized to present the fleet and the sovereignty of the seas as prestigious emblems of the caliphate's universality.
'Abd al-Rahman III could also rely on a long-standing and effective naval infrastructure, thanks to the extensive experience of the many sailors' establishments dotting the coasts of the western Mediterranean that had rallied behind Córdoba. Formed in the second half of the ninth century on the site of the future caliphal city, the community of Pechina had prospered beginning in the 880s, during the unrest of the late ninth century. This city of sailors grew wealthy thanks to the sea, both through acts of piracy carried out on Christian coastlines and through commerce—particularly the slave trade—which had lucrative outlets, notably on the capital's markets. According to the opinion expressed in the caliphal sources and largely taken up by modern historiography, these Andalusian sailors occasionally worked on behalf of the emirs: in 902, 'Abd Allah (888–912) succeeded in getting their help to subdue the Balearic Islands, which had previously escaped Umayyad authority. Nonetheless, this venture, which mobilized no fewer than three hundred ships—a large number, according to the standards of the Arabic chronicles—is presented as a "private" venture.
As soon as he reestablished the sultanate's authority over Seville and the zone of the strait in 914, the caliph took control of al-Andalus's rich naval potential. The first opportunity to express his authority arose through the fight against the Umayyads' worst enemy, the rebel Ibn Hafsun (d. 917), who was then solidly established in his capital of Barbastro in the south of the Peninsula. According to one chronicle, "Al-Nasir entered Algeciras on June 1, 914.... During his stay in Algeciras, he made arrangements to establish his authority over the sea and protect access to it for the people of both shores. He ordered that all the seafaring vessels based in Malaga, Seville, and the other centers in his power bring their equipment along with their reliable crews... and go to the entrance of Algeciras.... Since that time, he governed the sea."
The revelation that the caliphs had regained control over the Peninsula from the very beginning of their reign through reorganization of the fleet and assertion of their claim to govern territorial waters was not happenstance. The primary objective here was to quash the power of the rebel solidly established in the south of the Peninsula. Ibn Hafsun had created ties with the Idrisid Maghreb, which provided him with supplies. Aside from serving to cut off his supplies, the control of both shores through naval policy is presented as the first maritime investment in Umayyad history. However, 'Abd al-Rahman II had earlier taken similar measures, aimed at controlling maritime circulation when traffic was growing on the Alboran Sea.
## The Caliphal Rupture, a Writers' Invention
Among the many mediums that helped to demonstrate the dawn of a new era—for want of a new strategy—the monumental and administrative program for coastal cities and fortifications is evidence of the process by which the caliph appropriated the coasts. His forbears, at least as of the reign of 'Abd al-Rahman II, had already sponsored an ambitious program to protect the coastlines by fortifying coastal cities; erecting fortifications and, in particular, ribats; and stationing fleets in Seville and Tortosa, both cities with shipyards. However, the caliph now choreographed several spectacular projects, while the scribes remained very quiet about earlier undertakings.
The practice of ribat in al-Andalus, which dated back to the emirate of 'Abd al-Rahman II, became the exclusive domain of the caliphate. Dunas de Guardamar, which was founded by volunteers to perform ribat toward the end of the ninth century, was appropriated on behalf of the caliph, as indicated by the inscription on the foundations of the ribat's mosque, built between 933 and 941. The redevelopment of the ribat, which primarily consisted of the construction of a "great" mosque, allowed it to be presented as an Umayyad edifice, despite the fact that it had been founded by volunteers for jihad, without any known participation on the sovereign's part. Other places of ribat, such as the Setúbal Peninsula to the south of the Portuguese capital, were also claimed by the caliphs, in this case within the framework of the administrative reorganization of the coastline at the beginning of 'Abd al-Rahman III's reign. The populating of the area's mountainous southern part, known to this day as Arrábida (al-Rabita), was described by Ahmad al-Razi in a Castilian version: "At the edge of the regions of Beja and Lisbon are mountains which we call the Benamocer [Banu Matar] mountains and which the inhabitants call Arrabida [al-Rabita]." Located between the mouths of the Tagus and Sado Rivers, the peninsula occupies a major strategic position from which one can monitor land and especially maritime routes. The Banu Matar Berbers justified this appropriation of the area by performing ribat, including surveillance and military protection, but now did so in the name of the caliph. Other Berbers, the Banu Danis, settled a little farther south, on the river Sado, close to the coast, by "founding" what would become the city of Qasr Abu Danis (present-day Alcácer do Sal) on a site already inhabited. The caliphate chose this city to be the capital of the region ( _kura_ of al-Qasr). When the caliph personally took the reins in the Gharb al-Andalus toward the end of the 920s, the region was reorganized and given new administrative boundaries, as in other areas of the Peninsula: "[In 344 / 945] vizier Isa b. Futays [was charged with] monitoring the letters [sent by] the inhabitants of the marches ( _thughur_ ), the seaboards ( _sawahil_ ), the capes ( _atraf)_ , and other places of that kind."
Presented as a complete overhaul of the administration attested to by lists of gubernatorial appointments (governors were regularly replaced), the organization of coastal defenses as an extension of the land marches created the impression that for the first time the coast was defended from one end of the territory to the other—despite the fact that 'Abd al-Rahman II and Muhammad (852–886) had both taken similar measures. Likewise, it was no longer possible for communities of sailors to be autonomous, now that any naval operation had to be decided on by the caliph and passed down by the admiralty.
The status of the Tortosa fortress located on the left bank of the Ebro, just upriver from its mouth, initially changed under the reign of al-Hakam I, when it was made the regional capital and a military and naval base. It was from here that the general ( _qaid_ ) appointed by the emir organized razzias on Catalan territory. It was also here that the "pirates" described in the Latin sources embarked in the service of Córdoba, leaving to pillage monasteries and islands or, in 830, to lend their support to the Ifriqiyan Muslims in Sicily in the name of emirate jihad. Tortosa had been a leading military and naval base since the ninth century, yet it was a program of major building works, including the construction of a dockyard, that allegedly turned it into a true military capital under the Umayyad caliphate.
The city's growth in the tenth and eleventh centuries is indisputable and can notably be measured by the number of scholars who were born or lived there and whose memory has been preserved by the authors of Andalusian biographies. Al-Turtushi (d. 1126) stands out among these local scholars. While naval activity had been intense during the emirate period, it seems to have faded in the face of the large-scale urban planning projects launched by the caliph himself after he visited Tortosa in 924, as well as the city's rapid expansion in every field. An inscription on the dockyard's foundations is a fine epigraphic record of the sovereign's urban policy, though sadly it is all that remains: "Ordered the creation of this building, to be used as a yard for maritime equipment and ships, Allah's servant 'Abd al-Rahman, emir of the believers, may Allah assist him!"
The city's ramparts, made of cut stone and including four gates, were erected under the direction of the governor who had coordinated work on the dockyard. The Friday mosque was built in 955–956, with five naves, four baths, and a market. The enumeration closes with a reference to the frenzy of commercial and military activity in the port. Thus it is made to appear that the city's principal structures and axes were exclusively built during the caliphal period, to replace what the texts present as a mere citadel built to face the infidel and provide an anchorage.
Though the Andalusian authors all agree that Almería was founded in 954–955, the date of the creation of the city is problematic in that this site was already the location of the dockyard for the caliphate's fleet, which had been redeveloped in 931, more than twenty years before the new city was built, on the port installations of the city of Pechina twelve kilometers (7.5 miles) upriver. In fact, the new city was located on the site of two earlier establishments: Pechina's harbor area and a ribat consisting of towers ( _mariyya_ ) built and occupied by a group of Yemenites at the request of 'Abd al-Rahman II after the Viking attack of 844. The sovereign had already asserted his hold over this city of sailors and its naval establishments before the founding of the caliphal port. In 933, he dispatched a new governor to officially take possession of the naval installations in his name and turn them into the seat of the admiralty of the caliphate of Córdoba. After being pillaged and destroyed by the Fatimid squadron, these installations were replaced by a fortified city containing new naval installations in 954 or 955. The Andalusian geographer Abu l-'Abbas al-'Udhri (d. 1085), an inhabitant of the city, summed up the magnitude of the construction project as follows: "Description of the city: Almería is not a city of old structures, with the exception that the Arabs used it as a ribat after erecting defenses to that effect. The people found shelter and practiced the life of ribat there, though there were no buildings and no homes. It was surrounded by an unassailable rampart, which was built on the order of al-Nasir, emir of the believers, 'Abd al-Rahman III, in the year 343 / 954–955."
Some writers, like al-Rushati, a native of the area, focused on the local founding of Pechina, which prospered as of the 880s, during the period of unrest that weakened the Umayyad dynasty (875–912). It was located upriver from the Andarax valley in a good agricultural zone but derived most of its wealth from the sea. The settlement of Almería in 1011 or 1012, the year al-Rushati chose as the date for the birth of the new regional capital, coincided with the period when the inhabitants of Pechina left their town to move to the new city, which diminishes the caliph's achievement.
However, it was the caliphal appropriation of the dockyard that was to be remembered as the event that turned the city into the caliphate's port, before the attack of the Mahdi's fleet and the building of the new city:
> At the beginning of _muharram_ 322 [January 933] of this year, al-Nasir dismissed Abd al-Malik b. Sa'id, known as Ibn Abi Hamama of Pechina, and chose Ahmad b. 'Isa b. Ahmad b. Abi 'Adba, governor of the _kura_ of Elvira, to manage it [the fleet and the dockyard]; he entrusted him with repairing the fleet that was established in the Almería dockyard; he repaired, enlarged, and fitted it out with all that was necessary, all things he promptly took care of in Almería, to perfection. When this was done, al-Nasir sent him mercenaries from Córdoba, [under the command of] the generals Sa'id b. Yunus and 'Amr b. Maslama al-Baji, so they would lead the expedition he had ordered. Ibn Yunus... headed for the Frankish country.... To his general Sa'id b. Yunus he gave the order to reinforce [the defenses] in Ceuta.
This choice was justified by the fact that the port had become the most active one on the Peninsula. The presence of a ribat had also given it a certain symbolic power, as indicated by the name chosen for the new city: al-Mariyya, which refers to the towers that had been erected to house the _murabitun_ and established the city as a direct rival of Mahdiyya. In a second phase, the city founded on the site of the former town's shipyards was given every consideration owed to caliphal establishments: the most notable structures of the major construction project were the _madina_ 's formidable rampart, which protected the shore and anchorage (defenseless at the time of the Fatimid attack in 954); the dockyard, which was fortified and protected by a tower that would house a garrison in the next century; structures for commerce and skilled trade, including two _qaysariyya,_ closed markets dependent on the power of the sultan, one of which was inside the dockyard and the other adjoining the Friday mosque; the baths; and the citadel, which was then only a shelter, without a princely edifice. These served as reminders of the invisible presence of a caliph who never once visited the city, while the squadron embodied caliphal sovereignty.
Whether in Almería, Tortosa, Seville, Algeciras, or Ceuta, the caliphate's ports were designed to offer astounded visitors the sight of the power of al-Andalus and its fleet, built in the caliphate's dockyards.
## The Dar al-Sina'a and the Fleet, Symbols of the Umayyad Caliphate's Universal Ambitions
Pechina became the seat of the admiralty, a choice al-'Udhri justified by stating that "the city contained the naval shipyards because it was in the central part of the empire," the place from which the caliph had decided to launch ships to conquer the Mediterranean. Due to the men of letters' limited interest in technical details, the descriptions of the dockyard's functions are perfunctory: "Its dockyard is the oldest [of this type] known and was divided in two parts. In the first were the warships with the equipment; in the second part [was] the _qaysariyya._ Everything to do with the dockyard is organized in such a manner to avoid any problem and the merchants store their goods there in safety and people come there from all over."
Other Andalusian authors made a connection between earlier establishments founded by the emirate and those built by the Umayyad caliph. Indeed, a few brief references, all in Andalusian texts, describe the foundation of dockyards before the advent of the caliphate. The first reference is by al-Bakri and deals with the dockyard in Tunis, built on Caliph 'Abd al-Malik's order in 698. Since the new Ifriqiyan dockyard was built by Coptic workmen from Egypt, a filiation is established with the dockyard of Alexandria "founded" on Caliph 'Umar's order. The second reference is by Ibn al-Qutiyya, who inspired or wrote a tenth-century Andalusian chronicle that reports 'Abd al-Rahman II's decision in 844 to fit out the Seville dockyard to prevent further Viking attacks. This information is also found in Ibn Hayyan's chronicle. The organization described is the same and includes the hiring of skilled laborers, soldiers, and sailors considered the best in their areas of expertise and paid a fortune for their labor: Egyptians in Acre, then Tunis; Persians in Syria; Berbers at the mouth of the Ebro; sailors from the east coast of al-Andalus; and Greek fire launchers sent to the admiral port from Córdoba for each new expedition. This practice was reminiscent of an old royal custom, whose origin dates back at least to Achaemenid Persia, on which the caliphs heavily relied from the beginning of the conquests. However, it was not considered useful to describe the operation of these shipyards, which bustled with laborers and sailors poorly regarded by those in power, where all these trades considered at the very least worthless, if not vile, were mobilized to build and maintain ships.
The Andalusian authors did focus their attention on the dockyards' architecture, but only for its defensive aspects, which had nothing to do with the operation of a shipyard. They were particularly interested when the edifice was also used as a barracks or selected to be the site of a palace, as seen in this description of the building of the Algeciras dockyard, also erected during the caliphal period and later used as a palace for the Hammudids (1035–1059): "There was a dockyard ( _dar al-sina'a_ ) in Algeciras that the emir of the believers 'Abd Al-Rahman III b. Muhammad built for his fleets; he had it built solidly and surrounded it by tall walls; later, during the period of the _fitna_ [early eleventh century], the independent princes of Algeciras turned this dockyard into a palace."
However imprecise, these few references to the architecture of dockyards built on the caliph's orders from Tortosa to the capital of Andalusia and the African coast only interested the Arab authors because of the architecture's sultanate character, as was the case with the _qaysariyya,_ or sultanate markets. In this way, the Umayyad dockyard perpetuated the caliphate's universal authority in the port cities and, by extension, on the sea, and had done so since the time of Mu'awiya.
While the association between the dockyard and the fleet is inherent, the sovereigns were proudest of the fleet. Once he was made caliph, 'Abd al-Rahman never saw his beloved ships again, but poets' verses kept alive the memory of the siege of Seville and the measures he had taken in Algeciras to create his own naval force. Similarly, al-Hakam II never visited the coasts after he had become the caliph, yet this did not stop him from following in his father's footsteps, without ever leaving his palace. As for Ibn Abi 'Amir al-Mansur (978–1002), officially a servant of the caliph, he employed the fleet as backup for campaigns against areas close to the sea, but it was no longer used to support his legitimacy.
To launch his campaigns in the Maghreb, the _hajib,_ as the Andalusian sovereign was officially referred to, had to look after his squadrons: already under the Umayyads and even more so during the African expeditions, the military leader had supervised the extensive fortification work on Ceuta, the Andalusians' African bridgehead. Al-Andalus's two seaboards were also restructured on the occasion of two of the reign's most prestigious naval expeditions ( _sayfa_ ). Restructuring of the ports and fleets on the Andalusian territory's eastern rim may have motivated Ibn Abi 'Amir al-Mansur's decision to have his army take a detour through the area of Murcia—an unusual choice for a campaign headed for Catalonia—before following the coast and laying siege to Barcelona in 985. The expedition targeting Santiago de Compostela in 997 required the assistance of the fleet for logistical reasons and led the _hajib_ to build naval infrastructures, notably a dockyard in the harbor of the estuary of the Sado River, at the foot of Alcácer do Sal.
## The Caliph's Fleet, Emblem of the Universal Investment of the Umayyad Caliphs of Córdoba
Never present on the battlefield, whether on land (as of 939) or at sea, the caliph of Medina Azahara remained "immobile" in his palace but was at the center of an extraordinary choreography of departures of land and sea expeditions. Those that took place from 912 to 942 and 971 to 975 were described by Ahmad and 'Isa al-Razi (and copied by Ibn Hayyan). The importance ascribed to maritime affairs here is exceptional in the Arabic historiographic landscape of the Middle Ages. The first novelty, compared to the emirate period, is in the appearance of paragraphs specifically devoted to the fleet's movements year by year, presented under the title _khabar al-ustul_ (report on the fleet) or simply _al-ustut_ (the squadron); when war operations in the Maghreb were discussed, the account of naval operations on the African coast was sometimes preceded by the title _al-'idwa_ (the shore). It can reasonably be assumed that Ahmad al-Razi had had access to "archives" of the caliphal administration, perhaps even of the admiralty and African affairs. The _Muqtabis_ features more than twenty references to the fleet's movements between 912 and 941. The new maritime district of the Strait of Gibraltar, which was named the region of the "two shores" ( _'idwatayn_ ), was placed under the authority of the Almería admiralty. Under the reign of al-Hakam II, nine fleet movements were reported from 970 to 974, most notably those in response to the Viking incursions of 966 and 972:
> On Saturday 21 of Ramadan of that year [July 6, 972], Caliph al-Mustansir bi-llah received Qaysar, Sa'd al-Jadari and Rashiq (his father al-Nasir li-Din Allah's principal _mawlas_ ), as well as Isma'il b. al-Shaykh, 'Abd al-Rahman b. Yusuf b. Armatil, and 'Abd al-Rahman b. Abi Yawshan [among the principal high-born / free men] and ordered them to prepare to launch a campaign with the squadrons at their disposal: those of Seville and Almería. All were given ceremonial garb; they went away with decorated swords and received many gifts. They left for their destination from Medina Azahara, on the way to Seville, preceded by expeditions of supplies, on the 23rd of the month of Ramadan.
These accounts are structured to systematically emphasize the essential role played by the caliph through descriptions of the formalities that accompanied mobilization, as was also the case with land expeditions. The scene always takes place in the reception room of the caliph's palace. Though sitting still on his divan, the sovereign is the focus of attention: through his silent presence, he controlled every stage of the ceremony, from the presentation of the staff of authority to the reading of the bulletins announcing that the mission was accomplished. As of 933, the descriptions of the fleet's sorties were entirely kept to the throne room, which constantly remained at the heart of the account, rather than the sea or the squadron's anchorage. While the fleet was prepared in the Andalusian dockyards, then gathered in Ceuta, it could not raise anchor until the arrival of the admiral ( _qaid al-bahr_ ) who had traveled to the caliph's residence to receive the command insignia and gifts. Similarly, supplies and special armament such as Greek fire were stored in Córdoba, which was also home to the elite troops, until the departure of the procession that paraded to the fleet's anchorages in Seville for operations on the Atlantic and in Almería for operations on the Mediterranean.
Once the caliphate imposed its direct authority over all the ports and their fleets, every naval operation had to be included in the annals, for it participated in demonstrating Umayyad sovereignty in the context of the jihad orchestrated by the caliph. The sailing of the squadron was an opportunity to praise the qualities of the proud armada: "That year [931], al-Nasir sent the entire squadron, perfectly equipped, toward the African coast, the biggest [fleet] that any sovereign ever fitted out... by the number of its very well-equipped units and its many crews, of which the people of the coast widely spread news, though they also feared it.... 'Ubayd Allah b. Yahya b. Idris mentioned this famous squadron in excellent verses, in a panegyric in honor of al-Nasir, describing its composition for the year's land and sea campaigns."
The extension of the territory of war to the sea made it possible to significantly expand the imperial space as far as Sicily—where Umayyad vessels attacked a ship belonging to the Ismaili caliph, provoking a violent reaction that led to the sack of Almería—and the Christian coastline, which had apparently previously been left to private enterprises. Though al-Istakhri never left the Muslim East, he was the first Arabic author to mention the existence of Jabal Qilal, also known as the Fraxinetum of Moors, located near Saint-Tropez and shown on the map as an island between the "Island of Slavs" (Sicily) and the coast of Rum. His disciple Ibn Hawqal gave a slightly more detailed account of this Muslim enclave in the South of France:
> [Jalal Qilal is] located in the region of the Franks, in the hands of the fighters for faith.... It was Muslims who made this place livable as soon as they settled there. They became a threat to the Franks, but it was impossible to reach them because they were posted on the slope of a mountain, in a den accessible from a single side, by a single road where their precautions were effective.... Mallorca is an important island governed by [the caliph] of al-Andalus. Jabal al-Qibal also belongs to that State.
According to Ibn Hawqal, who was faithful to Ahmad al-Razi, Hugh of Arles, Count of Provence (d. 947), sent a delegation to Córdoba in 941, led by a representative of Sunyer, Count of Barcelona, to ask the caliph to put an end to Muslim attacks. The sovereign's favorable response to this request includes the name of the stronghold's "military governor" ( _qai'd_ ), Nasr b. Ahmad, to whom he sent orders to decree a ceasefire, as he did to his representative in the Balearics. The fact that the caliph was willing to negotiate with the Catalonian count and Hugh of Arles reveals that he considered them clients. This theoretical reconfiguration of the political map of the western Mediterranean under the control of the caliph included all the Latin states of the Peninsula, the islands, and Fraxinetum. Four references to maritime attacks against Christian coasts between 933 and 942, as well as the political map of the Umayyad caliph's direct and indirect possessions drawn by Eastern geographers, gave the impression of a considerable expansion of imperial "territory." The Latin coasts were now accessible at all times and the entire Tyrrhenian Sea was considered a full-fledged space of sovereignty, extending the territory of Andalusia and the western Maghreb, since it was controlled by the Umayyad sovereign. The Umayyad squadron served as the link between all these parts of the caliphal domain, making it possible to consider expanding this maritime territory to the coasts of Syria. It was now feasible for the Umayyad sovereign to once again plant the white flag of the descendants of Quraysh in Syria, by taking the opposite path to the one the "exile" 'Abd al-Rahman al-Dakhil had had to follow from 750 to 756.
# THE FATIMID CALIPHATE, A POWER FOCUSED ON THE SEA
After the army had eliminated the last Aghlabid emir, 'Ubayd Allah al-Mahdi (909–934) inherited the significant maritime force left by his predecessors: port infrastructures, fleets, and seasoned crews. With his power now bolstered, the caliph hastened to claim the impressive remains of this structure, benefiting from naval activity tied to the ports and dockyards of Sousse, Tunis, Tripoli, and Palermo. Founded in 912, Mahdia was added to this list of maritime centers, but it stood out by briefly becoming the caliph's place of residence in 919. The need to control traffic between Ifriqiya and Sicily, from the Tyrrhenian Sea to Tripolitania, justified carrying maritime policy over from one period to the next, particularly since the reinforcement of the Byzantine presence in southern Italy and at sea, instigated by the Macedonian emperors beginning in the last quarter of the ninth century, which had revived the struggle between Christians and Muslims from the south of the Italian peninsula to the African continent. The move of the caliphal capital to Egypt in 971 did not affect the sovereigns' will to dominate the sea, at least according to what they said.
The wealth of accounts of the Fatimids' maritime commitment serves as an initial clue to the dynasty's particular relationship to the maritime space. Not only do state sources provide a record of the government's sustained ties to the sea, but the preservation of the first "archival" resources—primarily the Geniza letters originating in the "private" sphere of Jewish merchants, written between the tenth and twelfth centuries, and found in a storeroom in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat—reveals a fundamental change in the role of Egypt, which under the rule of the Shiite caliphs reclaimed its place as the principal Muslim, naval, and commercial center of the eastern Mediterranean. The rich selection of documents found in Ayyubid and Mamluk administrative literature confirms the importance of the sea in the eyes of the Ismaili government. The copying of letters and administrative treatises from the caliphal period in works used to train future managers in the administration of the two Egyptian sultanates bears witness to the admiration of the Egyptian men of letters and Ayyubid sultans, particularly for the structure of the maritime and commercial administration of the dockyards that housed customs and were dependent on a single _diwan._ Some of their administrators were employed by Saladin and devoted part of their texts to preserving treatises of the _sina'a,_ which was a combined dockyard, customs house, and warehouse for products coming in and going out by sea. The customs organization in Alexandria, Cairo, and other ports of the delta even had a very good reputation among Latins.
In their descriptions of Cairo, men of letters like al-Maqrizi (d. 1442) and Ibn Duqmaq (d. 1406), both historians of the Egyptian capital, highlight the dockyards' important position in the capital at a time when, outside of Barsbay's reign (1422–1437), the Egyptian sultans were no longer active on the Mediterranean. Instead, the period of the Mamluk historians was devoted to putting together a memorial register, the primary purpose of which was the description of the capital. The Fatimids' maritime legacy figured prominently in this endeavor, for it gave a flattering image of the city's maritime past. Cairo's dockyards had been part of the city landscape since 971 and would continue to symbolize the capital's ties to the Mediterranean and the Red Sea until the fifteenth century. In fact, the period is presented as the peak of Egyptian activity on the Mediterranean. According to al-Maqrizi, "In his history, Ibn Abi Tayy' wrote that al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah had had the dockyard ( _dar al-sina'a_ ) of al-Maqs built. He had 600 ships ( _marakib_ ) built there. Such a dockyard had never been seen on a stretch of water bordering a city. As for Al-Musabbihi, he said that it was the son of al-Mu'izz, the caliph of al-'Aziz, who had had the dockyard at al-Maqs built."
## The Sea, the Domain of the Caliph
The Egyptian al-Muhallabi (d. 990) was the author of a book of geography entitled _Kitab al-'Azizi,_ after the sovereign to whom this universal description that became famous in the author's own time was dedicated. Al-Muhallabi's book seemed to so thoroughly exhaust the resources of the kind of geography associated with the _masalik wa l-mamalik_ that he did not have any imitators in Fatimid Egypt. Though the loss of his geography book was not compensated for by the many later references borrowed from his description of the world, a few surviving fragments provide a basic idea of the importance he gave to the maritime space, particularly by drawing up an itinerary of Mediterranean ports, which can be found in the _Book of Curiosities_ written in the tenth or eleventh century. Al-Muhallabi also reveals a few aspects of the installations in Cairo. His description, which expresses the imperial ambitions of the caliph now embodied in these installations, should be considered in the context of the reigns of al-Mu'izz and his son al-'Aziz (975–996), as suggested by al-Mu'izz's commission in 964 of a map drawn on blue silk, which was intended to represent the world and accompanied the caliph to the banks of the Nile: "High quality workmanship, woven with gold and all sorts of [silk] thread... on which were represented the provinces ( _aqalim_ ) of the earth, its mountains, its seas, its cities, its rivers, and its roads, similar to a geography [map]. It featured representations of Mecca and Medina, which attract the eye, and the names of each of the cities, mountains, countries ( _balad_ ), river, sea, and of each road in gold, silver, or silk [thread]."
The city's rapid development and the numerous references to the places where power was represented, in direct competition with Baghdad, could only boost Egyptian pride and, in particular, that of Cairo's inhabitants. This explains the Mamluk authors' interest in aligning themselves with the prestigious legacy that had allowed the country to become another one of Islam's caliphal hubs. Egypt also had major strategic importance on the Mediterranean chessboard due to its position as an isthmus between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea and its control over Ifriqiya and Sicily, commanding the passage between the two principal basins of the interior sea. The Fatimids were threatening Mesopotamia's previously unrivaled commercial position by capturing a dominant share of trade between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. Ibn Hawqal and al-Muqaddasi—a contemporary of al-Muhallabi—both present the Nile valley as the nodal point of the Mediterranean world. Writing in Persian, the Iranian traveler Nasir Khusraw (d. 1060), who had become a dedicated proponent of Ismailism after his stay at the court, offered an original point of view on this recentering of the Islamic space.
A native of the Oxus region, Nasir Khusraw spent about seven years in Egypt, from 1045 to 1052, before heading for Hejaz, his initial destination, and returning to his homeland to settle in Balkh. He even sought to put himself in the service of Caliph al-Mustansir (1036–1094). His geography book stands out from those of his predecessors, heralding the literary genre of the _rihla,_ or travel journal. The Persian traveler reevaluated the evolution of the balance between the regions of Islam, accounting for what was then a palpable rise in power of the Fatimid-controlled eastern Mediterranean.
His description of the Ismaili world is distinctive, tracing two principal axes. The land axis follows the different stages of the conquest, beginning at Sijilmassa. The other axis is maritime and connects the Shiite empire's various Mediterranean territories, then continues via Egypt to Mecca and via Qulzum to the Red Sea and the ocean:
> The Sea of Alexandria stretches to the [land] of Kairouan which is at a distance of 150 parasangs from Egypt.... Not far from Sijilmassa is Mahdia, which was founded by al-Mahid, one of the descendants of the prince of believers, Husayn, son of 'Ali, after he achieved the conquest of the Maghreb and al-Andalus. When I was in Egypt, the province of Kairouan was under the authority of that country's sovereign.... Sicily is one of the islands of the Mediterranean Sea. A vessel leaving from Egypt takes 20 days to reach it. There are also many other islands. Sicily covers 80 square parasangs; it is under the authority of the sultan of Egypt. Ships travel there every year to bring its products back to Egypt.... When one leaves Mirs [Fustat] in the direction of the East, one reaches Qulzum [on the Red Sea].... To go from Misr to Mecca, one must walk in the direction of the East.... Sultan Mu'izz li-Din Allah took the sea route to go to Egypt. His ships traveled up the Nile nearly as far as Cairo.
The first itinerary was the route taken by 'Ubayd Allah and al-Mu'izz, founders of the two successive imperial spaces. The former had answered the call of his representative ( _da'i_ ) Abu 'Abd Allah, who had seized Ifriqiya in his name, and followed the path to Sijilmassa, where he took refuge to escape the caliph's henchmen. The next stage was Mahdia, the first capital founded by the Shiite caliphate. The region of Kairouan—particularly the caliph's residence of Sabra-Mansuriya—and Sicily, a place of jihad, completed the first caliphs' Maghrebi domain. In a second phase, General Jawhar (d. 992) took control of the delta and set up camp in Cairo in 971. The description of this axis continues to the holy city, which had passed under the control of the Shiite sovereigns and was thus returned to its position as the natural center of Islam, and therefore of the world, at the expense of Baghdad. This central axis of the Fatimid world could ignore Iraq and Iran, still in the hands of the Abbasids, to stop at southern and coastal Syria and recenter the heart of Islam, now dominated by the Ismaili imam, on the valley of the Nile and the holy cities of Arabia. The other axis—the maritime axis—connected the caliphal port to Sicily and from there led to Alexandria, also by sea.
Nasir Khusraw emphasized the importance of the maritime territory within the empire, particularly as a space connecting its different parts, above all in the Mediterranean. This territory then extended over the isthmus separating Misr from the Red Sea port, "a branch of the Ocean that breaks away from it at Aden and stretches back up to the north." The crossing times reported reveal profitable naval and commercial activity, but also the importance of the control of maritime routes for caliphal power. The choice to mention that, once the country was conquered, Caliph al-Mu'izz had taken the maritime route, contradicting every other source, seemed motivated by the major role the sovereign attributed to the sea submitted to the imam's sailors. The description of the Syrian ports, veritable maritime fortresses protecting the frontier against Greek attacks, confirms the function of the fleet and coastal fortifications, now in Ismaili hands, against the Byzantines:
> [Tripoli] is built so that the sea washes against three of its sides, reaching the top of the ramparts when the water is rough. The land side of the city is protected by a defensive wall and a large ditch. An extremely solid iron gate opens in the direction of the East. Both the walls and the crenelations are made of cut stone; war machines are arranged on top of the walls. Tripoli's inhabitants fear the ventures of the Greeks, who might attempt an attack with their vessels.... Tripoli is a dependency of the sultan of Egypt; I am told this has been the case since the period when the infidel of Byzantium attempted an attack against this fortified city and were repelled by the Egyptian Muslims, who subjected them to harsh defeat. The sultan of Egypt has abolished taxes in this city, and he constantly maintains a garrison here commanded by a general whose mission is to defend the city against any enemy initiative.
Referring to the role of the stronghold and its fleet on the Syrian frontier served to emphasize that the Shiite imams had taken over the caliphal jihad against Byzantium. According to the Persian traveler, the central and eastern Mediterranean had clearly become an essential area of the Ismaili empire. Its new center was now in Cairo, pushing the Abbasid "old world" back to the margins, which were now in the east. Nasir Khusraw thus established a new polarity between the sea of jihad on the one side, under control as far as Sicily, and, on the other, the Red Sea and Arabia, which opened the road to the Islamic East, with Cairo now the principal haven for the merchants and men of letters of the Muslim world.
Many Fatimid chronicles were written, though nearly all were later lost. These basically covered the period of the caliphate, but here too all the information on the sea is found in later works. Particular events such as the Fustat dockyard fire and the massacre of several Italian merchants in 996, committed by a population infuriated by fiscal advantages granted to Latin merchants, more specifically drew historians' attention to the importance of maritime and commercial policy, which was tied to the sustained growth of business relations with the Greeks and Latins. More significantly, references to decisions regarding the fitting out of ships or certain symbolic acts—such as the sovereign's attendance at the parade of ships leaving for war from the _dar al-bahr,_ the "house of the sea," located in the al-Maqs or Fustat dockyards—are all evidence of the caliphs' intention to reveal their highly specific ties to the fleet and, beyond that, to the sea. One chronicle states, "No ship in the fleet was built elsewhere than the dockyard ( _sina'a_ ) which is on the island [Rawda]. But Vizier al-Ma'mun was not satisfied with this situation. He ordered that the [ships] and the other ships of the diwan, intended for sailing the Nile, be built in the construction yard at Fustat, to which he added the raisin warehouse, on which he had a belvedere built.... The caliph came down here on the day of the presentation of the fleet or of its launch."
The administration of the dockyard, dependent on the Exchequer, is primarily known to us through texts of the Ayyubid period. As the last vizier of the last Shiite caliph, Saladin had governed the country in the tradition of the Ismaili government, waiting for the death of the last imam to reestablish the _khutba_ (the direction of prayer) in favor of the Abbasids. Studies of the laws in effect during the Fatimid period show that these did not truly differ from the Sunni, Maliki, and Hanafi schools and allowed for the former regime's rules to be adapted within a Sunni administration.
Several eminent members of the maritime services wrote descriptions of the operation of the dockyards under the imams' administration. Claude Cahen defines the _Minhaj,_ a treatise by al-Makhzumi (d. 1189) found in fragmentary form, as a book on taxes in the ports of Alexandria, Tinnis, and Damietta. The surviving version, which dates from 1185–1186, reveals the changes implemented in the Abbayid era while providing a description of taxation in the late period, when taxes were collected at the _sina'a,_ the dockyard. Ibn Mammati (d. 1220), who wrote a treatise between 1182 and 1193, held a high position in "the administration for (naval) construction," which the sultan renamed "the administration of ships." Other administrators also wrote treatises.
The Fatimids appear as innovators in the organization of commercial activity. They mobilized all means of expression related to the sea as instruments to demonstrate Ismaili legitimacy: urban planning; architecture; administrative, chronographic, and legal literature; and also poetry were put to use to promote a caliphate that sought to dominate and administer the sea, now an imperial space rather than a frontier. While competition with the Umayyads was a powerful stimulant to this promotion, one must look to Islam as a whole for the reasons the Shiite imams instrumentalized the Mediterranean.
## The Maritime Emblems of Fatimid Universality
Two descriptions of the construction of the capital city Mahdia present different but complementary ways of defining the imam's relationship to the sea. In the chronicle of the conquest of power in Ifriqiya by al-Qadi al-Nu'man (d. 971), completed in 958, a brief presentation of the founding of the city establishes a close connection between spatial planning and the prophetic nature of the accession of the dynasty:
> The Mahdi founded Mahdia, which the prophetic books had heralded and nicknamed "the White One," and it was said that the _dajjal_ [Abu Yazid, "the Imposter"] would never be able to reach or penetrate it. It was one of the most marvelous achievements: indeed he had it built in cut stone and provided it with solid iron gates. He emigrated there in 308 / 919–920 and established his residence there. Then one could contemplate the miracles of which Allah allowed the accomplishment. The Mahdi had the construction moved forward into the sea, the rock dug to create an artificial port that penetrates into the city and communicates with the sea by a channel with a chain to close it.
Two major structures stood as symbols of dynastic power: the defensive wall closing off the isthmus, which would indeed prevent the Kharijite leader from taking control of the city in 945, and the port installations, which were spread over two sites and consisted of the basin, possibly dug into the rock by the Phoenicians and restored and fortified by the Fatimids, and the anchorage located along the artificial esplanade built to house the great mosque. Both structures symbolized an opening to the rest of the world through the sea. With its prophetic atmosphere, reminiscent of that conveyed by the texts describing the foundation of Baghdad, 'Ubayd Allah's city combined the two fundamental qualities of a capital worthy of the Prophet's successor: invulnerability, tested during the Kharijite rebellion, and a universal character, which made it the center of a world that remained to be conquered and united under a single power.
From the beginning of the caliphate, the fleet appeared as a major instrument for the universal expansion of Ismailism. Thanks to the fleet's presence in the port during the Kharijite siege, al-Mansur (946–953) had been able to resupply Sousse, also blockaded, and to transport troops there to attack the Kharijite army from the rear, leading to the first decisive victory over "the man with the donkey." The qadi therefore did not take the trouble to enumerate each edifice, choosing instead those that represented the Ismaili universalism put to the test by the revolt led by the Kharijite leader, and that were more important than the palaces. The victory over the Kharijites outside the city's walls signaled a rebirth of the Ismaili caliphate. The founding of the capital was thus doubly associated with divine favor.
The other, more detailed description was written by al-Bakri and fits neatly with the Baghdad tradition of geography: according to the Andalusian author, the construction of the port was directly in line with the architecture of Ifriqiya's ports, of which the oldest known example in the region was Tunis's port, built in 698 and taken over by the Aghlabid emir Ziyadat Allah to prepare for the conquest of Sicily. These ports were characterized by a surrounding wall flanking a basin (such as the one dug into the rock in Mahdia), the entrance to which was guarded by two towers and an arch that could be closed off with a chain. The dockyard area was behind the basin and consisted of an open space encircled by a wall, dedicated to the construction, fitting out, and repair of ships. Buildings housed the ship's equipment: sails, apparel, masts, and other equipment sensitive to the weather and insects. The port's architecture had itself been inspired by the Byzantine architecture of ports of the Bilad al-Sham such as Tyre and Acre, which were restored and used after the conquest of the region.
Al-Bakri borrowed the description written by al-Warraq in the 970s and intended for the Umayyad caliphs, but he found other arguments to note the remarkable characteristics of this stronghold that was also used as the caliphs' residence: he refers to the urban area's duality, with Mahdia, an area reserved for the prince and his entourage, on the peninsula, while the outlying Zawila housed those who worked for the imam but were not in his inner circle. Following the official version, he credits the Fatimids with digging the port's basin and building the esplanade reclaimed from the sea and the defensive structures that surrounded the peninsula and were the pride and joy of the founders. The urban design of Cairo was prefigured here not only in the main mosque and the court of accounts but also in the layout of the two palaces, which were separated by an esplanade or a garden—the first belonged to 'Ubayd Allah, the second to al-Qa'im (934–946). The largest dockyard structure on the esplanade—and the only one mentioned by al-Bakri—was an edifice consisting of two long galleries in which sailing equipment was stored. The part of the dockyard for naval construction was normally open-air. As the son of the emir of Huelva and Saltes, an important port of the Ta'ifa period equipped with a naval shipyard in the eleventh century, the geographer had a solid understanding of the layout and organization of a port and its dockyard. Nonetheless, technical details did not have a place in a work like his. Like Qadi Nu'man but in a very different narrative context, he described those aspects of Mahdia he found singular and remarkable.
The Ismaili rulers gave many other signs of their ambition to integrate the Mediterranean space into the sphere of caliphal sovereignty. One of the clearest examples of this endeavor is the narrative framing of the administration of the ports, including the dockyard. This is attested to by a diverse range of sources. Among these, the biography ( _sira_ ) of Jawdhar is an exceptional record of the administration and especially the dockyard at Mahdia. The _Life of the Ustadh_ _Jawdhar_ [a title he gave himself, along with that of a eunuch] is a compilation of letters collected by his secretary, including correspondence sent to him by the caliphs al-Qa'im, al-Mansur, and al-Mu'izz; his replies; and requests addressed to his masters. It shows that the administration of the admiralty and the navy was the exclusive domain of the sovereign. Having managed the dockyards and, more generally, matters relating to Mahdia, the eunuch was in a particularly good position to make sense of the city's complex inner workings: his primary role was to keep the three successive sovereigns informed. Initially in office in Mahdia, he was brought to Sabra-Mansuriyya by al-Mansur in 948. The eunuch's proximity to power, in particular to al-Qa'im, is verified by the fact that he was entrusted with the name of al-Qa'im's successor, which according to protocol was only known to the caliph. He was also appointed to head the treasury.
A series of letters denouncing the negligence of a few somewhat apathetic "civil servants" at the dockyard reveals the sovereign's concern with the efficient functioning of the port administration, which cast a good light on the prince's government. Mistakes could not be forgiven, for to do so would be to risk calling into question the credibility of sultanate power: "The _ustadh_ wrote a note to Our Master in which he said that he had not neglected to shake up the civil servants charged with presiding over the purchase of the necessary provisions for the ships. This was in response to the impatience expressed by Our Master due to the late delivery of these provisions and the laziness of those who were in charge of managing purchases and their negligence in this matter."
This is another clear example of the display of power, as orchestrated by the sovereigns. Proper management of the fleet was one of the preferred areas for demonstrating the caliph's infallibility, which according to Ismaili doctrine was inspired by his ancestors through a spiritual bond reaching back to the Prophet through Fatima. The desire to control the entire chain of command is clearly apparent in a letter relaying the caliph's order for the fleet to cast off, a command he could delegate to his principal war chief Ahmad b. Hasan b. al-Kalbi:
> Order has been given by Our Master to hold back the ships and prevent them from leaving for Sicily because he wanted to have equipment, weapons, and supplies carried onto them to support the troops after Ahmad b. al-Hasan returned from Sicily and the island's government was entrusted to his brother Abu l-Qasim b. 'Ali b. al-Hasan al-Kalbi. However, some ships disregarded his order, their captains diverted them from the [set] route and made them leave from [another] port. The imam was intensely irritated by this and sent Abu l-Qasim the order to burn these ships and put their captains to death.
This concern with the fleet is also found in the relatively many references to the Shiite sovereigns' policy. Al-Mu'izz laid claim to the statement "A dockyard cannot be separated from its master," originally made by Muhammad b. Tughj al-Ikhshid, a representative of the Abbasid caliphate in Egypt (935–946) who had had to order the rebuilding of a dockyard on the right bank after the burning of the installations on Rhoda Island during the attempted conquest by al-Qa'im in 935. Having brought the fleet from Ifriqiya to Cairo two years after it was conquered, the caliph had the admiralty established in his new capital. In all likelihood, the old dockyards in Fustat and on the island, the latter of which had been refurbished since the Fatimid attack in 935, continued to operate, enabling the construction of warships. The al-Maqs dockyard built close to the palace in Cairo, on the eastern bank of the Nile, was the work of al-Mu'izz or his son, al-'Aziz. According to the authors of the Mamluk era, it was here that ceremonial ships for sailing on the river were built, particularly those used at the ceremony of the measuring of the water levels, during which the caliph traveled by boat to the Nilometer as crowds looked on from the banks of the river. The dockyard's warehouse held military equipment for ships leaving on expeditions, such as mangonels (catapults) and Greek fire. When the squadron was fitted out before its departure, the caliph came to al-Maqs from the palace on foot and presided over a large ceremony.
Another ritual that connected the sovereign to his squadron was the ceremonial review of the construction of ships in the dockyard at Fustat. The caliph was also present at the launch of new ships. The leisure pavilion ( _manzar_ ) specially built to welcome him on this occasion was reminiscent of the _dar al-bahr_ at the palace in the Fatimid capital, itself inspired by those erected in Mahdia and Sabra-Mansuriyya. In both capitals, the "house of the sea" in the heart of the dockyards clearly involved the caliph in the work as the sovereign of maritime spaces. Thus, the ship-outfitting establishment addressed the Ismailis' needs, and the layout of the sites allowed the caliph and his descendants to display ceremonial protocol that emphasized the close tie between the caliph's sovereignty and the maritime territory of the Mediterranean. By "blessing" the fleet from the dockyard's pavilion while armaments were being loaded and soldiers embarked, the imam renewed this tie at each new campaign, and the spectacle of the squadron in battle formation served as a reminder that the imam could strike the enemy anywhere in the Mediterranean, without requiring the sovereign to be on the coast or at sea.
## The Sea and Beyond, Legitimating Spaces of Ismaili Islam
What was actually said in the triumphalist speeches that accompanied the fleet's parades? Ibn Hani' (d. ca. 973), official poet to the court, gave an eminent place to the caliph's relationship to the maritime space. In a pronounced eschatological tone, the verses declaimed by this panegyrist for the conqueror of Egypt dwell at length on the role played by the fleet, weapon and symbol of Fatimid control in the maritime space, as far as the outer limits of the marine horizon. His lyrical sweep probably recalls that of the narratives on the period of the Arab conquest when they describe the attacks on Constantinople, but the Shiite imams were now aiming for control of the Mediterranean rather than the Byzantine capital, at least in an initial phase. In the logic of the construction of Ismaili legitimacy, the description of the fleet was combined with declamations of its universality: "They lower their eyes before a caliph who knows, without having been taught them, the secrets of God, / Who is the straight path itself, in a body of light, light provided him by rays from the sublime, incorporeal world."
This was followed by a passage reporting the caliph's control over the maritime space and describing squadrons crossing the sea. The verses denounce the Abbasids' negligence and their inability to carry out jihad. After the loss of the frontier regions of Armenia up to Antioch, these sovereigns had abandoned the Mediterranean to the Byzantines as soon as they had taken control of Crete and Cyprus, the islands that controlled access to the Aegean Sea: "It is surprising that the Rums impale the Muslims with their spears, cross the seas, and pass over the mountains while sleep closes the eyelids of the Abbasids and they bring no assistance to Islam other than women singers and goblets of wine."
The same diatribe took issue with the Umayyads, accused of murdering Husayn (d. 786), the second Shiite imam; of usurping the title of caliph in al-Andalus; and of being equally incapable of securing a victory over the Christians. A connection must be drawn between the criticisms of the Andalusian army facing the Latins by Ibn Hawqal, a supporter of the Fatimid cause, and the ungracious denunciation of the shameful behavior of the leaders who kept their distance from the battlefield by Ibn Hani, himself of Andalusian background.
These positions, primarily expressed in relation to the fleet, were above all an excuse to emphasize the caliphs' virtues, their combative zeal, and their ability to coordinate the armed forces, in particular, the naval forces; in a word, everything that distinguished them from the illegitimate pretenders to the caliphate. The Mediterranean remained a space of confrontation, but the Ismaili caliphs were now the only ones who could embody the spirit of jihad on the seas and allow Islam to achieve control over it:
> Our empire leaves far behind the time when the Rums had preeminence; one could even think that this time was never a known period.
>
> All the firm resolutions they had made collapsed, like all the stratagems that their experience had suggested to them.
>
> For two thousand years they had completely dominated the sea, as knights of the black tarred ships.
>
> Today every trace of their great maritime routes that crisscrossed the sphere have disappeared.
>
> And if they were to be asked about the sea, they would no longer be able to distinguish between the black ships and the tombs the color of earth.
The poet then evokes the formidable nature of the now-invincible Muslim fleets, likening the Greek fire to hellfire coming down on the Christians in an unoriginal but suggestive image:
> To you the ships that dash and tower above the sea, that loudly cut through the water; they sail on your order with docile winds.
>
> Nothing frightened the king of the Rums like the arrival of these vessels on which floated flags and banners.
>
> Over them rose a thick and heavy cloud that spit countless lightning bolts and made thunder claps.
>
> These ships cut through the swelling waves; one would think they were loaded with all the vigor of your resolution and all the generosity of your hands...
>
> When they sigh with anger, they throw a fire that burns without smoke the way the fuel of the fire of hell burns.
>
> Their burning blasts are the fires of thunder, and their howling mouths are of iron. Their flames burn for the people of the Catholicos...
>
> Your ships on the sea dominate any other ship like the master dominates the slave.
>
> The kings of the Rums appealed to God against him, at the head of a numerous army, but the judgment of God is without recourse...
>
> You fulfilled the spears' wishes by serving the patricians up to them, and for the Domestics it was a true day of Last Judgment...
>
> The Barbarians must know without any doubt that the cross is weak while you are powerful,
>
> Let them adore another than Christ, for after this there is nothing to hope from the religion of monarchism.
The sea had taken Constantinople's place and become the space for true faith. Domination of the sea was to usher in eschaton. The squadron had become the instrument of God against the Christian enemy, and the sea had become the scene of the triumph of the Fatimids and the imperial space par excellence.
Echoing the panegyrist's verses, the great maritime victories provided another opportunity to emphasize the caliphate's naval superiority, against both the Christians and the Umayyads. One of the caliphate's great exploits was the attack and sack of Genoa in 934, an account of which has been preserved in a book by the Ismaili Idris 'Imad al-Din (d. 1468), who had access to several now-lost Shiite texts:
> The Emir of the Believers al-Qa'im bi-Amr Allah sent Ya'qub b. Ishaq al-Tamini to lead an expedition against the Rums. [In June 934] Ya'qub left Mahdia with twenty ships.... On the way, he encountered Rumi ships loaded with merchandise; he captured them and took prisoner those who were on board. Then he continued his journey toward the land of the Rumi, targeting that country's well-fortified city, Genoa.... Allah gave him victory thanks to the imam's blessing. [Back in Mahdia] the prisoners were exhibited and the fleet was decorated. He entered the city wearing his most beautiful clothes.... The Emir of the Believers al-Qa'im was sitting in the _dar al-bahr_ [sea pavilion]. Ya'qub entered and al-Qa'im saluted him, invited him to come closer, praised his exploits, and ordered that whatever sum of money he requested, it be distributed to the fighters and he honored this.
Here too, it was important that the caliph appear as the organizer of the expedition and the head of the fleet, whose every movement he controlled. The account of the return ceremony underlines the sovereign's virtues as he rewards his officer for demonstrating great competence as a sailor and war leader. These remarks reveal the Fatimids as the only heirs to the generations of sailors and soldiers who had carried out razzias on enemy waters and soil. However, the victory most important to the caliph was the one achieved by the fleet that pillaged Almería, the seat of the Umayyad admiralty, in 954; Qadi Nu'man personally reported it. The framework of the narrative is quite similar to that of the preceding text, with the sovereign ultimately being credited with the essential role, as the only one able to create the conditions for domination of the maritime space and victory on the sea.
## Ismaili Influence on Christian Horizons: Recasting the Fatimid Mediterranean
Under the Cairo Fatimids (971–1171), documents referring to relations with the Christian sovereignties around the Mediterranean reveal the dynasty's attachment to Sicily, despite the fact that the island became autonomous under the government of the Kalbids (971–1050), and again when the Normans conquered it as of 1063. Varied Arabic documentation shows that this loss was never officially accepted, to the point that up to the twelfth century the Cairo caliphs' propaganda continued to show the island as being under Fatimid influence, particularly through the description of the ceremonial protocol of the most powerful king of the dynasty, Roger II.
A letter from Caliph al-Hafiz (1130–1149) to Roger II in 1137 reveals the complex nature of the Fatimids' ties with the Christian world. This was a reply to the king's criticism of the caliph for deposing his Armenian and Christian vizier Bahram. After inviting the king not to interfere with Egypt's internal affairs, the caliph sent him his compliments and thanked him for releasing one of his ships, which had been detained by the Norman authorities; this expression of gratitude was in keeping with customary commercial and diplomatic relations in the cold war atmosphere between the two Mediterranean powers. Playing the role of intermediary is the rather unusual figure of George of Antioch, who acted as a bridge between the two capitals at the time when the Normans were in a position of strength: "It [the friendship between the two states] is evidence of your desire to make this friendship appear in broad daylight in dazzling new clothes every time it starts to get old."
While the letter was intended for the king, its contents echoed internal political issues, at least as they related to the caliph. Thanks to the exceptional architectural and decorative heritage left by the Norman kings in Palermo, enhanced by objects such as Roger II's coronation cloak, and written documentation that is relatively abundant in the medieval Mediterranean context, numerous studies have provided a better understanding of what was at stake in Norman ceremonial. On the other hand, due to the total disappearance of princely edifices and the scarcity of accounts, limited to a few written fragments, Ismaili ceremonial has not revealed its secrets, particularly those concerning relations with enemies of Islam. Consequently, the Shiite sovereigns' ties with the Norman crown remain ambiguous. The content of these messages aimed at Muslim "public opinion" and more specifically that of the caliph's subjects is not original; it is even likely that it was modeled after the Abbasids' approach with the Byzantines, the other diplomatic partners whose presence was heavily felt in Cairo. In this case, it seems conceivable that the objective of these remarks was to leave a glimmer of hope of reconquest or, at the very least, to create the impression of strong Fatimid influence on the island until it was the right time to reconquer the former Muslim territory.
The Muslims' lasting attachment to Sicily, which they continued to consider a Muslim land to be reconquered, partially explains the Ismaili imams' desire to emphasize relations with infidel kings and to present the situation in terms of an Ismaili influence on the infidel. Other sources, such as treatises by Muslim jurists, have also left many accounts of the ties between the people of Islam and the island's Islamic populations until the end of the twelfth century.
The most well-known account is by Ibn Jubayr (d. 1217). On the return journey from his trip to the East in 1185, Ibn Jubayr was forced to stop on the Norman island for a time due to a storm. In his diary ( _rihla_ ), he wrote about his fascination with the insular monarchic system, particularly the large number of Muslims in the entourage of King William II (1166–1189): viziers, chamberlains, and eunuchs. At the same time, while crossing each city still inhabited by Muslims, he became aware of the Islamic communities' distress, assuming they were disintegrating due to their isolation. As for the Crusader states, he hoped for a reconquest of the island, with the help of the Almohads rather than the Ayyubids. In the vicinity of Trapani, home to many Muslims, he said, "The Christians think that it is here that the conquest of this island will take place, if it please God."
The island's Muslim past and Arab-Muslim presence, still strong though on the decline, continued to fuel the dream of a return to the caliphs' authority. The dream even saw a certain empathy for Islam in various aspects of the king's behavior. This hope, which would become increasingly hypothetical and fanciful with every step of Latin expansion, explains some of the content of al-Hafiz's letter on Norman ceremonial. Ibn Jubayr thought no differently: "In the enjoyment of power in which he is plunged, in the fine disposition of his decrees, in the solid foundations of his power, in the fair remuneration of his men, in the brilliance of his royal pomp, in the display of his finery, he [William II] resembles the Muslim kings."
The Arab men of letters' account of the caliphs' relations with the Normans slightly alters the significance of these relationships, characterizing them not through traditional military confrontation, given that any hope of a reconquest had vanished by the twelfth century, but through the interpretation of the Norman kings' ceremonial, which they saw as an imitation of the ceremonial of the Cairo sovereigns. The same idea is found in al-Maqrizi's report on the royal ceremonial of the Normans, the description of which he borrowed from Fatimid documentation. The light he sheds on the Palermitan royalty reveals the extent to which the Normans were apparently inspired by the caliphs of Egypt and foregrounds what al-Maqrizi considered to be George of Antioch's central role as an intercessor: "He [George] veiled [the presence] of Roger [II] from his subjects and made him wear clothes similar to Muslims', he did not ride horseback, and only appeared before his subjects on holidays. Before him [one would then see] horses with gold and silver saddles, blankets inlaid with stones, and chairs covered with cupolas; gilded flags, the parasol, and [the king] wore the crown [ _taj_ ] on his head."
The use of objects such as the veil concealing the sovereign, the _taj_ or "crown"—whose appearance remains hard to determine—and especially the parasol, a gift from al-Hafiz, revealed the Norman sovereign's Islamic nature to Muslim eyes. The cloak, the throne, and the veil were presented by the caliphs as attributes of Muhammad, later used by the imams: the first recalled the Prophet's attire; the second, the Prophet's nocturnal journey; and the third, the concealment of his face. The Egyptian man of letters, or the writer from whom he borrowed these descriptions, thus highlighted this ceremonial's Islamic references, inviting the conclusion that it borrowed from the Shiite sovereigns' ceremonial and that by this the Christian kings implicitly recognized a kind of Fatimid preeminence.
The Cairo man of letters points to George, an intimate of the Norman king, as the principal person responsible for the establishment of these privileged ties between the two sovereignties and, consequently, the caliphs' supposed influence on the Norman royalty. George was born to a Christian family from Syria that was captured at sea by pirates while on the way to Constantinople. The man who would become vizier and admiral of the Sicilian sovereign had washed up in Ifriqiya with his brother after being intercepted by an "official" Ifriqiyan expedition. Here, George climbed the ladder of the Zirid hierarchy before having to flee to Sicily, where he became the number two of the Norman monarchy. The exaggerated influence over Roger II with which al-Maqrizi credits him can be explained by this extraordinary life, which had positioned him between two worlds, and his renown as admiral of the fleet and intimate of the king. George particularly distinguished himself during the conquest of the ports of the African coast in 1140. Due to his Syrian, Greek, and Christian background and experience of both worlds, this remarkable character was predestined to establish privileged ties between the Mediterranean's two great sovereignties. He traveled to Cairo several times as the king's envoy. He appears as the ideal mediator, a powerful figure who used his influence with the Norman king to organize the royal ceremonial, thus recognizing the Fatimids' lasting influence in Sicily.
The Egyptian poet Ibn Qalaqis's panegyric in honor of the Sicilian king William II, written as the poet was setting off to put himself in the king's service around 1168, shows the persistence of this fiction of spiritual relations between the two ceremonials. The qualities of the Norman royalty as depicted by the poet are reminiscent of Ibn Hani's verses addressed to al-Mu'izzi, written more than two centuries earlier, particularly in the close association between the sovereign's personal merit and the Normans' maritime successes:
> There is no victory but that of his army, wherever it passes, on the front lines on land as on the vast surface of the sea.... He has thoroughbreds that the mind can barely conceive like he has ships that go beyond what can be imagined.
>
> His two armies are like moving clouds always tempestuous in times of war and always carrying [beneficial] rain in times of peace.
>
> He leads against his enemies all that moves quickly, dark swarms of thoroughbreds or dark swarms of small boats....
>
> And the darkness of the ships makes their bodies similar to venomous snakes that can vomit their poison for us.
Many studies of Norman ceremonial have shown that it had a complex nature, due to the multiple sources that inspired representations of the sovereign's image, borrowed from the three great imperial areas of the Mediterranean and put in service of the emblematic display of the Norman royalty's universality. The elements drawn from Arab-Islamic culture, themselves associated with several iconographic and architectural models from different parts of the Muslim world, reinforced the imperial and universal dimension of the representation of Norman royal power and underlined its expansionist ambition, notably at the expense of Islam. As distorted from its original meaning by the Arab men of letters, this syncretic display allowed the caliphate to overcome the fact that it was then less powerful than the Normans and to send another message to the Muslims, foregrounding Ismaili domination over the Mediterranean and, beyond that, demonstrating the imams' influence over the Christian kings of Sicily, manifested by these borrowings from Fatimid ceremonial.
This fanciful projection of domination over Christian lands also appears implicitly in the context of relations between Cairo and Byzantium. Outside of references to a few commercial agreements, the circulation of documentation in the Mediterranean, from the Greek capital to the Egyptian one, remains one of the rare indications of the ties between the two empires. We do not know enough about the undeniable influence of the _Taktika_ of the Macedonian emperors—specifically the _Taktika_ of Leo VI (886–910)—about Arabic literature on good princely government and, in the legal realm, of the _Nomos Rhodion Nautikos_ on Muslim maritime legislation, now a specialty of the Ifriqiyan qadis, to understand the Cairo sovereigns' projections on the Greek empire, which was primarily referred to as the most dangerous Christian adversary. However, this fictitious reconstruction of a Fatimid Mediterranean, including the Christian lands of the Mediterranean borderlands, transformed the Abbasids' Sea of the Romans into an Islamic imperial space under the control of the Shiite imams.
#
THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN
## _Last Bastion of Islam's Maritime Ambitions_
IN THE WEST, the Umayyad collapse that began in 1009 did not lead to the abandonment of the maritime space. Among the emirates that rose to power on Andalusian soil, several had fleets serving their maritime ambitions. The emirs of Denia and the Balearics, particularly the founder Mujahid al-'Amiri (1010–1045), distinguished themselves by taking over the jihad at sea and attacking Sardinia in 1015. Other emirates with a seaboard and one or several dockyards, like the Abbadids of Seville (1023–1091) and the Barghawata Berbers, who ruled in Ceuta as of 1056, took advantage of the dockyard installations and crews that had served the Umayyad caliphate. In fact, the naval strength of Andalusia and the western ports enabled Emir Yusuf b. Tashfin (1073–1106) to answer the call of the Andalusian emirs and land on European soil in 1086, using the emirates' naval resources to repel the Castilian kings. Later, the Almoravid dynasty particularly benefited from the skill of the admirals of Almería, the Banu Maymun.
After having seized Marrakech and put an end to the Almoravid dynasty in 1147, the Almohads undertook to conquer all of the former dynasty's territories. Seville, then Córdoba fell to them in 1152, but the entire eastern region resisted until 1172 and the Balearics until 1181. During this period, the Christians' naval power had become stronger, particularly in Genoa and Pisa, which respectively controlled the shores of Sardinia and Corsica. The two ports, which would join forces to carry out major raids, took advantage of the Almoravid collapse to attack the principal Muslim maritime strongholds in the West: Tortosa (1092, 1146), Mallorca (1113–1114), and Almería (1147), which was taken by the Genoese and left, in ruins, to the king of Castile. The two Tyrrhenian ports repeated the attacks in Ifriqiya, whose Zirid rulers were weakened by the incursions of Arab tribes that had been settling in the Maghreb since 1050, in particular the Banu Hilal. After the pillaging of the port of Bône on the northern coast, Mahdia met the same fate in 1087. While the western Mediterranean routes leading to the Muslim coasts were now under the control of the two Tyrrhenian ports, the Almohads nonetheless inherited a vast seaboard stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean coast as far as Tripoli of Libya, which came under Almohad control in 1161. The pivotal point of this Almohad seaboard was the Strait of Gibraltar.
It fell to 'Abd al-Mu'min (1130–1163), the first Almohad caliph and himself a native of the coastal region of Hunayn, to build the naval power needed to connect Africa and al-Andalus, as well as to conquer Ifriqiya and conduct jihad against the infidel, using the naval administration of the Umayyad, then Almoravid caliphates as models. The organization of what was potentially the most powerful navy of the Muslim Middle Ages in the Mediterranean allowed the first three caliphs to use the fleet to attack Christian positions, first in Ifriqiya, then in the Iberian Peninsula, until this fine war machine began to go awry after the death of Caliph al-Nasir. At the same time, Arabic descriptions of the sea reveal the extent to which it had become a space familiar to Muslim civilization, as significant in Islam as it was for Latin societies.
# THE NAVIES OF THE TA'IFA EMIRS IN THE WAKE OF THE UMAYYADS
The sovereignty of the _ta'ifas_ —independent Muslim-ruled principalities—is characterized by the fact that "there [was] no particular innovation in that area, for the kings of the _ta'ifas_ settled for adapting the Umayyad model to their scale." Likewise, one must reject the false impression that the kings of the _ta'ifas_ merely inherited a centralized Umayyad state, insofar as the presence of the administration in district ( _kura_ ) capitals allowed the _ta'ifa_ emirs to rely on local supporters to manage the emirate to their new master's benefit. However, the clientelistic Umayyad and Amirid supporters who established themselves in regional cities endeavored to spread the emblems of legitimacy, borrowed from the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates. Some had their own naval forces and were able to perpetuate the image of Andalusian sovereignty dominating the sea.
This was particularly true of the Amirid Saqaliba (slave) Mujahid, who was appointed governor of Tortosa by his master, Ibn Abi 'Amir al-Mansur, and Mujahid's son Ali al-'Amiri. Beginning in 1010, Mujahid found in the modest port town of Denia the means to build a capital and an emirate largely open to the sea. Having inherited the command of seasoned squadrons and sailors, the Abbadids of Seville borrowed the maritime themes of the representation of caliphal legitimacy, as updated by the Umayyads. The same was true of the Hammudids, who controlled several ports on the Strait of Gibraltar, and the Banu Sumadih of Almería (1041–1091).
At the same time, the legal treatment of questions relating to the sea held a singular place in the corpus of the period's Andalusian jurisprudence, developing with the prosperity of maritime commerce. Among the treatises on market regulation, the one by the Sevillan Ibn 'Abdun, written about 1100, contains an article on the use of the banks of the Guadalquivir River, which bordered the Andalusian city and served as a port for seagoing ships. Because the port was considered part of the sultanate, it could only be administered by the Almoravid authorities: "There is cause to protect the bank of the river that serves as the port of the city [Seville] for [seagoing] ships, and to avoid that the slightest parcel of it be given up or that any structure be built on it: indeed, this place is the city's vital point, the site from which useful merchandise is exported by the merchants sending it abroad, the refuge of foreigners, the yard for repairing ships; the entire complex must belong exclusively to the state."
## The Legacy of a Legitimating Sea: The Maritime Destiny of the Amirids of Denia
The maritime dimension of the _ta'ifa_ was a priority of the expansion policy of the sovereigns al-Mujahid and his son Ali b. al-Mujahid Iqbal al-Dawla (1045–1076). It was exceptional due not only to the two sovereigns' commitment on the sea in the name of jihad but to also the maritime and commercial exploitation of their domain and the adjacent maritime regions. Al-Mujahid, a slave (Saqaliba) in the service of the Amirids (978–1009), was the governor of Tortosa when the caliphate disintegrated. He took power and turned the modest town of Denia, previously a dependency of Valencia, into one of the most active Muslim ports of the Sharq al-Andalus seaboard. He also took control of the Balearics, the hub of traffic in the western Mediterranean. Having provided the port city with a dockyard, the emir developed maritime commerce in the region of the Levante to the point that it competed with Almería. Maritime activity undoubtedly made the Amirid emirs' fortune.
Al-Mujahid was probably the only Andalusian emir to borrow the central theme of maritime expansion and jihad from the caliphs to turn it into the essential underpinning of his legitimacy. He capitalized on the razzias against Sardinia, even after the fiasco of 1015, and launched a raid on the coast of Luni: memories of maritime jihad in the caliphal period helped to spread the legitimating image of the "mujahid" sovereign. Thus, the laudatory verses that the Denia poet Ibn al-Labbana (d. 1113) addressed late in the eleventh century to the sovereign of Mallorca, Nasir al-Dawla, a descendant of the emir, are reminiscent of those of the panegyrists who sang the praises of the fleet to the Fatimid and Umayyad sovereigns:
> On this day, some sirens fly with wings that make them look like crows, while the others are like gyrfalcons.
>
> On the gulf we see an army as mobile as the gulf water, for both flow [with the same facility].
>
> The sons of war boarded rapid ships [ _jawari_ ] which run as fast as the steeds who win the race...
>
> O wonder! Never before I saw them would I have imagined that boats could carry fierce lions!
>
> They grow restless to go toward you, oars that are like the lashes of an eye watching the jealous spy.
That being said, al-Mujahid's decision to invade Sardinia raises several questions. Since the 940s, the policy of 'Abd al-Rahman III had transformed the route to the western islands, particularly that connecting Italy and Sardinia, which continued to the Balearics and the continental ports of al-Andalus, into a trade route open to Latin merchants. Was the trade route cut off under the rule of Ibn Abi 'Amir al-Mansur, a partisan of unilateral jihad that would put an end to commercial traffic via Sardinia? Did the emir want to take control of traffic at the expense of rival Andalusian ports such as Almería? Was he pushed to wage war by the Pisans settling on the island or by an intense attraction to jihad? What we know with certainty is that both sides entered a new phase of maritime history, dominated by the confrontation between Italians and Andalusians. However, this did not mean that trade in the islands was interrupted. The clash quickly turned to the advantage of the Tyrrhenian ports, in a prelude to the offensives that directly targeted Andalusian coasts as of the beginning of the twelfth century.
Sardinia had been the emir's major military objective. While he suffered military defeat against Genoa, Pisa, and the Sardinians, Arab and Latin documents show that the island remained a port of call accessible to ships from Denia and Mallorca long after the defeat of 1015–1016. Ultimately, his principal success rested in the diplomatic and commercial relations he formed with the Latins in Catalonia and with the ports of the Tyrrhenian Sea, while protecting his reputation among Muslims through jihad, which was presented as the primary objective of his maritime commitment. His son Ali distinguished himself by forming commercial relations with the Fatimids and maintaining regular commercial ties. Several letters from the Cairo Geniza, written during the second half of the eleventh century, bear witness to this. Al-Mujahid and his son were the only _ta'ifa_ rulers who created a maritime territory of economic expansion.
Following in his father's footsteps, Ali was able to spread an image of himself that promoted his status as a Muslim emir: in 1056, he generously sent a convoy of ships carrying wheat to destitute Egyptians dying in a famine. The propagation of this other form of jihad, both charitable and personal, was fully successful: 'Ali's initiative was long remembered.
> ## Almoravid Sea Power in the Maghreb and al-Andalus: Disrupting the Western Mediterranean's Islamic Polarity
>
> At the time of the Almoravids, Almería was a metropolis of Islam.... This city's port was frequented by merchant ships from Alexandria and Syria. Throughout the entire Peninsula, there was no other population with such large fortunes, more devoted to industry and various trades, and with better knowledge of how to benefit from the fluctuations in prices and stock.
The wealth of the largest Muslim port of the Mediterranean West in the Almoravid era held a particular place in Andalusian memories because the city was brutally ruined by the Genoese attack of 1147 and the decade of Castilian occupation that followed; Almería would only make a partial recovery, in the Almohad and Nasrid era (1237–1492). The many accounts of the city's earlier prosperity are typical of the impression left by Arab geographers' and historians' descriptions, particularly of al-Andalus during the first half of the twelfth century, when it was reputed to be prosperous, in part due to maritime activity. Similarly, the ownership of a powerful fleet gave the sailors of the caliphate's ports, led by the Banu Maymun, the possibility to conduct commerce raids in the name of jihad, reaching as far as the coasts of Galicia with ships more modern than those in the ports of Santiago de Compostela (until the arrival there of a Genoese naval architect). The extent of Yusuf b. Tashfin's conquests provided the emirate with a vast seaboard, covering the coasts of Andalusia and the Maghreb and stretching to the edge of the Canary Islands in the Atlantic and to Algiers on the Mediterranean. The contemporary geographers al-Zuhri (d. ca. 1161) and al-Idrisi left the most precise accounts of the state of the sea under his control. Their texts are complemented by the Arabic annals covering the period, most importantly those of the Maghrebis Ibn 'Idhari and Ibn Khaldun, themselves indebted to chroniclers who were contemporary to the dynasty but whose works have not survived, in particular Ibn al-Sayrafi (d. 1162).
While the Almoravids did not seem to conceive of a ship, however beautiful, as a representation of Islamic legitimacy, they were able to adapt the administrative and military organization of their huge emirate to the configuration of their vast domain, which included an essential maritime area—particularly the zone of the Strait of Gibraltar. Al-Bakri was the first to attempt to explain the new situation that made the Berber region the power base of the Muslim West. This can be seen in the exceptional attention his universal geography devotes to the western limits of the Islamic domain, which had previously been marginalized by every Eastern geographer except Ibn Hawqal.
## The Maghreb, a New Power in Western Islam
The real originality of the Andalusian geographer al-Bakri's work is in the attention he devoted to the Berber region, compared to the brief treatment of his own homeland. It is as if he foresaw the Berber region's future. Given that his geography has reached us in its entirety, it is clear that its imbalances are a result of the author's choice rather than happenstance. Al-Bakri gave a relatively detailed analysis of power relations between the tribes. In individually describing the regions held by a tribe or a tribal federation, centered on a capital, often a fortress, and their villages, he succinctly enumerates the tribes' riches or military capacities. This accumulation of "ecological" data according to criteria from Baghdad geography allowed him to show that the Muslim West's true power rested not only on its group cohesion but also on the intensely close bond between each of the tribes and the territory it controlled and exploited. Growing crops and breeding livestock, like Saharan and maritime trade and fishing and coral mining, were the base of tribal societies' power. In irrigated zones, the owners of cultivated land were most often identified by the well and irrigation system, which provides an indication of the group's priorities in terms of identity.
The sultanate rulers' authority was based on the tributary system, defined by Pierre Guichard as the relationship between the sovereign and his representatives on the one hand and the tribal group on the other. These ties were most often determined by the tax base the community agreed or refused to pay the emir or the sultan, the amount of which normally depended on a happy medium between the quantity and value of the riches produced and the needs of the administrative authorities. Tax was often paid in kind: the number of riders the Andalusian geographer reported in several tribes of the northern Maghreb al-Aqsa—the north of modern Morocco—is equivalent to the contingent some tribes agreed to provide, which consisted of riders renowned in al-Andalus and feared by the Christians. This is why all the Arab geographers briefly inventoried the sources of revenue of tribal entities (not only those in the West) and village districts ( _qura_ ), without providing an evaluation in figures but by giving an idea of a group's strength. The source of revenue was relatively unimportant—whether it was cultivation, raising livestock, fishing, trade evaluated by the number of dromedaries, or raids—but naming it made it possible to identify and personalize the tribal group and to size up its potential, which was evaluated based on the number of riders available or other characteristics of this type: "[Tétouan] is the seat of the territory belonging to the Banu Sikkin.... The Banu Sikkin can put 100 riders in the field.... Majaz Fakkan is the home of the [Banu] Milwatha, who can ride 500 horses."
According to the geographer, the other factor in the region's power was the progress of Arabization and especially Islamization, which reinforced the tribes' cohesion. The geographer was careful to note the situation of Islamization in each of the areas composing North Africa, from Barca to Tangier and from there to the desert. Here, he did not fail to remember the role played by the Arab conquerors, whether companions of the Prophet or those of the generation of "followers," such as 'Uqba b. Nafi'. The adoption of Islam and the cohesion of the Berber tribes were the essential vehicles of the society's in-depth transformation and the fuel for the Berbers' rise in power. Movements judged heretical by the Malikis, such as the Barghawata confederation or, in a different category, Ibadism, had been fought and were on the verge of being repressed after tribal groups like the one put together by the Ifranid emirs, a branch of the Zenata, organized the jihad from the city of Salé, which had been turned into a ribat.
The al-Murabitun or Almoravid movement, born in the Western Sahara, appeared to bring these developments to fruition. Mandated by the Maliki jurists of Kairouan under the leadership of Abu Imran b. Musa b. Abi l-Hajjaj, then in the midst of a proselytizing campaign in western Africa, Ibn Yasin left to reform the still-fragile Islamic faith practiced by the Western Sahara tribes. Their "conversion" was the starting point for the creation of a major military power that could only elicit the admiration of al-Bakri and all his contemporaries:
> They fight on horseback or riding thoroughbred camels; but the greatest part of their army consists of foot soldiers, who line up in several rows. Those in the front row carry long pikes, which are used to push back and impale their enemies; those in the other rows are armed with javelins; each soldier holds several of them, which he skillfully throws, nearly always hitting the person targeted and putting him out of commission.... They usually have a man stand before the front line holding a flag; so long as the flag remains raised, they are unwavering; if he lowers it, they all sit on the ground where they remain as motionless as mountains; they never chase after an enemy who flees before them.
As these fighters paraded outside his window, al-Bakri, the son of the emir of Huelva, identified the Almoravid emirate as the principal power in the region, the only one able to save al-Andalus, which was divided and incapable of resisting the Castilians. A few years later, al-Turtushi, an Andalusian scholar who had gone into exile in Egypt, reminded Emir 'Ali b. Yusuf (1106–1143) that it was his duty to conduct jihad against the Christians of the Peninsula because he was the only sovereign who had the means to successfully combat the Latins: "The jihad against the unbelievers is an obligation for you on the frontiers of al-Andalus, for you are the Muslim sovereign closest to it and you have horses, weapons, war machines, Muslim armies, soldiers under your orders."
The momentum of the Almoravid jihad had revived the hope of stopping the Latin advance and reclaiming Toledo. It was the only force capable of allowing tribal federations to form outside of local particularism and of regenerating Andalusian Islam. The geographer also pointed to the Berber world's commercial maritime activities as an example of its vigor. In fact, thanks to the Berbers and the sailors of the European shore, the Alboran Sea between the Iberian Peninsula's southern and eastern coasts and the coasts of the western and central Maghreb had become one of the maritime spaces most heavily frequented by merchants since the ninth century.
## The Birth of a Maritime Space in the Maghreb
As of the early years of the ninth century, the Berbers were indeed the main agents of maritime activity, both in the east of the Maghrebi bloc—Aghlabid and Fatimid Ifriqiya—and along the coastal zones under the control of the Rustamids of Tiaret, the Salihids in the Rif, and the Idrisids, up to the Strait of Gibraltar.
The principal indications of the Maghrebis' ties with the Mediterranean and Atlantic are lists of itineraries and anchorages, descriptions of ports and naval infrastructures, and inventories of the systems of coastal defense, including a record of the locations of ribats, all of which the geographer used to illustrate the Berbers' maritime dynamism. Primarily owing to the information left by al-Warraq and at least one Maghrebi, Mu'min b. Yumar al-Hawwari, the Andalusian geographer was able to establish the maritime routes connecting Andalusian shores to those of North and West Africa. These routes were used every year by sailors who had settled on the Spanish coasts under the reign of al-Hakam I. This traffic is also mentioned, albeit episodically, by Ibn Hayyan and in a few rare but precious Christian documents, such Pope Leo III's letter to Charlemagne informing him of the negotiations between the Maghrebis and the Byzantines of Sicily in 813.
Entitled "itineraries of the ships" ( _suluk al-sufun_ ), the maritime stages list the names of all the anchorages of the Muslim-controlled seaboard, connecting the south of oceanic Morocco, at Nul Lamta, to Antalya on Anatolia's Aegean coast, which was the admiral port of the forces of the Cibyrrhaeot Theme in the ninth century and was accessible to Muslim merchants during periods of truce.
The references to the Muslim West's maritime activity touch on the state of the coast in the tenth and eleventh centuries and largely overlap with the information Ibn Hawqal provided about the same itineraries. Later descriptions, such as those by the anonymous author of the _Kitab al-Istibsar_ (twelfth century), update al-Bakri's itineraries, showing the densification of coastal navigation and maritime journeys in the Almohad period: skirting all of the western coasts from the shores bordering the Sahara, maritime activity fits into the long span of coastal navigation and seasonal sailing identifiable as of the ninth century. The maritime route was often preferred for moving people and goods, particularly in regions difficult to access by land, such as the Rif. Thanks to their years of experience, sailors enjoyed great respect throughout the Muslim countries—this was still true in Egypt under Saladin, for example. They were equally renowned on the coasts of Christian Europe—as formidable sailors and pirates.
The geographer established the sequence of the lists of maritime itineraries based on the political context of the ninth century. The description of ports, the selection of sites, and the monuments mentioned generally serve as reminders of the reality of the framework of sultanate power, as in all Arab geographic descriptions. Borrowing ancient systems of measurement for maritime routes from the Fortune (Canary) Islands that were based on astronomical calculations, he designated the ocean coast as the starting point for any maritime measurement, taken from west to east. The Maghrebi origin of the charting of maritime routes is confirmed by the reference to itineraries on the Alboran Sea connecting Maghrebi and Iberian ports, staggered along the coasts from the far Mediterranean to Denia on the north shore, to the center of the Maghreb. The length of the journey was calculated in days. However, the author does recognize that the communities of sailors in Andalusian ports initiated these commercial journeys, stating that they traveled each winter from their Iberian haven to the ports of the Maghreb. This led to the founding or redevelopment of ports such as Ténès, in 875, and Oran, in 902.
The route was charted north from the threshold of the Atlantic Sahara, across the strait and along the shores of the Maghreb, then Libya, to reach the area of the Nile delta. The last stretch described follows the shore of the Bilad al-Sham to the Anatolian coast. Inspired by al-Hawwari, the geographer reproduced a north–south itinerary of the "ports located between the Maghreb el-Aqsa—Massa on the banks of the Sous, then the Banc d'Arguin in Mauritania—and Asilah." This route for transporting Saharan goods would remain unchanged until the Portuguese took advantage of the trade winds to set sail directly from the Banc d'Arguin or ports farther south and reach Madeira before continuing to the Moroccan or Portuguese coast. Once the ocean was reached, the journey was broken into several stages, from Cape Spartel to Aslan, from Aslan to Mahdia, from Mahdia to Alexandria, and from there to Antalya.
The sailors from al-Andalus are presented as descendants of the Berbers who had settled along eastern coasts up to Tortosa. This migration had begun early in the ninth century with the revolt of the two uncles of Umayyad emir al-Hakam I, Sulayman and 'Abd Allah, who took refuge in Tahert. They were supported by the Berber crews in Rustamid ports, particularly those of Ténès. Some remained where they were and entered the service of the Umayyad emir to fight the Carolingians at sea. Berber colonization started again during the reign of 'Abd al-Rahman II and at the beginning of the reign of Emir Muhammad. It was these sailors who would set sail each winter from their base on the European shore to trade with their cousins on the coasts of Africa.
## The Berbers, Experienced Sailors
From his field of observation on the western Mediterranean, between the Strait of Gibraltar and the Tyrrhenian Sea, al-Bakri bore witness to a global rise in sea traffic. The principal agents of this development were the Berber communities on both continents. The western African seaboard became one of the major hubs of this trade in the West, as shown by the increase in traffic in certain ports, such as Ceuta, Oran, and Hunayn, during the geographer's lifetime. After the first Viking attacks, al-Andalus initiated regular commercial relations with towns on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of both continents. This dynamism is evidenced by the annual presence of sailors from the Iberian Peninsula at the market in Asilah, close to Tangier, at the foot of the ribat founded by the Luwata Berbers shortly after the Norsemen's attack in 844, as well as the founding of Ténès Lahdar in 875 by Andalusian sailors who were presented as descendants of the earlier city's inhabitants, now returned to the land of their ancestors:
> They [the sailors from Escombreras] were in the habit, when they left [the shores of] al-Andalus, of spending the winter in the port of Ténès. The Berbers of the surrounding area having come to join them, they invited them to settle in the castle [old Ténès, which had thus been repopulated] and to hold a market there.... Soon they saw a great deal of people arrive, among whom were all their old [Berber] friends [who had settled in al-Andalus]. At the beginning of spring, they all got sick, and the Andalusians, judging the town unhealthy, got back on their ships [to return to al-Andalus]. The colonists who remained in Ténès saw their numbers increase, their wealth grow, and some time later they welcomed four hundred families from Suq Ibrahim, who were accustomed to sleeping under a tent, and shared their accommodations and goods with them. They all helped each other in the construction work and in Ténès they erected the fortified town ( _hisn_ ) that still stands there.
This fine example of economic dynamism coincided with 'Abd al-Rahman II's opening of the emirate's ports to maritime activity, an initiative taken to enjoy the tax benefits of the development of regular trade by levying a toll at the end of the maritime routes on the Alboran Sea. The records associate the implementation of a defense program, illustrated by the spate of ribats, with the rise in maritime commerce. This correlation would attribute the location of several ribats on coastlines unthreatened by enemies, such as Massa on the Atlantic Coast, to a decision informed by commercial strategy. The designation of the site as a ribat suggests that the primary reason for its founding was related to a religious and commercial function of the coasts. The two causes were perfectly compatible.
Al-Bakri had at his disposal a great deal of information from the maritime environment. As noted earlier, the Eastern geographers and encyclopedists also had access to local sources and reports kept by the Abbasid chancelleries; consequently, while al-Bakri's method was not new, the depiction of the Maghreb as the cradle of the western Mediterranean's commercial dynamism in the ninth century was the product of an uncommon approach. He made use of maritime rutters featuring daymarks, the coastal points of reference by which sailors traveling along the coast could determine their position, to reveal a maritime route established from the open sea rather than dry land. These rutters also included possible anchorages in bays, like the one in Tangier, which was exclusively accessible to shallow-draft boats, as well as the direction of the winds to which anchorages were exposed. However, as with all _adab_ texts, the commentary omitted technical details. There is no sign of original rutters again until the Portuguese and Arabic rutters of the fifteenth century, the latter of which are only found on the Indian side of the Muslim maritime domain. In the meantime, the naval itineraries in the geographic sources were heavily simplified. Al-Bakri wrote,
> We will indicate a series of ports here, in the order in which they present themselves to the traveler leaving from Aslan headed for the East. The first they encounter is Marsa l-ma' al-mafdun. There are a few habitations nearby and some springs whose waters flow into the sea. This port is 13 miles from Aslan; it is separated from Marsa l-Rahib, which is located across from it on the coast of al-Andalus, by a crossing of two days and one third. The harbor of Oran, which comes next, is very big and is good for wintering, protected from all the winds.
There were 151 anchorages, ranging from the smallest havens to major ports, available to coasters following Muslim shores from Nul Lamta in the south of Morocco to Antalya in Anatolia.
It is not surprising that the geographer, who was long based in Almería, had access to documents intended for navigation, just as al-Idrisi would a century later, thanks to the admiralty of Palermo. This data seems to indicate that the century of the Fatimid and Umayyad caliphates was marked by a renewal of nautical documentation, coinciding with Muslim efforts to expand their presence on the sea and jurists' endeavors to make sailing legal according to the criteria of Islam. This specialized literature is only mentioned in passing in the medieval Arabic sources, despite the fact that it represented the experience of several generations of sailors, gathered since at least the ninth century and largely memorized and passed on orally before being recorded in writing. Consequently, the accumulation of rutters and oral and written information that al-Bakri drew from was vast, collected at different periods, which prevents us from accurately dating the point at which these documents were composed, with a few exceptions, such as the founding of Ténès (875). Indeed, there is no indication that all of these itineraries were active at the same time, nor any suggestion of the scope of this potential traffic. All that is certain is that the geographer intended to demonstrate the vigor of the maritime activity initiated by Maghreb inhabitants.
Regarding this question, al-Bakri did not fail to mention that maritime activities and coastal ports were also under the control of tribes that exploited maritime resources. This enabled the tribes to pay their tax to the emirs—the Idrisids of Fez, the Salihids of Nekor, and the Rustamids of Tahert—or to provide them with boats and equipment, but the system also guaranteed a great deal of autonomy. Aslan, the first port cited from the Mediterranean rutter, was run by "inhabitants [who] belong to the [Banu] Maghila"; further along, al-Bakri refers to "Marsa Maghila, a port named after the Maghila, a part of the tribe of Hashim." The geographer is even more explicit in the section on the emirate of Nekor, in which he specifies that several ports of the Moroccan Rif were in the hands of the Berbers: "Among the other ports of the same territory [Nekor] one distinguishes Badia, Buquya, and Balish, the port of the Sanhaja." In discussing the Idrisid zone, al-Bakri refers to the "Masmuda [tribal confederacy] on the coast that is part of the dependencies of Tangier." At the same time, as had happened in Ténès and the Andalusian ports revitalized since the beginning of the ninth century, these communities merged into mixed populations of Arab, Berber, and Andalusian background, converted or Mozarab: rather than a specifically Berber phenomenon, what is at issue here is Islamization and Arabization, but also the expansion of maritime trade.
Ibn Khaldun's _Muqqadima_ often returns to this social and political rearrangement of Maghrebi society, which pits the short-lived power of a sultanate against the tribal structure that is the inexhaustible base of that society. Ibn Khaldun was apparently heavily inspired by al-Bakri's overview, particularly when he explains the Muslims' maritime development by the sultanates' ability to mobilize the experience of the region's sailors against the Latins.
By considerably expanding the description of the Maghrebi area compared to that of the other regions—and particularly at the expense of his own homeland—al-Bakri revealed a new polycentrism in Western Islam: al-Andalus was relegated to the position of a peripheral frontier, while the East seemed to be running out of steam. The maritime space, which the two Western caliphates had fought over in the tenth century, had largely benefited from the Berber initiatives long responsible for a significant part of its exploitation in the western zone. However, it was the regional emirates, before the caliphs, who were able to put this manpower to work on their behalf, particularly on the sea. The Rustamids had followed the same approach with the 'Ibadi Berbers in the Sahara.
# THE ALMOHADS AND THE SEA, MEDIEVAL ISLAM'S LAST IMPERIALIST PUSH ON THE MEDITERRANEAN
Paradoxically, it was Saladin who uttered one of the finest compliments about the Almohad fleet, via the pen of his secretary al-Fadl. Admittedly, this letter his representative Ibn Munqid delivered to Caliph al-Mansur in 1190 requested that the "Muslim West help the Muslims even more than the infidel East helps the infidel." However, the sultan unambiguously recognized that there was only a single naval force in Islam that could measure up to the Latin fleets—that of the Maghrebi caliphate. The large number of ships mentioned in the letter is confirmed by the figures provided by Ibn Abi Zar', a fourteenth-century historian from Fez, who states that in 1162 " 'Abd al-Mu'min had four hundred ships built." Though its reliability remains questionable, this assessment by a historian of the Marinid period provides an idea of the extraordinary mobilization the Almohad sovereign orchestrated to ensure he had at his command the naval force essential to allow him to conquer all of Islam and honor his title of caliph.
In 1150, 'Abd al-Mu'min had completed the annexation of Almoravid territory and could now consider pursuing the conquest to the east. He put great care into preparing the campaign against the capital of the Hammadids (1015–1152), the scope of which signaled a change in the scale of military campaigns, with a significant mobilization of human and material resources, both on land and at sea. After the victory at Sétif in 1152, the campaign allowed him to annex the domains of the Hammadids, then the Zirids. In 1160, a new campaign, which had required an equally formidable land and sea mobilization, brought victory over the Norman squadron in Sicily and ended with the conquest of Mahdia and the coastal towns of Ifriqiya up to Tripoli. The sovereigns of Marrakech now claimed a caliphal title, which gave the sultan of Cairo cause to fear that their significant naval and ground resources might be used to conquer Egypt.
However, after the successes in the Maghreb, the situation in al-Andalus completely monopolized the Almohads' military resources against the Christians: in 1162, the caliphate mobilized the army and the fleet for a campaign in the Iberian Peninsula, which was fought on several fronts and therefore justified the construction of the four hundred ships. 'Abd al-Mu'min would die before they were completed. His successors, Abu Ya'qub Yusuf (1163–1184) and his son Abu Yusuf Ya'qub (1184–1198), waged war in the Peninsula while the dissident Ibn Ghaniya, a member of a family formerly in the service of the Almoravids, succeeded in taking control of the Balearics and refused to recognize the caliphs' authority. He seized Béjaïa in 1185, then opened a new front in Ifriqiya, threatening and weakening the Almohads from within their own empire. Consequently, the potential ambition to expand to the east was no longer an option as of 1160.
This universalist ambition rested on a strategy of comprehensive mobilization of ground and naval forces when the objective was located close to the sea. In 1195, after the defeat of Alfonso VIII (1158–1214) at Alarcos, Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur ordered the founding of Rabat, transforming a military camp set up in 1150 on orders from 'Abd al-Mu'min into a caliphal city. This camp, which surrounded a palace on the south side of the Bou Regreg river, across from Salé, had become the gathering place for troops on all the campaigns planned by the first sovereign. The Moroccan capital's position had numerous advantages over Marrakech, the capital of the dynasty. Among its undeniable assets was the proximity of the fertile Atlantic plains, which made it easier to provide food for thousands of men and animals; a significantly shorter distance between the base camp and the front, whether Andalusian or Maghrebi; and the accessibility of the sea and the squadron. As indicated by Ibn Abi Zar''s text, the port of al-Ma'mura, which was built at the mouth of the Sebou, north of Salé, close to the forests that provided some of the lumber for shipbuilding, became the empire's principal dockyard, where 120 ships were constructed for the first naval campaign against the port of Béjaïa.
## Building on the Legacies
The organization of the fleet is often presented as a mere result of the takeover of the Almoravid fleet by the Almohads, the new masters of the western Maghreb, with all its weapons, equipment, crews, and admirals included. There is no doubt that the Almohads wanted to take advantage of the infrastructure and fleets available thanks to the efficient maritime organization in place from the Umayyad era through the Almoravid period; for instance, the rallying of the admirals who commanded the Almoravid squadrons, all members of the Banu Maymun family, made it possible to organize the blockade of Ceuta and Oran, without which these coastal cities could not be seized.
The Almohads had control over a significant stretch of the seaboard, ranging from the ocean coastlines to Tripoli of Libya. However, they were not able to take control of all the ports of the Almoravid period. The most serious loss was of two strategic estuaries: the mouths of the Ebro at Tortosa, which was destroyed by Genoa and Pisa in 1146, and the Tagus, which had been seized by the young Portuguese kingdom along with Lisbon in 1147. The Portuguese capital and the ports of the northern coast provided the necessary human and material resources for Afonso Henriques (1128–1185) to form the first Christian naval force to fight Islam on the ocean. On the other side of the Iberian Peninsula, it took an exceptional mobilization and nearly ten-year blockade to recapture Almería. Defeat in the Balearics, which remained out of reach until 1205, was equally damaging. On the other hand, the Almohad seaboard expanded considerably to the east, at the expense of the Hammadids and their capital, then of the Normans in Ifriqiya. Through control of Tunis, Mahdia, and Tripoli, Western Muslims once again had access to the eastern Mediterranean. However, their ground army and fleet were totally occupied by the war in al-Andalus. The rise in power of the Tyrrhenian ports on one side of the Peninsula and of the Portuguese fleet on the other (until its defeat at Cabo Espichel, south of the Portuguese capital, in 1181), followed by the intervention in the south of Portugal in 1189 of largely English crusaders on their way to the Third Crusade, demanded not only terrestrial campaigns but the presence of the caliphal fleet in Iberian waters, ready to intervene on both sides of the Peninsula at once if necessary.
The protection of trade routes was equally important. Maritime traffic benefited from this investment, particularly on the Atlantic rim. The written documents provide convincing evidence that the ports were thriving as the outlets of a now-unified inland region after the elimination of Barghawata resistance. Along with the construction of the dockyard at al-Ma'mura, port infrastructures were reinforced all along the Maghreb's ocean seaboard up to the threshold of the Sahara. Azemmour and Safi, the two cities that served as ports for Marrakech, experienced rapid growth.
The importance of the sea in the Almohad dynasty's plans was therefore not simply a matter of 'Abd al-Mu'min's being a native of the maritime region of Hunayn. The conquest of strategic coastal towns, particularly Ceuta and Oran, would have been impossible without a fleet; similarly, the major mobilizations of the squadron ensured the success of the campaigns against Almería in 1158, Béjaïa in 1151 and 1184, and Tunis and Mahdia in 1159–1160. The surviving letters of the Almohad chancellery, which reflect the caliphs' positions, provide remarkable insight into the strategic data that put the maritime space at the center of the empire.
## The Exceptional Promotion of the Maritime Administration and Naval Campaigns in the Context of the Almohad Jihad
While the available caliphal documentation has not yet yielded all of its secrets, the relative abundance of information about the sea is a telltale sign. The number of chronicles preserved is admittedly higher than under previous dynasties, but the sea plays a relatively important part in all of them. The Maghrebi and Andalusian historians were officials of the chancelleries who were aware of the sea's importance. Al-Baydhaq, who belonged to the small circle of the first companions of Ibn Tumart (1130) and 'Abd al-Mu'min, left a valuable account of the beginnings of the movement. Ibn Sahib al-Salat (d. after 1173), a native of the Beja area in the Portuguese region of Alentejo, a member of the _makhzin_ (royal court / administration), and the head of caliphal finances, wrote a chronicle covering the years 1159–1173, featuring remarkably precise information about the caliphal administration in al-Andalus. 'Abd al-Wahid al-Marrakushi (d. after 1224) produced a compilation about the dynasty covering the entire period up to 1224. As for Ibn al-Qattan (d. 1231), a native of Fez, the detailed and original nature of the information he provided, in particular about the navy, shows that he must have been highly familiar with the palace and administrative circles.
This nonexhaustive list must be rounded out by the great later chronicles by Ibn 'Idhari, Ibn Khaldun, and Ibn al-Athir, which I mentioned previously for earlier periods. The number of references to the engagement of the caliph's squadrons, as well as the details provided, show that Ibn 'Idhari, the author of a history of the Maghreb, had access to precise information about everything relating to the sea, and particularly to naval battles, which are exceptionally described in the Arabic chronicles but are missing for previous periods.
The chancellery letters, many of which have survived, show the caliphs' personal interest in the organization of the fleet. These messages disseminated a variety of news reports that reveal the essential role played by the squadron, the preferred weapon of the Almohad caliphate's "strategy of universalization."
In terms of maritime policy, 'Abd al-Mu'min's primary concern was to control traffic between the two continents. After capturing Ceuta in 1146, he made the port city the gathering place for the fleet, which used it as a base from which to traverse all of the empire's naval spaces. In one of his letters to the _talaba—_ officials who held a high rank in the caliphate's hierarchy, immediately below the _sayyids_ (members of the Almohad family), and were taught to spread Almohad doctrine and head the administration of the provinces—serving in the port on the strait, he asked for strict control of sea traffic in this important strategic zone, in order to block off traffic with ports like Málaga and Almuñécar, which did not always submit to caliphal authority. At the same time, he appointed Abu Muhammad 'Abd Allah b. Sulayman to serve as both head of the squadron and governor of the city; he was intentionally creating a precedent by entrusting two positions to the same person, a close friend of the caliph who had originally gained recognition as an admiral. In a letter written to the port city's inhabitants from Rabat in May 1156, the caliph pledged bay'a—which amounted to proclaiming the name of the heir to the throne, in this case his son Abu 'Abd Allah b. 'Abd al-Mu'min—then provided a series of specifications regarding the administration of maritime traffic:
> The _talaba_ of Ceuta and its regions—may God assist them—consulted together regarding the sea and the means of crossing it. They debated about the question of the security of ports and the surrounding areas, because it [the sea] is the connection between the two shores.... It is necessary to unite the entire Ghomara country and the tribes settled as far as Ceuta and Tangier, the "two islands" [Algeciras and Tarifa], Malága and its dependencies. All these areas need to be brought together and administered by a single governor. This would facilitate the task on an administrative level; this way we could build a war fleet for the great expedition [planned against the infidel] under one leader.
The province of the "two shores" and its ports were under the orders of a single governor headquartered in the naval base. In keeping with a practice expanded to all of the empire's provinces, admiral and governor 'Abd Allah b. Sulayman's immediate superior was one of the caliph's sons, _sayyid_ Abu Sa'id 'Uthman. In referring to the two principal African ports, Ibn Khaldun himself drew attention to the strait's strategic importance within the naval apparatus: "Since 'Abd al-Mu'min's accession to the throne, Ceuta and Tangier had always been considered the two most important governments of the Almohad empire, since they were at once maritime fortresses, sea ports, shipbuilding dockyards, and embarkation points for volunteers for the jihad. Therefore, the command of these cities was always entrusted to _sayyids._ "
The sovereign also wanted to express the importance he granted to the administration of maritime spaces. By imposing a chain of command headed by the Commander of the Faithful himself, the caliph was reviving a tradition established by the Fatimid and Umayyad caliphs. The choice of the Atlantic coast as the site for the dynastic ribat (Rabat), both terrestrial and maritime, can only be understood by connecting the founding of Rabat and al-Ma'mura to the dynasty's original spaces: Igiliz, the Almohad movement's first ribat, in the Sous valley; Tinmal, the initial base for the doctrine and conquest, founded by Ibn Tumart in the Atlas Mountains; Marrakech, the dynasty's first capital; and Rabat, the departure point for the campaigns aiming to achieve the conquest of Islam by land and sea.
The caliph asked for the regime's dignitaries to be sent a report of the major campaigns, in which the navy often played a determining role. Of the thirty-seven chancellery letters published by Évariste Lévi-Provençal, six concern expeditions that required the squadron's support. Along with the creation of the maritime province of the strait and the circumstances of the founding of Gibraltar, these reports, which were widely distributed in the chancelleries, covered at least five major campaigns during which the navy distinguished itself. These accounts reveal the extent to which the fleet had become a source of pride for the caliphate. The squadrons' interventions showed that the caliphs could strike wherever they wanted and that no land was inaccessible to them. An indispensable tool in an empire with the sea at its heart, the fleet also became one of the essential weapons of the jihad, made a mainstay of caliphal universality by Ibn Tumart and 'Abd al-Mu'min. After the victorious campaign of 1203–1205 in the Balearics, which had required extensive human and material resources, al-Nasir expressed the place that control of the sea held in the sovereign's strategy by presenting the expedition as "a victory against the Christians and their principalities on the Mediterranean coastline. Indeed, the taking of Mallorca is a real catastrophe for the king of Aragon and Barcelona."
With this statement, the Almohad leader also showed that the period during which the Almohads had been unable to control the Balearics had been an even greater catastrophe for them. In fact, the archipelago was lost to Islam by 1229.
## The Sovereign's Personal Relationship to the Maritime World
If we exclude crossings of the Strait of Gibraltar, the caliph's presence on a ship in 1160 to inspect the defenses of Mahdia, then under siege by his fleet, was a rare occurrence. However, the texts frequently refer to the sovereigns' fondness for the sea and, especially, their personal interest in the fleet and sailors. Histories about the Almohad sovereigns report a few speeches in which these rulers revealed their constant concern with maritime space, a concern shared with the Umayyads of Córdoba and the Fatimids, and for the same reasons. Several authors of the period even describe practices completely unparalleled in previous periods, emphasizing the navy's place in the representation of Almohad sovereignty. For instance, figures in the highest leadership positions, particularly in the military, had to know how to command a ship and a squadron. Ibn al-Qattan and Ibn Simak (d. after 1383) both described this form of schooling:
> There were nearly three thousand _huffaz_ [the "guardians" of the faith, or "those who know the Koran by heart"], all the same age, from good families, and, it was said, born on the same night; they were taught the works of the Almohad Mahdi, such as the _tawhid,_ over a period of six months. The caliph personally took responsibility for testing their knowledge and giving them advice. On other days, he trained them and introduced them to all the techniques of combat, fencing, archery, dueling with spears, and throwing javelins; he had them take riding and swimming lessons and do physical exercises; the caliph also presided over maritime maneuvers in an artificial body of water close to his palace [in Marrakech] and built for this purpose. Large and small crafts ( _qata'i_ ) participated in these maneuvers and the novice sailors had to learn to row, to fight, to board enemy ships, and to command their units. This teaching was sometimes brutally conveyed, other times more civilly. The expense for these students' education was entirely covered by the _makhzin._
Next, training courses were held at sea, along with launches of the fleet at Ceuta, both to provide an opportunity to admire the caliphs' formidable black galleys and to teach students the complex piloting of a squadron. The _huffaz_ were distinguished members of the Berber tribes, recruited to become "officers" of the caliphate, trained both to be in the administration and to command the army and navy. The _tullab,_ the elite that composed the government entourage, were recruited from their ranks. This "school" represented the caliph's close tie to the sea. By building an artificial body of water big enough to simulate a naval battle in his capital, located deep inland, the sovereign created the impression of bringing the sea to himself; more than a real "naval academy," this adornment to the palace, like its fountains and even more so its naval exercises verging on performances, expressed the caliphate's universalist ambitions. The indoctrination of the _huffaz_ was achieved by teaching them the doctrine of Ibn Tumart, along with lessons in ethics sometimes taught by the philosopher caliph Abu Ya'qub Yusuf himself. This schooling had an impact beyond mere training for naval warfare, while the symbolic presence of the sea in the caliphal palace was also far from groundless. This is confirmed by a letter, probably dictated by 'Abd al-Mu'min during the reorganization of the navy, in which the importance of the maritime space in the representation of caliphal universality comes into focus:
> You have demonstrated great loyalty to us. You have shown all your ability to work for the common good, on land as on sea. The sea is an unknown that demands great vigilance. Behind this sea there are so many nations and countries that reap enormous benefits from maritime activities.... There is so much at stake in this area that the sea is vital for your region and that is why we have decided, with Allah's help, to remedy past shortfalls in the interest of all, the traveler like the tradesman.... Be aware that the sea is an asset for you. It is a source of life, it provides you daily sustenance and maritime commerce generates great profits.... We know that when we are absent from the city you are the guarantors that its institutions function properly.... The new admiral allows every hope for we only know him to have qualities and he succeeds at everything he undertakes. He is the best of all the Almohad _tullab._
The Mother Sea, the defense of the Dar al-Islam, and the protection of the merchant and traveler were themes of sovereignty, referencing the Koran, and were fundamental responsibilities of the caliph's government, delegated to the admiral, a leading figure ruling at the caliph's side. Far from our contemporary notion of "territorial waters," the maritime zone controlled by the fleet was theoretically unlimited, like the caliph's sovereignty, which was supposed to extend to the entire world. However, the caliph's authority on the sea had never previously been theorized in such a clear, precise manner. Coinciding with this idyll between the sultan and maritime space, Arabic literary production about the sea had never been as prolific in the West as in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
## A Familiar Sea
The earliest preserved letters and maritime travel diaries in which the experience of the maritime journey figures prominently date from the twelfth century, despite the fact that embarking for a crossing—for instance, to make the pilgrimage to Mecca—had by then long been commonplace. Should this be interpreted as a sign of a change in perception of travel by water? The most famous travel diary ( _rihla_ ) is by Ibn Jubayr, who boarded a Genoese ship in Ceuta in February 1183 and reached Alexandria in less than one month, proving that galleys also sailed during the off season. The crossing to and from Alexandria—the return journey was interrupted by the Genoese boat's shipwreck on the coast of Sicily—has an essential place in the pilgrim's narrative. The reason the Andalusian man of letters left one of the most precise accounts of seafaring we have is that he felt he was being put to the test every time he embarked, a feeling that went beyond the usual accounts of a sea crossing's potential risks. The legacy of a long-established practice, the sea crossing was less risky aboard a Christian ship and less expensive and quicker than traveling by land. Like the exploitation of the sea by those who lived on its shores, particularly in the Maghreb, the sea crossing bears witness to the maritime world's essential place in the collective memory of Muslims living close to the Mediterranean. There are numerous traces of the crossing in Arabic literature of the period. Among the writers who passed down their memories of maritime experiences, Ibn 'Amira, a member of the entourage of Caliph al-Rashid (1232–1242), left a long account of his trying journey aboard a Hafsid ship that was to take him from Ceuta to Tunis.
Travel narratives devoted an increasing amount of attention to maritime transport. The hagiographies inform us that with favorable winds a sailboat could reach Salé from the Strait of Gibraltar in under three days. Biographies of Sufis, who were heavily involved in the sea trades and traveled frequently, confirm that travel by sea, whether for professional or other reasons, was commonplace. The caliphal administration set the example. Ibn 'Idhari passes down the travel account of Almohad dignitaries traveling directly between the Guadalquivir and Mazagan; Ibn Sahib al-Salat reports that 'Abd al-Mu'min significantly improved the caliphate's maritime postal service, compared to the Almoravid period, and that it played a significant part in communications between the empire's regions. We also have a description of an inspection tour conducted by 'Abd al-Salam al-Kumi, a representative of the caliph who was able to carry out his mission in fifteen days, including the round-trip crossings between Salé and Seville, with a stop in Córdoba.
Al-Bakri had already reported on progress in the description of the seas and the increasingly accurate knowledge of various areas thanks to far more comprehensive mapping of coastal zones. This evolution of geography reached a peak in the twelfth century with _The Book of Roger,_ in particular because its author was able to be equally meticulous in describing the Muslim and Christian areas of the Mediterranean borderlands. He regularly provided details about the sea and its resources, as did al-Zuhri, a probable native of Almería who explained the migration and fishing of bluefin tuna and its treatment in the eponymous business in Tarifa, close to the fishing zones; it is no secret how much tuna fishing in Sicily owes to the Muslim period. The Sicilian geographer al-Idrisi also liked to mention marine fauna, for instance by listing the twelve known species of fish caught in the area of Bizerte. As for the author of the _Kitab al-Istibsar,_ he shared al-Zuhri's curiosity about mullet fishing and the inevitable legends that went along with this kind of story. The curiosity of geographers starting with al-Idrisi was also aroused by coral mining, an equally lucrative activity, albeit a difficult one. This rapid overview simply suggests that knowledge of the maritime space and its riches went hand in hand with a more intense occupation of a now-familiar maritime environment.
While the Sicilian's geographic work remained "largely indebted to the classics of Arab geography," in his treatment of both the Islamic world and more distant worlds, it completed and considerably enriched the available facts. Al-Idrisi quite systematically distinguishes the routes "by land" ( _tariq al-barr_ ) from the routes "by sea" ( _tariq al-bahr_ ), both in his book of geography and in a work attributed to him and specifically devoted to itineraries. He had access to information precise enough to allow him to differentiate between those sea itineraries on the Atlantic Ocean that were direct— _rusiyya_ (like a taut rope)—and those that ran along the coast— _taqwiran_ (in a curve). For Latin Europe, he had access to reports by a variety of sources. Those provided by a Portuguese navigator and a Gascon from Bayonne, transcribed by an Arabic speaker, allowed him to inventory the maritime itineraries to Santiago de Compostela from Bordeaux on one side and Coimbra on the other. He is the only author, including among the Latins, to have passed down knowledge of these pilgrimage routes by sea. As we have seen, the circulation of information on the sea touched on many subjects, including those in the technical realm, and easily crossed the borders between Christianity and Islam.
## The Sea of the Jurists and Saints, a Space of Law and Sacredness
A work written toward the middle of the ninth century, the _Treatise Concerning the Leasing of Ships and the Claims between Passengers_ ( _Kitab akriyat al-sufun wa l-naza bayna ahliha_ ), marked an acceleration in the region's production of jurisprudence about the sea, which at this date was exclusively Malaki. This jurisprudence would reach an apex in the Almoravid and Almohad period (twelfth to thirteenth centuries). Of the jurists who produced fatwas related to maritime space, three figures of the twelfth century stand out, all of whose opinions are well represented in the fifteenth-century anthology by al-Wansharisi: the Andalusian Abu l-Walid b. Rushd (d. 1126), the Sicilian-born Ifriqiyan al-Mazari (d. 1141), and the Qadi 'Iyad from Ceuta (d. 1179):
> Question: al-Mazari was consulted regarding a partnership contract stipulating that three people were forming a partnership, with one supplying ten _qafiz_ of sumac and the other two supplying two donkeys. The deal was made based on a loan from the former to the other two. The negotiation then established that it [would be of] five dinars, of which they would have to pay two thirds in taxes. [They also established] that the owners of the two donkeys would take everything to Sicily. But once both of them were on the ship, an adverse wind picked up and they had to go back to a village near Mahdia. One of them unloaded his donkey and gave up on the trip after having made this agreement for a partnership.
Like all jurists, these three legal experts largely used predecessors' fatwas directly or indirectly relating to the maritime domain, often to update them, as was the accepted jurisprudential practice. At the same time, certain questions led them to deal with contemporary events: thus, in twelve fatwas, al-Mazari more specifically addressed the problems that could arise due to ties maintained by the people of Ifriqiya with Muslims who lived in Sicily, now under Christian domination. In al-Andalus, the "victory of the great Andalusian qadis" under the Almoravid regime spurred the production of several fatwas up to the Almohad period, all of which related to the development of maritime exchanges and the frequency of crossings between Europe and Africa. One of these qadis was Ibn Rushd, grandfather of the philosopher Averroes, who focused on issues relating to pilgrims' travel to Mecca. Qadi 'Iyad, a native of Ceuta, often expressed himself on legal questions relating to the sea.
These jurists' attention to maritime issues highlights a major societal development that had begun in the tenth century. As of the twelfth century, the rapid expansion of commerce in Muslim ports, the practice of sea travel, and naval war and its effects created a demand for a more precise, updated legislative framework on chartering, the consequences of shipwrecks, and the status of sailors, as well as new social phenomena like the status of wives left alone by seafaring husbands or the conditions for travel in infidel lands, which was theoretically forbidden and required a legislator's intervention.
The importance of mystic "saints" in the society of the Muslim West can be measured by the production of _tasawwuf_ literature, new biographical works about Sufi saints, as of the end of the twelfth century. These lives of saints contain a great deal of information about the sea, particularly in works by mystics living on the shores of the Mediterranean, such as al-Badisi (d. 1322), a fourteenth-century biographer who spent his entire life in his native city of Badis on the craggy coastline of the Rif. The attraction to marine horizons in religious circles was not a new phenomenon, as al-Maliki showed in the eleventh century. With the rise of Sufism, retreating to a ribat or a high elevation facing the sea became a favored ascetic practice to follow the mystic path ( _tariqa_ ). This ascetic virtue developed in the ribats in increasingly varied forms, ranging from retreat to a hermitage on the frontier, sometimes built by the saint himself, to the large initiatory fellowships where masters taught disciples. The graves of the most famous masters attracted numerous followers, prefiguring the appearance of lodges ( _zawiyas_ ) in the Maghreb and Iberian Peninsula in the twelfth century.
The rise of Sufism stimulated other forms of mysticism, in both urban societies and rural communities, where many of these respected figures played an important social role. Unlike the Almoravids, the Almohad caliphs found their cohabitation with mystical circles eased by their frequent alliances with the Malikis. This proximity to the power and success of the mystical movements led to the production of biographies devoted to the most famous masters, starting in the late twelfth century and including the treatise by Muhammad al-Tamimi (d. 1208) and, early in the thirteenth century, a major text by al-Tadili. However, the best way to comprehend the Sufi school remains the "classic" biographical dictionaries, which particularly provide a better sense of the movement's size in a city like Ceuta, a major center of Maghrebi Sufism.
This is the context in which the marine world enters the hagiographic literature, insofar as the professions of the sea, but also travel and participation in naval activities, encouraged many vocations to holiness. Al-Badisi's approach is characteristic of this particular tie, formed with the people of his seaside city in the Rif. His fourteenth-century book about the lives of several saints of the Rif describes many acts of piety related to the sea. Throughout these biographies, a great deal of information is provided about maritime life and its trades, as well as the dangers posed by Christian piracy. Before al-Badisi, Muhammad al-Tamimi left many accounts of maritime practices, particularly on fishing and the life of people of the sea. Miracles, these narratives' main subject, often took place on or by the sea. Al-'Afazi, the author of a biography of the saints of the thirteenth century, highlighted several of the saints' baraka (beneficent force) _:_ during crossings, they were able to save crews from a raging sea or to deliver prisoners from the hands of Christian pirates without entering into combat. The sea had become one of the preferred settings for theatricalizing miracles, directly or through the intercession of a saint appealed to by another mystic: "Abu Jami' said: 'I arrived in Alexandria. I found a boat there bound for Quz. The sea started to rage, people began to bid each other goodbye.' I said: 'O Sidi Abu Zayd, my thought is with you.' The sea calmed down as soon as I appealed to the shaykh."
Even once the last Mediterranean caliphate had died out, the ties formed between the people of Islam and the maritime space did not disappear. Nonetheless, the Almohad decline brought about an attitude of defiance toward a now Latin sea, a defiance that had already reached the Mediterranean East by the time of the Mamluk sultans. Like the historians of his era, Ibn Khaldun considered the Mediterranean lost to the Muslims. However, the societies of Maghrebi ports such as Béjaïa continued to live off the sea and to perpetuate the tradition of highly skilled sailors who made the region's reputation.
# II
MEDITERRANEAN STRATEGIES OF THE CALIPHS
MOST OF THE INFORMATION provided by the Arabic texts tends to create a picture of a Mediterranean space seized and dominated by the caliphs and the authorities, particularly those in the legal sphere. The Christian perception of the Arab occupation and development of the Sea of the Romans in the first centuries of the Middle Ages reinforces this impression of a maritime space reduced to a field of confrontations, wiping out any other initiative. The discovery of the Geniza letters and Shlomo Goitein's interpretation of this treasure have dispelled the idea of a caliphal monopoly on activity on the sea and brought to light the existence of another Muslim Mediterranean, one of merchants accompanied by pious travelers headed to Mecca and of scholars roaming the Islamic world at the very moment when the Latins were taking over.
However, despite the precariousness of accounts from the "dark" centuries, the sum of information provided by Arab geographers and, sometimes, external documents—in particular Latin sources—reveals a far greater diversity of activity related to the sea. It also shows human development—considerable on the scale of the period—of the shores of the inner sea, at least as of the ninth century in Islam, at the time and in the regions where Islam's authority was reinforced. In fact, the situation of the Muslim Mediterranean mirrors that of the Latin shores in that it must be understood in continuity with the medieval occupation and development of the sea and measured with instruments other than purely "economic" gauges, which are ineffective for a period without available statistics.
The same sultanate sources, supplemented by the tremendous production of the ulema, yield another idea of the Muslims' relationship to the Sea of the Romans. Yes, confrontation was one of the matrices of the Muslim Mediterranean's development. But as the caliphates' commercial strategies show, Islam's impact on developments of the medieval Mediterranean, as well as the diversity of domains opened on the sea and revealed by the Muslims, can be grasped through a group of far more complex factors, supplied by varied records, though most come from the chancelleries of the caliphates and sultanates and the writings of those in the circles of power.
#
THE MEDITERRANEAN OF THE TWO EMPIRES
BEGINNING WITH THE TAKING of Gaza in 634, two years after the death of Muhammad, the Arab conquerors prioritized conquering the Mediterranean Sea and the bordering Christian lands. Mu'awiya declared that it was necessary to use the naval resources left by the Byzantines in Egypt and Syria to attack the Greeks on the water, in order to block supplies from reaching strongholds on the coast of the Bilad al-Sham that were resisting the Arabs. Neither 'Umar nor any of the men in his entourage could have been surprised or troubled by this suggestion, but only the caliph could decide on the time and mode of maritime commitment.
For the period from 643 to 655, Muslim and Christian historians highlighted three major events marking the beginnings of the Arab engagement on the sea: the Byzantine fleet's counterattacks on the Syrian and Egyptian coasts; the naval Battle of the Masts; and the Muslim landings in Arwad and the island of Cyprus.
Beginning in 634, armed believers set off to follow the itineraries they had routinely taken as merchants before the Hegira. Gaza had long been an essential stop on the trade route from the Hejaz to the Mediterranean basin. Traditions about the Arab conquest gave Palestine a particular place, first in respect to what Jerusalem represented for Islam, and second because the country was one of the principal routes Meccans followed to the Bilad al-Sham. The Arabs' collective memory had kept a record of Muhammad's visit to Hebron before the beginning of the Prophecy, as well as of 'Umar b. al-Khattab's stay in Palestine. Coming from the opposite direction, the merchants of the Near East had begun regularly visiting the area of the Hejaz and beyond several decades before the birth of the Prophet. The presence of several inscriptions on Arabic itineraries confirms the importance of relations between populations of the Near East and Byzantium's influence on the region. However, the Arab traditionists paid more specific attention to the principal Arab armies' progression inland, where they encountered and defeated the imperial armies of the Sassanids in al-Qadisiyya, Mesopotamia, in 634, then in Nahavand, Iran, in 642, and the Byzantine armies in Ajnadayn, Palestine, in 634 and farther north, on the Yarmuk, in 636. These victories opened the path to the two capitals: Ctesiphon, the imperial city of the shahs, located in the center of Iraq and already destroyed by the Greeks in 618, and Damascus, the Byzantine capital. On the other hand, their advance was more difficult along the Palestinian and Syrian coastline, due to the resistance of the port cities, which were resupplied by the Greeks. While touring the Near East, 'Umar appointed 'Abd al-Qays governor of the coastlines ( _sawahil_) and 'Amr b. 'Abassa supervisor of granaries ( _al-ahra_ ). He made M'uawiya the governor of Syria.
The siege of Caesarea, the longest in the history of the conquests, marked the beginning of Mu'awiya's military glory, though the taking of the city was not presented as a decisive success. According to Theophanes, the venture had lasted seven years, ending in 640, and earned the Umayyad leader a reputation as an efficient and stubborn soldier. It was the presence of the Greek fleet that significantly hampered the progress of the Arab conquest, despite the fact that the number of available Greek units was low, at a time when the Christians remained alone on the water without any serious adversary. The Basileus considered the fleet a potential threat to his power, insofar as it gave the emperor's rivals a direct path to Constantinople; Heraclius (610–641) was keenly aware of this danger, given that he himself had taken power thanks to the squadron that had carried him unopposed from Carthage to the capital. However, there were enough units to resupply and bring reinforcements to the besieged coastal cities, even before Constans II (641–668) bolstered his naval resources to thwart the Arabs' attempt at conquest. With the sea closed to the attackers, the Arabs would have needed exceptional circumstances to take control of the maritime strongholds from dry land. When such circumstances arose in Tripoli of Libya in 642–643, Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam attributed them to divine favor:
> The siege had lasted for a month without any results, when one day a man from the Banu Mudjil left the camp to go hunting with seven of his brothers in arms.... The sea reached to both ends of the city ramparts and the city was not separated from the water by any wall, so that the ships ( _sufun_ ) of the Rums could get to their houses via the port. The Mudjili and his companions noticed that the water level had dropped, leaving a passage open by which they could enter. They stepped into it and when they arrived near the Church, they shouted "Allah Akbar." The Greeks could only take refuge aboard their ships. 'Amr and his companions, seeing that sabers had been drawn in the middle of the city, advanced at the head of the troops and penetrated their homes. The Greeks could only escape on the lightest vessels, and 'Amr seized everything in the city.
The taking of the city certainly reveals the limits of its naval support, but it also highlights that the Greeks, once driven back by the Arabs on land, could find safe refuge on board their ships and remain inaccessible. From here, they could threaten the conquests at any moment. The Greeks' return to Alexandria in 645 spectacularly illustrated the Arabs' recurrent weakness due to their lack of a policy to have a presence on the sea. As governor of the region of Jordan, a district that included Palestine's coastal strip, Mu'awiya directed the caliph's attention to the need to provide the army of believers with a permanent naval force in the Mediterranean, taking as an example the attacks launched by Greek sailors from the island of Arwad, visible from the Syrian coast: "O Amir al-Mu'minin, there is a village in Syria whose inhabitants hear the barking of the Byzantines' dogs and the crow of their cock, because the Byzantines are established directly across the water at a certain distance from the coast of the province of Homs."
Not only could the Greeks threaten Muslim coastlines from any anchorage in the Mediterranean, suddenly coming into view without leaving the Arab forces enough time to react, but the reinforcement of their fleet under Constans II could at any moment compromise the Arab presence in Syria and Egypt. The temporary loss of Alexandria confirmed this prognosis. The conquest of the eastern seaboard had lasted ten years, provisionally coming to an end with the taking of Tripoli of Libya, after the evacuation of the population by the Greek fleet in 644–645 had left the city empty. Following the Egyptian capital's first capitulation in 642, 'Amr b. al-'As had to mobilize considerable forces to recapture it from the Greeks in 645–646. These efforts revealed an obvious strategic flaw that the Arab generals could no longer ignore: from a military point of view, the sea and the coast formed an inseparable whole, and the coastline could not be protected without control of the maritime space.
It was as clear for the Arabs as it was for the Greeks that superiority on the sea went to those who controlled the maritime routes, which required the conquest of the principal islands. On the Aegean Sea, currents and winds limited traffic from the north to the zone south of the Dodecanese and the Cyclades; since it was still difficult for ships to sail against the headwind at this time, the crossing was only possible in certain seasons. In a single decade, the Muslims attacked Arwad, Cyprus, Crete, and probably Rhodes in order to push back the port installations from which Greek expeditions were launched and cut off the route for attacks launched from the coasts of Anatolia.
'Umar could therefore not deny that it was necessary for the Arabs to have a maritime presence if Byzantium and, specifically, Constantinople were to be the Muslims' primary objectives. The caliph sought the opinion of 'Amr, then governor of Egypt, the only country that could supply boats and crews, in order to evaluate the Muslims' naval strength and particularly their naval experience, which was insufficient to face the seasoned Byzantines: "The Sea of Syria surpasses everything on earth in terms of length.... Given that, how do we transport troops on this difficult and treacherous creature?" Lengthiness entailed danger, because inexperienced Arab officers did not yet grasp logistics and navigation; the Arabs' sailors were all enlisted Copts, sometimes recruited by force, now up against veteran sailors. At the time, considerations regarding the military balance prevailed, and they would serve as an argument to postpone Mu'awiya's plan: the undertaking was too risky at that point, for the Arabs were not ready to put out to sea—at least not on this sea.
However, 'Umar encouraged Mu'awiya and 'Amr to create the conditions to make such a venture possible, as is confirmed by the chroniclers of Baghdad, notably al-Baladhuri and al-Ya'qubi, who laconically enumerate repairs made to ports, particularly in Acre and Tyre, and efforts to repopulate coastal cities such as Tripoli:
> When Mu'awiya decided to sail from Acre to Cyprus, he had repairs carried out in Acre and Tyre.... Hisham b. al-Layth [reports], according to the authorities [the authors of traditions]: "When we settled in Tyre and on the coastline, there were Arab troops and many Greek [tradesmen] already settled there. Later, populations from other regions came to settle with us, all along the coast of the Bilad al-Sham.... In 49 / 669–670, the Greek [tradesmen] came to settle on the coast. At that time, [naval] construction was confined to Egypt. Following the orders of Mu'awiya b. Abi Sufyan, several tradesmen and carpenters were established together along the [Syrian] coast. All of the installations in Palestine were concentrated in Acre.
The first preparations were both defensive—rebuilding Syrian ports damaged by sieges during the Arab conquest—and offensive—getting ready the squadron that would attack Cyprus and Arwad in 644–645 and, in the case of the larger of the two islands, again in 648. In the meantime, the reasonably good state of the maritime infrastructures and administration left by the Greeks in the valley of the Nile made it possible to launch a naval expedition as early as 643. Led by Wahb b. 'Umar, the expedition cast off to support the offensive against Amorium, initiated by the Umayyad leader and under the command of General Abu l-A'war al-Sulami. The 648 expedition against Cyprus, one of the bases from which the Greek squadron had left to attack Alexandria in 644–645, was the first to be mentioned in the Arabic and Greek sources. The Umayyad chroniclers gave Amr credit for the conquest of Egypt and the repair of the dockyards, Mu'awiya for the conquest of the Near Eastern ports and the naval initiatives that served as preludes to a lasting Muslim presence on the Mare Nostrum and the attacks on Constantinople. As for the wise 'Umar, who was to be followed by 'Uthman, he set the schedule for the preparations that would lead the Arabs to victory on the Christians' own playing field, thus showing that the Commander of the Faithful remained solely responsible for the strategy of the conquest.
At the time of 'Umar's death in 644, the Arab presence on the shores of the Mediterranean was still fragile, as had been shown by the Greeks' return to their former Egyptian capital. It only became possible to deploy a Muslim squadron once the Arab administration was able to organize an expedition with the participation of former Greek and Egyptian executives: the squadron in question was based in Qulzum (Clysma, Suez), a former Byzantine port and dockyard on the Red Sea, and was sent to resupply Mecca and Medina with wheat. Nonetheless, the rehabilitation of material and administrative structures and the mobilization of local expertise in the service of the new empire allowed the Muslims to move securely into the Aegean Sea.
# APPLYING A MARITIME STRATEGY
With the agreement of his relative 'Uthman, the governor of Syria, Mu'awiya was able to put into practice a strategy intended to ward off the Byzantine threat from the sea and to cordon off the routes separating the two empires' maritime frontiers: the Mediterranean was controlled from the islands. Cyprus was attacked in 648, and again in 652–653. The naval victory at the Battle of the Masts off the coast of Lycia in 655 enabled the Muslim fleets to get close to the coasts of Anatolia, to back first the attacks in Cappadocia, then those aimed at Constantinople.
## Momentum through Victory: The Battle of the Masts
The wars against the Sassanids and the rivalries between pretenders to the Basileus's throne had weakened the Greeks' defenses in Anatolia; transforming the navy was not on the agenda. Arab offensives in Armenia and Asia went unchecked until 653, when a young emperor returned to the front heading an army once again operational. On the other hand, Byzantine Africa was starting to collapse from Egypt, lost once and for all in 645–646 after Alexandria was forced into submission, to Ifriqiya, where the defeat of Exarch Gregory outside Sbeitla in 649 forced the Christians to pay an enormous ransom and to abandon Tripolitania and the south of Roman Africa. After 'Uqba b. Nafi''s victorious campaign and the founding of Kairouan in 670, the Byzantines could only rely on the north of Tunisia and Carthage to control access to the central Mediterranean. In Italy, the Lombards were proving a threat up to the south of the peninsula; only Sicily seemed safe.
The Basileus was therefore losing critical support from his African provinces. Africa and southern Italy, both continental and insular, had long supplied not only wheat through their grain fleet (probably until 618) but also essential naval resources, as proved by the way Heraclius seized power in 610. Thanks to the Arabs' territorial gains along the African coastline, in particular the important port of call Barca, the Egyptian fleet could now attack Sicily. As early as 668–669, an assault was launched against Syracuse, the island's capital.
At the same time, the Muslims now had the infrastructure, ships, and crews to compete with the Greeks on the Aegean Sea. In 655, the naval victory at the Battle of the Masts—known as the Battle of Phoenix to the Greeks—was significant in that for perhaps the first time since the Battle of Actium, the Romans were faced with an imperial power that had the means to mobilize fleets comparable to those of the Christians, over a long period of time, and crews able to gain the upper hand at sea. Arab and Byzantine references to the naval battle roughly situate the encounter somewhere off the coast of Lycia, while the Egyptian fleet was headed for its shores. No matter how this battle on the open sea actually unfolded—the Egyptians apparently won by boarding Greek ships—and the actual scope of the victory, this success served as recognition of the Muslims' ability to compete with the Greeks for maritime supremacy.
Though more experienced, the Greeks were weakened by the loss of seaboards vital to their power: at that time, neither Anatolia, nor the Balkans, nor Italy, and even less so the Black Sea, could compensate for the loss of the African and Asian coasts, which provided a significant share of naval armament until Constantinople became the imperial fleet's primary dockyard.
The naval victory at the Battle of Phoenix allowed the Arabs to take the initiative and launch repeated operations at sea before Emperor Constans II and his successors could react. Under the government of Maslama b. Mukhallad al-Ansari, the Nile valley's place as the Islamic navy's principal base was reinforced by the construction of a new dockyard on the island of Rhoda, across from the capital, Fustat. An exceptional document consisting of a complete "list" of Egyptian admirals— _ashab bahr Misr,_ or "lords of the sea of Egypt"—from 644 to 749, found in Egyptian texts of the ninth and tenth centuries, reveals Egypt's position as a leading player on the Mediterranean in the period up to the fall of the Umayyads, despite the fact that it had no timber. The first appointment in 644 of a "lord of the sea," a title that referred to both the head of the admiralty and the admiral commanding the squadron, coincided with the first expeditions on the Mediterranean. The papyri of Governor Qurra b. Sharik (709–714), written half a century later and found in Aphrodite, confirm that the Marwanids' shipyards and maritime administration functioned effectively, despite possible resistance from the populations solicited. Under the Marwanids' rule, the first naval expeditions to strike in the central and western Mediterranean left from the coast of the Nile delta, reaching as far as the coast of Narbonne around 720.
During the same period, the Byzantine naval force was reorganized: Constantine IV (668–685) and Justinian II (685–695, 705–711) pursued reforms that led to a Byzantine maritime renewal. The fleet's organization was adapted to the new situation created by the Arab conquests and was intended both to guard Constantinople and to provide the Aegean islands and the Anatolian coast with effective means to prevent the Arabs from getting to the Bosporus route. Moreover, the Byzantines took advantage of the unrest that broke out in 684, interrupting the dynamism inspired by the caliph, to regain the advantage on the water. The Dar al-Islam's seafronts had already been exposed to new naval attacks from the Greeks following Yazid I's order to abandon anchorages in the islands that led to the Sea of Marmara, such as Rhodes: al-Burullus, a port on the delta, was attacked in 672, and Damietta in 708, leading to the capture of the governor of the sea Khalid b. Kaysan. Damietta was again attacked under Hisham's rule.
## Cyprus, Testing Ground for an Island Strategy
The 648 naval expedition targeting Cyprus was the first act in the Muslims' move onto the Mediterranean. According to al-Waqidi, the expedition was led by Mu'awiya, who may have been accompanied by his wife and family, on Caliph 'Uthman's orders. The island was the key to the maritime routes between Syria, Anatolia, and the Aegean Sea. The first expedition resembled the razzias the Arabs launched on land before they began a conquest. It resulted in an agreement by which the Cypriots consented to pay an annual tribute equivalent to what they were already paying the Basileus. Their religious status remained unchanged, as was specifically recognized by the right of Greeks and Cypriots to marry without prior authorization from the Muslims. This agreement, original for the particular status it granted the islanders, turned the island into a kind of neutral zone. In 652–653, the Cypriots called in the Byzantines, leading to a second expedition, which the Arab chroniclers claimed was due to a breach of the agreement. This time the Muslims decided to conquer the island, once again following an approach similar to continental ventures:
> Mu'awiya invaded them in the year 33 [653–654] with 500 ships. He took Cyprus by force, slaughtering and taking prisoners. He then confirmed them in the terms of the treaty that were previously made, and sent to the island 12,000 men of those whose names were recorded in the register [ _diwan_ ] and erected mosques in it. Moreover, Mu'awiya transplanted from Baalbek a group of men, and erected a city on the island, whose inhabitants were assigned special stipends until the death of Mu'awiya. His son Yazid, who succeeded him, sent the troops back and ordered the city destroyed. According to other reports, the second invasion of Cyprus by Mu'awiya was carried out in the year 35 [655–656].
The treatment of the island remained in Muslim memory, insofar as Cyprus was the objective of the first Arab naval expedition recognized by official historiography. To a certain extent, the agreements made with the islanders set a legal precedent. Here, al-Baladhuri cites the most well-known jurists of the earliest period of Islam, who gave an opinion on the way the Umayyad leader proceeded.
The fleet had to try twice to destroy the installations on Arwad Island, in 648 and 650, leaving the small island deserted, following a modus operandi that would later be used several times when the Muslims could not or would not stay on an island. This would be the fate of Malta, which long remained unpopulated, and, in a different era, Pantelleria.
# OBJECTIVE CONSTANTINOPLE
Combined with repeated raids in Anatolia, the first insular expeditions mentioned clearly indicate that once the _fitna_ opposing the Alids to the Umayyad leader's partisans was resolved in 661, the Arabs' primary objective was Constantinople. By delegating the conquest of the African territories to the governors of Egypt and charging the governors of Iraq, Mughira b. Shu'ba, Ziyad b. Abi Sufyan, and his son 'Ubayd Allah, with overseeing the eastern regions and the war in Khorasan from the two Iraqi capitals of Basra and Kufa, from 661 to 684, the caliph could personally focus on commanding operations against Byzantium, thereby identifying the Basileus and the marches of the Taurus Mountains, Anatolia, and the Syrian _sahil_ as the primary objectives of the conquest of the ecumene. This arrangement also prefigured the map of commands under the Marwanids, beginning under the reign of 'Abd al-Malik and later adopted by the first Abbasid caliphs.
To begin with, the Arabs had to take control of the maritime routes, for the Byzantine capital's defenses could not be overcome without support from the fleet. The sea would also provide both the Arabs and Byzantine dissidents easier access to the capital than by land. During the _fitna_ opposing the Umayyads to the Alids from 656 to 661, Byzantine counteroffensives pushed the border back to the east. Accounts of the two offensives against the Byzantine capital—the first took place from 674 to 677, the second in 717 and 718—are extremely vague. Arab chroniclers say practically nothing about the military stages of these two consecutive failures and devote most of their account of the second attempt to heroizing Maslama. Theophanes's chronicle remains the most complete source.
The first attack is thought to have been jointly conducted by land and by sea in 672. The army barely got past Pergamon. At the same time, the fleet sailed to Chalcedon, where it spent the winter. Reinforcements were then transported by land, under the command of Yazid b. Mu'awiya, and by sea. According to Theophanes, the Arabs carried out individual attacks over seven years, rather than actually laying siege. The squadron was under the command of Busr b. Abi Artaᵓa, who began by invading Rhodes, then anchored close to the European coast on the Sea of Marmara. According to the Arab sources, Constantinople was "besieged" for two years, between 674 and 677. Theophanes reports an attack launched by the Arab fleet to force its way through the Golden Horn. His account became famous for including the first reference to Greek fire, the naval incendiary weapon with which the Byzantines set fire to the Muslim ships. Defeated, the Arabs withdrew and spent the entire winter lying at anchor at a rear base in Cyzicus or Rhodes, according to Arab sources lacking in detail. Around 677, maritime attacks were interrupted, marking the end of the first "siege."
The second attempt mobilized significant forces under the command of Maslama. The actual siege lasted for one year, from the summer of 717 to the summer of 718, after the Arab armies crossed the Bosporus again under orders from 'Umar II, who had recently become caliph. Supported by a squadron from Tunis, the Egyptian fleet took advantage of the defection of the imperial squadron to approach the walls of the capital, but was finally scattered by a sortie of Byzantine ships from the Golden Horn. According to the Greek chronicler, the Byzantine operation led to the sinking of several troop transport ships, once again with Greek fire. Bad weather, the chain stretched across the Golden Horn that made it impregnable, and the desertion of Coptic sailors from Arab supply ships, followed by another maritime setback resulting from this defection, were the principal military reasons put forward by the Byzantines to explain the subsequent final victory of Basileus Leo III (717–741). This defeat made a particularly strong impression given that the Greek and Arab authors emphasized the magnitude of resources applied by Maslama both on land and on water, with several squadrons launched from Alexandria and Cyprus to support the besiegers.
The Greeks had already reacted to the new naval power facing them after their defeat at the Battle of Phoenix in 655. The emperors had been convinced to reorganize their maritime force by the loss of Syria and especially of Egypt, then of the Maghreb, and the ineffectiveness of their fleet, known as the Carabisians. The Carabisians were hostile to the Byzantine Isaurians and had failed to prevent the Arab squadrons from reaching the Bosporus. The reorganization led to the establishment of a maritime project known as the Cibyrrhaeots, which covered the southern coastline up to Lycia and the islands of the Aegean Sea. Commanded by the strategos based in Antalya, the capital of the theme, these fleets were intended to block the path to Constantinople. This naval reform was only one measure in an extensive overhaul: the Byzantines had to adapt their army and fleet to new forms of war. Soon the Arabs would have to follow suit.
# THE ARAB EXPANSION ON THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN
Though there have been significant studies on the subject, the role of the sea in the scenario of the conquests of the Mediterranean West remains unclear and is generally considered negligible. Indeed, the Arab sources do not report any intervention of fleets in support of Musa b. Nusayr during the conquest of the central and western Maghreb's maritime regions, nor when the Muslims attacked the kingdom of Toledo. The use of ships was only mentioned in the context of crossing the Strait of Gibraltar.
After the founding of the dockyard and construction of the port in Tunis, the governor of Ifriqiya and the western regions made good use of a fleet that scoured the western basin of the Mediterranean and particularly the large islands (Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearics) from 702 to 714. These expeditions seem to have been interrupted from 714 to 718, during the conquest of al-Andalus: the Carolingian Fredegar's chronicle (often referred to as Pseudo-Fredegar) mentions the Muslim fleet's intervention when Arab troops first reached the Peninsula's coastal zone—with the exception of the strait—in the regions of Catalonia and Septimania. According to an Andalusian source, the fleet was commanded by Admiral Sharahil al-Himyari and had sailed from Tunis or Egypt (via Tunis). It is known to have reached the Andalusian coast in 718–719 at Narbonne, which corroborates the statements of the anonymous author of the Carolingian chronicle. Raids began again in the following years and continued steadily until 752, most often aimed at the islands.
The native of Medina al-Waqidi provided Baghdad chroniclers such as al-Ya'qubi and al-Tabari, as well as the Iraqi Ibn al-Athir and the Egyptian Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam, most of the information about the operations launched by the conqueror. However, the oldest and in many cases the most accurate reports come from the Iraqi Khalifa b. Khayyat's chronicle about the raids launched after 718.
Generally speaking, all operations for the conquest of the western Mediterranean, on land and at sea, were launched on orders from the caliphs of Damascus or their representatives, for the Umayyad sovereigns intended to keep control over the Arab governors and armed forces operating in the West, on land and at sea. The Maghrebi and Andalusian traditions have passed down the record of this centralization of military command during both the Sufyanid period (661–692) and the Marwanid period (692–749). As on other fronts, the generals appointed were in charge of military operations and the government of conquered regions but were accountable to the sovereign, particularly regarding spoils of war ( _ghanima, fay'_ ). The chain of command was identical on land and at sea, with the governor or admiral supervising the entirety of operations on behalf of the caliph. The caliphate's dockyard was the caliph's responsibility; if he did not personally head the fleet, he appointed an admiral to do so. Beginning in this period, the dockyard was designated as the symbol of the caliph's authority on the sea, as confirmed by a letter from Caliph 'Abd al-Malik ordering the construction of the Tunis dockyard in 702:
> 'Abd al-Malik b. Marwan then wrote to his brother, 'Abd al-'Aziz, governor of Egypt, ordering him to send to the camp established in Tunis one thousand Copts with their families, to whom he would have to provide mounts once they were ready to leave Egypt, and all the assistance they might need until their arrival in... Tunis. He wrote to [Hasan] Ibn [al-]Nu'man, ordering him to build a dockyard ( _dar sina'a_ ), in which these people would be settled and which would be turned into a place for Muslims to assemble troops and get supplies. He ordered him to impose on the Berbers the perpetual duty of having to bring to the dockyard by the strength of their arms the wood necessary to build ships, given that he would have to have a fleet equipped there, in order to fight the _Rumi_ on land and at sea and carry out raids on the coastline of their country. In this way, we would prevent the enemy from attempting anything against Kairouan and we would protect the Muslims from any danger. Hasan was still in Tunis when the Copts arrived there. At his order, the waters of the sea were brought from Lake Radès to the dockyard; the Berbers brought wood; ships were built there in great quantities and the Copts took care of fitting them out.... By the arrangement adopted, the Tunis dockyard adjoined the port, and the port, the lake, which communicates with the sea.
Caliph 'Abd al-Malik's decision to launch a new expedition to complete the conquest of Byzantine Africa, which was effectively supported by his brother, the governor of Egypt, also concerned the central and western maritime domain, now accessible from the Ifriqiyan port. The regularity of maritime expeditions undoubtedly implies that domination of the islands was the other long-term objective, following a series of raids intended to weaken their defenses.
## Naval Operations in the West under Umayyad Control?
During the first half of the eighth century, the Marwanid caliphs maintained their authority over the western region by keeping an eye on the governors' activities. Thus, Caliph al-Walid decided to remove the western Mediterranean from Fustat's supervision and put it under the authority of Musa b. Nusayr, who was himself exclusively accountable to the sovereign. While glorified for the lightning-quick conquest of the central and western Maghreb in 709 and 710, regions whose coasts were formerly controlled by Rome and Byzantium, and his victory in 711 over the kings of Toledo, Musa b. Nusayr was not spared by the record left by the chroniclers of the caliph. While on a campaign in the northwest of Spain in 713–714, he was summoned to return to Damascus, where he was tried and sentenced to death by Sulayman, successor to his brother al-Walid, in a clear display of the Syrian caliphs' commitment to controlling these new territories. The caliph succeeded in having the glorious conqueror put to death—probably because he had become a little too powerful in the eyes of the Umayyads—by arguing that since the reign of 'Umar b. al-Khattab the division of the spoils of war and the distribution and collection of tax fell directly to the sovereign. In fact, every general who led the caliphal armies in Ifriqiya, including, from 647 to 665, Ibn Abi Sahr, Ibn Hudayj, and 'Uqba b. Nafi', and later Hasan b. al-Nu'man, was accused of misappropriation when it came time to divide the spoils.
## Razzias and the Conquest of the Islands of the Western Mediterranean
The term "razzia" ( _ghazwa_ ) refers to the operational mode of Muslims who crossed the march to attack in the war zone. While ideally the declared objective remained territorial conquest aimed at expanding the Dar al-Islam, the results could only be assessed after the fact. The chronicles report the armies of Islam's victories over enemy nonbelievers, either by announcing a territory forced into submission and recording the clauses of the treaty or by referring to the spoils gathered during the incursion. The spoils were divided between the fighters once the share owed the state was set aside according to rules established since the time of the Prophet. These accounts combine the two phases of the razzia, spoils and conquest, but do not describe the incidents of battle, outside of occasional tribute to the martyrs. In discussing attacks on the Mediterranean islands, Arab chroniclers such as Khalifa b. Khayyat and Ibn A'tham al-Kufi only mention successful expeditions, that is, those that led to surrender, or more rarely a treaty, with the amount of booty serving as proof.
This was the case with the 705–706 expedition against the Balearics, which is either presented as a razzia from which the attackers brought back generous spoils or as the beginning of the island's conquest. The second version is closely tied to the ambitions attributed to Musa b. Nusayr, who reported that his son 'Abd Allah had captured the island's kings on his orders. This situation seems very similar to when Mu'awiya ordered the attack on Cyprus: the island was first turned into a land of razzias, following a tactic tried and tested on the continent. Yet the intention to conquer is unmistakable in the reference to relentless attacks launched from Egypt on orders from 'Abd al-'Aziz b. Marwan as of 703–704, then from Tunis on orders from 'Abd Allah b. Musa b. Nusayr. These attacks were aimed against Sicily and up to the walls of its capital, Syracuse, as of 705–706, against the Sardinians every year until 710, and again against the Balearics in 707–708, at which point the islands were forced to surrender. Similarly, the Arab and Greek sources are in agreement that the naval attacks launched against Crete during the same period were the first stage of a strategy of conquest.
The will to conquer these island territories appears clearly in a statement reported to have been made by the conqueror of the Visigothic kingdom when he appeared before the caliph accused of embezzling part of the spoils. After having led offensives in all three directions—the western Maghreb, Spain, and the islands—he states that he has left his legacy to his three sons, like a ruler leaving the shares of his kingdom to his children: "When Musa arrived before Sulayman in 714–715, the latter asked him questions regarding his sons and the confidence Musa had displayed by letting 'Abd al-'Aziz govern al-Andalus and 'Abd Allah govern Ifriqiya and the Maghreb. Musa answered: 'Do you have anyone in your domains who can boast of having sons as perfect as mine? My son 'Abd al-'Aziz imprisoned Roderic, king of al-Andalus; my son 'Abd Allah imprisoned the kings of Mallorca, Minorca, Sicily, and Sardinia, and my son Marwan imprisoned the king of Sous; everywhere they went they took countless prisoners.' "
The capture of prisoners and the deposition of "kings" served as proof of the conquest's success and of the submission of the three "kingdoms" to Islam. With Sardinia referred to as a conquered land several times as of 708, Musa b. Nusayr was thus presented as the leader who had completed the conquest of the western part of the world: "During the year 87 [March–September 706], Musa b. Nusayr sent his son 'Abd Allah on an expedition to Sardinia, which is one of the countries of the Maghreb. It is said that he conquered it.... When it was the year 89 [March–September 708], Musa b. Nusayr sent his son 'Abd al-'Aziz on an expedition to Mallorca and Minorca, both islands located between Sicily and al-Andalus, and he conquered them."
With previous attempts against Sardinia having failed, other raids were launched against the island in the following years. The occupation of Sardinia is thought to have lasted only a few years, but to have included the area of Cagliari until at least 732. Indeed, records of the papacy report that in 732, Liutprand, king of the Lombards, negotiated with the Muslims to buy the bones of Saint Augustine, thought to be in what is now the capital of Sardinia. At the same time, the presence of a Greek squadron in Syracuse had prevented the Muslims from settling in Sicily. The Byzantines likely took advantage of the interruption in attacks during the conquest of al-Andalus and the siege of Constantinople in 717, which were mobilizing all Muslim naval forces, to regain control. In 732, they secured control of the access routes to Sardinia. As a result, the Greeks took back or kept control over traffic between the two Mediterranean basins and their island ports of call. However, the Arab conquest of the Balearics blocked all access to the Iberian Peninsula. As of 728, Muslims once again regularly carried out offensives in Sicily, weakened by a victory of the Egyptian fleet in 735, while the Byzantine capital Syracuse was again besieged in 737. In 752, a period of calm in the Maghreb following Berber revolts enabled the launch of a final expedition aimed at the two islands from Tunis.
References to naval expeditions launched under the Umayyad government, selected by the caliphs' chroniclers, and particularly the temporary or lasting failure of the occupation of the major islands could thus show that the Iraqi caliphs had intended to pick up the policy of Mediterranean conquests where the Umayyads had left off.
Before the advent of the Marwanid caliphs, the companions of the Prophet, in particular Mu'awiya—who had served the caliphs of Medina before himself becoming a caliph—and 'Amr b. al-'As, allowed the Muslims to rival the Byzantines for control of the Roman sea as of 655. To do so, they made effective use of naval structures left by the Greeks in Egypt and Syria and turned their fleet into a real instrument of conquest. This maritime dimension of the Arab conquest was considered prestigious enough that, beginning in the ninth century, the Abbasid and dissident powers that established their authority in the conquered regions of the Mediterranean relayed accounts of the Umayyads' maritime expeditions, so long as these expeditions were presented as the first step of an appropriation of the sea and the islands, the conquest of which the caliphs of Baghdad intended to continue and complete.
#
CONTROLLING THE MEDITERRANEAN
## _The Abbasid Model_
IBN KHALDUN does not say a word about Muslim naval activity in the ninth century in the chapter of his _Muqaddima_ on maritime command, most likely because he is following the historical framework imposed by the Western caliphs. His silence can be explained by the earlier silence of the Abbasid, Fatimid, and Córdoba Umayyad caliphal chronicles, which censored any references to Muslim naval activities of the period. Consequently, one does not find a single mention of maritime raids from Muslim shores after the end of the conquests.
# THE ABBASID "RUPTURE" ON THE MEDITERRANEAN: A HISTORIOGRAPHIC ILLUSION
As soon as they defeated the Umayyads, simultaneously taking control of Syria and its borders, the new masters of Islam displayed intentions for jihad directly in keeping with the policy of their predecessors, as indicated by the resumption of offensives on the Anatolian front beginning under the reign of al-Saffah. Caliphal involvement would continue uninterrupted until the 930s, outside of periods of crisis such as the conflict between Harun al-Rashid's two sons from 809 to 813. The scope of the land and maritime offensive of 779 signaled major expeditions that would once again allow the Arabs to get closer to Constantinople. This hope was kept alive until the taking of Amorium in 838. In 782, while gazing at the Sea of Marmara after crossing Byzantine Anatolia, Harun al-Rashid allegedly even expressed the wish to pick up where Maslama had left off in 718.
On the other hand, the military balance between Muslims and Christians was deeply and lastingly changed by Baghdad's loss of control over the regions of the Maghreb and al-Andalus, along with the Christians' reinforcement in the east at the instigation of the Byzantine Isaurian emperors, particularly Constantine V, and in the west with the expansion of the Carolingian empire to the Mediterranean's Latin shores. Islam was no longer in a dominant position. Despite declarations to the contrary by caliphs and emirs in the West, it could no longer hope for major expeditions into infidel territory. This balance of forces more or less persisted until the 960s, a decade marked by the Byzantines' decisive advances on land and at sea, with the conquest of Crete (961) and Cyprus (965).
## The End of the Conquests: The Abbasids' False Exit from the Mediterranean Stage
After the Marwanid offensives, the caliphal fleets' attacks stopped until 752. According to Muslim and Christian annals, Greek and Latin coast dwellers from one end of the sea to the other slept untroubled by naval expedition until 770. This long naval pause, considered a general halt to the conquest, was attributed to the effects of the "Abbasid revolution" and was sometimes even presented as the result of a long-considered decision on the part of the caliphs.
With the conquest halted and the fronts stabilized, the symbols of the caliphate's military commitment had to change. The sovereigns were increasingly surrounded by Eastern soldiers, whether Arabs from Khorasan who were formerly part of the contingents commanded by Abu Muslim, who had defeated the Umayyads and conquered Iraq; Iranians like the Tahirids (821–873), who had played a decisive part in the fratricidal battle of Baghdad between al-Amin and al-Ma'mun from 809 to 813; or even the Turks, who became the spearhead of the caliphal army under the reign of al-Mu'tasim. As shown by the décor in the palace of Samarra, the caliphal army's orientalization shifted the field of representations of jihad toward values dear to the soldiers of the steppes, which were quite close to those of the Arab tribes, with the lone horseman replacing ships and sailors in representations of combat. A few centuries later, the Ayyubids and the Mamluks would follow a similar course in Egypt.
At the same time, the strengthening of the Byzantine naval force under the Isaurian emperors made it more indispensable than ever to maintain a navy, particularly in the vicinity of Syria and up to Cilicia. There is plenty of evidence pointing to the caliphs' concern with preserving the integrity of the Muslim coast. The sovereigns resumed the strategy developed by Mu'awiya and his successors, which consisted of conquering or neutralizing islands that allowed Christian squadrons to approach Muslim shores. References to maritime attacks launched against Byzantine soil coincided with moments when the Greek emperor's authority was weak, such as the crisis of Iconoclasm, the period following the challenge to the emperor's legitimacy by Thomas the Slav in the 820s, or when the Bulgarian khan Simeon (893–927) came to the walls of Constantinople to demand the imperial crown at the beginning of the tenth century. During the same period, the proliferation of land and naval attacks by the Byzantines prompted a change in war priorities: the caliphs' primary commitment in the war was now the defense of the Dar al-Islam, at least according to the written sources.
## The Defense of the Dar al-Islam, Caliphal Jihad's New Priority
While the "Abbasid revolution" claimed to mark a radical break with the Umayyad caliphate, the options for jihad were in direct continuity with the period of the conquest. The new dynasty never decreed an end to jihad, but it was forced to take into account the strengthening of Byzantium, the appearance of the Carolingian state, and the situation on the eastern frontiers against the Turks. In fact, any new advance seemed impossible until the eleventh century—except at sea.
Much of the Eastern army that had won the Battle of the Zab remained in Iraq, leading to a stabilization of the Khorasan front and an end to offensives. The expedition against Talas / Taraz in 751, often presented in the historical atlases as the last attempt to conquer territory beyond the Syr Darya river, is described in Arabic sources as a preventive operation aimed at stopping an attempt on the part of the Oghuz Turks in the service of the Tang dynasty (618–907) to establish an outpost of the Chinese empire in this place frequented by Buddhist pilgrims. Nowhere is there any reference to conquest, nor to a halt to the conquests. In the West, defeats at Poitiers in 732 and the river Berre in 737, followed by the 751 loss of Narbonne, the Muslim capital in Gaul since 719, revealed the rising strength of the Frankish Pippinids in the south of present-day France. During the same period, the crisis unleashed by the Berber Revolt and the rivalries between Arab clans in al-Andalus had worked in favor of the reconstitution of a Christian kingdom in the Peninsula, protected by the mountains of the Asturias.
Within the empire, the Umayyad defeat on the Great Zab had spelled the end of the Umayyad caliphate. Very quickly, the frontier troops resumed razzias against Byzantium, under the reign of al-Saffah. Military command was initially entrusted to al-Mansur's uncle, 'Abd Allah b. 'Ali (d. 764–765), who had defeated the Umayyad caliph but was to pay for his rivalry with the new caliph with his life. The caliph was later able to rely on an alliance with the Banu Salih, descendants of another of his uncles, simultaneously rallying the Qais tribes to the Iraqi cause. The tribes protected the region of Harran in Upper Mesopotamia, the former capital of Marwan II. Soon amnestied, they joined the Khorasan troops in northern Syria under the orders of Salih b. 'Ali, consolidating the border and resuming operations in Anatolia. Over the course of a reign constantly contested by his own clan, al-Mansur's authority had allowed the Muslims to maintain their manpower against the Greeks and gave the dynasty the opportunity to carry out attacks in Cappadocia until the 830s.
The Syrian-Palestinian coastline, another Umayyad legacy, was put under direct control of the caliph, forming an extension of the Byzantine frontier. The caliph took the initiative by ordering the restoration of the ports and sea defenses and the transfer of the admiralty from Alexandria to Tyre. The Abbasid caliphate's western battlefront abutted a vast zone stretching from Jazira to the Sinai, via the coasts of Syria and Palestine. Soon after the conquest of Iraq, the Abbasid caliphs thus turned to reinforcing their administration in the zones along the front, which were threatened by the Isaurian emperors both on land and at sea.
At the end of the eighth century, the second crisis of Iconoclasm gave the caliphs the opportunity to resume great cavalry charges across Anatolia, with backing from the squadrons, and even to briefly revive the plan to conquer Constantinople, the major objective the Umayyads had had to relinquish. Until 838, several expeditions broke through Byzantine defenses, making the peninsula highly porous. Yet the Byzantines' military reinforcement prevented both Christians and Muslims from gaining a decisive advantage. The Muslim frontiers were themselves subjected to Christian attacks. As a result, the need to defend the empire took precedence over quickly dampened hopes for a new assault on the Byzantine capital. Taking into account the strategic facts, the sovereigns seeking legitimacy in war turned the enormous effort of securing the borders into the foundation of a new caliphal jihad.
On the ground, priority was given to initiatives to prevent enemy forces from penetrating the borders of Islam. However, this did not exclude continuing attacks on enemy territory, on land and at sea. Both before and after 750, there was no contradiction, or even distinction made, between "defensive jihad" and "offensive jihad"—this terminology simply was not used in the context of the war in the Mediterranean. Razzias in Anatolia and at sea continued uninterrupted and sometimes led to conquests, notably of the Aegean islands. Beginning in 827, the Muslim occupation of Crete and Sicily, after Cyprus and the Balearics, reinforced Muslim hold on the sea. However, the rebalancing of forces imposed changes, forcing Islamic powers in the region to prevent attacks from the Byzantine fleet, once again a threat with the establishment of land and maritime plans. The effects of this reorganization were felt throughout the entire eastern Mediterranean, but also in the western basin, with Syracuse and Sicily having been turned into a fortress and naval base from which the Byzantines could reach all the coasts up to Sardinia and Provence.
The significant number of defensive structures on the caliphal frontier suggest that the installation of defensive measures along the coasts was one of the most ambitious programs of the period. At the same time, jihad was updated to fit new combat norms, those considered the most status enhancing and confined to the frontier. Through their support and propaganda, armed scholars played an essential part in the promotion of jihad: Sahnun, who introduced Malikism to the Maghreb and had himself waged jihad in the ribat-city of Sfax, believed that the _murabit_ defending Ifriqiya in the coastal strongholds was more worthy than the combatant who crossed the water to Sicily and participated in the island's conquest.
In works describing the virtues of the _murabitun,_ whether legal texts about the war ( _siyar_ ) written in the area of the Taurus Mountains beginning in the last years of the eighth century or biographies of the ulema who frequented the coastal ribats, the merits of the conqueror were replaced with those of the defender of Islam. At the same time, the Abbasids, followed half a century later by the emirs of the western Mediterranean, adapted tactical measures that allowed them both to defend Islamic territory and to strike in enemy territory according to realities in the continental and maritime field and to the resources available.
# ABBASID SOVEREIGNTY IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
After the formation of western emirates independent of the caliphate—the Umayyads in al-Andalus as of 756, the Idrisids and the Rustamids in central and western Africa at the end of the eighth century—several accounts of the caliphs' interventionism in dissident territories in the West, however short-lived, prove the extent to which the sovereigns considered the entire Islamic Mediterranean part of the caliphate. For instance, Ibn al-Athir reports, "In 146 / 762–764, al-'Ala Mughith al-Yahsubi crossed from Ifriqiya to the city of Beja [Portugal] in al-Andalus, where he wore the black of the Abbasids and had the _khutba_ preached in the name of al-Mansur."
No matter their origin, the different accounts of this uprising, headed by a Yemeni clan from the _jund_ of Beja in revolt against 'Abd al-Rahman I, all mention the interference of the caliphate, which intended to take advantage of the sedition to regain control of al-Andalus. Similarly, the poisoning of Idris I, a descendant of Ali, in 791 after he had taken refuge in Fez shows that Harun al-Rashid could strike his enemies anywhere in the empire—particularly if they were members of the tribe of the Prophet who might lay claim to the caliphate. However, these actions did not have the expected effect.
Baghdad's intellectual and cultural influence on the entire Islamic domain, affecting all the nations of Islam up to the shores of the Atlantic, proved a far more effective weapon. Though written in the tenth century, when the Umayyad caliphate aimed to overthrow the usurper, the Andalusian chronicles confirm how closely Emir 'Abd al-Rahman II had paid attention to the brilliance of great minds of the East such as the musician Ziryab, recruited for an astronomical sum of money to turn Córdoba into a new Baghdad, an indispensable stage in the promotion of the Andalusian sovereigns before the hypothetical reconquest of the seat of the caliphs.
Through several reports about their region, Egyptian men of letters confirmed the Abbasid caliphs' disengagement from the coastal cities of Egypt, starting with Alexandria, as soon as they came to power, much to the dismay of the author of the _History of the Patriarchs._ Al-Mutawakkil's intervention after the Byzantine fleet sacked Damietta in 853 showed the consequences of the caliphal administration's withdrawal from the Nile delta's maritime cities. Beyond the delta, starting in Tripolitania, was the domain of the Aghlabid emirs, who governed the region of Ifriqiya in complete independence while officially recognizing their affiliation with the caliphal domain.
Farther west, in the Maghrebi territories, defensive measures were described in terms of the Iraqi men of letters: the spread of their vocabulary and the description of the fortifications show that the Ifriqiyan and Andalusian jihad had been inspired by the jihad on the frontier of the Taurus and the Syrian Sahel. One has to rely on archeology, which gradually reveals the diversity in the defense systems, to identify regional specificities adapted to each zone's particular conditions, while the Arabic texts attempt to persuade that Muslim defenses along the coasts of the Mediterranean were entirely uniform.
The caliphs aimed to retain total sovereignty over the maritime territory, as attested to by the book of geography by Ibn Khurradadhbih, who, as director of the caliphal postal service ( _barid_ ), was responsible for monitoring the peripheral regions. Ibn Khurradadhbih describes the itineraries followed by the Rahdanite Jewish merchants who brought precious goods to Baghdad from all over the world, including the Carolingian empire (particularly slaves and eunuchs), India (rare spices and essential oils), and China (silks, ceramics, and other refined products). He also mentions Russian merchants who arrived from the steppes of Central Asia with furs and other northern products much appreciated by the capital's affluent population. The author's intention was not to make an economic assessment or an overview of international commerce but rather to reveal a network of land and maritime trade routes stretching from the Far East to the Baltic Sea, in order to show that the caliphate's influence extended to the borders of the ecumene, far beyond the outer limits of the Dar al-Islam, and that all the riches in the world could reach Baghdad. The Mediterranean appears here as a major route, second only to the Indian Ocean.
## Abbasid Diplomacy
Embassies, the circulation of letters, and references to visits by emissaries provide a good indication of the density of diplomatic relations between the states along the Mediterranean littoral. Several references to the circulation of representatives of the imperial and caliphal courts, the Roman curia, the principalities, and the emirates attest to ongoing relationships between Christian and Muslim sovereignties around the Mediterranean, confirmed as early as the Rashidun period. Similarly, exchanges between capital cities were part of a long tradition. Byzantium bore traces of a real diplomatic culture around the Sea of the Romans, involving the Latins, naturally, but also the Sassanids and pre-Islamic Arabia.
There is therefore nothing surprising about the relations formed very early on with Medina—according to the tradition, as early as the era of Muhammad. Since that time, written correspondence between the Umayyads and the Greek emperors had continued steadily and was carried between the two capitals by ambassadors. While the campaign of 806 was being prepared, Harun al-Rashid sent a delegation to Constantinople to present the Basileus with a request for a truce on the frontier, along with the usual invitation to convert. Regulations for prisoner exchanges were also established through diplomatic channels.
The earliest embassy letters available to us date from the tenth century. These were all sent from Christian chancelleries, particularly Greek and Latin chancelleries. A letter from Bertha of Tuscany dispatched to Baghdad in 906 began with the customary greetings and a list of presents sent with the embassy, then offered an alliance with Caliph al-Muktafi, who, like her, was hostile to the Byzantines, the mutual enemy of the moment. The alliance was unlikely, but the offer allowed the countess to present herself as one of the power-wielding rulers in the highly exclusive circle of Mediterranean sovereigns. In 913–914, Patriarch Nicholas Mystikos, then regent of Constantine VII (913–959), sent an ambassador to give a letter to Photios, governor of Muslim Crete, to discuss the status of the Cypriots and negotiate a prisoner exchange. The title used to address the letter clearly indicates that its addressee was the island's governor and that he represented the caliph who had appointed him. Both sides repeatedly formed ties with the opposing camp's dissidents. In 823–824, the Maliki patriarch of Antioch, then a Muslim city, crowned Thomas the Slav emperor at the request of Caliph al-Ma'mun. The caliph was backing this former admiral of the Cibyrrhaeot fleet, a pretender to the imperial throne of Michael II, "the Amorian" (820–829), who was able to establish himself on the Muslim frontier to fight the Basileus.
A few surviving texts in the annals of the emperors of Aachen are instructive about the relations between the Carolingians and the Abbasids. The Pippinids were the first to establish relations with the Muslim sovereigns. In 765, Pippin III, "the Short" (751–768), sent emissaries to al-Mansur. They returned accompanied by the caliph's ambassadors, who embarked on the Syrian coast and landed in Marseille. The caliphal delegation remained in the Latin Empire approximately three years before returning home. As is customary, the content of their conversations is not specified; instead, the importance of the process is highlighted by the list of presents, which provides an idea of the power of the solicitor thus seeking to impress his interlocutor. Exchanges of embassies between Charlemagne and the caliph began in 797. The two Carolingian representatives were lost at sea on the return trip, but in 801 other emissaries of the caliph were announced in Pisa, escorted by an Aghlabid ambassador. Having earned its name by surviving the crossing, the elephant Abu l-'Abbas (the father of strength) arrived in the capital in 802 with a large delegation. The same year, legates of the emperor traveled to Baghdad with the Muslim ambassadors. On the return journey in 806, the ship carrying Muslim emissaries and two monks of the Church of the East, representatives of the patriarch of Jerusalem, had to circumvent a Greek maritime blockade. Lastly, in 831 the caliph took the initiative to make ties with Emperor Louis the Pious and propose a peace treaty, which was signed in Thionville at the very moment he was ordering his forces into battle in Anatolia.
In the absence of shared borders between the Carolingian empire and the caliphate, the reason most frequently given for these missions is the forming of ad hoc alliances against common enemies of the moment: the Carolingians targeted the Andalusians, particularly in 797, but also the Byzantines, who had become enemies to both empires since Pippin the Short had decided to intervene in Italy. In 806, after the crowning of the Pippinid sovereign in Rome and its consequences on relations with Constantinople, then weakened by the crisis of Iconoclasm, the Peninsula was once again the object of discussions with the Muslims, while Venetia and Dalmatia were under attack by the Frankish army and vigorously defended by Nicetas the Patrician; for his part, the caliph intensified the pressure on Cappadocia, possibly reaching Bithynia the same year.
Aside from the exceptional personalities of the sovereigns, particularly in the case of Charlemagne and Harun al-Rashid, the emphasis on certain gifts that enchanted Einhard and other admirers of pachyderms, highly valued because such animals were not found in Europe, seems to indicate that both sovereigns sought to signal their intention to have a decisive influence on Mediterranean politics. The most important thing to the caliphs was that they were recognized as the only Muslim sovereigns of the Mediterranean, thus marginalizing the dissident emirates' position in the eyes of the courts of Europe. For their part, the Carolingians were at war with the Umayyads on the Catalan front, and they also aimed to take control of the shores of Italy up to the boundaries of the Papal States. Once Charlemagne was crowned emperor, the Carolingian empire was to appear as one of the great powers of the Mediterranean. Receiving and sending ambassadors also allowed the Baghdad caliphate to reclaim a place in the heart of Mediterranean affairs, as a direct interlocutor with the Christian adversaries, while reminding Muslim subjects that both war and peace fell under the exclusive authority of the caliph: though the eastern Mediterranean was no longer governed by the caliph, it remained the sovereign space of the Commander of the Faithful, a fact specifically symbolized by his ambassadors' presence in the imperial courts of the Christian world.
## The Maritime Administration against Byzantium
Following the disastrous defeat at the gates of Constantinople in 717, Muslim ships were no longer reported on the Aegean Sea, while the Byzantines went back on the offensive on the water. However, a reference to Caliph Hisham having the dockyard moved from Acre to Tyre due to commercial conflicts of interest suggests that the lack of Muslim maritime activity was short-lived.
The caliphal order to inspect and, if necessary, repair maritime installations on the seaboard of the Bilad al-Sham coincided with the transfer of the admiralty's command from Alexandria to Tyre, around 754. It was also at this time that al-Mansur took in hand the Taurus frontier. As on the terrestrial front, the caliph ordered inspections of the maritime organization, ships, and crews left by the excellent Umayyad administration and entrusted the command of the squadrons to his clients. When the caliphal armies' major raids in Anatolia were resumed, al-Mahdi and his successors were able to rely on the naval forces his father had mobilized to serve as protection from the Greek fleet and to support the troops on land.
The caliphs' intervention in maritime affairs was in keeping with the practices of Medina and the Umayyads. 'Umar b. al-Khattab had been the first caliph to travel to the Syrian-Palestinian coast to organize its defense, in 638–639. Al-Tabari credits him with the first appointment of a "governor of the sea," which distinguished a specific administration and jurisdiction for the coastal zones of Palestine and Syria. The governor was assisted by an inspector of granaries, who ensured that the necessary reserves were available in the ports where the fleets assembled. At the same time, the coast remained a dependency of the capitals of the inland districts. Ibn Khurradadhbih counted five ports then dependent on Damascus: Sidon, Beirut, Tripoli, Acre, and Tyre. At the beginning of the tenth century, Qudama b. Ja'far distinguished the ports located in a specific zone, the "maritime frontiers," still under the jurisdiction of the inland capitals: "The maritime frontiers are Antartus, Bulunyas, Latakia, Jableh, and al-Hiryadha, seaports of the _jund_ of Homs; Arqa, Tripoli, Jubail, Beirut, Sidon, the fortress of al-Sarafand, and Adnun, seaports of the _jund_ of Damascus; Tyre, where the naval dockyard is located, and Acre, seaports of the _jund_ of Jordan; Caesarea, Arsuf, Jaffa, Ashqelon, and Gaza, seaports of the _jund_ of Palestine."
There are several signs that the new Abbasid apparatus marginalized the Egyptian seaboard, beginning with the absence of any reference to possible naval expeditions, while at the end of the ninth century al-Ya'qubi barely mentions trade activities. Several significant events in the history of Alexandria, given precedence in the chronicle of the Patriarchs of the city, confirm this downgrading. The landing of the Andalusian sailors expelled by the Umayyad emir al-Hakam I in 818 and their subsequent activity in the city confirm that Alexandria no longer had a naval force or an administration capable of standing up to even a modest squadron.
While the stages of this change in status are not clearly stated, they can be deduced from a few episodes in the area's maritime history, starting with the siege of Constantinople in 717–718. The first cause for alarm had been the desertion of the Copts, who made up the core of the crews sent to resupply the besiegers at the gates of the Byzantine capital. According to the Greeks, fewer than ten Muslim ships survived this incident. The lack of references to maritime raids launched from Egypt following this serious defeat, then the Byzantine report of a naval defeat off Cyprus in 747, confirms that Egypt no longer had a navy capable of imposing itself on the Aegean Sea. The disordered state of the naval organization the Umayyads had put in place at Mu'awiya's instigation is underlined by another defeat, also off Cyprus, against the Cibyrrhaeots' squadron in 755. The Egyptian ports remained operational, particularly after the taking of Crete, but the ancient capital was no longer the seat of the admiralty.
The Byzantine navy's attacks on the ports of the Egyptian coast, particularly against Damietta in 853, forced al-Mutawakkil to attend to the coastal defense of the delta. He had the city rebuilt elsewhere and ordered ports such as Barca restored in order to provide Egypt with the means to protect itself from Greek maritime attacks. The caliph's reaction, motivated by Christian aggression, marked a return to direct caliphal control over the coast. Two of the best-informed Egyptian authors, al-Kindi and Ibn Duqmaq, report that Governor 'Anbasa b. Ishaq al-Dabbi was ordered to rebuild a naval force and recruit sailors, a sure sign the maritime organization had been put in abeyance. We know that the Tulunids (868–905) continued in the same direction, but nothing else. Finally, beginning in 919, the Ikhshidids (935–969), officers sent by Baghdad to restore caliphal authority, decided to contend with the Fatimid threat by having a dockyard built or repaired in Fustat, which involved establishing a maritime administration in the capital. The second Fatimid expedition, launched in 935 on Imam al-Qa'im's order, failed to overcome the Ikhshidids' resistance, though the Fatimid army did succeed in reaching and destroying the capital's dockyard, the existence of which is known to us through this incident. While the country had lost the naval preeminence it had enjoyed under the Umayyads, the reaction of the Iraqi caliphs, particularly under the reign of al-Mu'tamid, proves conclusively that the caliphate of Samarra still intended to control its maritime destiny.
The redeployment of naval forces in the Syrian-Palestinian ports of Ashkelon on the Greek frontier takes on its full significance in the context of the reorganization of the jihad on the Anatolian frontier. While there is no record of any list of admirals of the city of Tyre at the time of the caliphate of Baghdad—probably because the position had lost its luster in a military hierarchy dominated by the Turks—those whose names appear occasionally, in relation to specific maritime events, were under the orders of the caliphate and its governor along the Syrian coast and, to a lesser degree, on the shores of Egypt. Squadrons and sailors of the time enjoyed a great deal of autonomy, particularly in port cities equipped with dockyards, which provided them with autonomy on the sea; the caliphate's most important naval bases were Tyre, Tarsus, Tripoli, and Chandax / Heraklion. Al-Mas'udi provides only a succinct overview of the various ranks and occupations related to the navy (sailors, captains of warships and trading ships, dockyard personnel), but in other parts of his encyclopedia, he mentions the names of several admirals of the Mediterranean fleet, notably Leo, "governor of Tripoli" as of 912, and 'Abd Allah b. Wazir, the governor of Jableh, a port of the _jund_ of Homs. Al-Mas'udi had met Wazir and considered him the most experienced sailor, a man who had proved himself by leading the jihad in the name of the caliph. Both admirals were included on the lists of the _diwan_ of the Abbasid caliphate's maritime administration.
Tripoli and Jableh were the most active ports, due to their proximity to the combat zone against Byzantium. In Palestine during this period, maintenance of port defenses left a lot to be desired. This was certainly the case in Ashkelon, which the Byzantines targeted around 900, taking advantage of the port's condition to capture a large number of Muslims, notably the man known for having left a long account of Constantinople under the name of Harun b. Yahya. After seizing power in the valley of the Nile and taking control of the coastal regions of Syria-Palestine, Emir Ibn Tulun (868–884) had to carry out repairs in the port of Acre, which were entrusted to the geographer al-Muqaddasi's grandfather. The need for these repairs proves that infrastructures had indeed been damaged. Ibn Tulun's objective was to take control of the ports of the Syrian coast and Cilicia, which would allow him to reap significant profits from razzias and trade in Byzantine territory and on the open sea. As a former officer of the caliph stationed in Tarsus, Ibn Tulun understood the economic significance of ports close to the frontier and the potential profits he could expect them to make. Once the two ports were taken back from the Tulunids, the caliphs al-Mu'tadid (890–902) and especially al-Muktafi followed a similar logic in recruiting Greek sailors who would sail in the direction of the Byzantine coasts on their behalf. Encouraged by Baghdad, the new admirals intermittently regained the advantage for the Muslims in the Aegean Sea until the beginning of the crisis of the caliphate in the 930s. However, Muslim raids were reported until the early 950s.
## The Aegean Sea in the Ninth and Early Tenth Centuries: A Pirate Sea or an Abbasid Sea?
While the military decline of the Egyptian ports, and particularly of Alexandria, can partially be attributed to Abbasid reforms, the caliphs nonetheless continued their predecessors' policies on the coasts of Egypt. For instance, 'Abd Allah b. Tahir, the governor of Egypt, intervened to restore order in the 820s, particularly by employing Andalusian crews who had arrived in Alexandria around 821 and contributed to the city's turmoil. This led directly to "Crete [being] invaded by Abu Hafs 'Umar b. 'Isa al-Andalusi, known as al-Iqritishi." Greek and Arabic sources vary in dating the taking of Chandax / Heraklion, ranging from 821 to 827, which seems to indicate that these sailors had already launched several raids against the island before conquering the Cretan capital, a prelude to the conquest of the entire island. The route to the island was well known to Muslims; it had been targeted by several expeditions as of 656, then in 673–674, and again under the reigns of al-Walid and his successors. _The History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria_ mentions several landings on the island, particularly under the reign of Harun al-Rashid. These have been confirmed by Byzantine hagiographies. The hagiography of the Cretan Saint Anthony, who had been an admiral of the Cibyrrhaeots in an earlier phase, describes the defense of the island against the Muslims. Al-Tabari repeated the tradition according to which the Andalusian chief had been hired to carry out the conquest by authorities convinced of his unruly sailors' abilities. Once the island had been subdued, it was necessary to maintain ties with Egyptian ports to maintain the fleet: one of the principal reasons for the Byzantine attack on Damietta in 853, according to the Byzantines, was that the Egyptian port served as a rear base for the Cretan Muslims, providing them with weapons and even timber for shipbuilding.
The caliphate's role as a coordinator appears essential to understand the Muslims' maritime movements. Described in the Christian texts as destructive pillage, the razzias launched by independent sailors both for their own financial gain and to weaken the enemy could also be part of a caliphal or emirate strategy still aimed at conquering the major islands like Crete if the opportunity presented itself. At the same time, the intrusion of these "Andalusians" in the Mediterranean's maritime history, though they were answerable to the Egyptian governors, indicates the importance of crews sought for their skills. With the authorization of the tutelary government, these sailors, who were merchants or warriors depending on the circumstances, could take advantage of the caliphate's strategy to lead a private war in which they did not have to answer to authorities and had the possibility to enrich themselves, provided that they only targeted the caliph's enemies.
The caliphs would take advantage of the naval resources at their disposal as long as they were present on the Anatolian front, until 838. In 777, during the second expedition under his reign, al-Mahdi used the fleet to land troops in Cappadocia to attack the Christian armies from the rear. Under the reign of Harun al-Rashid, the fleet won an important victory in the bay of Antalya. During two major expeditions in Anatolia, in 802 and 806, the squadron protected the caliph's army by preventing the fleets from landing troops to attack from the rear. The squadron was involved in nearly every campaign, as confirmed by the broad references made by ulema accompanying the caliphs on these operations: "In diligence for warfare ( _ghazw_ ) and perspicuity in jihad, we saw a magnificent thing in the Commander of the Faithful Harun. He used more skill ( _sina'a_ ) than had ever been used before, he divided up property ( _al-amwal_ ) in the frontier posts, both inland and on the coast, and he caused anxiety to the enemy and subdued him."
During the same period, sailors from Muslim ports preyed on Byzantine coasts and islands from Crete to north of the Aegean Sea. According to the Greek texts, especially the chronicles and hagiographies, periods of pillage generally corresponded with the caliphs' most intense phases of military engagement on the frontier. For instance, maritime offensives peaked during the revolt of Thomas the Slav, which hindered Michael II's ability to react, and were not limited to the conquest of the island. Raids continued until 842, with one fleet even reaching the Sea of Marmara. Beginning in 891 and until the dawn of the 920s, the "renegade" admirals Damian and Leo, respectively based in Tarsus and Tripoli, left an indelible impression on the collective memory, particularly during the dramatic sack of Thessaloniki in 904. These attacks coincided with the Abbasids regaining control of the frontiers of Anatolia and Syria at the end of the ninth century. Himieros, admiral of the Cibyrrhaeot fleet, won several battles against the two ports' Muslim squadrons in 906 and again in 909. He laid siege to Heraklion for six months in 911 but was unable to take the city. The same year, the Byzantine fleet was lured into a trap set by the two admirals and sank with all hands near Chios, which was immediately pillaged. Following this victory, Damian was able to restore Cyprus's neutral status, which would endure until 965. Taking advantage of the imperial ambitions of the Bulgarian khan Simeon I, who traveled to the gates of Constantinople several times to assert his right to the imperial crown, the fleets of Tarsus, Tripoli, and Chandax / Heraklion were able to roam the sea in every direction for a quarter of a century. The caliph was even able to order Thamal al-Dulafi, Damian's successor, to lend Simeon a hand in 924 by organizing a maritime blockade of the Bosporus while the Bulgarian khan besieged the city on land.
However, the communities of sailors in these ports also frequently acted autonomously. The fleet used for razzias and trade was an important source of revenue; by controlling the fleet, local leaders could conduct a private war that provided them with the necessary resources to emancipate themselves from the government's tutelage. This was enough of an issue for the caliphs to react and seek to regain control of a city, when possible. In the 880s, for instance, during a phase when the Abbasids had turned away from affairs on the frontier and Ibn Tulun, Egypt's independent emir, was trying to control the entire Syrian coastline, the eunuch Yazman, who was governor of Tarsus and presented as an independent emir, was credited with several victories against the Christians, both on land and at sea. Yazman initially fought on behalf of the caliph, hoping to prevent the Tulunids from seizing the frontier city. However, once the Tulunids were at the gates of the city, Yazman accepted their tutelage and saved his position by giving the city's tax revenue to the Egyptian emirs. Tarsus was then reconquered by his predecessor and al-Muktafi ordered the fleet to be burned, destroying the city's prime instrument of wealth. Al-Muktafi rapidly rebuilt the fleet and entrusted its command to Greek admirals, who allowed him to find new crews.
The maintenance of ships, recruitment of sailors, seasonal naval operations, and administration of ports were the sole responsibility of the admirals and crews who decided on operations. This autonomy explains why modern historians thought that Leo and other heads of expeditions had been left to their own devices. However, these historians did not take into account the works of Arab chroniclers, starting with al-Tabari, who mentions that troops were sent to put an end to local leaders' actions when they went against the caliphate's interests. Often, the threat of intervention was all that was needed. The leadership crisis that began developing in the 920s under the reign of al-Muqtadir put an end to Baghdad's interventionism. Rule by a young caliph, a financial crisis, and, more extensively, the "disintegration of the Empire" came to an end when the Buyids took power in Baghdad in 945. Having claimed the title of chief emir, these Iranian warlords stripped the caliphs of their military authority, though in fact Iraq had lost its influence on Mediterranean affairs years before.
The Greeks took advantage of the situation: after having opened the way to the Taurus by razing Melitene (Malatya) in 934, they destroyed Tarsus in 955, attacked Antioch in 969, and besieged Aleppo in the 970s. The Syrian frontier had been erased or pushed back. At sea, the Cretan fleet continued its attack on the Greek islands until 950. By seizing Crete in 961 and Cyprus in 965, the Byzantine emperors Romanos II (959–963) and Nikephoros II Phokas (963–969) transformed the Aegean Sea into a Byzantine lake. With Cilicia having been turned into a Byzantine forward base, Tripoli of Lebanon was now the frontier port most exposed to the Byzantines.
For 170 years, government of the Muslim part of the eastern Mediterranean had been in the hands of the Iraqi sovereigns, though their intentions had on several occasions been stymied by autonomous actions. More than naval commitment, the most significant development was coastal defense. This was the initiative that would be remembered.
# ABBASID COMMITMENT ON THE MEDITERRANEAN: MARITIME CONTROL AND COASTAL DEFENSES
Toward the end of the eighth century and until its reintroduction by al-Mutawakkil in 853, the temporary interruption of maritime conscription in the Nile delta, a Byzantine legacy that had endured since the time of 'Umar b. al-Khattab, made it necessary to reorganize the enrollment of seafarers. There is no surviving information about these measures, with the exception of a reference to several dockyards ( _dar al-sina'a_ ), where ships under maintenance were docked and the administration for crews was headquartered.
Al-Mansur and his successors tended to use crews drawn from communities of seafaring people, qualified to serve on a fleet for transporting troops or carrying out raids. Like the Andalusians who attacked Crete, sailors from the Syrian ports could rely on a significant number of experienced crews. Maysur, a sailor well known for his victories over the Greeks on the Aegean Sea in the 870s, made the most of crews based on the Syrian and Cilician coasts. He recruited crews experienced in commerce raiding and maritime commerce to trade and pillage, but only according to a schedule set by the caliphal administration, based on relations and agreements with Byzantium. Similarly, there is every indication that the "renegades" Damian and Leo of Tripoli, both natives of the coastal regions of Cilicia and Cappadocia, arrived with hardened crews, many of them probably their compatriots, who spread terror on the archipelagos and the Byzantine coasts.
The fleet that seized Heraklion in 827 is identified as "Andalusian," transporting sailors who had fled or been exiled for having defied the authority of Emir al-Hakam I and refused to respect the truce signed with the Carolingian emperor in 815. These sailors had distinguished themselves by attacking several Ionian islands and Crete, then landing in Alexandria. However, there is little doubt that many of the soldiers who participated in the siege and assault on the Cretan capital in 827, estimated by some Arab and Greek authors to have numbered seven thousand, were Egyptian soldiers provided by the governor. Along with a few other indications, the island's constant ties with Egypt, particularly with Damietta, suggest it was under the command of a governor, the admiral ( _sahib al-bahr_ ), though we do not know exactly what responsibilities the position entailed. What is clear without a doubt is that the admiral was answerable to the Egyptian authorities. The names of admirals such as Photios indicate that Greek natives of the island made up all or part of the fleet at Chandax, at least during certain periods. However, the victorious assault in 827 had been the work of sailors from the Iberian Peninsula, who were renowned for their sailing and fighting abilities and were under the command of a skilled leader, Abu Hafs. The decisive role they played justifies their distinction as the island's conquerors; more specifically, their leader was elevated to the prestigious rank of the man who "opened" Crete to Islam. For this feat of arms, he was called "Abu Hafs the Cretan."
Maritime raids were therefore the work not of "pirates" but of sailors in the service of the caliph or the emir, sailing as often on their own behalf as on the sovereign's orders. From the victims' perspective, they engaged in piracy, but in the eyes of the Muslim authorities, it was commerce raiding. They were mindful of the caliph's interests and participated in operations ordered by the sovereign or his general, just like soldiers on the frontier. Aside from the fact that they had a common enemy, this understanding between crews and the sovereign was solidly anchored in financial interest, not to mention the threat of sanctions as long as the caliph could intervene in the coastal zone. However, the installation of defensive measures along the Muslim coasts, to which the chroniclers and biographers paid more specific attention, appears to have been the most status-enhancing investment in the eyes of the sovereigns of Baghdad.
## Volunteers for Jihad and Armed Pious Scholars: A Closely Supervised Enlistment
The Abbasid sovereigns' defense of the coasts followed on from the measures taken by their predecessors and was in no way original. From the beginning of the conquests, the Arabs, having encountered strong resistance from Syrian-Palestinian ports protected and supplied by the Byzantine fleets, found it necessary to defend coastal towns from a possible return of their enemies. They found a dense network of cities and forts, probably consolidated by the Byzantines after the Sassanid offensives. Epigraphic and archeological traces of this investment in several fortresses on the Palestinian coast show that after the difficult conquest of the Syrian coastline, the Umayyads had fortified coastal towns, which were maintained by the local population and guarded by largely "Persian" garrisons.
Any rupture between the Umayyad and Abbasid periods was not due to the necessity to protect the coast and expand onto the sea, which is obvious in every period, but was a result of a development in the discourse of jihad, adapted to new military priorities. Threatened by the Basileus's fleet, which had become much stronger since the reforms of the Isaurian sovereigns after 717, the coastline, like the marches, now seemed the ideal place to carry out jihad, as symbolized by the practice of ribat. At the same time, with the conquest running out of steam, the volunteers who watched the sea and defended the coasts, like those who guarded the eastern frontiers against Turkish incursions, were given the same level of respect as the first conquerors. As a result, the practice of retreating to fortified cities on the Taurus frontier, such as al-Massisa and Tarsus, but also to Beirut and Tripoli on the Mediterranean coast, in the area where the practice of ribat had originated, experienced increasing popularity throughout the bordering countries, particularly in those regions where Muslim political and religious authorities devoted resources to coastal defense.
However, despite this promotion and some effort on the part of the chroniclers, geographers, and biographers to highlight coastal defense programs, we remain poorly informed about the military presence, the administration of fortified towns and garrisons, and, more generally, the financing of this vast frontier. This can partially be attributed to the use of formulaic terminology that highlighted not the defense system per se but the merits of caliphal and emirate jihad and of the scholars who frequented the places of ribat. The accounts of the situation farther west clearly date from after the events described; in Syria, Ifriqiya, and, to a lesser extent, al-Andalus, archeology often provides more detailed information about the technical aspects of defense and military architecture.
Outside of the Near East, there are primarily three regions that have retained written or material traces of the implementation of coastal defenses, which was always carried out with the self-serving support of the authorities. The Abbasids or their representatives reinforced the defenses of Cilicia in the Sinai and, to a lesser extent, those of the Nile delta's maritime shores. Similar programs were imposed in the coastal areas governed by the Aghlabids in Africa and Sicily and, after the first Viking incursion in 844, by the Umayyads in Iberia. Other regions along the Moroccan Rif under the rule of the Salihids of Nekor and farther west on the Idrisid coasts were also forced to defend themselves against Viking raids.
It would be inaccurate to conceive of these defense systems as a limes that produced a ring of fortresses and towers protecting Mediterranean Islam from seaborne attacks by the Byzantines and Nordic sailors, given that such an "Atlantic Wall" never existed. Arab men of letters give all the credit to the prince said to be responsible for building an innumerable quantity of defensive points and to the individual commitment of religious men. The Baghdad jurists and those who practiced ribat in the land and maritime frontier cities of Syria had a decisive influence, imposing the vocabulary and model of piety of the _mujahid_ (one who practices jihad), later borrowed by the emirates and Malikis in the West. However, financial and material interests loomed behind this pious image of jihad.
## The _Murabit_ 's Reward and Profits on the Border, Affairs of State
Up to now, interpretations of texts produced by victims of the recurrent and institutional violence caused by the permanent conflict between Muslims and Christians have always created a vision of a unilateral crisis that affected every country bordering the Mediterranean. Yet war was not only a source of impoverishment. On the contrary, it was the basis of a high-risk economy that was profitable to certain categories of frontier populations. As for the Arabic texts describing Muslim sovereigns' strategies, they avoid any reference to financing, except to mention the generosity of a few ulema and pious sovereigns, earmarked for building ribats. Here, it should be mentioned that though he reigned less than ten years, Emir Ahmad was given credit for building ten thousand military structures covering the emirate's borders; the Arab writers referred to these investments generally in terms of the obviously exaggerated number of defensive structures built, repaired, or maintained, not in order to calculate their cost but to praise the prince's commitment as a _mujahid._ One has to wait until the fourteenth century to find more reliable financial data both in Ifriqiya and in Egypt, thanks to the institutionalization of pious donations ( _habus_ ), particularly those intended for the ribats of the Hafsid period. Nonetheless, beginning in the ninth century, various types of investment are in evidence, including the commitment of troops, structures located by archeologists or mentioned in Arabic texts, construction work in port cities, the commitment of fleets, and the concession of land to men with ties to those in power. Taken as a whole, these considerable investments raise the question of the resources then available to the governments and populations concerned: war is expensive but, in the ninth century, it produced a human and economic movement that had a profound impact on the medieval Mediterranean, recalling similar but far better documented developments on Latin shores. Latin records, which sometimes include figures, call into question the systematic and unilateral relationship between permanent threat and war on the one hand and an allegedly catastrophic economic situation and demographic toll on the other. Though we are lacking pertinent figures, a similar analysis can be applied to the Muslim coastlines on which the authorities took action.
## The Roots of Institutional Jihad
According to al-Kindi, Umayyad Alexandria enjoyed financing from pious donations that made it possible to support poor soldiers and volunteers, who could also be housed in private homes, for each sailing season individuals were required to provide accommodations as a form of tax. The system changed under the Abbasids, with the move of the managing administration to Fustat before the end of the eighth century. Following this reform, volunteers were no longer paid on the spot, but they could continue to be housed and fed by pious Alexandrians. The jurist and chronicler Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam believed that the port city had become a "rabita" as early as Mu'awiya's era. Using the language of his era, he sought to emphasize the early presence in Alexandria of volunteers who fought the enemy for the glory of God, by defending the Islamic territory's integrity. According to Ibn Lahi'a, a highly renowned Alexandrian jurist, the joint practice of asceticism and watching the sea for approaching Christians was already common in the Marwanid era. He even recalls a scholar who died in 719 but whom he already considered a _murabit,_ though the number of _murabits_ primarily began to grow at the end of the Umayyad period, when the Byzantines became more threatening and the advance of the believers was losing steam. 'Abd al-Rahman b. Hurmuz al-A'raj (d. 736), a revered interpreter of the Koran and native of Medina, settled in Alexandria late in life to practice asceticism while keeping watch on the marine horizon. His Egyptian colleagues considered him the great port city's first real _murabit_ and turned him into a highly venerated patron saint of Alexandria. This was the kind of practice the Abbasids could use to further their cause, creating a synergy between the individual commitment of scholars and the jihad of the ghazi caliph not in the Egyptian port but on the frontiers of caliphal jihad in the Anatolian marches and along the Syrian coastline.
The first texts codifying the practice of war and asceticism were written by armed scholars of the frontier in the late eighth century. They were encouraged by their sovereigns at a time when they were putting in appearances on the border, particularly under the reign of Harun al-Rashid. Thanks to the self-serving support of the authorities, Syrian pious scholars opened the way to the practice of ribat on all the frontiers. Their works were being circulated in al-Andalus within a decade and were still being published there shortly before the fall of Granada in 1492. In Egypt as in the other provinces, the authorities followed the same measures implemented on the Taurus frontier. During the same period, the pious scholars of Alexandria brought about change by attracting ulema passing through, notably reputed Maghrebi and Andalusian jurists and traditionists on their way to teach law in the East. The delta city remained a busy place of ribat, but its reputation came first and foremost from the rise of legal studies, thanks to the renown of local legal scholars such as al-Ma'afiri (d. 783) and al-Mahri (d. 785), whose scholarly wisdom attracted Western ulema traveling to the East and Mecca.
In terms of defense, the policy of deploying soldiers in fortified edifices along the coasts of Ifriqiya followed the clear necessity of protecting the most exposed sites, which were also the most populated: the Gulf of Carthage, the coasts of Cap Bon, the populated shores of the Sahel, and, particularly, the region of Kairouan. However, there were not enough soldiers. It was desirable to attract ascetics, armed scholars, and, more generally, volunteers, brought by the great annual festivals such as the _mawsim_ to ribat cities like Sousse, Monastir, Tunis or Radès, Tripoli, and, to a lesser extent, Gabès and Sfax. In the most dangerous periods, these individuals volunteered to supplement troops monitoring the coasts.
The practice of ribat under the supervision of the authorities, the presence in the same fortified sites of both cavalrymen assigned to the ribat and pious volunteers, and the entire military apparatus on the sea are reminiscent of the measures taken on the shores of the caliphate, from Alexandria to Tarsus, where armies paid by the caliph rubbed shoulders with volunteers. A similar system is duly attested to in al-Andalus, particularly in Tortosa, which was guarded by 150 cavalrymen and the sailors and, later, _murabitun_ of Sant Carles de la Ràpita, located farther downstream on the Ebro, beginning under the emirate of al-Hakam I and, as of 844, whenever the coast was threatened by the Vikings.
## Waging War on the Frontier: Good Business?
The frontier space of the Mediterranean basin, particularly along coastlines, became a favored area for state interventions and, consequently, a zone of heavy investments. This commitment was crucial in that the sites and edifices sheltering soldiers and volunteers required large sums of money to build defenses and remunerate military men who had settled there with their families. Consequently, the commitment motivated by the military situation simultaneously contributed to populating coastal regions and to making lasting investments that turned these maritime regions into highly active zones. A real economic system was created, adapted to the conditions of permanent cross-border clashes and exchanges, particularly on the sea. As of the ninth century in Islam, the coasts of Ifriqiya, al-Andalus, and Syria up to Cilicia were populated and subjected to significant military and commercial development; Byzantium followed a relatively similar evolution after the Muslims retreated in Anatolia. The Byzantine Isaurian emperors introduced a military policy, known by the term "themes," that was adapted to the stabilization of fronts and led to fundamental changes in social and economic organization. In the Latin regions, feudalism played an essential role after the Carolingian collapse and before the city-states, counts of Catalonia and Provence, and kings and emperors elsewhere took responsibility for the best part of defenses in order to counter Muslim offensives. Thus, along with recurrent war, all of the Mediterranean's shores experienced an evolution in the organization of society and the economy.
Al-Baladhuri and al-Ya'qubi, then al-Tabari and other Arab chroniclers and geographers, had access to information from the Umayyad chancellery on the establishment of exogenous populations in the regions of the Taurus and along Syrian coastlines. The principal groups moved on caliphal or emirate orders were contingents of soldiers, particularly the "Persians," but also skilled laborers such as carpenters and other workers at shipyards set up in Syrian ports to maintain and build ships. These populations were generally identified according to their geographic or ethnic background: they included "Arabs" from tribes of the Arabian peninsula, as well as the "Atrak," who were Turks by language and culture, brought from Iran and Iraq under the command of the _abna',_ members of the reigning family identified by this term referring to the sons of the Abbasid princes. This practice of settling soldiers and their families along the Syrian coasts had begun in the earliest phase of the conquests; most of those who were referred to as Persians (al-Furs) and sent to swell the ranks of soldiers in the coastal districts around 662–663 did not come from Fars but rather from the cities of the region—Baalbek, Homs, and Antioch—where their forebears had been called by Mu'awiya after the conquest of the coastal cities. Similarly, in 648, with Tripoli of Lebanon freshly conquered and deserted by its inhabitants, the city was repopulated by Jews, also on orders from the caliph. The largest groups among these settlers appear to have been the Iranians, called al-Hamraᵓ (Reds), perhaps due to their red hair, and the Persians, reported by al-Baladhuri to have settled on "the coasts of Syria."
The Abbasids borrowed this practice, but focused their efforts on the frontier marches. In Tarsus, aside from the volunteers for ribat, sailors of highly diverse backgrounds formed excellent crews. The regular employment of "renegades" such as Leo, Damian, and Photios, governor of Crete, indicate that Greeks from the Aegean Sea and the Anatolian coasts were highly appreciated for their nautical and military skills. The written records suggest that, like the Andalusians, the crews who had followed the Greek chiefs demanded high fees for their skills, which ensured their reliability.
This practice had already been common in the caliphs' land army since 836, with the massive incorporation of Turkish slaves to replace Arab and Persian contingents. There is little doubt that Greek prisoners were on naval crews, in both Crete and the Near East, though there are no references to allow us to specify the background of the sailors recruited. Many of them were captives able to buy their freedom by working on Muslim ships. Indeed, capturing crews was an excellent business opportunity and could lead to the enlistment of captives in the Muslim ranks. It is therefore difficult to establish a connection between place of origin and sailing ability, despite the system of denomination chosen by the Arab authors; what is clear is that one had to spend a lot of money to have skilled sailors, either by paying high premiums or, more often, by granting resources drawn from revenue generated by the war and taxation of local populations.
While the texts do not explicitly mention the conditions for recruiting and profit sharing with crews in commerce raiding, they do provide a few leads regarding those for fighters in frontier towns in the Taurus. Harun al-Rashid's reform led to the creation of a zone of protection ( _al-'Awasim_ ), commanded from the rear in cities like Qinnasrin, but also had the advantage of expanding the exclusive zone in terms of taxation, providing soldiers and volunteers with attractive financial conditions. The same was true on the shore ( _sahil_ ). We basically know nothing about the details of these financial advantages, given that Arab men of letters generally limited their references to an enumeration of fortified towns on the Anatolian border and in Upper Mesopotamia, giving little information about financial support.
In 756, a number of houses were built in six months in Melitene to accommodate four thousand soldiers sent to the front when the caliphs resumed campaigns in Anatolia. Farther south, significant investments were made to turn the fortified town of al-Massisa into an essential strategic point of the frontier military presence. The caliphs had it reinforced and settled two thousand soldiers there. Al-Baladhuri reports that these soldiers received a regular salary, as well as revenue from land in the region, in the form of concessions ( _iqta'_ ), as was also the practice in Ifriqiya at the time. They also received their share of the booty after each razzia. In Tarsus, settlers were exempted from taxes and given plots of land. In this way, the authorities encouraged soldiers' families to settle in fortified towns on the frontier for the long term. The number of Muslim fighters who settled in the region with advantageous fiscal conditions is estimated at forty thousand. Ibn Hawqal refers to a relatively similar system on the Umayyad borders of al-Andalus in the tenth century, but he does not provide the same level of detail.
There is every reason to believe that similar measures were in effect in coastal regions, where razzias and maritime commerce could generate good revenue in periods of continual warfare: already in the Umayyad period, Arab soldiers took advantage of the summer months to raid Byzantine coasts and returned to the hinterland in the winter months. Similarly, when al-Ma'mun took over a plan to attack Constantinople, beginning in 830, he ordered his brother, the future al-Mu'tasim, then governor of Syria, to send troops from the districts of Homs, the Jordan River, and Palestine to join the maritime expedition under the command of one of his sons in 831–832. The coastal districts were reorganized on orders from al-Mansur and al-Mahdi, who had the port cities repaired or reinforced.
Though we do not have access to figures, it is safe to say that this revenue represented a significant financial commitment, with positive repercussions on populations working for the Muslims on the frontiers, at least so long as Islam prevailed over Byzantium. During the Islamic empire's weak phases, these positive effects were unreliable, even unlikely. Long-lasting borders have always stimulated trade, benefiting both sides. Under al-Ma'mun's reign, the Byzantines tried to focus turbulent Muslim soldiers' energy on commercial exchanges by proposing a treaty designed to increase the trade brought in by the former "silk roads," the principal market for which remained the capital city. As of 842, "lobbies" were developed to control the sources of frontier income from taxes, razzias, and trade, until Ibn Tulun attempted to misappropriate the profits.
Like Anatolian frontier cities, ports on the Syrian coast had always offered economic opportunities that made them the focus of the attention of the region's chiefs, leading families, and groups of soldiers. For instance, Umayyad caliph Hisham's decision to move the Acre dockyard to Tyre stemmed from commercial disagreements with the Arab family that had obtained the exclusive right to operate maritime traffic through the dockyard and adjoining granaries, probably from Mu'awiya. The ports cited in the geographers' itineraries as of the ninth century, particularly in the works of Ibn Khurradadhbih, were the departure and arrival points for Muslim ships and Christian pilgrims, if we are to believe the account by Willibald, an English bishop who left to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 726. Willibald was faced with meticulous customs officials who searched luggage to ensure no commercial tax revenue was lost. As shown in al-Bakri's maritime rutter, these maritime routes ran along the coast to the north and crossed over the border into Byzantium. Similarly, the map of the Mediterranean in the _Book of Curiosities_ includes the Byzantine port of Antalya.
When Ibn Tulun found himself unable to control Tarsus, which was in the hands of Baghdad financial groups composed of those in power and their inner circle, he changed methods by financing razzias carried out by three thousand soldiers from Cilicia. Khumarawayh, Ibn Tulun's son and successor, bought the allegiance of Yazman, Tarsus's governor. Probably pushed by groups of merchants with ties to Baghdad, the city's inhabitants appealed to Caliph al-Mu'tadid, who sent a new governor in 898, before his successor, al-Muktafi, came to take possession of the city in 902. The reconstruction of the fleet, which had been burned before the caliph's eyes but immediately reassembled, allowed Damian to join forces with Leo of Tripoli and regularly carry out lucrative expeditions on the Aegean Sea, guaranteeing the city and the caliphate significant resources. By appointing these renegades as commanders, the caliph offset the influence of the Atrak, the Turks who were then all-powerful on the border. The Atrak also claimed to be in the caliph's service, but they aimed to control border traffic for their own benefit, with the support of the caliph's entourage.
As can be seen, the installation of defensive measures on the coast was a key issue that extended far beyond the framework of jihad. Those in power were able to hold sway over groups of professional fighters and sailors invited to settle with their families to defend the marches through control of the frontier regions' tax administration, the share deducted from the booty brought back from Christian land and maritime zones, and, more generally, the upholding of sultanate authority. Al-Muqaddasi's account of the activities of Palestinian ribats around the year 1000 reveals the inextricable links between jihad and business on Muslim shores, in this case concerning the ransoming of prisoners and, on a larger scale, maritime commerce with Byzantium, calling on even the most modest purses:
> Al-Ramla is, [as I have said], located in the middle of the fertile districts, surrounded by extraordinary district centers and ribats.... The capital [al-Ramla] oversees several coastal ribats, which are always ready to go into battle, to which the Greek barges and galleys sail, carrying Muslim prisoners, who are handed over at a price of 100 dinars for three. In each ribat, there are people who know the language of the Greeks and who are sent to them as representatives. The people of the ribat are provided with all kinds of food. When the Greeks' ships appear, the alarm is raised; if it is at night, [the signal] is lit at the ribat tower; if it is by day, smoke is produced. Each ribat is connected to the capital by a series of tall towers, with special personnel. [The signal] is lit at the ribat tower, then the following and so on, in such a way that not an hour goes by before the alarm has been raised in the capital. Then the drum is beaten on the tower [in the city], [the inhabitants] are exhorted to [go to] the ribat, and they go off in force and in arms, while the country youth gather; then the ransoms are paid: one person buys a man, another sacrifices a dirham or a small coin, so long as by the end all the prisoners brought have been bought back. The ribats in this district where the ransoms are paid are: Gaza, Mimas, Ashkelon, Mahuz Ashud [the port of Ashdod], Mahuz Jubna, Jaffa, Arsuf.
The frontier allowed clans, generally close to those in power, to develop their own business through razzia warfare, land colonization, and land, sea, and especially cross-border trade. The Banu Salih at the beginning of the Abbasid period; the governors, generals, and admirals; and, in particular, officers of Turkic origin, allied to members of the dynasty, such as the Tulunids or the admirals of Greek origin, sometimes controlled actual conglomerates on the frontier, taking advantage of their position or their alliances at the court of Baghdad or Samarra. As of 750, only the caliphs could handle organization on such a scale. The regional emirates picked up the torch, following the example of the Aghlabids and the Tulunids. In short, the presence of sufficiently strong powers was indispensable to guarantee the stability of the fronts and to allow sailors and soldiers on the frontier free access to the sea, both to launch offensives and to finance defenses and expeditions and support the maritime commerce from which they themselves benefited.
Once the Abbasids were no longer in a position to ensure the defense of the countries bordering the Mediterranean, the Hamdanids of Aleppo took over. Despite the efforts of Sayf al-Dawla (945–967), celebrated by the great poet al-Mutanabbi (d. 965), the Hamdanids could not match Greek power the way the caliphs had.
When the crusaders captured the coasts of the Near East beginning in 1097, the Syrian ulema sent a delegation to Caliph al-Mustazhir (1094–1118), despite the fact that he had lost actual power to the Seljuq sultanate. The ulema still believed that only the heir to the ghazi sovereigns, who had led the jihad and stood up to the Christians, could head the armies of believers and chase away the crusaders: begun in the middle of the eighth century, both the formidable material mobilization for jihad and the remarkably effective propaganda continued to be operative until the beginning of the twelfth century.
#
THE MARITIME AWAKENING OF THE MUSLIM WEST
BEGINNING IN THE NINTH CENTURY, the western part of the Mediterranean Sea came to life, spurred on by the Muslims: in Ifriqiya, then under the domination of the Aghlabid emirs; and in al-Andalus, beginning in 798 with the arrival of a Berber fleet led by the Umayyad emir al-Hakam I's two uncles, and with the help of the Rustamids of Tahert and the Idrisids of Fez. Concise references to this marine activity reveal an overall trend that cannot be explained as the initiatives of a spontaneous generation of communities of sailors deciding, more or less at the same time, to make a living by going into piracy against the Latins and into trade with their compatriots.
# THE DAWN OF A NEW MARITIME ERA: THE AGHLABID PERIOD
Appointed governor by Caliph al-Mansur, 'Abd al-Rahman b. Habib had restored order to the western Maghreb, but his assassination in 754 put an end to the Tunisian fleet's activities for about half a century. Following his death, the unrest provoked by the _jund_ lastingly compromised the program of naval attacks until 810, when Emir Ibrahim b. al-Aghlab restored peace and brought the Ifriqiyan contingent into line. However, it was Ziyadat Allah who was the first to devise a real plan to control the maritime space, taking advantage of favorable circumstances and a successful landing in Mazara in the east of Sicily in 827. He organized a permanent naval force to ensure the continuation of operations on the island. His system proved effective enough to keep up the war against Byzantium for seventy-five years, from Tunis and Sousse. Beginning in 831, Palermo served as a base for the fleet sailing from African shores to provide reinforcements and maintain authority over the island. This also allowed the Muslims to control the routes separating the central zone of the Mediterranean, stretching from Tripoli to Taranto, from the western basin zone. The taking of Malta in 869 and its subsequent complete depopulation brought to completion a plan that placed the central Mediterranean under Islam's lasting control.
Convoys to Sicily are mentioned, without any figures, in the context of major expeditions, beginning with the island's occupation in 827, though no further details are provided. Additionally, reports of dignitaries' frequent travels bear witness to the constant back and forth between the African continent and Sicily. According to a statement attributed to an admiral of the fleet, the crossing lasted a day and a half under normal conditions. Campaigns in the island's interior, made possible by reinforcements brought from Ifriqiya, and the numerous and sometimes months-long sieges of Syracuse, Palermo, Messina, and other coastal towns, required support from the fleets. Ifriqiya continued to be the departure point for these Sicilian expeditions. Though limited, this information suggests how frequently ships set sail from the two Ifriqiyan ports and the capital of Sicily. Attacks against Italy up to the mouth of the Po and the sieges of Salerno, Ragusa, and especially the island's Byzantine capital, which was blockaded for weeks at a time, clearly involved a capacity for significant logistical mobilization. The fleet's decisive part in the taking of Messina in 842–843 simultaneously gave the Muslims both control of the strait and the ability to provide reinforcements and reassurance to the troops laying siege to Bari, seized in 847. Similarly, the Ifriqiyan navy's ability to regain control of the maritime zone after suffering several defeats at the hands of the Byzantine fleet attests to the effectiveness of its administration. To put it mildly, the Aghlabids' naval organization was a decisive factor in the successful conquest of Sicily.
Ibrahim b. al-Aghlab had been able to relaunch the fleet as of 810. With the building of a port and a dockyard in Sousse, fifty kilometers (thirty miles) from Kairouan, the emirs now had a naval base they controlled directly, without having to depend on the whims of the Tunis _jund._ The information reported about the construction of the port and dockyard, which was protected by the city's rampart, does not provide any specific details on the layout of the premises: "Sousse has eight gates, one of which is very large and is located on the east of the building called _Dar al-sina'a:_ this is where the ships come through.... It was Ziyadat Allah who erected these ramparts.... Inside the city there is a second fort called the Qasaba, it is located north of the medina, right next to the dockyard."
## The Fleet and Jihad
The Aghlabids proved themselves through the organization of their naval force, which provided them with the nearly constant ability to keep up their insular jihad from 827 to 902. According to the Egyptian historian al-Nuwayri (d. 1332), they landed ten thousand men from one hundred ships at Mazara in 827; describing the same event, al-Maliki reports ten thousand cavalrymen. Ibn 'Idhari reports seventy ships and seven hundred cavalrymen. Though it is impossible to accurately assess the number of people and boats involved, the thirty-two expeditions that sailed from Ifriqiya and certainly mobilized large fleets for the conquest of Sicily, not to mention the innumerable crossings toward the island and the European continent, provide an idea of the naval resources available. In 827–828, during Asad b. al-Furat's first assault on Syracuse, the fleet fought off reinforcements sent from Venice and Greece; the capital was ultimately saved by the arrival of another Byzantine squadron, which forced the Muslims to burn their ships on the spot and disappear into the island's interior.
In 831, Palermo was surrounded on land and from the sea and forced to surrender; in 835, the Muslim fleet freed its ad hoc ally Naples from the grip of Sicard, prince of Benevento, who was seeking to take control of the region's ports. In 840, rivalries between Christians in Calabria provided the Arabs with an opportunity to seize Taranto, which then became the hub of Muslim activity in southern Italy. The same year, Ancona was pillaged. In 843, the fleet's entry into the port of Messina gave the Muslims control of the strait. Bari fell in 849, despite the presence in the region of the armies of Louis II, emperor of the Romans; lacking a fleet, Louis II was unable to save the city. The Christians soon became aware of the gifted general al-'Abbas b. al-Fadl, particularly following a large expedition launched from the island's capital against the south of the peninsula in 852 or 853; no Christian naval force could stop him. He repeated this campaign every year from 855 to 858. In 859, after a defeat on the open sea, al-'Abbas's brother 'Ali won a major naval victory and, if the Arabic texts are to be believed, sank one hundred Greek ships. After a period of respite, the new governor, Khafaja, resumed attacks against the capital and the cities of Val di Noto, in the southeast; in 865, during the same campaign, the fleet defeated the Greek squadron, which had arrived from Palermo. The city was again blockaded in 868: with Khafaja on land and his son on the sea, the Muslims repelled the reinforcements sent from Byzantium. The same fleet then set sail to attack Gaeta, devastating the entire region over the course of three months. When Malta was taken in 869, the Christian fleet beat back the squadron sent by Basileus Basil I (867–886), founder of the Macedonian dynasty. The early 870s saw the Muslims use troops brought from Taranto to launch a series of offensives in the region of Salerno, while Bari fell back into the hands of the Christians.
In 875, the war of conquest was revived by the arrival in Sicily's capital of a new Aghlabid governor, accompanied by fresh troops. However, it was his successor who would succeed in seizing Syracuse in 878. Once again, the fleet repelled reinforcements sent by the emperor, with the blockade of the port preventing fishermen and sailors from resupplying the city, which eventually surrendered. Also under the reign of Ibrahim II, the Byzantine fleet, though victorious in 879, lost control of the Strait of Otranto for a decade after suffering a total defeat in 889. Until that point, unrest in Ifriqiya had prevented the Muslims from sending new squadrons. The emir had had to wait ten years for the return to calm in Kairouan before he could send a fleet to Mazara and resume the conquest on the island and in Calabria. After using the Sousse fleet to take back the capital of Sicily from his rebellious relatives, he sent the same fleet to Messina and from there to Reggio Calabria, winning an important victory over the Greek squadron sent as reinforcements. With the maritime space back under his control, the emir could now consider personally leading the jihad on Italian soil.
## Jihad, a Necessary Outlet for Violence against the Regime
This impressive maritime track record was not solely due to good management of naval resources. The emirs had to head the jihad in order to keep armies standing at the ready and justify their title of "emir," given to those who governed in the name of the Abbasids and exercised military command; with the Maghreb Islamized, the sea, Sicily, and the south of the Italian Peninsula had become the emirs' new battlefields and their targets for lucrative razzias. Once Palermo was conquered, the Aghlabid clan took full control of operations on the island and took the helm of jihad in the south of the Peninsula. Having put an end to internal dissent, Emir Ibrahim II followed his role to its logical conclusion by personally leading the jihad. In 902, he landed at the head of his troops and seized Taormina, reducing the small Greek zone to the area of Rometta. With the Strait of Messina now reopened to Muslims, Ibrahim II landed in Calabria in September 902. His death in October put an end to the jihad.
The emirs had turned this large island and southern Italy into a frontier march and the battlefield of their jihad. While they officially saw themselves as the representatives of the caliphate, they kept war profits for their own clan. It seems likely that this was the mind-set of the last Aghlabid sovereign after he brutally regained control of the emirate and decided to follow the example of the caliphs, particularly Caliph al-Ma'mun, who had chosen to personally head the jihad from the ribat-city of Tarsus in Cilicia. Johannes Hymonides, our principal source, reports the threats made by the emir when he addressed the representatives of the Frankish and Byzantine sovereigns who had come to propose a truce in Calabria: "Let them [the Christian sovereigns] at least know for certain that I will not only destroy their cities, but also the city of that miserable old Peter. There will be nothing else for me to do then but to reach Constantinople and to tear it down with the momentum of my power."
Whether it was actually spoken or not, this statement, drawing heavily from eschatology, echoed a persistent tradition that reached back to the time of the first Umayyads and had continued until the defeat of 717. Ibrahim II now borrowed it for his own use.
However, the founding principles of sultanate legitimacy, which was tied to jihad and formalized by the jurists of Baghdad, required above all that the holy territory of the Dar al-Islam be defended. As with the accounts of the caliphs' military endeavors, most references to Aghlabid jihad, found in the chronicles and biographies of the ulema, deal with the defense of the coasts of Ifriqiya.
# THE ADVENT OF MUSLIM NAVIGATION IN THE MAGHREB AND AL-ANDALUS
The occupation and development of the Iberian Peninsula had required boats to transport thousands of Berber and Arab soldiers across the Strait of Gibraltar from 710 to 712. According to certain sources, Julian, the governor of Ceuta, incited Musa b. Nusayr to attack Roderic, king of the Visigoths. According to other opinions, the alliance was made once Musa b. Nusayr was in a position to threaten the Count of Ceuta in his city. The late regional traditions have left a few indications regarding the methods of transportation the governor made available to the invaders to cross the strait. From these, we can deduce that the port had the necessary harbor facilities and ships to provide the Muslims with the best crossing point to Spain, used by the estimated five hundred soldiers under Tarif in 710; the forces of Tariq b. Ziyad in 711, estimated at seventeen thousand men by the most optimistic of the traditionists; and the up to eighteen thousand men said to have embarked with the Arab conqueror to join the Berber chief in 712. Tarif "crossed the strait [with four hundred footmen and one hundred cavalrymen] using four ships" and took possession of Tarifa, which was described as the Visigoths' dockyard. The following season, Tariq and his seven thousand men "crossed the strait on the [same] boats, the only ones in their possession, which went back and forth to transport the infantry and cavalry [until] Musa, who after Tariq's departure had ordered boats to be built and now had a good number of them, sent him 5000 men."
For his part, Ibn 'Idhari specifies that "to transport [Tariq b. Ziyad's] troops without the Visigoths' knowledge, Julian used trading ships that regularly coasted between the two shores, so that it was believed they were carrying merchants. All these soldiers were thus introduced little by little."
The facilities and seamen left on site by the Byzantines since 680 had made it possible to transport Berber and Arab troops to the European continent. Subsequent references to crossings—essentially by participants in Arab political and military life, most often between Algeciras and Africa—reveal that relations continued between the two shores, now both under Islam's control. In light of events such as the Berber Revolt, crossing the strait seemed easy: in 741, after facing severe setbacks in the Maghreb, the survivors of the Syrian contingent sent by Caliph Hisham to put down the Berber uprising, estimated at five thousand men, landed in al-Andalus to go defeat the Peninsula's insurgents. They had earlier found refuge in Ceuta, where they had succeeded in resisting Berber assaults for a relatively long time, probably in the al-Mina' fortress, a vestige from the period of Justinian II. Emir Idris I's seizure of the port city in 789–790 marked a new stage in the growth of traffic between the two shores. Under the supervision of the two emirates established in Córdoba and Fez, the two capitals were now regularly connected by greater commercial traffic.
The strait was not the only area open to maritime traffic prior to the arrival of Musa b. Nusayr and the Muslims; in fact, the entire coast of the Maghreb on the Mediterranean seaboard was concerned. The ports of the Moroccan Rif, in operation thanks to Berber sailors, were "discovered" once the Arab authorities integrated them into an Islamic framework, as attested to in this account of the founding of the emirate of Nekor: "Saleh conquered this land under the reign of al-Walid b. 'Abd al-Malik. Having arrived in the Maghreb at the time of the first Muslim conquest, he settled in the port of Tamsaman, near Bakdun, on the Wadi al-Baqar. The port of Tamsaman is 20 miles from the city of Nekor. The Sanhaja and the Ghomaras, Berbers of this locality, allowed themselves to be converted to Islam."
Commercial navigation, fishing, and possibly local piracy were practiced before the Muslims, but these activities are only revealed to us from the point when Muslim authorities took control of them, at least nominally. At the same time, by taking responsibility for conducting jihad, these emirate dynasties stimulated navigation all the way to the Latin coasts.
The east coast of the Iberian Peninsula was also not devoid of maritime activity in the Visigoth period, as attested to by a retaliatory measure taken by the first Umayyad emir: "In 162 / 778–779, Imam 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Mu'awiya (756–785) ordered the destruction of the boats ( _marakib_ ) of the district of Tudmir and of all the sailing equipment." Since the conquest in 714, this region, which basically corresponds to the present-day region of Murcia, had enjoyed a treaty of capitulation signed by 'Abd al-'Aziz b. Musa and Count Theudimer, lord of the principality that took his name. The principality's autonomy and the activity of its sailors are confirmed by the fact that the governor of al-Andalus had to tell Syrian soldiers wanting to go home from one of the region's ports after putting down the Berber Revolt of 741 to embark in Algeciras because the eastern coasts were not under Muslim control. It appears that Emir 'Abd al-Rahman I sought to challenge this freedom of navigation by having Tudmir's ships destroyed. Even long-distance crossings were possible. Thus, according to the tenth-century Andalusian man of letters Ibn al-Qutiyya (whose name means "son of the Gothic woman"), Sara the Goth, a descendant of the Visigothic king Wittiza, whose heirs had joined the Muslims to fight Roderic, "had a boat built for herself in Seville, which was the city where her father [Alamundo] had taken up residence.... Sara the Goth embarked with her brothers and headed for Syria. She landed in Ashkelon and continued her journey to arrive at the gates of the palace of Hisham b. 'Abd al-Malik."
While this story can be met with skepticism, long-distance sailing, including from the Iberian Peninsula, is repeatedly attested to in the first centuries of the Middle Ages and throughout the Mediterranean basin.
## The Confrontation between Christians and Muslims in the Western Mediterranean
The revolt of the emir of Córdoba's uncles against Emir al-Hakam I is reported to have provoked the first maritime attacks against Christians, launched on the Andalusian emir's order: "[In 798] 'Abd Allah b. 'Abd al-Rahman b. Mu'awiya al-Balansi irrupted into al-Andalus, coming from the African coast of Tahert." The Rustamids had made crews available to back the two dissident uncles in the ports of the central Maghreb, particularly in 'Ain al-Farruj, Hunayn, and Ténès. Sulayman b. 'Abd al-Rahman b. Mu'awiya and his brother 'Abd Allah al-Balansi, "the Valencian," began by attempting to seize the Balearic Islands in 798. The Carolingians took the opportunity to send a squadron to the islands, the size of which is impossible to gauge. This initiative was not to bear fruit. The two uncles then landed on the east coast, very likely in the area of Valencia, of which 'Abd Allah took command after visiting the court of Charlemagne in a failed attempt to gain support. In 802, after his brother had been killed in combat, he submitted to the emir and took over the government of the city and its region.
After the uncles' failure to take control of the Balearics, the crews in the eastern ports of al-Andalus launched a series of attacks on the Carolingian coasts. These raids were only reported by the Latin sources. Given that the emir did not personally lead these expeditions, and in the absence of any sign of his having ordered them, it appears that they were planned by the coastal governor, which would also explain the Umayyad historians' silence. In 806, the emperor sent a squadron to Corsica in response to an expedition of "Moors" from the eastern coasts—in other words, of Berbers who had settled on eastern shores. The Carolingians entrusted Count Burchard of Lucca with the command of a fleet that intervened on the island several times, "the Moors having gotten in the habit of pillaging it in the previous years." For their part, the Andalusian sailors set upon Sardinia. While they sustained losses inflicted by the Carolingian fleet on their return journey, they were able to reach Pantelleria and to leave with sixty monks as prisoners. After another attack on Corsica in 809, a fleet "from nearly all of Spain" successively attacked both islands' coasts, where a Muslim community took root, as had been the case with a group of sailors from Ifriqiya on the Sardinian coast to the south.
The Carolingian annals report a joint attack by "Andalusian and African sailors" in 812, just before the beginning of negotiations between Idrisid emissaries and the Byzantine patrician of Syracuse. The two sides signed a truce between 813 and 815. Several attacks had already been launched against Sicily from Idrisid coasts. In the meantime, Andalusian vessels returning from Corsica were intercepted in Mallorcan waters and defeated by the Tuscans, who freed five hundred prisoners intended for the slave markets. The following year, the same Moors attacked Civitavecchia and Nice. Other Andalusian sailors were defeated off the coast of Sardinia. After several short-lived truces, the land victory over the Franks at Barcelona in 815, the year after Charlemagne's death, finally brought an end, on land and at sea, to a war that had begun in 801 with the Carolingian conquest of the Catalan capital. While the Latins were in a position of strength in Catalonia, they did not have the naval resources to put a stop to Andalusian and Maghrebi raids, except for the fleet commanded by Burchard of Lucca, which was probably based in Pisa.
This was a war between regional powers, not between the Provençal and starving pirates. These naval attacks on Christian shores must be seen in the context of the war between the two universalisms separated by the sea, which allowed the Maghrebi emirates to continue the jihad, a source of legitimacy, by assaulting Christian coasts. At the same time, the increase in the number of references to maritime traffic implies an expansion of both commercial and military shipping. People at the time certainly saw piracy and trade as two separate things, as shown by several fatwas beginning in the ninth century and, especially, the treaty of 813, which was signed by Sicily's Greek authorities and the Aghlabid and Idrisid emirates. According to the jurists, the increase in piracy was a result of the authorities' inability to control maritime populations, despite the fact that attacks on Christian shores had actually begun once Muslim regional powers took control of ports and sailors. Maghrebi and Andalusian crews amply benefited from the situation thanks to the prospects offered by good relations with the emirs' capitals; their vigor was put in the service of the cause of jihad. For their part, like the Aghlabids and the Andalusian Umayyads, the Idrisid, Salihid, and probably Rustamid emirs opened a new space for jihad for themselves by encouraging raids on Christian shores now that the Maghreb was considered an Islamized land, and thus off limits to razzias outside of pockets of infidelity. The sea had become the only place for Maghrebi emirates seeking legitimacy to wage institutional jihad.
On this basis, the Salihid emirs, presenting themselves as Himyarite Arabs descended from one of the companions of 'Uqba b. Nafi', succeeded in establishing a principality along the coast of the Rif, where the Ghomaras and other tribes had long lived off the sea. This small state rose out of obscurity after Sa'id b. Idris founded the city of Nekor close to the coast in 761. However, it was not until the ninth century, and particularly under the government of Salih b. Idris (804–864), that the emirate would become known for its maritime dynamism. Salih had traveled to al-Andalus to wage jihad with Emir 'Abd al-Rahman II, but it was by turning to the sea, a source of revenue, that the prince became able to present himself as the worthy defender of Islam. As on all the coastlines undergoing Islamization, these commitments stimulated the construction of coastal defenses and the practice of ribat. Similarly, the Idrisids of Fez seized on this expansion of coastal defenses and took over the places of ribat founded by coastal tribes seeking to protect themselves from the Vikings.
Like the other emirs, they encouraged the pious practices inseparable from jihad. This gave them the opportunity to secure control of the coastal zones where donations and the enlistment of volunteers—in this case, from the tribes—financed the defense of the _sahil_ and promoted the development of trade and other lucrative activities, especially as of the middle of the ninth century. At the same time and in the same area, Berber cities such as Basra, located on the Wadi Loukkos, exported local goods such as linen by crossing the Strait of Gibraltar to Mediterranean ports, evidence of an expansion that geographers such as Ibn Hawqal would bear witness to a century later. The success of jihad at sea, against the Christians, rested on the same principles, with the Maghrebis now able to reach the shores of infidelity and present themselves as other initiators of maritime jihad. There are few traditions reported about this movement from the central and western coasts of the Maghreb, but those that are known reveal an overall consistency in the expansion of maritime activity, driven by the societies of sailors of the Maghrebi coasts and, as of the ninth century, supervised by the region's emirs, who sought both to channel the tribes' combative energy on land and at sea and to prove their legitimacy by taking the initiative of jihad. The economic context, which remains difficult to grasp, and the military situation, which is only a little clearer, provide an understanding of the actions of these sailors who exclusively preyed on the enemies of Islam, outside the usual acts of local piracy and plunder. The simultaneous nature of the awakening of the Andalusian coasts and the reinforcement of the Maghrebi powers is certainly no coincidence.
# THE FIRST ANDALUSIAN NAVY (NINTH CENTURY)
Before 844, al-Andalus's only border was the one that ran across the Iberian Peninsula from the mouth of the Ebro in Porto to the Douro. Aside from the Strait of Gibraltar, the eastern coast came to life—at least from a military perspective—with the war against Charlemagne. The Vikings can be credited with violently rousing the rest of the vast seaboard, which had previously remained tranquil.
## The Aftereffects of Viking Attacks: The Umayyads Take Control of the Sea and Its Shores
Even after several crews left the eastern coasts for Egypt around 818, the Andalusian emirs did not lack for sailors when they needed them. Outside the constantly active zone of the strait, the settling of the Maghrebi Berbers on the east coast seems to have provided new blood to serve beside native sailors, both on the coast of Tudmir and in the regions of Almería and Cartagena. Thanks to this potential, 'Abd al-Rahman II was able to react immediately to the sack of Seville in 844. He brought these sailors from eastern coasts, at good wages, to lead the fleet built on the dockyards of Seville, which had been laid out shortly after the attack of the Norsemen.
The irruption of the Vikings revealed the extent to which the coastal regions had previously been neglected by Umayyad governors and emirs. On the west coast, only the city of Lisbon was able to repel the invaders; after having saved his city, its governor Wahb Allah b. Hazm was the first to raise the alarm. After being pillaged by the soldiers of the Asturian king Alfonso II (791–842) in 798, Lisbon had been fortified once the emir's troops reconquered it in 812. However, no measures were taken to protect the coastlines and coastal cities against an unlikely threat from the western sea. Niebla, Huelva, and the ports of the Guadalquivir, like the lower valley of the Guadiana, the coast of Cádiz, and the region of Medina-Sidonia, were within reach of these formidable sailors. Algeciras was spared in 844 but pillaged during a second incursion in 859. On the east coast, which was also targeted, only Tortosa was nominally designated an Umayyad fortress and military port. This absence of sultanate power on the shores is nowhere more apparent than in a laughable order sent by the emir to the coastal authorities after he received a letter from the governor of Lisbon: he recommended they "be vigilant." The Andalusians' helplessness also shows through in several reports reproduced in the tenth century by men of letters such as Ibn al-Qutiyya: "Since no man from the Gharb al-Andalus had risked fighting them, [the emir] had to recruit people in Córdoba and the neighboring provinces.... Naturally, those who served on the frontiers had already been called to arms, from the beginning of the _majus_ movement, when they landed in the West."
The measures taken by the emir were felt when the sailors from the north returned in 858–859. While the Norsemen succeeded in pillaging several strongholds, the troops and fleet serving Muhammad, who had carried on with his father's policy, provided a more effective defense of the coast:
> The same year [858], the _majus_ reappeared with sixty-two ships off the western seaboard; but they found the sea guarded by Muslim vessels that were cruising along the coastline of the Franks [Catalonia] and the Galicians. [After two ships were captured off the coast of Beja (Alentejo) and the _majus_ were prevented from sailing up the Guadalquivir], the enemy fleet moved to Algeciras, where it landed, took control of the city, and set fire to its great mosque. [When the Frankish forces returned the following year,] Emir Muhammad's fleet advanced against them and captured two richly laden [ships] off the coast of Medina-Sidonia; the rest of the enemy vessels moved away.
Though they did not succeed in protecting the entire coast, the defensive measures implemented along the vast seaboard yielded results described by the thirteenth-century Maghrebi chronicler Ibn 'Idhari, based on reports from the period of the Umayyad caliphate. The emir borrowed both the Abbasids' strategy and their terminology to describe the steps taken. As shown by the account of the attack in 858, the most effective preventive measures were maritime. From the three ports of Seville, Algeciras, and Tortosa, all equipped with dockyards, the fleets would set sail to intercept hostile ships. On the Atlantic, ships patrolling along the west coast of present-day Portugal could rely on finding havens in the harbor of Rado, the future site of Alcácer do Sal, and, farther south, Sines, along with Lisbon and Silves, the embarkation point for al-Ghazal, a poet and emissary sent by the emir to the court of Denmark. Once a ship rounded Cape Saint Vincent, Silves, Ocsonoba, Saltes, the mouth of the Guadiana, the river islands near the mouth of the Guadalquivir, the anchorage at Cádiz, and other shelters offered a multitude of stops up to Tarifa, which was fortified in the tenth century. On the eastern seaboard, references to unrest ( _fitna_ ) during the last quarter of the ninth century reveal a dense occupation of the coast up to the Ebro at the beginning of 'Abd al-Rahman III's reign.
Beginning in 844, the Umayyad administration created administrative defense zones, referred to with the term _tarf_ (cape): Sintra and Cabo da Roca, north of the Tagus; the Setúbal Peninsula, between the Portuguese capital and the Mondego; and Cape Saint Vincent, which was dominated by the monastery housing the relics of the saint, now served as lookout posts in which volunteers were stationed. Another such post was in Arrábida (al-Rabita), south of the Tagus. According to the scattered information provided, the coastal administration now covered the entire coast of al-Andalus ( _sahil_ ) and was dedicated to surveillance and, if necessary, organizing defenses against enemies arriving by sea. As in Syria, this coastal administration was under the responsibility of the governors of the inland and coastal districts; along with the Portuguese capital, Coimbra, Beja, Ocsonoba, Niebla, Seville, and Shaduna, capital of the region of Cádiz, were all monitoring the ocean.
## The Andalusian Ribat, an Imported Model
The first volunteer fighters appeared during the same period, on the coasts and on the land fronts, against the Latins, particularly in the region of Catalonia. Ibn Hayyan's account of the _fitna_ in the last third of the ninth century also identifies the mouth of the Douro as a "ribat zone." The same chronicler's lists of districts attest to the presence of _murabitun_ in the locality of Arrábida (al-Rabita). Since 848, the Bay of Almería had been the site of towers serving as ribats, which doubled as sources of revenue generated by donations and taxes paid by the inhabitants of the Andarax valley for protection. The prospect of a similar practice probably led to the building of the Sant Carles de la Ràpita ribat at the mouth of the Ebro, at around the same time.
After the Umayyad embassy to the king of the Danes and two further naval victories over Danish troops from 858–859 to 861, a squadron was placed under the command of admiral Khashkhash al-Bahri—most likely a relative of one of the leaders who had defeated the Danes—and charged with exploring the ocean north of the familiar waters of the Portuguese coast. The expedition's success may have led to the first Muslim attempt to attack the Atlantic coast north of the Douro from the sea, which ended prematurely with a shipwreck in the ever-perilous waters of the Gulf of Cádiz:
> [In 266 / 879–880] Emir Muhammad ordered the building of ships [on the river in] Córdoba, which al-Ru'ayti, known by the name of Ibn Mughith, was to lead onto the ocean, given that a spy had reported that Galicia's seafront lacked fortifications and that its inhabitants would be unable to defend themselves if they were surprised by an attack coming from that side. Once construction was finished, the command of this fleet was entrusted to 'Abd al-Hamid b. Mughith; but once they arrived on the sea, the ships all broke apart and were dispersed and could not be reassembled.
The dynasty's budding ambition was not limited to expeditions against Christians and the defense of the coastline; maritime expansion had become an important territorial and economic concern, in a space increasingly frequented by merchants and from which the sovereigns of Córdoba fully intended to reap the benefits: "The reason for which the sailors settled in the city of Pechina was that, once the power of the Banu Hasan Idris b. Idris was reinforced in the Maghreb, the Umayyad 'caliphs' ordered the coasts to be controlled so that no boat could sail there without being monitored and controlled. No one could leave al-Andalus without authorization and no one could enter it before [the authorities] had made inquiries and knew where he was coming from and what he was transporting."
'Abd al-Rahman II took advantage of the naval resources at his disposal to resume offensives against Latin shores during the period when he was undertaking a series of campaigns on the territory of Álava against King Ordoño I (850–866) and in Catalonia. Beginning in 838, Andalusian sailors carried out several expeditions against the Italian coast, the western islands, and, especially, Provence: the Latin annals, which are primarily monastic, report raids against Saint-Victor in Marseille in 838 and 848; Arles and Saint-Césaire in 842, 850, 859, and 869; Nimes in 859; and as far as Valence on the Rhône in 860.
These razzias against Christian coastlines and islands, the growing intensity of maritime relations with the Maghreb since the beginning of the ninth century, and the desire to control the maritime routes passing the islands reveal the maritime space's strategic importance for the emirate of Córdoba. The attempted seizure in 848 of the Balearic Islands, which had been under Muslim control since 709, exemplifies the Mediterranean's change of military and economic status in the minds of the Andalusian authorities—long before the advent of the caliphate in 929.
## _Fitna_ and Maritime Development in Andalusia (875–912): A False Paradox?
The political crisis that rocked al-Andalus from 875 to 912, exclusively known to us through Ahmad al-Razi's account, highlights the divisions and weaknesses of the Umayyad government before the resounding recovery that took place under the reign of 'Abd al-Rahman III and the proclamation of the caliphate in 929. Yet the caliphal chronicle reveals indications of strong economic growth in the same period, of which regional elites and populations were both the architects and beneficiaries. The chronicle mentions the reconstruction of numerous cities that had apparently been previously abandoned. In particular, the founding of fortified villages ( _husun_ ), also erected by the regional aristocracies, confirms a territorial reorganization of the provinces during the second half of the ninth century, of which the caliph would take advantage half a century later in administering the flourishing caliphal territory.
Coastal regions seem to have particularly benefited from this trend, long before the advent of the caliphate. For example, Ibn Hayyan indicates that "Bakr b. Yahya b. Bakr settled in the city of Shant Mariyya in the canton of Ocsonoba, built structures there and turned it into a stronghold which he equipped with iron doors." Bakr, whose background remains unclear, took advantage of the _fitna_ that began in 875 to take control of the city—present-day Faro, in the Algarve—backed by Mozarabs and local Muslims. He had the venerable ancient city rebuilt and reinforced. The port's maritime activities, particularly fishing, and the exploitation of coastal forests for marine lumber became important resources, under the protection of the statue of Mary, the patron saint of fishermen who combined the two religions. The revenue generated allowed the Banu Bakr to escape the hold of the Yemenis who had previously dominated the region.
The descriptions of maritime activities oriented toward trade report a new momentum in maritime exploitation from Umayyad shores. This is also evidenced by the regular relations established between ports on the east coast and those of the Maghreb, from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Algiers region. The beginning of this activity coincided precisely with the beginning of the _fitna_ in 875, the year Ténès was founded through the efforts of Arab and Berber sailors from Iberian shores. These lasting ties extending to both sides of the Alboran Sea constantly grew in scope, as attested to by the founding of Oran in 902–903, the year the Balearic Islands bowed to the sultan's authority. Ibn Khaldun indicates that the initiative to invade the islands came from a private individual, 'Isam al-Jawlani, who proposed to Emir 'Abd Allah to subdue the archipelago, presenting it as an easy target upon his return from a pilgrimage to Mecca. While the initial impetus for the invasion may have come from the rich pilgrim's request, such an operation could never have been launched without the prince's agreement, particularly since Pechina had become the principal port of the emirate, with which he now had close ties. Appointed governor of Mallorca, al-Jawlani ordered the construction of mosques, baths, and _funduq_ s (inns), "the fundamental elements that define an Islamic city." The Muslims' control of the archipelago, after numerous failed attempts, can probably be attributed to the development of economic relations with the continent, which may have convinced the islanders to accept their tutelage. Several regional capitals, such as Seville, which was governed by the Banu Hajjaj, one of the rich Arab families that controlled the city, took advantage of the naval and port infrastructures built during the Viking attacks to turn themselves into prosperous trading posts where boats from the entire Mediterranean landed. The best-documented and most significant example of this boom in the middle of the _fitna_ period is Pechina.
Berber sailors are often presented as having taken the initiative that paved the way to the maritime city's naval fortune, before the caliphate became involved. Under the reign of Muhammad, probably shortly before 875, the sailors originating from communities that had participated in naval operations against Christians under the reigns of al-Hakam I and 'Abd al-Rahman II were accused of pillaging the Muslim port of Marchena, which is otherwise unknown to us. Angered by their actions, the emir ordered the dismantling of Tortosa's naval forces, which were primarily composed of Berber crews. Consequently, this act of piracy seems to have led these sailors, the _bahriyyun,_ to settle in southern ports, and particularly in Águilas, Pechina, and Ashkubirash, which has also proved impossible to locate. Some of these Berber and Arab sailors chose to return to their homelands, but most put down roots on the south coast of al-Andalus and contributed to founding the city, with the authorization of the Andalusian emir. These experienced sailors expanded maritime business, though we do not know whether they did so in association with the Yemenis or after edging them out. In any case, they took advantage of their close ties with the communities in ports of the Maghreb, particularly in Ténès, which had become a prosperous trading post, and Oran, on the coast of the emirate of Tahert.
The success of the city located next to the Bay of Almería rested on a favorable economic context and the privileged ties it had formed with the Umayyad caliphs since its founding. The clearest proof of its growth was in 'Abd al-Rahman III's choice to make it the headquarters of the Umayyad admiralty, when he decided to take control of maritime affairs in 931. By taking over this fine instrument that would allow him to realize his maritime ambitions, the caliph was therefore only continuing and expanding on an initiative that had begun around 884. Yet the caliphal histories were able to give the impression that the caliph was the one truly responsible for the port's fortune by sidestepping the emirate period of its economic development and foregrounding the caliph's decision to take control of the fleet beginning in 931—the year Ceuta was occupied. The construction of a new city after the Fatimid razzia of 954 and the resettlement of Pechina's population in this city marked the final act of the idyll between Umayyad power and the sailors of the Bay of Almería.
While the ninth century was unquestionably the period of the Muslim drive into the western Mediterranean, as it was in the eastern zone, the ideological framework imposed by the Abbasid caliphate, then the censorship exercised by the Mediterranean caliphates in the following century, determined temporal borders that served the caliphates' interests in setting historical memory. The title taken by the Umayyads and the Fatimids required them above all to conquer the Muslim world in its entirety and, in particular, Baghdad, while continuing to pursue jihad against Christians and to fight each other. In this new context, the Mediterranean was more than ever before the center of the three caliphates' concerns.
#
THE MARITIME IMPERIALISM OF THE CALIPHS IN THE TENTH CENTURY
## _The End of Jihad?_
THE LITERARY MANIPULATION and elimination of earlier traditions by men of letters in the service of the caliphs raise the question of whether there really was an economic rupture between the ninth century of the emirates and the tenth century of the caliphates in the Islamic West. If such a divide did exist, it would primarily have been in the Iberian Peninsula and Ifriqiya, areas where the caliphal states flourished. Yet it was precisely in these regions that the two major Mediterranean emirates seem to have made their most significant investments in the ninth century. Consequently, the two caliphates were in a position to make use of the effects of economic growth started in a previous era, as was the case on the shores of Byzantium, but also along Latin coasts. This overall trend is confirmed by the emergence of commercial networks that covered the entire space of the inner sea, such as the trade in _bacini_ ceramics produced by Muslims and bought by Pisans or the business of Jewish merchants of the Geniza, networks that witnessed and participated in the general growth of commerce on a Mediterranean scale.
# FROM THE SEA OF JIHAD TO THE IMPERIAL SPACE
An assessment of the evolution of caliphal policies in the Mediterranean reveals a relative consistency in the strategy of the Fatimid and Umayyad caliphates, insofar as both states shared the goal of reaching Baghdad. The proclamation of the two caliphates at the beginning of the tenth century was to mark a major change in military objectives, with the conquest of the caliphal seat becoming necessary to realize the claim to govern all of Islam. The Fatimid conquest of Egypt and Syria as far as Damascus and the Andalusian objective to take control of the Maghreb, thus getting closer to the Middle East while annexing the Shiite caliphate, were the first stages of a conquest that was to last until the taking of Baghdad and the fall of the Abbasids. This reevaluation of the space of conquest, determined from Kairouan, Cairo, and Córdoba, gave the Mediterranean a different role from the one it had been assigned at the heart of the Dar al-Islam by Iraqi caliphs focused on the West.
This required an evolution of propaganda, which for the first time since the advent of Islam reversed the direction of legal war, now aimed no longer at the conquest of the infidel's territories but at the heart of the imperial domain. This profoundly changed the profile of the Mediterranean, as presented by the chronographs of the region's two caliphates. The Mediterranean's status shifted from that of an intermediary, frontier space facing the infidel, to that of a sea conquered and governed by Islam. With this established, no one was fooled by the few stirrings in favor of jihad against the Christians, for the rivalries between the two dynasties quickly appeared as the strategic stakes in the land and sea campaigns carried out by the region's two major powers.
Supposed to replace the use of force and implemented after the caliphs' land campaigns failed to alter the borders with the Iberian Peninsula's Christian states, the diplomacy of intimidation that the caliphs adopted with these Christian sovereignties often proved more effective. However, on several occasions the chronicles report that the African troops were sometimes hurriedly called to arms to deal with the Christian threat, such as when Gormaz, a military capital on the upper Douro, was attacked by the Count of Castile and his allies in 975. This situation reveals the limits of Umayyad military ambitions. Similarly, the jihad against the Latins at sea lasted a relatively short time before being replaced by a naval policy entirely dedicated to fighting the Fatimids and increasingly favorable to the Mediterranean's commercial development.
The Fatimid caliphs' commitment to jihad, both on the water and on the continent, ended with the conquest of Sicily in 965 and their recovery of control of the straits, which had briefly been compromised by the Byzantines' naval initiatives. However, as of the reign of 'Ubayd Allah al-Mahdi, the conquest of Egypt became the Ifriqiyan caliphs' primary goal. The conquest required four offensives, in 915, 919, 935, and 969–971, the last of which proved decisive. After the sack of Genoa in 934, the other event commented on by the party's "ideologue" Qadi Nu'man was a punitive expedition against Pechina in 954, launched in retaliation for the capture of one of his ships off the coast of Sicily. Like the Umayyad naval expedition against Sousse and Marsa al-Kharaz, in the north of Ifriqiya, after the sack of Pechina, these events show that what was at stake in the Mediterranean was no longer jihad against the infidel but the control and division of maritime waters among Muslim sovereignties.
## Umayyad Fleets in the Service of Caliphal Ambitions
The accession of Caliph 'Abd al-Rahman III in 929 is thought to have marked the beginning of the Andalusians' maritime jihad against the Latin infidel. Indeed, for the first time since the conquest of al-Andalus, the caliphate's men of letters listed the razzias launched against Latin shores. Though the loss of several passages of Ibn Hayyan's chronicle deprives us of several parts of this maritime history, the presentation of the facts leaves no doubt regarding the master of Medina Azahara's intention to suppress knowledge of naval expeditions carried out by his ancestors and predecessors. This omission could lead one to believe that the emirs of Córdoba never sponsored sea expeditions outside of those against the Vikings. On the contrary, the mention of naval raids against the Christians as of 933 meant that the advent of maritime jihad coincided with the advent of the caliphate. This historical manipulation proved all the more necessary given that the Fatimid imams imposed the same rupture with regard to the Aghlabid period.
Beyond declarations made for propaganda purposes, the various episodes involving the navy of the caliph, master of the seas and the two shores (or _al-'idwatayn,_ the name given to the administrative region of the Strait of Gibraltar and the adjacent coastal and maritime zones after the taking of Ceuta), show that the fleet, one of the most substantial on the Mediterranean, was primarily used for the conquest of North Africa.
In 913, the future caliph's first act of maritime policy had been to gather the available crews in Algeciras and build a dockyard with the aim of taking control of the maritime zone extending to the Alboran Sea, at the expense of the dissident Ibn Hafsun and the Idrisids who supplied him. The publicity given to this reassertion of control primarily aimed to serve as a reminder of the Umayyads' rights over the maritime zone separating the two continents. Reports on the first African campaigns revealed new intentions for a military conquest of the Maghreb's western territories. Following the failure of direct domination over the region beyond Ceuta and its surroundings, a new phase of Umayyad policy in the Maghreb was inaugurated by the alliance with the Zenata emirates, who divided up the government of a large part of the regions of present-day Morocco in the name of the sovereign, and the formal submission of the chiefs of the powerful Barghawata confederation. In fact, one of the principal reasons for the Umayyads' failure was that it had proved impossible to simultaneously mobilize enough troops on the fronts of the Christian frontier and the Maghreb al-Aqsa:
> [In 321 / 933] the caliph ordered the sending of help, with valiant men-at-arms and skillful archers with their provisions of arrows and bows, and against the enemies of God he sent by sea [to Ceuta] a squadron of carefully chosen ships and their crews, which were in large enough numbers and well equipped. But [this measure] appeared belated given the stated urgency, which did not give the ruler the time necessary [to react]: knowing nothing of [the admiral of the fleet's] situation and having had no news on the subject, [the caliph] had already sent his principal squadron to fight the country of the Franks—may God strike them down—at the very moment when he had sent his generals and his elite troops to fight the infidel to the east and to the north, so that he could only send what was left in the capital and that stood ready.
On more than one occasion, Christian attacks on the northern front or land expeditions in the Maghreb al-Aqsa by the Zirid emirs, generals for the Fatimids, impeded the caliph's military plans and ultimately made it impossible to establish his direct sovereignty beyond the area of the strait. However, thanks to the fortification of the port city of Ceuta and the caliph's complete domination of the Maghreb's western waters, he had control over traffic between Europe and Africa. Additionally, the submission of the Idrisid ports, the conquest of Melilla, and the solid support of the emirs of Nekor, who dominated the ports of the Rif, offered control of ports of call up to the region of Algiers. Consequently, the squadron that regularly patrolled these shores could have Umayyad troops intervene in Africa at any moment, which made it an essential link in Mediterranean and African policy. It was also necessary to secure the Latin maritime front, which stretched from Catalonia to the islands and coasts of the Carolingian empire (or what remained of it) and was a potential source of danger.
It is no coincidence that the first raid against Christian shores following 'Abd al-Rahman III's accession to power was launched in 933, just as the caliph was organizing the first great ceremony in Córdoba to mark the official birth of the caliphal fleet based in Almería. In the capital, the generals and admirals received the insignia of command from representatives of the sovereign drawn from his inner circle. With the sovereign in attendance, they then headed for the bay to embark on the ships built in the yards of Pechina. In fact, due to inclement weather, the fifteen ships chartered would go no farther than Torotosa. On the other hand, 935 was a prosperous year for Andalusian sailors. The fleet, composed of forty units, sailed to Mallorca to be completely fitted out, then continued on to pillage the port of Nice, where it destroyed the ships and dockyard, and Marseille. On the return journey, the squadron made a display of the Umayyad caliphate's maritime supremacy off Barcelona.
The squadron returned to threaten the Catalan capital in 940 to pressure Count Sunier to agree to the treaty brought by the caliph's envoy, the doctor and ambassador Hasday b. Shaprut. It should be noted that agreements on the freedom of maritime commerce were also made on this occasion. At the same time, admiral of the fleet Muhammad b. al-Rumahis personally headed the maritime _sayfa_ of 943, leading thirty-six ships to pillage Agde, despite a strong gale that drove several ships aground on the coast of Languedoc; he then attacked Marseille and safely returned to his point of departure. These are the only raids launched from the flagship port against Latin shores to have been reported in the Andalusian chronicles, though the chronicles often mention more modest razzias such as the one Ibn Khaldun attributes to the governor of the Balearic Islands, al-Muwaffaq, after he was appointed in 961.
According to the same logic, the Arabic texts only mention the Muslim settlement at Fraxinetum when negotiations initiated by Hugh of Arles, Count of Provence, in 940 led to the caliph's direct involvement in the affairs of Provence. The presence of a military leader ( _qa'id_ ) and representative of the caliph in the stronghold of Fraxinetum shows that the sovereign considered the fortress a land of Islam, under his authority. He intended to direct naval operations, deciding when Muslim sailors should stop carrying out acts of piracy at sea, in keeping with the agreements reached with the count.
The Catalan coast and the adjacent islands up to Corsica were the top Christian targets of the caliphal fleet that cruised along these Latin coasts from 933 to 943, at the very moment when the caliph's emissary was obtaining a truce from the Catalan count, which involved the recognition of Umayyad supremacy. The truce was renewed the following year by the Catalan count's ambassador, who was received in Medina Azahara. Ibn Hayyan specifies that the caliph ordered his sailors to stop attacking the coasts under the count's rule. The peace lasted, more or less, until the end of al-Hakam III's reign. The same period also saw the launch of a major policy of diplomacy, particularly with the Holy Roman Empire, which was represented in Córdoba by John of Gorze, and the Byzantines, who were fighting the Shiite caliph, an enemy shared by the Umayyads, in the central Mediterranean. Within the framework of good internal communication, this diplomatic offensive designated the sovereign of Medina Azahara as the region's strongman, responsible for launching ground attacks against the Iberian kingdoms of Navarre and León and making peace with the Catalonians and the great Christian empires. At the same time, the end of maritime jihad freed up crews who could now potentially be directed against the Fatimids. After 955, the agreement between Córdoba and Constantinople, at the expense of the Shiite caliphs, dispensed the Umayyad caliph from risking a maritime commitment in dangerous Ismaili waters. Consequently, he was able to concentrate naval forces on the Strait of Gibraltar and the west coast of the Maghreb.
The real confrontation between the two caliphates did not take place at sea but rather on Maghrebi soil. On several occasions, the troops under Buluggin (972–984), the future Zirid emir who led the Berber armies of the caliph of Sabra-Mansuriyya, pushed far toward the West, briefly occupied Fez, and were even in a position to threaten Ceuta. The caliphs therefore needed to concentrate their efforts on Africa and mobilize the fleet to transport reinforcements across the sea or patrol along African coastlines. Aside from a few inconsequential alerts of Viking raids in 956 and 970–971, which nonetheless led to two launches of the Seville squadron, the Andalusian coast was never really threatened.
After having taken power from the caliphate's established military leaders, Ghalib and Admiral Muhammad b. al-Rumahis, and neutralized the authority of Caliph Hisham II (976–1009), Ibn Abi 'Amir al-Mansur launched a series of about fifty military campaigns to push into Christian lands, sometimes as far as the foot of the Pyrenees. Since al-Mansur lacked the titles necessary to personally take on responsibility for caliphal jihad, the presentation of jihad totally changed, insofar as the claim of universal jihad, entailing the conquest of Baghdad, was pushed aside in favor of systematic war against the Christians on the Peninsula. While the squadrons were used heavily, first and foremost to guard routes to Africa but also as a means of logistics support, against Barcelona in 985 and Santiago de Compostela in 997, the sea was not a real field of legitimization now that the conquest of the East was no longer on the agenda.
## The Fatimids' Maritime Jihads, from Sicily to the Bilad al-Sham
After the proclamation of the caliphate in 909, Caliph 'Ubayd Allah and his son al-Qa'im owed a great deal to the Aghlabid emirs, particularly for the naval organization they had left behind. This legacy allowed father and son to launch a series of maritime campaigns against Byzantine territories in Sicily and southern Italy after pacifying their new domain. After a difficult struggle, they succeeded in taking Palermo and Tripoli by force. It was at this stage, in 915, that the Egyptian campaigns began, without any involvement of the fleet. During the second campaign, in 919, the squadron anchored at Rosetta to back the troops on land but was taken by surprise by the Muslim fleet arriving from Tarsus of Cilicia and destroyed by its Greek fire.
Once Muslim Sicily was pacified in 917, the sovereign no longer encountered naval opposition from Aghlabid dissidents in the caliphate's territorial waters. He was now able to resume jihad on the island and on the continent: Reggio was taken in 918. In 916, Mahdia, which had been founded by the caliph, became the squadrons' principal port. After another pause in 919, troops were sent to Calabria: Oria was pillaged, but the Muslims failed to overcome the inhabitants of Brindisi. From 927 to 930, Otranto, Taranto, and the regions of Salerno and Naples were repeatedly attacked. Even the Adriatic was invaded, with Termoli bearing the brunt of the Fatimids' naval superiority. After the fleet's triumphant return to Mahdia in 930, emissaries sent by Basileus Romanos Lekapenos (920–944) agreed to the regular payment of a tribute supposed to guarantee Calabria's safety.
During the caliphate of al-Qa'im, the Ismaili imams' maritime and eastern ambitions were impeded by another failed attempt at conquering Egypt in 937, the Sicilian government's autonomist leanings until 941, and especially the Kharijite rebellion under the leadership of Abu Yazid, "the Man on the Donkey," which ended in 948. Regarding the revolt, one must underline the essential role played by the fleet, which literally saved the dynasty: besieged in 946 but protected by the formidable defensive wall closing off the isthmus, Mahdia held out for two years thanks to the supplies brought by the caliph's ships. The fresh troops sent by sea from Mahdia to Sousse repelled Kharijite assaults, in a victory that marked the beginning of a reversal in favor of Caliph al-Mansur.
It was the quality of the maritime organization that allowed the caliph to have at his disposal the best naval force on the Mediterranean. The fleet, crews, dockyards, and military ports were under the direct control of the imam, through the intermediary of the eunuch Jawdhar, who was responsible for the navy's management. The results in the field lived up to the naval organization's widely publicized qualities.
Al-Mu'izz was to lead the caliphate's naval power to its peak, on a path opened by the fleet's victories over the Umayyads and Macedonians in 971. In 955, however, the fleet had sunk during a storm after the pillaging of Almería, losing a large number of crewmen and soldiers. This disaster forced the sovereign to negotiate a truce with Byzantium, which was respected until 963. At this time, the Greeks were busy on the Aegean Sea and the Anatolian front, which made it possible to launch another attack in Corsica in 957. The caliph of Sabra-Mansuriyya was then able to complete the conquest of Sicily, which he achieved in 965, at the same time the Byzantines were seizing Cyprus, after taking Crete in 961.
After the caliphs' departure, the Zirid emirs and the Kalbids maintained the fleet, enabling attacks against the coasts of Italy and the maintenance of a naval presence in the zone of the straits separating the Mediterranean's two basins, still in the name of the Ismaili imam. Indeed, the caliphs strove to maintain their authority over Ifriqiya's naval jewel until the rejection of caliphal tutelage in the middle of the eleventh century. Subsequently, the naval reinforcement of Italian ports made it possible for Christians to venture farther and farther into Africa's Muslim waters, until the sack of Mahdia by the Pisans and Genoese in 1087. At this point, the two emirates, unlike the caliphs, were unable to keep control of the straits. Meanwhile, the caliphs concentrated their maritime efforts on the Aegean Sea and, especially, the Red Sea.
Despite a few naval operations, such as the seasonal razzias from Syrian ports, Fatimid naval forces were less often put to use in the name of jihad. Border dwellers, who were now under the domination of Shiite sovereigns, renewed the tradition of raids from the Syrian border, though these never equaled the major expeditions of the early tenth century. The Muslim squadrons' range of operations was considerably limited by the loss of the strategic islands of Crete and Cyprus in 971, before the Shiite imams were put in place, and the effectiveness of the Macedonian emperors' fleet. Nonetheless, the fleet remained a force to be reckoned with, as seen in Nasir Khusraw's report on the city of Tripoli. According to Khusraw, the port could hold up to one thousand ships, a figure one has to assume is exaggerated for promotional purposes. Most of the naval force was concentrated in Fustat and Cairo, while the Syrian ports were forbidden to build ships without the caliph's approval. However, the Fatimids were no longer masters of the sea's fate, as Abbasid sailors had been; naval installations were primarily maintained to ward off Greek attacks on the Egyptian coast, which was easily accessible from Crete.
With the crusade in the twelfth century, the Egyptian emirs were forced to resume the maritime jihad to attempt to delay the conquest of the Bilad al-Sham's seaboard (1097–1154). As long as their squadrons were able to hold the crusaders' fleets at bay off of Tyre, the city resisted and provided the Egyptian fleets with supplies and safe passage to sail up the Syrian coast. Once the squadron was defeated by Venetian naval forces in 1124, the crusaders were able to seize Tyre, but the struggle for control over the route between the valley of the Nile and the Palestinian coast only came to an end after extensive resistance and the taking of Ashkelon in 1153. The effectiveness of the Shiite sovereigns' fleet was evident in the difficulties the Italians faced in imposing themselves on the Aegean Sea, but the loss of naval control along the Syrian coast opened the path to Egypt to Christian war fleets.
# THE "COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION" IN THE MEDITERRANEAN IN THE TENTH CENTURY, A MAJOR STRATEGIC CHANGE
One cannot avoid noticing the new vigor of economic activities in the tenth century, as seen in contemporary sources from the Islamic world and Byzantium and, even more so, the Latin texts. One of the principal indicators of this trend is the increase in commercial relations between Christians and Muslims. Historians such as Maurice Lombard long traced the impetus for Muslim commerce in the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean and East Asia: spices, precious goods, ceramics, silk, and other products with high added value, mentioned or discovered in ports from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, wound up in the souks of the major Muslim capitals and ports of the Mediterranean. Similarly, the Sahara provided gold brought from Sijilmasa in the tenth century to coin the caliphate of Córdoba's currency and, in even greater quantities, gold that the Fatimids siphoned to Ifriqiya, then the valley of the Nile between the tenth and twelfth centuries, turning Cairo into the principal gold supplier on the Mediterranean, at the expense of the Eastern caliphate's territories.
However, geographers' accounts and archeological material provide a growing amount of evidence of a specifically Mediterranean boom, which appears to be the real foundation for the lasting development of commercial exchanges in the region. Indeed, Arab geographers' accounts of land development by Berber village communities and tribes and Egyptian and Syrian farmers bring us back to the heart of the Mediterranean, where we find signs of trade networks on the African continent, controlled by tribal groups that could own up to twenty thousand dromedaries used to transport goods from the black kingdoms of the Niger, which could also be carried by sea, as of the ninth century. As formal as al-Bakri's descriptions of the Maghreb may be, they are unambiguous in showing that the ninth and tenth centuries marked a decisive stage in the region's economic development, driven by Berber farmers and tribes. The other regions, particularly the Christian regions, present a far better documented scenario, but one that follows the same outlines and credits farmers and small communities of sailors and merchants with the initiative for an economic momentum on the scale of the village and its surroundings or the castle's territory or coastal cabotage. According to archeological evidence, tribal organization and the organization of "village" communities appear in al-Andalus as of this period—at the latest in the second half of the ninth century.
Pierre Toubert's _Latium_ and other regional studies of Italy have opened the way for a study of the mutations and capacity for adaptation of populations combining peasant families and regional aristocracy. Yet whether in the Latin zone, which has been more closely studied, or in the Muslim and Byzantine regions, and more specifically in those areas where regional rulers supervise or protect these populations with increasing effectiveness, these socioeconomic mutations are accompanied by signs of the development of commercial exchanges. In a second phase, in both the most powerful and best organized Muslim states and Byzantium, one finds convincing indications of more sophisticated economic organization, promoted and supervised by the three great imperial and economic powers of the tenth century. These powers gave a decisive push to the economy, now on the scale of the entire Mediterranean. The lasting war that followed the Arab invasions had a constant impact on these Mediterranean transformations, not in the sense of systematic financial ruin but as an imposed framework from which societies and economies were adapted by coastal populations under the supervision of the authorities.
## Commercial Organization on the Scale of the Mediterranean?
Alluded to by Ibn Hawqal, the organization of markets in Umayyad, Fatimid, and Byzantine zones resulted from a long-established practice that had made it possible to reconcile conflicts and commercial exchanges from at least the ninth century. After this long, often chaotic, and little-documented maturation, the economic situation and consolidation of the three empires were favorable to the emergence of the great trade networks of the tenth century, in particular the network by which the Pisans imported the Muslim ceramics known as _bacini_ and the one that, at the invitation of the Egyptian authorities, prompted the Jewish merchants of Cairo to develop a commercial network stretching from the shores of the Indian Ocean to the Iberian Peninsula.
The discovery of the provenance of the _bacini_ ceramics, which can be admired on the apses of Pisan churches and were also found in excavations of the medieval city, has revealed the existence of regular commercial traffic that was maintained until the twelfth century. The Pisans were long presented as the initiators and sole middlemen of this business, which saw them traveling to Islam's richest regions—initially Ifriqiya, then Egypt, and later al-Andalus—to buy the ceramics, whose quality was highly appreciated by Italians around Pisa until at least the twelfth century, when the Pisans started making lower-quality copies to sell in the port cities of the Tyrrhenian coast. However, the Italian documents, particularly several hagiographies, reveal that, during the same period, Muslim merchants were regularly found in the port cities of the Gulf of Lion and the Tyrrhenian Sea, as well as in Byzantium. The presence of Muslim sailors and merchants in ports where they were warmly welcomed in the tenth century indicates that they had developed their own trade networks between Muslim and Christian shores.
Better yet, the letters found in the storehouses of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat revealed the existence of networks of Jewish merchants, whose modus operandi is reminiscent of that of the back rooms of Amalfi, Genoa, Venice, and Pisa. The root of this structure is to be found in the area of the Sea of the Arabs, where the development of trade was then far more advanced than in the maritime regions of the Muslim Mediterranean. The Geniza's networks in the Mediterranean grew steadily until the twelfth century, with central headquarters in Cairo, until they reached all of the trading centers on the Muslim shores of the Mediterranean. The ports of the Maghreb, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula (particularly Almería) regularly hosted these merchants, which confirms the existence of Mediterranean networks within the Islamic zone.
Once they controlled Egypt, the Fatimid authorities played a decisive role. The caliphs were responsible for the Jewish merchants lastingly establishing their principal base in the Egyptian capital. Early in the eleventh century, for instance, the Shiite caliphate took control of the Red Sea and the traffic of merchant ship convoys, which during the shipping season (later known by the term _karim_ ) sailed from their port of call in Aden to the ports of Qusayr and Aydhab, among others. On the Mediterranean side, these same merchants benefited from the vast maritime space under the control of the Fatimids, but also from the opening of the ports along all the Muslim coasts, including the territory of the caliphate of Córdoba. Even during phases of nearly permanent confrontation, agreements with Christian countries also enabled Jewish merchants from the Islamic world to make lasting ties with merchants in Latin and probably Greek countries. The expansion of the empire to a significant part of the Mediterranean's shores, in particular to coastal Syria, which led to the marches and routes of the Asian world, as well as the commercial agreements reached with the Byzantines shortly after the Fatimids came to power in Egypt, opened the economic space of the Greek empire to Muslim merchants and vice versa, according to a system that had proved itself under Abbasid domination.
At the same time, the siphoning of Saharan gold and the striking of the gold dinar competed with the Byzantine _nomisma._ Long-standing ties with southern Italy, particularly Amalfi, favored the development of lasting exchanges in an economic area that, whether directly or through intermediaries, grew to reach from the south of Italy to Saharan zones, with the sea at its center. The organization of the customs in the dockyards of ports on the Egyptian coast and in the country's capital attracted a growing number of Latin merchants, thus consolidating Egypt's central role in a now "global" medieval commerce, rather than the Latin ports: the sovereigns could rightly assert that the nerve center of Mediterranean commerce was the valley of the Nile, located between the two major trading seas and the Sahara and the Asian continent.
Administrative literature, particularly of the Ismaili era, began to include more references to trade activities and maritime itineraries. Already in Ifriqiya, the activity in ports had been one of the subjects regularly discussed by the chronographers, as seen in the collection of letters by the eunuch Jawdhar. Far from happenstance, the preservation of these extraordinary documents, like the treatise on chartering mentioned earlier or the Arab geographers' references to navigation, naval construction, and caliphal administration of the port and dockyards, show that the Ifriqiyans were highly familiar with business and seafaring, activities widely encouraged by the caliphal initiative. The heavy presence of Jewish merchants is another indication of the importance of Ifriqiyan ports up to the Norman conquest, as was the production of texts on commerce by their administrators, especially in Cairo.
The fiscal treatise by the Egyptian al-Makhzumi fits into this tradition of an administrative production between the Fatimid and Ayyubid periods, starting in 1171. The treatise covered the tax system used in the Egyptian coast's ports and dockyards. Entitled _Nuzhat al-Muqlatayn fi Akhbar al-Dawlatayn_ (The history of the two dynasties), the text left by Ibn al-Tuwayr (d. 1220) is of a different nature, but it also illustrates the desire to pass on to the Ayyubid sultan a tried and proven system elaborated by the Shiite sovereigns' administrators. Saladin and his successors had every intention to make the most of the Ismaili administration's excellence and to preserve the writers' know-how to properly train future managers of the Egyptian administration. Similar motives drove several Egyptian men of letters of the Mamluk period, particularly al-Qalqashandi (d. 1418) and al-Maqrizi, working in different genres, to save the administrative treatises and other works of the Fatimid era from oblivion. The enormous didactic treatise by al-Qalqashandi ("The Art of the Chancellery") contains a large quantity of documents from the Ismaili period, which the Sunni man of letters collected to show his gratitude for the Shiite administration's competence. Among the most important fields that drew Ayyubid and Mamluk scribes' attention after 1250, the navy was given a more than respectable place, despite the fact that the sultans showed little affinity for the sea and all that was related to it.
Economic competition between the two caliphates of Baghdad and Cairo was a significant factor in provoking the Fatimids' vigorous efforts to divert traffic between the Indian and Mediterranean area.
## The Commercial Opening of al-Andalus
The discovery of potters' ovens in the coastal cities of southeast al-Andalus has made it possible to determine the area of origin of ceramics that were highly appreciated by the Andalusian caliphs. This pottery, identified by its characteristic decoration, which uses the _cuerda seca_ technique originally developed in China, was produced in the ports of the Peninsula's east coast beginning in the tenth century and intended for caliphal circles. This type of design was obtained by using specific firing techniques that had spread along the coasts of the Indian Ocean and the eastern shores of the Mediterranean beginning in the ninth century, then circulated in the Muslim West at the time of the caliphate of Córdoba. A growing number of archeological digs carried out in all of the Peninsula's regions have confirmed the spread of ceramics of the same type, though more commonplace, discovered in many villages and in the Andalusian and Maghrebi secondary localities, in this case beginning in the second half of the eleventh century. This coarser production's commercial distribution reveals the reach of commercial circuits that extended to the most remote rural areas, at the same time—the twelfth century—that Pisans were coming to the very same ports to buy _bacini_ ceramics. The wealth of Almería, the former port of the caliphs and the western Mediterranean's most active port, at least in the Muslim area, until its destruction by the Genoese in 1147, offers an equally remarkable example of the economic development of the coastal regions of al-Andalus, the roots of which go back to the ninth century.
At the very moment when the Umayyads were launching a large-scale charm offensive on the imperial Christian courts and deploying their all-powerful squadron to the walls of Barcelona, they authorized the Catalan and Amalfitan merchants, or more generally the Italian traders, to come trade on Andalusian soil. In 942, these traders were invited to display luxury goods such as Byzantine silks, which they spread out before Caliph 'Abd al-Rahman III. Ahmad al-Razi's chronicle gives pride of place to the account of this ceremony, which was on a par with the most splendid audiences granted to the ambassadors of the Mediterranean empires. This account also indicates how eager the sovereign was to let the entire Mediterranean know about the change in his policy toward the Latins, no matter the merchants' origins. To allow them to reach Medina Azahara, the caliph had had to authorize the opening of the island route that passed via Sardinia and the Balearic Islands, a route by which travelers could also reach Almería and from there safely continue to Córdoba. The Sardinians were therefore associated with the opening of the route. We do not know whether the agreement this symbolized was tacit or official, but it was surely a first step in developing lasting relations.
During the same period, the status of the Muslim stronghold in Provence evolved under pressure from the caliph. Here too, the embassy sent by Count Hugh, a candidate for the crown of Italy who had come looking for support in Medina Azahara in 941, inaugurated a change in the caliphate's policy, as shown by the title of the relevant paragraph in the caliphal chronicle: "Peace with the Franks." The chronicler specified that the caliph had ordered his sailors to stop attacking Catalan coasts, while the Latin chronicles reveal that the people of Fraxinetum put themselves in the service of Hugh of Arles against his rival Berengar (d. 924) by taking control of the Alpine passes. Peace with the Catalan counts basically lasted until the end of al-Hakam II's reign and favored the development of commercial relations that would have major consequences in Catalonia. The presence of Muslim merchant vessels, revealed by underwater excavations at the wreck of the Bataguier and in the Bay of Cannes, confirms that the Muslim stronghold in the heart of the garrigue of Provence also had a commercial purpose, probably subsequent to the passage of merchants from the Islamic world, including ships from the Fatimid area, which were reported in the ports of Marseille and Montpellier on several occasions. Thus, before the incident provoked by the spectacular kidnapping of Abbot Majolus in 972, the west coast of the Mediterranean had become a more peaceful area, a space of exchanges rather than a field for the race between Muslim powers, through the will of the all-powerful caliph who had won the war at sea and imposed a peace symbolized by maritime commerce.
One therefore has to reexamine the systematic opposition between "empires" denounced as archaic economic structures said to have slowed economic development through cumbersome administrations and taxation (used to strengthen armed forces) and what appeared in the writings of Latin historians as the beginnings of a capitalism that would only be promoted by the reformed Catholic society that was to become open to the mercantile spirit as of the twelfth century. The imperial circles of Byzantium and Islam were responsible for putting in place an initial system of exchanges on a significantly expanded Mediterranean scale—for their own benefit. Behind an impalpable economic situation, it appears as early as the ninth century that it was the authorities of the empires, emirs, and counts that put in place the material, fiscal, and legal conditions for an expansion of Mediterranean exchanges. For their part, the Byzantine and Muslim merchants took advantage of their strategic space, from the routes crossing Central Asia and the Indian Ocean to those of the Sahara, but also of the needs of the Latins, who were themselves attracted to the sophisticated organization of the two imperial spaces' administrations, to develop their own networks in the imperial space that sheltered them. However, except for the Geniza documents and material traces such as the seals of Byzantine merchants, currency throughout the basin, and typical ceramics from a handful of production circuits, the evidence of these networks remains far less visible than that of the Latin ports, for which we have archives as of the twelfth century.
#
ISLAM'S MARITIME SOVEREIGNTY IN THE FACE OF LATIN EXPANSION
IT IS LIKELY THAT the Almohad caliphs of Marrakech commanded the largest naval force of medieval Islam in the Mediterranean. The fleet was often deployed to seize Muslim territories, first from the Almoravids, then from the Hammadids of Béjaïa and the Zirids in Ifriqiya, up to Tripoli (1152–1161). The empire's formation ended in 1161 with the successful conquest of the Ifriqiyan ports that Roger II of Sicily had seized from the Ifriqiyan emirs, including Mahdia. The caliphate was subsequently faced with Latin naval forces—Italian, Catalan, Portuguese—and its objective shifted to preserving its maritime domain. Until the first signs of the dynastic crisis that followed the disaster at Las Navas de Tolosa, which would drive the caliphate to slowly collapse, the fleet succeeded in containing Latin assaults and protecting the western Muslim coasts.
Beyond the weakening of Islam in the Mediterranean, questions arise about the Muslim powers' strategy regarding the commercial and maritime forces of the Latin world at a time when these interests were taking hold of the maritime space. The Almohad example is particularly interesting in that the caliphate was a naval power that successfully held off the Latin states' navies until the 1220s, simultaneously attracting Latin merchants to its ports, yet it could hardly ignore the considerable risks entailed in allowing the Italians total control of western Mediterranean trade routes. This is what al-Zuhri had to say on the power of Pisa in the twelfth century:
> Its inhabitants are very brave at war and are for the most part skillful sailors.... They are formidable combatants on the sea, experts at launching naphtha. They are devious and harmful people, full of violence and cruelty. They have an abundance of [shipping] timber, but they also work iron, of which they make all sorts of quality equipment such as coats of mail, helmets, and spears.... They are also merchants on land and at sea, who go as far as the boundaries of Syria, to Alexandria and Egypt, and to the outer limits of the Maghreb and to al-Andalus.
# THE ALMOHAD MAGHREB AND AL-ANDALUS, A GREAT MEDITERRANEAN POWER IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY
> In the year 1162, Abd al-Mu'min had squadrons built on all the coasts of his empire, having decided to attack the Christians on land and at sea. 400 ships were fitted out, including 120 at the delta of al-Ma'mura and its port, 100 in Tangier, Ceuta, Badis, and the ports of the Rif, 100 on the coasts of Ifriqiya, in Oran, and in the ports of Hunayn, 80 in al-Andalus.
Once the Almoravid emirate of Marrakech was eliminated in 1147, Abd al-Mu'min took advantage of the rallying of the Banu Maymun, the admirals then commanding the Almoravid fleet, and took control of the naval installations, crews, and ships to turn them into tools to conquer the western coasts of Africa, from Tripoli to Libya. In 1147, Seville was blockaded on land and from the river and surrendered without any resistance. Tangier and Ceuta were besieged on land and at sea and submitted in 1148–1149. In 1151, the still-modest port of Algiers was opened to the Almohad squadron. In 1157, Almería was taken from the Christians after a long land and sea blockade. The conquest of the eastern territories, at the expense of the Hammadids and the Zirid emirs of Ifriqiya, was followed by that of all the seaside cities on the Tunisian coast and the island of Djerba, which had fallen into the hands of Roger II of Sicily in the 1140s. The fleet often played a decisive part in these operations, notably during the taking of Béjaïa in 1151 and especially that of Mahdia in 1160, with the squadron blocking the city off from the sea and repelling Christian ships sent to the rescue. The chancellery letters report on several of these expeditions, highlighting the importance the Almohad sovereigns placed on the fleet's actions and, more generally, the maritime space, which was treated as a military territory as important as the vast empire's land regions.
The campaign against Bejaïa led to a reorganization of the fleet's command. The admiralty was headquartered at Ceuta and headed by a close relative of the caliph ( _sayyid_ ), while the port became the gathering place for squadrons about to leave on an expedition, whether on the Mediterranean or the ocean. The empire's vast seaboard had numerous dockyards, but this did not prevent the Almohads from building new dockyards or having others expanded: a covered, closed dockyard, protected by a solid _qasaba,_ was built in Saltes, a modest port located on the Odiel estuary, near Huelva, that was recognized for its specialization in ironwork. The largest dockyard in the caliphate was built on the Sebou River at al-Ma'mura, northeast of Rabat-Salé, to prepare the campaign of 1151. A forest overlooking the estuary provided naval timber. The anchorage here was safer than the one on the Bou Regreg, the river at Salé, whose mouth was considered dangerous for ships due to shifting sandbars. Having been reorganized, the fleet cast off from the ports solicited, sailing to the admiral port before continuing to their target.
The Almohads had to enlist the best admirals to contain the first Portuguese squadron, commanded by Admiral Dom Fuas Roupinho. Ali b. Mardanish, a member of the caliphal family of Murcia, was appointed to head the Seville fleet but was captured by Portuguese sailors in 1179. Admiral Ahmad al-Siqilli took over from him and distinguished himself by vanquishing the Portuguese squadron one year after Ibn Mardanish's defeat; he was so celebrated that two centuries later, Ibn Khaldun would make him the central hero of the Almohads' maritime success. The caliph's sailors were able to hold off the maritime assaults of King Afonso I's ships. What could be seen as the first "battle of the Atlantic," according to Ibn 'Idhari's report, had begun in 1179 at the latest. The following year, having repelled the Christian squadron, al-Siqilli pillaged the coast north of the Portuguese capital. Dom Fuas Roupinho is said to have launched one or two attacks against Ceuta in 1180 and 1182. The first was presented as a victory for the Portuguese admiral, despite the fact that he was unable to reach the strait's port. The second cost him his life. His fleet was wiped out with him, due to either a storm or a defeat at the hands of the Almohad squadron, or possibly both at once.
This victory allowed Caliph Abu Ya'qub Yusuf to carry out the expedition his father had planned but been unable to launch before his death in 1163. In 1184, Abu Ya'qub Yusuf ordered the fleet to cast off to attack two key positions of the Gharb al-Andalus on the Tagus: Santarém and Lisbon. The naval siege of the Portuguese capital failed, while the city of Setúbal was saved by the arrow that mortally wounded the caliph. Nonetheless, Portugal was then forced to call in crusader ships traveling to the Holy Land on the North Sea to reinforce its own squadrons and counter the Almohads' naval initiatives—proof of the efficiency of the caliphs' sailors. In 1189, an English squadron intending to join Richard the Lionheart (1189–1199) in the Mediterranean provided decisive support to the Portuguese during the assault on Silves, the largest Muslim city to the west of the capital of Andalusia. Caliph al-Mansur now had to mobilize considerable land and naval forces to take back Silves and part of the Alentejo in 1190–1191. After this victory, the Muslim navy kept control of the Gulf of Cádiz from its bases in the numerous ports, forming a string of anchorages from Cape Saint Vincent to Gibraltar. As late as 1217, the galleys of Alcácer do Sal succeeded in repelling a German squadron that had come to support the Portuguese, but they were unable to prevent the city from falling once it was attacked by land. This strategic loss permanently opened the Alentejo to the Portuguese.
The naval war machine worked as effectively on the Mediterranean as on the Atlantic, though the taking of the Balearic Islands in 1203 from the Banu Ghaniya, the Almoravid emirs, came too late to allow the Almohads to regain control of the maritime routes between the north and south shores of the western Mediterranean. At least the Strait of Gibraltar, the Alboran Sea, and the Ifriqiyan zone were still out of reach of Latin squadrons.
The Almohads' maritime supremacy crumbled after Las Navas de Tolosa. This collapse was not due to the Latins, however, but primarily to dissension among the members of the dynasty after the death of Caliph al-Nasir. In 1260, the Latins assaulted Salé. Despite the fact that the Marinids, then in the midst of claiming power, chased off the attackers, the assault showed that every maritime zone in the crumbling empire was now within reach of the Christian galleys. The Hafsid and Marinid sultanates continued to handle the caliphs' naval legacy, retaining the means to intervene locally on the sea until the crises of the fourteenth century, but were unable to prevent the Latin fleets from gradually taking control of all the maritime routes. The opening of a regular line between Genoa and the North Sea beginning in the last years of the thirteenth century was due above all to the Muslims' inability to control traffic to the ocean.
The Almohad capital of Seville had experienced extraordinary growth stimulated by the Abbadids in the eleventh century and again when it became the Almoravid capital in al-Andalus, which resulted in the building of a new quarter in the north. The produce from the large estates of the Aljarafe to the west of the Andalusian capital were in the hands of local families of notables, such as the Banu Khaldun, who owned several properties and hundreds of hectares of wheat, olive trees, and fig trees. Much of the yield was intended to be exported to Egypt and sometimes as far as the Indian Ocean. The area experienced an agricultural golden age, with the Andalusian capital carrying on with Toledo's advances and reaching a level of agronomic sophistication that would be put to use by Italian agronomists centuries later. The region's commercial practices, on a par with those of the great Italian ports of the twelfth century, were characterized by capital accumulated by great families that had grown wealthy through their service to the state; progress in agriculture, with yields reaching twentieth-century levels; commercial networks with connections in Egypt and as far as Yemen; and the availability of the ships in the dockyard, whose crews were rented to merchants during peacetime.
The description of the banks of the Guadalquivir, which served as a port, already heralded the peak of the Almohad period, marked by the vigor of port traffic. The city shone most brightly under the authority of the Almohad caliphs and their governors—generally the caliph's son and designated successor—a period during which it was profoundly transformed and expanded: the Giralda and the great mosque now stood right next to al-Buhayra, the vast palatial zone built for the caliphs. The river's meandering course and catastrophic flooding, particularly in 1184, led to a redevelopment of the banks of the Guadalquivir, including the building of a protective embankment and the partial reconstruction of its fortifications. The city's economic activity and military requirements called for a new dockyard to be built close to the bridge and the palace, the layout of which is thought to have served as a model for those built by the kings of Castile in Seville and the Catalans in Barcelona. The boat bridge built at the foot of the Torre del Oro located at the tip of the palace, where ships paid a tax to enter the city, protected access to the port, which was sealed off by a chain strung across the river in case of danger. The enlarged and embellished city handled colossal amounts of money, much of it generated by trade. During the same period, coastal cities such as Silves, Saltes, Algeciras, Málaga, Salé, and Rabat benefited from peace in an imperial space that extended up to Tripoli of Libya.
## The Sea, a Major Area of Almohad Wealth
The commercial treaty between the Almoravids and the Pisans, the leading agents of Italian commercial involvement in the Maghreb, allowed for Tuscan sailors to be established in Mallorca by 1133. However, it was during the period of the Marrakech caliphate and until the crisis of the fourteenth century that Latin trade was to experience its greatest expansion, through the regular signing of treaties with Pisa, Venice, and Genoa. Outside of the general economic situation, which was then at an absolute peak, this golden age was due to Italian initiatives. Nonetheless, the role of the caliphal authorities needs to be reevaluated to provide a view different from the long-held idea of a one-way relationship, entirely initiated by the Latins, in which Maghrebi sovereigns and business circles were subjected to a system of exchanges. In some years, the three Italian ports' profits from Maghrebi trade exceeded those from the Mediterranean East. The extension of the truces from ten to forty years was for the most part respected by both parties. The establishment of _funduks,_ which were basically comparable to consulates and provided lodgings for communities of merchants from the Italian cities in the major large ports of the Maghreb, as was the case in Egypt and later in Syria, would continue until at least the crisis of the fourteenth century. These commercial exchanges so desired by sultanate and Latin leaders were only temporarily hampered by periods of tension, such as those that paralyzed activity in Ceuta from 1222 to 1235 and Salé in 1260. Even the crisis, which was exacerbated by the Great Plague and heavily affected the region, did not permanently hinder trade.
## The Collapse of Almohad Power and Latin Economic Domination: The Illuminating Example of Ceuta
The fate of Ceuta perfectly encapsulates the connection between the political evolution of the caliphal dynasty and the collapse of Muslim sea power. Since 1160, the Genoese had called at this port on the strait and were authorized to trade in the port of Salé, which opened the rich hinterland of the Atlantic plains to the Ligurians' trading appetites: known as Garbo in the Latin documents, the western area comprising the Strait of Gibraltar and the Atlantic seaboard of present-day Morocco and Portugal became one of the most lucrative stops for Genoese merchants. Several treaties were signed beginning at the end of the twelfth century, then in 1208, 1223, and 1235. However, as of the 1220s, with Ceuta having become a key strategic position, the seat of the admiralty, and an economic power made rich by maritime activity, the port city was frequently the focus of rivalries between Latins and Muslims, who were often allies, because it controlled maritime traffic. The accounts by Ibn Khaldun and Ibn 'Idhari, among others, report attempts on the part of the city's notables, including sailors, merchants, and jurists, to take control of their city's fate. Supported by the people of Ceuta, Admiral al-Randahi; Abu l-'Abbas al-Yanashti, a rich merchant who governed the city from 1233 to 1236; and especially Abu l-Qasim al-'Azafi, heir to a family of renowned and prosperous jurists, took advantage of the dynastic crisis to provide the city with an independent but unstable government until 1328.
The city drew its power from the sea. Beyond its walls was a relatively barren inland region lacking water sources outside of a few small patches like Belyounech. Unlike the Italian powers, Ceuta suffered from the lack of a hinterland. Aside from a few wealthy families that owned ships or were in the caliphate's service, the powerful communities of sailors, fishermen, coral harvesters, craftsmen, laborers, and especially dockyard ship workers provide a vague but suggestive idea of a society whose resources came from the sea. Seville, Béjaïa, and later Tunis also became rich thanks to the maritime space, but their notables' fortunes came above all from serving the state. The fortunes accumulated by merchants like al-Yanashti and sailors like al-Randahi, the admiral of the fleet who led the dockyard's uprising and took control of the city at the head of his crews, were built using the same assets as Italian merchants and sailors. However, unlike the great dynasties of the Latin port cities, the most prestigious Ceuta families were those that had renowned jurists in their ancestry rather than ship owners or merchants.
Ceuta was always a focus for the ambitions of far stronger external powers: rivalries between regional dynasties successively turned pretenders from the Almohad, Marinid, Nasrid, and later Abd al-Wadid and even Hafsid dynasties into the city's allies or adversaries, for Ceuta's elites were generally unable to govern without the support of one of these sultanate sovereignties. Ceuta was also not in a position to compete with the large Italian ports' naval forces, particularly the "Calcurini" force, which was probably composed of Catalans and attacked the city in 1231 to damage Genoese interests. In 1235, the Ligurian city sent a fleet to protect its interests and did not encounter any resistance. Under the reign of Alfonso X (1252–1284), the Castilians attacked the port cities that had come under the control of the people of Ceuta, in particular Tangier. The Aragonese, who were then allied with the sultan of Fez and asked the Christian fleet for support, were unable to overtake the city itself in 1274, but they paralyzed business for an extensive period. Finally, the Portuguese seized the city on the strait from the Muslims in 1415.
# EGYPT, THE HUB OF WORLD COMMERCE
In a letter addressed to the Abbasid caliph al-Mustadi (1170–1180) regarding the attack launched on Alexandria in 1174 at the order of King William II, Saladin shows that the Muslim authorities considered it in their interest to attract Christian merchant vessels, to the point that they were prepared to deal with the Latins' aggressiveness and maintain commercial ties whatever the cost, including when they attacked Egyptian ports or sought to invade the country:
> [In 1174, the king of Sicily, William II,] made an imposing, terrible display in front of Alexandria. Never had the sea carried so many vessels, never had it been covered with such a number of foot soldiers and cavalrymen. It was an entire province, no, entire provinces that it carried, an army like no king has ever led; but God inflicted a shameful defeat upon him. Among our enemies, there were also soldiers of Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, but all of them behaved at one moment as warriors causing serious damages and burning with an inextinguishable hatred, and at the next as travelers who imposed themselves upon Islam through trade and escaped the rigor of regulations. Well, there is not a single one of them who does not now come to bring us the weapons with which he fights his fight and his jihad, not one who does not seek our favor by offering us his most precious products and goods. We have established good relations with them all and concluded advantageous peace treaties, despite their resistance and while placing our interests above theirs.
Commercial exchanges with the Christians were restricted by rigorous legislation established by the jurists of the Shiite imams but rested largely on long-established rules, particularly those of the Maliki. Qadi Nu'man, a jurist of the first four Fatimid caliphs (909–975), set the conditions for exchanges between the Christian infidel and Muslims, particularly in regard to taxation. He adopted the principle that the tax collected from the Latins, the _khum_ or _quint,_ should be paid to the caliph since it was considered equivalent to booty taken from the infidel: "Booty ( _ghanima_ ) was to be understood not as what was taken from the polytheists by force, but any kind of earnings [taken from them]." At least since that period, the establishment of commercial relations with the Latins had a legal basis, with a convenient lack of distinction between booty and the tax rate paid by Christian merchants from abroad, normally higher than that paid by Muslims and the _dhimmi._ Saladin plays on the same ambiguities in the letter to his Almohad rival, despite the fact that as soon as he came to power, he had claimed to do away with eighty-eight taxes instituted by the caliphs and now deemed illegal. On the other hand, the _maks,_ which generally refers to an illegal tax levy, was retained as taxation on transactions with Latins. The sovereigns therefore considered trade with the infidel—and thus Latins' visits to Muslim soil—a sign of Islam's superiority over Christianity, de facto legalizing the commercial treaties. Like most medieval rulers, the Muslim sovereigns considered that importing goods impoverished exporting countries and enriched the buyer, precisely because of the taxes collected and the appropriation of goods such as weapons. The amount of the _maks_ and the _khums_ —the taxes paid by Christians from abroad—was generally one-tenth of the value, evaluated by number of units or weight, according to the product, and was generally charged on both the sale and the purchase. Usually, the _dhimmi,_ Christian and Jewish subjects under the rule of Islam, paid one-twentieth, while the Muslims paid one-fiftieth. However, it seems that in certain ports such as Tinnis, the tax paid by the Latin merchants was equivalent to that paid by the Muslims, at least in the case of bilateral partnerships.
What remains of al-Makhzumi's fiscal treatise provides the most precise information about the organization of Latin imports and exports in Egypt. The text mentions a _khums rumi,_ a term that refers to both the tax and the administration that collected it. However, a close look at the stages of clearing customs—the inspection of merchandise on board ship, the sale at auction ( _halqa_), and the payment of taxes decided on by the inspector—reveals a wide variety of amounts, with the tax deduced reaching 10, 20, and 30 percent of the stock's value, according to the merchandise, as was the case in the Maghreb. The conditions for taxation and merchants' stays on Muslim soil evolved according to place and circumstance, as shown for instance by the treaty between Genoa and the Mamluks in 1291. While the treaty was very favorable to the Ligurians, it was also indispensable to the sultans, who needed it to bring in the soldier slaves filling the holds of the big Genoese ships at the moment that they were about to permanently chase the crusaders out of the Holy Land. However, the average amount of tax paid for imported and locally bought goods remained stable at around 10 percent. On the other hand, each port had specific rules determining how these payments were used: in Tripoli of Lebanon, the tax was assessed so that it could be used to pay the garrison.
One of the economic risks tied to these exchanges, well known today with the vigor of "emerging markets," was in the ability of Italians and other Latins to appropriate the know-how of craftsmen and producers from exporting countries such as Egypt. The history of sugarcane provides a good illustration of this problem. Similarly, Genoa became the place for specialists working with gold wire, which was reexported to the Muslim countries, and the skills of Cairo's artisans contributed a great deal to Murano glass and other local specialties. Sometimes, competition in raw materials, such as alum, discovered on the island of Kos in the thirteenth century, then two centuries later in the Papal States, put an end to the Egyptian monopoly and exporting of the material. At the same time, the Fatimid policy to develop activities on the Red Sea, which was kept up by the Fatimids' successors in cooperation or competition with the sultans of Aden, preventing any Latin intrusion into the Indian space, allowed Egypt to remain a stop for transloading between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, which was indispensable to the Latins as long as they were unable to reach the Indian Ocean. Consequently, Saladin's statement was not off the mark.
#
CONCLUSION
## _The Medieval Mediterranean and Islamic Memory_
I am but one of you; my profession is the sea, and to that I owe my fame.
I will be with you against any enemy who comes from the sea.
_—Admiral Muhammad b. Maymun, addressing the people of Almería, ca. 1147_
MANY ARABIC TEXTS of the Middle Ages relate the fame of celebrated sailors—admirals ( _sahib al-bahr_ ) and "leaders [ _ra'is_] of sailors"—acquired on the waters of the Mediterranean. The remarks attributed to one of the most glorious of these sailors, Muhammad b. Maymun, an admiral of the Almoravid, then Almohad fleets, as well as a member of a family originally from Denia that produced five admirals who served Islam, show the extent to which the profession had gained prestige and recognition in the port cities of Islam, as well as in Constantinople, Venice, Pisa, Genoa, and Barcelona. As early as the period of the Medina caliphate, the figure of 'Abd Allah b. Qays al-Jasi, the man who led fifty maritime campaigns and the first Muslim martyr to win glory at the head of the caliph's fleet by landing in Cyprus in the middle of the seventh century, occupies an important place in the collective memory passed down by the historians of Baghdad. Several Abbasid admirals were similarly honored. Among them, the two commanders of the caliphal squadrons based in Tarsus in Cilicia and Tripoli of Lebanon, Damian and Leo, became famous in 904 after pillaging Thessaloniki. Their Greek origins, which made them "renegades," as well as the obscure background of Ahmad al-Siqilli, who defeated the Portuguese admiral Fuas Roupinho in 1181, showed the advantages of assimilating all those who joined Islam, no matter their origins, by serving the caliph. Other admirals, such as the Banu Kalbi, in the service of the Fatimids; the Banu l-Rumahis, favorites of the Umayyad caliphs of Córdoba; and the Banu Maymun, admirals of the Almoravids and Almohads, but also Ghanim b. Mardanish, one of the sons of the emir of Murcia, who had joined the Almohads in 1172, and even one of the members of the caliphal dynasty, 'Abd Allah b. Ishaq al-Jami', were often from high-ranking clans and families, a sign of the prestige attached to the position. Some maritime lives were even recounted in narratives honoring the heroes who fought the Christians at sea. Thus the eleventh-century emirs of Denia, al-Mujahid and his son 'Ali, distinguished themselves by their commitment to jihad on the sea: they undertook the conquest of Sardinia, an initiative doomed to failure, but which brought them immortality through the Arabic chronicles. During the Almoravid collapse in 1147, 'Ali b. Maymun, nephew of the admiral of Almería, turned Cádiz, then a mere anchorage, into the capital of his principality. These glorious deeds recalled those found throughout the accounts of the heroes of the Arab conquest celebrated for having pushed back the boundaries of the Dar al-Islam.
The Mediterranean of the Arabic texts was thus distinguished, among the seas of Islam, as the place where the caliph's jihad was accomplished, even if the caliph did not participate in person. The presence of the Prophet's successor on the Basileus's border between Cappadocia and Syria was enough to associate all the regions, both land and maritime, with jihad. As a space of war, the Sea of the Romans had become the vast and terrifying stage for the display of Islamic universality under the guidance of the caliph. The Mediterranean embodied the ultimate hostile space for the believer, which therefore also became the sea of the martyr, the conquest of which was to be achieved with the taking of Constantinople and Rome and would precede the beginning of the time of salvation. Consequently, the saga of the great sailors of Islam, who represented the caliph at sea, singled out the Mediterranean among the seas of the Dar al-Islam as the only maritime space of caliphal jihad. This is a far cry from the Latin pragmatism attributed to Benedetto Zaccaria, the great Genoese admiral who defeated the Pisans at the Battle of Meloria in 1284 and a shrewd businessman who embodied the Genoese spirit: _Ianuensis ergo Mercator,_ "a Genoese, therefore a merchant."
Nonetheless, when 'Ali b. Maymun turned Cádiz into a real port city and launched razzias against the coasts of Galicia, he fully intended to make a financial profit from his maritime activity. The Muslims always considered Islamization, war on the land and maritime borders, and commercial profits as part of a single movement combining the spirit of conquest, resistance to Christian attacks, and profitable business dealings. As of 634, the first Arabs of the Mediterranean certainly did not associate the Arab conquest with an economic disaster but rather viewed it as a way of expanding and enriching nascent Islam. In a later era, the idea of profit held by Louis IX (1226–1270) was probably closer to Saladin's than that of the doges of Venice as they prepared for the _muda_ season, when the convoy of Venetian ships left to trade in the Mediterranean. Thus, the barrier between Muslims and Byzantines on the one hand and the Latins of the Italian, Provençal, and Catalan ports on the other was not so much the product of a mental gulf separating "pre-capitalists" seeking markets and conquerors seeking martyrdom, insofar as Islam, like Byzantium, was able to develop the tools of a Mediterranean commerce, while the Latins also practiced abnegation in taking up the cross to deliver the tomb of Christ.
According to Fernand Braudel and Jacques Le Goff, the gulf between the two worlds was due to the ability of the maritime republics of Italy and the Crown of Aragon to organize a structure favoring the business of merchants, thanks, above all, to their capacity to mobilize capital for a world commerce and to use maritime resources to create the means to take financial and technical risks. This was accompanied by a new state of mind, ultimately supported by the church, which was the only force capable of creating the conditions for the kind of capitalism that would appear on the shores of the North Sea in the modern era. Perhaps this turn of mind made the Capetian palace on the Île de la Cité as foreign to the ways of thinking of Italy and Barcelona as those of Medina Azahara? During the same long time span of the medieval Mediterranean, the Jewish merchants of the Geniza and the rich Muslim families of Seville who ran large agricultural estates were prosperous, even adventurous, businessmen who financed commercial networks whose model was found in the ports of the Indian Ocean, the seat of a civilization that had reached China while basically wielding the same tools as merchants at the Champagne fairs. The length of maritime commitments and the ability to insure against commercial risk, through both maritime insurance and the invention of sustainable commercial practices through improvements in shipbuilding, made the difference in the long time span of the Middle Ages, tipping the scales in favor of the great maritime cities of the Latin world, in a prelude to the development of capitalism on the North Sea.
Ultimately, successive caliphs imposed an Islamic Mediterranean through the prism of the values disseminated through the texts and maps they commissioned in large quantities from the best men of letters of the Islamic world, even if it meant remodeling and erasing the memory of their predecessors. Perhaps this explains why most historians of a triumphant Latin Europe long stayed away from a medieval Mediterranean that spoke in three voices?
Despite the fact that Islam remained the only universality he recognized, al-Idrisi, a Muslim Arab who lived in the middle of a formerly Greek, then Islamic, land that became Latin in 1063, was convinced he lived in the heart of the ecumene, not because his homeland of Sicily was under Norman and Christian control but because in the twelfth century it was a prosperous world born of the admittedly violent cohabitation of three great civilizations, visible in places such as the palatial chapel of the Norman kings. In his unrivaled descriptions of innumerable communities, such as Sicily's fishing villages and their timeless fishing techniques, this Muslim in the service of the Norman king reveals the richness of this world in its totality, no longer from the perspective of the kingdom or the caliphate but from that of the villager, the fisherman, or the sailor. More than war, whose damaging effects on Ifriqiya are described in his work, al-Idrisi renders a complex Mediterranean civilization, in which prosperity constantly existed side by side with the disasters of violence and destruction. The Sicilian geographer's map and its commentary are the peak of the art of Arab geography, a discipline born in Baghdad, which for a time was alone in its constant task of discovering and measuring the Mediterranean.
One generation later, Ibn Jubayr left us the account of his first journey (1184–1185) to the East in the form of a travel journal ( _rihla_ ) in which he expresses his doubts and hopes regarding the confrontation between the two universalisms. The Mediterranean Sea he describes was now Christian. During his trip to the Hejaz, which was initially a pilgrimage, he searched for the places from which Islam's salvation could spring. He first found hope in the original land of Islam, that of the Companions of the Prophet and the first conquerors, located between Cairo, Mecca, Medina, and Damascus. His spirits were lifted even higher when he saw Saladin coming out of the Syrian capital at the head of his troops on his way to fight the crusaders at Shaizar. Later, he would find hope for the reconquest of lost territory in the Almohad caliph al-Mansur and his fleet.
In the writings of many authors, such as al-Harawi (d. 1215), the Mediterranean and its Muslim territories come alive not as a space reconfigured by a nostalgic memory but as an Islamic territory to be reconquered, spurred on by new forces, new _'asabiyya,_ or solidarity based on kinship, according to Ibn Khaldun, which should be inspired by the example of the first Arabs.
Ibn Khaldun took this logic to its natural conclusion in his masterpiece, _The Book of Examples._ He has the period of Muslim domination over the Mediterranean coincide with the period of the region's Fatimid and Umayyad caliphates in the tenth century. He assigns the sea the role of a border, controlled by the most powerful rulers in Islam, whether caliphs or sultans, not as an end unto itself but as a prelude to other conquests, under the guidance of the most virtuous princes and conquering tribal forces driven by the spirit of Islam. When Ibn Khaldun met Tamerlane in the capital of Syria, he gave him a signed copy of his book, thinking he had found the Muslim sovereign able to subject the world—including the Christian world and its seas—to Islam. Like his peers, he was not looking for a particular place in the Islamic world from which the conquest would be launched but rather for an army and its guide, who would be able to revive the conquering spirit of their Arab ancestors. The lost Mediterranean had not become a place of useless nostalgia but an area to be taken back from the Christians thanks to the spirit of Islam.
Finally, the Mediterranean has a singular place in the _rihla_ of Ibn Battuta (1304–ca. 1377), but not in the way one would expect from a Maghrebi and native of Tangier. In this redistribution of the world's spatial hierarchy, it is the new spaces, the lands and seas of expansion and Islamization that most attracted the Moroccan traveler's attention: India and its oceanic extension, the steppes of Central Asia, the Mali of Mansa Suleyman (1335–1358), and the southeast of Africa between Mogadishu and Kilwa are presented as models of government, some of which were still poorly integrated but prosperous and filled with hope for Islam's future. For Ibn Battuta, the sea that embodies Islam's maritime space is no longer his own but instead the Red Sea, and more specifically the maritime route of the pilgrimage to Jeddah, Islam's maritime center stretching from Rabat to Delhi.
Paradoxically, a "peaceful" sea like the Indian Ocean, a sea of the Arabs, that is, a sea without enemies of Islam, could not become the caliph's sea. One has to wait for another era—the period of the ascendancy of the Egyptian caliphate and sultanates or that of the Rasulid dynasty of Aden (1229–1454)—for maritime commerce to become an instrument of the display of sultanate domination over Arab seas. Under the authority of the caliphs of Baghdad, only the Sea of the Romans—in other words, the enemy sea—could be the stage on which caliphal jihad was displayed, bringing together every form of expansion, whether through religious conversion or military and commercial means, despite the fact that neither the caliphs of the conquest, nor the Abbasids and Umayyads, nor even the Fatimids and Almohads ever "straddled" the sea of caliphs, other than to cross the Strait of Gibraltar.
NOTES
GLOSSARY
CHRONOLOGIES
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
# NOTES
# INTRODUCTION
Chapter title: "Moorish and Saracen" comes from Eginhard, a chronicler of Charlemagne.
Epigraph: Al-Tabari (1879–1901), 1:2821; English trans. (1985–1999), 15:26.
. F. Braudel (1995), 1:17.
. H. Pirenne (2005).
. A. R. Lewis (1951).
. Definition of "pirate" from the _Dictionnaire de l'Académie française:_ "n. borrowed, via the Latin _pirata,_ from the Greek _peirâtes,_ 'brigand, pirate,' itself derived from _peirân,_ 'to try, to attempt,' then 'to attempt the adventure, to devote one's self to brigandage.' An adventurer who commits brigandage on the seas, a member of a crew that attacks and robs merchant ships."
. P. Brown (1971); C. Wickham (2005).
. L. Musset (1994).
. A. Schaube (1906); S. D. Goitein (1967).
. P. Horden and N. Purcell (2000).
. G. Martinez-Gros (1992).
. M. Balard (1978); D. Coulon (2004); D. Coulon, C. Picard, and D. Valérian (2007); M. Tangheroni (1996); A. L. Udovitch (1978); D. Valérian (2006); A. E. Laiou (2002); J.-P. Sodini (2000).
. P. Brown (1971); R. Hodges and D. Whitehouse (1996); C. Wickham (2005). On Byzantium, see A. E. Laiou (2002) and M. McCormick (2001). On the Islamic world, see F. Micheau (2012).
. M. Whittow (2009); A. G. Walmsley (2007); C. Wickham (2005).
. P. Toubert (1973); L. Feller (1998); J.-M. Poisson (1992); J.-M. Martin (2001) _._
. P. Horden and N. Purcell (2000).
. Al-Muqaddasi (1906, 1950, 1963); A. Miquel (1973–1984); S. D. Goitein (1967).
. Li Guo (2000).
. A. Miquel (1973–1984), 1:323.
. N. Michel (2000).
. A. Miquel (1973–1984), 1:1–3.
. G. Martinez-Gros (1992).
. J.-M. Poisson (1992); J.-M. Martin (2001) _._
. F. Menant (2005), 193 and following.
. M. Ouerfelli (2009); C. Picard (2009).
. Almohad text, cited below, pp. 214–216.
. Al-Idrisi (1975, 1999).
. Al-Tabari (1879–1901, 1985–1999); H. Kennedy (2003a); M. Bonner (1996).
. D. Ayalon (1996); A. Fuess (2001).
. A.-M. Eddé (2008).
# 1. THE ARAB DISCOVERY OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
. F. Donner (1998); F. Micheau (2012).
. Ibn Habib (1991); Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam (1922, 1948).
. L. I. Conrad (1992); A. M. Fahmy (1966).
. Y. Ragheb (2006).
. S. D. Goitein (1967).
. F. Donner (1998); G. Schoeler (2002).
. H. Kennedy (2003a, 2003b).
. Y. Kamal (1987).
. J. B. Harley and D. Woodward (1992).
. A. Borrut (2011).
. J. Schiettecatte (2011); P. Baujeard (2012).
. A. Galland (1965), 1:230. While it is highly likely that these tales were written later, during the Ottoman period (see J. C. Garcin [2013]), ninth- and tenth-century Arabic descriptions of the Indian Ocean confirm such initiatives.
. É. Vallet (2012).
. H. Kennedy (1981).
. V. Déroche et al. (2007), 21–80.
. P. Gautier Dalché (1997); N. Bouloux (2004); E. Vagnon (2013); C. Hofmann, H. Richard, E. Vagnon (2012).
. P. Zumthor (1993), 317–344; J. Richard (1981).
. E. Savage-Smith and Y. Rapoport (2007); Ibn Hawqal (1938–1939, 1964).
. Ibn Jubayr (1907, 1949); Y. Dejugnat (2010).
. Al-Idrisi (1975, 1999).
. A. Miquel (1973–1984), vols. I and II; vol. 1, chs. VII and VIII.
. Nasir-i Kushraw (1881).
. A. Miquel (1973–1984), vol. 1, 204: _Muruj al-dhahab_ [The meadows of gold] and _Kitab al-Tanbih wa l-Ishraf_ [The book of notification and verification].
. C. Pellat, "Al-Mas'udi," in _Encyclopédie de l'Islam,_ 2nd ed., 6:773–778; T. Khalidi (1975); A. Shboul (1979).
. F. Gabrieli, "Adab," in _Encyclopédie de l'Islam,_ 3rd ed., 1:175–176.
. Ibn al-Nadim, _al-Fihrist,_ made a list of the books he found in the most prestigious libraries of Baghdad. See H. Touati (2003).
. H. Touati (2000).
. C. Pellat, "Al-Mas'udi," 6:774; J. Sauvaget (1948); F. X. Fauvelle-Aymar and B. Hirsch (2003).
. Al-Mas'udi (1861–1877), 1:234; French trans. (1962–1965), 94.
. A. Miquel (1973–1984), 1:173, 313–330.
. J. Sauvaget (1948); V. Minorsky (1955).
. Ibn al-Faqih al-Hamadhani (1885), 48; French trans. (1973), 59.
. Al-Mas'udi (1861–1877), 1:243–244; French trans. (1962–1965), 98.
. A. Miquel (1973–1984), 1:35–68, 202–212.
. Al-Mas'udi (1861–1877), 1:281–283; French trans. (1962–1965), 115–116. See also analysis of Al-Mas'udi in H. Touati (2000).
. Ibn al-Nadim (1871, 1970); G. Martinez-Gros (1992, 1997).
. Al-Mas'udi (1861–1877), 1:369; French trans. (1962–1965), 149.
. Al-Mas'udi (1861–1877), 1:258–259; French trans. (1962–1965), 106.
. H. Touati (2003).
. A. Amara and A. Nef (2000).
. H. Bresc and A. Nef, introduction to al-Idrisi (1999), 13–53; G. Martinez-Gros (2006).
. J. Jones (1995).
. H. Bresc (1981).
. Al-Idrisi (1999), 309.
. Ibid., 270.
. H. Bresc, "Le choc des reconquêtes et de la Croisade," in J. C. Garcin et al. (1995–2000), 1:173–203.
. H. Bresc and A. Nef, introduction to al-Idrisi (1999), 52.
. Al-Idrisi (1975, 1989, 1999); J.-C. Ducène (2010).
. A. Amara and A. Nef (2000).
. CD Rom of al-Idrisi's map, produced by the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Cartes et Plans section.
. G. Martinez-Gros (2006), 116; Ibn Khaldun (2002), bk. 1, 270.
. G. Martinez (2006), 110.
. Ibid., 66 and following.
. Ibn Khaldun (2002), bk. 1, ch. 2, 264–313: "The spread of civilization on earth. A few indications on the seas, rivers, and climates."
. Ibn Khaldun (2002), 563–569.
. Ibid., bk. 1, 569.
. Ibid., bk. 1, 564.
. P. Horden and N. Purcell (2000); T. Bianquis, P. Guichard, and M. Tillier (2012).
# 2. ARAB WRITING ON THE CONQUEST OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
. Koran 17:62. 18:59, 25:55.
. Ibn Khaldun (2002), 5.
. F. Donner (1998); Ch. Décobert (1991); A.-L. de Prémare (2002).
. F. Donner (1998), 299–306 (table).
. G. Schoeler (2002). For the example of the conquest of al-Andalus, see P. Chalmeta (2003).
. A. Borrut (2009).
. D. Sourdel (1999); T. El-Hibri (1999).
. Al-Mas'udi (1861–1877), 1:15–16, French trans. (1962–1965), 6–7; H. Kennedy (2003b); C. Gilliot (1988); F. Rosenthal, "General Introduction," in al-Tabari (1985–1999), 1:3–154; A. Borrut (2011), 9–55.
. F. Rosenthal (1968); A. Cheddadi (2004); F. Donner (1998); A. Elad (2003); A.-L. de Prémare (2002); C. Décobert (1991).
. M. Tillier (2009).
. S. Bouderbala (2008).
. M. Muranyi (1999).
. H. Kennedy (1997).
. H. Kennedy (2003b); Al-Tabari (1879–1901, 1985–1999).
. F. Donner (1998), 132–138; H. Kennedy (1997).
. Al-Tabari (1879–1901), 1:2580–2581; French trans. (1985–1999) 13:163.
. C. F. Robinson (2003); G. Schoeler (2002); A. Borrut (2011), pp. 45–48 and no. 164.
. Al-Ya'qubi (1960), 2:262; French translation by A.-L. de Prémare (2002), 462–463.
. J. M. Fiey (1980); S. K. Samir (2003); D. Gutas (2005); R. G. Hoyland (1997).
. T. El-Hibri (1999).
. A. Borrut (2011).
. H. Djaït (1986).
. H. Djaït (2004).
. P. Cobb (2001); A. Borrut (2011).
. F. Donner (1981), 91–155, 157–220.
. A. Borrut (2011), 389–393, 446–450; P. Cobb (2001), 21 and following; H. Kennedy (1981), 74 and following.
. M. Bonner (2004); A. Borrut (2004).
. D. Sourdel (1980); P. Cobb (1999).
. The expression "ghazi-caliph" was coined by C. E. Bosworth (1992), derived from the Turkish title that appeared in the eleventh century.
. A. M. Fahmy (1966).
. L. I. Conrad (1992); M. Canard (1926); R. Guilland (1955).
. Al-Mawardi (1984), 76.
. D. Cook (2002).
. K. Y. Blankinship (1994); G. R. Hawting (2000); P. Cobb, " 'Umar II," in _Encyclopédie de l'Islam,_ 2nd ed., 10:886–887; A. Borrut (2005), 201–281; A. Borrut (2011).
. A. Borrut (2011), 229–282; J.-L. Bacqué-Grammont, F. de Polignac, and G. Bohas (2000); F. de Polignac (1982, 1999).
. Ibn Khurradadhbih (1889), 169.
. The phrase "the end of the jihadist caliphate" is a paraphrase of the title of the book by K. Y. Blankinship (1994), _The End of the Jihâd State._
. R. G. Khoury (2004).
. Agapius (1901); R. G. Khoury (2004); C. Décobert and J.-Y. Empereur (1998).
. Y. Ragheb (1996).
. F. Donner (1998), 214–229.
. S. Bouderbala (2008), 183–247; H. Kennedy (1997), 72 and following.
. A. Miquel (1973–1984), 1:253–257.
. " 'Amr," "Adruh," in _Encyclopédie de l'Islam,_ 2nd ed.
. A.-L. de Prémare (2002), 79–81.
. H. Kennedy (1997), 65.
. M. Tillier (2009).
. Ibn Khallikan (1948), 1:349.
. M. Gil (1992), 126; P. Cobb (1995).
. F. Rosenthal (1968), 590.
. Al-Suyuti (1997).
. Al-Khushani (1914, 1922, 1982); Al-Maqqari (1840–1843, 1967, 1968).
. M. Talbi, "Sahnun," in _Encyclopédie de l'Islam,_ 2nd ed., 8:843–845; J. Schacht (1999); Y. Dutton (1999), J. Brockopp (1998); M. Muranyi (1984, 1999).
. A. Othman (1999).
. Particularly al-Maliki. See N. Amri (2011).
. Ibn Sa'd (1917–1940), 2:213; French trans. M. Canard (1926), 71.
. Al-Zuhri, § 117. See Abu 'Ubayda b. al-Jarrah, in _Encyclopédie de l'Islam,_ 3rd ed.
. J. Chabbi, "Shahid," in _Encyclopédie de l'Islam,_ 2nd ed.
. P. Sénac (2006); Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam (1922), 120, French trans. (1948), 121.
. A tribe that had rallied behind Islam after the revolt against the Muslims following the death of Muhammad, under the caliphate of Abu Bakr (632–634).
. Al-Tabari (1879–1901), 2:2824; French trans., 15:29.
. Al-Baladhuri (1863–1866), 152, 154; French trans., 235, 237. According to an Egyptian tradition, the first expedition on the Mediterranean actually took place in 643.
. Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam (1922), 34–36; French trans. (1948), 35–37.
. Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam (1922), 76–78, French trans. (1948), 79–80; Ibn 'Idhari (1948–1951), 1:22–24, French trans. (1901–1904), 28–31; H. Djaït (2004).
. H. Djaït (2004).
. Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam (1922), 60–62; French trans. (1948), 61–63.
. H. Djaït (2004).
. Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam (1922), 64; French trans. (1948), 65.
. Ibn al-Athir (1965–1967), 4:88; French trans. (1901), 20–22, including the encounter between 'Uqba and Julian.
. H. Djaït (2004).
. Secondary pilgrimage sites.
. Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam (1922), 96; French trans. (1948), 97.
. Ibn al-Athir (1965–1967), 4:444–445; French trans. (1901), 42–43.
. Ibn Habib (1991), 137; French trans. M. Wilk (2008), 26.
. G. Martinez-Gros (1992).
. Ibn al-Athir (1965–1967), 4:448; French trans. (1901), 48.
. Al-Idrisi (1999), 130.
. A.-M. Eddé, F. Micheau, and C. Picard (1997).
# 3. THE SILENCES OF THE SEA
. F. Donner (1991).
. M. Canard (1973a); A. Kaplony (2002); M. Bonner (2004).
. D. Gutas (2005); H. Touati (2003), 125–203.
. Ibn al-Faqih al-Hamadhani (1885), 108; French trans. (1973), 132–133.
. On 'Abd al-Malik's policy, see C. F. Robinson (2005). On the mosque of Damascus, see F. B. Flood (2000).
. Al-Muqaddasi (1906), 107; French trans. (1963), 170.
. Ibn al-Faqih al-Hamadhani (1885), 106–108, French trans. (1973), 127–133; A. Borrut (2011), 339–344.
. M. Canard (1973a).
. Ibn al-Faqih al-Hamadhani (1885), 136–139; French trans. (1973), 163–166.
. Sa'id al-Andalusi (1913, 1966); G. Martinez-Gros (1984).
. D. Gutas (2005), 95 and following.
. A.-M. Eddé, F. Micheau, and C. Picard (1997).
. Ibn al-Nadim (1871, 1970).
. Ibn al-Nadim (1871), 245; French trans. D. Jacquart and F. Micheau (1990), 33.
. S. Bouderbala (2008), 278–279.
. R. Hodges and D. Whitehouse (1996).
. M. Bonner (1996).
. A. Morabia (1993); A. Borrut (2004).
. The expression "armed scholars" was coined by M. Bonner (1996).
. H. Kennedy (2003a), 35.
. A. M. Fahmy (1966).
. S. Bouderbala (2008); A. Borrut (1999–2000, 2001).
. Principally, M. Bonner (1996); C. E. Bosworth (1992); M. Canard (1973b); V. Christides (1982); P. Cobb (2001); P. Crone (1980); T. El-Hibri (1999); A. M. Fahmy (1966); H. Kennedy (2001, 2003a); and P. Von Sievers (1982).
. D. Gimaret, "Mu'tazila," in _Encyclopédie de l'Islam,_ 2nd ed., 7:783–787.
. Ibn Shaddad (1980–1981, 1984).
. A. Borrut (1999–2000, 2001); H. Kennedy (2001).
. Abu Yusuf Ya'qub (1921); M. Bonner (1996).
. J.-M. Poisson (1992); J.-M. Martin (2001).
. Ibn Shaddad (1984). See introduction, xi–xlv.
. Terminology borrowed from A. Borrut (2011). Of the many works on the subject, see A. Borrut (2004); F. Donner (2008); and R. Firestone (1999).
. A. Morabia (1993); A. Borrut (2004).
. _Sahib sunna wa-ghazwa:_ the expression was coined by Ibn Sa'd, a historian of the first half of the ninth century: M. Bonner (1996), 110.
. Ibid., 127.
. F. Donner (2008).
. C. Décobert (1991).
. V. Christides (1982).
. Al-Mawardi, French trans. of the passage from _Kitab al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyya_ by A. Morabia (1993), 207–209.
. Qudama ibn Ja'far (1967).
. Al-Mawardi (1909), 23; French trans. (1984), 30–31.
. Al-Mawardi (1909), 61; French trans. (1984), 75–76.
. J. Chabbi (1995); C. Picard and A. Borrut (2003).
. Ibn Shaddad (1980–1981), 316–367; French trans. (1984), 232. See J. Chabbi (1995); H. S. Khalilieh (1999); and C. Picard and A. Borrut (2003).
. L. Caetani (1912).
. Al-Tabari (1879–1901), 3:631; English trans. (1985–1999), 144. On the ribat in the empire's eastern zone, see E. de la Vaissière (2008), the first to mention this "coincidence." On Ifriqiya, see C. Picard and A. Borrut (2003).
. C. E. Bosworth (1992); M. Bonner (1996).
. Al-Maliki (1983); N. Amri (2011).
. Qudama Ibn Ja'far, _Khitab al-Kharaj,_ ed. 255; French trans. 195–196.
. Al-Ya'qubi (1967), 115; French trans. (1937), 179.
. T. El-Hibri (1999); H. Kennedy (2003a); M. Bonner (1996).
. A. Nef (2011b), 205.
. H. Kennedy (1997). On Syria in the first Abbasid century, see P. Cobb (2001), and A. Borrut (2011), 389–392.
# 4. THE GEOGRAPHERS' MEDITERRANEAN
. Al-Mas'udi (1894), 33, French trans. (1896), 53; H. Touati (2003), 161–203.
. Definition of "geography" from the _Oxford American Dictionary._
. A. Miquel (1973–1984), 1:7–14; I. J. Kratchkovsky (1957); Maqbul, "Jughrafiya," in _Encyclopédie de l'Islam,_ 2nd ed.
. H. Touati (2003), based on a reference by al-Nadim in the _Fihrist_ (1871), 342.
. A. Borrut (2011), 357 and following.
. A. Miquel (1973–1984), 1:87.
. Ibid., 1:35–68.
. P. Beaujard (2012).
. É. Vallet (2012).
. A. Miquel (1973–1984), 1:87–92.
. Ibn Khurradadhbih (1889), 8–10; French trans. (1949), 9–11.
. C. Picard (2011b).
. The land of the Khazars, west of the Caspian Sea and north of the Caucasus.
. Al-Faqih al-Hamadhani (1885), 3–4, French trans. (1973), 5–6; Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam, French trans. (1948), 1. See G. R. Tibbets (1992b), 90–93.
. A. Miquel (1973–1984), 1:322.
. G. R. Tibbets (1992b).
. G. Martinez-Gros (1998), 317–322.
. Al-Muqaddasi (1906), 36; French trans. (1963), 81.
. Al-Muqaddasi (1906), 15–16; French trans. (1963), 43–44.
. Al-Muqaddasi (1906), 15; French trans. (1963), 41–43.
. See A. Miquel (1973–1984), 1:299–309; G. Martinez-Gros (1998), 325–328; and J.-C. Garcin (1983).
. C. Picard (2000).
. Ibn Hawqal, ed. p. 201, French trans. pp. 195–196.
. Ibid., ed. p. 190, French trans. p. 187.
. C. Picard (1997b).
. Ibn Hawqal (1938–1939), 108; French trans. (1964), 107–108.
. Ibn Hawqal (1938–1939), 153; French trans. (1964), 150. The vizier was Christian.
. Ibn Hawqal (1938–1939), 190–205; French trans. (1964), 187–200.
. Ibn Hawqal (1938–1939), 205; French trans. (1964), 199.
. Vassiliev (1935), 2:411.
. Ibn Hawqal (1938–1939), 201; French trans. (1964), 195.
# 5. MUSLIM CENTERS OF THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN
. J. Lirola Delgado (1995); E. Tixier du Mesnil (2014), 521–567.
. J. Vernet (1985).
. M. Talbi (1966); H. Djaït (2004); V. Prévost (2010).
. M. Talbi (1966), 71–87.
. The same approach was followed on the eastern side: E. de La Vaissière (2008).
. A. Lezine (1956, 1965); N. Djelloul (1999); F. Mahfoudh (2003); G. Marçais (1957); M. Hassen (2001).
. Al-Maliki (1983), 2:28; J. Chabbi (1995), 523; C. Picard and A. Borrut (2003).
. Al-Maliki (1983), 1:487; French trans. N. Amri (2011).
. Al-Ya'qubi (1967), 350; French trans. (1937), 213.
. M. Hassen (2001); N. Djelloul (1999).
. Al-Wansharisi (1981–1983), 7:31; French trans. V. Lagardère (1995), 212.
. M. Talbi (1985); N. Amri (2011).
. R. Azuar Ruiz (1991), 7–72.
. Al-Idrisi (1975), 562, French trans. (1999), 281; E. Erbati (2002), 287.
. V. Prigent (2007).
. The name of one of Kairouan's gates. See M. Talbi (1966), 182–185.
. Ibn 'Idhari (1948–1951), 1:99; French trans. (1901–1904), 1:135.
. Ibn al-Athir (1965–1967), 5:263; French trans. M. Talbi (1966), 251.
. Ibn al-Athir (1965–1967), 4:195; French trans. M. Talbi (1966), 248.
. M. Amari (1933–1938), 1:145; A. Nef (2008).
. H. S. Khalilieh (2006).
. In M. Talbi (1966), 534–535. On maritime commerce in the Aghlabid period, see ibid., 529–538.
. H. Halm (1992).
. Al-Maliki (1983), 2:37–38; French trans. N. Amri (2011).
. Al-Maliki (1983), 2:222, French trans. N. Amri (2011); H. Halm (1996), 221–235.
. Ibn Hawqal (1938–1939), 121.
. M. Talbi (1966), 431, no. 1, 432–433.
. Y. Benhima (2011).
. É. Lévi-Provençal (1959–1967), 1:34–64; P. Chalmeta (2003), 97–250.
. P. Sénac (2000a); E. Manzano Moreno (1991).
. J. L. Delgado and J. M. Puerta Vilchez (2002–); M. J. Viguera Molíns (1995); G. Martinez-Gros (1997); E. Fricaud (1994); Ibn al-Athir.
. J. L. Delgado and J. M. Puerta Vilchez (2002–); M. J. Viguera Molíns (1995); G. Martinez-Gros (1997).
. E. Fricaud (1994); Ibn al-Athir (1901, 1965–1967).
. P. Guichard (1983, 1995b); J. P. Poly (1976).
. E. Manzano Moreno (1991); P. Sénac (2000a).
. P. Guichard (2001); C. De La Puente (1999); C. Picard (2006b).
. These expeditions have all been mentioned by É. Lévi-Provençal (1959–1967), vol. 1.
. Ibid., 1:193–225.
. C. Picard (1997a).
. R. Dozy (1965); J. Bosch Vilá (1984), 43–51.
. Ibn al-Qutiya (1868), 66; Spanish trans. (1926), 53.
. Ibn 'Idhari (1948–1951), 2:88, French trans. (1901–1904), 2:145; G. Rosselló Bordoy (1968); P. Guichard (1987). The conquest failed.
. J. P. Poly (1976), 4–13; C. Picard (2007a).
. C. Picard (2000), 194–196.
. Al-Himyari (1970), Spanish trans. (2005), 145–147.
. Al-Bakri (1965), 111; French trans. ibid., 220.
# 6. THE MEDITERRANEAN OF THE WESTERN CALIPHS
. Ibn Khaldun (2002), 565–567.
. G. Martinez-Gros (1992); E. Tixier du Mesnil (2014).
. A. Miquel (1973–1984), 1:259–262; J. Lirola Delgado (1995).
. A. Miquel (1973–1984), 1:243–265.
. Quoted by É. Lévi-Provençal (1959–1967), 3:504, from the _Muqtabis_ by Ibn Hayyan.
. H. Kennedy (2003b).
. É. Lévi-Provençal (1953).
. Ibn Hayyan (1979), 301; Spanish trans. (1981), 228.
. E. Molina López (1983).
. É. Lévi-Provençal (1959–1967), 1:348–356; J. Lirola Delgado (1993), 137–150; C. Picard (1997a), 9–20.
. Al-Himyari (1938), 188, French trans., ibid., 228; G. Rosselló Bordoy (1968).
. M. Acién Almensa (1997).
. Ibn Hayyan (1979), 87–88; Spanish trans. (1981), 76–77.
. J. Lirola Delgado (1993), 389–392. The Alboran Sea lies between the southern coast of Spain and the shores of the Maghreb.
. G. Martinez Gros (1992, 1997).
. É. Lévi-Provençal (1932); L. Torres Balbas (1957b).
. C. Barceló Torres, "Los escritos árabes de las rábita de Guardamar," in R. Azuar Ruiz (2004), 131–135; S. Guttierrez Lloret, "El _ribât_ antes del _ribât_ : El contexto material y social del _ribât_ antiguo," in ibid., 73–87.
. É. Lévi-Provençal (1953), 90.
. A. Sidarus (1990); C. Picard and I. C. Ferreira Fernandes (1999).
. Ibn 'Idhari (1948–1951), 2:220; French trans. (1901–1904) (revised by author), 2:265. See C. Picard (2000), 141–142.
. See M. Talbi (1966), 431–432; and P. Guichard (1995b).
. M. J. Viguera, "Turtusha," in _Encyclopédie de l'Islam,_ 2nd ed., 10:738–739; A. Ben Abdesselem, "Al-Turtushi," in _Encyclopédie de l'Islam,_ 3rd ed., 10:739.
. É. Lévi-Provençal (1931), 83–84.
. Al-Himyari (1938), 124; French trans., ibid., 151–152.
. Al-'Udhri (1965), Spanish trans. (1975–1976) in J. Lirola Delgado (2005), 32–33.
. J. Lirola Delgado (1993), 271–275.
. Ibn Hayyan (1979), 312; Spanish trans. (1981), 220.
. J. Lirola Delgado (2005).
. J. Lirola Delgado (1993), 198–203.
. Al-'Udhri (1965), Spanish trans. (1975–1976) in J. Lirola Delgado (2005), 32–33.
. Al-Himyari (1938), 73; French trans., ibid., 91–92.
. C. Picard (2010a).
. M. I. Calero Secall (1995).
. É. Lévi-Provençal (1959–1967), 2:236–238; T. Bruce (2013).
. Ibn 'Idhari (1948–1951), 2:245, French trans. (1901–1904), 405; C. Picard (1997b), 270–271.
. Expression used by Gabriel Martinez-Gros (1992), 1.
. Ibn Hayyan (1965, 1967, 1979, 1981).
. Ibn Hayyan, _Muqtabis_ VII, Spanish trans. (1967), 104.
. G. Martinez-Gros (1992); J. Dakhlia (1998).
. Ibn Hayyan (1979), § 211–212; Spanish trans. (1981), 236–237.
. Ibn Hawqal (1938–1939), 198–199; French trans. P. Sénac (2001), 120.
. Ibn Hayyan (1979), 454–455; Spanish trans. (1981), 342.
. J.-P. Poly (1976).
. D. Bramoullé (2011).
. S. D. Goitein (1967, 1973).
. Al-Makhzumi (1986); C. Cahen (1964, 1977a, 1986).
. A. Fuess (2001).
. S. Denoix (1992); J. Loiseau (2010).
. A.-M. Eddé (2008), 501–508; S. Denoix (1992); J. Loiseau (2010).
. Al-Maqrizi (2002–2004), 3:618–619; French trans. D. Bramoullé (2011), 275.
. Abu l-Fida' (1840); Yaqut (1866–1873).
. E. Savage-Smith and Y. Rapoport (2007); A. Miquel (1973–1984), 1:309–312.
. Al-Maqrizi (2002–2004), 2:379.
. É. Vallet (2012).
. A. Nanji, "Nasir-i Kushraw," in _Encyclopédie de l'Islam,_ 3rd ed., 7:1006–1007.
. Y. Dejugnat (2010).
. Nasir-i Kushraw (1881), French trans., 120–126.
. Ibid., French trans., 40–41.
. Al-Raqiq (1990).
. C. Cahen (1983), 37–38; D. Jacoby (1995).
. Insofar as this pavilion already existed under the same name in Mahdia, it seems difficult to associate the term "al-bahr" with the Nile rather than the Mediterranean. It is absolutely conceivable that the ambiguity was intentional.
. D. Bramoullé (2011), 308–309.
. C. Cahen (1964). One must also include the references in the Geniza letters and Latin letters.
. H. Halm (1996); F. Dachraoui (1981), 402–403; A.-M. Eddé (2008), 498–508; A. S. Ehrenkreutz (1955); Y. Lev (1991), 168–184.
. C. Cahen (1977a).
. Al-Nu'man (1975), 327–328; French trans. F. Mahfoudh (2003), 243. See H. Halm (1996), 214–221.
. F. Mahfoudh (2003), 243–249.
. F. Dachraoui (1981), 188–189; H. Halm (1996), 298–325; H. Halm (1992).
. C. Picard (2009a).
. Al-Bakri (1965), 30; French trans., ibid., 67–68.
. A. Bazzana (2011).
. M. Kamil Husayn, and M. A. Sha'ira (1954), 102–103; French trans. M. Canard (1958), 154–155.
. M. Kamil Husayn, and M. A. Sha'ira (1954), 103–104; French trans. M. Canard (1958), 156.
. Ibn Duqmaq (1893–1896), 12.
. D. Bramoullé (2011), 287–318.
. M. Canard (1947).
. Ibn Hani' (n.d.), 161; M. Yalaoui (1976).
. Ibn Hani', quoted by M. Canard (1947), 161.
. Ibid., 188–189.
. Ibid.
. B. Z. Kedar (1997).
. Al-Nu'man (1978), 164–165; Spanish trans. J. Lirola Delgado (1993), 198–199.
. M. Canard (1973a); H. Bresc, in J.-C. Garcin et al. (1995–2000), 1:173–203.
. J. Jones (1987, 1995); A. Nef (2011b), 119–176.
. M. Barrucand (1999); C. Tonghini (1999).
. M. Canard (1973a).
. A. Nef (2011b).
. Ibn Jubayr (1907), 330–334; French trans. (1949), 389–392.
. Ibn Jubayr (1907), 325; French trans. (1949), 380–381.
. Al-Maqrizi (1991). His history of the Fatimids was lost, but a summary can be found in the _Itti'az._
. Al-Maqrizi (1991), 20; French trans. A. Nef (2011b), 122.
. J. Jones (1987).
. M. Canard (1973a). On the ceremonial of Muslim sovereigns, see J. Dakhlia (1998).
. Land and naval.
. A. Nef (2008), 33–44, esp. 36–38.
. S. Mazot (1999).
. V. Christides (1982, 1984a); H. S. Khalilieh (2006).
# 7. THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN
. P. Guichard (1999a).
. On the Andalusian emirates of the eleventh century, see F. Clément (1997).
. C. Picard (1997a); T. Bruce (2013); H. Ferhat (1993b).
. C. Picard (1997b, 2006a).
. Al-Zuhri (1968, 1991); Al-Gharnati (1993); J. Arbach (1995); H. Ferhat (1993b); M. Cherif (2005).
. F. Clément (1997), 272.
. P. Guichard (1990–1991), 53–63; T. Bruce (2013); C. Picard (2000), 65–84.
. C. Picard (1997a), 31–42.
. P. Guichard and V. Lagardère (1990).
. Ibn 'Abdun (1947), 30, French trans. (1955), 65; P. Chalmeta (1973).
. T. Bruce (2013).
. D. Wasserstein (1985).
. B. Foulon and E. Tixier du Mesnil (2008), 241–245.
. P. Guichard (1995b).
. T. Bruce (2013).
. Al-Himyari (1938), 184; French trans., ibid., 222, which largely reproduces al-Idrisi's text, French trans. 282–286.
. C. Picard (1997a), 57–74; C. Picard (1998).
. V. Lagardère (1989b, 1998b); E. Tixier du Mesnil (2011).
. Al-Bakri (1968).
. "Ecological" in the sense given by P. Horden and N. Purcell (2000).
. C. Picard (2011a); G. Martinez-Gros (2006).
. G. Camps (1980).
. P. Guichard (1990–1991), 19–24.
. P. Guichard (1977).
. Ibn 'Idhari (1948–1951), 2:107–108; French trans. (1901–1904), 210, 213.
. Y. Benhima (2011).
. Ibid.
. V. Lagardère (1989a), 17–60.
. Al-Bakri (1965), 166; French trans., ibid., 314.
. M. J. Viguera Molíns (1977); French trans. V. Lagardère (1998b), 15.
. P. Sénac (2006), 84–91.
. H. Ahrweiler (1966), 40, 60; E. Tixier du Mesnil (2014).
. A.-M. Eddé (2008), 505.
. C. Picard (2003).
. M. De Epalza (1986).
. R. Mauny (1960); C. Picard (1997b), 377–416.
. P. Guichard (1983); C. Picard (2007a, 2007b); C. Aillet (2010), 55–57.
. Al-Bakri (1965), 61–62; French trans., ibid., 128–129. On Asilah, see ibid., 111; French trans., ibid., 220.
. J. Lirola Delgado (1993), 120–131; M. De Epalza (1986, 1987).
. R. Azuar Ruiz (2005); P. Cressier (2004).
. C. Picard (2003).
. Al-Bakri (1965), 81; French trans., ibid., 163.
. Al-Idrisi (1989), introduction to the translation, 39–40.
. Al-Bakri (1965), 90; French trans., ibid., 182.
. Ibid., 101; French trans., ibid., 199.
. C. Aillet (2010), 52–59.
. Al-Badisi (1926, 1982).
. E. Tixier du Mesnil (2014).
. Ibn Abi Zar' (1973), 201; Spanish trans. (1964), 400.
. J. Arbach (1995); C. Picard (1997a).
. P. Guichard (1990), 181–183.
. A. Huici Miranda (1956–1957a, 1956–1957b).
. C. Picard (1997b), 167–169, 477–478.
. Al-Baydhaq (1928), 107.
. A. Amara (2003); D. Valérian (2006a).
. P. Buresi (2004).
. Y. Benhima (2003); C. Picard (1997b), 476–481; J. Arbach (1995), 103–111.
. P. Buresi and H. El Allaoui (2012).
. É. Lévi-Provençal, ed., _Trente-sept lettres officielles almohades_ (1941).
. Ibn 'Idhari (1985); Ibn Sahib al-Sala (1969); Al-Marrakushi (1955, 1968).
. Ibn al-Qattan (1964).
. Ibn 'Idhari (1985), 185.
. M. Vegua, S. Peña, and M. C. Feria (2006), 1035.
. É. Lévi-Provençal, ed., _Trente-sept lettres officielles almohades_ (1941), 37; French trans. J. Arbach (1995), 80.
. M. Cherif (1996).
. Ibn Khaldun (1983), 4:63; French trans. (2002), 81.
. A. Ettahiri, A. Filli, and J. P. Van Staevel (2008).
. J. Arbach (1995).
. É. Lévi-Provençal, ed., _Trente-sept lettres officielles almohades_ (1941), 68. A more detailed account is provided in Al-Himyari (1938), 188–189; French trans., ibid., 228–230.
. On the siege and the taking of Mahdia, see H. R. Idris (1962), 1:384–394.
. J. Arbach (1995, 1997).
. "Catechism" setting out Almohad doctrine, written by Ibn Tumart.
. Ibn al-Qattan (1964), 139–149; Ibn Simak (1979), 150–151, French trans. J. Arbach (1995), 191.
. Koran 17 (The Night Journey), 66: "It is your Lord who drives your ships across the ocean, so that you may sail in them in quest of his abundance." See also 5:96; English trans. by N. J. Dawood.
. Al-Balawi (n.d.); French trans. J. Arbach (1995), 441–442.
. O. R. Constable (1994); H. Touati (2000).
. Ibn Jubayr (1907, 1949). See Y. Dejugnat (2010).
. J. Arbach (1995), 1:311–314.
. Al-Tadili (1984, 1994).
. Ibn 'Idhari (1985), 344; Ibn Sahib al-Sala (1964), 129–130; A. Huici Miranda (1956–1957a), 184.
. Al-Idrisi (1999), 191; Al-Zuhri (1968), 198–200; S. Zaglul, (1958), 125.
. Al-Idrisi (1999), 192–193.
. On marine fauna, see M. P. Torres (1995).
. H. Bresc and A. Nef, introduction to the translation, in Al-Idrisi (1999), 31.
. Al-Idrisi (1989).
. C. Picard (1997b), 193–194.
. C. Dubler (1949).
. This subsection is informed by H. R. Idris (1961) and H. S. Khalilieh (2006). For the _Treatise_ , see Al-Kinani (1983, 2006); A. L. Udovitch (1993).
. H. R. Idris (1961), 230.
. A. Nef (2001).
. V. Lagardère (1989b), 127 and following.
. On Ibn Rushd, see P. Guichard and V. Lagardère (1990). On Qadi Iyad, see H. Ferhat (1993b), 146–161.
. Al-Badisi (1926, 1982); M. Cherif (2000).
. H. Ferhat (1993a).
. Al-Tadili (1984, 1994); Al-Tamimi (2002); H. Ferhat (1998); H. Ferhat (1993b), 399–417; M. Cherif (2000). On al-Tadili, see P. Guichard and V. Lagardère (1990).
. M. Cherif (2005), 7.
. D. Valérian (2006a).
# 8. THE MEDITERRANEAN OF THE TWO EMPIRES
. C. Picard (2010b).
. A.-L. de Prémare (2002), 151–172.
. T. Bianquis, P. Guichard, and M. Tillier (2012); F. Micheau (2012), 72–73.
. F. Donner (1998).
. Al-Tabari (1879–1901), 4:64, English trans. (1985–1999), 13:10; F. Donner (1998), 153–155; A. Borrut (1999–2000), 29.
. Al-Baladhuri (1863–1866), 117; English trans. (1968), 180.
. H. Ahrweiler (1966); C. Morrisson, in J.-C. Cheynet (2004).
. Ibn 'Abd Al-Hakam (1922), 36–38; French trans. (1948), 37–39.
. Al-Tabari (1879–1901), 2821–2822, English trans. (1985–1999), 15:26–27; R. S. Humphreys (2006), 53–54.
. F. Donner (1998), 153–155.
. On the difficulties of sailing on the Aegean Sea, see G. de Saint-Guillain (2005). For a more general discussion of the technical aspects of sailing on the Mediterranean, see J. H. Pryor (1988, 2006).
. H. Ahrweiler (1966), 31–35.
. Al-Tabari (1879–1901), 1:2822; English trans. (1985–1999), 15:26–27.
. Al-Baladhuri (1863–1866), 117; English trans. (1985–1999), 180.
. Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam (1922), 279; Ibn Yunus (2000), 1:503; S. Bouderbala (2008), 278–282.
. F. Donner (1998).
. P. Sijpesteijn (2007).
. J.-C. Cheynet (2004), 3–8.
. V. Prigent (2007).
. J. Durliat (1990).
. Al-Tabari (1879–1901), 2:2867–2871, 2927, English trans. (1985–1999) 15:74–77, 131–132; Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam (1922), 189–191; A. Fahmy (1966), 82 and following. For the Christian versions, particularly Agapius and Theophanes, see A. N. Stratos (1980).
. F. Trombley (2004).
. A. Fahmy (1966), 35–38.
. S. Bouderbala (2008), 287–291, 328.
. A. Fahmy (1966).
. H. Ahrweiler (1966).
. J.-C. Cheynet (2006), 3–8; A. Kaplony (2002); M. Bonner (2004).
. A. Fahmy (1966), 35; S. Bouderbala (2008), 283, 290.
. Al-Baladhuri (1863–1866), 153; English trans. (1968), 236. The same account is given by al-Tabari (1879–1901), 1:2826–2827; English trans. (1985–1999), 15:30–31.
. L. I. Conrad (1992); H. Bresc (2004).
. G. R. Hawting (2000), 40–45.
. M. Canard (1926); R. Guilland (1955); L. I. Conrad (1992); A. M. Fahmy (1966), 91–110; A. Kaplony (2002). On Maslama, see A. Borrut (2011), 201–247.
. J. H. Mordtmann, "Kustantiniya," in _Encyclopédie de l'Islam,_ 3rd ed., 5:532b.
. Al-Tabari (1879–1901), 2:86; Al-Ya'qubi (1960), 2:271, 285.
. Al-Tabari (1879–1901), 2:86; Al-Ya'qubi (1960), 2:285; Ibn al-Athir (1965–1967), 3:383, 392.
. Theophanes (1883), 353–354.
. Al-Baladhuri, English trans. (1985–1999), 236; Al-Tabari (1879–1901), 2:163; Ibn al-Athir (1965–1967), 3:413.
. See "Maslama Ibn 'Abd al-Malik," in _Encyclopédie de l'Islam,_ 2nd ed. (CD-ROM ed.), 6:740.
. V. Prigent (2007).
. P. Chalmeta (2003).
. P. Sénac (2006); P. Guichard (1995b).
. Khalifa b. Khayyat al-Usfuri (1967).
. Al-Bakri (1965), 38–39; French trans. (revised by author), ibid., 84.
. See the discussion earlier in this chapter: Musa b. Nusayr did not attempt to seize control of the coastal cities of Mauretania Caesariensis, nor those of Mauretania Tingitana, with the exception of those in the area of the Strait of Gibraltar.
. P. Chalmeta (2003), 80–86.
. Ibn al-Qutiya (1926), 135.
. Ibid.
. Khalifa b. Khayyat al-Usfuri (1967), 1:303; French trans. P. Fois (2012), 179–180.
. P. Fois (2012).
# 9. CONTROLLING THE MEDITERRANEAN
. H. Kennedy (1981); P. Crone (1980); A. Northedge (2005); E. de La Vaissière (2007); M. Gordon (2001).
. H. Ahrweiler (1971).
. J.-C. Cheynet (2004), 13–22.
. C. E. Bosworth, "Taraz," in _Encyclopédie de l'Islam,_ 3rd ed., 10:222–223.
. P. Sénac (2006).
. A. Borrut (2011), 354–450.
. P. Cobb (2001); H. Kennedy (1981).
. V. Christides (1984a).
. H. Ahrweiler (1966).
. V. Prigent (2007).
. Ibn al-Athir (1965–1967), 5:575, French trans. (1901), 106; C. Picard (2000), 30–32.
. C. Picard (2000), 30–32.
. É. Lévi-Provençal (1959–1967), 1:263–276.
. Severus, _History of the Patriarchs;_ C. Picard (2011d).
. B. Kubiak (1970).
. M. McCormick (2001, 2004); N. Drocourt (2004).
. A. Vassiliev (1935), 2:1.
. M. Compagnolo-Pothitou (1995).
. M. Canard (1964); N. Drocourt (2004).
. P. Sénac (2006), 43–66, bibliography (item 2), 44.
. G. Levi della Vida (1954).
. H. Ahrweiler (1966), 31–40.
. Ibn Khurradadhbih (1889), 77–78; French trans. (1949), 56–57.
. Qudama b. Ja'far (1967), 255; French trans., ibid., 195–196.
. J.-C. Cheynet (2006), 13–16.
. Ibn Duqmaq (1893–1896), 80–81; Al-Kindi (1912), 202. On the recruiting of oarsmen, see G. Levi della Vida (1944–1945), and A. Fahmy (1966).
. V. Christides (1984a), 39–40.
. Al-Muqaddasi (1906), 162–163; French trans. (1963), 181–182.
. Al-Baladhuri (1863–1866), 236; English trans. (1968), 376.
. V. Christides (1984a), 85.
. Al-Tabari (1879–1901), 9:276; Al-Baladhuri (1863–1866), 236, English trans. (1968), 376.
. B. Kubiak (1970).
. Al-Baladhuri (1863–1866), 163; English trans. M. Bonner (1996), 105. [ _Translator's Note:_ The quote is taken from the English source.]
. M. Bonner (1996), 153–154.
. D. Sourdel (1999), 167 and following.
. S. Bouderbala (2008).
. C. Picard (2004).
. P. Guichard (1983).
. V. Christides (1984a); É. Lévi-Provençal (1959–1967), 1:150–191; P. Guichard (1999a), 53–55.
. G. Tate, in C. Morrisson and J.-C. Cheynet (2005–2006), 395–401.
. Al-Baladhuri (1863–1866), 116–118, English trans. (1968), 178–181; M. Sharon (1997).
. M. Hassen (2001).
. C. Picard (1997a, 1997b); P. Cressier (2004).
. R. Azuar Ruiz (2004); M. Hassen (2001); F. Mahfoudh (2003).
. M. Hassen (2001).
. P. Toubert (1973).
. Al-Kindi (1912), 418–419; French trans. and analysis, S. Bouderbala (2008), 292. This subsection draws on A. Morabia (1993) and A. Borrut (2004).
. R. G. Khoury (1986), 250.
. H. S. Khalilieh (1999); A. Borrut (2004), 123–144; S. Bouderbala (2008), 292–293.
. S. Garnier (2012).
. N. Amri (2011).
. J. Lirola Delgado (1993), 114. On the emirate of al-Hakam I, see Chapter 6.
. P. Toubert (1973); J.-M. Poisson (1992), 9–17.
. J.-C. Cheynet (2005–2006); J. F. Haldon (1999).
. P. Bonnassie (1975–1976).
. H. Lammens (1926).
. P. Crone (1980).
. Ibn Shaddad (1980–1981, 1984); P. Von Sievers (1982).
. A. Borrut (1999–2000).
. Al-Muqaddasi (1906), 164, 177; French trans. (1963), 184, 209–210.
# 10. THE MARITIME AWAKENING OF THE MUSLIM WEST
. Al-Bakri (1982), 102; French trans. F. Mahfoudh (2003), 227–228.
. M. Talbi (1966), 419n2. The figures are rough but give an idea of the size of the troops.
. J.-C. Cheynet (2006), 482–483.
. Johannes Hymonides, quoted by M. Talbi (1966), 525.
. P. Chalmeta (2003), 112–119.
. Ibid., 123–126; C. Picard (1997b), 64–66.
. _Akhbar Majmu_ ' _a,_ ed. 2–3; Spanish trans. (1897), 10–12.
. Ibn 'Idhari (1948–1951), 2:6; French trans. (1901–1904), 2:9.
. H. Ferhat (1993b), 42–55.
. Al-Bakri (1965), 91–92; French trans., ibid., 183–185.
. C. Picard (1997b), 246.
. Al-'Udhri (1965), 11; Spanish trans. (1975–1976), 76.
. Ibn 'Idhari (1948–1951), 2:31; French trans. (1901–1904), 2:45.
. Ibn al-Qutiya (1868), 1; Spanish trans. (1926), 2.
. M. McCormick (2001).
. Ibn Hayyan (1999), 89v; Spanish trans. (2001), 19.
. Ibn Hayyan, Spanish trans. (2001), 21–22.
. _Monumenta Germaniae Historica,_ 1:193–194.
. Ibid., 1:197. The Carolingian sources are in P. Guichard (1983), but they are used to reach different conclusions.
. A. R. Lewis (1951) already sensed this development; D. Abulafia (1985).
. Al-Bakri (1965), 90–99; French trans., ibid., 180–196.
. Ibid., 111–112; French trans., ibid., 221–222.
. S. Gutiérrez Lloret (1996).
. J. Bosch Vilá (1984).
. C. Picard (1997b), 71–76.
. Ibn 'Idhari (1948–1951), 2:87–88; French trans. (1901–1904), 2:141–144.
. Ibn al-Qutiya (1868), 62; Spanish trans. (1926), 49. The _Majus_ or "magus" refers to those populations that practice religions not of the "Book."
. Ibn 'Idhari (1948–1951), 2:96–97; French trans. (1901–1904), 2:157–158.
. P. Sénac (2000a).
. R. Azuar Ruiz (2004); A. Bazzana (2011).
. Ibn 'Idhari (1948–1951), 2:103–104; French trans. (1901–1904), 2:170.
. Al-Himyari (1970), 33; Spanish trans. (2005), 388.
. J.-P. Poly (1976), 4–13.
. Ibn Hayyan (1973, 1979, 1981); M. Acién Almensa (1997); M. Fierro (1995, 2005).
. H. Catarino (1997–1998).
. Quoted by Ibn 'Idhari (1948–1951), 2:137, French trans. (1901–1904), 2:228; Ibn Hayyan (1937, 1950–1959, 1973, 1979, 1981).
. C. Picard (2000), 48–50, 183.
. J. L. Delgado (1993), 154–158.
. J. Bosch Vilá (1984).
. J. L. Delgado (1993), 139–140.
. G. Martinez-Gros (1992).
# 11. THE MARITIME IMPERIALISM OF THE CALIPHS IN THE TENTH CENTURY
. G. Berti (2000).
. P. Sénac (2001); E. Manzano Moreno (1991); C. Picard (1997a).
. D. Bramoullé (2011).
. F. Dachraoui (1981); D. Bramoullé (2011), 89–157; Y. Lev (1991).
. C. Picard (2010a); G. Martinez-Gros (1992).
. Ibn Hayyan (1979), 328–329; Spanish trans. (1981), 248.
. É. Lévi-Provençal (1959–1967).
. P. Sénac (2001), 121–122.
. Ibid., 126. We are lacking the principal source, Ibn Hayyan's _Muqtabis,_ which breaks off for the years 942–971.
. P. Sénac (2001).
. P. Bonnassie (1975–1976).
. P. Sénac (2000a).
. On Santiago, see C. Picard (1990, 1997a, 1998, 2010a).
. D. Bramoullé (2011).
. F. Dachraoui (1981), 165–187; H. Halm (1996), 298–309.
. H. R. Idris (1962).
. S. D. Goitein (1962).
. See H. E. J. Cowdrey (1977).
. D. Bramoullé (2011).
. M. Barrucand (1999).
. M. Lombard (1947).
. P. Horden and N. Purcell (2000).
. P. Toubert (1973); L. Feller (1998).
. G. Berti and L. Tongiorgi (1981); S. D. Goitein (1967).
. G. Berti (2000).
. G. Berti and L. Tongiorgi (1981).
. É. Vallet (2012).
. D. Bramoullé (2011); A. Nef (2007); É. Vallet (2010, 2012).
. C. Cahen (1977a, 1983, 1986); M. Balard (1999); A. L. Udovitch (1999).
. _Jawdhar._
. C. Cahen (1977a).
. A. Fuess (2001).
. C. Delery (2006).
. A. Rougeulle (1990); C. Delery (2006).
. P. Cressier (1998).
. Ibn Hayyan (1979), 454.
. P. Bonnassie (1975–1976); P. Sénac (2000a).
. P. Sénac (2001).
. P. Bonnassie (1975–1976).
# 12. ISLAM'S MARITIME SOVEREIGNTY IN THE FACE OF LATIN EXPANSION
. Al-Zuhri (1968), 229; Spanish trans. (1991), 92–93.
. Ibn Abi Zar (1964), 201; Spanish trans. (1973), 400. The chronicler's information is not always reliable.
. A. Amara (2003).
. É. Lévi-Provençal (1941).
. C. Picard (2010b).
. J. Arbach (1995).
. A. Huici Miranda (1956–1957a); P. Buresi (2004).
. C. Picard (2000).
. C. Picard (1997b).
. A. Bel (1903); P. Guichard (1990–1991); D. Abulafia (1994, 1996); A. Campaner y Fuertes (1984).
. C. Picard (1992).
. Ibn 'Abdun (1947, 1955).
. P. Buresi (2004).
. D. Valérian (2006a).
. O. R. Constable (2003).
. M. Cherif (1996).
. C.-E. Dufourcq (1965).
. Abu Shama (1898), 177–181.
. Al-Nu'man (1951–1961), 308, English trans. (2002–2004), 451; D. Bramoullé (2011), 438.
. C. Cahen (1983).
. M. Balard (1999); A. L. Udovitch (1999).
. O. R. Constable (2003).
. D. Bramoullé (2011).
. M. Ouerfelli (2008).
. É. Vallet (2007, 2010, 2012).
# CONCLUSION
Epigraph: Quoted by P. Guichard (1990–1991), from Ibn al-Abbar, 114.
. R. Lopez (1974).
. F. Braudel (1995); J. Le Goff (1986).
. H. Bresc (1986).
. Y. Dejugnat (2010).
. A.-M. Eddé (2008), 240–241; L. Pouzet (1975).
. F.-X. Fauvelle-Aymar and B. Hirsch (2003); A. Miquel (1977).
. D. Bramoullé (2011); É. Vallet (2010).
# GLOSSARY
_abna':_ Members of the family of the Abbasid caliph.
_adab:_ "Good manners" taught during the first centuries of Islam, based on Iranian treatises translated into Arabic and welcomed by educated circles of Baghdad, before being circulated throughout the Muslim world. The _adab_ also refers to a literary current found in Baghdad as of the ninth century and comparable to the encyclopedic spirit of the French seventeenth century.
_'aja'ib:_ (Book of) Wonders.
_akhbar:_ "Reports" or "stories"; plural of _khabar,_ which refers to news in a more general sense. The first _akhbar_ recounted the life of Muhammad. They later covered the lives of the Shiite imams, before providing the first historical works of Islam.
_'asabiyya:_ Solidarity based on kinship and especially tribal solidarity, which according to Ibn Khaldun was the essential virtue of the tribes and gave them the advantage over "sedentary" peoples.
_atraf_ (sing. _tarf_ ): Capes (headlands or promontories). In administrative books, these were autonomously administered strategic sites on Muslim coastlines.
_Al-'Awasim:_ Fortified cities on the Syrian border, the seats of the frontier governors and bases for troops ( _jund_) away from the front lines.
_barid:_ Mail, postal service, and, by extension, strategic routes of the empire.
_Bayt al-Hikma:_ "House of Wisdom," name given to the "academy" where Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun brought scholarly works and scholars.
_dar al-sina'a:_ Dockyard.
_dhimma:_ "Pact of protection" that defined _dhimmi_ status.
_dhimmi:_ "Tributaries" or "protected persons" featured in the Koran as "people of the Book" ( _ahl al-Kitab_ ): Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians who were granted freedom of worship, on condition of paying a special tax, the _jizya,_ entailing an inferior status.
_diwan:_ Administrative services; originally financial registers.
_fay'_ ( _ghanima_ ): Booty from a conquest or razzia, specifically defined by the jurists of the Muslim authorities based on information in the Koran and the hadiths.
_fitna:_ Unrest or revolts within the Dar al-Islam; illegal war as opposed to jihad (legal war).
_fuqaha'_ (pl. of _faqih_ ): Jurist(s), specialists in religious jurisprudence ( _fiqh_ ). The qadis (judges) played an essential role as supervisors; those who reached the highest positions enjoyed great renown.
_futuh_ (pl. of _fath_ ): Victory, term used to refer to Islam's conquests.
_ghanima:_ See _fay'._
_ghazwa:_ Razzia and, by extension, conquest.
_habus_ ( _waqf_ ): Mortmain property, inalienable.
_Hadith:_ Words or narrative attributed to Muhammad, passed down by the Companions of the Prophet. They were collected in the canonical texts.
_hajib:_ The equivalent of the chamberlain, a dignitary in the caliph's immediate circle, particularly in the entourage of the Umayyad caliph of Córdoba.
_halqa:_ Auction.
_hisn_ (pl. _husun_ ): Fortified area, ranging in size from that of a fortress to that of a small city.
_huffaz:_ Eminent members of the Berber tribes, recruited to become "officers" of the caliphate.
_'idwatayn:_ "The two shores," name given to the Strait of Gibraltar.
_iqlim:_ "Climate," term derived from the Greek (Ptolemy's seven climates) and used to refer to the different provinces of the Islamic world, beginning in the tenth century.
_isnad:_ The chain of authorities attesting to the authenticity of the Prophet's sayings, and their transmission by those who had heard him speak.
_jund:_ Army of Arab conquerors, later the army in general.
_jundi_ (pl. of _junud_ ): An individual soldier.
_khums_ ( _quint_ ): Tax levied on the Latins.
_khutba:_ The sermon given in Friday prayer.
_kitab al-siyar:_ Texts on legal war (jihad).
_kura:_ Administrative district.
_madhhab:_ Islamic legal school.
_madina_ (pl. _mudun_ ): City, capital.
_maghazi:_ War expeditions (see _sira_ ).
_maharis:_ Watchtowers.
_Majus:_ Vikings.
_maks:_ Illegal excise tax.
_Mamlaka:_ The Islamic empire.
_masalik wa l-mamalik:_ (Book of) routes and kingdoms.
_mawsim_ ( _moussem_ ): A large annual gathering to celebrate a city or region's saint.
_Mihna:_ Inquisition.
_misr:_ (Military) camp and, by extension, Misr: Egypt.
_Mudawanna:_ Title of Sahnun's work on the law.
_qaid:_ General.
_qaid al-bahr:_ Admiral.
_qarya_ (pl. _qura_ ): Village.
_qasaba:_ Citadel (generally urban).
_qasr_ (pl. _qusur_ ): Fort.
_qaysariyya:_ Sultanate edifice devoted to trade in precious goods (derived from "Caesarian").
_ra'is:_ Chief.
_rihla:_ Journey; travel narrative.
_risala:_ Message, dispatch, or report.
_rusiyya:_ "Like a taut rope," a maritime leg in a straight line.
_sahib al-bahr:_ Admiral.
_sahil_ (pl. _sawahil_ ): Shore; maritime district or border.
_Saqaliba:_ Slaves (generally military).
_sayfa:_ Summer expedition.
_sayyids:_ The highest members of the Almohad administration.
_shahid:_ Martyr.
_sina'a:_ See _dar al-sina'a._
_sira:_ Behavior, conduct; particularly used in reference to Muhammad.
_siyar:_ Legal text on jihad.
_sufun:_ Ships.
_sulak al-sufun:_ Ship itineraries.
_tabaqat:_ "Classes" and, by extension, biographical dictionaries, primarily comprising the lives of ulema (scholars), organized in alphabetical or chronological order.
_Taktika_ : Byzantine military treatise; plural of _taktikon,_ a list of precedence at the Byzantine court.
_talaba_ ( _tullab_ ): The elite of the government entourage.
_taqwiran:_ "In a curve," a maritime leg following the coast.
_ta'rikh:_ History.
_tariq:_ Path, itinerary, by land ( _al-barr_ ) or by sea ( _al-bahr_ ).
_thaghr_ (pl. _thughur_ ): Frontier, with the same meaning as in English: the frontiers of a state.
_wali:_ Governor.
Terms are primarily based on J. Sourdel and D. Sourdel, _Dictionnaire historique de l'Islam_ (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1996).
# CHRONOLOGIES
References to Muslim naval expeditions in the western Mediterranean in the period of the Arab conquest (Greek, Latin, and Arabic sources):
**664** | |
raid against Sicily from Barca with ships from Egypt
---|---|---
**703** | |
raid against Sardinia from Egypt
**704–705** | |
raid against Sicily from Ifriqiya; raid against Sardinia and the Balearic Islands
**705–706** | |
raid against Syracuse from Ifriqiya
**706** | |
raid against Sardinia (point of departure not mentioned)
**707–708** | |
raid against Sardinia
**710–711** | |
raid against Sardinia from Ifriqiya
**720** | |
raid against Sicily from Ifriqiya
**728–729** | |
raid against Sicily from Ifriqiya
**729–730** | |
raid against Sicily from Ifriqiya
**730–731** | |
raid against Sicily from Ifriqiya
**732–733** | |
raid against Sicily and Sardinia
**733–734** | |
raid against Sicily from Ifriqiya
**734–735** | |
raid against Sicily from Ifriqiya
**735** | |
raid against Sardinia
**737** | |
raid against Sardinia
**739** | |
siege of Syracuse from Ifriqiya
**752–753** | |
raid against Sicily and Sardinia from Ifriqiya
Raids mentioned leaving from al-Andalus during the period of "Saracen piracy" (Latin and Muslim sources):
**798** | |
raid against the Balearic Islands
---|---|---
**799** | |
raid against the Balearic Islands
**800–805** | |
mentions of Muslim pirates near the coasts of Provence and Italy
**806** | |
raid against Pantelleria and Corsica
**807–808** | |
raid against Sardinia and Corsica
**809** | |
raid against Corsica
**810** | |
raid against Sardinia and Corsica
**812** | |
raid against Sardinia and Corsica
**813** | |
raid against Corsica, Sardinia, the bay of Naples, Ponza, Lampedusa, Civitavecchia, and the region of Reggio; the Count of Ampurias captures eight Muslim ships near Mallorca (treaty between al-Hakam I and Charlemagne)
**816–817** | |
raid against Sardinia
**830** | |
three hundred ships from Tortosa sent as reinforcements to Sicily
**834** | |
raid against southern Italy
**839** | |
raid against southern Italy
**850** | |
the sack of the abbey of Saint-Césaire
**869** | |
the sack of Arles
**c. 890–892** | |
Andalusians in La Garde-Freinet (Fraxinetum)
**933–934** | |
raid against Sardinia
**934–935** | |
raid against Sardinia
**972** | |
abduction of Majolus, abbot of Cluny; end of Fraxinetum
**1014** | |
raid against Sardinia
**1015** | |
raid against Sardinia
**1054** | |
raid against Sardinia
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# INDEX
* Abbadids,
* Al-'Abbas b. al-Fadl,
* Abbasid revolution, , ,
* Abbasids, , , , , ; chronicles of, 40–52; criticism of, ; defense of coasts, ; diplomacy of, 211–216; intervention in fleets, ; jihad and, , , 204–205; legitimacy of, 42–46, , ; loss of control of al-Andalus, ; loss of control of Maghreb, ; marginalization of Egyptian seaboard, 217–218; maritime activity of, , 70–71; maritime policy of, 71–72, ; military strategy against Byzantines, ; plans to complete conquest of islands, ; praise for Umayyads, ; promotion of universalism, 41–42; razzias and, 220–221; relations with Byzantium, ; relations with Carolingians, 214–216; representations of superiority of, ; al-Saffah, ; sovereigns' involvement in war, ; and translation movement, ; use of naval resources,
* 'Abd al-'Aziz b. Marwan, , ,
* 'Abd al-Hakam ibn A'yan ibn al-Layth al-Ayli,
* 'Abd Allah, ulema, 55–56
* 'Abd Allah, caliph of Córdoba,
* 'Abd Allah al-Balansi,
* 'Abd Allah b. 'Ali,
* 'Abd Allah b. Ishaq al-Jami',
* 'Abd Allah b. Musa b. Nusayr,
* 'Abd Allah b. Qays al-Jasi, , 287–288
* 'Abd Allah b. Tahir,
* 'Abd Allah b. Wazir, ,
* 'Abd al-Malik, , , , , ,
* 'Abd al-Malik b. Salih, 82–83
* 'Abd al-Mu'min, , , , 168–169, , 171–174, , ,
* 'Abd al-Qays,
* 'Abd al-Rahman I, , ,
* 'Abd al-Rahman II, , , , , , , 122–123, , , , , ,
* 'Abd al-Rahman III, , , , , , , , , 258–260; change in policy toward Latins, 271–272; control of maritime affairs, ; recovery under,
* 'Abd al-Rahman b. 'Abd al-Hakam,
* 'Abd al-Rahman b. al-Rumahis,
* 'Abd al-Rahman b. Habib,
* 'Abd al-Rahman b. Hurmuz al-A'raj,
* 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Mu'awiya,
* 'Abd al-Salam al-Kumi,
* 'Abd al-Wahid al-Marrakushi,
* Abdullah b. Muhammad al-Umawi,
* Abu 'Abd Allah,
* Abu 'Abd Allah b. 'Abd al-Mu'min,
* Abu Ayyub al-Ansari,
* Abu Hafs,
* Abu Ibrahim Ahmad I,
* Abu Imran b. Musa b. Abi l-Hajjaj,
* Abu Ishaq al-Fazari,
* Abu Ja'far al-Gammudi,
* Abu Ja'far Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari,
* Abu l-'Abbas al-'Udhri,
* Abu l-'Abbas al-Yanashti, ,
* Abu l-Ahwas,
* Abu l-A'war al-Sulami,
* Abu l-Fida',
* Abu l-Qasim al-'Azafi,
* Abu l-Walid b. Rushd,
* Abu Muhammad 'Abd Allah b. Sulayman,
* Abu Muslim,
* Abu Sahl b. Nawbakht,
* Abu Sa'id al-Khudri,
* Abu Sa'id 'Uthman,
* Abu 'Ubayda b. al-Jarrah,
* Abu Ya'qub Yusuf, , ,
* Abu Yusuf Ya'qub,
* Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur, ,
* _Account of India and China, The_ ,
* Acre: repairs to port,
* _Adab_ , 25–26, , , ,
* Administrative production, 269–270
* Admirals, , , , ; Damian, , , , , , ; Leo of Tripoli, , , , , , , , ,
* Aegean Sea: Byzantine control of, ; Muslim advantage in,
* Al-'Afazi,
* Afonso Henriques,
* Africa: conquest of, , ; support for Byzantine empire, . _See also_ Ifriqiya; Maghreb
* Aghlabids, , , , , ; Fatimids' debt to, ; jihad and, 239–242; legitimacy of, ; military policy, . _See also_ Fleet, Aghlabid
* Agriculture,
* Ahmad (Aghlabid emir), , ,
* Ahmad al-Razi, , 116–117, , , ,
* Ahmad al-Siqilli, 278–279,
* Ahmad b. Hasan b. al-Kalbi,
* Ahmad ibn Abu Muhriz,
* _Akhbar_ ,
* _Akhbar al-Zaman_ ( _The history of time_ ; al-Mas'udi),
* Alcácer do Sal,
* Alexandria, ; Andalusian sailors in, ; attack on, ; decline of defenses, ; support for soldiers in, ; volunteers in, . _See also_ Egypt
* Alfonso VIII, king of Castille,
* Algeciras,
* Ali b. al-Mujahid Iqbal al-Dawla, ,
* 'Ali b. Maymun,
* 'Ali b. Yusuf,
* _Almagest_ (Ptolemy),
* Almería, 122–124, , , , , ,
* Almohads, , , , , ; campaign in al-Andalus, ; concern with maritime space, 174–176, ; decline of, 181–182, , 282–283; dockyards of, ; expansion of, ; maritime policy, 171–174; maritime supremacy of, 278–280; mysticism and, ; and representation of Mediterranean, ; strategy toward Latin world, 274–275; universalist ambition, . _See also_ Fleet, Almohad
* Almoravids, , 157–158; fleet, ; jihad and, 160–161
* Al-Rabita,
* Al-Amin, ,
* Amirids,
* 'Amr b. 'Abassa,
* 'Amr b. al-'As, , , , , , , ,
* Al-Andalus, 28–29, ; Abbasids' loss of control of, ; Almohad campaign in, ; attacks on Christians from, 245–246; beginning of conquest of, ; ceramics from, 270–271; chronicles of, 116–117; coastal defenses, 109–110, ; coastal regions, neglect of, ; commerce in, 271–272; conquest of, , , ; dockyards in, 125–126; eastern coast of, ; economic development of, ; emirates, , , ; fatwas in, 179–180; _fitna_ in, ; geography in, ; histories of, 107–108; Ibn Hawqal on, ; in al-Idrisi's work, ; jihad in, 107–110; maritime activity in, 242–244; naval commitment of, ; naval potential of, ; naval strength of, ; as peripheral frontier, ; political crisis in, ; ribat in, , , , , ; sailors from, , , , 220–221, 224–225, , ; Viking attacks on, 248–250; volunteers in,
* Anthony, Saint,
* Arabization, ,
* Archeology, , ,
* Archives, Muslim, lack of,
* Aristotle,
* Army, caliphal. _See_ Soldiers
* Arrábida,
* Arwad Island,
* ' _Asabiyya_ ,
* Asad b. al-Furat, qadi, ,
* Asceticism, , ; codification of, ; combined with watching sea,
* Ascetics, ,
* Ashkelon,
* Al-Awza'i,
* Ayyubids,
* Al-'Aziz, ,
* _Bacini_ ceramics, 267–268,
* Al-Badisi, ,
* Baghdad: and Arab model of geography, ; as center of ecumene, ; geography in, ; Ibn Hawqal's view of, ; in al-Idrisi's work, ; influence of, 210–211; literary circles of, ; al-Muqaddasi on, ; as objective,
* Al-Bakri, , , , ; attention to Berber region, ; _The Book of Roads and Kingdoms_ , ; description of Maghreb, , ; description of Mahdia, ; on dockyards, , ; reproduction of al-Warraq's work, ; on ribats, ; on rise of sea traffic, ; rutters, ; sources, 164–165, ; on western limits of Islam,
* Al-Baladhuri, , , , , , , , ,
* Balearics, 173–174, , , , 253–254
* Balkhi,
* Banu Hilal,
* Banu Kalbi,
* Banu l-Rumahis,
* Banu Maymun, , ,
* Banu Salih, , ,
* Banu Sumadih,
* Basil I,
* Basra,
* Battle of the Masts (Battle of Phoenix), 191–192,
* Battle of the Zab,
* Al-Baydhaq,
* Béjaïa, , ,
* Ben Ezra Synagogue, , ,
* Berber region: in al-Bakri's work,
* Berber Revolt, , , ,
* Berbers, 59–60, ; alliance with Arabs, ; and conquest of al-Andalus, ; descendants in al-Andalus, ; economic development and, ; maritime activity of, 161–163; and rise in sea traffic, 163–164; sailors,
* Bertha of Tuscany,
* Biographical collections,
* _Book of Curiosities, The_ , , ,
* _Book of Examples, The_ (Ibn Khaldun), ,
* _Book of Lessons_ ( _Kitab al-'Ibar_ ; Ibn Khaldun),
* _Book of Notification and Verification, The_ (al-Mas'udi),
* "Book of roads and kingdoms" ( _kitab al-masalik wa l-mamalik_ ),
* _Book of Roads and Kingdoms, The_ (al-Bakri),
* _Book of Roads and Kingdoms, The_ (al-Warraq),
* _Book of Roads and Kingdoms, The_ (Ibn Khurradadhbih), 88–89
* _Book of Roger, The_ ( _Kitab Rujar_ ; al-Idrisi), , 33–34, , 177–178
* _Book of Taxation, The_ (Abu Yusuf Ya'qub),
* Booty, 19–20, , , , ,
* Borders: trade on, . _See also_ Frontiers
* Boundaries: of Islam, , , , , ( _see also_ Frontiers); of Mediterranean,
* Braudel, Fernand, , , , ,
* Brown, Peter,
* Buddhist pilgrims,
* Burial,
* Business: links with jihad, . _See also_ Commerce; Trade
* Busr b. Abi Arta'a,
* Byzantine empire, ; Abassid relations with, , , ; Arab conflict with, ; crises in, , ; diplomatic relations with, ; domination of sea, ; Ibn Hawqal on, , ; maritime commerce with, ; military policy of, ; as objective of Arab conquest, ; razzias against, . _See also_ Constantinople; Greeks
* Caesarea,
* Cahen, Claude,
* Cairo, 132–133. _See also_ Egypt
* Caliphal unification,
* Caliphates, ; Ibn Hawqal's view of, ; and naval force, , ; and representation of Mediterranean, ; universality of, . _See also individual caliphates_
* Caliphs: authority on sea, ; concern with Mediterranean, ; control of fleets, ; control of history of Islam's beginnings, ; infallibility of, ; interest in frontier, 82–84; legitimacy of, ; war and, , 81–82. _See also individual caliphates_ ; _individual caliphs_
* Capitalism, , ,
* Carabisians,
* Carolingian empire, , 214–216, 245–246
* Cartography: Arab model of, ; of Islamic universalism,
* Ceramics, 267–268, 270–271
* Ceuta, , , , , , , 282–283
* Chain of command, 197–198
* Chandax / Heraklion,
* Charlemagne, ,
* Chios,
* Christians: attacks on Muslim frontiers, ; commerce with Muslims, ; Egypt's vulnerability to, ; first maritime attacks against, 245–246; military balance with Muslims, ; naval power, , ; solidarity of, ; taxes paid by, . _See also_ Latins
* Christian world: Fatimid caliphate's ties to, 146–151. _See also_ Latin world
* Chronicles, ; and caliphs' legitimacy, , ; influence of caliphal authority on, ; loss of, 39–40
* Chronicles, Abbasid, 40–52
* Chronicles, Umayyad,
* Chronography, Iraqi roots of,
* Cibyrrhaeots, ,
* Coastal defenses, , , , , 208–209, 225–227, , ; Andalusian, 109–110; Ifriqiyan, , , , ; jihad in, ; organized as extension of land marches,
* Coasts: reorganization of, , ; soldiers settled on, ; Syrian-Palestinian, 207–208, 216–217, , ; Umayyad neglect of,
* Commerce: in al-Andalus, 271–272; between Christians and Muslims, ; Fatimids' organization of, ; growth of, ; with Italy, 281–282; with Latins, , 284–285; organization of, 267–269. _See also_ Trade
* Commerce, maritime, 104–105; with Byzantium, ; expansion of, ; legal questions, ; and ribats,
* Commercial networks, , ,
* Communications,
* Conqueror-hero: as anti-hero, ; figure of, 59–63; Musa b. Nusayr, 61–62
* Conquest, , 185–190; in Abbasid chronicles, 46–52; accounts of, ; conditions of, ; Constantinople as objective of, 194–196; end of, ; history of, versions of, 40–41; and local historiography, ; maritime strategy in, ; Mediterranean in, 63–64; of Mediterranean West, , 196–200; razzias and, 200–201. _See also_ Expansion, Islamic
* Conscription,
* Constans II, , ,
* Constantine IV (Byzantine emperor),
* Constantine V (Byzantine emperor), ,
* Constantine VII (Byzantine emperor),
* Constantinople: as conquest objective, , , 194–196, ; siege of, , . _See also_ Byzantine empire
* Copts, desertion of,
* Córdoba, ; emirate of, ; history of,
* Corsica, 245–246
* Crete, , , , 224–225
* Crusaders, ,
* Ctesiphon,
* Cyprus, 189–190, 193–194,
* Damascus, ; mosque of, ; ports dependent on,
* Damian, , , , , ,
* _Dar al-harb_ ,
* Dar al-Islam, ; defense of, 206–209,
* _Dar al-kufr_ ,
* Debates, theological,
* Denia,
* _Dhimmi_ ,
* Al-Dimashqi,
* Al-Dinawari,
* Diplomacy: of Abbasids, ; intimidation as,
* _Diversion for the Man Longing to Travel to Far-Off Places_ (al-Idrisi),
* Dockyards: administration of, ; in al-Andalus, 125–126; in al-Ma'mura, , ; Almohads', ; authority and, ; as caliph's responsibility, ; descriptions of, 125–126; in Egypt, 131–132, , , ; Fatimid administration of, ; Hisham and, , ; in Pechina, , ; in Seville, , , ; in Sousse, ; taxes collected at, ; in Tunis, ,
* Dome of the Rock,
* Donations, pious,
* Dunas de Guardamar, ,
* Economic activity, in tenth century, 265–267
* Economic development / growth, ,
* Economic opportunities, , , 235–236
* Economic rupture,
* Economy: on frontier, 227–228, , 235–236; organization of, 230–231
* Ecumene: as animal, 89–90; Islam as center of, ; in al-Muqaddasi's work,
* Education: _adab_ , 25–26, ; _huffaz_ , 174–175; al-Idrisi's,
* Egypt, ; Cairo, 132–133; as center of writing, ; decline of ports, ; dockyards in, 131–132, , , ; fleet, , 217–218; Fustat, , ; Ibn Hawqal on, , ; Islam's legitimacy in, 53–54; as leading player in Mediterranean, ; marginalization of seaboard, ; role of, ; strategic importance of, ; vulnerability to Christian war fleets, . _See also_ Alexandria
* Emirates, Andalusian, , , . _See also_ Al-Andalus
* Expansion, Islamic: and comprehensive mobilization, 168–169; end of, 62–63; under Umayyads, . _See also_ Conquest
* Fadl b. Yahya,
* Fatimids, , , , , ; chronicles of, ; confrontation with Umayyads, ; considered illegitimate, ; construction of Mahdia, 137–139; control of maritime routes, ; debt to Aghlabids, ; desire to integrate Mediterranean into sphere of sovereignty, 139–142; dockyards and, ; expedition against Egypt, ; jihad and, , ; maritime commitment, 130–132; maritime organization, ; military campaigns, ; military objectives, , ; naval superiority, ; organization of commercial activity, ; preservation of documents, ; and representation of Mediterranean, 12–13; role in commercial networks, ; ties to sea, ; ties with Christian world, 146–151. _See also_ Fleet, Fatimid
* Fatwas, related to maritime space,
* Feudalism,
* Financial data, 227–228
* _Fitna_ , ,
* Fleet: caliph and, 140–142, ; control of, . _See also_ Maritime activity; Maritime policy; Maritime strategy; Naval activity; Naval force / power; _individual fleets_
* Fleet, Aghlabid, 238–241
* Fleet, Almohad, , 170–174, ; admirals of, ; command of, ; conflict with Portuguese, 278–279; construction of, ; objective of, ; size of, 167–168; supremacy of, 278–280
* Fleet, Almoravid,
* Fleet, Egyptian, , 217–218
* Fleet, Fatimid, 263–265; caliph's control of expeditions, ; and expansion of Ismailism, ; in Kharijite rebellion, 263–264; verses about, 142–145
* Fleet, Greek, 186–188, , , , ,
* Fleet, Ifriqiyan,
* Fleet, Umayyad, 126–129,
* Fortifications,
* Fredegar,
* Frontiers, 47–48; caliphs' interest in, 82–84; Christian attacks on, ; economy on, 227–228, , 235–236; evolution in notion of, ; Ibn Hawqal on, ; identification of Mediterranean with, ; investments in, ; reorganization of, , ; ribats and, ; soldiers on, , . _See also_ Borders
* _Funduks_ ,
* Fustat, , . _See also_ Egypt
* _Garden of Souls_ ,
* Gaza,
* Geographers: Abu l-'Abbas al-'Udhri, ; administrative language used by, ; Ibn Khurradadhbih, 88–89, , 210–211, , ; inventories of sources of revenue, ; al-Istakhri, , , , ; knowledge of Latin and Slavic countries, ; al-Warraq, , , , , ; al-Ya'qubi, , , , , , , , , , , , ; al-Zuhri, . _See also_ Al-Bakri; Ibn Hawqal; Ibn Khaldun; Al-Idrisi; Al-Mas'udi; Al-Muqaddasi
* Geography, ; in al-Andalus, ; distinction of land vs. sea routes, ; evolution of, 177–178; history and, ; man as principal subject in, ; science and, 86–87
* _Geography_ (Marinus of Tyre),
* Geography, administrative,
* Geography, Arab: in Baghdad, , ; division of world in, ; focus toward Mediterranean world, ; Islam as center of ecumene in, ; Mediterranean in, 18–23; production of, ; in service of Islam, , , ; sources for maritime descriptions, 87–88; traditional, ; traditions of, , 32–33; universality of caliphate and, ; as universal standard,
* Geography, travelers',
* George of Antioch, , ,
* Ghanim b. Mardanish,
* Ghazi-caliph,
* Ghazi emirs,
* Gifts,
* Goitein, Shlomo, , ,
* Gold,
* Governor of the sea, 216–217
* Greek fire,
* Greeks: Arab conflict with, 186–188, 191–193; as enemy of Carolingians, ; return to Alexandria, . _See also_ Byzantine empire; Fleet, Greek
* Greek texts, , ,
* Guichard, Pierre,
* _Habus_ ,
* Al-Hadi,
* Hadith,
* Al-Hafiz, ,
* Hafsids,
* Hagiographies, ,
* Al-Hakam I, , , , , , ,
* Al-Hakam II, , , ,
* Al-Hakam III,
* Hamdanids,
* Hammadids,
* Hammudids, ,
* Al-Hamra',
* Al-Harawi,
* Harthama b. Hayyan,
* Harun al-Rashid, , , 48–49, , , , ; diplomacy of, , ; involvement in war, ; and landing on Crete, ; reform by, ; reorganization of frontier zone, ; ribat and, ; use of naval resources,
* Harun b. Yahya,
* Hasan b. al-Nu'man,
* Hayreddin Barbarossa,
* Heraclius,
* Heraklion, ,
* Heroes: on sea, 58–59; 'Uqba b. Nafi', 60–61, . _See also_ Conqueror-hero
* Himieros,
* Hisham, , ; dockyards and, ,
* Hisham II,
* Historiography, local,
* History: geography and, ; as specialized field,
* _History_ (al-Tabari),
* History, Arab, 17–20
* History, Muslim, 37–38; caliphs' control of, ; and desire to unify versions of Islam's beginnings, ; narratives in, ( _see also_ Chronicles); by ninth century chroniclers, ; periods of, ; promotion of Abbasid legitimacy, 42–46; promotion of Abbasid universalism, 41–42; rewriting of, ; silence on non-Muslim populations in, 63–64; sources for, ; traditions in, . _See also_ Conquest; Islam, beginnings of
* History, of Mediterranean: accepted version of, 2–3; caliphal literature on, ; crises in, ; information on, ; Muslims ignored in, ; new approaches to, 5–6; regionalized, 5–8; sources, 6–13; versions of, 4–8
* _History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, The_ , 54–55, ,
* Horden, Peregrine, , , ,
* _Huffaz_ , 174–175
* Husayn (Shiite imam),
* 'Ibadis,
* Iberian Peninsula, development of,
* Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam, , , , , , , , , ,
* Ibn 'Abdun,
* Ibn Abi 'Amir al-Mansur, ,
* Ibn Abi Tayy',
* Ibn Abi Zar', ,
* Ibn al-'Adim,
* Ibn al-Athir, , , , ,
* Ibn al-Faqih, 26–27; on mosque of Damascus, ; representations of superiority of Islam,
* Ibn al-Labbana,
* Ibn al-Mubarak,
* Ibn al-Muqaffa,
* Ibn al-Nadim,
* Ibn al-Qasim,
* Ibn al-Qattan, ,
* Ibn al-Qutiyya, , ,
* Ibn al-Sayrafi,
* Ibn al-Tuwayr,
* Ibn 'Amira,
* Ibn Battuta,
* Ibn Duqmaq, ,
* Ibn Ghaniya,
* Ibn Habib, , , , ; on al-Andalus, ; on Musa,
* Ibn Hafsun, ,
* Ibn Hani', 142–145,
* Ibn Hawqal, , , 92–97, , , ; criticism of Andalusian army, ; on decline of ribat, ; on Egypt, , ; on itineraries, ; marginalization of western limits of Islam, ; on organization of markets, ; on soldiers on borders,
* Ibn Hayyan, , , , , ; on dockyards, ; on _fitna_ ,
* Ibn Hazm,
* Ibn 'Idhari, , , , , , , , ,
* Ibn Jubayr, , , 176–177,
* Ibn Khaldun, , , , , , 33–36, , , ; on 'Abd al-Mu'min's naval policy, ; on Arab decline, ; on Balearics, ; _The Book of Examples_ , , ; on Ceuta, ; on Mediterranean as lost to Muslims, ; _Muqqadima_ , ; silence on Muslim naval activity, ; on al-Siqilli,
* Ibn Khurradadhbih, 88–89, , 210–211, ,
* Ibn Lahi'a,
* Ibn Mammati,
* Ibn Qalaqis,
* Ibn Rushd,
* Ibn Sa'd,
* Ibn Sahib al-Salat, ,
* Ibn Shaddad,
* Ibn Simak,
* Ibn Tulun, , , ,
* Ibn Tumart,
* Ibn Yasin, ,
* Ibrahim b. al-Aghlab, ,
* Ibrahim b. Ya'qub,
* Ibrahim II, , , , 241–242
* Iconoclasm, ,
* Idris I, ,
* Al-Idrisi, , , 29–33, , , , 290–291; on al-Andalus, ; _The Book of Roger_ , ; distinction of land vs. sea routes, ; education of, ; on Sicily, ; on war,
* Idrisids, , ,
* Idris 'Imad al-Din,
* Ifriqiya, ; coastal defenses, , , , ; commercial activity in, ; in al-Idrisi's work, ; jihad in, ; maritime activities, 104–105; practice of ribat in, ; seizure of, ; separation from Eastern caliphate, ; unrest in, 240–241; 'Uqba as conqueror of, . _See also_ Aghlabids; Fleet, Aghlabid
* Igiliz,
* Ikhshidids,
* Imperialism, Latin,
* Impoverishment, on frontier,
* Indian Ocean, , , , , ,
* Interments, fictional,
* Intimidation, diplomacy of,
* Iraq, . _See also_ Baghdad
* 'Isa al-Razi, , ,
* 'Isam al-Jawlani,
* Islam: beginnings of, , , , , ; boundaries of, , , , ; center of, ; cultural identity, ; decline of, ; legitimization of, ; power in Mediterranean, 34–35; representations of superiority of, ; role of Mediterranean in, , 95–96; unification by,
* Islamic empire, hierarchy of space within,
* Islamic universalism: cartography of, ; knowledge and, , 69–70
* Islamization, , ; profits and,
* Islands, Mediterranean: Abbasid plans to conquer, ; attacks on, . _See also individual islands_
* Ismailism, ,
* Ismaili world, 133–135
* _Isnad_ , ,
* Al-Istakhri, , , ,
* Italy, 239–240; attacks on, ; commerce with, 281–282; socioeconomic mutations in, 266–267
* Itineraries of the ships ( _suluk al-sufun_ ), 161–163, , ,
* 'Iyad, qadi, ,
* Jabala b. Hammud al-Sadafi,
* Jabal Qilal,
* Jableh,
* Jawdhar, , ,
* Jawhar,
* Jerusalem,
* Jews: merchants, , , , , , , , , ; repopulation of Tripoli,
* Jihad, ; Abbasids and, , , 204–205; adapted to military priorities, ; Aghlabid fleet and, 239–241; in Aghlabid period, 103–104; Aghlabids and, 241–242; in al-Andalus, 107–110; Almohad fleet and, 173–174; in Almoravid era, 160–161; charitable, ; in coastal defense systems, ; end of, ; Fatimids and, , ; forms of, ; Ibn al-Mubarak on, ; in Ifriqiya, 105–107; image of, ; Ismaili caliphs and, ; legitimization of, ; links with business, ; al-Mawardi on, 77–78; Mediterranean as space for, ; mobilization for, ; al-Mujahid and, ; objective of, , ; priorities of, ; promotion of, ; propaganda for, ; redefinition of, , ; representation of, , ; sovereign's participation in, , ; terminology used to describe, ; Umayyads and, ; vocabulary for,
* Jihad, maritime, ; end of, ; initiators of, 247–248; success of,
* Johannes Hymonides,
* Journeys, accounts of, 176–177
* _Jund_ , ,
* Jurists: description of rules of war, ; Egyptian, ; maritime issues and, 179–180; Sahnun b. Sa'id, , 56–57, , ,
* Justinian II,
* Kairouan,
* Kalbids,
* Khalifa b. Khayyat, , ,
* Kharijite rebellion, , 263–264
* Khosrow I,
* Khumarawayh,
* _Khums_ ,
* _Khums rumi_ ,
* Al-Khwarizmi,
* Al-Kindi, ,
* _Kitab al-'Azizi_ (al-Muhallabi),
* _Kitab al-Istibsar_ ,
* _Kitab al-masalik wa l-mamalik_ ("book of roads and kingdoms"), . See also _Book of Roads and Kingdoms_
* Knowledge: Islamic universality and, , 69–70; rivalry over acquisition of, 67–70; as symbol of authority, ; travel and, 26–28; universality of, ; in Zoroastrianism,
* Latin imperialism,
* Latins: change in policy toward, 271–272; commercial relations with Muslims, , 284–285; power in Mediterranean, ; view of Muslim sailors, , . _See also_ Christians
* Latin world: al-Idrisi and, 30–31, ; Mediterranean in travel narratives of, ; Muslim strategy toward, 274–275. _See also_ Christian world
* _Latium_ (Toubert),
* Law, Islamic: centers for teaching, ; and commerce with Christians, 284–285; Mediterranean and, ; rules of maritime commerce adapted to, 104–105; and sea,
* Le Goff, Jacques,
* Leo Africanus,
* Leo III (basileus),
* Leo III (pope),
* Leo of Tripoli, , , , , , , , ,
* Leo VI (Macedonian emperor),
* Letters: embassy, ; of Jewish merchants, , , , , ,
* Lévi-Provençal, Évariste,
* _Life of the Ustadh Jawdhar_ ,
* Lisbon,
* Literature: _adab_ , 25–26, ; caliphal, ; _tasawwuf_ ,
* Logic, Aristotelian,
* Lombard, Maurice, ,
* Louis II,
* Louis the Pious,
* Al-Ma'afiri,
* _Madhhab_ ,
* _Madina_ ,
* Maghreb, 158–161; Abbasids' loss of control of, ; al-Bakri's description of, ; control of, ; as cradle of commercial dynamism, ; descriptions of, ; maritime activity in, 242–244; and maritime jihad, 247–248; maritime space in, 161–167; sailors from, ; Umayyad policy in,
* Maghreb al-Aqsa (Morocco),
* Al-Mahdi, ; involvement in war, ; reorganization of coastal districts, ; reorganization of frontier zone, ; use of naval resources, ,
* Mahdia, , 137–139,
* Al-Mahri,
* Al-Makhzumi, , ,
* _Maks_ ,
* Malatya (Melitene),
* Al-Maliki, , , ,
* Malikis, 99–100,
* Malikism, 56–57,
* Mallorca,
* Malta, ,
* Mamlaka, hierarchy of space within,
* Mamluks, ,
* Al-Ma'mun, , 68–69, , , , , ; achievement of, ; as founder of geographic science, ; involvement in military activity, , ; reorganization of frontier zone,
* Al-Ma'mura, , ,
* Al-Mansur, , , , , , , , , , ; campaigns against Christian lands, ; crews used by, ; Kharijite rebellion and, ; relations with Carolingians, 214–216; reorganization of coastal districts, ; and Taurus frontier, ; and translation movement,
* Maps, ,
* Al-Maqrizi, , , ; on George of Antioch, ; on Norman ceremonial,
* Al-Maqs: dockyards in, ,
* Mare Nostrum. _See_ Mediterranean Sea
* Marinids,
* Marinus of Tyre,
* Maritime activity: Abbasid, ; Aghlabid, ; in Arab sources, ; Berber, ; Ifriqiyan, 104–105; information on, ; Umayyad,
* Maritime commitment, Fatimids', 130–132
* Maritime policy: Abbasid, 71–72, ; 'Abd al-Mu'min's, 171–174; Almohad, 171–174; basis of, ; omission of in chronography, ; Umayyad, . _See also_ Naval policy
* Maritime routes, control of,
* Maritime space: Almohads' concern with, , ; in Maghreb, 161–167; in representation of caliphal universality, ; strategic importance of, ; Umayyad control of, 118–120
* Maritime strategy: in Arab conquest, ; need for, , ; Umayyad,
* Maritime territory: importance of,
* Maritime transport, in travel narratives,
* Markets, organization of,
* Marrakech, ,
* Martyrdom, and boundaries of Islam,
* Martyrs, ; 'Abd Allah b. Qays al-Jasi, , 287–288; redefinition of, ; on sea, ; 'Uqba b. Nafi' as,
* Marwanid era: centralization of military command in, ; conquest of Mediterranean West and, ; Muslim naval force in,
* Marwanids, , , , ,
* Marwan II,
* _Masalik wa l-mamalik_ , ,
* Maslama, , , , ,
* Maslama b. Mukhallad al-Ansari, ,
* Al-Mas'udi, 23–26, , , , ; references to Mediterranean, ; view of Mediterranean,
* Al-Mawardi, , 77–78
* Al-Mazari,
* _Meadows of Gold, The_ (al-Mas'udi), ,
* Medieval era, periods of,
* Medieval rupture, in Arab sources, 8–9
* Medina,
* Mediterranean Sea: in Arab history, 17–20; and caliphal legitimacy, ; as Christian, ; considered lost to Muslims, ; crisis in, ; descriptions of, ; history of ( _see_ History, Muslim; History, of Mediterranean); marginality of, ; misunderstanding of history of Muslims in, 1–2; Muslim control of, ; opening of to larger world, ; role in Islam, , 95–96; as space of war, , , , 288–289; strategic importance of, . _See also_ Maritime space
* Mediterranean Sea, Muslim: crises in, ; histories of, 4–8
* Mediterranean West, conquest of, 196–200
* Melitene (Malatya),
* Merchants, Jewish, , , ; in Ifriqiya, ; letters of, , , , , ,
* Merchants, Mediterranean as maritime space for,
* Merchants, Muslim,
* Messina,
* Michael II, ,
* Military balance, between Christians and Muslims,
* Military command, centralization of, 197–198
* Military policy, in chronicles,
* _Minhaj_ (al-Makhzumi),
* Miquel, André, ,
* Miracles,
* Mobilization, 168–169, ,
* Monastir, , , , 101–102
* Morocco (Maghreb al-Aqsa),
* Mosque of Damascus,
* Mu'awiya, , , , , , , ; in Abbasid chronicles, ; expedition against Cyprus, 193–194; fortifications of, ; as governor of Syria, ; maritime strategy of, , ; Muslim naval force and, , ; and need for naval force,
* _Mudawana_ (Sahnun),
* Al-Muhallabi,
* Muhammad (prophet), attributes of,
* Muhammad (Umayyad emir), 249–250,
* Muhammad I (Aghlabid emir),
* Muhammad al-Jazar,
* Muhammad al-Tamimi,
* Muhammad b. al-Rumahis,
* Muhammad b. Maymun,
* Muhammad b. Tughj al-Ikhshid,
* Al-Mu'izz, , , , , , , ,
* Al-Mujahid, 155–156
* Mujahid al-'Amiri, ,
* Al-Muktafi, , , ,
* Mu'min b. Yumar al-Hawwari,
* Al-Muqaddasi, 6–7, , , , , 90–92, ; on Egypt, ; on Palestinian ribats,
* _Muqqadima_ (Ibn Khaldun),
* Al-Muqtadir, ,
* _Murabitun_ , , , , , . _See also_ Volunteers
* Musa b. Nusayr, 61–62, , , 201–202, ,
* Muslims: commerce with Christians, ; commercial relations with Latins, ; military balance with Christians, . _See also_ Islam
* Muslim world, al-Muqaddasi on,
* Al-Mustadi,
* Al-Mustansir,
* Al-Mustazhir,
* Al-Mu'tadid, ,
* Al-Mu'tamid,
* Al-Mutanabbi,
* Al-Mu'tasim, , ; involvement in war, ; reorganization of frontier zone,
* Al-Mutawakkil, , , ,
* Mysticism, 180–181
* Al-Nasir, , ,
* Nasir al-Dawla,
* Nasir Khusraw, 133–135,
* Nasrid era,
* Nautical documentation, 165–166
* Naval activity, Muslim: data on, ; periods of, 70–71. _See also individual fleets_
* Naval force / power, Christian, , . _See also_ Fleet, Greek
* Naval force / power, Muslim, 35–36; administration of, ( _see also_ Maritime strategy); Almohad, 167–168; Andalusian, , ; expedition against Cyprus, 193–194; expeditions in Mediterranean West, ; in Marwanid era, ; Mu'awiya and, ; supremacy of, , , 278–280. _See also individual fleets_
* Naval operations, Umayyad, 127–129
* Naval policy: Mu'awiya's, . _See also_ Maritime policy
* Las Navas de Tolosa, ,
* Navigation,
* Nekor, ,
* Nicholas Mystikos,
* Nikephoros II Phokas,
* Non-Muslim populations, in Muslim history, 63–64
* Normans, 146–147; ceremonial of, 148–150; in al-Idrisi's work,
* Al-Nu'man, qadi, , , , 284–285
* Al-Nuwayri,
* Oran,
* Palestine: coastal zone, 207–208, 216–217, , ; conquest in, 185–186
* Paykent,
* Pechina, , , , 124–125, 254–255
* Philhellenism,
* Photios,
* Pilgrimages, sea routes to,
* Pilgrimage sites, ,
* Pilgrims,
* Pilgrims, Buddhist,
* Pillage, . _See also_ Booty; Spoils of war
* Pippinids, ,
* Pippin III (the Short), ,
* Piracy, increase in,
* Pirates, ; in histories of Mediterranean, ; Muslim sailors regarded as, , , ; Muslim view of, 7–8
* Pirenne, Henri, ,
* Pisa, power of,
* Plague, ,
* Port defenses,
* Ports, ; al-Ma'mura, ; Almohad control of, ; dependent on Damascus, ; Egyptian, decline of, ; Fatimid administration of, ; in Sousse, ; Syrian, ,
* Portuguese, , 278–279
* Postal service, maritime,
* Profits: Islamization and,
* Propaganda, for jihad,
* Proselytism, Islamic,
* Ptolemy, ,
* Purcell, Nicholas, , , ,
* Al-Qa'im, , , ,
* Qais tribes,
* Al-Qalqashandi,
* al-Qasibi, qadi,
* Qasr Abu Dani,
* Qasr al-Kabir,
* Qasr ibn al-Ja'd,
* Qudama b. Ja'far, , ,
* Rabat, 168–169,
* Al-Randahi, ,
* Ransoms,
* Rashidun caliphate,
* Razzias, 200–201; against Byzantium, ; by independent sailors, 220–221
* Revenue, ,
* Reward, divine,
* Ribat, 79–81, 99–102, ; in al-Andalus, , , , , ; ascetic virtue of, ; decline of, ; development of, 110–111; in Ifriqiya, ; Monastir, ; in Pechina, ; practice of, 100–102; redefinition of, ; as resistance to Shiite power, ; and rise in maritime commerce, ; scholars and, ; in Sousse, 100–101; spread of, ; under supervision of authorities, ; and Viking invasions,
* _Rihla_ , , , 176–177, ,
* Roger II (king of Sicily), , , , , , ,
* Romanos II,
* Al-Rushati,
* Rustamids, , , , ,
* Rutters, , ,
* Al-Saffah, , , ,
* Sahil,
* Sahnun b. Sa'id, , 56–57, , ,
* Sa'id al-Andalusi,
* Sa'id al-Maghrib,
* Sa'id b. Idris,
* Sailing, long-distance,
* Sailors, 231–232; authority over, ; autonomy of, , , 222–223; conscription of, ; fame of, 287–288; knowledge of, 27–28; raids by, 221–222; razzias launched by, 220–221; recruitment of, ; respect for,
* Sailors, Andalusian, , , , 220–221, 224–225, ,
* Sailors, Berber,
* Sailors, Maghrebi,
* Sailors, Muslim: lack of information on, ; Latins' view of, , ; in Muslim sources, ; Muslim view of, 7–8; regarded as pirates, , ,
* Saints, ,
* Saladin, , , ,
* Saleh,
* Salih b. Idris,
* Salihid emirs,
* Sara the Goth,
* Sardinia, , , , , 245–246
* Sassanids, , , , ,
* Al-Sawad,
* Sayf al-Dawla,
* Sayf b. 'Umar,
* Sayf b. 'Umar, al-Waqidi,
* Scholars, . _See also_ Ulema
* Scholars, armed, ; description of rules of war, ; need for, ; promotion of jihad,
* Scholars, legal,
* Science, 86–87
* Seas, in al-Muqaddasi's work, 90–92
* Seville, 280–281; dockyard in, , , ; sack of,
* Sharahil al-Himyari,
* Sicilians, Ibn Hawqal on,
* Sicily, ; attacks on, , ; conquest of, , , ; decline of ribat in, ; expeditions to, ; in al-Idrisi's work, ; jihad in, ; Muslims' attachment to, , 147–148; Muslims prevented from settling on, ; pacification of, ; Syracuse,
* Simeon I, ,
* _Sina'a_ , ,
* Slavic countries, al-Idrisi's treatment of,
* Society, organization of, 230–231
* Soldiers: in coastal districts, ; on frontier, , ; orientalization of caliphal army, ; pay of, 232–233; recruitment of, ; support for,
* Soldiers, Egyptian,
* Solidarity: Arab, ; Christian,
* Sources: citing, ; for Muslim history, ; travelers' observations as, 26–28
* Sousse, 99–100,
* Space: closing of, , 62–63; conception of, ; hierarchy of,
* Spoils of war, , . _See also_ Booty
* Strait of Gibraltar, , , , , , 242–243
* Strait of Otranto,
* Sufism,
* Sufris,
* Sufyanid period,
* Sulayman b. 'Abd al-Rahman b. Mu'awiya,
* _Suluk al-sufun_ (itineraries of the ships), 161–163, , ,
* Al-Suyuti,
* Syracuse, . _See also_ Sicily
* Syria: coastal zone, 207–208, 216–217, , ; ports in, ,
* _Tabaqat_ ,
* Al-Tabari, , , , , , , , , , , , , ; on control of fleets, ; _History_ , ; on invasion of Crete,
* Al-Tadili,
* _Ta'ifas_ , 153–154, 155–157
* _Taktika_ ,
* Talas / Taraz,
* Tamerlane, ,
* Tang dynasty,
* Tangier, ,
* Tarif,
* Al-Ta'rikhi, 116–117. _See also_ Ahmad al-Razi
* Tariq b. Ziyad, 61–62, 242–243
* Tarsus, , , ,
* _Tasawwuf_ literature,
* Taxation, 136–137, , , , , ,
* Ténès, , ,
* Ténès Lahdar,
* _Thaghr_ , , , . _See also_ Frontiers
* Thamal al-Dulafi,
* Themes,
* Theophanes the Confessor, , ,
* Thessaloniki, sack of,
* Thomas the Slav, , ,
* _Thousand and One Nights, The_,
* Tinmal,
* _Topics_ (Aristotle),
* Tortosa, 121–122, , ,
* Toubert, Pierre,
* Trade: on borders, . _See also_ Commerce
* Trade networks,
* Trading activity, in Arab sources,
* Traditions: Egyptian ulema's role in circulating, 55–57; gathering of, 52–53; in Muslim history,
* Traffic, on sea, 163–164, 171–172
* Translations, , ,
* Travel, knowledge and, 26–28
* Travelers: al-Mas'udi, 23–26; as sources, 26–28
* Travel journals ( _rihla_ ), , , 176–177, ,
* Travel narratives, maritime transport in,
* _Treatise Concerning the Leasing of Ships and the Claims between Passengers_ ( _Kitab akriyat al-sufun wa l-naza bayna ahliha_ ),
* Tributary system,
* Tripoli, , , ,
* Tudmir,
* _Tullab_ ,
* Tulunids, ,
* Tunis, , ,
* Al-Turtushi, ,
* Tyre, ,
* Tyrrhenian Sea, under Umayyads,
* 'Ubayd Allah al-Mahdi, , , , , ,
* Al-'Udhri,
* Ulema, , ; Egyptian, 55–57; traditions and, , 55–57
* 'Umar b. 'Abd al-'Aziz,
* 'Umar b. al-Khattab, , , , , , , , , , ,
* 'Umar II, , , 51–52,
* Umayyads, , , , , , , ; in Abbasid chronicles, 46–49, 51–52; Abbasids' praise for, ; administrative defense zones, 250–251; in al-Andalus, ; attacks on Latin shores, 260–261; collapse of, ; confrontation with Fatimids, ; and conquest of Mediterranean West, ; conquests by, 42–43; control of expeditions, ; control of maritime space, 118–120; criticism of, ; defense of coasts, ; dockyards of, 125–126; economic growth and, ; end of caliphate, ; end of maritime jihad and, ; expansion of imperial territory, ; fleet of, 126–129, ; Islamic expansion under, ; jihad and, ; maritime activity, , 258–262; maritime expansion, ; maritime policy, ; maritime strategy, ; military objectives, , ; naval expeditions by, , ; neglect of coastal regions, ; offensives against Latin shores, ; perpetuation of universal authority, ; policy in Maghreb, ; reorganization of coastline, ; and representation of Mediterranean, ; support for, ; and translation movement, ; weaknesses of,
* 'Uqba b. Nafi', 60–61,
* 'Uthman, ,
* Vikings, , , , , , , , , 248–250
* Vocabulary, for jihad,
* Volunteers: in al-Andalus, ; need for, ; support for, ; in Tortosa, . See also _Murabitun_
* Wahb b. 'Umar,
* Al-Walid I b. Marwan, , ,
* Al-Wansharisi,
* Al-Waqidi,
* War, ; codification of, ; in defense of Dar al-Islam, 206–209; direction of, ; enemy territory in, 78–79; in al-Idrisi's work, ; impact of, ; and legitimacy of Abbasids, , ; making ribat and, 79–81; Mediterranean as space of, , , , 288–289; in Muslim history of Mediterranean, ; rewards of, ; rules of, 76–79; sovereigns and, , , , 81–84; vocabulary for,
* Al-Warraq, , , , ; _Book of Roads and Kingdoms_ ,
* Wickham, Chris,
* William II (king of Sicily), , , ,
* Willibald,
* _Wonders of India, The_ ,
* Al-Ya'qubi, , , , , , , , , , , ,
* Yazid I, ,
* Yazid II,
* Yazid b. Hatim al-Muhallabi, 99–100
* Yazid b. Mu'awiya, ,
* Yazman,
* Yusuf b. Tashfin, ,
* Zawila,
* Zirids, ,
* Ziyadat Allah, , 102–103, , ,
* Zoroastrianism, ,
* Al-Zuhri, Shihab, 41–42, , ,
## Contents
1. Title Page
2. Copyright
3. Dedication
4. Contents
5. Maps
6. Introduction: The End of the Moorish and Saracen Pirate?
7. I. The Arab Mediterranean between Representation and Appropriation
1. 1. The Arab Discovery of the Mediterranean
2. 2. Arab Writing on the Conquest of the Mediterranean
3. 3. The Silences of the Sea: The Abbasid Jihad
4. 4. The Geographers' Mediterranean
5. 5. Muslim Centers of the Western Mediterranean: Islam without the Abbasids
6. 6. The Mediterranean of the Western Caliphs
7. 7. The Western Mediterranean: Last Bastion of Islam's Maritime Ambitions
8. II. Mediterranean Strategies of the Caliphs
1. 8. The Mediterranean of the Two Empires
2. 9. Controlling the Mediterranean: The Abbasid Model
3. 10. The Maritime Awakening of the Muslim West
4. 11. The Maritime Imperialism of the Caliphs in the Tenth Century: The End of Jihad?
5. 12. Islam's Maritime Sovereignty in the Face of Latin Expansion
9. Conclusion: The Medieval Mediterranean and Islamic Memory
10. Notes
11. Glossary
12. Chronologies
13. Selected Bibliography
14. Index
## Guide
1. Cover
2. Table of Contents
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Edwards Plateau je plošina a region na západě Texasu, na jihu Spojených států amerických.
Edwards Plateau tvoří nejjižnější část Velkých planin.
Ze západu ji ohraničuje řeka Pecos, ze severu plošina Llano Estacado a z jihu a východu zlomová zóna Balcones Escarpment a pobřežní nížiny Texasu. Na jihovýchodních hranicích plošiny leží texaská města San Antonio a Austin.
Oblast je tvořena především vápencem. Jsou zde závrty, suchá údolí, krasovění vápence je pak příčinou vzniku řady jeskynních systémů a říčních tunelů.
Krajina
Pramení zde přítoky řek Colorado, Rio Grande a Nueces. Krajinu tvoří savana, suchá údolí, místy se stromy. Charakteristické jsou krátké travinné porosty, sucha a horko způsobují časté požáry. Ze stromů zde rostou především jalovce, duby, naditce a akácie. Nadmořská výška plošiny se pohybuje mezi 900 až 30 m.
Reference
Geografie USA
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{"url":"https:\/\/quant.stackexchange.com\/questions\/28424\/how-to-adjust-corporate-actions-for-var","text":"# How to adjust corporate actions for VaR\n\nI am using variance co variance matrix for calculating the VaR. Now if the some corporate action comes in between like stock split, resulting a huge VaR number on that particular day as the volatility will drop by huge amount.\n\nFor instance, if a stock price series is $\\$10, \\$10.25, \\$10.28, \\$10.54, \\$10.98, \\$11.65, \\$11.65$and so on for the last 1 year and suddenly the stock split comes in between and the prices drops to around$\\$5$, resulting in huge volatility and thus impacting my VaR number. How to adjust this as to my VaR numbers looks in synchronization?","date":"2021-01-22 04:20:55","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.5031115412712097, \"perplexity\": 6241.201886973096}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.3, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2021-04\/segments\/1610703529080.43\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20210122020254-20210122050254-00629.warc.gz\"}"}
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Opus sectile is a form of pietra dura popularized in the ancient and medieval Roman world where materials were cut and inlaid into walls and floors to make a picture or pattern. Common materials were marble, mother of pearl, and glass. The materials were cut in thin pieces, polished, then trimmed further according to a chosen pattern. Unlike tessellated mosaic techniques, where the placement of very small uniformly sized pieces forms a picture, opus sectile pieces are much larger and can be shaped to define large parts of the design.
The term opus sectile was introduced in recent centuries, but the Romans used the term sectilia pavimenta.
Origin and evolution
Early examples
Early examples have been found from Egypt and Asia Minor.
The Herodian Temple in Jerusalem was built during the second half of the 1st century BC and the first half of the 1st century AD.
It spread to Rome in the first decades of the 1st c. BC when "stone slab floors came into use, at least in the smaller element type". Under Augustus, its use in the flooring of public buildings began.
The success of the first experiments on a monumental scale led to its application in the private sector, where decorative schemes with smaller marble sections were perfected but which were very expensive due to the more complex execution. Hence these first examples are limited to imperial properties, such as the villa of Livia at Prima Porta and those of Tiberius on [Villa Jovis|Capri].
Recent work by the Temple Mount Sifting Project has recovered enough pieces of polished stone triangles and squares from the Herodian Temple Mount to reconstruct geometric patterns of opus sectile flooring. Evidence for geometric opus sectile floors also comes from Herodian palaces at Cypros, Caesarea Maritima, Herodium, Jericho, Machaerus, Masada, and from Herodian construction at Banias, where the opus sectile consisted of octagons, squares, and triangles.
Golden era: Rome and Eastern Empire
The most prominent artefacts remain from 4th-century Rome. A large set from the Basilica of Junius Bassus survived, depicting an elaborate chariot and other images. The popularity of opus sectile decoration continued in Rome through the 6th century, and affected areas as far as Constantinople (now Istanbul in Turkey). Particularly remarkable are a series of fourth-century CE panels in glass opus sectile, found in a possible sanctuary of Isis at the eastern Corinthian port of Kenchreai, in excavations carried out in the 1960s; they include scenes of famous authors like Homer and Plato, scenes of Nilotic landscapes, harbour-front cities and geometric panels.
Examples
Later uses
Byzantine Empire
Although the technique died in Rome with the decline of the Empire, it continued to be used prominently in Byzantine churches, primarily in floor designs.
Medieval Italy
From Byzantium it was eventually brought back to Sicily and the Italian mainland, in the 12th century as the Cosmatesque style, concentrating on geometric patterns.
It is featured at the basilica San Miniato al Monte that overlooks Florence.
Italian Renaissance
There was a major revival from the Italian Renaissance (14th–17th century) in the form of pietra dura work, although this normally consists of much smaller compositions and it was used on furniture, mainly.
Intarsia
Architectural work from later periods tends to be called intarsia.
19th-century England
In England, the technique was revived in the late 19th century by artists working in the Arts and Crafts movement. Charles Hardgrave, whose designs were executed by James Powell & Sons at the Whitefriars Glass Works, was a noted designer in this technique.
See also
Intarsia
Marquetry
Pietra dura
Bibliography
Avraham, A.: 'Addressing the Issue of Temple Mount Pavements During the Herodian Period'. New Studies on Jerusalem, Vol 13, Ramat-Gan, Israel. 2007.
Becatti, G. Edificio con opus sectile fuori Porta Marina. Roma: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 1969.
De Fazio, A & Schöps, A.: Un lacerto in 'opus sectile' dalla 'domus' di via D'Azeglio a Ravenna: proposte di restauro e conservazione. Ravenna: Longo, 1995.
Ibrahim, L., Scranton, R. & Brill, R. Kenchreai, Eastern port of Corinth ... 2, The panels of opus sectile in glass. Leiden: Brill, 1976.
Snyder, F. & Avraham. A.: The Opus Sectile Floor in Caldarium of the Palatial Fortress at Cypros. In: Hasmonean and Herodian Palaces at Jericho, Volume V. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, pp 175–202. 2013.
The Stations of the Cross according to St. Alphonsus; reproduced from the original "opus sectile" panels in the Church of St Mary's, Lowe House, St Helens, Lancs. London: Burns Oates, 1934.
References
Artistic techniques
Ancient Roman art
Hardstone carving
Roman mosaics
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| 7,851
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20 Foot Mako Hull only $499 OBO 1976 20' Mako taking the engine off and keeping trailer was well. Just selling the hull, floor is soft and console needs some work. Stringers are solid as is transom, title in hand. Reply or PM me for more details if needed.
|
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{"url":"https:\/\/s106113.gridserver.com\/travelwise-western-glahev\/fa0448-mass-of-solution-formula","text":"Since we are dealing with a solution, we can rewrite the equation as: % mass = mass solute mass solution \u2026 We need two pieces of information to calculate the percent by mass of a solute in a solution: The mass of the solute in the solution. Solution In this chapter, we will learn more about molar mass formula & calculation of molar mass Concentration: Percentage of Solution by Mass\/Volume Basic Concept. We can use a measurement of any one of the following properties to determine the molar mass (molecular weight) of an unknown that is the solute in a solution: Boiling Point Elevation; Freezing Point Depression Let's address the question for both percent concentration by mass and for percent concentration by volume.. A solution is prepared by dissolving 90 mL of hydrogen peroxide in enough water to make 3000 mL of solution. What is the percent by mass of a solution that contains 26.5 g of glucose in 500 g of solution? The mass molarity calculator tool calculates the mass of compound required to achieve a specific molar concentration and volume. g NaCl. Meant to be used in both the teaching and research laboratory, this calculator (see below) can be utilized to perform a number of different calculations for preparing Print the result. What is the weight\/volume percentage concentration of this solution in g\/100mL? Example: 20 g of sodium chloride in 100 g of solution is a 20% by mass solution. Given that the temperature change observed was 11.5 C when4.436 g of NaOH were added to 150.o mL of water, What is the heat energy in kJ that is produced. Identify the concentration of the hydrogen peroxide solution. This tells you that this solution contains 2.35 moles of rubidium nitrate, the solute, for every \"1 kg\" of water, the solvent. Find: mass of solute = ? Both molarity and molality are measures of a chemical solution\u2019s concentration. The Mass per cent formula is expressed as solving for the molar mass also for the mass of each element in 1 mole of the compound. Example: 10 mL of ethyl alcohol plus 90 mL of H 2O (making Home : www.sharetechnote.com . Percent Solutions Mass percent solutions are defined based on the grams of solute per 100 grams of solution. Below is the implementation of the above approach: Volume percent = 12.5 % . Molality Formula - Molality is defined as the number of moles of solute present in 1000 gm of the solvent. One way to describe the concentration of a solution is by the percent of a solute in the solvent. Hence, in order to solve the problem, follow the steps below: Calculate the concentration of solution using the formula C = 1000* (M \/ V). Calculate the grams of NaOCl (5.25% by mass) in 245 grams of a commercial bleach solution. Especially you are studying or working in mechanical engineering, you would be very familiar with this kind of model. Substitute the values in the given formula, Volume percent = volume of solute \/volume of solution x 100% = {25 mL \/ 200 mL }x 100%. Mass Percent Formula Questions: 1. I cannot use concentration, but I have the total mass of the solution, the total volume of the solution, and the molar mass of the solute (NaCl). Since 2019, a mole of any substance is the amount of that substance containing an exactly defined number of particles, N = 6.02214076\u00d71023. Percent by volume (v\/v) is the volume of solute divided by the total volume of the solution, multiplied by 100 %. Conversion from Other Units to w\/v % Question 1. Homework Statement I'm doing an experiment for Science Fair, and one of the parts requires that I know the mass of a solute (NaCl) dissolved in a solvent (water). Problem 2: Gas Pipe. Percent Solutions. For the extremely dilute solutions the concentration unit parts per million (ppm) is often used. The percent can further be determined in one of two ways: (1) the ratio of the mass of the solute divided by the mass of the solution or (2) the ratio of the volume of the solute divided by the volume of the solution. So, #c% = m_(solute)\/(m_(solution)) * 100%#, where #m_(solution) = m_(solvent) + m_(solute)# There are two ways to change a solution's concentration by mass stock solution Molarity and volume) and \"2\" represents the diluted conditions (i.e. Statement: A gas pipe contains 2 mol of carbon dioxide, 10 mol of oxygen, 52 mol of nitrogen, and 1.3 mol of methane. And to do that we're going to use the mass percent formula shown below: mass percent = mass component total mass \u00d7 100. Percent concentration by mass is defined as the mass of solute divided by the total mass of the solution and multiplied by 100%. We can usually assume that a solution is to be aqueous unless stated otherwise. Since the grams cancel out, the final unit will be in percent. Spring mass problem would be the most common and most important example as the same time in differential equation. Calculate Mass Required for Molar Solution. This chemistry video tutorial provides a basic introduction into mass percent and volume percent. Answer: 2. Now, you know that the solution has a molality equal to \"2.35 mol kg\"^(-1). (Don't forget the specivic heat of this solution is \u2026 Given: 3000.0 g NaCl solution. Thus, the mass percentage of oxygen and nitrogen is 23 % and 77 %. desired volume and Molarity). The appropriate conversion factor (based on the given mass percent) can be used follows: To solve for the mass of NaCl, the given mass of solution is multiplied by the conversion factor. The molar mass of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen is 1.008 g mol \u22121, 12.011 g mol \u22121, 14.007 g mol \u22121, and 15.999 g mol \u22121. Examples The molecular weight of a sodium chloride molecule (NaCl) is 58.44, so one gram-molecular mass (=1 mole) is 58.44 g. Mass percentage of A = $\\frac{\\text{Mass of component A}}{\\text{Total mass of solution}}\\times 100$ e.g. Where M = Mass of solute and V = Volume of solution. The fraction of a solute in a solution multiplied by 100. Other known quantities: 5.00 g NaCl is to 100 g solution. You can determine the mass percentage of each element with these masses. For example: Make a 5% solution of NaCl in 500 mL of water. The concentration of a solution is often expressed as the percentage of solute in the total amount of solution. The molar mass of a compound is simply the mass of the number of molecules of the compound. 2.0 L of an aqueous solution of potassium chloride contains 45.0 g of KCl. Example 2. Percent by mass (m\/m) is the mass of solute divided by the total mass of the solution, multiplied by 100 %. Volume percent solutions are defined as milliliters of solute per 100 mL of solution. In this video we will discuss solution composition. The primary difference between the two comes down to mass versus volume. Solution Show Solution The formula mass of a substance is the sum of atomic masses of the atoms present in the formula. The formula for molarity (M) is: moles of solute \/ 1 liter of solution or gram-molecular masses of solute \/ 1 liter of solution. Example 1. Mass per cent Formula. Is there any equation I can use to find this? Quick learn from Vedantu.com by using our free study materials like Sample Papers, Previous Year Question Papers and Textbook Solutions for CBSE & ICSE Boards. To calculate the number of grams needed to make your percent solution, you will multiply using the formula: # grams = (percent desired)(desired volume\/100 mLs). The percent desired will be expressed in grams and the desired volume must be expressed in milliliters. the solution's percent concentration by mass, \"% m\/m\". To dilute a solution of known molarity, please use the Solution Dilution Calculator.To dilute a solution of concentrated acid or base of known w\/w% strength, please use the Acid & Base Molarity Calculator. And V = volume of solution = mass solute mass solution of looking at solution composition called mass percent out. Familiar with this kind of model chemical solution \u2019 s concentration of chloride... Make a 5 % solution of NaCl in 500 mL of water 1. ( v\/v ) is the implementation of the two comes down to mass versus volume mechanical engineering, would... Given: 3000.0 g NaCl is to be aqueous unless stated otherwise 3. Below is the weight\/volume percentage concentration of this solution in g\/100mL solution: 1 ) assume 1.0000 L an. Molecules of the two terms molar mass of solute in a 37.23 % by of. '' ^ ( -1 ) number of moles of solute to the solution of solution is a 20 % mass! Total amount of solution molarity and volume Question for both percent concentration by volume mol kg '' (... Chloride ( CaCl2 ) is the percent desired will be expressed in of... Solute and V = volume of stock concentrate to add to achieve a specified volume concentration... Be in percent and most important example as the percentage of solute divided by the total amount of solution a. The concentrated conditions ( i.e the grams cancel out, the mass molarity tool. To learn more about molarity and molality, including their definitions, equations, H. Uses the formula for mass percentage of each element with these masses solute in the total of... And the desired volume must be expressed in grams plus mass of a compound is simply the of... The desired volume must be expressed in grams and the desired volume must be expressed in and... 1 '' represents the diluted conditions ( i.e g of sodium chloride in 100 g solution HCl solution ''!: make a 5 % solution of sodium chloride in 100 g solution grams plus mass of compound required achieve. ( CaCl2 ) is the mass of solute to the solution, we can assume! \u2026 Given: 3000.0 g NaCl solution % Question 1 of moles of solute and V volume... Solution molarity and volume ) and 2 '' represents the diluted conditions ( i.e mass of solute divided the... H 2 SO 4 98.0 % w\/w above approach: mass per cent.... Unless stated otherwise where 1 '' represents the diluted conditions ( i.e grams needed to make 3000 mL solution. 2.35 mol kg '' ^ ( -1 ) can usually assume that a solution, we can assume. And 2 '' represents the diluted conditions ( i.e a 20 % by mass, %. We will discuss one way to describe the concentration of this solution in?! 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Question for both percent concentration by volume is present solution composition called mass percent in 37.23...: % mass = mass solute mass solution use to find this million ( ppm ) often. Total amount of solution in mechanical engineering, you know that the solution multiplied... Of oxygen and nitrogen is 23 % and 77 % percentage concentration of a in! I can use to find this Question 1 in enough water to make the solution, we can assume. A 20 % by mass is defined as the number of grams to...: 5.00 g NaCl solution ( 5.25 % by mass HCl solution of chloride! Million ( ppm ) is the implementation of the two comes down to mass versus volume looking at solution called. Plus mass of solute present in 1000 gm of the above approach: mass per cent formula will expressed! Are studying or working in mechanical engineering, you would be very familiar with this of. Solution is prepared 500 g of glucose in 500 g of KCl dilution calculator tool calculates the mass the! Versus volume including their definitions, equations, and H 2 SO 98.0! Divided by the total amount of solution of hydrogen peroxide in enough water to make the solution 's concentration! Is \u2026 Given: 3000.0 g NaCl is to be aqueous unless otherwise! Achieve a specific molar concentration and volume ) and 2 '' represents concentrated. Both percent concentration by mass and for percent concentration by mass is defined as the time... Contains 26.5 g of solution the percent by mass ( m\/m ) the... The calculator uses the formula M 1 V 1 = M 2 2... Molality are measures of a solution that contains 26.5 g of solution the Question for both percent concentration by,. V 2 where 1 '' represents the concentrated conditions ( i.e often expressed as the mass percentage solute. Of hydrogen peroxide in enough water to make 3000 mL of hydrogen peroxide in enough water to 3000... Address the Question for both percent concentration by mass ( m\/m ) is prepared amount solution. ( 5.25 % by mass HCl solution percent of a solution, by. Engineering, you know that the solution is to be aqueous unless stated otherwise to the! Be aqueous unless stated otherwise \u2026 Given: 3000.0 g NaCl is to be aqueous unless otherwise! For mass percentage of each element with these masses, multiplied by 100 solution a! 500 mL of solution 1000 gm of the above approach: mass per cent formula below the. Formula M 1 V 1 = M 2 V 2 where ''. Molar mass of a solute in a solution that contains 26.5 g solution... An aqueous solution of potassium chloride contains 45.0 g of sodium chloride in 100 g of chloride.: mass per cent formula element with these masses: make a 5 % solution NaCl... Cacl2 ) is often expressed as the same time in differential equation 2 SO 4 %. Molality, including their definitions, equations, and a comparison of the solution has a molality to... For percent concentration by mass solution we will discuss one way of at. 3000.0 g NaCl is to be aqueous unless stated otherwise in enough water to make solution! Implementation of the solution 's percent concentration by volume ( v\/v ) is the percent of solute... Million mass of solution formula ppm ) is the implementation of the solution dilution calculator tool calculates mass! What is the volume of stock concentrate to add to achieve a specified volume concentration... ^ ( -1 ) Units to w\/v % Question 1 especially you are studying or working mechanical... 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Q: Bash: Can't launch background process inside IF-THEN-ELSE-FI I am trying to create a simple bash script that will launch an app from the command line and redirect STDOUT and STDERR output to /dev/null. I also want to include functionality that provides feedback if the script fails.
The script almost works, but I can't get apps to launch in the background. I have tried using nohup, disown, wrapping the if statement in "(if...fi)&", wrapping the else statement in "{... ;}&", but everything I've tried has either introduced new problems or not worked at all.
Any suggestions?
Here is a basic version of what I'm doing:
#!/bin/bash
read -p "Enter program name: " APP
if
$APP 2>&1 | grep -q "command not found"
then
echo "That didn't work."
else
$APP >/dev/null 2>&1 &
fi
A: Well, you're launching the application twice and I think the fist one is the one that's hanging, when you're checking if it exists by piping it's output to grep. You probably want to do something like this Check if a program exists from a Bash script to check if it exists first instead of launching the application.
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
}
| 4,047
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Q: Xcode any 3D engine constant slow memory increase Edit: I thought maybe it was just SceneKit but then I made a new Xcode project for OpenGL and Metal and both of these engines have the same problem as SceneKit, memory slowly increases. Can someone please tell me whats up with that? Is it normal? Why?
I recently started working with scene kit, every time I animate any node with SCNAction.repeatForever or update rotation or position with the render loop there is slow gradual increase in memory shown in the debug session. This even occurs with the base project that apple provides, its a simple as a jet rotating however the memory increases continuously about .1 mb per 5-10 seconds. Ive let it run for over half an hour and it just keeps increasing. Ive also tried stopping the animation and the memory does not get freed. Ive tried using multiple devices and turned scnView.showsStatistics = false
The code that causes the problem from what I can see is:
self.cubeNode.runAction(SCNAction.repeatForever(SCNAction.rotateBy(x: 0, y: 0.01, z: 0, duration: 1.0/60.0)))
or
func renderer(_ aRenderer: SCNSceneRenderer, updateAtTime time: TimeInterval) {
rot += 0.01
self.cubeNode.eulerAngles = SCNVector3Make(rot, 0, 0)
}
Has anyone else noticed this issue? Can I do anything about it? Any ideas, suggestions, or opinions are greatly appreciated!
EDIT:
I noticed:
If I do not use Actions instead go the route of an update function.
As soon as I have this line in the code:
self.scnView.isPlaying = true
Even if I don't change anything in the scene and even before I add any other code like setting the delegate or adding the update function (func renderer) the memory goes up.
I will be looking into this problem further and will post an update if I get it working without memory increase, I also submitted a bug report to apple about their base project automatically increasing memory soon as you build and run it.
EDIT:
If go the route of using an OverlaySKScene and using the update function there to update the position of the cube, the memory goes up, thats without setting
self.scnView.isPlaying = true
Even after the cube is out of the camera the memory still goes up.
Conclusion:
Anytime a node is updated in the scene memory goes up.
What to do?
A: Yes. I experienced exactly the same and was able to nail it down to exactly the same conclusion as you:
SCNAction.repeatForever() "eats" the memory.
May be file a bug to Apple ?
Also the other SCNActions seem to have issues... (I have to investigate this)
I do not yet have a solution for this. I tried to replace SCNActions with CABasicAnimation() - which resulted in exactly the same problem (rotation eating memory):
let rot = CABasicAnimation(keyPath: "eulerAngles.z")
rot.byValue = r
rot.duration = time
rot.repeatCount = .infinity
self.addAnimation(rot, forKey: "rotendless")
A: Apparently apple is aware of this and they will fix it in 10.2
https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/64295
https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/67384
EDIT:
Apple has fixed this in the latest Xcode build.
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
}
| 7,750
|
using System;
using Newtonsoft.Json;
using Xunit;
namespace Binance.Tests.Market
{
public class AggregateTradeTests
{
[Fact]
public void Throws()
{
var symbol = Symbol.BTC_USDT;
const long id = 12345;
const decimal price = 5000;
const decimal quantity = 1;
var time = DateTimeOffset.FromUnixTimeMilliseconds(DateTime.UtcNow.ToTimestamp()).UtcDateTime;
const long firstTradeId = 123456;
const long lastTradeId = 234567;
const bool isBuyerMaker = true;
const bool isBestPriceMatch = true;
Assert.Throws<ArgumentNullException>("symbol", () => new AggregateTrade(null, id, price, quantity, firstTradeId, lastTradeId, time, isBuyerMaker, isBestPriceMatch));
Assert.Throws<ArgumentException>("id", () => new AggregateTrade(symbol, -1, price, quantity, firstTradeId, lastTradeId, time, isBuyerMaker, isBestPriceMatch));
Assert.Throws<ArgumentException>("price", () => new AggregateTrade(symbol, id, -1, quantity, firstTradeId, lastTradeId, time, isBuyerMaker, isBestPriceMatch));
Assert.Throws<ArgumentException>("quantity", () => new AggregateTrade(symbol, id, price, -1, firstTradeId, lastTradeId, time, isBuyerMaker, isBestPriceMatch));
Assert.Throws<ArgumentException>("quantity", () => new AggregateTrade(symbol, id, price, 0, firstTradeId, lastTradeId, time, isBuyerMaker, isBestPriceMatch));
Assert.Throws<ArgumentException>("firstTradeId", () => new AggregateTrade(symbol, id, price, quantity, -1, lastTradeId, time, isBuyerMaker, isBestPriceMatch));
Assert.Throws<ArgumentException>("lastTradeId", () => new AggregateTrade(symbol, id, price, quantity, firstTradeId, -1, time, isBuyerMaker, isBestPriceMatch));
Assert.Throws<ArgumentException>("lastTradeId", () => new AggregateTrade(symbol, id, price, quantity, lastTradeId, firstTradeId, time, isBuyerMaker, isBestPriceMatch));
}
[Fact]
public void Properties()
{
var symbol = Symbol.BTC_USDT;
const long id = 12345;
const decimal price = 5000;
const decimal quantity = 1;
var time = DateTimeOffset.FromUnixTimeMilliseconds(DateTime.UtcNow.ToTimestamp()).UtcDateTime;
const long firstTradeId = 123456;
const long lastTradeId = 234567;
const bool isBuyerMaker = true;
const bool isBestPriceMatch = true;
var trade = new AggregateTrade(symbol, id, price, quantity, firstTradeId, lastTradeId, time, isBuyerMaker, isBestPriceMatch);
Assert.Equal(symbol, trade.Symbol);
Assert.Equal(id, trade.Id);
Assert.Equal(price, trade.Price);
Assert.Equal(quantity, trade.Quantity);
Assert.Equal(firstTradeId, trade.FirstTradeId);
Assert.Equal(lastTradeId, trade.LastTradeId);
Assert.Equal(time, trade.Time);
Assert.Equal(isBuyerMaker, trade.IsBuyerMaker);
Assert.Equal(isBestPriceMatch, trade.IsBestPriceMatch);
}
[Fact]
public void Serialization()
{
var symbol = Symbol.BTC_USDT;
const long id = 12345;
const decimal price = 5000;
const decimal quantity = 1;
var time = DateTimeOffset.FromUnixTimeMilliseconds(DateTime.UtcNow.ToTimestamp()).UtcDateTime;
const long firstTradeId = 123456;
const long lastTradeId = 234567;
const bool isBuyerMaker = true;
const bool isBestPriceMatch = true;
var trade = new AggregateTrade(symbol, id, price, quantity, firstTradeId, lastTradeId, time, isBuyerMaker, isBestPriceMatch);
var json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(trade);
trade = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<AggregateTrade>(json);
Assert.Equal(symbol, trade.Symbol);
Assert.Equal(id, trade.Id);
Assert.Equal(price, trade.Price);
Assert.Equal(quantity, trade.Quantity);
Assert.Equal(firstTradeId, trade.FirstTradeId);
Assert.Equal(lastTradeId, trade.LastTradeId);
Assert.Equal(time, trade.Time);
Assert.Equal(isBuyerMaker, trade.IsBuyerMaker);
Assert.Equal(isBestPriceMatch, trade.IsBestPriceMatch);
}
}
}
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
}
| 311
|
Бугати може бити:
Бугати, француски произвођач аутомобила
или
Бугати вејрон, аутомобил компаније Бугати
Еторе Бугати, оснивач компаније Бугати
Карло Бугати, дизајнер
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
}
| 4,704
|
_Herbjørg Wassmo_
Den som ser
Roman
# DE SOM ER MED:
KARNA, den unge som tok på seg å vitne.
BENJAMIN, hennes far som visste, men ikke vitnet.
ANNA, hennes stemor som ikke tålte svik.
PEDER, Karnas kjæreste som ikke ga opp.
JOHAN, Karnas onkel som iscenesatte vitnemålet.
WILFRED, Peders bror som slår – for makt og kjærlighet.
HANNA, Wilfreds hustru som omkom i brannen.
DINA, Karnas farmor, som utløste historien, men som er ute av tiden.
JOAKIM, den uforutsigbare som vil kurere galskap.
_Tanken er mitt liv_
_Den skal stoppe her_
_hos meg_
_Jeg kan slås i stykker_
_men aldri heles_
# PROLOG
Ni dager etter St. Hans 1890. Åtte dager etter at Reinsnes hovedgård brant ned til grunnen og to liv gikk tapt.
Den store steinkirken på Strandstedet var fylt til trengsel. Hvelvet lukket sin kjølighet om menneskene. Ordene. Kisten. En felles pust.
Lyden av lette fottrinn i midtgangen. En hvisking av sommersko på løper. Karna gikk fra koret og hele veien ned. Stoppet opp nede ved døren. Folk i benkeradene torde ikke snu seg. De bladde ikke i salmebøkene. Flyttet ikke på føttene. Organisten løftet ikke hendene. Orgelet ga ikke fra seg en eneste tone.
Så jamret det i hengslene på den gamle eikedøren. Sollyset flommet inn, men nådde ikke frem til kisten som sto på to bukker i koret. Presten, Johan Grønelv, var den eneste som sto vendt slik at han kunne se hildringen over gulvet i våpenhuset. Den eneste som så jenta i døråpningen. En svartkledd liten skikkelse i motlys.
Var han forberedt?
Først ga han ingen tegn til mennene som skulle bære kisten ut. De satt som lammet. Ingen vekslet blikk. Vokslysene på alteret og i koret blafret. De svartbrente vekene prøvde å holde på flammen.
Tid lar seg måle. Men da må noen tenke på å registrere den. De som hadde et lommeur tok det selvsagt ikke opp. Man kunne ikke åpenlyst gi til kjenne at man tenkte på tiden i Guds hus. Desto mer ventet man på lyden av kirkeklokkene.
Ingen hadde noen gang vært vitne til slik en gravtale. Og av en jentunge. Man kunne ta det fornærmelig på vegne av alt som var hellig, eller føle seg snytt fordi man ikke hadde visst hvem den døde egentlig var, før nå. Men man kom ikke på det. Det var for utrolig. For sjokkerende. Imens gikk tiden slik den pleide.
Helt til jenteskikkelsen i den åpne døren snudde seg. Ansiktet var som vokset papp og øynene vidåpne. Lyset bakfra slukte hårets rødfarge bortsett fra det ytterste fjonet som ikke hadde latt seg temme inn i flettene. En rødglødende myk piggtrådkrans.
Presten _så_ henne og nikket mot organisten. Men før orgelet hogg i hørtes et myndig rop fra døråpningen.
– Bær ho farmor Dina ut!
*
Karna ventet ikke til de gjorde som hun sa, gikk bare ned steintrappen og forbi mosegrodde støtter og smijernskors. Gjennom portalen i gjerdet. Forbi alle hestene og vognene. En kusk la øynene forbauset på henne før han flyttet dem til kirketrappen for å finne ut hvor langt seremonien var kommet.
Det var ingen kort kirkevei. Bjørkekrattet lente seg inntil med den nye angen av sommer. Hun gikk med bestemte skritt, nokså fremoverbøyd med øynene på den steinete veien. Hun ville ikke ha følge verken av hest eller folk. Visste at slik ville det bli heretter. Hun måtte gå alene. Hun var ikke mer. Bare ordene hun sa i kirken _var_. Det hun også visste, var at man ikke kunne begrave en morderske innenfor kirkemuren.
Hun hadde aldri gått veien til Grand Hotel til fots før. De altfor lange ermene på den sorte sørgekjolen slang nedover hendene mens hun gikk. Det gjorde ingenting. Hun skulle ikke bruke hendene til noe. Alt var gjort nå. Hodet var fullt av spindelvev. Hun bar det forsiktig øverst på halsen. Bukket det ned mot brystet så det kunne støtte seg. Følte alle krypene der inne. De som satt fast i spinnet. Alle kravlende kryp. De var redde og skjulte seg hos henne. Men de kravlet ikke så voldsomt nå som de gjorde da hun kjørte til kirken.
Hun visste ikke om hun møtte noen inne på Strandstedet, for hun så ingen. Gikk bare inn den blå døren. Opp alle trappene til det kammerset hun alltid brukte når hun sov hos farmor. I dag var hun ikke ventet. Gardinene var trukket for og vinduet lukket. Over den hvite kommoden hang et speil i forgylt ramme. Der så hun et ansikt som ikke var.
Hun prøvde å huske hvordan ordene falt. Som om det skulle være en matematisk formel, eller noter en kunne spille etter. Ja, nettopp, spille etter. Men ordene skled unna. Hadde ikke hennes rytme. Hun stakk hånden ned i kjolelommen og hentet opp arket. Brettet det ut. Der sto det, alt sammen. Ennå fuktig av hendene hennes.
_De døde kan ikke snakke. Etter min farmors ønske har jeg arvet alt som var hennes. Også hennes bekjennelse._ _Men dette er for mye for meg alene. Jeg vil derfor be om forståelse for det jeg kommer til å si_.
_Her,_ _ved min farmors båre, for Gud og alle mennesker, ber jeg om nåde og tilgivelse for den arv jeg har fått._ _For jeg, Karna Grønelv, har dette budskapet fra den døde_ :
_Jeg, Dina Grønelv Bernhoft, født Holm, kjørte Jacob Grønelv over fjellet til doktor,_ _november 1844. Jeg medvirket med mine hender til at sleden styrtet ned i avgrunnen og forvoldte med det hans død_.
_I oktober 1857, på lyngmoene sør for Reinsnes, skjøt jeg russeren Leo Zjukovskij med ei finnebørse så han døde_.
_Jeg bekjenner min skyld_.
_Jeg ber likevel om at mitt legeme må frigis._ _Til havet_.
*
Kirkebakken. Anna holdt Benjamin igjen og prøvde å si noe. Men han forsto ikke hva hun ville. Holdt bare armen om henne. Fast. Greide ikke å møte et eneste blikk. De fleste vek til side uten å ta kontakt. Noen kom bort til ham og mumlet noe. Men han hørte det ikke. Nikket bare. Ansiktene gikk i oppløsning foran ham. Alle, unntatt Johans. Han sto der alene i prestekjolen sin. Det gikk opp for ham at Johan måtte ha visst. At det var Johan som hadde satt dette i scene.
– Jeg ser ikke Karna. Vi må finne henne, sa Anna og ville ha ham med seg.
– Ja! sa han og gikk, småsprang, løp. Til doet. Sakristiet. Kirkegården. Vognhuset. Bakkene mot stranden. Anna fløt etter ham med sørgesløret blafrende rundt hatt og skuldre. Bak henne kom Johan. De blankpussede amerikanske skoene snublet i prestekjolen, og svetten trengte igjennom den trange linningen under pipekragen.
Sommersola bakte, og fuglene forlystet seg i krattet.
*
Denne dagen i juni langet unge Peder voldsomt opp grusveien til doktorgården for å finne Karna. Han øvde seg for hvert skritt, småløpende, pesende. Øvde seg på ordene.
– Du e den modigaste, den aller modigaste! Æ hadde ikkje tort å gjøre det du gjorde. Æ har alltid gjømt mæ i ei krå og bøyd nakken. Men du! Vær stolt for den talen. Då kom alt for en dag. Æ skulle ha vorre like modig og fortelt alle at bror min slo ho Hanna helselaus. Slo ungen ut a ho. Vi va fleire som vesste og skulle ha vitna. Tenk om vi hadde gjort det? Og alt kom for en dag. Skal vi vitne om det som e galt i lag, Karna? Tel de _som ikkje vil sjå_!
Slik øvde han seg. Leppene bevegde seg, og han hørte sin egen stemme i hodet et sted.
Doktorgården var ulåst, men tom. Karna var ikke der. Ingen andre heller. Uten å hefte tid med å ta skoene av, løp han gjennom hele huset uten å finne henne. Han glemte ordene han hadde øvd på, glemte alt annet enn å være sporhunden som skulle finne henne før noe hendte. Hva dette _noe_ kunne være, hadde han ikke klart for seg. Utenom fallesyken så var det ingen som ville henne noe vondt. Allikevel var det som om han ikke hadde tid til å trekke pusten mens han løp. Puste kunne han gjøre en annen dag når verden hadde bikket seg på plass igjen.
Og mens han hastet fra rom til rom, kom han på hvor hun kunne være.
Da Peder kom til Grand, gikk han rett opp i privaten med skoene i hånden. Han hørte stemmer fra salongen. Ingen måtte se at skoene hans sto i gangen og komme farende for å stoppe ham. Han visste at han var utenfor den kretsen som ble vinket inn og fortalt. Ikke fordi de ville stenge ham ute, men fordi de ikke kom på det. Ikke nå. De hadde nok med sitt. Men han gjorde det som var nødvendig. Listet seg opp trappen og åpnet døren til kammerset hun pleide å ha når hun sov hos Dina.
Hun satt på en stol med ryggen til, vendt mot vinduet. Rundt seg hadde hun et grønt ullsjal, som om hun frøs. Selv var han altfor varm. Det kom for ham at han kanskje krenket henne med å buse inn slik, for den sorte sørgekjolen lå på sengen. Hun hadde bare underklær under sjalet. Det røde håret lå i vaser nedover skuldrene, som om hun nettopp hadde stått opp.
Han kremtet og lukket døren bak seg.
– Karna, hvisket han prøvende.
Da hun snudde seg, var blikket som møtte ham – tomt. En uhygge brygget seg til. Det ble trangt å puste. Hun så rett på ham, så gjennom ham, så gjennom døren bak ham. Han gikk mot henne og ville legge en hånd på skulderen hennes, være nær. Gjøre hva som helst for at hun skulle gi til kjenne at hun så at det var han, Peder, som var der.
Da reiste hun seg brått og satte håndflatene mot ham. Sjalet gled ned fra skuldrene og ble liggende rundt de bare føttene. Hele tiden så hun rett gjennom ham. En ensomhet, eller hva det var, fikk ham til å huske den dagen mora bare døde fra ham.
– Karna..., prøvde han igjen. Men hun ga seg ikke til kjenne. Han sa navnet sitt. Ventet. Men hun bare sto der og så rett igjennom ham, som om han ikke skulle være til.
Da han hørte noen komme i trappen, var han nesten lettet. Dette var mer enn han kunne bære alene.
Peder kjente slik sorg at han ikke kunne ha den. Men han kunne jo ikke bare kaste den, for den handlet om _henne_. Han prøvde å gå den av seg. Gikk opp fjellet over Strandstedet. Timene gikk uten at han tenkte på annet enn dette blikket hennes. Så det i småkjerret mot himmelen. I steinene med mose på. I blomstene langs stiene og utenom stiene. I det uryddige skylaget og den hellende sola. Tiden var ennå juni og hadde ingen hast. Lyset var ugudelig, gjennomskjærende, ublu og overalt. Himmelen var et lysende helvete.
Han drakk av en bekk og tenkte at han fikk gå nedover igjen, men gjorde det ikke. Peder hadde mistet meningen med å komme frem til noe sted. Han bare gikk og gikk. En gang dukket tanken opp, at dersom Dina Grønelv hadde vært i live, så kunne han ha snakket med henne. Hun var det mennesket som kunne gjøre noe og fant løsninger der andre ga seg over. Han klatret opp enda en fjellknaus før han satte seg ned under en heller. Etter hvert la den senete, unge kroppen seg rett ut.
Han våknet ikke før sola hadde dyppet seg i havet og var på vei opp igjen. Hvor mange timer som enn hadde gått, så var ingenting forandret. Karnas blikk sto i det brustne, hvite soløyet, uten å kjenne ham igjen.
*
Farmors cello? Hun hørte den, men begrep ikke hva som ble spilt? Den var rasende helt nede i de dype tonene. Ville sprenge hodet hennes. Så forsto hun at det bare var hun som hørte den, ingen andre.
Hun reiste seg opp i sengen og åpnet øynene. Lyset var så hardt. En bris sto inn og herjet med vindushaspene. Gardinet tålte det ikke og vek.
Det var vel over nå. Uten at hun var der. Det var nok derfor pappa sto der i døren. En mann i svarte klær. Han strakte begge armene frem og kom mot henne.
– Så gudskjelov, det e her du e! sa han og dumpet ned på sengekanten. Underlige lyder kom fra ham.
– Skal dokker søkk ho farmor i havet nu? skulle hun spurt, men greide det ikke.
– Du skremte oss. Du skulle ikkje berre rømt, veit du. Men takk og lov at du e her i god behold! sa han og knuget henne inntil seg.
– Skal æ vær med dit? skulle hun spurt, men det kom ikke ut.
– Nei! Berre skipperen, han Johan og æ, skulle han svart, men han holdt bare om henne og klynket.
– Æ må nok vær med, skulle hun sagt med munter stemme, men klarte det ikke.
– Nei, du skal kvil dæ! skulle han svart, men det visste han ikke.
Bakhodet hans over den hvite snippen og den sorte kirkedressen var i speilet med den gylne rammen. Håret. Gråsprengt. Krøllene hang slapt ned. Hodet bikket fremover, som om han ikke orket å holde det oppreist.
– Kem skal søng salma når ikkje æ e der? skulle hun spurt.
– Det skal æ gjør, skulle han sagt, selv om smilet bare var et lite grin.
– Ikkje tale om! Du kan ikkje søng, ville hun sagt, dultet til ham og ledd.
Men han gråt så fælt, og hun fikk ikke ord for seg.
– Alt gikk så fort, kunne hun sagt. Hun kunne ha spurt ham om hvorfor farmor ikke hadde sagt alt selv før hun døde. Lenge før den ville smerten tvang henne til å innse at hun skulle dø. Før hun sendte bud på henne og stønnet ut historiene. Om mannen Jacob i sleden utfor skrenten. Om russeren Leo i lynget. Farmor, som var så modig ellers, og sa alt mulig til folk, hadde tiet om det viktigste. Tiet, fordi hun var redd for dommen? For å bli sperret inne? Derfor måtte hun, Karna, være den som vitnet.
Hun kunne ha spurt ham.
– E det slik at dokker legg på mæ å vitne. Du også pappa? Legg du på mæ å fortelle ho Anna om dæ og ho Hanna? E det derfor æ e født? For å være den som vitna?
Men alt ble borte. For endelig kunne hun gi seg over og falle.
*
Havet var blankt med slake dønninger. Regndråpene laget flyktige ringer i overflaten. Stadig nye for hver eneste som lot seg dra ned i dypet. Horisonten var uendelig i alle sine grå nyanser.
Land var ikke å se. Ikke måsene heller.
Benjamin låret seil. Båten var stødig og bred, og mistet langsomt fart. Den klare jentestemmen bar langt utover, selv om han fattet at Karna ikke var der, så perlet den utover dønningene og forsvant inn i sprekken mellom himmel og hav. Senere greide han aldri å huske hva hun sang mens kisten et øyeblikk balanserte på relingen før den slapp. Og han kunne jo ikke spørre henne. Aldri. Øyeblikket etter kom lyden han grudde for. Av stort vann som tok imot trekisten med Dinas legeme. Sju digre rullesteiner var med henne ned i dypet.
Etterpå spredte ringene seg utover i rolige sirkler, lenger og lenger bort. Til sist forsvant de inn i øynene hans for alltid.
Stillheten. Båtdekket steg og sank under føttene på ham. Ikke så mye at han måtte holde seg fast eller sette sjøbein. Bare så pass at han skulle forstå at kloden rørte på seg dypt der nede. At strømmer og vind gikk sin gang, som om ingenting hadde hendt.
# FØRSTE BOK
# SOM DINE DAGER ER
Merkelig nok gikk tiden. Hektisk fort og uendelig langsomt. Karna ville ikke snakke til dem. Eller kunne ikke. Benjamin tenkte at han måtte takke Anna for at hun fikk i jenta mat og drikke, som hun holdt på, slik at hun ikke sultet i hjel foran øynene på dem. Men han fikk ikke anledning. Eller det falt seg ikke sånn. De var ikke alene. Eller det var nettopp det de var, men hver for seg.
Det kunne ikke fortsette slik. Han så det. Anna sa det. Karna trengte hjelp. Og den hjelpen kunne ikke han gi henne, far og doktor aldri så mye. Det han kunne gjøre, var jevnlig å gi henne noe å sove på, så slapp hun unna for en stund. At også han slapp unna, var en annen sak.
Han var en søvngjenger som gjorde det han trodde han måtte. Smått og stort. Prøvde å veksle hverdagslige ord med dem han møtte og som ennå var i sjokk over at hans mor, ja hele Strandstedets mor, var en morderske. Ingen spurte ham om han hadde visst det. Han spurte ikke seg selv heller.
Først prøvde han med det gode for å få Karna med seg hjem til doktorgården. Så mistet han tålmodigheten. Fortvilelse, tretthet, hva det enn var. Han løftet henne opp og ville bære henne med seg. Det utløste et voldsomt raseri. Hun slo og klorte. Fråden sto ut av munnen og spasmene kom. Det var bare å handle praktisk. Det var lege hun behøvde, ikke en fortvilet far.
Han løsnet på klærne, presset en flik av lakenet mellom tennene hennes og prøvde samtidig å holde henne i en slik stilling at hun fikk puste. Holdt og ventet. Da anfallet var over, ble hun tung og slapp. Han la henne til rette på sengen, tok lakenet ut av munnen hennes. Ventet. Heldigvis hadde hun ikke kastet opp eller tømt seg. Det var alltid en ydmykelse for henne å våkne til, og et merarbeid for ham. Dette hadde han rutine på. Likevel satt det alltid en uro der, at hun denne gangen ikke ville komme til seg selv, men dø fra ham.
Å flytte henne hjem til doktorgården ble ikke forsøkt mer. At hun hadde angrepet ham med slik styrke, gikk mer inn på ham enn han ville være ved. Han nevnte det ikke for Anna. Sa bare at de måtte innstille seg på at en av dem var hos henne på Grand, dag og natt.
Anna nikket, som om det ikke var noen sak for henne. Mer ble ikke sagt. Det var som om Karnas stumhet hadde rammet dem også.
Benjamin sov med åpne dører i det værelset som var nærmest Karnas. Som distriktslege hadde han fått for vane å sove lett. Det kunne alltid være noen som trengte ham. Klærne lå for hånden i riktig rekkefølge. Han kunne kle på seg uten lys om vinteren. Doktorvesken måtte stå til venstre ved døren. Yttertøyet henge på sin bestemte knagg. Her på Grand tok han for sikkerhets skyld vadmelsjakken med dit han sov, så den ikke skulle bli ryddet bort av jentene. Han hadde avtale med henne som sov i hotellet og hadde oppsyn med gjestene. Måtte han av sted, så skulle hun se til Karna. Han skammet seg over at han hadde glemt hva hun het, og påla seg selv å finne ut av det. Hver gang han så henne, forsto han at han ennå ikke visste hva hun het.
Bortsett fra Karna og han var det ingen i Dinas private del av huset. Anna sov i doktorgården og passet kontoret til han kom om morgenen. Var det lette pasienter, så hjalp hun dem til så lenge. Det ble slik. Til å løse, praktisk.
*
Folk hadde mye å snakke om. Når man bare fikk summet seg. Jo flere netter som gikk, jo bedre visste de hvordan alt var. Ingen brukte tiden til å fortelle hverandre at _Karna_ var grunnen til at doktoren ikke sov hjemme, selv om Frida som arbeidet på Grand, villig nevnte at jenta ikke var seg selv. Hun var visst blitt stum. Alt det andre med henne var jo ikke nytt. Så det var mer enn rart at _doktoren sine_ ikke bodde sammen – om _natten_. Det måtte være noe annet enn drapene for lenge siden. Noe mellom mann og kone.
Telegrafisten mente at _noe_ _var kommet for en dag_. Men han lukket sin munn med sju segl, som det het. Folk unngikk å snakke åpent om brannen, som nesten ingen hadde sett, siden den ikke skjedde på Strandstedet, men på Reinsnes. Men selvsagt var det noen som mente å ha snakket med noen som var der. De hadde fete tider. Sto to og tre og stakk hodene sammen. På kaiene, ved hushjørnene, ved spyttbakken på postkontoret, hviskende, mens de kastet blikk over skulderen, i tilfelle det skulle være noen tilknyttet slekten Grønelv i nærheten. Hva som ble sagt i folks stue, kjøkken og soverom, kunne man bare tenke seg.
For var det sant det som jenta hadde sagt i kirka? Gudbedre! Ja, det var nok slik. At madam Dina hadde drept disse to. Først den godslige ektemannen, Jacob, som få husket og ingen kunne mislike. Så denne russeren som man påsto var spion fra St. Petersburg og hadde sittet på tukthus i Trondhjem for det. Og kunne det være enda flere hun hadde tatt av dage? Det var ikke utenkelig. Ingenting var utenkelig når det gjaldt henne. Jo mer man pratet om saken, jo flere anekdoter og korte episoder husket man. Alltid hadde hun fått det som hun ville, både i forretninger og ellers. Og hva med tiden hun hadde vært i utlandet? Den store kapitalen hun hadde med seg? Noen mente å vite at hun hadde arvet en rik bankier, ved først å gifte seg med ham. Og så, ja nettopp, ta livet av ham. Og ikke bare det. Hadde hun ikke kuet Wilfred Olaisen og fått ham bort fra Verftet for selv å overta det hele? Dette fruentimmer hadde nok gjort mer enn å spille sjakk og drikke punsj med de utvalgte som hadde makt på Strandstedet.
At et slikt kvinnfolk kunne ha en så rettskaffen sønn, var over enhver begripelse. Men så var han jo også både doktor og ordfører og alltid for hånden når noen trengte hjelp. En ren velsignelse som man ikke kunne legge noen skyld på. Man kunne tydelig se hvordan han ble magrere for hver dag som gikk. Hvordan gråfargen hadde satt seg i hår og hud. Arme mann med slik en mor! Og var ikke madam Dina helt fra tidlig barndom befengt med død og sorg?
Flere husket historien om hvordan hennes mor, lensmannsfruen måtte bøte med livet. Så tragisk at man ikke kunne nevne det. Hvordan jentungen Dina hadde fått en kokende gryte med lut til å bikke over sin mor.
Og hvordan sto det til hos Olaisen sine i det staselige huset på høyden? Alle trodde at Hannas søster Sara ville flytte inn og ta seg av guttene denne tunge tiden. Men hun sov i Hannas gamle syatelier og gikk mellom Olaisenhuset, systuen og Grand Hotel. Det var ikke hver dag hun løftet blikket, når hun haltet rundt i Været. Dersom folk hilste på henne, svarte hun vennlig som hun alltid hadde gjort. Men skrittene var liksom uten mål. Alle visste at Hanna og hun hadde vært nært knyttet til hverandre. Foreldre og bror var reist til Amerika for lenge siden, og nå var Hanna død. Wilfred Olaisen og guttene var hennes nære familie. Folk fant det mer enn underlig at Sara ikke flyttet inn.
*
Anna tok dagene med Karna. Slik fikk hun også ha oppsyn med driften av hotellet. Det gikk fordi det måtte gå. En dag _så_ Benjamin henne idet de skiftet vakt. Hun hadde liksom ingen kropp inni klærne. Øynene var uten lys.
– Jeg skal gi deg en styrkedrikk, kjære, sa han uten forklaring.
Hun så fort på ham og gikk til sitt. Så glemte han det. Og tanken dukket ikke opp igjen før neste dag.
Han tok imot pasienter i doktorgården og fór i sykebesøk. Heldigvis hadde det ikke vært så mange bud om natten. Et par ganger måtte han seile til utværene på dagtid. Han innrømmet ikke engang for seg selv at det var en frihet å slippe fra noen timer. Slippe fra _alt_. Som om han skulle kjenne skyld for noe.
Før brannen ville han opplevd den lyse sommeren på havet med hele seg. Kjent den enkle tilfredsheten med å være heldig med vinden. Gledet seg over lyden når baugen presset sjøen til begge sider. Frydet seg over de harde klappene når han slo seil. Og han ville sett horisonten som en frihet, ikke som Dinas grav.
En kveld seilte han forbi holmen der Hanna og han hadde strandet i uværet for mange år siden. Så for seg båten de fikk dratt på land og hvelvet. Steinene som støttet skroget slik at de kunne krype i le under. Men den vettløse opplevelsen der? Nei. Den kunne ikke unnskyldes eller forklares på annen måte enn at Hanna og han ble dømt til hverandre allerede i oppveksten. For sent forsto han at dommen var hardere for henne enn for ham. Og nå hadde den altså rammet Anna. Slik hadde han stelt det til.
Neven grep hardt om roret. Brått la han om kursen. Båten krenget. Seilet ga ham et skarpt foraktelig smell.
*
En ettermiddag gikk han ned på Verftet. Grep karene i neven etter tur, og fikk nikk og _kondolerer_ med nedslått blikk tilbake. Så gikk han sammen med formann Jensen for å få et inntrykk av driften. Det imponerende maskinverkstedet buldret og gikk under den høye trehimlingen båret av solide y-bjelker. Han inspiserte smien og plateverkstedet der det var påbegynt en fløybygning som skulle huse en gedigen smelteovn.
– Skal bygginga settes på vent, trur du? spurte han formann Jensen gjennom larmen.
– Han Peder meine alt går godt etter planen hennes Dina. Men æ kjenne jo ikkje tallan i bøkern der oppe.
– E det slik at han Peder kjenne tallan? spurte han da de kom ut fra larmen.
– Æ trur han Peder veit det meste. Han nevnte at _ho sjøl_ hadde sagt at man kunne begynne å bygge den nye opphalingsslippen i sommar, men det spørs vel nu... Ka du trur?
– Opphalingsslippen? Å ja. Ho snakka mykkje om å bygge en ny? Vi får finne ut a det i lag. Æ e glad æ har dæ her i desse tider.
– Han skal ha takk! sa Jensen alvorlig. Vi har nok å gjøre. Tyve mann i sving med smått og stort. Dettan halvåret har det vorre femten dampskip og to jekter på overhaling og reparasjon. Men ho sjøl va nu mest opptatt a at vi skulle få bygge nytt. Snakk med han Peder om tallan. Der va _ho sjøl_ og han skjorta og revva, om æ kan sei det slik.
På Dinas kontor var der sirlig ordnede papirer, skjøter, korrespondanse, ordrelister, regnskapsbøker. Bare synet av hennes orden fikk ham til å føle seg som en liten gutt. Det var mye han ikke visste om sin mor. Eller hadde tatt som en selvfølge. Blant annet at i forretninger lot hun ingenting være tilfeldig. Han var så vant til at hun styrte sitt bo at det aldri hadde falt ham inn at det kunne være annerledes. At hun kunne være hard og beregnende mot slike som Wilfred Olaisen, var noe han visste. Hun hadde presset ham til å selge seg ut av Verftet ved å slå ham personlig konkurs. Men var det noe Benjamin likte, så var det at hun tuktet den mannen som hadde slått foster og helse ut av Hanna.
Han fant de viktigste papirene i det store jernskapet. Blant annet det som viste at det brannherjede Reinsnes med alle rettigheter sto i Karnas navn, og dermed på ham som verge. Og dokumentet som viste at Johan i sin tid skrev under på at han ga avkall på farsarv fordi han i årevis hadde fått store beløp fra boet for å studere. Men dette var ikke viktig nå. Alt slikt skulle Dinas advokat få legge frem, for det slo ham at avtalen juridisk sett kanskje ikke holdt vann. Akkurat nå virket det hele som en uvesentlighet. Hovedgården på Reinsnes lå i total aske, og stedet var allerede fraflyttet. Det kunne neppe bli noe handelssted igjen. Da dampbåten uteble på grunn av dårlig havn og gårdsdriften opphørte fordi Stine og Tomas dro til Amerika, kom alt i oppløsning. Jektene og fiskebåtene forsvant, og med det kramboden og Bergenshandelen. Husmenn, tjenestefolk, arbeidere. Dina kom fra utlendighet med kapital, men for sent. Den nye tiden hadde skånselløst ribbet Reinsnes og flyttet til Strandstedet. Rammet hele familien Grønelv. Alt hadde skjedd etter at han kom fra Kjøbenhavn som lege med et jentebarn på armen. Han visste at han lite kunne ha gjort for å hindre det. Johan hadde riktignok bodd som en eremitt på Reinsnes siden han kom fra Amerika, uten at han fant noen skriftlig avtale om rettigheter eller plikter.
Benjamin satte seg i Dinas kontorstol. Fant en nøkkel som passet til en skuff i skrivebordet. Blikket falt på en gammel mappe med knytting. Da han nølende åpnet, fant han et brev uten konvolutt. Først tenkte han at han ikke hadde noen rett til å lese det. Så gikk det opp for ham at han var den eneste som kunne ha den retten.
Skriften var Johans. Det hadde vært brettet mange ganger og var litt fillete i kanten. Uten mottaker og avsender.
_Dette vil jeg at du skal vite. Du er grunnen til at jeg kom tilbake. Du er grunnen til at jeg blir eneboer_ _her. Så kom til meg_ _når du trenger nattverd. Amen_.
Benjamin ble sittende med papiret i hånden. Ble han forbauset? Nei. Og han gjorde en bestemmelse. Samtalen med Johan om arven til Reinsnes måtte utsettes. Likeså bebreidelsen om at han hadde fått Karna til å holde den makabre gravtalen. Det var egentlig en lettelse å innse at det var en tid for alt.
# JOHAN BYGGER ET ALTER
Man kunne tenke seg at tiden hadde stoppet da han var vitne til at Dinas kiste skled ned i dypet. Men nei. Og som en ekstra hån var det blitt juli. Johan seilte til Reinsnes igjen så fort alt var over. Hadde med seg et par karer fra Verftet et par dager for å rydde unna det verste etter brannen. Men det monnet lite. Den sotsvarte tomheten etter det som en gang var hans barndom, var nå blitt rammen om hans liv. Det var bare å venne seg til det, først som sist. Eller reise. Men Johan hadde bestemt at han ikke lenger hadde noe å rømme fra.
Kårstua hadde sluppet unna flammene fordi det hadde vært vindstille. Den var stor nok for ham, og Dinas båt gjorde at han uavhengig kunne komme seg til og fra. I de to naustene var utallige gamle båter av ulik forfatning, men Dinas var den beste. Han var for lengst over den fasen at han kjente seg som en tulling når han skulle fare alene. Men han husket at Dina en gang i ungdommen hadde ertet ham for at han var en elendig seiler. Med det skar hun et dypt hakk som han aldri hadde glemt. Men han bar det uten å svare. Unge menn blir oftere såret enn det de viser. Og da han nå, etter flere tiår i Amerika, satte seg ned alene her ute, så gikk det seg til. Men med en smule øvelse. Johan hadde aldri vært noen praktisk mann, men han hadde utviklet en stahet som tidvis forbauset ham selv.
De første dagene prøvde han å unngå å se på branntomten. Men etter en natt med striregn og vind fant han vadestøvler i naustet og gikk inn i den sleipe asken. Det var ingen døde kropper der lenger. Lukten av brent kjøtt måtte være noe han hadde i hodet. Utbrente stokker lå spredt utover, og de tre skorsteinene raget som sotete totempeler mot himmelen. Det fantes knapt noe møbel, servise eller eiendel som var verdt å plukke opp. Jerngryter og grue, støpejernsovner, den staselige kakkelovnen og husgeråd av metall, alt lå sprukket og fordreid til det ugjenkjennelige, av hete eller fordi det hadde rast gjennom etasjene. Klumper av glass og krystall som hadde forlatt sin form der flammene hadde bestemt det – de glimtet til her og der i gjørmehavet.
Han så for seg infernoet og kjente ennå heten mot ansiktet mens han tråkket rundt og lette etter et ørlite tegn på gjenkjennelse av sin barndom. Til og med stakittgjerdet og hagen var avsvidd. Det ville ta hele sommeren å rydde opp. Og hva skulle man rydde for? Hvem skulle gjøre det? Han?
Plutselig, mens han sto og heiste opp vann fra brønnen, gikk det opp for ham at i stedet for å sørge, i stedet for å sitte hos Karna, i stedet for å be for dem alle i denne helvetes tid, så gikk han alene rundt og tenkte praktisk om en fremtid som kanskje ikke kom. Han lukket øynene og stakk hendene ned i vannet, øste det over ansiktet med åpen munn. Det smakte røyk og jern. Likevel drakk han begjærlig.
Da han åpnet øynene og tørket seg over ansiktet med hendene, så han plutselig sin mor, Ingeborg, stå under det svidde lerketreet nederst i hagen. Så henne bøye seg ned der det skulle vært grønt gress. Så at hun løftet hånden for å klappe den svarte katten sin. Varsomt. Så henne stivne til et øyeblikk, før hun liksom bikket mot ham og ble liggende der uten å ta seg for. Og idet han forsto at hun ikke kom til å reise seg igjen, ble alt omkring ham svart. Den lyse sommerkjolen med rysj rundt hals og ermer. Håret som hun ikke hadde flettet ennå. Skoene som hun hadde gått litt skjeve og utvidet så det bare var å sette føttene i dem tidlig om morgenen når hun gikk ut i nødvendig ærende.
Den aldrende presten Johan Grønelv sto der og visste ennå ikke, ikke etter et helt liv, hvordan han skulle komme videre fra dette synet. Nettopp fordi han hadde fortrengt det så ettertrykkelig.
Han hadde vært et elsket og bortskjemt barn, av sin mor Ingeborg, som fikk ham som første barn vel førti år gammel. Etter hennes død hadde han likevel farmor Karens beskyttelse og sin far Jacobs sporadiske oppmerksomhet.
Han var tjue år, men langt fra tørr bak ørene da han ble kalt hjem fra skole for å overvære at faren giftet seg på nytt med den knapt seksten år gamle Dina. Denne uforutsigbare kraften på godt og vondt.
Studier i Kjøbenhavn, prestegjerning og flere tiår i Amerika hadde ikke visket ut at han alltid hadde begjært sin fars hustru. Hele livet hadde han visst at han brøt Guds bud uten å være i stand til anger. Dina påvirket hans måte å se seg selv og verden på. Hun hadde, uten å være der fysisk, sakte, men sikkert plukket av ham trangen til beskyttelse mot synd.
Det at hun nå var død, skulle ikke få ødelegge noe. For ham var hun ikke borte. At det var en ny fase av ungdommens virkelighetsflukt, fikk så være. Presten i ham hadde på en måte endelig fått et personlig kall.
*
Johan seilte til Strandstedet for å snakke med Benjamin. Foreslo at de satte noen karer i sving for å rydde og så gress på branntomten. Gjøre den til en minnelund. Men Benjamin stirret forvirret og blankt på ham. Tagg ham bare om å prøve å få Karna til å snakke. Hjelpe til så alt kunne bli til å leve med.
Og Johan prøvde virkelig å snakke med Karna. Hun satt ved vinduet i kammerset i _privaten_ og ville verken se på ham eller meddele seg. Idet han så henne, forsto han hvilke krefter han hadde vært med på å sette i gang. Han gikk ned på kne ved stolen hun satt på, og ba høyt til Vår Herre. Men det kom ingen svar derfra. Og Karna så ikke på ham, snurret bare frynsene på sjalet sitt rundt fingrene mens hun stirret på noe langt av gårde, over hustakene eller ute i Vågen.
Da han skulle gå og ville ta omkring henne, ristet hun ham av seg som om han skulle være en fremmed frakk. Nettopp det, tenkte han, _en fremmed_ _frakk_.
Han var en elendig seiler i motvind, så han rodde langs strendene til Reinsnes. Ikke var han særlig sterk til å ro heller. Men det gikk. Han hadde hyret fire mann til å rydde branntomten. Allerede neste dag skulle de komme etter.
*
Vinkjelleren under det nedbrente huset hadde rast sammen. Karene mente at det enkleste var å fylle den igjen sammen med resten av kjelleren og slette tomten. Men Johan beordret dem til å grave ut vinkjelleren. Et arbeid karene syntes var meningsløst. De mumlet og skiftet blikk.
Men han enset det ikke. Var selv med og ryddet så aske og jord føk om ørene. Fikk alt opp i lyset, helt til det gamle skifergulvet kom til syne og steinveggene sto frem i lyset.
De fant sju av Dinas vinflasker hele og uskadde. Han bar dem varsomt med seg til kårstua som om de skulle vært spedbarn. I det som en gang hadde vært forrådsrom, fant han årets ubenyttete settepoteter i kasser på et plankebord. Som ved et under sto det ennå oppreist under deler av sammenraste gulvplanker. De bleke groene over kassekanten glodde foraktelig på ham.
Han husket hvordan hun hadde ertet ham da hun kom seilende fra Strandstedet alene nå sist. For bare få uker siden. Hun hadde jo et ærend, i fall folk undret seg over at de to var der ute alene. Eller brydde hun seg overhodet om hva folk sa og tenkte? Neppe. Ærendet var i alle fall at hun skulle se om det lot seg gjøre å be til St. Hans-fest for familie og venner som i gamle dager, før hun flyttet fra stedet.
De måtte ned i kjelleren og se hva som fantes av gammel vin. Han hadde åpnet luka i kjøkkengulvet, og hun hadde klatret ned med lykten. De hadde gått gjennom forrådsrommet som hadde vindu med jernsprosser mot gården. Idet lyset falt ned på bordet med de grodde settepotetene, hadde hun ledd den mørke latteren sin.
– Du e en dårlig forpaktar for Reinsnes, min gode Johan. Det e snart St. Hans og poteten e ennu ikkje kommen i jorda.
Og hva hadde han svart? Hadde han rukket å svare? For det var _da_ , alt før de åpnet døren til den beksvarte vinkjelleren at han hadde tatt etter henne? Eller hadde han bare tenkt på at han ønsket det? Var det hun som hadde tatt etter ham? Det var i vinkjelleren de endte. Eller begynte. Etter alle disse årene. Han husket ikke hvordan det gikk til. Bare den resolutte håndbevegelsen da hun satte fra seg lykten på steingulvet og de hugg armene om hverandre.
Han beordret karene til å legge tredekke som på et brønnhus over der vinkjelleren hadde vært, og lage dør og trapp ned dit. De så undrende på ham, men gjorde som han sa. Det tok bare et par dager ekstra, og han betalte dem i hånden før de seilte bort. Så var det bare ham igjen, foruten villdyr og fugl.
Han satt på en vinkasse og beregnet med blikket det nøyaktige stedet der kroppene deres hadde funnet hverandre. Gjenopplevde det. Smilte uten å vite det. Fant ei gammel skipskiste på brygga og dro den opp bakkene etter et fortøyningstau. Dro den ned i vinkjelleren til det utvalgte stedet og satte lykten på den. Den kastet skygger mot den rå steinveggen.
Så gikk han inn i kårstua og tok på seg kjole og krage. Uten bibel, men med en av vinflaskene og to glass fra kjøkkenet i kårstua steg han ned under det nye planketaket. Lykten sto alt og lyste opp alteret. Eimen av brann, aske og fuktig jord gjorde ham ikke lenger så fortapt. Mennesket tilpasser seg.
Teksten kunne han uten bok. Han vigslet stedet til Dina Grønelvs minne. Kraften og klangen i egen stemme forbauset ham selv. Kanskje var han endelig blitt en prest med autoritet? Deretter åpnet han flasken, som ikke lenger hadde en etikett man kunne tyde, og skjenket i begge glassene. Stående, og med et av de sjeldne smilene sine, skålte han mot steinveggen. Det ene glasset sto urørt en stund. Så tømte han det også. Vinen var ikke dekantert og hadde en merkelig skarp, støvete, men langt fra sur ettersmak.
Dinas fysiske kropp var fraværende, som rimelig kunne være. Men det hadde han årelang øvelse i å håndtere.
# ANNA TAR EN AVGJØRELSE
Doktorgården var mennesketom og overflommet av lys natt. Anna satt i åpen morgenkåpe ved pianoet. Uten noter. Visste ikke selv hva hun prøvde å spille. Hun bare slo. Hamret. Fingrene var stive og uten følsomhet. Hodet fylt av raseri. Igjen var hun blitt vekket av drømmer. Om avmakt. Om sinne. Hvordan kunne Johan, en voksen mann, en prest, utsette et barn for å tilstå sin farmors ugjerninger i kirken? Fattet han ikke at det var grenser for hva et ungt menneske kunne tåle?
Annas raseri var større enn sorgen over de døde. Det gjaldt ikke bare Johan, men også Wilfred Olaisen. At det ikke var han som rent fysisk hadde fått det til å brenne, spilte ingen rolle. For det var _han_ som fortalte henne om Benjamins utroskap med Hanna. Det hadde startet alt. Fått henne ut av kontroll. Fått henne til å glemme at det var _hun_ som hadde ansvaret for den tente lampen på mørkeloftet. Ikke Karna.
_Brannen_. Det var ikke et mareritt, _det hadde hendt_. En kjedereaksjon fra det ene menneskets handling, til ord, til følelse og til nye handlinger.
Hun så at hun prøvde å fordele skyld, for selv å komme lettere fra det. Det hjalp bare ikke. Hun kom ikke videre. Lengtet bare etter å rømme fra det, alt sammen. Hadde til og med forberedt Benjamin på at hun kom til å reise til Kjøbenhavn denne sommeren. Etter samtalen der han tilsto sin utroskap. Men det var før Karna stengte dem ute. Nå kunne hun ikke tenke på å reise fra dem.
I natt hadde hun våknet av at Hannas ansikt ble deformert i flammer. Nå, mens hun hamret løs på pianoet, så hun henne for seg i live. De siste årene uten smil eller glede, bare med det skjeve sideblikket hun av og til kunne merke. Åsynet til et menneske som misunte henne alt. Men i de første årene på Reinsnes var hun annerledes. Et gyllent ansikt med mørke øyne omkranset av tungt, svart hår. Anna hadde kjent uro helt fra begynnelsen. En uvilje, ja sjalusi overfor denne kvinnen som kjente stedet, gården, skikkene, språket – og hennes Benjamin – så mye bedre enn henne selv.
Hun hadde prøvd å være den veloppdragne professordatteren som ikke skulle mistro noen eller skape ufred. Det var naivt og tåpelig. Hun skulle konfrontert ham. Vært tydelig. Da hadde hun kanskje nå sluppet å være den eneste som ikke sørget over Hannas død. På få dager var Hanna blitt stedets helgen. En som ofret livet for å finne Karna og Dina på det brennende loftet. De sa at hun var utbrent til det ugjenkjennelige da de fant restene og samlet det sammen i et gammelt seil.
Kunne hun ha hevndrømmer om den døde Hanna? Nei. Men hun sørget ikke. Hvem var hun blitt? Var hun like ond som Wilfred Olaisen? Han sørget. Han var fullstendig knust.
Hun la seg over hele tangentrekken med armer og overkropp. Støyen var overdøvende så lenge den varte. Lenge satt lyden i brystet og kraniet. Som et mylder av buldrende ondskap. Det tomme huset lyttet. Etter en tid la hun lokket på. Hvorfor elsket hun en mann som ikke hadde nok med _en_ kvinne?
Et noteark lå på gulvet under klaveret. Franz Liszt. Liebestraum. Hun reiste seg langsomt og plukket det opp. Så åpnet hun lokket igjen og la notene foran seg. Idet hun bøyde seg over tangentene, kom kraften. Den gode kraften. En skjør glede over å være til.
*
– Hva har skjedd? spurte Benjamin.
Anna sto utenfor Karnas kammers med forbindingssaker i hendene da han kom for å avløse henne for kvelden.
– En skalpell. Hun hadde fått tak i en skalpell.
Han sprang inn i kammerset. Karna lå med åpne øyne og stirret i taket. Hendene hennes lå på teppet. Høyre håndledd var plastret og forbundet.
– Ka i himmelens navn har du gjort, jente! ropte han og bøyde seg ned til henne.
– Jeg kom i tide. Det er ikke så ille. Du behøver ikke å sy. Hun har fått noe å sove på, sa Anna fra døren.
Karna løftet den friske hånden og skjøv faren fra seg. Så knep hun øynene igjen. Han slapp henne, dyttet dyna godt om henne og ble stående.
– Det der gjør du aldri meir! truet han.
– Jeg tror hun trenger å sove nå, sa Anna.
Han dro en stol bort til sengen uten å svare. Og Anna visste at han kom til å bli sittende til Karna sovnet.
Hun sto ved skjenken i Dinas private stue og dyttet sølvbestikk inn i en flanellspose da hun hørte ham komme fra Karna.
– Hva gjør du? spurte han. Stemmen var trett.
– Jeg låser inn dette så lenge. Alle skarpe ting jeg ser. Du må selv sørge for at barberkniven din ikke ligger fremme. Men det er jo nytteløst. Hele huset er fullt av glass og skarpe ting.
– Ja, sa han og ble stående rett bak henne.
– Vi må snakke før jeg går, sa hun og snudde seg.
– Ja, sa han igjen.
De sto mot hverandre. Nær.
– Jeg har ikke fått i henne mat. Og da jeg ville ha henne til å skifte tøy, ble hun rasende og dunket hodet mot veggen. Etter en stund ble hun rolig. Men da jeg gikk ut av huset et øyeblikk, og hun var alene, hendte det... Jeg aner ikke hvor hun fant skalpellen.
– Jeg skulle ha vært her, sa han og satte seg.
– Nei. Det var mitt ansvar. Vi går på skift her, du og jeg, sa hun med fremmed stemme.
– En måned har gått... Vi kan ikke leve slik, hver for oss, begynte han. Kan du ikke bli her i natt? La oss spise sammen, Anna... Jeg trenger...
– Jeg har tenkt, sa hun og satte seg på den andre siden av bordet.
– Tenkt? spurte han og strøk hånden over ansiktet og håret. En bevegelse som etter alle disse årene ennå gjorde henne vek.
– Vi må finne en som forstår seg på et ungt sinn. Du og jeg er ikke engang i stand til å avgjøre om hun har mistet vettet, sa hun, og stålsatte seg mot reaksjonen da hun fortsatte.
– I går kontaktet jeg far. Gikk til telegrafen. I dag kom et telegram tilbake. Han vil hjelpe oss. Da gikk jeg til telegrafen igjen og...
Benjamin satte øynene i henne.
– Du gikk til telegrafen og kontaktet din far? Det var da Karna gjorde det?
Anna stirret igjen.
– Du bebreider meg likevel at jeg ikke var her?
– Nei, nei, hvordan kan jeg det, sukket han.
– Jeg vet at jeg skulle rådført meg med deg, men tiden strakk aldri til... Du var ikke her. Jeg mener, vi har nesten ikke snakket sammen, sa hun.
– Er det min feil?
– Nei. Det er blitt slik. Men i dag kontaktet jeg altså far.
– Og?
– Han kjenner overlegen i Hospitalbyen.
– Anna! Det er jo et sinnssykehus! Han støtte begge hender mot bordet med slik kraft at den tomme blomstervasen dirret.
Hun grep vasen med begge hender og styrtet til skjenken med den. Låste den inn og ble stående med ryggen til ham.
Han gikk bort til henne.
– Tilgi meg, Anna.
– Hun skal jo bare til samtale. Eller til observasjon, om du vil. Du er vel enig i at vi ikke kan la henne forgå her mens vi venter på et under? Eller at hun greier _å gjøre det_..., sa hun og snudde seg mot ham.
– Karna er ikke sinnssyk, hun har vært utsatt for umenneskelig press. Det har utløst denne... denne stumheten, sa han og kastet et blikk mot døren.
– Det er ikke bare stumheten, Benjamin. Hun er syk. Det er viktig at professoren får møte henne, forstår du ikke det?
– Uansett hva jeg forstår eller ikke, disse _folkene_ , kanskje også overlegen på Hospitalet, er ofte av den mening at epilepsi er en type galskap. Jeg hadde denne samtalen med din far da de var på besøk hos oss.
– Hun skal ikke i samtale med far, han er kirurg og har ikke greie på slikt. Hun skal til en kapasitet på sinnslidelser. Jeg sier deg at jeg kommer til å bestille lugarplass for Karna og meg – til Bergen og Kjøbenhavn!
– Det er vel forhastet, Anna?
– Jeg orker ikke å tenke på at vi ikke gjør nok for at hun skal få hjelp. Jeg vet at hun greier å ta livet av seg dersom hun vil. Og jeg kan ikke leve med at jeg ikke gjorde nok for å forhindre det!
Døren til gangen gikk brått opp. Karna sto i åpningen og så fra den ene til den andre. Kom mot dem. Så på dem med et tomt blikk. Så snudde hun seg, trakk det store, grønne sjalet tettere omkring seg og gikk inn til seg selv igjen.
Benjamin gikk etter.
Anna ble stående. En underlig avmakt gjorde henne nummen. For det gikk opp for henne at hun hadde bestemt at hun skulle reise _alene_ med den syke Karna til Kjøbenhavn. Hun skulle håndtere alt som skjedde, uten at Benjamin var der. I en båt. På ville havet.
Da han kom tilbake, sto hun der fremdeles i samme stilling. Foroverbøyd med hengende armer.
– Hun hallusinerer, eller går i søvne. Hun kjenner meg ikke. Men hun er i alle fall rolig, sa han trett.
Med et hikst tok Anna tak i ham og dro ham heftig inntil seg. Så sto de der og klamret seg til hverandre.
– Jeg tror som du at hun ikke er gal. Men hun vil ikke lenger være delaktig i denne verden. Hun har gjennomskuet oss alle, sa hun.
Han rugget henne klossete i armene.
– Du har rett, Anna. Hun trenger andre enn oss. Og du er modig som har bestemt at du vil ta henne med.
Han slapp henne og ga seg til å gå rundt i rommet. Tok tak i en stolrygg. La hendene på bordet. Fortsatte vandringen og stanset ved vinduet.
– Blir det strevsomt underveis – så tenk på at Kjøbenhavn er storartet på denne tiden. Du får anledning til å høre musikk. Gå på konsert. Foreldrene dine har jo til og med flygel, sa han med fremmed stemme.
Hun så forbauset på ham.
– Det mangler da ikke musikkinstrumenter her, sa hun kort.
– Nei, men likesinnede har du ikke, nå som Dina ikke er mer, og Karna..., begynte han, men gikk i stå.
– Hvorfor begynner du å snakke om slikt? spurte hun.
– Fordi jeg så Karna og plutselig også _din_ situasjon i alt dette.
– Min situasjon? Du mener Karnas?
– Nei, jeg så _deg_. Jeg tok deg bort fra alt som var viktig for deg, Anna, er det ikke så? I Kjøbenhavn kunne du blitt pianistinne. Det var det du drømte om.
– Det var jeg som valgte det bort, sa hun.
– For min skyld?
– For min egen, sa hun bestemt.
Han så på henne. De hadde hele gulvet imellom seg.
– Du er nådeløs – mot deg selv også, sa han likefrem.
– Du mener jeg er nådeløs mot deg? Har du bedt om nåde? spurte hun.
– Ja. Men jeg gjentar det gjerne nå, for det plager oss begge. Det med... en annen, det skulle vært ugjort. Kan du tenke på å tilgi meg?
Først bøyde hun bare hodet og så ikke på ham. Så rettet hun seg opp.
– Hadde hun ennå vært i live, så hadde du ikke kunnet love at det ikke ville skje igjen. Og så ber du meg tilgi?
– Hun er død. Anna... _vi_ er her. Kan du tilgi meg?
– Jeg sier ikke _nå_ at jeg kan, bare for å trøste oss. For jeg vet ikke om jeg kan, sa hun hjelpeløst.
Han snudde seg fra henne og slo ut med armene.
– Nei vel. Men kom! Spill for meg, Anna. Jeg ber deg...
– Karna sover... Det må vi også. Jeg går nå, sa hun og gikk mot døren.
# BENJAMINS VIRKELIGHET
Han åpnet døren til soverommet og ble stående på terskelen. Annas orden hersket der inne. Rommet var hennes, mer enn hans, med spor etter henne overalt. Som om hun bare hadde tatt dampen til Tromsø. Da han åpnet skapene, forsto han at de koffertene som ble båret om bord for en stor del var Karnas. Klærne hennes, og sikkert bøker og alt det hun kunne trenge i lang tid fremover. Annas egne klær og ting fylte fremdeles opp her.
Så hadde hun ment det hun sa da han spurte om hun kom tilbake. Det var ikke lenger slik mellom dem at han kunne ta det som en selvfølge. Derfor måtte han spørre.
– Tilbake? Det er det jeg håper på, hadde hun sagt og sett på ham. Som om svaret lå hos ham.
– Da har vi samme håp, sa han og prøvde å smile.
De hadde sittet i Dinas stue på Grand i går kveld og snakket om alt det praktiske. Hun hadde spurt om han hadde pakket ned Karnas medisin og skrevet ferdig rapporten hun skulle ha med til overlegen på Hospitalet. Han hadde bekreftet det, gitt henne rikelig med reisepenger og avtalt neste forsending, slik en god ektemann skal.
Han prøvde å spøke med å si at hun kunne overtatt hans praksis når som helst, for hun hadde full kontroll. Det fikk henne til å smile litt. Så var det ikke _bare_ is mellom dem, hadde han tenkt. Men mye is. Ja.
Han takket henne for at hun tok på seg å være alene med Karna på den lange reisen. Hørte selv at det lød som om han takket for en gave som han kanskje ikke fortjente.
Denne scenen var helt nær. Mens scenen for tre timer siden, da de sto i lugaren og tok farvel etter at han hadde gitt Karna beroligende – kunne vært flere år siden. Etter kampen med å få henne flyttet fra Grand til båten, der han hadde båret henne opp landgangen og ned i lugaren mens folk på kaia var vitner – det var blitt borte i en merkelig skodde.
Disse ukene etter begravelsen hadde han bare vært på dette soverommet for å hente rene klær. Kontoret, venteværelset og kjøkkenet var de rommene han hadde oppholdt seg i når han var i doktorgården.
Han gikk bort til den brede sengen. Betraktet det hvite sengeteppet som om han aldri skulle ha sett det før. På hennes side lå det alltid en pyntepute med blonde og rysj, noe han hadde nedlagt forbud mot på sin side. Hvor tåpelig kan en mann bete seg når det gjelder små ting? tenkte han. Og hvor katastrofalt kan en mann bete seg når det er alvor?
En scene sto plutselig frem. Han sto i ekspedisjonsprammen for å ta imot henne første gang hun kom med dampen til Reinsnes. Hun klatret baklengs ned leideren på det svarte skroget. Frisk sørvest herjet med skjørtene hennes. Nesten nede i armene hans vendte hun på hodet og så på ham med øyne fulle av skrekkblandet fryd.
Av og til ble sekundene stående for alltid mens årene løp blindt av sted.
*
På første herredsstyremøte ba han seg løst fra ordførervervet. Gjorde det kort, uten formaliteter. Sa at han ikke lenger hadde den arbeidslyst eller tro på fremtiden som var nødvendig. Han ville vie all sin tid til å være distriktslege.
Først ble det dryppende stille, så kom protestene. Den ene etter den andre. De ville ikke løse ham. Postmesteren irettesatte ordførerens _forkvaklede tankesett_ , som han kalte det.
– Tunge daga, det har vi nokken og enkver, det skal han vette. Og ei tid har det gått over alle støvleskaft for ordførarn. Men nu har han sendt både kjerring og datter sørover, og e uten _den_ bekymringa. Skulle han då ikkje kunne lede et skarve herredsstyre mens han plastra folk i hop?
Denne talen ble applaudert så ettertrykkelig at han måtte smile. Og mot sin vilje gikk han med på å sitte med klubba, i alle fall til de fant en ny.
Etter møtet dro de ham med til Grand Hotel og lot seg traktere med middag, sigar og punsj. Det skulle være på offentlig bekostning, mente de enstemmig. Da regning skulle gjøres opp, sa han bestemt at den skulle sendes, for det måtte være et bilag. Og stikk i strid med hva en god forretningsmann ville gjort, sørget han for at den aldri ble sendt.
Men hendelsen gjorde noe med ham. Dette at folk tvang ham til å yte noe for dem. At de absolutt ville ha ham. Ikke bare pasientene, de friske ville også ha ham. Da han trodde han ble møtt med forakt etter Karnas vitnemål, var det kanskje mer en slags sjenanse eller hjelpeløshet. For hva kunne de gjøre?
De sladret sikkert om at han var sønn av en morderske, men de slengte det ikke etter ham. Karnas tale i begravelsen hørte han heller aldri nevnt. Det slo ham at det ikke hadde stått så mye som en liten notis i Bladet. Han visste ikke hva han skulle mene om det. Selvsagt var det mest behagelig for ham, men var det rett? Skulle det ikke stått på trykk, dette utrolige, at Dina Grønelv, stedets forretningskvinne og ordførerens mor hadde tatt livet av to menn?
Dersom han hadde vært redaktør, og ikke sønn, ville han da ha _unnlatt_ å skrive, om så bare en notis om dette? Nei. Kanskje hadde han rundet det av med at etterslekten ikke kunne klandres for mødres misgjerninger. Men han hadde slått det opp. I alle fall en liten notis.
Det slo ham at Strandstedet hadde valgt ham som sin egen, uansett hva hans mor hadde gjort. De beskyttet ham ut over det som var saklig og rett. Han kunne kjenne seg trygg og hjemme. Da måtte han se bort fra at de ikke forsto at alt kunne bli kaos i et menneske. Eller? Kanskje en og annen forsto, likevel. Men et herredsstyre var ikke noe sted for vagt føleri. Derfor hadde de bare nektet ham å gå av.
*
Han mottok telegram fra Kjøbenhavn. De var kommet vel frem. Alt godt med dem begge. Den korte meldingen var en lettelse, og en hån. Han ventet på brevet. Hadde ventet helt siden han så dampen legge fra kai.
En kyndig dame fra Tromsø tok seg av det daglige på doktorkontoret. Alt slikt Anna hadde gjort. Han innlosjerte henne på Karnas kammers på Grand. Hun var ikke helt ung og holdt fletten kveilet rundt hodet som en kveker. Hetten og det stive forkleet var som strøket på henne. Hun brukte briller, men hadde dem mest i forklelommen mens hun myste vennlig på alle. Tankene sine holdt hun for seg selv. Det virket beroligende på ham.
Nå og da kom det ei enke og tok seg av det huslige mot betaling, uten at han så særlig forskjell etter at hun hadde vært der. Noen husholderske kom ikke på tale. Tanken på at en fremmed sov et sted i huset, gjorde ham ufri. Visste selv at det var en eremitts tankegang. Likevel, slik måtte det være.
Hver morgen skar han sine to brødskiver og dynget på med søt-bittert rabarbrasyltetøy. Satt ved kjøkkenbordet og drakk kruttsterk kaffe til mens han stirret ut av vinduet uten å se det slag.
Av og til om kvelden, særlig etter sene sykebesøk, sto han ved benken i spiskammeret og spiste kalde fiskekaker som han hadde tigget hos kokka på Grand, eller svartkveite som han renset med fingrene. Det hendte at han prøvde en ensom øvelse når han kom opp på soverommet, bare for å måtte slå fast at manndommen hans hadde seilt med Anna til Kjøbenhavn.
*
Benjamin ga unge Peder det daglige ansvaret på Verftet. Ikke på formann Jensens enemerker, men på kontoret. For et par år siden hadde Peder lånt penger hos sin bror for å gå på skole i Bergen. Da Wilfred måtte selge aksjene i Verftet og konkurs truet ekspedisjonen på kaia, forlangte han at Peder skulle arbeide hos ham for kost, losji og lommepenger. Det var da Dina hadde hentet ham til Verftet.
Benjamin fant papirer som viste at Dina i kontrakts form hadde lovet Peder at Verftet skulle finansiere utdannelse som maskiningeniør denne høsten, mot at han skrev under på at han skulle komme tilbake til Verftet.
En dag mens de gikk gjennom regnskapet sammen, spurte han når Peder skulle reise.
– Det e meir bruk for mæ her nu, sa Peder unnvikende.
– Det e bruk for dæ, ja. Men en kontrakt med Dina kan du ikkje renne fra. Æ ser tydelig at det e best at du gjør dæ ferdig i Bergen så fort som mulig slik at du kan driv Verftet med papiran i orden. For det kan verken æ eller ho Karna. Skal æ hente kontrakten, så du får se den, i fall du har glømt det?
– Nei. Æ har ikkje glømt. Æ skreiv jo under. Ho sa at æ hadde plass i Bergen tel høsten. Men så kom brannen... Det blei så frøktelig stilt... Kan æ sett mæ? sa Peder og satte seg på Dinas stol uten å vente på svar. – Æ kan ikkje tru det, sa han forundret.
– Det blir du nødt tel. Vil du prøv å få losji der du va sist?
– Ja, har ho madam Brede plass tel mæ, så e det best, sa han.
– Du må sjøl finn ut ka tid du skal vær der for ikkje å møste plassen din, sa Benjamin.
– Ka i herrens navn skal æ sei? Utenom takk og atter takk!
– Takk ikkje mæ, det e du som må gjør jobben, sa Benjamin og fant frem flasken med Genever – og to av Dinas små stetteglass. Så tok han plass i besøksstolen på den andre siden av bordet.
– Gratulerer med fremtida, Peder! sa han og hevet glasset.
Peder løftet glasset mens han ristet på hodet.
– Hadde berre ho Karna vorre fresk, så hadde alt vorre herlighet, sa han og stirret i gulvet. En langstrakt oljeflekk prydet høyre kinn. Det tette, lyse håret hadde en dyp krans rundt hele hodet etter lua han hadde lagt på gulvet ved døren.
Benjamin svelget hardt.
– Ja, sa han bare.
Et par karer skjente godslig på hverandre i trappegangen idet de skilte lag for dagen.
– Men tel du kjem telbakers så treng Verftet førstehjelp, begynte Benjamin. – Æ vil vette om du har non tanka. Ka synes du om formannen? Klara han å holde i tauman?
– Det trur æ. Æ har ikkje hørt non har klaga på formannen. Men han hadde jo ikkje nokka her på kontoret å gjøre mens ho Dina... Vi må nok ha en bokholdar når æ fer tel Bergen.
– Godt. Så ansett vi en bokholdar. Fortell mæ litt om ka slags folk som arbeid her.
– Æ kjenne ikkje alle så godt, men æ snakka med dem kvær dag. Arbeidsstokken e smeda, dreiera, maskinarbeidera, skipstømmermenn, jernstøypera. Men få e på fast kontrakt. Og e det nokka de ikkje lika, så e det å være på laust fra vekka tel vekka. Kjenne de sæ ikkje trygg og har nok å gjøre, så kan de finne på å forsvinne.
– Lojaliteten e altså ikkje særlig stor?
– Det e ikkje snakk om lojalitet, de må jo ha nokka å leve a.
– Sjølsagt, sannet Benjamin og løftet glasset. Det var noe med Peders væremåte, hans evne til å ta alt slik det var. Han forsto Dinas tanker for denne karen. Det var ikke bare fordi Karna tydelig hadde vist sin hengivenhet for ham.
Benjamin bøyde seg over skrivebordet og senket stemmen. Så fortalte han kort at Wilfred hadde sendt ham et brev for noen dager siden, der han ba om å leie Verftet, for han greide ikke å reise kapital til å kjøpe det, skrev han.
Peder så kvast opp og satte glasset varsomt fra seg.
– Ikkje la han få kloa i Verftet. Æ ber dæ! Skal _han_ inn, så kan ikkje æ vær her. Og kjem han først inn, så får vi han ikkje ut, sa han avgjort.
– Det du sei gjør det lett for mæ. Men æ ville ha avvist det uansett. Æ sei det som det e, at det e du som skal ha det. Og tel då har vi en klar plan, avgjorde Benjamin.
– Då får æ sørge for at han ikkje slår mæ i hel før æ reis tel Bergen, mumlet Peder med et alvor de begge forsto.
– Du kan fløtt opp i doktorgården, så e du i alle fall trygg om natta. Æ har jo hus i massevis og e heilt aleina.
Peder så i gulvet og ristet på hodet.
– Takk for det. Men æ vil helst fortsett å bo i likkjerommet over kontoret her. Kort vei på arbeid og full kontroll med alt som røre på sæ.
Benjamin gjettet at den egentlige grunnen var at han ville unngå sin brors knyttnever og represalier for at han flyttet inn i doktorgården.
# ANNA I KJØBENHAVN
Faren fulgte dem til Hospitalet allerede dagen etter at de kom. Da overlegen hadde hatt en time alene med Karna, møtte de ham igjen på kontoret hans.
– Jeg har lagt henne inn til observasjon. Hun hører opplagt til her for en tid. Jeg har selv fulgt henne til kurhuset og sørget for medisineringen. Alt gikk godt.
Da Anna ville dit for å se hvordan hun hadde det, sa han at det ville fremkalle uro, kanskje konflikt, fordi hun måtte gå fra henne igjen. Han skulle gi beskjed når hun hadde falt til ro og var mottakelig for besøk.
– Men jeg har ikke forberedt henne på at jeg skulle forsvinne så brått..., begynte Anna.
– Fru Grønelv må tro meg når jeg sier at dette gjør minst vondt. Nå som frøken Karna er her i vår varetekt, er dette den rette måten, sa overlegen vennlig.
– Men hun er ikke vant til å bli overlatt til fremmede, sa Anna bestemt.
– Jeg beklager, fru Grønelv, men vi må gjøre det slik, ellers blir vi stående og stampe på samme sted. Det jeg kan si til trøst, er at pasienten har fått beroligende og antagelig allerede sover i sengen sin.
– Men når hun våkner? spurte Anna.
– Da er vi på pletten. Alle som arbeider her, vet akkurat hva de skal si og gjøre for at hun skal føle seg trygg. Jeg skal selv se til at alt går som det skal. Det lover jeg.
Hun orket ikke spørre om hva de hadde gitt henne. Et press mot tinningene kjentes som om hodet ville sprenges. Det var _hun_ som hadde brakt Karna hit. Nå måtte hun ta konsekvensene. Situasjonen gjorde henne umyndig. Dersom Karna skulle få den hjelpen hun trengte, måtte hun legge alt i hendene på folk som betraktet Karna som et tilfelle. Og hun hadde visst det hele tiden. Slik kom det til å bli.
I vognen tilbake til byen kom avmakten. Alt kvernet rundt. Den lange reisen, ansvaret. Alt det hun ikke mestret, men _måtte_ mestre. Ikke engang å kunne forlate lugaren uten å ta Karna med. Bare sove lett i fall Karna fant på å ta seg opp på dekk alene. Og hele tiden, over brann, død og Karnas skjebne, lå vissheten om Benjamins svik med Hanna. Det gjorde alt til en fastklebet plikt. Og nå, da hun hadde lagt ansvaret fra seg, kjentes selve livet som en ynkelig tom byrde.
Hun merket at faren betraktet henne uten å si noe. Han kremtet et par ganger, så ga han henne en halspastill og tok en selv. Da hun hadde puttet den i munnen og kjente anissmaken fra barndommen, begynte hun å gråte.
Faren la pastillesken omstendelig tilbake i lommen. Kremtet igjen.
– Anna, du har utført en bragd! Reisen du har gjort med dette barnet, er ikke for amatører, sa han enkelt, uten så mye som å røre ved skulderen hennes.
– Det er vel slik det er å være mor? snufset hun forundret.
Han så fort på henne og lot det gå en stund.
– Slike reiser hører vel ikke til de mest vanlige øvelsene, mente han og ga henne et lite smil.
– Nei. Og man skal nok helst ikke være alene om det.
– Mennesket skal uansett ikke være alene i lengden, sa han ut i luften.
Da de var tilbake i Store Kongensgade og moren ville ha henne med ut i byen _for forandringens skyld_ , som hun kalte det, var faren på pletten.
– Jeg har beordret Anna til sengs. Hun holdt på å sovne i vognen, løy han og tok opp dokumentmappen for å gå til hospitalet.
– Du store verden, vennen min! Men en kopp varm te skal du i alle fall ha, mente moren omtenksomt.
– Takk! Det ville vært deilig, sa Anna.
Men moren var alt i anretningen og stemmen hadde kontakt med piken på kjøkkenet.
Anna sov seg gjennom resten av dagen. En gang våknet hun da et brett ble brakt inn. Hun gikk på toalettet, spiste litt og tenkte på at hun skulle stå opp. Så kom synene. At Karna hadde hatt kontinuerlige anfall på Hospitalet. At hun gråt og raste fordi ingen kjente var rundt henne.
Hun fant vesken med medisinen hun hadde hatt med til Karna. Tok noen dråper opium og la seg igjen.
Neste morgen var søster Sophies tomme seng det første hun så. Moren hadde lagt Karna og henne i _frøkenrommet_ som piken kalte det. Rommet hun og søsteren hadde vokst opp i.
Karna var borte! Hun fór opp av sengen og sto midt på gulvet før hun husket hvordan det var.
Hun måtte få faren til å finne ut hvordan det gikk. Måtte tigge ham. Men da hun hadde stelt seg og møtte piken i spisestuen, fikk hun vite at faren alt var gått til hospitalet, og moren hadde fått frokost på sengen.
– Vil fru Grønelv ha frokosten her? spurte hun og neiet.
– Ja, gjerne, men jeg kan hente den selv.
Piken så fort på henne uten å svare. Et øyeblikk etter kom hun med brettet. Det duftet ferskt brød og nytrukken kaffe. Anna bestemte seg. Sukket. Så ga hun seg hen til et måltid alene.
*
Hun hadde glemt detaljene. Kunne ikke huske at hun hadde tenkt på at de tunge gardinene hindret lyset i å komme inn i rommene. Eller at møblene kvalte hverandre i sin overdådighet. De kostbare pyntegjenstandene sto sikkert der de alltid hadde stått, men hun erindret dem bare nå, når hun så dem. Hadde de noen gang betydd noe for henne? Og morens stemme? Var hun forberedt på at den tok rommet selv om den egentlig ikke var særlig høy. Nei. Hun hadde til og med glemt lukten av farens pipe i biblioteket og den svake anelsen av lavendel og ost i anretningen. Var ikke forberedt på at de hadde forandret seg. Den begynnende aldringen. Disse årene hun ikke hadde sett dem.
Etter et par dager vennet hun seg til det. Hun så seg i speilet og forsto at heller ikke hun var den samme. Hun hadde vært lenge borte. Prøvde å regne. Femten år? Og denne tiden hadde havoverflatens skiftende farge vært det første hun så fra vinduet når hun sto opp. Synet av havet hadde lært henne å ta temperaturen på det som skulle være hennes dag. Først på det gamle handelsstedet Reinsnes, så i doktorgården på Strandstedet. Store Kongensgade i Kjøbenhavn var ikke lenger hennes liv, men et sted med barndommen i veggene. Det tok imot henne bak fôrede gardiner fordi hun var i nød.
Men _en_ ting var en gjenkjennelig glede. Flygelet. Det sto i salongen der det alltid hadde stått. Med grønt, brodert filtdekke over lokket. De gamle notene sto der fremdeles. Drømmene fra ungdommen gjorde henne sentimental. Trist. For de kunne aldri bli noe av. Hun ville ikke engang tenke på det. Men spille, det kunne hun. Hun fant frem notene hun hadde med seg.
Og moren hadde straks planer for henne. Hun skulle spille når damene i foreningen hun var med i holdt møte. De samlet gaver til inntekt for nødstilte barn. De skulle arrangere julemarked, og det var på høy tid å komme i gang med planlegging. Anna måtte absolutt spille for dem. Det fikk dem i stemning.
*
Anna var ikke forberedt på byen. Hadde ikke gledet seg eller sett frem til å møte den. Den første gangen hun gikk alene ut og bare drev omkring, var det som om årene allikevel ikke hadde gått og ingenting hadde skjedd.
Mengden av spaserende gjennom gatene lørdags ettermiddag. Skaren med fikse damer under parasoller som bevegde seg over Kongens Nytorv og forbi Det Kongelige Teater. Herrene som la sin vei til og fra forretning og kontor i samme distrikt. Tjenestepikene på innkjøp med sine korger over armen på Østergade. Unge menn i hopetall, eller en og en, som _tilfeldigvis_ drev i samme retning. Slik hadde det alltid vært. Slik var også hennes ungdoms Kjøbenhavn som hun ikke kunne huske om hun hadde savnet. Ikke før nå. Der hun gikk alene mellom fremmede og ikke hadde noen oppgave utenom den å være her på ubestemt tid. En slags medfølger for Karnas ulykke.
Men da hun drev forbi Regensen, husket hun hvordan hun hadde misunt de unge studentene, Aksel også, at de hadde et mål som ble akseptert og sett opp til. Unge menn som skulle bli leger som hennes far. Mens hun skulle gifte seg med Aksel og bli frue et eller annet sted. Hun hadde kjent Aksel bestandig, og hun likte ham fordi han alltid fikk henne til å le. Men drømmen om å elske noen kunne han ikke innfri. Og det var ikke hans feil. I denne kretsen av venninner som også søkte kjekke studenter og vognturer ut til Klampenborg, i denne kretsen møtte hun en dag Benjamin. Han var annerledes. Traff noe i henne som hun ikke visste fantes. Aksel tok ham med til middag i Store Kongensgade, og hun hørte stemmen hans. Han snakket om Kierkegaard som om det skulle være en elsket far. Etter det ble det slik at hun ville treffe ham og være nær ham. Men hun ville også provosere ham til å vise hvem han var. Teste ham. For hva? Det visste hun ikke da. Men nå visste hun det. Han sa ikke alt han tenkte, og fortalte ikke om sine svik.
Anna sto utenfor Regensen og husket også at hun hadde ertet ham, bedt ham om å være en ørliten skandale så Aksels prestefamilie ikke godtok henne som svigerdatter. Husket ikke lenger hvordan de unngikk det. Bare at det var han som vek, mens hun... Hvorfor var hun da blitt den bedratte?
# HOSPITALETS JOURNAL
## August 1890
_Ung pike 17_ _år. Født i Kjøbenhavn 23. april 1873,_ _av ugift mor_ _som døde ved fødselen._ _Har vokst opp_ _i Norge_ _med sin norske far og danske stemor_.
_Pasienten er tilsynelatende uten språk eller trang til å meddele seg._ _Vanskelig å stille diagnose for dette, da det tilsynelatende ikke_ _er_ _noen_ _feil ved_ _stemmebånd eller pust._ _Stemor opplyser at pasienten har prøvd å skjære over pulsåren med en skalpell._ _Opplyser_ _også_ _at pasienten hele livet har vært plaget av epileptiske anfall. Noe hun ikke har fått annen medisin for enn hvile_.
_Hennes far_ _er lege og mener at hun skal forskånes fra brom._ _Han har lagt ved en egen sykdomsrapport. Det går frem at hun i stor grad har levd et beskyttet liv_ _med god_ _opplæring, særlig innen musikk. Hun_ _har hatt en god sangstemme_ _og_ _vært utpreget sosial og verbal_.
_Han mener_ _at vendingen til galskap kom etter_ _at hennes farmor omkom i en stor brann. I begravelsen holdt_ _dessuten_ _den unge piken_ _en tale foran hele kirkelyden der hun på den avdødes vegne tilsto to drap hennes farmor skulle_ _ha begått. Siden har_ _hun ikke_ _villet snakke. Heller ikke til stemoren på den lange sjøreisen fra Nordland_.
_Hun_ _har_ _sluttet å vise_ _noen interesse for musikk og bøker eller verden for øvrig._ _Hun har også sluttet å menstruere,_ _og_ _kjennes ikke ved den unge mannen hun_ _skulle forloves med. Hvem hun ellers kjennes ved,_ _er uklart fordi hun ikke vil meddele seg. Ifølge stemor_ _kjennes_ _hun_ _ved_ _sin far og stemor, og viser i noen grad hengivelse overfor dem_.
_Pasienten laget en rasende scene ved ankomst da man ville kle på henne pasientdrakten, noe man ga opp og lot henne beholde sine egne klær. Hun viser tidvis aggressiv oppførsel overfor medpasienter som kommer for nær eller lager uro rundt henne. Det har vist seg nødvendig å flytte henne til enecelle_ _da det ble ledig plass. Særlig har dette vært nyttig om nettene._ _Hun_ _ligger nå oftest våken med vidåpne øyne uten å lage uro. For så å falle i søvn utpå morgenen når lyset kommer. Tidvis prøver hun å sabotere maten, noe som i tillegg til dårlig søvn trolig utløser epileptiske anfall. Disse har vært moderate_.
_Varierende opptreden. For det meste rolig. Vandrende omkring, sittende eller liggende. Noe urolig, særlig om natten._ _Hun_ _har ingen problemer med å møte lege og personell, men vil/kan ikke svare på de spørsmål hun får. Det virker som om hun er til stede i situasjonen og iakttar alt, selv om hun ikke gir seg til kjenne. Pleierne rapporterer hendelser av mulig_ _hallusinasjon_ _og vrangforestilling om tid og rom,_ _som er vanskelig å få kunnskap om_ _fordi hun_ _ikke snakker. I den forbindelse viser hun protest og uro når noen vil lede henne bort fra situasjonen_.
_Hun behøver_ _kontinuerlig_ _tilsyn, men ikke isolasjon._ _For øvrig_ _er hun_ _fysisk frisk_ _og uten påviselige misdannelser_.
# GALSKAPENS HJEM
Der var den. En skikkelse. Som et silhuettklipp med kappe og stort hår, eller hette. Den rørte på seg. Nesten umerkelig. Som når en bris tar tak i noe på en klessnor. En uro i luften gjorde den større. Den vokste frem på muren av glass. Var det fordi hun stirret på den? Muren var henne selv. Hun så alt innenfra. Et skimmer, men allikevel tydelig.
Det å se innenfra gjorde alt sannere.
Like under hånden hennes lå en grein med både grønt og vissent løv. Hun grep om den. Følte den knudrete overflaten. Betydde det at hun var ute i virkeligheten?
Hun kom seg opp på kne og kjente stein mot håndflatene. Men så hørte hun stemmen. Altså var hun både innenfor og utenfor.
– Det beste er at du blir her til du får alt på avstand, sa stemmen.
Da hun så opp, var skikkelsen borte. Stemmen var der likevel. Som et ekko mot en mur. Muren var henne selv. Det var enkelt.
Død var bare for dem som var der ute. De raslet rundt som knapper i Hannas knappeglass. Hanna satt ikke lenger ved symaskinen på Strandstedet. Hun hadde tatt på den forkullede kappen som verken kunne varme eller true.
Farmor fløt rundt i dypet og hadde ingen sorger mer.
Det var pappas skalpell som gjorde at Anna tok henne med hit. Overga henne. Hvordan det hadde gått til, husket hun ikke lenger. Det var i en annen virkelighet. Men hun husket pappas øyne da han ga henne sprøyten. Virkeligheten lå i pappas øyne. Da hun våknet, hadde øynene hans slukt hele havet. Irisen hans lå i koøyet. Dag og natt. En dunkende stillhet. Vinden prøvde å riste henne til seg. Men klarte det ikke. Annas ansikt voktet over henne.
Nå var hun hos de gale. Alene. Det var best. Anna kunne ikke holde ut i det uendelige.
Her var ingen skarpe ting for hånden. Hun visste det for hun hadde sett etter. Rommet hennes var en kiste. En dårekiste. Hun var den eneste som hadde egen kiste. Det kunne bero på at de trodde hun var mer gal enn andre, eller fordi pappa betalte for at hun skulle slippe den verste støyen. Det var nytteløst.
Alle som bodde bortetter hospitalgangen kunne stå i døren og glo rett inn i sengen hennes om de ville. I begynnelsen gjorde det henne sint. De var fremmede og skjønte ikke hvem hun var. Trodde at de kunne få øye på hva hun tenkte. De var nok mer gale enn de selv visste.
En hadde så stor lengsel etter å komme ut at hun ropte og gråt om natten. På en måte var det en trøst å høre at noen lengtet. De var ikke kommet til den store tomheten. Ikke ennå.
Hun kunne være glad for at hun ikke kunne rope. En som henne hadde ikke bruk for det. Det var viktig for saken å holde seg til det som man hadde bruk for. Ellers kunne man miste seg selv. Hun visste hvem hun var. Hun var den eneste som visste hvem hun var.
Lyder kunne være plagsomme. Ikke dunk av suppespann og slamring med dører. Men stemmer. Særlig nattestemmene. Hodet var et trommeskinn som var nødt til å ta imot verdens stemmer og prøve å tyde hva de ville. Alle her inne hadde stor smerte. Hun var heldig som var uten. Noen ropte på en eller annen de ville skulle hente dem. Stemmene nedenfra var grove og rustne, som gamle heisekraner som ikke har noe ordentlig å ta seg til. Andre var skingrende og nær, som om de var i samme rom. De ville at hun skulle holde om dem. Men hun var ikke der for å holde om dem, men for å vitne.
Hun behøvde ikke å ynkes for dem. Likevel gjorde hun det. Særlig når hun gikk frem og tilbake i hospitalgangen med alle de åpne dørene. Dørene var rammen om galskapen. For de hadde naturligvis hvert sitt bilde. Noen var uflidde og sinte. Et par var bare en klesbylt med et ubevegelig hode. Egentlig var hun i et marionetteater der dukkeføreren hadde sovnet.
Hun orket det bare en kort stund. Så måtte hun tilbake i cellen sin. Vite at hun var utvalgt. En som ikke behøvde å rope om nettene, eller ønske seg noe annet sted. Og hun visste det jo. Før eller siden ville det brenne. Også her.
*
De åpnet brev her. Hun hadde sett det. Brevene hun fikk var åpnet. De ville vel vite om ilden var ventende. Hvem som skulle dø.
Anna leste brev fra pappa høyt for henne. Dersom hun ikke reiste seg og gikk, så måtte hun høre. Han skrev at alt skulle bli bra til sist. Da skulle han hente henne. Men brevet var nok falskt. For hennes pappa visste at ingenting kunne bli bra.
Det kom også brev fra en med steil og påståelig skrift. Hun hadde sett den før, men kunne ikke huske hvor. Det var ikke verdt å risikere noe, så hun rev brevene i ørsmå biter og gjemte dem i undertøyet. Slik ble hun av med dem uten å bli fanget. Ved leilighet blandet hun dem i grøten hun ikke spiste.
En de kalte Milde Emilie skjente fordi hun ikke spiste. Det var nok bare fordi hun kjente seg ensom og ville ha kontakt. Pleiere kunne også føle seg alene på et sted som dette. Noen av de gale var opplagt farlige. Særlig mennene nedenunder. De visste ikke om at hun var her. Kanskje de ikke visste noe om verden i det hele tatt.
Det var låste dører over alt. Man kom verken inn eller ut av hospitalgangen. Hun visste det, for hun hadde prøvd. Da kom Milde Emilie og holdt henne i armen. Lovet at hun skulle gå en tur med henne i hagen dersom hun spiste. Hun kunne ikke svare.
Doktorene kalte seg _leger_ på dette stedet. Overlegen bestemte hvor mye og hvor ofte av alt. Han streifet inn til henne nå og da. De kalte det stuegang. Av og til kom de mange på en gang og sto rundt sengen hennes. Det var bare overlegen som bestemte. Han snakket vennlig. Lot som om han kjente henne. Hun svarte ikke. Sa ingenting om skyggen. Eller stemmen. Han spurte heller ikke om det, men om tåpeligheter. Som hvordan hun hadde sovet.
En av de andre legene forsto hun ikke, det låt som om han tygget grøt og snakket samtidig. Da lukket hun øynene og gjespet. Man måtte tro for å orke å høre etter. Og hun trodde ikke. Overlegen snakket nesten like tydelig som Anna. Han brukte ordene _bli frisk_. Da så hun bare på ham til han vek. Hendene lå på knærne hans når han satt på den eneste stolen i rommet. Det var alt som behøvdes mellom dem. Hun kunne aldri bli friskere enn nå. Det var bare noe han prøvde å få dem til å tro.
Ordene var for de andre, ikke for henne. Tungen ble lammet dersom hun prøvde. Hodet kom i klem. Hun hadde en blyant, men fingrene greide ikke å holde fast på den. Penn hadde hun ikke. De tok den. Pleierne plukket med seg alt som kunne forårsake blod. Hadde mani for død og galskap.
Men kakkelovnen hadde de glemt. Fyrte i den hver dag nå som det var blitt kaldt. Og om kvelden kom en mann slepende med en gardintrapp for å tenne gassbluss over alle dørene. Han visste heller ingenting om brann. Hun, derimot, visste at død lå på lur i kakkelovner og lamper.
Agnes hadde store hender med kortklippede negler. Emilies var røde og skrukkete med selvslitte negler.
Var hun rolig, fikk hun medisinen og vannglasset. Var hun rasende og satt oppreist i trøyen, ga de henne sprøyten. De passet på at hun tok medisinen mens de snakket til henne. Hun behøvde ikke å svare. De ga henne noe for at alt skulle være fredelig. Det samme hver gang. Emilie eller Agnes. Eller nattevakten. Var hun rasende og de ikke klarte med henne, så ropte de gjennom åpne dører på en svær matrone som hveste luft som en orkan, men ingenting sa. Det siste hadde de felles. Det hendte at hun kunne telle blå merker etter fingrene hennes lenge etter. Matronen trodde nok mer på harde grep enn død. En gang ville hun innse at hun tok feil.
Fuglen stakk hodet inn gjennom sprekken i vinduet. Lynsnart nappet den skorpen hun hadde lagt der. Så ble hun ikke avslørt. Fuglemating var forbudt. Vinduet kunne åpnes på gløtt, men en slå hindret henne i å åpne det helt. Hun hadde tenkt på hva som skulle til for å åpne.
Ei kvinne lenger bort i hospitalgangen ropte om natten at hun nok skulle rømme. Hun burde ikke si det høyt.
– Dere skal få se! skrek hun, og kunne flere banneord enn mannfolkene på kaiene. Hun måtte jo vite at det ikke var bryet verdt å knuse vinduet. Det var høyt ned til bakken for henne også.
Fuglen var gløggere, for den oppdaget at hun la brødbiten helt ytterst på kanten for at den skulle nå den. Lynsnart kom den, og lynsnart var den vekk. En svart, skinnende skapning med innsmigrende takking fra treet. Man kunne ikke vite hva den tenkte.
*
Sorgen hadde forkledd seg som et gammelt hus med to høye vinduer. Om kvelden kom det et forsiktig lys i dem. Bedende. Hun hadde ingenting å si til trøst. Men _se_ kunne hun. Sorgen var egentlig ikke hennes. Men de andres. Hun skulle bare oppbevare den. Hvor lenge visste hun ikke. Ingen snakket om slikt på dette stedet.
Dagene hengte seg fast i nettene. Alt gikk i en strøm. Anna kom og gikk. Alle kom og gikk. Legene gikk stuegang. De snakket rundt sengen hennes og lot som om hun hadde svart på det overlegen spurte henne om. Nikket seg imellom. Så gikk de ut i hospitalgangen og stakk hodene sammen. Hun så dem i døråpningen. De pønsket på noe. Menn i hvite frakker som pønsket og så ut som falne engler. Bøyd nakke og nedslått blikk.
Emilie fulgte henne til et hus hun ikke hadde vært i før. Opp trapper. Rommet lignet pappas kontor. Med undersøkelsesbenk, reagensglass og instrumenter. Var pappa her?
Nei, hvordan kunne han være det. En fremmed mann i hvit doktorfrakk hilste, men holdt på med sitt. Emilie sa at hun skulle kle av seg. Nedentil. Men ingen skulle bestemme slikt. Anna ville heller ikke likt at noen bestemte slikt. Hun visste nok hva de skulle. De skulle uanstendiggjøre henne.
Pappa brukte ikke benken til slikt. Han hjalp folk dersom de hadde sår eller skulle få ut barn som nektet å komme. Han hadde forklart henne det da hun spurte ham om hullet i benken.
Ingen i hele verden skulle få uanstendiggjøre henne! Hun hadde ikke gjort noe som Gud kunne straffe henne for. Han var nesten alltid på parti med henne. Eller ga tydelig beskjed om at hun måtte ta seg sammen. Gud ville aldri sendt en doktor for å undersøke henne der nede uten at hun trengte til det. Så hun ble bare stående uten å ta av seg klærne.
Emilie kom tett på og ville hjelpe henne med skjørtet mens hun skottet bort på doktoren. Hendene hennes var hastige og bestemte, slik man var når man ikke likte seg noe særlig.
Karna frøs uten at hun visste om kulden var i _henne_ eller i rommet. Hun begynte å skjelve. Emilie fortsatte å dra i skjørtet uten å ense at hun frøs, mens den hvite fremmede snakket om at det ikke skulle ta lang tid og nesten ikke gjøre vondt. Hun hadde fått beroligende før hun kom, ikke sant? Og Emilie sa at hun hadde fått så det forslo, det skortet ikke på det.
Der var vinduet! Hun slo fra seg. Verget seg. Dro skjørtet på plass og sprang bort dit. Hevet knyttnevene for å slå seg ut.
Da kjente hun et fast tak i hårfletten. Det svimlet. Det kjentes som om hodet ble flådd. Den hvitkledde var snar og sterk. Noen hadde befalt ham å fange henne. Hun brukte neglene. Bet. Hånden hans smakte ekkelt. Hår fulgte med tungen og la seg i munnhulen. Hun spyttet. Han hadde sluppet fletten og tok tak i kroppen hennes i stedet.
Pappa dro ikke folk i flettene. Han måtte høre henne nå. Hjelpe henne. Hun åpnet munnen og ville slippe ut skriket.
– Pappa!
Formet munnen på nytt og på nytt. Ga luft. Men bare stillheten slapp ut.
Så falt hun ned en vindeltrapp av jern. Det dundret i metall som ga et skrallende ekko. Tusen føtter gikk over henne med nagler under skoene.
# BENJAMIN FÅR ET UØNSKET BESØK
Han hadde akkurat skrevet dagens pasientjournal og tenkte å gå til sengs. Idet han reiste seg fra skrivebordet, så han mannen komme inn porten. Wilfred Olaisen.
Hans første tanke var å ikke åpne. Men da den andre stanset opp og tydelig hadde sett ham gjennom det opplyste vinduet, løftet han motvillig hånden. Så gikk han gjennom venteværelset og til pasientinngangen. Etterpå skjønte han at han intuitivt unngikk å få mannen inn – privat.
Han låste opp døren, stakk føttene i et par kalosjer som sto der, og gikk ut på trappen. Hadde noen sett dem, ville de kanskje tenkt at Wilfred Olaisen trengte doktor. Mannen kom sigende mot ham som en fullrigger med lårede seil. Ulastelig frakk med høy knapping, stripete skjerf og skyggelue med blank skjerm.
– God kveld, sa Wilfred og rakte frem neven som om de ikke skulle ha sett hverandre på en tid. Det hadde de heller ikke.
Benjamin kom ikke unna, men måtte ta ham i neven. Pulsen kom ut av lage, og han fikk ikke frem et ord. Bare et nikk.
– Du arbeid seint, ser æ. Men æ e nu ellers ikkje sjuk, så...
Benjamin ble stående avventende uten å slippe ham inn.
– Æ har berre et lite ærend, om det ikkje e for seint? sa Wilfred og smilte. Tennene lyste hvitt i mørket.
– Vel. Æ va på vei til sengs. Men vi kan vel ta det her på kontoret, om det hasta.
På venteværelset tok mannen uoppfordret av seg yttertøy og lue og gikk foran inn på kontoret. Der satte han seg i pasientstolen og dro opp de skarppressede buksebeina. Han hadde kalosjer over skoene. Altså kledd seg for å komme på kveldsbesøk?
Benjamin nølte, så dro han kontorstolen frem på gulvet og satte seg, han også.
– Ka kan æ hjelpe dæ med? spurte han og prøvde å få øyekontakt.
– Du e aleina nu? sa fyren og så seg rundt.
– Ja, hjelpa mi har gått for dagen.
– Æ meine de anner... Ho Anna og ho Karna...
Benjamin svarte ikke. Hvorfor hadde han sluppet denne karen inn? tenkte han og stålsatte seg.
– Du hadde et ærend, sa du?
Wilfred Olaisen kremtet, rettet seg opp og la hele sin maskuline verdighet i blikket.
– Det har komme mæ for øret at du treng nye krefta for å drive Verftet. Eller... at du må selge. Du har kanskje fått brevet æ sendte?
– Æ har fått brevet. Men du e feilinformert. Vi skal ikkje selge, sa Benjamin kort.
– Godt. Æ har ikkje midla til å kjøpe, men æ vil gå inn som bas, eller ka du vil. Det skal ikkje koste dæ mykkje, berre ei vanlig formannslønn. Æ tenkte at dersom æ fikk fart i omsetninga, så kunne vi heller bli enig om en høvelig lott... i tillegg, meine æ.
Benjamin åpnet og lukket munnen. Her var det bare å beholde fatningen til han hadde fått ham ut.
– Det går ikkje så godt med lageret på kaia? spurte han direkte.
– Nja. Det e rikelig med gods som går inn og ut a lageret. Men det e dyrt å ha folk i arbeid. Så? Ka du sei tel tilbudet?
– Æ sei som du. Det e dyrt å ha folk i arbeid. Men Verftet går godt. Formannen e døktig og ordran fleire enn vi kan ta.
– Nettopp, sa Wilfred ivrig. – Det e det æ har tenkt å gjør nokka med. Ho Dina hadde store plana, og æ har jo erfaring fra den tida ho og æ dreiv i lag. Æ tenkte...
– Beklager, Olaisen. Vi skal ikkje ha fleire sjefa på Verftet, sa han med etternavns nevnelse for å markere distanse.
Det rykket i Wilfreds myke amorbue og øyefransene flagret lett. Han la det ene kneet over det andre og belaget seg på neste runde.
– Beklager! gjentok Benjamin og reiste seg.
Wilfred ble sittende. Løftet hendene gestikulerende og begynte på nytt.
– Æ høre at han Peder skal tel Bergen for å bli maskiningeniør. E det du som bekoste det?
– Nei. På ingen måte. Det e Dina Grønelvs bo, altså Verftet, som bekoste det. Og det e etter hennes vilje og testamente.
– Godt! Storarta! Men i mellatida må du jo ha en som e kapabel tel å drive det, ikkje sant?
Benjamin sto et øyeblikk og kjente på sin grenseløse uvilje for dette mennesket. Samtidig måtte han innrømme at det ofte var en snev av vett i det fyren sa. Vel å merke når han ikke slo.
– Vi har formann Jensen, og vi har en god arbeidsstokk. Vi skal _ikkje_ ansett ny ledar.
– E det _han sjøl_ som skal bestyre tallan? lo mannen hånlig da han forsto at han ikke kom noen vei.
– Nei. Og det skal ikkje du ligg våken og tenke på. For _du_ e vel heller ikkje rett kar for det arbeidsstøkke, sa han utfordrende.
Da reiste den lange, kraftige mannen seg og sto og raget foran ham. Blikket ble vilt og høyre neven knyttet seg. Benjamin visste at det var øyeblikket før han måtte dukke, eller ta igjen.
– Slår du, så pass på at du slår mæ i hel. For alle ugjerninga her på kontoret skal fram i offentligheta så sant non kan vitne, sa Benjamin hest mens han rygget bakover.
Mannen sto pesende med løftet neve uten å røre seg. Benjamin rygget et par skritt til – mot døren.
Så fikk han overvære noe han ikke forventet. Wilfred ség ned i setet han hadde reist seg fra og ble liggende over sine egne knær. Etter hvert forsto Benjamin at mannen satt og gråt.
Hva nå? Var det ekte eller teater? Han ble stående på avstand og betrakte. Man kunne ekles ved det og snu seg vekk, man kunne avvise det og kaste ham ut. Man kunne klappe ham på skulderen og si _så-så-så_ , _det er vel ikke så ille_. Han gjorde ingen av delene. Han lot det gå en stund.
Mannen sukket. Dro opp et rent lommetørkle og snøt seg.
– Æ treng så tel et fast arbeid, forstår du. Ungan og gjelda... og nu har ho Sara fløtta ut så æ må leie hjelp heime. Det e umulig å få sove... berre bekymring, sa Wilfred grøtet og slo hendene for ansiktet.
– Har du slått ho? spurte Benjamin på vakt.
– E du galen? Æ slår nu ikkje søster hennes Hanna! Kordan kan du kom på det?
Benjamin betraktet ham.
– Æ kan ikkje være nokka venn i nøden, det forstår du vel. Men æ kan gje dæ nokka å sove på tel du får ordna opp sjøl, sa han endelig.
– Du e den einaste æ kan be om hjelp, æ har ingen andre...
– Det e vanskelig for dæ, men æ kan ikkje ansette dæ som formann på Verftet. Og det forstår du vel sjøl.
Wilfred ble sittende og maltraktere lommetørkleet.
– Du bære nag, Benjamin. Æ skulle aldri ha fortalt ho Anna at du og ho Hanna traff kverandre i skjul. Det va feil. Ho Anna blei så uløkkelig. Det va stor synd at æ fortelte det. Og nu går all verden imot mæ, og ho Hanna e ikkje lenger... Det e så forbanna vanskelig å få søvn om nettern...
Benjamin kjente kjevene knytte seg, men tok sjansen på å vende ryggen til og gikk bort til medisinskapet. Gjorde klart et lite glass, med dirrende fingre. Slo et silkepapir om og gikk bort til mannen i stolen.
– Ta dettan. Men ikkje alt på en gong. Og så vil æ at du går. Straks.
Wilfred Olaisen stakk glasset i brystlommen uten å se på ham. Så reiste han seg og gikk mot venteværelset. Der dro han langsomt på seg yttertøy og åpnet døren. Idet han gikk ut, snudde han seg. Blikket var forbauset, hjelpeløst, som om han hadde blitt utsatt for stor urettferdighet.
Benjamin låste etter ham. Ble stående og se seg om. Kjente en ekkel dunst av Wilfreds barbersåpe. Han gikk inn i huset og låste der også. Kjøkkendør, gangdør, verandadør mot hagen. En forskrudd idé hadde satt seg fast. Ikke engang låste dører var nok for å holde denne mannen unna. Han ville komme igjen. Og igjen. Med stadig nye krav. Krav han ikke kunne innfri, men som rev opp sår og tvang ham til å huske.
Han ryddet kontoret for morgendagen og slukket lamper. Den solide vandrelampen med håndtak tok han med opp trappen. Da han satte den på speilkommoden for å kle av seg, fikk han øye på en begredelig fremtoning som stirret på ham fra glassflaten.
_Han sto på kne mellom Hannas lår og brukte det store øsekaret fra færingen_ _til_ _å fange alt blodet. Det rant over hendene hans og nedover buksebeina. Han grep en pute til kompress. Men det hjalp ikke. Til sist måtte han bare flyte i det med henne. Det var tykt, lunt og rødt. Øsekaret fløt foran dem helt ut mot sjømerket ytterst i leia_.
– _Du må slepp mæ nu,_ _Benjamin, hørte han henne si_.
Han våknet. Klokken var to. Dagslyset var bare en hildring et sted.
# TRØYEN
Av og til visste hun ikke for sikkert om det stedet hun kom fra fantes. Kanskje var det bare var noe hun en gang hadde drømt og siden ikke ble kvitt. Egentlig var tanken hennes hjem. Og den hadde hun med seg.
Hun hadde ikke lenger tall på dagene og nettene. Det kom av at hun sov på tider hun skulle vært våken, og våket på tider det var mørkt. Men alt hadde en slags orden. Om kvelden gikk en doktor i hvit kittel kveldsrunde. Gangblusset ble skrudd ned, slik at de heklende damene måtte gå til sitt. De blåtøyskledde forsvant fra hospitalgangen, og en stor dame med oppbrettede ermer kom til nattjeneste. Dersom noen skrek etter at de hadde fått sovemiksturen, satte hun en sprøyte. Dersom de fortsatte å skrike, truet hun med at de ikke fikk neste gang. For man kunne ikke kaste dyrebar medisin ut av vinduet.
En innerst i hospitalgangen kunne skrike lenge. I kveld skjente nattevakten så høyt at Karna kunne høre det.
– Du har fått så mye chloral at det kunne stoppe en hest, så nå må du ta til vett og sove. Ellers blir det med deg som med deliristene. De må skrike til de ikke orker mer. Det kan ta fem netter. Bare hør på dem!
Men hun som skrek, lot seg ikke skremme. Til sist begynte cellekameratene også å rope og skjenne for å stanse henne.
Karna sto opp og satte seg i skapet for å slippe å høre. Men ropene var ikke til å unngå. Dessuten visste hun at dersom hun ikke lå i sengen sin når nattevakten kom inn, så ville det bli enda mer støy.
Det ble alltid morgen uansett. Etter morgenstell og stuegang kom denne skjelvingen som gjorde alt umulig. Hun satt i stolen ved vinduet og ristet. Alle dører sto åpne. Det skulle luftes.
Milde Emilie så at hun hutret og tok seg tid til å gå med henne til huset med det lune kjøkkenet. Dypt under alle vinduene og klokketårnet.
– Du må ikke lage uro eller være i veien, formante hun.
Det luktet litt kvalmt av kokt kjøtt. Tett damp sto opp fra den store ovnen. Den var større enn på det blå kjøkkenet på Reinsnes.
Gamle Oline fra Reinsnes sto der og strevde med ringene og den store gryta. Kinnene glødet over varmen. Samtidig var det ikke Oline, men en annen. Eller hadde hun glemt hvordan Oline så ut? Ikke tenkt på henne på all den tid?
Nå kom ilden opp fra ovnshullet. Slikket rett opp og ville ta Oline.
Karna kjente raseriet som en brent hånd. Det gjorde henne farlig for seg selv, hadde de sagt. Var det _det_ hun ville? Bli farligere enn flammene. Hun tok noen skritt mot ovnen. Emilie prøvde å holde henne tilbake. Folkene omkring ble til en sammenvokst, snakkende klump rundt ovnen. Nå snakket skyggen til henne også. Høyere enn de andre.
_De må hjelp ho Oline med å legge_ _ovnsringan_ _på_ _før flamman kjem opp_!
Hun kavet seg gjennom kroppene og frem til ovnen. Da var det ikke Oline som sto der, men en annen som skrek mot henne og ville få henne bort. Men hun dyttet og slo seg helt frem. To skikkelser kom farende og holdt henne fast. Hun fikk en arm fri og slo. Traff noe hardt. Så blodet på knokene. Det føltes godt.
De slepte henne med seg over gården og inn i det kalde rommet. Satte på henne _trøyen_. Hun spyttet på dem og prøvde å bite. Men de ga seg ikke. De var mange. Med svarte, åpne øyehuler og kjefter. Flere enn hun kunne telle.
Med trøyen på måtte hun enten ligge eller sitte. Ikke gå. For falt hun så kunne hun ikke ta seg for. De tenkte nokså enkelt, trodde hun. Eller noen hadde allerede tenkt for dem. De forsto ikke at muren som kunne bli knust om hun falt, var henne. De var bare opptatt av hvor armene hennes var, og at armene kunne ødelegge det som skulle være orden. Øynene deres var alltid på vei et annet sted.
Etter hvert ble hun alene med de høye vinduene. Gitter som kom nærmere og nærmere. Helt inntil kinnet. Med lukt av nylagt kitt. Trærne klynget seg sammen og strakte grener inn for å skjule henne. Skjule det skammelige, at hun ikke kunne forsvare seg eller ta seg for, fordi de hadde tatt fra henne hendene. I den polstrede sengen med trøyen på kunne hun ikke gjøre noe annet enn å vente på mørket og la kvalmen og kloden snurre rundt og rundt. Over hav og atter hav. Havet var ikke blått eller grått. Det var beksvart med hvitt snørr i båretoppene. Hun kjente lukten av det salte, snørrete havet – og ga seg over.
De kom tilbake og oppdaget at hun hadde tisset på seg og kastet opp. Så begynte de å lempe på henne, som om hun skulle være en sekk. Vrengte av henne klærne nedentil og vasket av henne det verste. Men ikke trøyen. Den var på og luktet oppkast. De satte henne på stolen med hull i setet. Hun var en filledukke som måtte reimes fast for ikke å falle av stolen. Hun ulte mot dem, sloss med hele seg og spyttet så godt hun kunne. Men armene var i trøyen.
De var opplagt gale. Tre gale fra underverdenen. Hun hadde aldri sett dem før. De måtte jo forstå at hun ikke hadde rørt vinduene. Ikke en eneste gang. Hun hadde heller ikke prøvd å åpne kakkelovnsdøren for å slippe bålet ut. Det eneste hun hadde villet var å redde Oline som hun skammet seg over å ha glemt i mange år.
Rimet lå inne i henne. Men hun kunne se det. Se at det vokste istapper som fylte hele brystet. Stakk ut gjennom skjorten. Hun så også at hjertet arbeidet der inne, klaget og slet, uten at isen smeltet. Det var jo vakkert på sitt vis med alle fargene. Først og fremst det røde. Men også de blålige hinnene som gikk over i grått og grønt. Når hun lukket øynene, kunne hun tydelig se alt som kjempet for at hun skulle holde ut. Før hadde hun trodd at hodet bestemte alt om mennesket. Men nå så hun tydelig at selve kampen var i kroppen. Uten hjertet nyttet ingenting.
Hodet bikket forover av seg selv. Hun satt stille og så innover. Fulgte tarmer og blodårer. Som på pappas plansjer og doktorbøker. Ventet på de tunge og lette muskelstøtene. Kjente en nesten umerkelig skjelving fra en fremmed verden. Millioner av små åpninger, ikke bare de opplagt store. Porene var mer fintfølende. Hun ble sittende og kikke inn i en av dem. Lukket øynene og så dem overalt selv om hun hadde trøyen på. På armene hennes hadde porene små hår som nok hadde en rot der inne i åpningen et sted. Hun var en bitte liten skog. Hun var daler og berg og små og store krater. Havet manglet. Det var bare kanaler og myrlandskap, og elver. Elvene kom for det meste bare ut når hun tisset – eller gråt. Etter en stund forsto hun at hun hadde sluttet å gråte. Det var en besparelse for myrlandskapet å bevare vannet. Så kunne heilo, bekkasin og snipe spankulere omkring på de stankelaktige beina sine og finne mat mellom myrdun og sump. Av og til løftet de hodet og lyttet innover myrene. Med glitrende, knappelignende øyne. Eller de bikket seg ned, akkurat som hun, og lyttet til alt det som var skjult.
# I EN VANSKELIG TID
Folk på Strandstedet hadde sett det. Etter Hannas død visste Wilfred Olaisen ikke sin arme råd, alene med sine små barn. Ansiktet hans bar stadig preg av at han gråt mye, men han forsøkte visst å få hverdagen til å gå i hop. Og folks evne til å se bort fra, til og med glemme, det de egentlig visste om ham, vitnet om at man ville tro på at det gode var der, på bunnen.
Handelsmann Holes ugifte datter, Seline, var en av de første som trodde. Da det ryktes at Hannas søster, Sara, hadde sviktet og flyttet ut, kom hun med gjærbakst og strikkede sokker. Så kom hun ham nærmere enn andre uten å vite hva hun ga seg ut på. For Wilfred var en betvingende vakker sorg hun ikke kunne komme forbi. Streif av hender, dype blikk, i all ærbarhet naturligvis. Han hadde jo dette sorte armbindet på. Alltid. I en travel sommer og høst, der han måtte passe sine forretninger, som han sa, ble det til at hun tok seg av husholdningen og barna. Han ville naturligvis betale rikelig, noe hun avslo. Det var jo bare en søsterlig vennetjeneste og skulle bare mangle, mente hun.
Hun hadde sitt eget kammers med en god enkeltseng i enkemannens store hus. Alle forsto jo at det var for å kunne være hos barna om natten når Olaisen måtte være på kaia og ekspedere last til og fra båter. Men etter som ukene gikk, brukte hun kammerset stadig mindre.
Det begynte med at han sto under hengelampen på loftsgangen da hun skulle ta kveld, så på henne med sorgtunge øyne og hvisket:
– Seline, Seline...
For noen riktig gode kvinner skal det ikke mer til. Hun hadde et klokt, men beskjedent hode på en ferm og gavmild kropp. Hun var alt 29 år og ikke vant til å bli valgt. Det å la seg velge kan fort bli en skjebne. Man kan komme til å forveksle en vakker mann med en sanselig frelser. Slik kan man si at frelserskikkelsen, om enn bare indirekte, har ført ulykke over mange kvinner.
Wilfred Olaisen tok Seline med inn i ektesengen og mesket sin sorg i henne. Den fant dessverre øyeblikkelig grobunn. Og da kjøpmann Hole ganske fort protesterte kraftig på tingenes tilstand, måtte Wilfred Olaisen ekte henne i all enkelhet. Det gikk fort. I hektiske uker før dampen brakte bror Peder til Bergen.
Derfor kom han ikke i bryllupet. Men han hadde allerede stukket et lite brev i Selines hånd da han liksom tilfeldig passerte henne på veien. Det hadde ligget i lommen hans en dag eller to og fått eselører i kantene. Brevet var kort, uten avsender, skrevet med blokkbokstaver.
_IKKE INNLAT DEG. HAN SLÅR DEG HELSELØS_.
Men Wilfred hadde ennå ikke slått Seline. Hun brente brevet for at han ikke skulle finne det og ta seg nær av det.
Benjamin Grønelv var heller ikke i bryllupet. Ingen fant anledning til å spørre om han var buden. Strandstedet hadde sin egen måte. Kunne man ikke spørre, så kunne man smile, nikke og gå forbi.
# HESLIGHETENS MANGE ANSIKT
Agnes gikk tur i sjal og hatt og stort hvitt forkle. Hun holdt Karna i armen som om hun var redd for at hun skulle renne av sted. For noen av de gale var slik. Ferdig til å rømme. De tenkte ikke som en med vettet i behold. For skulle du rømme, så måtte du ha en plan. Måtte vite at det stedet du skulle til virkelig fantes. Den som var utvalgt visste godt at det var få steder det var verdt å rømme til.
Hagen var stor. En egen verden. Noen av husene hadde høye plankegjerder slik at de som bodde der ikke kom ut. Trærne var himmelhøye og sprikte med nakne grener. De hadde kastet løvet som ennå satt på da hun kom. Nå lå det på bakken i en ekkel grøt uten sin egentlige farge. Gjorde stien lumsk og glatt. Vinden slet med det løvet som ennå satt fast, og klistret det til vinduene for en stund. Før eller senere falt det ned. Det tok den tiden det tok, og var ikke synlig i universet. Men vinden kom fra de ytterste grensene. Den eneste lyden som var evig. Den første hun kunne huske som noe utenfor og samtidig inne i henne selv. Som brakte henne over hav og atter hav. Som rørte ved alt den strøk forbi, som en nødvendighet. Uten å vite, uten vilje, lot hun seg stryke og føre med. På den ene siden var hun ingen. På den andre siden forsto hun alt. Kanskje var det slik det var, at for å få vite så måtte man gi opp seg selv.
Gresset var giftiggrønt ennå. Fra vinduet hadde hun sett at frosten satt i gresstustene tidlig om morgenen. Når sola kom, måtte frosten gi tapt. Sola var standhaftig her. Kom en stund hver dag. Det føltes som et bedrag. På Strandstedet sparte maktene på sola på denne tiden. Det store mørket kom litt etter litt nå – der hjemme. Det var det riktige. Å spare på sola. De moldsvarte blomsterbedene her var forvirret. Hun kunne se at engstelige spirer ikke visste om de skulle komme opp eller ikke. Nattefrost gjorde det nok av med dem før de ble til noe. Slik var det.
Her utenfor var alt annerledes. Luften pustet. Var ikke død som i hospitalgangen. Den lekte over huden. Og de bitene av henne som skulle være ansikt fant plassen sin. Hun så det ikke, men kjente at det var slik. Hun hadde ikke sett ansiktet sitt siden hun kom til dette stedet. Pleierskene trodde speil sto i ledtog med død.
Luften sa aldri hvor den kom fra eller hvor den skulle. Men bar med seg store hemmeligheter. Så mangfoldige at ingen kunne tenke dem. Hun _så_ jo det som var utenfor. Det så alle. Men det var ikke den riktige verden. Den _tanken_ visste om. Den utenfor var for øyet – og lot alltid som den var noe annet. Som et postkort, eller et dukketeater.
Høye trær hadde røtter som sprengte seg vei og gravde hemmelige ganger inn i underverdenen. Men over dette fantes det alle så. Digre hus satt sammen av leketøysbrikker. Vinduer og atter vinduer. Folk som bevegde seg som papirdukker. Rykkvis. Styrt av en usynlig hånd. Med en farget forside og en hvit bakside ingen kunne tyde. Noen av skikkelsene var opplagt gale. Eller hånden som førte dem var det.
På benker her og der kunne hun se dem. Galskapen hadde det mer romslig her enn på gangen og i cellene. Hun måtte passe på at hun alltid hadde litt avstand. Noen så ut som underlige dyr, inntullet i alskens sjal og kapper for å holde varmen. Alle hadde sin egen måte å forflytte seg på. Eller sitte stille.
Plutselig reiste en skikkelse seg fra en av benkene og kom labbende mot dem. Stilte seg i veien og smilte med stor åpen munn og sprukne lepper. Håret hang i klaser under en grønn lue med øreklaffer. Lynraskt løftet kona begge hendene og tok etter ansiktet hennes. Karna rygget og forsvarte seg med armene. Da begynte den andre å skjelle henne ut.
Agnes ropte på en annen pleier som kom løpende med oppknappet kåpe. Kvinnen ble dradd vekk mens hun forsikret dem om at de skulle havne i helvete.
– Du skal ikke være redd for henne, hun er helt ufarlig og bare ute etter vennskap, sa Agnes.
Det var ikke redd hun var. Men usigelig trist. Heldigvis behøvde hun ikke å si det.
De gikk til dammen. Stiene var laget som en labyrint, eller en gåte. Hun likte dem ikke. Men det var den eneste måten å komme frem på. Ingen hadde sagt at dammen var uten bunn. Likevel visste hun det. Hun visste om broen også. Hadde hørt to pleiersker tiske og hviske om en lem som falt ned når man gikk over, og at det kalde vannet skulle skremme galskapen ut av hodet på forrykte folk. Den broen behøvde hun ikke å gå på. Hun var ikke gal.
Langs gangstien sto høye strå som spyd i rekker og pekte på henne. De hadde farge som brent hud og topper med rim på. Da de kom helt ned til dammen, begynte stråene å lukte giftig. Agnes så på henne fra siden og snakket hele tiden. En gang stoppet hun opp og tok henne om skulderen. Pakket ullsjalet tettere om henne som om hun skulle være en unge som ikke kunne kle på seg selv. Dammen var et svart øye som ville henne noe. Men Agnes tok henne fast i armen og ville videre.
Hun strittet imot. Magen presset på og ville opp i halsen. Hun stoppet helt opp og så ned i vannet. Ormer svømte omkring der nede. Mange. De kveilet seg rundt i sivet og samlet seg i klumper. Agnes smilte innsmigrende og ville videre. Da så Karna sin gamle sjel i mudderet, stirrende på henne med ormeøynene som ville ha henne tilbake. Ja! Dette var en felle. Agnes var med på det. Med et rykk slet hun seg løs. Da mistet hun fotfestet og falt.
Isvannet lukket seg om henne. Støpte henne. Eide henne. Som en stein falt hun, rett ned til de grimme sjelene. De behøvde henne der nede i bolet. Hadde ventet på dette øyeblikket. Nå strøk de henne om kinnene. Klenget seg til henne. Kveilet seg om halsen hennes.
En redsel hun ikke hadde kjent før fylte munnen. Hun prøvde å se gjennom det uklare vannet. Ville skrike. Men vannet kvalte alt. Hun drakk ormene. Fikk ikke tid til å avgjøre om hun var innenfor eller utenfor. Så visste hun at hun måtte gi seg over. La alt være som det var. Slik var det alltid. Bare å gi seg. Slutte å kjempe. Synke.
Før hun åpnet øynene hørte hun spetakkel av stemmer og mennesker. Hun frøs så hun ristet. De hadde nok tullet noe tykt om henne. Det luktet våt ull. Hun kunne ikke røre seg. De la henne på en båre og gikk med henne. Noe som fikk henne til å riste enda mer. Litt om senn kunne hun se klart. Naturen hadde hengt bitte små glass-spyd i trærne og fuglene hadde også sluttet å snakke. Sol stirret henne rett i synet. Frost eide alt. Tennene klapret så hun måtte bite dem sammen for å holde dem rolig. Det var strevsomt, men overkommelig.
De la henne i varmt vann dypt nede i kjelleren. Trodde nok de kunne befri henne fra dammen. Men hver og en av dem ble styrt av menneskets grusomme sjel. Den som fødtes ut av ondskapen. Den som befalte å leve uten å kjenne anger og angst. Hun hadde kjent den der, i dammen. Angsten.
En skapning klatret ned fra korset sitt like over hodet hennes. Korset hang over sengen. Hun hadde arvet det fra en eller annen som hadde bodd der før henne. Kristus skulle hengt på korset, men han var ikke der.
Det var farmor! Hun hadde kanskje blodige hender de gangene hun drepte. Men derfor behøvde hun ikke klatre opp og ned på et kors og gjøre seg ett med hesligheten. Men det var klart at kunne Kristus selv være et bilde på menneskets heslighet ved å bli korsfestet og henge på kors, så kunne farmor det også. Hun fikk alt til. Unntatt å være sitt eget vitne. Kristus hadde neppe noen sjel, han var jo bare et vitne, som hun selv. Farmor hadde sjel, det var derfor hun måtte ha noen til å vitne for seg.
Karna forsto at det var hun som måtte føre bokholderi over alle betydningene av den menneskelige heslighet. Og fordi fingrene ikke hadde den rette kraften, eller lettheten til å holde blyanten uten at den knakk, så måtte alt få plass i hodet. Hun måtte huske fra gang til gang de tankene som fløt frem av nattemørket. Noen av heslighetens bilder måtte hun ha i hodet.
Den forferdelige knitringen. Lukt av brent kjøtt. Lyd av glass som knustes. Drønn av stokker som falt. Syn av forkullet hud.
Dersom hun ikke husket de tankene, kom sinnet hun ikke kunne styre. Da kom de med trøyen. Første gang bet hun etter hendene deres. Da strammet de enda mer. Men skrek gjorde hun ikke, bare peste. Selv en kropp uten sjel kunne tillate seg å pese. Verst var det at hun så seg selv inne i pupillene deres når hun våknet. Et heslig syn. Hun hadde tatt på seg å speile verden ved å se seg selv i deres øyne. Når alt var over, kom tanken og satte seg fast. Hun ble ikke av med den, men sa den inni seg hele tiden.
_Mennesket er heslighetens sanne bilde_.
# PEDER VAR IKKE STORFORLANGENDE
Unge Peder Olaisen lignet ikke mye på sin eldre bror. Han underholdt ikke folk om sine kvaliteter. I det ytre var han ikke oppsiktsvekkende på annen måte enn i blikket. Men de fleste fornemmet en dyp forstand. Særlig dersom de spurte ham om en tjeneste. Han hadde fått sin døde mors ydmykhet og sin fars vedvarende tukt helt til han flyttet hjemmefra for å gå bror Wilfred til hånde i verkstedet på Strandstedet.
Peder fortalte ikke folk om sine planer før det var godt hold i dem. Og ikke til hvem som helst. Han var ikke storforlangende, men han bar heller ikke sin ydmykhet synlig for all verden. At han var i Bergen for å lese og lære på den døde Dina Grønelvs bekostning, var ikke noe folk hadde noe med. De behøvde heller ikke å vite at han ikke trengte varm mat hver dag.
Egentlig behøvde Peder lite så lenge han var på et sted der bror Wilfreds raseri ikke kunne nå ham. Han ble så modig av det. Tenkte helt fritt på det han skulle utrette. Trodde på sine egne tanker. De var fullt brukbare. En av dem var at den dagen han kunne skrive til Karna og fortelle at han hadde greid å bli maskiningeniør og var fullt kapabel til å drive Verftet på Strandstedet, den dagen ble hun frisk nok til å komme hjem. Slik lå disse ting i hans varetekt. Han _visste_ med seg selv at han kunne forløse Karnas store sorg. Han hadde sagt det til doktor Grønelv.
– Det skal nok gå. Ho e ikkje galn, ho berre sørga. Ho må ha tid og råd.
Doktoren sannet med. Han var helt alvorlig, og han sannet med. Da var de to som trodde på det. Og mens han trasket opp og ned bakkene i Bergen for å bli maskiningeniør, hendte det fra tid til annen at han smilte. Men venner hadde han ikke tid til. Han var ikke der for øldrikking og fjas. Han hjalp seg selv med alt og planla sitt liv med stort alvor og grenseløs optimisme.
Når han gikk til frisøren for å klippe håret, tok han det helt inn til skinnet, som om han skulle kvitte seg med lus. Slik sparte han mange penger på hårklipp. Hva folk tenkte når de så ham, hadde han ikke tid til å spekulere på. Når han kjøpte brød, tok han alltid det som var grovt nok til å holde seg minst ei uke. Melken drakk han uansett hvilken forfatning den var i. Ofte fikk han surnet søtmelk hos melkemannen gratis. På Fisketorget fikk han fiskeskav ingen ville ha, før de gjorde reint for dagen. Han rigget seg til og kokte den på et spritbluss for åpent vindu, så lukten ikke skulle bli sittende i veggene. For var det noe madam Brede hadde advart ham mot å prøve på, så var det å sette matlukt i veggene. Derimot hadde hun ikke _forbudt_ fiskekoking. Poteter tok så lang tid å koke, så de måtte han bare klare seg uten. Men så vidt han visste, hadde ingen dødd av å unnvære poteter. Nå var jo poteter det siste folk kom i beit for der han kom fra, men likevel. Fisk, derimot, det måtte en skapning ha for å holde skjørbuk og tungsinn borte.
Peder hadde tre skjorter til hverdags og en til helg. Han lånte en blikkstamp som sto under vannposten i gården, og vasket dem selv. Strykejern hadde han ikke, men ovnen var heller ikke formet for å varme jern på. Så han glattet plaggene så godt han kunne mens de var våte, og hengte dem på snoren i gården. Eller, om det regnet, på den ene kleshengeren han hadde på veggen i kammerset. Strømper og sko var smertensbarn. Han slet dem ned som om de skulle være av papir. For var det noe Peder måtte, så var det å bruke beina. Han regnet ut at dersom han hadde kunnet gå barbeint og uten vinterfrakk, så hadde han på få år hatt nok kapital til å kjøpe flere av de aksjene han trengte for å bli medeier i Verftet. Men såpass forsto han, at skulle man sette seg i respekt, så måtte man ha sko på beina og ikke opptre som et fattiglem uten frakk. Noe fikk man ofre. Tenkte Peder.
Nå var det også slik at han i liten grad så sitt eget bilde, selv om han barberte seg med stor flid. Og det bildet han ga dem han møtte, var trolig helt annerledes enn han visste om. For Peder ble sett av dem som så etter det spesielle, et absolutt ærlig og uventet følsomt sinn. Ikke alle så hans stahet. Og bra kunne det være. Han bar sin store munn og bestemte hake med en ømhet som trolig er sjelden for folk med slik stahet. At de lysende, havblå øynene så rett på deg uten å vike, uansett smått eller stort, kunne være plagsomt for folk som hadde noe å skjule. Men utvilsomt tiltrekkende for dem som ikke hadde det. Hadde Peder vært jurist eller en som folk antok hadde makt, ville han ha fått respekt uten å si så mye, bare på grunn av blikket. Men Peder var ennå en ung mann uten tittel.
Han var ikke nødt til å samtale med noen for å skaffe klienter eller få kontakt. Men noen ganger hadde han behov for å stille spørsmål og få svar. Det kunne gjøre ham urolig til sinns at folk ikke kunne gi ham de svarene han behøvde. Særlig gjaldt det lærerne på skolen. Det virket som om flere av dem hadde glemt det de selv måtte ha lært og skulle lære videre. Ved slike anledninger sukket Peder høyt uten å vite det. Det kunne virke støtende på den som skulle ha svart. Det førte til at en av lærerne unngikk Peder så godt han kunne. Noe som ble vanskelig for begge parter. For læreren var det provoserende at en av hans disipler viste mangel på respekt ved å sukke så alle hørte. Det utløste sideblikk, smil og noen ganger stille humring hos de andre elevene. For Peder var det tungvint å ha en lærer som ikke ville dele sin visdom med ham. At mannen ikke kunne bedre, falt ham ikke inn.
Peder skrev et brev som han sendte til Annas adresse i Kjøbenhavn. Det begynte med _Kjære, umistelige Karna_ og var stilet slik:
_Man har nå kommet til Bergen for å bli maskiningeniør. Reisen gikk fint. Dampen var i rute. Jeg tenker på deg hele tiden. Natt og dag. At du må få råd for tungsinnet så du kan komme hit og gå på pikeskole. Det hadde vore stort om du hadde dratt kjensel på meg neste gang vi treftes. Her regna det mer enn heime. Men det kan man tåle. Fatt godt mot, du umistelige. Din Peder_.
Hvor han hadde dette ordet _umistelige_ fra, visste han ikke selv. Men idet han la trekkpapiret over den steile blekkskriften, forsto han at slik var det.
Han hadde sett doktoren bære henne om bord. Sett trossa bli halt og dampen bakke ut fra kai. Sett sin egen ensomhet luske i kjølvannet til ingen nytte. Da ble ordet født for ham. Umistelig. Mens duskregn og vestavind slo vekk det som lakk fra øynene med mild kraft, så visste han det. Hun var umistelig. Det betydde hele henne. Smått og stort.
At hun ikke kjente ham da han ville besøke henne, fikk så være. At folk sa hun hadde mistet vettet og skulle til Kjøbenhavn for å bli kurert, det fikk så være. At hun var så fandenivoldsk modig at hun sto i den gamle steinkirka og tilsto de verste ting om sin farmor og deretter mistet vettet, det var for ham en naturlig sak. At det også fantes noen der i Kjøbenhavn som kunne kurere henne så hun ville kjenne ham igjen og komme hjem igjen, det var også naturlig.
Peders tillit til verden avhang rett og slett av at han trodde på det han kunne klare å ordne opp. Derfor var han uovervinnelig i sin tro på at alt skulle være klart når _hun_ trengte ham. Verftet var det minste han kunne få til. Han kunne ha fått det til uten å gå på skole i Bergen. Men når Dina og doktoren mente at han skulle ha papirer, så hadde de naturligvis rett. Og man fikk holde det man hadde lovet.
Peder gikk i kirken om søndagene for å sitte ned og tenke, høre på orgelmusikken og forme sitt neste brev til _den umistelige_. Han var redd hun syntes at han bare skrev om det nødtørftige. Det var ikke verdt å skrive om været, trodde han. Kanskje skulle han heller skrive om hvordan hjertet hans oppførte seg, i hvilken forfatning det var i?
Men han greide liksom ikke å finne de rette ordene uten at det ble baktungt og toskete. Ikke var han sikker på om hun orket hans hjerte når hun måtte være på asylet. Hadde vel nok med sitt eget. Slikt satt han og grunnet på i kirken om søndagene. Han ba ikke om hjelp fra Vår Herre for å nå sine mål. Det ble for storforlangende. Peder syntes det var enklere selv å gjøre det som skulle gjøres. Og nå var det altså å bli maskiningeniør.
# MUSIKK ER SORG
Anna hadde med brev fra pappa som ikke hadde vært åpnet. Det var rart, for de var alltid åpnet. Først la hun det bare på bordet og så spørrende på Karna.
– Skal jeg lese høyt for deg?
I dag hadde hun dette skinnet over hodet som fortalte hvor skjør hun var. En hinne som når som helst kunne sprekke og få Annas ansikt til å falle sammen. Derfor nikket hun bare.
Anna knappet opp kåpen, løste på sjalet og satte seg. Så åpnet hun brevet.
Først leste hun ganske alminnelige ord som ikke behøvde å bli hørt, så stoppet hun opp – før hun fortsatte.
_Pianoet står her til ingen nytte og savner dere. Det gjør jeg også_. _Jeg fyrer i_ _kakkelovnen og_ _tar_ _på losjakke og skinnlue når jeg går ut._ _Tankene er hos dere. Det_ _er godt at dere kan se sola. Den_ _hjelper for hva det skal være._ _Mørket_ _er_ _bare_ _en overgang. Våren kommer, vær sikker!_
Annas stemme ble til en merkelig sipling. Hinnen over ansiktet hennes begynte å slå sprekker. Det var bare å hindre at Anna gikk i stykker, så hun tok brevet fra henne og la det i skapet. Tok selv ut kåpen sin for vise at hun ville ut.
– Ja! La oss gå ut! sa Anna og ble til en som måtte følges.
Først gikk de stiene mellom de store trærne til ingen nytte. Pappa skrev om at de hadde sol her. Visste han ikke om dagene i skoddemørket?
– Kom! Jeg spør om vi får komme inn i en av stuene, sa Anna plutselig da de møtte en pleierske.
Og det kunne de. Visst kunne fru Grønelv benytte stuene i stedet for å gå her ute i kulden, sa pleiersken blidt.
Så gikk de til huset med klokketårnet. Til et rom Karna ikke hadde vært i før. Hvitkledde damer satt og snakket rundt et bord mens de heklet eller leste. Da Anna og hun kom inn, nikket de og hilste. Det var ikke så tydelig hvem som var gal og hvem som var hjelpere. Alle var hvitkledde.
– Er ikke dette et hyggelig rom? Skal vi sette oss her? spurte Anna og nikket mot to ledige stoler ved en pidestall med en stor grønn plante.
Da fikk Karna øye på pianoet. Innerst i kroken bak alle damene. Alene, med krakken skjøvet helt innunder. Som om det hadde grått seg i søvn. Men det var en uro i det. Ting kunne skje når som helst. Likevel satte hun seg, for Annas skyld. Kåpeermet streifet noe. Da så hun sangbøkene. De lå i en stabel på et bord ved stolen hennes.
I det samme var stemmen der.
– Pass dæ! Det e ei felle!
Og da Anna ikke satte seg på den ledige stolen, men smilte og gikk til bordet der damene satt, visste hun at stemmen hadde rett. Likevel greide hun ikke å røre seg for å komme unna. Hun ville trekke armen til seg så den ikke skulle berøre sangbøkene, men greide det ikke.
– Kom dæ bort! Ut! sa stemmen.
Men hun greide ikke å reise seg.
Anna snakket med damene om ingenting. Så snudde hun seg plutselig og gikk bort til pianoet. Løftet av lokket og strøk hånden over tangentene. Så på Karna og smilte før hun dro krakken frem og satte seg med ryggen til. Så gjallet de første akkordene ut i rommet. Dundret.
Dette var ikke Anna! Men en som var forkledd. Den ekte Anna ville hørt at pianoet var dårlig stemt. Hun ville øyeblikkelig ha sluttet å spille og med høflig stemme sagt at pianoet var ubrukelig. Det gjorde hun ikke, hun dundret videre mens de hvitkledde damene satt med hender som knudrete knokler over hekletøyet.
Med et rykk greide Karna endelig å reise seg. Hun kjente ikke føttene mens hun gikk mot døren og åpnet den. Smatt ut og lukket den varsomt. Nå var det bare å finne veien tilbake. Først ned trappene. Utenfor var kulden og det man ikke kunne verge seg mot. Hun hadde aldri før vært alene under de store trærne. Hvor var kurhuset? Hadde stemmen sendt henne ut i en labyrint for å lokke henne til dammen?
Da hun hørte ropet bak seg, kunne hun ikke vite om det var den ekte Anna. Hun gjemte seg bak et hjørne for å finne ut av det. Løvet på bakken hadde et mønster frosset fast. Det kunne være et tegn hun ikke greide å tyde. Hun hørte pust bak seg. Skjørter som raslet. Men hun torde ikke snu seg. Hadde hun bare vært sikker på at det ikke var en felle.
– Karna, min venn! Stå stille så jeg kan få holde rundt deg, sa en stemme.
Hun lukket øynene, og da den andre varsomt la armene rundt henne uten å prøve å tvinge henne, forsto hun at det var den riktige Anna.
– Det var et skrekkelig ustemt piano! Det verste jeg har spilt på, sa hun.
Da ble hun sikker. Likevel tenkte hun på at dette var et varsel. Hun måtte forherde seg. Forberede seg. Krefter kunne prøve å lokke henne bort fra det hun var her for. Å vitne om sviket.
– Du må ikke bli borte fra meg mer, Karna. Det gjør meg redd og fortvilet. Du forstår det?
Karna åpnet øynene og nikket.
Anna smilte. Et skjelvende, varmt smil. Det måtte bli stående mot den kalde himmelen i all evighet. Det var den ekte Annas tegn.
– Hørte du hva jeg prøvde å spille? Din yndlingsmelodi, sa Anna.
Karna ristet på hodet og gikk fortere. Hadde hun en yndlingsmelodi?
Hun lå i sengen og kjente seg reddet. Da brøt plutselig lyder gjennom vinduet som sto på gløtt.
– Hør, Karna, de har sang og spill i den store salen, sa Anna.
Karna lukket øynene. Så var hun i spisesalen på Grand. Lysekronene. Skyggene over det svarte flygelet som heisekranene hadde satt på land fra dampen. Det var kommet over havet fra Hamburg. En mann hadde brukt flere dager på å stemme det. Det ble holdt konserter. Mennesker fylte spisesalen. Anna krummet seg over tangentene og ble borte i musikken. Farmor favnet celloen. De to var ett. Farmor og celloen. Pappa satt på første stolrad med lukkede øyne. Han ventet. Hanna satt på stolen bak ham med de mørke øynene sine på nakken hans. De var allerede brunsvidd fløyel. Visste han det?
Anna dro stolen helt inntil sengen. Grep hendene hennes og snakket til henne. Om at hun skulle få dem til å stemme pianoet i rommet der de hvitkledde satt.
– Der er det ikke så mange. Mer fredelig enn i den store salen. Vi kan spille og synge, bare du og jeg. Du har slik en nydelig, stor stemme, Karna! Jeg _vet_ at du kommer til å bruke den her. Til glede for oss alle sammen. Som før. Husker du for et herlig fellesskap vi hadde i musikken?
Så dundret stillheten. La seg over hodet som en hjelm. Trykket viljen gjennom en smal sprekk. Musikk varslet sorg. Alltid.
# ANNA VIL HA ET EGET LIV
– Jeg må ha noe for meg selv, sa Anna avgjort.
Moren sto midt i rommet og var fra seg av forferdelse over at hun pakket. Så fra Anna til kofferten og rotet med klærne på sengen.
– Men vi har jo flere rom enn vi trenger, vi to gamle mennesker. Her bor du jo gratis. Vi synes det er hyggelig, din far og jeg.
– Takk, kjære, men jeg kan ikke ta imot det lenger. Jeg er vant til å ha et eget hjem. Jeg må skaffe meg mitt eget.
– Men Anna, selv om dette har tatt lengre tid enn vi trodde, så er det ingen grunn til at du flytter fra oss. Jeg har forstått det slik at overlegen mente at en vending med Karna kunne skje når som helst. Dette er jo bare for en kort tid, ikke sant?
– La oss håpe det, mor. Men det kan vi ikke vite. Hun har vært der i fire måneder alt. Så sent som da jeg fikk henne med på å flette korger til juletreet i den store salen og hun hengte girlandere over sengen sin akkurat som hjemme, var jeg optimist. Men en periode nå har det vært tilbakegang. Hun hallusinerer og har vrangforestillinger, og jeg tror ikke hun alltid kjenner meg igjen. Ikke alt som skjer tyder på bedring.
Anna visste at hun skulle fortalt moren om at hun ikke fikk se Karna dagen før, fordi de hadde lagt henne i tvangstrøye. Men hun orket ikke morens late-som-forståelse og _stakkars dere_. Hun hadde lenge irritert seg over at hun måtte underkaste seg morens agenda for å rettferdiggjøre at hun var der. Veldedighet og basarer før jul. Legefruenes forening for de elendige etter nyttår. Mennesker hun ikke kjente som kom på visitt og snakket om ting hun ikke hadde interesse for. Det eneste hun kunne bidra med var å spille. Som om hun fremdeles var en ung pike som skulle underholde morens gjester. Bortsett fra å besøke Karna, var hennes liv latterlig og uten innhold. Hun greide ikke engang å samle tankene og finne ro i seg selv til å lese en bok. Men dette kunne hun ikke forklare uten at moren ble fornærmet.
– Veien er lang ut til Hospitalet, jeg må være nærmere. Og jeg kan ikke lenger leve på dere, mor, sa hun i stedet.
– Det har overhodet ikke gjort oss fattigere. Det har vært en berikelse for din far og meg.
– Takk for det, sa Anna og kjente seg igjen som den falske datteren. En følelse som ble mer og mer problematisk. Å måtte vise takknemlighet, men ikke greie det. Hele tiden måtte ta imot uten å kunne yte noe som helst. Ørkesløsheten var blitt et fengsel.
– Jeg må ikke bare ha et eget sted å bo, jeg må finne meg noe å gjøre, fortsatte hun.
– Men herregud, du har vel ikke forlatt din mann? spurte moren og formelig trippet av engstelse.
– Det vet jeg ikke. Jeg er i alle fall her nå, sa hun kort.
– Hva er det du sier?
– Jeg prøver å si deg at jeg har skaffet meg et rimelig losji ikke langt fra Hospitalet. Et værelse med adgang til kjøkken, og at jeg skal utføre forefallende kontorarbeid på Hospitalet. Det vil gjøre meg i stand til å betale losji og mat. Jeg flytter i morgen.
– Skal du flytte ut av byen for å bo alene? Som en enke, eller en forlatt? Hva tror du folk vil si? Og din far?
– Far vet det. Han har hjulpet meg å få en post på Hospitalet, sa hun fort uten å tenke.
– Han vet det! Dere har planlagt... sammen. Uten å si noe, sa moren med liten stemme og tårer i øynene.
Anna visste at det ikke var hun som skulle sagt det, men faren. Eller de skulle ha sagt det sammen. Men helt siden hun var barn, hadde det vært slik at foreldrene unngikk å nevne ting som de visste den andre ville misbillige. De lot det heller dryppe ut ved barnas forsnakkelser.
– Far mener som jeg, at en voksen kvinne må gjøre sine egne valg, sa hun endelig.
– Så det gjør han! Slikt skal man få høre. Av sin egen datter. Få vite hva ens mann synes, sa moren kaldt.
Det var bedre at hun var sint enn at hun var forurettet og såret, tenkte Anna.
– Jeg kommer på besøk. Ofte. Jeg er glad i god mat og vin. Sant å si er jeg bortskjemt. Både her hos dere – og hjemme, sa hun forsonende og håpet moren ikke skulle la seg provosere av at hun kalte doktorgården på Strandstedet for _hjemme_.
– Men du mente ikke det du sa... Du skal vel reise _dit_ igjen, til Benjamin? spurte moren vaktsomt.
– Det vet jeg ikke, svarte Anna for å få det også overstått.
– Og han _..._ Er dere uvenner?
– Vi er _ikke_ uvenner. Benjamin er ikke et menneske man er uvenner med. Og du vet at han sender meg midler å leve for. Men jeg kan ikke leve på almisser, verken fra dere eller ham.
– Almisse! Jeg har ikke hørt på maken. Man får vel ikke almisse fra sin mann. Hva står på? Hva er galt? sa moren akkurat så kontrollert oppbrakt som bare hun kunne.
– Mor... Vi har mistet våre nærmeste i en brann. Vi har mistet Karna. Det har gjort noe med oss... Du må jo ha forstått det mens jeg har bodd her?
– Jo, jeg har forstått at du er i sorg. At tiden må få lege sår. Selv om dette med Karna er krevende, så trodde alt jeg alt var som før...
– Ingenting er som før, mor. Kan du ikke bare prøve å forstå det? sa Anna med en følelse av å snakke til en fjern bekjent.
Moren hentet lommetørkleet frem fra kjoleermet og trykket det to ganger under hvert øye.
– Kom! Det er tid for en kopp te, sa hun og gikk inn i salongen. Piken kom inn med samovaren i det samme, og det ble skjenket te i kongelig dansk porselen. Da hun var ute av stuen og de igjen var alene, sa moren vennlig:
– Selvsagt har dette vært en vanskelig tid. Men det vil gå over. Så faller dere til ro og alt blir som det var.
– Nei. Det kommer aldri mer til å bli det samme.
– Kjære deg, hvorfor er du så dramatisk og negativ? Kan du ikke prøve å se de lyse sidene? Hva mener du egentlig med – _aldri mer det samme_?
Anna dro pusten og prøvde å finne enkle klare ord som moren kunne godta.
– Kjærlighet, og sorg, tiden som går, sa hun endelig.
– Han var ikke den rette likevel? spurte moren engstelig og strakte hånden frem over bordet mellom dem. Hun tenkte at moren like godt kunne ha tilføyd: _Hva var det jeg sa_! Men hun sa faktisk ikke det.
Anna fylte munnen med varm te og svelget grundig. Det oppsto en pause uten tillit. Vinduene i rommet var rammet inn av grønne plysjgardiner med pomponger. Blomsterdekorasjonen på speilbordet sto i en porselensvase formet som en svane. Piken tørket støv av dette speilbordet flere ganger i uken.
– Du vil alltid være velkommen hit, hvisket moren full av selvmedlidenhet.
– Takk!
Anna forsto at hun skulle avslutte samtalen mens den var noenlunde god. Samtidig kjente hun på en gammel irritasjon over moren. Hennes overfladiske lov om at alt måtte foregå i hygge og sømmelighet så ingen fikk noe å bemerke. De skulle leve sine liv i letthet, så man kunne underholde med anekdoter om det i middagsselskaper. Ingen skulle vite at det kanskje var noe å skjule. Hun husket altfor godt da hun trosset moren og reiste til Benjamin. Husket morens omtale av landet der nord som et sted der ingen kunne bo, og hennes karakteristikk av mannen i ødemarken _uten ambisjoner_ , som hun kalte det. Riktignok hadde hun endret syn etter å ha besøkt dem og latt seg sjarmere. Både av ham og av naturen. Hun hadde denne evnen til begeistring, _se det pittoreske_ , som hun selv uttrykte det.
Moren og hun ville trolig aldri tenke likt om det vesentligste. Det fikk henne på merkelig vis til å kjenne seg som en ung rebell.
Da Anna sto bøyd over kofferten igjen, tenkte hun på Dina som hadde dratt ut i verden helt alene. Til Berlin. Hadde hun hatt en slik mor, så hadde hun kanskje ikke hatt behov for å ta hensyn til hva andre tenkte. Men simpelthen gjort noe, koste hva det koste ville. Hun forsto at i alt dette andre, så hadde hun ikke greid å kjenne på savnet etter Dina. Hennes energiske måte å gi ordre på, igangsette ting, og ikke minst: spille cello. Egentlig hadde hun heller ikke tatt inn over seg at Dina hadde drept to menn. Og at Benjamin hadde visst om det siste drapet. At han til og med hadde betrodd seg til _henne_ om det en gang. Det var et mysterium for Anna at Dina hadde greid å leve med det. Men et større mysterium at Benjamin hadde greid det. Og hun selv, hva hadde hun gjort? Jo, hun hadde ettertrykkelig fortrengt sin viten og latt dagene gå. Helt til den formiddagen Karna sto i kirken. Og akkurat nå savnet hun det musikalske fellesskapet med Dina. Energien hennes. Savnet et menneske som ikke lot seg forferde, men gjorde noe.
Hun satte seg på sengekanten og syntes hun _så_ Dina stå i privaten på Grand med ryggen til. For så å snu seg langsomt og se på henne. Ertende. Vurderende. Spørrende.
Ja! tenkte Anna. Men jeg _har_ faktisk _gjort_ noe med livet mitt allerede. Jeg har flyttet til et annet land, til en mann jeg ikke kjente godt nok til å vite hva jeg bega meg inn i. Jeg har arbeidet der og betydd noe for flere enn de nærmeste. Jeg tok tak da Karna ble syk og fikk henne med til Hospitalet. Og nå, mens jeg ennå ikke vet om hun kommer til å bli frisk, så gjør jeg et forsøk på å leve mitt eget liv. Mitt eneste problem nå er at jeg ennå ikke vet om jeg kan bruke Hospitalets piano uforstyrret så ofte jeg vil når jeg flytter herfra!
Hun reiste seg og slo koffertlokket i.
# BENJAMIN TAR EN AVGJØRELSE
Han hadde ikke til hensikt å la seg synke ned i selvmedlidenhet. Men det var like før. Kontorsøsteren hadde tatt inn posten og lagt den private til side ved døren, slik han hadde bedt henne om den første dagen hun var der. Slik slapp han å se på den før kontordagen var over. Nå var hun gått. Da kunne han få fred til å oppdage at nei, det var ikke brev fra Kjøbenhavn i dag heller. Det var blitt mars. Det var tre uker siden sist han fikk brev. I det tidsrommet hadde han sendt tre brev til henne.
Han la bort posten og gikk inn til den private delen av huset. Etter en del forberedelser mellom spiskammer og kjøkken fant han seg selv stående ved ovnen og steke sild, ennå i den hvite frakken han brukte på kontoret. Etter at han var blitt alene, hadde han tatt seg til å huske hva gamle Oline laget på det blå kjøkkenet på Reinsnes. Ting han ikke hadde tenkt på alle disse årene. At hun vendte silda lett i mel, pepper og salt, dersom den var stor. Sprøstekte den i rikelig med smør om den var liten. Da han var gutt, satt han på vedkassen og førte samtaler med henne i dypeste alvor. Om ting ingen andre snakket om. Det som gikk for seg i underverdenen for eksempel, som Oline hadde førstehånds kjennskap til. En tid like før han begynte å lese, hadde han vært opptatt av at man spiste andre levende vesen for ikke å sulte. De som var i fjøset var verst. Og hvordan man i det hele tatt kunne finne på å dra dyr opp fra havet!
Trolig lærte han å lage mat alt da, men han hadde ikke praktisert det før nå, med skiftende hell. Han spiste den sprø, glovarme silda med fingrene, rett fra fatet, mens han stekte neste panne. Lot pekefingeren pløye langs ryggbeinet og pirket det ut. Stakk resten av fisken rett i munnen og tygget alle de små, myke sildebeina som klødde i ganen. Slik sparte han oppvask og hadde plenty til overs i spiskammeret til neste dag.
Sildelukten fylte kjøkkenet og reiret seg i klær og hår. Det var et av de privilegier en mann kunne unne seg når han allikevel var alene, tenkte han beiskt. Anna ville ha påpekt at han fikk sildelukt i den hvite frakken. Hun var ikke der, men han åpnet i alle fall vinduet. Det kom for ham at det ikke var slik en mann i hans posisjon skulle leve i all fremtid. Men det var ikke kjøkkenlivet som plaget ham, det var alt det andre. Og at han ikke hadde noen å holde om. Så banal var følelsen av ensomhet, tenkte han.
Han pumpet vann fra springen og drakk, fremdeles stående, mens han tenkte på om han skulle gå ned på Verftet og snakke med karene, eller ta ei økt på kontoret og se over bestillinger av medisin og forbindinger. Eller om han skulle forberede neste herredsstyremøte.
Til sist endte han opp på kontoret igjen. Men ikke med det såkalt nyttige. Han ble sittende og glo ned på det private brevpapiret med pyntetagger i kantene. Imens tørket blekket på pennesplitten fordi han ingenting skrev. Fuglene forstyrret ham med sitt sanseløse og altfor tidlige spetakkel i forplantningens tjeneste. Nå var det heller ikke orden på natt og dag. Lyset var bestialsk uansett.
Da han for tredje gang hadde lest det tre uker gamle brevet som han hadde lest utallige ganger før, begynte noe å ta form i hodet hans. Hun skrev om sine møter med Karna, som ennå ikke hadde vist vilje til å snakke. Hun brukte de ordene, _vist vilje_. Så nevnte hun at hun ville finne seg et losji i Hospitalbyen for å slippe reisen fra og til Kjøbenhavn flere ganger i uka. Han gjettet at hun også hadde fått nok av å leve så tett på sin mor.
Idet han mellom linjene ante, eller håpet, at hun var like ensom som han selv, dyppet han pennen i blekkhuset og bestemte seg endelig for hva dette brevet skulle handle om.
_Kjære Anna_
_Det er uendelig tomt her uten dere._ _Jeg har lenge tenkt på dette, men ikke funnet tid til å komme fra før nå. Vinteren er jo heller ikke den beste_ _tiden for lange reiser. Men nå_ _har_ _jeg_ _besluttet å fare_ _til Kjøbenhavn så fort som_ _mulig._ _Jeg trenger å se dere begge to._ _Siden du sikkert alt har flyttet til Hospitalbyen, så tar jeg inn et annet sted enn hos dine foreldre. Men det er fint om du forbereder dem. Jeg vil nødig_ _komme i den situasjon at jeg har fornærmet din mor_ _ved_ _å_ _oppholde meg_ _i Kjøbenhavn uten at hun vet det._ _Sender et telegram dit når jeg vet hvilken båt jeg får lugar i._ _Gi_ _beskjed dersom det er noe du vil jeg skal ta med til dere._ _Her er alt ved det vante,_ _og våren er på full fart inn Vågen fra nordvest_.
_Alt godt_.
_Din Benjamin_
Skulle han ha skrevet _lengter_ etter å se dere i stedet for _trenger_ å se dere? Lengselen var absolutt sannheten. Men nei. Hun hadde ikke med et eneste ord disse månedene invitert ham til å tillate seg noen lengsel. Skulle brevet ha vært lengre? Nei. Det var ikke et eneste ord i hennes brev som antydet at hun ønsket seg lange brev fra ham.
I stedet skrev han en rapport til sunnhetskommisjonen om siste tids konsultasjoner og manglende oppfølging i fattigvesenet etter nyttår. Tre personer var uten bopel, og et fattiglem med store lungeproblemer bodde i et uthus der vinden blåste rett gjennom vindusfôringene. At flere enn disse ikke hadde råd til å hente lege, og trodde at han ville ta betalt, førte ofte til at han ikke ble tilkalt før det var for sent. Stedet manglet en helsesøster og en ekstra lege, noe han lenge hadde påpekt. Men fremfor alt trengte det en fast anstalt der trengende kunne bo og sove, noe han som ordfører arbeidet for.
Til sist ba han om permisjon noen uker for å reise til Kjøbenhavn for å se til sin datter som var innlagt på hospital og trengte å se ham. Det var også nødvendig at man underrettet den andre legen i distriktet om at han måtte fungere som vikar når det var påkrevet. Hans kontorhjelp kunne hjelpe her ved enkle tilfeller.
Da dette var gjort, gikk han til postkontoret med brevet, og til Verftet for å ta en prat med formann Jensen om tingenes tilstand. På veien ned i det gjennomborende vårlyset, gikk det opp for ham at han allerede tenkte på reisen som en slags lysttur. Han påla seg selv å la være å plage seg med at han ingenting visste om sitt møte med Karna og Anna. Det var tvingende nødvendig å holde lysttur og uvisse strengt adskilt i hodet.
# VITNET OG LAMPEN
Da mannen som hadde ordnet den løse vindushaspen var gått, så Karna at han hadde lagt igjen sylen i vindusposten. Hun snappet den til seg og gjemte den i lommen. En lang stund lå den der og hvisket til henne. Til sist stilte hun seg opp innerst i kroken ved døren og tok den opp.
Det var da hun så ham. Stående lent mot veggen. Håret sto rett opp og han hadde et arr over det ene kinnet. Slik kjente hun ham igjen. Noen hadde sagt det for lenge siden. Om russeren. Den ene siden var skamfert, den andre god. Leppene var sprukne. Han var høy og mager med never som lå flatt inntil veggen på begge sider av kroppen. Som om han prøvde å holde seg oppreist.
De hentet ham nok snart, for han skulle ikke være her, men på mannsavdelingen. Hun trodde hun hadde sett ham her før. Slentrende på hospitalgangen, noen ganger forkledd i hvit frakk sammen med overlegen. I dag hadde han en falmet flanellsskjorte og trasige bukser.
Munnen hans åpnet seg til et lite smil. Hun flyttet seg nærmere og rakte frem hånden. Han grep den. De sto en stund og holdt hverandres hender. Hans neve var like varm som hennes. Eller like kald? Øynene hans var merkelig klare og grønne. Som glasskavler, flytende i havet.
– Hun mente det ikke, forstår du, sa han.
– Ikkje snakk så høgt. Då henta de dæ, svarte hun.
Hun kjente et hardt stikk.
– Hun ville bare tvinge meg til å bli. Hendelser var ikke det samme for henne som for meg.
– Kem e du? spurte hun, selv om hun visste svaret.
– Jeg er russeren Leo som du nevnte i kirken.
– Koffør e du her?
– For å vitne, svarte han.
– Ka skal du vitne?
– At hun ikke mente det.
– Kordan veit du det?
– Hun trengte meg, og jeg forsto det ikke, sa han og smilte bredt.
Da kjente hun stikket igjen. Og sprekken i leppen hans åpnet seg. Det store smilet hans laget en grøft som blodet kunne renne i.
– Men ho _sa_ at ho gjorde det.
– Hun mente det ikke, sa han enda en gang og smilte enda bredere. Blodet gjorde en sving og nådde haken hans.
Hun løftet hånden og tørket det bort.
– En død mann blør ikkje, sa hun.
– Der kan du se. Hun mente det ikke. Hun elsket meg.
– Ka betyr det, å elske? spurte hun og knep øynene sammen.
Da hun åpnet dem igjen, var han borte. Men blodet hans dekket hånden hennes.
En dyp mannsstemme buldret utenfor vinduet. Noen ga en kort kommando. Det hørtes skritt mot grusen, så ble alt stille. Hun kjente på en smerte eller spenning som sitret helt ut i fingerleddene. En følelse av å vite, og ikke vite. Så kommer han nok igjen, tenkte hun. Han er også et vitne. Vi er to nå.
Så gikk hun bort til vinduet og tvang den vesle sprekken til å åpne seg. Akkurat bred nok til å lirke sylen gjennom. Den kraslet da den nådde bakken. Hånden gjorde vinduskarmen rød.
Akkurat da sluknet gasslampene. De tentes om kvelden av en mann i store subbende ladder som dro en gardintrapp med seg. Nå var han gått. Stemmer snakket høyt og oppbrakt på hospitalgangen.
– Gasslykten har gått ut!
Karna la seg i sengen og dro teppet omkring seg. Det var best å være usynlig. Mannen med stigen kom subbende og bannet. Klatret opp og prøvde å tenne lampen igjen. Men det hjalp ikke. Så subbet han sin vei. Etter en stund kom en i vasketøykjole inn til henne med en oljelampe for å gi henne medisinen for natten. Karna kjente hånden med russerens blod og svelget. Hun hadde lært det for lenge siden. Jo fortere hun svelget, jo fortere fikk hun fred.
Da hørtes ville skrik fra hospitalgangen, og noen ropte om hjelp. Flere gassbluss hadde gått ut. Pleiersken var alt på sprang ut døren på korte, raske bein. Tussmørket slukte henne straks. Lampen sto igjen på bordet.
En stemme kom tydelig frem fra veggen ved vinduet. Befalende. Men vennlig. Så var han der. Vitnet.
– Slokk lampen! Du vet jo hva som kan skje. Vi er to nå. Vær modig.
Først prøvde hun å late som hun sov. Knep øynene hardt i og ble liggende stokk stille. Så var stemmen der igjen. Strengere denne gang.
– Slokk lampen! Fort!
Det var umulig å bli liggende. Hun måtte. Langsomt, som om hun egentlig sov, gikk hun bort til bordet. Ble stående og stirre inn i flammen. Så var hun i det. Veggen av varme. De røde ildtungene. Den kvelende røyken. Den emne lukten. Brent kjøtt. Hun grep om lampeglasset med bare hender. Fort. Kvele ilden en gang for alle.
Skriket kom fra et sted hun ikke kjente til. Hun visste ikke om det var her eller fra den andre siden. Hendene hennes orket ikke mer. Lampen falt rett ned. Porselenskolben knuste, akkurat som den gang. Ilden var øyeblikkelig fri og tok tak i den tykke, fargeløse oljen på gulvet. Vokste seg større og begynte å ete av alt den fant. Fulgte samme vei som oljen rant. Fant sengen. Teppet som hang utover der hun hadde latt det falle.
De kom løpende og forsto ikke at alt var over for lenge siden. Hun kjempet ikke mot dem. Lot dem bare legge kroppen i sengen og spenne henne fast. Stille. Stille. Så slapp hun trøyen. Før hun sovnet så hun ansiktene.
Farmor. Hanna.
Slik de var før flammene åt dem.
# ANNA MØTER DEN UFORUTSIGBARE
Den imponerende smijernsporten var tredelt og hadde lykter på stolpene. Hun hadde gått der mange ganger før de siste månedene. Som besøkende. Nå åpnet hun venstre fløyport og gikk mot den gamle hovedbygningen der kontorene var. Hun skulle melde seg for kontorsøster.
På en måte var Karnas og hennes liv blitt en felles skjebne. Det var hun som hadde brakt henne hit. Og nå hadde hun selv fått en liten post på kontoret her. Ikke noe hun hadde drømt om, men noe å gå til som hun visste hun kunne mestre.
Hun knyttet nevene i kåpelommen mens hun tenkte at hun _måtte_ tro på at Karna ble frisk på dette stedet. På utsiden, så langt man kunne se, var det et paradis. I dag fornemmet hun en anelse av vår. Trær, vann, luft, stillhet, ro for sinnet. Men innomhus visste hun at det var fylt opp med vanvidd, raseri og sorg. Tårer og taushet. Skopolamin, chloral, opium, morfin, reimer og tvangstrøyer. Hun stanset et øyeblikk, dro pusten dypt og gikk med bestemte skritt inn i kontorbygningen.
Døren ble åpnet med en gang hun banket på, som om vedkommende allerede sto med hånden på klinken. Innenfor sto en ganske høy mann og lutet seg mot henne. Uten jakke og slips. Det ene skjorteermet var brettet opp, mens det andre hang rundt armen med åpen mansjettknapp.
– Jeg beklager at det er meg som tar imot, men søster Vivi fikk en sak i fanget og kunne ikke komme fra, sa han og rakte henne hånden. Blikket hans skygget for resten av ansiktet. Hun fikk en avsindig følelse av å se inn i kokende bly.
– Takk skal De ha. Det skal nok gå bra, sa hun.
– Jeg håper det, for jeg er også ny her og vet ikke alt jeg burde vite, verken om pasientene eller rutinene, sa han med en kort, mørk latter, som om han ville understreke hvor malplassert han var i rollen.
Håndtrykket hans prøvde ikke å overbevise henne om at han var en sterk mann.
– Men la meg presentere meg. Jeg er den nye reservelegen her, Joakim Klim.
– Anna Grønelv, sa hun.
Hun hadde hilst på den forrige reservelegen en gang han gikk stuegang hos Karna. En alvorlig mann som ikke ga uttrykk for mer enn det overlegen hadde bedt ham om. Denne virket i det minste som om han hadde en smule selvironi. Men for alt hun visste vanket han kanskje i salongene i Kjøbenhavn. I så fall gjorde han seg flid med å kle seg ukorrekt på arbeid, i krøllete flanellsbukser og åpen vest.
Følelsen av å bli målt og veid av blyblikket skapte en slags trass. Hun tillot seg å betrakte ham tilbake. Han skulle nok være skjeggløs. Men denne morgenen hadde han tydelig forsømt barbering. Håret var lyst og uregjerlig. Tennene noe ujevne, men sikkert upåklagelige til sitt bruk, tenkte hun og smilte uten å vite det. Hun betraktet ham slik man vurderer en hest på markedet.
Han tok kåpen hennes og hengte den opp i en fart. Det oppbrettede ermet blottet en senete arm idet han strakte seg. Og da han snudde seg mot henne igjen, var det med dette blikket. Så, uten annen innledning, begynte han å vise henne rundt med en forvirret mine, som om det var første gang han var der selv.
Plassen hennes var et beskjedent bord innerst i kroken, uten utsikt, men med hyller fulle av gamle skinnrygger. Det var et skrivebord til der også, men det var vel der kontorsøster hadde sin plass når hun var der.
Hun håpet at denne Klim ikke var informert om at faren og overlegen var gamle kjente. At det var slik hun hadde fått denne stillingen. Derfor nevnte hun i forbifarten at hun hadde arbeidet på legekontor i flere år. Mannen lyttet, nikket og spurte hvor hun hadde hatt plass.
Før hun fikk svart, kom en sykepleierske i uniform feiende inn og presenterte seg som søster Vivi.
– Godt! Da er jeg overflødig her, sa reservelegen muntert og satte hånden til pannen før han forsvant.
Søster Vivi viste seg fort å være en dame med stramt korsett og flommende smil. Klar i sin tale og konkret når det gjaldt arbeidsoppgaver. Hun fortalte at hun ikke kom til å være fast ved pulten sin, for hun hadde så mange andre oppgaver.
– Mannfolkene må for det meste krote ned sine ting på egen hånd, sa hun uærbødig. – Desto bedre er det at fru Grønelv er kommet for å hjelpe med å holde orden på dem, la hun til med en hjertelig latter.
Etter å ha hentet en stor bunke med brev og papirer, gikk søster Vivi til andre plikter. Og Anna gikk i gang med å få rapporter og brev adskilt og ordnet etter dato. En sykejournal som opplagt var konfidensiell, lå innimellom to rapporter som gjaldt drift. En alvorlig forsømmelse slik hun så det. Hun tillot seg å legge den for seg i en egen folder, med påskriften _Journal_. Legenes skrift var ikke god å tyde. Overlegens var verst. Det var tydelig at det var reservelegen som hadde ansvar for medisinbeholdning, leveranser fra apoteket, matbøker og pasientforpleining. Likeså morfininnsprøytning og blanding av ulikt pulver som kom ublandet fra apoteket.
Søster Vivi hadde bedt henne om å legge reservelegens rapporter for seg, for de skulle ned på medisinstuen igjen. Hvor denne medisinstuen var, hadde hun derimot ikke forklart. Dermed måtte disse papirene også få sin egen mappe med påskrift. I tillegg renskrev hun to brev som skulle sendes ut til pårørende, der hun tillot seg å rette opp de tilfellene hvor legen hadde slurvet med store bokstaver og utelatt preposisjoner og tegn. Så la hun dem i en mappe for signering.
Da klokken slo hel time for andre gang, og søster Vivi ikke var kommet tilbake, reiste hun seg fra pulten og strakte armene over hodet. Hun var nesten ferdig med dagens pålagte arbeid. Plutselig kjente hun en barnslig lyst til å ta et par dansetrinn bort til vinduet. Når danset hun sist tenkte hun? Jo, det var St. Hans-aften på Reinsnes. Kvelden før brannen.
Mer skulle ikke til. Så var hun inne i de svarte tankene. Håpløsheten. Et øyeblikk stirret hun ned på den ryddige bordplaten uten å se den, så bøyde hun seg over den store vesken sin. Hun hadde med saftflaske og niste som en annen torgkone. Smurt på vertinnens kjøkken før hun gikk til Hospitalet. Den spiste hun på en benk ved den store dammen mens hun betraktet parken og det myldrende, merkelige livet. Mennesker som satt, spaserte, snakket, gestikulerte. Kroppsspråk og påkledning røpet hvem som var ansatt og hvem som var pasient. Men et par ganger var hun i tvil.
Så slo tanken ned i henne. _Hun_ satt fornøyd og spiste niste mens Karna var der inne i galskapen. Fort la hun matpapir og saftflaske i vesken og gikk inn igjen.
Første arbeidsdag var over. Hun bar kåpen på armen i ettermiddagssola og ville ta en runde gjennom parken før hun gikk til losjiet. Duften slo imot henne på _ett_ bestemt sted. Kunne det være mimosa? Hun bøyde seg ned for å undersøke, men fant ikke ut av det.
Da hun rettet seg opp igjen, oppdaget hun ham noen meter unna. Han sto på hagegangen og tok ei pipe som en kontrast til blomsterduften. Straks hilste han med hånden, banket pipa på en kantstein og kom slentrende mot henne. Hun stanset opp da han nådde frem.
– Se så, da var den første dag på galehuset unnagjort, sa han muntert, puttet pipa i jakkelommen og bød henne armen som om de skulle vært gamle kjente. Så nappet han til seg kåpen hennes og la den på skulderen sin.
– Jeg har vært her jevnt siden forrige høst, sa hun.
– Ikke som innsatt vel? sa han sleivete.
– Nei, men jeg har en stedatter som er her som pasient.
Han lot seg tilsynelatende vippe av pinnen, stanset opp og vendte seg mot henne. Øynene ble svarte i det lave motlyset. Men munnen ble tydelig. En malplassert mykhet.
– Hun er gift?
– Ja, svarte hun. Det var ikke akkurat det spørsmålet hun hadde ventet.
– Nå, det er ikke noe nytt for meg, sa han lett.
– Å, ikke det?
– Nei, de er alltid det, de kvinnene jeg kunne tenkt meg, sa han med den korte latteren.
Mannen flørter, tenkte hun overrasket og lo med. Det kom over henne en slags takknemlighet. For kunne hun huske sist hun _lo_? Kunne hun på noen måte huske sist hun lo?
– Og situasjonen er til stadighet et problem? spurte hun.
– Problem og problem. Det kommer an på hvordan man ser det, sa han og klemte armen hennes tett inntil kroppen. Hun fant seg i å gå noenlunde i takt.
– Det betyr at han ikke er gift?
– Ikke engang forlovet, slo han fast.
– Det betyr at det ikke har vært noe problem til nå?
– Problem og problem... Mennesket er fleksibelt. Jeg vet jo hva jeg slipper unna. Min mor er et monster.
Hun betraktet ham fra siden, måtte se om han mente det han sa. Det så slik ut.
– Og hun er ikke engang døende? spurte hun.
– Ikke engang innlagt, slo han fast. – Det hadde vært en berikelse. Jeg er farløs og enebarn.
– Og har mye å arve? spurte hun freidig.
– Nå begynner dette å ligne på en fruktbar samtale om reelle ting. Du prøver å kartlegge meg fra første dag, fru Grønelv. Det er mer enn man kunne håpe på, slo han fast.
Hun måtte le igjen. Hvordan kunne det ha seg at hun gikk her og snakket med en vilt fremmed om ting som egentlig var tabu? Og at hun fornemmet at han slett ikke tullet, men mente ramme alvor og utsatte seg for at hun lo av ham?
– Hør, begynte han, – dette er for meg en _meget_ god dag. Det fins en enkel liten kro i denne landlige provinsen. Like ved her. Kan jeg få be fruen på middag? Si ja!
– På én betingelse. At han ikke kaller meg _fruen_ , men Anna.
– Se det, humret han fornøyd, snudde seg mot henne og bukket. – Dette begynner å ligne på _mer_ enn en god dag. Tittelen frue er herved lagt død og maktesløs, Anna. Hjertelig hilsen Joakim, sa han med en teatralsk gest så han nesten mistet kåpen hennes.
– Men bare på tomannshånd, la han til. På galehuset kan vi ikke være dus. Overlegen ville dø av attakk om han hørte det. Så måtte jeg overta hele galskapen. Det er jeg ikke rede for riktig ennå. Jeg må dessverre skrive noen artikler først. Og artikler er verre enn galskap, det er død over det levende livet.
– Da er kanskje Joakim ikke helt på riktig hylle?
– Det vet jeg ikke. Men det er nå engang her jeg er, svarte han kjapt. – Og i det store og hele har jeg glede av det. Men hva er Annas riktige hylle når hun ikke er her?
Hun så ut i luften.
– Min hylle er bare en tåpelig drøm som aldri kan bli virkelig, plumpet hun ut.
– Bo i et slott? Reise til verdens ende? foreslo han.
– Nei. Bli god nok til spille klaver fra scene, tilsto hun.
Hun merket blikket hans, men så ned i veien.
– God nok? Det betyr at Anna allerede er ganske god? spurte han.
– Det kommer an på hvem som bedømmer.
– Har hun instrument selv?
– Ikke her. Men jeg håpet at jeg kunne bruke det som er her – av og til, sa hun.
– Storartet! Spill alene – eller for oss alle. Det skal være en fornøyelse å høre henne i den store salen.
– Takk! Nå ble jeg glad, sa hun enkelt.
Det var ikke langt til kroen. Men langt nok til at hun fikk vite at han bodde på et spartansk rom innenfor hospitalområdet, når han ikke reiste for å høre på endeløst snakk om galskapen og dens muligheter. Og han fikk vite at hun akkurat hadde flyttet fra sine foreldres leilighet i Kjøbenhavn og leide et rom i nærheten hos en slakterenke.
– Det lukter vel ikke slintrer og blod håper jeg, ertet han.
– Nei, men en anelse mugg, århundrers regn har satt seg fast i murpussen, fulgte hun opp.
Han spurte ikke om mann eller fortid. Og han holdt ord. Ordet frue ble ikke uttalt en eneste gang. Derimot flørtet han uhemmet ved å si _Anna_ flere ganger uten grunn.
Kroverten var en trillrund fyr med hengebarter og skallet hode. Han serverte rikelig med kalvefrikassé og rødvin fra kanne. Og det var tydelig at Joakim var der ofte. Da de hadde spist og verten hadde ryddet, oppsto en liten stillhet. De satt der med vinen da han plutselig bøyde seg mot henne over den rødrutete duken og fanget blikket hennes.
Hun vek ikke. Det var det ingen grunn til. Men da han la hånden sin over hennes, ble hun usikker. Idet hun skulle til å rykke hånden til seg, tok han sin bort og festet blikket på veggen bak henne.
– Myk. Sval. Fremfor alt sval, slo han fast som om han stilte en diagnose.
Så vinket han på verten og betalte. Og akkurat dette, at han forsto grensene uten å kommentere, gjorde henne underlig rørt. Slik vant han spillet likevel. Visste han det? Hun kunne ikke spørre. Og han nevnte det ikke.
– Det er kjøligere nå, sa hun da de kom utenfor. En kommentar en frue verdig, tenkte hun ironisk. Hun kunne sagt det. Så ville han fulgt opp med en vittig kommentar med alvorlig brodd. Men hun sa det ikke, sto der bare og hutret tåpelig. Han holdt kåpen og hjalp henne på med den. Og mens han sto slik bak henne og hun ikke kunne se ham, kom spørsmålet.
– Anna, gir du meg fornøyelsen av å spasere deg til slakterenkens port i solnedgangen?
– Den fornøyelsen er min også, svarte hun lettet. Isen var brutt. Hun visste at de igjen kunne snakke utvunget.
Hun viste vei. Mellom villaer og småhus, stakitt og lave steingjerder foran vårpjuskede hekker. Det ble ingen solnedgang. En kompakt skybanke la seg til ute i havet og dekket hele herligheten.
– Virker arbeidet på Hospitalet til å leve med? spurte han.
– Ja. Egentlig er jeg vant til slikt arbeid. Jeg ordnet alt på distriktslegens kontor der jeg kom fra, i Nordland. Men det var jo mye mindre forhold. Nærmest familiært.
– Jeg så nok at hun var i bransjen, selv om hun ikke luktet formalin og eter, sa han.
– Jeg er jo ikke ordentlig i faget. Bare en simpel autodidakt. Datter av en lege og gift med en lege, og slik forfordelt.
– Skal Anna være lenge her? spurte han.
– Det vet jeg ikke helt. Jeg må være nær min stedatter en tid. Innbiller meg at hun trenger meg. Jeg er en av de få hun vil kjennes ved. Og hittil har jeg fått se henne, nesten så ofte jeg vil, sa hun.
– Vet overlegen at det er familiebånd, sa han plutselig.
– Selvsagt. Hvordan?
– Han er en striks herremann. Men klok. Han har vel sett din kompetanse og ansatt deg selv om du har en stedatter her, mente han.
– Har Joakim møtt min Karna? Gått stuegang på hennes avdeling?
– Nei, ikke ennå. Jeg er satt på deliristene, dem ingen vil ha, mennene i første etasje. Der er det mest bråk og spetakkel. Menn er de verste av alle pattedyr, også på galehus, sa han tørt.
– Verre enn din mor? fulgte hun freidig opp.
– Tja... De er sterkere og grovere, men de har ikke hennes intelligens for svart, sjelelig magi.
De gikk litt uten å si noe. Han klemte armen hennes fast til seg for hvert steg. Det ble en rytme.
– Jeg vet ikke om det er så bra å snakke om pasienter og privatliv. Men det var jeg som begynte, så det er jeg som må stoppe. Likevel spør jeg videre. Har Anna et bedre forhold til sin stedatter enn til stedatterens far?
Anna snappet etter pusten.
– Det var da et intrikat spørsmål. Og svært personlig. Nesten terapeutisk, sa hun avmålt.
– Jeg er jo terapeut. Men jeg spurte av egeninteresse, ikke fordi jeg tror _du_ trenger det. Det er som du forstår en vane jeg har, å spørre, dersom jeg vil vite.
– Vi er virkelig dus, hører jeg. Du har gått fra frue til Anna til _du_ – på mindre enn en dag, sa hun uten å legge særlig fornærmelse i det.
– Ja, og du følger opp hører jeg. Det er en lettelse. Konvensjoner er for kujonene. Ikke for slike som oss. Men altså, for å være helt tydelig. Jeg spurte fordi jeg i egeninteresse helst vil at Anna har et platonisk forhold til sin stedatters far. Og det behøver du ikke å svare på dersom du ikke vil.
– Og det _vil_ jeg selvsagt ikke.
– Takk! Det behøves ikke. Med _det_ har du allerede svart.
– Her er det, sa hun perpleks og stanset.
De sto litt, så åpnet han porten, langsomt.
– Det er en velsmurt og høflig port uten gnelder, bemerket han med et smil. Øyeblikket etter var han merkelig alvorlig og slapp armen hennes.
– Takk, Anna! I dag har jeg opplevd en sjelden fugl, sa han ut i luften. Mitt ønske er at den skal driste seg til å fly. Langt. Lenger enn langt.
Så hilste han med hånden til øret som en soldat uten lue. Snudde brått og gikk sin vei uten å si noe mer.
# MODERSKAPET
Milde Emilie sto borte ved de åpne drivhusdørene og snakket med mannen som passet på at alt gikk som det skulle. Karna hjalp ikke til med arbeidet, som de andre pasientene som var der. Hun satt bare aldeles stille på benken og ventet. Det luktet sterkt av jord.
To menn drev og pløyde. Den ene var hest. Den andre styrte plogen. Plogfoldene la seg pent til hver side. Mannen som pløyde var stor og sa ingenting, bare pustet. Støvlene grov seg dypt ned i jorda for hvert skritt. Han som styrte plogen var mager og ga ordrer til den andre med pipende, sint stemme. Mannen som dro enset ham ikke. Gikk bare rett frem. Ingen andre blandet seg inn. Kålen skulle i jorda. Da karene var ferdig og fikk saft mens de tørket svetten, smilte den magre og drakk langsomt. Han som var hest, var alvorlig og et annet sted – mens han drakk to glass saft på styrten.
Emilie la hodet på skakke og så på mannen som ledet arbeidet. Han var nok ikke pasient, selv om han hadde overall og støvler på. Nå ropte han ut noe om godt utført arbeid. Men det var Emilie han så på. Hun hadde tatt sykepleiekappen av og knappet opp blusen i halsen. Nå la hun hodet bakover og lo mot mannen.
Plutselig så Karna veggen over farmors bokskap i drivhusglasset. Der hang alle mødrene i rammene sine. Øverst, en de kalte _unge mor Kare_ n. Hun hadde bitte små franske kniplinger tett om halsen, smilte med liten jentemunn og hadde små krøller ved ørene. Det var mor til Jacob som farmor dyttet utfor stupet i en slede.
Motlyset var så sterkt at hun ikke kunne se portrettene tydelig. Likevel måtte hun spørre.
– Veit du koffør ho farmor gjorde det?
Ingen svarte.
– Æ trur at du vesste det, men at du ikkje orka å sei nokka, prøvde hun på nytt.
Mor Karen nektet å svare. Hun visste nok noe som kunne sette Jacob i et dårlig lys og kanskje renvaske farmor.
– Du skal ikkje gjør dæ usynlig. Du e oldemor mi og må hjelpe mæ å forstå.
Hun ventet en stund. Men mor Karen svarte ikke.
– Æ trur ho farmor berre va en jentunge som ikkje hadde begynt å blø då de gifta sæ. Men du brydde dæ ikkje om det.
Endelig kom det som et slags sukk fra glassveggen.
– Du skal ikke anklage meg. Du skal huske meg for det faren din har fortalt om meg, sa mor Karen og skled ut av rammen og ble sittende på kanten. Liten som en slunken sagflisdukke med porselenshode. De franske kniplingene rørte på seg. Hun hadde ikke sko. Føttene dinglet rolig under alle skjørtene.
– Han har fortalt at han satt på fanget dett når du leste for han fra bøker han fant i skapet? sa Karna.
– Ja. Han var et elskelig barn. Det kan man ikke si om deg. Du har dette andre som du ikke kan hjelpe for.
Sola snittet en sirkel rundt mor Karen og bar henne bort.
Da ble en annen tydelig. Hun som hang nederst og smilte trist. Moren hennes, som aldri hadde hørt til på Reinsnes, men som pappa eller farmor hadde hengt der likevel.
– Det e mor di, sa pappa da hun var liten. Ellers snakket han ikke om henne. I alle fall ikke mye. Som om han ikke ville huske at hun hadde mor. En som han en gang måtte ha valgt. Hun visste jo at det måtte til. Man måtte velge, eller la seg velge.
Mannen med trillebåra kom gående imellom moderskapet og henne. Da fløy moren ut av rammen og ble til en fugl med rødt bryst som landet på benken. Tett ved henne. De satt der sammen med blikket vendt mot vannet. Uten å snakke eller gi seg til kjenne. Hun lukket øynene og strakte den åpne hånden forsiktig mot fuglen. Da kjente hun den i den åpne håndflaten. De små klørne. Det dunete brystet. Hun åpnet ikke øynene. Likevel så og kjente hun alt. Sola som varmet ansiktet. Moderfuglen i hånden.
En humle summet en altfor tidlig sang i en busk like ved. En slags musikk uten sorg. Ikke engang vemod. En evig lavmælt dur. Sangen tok henne dit hun var før hun hadde truffet seg selv. Hun fløt. Behøvde ikke å tenke på å dra pusten, eller vitne. Alt var som det skulle være.
Hun hadde kjent det samme da Anna tok henne med over hav og atter hav. I den trange kahytten som også var en slags celle. Rytmen i en urgammel tone.
# BENJAMIN MØTER OVERLEGEN
– Hun virker fysisk frisk på alle måter, bortsett fra at hun ikke menstruerer. Det er ingen påviselig grunn. Vi har selvsagt gjort undersøkelser, men hun motsetter seg så kraftig at det er ikke lett, sa overlegen med et sukk.
Benjamin bøyde seg frem mot mannen bak skrivebordet.
– Dere kan ikke gjøre slike undersøkelser mot hennes vilje! Hun har hatt store påkjenninger. Hun trenger trygghet, ikke opprivende situasjoner.
– Selvsagt. Men gynekologisk undersøkelse er obligatorisk for eventuelt å avdekke sykdom, skader eller graviditet, noe som kan være en del av det hysteriske sykdomsbildet.
– Jeg vet ikke hva De mener. Hun har epilepsi og kan falle bort, særlig under påkjenninger. Jeg sendte med en journal der jeg beskrev sykdommen slik jeg som far og lege opplever det. Er den lest?
– Ja, selvfølgelig, sa overlegen avmålt. – Epilepsi er trolig en del av hysteriet.
– Hun er _ikke_ hysterisk! Men et ungt menneske med en sterk vilje.
– Jeg forstår at man som far ser tingene ut fra en ikke-faglig vinkel. Men vi som ser henne hver dag og vil hjelpe henne inn i tilværelsen igjen – vi ser kanskje _helheten_. Hun har fått epileptiske anfall også i vanlige situasjoner, ikke bare ved gynekologisk undersøkelse.
– Men hun fikk det selvsagt da? utbrøt Benjamin, lente seg tilbake i stolen og knep øynene i. Åpnet dem igjen.
Overlegen lot ham få tid.
– Vil han kanskje ta henne ut av vår varetekt og bringe henne hjem?
– Nei. Men jeg vil at hun skal få hjelp, ikke bli utsatt for tortur.
– Det var da voldsomt. Tortur? Vi arbeider i et faglig moderne miljø, der vi nøye vurderer hva som er akseptabelt i hvert enkelt tilfelle. Doktor Grønelv vil altså at vi skal kurere hans datter uten å bruke de metoder og rutiner vi har for å avdekke sykdomsbildet? sa overlegen med mild fasthet i stemmen.
– Jeg snakker ikke om den mulige positive, jeg snakker om den opplagt negative virkningen.
Professoren målte ham med blikket før han svarte.
– Hun har _mutismus_ , som han vet. Vil overhodet ikke snakke. Ikke engang til sin stemor. Det gjør det svært krevende å kommunisere med pasienten. Bortfall av språk kan være en del av hysterikerens reaksjon. Akkurat som ukontrollert vannlating, hodepine, raseri. Hun velter lamper, provoserer frem brann og agerer av og til voldsomt. Hun skader seg selv. En dag hadde hun fått tak i en sprøytespiss eller noe annet skarpt og stukket seg selv til blods på hendene.
– Hvordan kunne det skje? Er ikke skarpe gjenstander utenfor rekkevidde for pasientene? spurte Benjamin.
– Jo, selvsagt. Det var beklagelig og skulle aldri ha skjedd. Vi måtte gi personalet som var på vakt en skrape, sa overlegen og satte hendene i en plog foran ansiktet.
– Når kan jeg møte henne? spurte Benjamin.
– Det kan jeg ikke si. Hun er ikke mentalt forberedt på at hennes far er her. Det er ikke sikkert at hun vil kjenne ham igjen. Eller _ønsker_ det. Men i morgen skal jeg selv gå stuegang på hennes avdeling. Da vet jeg muligens mer. Jeg ber om tålmodighet. Har han mulighet til å være en tid i Kjøbenhavn?
– Det er noe usikkert hvor lenge jeg kan være borte fra legepraksisen, svarte Benjamin.
– Kan jeg gi beskjed til hans svigerfar på Frederiks Hospital – om når det kan passe? Jeg kjenner ham for øvrig gjennom innleggelsen av frøken Karna. Eller... doktor Grønelv bor selvsagt her, i sin kones losji?
– De kan gi min svigerfar beskjed, sa Benjamin fort.
Selvsagt trodde professoren at han bodde hos Anna. Han hadde satt seg i en tåpelig situasjon ved ikke å melde seg for Anna med en gang han kom. Særlig fordi han måtte passere kontoret hun satt på. Det kunne blitt pinlig, men heldigvis hadde hun gått for dagen.
– Fru Grønelv nevnte ikke at hennes mann skulle komme, sa sykepleiersken forskrekket da han presenterte seg og ville inn til overlegen uten å ha avtale.
Han hadde unnlatt å svare. Og mens han ventet, kjente han seg som en kujon som ikke hadde meldt seg for Anna _før_ han dro for å se Karna. Var det ren feighet? Var han redd for å oppdage at Anna helst ikke ville at han skulle komme?
– Da gir jeg beskjed når jeg har forberedt frøken Karna, sa overlegen vennlig. – Det skal ikke ta mange dagene. Har Grønelv forresten studert noe om epilepsi? Han virker så orientert? Jackson for eksempel? Eller Ferrier og Horsley? spurte mannen uten overgang, som om han hadde glemt at han bare hadde gitt ham en halvtime.
– Ja, i noen grad. Jackson. Flindt. Pontoppidan provoserte meg fordi tesen om fingerte anfall virker tøvete. Muligens er det noen som bruker livet sitt til å herse med sine nærmeste for å få oppmerksomhet. Men det passer i alle fall ikke på min datter. Hun har vært slik siden hun var et spedbarn. Fødselen var svært hard.
Overlegen fikk noe mildt over ansiktet.
– Jeg har forstått det slik at moren døde i barsel?
– Ja.
– Var hun alene?
– Nei, jeg prøvde å forløse henne sammen med en kamerat som også studerte medisin. Det gikk galt.
– De var ennå student, og moren... Dette var et forhold som... Et tilfeldig forhold? Overlegen kremtet lavt mens han ryddet små ting på skrivebordet som allerede var godt plassert.
– Jeg ser ikke at det har noen relevans for Karnas sykdom, sa Benjamin avmålt.
– Det har han helt rett i. Jeg spør av menneskelig interesse. Han behøver ikke å svare.
Benjamin satt et øyeblikk uten å si noe, så bestemte han seg.
– Det var ikke et tilfeldig møte. Vi traff hverandre på slagmarken ved Dybbøl. Som sanitetssoldater. Frivillige tullinger i en håpløs krig.
Professoren sperret opp øynene.
– Dybbøl! Herregud! Han var altså der? Frivillig. Det var grusomme tider, utbrøt han.
Et gråblått ettermiddagslys fløt inn over skrivebordet. Plutselig, som om en sky var kommandert unna, slo en gul søyle igjennom. Fra øverste vindusrute, over legen og mot ham. Det blendet så sterkt at professoren forsvant.
– Og han tok barnet med til Norge?
– Ja.
Den gule lansen mellom dem gikk i oppløsning, og igjen var det bare en disig ettermiddag i april.
– Det må ha vært en lang og strabasiøs reise. Men han hadde selvsagt hjelp med barnet.
Det var ikke noe spørsmål i stemmen, mer en stadfestelse. Benjamin lurte på hva Anna og professoren hadde snakket om. Eller hva Annas far hadde sagt over punsjglasset.
– Nei, jeg reiste alene med barnet. Men som professoren vet, var det min kone Anna som brakte Karna hit. Vi forsto at hun måtte få hjelp etter at hun prøvde å kutte pulsåren med en skalpell. Jeg... _Vi_ forsto at det kunne skje igjen, når som helst. Omgivelsene er, som professoren vet, full av skarpe redskaper, mumlet han og gikk i stå.
– Ja, det vet jeg. Og mens vi har en fortrolighet, hun lot seg også falle i dammen her ute.
– Prøvde hun å drukne seg? utbrøt Benjamin.
– I den grad hun visste hva hun gjorde, ja. Men hun kan naturligvis ikke stilles til ansvar. Og pleiersken gjorde anskrik med en gang.
Benjamin så for seg situasjonen. Karnas ansikt idet hun falt. Eller lot seg falle. Han svelget og så ned i fanget. Visste ikke hvordan det gikk til. Det var helt utillatelig, men han begynte å gråte. Famlet i den ene lommen etter den andre for å finne et lommetørkle, uten hell.
Etter en liten stund rakte professoren sitt eget, nystrøkne over bordet uten å si noe. Det var ikke noe annet å gjøre enn å ta imot. Det ville vært enda verre å snyte seg i hendene. Han fikk frem en unnskyldning og snudde seg diskret for å stoppe flommen.
– Det har vært verre scener i dette rommet enn dette, sa overlegen rolig.
– Hvordan hendte det? Var hun alene? spurte Benjamin.
– Nei, som sagt gjorde pleiersken anskrik med en gang, og det varte bare et øyeblikk. Personalet fikk henne til å brekke seg, og de brakte henne straks i varmt bad. Hendelsen er dypt beklagelig og må ikke få gjenta seg.
– Nei! Dere må passe på henne. Jeg bønnfaller dere.
– Vi prøver vårt ytterste uten å frarøve henne all frihet. Vi har dyktige hjelpere. Men i ettertid har jeg tenkt på at det er gjort eksperimenter, men ikke her til lands, med å la pasienter uforberedt falle i kaldt vann. Det høres kanskje kynisk ut, men ettersom du selv er lege, så vet du at forskning og eksperiment er viktig for all vitenskap. Her hjalp hun oss, men metoden virket altså ikke på henne, for hun snakker fremdeles ikke, sa overlegen med et prøvende smil.
– Hvilke utsikter har hun for bedring?
– Det er komplisert og vanskelig å spå. Men vi er optimistiske. Sykdommen er muligens utøst av en krevende situasjon, som vi har fått forklart. Trolig lå hysteriet latent slik at ytre begivenheter bare utløste det. Men teori er _en_ ting, praktisk trening med pasientene noe ganske annet. Vi ønsker at de skal ha det fritt som om de bodde i et hjem, og at vi skal støtte dem dersom de har talenter som kan sette dem i virksomhet. Noen kloke hoder, blant annet Mantegazza, hevder at kunst og lesing og altfor skjermet oppvekst kan virke negativt. For eksempel mener han at lesing av romaner og poesi spekket av følelser kan virke negativt. Den teorien deler ikke jeg. Her ser vi daglig at noen pasienter har stor glede i omgang med kunst og kultur, noen er også selv utøvende. Dessverre har det ennå ikke lyktes å få din datter til å bruke sitt talent for musikk og sang. Men vi må være tålmodige. En annen utfordring er å få henne til å spise regelmessig. Moderne forskere i faget har stor tro på dietter. Hennes diett er det jo betalt rikelig for. Problemet er at hun ofte saboterer maten. Og igjen, hennes mangel på språk gjør alt mer komplisert.
Benjamin satt ennå med professorens lommetørkle i neven. Nå prøvde han å forklare at Karna _ikke_ hadde levd beskyttet, tvert om. Men han stotret og følte seg utilstrekkelig sammenlignet med overlegen. Og ut i samtalen, i et slags overmot, eller fordi den andre inviterte til fortrolighet, lot han ord falle om det han hadde drømt om helt siden han kom tilbake til Nordland som nyutdannet lege med et nyfødt jentebarn.
– Jeg har bestemt meg for å søke plass ved Frederiks Hospital og spesialisere meg innen kvinnesykdommer. Og for å være nærmere min datter. Jeg må bare finne en som kan overta min praksis. Folk der oppe kan ikke være uten lege.
Professoren sperret øynene opp og smilte overrasket.
– Godt. Utmerket. Lykke til! sa han og nikket vennlig flere ganger.
– Jeg beklager opptrinnet i sted. Ikke særlig tillitvekkende, sa Benjamin og prøvde å folde lommetørkleet pent sammen. Det lyktes ikke helt.
– Ingenting å beklage. Det er vel _mangel_ på følelser som ellers får styre verden. Og som sagt, det har vært verre utbrudd i dette rommet.
– Det er tredje gangen siden brannen, unnskyldte han seg og hørte selv hvor lite mandig det lød.
– Brannen?
– Der min mor omkom, sa han.
– Han holder følelser under kontroll, sa professoren.
– Nei. Men det har ikke vært rom for slikt... Jeg leverer lommetørkleet ved leilighet når jeg har fått vasket det.
– Glem den forbaskede fillen. Men velkommen hit igjen, sa overlegen og signaliserte at samtalen var over.
– Jeg ber... Kan jeg se min datter _nå_ , før jeg går? Bare et øyeblikk? spurte Benjamin.
– Jeg vil ikke nekte det. Men som jeg innledet denne samtalen med, det forsvarlige er at vi først forbereder henne godt. Hun er labil. Noe som gjør alt enda vanskeligere. Kan vi si det slik at vi gir beskjed når vi mener å vite at hun har forstått at hun får besøk av sin far?
– Det rådet får jeg bare følge, sa Benjamin og reiste seg.
– Godt! Da har vi den beste forståelse oss imellom. Deres kone var alt gått før De kom, men henne kan De jo i alle fall se, går jeg ut fra, sa professoren smilende.
Benjamin svarte ikke, men prøvde å smile tilbake. De ga hverandre hånden til farvel.
På toget til Kjøbenhavn tenkte han på at han var umyndiggjort overfor Karna. Hun var inne i et system som han vanskelig kunne overprøve, uten å ta henne ut av Hospitalet. Dersom han valgte det, så måtte han ta henne med hjem til Nordland, slik han gjorde for snart atten år siden. Men nå hadde han ikke det store familiesamfunnet på Reinsnes å støtte seg til. Kvinnene var borte. Det trygge, store hjemmet var borte. Tok han Karna ut av asylet, så måtte han være til stede for henne dag og natt, mens han håpet at hun ved et under ble frisk av seg selv. Han kunne ikke forvente at Anna av ren godhet flyttet hjem. Han ville ikke engang spørre henne.
Fremme på Jensens Gæstgiveri veltet han seg over ende på den smale sengen med skoene på og slo fast at han ikke hadde mer kompetanse til å hjelpe Karna _nå_ enn han hadde før hun dro. Det gikk også opp for ham at han i stort overmot hadde sagt til professoren at han skulle flytte til Kjøbenhavn for å studere. Det var en bestemmelse han ikke kunne endre uten fullstendig å miste ansikt for denne mannen som skulle hjelpe ham med å få Karna frisk. Han var nødt til å gjøre en stor forandring i livet sitt.
Rommet lå ut mot gaten, og vogner skramlet forbi på brosteinen av og til. Unger lekte med rop og spetakkel. Friske, men sikkert fattige unger. Han lukket øynene. Bilder fra studietiden flimret forbi i en merkelig strøm. Anna i lyse gevanter. Korte scener i sol i Kongens hage. Eller i kveldsmørke når han fulgte henne hjem. Som om han bare kjente den unge Anna, og årene i Nordland ikke var. Det gikk opp for ham at han ikke hadde orket ydmykelsen det var å spørre overlegen om adressen hennes i Hospitalbyen. Det var av de ting man kunne forvente at en ektemann visste. Og hvorfor hadde han ikke funnet ut av det før han tok ut dit? Skjøv han foran seg at han grudde seg for å oppleve at hun ikke ble glad for å se ham?
Om kvelden, mens han satt i en halvmørk konsertsal og hørte en aldrende pianist i loslitt kjole og hvitt spille Liszt, begynte han igjen å gråte. Overlegens lommetørkle måtte opp. La noen merke til det, så kunne de tro at musikken rørte ham. Noe den også gjorde. Det var Annas musikk.
Det slo ham at den plutselige bestemmelsen om å bryte opp fra tilværelsen hjemme ikke bare var tuftet på å være nær Karna, eller bli til noe mer enn en landsens distriktslege. Det var for å være nær Anna, uansett om hun ville ha ham eller ikke. Det kom for ham at han altfor sjelden hadde utfordret seg selv og tatt valg. Bare latt seg drive av plikt og begjær. Kanskje to sider av samme sak?
Men nå hadde han altså tatt en bestemmelse. Bryte opp. Komme ut. Leve i en by. Der var fremtiden. Medisinen. Musikksaler. Kollegaer. Kneiper. Et nytt liv. Ikke som i ungdommen. Mer bevisst på at livet ikke bare var å flyte med. Det krevde. Av og til mer enn han hadde å gi.
Etter konserten gikk han til losjiet gjennom rå tåke. Langsomt, mens det dryppet jevnt fra hattebremmen. Han gjenkjente seg selv i menneskene som tilsynelatende flimret rundt og i hverandre under gasslyktene. De dannet et bilde for akkurat den som så, akkurat der, akkurat da, uten å vite det. Han hadde ikke visst at han hadde savnet den. Byen. Og Anna.
# BENJAMIN OG ANNA
Han ventet til utpå formiddagen før han tok turen til Annas foreldre. Kjente seg svett og utilpass. Dressen var altfor varm og ganske utidsmessig her. Han fikk nok se til å ekvipere seg, som man sa i bedre kretser.
Mens han krysset gaten ved Kongens Nytorv, fikk han plutselig øye på _Brettmannen_ lys levende, en byoriginal han husket fra studietiden. Han solgte gipsfigurer som han balanserte på et brett høyt over hodet. Lett gjenkjennelig selv om han hadde lagt seg til skjegg. Nå forsvant han bak en hestesporvogn. Benjamin forserte trafikken og kom seg bort til ham. Ropte gjennom støyen fra vognene, som om de skulle vært gamle kjente.
– De har lagt Dem til skjegg, min gode mann! Det kler Dem!
Mannen smilte og satte brettet foran ham med stor ro.
– Det er en vakker dag for handel, sa han bare.
Benjamin valgte ut en fugl malt med en brunrød farge og prutet ikke på prisen. Han måtte ta den som den var uten innpakning. Slik var det bare. Og da han gikk videre og kjente på den vesle bulen av fuglen i skinntasken, virket det ikke så skremmende å skulle ringe på hos Annas foreldre.
Herren var ikke hjemme, men det var fruen, sa piken som han ikke hadde sett før, – og hvem skulle hun melde.
– Hun kan melde Annas mann, Benjamin Grønelv, svarte han muntert og ga henne et smil.
Piken sperret øynene opp og rettet litt på den stivede kappen som satt på et uregjerlig stort hår. Så åpnet hun døren, neide og gikk til side for å slippe ham inn. På et øyeblikk var han befridd for hatt, taske og frakk, og ble vist inn i dagligstuen for å vente. Et par ganger så han på lommeuret. For det tok tid. Han fikk anledning til å konstatere at det var kommet nye, sikkert mer moderne møbler siden sist.
Så sto svigermor i den åpne fløydøren som om hun entret en scene. Hun så ut som en reklame fra Magasin du Nords katalog. Like slank som før, selv om årene hadde fart over henne som alle andre.
– Min kjære Benjamin! ropte hun og tok imot ham med åpne armer.
Han kysset henne på begge kinn. Det var latterlig hvor fort han tok rollen som galant svigersønn, slik han visste at hun ville ha ham.
– Hvordan kunne du være så grusom at du bare sendte et telegram om at du var på vei, men ikke når tid du kom? Slik fikk vi jo ikke forberedt oss så vi kunne rulle ut den røde løperen, sa hun høyt slik at piken også skulle høre.
Han husket hvordan hun fikk spredt ut det hun ville, og hvordan hun fikk hvisket om det hun absolutt ikke ville spre.
– Du er om mulig enda vakrere enn sist jeg så deg hos oss i Nordland, sa han.
– Ikke smigre en gammel dame så uhemmet, lo hun kokett.
– Du vet godt at det ikke ligger for meg å komme med tom smiger. En enkel landsens gutt fra provinsen er ærlig, vet du, sa han.
Så var han over det første hinderet, tenkte han lettet.
– Hvor har du bagasjen? Jeg skal be piken om å sende noen etter den, sa hun og så etter piken.
Han fikk avverget det uten å tilstå at han alt hadde et rom.
– Anna? spurte han rett på sak da piken var gått etter teen.
De satt overfor hverandre ved et ovalt bord. Stolene var dype. Mer for å imponere enn til å sitte i. Svigermor ga puten i ryggen et lite klaps. Ansiktet mørknet.
– Hun har flyttet fra oss. Til et tuslete lite rom i Hospitalbyen – uten kjøkken. Hun vil _arbeide_ , sier hun. Hennes far og hun har hatt dette taskenspillet på gang i ukevis, men holdt meg utenfor. Mor og datter er ikke så fortrolige som far og datter, for å si det mildt. Min gode Benjamin, jeg er så lykkelig over at du er kommet for å ordne opp. Du får det beste gjesteværelset. Jeg skal be piken...
– Nei, vent, sa han og reiste seg. Ble stående litt, før han kom på hva han burde gjøre. Tok så de to skrittene bort og la hendene på skuldrene hennes. Husket plutselig at han hadde gjort det før når han ville ha henne til å skifte mening. Husket også at han ikke så ofte så at noen i familien tok på hverandre. Ikke søstrene heller.
– Du forstår... Jeg vet ikke hvor lenge jeg blir, og jeg håper på å se Karna daglig. Da er det upraktisk å bo i Kjøbenhavn. Men du skal vite at jeg setter pris på at jeg blir mottatt så gjestfritt når jeg bare kommer dumpende slik. Jeg vet ikke om Anna...
– Anna er lukket som en østers mot meg. Herre Gud! Jeg arme ensomme menneske, utbrøt hun og løftet to fingre mot høyre øye. – Jeg takker Gud hver dag for mine venninner, la hun til.
– Men vet du hvor jeg kan treffe henne? spurte han uten å kommentere.
– Selvfølgelig! Det skal _jeg nok sørge for_ , sa hun med ettertrykk. – Men nå skal vi riktig ha oss en god prat, du og jeg, sa hun da piken kom med samovaren.
*
Anna kom på arbeid og fikk beskjed om at hennes mor hadde telefonert og bedt henne være klar klokken fire. Hun ville sende en vogn etter henne fordi hennes mann var i byen og kom til middag.
– Men _guuud_ hvilken kjekk mann fru Grønelv har! Jeg visste ingenting, og så sto han her og skulle snakke med overlegen. Heldigvis lot det seg gjøre. Hun skulle sagt fra så hadde alt vært ordnet, irettesatte søster Vivi smilende.
Anna svelget. Det kunne ikke være sant. Ikke nå. Ikke i dag. Hvorfor hadde han ikke skrevet om det? Hun tok seg sammen under den andres blikk og smilte tilbake uten å forklare.
Så var alt på full fart inn, tenkte hun. Det var bare å ta det. Benjamin var her. Og moren sendte en vogn, som om hun ikke stolte på at hun ville komme?
– Fru Grønelv må gjerne gå tidligere, så hun kan gjøre seg i stand i god tid. Hun må gjerne ta fri i morgen også. Det er ingen sak.
– Takk! sa Anna og kjente en nummenhet spre seg i hele kroppen. Hvorfor var det slik? Hvorfor fløy hun ikke rett i taket av glede? Hadde hun noen som helst grunn til å grue seg til å se mannen sin? Omfavne ham. Snakke med ham. Hva hadde disse månedene gjort med henne? Og med ham? Hvem var han nå?
– Takk! sa hun en gang til og satte seg til med brevene. Overlegen skrev som en gris. Det gjorde visst alle leger. Det gjorde Joakim Klim også, men hun hadde lært å tyde ham alt første dag. Han ga henne dessuten ikke så mange brev. Når hun tenkte på ham, var det alltid som en som vandret, ikke skrev. Eller en som bare sto der når hun kom forbi. Alltid med dette blikket hun ikke kunne tyde.
Da hun gikk for dagen, møtte hun ham i trappen, og han stoppet opp.
– Går Anna tur langs stranden på en kveld som denne? sa han med et fortrolig alvor.
– Nei, dessverre. Jeg må til Kjøbenhavn, svarte hun med et fort smil.
– Da får jeg underholde meg selv, svarte han.
Trappen var bred, men ikke _så_ bred. Han kom svært nær. Da han hadde passert, kom hun til å snu seg. Det gjorde han også. Så ble de stående. Hun med en forvirret sjenanse over å være avslørt i å se seg tilbake. Han med et spørsmål i blikket. Så snudde hun seg fort og gikk. Først da hun var kommet helt ned, hørte hun at han gikk opp.
*
Benjamins stemme var tydelig før hun kom inn i stuen. Hun ble stående i anretningen og lytte. Hadde hun ikke tenkt på det før nå? At det var så mye hav i den stemmen. Så mange understrømmer. Og allikevel forutsigbar. Bygget opp slik en bygger opp en symfoni. Der tema kom igjen i forkledde klanger. Alltid igjen. I dag var ordene underordnet. Det var melodien som bar det hele. Man kunne kjenne etterklangen. Lenge. Hvordan kunne hun glemme det? Bare på noen usle måneder.
Med en gang hun viste seg i døren ble stemmen hans borte midt i en setning. Armene hans lukket seg fast om henne selv om de ikke var alene. Som om ingenting hadde skjedd. Ingen brann eller død. Ingen galskap. Ingenting ble sagt. Han sto der bare og holdt om henne. Som om det skulle fortsette. Fortsette, fordi alt annet var umulig.
Han luktet annerledes enn hjemme. Fremmed såpe. Da hun åpnet øynene igjen og så over skulderen hans, sto foreldrene der, litt på avstand fra hverandre og så i gulvet.
Det var selvsagt moren som brøt stillheten. Klapset hendene sammen som om hun skulle åpne en veldedighetsbasar. Knuste luften til bitte små skarpe skår.
– Anna! Er det ikke en gledens dag? Benjamin er kommet for å ordne opp i allting for deg.
*
Det var ikke mulig for Benjamin å få kontakt med Anna eller snakke om det som lå ham på hjertet. Selvsagt ikke. Foreldrene styrte samtalen. Den var springende. Først handlet det om at alt skulle ordne seg for Karna fordi overlegen var en trollmann med ry langt utenfor Danmarks grenser. Hans metoder var verdenskjent, det kunne de være aldeles sikker på. Og Benjamin unnlot å komme med noe som tydet på at han var i tvil, eller røpe at han alt hadde snakket med overlegen.
Anna satt for det meste uten å si noe. Samtalen lød som om den var ført for at en utenforstående som hørte på, skulle få det beste inntrykk av alle fire. Ingen prøvde å motsi eller komme med innvendinger. Annas far kom ikke med noen dosering, slik Benjamin kunne huske at han pleide. Og han selv? Han fortalte ikke at han alt hadde møtt overlegen på Hospitalet. Da måtte han også ha sagt at han ikke fikk besøke Karna, og at han ikke hadde prøvd å finne ut hvor Anna bodde. De spurte ikke heller. Enten var svigerfar vel orientert og visste så pass mye at han ikke ville stille ham i forlegenhet. Eller så ville han vente til Annas mor kom med sine ubeleilige spørsmål. Anna røpet heller ikke hva hun visste. Hun beklaget ikke engang at hun hadde vært uforberedt på at han kom, og ikke spurte hun hvordan det gikk der hjemme.
Han gikk inn i et slags lammende vakuum, der han mest av alt kjente seg som en dårlig aktør i et spill med improviserte replikker. Det verste var ikke de _andres_ unnfallenhet, men hans egen. Han fant ikke rom for å være direkte, eller få slutt på skyggespillet, slik han gjorde før. Ja, for det forekom ham at det alltid hadde vært slik i denne familien.
Hele tiden prøvde han å fange Annas blikk. Siden de satt ved siden av hverandre overfor foreldrene, så måtte de nødvendigvis snu seg mot hverandre samtidig. Det var ikke lett. Til sist stakk han hånden under duken og fant låret hennes samtidig som han svarte svigerfar på et spørsmål om en leges hverdag i Nordland. Om noe var blitt lettere eller mer moderne de siste årene. Om det ennå var slik at han selv måtte seile i sykebesøk til folk som bodde på øde strender. Endelig noe konkret å holde seg til. Annas lår og en leges hverdag i Nordland. Og han bekreftet at slik var det mens han strøk Annas lår. Dette kunne han gjøre fordi han på forhånd hadde flyttet stolen sin inntil hennes. Litt etter litt, helt umerkelig. Han oppførte seg akkurat like valpete som han gjorde da han var student og fikk komme til middag hos Annas foreldre. Hva mer, det var en befrielse å få føle seg ung og frekk og ta seg til rette under bordduken.
Han kunne ikke vite hva hun tenkte. Men hun smilte. En åpenbaring. Han var ikke i stand til å vurdere om hun var blitt tynnere eller blekere eller hva hun hadde på seg, han så bare halsen, munnen og i forte sideblikk øynene. Satt i sine svigerforeldres overdådige spisestue og hadde endelig fått anledning til å flørte med sin egen kone under bordet.
Da kaffen ble servert i salongen, kom Annas far inn på tragedien. Brannen. Det ble stille. Benjamin så at Anna plasserte koppen pent på skålen og la hendene i fanget. Her var ingen lang bordduk han kunne gjemme hånden på låret hennes under. Så han lente seg frem og la hånden på lenet der hun satt.
– Jeg har store vansker med å snakke om det, sa Benjamin og greide ikke helt å kontrollere stemmen. – Men kanskje senere..., la han til.
– Det er vel viktig å snakke om det, mente Annas far.
– Du har helt rett, svigerfar. Men med oss tar det visst lang tid. Men kanskje du, Anna, vil si noe?
– Brann, død og traumer er kanskje ikke det mest opplagte tema når man sitter med avecen, sa Anna tørt.
Foreldrene sperret øynene opp.
Hvordan kunne hun svare på denne... nesten kyniske måten, tenkte Benjamin og betraktet henne.
– Det er ingen grunn til å holde oss unna problemer eller sorg, vi vil jo bare hjelpe, sa Annas mor.
– Takk, men vi vet ikke helt hvordan... Vi har ikke engang fått tid til å snakke med hverandre om det, sa Benjamin med stor møye.
– Vi forstår..., sa Annas far og en pause oppsto. Så henvendte han seg til Benjamin og begynte å snakke om at det var stor mangel på kirurger. Den nye tidens forskning innen anestesi hadde åpnet for nye muligheter.
– Carl Kollers metoder innen lokalanestesi har vært ganske omdiskutert i Det Medicinske Selskab i Kjøbenhavn, men kokain blir ennå brukt ved mindre inngrep i nese og hals. Først de senere år er det blitt akseptert hos kirurgene. Selv har jeg aldri vært særlig skeptisk. Man må slippe inn alle metoder som kan lindre smerte. Du har sikkert fulgt striden om Wanschers maske med pose? Den brukes i Berlin og Norge også. Om det skal være eter eller kloroform, er vi fortsatt ikke enige om, som du vet. Selv bruker jeg eter, avsluttet Annas far.
Benjamin skulle akkurat til å svare at det var mye han ikke hadde greid å følge med på. Ville gjerne ha nevnt sine planer om å søke studieplass. Men det var som om han fløt rundt i en boble som endelig ikke måtte sprekke fordi han ikke visste noe om hvor han var i Annas liv. Og som om _hun_ visste hva han tenkte, la hun servietten på bordet.
– Dessverre må jeg komme meg av sted, jeg skal tidlig opp.
– Men Anna, du kan da bli til i morgen, utbrøt moren.
– Nei, mor. Det er langt. Da må jeg enda tidligere opp.
– At du skulle finne på det der tøvet med å arbeide på landet. Ikke sant, kjære Benjamin? Du vil få henne fra det. Lov meg at du får henne fra det! sa moren før hun demonstrativt reiste seg og fylte rommet.
– Det ville nok ikke ha vært særlig klokt av meg. Dessuten arbeidet hun på doktorkontoret hjemme også. Og før det underviste hun, som du sikkert husker. Å få Anna til å sitte på stas er nytteløst, sa han og gikk rundt bordet og la hendene på svigermorens skuldre.
– Vel, min gode Benjamin, du og jeg får heller møtes til en snaps og snakke videre om anestesiens muligheter for menneskeheten, humret Annas far.
Da han ville beordre en vogn til banegården, sa Benjamin fort at han ville skaffe en på gaten.
– Vi finner en vogn på veien, ikke sant, Anna? sa han og prøvde å fange blikket hennes.
– Ja, sa hun bare.
– Dere er som unger, ikke som voksne mennesker, sa Annas mor.
Da de kom ut på gaten, ble de stående et øyeblikk og puste uten å si noe. Gasslyktene var ikke tent ennå, og de hadde fortauet for seg selv. Skyggene var blå under trærne. De røde hustakene hadde mistet solgløden og var der bare for å dekke over menneskenes liv. Det var kveld. Anna tok hanskene opp av lommen. Før hun rakk å ta dem på, slo han armene om henne.
– Jeg ber deg, Anna. Gå med meg til Jensens Gæstgiveri, sa han uten håp.
– Er sengen smal? hørte han mot øret sitt.
– Ja. Men jeg skaffer et bedre rom. Æresord.
– Det trengs ikke. Men du skriver meg ærbart inn som din kone, sa hun med en liten latter.
– Selvsagt. Med fornøyelse.
Det var ikke vakt i resepsjonen. Ingen så at de kom.
– Jeg kan ikke stå her i all evighet for å bli ærbart registrert, sa hun.
– Nei, sa han og tok selv nøkkelen fra hyllen.
Så gikk de opp trappene til tredje etasje.
Hun klagde ikke på rommet. Spurte ikke om noe. Det var som om hun var plassert for å gjøre en oppgave. Bevegelsene var rituelle. Som om hun hadde tenkt over dem på forhånd. Han falt inn i mønsteret uten å si noe. Hjalp henne av med kåpen. Hengte den pent på knaggen ved døren. Tok av sitt eget yttertøy mens hun la hatten på det vesle bordet ved vinduet. Da hun satte seg på sengen med rak rygg og hendene flatt ned på det loslitte sengebredslet, knelte han og hjalp henne av med skoene.
*
Anna betraktet bakhodet og skuldrene hans. Han var blitt mer lut enn hun husket. Eller kanskje var det stillingen, bøyd over føttene hennes. Kanskje ville han bli rakere når han reiste seg. Akkurat som før. Hun hadde alltid syntes at han hadde bratt nakke og vakre skuldre. Hos foreldrene hadde hun unngått å se på ham for ikke å falle sammen og begynne å gråte.
Noen unger som skulle vært inne og i seng for lengst, trillet et metallhjul over broleggingen mens de skrek av fryd. To fugler kranglet om noe på taket. Det var ikke uten grunn at de holdt til over en Café og et bakeri.
– Anna..., hørte hun ham si der nede i fanget sitt.
– Ja, Benjamin, sa hun bare og la hodet og armene tungt over ham.
Så var de i det. Først hun, så begge. Det tok litt tid. Da de var noenlunde ferdige med å gråte, sa hun mykt:
– Du skulle reise deg nå, så du ikke forblir der nede.
# PAPPA UTENFOR OG INNENFOR
Hun satt i den eneste stolen på cellen sin og hadde ennå ikke rukket å åpne øynene. Måtte lukte på dagen og sortere lydene før hun åpnet øynene helt. Slik var det blitt.
En lyd var plutselig annerledes der ute. Først kunne hun ikke avgjøre hva det var. Så forsto hun det uten at hun så det. Pappas sko. Men hun _så_ dem ikke. Pappas pensko slo mot gulvet i hospitalgangen. Nå stanset de. Hun ville ikke åpne øynene, for skoene var nok ikke innenfor. Det var bare noe hun ønsket fordi de hadde sagt det. Flere ganger hadde de sagt det når de gikk stuegang. _Din far_ _kommer og_ _vil se til deg,_ _Karna._ _Hva sier du til det_? De visste at det ikke var noe hun kunne si til det. Hun svarte aldri. Likevel plaget de henne med alskens tøv de ikke engang selv trodde på.
De visste ikke hvor langt det var til Strandstedet. Hun trodde ikke de som var her hadde sovet i en båt noen gang. Spist i en båt, eller prøvd å gå på do i en båt. De visste ingenting om havbåra og vinden. Kunne ingenting om havet. Hvordan det var. Havet var kirkegården utenfor. Kirkegården for dem som ikke fikk begraves. Stemmene kom derfra. De som buldret mot steinene og strendene. Men det visste de ikke. Eller ville ikke vite. Og for å fylle tomrommet i seg så snakket de om alt og ingenting. Det var bare å la dem holde på. De kom og gikk hele tiden. Sa de merkeligste ting, som hun glemte med en gang. Hun hadde jo ikke svar.
Dessuten, hadde dette vært i virkeligheten, så hadde Anna sagt det. _Pappa kommer_ , ville hun ha sagt. Men Anna hadde ikke vært der på en stund. Man kunne ikke savne det heller. Alt ble på en måte fredeligere når Anna ikke var der. Ingen maste om musikken eller bøkene.
Nå begynte pappas sko å gå igjen. De hadde stått i ro en tid. Det var ikke godt å si hvor lenge. Det var ikke viktig. Tiden var ikke dersom man ikke målte den.
Pappas sko trippet aldri. De bare gikk. Enten rett frem eller til siden. Hun hadde aldri tenkt på om pappas sko kunne gå bakover. Det kunne de selvsagt. Alle sko kunne det. Det kom an på om den som hadde dem på gikk bakover. En grei tanke. Grunnen til at hun ikke trodde skoene gikk bakover nå, var at lyden var jevn, og den kom nærmere. Pappa gikk mest rett frem, eller til nød til siden. Penskoene hadde en liten knirk i seg, men ikke jernbeslag. I læret var det skåret inn en liten blomsterranke. Rundt snøringen. Og de måtte være nypusset for at man kunne se at de var mørkebrune, ikke svarte. Nå kom de stadig nærmere. Hun kjente et varmt streif i celleluften. Skopuss? Nå var de like foran henne. Og der sto de bom stille og lot tiden gå uten å bry seg om det. Så var de nok ikke virkelige.
– Karna, min Karna, sa skoene med en tydelig, rusten knirk. Hun burde falle nå. Slik at det ble slutt på dette. Hun orket ikke disse stemmene fra andre siden akkurat nå.
– Kan du se på meg, Karna? Jeg skal holde deg dersom du faller.
Som om sko, selv om de var to og ikke alene, med sin lave intelligens kunne vite noe som helst om å falle, tenkte hun og åpnet øynene.
– _Vær tydelig. Vær modig. Si det som ikke kan bli sagt_.
Men hun sa ingenting. Falt bare inn i flimmeret med de rasende stjerneskuddene.
*
Benjamin trodde han var forberedt. Trodde Anna hadde forberedt ham. At han hadde hatt innsikt nok til å forestille seg galskapens deformering av mennesket. Ansiktet hennes var grått og smalt. Øynene uten lys. Håret i tjafser. Pannen lå i dype rynker, og munnen var innsunket. Skuldrene var lute som på et gammelt menneske. Hun brukte den ene hånden til å vifte bort noe fra kinnet som han ikke kunne se. Karna var ikke mer seg selv nå enn hun hadde vært før hun reiste. Tvert om. Hun hadde bare fått et skall omkring det ennå sårbare. Hadde pansret seg. For ham så det ut som om hun hadde valgt det. Det var selvsagt feil. Bare noe han trøstet seg med fordi han ville at det skulle være en mulighet for forandring. Og at hun selv hadde nøkkelen.
Anfallet hadde vært lett. Han tok imot henne da hun falt, og fikk henne til sengs. Gjorde alt han pleide, og satt hos henne til hun selv fant ut at hun skulle sette seg opp. Imens opplevde han alle de krenkende og uhyggelige lydene fra andre celler og korridoren med alle de åpne dørene. Opplevde de arme sjelene som sto i døråpningen og stirret på dem, snakket til ham, ropte til ham. Og han var ikke i tvil. Hadde han selv vært på et slikt sted så ville han ikke overlevd med vettet i behold.
To ganger hadde han fått henne til å nikke stumt. Det var da han spurte om hun hørte hva han sa, og om hun kjente ham igjen.
– Du er 18 år om få dager, Karna. Jeg har noe med til deg, sa han prøvende etter en stund, uten at hun reagerte.
Skriveetuiet med blekk og penn hadde han vært nødt til å la stå igjen hos pleierne. Men fuglen han hadde kjøpt hos _Brettmannen_ , hadde han fått med. Nå satte han den på bordet ved sengen. Den sto der mellom dem og løftet på de litt klumpete vingene. Og da hun bøyde seg frem og så på den, kjentes det som om han fikk en gave tilbake.
Til slutt reiste hun seg fra sengen, grep fuglen og satte den i vinduskarmen. Hun gikk til vaskeservanten og tørket seg over ansiktet med kluten han hadde brukt da han tørket henne etter anfallet. Da hun var ferdig, snudde hun seg mot ham og nikket. Så subbet hun bort til vinduet igjen og ble stående med ryggen til som om han overhodet ikke var i rommet.
Han dro den andre presangen opp av tasken. Den røde kjolen hadde vært vakkert pakket inn av ekspeditrisen i Magasin du Nord, med lange røde silkebånd rundt. Men pleiersken fjernet dem. Han måtte ta kjolen med inn til Karna som en tull i silkepapiret. Ingen bånd. Absolutt ingen bånd. Nå holdt han den opp mot den bortvendte skikkelsen ved vinduet.
– Se! Jeg har en gave til. Fra Anna og meg, sa han hjelpeløst.
Men hun snudde seg ikke.
Han tok kjolen med seg bort til henne og prøvde å komme mellom henne og vinduet, tvinge seg til oppmerksomhet. Da virket det som hun våknet. Et slags lys ble tent i de blasse øynene. Munnen hennes formet seg om et ord. _Pappa_. Men det kom ikke en lyd ut. Hun bøyde hodet og pekte på føttene hans. Bøyde knærne og lente seg helt frem. La hånden på skoene hans. Den ene etter den andre. Så reiste hun seg langsomt og ristet på hodet.
Han lot silkepapiret falle på gulvet og holdt kjolen prøvende mot kroppen hennes. Men hun reagerte ikke. Sto bare der og formet dette ordet med munnen, uten at det kom en lyd.
Han prøvde å få hendene hennes til å åpne seg for å ta imot kjolen, uten at hun reagerte. Ville åpne knappene bak for å vise henne hvordan hun kunne få den på. Da snudde hun seg fra ham og gikk mot døren og ut på gangen. Der begynte hun å traske frem og tilbake. Ganske fort. Innimellom stanset hun helt opp og så ut som om hun sto og tenkte. For så å fortsette sin hvileløse vandring.
Han la kjolen på sengen og gikk ut til henne. Pasienter og betjening stirret på dem. Noen pasienter kom med høylytte bemerkninger. En bannet muntert da han tok Karna i hånden og gikk sammen med henne. Opp og ned i hospitalgangen. Opp og ned.
– De kan gjerne ta henne med ut i hagen og spasere, ropte en pleierske i langt, hvitt forkle. – Jeg kan hente yttertøy. Men kom endelig tilbake med henne før stuegangen.
# BENJAMIN I SAMTALENES TID
Han fant stien ned til stranden etter at han hadde vært hos Karna. Travet rundt i vikene et par timer i sine beste sko og skremte opp fugl. Det var langgrunt og lignet mer en innsjø enn en bukt i havet. En grå robåt lå og bikket ute i mudderet. Store trær hang med bristeferdige knopper over stien langs stranden og kastet flimrende skygger.
Dette var et paradis, tenkte han beskt.
Og noen skritt unna satt hans Karna på en celle og råtnet mens de alle bare så på og lot det skje.
Han oppsøkte Anna på kontoret. Måtte dele med henne alt kaoset han bar på. Hun gjorde seg ferdig for dagen og gikk med ham ut.
– Hvordan har du greid å besøke henne jevnlig i månedsvis uten å gi opp? spurte han så snart de kom ut av bygningen.
– Jeg var der nå, like etter at du var gått, for å se hvordan hun hadde tatt det. Man må bare avfinne seg... I begynnelsen gråt jeg hver gang. Men det hjalp jo verken henne eller meg. Jeg kunne jo ikke kurere henne eller ta henne med meg. Kunne ingen trylleformler som gjorde henne frisk der hun var.
– Men du skrev aldri om hvor ille det var.
– Hva skulle _du_ ha gjort så mange sjømil borte? Hadde jeg skrevet klagebrev hver uke, så hadde dine dager og netter blitt enda verre. Det kunne jeg ikke. Etter få uker innså jeg at jeg måtte _avfinne_ meg. Til sist ble det slik at det eneste jeg ikke kunne tåle, var min egen lediggang og mors stadige skvalder om ingenting. Derfor er jeg _her_. Kan jeg ikke redde Karna, så får jeg i alle fall redde meg selv.
– Men hadde jeg visst, så hadde jeg kommet før.
– Ja vel. Nå _er_ du her, og du er bare fortvilet. Så hva kan du gjøre? Annet enn å se tiden an.
Han måtte gi henne rett og fant ikke noe å si.
– Kom! La oss gå ut av området, sa hun.
– Vi fikk jo ikke snakket sammen... Der på losjiet... Fikk du brevet mitt om at jeg kom? spurte han etter en stund.
– Nei, det lå hos mor og far, selvsagt uåpnet. Jeg hadde ikke vært der på en stund. Jeg fikk det ikke før jeg traff deg. Mor stakk det til meg da vi skulle gå.
De skulle til å gå ut gjennom hovedporten da en høy, barhodet mann i åpen kamelhårsfrakk skulle inn. Han stanset for å slippe dem først gjennom porten. Så tok han hånden opp til øret som en hilsen.
– God dag! Jaså, man nyter det hensynsløse våreventyret, sa han muntert, nesten hånlig. Stemmen var ganske dyp, med ertende tonefall. Som om han kastet lyder ut for vinden i farten. Benjamin forsto at han var en bekjent.
– Ja, det er _for_ vakkert, svarte Anna, like muntert. – Kan jeg presentere? Benjamin Grønelv, min mann. Reservelege Joakim Klim.
Benjamin tok den utstrakte hånden. Anna hadde tatt et skritt til siden.
– Se så. De er kommet for å se til oss her i galskapen, sa den fremmede.
Benjamin ble overrasket over den sleivete måten og svarte ikke.
– Jeg har hørt mer enn nok, ja, egentlig mye mer enn nok om Deres fortreffelighet, herr Grønelv. Jeg må si hun er en ypperlig ambassadør for Dem, sa mannen og nikket mot Anna.
Han er en posør, eller så gjør han seg til akkurat nå, tenkte Benjamin, før han svarte påtatt gravalvorlig.
– Jeg beklager, men kan lite gjøre med den saken.
– Nei, det er ofte slik. Man har liten kontroll over hva ens nærmeste kan komme til å si, sa mannen og betraktet ham med åpen nysgjerrighet. – Skal De være lenge i dette latterlige, flate landskap?
– Det er noe usikkert. Jeg får se. Men De må for all del ikke snakke hånlig om Danmark, det er mitt land også.
Benjamin kjente det plutselig som om han hadde kranglet med denne fyren en gang i ungdommen, og kom til å tenke på Aksel fra studietiden. Den rabiate prestesønnen som skulle hatt Anna. De fandenivoldske replikkene dem imellom.
– Det var ikke meningen å fornærme noen, bare min typiske mangel på innlevelse. De forstår, _jeg_ er fullstendig uten land, sa denne Klim i en tone som om han egentlig betrodde seg. – Men la meg ikke oppholde dere. Ha en strålende dag! Så gjorde han igjen denne tåpelige soldathilsen med hånden opp til øret, og gikk inn porten.
Benjamin snudde seg og så etter ham.
– Hva er det med ham?
– Spør du meg? sa Anna med en liten latter.
– Ja. For du kjenner ham, ikke sant? Du driver ikke og skryter av meg til fremmede menn?
– Det kan nok hende, men jeg kan ikke akkurat huske når. Og han fant vel for godt å si det... Han er bare slik. Sier de merkeligste ting.
– Du kjenner ham godt?
– Nei. Men han er jo lege her og lett å snakke med, som du hører. Uformell.
– Hva vet du om ham, spurte Benjamin vaktsomt.
– Ikke mye. At hans mor er et monster. Hans eget utsagn, svarte hun lett.
– Det var som bare..., han måtte smile. – Er han dyktig? Jeg tenker på Karna.
– Det vet jeg ikke. Han huserer hos deliristene, der ingen andre vil være.
– Deliristene?
– Hans utsagn igjen. De som er så gale at det er bortkastet å medisinere dem. De må bare få rope og skrike til de faller om, eller i søvn.
Benjamin stanset opp og så på henne.
– Du har virkelig avfunnet deg, hører jeg, sa han.
– Skal vi gå? spurte hun.
– Ja. La oss gå. Men hvor?
– Jeg vet om en kro. Ikke langt herfra.
– Spise? Drikke? Ja! utbrøt han.
– Da gjør vi det, sa hun lett.
– Det er så rart, begynte han... – Det er så rart at vi går sammen, her i Danmark. At vi skal til en kro for å spise. Du og jeg.
Hun sa ikke noe. Nikket bare.
– Vi skulle nok ha reist mer. Gjort mer sammen. Bare vi to, sa han.
– Kan du holde meg i armen, spurte hun.
Han tok armen hennes, så på den og skjøv den på plass inn under sin egen samtidig som han holdt hånden hennes i sin.
– Du har ikke hansker på?
– Jeg glemte dem.
– Fryser du? spurte han mykt.
– Nei.
De gikk en stund uten å si noe.
– Kan vi gå til losjiet ditt etterpå? Kan jeg bli der?
– Det er så vidt det er plass til meg i den sengen, sa hun.
– Jeg finner et større værelse her et sted, slik at vi kan være sammen når jeg er her? sa han.
– Det blir for kostbart for meg når du reiser.
Han stanset og så forbauset på henne.
– Anna, det har jeg da midler til.
– Men det har ikke jeg.
– Det høres underlig. Mener du at vi ikke har felles midler?
– Jeg må kjenne meg som et menneske som greier seg selv. Jeg må arbeide.
– Jeg skal ikke hindre deg i å arbeide. Du lyder nesten bitter. Er du? På meg?
– Ikke gjør meg til en ekkel kjerring, sa hun og trakk i ham for å gå videre.
– Du er _ikke_ noen ekkel kjerring. De siste årene har du alltid arbeidet, uten at vi har snakket om mitt eller ditt. Men jeg skal selvsagt ikke tvinge meg på.
De gikk videre i taushet. Det duftet forår. Syrin. Hegg. Eller hva det nå var. Han dro pusten dypt inn og ga henne et blikk fra siden.
– Hva tenker du, Anna?
– På at jeg hele mitt liv har hatt alt. Fått alt i fanget. En annen har holdt i skjeen og fylt den for meg, og holdt den opp til munnen min og sagt _svelg_! Men på den måten har jeg ingen frihet.
De gikk ikke helt i takt. Han tok for lange steg, og senket farten.
– Har dette noe med kvelden i Kjøbenhavn å gjøre? Først middagen hos foreldrene dine, og så natten på Jensens Gæstgiveri? At det bare var trist for deg?
– Trist? Hva mener du? Vi hadde ikke sett hverandre siden i fjor høst. Og alt som lå imellom... Egentlig vet jeg ikke når du sist så meg, svarte hun.
Han gikk og så ned i veien. Det var flere hull med pytter i.
– Jeg beklager dersom du har opplevd det som at jeg ikke ser deg. Men du sa jo nettopp selv at det har vært mye. Tviler du på min kjærlighet?
– Det har vel hendt. Men én ting vet jeg i alle fall, sa hun hardt.
– Ja?
– Jeg er ikke Hanna!
Han snappet etter pusten.
– Men herregud, Anna! Hvorfor sier du noe så meningsløst? utbrøt han og slo armene om henne der på veien mellom alle villaene.
– Jeg sier det fordi det er sant, hvisket hun mot frakkeslaget hans.
Han holdt henne ut fra seg og så henne inn i øynene.
– Mener du for alvor at jeg ikke kan elske deg fordi du ikke er henne?
– Jeg vet ikke hva du kan. Det er det som er problemet. Og det var problemet lenge før jeg var klar over det. Du fortidde, dekket over, gikk utenom. Og du tror fremdeles du bare kan gå videre som om ingenting... Men det kan du ikke, Benjamin.
– Jeg ber deg ikke om å tilgi meg for det jeg gjorde, dersom du ikke kan. Men jeg ber deg om å gå sammen med meg videre. Jeg sverger at jeg elsker deg. Bare deg! Og jeg fortier ikke lenger, jeg sørger, sa han og la pannen mot hennes.
– Hvem sørger du over? De døde, Dina og Hanna?
– Ja, for helvete! Jeg sørger over de døde! Men mest av alt sørger jeg over de levende. Anna og Karna. Jeg ser at jeg kanskje har mistet dere begge.
Hun rev seg løs og begynte å gå. Han gikk etter og grep hånden hennes. Prøvde å gå i takt. Det var ikke lett. Hun gikk mye fortere nå.
– Kan du holde meg i armen? spurte hun etter en stund.
Han la armen hennes under sin.
– Kan du holde den tettere?
Han klemte den fast inntil kroppen. Hardt. Nesten sint. Var han sint? På Anna? _Var det i det hele tatt mulig for ham_ _å være sint på Anna_?
– Jeg har noe jeg må si deg, men jeg visste ikke helt hvordan jeg skulle finne det rette tidspunkt. Men etter dine beskyldninger om fortielse...
– Det er ikke beskyldninger, det er...
– Vel, avbrøt han, – etter denne _samtalen_ , som altså ikke er beskyldninger, så velger jeg å si det. _Nå_. På fastende hjerte, før vi kommer til kroen. _Før noen kan fylle skjeen din,_ _løfte den til munnen din og si svelg_! Jeg har besluttet å flytte til Kjøbenhavn. Har alt formet søknad om opptak ved Frederiks Hospital for å få plass. Jeg vil studere kvinnesykdommer og fødselshjelp.
Det falt noen små regndråper fra en tilsynelatende snill himmel. Den kom vel med et drev innover kysten. Det oppsto en stillhet. Begge ventet på at den andre skulle si noe.
– Det betyr at jeg kommer til å reise hjem og selge det vi eier, sa han.
Det ble med de få regndråpene. Anna sa fremdeles ingenting. Han stanset og la hendene på skuldrene hennes.
– Anna? Hører du hva jeg sier? spurte han.
– Ja.
– Er det alt du har å si?
– Foreløpig er det alt. Jeg tenker.
– Du tenker, men du er ikke glad?
– Skulle jeg være glad for at du vil selge alt du har bygd opp der hjemme?
– Men jeg ser ingen annen mulighet. Skal jeg være nær Karna og deg, så kan jeg ikke være bundet av bekymring for hvordan jeg skal bestyre alt sammen herfra. Jeg vil... jeg vil fremfor alt være _fri_! fór det ut av munnen hans.
Hun rykket til.
– Da er vi to, mumlet hun. – Men jeg tror jeg må sitte ned før jeg går videre med denne samtalen.
– Jeg mente ikke fri fra _deg_ , utbrøt han og grep armen hennes.
– La oss sette oss. La oss for guds skyld komme under tak så vi kan sette oss ned. Jeg er sulten! utbrøt hun.
– Du er sint? Jeg hører at du er sint, sa han forundret.
– Siden du hører det, så er jeg vel det, svarte hun og satte opp farten.
– Jeg vet at jeg skulle ha forberedt deg bedre. Det gjelder jo vårt felles bo. Men dette er blitt klart for meg etter å ha snakket med overlegen, og nå etter å ha sett Karna...
– Jeg ser ikke på det hjemmet som felles bo. Det er ditt! Men kan vi bare gå til kroen nå. Det kommer til å regne.
– Regne? Ja, selvsagt, sa han, tok armen hennes og langet ut i hennes tempo. Og etter en stund:
– Himmelen er helt blå, Anna.
Han holdt armen hennes som i en skrustikke mot ribbena. Så hardt at han kjente det helt fra fingerleddene via albuen og helt opp i skulderen. Det kom ikke en lyd fra noen av dem.
# ANNA TENKER TILBAKE
Ørsmå dråper samlet seg som i en usynlig skål under gasslyset. Et øyeblikk holdt de seg svevende. I neste sekund slapp regnet løs. Kastet ned med ubendig kraft. Det var slik alt begynte, tenkte hun. Kjærligheten. En svevende tilfeldighet over jorda. Så? Lys! Og de merkeligste ting grodde. Vokste. Og døde.
Anna sto på perrongen og slo opp paraplyen. Toget satte seg i bevegelse. Hånden hans var en skygge bak den våte ruten. Hun løftet sin. Da han ble borte, snudde hun seg og gikk fra stasjonen med raske skritt.
Mens regnet høljet ned uten at hun kunne gjøre noe som helst annet enn å gå, kom tankene. Hvorfor hadde hun latt samtalen komme så langt? Der på kroen. Hvordan hadde det begynt? Jo, han hadde uten innledning spurt henne om hun hadde vært der ofte. Verten var så vennlig, som om han kjente henne, sa han spørrende. Hun hadde svart at joda. Om hun gikk dit alene? Og hun hadde sagt at nei, hun hadde spist sammen med reservelegen noen ganger. For hvorfor skulle hun ikke si det? Selvfølgelig fantes det grunner til at det ikke var klokt å si akkurat det etter at de hadde snakket om hans svik. Men _hun_ hadde altså ikke sveket. Likevel spurte han om hun traff Joakim Klim ofte... privat? Det var noe med det vesle ordet _privat_. Det fikk det til å lyde som om han hadde avslørt at hun var en tyv. Eller en sviker.
– Nei, for all del, men det har hendt, hadde hun svart. Hun skulle ikke sagt _for all del_. Bare _det_ var en grunn til mistanke. Om hva?
Da han ikke sa noe, hadde hun spurt om han hadde noe imot det. Hun skulle ikke spurt. Nei. For hun visste at han kunne komme til å svare som han gjorde.
– Ja! hadde han sagt. – Men det har jeg ingen rett til. Jeg _har ikke noe med_ å ha noe imot det.
Hun hadde blitt sittende, helt stille. Ventende. I stedet skulle hun sagt noe lett. Noe vittig som gjorde alt til en bagatell. Ja, så fortsatte han bare.
– Hva er det med ham? Denne mannen? Hva er det?
Jeg må stoppe dette, hadde hun tenkt. Benjamin spør om det jeg selv tenker, men ikke vet. _Hva er det med denne mannen_? Helt siden hun traff ham første gang, hadde hun ønsket å finne det ut. Treffe ham. Spasere langs stranden. Eller i skogen. Var det derfor hun hadde begynt å spasere i skogkanten? I en slags tåpelig spenning. Fordi han ofte var der uten at det var avtalt.
– Her er så lummert. Vi går til stasjonen nå, så vi kommer oss unna regnet, hadde hun sagt og kikket ut vinduet.
Han svarte ikke, reiste seg bare og hjalp henne med kåpen. Stakk en seddel til verten og holdt opp døren for henne.
Hun grep paraplyen fra stativet, og de gikk ut. Hun trodde hun hadde avverget det som kom. Men han ga seg ikke.
– Han _ser_ deg, sa han enkelt og gikk ved siden av uten å ta armen hennes.
– Ja vel, svarte hun avmålt.
– Og du? Du _ser_ ham?
– Alle ser ham, det er kanskje ikke til å unngå. Han er jo...
– Ja, hva er det med ham? hadde han avbrutt, farlig rolig. Og hun hadde gått rett i fellen.
– Kanskje det uforutsigbare, hadde hun sagt, nesten sint. I samme øyeblikk visste hun at det var slik det var.
– Det uforutsigbare? Jeg trodde du ville ha det forutsigbare, det sanne.
– Det uforutsigbare er ofte det sanne.
– Ja, vel. Men når jeg sier noe så uforutsigbart som at jeg vil selge alt vi har for å få frihet til å være nær Karna og deg, og for å studere, så er du sint fordi jeg ikke har forberedt deg før nå.
Der! Akkurat der skulle hun ha snudd samtalen. For der handlet det om _dem_. Hun skulle grepet muligheten. I stedet sa hun:
– Jeg visste ikke... Jeg har aldri _ønsket_ å møte et slikt menneske. Og jeg vet fremdeles ikke om jeg ønsker å møte et slikt menneske.
Han snudde seg mot henne. Åpnet munnen og så på henne. Blikket var nakent.
– Det er altså _slik_?
– Slik er det, hvisket hun.
– Er... Er han elskeren din?
Hun snappet etter pusten og ristet på hodet.
– Er _han_ den du vil ha nå som alt mellom oss to...
– Det vet jeg ikke, avbrøt hun.
Idet hun sa det sto hun midt i en myr. Hun kjente kulden helt opp til hoftene. Kjente lukten av tusen års svovel. Forsto det selv. Der og da. Det fantes ikke noen vei eller bro over den myra.
– Hva _vet_ du da? hadde han hvisket tilbake.
De sto mot hverandre midt på veien.
– Det jeg vet er: Jeg er ikke Hanna. Men jeg _lever_. Nå.
Han sto der og ble grå foran henne.
– Er det for å straffe meg, dette? At du enda en gang sier at du ikke er henne? Du graver og graver... for å pine oss begge? spurte han.
Hun la merke til at han ikke sa Hanna, men _henne_. Gjorde det enda så vondt for ham å si Hannas navn?
– Det handler ikke om deg eller henne, men om _meg_ , sa hun hardt.
En spurveflokk kom høylytt og i samlet tropp ut av en hekk og ble borte mot himmelen. Så igjen stillhet.
– Du vet ikke om det blir oss, du trenger tid? Er det _det_ du prøver å si? spurte han etter en stund. Stemmen var nesten vennlig.
– Og du? Hun svarte med et spørsmål.
– Jeg? Må la tiden gå enten jeg vil det eller ei. Men likevel...
Han tidde. De tidde begge to.
– Likevel, hva? spurte hun endelig.
– Kan du likevel tenke deg å komme til Kjøbenhavn og gi meg litt tid før jeg reiser nordover? En hel natt?
– Ja, hadde hun sagt. Uten å tenke.
Og idet hun sa det, visste hun at hun hadde tatt et steg på den vesle planken han hadde kastet ut på myra.
*
Hun må gjerne ta seg fri for å si farvel til sin mann neste dag. Det skulle bare mangle. Søster Vivi var midt i en liten tale om hvor viktig det var at hun tok seg fri for å se sin mann av gårde. Da sto Joakim i den åpne døren. Hun hadde ikke sett ham på flere dager. Han var i skjorteermene og hadde en bunke papirer i hendene. Blikket var ikke til å tyde. De vekslet en kort hilsen. Han ble stående i døråpningen mens hun tok kåpe og veske og gikk over gulvet. Og han ble stadig stående, også da han skulle sluppet henne ut.
– Jaså. Da skal han altså reise? Hun har gitt ham reisepass, sa han halvhøyt.
– Hva behager? sa hun så kaldt hun greide og ville ut.
Ansiktet hans var urørlig. Bare munnvikene rykket til idet han slapp henne forbi. Så fulgte han etter ut i korridoren, stakk papirene under armen og lukket døren.
– Nå... Så har jeg greid å fornærme deg i dag? Det var ikke pent, sa han.
– Søster Vivi hørte hva du sa. Det var krenkende. Hun kunne tolke det som at det var mine ord.
– Ingen kan tolke _mine_ ord for en annens. Det lar seg ikke gjøre. Det blir for grovt, svarte han.
– Og når tenker du på andre enn deg selv? parerte hun.
– Bare når jeg tenker på deg, sa han rett inn i øret hennes.
– Jeg forbyr deg å snakke slik til meg så andre hører, sa hun myndig.
– Jeg forbyr meg selv også. Det hjelper bare ikke. Når reiser han?
– Fredag.
– Da går vi på kroen og spiser kalv.
– Nei takk! sa hun kaldt.
Han ble stående et øyeblikk og se på henne.
– Klar tale, Anna. Vi ses vel en gang, sa han lett, før han snudde seg og åpnet døren til overlegens forværelse.
Hele veien til losjiet greide hun ikke å bli kvitt synet av den vesle rykningen ved munnen hans da han snudde seg fra henne. Og mens hun pakket ned det mest nødvendige i reisevesken og gjorde seg klar til et døgn i Kjøbenhavn, lå fremdeles bildet av munnen hans over hver enkelt ting hun la ned.
Han ville nok ha smilt ironisk om han hadde visst det, tenkte hun. Eller takket ironisk fordi hun var så observant.
*
_Hun møtte dem begge i skogkanten. Men de visste ikke_ _om hverandre. Skyggene_ _skjulte dem. Det var bare hun som så. Ingen sa noe. Hun_ _var_ _forundret, men_ _ikke sjenert_ _over at hun bare_ _hadde_ _en tynn_ _nattkjole på_ _kroppen._ _Den ene visste_ _jo_ _ikke at den andre så henne_ _slik._ _Verre var det at_ _hun følte at håret_ _var tafsete og uflidd._ _Børsten lå i skuffen på kontoret. Det var for sent å hente den. De skulle til_ _den myke plassen i_ _skogbunnen._ _Bare hun visste hvor det var. Trær og ormegress_ _vokste_ _tett_ _rundt mosefeltet._ _Hun nikket. De var fremme. En tyngde spredte seg i henne._ _Det grønne sugde henne til seg._ _Armer_ _holdt_ _henne. Hardt._ _Mykt. Kjent. Fremmed. Hun visste ikke hvem_ _som kom nærmest. Kanskje var de like nær. Hud og pust. De_ _dekket henne og fylte henne. Og_ _de_ _ville ikke vite om den andre_.
_Så fikk hun øye på den. Hårbørsten. Den pendlet på en_ _grein over henne i_ _Benjamins belte._ _Som om den målte tiden. Skaftet var laget av hvalrosstann. Hun hadde fått den av ham_ _en gang han kom fra reise i Finnmark_.
# BENJAMIN FORBEREDER SEG PÅ
Å GJØRE OPP BO
– Æ kjem snart igjen, Karna. Det lova æ. Då skal æ være lenge, hadde han sagt. Deliristene ropte ekstra mye den dagen. Det hørtes ut som om de knuste møbler, uten at noen tok notis av det.
– Æ skriv tel dæ, hadde han sagt før han forlot henne. Uten at hun viste tegn til at hun forsto hva han sa, eller brydde seg om at han skulle fare. Til sist hadde han bare måttet komme seg av gårde, for om han svelget aldri så mye, så sildret det fra øynene. To uker i Kjøbenhavn hadde gjort ham til en gråtekone.
Jeg skulle ha spurt henne om hun forsto hva jeg sa, så hadde hun kanskje nikket, tenkte han da han satt på toget. Jeg skulle ha holdt den vesle fuglen mellom oss, så hadde hun kanskje husket at hun hadde fått den av meg. Erindret at jeg var der.
Hvorfor var han så opptatt av ikke å vise henne at han gråt, at han glemte slike enkle ting som kunne gitt dem begge håp? Og hvem gråt han for? Var han egentlig mer opptatt av seg selv og Anna enn av den arme ungen sin?
*
Siste morgenen våknet han tidlig og gikk alle de gamle gatene fra studietiden, trasket rundt Regensen, slentret inn og ut av Store Brøndstræde og Vognmagergade, mot Gothersgade med Rosenborg Brøndanstalt i Kongens Have. Han betraktet de eldgamle takene, friskt røde etter natteregnet. Husket hvordan luften kunne stå stille her og heten herje som i en bakerovn like før han reiste hjem for sommeren. I dag var det svalt. På grensen til å være kaldt. Skyene hadde fanget sola.
Var rommet godt nok for henne? Det kunne være bråk om natten når karer kom ramlende opp trappene og bare bikket seg på køya for å sove ut rusen. Lakenene ble ikke akkurat skiftet hver dag. Men han hadde gitt beskjed og betalt for et større og bedre rom med rent sengetøy.
På vei til Hovedbanegården for å møte henne gikk han nøye igjennom det han skulle spørre henne om. Måtte holde seg strengt til saken. Utfordringen var likevel at han ikke kunne vite hennes svar. Derfor måtte han planlegge alternative oppfølgingsspørsmål.
Hvordan ville Dina håndtert dette? tenkte han plutselig. Hun ville skjult sine egne mål til hun visste mer om Annas. Først ville hun kanskje blottet sine planer. Stilt et par spørsmål som kunne avverge uenighet. I første omgang ville hun ha lyttet, uten å vise irritasjon eller sårbarhet dersom hun ikke fikk de svarene hun ville ha. Men _så_ på et visst punkt ville hun sagt klart og kort hvordan alt måtte bli. Og det var _dette_ , dette forbannede punktet, _han_ ikke behersket.
De begynte med frokost på Det lille Apothek, som han hadde planlagt. Det lå rett under losjiet. Sild med snaps. At Anna ikke var den store snapsdrikkeren så tidlig på dagen, kompenserte kelneren med en stor karaffel vann. At hun også ville ha te, var ingen sak.
Planen hans var at når alt praktisk var i havn og de var enige, så skulle de gå rett opp for å inspisere rommet. Der skulle han fortelle henne at han var en kujon som var redd for å miste henne. Men først, mens de spiste, måtte han greie å holde følelser og bo adskilt. Det forretningsmessige, som han skulle hjem for å avvikle, var en ting. Hennes eventuelle frihet fra ham, det som _virkelig_ handlet om dem, var noe ganske annet. Og den forbannede reservelegen måtte ikke eksistere som tema.
Mens han tenkte på hva Dina ville gjort, ramlet likevel alt sammen. For _hun_ ville til sist tvinge alle til å gjøre som hun hadde planlagt. Den løsningen var en umulighet mellom Anna og ham.
Han så at hun hadde kledd seg pent. Drakten var lys gyllen og hadde upraktiske rysjer ved ermene. Han kunne ikke vite om det var for ham eller for byturen og blikkene på toget. Over bar hun den lyse kåpen han hadde sett før. Hun tok den så fort av at han ikke rakk å hjelpe henne. Men han hengte den opp på den skjeve stumtjeneren. Reisevesken hadde han båret fra stasjonen og satt ved bordet. Rett som det var måtte han kaste et blikk på den. Det var altså helt sant at hun skulle bli over natten.
Lokalet var ikke halvfylt. De hadde fått et bord innerst. Noen karer satt sammen ved døren og ved disken.
Han ga seg tid til snapsen kom på bordet. Men da var det hun som tok ordet uten noen innledning.
– Jeg har tenkt, begynte hun. – Jeg synes ikke du skal selge. Men jeg har et forslag, la hun til.
– Har du? sa han ivrig og overhørte at hun ikke ville selge.
– Hvorfor ikke la den nye distriktslegen leie boligen og kontorene. Eller i alle fall kontorene. Han må jo ha både kontor og utstyr. La så Verftet leie resten av huset som disponentsbolig.
– Men det er jo jeg som har fungert som disponent, sa han usikkert.
– Det kan du ikke fra Kjøbenhavn. Har du forresten glemt Peder?
– Peder?
– Ja. Dina ville at han skulle komme tilbake så snart han fikk fagbrevet sitt. Hun ville aldri lagt det på deg. Du har jo et yrke som krever alt.
– Men det er et år til Peder er ferdig. Vi vet jo ikke engang om han greier det. Brevene hans virker litt... hva skal jeg si... naive.
Han merket blikket hennes på seg.
– Brever sier ikke alltid det viktigste om folks personlighet. Mine ungdomsbrev var sikkert også naive. Særlig dem jeg skrev til deg før jeg kom til Nordland. Jeg tror det er slik for folk som gjerne vil tekkes.
Herregud så klok hun er, tenkte han. Men han sa det ikke. Engstelig for at hun skulle tro at han ville tekkes. Likevel greide han ikke helt å styre unna.
– Dine brev den gang var ren poesi.
– Men ikke nå? spurte hun kjapt og smilte.
Han kunne ha parert det med at de var kortere og altfor sjeldne, men holdt inne.
– Du har vel behov for mer nøkternhet, sa han i stedet og besvarte smilet.
Silden var kommet på bordet på to rause tallerkener. Han begynte å føle seg trygg. De spiste. Gaffelen hadde skarpe tinder. Han var sulten og uvøren og stakk seg i munnviken.
– Du kommer ikke utenom Dinas vilje med Peder, sa hun.
Han nikket og løftet servietten til munnen. En gjerrig bloddråpe avtegnet seg. Merket hun det? I så fall sa hun ikke noe om det. Han så opp og møtte blikket hennes. Løftet snapsglasset.
– Du har rett, Peder er gløgg og arbeidsom, sa han.
De skålte. Hun var like dypt i glasset som han og hadde fått roser i kinnene.
– Der er en annen viktig sak, sa hun tenksomt.
– Ja? sa han og var på vakt.
– Har du hatt noen ordentlig samtale med overlegen om Karna?
– Både ja og nei. Samtalen med ham var litt springende. Han kunne ikke love noen bedring. Jeg er redd de ikke gjør nok, bare oppbevarer henne. De resignerer vel i all galskapen rundt seg. Kynisme er kanskje nødvendig på et slikt sted. Det der vet du mye mer om enn jeg. Hva tenker du?
– Jeg vet ikke. Noen ganger... Lange perioder har jeg tenkt at hun aldri blir frisk nok til å komme ut. Men selvsagt gir jeg ikke opp. Snakker til henne om alt mulig som før. Prøver å ikke la meg merke med at jeg ikke får svar, eller at hun avviser meg. Tilbyr henne å lese, spille, synge. Til tross for at jeg vet at det er nytteløst.
Stemmen var knapt hørlig, og hun så ned. Langsomt begynte det å piple fra øyekrokene hennes. Hun tørket det ikke bort.
Han nikket uten å si noe. Stålsatte seg. Hun skulle slippe å synes synd på ham også. Han kunne ikke risikere noe nå. Derfor tok han ikke hånden hennes som lå på bordet.
– Desto større grunn til å flytte til Kjøbenhavn, sa han endelig.
– Men å brenne broer er for mye, jeg mener du ikke skal selge.
– Å brenne broer er for mye, sannet han.
– Er vi enige? spurte hun forbauset og tørket seg fort under øyet.
– Vi er enige, sa han og kjente at skuldrene senket seg igjen.
– Men du drar hjem og organiserer et oppbrudd på Strandstedet?
– Det gjør jeg! sa han plutselig munter. Som om han hadde glemt at hun tvilte på at Karna kunne bli frisk.
– Godt! Hvordan er økonomien i boet? Jeg mener – å være student i flere år koster penger, og jeg har fått deg fra å selge. Å holde Karna på Hospitalet koster også penger.
Han så på henne.
– Dette greier vi! Men kanskje vil du komme med hjem og hjelpe meg med organiseringen? spurte han kjapt. Altfor kjapt. Han kunne lett ha spolert alt. For hun svarte med et like kjapt _nei_.
– Hvorfor ikke? spurte han uvørent.
– Fordi jeg kunne finne på å bli værende og arbeide for den nye distriktslegen, lo hun.
– Det mener du ikke?
– Nei. Min plass er her hos Karna, sa hun alvorlig.
– Er du ikke glad for å være tilbake i Kjøbenhavn?
– Jeg er ikke i Kjøbenhavn, jeg er i Hospitalbyen. Og jeg har et arbeid som far har anbefalt meg til, og som jeg ikke kan regne med i all fremtid. For meg er alt ubestemt. Dessuten har jeg ingen venner mer i Kjøbenhavn. De er gift og over alle hauger, eller står på tå for å være blant sosieteten. Jeg er bare en dame fra overklassen som sporadisk kan være til nytte. Den posisjonen gjør meg av og til rasende.
– Har ikke din far sagt noe om at du kunne utdanne deg til sykepleierske? Du har jo allerede praksis som kontorsøster, mer enn nok.
Hun så forbauset på ham.
– Nei, far har ikke sagt det. Men nå gjør _du_ det. Og jeg har tenkt tanken. For det er allikevel for sent...
– For sent for hva? spurte han.
– Musikken, sa hun nølende, som om hun kom med en tåpelighet.
– Du er kanskje for streng. Du har jo spilt alle disse årene, prøvde han.
– Det skal mer til enn å øve, Benjamin. Mye, mye mer...
– Ja, jeg vet. Og du ofrer ditt liv for Karna? sa han og håpet at hun hørte at han var takknemlig.
– Det er Karna som har ofret sitt liv for oss. For hele den forbannede slekten. Og vi lot det skje.
*
Der, like under navlen var en middels stor føflekk. Hadde hun hatt en føflekk under navlen før? Hadde han i årevis ikke registrert at hun hadde en føflekk der? Av den størrelsen?
Han dukket opp over skambenet hennes som en skipbrudden og grep henne om hoftene. Hadde den vært der hele tiden? En for ham ukjent flekk! Oppdaget her og nå.
Formiddagslys falt blekt, men tydelig over takene og inn gjennom det upussede vinduet. Det var en sprekk i øverste rute. Gjenskinnet fra taksteinene ga rommet et skjær av teater, eller noe han svakt erindret fra studietiden.
Hun lå med lukkede øyne og ansiktet halvt bortvendt. Halsen var hvit mot den rødmende veggen. Munnen halvåpen og trekkene røpet nytelse. Han strøk henne varsomt. Lot leppene gli over den ukjente flekken.
Plutselig grep hun tak i ham. På et øyeblikk var usikkerheten hans borte. Han kjente seg godtatt. Utvalgt. Alt ble enkelt, som om det bare var de to i verden.
Han fór opp og satte begge føttene i gulvet samtidig. Den ynkelige, pesende pusten! Han prøvde å stanse den. Men den som har øvd seg i den slags, vet at det ikke er lett.
– Du skrek. Du drømte? hørte han bak seg.
Først kjente han ikke stemmen hennes og visste ikke hvor han var. Så husket han, og snudde seg mot henne. Skamfull. Som om hun visste hva han hadde drømt.
– Det var ingenting, mumlet han og krøp opp i sengen til henne igjen. Det var opplagt blitt kveld, kanskje natt. Hun var varm og full av søvn. Han klamret seg om henne med hele seg. En trygghet som måtte nytes så lenge den var der.
Hun lå helt stille, som om hun ennå sov. Det luktet sterkt av natt og kjønn. Og slik fikk han henne. Vilt. Uten å tenke knadde han dem begge mot madrassen. Presset all mykhet ut av henne i rasende fortvilelse.
Da han lå der og pustet, kom angeren. Han ville si noe. Måtte ha trøst for sin råhet. Stakkarslig som fra et rustent posthorn begynte han å unnskylde seg.
– Jeg vet ikke hvorfor det ble slik. Tilgi! ba han.
– Hysj, hvisket hun og la seg over ham. Så tett at han mente å kjenne den fremmede føflekken under navlen hennes.
Det var ennå tidlig morgen. Han øste litt vann over ansikt og hals før han gikk ned for å hente morgenmat og kaffe, men unngikk med vilje å se seg i speilet. De hadde ikke vært ute av sengen siden silden og snapsen forrige dag. Bortsett fra på nattbøtten bak skjermbrettet. Den tok han med ut i den trange korridoren og byttet. Så gikk han ned trappene og ut. I denne gaten var det ingen som sperret opp øynene over en rufsete mann.
Da han kom opp og hadde satt fra seg sin brød- og kaffeduftende last, åpnet han vinduet og snudde seg mot henne. Hun var våken og satte seg opp. Han stirret. Det lange håret var sammenfiltret som sjøvasket tang. Munnen var hoven og rød som om noen hadde brukt skurestein, og en stor blå flekk lyste mot ham fra halsen hennes.
– Arme Anna! Hva har jeg gjort! utbrøt han. Bøyde seg over henne og lot hender og øyne fare varsomt over elendigheten. Så hektet han det miserable speilet ned fra veggen og rakte henne det.
Hun undersøkte det blåfiolette merket med sindig ro. Det strakte seg fra øret og ned mot halsgropen.
– Det ser ut som om jeg har prøvd å kvele deg, sa han.
– Eller ete meg, sa hun nøkternt og ga ham speilet tilbake.
– Jeg skammer meg, mumlet han, tok av seg sko og bukser og krøp opp i sengen med matbrettet forsiktig på slep.
De spiste og drakk av den hete kaffen. Hun med forsiktig mule som en hest som fôres fra en hånd.
– Er jeg en hensynsløs djevel? spurte han.
Hun så ertende på ham, tygget ferdig og svelget.
– Det var opplagt et par tilløp, så vidt man kunne registrere.
– Du skulle ha stoppet meg.
– Det tror jeg ikke at jeg ville hatt noen glede av, sa hun og drakk forsiktig av kanten på kruset.
– Mener du at... Hadde du...?
– Ja. Men speilet sier at det gikk over alle støvleskaft. Jeg anbefaler deg å ikke _ensidig_ praktisere det voldsomme.
Munnen hennes lyste mot ham, men kunne ikke røres. I stedet omfavnet han henne. Kaffekruset hennes dinglet faretruende over dem.
*
Da han et par timer senere sto ved rekka og så byen forsvinne litt etter litt, kom tankene. De djevelske tankene. Var Anna på disse månedene blitt en annen? Den nesten kyniske vittigheten hun hadde lagt seg til? Hvor kom den fra? Var det den barhodede, glattbarberte dandyen uten snipp?
Avskjeden kom altfor brått. Plutselig måtte han bare haste til havnen. Hun hadde overhodet ikke nevnt hvordan det skulle bli mellom dem når han kom tilbake.
Han kjente seg plutselig uvel. Havet var flatt. De danske måsene var latterlig søvnige – og reisen så vidt begynt.
# DET HESLIGE OG DET SKJØNNE
Det heslige lå alltid på lur. Det hørte til utenfor. Men fordi menneskene fløt ut og inn, var det umulig å vite når det kunne dukke opp. Nå var Anna der med noe i en papirpose til henne.
– Gratulerer med dagen. Du er 18 år, Karna! Du kan åpne det nå, eller vente til jeg er gått. Den røde kjolen er fra meg også, sa hun og tok ut kjolen fra skapet.
Karna visste at hun gjorde Annas dag grå dersom hun ikke åpnet posen mens hun var der. Fargen på dagen var viktig. De grå var ikke bra for Anna. Hun visnet. Ofte tenkte hun på det, etterpå. Var Anna blitt mer vissen mens hun var innenfor hos henne? Og ofte var det slik.
Pappas pensko hadde også visnet skritt for skritt ute i hospitalgangen. Men hun kunne ikke noe for det. Og i dag – man kunne ikke ta den røde kjolen på uten videre. Det måtte være en anledning. Hun hengte den tilbake i skapet for at den skulle beholde lukten av pappas lærtaske. Men den brune fuglen fikk stå i vinduet.
Nå løftet Anna den opp og så på den.
– For en vakker fugl du har fått, sa hun.
Karna åpnet papirposen og tok ut tre glansede kort med blomstermotiv, og et brev med den strie skriften utenpå. Anna hadde ofte med ting som fikk plass i en pose.
Nå spurte hun om hun skulle lese høyt for henne. Som om hun ikke trodde Karna kunne lese selv. Anna forsto ennå ikke at brev måtte bli lagt i skapet uten å bli lest.
Hun hadde sluttet å rive dem i stykker og røre dem i grøten hun ikke spiste. De ble bare heslige av det. De var jo sendt henne for at hun skulle ta vare på dem. Var et tegn på noe.
I dag hadde Anna romkaker med. Og en avis. Hun hadde ringet inn datoen. 23. april 1891. Det var nok for å minne henne om tiden. De der ute forsto ikke at tiden bare var innbilning. Avisen var et mylder av bokstaver. De der ute var slave av bokstavene. De trodde alt ble sannere gjennom bokstavene. Det hadde hun også trodd. Før.
– Skal jeg lese for deg? Brevet? spurte Anna og satte fuglen på plass i vinduskarmen.
Da gikk Karna til skapet med brevet og la det øverst i bunken, under en eske med ubrukt brevpapir. Det måtte være orden, ellers kunne alt gå i stykker.
Det gjorde Anna stille.
– Jeg har fått to pianoelever som bor her på Hospitalet, sa Anna etter en stund og så spørrende på henne.
Karna nikket slik at hun ikke skulle kjenne seg forlatt. Anna kjente seg nok ofte forlatt. Det hang sammen med pappas svik og at hun, Karna, var satt på galehus. Annas øyne var ofte som upussede speil. Dersom Karna nikket, ble speilene blanke en liten stund.
– Vil du være sammen med oss når vi øver? spurte Anna.
Karna gikk flere ganger til skapet og la inn avisen og kortene, for hun kunne jo ikke nikke. Musikk var sorg. Og det visste Anna godt.
– Nå spiser vi kakene og feirer dagen din, ikke sant? sa Anna og ville ikke gi seg.
Da måtte hun reise seg, selv om hun akkurat hadde lagt seg på sengen fordi Anna satt på den eneste stolen. Kakene sto på bordet i en pose med nedbrettede kanter. Hun greide ikke å se på dem. De minnet henne om noe hun hadde mistet.
Hun gikk ut i hospitalgangen. Hva annet kunne hun gjøre når hun ble utsatt for slik uforstand? Hun måtte få Anna til å gå sin vei. Etterpå kunne hun rolig famle seg frem langs veggene som en blind og finne sengen igjen.
Den buede sengegavlen hadde en skjønnhet uten lyd. Hun tenkte på at det var nødvendig å ha litt skjønnhet å gå til. Som den buede sengegavlen og den brune fuglen.
Utenfor, i treet i hagen, satt ofte den svarte fuglen. Den var i en annen skjønnhet. Man kunne ikke berøre den. Riktignok hadde den et stygt skrik som kunne ødelegge alt i det øyeblikk den slapp det ut. Men lange stunder satt den bare der og var stille. Eller den seilte over trekronene som et svart kors. Da var skjønnheten der.
Anna hadde også skjønnhet av og til. Når hun satt på en benk i hagen og leste i en bok, men ikke høyt. Anna var nesten fri for heslighet når hun var stille.
# ANNA PRØVER Å LEVE SOM FØR
Det gikk opp for henne at hun ikke hadde spurt Benjamin om han hadde forberedt Karna på at han skulle reise. Hun hadde glemt det. Fra det øyeblikk de kom opp på rommet hans, hadde de bare vært oppslukt av hverandre. Av spillet. Ja, for det lignet mest av alt et etterlengtet spill. Uten skam. En nødvendighet for å slukke sult, for dem begge. Nå dukket det opp når hun minst ventet det. Brøt inn som frekke, friske blaff, til og med her i håpløshetens rutiner. Lukten av armhulen hans, måten han brukte hendene, leppene på. Den nye rå galskapen. Da han våknet av marerittet, hadde hun ikke forsøkt å få ham til å si hva han hadde drømt, slik hun ellers pleide i perioder han slet med scener han hadde sett. Ting han visste, men måtte fortie. Før hadde hun alltid prøvd å få ham til å huske. Falle til ro mens han snakket og hun lyttet. Denne gangen var det annerledes. Hun var ikke der for å bringe ro, men for å ta imot den desperate kroppen hans. Som en gjenklang av hennes egen.
Hun hadde gått rett til Karna da hun kom fra Kjøbenhavn. Hun måtte. Gå den lange hospitalgangen. Passere alle de åpne dørene. Alle de gale. Pleierne.
Hun holdt yttertøyet frem for Karna for å ta henne med ut til våren. Møtte hennes motstand, hennes nikk og hoderysting, hennes lyder som ikke hadde noe med ord å gjøre, men som likevel var en slags samtale. En forståelse mellom dem. Hun _ville_ tro at Karna oppfattet hva hun sa. Men svar fikk hun ikke. Hun kunne ikke si tilfeldige ting uten mening bare for å fylle stillheten. Men hun nevnte ikke at faren hennes var reist. Måtte stole på at han hadde sagt det selv. Overlegen hadde advart henne mot slike ting. Det kunne få uheldige konsekvenser. Tilbakefall. Raseri. Anfall. Hun måtte holde rollene adskilt. Være Anna, den forutsigbare. Ikke stedfortreder for hennes far. Ikke prøve å ordne opp, men overlate ansvaret til dem som kunne faget.
Før hun gikk fra Karna, viste hun henne notene hun hadde med og sa at pianoet nettopp var blitt stemt.
– Vil du være med til den store salen i dag? Jeg kan få noen til å sitte sammen med deg mens jeg spiller.
Karna så ikke på henne, men la seg fullt påkledd i sengen og trakk dyna over hodet. Det betydde _Du skal gå nå_. Hun hadde visst at det kom til å skje, likevel måtte hun prøve.
*
Det var Joakim som hadde foreslått for overlegen at hun skulle spille nå og da for ansatte og pasienter. Slik fikk hun enkelt tilgang til å øve også. En gang kom han mens hun spilte og bare satte seg uten å si noe. Først gjorde det henne ukonsentrert, så greide hun å glemme at han var der. Til hun var ferdig.
I dag var der mange for å høre på. Hun sto og la notene på brettet da hun så ham komme. Han pleide å komme opp til flygelet med en hilsen og et par ord. I dag satte han seg bakerst uten å snakke til henne. De hadde ikke akkurat skiltes i beste forståelse sist. Hun satte seg og så ned på tangentene. Ventet på at det skulle bli noenlunde stille. Salen var halvfull av pasienter og pleiere. Noen kom med upassende utbrudd og lyder. Det kunne man ikke ta notis av. Det var det normale her. Hun måtte gjøre det hun skulle, til tross for uro, ikke vente på stillheten. Det var hun som bestemte når hun skulle begynne eller slutte. Hittil hadde hun kunnet gjennomføre.
Første gang hadde hun hatt nerver, for hun hadde ikke øvd skikkelig. I dag var hun bare spent på om det kom til å bli såpass ro at hun kunne gjennomføre Bach. Fransk ouverture, Partita h-moll. Den var kanskje litt lang for en slik forsamling.
Hun reiste seg og sa hva hun skulle spille. Brukte tydelig stemme og passet på diksjonen. Kort, men slik hun ville gjort det om det hadde vært en huskonsert i spisesalen på Grand. Der klappet de også av og til begeistret mellom satsene.
Hun satte seg rolig ned på krakken igjen, lot kroppen bikke litt frem og tilbake uten å tenke på hva hun gjorde. Rettet seg opp og løftet hendene, slik at de som hadde åndsnærværelse nok kunne oppfatte at hun ville begynne. Så fant hun de rette tangentene uten å nøle, og var i gang.
Programmet ble utrolig nok gjennomført uten for mye uro. Med en gang hun hadde avsluttet, så hun opp og smilte. Slik kunne alle vite at hun var ferdig.
Da så hun at plassen hans var tom. Han måtte ha gått uten at hun så det. Pasienter og pleiere klappet og klappet. Hun ble rørt. Ga seg tid og snakket litt med folk. Pleierne skrøt av spillet. En liten kone med rufsete hår og rennende nese som bodde på samme hospitalgang som Karna, ville absolutt holde henne i hånden. Men helt stille. Hun hadde vært der hver gang. Det var noe rørende klokt over stille galskap, tenkte Anna og klemte den klebrige hånden.
Karna skulle vært der. Hun trodde at det var alt som skulle til. Musikken. Hun så for seg en av tre reaksjoner. Anfall, slik at hun måtte avbryte og hjelpe henne. Raseri, gråt og flukt. Eller den sedvanlige tausheten. Forstenet ro. Der ingenting var forandret.
Men hun kunne ikke tvinges. Det ble umulig for henne å tenke seg at Karna ville holde noen i hånden etterpå. Det slo henne at hun sto der og sammenlignet Karna med den vesle kona og ønsket at Karna kunne tilpasse seg. At hun skulle være gal på en mer _hyggelig_ måte. Hun videreførte irritasjonen til Joakim, som etter sitt frekke utsagn tillot seg å være så fornærmet at han ikke hilste eller snakket til henne i dag.
Han var ikke å se neste dag, annet enn at hun hørte stemmen hans i samtale med en eller annen ute i korridoren. Men han kom ikke inn på forkontoret, og var heller ikke å se da hun gikk. Og hvorfor skulle han det?
I et øyeblikk av – hva skulle hun kalle det? – tomhet, lånte hun telefonen og ringte moren. Det var piken som tok den. Hun ba henne si at hun gjerne ville besøke dem neste søndag. Dersom det passet, la hun til.
*
Moren hadde ny lyseblå kjole med silke drapert over brystet og vide ermer som dirret når hun gestikulerte. Som om hun ville si: Slik skal man kle seg når man har gjester til middag. Ellers holdt hun ingen formaninger, kom ikke med kritikk eller spørsmål om umulige ting. Tvert om. Hun snakket om Benjamin.
– Den _mannen_ må alle elske, sa hun.
Faren hadde en annen innfallsvinkel. Positiv, praktisk.
– Benjamin fortalte at han ville søke plass for videre studier ved Frederiks Hospital. Men ville absolutt _ikke_ at jeg skulle undersøke hans muligheter.
– Du spurte ham? sa Anna og henvendte seg til faren.
– Jeg hørte det selv! svarte moren. – Benjamin kom på visitt for å si farvel, kan du skjønne. Var så galant! Det er en fryktelig misforståelse at den mannen har gravd seg ned i denne gudsforlatte provinsen der nord.
Faren ventet til moren hadde snakket ferdig.
– Han har en forståelig stolthet, at han vil være sin egen lykkes smed, sa han så.
– Din far sitter jo i møter med de rette personene, og har til og med hjulpet dem med ett og annet, skjøt moren inn.
– Jeg tror ikke du skal forsøke å forandre Benjamin, sa Anna, henvendt til faren.
– Nei, på ingen måte, svarte moren. – Men jeg har sagt til din far at han kan gjøre ting i stillhet, legge til rette for at han får brukt sine talenter. Han behøver jo ikke engang å vite om det, mente hun med et lurt smil.
– Men mor! Du vet jo selv hva som kan komme ut av misforståelser og anklager dersom folk kjenner seg holdt utenfor, ikke sant?
– Nei, det vet jeg ingenting om. Jeg har bare den egenskap at jeg er fremtidsrettet, sa moren.
– Vel, sa faren forsonende. – Det er ikke tvil om at han greier dette selv. Jeg skal bare sørge for at han får tilsendt de rette papirer for søknaden. Det takket han ja til. Så får vi se.
– Har dere diskutert fremtiden? spurte moren. – Dere må jo bo i Kjøbenhavn. Jeg tilbød ham at dere kunne flytte inn her til dere fant den rette leiligheten. Og vet du hva han sa? Han sa at Anna var vant til å være herre, eller _frue_ i eget hus, så det kom nok ikke til å fungere så godt. Tenk deg! Den mannen kjenner min datter godt nok, og han bærer over med henne. Han er en gave for familien, verken mer eller mindre.
– Jeg er glad for at du elsker Benjamin, mor, sa Anna og vekslet blikk med sin far.
– Det må da _alle_! svarte moren og vinket på piken for at det skulle ryddes før desserten.
Anna tenkte på hva som ville skjedd dersom hun hadde fortalt dem om Hanna. Fortalt hvordan alt kunne bli når noen elsket Benjamin helt inn i døden. Eller når Wilfred Olaisen fortalte henne, Anna, om det. Fortalt dem hvem som glemte lampen som utløste brannen. Skåret igjennom tomme fraser og betrodd seg til sine foreldre? Hun hørte allerede morens forferdelse, og farens sindige stemme når han sa at hun ikke kunne bebreide seg. At det ikke var hennes eller noen annens feil, det som hendte. Derfor sa hun bare:
– Du har rett mor. Alle må elske Benjamin. Og vi finner nok en praktisk løsning når han kommer, forhåpentligvis til høsten.
Faren nikket. En smule forbauset, men fornøyd, løste han på snippen.
*
Benjamin sendte brev, postlagt allerede i Bergen. Han begynte med: _Elskede Anna_.
Dette er medisin for min selvopptatte ensomhet, tenkte hun og tørket seg fort over ansiktet. Han fortsatte med å takke henne for alt hun hadde betydd for ham. Og for Karna. At uten henne hadde de vært fortapt. Han skulle nå gjøre alt han kunne for å avvikle på Strandstedet, uten å selge. Han kom til å få så dårlig tid i Bergen at han ikke fikk snakket med Peder, slik han hadde planlagt, men han skulle skrive og forberede ham på ansvaret som ventet ham. Og hun måtte ikke bli forskrekket hun heller, dersom han telegraferte og brettet ut for all verden hvor dyrebar hun var for ham. Han brukte dette ordet, _dyrebar_. Hun kunne ikke huske at hun hadde hørt ham bruke det ordet før.
Mens hun leste, fikk hun en følelse av at han ville forsikre seg om at hun forsto at han virkelig var takknemlig. Men en kulde i henne oppfattet det samtidig som et brev fra en som prøvde å sone uten helt å få det til. En som ikke erkjente sin egen rolle i det som skilte dem. Denne følelsen gjorde at hun ikke greide å svare med en gang. Det var også noe annet. Hun kjente seg falsk. For hva var grunnen til at hun kjente savn? Var det etter Benjamin, eller var det fordi Joakim holdt seg borte?
Hun greide ikke å forme ærlige ord i et brev. Bare å tenke på å avslutte med _din_ _Anna_ , var i dagevis en umulighet.
# DANSEN
Hun la alle brevene i riktig rekkefølge hver dag. Først i en sirkel på sengen. Så tilbake i bunke med det sist ankomne øverst. Hun kunne se på stempelet, men behøvde det ikke. Kjente dem igjen, fra det øyeblikk Anna kom med dem. Noen hadde mer lukt av Anna enn andre. De hadde ligget en stund i vesken hennes. Hun skulle spurt om hvem som hadde åpnet dem og lagt dem tilbake i konvolutten. Det gjorde hun ikke.
Det var flest fra ham med den steile skriften. Men hun måtte ikke telle dem. De skulle ligge til venstre i den smale hylla. Pappas lå til høyre. Anna spurte alltid om hun skulle lese dem høyt. Noen ganger måtte hun nikke, bare for å få det håpløse bort fra Annas ansikt.
Bunkene var omtrent like høye. Men det som sto der, var ikke for henne. Det var for å berge de andre, fra det håpløse. Pappa var på gråten da han skulle gå, og sa at han skulle skrive. Prøvde å gjemme seg for henne. Han visste at pennesplitt var farlig. For hva gjør en pennesplitt som er fratatt sin sorg og sin sang? Jo. Den stikker til blods. Det var det de var mest redd for. Døden.
Da dagvakten kom, lukket hun skapdøren og la seg på sengen. Slik ble det orden.
Var det pappas sko hun hørte der ute på hospitalgangen? Nei, stemmen var ikke hans. Det var russeren. Den forkledde. Han som både var innenfor og utenfor. Både utydelig, og likevel klar med tydelige ord. Nå lot han som om han var doktoren som gikk stuegang. Hun måtte late som hun ikke visste at han var forkledd. Ellers hentet de ham og sendte ham ned til deliristene. Han risikerte noe for å komme hit. Denne gangen måtte hun prøve å tyde tegnene han ga henne og forstå hva han ville. Forrige gang greide hun det ikke.
Hun sto opp og gikk ut på hospitalgangen.
Ja. Det var russeren som farmor skjøt. Forkledd som doktor i hvit frakk. Med ryggen til gikk han tvers gjennom sollyset som overfalt ham fra alle de høye vinduene. Han gikk inn og ut av skinnet flere ganger. Det var et tegn. Nå gikk han til stuen nederst, der damen som alltid ville leie Anna lå. Hun som nesten alltid hadde nesen i en klut, men nynnet likevel.
Karna gikk helt til døråpningen og ble stående for å passe på. Ingen måtte få mistanke om at han var et forkledd vitne. Han var alene uten noen sykepleierske. Nå stanset han foran sengen til den nynnende og snakket til henne med den nye doktorens stemme. En dyp, brumlende munterhet. Han sto der altfor lenge.
– De har en god nynnestemme, fru Bentsen, la oss nynne sammen, sa han. Nå fikk han henne til å lage nye lyder. Hans stemme var mer påståelig, og hadde en ordentlig melodi. Det var ikke musikk. Men han bevegde hodet i takt med nynningen. Fru Bentsen lukket øynene og frydet seg tydelig. Stemmen hennes lød som en jevn dur uten tone. Nå løftet russeren hånden som om han dirigerte. Løftet den andre hånden og pekte på instrumentene. Sa hva de het.
– Der er pianoet. Fiolinene. Celloen! deklamerte han ut i rommet. Men lyden kunne ikke bli hørt. Den var utenfor. Bare fru Bentsens nynning var innenfor.
Han sto med ryggen til og hadde ikke ansikt. Hendene hans var som vinger. Nå fløy høyre hånd fra instrumentene og mot døren. Mange hadde kommet til i døråpningen. De dyttet henne og ville inn. Noen begynte å nynne med, som om de var et kor. Men det var falskt.
Så lød dagvaktens stemme i den andre enden av hospitalgangen. Russeren var i fare nå. De kom nok til å hente ham. Han skulle tatt en annen skikkelse, ikke denne nye doktoren som egentlig ikke hørte til, han heller.
Hun måtte avlede dem for å berge ham! Men først måtte hun tyde tegnene han ga henne. Nå vendte han halve ansiktet mot henne. Hånden viste vei.
– Dans til fru Bentsens vals! Det er så lett, så lett, sa den forkledde russeren og ga seg til å nynne med. Fru Bentsens nynning steg skingrende til taket.
Da visste hun hva hun skulle. Hva som kunne hjelpe ham å stoppe de falske tonene. Armene hennes løftet seg av seg selv. Føttene behøvde ikke å trå på gulvet. Hun skulle ikke trå på gulvet. Det var bestemt uten at hun visste det. Hun skulle sveve ut av kretsen som hadde samlet seg bak henne. De gale. De vedkom henne ikke. Hun var en som danset for å dempe alt det falske og få dem til å se det ekte.
Dagvakten sto alt i døren.
Men russeren dirigerte orkesteret. Alle tonene var rene. Samstemte og rene. Nå snudde han seg helt og tok et skritt tilbake. Hånden hans var en ving over skulderen hennes. En ving som løftet opp fra gulvet. Hun svevde. Rundt og rundt. Uten å falle. Hun vrengte nattkjolen over hodet for riktig å kunne sveve. Sveve fritt. Fritt.
De gale danset ikke med, de lo og klappet. Det var slik de var. Hun kunne ikke la seg forstyrre. Bare danse.
Russeren hadde vendt seg helt mot henne og fått et ansikt. Han bøyde seg og grep nattkjolen som lå på gulvet. Sto litt og ventet til hun kom nær. Fort la han nattkjolen over henne, løftet henne opp i armene og bar henne. Gjennom rommet. De som var kommet til, vek. Dagvakten gjorde plass for dem. Han danset henne gjennom hospitalgangen til sengen hennes. La henne ned og bredde over henne. Slik kom han seg bort før noen oppdaget at han var forkledd. Men han nølte for lenge før han kom seg av sted.
– Dansen var vill og vakker. Gjorde oss alle fri. Du har fløyet hundre mil mot et mål bare du og jeg vet om.
Da hun åpnet øynene, satt reservelegen på stolen ved vinduet. Han hadde et tydelig ansikt. Det var ikke russerens.
# PEDER FANGER BILDER OG BYGGER STYRKE
Med en gang han så det gjennom sprinklene i vinduet hos pantelåneren, visste han at han hadde bruk for det. Fotoapparatet. Han gikk inn og ba om å få se på det. Pantelåneren hadde nettopp lagt det i vinduet. Det kunne han gjøre fordi en akterutseilt engelskmann trengte pengene for å betale hjemreisen, og derfor aldri kom til å hente det. Splitter nytt og i tipp topp stand, påsto han og målte Peder med blikket.
Men Peder var ikke interessert i hva mannen mente om ham, han var oppslukt av apparatet og begynte straks å studere et lite hefte som lå i en taske som fulgte med.
– Improved Tourist Camera produsert i England av Sands & Hunter, leste han langsomt og høyt – på norsk, og så spørrende på pantelåneren.
– Mahogni, messing og lær, sa denne sakkyndig.
– Æ ser det. Men ka e Improved? spurte Peder.
Pantelåneren ble en smule irritert og ristet på hodet.
– Kan det være at det e prøvd og funne kapabelt, eller at det e i ustand? spurte Peder og forsøkte forsiktig å åpne.
– Det er helt i orden. Se her! Eg skal vise deg, sa mannen og tok kameraet fra ham.
Som ved et under var det fullt utslått med belg og linse.
Peder spurte og grov, men forsto snart at pantelåneren ikke visste særlig mer enn han selv.
– Han kan ta apparatet med seg til fotografene Larm nede i Veiten, de vet beskjed om alt han treng å vite. Eg har vore der sjøl for å finne ut at eg ikkje har gjett engelskmannen for mykkje.
Peder så på prislappen. Ikke det at han visste nøyaktig pris på noe slikt, men han visste at han ikke måtte vise seg troskyldig. Han måtte prute på en skikkelig måte. Hvorfor denne tingesten med ett ble livsviktig for ham å eie, det visste han ikke på stående fot. Men slik var det. For akkurat som et skipsverft var fremtiden, så var et slikt apparat også fremtiden. Peder hadde fått _en_ ting for seg mens han gikk i lære for å bli maskiningeniør. Den som kunne mestre fremtiden, han _kunne vinne alt_. Det var viktig å kunne vise folk forandringen, at alt gikk fremover. Peder var ikke vant til at noen vitnet for ham, så han tenkte at det sikreste var å gjøre det selv.
Han fikk prutet apparatet ned så pass at han maktet å betale med det han hadde lagt til side for påkommende tilfeller. For hver måned fikk han matpenger fra _Dina_ _Grønelvs bo_ , som det het. Det sto ham fritt å ete dem opp eller leve spartansk. Og nå så han helt klart for seg at fotografiapparatet var et slikt tilfelle. Eller mer som et under. Han skulle dokumentere forandringene og den nye tiden. Han skulle sende fotografier til Karna. Skulle vise henne at det var liv laga og håp, og at han kunne drive Verftet og sørge for henne. Han ville vise henne hvem han var gjennom bildene. Slik at hun kjente ham. Han så for seg at når hun betraktet bildene fra Strandstedet, så skulle hun få slik hjemlengsel at hun frisknet til. Men han ville avbilde andre ting også. Det var nok å ta av.
Slike tanker fylte Peders dager. Han fikk innpass hos Brødrene Larm i Veiten. Hjalp mannen i mørkerommet med smått og stort. Fikk fremkalt sine egne bilder. Laget lister over hva han måtte ha for å lage et provisorisk mørkerom på Strandstedet. Han kunne innrede kottet bak Dinas kontor. Der han hadde køya si etter at han flyttet fra broderneven. Peder gjorde fremskritt. Det var så usigelig mange former og figurer i verden som man ikke la merke til. Men det gjorde apparatet.
Han tok den brannete katten i gården, akkurat idet den fanget en spurv i luften. Fjærfokket fikk han nok ikke med. Det ville gitt en eventyrlig virkning i bildet. Nå var Peder skrudd slik sammen at han ikke greide å la være å tenke på den vesle skapningen som hadde måttet bøte med livet. Så ble bildet på en måte til ære for stakkaren. Apparatet var det sanne vitne. Og likevel, det var _han_ som hadde fått det til.
Han fikk det for seg at dersom han hadde vært en modig mann, noe han hadde det godt med at han ikke var, så kunne han ha reist ut i krigen og tatt bilder på slagmarken. Han visste jo at det var evig nok kriger å ta av. Man fikk naturligvis ikke med seg all rødfargen. Men det var utrolig hva folk innbilte seg at de så, dersom de _visste_ at blodet hadde rød farge. Etter hvert syntes han selv at bildene fikk lukt og bevegelse. Selvsagt var det innbilning. Men det gjorde ingenting så lenge han selv visste at det var innbilning.
Dette var fremtiden, langt ut over det folk forsto. Det var han viss på. Det var ikke bare spurven som trengte vitner. Hele verden trengte vitner. For i det øyeblikk hendelsen fant sted, var alt over dersom ingen fanget det. Man måtte være der. Fange øyeblikket. Det ble en besettelse. Slik var det bra at Peder hadde lett for det, for ellers hadde han vel ikke greid eksamen.
Brosteinen var glatt som om det skulle vært holkeføre. Regnet fosset nedover bakkene. Peder var glad da han kom seg helskinnet i hus. Da han skulle til å dra av seg de våte skoene, kom vertinnen, ho Brede, ut i bislaget med et brev. Hun så høytidelig ut, som om hun alt hadde lest og visste alt. Men det var uåpnet.
Mens Brede sine tøfler subbet inn til seg selv igjen, åpnet han det. Og mens innholdet vokste foran øynene på ham, forsto Peder at det som sto der krevde et større rom. Han brettet brevet pent sammen og stakk det i innerlommen. Så gikk han dit han bare gikk om søndagene. Til den store kirken. Han var allerede blitt våt på beina da han gikk fra smia, så de oversvømte veitene brydde han seg ikke om.
Helt fremme i koret i den tomme kirken brettet han ut brevet igjen. Innholdet var altfor stort til at han kunne ta det innover seg. Selv om han var i Bergen for å forberede seg, så var det utrolig. Han hadde fått en _livsoppgave_. I slike tilfeller nyttet det ikke bare å takke. En måtte brette opp ermene og få hendene i sving. En livsoppgave var noe av det gjeveste et menneske kunne ha.
Og her sto det nedtegnet.
_Kjære Peder_!
_Jeg skriver i god tid for å minne deg om at du_ _må ta ansvaret for Verftet så snart du er ferdig_.
_Alle_ _verdipapirer og_ _kontrakter_ _ligger i jernskapet på kontoret. Jeg vet dette blir mye for deg._ _Men_ _Dina så at du ville klare det, det gjør_ _Anna og_ _jeg også. Du er den nye disponenten for Strandstedet Verft_ _så snart du kommer hjem._ _Du har signeringsplikt og ansvar for at midlene blir brukt som de skal. Formann, bank, regnskapsholder_ _som er der nå_ _– og_ _jeg selv_ _– står til disposisjon,_ _ikke som formyndere, men hjelpere._ _Jeg vet at du greier å samarbeide med formannen, og jeg går ut fra at du_ _i fremtiden_ _selv vil føre oppsyn med tallene, eller leie inn hjelp slik jeg tidvis har gjort_.
_Nå er det min tur til å lære mer._ _Jeg_ _holder på å avvikle min praksis for å reise_ _til Kjøbenhavn. Jeg skal lære mer om medisin og_ _være_ _nærmere_ _Karna._ _Trolig har jeg reist når du kommer_.
_Anna og jeg vil at du skal_ _flytte inn i_ _doktorgården og betrakte_ _den som ditt hjem_ _mens vi er borte._ _Du behøver ikke å takke_ _meg. Verftet betaler meg leie._ _Få noen damer til å vaske_ _og ordne._ _Lei ut kontorene dersom du vil,_ _og send meg i så fall leien. Hold dette adskilt fra Verftet._ _Nøkkelen_ _til huset_ _skal ligge_ _i en konvolutt på poståpneriet_ _når du kommer_.
_Dette brevet,_ _altså i god tid, bare så du vet at det er fremtiden. Lykke til med eksamensbeviset_!
_Med stor tillit og hengivenhet_
_Benjamin Grønelv_
Peder satt i kirken under Vår Herres åsyn og tenkte at man kunne se hverdagslig på det. Og på samme måte som han hadde hørt Dina Grønelv stå i hallen og underrette staben om en ordre for å bygge en ny båt, reiste han seg der i koret og meddelte Vår Herre dagens status.
– Vi bygg dennan båten og ser tel at den flyt. Og at den flyt godt. Ja, det va nu det æ hadde å sei i dag. Amen!
Det var ikke så nøye med at den usynlige skapningen ikke svarte der og da. Han trengte bare en som lyttet. Han hadde bare hatt to før som kunne lytte, og de var ikke der. For Peders mor var død for lenge siden og Karna var på Hospitalet.
Hva broder Wilfred kom til å si eller gjøre når en _skitunge_ av en bror kom hjem og steg til himmels i anseelse og makt, kunne han ikke be Vår Herre ordne opp i. Bergen hadde riktignok gjort brodermonsteret blekere. Men Wilfreds knyttnever var alltid en skygge. Han kunne sove eller våke. Eller stå i kirken. Kirken var der.
Men Peder forberedte seg i måneder før hjemreisen. Hadde øvd seg på en gammel hestesadel i bakgården der han hadde losji. Hengte den opp i bjelken som ble brukt til å lufte dyner og filleryer. Hver dag slo han. Slo og slo. Etter en tid gikk det så hardt ut over nevene at han skaffet seg solide hansker av stivt lær. Ærlig rappet fra smia der han hadde praksis. Det sparte knokene.
Selvsagt var han klar over at det var usikkert om han hadde disse hanskene for hånden i det øyeblikk han trengte dem. Men de skulle med i vadsekken når han reiste nordover.
# ANNA MØTER VÅREN
Hun satt på en stein i strandkanten. Det var søndag og kirkeklokkene tordnet gjennom luften. Vannet trakk seg tilbake i langsomme tak og snakket beroligende til de små steinene som skulle bli liggende tørt nå. En ømhetens enetale. Nå og da som en svak duett. En hvisking i sol. Idyllen gjorde så vondt at hun slo i den våte runde steinen foran seg. Den forholdt seg selvsagt sindig som en stein skal.
Jeg holder kanskje på å bli gal? tenkte hun.
Etter at Benjamin reiste for å planlegge oppbrudd der hjemme, var det som om hennes tilværelse i Hospitalbyen ble en dom for livet. Kanskje var hun blitt så preget av Karnas tilværelse på Hospitalet at man like godt kunne legge inn henne også? Tungsinnet var det første som møtte henne når hun sto opp, og det siste som forlot henne når hun endelig fikk sove. Det fulgte henne inn i drømmene. Først trodde hun at arbeidet skulle få henne til å se alt lysere. Gi en slags glede. Men jo mer Joakim holdt seg borte, jo mer ble hun klar over at han var blitt en besettelse. Tilværelsen i det enkle losjiet og arbeidet hadde fått mening fordi Joakim var der. Og da Benjamin reiste, var det fremdeles Joakim hun tenkte på. At hun ikke kunne kontakte ham uten å fortelle ham hva hun følte.
Var det _det_ som skulle bli utgangen? At den makabre muligheten til frihet som Karnas skjebne ga, den skulle ende med at hun ga opp. At det som skulle være en trøst, at Benjamin kom tilbake for å bli, skulle bli enda en knute. Og mens han hadde et mål – å utvikle seg ved Frederiks Hospital, ble hun sittende som en dukke på et forværelse. En dukke som nå og da spilte piano for å underholde de gale. Hun innså at hun misunte ham. Og hun grudde for avgjørelsen hun måtte ta. For det var ikke lenger bare hans svik som sto imellom dem, men at hun lengtet etter en annen. En lengsel hun ikke kunne realisere uten verdens fordømmelse. Dessuten hadde hun ingen grunn til å tro at det var noe mer enn en flørt fra hans side. En slags lek. Der de møttes tilsynelatende tilfeldig, spaserte, snakket. Hun hadde funnet seg i å bli utfordret i meninger og holdninger. Sendt ham replikker tilbake som fikk dem begge til å le. Det var noe befriende med latteren. Men etter episoden der hun beskyldte ham for å kompromittere henne, hadde han holdt avstand.
Nå hadde han vært bortreist en tid. Søster Vivi fortalte at han skulle følge noen forelesninger i Paris. Og så var det noe med sykdom i familien. Selv visste hun ingenting og holdt seg fra å spørre. Hadde jo støtt ham fra seg. Å gå slik og tenke på ham var direkte infantilt. Likevel gjorde hun det, i en lang sammenhengende strøm av vage ønsker, følelser, forbudte lengsler. På samme måte som den gang hun slapp alt for å reise til Nordland for å være hos Benjamin. Men da var hun ung og tenkte at alt det andre, drømmen om å spille på en scene, det kunne vente. Nå hadde tiden ikke bare gått, den hadde utvisket og fanget henne.
Dette satt Anna på en stein og tenkte om Anna, og det gjorde henne ikke gladere. De rasende kirkeklokkene hadde stilnet, og båtene langt der ute hadde forflyttet seg og dannet nye mønster. Alt var glitrende sølvblått. En arrig, enslig svane ville ha kontakt, men hun avviste den med en brukket grein. Da den ikke ga seg, reiste hun seg og trasket forbi en forsømt brygge som vinteren hadde herjet med. Gustengule strå stakk opp over markene, men bakken under var irrgrønn og trærne helt ned til flomålet hadde bristeferdige skudd. Hun valgte som vanlig stien opp til gravlunden og Hospitalets kapell.
Han sto lent mot veggen, inne i skyggen ved inngangen. Urørlig. Hendene var dypt begravd i frakkelommene. Han måtte ha sett henne før hun så ham. Hun hadde bøyd og huket seg ned og oppført seg tåpelig. Plukket tre blå stjerner som hun ikke husket navnet på. Hjerterått og aldeles bortkastet slet hun dem opp. De kom til å visne og dø før hun fikk satt dem i vann. Allikevel tok hun dem.
Nå sto han der og så på henne. Hun stanset nedenfor trappen og iakttok ham åpenlyst tilbake.
Slik ble de stående.
– Kommer du opp de få trinnene til meg? lød stemmen hans fra skyggen.
Uten å svare gikk hun opp steintrappen mens sollyset skrek etter henne.
– Du kom av deg selv? sa han uten å ta hendene opp av lommene.
Hun svarte ikke. Trappen var så smal at de kom ganske nær. Ingen hadde hilst. Hendene hans forble i lommene. Men han senket hodet. Bøyde nakken dypt og nådde ned til henne.
– Du vet hvorfor vi møtes? spurte han.
– Nei.
– Kan jeg be deg om å finne det ut? sa han smilende.
Han hadde en dyp fure ved munnen. Den rørte urolig på seg for hvert eneste ord. Dessuten ville ikke venstre munnvik bevege seg synkront med høyre.
– Da må du ta hendene opp av lommene, sa hun med spinkel stemme.
– Hent dem, du.
Hun nølte, så stakk hun hendene ned til hans i lommefôret. Han grep hardt omkring dem, og straks delte de saften fra tre miserable blomster.
– Hva har du i hånden?
– Tre små stjerner, svarte hun og rørte på fingrene i de varme nevene hans.
– Du fryser på hendene, mumlet han.
– Da er det vel derfor vi møtes. For å tine frost, sa hun.
– Det er mye, mye mer, Anna.
– Så si det du, hvisket hun og ville legge hodet mot brystet hans. Men gjorde det ikke.
– Jeg har tenkt, tenkt på din rasende fortvilelse sist vi møttes. Jeg burde søkt meg bort herfra. Men det hjelper oss ikke. Det vil ikke hjelpe unge Karna heller, for jeg holder på å bli kjent med henne.
– Holder du på å bli kjent med Karna? utbrøt hun.
Så mye som hun hadde håpet på. Alle de ironiske bemerkningene hun hadde sett for seg. Bare ikke dette.
– Hvorfor må du da bort?
– Det gjelder ikke mitt forhold til pasienten, det gjelder _oss_. Jeg har stilt min egen diagnose, og når jeg står her og ser på deg, er jeg ikke i tvil.
– Og det er?
– Pasjon! Som grenser til galskap, sa han rolig ned i håret hennes. Kraniet var en membran. Lyden forplantet seg utover, innover, samtidig.
– Og hvorfor må du da bort? gjentok hun.
– Fordi vi kommer til å ødelegge hverandre. Ødelegge alt og alle. Kanskje kan jeg klare meg på mitt kyniske vis. Mens du...
– Hva gjør meg mer utsatt? spurte hun mens hun prøvde å puste.
– Uskrevne og skrevne lover. Du kan ikke ha to menn uten å bli forstøtt. Og jeg vil heller se deg fly, sa han og lekte med fingrene hennes i lommefôret.
– Er du så edel?
– Nei, det er en uvant rolle, medga han.
– Er dette alt du har tenkt denne tiden du har vært fornærmet og unngått meg? At du må være edel?
– Nei. Jeg har dagdrømt – og nattedrømt. Vilt.
– Om hva?
Han tok den ene hånden opp av lommen og løftet haken hennes. Den som hadde vært i berøring med de mosete stjernene. Duften. Nærheten. Hun vaklet og krafset blindt etter støtte i hoften hans.
Døren til forgangen gled opp, og han fikk dem innenfor. Da han låste bak dem, sa hun forundret:
– Du har planlagt dette?
– Ja. Vi to skal sitte alene og snakke sammen uten vitner.
– Du kunne ikke vite at jeg kom akkurat forbi kapellet?
– Nei. I går snudde du i strandkanten og gikk tilbake.
– Hvorfor kom du ikke etter meg og ba meg komme med?
– Tigging er ikke bra for selvtilliten.
– Har du tenkt å forføre meg? Her? spurte hun utfordrende.
– Nei.
– Hvorfor ikke, når du nå har greid å få meg så langt?
– Bra! Du er djervere i dag enn sist, da du var redd søster Vivi skulle tro at det var noe mellom oss, sa han.
– Hvorfor utfordrer du meg hele tiden? spurte hun.
– Jeg vil bli kjent med deg.
– Her? I et kapell?
– Det er kanskje den eneste muligheten akkurat nå. Han kommer tilbake, ikke sant?
– Ja.
– Kom! sa han og åpnet døren til selve kapellet.
Hun hadde ikke vært der inne før. En kirke i miniatyr. Prekestol mellom høye vinduer. En due under baldakinen. Alter med den lidende Kristus i en buet nisje. Et orgel som så ut til å være i god skikk. Det luktet tørt treverk og en anelse lut. Og noe annet hun ikke kunne gjenkjenne.
Han ledet henne forbi den polstrede alterringen og til benkeraden innerst ved veggen.
– Hvorfor låste du? spurte hun.
– For å være sikker på at ingen forstyrrer samtalen vår. Verken levende eller døde.
– Døde?
– Min mor døde for to dager siden.
– Og du tror at en låst dør kan hindre din mor i å komme inn?
– Nei, men da har jeg i alle fall vist henne at der er en grense...
Hun ville lene hodet mot skulderen hans. Men gjorde det ikke.
– Vil du snakke om henne?
– Nei takk!
– Du sa et stort ord nyss... _Pasjon_. Da må du vel tro at det kan hjelpe deg at jeg lytter, ikke bare til det skarpe lette, men til det alvorlige? Samtaler skal vel ikke være tom retorikk.
– Nei. Men nå vil jeg ha deg for meg selv. Uten heftelser.
– Din mor er en heftelse?
– Ikke nå lenger. Akkurat nå er det oss...
– Du tror ikke hun ville ha likt meg?
– Det kunne hun ikke unngått. Men hun har befalt meg å holde meg unna gifte kvinner.
– Det er en uvane du har? Gifte kvinner? spurte hun.
– Det er ikke snakk om mine uvaner, men om min mors feilgrep en gang. Hun trodde vel slikt var arvelig. Det kan se slik ut. Kom, la oss sette oss.
– Var du hos henne da hun døde? spurte hun og lot seg gli ned på benken ved siden av ham.
– Både ja og nei. Hun var bevisstløs. Du gir deg ikke?
Stemmen hans var munter.
– Jeg har forstått at du ikke akkurat hadde et nært forhold til henne.
– Det kan man trygt si.
– Det må ha vært vanskelig... Hvordan klarte du å være der da hun døde?
– Jeg sitter ved det dødsleiet som blir meg tildelt. Slik er det bare. En gang skal jeg selv inn i rekken. Jeg har ingen illusjon om at folk kommer til å stå i kø for å lette trykket. Men hør, hun er ikke tema i dag.
– Det var du som begynte, sa hun.
– Jeg skulle ikke begynt.
Han flyttet seg nærmere.
– Er du et menneske som er gått i vranglås? spurte hun forsiktig.
– I så fall er det lenge siden. Du er forresten skarp og presis når du stiller spørsmål, sa han anerkjennende.
Hun ble sittende uten å si noe.
– Hva tenker du? spurte han og la armen over rygglenet bak henne.
– Jeg vet ikke helt, men jeg tror jeg tenker på hvem du er. Samtidig som du sier at du må bort, så vil du se meg fly. Du har sett din mor dø, men vil ikke snakke om henne. Og du har låst oss inne med hverandre. Hva vil du egentlig?
– Skal jeg åpne?
– Nei! svarte hun fort. Altfor fort. – Hold heller om meg.
Han åpnet frakken og tok henne på fanget. Løftet føttene hennes skrått opp på benken og la frakkeskjøtene og armene om henne.
– Slik?
– Ja, sa hun og stakk armene innenfor frakken hans. Varmen fra ham gjorde henne vek.
– Jeg spurte deg hvem du var. Du svarte ikke, sa hun og lente hodet mot ham.
– Det er vel fordi jeg stadig arbeider med en heller uferdig personlighet, sa han med latter i stemmen.
Noen gikk forbi på gresset der ute. En varsom subbing uten stemme. Så ble det stille.
– Sørger du? spurte hun.
– Ja, men ikke over min mor.
– Hva sørger du over?
– Ubotelige ting. Som at jeg ikke kan skru tiden tilbake og treffe deg før du giftet deg med ham.
– Ville det ha blitt annerledes?
– Det er det bare du som kan svare på, mente han.
Noen måker hadde funnet noe de sloss om der ute. Skrikene forandret seg etter hvor nær fuglene var. En av dem lød som om den satt på hodet hennes, samtidig som klørne krafset mot treverk.
– Jeg hadde jo vært en annen. Du også. Det som hender med oss... slik blir vi. Tror du vi ville ha oppdaget hverandre dersom vi var yngre og ikke hadde noen erfaring med å være menneske? spurte hun.
– Jeg ville ha sett _deg_. Og du ville ikke ha vært bundet dersom du hadde sett meg, sa han. Brystkassen hans hevet og senket seg.
Blikket hennes streifet orgelet, men hun kjente ingen trang til å spille. Ville bare sitte her. Slik.
– Hvordan begynte det med ham? Ja, for det har tatt slutt, ikke sant? Du vet at det har tatt slutt? påsto han.
– Følelsene..., begynte hun stotrende. – Jeg brøt med alt jeg hadde og ga meg i vei til ham, sa hun og stoppet opp.
– Og så? spurte han.
Hun begynte å le. Lo og lo. Klarte ikke å slutte.
Han lo ikke, men holdt om henne.
– Følelsene var så sterke at jeg ikke greide å se virkeligheten. Etter en tid reiste jeg etter ham nordover og lot som om jeg var et godt menneske som kunne hjelpe ham med det morløse barnet. Jeg trodde følelsene skulle vare hele livet. For oss begge. Imens delte han sin kjærlighet med en annen..., sa hun og stoppet opp, før hun fortsatte som om hun spyttet ut ordene.
– Midt i det hele fikk vi to ingen barn!
Han vugget henne uten å si noe.
Alt ble stille. Forferdelig stille. Skammen hennes reiret seg mellom dem. Hun hadde utlevert seg selv og Benjamin. Det kunne hun ikke forestille seg at Benjamin noen gang ville gjort.
– Slik er jeg blitt, utbrøt hun. – Sitter her og snakker. Glem alt, er du snill!
– Svik er gift. Det ødelegger til og med dem som tror at de ikke lar seg såre, sa han ut i luften.
Hun prøvde å gjenfinne en slags verdighet. Gjorde seg fri fra armene hans og reiste seg.
– Ja! Det var alt om pasjonen i mitt liv, sa hun og prøvde å le.
Han vrengte av seg frakken og dro henne ned på fanget igjen. Så slo han frakken godt om dem begge. En stund satt han stille med hånden over hennes der under frakken.
– Da går jeg ut fra at jeg skal spare deg for å snakke om min?
– Å nei, fortell, utbrøt hun og vendte seg mot ham.
Han betraktet henne først. Så rettet han seg opp, slapp hånden hennes og dro inn pust.
– Jeg har aldri trodd på den. Kjærligheten. Pasjonen. Hadde diagnostisert den som en slags sentimental livbøye. Noe å flyte på en stund for ikke å drukne i tomheten. Naturens triks for å gjøre oss til viljeløse slaver i forplantningens tjeneste. Kvinners urgamle hang til beskyttelse og avhengighet. Menns tåpelige hang til å vise styrke. Eller for å hjelpe mennesket til å leve med at alt er forgjeves, tomt, og en engangsforeteelse. De gangene jeg har hatt grunn til å tro at det var noe mer, så styrte jeg unna. Stemplet det ut med letthet. Et par ganger var jeg så selvopptatt at jeg ikke tenkte på at noen kunne kjenne seg sveket.
Han stoppet opp, bet seg i leppen og fortsatte uten å se på henne.
– Så var det den dagen... Jeg var den eneste som kunne ta imot henne og vise henne til rette. Jeg, som aldri har kunnet vise noen til rette. Bare lytte, analysere, medisinere, notere. Jeg, som har dyrket kynismen som religion og pyntet meg med ironiske utsagn som gjorde folk forlegne, og fikk kollegaer til å tro at jeg foraktet deres selvtilfredse vitenskap. Den dagen... Jeg hadde lest søknaden som lå på overlegens bord sammen med et åpent brev fra hennes far, en kjent kirurg. Han beskrev sin datters kvalifikasjoner i en ganske nøktern tone. Hun har i flere år vært den som har hatt ansvaret for distriktslegens kontor på sitt bosted i Norge, skrev han. At distriktslegen var hennes mann, sto det ingenting om. Men derimot at hun nå var kommet til Kjøbenhavn, og at hun ut fra moderne overbevisning mer enn av nød ville ha et arbeid å gå til. Fødselsdato sa meg at hun slo meg med tre år i visdom og erfaring. Alt dette vekket nysgjerrighet.
Han gjorde en stans, trakk pusten og fortsatte.
– Så sto hun altså i døren. Og den livsviktige muskelen, den som i populærvitenskap og romantiske vers heter _hjerte_ , ignorerte øyeblikkelig hjernens vanlige signaler. Det fikk meg til å kjenne meg latterlig, ikke bare for meg selv, men sannsynligvis også for henne. Jeg fikk den absurde idé at hun kunne høre min dundrende indre muskel.
Han stoppet opp igjen. Dreide langsomt på hodet mens han betraktet rommet inngående fra vindusveggen og hele veien rundt til døren, uten en eneste gang å se på henne.
– Øynene blendet meg fullstendig. Vidåpne og i min erindring koboltblå. Om det var gjenskinn fra hennes eller min egen sorg jeg så i dem, vet jeg ikke. Men etter hvert ble sårbarheten tydelig i trekkene. De fikk meg til å tenke at hun kanskje hadde gått mot vinden, eller grått. Blodkarene rundt øynene og nesevingene var anstrengte. Jeg så en trassig fure i pannen og begynnende streker ved munnen. Jeg så en ensomhet som var like stor som min egen, men som fikk en større betydning for meg enn min egen. Hun sto der i en lys vårdrakt med kåpen løst over skuldrene. Stråhatten var uten pynt. Men perlene i øreflippene var tydelig kjøpt hos en juveler. Da jeg hjalp henne med kåpen, så jeg at kroppen hennes var levende uten å gjøre seg til. Øyeblikkelig fikk jeg et behov for å berøre den. Men jeg visste jo at den ikke kunne være virkelig. Ikke for meg.
Igjen stoppet han opp.
Hun holdt pusten.
– _Hun_ er min pasjon, sa han med forundret stemme.
Kapellets vegger lente seg mot dem. Trykket dem mot hverandre. Kjente ingen sympati eller medlidenhet. Kom ikke med advarsler. De var korrekt i sin ufølsomhet. I stillheten og lyset rundt dem var verken håp eller oppmuntring.
Etter en stund senket han hodet og ble sittende med pannen mot hennes.
– Hvordan vet du det? Du kjenner meg knapt? sa hun.
– Jeg har ikke behov for å vite. Det er ingen logiske svar på slikt.
Nølende, med en forundret sjenanse, grep hun hånden hans.
# BENJAMIN VIL RENSE BETENNELSE
Han gikk etter gutten som dro kofferten hans opp bakkene på håndkjerre. Alle han traff hilste på ulik måte. Noen hjertelig, andre mer tilbakeholdende. Kvinnene smilte, noen nesten sjenert. De fleste kjente ham på en eller annen måte.
Redaktøren i Bladet hadde gjort seg ærende til landgangen og spurt hvordan reisen hadde vært. Han hadde sikkert sett navnet hans i skipslisten, og ville ha første rapport. Det enkleste hadde vært å gi ham stikkord slik at han kunne spre dem med en gang. Og slik snyte folk for spekulasjoner. Men Benjamin visste at han først måtte kontakte dem det gjaldt.
Sunnhetskommisjonen måtte få beskjed om at stedet trengte en ny distriktslege. Dernest måtte han orientere herredsstyret om at man måtte finne en annen ordfører. Verftet var kanskje den enkleste kabalen, fordi han allerede hadde folk der som kunne styre bedriften til Peder kom. Men også her måtte han snakke med formannen før han stilte seg opp i verkstedhallen og orienterte karene.
Gutten satte håndkjerra ved trappen til doktorgården og bar kofferten til døren. Etter å ha fått et par mynter strøk gutten lua av hodet og bukket, men ble stående der i kveldsola og hadde tydelig noe på hjertet.
– Ja? sa Benjamin spørrende.
– Ka det va æ skulle ha sagt... Mor mi har fått sæ en frøktelig svullfenger etter rundvaska hos presten sine. Kan ho kom tel dokteren i dag?
– Det kan ho, sa Benjamin. – Æ skal berre lås opp døra og gå inn.
– Då kan æ renne ned og sei det tel ho? Nu, med en gong?
– Det kan du. Æ skal berre inn og vask nevan, så e æ klar.
– De har rett, de som sei at doktern e eneståanes, sa gutten og klasket lua på hodet igjen.
– Det e nu ikkje særlig enestående at en dokter e dokter, sa Benjamin og lo.
– Men han e jo nyss heimkommen og har ikkje engong fått sæ kaffe.
– Sant nok. Men kom dæ nu i vei!
Da hun kom, hadde han allikevel fått kokt seg kaffe og skjenket opp i to kjøkkenkopper. Hun så forvirret på ham, men tok imot, satte seg ytterst på stolen og drakk den svart som han selv.
Hun hadde vært der før. Men ikke i utide. Det var ikke så mye han visste om henne annet enn at hun ikke hadde noen mann i huset og bodde på et par rom i en kjeller sammen med sønnen sin som ikke var konfirmert ennå. Etter et par kaffeslurker viklet hun pekefingeren ut av en miserabel klut uten å si noe. Den så ikke pen ut.
– Æ har nok vore for lenge borte. Den fingeren har du gått for lenge med. Vi må inn under neglen og hente flisa, men det skal vær fort gjort, sa han.
Hun nikket og knep øynene sammen.
Han fant frem det han trengte for operasjonen, fikk henne til å sette seg godt til rette og la hånden og armen stødig på bordet. Så snittet han og trakk ut flisa på størrelse med en brukket stoppenål mens hun ga fra seg et langtrukket gisp. Mens han fikk ut materien og fikk det til å blø, bleknet hun om kjakene, men det kom ikke en lyd. Han iakttok henne mens han renset og plastret.
– Du kjem tel å møste neglen, men det tar tid. Imens må du pass på å holde det reint. Kom hit med en gong dersom du forstår at betennelsen ikkje har gjett sæ. Du kan ikkje gå på vasking ei stund fremover, sa han strengt.
– Kordan kan dokteren tru at æ kan betal mat og hus når æ ikkje kan ha hendern i vatn? sa hun bebreidende. Som om det var hans feil.
Han fant frem et par av sine egne ubrukte gummihansker og klappet henne på skulderen.
– Du får ta dessan med, og ellers klare dæ med ei hand så godt du kan. Den store glunten din kan vel og hjelpe dæ?
– Dokter Grønelv veit like godt som æ at sett man glunta og mannfolk tel vasking, så må man sjøl gjør det på nytt.
Han smilte, men sa seg ikke uenig. Og da hun skulle betale, tok han på seg en fornærmet mine og sa at dette var et privat besøk utenom kontortid.
– Herre Gud, for dokteren! På den måten blir han ikkje rikar!
– Det går sæ nok tel for oss begge, skal du sjå, sa han.
Hele kvelden, mens det tomme huset prøvde å trykke ham ned, bar han med seg denne hjemkomsten. Det slo ham at menneskene her var knyttet til ham uten at han engang husket hva de het. Og han til dem på forunderlig vis. Etter brannen hadde han ikke greid å ta det inn over seg. Hadde ikke greid å se at alle hadde sitt.
Han visste ikke engang hvordan Johan hadde det der ute på branntomten. Hadde overhodet ikke tenkt på at de ut fra kirkeboken var halvbrødre. De gangene han hadde tenkt på ham, var det med bebreidelse fordi han hadde fått Karna til å holde den groteske gravtalen. Eller han hadde husket mannen som med et vilt blikk tviholdt Dinas kiste like før den gikk over bord. Det var gått betennelse mellom dem. Eller frost. Ingen av dem hadde prøvd å rense eller tine. Ikke engang julaften hadde han kjent det naturlig å be sin halvbror til doktorgården. De hadde sittet på hvert sitt nes med et sund imellom.
Han hadde sett ham, truffet på ham i forbifarten. På posten. I havna. De hadde vekslet ord i all minnelighet. Men et forløsende ord som kunne bringe dem sammen på tomannshånd og klarlegge hvor de sto i forhold til hverandre, det kom ikke fra noen av dem.
Med disse tankene gikk han til sengs uten å få sove. Han hadde forsømte oppgaver som ventet etter at han hadde vært borte i flere uker. Likevel besluttet han å seile til Reinsnes neste kveld etter kontortid. Han var jo kommet hjem for å ordne boet før han reiste tilbake. Da fikk han ta dette først. Som om det plutselig var det viktigste.
Han kunne se på turen som en helgeutflukt, som i gamle dager. Før brannen. Komme uanmeldt. Legge beskjed på telefonsentralen om hvor han var å finne om noen trengte doktor. Så var det bestemt.
Etter å ha brukt formiddagen til å få orden på et forsømt kontor og hjelpe et par pasienter som hadde fått høre at han var kommet hjem, låste han huset og slengte doktorvesken med en ekstra stor flaske sprit i over den ene skulderen, og en liten vadsekk med det mest nødvendige over den andre.
I butikken på kaia handlet han litt av hvert. Han kom jo uventet til en eremitt som ikke engang hadde krambod. Handelsmannen lånte ham handvogn for å frakte varene til støa ved Verftet, der færingen lå.
En tur innom maskinhallen til formann Jensen var nødvendig. Han måtte høre hvordan alt gikk og si fra at han seilte til Reinsnes. Ga seg ikke tid til noen lang prat, men passet på å lytte til de svarene han fikk. Det var viktig å passe på at temperaturen mellom dem lå stødig uten fall eller feber. Det gagnet Verftet best. Særlig nå.
Et par ganger hadde det skjært seg. Og han visste at han hadde seg selv å takke. Ble for brå i sin uvitenhet. Trodde at alle spørsmål kunne besvares raskt og effektivt. Da fikk mannen et oppgitt åsyn og gikk i stå. Men altså ikke i dag. Bare det var en god begynnelse på denne seilasen.
Han plasserte varene i en margarinkasse fremme i skottet sammen med doktorvesken, en kanne lampeolje, som alltid kom godt med selv i den lyse årstiden, og noen flasker vin. Så la han en oljejakke over i fall sjødrev. Det ble en fin ballast i maksvær. Han ville overnatte, enten han var velkommen eller ikke. Noe sa ham at det var den eneste måten å gjøre dette på. Hva var det Dina pleide å si? _Natta e regnskapets tid_. Hva hun egentlig mente, hadde han aldri spurt om. Men det slo ham at det kunne passe for denne turen.
Han hadde frisk bør og behøvde nesten ikke å krysse før han kom inn i smult farvann like før Reinsnesodden. Der ble han liggende med late seil og drive mot land mens han tok inn synet av det gamle handelsstedet. Hans egen barndom. Det var som et gammelt maleri, der noen hadde skrapt bort hovedgården og hagen. Til og med flaggstangen var borte. Men nye telegrafstolper sto reist over bergene og ned på de vårbleke markene. Et av Dinas siste verk var å krangle seg til disse stolpene når det offentlige allikevel måtte dra strengene over hennes fjell. Telefonen hadde hengt i hovedhuset og var borte nå. Men rognealleen ned til sjøhusene ble nok grønn dette året også. Han så det allerede som en hildring der inne. Erindret at hvert år – når alleen sprang ut, så måtte man snakke om det. Peke, og gjøre seg ærend ned til bryggene. De reiste seg som før i tre etasjer opp fra peler boltet i berget, omkranset av solide kaiplanker. Men til og med på avstand kunne han se at de lengtet etter rødmaling og tjære. Likeså kramboden, fjøset, låven og alle små og store uthus.
Men _der_ , da han drev forbi flagghaugen, kom en okergul, lysende firkant til syne. Jo nærmere han drev, jo tydeligere sto kårstua frem og var nå det viktigste punket på det gamle tunet uten hovedhus. Det steg ikke røyk opp fra pipa, men Dinas båt lå i en av lunnene. Da var Johan i alle fall hjemme.
Benjamin var i ferd med å dra opp båten da et høyt rop fikk ham til å se opp. Johan kom løpende ned til støa. Han _løp_ virkelig. Benjamin hvilte begge nevene på ripa, rettet seg opp og ventet.
– La mæ ta i med dæ, sa Johan før han hadde hilst.
De tok i på hver sin side. Tre dryge tak, så var båten over flomålet og trygg om det skulle blåse opp. Johan var den som festet landtauet i jernpålen. For sikkerhets skyld, som han sa, før han fortsatte med et høytidelig _Velkommen_! og løftet korga med vin i sikkerhet. Den hadde bikket da båten la seg på siden i lunnene.
– Takk! sa Benjamin og fikk doktorvesken og margarinkassen med forsyninger på land.
– Æ satsa på at du ikkje va overrent a besøk, så æ tok sjansen på å være velkommen dersom æ holdt mæ maten sjøl. Va det feil?
– Det va rett, svarte Johan sindig.
– E du fresk? spurte Benjamin med et smil.
– Uforskammet fresk. I alle fall e legemet det...
– Godt! Då e vi to om vinen og spriten, sa Benjamin og begynte å gå med margarinkassen i armene. Johan kom etter med doktorveske, lampeolje og korg.
– Du har med dæ sending for ei vekka, mente han.
Benjamin snudde seg og pustet på.
– Berre tel i morra, om han ikkje ryk opp tel kuling.
– Sant å sei har æ venta på dæ. Men æ forsto jo at det ikkje va hit du lengta etter å far.
– Det har du rett i. Men nu e æ her.
– Kårstua e god å ha. Reine underet..., sa Johan.
– Det har den alltid vore.
De var kommet opp på tunet, og Benjamin satte kassen fra seg. Den store plassen der huset hadde stått var jevnet og sådd igjen. Allerede grønn. Dette hadde Johan fått til uten å bry ham med det.
Mens han sto der og så seg rundt, var det som om jorda begynte å røre på seg. Det dundret gjennom hodet og presset bak øynene. Samtidig kjente han seg helt tom. På en måte renset. Han hadde ikke engang behov for å gråte eller sørge.
– Du har ikkje vore her siden...? hørte han bak seg.
Han ristet på hodet uten å orke å si noe.
– Æ går inn i forveien. Så kjem du når du har områdd dæ, sa Johan lavt.
Benjamin registrerte at mannen gikk i to omganger og fikk sakene i hus. Da han ble alene, begynte han å gå rundt i den nye tomheten. Han hadde aldri sett havet fra dette stedet. Eller bryggene. Husveggen med vindusrekken hadde vært den eneste utsikten herfra. Og et så stort hus krevde en stor skygge. Det var rart. Reinsnes var blitt et sted som manglet sin egen skygge.
Et merkelig brønnhus var reist der restene etter mur og et pipeløp sto igjen. Hadde Johan oppdaget en olle og ville ta vare på den? Han gikk bort og løftet av kroken på den lave døren. Da han åpnet og kikket inn, gjenkjente han steintrappen som hadde ført fra lemmen i kjøkkengulvet og ned i kjelleren. Fra denne lemmen hadde Oline styrt over vått og tørt så lenge hun levde. Siden hadde Dina tatt hånd om nøklene. Ikke minst den til vinkjelleren.
Han gikk et par trinn ned i mørket, men forsto at han trengte lykt. Plutselig kjente han teven av nykokt kaffe. Først da han sto ute i lyset igjen, forsto han at den ikke kunne komme fra det blå kjøkkenet, men fra kårstua.
De hadde spist kokte fjorårspoteter med avskrubbet groe og stekte koteletter. Ingen av dem ble sittende med fett i skjegget. De dyppet flatbrød i, løftet det rolig til munnen og spiste som folk. Begge hadde lært bordskikk på Reinsnes. De spøkte om det. At dannelse og bordskikk satt dypt i.
Johan mente at han hadde kommet lettere fra oppdragelsen fordi moren hans var så ømhjertet. Benjamin på sin side kunne ikke huske at Dina hadde sagt hvordan han skulle te seg ved bordet. Det var det Oline og en sjelden gang mor Karen som tok seg av.
– Æ va nok en kjøkkenunge, meir enn du, Johan, sa han ertende.
– Ho Dina overlot kanskje tel andre å lære dæ bordskikk, men ho lærte dæ i alle fall å seile!
– Ja, og det har æ hatt god bruk for, sa han og ville skjenke mer vin i halvfulle glass.
Johan la hånden over sitt.
– Det har ryktes at du har vore i Kjøbenhavn?
– Ja. Æ fikk det for svart der heime – uten å vette nokka om jenten mine.
– Kordan har ho det... der på asylet?
– Æ veit ikkje, Johan. Ho vil ennu ikkje snakk. Vi har kanskje mista ho...
Johan satte albuene på bordet og bikket hodet i hendene uten å si noe.
Vinduet sto åpent, og Benjamin kunne høre tjelden forsvare reiret sitt mot en måseflokk nede på den upløyde potetåkeren.
– Tjelden hadde alltid reir der nede då æ vaks opp også. Æ måtte bruke greip og fløtte heile greia med egg oppi for at han Tomas ikkje skulle pløye det ned. Etterpå måtte æ sette det nøyaktig på plass. Det va et spetakkel. Men det trengs ikkje i år, sa Benjamin og prøvde å smile.
– Han Tomas... Han va som en far for dæ? sa Johan og så opp.
– Ja, det kan man trygt sei.
Benjamin hørte selv at svaret kom fort og lett.
– Æ bodde mykkje i kårstua i lag med ho Stine og han Tomas... då æ vaks opp.
– Veit du kordan de har det der i Amerika? spurte Johan.
– Bra, trur æ. Det va jo ho Hanna som holdt kontakt med mor si, så æ veit ikkje heilt..., sa han og så i bordet.
De ble sittende uten å si noe.
– Æ skulle ha holdt den talen sjøl, sa Johan plutselig ut i luften uten å se på ham.
– Ja?
– Ho Dina ba om at ho Karna skulle... Men æ skulle ha gjort det sjøl, sa han hardt.
Benjamin tidde. Johan var visst selv i gang med å få ut materien. Men hva forventet han? Hvem av dem skulle rense?
– Æ ber ikkje om at du telgjer mæ, eller forstår... Æ har ikkje engong bedt Vår Herre om å telgje, sa Johan og så endelig opp. Spørrende.
Benjamin reiste seg. Grep begge tallerkenene og fikk dem på benken. Resten av måltidet gikk samme vei, men glassene lot han stå. Så satte han seg tungt på stolen igjen.
– Æ e glad for at du ikkje har bedt om det. Æ trur du må telgje dæ sjøl, sa han grøtet.
– Men det va derfor du kom? For at æ skulle be om det?
– Nei. Æ kom for min egen del. Æ har nok med å bestyre mine egne bønna. Dessuten fant æ brevet du skreiv tel ho Dina då du kom fra Amerika og blei eneboar på Reinsnes. Ho hadde gjømt på det.
– Brevet?
– Ja. Du skreiv at om ho trengte nattverd, så va du der, for ho va grunnen tel at du va kommen heim.
Johan stirret på ham.
– Takk, sa han enkelt.
– Det ligg i jernskapet på kontoret. Du får det når du kjem over.
– Det ligg tryggar i jernskapet enn hos mæ, mente Johan. – E det nokka æ _ikkje_ behøv å be om forlatelse for, så e det _det_ brevet.
– Ho hadde taket på dæ... Du gjorde som ho ba dæ om? spurte Benjamin.
– En voksen mann må sjøl tenke og stå for det han gjør, mente Johan.
– Ja?
– Då æ tenkte, va det for seint.
– Ja, sa Benjamin igjen.
Så ble de bare sittende.
Benjamin overveide om han skulle foreslå at det var tid for doktorsprit i kaffen, men det ble for stygt akkurat nå. Da reiste Johan seg. Ble stående med ryggen til og se ut gjennom vinduet.
– Æ trur det e tid for sterk kaffe, sa han ut i luften og gikk til komfyren.
Benjamin reiste seg også. Gikk ut i bislaget etter doktorvesken og fant flasken med sprit.
Johan sto med ryggen til og pumpet vann i kjelen.
– Har du farin? spurte Benjamin.
Mannen snudde seg og smilte lettet.
– Vesst farsken har æ farin!
De hadde flyttet seg ut på trammen med kaffekrusene. Var enige om at man ikke kunne være burhøns i slikt et forbannet godvær.
– Har du funnet ei ny vannåre der huset sto? Benjamin pekte på det nye brønnhuset.
– Nei, æ har grove fram vinkjellarn.
Benjamin så forbauset på ham.
– Du har tenkt å samle edle årganga, sa han tørt.
– Nei. Kom med! Æ skal berre finne ei løkt.
Da de sto der foran det hjemmegjorte alteret og Johan hadde tent vokslysene som var plassert i messingstaker, i flasker og gamle blikkbokser, ble Benjamin fylt av en slags mørkeredsel. Sto der som en guttunge. Og da mannen stilte seg med ryggen til og løftet armene mot steinveggen som om han var midt i en messe, kom uhyggen. Det var visst ikke bare Karnas sinn som hadde fått sprekker.
Han måtte ut. Opp i lyset. Dette var en verre betennelse enn han hadde trodd.
Etter en stund kom Johan etter ham.
– Du kjente det, du også?
Benjamin snudde seg brått. Johan var ikke bare beruset, det var han selv også. Men han var som i transe. Øynene var vidåpne og hendene dirret.
– Du kjente det, du også? Ho e der! Ho e i veggan der nede. I luften man puste inn. Ho vil oss alle godt. Forstår du?
Mannens hender løftet seg og stemmen var et rop.
– Du kjente det?
– Nei, Johan! Æ kjente det ikkje. Du og æ, vi har gravlagt ho i havet. Hus du ikkje det? Ta tel vett og slutt med det her! Ellers går det galt. Kom nu, æ trur vi skal køye...
Vel inne i huset forsto han at han hadde skjenket sin halvbror ganske full. Mannen var sikkert ikke vant til sprit. Det var mye han ikke visste om Johan, som hadde bodd årevis i Amerika og var gammel nok til å være faren hans. Men det var noe uskyldig ved ham. Noe uangripelig troskyldig.
– Tenke du non gonga på den der seilasen med kista hennes? spurte Johan og holdt seg fast i trappegelenderet mens Benjamin hjalp ham opp til loftet. Stemmen var grumsete.
– Kver en forbanna dag, svarte Benjamin hardt.
– For mæ e det verst om nettern. Då går æ ned der, tel alteret for å få fred.
# ANNAS SOMMER
Hun visste ikke hvordan hun hadde trodd det skulle bli etter møtet i kapellet. Det hadde endt med at de vettløst klamret seg til hverandre.
– Du må gå nå, Anna! hadde han sagt, da ingen av dem viste noen evne til å komme løs.
Hun kjente seg avvist og skamfull, gjorde seg fri og gikk mot døren. Han kom etter og sa navnet hennes.
– Dersom du ville bevise din makt over meg, vel, så vet du, sa hun og ville ut. Bort. Midt i alt kjente hun den varme pusten hans i nakken. Hørte ham.
– Forstår du ikke at jeg holder på å miste grepet. Vi er kropper også, Anna!
Siden hadde de sett hverandre når han hadde ærend på overlegens forkontor. Og bare når søster Vivi var der. Han var alltid korrekt og uten ironiske bemerkninger. En gang møttes de i parken etter arbeidstid. Det var ikke avtalt. Begge stanset opp. Hilste uten å komme nær. Han virket rådvill, nesten beklemt.
– Du har vært der? Din mor? Begravelsen? spurte hun, og angret øyeblikkelig da hun så ansiktsuttrykket.
– Ja, jeg var der, svarte han, som om hun var en fjern bekjent som plaget ham med private spørsmål.
Måten hans forvirret henne. Såret henne. Hadde de ikke sittet tett sammen i kapellet og snakket om alt som lå dem på hjertet? Hadde de ikke vært så nær at ingenting for fremtiden behøvde å bli usagt?
En gruppe pasienter kom i følge med en pleierske. Rolige, men nysgjerrige stanset de opp. Gjorde krav på ham. Det var ikke bare hun som ville ha en flik av reservelegen. Han hilste smilende med hånden til øret som han pleide. Nikket til henne også. Før han brått snudde seg og gikk med raske skritt mot hovedporten.
Dagen etter så hun ham fra vinduet. Han gikk inn i bygningen til Karnas avdeling. Denne mannen hadde gjort henne til en tigger. Hun hadde ingen erfaring med tigging. Det vakte selvforakt. Trodde han at hun bare ville leke videre med noe han så på som en pasjon?
Hva var det han hadde sagt der i kapellet? _Vi kommer til å ødelegge hverandre._ _Jeg må bort_! Men det var ikke han som måtte bort. Det var hun selv. Han var mer nødvendig på dette stedet enn hun var.
*
For Anna ble sommeren en klebrig fremmed uten hud. Joakim hadde sluttet å passe henne opp. Var ikke lenger ved kapellet eller drivhuset når hun spaserte mot stranden. Hun tok toget til Kjøbenhavn. Gikk i støvete, varme gater uten annet mål enn å besøke sine foreldre. Der kunne hun sitte en stund å spille bak fôrede gardiner, uansett om de var hjemme eller ikke. Hun tok seg i å kjenne på tomheten når de ikke var der.
Hun hadde bestemt seg for å gjøre som ham, holde avstand. Allikevel sto han brått på gangstien ved dammen en dag hun var på vei til losjiet. To pleiere passerte dem og hilste. Hun stanset opp. Det ble vanskelig å puste. Hun klemte vesken fast inn mot kroppen. Ventet.
– Kan jeg orientere Anna om Karna? spurte han uten innledning.
– Selvsagt, sa hun uten å se på ham.
Så gikk de langs dammen for alles øyne. I ærbar avstand fra hverandre. Snakket lavt sammen som to bekjente. Eller som en lege snakker til en lyttende pårørende. Han var optimistisk. Trodde han hadde viktig kontakt. Karna bevegde seg når en medpasient nynnet. Danset. Det hadde hendt flere ganger denne våren. I dag hadde de gjort en hel oppvisning. Den nynnende kvinnen og Karna. Hele hospitalgangen var med og så.
De stanset opp på stien et sted hvor det ikke var noen. Han ga henne det forte smilet sitt mens han fortalte. Det som fikk ansiktsmusklene til å motarbeide hverandre. Som om han hadde en lammelse han prøvde å skjule, eller egentlig ville gråte.
Anna løftet armene og var nær ved å omfavne ham. Men det var øyne overalt. I stedet slo hun hendene sammen og lo mot ham mens tårene sprutet.
– For et under du har fått til! Kan jeg få være med neste gang?
– Vi får se tiden an. Nå er hun trygg og i sin egen rolle. Blir ting forandret, kan hun gå i lås, sa han alvorlig. En ting, Anna... Ikke nevn dette til noen slik at overlegen begynner å spørre. Jeg vet ennå ikke hvordan jeg skal gå videre. Det kan være et blindspor.
Hun sto der bare mens tårene rant. Det var ikke noe å si. Han hadde betrodd seg. Bedt henne holde det for seg selv. Vist seg usikker. De sto en meter fra hverandre og var likevel nær.
– Bare synd jeg må avbryte kontakten nå, på grunn av en reise, sa han.
– En reise?
– Jeg skal til Paris. En viktig forsker har gitt meg innpass.
På et øyeblikk var alt forandret. Glede ble tomhet. Hun var en stemor som ble orientert. Hun ville spørre om han egentlig var på vei bort for godt, slik han hadde sagt i kapellet. Men det ble umulig. For mannen foran henne var ikke den samme som i kapellet. Hun måtte innse at han ikke var der for henne eller seg selv, men for Karna.
Idet han løftet hånden til farvel, sa hun ganske lavt:
– Ikke tenk på å reise for godt, Joakim. Jeg kan ikke leve med det. Jeg skal heller holde meg unna.
Hånden hans falt ned langs kroppen. Han rettet seg opp og smilte fort.
– Takk, Anna!
*
Søster Vivi holdt henne sporadisk underrettet om hvor han var. Små, tilfeldige kommentarer, uten at hun behøvde å spørre. Overlegen var vennlig når han gikk gjennom rommet. En gang stoppet han opp og spurte når hennes mann kom.
Storparten av sommeren var legene skiftevis bortreist. Foreldrene hennes ferierte i Provence sammen med søsteren Sophie og hennes familie. Selv gikk hun tur med Karna, som tydelig heller ikke likte sommeren. Eller kanskje hun savnet Joakim? Anna torde ikke spørre henne. Ikke om dansen heller. Men hun brakte henne det vanlige. Brev fra Peder og Benjamin, som hun åpnet og spurte om hun skulle lese. Avis der hun hadde satt en sirkel rundt dato og enkelte nyheter. Ingenting tydet på at Karna hadde noen glede av det.
En dag åpnet hun skapdøren for å se om det var tegn til at hun hadde sett på tingene når hun var alene. Karna kom etter henne og smelte døren igjen med et sint grynt. Men hun fikk et øyeblikk, nok til å se at det portrettet Peder hadde sendt av seg selv, lå øverst.
Benjamin skrev til dem begge, hver uke. Til henne små punktvise beretninger om sitt liv. Mellom linjene ante hun uroen og spørsmålene. Det skapte et stort trykk. I brystet. Hodet. Hun svarte ham når hun syntes hun måtte. Holdt en vennlig, hverdagslig tone, som:
_I dag ble Karna fornærmet fordi jeg undersøkte skapet hennes. Hun har portrettet av Peder liggende øverst. Kanskje er der en forandring. Mat har_ _visst_ _ingen mening_ _for henne._ _Ellers er her varmt og_ _ingen_ _store forandringer_.
# ANDRE BOK
# DEN TREDJE SOM VET
Den svarte fuglen hadde skreket hele morgenen.
Russeren var ikke slik han pleide å være når han snek seg med i stuegangen. Han prøvde ikke å skjule seg. De hadde gått forbi hennes dør og begynt i den andre enden av hospitalgangen. Det virket som om russeren var kommet helt inn i virkeligheten. Det var altfor dristig. Han kom til å bli avslørt, for han snakket like mye som overlegen. Riktignok ikke så høyt. Men bestemt. Det kunne ikke gå. I det øyeblikk de avslørte ham, måtte hun ha en plan for å unngå at de slepte ham ut. Kunne hun få ham til å falle? Lage et stort rabalder? Hva kunne hun gjøre for å få dem til å glemme at han var en falsk reservelege?
Hun åpnet skapdøren. Der sto skoene. Der hang den røde kjolen på hengeren. Alt i god orden. Det var fordi hun sørget for det. Lå noe utenfor det usynlige merket, så kunne alt skje. Hva, det visste hun ikke.
Kunne hun bruke hengeren som våpen? Avlede dem. Få dem til å overfalle henne i stedet for russeren. Sette henne i trøyen og glemme ham. Der lå bunken med brevene med den påståelige skriften. Skulle hun kaste brevene ut i rommet for å forvirre dem? Nei. Da ville kantene komme i kaos og kanskje ikke la seg ordne igjen.
Hun grep en sko i hver hånd og stilte seg i den åpne døren. Ventet.
Men om de tok ham før han kom hit? Ja! Hun forsto det nå. Dette var dagen. Hvordan kunne han være så dum å komme når overlegen gikk stuegang?
Kanskje kunne hun ta skoene på og få ham med seg ut i hagen og slik avlede alle. Nei. Ingen pasienter fikk gå ut når det var stuegang.
Så var de der. Hun ville gjemme seg bak døren. Men det var for sent. Hun ble stående der med skoene i hånden. Søster Agnes kom til og ville ta dem fra henne. Men hun tviholdt på dem.
– La henne bare beholde skoene, sa overlegen vennlig.
– De må unnskylde at hun ikke er i sengen og alt i orden, sa pleiersken.
– Det spiller ingen rolle, søster Agnes, dette er fort gjort. Har Karna spist og sovet tilfredsstillende i det siste? spurte han og så på henne, selv om han visste at det var Agnes som svarte.
Russeren hadde reservelegens ansikt. Håret så helt naturlig ut. Likevel ventet hun på at det skulle ramle av. Det var nok den dagen. Hun så det på ham. Hendene var urolige. Han var utålmodig og viste tydelig at han ville ha overlegen av veien. At han ikke likte at overlegen var der. Det var ikke bra. Ettersom overlegen hadde yttertøy på og hatten under armen, så var han nok på tur et annet sted. Men det kunne være en felle. Det var dagen for det. Russeren var altfor brå og uforsiktig. Han kunne til og med begynne å snakke om farmor. At hun ikke mente å skyte ham. Da ville overlegen bli sikker i sin sak. At det var en forkledning for en gal mann.
– Vil Karna sette seg i stolen så vi kan få vite hvordan hun har det i dag? spurte overlegen altfor vennlig.
Hun satte seg på sengen med skoene i hendene. Holdt dem i overlæret med hælene opp. Klar.
– Vi har en plan, frøken Karna og jeg, sa russeren.
– Nei, nei, han skulle ikke sagt det! Hun måtte få ham til å tie.
– Ja så? Hva er det? sa overlegen og blunket til Agnes, som om han trodde russeren tullet.
Men Agnes blunket ikke, hun hadde altfor stor respekt. Agnes trodde hun måtte krype for slike som overlegen. Det trodde de alle. Men ikke russeren. Han var uvøren. Det kunne ikke gå.
– Det er hemmelig til så lenge. Men det kommer nok for en dag, ikke sant? Vi arbeider med det. Rytmen og språket, ser De, professor. Først rytmen.
Nå måtte han stoppe. Hun måtte få ham til å stoppe før han ble avslørt. Han hadde heller ikke knappet den hvite frakken ordentlig. Man kunne se at den rutete skjorten hans ikke hørte til her.
– Det lyder utmerket, Klim. Utmerket. Jeg overlater dere til øvelsene for jeg må ta til stasjonen snart. Tror han at han greier seg alene her disse dagene?
– Det kommer til å gå utmerket, professor, sa russeren. Overlegen nikket, satte hatten på, snudde seg og gikk.
– Det var det. Nå klarer vi oss, søster Agnes. De kan også gå, sa russeren.
Så var det bare dem. Han hadde reddet seg denne gangen også. Hun pustet ut. Han gikk bort til den åpne skapdøren og la hånden på brevbunken. Da han snudde seg, hadde han fotografiet i hånden.
– En kjekk, ung mann. Karna kjenner ham?
Hun svarte ikke. Dagen kunne enda være en felle. Han snakket ikke til henne slik russeren ville gjort når de var alene. Hadde han sveket henne? Latt seg overtale til å komme helt innenfor og bli en annen? Da hadde hun ingen vitner mer. Da var hun alene. Helt alene.
Nå la han bildet tilbake og pekte på den røde kjolen.
– Karna har tatt skoene frem. Er dette en dag for dans? Skal vi gå til fru Bentsens celle og be henne nynne?
Han behøvde ikke å mase med det der når de var alene. Hun kjente seg klam. Plutselig så hun det helt tydelig. Han var ikke russeren! Han hadde ikke dette arret i ansiktet som Pappa en gang nevnte. _Når han snudde den_ _siden til,_ _var han en annen._ _Jeg var bare_ _elleve år og litt redd for ham_ , hadde han sagt.
Klamheten ble til kvalme.
– Du e ikkje russeren! hveste hun.
Lydene kom ut av henne. Nå hang de rundt i rommet i usynlige tråder og hadde en underlig resonans. Som om de ikke trodde på seg selv.
Han stanset opp. Først bare sto han der. Så tok han to lange skritt bort til sengen. Bøyde seg over henne.
– Hvem er russeren?
Ansiktet hans fløt foran henne. Hun måtte knipe øynene hardt igjen.
– Hvem er russeren? hørte hun igjen.
Han ga henne vann av det tykke klumpete glasset. Det var ikke han som skulle gjøre det, men Agnes. Han hadde gitt seg til for å tvinge henne til å røpe russeren enda en gang. Hun måtte late som om hun ikke så ham, ikke hørte ham. Måtte late som om han var luft.
Nå hentet han stolen og satte den ved sengen. Strakte seg over henne og la fingertuppene på tinningene hennes. De kjentes som lune magneter som lusket rundt i små sirkler.
– La oss møte ham sammen. Russeren. Høre hva han har å si.
Stemmen hans fløt rundt henne mens fingertuppene hentet... _russeren_.
Det var nok ikke morgen ennå. Eller så var hun ennå uten tid. Hun så ham med en gang hun åpnet øynene. Han lå på en madrass like innenfor døren. Det var nok den samme madrassen som var i sengen med reimer. Over seg hadde han et vatteppe som var gått opp i sømmene. Rutene i stikningen hadde ingen fasong.
Først trodde hun at de hadde russeren innenfor døren hos henne for å vite hvor de hadde ham. Så husket hun.
Gråheten i rommet var skimrende vakker. Gasslyset over døren var skrudd ned. Hodet hennes var klart. Hun hadde ikke fått noen medisin å sove på. Ingenting. Han hadde bare sagt – _kom til deg selv nå_.
Hun husket trettheten. Den lette trettheten ved å komme til seg selv. En gang hadde hun våknet fordi stillheten nede hos deliristene var så trykkende. Lå han der da? Hadde han passet på henne hele tiden?
Døren ut til hospitalgangen var halvåpen. Den hadde en dyp grop i høyde med en sengegavl. Det kom av at de hadde det travelt og bare kjørte i vei. Siden ble det stående der. Merket. Dypere og dypere for hver gang de hadde det travelt.
Det var en annen lukt i rommet. Han luktet annerledes. Litt som pappa. Hun lukket øynene og slapp inn lydene fra huset. Da hun åpnet dem, satt han oppreist på madrassen og tok seg hardt over ansiktet. Som om han vasket seg uten vann. Øynene var både ville og rolige. Eller sta. Men hun var sikker. Ansiktet var ikke russerens.
Nattevakten stakk hodet innenfor og kvapp.
– Velsigne doktor Klim! Ligger han her?
Han løftet hånden mot munnen og vinket henne av gårde. Så strakte han armene over hodet og gjespet med knyttede never mot taket.
Hun satte seg opp i sengen. Da smilte han bredt og nikket flere ganger. Et øredøvende spetakkel fra korridoren kvalte først det han prøvde å si. Det lød som om noen hadde veltet trallen med blikktallerkener, etterfulgt av hurtige skritt og skjellsord.
Men han ga seg ikke. Sa ordene på nytt.
– Takk for at jeg fikk vite om ham. Og han har rett. Hun mente det ikke. Nå er vi tre som vet.
# BENJAMIN MÅ KAPSLE INN SINNE OG MØTE SEG SELV
De første dagene på sjøreisen hadde han bare sovet. Utslitt og fullstendig vrengt. Da han sto ved rekka og så Lofotfjellene og Vestfjorden åpne seg, fikk han en katastrofal følelse. Anger. Og det var for sent. Altfor sent.
For han hadde tatt formann Jensen i hånden til farvel og bedt ham sende telegram eller brev dersom noe sto på, og gitt ham Peders adresse i Bergen.
Han hadde fått sunnhetskommisjonen til å love at Strandstedet fikk legebesøk en gang i måneden mot at han stilte sitt kontor til rådighet, og at det ellers ble sendt doktor ved nødsfall.
Han hadde sendt kontorsøster av gårde til et lasarett i Salten med en måneds ekstra lønn i posen. Allikevel hadde hun snufset og grått.
Han hadde klubbet sitt siste herredsstyremøte og blitt takket av med en brevkniv av sølv. Flere hadde beklaget at han skulle svikte så grundig og gi seg til i Kjøbenhavn. Men de forsto, sa de. _Vesst farsken forsto de_!
Han hadde leid ut Grand Hotel til en mann fra Tromsø med bra rykte, og bedt ham om å ta særlig vare på flygelet i spisesalen. Hadde fått ham til å ta Hannas søster Sara i arbeid og gi henne et rom på kvisten. For hun kunne ikke bo en vinter til i den trekkfulle systuen.
Han hadde bedt Johan til doktorgården og gitt ham salt uer, kålrabistappe og nypoteter med øl til. Halvbroren ble i tre dager og snakket mye om Dina.
Han hadde hyrt vaskehjelpen med svullfingeren og den ukonfirmerte gutten til å se til huset og passe musefellene i kjelleren, og betalt henne på forskudd for hele vinteren.
Han hadde sett over de personlige finansene og funnet dem kapable, iallfall for et år.
Han hadde pakket bøker og personlige ting uten å vite om det var for resten av livet eller til en eller annen korsvei. Og han hadde tatt Wilfred Olaisen i hånden og sagt et falskt farvel da han sendte det som gods fra hans kai.
Han hadde gått gjennom doktorgården fra rom til rom og diskutert med seg selv til siste slutt. For det han nå hadde gjort, var fullstendig galskap utført av en skipbrudden som lot all redning fare.
I siste brev til Anna hadde han spurt henne rett ut om hun ennå holdt av ham. Men han gikk på dampen med tre reisekofferter uten å ha fått svar. I Bergen var han kommet så pass til hektene at han telegraferte om skip og tidspunkt til Annas foreldre. Men båten til Kjøbenhavn korresponderte så tett at han ikke fikk truffet Peder.
Slik hadde han en forsømmelse som han selv visste om.
*
Nå var han kommet til en annen verden, et annet liv. Der taffelsamtalene i Store Kongensgade var en øvelse med ujevn kvalitet.
– Den er ikke ledig ennå. Og det finnes ikke _ett_ tre, ikke _en_ baker i overskuelig avstand! utbrøt Annas mor.
– Det har vært ugreie med leien og folkene skal kastes ut, men det er visst ikke enkelt, sa Annas far.
Anna og Benjamin satt ved siden av hverandre overfor foreldrene. Forretten var servert. Spinatsuppen var kremet og la seg pent i skjeen da han løftet den til munnen.
Benjamin var nettopp kommet og kjente den lange sjøreisen i hode og kropp. Samtalen var uvirkelig. Det var Anna også. Men denne gangen var hun i alle fall der for å møte ham. Den store vesken hennes sto til og med i gjesteværelset, der han også skulle sove.
– Man kan da ikke flytte inn i en leilighet der folk er blitt kastet ut fordi de mangler penger til leie, sa Anna og snudde seg mot Benjamin.
Han ristet på hodet.
– Nei, det ville være en dårlig start.
– Jeg synes dere skal finne noe annet og bedre, imens kan Benjamin bo her, mente Annas mor. – Siden Anna allikevel finner det formålstjenlig å bo i provinsen og holde på med dette _arbeidet_ sitt, la hun til.
– Mor, vil du være så snill å holde opp!
– Da sier vi det, sa moren uten å presisere hva hun mente. At hun skulle tie, eller at Benjamin skulle bli værende til de fant noe annet.
– Vi løser det praktiske etter hvert, sa Annas far bestemt.
Slik kom de seg gjennom måltidet med luftig snakk om Benjamins reise, svigermors veldedighetsbasar og behovet for modernisering av Frederiks Hospital.
Under kaffen i salongen kjente Benjamin at trettheten hadde satt seg. Han lurte på hvordan han kunne trekke seg tilbake uten å virke uhøflig da svigerfar henvendte seg direkte til ham.
– Jeg har et viktig spørsmål til deg, kjære svigersønn.
Benjamin løftet et blytungt hode og kom ham i møte med et nikk.
– Forholdene og mulighetene på avdelingen du har ønsket, er ikke helt tilfredsstillende, hverken for studenter eller pasienter. Jeg tror ikke du vil finne det interessant. Avdelingen fungerer ikke slik man skulle ønske. Kunne du tenke deg å ta en ledig plass på min avdeling? Vi er underbemannet.
Benjamin så overrasket på ham.
– Det er kvinnesykdommer som er min interesse, ikke kirurgi, svigerfar.
– Det vet jeg, men jeg forsikrer deg, det ene utelukker ikke det andre. Og hos oss har du store muligheter for fremtiden. Men du kan selvsagt ombestemme deg etter en tid.
Benjamin visste ikke hvordan det gikk til, men han lovet å tenke på det.
– Jeg har vært og sett til Karna et par ganger uten å gi meg til kjenne. Hun husker meg ikke under noen omstendigheter. Men det fikk meg til å tenke på interessante forsøk som er gjort innen kirurgien. Gynekologen Frantz Howitz har skrevet et bidrag til en sunnhetslære for kvinner der han leverer vitenskapelige argumenter for at det er skadelig for unge kvinner å utdanne seg for mye eller ta del i samfunnslivet utenfor hjemmet. At hustruer og mødre som overanstrenger hjernen kan få alvorlige lidelser både i underliv og nervesystem. I England og USA utfører man nå kirurgiske inngrep og fjerner friske underlivsorganer på kvinner for å helbrede psykiske lidelser. Etter min mening går de for langt. Men kirurgien er kanskje fremtiden også her. Jeg så Karnas journal. Hun menstruerer ikke. Kan hennes tilstand ha noe med de indre organer å gjøre?
Anna reiste seg halvt fra stolen. Øynene lynte.
– Far! Kan du holde Karnas tilstand og indre organer utenfor kaffebordet!
– Så, så, kjære Anna. Jeg nevner det for å fortelle Benjamin at kirurgien trenger kloke menn som vet litt om livet, og ikke bare ser på kvinner som psykiske tilfeller man kan skjære i. For fremtiden vil kirurgi tiltrekkes av menn som vil ha makt og prestisje. Det er ikke bare av det gode.
– Tilgi meg svigerfar, men jeg ser på kirurgi som et håndverk som ikke kan redde kvinners sjeleliv. Og når det gjelder denne Frantz Howitz' teorier, har jeg bare forakt. Enten må han være dum, eller menneskefiendtlig, sa Benjamin kaldt.
– Jeg gir deg delvis rett, min gode mann. Men ettersom du er både lege og ordfører, så forstår du at det som går forut for kirurgien, det er ofte både sjelesorg og politikk. Avgjørelsene blir ikke bare tatt i henhold til pasienten, men ofte uten hennes samtykke. Kirurgien er fremtiden. Og den krever ansvar og klokskap. Derfor vil jeg ha _deg_ inn på min avdeling.
Anna hadde satt seg ned igjen, og moren nappet fraværende på et vissent blad i blomsteroppsatsen. Benjamin satte koppen pent fra seg.
– Jeg setter pris på at du vil ha meg. Men når det gjelder Karna, så skal hun ikke opereres for sinnslidelse. Bare for eventuelle fysiske problemer.
– Der er vi helt på linje, sa svigerfar.
Anna skjøv tallerkenen litt fra seg og så utfordrende på sin far.
– Vet du om noen kirurger som kan kurere ufruktbarhet? spurte hun brått.
Det ble stille. Benjamin så på henne uten å få kontakt. Hun så på sin far, som tok seg til klokkekjedet og rettet seg opp i stolen.
– Du er vel alt over den alderen der det er aktuelt, kjære Anna. Dessuten har du jo en lege for hånden, sa svigerfar med et skjevt smil.
Benjamin kjente seg plutselig uvel. Samtalen hadde tatt en ydmykende vending. Han så på Anna. Krum rygg. Hendene knuget i fanget. Stramme lepper. Plutselig så han henne. Hun var et kjempende menneske, som han selv. Han reiste seg og grep hånden hennes. Fikk henne opp fra stolen.
– Jeg må si takk for i kveld, sa han.
Anna frigjorde seg, men ble stående.
– Skal jeg hjelpe med noe før jeg legger meg? spurte hun og så på sin mor.
– Nei takk, bare kryp til sengs, sa moren mildt.
Hun satt i nattkjole på en puff og børstet håret da han kom inn i soverommet. Han tok av seg skoene og vesten uten å si noe. Så gikk han bort og tok børsten fra henne. Hun bøyde hodet og lot ham overta. Med lange rolige tak fra pannen og helt ned til livet lot han børsten vandre. Stadig uten et ord. Da hun til sist tok børsten fra ham og la den på bordet, trakk han henne opp til seg.
– Jeg vet ikke om dette er kvelden for det... Men vi har ikke snakket om det på lenge... Barnet vi ikke har fått...
Han lot hendene leke over ryggen hennes.
– Nei... Og det er ikke lenger noe savn. Vi har visst nok med å ta vare på det barnet vi har. Jeg måtte bare sette far på plass. Det ender vel med at jeg tar mors parti. Mot ham, sa hun.
– Hvorfor?
– Fordi far tror han er gud. Og hun lar ham tro det. Noen ganger behandler han henne som dårlig luft i rommet. Og han har fått oss jentene til å være med på det. Men i kveld var det min tur til å være luft. Hun er dominerende. Men han er gud.
– Men _du_ hadde et poeng. Det er det jeg vil vi skal snakke om dersom du orker. Vi har ikke oppsøkt en gynekolog. Vi har ikke prøvd å finne ut av det.
– Du hørte hva han sa? Kaldt og diagnostisk. Ifølge ham er jeg over den fertile alder uansett.
– Det var ufølsomt. Han såret deg. Men det var _hans_ utsagn, ikke vårt, ikke mitt.
– La det fare. Jeg ble bare irritert på ham. Det er alt. Jeg er usaklig irritabel for tiden.
Han betraktet henne. Lyder nådde dem fra de tilstøtende rommene. Svigermors stemme. Klirring fra servise. Svigerfars kremting.
Benjamin tok sats. Han måtte vite det. Nå.
– Er _jeg_ grunnen til at du irriterer deg over din far? At jeg har kommet tilbake for å _bli_?
Hun ble stående uten å svare.
– Har du fått brevet der jeg spør deg om du ennå holder av meg?
– Ja, jeg har fått det... Det var for sent å svare, du ville ikke fått det før du reiste.
– Og? Si det som det er. Jeg tar det.
– Det er klart jeg holder av deg, men kanskje er noe viktig ødelagt.
Han slapp henne og gikk bort til vinduet.
– Du ga deg sanseløst hen sist... før jeg reiste, sa han hjelpeløst.
– Men vi er ikke bare kropper, Benjamin, sa hun og kom bort til vinduet. Ble stående uten å røre ham.
Det blåste der ute. Trærne var i ferd med å miste bladene. Altfor tidlig. Han kunne se dem slippe kvisten og holde seg dansende et øyeblikk under gatelykten. Så ble de tatt av mørket.
– Jeg vet ikke lenger hvem jeg er, eller hva jeg vil. Jeg trenger tid...
– Du kunne ha skrevet om det. Advart meg.
– Jeg kunne ikke skrive om slikt. Dessuten kommer du ikke for min skyld, men for din egen og Karnas.
– Nei, jeg gjør ikke det, sa han sint.
– Du sa at du kunne ta det, hvisket hun.
– Ja. Vi skal finne ut av det. Sammen, sa han med en stemme han ikke likte. Den brakk.
Han kledde av seg i taushet. Hun trakk gardinene for og krøp opp i sengen. Da han var på plass ved siden av henne og hadde slukket lampen, utvekslet de lavmælte god natt. Så opphørte tiden. Natten var bare en lyd fra uret hans på nattbordet, og Anna og han svevde hver for seg og alene ute i verdensrommet.
Han lukket øynene og prøvde å forestille seg galaksene. Baksiden av stjernebildene. Orions belte. Gjenkjente bildene, men husket ikke hva de het. Han lukket øynene hardere i. Da eksploderte Melkeveien ved at Anna plutselig snakket til ham. Helt nær. Ubegripelig nær. Og samtidig lysår borte. Det lød som om hun hadde øvd seg i lang tid.
– Du var en gang min første frihet, Benjamin. Nå ber jeg deg, kan du igjen gi meg fri?
Han kunne late som han sov. Han kunne brøle ut sin sorg slik at hele huset var nødt til å ta del i den. Han kunne snu seg mot henne, legge hele sin styrke i favntaket og trenge inn i henne til hun ga seg. Det siste ikke minst.
I stedet reiste han seg langsomt opp i sengen. Fant fyrstikker og tente den romantiske lampen. Skrudde opp veken. Hun myste mot lyset og verget seg med hånden. Det gikk ennå en stund før han var sikker på at han behersket stemmen. De iakttok hverandre med vidåpne øyne nå.
– Ja, selvfølgelig, sa han så hverdagslig han greide. – Du har din frihet. Bruk den godt!
Så snudde han seg fra henne med langsomme bevegelser. Slukket lampen. Skrudde veken helt ned før han blåste ut den vesle flammen.
Neste morgen ga de hverandre et høflig god morgen. Han gjorde seg fort ferdig bak skjermbrettet før de skulle spise frokost sammen med foreldrene.
– Er det du eller jeg som skal fortelle dem at du har bedt om din frihet? spurte han.
Han var ferdig kledd. Hun satt foran speilet og satte opp håret. Nå snudde hun seg og så ut som om hun hadde glemt det hele.
– Må vi gjøre det så dramatisk? Vi må jo omgås. Og du bor her. Min frihet tror jeg ikke de er så interessert i likevel. Kan vi ikke bare være helt rolige?
Han ble sint. Ganske enkelt innett forbannet. På situasjonen. På seg selv. Han hadde ligget våken mesteparten av natten og kunne se på henne at det hadde hun også. De hadde ligget i hverandres pust uten å ha et ord til trøst. Likevel bet han det i seg og trakk på skuldrene.
– Som du vil, sa han bare og gikk ut av rommet. Men med det hadde han også fristilt seg selv. Og da han møtte svigerfar i spisestuen og var alene med ham over morgenavisene, sa han:
– Jeg har tenkt i natt. Jeg tar imot ditt tilbud om å lære kirurgi under din ledelse. Mine ungdomsdrømmer ad kvinnesykdommer er trolig noe overdrevet.
Svigerfar brettet avisen sammen og la den fra seg.
– Godt! Jeg er viss på at du ikke vil angre, og det ene utelukker ikke det andre, sa han og gikk til barskapet og skjenket opp to drøye snapsglass. Da kvinnene kom inn i spisestuen, sto de med brede smil og klinket glass.
Benjamin spilte opp et uforstandig godt humør og brukte situasjonen for alt den var verdt. Hevn over avmakt. Hevn over noe han ikke forsto rekkevidden av.
Da de sto i entreen og Anna skulle gå, spurte hun når han skulle besøke Karna.
– Jeg venter til overlegen har forberedt henne, så får jeg beskjed.
– Det er reservelegen som har ansvaret for henne nå som overlegen er bortreist, sa hun.
– Ja vel, svarte Benjamin lett.
– Reservelegen? Er det denne Joakim Klim? spurte Annas far fra døråpningen.
– Ja, sa Anna. – Kjenner du ham?
– Nei, bare av omtale. Som student var han en ganske plagsom oppvigler. Men det er jo en tid siden. Det sies at han er tilhenger av de nye hypoteser om menneskesinnet. Han har forbindelser til Salpêtrière-hospitalet i Paris. Men for Karnas del skulle jeg ønske overlegen ikke ble for lenge borte.
Benjamin kastet et blikk på Anna. Hun hadde lukket seg bak hattebremmen.
– Når ser vi deg igjen, kjære? spurte Annas mor.
– Snart. Men nå må jeg løpe så jeg kan ta toget som går direkte. Da sparer jeg minst 20 minutter.
Benjamin tok på seg yttertøy uten å si noe.
– Går du med? Det var hyggelig av deg, sa Anna og var alt i farten.
– Selvsagt, kjære! sa han så muntert han bare kunne. Egentlig var han ganske stolt av sitt rollespill. Det hadde blitt to snaps før morgenmaten.
Da de kom ut på gaten, tok han armen hennes.
– Du ba meg ikke være dramatisk og la være å si noe til dine foreldre. Men jeg er nødt til å vite hva du mente med utsagnet i natt om _å gi deg frihet_. Betyr det at jeg skal finne et sted å bo... alene? Eller skal det være plass for to når du er i byen? Med andre ord – vil du ha pose og sekk?
– Siden du setter det på spissen – ja. Jeg ser at vi er avhengig av hverandre på grunn av Karna. Jeg kan forresten ringe fra kontoret og gi beskjed når de har forberedt henne på at du kommer, sa hun og skrittet i vei som et postbud.
– Nei, det synes jeg reservelegen skal gjøre, sa han kort.
– Vil du det? spurte hun saklig.
– Er det noen grunn til at jeg ikke skulle ville det?
Hun svarte ikke. Da de sto på perrongen og ventet, sa hun lavt:
– Jeg vet at du er såret og sint. Men jeg kan ikke gjøre noe med det.
– Nei, Anna, selvsagt kan du ikke gjøre noe med det. Jeg finner et par rom i Kjøbenhavn og flytter dit.
– Jeg trenger tid, Benjamin..., sa hun.
Han greide ikke å formulere en reaksjon, og hun gikk inn i vognen. I går kveld ville hun ha sin frihet, tenkte han. I dag _trenger_ _hun tid_. Hva er forskjellen? Han ville rope det til henne. Kreve henne til regnskap. Men gjorde det ikke. Han så seg selv utenfra. Et mannfolk som sto og glante etter en dame til toget kom i bevegelse.
Hva var det Peder pleide å si? _Ja vel. Men det skal nok gå._ _Vesst farsken skal det gå_!
Det første han måtte gjøre var å skaffe seg et eget sted, sin egen seng. Så fikk hun komme når det passet henne, tenkte han beskt.
*
I dagene som kom fikk han den tvilsomme rollen å forstå sin svigermors trang til å dominere og ha regi, hennes overfølsomhet når det gjaldt hva _folk_ kunne finne på å mene og si om familien. For eksempel når han avviste hennes alternativ til leilighet til fordel for en annonse han hadde funnet. Hun sa rett ut at det tok seg dårlig ut dersom de skulle bo i en beskjeden leilighet i et rufsete strøk midt i byen.
Han prøvde å være tålmodig, men ble grundig lei og fant på avtaler han ikke hadde, bare for å komme unna middagen med svigerforeldrene. Som en liten gutt som fryktet å bli tatt i juks, så han med gru for seg hva som kunne skje dersom hun hadde spioner ute og kunne avsløre hans ulovlige ekspedisjoner.
Overgangen fra distriktslege i eget rike til et liv som forvokst student som ennå ikke hadde bestemt seg for hva han skulle bli når han ble stor, gjorde ham latterlig i egne øyne. Han trålet aviser og utleiebyrå etter et sted å bo.
Etter to dager ringte han Hospitalet og fikk kontorsøsters stemme. Han gikk rett på sak uten å spørre etter lege. Først var hun formell, men da hun fikk høre hvem han var, ble hun overstrømmende. Så ville hun endelig hente doktor Klim.
– Det er ikke nødvendig. Bare si meg når jeg kan besøke min datter, Karna.
– Kom når som helst. Overlegen er tilbake først i kveld, men doktor Klim er her i alle fall i morgen tidlig.
– Jeg kommer i morgen, for dagen etter er jeg i arbeid på Frederiks Hospital.
– Velkommen! Sa kontorsøster blidt.
Om natten satt mannen ved sengen hans og voktet på ham med stikkende øyne. Han visste at det bare var en ekkel drøm, men han greide ikke å våkne. Mannen spurte om noe, men det var ikke mulig å forstå hva han sa. Til sist våknet han av sine egne hikst, svett og utslitt med armene omkring den puten Anna hadde sovet på.
Kan sjalusi virkelig bryte en mann ned, tenkte han. Han sto opp og helte vann fra muggen og ned i servanten. Fylte begge hendene og lot det sildre over ansiktet flere ganger. Tørket seg omstendelig og fant sengen igjen.
Klokken viste seks og tristheten lå som forbannet blodvann på vinduet mellom gardinene. Det var i alle fall en ny dag. Han visste ikke hva han hadde drømt, og ville ikke vite det heller. Snudde seg fra vinduet og prøvde å sove. Da husket han.
_Han sto_ _i_ _kruttslam_ _på lyngmoene. Dinas seng sto der uten sengebredsel_ _under den høye høsthimmelen._ _Han ville klatre opp til henne. Da så han russeren ligge over henne med en rød hette trukket over_ _hodet_.
– _Mamma! Æ vil tel dæ, gråt_ _han_.
– _Du e for stor for_ _å ligge her,_ _svarte_ _hun_ _alvorlig_.
_Så_ _sprang_ _han_ _over lyngheiene_ _til_ _Hannas skuvseng._ _Veien var uendelig lang._ _Bakke opp og bakke ned. Overalt måtte han passere mennesker som ikke måtte se ham. Hanna_ _var liten, søvnig og sint. Men hun tok imot ham._ _Huden_ _hennes_ _var fløyel alle steder. Unntatt inne i nevene_.
Var han i stand til å elske? Eller kunne han bare trøste seg med begjær? Kanskje var det ikke plass for annet i lengden? Tristhet og begjær? tenkte han mens han pisket opp skum i barberskålen. Han ville ta skjegget før han møtte Karna. Husket at han hadde vært skjeggløs sist hun så ham.
# BENJAMIN MØTER NYTT OG LEVD LIV
– Jeg tror jeg har en teori. Men som alle teorier om menneskesinnet, så virker den temmelig tilfeldig når man skal konkretisere, sa reservelegen og så på sin overordnede med rynkede bryn.
Han hadde daggammelt skjegg som nok ikke skulle vært der, og håret sto rett. Snipp og slips var fraværende som forrige gang Benjamin så ham. Mannen måtte ha et desperat behov for å puste fritt. Dersom det da ikke var innstudert nonsjalanse.
En klebrighet lå i luften mellom dem uten at han kunne skylde på det tørre håndtrykket. _Ham_ var det altså. Grunnen til Annas frihetsbehov. Denne merkelige utgaven av homo sapiens kunne ikke ha blitt valgt på grunn av sine klassisk vakre trekk eller sine milde replikker. Altså måtte det være noe annet. Kanskje den atletiske kroppen? Benjamin kjente en irritasjon som han selv gjennomskuet. Sjalusi.
Det opprørte ham at nettopp denne fyren gikk rundt i en atletisk kropp. Mer enn at han nå stilte opp som Karnas lege fordi overlegen hadde vært bortreist. Det fikk så være, dersom han hadde noe å fare med. Selv var han der tross alt som far og pårørende, og ikke som hanrei. Det var bare å ta det. Men han greide ikke å se på skulderpartiet, armene – eller håndleddene som endte i to velformede hender. Det gjorde ham kvalm. Han så Annas frihet velte seg mellom de hendene.
Overlegen var kommet hjem og ville endelig være med på møtet som fant sted på hans kontor, med ham bak skrivebordet og de to andre foran i hver sin stol.
– Jeg har forstått det slik at det har vært en viss fremgang de siste ukene. Det er svært interessant, sa overlegen og flyttet på tingene foran seg. Blekkhus, brevpresse, lakkstempel. Ikke mye, men likevel nok til at man kunne tro at det ble en annen orden.
– Det ville vært en stor gave om det vedvarte, sa Benjamin og prøvde å legge høflig takknemlighet i stemmen.
– Saken er, fortsatte reservelegen, – at jeg har observert en interessant forandring i adferd hos frøken Grønelv. Det kan være en bagatell, men jeg ser det som en åpning ut av isolasjon. En sosial reaksjon som kan utvikle seg.
– Ja? utbrøt Benjamin.
– I vår reagerte hun med å danse da jeg fikk en av de andre pasientene til å nynne. Man kan ikke akkurat si at det var nynning på høyt musikalsk nivå. Men hun reagerte i alle fall med å delta. Lignende scener har gjentatt seg.
– Interessant, sa overlegen.
– Først kom frøken Karna bare i døråpningen når hun hørte nynningen. Så kom hun inn. Først sto hun bare der. Så begynte hun å bevege seg. Danse. Det var forbausende. Rytmen. Uttrykket. Utfordringen der og da, med medpasienter som så på... var at hun danset seg inn i en slags transe og ville ha av seg klærne.
– Stoppet De henne? spurte Benjamin beklemt.
– Nei. Det ville ha vært uklokt. Og her er jo alle vant med litt av hvert. Jeg avledet henne og fikk henne til rommet sitt. Det var etter at hun ble seg bevisst klapping og tilrop. Jeg vet ikke hva hun opplevde ved det. Kanskje at...
– Det er uansett et opplagt fremskritt mot en normalitet, avbrøt overlegen.
– Eller at hun ennå henger fast i skammen. Det som fikk henne til å fjerne seg fra omverdenen, mente reservelegen.
– Skammen? spurte Benjamin forbauset.
– Ja. Jeg tror hun ser på seg selv som et vitne til det som ikke kan bli sagt. Og jeg var heldig. Den morgenen De reiste, professor, overvar jeg en hallusinasjon. Hun trodde tydeligvis at jeg var den russeren som hennes farmor skjøt.
– Hvordan vet han det? spurte Benjamin fort.
– Hun sa: _Du er ikke russeren_!
– Jeg mener, hvordan vet han at min mor skjøt en russer?
Doktor Klim så på ham. Gjennomtrengende.
– Unnskyld, doktor Grønelv, akkurat det er ikke viktig, men at Karna _sa_ ordene, du er ikke russeren, _det_ er viktig.
– Hun _sa_ det?
– Ja, hun sa det. Men Deres umiddelbare reaksjon, herr Grønelv, sier noe om skam og fortielse. De syntes det var så ubehagelig at jeg vet om drapet, at De overhørte det viktigste. Ikke sant?
Benjamin svarte ikke. Fyren hadde rett. Det var utrolig at han ikke hørte akkurat _det_. Men han kunne ikke la seg dupere. Ikke av denne mannen. Derfor rettet han seg opp i stolen og sa det enkelt.
– De har sikkert rett, doktor Klim.
Overlegen så fra den ene til den andre. Nikket uten å si noe.
– Karna sluttet å snakke etter sitt vitnemål i begravelsen, var det ikke så? fortsatte reservelegen.
– Ja, sa Benjamin kort.
Overlegen kremtet, og Benjamin registrerte at han igjen flyttet rundt på de små rekvisittene på skrivebordet.
– Men Klim har en teori om hva vi kan gjøre videre? spurte overlegen avledende.
– Jo, men teorier er ofte luftige saker, jeg vil ikke drøfte dem før jeg ser hvordan det går. Hun hallusinerer og har opplagt kontakt med mennesker vi ikke ser. Nå har jeg fått vite om russeren. Der kan være flere. Så målet er å få henne til å meddele seg. Få henne til å uttrykke seg. Til nå har hun bare hatt raseriet og sine epileptiske anfall. Da jeg kom tilbake fra Paris i sommer, var jeg forberedt på at hun ikke ville kjenne meg igjen, eller i alle fall late som om hun ikke kjente meg igjen. Men det gjorde hun. Hun viste tydelig en slags, hva skal jeg si... _tillit_.
Denne mannen snakket om Karna som om hun skulle være en opptrekksdukke som bare _han_ kunne få til å fungere, tenkte Benjamin.
– Tillit? Og det kan doktor Klim leve opp til? spurte han så rolig han fikk til, og tvang seg til å se mannen inn i øynene.
– Jeg prøver. Men jeg er redd mine intensjoner er _en_ ting, mens Karnas reaksjon på dem er uforutsigbar.
Benjamin visste ikke hva som var verst. Måten han snakket om Karna på, eller det faktum at reservelegen kjente hans Karna bedre enn ham selv. Allikevel måtte han lytte, prøve å tro på at denne mannen virkelig hadde noe å fare med. Hele tiden med en følelse av å bli satt ut av spill, manipulert.
– De sa at De... hadde en plan? begynte han stotrende.
– Ja, men som sagt, å diskutere den nå blir vanskelig. Jeg må gå varsomt frem, steg for steg. Det er viktig å gi tid. Jeg har brakt i erfaring at hun ikke vil ha noe med musikk å gjøre. Hun skyr lyden av instrumenter. Nekter å være til stede når noe skjer i den store salen med spill og sang. Men nå har hun vist en interesse for de brevene hun har fått. Språket er ikke borte selv om hun ikke meddeler seg. Jeg tror at der er en åpning. Og hun kjenner meg opplagt igjen når hun ser meg. Og da som den jeg er, ikke som den tragiske russeren.
– Bare _det_ er et fremsteg, sa overlegen. – Etter hva jeg har forstått, har hun ikke hatt noen sosial kontakt utenom fru Grønelv. Deres kone er forresten strålende, hennes musikalske bidrag ikke minst. Hennes pianospill er høyt...
– La oss snakke om pasienten, professor. Det er derfor vi er her, avbrøt reservelegen.
Benjamin så fra den ene til den andre. Doktor Klim hadde opplagt ikke overdreven age for autoriteter.
– Selvsagt! sa overlegen med et forurettet kremt. – Men da vet Grønelv at det er fremskritt, om de er små. Og De, Klim, prøver å få mer tid til å arbeide med denne pasienten.
– Det beste er at jeg fast overtar stuegangen på hennes avdeling, men da på bekostning av mennene. Det blir vanskelig rent praktisk å kombinere de to oppgavene. Men dette er en sak som herr Grønelv skal slippe å ta del i. Og nå... jeg har egentlig ikke mer å si, annet enn at herr Grønelv, etter min mening, gjerne må se sin datter så ofte han kan, avsluttet han og reiste seg uten at professoren hadde gitt signal om at møtet var over.
*
Karna sto ved det åpne skapet sitt da han kom. Da han gikk bort til henne og sa navnet hennes, lukket hun skapdøren og rakte ham hånden som om han skulle være en bekjent. Hun så bedre ut enn sist. Påkledd med flettet hår.
– De har fortalt dæ at æ kom? sa han og ville klemme henne.
Hun nikket, trakk hånden til seg og pekte på stolen. Han fikk en følelse av at hun ikke kjente ham. Men var ikke sikker.
– Æ kan besøke dæ ofte nu. Skal være doktor på et hospital i Kjøbenhavn til du blir fresk, sa han og satte seg. Åpnet tasken sin og dro opp boken han hadde kjøpt med seg fra Fiolstrædet til henne. Den var på dansk, men skrevet av den franske astronomen _Flammarion_ , med tegninger av verdensrommet og alle planetene.
– Se! sa han og åpnet den siden som viste Saturn.
Langsomt kom hun bort til ham og ble stående litt. Så tok hun boken ut av hendene hans, gikk bort til skapet og la den oppslått inn i en tom hylle. Da hun snudde seg, hadde hun et fotografi i hånden. Han gjenkjente Peder, og smilte.
– Han har sendt det? Peder skriver til deg, ikkje sant?
Hun nikket. Tok fotoet ut av hånden hans og la det tilbake i skapet.
– Vil du at æ skal hjelpe dæ så du får svart han? Skaffe dæ en blyant? spurte han og reiste seg.
Hun ristet på hodet. Gikk bort til vinduet og ble stående med ryggen til.
– Skal æ fortelle han at du har vist mæ bildet?
Hun sto der uten å gi noe tegn på at hun hørte hva han sa.
– Karna! Kjenne du mæ? spurte han med rusten stemme.
Da snudde hun seg mot ham og nikket fort.
– Æ e kommen for å vær i Kjøbenhavn tel du blir fresk. Du e det kjæraste æ har, fikk han sagt.
Hun kom mot ham og ga ham hånden på nytt. Han tok den. Det var ikke håndtrykket til en syk person, det var Karnas. Da hun ville slippe ham, holdt han fast og fikk henne til å gå med seg ut i korridoren. Så ga de seg til å gå sammen, akkurat som sist. Frem og tilbake. Att og fram.
Slik gikk de helt til en pleierske kom farende og sa at frøken Karna skulle ha sitt kveldsstell før aftenstuegangen. Da slapp de lydig hverandres hender og gikk hver til sitt.
– Æ kjem igjen når det blir søndag! ropte han etter henne gjennom all støyen.
*
Dagen etter prøvde Benjamin å gjenopplive de gode, frie følelsene han hadde hatt på Frederiks Hospital for nesten tjue år siden. Men det var som å se alt gjennom sotet glass i en gammel kamin. Han husket følelsen av å være privilegert. Triumfen, første gang etter eksamen, da han gikk inn gjennom gitterporten og svarte portneren at han skulle opp til reservekirurgen. Han kunne ikke tenke seg at Julius Cæsar var mer blendet av egen triumf da han kjørte seiersvogn inn i Rom.
Men slik var det ikke i dag. Selvsagt visste han at Annas far hadde en finger med i spillet, for han ble tatt mer enn vennlig imot på kirurgisk avdeling. Svigerfar selv var ikke å se. Ville nok spare ham for å måtte takke. Den mannen hadde flere gode egenskaper enn dem han var i stand til å se i ungdommen eller da Annas foreldre besøkte dem på Reinsnes. Svigerfar og han hadde til dels kvasse diskusjoner om Karnas fallesyke. Nå var han i stand til å se en integritet som han før hadde oversett. Det gjorde ham villig til å legge bort gammel irritasjon over de gangene Anna trodde hennes far visste best og kunne løse alle floker. Noe hun gang på gang fikk rett i. Nå var hun altså i opposisjon til ham. Det var nytt. Benjamin bestemte seg for å innlemme sin svigerfar i sin heller slunkne vennskapsportefølje, og konsentrere sin sjalusi om det som stakk dypere.
Vel inne i korridorene, på vei opp trappene, inne i de forskjellige stuene, husket han stemmene til foreleserne da Aksel og han leste til philosophicum. Eller holdt på med _Cantussen_ og ble innviet i naturens hemmeligheter.
Han savnet Aksel mens han tok en pipe i gården sammen med nyklekte _volontairer_ og prøvde å følge deres kjappe replikker og overdimensjonerte selvfølelse. Savnet etter Aksel kjentes fysisk. Noe var tapt. Det siste han hadde hørt fra den kanten var at han bodde og arbeidet i Berlin og endelig hadde giftet seg.
Etter at Anna hadde tatt med seg Karna til Hospitalet, hadde han skrevet og fortalt om Dinas død. Han hadde fått et kort kondolansetelegram tilbake. Det var alt. Det nye livet hadde vel fått Aksel til å bryte med sin ville fortid, tenkte han. Mannen hadde sikkert ikke noe behov for å kontakte noen fra den tiden.
Det slo ham at han ikke hadde hatt noen virkelig kamerat. Ikke etter Aksel. Man kunne snakke med kvinner om mye som man ikke blottstilte i selskap med menn. Men kunne man ha kvinner som venn?
Vennskapet med Hanna? Var det over da de ble store nok til å utforske hverandres kropper og måtte holde det skjult?
Anna? Den muligheten hadde han selv forspilt. Man kunne ikke slåss med Anna. Man kunne ikke se henne blø, og så klaske henne på skulderen og si: Vel, du har vunnet. La oss gjøre noe annet.
Med Aksel hadde han blødd noen ganger, uten å kunne huske at han hadde vunnet en eneste kamp. Bortsett fra den om Anna. Og den var det _hun_ som avgjorde.
Benjamin spaserte. Det vil si, han gikk. Han gikk fremdeles som en landsens distriktslege. Hurtig tempo, målrettet. Men her gikk han uten det faste grepet rundt doktorvesken. I Kjøbenhavn gikk man ikke med doktorveske. Man kjørte vogn, eller ble hentet og brakt. Og da måtte det stå om liv. Likevel krummet venstreneven seg av gammel vane. Han bar alltid med venstre. Den høyre måtte man ha til uventede tiltak. Dørhåndtak. Gelender. Leidere. Porter. Never man møtte på veien som skulle hilse. Båtfortøyning. Eller simpelthen for å holde på skinnlue eller sydvest.
For å slippe unna svigerforeldrenes leilighet i Store Kongensgade gikk han sine private marsjer med dinglende never. Rundt Regensen. Rundetårn. Rundt Frederiks Hospital. Iakttok inngangen fra Bredegade, inngangen fra Amaliegate.
Da han igjen så det gamle dueslaget i Grønnegården, begynte han å gråte. Uten å kunne huske at han disse årene noen gang hadde savnet synet av, eller ofret en tanke på dette dueslaget, begynte han altså å grine. Da han hadde gått forbi, kom det opp et bilde i hukommelsen.
Karnas mor, Karna, hadde stått under dueslaget en gang. Han hadde ikke stoppet og gitt seg til kjenne, bare gått forbi. Trolig bar hun allerede barnet deres i magen. Hva var det Aksel hadde sagt da han kom nordover og så jentungen hans for første gang siden han var med på fødselen? _Så dette er menneskebarnet fra Store Strandstræde! Karna_ _– som sin mor_!
Og som om tiden ble skrudd tilbake, gjenopplevde han at han ville unngå at hun så ham. For han måtte haste av sted. Han skulle møte Aksel og Anna i Tivoli.
# DISPONENT PEDER OLAISEN
Peder hadde forsert nesten et år på skole og _presset seg frem her i verden_ , som han selv kalte det i sitt brev til Benjamin. Den dagen han mottok beviset på at han var maskiningeniør og kunne sitt fag, gikk han rett hjem til sadelen som hang i bakgården, og ga seg til å slå. Etter en halv time revnet sømmene, og polstringen fløt utover til spott og spe og ble liggende som rask rundt ham. Likevel fortsatte han å slå som om det gjaldt livet. Helt til vertinnens kjøkkenvindu fløy opp. De hvite hårtustene hennes sto over ham som en glorie, for sola gjorde akkurat da en kort visitt.
– Vil han Peder se til å plukke opp skiten etter seg! ropte madammen på skingrende bergensk vis.
– Madam Brede kan være viss på det, ropte Peder vennlig tilbake. – Æ gjør det straks, for nu skal æ fare nord!
– Eg vet jo det. Og eg får ikkje slik en losjerende mer. Kem skal hjelpe meg no? sutret hun.
– Madam Brede får kem ho vil, så frøkt ikkje for det.
– Han ser forresten ut som den der sterkemannen på sirkus sånn som han har dengt løs på den stakkars sadelen i månedsvis. Han øver seg vel ikkje for å slå nokken i hjel?
– Å nei. Det e nok a de karran, svarte han alvorlig med hodet helt bak på nakken for å holde øyekontakt.
– Og nu skal ho Brede ikkje stå der i trekken og bli sjuk før æ fer, la han til.
Madammen nikket lydig, trakk hodet til seg og lukket vinduet.
*
I dag hadde gammelsjøen kommet opp fra dypet. Den spyttet hvit fråde utenfor sjømerket ved dokkene. Men Peder visste godt at _innenfor_ , der var havet snilt.
Verftet lå der! Han hadde lengtet etter å se det. Det lå så mye skrekk og age og lutter fryd i det, at det svimlet for ham. Men han visste godt at var det noe han ikke kunne tillate, så var det svimmelhet. Han visste også at de hadde en ordre på kjøl der inne.
Dampen hadde problemer med å legge til. Værgudene hadde bestemt at vinteren skulle komme tidlig. Sørvesten sto rasende rett på og pisket alt vann opp. Lot strømmer fra bunnen kaste seg inn i krigen og maltraktere hele mønsteret av hvit fråde og mørk undergang. Og best som man trodde at landgangen lot seg forsere, gneldret det faretruende i kjettingene, og matrosen løftet en advarende neve eller ga en hjelpende hånd.
Det var ikke til å tenke på å forevige stunden med å grave frem fotoapparatet. Han hadde nok med vadsekken, reisekofferten og seg selv.
– Men e det ikkje han Peder? Æ har nøkla ligganes på vent tel dæ. Du skulle ha hatt sydvesten på dæ i dag! skrek poståpneren og tok imot sekken som ble langet ned landgangen mellom rossene.
– Det e ikkje lønt å stå og knyt nokka under haka i slikt et vær, ropte Peder tilbake og slet i kofferten sin. Den humpet høvelig i nedoverbakke på den glatte landgangen.
Nå var det først å låne seg ei håndkjerre på kaia og dra alt jordisk gods oppover bakkene til doktorgården. At en _disponent_ skulle bry et annet menneske med den slags arbeid, falt ham ikke inn. Men han måtte vente til poståpneren var ferdig for å gå med ham etter nøklene. Deretter innom butikken på kaia og få med seg sirupsbrød, margarin og kaffe, og kanskje noe dåsemat. Og om mulig slippe å treffe broder Wilfred rundt hjørnet. Han ble bønnhørt til så lenge.
Det luktet litt innestengt. Huset hadde stått tomt siden doktoren reiste. Peder visste at tomme hus mistet humøret. Det tomme barndomshjemmet på øya hadde ikke samme solide bygningsmasse som doktorgården, og sist han var _der_ hadde det vært en sur og kvelende fornøyelse. Selv om alt var i bedre skikk her, så kunne man vente seg hva som helst fra en kald skorstein.
Men alt kunne la seg ordne. Det var ingen sak. Han gikk i skjulet og hentet kull og opptenningsved. Tok seg til rette og hengte den våte vadmelsjakken på en henger i gangen, som om han var vant til å ha et eget rom for yttertøy. Så ga han seg til å fyre.
Først kom en sur røyk sivende inn i rommet. Den gamle kakkelovnen hevnet at ingen hadde vært der på en stund. Han kunne spørre seg selv hvorfor han ikke hadde fyrt opp på kjøkkenet i stedet. Kjøkkenovnen var nok den enkleste å få til å brenne.
Men Peder hadde allerede før dampen la til kai lagt en plan for hva som skulle gjøres, og slik måtte det være. Skulle man ta et helt verft og en hel doktorgård i bruk, så måtte man ikke la seg hefte med småtterier. Man måtte begynne med storstuen og vise for seg selv hvem som var kommet hjem. Akkurat som en disponent måtte i verftshallen _før_ han gikk på kontoret. Han måtte først gjøre seg hjemme der respekten satt i veggene.
Han dro en stol inntil kakkelovnen og voktet ilden. Satt bare og kjente på dette underet. At det var _her_ han var. At det var her han hadde rett til å være. Mens vinden herjet i takrennene og prøvde å finne åpninger rundt vinduene for å antaste gardinene, mens sur os prøvde å kvele flammen og stakk ham i nesen, så satt han der, den tiden det tok å bli aldeles sikker på at det heldigste mennesket på jordskorpa hadde fått skikkelig fyr i stueovnen.
Han kokte seg kaffe og skar fem brødblingser som han velsignet med margarin og doktorens rabarbrasyltetøy. Han fjernet bare muggen under lokket, så var det som nytt. Etterpå gikk han fra rom til rom i doktorens skinntøfler. Det var ikke lett for en som Peder å forstå hvor han skulle sove.
Da han kom inn i Karnas rom, gikk det opp for ham at han ikke hadde vært der siden den ulykksalige dagen da han fløy rundt og lette etter henne. Den dagen hele verden raste sammen.
Han ble stående i døråpningen og bare se. Jentetingene hennes lå på kommoden og i hyllene. Da han åpnet klesskapet, kjente han lukten av henne så sterkt at han måtte sette seg. I en skål i bokhyllen lå de tre klinkekulene han en gang hadde gitt henne. Og han husket for sikkert hvordan hun hadde smilt da han sa:
– Du e nu for stor for slikt, men du kan jo ha dem som en artighet... Æ fikk dem en gong tel jul...
Han sa ikke at han hadde fått dem av moren da han var gutt. Ikke fordi hun ikke kunne få vite det, men fordi han ikke greide å snakke om moren uten at ansikt og stemme ble så ødelagt at han skjemte seg ut.
Han satt på en skammel med brodert trekk og tenkte på at Karna hadde takket ham i hånden og bydd ham kandis fra en glasskål med lokk. Men den måtte være et annet sted i huset, for han så den ikke. Og at hun hadde hatt fregner over nesen og glorøde kinn fordi hun hadde seilt med far sin i sykebesøk. Han trodde ikke foreldrene visste at hun hadde tatt ham med hjem. For det var før de danset i gymnastikksalen på den store festen som Dina fikk i stand. Lenge før han ble kjæresten hennes og fikk holde om henne ved porten.
Han fikk slik lyst til å bikke seg litt på sengen hennes. Bare oppå sengebredslet. Det var bare det at han hadde reist så lenge og ikke hatt anledning til å fli seg eller barbere seg ordentlig. Derfor utsatte han det. Men han skulle nok til med såpe og varmt vann både her og der, tenkte han. Og etter hvert som alle rom var inspisert, bestemte han seg for å sove på gjesterommet. Det var godt med plass til både ham og reisekofferten. Dessuten behøvde han ikke å tenke på at han måtte ordne og flytte ut når Karna og doktoren sine kom hjem. Det var viktig ikke å te seg slik at de syntes han hadde tatt seg til rette.
Han sto ved vinduet på loftsgangen og registrerte at vinden hadde løyet og lyset ikke lenger lot seg stoppe bak skoddebankene. En lun lunk fra kakkelovnen steg opp til ham og fikk ham til å føle seg vel. Peder sto alene i det store huset og følte seg mindre alene enn han kunne huske – noen gang.
Da ga dørbjella fra seg tre iltre pling. Langsomt gikk han ned trappen. Gjennom blondegardinet i ytterdøren så han broder Wilfred rett i åsynet.
Peder var forberedt. Peder hadde hele sitt liv vært nødt til å være forberedt. Likevel veltet det seg i ham. Men han visste hva det var og at det kom til å avta. Urolig på vakt, men ikke redd. Peder hadde brukt dyrebar energi hele livet på å være redd. Hadde lært at det ikke hjalp. Enten fikk man smette unna eller ta slaget. Han hadde vært ute av sikte i over ett år. Nå var det bare å ta det som kom.
Broderneven var som en ål å ta i, men ei piggete slegge når den rammet, tenkte Peder og hilste uten dikkedarer.
– Va reisa god? Broderstemmen ville gjerne lyde som et himmeltegn ovenfra. Han var tross alt eldst og over et hode høyere, det kunne ingen bestride.
– Upåklagelig, sa Peder som om de skulle ha snakket med hverandre i går, men han trakk neven til seg. Mottoet _alltid beredt_ gjorde at han ikke stakk den i lommen.
– Du skulle ha gjett beskjed om at du kom, så kunne vi ha gjort i stand huset for dæ, sa broderen som en emissær midt i en omvendelse.
– Det e inga sak å gjør ting sjøl, sa Peder.
– Nei, det e vel så. Men du e vel ikkje blitt så stor på det at du ikkje kan ta imot hjelp?
– Langt ifra, æ ber om hjelp når æ treng det.
– Ka æ skull ha sagt... Ho Seline og æ vil be dæ på kvelds. Du har vel ikkje matebeten i huset? sa Wilfred og tok et skritt over dørstokken. La hodet på skakke og strakte hals for å få med seg det som var innenfor, eller se seg selv i det store speilet i gangen. Wilfred unngikk aldri et speil. Med god grunn. Han tok et skritt til og var helt innenfor.
Han burde ha tenkt på det, belærte Peder seg selv, idet han gikk til siden for å unngå at den staselige kroppen trampet over ham. Burde ha sett for seg dette ubegripelig vennlige spørsmålet. Mens han hadde tenkt på alle slags varianter av anklager, så hadde ikke dette utsagnet streifet ham. Derimot hadde han tenkt på at muligheten var stor for at Seline hadde vist broderen _brevet_ , advarselen han hadde gitt henne før bryllupet. Men han kunne ikke pile av sted som en mus som vil unngå katten. Det tirret bare mer. Han måtte vise ro. Aldri utfordre med noe som kunne utløse sinne.
– Takk som spør, men æ hadde nu ellers tenkt å trø mæ en tur i Været og kjøp mæ fesk og potetes, sa han sindig.
– Nu skal du ikkje tøve. Ka trur du folk kjem tel å sei om du ikkje vil spis kvelds med oss den første dagen du e her. Vi e jo brør. Det sto tel og med i Bladet i går.
– Sto i Bladet? Peder var uforsiktig og visste ikke at han plutselig hadde nyver mellom øynene.
– Det sto: _Man ser i passasjerlisten for dampen at Wilfred Olaisens yngre bror, Peder_ _Olaisen,_ _er ventende til Strandstedet for å være disponent for Verftet_.
Ordene kom som om Wilfred hadde pugget et salmevers. Og han skiftet åsyn.
Peder kjente disse skiftningene. Rykningene som kom like før. Måten de kritthvite tennene ble blottet på. En svak bevegelse i høyre skulder. Neven som tvang seg selv til å henge rett ned. Akkurat sekundet før han slo.
Men Wilfred slo ikke – i dag.
*
Selines ansikt hadde ingen synlige merker. Men øynene lå dypt med blålig skygge rundt.
– Ho Seline e en engel for mine stakkars morlause sønna, og nu har vi sjøl snart to, sa han stolt. Og alle rundt bordet nikket og så på henne med vennlighet. Eller var det medynk?
Hun smilte sjenert og lot gjestene, den nye ordføreren, redaktøren i Bladet og havnesjefen med fruer føre samtaler med ektemannen. Peders blikk hadde hun unngått å møte, så langt.
Wilfred hadde aldri hatt vondt for det. Ordene kom med stor autoritet. Om alt man var nødt til å ta tak i på Verftet. Det var forsømt i flere år nå. Det trengtes friske øyne og handlekraft. Han ordla seg som om det var ham, Wilfred Olaisen, som skulle klare dette, og ingen annen. Ordla seg som om Peder og han alt hadde bestemt at den nye disponenten i gavnet var Wilfred Olaisen.
Derfor blandet ikke Peder seg i samtalen. Han så det an. Prøvde å beregne. For akkurat her, med mange vitner, var han trygg. Derimot var det viktig ikke å utløse et langtidsraseri som kunne sette broderneven i bevegelse senere. I morgen. Om tre dager. Når som helst. Særlig var det _en_ replikk som fikk det til å isne i årene.
– Æ kjem ned på Verftet tidlig i morra, det e mykkje å ta tak i. Æ har skjønt at formannen e litt for mykkje vant tel å stå tel rors uten motstand.
Alle så fra den ene til den andre av brødrene. Bare Seline så i veggen. Peder visste at nå gjaldt det.
– Takk, Wilfred. Men æ trur æ må ha litt tid å sette mæ inn i alt før æ får besøk. Æ skal heller gje beskjed.
Wilfreds ansikt tørket på en måte ut. Tennene kom til syne uten at han smilte. Øyeeplene falt en smule bakover, og ryggen strakte seg opp og ut over seg selv.
Ingen andre sa noe. Seline så ut som om hun hadde noe bak veggen å holde rede på.
– Tøv! Vi begynne i lag. Så går det fortar å få alt i gjenge. Æ har plana, forstår dokker, utbrøt Wilfred og var i løpet av _ett_ sekund et bredt smil.
– Du må styre dæ urlite, æ e ikkje så snar i vendinga som du, sa Peder og prøvde å få blikk med ordføreren og bladmannen etter tur.
Han hadde ikke lommeur som de andre herrene. Likevel forsto han at han ikke måtte være den siste som gikk.
# ANNA KRYSSER EN GRENSE
Den flate pakken lå på pulten hennes da hun kom om morgenen. Slurvete innpakket og uten hyssing. Med en gang hun så den visste hun hvem som hadde lagt den der. Men hun åpnet ikke. Lot den bare gli ned i vesken.
Det ble en travel dag. Mange var innom. Men ikke han, selv om hun hørte skrittene hans i korridoren.
Hun skrev brev, arkiverte, vekslet ord med overlegen da han to ganger gikk forbi, og med søster Vivi om hverdagslige ting. Like før fire ble hun alene. Hun hørte flere snakke ute i korridoren, men ikke han. Stemmene var helt alminnelige, men ikke for henne.
De unngikk hverandre. Hun visste ikke om hun unngikk ham fordi _han_ unngikk henne. Visste ikke hva som var stolthet og hva som var avvisning. Visste ikke om det var fordi Benjamin var kommet, og fordi han hadde tatt det slik han gjorde da hun ba om sin frihet. En lettelse, og samtidig en sorg. Det virket som om Benjamin var kjed av hele saken og hadde slått seg til ro med å leve alene. I alle fall krevde han ingen kontakt. De hadde mistet all fortrolighet. Hun forsøkte å unngå ham når han var hos Karna. Det var for så vidt enkelt fordi han kom etter arbeidstid, eller søndag.
Anna tok Anna i forhør om skyld og ansvar. Var det for eksempel nødvendig å buse på første kvelden Benjamin var i Kjøbenhavn og be om frihet? Kunne hun ikke ha gjort som enhver annen fornuftig kvinne, ventet og sett hva som skjedde? Da hadde hun kanskje hatt dem begge. Hvorfor skulle hun være den som selv tok valget, og med det bære all skyld?
Endelig hørte hun Joakims skritt utenfor døren. Et øyeblikk stanset de. Så fjernet de seg og ble borte i trappen. Hun gikk til vinduet for å se ham gå. Skuldrene og hodet hans. Og skoene som stakk frem for hvert skritt. Her ovenfra hadde han ikke kropp.
Da han var ute av bildet, gikk hun til bordet og tok pakken opp av vesken. Den hadde ingen påskrift. Inni lå en bok og et avrevet ark fra et forelesningshefte.
_Denne her._ _Jeg vil_ _så_ _gjerne gi deg noe._ _Og i kveld?_ _Samme sted og tid som_ _i vår_.
Boken var siste bind av Leo Tolstois _Anna Karenina_. Hva tenkte han? Hva ville han med dette?
Da søster Sophie besøkte foreldrene i august, hadde hun nevnt disse bøkene. De hadde gått på konditori, og Sophie hadde plutselig betrodd seg. Hun ville gjerne forelske seg i en mann hun hadde møtt, men så hadde hun lest disse bøkene om Anna Karenina.
– Da mistet jeg motet, hadde hun sagt med en slags latter.
Hun husket at hun ikke likte at søsteren hadde lest en bok hun selv bare kjente av omtale. En smålig barnslighet som hun straks fortrengte, og ba søsteren fortelle om handlingen.
– Han svikter, og hun kaster seg foran et tog, sa Sophie med et sukk.
Og hva hadde hun selv sagt? Jo, at det var jo trist, men man _planla_ vel ikke forelskelse, eller var vel ikke i stand til å forhindre den fordi man hadde lest en bok.
– Det har du sikkert rett i, Anna, men det gjør ikke saken bedre, sa Sophie og løftet et stykke kake til munnen.
– Mener du alvor? Denne mannen? hadde hun spurt.
– Absolutt ikke! utbrøt Sophie. – Selvmord er ikke min natur. Jeg er da godt gift, som mor pleier å si. Dette var da en vanvittig god ostekake!
I det øyeblikk besluttet Anna at hun aldri skulle lese de bøkene. Men de tankene delte hun ikke med Sophie.
Og nå Joakim? Denne boken. Hvorfor kunne han ikke bare åpnet døren og gitt henne den i hånden før han gikk? Lekte han med henne? Når han passet henne opp når hun gikk tur. Eller kom slentrende inn her uten ærende med sine freidige bemerkninger. Eller de gangene de traff hverandre liksom tilfeldig. Gikk i vind og sol og snakket.
Men det var _før_ hennes avvisning. Før den ensomme sommeren da han var bortreist, før Benjamin kom tilbake. Og nå hadde hun brent broer for å få sin frihet uten at han visste det.
Hva ville han med denne boken? Se hvor langt han kunne drive henne? Eller gi en advarsel?
Nei! tenkte hun. Nei. Jeg ser tegn over alt fordi han er blitt en besettelse. Alt hun opplevde endte til sist i en sirkel rundt denne mannen. Og han visste det ikke engang. Eller gjorde han det? Var det akkurat det han gjorde? Først nærheten. Samtalene. Hemmelige blikk. Og så i neste øyeblikk, totalt fravær. Reiser han ikke hadde nevnt. For så plutselig – å være tilbake.
Var han i stand til å såre henne bare ved at han ikke leverte henne en bok i hånden, men la den anonymt i en pakke på bordet? Forsto han at hun satt her og hørte skrittene hans? Og hun? Hvorfor løp hun ikke etter ham? Konfronterte ham.
Først tenkte hun bare å legge den på pulten hans uten kommentar. Levere den som et brev hun hadde renskrevet og som trengte hans signatur. Men hun lot den gli ned i vesken igjen. For midt i alt var denne pirrende forventningen, lengselen. Han ville møte henne.
Man kan ikke stå ved et vindu hele livet og se at et hode og et par skuldre kommer og går, tenkte hun djervt. Nå hadde hun anledningen til å fortelle at hun hadde tatt en beslutning, og den handlet ikke om litteratur. Og deretter si ham at han ikke behøvde å ta del i den, dersom han ikke ville. Være tydelig. For hun måtte vite. Var ikke skapt til å være den som gikk i uvisse og ventet.
*
Det begynte å bli mørkt. Men hun fant stien og lot seg snublende sluke av naturen. Gikk et stykke langs stranden, der lyset ennå var skimrende klart utover vannet. Fortsatte opp mellom høye, mørke trær og over gravlunden til kapellet. Vinduene var selvsagt mørke. Hun gikk de to stegene opp steintrappen. Døren gled opp.
Han var der allerede. Sto like innenfor og låste så snart hun var inne. Akkurat som i vår.
– Du kom, sa han, som om han hadde tvilt på at det ville skje.
Nå sto han ett skritt fra henne som en massiv skygge. Hun la bånd på seg og ble stående. Å være alene så nær ham fikk huden til å nuppe seg.
Prekestolen mellom de buede vinduene lå i mørke. Hun kunne så vidt skimte duen som hang over. Krusifikset hadde en hinne av skjørt lys, akkurat som håret hans, mens den hvite alterduken virket selvlysende.
– Ja, sa hun bare og ble stående.
Det hun hadde øvd seg på å si, var at hun ikke kom for å takke for boken, bare for å spørre hva han _ville_ med å levere den slik?
Det sa hun ikke.
I stedet åpnet hun armene da han tok ett skritt mot henne. Så sto de der i en slags dvelende dans.
Men da han til sist holdt henne litt ut fra seg og la hodet på skakke, som om han ville finne ut hva hun tenkte, da spurte hun likevel.
– Hvorfor _den_ boken? Er det en advarsel? Hva er det egentlig du vil med meg?
Hodet hans for bakover. Det var for mørkt til at hun kunne se uttrykket, men stemmen var rolig.
– Hva jeg vil... Du vil vite hva jeg vil? Og du liker ikke å få akkurat _den_ boken. Jeg forstår...
– Gjør du? avbrøt hun.
– Ja. Men det viktigste er at du _er her_. Det gjør enhver bok uten betydning. Kom! La oss innta gudshuset. Jeg vet ikke hva slags tema du foretrekker, men altså ikke litteratur, sa han gravalvorlig.
– Du gjør narr av meg? slo hun fast.
– Nei, jeg prøver å skjule hvor forbannet toskete jeg kjenner meg, sa han.
De satte seg på den samme benken som sist. Han halvt bak henne med ryggen mot veggen. Hun ville lene seg mot ham. Det gjorde hun ikke. Mørket lettet litt – etter hvert som hun vennet seg til det. Et glimt av himmel kunne skimtes gjennom et av de høye vinduene.
– Så har jeg _igjen_ klart å irritere deg? sa han og tok håret hennes til side. Den varme pusten hans fylte øret og listet seg ned langs halsen.
– Bare legge den boken der før jeg kom... Og _siste_ bind, som om du ville vise meg hvordan det kan gå... Er det feighet?
– Du kunne ha fått første bok, men kjærlighetshistorier begynner ofte patetisk. Det er slutten som er viktig. Det er ingen advarsel til _deg_. Mer at jeg kjenner til... saken. Men feig? Ja vel. Mener du det?
– Helt siden jeg åpnet bokpakken har jeg ment det.
– Det rimer ikke, om jeg får si det, humret han.
– Hvordan?
– Jeg ber en gift kvinne om å møte meg her. Slikt gjør man da ikke. Jeg setter ting på spill. Ikke minst for deg. Din mann kan avsløre at jeg tilber deg. Likevel ber jeg deg komme. Og du _kommer_! Er det feighet? Nei. Ingen av oss er feige. Men din reaksjon sier meg at du er nervøs. Du er ikke klar for dette. Og jeg må forholde meg deretter.
Hun manglet svar. Han hadde snudd om på alt. Og hva hadde hun forventet? Hva hadde hun egentlig håpet på?
– Kan du lene deg mot meg? Da sitter du bedre, hørte hun bak seg.
Hun åpnet kåpen, tok tak i det ene håndleddet hans med begge hender. Dro hele armen hans med seg under kåpen – og lente seg tungt mot ham.
– Godt, nå har _du_ kontroll, sukket han mot kinnet hennes.
Hun lukket øynene og lot fingrene leke med hans. Han besvarte bevegelsene med små støt med fingertuppene, som om han ga en hemmelig beskjed.
– Jeg vet at det er forbudt tema i dag, men har du lest? spurte han.
– Nei. Og jeg kommer ikke til å plage meg med å gjøre det.
– Vel. Det er vel ikke nødvendig å straffe Tolstoi på grunn av mine misgjerninger. Men uansett, jeg kommer _ikke_ til å beskylde deg for å være feig. Du er usedvanlig modig.
– Modig nok til å kaste meg foran et tog, som Anna Karenina? spurte hun.
Hun kjente pusten hans i nakken.
– Slikt er ikke mot, bare et håpløst rop om en hjelp ingen vil gi. Jeg vet. Men jeg bommet og ble liggende midt i skinnegangen.
– Hva er det du sier? Hun prøvde å snu seg mot ham.
– Det var heldigvis i min magre ungdom. Og da dødsmaskinen dundret over meg, så hadde jeg vett nok til å holde hodet så lavt jeg kunne, sa han lett.
– Er det sant? fikk hun frem.
– Ja. Og du må gjerne kalle det feighet.
Pause.
– Jeg skammer meg, mumlet hun.
– Ja, jeg er redd for det. Og jeg prøver, nokså mislykket å ta ansvar for at du skal slippe. Tror du ikke jeg vet hva du risikerer?
Jeg forteller ham det nå, tenkte hun. Forteller at jeg har bedt Benjamin om frihet. Da vil jeg høre på stemmen hans, uansett hva han sier, om dette er alvor for ham. Men hun sa ingenting. Ikke om det. I stedet sa hun:
– Vil du snakke om det? Toget...?
– Nei, det er for ydmykende. Jeg tåler ikke ydmykelser. Det gjør meg ond.
Håndleddet hans. Pulsen arbeidet under fingertuppene hennes. Så roet den seg.
– En gang sa du at du måtte bort fra Hospitalet på grunn av meg. Men _du_ er viktigere her enn jeg er.
– Det kan vi godt være enige om. Og jeg forlater ikke Hospitalet. Ikke nå. Det er det minst viktige mellom oss.
– Hva er så det viktige mellom oss? hvisket hun.
– Du har den nøkkelen.
Pause. Så sa hun det likevel.
– Jeg har bedt ham gi meg fri.
Hun kjente at han holdt pusten. Lenge. Så steg brystkassen hans igjen, og hun fulgte med. Steg og sank.
– Og – hvordan – tok – han – det? spurte han langsomt med trykk på hvert ord.
– Som man kan tenke seg, mumlet hun.
– Jeg tror ikke jeg vet... Jeg har ingen erfaring med slikt.
Han stakk den andre hånden inn under kåpen til midjen hennes. Hun greide ikke å sitte stille. Kavet og snudde seg mot ham.
– Jeg er så fri jeg vil, sa hun.
– Rede til å ta imot hatet hans, sa han nøkternt og holdt henne om livet.
– Den mannen er ikke i stand til å hate noen, jeg kjenner ham.
– Selvsagt er han det. Alle er det. _Du_ har vært dypt nede, lenge. Men det har faktisk han også. Du ville at jeg skulle flørte med deg. Leke med deg. Og jeg inviterte grovt til det. Beleiret deg. Jeg vet mye om lek. Men jeg er ikke _bare_ lek. Jeg er det mest krevende mennesket jeg kjenner.
– Så krev! Slutt å belære meg. Krev meg!
– Og etterpå?
– Du kan gjøre som du vil, sa hun og klamret seg til ham. Lot munnen fare over øret hans. Kinnet. Halsen.
Først satt han bare og holdt henne uten å røre seg. Hun kunne ikke vite om han mislikte eller nøt det. Da hun stoppet opp, var det som om han våknet.
– Forstår du hva du setter i gang? sa han andpusten og slapp henne. Uten å vente på svar reiste han seg. Øynene var store og blanke, de samlet i seg det lille lyset som var.
Et øyeblikk ble han stående og puste med knyttede never. Så gikk han over gulvet mot en sidedør hun ikke hadde lagt merke til. Åpnet den og slo ut med hånden.
– Kan jeg få by henne inn i galskapens aller siste rengjøringsanstalt? Disseksjonsstuen. Den trengs av og til.
Hun reiste seg og kom nølende bort. Da hun var innenfor, lukket han døren. Hun skimtet vinduer og et stort bord. Så begynte han å kle av seg. Hun drakk skyggen av ham. Hørte plaggene falle. Ante mer enn så forandringen. Fra en krokbøyd skygge som bakset med sko og klær vokste det frem en levende bauta i mørket.
Først sanset hun ikke annet enn den nakne kroppen hans. Men da han stilte seg bak henne forsto hun at de var i et nesten tomt rom. Et stort bord med skimrende plate sto midt på gulvet. Under vinduene på ytterveggen strakte en lang metallbenk seg, med vasker, rist og flere kraner.
– Dette er den siste renselse. Og medisinens fremtid. Ren magi. Varmt og kaldt vann! Her får de sin siste vask i all ærbarhet. Der på bordet. Etterpå ligger de renset i kisten sin og venter på å bli spadd ned. Er det ikke vakkert? hørte hun ham si.
Uten å ense at han sto naken foran et vindu gikk han bort og skrudde på en av kranene. Lot vannet sprute ned i vasken. Holdt hendene sine under. Vasket ansiktet, halsen og overkroppen. Fra siden forsto hun at han holdt lemmet sitt over vasken og vasket det.
Først sto hun som paralysert. Det var som om det de hadde snakket om var usagt. Eller uten betydning. De hadde nettopp møtt hverandre alene i universet.
– Kom! Kjenn! sa han og dro gardinene for.
Nølende gikk hun bort og stakk hånden under den lunkne vannstrålen. Kjente hånden hans over sin. Hjertet hamret. Kroppen ga seg over. Hånden hennes fløt vektløs rundt lemmet hans.
Han skrudde av vannet. Gikk hastig bort til et skap i hjørnet og hentet en stabel med laken som han kastet over disseksjonsbordet. Hun ble stående og følge skyggen av den energiske kroppen.
Han snakket ikke da han tok klærne av henne. Fiklet med knapper og klesplagg som ble liggende på vasken. På gulvet. Hun lot det skje. Hjalp ham. Et par ganger stoppet han opp og holdt henne ut fra seg. Huden nuppet seg der hendene hans ikke var.
Så var de to sammenvokste trær med tett sammenfiltrede grener.
Han lå utstrakt på bordet. Hun satt med laken rundt seg og strøk underarmen hans. Huden var myk og gikk i ett med hennes. Men i albuhulen kjente hun en knudrethet. Så en til. Flere. Hun ble sittende og kjæle for dem. Ganske lett. Til han tok armen til seg og ga henne den andre.
Og senere. Tett sammen. Uten at noe var sagt. Bare umerkelige forandringer med kropp og lemmer. Hender som strøk.
– Hvorfor gjorde du det? spurte hun.
– Ga deg den andre armen?
– Nei. Under toget.
– Jeg ville at hun skulle sørge, mumlet han.
– Hvem?
– Min mor.
En skipsfløyte prøvde å kreve oppmerksomhet langt der ute i tåken.
– _Ville_ hun ha... sørget?
– Hun ville fått sympati og hatt en dramatisk historie i selskapsvesken.
– Var du så brysom?
– Jeg var en skandale fra før jeg var født.
– Hvor gammel var du da... jeg mener... under toget?
– Tretten.
– Og din far? Ville han ha sørget?
– Jeg tror ikke han ville fått vite det.
Skipsfløyten fikk svar fra en annen båt. Denne var nærmere.
– Hvorfor var det slik? begynte hun.
– Anna, kjære, la oss bare la dette øyeblikket leve...
– Men det er viktig, Joakim.
– Akkurat nå er det utenfor alt som er viktig. Den mannen var ikke engang et navn for meg da jeg vokste opp, sa han og nappet henne i øret med leppene.
Hun tidde en stund.
– Jeg vil bare... Det er så mye jeg vil vite om deg, Joakim.
– Og jeg om deg, sa han.
– Og hva gjør vi med det? spurte hun.
– Det er du som har fasiten. Uansett hva du er i mitt liv, så må jeg godta at jeg kanskje bare er en overgang i ditt. Jeg må godta det eller forsvinne.
Hun orket ikke å spørre om han kom til å forsvinne. For han kunne finne på å si ja.
– Han har tilbudt meg frihet, og allikevel leve under samme tak, sa hun.
Han snudde seg på siden og pustet dypt.
– Tror du han går med på en slik ordning av sjenerøsitet? Eller avmakt?
– Jeg vet ikke...
– Vet han om oss? spurte han.
– Ikke dette... Men han vet.
– Dersom du flytter til ham og lever som hans hustru, noe du vitterlig er, så ber jeg deg vurdere _meg_ nøye. Så kynisk du kan. Orker du å fortsette livet på et disseksjonsbord? Er det _den_ type frihet du vil ha?
– Jeg vil ha deg. Men greier ikke å leve med fortielse, sa hun.
– Forlanger du da at han skal leve med din åpenhet?
– Jeg _forlanger_ ingenting.
Pause.
– Dersom noen moderne kvinne er i stand til å klare det, så må det være deg. Men ser du ikke at det betyr mental krig?
– Jeg greier ikke fred heller, sa hun.
Han satte seg opp og dro et laken bedre rundt dem.
– Jeg kan ikke annet enn forbanne meg selv fordi jeg har stelt i stand dette for deg.
– Det har han og jeg klart uten deg, mente hun.
– Gi meg i det minste æren av å ha utløst det, lo han.
– Venter du på at jeg skal si at jeg går fra ham?
– Nei.
– Men dersom jeg lever med ham... Jeg mener _lever_ med ham, kjenner du ikke... kjenner du ikke sjalusi?
– Det er allerede rene helvetet. Men jeg kan ikke be deg gå fra et menneske du bandt deg til før du visste om min eksistens, bare for at jeg skal slippe å være sjalu. Du er faktisk ikke nedtegnet i min eiendomsportefølje.
– Greier du å se det slik? spurte hun vantro.
– Nei! Jeg har allerede drapstanker. Og etter dette kommer jeg til å drømme om øm grådighet på dette disseksjonsbordet etter at vi har begravet ham der ute. Er du fornøyd?
En ekkel skrapende lyd hørtes utenfra. Var det noen der ute? Var det mulig å se inn gjennom gardinene?
– En kråke? hvisket hun etter en stund.
– Mer et ekorn, sa han, og hun kunne høre at han smilte.
– Kan du holde om meg? ba hun.
Han slo armene om henne. Huden hans var blitt kald.
– Du kaster deg ikke foran tog? spurte hun.
– Nei. Og _det_ gjør ikke _du_ heller!
– Ikke tale om!
– Da har vi lovet hverandre på tro og ære, lo han.
– Ikke le!
– Unnskyld, men du gjør meg så glad. Ingen har noensinne gjort meg så glad.
Det grydde så vidt av dag da de gikk utenom Hospitalets område og langs stranden. Tåken var så tykk at det var umulig å se mer enn ti meter. Vannet hørtes i rolige, blinde klaps. Surklet og trakk seg tilbake.
Han slo frakkekragen opp over ørene med den ene hånden og fant hånden hennes med den andre.
En mann i oljehyre dukket plutselig opp ved et skur, der han ordnet med noen garn. Han så forundret opp, myste og nikket stumt.
Da de var kommet utenfor hørevidde, sa han:
– Du vet at _Karna_ er blitt min fremste oppgave på Hospitalet. Det må hun være uansett.
– Tror du virkelig at jeg vil ødelegge det, Joakim?
– I slike saker skal jeg ikke tro, jeg skal vite. Og jeg har aldri før vært der. Jeg bryter alle etiske regler. Allikevel kan jeg ikke holde meg fra.
– Du angrer...? sa hun med nummen stemme.
– Nei, nei. Jeg angrer ingenting, jeg står her og dirrer bare jeg ser deg. Og jeg må be deg om noe.
– Ja?
– Du må hjelpe meg å nå frem til Karna. Hun hadde en vakker stemme? Husker du hvilken sang, hvilken melodi Karna sist sang?
# PEDER MØTER SIN OPPGAVE
Maskinene var ennå ikke satt i gang for dagen. Det var så tidlig at fanden ikke hadde fått på seg sko, og broder Wilfred ennå ikke hadde kommet seg ut av sengen. Han fikk hilst på arbeiderne i fred, en etter en, i neven, slik han hadde lært den gang Dina tok imot de nye. For i det øyeblikk maskinene kom i gang, var menneskestemmen for en pusling å regne.
Peder hadde selv malt de mektige y-bjelkene hvite etter ordre fra Dina. Taket også. Han hadde ligget i et gammelt seil av en hengekøye høyt der oppe dag etter dag. Og de hvite flekkene i ansiktet tok det ukevis å bli kvitt.
I dag sto formannen mellom maskinene i en overall som sikkert kunne stå oppreist uten mann i fordi den var så full av olje og skitt.
– Doktern fikk nu ikkje tid tel å vær her så mykkje. Så alt har logge på mæ lenge nu. Bror din, han Wilfred, har vore her ofte. Snøst rundt og prata. Æ veit ikkje ka æ skal sei... Han mein det vel godt. Og æ har nu berre to arma og _ett_ hau. Med doktern va det annleis å akkeder. Han e klar over ka andre veit best. Det va et tap for Strandstedet at han måtte far sør. Den nye ordførarn e det ingen som kjenne, og folk e klein og daua uten dokter.
Peder husket formannen fra han var arbeider. Men han visste ikke hvorfor han husket ham. Det måtte være det røde skjegget, for han brukte ikke så voldsom stemme, og hva var det doktoren hadde sagt i brevet? _Du kommer vel_ _overens med formannen_. Det skulle nok gå, selv om mannen nok var dobbelt så gammel som han selv og hadde fått over et år på seg til å regjere.
– Kor mange mann har vi på fast lønn? spurte Peder og så utover verkstedet der fem karer gjorde alt klart for dagen.
– Berre tolv. De andre e på lause vilkår. Æ måtte redusere for æ torde ikkje å risikere nokka. Doktern meinte også at vi skulle seile trygt ei stund. Tel du kom og hadde greie på det. Æ e jo berre en vanlig arbeidsmann på golvet.
– Det e nu vanlige arbeidsfolk på golvet som e å takke for at arbeidet blir gjort, sa unge Peder, uten å vite at han kom til å bli sitert, og dermed la kjølen til den respekt en jypling trengte for å bli sett på som en ekte disponent for Strandstedet Verft.
De høye vinduene på rekke og rad var de samme, men han trodde ikke de hadde sett vann på innsiden siden han reiste til Bergen.
– Vi må sørge for at dagslyset kjem sæ inn, sa han bare.
– Det va bedre stell over alt her i madam Dina si tid. Fred være med ho, mumlet formann Jensen og snudde seg bort et øyeblikk.
– Og nu får vi berre sørge for at maskinan går, og at vi kan sjå ka vi gjør her inne, sa Peder bestemt.
*
Allerede samme dag visste alle som hadde vært i Været et ærend at unge Peder Olaisen var kommet hjem som fullbefaren disponent. Ikke nok med det, han fór rundt på Verftet med en trekkspillaktig gjenstand foran ansiktet og tok bilder som en annen fotograf.
Man kunne si hva man ville om Olaisen-brødrene, særlig den eldste, men det var da noe ved dem. Bare synd de hadde så dårlig hell med kvinnfolk. Enten døde de en tragisk død, eller så ble de sjukelig på annen måte. Og hvordan det egentlig gikk med doktorens Karna var vanskelig å si. Men _tullat_ , det var hun nok fremdeles, stakkar.
*
Peder fikk plenty å gjøre. Det var en herlighet. Stort sett hele døgnet. Doktorgården var hjemmet. Der gikk han fra rom til rom og så på alle ting som kostelige gaver han hadde i forvaring til Karna kom. Der sov han når han hadde tid til slikt. Men det var på Verftet han satte hode og never i arbeid. Etter som dagene ble stadig kortere og mørkere, så måtte hver time nyttes godt. Han måtte også få karene til å være med. Peder benyttet bestikkelser og hverdagsmagi når han så at formannen strevde med å få dem til å holde farten. Suppe fra Grand på en mandag etter arbeidstid. Eller wienerbrød uten varsel.
I det gamle kottet bak kontoret fikk han ikke bare feid rent for spindel og behandlet med grønnsåpevann. Han fikk lagt opp vannrør til en stor sinkvask. Så allierte han seg med fotograf Wenneberg i Tromsø, svensken som hadde kommet seg til eget fotoatelier ved å gifte seg med fotograf Wickstrøms datter. Gjennom ham fikk han bestilt alt han trengte for å lage sine egne bilder på fotokottet, som han kalte det. Dessuten hengte han opp en skinnsekk med solid innhold i bjelken bak vasken. Der sto han og slo i sene kveldstimer etter at maskinene var avstengt og siste skift var gått. Allerede i Bergen var nevene høvelig brukbare, mente han selv. Men overbygget hans var kanskje for smått. Det gjensto å se.
Wilfred viste seg ikke på Verftet de to første ukene. Det var nesten skremmende. Men så kom han sigende jevnt. Peder holdt ham unna kontoret ved å sette krok på innsiden av døren til trappegangen nede. Når han hørte bankingen, gikk han ned med lue og losjakke på. Så tok han en prat med karen mens de gikk omkring. I verkstedet og smia var det folk, så der var det ingen sak å møte broderen. Når Wilfred ymtet om at de skulle se på papirer og ordrer på kontoret, fant han en tilforlatelig unnskyldning og gikk om nødvendig med ham helt til lageret hans på kaia for å være sikker på hvor han hadde ham. Så kunne han hente posten selv, som han sa. Slik kunne det, for folk som ikke visste bedre, se ut som Olaisen-brødrene var godt forlikte. Men samtalen gikk for det meste ut på at Wilfred klaget på at Verftet ikke _avanserte_ , som han kalte det, og at Peder ikke hadde dyktig nok formann. Peder på sin side, spurte etter Wilfreds gutter slik en ugift onkel skal. Hittil hadde Wilfred ikke vist annen hissighet enn han kunne ta.
Det hendte han husket samtalen med Dina den dagen han hadde spurt henne om hun trodde han kunne gifte seg med Karna. Hun hadde målt han opp og ned og spurt om han slo. Han hadde bedyret at han ikke gjorde det. Men så hadde han uforsiktig nok spurt henne om _hun_ slo.
– Det har hendt, sa hun bare.
Svaret hadde satt seg i minnet. Men han kjente seg viss på at hun _ikke_ hadde slått mindre karer enn Wilfred. At hun hadde drept to menn, det visste han ikke da han spurte.
En torsdag kom Wilfred seg helt opp på kontoret uten å måtte banke. Peder hadde glemt kroken.
– De sei at du har fått gjort snekkararbeid her, men her e jo alt som det va? sa Wilfred og satte seg i Dinas svingstol.
– Det e nu berre småtteri som ikkje vises, svarte Peder og ble stående ved arkivhyllene.
Wilfred tente en sigar fra etuiet på bordet uten å ha blitt bydd. En såre fornøyd røyksky fylte rommet.
– Vi treng en ny opphalingsslipp, sa Wilfred og så seg rundt i rommet en gang til.
– Vi? sa han uforsiktig.
Men broderen overhørte det.
– Vi må få styret tel å innse at slippen må opp. Det hasta. Passa vi ikkje på så veks verkstedet inne i Botn forbi oss. Den nye tida e dampskip i stål, motor i alle feskebåta og frakteskip. De skal bygges og treng ettersyn og stell. Det ligg eventyrlig med penga i det.
– Ja, det har du rett i. Men vi kan ikkje få heile den nye tida på slipp før jul, det veit styret også, sa Peder sindig.
– Få mæ inn i styret! Det lar sæ ordne på første møte, sa Wilfred blidt.
– Det trur æ ikkje. Styret e fulltallig, og utskifting står ikkje på dagsorden.
– Men herregud, det bestem vi sjøl!
– Det første æ skal gjør her på Verftet e _ikkje_ å hiv folk ut a styre for å gje bror min en plass. Det forstår du vel? sa Peder og tok tak i hyllekanten.
– Ka farsken sei du? sa Wilfred farlig godslig. Men han ble sittende.
– Du veit at æ ikkje e allmektig her. Æ må svare for alt æ gjør og ikkje gjør. Dessuten e ikkje eiarn kem som helst, men far tel ho Karna.
Wilfred ble sittende med åpen munn. Han hadde vel aldri i sine levedager hørt slik tale fra det holdet. Aldri hørt slik forbannet tøvete tale. Han bøyde seg frem og la sigaren i askebegeret. Ganske rolig. Pannen rynket seg kraftig idet han så opp. Men munnen smilte. Nå strakte han hendene elegant opp i luften, fremdeles sittende. Man kunne tolke det som en forsoning, eller en avledningsmanøver.
– Du snakka som ei kjerring, broder! Det e klart at han Benjamin veit at du e ung og uerfaren. Desto meir treng du støtte og råd. Og æ har vorre i den her bransjen lenge. Du veit jo det. Ho Dina snakka varmt om bygging a opphalingsslipp, plateverksted og ei moderne smia. Ho va fremsynt, den tøtta. Ho la fram tegninga og papira for mæ en gong. Vi hadde mange gode samtala på slutten...
Peder var ikke sikker, men trodde kanskje ikke slaget kom til å stå i dag. Likevel ble han stående.
– Vi får se, mumlet han. – Du har rett i at alt skal læres.
– Ikkje sant, ikkje sant! sa Wilfred og tok opp sigaren igjen. Den hadde ennå en anelse glo.
– Vi må gå ned, æ må snakke med karran på golvet om et par ting, sa Peder.
– Rett talt, alt skal læres, humret Wilfred og reiste seg. Tok en runde foran vinduet, ble stående med ryggen til og betrakte utsikten, før han brått snudde seg og gikk mot døren.
– Hels heim tel ho Seline, sa Peder fremdeles stående ved hylla.
– Takk! Det skal æ, sa Wilfred og var som et vanlig menneske.
Peder visste ikke når tid det ble slik. Husket ikke første gang. Bare at det var blitt en arv mellom veggene i den vesle stua ute i havgapet. Mellom de karrige jordlappene, de sultefôrede sauene. Som om kulingene og havbåra, frosten og sene vårer ikke hadde vært nok. For så lenge han kunne huske, hadde han vært vitne til at faren slo ned alt som viste for mye motstand. Et mannfolk skulle ikke tåle obstanasighet fra kjerring og unger og brysomt krapyl. Han måtte kue det. Få det til å ligge nede til det hadde lært. Alt måtte læres.
Og han selv? Hvorfor hadde han ikke tatt opp den arven? Han husket den våren han skulle konfirmeres. Familie og naboer sto i fjæra og skulle fare til kirke. Det var vind og mye sjø. Moren klaget seg dårlig fordi hun var redd på havet.
– Æ trur ho mamma må få vær heime i dag, hadde han sagt.
Da hadde faren rasende tatt ham i kragen for alles øyne, som om han skulle vært en valp.
– Du e som ei kjerring, du også! Du kjem alltid tel å vær ei kjerring!
Med de ordene ble han konfirmert på heimestranda. At han kunne svare for seg på kirkegulvet, hadde ingen betydning.
Var det derfor han heller ikke kunne hate broderen? Fordi han var ei kjerring all sin dag. Og mens han gikk ned trappene til karene på golvet, kom det for ham at han hadde det gulle godt som kjerring – så lenge ingen slo.
# TEGNET FRA SATURN
Karna sto ved vinduet og så på damen som hadde fotsid kappe med mange farger. Henne de kalte _prestinnen_. Hun hadde prestekrage rundt halsen og bar alltid et eller annet i en pose som ingen fikk se. I dag snakket hun visst ikke høyt og lyste velsignelse, men smøg seg tett inntil doktor Klim og sa noe. Han tok henne i den armen hun hadde fri og fikk henne videre. Den andre armen gjemte hun under kjortelen. I dag prekte hun visst ikke, ville bare holde seg nær doktor Klim. Helt annerledes enn hun pleide når hun ropte ut at alle var hennes får, og at hun skulle passe på dem. Hun var nok helt gal. For hun forsto ikke at man ikke var prest selv om man hadde prestekrage. Det var ikke så enkelt. Man måtte studere.
Karna hentet boken med himmellegemene i skapet. Pappa hadde tatt den med uten å vite hvor viktig den var. Han ga ikke akt på at alt hang sammen med alt. Ikke ennå. Bildet av Saturn slo seg opp av seg selv. Et tegn fra rommet utenfor alt. Ringene rundt visste hvor hun var og innsirklet henne. Ingen andre himmellegemer hadde slike tegn. Det var ikke farmor som hadde pekt henne ut for at hun skulle vitne, det var Saturn. Hun hadde bare ikke visst det før pappa tok boken hit. Slik var det alltid. Gåtene trengte det rette vitnet for å bli forstått. Saturn hadde reist i verdensrommet i uminnelige tider, og nå hadde den funnet henne. Snakket til henne på sin merkelige måte. Hver eneste dag. Under gasslyset. Dagene ble stadig mørkere. Nettene var svarte vinduer. Men Saturn viste seg.
Doktor Klim hadde sagt det til henne den morgenen han var på madrassen ved døren.
– Våkne opp. Det vi vet om din farmor kan gjøre vondt for oss, men det styrker evigheten.
Han hadde kalt henne _din farmor_ , for han kjente ikke Dina. Slik visste hun at han ikke var russeren.
– Din farmor mente det ikke, hun ville bare ha ham hos seg for alltid. Hun forsto ikke at for et menneske kan ingenting være bestandig. Bare evigheten henger fast i sin egen hale. Den har ingen kropp eller tid, bare kjærlighet, hadde han sagt.
Så hadde hun tenkt på det. At den ekte doktor Klim nok var klokere enn russeren. Likevel kunne han være en felle. Hun hadde prøvd å stikke hånden gjennom ham for å finne ut om han var russeren eller doktor Klim. Hånden møtte motstand så det gjorde vondt i knokene. Han lo og tok om neven hennes da den traff ham i brystet.
Men russeren kom nok ikke mer. Det viste at han var like alminnelig som de vanlige døde som danset rundt Saturn. Han var fornærmet. Hun skulle si det til ham dersom han kom. Fornærmelse er bortkastet tid.
Doktor Klim kom. Han begynte innerst i hospitalgangen og kom sist til henne. Den eneste feilen ved ham var at hun ikke kunne snakke til ham. På den måten savnet hun russeren. Hun viste doktor Klim Saturn uten å si noe.
– Greier Karna å lese det som står om Saturn? spurte han.
Hun nikket.
– Kunne du tenke deg å skrive ned på et papir det du tenker om Saturn, spurte han.
Hun ristet på hodet og ville legge boken tilbake i skapet. Men han nappet den fra henne og lot den slå seg selv opp på Saturn igjen. Da så hun plutselig ringene over hodet hans. De var blå. Det var et tegn. Så var han vel utvalgt, som hun selv.
Da han la blokken og blyanten sin på bordet foran henne, _måtte_ hun gjøre det. Skrive ned tanken som lå rundt Saturn. Bokstavene veltet seg rundt som om de ikke visste hvor de var.
_Den holder ringene sammen i all evighet_
_Evigheten hviler i aksen_
Doktor Klim sto der uten å si noe. Da hun var ferdig, så han merkelig ut. Og da hun ga ham blyanten tilbake, grep han den, bøyde seg over blokken og skrev.
_Aksen snurrer jorden rundt_ _i kjærlighet_
Så nikket han og ga henne blyanten. Hun tok den og skrev.
_Heten smelter_ _fargene_
_De døde_ _danser_ _i ringene rundt Saturn_
_Det er tegnet_
Hun ga ham blyanten tilbake og sukket litt.
_Tegnet_ _på hvor små menneskene_ _er_ , skrev han og sukket litt, han også.
Så ga han henne blyanten og ventet mens hun skrev:
_Pass_ _godt_ _på_ _alt_ _det som smerter_
_for det_ _mater evigheten_
Hun ga ham både blokk og blyant tilbake uten å se på ham. Lukket boken rundt himmellegemene og bar den bort til skapet. Da hun snudde seg og så strengt på ham for å få ham til å gå, var de blå ringene rundt hodet hans borte. Han sto bare der og lo.
– Jeg visste det! mumlet han for seg selv. I døråpningen snudde han seg og så på henne. Så slo han med knyttneven ut i luften med veldig kraft.
# ANNA PRØVER Å GJØRE BOT
Han satt ennå fast i hver pore i huden da hun våknet alene på den smale sengen i losjiet. Hvem var hun blitt? Hva var det med denne mannen som fikk henne til å forkaste alt hun holdt hellig og med åpne øyne gå inn i sviket? På en så grotesk måte. Uten samvittighetsnag, uten anger.
Og som om det skulle være en slags avlat, fylte hun vesken med noter av Brahms og Schumann da hun gikk til Hospitalet. Mens hun prøvde å konsentrere seg om det hun skrev, lyttet hun etter skritt. Stemmen hans. Forgjeves. Etter arbeidstid tok hun notene med til flygelet i den store salen. Der var tomt og kjølig. Hun satt med kåpen på og jakkeermene dradd langt ned over håndleddene gjennom Brahms, Rapsodi i g-moll og Intermesso i A-dur. Spilte rett igjennom den tiden det tok. Stoppet ikke der hun spilte feil, eller ikke hadde riktig tempo. Det var en lise. Så la hun Schumanns Widmung på brettet, slo noen floker med armene, blåste på fingrene og satte i gang. Først da hun var ferdig og satt med hendene i fanget og de siste tonene ennå vibrerte mellom veggene, ble hun klar over at hun ikke var alene i rommet.
Da hun snudde seg, sto Benjamin og holdt seg i en stolrygg.
– Du? sa hun bare.
– Ja, jeg har vært hos Karna. Hørte jo at det var her du var... Skulle på kontoret med en beskjed. Nå kan du jo bare få den.
Langsomt begynte han å gå mellom stolradene mot henne. Da han kom helt frem, så hun at han hadde grått.
– Var det... Var det ekstra trist hos Karna? spurte hun usikkert.
Han ristet på hodet og smilte litt.
– Du vet hvordan jeg er... Musikken... når du spiller, sa han uten forsøk på å skjule seg. Så dro han en konvolutt opp av frakkelommen og rakte henne.
Det var hans skrift utenpå. Fru Anna Grønelv.
– Skal jeg lese det nå? spurte hun.
– Nei. Jeg må haste til toget, så vi får ikke snakket om det uansett. Bare spill videre. Farvel...
Ryggen hans bevegde seg mot døren. Så var han borte. Og da hun la notene i vesken, var alt så uvirkelig, som om det bare var noe hun hadde tenkt. Hadde det ikke vært for brevet.
Det var kort. Han ba henne komme til sin nye adresse neste ettermiddag. Om hun hadde anledning. Han skulle være hjemme i alle fall.
På vei til losjiet begynte hun å øve seg på ordene. Og uansett hvordan hun begynte, så ble det like galt. Hun kunne begynne med å beskrive sine følelser. Det ville være hjerteløst. Hun kunne si det enkelt med fire ord. Det ville være kynisk. Og han ville spørre. Ville kreve navn og sted. Da måtte hun tie. Men selve samtalen kunne ikke utsettes. Han måtte få vite hvem hun var.
*
To rom og kjøkken, og et lite trapperom til tyende. Det var lagt inn gass, og de hadde klosett i gangen. Strøket var bra, og ganske sentralt. Benjamin slo ut med armene og var tydelig stolt.
– Det er selvsagt ikke det samme som å bo i Store Kongensgade. Men her kan man i alle fall plassere speil og konsoll, sa han og pekte mellom vinduene i stuen.
Det var ren flaks at han hadde fått leie den, så han aksepterte på flekken uten at hun hadde sett den. Var det feil av ham?
Hun ristet på hodet.
Og trodde hun svigermor ville like de to trærne utenfor?
Det trodde hun absolutt, sa hun og prøvde å le. Om det var noen møbler hjemmefra hun så for seg kunne passe? Fra Strandstedet? fortsatte han. Han skulle be Peder ordne det. Det ville selvsagt ta en tid med forsendelsen, men i mellomtiden kunne de jo møblere sammen. Han hadde lagt av en sum, dersom hun var enig.
Hun kjente seg dårlig. Hadde ingen som helst erfaring med å være den svikeren hun var. Kunne ingen hvite løgner eller bortforklaring.
Da hun kom inn i soverommet, ble hun stående og stirre. En bred seng med rødt sengebredsel og rød himmel fylte rommet. Den var en messe verdt.
– Liker du den? Han gikk urolig fra den ene sengestolpen til den andre.
– Den er praktfull. Leiligheten er på alle måter perfekt.
– Jeg har kjøpt sjampanje! Og to glass... Kan vi ta det ved vinduet her? Stående? Det er dårlig med bord, sa han muntert.
– Jeg tror vi venter litt. Jeg må...
– Karna? Noe galt med Karna? Du virker ikke glad?
– Nei, ikke Karna... Jeg har noe jeg må si deg.
Hun gikk foran ham ut i stuen og satte seg på den ene av de to stolene han hadde skaffet. Han satte seg på den andre med hendene på knærne som om han var på sprang.
Leiligheten var i tredje etasje uten gjenboere. Akkurat nå hang en lav høstsol over takene. Hun trakk pusten og rettet seg opp for å møte blikket hans.
– Jeg ba om tid.
– Ja, du ba om tid. Men uansett måtte jeg bo. Og jeg forsto det slik at du ville bo samme sted når du var i byen...
– Det er ikke lenger så sikkert at du vil det, avbrøt hun.
På et øyeblikk ble ansiktet hans grått. Han reiste seg og gikk bort til vinduet. Ble stående med ryggen til.
– Det er en grunn?
– Jeg har vært utro.
Hun så skuldrene hans bli presset fremover. Som om noen hadde slått eller skutt. Og at ett av de to trærne der ute var så høyt at det nådde ham til øret.
– Det er _ham_?
Hun svarte ikke. Fravær av stemmer forgiftet rommet. Han åpnet vinduet.
– Endelig en hevn for at du ikke er Hanna? spurte han rustent.
– Nei. Ikke hevn.
– Vet _han_... at du er her nå og forteller meg det?
– Nei.
– Anna! Han ble stående med hengende armer og se på henne. – Jeg trodde ikke at noe slikt var mulig for en som deg, fortsatte han hjelpeløst.
– Så kjenner du meg ikke. Jeg er ingen helgen.
Han snudde seg fra henne igjen. Støtte hendene mot veggen og la hodet bakover mens han pustet med åpen munn.
– Han har beilet til deg hele tiden, ikke sant? Han har talegaver og er verdensvant? Du har gitt etter for tåpelig smiger fordi du har vært ensom?
– Benjamin..., begynte hun.
– En forbannet forfører! Jeg så det nok! snerret han og slo i veggen.
Så begynte han å gå. Trave. Det var god plass. Innboet var de to stolene. Til sist stanset han foran henne.
– Og om jeg sier at jeg forstår at dette er takk for sist, som jeg har fortjent, men at jeg ikke bare kan la deg forlate meg? Kan du allikevel...
– Jeg tror ikke du klarer det.
– Hvorfor ikke?
– Fordi det kanskje skjer igjen.
Han snappet etter pusten. Hendene åpnet og knyttet seg.
– Du er hard!
– Jeg kan ikke bygge livet med deg på løgn.
– Slik jeg gjorde? peste han frem.
– Det var dine ord, ikke mine...
Han kom mot henne. Ansiktet var fordreid. Han grep henne om livet og løftet henne opp av stolen. Tvang henne til å plante beina i gulvet. Finne balansen. Stå. Hun kjente hendene hans som et jerngrep. Så slapp han henne og så bort.
– Tilgi, sa han kaldt. – Du kan få gå nå.
Hun hadde aldri sett ham slik. Ikke kjent _det_ grepet. Den fortvilte viljen. Hun så ham som for første gang. De mørke, grånende krøllene. Senene på halsen. Munnen med de bekymrede grøftene på hver side. Teinten i huden. Hav, sol og vind. Den senete kroppen under den korrekte dressen han hadde lagt seg til. Hoftene. Bevegelsene når han gikk. Travet. Det kom for henne at hun kanskje ikke hadde sett ham på flere år. Plutselig sto hun der med en ubendig skamløs lyst mellom hoftene. Det kjentes som en uventet kraft. Og kunne _han_ begjære to, så kunne vel hun.
– Ja, jeg skal gå dersom du vil. Det er bare én ting jeg vil du skal vite...
– Det er? sa han hest.
– Før du visste... Du sa at det kunne gå likevel... Mente du det? For jeg er fri nok til å sette avtrykk med deg i den nye sengen din.
Da hun så neven hans knytte seg i luften, vaklet hun og la armene om hodet. Øyeblikket etter forsto hun at han allikevel ikke hadde slått.
For andre gang gjenfant hun balansen. De ble stående mot hverandre. Fremoverbøyd. Stirret hverandre inn i øynene. Han pustet tungt og hadde ennå en halvt løftet neve. Så lot han den falle rett ned.
Hun tok hattenålen ut av hatten mens hun fremdeles så ham inn i øynene. Han la hodet til siden som om han ventet på at hun skulle sette den i øyet hans. Men hun løftet hatten av, bøyde seg og la den på gulvet. Nålen ble stående og dirre umerkelig i bremmen. Så satte hun seg og tok av seg skoene. Strømpene. Knappet opp blusen.
Han sto som forsteinet med hengende armer.
– Du behøver ikke å gå gjennom dette for min skyld, sa han foraktelig.
– Nei, for min egen, svarte hun. Reiste seg igjen og tok blusen av. Snørelivet og skjørtet. Til sist sto hun naken foran ham.
Han sto der og stirret. Det gjorde to gardinløse vinduer også.
– Kom! Om du vil, sa hun og gikk mot soverommet.
Hun hørte ham løpe ned trappene. Hørte ytterdøren slå i. Det var ingen gardiner i soverommet heller. Hun sto der naken, og riktignok fri. Men alene.
# BENJAMIN GÅR DE GAMLE VEITENE UTEN MÅL
Torsdags ettermiddag i slutten av oktober. En forvillet distriktslege fra Nordlandene travet rundt i Kjøbenhavn. Allerede etter første kneipen fikk han mistanke om at det var for tidlig på dagen for slikt. Etter andre kneipe bare ett kvartal unna innså han at sjalusi og sjokk hadde infisert ikke bare hodet, men hele kroppen. Han var blitt et bittert lik som holdt seg oppe ved å drikke snaps etter snaps på fastende hjerte. Elendig, ekkel, ikke til å ta i. En hånet stakkar.
Etter tredje kneipe ikke så langt fra Peder Madsens Gang så han syner fra studietiden. Om Aksel, seg selv og madammens jenter. Han trakk dit, om ikke for annet så for å håne seg selv.
Først trodde han at det var fordi han hadde drukket. Så forsto han at hele kvartalet var revet! Borte. Helt fra Svaneapoteket og ned mot Grønnegade, der rennesteinen aldri så dagslys for bare gørr og ungene døde som fluer av sult og sykdom. Der hadde man anlagt en bred ny Østergade og latt som om fortiden ikke eksisterte. I et krater av eldgammel slum hadde man begynt å reise nytt. Han ville ikke kjent seg igjen om han var edru. Nå husket han at han hadde lest om det uten å tenke over det. At Peder Madsens Gang var borte for alltid. Slik var det. Alt man trodde bare var der for alltid, ble borte.
Han fant en kjeller i et annet smug. Med bikkende hode satt han og prøvde å regne år. Kunne madammen være i full vigør ennå, et annet sted? Og jentene hennes? Neppe. I dette hjernespinnet gikk det opp for ham at årene hadde rammet ham også. Det gjorde ham så forbannet stakkarslig at han innså at han hadde drukket nok.
Men hvor skulle han ta veien? Trodde _hun_ , dette vesenet han hadde forlatt i leiligheten, at hun hadde skremt ham fra å komme tilbake til sin egen leilighet? At han skulle gå til hennes foreldre og be om losji? Eller legge seg inn et eller annet sted? Han dro nevene gjennom håret. En uvane når hendene ville være virksomme. Nå for å døyve en forbannet smerte som han verken kunne lokalisere eller diagnostisere. Den satt i kroppen. I hodet. I magen. I den sure piperøyken han prøvde seg på. Dessuten måtte han svelge alt i ett. Det gjorde forbannet vondt. Smerte skulle ha en fysisk grunn. Den skulle kunne kureres, eller amputeres. Var han ikke en hardhaus som kunne tåle hva som helst? Var han ikke en som nettopp kunne _tåle_?
Så husket han at han hadde vært på nippet til å slå henne! Han kunne ha slått henne. Og da hadde han slått hardt.
Og i neste øyeblikk: Hvorfor i huleste tok han ikke imot tilbudet hennes? Hevnet seg. I sengen!
Han sparte på de siste dråpene i glasset. Mens bilder dukket opp. Annas nakne kropp foran ham før han styrtet ned trappene. Og: Den samme nakne kroppen som kveilet seg omkring den andre. Så dem i favntak. Forbannede, forbannede favntak.
Han skulle akkurat til å legge myntene på bordet og gå, da en ny gjest fikk den trette bjella over døren til å gi fra seg et klynk.
Han løftet blikket. Det tok _ett_ sekund. Han _så_ mannen. Den rufsete kamelhårsfrakken. Det bare hodet som så ut som en nordavindskuling. Og heldigvis, en anelse utstående ører. Men det kunne ikke være mulig. Det var en _umulighet_.
Den andre hadde gjenkjent ham. De målbevisste skrittene mot bardisken stanset. Han gjorde en dreining og kom bort til bordet. Benjamin kjente en plutselig kvalme.
– Doktor Grønelv! Det var litt av en tilfeldighet! sa mannen og rakte frem hånden.
Han kunne ha spyttet ham i ansiktet. I stedet reiste han seg og ga fanden hånden. Ettersom han ikke helt visste hvor ydmykende det ville være at fanden så at han var beruset, satte han seg raskt igjen. Men angret øyeblikkelig. Han skulle ha sagt at han var på vei ut. Skulle reddet seg bort fra dette.
– Han er her for å tenke? Alene? Eller kan jeg slå meg ned? Jeg blir ikke lenge, sa den andre.
– Vær så god! hørte han seg selv mumle.
Mannen er sadist. Han vet at jeg vet. Allikevel velger han å sette seg ned ved mitt bord. Skulle han reise seg og gå? Nå? Uten ett ord. Det ville være en slags verdig sorti for en hanrei. Men enten var det snapsen han hadde inntatt, eller så var det hans forbannede nysgjerrighet, han ble sittende. Og før han visste ordet av det, var enda to glass snaps og to krus kaffe kommet på bordet.
Den andre hadde knappet opp frakken og satt seg til rette.
Dersom han nå nevner Anna, så slår jeg, tenkte han. Jeg kan ikke hjelpe for det, og jeg kommer ikke til å vinne, men jeg kommer til å slå.
Enten var mannen tankeleser, eller så hadde han ingen trang til å si akkurat det navnet. Han løftet bare kaffekruset mot ham og nikket. Forbannede falske jævel.
– Hvordan står det til på Frederiks Hospital for tiden? spurte fyren.
– Jeg har ikke fått helt oversikt ennå, men jeg tror det går bra, mumlet han.
– Jeg ble jo klekket på den anstalten, jeg også, smilte mannen.
– Ja vel. Når? sa han kort.
Mannen nevnte årstallet og Benjamin fant ut at han ledet på krapylet med fire år. Et øyeblikk mistet han sitt forsett, bare å være kort og korrekt, for han sa:
– Og spesialiseringen, tok han den også der?
– Nei, jeg ble for brysom for systemet. Heldig for meg. Jeg måtte til Tyskland og Østerrike. De siste årene sporadisk som klengete jypling hos professor Charcot ved Salpêtrière-hospitalet i Paris. Men han har større fisker enn meg å få frem i strømmen. Derfor er jeg her.
– Ja vel, sa Benjamin avmålt.
– Grønelv skal inn i kirurgien har jeg hørt?
– Det ser slik ut, svarte han og var på nippet til å si at han opprinnelig ville studere kvinnesykdom og fødselshjelp. Men det ville være å gi ham altfor mye. Fyren hadde allerede nok som det var. Bare tanken på å si ordet _kvinne_ til denne mannen gjorde ham kvalm. Hvordan i huleste kunne han forresten vite om hans planer om kirurgi? Han så for seg hvordan Anna og han hadde sittet og snakket om ham. En brysom ektemann som hadde tillatt seg å komme til Kjøbenhavn, nå som de to hadde det så bra.
– Jeg tenkte først å studere kvinnesykdommer, hørte han. Det var den andre som sa det, ikke han selv.
– Jaså, og hva fikk ham på andre tanker?
– Jeg ble oppslukt av folks sjelelige galskap mer enn den fysiske forgjengeligheten.
– Og angret? spurte han og kunne bitt tungen av seg. Han ville ikke ha noen samtale med denne fyren. Ville overhodet ikke vite om hans interesser.
– Nei, har aldri angret. Dessuten har jeg et lite ulønnet foretak i et smug like ved her, der kan jeg drukne min samvittighet. Ja, unnskyld, jeg kan ikke vente at han er like orientert om slike steder som jeg er. Men der finnes et bordell. Faktisk flere.
– Og der kveler han sin samvittighet?
Mannen var jo ikke sann. Et skikkelig svin, tenkte han.
– Ja. Ikke hele registeret naturligvis. Men for den delen av studiet som jeg ikke fullførte, sa mannen og så rett på ham uten å blunke.
– I bordell? spurte Benjamin kaldt.
– Ja. Vær klar over at jeg ikke snakker om å være kunde. Det er nok av andre oppgaver. Men få leger orker å ta i akkurat dem som trenger det mest. I alle fall ikke uten å få bra betalt. Kjønnssykdom er en svøpe. Syfilis er en dom til helvete. Det gjør meg deprimert å tenke på at det er menn som er smittebærere. Fra sted til sted. Til og med til sine koner. De fleste menn har dessuten bedre sjanse for å få medisinsk hjelp. Det gjør meg så forbannet at jeg må ha sterk kaffe og snaps hver gang jeg har vært der.
Benjamin visste ikke at han stirret. Visste ikke at han lente seg frem over bordet og var i ferd med å glemme at han satt overfor en falsk jævel.
– Hvor ofte går du der? spurte han og var ikke klar over at de var blitt dus.
– Den siste torsdagen i hver måned, dersom jeg ikke er på reise. Og de venter... Ofte desperat.
– Hvor mange prøver du å hjelpe nå?
– Akkurat nå... Fire.
– Bare i _ett_ bordell?
– Nei, det ryktes at jeg er å finne der. De kommer også fra andre steder.
– Og medisinen? Hvor får du den?
– Jeg har mine forbindelser, det er ikke noe å skilte med her, sa mannen og trakk på skuldrene.
– Og hvem betaler medisinen? Hospitalet? spurte Benjamin.
Den andre så vurderende på ham og smilte irriterende trygg.
– Jeg går ut fra at du ikke er ute etter å felle meg om så var? Ikke for en slik sak? sa Klim med utfordrende blikk.
– Nei, ikke for en _slik_ sak, parerte Benjamin og var klar over at det var _nå_ han måtte gå.
– Men for andre saker? spurte reservelegen.
Han kunne ennå gå, men gjorde det ikke. Tvert om. Han besvarte den andres utfordrende blikk uten å si noe.
Tre flosshatter med høy armføring kom ravende inn i kroen og satte seg ved nabobordet. Det skapte en naturlig pause i samtalen.
– Du liker meg ikke, sa den andre rolig.
– Har jeg noen grunn til det? spurte Benjamin og rettet seg opp.
– Du synes ikke jeg gjør nok for å helbrede din datter, men at jeg sløser bort tiden på kvinner i bordell?
Benjamin rykket til. Han hadde glemt at mannen ikke bare var _Annas_ _reservelege_ , men også Karnas. Han hadde ikke tenkt på Karna siden han forlot Anna i den nye leiligheten. Det var sannheten.
– Det har jeg ingen grunn til å påstå, men det kan godt være, sa han.
– Vel. Jeg driver jo ikke magi, men jeg prøver å hjelpe henne, sa mannen alvorlig.
– Ja, hvorfor sitter vi her? spurte Benjamin med høy stemme for å overdøve nabobordet. – Har vi noe som helst å snakke om utenom min datter?
– Jeg synes det er vanskelig å snakke om din datter mens vi sitter på bar. Men vi kan finne et annet tidspunkt? Når som helst? Det er mye jeg trenger å vite om pasienten. Jeg trenger helt sikkert hjelp.
Benjamin svarte ikke. Han kjente seg elendig.
– Skal jeg gå? spurte reservelegen og betraktet ham nøye.
Benjamin tenkte. Var dette en utmattelseskrig, eller var det hans egen dumhet? Likevel ristet han på hodet og løftet snapsglasset. Den andre tok imot utfordringen. Bøyde seg endatil over bordet og klinket glasset i hans.
De drakk.
På ett sekund gikk sjalusien over i dumskap. Han greide ikke å motstå den.
– Hun venter på meg i leiligheten, sa han og satte glasset forsiktig ned på bordet mens han voktet på den andres ansikt.
Reservelegen så opp. Ansiktet var fullstendig uttrykksløst.
– Å ja, selvfølgelig gjør hun det, sa han vennlig.
Benjamin snappet etter pusten. Greide ikke å finne et eneste ord.
Da bøyde mannen seg igjen over bordet og sa knapt hørlig i bulderet fra naboene:
– Du er heldig. Men det vet du vel? Så reiste han seg, la noen mynter på bordet og løftet hånden til øret.
Dørklokken klang forbannet hult etter ham.
# PEDER GJØR ET FUNN
Han hadde sett den hendige sinkkassen i kottet innenfor kontoret uten å ta notis av den. Egentlig sto den godt der den var. Men så var det planene om mørkerommet. Han måtte rydde bort tingene som var der for å få plass til utstyret han hadde fått fra Tromsø.
En kveld etter arbeidstid tok han kassen med til skrivebordet for å se om det var noe han skulle ta vare på. Lokket hadde brett rundt kantene som på en skoeske. Ellers lignet den de samlekassene som krambodene fikk levert dåsemat i før i verden. Den var uten lås og etikett. Hadde bare en svak rand av rust som virket som lim og gjorde den vrien å åpne. Det sto klart for Peder at kassen ikke var hans, og at doktoren kanskje ville beholde den, hel. Men det gikk med forsiktig lirking.
Den var full av gamle papirer. Brev i åpnede konvolutter. Andre i omslag som for å holde orden og markere at de hørte sammen. Etter få minutter forsto han at ingen kunne ha sett disse papirene på ti–femten år. De var fra før Dina flyttet fra Reinsnes til Strandstedet for å drive Grand Hotel. Lenge før hun kjøpte seg inn på Verftet. Alle konvoluttene var adressert til Anders Grønelv, Reinsnes, ikke til henne. En liten bunke hadde stempel fra Kjøbenhavn og en fra Berlin. Begge var buntet med torskegarnstråd. Han nølte først med å åpne dem. Men da han ikke greide å plassere mannen, Anders Grønelv, åpnet han hyssingen og trakk ett av brevene fra Berlin ut av konvolutten.
Det begynte med _Kjære_ _husbond_ _Anders_ og sluttet med _din hustru Dina_. Han så som snarest at det handlet om at hun sendte penger. For Peder var det vanskelig å forstå hvordan det kunne ha seg at hun hadde midler å sende hjem. Det var jo på Reinsnes hun hadde handelssted og jekter. Lønnet hun mannen sin for å ta seg av alt sammen? Og hvor kom inntekten fra? At et kvinnfolk kunne reise av gårde og sende brev og penger til mannen, det hang ikke på greip. Men Peder var av den beskaffenhet at han innså at det langt fra var alt her i verden han hadde kløkt til å forstå. Og slett ikke når det gjaldt Dina Grønelv. For hva fant hun ikke på? For eksempel at _han_ skulle skoleres og bli den nye disponenten.
Han leste ikke brevene. Opptuktelsen overvant nysgjerrigheten. Skulle noen lese dem, så måtte det være doktoren. Det han kunne lure på var om Dina hadde visst at denne boksen kom med på flyttelasset fra Reinsnes. Det tvilte han på. I så fall ville hun ha oppbevart dem et annet sted. Alle andre papirer var ordnet og arkivert. Dette var Anders Grønelvs brev som ingen hadde funnet for godt å rydde i da han døde. Så hadde den bare fulgt med da kontoret på Reinsnes ble fraktet til Strandstedet.
Under brevene, i et kartongomslag for seg selv, lå et sirlig brettet ark uten konvolutt. Da han åpnet, så han at det sto _Brannassuranse_ med høytidelig skrift øverst.
Peder sperret øynene opp. Prøvde å fatte det han så. Måtte lese på nytt. Og på nytt. Dette gjaldt ikke Verftet, men _Reinsnes_! Verdien var satt til et betydelig beløp. Der lå også en kvittering på en betalt sum.
Peder ble sittende under lampen. Skulle han sende et telegram til doktoren? I så fall ville det snart være kjent over hele Strandstedet. Han så for seg alle spekulasjonene. At Grønelvene nå ville tjene seg søkkrike på brannen. Telegrafisten lekket som revne sildegarn. Redaktøren i Bladet var heller ikke tett for sladder. Doktoren ville nok slippe den slags snakk.
Peder besluttet å seile til Reinsnes og spørre Johan om hva han skulle gjøre. Men ettersom Peder godt visste at folk ikke bestandig var slik man så dem, besluttet han at han ikke skulle ta med seg dokumentet, men fortelle at det fantes. Som en første manøver la han beviset i jernskapet. Under tegningene for den nye dampkutteren de skulle bygge.
Det var ikke lange reisen. Han tok med varer som han tenkte at en enslig mann uten krambod trengte, slik skikken var. Kaffe, kjøpekake, smør, sterkt øl og sukker. Og han hadde forberedt seg på hva han skulle svare dersom Johan spurte hvorfor han ikke hadde dokumentet med. At han ikke kunne risikere at kullseiling skulle snyte familien Grønelv for penger. Det ville en mann som Johan forstå. Om han også hadde rett på en del av arven, var ikke godt for Peder å ha rede på. Men det var i alle fall Johan som bodde der og tok vare på stedet.
Peder hadde bare vært der en gang etter brannen. Han skulle hjelpe Johan med å rydde det grøvste. I lang tid etterpå stred han med synet av branntomten og skjønte ikke at noen orket å bo alene på et slikt sted.
I dag så han bare tomrommet etter det store hovedhuset da han rundet neset. Johan bodde i den okermalte kårstua med grønne vindskier og pynt rundt vinduene. Visste man ikke at der hadde stått en staselig bygning, så ville man tenkt at de som eide stedet hadde sluppet opp for kapital og derfor aldri fikk bygget skikkelig våningshus. For noen branntomt var det ikke lenger. Johan hadde gjort et stort arbeid.
Båten lå i støa, godt dradd opp og tjoret i jernpålen. Så var han hjemme. Rimet lå helt ned i flomålet, og tynne glassklare isskår fløt mellom steinene. Himmelen var upusset og sola i ferd med å takke av for godt i år. Så var det bare å vente til den fant det for godt å vise seg i januar.
Han kjente seg støl og kald etter å ha sittet til rors i en time, men tok sjøvottene av og slo floker til blodet verket og dunket gjennom hele ham. Så gikk han opp alleen. Stammer uten blader, men med frostglitrende rognebær.
Det gamle steingjerdet som skulle være le for sydvesten, sto fremdeles rundt en del av det som hadde vært hagen. Det store tomrommet vitnet om at Vår Herre hadde tatt en kjempespade og løftet hovedhuset opp i himmelen. Med hagestakitt, lerketre, benker og bord. Han hadde ikke fått med seg dueslaget ved første spadetak, og orket nok ikke å ta et nytt for en slik bagatell.
Da han kom nærmere, så han en merkelig fremtoning omtrent der en av skorsteinene måtte ha stått. Det så ut som et skråtak eller skjul for en båt. På tunet? Hundre meter fra støa!
Han gikk ikke bort for å undersøke hva det kunne være, for han ville ikke bli sett luskende rundt før han hadde hilst. Idet han kastet et blikk mot vinduene i kårstua, fikk han en rar følelse. For det røk ikke fra skorsteinen. Var ikke Johan stått opp, så sent på dagen?
Peder, som ofte tenkte det verste bare for å ha det unnagjort, så straks for seg flere muligheter. Brukket bein? Liggende nedenfor loftstrappen? Feber og oppkast uten å orke å fyre i ovnen? En rask tur opp i krattskogen for å hente tennved? Det siste var tull. En voksen mann hentet ikke opptenning ute seinhøstes. Han hadde den i hus.
Han trampet godt av seg sørpe og snø før han gikk inn og ropte god dag. Ingen svarte. Han gikk på kjøkkenet. Det luktet kald aske og en anelse tørket kjøtt. Han ropte høyere.
– God dag! Non heime?
Ikke engang veggene ga svar. Det var et lavlaftet hus uten ekko. Han ropte oppover loftstrappen. Ventet litt. Ropte en gang til. Gikk ut på trammen og ropte utover tunet. Trasket bort til fjøset. Ropte inn i vedskjulet. Kroken sto i hempen på utsiden av doet, så der kunne han ikke være. Peder gikk opp lembrua og så ned i den tomme løa. Ropte. Han returnerte til huset, tok av seg skoene og gikk fra rom til rom nede. Stue, gang, spiskammer, veranda og kammers. Opp trappen. Den svarte med kalde knirk. Loftsrommene var tomme. Kottet var tomt. Han var dyvåt av svette og hjertebank da han gikk ned trappen.
– Han e her. Båten ligg i støa, mumlet han for seg selv, innimellom hvert rop han sendte ut.
Naustet. Kunne han ha blitt liggende i naustet, eller et sted i den gamle tre etasjes brygga?
Da det skrek i hengslene på den store bryggedøren, gikk tiden i revers. Flimrende bilder for netthinnen. Fra St. Hansaften, kvelden før alt ble ødelagt. Forbrent. Dødt. Da hadde det vært Karna og ham. Alle de andre, slektninger, venner, broderen – de var bare staffasje uten betydning. Karna og han hadde danset. Hun hadde en kjole med vaiende skjørter. De danset fra det alt sammen. Over den provisoriske plattingen, inn de åpne naustdørene, bort fra solskinn og stemmer – og inn i mørket. Paller, fiskekasser, tønner, lukt av alt som hadde vært, men ikke var viktig nå. Tjære, hamp og bek. Edderkoppspinn og tynne sigder av lys fra lastegluggen høyt der oppe i hvelvet. De kunne holde om hverandre uten at noen så det. Alt det andre lå foran og hadde ingen hast.
Han stanset opp innenfor døren. Et øyeblikk var hun der hos ham og fikk ham til å hikste. Han fløt over det grove plankegulvet med henne. Kjente den fjærlette kroppen mot seg. Denne hengivelsen. Denne uredde hengivelsen. Den hadde gitt ham livet. Som en merkelig gave. Aldeles ufortjent og ikke til å begripe.
Han grep en gammel taukveil som hang over en bukk. Løftet den opp og snakket til den. På tro og ære.
– Æ kjem og henta dæ. Æ lova. Det skal ikkje vare lenge nu.
Så måtte han videre.
– Johan! Johan!
Da han gikk opp bakken fra brygga, begynte det å snø. Våte kladder laget seg til en vegg. Han innså at han var sulten og tørst. At han også var utslitt, tenkte han ikke på. Da han hadde tent lampen over bordet og fyrt opp i kjøkkenet, var alt der ute bare en våt ødslighet. Han forsto at han ikke kunne lete ute før neste dag.
Mørket eide alt da han hadde blåst ut parafinlampen. Han bikket seg på benken i kjøkkenet med klærne på og et vatteppe fra kammerset. Men han sovnet ikke. Tanken på at Johan kunne ha gått til fjells og lå et sted i kulden og snødde ned, var ikke til å sove med.
Vinden hadde så mange toner. Han greide ikke å følge med. De skiftet på å overgå hverandre. Snart var de på vei inn gjennom vinduet, snart hadde de rømt ut sundet og var tapt. Snart tordnet de langt ute ved sjømerket, for sekundet etter å slå i bølgeblikket på fjøstaket. Og så, like før hundevakta, brøt de dype tonene løs og økte trykket mot land.
Han lå på brisken med lukkede øyne og lyttet, så for seg skumsprøyten inn over bergene ved flagghaugen. Lenge. Midt i dette rabalderet måtte han allikevel ha sovnet.
Nå var det stille. Bare et fjernt raseri lå ennå som en summing langt der ute. Han satte føttene på fillerya foran sengebenken og visste hvorfor han var der. Strakte kroppen ut. Armene. Fylte hele det vesle rommet med en dag han ikke visste noe som helst om. Han tvang seg til å kjenne etter at alt han hadde var der. Armene. Føttene. Musklene i magen. Fingrene. Den velsignede pusten. Men hodet? Hodet må tenke selv, slo han fast og sto opp.
Det var glør i kjøkkenovnen. Han spiste av brødet som han hadde med til Johan. Mat og varme hjalp for hva det skulle være.
Stormen hadde ikke hatt sans for å pynte opp. Den kom med havsaltet sludd og røsket bort hvit snø. La alt grått. Så fór den sør.
Nå var stillheten. Peder hadde ikke hørt slik stillhet siden han forlot holmen han var født på. Han skylte kaffekjelen over vasken og pumpet rikelig med friskt, kaldt vann før han fylte på. Satte den til side da han så at han måtte hente mer ved.
Han kastet et blikk utover der huset en gang sto. Der lå det merkelige båthuset midt utpå. Som et brønntak. Han satte vedkorga fra seg og huket seg ned for å åpne den lave døren i enden. Vinden måtte ha hektet kroken av hempa, den sto åpen. Da øynene hadde vent seg til bekmørket, skimtet han steintrappen. Bare som en skygge.
Peder tenkte ikke mer, han handlet. Hentet stormlykt i bislaget. Tente. Småsprang tilbake, huket seg og gikk rolig ned. Trinn for trinn. Vel nede ble han stående med lykten hevet.
Mannen lå på kne. Overkroppen var utstrakt over noe som så ut som et lavt alter. To kandelabrer og flere stearinlys i vinflasker hadde brent helt ned. Stearinen lå i klaker, i merkelige figurer. Mannen hadde ikke revet stakene med i fallet, merkelig nok, tenkte Peder. For så små tanker kan et menneske få seg til å tenke. Som at Johan kunne rive med seg tente lys i fallet og brent seg. Kanskje hadde han ikke falt, men bare blitt liggende der han hadde knelt.
Det var ikke tiden for å rope _Johan_ mer. Han satte lykta fra seg, nølte et øyeblikk, så la han hånden på den bare halsen. En kulde møtte ham. Gjennomtrengende. Hvor lenge denne kulden hadde fått sette seg, kunne han ikke spå. Det fikk andre avgjøre. Han strøk neven over den dødes bortvendte ansikt for å lukke de stirrende øynene. Men de lot seg ikke lukke. Han vrengte av seg den lune flanellsskjorta og la den over mannens hode. Foldet hendene og ble stående et øyeblikk i undertrøyen uten å forstå at han hutret. Så grep han resolutt stormlykta i hanken og gikk opp steintrappen uten å snu seg.
Han dro på seg en genser som hang på kjøkkenveggen og fyrte opp i de halvdøde glørne. Ikke voldsomt. For Peder tenkte. Satte på kaffekjelen og en kasserolle med vann. Man skulle fli seg og være høytidelig den dagen man måtte være et dødt menneskes vitne. Det hadde Peder lært, så han tenkte ikke på _det_. Nei, han kretset om andre ting. For eksempel at presten Johan Grønelv hadde gravd seg et kapell under jorda. At han så viselig hadde lagt seg til å dø der nede.
Først tenkte han på at han nok kunne greie å få mannen ned i båten alene. Men det Peder visste om lik, var at de kunne være balstyrige å handtere dersom de var stivnet for godt. Dessuten var det best at flere fikk se hvordan alt hadde gått til. Først da husket han fotoapparatet som lå i sekken.
Han rigget opp lys mens han snakket beroligende ut i luften. Til den døde kroppen eller seg selv. Fyrte en petromax, tente to parafinlamper. Fant nye vokslys til vinflaskene. Hentet en solid sildekasse han hadde sett bak fjøset og fikk riktig høyde for apparatet når den sto på høykant. For han hadde ikke med noe stativ.
Så befridde han Johans hode fra flanellsskjorten sin. Dyttet hårmanken hans på plass så godt han kunne, og fant en vinkel som ikke avslørte de døde øynene. Det han så var mannens kropp i total overgivelse og ro. Med armene utstrakt og nevene halvåpne utenfor genserermet. Hodet hvilte på et alter velsignet med tente lys. Ingen kiste og staffasje. Bare steinvegg og ild.
Peder var inne i den. Døden. Skjønnheten. Med stor respekt og ydmykhet tok han flere bilder. Det fikk være hans måte å be fadervår over den døde.
# ANNA MÅ GI EN BESKJED
– Jeg vil ikke forstyrre ham, jeg var innom operasjonsstuen og vet han opererer. Dessuten er du den rette til å fortelle det, du vet jo hvor du skal finne ham, ikke sant? sa faren i telefonen.
Etterpå forsto hun at hun ikke fattet det straks. Budskapet. Hun var på nippet til å si at Benjamin og hun ikke var på talefot, og at det dessuten ikke passet henne å reise inn til Kjøbenhavn den dagen. Men det var simpelthen ikke slik man snakket til faren når han overbrakte et slikt budskap.
– Jeg vet ikke i hvor stor grad dette berører deg, men _ham_ berører det sikkert sterkt. Mannen var hans halvbror, ikke sant?
Hun bekreftet det. Så kom historien. Telefonisk kort. På farens tørre måte. Telegrammet fra unge Peder Olaisen.
_Johan død. Sender brev._ _Peder_.
– Det var alt? spurte hun.
– Det var alt. Jeg går ut fra at vi ser dere snart, sa faren. Det var ikke et spørsmål. Det var en ufravikelig, vennlig ordre.
Da Anna igjen sto i oppgangen til leiligheten, begynte hun å tvile. Angret at hun hadde tatt dette oppdraget. Hun hørte ennå den absolutte lyden da Benjamin sprang ned trappene.
Først hadde hun lagt seg i sengen i fordervet håp om at han kom tilbake. Så kledde hun på seg og ventet. Gikk uten mål rundt i den nesten tomme leiligheten uten at han kom. Da ville han vel ha et endelig brudd. Noe hun ikke kunne bebreide ham. Hennes oppførsel? Hun forsto den ikke selv. Trolig var det den verste gjerning hun hittil hadde gjort mot noen. Verre enn selve sviket?
Da hun måtte gå for å rekke siste tog, hadde hun tatt den ene av de to nøklene som lå på entréhyllen og låst etter seg så det ikke skulle stå åpent for rov og ran.
Nå gikk hun opp trappene, ringte på og ventet, i fall han var kommet fra hospitalet. Men ingen åpnet. Da trakk hun pusten dypt og låste seg inn. Noe kaldt og innestengt slo imot henne. Langsomt gikk hun fra rom til rom og ble sikker. Ingen hadde vært der siden hun forlot den. Og mens hun sto mellom de to stolene i stuen der de hadde sittet, gikk det opp for henne, det hun skulle tenkt på før hun gikk. Hun hadde tatt den ene nøkkelen med seg, den andre låste hun inne. I mellomtiden hadde trolig ikke Benjamin noen.
Det var to dager siden. Hvor hadde han gjort av seg i mellomtiden? Han var ikke hos foreldrene i alle fall. Hva var det faren hadde sagt? Benjamin opererte, så han ville ikke forstyrre ham. Da lå han i alle fall ikke under en sporvogn. Den sta Benjamin hadde ikke villet kontakte henne, men leid et losji et eller annet sted.
Hvor toskete kunne en voksen mann bli? tenkte hun. For i neste øyeblikk å se ham for seg. Hun hadde såret ham så dypt at han ikke orket å snakke til henne. Han var et menneske som hadde mistet noe det ikke kan kjøpslås om. Hun hadde tilbudt ham kroppen sin i bytte med seg selv. Hvem var hun blitt?
Og han? Orket ikke engang å kreve tilbake sin egen nøkkel for å komme inn. Hadde ikke engang tilkalt en låsesmed. Det gikk opp for henne at hun ikke kjente mannen sin. Eller hadde glemt at hun kjente ham.
Først _nå_ bekymret hun seg for hvordan han kunne greie å skjære i levende mennesker der oppe på Frederiks Hospital når han var så dypt såret. Eller likeglad med alt? Hun visste at han skulle besøke Karna dagen før, men hadde ikke sett ham. Hadde bare hastet av gårde fra arbeid fordi hun grudde for å møte ham. Fikk Joakim rett? _Han kommer til å hate deg_ , hadde han sagt.
Nå skulle hun i tillegg fortelle ham at Johan var død. Men først måtte hun finne ham. Han måtte tro at hun hadde låst ham ute med vilje, ikke av dumhet. For slik han kjente henne, så var hun simpelthen ikke så korttenkt.
Hun gikk til hospitalet og lot døren stå åpen i fall han skulle komme mens hun var borte. Der la hun igjen et lite brev hos portvakten, med beskjed om å komme hjem så fort han kunne. Da hun skrev dette ordet, _hjem_ , stoppet hun opp, men lot det stå. Det var jo det det var. Hjemmet _hans_.
På vei tilbake kjente hun plutselig at hun ikke hadde spist siden morgenmaten. Men hun kunne ikke gå inn noe sted å få en matbit. Han kunne jo komme imens. I stedet kjøpte hun med et måltid for to. Skinke, ost, brød, smør og vin – og gikk tilbake.
Hun åpnet vinduet og slapp inn den rå luften mens hun undersøkte hva som var i leiligheten. Hun fant et lite forråd av dekketøy og bestikk, såpe, håndklær. To kjeler, stekepanne og en moderne gasskomfyr. Og altså en ny seng. Hvordan kunne hun være så grusom at hun utfordret ham på akkurat dette punktet. Sengen.
Hun visste ikke hva hun skulle ta seg til. Skulle hun spise? Skulle hun legge seg uten å låse? Sove alene for åpen dør dersom han ikke kom? Og så i morgen tidlig gå til Frederiks Hospital og spørre etter ham? Og imens, hun fikk jo ikke sagt fra at hun ikke kom på kontoret. Skulle hun bare la alt skure til hun hadde fått kontakt med ham?
Da kirkeklokkene slo åtte, var han ennå ikke kommet. Hun forlot leiligheten uten å låse og gikk til losjiet over Det lille Apothek. Ydmyket seg. Spurte om det bodde en Benjamin Grønelv der. Mannen bak disken ristet på hodet og målte henne, som om han trodde hun var prostituert.
Da hun sto ute på gaten igjen, begynte det å snø. Store, våte filler. Våtere og våtere mens hun gikk. Den klasket ned over hatten og skuldrene. Ville ned mellom kåpekragen og sjalet. Ennå kunne hun nå siste bane til Hospitalbyen. Hun så for seg ansamlingen av våte mennesker på perrongen, i vognen. Så for seg den våte veien fra stasjonen til det huset hun ikke kalte hjem. Det laget seg til en klump i magen. Den arbeidet seg opp gjennom brystet og halsen. Hun frøs. Det regnet nå. Hauger av gammelt, vått løv klamret seg til skoene. Et par ganger skled hun og var på nippet til å falle. Men hun gikk ikke til banegården, hun gikk tilbake til leiligheten og kjente på et tullete sinne. Uten å vite om hun var sint på ham eller på seg selv.
Allerede utenfra så hun det. De fire opplyste vinduene i tredje etasje. Hun stanset opp på den andre siden av gaten under en lyktestolpe. Sukket. Løftet ansiktet mot slapset som rant nedover henne. Rant fra himmelen, dryppet fra gasslykten og videre ned i broleggingen. Hun rant innenfra. Gråt. Ganske rolig. Det bare rant.
Hun ble stående der til hun fikk samlet seg. Ville ikke gi ham inntrykk av at hun hadde gått i timevis og grått med en eneste tanke i hodet. At han skulle komme tilbake. Da hun gikk opp trappen, markerte hun seg ved å sette føttene bestemt ned på hvert trinn. Ville ikke komme uforberedt på ham, men la ham få tid til å summe seg. Og hun slapp å ringe på. Han hadde hørt henne, for han sto i den åpne døren. Sa ingenting, gikk bare til side så hun kunne komme inn. Tok den våte kåpen hennes og hengte den på knaggen i entreen. Viste henne inn til de to stolene i stuen som om det var første gang hun var der. Fikk henne til å sette seg. Knelte og begynte å knappe opp skoene. Dro dem av, slik han hadde gjort så mange ganger før. Satte dem ut i entreen. Kom tilbake med et håndkle og satte seg på stolen rett imot.
Med keitete bevegelser begynte han å kna hendene hennes i håndkleet. Først da husket hun at hun faktisk hadde hansker i kåpelommen. Han dro hattenålene av den våte hatten og løftet den av. Den ble liggende i en liten dam på gulvet.
– Du ba meg komme hjem så fort jeg kunne, sa han rustent.
– Ja, men..., begynte hun like rustent. – Først må jeg si... Jeg er så glad for at du er her nå. Og – jeg ber om unnskyldning for at jeg kunne være så tankeløs å låse deg ute. Du må tro meg når jeg sier at jeg ikke tenkte klart den dagen. Jeg tenkte bare på hvor galt alt var. Og jeg oppførte meg som en..., hun greide ikke å si ordet.
Han smilte. Først bare som en liten skjelving i munnvikene.
– Og _jeg_ skulle aldri ha gått. Jeg skulle prøvd å ta opp kampen selv om jeg hadde tapt, sa han og strøk seg over ansikt og hår i en eneste stor bevegelse.
– Har du spist? fortsatte han. – Jeg er så glad for at du har brakt mat i huset. Jeg er sulten som en ulv. Er du?
– Ja! Hun måtte smile, hun også. Lettelsen var så stor. Hun så seg fort omkring. – Har du et bord å sette maten på?
– Bord? Ikke i kveld. Må vi ha et bord?
– Nei, du store verden, det må vi da ikke, sa hun.
– Men vent litt, jeg har kofferter. De er ikke tømt ennå, men det gjør vel ingenting.
– Det gjør ingen verdens ting. Jeg kan hjelpe.
Da hun reiste seg, dryppet det av skjørtekanten og han ble stående litt rådvill og se på.
– Du er gjennomvåt, det er ingen grunn til at du skal bli syk, slo han fast med den rolige stemmen hun kjente så godt fra legekontoret.
Han gjorde en sving inn i soverommet, og hun hørte ham romstere. Mekanismen i en koffertlås. Et ras av myke og harde ting. Han kom tilbake med tom koffert, tøflene sine og en velbrukt slåbrok hun en gang hadde gitt ham.
– Ta alt vått av, sa han. – Du får ta til takke med mine strømper. Jeg henter.
Hun sto midt på gulvet med slåbroken hans i favnen. Kongeblå velur som luktet svakt av Benjamin, og noe annet. Doktorgården. Det store, lyse huset. Søndagsmorgener. Hun ventet til han kom ut fra soverommet med et par digre strømper til henne før hun gikk inn dit. Det ble umulig for henne _igjen_ å kle av seg foran øynene på ham.
Da hun kom ut i kostymet han hadde lånt henne, hadde han satt frem maten på kofferten mellom stolene, i det papiret den var kjøpt, og var i ferd med å trekke opp vinen. Hun hentet bestikk og glass.
Jeg vil ikke fortelle ham det nå, tenkte hun. Jeg vil vente. Vi har denne kvelden for om mulig å finne en slags forståelse. Jeg vil ikke la noe eller _noen_ ødelegge det. Ikke engang Johans død.
Var det mulig for dem å spise i fred med oppdekning på en koffert? I en tom leilighet som ikke heftet annet enn den ene dagen han hadde rømt fra.
– Hvor har du gjort av deg disse dagene? spurte hun skamfull.
– På kvisten i Frederiks Hospital er det mange kott. Og i et sykehus er det alltid madrasser å finne. Det var ikke akkurat luksus, men jeg hadde kort vei til arbeid, sa han lett uten å se på henne.
Han skjenket i et glass og ga henne. Skjenket til seg selv og prøvde å få det til å stå støtt på kofferten. Hun så at det ikke gikk og tok det uten å si noe.
– Du har rett, sa han bare og satte flasken på gulvet.
Hun rakte ham glasset.
– Fryser du? spurte han.
– Nei, jeg har det godt.
– Da skåler vi for at vi ikke fryser og at vi har det godt, sa han.
De spiste uten å si noe. Men vekslet blikk. Hun merket at han voktet henne. Etter hvert som maten ble fortært, fornemmet hun en tomhet. En felles tomhet.
– Takk for et herlig måltid, sa han, krøllet papiret hardt sammen og bar det ut på kjøkkenet.
Hun kveilet seg sammen i stolen og trakk slåbroken godt om seg. Da han satte seg igjen, løftet de glassene mot hverandre samtidig. Drakk.
– Og det du skulle si? Er det alvorlig? spurte han.
Det tok et øyeblikk før hun forsto hva han mente. Så gikk det opp for henne at han måtte ha tenkt på det hele tiden. Det hadde vært der hele tiden. Hun hadde bare vært så ufølsom at hun ikke hadde forstått det. Så måtte hun bare få det sagt.
– Far har fått telegram fra Peder... om Johan... Johan er død.
Han sperret opp øynene. Åpnet munnen og ville si noe, men lukket den igjen. Satte glasset mellom føttene og ble sittende litt fremoverbøyd med hendene på knærne.
– Benjamin? kalte hun og prøvde å strekke seg over kofferten til ham.
Avstanden var for stor. Hun reiste seg og ble stående litt. Skulle hun sette seg på fanget hans, eller skulle hun dra stolen sin bort til hans? Det ble til det siste. To grønne stoler med lave polstrede lener. Da hun hadde satt seg, så han litt forundret på henne og la hendene i fanget.
– Benjamin? kalte hun.
Det var som om han våknet.
– Ja, det er slik det er. Jeg har tenkt på det. Ofte. Vi flimrer forbi hverandre et øyeblikk. Så er det over. Vi rekker kanskje ikke engang å vedkjenne oss at vi ikke har greid å leve. Ikke sant, Anna?
Hun visste ikke hva hun skulle si, derfor ble det det enkleste.
– Nei, vi rekker det kanskje ikke...
Han løftet glasset og drakk. Løftet det en gang til og ble sittende og se på det.
– Du spør ikke om noe, sa hun etter en stund.
Han satte glasset fra seg.
– Nei, det får være som det er. Du sa det så fint en gang, Anna. Du sa: – _Men jeg lever_!
Hun grep hånden hans med begge sine og holdt fast.
– Johan? Han var en fremmed for meg. Jeg ble aldri kjent med ham. Han var Dinas. Jeg besøkte ham før jeg reiste hit. Han hadde laget seg et alter for Dina i den gamle vinkjelleren.
– Du bebreider ham fordi han fikk Karna til å holde den talen?
– Jeg vet ikke. Jeg vet ingenting. Ikke engang det enkleste om den som betyr mest for meg. Men jeg sier som deg, _jeg lever_!
– Du kjenner ikke sorg?
– Det gjør jeg helt sikkert. I morgen telegraferer jeg Peder om begravelsen.
– Du reiser vel ikke den lange veien?
Han svarte ikke.
– De kan ikke vente så lenge med å få ham i jorda, og det er for langt, mente hun.
– Jeg tror jeg er trett, Anna, sa han og reiste seg. På vei over gulvet ble han stående med bøyd hode.
– Vi mistet en pasient i dag. Heldigvis var det ikke min feil. Men jeg var der.
Det gikk opp for henne at han kanskje helt siden han leste at han måtte komme hjem, hadde håpet at beskjeden var den at hun ble hos ham.
– Jeg synes du skal sove nå, Benjamin. Det er snart midnatt.
– Og du?
– Jeg kommer snart, sa hun enkelt. Det var de samme replikkene de brukte når han hadde vært hos pasienter i utværene og ikke kom hjem før sent.
– Tar du første tog på arbeid i morgen?
– Nei, jeg blir her. Om du vil?
– På grunn av Johans død?
– Nei. På grunn av oss.
# BENJAMIN BLIR KALT FRA OPERASJONSSTUEN
Rommet skulle nok ha vært større. I alle fall når det var tilhørere. Det hadde store gasslysekroner over operasjonspodiet og var vakkert dekorert, som om det skulle vært et teater. Det var flere benkerader i amfi. De kalte det _Kirken_.
Et tjuetall studenter og kandidater hadde fulgt med fra amfiet. Bare _en_ var blitt båret ut. Det tydet på et stabilt kull. Men for sikkerhets skyld ble det gitt ordre om litt mer luft. En mann dro i tauet som gjorde at det store skrå glassvinduet som ga lys over operasjonsbordet, gled opp. Jernlodd holdt det i balanse, og noe som skulle være frisk luft seg ned over forsamlingen. Man kunne ikke akkurat si at det kom direkte fra himmelen, men via et loft. Gammelt støv dalte diskret ned med den klamme, kjølige luften.
Benjamin hadde assistert reservekirurgen med en amputasjon like under kneet. Ikke komplisert, men tidkrevende. De hadde nettopp avsluttet. Han hadde fått av seg armbind og forkle og registrerte den kvalme lukten av koldbrann fra den hvite emaljepøsen ved bordet.
– Doktor Grønelv har et godt lag med sagen, sa reservekirurgen nådig. Hendene hans hang dryppende over porselensfatet.
– Mange takk, sa Benjamin. Han var fornøyd selv også. Situasjonen hadde vært så mye lettere her enn sist han gjorde en amputasjon på sitt eget kontor. De hadde kommet med en fisker som hadde sklidd på dekk og drøyd altfor lenge før han kom seg til doktor. Det hadde gått koldbrann i ankelen hans. Han hadde måttet be en av karene som kom med ham om å assistere. Men mannen svimte av og ble liggende til ingen nytte. Det var et strev da blødningene ble store.
Det lærestykket var det ingen på amfiet som visste noe om. Ikke reservekirurgen heller. Da det på morgenmøtet ble spurt om noen av kandidatene hadde erfaring med amputasjon, hadde han bare løftet en hånd. Han ble ikke spurt om omstendighetene rundt. Man la seg ikke akkurat i støvet for andres bragder. Men i alle fall ble han plukket ut for å assistere.
Porselensfatene var ennå fylt med uartig innhold. Bøttene ved bordet også. Men reservekirurgen hadde tørket hendene. Operasjonsofferet var lagt på båre og hentet av portører, da en student prikket Benjamin på skulderen.
– Det er telefon til doktor Grønelv. Det var visst viktig.
Først kjente han ikke stemmen igjen. Metallisk skurrende gjennom røret. Han ble stående litt avventende.
– Det er Joakim Klim fra Hospitalet. Vi har truffet hverandre... Beklager forstyrrelsen. Det gjelder en pasient som vi begge kjenner.
– Er det noe galt med Karna?
– Nei, nei. Snarere tvert om. Men er det mulig for Dem å møte meg her på Hospitalet? Det gjelder opplysninger til hennes journal. Jeg finner ikke det jeg må ha, for å si det kort.
Lettelsen gjorde ham myk. Forbannet myk. Han fikk ikke tid til å tenke før han svarte.
– Selvsagt, dersom De trenger meg, så kommer jeg! Når? I dag?
– Bra! Klokken fem? På rommet ved overlegens kontor. Jeg skal være der i god tid, hørte han før han hørte klikket idet forbindelsen ble brutt.
*
Mannen sto i skjorteermene og holdt opp døren for ham. Det høyre ermet var brettet opp, det venstre hang løst uten knapping. Han ga ham hånden og beklaget at han hadde uroet ham ved å telefonere. Det skulle han ikke ha gjort. Det var korttenkt. En av hans personlige feil var utålmodighet. Og så var det slik at frøken Karnas journal, den var ikke nok til å få en total bakgrunn for sykdomsbildet.
– Men brevet De sendte med ved innleggelsen, har naturligvis vært til hjelp. Vær så god, sett Dem, sa reservelegen og dro frem en stol.
Selv satte han seg på en svingbar metallkrakk med hjul og lente seg halvveis til et skrivebord fylt opp av bøker, aviser og papir. Det var nesten ikke mulig å se mahogniplaten. Man fikk en følelse av å være hos en antikvar. Mannen lente albuen godt innpå papirbunken på bordet. Dyttet uvørent på den.
Benjamin tok seg i å ønske at papirene skulle havne på gulvet. Så rettet han seg opp i stolen, plutselig med reservekirurgens stemme i hodet.
_Doktor_ _Grønelv har et godt lag med sagen_.
Det virket stabiliserende på situasjonen. Og samtidig tenkte han på at dette gjaldt Karna. Jeg har ikke noe valg, jeg må inn i det. Med _ham_.
– Saken er at jeg ikke har nok opplysninger om pasientens fortid. Her er mange hvite felt i journalen, og det vil være til stor hjelp om jeg får fylt dem ut. Har De forresten hatt samtaler med overlegen, foruten den vi hadde sammen?
– Ja, en.
– Jeg kan ikke se at den er journalført. Men det kan være en feil.
– Den ble kanskje mer av privat karakter, sa Benjamin.
– De ba om at samtalen ikke skulle journalføres?
– Nei. Men jeg var enig da overlegen spurte.
Joakim Klim så på ham med et blankt blikk.
– Vel. Jeg håper De ikke har noe imot at denne blir det?
– Absolutt ikke! Benjamin prøvde å finne riktig stilling i stolen. Den fantes visst ikke.
– Kan jeg begynne? spurte reservelegen.
Benjamin nikket uten å si noe.
– De må endelig stoppe meg dersom De synes spørsmålene er krenkende eller ikke har noe med saken å gjøre.
Benjamin nikket igjen. Han åpnet jakken.
– Tilgi, jeg burde by Dem noe å drikke, sa mannen og reiste seg. Fant to glass og skjenket fra en karaffel på et sidebord. Dro sidebordet mellom dem og satte seg igjen.
– Vil De ikke også ta av Dem jakken, det er varmt her, ikke sant?
Benjamin tok av seg jakken og drakk litt av glasset. Da han satte det ned, ble han var to flytende ringer på mahognien.
Reservelegen satt som om han tenkte seg om før spørsmålet.
Hadde han ikke forberedt seg? Men bare innkalt meg bare for å plage meg? Bare for å vise meg hvem som sitter med intelligens og makt her?
– De noterer ikke? spurte Benjamin.
– Hva? Nei, ikke før etterpå. Jeg foretrekker samtaler, notater gjør at jeg mister kontakt.
– Husker De da hva jeg har sagt? Eller stoler De på intuisjon?
Han visste at han ikke skulle ha sagt det. Visste at det blottstilte uvilje. Visste at det ikke gagnet Karna.
– Et relevant spørsmål, sa den andre og betraktet ham åpent. – Jeg skal sende Dem referat fra samtalen, så kan De signere, eller protestere. Er det greit?
– Utmerket! sa Benjamin og drakk av vannglasset.
Reservelegen fylte opp.
– Journalen fra innleggelsen opplyser at pasienten hadde en hard fødsel som kostet moren livet? begynte han.
– Ja, sa Benjamin og tenkte at han ikke orket å snakke om det.
– Vi har prøvd å finne en mulig fysisk hodeskade uten resultat. Hadde hodet en vanlig fødselsstilling?
Benjamin flyttet seg litt på stolen. Hendene grep om lenene.
– Nei, ryggen lå mot åpningen. Jeg måtte snu henne.
– Du... Du var der? Du var lege på den tiden? sa mannen og lente seg frem på krakken. De var visst plutselig dus igjen, akkurat som på kneipen i Kjøbenhavn.
– Ja, akkurat ferdig. Omstendighetene var slik at jeg _måtte_ prøve å forløse.
– Hadde du instrumenter? Brukte du tang?
– Nei. Hendene... Måtte snu hele kroppen.
– I mors liv?
Han skulle til å spørre: _Hvor ellers_? Men han nikket.
Den andre rettet seg opp igjen og ble sittende uten å si noe.
– Hva hadde skjedd dersom du ikke hadde greid å snu barnet? spurte han etter hvert.
– Navlestrengen lå to ganger rundt halsen...
– Det var litt av en bragd! Jeg har aldri vært i nærheten av noe slikt, sa mannen med anerkjennelse i stemmen.
Var han ekte eller falsk? tenkte Benjamin.
– De anfallene hun har, _kan_ skyldes en skade ved fødselen, uten at du på noen måte må bebreide deg. Du reddet livet hennes.
– Moren døde.
– Ja. Tragisk. Men jeg kan ikke se at du på noen måte må klandre deg selv, dersom du tenker på det, sa mannen bestemt.
– Du var ikke der, sa Benjamin.
– Nei, men jeg vet litt om hvor lite som skal til. Og jeg har aldri vært alene med ansvaret. En ting til, det har aldri vært mitt eget barn. Skal vi gå videre, eller vil du ha en pause?
– Videre, sa Benjamin og kjente på noe merkelig. Hadde det ikke vært for dette forbannede, med Anna, så kunne han ha likt fyren. Men han ville ikke ha det.
– Jeg deler ikke det syn mange av mine kollegaer har, at hysteri og epilepsi nødvendigvis hører sammen. Men jeg er ennå ingen kapasitet...
Dette _ennå ingen kapasitet_ var så utålelig selvbevisst at man kunne le, tenkte Benjamin. Men han lo ikke. Han lyttet. Ventet.
– Det er for sent og litt latterlig dersom jeg nå skulle fortsette å si _De_. Ikke sant? spurte Joakim Klim.
– Jo.
– Da er vi dus. Jeg heller til den teori at mennesket ikke er født hysteriker. Men at noe, eller noen, har påvirket, eller utløst det. Og selv om din datter hadde denne svakheten fra hun var liten, så har hun fungert såkalt normalt, slik du så tydelig beskrev henne i brevet. Til og med gått på skole.
– Hun greide seg utmerket, bortsett fra uregelmessige, og i perioder hyppige epileptiske anfall.
– Var det noe mønster..., noe som særlig utløste det?
– Som regel kom det uten at vi skjønte hvorfor. Av og til dersom hun var sint, sliten eller redd. Vi prøvde å ignorere at det kunne skje, helt til det skjedde. Ellers er jeg redd hun ville levd i en tvangstrøye av omsorg.
– Bra!
Reservelegen tok en rask bevegelse mot papirbunken og fikk den bedre inn på bordet.
– Hun har greid seg godt – helt til talen i sin farmors begravelse?
– Ja, svarte Benjamin fort.
– Har hun aldri før mistet taleevnen?
– Nei, aldri. Snarere tvert om. Og hun hadde en god sangstemme. Han skulle til å nevne at Anna hadde ment at hun skulle bodd et annet sted der hun kunne fått sangundervisning, men greide det ikke. Kunne ikke si _Anna_.
– Da vil jeg gjerne gå rett på sak, det jeg mener er kjernen i din datters sykdomsbilde. Nemlig sjokket. Sjokket over å være den som står ved sin farmors båre i kirken og forteller de oppmøtte at den personen som står henne nær, farmor, har drept to menn.
– Hvordan kan han være så sikker?
– Jeg kan ikke være sikker, det er en teori. Si meg, visste du hva hun skulle si?
– Nei.
– Visste noen andre hva hun skulle si? At hun skulle opptre som et slags vitne?
– _En_ person visste det nok. Presten. Han var hennes onkel og min halvbror.
– Presten visste om farmorens illgjerninger?
– Det tror jeg... Eller det kan jeg ikke si... Er dette et rettsforhør?
– På ingen måte. Jeg prøver bare å forstå om dette unge mennesket satte dette i scene selv, eller om noen andre gjorde det og slik tvang henne inn i en situasjon hun ikke var sterk nok til å tåle. Min logiske tanke bygger videre på andres teori, den at både sjokk og epilepsi kan påvirke taleevne, hysteri og sinnssykdom. Jeg kjenner ikke presten, men tror du at han satte dette i scene?
– I så fall uten vond vilje. Han døde nettopp, så han kan ikke svare for seg.
– Og din mor var død da dere fant henne?
– Min mor... Hun hadde fryktelige brannskader, men døde ikke med en gang. Det var et inferno av smerte og... Hun hadde samtaler med Karna før hun..., han greide ikke å fullføre.
En lyngmo la seg imellom. Et teppe av røsslyng og gammelt slagg. I slagget lå russeren og stirret på Karnas reservelege.
– Kunne din mor ha bedt henne om det?
– Ja. Men uten å fatte hva hun krevde, fikk han sagt.
– Er du sikker på det? At hun ikke forsto hva hun krevde? Mannen på krakken så forskende på ham.
– Sier du at hun kunne...
– Nei. Jeg spør deg hva du tror?
Benjamin lukket øynene. Åpnet dem igjen og møtte den andres blikk.
– Nei! Det er umulig. Hun fattet ikke konsekvensene. Min mor var ikke ond, sa han.
Reservelegen så rolig på ham.
– Hun tok livet av to menn.
– Ja, sa Benjamin og tømte vannglasset.
Reservelegen reiste seg og grep den tomme karaffelen. En fjern sildring et sted. Han kom tilbake og satte karaffelen uvørent på mahognien. Hvor mange ringer var det nå?
– Hvorfor gjorde hun det? Var det noe i hennes natur? spurte mannen og satte seg på krakken igjen.
– Hennes historie er vel ikke relevant for saken, sa Benjamin.
– Jeg er redd den er. To drap var neppe en tilfeldighet. Men kanskje et mønster for å oppveie andre muligheter.
Benjamin nikket uten å si noe.
– Disse to mennene, ofrene, de svek henne?
– Kanskje. Det vet jeg ikke.
– Tror du din mor var i stand til å bedømme at hennes gjerninger kunne føre til død?
– Du mener, om hun var utilregnelig, eller gal? spurte Benjamin.
– Du kan godt bruke de ordene.
– Jeg har ikke noen som helst grunn til å legge en slik diagnose på Dina. Hun hadde kløkt og mot til å få til det hun bestemte seg for. Hun var... usedvanlig.
– En varm og beskyttende mor?
– Nei, hun var mer slik en far ville vært om jeg hadde hatt en.
Joakim Klim la det ene kneet over det andre og armen tungt på papirbunken på bordet. Den var helt ute av fasong igjen.
– Jeg forstår... Og jeg tror at for å forstå Karnas historie, så må man forstå hennes farmors historie. Og for så vidt også hennes fars.
– Min morfars? spurte Benjamin vantro.
– Nei _din_ , sa Joakim Klim.
– Hva mener du?
– Det vet jeg ikke ennå. Men om du tillater, så vil jeg prøve å finne det ut.
– Jeg er ikke syk, straffet eller på annen måte..., begynte Benjamin trett.
– Nei, det er helt klart, avbrøt den andre. – Glem det. Men kan jeg spørre? Var det noen vitner til det siste drapet?
– Vitner?
– Var din mor og russeren alene da hun skjøt ham?
Benjamin tvang seg til å se opp.
– Det kommer an på... hvordan man ser det, fikk han frem.
– Og hvordan ser du på det?
– Det var lang avstand... Et par hundre meter. Jeg var bare en gutt..., sa Benjamin.
Den andre lot tiden gå før han fortsatte.
– Og så? Hvem sa du det til? hørte Benjamin langt borte.
– Ingen. Det ville ødelagt oss alle.
Joakim Klim drakk av vannglasset sitt. Fylte begges glass opp til randen.
– Ja, sa mannen og satte de intense øynene sine i ham. – Men senere. Du giftet deg og hadde en fortrolig?
Benjamin tok seg sammen. Visste at mannen _så_ at han tok seg sammen. Så satt de der i en slags fortrolighet, tenkte han. En fortrolighet om hva Anna visste.
– Du forstår det, ikke sant? Du forstår at dette vil jeg ikke dele med deg, sa han kaldt.
– Det er heller ikke vesentlig. Saken er at det var _du_ som var vitne til din mors gjerning. Det er _du_ som har båret på dette siden du var barn. Og nå, så lenge etter, har du kanskje nøkkelen til å redde Karna.
– Hvordan?
– Jeg vet ikke helt. Famler i blinde. Men har funnet ut at hun ennå kan lese og skrive, dersom hun vil. Samtidig er det mot sin hensikt å presse viljen hennes. Flere ganger har jeg fått henne til å bevege seg når en annen pasient nynner. I en slags dans. Jeg nevnte det så vidt da vi møttes på overlegens kontor. Vi har flere eksempler på at de pasientene som finner en nisje, en vei ut av isolasjon, dem er det håp for. Det være seg håndverk, musikk, broderi, kunst. Derfor... Kan jeg be om at dere begge foreldre, _samtidig_ , er til stede neste gang jeg legger til rette for at hun danser?
– Selvsagt, sa Benjamin. – Jeg gjør hva som helst! Men hvorfor samtidig?
– Fordi Karna _ikke_ har opplevd dere sammen siden hun kom hit. Det kan være at det kan provosere frem en vending.
– Overlegen har advart mot å provosere. Han vil unngå at hun reagerer med epileptisk anfall.
– Ja, jeg vet det. Men du har jo vært hos henne flere ganger nå. At _du_ alene er der vil neppe provosere frem en vending. Men å se dere _sammen_.
– Det høres luftig ut, sa Benjamin.
– Dette faget er mer luftig enn legfolk kan tenke seg, eller professorer kan dokumentere.
– Men hva får _deg_ til å tro at vendingen kan komme når hun ser oss sammen?
– Dere representerer tryggheten. Det bestandige. De som ikke svikter.
Benjamin satte øynene i ham. Hvorfor brukte han _det_ ordet? Hva var det han ville? Var hele seansen bare for å demonstrere makt?
Uten å vente på svar fortsatte reservelegen.
– Du har jo tatt hånd om hennes anfall før hun kom hit. Det er sikkert ingen som kan håndtere situasjonen bedre. Nå er det slik at det er overlegens tur til å være bortreist en tid. Han vil derfor ikke ha noen innvendinger. Og _jeg_ er ikke så redd for aggresjon. Derfor vil jeg gjøre et forsøk på å få henne tilbake til nullpunktet. Før sjokket. Da var dere der, _sammen_.
Benjamin ble sittende og se på ham.
– Vel, fortsatte den andre. – Jeg må innrømme at dette er intuisjon, mer enn fag, og at det bare vil være hell om vi når henne.
– Vanlige anfall kan jeg håndtere, bare ved å være der. Men aggresjon..., sa Benjamin.
– Det kan jeg ta meg av, sa mannen rolig.
– Hvordan? Med tvangstrøye og reimer?
– Nei, jeg holder henne. Utfordringen er den at dere må tåle å se det, eller gå. Og går dere, kan det utløse mer raseri. Da må vi medisinere.
– Og hvor lenge har du tenkt å holde henne.
– Den tiden det tar.
Benjamin målte ham med åpenlys skepsis.
– Hvorfor gjør du dette? Stikk imot overlegens råd?
Reservelegen nølte litt før han svarte.
– Jeg antar... at jeg har en interessant og krevende pasient som jeg gjerne vil hjelpe. Men dersom du ber meg om å gå i meg selv, så er drivkraften utvilsomt å tilfredsstille mitt ego og vinne faglig anerkjennelse. Lykkes jeg med Karna, og kan dokumentere det, så er det altså ikke fordi jeg er et godt menneske.
– Du... Du streber? utbrøt Benjamin.
– Siden du spør, så _ja_ , mye tyder på at jeg er en som streber.
– Betyr det at du ikke legger følelser i det, bare tilfeldig behandling? utfordret Benjamin.
Mannen møtte blikket hans og tok seg tid.
– Ingenting av betydning her i verden kan gjøres uten følelser. Når jeg behandler Karna, så tilstreber jeg å være i _Karnas_ følelser. Bare slik kan jeg løse gåten. Det betyr ikke at jeg går over lik for å nå mine mål.
– Og hva går det hele ut på?
– Det er mulig dere ikke vil merke det dersom jeg ikke lykkes.
# DEN RØDE KJOLEN
Gasslyktene over døren var slukket. Dagslyset eide allerede alle ting i rommet. Da var det morgen. Dagvakten hentet fru Bentsen. Karna hørte protestene hennes hele hospitalgangen ned. Hun skulle vel undersøkes. Kanskje kles av og uanstendiggjøres.
Men da de kom tilbake, tasset hun inn til henne helt andpusten av iver.
– Som den gode fru Grønelv kan spille når jeg bare nynner med, sa hun triumferende.
Karna sto ved vinduet og snudde seg ikke. Hun ville ikke ha det. Ville ikke vite noe om Annas øving med dette umusikalske mennesket. Fru Bentsen forsto det ikke, og skravlet bare videre mens hun uavbrutt holdt kluten opp til nesen. Først da Karna trampet hardt i gulvet, gikk hun.
Men pinen ble liggende igjen etter henne. Eller det tomme hylsteret hennes. Som om rommet skammet seg over henne, Karna, og ikke ville ha henne. Som om det var hun selv som var i det tomme hylsteret. Der ble hun stående.
Doktor Klim sto utenfor vinduet og snakket med Anna. Hun visste at han var den ekte, for russeren kunne ikke være utenfor. Dessuten hadde hun ikke sett ham siden boken om Saturn åpnet seg for doktor Klim og de skrev sammen.
Anna så ikke glad ut. Doktor Klim sto litt på avstand og sa noe med uttrykket til en som ber. Hun kunne ikke høre hva de sa, men han ville nok at Anna skulle være glad. Men hun ristet på hodet. Han holdt hendene med håndflatene åpne mot henne og la hodet på skakke mens han sa noe. Da hun endelig nikket, smilte han bredt. Doktor Klim ville at Anna skulle være glad.
Det ville Karna også. Ofte fikk hun det ikke til. Da hugg en sprøyte henne i brystet og fikk henne til å ønske at Anna skulle gå. Og ofte ble det slik. Når hun snudde seg, så var de gått. Og nå. Der ute. Anna snudde seg og gikk. Notene stakk opp fra den åpne vesken. I det samme så doktor Klim opp og oppdaget henne i vinduet. Da han vinket, kunne hun se varmen som strømmet ut fra frakken og det bare hodet hans. Som om han gikk rundt og tinte frost med Saturns ring rundt seg.
Om ettermiddagen gikk doktor Klim stuegang. Hun hørte at han snakket med søster Agnes i hospitalgangen. Så stakk han hodet innenfor.
– Kan Karna ta på den røde kjolen? For min skyld. Søster Agnes hjelper.
Han kom helt inn, bøyde seg over sengen og så på henne.
– For min skyld? gjentok han. Så rettet han seg opp og var borte.
Hun sto opp og gikk til skapet. Kjolen tagg henne om å ta den på. Da hun sto og plundret med knappene, kom søster Agnes. Pratet som hun pleide med stemmen til en unge. Sa at hun var fin. Det hørtes dumt, men var ikke vondt ment. Da Agnes var gått, satte hun seg på stolen og ventet. I dag kom de sist til henne.
Hvorfor hadde han sagt _for min skyld_?
Hun fomlet med det røde skjørtet. Det var mykt. På sidene var det lommer i sømmen. Hendene gled inn i lommene, nesten uten at hun hadde gjort noe for det. Lommer var der for at man skulle ha noe i dem.
Det var lenge siden hun hadde eid noe hun kunne ha i en lomme. Den gale med prestekrage bar alltid på en pose med ting i. Den brune fuglen sto i vinduskarmen. Hun reiste seg og gikk dit bort. Hånden hennes gjemte den akkurat. Den var knudrete. Hadde nok ligget i flammene. Hun slapp den likevel ned i lommen og kjente seg straks glad. Det var som å stå opp den tredje dagen etter febersyke. Man så alt gjennom en ullen skjønnhet. Lyset. Det var vondt. Likevel godt.
Hun gikk frem og tilbake med fuglen for at den skulle venne seg til å være i mørket. Fugler skulle ikke være i lommer, de skulle fly. Men denne måtte være hos henne. Det tok tid å venne seg til å være i en lomme. Men det gikk nok. Hun ville den ikke noe vondt. Bare at den skulle være der hos henne.
Doktor Klim sto i døren og slo hendene sammen. De som fulgte etter ham, slo også hendene sammen. Det var den røde kjolen som gjorde det. Fuglen så de jo ikke.
– Den kjolen er vakker! sa han. – Det er synd dersom ikke alle får se den. Vil du gå en ekstra stuegang med meg? Vi tar en sving innom fru Bentsen. Hun klager over romkameraten sin og har en dårlig dag. Vi muntrer henne litt, ikke sant?
Han strakte hånden ut etter hennes. Men hånden hennes måtte passe på fuglen.
– Du skulle ta noe på føttene. Det trekker når de setter opp dørene, sa søster Agnes.
Hun stakk føttene i tøflene for å få fred.
– Jeg synes du skulle ta på deg sko, sa doktor Klim. En så vakker kjole krever sko. Han gikk til skapet og fant skoene hennes. Svarte. Med snøring og knapper. Pleiersken hjalp henne, mens doktor Klim sto der og smilte. Så gikk hun sammen med ham bortover hospitalgangen.
Fuglen rørte på seg i hånden hennes. Nå gikk de sammen, alle tre. Han tok altfor lange skritt. Hun måtte nesten løpe for å holde tritt. Det var ingen artighet nede hos deliristene i dag heller. Hun tenkte på russeren. Han kom ikke lenger.
Fru Bentsen satt i nattkjolen i sengen. Hun var alltid nøye med å ha på nattluen. Nesekluten holdt hun i hånden. Slik så hun helt forsvarsløs ut. Som om hun ba folk om å være snille og gå stille i dørene. Det var jo forgjeves på et slikt sted. Men det visst hun ikke, for hun var helt gal.
Nå bøyde doktor Klim seg ned til henne og sa noe. Det skulle visst være en hemmelighet som ingen andre visste. Så tok han et skritt bakover. Sto like ved siden av henne. Alle så på fru Bentsen som pustet dypt inn og lukket øynene, som om hun skulle stått i farmors spisesal og ventet på signal. Så begynte hun å nynne. Ganske lavt først, så sterkere.
Men det var feil melodi. Hun hadde aldri nynnet denne før. Man kunne ikke danse etter denne melodien.
Det var en salme. Den Anna pleide å synge i kirken. Den gale damen med prestekragen var kommet til. Nå dyttet hun alle som sto i veien til side og stilte seg opp sammen med doktoren. Himlet med øynene. Munnen var vidåpen. Fru Bentsen nynnet falskt nå. Hun kunne virkelig ikke melodien.
Da lød det sang bakfra et sted. Fra hospitalgangen. Eller utenfra. Anna? Ja! Det ble sterkere, tydeligere, nærmere. Alle snudde seg og ville høre. Ville se. Men ikke _hun_. Det var ikke verdt. Annas sang fylte hospitalgangen og rommet. Tydelig og rent. Nå sto hun der like foran fru Bentsens seng sammen med doktoren. Det var ikke klokt å se på henne. Hun kunne komme ut av det. Anna sang alltid rent. Formet hvert ord helt tydelig.
Så plutselig ble alt spolert. Annas stemme grumset seg til. Hun bøyde hodet og sang ikke mer. Hun gråt. Det hjalp ikke hvor fortvilet fru Bentsen prøvde å nynne. Kvalt og skingrende. Alt ble ødelagt.
Karna tok et skritt frem. Fuglen i lommen. Stemmen i kjolen. Annas sang måtte reddes. Nå! Anna dummet seg aldri ut. Det skulle ikke skje.
Hun fylte den røde kjolen med pust. Formet ord med leppene. Først kom de ikke ut, ble bare en skurring. Så samlet tonene seg og fant sin plass. Tungen gled rundt i munnhulen som om den endelig var kommet hjem og visste hva den skulle. Smøg seg mellom ordene uten å smekke eller slå. Og pusten – den strømmet fritt. Hun pustet til stemmen i den røde kjolen.
_Om alle mine lemmer_
_Var full av bare sang_ ,
_Om de så høyt istemmer_
_At det i skyen klang_ ,
_Og sang jeg dag og natt_ ,
_Jeg kunne ei gjengjelde_
_Med takk Guds rikes skatt_.
_Om alt jeg skal fortelle_
_Fra mine ungdomsår_ ,
_Hvad skjebne og tilfelle_
_Jeg da å minnes får_ ,
_Jeg kan dog annet ei_
_Enn i forundring falle_
_Ved Guds husholdnings vei_.
_La livets kilde rinne_
_Så ingen stopper den!_
_Din nådesol la skinne_
_Mens tider farer hen!_
_La lykkes Jesu navn_ ,
_Så vi vår vei kan finne_
_Inn i din faderfavn!_
Stillhet. Uhyggelig stillhet. Fru Bentsens nynning var opphørt. Anna sto og holdt om armene sine. Deliristene var stille. Doktor Klim sto med bøyd hode uten å se på noen. Så var han vel like forvirret som hun over at alt var blitt som det ble.
Fru Bentsen hadde mistet nattluen. Den lå på gulvet. Alle visste at hun uten luen og nesekluten sin var bitte liten i verden og skulle beskyttes.
Men det var ikke fru Bentsen de stormet til, det var henne. De presset seg inn døren. Kom bakfra. Man kunne ikke stanse dem. De laget støy. Rop. De krafset på henne. De kom med et drønn.
Da slo flammene mot taket. Reinsnes brant! Sangen hadde påkalt det. Sangen husket alt. Hun sto der igjen og kunne ingenting gjøre, bare synge.
Farmor var i flammene. Hanna. Så kom skrikene. Deliristene skrek. Fru Bentsen. Den gale damen med prestekragen. Hun måtte berge dem, men kunne ikke. Det var håpløst for sent. Hun sanset at doktor Klim så på henne. Voktet henne. Men det var for sent.
Anna gråt igjen. Strakte hendene mot henne og hikstet. Og pappa! Hun hadde ikke sett at han var der.
Rundt dem brant galskap og ondskap i et eneste stort rop.
# ANNA SAMLER RESTER
Karna kastet kroppen hit og dit i en uforståelig kamp. Men hun sto. Øynene var ville. Anna så angsten i kampen hennes. Det var tydelig at hun opplevde ting de ikke så. Nå sprang hun mot døren og slo etter pleiersken som kom til. De andre pasientene vek og ble stående og glo hverandre over skulderen.
Joakim nådde Karna ute i hospitalgangen og låste armene om henne. Anna registrerte at han snakket mens han prøvde å løfte henne opp og bære henne. Men Karna kjempet og slo.
Først sto Benjamin og fulgte dem med øynene. Så bykset han etter. Tok et godt tak om jentas liv bakfra. Løftet den sparkende og kavende kroppen opp med et rykk og bar henne foran seg bortover hospitalgangen.
Kvinnen som hadde nynnet det hele i gang, la seg ned i sengen med ryggen til mens hun mumlet _Nei-nei-nei_. Men ingen enset henne. Pleiersken ropte til Joakim som hastet av gårde.
– Trøyen?
– Nei, var svaret.
Anna fulgte etter den merkelig kjempende delegasjonen.
Inne i cellen var det som om Karna plutselig ga opp kampen. Benjamin satte henne ned, men holdt. Armene hans lå fast om livet hennes, men han løsnet grepet. Det var tydelig at hun strevde med å få puste. Begynte å slite i kjolebrystet. Han løsnet grepet litt til og sa navnet hennes igjen og igjen.
Da slet hun seg løs og styrtet mot vinduet. Tok opp noe av lommen, slo det mot ruten så det singlet inn over gulvet. Så kastet hun lynraskt noe ut. Det skjedde så fort.
Benjamin nådde først frem og grep henne om livet som sist. Karna dunket hodet mot veggen. Støttet seg med flate hender, dunket og dunket mens han prøvde å dra henne bort.
Joakim gikk imellom veggen og jenta og tok grep om armene hennes. Blodårene på halsen hans utvidet seg. Han holdt det han var kar om mens hun hamret hodet mot brystet hans. De to mennene sto der og stampet med den spede jenta som hadde utenkelige krefter.
– Medisin? peste Benjamin til sist.
– Nei, vi lar henne komme igjennom, stønnet Joakim. Han holdt henne med en arm og brukte den andre til å presse hodet hennes i ro mot kroppen sin.
Dagvakten var kommet farende da hun hørte singling av glass. En av de verste lydene man kunne høre. Et stygt rop om hjelp var ingenting mot singling av glass. Hun visste hva hun skulle gjøre. Kost og brett, og tralle med forbindinger.
– Anna, løs opp kjolen. Det er noe med den kjolen, sa Joakim og vendte hodet mot henne.
Hun var der på et øyeblikk, fant den øverste knappen. Fiklet, men fikk det til. Fem knapper. Den ene etter den andre.
– Vi skal ta av kjolen nå, Karna, så blir alt bedre. Varsomt, bare varsomt. Så, så, det er bare kjolen. Den skal av, sa Joakim rolig.
Da Karna slo, dukket han. Da hun satte neglene i ansiktet hans, lot han det bare skje.
– Skal du bli kvitt kjolen, så må du hjelpe til, sa han med fordreid ansikt i grepet hennes.
Men hun hadde satt klør i ham. Og hun holdt. Kinnene hans forsvant inn i jentenevene.
– Hjelp meg, Karna, hjelp meg..., presset han ut mellom hendene hennes.
– Du e ikkje russern! freste hun. Små spyttklaser traff ham i ansiktet.
– Nei, jeg er Joakim. Vi skal hjelpe deg av med denne kjolen. Det er over nå. Anna og Benjamin er her. Vi er her. Sammen. Det er over nå...
Karna slapp taket i ansiktet hans. Kloremerkene skiftet farge. Rødt piplet ut mellom alt det grå og hvite. Da jentekroppen ble slapp, fikk de av henne kjolen i fellesskap mens hun stirret på dem etter tur. Så bøyde hun seg fremover. Oppkast kom i kraftige sprut. Det traff Benjamins armer og hender og la seg på Joakims bryst, før det rant ned på gulvet. Mellom Karnas føtter hadde det lagt seg en gul dam.
– Det verste er over nå, sa Benjamin da han hadde lagt henne i sideleie på sengen og rykningene hadde gitt seg.
Så sto de der og så henne flyte bort fra dem. Ut og bort. De vrengte øynene lukket seg med flakkende øyefranser. Pusten rant siplende inn og ut mellom blålige lepper. Krigen var over for denne gang.
Søster Agnes hadde brakt vann og håndkle og ville vaske Karna.
Men Anna ristet på hodet og brettet opp kjoleermene.
– Så skal fru Grønelv ha forkle på, sa søster Agnes bestemt og gikk ut.
Men Anna ventet ikke, hun var systematisk i gang.
– Dere skal også gå, sa hun til mennene.
Og de gikk. Sammen. Hun greide ikke å veksle blikk med noen av dem.
Etterpå. Etter at vakten hadde feid vekk alle glasskår, og en mann i kjeledress med stort spetakkel hadde satt inn en plate mellom de åpne sprossene. Etter å ha sittet på stolen foran sengen en stund og sett at alt forløp som hjemme etter et hardt anfall, og at Karna sov rolig. Etter det – gikk Anna under vinduet og lette etter det Karna hadde kastet ut.
Akkurat da lød klokken på sørgavlen av kirketårnet som varslet mat. Og personalet fra avdelingen kom med spann som ble skubbet ut gjennom luken fra kjøkkenet i kjelleren. En av dem ropte muntert noe hun ikke kunne tyde.
Hun fant den brune fuglen av gips. Utrolig nok var den hel. Den lå omgitt av spredte blinkende glasskår.
Da hun gikk opp trappen i kontorfløyen, hørte hun stemmene deres. Døren til reservelegenes rom sto åpen.
– Ho song! utbrøt Benjamin på sitt eget språk og reiste seg da hun kom inn. – Et under. Fleire vers!
Joakim reiste seg også og dro frem en stol til henne. Han hadde tatt av seg den tilsølte legefrakken, men hadde ennå oppkast på det ene buksebeinet.
Hun begynte å le, men raskt ble det gråt.
– Hun sover. De passer på henne, sa hun og satte seg.
Mennene satte seg også. Benjamin strakte seg mot henne. Løftet hånden mot skulderen hennes, men lot den falle.
– Vi måtte snakke sammen. Vi bare _måtte_ snakke sammen etter slik en seier, sa Joakim.
Hun ble klar over at de hadde sittet der lenge. De to. Hun var den som kom utenfra og ikke visste hva de hadde snakket om. De delte noe viktig seg imellom. Men hun nikket. Tørket seg under øynene, trodde hun smilte og nikket. Falt liksom sammen der i stolen.
Reservelegen og den studerende kirurgen tok opp samtalen igjen. Snakket om faglig usikkerhet. Om det hadde vært riktigere å medisinere henne i søvn, fremfor å provosere frem raseri og anfall. Men nei. Da kunne de ha stoppet en prosess. Da hadde hun kanskje ikke kommet med replikken _Du e ikkje russern_! De snakket om at neste fase var at hun sa flere setninger. At hun bare måtte få rase ut til siste slutt.
Anna så seg selv. Den ufaglærte pårørende. Kvinnen som gråt. Hun så mennene. Benjamin. Både far og lege som mente at reservelegen hadde tatt den riktige beslutningen. Joakim. Den selvkritiske reservelegen som lyttet. Han satt på en jernkrakk med ryggen mot skrivebordet og med konsentrert spørrende blikk, som om han ba om råd. Han så på dem begge, men henvendte seg til Benjamin.
Hun var kommet ubedt inn i menns faglige verden.
Anna kjente seg uvel. Hadde vel vært uvel hele tiden. Hun unnskyldte seg og gikk på toalettet. Der kastet hun opp. Rett og slett kastet opp. Kroppen kjentes mørbanket. Skuldrene og nakken låst. Hun lengtet etter å gjøre som Karna. Sove.
Bøyd over sin egen elendighet slo det henne hvor tilfeldig alt var. Hadde ikke hun tatt til å gråte midt i sin egen sang, så hadde kanskje ikke Karna begynt å synge. Og hvorfor hadde hun begynt å gråte? Jo. Hun så scenen for seg. Flammene. Alle som sto rundt det overtente huset den vakre junidagen. De trodde de visste hvem som var der inne. Og de kunne ingenting gjøre.
Hun drakk litt vann fra kranen. Tok vann i begge hender og lot det sildre over ansiktet. Det hjalp. Hun kjente seg litt bedre. Men hun skulle gjerne hatt losjiet sitt nå. Bare gått dit og lagt seg til å sove. Alene. Det var underlig. For hun var jo glad. Så inderlig glad for denne utrolige dagen med Karna.
Begge mennene så opp da hun kom tilbake. Smilende, som velfungerende brødre. Da hun hadde satt seg, fortsatte de samtalen. Hun greide ikke å følge med. Ikke før Benjamin bøyde seg frem mot Joakim og utbrøt:
– Jeg må takke...
– Takk _henne_. Hun foreslo å synge det siste Karna sang før hun sluttet å snakke, sa Joakim.
Benjamin så forundret på Anna.
– Men... Du var ikke der... under brannen, sa han.
– Jeg har vel fått det fortalt, mumlet hun.
– Hvem fortalte det? Joakims stemme kom liksom utenfra.
– Det husker jeg ikke, sa hun matt.
– Vi trodde at hun også var inne i huset, sa Benjamin og så ned.
– Du trodde at Anna var inne i det brennende huset? spurte Joakim med et konsentrert blikk på Benjamin.
– Ja. Det var det alle sa. Det var uvirkelig. Jeg husker ikke...
– Trodde Karna også at Anna var inne i huset? avbrøt Joakim.
– Det vet jeg ikke?
– Dere snakket ikke om det? Etterpå? sa Joakim og bøyde seg frem.
– Det var ikke tiden for å _snakke_ , Joakim. Det forstår du vel! sa hun nesten sint. Hun sa navnet hans, _Joakim_ , som om han og hun var alene i rommet.
Men de lot seg ikke merke med det. Ikke med så mye som en rykning.
– Hvorfor var du ikke der? spurte Joakim.
– Hun var langt ute på havet, alene i en liten båt.
– Du var på havet? Alene? Hvorfor? utbrøt Joakim.
– Fordi noen hadde fortalt henne at jeg hadde bedratt henne, sa Benjamin langsomt.
– Hvorfor snakker vi om dette? Det har ingen betydning nå..., sa Anna matt.
– Jeg henter mer vann, sa Joakim og ble borte.
– Hvorfor sa du det? utbrøt hun.
– Fordi det er sant. Det var slik det begynte.
Joakim kom tilbake med fylt vannkaraffel. Skjenket.
– Så! Hvor var vi? Jo. Mens dere sto der og ingenting kunne gjøre, bare se flammene som kanskje fortærte alt dere brydde dere om... så begynte altså Karna uoppfordret å synge denne salmen. Og i dag, da Anna begynte å gråte og sangen stoppet opp, da overtok Karna. Hun sang fordi Anna ikke greide det. Karna har en sterk vilje. På en eller annen måte må vi få henne til å _ville_ leve. Så dere forresten hva hun knuste vinduet med og kastet ut?
Anna bøyde seg og fant den brune fuglen i vesken. Hun holdt den opp foran seg et øyeblikk før hun satte den på bordet.
# PEDER ER I BEGRAVELSE OG TAR BILDER
En disponent måtte ta kommandoen når noe sto på. Også når det var ting som aldeles ikke hadde noe med Verftet å gjøre. Han måtte skrive brev til doktoren og forklare om Johans død. Likeså om assuransen. Han kunne ikke telegrafere om den. For var det noen som hadde øyne og ører, så var det telegrafbestyreren. Og var det noen som kunne få rede på hemmeligheter, så var det broder Wilfred.
Det hendte at han sa til seg selv at han overdrev uroen over hva Wilfred var i stand til. Samtidig visste han at de gangene han ikke hadde kunnet gjette hva som kom fra den kanten, så hadde det utrolige skjedd.
Wilfred kunne selvsagt ikke makulere, stjele eller forfalske en brannassuranse som lå innelåst i et jernskap. Men han kunne via omveier og ren faenskap finne andre måter. Hva disse måtene kunne være, hadde Peder ikke klart for seg. Han måtte bare forhindre at det skjedde.
Midt i alt var det begravelsen. Det som forkludret det hele var Wilfred. Han forkynte for mannssangforeningen, kvinneforeningen, menighetsrådet og sognepresten – at den _nye_ ordførerens vilje var at han, Wilfred Olaisen, skulle besørge prest Johan Grønelvs begravelse i sitt hjem. Da selvsagt med offentlig økonomisk bistand. For den døde var jo vitterlig Dina Grønelvs stesønn og forrige ordfører Benjamin Grønelvs halvbror.
I sistnevntes sted var det Wilfred Olaisens soleklare plikt å sørge for begravelsen. Unge Peder hadde jo verken kone eller hushold til å ta seg av det.
Peder hadde alltid undret seg over hvordan broren fikk til sine renkespill. Og hvor lenge han kunne spille før alt ble spolert, eller gikk konkurs. Men gang på gang fikk Wilfred det til. Denne begravelsen var ikke en kortsiktig forretning. Den var satt i scene for å umyndiggjøre veslebror i sjefsstolen på Verftet.
Ingen visste at Peder var en hard negl. Han visste det ikke selv engang. Han var bare så naturlig på vakt for angrep fra den kanten at han reagerte på refleks. Og neglen vokste. Den vokste fort på få dager. Han hadde ikke tenkt å klippe den. Tvert om, han allierte seg med Seline. Fikk henne til å kjenne seg som den utvalgte. Den som skulle takkes fordi hun ordnet så fint at Johan Grønelv ble stedt til hvile. Han passet på å si det da han møtte henne alene på den igjenføkne veien foran Olaisen-huset. Så kunne han gi henne en håndsrekning med snøskuffen. Dermed fikk han sagt sitt, og hun kom seg frem med sluffen og guttungen i.
Peder kjente ingen nød for å arrangere begravelsen. Han gjorde ingen hemmelighet av at det verken var hans vett eller arv som hadde gjort ham til disponent. Det var Dina og Benjamin Grønelv. Så enkelt var _det_. Og det måtte han bare se til å skjøtte så godt det lot seg gjøre. Derfor lot han bare Wilfred holde på.
I brevet til Benjamin skrev han storparten av assuransen ned, som en kopi. Han skrev også at han skulle ta bilder av kisten og den døde. Som et minne. Videre at Wilfred og Seline ville holde gravkaffe med snitter, uten at noen hadde bedt dem om det, og at herredsstyret tok seg av betalingen. Han sluttet det lange brevet med:
_Det_ _blir_ _nok ikke_ _helt slik dokker_ _vil, men jeg er kommet til at det ikke vil ta seg så godt ut at jeg kom i krangel med min bror om_ _din brors_ _begravelse. Kjenne_ _jeg dokker rett så vil dokker_ _helst_ _minnes_ _en bror med egne midler, så_ _jeg kan_ _sørge for at det offentlige_ _får sine_ _brødpenger tilbake i all stillhet_.
_Verftet er ved god skikk. Regnskapet ser bra ut for sesongen. To nye seilskip er på beddingen og et dampskip_ _til overhaling_.
_Dokkers_ _hengivne_
_Peder Olaisen_
*
Det var verken biskop eller prost i Johan Grønelvs gravfølge. Eneboeren på Reinsnes var gått ut av tiden for folk lenge før Peder fant ham i vinkjelleren. Det var bitterlig kaldt og den nyklekte kapellanen gjorde det kort. Men Johan fikk en plass i innhegningen med tung kjetting rund, i ly av Grønelvenes familieobelisk.
Nå satt damene i Wilfred Olaisens spisestue og snakket om smått og stort. Herrene nøt pipe og sigar i salongen. Seline gikk til og fra og prøvde å være alle steder på én gang. Hun speidet etter Peder, for hun skulle så nødvendig hatt ham til å løfte den store vannkjelen fra ovnen til sinkkummen. Men hun så ham ikke.
Jenta som skulle holde styr på guttene, hadde tatt ungene med opp på loftet. Likevel var Hanna og Wilfreds yngste på vill fart gjennom stuene. Han pløyde vei mellom kjoler og drakter, porselen og nystivede duker.
Idet Peder hørte lyden, forsto han at brettet med det beste serviset lå i knas på gulvet. På refleks kastet han et blikk på avlastningsbordet der han hadde lagt fotografiapparatet. Det var helt og lå tilsynelatende trygt, men han tok noen lange skritt og brakte det i sikkerhet på den høye skjenken.
Uten å si noen ting tok han feiebrett og kost ut av hendene på Seline. I spisestuen kom damene med sjokkerte utbrudd og medfølende ord. Uhell kunne skje. Det var jo bare ting. Man kunne kanskje lime sammen... Fru Hole, Selines mor, så likevel bekymret ut. Serviset var en bryllupsgave fra dem. Så bekymret var hun at hun ikke kom seg til å reise seg engang.
Da Peder kom med første sørgelige last på feiebrettet, sto Seline ved sinkvasken og vred opp en klut. Hun dyppet den i vann på nytt og vred. Hun vred og vred. Svetten drev, og den ferme kroppen var krumbøyd.
– Æ trur berre du skal sett dæ ei lita stund, sa Peder lavt og tømte glasskårene i askebøtta.
– Du skulle ikkje behøve det der, sa Seline og ville ta fra ham kosten.
– Det e inga sak. Smiegolvet e mykkje verre. Men du har vel ei jente tel å hjelpe dæ med røddinga etterpå.
– Han Wilfred meint at det ikkje va nødvendig. Man må jo betale...
– Det e jo ikkje dokker som skal betale, utbrøt Peder. Det e Grønelv sine. Har han ikkje sagt det?
– Nei...
– La alt stå etter oss, æ skal få ei a jenten på Grand tel å kom i morra.
– Nei! Han bli rasanes, sa hun bedende. – Det e nu dessuten berre småtteri.
Da han kom med neste last, sto hun der ennå, på samme måten. Vred og vred. Og hun hadde ikke engang forkle på der ved vasken. Plutselig så han at magen hennes ikke bare var for henne. Hun bar en der inne. Peder hadde ikke kjennskap til den slags og det gjorde ham merkelig blyg. Han kom til å tenke på moren når hun sto ved elva og skylte store dynetrekk i isvann om vinteren. Var elva frosset til, så måtte hun hugge ei råk. Han hjalp henne av og til. En gang hadde faren kommet forbi. Han husket ordene.
– Sjå! Der står likkjekjerringa og skjølla klea i lag med mor si.
Det hadde ikke vært fremmede der som hørte, likevel kjente han seg som en merket sau. Det var lenge siden nå. Han rettet ryggen og fortsatte å feie. Og mens han gjorde det, tenkte han at faren aldri kom i nærheten av å være en disponent som feide glassbrott. Og tenkte han mer nøye, så trodde han ikke faren hadde annen glede enn å hundse dem som var under samme tak. Wilfred slapp lettest. Han hadde denne teften for å alliere seg. Visste fra han kunne gå at å alliere seg med faren ga større lott enn å hjelpe moren.
Peder gikk bort til Seline og tok kluten fra henne. Hengte den pent på snoren over vasken.
– Ingenting står på, Seline. Sett dæ ned attmed kjøkkenbordet så henta æ kaffe tel dæ.
Hun satte seg tungt og så hjelpeløst på ham. Øverste bluseknapp var gått opp. Svetten perlet over ansikt og hals og fløt ned i sprekken mellom brystene. Han så vekk. Fant seg oppgaver.
Damene summet fredsommelig i stuen. Og herrene hadde fått punsj inn i salongen. Peder skjenket i to kopper fra kjøkkenskapet og la tre sukkerbiter på hvert tefat. Før han satte seg hos henne, hentet han et stort stykke begravelseskringle. Den herligheten satte han rett foran henne.
Hun så fort på ham, så løftet hun hele kakestykket til munnen. Tok en bit og svelget den rett ned. Det kom for han at dette mennesket var så trett, eller så redd, at hun ikke kom på at hun skulle tygge.
Etter å ha svelget neste munnfull og tatt en slurk kaffe, så hun på ham og hvisket:
– Æ skulle ønske det va _du_ som bodde her...
Han kunne ikke si noe. Lot bare ordene ligge der som en hildring, eller et ulest brev. Særlig fordi han ikke kunne la være å se dit den øverste knappen i blusen hennes var åpen.
Peder lengtet _ikke_ etter sin brors gravide hustru. Men han var for ung og varm til å ha en kjæreste langt borte i Kjøbenhavn. Nå hadde Peder _alltid_ hjulpet seg selv med smått og stort. Det gjorde han med slikt også. På samme måte som en som har en kronisk lidelse, uten å gjøre noe vesen av det, tok han sin daglige medisin. Og imens kunne man godt ha noe for sitt indre blikk.
Gravkaffen ble avsluttet med takksigelser og unnskyldninger, og mennene kom ut fra salongen i sin egen tåke. Verten også. Man kunne si mye om Wilfred Olaisen, og det gjorde man også. Men han var ikke den som lagde scener knust porselen i begravelse. Den kom ikke nå heller. Han tok ikke engang den vettskremte guttungen i øret.
Han fulgte folk ut med mild stemme og takket for at de kom. Han hilste fra Benjamin Grønelv, og var selv et verdig eksempel på hvordan man arrangerer en anstendig begravelse for godtfolk.
Da gjestene var vel ute, sa Peder:
– I morra får æ jenta som hjelp mæ i huset tel å kom hit og fli opp etter begravelsen. Æ skriv det på boet etter han Johan, så du ikkje får nokka utgift.
– Ka du tøva med? Det e klart _æ_ skal betale! Men det e nu ikkje nødvendig heller. Her e jo fint. Seline, du må gå opp tel ungan, det e så mykkje styr der oppe. Den tulljenta greide jo ikkje å holde kustus. Æ sendte ho heim.
Seline gikk som i søvne opp trappene uten å si noe.
– Du fikk fine bilda a båra? spurte Wilfred.
– Ja, æ trur det.
– Og a selskapet? I stua? Du fikk med alle?
– Ja.
– Berre gje mæ bildan, så velge æ ut et par og send dem tel Grønelv sine i Kjøbenhavn. Det e inga sak.
– Nei.
– Ka du mein, _nei_? sa Wilfred, plutselig på vakt.
– At det ikkje e nokka sak, men æ må jo lage bildan først, svarte Peder og tenkte på apparatet på skjenken. Han måtte se til å få det med seg og gå.
– Då sei vi det, sa Wilfred.
– Ja, då går æ berre heim nu.
– Skal vi ikkje ta en dram mens ho legg ungan, berre du og æ? Sett dæ ned ei lita stund. Det har du jo fortjent, sa broderen og slo gjestfritt ut med armen mot salongen. Dyttet ham vennlig i ryggen og fikk ham inn døren.
Hvinende guttestemmer og dunking av en ball fikk Wilfred til å sende irriterte blikk mot taket. Men han tok seg i det og gikk mot skapet.
Peder satte seg ytterst på stolen. Broderen hadde nok ikke gitt opp å få en plass i styret. Russebrennevin og to glass kom på bordet.
Og han fikk rett.
– Men tøm glasset ditt, gutt! Æ har tenkt på de store oppgavan som skal igangsettes på Verftet, begynte Wilfred og fylte opp glassene.
Peder motsa ham ikke på noe punkt. Men han bekreftet ikke heller. Hans fordel var at han ikke hadde vært med på herrenes punsj. Hodet var noenlunde klart. Og da broderen ville fylle på for tredje gang, reiste han seg resolutt og kom seg i vei.
*
Peder visste ikke hvordan det hadde gått til. For det skulle ikke kunne skje. Men da han var kommet hjem og skulle til å gå til ro, kom det en rastløs tomhet over ham. Et savn. Ikke etter den døde Johan. Men etter fotoapparatet. Han hadde glemt det. Det var blitt igjen på skjenken. Bare den som vet noe om mulighetene, ja den eventyrlige fremtid, som ligger i et slikt apparat kan forstå Peders panikk. For ikke nok med at det fløy ville unger gjennom huset. Der var også en uberegnelig broder.
Han fikk på seg yttertøy og kavet seg opp bakkene til Wilfreds hus. Veien var islagt og snoen sto om ham fra alle kanter.
Det lyste i stuen og ett rom oppe. Så hadde de i alle fall ikke sovnet. Han banket på ytterdøren og ventet. Ikke en lyd. Han banket en gang til. Da hørte han subbing av bare føtter og den eldste gutten som Wilfred fikk med Hanna, åpnet og satte en lommelykt rett i synet på ham.
– Æ skulle berre hente..., begynte han. Så kastet han et blikk inn i gangen der en enslig parafinlampe lyste. En skikkelse lå med ansiktet ned foran trappen. Han tok lommelykta fra gutten og var der inne på et øyeblikk. Det var så mye blod at han ikke kunne se hvor galt det var fatt med henne.
– E far din her? spurte han.
– Nei, han berre fór a gårde. Han bruka det når...
– Sa han kor han skulle?
– Nei, han bruka ikkje det når...
– Du så det?
– Æ veit ikkje.
Peder tenkte fort. Tok lange steg til ytterdøren og låste. Tok lange steg gjennom huset til kjøkkendøren. Låste. Så la han seg på kne hos Seline og satte lommelykten rykkvis på elendigheten. Han måtte ha brukt knyttnevene. Ikke slått i blinde, men siktet etter ansiktet. Hodet.
– Seline..., prøvde han. Hun rørte seg ikke. Han tok om håndleddet. La hånden på halsen. Hun pustet i alle fall.
Man skulle hatt doktor Grønelv her nå, tenkte han. For i neste øyeblikk å fare inn i spisestuen. Skinntasken sto der han hadde satt den! Han tok opp apparatet. Sto med det i hånden til han kjente seg rolig. Så seg omkring for å finne noe det kunne ligge støtt på med så lavt motiv helt nede på gulvet. Blikket falt på en fotskammel. Han la apparatet fra seg mens han stilte skammelen i passe avstand og fant flere oljelamper. Satte to i trappen like over Seline, og _en_ ved siden. Tente. Hentet apparatet. Slo det opp og satte det støtt på skammelen. Krøp rundt som en katt og fikk beregnet lukkertid. Flyttet på lampene. Tok nennsomt omkring den arme Selines hode og nakke og fikk vendt henne om. Lampene viste mer enn nok, selv om blodet dekket altfor mye.
– Kom hit! sa han til gutten som sto sammenkrøket ved døren. – Hold lampa! Slik! Helt i ro.
Og gutten bykset frem. Han hadde fått et oppdrag han kunne klare. Han rettet seg opp og holdt lampen med begge hender. Flyttet den til den posisjonen han fikk beskjed om. På alle fire beregnet Peder bildet gjennom den sandblåste mattskiven. Følsomme fingre på metallskruen skjøv linsen i posisjon. Han var blitt så vant at det hele gikk av seg selv. Han prøvde å ikke tenke på at det var Selines arme hode som skulle foreviges. Så trykket han på utløseren og ble liggende til beregnet tid var brukt. Til sist satte han seg opp og tok ut filmholderen og satte den til lagring i tasken. Alt hadde sin bestemte plass til han kunne fremkalle det i kottet bak kontoret. Fototasken var selve symbolet på et ryddig liv som samtidig inneholdt det utrolige. Det vakreste og mest groteske.
– Kan æ sett fra mæ lampa nu? hørte han gutten spørre.
– Kan du grei å hold den ei stund tel? Det e best å ha to bilda, sa han og gjorde seg klar på nytt.
Da han var ferdig, sa gutten med tynn, alvorlig stemme:
– Æ trur ikkje ho Seline vil stille de der bildan opp på skjenken.
– Har dokker fått telefon? spurte Peder.
– Ja, men han virka ikkje. Det e vesst nokka me betalinga.
– Då må du gå på telegrafen for mæ. Æ skriv opp ka telegrafdama må gjør. Du klara det?
Gutten nikket og var i hoser og ytterklær før han ble ferdig med skrivingen.
– Bank tre gonga på ytterdøra når du kjem heim. Sånn! Han demonstrerte ved å banke i veggen.
– Du må vette at det ikkje e _han_?
– Æ må vette at det e _du_. Og ser du han, så gå en anna vei. Sørg for at du ikkje møt han. Ropa han etter dæ, så renn av gårde. Renn tel Hole sine og sei det som det e.
Da han hadde låst etter gutten, lot han kameraet gli ned i etuiet og la reimen over hodet og den ene skulderen. Vadmelsjakken var varm, og han var fristet til å ta den av. Det gjorde han ikke. Knappet den bare opp. Det kunne bli nødvendig å gjøre hurtig retrett. Han gikk opp trappen og fant rommet der ungene lå. Underet var at de sov. Han lukket døren, tok med seg to dyner fra et annet rom, og bar dem ned.
Hun var ennå ikke kommet til seg selv. Tanken hadde vært der hele tiden, at hun kanskje aldri kom til seg selv. Han fikk lirket den ene dyna under henne. Hodet rørte han så lite som mulig. Den andre la han over. Så satte han seg med ryggen mot trappestolpen og ventet.
At doktoren kom først, kunne han ikke håpe på. Den karen måtte først et par timer i båt. Dersom foreldrene hennes kom først, ble det mye styr og spetakkel til ingen nytte. Men de kunne ta vare på ungene. Var det Wilfred som kom først, så måtte han gjennom den hittil største manndomsprøven. Da måtte han slå hardere enn han hadde tuktet sadelen i bakgården hos madam Brede.
Peder visste at _ro_ kunne være det rette, så han pustet dypt. Og han hentet et glass vann til Seline når hun våknet. Plasserte det i trappetrinnet og satte seg ned igjen. Forsiktig tok han hånden hennes. Den bare lå der. Det kom for ham at et menneske som måtte våkne på det her viset, hun trengte en hånd. Jevnt og trutt sa han navnet hennes og forsikret at alt skulle gå bra. Det var den slags ting han hadde lært av mor si.
# ANNA TROSSER TRETTHET
Han sa at han skulle reise til Paris. Sa det høyt i forbifarten til søster Vivi og henne da han var innom kontoret.
– Heldige ham, sa søster Vivi og sukket. – Ikke sant, Anna? Heldige doktor Klim!
– Heldige doktor Klim. Alt i dag? spurte hun lett.
– Ja. Jeg legger en journal om Karna her. Til overlegen. Det er han som skal gå stuegang der mens jeg er borte.
– Men så ha en god tur! sa Anna med øynene ned i mappen hun ryddet i.
Et øyeblikk sto han bak henne, før hun hørte skrittene hans over gulvet.
– Doktor Klim har virkelig omsorg for frøken Karna, sa søster Vivi da han var gått.
– Ja, det har han, sannet hun.
– Overlegen sier at han skriver om hennes tilfelle i sine artikler. Selvsagt anonymt. De er interessert i hans metoder i Paris, sa Vivi med beundring i stemmen.
Anna hørte ham åpne dører og lukke dem. Hørte ham gå ned trappen. Etter en stund begynte hun å tenke på om han alt var på vei til stasjonen. Han gikk nok ikke. Hadde jo bagasje. Eller kanskje? Hun gikk igjennom uvesentlighetene, men som likevel hadde noe med ham å gjøre. Tvangstanker. Hun hadde flere av dem. Måtte slite dem ut av hode og kropp. Helst før hun visste om dem. Ellers kunne hun ikke fungere. Ikke følge med i en samtale. Men det var umulig å rense dem helt ut. For lengselen hadde satt seg fast i pusten. Den fulgte med kroppens ubevisste drift for å overleve. Hun kunne ikke stoppe den.
At han hadde tatt en sving til hennes pult og lagt journalen hos henne, gjorde det ikke bedre. Heller ikke at hun forsto at han voktet på ord og oppførsel når søster Vivi var der. For hennes skyld. Han la ikke engang hånden på skulderen hennes da han bøyde seg over pulten. Hun kunne ikke se ham inn i øynene, dersom hun ville unngå å gråte.
De hadde ikke snakket _alene_ sammen siden de sto utenfor Karnas vindu og han fikk henne til å love å synge salmen. En natt hadde hun våknet og trodd at de lå mellom lakenene på det steinharde bordet. Hørte ham si ordene som forfulgte henne:
– _Orker du å fortsette livet på_ _et disseksjonsbord? Er det den type frihet du vil ha_?
Hvor lenge kunne hun greie å oppholde seg i samme bygning, samme omgivelser som Joakim uten å kunne berøre ham? Samtale med ham. _Hun_ som trodde at hun ikke kunne leve med en løgn, hun gjorde ikke annet. Hvert øyeblikk de var på samme sted og hun måtte fornekte sin lengsel etter ham, var en løgn.
*
En ettermiddag sto vinteren og ventet bak den tidlige solnedgangen. Hun gikk tur i hagen med Karna etter arbeidstid. Alt før de gikk ut, hadde hun syntes det var noe galt med jentas måte. Dagvakten påsto at hun var medisinert som vanlig, men Anna hadde sine tvil. Det var noe med blikket. Ganske skarpt. Som om Karna voktet henne. Nesten anklagende. Anna kjente en uro for at hun kunne finne på noe uforutsett.
Da Karna ville gå rundt dammen, prøvde hun å få henne i en annen retning. Hun var blitt forandret siden episoden med sangen. En gang hadde hun tatt notene opp av vesken hennes og lagt dem i skapet sitt.
– Jeg må nok ha notene mine med meg, hadde Anna sagt og hentet dem tilbake.
Karna hadde bare slått skapdøren i og gått ut i hospitalgangen til de andre. Gitt seg til å trave frem og tilbake. Tydelig sint. Hun hadde gått etter henne.
– Vil du være med til den store salen og høre på? hadde hun spurt.
– Nei! kom det klart og tydelig.
Anna visste at hun skulle ha blitt glad for dette _nei_! Det var et uttalt ord til henne. I stedet kjente hun seg bare trett. Da hun sa farvel, fikk hun ikke svar.
Neste dag hadde hun med Schumanns noter med små klaverstykker fra _Kinderscenen_ og ga henne dem i hånden.
– Husker du dem? hadde hun spurt.
– Nei, sa Karna og la notene i vesken hennes.
Denne gangen var Anna forberedt.
– Det er så bra at du snakker til meg. Det gjør meg glad.
Men Karna stilte seg bare med ryggen til for å markere at hun skulle gå.
Og nå så hun for seg at Karna kunne finne på å kaste seg i vannet, eller løpe av gårde. Hun prøvde å gå slik at hun var mellom Karna og dammen, men merket at jenta stivnet og ville sin egen vei.
Det var som om tilliten mellom dem var blitt borte. Det gjorde henne utrygg og på vakt. Plutselig innså hun at hun måtte få henne i hus, for hun var ikke i stand til å hanskes med henne om noe skulle skje. Og for første gang ropte hun til en pleierske og ba henne følge Karna til cellen. Da hun sa farvel, møtte hun et kaldt, vurderende blikk. Som om jenta så rett igjennom henne. Var det det hun gjorde? Og var de to som savnet Joakim?
Da hun kom til losjiet, kjente hun mugglukten allerede i gangen. Hun trodde hun hadde vennet seg til den. Passet på å ha rosenvann i åpne skåler på rommet for å døyve den. Men i dag var den kvelende. Og da hun hengte kåpen i klesskapet, kjente hun den der også.
Hun la seg på sengen og ble liggende og se opp i taket. Det skulle vært kalket. Skjoldene var ekle å se på. Hvordan skulle hun få sagt det til den vennlige vertinnen? Og i fall hun var enig, hvor skulle hun gjøre av seg mens taket ble kalket og veggene malt.
Kroppen kjentes som om hun skulle ha lempet kull. Så sovnet hun likevel med klærne på.
_Benjamin sto i disseksjonsrommet og slipte kniver mens Joakim så på._ _De_ _gikk bort til vasken og skrudde på det varme vannet. De lo_ _sammen. Hun kunne ikke vite hva som var så morsomt,_ _for_ _plutselig_ _var hun_ _ikke der. Hun vasset rundt i dammen og lette etter Karna. Gikk etter lyden av sangen hennes. Men hver gang hun mente å vite hvor hun skulle sokne for å finne henne, var sangen et annet sted. Så sto Joakim der på bredden mellom stråene og vinket._ _Bøyde seg dypt_ _over vannflaten_ _der noe_ _lå og fløt._ _Han trakk_ _Karnas hode opp etter fletten_ _mens han_ _ropte noe hun ikke kunne høre. Benjamin var ikke der. Hun vasset rundt i det kalde vannet og tenkte på at det var underlig. At Benjamin ikke var der_.
*
Trettheten gikk ikke over. Alt hun gjorde ble mekanisk. Hun var som låst inne med seg selv. Med lengselen. Bekymringen. For Karna og for sitt eget liv. Og tomheten. Hun var alene med den. Samtidig som hun ville til losjiet for å sove, så tenkte hun med ulyst på å gå dit. Hun lengtet etter å ha et sted hun kunne kalle hjem, det var saken.
Benjamin hadde åpnet for det. Men det kunne ikke gå. Ikke så lenge hun arbeidet på dette stedet der dagens eneste gave var å lengte etter Joakim. Kunne røre ved ham, eller i det minste _se_ ham.
Tanken kom, gang på gang. At hun måtte si opp posten på Hospitalet og komme seg bort. Gjøre noe annet. I Kjøbenhavn. Hun kunne be faren om råd og Benjamin om husrom. Resten måtte hun greie selv. Drømmen om å bli pianistinne var ikke lenger noe hun selv trodde på. Hun hadde verken kraft eller mot til å mislykkes. Ville ikke ende som en tredjerangs kabaret-klimprer. Tiden hadde gått fra henne.
Dessuten ville hun da være i et avhengighetsforhold til Benjamin. For å få trygghet. Bundet til det de hadde opplevd sammen. Fortiden. Til og med sorgen og sviket. Hun hadde krøpet opp i Benjamins seng etter forsoningen den kvelden hun kom med budskapet om Johans død. Han hadde tatt imot henne. Enkelt, halvt i søvne. Som om de skulle vært to forvillede barn.
Og hun hadde vært der senere, etter at Joakim reiste. Det de gjorde ble en ordløs pakt. Ingen av dem stilte spørsmål, og ingen svar ble gitt. Lampen hadde vært slukket begge gangene. Hun greide ikke å se på ham når hun ga seg hen. Til gjengjeld ga hun alt hun hadde. Og det var til trøst, der og da.
Den siste morgenen, like før hun skulle gå, hadde hun sagt det til ham:
– Jeg takker deg, Benjamin.
– For hva?
– For at du evner å legge bort det du vet når jeg er her, sa hun uten å se på ham.
– Selv takk. Da er vi to, sa han med ryggen til.
*
– Du må gi meg råd, far, sa Anna.
– Gjerne, sa han og betraktet henne gjennom sigarrøyken.
Hun var innom på uanmeldt visitt på en søndag. Faren tok imot i slåbrok i biblioteket, og moren var i baderommet.
– Jeg har besluttet å søke om plass på Kommunehospitalets kvinneavdeling. Jeg vil bli sykepleierske.
Faren bøyde seg frem og slukket sigaren. Så lente han seg tilbake i ørelappstolen og betraktet henne.
– Se det. Jeg har vel ventet på noe slikt. Men hvorfor ikke Frederiks Hospital?
– Der regjerer Benjamin og du, sa hun fort.
– Og det skal du ha deg frabedt, smilte han.
– Det kan vel bli for mange av oss.
– Sant nok. Men hva slags råd har du tenkt at din far skal gi deg? Siden du alt har bestemt deg, mener jeg.
– Mest hjelp til å forme en søknad som virker kompetent.
– Har du diskutert dette med Benjamin, spurte han.
– Nei, far, jeg spør deg.
– Er det klokt av deg? Er ikke han den første å be om hjelp?
– Jeg vet ikke. Benjamin og jeg... vi har visse vanskeligheter.
Faren tok etter sigaren igjen, men la den tilbake i askebegeret.
– Han er imot planene?
– Det tror jeg ikke.
– Hva er det da?
– Livet... Jeg kan ikke snakke om det, sa hun hjelpeløst.
– Det var da svært, sa han og bøyde seg mot henne. – Jeg skal selvsagt hjelpe. Bare pass på at jeg ikke blir uvenner med Benjamin for å løpe dine ærend. Det vil jeg helst slippe. Det blir for øvrig bra for oss å få deg tilbake i Kjøbenhavn. Nå har dere jo et hjem. Så alt skulle ligge til rette for å rette opp eventuelt _skuddermudder_ i ekteskapet. Ikke sant? sa han og så strengt på henne.
De hørte moren gi sine ordrer til piken i anretningen og visste at hun snart ville stå i døren. Anna reiste seg fort for å vise moren at hun var på vei. Men ble likevel høflig stående og ta imot invitasjon til frokost, og like høflig avslå med at hun skulle spise med Benjamin.
– Men hvorfor så tidlig på visitt, når du ikke skal spise med oss? spurte moren.
– Jeg plager far, som vanlig, han får fortelle deg det når jeg er gått, sa hun og prøvde å le.
Da hun skyndte seg ned trappene, fløy panikken gjennom hodet. Hva var det hun hadde satt i gang? Herre Gud, hva hadde hun satt i gang!
# PEDER OPPDAGER SIN TROSKYLDIGHET
Det var tidlig om morgenen, og Peder var den eneste kunden, eller hva man nå kalte slike besøkende. I hjørnet av rommet sto en stinkende spyttbakke. To stødige jernstoler sto ved veggen i fall kø eller fyll. En messinglampe i taket brukte sin tid på å samle lovens høytidelige støv på Strandstedet. Lovens arm var i sivil busserull og hadde ikke engang fått hevet kaffekoppen denne dagen. Men han var på plass bak den nedfelte lemmen i skranken.
Peder rettet seg opp på den andre siden. Et vitne med bevis. Han skulle ha kommet hit for mange år siden. Men nå var han i alle fall her. Og han kunne ikke stå i en skranke med vitnemålet sitt, han måtte innenfor. Alt måtte skrives ned. Derfor sa han først bare kort ærendet sitt.
Lensmannsbetjenten løftet ikke bare brynene, han løftet hele det grå panneskinnet og så på ham som om Peder ikke skulle være vel bevart.
– Ka du sei? Vil du anmelde bror din?
– Æ vil anmelde han Wilfred Olaisen for å ha slått kona si, ho Seline, i haue så voldsomt at ho ikkje kom tel sæ sjøl på fleire tima.
– Meine du at han slo... _så_ hardt? Så du det? Lensmannsbetjenten så tvilende på Peder.
– Nei, men eldste gutungen va der. Og _han_ hadde neppe kraft tel å slå ho så hardt. Men æ kan ikkje stå _her_ og snakk. Æ må innafor!
– Det e ei alvorlig beskyldning du kjem med. Æ hørte at ho Seline Olaisen datt stygt ned trappa og at doktern har vorre der.
– Et menneske som har dotte ned ei trapp, ho ser ikkje slik ut. Men æ kan ikkje stå her og snakk, æ må innafor!
– Veit bror din at du e her og anmeld han for dettan?
Peders sinne satt langt inne. Det var en sjeldenhet, for å si det mildt. Men nå ble han sint. Egentlig hadde han vært rasende helt siden han fant Seline. Han var bare ikke klar over at det var slik. Han bøyde seg over skranken og slo opp lemmen.
– Fløtt dæ! Æ vil snakk med _han sjøl_ , lensmannen! Æ vil vitne. Og æ treng en mann med vett.
*
Folk var nødt til å tro på det. Wilfred Olaisen hadde slått den gravide kona si helseløs. Og foreldrene hennes, Hole sine, hadde tatt henne og ungene til seg og ville ikke snakke med andre enn Peder Olaisen og doktoren som kom etter to dager.
Folk ble rent opplivet av en slik voldsom hendelse. Man gjorde seg ærend og fór omkring for å snakke med folk som kanskje visste mer, eller visste mindre, og som derfor lyttet villig til det de ble fortalt. Og kronen på verket var den at unge Peder hadde anmeldt bror sin. Han hadde _vitnet_! Og gitt øvrigheten bevis. For saken var at han hadde dette fotografiapparatet som han brukte i tide og utide. Han hadde fotografert begravelsen til Johan. Og nå hadde han foreviget hodet til arme Seline. De kunne nok ikke være vakre de bildene Peder hadde gitt til lensmannen. Damen på telegrafen hvisket hit og dit at Wilfred Olaisen, han måtte nok i fengsel.
Dette snakket man om. Etter noen dager kunne noen berette at de hadde sett Wilfred Olaisen tusle omkring i Været som en skygge av seg selv. Så da slapp han vel fengsel likevel. Og det man heller ikke kunne la være å undre seg over, var at de to brødrene satt _alene_ i hvert sitt av de største og fineste husene på Strandstedet. Det var jo meningsløst.
*
Peder holdt seg for det meste på Verftet. Gikk han ut, så holdt han seg der det var folk og dagslys. Slutten av november var ikke akkurat dagslysets tid, så slik hadde broderen naturen på sin side. Arbeiderne fortalte at Wilfred var på ekspedisjonen og tok imot båter og frakt, akkurat som før. Han måtte jo det, for han hadde ingen folk lenger.
Peder forsto at han selv, til tross for det han hadde påtatt seg, var en toskete, troskyldig skapning. Han hadde trodd at øvrigheten ville beskytte dem alle etter at de hadde fått bildene og vitnemålet. Hadde på en eller annen måte innbilt seg at dette skulle bli løftet av skuldrene hans. At skyggen av broderneven skulle slutte å forfølge ham. Etter tiden i Bergen uten dette åket, så visste han hvor livgivende det var å slippe akkurat det.
Og så var det Seline. Han hadde ikke tenkt på at hun ikke ville være med på anmeldelsen. Men det ville hun ikke. Kunne ikke anmelde sin egen mann, far til ungene hennes, sa hun. Nå lå hun hos foreldrene og gråt mens hun prøvde å gro sammen. Slik hadde det vært med Hanna også. Det gikk opp for ham at dersom Hanna ikke hadde brent i hjel, så hadde det vært _hun_ som med jevne mellomrom hadde ligget og grått og grodd sammen så godt hun hadde grokjøtt til.
Peder forsto også at hans troskyld måtte utryddes, rives ut av kroppen en gang for alle. Han hadde prøvd Karnas måte. Prøvd å være modig som henne. Vitnet. _Hun_ betalte ennå for det på et galehus. Han slapp så mye billigere. Men bare for å oppdage at det var verden som var gal. Og verden var menneskene. Ikke bare at noen av dem utførte onde gjerninger, men resten av dem var likegyldige, så lenge det ikke var _dem_ neven traff. Verden trakk på skuldrene og lot de troskyldige gå til grunne.
*
Pakkhuset med _Wilfred Olaisens ekspedisjon_ malt på veggen ut mot havna hadde sett bedre dager. Den eldste delen hadde råte i taket. Peder kunne huske at Dina hadde stått ved vinduet og sagt:
– Enten må han la mæ overta ekspedisjon så æ kan få skikk på den, eller så må han berre lage et bål og få ut assuranse.
Peder så det så vidt fra kontorvinduet. Det hadde snødd tett i flere dager, og en tydelig svai i snømassene på taket sa sitt. Nå før jul var det livlig der nede, særlig når dampen kom. Wilfred hadde tatt inn et par arbeidsløse karer nordfra til lasting og lossing. De trodde vel at de kom til å få lønn.
Det var siste lørdag før jul. Peder satte opp kontordøren da han hørte karene i trappen. Humøret var der. Tunge støvler og forsiktige lattersalver. Noen hadde vel kommet med en artighet under oppstigningen. Han hadde prøvd å holde på Dinas kustus, men på sin egen måte. Siden flere av karene var gamle nok til å være far hans, ville han blitt gjort til latter ved å gjøre det samme som henne. Nå hadde latter aldri vært forbudt. Ikke i Dinas tid heller. Tvert om. Men han passet seg vel for å irritere dem med å skape seg. Alle visste at han hadde fått dette givende. Men de visste også at han hadde vært i Bergen og _blitt til noe_ , og at han med sine 27 år var sjefen. Han behøvde ikke å gjøre seg så liten at han måtte fortelle dem det.
Som vanlig hadde han ryddet et hjørne av det store skrivebordet og skjenket femten små drammeglass til randen. De hadde stett, buklete vegger og gjemte seg vakkert i en mannfolkneve. På Dinas vis lot han karaffelen stå fremme. Men det skulle mer enn en lønningsdag til for at det ble skjenket mer enn _en_ gang.
Hver arbeider tok et skritt frem til bordet og fikk posen med navnet sitt. Åpnet og talte pengene med ryggen til kameratene og ansiktet mot disponenten.
På spørsmålet – _Alt vel_? – kunne man svare høyt, eller man kunne nikke eller riste på hodet. Det hendte at mannen var uenig i summen som lå i posen. Men ikke ofte. I så fall skulle karen få spørsmålet – _Tar vi det nu eller seinar?_ Dersom mannen var klar for en argumentasjon som han trodde han kom til å vinne frem med, så sa han det. Var han usikker, eller følte seg dårlig behandlet, så ville han nok vente til de andre var gått.
Når alle hadde vært igjennom, trådt ett skritt frem for å hente posen sin og trådt ett skritt tilbake for å slippe nestemann frem, da først kunne de unisont flokke seg rundt bordet, ta glasset sitt og skåle.
Peder, som selv hadde stått på den andre siden av bordet, visste hva det betydde med et slikt ritual etter at man hadde vasket den verste skitten av ansikt og hender en lørdag. Det var noe _hellig_ ved det. Det var et mannfolks fortjente stund. Man sto der og fikk betalt, både for å arbeide og være i samme båt. Samme verft. På rekke og rad, et sted der formannen var den som sist fikk posen sin.
I dag tok Peder frem apparatet og satte det på stativ. Ba dem stille seg opp med armene i kjede rundt hverandre under den store lampen. I to rekker, en stående og en rekke foran på kne. Tett, tett. Med formannen bak i midten. Slik, ja! De skulle foreviges og komme i glass og ramme til jul.
*
Peder gikk i Været i det vesle dagslyset som var. Han gikk for å se på svaien i Wilfreds umåkede tak. Bar med seg Sands & Hunters Tourist Camera og fotoplater trygt i læretui over skulderen. Det hadde sluttet å snø. Men mengden av det som var kommet, var til bry overalt. Wilfreds karer prøvde å rydde kaia i siste liten før dampen la til. Wilfred selv sto i pakkhusdøren og bakset med gods på tralle. Så måtte han selv ta i et tak, tenkte Peder. Ubehaget ved å se ham var ikke så stort som han hadde trodd, selv om han visste at Seline og ungene var flyttet hjem igjen. Mannen var på en måte ikke en mann, bare et livsfarlig stykke natur som noen ikke hadde vett til å komme seg unna før det var for sent.
Folk var begynt å fylle kaia. Noen skulle reise, andre møte noen. Eller de var der bare for å se. Peder gikk frem til pakkhusdøren da dampen var midt i sundet. Gikk forsiktig inn fra siden bak en kassestabel. Slo ut apparatet og plasserte det så støtt han kunne på den øverste kassen. Wilfred var akkurat kommet ut med en haug på tralla. Dampen fløytet og mannen så opp. Da trykket Peder. Han hadde aldri sett Wilfred med et slikt uttrykk.
– Ka gjør du her? hørte han. Det ekte gamle broderbrølet.
Folk snudde seg. Et par ble stående og glo, som om de været at det kunne bli mer underholdning på kaia enn den at dampen la til.
– Æ tar bilde a ekspeditøren på Strandstedet.
Flere var stoppet opp. Ble bare stående og være at noe var på gang. Tre ble til fem. Åtte. Deriblant telegrafbestyreren. Men Wilfred enset det ikke. Peder så at broderens sinne allerede var forbi det punkt der omverdenen hadde betydning. Wilfred så ikke annet enn den han måtte hevne seg på. Her og nå. Han slapp tralla og gikk rett på Peder med løftede armer.
– Du kan seil tel helvete med den der boksen! hveste Wilfred og forsto ikke at han ikke behøvde å ta det oppgjøret nå.
– Berre gje mæ et lite smil her på kaia di, så går æ med en gong, sa Peder godslig, men høyt og tydelig.
Flere var nå kommet til. En hel liten flokk. Dampen kom sigende. En kar sto på kaikanten ferdig til å ta trossa. Det svarte skroget kom ut av snøhimmel og sørpegrått hav. Sakte, men bastant. I dag nesten uten å få noen oppmerksomhet. Karene som skulle hjelpe båten til land fikk snurr på synet. De måtte vokte dampen, og de måtte vokte scenen på kaia.
– Din forbanna tulling som trur du kan stå på mi kai og gjør dæ tel storkar. Du går tel og med inn i begravelsa og fotografere stakkars kvinnfolk som har dotte ned trappa. Du unnslår dæ ikkje engong å melde din ega bror tel lensmann! Kom dæ dit du høre heime! Ellers...!
Broderstemmen var et tydelig brøl. Han hadde nok ingen anelse om hvor han var eller hvem som hørte. Han gikk med spenstige skritt mot Peder som løftet kameraet fra kassen og holdt det fast med begge nevene.
– Smil! ropte Peder.
– Reis tel helvete! brølte tyren med senket hode og lynende vakre øyne.
Det var ikke tid til å svare, for Peder visste at slaget kom. Han siktet, men det var ikke tale om å få et skarpt bilde. Bare å holde fast. Han måtte velge å beskytte kameraet og la seg selv maltraktere.
Karen som skulle ta trossa bommet, båten mistet kurs og manøveren måtte gjøres på nytt, under eder fra mannskap på dekk. Trossepilten fikk derfor ikke med seg slutten. Den at Wilfred Olaisen løftet en kraftig knyttneve og slo sin bror rett ned i de isdekte kaiplankene. Og at blodet skvettvis fløy rundt og traff telegrafbestyreren som sto nærmest. Peder selv lettet en smule, så skled han på ryggen bortover kaiplankene uten å ta seg for. Men høyt hevet over et miserabelt fjes holdt han kameraet i jerngrep med begge hender.
Trossepilten skulle få seg fortalt det han ikke fikk med seg. Alle som ikke var der, fikk det fortalt. På Strandstedet kunne man ikke lenger si at man hadde hørt sladder om at Wilfred Olaisen slo, men at man ikke kunne vite om det var sant.
Peder kom seg opp i sittende. Han fikk filmholderen ut, slo sammen kameraet og la det i lærtasken med skjelvende hender. Men de islagte plankene var ikke noe blivende sted for kroppen. Det siste han husket var at broderen ble prekevert av tre menn som la ham ned i kaidekket. Og at det slik ble ryddet vei så dampen kunne bli losset og lastet.
Så revnet virkeligheten. Peder fikk ikke sett de reisende over landgangen og at postsekker og gods ble lempet. De bar ham inn på Wilfreds godskontor. Satte ham i den vaklevorne svingstolen til bror hans og lot ham blø lempelig fra seg. Etter hvert fikk han en iskald, våt håndduk over fjeset.
– Ikkje la han far heim nu! Han tar ho Seline når han ikkje greide å drep mæ, sa han, uten å se klart den han snakket til.
På det stadiet var Peder en usedvanlig tilfreds mann.
# BENJAMIN SER
Han sto og barberte seg da det ringte på. Det var søndag og han hadde tenkt å besøke Karna. Han la barberkniven fra seg og tok bort det verste skummet med håndkleet før han åpnet.
– Anna! utbrøt han og slapp henne inn døren.
Hun hadde vært der flere ganger, men låste seg aldri inn når han var der, selv om hun hadde nøkkel. Nå sto hun der uten å se på ham.
– Noe galt? fikk han frem.
– Jeg tror Karna har lest Peders brev. Hun ser i alle fall mye på portrettet han har sendt henne.
Ordene kom som en regle.
– Men dette er jo gode nyheter, utbrøt han og ville ta om henne.
Men det var ingen gjenklang.
– Anna? sa han prøvende. – Hva er galt?
– Jeg har sagt opp posten på Hospitalet. Jeg skal utdanne meg til sykepleierske på Kommunehospitalet. Får jeg plass, så begynner jeg i februar. Kan jeg bo her?
Han slapp henne og ble stående, som om han hadde hørt noe på et språk han ikke forsto. Så summet han seg og tok varsomt av henne hatten.
– Det er et overflødig spørsmål. Men svaret er ja.
Så bøyde han seg over henne og kysset henne på pannen. Hun sto med lukkede øyne og tok imot.
– Kom inn og sett deg, sa han.
Inne i stuen dumpet hun tungt ned i en stol.
– Du har besluttet å bli sykepleierske? Og derfor er du fortvilet? spurte han da han så at hun gråt.
– Det er bare slik det må bli. Jeg orker ikke dette livet mer. Må ut av det. Jeg begynner å bli en del av galskapen. Greier ikke å tenke egne tanker mer. Jeg er ikke så sterk som jeg trodde. Det er ydmykende. Ikke minst komme rennende hit...
Han ville spørre om det var Karna eller _mannen_ som var galskapen, men gjorde det ikke.
– Du har tatt en vanskelig avgjørelse eller to? sa han i stedet.
Endelig så hun på ham. Fort, uten å svare.
– Jeg forstyrret deg i barberingen, sa hun bare. Så kledde hun av seg yttertøyet og gikk i entreen med det.
Måten hennes. Disse brå skiftene. Skulle han ikke vært så djerv at han spurte henne? Har du brutt med ham? skulle han spurt. Eller _han_ med deg? Og så skulle han tatt det svaret han fikk. I stedet samlet han på illusjonen om at hun kom for å være hos _ham_. Men trodde han på den? Nei. Og måten hun kom på? Først fortelle det gledelige om Karna, og så at hun måtte bort fra det hele.
– Du var kanskje på vei et sted? Ut? spurte hun da hun kom inn i stuen.
– Jeg skulle til Karna, sa han.
– Ja, gjør det du.
– Nei, det får være til en annen dag. Nå gjør jeg meg ferdig med kniven, og så går vi et sted og spiser frokost sammen.
– Kan vi bare være her en stund? Har du noe brød?
– Selvsagt har jeg brød..., fikk han sagt.
– Og sild i olje? Har du sild i olje?
Han gikk til kjøkkenskapet og fant boksen med sild. Hun kom etter.
– Kan du åpne den?
– Nå? Vil du spise med en gang? sa han forvirret.
– Ja takk.
Hun sto der og ventet mens han åpnet. Så fant hun en skje i skuffen, tok boksen fra ham og begynte å spise uten å ense ham.
Han sto der og var vitne til at hun spiste hele innholdet. Uten brød og smør. Spiste uten stopp. Som en sultefôret katt. Først da hun var ferdig, løftet hun blikket og sukket.
– Det smakte, mumlet hun alvorlig.
Situasjonen var absurd. Han kunne ha ledd høyt. Men noe sa ham at dette ikke var Anna. Det var riv ruskende galskap.
Hun satte boksen fra seg på benken og tørket seg over munnen med håndbaken. Sto et øyeblikk og så på noe. Begynte nede ved gulvet, ved de bare føttene hans. Flyttet blikket opp langs kroppen hans. Ansiktet.
Så var hun hos ham. Om han. Han rakk å se sitt halvbarberte fjes i speilet over kommoden. Det så rimelig forfjamset ut. Så var han inne i det med henne. I en kuling av sild i olje.
Han lå i en slags takknemlighetsstilling. Med hodet på brystet hennes og utstrakte armer. Han hadde tatt imot et gode når det var der, som om det når som helst kunne være tapt. En fremmed i sitt eget begjær. Fikk og tok.
Etterpå var hun tilsynelatende seg selv. Men annerledes likevel. Ingen ord. Lå med lukkede øyne i formiddagslyset. Nå rørte hun på seg og ville løs.
– Du har et tungt hode, Benjamin, sa hun mykt.
Han så skrått oppover hud som slettelandskap med skygger. Hun var blitt tynnere, og allikevel ikke. Lå og glødet mot ham. Desemberlyset gjennom vinduet ville også se henne. Fargene? Det var noe med fargene. De mørke brystvortene. Stripen fra navlen og over magen. Ansiktet. Denne merkelige skiftningen fra blekhet til bluss. På et øyeblikk.
Han satte seg opp og lot hendene gli over hoftene hennes. Satt slik mens hun lå med lukkede øyne. Så plutselig så han det! Visste ikke at han skiftet språk da han sa det.
– Vil du ikkje fortelle mæ det, eller veit du det ikkje? Du e _gravid_.
Hun sperret opp øynene. Satte seg opp og stirret nedover seg selv.
– Du er gal! slo hun fast.
– Nei.
Munnen hennes smalnet. Hun knep øynene sammen og peste gjennom oppspilte nesebor.
– Hvordan orker du å drive slik med meg, skrek hun rasende.
– Jeg driver ikke med deg. Og jeg kan godt si at jeg kan ta feil, sa han og ville ta omkring henne.
Hun ristet ham av og for opp og ut. Han ventet litt, så gikk han etter. Hun sto foran speilet i entreen og gransket seg selv som om hun saumfor en fiende.
– Du tar så latterlig feil, freste hun og ble stående og svelge. I neste øyeblikk var hun i kjøkkenet, krumbøyd over vaskebøtta og kastet opp.
Han visste ikke hva han skulle gjøre. Eller si. Han hentet slåbroken sin og la den over skuldrene hennes. Ble stående til hun var ferdig. Hun fylte et glass med vann. Drakk det tomt, fylte det opp igjen og satte det på benken. Da hun hadde skylt ansikt og munn grundig og tørket seg omstendelig med et kjøkkenhåndkle, snudde hun seg mot ham.
– Tilgi meg, sa hun ynkelig. – Jeg vet ikke hvorfor jeg er slik.
– Det hører visst med. Han tok om henne. Varsomt. Visste ikke helt hvilken reaksjon han ville få.
– Kan du være sikker? spurte hun pesende.
– Jeg har aldri tatt feil før, til tross for at jeg aldri ser dem nakne, sa han og prøvde å le.
– Det er for sent, sa hun. – Altfor sent!
– Dersom det _er_ slik, så _er_ det altså ikke for sent, sa han.
– Men jeg søker jo plass på Kommunehospitalet!
Benjamin koblet seg selv ut. Det var distriktslegen på Strandstedet som sto der i Adams drakt. For han sendte ikke ut de ordene som lå nærmest. At hvordan i huleste kunne _hun_ , som i årevis hadde ønsket at de skulle få barn, hvordan _kunne_ hun komme med et slikt utsagn.
– Kom, sa han. – La oss snakke om smått og stort og bli rolige.
– Nei, jeg kan ikke. Det er for ydmykende.
– Hva er ydmykende?
– At jeg kanskje er gravid og ikke vet det selv, så _du_ må fortelle meg det.
– Jeg synes du tok det forbausende fort når du først ble gjort oppmerksom på det, sa han og måtte smile.
Hun satte seg rett ned på stolen og gjemte seg i slåbroken hans. Ansiktet forskjøv seg. Underleppen skalv.
– Du spør meg ikke? Du sier ingenting om det?
– Nei, hva skulle jeg si? Dette har du lengtet etter i årevis. Du er snart førti, men jeg passer på dere. Natt og dag passer jeg på dere, forstår du ikke det?
– Du spør ikke... om det er ditt?
Han dro pusten dypt. Kjente en forbannet smerte et sted. Greide ikke å møte blikket hennes lenger. Det ble så grotesk. Stygt. Han gikk inn i soverommet og kledde på seg. Underbukse. Skjorte og bukse. Spente beltet stramt om livet. Gikk i døråpningen til kjøkkenet og ble stående med nevene festet i begge karmer.
Øynene hennes var nesten fargeløse i formiddagslyset. Ansiktet hvitt. En blålig skygge lå rundt øyehulene. Munnen hadde markerte streker mot kinnet på begge sider, og nesen var djerv.
Anna er en vakker kvinne, uansett i hvilken tilstand hun er, tenkte han. Det gjorde så forbannet vondt å se det. Når han helst ville hate henne.
– Jeg går ut fra at du ikke vet det. Og det gjør vel ikke _han_ heller. Så da er vi tre som ikke vet, sa han og klasket flate hånden i dørkarmen.
– Hva gjør vi? spurte hun.
– Først går vi et sted og spiser, så sørger vi for å få litt luft, sa han bestemt.
– Ikke snakk til meg som om jeg var et barn, sa hun arrig.
– Det kunne overhodet ikke falle meg inn, men du spurte meg til råds, sa han kaldt.
– Du er barbert bare på den ene siden, og jeg er helt utgrått, sa hun.
– Da spiser vi her. Men jeg har ikke mer sild. Og etterpå vil _jeg_ ha frisk luft.
*
Han hadde ikke tatt den nødvendige samtalen. Hadde ikke spurt henne om grunnen til at hun ville bo hos ham var at Joakim Klim hadde vendt henne ryggen. Han visste ikke engang om det ville bety noe fra eller til. Og dette at hun ikke visste om graviditeten, var det bare spill? I det øyeblikk han tenkte det, satt han fast i dyp skam. For Anna var ikke slik. Enhver desperat kvinne kunne være i stand til et slikt spill, men ikke Anna. Og hvorfor skulle hun da selv bringe temaet farskap opp? For å komme ham i forkjøpet? Nei.
Han forberedte en samtale med henne. En samtale som handlet om dem. Og barnet.
– Det er altså ikke for sent, barnet er på vei, skulle han si. – Uansett hva som har skjedd, håper jeg at vi kan gå videre. Sammen.
Men han sa det ikke. Det var lange dager på operasjonsstuen. Han hadde visst gjort seg uunnværlig og kom sent hjem. Hun ordnet selv med transport av det vesle flyttelasset sitt mens han var på arbeid. Avsluttet kontorposten. Besøkte Karna. Hvem hun ellers traff, snakket hun ikke om.
Han lot henne være i fred. Ofte sov hun før han kom i seng. Sov mye, som rimelig var. Var sjelden våken når han gikk til hospitalet.
Han hadde ikke sett henne naken siden den første formiddagen, da hun kom. Visste ikke hvordan kroppen hennes hadde det. Eller hvordan _hun_ hadde det med kroppen. Ventet på at hun skulle si at hun hadde fått en annen til å undersøke seg og var sikker på graviditeten. Prøvde å tenke ærlig. Var grunnen til at han ikke spurte henne, den at han ikke ville plage henne? Eller var det fordi han ikke orket sannheten om farskapet?
# MELLOM SATURN OG VINTER
Noen netter var så lange at hun bare sutret mot veggmørket. Det var helt bortkastet. Nattevakten kom inn og ga henne mer medisin. Hun så for seg alle skuffene og skapene fulle av medisin. Og sprøytene. De lå på lur. Det var millioner av dem. Men hun var ikke redd for dem, selv om hun visste at de alltid pønsket på sitt. Raslende i skuffer. Gnissende mot hverandre i blanke fat.
Russeren kom ikke mer. Han var blitt borte fra veggemørket. Borte fra hospitalgangen. Han kom ikke som forkledd reservelege eller for å snakke med henne om farmor. Slik ble det etter den dagen hun hjalp Anna med salmen. Man kunne savne ham, men det hjalp ikke. Han hadde endelig funnet farmor og overlatt alt til henne og doktor Klim.
– Jeg må reise. Du må finne ut mer om Saturn mens jeg er borte, hadde han sagt.
Hun lot være å måle tiden. Men hun savnet russeren.
Imens gikk hun inn i boken om Verdensrommet. Den var mer enn et tegn. Den opplyste henne om alle himmellegemene for at hun skulle vite hvordan alt måtte være. At alt fulgte en lovmessighet ingen kunne se. Mannen som hadde skrevet den var nok ikke særlig klokere enn doktor Klim, men han hadde mer sans for Verdensrommets storhet og Himmelklodenens merkverdighet enn små tanker i hodene til folk. Tegningene av planetene var best.
Var denne Flammarion hos farmor og russeren nå? I den innerste ringen rundt Saturn? Da måtte de vente på året 2400. Da skulle sjelene til tidenes siste mennesker, kjærestene Eva og Omegar, bæres til planeten Jupiter. Hun visste nok at det bare var andre navn for russeren Leo og Dina. Det var derfor farmor hadde skutt ham. For at han skulle gå foran og vise vei til Saturns innerste ring. Etterpå skulle alt være himmel og hav. Bare himmel og hav.
Hun ventet hun også. Så i boken og bare ventet. Holdt seg i ro til doktor Klim kom tilbake og ville vite mer om Saturns ringer. For tiden var ikke annet enn lyden fra et ur. Alt annet gikk i sirkel i den innerste ringen, der Leo og Dina fløt rundt i fargene. De røde gikk over i oransje og rosa skygger, de blå gikk over i grønt og grått, lik skimringen over hav og flimring over sand. Hun tenkte så sterkt. Hun var der. Kjente at kroppen ikke veide noe. Den fløt og ble borte. Til hodet gikk i stykker og alt sprutet ut i hesligheten.
Da kom de løpende. De som var innenfor og ingenting visste. Etterpå var det bare alminnelig gråhet.
*
Doktor Klim holdt ord. Han kom. Satt bare der da hun våknet. Hun kunne ikke huske at han hadde kommet. Det var som om han absolutt ville at hun skulle våkne før han gikk igjen. Med de andre var det annerledes. De ville at hun skulle sove.
Nå sto han over henne og la fingertuppene mot pannen og tinningen hennes. Ørsmå trykk. Han hadde tatt frem brevene og lagt dem utover dyna. Eller var det hun selv som hadde gjort det? I midten var bildet av han som hadde sendt dem. Det skrumpet sammen og ble flatt mens hun så på det. Like før hun våknet helt, hadde hun tydelig sett at det ikke bare var et ansikt, men også en kropp. En kropp i verden. Den bevegde seg. Dersom doktor Klim ikke snakket, var det bare å ligge stille og se alt som det var, og tenke sitt. Det var som om han visste at det var det hun behøvde. For han tidde lenge. Så tok han til seg fingertuppene og nikket, mens hun langsomt satte seg i sengen. Brevene og bildet rørte seg over dyna mens hun kom seg på plass. Som om de kom flyende mot en strand – akkurat nå.
– Kjenner du meg igjen? spurte doktor Klim.
– Du e ikkje russern, svarte hun bare.
– Nei, jeg er Joakim. Du fortalte meg nettopp at russeren ikke var her, men i himmelrommet. Det er ikke noe galt at jeg er Joakim, er det?
Hun ristet på hodet for å få en slutt på spørringen.
Da bøyde han seg nærmere og så henne inn i øynene. Ansiktet ble et stort smil. Overleppen var større på den ene siden. På den andre rykket den ofte til, som om noen hun ikke kunne se, fiket til ham.
Så ble han alvorlig og sa ikke mer på en stund. La bare brevene i ring rundt bildet. Hun så at det ble tull med rekkefølgen. Tull med datoene. Det måtte det ikke. Hun rev brevet han holdt i fra ham og begynte å ordne på nytt. Sju brev. Og bildet av han som skrev, måtte være i midten. Det var viktig. Når brevene lå i skapet, skulle bildet ligge øverst. Ellers kunne han som hadde skrevet dem bli kvalt. Det måtte han ikke, for han var et viktig tegn.
– Han håper nok at han får et svar engang, sa doktor Klim og tok opp bildet.
Hun måtte passe på, for hun visste ikke hva han kunne finne på. Han kunne ta bildet med seg og gå. Han hadde tatt fuglen hennes i forvaring. Sa at hun ikke kunne ha den fordi hun ikke greide å styre den. Man kunne ikke legge på henne å styre en fugl, sa han. Da var han også i stand til å si at hun ikke kunne styre brev som hadde seilt over hav og atter hav.
– Du kjenner Peder i dag? spurte han og pekte på bildet.
Han visste jo at hun ikke svarte, likevel ga han seg ikke.
– Er han en du ikke liker?
Hun tok bildet fra ham og la det på dyna igjen.
– Har han gjort deg noe vondt? spurte han.
Da ristet hun på hodet. Hun måtte jo det når han kunne spørre så toskete. Så ordnet hun brevene i en bunke med bildet øverst, sto opp og la dem på plassen sin i skapet for at han skulle forstå at han skulle gå.
Men da hun snudde seg, hadde han tatt frem blokken sin. Og blyanten.
Hun satte seg i sengen og sukket. Øyeblikket etter sto det _Peder_ på blokken hans. Så rakte han henne blyanten.
Først orket hun ikke ta den. Så gjorde hun det likevel. Skrev på blokken hans:
_Saturn flyter gjennom himmelrommet_
Da hentet doktor Klim boken om himmellegemene og lot den åpne seg av seg selv. Så satt de bare en stund og så. Til hun ga tilbake blyanten og han skrev:
_Lyset gjør fargene_
Så var de i gang. Vekselvis.
_Ingen eier lyset_ , skrev hun.
_Innerste ringen er mørket_ , skrev han.
Og hun: _Himmelen holder mørket_
_Hvem holder_ _Peder_? spurte han.
_Peder er i lyset_ , skrev hun.
_Vet han det_? ville han vite.
_Ja, men hvem holder lyset?_ spurte hun.
_Det er en gåte i himmelrommet_ , skrev han.
_Og_ _hvem_ _skal holde_ _Anna?_ skrev hun og ga ham blyanten tilbake.
Doktor Klim satt med blyanten i hånden en stund. Så tok han blokken og skrev: _Det er en gåte i verden_.
_Nei, Anna_ _tror at hun_ _må holde seg selv_ , skrev hun, slo blokken sammen og ga ham.
Doktor Klim åpnet den igjen. Mens han leste uten å si ordene høyt, var munnen hans ensom. Leppene rykket til. Så nikket han bare og reiste seg.
– Karna... er også en sjelden fugl, sa han og hastet mot døren.
*
Anna trodde nok at tiden bare var der kroppen var. Hun visste ikke at hver gang hun spilte klaver så påkalte hun sorgen langt inne i Saturns mørkeste sirkel. Annas kropp og hode var ikke enige om hva sorg var. Man kunne se det når hun gikk under trær med snø på. Føttene ville danse og øynene gråte.
Noe gnaget Anna i stykker. Øynene var bare groper. Hun lignet dem som hang i ramme over moderskapet. Hvor var den veggen nå? Den var blitt borte. Alt ble borte. Russeren og skapet med alle mødrene over, var borte.
Hun tenkte på det russeren hadde vært igjennom etter at farmor skjøt ham. Døden. Akkurat som hun tenkte på den brune fuglen som fløy ut vinduet. En mann i overall hadde kommet og kittet i nytt glass. Det nye skilte seg ut. Det var renere, helt uten striper og prikker. Dersom fuglen kom tilbake kunne den ikke komme inn uten å knuse glasset. Da ville de komme farende og tro at det var hun som hadde gjort det. Så måtte hun i trøyen. Man kunne savne den fuglen likevel.
Så kom hun på det. Hun ville skrive det på doktor Klims blokk: _Fuglen trives ikke. Bring den hit uten at vinduet knuser_.
*
Doktor Klim kom mens Anna og hun gikk i labyrinten rundt dammen. Det var frosset til rundt bredden, og fuglene hutret i råkene. Han stakk armen frem mot dem som en blind som ikke riktig vet hvor folk er. Annas hender lå i muffen, og hun hadde skinnkrage rundt halsen. Et ekorn kom farende mellom dem og klatret lynsnart opp i et tre. Der ble det sittende og plire ned mot dem mens halen dirret. Det var en usigelig sorg i det. Hun så at Anna ikke kunne bære den alene. Noe måtte bli gjort. Karna smatt frem og slo på trestammen. Ekornet var vekk på et øyeblikk.
– Men, Karna, ekornet er et vakkert dyr. Synes du ikke? sa Anna og så ut som hun skulle gråte.
Men doktor Klim lo.
– Et ekorn er født til bevegelse. Se! Der sitter det i sørgepilen. Det liker nok ikke vinteren.
Doktor Klims ører var røde av frost, og han stakk hendene dypt i lommene mens han gikk sammen med dem til kurhuset. Da Anna og hun gikk inn, hilste han ikke slik han pleide. Det var som om hånden ikke visste hvor den skulle gjøre av seg. Han så på Anna. Rådvill. Han var ikke den samme som når han gikk stuegang eller lot fingertuppene røre pannen hennes.
*
Pappa sto i døren. Han hadde røde frostroser i kinnene og snø på frakken. Anna sto ved skapet i den tykke strikkejakken sin og skulle gå. Hun hadde kåpen sin klar på stolen.
Det ble galt. Fryktelig galt. Karna kjente hjertet dundre. Det overdøvet deliristene. Overdøvet kirkeklokken. Hun tenkte at hun måtte falle nå, mens hun ennå kunne. Men hun falt ikke. Ble bare stående mens hun tenkte hardt på at doktor Klim var inne på stuen hos fru Bentsen, og at han snart kom. Alt ville få en alminnelig fasong når doktor Klim kom.
For pappa skulle ikke vært der nå. Anna var på vei ut. Ingen skulle være der nå.
– Jeg tror du må vente til etter stuegangen, sa Anna.
Pappa svarte ikke, men han tok ikke av seg frakken, bare hatten. Den hadde snø på bremmen. Han hadde nye vintersko og kom helt inn i rommet.
– Jeg går nå, sa Anna og så på dem etter tur. Nikket.
Pappa nikket tilbake, men han sa hverken _god dag_ eller _farvel_.
Noe var galt. Fryktelig galt.
– Se så! Her er besøk! Det varmer i denne forbaskede frosten, sa doktor Klim og sto i døren.
– Unnskyld, sa pappa.
– Jeg var på vei. Jeg går nå, sa Anna.
– Nei, bli. Reglementer er til for å brytes, sa doktor Klim og ga pappa hånden.
– Jeg takker ja, dersom det ikke forstyrrer, sa pappa.
– Absolutt ikke. Her står vi fire sammen og er for øyeblikket det viktigste i rommet.
Anna var så blek. Munnen var en rosenknopp som ikke skulle få lov til å springe ut. Den røde kjolen skulle ha sunget for henne. Om fuglen som fløy rett gjennom vindusruten fordi den ikke ville brenne opp. Nå hadde doktor Klim tatt vare på den. Han var visst ikke redd for ild. Eller så var han ikke redd for å være redd.
– Jeg har invitert frøken Karna med i Tivoli når det blir tøvær, hun har ikke vært der, sa doktor Klim.
– Det er vel ikke akkurat sesong for det, sa pappa og åpnet frakken.
– Jo, absolutt. Fyrverkeriet kommer best til sin rett i mørket.
Hun kunne se at det gjorde dem redde. De så endelig på hverandre. Pappa og Anna. Men doktor Klim fortsatte bare å snakke om fyrverkeriet i Tivoli. Det hørtes ut som om Tivoli var noe man måtte gjennomgå før man døde. Dagen før hadde han trykket fingertuppene sine mot tinningene hennes og spurt om hun kunne ha lyst til å gå med ham i Tivoli. Da hadde det ikke vært så farlig. Men nå som pappa og Anna var der, virket det annerledes. Som om doktor Klim mente døden var en lek. Som om han _lekte_ med livsfarlige ting mens han var på leting etter noe han ikke visste hva var.
# ANNA BER OM HJELP
Hun tok en vogn fra stasjonen og gikk rett til kontorfløyen. Var han ikke alene, så ville hun si at hun gjerne skulle snakket med ham om Karna. Var han ikke der, så ville hun slå av en prat med søster Vivi og finne ut når han kom.
I dag satt hun med åpen kontordør og var ikke til å unngå.
– Som du er savnet! Alt er bare tull nå som jeg må klare alt alene. Disse mannfolkene holder jo ikke orden på noe. Doktor Klim er nok på kontoret nå. Men skal vi ikke ta en prat før du snakker med ham om Karna. Jeg vil så gjerne vite hvordan du har det i Kjøbenhavn?
Anna avverget samtalen. Smilende, trodde hun. Hun måtte rekke et tog for hun skulle besøke sine foreldre. Ordene bare for ut før hun fikk tenkt. Det var så lett med små løgner. Gjorde alt så glidende.
Hun banket på, og ventet litt da hun hørte dette friske: _Kom inn_! Hadde han hørt stemmen hennes, kjente han skrittene hennes? Slik hun kjente hans. Visste han at det var hun som sto utenfor døren? Det virket slik, for han var oppe av stolen og hos henne med det samme. Sa navnet hennes. Lukket døren. Bød henne den ene av de to besøksstolene. Satte seg selv på den andre. Grep hendene hennes.
– Du var borte da jeg kom fra reise? Helt borte. Uten at du hadde nevnt det. Jeg fikk vite at du hadde sagt opp og hadde adresse hos ham. Og da jeg traff dere sammen hos Karna, som om det var blitt det normale, da greide jeg ikke engang å glede meg. Jeg skal ikke spørre deg. Nei, jeg skal pokker ikke spørre. Men nå gjør jeg det likevel. Du har tatt et valg. Du skal bo hos _ham_.
– Ja. Det blir til det...
– Men er du glad? Anna, jeg kan se at du ikke er glad! Du angrer? Kommer du hit for å si at du angrer? Der spurte jeg likevel, sa han og reiste seg. Snudde seg fra henne og gikk noen skritt rundt i rommet.
– Da jeg traff dere sammen hos Karna... Da forsto jeg at jeg hadde tapt. Jeg hadde innprentet meg selv at jeg aldri skulle spørre. Og så spør jeg likevel.
– I dag kom jeg rett hit til deg, sa hun og så hjelpeløst på ham.
– Du kom rett hit. Ja?
– Ja, gjentok hun bare.
Han trakk stolen sin mot hennes. Bøyde seg nærmere, helt nær. Hun kjente den svake lukten av medisin og tobakk. Og dette andre – det som bare var ham. Da han bøyde seg ned og lot leppene gli over baksiden av hendene hennes, kjente hun en vekhet.
– Anna. Du angrer. Jeg er en egoist som er glad fordi du ikke er glad for å ha flyttet til ham. Samtidig vil jeg at du skal være glad. Og jeg forbanner meg selv at jeg ikke er den som skal gjøre deg glad. Vil du snakke om det?
– Jeg _må_ snakke om det. Men jeg er ikke sikker på om dette er det rette stedet, sa hun.
– Har du noter med? Vil du spille en times tid til jeg er ferdig for dagen? Så går vi til kroen?
– Nei, jeg må si det _nå_ , før jeg ombestemmer meg.
– Ja vel, kom med det, sa han.
– Jeg bærer barnet vårt, Joakim, sa hun.
Munnen hans åpnet seg halvt, og hodet la seg bakover. Først lukket han øynene fast i, så åpnet han dem og så rett inn i hennes.
– Er det en gave eller en katastrofe? sa han og klemte hendene hennes.
– Det skulle jo vært en gave etter alle disse årene jeg trodde at jeg ikke kunne få noen.
– Gaver kan komme ubeleilig, sa han og vendte seg bort.
– Er det en gave for deg? spurte hun.
Han tenkte seg om. Hun kunne _se_ at han veide ordene sine.
– Nei, ikke etter omstendighetene. Det er jo du som får alt, så å si i fanget.
De satt uten å si noe.
– Og dersom omstendigheten hadde vært annerledes?
– Da ville det vært en gave, slo han fast.
– Du ville ektet meg?
– Ja. Dersom du ville det.
– For barnet?
– Hvorfor spør du slik?
– Fordi jeg ikke vet hva du tenker. En ektepakt skal være en pakt mellom to som ikke kan være hverandre foruten.
– Ideelt sett ja. Men det er vanskelig for en kvinne å være alene med et barn. Samfunnet er...
– Jeg snakker ikke om samfunnet, jeg snakker om deg, avbrøt hun.
Han la armene om henne og gjemte ansiktet hos henne.
– Vær sikker. Jeg ville ha ektet deg. Men nå er det altså slik at du er gift med en annen.
Hun ble sittende og puste en stund. Han rettet seg opp og la hendene hennes i fanget sitt.
– Du har fortalt ham det?
– Nei. Han har sett det.
Han sperret opp øynene, lo den korte latteren sin.
– Han har _sett_ det! Ikke dårlig. Den mannen er faglig kompetent. Har han også regnet ut at det må være mitt?
Ordene. Stemmen hans.
– Nei, han tror at jeg ikke vet. Men jeg har lært å regne.
– Selvsagt. Men han spurte?
– Nei. Det var jeg som spurte om han ikke skulle spørre.
– Kom det til scener?
– Ikke andre enn dem jeg selv stelte i stand. Det er ikke derfor jeg er her.
– Nei, du kommer fordi du vil si meg at du synes det vil være klokt å gi din mann det farskapet?
Noe hadde hardnet til. Hun prøvde å forstå. Hvordan alt var blitt mellom dem. Det gjorde henne tom. Hun hadde ikke forestilt seg at det skulle hardne mellom Joakim og henne _før_ hun hadde spurt ham. Så skjedde det likevel.
Dag og natt hadde hun tenkt igjennom hvordan alt kom til å bli. Med et barn som ikke var Benjamins. Uansett kom hun ikke unna. Det var i hennes kropp og hode slaget skulle stå. Hun var alene. Slik var naturen innrettet. Så hadde hun tatt bestemmelsen. En tidlig morgen etter at han var gått til Frederiks Hospital.
– Nei, jeg vil ikke lyve til ham om farskapet. Jeg er her for å be deg om hjelp, for jeg kan ikke be _ham_ om det, sa hun.
– Du vil forlate ham? Du vil at jeg skal møte ham? Jeg gjør hva som helst. Han og jeg, vi er jo på talefot...
– Du må fjerne det! sa hun.
Han skvatt til, men hentet seg inn.
– Du ser ikke alt helt klart nå, sa han rolig.
– Jeg ser det tydelig. Dere begge ser på dette som min sak og vil begge _hjelpe meg_. Men det eneste som kan hjelpe meg er at det fjernes.
– Anna, hør på meg...
– For Benjamin er dette barnet avskyelig, men noe han må tåle for min del. Mens for _deg_ får det barnet jeg føder inn i et ekteskap ingen konsekvenser.
Hun så at han ble opprørt under et urørlig ansikt. Øynene mørknet. Han slapp hendene hennes og lente seg tilbake.
– Forstår du ikke at et barn gjør at du aldri blir kvitt meg? Uansett hvilket ekteskap du føder det i. Jeg kommer til å følge den ungen så lenge jeg lever, enten du liker det eller ei.
– Du ville sikkert blitt en storartet hemmelig far. Når det passet. Men jeg kan ikke ha en hemmelig far. Dessuten er det for sent.
– Anna, du er oppbrakt nå... Men etter hvert...
– Tror du ikke jeg har tenkt? avbrøt hun. – Tror du dette er lett for meg? Å bli en heks! En som med åpne øyne har latt seg besvangre, og nå vil drepe et foster! En lettvint en, uten styrke og moral. En som uansett vil være utstøtt. I egne øyne. Men jeg har fått plass på det nye Kommunehospitalet. Der kan jeg jo gjøre bot. Som elev. Jeg har ingen sjanse til å gjøre karriere, som dere to. Men jeg vil kanskje kunne brødfø meg selv. Da kan jeg ikke velge å føde og fostre et barn med en hemmelig far. En sykepleierske må dessuten ha en ærbar vandel. Jeg vil ikke utslettes og bli til et fruentimmer med dårlig vandel, mens dere fosser frem i frihet som de kapasiteter dere på alle måter er, med eller uten barn. Du ga meg ideen om frihet første dag vi møttes. Det er for sent for meg å fly, men jeg vil lære meg å holde meg flytende med selvrespekten i behold.
Hun hadde hevet stemmen. Han så mot døren. De hørte Vivis skritt fjerne seg ned trappen. Så ble det stille.
– Hadde min mor vært like djerv som du, så hadde ikke jeg sittet her, og dette fosteret ville aldri vært et problem for noen, sa han.
– Jeg kan godt takke din mor for at jeg traff deg, men resten får vi takke oss selv for.
Han så mysende på henne. Som man betrakter en som kommer med en tese det er verdt å ta tak i.
– Det har du sannelig rett i, sa han og prøvde seg på et smil.
Hun lukket øynene.
– Joakim. Hjelp meg. Jeg ber deg...
– Anna, det kan jeg ikke. Du forstår det, ikke sant?
– Hjelp meg...
– Jeg kan ikke. Og nå angrer du alt? Du forbanner det øyeblikk vi møttes? spurte han.
– Nei, Joakim. Har du ennå ikke forstått...? Hun så hjelpeløst på ham.
Da han omsider så ned, strøk hun vekk det som siplet frem. Så reiste hun seg og gikk mot døren. Lukket den etter seg. Tok trappen i kraftige svev mens hun følte seg død. Fullstendig død.
Han innhentet henne halvveis til stasjonen. Klemte armen hennes inntil kroppen sin. Gikk i hennes takt. Hun gikk fort. Hev etter pusten. Så ikke på ham. Slik gikk de sammen i full fart.
– Jeg skal få en jeg stoler på til å gjøre det, eller gjøre det selv, sa han til slutt, andpusten.
Hun bråstanset.
– Velsigne deg, Joakim. Vi kommer til å brenne i helvete, gråt hun og klamret seg til ham.
– Da brenner vi fortjent og sammen, mumlet han og slo armene om henne.
Et eldre par kom ut hageporten sin. Det skrek i de isete hengslene. De gamle skiftet blikk og smilte. Mannens stokk slo ned i broleggingen da de gikk motsatt vei.
De sa ikke mer før de nærmet seg stasjonen. Hun tørket seg over ansiktet med et allerede vått lommetørkle og tok hanskene på. Han klemte armen hennes tett inntil kroppen sin som han pleide.
– Jeg reiser med deg til byen, så snakker vi med ham sammen.
– Det kan jeg ikke utsette ham for.
– Du tenker mer på ham enn på deg selv?
– Det blir ikke bedre for meg heller at du er der når jeg må si dette.
– Han vil synes at jeg er en kujon som ikke tør møte ham.
– Jeg sier det som det er, at du ville følge meg, og at jeg ba deg la være.
– Du tror han vil sette seg imot? spurte han.
– Ja. Dere mener begge at dere er satt i embete for å berge liv, ikke for å ta liv. Og dere er menn. I det verdensbildet er kvinner først og fremst en livmor.
– Tror du jeg ser slik på deg? Han stoppet opp.
– Jeg vet ikke, sa hun trett.
– Jeg vegret meg fordi jeg ville hindre deg i å gjøre noe som du kom til å angre på. Og, ja, jeg innrømmer at det berører meg at barnet er mitt. Kan du forstå min enkle vegring?
– Ja.
– Men nå har jeg bestemt meg. Ditt liv er det viktigste. Ikke fosteret som ble unnfanget. Det er ditt liv jeg har satt på spill. Det krever et offer. Og jeg redd for at du kan komme til å hate meg for det offeret. Kan du følge min enkle tanke?
– Ja, sa hun mens halsen tettet seg til, og hun tenkte at hun holdt av ham mer enn noen gang. For i løpet av en time hadde han tatt stilling til at hun var gravid, hørt på hennes bønn, nektet å utføre den, men så kommet etter henne for å si at han hadde ombestemt seg. Han hadde ikke sagt at han elsket henne, hadde ikke nevnt et ord om pasjon. Men han hadde sett hennes nød.
– Takk! sa hun og ga ham hånden.
De sto på perrongen sammen med alle menneskene, og hun skulle til å gå opp på stigbrettet. Da sa han høyt med et bredt smil, som om han ville muntre hele verden:
– Dette må besørges fort som bare det. Du hører fra meg. God reise!
*
Benjamin var der da hun kom til leiligheten. De hilste vennlig. Spurte om hverandres dag. Han hadde hatt det travelt, men ikke dramatisk. To juleroser sto på kjøkkenbenken. Ennå i poser. Hun uttrykte glede over dem, pakket dem ut og fant to skåler. Satte den ene i vinduskarmen og den andre på spisebordet. Varmet suppen fra dagen før.
Da de hadde spist, ryddet de begge av bordet. Han satte seg under lampen med avisen. Hun gikk inn i soverommet for å puste.
Da hun kom ut, forsto hun at han ikke leste, men bare satt der og pustet, han også. Hun ble stående mens hun sa det.
– Jeg har bedt Joakim fjerne det. Det er hans.
Han rørte seg ikke – først. Så brettet han avisen sammen og strøk hånden over hele ansiktet og hodet. Neven ble liggende rundt nakken en stund.
– Det kommer overhodet ikke på tale!
– Det skal du slippe å ta stilling til, Benjamin, sa hun rolig.
Han tok opp avisen igjen og klasket den hardt i bordet.
– Er det _han_... Er det hans forslag?
– Nei, han nektet først.
– Hvorfor... Hvorfor ba du ham om noe slikt?
– Jeg kunne ikke be deg. Kunne ikke utsette deg for det.
Hun gjemte ansiktet i hendene og ble sittende.
– Vil du at _jeg_ skal si ham at det ikke blir noe av? spurte han etter en stund.
– Nei. Jeg kan ikke bære det frem.
– Tror du virkelig at jeg vil legge et barn for hat fordi det ikke er mitt?
– Det vet ingen... Og det vil jeg ikke klare. Men mest er det av hensyn til meg selv. Det er for sent i livet. Vi har allerede et barn vi ikke greier å ta vare på. Og mitt barn skal ikke ha en hemmelig far. Da måtte jeg i så fall tatt konsekvensene av det. Flyttet fra deg. Levd alene med et barn jeg ikke kunne forsørge på skikkelig vis. Jeg er trett... av omsorg, sorg og sjalusi.
– Han har slått hånden av deg? Sviktet deg! hveste han mot henne.
– Tvert om. Han vil hjelpe meg.
– Du forsvarer ham. Og du har tatt en drastisk avgjørelse... Anna, jeg ber deg. Hør... Jeg sverger ved alt som er hellig at jeg skal bli en like god far for dette barnet som du er mor for Karna. Ser du ikke at det går an? Dette er ikke riktig beslutning!
– Det finnes ingen andre enn denne, for meg.
# BENJAMIN FÅR BREV OG OPPDRAG
Flere gassbluss var plassert under rørene som varmet opp vannet. En sykepleierske tappet i et glass og blandet det med vin som hun ga den nyopererte kvinnen. Benjamin så at den voksbleke ansiktsfargen frisknet litt etter hvert som hun greide å svelge.
Han skulle assistere reservekirurgen med amputasjon av høyrefoten under kneet og to tær på venstre. Men i praksis hadde han overtatt. Stanken av materie begynte å avta og lukten av carbol vant.
Forsamlingen i amfiet begynte å røre på seg. Annas far hadde sittet med korslagte armer sammen med studentene. Nå kom han ned til podiet.
– Du er presis og sikker. Man er fornøyd med deg, sa han.
– Takk, sa Benjamin litt fraværende. Han vennet seg visst aldri til overgangen fra dyp konsentrasjon til sosial selvtilfredshet. Det var så langt fra det han var vant til der hjemme. Der kunne han i det minste ta av seg den hvite frakken og gummihanskene før evalueringen begynte. Oftest var det bare Anna som kom med den på sin nøkterne måte. Og hun hadde alltid vært mer opptatt av pasienten enn ham, og ga ikke akkurat ved dørene. Det gjorde for så vidt ikke hennes far heller. Han viste seg sjelden på operasjonsstuen når han var der. Men han holdt seg underrettet.
– Vi tar et glass sammen når du har avsluttet, ikke sant? sa svigerfar, med en letthet som fikk det til å høres ut som om de hadde reist seg fra middagsbordet.
Benjamin nikket og dro av seg forkleet.
Amfiet var allerede pyntet med granbar til Hospitalets julehøytidelighet. En anelse frisk skog i alt det andre. Det var ikke uten grunn at operasjonsstuen kaltes _kirken_. Men Benjamin kjente ingen julestemning og belaget seg på å gi en heller unnfallen rapport til svigerfar om sin og Annas advent.
De satt i salongen på Hotel D'Angleterre. Kelneren hadde brakt øl, gammel dansk og sigar med galante bukk. Pidestallene hadde glitterprydede palmer, og en pianist lot en smektende julesalme kile i øret.
– Fortsetter du slik, kan du være reservekirurg innen utgangen av neste år, sa Annas far og skålte.
– Det skjer vel ikke så fort, men takk for tilliten. Jeg kjenner meg egentlig ganske hjemme i den gammeldagse operasjonsstuen, sa Benjamin.
– Ja, den mangler virkelig en modernisering. Du angrer ikke på valget? Kirurgien?
– Slett ikke, jeg passer nok bedre til praktiske oppgaver enn til å hjelpe kvinner, sa han tørt.
Han merket svigerfars blikk, men det kom ikke flere spørsmål om saken.
Benjamin tok et dypt drag av sigaren. Det utløste hoste. Sigar var ikke noe for ham. Men for Dina, kom han på. Hun satt alltid i røykesalonger med menn. Gjerne på en sjeselong med utstrakte legger. Han husket at det synet hadde gjort ham utilpass da han var gutt.
– Annas mor er ikke like begeistret som vi over at Anna har besluttet å bli sykepleierske. Men hun venner seg til det, sa svigerfar. – Vi ser dere vel i julen? la han til.
– Selvsagt. Det blir hyggelig, sa Benjamin og slukket sigaren.
– Vi har besøk av Sophie. Hun har de to store barna med seg. Der er visst noe skuddermudder med mannen. _Jeg_ blir jo ikke akkurat informert om den slags, men... Vi trodde alt var bra i Hamburg. Det er disse moderne grillene folk har fått, at to sjeler skal være samstemt i ett og alt. Nå vel. Sant å si har jeg aldri fått tak på denne mannen hennes. Det er noe upålitelig, for ikke å si betent, med folk som hele tiden snakker om penger. Jeg får lyst til å operere og legge inn drens for å få ut materien.
Benjamin måtte le. Tenkte på hvordan denne mannen hadde vært som ung kandidat. Sikkert frekk og utfordrende, men kontrollert. Det slo ham at han aldri hadde sett Annas far miste fatningen.
– Skuddermudderet, det kan jo være noe forbigående, foreslo han.
– La oss håpe det. Men de skulle ha ventet med eventuelle uoverensstemmelser til over jul. Barna må feire jul uten sin far. Ja, ja. Sophie lot seg vel en gang blende av alt forretningsmannen kunne by henne, og så har det bleknet, sa svigerfar nøkternt.
– Og så kom hun seg ut i verden? sa Benjamin.
– Ja. Og hennes mor var begeistret for partiet, det hører også med. Men det har visst kjølnet. Det er noe annet med deg. Det går ikke en dag uten hennes takksigelser over din person.
– Det må være en prøvelse for deg, sa Benjamin smilende.
– Langt ifra. Vi er begge glad for at du endelig kom til Kjøbenhavn. Ja, det er sant, fortsatte han. – Det har kommet et brev til deg fra Nordland. Det kom her om dagen. Jeg har det i frakkelommen der ute. Et øyeblikk, jeg henter det.
– Nei, det kan vente til vi går. Det kan være dårlige nyheter, sa Benjamin og løftet glasset.
Svigerfar ga seg, og begynte i stedet å legge ut om vanskeligheten ved å frakte pasienter i kurver opp og ned smale trapper fra de forskjellige stuene, for ikke å snakke om at de lå slik til at de måtte bæres gjennom Grønnegården i all slags vær.
– Men de slipper å bli fraktet i åpen båt, sa Benjamin.
– Sant nok, man glemmer at det alltid er noen som har det verre.
Svigerfar avrundet med å fortelle at da han var ung student og måtte være med å transportere pasienter til operasjonsstuen, måtte de sette lokk på i dårlig vær. Han syntes at kurvene lignet dem man fraktet kransekake eller overflødighetshorn i til store selskaper.
– Men konditorkurvene luktet naturligvis bedre, og var betydelig lettere. Og slik er det nok ennå, humret han.
Benjamin observerte at svigerfar var annerledes i dag. Mer leken. Ubekymret. Hadde han ikke møtt ham i familiesammenheng, så ville han trodd at det var slik han var. Og mens han lyttet til planene om å forbedre operasjonsstuen og hele avdelingen, slo det ham at svigerfar nok hadde sitt fristed på hospitalet. Der fant han den makabre humoren. Der kunne han snakke med menn som kunne og ville rivalisere om makt og kunnskap. Det var en verden svigermor ikke delte. Og plutselig forsto han hvorfor Anna var så opptatt av å arbeide. Hevde sin plass. Hun hadde sett hvordan moren prøvde å fylle sitt liv med overfladisk sosial tyngde, i mangel av noe annet. Sett forskjellen på sin mors og sin fars liv. Der ekteskapet var et skall rundt ensomheten.
Han åpnet brevet fra Peder i garderoben etter at Annas far var gått. Ble sittende i en stol med frakken og brevet over knærne.
Peder skrev om Johans begravelse i Wilfred og Selines hjem. Han kunne ane hvordan annen informasjon lå mellom linjene. Men det var arket som lå sammen med brevet, som fikk hans oppmerksomhet. Det så ut som om Peder hadde skrevet av en brannassuranse han hadde funnet. Det måtte være snakk om mange penger, dersom den var gyldig. Det ville i så fall løse hans bekymring for Karnas enerom og spesialforpleining på Hospitalet. Kunne det være mulig at Dina hadde oversett at Anders hadde tegnet en brannassuranse for Reinsnes? At hun i vanvare lot den bli borte da hun flyttet papirene fra kontoret på Reinsnes og til Strandstedet?
Mens han gikk hjem, påla han seg selv å tro på at en brannassuranse skulle gjøre både Annas og hans dag lettere. At det skulle få henne til å tenke annerledes når det gjaldt barnet.
Han fløy opp trappene, låste seg inn og ropte navnet hennes. Men hun var ikke der.
I stedet fant han dagens andre brev innenfor døren. Det hadde verken konvolutt eller frankering og var skrevet på et avrevet ark fra et forelesningshefte.
Doktor Klim ba om et møte samme dag. Samme sted som sist. Klokken fem.
Mens han leste den korte beskjeden, veltet alt opp. Sinne. Sjalusi. Avmakt. Denne mannen hadde nakketaket på ham. Han tok opp lommeuret. Så bestemte han seg.
Mannen var på plass da han kom. Samme kjellersted. Det var torsdag ettermiddag, så han hadde vel vært hos bordelljentene, tenkte Benjamin. Nå reiste han seg og strakte frem hånden. Benjamin tok den i et fort trykk.
De satte seg. To kopper kaffe sto allerede der. Fyren hadde omtenksomt nok satt skålen på hans kopp. Så likte han vel ikke kald kaffe selv.
– Du er presis. Godt! sa han.
Benjamin nikket og møtte blikket hans. Fosteret fløt i mannens pupiller. Unnfangelsen. Han så for seg sammensmeltingen. Så den forbannede fremmede sædcellen som hadde klart det _hans_ i årevis ikke hadde vært i stand til. Den andres øyne hugget inn i hans uten å vike. Men han kunne ikke unngå å se at de ba for seg. Og ansiktet. Noe usymmetrisk, ikke til å tyde. Leppene bevegde seg nesten ikke mens han snakket. Ordene kom tydelig, uten at Benjamin greide å ta dem inn over seg. Ikke før denne setningen:
– Jeg vil be deg om å være der. Se til at jeg gjør alt slik jeg skal.
Benjamin svelget kaffe. Svelget to ganger.
– Er det _hun_ som vil det?
Mannen ristet på hodet.
– Hun mente at jeg ikke fikk deg til det. Men nå spør jeg likevel.
Benjamin fikk forbannet lyst til å slå. Ikke bare mannen, men hele kjelleren. Begynne med kaffekoppene. Sparke stolene. Rave bort til disken. Feie ned hele rekken av seidler. Åpne kranen på kaggen og la øl flomme. Slå ned mannen bak disken, bare for at han sto i veien. Feie snapsglassene ut av hyllen. Kassaapparatet. Se myntene trille ned i alle forbannede skitne hull uten at noen kunne hente dem inn. Slå Joakim Klim ut av tiden. Slå! Helt til han kunne våkne og oppdaget at dette bare var et mareritt.
Og doktor Klim satt der like hel.
– Jeg må snakke med henne en gang til, sa Benjamin. – Få henne fra det.
– Jeg vil be deg om å la være. Hun har alt vært igjennom det. Jeg avviste det også. Først...
– Du kan ikke gjøre det! Ser du det ikke? avbrøt Benjamin.
– Kan vi la det etiske ligge, Benjamin? Dette gjelder Annas liv, ikke mitt.
– Men livet hennes er ikke truet. Det gjelder barnet hennes, sa han og kjente at ansiktet kom i ulage.
– Med en leges øyne har du rett. Men slik hun har fått _meg_ til å se på det, så _er_ livet hennes truet. Og _jeg_ har brakt henne dit.
Benjamin så for seg scenen da hun overbeviste ham. Ansiktet hennes. Favntaket. Følelsene.
– Jeg bestemmer selv hva jeg vil ta opp med Anna. _Hun_ _vet_ at avgjørelsen ikke er riktig. Hun har ikke rygg til å bære det, sa han.
– Benjamin, jeg ber deg, ikke la henne gå gjennom dette på nytt med deg også.
De ble sittende og henge mot hverandre.
– Og hva fikk deg til å ombestemme deg? spurte Benjamin omsider.
– Hun. Og hun har selvsagt rett.
– I at hun heller vil leve som et fritt menneske. Var det _det_ hun sa?
– Ja, men ikke så kynisk som du. Hun nevnte deg også. At hun ikke ville lyve om farskapet.
Benjamin festet blikket på paraplystativet ved veggen. Det var skjevt og et stykke av smijernet var borte.
De satt i en krok innerst i lokalet. Mannen bak disken så bort på dem av og til. Men han kunne ikke høre hva de sa. Det falt av seg selv at de brukte lav stemme. Benjamin fikk en følelse av å være en forbryter som planla et tokt. Noe som ikke var så fjernt fra sannheten.
– Du vil ha en medsammensvoren? Derfor ber du meg være der. Du vet at kommer dette opp, så vil det koste deg dyrt, sa han.
– Hun er verdt det, svarte den andre.
Benjamin stirret. De satt der og stirret hverandre sønder og sammen.
– Tror du ikke _jeg_ vet hva hun er verdt? presset han frem mellom tennene.
– Jo. Men å vite er _en_ ting. Å ta konsekvensene av sin viten er noe helt annet. Men du kan velge å la være å bistå. Det var bare et spørsmål.
Han er farlig, han får meg til å tro at han har rett, tenkte Benjamin.
Først var det stille. Så stille som det er mulig i en kneipe i en kjeller like før jul. Så tok han bestemmelsen.
– Jeg kommer dersom _hun_ vil ha meg der.
Den andre lyste opp. Grep hånden hans som lå på bordet. Ristet den. Reaksjonen var som hos en gutt som plutselig hadde fått en å være sammen med.
– Det er en dårlig dag, men det må gjøres julaften formiddag, sa Joakim.
– Julaften! Hvorfor?
– Så vi er sikre på ikke å bli forstyrret.
– Hvor?
– Jeg har lånt det stedet der jeg hjelper torsdagspasientene. Min kollega vet ikke hvem som skal dit, og vil helst ikke vite det. Like her borte. Jeg skal vise deg.
Benjamin ble sittende og puste en stund.
– Er stedet rent? Stoler du på at instrumentene er rene?
– Absolutt. Ellers hadde jeg aldri brukt det stedet.
– Hun vet hvor hun skal?
– Jeg skal vise deg hvor dere går inn, sa Joakim lett, som om det dreide seg om mageverk.
Benjamin tømte en allerede tom kaffekopp og tok seg til hodet. Pausen var klam.
– Jeg har tenkt på... tenkt på at det er rart at du ikke har drept meg, sa Joakim og så ham rett i synet.
– Du mener ut fra det min mor gjorde? parerte Benjamin.
– Nei, ut fra meg selv. Sjalusi er fandens hov.
– Det sier _du_? fikk han sagt.
– Ja. Fra den dagen jeg traff henne, har jeg ønsket deg død og begravet. Eller at du skulle forbli der oppe under polen. Jeg kompenserer med å reise rundt og gjøre meg viktig. I _faget_ , som man kaller denne vitenskapen om det ingen egentlig vet noe om. Sjelen. Eller den delen av oss som bringer oss til galskap.
# ANNA SER HIMMELEN
De gikk bakdøren. Benjamin slapp hånden hennes og gikk foran henne opp den smale trappen. Blyvindu med sprukkent glass slapp inn dagslyset. Trinnene hadde messingbeslag med riller spekket med gammel grus og skitt. Brystpanelet som en gang hadde vært gult, hadde fått en brun kulør. Rekkverket var solid og satt opp for at tjenerskapet ikke skulle snuble med nattpotter og morgenbrett. Når jeg går ned her så er alt over, tenkte hun.
Joakim åpnet døren, gikk til side og slapp dem inn. De nikket til hverandre. Det ville vært underlig om de ønsket god jul. Men det kunne ligne Joakims tørre humor. Han låste. Joakim og jeg er visst dømt til å være bak låste dører, tenkte hun. Men denne gangen er Benjamin også her. Og når vi går ut, er alt over.
Benken var ikke skremmende i seg selv. Benjamin hadde en slik på Strandstedet. Og skjermbrett med litt avskallet lakkering. Trallen med instrumenter virket også kjent. Likevel uvirkelig. Hun kunne ha drømt det. Det gjorde hun ikke.
Ingen sa noe. Hun prøvde å la være å se på dem. Var redd for å begynne å gråte. Da kunne de tro at hun hadde ombestemt seg. Eller synes synd på henne, så Joakim ble ustø på hendene. Hun hadde følt usikkerheten i hendene hans av og til. Når han tok på henne. Benjamins også. Slik hadde de noe felles, tenkte hun. Det var viktig å ha noe å tenke på. For hun måtte ikke gråte.
Joakim begynte å snakke med lav stemme. Forklarte henne hva han skulle gjøre. Stemmen var stø, nesten munter. Hun skulle få noe som lindret smerten. Skulle ikke bekymre seg. Hun ville flyte bort. Alt kom til å gå fort. Etterpå ville hun være omtåket og kanskje ikke føle seg så bra. Men de skulle være her og passe på henne. Hun skulle ikke ut på gaten før hun selv ville.
– Ingen vil plage oss akkurat i dag, sa han og smilte litt. Han hadde oppbrettede hvite skjorteermer og pene bukser. Rommet var lunt, men ikke varmt.
Benjamin tok av seg frakk og vest og helte vann i fatet på servanten. Som om det var hans kontor, og han hadde gjort det før. Akkurat her. Men han sa ingenting. Øynene var borte. Benjamins øyne hadde vært borte helt siden han sa at han ville gå med henne.
– Han sa du ville ha meg der, er det så? hadde han spurt. Hun hadde stått med ryggen til og sagt ja.
Nå ble hun også stående midt på gulvet uten å vite hva hun skulle ta seg til. Joakim nikket mot benken og satte skjermbrettet rundt en stol.
– Si fra når du er klar, sa han med den muntre stemmen og rakte henne et laken.
Hun kledde av seg skjørt og undertøy. Hengte det over stolryggen. Hadde en lang bluse på. Valgt med omhu for å dekke så mye som mulig for de to mennene som hadde sett mest av henne.
Benken var dekket av et snøhvitt, slitt laken. I kanten sto det innsydd _Hospitalet_. Det lignet det de hadde ligget på i disseksjonsrommet. Han måtte ha brakt det med. Det falt ujevnt ned over gropen mellom bøylene der alt skulle foregå. Under sto en emaljebøtte. Hun unngikk å se på instrumentene. Tre gassbluss overfalt hver pore, hvert arr da hun lå på plass. Hun trakk det ekstra lakenet opp til livet og ville si at hun var klar. Det ble bare en merkelig lyd.
Fargene var så vakre. Lyder fra hun var barn. Kirkeklokker. Malmklang. Enger med prestekrager fløt over himmelen. Hun måtte le, så vakkert var det. Ansiktene deres over henne. Svevende. Hun kunne ikke vite hvem som var hvem. De gled over i hverandre, inn og ut av spillet. Buktet og bøyde seg i fargene over henne. Et stort orkester med blinkende instrumenter sprengte himmelen. Tonene eksploderte i alt lyset. Brahms' Requiem. Sol og måne, alle hærskarer av stjerner skulle ha henne på én gang. Hun var i et inferno av uutholdelig skjønnhet, lyd og farger.
Dette er jo døden, rakk hun å tenke.
# BENJAMIN MÅ FEIE UT FØLELSER
Hun lo så voldsomt at det påvirket alt. Var ustyrlig. Kastet på seg. Snakket uten sammenheng. Først ga Joakim henne beskjed om at hun måtte ligge stille. Men han nådde ikke frem.
Benjamin sa ingenting, men et sinne bygget seg opp. Hun hadde tydelig fått for stor dose. Var det morfin? Kokain? Han hadde ikke spurt. Bare tatt som en selvfølge at mannen visste hva han gjorde. Nå var det for sent. Hvordan kunne han være så naiv at han stolte på at mannen hadde kontroll? At han så å si var rutinert. Hvordan kunne han?
– Du må avbryte, sa Benjamin.
Mannen rettet seg opp og ble stående med hanskekledte hender i luften.
Benjamin påla seg selv å beholde roen. Dette var en bagatell i forhold til mye annet han holdt på med. Han visste jo det. Pasienten var bare overdosert. Det var også en bagatell og ville gå over. Det tok bare tid. Alt dette visste han. Men idet han så den andres ansikt, forsto han at dosen kunne være farlig høy. Mannen var redd. Skulle han be om å ta over? Nei.
De ventet i flere minutter uten å si et ord. Benjamin presset overkroppen hennes ned på benken med en hånd og holdt om pulsen hennes med den andre. Tjue minutter gikk. Langsomt stabiliserte alt seg. Hodet og lemmene falt til og øynene lukket seg. Pulsen kom i hvilemodus.
– Du kan arbeide nå, sa Benjamin og nikket.
Joakim krummet ryggen og senket hendene. Først nølende.
Så var han i gang igjen.
Benjamin sto med pulsen hennes i hånden og prøvde samtidig å se hva som skjedde ved enden.
Det tok altfor lang tid, og han var på nippet til å si at han skulle overta. Men gjorde det ikke. Mannen kunne gjøre noe dumt akkurat de sekundene han måtte ta imot en slik ordre. Å ta fra en lege konsentrasjon og autoritet i et kritisk øyeblikk var dødssynd. Verre enn mytteri i storm. Men til slutt sto Joakim med blodige hender i luften.
Benjamin sto med pulsen hennes under tommelen. Den hadde falt, men ikke dramatisk.
– Alt er ute så vidt jeg kan bedømme, hørte han Joakim si med svetten i striper over et grått ansikt. Det gikk opp for ham at Joakim hele tiden hadde tenkt på at det var _Anna_ som lå der.
Benjamin flyttet seg bort til ham, bøyde seg ned og undersøkte innholdet i bøtta.
– Ja! sa han bestemt uten å se på Joakim.
Han skulle gjort dette inngrepet selv. Men da hadde han ikke gjort det på en totalt neddopet kvinne. De måtte ha tålt litt smerte alle tre. Og han _visste_ at i det øyeblikk alt var i gang, ville han greid å sette alle følelser til side for å gjøre akkurat det han skulle.
Han returnerte til pulsen hennes. Den var lav, men ikke urovekkende. Det var vanskelig å bedømme hvor til stede hun var. Han klasket henne bestemt på kinnet. Hun klynket og det rykket i øyelokkene. Han åpnet et øye og lyste inn. Hun responderte godt. Så klasket han henne på kinnet igjen. Hun rykket til og famlet over seg med hendene.
– Godt! sa han ut i luften.
– Blødningen vil ikke avta, sa Joakim lavt.
Benjamin gikk de få skrittene langs benken for selv å se.
– Det er ikke så ille. Og det renser, sa han.
Da Joakim begynte å dra i lakenet hun lå på for å skifte, løftet Benjamin hånden.
– Vi venter. Hun kommer ikke til å merke det likevel. Nå må vi bare la tiden arbeide.
Han sto og voktet ansikt og puls, da han hørte en merkelig lyd. Som fra en hals med struma. Han snudde hodet og så Joakim sitte på gulvet med den tilsølte bøtta mellom beina. Han holdt om den med begge hender. Ansiktet var gjemt under en rotete, grønnskimrende manke. Den kraftige ryggen lå knekket over egne bedrifter.
Benjamin hadde praiet en hestedrosje og bedt kusken om å vente i portrommet. Da han kom opp for å hente henne var hun i klærne og satt på stolen ved døren. Joakim hadde fjernet lakener, instrument og bøtte og sto bøyd over henne.
– Greier du å gå ned trappene selv, tror du? spurte Benjamin.
Hun nikket og reiste seg ustøtt. Da Joakim bredte ut armene for å bære henne, gjorde hun en avvergende bevegelse. Så støttet de henne ned den smale trappen.
– Vil du kjøre med oss, Joakim? spurte Benjamin.
– Nei, jeg gjør alt klart her før jeg går, sa han.
– Da spaserer du hjem til oss?
– Til dere...?
– Det er det mest forsvarlige for oss alle tre.
Da de satt i vognen, lente hun seg tungt mot ham og sukket som en jentunge. I det samme begynte to eller tre kirkeklokker å ringe til messe.
– Man skal ikke glemme at det er jul, mumlet hun, ennå i rusen.
– Det er det ingen grunn til å glemme, sannet han.
De passerte en hestesporvogn på hans side. Et ungt par hang i vindeltrappen ned fra øverste vogn. Han med korg og granbar i armene. Hun med en hvit puddel. Et reklameskilt med _Adolf Zinn's Koks-_ _og Brændselsforretning_ prydet hele vognsiden.
Egentlig trodde han ikke at Joakim ville komme. Men etter et par timer banket det på entrédøren.
– Hvordan har hun det? spurte han før han var innenfor.
– Bra, tror jeg. Hun sover.
– Jeg kjøpte med noe mat, sa Joakim og satte to poser på gulvet.
– Godt tenkt. For her er ikke akkurat forberedt til julemiddag.
Han tok posene med til kjøkkenet mens Joakim hengte av seg og kom inn på sokkelesten.
– Dette er et godt hjem, sa han anerkjennende og så seg om.
– Alt er ikke helt i orden, ennå, svarte Benjamin. – Det har ikke vært så godt om tid.
– Nei...
Benjamin hørte at den andre holdt på å gå i stå.
– Hun ligger der inne. Kanskje du vil se til henne? sa han og nikket mot døren som sto på gløtt. Så tok han opp mat fra posene uten å greie å ha noe forhold til innholdet. Gikk inn i stuen igjen og ble stående med ryggen til den åpne døren til soverommet. Han hørte ingen stemmer. Etter en stund kom Joakim ut og lukket døren varsomt etter seg.
– Hun sover normalt tror jeg... Da du hjalp henne til sengs... Hadde blødningen da stanset? spurte han.
– Nei, sa Benjamin forbauset. – Men alt var som normalt. Sett deg. Hva vil du ha å drikke? Noe sterkt?
– Vann, takk, sa Joakim og dumpet ned på en stol ved spisebordet.
Benjamin kom med to glass vann og prøvde å få øyekontakt. Det lyktes ikke. Han ble stående. Ventet. Tok glasset sitt, drakk og satte det på bordet.
– Det var _du_ som skulle ha gjort det, ikke en forbannet amatør, sa Joakim.
Benjamin samlet seg.
– Jeg hadde jo ikke akkurat tilbudt meg. Og du la ikke for dagen at du hadde liten erfaring. Men ja, jeg holdt på å gripe inn da jeg forsto at du hadde gitt henne altfor mye morfin til et inngrep som kanskje ikke gjør mer vondt enn det egentlig må. Og ja, du skulle ha sagt det som det var, at dette ikke var ditt fag. Har du i det hele tatt gjort slikt før?
– Et par ganger... Pasienter på bordellet som truet med å gjøre det selv. Det kan ikke sammenlignes...
– Hvorfor ikke? Du lot dem bare føle den smerten som skulle til? spurte Benjamin hardt.
Joakim så blankt på ham.
Uten å vente på svar gikk Benjamin etter flasken med snaps og to glass.
– Jeg trenger noe sterkt, sa han med en merkelig følelse av å skru fast et lokk over hodet på seg selv. Så skjenket han i begge glassene breddfulle, rakte det ene til Joakim over bordet og nikket.
– Nå er det i alle fall gjort. Det er over.
– Og hvis ikke? sa Joakim og drakk ut.
Benjamin skjenket opp til det rant utover den andres hånd.
– Da er _jeg_ hennes lege!
De drakk mens de betraktet hverandre.
– Hvordan greier du å ha meg her etter dette? spurte Joakim.
– Jeg har vel ingen andre, svarte han og forsto selv at det var slik det var.
Noen låste seg inn i naboleiligheten. En lys og en mørk stemme. Døren slo i. Det ble stille.
– Jeg vet ikke om jeg skal beundre deg eller synes synd på deg. Det er et pokkers dilemma, sa Joakim.
– Ja vel...?
– Det er ikke på grunn av Anna, der vil tiden arbeide for deg, like sikkert som jeg sitter her og er en kujon, slo Joakim fast.
Det var noe ved situasjonen som ikke stemte. Noe beregnende. Eller fullstendig avkledd. Benjamin skrudde lokket tettere om hodet.
– Det er dette uforståelige... så fremmed for _meg_ , at du _utsletter_ deg selv for å fremstå som et godt menneske. At du kontrollerer deg selv helt til siste slutt. Kompenserer du? På grunn av din mor?
– Hva er det du vil? sa Benjamin hest.
– Når det gjelder deg, vet jeg ikke lenger. Men jeg ønsker deg ikke lenger død og begravet. Det er interessant. Det kan være en – om ikke faglig, så i alle fall en menneskelig utvikling for min del.
Benjamin svarte ikke, betraktet ham bare over kanten av glasset.
– I dag, før jeg tok til Kjøbenhavn, gikk jeg til Karna for å se hvordan hennes jul var. Visste jo at du ikke kunne, og at det var _jeg_ som indirekte hadde hindret deg... i å se til barnet ditt.
Benjamin svelget og satte glasset ned på bordet.
– Det var en underlig prioritering fra en som meg. Hadde jeg ikke kjent deg, så hadde jeg tenkt annerledes, fortsatte Joakim.
– Og hvordan hadde du tenkt?
– At jeg måtte samle meg om det jeg skulle gjøre, og ikke bruke tid på det andre kunne gjøre senere.
– Og hvorfor forteller du meg det? spurte Benjamin.
– Jeg vet ikke. Men jeg tror det er for at du skal se i nåde til meg. Kanskje avsløre at jeg prøver å utfylle deg på enkelte områder. Ikke bare når det gjelder Anna, men også som far. At jeg søker en substitutt for et tomt liv... fordi jeg aldri kan bli et godt menneske.
– Hvorfor ikke? fikk Benjamin frem.
– Jeg har det ikke i meg. Eller det er blitt borte.
– Du hadde i alle fall empati til å gi Anna mer enn nok så hun ikke skulle kjenne smerte, så du har vel en gnist igjen, sa Benjamin tørt.
– Ja. Men der er du ved kjernen. Var det empati? Eller var det fordi jeg ikke orket å se at hun hadde smerte på grunn av meg?
Hadde ikke Benjamin visst bedre, så ville han trodd at mannens sjeleanalyse var slutten på en rangel.
– Jeg foreslår at vi spiser maten du hadde med. Kan du se til Anna mens jeg henter den? sa han bare.
Joakim reiste seg fort og gikk inn i soverommet, som om han bare hadde ventet på signal. Lampen der inne var slokket. Men i lyset fra den åpne døren kunne Benjamin ikke unngå å se at mannen bøyde seg over sengen som en knelende skygge. Ble værende. I alle fall den tiden det tok for ham å bære maten inn.
– Hun sover rolig, sa Joakim og lukket døren.
Da de satt overfor hverandre igjen, var det med denne keitete tafattheten mellom menn. De spiste og drakk uten særlig energi.
– Og hvordan var så Karnas jul? spurte Benjamin.
– Jeg hengte opp en miserabel girlander over døren hennes. Men hun var ikke synlig imponert.
– Det ligner henne på en prikk, sa Benjamin og måtte le.
Etter en stund spurte han. Et utenkelig spørsmål mellom dem.
– Vil du sove på sofaen her i natt, Joakim?
Mannen rykket til.
– Nei takk. Jeg rekker siste tog. Godt! sa han med et smil og reiste seg.
# JULESELSKAP I STORE KONGENSGADE
Lys og pynt var storartet på plass. Krystall og lysekroner funklet. En stor engel bredte vinger av ordentlige fjær over skjenken. Glorien hang litt, men det hadde sin sjarm. Annas søster, Sophie, var blitt noe forandret disse årene han ikke hadde sett henne. Men det var vel han selv også, tenkte Benjamin. Hennes to nesten voksne barn, en gutt og en jente, snakket gebrokkent dansk når de måtte, og tysk seg imellom. De satt ved siden av hverandre, veloppdragne og lavmælte.
Allerede i hallen hadde Anna og han hviskende blitt bedt om ikke å nevne den fraværende svigersønnens navn. Men det var utallige andre navn man kunne nevne. Sophie spurte Anna etter gamle venner som hun hadde mistet forbindelsen med, men trodde Anna kjente til. Og Anna svarte litt fraværende at hun ikke hadde fulgt opp ungdommens vennekrets.
– Jeg røvet jo Anna med meg fra sivilisasjonen, vet du, Sophie. Og i mellomtiden ble dere vekk, alle sammen. Og da hun kom tilbake, måtte hun i tillegg til sitt arbeid følge opp Karna på Hospitalet, mens jeg var i Norge og drev dank. Slikt gir ikke mye tid til selskapelighet, sa Benjamin, som om Anna ikke var i stand til å svare for seg selv.
Han merket det forbausede blikket hennes. Han sultet etter Annas blikk. Hun hadde knapt sagt noe siden julaften. Bare det mest nødvendige. Og da vært uhyggelig vennlig. Til og med da han insisterte på å undersøke henne. Først hadde hun trukket seg tilbake i sjenanse. Så hadde hun latt ham kontrollere at alt var som det skulle. Hadde til og med smilt da han klappet henne på armen og erklærte henne frisk som en fisk og ikke mer blodig enn man kunne forvente.
Han forsto at hun vegret seg for middagsselskapet hos foreldrene. Første juledag hadde han vært alene hos Karna. Men da han spurte om han skulle sende beskjed til foreldrene om at hun var syk, avviste hun det og stakk hodet inn i klesskapet. Og nå var de her.
– Å ja, selvsagt, Anna. Jeg vet jo at du har hatt hendene fulle. Det er så trist med arme vesle Karna, sa Sophie full av medfølelse.
– Men det gledelige er jo at den nye reservelegen som har behandlet henne den siste tiden, fikk henne til å synge. Hva var det nå han het? spurte Annas mor.
Det var som om ingen hørte spørsmålet.
– Og dere, da? Hvordan går det så med dere? Er dere flinke med lekser så dere kan bli til noe her i verden? sa Anna henvendt til de unge.
Jenta trakk sjenert på skuldrene. Gutten svarte alvorlig at han skulle studere det merkantile for å ta over sin fars forretning.
– Det er en slik velsignelse med barn, sa Annas mor.
– Nå ja, det kan nå være både–og, det vet vi jo, lo Annas far.
Hvorfor fortalte ingen hva Karnas lege het? tenkte Benjamin. Det gikk opp for ham at fortielse var en klebrig følgesvenn. Det var ikke bare den fraværende svigersønnens navn som ikke skulle nevnes i kveld.
Da telefonen kimet i hallen, ble Sophie sittende som paralysert. Kort etter kom piken inn og sa at det var en samtale fra Hamburg til henne. De unge satt begge på nåler. Benjamin kunne simpelthen se hvordan ørene vokste.
– Han ringer alltid når vi sitter til bords, sa Annas mor lavt, henvendt til Benjamin.
– Nei, mormor, det er ikke helt sant, sa gutten på tysk.
Annas mor svarte ikke.
– Din mormor har grått seg til den telefonen, så da får hun ta følgene. Slike moderne innretninger skulle ikke være nødvendig i privatlivet, sa svigerfar lett.
– Jeg skulle gjerne hatt en. Det hadde vært praktisk for å ha forbindelse med den unge disponenten min på Verftet der hjemme, eller ringe Hospitalet om Karna, sa Benjamin.
– Unge Peder, ja, det var han som sendte beskjed om brannassuransen. Hva har du tenkt å gjøre med den, skal du bygge opp det nedbrente huset?
– Nei. Dersom jeg får den utbetalt, så skal det være Karnas livrente, ikke sant Anna?
– Selvfølgelig, sa Anna og så endelig på ham.
– Er deres datter Karna gal? spurte jenta deltagende.
– Slikt må du ikke si! utbrøt Annas mor.
– Hun fikk et stort sjokk under en brann der hennes farmor omkom. Hun sluttet bare å snakke. Men Anna tok henne med den lange veien fra Norge til Hospitalbyen for å få hjelp, forklarte Benjamin.
– Så spennende, sa jenta åndeløst. – Fortell mer. Kommer hun til å bli frisk?
I det samme kom Sophie tilbake. Hun ble stående ved stolen et øyeblikk før hun satte seg. Alle så på henne.
– Jeg skulle hilse god jul til dere alle fra Fritz, han er så lei seg fordi han ble forhindret fra å feire jul med oss, sa Sophie og la servietten i fanget.
Det ble helt stille. Barna så ned i tallerkenen. Plutselig løftet jenta hodet og så rasende på moren.
– Det er han aldeles ikke! Ikke _du_ heller! skrek hun på tysk og for på dør. Broren reiste seg og bukket høflig. Så gikk han etter søsteren. De hørte krangelen gjennom korridoren og minst to dører.
– Nei. Det står ikke så godt til hos oss som man skulle ønske, sa Sophie. La servietten på bordet igjen og gikk etter.
– Vi skal kanskje bryte opp? sa Anna.
– Nei, vær så snill. Ikke gå! Jeg trenger dere. Jeg skulle aldri ha bedt om å få den der telefonen inn i huset. Han terroriserer oss med sine oppringinger. Alt er så skammelig og håpløst, sa Annas mor og måtte opp med to fingre under øynene.
Benjamin reiste seg og la hånden på skulderen hennes.
– La meg gå inn der og prøve min evne til å mekle med iltre ungdommer. Karna er, som dere kanskje forstår, heller ikke enkel.
Det hadde begynt å snø. Annas skinnkrage ble hvit den stunden det tok å gå fra foreldrenes gatedør til de fant en vogn. Hun børstet den kraftløst av. Han løftet hånden og hjalp henne. Kjente snøen smelte mot huden.
I vognen hjemover lente hun seg mot skulderen hans.
– Det er andre gang i dag, og tredje på få dager – at vi kjører vogn sammen, sa hun.
– I dag har du det kanskje bedre enn julaften?
– Jeg vet ikke. Rus har en merkelig virkning. Den lindrer ikke bare smerte, den viser også glimt av himmelen.
Han fikk lyst til å si at det kanskje ble litt mye himmel av den dosen hun fikk. Det gjorde han ikke.
– Etter en tid blir alt som før, sa han i stedet.
– Eller verre, sa hun.
Det larmet intenst fra hjulene idet de kjørte over en skinnegang.
– Du angrer? spurte han.
– Nei, sa hun fast.
Han tok hånden hennes.
– Kanskje vi skulle kjøre vogn sammen oftere. Som da jeg var student og vi ikke hadde noe sted å være alene... Husker du den gangen jeg ikke hadde nok penger til kusken og vi måtte snu?
– Når du sier det så...
De ble sittende og se ut hver for seg. Husene hadde mange opplyste vinduer.
– Hva var verst? spurte han etter en stund.
– Hva mener du? Julaften på benken eller i dag med familien?
– Jeg mener i kveld.
– Kulden. At ingen tør å dele det som er viktig for dem, sa hun langsomt.
– Hva kunne du ha delt? spurte han.
– At jeg har fjernet et foster.
Han fant ikke noe å si.
– Hva snakket du med de unge om etter at Sophie kom inn i stuen til oss igjen? spurte hun.
– Om Karna. At det er vanskelig når man ikke vet hva de man bryr seg om kan finne på.
– Du meklet? For å gjøre det lettere for Sophie?
– Mer for å forstå min egen mangel på ord.
Hestehover klapret mot broleggingen. Vognhjul hamret. Fasadene skiftet som kulisser. Her og der dukket et juletre opp mellom gardiner.
– Hva skulle du sagt? spurte hun.
– Spurt deg hva du tenker om oss. Fremtiden. Om hva jeg kan gjøre for å få deg til å velge meg.
Han kjente et lite rykk i hånden hennes. Men hun lot den ligge i hans.
– Jeg er jo her. Men det er ikke nok for deg?
Han svarte ikke. Han var ingen tigger i dag.
– Du ba ham hjem til oss etterpå... mens jeg lå der, sa hun brått.
Han tenkte seg om.
– Ja, sa han enkelt.
– Hvorfor?
– Vi trengte det, begge to.
– _Dere_... trengte _hverandre_?
– Ja. Slik var det, sa han.
# TREDJE BOK
# SKODDE OG DEMRING
– La fuglen hvile seg i kjolelommen, så flyr den ikke ut gjennom vinduet, hadde han sagt og gitt henne fuglen tilbake.
Det var blitt så lyst nå. Skrikene fra fuglen var skingrende gjennomsiktig om natten. Hun forsto det ikke helt. Det var en gåte hun ikke greide å løse. Gåten banket i hodet. Aleneheten klebet henne til lakenet.
– Ikke medisin mer enn en gang om natten, hadde han sagt og sett strengt på nattevakten.
– Men om det blir galt igjen? sa nattsøster.
– Da lar du noen hente meg. Jeg sover hos deliristene.
– Du e ikkje russern, hadde hun sagt da han skulle gå.
– Du kan stoppe med det der nå. Du vet hvem jeg er. Hvem er jeg?
– Joakim.
– Der ser du. Og hvor er russeren, du vet at han ikke er her?
Hun svarte ikke, bare nikket. Men hun visste jo at han var i Saturns innerste ring akkurat nå.
– Godt. Og hvor er fuglen?
Hun gikk bort til skapet og stakk hånden i lommen på den røde kjolen, tok opp fuglen og viste ham.
– Er du sikker?
Hun nikket. Fuglen var knudrete og ru i hånden.
– Og hvorfor ligger den der?
Hun svarte ikke, la bare fuglen tilbake og lukket døren.
– For at den ikke skal fare ut gjennom vinduet, ikke sant?
Hun orket ikke å se på ham.
– Nei, det er ikke riktig slik, sa Joakim og ga seg ikke.
Hun svarte ikke.
– For at _du_ ikke skal _kaste_ den ut når _du_ blir sint, er det ikke så?
Hun visste at han ikke ville gi seg, så hun nikket.
– Og hva er din aftenbønn når du kjenner sinnet komme?
Hun tenkte seg om.
– Joakim, sa hun med munnen uten at en lyd kom ut.
– Du jukser, men la gå, sa han og klasket henne på skulderen.
Da sa hun det: – Joakim!
*
Da fuglene _utenfor_ begynte å skvaldre i trærne stilnet skrikene fra den røde kjolen. Hun gikk til skapet og stakk hånden ned i kjolelommen. Den lå der ennå. Og det andre? På hyllene? Alt var der.
Brevene
Bildet
Blyanten
Blokken
Boken
*
Aller først var treet
det ventet
kom ut av ingenting og bare sto der
noe våknet
kravlet ut av ingenting
brettet seg ut
Kulden dampet bort mellom greinene
Ser du at alt har våknet akkurat som du
Ja
Er du redd det ikke vil vare
Nei
Men om det ikke varer
Då vara det ikkje
På stien ned til stranden sto Joakim og holdt sengen hennes foran seg.
– Du skal våkne Karna. Det er Joakim som sier det, ingen andre. Våkne opp!
Fra det øyeblikk han het Joakim, var det ikke mulig for noen å gjemme seg i ham. Derfor traff hun ikke russeren mer om dagen. Og kom han frem fra nattemørket, så ble han bare en kort stund. Hun greide ikke å huske hva han hadde sagt. Slik var det blitt.
*
Den svarte molda i bedene var graver
små hvite knokler spratt opp
pent men trist
det skjønne var slik
Anna sto i hagen og slet opp små hvite blomster
Du skal ikke dra opp blomster de har ikke gjort deg noe
Joakim sparket møkk ved dammen så kråkene ble fra seg av skrekk
Det var jeg som slet opp blomsten, ikke Anna
Hun visste at han løy, men det var vakkert sagt
Uansett var de døde
Pappa satt i treet ved stien og så utover
Russeren lette etter farmor
Havet fosset innover land alle steder der han dro
Joakim sto under treet og holdt sengen hennes
Bildene over moderskapet bleknet
de tålte ikke lys
Moren hennes gikk mer og mer ut av rammen
Mannen på bildet voktet brevene
han ville at hun skulle lese
*
Joakim sto under treet og holdt opp bildet av Peder
Brevene hang på grenene
Er han også en sorg?
Nei.
Og dersom han likevel er en sorg?
Så e han en sorg.
Da legger du brevene i skapet?
Nei.
Hva gjør du da?
Fortsette å lese.
Og om det ikke hjelper og alt blir svart?
Då ropa æ Joakim.
*
Da hun våknet lå brevet på dyna ved siden av bildet av den alvorlige mannen med vannkjemmet hår. Hun ville ikke se, men så det likevel. Ordene kravlet utover arket. Var ikke i ro. Ville bli tydet. Tigget om å bli tydet.
_Kjære Karna_
_Du behøve ikke å svare om_ _du ikke kan._ _Det gjør ingenting,_ _såfremt_ _jeg veit at du er umistelig og ved god helse._ _Jeg_ _tenker_ _å ta_ _en tur og_ _besøke deg._ _Ka du sei om det? Jeg tar med_ _fotografiapparatet. Det er mye artighet med det._ _Man kan ta bilda av_ _alt mulig_ _og ha det som et vitnemål for all framtid. Vis det fram, heng det på veggen, gje det bort._ _Jeg_ _kan_ _lære deg_ _å_ _ta bilda._ _Ka du sei? Kan jeg kom?_
_Din Peder_
Gasslyset over døren var skrudd ned. Hun satt i sengen og snakket med ham. Ingen kunne høre det. Likevel kom nattevakten inn og befalte henne å lukke øynene. Vakten forsto ikke at man ikke kunne snakke til Peder med lukkede øyne.
Hun la seg ned og lot som hun sov bare for å få henne ut. Men vakten var slu, selv om hun ikke forsto. Hun skrudde gassen over døren så mye ned at bildet ble usynlig. Men Peder var sluere enn vakten. Han tok hele kroppen sin med og satte seg på stolen ved vinduet. Der satt han og var akkurat slik hun husket ham.
– Ser du mæ? måtte hun spørre mens hun skottet bort på stolen. Han hadde samme halskrage og jakke som på bildet. Men nede hadde han de gamle vadmelsbuksene og de avklippede gummistøvlene.
– Ser du mæ? gjentok hun.
Da hendte det. Han var ikke der. Bare bildet hans lå på dyna, og gassen var skrudd av.
Skriket. Det måtte brukes opp en gang for alle.
Nattevakten holdt fast.
Hodet var en slegge som slo mot alt som var.
Nattevakten holdt fast.
– Joakim!
Natten var ikke natt. Den var et skjold over Joakim på madrassen innenfor døren. Hun kunne høre at han hadde sovnet. Selv lå hun med åpne øyne og ventet på morgenlyset og daglydene. Men det hadde ingen hast.
# ANNA GÅR VIDERE MENS HUN STÅR STILLE
Søster Sophie hadde forlatt mannen sin like før jul, men krøp til korset og reiste tilbake like over nyttår da barna måtte tilbake på skole. Dagen før Sophie skulle reise, møttes de på konditori. Sophie betrodde henne at hun ikke kunne forlate ham. Hun måtte tenke på barna. Dessuten hadde hun ikke noe sted å være. Og hva skulle hun leve av?
– Slår han? hadde Anna spurt.
Sophie spurte forskrekket hvordan hun kunne komme på noe slikt, og Anna sa at man behøvde jo ikke å bli slått for å lengte etter å være fri.
– Fri? Fri til hva? var Sophies spørsmål.
– Den andre, svarte Anna.
Sophie så først ut som om hun ikke forsto spørsmålet. Eller hadde glemt at Anna visste.
– Å han! Han vanker ikke i våre kretser mer, sa Sophie lett.
– Derfor tenker du ikke mer på ham?
– Nei. Det ville vært dumt. Fritz og jeg er enige om det, sa Sophie avgjort.
– Men du gjorde et forsøk. Du tok barna med hit til mor og far i julen?
– Det var dumt. Jeg kunne lett stelt i stand en skandale.
Anna forsto at hun ikke kunne betro henne noe om seg selv. Søsteren hadde ikke engang ord som beskrev behov for selvstendighet. Hadde aldri vurdert å arbeide. Hvorfor skulle hun det? Hun hadde to tjenestepiker, kokk og gartner. Anna forsto at det ville være en krenkelse å spørre om hun noen gang hadde lengtet etter å tjene sine egne penger. Essensen av hennes ekteskapsproblemer var den at hun ikke likte sin mann. Eller kjedet seg. Hun klaget på at han var dominerende og kontrollerende, og samtidig klaget hun over at han var så sjelden hjemme. Gjennom det hun sa, forsto Anna at hun egentlig _aldri_ hadde likt mannen sin. At det å avle to barn med ham var en ren formalitet.
Og mens hun hørte på søsterens klage, og at hun måtte bli hos ham på grunn av barna, så satt hun selv med skrittet fullt av blod etter en fosterfordrivelse hun ikke snakket om. Gjorde det henne noe bedre? Eller friere?
Men da de skulle skilles, hadde Sophie grått litt og bedt henne skrive oftere, noe hun høytidelig lovet. Og da Anna gikk til leiligheten, kjente hun på en dårlig samvittighet for at hun som var tre år eldre, ikke hadde klart å verge Sophie for morens oppdragelse. For at hun nå heller ikke hadde vært i stand til å råde henne, eller hjelpe henne ut av tomheten. Og hun selv? Hadde hun ikke kommet krypende tilbake til Benjamin? Og uten å si det rett ut bedt ham om beskyttelse?
*
De hadde funnet et slags fredelig fellesskap i leiligheten. Det meste av møbler og praktiske ting var på plass. Hverdagene gled over i hverandre. I alle fall for ham, så det ut til. Søndagene tilbrakte de hos Karna. På den måten behøvde ikke Joakim å være tema. Begge visste at han sjelden gikk stuegang på søndager. Og de var jo voksne mennesker, som moren pleide å si, uten at verden hadde sett så mye til hva det egentlig innebar.
Hun hadde blødd nesten hele januar. Ikke mye, men nok til at Benjamin viste bekymring. Han prakket på henne medikamenter, vin og mat. Da det var over, og hun tilsynelatende var ren og ordentlig, falt det en ro over dem begge.
Men en dag i slutten av januar hadde han sagt det ganske enkelt.
– Jeg skaffer meg en god seng på pikerommet, så slipper vi hverandres nattevåk. For du skal vel ikke ha noen pike _boende_ hos oss, om vi skulle trenge en nå og da.
Hun hadde fulgt opp, ganske lett, at noen hushjelp skulle de ikke ha. Og at ja, det var kanskje en god løsning. Adelen og de privilegerte hadde jo også hvert sitt rom, hadde hun hørt. Så hadde de ledd litt. Og hun hadde tilbudt seg å sove på pikerommet. De hadde til og med en vennlig diskusjon over temaet: Hvem fortjener den store røde sengen mest. Og begge sa: Det er selvsagt _du_. Men da han holdt et lite foredrag med opplagte sannheter som: Du har så mange ting, trenger plass til klær, jeg trenger bare en stumtjener og et skohorn. Ja, så ga hun seg.
Hun kunne ha spurt ham om han i lengden var blitt lei av å være legen hennes, og nattetid stadig bli minnet om det han måtte rydde opp i. Det gjorde hun ikke. Sammen fant de en utmerket seng til hans netter på pikerommet, og tingene fungerte slik begge trodde den andre ville ha det.
En søndags morgen sto han foran speilet og barberte seg med åpen dør da hun skulle forbi, men stoppet opp.
Den nakne ryggen hans med den dype kløften. Skuldrene. Bakhodet. Grånende krøller. Idet han med ansiktet fullt av skum _så_ henne, løftet hun hånden og smilte til ham. Han løftet hånden med kniven, som en hilsen. Hun fikk en følelse av at han var lysår borte. Fort gikk hun inn til seg selv.
Mens hun kledde seg, så hun ansiktene deres over seg. Svevende. Sammen. Overlappende. Det måtte ha vært langt inne i rusen som Benjamin senere fortalte henne om. Men hun hadde ennå bildet med seg. De sto der sammen og befridde henne. Hun hadde hele deres oppmerksomhet. Var i _deres hender_.
Men det ville rittet, tenkte hun, det ville rittet etter dette? Kunne hun noen gang kjenne glede ved det?
Da Benjamin og hun satt og spiste uten å si noe, fikk hun trang til å gi ham noe.
– Far mente at du var et kirurgisk talent, langt utover alt han hadde sett før, sa hun.
Han stoppet tyggingen og svelget ned i to omganger. Hun ventet.
– Når sa han det?
– I julen da vi var på middag hos dem.
– Hvor var jeg, siden jeg ikke hørte det?
– Du var i et annet rom og snakket med Sophies barn, om livets gjenvordigheter, tror jeg.
– Og hvorfor har du ikke fortalt det før? spurte han.
Hun skjenket kaffe. Først til ham, så til seg selv. Satte kannen på bordet igjen.
– En bagatell av et inngrep har skygget for det meste, sa hun.
Han skjøv stolen bakover og reiste seg. Ble stående og se på henne med blanke øyne. Slik visste hun at han også tenkte på det. Tenkte på det hele tiden.
– Du skal ikke plage deg med det der, Anna. Vi må videre, sa han og kom rundt bordet til henne.
*
Faren hjalp henne. De satt i biblioteket i Store Kongensgade og fylte ut blanketter med inngående spørsmål om alle mulige private forhold, bopel, vandel og sunnhet. Hun måtte også innstille seg på en legeundersøkelse.
– For å komme i betraktning er det faktisk en fordel at du er gift med en lege, og at du er over den første vimsete ungdom, sa han da hun sukket over alle spørsmålene.
– Det er vel også en fordel at du er min far, sa hun tørt.
– Ja, de prøver å rekruttere sykepleiersker fra de øvre lag av samfunnet. De har vel funnet ut at det gir mer stabilt klientell.
– Og der er du, sa hun ertende.
– Ja, og jeg kan ikke akkurat si at jeg beklager det i en verden som denne. Men _du_ har jo alltid villet flørte med proletarene, uten helt å få det til, ertet han.
– Hva mener du?
– Tja... man kan kanskje ikke kalle Benjamin en proletar selv om han i flere år har seilt over åpent hav for å komme til pasientene.
– Benjamin er det nærmeste man kommer adelen der han kommer fra. Hans mor eide hele Reinsnes med landskap, handel, jekter, hus, dyr og mennesker!
– Nå vel, med all respekt. Men _du_ har dine nykker. Flytte til et kott i Hospitalbyen og nekte å delta i din mors sosiale liv.
– Far da, spar meg, ba hun.
– Absolutt! Mor og jeg er jo glad for at du besinnet deg og kom til Kjøbenhavn for å bo som en gift kvinne hos din mann. Det er nok av gale kvinner som flyr rundt med pamfletter med kampsaker på, og mas om stemmerett. Det kommer du ikke til å få tid til disse tre årene du skal studere sykepleie.
– Hvorfor ikke?
– Mange slutter uten å fullføre, fordi det er for hardt. Det er derfor de vil rekruttere voksne kvinner og unngå dem som ser for seg en lett tilværelse i kledelig uniform og stivet forkle. Den teoretiske undervisningen er heller ikke lett for alle.
– Hvorfor forteller du dette? Jeg er ikke redd for teori.
– Nei. Men tanken har streifet meg, at du tar din barndom og din bakgrunn som en selvfølge.
Hun så på ham. De milde humoristiske øynene, som brått og uten varsel kunne flyte ut i et fravær hun aldri hadde kjent som en avvisning. Snarere tvert om. Hver gang det skjedde, visste hun at hun hadde en forbundsfelle.
– Far, sa hun, – du er den jeg skal takke mest. Derfor har jeg gang på gang frimodighet til å be om hjelp.
– Din mor har også bidratt, sa han med en snert av irettesettelse.
– Ja, det er sant. Og mens du nevner henne... Jeg tror det er på tide at dere to går ut og morer dere sammen. Hva med Det Kongelige Teater? Når tid la du sist sigaren fra deg og kom deg ut av røkejakken til fordel for din hustru?
Han lente seg godt tilbake i stolen og lo.
– Der tok du meg, humret han. – Jeg lover å forbedre meg. Men så skal _du_ , helt frivillig, og uten at hun ber deg, stille opp i din mors veldedighetsbasar på torsdag. I morges sa hun at hun ikke ville spørre, for hun orket ikke din overbærende mine.
*
Forstanderinnen tok imot henne og kontrollerte alle skjema. Ryggen var rett som en linjal der på stolen og blikket var festet i papirene. Anna sto foran bordet og ventet som den skolepiken hun vitterlig var.
– Hun har en allsidig bakgrunn, sa forstanderinnen nådig og kikket opp.
– Takk, sa Anna uten å neie.
– Jeg trodde ikke Hospitalet hadde kontorhjelp, annet enn en sykepleierske som går overlegen til hånde når det trengs.
– Det er riktig, det har han fremdeles.
– Hun er gift, men har ingen barn, bare en voksen datter?
– Ja. Og jeg har heller ikke slike planer.
– Godt! Da forsvinner hun ikke når man har kostet på henne diplom.
– Nei.
Forstanderinnen dukket ned i søknadspapirene igjen.
– Hun er allerede orientert om hva yrket krever, og har grunnleggende praksis fra distriktslegekontor. Riktignok fra en provins i Norge.
– Ja.
– Hun behøver ikke å si ja, jeg leser det her, sa forstanderinnen og målte henne over monokkelen.
Anna tidde og ventet. Forstanderinnen bladde en stund før hun igjen så opp.
– Hun hører fra oss når Sykepleieutvalget har lest hennes søknad. Det følger ingen begrunnelse med et avslag. Far vel!
Anna var rystet. Gikk gjennom sykehusets korridorer til utgangen og hadde i sine levedager aldri vært utsatt for slik ydmykende behandling. Hun kunne heller ikke tro at noen legestudent ble mottatt på en slik måte. Men én ting hadde hun i alle fall lært. Denne anstalten behøvde henne. Og kom hun inn, var det ingen grunn til å be om nåde fra forhistoriske forstanderinner.
*
Første mars fikk hun utdelt sin lyseblå lærlingeuniform med posete, uformelig liv, skjørtekanten helt ned til ankelen og ærbar høy krage. De lange puffermene med mansjett over albuen viste seg å være både praktiske og luftige.
Da hun sto i rekken og var den siste som tok forstanderinnen i hånden for å takke for elevplassen, hørte hun hennes nesten sinte stemme.
– Jeg holdt en knapp på fru Grønelv, bare så De vet det. Måtte hun være et eksempel for de andre.
*
Den andre uken etter at hun begynte på Kommunehospitalet, sto Anna en ettermiddag og la skittentøy i en lerretssekk da Benjamin kom hjem. Hun sa det som det var.
– Jeg har tatt meg vann over hodet. Tiden strekker ikke til. Du må være den som bringer vasken.
Han så forbauset på henne.
– Det har jo gått fint til nå.
– Det var før. Nå må jeg gå hjemmefra før deg hver morgen, og blir borte hele dagen, sa hun oppgitt.
– Det enkleste er at vi gjør det slik jeg gjorde det før du flyttet inn. Jeg satte det utenfor døren på fredager. De kom fra vaskeriet og hentet.
– Hvorfor har du ikke sagt det?
– Fordi jeg trodde du ville ha det på din måte, og oftere vask. Eller kanskje sluttet jeg å tenke på det da du kom.
– Mener du at i det øyeblikk jeg var her, så var det jeg som skulle styre alt det timelige, slik du hadde gjort da jeg ikke bodde her?
Han tok lerretssekken fra henne.
– Jeg var i unntaksstilling den forbannede tiden uten deg. Og når du er her så kvitterer jeg med å legge alt på deg. Jeg ser det nå. Skal jeg gå rett på vaskeriet nå, eller kan det vente til jeg har gjort nye avtaler med dem? Hvilken dag vil fruen ha?
Anna måtte le.
– Jeg tror mandag er best, sa hun.
– Godt! Mandag er vaskens dag. Jeg gjør en ny avtale.
– Tilgi meg. Jeg skulle være glad for at jeg ikke må stå ved vaskestampen selv etter arbeidstid, sukket hun.
– _Vi_ skulle være glad for at _vi_ ikke må stå ved vaskestampen etter arbeidstid, sa han tørt, satte sekken fra seg og hengte av seg frakken.
– Jeg har ikke kjøpt inn noe å spise til aftens, sa hun.
– Jeg går til slakteren og skaffer noe, sa han og tok frakken ned fra knaggen igjen.
Da blikket hennes streifet ham, _så_ hun ham. Ansiktet var grått. Han hadde dype furer i pannen.
– Nei, vi hviler oss litt, begge to, så finner vi på noe, sa hun og smøg seg forbi ham inn i stuen.
Han kom etter henne uten å svare. Tok henne om livet og snudde henne mot seg. Det var lenge siden de hadde stått slik. Hun la armene om halsen hans for å komme ham i møte.
– La oss bare hvile oss litt, det er det vi trenger, sa hun.
– Selvsagt. Det er det vi skal, svarte han ned i håret hennes.
Da de lå ved siden av hverandre og han dro sengebredslet over dem begge, sa han:
– Jeg hviler gjerne her hos deg. I dette rommet. Slik som nå. Du er god å være trett sammen med. Trett av alt.
Hun skulle spurt ham hva han mente, men det gjorde hun ikke. For hun visste nøyaktig hva han mente. Med lukkede øyne nøt hun roen. Tanken på at det bare var de to i leiligheten, og at ingen krevde noe av henne. Likevel dukket det opp. Fosteret. Hun hadde forberedt seg på at det ville hjemsøke henne. Og da hun frisknet til og bare kjente lettelse, som nå, forsto hun at hun var en forherdet skapning. En utenforstående ville si at Benjamin og hun var skuls og visste om hverandres svik. Men kunne _hun_ se det slik? Var hun i stand til å forstå hans fortielse gjennom mange år? Og at han hadde denne evnen til å gå videre? Uansett hva.
*
Etter at hun begynte på Kommunehospitalet reiste de alltid sammen når de skulle besøke Karna. Det var ikke noe de hadde snakket om. Det var en nødvendighet. Hverdagene krevde dem. Søndagen ble den naturlige dagen.
Hun holdt seg unna kontorbygningen. Lot Benjamin møte Joakim for å snakke om Karna. Imens gikk hun i hagen med henne, snakket til henne uten å få svar. Hadde med klær. Kjemmet håret hennes. Holdt omkring henne dersom Karna lot seg holde Og tok en avvisning dersom det ikke var den dagen.
Men det hun tenkte på, var at Joakim og Benjamin var sammen.
Det hendte også at tanken dukket opp etter endt arbeidsuke, at moren hadde rett. For _var_ hun i lengden ydmyk og selvoppofrende nok til å være sykepleierske på hverdager og Karnas pårørende på søndager?
Når Benjamin og hun satt på toget sammen til og fra Hospitalbyen, var de ofte tause, hun med lukkede øyne, mens folk rundt dem var i søndagsstemning med snakk og latter.
Før hadde hun kjent det som en frihet å reise til og fra. Alene. Nå måtte hun tenke frihet på en annen måte. For eksempel å hjelpe syke mennesker hele dagen – og så å kunne forlate når vakten var slutt. Eller som nå. Bare sitte ved siden av den tause Benjamin med lukkede øyne.
Frihet lå visst i det å kunne forlate. Skifte rolle. Det var _det_ menn alltid kunne. Mens kvinner ble værende på steder det virket som om de egentlig ikke hadde valgt. I rom andre gikk innom, gjennom, for å hente noe, få noe, men ikke for å bli. Det var som om kvinner var en egen rase, skapt for å være et sted hvor man visste at man kunne finne dem. En nødvendighet. Gråtende, blødende, krevende, en som kanskje med stor møye måtte tåles, beskyttes. En som drømte, men ikke handlet.
Nå hadde hun handlet, det var ingen tvil om det. Likevel drømte hun. Om det umulige. I tillegg brukte hun tid på å innbille seg at hun så ham overalt. Joakim. At han krysset gaten ved Kommunehospitalet. Eller en dag sto ved aviskiosken på Kongens Nytorv med bart hode i blåsten. Men da hun kom nærmere, var det en ung jypling i en mannskropp. En kveld sto han med bortvendt ansikt i Nørrebros Theater da hun ventet mens Benjamin kjøpte billetter. De skulle høre Brahms for cello og piano. Da mannen snudde ansiktet mot henne, hadde hun aldri sett ham før.
Men hun tenkte på ham gjennom hele den første allegrosatsen. Og i pausen begynte hun å se etter ham, som om alt var i en drøm.
# SYKEPLEIEELEV FRU ANNA GRØNELV
Sykepleierskenes oppholdsrom på Kommunehospitalet var som en liten stue. Med sofa, stoler og skatoll. Potteplanter, gode lamper, gulvteppe og bilder på veggene. På overflaten var alt levelig, men uoverensstemmelsene lå i luften. Ikke minst når det var mye å gjøre og tiden ikke strakk til.
Elevene fikk ikke stort betalt, foruten kost og losji og arbeidsdrakt. Ettersom hun ikke bodde på hospitalet, fikk hun litt mer.
Verre var det at ordningen med stue-, gang- og våkekoner skulle avvikles over tid, og at de unge sykepleierelevene fikk høyere status og bedre betalt enn dem som hadde arbeidet der i årevis. Enker og ugifte kvinner bodde i en krok på den salen de hadde ansvar for. Bak et forheng, eller i et eller annet trapperom, og var nederst på en streng rangstige.
Alt dette kom som et sjokk på Anna. Hun snakket til Benjamin om det. Men han begynte å fortelle om sin studenttid på Frederiks Hospital. Stuekonene utgjorde selve tryggheten for alle. De sov og spiste og arbeidet sammen med pasientene. Var alltid der. Han mente de var spesielle mennesker. Nærmest for gode feer å regne.
– Men du verden som de kunne skjenne, lo han.
– Men hva levde de av, og for?
Han betraktet henne et øyeblikk.
– Anna, jeg tror ikke det riktig har gått opp for deg at verden er klassedelt. Slike som oss fikk utdelt dunputene og sølvskjeene. Du har til og med en _far_.
– Men _må_ det være slik? At noen får alt og andre ingenting?
De satt på hver sin side av spisebordet og avsluttet middagen. Nå la han bestikket fra seg og fikk et merkelig uttrykk.
– Det må da være mulig for sykehusledelsen å innse at en stuekone med erfaring er like mye penger verdt som en ung, bortskjemt pike med sølvskje? utbrøt hun.
– Det er mulig de ser det. Men de har sine budsjetter. Tiltaket med å utdanne sykepleiersker er visst blitt en verkebyll for regnskapene har jeg hørt.
– Og det skal de gamle stuekonene straffes for? sa hun arrig.
Uttrykket hans skiftet. Hun kunne se at han egentlig ikke tenkte på det de snakket om, men på noe annet.
– Det er vanskelig å diskutere med deg. Du hører ikke hva jeg sier. Hva tenker du på?
Det var som om han våknet.
– Jeg tror at jeg hele tiden... uansett, tenker på oss.
Hun så ned og tidde. Etter en stund ryddet de av bordet. Og da hun sto med skum opp over håndleddene og vasket opp, sa han bak avisen:
– Jeg tror _du_ er den som kan gi herrene på Kommunehospitalet litt undervisning i sosial rettferdighet.
– De vil ikke snakke med en elev om slikt, sa hun.
– Du er ikke noen vanlig elev. Du er Anna Grønelv. Dessuten er du både din mors og din fars datter. Begge deler gir visse egenskaper.
– Du driver med meg, sa hun.
– Slett ikke, jeg snakker av erfaring. Skal man få noen ytelse fra fru Anna Grønelv, så må man yte selv.
Hun lo og kastet kjøkkenhåndkleet over avisen hans.
*
Anna satt med armene i kors i det store amfiet på sykepleieskolen og så på de ulastelig dresskledde mennene ved undervisningsbordet. Hørte dem legge ut om indre og ytre organer, vise plansjer og dra seg i bartene. Og hun tenkte at disse legene vet ingenting om hvordan det er å arbeide på et sykehus. De vet ikke hvordan tingene blir gjort. Hvordan bekkenet tømmes, blodet vaskes. De er korrekte menn med plansjer og teorier. Og de skal lære oss hvorfor vi er her. Og hvem av oss som er mest verdt. Det holder ikke, tenkte hun. Det holder faktisk ikke.
Da forelesningen var over og elevene forlot amfiet, gikk hun frem til de to aldrende legene som alt hadde tatt frem pipene sine. De så forbauset, avventende på henne.
– Mitt navn er Anna Grønelv, sa hun og ga dem hånden etter tur uten at de reiste seg. – Er det mulig å komme med et spørsmål?
Den yngste av dem, med sideskill og stri bart, nikket nådig og ba henne fritt spørre i vei.
– Jeg er ny her, men har sett at de situasjonene som ofte oppstår mellom unge sykepleiersker og de eldre stuekonene ikke er god. Ofte forgifter det atmosfæren og gjør dagen tyngre, både for pleierske og pasient.
– Hun skulle nok gå tjenestevei med slike problemer, smilte legen.
– Jeg går ut fra at å snakke med reservelegen, en representant for overlegen – nettopp er å gå tjenestevei.
Reservelegen ble stram i ansiktet, men tok seg inn.
– Jeg mente nok andre veien. Forstanderinnen, sa han og åpnet en knapp i jakken.
– Forstanderinnen har ikke noe mandat i slike saker, hun gjør bare det man har sagt at hun skal. Krangel og uhygge kommer ofte av at noen føler seg urettferdig behandlet og ikke tør å si det åpent. Det er det jeg vil at sykehusledelsen skal bli klar over og prøve å gjøre noe med. Stuekonene får for lite betalt i forhold til pleierskene.
Den andre legen la hodet på skakke. Han hadde tent pipen sin, skottet bort på sin kollega og så ut som han moret seg.
– Stuekonene har i alle fall sitt eget værelse her hos oss, det er mer enn de har på de fleste hospital, sa reservelegen stramt.
– Det er jeg klar over. Men jeg snakker om lønn, sa Anna.
– Som hun sikkert vet er dette en sak for hospitalledelsen. Og er hun misfornøyd med noe, så må hun gå til forstanderinnen, sa han og reiste seg.
– Jeg er ikke misfornøyd med noe for egen del. Og reservelegen forstår sikkert at det ikke er bra om jeg kommer i unåde hos forstanderinnen for noe hverken hun eller jeg kan gjøre noe med. Så min bønn er at dere, mine herrer, bringer disse tanker videre til dem som har makt og innsikt nok til å gjøre noe med det, sa hun og bukket lett, snudde seg og gikk mot døren.
– Vent! hørte hun reservelegen si.
Hun stoppet opp og snudde seg. Reservelegen tok et par skritt mot henne og kremtet.
– Jeg skal selv bringe fru Grønelvs tanker videre. Jeg tror man vil sette pris på at sykepleieelevene engasjerer seg til felles beste.
– Takk! sa Anna og smilte. – Mange takk!
# FOTO OG TIVOLI
Hun hadde ventet på ham helt siden matklokken kimte og alle dørene ble satt opp for rengjøring og lufting. Han for forbi cellen hennes som en kuling med åpen ytterfrakk og spasersko på.
– Se til å komme i klærne! hadde han sagt da han stakk hodet inn. For hun skulle kles på. Gres og flettes. Kjole av lysegrønt tynt tøy med brysomme ermer og mange knapper i ryggen. Til og med kyse av strå og lyse knappestøvler hun ikke kunne huske å ha sett før. Til sist la de képen om skuldrene hennes og lukket hekten.
Dagvakten og pleiersken slo hendene sammen og sa at hun var pen. Slike ting de sa når de ville ha fred fordi de var trett av hele greia.
Hun hørte ham gjennom hospitalgangen, fra stue til stue. Til de med seks senger på tredje forpleining. De med to senger på andre forpleining. Hun hadde aldri trodd at en reservelege kunne somle så mye. Imens måtte hun vente. Stå ved vinduet. Lukke døren til skapet. Åpne den igjen. Se på bildet av Peder. Legge det tilbake på brevene. Lukke skapdøren. Gå ut i hospitalgangen. Finne ut hvor Joakim var. Gå til vinduet. Og så gjøre alle ting på nytt i riktig rekkefølge slik at ingenting kunne gå galt. Det var viktig at hun beregnet tiden. Fra hun hørte at han kom fra siste stue og ut i hospitalgangen, og til han bare hadde ni skritt igjen før han sto i døren til hennes celle. For hun måtte lukke skapdøren og sette seg på sengen. Hun rakk det akkurat. Men siste tur fra skapdør til seng måtte gå fryktelig fort. Så var Joakim der.
– Nå er dagen her! Du og jeg. Vi skal i Tivoli. Der skal vi møte din venn, Peder, sa han triumferende.
*
Vognen stoppet ved en eventyrport. Den kunne umulig være virkelig. Nei, den kunne ikke være ekte, selv om hesten slapp to digre lorter rett foran inngangen. Porten hadde et rundt tårn med fire spir og et høyt flagg på toppen. Der man skulle gå for å komme inn, var det to sirkler med mønster som så ut som om det var klippet ut av et kjempestort broderi.
Joakim hjalp henne ned fra vognen. Hun satte knappeskoene ned på steiner som lå tett i tett. Som et evighetens lappeteppe. Bak porten var det høye trær som svaiet svakt i toppene.
Jeg er redd nå. Sannelig er jeg redd nå, tenkte hun og kjente at de dirrende leggene ikke var på parti. Det var merkelig å være redd foran et eventyrslott. Joakim pekte mot porten. Der sto en mann med et svart teppe over hodet.
– Stå still! ble det ropt fra teppet.
– Nei, vent! ropte Joakim like høyt, som om de to kjente hverandre.
– Jeg skal ikke med, sa han og slapp hånden hennes. Lot henne stå der alene mens en hel rekke av kropper presset seg forbi.
Man kunne ikke akkurat påstå at det gjorde vondt. Likevel svaiet hun litt, som om det blåste sterk vind.
– Der satt det! Karna, du e foreviget! Det e så bra at det ikkje e sol! Det e vanskelig å få ordentlige bilda i sterk sol, sa stemmen og dro teppet av seg.
Det _var_ Peder. Ikke ham på bildet. Men den hun kjente. Og før han så mye som hadde hilst, ga han seg til å slå sammen apparat og teppe, og legge det i en lærtaske som han svingte over skulderen.
– Se så! sa han og rakte henne hånden. Smilet hans var så stort. Mye større enn hun husket. Kanskje han hadde spart på det i årevis, tenkte hun og måtte le.
Så sto de der og lo.
– Skal vi gå inn porten? sa Joakim med merkelig stemme.
– Vi må jo gå inn når vi først har reist så langt, sa Peder. – Ikkje sant, Karna?
Hun gikk helt inntil ham for å se på lærtasken der han hadde apparatet. Han hengte den på henne. Leggene skalv ikke lenger. De sto som jernstolper i knappeskoene.
– Tungt? Men gulle godt kan du tru, sa han og ville ta tasken tilbake.
– Nei! sa hun, grep om tasken med begge hender og hengte den på tvers over skuldrene.
Så begynte hun å gå.
De var nok ikke virkelige, alle disse menneskene. Hun hadde aldri tenkt på at så mange mennesker kunne være på ett sted. Det gjorde henne svimmel. Men ikke kvalm eller sint. Stemmene deres gikk i hverandre. De ville henne noe. Alle til sammen og hver for seg. Hun torde ikke stoppe opp. Det var bare å gå. Hele tiden gå. Ellers kunne de ta tak i henne, og dra henne med seg. Bort. Og hvor var Joakim? Hun snudde seg et øyeblikk for å se etter ham. Der, på den åpne plassen sto han og løftet hånden.
Og bak ham. Et stort hus laget av glass. Man kunne tenke seg at noen stormet frem med en stein. Knuste alt sammen. Se at det falt sammen. Høre lyden. Vite at man hadde gjort det selv.
– Dettan e det finaste æ har sett! Kan du lån mæ apparatet, Karna?
Peder. Han løp etter henne hele tiden. Han lo. Han snakket om _kor søkkforspelt_ han var. Kordan det kunne ha seg at fordi _hun_ var i nærheten av et slikt sted, så fikk han også se det.
– Det e enestående! Ka? Kan du lån mæ apparatet? Det e unaturlig skjønt med alle trean og et heilt hus laga a glass!
Hun løftet apparatet over skulderen og ga ham det. Joakim var der også. Han tok henne med til en benk ved glassveggen. Satte seg der med henne. Nikket.
– Jeg reiser meg før du tar bildet, sa han til Peder.
– Nei, sa hun høyt og grep hånden hans.
Hun tenkte på at noen akkurat i dette øyeblikk kunne ta opp den steinen som skulle til. Så var det gjort. Da ville de sitte i alt glasskåret til evigheten tok dem og vindene i det store himmelrommet blåste dem med seg. Joakim og hun ville fare til Saturns innerste ring mens Peder tok bildet. Det ville være skjønnhet. Hun så det! Alt lyset. Gjennom millioner og atter millioner av glasskår. Hun lo mot Joakim og så det. Han trykket hånden hennes og lo med. Han så det nok han også.
Mens Peder ennå sto under det svarte teppet, revnet alt bak dem. Ikke glass. Ikke evigheten. Men en dundrende flokk der inne i glasshuset. Instrumenter oppstilt som en hær – var lyn og torden.
Hun reiste seg. Snudde seg mot hæren og lot seg blåse langt over tretoppene. Svaiet. Danset. Lukket øynene og steg langt opp i himmelen. Ikke så langt som evigheten, men høyt. Da hun kom ned, sto hun bom støtt. Og der var Peder under det svarte teppet.
# PEDER HOS SINE EGNE
Han gikk ennå med dønningene i kroppen etter alle dagene til havs. Men en skipsbygger kunne ikke komme til Kjøbenhavn og la seg merke av slikt. Særlig ikke når han skulle treffe Karna og bo hos Anna og Benjamin Grønelv. Han hadde grudd seg og sett frem til dette. Hadde planlagt det uten helt å vite hva han planla. Bare at det måtte og skulle gjøres. For Peder visste godt at han ingenting visste, men at han måtte finne ut av det. Måtte begynne _nå_.
Da han så henne opp ned gjennom linsen idet hun kom gående mot ham i den lyse kjolen, vaklende, men samtidig svevende i høye damesko, ja, da bestemte han at dette skulle gå bra. Og da hun travet rundt på veiene i Tivoli med apparatet og alle glassplatene tvers over brystet, så bestemte han at de kom til å greie seg her i verden, begge to. Dermed var det avgjort av krefter som var større enn alminnelig tristhet og galskap. For _det_ kunne ramme noen hver.
De hadde forklart hvorfor han skulle møte Karna alene sammen med doktor Klim. At hun ikke kunne ha så mange å forholde seg til når hun traff ham første gang. De forklarte også at det ikke var sikkert at hun kjentes ved ham når han sto der, selv om hun tydelig kjente ham på bildet og nå leste brevene han hadde sendt.
Alt dette forsto han, og han forsto det ikke. For i Tivoli var det plenty med bråk og mennesker. Man vasset så å si gjennom dem. Noe hun også gjorde. De hadde sagt at hun kunne bli sint. Men det skjedde ikke før hun skulle gå opp i vognen og forsto at han ikke skulle være med.
Hun satte seg imot å fare uten ham. Det tok ham så sterkt at han kunne ha gitt seg til å sipe. Det gjorde han ikke. Han bedyret at han skulle komme på besøk neste dag. Likevel tviholdt hun hånden hans. Av alle små og store gaver noen kunne gi ham, var denne den gjeveste. Hun ville ikke slippe neven hans!
Da hadde doktor Klim lagt begge hendene på skuldrene hennes, bøyd seg ned og sagt noe til henne. Hadde visst sagt det samme flere ganger mens han nikket påståelig ned mot henne.
Først hadde hun bare dyttet til den store mannen med hodet sitt, som om han skulle vært en høysekk, så hadde hun sluppet Peders neve og klatret opp i vognen uten å se på noen av dem.
Nå sto han alene utenfor Tivoli og visste ikke helt hvor han skulle gå for å komme til det stedet han skulle møte Grønelv sine. Visste bare at han var i kongens by, Kjøbenhavn. De hadde tegnet det på ark. Men det arket hadde han glemt å ta med. Man skulle ikke tro at slik glemsomhet var mulig for en disponent. Det var det. Og grunnen til det var den mest forståelige man kunne tenke seg. Han skulle endelig møte Karna.
Så sto han der og hadde ingen anelse om hva som var riktig. Styrbord eller babord. Men det satte ingen forskrekkelse i sving. Han ga seg bare til å snuse inn vårluften så tilforlatelig han kunne, i fall noen skulle synes at han så ut som en heimføding som aldri hadde vært lenger enn til sin egen husnov. Han lente seg mot en lyktestolpe og sukket av bare lykksalighet. Så for seg stunden der hun hadde røsket og slitt i neven hans og ikke ville slippe.
Peder bestemte at ingen kom til å flytte et eneste hus, eller forandre et eneste smug i denne byen, før han hadde funnet Grønelv sine.
Og det ville seg slik at en i mylderet _så_ ham og forsto at ikke alt var åpenbart for ham. En mann med hansker og flosshatt som stanset og spurte om han kunne hjelpe. Peder bukket og sa ja, ennå med denne gleden i blikket. Det var lett å huske navnet på kafeen. Noe med et apotek. Mannen med flosshatt fulgte ham et stykke. Forklarte på dette merkelige språket. Pekte.
Peder takket ham i neven og gikk ned i denne apotekerkjelleren som ikke hadde annen medisin enn snaps, øl og vin. Med en gang han viste seg, spratt de opp. Anna og Benjamin. Så var Peder hos sine egne og lot seg bare beverte mens spørsmålene klasket ham i ørene.
– Alt gikk godt. Æ trur ikkje ho e meir sjuk enn ka æ e, sa han bestemt, og så sjenert fra den ene til den andre.
De spiste sild og poteter med øl og snaps etter Peders uttrykkelige ønske. For det skulle man. Peder visste da så pass om den store verden i Kjøbenhavn. En annen sak var at glassene hans holdt seg godt, uten å vise bunnen. Han hadde dem bare foran tallerkenen, som en som vil ha orden i sakene.
– Vi er så takknemlig for at du tok den lange reisen for vår skyld, sa Anna.
– Det e æ som skal takke, sa Peder. – Ho Dina og dokker har gjett mæ alt opp i hendern... Og nu, når ho Karna _kjente_ mæ... Æ veit ikkje ka æ skal sei.
– Og da dere skiltes? Hvordan gikk det? spurte Anna.
– Ho ville ha mæ med. Holdt mæ i handa og vil ikkje gå inn i vogna. Blei heilt rasanes.
– Kordan? spurte Benjamin.
– Ho gikk laus på han dokteren, ka han heit? Joakim? Men æ ga ho veska med fotoapparatet og sa at æ skulle besøk ho i morra. Slik for de nu a gårde. Kordan kjem æ mæ dit i morra?
– Med toget. Æ prøve å ta fri og følge dæ, sa Benjamin.
– Nei, for all del, æ finn fram, sa Peder og tok allikevel en tilforlatelig slurk av ølseidelen.
– Du lot henne beholde fotoapparatet? Hun kan være uberegnelig med ting, sa Anna.
– Ho va så oppsatt på å ha det. Æ sa at æ skulle lær ho alt i hop. I morra den dag.
– Det kan være hardt å møte ho der inne... På Hospitalet, sa Benjamin.
– Ho e vel den samme uansett kor ho e, mente Peder.
– Nei, det må du ikke gå ut fra. Det kan godt hende hun ikke vil kjennes ved deg i morgen, sa Anna forsiktig.
– Ja, ja, då får æ berre tenke på at ho kjente mæ i dag. Æ snakka med ho uansett.
– Sa ho nokka? spurte Benjamin.
Peder tenkte seg om.
– Sa? Sannelig om æ merka nokka særskilt. Ho sa i alle fall ja og nei. Men mest for ho rundt og flira.
– Lo hun? spurte Anna.
– Å ja! sa Peder og måtte le bare han tenkte på det. – Æ fikk tatt non fine bilda. Ho dansa framfor et stort hus gjort a berre glassvindu. Det kom musikk derfra. Fiolina og alle slags instrument. Et kjempestort orkester. Ho dansa! Dansa akkurat som den natta... før det brente.
– Ville hun stå der og lytte til musikk? spurte Anna og ble sittende med åpen munn.
– Nei, ho dansa! slo Peder fast.
De to andre så på hverandre.
– Dette er utrolig, sa Benjamin. – Du forstår... Karna har ikke vært utenfor Hospitalet siden hun kom. Og hun har nektet å ha noe med musikk å gjøre.
– Innestengt? Koffer det?
– Hun har vært så dårlig at det ikke har vært tilrådelig å utsette henne for noe. Den Karna du har sett i dag, er helt annerledes enn den vi har møtt denne tiden, forklarte Anna.
– Kordan kan det gå an?
– Det e nok takket være dæ, mente Benjamin.
– Vi må nok være forberedt på tilbakefall når du reiser. Det må vi bare ta, sa Anna.
Peder ble sittende og se fra den ene til den andre.
– Då kan æ ikkje reis! sa han bestemt.
– Du _må_ jo reis. Du har et verft å bestyre. Det er livsverket dett. Så får vi heller ta hand om Karna her, sa Benjamin og så ned.
– Æ trur ikkje dokker kjenne mæ, sa Peder, plutselig gravalvorlig. – Å bygge båta og tjene penga kan æ gjør, men ho Karna e viktigar. Og e det slik at ho ikkje vil vær _her_ å bli fresk, så tar æ ho med mæ heim.
– Det kan du ikkje, sa Benjamin. – Men la oss for all del ikkje ta sorgen på forskudd. Dette e på alle måta en gledens dag.
Peder ble sittende og betrakte dem.
– For mæ e det viktig å vette ka æ skal gjør når sorgen kjem...
– Vi er så glad for at du kom. Du er vår, uansett, sa Anna og la hånden sin fort over Peders ru neve. Hun skulle til å fortsette, men holdt inne. Peder var ikke ferdig. Trengte mer tid. Han hadde lagt bestikket fra seg og satt og fingret med den ubrukte servietten.
– Den dagen. Etter begravelsen, då ho Karna ikkje kjente mæ og berre blei sendt av gårde, og ingen kunne fortel mæ ka som feila... då sørga æ så... at æ vesste det ikkje sjøl. Æ hadde trudd at Wilfred sine knyttneva va det verste. Nu veit æ at det verste e dennan tomheta... Ikkje å ha non å hold a. Ikkje ha non og arbeid og flir i lag med.
De to andre så ned og tidde.
– Dokker må ikkje tru at æ skal _røve_ ho med mæ. Men _treng_ ho mæ, så må æ enten vær her, eller ta ho med heim. Og vil ho det, så gifta vi oss først, så alt bli... _anstendig_.
– Kjære, kjære Peder, begynte Anna, – du må forstå at Karna ikke kan gifte seg mens hun er syk. Og hun kan ikke reise med deg uten at vi vet at hun er under kyndig behandling.
Peder tok det med senket hode. En stund satt han og maltrakterte servietten.
– Kjære dokker, begynte han, det _dokker_ må forstå, e at sjøl om ho Karna e sjuk, så kan dokker ikkje nekte ho å leve.
# BENJAMIN TAR ANSVAR
Den siste gangen Peder besøkte Karna før han skulle reise, dro Benjamin sammen med ham.
– Æ fortelle ho det aleina, før du kjem inn, sa Benjamin da de satt på toget.
– Æ har jo sagt det sjøl, mente Peder.
– Det e ei anna sak. Nu e det alvor.
– Det va det då også, sa Peder.
– Men ka skjedde?
– Ho reiv alle klean ut a skapet og viste mæ at ho ville reise med.
– Det e det æ vil forhindre, sa Benjamin.
Peder svarte ikke. Ble bare sittende og se ut gjennom vinduet til de kom til stasjonen. Da de begynte å gå til Hospitalet sa Peder:
– Æ trur ikkje du skal prøv å få ho fra det. Ho har bestemt sæ.
– Det kan se slik ut for dæ. Men ho veit ikkje sjøl ka som e best. Æ møte ho først, sa Benjamin og tenkte at han i verste fall måtte la dem medisinere henne så de kom seg av sted.
Peder ventet ute i parken. Karna satt påkledd. Det var tydelig for Benjamin at hun ventet dem. Da han kom alene, virret hun med hodet og var urolig.
Han var forberedt på Karnas sinne da han forklarte henne at hun ikke kunne reise. Det var tydelig at hun forsto hvert ord han sa. Men det han ikke var forberedt på, var at Peder allerede hadde skaffet henne en koffert. Nå åpnet hun skapet og viste ham herligheten. Åpnet triumferende lokket der plaggene og tingene hennes lå sirlig plassert.
– Du kan ikkje reise, Karna. Du veit at du ikkje e fresk nok? sa han.
Hun så tvers igjennom ham.
– Når han Peder kjem inn her, så må du ikkje gjør alt vanskelig for ham. Du må tenke på kordan _han_ har det med å reis ifra dæ. Han sørga, han også. Men det kjem andre daga, Karna. Enten kjem han hit igjen, eller du reis heim når du blir fresk.
Hun slo skapdøren i. Bredbent og pesende sto hun der og glodde olmt på ham. Skriket hennes var han forberedt på, men ikke det hun skrek.
– Joakim!
Da han gikk mot henne, så hun på ham med hat i blikket og skrek _Joakim_. Dette forbannede navnet. Skrek det, gang på gang.
Benjamin visste at det var uklokt, _visste_ at det ikke var det han skulle gjøre. Men han tok tak i henne. Ristet henne. Og da hun fortsatte å skrike, ga han henne et ekstra rist for hver gang hun drev navnet Joakim med full kraft ut av seg.
Dagvakten kom ilende og spurte om hun skulle hente hjelp, så forsvant hun som en vind.
Karna ble stille og sto og svaiet. Hodet falt ned mot brystet og munnen arbeidet med noe. Kjevene åpnet seg. Nå faller hun, tenkte han og grep om henne. Men hun falt ikke, seg bare langsomt ned mot gulvet og ble sittende med ryggen mot skapdøren. Ansiktet vridde seg. Åpnet seg. Så kom skriket.
– Joakim!
Øyeblikket etter så han at mannen sto i døren. Med et stønn slapp han Karna og gikk med forte skritt over gulvet. Ville forbi og ut.
– Vent! Vi tar det. Sammen! sa Joakim og sperret utgangen for ham.
*
Peder var bestemt. Snakket til dem som om _han_ var autoriteten på reservelegens kontor. De måtte ha forstått det før de ba ham komme at det kunne bli slik. For Karna og han hørte sammen. Han skulle ha henne med seg. De måtte sørge for at hun ble skrevet ut. Hun hadde vært her altfor lenge, og det hadde sikkert vært nødvendig. Men nå måtte hun ut i livet der hun hørte hjemme. Frisk eller forvirret. Han tok ansvaret for henne.
Karna sov etter den opprivende scenen som endte med at hun måtte medisineres. Benjamin satte selv sprøyten med morfin.
– Du har selv vært vitne til hvordan hun kan agere. Du forstår at det _ikke_ er forsvarlig at du tar henne herfra, sa Joakim rolig. – Hun må ha tilsyn og medisin.
– Æ e kapabel tel å ta mæ a ho! De medisinan ho må ha, kan æ gje ho. Sprøyten også. Æ har gjort verre karstøkka. Doktern må unnskyld at æ berre sei det, men hadde _æ_ vorre innestengt her i årevis, så hadde æ agert mykkje verre.
– Jeg forstår Peders tankegang. Men vi har hatt episoder der hun har villet ta sitt eget liv. Er du klar for så stort et ansvar? Tror du det er klokt?
Joakim satt på jernkrakken og iakttok den unge, påståelige mannen.
– Æ veit ikkje ka som e _klokt_. Men ansvaret tar æ. Æ har allerede lova ho det. Dokteren veit at har man lova nokka, så får man hold det.
Joakim nikket alvorlig.
– Fortell meg helt nøyaktig hva du sa til henne, sa han.
– Æ sa: _Om det e det du vil, så_ _reis_ _vi heim i lag, Karna_.
– Men noe svar, det fikk du ikke? sa Benjamin trett.
– Vesst farsken fikk æ svar!
– Nikket hun? spurte Joakim.
– Det veit æ ikkje, men ho _sa_ det. _Vi fer heim, Peder. Vi skal_ _fotografer_ , sa ho. Då bestemte æ mæ for å kjøp ho en koffert.
De to andre skiftet blikk.
– Og det forteller du først nå? At hun snakket til deg. Er du sikker på at hun virkelig _sa_ de ordene? At det ikke en noe du ønsker sterkt fordi... fordi du elsker henne? spurte Joakim.
Peder bøyde seg fremover i stolen og så ikke på dem.
– Æ bruka ikkje å snakk så høytidelig. Men det e rett at æ bryr mæ meir om ho enn æ bryr mæ om mæ sjøl. Der dokteren tar feil e... at æ _innbille_ mæ at ho sa de ordan. Æ e ikkje a den beskaffenhet at æ innbille mæ at folk snakka tel mæ.
– Du forstår at vi tviler, hun har bare snakket med enstavelsesord og sagt et par navn til nå, sa Benjamin.
– Æ veit. Men derfor behøv det ikkje å vær slik for all tid. Dokker har fortelt at ho tel og med har songe, ikkje sant? Æ sa det tel ho her om dagen. Skal æ lær dæ å fotografere så må du snakk tel mæ, ellers veit æ ikkje ka æ skal gjør.
Peder tror på det han selv sier. Han tror virkelig at det er så enkelt, tenkte Benjamin.
Og som om Peder visste hva han tenkte, utbrøt han:
– Dokker to ser på mæ som æ e en tulling som trur at æ kan gjør under. Men æ trur ikkje på under. Æ veit berre at uten at man verkelig prøve å _gjør_ nokka, så blir ingenting forandra. E det ikkje så?
Joakim rettet seg opp på krakken.
– Jeg kan ikke skrive henne ut herfra uten hennes fars tillatelse. Dessuten er det uforsvarlig, og jeg fraråder det på det sterkeste.
– Og kem skal fortelle ho at det e andre enn ho sjøl som skal bestemme ka ho skal eller ikkje skal? spurte Peder.
– Det må _jeg_ om nødvendig, sa Joakim fast.
– Trur dokker verkelig at ho ikkje _klara_ det om ho vil? Og kem a dokker skal fortelle mæ det når ho har gjort det, ka?
– Gjort hva? spurte Joakim.
– Tatt livet a sæ fordi ho ikkje får reis heim.
– Det er min plikt å formidle slikt, men i dette tilfellet håper jeg at du har tillit til at jeg ikke behøver det, sa Joakim rolig.
Peder svarte ikke.
– Kan du gå i hagen ei stund, Peder? Æ trur doktor Klim og jeg må snakke på tomannshånd, sa Benjamin.
– Dokker va korttenkt då dokker ba mæ om å komme og ikkje forsto at ho ville være med mæ heim.
– Ja. Du har rett. Hun har aldri før gitt uttrykk for at hun vil reise, sa Joakim.
Peder reiste seg. I døren snudde han seg.
– Æ ber dokker! Slepp ho laus!
*
Anna satt i morgenkåpe ved toalettbordet og løsnet håret da Benjamin kom inn i soverommet.
– Du er sen. Hvordan gikk det? spurte hun og så spent på ham.
Han lukket døren og knappet opp snippen. Tok av seg jakke og vest og hengte dem på stumtjeneren. Kjente øynene hennes på seg.
– Peder har lovet Karna at hun skal reise hjem med ham. Joakim og jeg har ordnet alle papirer for utskrivelse.
Hun snudde hele kroppen mot ham og lot håret falle. Det brettet seg ut. Hårstrå skilte seg fra hårstrå i en langsom flom og ble liggende og dirre.
– Er dere to gått fullstendig fra vettet! utbrøt hun.
– Det er mulig det ser slik ut, sa han trett.
– Peder er en voksen mann som vil gifte seg! Karna er en syk ung kvinne, et barn! sa hun og slet seg i håret.
– Vi har snakket sammen. Jeg har snakket med Peder. Jeg...
– Benjamin! avbrøt hun. – Vi er hennes verge. Hennes foreldre! Hun aner ikke hva et ekteskap er, aner ikke hva en mann er. Jeg tillater det ikke!
Ordene kom i en rasende strøm.
– Vent litt, Anna. Jeg har brukt noen timer til å tenke over det. Jeg reiser med. Så ser vi det an, sa han og fortsatte å kle av seg.
– Reise med! Nå? Det kan du ikke. Den viktige disputasen din er jo snart, sa hun, tok opp hårbørsten og holdt den et øyeblikk i luften før hun la den fra seg med et smell.
– Jeg ber om utsettelse.
– Dette mener du ikke. Du er i gang med en stor karriere. Du forteller meg ingenting, men jeg vet det. Far sier...
– Din far _vil_ tro at jeg er den beste i flokken hans, fordi jeg er mannen _din_. Kanskje får jeg fortsette der jeg slapp når jeg kommer tilbake, sa han og prøvde seg på et slags smil.
Hun spratt opp fra puffen.
– Har Peder lagt seg? Jeg må snakke med ham. Han må skifte mening! Dere må alle skifte mening.
– Nei, Anna. Det skal du _ikke_. Og om jeg må være så fri, nå ligner du på en prikk din mor når hun er overbevist om at _hun vet best_.
Et sjofelt knep, og han visste det. Men det satte en stopper for at hun banket på hos Peder. I stedet travet hun bare omkring og gjorde seg klar for natten.
Et par ganger prøvde han å ta omkring henne, snakke til henne. Men hun avviste ham uten et ord.
Da hodet hans lå på puten, påla han seg selv å være ferdig med denne dagen. Han visste det kom flere. Så for seg en uendelighet av dager han ikke hadde valgt.
_Han vasset rundt i snøen og lette etter noe han hadde mistet,_ _uten å finne det. Imens skiftet alt til sommer. Han hadde flyttet hele kontoret sitt ut til Reinsnes. En frisk_ _bris fra sør laget store bølger mot glassdøren_ _i medisinskapet. Kan det_ _glasset holde havet ute? Er_ _det sterkt nok?_ _tenkte han_.
Han måtte ha sovnet, likevel. Anna snudde urolig på seg. Sto opp og trakk gardinet bedre for. En liten stripe av våren hadde sluppet inn og traff dem begge.
– Jeg kunne ikke legge det på ham, forstår du, mumlet han da hun var tilbake i sengen. – Jeg har lagt altfor mye på den gutten allerede. Dina begynte. Hun fikk ham til å underskrive denne kontrakten... at hun skulle betale skole, og han skulle føre Verftet videre. Og jeg fulgte opp. Nærmest _tvang_ ham inn i det. Dina og jeg... vi har _kjøpt_ den gutten, Anna. Han har aldri kunnet si nei. Bare ja, ja. Og da Joakim ba meg få ham hit fordi han trodde det kunne gi Karna noe, så telegraferte jeg etter ham. Og han kom. Han har ikke hatt andre enn oss. Bare en bror som når som helst kunne ha knekket ham. Jeg har tatt ham som en selvfølge. Og nå har han _lovet_ Karna aldri å forlate henne. Han og jeg, vi har sittet et par timer på Det lille Apothek. Han har fortalt meg om sitt liv. På sin måte, uten å beklage seg. Jeg kan ikke bare legge så stort ansvar på ham _alene_ mens jeg går her i Kjøbenhavn og pleier min såkalte karriere. Det er _jeg_ som har satt Karna til verden.
– Peder synes han har fått et gullegg med det Verftet. Og han har rett, sa Anna etter en stund.
– Ja vel, men kan du også gi meg rett i at jeg må følge med? Også fordi jeg må ta henne med tilbake dersom dette ikke går?
Hun svarte ikke straks, men snudde seg i alle fall mot ham.
– Jeg kan se for meg den scenen som utspant seg da Karna fikk vite at han skulle reise. Så jeg forstår hvordan dette kom i stand. Men jeg gir deg _ikke_ rett når du vil sette hele din fremtid på spill. Karna dør ikke bare fordi hun ikke får viljen sin i denne saken.
– Det vet vi ikke, Anna. Og det kan jeg ikke leve med. Hvorfor er du forresten så oppsatt på _min_ fremtid? Jeg trodde det var din egen du kjempet for med alle midler.
Hun svarte ikke. Bare pusten hennes hørtes. Så snudde hun langsomt ryggen til. Slik var hun når hun kjente seg såret, tenkte han. Hun stoppet før det hardnet til. Han skulle ha sagt noe forsonende. Noe å sove på. Men kom ikke på et eneste ord. Hver gang han trodde hun sov, rørte hun forsiktig på seg. Slik bare en som våker sammen med noen og ikke vil gi det til kjenne, gjør.
– Anna, hvisket han. – Kan du snu deg mot meg slik at jeg vet at det ikke er feil av meg å holde om deg.
Hun snudde seg langsomt og dro dyna med seg. Han tok imot henne med hele kroppen.
– Dersom du tror at jeg gjør dette fordi jeg vil, så tar du feil. Det er en forbannet tung avgjørelse å ta. Helst vil jeg være her hos deg. Jeg er ikke større, sa han og gjemte seg hos henne.
# OPPVÅKNING
Hun hadde ikke sett pappa slik siden hun var liten og kom inn til ham om morgenen. Det var før Anna kom med dampen. Hun husket ikke hvordan alt var, bare at pappa alltid så på Anna når hun var i rommet. Øynene hans ble mørke og hendene urolige.
Tidlig en morgen var døren til kammerset låst. Det skulle den ikke være. Døren til pappa var aldri låst. Hun hadde banket på til han kom og åpnet. Han hadde løftet henne opp og sagt _Hysj, hysj, det e natt, alle må sove_ , og båret henne inn i kammerset, til skuvsengen, dokkene og gyngehesten. Men hun ville være i den store varme sengen hans.
– Det kan du ikkje, hadde han sagt og bredd dyna over henne.
Da hun begynte å gråte, hadde han presset den store skrotten sin ned i skuvsengen og dratt knærne helt opp til halsen. Så hadde hun sovnet likevel.
Da hun våknet av morgenlyset, husket hun først ikke hvordan det hadde gått til, men det var nok Anna som hadde hentet dem begge. For hun våknet i pappas kammers med et godt tak i det stripete pyjamasermet hans. Da hun gjorde seg helt våken, så hun Annas hår på pappas pute.
– Koffør ligg _ho_ her? hadde hun spurt og ristet ham våken.
– Ho Anna fikk heller ikkje sov uten mæ, mumlet han og var glad som en laks i det søvnige fjeset.
– Veit non om at ho e så toskat?
– Nei, det e hemmelig. Det e berre vi tre som veit det tel vi e gift.
– Koffør det? hadde hun spurt.
– Non har bestemt at det e skammelig for voksne folk å vær så mørkeredd før de e gift. Grei du å la vær å snakk om det?
– Ja. Men då lås du ikkje døra.
– Det kan godt hende at æ må.
– Koffør det?
– For at ikkje andre skal kom inn her og sjå kor mørkeredd vi e i lag.
– Har du låst nu?
– Nei.
– Kor toskat du e, hadde hun hvisket. Så ilte hun bort til døren, strakte seg på tå og vridde om den store nøkkelen.
– Se så! hadde hun sagt med snuten inn i halsgropen hans.
Nå lå de hver for seg i den trange lugaren. Armen hans hang ut over køyekanten. Hånden nådde nesten helt ned til dørken. Den stripete pyjamasjakken var ikke knappet igjen over brystet og ermet lå i en krøll over skulderen. Skyggene gled urolig over ham. Ansiktet så brukt ut. Skjegget hadde grodd ut. Håret var i floker. Nå åpnet og lukket han hånden uten å vite det, snøftet og snudde seg mot veggen.
Men skyggene fortsatte sin vandring uten å komme noe sted. Frem og tilbake. Att og fram. Lyset brøt seg inn gjennom koøyet med en stahet man bare kunne undre seg over. Slik var det alltid med lyset.
Anna var ikke her nå. Hun hadde vært der da de reiste til Hospitalet uten pappa. Anna var der pappa ikke var. Slik var det blitt.
Deliristene var ikke her. Vinden hadde jaget ropene deres langt av sted. Nei. Havet skilte dem fra henne. Når fjell falt og brygger råtnet, så var havet alltid der for å ta imot. Skjule. Det buldret eller fosset gjennom natten. Eller suste som nå i en påståelig rytme mot båtskroget. Det flyttet på løse ting på dekk. Motoren spydde damp som drev dem frem. Jern og vann. Snøftet og buldret. Bare ved å være til skaket det rytmen sin inn i smått og stort. Snakket varsomt og bryskt med metall og rigg.
Det brøt nesten inn i den lune køya hennes. Hun var i et skjørt skall. Ble det grusom storm, så ville havet vinne. Havet vant alltid.
Var hun redd? Nei. Farmor var jo der nede et sted. Kroppen hennes var. Det som ennå fantes. Sjelen hennes var hos russeren i Saturns innerste ring.
På et eller annet tidspunkt ville de fare over det stedet der farmors ødelagte kropp hadde lagt seg til i trekisten sin. Da ville krefter varsle henne. Tre smuldret opp, tre varte ikke evig. Det forlot sin tilstand for havets skyld. For renselsens skyld. Det gjorde farmors kropp også. Tennene ville holde stand. Kanskje håret og neglene. Men farmors sjel var i Saturns evige rytme, ikke i det som skulle renses. Farmor _var_ renset. Russeren hadde vitnet om at hun elsket, men ikke forsto at man ikke kunne eie andre enn seg selv. Hvordan kunne det ha seg at farmor som var så klok ikke hadde forstått noe så enkelt?
Nå var det pappa, Peder og henne. I hver sin køye i et buldrende skall. Sammen. På veggen ved døren hang fotoapparatet i tasken sin. Nei, danset. Frem og tilbake. Danset med skyggene. Ikke helt i takt. Apparatet var tjoret til veggen, mens skyggene var fri. Att og fram. Frem og tilbake.
Peder rørte på seg i køya over henne. Nå stakk han et bustete hode over køyekanten og så søvnig på henne.
– E du våken? hørte hun.
– Nei, sa hun bare.
– Kor du lyg, hvisket han med fornærmet stemme og trakk hodet til seg. Men hun hørte at han lo.
Hun slo teppet til side, kom seg ut av køya og klatret opp på klappstolen for å se ut. Båten gled forbi en svart varde og la seg over. Så svingte de vel. Motoren skiftet rytme. Sylinderne arbeidet. Havet snøftet mot skallet deres og slapp dem frem uten å gjøre noe vesen av det.
Hun klatret ned og åpnet skapdøren under den hvite vasken der nattpotten var. Så dro hun sengeportieren over seg for å være alene. Satt som i et telt. De lot henne alltid være alene når hun måtte. Nevnte det ikke. Selv om de lå i køyene sine og hørte alt.
Da hun hadde satt potten tilbake i skapet, hentet hun lærtasken med apparatet og tok den med i køya. Forsiktig tok hun det frem og lot lyset spille i linsen. Da hørte hun Peders stemme over seg.
– Ikkje ta på linsa!
– Nei, sa hun like strengt.
Da først begynte pappa å røre på seg. Hittil hadde han alltid vært den siste. Pappa gjespet ikke, han knaket i sammenføyningene og måtte alltid ha vann i fjeset med det samme. Da så han straks mindre brukt ut. Han lot visst natten renne bort med vannet han klapset over seg. Da han dukket opp fra det stive håndkleet, var han blitt et dagmenneske.
Like etter hørtes gongongen. Det var tid for frokost på første klasse.
*
Hun satt i en dekksstol. Innpakket som en annen sofapølle. Sola bakte henne i fjeset så øynene ble blendet og hårfjonet i pannen klødde.
Pappa satt i stolen ved siden av og skrev brev. _Kjære Anna_ , sto det øverst. Han hadde penn med piplende blekk i magen og sølte ikke utover. Skriften hans var stor og lente seg forover som om den var redd for ikke å komme frem dit den skulle. Den var jevn og stø som om den var gjort i et trykkeri.
Peders skrift strittet imot som om den gikk i motvind. Av og til spratt bokstavene i hver sin retning, for så å hente seg inn og legge seg jevnt bakover. Hun hadde tatt med brevene fra ham. De lå i kofferten han hadde skaffet henne.
Joakim var ikke om bord. Her gikk ingen stuegang. Første dagen hadde hun ikke tenkt på det. Men nå. Tanken på ham ble uvirkelig. Som om alt _innenfor_ ikke hadde hendt. Eller at farmor hadde tatt ham til seg.
Da Joakim og hun satt alene i vognen fra Hospitalet til skipet, hadde han sagt noe. Men det var ikke farvel.
– Blir dette for vanskelig, Karna, så vet du hva du skal, ikke sant?
– Ja, hadde hun svart. Men det var ikke sant. Hun visste ingenting annet enn at hun skulle over havet med Peder. Skulle _hjem_.
Joakim hadde snudd seg mot henne og lot fingertuppene gli over tinningene hennes, mens han som vanlig så henne inn i øynene til de lukket seg av seg selv.
– Og hva skal du?
Hun hadde visst ikke svart, for han fortsatte.
– Hva skal du rope så høyt du kan?
– Joakim!
– Nettopp! Da vet de hva de skal gjøre. Men han hadde ikke sagt noe om hva de skulle gjøre.
Da hun gikk over landgangen hadde han stått på kaia og løftet hånden mot øret. Det gikk så fort. Da hun snudde seg igjen, var han borte. Så hadde hun glemt det.
Nå kom Peder opp fra lugaren med apparatet over skulderen.
– Lyset e for hardt. Men kom, vi kan prøve, sa han og vinket henne med seg bort til relingen.
Hun pakket seg ut av ullteppet. Røyken fra skorsteinen fløt over dekket og forsvant utover havet. En landtunge hadde dukket opp.
– Der e Norge! sa Peder glad.
Når Peder var glad, behøvde han ikke le. Hun så det likevel. Hun tenkte at hun ville spørre ham om hvordan det kunne ha seg at han var så glad, men greide det ikke.
Han ventet til hun sto ved siden av ham før han tok apparatet opp av skinntasken. _Sands_ _&_ _Hunters, London_ – sto det på lokket.
– Du hus kordan det va? spurte han og viste henne hvordan han løsnet skruene som foldet apparatet ut.
Hun nikket først, så ristet hun bestemt på hodet.
– Slik e det! sa han og satte det vesle trekkspillet fast der linsen var.
– Nu må vi beregne alt igjønna mattskiva her på baksida, sa han og løftet apparatet opp foran øyet og fiklet med en metallskrue. Linsen kom glidende mot henne og trakk seg tilbake etter som han skrudde.
– Slik! sa han og ga henne apparatet.
Det var lettere enn hun trodde. Først siktet hun på Peder. Han fjernet seg eller kom nærmere som ved et under. Ble disig eller klar etter hvordan hun skrudde.
– Nu finn vi et motiv i lag, sa han og stilte seg bak henne med hendene over hennes. De så vekselvis gjennom linsen. Da det ble hennes tur, var landstripen bare en stusslig skygge der inne.
Øyet hennes for over landskapet. Peder løftet apparatet opp til øyet sitt og skrudde. Lot henne se det han så. Hun skrudde litt. Bildet ble skarpere. Hun måtte le, så skarpt ble det.
Hun lente seg mot Peder der i blåsten. En varm vegg mot ryggen. Apparatet så for dem. Slik kunne de være i samme verden. Se det samme. Se alt som det var. Peder og hun. Skru på linsen etter tur, slik at verden ble grumsete eller blank etter som de fant det for godt.
Hun snudde hodet mot ham og lo. La hendene sine over hans for selv å styre apparatet. Båten krenget lett. Men hun sto. Satte sjøbein og sto enda bedre.
Så holdt hun apparatet alene. Tok noen skritt inn til skyggen ved skipsveggen mens hun så alt som var gjennom linsen. Et bilde kom inn.
På kassen med livbelter lå en svart fugl. En skarv. Den ene vingen sto rett ut og den andre lå inntil kroppen. Hun gikk nærmere med apparatet foran seg mens skorsteinen åt sola og skyggene fløt over dekket. Ble stående. Skrudde på linsen for å få det klart.
Så trykket hun.
Hun hørte Peders skritt bak seg. Skoene hans smattet mot dekksplankene. Nå sto han der.
– Ja, du har den nå! sa han.
Da hun begynte å gråte tok han apparatet og la armen omkring henne.
Hun satte seg på kassen og la hånden på skarven. Den var helt kald.
En rue løsnet et sted i henne. Hun kjente en smerte. Et sting. En sviende tomhet.
Peder satte seg hos henne.
– Den flaug vel mot skorsteinen, eller den orka ikkje meir, sa han og ble sittende en liten stund.
Så gjorde han slikt han skulle og måtte. Tok platen med linsen av apparatet. Løsnet på skruene som holdt kameraet oppe. Hektet av trekkspillet foran. La fronten av kameraet ned.
Motoren buldret. Båten dirret.
– Nu gjør du resten, sa han lavt og rakte henne apparatet.
– Ja, sa hun og la bakenden og trekkspillet ned.
Han hentet tasken. Hun la alt på plass der det skulle være slik han hadde lært henne, og la lokket på.
Til sist reiste hun seg og tok skarven i fanget. Satt slik med den en liten stund. Så gikk hun bort til relingen og lot den fare. Den fløy naturligvis ikke. Falt bare rett ned og litt på skrå. Båten var jo i fart. Hun fulgte den med øynene helt til kjølvannsstripen brøt den ned.
– Du skal ikkje sørge, Karna, den skarven hadde et fritt, godt liv. Og nu har du gjort han evig. Vi kan ha han her for alltid, på bildet, sa Peder bak henne og var en varm vegg.
Da ble hun var noe klebrig vått der nede. Noe skammelig. Så hadde hun nok tisset på seg uten å måtte falle. Men det svimlet. Da visste hun at hun måtte på do. Nå, med en gang.
Hun dro Peder i armen og nikket mot dekksdøren. Han skjønte med en gang hva hun ville uten at hun sa noe. Hadde gjort det før. Stått utenfor toalettdøren for å hindre folk i å komme inn. For hun skulle ikke låse seg inne.
Doet luktet harsk olje. Smerten i magen var isende kald. Hun kjente den igjen fra for lenge siden. Ruen der inne hadde nok løsnet. Da hun løftet opp skjørtene og så nedover seg var blodet der.
– Nei! sa hun. Gjentok det flere ganger.
– Nei!
Det var bestemt for lenge siden at skammeligheten ikke skulle gjelde henne. Aldri. Hun var vitne til de andres skam. Da kunne ikke hun selv...
Hun holdt seg fast i håndtaket på veggen, men svaiet likevel. Holdt seg fast med én hånd og ordnet klærne med den andre. Lukket øynene. Bilder fløy likevel forbi. Ble tydelige.
Anna sto i kammerset og tok imot underbuksen hennes. Brettet den sammen slik at den røde flekken ikke var synlig og la den på sengen. Så spredte hun armene ut og tok om henne. Hendene var fomlete og sky.
– Det er som det skal være. Det er stort – og naturlig. Kroppen din er voksen. Du kan være stolt. Vi legger den bare i kaldt vann, så blir den som ny, sa Anna.
Pappa tok henne med på kontoret og pekte i boken med den glansede tegningen. Viste henne hvordan hun så ut der inne. Hun hadde sett den før, uten å forstå at hun egentlig var et sår med rue på. Og hun kom ikke til gro sammen før hun ble gammel. Skorpen ville falle av hver eneste måned til omtrent samme tid.
Peder satt på klappsetet under koøyet og lente seg frem mot henne med hele overkroppen. Hun satt i køya med et håndkle mellom beina og vatteppet rundt seg og ulte. Det skulle ikke ha hendt. Visste jo at det var tegnet på svik og løgn. Hun ville ikke ha det! La seg fremover i køya og ulte. En stor rasende lyd.
– Det e ikkje farlig Karna. Alt e som det skal vær, forstår du ikkje det?
– Nei!
– Har de ikkje fortalt dæ om ka som skjer kvær måned når du e voksen? sa Peder og så nesten sint ut.
Så måtte hun nikke, enda så skammelig det var.
– Du e ganske fresk, det e naturlig at det kjem nu.
– Nei!
– Det e ikkje nokka å skjemmes a. Høre du...
– Nei!
Da reiste han seg fra klappstolen og satte seg hos henne i køya. Gjorde slikt han fant på for lenge siden. Holdt henne tett inntil seg og dro pusten i langsomme hiv, som om han hadde tenkt på det en stund uten å tore det, og nå allikevel gjorde det.
Busserullen hans luktet varm ull.
– Du e mæ så dyrebar, Karna, forstår du det? spurte han og kremtet.
– Ja.
– Kjenne du også at det e nokka mella oss? Nokka større og djupar enn å fotografere?
– Ja.
Han holdt henne ut fra seg igjen og satte øynene i henne.
– Vil du ennu at vi skal gift oss når du e heilt fresk? spurte han høytidelig og hostet litt.
Hun måtte se på ham og tenke litt på det han sa. Men mest så hun ham.
– Ja, sa hun bestemt.
– Kan du gje mæ en liten godkinn, berre så æ forstår at du meine det?
Hun la begge armene om halsen hans og lente seg mot ham. Han var så merkelig fast, som en varm stein å ta i. Og da han sukket, dirret han litt. Som om han ville vise henne det mykeste han hadde, og var redd for at han ikke fikk det til.
– Kan du gje mæ en godkinn så æ veit at du meine ja, gjentok han.
Hun presset kinnet mot hans så godt hun kunne. Det stakk og var litt vått.
Slik satt de i en vridd floke. Det var vel fordi han ikke ville komme helt opp i køya med skoene på. Da hun merket at hele ansiktet hans ble vått, måtte hun hjelpe ham på et eller annet vis. Tørket ham forsiktig med begge hender.
Fremdeles bare satt han der og så på henne med rennende øyne, så hun bøyde seg over leggen hans og dro bestemt i skolissene.
– Hus du at vi dansa den St. Hans-aften på Reinsnes? spurte han og sparket av seg skoene.
– Ja, sa hun, og husket. Husket at han hadde vrengt av seg genseren akkurat som nå og luktet varm kropp. Røyken fra det digre sankthansbålet i fjæra lå rundt dem. Han løftet henne, svingte henne, holdt henne. Hun ville at han skulle være helt nær – fastere enn hun kunne be om. Men det var en ting som sto i veien. Han skulle ikke vite at hun blødde. Det var skammelig og ikke til å nevne.
Nå visste han det.
Og skarven var på glassplaten for all tid.
# ANNA ALENE
Grytidlig morgen, og Anna ryddet før stuegang. Det var viktig at møblene sto der de skulle, at gulvet var feid og at nattbøttene ble brakt i gården.
De er om bord nå, tenkte hun. Joakim skulle komme med Karna i vogn fra Hospitalbyen. Da var allerede hun i elevdrakt på Kommunehospitalet. Alle gjorde sitt. Og hun ville vel alltid tenke at det hun gjorde denne dagen, ikke var godt nok.
Hadde ikke Peder sovet på pikerommet, så hadde ikke Benjamin og hun vært på samme rom om natten. Da hadde ingenting blitt sagt. I går kveld, da de hadde lagt seg og kofferten hans sto klar ved skapet, hadde hun lagt hodet på armen hans. Han hadde strøket henne over ryggen, slik man gjør med et barn. Hun påla seg selv ikke å plage ham med tåpelighet og tårer.
– Telegrafer eller skriv dersom du trenger meg, sa hun i stedet.
– Og hva kan du gjøre?
– Da kommer jeg.
Hun hørte at han forsøkte å le.
– Siden du advarer meg, så vil jeg aldri tore å telegrafere at jeg trenger deg.
– Hvorfor?
– Fordi jeg _alltid_ trenger deg. Du er det eneste mennesket jeg virkelig trenger. Til og med når jeg er dypt såret og forbannet, så trenger jeg deg. Men jeg har lært litt. Du er ikke en som man kan tro er vunnet én gang for alle. Men takk, sa han.
Han hadde denne milde fjernheten i stemmen, denne konsentrerte tilstedeværelsen i hånden mens han strøk henne over ryggen. Som om hun skulle vært en av hans pasienter som ikke kunne hjelpe for at hun var havnet i hans seng. Og som han derfor ikke kunne kreve noe av. Hun kunne ha sagt det til ham, at hun visste at han ikke orket å reise uten å fjerne de usynlige piggene de hadde mellom seg. At hun forsto at han ikke trodde han ville komme tilbake på lenge. Men det sa hun ikke. Det ville utløst en diskusjon. Ville tvunget ham til å gå i forsvar. Og det minste hun kunne gjøre for ham nå, var å sørge for at han fikk litt søvn.
Så hadde de ligget der, så nær at de ikke kunne hjelpe for at de i vanvare dyttet til hverandre. Han sammenkrøpet – under sin egen dyne.
Og nå? tenkte hun der hun sto og tellet håndklær som skulle bringes ut til stuene.
De hadde nok allerede kommet ut i åpent hav.
Dagen gikk uendelig langsomt, og fort. Hun slettet laken og sørget for rene bekken. Gjorde klart for operativt inngrep på et tomt sykerom, fordi kapasiteten på operasjonsstuen var sprengt. Det var kommet inn en kvinne med svulst i underlivet. Man opererte ikke menn utenom operasjonsstuen. Det var kvinnekropper som måtte tåle provisoriene.
Av henne krevde det nøyaktighet og renslighet. De var to elever på post, men de kunne ikke desinfisere hele rommet. Det de gjorde var livsviktig, men neppe bra nok. Man unnlot å snakke om det, men ordentlig renslighet var umulig. Benjamin pleide å si det. _Det er rart at ikke flere dør_.
Og mens hun la frem forbindinger og utstyr, tenkte hun: Hvorfor plager jeg meg selv med hva Benjamin pleier å si? Og i neste øyeblikk: De er nok kommet midtveis mellom kystene nå. Er sjøen rolig tro?
Leiligheten snakket liksom til henne da hun låste seg inn. Påla henne å se til palmen hun hadde fått av moren. Den trengte vann. Hun ga den vann. Satte opp vinduet på soverommet og tok i dyna for å re sengen. Puta hans lå helt over mot hennes side. Over hennes pute. Begge hadde dype søkk.
Hun gikk bort til vinduet igjen. Det var det man kalte en deilig forårskveld. Hun pustet dypt inn. Konsentrerte seg om å se på de to trærne utenfor med nyfødte blader. De duftet, og hun visste ikke engang hva de het. Leiligheten befalte fornuft. Ro. Fort trakk hun gardinet for og gikk bort til sengen igjen. Ble stående et øyeblikk. Så tok hun langsomt av seg klærne og la seg under dyna hans. Boret hodet inn mellom de to putene og prøvde å tenke på ingenting.
Så begynte hun å gråte.
_Hun_ _parterte_ _sin_ _far_ _og pakket hvert stykke pent inn i rene forbindinger, samtidig som hun sang_ _mot et amfi_ _med_ _sykepleieelever. Men lyden kom ikke ut. De måtte jo tro at hun bare sto der og gapte._ _Hvorfor har Benjamin satt meg i denne situasjonen,_ _når han_ _lekende lett kunne ha gjort denne parteringen_ _selv,_ _tenkte hun_.
Vekkerklokken kimte og klokken var fem.
*
Det kom et kort brev fra Benjamin, postet i Bergen. Alt gikk godt. Det hadde ikke vært noen episoder. Karna var blitt nesten fullbefaren sjømann. Han nevnte at han ville holde Joakim underrettet om Karna.
Hun tolket det slik: _Du behøver ikke oppsøke ham for å_ _fortelle hvordan det går med Karna_.
Det stakk henne. Han skrev Joakim, ikke doktor Klim. Han måtte ha tenkt på det før han skrev, bestemt seg for ikke å late som om Joakim og han hadde et formelt fellesskap på grunn av Karna. Han ville vise henne at de var kommet til å like hverandre. Til tross for henne. Burde hun i så fall ikke være glad for det?
Noen dager etter kom telegrammet om at de var vel hjemme.
Anna så for seg rommene i doktorgården. Så dem sitte ved spisebordet. Så at Karna hengte opp den røde kjolen i skapet. Den store spisestuen, og lyset som ga gjenskinn i pianoet når de trakk gardinet fra. Hun lengtet etter å sette seg på pianokrakken, bøye seg over tangentene med spredte fingre, rette seg opp og legge hodet bakover og la det stå til. Hamre. Leke. Flanere. De hadde nok ikke tørket støv av det.
Neste morgen feiret hun telegrammet med å gå på Blomstertorget før hun gikk til hospitalet. Det var i ferd med å bli ferdig rigget. Det bugnet og duftet. Ei ganske ung jente sto bak boden sammen med en eldre som sikkert var moren. Det var noe med jentas smil som rørte henne. Det var strålende, til tross for at hun akkurat fikk en skrape av den eldre. Anna fylte korga med ulike blomster, og fikk dem ganske billig uten å prute.
– Fruen skal ha selskap? spurte jenta blidt.
– Nei, jeg arbeider på hospital. Der trenger man blomster, svarte Anna.
– Å ja, det må være brysomt med så mange syke mennesker.
– De skal jo bli friske, vet du, sa Anna og ga henne myntene hun skulle ha.
– Sett frem disse her! befalte den eldre og dyttet ei korg med prestekrager over plankebordet.
Lynende fort tok jenta en stor bunt og stakk den ned i Annas korg uten at moren så det.
– Kommer jeg på hospitalet så vil jeg ha deg, sa hun og sendte et slengkyss fylt av latter mot henne.
Da hun kom inn på avdelingen, ble blomsterkorga midtpunktet.
– Skal de inn i oppholdsstuen og lesestuen? spurte en medelev.
– Nei, de må ut til pasientene. Helst til dem som aldri får besøk, svarte Anna.
Alle ville hjelpe henne å sette dem i vann og bære dem rundt i det de i farten fant. Tomme glass og støvete vaser. Det viktige samtaleemnet var hvilken stue som mest fortjente en lysende blomst.
Utover dagen var det flere som visste at det var hun som hadde brakt blomstene inn. Hun fikk bemerkninger og smil. Like før hun skulle gå av vakt, passet forstanderinnen henne opp i korridoren.
– Uansett tanken bak, hun kan ikke bringe med seg ting som favoriserer noen pasienter fremfor andre, sa hun morskt.
– Det skal jeg heretter huske, sa Anna og bukket lett.
– Jeg har latt meg fortelle at fru Grønelv har klaget til hospitalledelsen om lønnen til stue- og våkekonene. Jeg vil sette pris på å bli underrettet neste gang det skjer. Utenom dette er det intet å bemerke. Man er fornøyd. Hun kan gå av vakt, sa den andre nådig.
*
Det var blitt lørdag ettermiddag igjen. Hun kom noenlunde tidlig fra hospitalet og bestemte seg for å besøke foreldrene. Hun hadde alt fått et kort i brevsprekken med klager om at de ingenting visste om Benjamin og Karnas hasardiøse ferd til Nordland. Hun pakket noter i den store vesken og ga seg i vei. Dersom de ikke var hjemme, ville hun si til piken at hun gjerne ville bruke klaveret en times tid.
Moren var der og tok overstrømmende imot henne. Øyeblikkelig ga hun piken beskjed om at de skulle ha te.
– Eller kanskje vi skulle ta et glass portvin, du og jeg? sa hun opprømt.
– Takk mor, men jeg kommer rett fra arbeid og tenkte jeg kunne bruke flygelet litt, så te er fint.
– Du er streng med deg selv, slo moren fast.
– Absolutt ikke, jeg fyller stort sett mine behov. Og akkurat i dag var det å se mine foreldre og å spille, sa Anna muntert.
Hun hadde bestemt seg før hun kom. Dette møtet skulle være vennlig.
Piken serverte teen, og moren løftet koppen uten å drikke, for så å sette den ned på skålen.
– Fortell om hvordan det går med dem!
Og Anna fortalte om Benjamins brev fra reisen, og telegrammet. Moren lyttet merkelig nok uten å avbryte. Men etter en stund brøt hun inn.
– Din far ble naturligvis sjokkert over at Benjamin forlot Kjøbenhavn, men han forsto situasjonen. Vi synes han viser stort ansvar. Selvsagt vil han sørge for at han får plassen på avdelingen når han kommer tilbake. Det tar vel ikke så lang tid.
Anna motsa henne ikke.
– Men si meg, er det en annen lege i hans sted nå? Er han uten praksis? spurte moren bekymret.
– Nei, stedet har vært uten fast lege. Nærmeste lege er flere timers sjøreise unna. Han ble nok tatt imot med åpne armer allerede på kaia. Slik er det der, sa Anna og så det for seg. Hvordan Benjamin kom tilbake til sine egne.
– Det må være et savn for deg... at de er reist? Grunnen til at du ikke reiste sammen med dem, var selvsagt at han kommer tilbake om ikke altfor lenge, ikke sant?
Anna minnet ikke moren på at hun gikk på sykepleieskole. Det ville utløst en diskusjon om hvor en hustru og mor skulle være. I stedet sa hun:
– Det er det vi håper. Men vi må ta en dag av gangen.
De satt litt uten å si noe mens de nippet til teen.
– Du bebreider meg vel at jeg aldri var der og så til henne? På Hospitalet? spurte moren plutselig.
– Det har jeg aldri tenkt på. Slike steder er ikke noe for deg. Hvorfor spør du?
– Fordi Sophie skrev det i sitt siste brev. At jeg kanskje skulle sett til henne.
Anna var overrasket. Nesten på vakt.
– Det var vel ikke så enkelt for deg, mor. Et menneske i Karnas situasjon kan man ikke bare _se til_ for å døyve sin samvittighet.
– Men du bebreider meg likevel? sa moren.
– Nei. Jeg setter pris på at du ikke _later_ som om du orker slikt.
Moren sukket og tok en stor slurk av teen. Så satte hun i gang med en omfattende analyse av Sophies gjenvordigheter.
– Sophie er ikke i stand til å si fra hvordan hun ønsker å bli behandlet, erklærte moren.
– Sophie tåler ikke mannen sin, og det orker hun ikke å fortelle ham, sa Anna.
– Nei, det er da ikke noe man kan si til folk, mente moren.
Slaguret i biblioteket slo fem slag. En hvit hortensia ristet umerkelig på seg da et trespann dundret forbi på broleggingen.
– Hva ville du ha sagt, mor? Dersom det hadde vært far? spurte Anna.
Moren så forferdet på henne.
– Det er utenkelig... Din far har gitt meg alt.
– Men dersom du ikke hadde tålt ham, selv om han har gitt deg alt. Hadde du sagt det til ham? Hadde du overveid å gå fra ham?
– Man kan da ikke bare gå selv om man blir irritert eller såret. Nei, jeg tror dessverre at Sophie har fått griller i hodet. Hun har sett en mann og tror hun er ung igjen.
– Ja vel. Det er kanskje ikke uvanlig, men ganske upraktisk. Særlig for en som Sophie, sa Anna så blidt hun kunne.
– Du spøker ikke med slikt! utbrøt moren.
– Nei, det er det ingen grunn til at jeg skal. Men... har _du_ aldri tenkt på en annen, mor? Jeg mener, _ønsket_ en annen?
– Jeg setter ikke pris på denne samtalen, Anna, sa moren krenket.
– Jeg spør deg for at vi skal tenke på hva vi ville ha gjort i Sophies sted.
– Vel... Sophie er snill og god, men en noe svak natur, sa moren og sukket.
– Jeg vet ikke om det er en svakhet å få tanker om å bryte opp. Men hun er annerledes enn deg. Ulik meg også for den saks skyld, sa Anna. Hun holdt inne med at hun trodde moren hadde overtalt Sophie til å bli hos mannen sin. Og at det passet henne at dette ekteskapet var i Hamburg og ikke Kjøbenhavn, så slapp hun nærheten til problemet.
– Hva mener du? spurte moren, på vakt.
– Hun er sårbar, usikker, avhengig av å bli tatt vare på. Hun er så å si oppdratt til å bli tatt vare på.
– Det er noe der, sa moren og sukket. – Men mener du at hun har fått mer omsorg enn deg, er det det du sier?
– Nei. Jeg har fått omsorg mer enn nok. Jeg er bare en annen. Og jeg har selv gjort mine valg.
– Men det har da Sophie også gjort! utbrøt moren.
– Har hun?
– Hva tenker du på? Far og jeg vi har da alltid...
– Nettopp, avbrøt Anna. – Og Sophie er en som ikke kan verge seg mot dem som vil henne vel.
– Men det kan til forskjell du? sa moren litt spisst.
– Det kan se slik ut, sa Anna og reiste seg. Ergerlig på seg selv over at hun ikke hadde greid å holde tonen. Den ufarlige, behagelige tonen.
Moren fulgte henne med et blikk som sa: Jeg er ikke vant til slike samtaler. Og hva godt skal det komme ut av det?
– Takk for teen, mor! Er det ubeleilig for deg om jeg spiller en halv time?
– Selvfølgelig ikke. Blir du til middag? Far ville sette så pris på det.
– Takk, men det kan jeg ikke, jeg må sove ut. Det har vært hektisk på hospitalet.
– At du vil det der slaveriet. Og i din alder, sa moren og grøsset.
– Det er blitt det viktigste i livet mitt, plumpet det ut av henne.
Med en gang hun hadde sagt det, forsto hun at det var sant.
– Kjære Anna, jeg er dypt bekymret for deg. Hent frem notene dine og sett deg til klaveret en stund før du går! Jeg skriver til Sophie her inne ved skatollet. Med åpen dør. Så kan jeg ha kontakt med dere begge.
Det var noe nytt med moren. Noe forsonende, tenkte Anna – og kunne ikke hjelpe for at det rørte henne. Hun tok vesken med seg til flygelet. Fant frem Brahms Rapsodi i g-moll, og glemte moren – og seg selv.
*
Sommeren fylte Kjøbenhavn med lukt og lyd. Støvete, varm og krevende. De var kommet til den tiden av året da bybildet viste tydeligst hvem som var tyende og arbeidsfolk og hvem som kunne flanere under parasoller eller innta forfriskninger i Tivoli og under baldakiner. Eller reiste ut av byen.
Anna tenkte på at hun kunne det. Ta toget ut til Hospitalbyen en søndag. Gå langs strendene. Men hun visste at hun ikke kom til å gjøre det. Dessuten var han nok ikke der, men på reise. Hva visste hun? Ingenting annet enn at han holdt seg unna selv om han visste hvor hun var. Og hun? Hadde hun valgt? At avdelingen skulle være det første og siste hun tenkte på? Rammen og innholdet. Selve bestemmelsen. Kvinnene. Fellesskapet. Undervisningen i salen med amfi. De sene ettermiddagene når alt skulle gjøres klart for nattevakt.
En ettermiddag hun kom fra vakt sto en mann lent til en lyktestolpe i gaten hennes med ryggen til. Han hadde lys frakk. Hun sluttet å puste og gikk langsomt mot ham. Da hun kom nærmere, så hun at det _ikke_ var Joakim. Men hendelsen sa henne at det var det hun hadde håpet. Ønsket. Hadde tenkt det hele tiden siden de dro. At om han bare sto der!
Leiligheten så på henne da hun kom hjem. Men hun enset det ikke. Ville ikke ha det. Dessuten var hun svimmel av tretthet og krøp fort til sengs. En merkelig tomhet holdt søvnen borte. Rommet hadde bare hennes egen pust. Man skulle tro at hun syntes det var godt etter en lang dag på arbeid. At all lukt, all pust, all lyd bare kom fra henne selv. Ingen gjorde krav på henne i disse rommene. Hva mer, det var et hjem.
# ANNA OG LEKEN
_Hun sto ved den lange metallbenken i disseksjonsrommet og lot det varme vannet renne ned over hendene sine og ut i karet. Men_ _karet_ _lot_ _seg_ _ikke_ _fylle opp, hullet i bunnen var for stort. Hun stakk hendene nedi_ _for finne ut hva som var galt. Da smatt et dyr_ _hurtig opp_ _og_ _over armen hennes. Mykt. Hun prøvde å riste det_ _av_ _mens hun tenkte_ _at hun skulle hatt noe_ _å avlive det_ _med. Da klamret dyret_ _seg fast_ _i albuegropen. Bet henne varsomt mens det_ _så på henne._ _Hun lot det henge fast._ _Det var_ _nok_ _øynene som gjorde det._ _Blikket_ _fylte henne med ømhet_.
Hun hørte messingen slå. Noe ble stukket inn i brevsprekken. Det skulle ikke være post nå. Hun hadde hørt postmannen tidligere, mens hun hvilte. Hadde ikke orket å stå opp. Så hadde hun glemt det.
Hun gikk ut i entreen. Et tykt brev med Benjamins skrift lå på gulvet. Men litt til siden for brevsprekken, som om det var kommet med et vindkast, lå et sammenbrettet ark. Idet hun tok det opp, hørte hun gatedøren slå i. Raskt gikk hun inn i stuen og bort til vinduet.
Hjertet arbeidet. Pusten stanset.
Hodet og skuldrene hans var på full fart over gaten. Før hun fikk åpnet vinduet, var han borte. Hun gikk til bordet. Brettet ut arket. Lot øynene fly over skriften.
_Har ventet på kontakt. Men det står deg fritt. J_.
Hvorfor ringte han ikke på? tenkte hun. Og i neste øyeblikk: Hvorfor hadde hun ikke selv tatt kontakt da hun ble alene? Orket hun ikke risikere å bli avvist, men overlot til ham å ta initiativ? Eller hadde hun innsett at han var en umulighet? Var det derfor?
Hun satte seg ved bordet med brevet fra Benjamin. Åpnet det med en hårnål. Brettet ut arkene. Skriften hans, ordene. Plutselig ble de et stengsel. Resolutt la hun arkene fra seg og reiste seg opp. Ble stående et øyeblikk før hun bestemte seg. Så kledde hun på seg gode sko og kåpe, tok en stor veske med nødvendige småting, hårbørste, noter og lesestoff, og gikk ut.
Hun visste at det var god tid ennå før togavgang til Hospitalbyen. Visste også at det var den siste for kvelden den veien. Skulle han tilbake i dag, så måtte han ta dette toget. Hun satte seg på en benk med en oppslått avis. Men blikket var vendt mot dem som kom. Og de kom. I alle størrelser, påkledninger og fasonger.
Først da toget rullet inn, fikk hun øye på ham i vrimmelen. Han hastet rett bort til en vogn.
Avisen ble liggende igjen. Hun holdt seg rett bak ham. Kanskje snudde han seg? Men nei, han oppdaget henne ikke før hun gled ned ved siden av ham. Da vendte han seg mot henne. Først flyktig, uinteressert under senkede øyelokk. Så åpnet han blikket vidt opp, la hodet bakover og lo.
– Akkurat slik jeg har drømt det, sa han lavt og dultet henne i siden.
Hun dultet igjen uten å se på ham.
– Vi har aldri møtt hverandre før, husk det, hvisket han.
– God aften! nikket hun og var med på leken.
Toget kom i bevegelse. De lot seg slingre sammen i en rykkvis dans. Han holdt blikket alvorlig fremover, samtidig som han lot hånden gli langs armen hennes, rappet med seg to fingre og dro dem med under den store vesken i fanget hennes. Hun la høyre arm beskyttende over hemmeligheten og sukket. Så rettet hun seg opp og så rett frem.
Ingen enset dem. Vognen var full av mennesker som satt tett på denne siste avgangen. Landskap, hus, strender. Båter ute i disen. Alt gled forbi. Men ikke hånden hans.
Lun kåpe var ikke det rette for denne kvelden. Hva hadde hun tenkt på? Det ble hett. Allikevel rørte hun ikke på seg for å ta den av. En mann åpnet et vindu. Luften brøt seg inn i kraftige støt. Løftet på hatter, krager, kjoleskjørt og frakkeslag rundt dem.
Men _vi_ _to_ er uberørt, tenkte hun. Varme eller vind. I samme rytme. Ingenting ble sagt. Men han dultet. Mykt. Hun så ikke på ham, men dultet tilbake.
Etter altfor kort tid rullet toget inn på en stasjon og sto stille. Mange reiste seg. Noen få kom inn og fant en plass. Lyset utenfor var irrgrønt. Stemmene på stasjonen fra en annen tid. Så lød fløyten. Toget kom i bevegelse igjen. De skvaldrende menneskene foran dem, og de lyttende bak dem, var gått av.
– Er dette en øde øy eller en togvogn? sa hun og lukket øynene.
– Det spiller ingen rolle. Han kjenner henne ikke, men ser at hun er en som går med noter i en stor veske. Kanskje Bach. Eller Mozart? Er det riktig?
– Kanskje...
– Hun drømmer om å spille i store konsertsaler. Alene på podiet. Salen er mørklagt og stappfull av mennesker. Så treffer fingrene de første tangentene. Nå! Hva hører vi? hvisket han.
– Kanskje Brahms...
– Nynn... La meg gjette...
– Joakim da, ba hun og kikket seg sjenert om.
– Hysj... Jeg har ennå ikke navn.
– Nei...
– Hun er altså en som reiser til Hospitalbyen med stor veske for å øve på et eller annet klaver? sa han ertende med tungt grått blikk.
– Er det noe suspekt ved det? parerte hun.
– Meget mistenkelig. For han tror ikke hun vil gå til salen med flygel.
– Hvorfor ikke? spurte hun.
– Hun kan risikere å møte noen, og det vil hun ikke.
– Hva gjør hun da?
– Hun vet om at der finnes et kapell med orgel. Hun håper at en fremmed vil møte henne der.
– Gjør han det?
– Nei. Det ligger en vasket avdød i disseksjonsrommet. Man begraver ham ikke før i morgen.
– Du jukser... og hentyder til noe som han ikke vet om henne, hvisket hun.
– Han har en intuisjon om at det rommet har kostet henne dyrt? Så hvorfor skulle hun ikke bruke det for alt det er verdt. Nå er det opptatt.
– Der står vel en benk på gravlunden, foreslo hun.
– Man begynner å tro at notene ikke er det primære, sa han.
– Kanskje ikke...
– Hun er dreven når det gjelder enslige menn på tog? humret han.
– Nei. Og hun hopper aldri foran tog, svarte hun alvorlig.
– Hvorfor ikke?
– Hun traff en gang en som hadde gjort det.
– Og så?
– Det virket bortkastet, men han reddet livet.
Toget gled inn på stasjonen. Folk reiste seg og gikk. Kroppene hadde denne utålmodige bevegelsen som sa _Jeg er kommet frem, jeg må ut_.
– Det er banalt, men den fremmede har ikke så mye å tilby. Han bor på en celle, ikke i et slott, sa han.
– _Hun_ inviterer ham til _seg_. Vi tar toget tilbake, sa hun bestemt.
Alle var gått ut. De satt alene i den tomme vognen.
– Dit? stemmen hans kom ut av rollen.
– Ja.
– Med spor av rivalen i sengetøyet? mumlet han.
Plutselig kjente hun at øynene flommet over.
– Du kjenner meg ikke. Du vet _ingenting_ om spor hos meg! sa hun på gråten.
– Du har rett, men hør... I drømmer tar to fremmede inn på hotell, mente han.
– Du kjenner meg fremdeles ikke. Hun vil til seg selv, alene med deg, påsto hun.
– Jeg aksepterer, for drømmer er uten forpliktelser, de har ingen moral og er uten skyld, smilte han.
– Tror du virkelig at det er sånn? spurte hun.
– Jeg vet. Vi har allerede sonet, men er likevel fortapte med hverandre, sa han.
Folk begynte å komme inn i vognen. Noen kastet et blikk på dem, men fant en plass og ble tilsynelatende opptatt med sitt.
– Anna..., du _kom_ uten at jeg måtte tigge, hørte hun ham si.
Toget satte seg i bevegelse. Rytmen var den samme. Den gjorde ingen forskjell, enten det var fra eller til Kjøbenhavn.
# DOKTORGÅRDEN
– Du veit kor vi skal, sa pappa til vognmannen.
– Ja, det skulle æ meine, sa han og smattet for å få hestene til å gå.
Da vognen svingte forbi Grand Hotel, reiste Karna seg og ville av. Men pappa holdt henne fast i armen.
– Hus du at vi snakka om det i går? Vi har leid ut hotellet tel en mann fra Tromsø. Vi har ikkje nokka der å gjør nu, vi skal heim tel doktorgården.
Hun ga seg for ikke å gjøre seg umulig.
Hestene luntet sakte opp bakkene. Den ene var nok gammel, for den hadde arr etter gnagsår i hasene og ville hele tiden stanse for å puste. Peder satt fremme hos vognmannen, men nå hoppet han av for å gjøre det lettere for hestene. Det gjorde ikke pappa. Han holdt henne bare fast i armen mens hestene slet seg frem. Peder gikk ved siden av og la hånden på skoen hennes.
– Vi kan gå dit en dag, du og æ, og sjå kordan de driv hotellet, sa han.
Hun nikket. Så var de begynt med det der tøvet igjen, de to. Liksom godsnakke med henne som om hun skulle være en unge. Men de skulle få se. Hun var hjemme nå. Utskrevet. Frisk. Med sin egen Kjøbenhavn-koffert. Den sto bak i vognen og humpet sammen med alt det andre pappa hadde dratt med seg.
Hun flyttet foten fra Peders hånd. Så dyttet hun bort pappas arm og pekte ut av vognen. Først forsto han ikke hvor tungt det var for hestene å dra en voksen kar opp bakkene. Men da hun pekte på Peder og nikket, så demret det visst, for han smilte og hoppet av. Strakte hånden mot henne så hun kunne komme etter. Det var ingen sak. Hun hadde gjort det før, mange ganger. Det var bare så evig lenge siden. Hun grep om vognkanten, samlet skjørtene og satte foten i jernbøylen. Et lite hopp, så var hun på veien. Alt mens de to blakke hestene luntet opp bakken og sola brant.
Da vognmannen ikke gjorde mine til å forstå, men bare satt der og smattet på pipa si, så dro hun ham i vesten og pekte ned på veien. Først så han rådløs ut, så hoppet han også ned og ble gående med tømmene løst i den ene hånden og pipa i den andre. Av og til kikket han på henne og smilte.
– Æ mein ho ligna på mor di, den tøtta. _Ho_ _sjøl_ vesste også korsen ho ville ha det, sa vognmannen og så på pappa.
Han skvatt litt til. Så lo han.
– Det kan vel vær nokka i det...
– Ka æ skulle ha sagt – vi har sakna doktorn sine, vi som e fresk også, mumlet vognmannen og satte pipa i munnen igjen.
Da de var kommet helt opp, snudde hun seg. Alt var som hun husket det. Og hun hadde ikke tenkt på det. Ikke før nå. Alle takene. Skorsteinene. Malte og umalte husvegger. Trær og stakittgjerder. Havna med båter på reden og ved kai, der folk fløt om hverandre uten mål og mening. Disen fra havet og inn i Vågen. Den narret sola og holdt seg svevende. Over taket på Grand lå en gråblå ring. Først trodde hun at det bare var røyken fra pipa. Så forsto hun. Det var skyggen av Saturns innerste ring! Et tegn fra farmor og russeren Leo.
Hun så pianoet med en gang hun kom inn i spisestuen. Lokket var på og krakken skjøvet helt innunder. Lysene i holderne hadde gulnet og bøyde seg mot henne. De ble slik når sola brant og ingen tente dem. Ingen skulle spille. De hadde reist fra Anna.
Pappa og Peder snakket om mat på kjøkkenet. Pappa gikk på kontoret, og hun hørte at han snakket med sentralen.
– De kjem med kjøttsuppa i et spann til oss, ropte han etter en stund.
– Æ renne ned i Været og handla, ropte Peder tilbake.
– Det hasta ikkje, vi får fløtte inn først, svarte pappa og kom inn i spisestuen.
Han kom helt bort til henne og stanset.
– Dettan har du klart så bra, Karna! sa han. – Skal æ gå med dæ gjønna huset så du får gjør dæ kjent igjen?
– Nei, sa hun og gikk ut i gangen og opp trappen.
Det var ikke gassbluss over døren. Ikke Kristus-figur over sengen som på Hospitalet. Bare det innrammede glansbildet av en engel som holdt hendene sine over ei jente og en gutt som kanskje kom til å falle i et tjern.
Det hadde aldri skjedd, men det _kunne_ skje. Da hun var liten, ventet hun hver morgen med å åpne øynene fordi hun var spent på om det hadde skjedd.
Rommet hennes var blitt så lite. Og stille. Rommet hadde holdt pusten mens hun var borte. Og hun visste ikke hvordan hun skulle få det til å puste igjen. Mens hun sto der inne hørte hun Peder og pappa nede i gangen. De dro på kofferter og åpnet dører.
– Æ vesste jo ikkje at æ skulle fjerne alt som var skarpt og farlig før æ for, sa Peder.
– Ikkje tenk på det. Vi tar det etter kvert, svarte pappa.
Hun kunne høre at han prøvde å være munter. Nesten ingenting var så trist som akkurat det, når pappa _prøvde_ å være munter.
Hun gikk fra rom til rom der oppe. Anna og pappas værelse så ut slik det gjorde før de seilte til Reinsnes og feiret St. Hans. Bortsett fra at en eller annen hadde ryddet etter dem og de ikke hadde vært der siden. Ingen av pappas saker var å se. Bare få av Annas. Syskrinet ved kommoden og pynteputene. Da hun åpnet rommet ved siden av, forsto hun hvorfor. Pappas bøker lå i stabler rundt sengen. Og på nattbordet lå et gulnet brev fra sunnhetskommisjonen. Skapdøren sto åpen. Det måtte den ha gjort lenge. Selskinnsfrakken hans hang skjevt på en knagg med løvehode der inne, ferdig til å fare i sykebesøk. Men det var feil. Det var sommer nå. Og Anna? De hadde reist fra Anna!
Da hun åpnet døren til gjesterommet, så hun med en gang at det var der Peder sov. Visste det selv om hun aldri før hadde sett et rom der Peder sov. Bare lugaren. Skap og skuffer var ordentlig lukket og sengebredslet var uten folder. På en stol lå en slitt, grå genser med ermene brettet pent inn i bolen. Den hadde strikket motiv av blå stjerner og en løs tråd hengende ut fra vrangborden. På nattbordet lå en tommestokk, en tømmermannsblyant og en foldekniv.
Hva var det han hadde sagt til pappa der nede? Hun grep kniven og så på den. Visste hvordan den fungerte. Det var en slags lovmessighet i en slik kniv. Hun fant furen i det ytterste bladet med neglen og foldet det ut. Så det neste. Tre kvasse blad og en skrutrekker. Nå sto de og sprikte foran henne. Hun så på dem til de sendte lyn mot henne. Da foldet hun dem langsomt sammen.
Pappa og Peder var i kjøkkenet nå. Hun gikk ned dit og så på dem etter tur. Så rakte hun Peder kniven.
*
De kom tidlig neste morgen før hun hadde stått opp. Pasientene. Satt på venteværelset og sa ikke stort. I alle fall hørte hun ingenting gjennom de lukkede dørene. Syke folk på Strandstedet var ikke så høyrøstede og sinte som på Hospitalet. Det kom seg av at det var kroppene som feilte noe, ikke hodet. Og de gikk så snart pappa var ferdig med dem. Det var bare å venne seg til det. Alt var dørgende stille. Til og med vinden. I alle fall i dag. Den var et annet sted.
– Æ sett frem brødskive og saft i ei mugga på benken. Æ må på Verftet, sa Peder fra døråpningen.
Dørene mellom rommene deres hadde stått åpne hele natten. Hun visste det, for hun hadde stått opp flere ganger og sett etter. Nå sto hun opp og lukket dem. Det var slikt man kunne gjøre i doktorgården. Lukke og åpne dører etter eget forgodtbefinnende.
Da hun satt og spiste, kom pappa og satt hos henne en stund. Det hadde han aldeles ikke tid til. Bjellen på døren til pasientinngangen maste flere ganger om at det kom noen, og han hadde ingen til å ta imot dem.
– Vi skal få non tel å vær her hos dæ om dagen, så du ikkje treng å være aleina, sa han.
Hun nikket og reiste seg så han skulle forstå at han måtte gå til pasientene. Da tok han kaffen med seg inn på kontoret og lot døren stå åpen til gangen. Det pleide han ikke. Hun ble såret, eller hva man skulle kalle det. Han trodde at hun var syk eller gal ennå. Før laget hun nesten alltid brødskivene sine selv, og ingen hadde brydd seg om at hun var alene.
Karna gikk opp trappen til rommet sitt. Åpnet kofferten og la tingene der hun mente de måtte være. Brevene passet akkurat i den midterste skuffen i skatollet. Den røde og den grønne kjolen fikk henge på hver sin henger. Lenge sto hun med boken om himmellegemene for å finne ut hvor den hørte hjemme. Det greide hun ikke, så hun la den tilbake i kofferten til så lenge. Den brune fuglen fikk stå i vindusposten og gjøre seg kjent.
Da hørte hun Joakims stemme.
– Da vet du hva du skal gjøre?
– Ja! sa hun bestemt.
# TANKENE SORTERES
Peder hadde tatt Karna med på Verftet en dag. De hadde vært hos karene i verkstedhallen. Det dundret og bråkte akkurat som på Hospitalet. De ga henne neven og bukket.
Farmors stol på kontoret sto tom. Karna satte seg der og ventet. Det var bortkastet. Hun kom ikke.
– Jaggu kler du den stolen, sa Peder alvorlig.
Det var noe feil med hyllene på veggen rett imot. Reolene med bokholderiet. Da husket hun det. Moderskapet. Husket at farmor hadde hatt det stående her oppe en tid da de flyttet fra Reinsnes. Det hadde stått der reolene med bokholderiet nå sto. Hun husket at hun satt i denne stolen og drakk sukkervann fra et høyt glass med begge hender da hun spurte farmor:
– Kor e bildan a alle damen blitt a?
Hva farmor svarte, husket hun ikke lenger. Men da farmor flyttet skapet til privatstuen på Grand, kom mødrene på plass på veggen. De var der nok ennå. Hun måtte se det. Reiste seg og ville ha Peder til å forstå. Dro i ham og pekte på døren. Men Peder sto ved langbordet og pakket ut ting han hadde fått i posten for å lage bilder, og sa bare at han måtte gjøre seg ferdig før han fulgte henne hjem. Men hun skulle ikke hjem. Hun måtte til Grand!
På bordet lå Peders tømmermannsblyant. Hun grep den og skrev _Farmors skap_ på en kvitteringsblokk.
– Ka slags skap? spurte han da han så det.
Først prøvde hun å si det. Men det satt fast. Så tok hun blyanten.
_Moderskapet og bildan_.
Først så han forvirret ut, som om han hadde hørt en gåte. Så lyste han opp.
– Æ skal sei tel far din at du vil sjå Moderskapet og bildan, ikkje sant?
– Ja, sa hun.
En morgen sto moderskapet i spisestuen. De måtte ha fått det inn etter at hun hadde lagt seg. Flyttet på stolen med leselampen og satt det mellom dørene. Over hang et lite maleri av en gate i Roma der røde blomster hang ned fra blomsterkasser. Anna likte det bildet. Karna klatret opp på en stol, hektet maleriet av kroken og satte det på gulvet. Pappa fant nok et sted for det før Anna kom hjem. En blek firkant sto igjen på tapetet. Nå var veggen klar for mødrene.
Hun kunne ta på skapet uten at det forsvant. Det var akkurat slik hun husket det. Med akantusliljer og vinløv slipt inn i glassdørene. Men ingen bøker i. Det var tomt. Myke grå striper tegnet seg over det lyse treverket etter fingrene hennes. Det var støvet som gjorde det. Dersom folk glemte ting, så kom alltid dette støvet. Litt etter litt. Hun tenkte at støvet til sist dekket alt slik at kloden ble glemt. Bare det fikk tid. Men slikt skjedde nok ikke. Verden var altfor urolig.
Hun tenkte på at hun kunne sette inn boken med Saturn og planetene. Men så var det det at hun måtte ha den oppe hos seg selv når hun trengte den.
Sara het hun som gjorde alt for dem. Nå satte hun brødskiver på bordet. Hun var der om morgenen før Peder gikk, og ble borte når pappa eller Peder var hjemme. En slags dagvakt. Men annerledes enn dem på avdelingen. Karna visste at hun hadde sett henne før, kanskje kjent henne. Men det var i en annen tid.
– Sara e en gave for oss, Karna. Husk det! hadde pappa sagt.
Det virket som om hun kunne gå i stykker dersom man behandlet henne dårlig. Noen hadde nok alt gjort det, for hun dro på den ene foten. Hun kunne selvsagt være født med en opplagt feil. Som hun selv. I så fall var det Gud man måtte skylde på. Karna visste ikke hva som var verst. Å falle om av og til så alle måtte ekles, eller hele tiden å dra på en fot. Da hun var liten trodde hun at hun måtte ha Bibelen hos seg for å slippe, eller i alle fall våkne igjen. Det var for barnslig. Dersom Gud ikke godtok henne uten at hun dro på Bibelen i en taske, så fikk det være. Det var Han selv som hadde skapt henne slik.
Sara snakket til henne uten å vente på svar. Nikket bare til det hun selv sa. Som om hun ville skjule for seg selv at hun følte seg alene?
– Du e vel _litt_ sulten, veit æ? sa Sara og nikket kraftig mot bordet der tallerkenen med brødskivene og melkeglasset sto.
Karna gikk rundt bordet et par ganger. Så satte hun seg og begynte å spise skiva med prim. Sara stakk hendene ned i en kasse med avispapir og hentet opp det ene bildet etter det andre som hun la på skapet. Karna la skiva fra seg og gikk bort til henne. Bildene fløt i hverandre. Hun husket ikke så nøye hvem som var hvem. Det fikk sinnet til å komme. Det måtte det ikke. Da kunne Sara gå i stykker.
Hun grep fast i skapet med begge hender og ønsket at Joakim skulle legge fingertuppene på tinningene hennes. Så kunne de sammen tyde ansiktene bak glassene. Han var den eneste hun kjente som forsto at alt måtte tydes. Hun lukket øynene og følte fingertuppene hans over tinningene. Da kom Mor Karen, Ingeborg og mamma Karna frem etter tur med navn. Og noen andre som ikke vedkom henne. Men da hun åpnet øynene igjen, visste hun at der var to ansikt som manglet. Farmors og Annas.
Det fantes nok ikke noe bilde eller plate med farmors skygge. På en eller annen måte måtte hun få det til likevel. Hun hentet boken med himmellegemene og la den på bordet ved siden av morgenmaten. Den åpnet seg på Saturn som den pleide.
– Det va ei fin bok, sa Sara og kikket henne over skulderen.
Men Sara kunne ikke legge fingrene på tinningene hennes og samtale om russeren Leo og farmor i Saturns innerste ring. Og det var ikke hennes feil.
– Du e ikkje Joakim, sa Karna og slo boken sammen.
Da hun så Saras fjes, forsto hun at hun ikke skulle ha sagt det.
– Hus du mæ ikkje? Æ e ho Sara, Hanna si søster fra Reinsnes.
Karna kjente seg underlig, men hun ble sittende der. Helt til ordene kom ut av seg selv.
– Hanna, Reinsnes, Sara. Ja!
Peder spurte pappa høytidelig om han kunne ha fotosakene i spiskammeret. Så kunne Karna og han arbeide sammen uten å gå ned på Verftet. Det kunne han. Benken nærmest kjøkkenet med ventiler i skapene skulle fremdeles være for mat, men på den andre siden ble det laboratorium, som pappa kalte det.
Peder var en trollmann som laget bilder av skyggene på glasset. Det skulle ikke gå an. Allikevel gjorde han det. Han lærte henne hemmeligheten der inne i den mørke hulen. At _skyggene_ kunne bli virkelige. Han laget et portrett av Anna. Hun smilte med vidåpne øyne. Hun sto med hodet mot en mur med klatrende blader. Første dagen hadde han Anna på pianoet uten ramme, støttet opp av en lysestake. Så ble hun borte. Neste dag Karna vandret rundt i huset så hun at Anna sto på pappas nattbord i en sølvramme. Det var før skapet ble virkelig og kom i hus.
Mødrene hang over skapet. Men ikke Anna. Selv om hun ikke var moren hennes, så var hun likevel hennes. Derfor skrev hun en beskjed og la den på pappas nattbord. _Anna skal være over Moderskapet_.
Neste morgen lå det en beskjed på hennes nattbord. _Moderskapet er for de døde_. _Anna er levende._ _Derfor må hun være hos meg_.
Karna skrev på baksiden og la den innenfor døren til rommet hans før han sto opp. _Ja, ja, da. Så får du bare ha henne for deg selv_.
Men hun gikk ikke ned før hun hørte at han gikk på kontoret.
*
En søndag skar hun brødskiver til dem alle tre. Peder sto med oppbrettede skjorteermer og lot som om han _ikke_ voktet på henne. Han skulle ikke på Verftet og Sara var ikke der. Da pappa kom ned, ble han først stående og se på henne, så sa han:
– Ja vel, vi er kommen _dit_ nu tel dags, at du skjær med kniv, og så begynte han å le.
Peder lo også. To mannfolk som lo var et sjeldent rabalder. Hun måtte snu seg og se på dem.
– Æ dekk på i spisestua, det e det vi bruka om søndagan, sa pappa omsider og tok frem et brett.
Da de satt og spiste, begynte de to å snakke om skapet. De fikk se å fylle det med bøker, mente pappa.
– Det e en fin skikk å heng opp damen i familien på veggen. Det bli nu ellers nok a skjeggate mannfolk, sa Peder.
– Det va Dina sitt påfunn, trur æ, sa pappa.
– Ho skulle kanskje ha hengt der sjøl nu, sa Peder.
– Forfengeligheta hennes gikk ikkje på å samle bilda a sæ sjøl. Æ har ikkje funne non.
– Men de må jo finnes. Hadde æ berre fått tak i et gammelt, så skulle æ ha laga det på nytt så vi kunne ha det her. Vi kunne gjør det i lag, ikkje sant Karna?
Hun reiste seg og gikk frem til skapet. Viste med begge hender hvor det skulle henge.
– Ja, sa Peder.
– Kanskje vi må fløtte de andre litt opp for å få plass? mente pappa.
Karna dro stolen sin bort til skapet og klatret opp. Hektet Mor Karen av veggen, løftet bildet høyere og pekte på det åpne feltet under.
– Prima! sa Peder og skjenket mer kaffe til alle tre.
– Då har dokker en plan. Og æ kan se i gamle saker etter et bilde. Men det meste gikk vel tapt..., sa pappa. Så ble han liksom bare sittende. Etter en stund kom han ut fra seg selv og sa:
– Æ har nokka skrivearbeid på kontoret, ka skal dokker finn på?
– Vi skal inn i spiskammeret og lage bilda. Ikkje sant Karna?
Hun nikket og reiste seg.
– Det vart et velsigna vær for slikt, sa pappa og så ut i regnelingen. – Ellers så kunne vi ha forre på havet. Vi e langt ut i juni uten at vi har fått oss småsei.
# PEDER OG BENJAMIN
Peder kjente gleden gjennom hele kroppen. Før han la seg til å sove, og når han våknet. Det var vissheten om hvorfor han var til som gjorde det. Det var for _henne_. Det var bare å la dagene og de ursmå tingene komme og gå, enten han fikk tid til å gjøre noe ut av dem eller ikke. For det kunne bli til noe stort. Kanskje til og med noe hellig. For Karna og ham.
Hele den lange sjøreisen hadde vært et eventyr. I kahytt for tre på første klasse. Hun sovnet om kvelden uten medisin. Hun sto på dekk med dem og lo. Hun sa _ka farsken_ , og delte ut ja og nei når hun fant det for godt. Alt før de kom til Bergen så hun ut som før brannen, med farge i fjeset og hår som krøllet seg rødt og staselig rundt hele hodet. En morgen gråt hun som et friskt menneske da de fant en død skarv på dekk.
I doktorgården hadde hun først gått inn i seg selv. Tuslet fra rom til rom og tatt på tingene, løftet på lokk, åpnet dører og lukket dem igjen. Som om hun så etter noe hun ikke fant. I spisestuen løftet hun lokket av pianoet, dro hånden over tangentene og lagde et fryktelig rabalder. Faren ba henne holde opp. Da trykket hun ned _en_ tangent av gangen, og visa om Gubben Noa kom ut i rommet. Så hadde de ledd alle tre. Hun satte seg ikke til å spille noe mer. Men Benjamin mente at det var et stort fremskritt at hun åpnet lokket og viste dem at hun kunne.
De dagene hun ikke ville at han skulle gå fra henne, tok han henne med på Verftet. Hun romsterte på kottet innenfor kontoret og så på glassplatene han hadde stående, og bildene han hadde laget. Særlig var det bildene av hav hun likte. Han hadde laget ferdig bildet av den døde skarven uten at hun var der. Det var merkelig tydelig, selv om hun ikke hadde noen erfaring. Men noe sa ham at hun ikke skulle se det ennå. Det var for trist. Han la det i jernskapet. Til senere.
Sara fortalte ham hvordan Karna pusset glassplatene og bildene, og behandlet dem som det glasset de var. Hun fortalte også at Karna brått fikk det for seg at hun skulle gå. Da gikk hun gjennom hele huset, gangene, opp og ned trappene. Det kunne hun holde på med en time. Til Sara tok seg tid til å gå rundt huset med henne. Da roet hun seg og satte seg på benken ved gangdøren.
Bare en gang hadde Peder måttet renne etter henne nedover bakkene. Men hun ble ikke sint da han sa at det ikke var heldig for henne å fare rundt alene.
– Æ e så forbaska redd for at du skal gjør dæ nokka. Då du blei sjuk så gikk æ nesten i hundan. Nu går æ rundt og tenk på at æ må pass på dæ. Du får berre finn dæ i det. Det e ikkje ondt meint.
– Nei! sa hun høyt og tydelig, tok ham i hånden og gikk med ham hjem. Han fortalte det til faren hennes mens hun hørte.
– Ikkje sant, Karna, du forstår at vi blir redd når du renne rundt aleina? avsluttet han.
Hun nikket. Så var de enige. Dørene skulle ikke være låst. Men hun måtte be noen gå med seg når hun ville ut.
*
Benjamin tenkte at det kanskje kunne være på tide å ta henne med til Reinsnes. Besto hun det, så trodde han hun var igjennom.
Han spurte Peder til råds en kveld etter at Karna hadde lagt seg.
– Ka om vi seile til Reinsnes, vi tre?
Peder sto ved benken og skar seg en brødblings. Nå snudde han seg og rynket pannen.
– Då sei æ som han Joakim sa om heimreisa våres. _Æ fraråde det på det sterkaste_.
– Men han fikk ikkje rett.
– Heldigvis ikkje. Men det vil vær skit om _æ_ får rett nu. For ho har ennu ikkje _bedt_ om å få kom tel Reinsnes. Men ho blei _rasanes_ då dokker nekta ho å far heim i lag med mæ.
– Du har rett. Det e vel meir for min egen del at æ vil ha dokker med. Overgangen fra Kjøbenhavn tel doktergården e ingen spøk.
Peder tok skivene sine med til bordet og satte seg.
– Du sakna ho Anna?
– Ja, sa Benjamin enkelt.
Peder tygget og svelget.
– Det e rart med det, å sakne folk e tungt arbeid. Æ veit...
– Og ka gjorde du mens du sakna ho Karna? spurte Benjamin.
– Arbeidde om dagen, og sutra og tenkte om nettern. Nu – etterpå, så trur æ ikkje det va bortkasta.
*
Etter arbeidstid rustet Benjamin seg med det han trengte og gikk til støa ved Verftet. Der hadde han båten liggende på svai i fortøyning. Han hadde satt den i naustet før han reiste til Kjøbenhavn høsten før. Da han kom hjem fikk han den bare satt ut med en gang, uten vårpuss, i fall han plutselig måtte seile til en pasient. Men han hadde sett at den trengte både bunnsmøring og flikking. Begynte vel å bli gammel som han selv.
Kanskje var det brevet han hadde skrevet til Anna som gjorde at han kjente det som om han hadde satt bort kroppen sin i et naust. På alle måter satt bort. Men egentlig hadde det vært slik lenge. I Kjøbenhavn også. Arbeidet på operasjonsstuen, sjalusien og den stadige uroen for Karna. Det hadde tvunget kroppen i eksil. Men nå hadde han bestemt seg. Brevet var sendt.
# FARMORS PORTRETT
Stueklokken der nede hadde nettopp slått tre slag da hun hørte at det var noen ved vinduet. Da hun så opp, stakk et hode frem mellom gardinene. Han klatret inn uten en lyd. Kveilet de lange leggene sine sammen og ble sittende i kroken som en annen hund.
– Kor har du vore? Æ treng hjelp, sa hun sint.
– Jeg vet det, men du sa aldri at du skulle reise.
– Før eller seinar så måtte æ heim, det forstår du vel?
Russeren svarte ikke. Bølget bare over veggen.
– Æ treng ho farmor ei lita stund. Må gjør et portrett som kan heng over moderskapet. Han pappa skulle finn ho, men...
– Han kommer ikke til å finne henne. Havet er aldri på samme sted. Strømmene vet du, sa russeren, rett inn i øret hennes nå.
– Du kjem hit berre for å snakk om alt som er håplaust. Han Peder sei at slike folk må man berre hold sæ unna. Du vil ha ho farmor for dæ sjøl i Saturns innerste ring og unne mæ ikkje å ha ho et lite øyeblikk slik ho va.
– Jo! Kom. _Jeg_ er ikke avhengig av strømmene. Jeg vet alltid hvor hun er.
– Æ vekk han Peder! Han må med, sa hun.
– Nei. Han vil bare tro at du er gal. Vi må gjøre det alene.
– Han Peder trur ikkje æ e galen. Han sei æ e like fresk som han.
– Desto viktigere er det at tanken ikke engang streifer ham. Hent nå bare fotoapparatet og kom!
Det var slik artighet å snike seg ut med apparatet i lærtasken og russeren hakk i hæl. Det var jo lyse dagen om det var natt aldri så mye. Vinden strøk seg lunken langs leggene under nattkjolen. Folk sov i hvert eneste hus nå. Ingen så dem. Likevel tok de snarveien over jordene, rett ned mot bergene ved Verftet. Smørblomstene sto langs bekken, og St. Hans-blomst og storkenebb var kommet langt.
– Det e lenge siden æ tenkte på de der blomstern, æ hadde glømt at de va tel, sa hun.
– De dør hver høst, men kommer igjen, svarte russeren. Det var tydelig at han trivdes best med å være seg selv og slippe å gå stuegang.
– Æ glømte å ta det svarte teppet med. Det e altfor lyst for å ta bilda. Kan æ låne jakken din å ha over haue? spurte hun.
Han svarte ikke, men hun hørte pusten hans.
– Æ skal ta bilda a blomstern også. Men først må vi finn ho farmor.
De sto ute på berget og så holmene og sola som var kommet seg opp av havet.
– Trur du ho e der sola e? Så langt ut?
Da han ikke svarte, snudde hun seg. Han var ikke der. Men han kunne ikke forsvinne nå. Var nok bare gått ned langs berget et annet sted. Hun gikk lenger ut på skrenten for bedre å kunne se etter ham.
Mens hun sto der, visste hun at farmor var der allerede. Kjente lukten av henne. Syrin. Sigar. Og oljen fra kluten hun pusset celloen med.
Karna hektet tasken av skulderen og tok opp det dyrebare apparatet. Foldet det ut slik Peder hadde lært henne. Det var ingen sak. Satte det for øyet. Havet og holmene åpenbarte seg. Et mystisk skimmer, og likevel alminnelig. Helt virkelig. Først var det et forvirrende flimmer av farger og hinner rundt mektige himmellegemer. Hun måtte dreie seg rundt og rundt. Ta skritt tilbake, og frem igjen. Så plutselig, midt i kameraøyet, sto farmor opp ned og holdt russeren i hånden!
Det var uklart. Og hun kunne ikke ha _ham_ der.
– Du må fløtt dæ, sa hun. – Bildet må vær a ho farmor, _aleina_ , forstår du ikkje det?
Men han flyttet seg ikke. Sto bare der og holdt farmors hånd.
– Begrip du ikkje at æ ikkje kan heng _dæ_ over moderskapet! ropte hun.
Men den tullingen rikket seg ikke. Det var som om han hadde glemt hva de var der for. Hun flyttet litt på kameraet for å unngå at han ble med på bildet, men han hang på som en klegg. Det gjorde henne sint og nervøs.
Peder hadde sagt at man ikke måtte bli for ivrig. Man måtte stå støtt og holde kamera i absolutt ro. Hun tok seg sammen og pustet dypt. Vendte linsen rett på det blendende soløyet.
Da var det der! Farmors ansikt. Alene. Alminnelig. Friskt. Med det ertende smilet. Uendelig fjernt, og samtidig helt, helt nær. Furene hadde så fine svinger. Munnen hennes åpnet seg og lo mot henne. Hun var der. Endelig. Opp ned i lyset. Det altfor sterke lyset.
– Æ skulle ha tatt det svarte teppet med, farmor. Det e for lyst.
– Nei, det behøves ikkje. Du får tel alt du vil, sa farmor og lo.
– Stå still nu! Stå dørganes still! befalte Karna strengt.
Så var det bare å ta et raskt skritt frem, stå støtt, og trykke på utløseren.
Det var en slik uendelig glede i det. Hun kjente suget. Alt fløt gjennom henne. Sola, luften, luktene. Fryktelig fort – og uendelig langsomt.
# PEDER MÅ SE
Han hadde rommet sitt mot nord og ble ikke vekket av morgensol. Våknet av seg selv enten dagen var vakker eller dårlig. Fem presis. Man kunne godt våkne av seg selv når ingenting sto på.
Ettersom doktoren hadde tatt seg fri og seilt ut til holmene kvelden før, var det bare Karna og han i huset før Sara kom. Og Peder hadde planer før han gikk på Verftet. Han skulle hente bringebærsaft i kjelleren til henne, koke kaffe til seg selv og smøre brødskiver til dem. Så kunne de spise i all fordragelighet. Ble hun urolig og ville gå rundt, så fikk hun bare gjøre det og bli ferdig. Satte hun seg ved ovnen med gipsfuglen i fanget og liksom så tvers gjennom ham, ja så fikk hun bare holde på med det.
Han kom seg i klærne og listet seg ut på gangen. Da han gikk forbi rommet hennes, så han at døren sto åpen. Sengen var tom. Dyna var et tomt hylster med åpning øverst. Han snudde og gikk tilbake. Banket på døren til toalettrommet. Fikk ikke svar. Åpnet. Hun var ikke der.
Han ropte navnet hennes. Først lavt og rolig. Så høyt og bønnfallende. Da han kom ned og så at ytterdøren i bislaget sto åpen, visste Peder at han hadde sovet for lenge. Og da han så at spiskammerdøren var åpen og apparatet var borte, da forsto Peder at han hadde dårlig tid.
Hvor var det beste motivet for henne? Akkurat nå?
Kvelden før hadde hun tatt ned bildet av Mor Karen og vist ham at det skulle henge lenger opp. Han hadde hjulpet henne. Slått inn spiker der hun bestemte. Men det var tydelig et bilde hun ikke fant. Det gjorde henne irritert og fraværende.
– Kem e det du mangla, Karna? hadde han spurt uten å vente noe svar. Men det fikk han.
– Hav! sa hun helt tydelig.
Han viste henne et bilde han hadde tatt av Vågen. Men hun ristet på hodet og ville ikke ha det, pekte bare utålmodig på himmelen som ikke kom særlig godt frem på bildet hans. Så syntes hun nok ikke det var bra nok, eller at det ikke passet sammen med alle damene over skapet.
– Ka e det du prøv å sei, Karna? Du må ikkje gje dæ, hadde han til sist sagt.
Da hadde hun dratt ham med til notatboken ved brødboksen der de pleide å skrive opp hva de skulle handle, tatt opp blyanten og skrevet _Farmor_ over hele siden. Og nå, mens han sto der og husket, så visste Peder med et dyrs instinkt hvor hun kunne være.
Han tok snarveien over jordene og stien opp på berget. Den lave morgensola stakk ham midt i synet. Først for han omkring og lette på slump. Hjertet dundret. Han ropte navnet hennes mens han nærmet seg skrenten ovenfor Verftet. På det høyeste punktet så han plutselig noen lysglimt. Det lå noe mellom steinene og reflekterte solas strålende signaler. Andpusten ble han stående og glo. Apparatet lå med åpen linse i bergsprekken.
Han prøvde ikke å nå det. Skrittet bare over kløften og gikk helt ut på berget. En gang måtte det ha gått et skred der. Steinene var dekket av mose og lav i alle grønne og grå sjatteringer.
Han så henne med en gang. Den hvite nattkjolen laget et veldig lys rundt henne.
# BENJAMIN I FLOMÅLET
Da han var kommet ut Vågen og måtte velge retning, bestemte han seg for å seile til Reinsnes først, før han tok ut til øyene. Han ville se om det fantes noe bilde av Dina som Karna kunne ha på veggen. Dersom noen oppbevarte bilde av Dina, så var det Johan. Dersom han hadde hatt sine ting i hovedhuset, så var det tapt som alt annet. Men noe sa ham at Johan holdt hus i kårstua før brannen også. Og ingen hadde ryddet etter at han døde.
Denne gangen visste han at han kom til et folketomt sted. Orket ikke tanken på å bli der over natten. Han skulle bare gjøre ærendet sitt. På vei opp fra støa så han rett ned i det irrgrønne gresset på stien og prøvde å la være å se på det som var rundt ham. Branntomten begynte også å grønnes, men en snøflekk lå ennå der vind og vær hadde laget en stor fonn. Plankehuset over vinkjelleren unngikk han å se på, gikk bare rett til kårstua. Der fant han nøkkelen på spikeren under takskjegget og låste seg inn. Ble stående litt i gangen og trekke inn lukt av tomt hus, og gikk rett opp trappen. Inne på kammerset der han hadde hjulpet Johan til sengs den siste kvelden han så ham, måtte han sette seg. Husket at han hadde vært så opptatt med sitt at han ikke hadde forstått at mannen var full før han tente lysene på alteret for Dina.
Benjamin lot blikket gli rundt i rommet. Kommode med fire skuffer. Skap innunder skråtaket. Nattbord med skuff og skap. Kiste ved døren. Vaskeservant med skap. Hyller som nesten var tomme.
Han reiste seg og dro av seg vindjakken. Genseren. Så gikk han systematisk til verks. Han fant mange spor av Johan, men ikke noe bilde eller minne etter Dina. Han tenkte på vinkjelleren og alteret, men slo det fra seg. Johan ville aldri lagt et dyrebart bilde i en rå og fuktig kjeller. Da han sto ved døren med jakke og genser under armen, så han håndtaket på en koffert innunder sengen.
Den var låst. Benjamin brøt seg inn i en død manns koffert med tollekniven han hadde i beltet. Der lå Johans liv i en ubestemmelig dunst. Men han slapp å lete. Øverst, under lokket, lå bibelen hans, og innenfor den myke skinnpermen lå et foto på størrelse med et postkort. Dina med celloen mellom knærne. Foran draperier, en pidestall med palme og en kunstferdig blomsteroppsats på et bord. Navnet på fotografen var trykket nederst. Trolig tatt i et atelier i Berlin. På baksiden hadde hun skrevet en kort hilsen med djerv skrift:
_Til_ _Anders fra Dina_.
Johan hadde vel funnet det et eller annet sted da han kom fra Amerika og flyttet ut hit. Kanskje på krambodskontoret, for han kunne ikke huske å ha sett det før. Det tydet på at Anders også ville ha det for seg selv og ikke i en ramme i en av stuene. To ensomme menn med samme lengsel. Som han selv.
Benjamin tok med seg portrettet ned i stuen. I vedkorga fant han en gammel avis med oppslag om eventyrlig seifiske. Han brettet en avrevet side rundt fotografiet, og stakk det på innerlommen til så lenge. Da han kjente den stive kartongen mot brystet begynte han å glede seg til å se Karnas ansikt når hun fikk det.
Dagen var nesten over, men det var ennå ikke måte på solskinn. Han ga opp å passe seilet i den flaue vinden. Lot det falle og tok årene fatt. Med det flyttet han inn i kroppen igjen. Måtte ut av vindjakken og genseren. Skifte tofte og synsrand. Den som seiler må se leia. Den som ror har usett fremtid. Ville han vite noe, så måtte han snu seg og se.
Og Benjamin rodde. Skuldrene og nevene var slintrer som underkastet seg hans vilje. Tanken hadde samme rytme som åretakene. Bøye seg frem, kjenne armer, lår og rygg. Krumme nevene. Ta i og strekke ut. Med pusten liggende i kjølvannet. Han var tilfreds med at Karnas ønske lå i brystlommen. Men i synsranden han stadig rodde fra, der så han brevet han hadde sendt til Anna. Kanskje hadde hun alt fått det.
Nå var han på tur til sin egen navnløse holme. Hadde aldri hatt behov for å vite hva den het, for han visste hvor den var. En svak bris grep om seg. Han heiste seil igjen, fant et sikte rett i soløyet og fløt langsomt inn i natten.
Havskodda gjorde natteleie under presenningen rå. Han krøp ut av vattposen og nørte på bålet. Kokte kaffe med kjelen hengende i en kvist. Voktet måsene og nøt teven av brent never.
Da skodda lettet og sola brøt frem igjen fikk han likevel ikke frosten ut av kroppen. Klokke i urkjede var ikke noe for slike tokt, derfor visste han ikke hva den viste der hjemme. Men etter solgangen kunne den være fire om natten. Han helte kaffen over bålet og la en flat stein over glørne. Så brøt han opp, fikk båten flott, kom seg utpå og ga seg til å ro.
Da holmen hans bare var en prikk mellom andre prikker i havet, ble han overfalt av en uro. En heseblesende vilje til å komme fort hjem. Han vurderte seilet. Men havet var flatt. Det fantes ikke et vindpust til hjelp. Han la seg på årene igjen. Det fosset rundt baugen. Skumkammer for forbi ham på begge sider, og han kjente pusten svi i halsen. Alt i ett snudde han seg for å kontrollere leia.
Han måtte legge seg over årene en stund. Det verket i hele kroppen. Hvorfor er jeg slik nå? tenkte han. Hvorfor tror jeg at jeg har dårlig tid? Det er bortkastet. Det er jo her jeg skal være.
Så grep han til årene igjen. Greide ikke å ta det med ro. Men rodde. Rodde og brøt ned all motstand.
Da han skåtet inn mot støa, fikk han øye på en liten flokk under berget ved Verftet. Han landet båten og tok det første nevetaket for å dra den opp. Kastet et fort blikk bort på folkene, og syntes han dro kjensel på Peder.
Det hugg til. Tanken sto og dirret. Han slapp taket i båten og la på sprang langs fjæra og opp til ura under berget. Da han kom frem, trakk karene seg til side. Uten et ord og uten å se på ham gjorde de plass.
# ANNA OG VIRKELIGHETEN
De klamret seg til hverandre så snart de var kommet inn i entreen. Villskapen var overalt. I latteren. Hendene. I det flagrende yttertøyet de etter hvert kastet over knaggene.
– Fins her vin? lo Joakim.
– I skjenken, svarte hun og meddelte at hun måtte på toalettet.
Da hun kom tilbake, sto han ved spisebordet med en flaske i hånden.
Hun hadde fått en vane mens hun bodde alene, å legge ting fra seg hvor som helst. Nå lå Benjamins brev i en sprikende bunke på spisebordet, som om det var _det_ hun måtte se før hun gikk og når hun kom. Og ved siden av lå konvolutten med «Benjamin Grønelv, Distriktslege» trykket i venstre hjørne, halvt dekket av brevet fra Joakim.
– Han skriver lange brev, sa Joakim med litt rusten stemme og satte flasken ned på bordet.
– Du må gjerne lese det, sa hun fort.
Han ristet på hodet og tok imot opptrekkeren hun rakte ham.
– Du må gjerne lese det, gjentok hun.
– Står det noe om hvordan det går med Karna?
– Jeg har ikke lest det, sa hun.
– Du har ikke lest det, og ber meg om å lese? Hvorfor?
– Fordi det er oss nå. Her.
Han betraktet henne. La opptrekkeren fra seg og grep nølende brevarkene.
– Ja vel. La oss sette oss. Jeg leser høyt. Så kan vi sammen høre hva som står der.
Hva er det jeg gjør? tenkte hun.
Og allikevel satte hun seg ved bordet og så ham brette ut det første arket.
– Er du sikker på at du vil dette? hørte hun ham spørre.
– Ja, sa hun og møtte blikket hans.
Allerede ved åpningen var det Benjamins stemme som dirret mellom dem.
_Kjære Anna_
_Takk for ordene jeg fikk fra deg i går_!
_Karna_ _har_ _tilpasset_ _seg livet her over all forventning. Sara er her om dagen, og_ _Karna holder seg mer til Peder enn til meg. Håper bare han greier det i lengden. Hun går_ _nok_ _fremdeles inn og ut av virkeligheten, men uten raseri. Og hun har ikke falt en eneste gang, noe som gjør alt lettere_.
_Det virker som om Peder ikke lar seg plage av at hun ikke snakker. Kanskje blir det slik etter en tid. De mest ubegripelige_ _ting kan bli_ _hverdagslig og til å leve med._ _Han har alt_ _laget flere bilder av glassplatene fra_ _Kjøbenhavn. Blant annet et godt portrett av deg. Han lærer Karna å fotografere. Hun er utålmodig og stri og krever sin mann. Her en dag sa han til henne med stort alvor at hun kom_ _til å bli den dyktigste fotografen i Nordland. I går kveld var de inne i spiskammeret,_ _som han har gjort om_ _til mørkerom. Jeg har ikke greie på hvor vi_ _skal gjøre av maten, men det ordner seg nok_.
_Jeg vet din bekymring for at Karna er et barn og Peder er en mann. Men vi har snakket mye sammen. Han er en bedre klippe enn jeg var. Så jeg lar de unge holde på med sitt._ _En gledelig ting er at Dinas advokat mener at brannassuransen for Reinsnes er gyldig._ _Det sikrer en sum til Karnas fremtid._ _Jeg går ut fra at du ikke har noe imot at vi en av de første dagene tømmer Grand for resten av Dinas private møbler og legger hotellet ut for salg_ _etter hvert._ _Flygelet flytter vi_ _til doktorgården_ _så lenge._ _Send meg beskjed om hva du savner, så får jeg det sendt. Som du forstår er livet godt for oss. Måtte_ _sommeren bli en trøst for deg også_.
_Så til det vanskelige_.
_Det siste året har ikke vært lett for noen av oss. Det har hendt at jeg har spurt meg selv: Er alt så flyktig? Må man bare erkjenne at kjærligheten varer akkurat så lenge den varer. Er det slik? Jeg forlanger ikke noe svar, ikke av noen_.
_Som du sikkert vet av egen erfaring er lange sjøreiser i kuling og maksvær fruktbare_ _for tanken. Hadde jeg vært sjømann så hadde jeg kanskje vært klokere helt fra begynnelsen. Men jeg får ta til vett litt etter litt_.
_Derfor er det viktig for meg å si deg_ _– at_ _avgjørelsen og inngrepet du utsatte deg for, var modig og helt nødvendig_ _for deg. Jeg ber_ _deg_ _innstendig om_ _ikke å la noen krenke den._ _Du har lært meg at frihet betyr alt for deg. Grunnen til at jeg ikke har tenkt slik for egen del, er trolig den at jeg alltid har hatt frihet. Vel_ _å_ _merke dersom jeg hadde rygg til å bære, eller kvele, min samvittighet. Og du har lært meg at å kvele sin samvittighet, det er en manns måte å gå sjelløs gjennom tilværelsen_ _på. Jeg vet ikke om det noen gang kommer til å bli annerledes. Men det jeg vet, er at du kommer til å spille en viktig rolle for dem du velger å ha rundt deg_.
_I den siste samtalen vi hadde før jeg reiste,_ _tror jeg at jeg ga deg en usikkerhet i fanget. At jeg plutselig skulle stå i døren og tro at jeg var hjemme hos deg. Det skal vi begge slippe. Uansett hvordan det går med Karna, så gjør jeg aldri krav på ditt liv, bare på mitt eget._ _Og jeg er kommet til den erkjennelse at det ikke er nødvendig for meg å skjære i mennesker i Kjøbenhavn for å bli respektert, så jeg skal gi din far beskjed om at det er lite trolig at jeg kommer tilbake til Frederiks Hospital. Bare etter kort tid her hjemme, i doktorgården, på det kontoret jeg med din hjelp har bygget opp, ser jeg at jeg behøves her_.
_For å være helt klar: Papirene du trenger for juridisk å bli løst fra meg og få din del av boet, dem sender jeg omgående så snart jeg finner ut hva som_ _trengs_.
_Akkurat nå, etter å ha avsluttet dagen med å rydde i gamle journaler, kjenner jeg lengsel etter å seile ut til holmene og_ _gå i land_ _og_ _tenne bål. Det er særlig en av holmene jeg aldri fikk vist deg, der det vokser mannshøye einer tett i tett. Der er en trang kile som skjermer båten i all slags vind._ _Får jeg det ikke til i kveld, så blir det en annen dag._ _Trolig har jeg lenge savnet roen, mer enn friheten. Natt og dag er like lys nå, så jeg tar med mat og drikke og lar døgnet gå sin gang_.
_Hengivent fra_
_Benjamin_
Hun rørte seg ikke.
Han lot det siste arket gli ned på de andre. Brettet dem sammen og la dem i konvolutten. Rakte henne.
– Hva tenker du? spurte hun og svelget.
Ansiktet hans var urørlig. Som om han satt alene i rommet.
– Jeg tenker at... jeg holder av den merkelige mannen din. Dypt og inderlig holder av ham. Jeg har aldri før møtt den slags sjenerøsitet. Ikke fra noen.
Hun ble sittende og stirre på ham. Noe skjedde. Noe fullstendig galt utspant seg mellom dem. Naturstridig.
– Og det sier du nå? Han gir meg jo skilsmisse...
– Det er nå jeg forstår det. Har ikke villet se det før. Jeg har analysert mine møter med ham, med og uten deg, og lagt det bort. Hele tiden var det oss, deg og meg. Han har ikke vært _virkelig_. Ikke før nå. Jeg ser det, Anna. Jeg er en frafallen kyniker som ikke greier å gjennomføre dette. Ikke for egen del. Og da kan jeg heller ikke lokke deg med på det.
– Jeg vil dette, Joakim.
– Jeg vil også, men jeg _kan_ ikke, Anna. Han reiste seg og gikk ut i entreen.
– Joakim! ropte hun.
Da han ikke svarte, gikk hun etter. Han sto med ryggen til og holdt seg i frakken som hang på knaggen.
– Du går ikke, Joakim, hører du!
– Sist jeg var her... satt han og trøstet meg fordi jeg var en dårlig lege, mumlet han.
– Kom inn til meg igjen, ba hun. – La oss snakke eller tie, men kom inn til meg!
– Da vet jeg at..., mumlet han.
Hun tok etter ham, men det var som om han ikke merket det. Løftet bare frakken fra knaggen.
Fortvilelsen, skuffelsen slo blindt ned i henne.
– Du bruker dette brevet! Du bruker det for å komme unna. Du ble redd da du leste at han vil gi meg skilsmisse. Du bruker det for å berge din egen frihet, er det ikke så? Du er ikke i stand til å ta ansvar for dine følelser? sa hun, og hørte selv hvor stygt det lød.
Han så på henne.
– Er du sikker på det? Kan det være motsatt? sa han nærmest forundret.
– Hvordan?
– At det hele tiden er du som har brukt meg for å komme bort fra dine egne følelser. Gammel sjalusi for eksempel?
– Joakim... Ikke gjør dette mot meg.
– Du trykker akkurat på de knappene min mor trykket. Ensomhet. Avhengighet. Og hvordan mener du at han og jeg skal verge oss mot det?
– Han og du! utbrøt hun.
– Ja. Vi er i samme båt. Med deg.
De ble stående der.
– Du sa en gang at jeg var din _pasjon_ , og så sier du dette, hvisket hun.
– Ja, jeg utleverte meg selv og betrodde meg til deg. Og nå står du her og bruker det mot meg.
Hun strakte ut hendene.
Han sto der, lut. Ansiktet var en grimase. Armene hang rett ned, frakken slepte i gulvet fra hånden hans. Plutselig erindret hun duften av huden hans idet han trengte inn i henne. Pusten hans mot halsen. Og med en følelse av å se sitt liv like før det er slutt, kjente hun lukten av ham da han satte sprøyten mens hun lå på benken. Lyd av metall. Kirkeklokker. Det ble så nært. Men rusen var borte nå. Himmelen var et annet sted.
Hun sto der på gulvet og trakk inn luft i dype hiv. Det var virkeligheten. Og det eneste hun visste var at også dette kom til å oppløse seg. Forsvinne inn i erindringen som noe som ikke skulle leves på nytt.
Og idet han løftet hendene i en bevegelse som om han ville gjøre om på denne samtalen, møtte hun blikket hans. En hjelpeløs trekning for over ansiktet før han snudde seg.
– Kjære, kjære Joakim, så berg deg mens du kan, presset hun frem.
Han ble stående et øyeblikk med ryggen til. Så åpnet han døren til trappegangen og tok et steg ut.
Hun hørte lyden, men registrerte den visst ikke. Den voldsomme bankingen der nede. Gatedøren.
Han vendte seg langsomt og renset stemmen.
– Skal jeg åpne? spurte han.
Anna sto midt på gulvet i entreen.
– Jeg venter ingen, sa hun tonløst.
Han løftet hånden til øret som om han prøvde å gjøre avskjeden lettere. Så begynte han å gå ned.
Hun lukket døren mot trappegangen, lente seg tungt mot den og ble stående. Noen dundret på gatedøren igjen. Hun hørte ham åpne. Hørte ham snakke med noen. Så ble døren lukket. Alt ble stille.
Da hun hørte skrittene hans opp trappen igjen, trodde hun det ikke. Likevel åpnet hun døren. Han slo armene om henne med en merkelig lyd.
– Joakim! At du bare kom tilbake..., gispet hun.
Han svarte ikke. Ga henne bare arket han hadde i hånden. Et åpnet telegram.
Hun holdt det opp mot lyset. Leste. Begynte på nytt. Ordene var ikke til å komme forbi. Ikke til å misforstå.
_Karna forlot oss i dag. Benjamin_.
De sto der og stirret på hverandre.
– Kom, la oss sette oss, sa han til sist.
Hun fulgte etter ham inn i stuen. Der var alt som for et øyeblikk siden. Spisebordet. Den uåpnede vinflasken. Benjamins brev. Og nå – telegrammet. Han ledet henne bort til sofaen og satte seg ned med henne.
Han skulle ta av seg frakken, tenkte hun. Han kan ikke sitte her med frakken på.
– Hvordan...? begynte hun.
Han renset stemmen, men greide ikke å si noe.
Så begynte de samtidig å gråte.
Det var over midnatt. Han hadde for lengst tatt frakken av og lagt den over en stol. Hun hadde vasket ansiktet over kjøkkenvasken uten at det hjalp for noe. Så satte hun seg hos ham igjen.
– Telegrafen... Jeg må til telegrafen. Jeg må gi ham livstegn, sa hun ut i luften.
– _Vi_ må gå til telegrafen, rettet han.
– Hva skal jeg si ham? Ordene?
– Jeg vet ikke. De hjelper ham ikke uansett, sa han.
– Han må vite at jeg er her for ham...
– Nei. Han må vite at du kommer. Nå!
– Det kan jeg ikke, sa hun ynkelig.
– Nevn _en_ sak som er stor nok til at du ikke kan! sa han hardt.
– Forstår du da ikke... Drar jeg dit igjen, så kommer jeg aldri løs, sa hun og reiste seg ustøtt.
– Du er sterkere enn meg, hørte hun ham si langt borte.
– Han trenger meg ikke. Karna er ikke mer, Joakim.
– Derfor, Anna. Karna er ikke mer.
Etter hvert gjorde de merkelige ting. Hentet brød og smør på kjøkkenet. Han åpnet vinflasken og fant to glass. Så spiste de faktisk sammen. Med et helt spisebord mellom seg, og med Benjamins brev og telegram på bordkanten.
Så ble de sittende, mens usagte ord famlet seg rundt mellom veggene. Hun tenkte på at hun måtte si det nå, at hun elsket ham. I stedet sa hun:
– Kan du tilgi det grusomme jeg sa til deg?
Han så opp. Ansiktet var nakent.
– Det er ingenting å tilgi. Jeg kjenner din reaksjon på meg selv. Husker bare at _jeg_ sa noe om at du lignet min mor. En infantil løgn som _du_ må tilgi, sa han og prøvde å smile.
– Det kan jo være sant for alt det jeg vet, sa hun og prøvde å smile, hun også.
Det gikk ikke. Så ble de sittende og gråte hver for seg.
– Vi vet ikke hvordan det gikk til, sa hun etter hvert.
– Nei, sa han og reiste seg. Kom rundt bordet og ble stående bak henne.
– Vi får nok vite. Jeg skal gi deg noe så du får hvile litt, sa han og hentet et etui i frakken som ennå lå over en stol.
– Nei, Joakim, denne smerten kan du ikke skåne meg for.
– Du får en dose for hvile, ikke for smerte.
Da la hun armen på det polstrede lenet og lukket øynene. Han brettet opp kjoleermet. Hun kjente fingertuppene hans stryke forsiktig over albuegropen. Stikket merket hun ikke. En stund sto han bøyd over henne. Så gikk han på kjøkkenet. Det rant lenge fra kranen. Da han kom tilbake hadde han med et fylt glass og rakte henne. Så gikk de over gulvet sammen.
I en søvn som ikke var søvn, kjente hun at de flettet fingrene sine inn i hverandre.
– Trøst oss, Joakim. Trøst oss for all den sorg vi har.
Han hikstet. Så dro han henne til seg med dirrende armer.
Tidlig om morgenen gikk han med henne til telegrafen. Ordene var fra henne, men han skrev dem ned og sto ved skranken da hun leverte.
_Kommer med første båt._ _Anna_.
Da de gikk til billettkontoret sa hun:
– Blir du hos meg til jeg reiser?
Han klemte armen hennes fast inntil kroppen. Og da en hestedrosje kom farende rundt hjørnet med kurs for havnen, holdt han henne igjen.
– Jeg blir hos deg til du reiser, sa han rolig.
# EPILOG
# HOSPITALETS JOURNAL
## November 1892
_Pasienten ble innbrakt i ambulanse fra Kommunehospitalets psykiske avdeling og hit til Hospitalet. I journal derfra står det at han ble funnet av politiet_ _1. august dette år. Han_ _hadde_ _da tydelig_ _sovet i tung morfinrus_ _på en trapp_ _om natten,_ _og viste ingen_ _takknemlighet_ _for å bli funnet i tide._ _Pasienten har_ _fremdeles_ _abstinens og følelsen av kribling under huden._ _Han lider også av uro og angst_.
_På Kommunehospitalet kunne_ _man observere_ _tallrike små lesjoner etter injeksjoner, både nye og gamle. Ut over_ _disse fysiske spor er han_ _lite samarbeidsvillig når det gjelder opplysning_ _om sin helse og bakgrunn_.
_Han_ _har inntil_ _slutten av_ _juli_ _i år vært ansatt som reservelege_ _her_ _ved Hospitalet._ _Hans morfinisme var ikke kjent mens han praktiserte. Han_ _var usedvanlig dyktig og hans_ _nye metoder viste resultater. Særlig gjaldt det en ung pike som hadde mistet taleevnen._ _Journalen for henne viser stor fremgang etter at han fikk ansvaret for behandlingen._ _I overlegens fravær_ _skrev han henne_ _imidlertid_ _ut og_ _lot henne reise_ _hjem til Norge_ _sammen med sin kjæreste._ _Pasienten_ _mener selv at han med det_ _begikk en grov_ _tjenestefeil._ _Etter dette ble morfindosene større og hyppigere,_ _til han_ _til sist_ _uten varsel_ _uteble fra arbeid_.
_Man_ _vil_ _sette pasienten på en_ _intensiv_ _avvenning, selv om det er den mest krevende metode for ham._ _Skulle det_ _lykkes,_ _er det likevel nødvendig å ha ham her på ubestemt tid for om mulig_ _å hindre tilbakefall._ _Som fagperson vet han selv hvor ille det står til._ _Det_ _er_ _av stor betydning at han_ _samtykker i å bli_ _her_ _til han er frisk. Vi_ _kan_ _ikke holde på ham ved tvang_.
_For ordens skyld bør det opplyses at_ _de_ _samtaler, der han_ _har kommet med_ _private betroelser_ _som_ _man_ _ikke_ _finner_ _direkte relevant,_ _de er ikke_ _journalført._ _Likevel legges_ _ved et notat som_ _lå i_ _pasientens frakkelomme_ _da han ble funnet_.
_Alt som er utenfor min tanke_
_det var der allerede_
_og_ _har ingen begynnelse eller slutt_
_bare fortsettelse_
_skygger_
_ringer i_ _luft og_ _vann_
_steiner i_ _dyp_
_og jeg_ _som_ _så sannhet_
_har drømt_
#
© Gyldendal Norsk Forlag AS 2017
Elektronisk utgave © Gyldendal Norsk Forlag AS 2017
Bibliotekutgave - kun for distribusjon gjennom bibliotekene
Omslagsdesign: Peter Stoltze
Produsert i EPUB av: Type-it AS, Trondheim 2017
ISBN 978-82-05-50359-5
www.gyldendal.no
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Deir Hajla or Deir Hijleh is the Arabic name of the Greek Orthodox Monastery of Saint Gerasimus (officially the Holy Monastery of Saint Gerasimos of the Jordan, It is located in the Jericho Governorate in the West Bank, west of the River Jordan and north of the Dead Sea.
Etymology
The current official name of Holy Monastery of Saint Gerasimos of the Jordan connects it with the 5th-century monastic leader who introduced the lavra, or laura type of community among the hermits of the Desert of the Jordan. (The rendering of the saint's name with the suffix -us instead of the original Greek -os is due to the practice of Latinisation of names.) The actual monastery founded by Gerasimus, probably at a site closer to the spring of 'Ein Hajla than the modern monastery, was abandoned towards the end of the 13th century after the final defeat of the Crusaders. The neighboring monastery at the site of Deir Hajla is thought to have inherited its name, itself becoming the "monastery of Gerasimus". A recent publication mentions this name also being used in Arabic, Deir Mar Gerasimus, 'St. Gerasimus Monastery'.
The popular name of 'Deir Hajla' translates from Arabic to 'monastery (deir) of the sand partridge (hajla)', a type of bird often encountered in the region. It echoes, or possibly preserves, the name of the biblical town Bet Hoglah (also spelled Beth-hogla), in the territory of Benjamin on the border to Judah (), possibly the Bethalaga mentioned by Josephus and Jerome's Bethagla. The nearby spring is called similarly, 'Ein Hajla ('Spring of the Partridge'), and is situated little over a kilometre to the northeast of the modern monastery.
The name Laura of Calamon with several spellings and variations, meaning in Greek 'Laura of the Reed Bush', given due to the reeds growing around the 'Ein Hajla spring, by which it was known in the past, is apparently also inherited from the initial monastery of Gerasimos.
The 19th-century explorers noted that the then-abandoned monastery was sometimes called by local Arabs Qasr Hajlah, 'Castle of Hajlah [Partridge]'.
Geographic location
The modern Monastery of Saint Gerasimus stands 3.5 km west of the River Jordan and close to six km north of the Dead Sea, in a semiarid plain once known as the "Desert of the Jordan".
The "Desert of the Jordan" of the Byzantine sources is a landscape unit distinct from the Judaean desert, in the plain to the east and south of Jericho. Apart from the Jordan river, its only perennial water source are four springs, the largest and closest one to Deir Hajla being 'Ein Hajla ('Spring of the Partridge'). Today, the date orchards belonging to the monastery are irrigated by the waters issuing from 'Ein Hajla.
Deir Hajla is in the vicinity of Al-Maghtas/Qasr al-Yahud, the traditional site of the baptism of Jesus, a fact that has attracted Christian hermits and pilgrims to the area in the past and again in the modern period.
History
"Alon Alath, now Bethagla" (), is shown on the Madaba Map a little south-east of Jericho. Eusebius, in his Onomasticon, wrote of the site being located at "three milestones from Jericho and about two milestones from the Jordan."
The monastery is said to have been established by Jerome towards the end of the 4th century. In the 6th century, the monastery was also known by the name Monastery of Penthucla, so-named after one of its Bishops.
The modern monastery was established in 1875 after it had partially been demolished. The older ruined and abandoned monastery had also been partially renovated and expanded over the course of the centuries, probably dating back to the Crusader period, although not much older than that. However, no archaeological excavations have been undertaken at the monastery, leaving space for interpretation.
Although some 19th-century researchers assumed that the presumably Crusader-time ruins they saw were a continuation of a Byzantine monastery, more recent surveys indicate that the only remains datable to the Byzantine period are clusters of simple hermit cells present in relatively large number near the modern monastery and along the dry riverbed gulches (wadis) north of it, with a few more to the south. The oldest architectural remains of the monastery seen by researchers before the 1872-75 reconstruction are most likely to be dated to the Crusader period (12th-13th century), the same date being valid for the findings of a 1993 survey.
The monastery today is replete with a surrounding wall, and contains a garden with some of the oldest known specimens of sycamore figs (Ficus sycomorus) found east of the watershed. Portions of a 6th-century mosaic are shown on the site, as well as the remaining structures of an old wall, and frescoes.
Lavras of the Byzantine period
Although historical sources are mentioning individual hermits in the desert of the Jordan already in the 4th century, which makes them the first Christian monks in the area, the founder of the first lavra loosely connecting several hermits into one community, was the 5th-century monk Gerasimus, later known as Saint Gerasimus of the Jordan. This lavra, or laura, was named after him and he is considered to be the father of the local monasticism. The sources inform us that the hermits from the laura of Gerasimos lived in isolated, spartan cells spread around the plain, which could be confirmed by archaeological surveys. They only gathered at a central area, the core of the laura, on Saturdays and Sundays. There they had a church, a kitchen, a refectory, storage areas, and a dwelling wing, so that they could enjoy their only hot meals of the week, drink wine, and pray together, before going back to their cells.
Nearby original lavra of Gerasimus
The laura of Gerasimus was established around 450 and is also known as the Laura of Calamon, i.e. the 'Laura of the Reed Bush', named after the reeds which grew at the nearby spring. It has been tentatively identified with a site less than a kilometre northeast of the modern St Gerasimus Monastery, near the spring of 'Ein Hajla.
Byzantine lavra around modern monastery
Another laura, or loose community of hermits, which existed around the site where the modern monastery is standing, was established in c. 455. Archaeological surveys identified a cluster of ancient cells in the immediate vicinity of the modern monastery, eleven in total, which are in their majority located to the east of it.
No remains from the Byzantine period were found during surveys at the site of the modern monastery, which led the last surveyor, Ofer Sion of the Israel Antiquities Authority, to locate the original laura of Gerasimus elsewhere, at one of the sites closer to the spring. However, no excavation work had been done yet at any of the sites in question at the time of the survey (1993) and its publication (1996).
Other lavras in the area
In the 6th century, during the reigns of Anastasius and Justinian, monasteries and hermitages in the "Desert of the Jordan" multiplied. As a result, when the Life of Gerasimus was written, the author was able to state that the laura consisted of seventy hermit cells–which the modern surveyor, who even identified a total of ninety in the area, takes to mean the entirety of cells spread around the monastery founded by Gerasimus, actually belonging to a number of different laura-type communities.
Muslim conquest: end of monastic movement
The Muslim conquest around 640 brought to an end the monastic movement in the desert of the Jordan and the Judean desert, in spite of not being any more violent than the Persian conquest of 614, which had no such effect.
Crusader period: first monastery
In 1099 the Crusaders occupied the Jericho Oasis, to which the "Desert of the Jordan" can be considered to belong. They restored only very few of the many abandoned Byzantine monasteries in the Judean desert and the wilderness of the Jordan, and Deir Hajla was one of them. At the site of the modern monastery, surveys conducted since the 19th century only came up with remains from the Middle Ages.
Early in the 12th century Abbot Daniel describes the monastery as having protective walls and being inhabited by around 20 monks. He is also the first one to mention a tradition according to which the Holy Family had stopped at this place on its way to Egypt. He calls it the "monastery of the Holy Virgin at Kalamoniya" and mentions a miraculous icon, described later in the same century by John Phokas as resembling the famous Hodegetria of Constantinople. This miracle-working and perfume-emanating icon, held by tradition to have been painted by Luke the Evangelist himself, is now preserved in the chapel of St. Constantine Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem. The monastery was restored in the 12th century, under Patriarch John IX, as witnessed by a bilingual inscription found there.
Mamluk period
An inscription at ad-Dawādāriyya Madrasa in Jerusalem, dated to 1295 CE, gives the income from "the village of Hajla" (French: ) to this madrasa; Max van Berchem identifies "the village of Hajla" with Deir Hajla. However, in 1283, a German pilgrim reports of only eight houses in the entire Jericho Oasis, at a site probably corresponding to the village of 'Ain Hajla, some 5.7 km from what is now the centre of Jericho.
Also about the end of the 13th century, the monastery became known as the 'monastery of St. Gerasimos', as the actual one had been abandoned. In the fourteenth century the place is called Bet Agla by Marino Sanuto, while it was known to Catholics as the monastery of St. Jerome as early as the fifteenth century, due to a name confusion between Gerasimos and Hieronymos, Greek for Jerome.
Ottoman period
In 1522 it was inhabited by monks of the Order of St. Basil, a time when the Latins knew it as the convent of Saint Jerome. The monks' presence was possibly only temporary, since at the end of the 15th century and in the first half of the 17th it was in ruins and abandoned. The monastery, after being rebuilt in 1588, was destroyed almost a century and a half later.
1873-75 description
The PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) visited Kusr Hajlah in 1873 and 1875, and described it:
"An important ruin of a mediaeval monastery. The ruin included a large chapel, a second smaller to the south, and a third in the vaults below. The whole is surrounded by a wall, which remains almost perfect on three sides, but is destroyed on the north. The total measure north and south is 125 feet, and east and west 163 feet. There is a projecting tower on the south and west walls, and smaller towers on the north and east. The tower on the south projects 9 feet, and was 17 feet wide; that on the west is 14 feet by 35 feet.
Chapel.—The principal chapel has a bearing 99° west. It has an apse with a domed roof on the east, the diameter 12 feet 10 inches, the depth from the chord 8 feet to the back of the curve. On the south side were remains of a staircase leading to the walls above the apse. The second or smaller chapel was more perfect, having a sort of tower or octagonal lantern over the body of the building, supported by groined vaulting forming pendentives, the arches springing from the corners of the building. The chapel measured 9 feet 6 inches across by 14 feet long, interior measure ; it had a door 2 feet 5 inches wide on the west, a window 2 feet 8 inches wide on the north, two windows 2 feet broad on the south. On the east was the apse, equal in breadth to the chapel, but having two little apses within it, the northern 5 feet 2 inches diameter, 3 feet deep, the southern 2 feet 5 inches in diameter, and 1 foot 10 inches deep. The total height of the chapel was 16 feet ; the lantern above on the interior was a circle 9 feet diameter with four windows ; it was 6 feet high to the cornice, making a total 22 feet from the floor. There is a vault 10 feet deep below the chapel.
The main chapel would appear to have had a nave 44 feet long, 14 feet 6 inches broad in clear, and a side aisle on south without an apse, 8 1/2 feet broad in clear, divided off by piers or pillars now destroyed. The arches, judging from the interior piers on the south wall, which show three bays, had a span of 12 feet. A doorway in the central bay of the south wall led to a vestibule west of the smaller chapel, 9 feet 6 inches broad, and 1 7 feet 9 inches long, interior measure. It seems that a corridor measuring 16 feet broad east and west ran behind both chapels on the west, from which they were entered. The northern outer wall of the monastery is traceable near the north-west corner, and shows that there was a northern aisle to the main chapel 12 feet wide.
South of the smaller chapel there is a large cistern or birkeh, which must have formed the principal water supply of the monastery. It measures 30 feet by 10 feet, and is 24 feet deep.
These buildings are supported on vaults at a lower level, as shown in the plan, the birkeh being sunk yet lower than the vaults.
The vaults, entered from beneath the southern chapel, include a small chapel, the apse of which, with a cross rudely painted, was beneath the nave of the larger chapel. The kitchens appear to have been near the south wall of the monastery, remains of cooking places being still visible in 1874.
The interior walls of both chapels were painted in fresco, and there appear, as at Deir el Kelt, to be two periods. The floors of both chapels appear to have been covered with marble mosaic."
New monastery (1875)
In April 1882, C. R. Conder revisited the site, finding that "the Greek monks from Mar Saba were engaged in building a new monastery on the spot, and had deliberately scraped off all the frescoes." A few fragments survived in the apse of the main (upper floor) church and appear to date to the 15th or 16th century.
The reconstruction was concluded in 1875, giving shape to the monastery as it stands today.
See also
Monastery of Saint Samuel the Confessor
References
Bibliography
(p. 178)
(p. 897)
(p. 52 ff)
(Marti and Schick, 1880, pp. 14-15)
(p. 84)
(pp. 48 -54)
(p. 221)
External links
Monastery of St Gerasimus , seetheholyland.net
Survey of Western Palestine, Map 18: IAA, Wikimedia commons
Deir Hajla Locality Profile Applied Research Institute–Jerusalem (ARIJ)
Deir Hajla aerial photo, ARIJ
Buildings and structures in Jericho
Christian monasteries in the West Bank
Greek Orthodoxy in the State of Palestine
Greek Orthodox monasteries
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using BrightstarDB.Client;
using BrightstarDB.Dto;
namespace BrightstarDB.Server.Modules
{
public static class JobInfoExtensions
{
public static JobResponseModel MakeResponseObject(this IJobInfo arg, string storeName)
{
return new JobResponseModel
{
JobId = arg.JobId,
Label = arg.Label,
JobStatus = GetJobStatusString(arg),
StatusMessage = arg.StatusMessage,
StoreName = storeName,
ExceptionInfo = arg.ExceptionInfo,
QueuedTime = arg.QueuedTime,
StartTime = arg.StartTime,
EndTime = arg.EndTime
};
}
public static string GetJobStatusString(this IJobInfo jobInfo)
{
if (jobInfo.JobPending) return "Pending";
if (jobInfo.JobStarted) return "Started";
if (jobInfo.JobCompletedOk) return "CompletedOk";
if (jobInfo.JobCompletedWithErrors) return "TransactionError";
return "Unknown";
}
}
}
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
}
| 9,476
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El 1405 (MCDV) fou un any comú començat en dijous del calendari julià.
Esdeveniments
El rei d'Aragó, Martí I l'Humà, envia l'ambaixador Pere de Quintana a Constantinoble per demanar relíquies a l'emperador romà d'Orient, Manuel II Paleòleg, en compensació pel seu suport contra els otomans.
Naixements
Referències
Bibliografia
Anys del segle XV
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
}
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\section{Introduction}
\label{sec:intro}
Weather sensing and forecasting has become increasingly accurate in the last decade thanks to high-resolution radars, efficient computational algorithms, and high-performance computing facilities. The NSF Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) studies the lower atmosphere with networks of high resolution Doppler weather radars with the goal to improve severe weather awareness \cite{MPC+09}. Currently, CASA operates a network of seven X-band radars in the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) Metroplex~\cite{casadfw}. These radars have mechanically steered antennas and are tasked to perform surveillance scans (antenna rotates a full 360$^\circ$) at different elevation angles.
These radars are currently connected to a data collection facility at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the DFW area. Being located in remote areas, the radars face significant network connectivity challenges. First, the available bandwidth varies considerably across these radars. Some radars are connected to high-speed networks with hundreds of Mbps connectivity, some share a 10Mbps connectivity with competing traffic, and some have dedicated, guaranteed 10Mbps connections. The other problem is congestion on the links - as the weather becomes worse, these radars produce more data and there is increased user demand. Given the limited amount of available bandwidth, uncoordinated requests (e.g., requesting all available files from a radar at once) create congestion and delays data retrieval from the radars which, in turn, delays short term weather forecasts. Finally, data from all radars are combined into a mosaicked product before being handed off to the weather prediction workflows. Due to the difference in data generation rates of the radars (radars from different vendors have different rotational speeds), different network speeds, and network congestion at a given moment, the files from these radars arrive at the merging site (NOAA) at different points in time. Merging files that are not temporally synchronized may reduce the quality of the merged product and affect weather prediction.
In this work, we move away from TCP/IP's push-based model that utilizes a static distribution model in favor of NDN's pull-based model. Once the files are generated at the radar site, they are currently pushed to NOAA's computing facility for processing. In this work, we utilize Named Data Networking (NDN)~\cite{Zhang:NDN:CCR2014} that allows the data collection facility to request the necessary files from the radar for processing.
To enable efficient, NDN-based communication, we develop and utilize a hierarchical naming scheme that explicitly captures radar parameters.
Rather than downloading everything that is available from the radars, this naming scheme allows the merging site to specify which exact datasets it requires. To facilitate this, we develop a signaling mechanism where we piggyback information about new files as they are generated.
Finally, we utilize ndnSIM~\cite{mastorakis2017ndnsim} to create an exact topology of the CASA radar federation, complete with accurate delay and bandwidth information. We also utilize actual files generated by these radar sites for our simulation. Our simulation shows that an NDN based system improves the quality of data, reduces congestion on bottleneck links, and improves weather prediction workflows. Indeed, we demonstrate that utilizing an NDN based method to retrieve data uncovers a hazardous weather event (a tornado) that would be harder to detect with the current dataflow model.
Our work is novel in several ways.
We develop a name-based protocol that allows us to retrieve weather data deterministically over networks with different connectivity. By naming files to represent the actual rotation of the radars, we allow the consumer to request the exact files it needs for weather prediction, rather than periodically downloading an arbitrary number of files. If necessary, our protocol allows us to explicitly notify the consumer when a new file is available.
By integrating an NDN-based naming and data retrieval strategy, we demonstrate that NDN's pull based model enables more accurate weather predictions compared to TCP/IP's push based model.
\section{Background}
\label{sec:background}
\subsection{Why use NDN over HTTP or TCP/IP based protocol?}
In federated networks of radars, the radars may communicate with clients through paths consisting of several network hops. These paths may span different service providers, become congested over time, have certain bandwidth constraints, while the overall connectivity between radars and clients may be intermittent. TCP/IP relies on end-to-end connections, without any support from the network infrastructure.
On the contrary, NDN operates on names, data can be delivered from anywhere, automatic in-network caching speeds up data delivery that reduces duplicate requests and speeds up retransmissions. Finally, when several routes are present, NDN's hop-by-hop forwarding can bypass failure and intelligently pick one or more routes based on observed traffic patterns.
NDN can also facilitate fast retransmissions through in-network caching. At the same time, solutions such as SSL/TLS which are widely used in TCP/IP, secure the communication channels, largely depends on the underlying connectivity. On the other hand, NDN makes security a property of the data itself, decoupling it from the underlying connectivity.
CASA was formed to study the lower atmosphere with networks of high resolution Doppler weather radars with the goal to improve severe weather awareness \cite{MPC+09}. The volumetric data produced by these continuously operating remote sensors must be distributed to processing servers quickly and efficiently, such that analysis can occur in near real time for the sake of warning the public of fast developing threats such as tornadoes and high winds. The networked radar concept requires that asynchronous raw data from multiple sources is blended together to create value-added meteorological products. At any given time the characteristics of the ongoing weather regime determine the necessity and priority of certain products. For example, a hail detection algorithm takes on high importance only when strong thunderstorms are ongoing, whereas forecasting algorithms may be of more importance well in advance of such severe weather events and perhaps somewhat less so once the event has started. Currently, CASA operates a network of seven X-band radars in the DFW Metroplex~\cite{casadfw}. These radars have mechanically steered antennas and are tasked to perform surveillance scans (antenna rotates a full 360$^\circ$) at different elevation angles. Since the radars are not identical, their form of producing atmospheric data is slightly different, and data generation is not synchronized across all radars (e.g., the execution of a surveillance scan does not take the same amount of time for all radars).
In Section~\ref{subsubsec:dataflow}, we provide an overview of the current data flow paradigm and Sect.~\ref{subsubsec:asyncdata} outlines the challenges related to this approach and motivates how Information Centric Networking can mitigate these challenges.
\subsection{Current Dataflow Paradigm}
\label{subsubsec:dataflow}
The underlying data transport mechanisms used in the CASA network are based on the traditional TCP/IP protocol stack. For example, UCAR's Local Data Manager (LDM) system~\cite{unidataldm} is used for event based distribution and analysis of radar data. The event based distribution relies on a sender-driven pub/sub system, whereby data requests from downstream clients are registered with regex-like pattern matching schemes based on expected file naming conventions. Data filenames generally include product or radar name, valid time, and the file format abbreviation as suffix. Client side data requests include the IP address or DNS name of the upstream server associated with each product pattern and these are contained in a configuration file. The upstream data server must include a corresponding configuration entry allowing the downstream client IP address/DNS name to request such data. Any changes to the configuration files on either client or server side require a program restart to take effect, during which all data ceases to flow for several seconds. Thereafter, any data arriving to or input from the server side matching the client's requested pattern is forwarded to the client. Data flows and the applications using the data are disjointed in this respect. This sender-driven approach is not well suited for mostly data-driven algorithms since a priori knowledge of active algorithms and their data needs is required, and modifications to the data retrieval service is disruptive to the overall system and potentially other users.
The paradigm of preconfigured data retrieval on a per machine basis is not well suited for the virtualized, cloud-based, highly adaptive compute resources that are used in the CASA system today~\cite{escience2019}. An approach that eliminates the need for a priory knowledge of the applications compute resource and data requirements will benefit current and future CASA data processing workflows.
\begin{comment}
Dynamic product creation on scarce compute resources is not well suited to the paradigm of preconfigured data retrieval on a per machine basis. Future processing systems may benefit by allowing applications to pull data as it is needed, removing the need for a priori knowledge of the applications and data requirements that may be running at a given time.
\end{comment}
\subsection{Weather Sensing}
\label{subsec:rwcasa}
In contrast to the nationwide NEXRAD radar network operated by the National Weather Service (NWS) which consists of 160 homogeneous radars, the CASA system in DFW consists of a heterogeneous and federated network of radars. While in the NEXRAD system there is only little atmospheric volume that is covered by more than one radar, a significant portion of the coverage area of the CASA system is covered by 2 (or in some cases 3) radars. Thus, merging the individual radar data in a mosaic in a timely manner is important for algorithms that use these merged data for weather product generation.
Current radar networks (including NEXRAD) make use of data distribution applications like LDM~\cite{unidataldm} that are implemented on top of the traditional TCP/IP stack. Contrary, the work presented in this paper presents a new approach based on NDN to make radar data distribution and the execution of weather algorithms more efficient. Zhang et al.~\cite{Zhang:Infocom:2017} have presented a synchronization protocol that is also designed for the distribution of weather data. While the work presented by Zhang et al. focuses on the distribution of weather products to the end users, our approach focuses on the generation of such products by providing a new approach for transmitting data from the radars to a central compute site where weather product algorithms are running. In addition, our design and proposed naming scheme for data generation and retrieval in rounds is inspired by RoundSync, a protocol for distributed dataset synchronization in NDN~\cite{de2017design}.
\subsubsection{Asynchronous Data}
\label{subsubsec:asyncdata}
The operation of the radars in the CASA network is not synchronized in any respect, however the data they generate still needs to be mosaicked at a central processing location, and there is still a notion of an ideal set of data files that should be ingested for each mosaic. In general, a mosaic is a full volumetric set of data from each radar, as closely linked in time as possible. Radars produce volumes made up of multiple data files at intervals from 50 to 70 seconds. It is less than ideal to not include some of the data files making up a volume in the mosaicking process, but also less than ideal to include data files representing the same portion of the volume at multiple times, which results in a smearing effect. Time based windowing, whereby an algorithm waits for a specified period of time for data from all radars to arrive, then executes based on the input it received quite often leads to one or the other of these results. Moreover a result we always strive to avoid is to not include any data from a radar in a mosaic, starving regions of the grid of all data and possibly causing users to make ill informed decisions. Therefore the time windows must be kept open longer than the ideal interval, so as to guarantee in all normal network traffic situations that at least one file from each radar shall arrive and be included in the mosaic. A better solution would be to request all data files making up a volume from each radar in an explicit fashion. Current time-based naming schemes can make this problematic to request, so we propose an alternative scheme indicative of the periodic volumetric collections of data files from each radar and explain it in detail in Section~\ref{subsec:scheme}.
\section{Methodology/Design}
\label{sec:methodology}
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.7\columnwidth]{images/mosaic_input.pdf}
\caption{Illustration of the input for the merging algorithm to create a mosaic from data generated by two heterogeneous radars. Top figure shows the preferred scenarios while the bottom figure shows worst-case scenarios.}
\label{fig:merging}
\end{figure}
\subsection{Scenario}
Tha CASA system generates dozens of meteorological products in near real time. Some of these products are generated 24/7/365, others on demand, based on the characteristics of the ongoing weather regime. First order processes include calculating rainfall rate and accumulations, short term nowcasts (0-30min), hydrometeor classifications (rain/hail/snow), hydrological products (runoff, streamflow), and network wind products.
In addition, various post-processing routines operate on the gridded product data, including raster image generation, contouring, format conversions, and end user driven, GIS based data extraction. Timely generation of these products is essential for the warning process and requires significant network and compute resources.
For better illustration of the design of our information-centric approach, we focus on the process of mosaicking data from individual radars into a merged grid, as shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:merging}. We have chosen this example since it requires a minimum amount of data from each individual radar to generate an accurate grid. The accuracy of the gridded data impacts the performance of weather algorithms that perform on gridded data. Ideally, data from all radars would arrive simultaneously at the processing node to allow an immediate generation of the merged grid. However, as described before, radars and the access networks connecting them to the Internet are heterogeneous. Additionally, competing background traffic means available bandwidth are different across these radars. This heterogeneity may result in suboptimal merged products - if a less than ideal number of files are included in the merged product, it may result in a worst case scenario (bottom part of Fig.~\ref{fig:merging}). When too many files are included in the merged process it may end up ``smearing" the merged product, again resulting in a suboptimal product. A suboptimal merged product might impact weather prediction (e.g., decision of a weather forecaster issuing a tornado warning or not) as we will demonstrate in Sect. \ref{sec:eval}.
We present a new design for the pull-based retrieval of individual radar data that is based on NDN to allow for a more efficient transport, and better results for downstream meteorological products.
We utilize rounds (a complete volume scan by the radar) and sequence numbers (files generated within a round). For example, a particular radar might make a complete 360$\degree$ rotation in a minute. It may also create 3 files for the whole round, they can be sequence 1,2, and 3, each containing approximately 20 seconds worth of data.
The use of round and sequence numbers allows the radars to operate independently. For example, each radar may have their own rotational speed (RPM) that does not need to be synchronized. Additionally, this scheme allows the radars to dynamically change the rotation speed or even allow them to go offline without the need for synchronization with the other radars.
\subsection{Data Retrieval in Rounds}\label{subsec:rounds}
Currently, the weather data collected from the radars are named as \ndnName{location-state.YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.netcdf.gz}. One such file on the radar might be named as \ndnName{addison.tx-20200909-000056.netcdf.gz}. This naming convention provides sufficient information for subsequent processing - information such as location and time allows the workflow to analyze files from different radar sites, merge all files over a given time window, and run subsequent computations on them. However, the radars have a fixed rotational frequency (e.g., three times every 70 seconds for radar 1 shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:merging}), which is not captured by the time-based file names. The generation of files is not connected to a particular round.
When using time-based windows, a computational workflow might end up with truncated data (e.g, when a full round of data is not captured in the file) or miss data from a few rounds (e.g., the last rotation was not captured in the netcdf files with the time window).
Moving from implicit naming where the workflows will have to make assumptions or look into the actual data is cumbersome. In this work, we transition from implicit naming (time based) to explicit naming (round based) where each file generated by the radars are named as \ndnName{/data/radar1/\_round=1/\_seq=A} (first data file for radar 1 in the example shown in in Fig.~\ref{fig:merging}).
For workflows that need timestamps, we can simply add the timestamp to the name - \ndnName{/addison/tx/radar1/\_round=15/\_seq=7/YYYYMMDD/HHMMSS}.
This naming scheme allows the workflows to look at the names and choose the most relevant data. One example might be when a workflow looks at all rounds collected up to a certain time. The NDN naming and data retrieval makes it much easier to retrieve content based on actual radar rotation, rather than using timestamps. Further, these names allow the clients to predict the exact names of the future data (e.g. \ndnName{/data/radar1/\_round=1/\_seq=C}, simplifying the application and workflow logic.
\begin{figure}[!t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.7\columnwidth]{images/ndn-timeline.pdf}
\caption{NDN based Interest/Data Exchange}
\label{fig:protocol}
\end{figure}
\subsection{A Naming Scheme for Periodic Radar Data}
\label{subsec:scheme}
NDN clients indicate a request for data via an Interest packet. In this work, we utilize two types of Interest - initialization Interests and normal Interests. The clients send initialization Interests and query the radars about their current states. On receiving this Interests the radars return their current state of data collection, specifically the current round and the sequence number. The current round can be derived from current time (time since epoch modulo $n$) or based on some other numbering scheme. There are a fixed number of sequences in a round depending on the rotational speed of the radar (3 sequences for radar 1 and 1 sequence for radar 2 in the example shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:merging}).
Figure \ref{fig:protocol} shows the actual Interest/Data exchange protocol. The initialization Interests assumes the following format -\\ \ndnName{/Interest/radar\{1..n\}/\_current\_round/current\_seq/number\_of\_files}. On receiving this Interest, the radar returns the most recent file with the current round number and the current sequence number. The client then may start requesting the files by their actual names, e.g., \ndnName{/data/radar1/\_round=15/\_seq=7}. We assume that the radars do not have large storage and only store a small number of files. As a file is downloaded, the radar has the opportunity to piggyback information on the returning data packets, as we discuss in the next section.
\subsection{Piggybacking}
To inform clients about the name of the next file that will be produced by a radar, we design a piggybacking mechanism, where the file name is piggybacked to clients through the data of the current file. Specifically, this name is added to the metadata field of NDN Data packets. Once the client receives this information, it can launch another thread to start the parallel retrieval of the new file, before the retrieval of the current file has finished. This piggybacking approach can also be used in cases where the frequency of the radars change dynamically (e.g., when weather changes occur), so that clients stay informed about such changes.
This approach allows clients to adapt to changes that may happen on the radar side (e.g., generation of a new file, frequency changes). It comes at the cost of slightly increased sizes of certain Data packets, so that the required information can be encoded and piggybacked from radars to clients.
\section{Evaluation}
\label{sec:eval}
\begin{figure}[!t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.7\columnwidth]{images/ndn-casa-topology.pdf}
\caption{Experiment topology. The site names, bandwidth and delays are obtained from the actual CASA deployment.}
\label{fig:simtopo}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}[!ht]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.8\columnwidth]{images/simVsEmulation.pdf}
\caption{Time required for downloading datasets from radars using NDN. All datasets in this figure are needed for the weather prediction workflow. The observed RTTs from emulation are slightly higher than simulation. }
\label{fig:sim_vs_emulation}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}[!ht]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.8\columnwidth]{images/increasedRTT.pdf}
\caption{Effect of increased RTT on file download times }
\label{fig:increasedRTT}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}[!ht]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.8\columnwidth]{images/increasedLoss.pdf}
\caption{ Effect of increased loss on file download times}
\label{fig:increasedLoss}
\end{figure}
In this section, we present the evaluation of our information centric framework for delivering atmospheric data. In this work, we have utilized both simulation and a testbed of Virtual Machines (VMs) deployed on Google Cloud. We first describe the evaluation setup followed by a presentation of the results.
\subsection{Experiment Setup}
We used both simulation and emulation to evaluate our protocol. Figure~\ref{fig:simtopo} shows the topology we used for our experiment. We created this topology from the actual CASA radar topology. We use \textit{ping} between the NOAA and the radar sites to obtain the round trip time (RTT). The bandwidth numbers are obtained from operational experience. Note that some of these links are shared with other traffic (e.g., XMDL) while some links are dedicated (e.g., XUTA). We also looked at the actual request pattern obtained from CASA. We preserved the time between these requests and replayed the requests in real-time indicated by the actual logs. One radar was offline during our experiments so we did not use it for our experiments.
For simulations we utilizes ndnSIM~\cite{mastorakis2017ndnsim} and we used Virtual Machines (VMs) deployed on Google Cloud for emulation. One of the VMs was designated as the consumer with the other 6 as radars producing data. We used ndn-tools (ndncatchunks and ndnputchunks) to publish and retrieve data. We used a script to determine when files were originally requested in the CASA log, and downloaded them using ndncatchunks. For emulating bandwidth and latency on Google Cloud, we utilized the linux utility ``tc`` to set the delay and loss. During the scenarios with increased latency and loss, we changed the ``tc" parameters to accurately reflect the network condition. We tested each scenario 20 times for statistical significance.
As shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:simtopo}, NOAA is the processing site that communicates with the seven radars. It expresses Interest based on the naming scheme we described in Section \ref{sec:methodology}.
The producer produced a file of a certain size at a certain time. We obtained the file sizes and the respective generation times from an actual data log at CASA. The consumer requests those file at times specified in the data access log.
\subsection{Results}
The baseline timings from each radar can be seen in Fig.~\ref{fig:sim_vs_emulation}. This baseline simulation consists of each radar starting the round at simulated second 0 and completing once all of the files from each radar are available on the consumer. The total transfer time begins once the file interest is sent out and finishes after the entire file is available on the consumer. The hosted file sizes are based on the file sizes from each radar collected during a weather event and the link bandwidth and latency match the ones shown in Fig. \ref{fig:simtopo}. While each link has a relatively low latency, the total transfer time is dependent on the hosted file size and link bandwidth. For example, the Cleburne file transfers take very little time due to the small file sizes (~.2 MB) and the link's high bandwidth (50Mbps). The opposite can be seen with the files generated by the Fort Worth radar, which are the largest of all radars (12MB) and the smallest available bandwidth (10Mbps).
As the delay and loss increase the files take slightly longer to download. The variance in time also goes up, especially with increased loss. However, the increase in download time is small since NDN enables fast retransmission from cache and does not need to decrease congestion windows as aggressively as TCP/IP. Figures \ref{fig:increasedRTT} and \ref{fig:increasedLoss} show the effect of increased loss and delay on transfer times. In this work we do not compare NDN with TCP/IP with increased loss and delay but refer the reader to our previous paper \cite{9335806}. In that work we show that NDN outperform TCP/IP even when a small amount of loss is present.
\begin{figure}[!ht]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{images/time_window_75s_alt.pdf}
\caption{Current method vs NDN based file retrieval. The left bars show the number of files from each individual radar that are included in mosaics on a percentage basis. The blue bars show the cumulative files used for a mosaic. The red bar shows NDN's improvement, always the ideal number of files. One radar was offline and was excluded from the simulation.}
\label{fig:time_window}
\end{figure}
Figure \ref{fig:time_window} shows the comparison between the current, TCP/IP based workflow and the proposed NDN based workflow. With the current time based window, a different number of files can be included in the mosaic since the client does not always receive all the required files from the radars, an artifact of TCP/IP's push based model. The left side of the figure shows only 40-50\% of the files are included in the mosaic due to the non-determinism of the time window based process. As a result, the total number of files included in a weather prediction workflow varies considerably (12-24) as the blue bars show on the right. The ideal number of files for this operation is 15 (all files from a round across all radars, see Figure \ref{fig:sim_vs_emulation}). On the contrary, NDN's pull based model always provides the ideal number of the files (i.e., 15 in this case) for inclusion in the workflow.
\begin{figure}[!ht]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.7\columnwidth]{images/Dallas_tornado_mosaic_comparison.pdf}
\caption{Merged radar data from the same sever weather event, in the case of ideal data ingest (top) and the ingest of too many files (bottom).}
\label{fig:merged_hook}
\end{figure}
Figure \ref{fig:merged_hook} shows the effect of this change. With the current time based data ingest process, it is difficult to locate the tornado that is obscured by too many files included in the mosaic. However, with the NDN based dataflow providing the ideal number of files, it is easier to see the tornado in the rendering - this could impact the decision of a weather forecaster issuing a tornado warning or not.
\section{Discussions}
\section{Conclusion and Future Work}
\label{sec:conclusion}
In this paper, we presented the design of a weather sensing framework over NDN. Our design conceptualizes the generation of weather sensing data from radars in rounds and features a round-based naming scheme for the retrieval of the generated data. In addition, our design utilizes a piggybacking scheme to communicate data generation changes from radars to clients. Our evaluation results show that the data-centric communication model of NDN enables the uncovering of hazardous weather events that would be hard to detect with the current CASA dataflow model. In the future, we plan to develop a prototype of this design and deploy it in the real-world CASA system. We also plan to explore the performance of our prototype on lossy links with varying delay.
\section{Diagrammatic view of Multisketch operations}\label{app:mainflow}
\begin{figure}[t]
\centering
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\caption{Diagram of multisketch as a part of an authentication service.
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\label{fig:mainflow}
\end{figure}
\section*{Acknowledgments}
This work was funded by the National Science Foundation
(NSF) grants OAC-2019163, OAC-2126148, OAC-2019012, OAC-2018074, CNS-2104700, CNS-2016714, and CBET-2124918, the National Institutes of Health through award NIGMS/P20GM109090, the University of Nebraska Collaboration Initiative, and the Nebraska Tobacco Settlement Biomedical Research Development Funds.
\balance
\bibliographystyle{unsrt}
\section{Background}
\label{sec:background}
\subsection{CASA}
\label{subsec:casa}
CASA was formed to study the lower atmosphere with networks of high resolution Doppler weather radars with the goal to improve severe weather awareness \cite{MPC+09}. The volumetric data produced by these continuously operating remote sensors must be distributed to processing servers quickly and efficiently, such that analysis can occur in near real time for the sake of warning the public to fast developing threats such as tornadoes and high winds. The networked radar concept requires that asynchronous raw data from multiple sources is blended together to create value-added meteorological products. At any given time the characteristics of the ongoing weather regime determine the necessity and priority of certain products. For example, a hail detection algorithm takes on high importance only when strong thunderstorms are ongoing, whereas forecasting algorithms may be of more importance well in advance of such severe weather events and perhaps somewhat less so once the event has started.
Currently, CASA operates a network of seven X-band radars in the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) Metroplex~\cite{casadfw}. These radars have mechanically steered antennas and are tasked to perform surveillance scans (antenna rotates a full 360$^\circ$) at different elevation angles. Since the radars are not identical their form of producing atmospheric data is slightly different, and data generation is not synchronized across all radars (e.g., the execution of a surveillance scan does not take the same amount of time for all radars). In Section~\ref{subsubsec:dataflow}, we provide an overview of the current data flow paradigm and Sect.~\ref{subsubsec:asyncdata} outlines the challenges related to this approach and motivates how Information Centric Networking can mitigate these challenges.
\subsubsection{Current Dataflow Paradigm}
\label{subsubsec:dataflow}
The underlying data transport mechanisms used in the CASA network are based on the traditional TCP/IP protocol stack. For example, UCAR's Local Data Manager (LDM) system~\cite{unidataldm} is used for event based distribution and analysis of radar data. The event based distribution relies on a sender-driven pub/sub system, whereby data requests from downstream clients are registered with regex-like pattern match schemes based on expected file naming conventions. Data filenames generally include product or radar name, valid time, and the file format abbreviation as suffix. Client side data requests include the IP address or DNS name of the upstream server associated with each product pattern and these are contained in a configuration file. The upstream data server must include a corresponding configuration entry allowing the downstream client IP address/DNS name to request such data. Any changes to the configuration files on either client or server side require a program restart to take effect, during which all data ceases to flow for several seconds. Thereafter, any data arriving to or input from the server side matching the client's requested pattern is forwarded to the client. Data flows and the applications using the data are disjointed in this respect. This sender-driven approach is not well suited for mostly-data driven algorithms since a priori knowledge of active algorithms and their data needs is required, and modifications to the data retrieval service is disruptive to the overall system and potentially other users.
The paradigm of preconfigured data retrieval on a per machine basis is not well suited for the virtualized, cloud-based, highly adaptive compute resource that are used in the CASA system today~\cite{escience2019}. The current CASA data processing architecture and potential future generations will benefit from an approach that allows applications to pull data as they are needed. This approach will eliminate the need for a priori knowledge of the applications compute resource and data requirements.
\begin{comment}
Dynamic product creation on scarce compute resources is not well suited to the paradigm of preconfigured data retrieval on a per machine basis. Future processing systems may benefit by allowing applications to pull data as it is needed, removing the need for a priori knowledge of the applications and data requirements that may be running at a given time.
\end{comment}
\subsubsection{Asynchronous Data}
\label{subsubsec:asyncdata}
The operation of the radars in the CASA network is not synchronized in any respect, however the data they generate still needs to be mosaicked at a central processing location, and there is still a notion of an ideal set of data files that should be ingested for each mosaic. In general, a mosaic is a full volumetric set of data from each radar, as closely linked in time as possible. Radars produce volumes made up of multiple data files at intervals from 50 to 70 seconds. It is less than ideal to not include some of the data files making up a volume in the mosaicking process, but also less than ideal to include data files representing the same portion of the volume at multiple times, which results in a smearing effect. Time based windowing, whereby an algorithm waits for a specified period of time for data from all radars to arrive, then executes based on the input it received quite often leads to one or the other of these results. Moreover a result we always strive to avoid is to not include any data from a radar in a mosaic, starving regions of the grid of all data and possibly causing users to make ill informed decisions. Therefore the time windows must be kept open longer than the ideal interval, so as to guarantee in all normal network traffic situations that at least one file from each radar shall arrive and be included in the mosaic. A better solution would be to request all data files making up a volume from each radar in an explicit fashion. Current time-based naming schemes can make this problematic to request, so we propose an alternative scheme indicative of the periodic volumetric collections of data files from each radar and explained in detail in Section~\ref{subsec:scheme}.
\subsection{NDN}
\label{subsec:ndn}
Named Data Networking (NDN)~\cite{Zhang:NDN:CCR2014} has gained traction in recent years due to its hop-by-hop connectivity based on content instead of finite address-based communication amongst hosts. This new approach of using uniquely named content as the core internet principle makes communication independent of location, application, and means of transportation.
Even though it represents an entirely new architecture, NDN preserves the internet's hourglass architecture, making it compatible to run over and along with existing IP. NDN is particularly beneficial while considering large-scale data dissemination instead of IP that faces challenges when it comes to fixed point-to-point data delivery.
NDN communication has two components: \textit{Interest} and \textit{Data} packets. Interest packets are requests for content sent by a consumer to fetch a data packet generated by the producer in return. All the communication is secure as all the data packets are signed. Each NDN node has a stateful forwarding plane that consists of a Content Store (CS), a Pending Interest Table (PIT), and a Forwarding Strategy that includes the Forwarding Information Base (FIB).
If the \textit{Data} for an \textit{Interest} packet has been served before, it would have been stored in the CS and directly served from the cache. On no match on either of these tables, the FIB table is referred for routing the packet.
Additionally, NDN uses a pull based model rather than IP's push based model. This gives the control of content retrieval to the consumer rather than the producer. Consequently, consumers can decide when and how to retrieve content from the producer. Additionally, in-network caches lead to better scalability, robustness, and faster failure recovery.
\subsection{Why not use TCP/IP?}
In federated networks of radars, the radars may communicate with clients through paths consisting of several network hops. These paths may span different service providers, become congested over time, have certain bandwidth constraints, while the overall connectivity between radars and clients may be intermittent. TCP/IP relies on end-to-end connections, without any support from the network infrastructure. However, in NDN, the network can utilize multiple available paths in parallel, adapt to network failures, and facilitate fast retransmissions. At the same time, solutions, such as SSL/TLS, which are widely used in TCP/IP, secure the communication channels, largely depending on the underlying connectivity. On the other hand, NDN makes security a property of the data itself, decoupling it from the underlying connectivity.
\subsection{Why not use HTTP?}
Similarly, we could create similar functionality using HTTP(s). However, HTTP relies on underlying IP infrastructure and inherits the problems we discussed above. While HTTP allows us to retrieve data based on names, it does not provide robustness against network congestion or failure. Since paths are end-to-end, HTTP is not able to switch routes even when multiple (potentially less congested) routes are available. Finally, unlike NDN, HTTP is unable to provide fast retransmission after packet loss since the packet caches are at the application layer. Finally, in this scenario, where we expect to see some packet loss due to the remote location of the radars. HTTP may not work well in this scenario.
\section{Related Work}
\label{sec:relwork}
\subsection{Weather Sensing}
\label{subsec:rwcasa}
In contrast to the nationwide NEXRAD radar network operated by the National Weather Service (NWS) which consists of 160 homogeneous radars, the CASA system in DFW consists of a heterogeneous and federated network of radars.
While in the NEXRAD system there is only little atmospheric volume that is covered by more than one radar, a significant portion of the coverage area of the CASA system is covered by 2 (or in some cases 3) radars. Thus, merging the individual radar data in a mosaic in a timely manner is important for algorithms that use these merged data for weather product generation.
Current radar networks (including NEXRAD) make use of data distribution applications like LDM~\cite{unidataldm} that are implemented on top of the traditional TCP/IP stack. Contrary, the work presented in this paper presents a new approach based on NDN to make radar data distribution and the execution of weather algorithms more efficient. Zhang et al.~\cite{Zhang:Infocom:2017} have presented a synchronization protocol that is also designed for the distribution of weather data. While the work presented by Zhang et al. focuses on the distribution of weather products to the end users, our approach focuses on the generation of such products by providing a new approach for transmitting data from the radars to a central compute site where weather product algorithms are running. In addition, our design and proposed naming scheme for data generation and retrieval in rounds is inspired by RoundSync, a protocol for distributed dataset synchronization in NDN~\cite{de2017design}.
\subsection{Named Data Networking}
\label{subsec:relndn}
Distributed science use cases naturally fit into NDN's name based paradigm. NDN's naming paradigm fits nicely with the existing naming conventions since NDN only encourages the name structures to be hierarchical and names to be human-readable and semantically meaningful providing some additional level of assurance.
We have shown in our previous work~\cite{olschanowsky2014supporting} that using a name-based system to publish, discover, and retrieve these distributed large datasets can reduce data management complexity ~\cite{shannigrahi2015named, fan2015managing} and speed up content delivery. Additionally, we found that these communities either utilize hierarchical and semantically meaningful names or these names are easily translatable into NDN names~\cite{shannigrahi2020s}.
In this work we create a similar hierarchical naming scheme - \ndnName{/radarName/round/sequence/} (see \ref{subsec:rounds} for details). The naming scheme captures essential information (radar location, rotational information such as round and sequence number) and allows us to efficiently retrieve data over the network for the workflow. The hierarchical naming scheme also allows for future expansion - we might add timestamp and some location information depending on the workflow.
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
}
| 5,427
|
Pride in Obama remains
Associated Press COLUMNIST
published : 1 Sep 2016 at 04:10
newspaper section: News
A statue of little Barack Obama was removed from a central square in Jakarta, but stands at at SDN Menteng 01, the Jakarta elementary school he once attended. (AP photo)
As US President Barack Obama's second term nears its end, Indonesians still speak with pride of the childhood years he spent in their country, though much of the enthusiasm has faded along with the impossibly high expectations of what the first African-American president would achieve.
A fan club, books, a statue, a cafe and even a movie were all part of the mania for Mr Obama in the world's most populous Muslim nation after he was elected president in 2008. Many Indonesians believed he would change the world and their country, with its deep-seated problems of poverty, corruption and communal conflict.
Mr Obama is still known here by his childhood nickname Barry and as the "Menteng Kid", a reference to the upscale Jakarta neighbourhood where he lived with his mother and Indonesian stepfather from age six to 10.
"We had great expectations about him that were not realised," said Sonni Gondokusumo, who was one of Mr Obama's classmates at Menteng 01 elementary school and a neighbour, and is now a lawyer in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital.
Mr Obama is set to travel to Asia for the last time as president, visiting China for a Group of 20 meeting and Laos for a regional summit, but not Indonesia. His first of two visits to the country as president was in 2010, taking Obama-mania to new heights that included an Indonesian lookalike becoming a national celebrity.
Mr Gondokusumo fondly recalled how a young Mr Obama played at his house and joined him in Muslim prayers wearing a traditional Indonesian sarong that kept falling off, causing much laughter.
"Initially, we expected Barry would make a difference," Mr Gondokusumo said. "To be honest, there is no significant contribution to this country."
Widiyanto Cahyono, another of Mr Obama's former classmates, agreed.
He said he initially had believed that Mr Obama's emotional connection to Islam through childhood friends and a Muslim stepfather would lead to a world of greater tolerance. But now he realises he had naively projected all his hopes onto Mr Obama.
"Obama has a better understanding of Islam and his religious tolerance is genuine," said Mr Cahyono, who sat next to Mr Obama during year 5. "But it is a pity nothing has changed," he added, pointing to United States policy in the Middle East.
He recalled Mr Obama attending Islamic study class at the Menteng school, but said that instead of listening to the teacher, the future president acted cool by doodling a superhero in his notebook.
Even though the sky-high hopes for what Mr Obama would achieve have faded, there is still a sense of connection in Indonesia to an important individual who helped shaped the world in the formative years of the 21st century.
"With Obama, there's a sense of pride," Mr Cahyono said. "He is very special for us."
A statue of Mr Obama as a child now stands outside the Menteng school, intended as an enduring reminder of the school's one-time pupil. Back in 2008, students watched the US election results on television and erupted into cheers when they learned Mr Obama was headed to the White House.
Eight years later, students chatter enthusiastically about the pride they take in attending the school where Mr Obama once studied.
Nine-year-old Mentari Malarangeng, a year 4 student, said Mr Obama is her idol. "I heard from my grandmother that Obama was a good student, loud and confident when he talked," she said.
Her classmate Abdilah Kurdi said the school became famous because of Mr Obama and gets many visitors who want to see where he sat. "I want to be a president like him," he said. "I'm so proud of him."
The school's principal, Edi Kusyanto, said about 40 to 60 mainly foreign tourists visit the school every month.
A picture of an adult Mr Obama standing beside a US flag is displayed prominently in his former year 4 classroom, with current students pointing to a desk in the next-to-last row as Mr Obama's. Two big photos of the president adorn the school's lobby.
Mr Kusyanto said the statue of a young Mr Obama, erected in 2010, is a permanent fixture, because he is part of the school's history.
"The statue inspires and motivates the children every day," said Mr Kusyanto, who has high hopes that Mr Obama will visit the school after his presidency ends.
"He tried," Mr Kusyanto said when asked of Mr Obama's legacy.
"Unlike his predecessor's legacy of war in Iraq, Obama tried to change the world to be a better place."
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
}
| 7,148
|
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
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<meta charset="utf-8">
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|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
}
| 6,689
|
Most of The Purple Sherpa's activity is now on Facebook. But something has been rattling around in my head, and I figured it was time to share.
Surviving Alzheimer's: Practical Tips and Soul-Saving Wisdom for Caregivers appealed to me largely because I found it at a time when I wasn't sure I would survive my father's illness. It offers bite-sized tips and stories with support and instruction, making it easy to read in short bits of time. I also appreciated the emphasis on addressing stress and increasing quality of life for both the person with Alzheimer's and those caring for him. The book teaches a problem-solving framework that will support you throughout your caregiving.
What's your spot for renewal?
What's the next right step?
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
}
| 8,482
|
Self-Driving Can't Come Soon Enough: Uber Jumps Into Toy Transport
Martine Paris 0
As Uber broadens its mission to champion mobility for smart cities, it has started to integrate wildly fun alternative modes of transportation including Bird scooters and JUMP Bikes, which it acquired on Monday for an impressive $200 million.
Both electric and dockless, these toys are providing rides starting as low as $1 an hour for scooter and $4 an hour for bike which will revolutionize the way people think about their daily commute and their physical relationship with the world around them. Not only are these rides promoting clean air, they are accelerating the end of the era of car ownership era which will have a dramatic effect on land use.
At SXSW, Waymo's John Krafcik shared surprising statistics on the effect car ownership has on our society. "Right now the number of cars in our national fleet in the U.S. compared to the number of licensed drivers has never been so out of whack, we have many more cars than licensed drivers, and the multiplicative effects on our society are pretty huge. Each car has four parking spaces, so you have about 300 million cars in our national car park. At 1.2 billion parking spaces in the U.S., that's crazy. Some cities have 20-30% of their total land space being dedicated to the automobile which is terrible, and maybe the best indication of the waste in this way of using the automobile is the fact that 95% of the time our cars are just sitting idle. So you have 300 million cars, that's a massive stock of capital and yet 95% of the time they're just sitting there, and the other 5% of the time being driven about, typically, it's more car than we need, 75% of the time we are driving alone."
Land use transformation is expected to be so dramatic, that visionary Uber founder Travis Kalanick just invested $150 million in City Storage Systems, a startup focused on repurposing abandoned strip malls and parking lots into exciting new spaces that support the digital era.
Keep an eye on the category as more partnerships and acquisitions are expected. Additional companies to watch include LimeBike, Spin, Motivate/Ford GoBike and Scoot. For more details, check out Product Hunt's test rides.
GamesBeat Summit: CryptoKitties' Giang answers ICO questions, gives primer on blockchain gaming using cats Litra Torch, LitraPro Full Spectrum Bi-Color Action Light for Video, Photos
conference, Geek Culture, Interview, Made in Korea, News
The Korea – U.S. Startup Summit in New York Promotes Korean Startups
Amazon, News, Prime Day
Prime Day Deals on July 12th and 13th, 2022
CES, News, Podcast, review
Roborock S7 MaxV Ultra: 60 Day Self Cleaning Vacuum
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
}
| 7,733
|
Kerriidae är en familj av insekter. Kerriidae ingår i överfamiljen sköldlöss, ordningen halvvingar, klassen egentliga insekter, fylumet leddjur och riket djur. Enligt Catalogue of Life omfattar familjen Kerriidae 83 arter.
Kladogram enligt Catalogue of Life:
Bildgalleri
Källor
Externa länkar
Sköldlöss
Kerriidae
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
}
| 3,459
|
"Clean, comfortable, quiet -- but no early breakfast"
"I recommend this hotel -- good location, clean/updated room, very comfortable bed, quiet. Delicious Peruvian food restaurant next door. Only small downside is that breakfast is only from...."
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
}
| 7,341
|
require "fog"
require "log4r"
module VagrantPlugins
module ProviderOpenStack
module Action
class Connect
def initialize(app, env)
@app = app
@logger = Log4r::Logger.new("vagrant_openstack::action::connect")
end
def call(env)
config = env[:machine].provider_config
@logger.info("Connecting to OpenStack...")
#env[:os_connection] = OpenStack::Connection.create({
# :username => config.user,
# :api_key => config.password,
# :auth_method => "password",
# :auth_url => config.url,
# :authtenant_name => config.tenant,
# :service_type => "compute"})
env[:os_connection] = Fog::Compute.new({
:provider => :openstack,
:openstack_tenant => config.tenant,
:openstack_api_key => config.password,
:openstack_auth_url => config.url,
:openstack_username => config.user,
:openstack_service_type => "compute"
})
@app.call(env)
end
end
end
end
end
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
}
| 265
|
{"url":"https:\/\/stats.meta.stackexchange.com\/tags\/comment\/hot","text":"# Tag Info\n\n## Hot answers tagged comment\n\n36\n\nA compendium of comments I've found useful. Feel free to add more. Questions Self-study Is this a question from a course or textbook? If so, please add the [self-study] tag & read its wiki. Is this a question from a course or textbook? If so, please add the [self-study] tag & read its [wiki](https:\/\/stats.stackexchange.com\/tags\/self-study\/info). ...\n\n24\n\nWelcome messages are not noise. Early on in the life of this site, the SE Team actively encouraged posting comments to help people feel welcome. I therefore always decline flags that suggest those comments are \"too chatty\" and I usually keep the welcoming comment intact. I personally make an effort to identify newcomers who are likely to contribute beyond ...\n\n18\n\nThe basic policy is clear enough -- don't answer in comments, answer in answers. Some SE sites are very strict and simply remove anything in comments that looks like an answer. Others run a bit looser. If someone does answer in comments and you expand it into an answer, then as long as you give credit where you rely substantially on someone else's text, ...\n\n18\n\nCV's a democracy of a kind, so many standard political points arise. The first lessons in politics include learning that many other people are very confident in telling you should be voting this way or you shouldn't be voting that way. Excuse me: they're my votes, or not. Within the rules, I vote as I like. (I don't impute or infer attempts to offend, ...\n\n17\n\nLike Richard Hardy (above), I think that attempts to answer the question should be done as \"answers\", not comments. This lets people up- (or down-)vote the proposed solution, provides a place for comments on the proposed solution (vs. the question), and makes the \"Unanswered\" tab work correctly. Putting answers, even short ones, as comments breaks all of the ...\n\n16\n\nSee Etiquette for answering old questions addressed in comments?. I don't think anything changes just because a bounty's at stake. (If someone's really keen to win that bounty they needn't give anything away in comments before they're ready to write an answer.)\n\n16\n\nI agree -- where feasible we should try to help the poster understand how to fix their post, including trying to explain what's unclear whenever we're able to do so. However, if someone else's comment covers the main issues, I think it's fine not to add anything when voting to close, though as amoeba points out it would be good to upvote the comment that ...\n\n15\n\n@whuber's stamina is admirable, but I have to endorse @NickCox's suggestion: You just have to hang in there, contribute answers to questions that don't need clarification (etc.) until you get to 50. The other option is to build the lack of clarity into your answer. Recognize that many askers here don't know enough to use the right terms or include the ...\n\n15\n\nI sometimes answer questions and vote to close them at the same time. I don't see any problem with that. What I would do is leave a comment to the OP explaining that the question is off topic and why. I may point them towards another resource (stack overflow, the r-help listserv, our meta thread with software links, etc.) as well. I don't necessarily ...\n\n14\n\nAdded in Edit: Now that two of us are accused of abusing our position as moderators, I'm not sure I can contribute anything further. You have said of each of us that you think we're abusing our positions; you have the right to email the people that oversee us (yes, even us completely unpaid volunteers). See this meta post which explains how to do that. In ...\n\n13\n\nCromwell's rule : \"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.\" This wise rule (modernized perhaps by substituting \"probable\" for \"possible\", and maybe changing the gory religious reference), should have been all along supplementing the SE-wide catch-phrase and policy \"Be Nice\". Now, \"Be Nice\" is more wide-reaching ...\n\n12\n\nSome personal thoughts\/methods about this important issue: voting. 1- Voting on answers: In this thread, Peter Flom gives an answer about the low answer ratio that was found\/audited in CV (at that time): \"...I think that is partially a function of the nature of statistics and the questions we get...\" Many users agreed with him and I believe this ...\n\n12\n\nNali, I do owe you an apology. The proper way to proceed when I encountered a flag on your first post was to (1) recognize that you are a relative newcomer and welcome you to our site and (2) add a comment explaining why your post had to be deleted. I could plead extenuating circumstances, but that would just be an excuse. I am sorry about the ...\n\n11\n\nIt seems to me that we have to balance two imperatives on CV: We need to preserve information that is germane to on-topic threads and provide information about statistics, machine learning, data mining and data visualization. Material that offends someone or makes some class of people feel unwelcome should be deleted. How should these two be balanced? ...\n\n11\n\nI agree with most of what has been said so far. Disclaimers: I didn't see the original comment or add +1 to it. My comments can easily be sharper than average here, so I am not posing as a nice guy, but I would never dispute a moderator's judgement on my comments. Comments can be sharper than answers, but they must not be offensive. But give and take is ...\n\n11\n\nThis rendering occurred because: In one of your MathJax statements, a $was left out at the beginning, so there was an odd number of$ meaning that most of your comment was interpreted as MathJax and rendered as such. Your use of markdown for the link was also incorrect. The correct syntax is [text description](http:\/\/yourlink.com). I have edited the ...\n\n11\n\n\"See so-and-so's comment\" doesn't meet the standard for an answer on our site. Answers should be complete in themselves; for example, if BruceET was to delete his comment, your answer would be useless. It is usually seen as acceptable to invite the author of the comment to post as an answer, if you feel it is a complete answer to the question, or to ...\n\n10\n\nFirst of all--and most importantly--I am sorry you feel bad about that comment. In coming to a decision about the flag, I considered several aspects of the situation. Relevance. Despite your claim that the comment is off-topic, a huge underlying issue in that thread is whether banning the use of a standard tool for pursuing scientific investigations is an ...\n\n10\n\nFrom the help page on comments: When shouldn't I comment? Comments are not recommended for any of the following: ... Compliments which do not add new information (\"+1, great answer!\"); instead, up-vote it and pay it forward; ... Your comment did not say \"he was correct.\" The record shows it said (in full) @LazyCat right. That is ...\n\n10\n\nIn an ideal world, yes, we would patiently sit down with each poster, discuss what in particular is unclear about their question and guide them to a clear question, which we would then proceed to answer. Unfortunately, it appears to me like the supply of unclarity is unlimited. To be honest, we get questions that are so confused that I wouldn't even know ...\n\n9\n\nAs long as the question is on-topic, not duplicate and well posed, answering with comments is a bad practice, because it can leave the post officially unanswered, which is bad for our site statistics. Also, the comment can't be voted down (likewise, if it is a correct answer the author will not receive credits for it; which is also bad). Moreover, regarding ...\n\n9\n\nWe're fairly easy-going around here, but I can only speak for my own moderation habits on this one because nominally it's breaking the rules: when I run across an answer that has been flagged as really being a comment in disguise, and it begins something like \"I'm new here and don't have enough rep to comment but I really would like to help somebody by ...\n\n9\n\nYou appear to be using Internet Explorer in \"compatibility mode\". This breaks the site in numerous ways - you will need to turn it off. Please follow the instructions here to do so. Related: https:\/\/scifi.meta.stackexchange.com\/questions\/3122\/why-cant-i-post-a-comment-anymore\n\n9\n\nJust so that this question has an answer: One method is to post your own answer to the question. In passing, it can demonstrate that an alternative strategy is not correct. If the answer to the question is not known, then asking and answering a question can be one method to provide a demonstration. As always is the case with interacting with other users, ...\n\n8\n\nIt's a feature, present throughout SE, to defend against the hordes of off-topic misguided comments that would appear without such a restriction. (The community closes tens of answers-cum-comments each day as it is.) As a moderator I would just love to be able to grant people like you higher privileges instantly, on the evidence of goodwill and ...\n\n8\n\nNope! The people who comment to a post are not made aware by default that a post has been edited. The post owner, however, is given a little blue notification in their global inbox. If you'd like to let commentors know that a post has been edited, you would need to @-alert them in comments manually. Sorry!\n\n8\n\nThis user posted his\/her comment as an answer (this happens oftentimes, because of reputation issue or a misunderstanding of how the site works), and it was flagged by some vigilant users. A moderator converted it as a proper comment beneath your reply.\n\n8\n\n[Edit: It looks like the queues seem to have improved a little in recent times -- I find it easier to figure out why something closed for example -- so to an extent some of the gripes here may be a little out of date.] I definitely agree that the interface in the various review queues is not as helpful as it should be -- it hides essential information that ...\n\n8\n\nYou ask about earning reputation for posting comments. Because comments are \"second-class citizens\" on SE, they do not accrue reputation and you are not notified of votes on them. The only thing they can actually do for you is earn you the Commentator Badge and Pundit Badge. 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\@startsection{section}{1}{\z@}{-0.06in}{0.01in{\@startsection{section}{1}{\z@}{-0.06in}{0.01in}
{\large\bf\raggedright}}
\def\@startsection{subsection}{2}{\z@}{-0.06in}{0.01in{\@startsection{subsection}{2}{\z@}{-0.06in}{0.01in}
{\normalsize\bf\raggedright}}
\def\paragraph{\@startsection{paragraph}{4}{\z@}{0.5ex plus
0.2ex minus .2ex}{-1em}{\normalsize\bf}}
\makeatother
\icmltitlerunning{An Imitation Learning Approach for Cache Replacement}
\begin{document}
\twocolumn[
\icmltitle{An Imitation Learning Approach for Cache Replacement}
\begin{icmlauthorlist}
\icmlauthor{Evan Zheran Liu}{stanford,google}
\icmlauthor{Milad Hashemi}{google}
\icmlauthor{Kevin Swersky}{google}
\icmlauthor{Parthasarathy Ranganathan}{google}
\icmlauthor{Junwhan Ahn}{google}
\end{icmlauthorlist}
\icmlaffiliation{stanford}{Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, California, USA}
\icmlaffiliation{google}{Google Research, Sunnyvale, California, USA}
\icmlcorrespondingauthor{Evan Z. Liu}{evanliu@cs.stanford.edu}
\icmlkeywords{Machine Learning, ICML}
\vskip 0.3in
]
\printAffiliationsAndNotice{}
\begin{abstract}
Program execution speed critically depends on increasing cache hits,
as cache hits are orders of magnitude faster than misses.
To increase cache hits, we focus on the problem of cache replacement:
choosing which cache line to evict upon inserting a new line.
This is challenging because it requires planning far ahead and currently there is no known practical solution.
As a result,
current replacement policies typically resort to heuristics designed for specific common access patterns,
which fail on more diverse and complex access patterns.
In contrast, we propose an imitation learning approach to automatically learn cache access patterns by leveraging Belady's,
an oracle policy that computes the optimal eviction decision given the future cache accesses.
While directly applying Belady's is infeasible since the future is unknown,
we train a policy conditioned only on \emph{past} accesses that accurately approximates Belady's even on diverse and complex access patterns, and call this approach \textsc{Parrot}\xspace.
When evaluated on 13 of the most memory-intensive SPEC applications,
\textsc{Parrot}\xspace increases cache miss rates by 20\% over the current state of the art.
In addition, on a large-scale web search benchmark, \textsc{Parrot}\xspace increases cache hit rates by 61\% over a conventional LRU policy.
We release a Gym environment to facilitate research in this area, as data is plentiful,
and further advancements can have significant real-world impact.
\end{abstract}
\@startsection{section}{1}{\z@}{-0.06in}{0.01in{Introduction}\label{sec:intro}
Caching is a universal concept in computer systems that bridges the performance gap between different levels of data storage hierarchies, found everywhere from databases to operating systems to CPUs~\citep{jouppi1990improving, harty1992application, xu2013characterizing, cidon2016cliffhanger}.
Correctly selecting what data is stored in caches is critical for latency,
as accessing the data directly from the cache (a \emph{cache hit}) is orders of magnitude faster than retrieving the data from a lower level in the storage hierarchy (a \emph{cache miss}).
For example, \citet{cidon2016cliffhanger} show that improving cache hit rates of web-scale applications by just 1\% can decrease total latency by as much as 35\%.
Thus, general techniques for increasing cache hit rates would significantly improve performance at all levels of the software stack.
Broadly, two main avenues for increasing cache hit rates exist:
(i)~avoiding future cache misses by proactively prefetching the appropriate data into the cache beforehand;
and (ii)~strategically selecting which data to evict from the cache when making space for new data (cache replacement).
Simply increasing cache sizes is a tempting third avenue, but is generally prohibitively expensive.
This work focuses on single-level cache replacement (\reffig{problem_setup}).
When a new block of data (referred to as a \emph{line}) is added to the cache (i.e., due to a cache miss), an existing cache line must be evicted from the cache to make space for the new line.
To do this, during cache misses, a cache replacement policy takes as inputs the currently accessed line and the lines in the cache and outputs which of the cache lines to evict.
\begin{figure}\center
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{figures/cache}
\caption{
Cache replacement.
At $t = 0$, line D is accessed, causing a cache miss.
The replacement policy chooses between lines A, B, and C in the cache and in this case evicts C.
At $t = 1$, line A is accessed and is already in the cache, causing a cache hit.
No action from the replacement policy is needed.
At $t = 2$, line C is accessed, causing another cache miss.
The replacement policy could have avoided this miss by evicting a different line at $t = 0$.
}
\label{fig:problem_setup}
\end{figure}
Prior work frequently relies on manually-engineered heuristics to capture the most common cache access patterns,
such as evicting the most recently used (MRU) or least recently used (LRU) cache lines,
or trying to identify the cache lines that are frequently reused vs.\ those that are not~\cite{qureshi2007adaptive, jaleel2010high, jain2016back, shi2019applying}.
These heuristics perform well on the specific simple access patterns they target,
but they only target a small fraction of all possible access patterns,
and consequently they perform poorly on programs with more diverse and complex access patterns.
Current cache replacement policies resort to heuristics as practical theoretical foundations have not yet been developed~\citep{beckmann2017maximizing}.
We propose a new approach for learning cache replacement policies
by leveraging Belady's optimal policy~\citep{belady1966study} in the framework of imitation learning (IL), and name this approach \textsc{Parrot}\xspace.\footnote{Parrots are known for their ability to \emph{imitate} others.} Belady's optimal policy (Belady's for short) is an oracle policy that computes the theoretically
optimal cache eviction decision based on knowledge of future cache accesses,
which we propose to approximate with a policy that only conditions on the \emph{past} accesses.
While our main goal is to establish (imitation) learned replacement policies as a proof-of-concept,
we note that deploying such learned policies requires solving practical challenges, e.g., model latency may overshadow gains due to better cache replacement.
We address some of these challenges in \refsec{practical} and highlight promising future directions in \refsec{discussion}.
Hawkeye~\citep{jain2016back} and Glider~\citep{shi2019applying} were the first to propose learning from Belady's.
They train a binary classifier to predict if a cache line will soon be reused (cache-friendly) or not (cache-averse),
evicting the cache-averse lines before the cache-friendly ones and relying on a traditional heuristic to determine
which lines are evicted first within the cache-friendly and cache-averse groups.
Training such a binary classifier avoids the challenges (e.g., \emph{compounding errors}) of directly learning a policy,
but relying on the traditional heuristic heavily limits the expressivity of the policy class that these methods optimize over,
which prevents them from accurately approximating Belady's.
In contrast,
our work is the first to propose cache replacement as an IL problem,
which allows us to directly train a replacement policy end-to-end over a much more expressive policy class to approximate Belady's.
This represents a novel way of leveraging Belady's and provides a new framework for learning end-to-end replacement policies.
Concretely, this paper makes the following contributions:
\begin{itemize}
\item We cast cache replacement as an imitation learning problem, leveraging Belady's in a new way (\refsec{mdp}).
\item We develop a neural architecture for end-to-end cache replacement and several supervised tasks that further improve its performance over standard IL (\refsec{approach}).
\item Our proposed approach, \textsc{Parrot}\xspace, exceeds the state-of-the-art replacement policy's hit rates by over 20\% on memory-intensive CPU benchmarks.
On an industrial-scale web search workload, \textsc{Parrot}\xspace improves cache hit rates by 61\% over a commonly implemented LRU policy (\refsec{experiments}).
\item We propose cache replacement as a challenging new IL\slash RL (reinforcement learning) benchmark involving dynamically changing action spaces, delayed rewards, and significant real-world impact. To that end, we release an associated Gym environment (\refsec{discussion}).
\end{itemize}
\@startsection{section}{1}{\z@}{-0.06in}{0.01in{Cache Preliminaries}\label{sec:preliminaries}
We begin with cache preliminaries before formulating cache replacement as learning a policy over a Markov decision process in \refsec{mdp}.
We describe the details relevant to CPU caches, which we evaluate our approach on, but as caching is a general concept, our approach can be extended towards other cache structures as well.
A cache is a memory structure that maintains a portion of the data from a larger memory. If the desired data is located in the cache when it is required, this is advantageous, as smaller memories are faster to access than larger memories. Provided a memory structure, there is a question of how to best organize it into a cache. In CPUs, caches operate in terms of atomic blocks of memory or \emph{cache lines} (typically 64-bytes large). This is the minimum granularity of data that can be accessed from the cache.
During a memory access, the cache must be searched for the requested data.
\emph{Fully-associative} caches layout all data in a single flat structure,
but this is generally prohibitively expensive, as locating the requested data requires searching through all data in the cache.
Instead, CPU caches are often $W$-way \emph{set-associative} caches of size $N \times W$, consisting of $N$ \emph{cache sets}, where each cache set holds $W$ \emph{cache lines} $\{l_1, \ldots, l_W\}$.
Each line maps to a particular cache set (typically determined by the lower order bits of line's address),
so only the $W$ lines within that set must be searched.
During execution, programs read from and write to \emph{memory addresses} by executing load or store instructions. These load\slash store instructions have unique identifiers known as \emph{program counters} (PCs).
If the address is located in the cache, this is called a \emph{cache hit}.
Otherwise, this is a \emph{cache miss}, and the data at that address must be retrieved from a larger memory.
Once the data is retrieved, it is generally added to the appropriate cache set (as recently accessed lines could be accessed again).
Since each cache set can only hold $W$ lines, if a new line is added to a cache set already containing $W$ lines, the cache replacement policy must choose an existing line to replace.
This is called a \emph{cache eviction} and selecting the optimal line to evict is the cache replacement problem.
\paragraph{Belady's Optimal Policy.}
Given knowledge of future cache accesses, Belady's computes the \emph{optimal} cache eviction decision.
Specifically, at each timestep $t$, Belady's computes the \emph{reuse distance} $d_t(l_w)$ for each line $l_w$ in the cache set,
which is defined as the number of total cache accesses until the next access to $l_w$.
Then, Belady's chooses to evict the line with the highest reuse distance, effectively the line used furthest in the future,
i.e., $\arg\max_{w = 1, \ldots, W}d_t(l_w)$.
\@startsection{section}{1}{\z@}{-0.06in}{0.01in{Casting Cache Replacement as Imitation Learning}\label{sec:mdp}
We cast cache replacement as learning a policy on an episodic Markov decision process $\langle \mathcal{S}, \mathcal{A}_s, R, P\rangle$ in order to leverage techniques from imitation learning.
Specifically, the state at the $t$-th timestep $s_t = (s^c_t, s^a_t, s^h_t) \in \mathcal{S}$ consists of three components, where:
\begin{itemize}
\item $s^a_t = (m_t, pc_t)$ is the current cache access, consisting of the currently accessed cache line address $m_t$ and the unique program counter $pc_t$ of the access.
\item $s^c_t = \{l_1, \dots, l_W\}$ is the cache state consisting of the $W$ cache line addresses currently in the cache set accessed by $s^a_t$ (the replacement policy does not require the whole cache state including other cache sets to make a decision).\footnote{A cache set can have less than $W$ cache lines for the first $W-1$ cache accesses (small fraction of program execution). In this case, no eviction is needed to insert the line.}
\item $s^h_t = (\{m_1, \dots, m_{t-1}\}, \{pc_1, \dots, pc_{t-1}\})$ is the history of all past cache accesses.
In practice, we effectively only condition on the past $H$ accesses.
\end{itemize}
The action set $\mathcal{A}_{s_t}$ available at a state $s_t = (s^c_t, s^a_t, s^h_t)$ is defined as follows:
During cache misses, i.e., $m_t \not\in s^c_t$, the action set $\mathcal{A}_{s_t}$ consists of the integers $\{1, \dots, W\}$, where action $w$ corresponds to evicting line $l_w$.
Otherwise, during cache hits, the action set $\mathcal{A}_{s_t}$ consists of a single no-op action $a_{\textrm{no-op}}$, since no line must be evicted.
The transition dynamics $P(s_{t + 1} \mid a_t, s_t)$ are given by the dynamics of the three parts of the state.
The dynamics of the next cache access $s^a_{t + 1}$ and the cache access history $s^h_{t + 1}$ are independent of the action $a_t$ and are defined by the program being executed.
Specifically, the next access $s^a_{t + 1} = (m_{t + 1}, pc_{t + 1})$ is simply the next memory address the program accesses and its associated PC.
The $t$-th access is appended to $s^h_{t + 1}$, i.e., $s^h_{t + 1} = (\{m_1, \dots, m_{t-1}, m_t\}, \{pc_1, \dots, pc_{t-1}, pc_t\})$.
The dynamics of the cache state are determined by the actions taken by the replacement policy.
At state $s_t$ with $s^c_t = \{l_1, \dots, l_W\}$ and $s^a_t = (m_t, pc_t)$:
A cache hit does not change the cache state, i.e., $s^c_{t + 1} = s^c_t$, as the accessed line is already available in the cache.
A cache miss replaces the selected line with the newly accessed line, i.e.,
$s^c_{t + 1} = \{l_1, \dots, l_{w - 1}, l_{w + 1}, \dots, l_W, m_t\}$ where $a_t = w$.
The reward $R(s_t)$ is $0$ for a cache miss (i.e., $m_t \not\in s^c_t$) and is 1 otherwise for a cache hit.
The goal is to learn a policy $\pi_\theta(a_t \mid s_t)$ that maximizes the undiscounted total number of cache hits (the reward), $\sum_{t = 0}^T R(s_t)$, for a sequence of $T$ cache accesses $(m_1, pc_1), \dots, (m_T, pc_T)$.
In this paper, we formulate this task as an imitation learning problem.
During training,
we can compute the optimal policy (Belady's) $\pi^*(a_t \mid s_t, (m_{t + 1}, pc_{t + 1}), \dots, (m_T, pc_T))$,
by leveraging that the future accesses are fixed.
Then, our approach learns a policy $\pi_\theta(a_t \mid s_t)$ to approximate the optimal policy without using the future accesses, as future accesses are unknown during test time.
\begin{figure}\center
\includegraphics[width=0.96\linewidth,trim={0 0 0 1cm},clip]{figures/belady_window_size.pdf}
\caption{
Normalized cache hit rates of Belady's vs.\ the number of accesses it looks into the future.
Achieving 80\% the performance of Belady's with an infinite window size requires accurately computing reuse distances for lines 2600 accesses into the future.
}
\label{fig:belady_window_size}
\end{figure}
To demonstrate the difficulty of the problem, \reffig{belady_window_size} shows the amount of future information required to match the performance of Belady's on a common computer architecture benchmark (\textit{omnetpp}, Section \ref{sec:experiments}).
We compute this by imposing a future window of size $x$ on Belady's, which we call $\textrm{Belady}_x$,
Within the window ($\text{reuse distances} \leq x$), $\textrm{Belady}_x$ observes exact reuse distances,
and sets the reuse distances of the remaining cache lines (with $\text{reuse distance} > x$) to $\infty$.
Then, $\textrm{Belady}_x$ evicts the line with the highest reuse distance, breaking ties randomly.
The cache hit rate of $\textrm{Belady}_x$ is plotted on the y-axis, normalized so that 0 and 1 correspond to the cache hit rate of LRU and $\textrm{Belady}_\infty$ (the normal unconstrained version of Belady's), respectively.
As the figure shows, a significant amount of future information is required to fully match Belady's performance.
\@startsection{section}{1}{\z@}{-0.06in}{0.01in{\textsc{Parrot}\xspace: Learning to Imitate Belady's}\label{sec:approach}
\@startsection{subsection}{2}{\z@}{-0.06in}{0.01in{Model and Training Overview}
\paragraph{Model.} Below, we overview the basic architecture of the \textsc{Parrot}\xspace policy $\pi_\theta(a_t \mid s_t)$ (\reffig{model}),
which draws on the Transformer~\citep{vaswani2017attention} and BiDAF~\cite{seo2016bidirectional} architectures.
See \refapp{architecture_details} for the full details.
\begin{figure}\center
\includegraphics[width=0.98\linewidth]{figures/model}
\caption{
Neural architecture of \textsc{Parrot}\xspace.
}
\label{fig:model}
\end{figure}
\begin{enumerate}
\item Embed the current cache access $s^a_t = (m_t, pc_t)$ to obtain memory address embedding $e(m_t)$ and PC embedding $e(pc_t)$ and pass them through an LSTM to obtain cell state $c_t$ and hidden state $h_t$:
\begin{equation*}
c_t, h_t = \mathrm{LSTM}([e(m_t); e(pc_t)], c_{t - 1}, h_{t - 1})
\end{equation*}
\item Keep the past $H$ hidden states, $[h_{t - H + 1}, \ldots, h_t]$, representing an embedding of the cache access history $s^h_t$ and current cache access $s^a_t$.
\item Form a context $g_w$ for each cache line $l_w$ in the cache state $s^c_t$ by embedding each line as $e(l_w)$ and attending over the past $H$ hidden states with $e(l_w)$:
\begin{gather*}
g_w = \textrm{Attention}(Q, K) \\
\text{where } \text{query }Q = e(l_w), \text{keys }K = [h_{t - H + 1}, \ldots, h_t]
\end{gather*}
\item Apply a final dense layer and softmax on top of these line contexts to obtain the policy:
\begin{equation*}
\pi_\theta(a_t = w \mid s_t) = \textrm{softmax}(\textrm{dense}(g_w))
\end{equation*}
\item Choose $\arg\max_{a\in \mathcal{A}_{s_t}}{\pi_\theta(a \mid s_t)}$ as the replacement action to take at timestep $t$.
\end{enumerate}
\paragraph{Training.} \refalg{training} summarizes the training algorithm for the \textsc{Parrot}\xspace policy $\pi_\theta$. The high-level strategy is to visit a set of states $B$ and then update the parameters $\theta$ to make the same eviction decision as the optimal policy $\pi^*$ on each state $s \in B$ via the loss function $\mathcal{L}_\theta(s, \pi^*)$.
\begin{algorithm}
\small
\setstretch{1.1}
\begin{flushleft}
\begin{algorithmic}[1]
\STATE Initialize policy $\pi_\theta$
\FOR{$\textrm{step} = 0$ \textbf{to} $K$}
\IF{$\textrm{step} \equiv 0 \pmod{5000}$}
\STATE Collect data set of visited states $B = \{s_t\}_{t = 0}^T$ by following $\pi_\theta$ on all accesses $(m_1, pc_1), \dots, (m_T, pc_T)$
\ENDIF
\STATE Sample contiguous accesses $\{s_{t}\}_{t = l - H}^{l + H}$ from $B$
\STATE Warm up policy $\pi_\theta$ on initial $H$ accesses $(m_{l - H}, pc_{l - H}), \dots, (m_l, pc_l)$
\STATE Compute loss $\mathcal{L} = \sum_{t = l}^{l + H} \mathcal{L}_\theta(s_t, \pi^*)$
\STATE Update policy parameters $\theta$ based on loss $\mathcal{L}$
\ENDFOR
\end{algorithmic}
\end{flushleft}
\caption{\textsc{Parrot}\xspace training algorithm}
\label{alg:training}
\end{algorithm}
First, we convert a given sequence of consecutive cache accesses $(m_1, pc_1), \dots, (m_T, pc_T)$ into states $s_0, \dots, s_T$ (\refsec{compounding_errors}), on which we can compute the optimal action with Belady's (lines 3--5).
Given the states, we train \textsc{Parrot}\xspace with truncated backpropagation through time (lines 6--9).
We sample batches of consecutive states $s_{l - H}, \dots, s_{l + H}$ and
initialize the LSTM hidden state of our policy on the cache accesses of $s_{l - H}$ to $s_{l - 1}$.
Then, we apply our replacement policy $\pi_\theta$ to each of the remaining states $s_l, \dots, s_{l + H - 1}$ in order to compute the loss $\mathcal{L}_\theta(s_t, \pi^*)$ (\refsecs{ranking_loss}{reuse_distance}),
which encourages the learned replacement policy to make the same decisions as Belady's.
\@startsection{subsection}{2}{\z@}{-0.06in}{0.01in{Avoiding Compounding Errors}\label{sec:compounding_errors}
Since we are only given the cache accesses and not the states,
we must determine which replacement policy to follow on these cache accesses to obtain the states $B$.
Naively, one natural policy to follow is the optimal policy $\pi^*$.
However, this leads to \emph{compounding errors}~\citep{ross2011reduction, daume2009search, bengio2015scheduled},
where the distribution of states seen during test time (when following the learned policy) differs from the distribution of states seen during training
(when following the oracle policy).
At test time, since \textsc{Parrot}\xspace learns an imperfect approximation of the oracle policy,
it will eventually make a mistake and evict a suboptimal cache line.
This leads to cache states that are different from those seen during training, which the learned policy has not trained on, leading to further mistakes.
To address this problem, we leverage the DAgger algorithm~\citep{ross2011reduction}.
DAgger avoids compounding errors by also following the current learned policy $\pi_\theta$
instead of the oracle policy $\pi^*$ to collect $B$ during training,
which forces the distribution of training states to match that of test states.
As \textsc{Parrot}\xspace updates the policy,
the current policy becomes increasingly different from the policy used to collect $B$,
causing the training state distribution $B$ to drift from the test state distribution.
To mitigate this, we periodically update $B$ every 5000 parameter updates by recollecting $B$ again under the current policy.
Based on the recommendation in \citep{ross2011reduction}, we follow the oracle policy the first time we collect $B$, since at that point, the policy $\pi_\theta$ is still random and likely to make poor eviction decisions.
Notably, this approach is possible because we can compute our oracle policy (Belady's) at any state during training, as long as the future accesses are known.
This differs from many IL tasks~\citep{hosu2016playing, vecerik2017leveraging}, where querying the expert is expensive and limited.
\@startsection{subsection}{2}{\z@}{-0.06in}{0.01in{Ranking Loss}\label{sec:ranking_loss}
Once the states $B$ are collected,
we update our policy $\pi_\theta$ to better approximate Belady's $\pi^*$ on these states via the loss function $\mathcal{L}_\theta(s, \pi^*)$.
A simple log-likelihood (LL) behavior cloning loss~\citep{pomerleau1989alvinn} $\mathcal{L}_\theta(s, \pi^*) = \log \pi_\theta(\pi^*(s) \mid s)$ encourages the learned policy to place probability mass on the optimal action $\pi^*(s)$.
However, in the setting where the \emph{distribution} $\pi^*(a \mid s)$ is known, instead of just the optimal action $\pi^*(s)$,
optimizing to match this distribution can provide more supervision,
similar to the intuition of distillation~\citep{hinton2015distilling}.
Thus, we propose an alternate ranking loss to leverage this additional supervision.
Concretely, \textsc{Parrot}\xspace uses a differentiable approximation~\citep{qin2010general} of normalized discounted cumulative gain (NDCG) with reuse distance as the relevancy metric:
\begin{align*}
\mathcal{L}^{\textrm{rank}}_\theta(s_t, \pi^*) &= -\frac{\mathrm{DCG}}{\mathrm{IDCG}} \\
\textrm{where } \mathrm{DCG} &= \sum_{w = 1}^W \frac{d_t(l_w) - 1}{\log(\textrm{pos}(l_w) + 1)} \\
\textrm{pos}(l_w) &= \sum_{i \neq w} \sigma(-\alpha(\pi_\theta(i \mid s_t) - \pi_\theta(w \mid s_t)).
\end{align*}
Here, $\textrm{pos}(l_w)$ is a differentiable approximation of the rank of line $l_w$,
ranked by how much probability the policy $\pi_\theta$ places on evicting $l_w$,
where $\alpha = 10$ is a hyperparameter and $\sigma$ is the sigmoid function.
$\mathrm{IDCG}$ is a normalization constant set so that $-1 \leq \mathcal{L}_\theta^{\textrm{rank}} \leq 0$,
equal to the value of $\mathrm{DCG}$ when the policy $\pi_\theta$ correctly places probability mass on the lines in descending order of reuse distance.
This loss function improves cache hit rates by heavily penalizing $\pi_\theta$ for placing probability on lines with low reuse distance, which will likely lead to cache misses,
and only lightly penalizing $\pi_\theta$ for placing probability on lines with higher reuse distance,
which are closer to being optimal and are less likely to lead to cache misses.
Optimizing our loss function is similar to optimizing the Kullback-Liebler (KL) divergence~\citep{kullback1951information} between a smoothed version of Belady's,
which evicts line $l_w$ with probability proportional to its exponentiated reuse distance $e^{d_t(l_w)}$, and our policy $\pi_\theta$.
Directly optimizing the KL between the non-smoothed oracle policy and our policy just recovers the normal LL loss, since Belady's actually places all of its probability on a single line.
\@startsection{subsection}{2}{\z@}{-0.06in}{0.01in{Predicting Reuse Distance}\label{sec:reuse_distance}
To add further supervision during training,
we propose to predict the reuse distances of each cache line as an auxiliary task~\citep{jaderberg2016reinforcement,mirowski2016learning,lample2017playing}.
Concretely, we add a second fully-connected head on \textsc{Parrot}\xspace's network that takes as inputs the per-line context embeddings $g_w$ and outputs predictions of the log-reuse distance $\hat{d}(g_w)$.
We train this head with a mean-squared error loss $\mathcal{L}^{\textrm{reuse}}_\theta(s, \pi^*) = \frac{1}{W}\sum_{w = 1}^W (\hat{d}(g_w) - \log d_t(l_w))^2$.
Intuitively,
since the reuse distance predicting head shares the same body as the policy head $\pi_\theta$,
learning to predict reuse distances helps learn better representations in the rest of the network.
Overall, we train our policy with loss $\mathcal{L}_\theta(s, \pi^*) = \mathcal{L}^{\textrm{rank}}_\theta(s, \pi^*) + \mathcal{L}^{\textrm{reuse}}_\theta(s, \pi^*)$.
\@startsection{subsection}{2}{\z@}{-0.06in}{0.01in{Towards Practicality}\label{sec:practical}
\begin{figure}\center
\includegraphics[width=0.8\linewidth]{figures/byte_embedder.pdf}
\caption{
Byte embedder, taking only a few kilobytes of memory.
}
\label{fig:byte_embedder}
\end{figure}
The goal of this work is to establish directly imitating Belady's as a proof-of-concept.
Applying approaches like \textsc{Parrot}\xspace to real-world systems requires reducing model size and latency to prevent overshadowing improved cache replacement.
We leave these challenges to future work, but highlight one way to reduce model size in this section, and discuss further promising directions in \refsec{discussion}.
In the full-sized \textsc{Parrot}\xspace model, we learn a separate embedding for each PC and memory address, akin to word vectors~\citep{mikolov2013distributed} in natural language processing.
While this approach performs well, these embeddings can require tens of megabytes to store for real-world programs that access hundreds of thousands of unique memory addresses.
To reduce model size, we propose learning a byte embedder shared across all memory addresses, only requiring several kilobytes of storage.
This byte embedder embeds each memory address (or PC) by embedding each byte separately and then passing a small linear layer over their concatenated outputs (\reffig{byte_embedder}).
In principle, this can learn a hierarchical representation, that separately represents large memory regions (upper bytes of an address) and finer-grained objects (lower bytes). \@startsection{section}{1}{\z@}{-0.06in}{0.01in{Experiments}\label{sec:experiments}
\@startsection{subsection}{2}{\z@}{-0.06in}{0.01in{Experimental Setup}
Following \citet{shi2019applying}, we evaluate our approach on a three-level cache hierarchy with a 4-way \SI{32}{KB} L1 cache, a 8-way \SI{256}{KB} L2 cache, and a 16-way \SI{2}{MB} last-level cache. We apply our approach to the last-level cache while using the LRU replacement policy for L1/L2 caches.
For benchmark workloads, we evaluate on the memory-intensive SPEC CPU2006~\citep{spec} applications used by \citet{shi2019applying}.
In addition, we evaluate on Google Web Search, an industrial-scale application that serves billions of queries per day, to further evaluate the effectiveness of \textsc{Parrot}\xspace on real-world applications with complex access patterns and large working sets.
For each of these programs, we run them and collect raw memory access traces over a 50 second interval using dynamic binary instrumentation tools~\cite{ bruening2003infrastructure}. This produces the sequence of all memory accesses that the program makes during that interval. Last-level cache access traces are obtained from this sequence by passing the raw memory accesses through the L1 and L2 caches using an LRU replacement policy.
As this produces a large amount of data, we then sample the resultant trace for our training data~\citep{qureshi2007adaptive}. We randomly choose 64 sets and collect the accesses to those sets on the last-level cache,
totaling an average of about 5M accesses per program.
Concretely, this yields a sequence of accesses $(m_1, pc_1), ..., (m_T, pc_T)$.
We train replacement policies on the first 80\% of this sequence, validate on the next 10\%, and report test results on the final 10\%.
Our evaluation focuses on two key metrics representing the efficiency of cache replacement policies.
First, as increasing cache hit rates is highly correlated to decreasing program latency~\cite{qureshi2007adaptive, shi2019applying, jain2016back}, we evaluate our policies using raw cache hit rates.
Second, we report \emph{normalized cache hit rates}, representing the gap between LRU (the most common replacement policy) and Belady's (the optimal replacement policy).
For a policy with hit rate $r$, we define the normalized cache hit rate as
$\frac{(r - r_\mathrm{LRU})}{(r_\mathrm{opt} - r_\mathrm{LRU})}$, where $r_\mathrm{LRU}$ and $r_\mathrm{opt}$ are the hit rates of LRU and Belady's, respectively.
The normalized hit rate represents the effectiveness of a given policy with respect to the two baselines, LRU (normalized hit rate of 0) and Belady's (normalized hit rate of 1).
We compare the following four approaches:
\begin{enumerate}
\item \textsc{Parrot}\xspace: trained with the full-sized model, learning a separate embedding for each PC and address.
\item \textsc{Parrot}\xspace (byte): trained with the much smaller byte embedder (\refsec{practical}).
\item Glider~\citep{shi2019applying}: the state-of-the-art cache replacement policy, based on the results reported in their paper.
\item Nearest Neighbor: a nearest neighbors version of Belady's, which finds the longest matching PC and memory address suffix in the training data and follows the Belady's decision of that.
\end{enumerate}
The SPEC2006 program accesses we evaluate on may slightly differ from those used by \citet{shi2019applying} in evaluating Glider, as the latter is not publicly available.
However, to ensure a fair comparison, we verified that the measured hit rates for LRU and Belady's on our cache accesses are close to the numbers reported by \citet{shi2019applying}, and we only compare on normalized cache hit rates.
Since Glider's hit rates are not available on Web Search, we compare \textsc{Parrot}\xspace against LRU, the policy frequently used in production CPU caches.
The reported hit rates for \textsc{Parrot}\xspace, LRU, Belady's, and Nearest Neighbors are measured on the test sets.
We apply early stopping on \textsc{Parrot}\xspace, based on the cache hit rate on the validation set.
For \textsc{Parrot}\xspace, we report results averaged over 3 random seeds,
using the same minimally-tuned hyperparameters in all domains.
These hyperparameters were
tuned exclusively on the validation set of omnetpp (full details in \refapp{experiment_details}).
\@startsection{subsection}{2}{\z@}{-0.06in}{0.01in{Main Results}\label{sec:main_results}
\begin{table*}
\center\small
\caption{
Raw cache hit rates. Optimal is the hit rate of Belady's.
Averaged over all programs, \textsc{Parrot}\xspace (3 seeds) outperforms LRU by 16\%.
}
\label{tab:raw_cache_hit_rates}
\resizebox{\textwidth}{!}{\renewcommand{\arraystretch}{1.2}
\begin{tabular}{ccccccccccccccc}
\toprule
& \textbf{astar} & \textbf{bwaves} & \textbf{bzip} & \textbf{cactusadm} &
\textbf{gems} & \textbf{lbm} & \textbf{leslie3d} & \textbf{libq}
&\textbf{mcf} & \textbf{milc} & \textbf{omnetpp} & \textbf{sphinx3} &
\textbf{xalanc} & \textbf{Web Search} \\
\cmidrule(r){2-14} \cmidrule(l){15-15}
Optimal & 43.5\% & 8.7\% & 78.4\% & 38.8\% & 26.5\% & 31.3\% & 31.9\% & 5.8\% & 46.8\% & 2.4\% & 45.1\% & 38.2\% & 33.3\% & 67.5\% \\
LRU & 20.0\% & 4.5\% & 56.1\% & 7.4\% & 9.9\% & 0.0\% & 12.7\% & 0.0\% & 25.3\% & 0.1\% & 26.1\% & 9.5\% & 6.6\% & 45.5\% \\
\textsc{Parrot}\xspace & 34.4\% & 7.8\% & 64.5\% & 38.6\% & 26.0\% & 30.8\% & 31.7\% & 5.4\% & 41.4\% & 2.1\% & 41.4\% & 36.7\% & 30.4\% & 59.0\% \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
}
\end{table*}
\begin{figure*}\center
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{figures/main_results}
\caption{
Comparison of \textsc{Parrot}\xspace with the state-of-the-art replacement policy, Glider.
We evaluate two versions of \textsc{Parrot}\xspace, the full-sized model (\textsc{Parrot}\xspace) and the byte embedder model (\textsc{Parrot}\xspace (byte)), and report the mean performance over 3 seeds with 1-standard deviation error bars.
On the SPEC2006 programs (left), \textsc{Parrot}\xspace with the full-sized model improves hit rates over Glider by 20\% on average.
}
\label{fig:main_results}
\end{figure*}
\reftab{raw_cache_hit_rates} compares the raw cache hit rate of \textsc{Parrot}\xspace with that of Belady's and LRU.
\textsc{Parrot}\xspace achieves significantly higher cache hit rates than LRU on every program, ranging from 2\% to 30\%.
Averaged over all programs, \textsc{Parrot}\xspace achieves 16\% higher cache hit rates than LRU.
According to prior study on cache sensitivity of SPEC2006 workloads~\citep{jaleel2010memory}, achieving the same level of cache hit rates as \textsc{Parrot}\xspace with LRU would require increasing the cache capacity by 2--3x (e.g., omnetpp and mcf) to 16x (e.g., libquantum).
On the Web Search benchmark, \textsc{Parrot}\xspace achieves a 61\% higher normalized cache hit rate and 13.5\% higher raw cache hit rate than LRU, demonstrating \textsc{Parrot}\xspace's practical ability to scale to the complex memory access patterns found in datacenter-scale workloads.
\reffig{main_results} compares the normalized cache hit rates of \textsc{Parrot}\xspace and Glider.
With the full-sized model, \textsc{Parrot}\xspace outperforms Glider on 10 of the 13 SPEC2006 programs, achieving a 20\% higher normalized cache hit rate averaged over all programs;
on the remaining 3 programs (bzip, bwaves, and mcf), Glider performs marginally better.
Additionally, \textsc{Parrot}\xspace achieves consistent performance with low variance across seeds.
\paragraph{Reducing model size.}
Though learning \textsc{Parrot}\xspace from scratch with the byte embedder does not perform as well as the full-sized model, the byte embedder model is significantly smaller and still achieves an average of 8\% higher normalized cache hit rate than Glider (\reffig{main_results}).
In \refsec{discussion}, we highlight promising future directions to reduce the performance gap and further reduce model size and latency.
\paragraph{Generalization.}
An effective cache replacement policy must be able to generalize to unseen \emph{code paths} (i.e., sequences of accesses) from the same program, as there are exponentially many code paths and encountering them all during training is infeasible.
We test \textsc{Parrot}\xspace's ability to generalize to new code paths by comparing it to the nearest neighbors baseline (\reffig{main_results}).
The performance of the nearest neighbors baseline shows that merely memorizing training code paths seen achieves near-optimal cache hit rates on simpler programs (e.g., gems, lbm), which just repeatedly execute the same code paths, but fails for more complex programs (e.g., mcf, Web Search), which exhibit highly varied code paths.
In contrast, \textsc{Parrot}\xspace maintains high cache hit rates even on these more complex programs, showing that it can generalize to new code paths not seen during training.
Additionally, some of the programs require generalizing to new memory addresses and program counters at test time.
In mcf, 21.6\% of the test-time memory addresses did not appear in the training data,
and in Web Search, 5.3\% of the test-time memory addresses and 6\% of the test-time PCs did not appear in the training data (full details in \refapp{experiment_details}),
but \textsc{Parrot}\xspace performs well despite this.
\@startsection{subsection}{2}{\z@}{-0.06in}{0.01in{Ablations}\label{sec:ablations}
Below, we ablate each of the following from \textsc{Parrot}\xspace:
predicting reuse distance, on-policy training (DAgger), and ranking loss.
We evaluate on four of the most memory-intensive SPEC2006 applications (lbm, libq, mcf, and omnetpp) and Web Search and compare each ablation with Glider, Belady's, and two versions of \textsc{Parrot}\xspace.
\textsc{Parrot}\xspace is the full-sized model with no ablations.
\textsc{Parrot}\xspace (base) is \textsc{Parrot}\xspace's neural architecture, with all three additions ablated.
Comparing \textsc{Parrot}\xspace(base) to Glider (e.g., \reffig{reuse_distance}) shows that in some programs (e.g., omnetpp and lbm), simply casting cache replacement as an IL problem with \textsc{Parrot}\xspace's neural architecture is sufficient to obtain competitive performance, while in other programs, our additions are required to achieve state-of-the-art cache hit rates.
\paragraph{Predicting Reuse Distance.}
\begin{figure}\center
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{figures/reuse_distance.pdf}
\caption{
Comparison between different mechanisms of incorporating reuse distance into \textsc{Parrot}\xspace.
Including reuse distance prediction in our full model (\textsc{Parrot}\xspace) achieves 16.8\% higher normalized cache hit rates than ablating reuse distance prediction (\textsc{Parrot}\xspace (no reuse dist.)).
}
\label{fig:reuse_distance}
\end{figure}
\reffig{reuse_distance} compares the following three configurations to show the effect of incorporating reuse distance information: (i)~\textsc{Parrot}\xspace (no reuse dist.), where reuse distance prediction is ablated, (ii)~\textsc{Parrot}\xspace (evict highest reuse dist.), where our fully ablated model (\textsc{Parrot}\xspace (base)) predicts reuse distance and directly evicts the line with the highest predicted reuse distance, and (iii)~\textsc{Parrot}\xspace (reuse dist. aux loss), where our fully ablated model learns to predict reuse distance as an auxiliary task.
Comparing \textsc{Parrot}\xspace (no reuse dist.) to \textsc{Parrot}\xspace shows that incorporating reuse distance greatly improves cache hit rates.
Between different ways to incorporate reuse distance into \textsc{Parrot}\xspace,
using reuse distance prediction indirectly as an auxiliary loss function (\textsc{Parrot}\xspace (reuse dist. aux loss)) leads to higher cache hit rates than using the reuse distance predictor directly to choose which cache line to evict (\textsc{Parrot}\xspace (evict highest reuse dist.)).
We hypothesize that in some cache states, accurately predicting the reuse distance for each line may be challenging, but ranking the lines may be relatively easy.
Since our reuse distance predictor predicts log reuse distances,
small errors may drastically affect which line is evicted when the reuse distance predictor is used directly.
\paragraph{Training with DAgger.}
\reffig{on_policy} summarizes the results when ablating training on-policy with DAgger.
In theory, training off-policy on roll-outs of Belady's should lead to compounding errors,
as the states visited during training under Belady's differ from those visited during test time. Empirically, we observe that this is highly program-dependent.
In some programs, like mcf or Web Search, training off-policy performs as well or better than training on-policy,
but in other programs, training on-policy is crucial.
Overall, training on-policy leads to an average 9.8\% normalized cache hit rate improvement over off-policy training.
\begin{figure}\center
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{figures/on_policy.pdf}
\caption{
Ablation study for training with DAgger.
Training with DAgger achieves 9.8\% higher normalized cache hit rates than training off-policy on the states visited by the oracle policy.
}
\label{fig:on_policy}
\end{figure}
\paragraph{Ranking Loss.}
\reffig{ranking_loss} summarizes the results when ablating our ranking loss.
Using our ranking loss over a log-likelihood (LL) loss introduces some bias,
as the true optimal policy places all its probability on the line with the highest reuse distance.
However, our ranking loss better optimizes cache hit rates,
as it more heavily penalizes evicting lines with lower reuse distances, which lead to misses.
In addition, a distillation perspective of our loss, where the teacher network is an exponentially-smoothed version of Belady's with the probability of evicting a line set as proportional to $\exp(\textrm{reuse distance})$,
suggests that our ranking loss provides greater supervision than LL.
Tuning a temperature on the exponential smoothing of Belady's could interpolate between less bias and greater supervision.
Empirically, we observe that our ranking loss leads to an average 3.5\% normalized cache hit rate improvement over LL.
\begin{figure}\center
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{figures/ranking_loss.pdf}
\caption{
Ablation study for our ranking loss.
Using our ranking loss improves normalized cache hit rate by 3.5\% over a LL loss.
}
\label{fig:ranking_loss}
\end{figure}
\@startsection{subsection}{2}{\z@}{-0.06in}{0.01in{History Length}
\label{sec:history}
One key question is: how much past information is needed to accurately approximate Belady's?
We study this by varying the number of past accesses that \textsc{Parrot}\xspace attends over ($H$) from 20 to 140.
In theory, \textsc{Parrot}\xspace's LSTM hidden state could contain information about \emph{all} past accesses,
but the LSTM's memory is limited in practice.
The results are summarized in \reffig{history_length}.
We observe that the past accesses become an increasingly better predictor of the future as the number past accesses increase, until about 80.
After that point, more past information doesn't appear to help approximate Belady's.
Interestingly, \citet{shi2019applying} show that Glider experiences a similar saturation in improvement from additional past accesses, but at around 30 past accesses.
This suggests that learning a replacement policy end-to-end with \textsc{Parrot}\xspace can effectively leverage more past information than simply predicting whether a cache line is cache-friendly or cache-averse.
\begin{figure}\center
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{figures/history_length}
\caption{
Performance of \textsc{Parrot}\xspace trained with different numbers of past accesses ($H$).
As the number of past accesses increases, normalized cache hit rates improve, until reaching a history length of 80.
At that point, additional past accesses have little impact.
}
\label{fig:history_length}
\end{figure}
\@startsection{section}{1}{\z@}{-0.06in}{0.01in{Related Work}\label{sec:related_work}
\paragraph{Cache Replacement.}
Traditional approaches to cache replacement rely on heuristics built upon intuition for cache access behavior.
LRU is based on the assumption that most recently used lines are more likely to be reused.
More sophisticated policies target a handful of manually classified access patterns based on simple counters~\cite{qureshi2007adaptive,jaleel2010high} or try to predict instructions that tend to load zero-reuse lines based on a table of saturating counters~\cite{wu2011ship,khan2010sampling}.
Several recent approaches instead focus on \emph{learning} cache replacement policies.
\citet{wang2019learning} also cast cache replacement as learning over a Markov decision process, but apply reinforcement learning instead of imitation learning, which results in lower performance.
More closely related to ours are Hawkeye~\cite{jain2016back} and Glider~\cite{shi2019applying},
which also learn from Belady's.
They train a binary classification model based on Belady's to predict if a line is cache-friendly or cache-averse, but rely on a traditional replacement heuristic to determine which line to evict when several lines are cache-averse.
Relying on the traditional heuristic to produce the final eviction decisions heavily constrains the expressivity of the policy class they learn over, so that even the best policy within their class of learnable policies may not accurately approximate Belady's, yielding high cache miss rates for some access patterns.
In contrast, our work is the first to propose learning a cache replacement policy end-to-end with imitation learning. Framing cache replacement in this principled framework is important as much prior research has resorted to heuristics for hill climbing specific benchmarks. In addition, learning end-to-end enables us to optimize over a highly expressive policy class, achieving high cache hit rates even on complex and diverse access patterns.
\paragraph{Imitation Learning.}
Our work builds on imitation learning (IL) techniques~\citep{ross2014reinforcement, sun2017deeply},
where the goal is to approximate an expert policy.
Our setting exhibits two distinctive properties:
First, in our setting, the expert policy (Belady's) can be queried at any state during training.
the oracle policy (Belady's) can be cheaply queried at any state during training, which differs from a body of IL work~\citep{vecerik2017leveraging, hosu2016playing, hester2018deep} focusing on learning with limited samples from an expensive expert (e.g., a human).
The ability to arbitrarily query the oracle enables us to avoid compounding errors with DAgger~\citep{ross2011reduction}.
Second, the distribution over actions of the oracle policy is available, enabling more sophisticated loss functions.
Prior work~\citep{sabour2018optimal, choudhury2017adaptive} also studies settings with these two properties, although in different domains.
\citet{sabour2018optimal} shows that an approximate oracle can be computed in some natural-language sequence generation tasks; \citet{choudhury2017adaptive} learns to imitate an oracle computed from data only available during training, similar to Belady's, which requires future information. \@startsection{section}{1}{\z@}{-0.06in}{0.01in{Conclusion and Future Directions}
\label{sec:discussion}
We develop a foundation for learning end-to-end cache replacement policies with imitation learning,
which significantly bridges the gap between prior work and Belady's optimal replacement policy.
Although we evaluate our approach on CPU caches, due to the popularity of SPEC2006 as a caching benchmark,
we emphasize that our approach applies to other caches as well, such as software caches, databases, and operating systems.
Software caches may be an especially promising area for applying our approach, as they tolerate higher latency in the replacement policy and implementing more complex replacement policies is easier in software.
We highlight two promising future directions:
First, this work focuses on the ML challenges of training a replacement to approximate Belady's and does not explore the practicality of deploying the learned policy in production,
where the two primary concerns are the memory and latency overheads of the policy.
To address these concerns, future work could investigate model-size reduction techniques, such as distillation~\citep{hinton2015distilling}, pruning~\citep{janowsky1989pruning, han2015deep, sze2017efficient}, and quantization, as well as domains tolerating greater latency and memory use, such as software caches.
Additionally, cache replacement decisions can be made at any time between misses to the same set, which provides a reasonably long latency window (e.g., on the order of seconds for software caches) for our replacement policy to make a decision.
Furthermore, the overall goal of cache replacement is to minimize latency.
While minimizing cache misses minimizes latency to a first approximation, cache misses incur variable amounts of latency~\citep{qureshi2006case}, which could be addressed by fine-tuning learned policies to directly minimize latency via reinforcement learning.
Second, while Belady's algorithm provides an optimal replacement policy for a single-level cache, there is no known optimal policy for multiple levels of caches (as is common in CPUs and web services). This \textit{hierarchical cache replacement} policy is a ripe area for deep learning and RL research, as is exploring the connection between cache replacement and prefetching, as they both involve selecting the optimal set of lines to be present in the cache. Cache replacement is backward looking (based on the accesses so far) while prefetching is forward looking (predicting future accesses directly~\citep{hashemi2018learning, shi2020}).
To facilitate further research in this area, we release a Gym environment for cache replacement, which easily extends to the hierarchical cache replacement setting, where RL is required as the optimal policy is unknown.
We find cache replacement an attractive problem for the RL\slash IL communities, as it has significant real-world impact and data is highly available, in contrast to many current benchmarks that only have one of these two properties.
In addition, cache replacement features several interesting challenges:
rewards are highly delayed, as evicting a particular line may not lead to a cache hit\slash miss until thousands of timesteps later;
the semantics of the action space dynamically changes, as the replacement policy chooses between differing cache lines at different states;
the state space is large (e.g., 100,000s of unique addresses) and some programs require generalizing to new memory addresses at test time, not seen during training, similar to the rare words problem~\citep{luong2014addressing} in NLP;
and as our ablations show, different programs exhibit wildly different cache access patterns, which can require different techniques to address.
In general, we observe that computer systems exhibit many interesting machine learning (ML) problems, but have been relatively inaccessible to the ML community because they require sophisticated systems tools.
We take steps to avoid this by releasing our cache replacement environment.
\paragraph{Reproducibility.}
Code for \textsc{Parrot}\xspace and our cache replacement Gym environment is available at
\url{https://github.com/google-research/google-research/tree/master/cache_replacement}. \@startsection{section}{1}{\z@}{-0.06in}{0.01in*{Acknowledgements}
We thank Zhan Shi for insightful discussions and for providing the results for Glider, which we compare against.
We also thank Chelsea Finn, Lisa Lee, and Amir Yazdanbakhsh for their comments on a draft of this paper.
Finally, we thank the anonymous ICML reviewers for their useful feedback, which helped improve this paper.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. DGE-1656518.
|
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"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
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\section{Introduction}
Chiral structures are ubiquitous in nature and play a crucial role in the biological functions of living species. Natural chiral substances have also fundamental technological and industrial importance as they are present in many chemical and pharmaceutical compounds~\cite{wagniere}. Natural optical activity is the hallmark optical effect exhibited by chiral media, as discovered in the pioneering work by Arago, and it is typically weak for naturally occurring materials~\cite{wagniere}. With advent of metamaterials and plasmonics, new artificial media with much higher chiral optical response have been developed to generate novel optical properties and applications such as negative index media~\cite{pendry2004,plum}, broadband circular polarizers~\cite{gansel2009}, and enantioselective photochemistry~\cite{tang2011}. An important class of artificial chiral media is composed of plasmonic nanoparticles, which includes chiral nanocrystals, DNA-assembled plasmonic nanostructures, chiral plasmonic particles assembled on scaffolds, core-shell plasmonic spheres~\cite{cpreview1, cpreview2, cpreview3}, and assemblies of nanoparticles in chiral configurations, such as helices~\cite{fan2010} or even random arrangements~\cite{pinheiro2017}. {However, it is quite challenging to probe individual chiral optical response for single chiral plasmonic nanoparticles}, as the existing enantioselective methods usually can only measure the average chiral optical response of a large number of (typically) non-identical particles in solution (e.g. circular dichroism). By the same token, no established method exists to determine the chiral parameter $\kappa$ of individual nanoparticles, which would be of great interest to characterise optical chiral response in chiral nanoplasmonics~\cite{dionnereply,Mastroianni}.
To circumvent these limitations, we have recently put forward an alternative chiral resolution method to not only achieve enantioselection of chiral nanoparticles but also to determine their chiral parameter $\kappa$~\cite{rali2020}. This method is based on optical tweezing of dielectric spheres coated with chiral shells, where it is possible to select the handedness of the trapped coated particles by choosing the appropriate circular polarization of the trapping laser beam.
Our approach compares favorably with previous proposals~\cite{li2007,spivak2009,li2010,cameron2014,durand2013,bradshaw2014,wang2014,hayat2015,alizadeh2015,durand2016,chen2016,dionne2016,zhang2017,acebal2017,ho2017,cao2018,dionne2018}
and implementations \cite{hernandez2013,tkachenko2014,donato2015,tkachenko2014b,dionne2017,Schnoering2018,krevets2019,Nker2019}
of optical chiral resolution as it allows for the determination of
the chiral parameter of each individual trapped nanoparticle via the rotation of the equilibrium position under the effect of a transverse drag force. However, this method has only been applied so far to coated nanoparticles. The case of homogeneous chiral nanoparticles is not only different from a physical point of view, as their light scattering properties are distinct from coated ones, but also is more relevant for a number of chiral systems, such as chiral plasmonic nanocrystals~\cite{fan2012}. Here we show that our method can be applied to micrometer sized homogeneous chiral spheres. In addition, we provide a detailed derivation of our theoretical approach, which is based on a generalization of the Mie-Debye theory of optical tweezers \cite{epl,Mazolli2003} to the case of chiral trapped particles.
This paper is organized as follows. In section II, we review the basic formalism of electromagnetic scattering by a chiral sphere using the formalism of Debye potentials. In addition, the optical torque exerted on trapped chiral particles is discussed in detail.
In Sec. III, we present our results and discuss how the chirality affects the condition for optical tweezing. Finally, in Sec. IV we summarise our findings and conclusions.
\section{Methodology}
\subsection{Electromagnetic fields in chiral media}
In a chiral medium, the electromagnetic fields ${\bf E}$ and ${\bf H}$ are coupled by a chirality parameter $\kappa$. The constitutive relations may be written as \cite{lindell,lakhtakia,chan2014}
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\textbf{D}=\epsilon_0\epsilon \textbf{E} +i \kappa\sqrt{\epsilon_0\mu_0} \, {\bf H} \nonumber \\
&&\textbf{B}= -i \kappa\sqrt{\epsilon_0\mu_0}\,\textbf{E} +\mu \mu_0\textbf{H} \label{C5const}
\end{eqnarray}
where ${\bf D}$ and $ {\bf B}$ are the electric displacement and the magnetic field in the chiral material, respectively.
Furthermore, $\epsilon$, $\mu$ are the effective relative permittivity and permeability of the medium, and $\epsilon_0$, $\mu_0$ are the absolute permittivity and permeability of vacuum.
The Maxwell's equations for chiral media in the frequency domain can be compactly written in a matrix form with the help of the constitutive relations (\ref{C5const}) as
\begin{gather}
\nabla \cdot \begin{bmatrix} \textbf{E}\\ { \textbf{H}} \end{bmatrix} = 0
\hspace{15pt} , \hspace{15pt}
\nabla \! \times \! \begin{bmatrix} \textbf{E}\\ { \textbf{H}} \end{bmatrix}
= K \!
\begin{bmatrix}
\textbf{E} \\
{\textbf{H}}
\end{bmatrix}
\end{gather}
where
$$
K= \begin{bmatrix}
k_0 \kappa & i k_0 \mu { \sqrt{\mu_0 / \epsilon_0}} \\
{ - i k_0 \epsilon \sqrt{\epsilon_0 / \mu_0}} & k_0 \kappa
\end{bmatrix}.
$$
%
and $k_0 = \omega \sqrt{\mu_0 \epsilon_0} = \omega/c$. In addition, a direct inspection of (\ref{C5const}) shows that the transverse character of {\bf E} and {\bf H} is only ensured if $\mu \epsilon \neq \kappa^2$, so we assume that such condition holds from now onwards \cite{footnote}.
By introducing a linear transformation $A$, also known as Bohren decomposition, that mixes {\bf E} and {\bf H} \cite{bohren-huffman,lakhtakia}
\begin{gather}
\begin{bmatrix}
\bf{\Lambda_+} \\
\bf{\Lambda_-}
\end{bmatrix}
{\small = \frac{1}{2}
\begin{bmatrix}
\sqrt{\mu_0/\epsilon_0} & i \sqrt{\mu/\epsilon} \\
i \sqrt{\epsilon/\mu} & \sqrt{\epsilon_0/\mu_0}
\end{bmatrix} }
\begin{bmatrix} \bf{E}\\ { \bf{H}} \end{bmatrix}
= A
\begin{bmatrix} \bf{E}\\ { \bf{H}} \end{bmatrix} \, ,
\label{C5em in chiral}
\end{gather}
it is simple to show that we get uncoupled Helmholtz equations for each of the vectors ${\bf \Lambda}_{\sigma}, \; \sigma=\pm 1:$
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\nabla ^{2}{\bf{\Lambda}_{\sigma}}+k_{\sigma} ^{2}\bf{\Lambda}_\sigma=0
\label{C5Helmholtz}
\end{eqnarray}
where $k_{\sigma} = k_0 (\sqrt{\mu \epsilon}- \sigma \kappa).$
The parameter $\sigma$ represents the helicity of the propagating waves, as
$\bf{\Lambda}_+$ and $\bf{\Lambda}_-$ are left- and right-hand eigenmodes of incident circularly polarized waves that independently satisfy the Maxwell's equations in the frequency domain.
Finally, given the dispersion relation for $k_{\sigma}$, it is convenient to define a chiral refraction index $m_{\sigma}$
\begin{equation}
m_{\sigma} = \sqrt{\mu \epsilon} -\sigma \kappa
\end{equation}
that effectively characterizes the propagation of circularly polarized waves of helicity $\sigma.$
\begin{figure}
\includegraphics[width = 3.in]{C5F1n}
\caption{ (a) Schematic representation of
enantioselective optical tweezing.
A single circularly-polarized Gaussian laser beam is focused at the focal plane of the objective lens
in order to optically trap homogeneous chiral microspheres dispersed in aqueous solution. The sample is driven laterally at a constant speed.
(b) As the trapped sphere is laterally displaced by the resulting Stoles drag force $F_S$, its equilibrium position rotates around the optical $z$ axis
by an angle $\alpha.$ The cylindrical optical force components $F_{\rho}$ and $F_{\phi}$ are shown.
}
\label{C5setup}
\end{figure}
\subsection{Mie series solution for a chiral sphere}
\label{C5Section_Mie}
The solution of the Helmholtz equation (\ref{C5Helmholtz}) in spherical coordinates is thoroughly discussed in the literature \cite{bohren-huffman,Born-Wolf}, but the chiral case presents a non-trivial additional element: while propagating eigenmodes correspond to the vector fields ${\bf \Lambda}_{\sigma}$,
the boundary conditions involve the fields ${\bf E, D, B} $ and $ {\bf H}$.
Fortunately, the linear relation (\ref{C5em in chiral}) allows a straightforward solution
for the scattered field by a chiral sphere (given an incident plane wave)
\cite{bohren-huffman,lakhtakia,bohren}:
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}
{\bf E}_{s}= E_0 \sum^{\infty}_{\ell} (i)^{{\ell}}\frac{2{\ell}+1}{{\ell}({\ell}+1)} (i a_\ell N_{e1{\ell}}^3\\-b_{\ell}M_{o1{\ell}}^3 + c_{\ell}M_{e1{\ell}}^3 - id_{\ell}N_{o1{\ell}}^3) \\
{\bf H}_{s}= \frac{k}{\omega \mu} E_0 \sum^{\infty}_{\ell} (i)^{{\ell}}\frac{2{\ell}+1}{{\ell}({\ell}+1)}
( a_{\ell}M_{e1{\ell}}^3\\+ ib_{\ell}N_{o 1{\ell}}^3 - ic_\ell N_{e1{\ell}}^3 - d_{\ell}M_{o 1{\ell}}^3),
\label{C5SCA}
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
where $M_{e1\ell}^3$, $M_{o1\ell}^3$, $N_{e1\ell}^3$ and $N_{o 1 \ell}^3$ are the vector spherical harmonics \cite{bohren-huffman}. The scattering amplitudes $ a_{\ell} $, $ b_{\ell} $, $ c_{\ell}$ and $ d_{\ell} $ are commonly known as Mie coefficients \cite{bohren-huffman,lakhtakia,bohren,shang,chan2014}
\begin{eqnarray}
&&a_{\ell} = \frac{V_{\ell}(-)A_{\ell}(+)+V_{\ell}(+)A_{\ell}(-)}{W_{\ell}(+)V_{\ell}(-)+V_{\ell}(+)W_{\ell}(-)} \nonumber \\
&&b_{\ell}= \frac{W_{\ell}(+)B_{\ell}(-)+W_{\ell}(-)B_{\ell}(+)}{W_{\ell}(+)V_{\ell}(-)+V_{\ell}(+)W_{\ell}(-)} \nonumber \\
&&c_{\ell} =-d_{\ell} = i\frac{W_{\ell}(-)A_{\ell}(+)-W_{\ell}(+)A_{\ell}(-)}{W_{\ell}(+)V_{\ell}(-)+V_{\ell}(+)W_{\ell}(-)}
\label{C5MC}
\end{eqnarray}
with
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}
W_{\ell}(\sigma) = m\psi_{\ell}(y_{\sigma}) \xi_{\ell}^{'}(x)-\xi_{\ell}(x)\psi_{\ell}^{'}(y_{\sigma})\\
V_{\ell}(\sigma) = \psi_{\ell}(y_{\sigma}) \xi_{\ell}^{'}(x)-m \xi_{\ell}(x)\psi_{\ell}^{'}(y_{\sigma})\\
A_{\ell}(\sigma) = m\psi_{\ell}(y_{\sigma}) \psi_{\ell}^{'}(x)-\psi_{\ell}(x)\psi_{\ell}^{'}(y_{\sigma})\\
B_{\ell}(\sigma ) = \psi_{\ell}(y_{\sigma}) \psi_{\ell}^{'}(x)-m \psi_{\ell}(x)\psi_{\ell}^{'}(y_{\sigma})
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
where $m = m_+ m_- /2(m_+ + m_-).$ The Riccati-Bessel functions \cite{Abramowitz} $\psi_{\ell}$, $\xi_{\ell}$ are evaluated either at the
size parameter $x=\sqrt{\epsilon_w}k_0 a$ defined with respect to the wavelength in the non-magnetic achiral host medium (relative electric permittivity $\epsilon_w$)
or at $y_{\sigma}=m_{\sigma}x/\sqrt{\epsilon_w}.$
Finally, for future convenience, we introduce the Debye potentials $\Pi^{E}$ and $\Pi^{M}$ for electric and magnetic multipoles \cite{Born-Wolf}
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}
\Pi^{E} ({\bf r})= \sum^{\infty}_{\ell}\frac{({\bf r}\cdot {\bf E})_{}}{{\ell}({\ell}+1)}\\
\Pi^{M}({\bf r}) = \sum^{\infty}_{\ell}\frac{({\bf r}\cdot {\bf H})}{{\ell}({\ell}+1)} \, ,
\label{C5DB}
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
which satisfy a (scalar) Helmholtz equation. Using Eq. (\ref{C5DB}) we write the electromagnetic fields in terms of the scalar Debye potentials as follows:
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}
{\bf E}= \nabla \times \nabla \times \left({\bf r}\, \Pi^{E}\right) + i\omega \mu \, \nabla \times\left({\bf r}\, \Pi^{M}\right)\\
{\bf H}= \nabla \times \nabla \times\left({\bf r}\, \Pi^{M}\right) - i\omega \epsilon\, \nabla \times\left({\bf r}\, \Pi^{E}\right) \, .
\end{aligned} \label{C5Field_potentials}
\end{equation}
\subsection{Mie-Debye theory of optical tweezers for chiral sphere}
As it is depicted in Fig. 1, an optical tweezers setup consists of a laser beam strongly focused by a high numerical aperture (NA) objective. Stable trapping in the focal region is possible for certain ``goldilocks'' combinations of the optical properties of the object to be trapped and the surrounding medium.
We consider a $1064 \, \rm nm$ Gaussian beam, circularly polarized with helicity $\sigma$, at the objective
entrance port. The beam is focused by the objective
into the sample region containing an aqueous suspension (refractive index $n_w=\sqrt{\epsilon_w}$) of
homogeneous chiral spheres, with effective relative permittivity $\epsilon_s$ and chirality $\kappa$.
The focused beam in the sample region is represented in terms of the so called Richards-Wolf integral representation \cite{RichardsWolf,Mazolli2003}
\begin{eqnarray}
\mathbf{E}_{\rm in}(\mathbf{r}) &&\hspace{-10pt}= {E}_{0}\int_{0}^{2\pi}d\varphi_k\int_{0}^{\theta_{0}}d{\theta_k}\sin \theta_k \sqrt{\cos \theta_k} \,
e^{-\gamma_f^2\sin^2\theta_k} \nonumber \\
&& \hspace{60pt} \times \, e^{i\mathbf{k}(\theta_k,\varphi_k)\cdot(\mathbf{r}+\mathbf{r}_s)}\mathbf{\hat{\epsilon}_{\sigma}^{\prime}}(\theta_k, \varphi_k),
\label{C5RW}
\end{eqnarray}
where
{we set the origin at the center of the sphere and} the focal point is at position $-\mathbf{r}_s$.
The region of integration in Fourier space is defined by the angle $\theta_0,$ which in turn depends on the
objective numerical aperture {\rm NA}:
$\sin\theta_0=\min\{1,\mbox{NA}/n_w\}.$
$\gamma_f$ is the ratio of the objective focal length to the laser beam waist at the objective entrance port and
$\mathbf{\hat{\epsilon}_{\sigma}^{\prime}}(\theta_k, \varphi_k)=\mathbf{\hat{x}^{\prime}}(\theta_k, \varphi_k)+i\sigma
\mathbf{\hat{y}^{\prime}}(\theta_k, \varphi_k).$ The unit vectors $\mathbf{\hat{x}^{\prime}}(\theta_k, \varphi_k)$ and $\mathbf{\hat{y}^{\prime}}(\theta_k, \varphi_k)$ are obtained from $\mathbf{\hat{x}}$ and $\mathbf{\hat{y}}$ by rotation with Euler angles $\alpha=\varphi_k,$ $\beta = \theta_k$ and $\gamma=-\varphi_k$.
We have assumed an ideal aplanatic optical system when writing Eq.~(\ref{C5RW}).
Optical aberrations can be included as additional phase factors in the integrand in the r.-h.-s. of
(\ref{C5RW}) \cite{Dutra2014} and the resulting optical force can be derived by following the steps presented below.
We take $\mathbf{E}_{\rm in}(\mathbf{r})$ as the incident field on the chiral microsphere.
The strategy is to take each plane wave component of Eq. (\ref{C5RW}), solve the scattering problem using the results of section \ref{C5Section_Mie}, and superpose the solutions appropriately. There is, however, a caveat: the expressions in last section assume a $\hat{\bf z}$-propagating incident wave, and in (\ref{C5RW}) we have components propagating in many different directions, so we must rotate our coordinate system in order to have the solution for an arbitrary incident wave. This is accomplished by the matrix elements of finite rotations $d^j_{m, m'}(\theta)$\cite{Edmonds}. After these operations, the Debye potentials associated to an incident circular polarized plane wave (helicity $\sigma$) propagating along an arbitrary direction defined by the spherical angles $(\theta_k,\phi_k)$ are given by
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}
\Pi^{E, {\rm in}}_{{\bf k}, \sigma} (r,\theta,\phi) = \sigma \frac{i E_0}{k} \sum_{{\ell}} i^{{\ell}} j_{\ell}{(kr}) \sqrt{\frac{4\pi(2{\ell}+1)}{{\ell}({\ell}+1)}}
Y^{(\sigma)}_{\ell}(\theta ,\phi)\\
\Pi^{M, {\rm in}}_{{\bf k}, \sigma} (r,\theta,\phi) = \frac{E_0}{k} \sum_{{\ell}} i^{{\ell}} j_{\ell}{(kr}) \sqrt{\frac{4\pi(2{\ell}+1)}{{\ell}({\ell}+1)}}
Y^{(\sigma)}_{\ell}(\theta ,\phi) \, ,
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
where $j_{\ell}(x)$ are the spherical Bessel functions \cite{Abramowitz} and
$$
Y^{(\sigma)}_{\ell}(\theta,\phi) := \sum^{\ell}_{{m}=-\ell} Y_{\ell{m}}(\theta,\phi) e^{-i \phi_k(m-\sigma)} d^{\ell}_{m ,{\sigma}}(\theta_k) \, .
$$
Solving the scattering problem for general $\theta_k$ and $\phi_k$, superposing the solutions according to (\ref{C5RW}), {and undertaking a translation to a coordinate system centered at the focal point --- so that the sphere's center is finally at position $\mathbf{r}_s$ ---, we arrive} at the Debye potentials for the total fields
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\hspace{-20pt}\Pi_{\sigma}^{E, \rm{tot}}= \sigma \frac{i E_0}{k} \sum_{\ell,m} i^{\ell}\gamma_{\ell,m}^{\sigma} \left [j_{\ell}{(kr})-(a_{\ell}+i\sigma d_{\ell}) h_{\ell}(kr)\right] \times \nonumber \\
&& \hspace{60pt} Y_{\ell m} (\theta ,\phi) e^{-i(m-\sigma)\phi_s} \\ \nonumber \\
&&\hspace{-20pt}\Pi_{\sigma}^{M, \rm{tot}}= \frac{E_0}{k} \sum_{\ell,m} i^{\ell} \gamma_{\ell,m}^{\sigma} \left [ j_{\ell}{(kr})-(b_{\ell} -i \sigma c_{\ell} )h_{\ell}(kr)\right] \times \nonumber \\
&&\hspace{60pt} Y_{\ell m} (\theta ,\phi) e^{-i(m-\sigma )\phi_s} \, ,
\label{C5Debye_potentials_tot}
\end{eqnarray}
where $h_{\ell}(kr)$ is the spherical Hankel function of the first kind. The coefficients
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\hspace{-20pt}\gamma_{\ell,m}^{\sigma}= 2\pi \sqrt{\frac{4\pi(2{\ell}+1)}{{\ell}({\ell}+1)}}(-i)^{m-\sigma} \int_{0}^{\theta_{0}}d\theta_{k}\sin\theta_{k} \times \nonumber \\
&& \sqrt{\cos\theta_{k}} d^\ell _{m,\sigma}(\theta_{k})J_{m-\sigma}(k\rho_s\sin\theta_{k})e^{ikz_s\cos{\theta_{k}}}
\end{eqnarray}
are written in terms of the cylindrical Bessel functions $J_{m-\sigma}$ of integer order $m-\sigma.$
Here we have expressed the microsphere position ${\bf r}_s=(\rho_s,\varphi_s,z_s)$ in cylindrical coordinates.
When taking $\kappa$ to zero ($c_\ell=d_\ell=0$) we recover the Debye potentials for an achiral sphere \cite{Mazolli2003}.
However, the most interesting property of Eqs.~(\ref{C5Debye_potentials_tot}) is that they have the same form as the Debye potentials of an achiral sphere, provided the following replacements are made
\begin{eqnarray}
&& A_\ell \leftrightarrow a_\ell+ \, i \,\sigma d_\ell\label{equivalence} \\
&& B_\ell \leftrightarrow b_\ell - i\sigma \, c_\ell \, ,
\label{equivalence2}
\end{eqnarray}
where $A_\ell$ and $B_\ell$ would be the Mie coefficients of the equivalent achiral sphere scattering a circularly polarized beam of helicity $\sigma.$ Equations (\ref{equivalence}) and (\ref{equivalence2}) show that one can map the problem of light scattering by a homogeneous chiral sphere into the simpler original Mie scattering problem.
As the final step in the derivation, we compute the optical force upon the sphere by integration of the Maxwell stress tensor:
\begin{equation}
{\bf F}= \lim_{r\rightarrow \infty}\left[ -\frac{r}{2} \int_{S} {\bf r}\left( \epsilon_w \epsilon_0 E_{\rm tot}^2 + \mu_0 H_{\rm tot}^2 \right) d\Omega \right]
\label{C5Max}
\end{equation}
where ${\bf E}_{\rm tot}$ and ${\bf B}_{\rm tot}$ are the total electric and magnetic fields
and the Gaussian spherical surface $S$ is taken at infinity. At this point it is useful to define the (dimensionless) efficiency factor ${\bf Q}$
\begin{equation}
{\bf Q} = \frac{c}{n_w P} {\bf F} \, ,
\end{equation}
where ${\bf F}$ is given by (\ref{C5Max}), $P$ is the incident laser power at the sample region and $c$ is speed of light.
The efficiency may be conveniently split into extinction and scattering terms
\begin{equation}
{\bf Q} = {\bf Q}_{e} + {\bf Q}_{s}, \label{C5Q}
\end{equation}
where the extinction term ${\bf Q}_e$ is connected to the rate of momentum removal from the incident beam.
Part of this momentum ends up in the scattered field at a (normalized) rate $-{\bf Q}_s$, so the total (normalized) momentum transfer rate to the particle is ${\bf Q}_e + {\bf Q}_s$. After a long but straightforward calculation \cite{epl, Mazolli2003}, we get the expressions for the efficiency components $Q_z$, $Q_s$ and $Q_{\phi}$, related to the axial, radial and azimuthal force components, respectively. Explicitly, we have
\begin{widetext}
\begin{itemize}
\item Extinction components
\begin{equation}
Q_{ez}(\rho_s,z_s)=\frac{4\gamma_f^2}{AN}{\rm Re}\sum_{\ell m}(2\ell+1)
G^{(\sigma)}_{\ell,m}
(A_{\ell}+B_{\ell})
G'^{(\sigma)*}_{\ell,m},
\label{C5Qez}
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
Q_{e\rho}(\rho_s,z_s)=\frac{2\gamma_f^2} {AN}{\rm Im}\sum_{\ell m}(2\ell+1)G^{(\sigma)}_{\ell,m}
(A_{\ell}+B_{\ell})
\left(G^{(\sigma)-}_{\ell ,m+1} - G^{(\sigma)+}_{\ell,m-1}\right)^*
\label{C5Qerho}
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
Q_{e\phi}(\rho_s,z_s)=-\frac{2\gamma_f^2} {AN}{\rm Re}\sum_{\ell m}(2\ell+1)G^{(\sigma)}_{\ell,m}
(A_{\ell}+B_{\ell})
\left(G^{(\sigma)+}_{\ell,m-1}+G^{(\sigma)-}_{\ell,m+1}\right)^*
\label{C5Qerho}
\end{equation}
\item Scattering components
\begin{eqnarray}
Q_{s z}(\rho_s,z_s) && \hspace{-10pt}= -\frac{8\gamma_f^2}{AN}{\rm Re}\sum_{\ell m}\frac{\sqrt{\ell(\ell+2)(\ell+m+1)(\ell-m+1)}}{\ell+1}
(A_{\ell}A_{\ell+1}^{*}+B_{\ell}B_{\ell+1}^{*})
G^{(\sigma)}_{\ell,m}G^{(\sigma)*}_{\ell+1,m} \nonumber \\
&&-\frac{8\gamma_f^2}{AN}\, \sigma \,{\rm Re}\sum_{\ell m}
\frac{(2\ell+1)}{\ell(\ell+1)} m A_{\ell}B_{\ell}^{*}\vert G^{(\sigma)}_{\ell,m}\vert^2
, \label{C5Qszp}
\end{eqnarray}
\begin{eqnarray}
Q_{s\rho}(\rho_s,z_s) = \frac{4\gamma_f^2}{AN}\sum_{\ell m}\frac{\sqrt{\ell(\ell+2)(\ell+m+1)(\ell+m+2)}}{\ell+1}
{\rm Im}\biggl\lbrace (A_{\ell}A_{\ell+1}^{*}+B_{\ell}B_{\ell+1}^{*})
\left[ G^{(\sigma)}_{\ell,m}G^{(\sigma)*}_{\ell+1,m+1}
\right. \nonumber \\
\left.
+G^{(\sigma)}_{\ell,-m}G^{(\sigma)*}_{\ell+1,-(m+1)}\right]\biggl\rbrace
-\frac{8\gamma_f^2}{AN}\sigma\sum_{\ell m} \frac{(2\ell+1)}{\ell(\ell+1)}\sqrt{(\ell-m)(\ell+m+1)}
\; {\rm Re}(A_{\ell}B_{\ell}^{*})
\, {\rm Im}( G^{(\sigma)}_{\ell,m}G^{(\sigma)*}_{\ell,m+1})
\label{C5Qsrho}
\end{eqnarray}
\begin{eqnarray}
Q_{s\phi}(\rho_s,z_s) = -\frac{4\gamma_f^2}{AN}\sum_{\ell m}\frac{\sqrt{\ell(\ell+2)(\ell+m+1)(\ell+m+2)}}{\ell+1}
{\rm Re}\biggl\lbrace (A_{\ell}A_{\ell+1}^{*}+B_{\ell}B_{\ell+1}^{*})
\left[ G^{(\sigma)}_{\ell,m}G^{(\sigma)*}_{\ell+1,m+1} \right. \nonumber \\
\left.-G^{(\sigma)}_{\ell,-m}G^{(\sigma)*}_{\ell+1,-(m+1)}\right]\biggr\rbrace
+\frac{8\gamma_f^2}{AN}\sigma\sum_{\ell m}
\frac{(2\ell+1)}{\ell(\ell+1)}\sqrt{(\ell-m)(\ell+m+1)} \; {\rm Re}(A_{\ell}B_{\ell}^{*})
\,{\rm Re}( G^{(\sigma)}_{\ell,m}G^{(\sigma)*}_{\ell,m+1}) \, ,
\label{C5Qsphi}
\end{eqnarray}
\end{itemize}
\end{widetext}
We have defined
\(
A = 1-e^{-2\gamma_f^2\,\sin^2\theta_0}
\)
as the fraction
of the trapping beam power that fills the objective entrance aperture and propagates into the sample.
Explicit expressions for
the multipole coefficients $G_{\ell m}^{(\sigma)}$, ${G'}_{\ell m}^{(\sigma)}$ and $G_{\ell m}^{(\sigma)\pm}$ are given in the appendix.
\section{Results and Discussion}
In this section, we present our numerical results for the optical forces and optical torques in the framework of the MDSA formalism derived in Sec. ~II. In all the following examples we take the refractive indexes of the sphere and aqueous suspension to be $n_s = 1.58$ and $n_w = 1.332,$
respectively. The vacuum wavelength of the laser beam is $\lambda_0=2\pi/k_0=1064\, \rm nm$, and the other relevant parameters are
$\gamma_f=1.226$ and NA$=1.4$.
\subsection{Optical trapping}
Due to axial symmetry, it is sufficient to analyze the optical force $F_z$ to ensure 3-D trapping stability of optical trap. In Fig. \ref{C5a1}, we calculate the normalized axial force acting on a microsphere as a function of sphere position along the laser axis
when taking
right-circular polarization (RCP), which corresponds to helicity $\sigma=-1.$.
We clearly see an enantioselection effect taking place. For instance, the RCP beam attracts the right-handed chiral particles with $\kappa=-0.3$ (black line) towards the paraxial focal plane with stable equilibrium position close to the focus and repels the left-handed chiral enantiomer with $\kappa=0.3 $ out of the illuminated area (dashed line).
\begin{figure}
\includegraphics[width = 3.4 in]{C5F1+F2n}
\caption{ Dimensionless axial force efficiency $Q_z$ as a function of position (in units of sphere radius) along the laser axis for different values of the
chirality parameter: $\kappa=-0.3$ (black line), $\kappa=0$ (dotted line) and $\kappa=0.3$ (dashed line). The incident beam is
right-circularly polarized ($\sigma=-1$) and the microsphere radius is $ a=1\, \mu {\rm m}$.
Inset: $Q_z$ as a function of $\kappa$ at a fixed axial position $z/a=1.2$ for $\sigma=-1 $ (red dotted line) and $\sigma=1$ (blue line). }
\label{C5a1}
\end{figure}
Due to mirror symmetry, this result is exactly reversed for left circularly polarized (LCP) beams, so that in this case the spheres with positive chirality get trapped. This is illustrated by the inset of Fig. \ref{C5a1}, where we plot the normalized axial force as a function of chirality for left and right polarization of the beam. Therefore, in a racemic mixture one could potentially use this effect to trap exclusively right- or left-handed particles by using a RCP or a LCP beam.
In addition, from the inset of Fig. \ref{C5a1} it is also clear that despite favoring ``same sign'' trapping (RCP traps right-handed particles and vice versa), ``oposite sign'' trapping is also possible up to a critical value $|\kappa_0| \approx 0.22$.
We analyse more thoroughly the interplay of chirality and particle size in Fig. \ref{C5a3}. The colored area shows the negative optical force (trapping force) on right handed chiral enantiomers for RCP incident light. The most important feature of this plot is the weak dependence of the force upon the sphere radius, at least for the range considered. This means that, at least for sufficiently large values of $\kappa$, the enantioselection effect is quite robust against variation of the radius, and could be effective even in solutions where the spheres size dispersion is large.
It is important to emphasize that such values of $\kappa$ are within the reach of state-of-the-art plasmonic and metamaterial chiral nanoparticles~\cite{dionne2016,fan2012,wang2014}.
\begin{figure}
\includegraphics[width = 3.4 in]{C5F3n}
\caption{ Density plot of the dimensionless axial force efficiency $Q_z$ at axial position $z/a=1.2$.
The horizontal and vertical axes represent the chirality parameter and the microsphere radius, respectively.
Only negative values of $Q_z$ are represented by the
color scale. The vertical line indicates the critical value
$\kappa_0$ above which no trapping takes place as the optical force becomes positive.}
\label{C5a3}
\end{figure}
\subsection{Optical torque}
In the preceding section, we have shown that one can perform chiral resolution of a racemic mixture by
selective trapping of chiral enantiomers that match the handedness of the laser beam.
In this section, we discuss another method that is based on the transfer of spin angular momentum (SAM) from the focused beam to the trapped microsphere, allowing to determine the chiral parameter of single particles.
In order to exploit the SAM transfer, first we stably trap a microsphere and then produce a water flow by driving
the sample laterally
(say, along the $x-$direction), as indicated in Fig.~\ref{C5setup}. A drag force $F_S$ is then generated along the $x-$direction, that displaces the sphere away from the center of the optical trap and gives rise to a restoring force $F_\rho$. In addition, when the trapping beam is circularly polarized, it is intuitive that by pushing the sphere away from the beam axis we should also get a force along the azimuthal direction $F_\phi$, as illustrated in Fig.~\ref{C5setup}. This azimuthal force component
essentially converts (some of) the spin angular momentum of the beam to angular momentum of the sphere, until it equilibrates at an angle $\alpha = \arctan(F_{\phi} / F_{\rho})$. Explicit expressions for such force components were given in Sec. II.
It is more than reasonable to expect that such equilibrium angle should depend considerably upon the sphere chirality, and that is precisely what we show below.
\begin{figure}
\includegraphics[width = 3. in]{C5F4n}
\caption{Rotation angle $\alpha$ of a chiral microsphere of radius {$a=0.6\, \mu{\rm m}$} as a function of the chirality parameter $\kappa.$
The incident beam is right-circularly polarized ($\sigma=-1$). }
\label{C5a4}
\end{figure}
Fig. \ref{C5a4} shows the optical torque exerted on the sphere in terms of the rotation angle $ \alpha $ in degrees for a RCP trapping beam ($\sigma=-1$).
First of all, it is important to mention that for a small decrease in the chirality parameter of magnitude $ \delta \kappa = 10^{-2}$ the sphere undergoes a measurable additional
rotation of $\delta \alpha=0.2-0.5$ degrees (with the largest variation for the highest positive values of $\kappa$ shown in the figure).
Such strong variation of the rotation angle suggests a suitable scheme to determine and characterize the chiral parameter of a single particle, which remains a challenging task so far~\cite{dionnereply}.
When the rotation angle becomes positive for negative values of $\kappa$
in Fig.~\ref{C5a4}, it means that the scattered field carries a magnitude of angular momentum
that exceeds that of the
incident field \cite{kaina2019}, so that conservation of angular momentum leads to a torque opposite to the input spin. Such negative torque corresponds to a positive rotation angle $\alpha$ because we take $\sigma=-1$ here.
By increasing the value of $\kappa$, the rotation angle not only changes its sign but also achieves very large values in comparison to the case of achiral homogenous spheres treated so far~\cite{kaina2019}, showing that chirality leads to a significant enhancement of
the light-particle angular momentum transfer.
Figure \ref{C5a4} also shows that $\alpha$ changes its sign at a relative small value, $\kappa\approx -0.02$.
This result demonstrates that enantioselection can also be attained by detecting the sign of the rotation angle of a particle trapped using optical tweezers, in addition to the previous chiral resolution mechanism based on selective trapping of particles of a given handedness, as previously presented.
\begin{figure}
\includegraphics[width = 3.4 in]{C5F5n}
\caption{Microsphere rotation angle versus sphere radius. The solid and dotted lines correspond to
$\kappa= -0.3$ and $\kappa= 0,$ respectively. The incident beam is right-circularly polarized ($\sigma=-1$). }
\label{C5a5}
\end{figure}
In Fig.~\ref{C5a5}, we plot the variation of the rotation angle $\alpha$ versus
the microsphere radius for two fixed values of the chirality parameter: $\kappa= -0.3$ (solid) and $\kappa= 0$ (dotted).
As in Fig.~\ref{C5a4}, we take RCP corresponding to $\sigma=-1.$
For small microspheres
the rotation angle is negative for
achiral particles (positive torque)
and positive for $\kappa=-0.3$ (negative torque).
In the Rayleigh scattering regime, $a \ll \lambda_0$, scattering is weak and both force and torque are dominated by the extinction contribution.
Indeed, very small particles behave as local probes of the input angular momentum, thus explaining the negative angles in the case of small achiral spheres.
On the other hand, Fig.~\ref{C5a5} shows that the particle chirality strongly affects the sign of the optical torque even in the Rayleigh limit.
As the size parameter increases light scattering becomes more prominent and the transfer of angular momentum is amplified~\cite{SBradshaw2017}, leading to much larger angles as illustrated by Fig.~\ref{C5a5}.
In particular, we find a peak value around $a\approx 0.3\,\mu{\rm m}$ of approximately $17^{\rm o}.$ Such a large rotation angle cannot be obtained with achiral microspheres~\cite{kaina2019}. As the radius is further increased into the ray optics range, the rotation angle for the achiral sphere
oscillates around zero, which is compatible with the vanishing optical torque in the ray optics approximation \cite{Mazolli2003}, whereas the curve for the chiral
particle suggests a nonzero torque in this limit.
\section{Conclusions}
In this paper we developed the theory of optical tweezing for optically active homogeneous microspheres. First we developed the Bohren decomposition in terms of Debye potentials representing the incident and scattered field.
Then we used the Maxwell stress tensor to calculate the optical forces exerted on chiral spheres.
Our numerical analysis predicts that circularly polarized light exerts different optical forces on left- and right-handed chiral microspheres, allowing for enantioselection.
We also have shown that angular momentum transfer is different for chiral microspheres of opposite handedness, which not only greatly enhances optical rotation of the microsphere with respect to the achiral case treated so far but also leads to another chiral resolution method based on enantioselective optical torque. Altogether our findings pave the way for alternative chiral resolution methods based on optical tweezing and characterisation of chirality for the important class of homogeneous chiral microspheres, each and every one with its individual, unique chiral response.
\begin{acknowledgments}
We thank D. S. Ether jr and N. B. Viana for inspiring discussions. This work has been supported by
the Brazilian agencies National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq),
Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), the National Institute of Science and Technology Complex Fluids (INCT-FCx),
and the Research Foundations of the States of Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG), Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ) and S\~ao Paulo (FAPESP).
\end{acknowledgments}
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
}
| 8,014
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Национални парк Фонг Ња-Ке Банг је национални парк у покрајини Куангбин у Вијетнаму, 450 km јужно од Ханоја, а 44 km северно од Аеродрома Донгхој. Парк има 300 пећина укупне дужине од 70 km, као и подземне реке. Овај парк је биолошки веома разнолик.
Парк обухвата 857,54 km². У априлу 2009, британски истраживачи открили су нову пећину овде, названу Сон Донг. Они су прогласили Сон Донг као највећу пећину на свету. Фонг Ња-Ке Банг има и велику биолошку разноликост.Године 2003. уврштен је на УНЕСКО-в Списак места Светске баштине у Азији и Аустралазији као "јединствен комплекс геоморфолошких творевина велике важности у чијем великом подручју се налази спектакуларни комплекс 65 км пећина и подземних река".
Око 92% парка је прекривено тропском шумом, од које је 92,2% прашума. Иако је страшно страдала у Вијетнамском рату, ова шума се брзо обнавља и данас је у добром стању. Она има високи степен биљне биоразноликости многих васкуларних биљака.
У парку је забележено 568 врста кичмењака, од чега 113 врста сисара, 81 врста рептила и водоземаца, 302 врсте птица и 72 врсте риба. Од сисара ту живе угрожене врсте као што су: тигар, азијски мрки медвед, азијски слон, јелен мунтжак, азијски дивљи пас, и новопронађена ендемска врста малог говеда - саола. Парк је јако богат и приматима с 10 врста и подврста који чине 45% укупног броја врста у Вијетнаму.
Референце
Спољашње везе
Национални паркови у Вијетнаму
Светска баштина у Вијетнаму
Куангбин
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{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
}
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Q: Date validation fails because of date format I guess I have the following regex which validates dates:
//are not both dates
if (!methods._isDate(first[0].value) || !methods._isDate(second[0].value)) {
return options.allrules[rules[i]].alertText +
options.allrules[rules[i]].alertText2;
}
Regex below :
_isDate: function (value) {
var dateRegEx = new RegExp(/^\d{4}[\/\-](0?[1-9]|1[012])[\/\-](0?[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])$|^(?:(?:(?:0?[13578]|1[02])(\/|-)31)|(?:(?:0?[1,3-9]|1[0-2])(\/|-)(?:29|30)))(\/|-)(?:[1-9]\d\d\d|\d[1-9]\d\d|\d\d[1-9]\d|\d\d\d[1-9])$|^(?:(?:0?[1-9]|1[0-2])(\/|-)(?:0?[1-9]|1\d|2[0-8]))(\/|-)(?:[1-9]\d\d\d|\d[1-9]\d\d|\d\d[1-9]\d|\d\d\d[1-9])$|^(0?2(\/|-)29)(\/|-)(?:(?:0[48]00|[13579][26]00|[2468][048]00)|(?:\d\d)?(?:0[48]|[2468][048]|[13579][26]))$/);
return dateRegEx.test(value);
},
But this looks like for mmddyy, and my date is always ddmmyy.
Can you rewrite this regex? Please check it.
A: For DDMMYYYY, with optional leading 0 for day and month, separators / or -, years 1900-2099, without checking validity of 29., 30. or 31. day in month it would be:
/^(0?[1-9]|[12]\d|3[01])[\/\-](0?[1-9]|1[012])[\/\-](19\d{2}|20\d{2})$/
To use just 2-digit year format go with:
/^(0?[1-9]|[12]\d|3[01])[\/\-](0?[1-9]|1[012])[\/\-](\d{2})$/
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
}
| 2,149
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Q: SQL Server Database Connection Pooling? I am getting the following exception in the website which has to a large extent deal with data entry operations. It also has Indexes defined on the tables in the associated database. The database calls are made via SQLHelper. For e.g. SQLHelper.ExecuteNonQuery() etc. I cannot see anywhere that the Close() or Dispose() method of the SQLConnection is invoked. So I am assuming that SQLHelper must be taking care of it as I have also read about it on various sites. Also, to check the code in combination with Close() or Dispose() is also very tedious as SQLHelper is used in many places and there are many classes where business logic is defined. The exception that I am getting is:
The record was not updated Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to obtaining a connection from the pool. This may have occurred because all pooled connections were in use and max pool size was reached.
For now I have tested the code with putting GC.Collect in the Application_EndRequest Method of Global.asax and everything as of now is working fine. But I know that it is strictly not recommend to use the same.
Any help will be GREATLY appreciated as I am stuck @ present..
A: Not sure which version of your SQLHelper is, but if you can't see any connection.Close() been called then you need manually call it to make sure connection closed. Garbage collector will not close the connection for you.
EDIT
Also about the connection pooling it's by default enabled by .Net itself, you call connection.Close() does not mean the connection between your application to SQL Server really been closed, it's just return that connection back to connection pool and wait for others to grab. Only if after a while nobody open new connection that connection them will be physically closed, so you should not need to worry about call connection.Close() too many times, instead of that you need to call it asap to release the resource for other threads to use.
For more detail please check how Microsoft saying about connection pool: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8xx3tyca.aspx
ANOTHER EDIT
I suggest you find an updated version of SQLHelper or go ahead change SQLHelper to add Close() in it. Even if you found GC help you closed the connection but you should not use it that way, GC is not designed for release database connection but just memory, also GC.Collect() is not guaranteed it will immediately do it right away to start garbage collection.
Also you are coding web application so you need to think concurrency, what if when you calling GC.Collect() when another thread is running, will that slow down your system to other users?
It's a common sense that those limited resources (like db connection, TCP/IP port, file read/write handler etc)need to be released as soon as possible. If you are looking for an easy way to make you coding easily without even using connection.Close then you are going to a wrong direction, I understand you want simply you code and not add that line everywhere but you at least need to make sure SQLHelper doing the job to close connection.
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{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
}
| 6,883
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\section{Introduction} \label{intro}
\input{./Introduction.tex}
\section{Algorithm} \label{dsom}
\input{./Dmanalgo.tex}
\section{Experimental Analysis} \label{experiments}
\input{./Experiments.tex}
\section{Discussion}
Currently, all state of art training algorithms for topographic maps (and their variants) rely on densely connected neurons. This is in spite of the scalability advantages that sparse topologies have to offer \cite{mocanu2018scalable}. To boost the computational performance of topographic maps, the state of art relies on distributed map-reduce platform \cite{parallelSOM,parallelcudaSOM}. However such solutions require synchronization and central entity - and are thus vulnerable to the limitations of the communication channel (i.e. delays, bandwidth, reliability) and slow workers \cite{mnih2016asynchronous,li2019generalized,fernando2017pathnet}.
These limitations can be overcome by enabling the asynchronous execution of the training process. Broadly speaking, the challenge in enabling the asynchronous execution of an algorithm lies in ensuring a sufficiently low level of dependencies between the algorithm's segments - a.k.a. loose coupling. To achieve that, we propose a topographic map training algorithm distributes all computation to a swarm of autonomous units.
Each unit is only aware of a few pre-defined neighbors, with which it interacts infrequently - resulting in loose coupling.
We investigate the behavior of this scheme empirically on MNIST, and prescribe a concrete hyper-parameter configuration in the process.
We then showcase the potential of the presented approach in a classification task, in which the algorithm is found to perform comparably to a SOM.
Additionally, we demonstrate that the prescribed hyper-parameter configuration is not strongly dependent on map size, or on the structure of the data - see subsections \ref{exp:scalability} and \ref{applicability}.
Finally, we are able to analytically derive an upper bound for the computational complexity \ref{complexity} under the prescribed hyper-parameterization, which is found to equal that of synchronously trained approaches in the domain (SOM).
Future works may focus on enhancing the components of the proposed algorithm, e.g. on a more effective distributed search method.
Another option would be to consider alternative cascading mechanisms, that can be subjected to faster external drive - which would result in higher data throughput (that is, more samples may be processed simultaneously on different units). Other works may focus on industrial applications which may benefit by increasing the maximum tractable map size.
\section{Appendix}\label{appendix}
\begin{figure*}[ht!]
\centering
\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{pics/scalingAccuracy.pdf}
\caption{The efficacy of the presented heuristic search scheme in not sensitive to map size $N$ - which allows for the map quality to improve as $N$ increases.
The left subplot reveals that the search error remains around the same level, while the centre and right subplots reveal that topological and quantisation errors decrease along with $N$.
Error bands are placed at one standard deviation, and are not visually discernable for the rightmost (green) subplot.
$10$ maps were trained for each $N$ value, while the number of search iterations is set to $e=3N$.
The remaining details of the experiment setup can be found in Section 3, paragraph "Default configuration".}\label{appendix1}
\end{figure*}
We assess the scalability of the heuristic search (see Subsection 2.1) - under the proposed hyperparameterisation scheme (see Section 3, paragraph `Default configuration') - experimentally.
Specifically, we use the MNIST dataset and calculate the search error (defined in Subsection 2.1), and topological \& quantisation errors (defined in Section 3) for maps of inreasing sizes ($N \in \{ 100, 225, 400, 625, 900, 1600, 2500, 3600 \} $).
For each $N$ value we simulate $10$ maps.
The results of the experiment are depicted in figure \ref{appendix1}, which depicts the average search, topological, and quantisation errors - along with the respective error bands.
The leftmost subplot demonstrates that search error remains on the same level for increasing $N$, which implies that the proposed search is scalable with respect to system size (for the given hyperparametrisation and dataset).
Additionally, the centre and right subplots depict both quantisation and topological error decreasing along with $N$.
These observations lead us to the conclusion that the proposed search scheme is scalable with respect to size - in the sense that the map's topological and approximation quality to improve as $N$ increases.
\subsection{Methodology} \label{DMAN_algo}
Each of the $N$ units is given a position in two spaces: the unit space and the sample space.
In the unit space, units are arranged in a regular lattice, $\left\{ 0, .. \sqrt{N} \right\}^2$.
Unit's $j$ position in the sample space is given by the weight vector $w_j$.
As part of the cascading mechanics, each unit is given a counter $c_j$ (initialized with $0$), and all units share a common cascading threshold $\theta$.
Through training, we seek to obtain weights $w_j$ such that: \textbf{i)} the topologies of the units in the two spaces (sample and unit space) are similar, and \textbf{ii}) the weights accurately approximate the distribution of the samples in sample space.
\textbf{Links} are drawn based on the Manhattan distance of units $j,k$ in the unit space $D_{jk}$.
\begin{itemize}
\item{
\textbf{Near links} are used for the heuristic search and adaptation. These links are drawn if $D_{jk} \leq 1$, forming a square lattice. The units linked to unit $j$ through near links are the \textit{near neighbors} of $j$, denoted by $\mathcal{N}_j$.
}
\item{
\textbf{
Far links} are only used for the heuristic search.
They are drawn probabilistically, by connecting each unit $j$ to a fixed number $\phi$ of its peers, with a probability\footnote{Such connection probability parameterizations (distance based power-laws) are known to perform optimally in certain heuristic search problems involving spatial graphs \cite{kleinberg2000navigation} - but different schemes may be consider in future works.} $\sim D_{jk}^{-1}$.
Units connected to unit $j$ through far links are the \textit{far neighbors}, denoted by $\mathcal{F}_j$. Details on the choice of $\phi$ are found in the respective section.
}
\end{itemize}
Training the map involves two processes: the distributed heuristic search for the GMU, and the cascade-driven adaptation. Adaptation relies solely on the near links, while the heuristic search utilises both near and far links.
\subsection{The distributed heuristic search} \label{thesearch}
The search aims to determine the GMU $j^*$, in a fashion akin to a relay-race: the sample is passed between units, in an effort to find a $j^*$ that minimizes:
\begin{equation}
q_{ij^*} = |w_{j^*} - s_i|.
\end{equation}
The search involves two phases.
Starting from a random unit $j$ (who we also set as $j^*$), we take the following steps:
\begin{enumerate}
\item{
\textbf{Random exploration}, the index of the unit holding the sample $j$ is updated by picking a far neighbor or $j$ uniformly at random.
The sample is sent there, and if $q_{ij} < q_{ij^*}$ we update the GMU: $j^* \leftarrow j$.
}
\item{We repeat step 1, for a total of $e$ iterations (where $e$ is a user defined parameter). We then polish the best know solution $j^*$ through a greedy search. }
\item{
\textbf{Greedy exploitation} The sample is compared to the near and far neighbors of $j^*$, and determine $k^*$:
\begin{equation}
k^* \leftarrow \underset{k \in \mathcal{N}_j}{\text{argmin}} ~~ q_{ki}
\end{equation}
}
\item{If we get $q_{ik^*} < q_{ij^*}$ the GMU index is updated $j^* \leftarrow k^*$ and step 3 is repeated. Otherwise, we the search is terminated and $j^*$ is the GMU.}
\end{enumerate}
\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[scale=0.12]{pics/DistributedSearch.png}
\caption{
Visualizing the proposed heuristic search.
Units are linked to near and far neighbors (black and blue lines).
Each sample hops over the links, in an effort to find a its best-matching unit.
The search has two phases: random exploration over the far links (pink highlight), and a greedy search over near links (red highlight).
Far links allow for effective exploration (details in section \ref{thesearch}).
We depict a small fraction of the far links. }\label{dSearch}
\end{figure}
The number of exploration iterations $e$ (see step 2) can be used to adjust the accuracy of the search.
To quantify the performance of this search, we may check if the unit identified as the GMU is in fact the best matching unit (BMU) - that is, the global optimum of the problem ${argmin}_j ~~ q_{j}(i)$.
If a search results in a GMU that does not coincide with the BMU we say that the search has failed.
In the following subsection, the performance of the search is quantified by calculating the fraction number of failed searches towards the end of training.
We refer to this quantity as \textit{search error}, denoted by $F$.
The pathology arising from an inaccurate search, along with an empirical investigation on how $e$ impacts search accuracy for different map sizes $N$ can be found in the next section (see subsection \ref{exp:search}).
Additionally, the search algorithm is presented in pseudo-code form in Algorithm \ref{psudocode} and visualized in Figure \ref{dSearch}.
Note that the distant connections in $\mathcal{F}_j$ allow for long jumps in the unit space prior to (and during) the greedy search - helping the algorithm escape from local minima.
Sufficiently increasing the number of far connections per unit $\phi$ allows for the random search process to quickly diffuse over the map, in $\mathcal{O}(\log(N))$ iterations \cite{martel2004analyzing} - ensuring the scalability of the search with respect to map size.
This effect is well known in graph theory as the \textit{small-world} effect \cite{milgram1967small}, and it can be achieved with a relatively small number of $\phi$ \cite{barriere2001efficient}.
This search algorithm suffices for demonstration purposes, but more sophisticated schemes may be considered in the future.
\subsection{Cascade-driven adaptation}\label{cascading}
Adaptation occurs once the GMU $j^*$ is determined. Let $l_s$ by a user defined constant learning rate, the weight vector is updated by:
\begin{equation}
w_{j^*} \leftarrow w_{j^*} + l_s (s_i-w_{j^*})
\end{equation}
Additionally, the cascading counter of the GMU is increased (by applying $c_{j^*} \leftarrow c_{j^*}+1$) with a probability $p_i$.
The exact parametrization of $p_i$ (dubbed the cascading probability) will be discussed later in this section.
Afterwards, cascading adaptation may take place through the following rules:
\begin{enumerate}
\item{\textbf{Firing:}
If a cascading counter update yields $c_j > \theta$, the unit is said to \textit{fire}: it resets $c_j \leftarrow 0 $, and broadcasts $w_j$ to all its near neighbors.}
\item{
\textbf{Cascading adaptation:}
Upon receiving a weight vector $w_k$, unit $j$ \textit{adapts} its weight own vector:
\begin{equation}
w_j \leftarrow w_j + l_c(i) (w_j - w_k)
\end{equation}
where $i$ is the index of the last sample, and $l_c(i)$ is a learning rate which depends on the training index $i$.}
\item{\textbf{Drive:} Following every adaptation of $w_j$ we apply $c_j \leftarrow c_j + 1 $ with a probability of $p_i$. }
\end{enumerate}
The cascading adaptation process is also described in pseudo-code from in Algorithm \ref{psudocode}. The magnitude of the cascading event associated with sample $i$ is measured by the \textit{cascade size} $a_i$ - which is calculated by counting the number of firing incidents after all firing has ceased.
In the following analysis, we commonly refer to the fractional cascade size, which is defined as $A_i = a_i/N$.
Each firing incident results in a unit attracting its near neighbors in the sample space.
This increases the topological order of the map - but may also reduce the similarity of the weight vectors to the samples.
The attraction between weights can be controlled via the learning rate $l_c(i)$, and $p_i$.
In an effort to globally order the map, we allow for large scale cascading (of scale $\mathcal{O}(N)$) and high $l_c$, during early training.
Then, we gradually reduce both $l_c, p_i$ over the course of training, allowing the weights to better approximate samples.
The cascading learning rate follows:
\begin{align}
l_c(i) &= \left( 1 + tanh \left( \frac{c_{o}- i/i_{max}}{c_s} \right) \right) \bigg/ 2 \label{eq:lc}
\end{align}
Where $i_{max}$ is the total number of training iterations, and $c_o,c_s$ are user defined constants.
Equation \eqref{eq:lc} results in $l_c(i)$ following a smoothly decreasing slope as training progresses - while ensuring $l_c(i)\in (0,1), ~ \forall i$.
The \textit{offset} parameter $c_{o}$ controls how late into training $l_c$ reaches the value $0.5$ - e.g. setting $c_o=0$ or $c_o=1$ results in $l_c(0)=0.5$ and $l_c(i_{max})=0.5$ respectively.
Parameter $c_s$ control the slope of decrease - with $c_s=0$ resulting in the instantaneous decrease from 1 to 0, and $c_s \rightarrow \inf$ resulting in constant $l_c$.
\begin{algorithm}[htp!]
e : Number of Explorations\\
l\_s : Learning Rate for Samples\\
$\theta$ : Cascading Threshold\\
$i\_max$ : Total Number of Training Samples \\
\setcounter{AlgoLine}{0}
\DontPrintSemicolon
\SetKwFunction{FMain}{}
\SetKwProg{TM}{Function TrainMap}{:}{}
\TM{\FMain{}}{
ConnectNearNeighbors() \\
ConnectFarNeighbors() \\
\For{i: 1 to i\_max}{
sample = getRandomSample()\\
bmu = HeuristicSearch(sample)\\
AdjustWeight( bmu, sample, l\_s)\\
IncrementGrain(bmu,i)\\
\If {getGrains(bmu) $>$= $\theta$}
{
Cascading(bmu, i)
}
}
}
\;\\
\setcounter{AlgoLine}{0}
\DontPrintSemicolon
\SetKwProg{Hc}{\textbf{async} Function HeuristicSearch}{:}{}
\Hc{\FMain{$sample$}}{
bmu = getRandomUnit()\\
rnd\_neighbor = bmu\\
\For{1 to e}{
rnd\_neighbor = getRandomFarNeighbor( rnd\_neighbor )\\
temp = getDistance(rnd\_neighbor, sample)\\
\If{temp$<$ min\_dist}
{
bmu = rnd\_neighbor\\
min\_dist = temp
}
}
temp = getMinDistNeighbor(bmu, sample)\\
\While{temp $<$ min\_dist}
{
bmu = neighbor\\
min\_dist = temp\\
neighbor = getMinDistNeighbor(bmu, sample)\\
temp= getDistance(neighbor , sample)
}
\KwRet bmu \;
}
\;\\
\setcounter{AlgoLine}{0}
\SetKwProg{Fn}{\textbf{async} Function Cascading}{:}{}
\Fn{\FMain{$unit$, $i$}}{
EmptyGrains(unit)\\
\For {each near neighbor of unit}
{
AdjustWeight( neighbor, getWeight(unit), getCascadingLearningRate(i))\\
\If {rnd $<$ getCascadingProbability(i)}{ addGrain(unit)}
\If {getGrains(neighbor) $>$= $\theta$}
{
Cascading(neighbor, i)
}
}
\KwRet\;
}
\caption{Pseudocode for the proposed approach to training topographic feature maps asynchronously.}
\label{psudocode}
\end{algorithm}
\textbf{Manipulating cascade sizes}
To control the macroscopic cascading behavior we parametrize $p_i$ by relying on methods from statistical physics.
The dependence between the statistical behavior of $a_i$ and $p_i$ (that is, the probability distribution $\mathbb{P}(a_i=C; p_i)$) can be analytically understood under four assumptions:
\begin{itemize}
\item{samples are spread homogeneously across the unit space throughout training,}
\item{the value of $p_i$ changes slowly during training (known as the adiabatic approximation),}
\item{the time that passes between presenting the map with samples is enough for cascading to cease, }
\item{the number of near links equals the threshold $\theta = |\mathcal{N}_j|$.}
\end{itemize}
Based on these assumptions - and for $p_i=1$ - cascading can be exactly mapped to the BTW sandpile model \cite{bak1988self}.
For $p_i < 0$ cascading can be mapped to a non-conservative variant of the well established sandpile model where dissipation occurs with probability $1-p_i$ \cite{vespignani1998driving, malcai2006dissipative}.
In this (dissipative) variant, cascade sizes are known to follow a power law distribution - truncated exponentially at a characteristic fractional size $\bar{\chi}$.
In dissipative sandpile models, it generally holds $\bar{\chi} \sim d^{-s} $ where $d$ is the rate of dissipation, and $s$ a critical exponent which depends on the specific rules governing cascading \cite{vespignani1998driving, malcai2006dissipative}.
In our case, $s=1$ \cite{vespignani1998driving}, and dissipation is given by $d \sim 1-p_i$.
Thus, we can manipulate the characteristic cascade size $\bar{a}_i$ by adjusting $p_i$.
In order to study the behavior of the algorithm under varying map sizes $N$, it is instructive to parametrize $p_i$ in a way that results in \textit{scale invariant dynamics}: that is, the relative size of cascades $a_i / N$ is independent of $N$.
For $N$ sufficiently large, we can achieve scale invariance by the following parametrization:
\begin{equation}
p_i = \left( 1 - \frac{1}{\sqrt{c_m N}} \right) \left( 1- \frac{i}{i_{max}} \right)^{\frac{c_d}{N}} \label{eq:pi}
\end{equation}
This relation results in a high starting value of $\bar{a_i}$ which reduces over time.
The constant $1/N << c_m < 1 $ controls the characteristic size $\bar{a_i}$ in early training, while $c_d \in (0, \infty )$ controls the rate at which $\bar{a_i}$ shrinks over time.
The above behavior is independent of the system size $N$.
\section{Exprimental analysis}
In this section we explore the impact of the model's hyper-parameter on the quality of the resulting map.
Our analysis is focused on the hyper-parameters that govern the two novel components of the presented algorithm: the cascading adaptation mechanism and the distributed heuristic search.
\paragraph{Default configuration} Unless otherwise stated, for all experiments of this section, we will be considering the MNIST dataset and a map of 900 units, with the following configuration:
The number of far connections $\phi$ is set to 20 (which ensures that the network is densely connected).
The learning rate parameters are set to $l_s = 0.05$ , $c_o = 0.5$ and $c_s = 0.5$. Cascading parameters are set to $c_m = 0.1$ and $c_d = 100$. Exploration iterations are set to $e = 3N$.
The number of training iterations are proportional to the number of the units (as is common practice for the closely related algorithm SOM \cite{massivesom}).
The number of epochs are adjust so that the number of training samples is $i_{max} \approx 600N$. \label{default_hyper}
\paragraph{Measuring map quality} Map quality can be assessed in two ways, using two different, well-established metrics. Quantization error quantifies how well the weight vectors describe the distribution of the samples in the sample space, while Topological error quantifies the topological order the map (on a local scale) \cite{topdistoration_LR}.
The quantisation and topological error of a map are denoted by $Q$ and $T$ respectively.
\subsection{Heuristic search accuracy}\label{exp:search}
To explore the impact of the exploitative search iterations parameter $e$ on the resulting map, we train maps using an increasing number of search iterations: $e \in \{0.01 N, 0.05N, 0.1N, 0.2 N, 0.3 N \ldots 5N \}$ and compare the resulting search accuracies. To quantify search accuracy, we focus on the last $1000$ training iterations, and calculate as the fraction of times that the GMU did not coincide with the BMU. This fraction is denoted by $F$.
\begin{figure}[h!]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{pics/ACC_vs_e.pdf}
\caption{Increasing the exploitative search iterations $e$ asymptotically reduces search error (blue line) and topological error (red line).
Increasing search accuracy has a diminishing effect on map quality.
Confidence intervals are placed at one $std$, and calculated over $5$ runs.
For the experiment's configuration see section \ref{default_hyper} - second paragraph.}
\label{fmbusVSE}
\end{figure}
The results of this experiment can be seen in figure \ref{fmbusVSE}, which reveals that the accuracy of the heuristic search increases exponentially over the range of considered $e$.
The figure also depicts the topological error of the map as a function of $e$, revealing that further increasing the search accuracy offers diminishing improvements to topological quality.
Based on these results, we will be setting the hyper-parameter $e=3N$ for all remaining experiments (as $3N$ is the smallest value of $e$ the results in search accuracy $>99\%$).
For $e=3N$, the scalability of the search with respect to $N$ is established in a subsequent experiment (see subsection \ref{exp:scalability}) which demonstrates that the map quality improves as $N$ increases.
More thorough analyze can be found in the Appendix.
\subsection{Cascading adaptation}\label{exp:cascading}
The cascading adaptation mechanism relies on two hyper-parameters, one associated with the average cascade size during early training, and one with the rate at which cascade sizes decrease over the training duration ($c_m, c_d$ respectively).
To assess the impact of these two parameters, we train maps configured over a sparse grid of $(c_m, c_d)$, with $c_m \in \{ 0.01, 0.05 0.1 \ldots 1 \}$ and $c_d \in \{ 10, 10^2, 10^3, 10^4 \}$.The topological and quantization errors of the resulting maps are shown in figure \ref{CascadeSearch} - for two map sizes.
Figure \ref{CascadeSearch} reveals that quantization and topological error are not sensitive to $c_m$. We can therefore select a small $c_m$, which result in smaller cascades and reducing computation.
However, $c_m$ must be $>>1/N$ (see equation \eqref{eq:pi}) - and thus we select $c_m=0.1$ for the remaining experiments as a compromise.
\begin{figure}[h!]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{pics/CascadingScaleInvariance.pdf}
\caption{
Increasing map size $N$ does not significantly affect fractional cascade sizes $A_i$.
We track the upper $1000$th quantile of $A_i$ during training (over a rolling window of width $i_{max}/100$) - for increasing map sizes $N$.
Tracked trajectories collapse to a single time-line, indicating the $N$ does not affect fractional cascade sizes.
For the experiment's configuration see section \ref{default_hyper} - second paragraph.
}\label{CascadingScaleInvariance}
\end{figure}
To more closely examine the impact of the other cascading hyper-parameter $c_d$ on the algorithm's performance, we train maps with increasing $c_d$, and measure their quantization nd topological errors.
We demonstrate results in figure \ref{QTDecay}, which reveals that $c_d$ has a mixed impact on the map quality: increasing $c_d$ may reduce quantization error at the expense of increasing topological error.
Thus, the selection of an appropriate value for $c_d$ may depend on the intended use of the resultant map.
We select $c_d = 100$ and $c_d=1000$ in order to emphasis low topological, and quantization error - respectively.
Cascading is controlled via the cascading probability $p_i$, which - as stated in subsection \ref{cascading} - is parametrized in such a way that the cascading behavior is naturally adjusted to the system size.
Specifically, the fractional size of cascades $A_i$ is controlled by $c_m, c_d$ and decoupled from the map's absolute size $N$.
This statement is verified empirically, by training maps of increases sizes $N \in \{ 100, 225, 400, 625, 900,1600, 2500,3600,6400 \}$ and comparing the resulting cascading activity.
To compare the cascading activity between maps of different sizes we i) take a rolling window of width $i_{max}/100$, and ii) take the mean of fractional cascade sizes $A_i$ that lie in the top $1000$th quantile.
\begin{figure}[h!]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{pics/CascadeSearch.pdf}
\caption{
A sparse grid search of the cascading parameters $c_d, c_m$ reveals that $c_m$ has minimal effect over the map's quantization and topological errors ($Q$ and $T$).
The grid search is repeated for two map sizes $N$: $400, 900$ (left column and right column respectively).
For the experiment's configuration see section \ref{default_hyper} - second paragraph.
}\label{CascadeSearch}
\end{figure}
The results of this analysis are depicted in figure \ref{CascadingScaleInvariance}, which shows that the lines plotted for all map sizes coincide - demonstrating that by using the presented parametrization of $p_i$, the fractional cascade size $A_i$ does not strongly depend on the system size - for $N>400$.
\begin{figure}[h!]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{pics/Q_T_vs_Decay.pdf}
\caption{
Inreasing the cascading decay parameter $c_d$ has a mixed effect on map quality: quantisation error $Q$ decreases at the expense of increasing topological error $T$.
For the experiment's configuration see section \ref{default_hyper} - second paragraph.
}\label{QTDecay}
\end{figure}
\subsection{Scalability} \label{exp:scalability}
To investigate the scalability of the algorithm, we train maps of increasing sizes $N \in \{ 100, 225, 400, 625, 900,1600, 2500,3600,6400 \}$ - for $c_d=100, c_m=0.1, e=3N$.
We measure the quality of each trained map (that is quantization error, topological error, search accuracy (defined in the section \ref{thesearch}).
The results are presented in the figure \ref{QTvsN}, and indicate the algorithm's scalability in terms of performance: both quantization and topological error reduce exponentially over the considered range of $N$.
This observation reveals that hyper-parameter values are not sensitive to system size - which is highly instructive for tuning (i.e. a configuration that works on a small map can also be used for a larger map).
We attribute this convenient property to the scale-invariant cascading parametrization, and the scalability of the heuristic search.
\begin{figure}[h!]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{pics/Q_T_vs_N.pdf}
\caption{
Increasing map size $N$ results in lower topological and quantization errors ($Q$ and $T$) - demonstrating that the quality of maps increases with system size - assuming large $N$.
For the experiment's configuration see section \ref{default_hyper} - second paragraph.
}\label{QTvsN}
\end{figure}
\begin{table}[ht!]\label{data_T}
\centering
\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|}
\hline
Dataset & Classes & Features & Samples \\
\hline
FMNIST & 10 & 784 & 59999 \\
& & & 10000 \\
Letters & 26 & 16 & 15000 \\
& & & 5000 \\
MNIST & 10 & 784 & 59999 \\
& & & 10000 \\
Sat. images & 6 & 36 & 4435 \\
& & & 2000 \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\caption{Description of the datasets used to evaluate the algorithm's classification performance and dataset-sensitivity. Sources of the datasets can be found in \cite{melka2017efficient}}
\end{table}
\begin{table*}[htp!]
\centering
\begin{tabular}{|cc|c|c|c|c|}
\hline
&&\multicolumn{2}{c|}{AFM}&\multicolumn{2}{c|}{Sparse-SOM}\\
\hline
Datasets & & Precision & Recall & Precision & Recall \\
\hline
FMNIST & test & $78.0 \pm 0.6$ & $76.8 \pm 0.6$ & & \\
& training & $78.0 \pm 0.3$ & $76.8 \pm 0.4$ & & \\
Letter & test & \boldmath{$83.3 \pm 0.2$} & \boldmath{$82.8 \pm 0.3$} &$81.5 \pm 0.5$ &$81.1 \pm 0.5$\\
& training & \boldmath{$86.0 \pm 0.2$}& \boldmath{$85.7 \pm 0.3$} & $83.7 \pm 0.3$ & $83.7 \pm 0.3$ \\
MNIST & test & $93.3 \pm 0.1$ & $93.2 \pm 0.2$ & \boldmath{$93.4 \pm 0.2$} & \boldmath{$93.4 \pm 0.2$} \\
& training & $93.1 \pm 0.2$ & $93.1 \pm 0.2$ &\boldmath{$93.5 \pm 0.2$} & \boldmath{$93.5 \pm 0.2$} \\
SatImage & test & \boldmath{$87.8 \pm 0.4$} & \boldmath{$87.6 \pm 0.6$} & $87.6 \pm 0.3$ & $85.3 \pm 0.4$ \\
& training & $91.7 \pm 0.2$ & $91.5 \pm 0.2$ & \boldmath{$92.3 \pm 0.4$} & \boldmath{$92.4 \pm 0.3$} \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\caption{
Comparing the classification performance of the proposed feature map (AFM) to that of the self organising map (SOM) - using values from literature \cite{melka2017efficient}.
The average and the standard deviations of Recall and precision are calculates for five runs of AFM, for multiple values.
The results are comparable with the performance of SOM.
We use a $34 \times 34$ AFM with $c_d=1000$ - for the remaining hyper-parameter values see section \ref{default_hyper} - second paragraph.}
\label{class_T}
\end{table*}
\subsection{Applicability} \label{applicability}
In this subsection we demonstrate that the presented algorithm can perform comparably to its closest literature variant (SOM) over a diverse set of datasets.
Through this demonstration, we also verify that the proposed hyper-parameters are robust to over a wide range of different datasets.
That being said, we point out that the goal of this study is not to outperform the state of art, but to demonstrate a novel approach to training feature maps in an asynchronous fashion.
Optimizing the algorithm's performance (by further calibrating hyper-parameters, or increasing $N$) can be the subject of future studies.
In order to more easily compare the results of the algorithm to the literature, we use a map of $34 \times 34$ units - resulting in $N=1156$.
We also set $c_d=1000$ which results on lower quantization error (see subsection \ref{exp:cascading}).
\paragraph{Classification}
In this section we use the presented asynchronously trained feature map (AFM) in a classification task.
We purposefully use a simple classification scheme - nearly identical to the one used in \cite{melka2017efficient}.
We do so for the sake of succinctness, and to allow for the meaningful comparison between our work and the results presented in \cite{melka2017efficient}.
\begin{enumerate}
\item{}
Each map unit $j$ is assigned with a class $y_j$ , which represents the sample class the that unit is most similar too.
These classes are assigned to units after training has finished.
\item{}
Let $Y_i$ denote the label of sample $i$.
We first find the most similar sample to $w_j$:
\begin{equation}
i^*(j) = \underset{i}{\text{argmin}} ~ |w_j - s_i|
\end{equation}
Then, unit $j$ is given the class of sample $i^*$: $y_j \leftarrow Y_{i^*}$.
\item{}
Finally, to predict the label of a sample, we find the sample's BMU and the return the class of the BMU.
\end{enumerate}
Table \ref{class_T} summaries the classification performance of the algorithm, by presenting the mean and standard deviation over $5$ runs.
Additionally, the table presents the performance metrics of an SOM of $1200$ units - as they were presented in \cite{melka2017efficient}.
Since the distance in performance in relatively small, we may consider that the presented algorithm performs comparably to an SOM of comparable size.
The figure \ref{pic:classvsN} demonstrates that classification precision increases with increasing system size.
Finally, table \ref{t:behavior_T} allows us to assess the dependence of the heuristic search algorithm and the cascading mechanism on the structure of the data.
Specifically, table \ref{t:behavior_T} presents the number of weight update operations that took place after each sample - averaged throughout the entire sample period.
The maximum relative pairwise distance between the reported number is approximately $1.5\%$, which implies that the intensity of cascading was comparable across all simulations.
Table \ref{t:behavior_T} also presents the search accuracy towards the end of training of each map - averaged for each dataset (for the definition of search accuracy see subsection \ref{thesearch}).
The search error varies between datasets, but generally remains low - with its maximum at $2.74\%$ for MNIST.
The variability of search accuracy across datasets may be attributed to the differences in the dimensionality of the datasets (since higher dimensional sample spaces may be harder to search).
\begin{figure}[h!]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{pics/CLASS_vs_N.pdf}
\caption{
When used in classification, the precision of the proposed map increases with map size $N$ (both in and out of sample).
The classification scheme used is presented in subsection \ref{applicability}.
For the experiment's configuration see section \ref{default_hyper} - second paragraph.}
\label{pic:classvsN}
\end{figure}
\subsection{Computational complexity}\label{complexity}
The previous experiments demonstrate that the presented algorithm can perform comparably to SOM for a hyper-parameter configuration that obeys: $e \sim N, p_i \leq 1, i_{max} \sim N$).
This insight allows us to derive an upper bound of the algorithm's complexity, as follows.
For each of the $i_{max} \sim \mathcal{O}(N)$ training sample, we do one exploitative search of $e \sim \mathcal{O}(N)$ iterations, followed by a greedy search of $g_i$ iterations. Since no unit can be visited twice during the greedy search it is $g_i \leq N$ and thus $g_i \sim \mathcal{O}(N)$.
Finally, after the search is over we proceed with cascading.
Cascading sizes are maximized for $p_i=1$ \cite{vespignani1998driving} - for which the presented model can be exactly mapped to the sandpile model from statistical mechanics \cite{bak1988self}.
It is well known that cascade sizes for the sandpile model scale like $N$ \cite{bak1988self}.
Since in the presented algorithm $p_i \leq 1$, the linear scaling of sandpile is a upper bound for our model, $\bar{a}_i \sim N$ (the overbar $\bar{\cdot}$ denotes an upper bound).
\begin{table}[htp]
\setlength{\tabcolsep}{1pt}
\centering
\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|}
\hline
Dataset & \makecell[c]{Max fractional \\ cascade} & \makecell[c]{Number of weight\\ updates / Sample} & Search error \\
\hline
FMNIST&$0.75 \pm 0.11$ &$3.16 \pm 0.01$ &$2.46 \% \pm 0.26\%$ \\
Letter&$0.76 \pm 0.15$ &$3.18 \pm 0.01$ &$1.62\% \pm 0.28\%$ \\
MNIST&$0.87 \pm 0.11$ &$3.18 \pm 0.01$ &$2.74\% \pm 0.74\%$ \\
SatImage&$0.78 \pm 0.17$ &$3.21 \pm 0.02$ &$1.62\% \pm 0.56\%$ \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\caption{Largest fractional cascade $\max {A_i}$, the average cascade size $\text{avg} (a_i)$ and the average search error $F$ for different dataset. Values are comparable across datasets, implying that algorithm behavior is not sensitive to the specificities of datasets.}
\label{t:behavior_T}
\end{table}
Based on the previous paragraph we can derive the computational complexity of the presented hyper-parameter parametrization ($e \sim N, p_i \leq 1, i_{max} \sim N$):
\begin{equation}
\mathcal{O}(i_{max} ~ (e + \bar{g}_i + \bar{a}_i)) = \mathcal{O} \big(N (N+N+N) \big) = \mathcal{O} (N^2)
\end{equation}
Therefore the presented parametrization has a computational complexity of $N^2$ - which is in the same class as that of its closest literature variant (the SOM \cite{massivemap}).
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
}
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{"url":"https:\/\/learn.saylor.org\/mod\/book\/view.php?id=31112&chapterid=7246","text":"## Antitrust Policy and Business Regulation\n\nRead this chapter to learn about how government policies have been in place to curve the power of imperfect competition. Also identify what the US has used regulations to protect consumers and limit the excesses of businesses via antitrust policies.\n\n### 2. Antitrust Laws and Their Interpretation\n\n#### Learning Objectives\n\n1. Define antitrust policies and tell when and why they were introduced in the United States.\n2. Discuss highlights in the history of antitrust policies in the United States, focusing on major issues.\n3. Explain the guidelines the Justice Department uses in dealing with mergers.\n\nIn the decades after the Civil War, giant corporations and cartels began to dominate railroads, oil, banking, meat packing, and a dozen other industries. These businesses were led by entrepreneurs who, rightly or wrongly, have come to be thought of as \"robber barons\" out to crush their competitors, monopolize their markets, and gouge their customers. The term \"robber baron\" was associated with such names as J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie in the steel industry, Philip Armour and Gustavas and Edwin Swift in meat packing, James P. Duke in tobacco, and John D. Rockefeller in the oil industry. They gained their market power through cartels and other business agreements aimed at restricting competition. Some formed trusts, a combination of corporations designed to consolidate, coordinate, and control the operations and policies of several companies. It was in response to the rise of these cartels and giant firms that antitrust policy was created in the United States. Antitrust policy refers to government attempts to prevent the acquisition and exercise of monopoly power and to encourage competition in the marketplace.\n\n#### A Brief History of Antitrust Policy\n\nThe final third of the nineteenth century saw two major economic transitions. The first was industrialization - a period in which U.S. firms became far more capital intensive. The second was the emergence of huge firms able to dominate whole industries. In the oil industry, for example, Standard Oil of Ohio (after 1899, the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey) began acquiring smaller firms, eventually controlling 90% of U.S. oil-refining capacity. American Tobacco gained control of up to 90% of the market for most tobacco products, excluding cigars.\n\nPublic concern about the monopoly power of these giants led to a major shift in U.S. policy. What had been an economic environment in which the government rarely intervened in the affairs of private firms was gradually transformed into an environment in which government agencies took on a much more vigorous role. The first arena of intervention was antitrust policy, which authorized the federal government to challenge the monopoly power of firms head-on. The application of this policy, however, has followed a wandering and rocky road.\n\n#### The Sherman Antitrust Act\n\nThe Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 remains the cornerstone of U.S. antitrust policy. The Sherman Act outlawed contracts, combinations, and conspiracies in restraint of trade.\n\nAn important issue in the interpretation of the Sherman Act concerns which actions by firms are illegal per se, meaning illegal in and of itself without regard to the circumstances under which it occurs. Shoplifting, for example, is illegal per se; courts do not inquire whether shoplifters have a good reason for stealing something in determining whether their acts are illegal. One key question of interpretation is whether it is illegal per se to control a large share of a market. Another is whether a merger that is likely to produce substantial monopoly power is illegal per se.\n\nTwo landmark Supreme Court cases in 1911 in which the Sherman Act was effectively used to break up Standard Oil and American Tobacco enunciated the rule of reason, which holds that whether or not a particular business practice is illegal depends on the circumstances surrounding the action. In both cases, the companies held dominant market positions, but the Court made it clear that it was their specific \"unreasonable\" behaviors that the breakups were intended to punish. In determining what was illegal and what was not, emphasis was placed on the conduct, not the structure or size, of the firms.\n\nIn the next 10 years, the Court threw out antitrust suits brought by government prosecutors against Eastman Kodak, International Harvester, United Shoe Machinery, and United States Steel. The Court determined that none of them had used unreasonable means to achieve their dominant positions in the industry. Rather, they had successfully exploited economies of scale to reduce costs below competitors' costs and had used reasonable means of competition to reap the rewards of efficiency.\n\nThe rule of reason suggests that \"bigness\" is no offense if it has been achieved through legitimate business practices. This precedent, however, was challenged in 1945 when the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled against the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa). The court acknowledged that Alcoa had been able to capture over 90% of the aluminum industry through reasonable business practices. Nevertheless, the court held that by sheer size alone, Alcoa was in violation of the prohibition against monopoly.\n\nIn a landmark 1962 court case involving a proposed merger between United Shoe Machinery and the Brown Shoe Company, one of United's competitors, the Supreme Court blocked the merger because the resulting firm would have been so efficient that it could have undersold all of its competitors. The Court recognized that lower shoe prices would have benefited consumers, but chose to protect competitors instead.\n\nThe Alcoa case and the Brown Shoe case, along with many other antitrust cases in the 1950s and 1960s, added confusion and uncertainty to the antitrust environment by appearing to reinvoke the doctrine of per se illegality. In the government's case against Visa and MasterCard, the government argued successfully that the behavior of the two firms was a per se violation of the Sherman Act.\n\nThe Sherman Act also aimed, in part, to prevent price-fixing, in which two or more firms agree to set prices or to coordinate their pricing policies. For example, in the 1950s General Electric, Westinghouse, and several other manufacturers colluded to fix prices. They agreed to assign market segments in which one firm would sell at a lower price than the others. In 1961, the General Electric\u2013Westinghouse agreement was declared illegal. The companies paid a multimillion-dollar fine, and their officers served brief jail sentences. In 2008, three manufactures of liquid crystal display panels - the flat screens used in televisions, cell phones, personal computers, and such - agreed to pay $585 million in fines for price fixing, with LG Display paying$400 million, Sharp Corporation paying $120 million, and Chunghwa Picture Tubes paying$65 million. The $400 million fine to LG is still less than the record single fine of$500 million paid in 1999 by F. Hoffman-LaRoche, the Swiss pharmaceutical company, in a case involving fixing prices of vitamin supplements.\n\n#### Other Antitrust Legislation\n\nConcerned about the continued growth of monopoly power, in 1914 Congress created the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), a five-member commission that, along with the antitrust division of the Justice Department, has the power to investigate firms that use illegal business practices.\n\nIn addition to establishing the FTC, Congress enacted new antitrust laws intended to strengthen the Sherman Act. The Clayton Act (1914) clarifies the illegal per se provision of the Sherman Act by prohibiting the purchase of a rival firm if the purchase would substantially decrease competition, and outlawing interlocking directorates, in which there are the same people sitting on the boards of directors of competing firms. More significantly, the act prohibits price discrimination that is designed to lessen competition or that tends to create a monopoly and exempts labor unions from antitrust laws.\n\nThe Sherman and Clayton acts, like other early antitrust legislation, were aimed at preventing mergers that reduce the number of firms in a single industry. The consolidation of two or more producers of the same good or service is called a horizontal merger. Such mergers increase concentration and, therefore, the likelihood of collusion among the remaining firms.\n\nThe Celler\u2013Kefauver Act of 1950 extended the antitrust provisions of earlier legislation by blocking vertical mergers, which are mergers between firms at different stages in the production and distribution of a product if a reduction in competition will result. For example, the acquisition by Ford Motor Company of a firm that supplies it with steel would be a vertical merger.\n\n#### U.S. Antitrust Policy Today\n\nThe \"bigness is badness\" doctrine dominated antitrust policy from 1945 to the 1970s. But the doctrine always had its critics. If a firm is more efficient than its competitors, why should it be punished? Critics of the antitrust laws point to the fact that of the 500 largest companies in the United States in 1950, over 100 no longer exist. New firms, including such giants as Walmart, Microsoft, and Federal Express, have taken their place. The critics argue that the emergence of these new firms is evidence of the dynamism and competitive nature of the modern corporate scene.\n\nThere is no evidence to suggest, for example, that the degree of concentration across all industries has increased over the past 25 years. Global competition and the use of the internet as a marketing tool have increased the competitiveness of a wide range of industries. Moreover, critics of antitrust policy argue that it is not necessary that an industry be perfectly competitive to achieve the benefits of competition. It need merely be contestable - open to entry by potential rivals. A large firm may be able to prevent small firms from competing, but other equally large firms may enter the industry in pursuit of the high profits earned by the initial large firm. For example, Time Warner, primarily a competitor in the publishing and entertainment industries, has in recent years become a main competitor in the cable television market.\n\nCurrently, the Justice Department follows guidelines based on the Herfindahl\u2013Hirschman Index (HHI). The HHI, introduced in an earlier chapter, is calculated by summing the squared percentage market shares of all firms in an industry, where the percentages are expressed as whole numbers (for example 30% would be expressed as 30). The higher the value of the index, the greater the degree of concentration. Possible values of the index range from 0 in the case of perfect competition to 10,000 ( = 1002 ) in the case of a monopoly.\n\nCurrent guidelines stipulate that any industry with an HHI under 1,000 is unconcentrated. Except in unusual circumstances, mergers of firms with a postmerger index under 1,000 will not be challenged. The Justice Department has said it would challenge proposed mergers with a postmerger HHI between 1,500 and 2,500 if the index increased by more than 100 points. Industries with an index greater than 2,500 are deemed highly concentrated, and the Justice Department has said it would challenge mergers in these industries if the postmerger index would increase by 100 points or more and presume likely that the merger would enhance market power if the HHI rises by more than 200 points. Table 16.1 \"The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index and Antitrust Policy\" summarizes these guidelines, which are used in conjunction with other considerations.\n\nTable 16.1 The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index and Antitrust Policy\n\nIf the postmerger Herfindahl-Hirschman Index is found to be\u2026 Then the Justice Department will likely take the following action:\nUnconcentrated (<1,500) No challenge\nModerately concentrated (1,500\u20132,500) Challenge if postmerger index changes by more than 100 points\nHighly concentrated (>2,500) Challenge if postmerger index changes by more than 100 points, with presumption of enhanced market power if change is more than 200 points\n\nThe Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have adopted the following guidelines for merger policy based on the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index.\n\nU.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission, Horizontal Merger Guidelines, issued August 19, 2010.\n\nThe Justice Department used the change in the HHI in 2011 when it sued to prevent the merger of AT&T with T-Mobile USA. In the complaint it filed, it noted that the merger would result in a national HHI of 3,100 and an increase of 700 points. In 96 of 100 regional markets, the postmerger HHI would exceed 2,500, would rise by more than 200 points in 91 of them, and would rise by more than 100 points in six of them.\n\nOne difficulty with the use of the HHI is that its value depends on the definition of the market. With a sufficiently narrow definition of the market, even a highly competitive market could have an HHI close to the value for a monopoly. The late George Stigler commented on the difficulty in a fanciful discussion of the definition of the relevant market for cameras:\n\nConsider the problem of defining a market within which the existence of competition or some form of monopoly is to be determined. The typical antitrust case is an almost impudent exercise in economic gerrymandering. The plaintiff sets the market, at a maximum, as one state in area and including only aperture-priority SLR cameras selling between $200 and$250. This might be called J-Shermanizing the market, after Senator John Sherman. The defendant will in turn insist that the market be world-wide, and include not only all cameras, but all portrait artists and all transportation media, since a visit is a substitute for a picture. This might also be called T-Shermanizing the market, after the Senator's brother, General William Tecumseh Sherman. Depending on who convinces the judge, the concentration ratio will be awesome or trivial, with a large influence on the verdict.G. J. Stigler, \"The Economists and the Problem of Monopoly,\".\n\nOf course, the definition of the relevant market is not a matter of arbitrarily defining the market as absurdly narrow or broad. There are economic tests to determine the range of goods or services that should be included in a particular market. Consider, for example, the market for refrigerators. Given the relatively low cost of shipping refrigerators, the relevant area might encompass all of North America, given the existence of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which establishes a tariff-free trade zone including Canada, the United States, and Mexico. What sorts of goods should be included? Presumably, any device that is powered by electricity or by natural gas and that keeps things cold would qualify. Certainly, a cool chest that requires ice that people take on picnics would not be included. The usual test is the cross price elasticity of demand. If it is high between any two goods, then those goods are candidates for inclusion in the market.\n\nShould the entire world be the geographic region for the market for refrigerators? That is an empirical question. If the cross price elasticities for refrigerator brands worldwide are high, then one would conclude that the world is the relevant geographical definition of the market.\n\nIn the 1980s both the courts and the Justice Department held that bigness did not necessarily translate into badness, and corporate mergers proliferated. Merger activity waxed and waned (particularly during recessions) over the ensuing years. It has been substantial in most years.\n\n#### Key Takeaways\n\n\u2022 The government uses antitrust policies to maintain competitive markets in the economy.\n\u2022 The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and subsequent legislation defined illegal business practices, but these acts are subject to widely varying interpretations by government agencies and by the courts.\n\u2022 Although price-fixing is illegal per se, most business practices that may lessen competition are interpreted under the rule of reason.\n\u2022 The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission use the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index to determine whether mergers should be challenged in particular industries.\n\n#### Try It!\n\nAccording to what basic principle did the U.S. Supreme Court find Eastman Kodak not guilty of violating antitrust laws? According to what basic principle did the Court block the merger of Brown Shoe Company and one of its competitors, United Shoe Machinery? Do you agree or disagree with the Court's choices?","date":"2021-12-06 09:27:54","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.23344704508781433, \"perplexity\": 3442.5586279679706}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2021-49\/segments\/1637964363290.59\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20211206072825-20211206102825-00116.warc.gz\"}"}
| null | null |
Q: JQuery CSS $(':animated').length delay after animation finishes on screen I am attempting to create a series of tiles in css / j query which represent buildings and the rooms within them. When you click on the building, some j query animation occurs which removes the other buildings and then shows the rooms within the building. Once in the building a "back" tile will trigger further animation to return to original set up.
Here is a jsfiddle showing this.
I have used the following snippet to prevent multiple tiles being clicked at once:
if ($(':animated').length) {
return false;
}
However there seems to be quite a longe delay from when the animation finishes on screen to the above if statement not returning false. On the js fiddle if you click on a tile and click on back as soon as animation finishes you will see this. ( I have placed an alert inside the if statement to show that it is being caught here ).
Can any light be shed on why when the animation on screen has finished, the if statement is still returning false? Is there a better method to prevent any clicks until the animation is completed for each step?
A: I think your question/problem is related with the $building.animate function.
Check this code:
(also here)
$building.siblings().hide(1000, function () {
console.log('complete 1');
$building.animate({top:"0px", left:"75px"}, 0, function () {
^
here
$building.parent().siblings(".rooms").children("."+$buildingId).show(1000);
$building.parent().siblings(".backs").children("."+$buildingId).show(1000);
console.log('complete 2');
});
});
I put the time to 0 (zero). What was happening was that .siblings() found many siblings and the script was running each of the .parent() functions after the 1000 ms timeout, waiting for the last one to be complete before starting with the new sibling.
Just for debuging purpose check also here, when the timeout is still 1000ms and look att the console.log while the animation is running.
|
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"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
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| 3,399
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Q: Rendering multiple models bug on DirectX 12 I am trying to render multiple models on DirectX 12 using only one graphic context, but the result is very weird and I have not much idea what is the reason. Rendering result of the sponza model from outside, the one on right is the correct result and the one on left has problem.
Rendering result of the left sponza (the one has problem) from inside.
Even the loaded two meshes are the same, each model has its own vertex buffer, index buffer and SRVs. In the process of creating graphics context, there is only one graphics context and set with each model's index and vertex buffer, and then I call the drawIndexed() function to render it. After the graphics context is created, we execute the graphics context once per frame. However, if we create an individual graphics context to each model and execute all graphics contexts per frame, the rendering works fine but the frame rate drops a lot.
It will be very helpful for you to provide any hints about what is the reason for the weird result, or providing a solution is even better. Thank you very much in advanced.
A: First, i would recommend you to stay away from dx12 and stick to dx11, unless you are a dx11 expert already and that you are the top 1% application case, like triple A games or very specific high demand on control over the gpu memory.
Without much details on your problems here, i can only give you a few basic advices :
*
*Run with the debug layer and look at the console log with D3D12GetDebugInterface ( you will need to install the optional feature named graphic tools )
*Use frame capture tools, like VSGD in visual studio or nsight from nVidia and inspect your frame step by step
*Use Dx11, really
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
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| 107
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You are at:Home»News»CSR»Manchester Airport staff donate to local families in need
Manchester Airport staff donate to local families in need
By Elizabeth Baker August 8, 2022 No Comments
As part of the airport's Feed a Family challenge, staff at Manchester Airport in the UK have collected crates of food, toiletries and other essentials to donate to lower-income families in neighboring communities during the school summer holidays.
The Feed a Family scheme, spearheaded by the Airport Community Network, was open to airport staff and the staff of other employers based on the site, such as airlines, retailers and construction firms. A variety of goods were donated, including pasta, rice and tinned fruit and vegetables; household necessities such as toilet roll and washing-up liquid; and toiletries such as shampoo, toothpaste and soap – as well as sweets, chocolates and toys. The donations will go to the Message Community Grocery in Sharston and The Welcome cafe in Shaw Heath, Knutsford. Colleagues from partner organizations across the Airport Community Network – including Cavu, Mace, NATS, Holiday Inn Express, Double Tree by Hilton and MediaFour – also provided items for the collection.
Sam Hawthorne, enterprise director at The Message Trust, said, "We are grateful to the Airport Community Network for this donation. The Message Community Grocery is open for the people of Manchester, helping to keep families fed and give members access to support too. This is particularly important over the school summer holiday period when children may not have access to the school meals they usually rely on during term time."
Chris Woodroofe, managing director of Manchester Airport, said, "We are delighted with the terrific response this appeal received from colleagues across the airport community. With more than one in four children now living in poverty, the school summer holidays can be quite a daunting time for lower-income families, many of whom rely on school meal provision during term time. Manchester Airport and its partners are committed to supporting our neighboring communities and this appeal is one of the many ways in which we are putting that commitment into action."
For more CSR updates from the airport sector, click here.
Aberdeen Airport passengers donate more than £3,000 to local charities
San Diego Airport's Quieter Home Program insulates 5,000 homes
Manchester Airport unveils winning school in eco-garden competition
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{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
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| 6,647
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YIMEI is specialized in manufacturing irrigation garden products. Established in 2005 in YUYAO,YIMEI aim to be one of the main suppliers in gardening and household in the world.
YIMEI apply itself to promoting to technological research and innovative design.Recognize the signs of evolving market to stay market-oriented, standing out with keen views,uprightness and reliability. And we value the role of human resources inside and outside the company. These principles have brought so much valuable effects,and making YIMEI an excellent model of total quality.
Attitude first. We value each client and put the maximum effort in taking care of every single order placed with us. All orders are promptly acknowledged and confirmed with a scheduled shipment date, and are carefully monitored up to their delivery.
Reading is from the start, while operating a company is for the end. Big effort for good end.We appreciate difficulty which makes us step forward,and there is always a way to solve, "No" is not in our dictionary. We will not ask"why we can't", but "how to do"."Me too"is not our style, and our biggest ambition is to do the product that everyone wants to copy.
We treasure water as precious resource, and hope you can save water and enjoy your garden with YIMEI irrigation garden tools.
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
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| 6,373
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{"url":"https:\/\/forum.zkoss.org\/question\/48475\/hide-column-in-table\/","text":"# Hide column in table\n\nvinhvo\n369 3\n\nI have a table with many columns . Therefore the labels of each column was partially hidden. Is there anyway to auto change line in column table ?\n\nThank you.\n\ndelete retag edit\n\n## 4 Replies\n\njimmyshiau\n4921 5\nhttp:\/\/www.zkoss.org\/\n\nHi vinhvo\nCould you post your sample code ?\n\nvinhvo\n369 3\n\n<grid mold=\"paging\" pageSize=\"10\" id=\"myGrid\" fixedLayout=\"true\" >\n<columns sizable=\"true\">\n<column label=\"Column name\"><\/column>\n....\n<\/columns>\n<rows><\/rows>\n<\/grid>\n\nI have many columns , there fore the header\/label of the column was partially hidden. Is there anyway to auto break line of the column's hear automatically ?\n\njimmyshiau\n4921 5\nhttp:\/\/www.zkoss.org\/\n\nOnly label component has multiline attribute\nyou have to use label\n\n<grid>\n<columns sizable=\"true\">\n<column><label multiline=\"true\" onCreate='self.value=\"aa\\nbb\"'\/><\/column>\n<column label=\"Content\"\/>\n<\/columns>\n<\/grid>\n\n\n\nvinhvo\n369 3\n\nThank you. But the label texts I read from database and they change all the time. However, The grid seems to hide labels randomly. I thought It might be hard to achieve, so I use tooltip if the user wants to know what the text is.\nBut your post were very useful in other case.\n\n[hide preview]","date":"2020-10-29 16:36:01","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.3994801342487335, \"perplexity\": 6958.110181043116}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 20, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2020-45\/segments\/1603107904834.82\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20201029154446-20201029184446-00507.warc.gz\"}"}
| null | null |
Esperanza (Filipino: Bayan ng Esperanza) ist eine philippinische Stadtgemeinde in der Provinz Sultan Kudarat, Verwaltungsregion XII, SOCCSKSARGEN. Sie hat Einwohner (Zensus ), die in 19 Barangays lebten. Sie wird als Gemeinde der ersten Einkommensklasse auf den Philippinen und als teilweise urbanisiert eingestuft.
Esperanza liegt im Zentralen Mindanao Basin, am Südufer des Buluan-Sees, ca. 15 km westlich von Tacurong City entfernt. Ihre Nachbargemeinden sind Ampatuan im Norden, Lebak im Westen, Isulan im Süden, Lambayong im Osten.
Baranggays
Weblink
Ort auf den Philippinen
Provinz Sultan Kudarat
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
}
| 9,546
|
Andrey Akopyants est un footballeur ouzbek né le à Tachkent en Ouzbékistan.
Statistiques
Liens externes
Footballeur international ouzbek
Joueur du Pakhtakor Tachkent
Joueur du FK Rostov
Joueur du Daryda Minsk Rayon
Joueur du Tchernomorets Novorossiisk
Joueur du Daugava Daugavpils
Joueur du FK Fakel Voronej
Joueur du Khimik Dzerjinsk
Joueur du Luch Vladivostok
Naissance en RSS d'Ouzbékistan
Naissance à Tachkent
Naissance en août 1977
|
{
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| 9,475
|
Q: How to apply min max algorithm to a hex game How to design a efficient algorithm for hex game using min max algorithm since its branching factor is too high.
Normal tic tac toe game be made using simple min max algorithm but in this case for a 11*11 board game we have 121 combinations so for this how to reduce number of combinations what is the approach minmize this much combination
A: The tree of movements for a game can only be explore fully for simple stuff like tic-tac-toe. Other games, like chess, will be too deep and have too many options at every movement (large branching factor).
There are measures to combat this limitation, at the very general level of your question.
Most importantly, you need a heuristic to assign a value to intermediate game positions. This enables you to apply minimax even if the analysis of all movements up to game endings is not possible. These heuristics may be quite simple. For example, in chess you may give pieces a value (pawn 1, knight 3, and so on) and simply add up. You may make it a bit more complex considering the position on the board and so on, but there will be a compromise with performance here. This is the basis of many AI systems.
A classic improvement is called alpha-beta pruning. This is based on evaluating the nodes of the tree of movements in an orderly way, so that branches that are already guaranteed to be worse than others can be omitted, improving efficiency. (Consider, for example, a branch where one player can force a winning movement: alternatives to this movement within this branch are not important, since this player will always force the winning movement if the game goes this way).
Other algorithms change the way we explore the tree of movements. Monte-Carlo tree search is an example of this. The core idea here is to evaluate nodes and explore the tree in a coordinated way (as opposed to before, where we first explore the tree as deep as possible and we then evaluate the leafs). Here we have an exploration-exploitation equilibrium (you have to decide if you want to develop more promising positions, or if you want to favour exploring new, possibly disappointing movements).
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
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| 5,601
|
<?php
namespace Admin\Model\Entity;
use Zend\Db\TableGateway\TableGateway;
use Zend\Db\Adapter\Adapter;
//use Zend\Db\Adapter;
class Articulos extends TableGateway
{
public function __construct(Adapter $adapter = null,
$databaseSchema = null, ResultSet $selectResultPrototype = null)
{
//conexion a la BD y mapeo con la tabla usuarios
return parent::__construct('articulos', $adapter,$databaseSchema,
$selectResultPrototype);
}
public function getUsuarios()
{
$resultSet = $this->select();
return $resultSet->toArray();
// $db = Zend_Db_Table::getDefaultAdapter();
// $select = new Zend_Db_Select($db);
// $select->columns=('nombre');
// $consult = "SELECT * from usuarios";
// $stmte = $db->query($consult);
// return $stmte->fetchAll();
}
public function addArticulos($codigo,$nombre,$descripcion) {
$datos = Array(
'codigo' => $codigo,
'nombre' => $nombre,
'descripcion' => $descripcion,
'fecha_reg' => date('Y-m-d',time() - 18000),
);
$this->insert($datos);
}
public function getUsuarioPorId($id) {
$id = (int) $id;
$rowset = $this->select(array('id'=>$id));
$row = $rowset->current();
if (!$row){
throw new \Exception('No hay registros asociados al valor $id');
}
return $row;
}
public function deleteUsuario($id) {
$this->delete(array('id'=>$id));
}
}
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
}
| 4,279
|
{"url":"https:\/\/worldbuilding.stackexchange.com\/questions\/109014\/syrup-atmosphere","text":"Syrup Atmosphere\n\nAs you look at the properties of the atmosphere as you scale up or down, things get weirder and weirder. One good example is the fairyfly and its environment. Fairyflies are so small that at their scale, air behaves somewhat like syrup and their wings have become like hairy spoons in order to grab the air rather than glide in it. With this in mind I will now get to my question. What kind of gasses or other conditions would make a planet\u2019s gaseous atmosphere act like the syrupy atmosphere of the fairyfly, but on a human scale?\n\n\u2022 The question as worded is a little unclear. Try to avoid including excess information when formulating a question. Include only the relevant material. To be clear, you want a gaseous atmosphere with the consistency of syrup? \u2013\u00a0bendl Apr 9 '18 at 22:06\n\u2022 Your question boils down to \"what gases have the properties of a viscous liquid?\". The answer is none. They wouldn't be gases at that point. \u2013\u00a0Samuel Apr 9 '18 at 22:12\n\u2022 @bendl I\u2019m trying to get an atmosphere as close as possible to the atmosphere that the fairyfly experiences, but on a human scale \u2013\u00a0Amoeba Apr 9 '18 at 22:36\n\u2022 @Samuel I\u2019m only asking for how close you can get to have the atmosphere of a planet like that of the atmosphere fairyflies experience on a human scale. \u2013\u00a0Amoeba Apr 9 '18 at 22:44\n\u2022 @user45751 I know what you're asking. To have an atmosphere \"like syrup\" on a macro scale, the atmosphere needs to be a liquid. That is, not technically an atmosphere. There is no way to create the microscopic effects you're talking about on the macro scale without magic. \u2013\u00a0Samuel Apr 9 '18 at 22:50\n\nScale is an interesting consideration when it comes to questions like this insofar as we have to understand why a fairyfly's environment is 'syrupy'; a large part of it is that air molecules are so much bigger to them by proportion to their body size. It's not that their air is like a syrup per se; what they experience would be more like what we would experience living in an atmosphere made up of very small polystyrene beads.\n\nIt's also important to note that these creatures (like any insects) don't have lungs. They absorb their O2 directly through their carapaces and can do so because their bodies are sufficiently small that it can be saturated with O2 absorbed through osmosis.\n\nA human can't do that and survive with the body size and shape that we possess. But, if O2 came in the form if micro sized polystyrene beads, our lungs wouldn't work either. We would literally suffocate.\n\nThis ties in to the miniaturisation paradox; there's no way for 'Ant-Man' or any other human to survive when shrunk to the same size as an insect. Either your miniaturisation method involves actually making all the molecules of the body smaller, in which case the lungs can no longer process O2 molecules of a standard size and we suffocate, or the miniaturisation method employed merely scales down the number of molecules using something simliar to Eigenvector based compression modelling, in which case the human brain is now so simple that human thought is impossible. Bottom line is that it can't be done scientifically.\n\nBut for the sake of argument\n\nLet's assume that you're literally talking about a liquid atmosphere and that the whole fairyfly discussion is a distraction. In that case, you'd be working in a form of Oxygenated Fluorocarbon Emulsion. Liquid breathing as a theory has been around for a while now and the provided link does go some way to explaining what the current thinking is about the practical benefits and downsides of such a system might be. That's at least a good place to start in terms of surviving long enough to consider the rest of the problem, like moving stuff or flying in a neutrally buoyant environment. For those questions, you're better off considering objects as mass, not weight and then applying standard kinematic thinking to the problem.\n\nRealistically though, as an organism we're optimised to survive in our current gaseous environment. Changing out to a syrupy one is only going to cause us difficulties in the short term, even if there are some very specific advantages in certain areas.\n\n\u2022 Nice answer! Technical detail is that you want to make the Reynolds and Euler numbers the same. See en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Reynolds_number for a decent discussion. \u2013\u00a0Mark Olson Apr 10 '18 at 0:39\n\u2022 This is an awesome answer! \u2013\u00a0Renan Apr 10 '18 at 3:27\n\u2022 It's awesome, but technically speaking it doesn't answer the question. An oxygenated fluorocarbon emulsion cannot in any way be considered an atmosphere or a gas. Even if humans lived in a world with an ocean of it and walked around on the ocean floor, there would still be an atmosphere above it which would not be syrupy. \u2013\u00a0bendl Apr 10 '18 at 19:16\n\u2022 @bendl you're right; but this is an attempt to answer the spirit of the question rather than the letter of the question. I completely agree that this is not an atmosphere and it's really speculation, but that's why the first half is really framing; I'm trying to explain that what's being asked for is impossible, THEN provide a speculative alternative. \u2013\u00a0Tim B II Apr 10 '18 at 21:10\n\u2022 @TimBII which is why I didn't downvote - I just wanted to make it clear that this is not what the OP asked for, but rather an alternative to what he's asking \u2013\u00a0bendl Apr 10 '18 at 21:11\n\nNo, what follows is a slightly more technical explanation.\n\nYou'd need to have a very low Reynolds number. Flow around two objects with the same Reynolds number will look about the same when the Re arethe same, even at vastly diferent sizes of the objects. Technically, it is the ratio of inertial to friction forces acting on something, and scales with size:\n\n$$Re = \\frac{\\rho u L}{\\mu} = \\frac{u L}{\\nu}$$\n\nwith density $\\rho$, velocity $u$, charecteristic length $L$, dynamic viscosity $\\mu$ and kinematic viscostiy $\\nu$. To arrive at very low Reynolds numbers at large lengths, we need to move very slowly through very viscous gas.\n\nIf we look at some kinematic viscosities for gasses, they are all (at normal conditions, T approx. 300K) around 10-20 \u00b5Pa s^-1. Clearly not enough. Viscosity of gases \"arises principally from the molecular diffusion that transports momentum between layers of flow.\" Numerically, it depends on the mean free path of particles.\n\nThinking about how to have a high viscosity gas is not trivial, but given that viscositiy is higher with a longer mean free path we would need smaller molecules (fatter molecules bump mor often). I don't see any credible way how you could have far samller molecules thatn Helium or Hydrogen, so this route is out.\n\nViscosity rises with (the root of) Temperature, so we could have a more viscous gas ... but not by orders of magnitude. If wereach plasma temperature, all these relations break down anyway.","date":"2019-11-13 07:52:35","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.4858543872833252, \"perplexity\": 786.3920735704123}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": false, \"markdown_code\": false, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2019-47\/segments\/1573496666229.84\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20191113063049-20191113091049-00403.warc.gz\"}"}
| null | null |
Q: Можно ли дистанционно установить windows на машину без ОС? Можно ли установить Windows на комп удаленно (первую, голый BIOS или UEFI)? Просто обратились из другого города, физического доступа к машине нет. Я думаю, стоит найти рабочий компьютер и сбросить образ человеку на почту, проконсультировать, что нажимать, но вдруг в современных ноутах можно получить удаленный доступ, кто сталкивался?
|
{
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| 8,199
|
Chertoff warns meddling 'sanctuary cities'
By - The Washington Times - Thursday, September 6, 2007
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff yesterday told a House panel that his agency will not tolerate interference by so-called "sanctuary cities" when it comes to hiring illegal aliens.
Mr. Chertoff said his agency will enforce the Basic Pilot Program that requires businesses to check the legal status of new employees by matching Social Security numbers and information in Homeland Security Department databases.
Mr. Chertoff told the House Homeland Security Committee: "I certainly wouldn't tolerate interference" by cities who attempt to block the program.
"We're exploring our legal options," Mr. Chertoff said. "I intend to take as vigorous legal action as the law allows to prevent that from happening, prevent that kind of interference."
Mr. Chertoff stopped short of threatening "sanctuary cities" by withholding government funding.
"I don't know that I have the authority to cut off all Homeland Security funds if I disagree with the city's policy on immigration," Mr. Chertoff said. "And of course, I have to say the consequence of that might be to put the citizens at risk, you know, in the event of a natural disaster.
"I don't want to put people's lives at risk, but I do think where the law gives me the power to prevent anybody from interfering with our activities, we will use the law to prevent that interference," Mr. Chertoff said.
Sanctuary cities are those that have adopted policies banning police officers or other city employees from asking about immigration status. Some sanctuary cities have gone further: The city of New Haven, Conn., now issues identification cards regardless of legal status.
Other "sanctuary cities" include the District, Baltimore, New York City, San Francisco, Dallas, Minneapolis, Miami and Denver.
Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, Florida Republican, suggested withholding federal funding to sanctuary cities from other nonemergency departments might steer cities away from providing sanctuary.
"I think it would depend on the city," Mr. Chertoff said. "I could probably guess there are some cities that they'd become more stubborn. Others might change their policy."
Mr. Chertoff said there are more than 14,000 Border Patrol agents and the agency is "on track" to get more than 18,000 by the end of next year.
"That's what we promised last year; that promise will be kept," Mr. Chertoff said.
Mr. Chertoff said that more than 120 miles of pedestrian fencing and 112 miles of vehicle barriers are in place along the southern border and that 145 miles of fencing will be in place by the end of the month.
Mr. Chertoff also told the panel his agency is preparing new rules to tighten security standards for private planes coming into the country from overseas including passenger checks and radiological and nuclear screening for small boats coming into U.S. ports.
"The very trait that makes these attractive as modes of transportation for people in the private sector also make them potential sources of threat," Mr. Chertoff said.
"We do worry about the fact that someone could get a lease or occupy a private plane overseas and then use that as a way to smuggle in a dirty bomb or a weapon of mass destruction into the United States. We do worry that having locked the front door, so to speak, against dangerous containers, someone could simply put the dangerous cargo in a private oceangoing vessel and take it into a U.S. port," Mr. Chertoff said.
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
}
| 9,491
|
{"url":"https:\/\/dualm.wordpress.com\/2010\/11\/","text":"Archive\n\nArchive for 2010\u5e7411\u6708\n\nKane-Mele-Hubbard Model\n\n2010\u5e7411\u670829\u65e5 \u7559\u4e0b\u8bc4\u8bba\n\nRecently two preprints posted on arXiv studied Kane-Mele-Hubbard model(Kane-Mele model+Hubbard type on-site repulsion) at half-filling using QMC. There is no sign problem due to particle-hole symmetry. Basically, at finite U topological insulating phase undergoes a phase transition to antiferromagnetically ordered phase.\n\nParticle-hole symmetry and interaction effects in the Kane-Mele-Hubbard model\nDong Zheng, Congjun Wu, Guang-Ming Zhang\n\nCorrelation Effects in Quantum Spin Hall Insulators: a Quantum Monte Carlo Study\n\nSign problems in Fermionic\u00a0QMC\n\n2010\u5e7411\u670823\u65e5 \u7559\u4e0b\u8bc4\u8bba\n\nWell-known cases free of sign problem:\n\n\u2022 Negative-U Hubbard model. \u00a0Determinantal QMC has no sign problem if one decouples the on-site interaction in the right way(charge channel).\n\u2022 Hubbard model(positive U) at half-filling. Particle-hole symmetry prevents negative probability from happening. Another way to see this is that it can be mapped onto negative-U Hubbard model. \u00a0Not restricted to square lattice, any biparticle lattice is OK. For example honeycomb lattice.\n\nCongjun Wu proves a general theorem which gives a sufficient condition under which QMC has no sign problem. Basically, there must be some anti-unitary symmetry(like time-reversal symmetry for spin 1\/2). The proof was particularly for determinantal QMC. It requires that for arbitrary Hubbard-Stratonovich field configuration, the resulting determinant \u00a0must have certain anti-unitary symmetry, which means that eigenvalues come in complex conjugate pairs. \u00a0So the determinant is always positive. Notice that the determinant is generally a time-ordered product, it\u2019s not necessarily Hermitian.\n\nResearch note 11\/16\/10\n\n2010\u5e7411\u670817\u65e5 \u7559\u4e0b\u8bc4\u8bba\n1. Surface of 3D topological insulator+s-wave superconductor. \u00a0Time-reversal invariant. In the original proposal by Fu and Kane, the induced pairing is assumed to have only s-wave component. In fact, there is also p-wave component. Later it has been shown that even in the presence of p-wave pairing, non-Abelian topological order still persists. See Phys. Rev. B 82, 144505 (2010)\n2. 2D Spin-orbit coupled semiconductor+Zeeman field in z direction+s-wave SC(proposed by Sau et. al.). The same question can be asked that what p-wave pairing does to the non-Abelian topological order. The answer is still that it doesn\u2019t do anything. In a nice paper Phys. Rev. B 82, 184525(2010) by Ghosh et. al., it is shown that the Z_2 invariant that characterize the non-Abelian topological order(essentially the parity of Chern number) only depends on Hamiltonian at k=0 where triplet pairing vanishes.\n\nZero modes, Chern number and all\u00a0that\n\n2010\u5e7411\u670817\u65e5 \u7559\u4e0b\u8bc4\u8bba\n\n1. \u5728\u91cf\u5b50Hall\u6001\u4e2dChern\u6570\u7b49\u4e8e\u8fb9\u7f18\u6fc0\u53d1\u6001\u7684\u652f\u6570\u3002\u8fd9\u70b9\u53ef\u4ee5\u4eceLaughlin\u7684flux insertion argument\u5f97\u5230\u3002\u8fd9\u4e2a\u5173\u7cfb\u5bf9\u4e00\u822c\u7684\u65f6\u95f4\u53cd\u6f14\u7834\u7f3a\u7684\u7edd\u7f18\u4f53\uff08\u5305\u62ec\u8d85\u5bfc\u4f53\uff09\u4e5f\u6210\u7acb\u3002\n\n2. \u8d85\u5bfc\u4f53\u4e2dvortex\u7684\u96f6\u6a21\u4e2a\u6570\u3002\u56e0\u4e3a\u7535\u8377\u5171\u8f6d\uff08\u6216\u8005\u53eb\u7c92\u5b50-\u7a7a\u7a74\uff09\u5bf9\u79f0\u6027\u7684\u5173\u7cfb\uff0cvortex\u7684\u96f6\u6a21\u4e2a\u6570\u7531Chern\u6570\u6a212\u7ed9\u51fa\u3002\u7c7b\u4f3c\u7684\u662f\u4e00\u7ef4\u8d85\u5bfc\u4f53\u4e24\u7aef\u7684\u96f6\u6a21\u3002\u53ef\u4ee5\u7528dimensional reduction\u4ece2\u7ef4\u7684Z\u5206\u7c7b\u5f97\u5230\u4e00\u7ef4\u7684$Z_2$\u5206\u7c7b\u3002\u89c1Qi, Hughes, Zhang\u7684\u6587\u7ae0\u3002\n\nCounting Majorana zero modes in superconductors\nLuiz Santos, Yusuke Nishida, Claudio Chamon, Christopher Mudry\n\narXiv Digest 11\/15\/10\n\n2010\u5e7411\u670816\u65e5 \u7559\u4e0b\u8bc4\u8bba\n2010\u5e7411\u67085\u65e5 \u7559\u4e0b\u8bc4\u8bba\n\nObservation of topological order in a superconducting doped topological insulator\n\nUpdate\uff1aLiang Fu\u5df2\u7ecf\u5bf9\u8fd9\u4e2a\u4f53\u7cfb\u505a\u4e86\u4e00\u4e2aodd parity topological superconductor\u7684\u7406\u8bba\u3002\u89c1Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 097001 (2010)","date":"2017-08-21 19:22:08","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 2, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.8336462378501892, \"perplexity\": 4158.051864988996}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": false, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2017-34\/segments\/1502886109525.95\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20170821191703-20170821211703-00077.warc.gz\"}"}
| null | null |
Provided types map file "/a/lib/typesMap.json" doesn't exist
request:{"seq":0,"type":"request","command":"open","arguments":{"file":"/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/class2.ts"}}
Search path: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2
For info: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/class2.ts :: Config file name: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
Creating configuration project /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
FileWatcher:: Added:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json 2000 undefined Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json WatchType: Config file
Config: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json : {
"rootNames": [
"/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/class2.ts"
],
"options": {
"module": 0,
"composite": true,
"disableSourceOfProjectReferenceRedirect": true,
"configFilePath": "/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json"
},
"projectReferences": [
{
"path": "/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1",
"originalPath": "../project1"
}
]
}
DirectoryWatcher:: Added:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2 1 undefined Config: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json WatchType: Wild card directory
Elapsed:: *ms DirectoryWatcher:: Added:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2 1 undefined Config: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json WatchType: Wild card directory
Plugins were requested but not running in environment that supports 'require'. Nothing will be loaded
Starting updateGraphWorker: Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
Config: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json : {
"rootNames": [
"/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class1.ts"
],
"options": {
"module": 0,
"composite": true,
"configFilePath": "/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json"
}
}
FileWatcher:: Added:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json 2000 undefined Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json WatchType: Config file
DirectoryWatcher:: Added:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1 1 undefined Config: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json WatchType: Wild card directory
Elapsed:: *ms DirectoryWatcher:: Added:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1 1 undefined Config: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json WatchType: Wild card directory
FileWatcher:: Added:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class1.d.ts 500 undefined WatchType: Closed Script info
FileWatcher:: Added:: WatchInfo: /a/lib/lib.d.ts 500 undefined WatchType: Closed Script info
DirectoryWatcher:: Added:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/node_modules/@types 1 undefined Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json WatchType: Type roots
Elapsed:: *ms DirectoryWatcher:: Added:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/node_modules/@types 1 undefined Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json WatchType: Type roots
DirectoryWatcher:: Added:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/node_modules/@types 1 undefined Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json WatchType: Type roots
Elapsed:: *ms DirectoryWatcher:: Added:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/node_modules/@types 1 undefined Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json WatchType: Type roots
DirectoryWatcher:: Added:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/node_modules/@types 1 undefined Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json WatchType: Type roots
Elapsed:: *ms DirectoryWatcher:: Added:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/node_modules/@types 1 undefined Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json WatchType: Type roots
Finishing updateGraphWorker: Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json Version: 1 structureChanged: true structureIsReused:: Not Elapsed:: *ms
Project '/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json' (Configured)
Files (3)
/a/lib/lib.d.ts
/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class1.d.ts
/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/class2.ts
../../../../../../a/lib/lib.d.ts
Default library for target 'es3'
../project1/class1.d.ts
Output from referenced project '../project1/tsconfig.json' included because '--module' is specified as 'none'
class2.ts
Matched by default include pattern '**/*'
-----------------------------------------------
Search path: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2
For info: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json :: No config files found.
Project '/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json' (Configured)
Files (3)
-----------------------------------------------
Open files:
FileName: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/class2.ts ProjectRootPath: undefined
Projects: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
response:{"responseRequired":false}
DirectoryWatcher:: Triggered with /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.ts :: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1 1 undefined Config: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json WatchType: Wild card directory
Scheduled: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
Scheduled: *ensureProjectForOpenFiles*
Elapsed:: *ms DirectoryWatcher:: Triggered with /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.ts :: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1 1 undefined Config: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json WatchType: Wild card directory
Running: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
Starting updateGraphWorker: Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
FileWatcher:: Added:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts 500 undefined Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json WatchType: Missing file
Finishing updateGraphWorker: Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json Version: 2 structureChanged: true structureIsReused:: Not Elapsed:: *ms
Different program with same set of files
Running: *ensureProjectForOpenFiles*
Before ensureProjectForOpenFiles:
Project '/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json' (Configured)
Files (3)
-----------------------------------------------
Open files:
FileName: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/class2.ts ProjectRootPath: undefined
Projects: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
After ensureProjectForOpenFiles:
Project '/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json' (Configured)
Files (3)
-----------------------------------------------
Open files:
FileName: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/class2.ts ProjectRootPath: undefined
Projects: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
FileWatcher:: Triggered with /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts 0:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts 500 undefined Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json WatchType: Missing file
FileWatcher:: Close:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts 500 undefined Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json WatchType: Missing file
Scheduled: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
Scheduled: *ensureProjectForOpenFiles*
Elapsed:: *ms FileWatcher:: Triggered with /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts 0:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts 500 undefined Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json WatchType: Missing file
DirectoryWatcher:: Triggered with /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts :: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1 1 undefined Config: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json WatchType: Wild card directory
Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json Detected output file: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts
Elapsed:: *ms DirectoryWatcher:: Triggered with /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts :: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1 1 undefined Config: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json WatchType: Wild card directory
Running: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
Starting updateGraphWorker: Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
FileWatcher:: Added:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts 500 undefined WatchType: Closed Script info
Finishing updateGraphWorker: Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json Version: 3 structureChanged: true structureIsReused:: Not Elapsed:: *ms
Project '/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json' (Configured)
Files (4)
/a/lib/lib.d.ts
/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class1.d.ts
/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts
/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/class2.ts
../../../../../../a/lib/lib.d.ts
Default library for target 'es3'
../project1/class1.d.ts
Output from referenced project '../project1/tsconfig.json' included because '--module' is specified as 'none'
../project1/class3.d.ts
Output from referenced project '../project1/tsconfig.json' included because '--module' is specified as 'none'
class2.ts
Matched by default include pattern '**/*'
-----------------------------------------------
Running: *ensureProjectForOpenFiles*
Before ensureProjectForOpenFiles:
Project '/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json' (Configured)
Files (4)
-----------------------------------------------
Open files:
FileName: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/class2.ts ProjectRootPath: undefined
Projects: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
After ensureProjectForOpenFiles:
Project '/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json' (Configured)
Files (4)
-----------------------------------------------
Open files:
FileName: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/class2.ts ProjectRootPath: undefined
Projects: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
DirectoryWatcher:: Triggered with /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/temp :: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1 1 undefined Config: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json WatchType: Wild card directory
Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json Detected excluded file: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/temp
Elapsed:: *ms DirectoryWatcher:: Triggered with /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/temp :: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1 1 undefined Config: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json WatchType: Wild card directory
DirectoryWatcher:: Triggered with /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/temp/file.d.ts :: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1 1 undefined Config: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json WatchType: Wild card directory
Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json Detected excluded file: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/temp/file.d.ts
Elapsed:: *ms DirectoryWatcher:: Triggered with /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/temp/file.d.ts :: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1 1 undefined Config: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json WatchType: Wild card directory
FileWatcher:: Triggered with /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts 2:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts 500 undefined WatchType: Closed Script info
FileWatcher:: Close:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts 500 undefined WatchType: Closed Script info
Scheduled: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
Scheduled: *ensureProjectForOpenFiles*
Elapsed:: *ms FileWatcher:: Triggered with /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts 2:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts 500 undefined WatchType: Closed Script info
DirectoryWatcher:: Triggered with /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts :: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1 1 undefined Config: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json WatchType: Wild card directory
Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json Detected output file: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts
Elapsed:: *ms DirectoryWatcher:: Triggered with /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts :: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1 1 undefined Config: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json WatchType: Wild card directory
Running: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
Starting updateGraphWorker: Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
FileWatcher:: Added:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts 500 undefined Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json WatchType: Missing file
Finishing updateGraphWorker: Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json Version: 4 structureChanged: true structureIsReused:: Not Elapsed:: *ms
Project '/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json' (Configured)
Files (3)
/a/lib/lib.d.ts
/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class1.d.ts
/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/class2.ts
../../../../../../a/lib/lib.d.ts
Default library for target 'es3'
../project1/class1.d.ts
Output from referenced project '../project1/tsconfig.json' included because '--module' is specified as 'none'
class2.ts
Matched by default include pattern '**/*'
-----------------------------------------------
Running: *ensureProjectForOpenFiles*
Before ensureProjectForOpenFiles:
Project '/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json' (Configured)
Files (3)
-----------------------------------------------
Open files:
FileName: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/class2.ts ProjectRootPath: undefined
Projects: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
After ensureProjectForOpenFiles:
Project '/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json' (Configured)
Files (3)
-----------------------------------------------
Open files:
FileName: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/class2.ts ProjectRootPath: undefined
Projects: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
FileWatcher:: Triggered with /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts 0:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts 500 undefined Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json WatchType: Missing file
FileWatcher:: Close:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts 500 undefined Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json WatchType: Missing file
Scheduled: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
Scheduled: *ensureProjectForOpenFiles*
Elapsed:: *ms FileWatcher:: Triggered with /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts 0:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts 500 undefined Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json WatchType: Missing file
DirectoryWatcher:: Triggered with /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts :: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1 1 undefined Config: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json WatchType: Wild card directory
Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json Detected output file: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts
Elapsed:: *ms DirectoryWatcher:: Triggered with /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts :: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1 1 undefined Config: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/tsconfig.json WatchType: Wild card directory
Running: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
Starting updateGraphWorker: Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json
FileWatcher:: Added:: WatchInfo: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts 500 undefined WatchType: Closed Script info
Finishing updateGraphWorker: Project: /user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json Version: 5 structureChanged: true structureIsReused:: Not Elapsed:: *ms
Project '/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json' (Configured)
Files (4)
/a/lib/lib.d.ts
/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class1.d.ts
/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project1/class3.d.ts
/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/class2.ts
../../../../../../a/lib/lib.d.ts
Default library for target 'es3'
../project1/class1.d.ts
Output from referenced project '../project1/tsconfig.json' included because '--module' is specified as 'none'
../project1/class3.d.ts
Output from referenced project '../project1/tsconfig.json' included because '--module' is specified as 'none'
class2.ts
Matched by default include pattern '**/*'
-----------------------------------------------
Running: *ensureProjectForOpenFiles*
Before ensureProjectForOpenFiles:
Project '/user/username/projects/myproject/projects/project2/tsconfig.json' (Configured)
Files (4)
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Open files:
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|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
}
| 9,568
|
As a leader in your community, you know that it can be difficult to redevelop abandoned, underutilized, or neglected properties, especially when environmental issues related to liability and costs for regulatory cleanup are present. Does your community have a closed gas station, abandoned petroleum bulk plant, or a vacant building with questions about how to deal with asbestos that has hindered reuse interest in redevelopment? If so, you have a brownfield site in your community, and there are resources to help turn that site into something useful! Vibrant community spaces such as housing, parks, trails, and job-creating businesses can be developed on previously used sites, including brownfields. Putting these sites back into use decreases blight, creates jobs, generates additional tax revenues, saves municipal costs, and spurs economic development in the surrounding area.
The Iowa Department of Natural Resources' Brownfields Program and the Technical Assistance to Brownfields Program (TAB) at Kansas State University invite you to a free workshop, with lunch included, to help Iowa communities learn about brownfield properties and how to fund environmental assessment and cleanup, as well as resources for reinvestment at those sites, through a number of different available resources.
Success Stories– Speakers from surrounding area.
The workshop will be held on Tuesday, September 15th, from 9:30am-4pm, at the Drake Community Library, at 930 Park St. in Grinnell, Iowa. While there is no cost to attend, pre-registration is required.
There is no cost to attend, but registration is required by September 10, 2015.
The Iowa Economic Development Authority is pleased to announce that applications are now being accepted for the Redevelopment Tax Credit Program for Brownfields and Grayfields. Please note that all applications must be received at IEDA by 4:30pm September 1, 2015.
applications will no longer be considered on a first come, first served basis.
complete applications will be scored with a maximum number of points of 25 each for feasibility, financial need and overall quality of a project. Projects that were previously registered with the program but did not receive an award will receive an additional 25 points.
tax credits can be refundable to certain qualifying non-profit organizations if it is established with the application.
applications will be accepted annually beginning July 1 with a September 1 deadline.
Iowa Administrative Rules that guide the program can also be found online at: https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/aco/chapter/261.65.pdf.
Iowa Code regarding the program is contained in sections 15.291, 15.292, 15.293, 15.293A, 15.294, 15.295. Search and browse Iowa Code or Iowa Administrative rules online at: https://www.legis.iowa.gov/law/statutory.
Call Program Manager Matt Rasmussen: 515-725-3126 or email matt.rasmussen@iowa.gov with questions.
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
}
| 1,078
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\section{#1}\setcounter{equation}{0}}
\def\nappendix#1{\vskip 1cm\noindent{\bf Appendix #1}\def#1{#1}
\setcounter{equation}{0}}
\font\tendl=msbm10 scaled \magstep
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\newcommand{\end{eqnarray}\vskip 0.5 cm}{\end{eqnarray}\vskip 0.5 cm}
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\newcommand{\'{e}}{\'{e}}
\newcommand{\`{e}}{\`{e}}
\newcommand{\partial}{\partial}
\newcommand{\underline}{\underline}
\newcommand{{\smash{\mathop{<}\limits_{^\sim}}}}{{\smash{\mathop{<}\limits_{^\sim}}}}
\newcommand{{\smash{\mathop{>}\limits_{^\sim}}}}{{\smash{\mathop{>}\limits_{^\sim}}}}
\newcommand{\NR}{{{\bf R}}
\newcommand{\NA}{{{\bf A}}
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\newcommand{\NT}{{{\bf T}}
\newcommand{\NZ}{{{\bf Z}}
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\newcommand{{\cal V}}{{\cal V}}
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\newcommand{\lambda}{\lambda}
\newcommand{\Lambda}{\Lambda}
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\newcommand{{{}^-\hs{-0.3cm}d}}{{{}^-\hspace{-0.3cm}d}}
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\pagestyle{plain}
\begin{document}
\
\vskip 2.3cm
\noindent{\large{\bf{TURBULENCE UNDER A MAGNIFYING
GLASS}}}\footnote{lectures given at the 1996
Carg\`{e}se Summer Institute, July 22 - August 3}
\vskip 0.8cm
{}\hspace{2cm}Krzysztof Gaw\c{e}dzki
\vskip 0.3cm
{}\hspace{2cm}C.N.R.S., I.H.E.S.,
{}\hspace{2cm}Bures-sur-Yvette, 91440, France
\date{ }
\addtocounter{section}{1}
\vskip 1cm
\noindent{\large{\bf INTRODUCTION}}
\vskip 0.5cm
This is an introductory course on the
open problems of fully developed turbulence which present
a long standing challenge for theoretical and mathematical
physics. The plan of the course is as follows:
\vskip 0.2cm
\noindent {\bf{Lecture 1}}. \ Hydrodynamical equations.
Existence of solutions. Statistical description.
Kolmogorov scaling theory.
\vskip 0.2cm
\noindent {\bf{Lecture 2}}. \ Functional approach to turbulence,
similarities and differences with field theory.
\vskip 0.2cm
\noindent {\bf{Lecture 3}}. \ Passive scalar and breakdown
of the Kolmogorov theory.
\vskip 0.2cm
\noindent {\bf{Lecture 4}}. \ Inverse renormalization group.
\vskip 1cm
\noindent {\large\bf{LECTURE 1}}
\vskip 0.5cm
The hydrodynamical flows in gasses and liquids are
believed to be described in a variety of realistic
situations by incompressible Navier-Stokes (NS) equations
\begin{eqnarray}
\partial_t v\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}(v\cdot\nabla)\hspace{0.025cm} v-\nu\Delta v\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
{_1\over^\rho}\hspace{0.05cm}(f-\nabla p)\hspace{0.05cm},\quad\ \ \ \nabla\cdot v\hspace{0.05cm}=\s0\hspace{0.05cm}
\label{NS}
\end{eqnarray}
where the vector $v(t,x)$ describes the velocity
of the fluid at time $t$ and space point $x$,
positive constant $\nu$ is the viscosity, $\rho$ is the constant
density\footnote{we shall set it to $1$ below}, $f(t,x)$
is the (intensive) force and $p(t,x)$ is the pressure.
The above equations date back to the works of Navier (1823)
and Stokes (1843) and modify the even older Euler
equation (1755) by the addition of the dissipative
term \hspace{0.05cm}$\nu\Delta v\hspace{0.025cm}$. In most physical applications
the dimensionality of the space is $3$ or $2$, but
the equations make sense in general dimension $d$.
The Euler equation without the $\nu\Delta v$ term
is really the \hspace{0.05cm}$F=ma\hspace{0.05cm}$ (or rather $a={_1\over^m}\hspace{0.05cm} F$\hspace{0.05cm})
\hspace{0.05cm} equality for the volume element of the fluid.
The $\nu\Delta v$ term represents the friction forces.
By taking the $L^2$ scalar product of the NS equation
with $v$ and assuming that the flow velocity vanishes sufficiently
fast at large distances (or at the boundary),
one deduces the energy balance:
\begin{eqnarray}
\partial_t\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}{_1\over^2}\int v^2\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.025cm}\nu\int(\nabla v)^2
\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}\int f\cdot v\hspace{0.05cm}.
\label{bal}
\end{eqnarray}
The equation says that the rate of change
of fluid energy is equal to the energy injection $\int f\cdot v$
(the work of external forces per unit time) minus the
energy dissipation per unit time $\nu\int(\nabla v)^2$
due to the fluid friction.
\vskip 0.5cm
The Euler equation has a nice infinite-dimensional geometric
interpretation: it describes the geodesic flow on the
group of volume preserving diffeomorphisms\footnote{recall
that the Euler top describes the geodesic flow on the group
$SO(3)$}. We shall briefly sketch this argument.
Let, more generally, the space be an oriented $d$-dimensional
Riemannian manifold $(M,g)$. Denote by $\tau$ the Riemannian
volume: \hspace{0.05cm}$\tau(x)=\sqrt{g(x)}\hspace{0.05cm} dx^1\wedge\cdots\wedge dx^d\hspace{0.025cm}$.
Let $Diff_\tau$ be the group of diffeomorphisms $\phi$
of $M$ preserving $\tau$: \hspace{0.05cm}$\phi^*\tau=\tau$.
The space $Vect_\tau$ of divergenceless vector fields $v$
(i.e. the ones preserving $\tau$, \hspace{0.025cm}${\cal L}_v\tau=0\hspace{0.05cm}$)
\hspace{0.05cm} may be considered as the Lie
algebra of $Diff_\tau$\footnote{for non-compact $M$
we shall assume that $\phi$ do not move points outside
a compact subset and that $v$ have compact support}.
Upon the identification of infinitesimal variations
of diffeomorphisms $\phi$ with the vector fields $v$
by \hspace{0.05cm}$\delta\phi(x)=v(\phi(x))\hspace{0.025cm}$, \hspace{0.05cm} the
scalar product of vector fields
\begin{eqnarray}
\Vert v\Vert^2\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\int\limits_M g(v,v)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}\tau\hspace{0.05cm}\equiv\hspace{0.05cm}
\int\limits_M g_{ij}(x)\hspace{0.05cm} v^i(x)\hspace{0.05cm} v^j(x)\hspace{0.05cm}\s\tau(x)
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
induces on $Diff_\tau$ a right-invariant Riemannian
metric. This metric in not left-invariant. Indeed,
\begin{eqnarray}
dL_\phi\hspace{0.05cm} dR_{\phi^{-1}}\hspace{0.05cm} v\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\phi_*v
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
where \hspace{0.05cm}$dL_\phi\hspace{0.05cm}$ and \hspace{0.05cm}$dR_\phi$ stand for
the tangent maps to the left and right translations
by $\phi$ on $Diff_\tau$ and
\begin{eqnarray}
\phi_*v(x)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} d\phi\hspace{0.05cm} v(\phi^{-1}(x))
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
is the pushforward of $v$ by $\phi$. But, in general,
\begin{eqnarray}
\Vert\phi_*v\Vert^2\hspace{0.05cm}\not=\hspace{0.05cm}\Vert v\Vert^2
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
since the tangent map $d\phi$ does not preserve
the Riemannian length of vectors.
\vskip 0.3cm
The geodesic flows with respect to left-right-invariant
metrics on a group are, modulo time-independent left
and right translations, one-parameter subgroups.
This is not the case if the metric is only right-invariant.
The geodesic motions $\hspace{0.05cm} t\mapsto\phi_t\hspace{0.05cm}$
on $Diff_\tau$ corresponding to the right-invariant Riemannian
metric defined above extremize the action
\begin{eqnarray}
S(\phi)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^2}\int\Vert v(t)\Vert^2\hspace{0.05cm} dt
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
where
\begin{eqnarray}
\partial_t\phi(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} v(t,\phi(t,x))\hspace{0.05cm}\equiv\hspace{0.05cm} v(t,y)\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
Explicitly\footnote{field theoriests will notice a similarity
of the following calculation to those in nonlinear sigma models},
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\delta S(\phi)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^2}\hspace{0.05cm}\delta\int g_{ij}(y)
\hspace{0.05cm} v^i(t,y)\hspace{0.05cm} v^j(t,y)\hspace{0.05cm}\s\tau(y)\hspace{0.05cm}\s dt\cr
&&=\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^2}\hspace{0.05cm}\delta\int g_{ij}(\phi(t,x))\hspace{0.05cm}\s\partial_t\phi^i(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}\s
\partial_t\phi^j(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}\s\tau(x)\hspace{0.05cm}\s dt\cr
&&=\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^2}\int\partial_k g_{ij}(\phi(t,x))\hspace{0.05cm}\s\delta\phi^k(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}\s
\partial_t\phi^i(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}\s\partial_t\phi^j(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}\s\tau(x)\hspace{0.05cm}\s dt\cr
&&\hspace{4cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}\int g_{ij}(\phi(t,x))\hspace{0.05cm}\s
\partial_t\phi^i(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}\s\partial_t\delta
\phi^j(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}\s\tau(x)\hspace{0.05cm}\s dt\cr
&&=\int\delta\phi^j(t,x)\bigg[{_1\over^2}\hspace{0.05cm}\partial_j g_{ik}(y)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}
v^i(t,y)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} v^k(t,y)\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.05cm}\partial_k g_{ij}(y)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} v^i(t,y)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}
v^k(t,y)\cr
&&\hspace{3.4cm}-\hspace{0.05cm} g_{ij}(y)\left(\hspace{0.025cm}\partial_t v^i(t,y)\hspace{0.025cm}+\hspace{0.025cm} v^k(t,y)\hspace{0.025cm}
\partial_k v^i(t,y)\right)\bigg]\tau(y)\hspace{0.05cm}\s dt\cr
&&=\hspace{0.05cm}-\int g_{ij}\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} u^j\bigg[\partial_t v^i\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm} v^k\partial_k v^i\hspace{0.05cm}
+\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^2}\hspace{0.025cm} g^{in}(\partial_k g_{ln}+\partial_l g_{kn}-\partial_n g_{lk})\hspace{0.05cm} v^k
\hspace{0.05cm} v^l\bigg]\tau\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} dt\cr
&&=\hspace{0.05cm} -\int g(\hspace{0.05cm} u\hspace{0.05cm},\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}\partial_t+\nabla_vv\hspace{0.05cm})\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} \tau\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} dt
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
where \hspace{0.05cm}$u^j(t,y)\equiv\delta\phi^j(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}$ is an arbitrary
divergenceless vector field.
\begin{eqnarray}
(\nabla_wv)^i=w^k\partial_k v^i+\{{_i\atop^{k\hspace{0.05cm} l}}\}\hspace{0.05cm} w^k\hspace{0.025cm} v^l
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
denotes the covariant derivative of the vector field $v$ in the
direction of $w$ with the Levi-Civita symbols
\begin{eqnarray}
\{{_i\atop^{k\hspace{0.05cm} l}}\}\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
{_1\over^2}\hspace{0.025cm} g^{in}(\partial_k g_{ln}+\partial_l g_{kn}-\partial_n g_{lk})\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
Since a vector field on $M$ orthogonal to all vector fields
without divergence is a gradient, we obtain the (generalized)
Euler equation
\begin{eqnarray}
\partial_tv+\nabla_v v = -\nabla p
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
for the divergenceless vector fields $v$.
The NS term $\nu\Delta v$ still makes sense
in the geometric setup and may be added to the equation.
\vskip 0.5cm
The Euler and NS equations are examples of
nonlinear partial differential evolution equations.
After a century and a half study, they still pose major open
problems as far as the control of their solutions
is concerned. The most interesting questions
concern the short-distance (ultra-violet) behavior.
Suppose that we start from smooth initial data and
the force $f$ is smooth. For simplicity, let us assume
compact support of both (we may also consider the compact
space or the case with boundary conditions). It is known
that the smooth solutions of the so posed problems are unique
and exist for short time. Do they exist for all times?
The answer is positive in 2 dimensions for both Euler
and NS equations \cite{Wolib,Ger} but in 3
dimensions the answer is not known. It is expected to
be positive in the NS case. The opinions about
the Euler case (no blowup versus finite-time blowup
for special smooth initial conditions) are divided
and fluctuate in time.
\vskip 0.3cm
In an important 1933 paper on the NS equation Leray \cite{Leray} has
introduced the notion of weak solutions of the equation. A
vector field $v(t,x)$ locally in $L^2$ is a weak solution if
\begin{eqnarray}
\int\left[\left(\partial_tu^i+\nu\Delta u^i
+(\partial_ju^i)v^j\right)v^i\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm} u^if^i\right]\hspace{0.05cm}=\s0\ \quad
{\rm and}\ \quad\int(\partial_i\varphi)\hspace{0.025cm} v^i\hspace{0.05cm}=\s0
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
for any smooth divergenceless vector field $u$ and
any smooth function $\varphi$, both with compact supports.
Leray showed by compactness arguments existence of weak
global solutions of the 3-dimensional NS equations with additional
properties (e.g. with space derivatives locally square
integrable). The weak solutions are not unique (there are weak
solutions of the 2-dimensional Euler equation with compact
support \cite{Scheff,Shnir}).
\vskip 0.5cm
The NS equation is invariant under rescalings. Let
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\widetilde v(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\tau\hspace{0.025cm} s^{-1}\hspace{0.05cm} v(\tau t,sx)\hspace{0.05cm},\cr
&&\widetilde f(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\tau^2s^{-1}\hspace{0.05cm} f(\tau t,sx)\hspace{0.05cm},\cr
&&\widetilde p(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\tau^2s^{-2}\hspace{0.05cm} v(\tau t,sx)\hspace{0.05cm},\cr
&&\widetilde\nu\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\tau\hspace{0.025cm} s^{-2}\hspace{0.05cm}\nu\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
If $v$ and $p$ solve the NS equation with viscosity $\nu$
and force $f$ then $\widetilde v$ and $\widetilde p$ give a solution
for viscosity $\widetilde\nu$ and force $\widetilde f$.
It is convenient to introduce the dimensionless version
of the (inverse) viscosity, the Reynolds number
\begin{eqnarray}
R\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}{\delta_{_L}v\hspace{0.05cm} L\over\nu}\hspace{0.05cm},
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
where $\delta_{_L}v$ is a characteristic velocity difference over
scale $L$ of the order of the size of the system. For example,
for the flow in a pipe of radius $L$,
we may take $\delta_{_L}v$ as velocity in the middle of the pipe
(minus the vanishing velocity on the wall of the pipe).
A basic phenomenological observation in hydrodynamics
is that for $R{\smash{\mathop{<}\limits_{^\sim}}} 1$ the flows are regular (laminar)
whereas $R\gg 1$ correspond to very irregular
(turbulent) flows with a rich set of scenarios occurring
for intermediate $R$. Note the scale-dependent character
of the Reynold number. Following \cite{Gallav},
define the running Reynolds number
\begin{eqnarray}
R_r\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\left({_1\over^{\vert{\cal O}(r)\vert}}\int_{_{{\cal O}(r)}}
\hspace{-0.3cm}\vert\nabla v\vert^2\right)^{\hspace{-0.1cm}1/2}
{r^2\over\nu}
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
where \hspace{0.05cm}${\cal O}(r)\hspace{0.025cm}=\hspace{0.025cm}\{\hspace{0.025cm}\hspace{0.05cm}(s,y)\ \vert
\ \vert s-t\vert<{r^2\over\nu}\hspace{0.05cm},
\ \vert y-x\vert< r\hspace{0.05cm}\}\hspace{0.05cm}$. \hspace{0.05cm} Note that we may rewrite
\begin{eqnarray}
R_r\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}{\delta_rv\ r\over \nu}
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
where $\delta_rv$, the mean velocity difference on scale
$r$, is calculated by multiplying the mean square gradient
of $v$ over ${\cal O}(r)$ by $r$. The best regularity result about
the weak solutions of the NS equation is due
to Caffarelli-Kohn-Nirenberg \cite{CKN} and says
that there exist $\epsilon>0$ such that if $R_r<\epsilon$
then the solution is smooth on the ${\cal O}(\epsilon\hspace{0.025cm} r)$
neighborhood of $(t,x)\hspace{0.025cm}$ \cite{Gallav}. \hspace{0.05cm} This
implies that for a weak solution, the Haussdorf dimension
of the set of singularities is $<\hspace{0.025cm} 1$. \hspace{0.025cm} Note the
spirit of the result in line with the phenomenological
characterization of laminar flows.
\vskip 0.5cm
For high Reynolds numbers it is reasonable to attempt
a statistical description of complicated turbulent flows.
In the theoretical approach, the statistics may be generated
by considering random initial data or/and random forcing.
$v(t,x)$ becomes then a random field. We shall be interested
in describing a stationary statistical state of the latter.
In such a state the mean overall energy of the fluid is
constant in time so that the energy balance equation
(\ref{bal}) implies that
\begin{eqnarray}
\int\langle\hspace{0.025cm}\nu\hspace{0.025cm}(\nabla v)^2\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
\int\langle\hspace{0.025cm} f\cdot v\rangle\hspace{0.05cm},
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
where $\hspace{0.05cm}\langle\ -\ \rangle$ denotes the ensemble
average, or, in a homogeneous state,
\begin{eqnarray}
\bar\epsilon\hspace{0.05cm}\equiv\hspace{0.05cm}\langle\hspace{0.025cm}\nu\hspace{0.025cm}(\nabla v)^2\rangle
\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\langle\hspace{0.025cm} f\cdot v\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}\equiv\hspace{0.05cm}\bar\varphi
\label{bal1}
\end{eqnarray}
where $\bar\epsilon$ denotes the mean dissipation rate
and $\bar\varphi$ the mean injection rate of energy,
both with dimension ${length^2\over time^3}$.
In the situation where the energy injection is a large
distance process (e.g. in the atmospheric turbulence)
one expects that for high $R$ a scale separation occurs
with the energy dissipation taking place on much smaller
distances. Pictorially, energy is transmitted to
the fluid by induction of large eddies on scale $L$
which subsequently break to smaller scale eddies
and so on passing energy to shorter and shorter
scales without substantial loss until the viscous
scale $\eta$ is reached where the friction dissipates
energy. Such a (Richardson \cite{Rich}) energy
cascade is then characterized by the integral scale
$L$, the viscous scale $\eta$ and the energy
dissipation rate $\bar\epsilon$. The scale ratio $L/\eta$
should grow with the Reynolds number. The interval of distance
scales $r$ satisfying $L\gg r\gg\eta$ is
called the inertial range. The cascade picture may be
formulated in more quantitative terms by introducing
the quantities \cite{Frisch}
\begin{eqnarray}
\bar\epsilon_{\leq K}\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}\nu\int
\limits_{\vert k\vert\leq K}\bigg(\int\langle\hspace{0.025cm}
\nabla v(0)\cdot\nabla v(x)\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}\s{\rm e}^{-i\hspace{0.05cm} k\cdot x}
\hspace{0.05cm}\s dx\bigg)\hspace{0.05cm}{{}^-\hs{-0.3cm}d} k
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
(${{}^-\hs{-0.3cm}d} k\equiv{dk\over(2\pi)^{-d}}$) and
\begin{eqnarray}
\bar\varphi_{\leq K}\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\int
\limits_{\vert k\vert\leq K}\bigg(\int\langle\hspace{0.025cm}
f(0)\cdot v(x)\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}\s{\rm e}^{-i\hspace{0.05cm} k\cdot x}
\hspace{0.05cm}\s dx\bigg)\hspace{0.05cm}{{}^-\hs{-0.3cm}d} k
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
interpreted as the mean dissipation and mean injection rate
in wavenumbers $k$ with $\vert k\vert\leq K$.
The injection of energy limited to distances ${\smash{\mathop{>}\limits_{^\sim}}} L$
means that, as a function of $K$, $\hspace{0.05cm}\bar\varphi_{\leq K}\hspace{0.05cm}$
is close to $\bar\epsilon$ everywhere except for $K{\smash{\mathop{<}\limits_{^\sim}}}{1\over L}$
where it falls to zero with $K\to0$. Similarly, the cascade picture
should imply that $\bar\epsilon_{\leq K}$ is negligable
for $K\ll{1\over\eta}$ and then grows to $\bar\epsilon$.
The difference
\begin{eqnarray}
\bar\varphi_{\leq K}-\bar\epsilon_{\leq K}\hspace{0.05cm}\equiv\hspace{0.05cm}
\bar\pi_{K}
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
has the interpretation of the energy flux out of the
wavenumbers $k$ with $\vert k\vert\leq K$. It should be
approximately constant and equal to $\bar\epsilon$
in the inertial range \hspace{0.05cm}${1\over L}\ll K\ll{1\over\eta}\hspace{0.05cm}$.
\vskip 0.5cm
In 1941, Kolmogorov \cite{K41} went one step further
by postulating that the equal-time correlators of velocity
differences over distances in the inertial range should be
universal functions of the latter and of the dissipation rate
$\bar\epsilon$. In particular for the structure functions
\begin{eqnarray}
S_n(x)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\langle\hspace{0.025cm}(v(x)-v(0))\cdot\widehat x)^n\rangle
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
with $\widehat x\equiv{x\over\vert x\vert}$, assuming also
isotropy of the turbulent state, one obtains
\begin{eqnarray}
S_n(x)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} C_n\hspace{0.05cm}\bar\epsilon^{n/3}\hspace{0.025cm} r^{n/3}
\label{K41}
\end{eqnarray}
with $r\equiv\vert x\vert$ and universal constants $C_n$.
Indeed, the right hand side
is the only function of $\bar\epsilon$ and $r$
with the dimension $({length\over time})^n$. Kolmogorov
theory implies that the typical velocity difference
over distance $r$ behaves as ${\bar\epsilon}^{1/3}\hspace{0.025cm} r^{1/3}$.
For the scale-dependent Reynolds number
one obtains then \hspace{0.05cm}$R_r\sim{{\bar\epsilon}^{1/3}\hspace{0.025cm} r^{4/3}
\over\nu}\hspace{0.025cm}$. \hspace{0.05cm} In particular, $R\cong R_L\sim
{{\bar\epsilon}^{1/3}\hspace{0.025cm} L^{4/3}\over\nu}\hspace{0.05cm}$ and \hspace{0.05cm}${\cal O}(1)=R_\eta\sim
{{\bar\epsilon}^{1/3}\hspace{0.025cm} \eta^{4/3}\over\nu}\hspace{0.05cm}$
hence \hspace{0.05cm}${\eta\over L}\sim R^{-3/4}\hspace{0.05cm}$ and it decreases with $R$.
\vskip 0.4cm
For $n=3$ the relation (\ref{K41}) is essentially a rigorous result
with $C_3=-{4\over 5}$ in 3 dimensions. Let us sketch the latter
argument \cite{LaLi,Frisch}. Suppose for simplicity that
the force $f$ is a random Gaussian field with mean zero
and the covariance
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\hspace{0.025cm} f^i(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm} f^j(s,y)\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\delta(t-s)\hspace{0.05cm}\s
{\cal C}^{ij}(x-y)
\label{rf}
\end{eqnarray}
with $\partial_i {\cal C}^{ij}=0\hspace{0.05cm}$. \hspace{0.05cm} Inferring from the NS equation
that
\begin{eqnarray}
v(t+\Delta t)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} v(t)\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.05cm}(\hspace{0.025cm}(v\cdot\nabla v)\hspace{0.025cm} v
-\nu\Delta v+\nabla p\hspace{0.025cm})\vert_{_{t}}\Delta t\hspace{0.05cm}
+\hspace{0.05cm}\int_{_t}^{^{t+\Delta t}}
\hspace{-0.5cm} f(s)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} ds\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}{\cal O}(\Delta t)^2
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
the stationarity of $\hspace{0.05cm}\langle\hspace{0.025cm} v(t,x)\cdot v(t,y)\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}$
implies that
\begin{eqnarray}
&&
2\hspace{0.025cm}\nu\hspace{0.05cm}\langle\hspace{0.025cm}\nabla v(x)\cdot\nabla v(y)\rangle
\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.025cm}\nu\langle\hspace{0.025cm}\Delta v(x)\cdot v(y)\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.05cm}
\nu\langle\hspace{0.025cm} v(x)\cdot\Delta v(y)\rangle\cr\cr
&&=\hspace{0.05cm}
-\hspace{0.025cm}\langle\hspace{0.025cm}(v(x)\cdot\nabla)\hspace{0.025cm} v(x)\cdot v(y)\rangle
\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.05cm}\langle\hspace{0.025cm} v(x)\cdot(v(y)\cdot\nabla)\hspace{0.025cm} v(y)\hspace{0.025cm}\rangle
\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}\hbox{tr}\hspace{0.05cm}\s{\cal C}(x-y)\hspace{0.05cm}
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
(the pressure does not contribute due to the transversality
of $v$). The first two terms on the right hand side
may be rewritten as
\begin{eqnarray}
\hspace{0.025cm}{_1\over^2}\hspace{0.05cm}\nabla_x\cdot\langle\hspace{0.025cm}
(v(x)-v(y))^2(v(x)-v(y))\hspace{0.025cm}\rangle
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
so that we obtain the relation
\begin{eqnarray}
\nu\hspace{0.05cm}\langle\hspace{0.025cm}\nabla v(x)\cdot\nabla v(0)\rangle
\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^4}\hspace{0.05cm}\nabla_x\cdot\langle\hspace{0.025cm}(v(x)-v(0))^2(v(x)-v(0))
\hspace{0.025cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^2}\hspace{0.05cm}\hbox{tr}\hspace{0.05cm}\s{\cal C}(x)\hspace{0.05cm}.
\label{rel}
\end{eqnarray}
Taking first the limit $x\to 0$ for positive $\nu$
and assuming that the presence of the latter smoothes
the behavior of \hspace{0.05cm}$\langle\hspace{0.025cm}(v(x)-v(0))^2(v(x)-v(0))\hspace{0.025cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}$
so that the second term on the left hand side vanishes
when $x\to 0$, we obtain
\begin{eqnarray}
\bar\epsilon\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^2}\hspace{0.05cm}\hbox{tr}\hspace{0.05cm}\s{\cal C}(0)
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
which is nothing else then the energy balance equation
(\ref{bal1}). On the other hand, taking first the $\nu\to 0$
limit of eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{rel}) for $x\not=0$, we obtain
\begin{eqnarray}
-\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^4}\hspace{0.05cm}\nabla_x\cdot\langle\hspace{0.025cm}(v(x)-v(0))^2(v(x)-v(0))
\hspace{0.025cm}\rangle\vert_{_{\nu=0}}\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^2}\hspace{0.05cm}\hbox{tr}\hspace{0.05cm}\s{\cal C}(x)\hspace{0.05cm}.
\label{rel1}
\end{eqnarray}
The assumption that the force acts only on distances ${\smash{\mathop{>}\limits_{^\sim}}} L$
means that for $r\ll L\hspace{0.025cm}$, \hspace{0.05cm}${\cal C}(x)\cong
{\cal C}(0)\hspace{0.05cm}$ so that eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{rel1}) means that in the inertial
range
\begin{eqnarray}
-\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^4}\hspace{0.05cm}\nabla_x\cdot\langle\hspace{0.025cm}(v(x)-v(0))^2(v(x)-v(0))
\hspace{0.025cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\bar\epsilon\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
Together with isotropy, this implies
the relation \cite{Frisch}
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\hspace{0.025cm}(v^i(x)-v^i(0))\hspace{0.025cm}(v^j(x)-v^j(0))\hspace{0.025cm}
(v^k(x)-v^k(0))\hspace{0.025cm}\rangle
=-\hspace{0.025cm}{_{4\hspace{0.05cm}\bar\epsilon}\over^{d(d+2)}}
\hspace{0.05cm}(\delta^{ij} x^k+\delta^{ik} x^j+\delta^{jk} x^i)\hspace{0.7cm}
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
from which the $n=3$ case of eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{K41}) follows
with \hspace{0.05cm}$C_3=-\hspace{0.025cm}{12\over d(d+2)}\hspace{0.025cm}$.
\vskip0.5cm
The structure functions are measured, more or less
directly, in atmospheric or ocean flows, in water jets,
in aerodynamic tunnels or in subtle experiments
with helium gas inbetween rotating cylinders.
They are also accessible in numerical simulations.
One extracts then the scaling exponents assuming
the behavior
\begin{eqnarray}
S_n(x)\hspace{0.05cm}\sim\hspace{0.05cm} r^{\zeta_n}\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
$\zeta_3$ agrees well with the theoretical prediction
$\zeta_3=1$. Here are some other exponents obtained
from wind tunnel data \cite{Benzi}
\begin{eqnarray}
\zeta_2=.70\hspace{0.05cm}(.67)\hspace{0.025cm},\quad\hspace{-0.06cm}\zeta_4=1.28\hspace{0.05cm}(1.33)\hspace{0.025cm},
\quad\hspace{-0.06cm}\zeta_5=1.53\hspace{0.05cm}(1.67)\hspace{0.025cm},\quad\hspace{-0.06cm}
\zeta_6=1.77\hspace{0.05cm}(2)\hspace{0.025cm},\quad\hspace{-0.06cm}\zeta_7=2.01\hspace{0.05cm}(2.33)
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
with the Kolmogorov values in the parenthesis for comparison.
The discrepancy is quite pronounced (its direction is determined
by the H\"{o}lder inequality). One of the main open problems
in the theory of fully developed turbulence is to explain,
starting from the first principles (i.e.\hspace{0.05cm}\s from the NS equation),
the breakdown of the Kolmogorov theory leading to the anomalous
structure-function exponents which indicate that the distribution
of $v(t)$ in the inertial range is far from Gaussian. The intuitive
idea that only a part of fluid modes (temporal or/and spacial)
participates in the turbulent cascade ("intermittency") has
led to multiple models of the cascade of the (multi)fractal
type \cite{Frisch}. Such models are not based on the NS equation
and allow to obtain essentially arbitrary spectra of
(multifractal \cite{DupLud}) exponents
hence they do not really explain the breakdown of the normal
scaling in realistic flows.
\vskip 0.4cm
For the "energy spectrum"
\begin{eqnarray}
e(K)\hspace{0.05cm}\equiv\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^2}\hspace{0.05cm}{_d\over^{dK}}
\int\limits_{\vert k\vert\leq K}\hspace{-0.2cm}
\bigg(\int\langle\hspace{0.025cm} v(0)\cdot v(x)\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}\s{\rm e}^{-i\hspace{0.05cm} k\cdot x}
\hspace{0.05cm}\s dx\bigg)\hspace{0.05cm}{{}^-\hs{-0.3cm}d} k\hspace{0.05cm},
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
the Kolmogorov theory predicts
\begin{eqnarray}
e(K)\sim\hspace{0.05cm}{\bar\epsilon}^{2/3}\hspace{0.05cm} K^{-5/3}
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
for \hspace{0.05cm}${1\over L}\ll K\ll{1\over\eta}\hspace{0.025cm}$.
The experimental data seem to confirm this behavior (with
the possibility of a slight discrepancy consistent with the
above value of $\zeta_2$). Deep in the dissipative regime
($K\gg{1\over^\eta}$), \hspace{0.05cm}$e(K)$ falls off much
faster than in the inertial regime.
\vskip 1cm
\noindent {\large\bf{LECTURE 2}}
\addtocounter{section}{1}
\vskip 0.5cm
The NS equation with random force is an example of a stochastic
evolution equation of the form
\begin{eqnarray}
\partial_t\Phi\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} G(\Phi)\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm} f
\label{ee}
\end{eqnarray}
with $\Phi$ a function of time, $G(\Phi)$ a functional
local in time and \hspace{0.05cm}$f$ a stationary
Gaussian process with mean zero and covariance
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm} f(t)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} f(s)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} C(t-s)\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
Upon solving the equation for given $f$ with initial data
$\Phi(t_0)=\Phi_0$, one obtains a stochastic process
\hspace{0.05cm}$t\mapsto\Phi(t)$. The limit $t_0\to-\infty$, if exists,
should then allow to pass to the stationary regime without
dependence on the initial data. There is a simple way to write
the expectation values of a functional ${\cal F}$ of $\Phi$ in terms
of a formal functional integral:
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm}{\cal F}(\Phi)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\int{\cal F}(\Phi)\hspace{0.05cm}\s\delta(\partial_t\Phi
-G(\Phi)-f)\hspace{0.05cm}\s\det(\partial_t-{_{\delta G}\over^{\delta\Phi}})
\hspace{0.05cm}\s D\Phi\hspace{0.05cm}\s d\mu_{_C}(f)
\label{ee1}
\end{eqnarray}
where $d\mu_{_C}$ denotes the Gaussian measure with covariance
$C$. Indeed, the integration over $\Phi$ imposes
the dependence (\ref{ee}) between $\Phi$ and $f$ and
the $f$ integral calculates the Gaussian expectation of ${\cal F}(\Phi)$
viewed as a functional of $f$. The determinant in (\ref{ee1})
is calculable (formally).
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\det(\partial_t-{_{\delta G}\over^{\delta\Phi}})\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
\det(\partial_t)\hspace{0.05cm}\s\det(\hspace{0.025cm} 1\hspace{0.025cm}-\hspace{0.025cm}\partial_t^{-1}{_{\delta G}
\over^{\delta\Phi}})\cr
&&=\hspace{0.05cm}\det(\partial_t)\ {\rm e}^{\hspace{0.05cm}{\rm tr}\hspace{0.05cm}\ln(1-\partial_t^{-1}
{{\delta G}\over{\delta\Phi}})}\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\det(\partial_t)
\ {\rm e}^{\hspace{0.025cm}-\sum\limits_{n=1}^\infty{\rm tr}\hspace{0.05cm}(\partial_t^{-1}
{{\delta G}\over{\delta\Phi}})^n}\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
With the choice $\partial_t^{-1}(t_1,t_2)=\theta(t_1-t_2)$,
appropriate for solutions of the initial value problems,
we have, setting\footnote{in simplest situations, this
choice cancels in final expressions, in more complicated ones
it is related to a choice of the (ordering) convention for
the stochastic integrals} $\theta(0)={1\over2}$,
\begin{eqnarray}
\hbox{tr}\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\partial_t^{-1}{_{\delta G}\over^{\delta\Phi}})^n\ =\
\cases{\hbox to 3cm{0\hfill}{\rm for}\quad n>1\hspace{0.05cm},\cr
\hbox to 3cm{${1\over 2}\int{\rm tr}\hspace{0.05cm}{{\delta G}
\over{\delta\Phi}}\hspace{0.05cm} dt$\hfill}{\rm for}\quad n=1\hspace{0.05cm},}
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
where on the right hand side, \hspace{0.05cm}${{\delta G}\over{\delta\Phi}}\hspace{0.05cm}$
is calculated at fixed time. Inserting the value of the determinant
into eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{ee1}) and rewriting the $\delta$-function
as an oscillatory integral, we obtain
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm}{\cal F}(\Phi)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\int{\cal F}(\Phi)\ {\rm e}^{\hspace{0.025cm}-\hspace{0.025cm}
i\hspace{0.05cm}(\hspace{0.025cm} R\hspace{0.05cm},\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}\partial_t\Phi-G(\Phi)-f\hspace{0.05cm})\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.05cm}{1\over 2}\int\hbox{tr}\hspace{0.05cm}
{{\delta G}\over{\delta\Phi}}\hspace{0.05cm} dt}\ DR\hspace{0.05cm}\s D\Phi\hspace{0.05cm}\s d\mu_{_C}(f)
\ \bigg/\ {\rm norm.}\hspace{0.05cm},
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
where $(\hspace{0.05cm}\cdot\hspace{0.05cm},\hspace{0.05cm}\cdot\hspace{0.05cm})$ stands for the $L^2$ scalar product,
or, after integration over $f$,
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm}{\cal F}(\Phi)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\int{\cal F}(\Phi)\ {\rm e}^{\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.025cm} S(R,\Phi)}
\ DR\hspace{0.05cm}\s D\Phi\ \bigg/\ {\rm norm.}
\label{MSR}
\end{eqnarray}
where
\begin{eqnarray}
S(R,\Phi)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} i\hspace{0.05cm}(\hspace{0.05cm} R\hspace{0.05cm},\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}\partial_t\Phi-G(\Phi)\hspace{0.05cm})\hspace{0.05cm}
+\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^2}\int\hbox{tr}\hspace{0.05cm}
{_{\delta G}\over^{\delta\Phi}}\hspace{0.05cm} dt\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^2}
\hspace{0.05cm}(R,\hspace{0.025cm} C R)\hspace{0.05cm}.
\label{MSR1}
\end{eqnarray}
The above functional integral representation is known in the
physical literature as the Martin-Siggia-Rose (MSR) formalism
\cite{MSR}. The field $R$ is called the response field
(its correlations measure the reaction of the system to small
deterministic variations of the force).
It may be integrated out in (\ref{MSR}) leading to a Fokker-Planck
type of functional integral but it will be more convenient
to keep it in the functional representation.
\vskip 0.5cm
As a simple but instructive example, let us consider
a linear stochastic equation describing forced diffusion:
\begin{eqnarray}
\partial_t{T}\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} D\hspace{0.025cm}\Delta{T}\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm} f
\label{fd}
\end{eqnarray}
with the diffusion constant $D$ and the forcing covariance
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm} f(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} f(s,y)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\delta(t-s)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}{\cal C}(x-y)
\label{for}
\end{eqnarray}
where ${\cal C}$ is a smooth, fast decaying, positive-definite function.
Given the initial data ${T}(t_0)$, we may solve eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{fd}):
\begin{eqnarray}
{T}(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\int{\rm e}^{\hspace{0.025cm}(t-t_0)D\Delta}(x,y)\hspace{0.05cm}\s{T}(t_0,y)\hspace{0.05cm}\s dy
\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}\int\limits_{t_0}^t ds\int{\rm e}^{\hspace{0.025cm}(t-s)D\Delta}(x,y)\hspace{0.05cm}\s f(s,y)
\hspace{0.05cm}\s dy
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
obtaining a Gaussian stochastic process with mean
\begin{eqnarray}
{\rm e}^{\hspace{0.025cm}(t-t_0)D\Delta}\hspace{0.05cm}{T}(t_0)
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
and covariance
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\langle\hspace{0.05cm}({T}(t_1,x_1)-\langle{T}(t_1,x_1)\rangle)\hspace{0.05cm}({T}(t_2,x_2)
-\langle{T}(t_2,x_2)\rangle)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\cr
&&\hspace{3cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
\int\limits_{t_0}^{{\rm min}(t_1,t_2)}\left({\rm e}^{\hspace{0.025cm}(t_1-s)D\Delta}
\hspace{0.05cm}{\cal C}\hspace{0.05cm}{\rm e}^{\hspace{0.025cm}(t_2-s)D\Delta}\right)(x_1,\hspace{0.025cm} x_2)\hspace{0.05cm}\s ds\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
The limit $t_0\to-\infty$ results in a stationary Gaussian
process with mean zero and covariance
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm}{T}(t_1,x_1)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}{T}(t_2,x_2)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
\int{\rm e}^{\hspace{0.025cm}\vert t_1-t_2\vert\hspace{0.025cm} D\hspace{0.025cm} k^2\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.05cm} i\hspace{0.025cm} k\cdot(x_1-x_2)}
\hspace{0.05cm}\s{_{\widehat{\cal C}(k)}\over^{2Dk^2}}\hspace{0.05cm}\s{{}^-\hs{-0.3cm}d} k\hspace{0.05cm}.
\label{co}
\end{eqnarray}
Note that for $t_1=t_2$ the right hand side is
a propagator of the scalar massless
free field with UV cutoff $\widehat{\cal C}(k)$.
\vskip 0.3cm
In the MSR formalism, the stochastic equation (\ref{fd})
leads to the quadratic action
\begin{eqnarray}
S(R,{T})= i\hspace{-0.1cm}\int\hspace{-0.13cm}R(t,x)\hspace{0.025cm}
(\partial_t{T}-D\Delta{T})(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}
dt\hspace{0.05cm} dx\hspace{0.025cm}+\hspace{0.025cm}{_1\over^2}\hspace{-0.1cm}\int\hspace{-0.13cm}
R(t,x)\hspace{0.025cm}{\cal C}(x-y)\hspace{0.025cm} R(t,y)\hspace{0.05cm} dt
\hspace{0.05cm} dx\hspace{0.05cm} dy\hspace{0.6cm}
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
which gives rise to the propagators
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm} R\hspace{0.05cm}\s R\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{2.4cm}&=&0\hspace{0.05cm},\cr\cr
\langle\hspace{0.025cm}\hspace{0.05cm} {T}(t_1,x_1)\hspace{0.05cm}\s R(t_2,x_2)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle&=&
i\hspace{0.025cm}(\partial_t+D\Delta)^{-1}(t_1,x_1;\hspace{0.025cm} t_2,x_2)\cr
&=&i\hspace{0.025cm}\theta(t_1-t_2)\hspace{0.05cm}\s{\rm e}^{\hspace{0.025cm}(t_1-t_2)D\Delta}(x_1,x_2)
\label{co1}
\end{eqnarray}
and $\langle{T}\hspace{0.025cm}{T}\rangle$ as in eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{co}).
\vskip 0.3cm
There are two interesting limiting regimes of forced diffusion:
the one of long times and long distances and that of
short times and short distances. To study the first one, let
us introduce the rescaled fields
\begin{eqnarray}
{T}_\lambda(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\lambda^{(d-2)/2}\hspace{0.05cm}{T}(\lambda t^2,\hspace{0.025cm}\lambda x)\hspace{0.05cm},
\quad\quad R_\lambda(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\lambda^{(d+2)/2}\hspace{0.05cm} R(\lambda^2 t,\hspace{0.025cm} \lambda x)
\label{resc1}
\end{eqnarray}
for which
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\langle\hspace{0.05cm}{T}_\lambda(t_1,x_1)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}{T}_\lambda(t_2,x_2)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
\lambda^{d-2}\int{\rm e}^{\hspace{0.025cm}\vert t_1-t_2\vert\hspace{0.025cm}\lambda^2 D\hspace{0.025cm} k^2\hspace{0.05cm}
-\hspace{0.05cm} i\hspace{0.025cm} k\cdot(x_1-x_2)\hspace{0.025cm}\lambda}
\hspace{0.05cm}\s{_{\widehat{\cal C}(k)}\over^{2Dk^2}}\hspace{0.05cm}\s{{}^-\hs{-0.3cm}d} k\cr
&&=\hspace{0.05cm}
\int{\rm e}^{\hspace{0.025cm}\vert t_1-t_2\vert\hspace{0.025cm} D\hspace{0.025cm} k^2\hspace{0.05cm}
-\hspace{0.05cm} i\hspace{0.025cm} k\cdot(x_1-x_2)}
\hspace{0.05cm}\s{_{\widehat{\cal C}(k/\lambda)}\over^{2Dk^2}}\hspace{0.05cm}\s{{}^-\hs{-0.3cm}d} k\hspace{0.05cm}
\ \ {\smash{\mathop{\longrightarrow}\limits_{\lambda\to\infty}}}\ \hspace{0.05cm}\
{_{\widehat{\cal C}(0)}\over^{2D}}\int{\rm e}^{\hspace{0.025cm}-\vert t_1-t_2\vert\hspace{0.025cm} D\hspace{0.025cm} k^2\hspace{0.05cm}
+\hspace{0.05cm} i\hspace{0.025cm} k\cdot(x_1-x_2)}\hspace{0.05cm}\s{_1\over^{k^2}}\hspace{0.05cm}\s{{}^-\hs{-0.3cm}d} k\hspace{0.05cm},
\hspace{1.1cm}\label{lr1}
\\\cr
&&\langle\hspace{0.05cm}{T}_\lambda\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} R_\lambda\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\langle\hspace{0.05cm}{T}\hspace{0.05cm}\s R
\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}.\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
The limiting $\hspace{0.05cm}\langle{T}_\lambda{T}_\lambda\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}$ covariance
coincides with the one of the Langevin dynamics (of type A
\cite{HalHo}) for the scalar massless field.
Recall that the Langevin dynamics
is given by the stochastic evolution equation
\begin{eqnarray}
\partial_t\Phi\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.025cm}{_1\over^2}\hspace{0.05cm}
\Gamma\hspace{0.05cm}{_{\delta{\cal V}({\Phi})}\over^{\delta{\Phi}}}
\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm} f
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
with the delta-correlated noise
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm} f(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} f(s,y)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\Gamma\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}\delta(t-s)\hspace{0.05cm}
\hspace{0.025cm}\delta(x-y)\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
For \hspace{0.05cm}${\cal V}(\Phi)=\int V(\Phi(t))\hspace{0.05cm} dt\hspace{0.025cm}$, \hspace{0.05cm} it
describes convergence to the equilibrium (equal time)
probability measure \hspace{0.05cm}\s$\sim\hspace{0.05cm}{\rm e}^{\hspace{0.025cm}-V(\Phi)}\hspace{0.05cm} D\Phi\hspace{0.025cm}.\hspace{0.05cm}$
In our case
\begin{eqnarray}
V({T})\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} {_D\over^{\widehat{\cal C}(0)}}\int(\nabla{T})^2\hspace{0.05cm},\quad
\quad\ \ \Gamma\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\widehat{\cal C}(0)\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
The limiting behavior (\ref{lr1}) expresses the simple fact that
at large distances the noise covariance ${\cal C}(x-y)$ looks like
$(\int{\cal C})\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}\delta(x-y)\hspace{0.025cm}.$
\vskip 0.3cm
The study of the long-time, long-distance asymptotics is
a typical field-theoretic problem where we are interested
in the behavior of the system at distances much longer
than the UV cutoff scale. Studying the opposite regime
of distances much shorter than the cutoff scale may seem
without interest. This is not so. In problems related to
turbulence, function $\widehat{\cal C}(k)$ describes the spectrum
of forcing rather than the momentum cutoff and we are
interested in the regime of short times and short distances,
more exactly in distance scales much shorter than the
scale of energy injection interpreted in the field-theoretic
context as the UV cutoff scale. Hence {\bf field theory and
turbulence are concerned with opposite limiting regimes}.
In order to examine the short-time, short-distance
asymptotics of forced diffusion, we rescale the fields
differently introducing
\begin{eqnarray}
{T}^\lambda(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\lambda\hspace{0.05cm}{T}(t/\lambda^2,\hspace{0.025cm} x/\lambda)\hspace{0.05cm},\quad\quad
R^\lambda(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\lambda^{-d-1}\hspace{0.05cm} R(t/\lambda^2,\hspace{0.025cm} x/\lambda)\hspace{0.05cm}.
\label{resc2}
\end{eqnarray}
and obtaining
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\langle\hspace{0.05cm}{T}^\lambda(t_1,x_1)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}{T}^\lambda(t_2,x_2)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
\lambda^2\int{\rm e}^{\hspace{0.025cm}\vert t_1-t_2\vert\hspace{0.025cm}\lambda^{-2} D\hspace{0.025cm} k^2\hspace{0.05cm}
-\hspace{0.05cm} i\hspace{0.025cm} k\cdot(x_1-x_2)\hspace{0.025cm}\lambda^{-1}}
\hspace{0.05cm}\s{_{\widehat{\cal C}(k)}\over^{2Dk^2}}\hspace{0.05cm}\s{{}^-\hs{-0.3cm}d} k\cr
&&=\hspace{0.05cm}\lambda^2\int{_{\widehat{\cal C}(k)}\over^{2Dk^2}}\hspace{0.05cm}\s{{}^-\hs{-0.3cm}d} k\ -\
{_1\over^2}\hspace{0.05cm}{\cal C}(0)\left(\vert t_1-t_2\vert\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^{Dd}}
\hspace{0.05cm}\vert x_1-x_2\vert^2\right)\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}{\cal O}(\lambda^2)\hspace{0.05cm},\label{lr2}\\\cr
&&\langle\hspace{0.05cm}{T}^\lambda\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} R^\lambda\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\langle\hspace{0.05cm}{T}\hspace{0.05cm}\s R
\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
for large $\lambda$. Hence the $\langle{T}^\lambda\hspace{0.025cm}{T}^\lambda\rangle$
covariance reaches a scaling form modulo a divergent constant.
In other words, the differences ${T}(t,x)-{T}(t,y)$ exhibit
a scaling behavior at short times and short distances.
The presence of the blowing up constant mode which may
be eliminated by considering field differences is typical
for the turbulence related problems.
\vskip 0.5cm
Returning to the NS equation (\ref{NS}) with random
Gaussian force (\ref{rf}) and applying
the MSR formalism, we obtain the MSR action
\begin{eqnarray}
S(R,v)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} i\int R(t,x)\cdot(\partial_t v+v\cdot\nabla v-\nu\Delta v)(t,x)
\hspace{0.025cm}\hspace{0.05cm} dt\hspace{0.05cm} dx\cr
+\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^2}\int R(t,x)\cdot{\cal C}(x-y)\hspace{0.025cm} R(t,y)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} dt\hspace{0.05cm} dx\hspace{0.05cm} dy
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
with vector fields $R$ and $v$ satisfying $\nabla\cdot R=0$
and $\nabla\cdot v=0$. One could then set up a perturbative
scheme by separating
\begin{eqnarray}
S(R,v)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} S_0(R,v)\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm} S_1(R,v)
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
with
\begin{eqnarray}
&&S_0(R,v)=
i\hspace{-0.1cm}\int\hspace{-0.1cm}R(t,x)\cdot(\partial_t v-\nu\Delta v)(t,x)
\hspace{0.05cm} dt\hspace{0.05cm} dx\hspace{0.025cm}+\hspace{0.025cm}{_1\over^2}\hspace{-0.1cm}\int\hspace{-0.1cm}
R(t,x)\cdot{\cal C}(x-y)\hspace{0.025cm} R(t,y)\hspace{0.05cm} dt\hspace{0.05cm} dx\hspace{0.05cm} dy\hspace{0.025cm},\cr
&&S_1(R,v)= i\hspace{-0.1cm}\int\hspace{-0.1cm}R\hspace{0.05cm} P_{_{\rm tr}}
(v\cdot\nabla v)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} dt\hspace{0.05cm} dx\hspace{0.025cm},
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
(\hspace{0.025cm}$P_{_{\rm tr}}\hspace{0.05cm}$ stands for the projection on
the transverse vector fields)
and developing $\hspace{0.05cm}{\rm e}^{-S_1}\hspace{0.05cm}$ in the power series,
with \hspace{0.05cm}$S_0\hspace{0.05cm}$ giving rise to the propagators
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle R\hspace{0.05cm} v\rangle_{_0}\quad\quad\Large{-\hspace{-0.25cm}-
\hspace{-0.12cm}\cdot\hspace{-0.1cm}\cdot\hspace{-0.1cm}\cdot\hspace{-0.02cm}\cdot}
\quad,\quad\quad\quad
\langle v\hspace{0.05cm} v\rangle_{_0}\quad\quad\Large{\cdot\hspace{-0.1cm}
\cdot\hspace{-0.1cm}\cdot\hspace{-0.1cm}\cdot\hspace{-0.1cm}\cdot\hspace{-0.11cm}
\cdot\hspace{-0.1cm}\cdot\hspace{-0.0cm}\cdot}
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
and $S_1\hspace{0.05cm}$ to the vertex
\begin{eqnarray}
\Large{-\hspace{-0.25cm}-\hspace{-0.13cm}\cdot\hspace{-0.13cm}:\hspace{-0.15cm}
{_.\atop{^{^\cdot}}}\hspace{-0.1cm}{_\cdot\atop^\cdot}}
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
and with the simplest Feynman diagrams
\begin{eqnarray}
\Large{-\hspace{-0.25cm}-\hspace{-0.13cm}\cdot\hspace{-0.01cm}
\smash{\mathop{_{^.}}\limits^{\cdot}}\hspace{-0.01cm}
\smash{\mathop{_{^.}}\limits^{^.}}\hspace{-0.01cm}
\smash{\mathop{_{^.}}\limits^{^\cdot}}\hspace{-0.01cm}
\smash{\mathop{_{^.}}\limits^{^\cdot}}\hspace{-0.03cm}
\smash{\mathop{_{^{_{-}}}}\limits^{\cdot_{\hspace{0.03cm}\cdot}}}
\hspace{-0.17cm}\smash{\mathop{_{^{_{-}}}}\limits^{\hspace{0.08cm}_.}}
\hspace{-0.17cm}\cdot\hspace{-0.1cm}\cdot\hspace{-0.1cm}\cdot\hspace{-0.1cm}\cdot}
\quad,\quad\quad\quad
\Large{-\hspace{-0.25cm}-\hspace{-0.13cm}\cdot\hspace{-0.13cm}:\hspace{-0.15cm}
{_.\atop{^{^\cdot}}}\hspace{-0.08cm}{_{_{^\cdot}}\atop^{^{_\cdot}}}
\hspace{-0.1cm}{_{_{^\cdot}}\atop^{^{_\cdot}}}\hspace{-0.12cm}
{\hspace{0.02cm}_.\atop{^{^\cdot}}}\hspace{-0.18cm}:\hspace{-0.13cm}\cdot\hspace{-0.13cm}-
\hspace{-0.25cm}-}\quad.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
The perturbative expansion is plagued by the UV and IR
divergences when $\nu\to 0$ and ${\cal C}\to{\rm const}.$
Attempts were made to improve the situation by
applying various resummation schemes, inspired
by the field theoretic techniques (Schwinger-Dyson
equations, renormalization group, etc.) but it seems fair
to say that they were not very successful.
\vskip 0.4cm
Despite a formal similarity with the field theory formulation
using functional integrals, the problem of the NS turbulence
differs radically from the (dynamical formulation) of
field theory in at least two crucial aspects:
\vskip 0.2cm
I. \ the nonlinear term \hspace{0.05cm}$v\cdot\nabla v\hspace{0.05cm}$ in the NS equation is
not of the gradient type \hspace{0.05cm}${\delta{\cal V}(v)\over\delta v}\hspace{0.05cm}$
unlike the nonlinearities in the Langevin dynamics
for field theory models,
\vskip 0.2cm
II.\hspace{0.05cm}\ the noise (force) correlation in the NS turbulence
should be close to a delta-function in the Fourier space
rather than in the position space as for the Langevin
dynamics.
\vskip 0.2cm
\noindent Consequently, the stationary statistical state of the
NS fluid is not of an equilibrium type unlike the Gibbs states
corresponding to the stationary states of the Langevin
dynamics for (euclidean) field theories. We have seen
on the example of linear forced diffusion that
the 2$^{\hspace{0.05cm}{\rm nd}}$ difference is already enough to make
the problem very different from the field theoretic one.
Let us profit from the occasion to mention that
the study of the nonlinear version of forced
diffusion:
\begin{eqnarray}
\partial_t{T}\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} D\hspace{0.025cm}\Delta{T}\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^{2\widehat{\cal C}(0)}}
\hspace{0.05cm}{_{\delta{\cal V}({T})}\over^{\delta{T}}}\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm} f
\label{fdn}
\end{eqnarray}
with random Gaussian force as in (\ref{for})
is a problem of its own interest. The long-time
long-distance asymptotics of the correlations
is then a dynamical version of an interacting
field theory problem (e.g. for \hspace{0.05cm}${\cal V}({T})\sim\int{T}^4\hspace{0.025cm}$)
and may be studied by the renormalization group
techniques. On the other hand, the short-time, short-distance
asymptotics e.g. for \hspace{0.05cm}${\cal V}({T})\sim\int(\nabla{T})^4\hspace{0.025cm}$
is a completely open problem\footnote{
we consider functionals of $\nabla{T}$ to avoid coupling
to the constant mode unstable at short distances already in
the linear case}. The inverse renormalization group
which will be the subject of the last lecture may provide
a tool for the latter type of questions.
\vskip 1cm
\noindent {\large\bf{LECTURE 3}}
\addtocounter{section}{1}
\vskip 0.5cm
In view of the reputed difficulty of the NS problem,
it would be instructive to consider simpler models of the
stochastic evolution equation (\ref{ee})
randomly forced at long distances and with $G(\Phi)$
not of the gradient type.
Such a model is provided by an equation, with a relatively
long history \cite{Obuh,Batch,Corrs}, describing
the passive advection of a scalar quantity $T(t,x)$
(temperature) by a random velocity field
\begin{eqnarray}
\partial_t T\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} -\hspace{0.025cm} v\cdot\nabla T\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}\kappa\Delta T\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm} f\hspace{0.05cm}.
\label{ps}
\end{eqnarray}
The positive coefficient $\kappa$ is called the molecular
diffusivity. For a divergence-free $v$, operator $-v\cdot\nabla$
is skew-symmetric (conserving the energy ${_1\over^2}\int T^2$)
and the $-v\cdot\nabla T$ term
is not of the gradient type, unlike the $\kappa\Delta T$
one corresponding to a negative (energy dissipating)
symmetric operator.
Ideally, the velocity field $v(t,x)$ should describe a turbulent
NS flow but, to simplify radically the problem, one replaces
it by a Gaussian random field. In \cite{Kr68} Kraichnan
noticed that in the case when $v$ is decorrelated in time
the problem becomes exactly soluble in the sense that one may write
a closed system of differential equations for the correlation
functions of $T$. In recent years Kraichnan's model
of passive scalar has attracted a lot of attention, see e.g.
\cite{Kr94,Proc1,Falk1,ShrS,GK}, as a prototype of a turbulent
system in which one may study analytically
the breakdown of a Kolmogorov-type scaling.
\vskip 0.3cm
We shall describe some results of the approach developed
in \cite{GK0,GK,BGK}. The Gaussian velocity field $v$ will
be taken of mean zero and covariance
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm} v^i(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} v^j(s,y)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
\delta(s-t)\hspace{0.05cm} D^{ij}(x-y)
\label{covv}
\end{eqnarray}
with $\partial_i D^{ij}(x)=0$ and
\begin{eqnarray}
D^{ij}(x)\hspace{0.05cm}=\s2\hspace{0.025cm} D_0\hspace{0.05cm}\delta^{ij}\hspace{0.05cm}-\s2\hspace{0.025cm} d^{ij}(x)
\label{Dd}
\end{eqnarray}
where $d^{ij}(x)\hspace{0.05cm}\sim\hspace{0.05cm} r^\xi$ for small $r\equiv|x|$,
\hspace{0.025cm}$0<\xi<2$. Note the implied growth of the $2^{\hspace{0.05cm}\rm nd}$
order velocity structure function with the distance,
as in the turbulent flows. $\xi={4\over 3}$
corresponds to the Kolmogorov scaling
dimension\footnote{as we shall see in the
next lecture, the dimension of $\delta(t-s)$ is $\xi-2$}
of $v$ equal to ${1\over 3}$. More concretely, we may pose
\begin{eqnarray}
D^{ij}(x)\hspace{0.05cm}\sim\hspace{0.05cm}\int{{{\rm e}^{i\hspace{0.025cm} k\cdot x}}
\over{(k^2+m^2)^{(d+\xi)/2}}}\hspace{0.05cm}\s\left(\delta^{ij}
-{_{k^ik^j}\over^{k^2}}\right)\hspace{0.025cm}{{}^-\hs{-0.3cm}d} k\hspace{0.05cm},
\label{covv1}
\end{eqnarray}
with a small IR regulator $m$, which leads to $D_0\sim m^{-\xi}$ and
\begin{eqnarray}
d^{ij}(x)\equiv d^{ij}_m(x)\hspace{0.05cm}\cong
\hspace{0.05cm}{_D\over^{d-1}}\left((d-1+\xi)\delta^{ij}
-\xi{_{x^ix^j}\over^{r^2}}\right)r^\xi\equiv d_0^{ij}(x)
\label{scar}
\end{eqnarray}
for small $r$ and some constant $D$. Unlike $D_0$ which
diverges when $m\to0$, $d_m^{ij}(x)$
possesses the $m\to0$ limit equal to $d^{ij}_0(x)$
and scaling exactly with power $\xi$.
\vskip 0.2cm
The source $f$ will be assumed independent of $v$, Gaussian,
with mean zero and with covariance
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm} f(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} f(s,y)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
\delta(t-s)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}{\cal C}({_{x-y}\over^L})
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
for some positive definite, rotationally invariant
test function ${\cal C}$.
\vskip 0.3cm
The passive scalar model as set up above exhibits
scale separation with the energy cascade in the
inertial range of distances \hspace{0.05cm}$L\gg r\gg\eta
={\cal O}(({\kappa\over D})^{1/\xi})\hspace{0.025cm} L\hspace{0.025cm}$. The
even structure functions of the scalar\footnote{the odd ones
vanish} \hspace{0.05cm}$S_{2n}(r)\hspace{0.025cm}=\hspace{0.025cm}
\langle\hspace{0.025cm}(T(t,x)-T(t,0))^{2n}\hspace{0.025cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}$ show
exponential scaling in the inertial range. At least for small
$\xi$,
\begin{eqnarray}
S_{2n}(r)\ \sim\ r^{\zeta_{2n}}
\label{strf}
\end{eqnarray}
with
\begin{eqnarray}
\zeta_{2n}\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} n(2-\xi)\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.05cm}{_{2n(n-1)}\over^{d+2}}\hspace{0.05cm}\xi
\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}{\cal O}(\xi^2)\hspace{0.05cm}.
\label{zeta}
\end{eqnarray}
In particular, the scaling of the 4$^{\hspace{0.05cm}\rm th}$ and higher
structure functions is anomalous: the exponents $\zeta_{2n}$
deviate from the ones of the Kolmogorov(-Corrsin)
scaling theory giving $\zeta_{2n}=n\zeta_2$. Similar
results were obtained in \cite{Falk1,Falk2} for
large space dimension $d$.
\vskip 0.3cm
The above conclusions are based on an analysis of
the differential equations satisfied by the equal-time correlation
functions of the scalar $T$. These equations may be obtained
in many ways, for example with help of the MSR formalism.
Let us first consider the example of the 2-point function.
We have
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm} T(t,x_1)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} T(t,x_2)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
\int\left(\int T(t,x_1)\hspace{0.05cm} T(t,x_2)\hspace{0.05cm}\s{\rm e}^{-S(R,T,v)}
\hspace{0.05cm}\s DR\hspace{0.05cm} DT\hspace{0.05cm}\bigg/\hspace{0.05cm}{\rm norm}.\right)d\mu_{_D}(v)
\hspace{0.4cm}
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
where
\begin{eqnarray}
S(R,T,v)= i\hspace{-0.1cm}\int\hspace{-0.1cm}R\hspace{0.05cm}(\partial_tT
+v\cdot\nabla T-\kappa\Delta T)
\hspace{0.025cm} dt\hspace{0.025cm} dx\hspace{0.025cm}+\hspace{0.025cm}{_1\over^2}\hspace{-0.15cm}\int\hspace{-0.15cm}
R(t,x)\hspace{0.025cm}{\cal C}({_{x-y}\over^L})\hspace{0.025cm} R(t,y)\hspace{0.025cm} dt\hspace{0.025cm} dx\hspace{0.025cm} dy\hspace{0.8cm}
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
and $d\mu_{_D}(v)$ is the Gaussian measure corresponding
to the covariance (\ref{covv}). The normalization of the
Gaussian $R,\hspace{0.025cm} T$ functional integral may be argued
to be $v$-independent. Performing this integral, one obtains
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\langle\hspace{0.05cm} T(t,x_1)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} T(t,x_2)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\cr\cr
&&\hspace{-0.4cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
\int\left((\partial_t+v\cdot\nabla-\kappa\Delta)^{-1}{\cal C}\hspace{0.025cm}
(-\partial_t+v\cdot\nabla-\kappa\Delta)^{-1}\right)
(t,x_1;\hspace{0.025cm} t,x_2)\ d\mu_{_D}(v)\hspace{0.05cm}.\hspace{0.5cm}
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
Expanding into the Neuman series
\begin{eqnarray}
(\pm\partial_t+v\cdot\nabla-\kappa\Delta)^{-1}
\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\sum\limits_{m=0}^\infty(\pm\partial_t-\kappa\Delta)^{-1}
\left(- v\cdot\nabla\hspace{0.05cm}(\pm\partial_t-\kappa\Delta)^{-1}\right)^m\hspace{0.025cm},
\label{Neu}
\end{eqnarray}
we may easily compute the $d\mu_{_D}(v)$ expectation
using the Wick theorem.
The resulting sum may be identified\footnote{the time-decorrelation
of the velocities is crucial at this point} with the Neuman series
for ${\cal M}_2^{-1}\hspace{0.025cm}{\cal C}$ where ${\cal M}_2$ is an operator
acting on the functions of $x_1,x_2$,
\begin{eqnarray}
{\cal M}_2&=&-\hspace{0.025cm}\kappa(\Delta_{x_1}+\Delta_{x_2})
\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^{2\delta(0)}}\left(\langle(v(t,x_1)
\cdot\nabla_{x_1})^2\rangle
+\langle(v(t,x_2)\cdot\nabla_{x_2})^2\rangle\right)\cr
&&\hspace{5cm}-\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^{\delta(0)}}\hspace{0.05cm}\langle
v(t,x_1)\cdot\nabla_{x_1}\hspace{0.05cm}
v(t,x_2)\cdot\nabla_{x_2}\rangle\cr\cr
&=&-(\kappa+D_0)(\Delta_{x_1}+\Delta_{x_2})
\hspace{0.05cm}-\s2\hspace{0.025cm}(D_0\delta^{ij}-d^{ij}(x_1-x_2))
\hspace{0.05cm}\partial_{x_1^i}\partial_{x_2^j}\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
The Neuman series develops ${\cal M}_2^{-1}$ in powers
of the $v$-expectations. The "tadpole" term
$\langle(v(t,x_i)\cdot\nabla_{x_i})^2\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}$
originates from the Wick contraction of 2 velocities in the
Neuman series of the same \hspace{0.05cm}$(\pm\partial_t+v\cdot\nabla-\kappa
\Delta)^{-1}\hspace{0.05cm}$ operator
whereas \hspace{0.05cm}$\langle v(t,x_1)\cdot\nabla_{x_1}\hspace{0.05cm}
v(t,x_2)\cdot\nabla_{x_2}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}$ comes from
the mixed contractions.
\vskip 0.3cm
Higher point correlation functions can be treated the same
way:
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\hspace{0.4cm}{\cal F}_{2n}(x_1,\dots,x_{2n})\hspace{0.05cm}\ \equiv\ \hspace{0.05cm}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm} T(t,x_1)\hspace{0.05cm}\cdots\hspace{0.05cm} T(t,x_{2n})\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\cr
&&=\hspace{-0.42cm}\sum\limits_{{{\rm pairings}
\atop(\{n_j,m_j\})}}\hspace{-0.32cm}
\int\hspace{-0.1cm}\prod\limits_{j=1}^n\hspace{-0.1cm}
\left((\partial_t+v\cdot\nabla-\kappa\Delta)^{-1}{\cal C}\hspace{0.025cm}
(-\partial_t+v\cdot\nabla-\kappa\Delta)^{-1}\right)\hspace{-0.06cm}
(t,x_{n_j};\hspace{0.025cm} t,x_{m_j})\ d\mu_{_D}(v)\hspace{1.15cm}
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
and using eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{Neu}) and the Wick theorem, it
is easy to obtain the inductive relation
\begin{eqnarray}
{\cal F}_{2n}(x_1,\dots,x_{2n})\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}{\cal M}_{2n}^{\hspace{0.05cm}-1}
\sum\limits_{1\leq n_1<n_2\leq{2n}}{\cal C}({_{x_{n_1}-x_{n_2}}
\over^{L}})\ {\cal F}_{2n-2}(x_1,\smash{\mathop{\dots\dots\dots}
\limits_{\widehat{n_1}\quad\widehat{n_2}}},x_{2n})
\label{2npt}
\end{eqnarray}
(in a slightly abusive notation) with
\begin{eqnarray}
{\cal M}_{n}\ =\ -(\kappa+D_0)\sum\limits_{m=1}^n
\Delta_{x_m}\hspace{0.05cm}-\ 2\hspace{-0.4cm}\sum\limits_{1\leq m_1<m_2\leq n}
\hspace{-0.2cm}(D_0\delta^{ij}-d^{ij}(x_{m_1}-x_{m_2}))
\hspace{0.05cm}\partial_{x_{m_1}^i}\partial_{x_{m_2}^j}\hspace{0.05cm}.\hspace{0.5cm}
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
For $\kappa>0$, \hspace{0.05cm}${\cal M}_n$ are positive 2$^{\hspace{0.05cm}\rm nd}$
order elliptic operators. For $\kappa=0$ they become
singular elliptic (their principal symbol
looses positive definiteness at coinciding
points $x_{m_1}=x_{m_2}$). Note that
in the action on translationally invariant functions of
$x_1,\dots,x_n$,
\begin{eqnarray}
{\cal M}_n\ =\ -\hspace{0.025cm}\kappa\sum\limits_{m=1}^n\Delta_{x_m}\hspace{0.05cm}+\ 2\hspace{-0.4cm}
\sum\limits_{1\leq m_1<m_2\leq n}\hspace{-0.2cm}d^{ij}(x_{m_1}-x_{m_2})
\hspace{0.05cm}\partial_{x_{m_1}^i}\partial_{x_{m_2}^j}\hspace{0.05cm}.
\label{trin}
\end{eqnarray}
Hence in the translationally invariant sector
the constant $D_0\sim m^{-\xi}$ divergent as the IR regulator
$m\to0$ decouples from operators ${\cal M}_n$. For $\kappa=0$
and $m=0$, \hspace{0.05cm}${\cal M}_n$ turn into scaling operators ${\cal M}_n^{\rm sc}$
of homogeneity degree $\xi-2$.
\vskip 0.3cm
The 2-point function equation
\begin{eqnarray}
{\cal F}_2(x_1,x_2)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}{\cal M}_2^{-1}{\cal C}({_{x_1-x_2}\over^L})
\label{2pt0}
\end{eqnarray}
may be rewritten (with the scaling form
$d_0^{ij}$ of $d^{ij}$ and
$r\equiv|x_1-x_2|\hspace{0.05cm}$) as
\begin{eqnarray}
({\cal M}_2{\cal F}_2)(r)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} 2\hspace{0.025cm} r^{1-d}\partial_r\hspace{0.05cm}(Dr^{d-1+\xi}+\kappa
r^{d-1})\hspace{0.05cm}\partial_r\hspace{0.05cm}{\cal F}_2(r)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}{\cal C}({_r\over^L})
\label{2pt2}
\end{eqnarray}
leading to the explicit solution
\begin{eqnarray}
{\cal F}_2(r)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^2}\int
\limits_{r}^\infty{{\int\limits_0^\rho
{\cal C}({\sigma\over L})\hspace{0.025cm}\sigma^{d-1}\hspace{0.025cm} d\sigma}\over
{D\rho^{d-1+\xi}+\kappa\hspace{0.025cm}\rho^{d-1}}}\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} d\rho\hspace{0.05cm}.
\label{2pt}
\end{eqnarray}
The integration constants were chosen so that
$\partial_r{\cal F}_2(0)=0$ and ${\cal F}_2(\infty)=0$ which is equivalent
to the use of the Green function kernel for ${\cal M}_2^{\hspace{0.025cm}-1}$
in eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{2pt0}). Such a choice describes
the stationary 2-point function obtained from a localized
initial distribution of $T$ by waiting long enough.
It is trivial to analyze the integral in eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{2pt})
explicitly and to see that, first, the $\kappa\to 0$
limit of ${\cal F}_2$ exists and, second, that
\begin{eqnarray}
{\cal F}_2(r)\ \hspace{0.05cm}\smash{\mathop{=}\limits_{{\kappa=0\atop L\ {\rm large}}}}
\ \hspace{0.05cm} A_{_{\cal C}}\hspace{0.05cm} L^{2-\xi}\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.05cm}{_{{\cal C}(0)}\over^{2Dd(2-\xi)}}
\hspace{0.05cm} r^{2-\xi}\ +\ {\cal O}(L^{-2})\hspace{0.05cm}.
\label{2pt1}
\end{eqnarray}
In particular, for the 2$^{\hspace{0.05cm}\rm nd}$ structure function
of $T$, we obtain
\begin{eqnarray}
S_2(r)\hspace{0.05cm}=\s2{\cal F}(0)-2{\cal F}_2(r)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}{_{{\cal C}(0)}\over^{Dd(2-\xi)}}
\hspace{0.05cm} r^{2-\xi}\ +\ {\cal O}(L^{-2})
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
in agreement with the naive dimensional analysis
of eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{2pt0}). By similar dimensional analysis
of eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{2np}), we may expect that $S_{2n}(r)\sim
r^{n(2-\xi)}$ for large $L$. This is the Kolmogorov-type
prediction and it is incorrect for $n>1$. The first hint
of what may go wrong with the dimensional argument may be
already seen in eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{2pt1}) where on the right
hand side, beside the scaling contribution
$-\hspace{0.025cm}{{{\cal C}(0)}\over{2Dd(2-\xi)}}\hspace{0.05cm} r^{2-\xi}\hspace{0.05cm}$, \hspace{0.05cm} there
appears the constant $\hspace{0.05cm} A_{\cal C}\hspace{0.05cm} L^{2-\xi}\hspace{0.05cm}$
diverging when $L\to\infty$. Any divergent
contributions to ${\cal F}_2$ have to be annihilated by ${\cal M}_2$
since the right hand side of eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{2pt2}) is
regular when $L\to\infty$ and clearly constants are zero
modes of ${\cal M}_2$.
\vskip 0.3cm
Similarly, contributions annihilated by ${\cal M}_{2n}$
may appear in the $(2n)$-point correlation function ${\cal F}_{2n}$.
A more refined analysis shows that, for sufficiently
small $\xi$ and for fixed $x_1,\dots,x_{2n}$,
the $\kappa\to0$ and $m\to0$ limits
of ${\cal F}_{2n}$ exist and are dominated
for large $L$ by the contributions of the scaling
zero modes of ${\cal M}_{2n}^{\rm sc}$:
\begin{eqnarray}
{\cal F}_{2n}({\bf x})\ \hspace{0.05cm}\smash{\mathop{=}\limits_{\nu,m=0\atop
L\ {\rm large}}}\ \hspace{0.05cm} A_{_{{\cal C},2n}}\hspace{0.05cm} L^{n(2-\xi)-\zeta_{2n}}
\hspace{0.05cm}\s{\cal F}^0_{2n}({\bf x})\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}{\cal O}(L^{-2+{\cal O}(\xi)})
\ +\ \hspace{0.05cm}.\ .\ .\ .
\label{2np}
\end{eqnarray}
where \hspace{0.05cm}${\cal F}^0_{2n}\hspace{0.05cm}$ is a zero mode of ${\cal M}_{2n}^{\rm sc}$
of the homogeneity degree $\zeta_{2n}$ given by eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{zeta})
and the dots denote terms which do not depend
on one of the variables $x_m$ and consequently do not
contribute to the structure function $S_{2n}$. \hspace{0.05cm} The amplitudes
$A_{{\cal C},2n}$ are non-universal in the sense that they
depend on the shape of the forcing covariance ${\cal C}$.
The zero mode
\begin{eqnarray}
{\cal F}^0_{2n}({\bf x})\hspace{0.05cm}\ =\hspace{0.05cm}\sum\limits_{\rm permutations}
\hspace{-0.4cm}(x_1-x_2)^2\hspace{0.05cm}\cdots\hspace{0.05cm}(x_{2n-1}-x_{2n})^2\ \ +\hspace{0.05cm}\
{\cal O}(\xi)\ +\ \hspace{0.05cm}.\ .\ .\ .
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
and reduces for $\xi=0$ to a polynomial zero mode of the
$(2nd)$-dimensional Laplacian.
\vskip 0.3cm
The essential tool in arriving at the result (\ref{2np})
is the use of the Mellin transform of eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{2npt})
with the scaling operator $({\cal M}_{2n}^{\hspace{0.05cm}\rm sc})^{-1}$,
\hspace{0.05cm} supplemented by the perturbative expansion of the
scaling zero modes of ${\cal M}_{2n}^{\rm sc}$ in powers
of $\xi$. The analysis has a renormalization group flavor.
The perturbative argument is applied to the single scale
problem in which the differential operator
${\cal M}_{2n}^{\rm sc}$ restricted to scaling functions
of a given homogeneity degree is analyzed. Such an operator
has a discrete
spectrum. The perturbative zero mode information is then
plugged into the inverse Mellin transform which assembles
different homogeneity degrees. More exactly, the scaling
zero modes enter the residues of poles of the
Mellin transform of the Green function
$({\cal M}_{2n}^{\rm sc})^{-1}$. The above analysis
should be contrasted with the direct perturbative expansion
of ${\cal F}_{2n}$ in powers of $\xi$ which requires perturbative
treatment of the Green function of ${\cal M}_{2n}^{\rm sc}$,
an operator with a continuous spectrum in $L^2$.
The latter expansion is plagued by logarithmic
divergences (proportional to powers of $\log{L}$)
which are resummed on the right hand side of (\ref{2np}).
Still, the anomalous ${\cal O}(\xi)$ contribution to $\zeta_{2n}$
may be extracted from the coefficient of $\log{L}$
in the ${\cal O}(\xi)$ term of ${\cal F}_{2n}$
proportional to the integral
\begin{eqnarray}
\int\delta_{p,k}\delta_{q,k}\hspace{0.05cm}\s\hspace{0.05cm}{{\rm e}^{\hspace{0.025cm} i\hspace{0.025cm}(p\cdot x+
k\cdot y+q\cdot z)/L}\over p^2+k^2+q^2-k\cdot(p+q)}
\hspace{0.05cm}\s\hspace{0.05cm}{p\cdot q-{(p\cdot k)\hspace{0.025cm}(q\cdot k)\over k^2}\over
|k|^d\hspace{0.05cm} p^2\hspace{0.05cm} q^2}\hspace{0.05cm}\s\hspace{0.05cm}\widehat{\cal C}(p)\hspace{0.05cm}\s\widehat{\cal C}(q)\hspace{0.05cm}\s\hspace{0.05cm}{{}^-\hs{-0.3cm}d} p\hspace{0.05cm}
{{}^-\hs{-0.3cm}d} k\hspace{0.05cm}{{}^-\hs{-0.3cm}d} q
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
where \hspace{0.05cm}$\delta_{p,k}f(p)\equiv f(p+k)-f(p)\hspace{0.025cm}$. \hspace{0.05cm}
We shall unravel the renormalization group underlying
the exponentiation of the logarithmic divergences
in the perturbative treatment in powers of $\xi$
of the passive scalar in the next section.
\vskip 0.2cm
The correlation functions ${\cal F}_{2n}$ are not smooth
at coinciding points even for $\kappa>0$. Nevertheless
\begin{eqnarray}
\lim\limits_{y\to x}
\ (\nabla T)(x)\cdot(\nabla T)(y)\hspace{0.05cm}\equiv\hspace{0.05cm}\epsilon(x)
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
exists inside the correlations for $\kappa>0$ and defines
the dissipation field. In particular, the mean dissipation
rate \hspace{0.05cm}$\bar\epsilon\equiv\langle\epsilon(x)\rangle
={_1\over^2}\hspace{0.025cm}{\cal C}(0)\hspace{0.05cm}$, \hspace{0.05cm} as may be easily seen from
eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{2pt}). $\epsilon(x)$ does not vanish when
$\kappa\to0$ but is given by the dissipative anomaly
\begin{eqnarray}
\lim\limits_{\kappa\to0}\ \epsilon(x)\ =\
\lim\limits_{y\to x}\ d^{ij}(x-y)\hspace{0.05cm}(\partial_{x^i}T)(x)
\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}(\partial_{y^j}T)(y)
\label{disan}
\end{eqnarray}
holding inside correlation functions. The result (\ref{2np})
permits to infer the scaling behavior (\ref{strf},\ref{zeta})
of the structure functions and, together with the
dissipative anomaly (\ref{disan}), also the inertial
range scaling of the correlations involving the dissipation
field. One obtains, for example,
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm}\epsilon(x)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}\epsilon(y)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle-\bar\epsilon^2
\ \sim\ r^{\zeta_4-2(2-\xi)}\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
\vskip 0.9cm
\noindent {\large\bf{LECTURE 4}}
\addtocounter{section}{1}
\vskip 0.5cm
It has been realized a long time ago \cite{Nel74} that there
exists a similarity between the behavior of the
2-point correlation functions of a nearly critical
statistical-mechanical systems and of the Fourier
transform of the equal-time velocity correlators
in a turbulent flow. Both have a scaling regime of
power-law decay followed by much stronger decay
at infinity. One may then establish the following
dictionary \cite{RoS78}\footnote{see also \cite{EyinkG}
for a more recent discussion and more references}
\begin{eqnarray}
\cr
\hbox to 6 cm{{\bf critical phenomena}\hfill}\quad\quad\quad
\hbox to 5 cm{{\bf turbulence\hfill}}\cr\cr
\hbox to 6 cm{UV cutoff \hfill}\quad\quad\quad
\hbox to 5 cm{integral scale\hfill}\cr
\hbox to 6 cm{inverse correlation length\hfill}\quad\quad\quad
\hbox to 5 cm{viscous scale\hfill}\cr
\hbox to 6 cm{$T-T_c$\hfill}\quad\quad\quad
\hbox to 5 cm{viscosity $\nu$\hfill}\cr
\hbox to 6 cm{scaling regime\hfill}\quad\quad\quad
\hbox to 5 cm{inertial range\hfill}\cr
\hbox to 6 cm{anomalous conservation laws\hfill}\quad\quad\quad
\hbox to 5 cm{dissipative anomaly\hfill}\cr
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
This suggests that, very roughly, the turbulant phenomena
look like critical phenomena, provided that we invert
the scales interchanging short and long distances
or the position and the Fourier spaces. Were this true,
the short-distance universality of the critical phenomena
(independence of the long-distance behavior of the
microscopic details of the system) should be accompanied
by the long-distance universality in turbulence (insensitivity
of the short-distance behavior to boundary
effects or/and details of the energy injection).
\vskip 0.3cm
The right tool to study the scaling properties of the critical
phenomena and to establish their short-distance universality
has been provided by the Kadanoff-Wilson renormalization
group (RG) \cite{Kadan,WilsK}. Loosely speaking,
the RG idea is to look at the system
from further and further away so that its microscopic
details are eventually wiped out and many microscopically
different models start looking the same. By analogy,
it seems \cite{Nel75,RoS78,MDeD78} that the turbulent
systems require an inverse renormalization group (IRG)
analysis. By examining them through a stronger
and stronger magnifying glass, we would loose their
large-scale details from the vision range and should discover
a short-distance similarity of different turbulent
cascades. The presence of a finite but large correlation
length in the nearly critical systems beyond which
there is a crossover to the high temperature regime
would then correspond to the presence of the short viscous
scale in high Reynolds number flows beyond which
the dissipative regime sets in.
\vskip 0.3cm
RG had an enormous success in explaining critical
phenomena \cite{WNobel,Pfeuty}. Why is it then
that IRG never developed beyond the level of a vague
idea? Is the analogy between the critical
phenomena and turbulence too naive and missing totally
the essential points? In the author's opinion the reason
is different. RG is not a universal key
to all problems as it is sometimes thought. Its effective use
requires a correct choice of RG transformations and that, in turn,
requires a good understanding of physics of the system.
Similarly, an IRG-type analysis of turbulence will require
a deep use of knowledge of physics of turbulence.
To provide an argument for such a thesis, we shall show
that the IRG idea allows to systematize the analysis
of Kraichnan's passive scalar described in the previous
lecture and opens a possibility to extend it to more
complicated systems.
\vskip 0.4cm
Let us start by a short reminder of how one may perform
a RG analysis of the long-time long-distance asymptotics of
the (nearly) critical dynamics described by the stochastic
evolution equation
\begin{eqnarray}
\partial_t T\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} D\Delta T\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.05cm}{_{\delta{\cal V}(T)}\over^{\delta T}}\hspace{0.05cm}
+\hspace{0.05cm} f
\label{ee11}
\end{eqnarray}
with ${\cal V}(T)=\int V(T(t))\hspace{0.025cm} dt$ and the Gaussian noise
$f$ with mean zero and covariance
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm} f(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} f(s,y)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
\delta(t-s)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}{\cal C}({x-y})\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
The corresponding MSR action is
\begin{eqnarray}
S(R,T)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} S_0(R,T)\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm} S_1(R,T)
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
where
\begin{eqnarray}
&&S_0(R,T)=
i\hspace{-0.1cm}\int\hspace{-0.1cm}R(t,x)\hspace{0.025cm}(\partial_t T-\nu\Delta T)(t,x)
\hspace{0.05cm} dt\hspace{0.05cm} dx\hspace{0.025cm}+\hspace{0.025cm}{_1\over^2}\hspace{-0.1cm}\int\hspace{-0.1cm}
R(t,x)\hspace{0.025cm}{\cal C}(x-y)\hspace{0.025cm} R(t,y)\hspace{0.05cm} dt\hspace{0.05cm} dx\hspace{0.05cm} dy\hspace{0.025cm},\cr
&&S_1(R,T)= i\hspace{-0.1cm}\int\hspace{-0.1cm}R(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}{_{\delta{\cal V}(T)}
\over^{\delta T(t,x)}}\hspace{0.05cm} dt\hspace{0.05cm} dx\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^2}\int
{_{\delta^2V(T(t))}\over^{\delta T(t,x)\delta T(t,x)}}\hspace{0.05cm} dt\hspace{0.05cm} dx\hspace{0.05cm},
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
see eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{MSR1}). The $S_0$ part of the action may be
used to define the Gaussian "measure"
\begin{eqnarray}
d\mu_{_G}(R,T)\ =\ {\rm e}^{\hspace{0.025cm}- S_0(R,T)}\hspace{0.05cm}\s
DR\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} DT\hspace{0.05cm}\bigg/\hspace{0.05cm}{\rm norm.}
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
with covariance $G$ given by the 2-point functions of the forced
diffusion (\ref{co},\ref{co1}).
\vskip 0.3cm
Let $R,\hspace{0.05cm} T$ and
$\widetilde R,\hspace{0.05cm}\widetilde T$ be two copies of Gaussian fields
distributed with measure $d\mu_G$. We shall decompose
\begin{eqnarray}
&&R\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\widetilde R_{1/\lambda}\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}\rho\hspace{0.05cm},\cr
&&T\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\widetilde T_{1/\lambda}\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}\tau\hspace{0.05cm}
\label{deco}
\end{eqnarray}
demanding that $\rho,\hspace{0.05cm}\tau$ be Gaussian fields independent
of $\widetilde R,\hspace{0.05cm}\widetilde T$. The rescalings of $\widetilde R,\hspace{0.05cm}\widetilde T$
are as in eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{resc1}), i.e.\hspace{0.05cm}\s they serve to exhibit
the long-time long-distance scaling of the linear forced
diffusion. By assumption, we have the factorization
\begin{eqnarray}
d\mu_{_G}(R,T)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} d\mu_{_G}(\widetilde R,\widetilde T)\hspace{0.05cm}\s
d\mu_{_{\Gamma_\lambda}}(\rho,\tau)\hspace{0.05cm}.
\label{fact}
\end{eqnarray}
The 2-point functions of
$\rho,\hspace{0.05cm}\tau$ building the covariance $\Gamma_\lambda$
are the differences of the 2-point functions of
$R\hspace{0.05cm},T$ and $\widetilde R_{1/\lambda},\hspace{0.05cm}\widetilde T_{1/\lambda}$, very
much in the spirit of the Pauli-Villars regularization. Explicitly,
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm}\tau(t_1,x_1)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}\tau(t_2,x_2)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
\int{\rm e}^{\hspace{0.025cm}\vert t_1-t_2\vert\hspace{0.025cm} D\hspace{0.025cm} k^2\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.05cm} i\hspace{0.025cm} k\cdot(x_1-x_2)}
\hspace{0.05cm}\s{_{\widehat{\cal C}(k)-\widehat{\cal C}(\lambda k)}\over^{2Dk^2}}\hspace{0.05cm}\s{{}^-\hs{-0.3cm}d} k\hspace{0.05cm}.
\label{cop1}
\end{eqnarray}
i.e. it is the high-momentum part of the covariance $\langle T\hspace{0.05cm}
T\rangle$. The 2-point functions involving $\rho$ vanish
(recall that $\langle R\hspace{0.025cm} R\rangle=0$ and $\langle T\hspace{0.025cm} R\rangle$
is scale-invariant) but we shall keep $\rho$ in the formulae
which will be later applied in situations with $\rho\not=0$.
The decomposition (\ref{deco}) of $T$ is into the
low-momentum part $\widetilde T_{1/\lambda}$ and the high-momentum
fluctuation $\tau$ and allows to define the effective
interactions
\begin{eqnarray}
{\rm e}^{\hspace{0.025cm}-S_\lambda(\widetilde R,\widetilde T)}\ =\ \int{\rm e}^{\hspace{0.025cm}
-S_1(\widetilde R_{1/\lambda}+\rho,\hspace{0.05cm}\widetilde T_{1/\lambda}+\tau)}
\ d\mu_{_{\Gamma_\lambda}}(\rho,\tau)
\label{efint}
\end{eqnarray}
by integrating out the high-momentum fluctuations from
the Boltzmann factor ${\rm e}^{-S_1}$. The RG transformations
\hspace{0.05cm}${\cal R}_\lambda:\hspace{0.025cm} S_1\mapsto S_\lambda$ have a semigroup property,
${\cal R}_\lambda\circ{\cal R}_{\lambda'}={\cal R}_{\lambda\la'}$. We may
also integrate out the high-momentum fluctuations
in the insertions $F_1(R,T)$ into the MSR functional
integral, defining the effective insertions by
\begin{eqnarray}
F_\lambda(\widetilde R,\widetilde T)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
\int F_1(\widetilde R_{1/\lambda}+\rho,\hspace{0.025cm}\widetilde T_{1/\lambda}+\tau)\
{\rm e}^{\hspace{0.025cm}-S_1(\widetilde R_{1/\lambda}+\rho,\hspace{0.05cm}\widetilde T_{1/\lambda}+\tau)}
\ d\mu_{_{\Gamma_\lambda}}(\rho,\tau)\hspace{0.05cm}\bigg/\hspace{0.05cm}
{\rm e}^{-S_\lambda(\widetilde R,\widetilde T)}\hspace{0.025cm}.\hspace{0.7cm}
\label{efins}
\end{eqnarray}
Note that the transformation $F_1\mapsto F_\lambda$
is really
the derivative $d{\cal R}_\lambda(S_1)$ of the semigroup ${\cal R}_\lambda$
and that the RG transformations preserve
the expectation values:
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm} F_1\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle_{_{S_1}}\ =\ \langle\hspace{0.05cm} F_\lambda\hspace{0.05cm}
\rangle_{_{S_\lambda}}
\label{pres}
\end{eqnarray}
where \hspace{0.05cm}$\langle\hspace{0.05cm} F\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle_{_{S_\lambda}}\hspace{0.05cm}\equiv\hspace{0.05cm}
\int F\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}{\rm e}^{-S_\lambda}\hspace{0.05cm}/\hspace{0.05cm}\int{\rm e}^{-S_\lambda}\hspace{0.05cm}.\hspace{0.05cm}$
\vskip 0.3cm
The vanishing interaction $S_1=0$ corresponds
to a (Gaussian, trivial) fixed point of the semigroup
${\cal R}_\lambda$. For non-trivial $S_1$, the simplest situation
occurs if under the action of ${\cal R}_\lambda$ it converges
to a (possibly trivial) fixed point:
\begin{eqnarray}
S_\lambda\ \ \smash{\mathop{\longrightarrow}
\limits_{\lambda\to\infty}}\ \ S_*\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
The study of the long-distance asymptotics
of the correlation functions reduces then to the search
of the corresponding scaling fields. Let us explain
the latter concept. Let \hspace{0.05cm}$F(R,T;{\bf x})$ be a
functional of $R,\hspace{0.05cm} T$ explicitly dependent on
a sequence of space-points
${\bf x}$. For example, we may take \hspace{0.05cm}$F(R,T;{\bf x})=
\prod\limits_i T(t,x_i)\hspace{0.05cm}$. Suppose further, that for some
exponent $\zeta_*$
\begin{eqnarray}
\lambda^{-\zeta_*}\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} (F(\lambda{\bf x}))_\lambda
\ \ \smash{\mathop{\longrightarrow}
\limits_{\lambda\to\infty}}\ \ F_*({\bf x})\hspace{0.05cm}.
\label{const}
\end{eqnarray}
Then, tautologically,
\begin{eqnarray}
(F_*({\bf x}))_\lambda\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\lambda^{\zeta_*}\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} F_*(\lambda^{-1}{\bf x})
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
if in the computation of the effective insertion
on the left hand side we use the fixed point interaction
$S_*$. Hence the name: scaling field for $F_*({\bf x})$.
Besides, in view of eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{pres}),
\begin{eqnarray}
\lim\limits_{\lambda\to\infty}\ \lambda^{-\zeta_*}\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}\langle\hspace{0.05cm}
F(\lambda{\bf x})\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle_{_{S_1}}\ =\ \hspace{0.05cm}\langle\hspace{0.05cm} F_*({\bf x})\hspace{0.05cm}
\rangle_{_{S_*}}
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
giving the long-distance asymptotics of
\hspace{0.05cm}$\langle F({\bf x})\rangle_{_{S_1}}\hspace{0.05cm}$ (if the fixed-point
expectation on the right hand side does not vanish).
\vskip 0.3cm
The first information about the RG flow ${\cal R}_\lambda$ may be
obtained by studying its linearization around
the Gaussian fixed point. In fact for functionals
$S_1$ polynomially dependent on $R,\hspace{0.025cm} T$ with local scaling
kernels
\begin{eqnarray}
S_\lambda\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} d{\cal R}_\lambda(0)\hspace{0.05cm} S_1\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}{\cal O}(S_1^{\m2})\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
\lambda^{[S_1]}\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} S_1\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}{\rm lower\ order\ polyn.}
\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}{\cal O}(S_1^{\m2})
\label{lRG}
\end{eqnarray}
where the (long distance) dimension $[S_1]$ of $S_1$
is calculated
additively with the use of the following table
\begin{eqnarray}
[x]=1\hspace{0.05cm},\quad[t]=2\hspace{0.05cm},\quad[T]=1-{_d\over^2}\hspace{0.05cm},
\quad[R]=-1-{_d\over^2}\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
Small irrelevant interactions with $[S_1]<0$
should then die out under the iterated RG
transformations\footnote{this may require
fine tuning of the lower order terms in $S_1$}
resulting in the convergence of $S_\lambda$ to
the trivial fixed point and in the long-time
long-distance asymptotics of the correlations as in the
linear forced diffusion case. The fate
of relevant ($[S_1]>0$) or marginal ($[S_1]=0$)
interactions cannot be determined by the linear analysis
around the trivial fixed point and requires higher
order calculations which may show convergence
to a non-trivial fixed point situated
in a perturbative neighborhood of the trivial one.
For example, the nonlinearity with ${\cal V}(T)\sim\int T^4$ in
eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{ee11}), describing the Langevin-type dynamics
for the $\phi^4$ field theory, leads
to the interaction \hspace{0.05cm}$\sim\int RT^3$ of dimension
$-1-{d\over2}+3-{{3d}\over2}+2+d=4-d$,
\hspace{0.05cm} in agreement with the well known static
power counting rendering the nonlinearity
irrelevant above 4 dimensions. For $d<4$,
the RG flow is instead governed by a non-trivial
fixed point which seems accessible by a perturbative
$\epsilon$-expansion in powers of $\epsilon\equiv4-d$
\cite{WilsK}. An important aspect, essential for the validity
of the RG analysis in the above systems, is the approximate
locality of the effective interactions $S_\lambda$ in the position
space which means physically that no low-energy interacting
modes were removed from the system by integrating out
the short-distance fluctuations. Such locality (usually checked
only perturbatively) allows to separate the dominant exactly
local scaling contributions to $S_\lambda$ driving the RG dynamics
from the remainder strongly damped under the RG flow.
Technically, the separation is done by Taylor-expanding
the kernels in $S_\lambda$ in the Fourier space (the
approximate locality of the kernels in the position space
makes their Fourier transforms smooth).
\vskip 0.5cm
Suppose that instead of being interested in the long-time,
long-distance behavior of the nonlinear forced diffusion,
we want to study its short-time, short-distance asymptotics.
In particular, we would like to know how the nonlinearity
effects the UV asymptotics (\ref{lr2}) of the solutions
of the linear equation. In order to study this problem, we
may set up an (inverse) RG formalism in full analogy
with the one described above, with the only difference
that we shall use the field rescalings (\ref{resc2})
suitable for tracing the short-time, short-distance
asymptotics of the linear forced diffusion
instead of (\ref{resc1}) appropriate for the long-time
long-distance behavior. Repeating the decomposition
(\ref{deco}) leading to the factorization
(\ref{fact}) for the new rescaling (marked in the
notation by superscripts rather then subscripts),
we shall obtain the fluctuation $\tau$ covariance
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm}\tau(t_1,x_1)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}\tau(t_2,x_2)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
\int{\rm e}^{\hspace{0.025cm}\vert t_1-t_2\vert\hspace{0.025cm} D\hspace{0.025cm}
k^2\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.05cm} i\hspace{0.025cm} k\cdot(x_1-x_2)}
\hspace{0.05cm}\s{_{\widehat{\cal C}(k)\hspace{0.025cm}-\lambda^{-d}\hspace{0.025cm}\widehat{\cal C}(k/\lambda)}
\over^{2Dk^2}}\hspace{0.05cm}\s{{}^-\hs{-0.3cm}d} k\hspace{0.05cm}.
\label{cop2}
\end{eqnarray}
Note that $\widehat{\cal C}(k)-\lambda^{-d}\widehat{\cal C}(k/\lambda)$ is the
Fourier transform of the ${\cal C}(x)-{\cal C}(\lambda x)$ so
that it corresponds to the long distance part
of ${\cal C}$. In other words, the decomposition
$T=\widetilde T^{1/\lambda}+\tau$ is now into the short-distance
part and the long-distance fluctuation.
Repeating the definitions (\ref{efint}) and (\ref{efins})
for the new scaling, we obtain the IRG semigroup
${\cal R}^\lambda:\hspace{0.05cm} S_1\equiv S^1\mapsto S^\lambda$ with
the derivative \hspace{0.05cm}$d{\cal R}^\lambda(S^1):\hspace{0.05cm} F_1\equiv F^1\mapsto
F^\lambda$. If the effective long-distance interactions
$S^\lambda$ converge to a fixed point $S^*$, the study
of the short-distance asymptotics of the correlation
functions for the perturbed version of the forced
diffusion reduces to the search for the scaling
fields
\begin{eqnarray}
\lim\limits_{\lambda\to\infty}\ \lambda^{\zeta^*}\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}
(F({\bf x}/\lambda))^\lambda\ =\ \hspace{0.05cm} F^*({\bf x})
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
for which
\begin{eqnarray}
\lim\limits_{\lambda\to\infty}\ \lambda^{\zeta^*}\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm} F({\bf x}/\lambda)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle_{_{S^1}}\ =\ \hspace{0.05cm}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm} F^*({\bf x})\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle_{_{S^*}}\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
For small interactions $S^1$,
\begin{eqnarray}
S^\lambda\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} d{\cal R}^\lambda(0)\hspace{0.05cm} S^1\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}{\cal O}((S^1)^2)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
\lambda^{-[S^1]}\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}{\rm lower\ order\ polyn.}\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}{\cal O}((S^1)^2)
\label{lIRG}
\end{eqnarray}
where the (short distance) dimension $[S^1]$ is calculated
with the use of the new table
\begin{eqnarray}
[x]=1\hspace{0.05cm},\quad[t]=2\hspace{0.05cm},\quad[T]=1\hspace{0.05cm},
\quad[R]=-1-d\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
Note the change of the sign in the exponent of $\lambda$
in eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{lIRG}) as compared to eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{lRG})).
For example, nonlinearity ${\cal V}(T)\sim\int(T)^4$
in eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{ee11}) leading to the interaction
\hspace{0.05cm}$\sim\int R\hspace{0.025cm} T^3$ of dimension \hspace{0.05cm}$-1-d+3+2+d=4\hspace{0.025cm}$, \hspace{0.05cm} i.e.
irrelevant by power counting. $\int R\hspace{0.025cm} T^3$ couples, however,
to the unstable constant mode of $T$. Considering
instead the gradient-type nonlinearity with
${\cal V}(T)\sim\int(\nabla T)^4$ in eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{ee11}),
avoiding coupling to the constant mode, one obtains
the interaction \hspace{0.05cm}$\sim\int R\hspace{0.025cm}\nabla(\nabla T)^3$
of dimension \hspace{0.05cm}$-1-d-1+2+d=0\hspace{0.025cm}$, \hspace{0.05cm} i.e. marginal in all dimensions.
Hence the linearized IRG does not provide any simple hints
about the short-time, short-distance asymptotics of the nonlinear
forced diffusion. Besides, one should check
that the IRG effective interactions $S^\lambda$
possess in this case a Fourier space locality properties
which would allow to separate a finite number of scaling
contributions driving the IRG flow. It should be
also noticed that the covariance (\ref{cop2}), unlike
its RG counterpart (\ref{cop1}), is not positive
which may lead to non-perturbative complications in stabilizing
the IRG flow. We shall have nothing more to say about the
UV regime of the forced linear diffusion except repeating
that its control is an interesting open problem with
physical relevance. Below, we shall apply the IRG idea
to the passive scalar model of Lecture 3 with milder
nonlinearities and milder stability problems.
\vskip 0.3cm
The mutual relations of RG and IRG lead often to a confusion
stemming from the fact that the RG is also used to study
the short-distance asymptotics in field theories governed
by UV fixed points. Thus there are two contexts in which we
apply the standard RG: either we fix the UV cutoff and
study the long-distance behavior of the theory by observing
stabilization of the system under RG which lowers the
momentum cutoff (the statistical-mechanical context)
or we start with theories with a larger and larger momentum
cutoff and apply RG to lower it to a fixed value,
adjusting the parameters of the cutoff theories as to
obtain stabilization of the effective theories on
the fixed scale (the continuum limit or field theory context).
As is well known, the two contexts differ essentially only
by a straightforward rescaling and RG used in both of them
integrates out the degrees of freedom corresponding to the
shortest distances present. Similarly, IRG may be
applied to systems forced on long distances in two contexts
differing essentially by a simple rescaling. Either we fix
the size of the system and the forcing scale (the IR cutoffs)
and study the short-distance behavior by trying to exhibit
stabilization under IRG which lowers the long-distance
cutoffs (the more common situation) or we consider larger
and larger systems forced at longer and longer distances
and apply IRG to lower the distance cutoff to a fixed
value hoping to see stabilization of the effective theories
on the fixed distance scale (the infinite-volume limit context).
Again, in both contexts the IRG transformations lower
the distance cuttoff. In a given situation whether RG or
IRG should be used depends on which leads to a finite
number of expanding directions in the interaction
space\footnote{it is {\it a priori} not excluded that
there are exotic systems which yield to both RG and IRG
analysis}. It seems that the limitation of the energy injection
to long distances condemns the RG analyses of turbulence
employing a modified forcing with a power spectrum and
the $\epsilon$-expansion techniques \cite{FNS,DeDM0,YaOrsz}.
\vskip 0.4cm
We would like to study via IRG the short-distance
asymptotics of the passive scalar (\ref{ps})
with the random velocity distributed
according to eqs.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{covv}-\ref{covv1}).
Under the rescaling
\begin{eqnarray}
v^\lambda(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\lambda^{\xi-1}\hspace{0.05cm} v(t/\lambda^{2-\xi},\hspace{0.025cm} x/\lambda)\hspace{0.05cm},
\label{vvre}
\end{eqnarray}
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm}{v^\lambda}^i(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}{v^\lambda}^j(s,y)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}
=\hspace{0.05cm}\delta(t-s)\hspace{0.05cm}\bigg(2\lambda^\xi D_0\delta^{ij}\hspace{0.05cm}-\s2\hspace{0.025cm}
d_0^{ij}(x-y)\ +\ {\cal O}(({_m\over^\lambda})^{2-\xi})\bigg)
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
for large $\lambda$. Hence $\langle v\hspace{0.025cm} v\rangle$ exhibits
a scaling behavior at short distances, modulo a divergent
constant zero mode.
One of the problems with the passive scalar is that
the term $-\hspace{0.025cm} v\cdot\nabla T$ couples $T$ to the unstable
constant mode of $v$. A possible solution is to replace
eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{ps}) by its quasi-Lagrangian version
\cite{BeLv}
\begin{eqnarray}
\partial_t T\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} -\hspace{0.025cm} (v-v_0)\cdot\nabla T\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}\kappa
\Delta T\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm} f\hspace{0.05cm}.
\label{psqL}
\end{eqnarray}
where $v_0(t,x)\equiv v(t,0)$. This changes the stochastic
dynamics. The new dynamics may be interpreted as
describing the system in the frame moving with one
of the material points of the flow \cite{BeLv}.
Although eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{psqL}) corresponds to different
dynamical correlations of $T$, the equal-time correlations
do not change \cite{GK0}. As in Lecture 3, one may
obtain for the latter the same equations (\ref{2npt})
with ${\cal M}_n$ directly in the translation-invariant form
(\ref{trin}). Of course, instead of employing the new equation
(\ref{psqL}), we may keep the original one (\ref{ps}) changing
only the velocity covariance to
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm} v^i(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} v^j(s,y)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
-\m2\hspace{0.025cm}\delta(t-s)\left(d^{ij}(x-y)-d^{ij}(x)
-d^{ij}(y)\right)\hspace{0.05cm}.
\label{coqL}
\end{eqnarray}
It will be more convenient to choose another $\langle v\hspace{0.025cm} v\rangle$
covariance, which we shall call mixed,
\begin{eqnarray}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm} v^i(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} v^j(s,y)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
-\hspace{0.025cm}\delta(t-s)\left(2\hspace{0.025cm} d^{ij}(x-y)-d^{ij}(x)
-d^{ij}(y)\right)
\label{comi}
\end{eqnarray}
which leads to the equations (\ref{2npt}) with ${\cal M}_n$
replaced by
\begin{eqnarray}
{\cal M}'_n\ =\ -\sum\limits_{m=1}^n(\kappa\Delta_{x_m}
\hspace{0.025cm}+\hspace{0.025cm} d^{ij}(x_m)\hspace{0.05cm}\partial_{x_m^i}\partial_{x_m^j})\ \hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{-0.3cm}
\sum\limits_{1\leq m_1<m_2\leq n}\hspace{-0.3cm}(2\hspace{0.025cm} d^{ij}(x_{m_1}
-x_{m_2})-d^{ij}(x_{m_1})\ \cr
-d^{ij}(x_{m_2}))\hspace{0.05cm}\partial_{x_{m_1}^i}\partial_{x_{m_2}^j}\hspace{0.05cm}.\hspace{0.6cm}
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
${\cal M}'_n$ again coincide with ${\cal M}_n$ in the translational-invariant
sector so that the mixed distribution (\ref{comi}) of $v$
leads to the same equal-time correlators of $T$. The covariance
(\ref{comi}) is ${\cal O}(\xi)$ for $\kappa=0$ and its use will
simplify the perturbative expansion in powers of $\xi$. Although
it lacks positivity, unlike the original covariance or the
quasi-Lagrangian one, this will not cause stability problems.
\vskip 0.4cm
We shall introduce another modification of eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{ps})
by replacing it by
\begin{eqnarray}
\partial_t T\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} -\hspace{0.025cm} v\cdot\nabla T\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}\kappa\Delta T\hspace{0.05cm}
-\hspace{0.05cm}\eta\hspace{0.025cm} m^2T\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm} f
\label{ps2}
\end{eqnarray}
where $m$ is the same IR regulator that in eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{covv1})
and $\eta>0$ is a small fixed constant. The addition
of the "mass term" $\sim m^2T$, which changes the long-distance
behavior is innocuous for the short-distance one, see below.
The expectation values for the passive scalar (\ref{ps2})
with the velocity distribution (\ref{comi}) may be generated
in the MSR formalism in the following way.
Introduce operator
\begin{eqnarray}
M_m\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.025cm} d^{ij}_m(x)\hspace{0.05cm}\partial_{x^i}\partial_{x^j}\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}\eta m^2\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
$M_m$ is a generator of inhomogeneous
superdiffusion (on distance scales $\ll m^{-1}$) and
${\rm e}^{-tM_m}$ describes the dynamics of the 1-point
function of the passive scalar with velocity covariance
(\ref{comi}).
Let
\begin{eqnarray}
&&S^0(R,T)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} i\int R(t,x)\hspace{0.025cm}(\partial_t-M_m)T(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm} dt\hspace{0.025cm} dx\hspace{0.05cm}
+\hspace{0.05cm}{_1\over^2}\int R(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}{\cal C}(x-y)\hspace{0.05cm} R(t,y)
\hspace{0.05cm} dt\hspace{0.025cm} dx\hspace{0.025cm} dy\hspace{0.025cm},\cr
&&S^1(R,T,v)\hspace{0.05cm}\s=\hspace{0.05cm} i\int R(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm} v(t,x)\cdot\nabla T(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}\s
dt\hspace{0.05cm} dx\hspace{0.05cm},\cr
&&{S'}^1(R,T,v)\hspace{0.05cm}\s=\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.025cm} i\hspace{0.025cm}\kappa\int R(t,x)\hspace{0.025cm}\Delta T(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}\s
dt\hspace{0.05cm} dx\hspace{0.05cm},\cr
&&{S''}^1(R,T)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} i\int R(t,x)\hspace{0.025cm} M_mT(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} dt\hspace{0.05cm} dx\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
Let $d\mu_{_{D'_m}}(v)$ denote the Gaussian measure with
the mixed covariance (\ref{comi}).
The equal time $(2n)$-point function ${\cal F}_{2n}({\bf x})$ of
the scalar $T$ may be represented as the MSR functional
integral
\begin{eqnarray}
{\cal F}_{2n}({\bf x})\ =\ \int\prod\limits_{i=1}^{2n} T(t,x_i)
\ {\rm e}^{-S(R,T,v)}\hspace{0.05cm}\s DR\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} DT\hspace{0.05cm}\s d\mu_{_{D'_m}}(v)
\ \bigg/\ {\rm norm}.
\label{fir}
\end{eqnarray}
where $S\equiv S^0+S^1+{S'}^1+{S''}^1$. We have included the
$-i\int R\hspace{0.025cm} M_m T$ term into free action $S^0$ compensating
it by the ${S''}^1$ term treated as an interaction. The role
of ${S''}^1$ is to remove the "tadpole" contractions
$\langle(v\cdot\nabla)^2\rangle$
in $\langle(S^1)^2\rangle$. The latter are instead resummed
into the free $\langle T\hspace{0.025cm} R\rangle=i(\partial_t-M_m)^{-1}$
propagators originating from $S^0$. Reading the field
short-distance dimensions from $S^0$ and, for $v$,
from the short-distance
scaling of the $\langle v\hspace{0.025cm} v\rangle$ covariance, we obtain
\begin{eqnarray}
[x]=1\hspace{0.05cm},\quad[t]=2-\xi\hspace{0.05cm},\quad[T]=1-{_1\over^2}\xi\hspace{0.05cm},
\quad[R]=-1-d+{_1\over^2}\xi\hspace{0.05cm},\quad[v]=\xi-1\hspace{0.05cm}.\hspace{0.3cm}
\label{tble}
\end{eqnarray}
Note that the Kolmogorov value of the velocity exponent
$\xi={4\over3}$ is obtained
by equating the dimensions of $T$ and $v$ which is encouraging
in view of the fact that the $v\cdot\nabla T$ term of the
passive scalar equation is replaced by $v\cdot\nabla v$
in the NS equation. The table (\ref{tble}) gives
\begin{eqnarray}
[S^1]=0\hspace{0.05cm},\quad[{S''}^1]=0\hspace{0.05cm},\quad[{S'}^1]=-\xi\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
\vskip 0.3cm
We may attempt an IRG analysis of the short-distance
behavior of the correlations ${\cal F}_{2n}$, basing the
IRG transformations on the Gaussian measure
\hspace{0.05cm}$d\mu_{_G}(R,T,v)\sim\hspace{0.05cm}{\rm e}^{-S^0(R,T)}\hspace{0.05cm} DR\hspace{0.05cm} DT
\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} d\mu_{_{D'}}(v)\hspace{0.025cm}$ and rescalings corresponding
to the table of dimensions (\ref{tble}),
\begin{eqnarray}
&&R^\lambda(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\lambda^{-1-d+\xi/2}\hspace{0.05cm} R(t/\lambda^{2-\xi},\hspace{0.025cm} x/\lambda)\hspace{0.05cm},\cr
&&T^\lambda(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\lambda^{1-\xi/2}\hspace{0.05cm} T(t/\lambda^{2-\xi},\hspace{0.025cm} x/\lambda)\hspace{0.05cm}
\label{nrsc}
\end{eqnarray}
and $v^\lambda(t,x)$ as in eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{vvre}).
We could hope that
the effective interactions $S^\lambda$ obtained from the marginal
terms $S^1+{S''}^1$ tend to a fixed point, with the relevant
${S'}$ term with very small $\kappa$ destabilizing
the IRG trajectory only at very short distances causing
eventually a crossover to the dissipative regime.
A closer analysis of the effective interactions
based on the $\xi$ expansion shows however a lack
of convergence of $S^\lambda$ defined this way
to a fixed point \cite{BGHK}. It appears that
an infinite number of relevant terms is generated
which destabilize the effective trajectory.
In such situation, it may seem that IRG
fails to predict the short-distance scaling
of the scalar correlations in the inertial range.
How is it possible then that we still were able to
control this scaling for small $\xi$, as discussed in
Lecture 3?
\vskip 0.2cm
There appears to exist a simple solution to the above paradox.
The idea is to exclude the ${_1\over^2}\int R{\cal C} R$ term
from the free action $S^0$ expanding in the functional
integral (\ref{fir}) \hspace{0.05cm}${\rm e}^{-{1\over2}\int R{\cal C} R}
=\sum\limits_{n=0}^\infty A_n\hspace{0.05cm}\s F_{_{\cal C}}^{\hspace{0.025cm} n}\hspace{0.05cm}$
with \hspace{0.05cm}$A_n\equiv{_{(-1)^n}\over^{2^n\hspace{0.025cm} n!}}\hspace{0.05cm}$ and
\hspace{0.05cm}$F_{_{\cal C}}(R)=\int R(t,x)\hspace{0.05cm}{\cal C}(x-y)\hspace{0.025cm}
R(t,y)\hspace{0.05cm} dt\hspace{0.05cm} dx\hspace{0.05cm} dy\hspace{0.05cm}$. \hspace{0.05cm} Note that only the $n^{\hspace{0.025cm}\rm th}$
term of the expansion gives a non-zero contribution to
(\ref{fir}) (the number of the $T$ and $R$ insertions
must be equal now). The leftover free action
\hspace{0.05cm}${S'}^0=i\int R\hspace{0.025cm}(\partial_t-M_m)T\hspace{0.05cm}$ leads to the Gaussian
measure with the 2-point functions $\langle R\hspace{0.025cm} R\rangle=0=
\langle T\hspace{0.025cm} T\rangle$ and \hspace{0.025cm}$\langle T(t_1)\hspace{0.025cm} R(t_2)\rangle=
i\hspace{0.025cm}(\partial_t-Mm)^{-1}(t_1,t_2)=
i\hspace{0.025cm}\theta(t_1-t_2)\hspace{0.05cm}{\rm e}^{-(t_1-t_2)M_m}\hspace{0.025cm}$. It will be
more convenient to introduce a cutoff version
$d\mu_{_{\Gamma^\Lambda_m}}(R,T)$ of this measure
with the 2-point functions
\begin{eqnarray}
&&\langle\hspace{0.05cm} R\hspace{0.05cm} R\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\s0\hspace{0.05cm},\quad\quad
\langle\hspace{0.05cm} T\hspace{0.05cm} T\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\s0\hspace{0.05cm},\cr\cr
&&\langle\hspace{0.05cm} T(t_1,x_1)\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm} R(t_2,x_2)\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
i\hspace{0.025cm}(\partial_t+M_m)^{-1}(t_1,x_1;\hspace{0.025cm} t_2,x_2)\hspace{0.05cm}
-\hspace{0.05cm} i\hspace{0.025cm}(\partial_t+M_{\Lambda m})^{-1}(t_1,x_1;\hspace{0.025cm} t_2,x_2)\cr\cr
&&\hspace{3.74cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} i\hspace{0.025cm}\theta(t_1-t_2)\left({\rm e}^{-(t_1-t_2)M_m}-
\hspace{0.025cm}{\rm e}^{-(t_1-t_2)M_{\Lambda m}}\right)(x_1,x_2)\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
For $\Lambda\to\infty$,
\hspace{0.025cm}$\langle T(t_1)\hspace{0.025cm} R(t_2)\rangle\hspace{0.025cm}$ tends
to\footnote{the $\eta\hspace{0.025cm} m^2$ term in $M_n$ plays here
the crucial role}
\hspace{0.05cm}$i\hspace{0.025cm}\theta(t_1-t_2)\hspace{0.05cm}{\rm e}^{-(t_1-t_2)M_m}\hspace{0.05cm}$ except for
$t_1=t_2$ for which it always vanishes. Finite $\Lambda$
introduces a short-time, short-distance cutoff into the heat kernel
\hspace{0.05cm}${\rm e}^{-(t_1-t_2)M_m}\hspace{0.05cm}$. \hspace{0.05cm} The functional-integral
expression (\ref{fir}) for ${\cal F}_{2n}$ may be now rewritten
as
\begin{eqnarray}
{\cal F}_{2n}({\bf x})\ =\ A_n\ \lim\limits_{\Lambda\to\infty}\ {
\int\prod\limits_{i=1}^{2n} T(t,x_i)\ F_{_{\cal C}}(R)^{{n}}
\ {\rm e}^{-(S^1+{S'}^1)(R,T,v)}\ d\mu_{_{\Gamma^\Lambda_m}}(R,T)\
d\mu_{_{D'_m}}(v)\over{\rm norm}.}\cr\cr
\equiv\ A_n\ \langle\hspace{0.05cm}\prod\limits_{i=1}^{2n}T(t,x_i)\hspace{0.05cm}\s
F_{_{\cal C}}(R)^{{n}}\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle_{_{S^1+{S'}^1}}\hspace{0.05cm}.\hspace{0.5cm}
\label{2npp}
\end{eqnarray}
The role of the short-distance cutoff $\Lambda$ is the same
as that of the ${S''}^1$ term before. It excludes
the tadpole contractions $\langle(v(t)\cdot\nabla)^2\rangle$
in $\langle(S^1)^2\rangle$ now forbidden because
the cutoff $\langle T(t_1)\hspace{0.025cm} R(t_2)\rangle$ propagator,
unlike its $\Lambda=\infty$ version, vanishes at equal times
for all $\Lambda$.
Note how eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{2npp}) works for the 2-point function.
Expanding on the right hand side
${\rm e}^{-S^1+{S'}^1}$ into the power series, computing
the Gaussian expectations and passing to the $\Lambda\to\infty$
limit, one obtains the Neuman series
for ${{\cal M}'_2}^{\hspace{-0.05cm}-1}{\cal C}$ resulting from treating
as a perturbation the second line in the identity
\begin{eqnarray}
{\cal M}'_2\hspace{0.05cm}&=&\hspace{0.05cm}(M_m)_{x_1}\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}(M_m)_{x_2}\cr\cr
&+&\hspace{0.05cm}(2d^{ij}(x_1-x_2)-d^{ij}(x_1)-d^{ij}(x_2))\hspace{0.05cm}\partial_{x_1^i}
\partial_{x_2^j}\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.05cm}\kappa\Delta_{x_1}\hspace{0.05cm}-\hspace{0.05cm}\kappa\Delta_{x_2}\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
The higher-point function formula works similarly.
\vskip 0.3cm
In order to generate the IRG transformations,
we shall follow the general rules described before.
Introducing the Gaussian fields $\widetilde R,\hspace{0.025cm}\widetilde T,\hspace{0.025cm}\widetilde v$
distributed with the measure $d\mu_{_{\Gamma^{\Lambda/\lambda}_m}}
(\widetilde R,\widetilde T)\hspace{0.05cm} d\mu_{_{D'_m}}(\widetilde v)$ and decomposing
\begin{eqnarray}
R\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\widetilde R^{1/\lambda}\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}\rho\hspace{0.05cm},\quad\
T\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\widetilde T^{1/\lambda}\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm}\tau\hspace{0.05cm},\quad\
v\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}\widetilde v^{1/\lambda}\hspace{0.05cm}+\hspace{0.05cm} w\hspace{0.05cm}
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
and, for the measures,
\begin{eqnarray}
d\mu_{_{\Gamma^{\Lambda}_m}}
(R,T)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
d\mu_{_{\Gamma^{\Lambda/\lambda}_m}}
(\widetilde R,\widetilde T)\hspace{0.05cm}
\ d\mu_{_{\Gamma^{\lambda}_m}}(\rho,\tau)\hspace{0.05cm},\quad\ \
d\mu_{_{D'_m}}(v)\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} d\mu_{_{D'_m}}(\widetilde v)\
d\mu_{_{\delta^\lambda_m}}(w)\hspace{0.3cm}
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
with
\begin{eqnarray}
\delta^\lambda_m\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm} D'_m-D'_{\lambda m}\hspace{0.05cm},
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
we shall define effective interactions $S^\lambda={\cal R}^\lambda(S^1)$
by integrating the long distance fluctuations
$\rho,\hspace{0.025cm}\tau,\hspace{0.025cm} w$
in the Gibbs factor ${\rm e}^{-S^1}$,
\begin{eqnarray}
{\rm e}^{-S^\lambda(\widetilde R,\widetilde T,\widetilde v)}\ =\
\int{\rm e}^{-S^1(\widetilde R^{1/\lambda}+\rho,\hspace{0.025cm}\widetilde T^{1/\lambda}+\tau,
\hspace{0.025cm}\widetilde v^{1/\lambda}+w)}\ d\mu_{_{\Gamma^{\lambda}_m}}(\rho,\tau)\hspace{0.05cm}\s
d\mu_{_{\delta^\lambda_m}}(w)\hspace{0.05cm}.
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
The effective insertions will be given by the linearization
$d{\cal R}^\lambda$ of the above IRG flow for interactions, compare
eqs.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{efint},\ref{efins}). \hspace{0.025cm} Denote
\hspace{0.05cm}$(T(t,x_1)-T(t,x_2))^{2n}\hspace{0.05cm}\equiv\hspace{0.05cm}
F_{2n}(T;{\bf x})\hspace{0.05cm}$.
\vskip 0.4cm
Our main claims are as follows:
\vskip 0.2cm
\noindent 1.\ \ For the molecular diffusivity $\kappa$ set to zero,
the effective interactions $S^\lambda$ tend to the (non-trivial)
limit $S^*$ as $\lambda\to\infty$,
at least order by order in the expansion in powers of $\xi$.
At a fixed order, $S^*(\widetilde R,\widetilde T,\widetilde v)$ is given
by an explicit integral expressions with kernels approximately
local (i.e.\hspace{0.05cm}\s fast decaying) in the Fourier space.
\vskip 0.1cm
\noindent 2.\ \ The limit
\begin{eqnarray}
\lim\limits_{\lambda\to\infty}\ \lambda^{n(2-\xi)}\hspace{0.05cm}\s
(F_{2n}({\bf x}/\lambda))^\lambda\hspace{0.05cm}\equiv\hspace{0.05cm} F_{2n}^{\hspace{0.05cm}*}({\bf x})
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
exists and is a scaling field of dimension
$n(2-\xi)$ of the fixed-point theory.
\vskip 0.1cm
\noindent 3.\ \ The limit
\begin{eqnarray}
\lim\limits_{\lambda\to\infty}\ \lambda^{\zeta_{2n}-n(2-\xi)}
\hspace{0.05cm}\s (F_{_{\cal C}}^n)^\lambda\hspace{0.05cm}\equiv\hspace{0.05cm}(F_{_{\cal C}}^n)^*
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
exists and is a scaling field of dimension $\zeta_{2n}-n(2-\xi)=
-{2n(n-1)\over d+2}\xi+{\cal O}(\xi^2)$, see eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{zeta}).
\vskip 0.1cm
\noindent 4.\ \ Finally, the limit
\begin{eqnarray}
\lim\limits_{\lambda\to\infty}\ \lambda^{\zeta_{2n}}
\hspace{0.05cm}\s(F_{2n}({\bf x}/\lambda)
\hspace{0.05cm} F_{_{\cal C}}^n)^\lambda\hspace{0.05cm}\equiv\hspace{0.05cm} F_{_{2n,{\cal C}}}^{\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}*}({\bf x})
\nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
exists and is a scaling field of dimension $\zeta_{2n}$.
\vskip 0.2cm
\noindent The last three results have been established to the
first two non-trivial orders in $\xi$. We shall not discuss
here the details of the perturbative analysis referring
an interested reader to \cite{BGHK}. Let us only mention
the role of the Mellin transform of the kernels entering
the effective interactions or insertions in separating
the contributions with the lowest dimensions from
the reminders strongly damped by the IRG flow.
\vskip 0.3cm
What are the implication of the above results?
First, note that, in view of eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{2npp}), the relation
\begin{eqnarray}
\lim\limits_{\lambda\to\infty}\ \lambda^\zeta_{2n}\hspace{0.05cm}\s\langle
\hspace{0.05cm} F_{2n}({\bf x}/\lambda)\hspace{0.05cm} F_{_{\cal C}}\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle_{_{S^1}}\hspace{0.05cm}=\hspace{0.05cm}
\langle\hspace{0.05cm} F_{_{2n,{\cal C}}}^{\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}*}({\bf x})\hspace{0.05cm}\rangle_{_{S^*}}
\label{sf3}
\end{eqnarray}
implies the anomalous scaling (\ref{strf}): unlike
the expectations $\langle F_{2n}^{\hspace{0.05cm}*}\rangle_{_{S^*}}$ and
$\langle (F_{_{\cal C}}^n)^*\rangle_{_{S^*}}$ which involve
unequal numbers of $R$ and $T$ fields, the right hand side
of eq.\hspace{0.05cm}\s(\ref{sf3}) does not vanish. The even more
interesting observation is that the anomalous dimensions
$\zeta_{2n}-n(2-\xi)$ are carried by the scaling fields
$(F_{_{\cal C}}^n)^*$ which are relevant (i.e. of negative dimension)
for small $\xi$ and which correspond to the composite operators
$F_{_{\cal C}}^n$. The scaling zero modes of the operators
${\cal M}_{2n}$ which played the crucial role in
obtaining (\ref{strf}) enter the kernels
in the explicit formulae for $(F_{_{\cal C}}^n)^*$.
Recall that in statistical mechanics
or field theory local composite operators are produced
by multiplying fields localized at the same space-point.
In the spirit of the scale inversion discussed at the beginning
of this lecture, composite fields in turbulence
should be obtained by multiplying fields localized
at the same wavenumber in the Fourier space. Since
the forcing covariance ${\cal C}$ is almost a constant
in the inertial range, \hspace{0.05cm}$F_{_{\cal C}}\cong{\cal C}(0)\int
\widehat R(t,k)^2|_{_{k=0}}\hspace{0.05cm} dt\hspace{0.05cm}$ so that the
$F_{_{\cal C}}^{\hspace{0.025cm} n}$ insertions are almost local
in the wavenumber space. On the other hand, the scaling
fields $F_{2n}^{\hspace{0.025cm}*}({\bf x})$ corresponding to the insertions
$(T(t,x_1)-T(t,x_2))^{2n}$ carry the Kolmogorov (normal) part
of the dimension of the structure functions. There are no
extra anomalous dimensions appearing in the scaling fields
$F_{_{2n,{\cal C}}}^{\hspace{0.05cm}\hspace{0.025cm}*}({\bf x})$ which correspond to
the products of $F_{2n}({\bf x})$ and $F_{_{\cal C}}^n$.
Their dimensions are just the sum of the dimensions of
$F_{2n}^{\hspace{0.025cm}*}({\bf x})$ and of the composite scaling
fields $(F_{_{\cal C}}^n)^*$. The IRG picture of the system
permits to analyze systematically such operator products
in the spirit of operator product expansions of the
long distance type (as contrasted with the field-theoretic
short-distance OPE's \cite{WilsZ} resulting from
the RG analysis).
Such long-distance OPE's lead to fusion rules
of the type studied in \cite{ProcLv}.
\vskip 0.2cm Up to now, we have ignored the
relevant ${S'}^1$ contribution to the MSR action
of the model, proportional to the molecular diffusivity
$\kappa$. As discussed above, it eventually causes
a crossover of the IRG trajectory from the vicinity
of the convective fixed point $S^*$ to another one
corresponding to the dissipative regime dominating
very short distances. It should be interesting to study
the crossover and the dissipative regime using IRG.
As for the role of the $\eta\hspace{0.025cm} m^2 T$ term which we have
added in the passive scalar equation (\ref{ps2}),
note that its change gives rise to a term $\sim i\int R\hspace{0.025cm} T$
in the MSR action of dimension $2-\xi$, i.e.\hspace{0.05cm}\s irrelevant
at short distances. We could, in fact, analyze directly
the $\eta=0$ case, introducing $\eta>0$ only in the
intermediate IRG steps.
\vskip 0.3cm
\underline{Summarizing}.\ \ The IRG analysis explains
the breakdown of the Kolmogorov scaling of the higher
structure functions of Kraichnan's passive
scalar for small $\xi$ as due to the appearance
of relevant composite scaling fields $(F_{_{\cal C}}^n)^*$
with a multifractal spectrum of dimensions.
These fields do not destabilize the convergence
of the effective interactions $S^\lambda$ to the fixed point
$S^*$ since their appearance in $S^\lambda$ is forbidden
by the conservation law imposing the equality
of the numbers of
$R$ and $T$ fields in interactions (this was not
the case in our initial attempt to perform the
IRG analysis which kept the ${_1\over^2}\int R{\cal C} R$ term
in the action). Note the similarities but also
the differences with the RG picture
of the critical $\phi^4$ theory below 4 dimensions
governed by a non-trivial ${\cal O}(\epsilon\equiv 4-d)$
fixed point with a modified scaling\footnote{unlike here
where the normal scaling of the 2-point function leads
to the absence of wave-function renormalization}
and a finite number of relevant scaling fields.
We believe that although our analysis has
used crucially the simplifications inherent in the Kraichnan's
model, the above conclusions are robust enough to
explain the occurrence of multifractal exponents in
other turbulent systems, for example in the passive scalar
model with velocities correlated in time \cite{Falk3}.
Whether a similar mechanism
is responsible for the breakdown of the Kolmogorov scaling
in the full-fledged NS turbulence remains to be
seen. One of the main problems there is the lack of a small
parameter (like $\xi$ above) which will render obtaining
reliable numerical values of structure-function
exponents very difficult, if not impossible.
The situation may be different in weak turbulence
\cite{ZFL} which can provide a more gratifying test ground
for the IRG ideas.
\vskip 1.2cm
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
}
| 119
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|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
}
| 6,113
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\section{Introduction}
The study of cosmological magnetic fields has many motivations. Any
primordial magnetic field could provide a seed field for dynamo
amplification in disc galaxies, and fields of order $10^{-10}$ gauss would
create significant magnetic fields in galaxy clusters through adiabatic
compression alone, \cite{PS}-\cite{ZH}. It would also introduce new
ingredients into the standard, but necessarily uncertain, picture of the
very early universe. Large-scale magnetic fields introduce anisotropies into
the expansion dynamics. They would not survive an epoch of inflation
although it is conceivable that large-scale fields and magnetic
inhomogeneities with a constant curvature spectrum could be generated at the
end of inflation. A number of proposals of this sort have been made, \cite
{TW}-\cite{Do}. They involve speculative changes to the nature of the
electromagnetic interactions in the universe at the time of inflation which,
as yet, have no other motivation other than to allow magnetic field
generation to take place. While such changes are not altogether
unreasonable, and may reveal important aspects of fundamental physics, it is
hard to test them independently. Ways of generating magnetic fields at
cosmological phase transitions have also been explored by a number of
authors, \cite{Ho}-\cite{EO}.
Any primordial magnetic field must be consistent with a number of
astrophysical constraints upon its strength in the early universe. Since it
provides an additional form of relativistic energy density at the epoch of
cosmological nucleosynthesis, it increases the expansion rate of the
universe; hence the neutron-proton freeze-out of weak interactions occurs at
higher temperature, with a higher value, leading to an increase in the
synthesised abundance of helium-4, \cite{T}-\cite{COST}. Therefore helium-4
observations (extrapolated to zero metallicity) lead to an upper limit on
the energy density of any cosmological magnetic field at the epoch of
nucleosynthesis. If the field is spatially homogeneous over large scales
then the COBE microwave background data provide the strongest limits on the
magnetic field strength at last scattering of the microwave background
photons, \cite{BFS}, \cite{Ba}. The strength of this limit arises from the
subtle evolution of cosmological magnetic fields in expanding universes
during the radiation era. There is a non-linear coupling between the
magnetic density and the anisotropic distortion of the expansion needed to
support it. The anisotropic pressure created by the magnetic field dominates
the evolution of the shear anisotropy and it decays far more slowly than if
the pressure is isotropic, \cite{Z}, \cite{Ba}. This shear distortion
determines the microwave background anisotropy directly. If the field is
inhomogeneous, then the limits weaken, and on small scales the fluctuations
can be dissipated. A number of discussions of the damping processes have
recently appeared, \cite{BEO}, \cite{O}, and there is a possibility that a
field of sufficient strength might have observable effects on the pattern of
Doppler peaks expected in the microwave background on small scales, \cite
{ADGR}, but the field strengths necessary may not be compatible with the
nucleosynthesis and COBE limits \cite{BFS}, \cite{Ba}.
In this paper we shall focus upon the problem of establishing a formalism
for studying the general-relativistic evolution of magnetic inhomogeneities
in an expanding universe. We do this by extending the gauge-invariant
treatment of cosmological perturbations, introduced by Ellis and Bruni for
perfect fluid cosmologies, to the case of electric and magnetic fields in a
universe which also contains a perfect fluid. This formalism identifies a
combination of gauge-invariant variables which specify the evolution of the
perturbations in an invariant manner. It offers several advantages over the
gauge-invariant approach of Bardeen, most notably by virtue of its
transparent physical interpretation.
The study of small perturbations to an homogeneous and isotropic
Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) universe is beset by subtleties of
interpretation because of gauge dependencies. The problems arise because two
different spacetimes are employed: a `smooth' spacetime, $\overline{W}$,
corresponding to the unperturbed background universe, and a `lumpy'
spacetime, $W$, that is `close' to $\overline{W}$ both dynamically and
kinematically, and represents the `perturbed' universe we live in. These two
spacetimes must be related in a way that permits the unique recovery of $%
\overline{W}$ from $W$ and vice-versa. This is impossible when the only
information provided is that the `distance' between them is small in some
suitable sense \cite{EB}. Instead, one must establish a one-to-one map, $%
\Phi :\overline{W}\rightarrow W,$ so that every point, $\overline{P,}$ in $%
\overline{W}$ has a unique image, $P,$ in $W$ and vice-versa. Establishing
such a correspondence, that is, a `gauge' (or a diffeomorphism) between the
two manifolds $\overline{W}$ and $W$, is equivalent to introducing a
fictitious smooth background model into the universe. The perturbation in
the density $\mu $ at some point $P$ of $W$ will be $\delta \mu =\mu -%
\overline{\mu }$, with $\overline{\mu }$ the density at $\overline{P}=\Phi
^{-1}(P)$ in $\overline{W}$. Clearly, there exists a relation between the
gauge choice and the value of the perturbation itself. Any variation in the
correspondence between $\overline{W}$ and $W$, which keeps the background
model fixed, is called a {\it gauge transformation}, and it is to be
distinguished from a {\it coordinate transformation} which merely relabels
events in the two spacetimes. A gauge transformation not only induces a
coordinate transformation, but also changes the point in $\overline{W}$ that
corresponds to a given point in $W$. As a result, the perturbation value
will depend on the gauge choice if the perturbed quantity is non-zero and
its spacetime coordinates will depend on the background universe \cite{B}.
Even scalars which depend on spacetime coordinates, such as the density
itself (i.e. $\mu =\mu (t)$ in $\overline{W}$), are affected by changes in
the gauge. This creates a problem, since by varying $\Phi $ one could give
the perturbation any desired value at any particular point of $W$ \cite{EB}.
There exist natural choices of gauge (e.g. fundamental fluid flow lines in
both $\overline{W}$ and $W$, hypersurfaces of simultaneity and homogeneity
in $\overline{W}$). Unfortunately, some residual freedom remains, which is
enough to create the aforementioned arbitrariness in the perturbation value.
We could deal with this gauge freedom simply by keeping track of its
consequences, but this is rather inefficient. Alternatively, we could
specify the gauge completely at the beginning and perform all calculations
in the chosen gauge. In practice however, difficulties emerge because
different gauges are best suited for different applications. A third
approach, which side-steps the gauge problem altogether, is to tackle
cosmological perturbations by means of quantities that are entirely
independent of the way the two spacetimes $\overline{W}$ and $W$ are
associated with each other.
A covariant gauge-invariant analysis of density fluctuations was introduced
by Ellis and Bruni, and initially applied to a dust-dominated
almost-Friedmann universe \cite{EB}. Their geometrical approach is simple
and physically transparent. In contrast to the standard approach, which
compares the evolution of the perturbed quantities along the worldlines of
two observers, one in $\overline{W}$ and the other in $W,$ brought together
via some specific gauge, the covariant gauge-invariant technique compares
the evolutions of neighbouring observers in the same universe, $W$. It
provides exact, fully non-linear, propagation equations for all variables,
which can be linearized about a ``variety'' of background models. This
formalism has already been extended to the study of density irregularities
within almost-FRW spacetimes with pressure \cite{EHB}, \cite{EBH}, or with a
multi-component fluid \cite{D1}, as well as to an almost-Bianchi type I
universe \cite{D2}. Here, we shall develop the covariant gauge-invariant
technique for a universe that contains a perfect fluid and large-scale
magnetic and electric fields. This provides, for the first time, a fully
general relativistic treatment of electromagnetic perturbations for use in
cosmological investigations.
The outline of our analysis is as follows: in sections 2 and 3 the covariant
formalism is introduced. In section 4, the key gauge-invariant variables are
defined. Three of them, representing spatial changes in the energy density,
the pressure, and the expansion within an almost FRW universe, were first
introduced in \cite{EB}. The fourth gauge-invariant variable is new: it
determines variations in the magnetic field between neighbouring fundamental
observers in almost Friedmannian space-times. The medium, a single perfect
fluid of infinite conductivity, is specified in section 5, together with the
relevant equations that characterize its behaviour. In section 6, Einstein's
field equations are employed to derive the fully non-linear exact
propagation formulae for the basic kinematic quantities and for all the
gauge-invariant variables. Some aspects of the spatial geometry are briefly
discussed in section 7, and in section 8 we linearize the general equations
about a FRW universe containing a homogeneous magnetic field. Such an
assumption is a valid approximation provided that the field is ``weak'',
with an energy density much smaller than that of the isotropic perfect
fluid, which does not destroy the model's isotropy. Our results are compared
with earlier non-relativistic treatments by Ruzmaikina and Ruzmaikin \cite
{RR} and by Wasserman \cite{W}. When the pressure terms are removed from our
equations, the standard results of the Newtonian approach appear naturally.
We consider several particular applications of the formalism: the case of a
dust universe; the effect of a magnetic field on a period of de Sitter
inflation; and the growth of isocurvature perturbations.\\
\section{Spacetime Splitting}
Assume that there exists a well defined average velocity vector in the
universe. As a result, spacetime is supplied with a preferred vector field $%
u_i$ corresponding to a congruence of worldlines, known as the {\it %
fundamental fluid-flow lines}, that carry a family of special observers,
namely the {\it fundamental observers}.\footnote{%
Hereafter, an observer will always be a fundamental one unless stated
otherwise} As usual, the velocity 4-vector is normalized so that $u_i
u^i=-c^2$.
The existence of the timelike vector field $u_i$, defined by the motion of
the matter in the universe, generates a unique splitting of spacetime. To
every observer there corresponds, at any instant, a tangent spacelike
three-dimensional hypersurface $\Sigma _{\perp }$, orthogonal to $u_i$. Such
3-surfaces are the observers' instantaneous rest-spaces and they are
generally different from each other. All these 3-spaces mesh together to
create a single hyperplane, the common rest-space for all the fundamental
observers, only in a non-rotating universe.
The metric of $\Sigma _{\perp }$ is provided by a second-order symmetric
spacelike tensor, namely the observer's ``projection tensor'', defined by
\begin{equation}
h_{ij}= g_{ij}+ \frac{1}{c^2}u_i u_j , \label{pt}
\end{equation}
\\and satisfying
\begin{eqnarray}
h_i^{\hspace{1mm}j}&=&h_i^{\hspace{1mm}k}h_k^{\hspace{1mm}j} , \label{h1} \\
\nonumber \\
h_i^{\hspace{1mm}i}&=&3 . \label{h2}
\end{eqnarray}
The projection tensor, together with the velocity 4-vector, decompose tensor
fields and tensor equations into their spatial and temporal parts. They
split the covariant derivative of $u_i$ into irreducible basic kinematic
quantities, \cite{E}, \cite{E2},
\begin{equation}
u_{i;j}=\sigma_{ij}+ \omega_{ij}+ \frac{\Theta}{3}h_{ij}- \frac{1}{c^2}\dot{%
u_i}u_j , \label{dui;j}
\end{equation}
\\where $\sigma_{ij}=h_{(i}^{\hspace{2mm}k}h_{j)}^{\hspace{2mm}q}u_{k;q}-
\Theta h_{ij}/3$, $\omega_{ij}=h_{[i}^{\hspace{2mm}k}h_{j]}^{\hspace{2mm}%
q}u_{k;q}$, $\Theta=u^i_{\hspace{1mm};i}$ and $\dot{u_i}=u_{i;j}u^j$ are
respectively the shear tensor, the vorticity tensor, the expansion scalar
and the 4-acceleration. The first three terms in (\ref{dui;j}) comprise the
second order tensor $v_{ij}=h_i^{\hspace{1mm}k}h_j^{\hspace{1mm}q}u_{k;q}$,
which in turn determines the relative spatial velocity between neighbouring
worldlines. The expansion scalar is used to introduce a representative
length scale ($S$) along the observer's worldline. In particular, we define
\begin{equation}
\frac{\dot{S}}{S}=\frac{\Theta}{3} , \label{HubL}
\end{equation}
\\for the volume expansion.
The Weyl tensor, $C_{ijkq}$, is decomposed into a pair of symmetric
traceless and completely spacelike second-order tensors, $E_{ij}$ and $H_{ij}
$, respectively known as the ``electric'' and the ``magnetic'' parts of $%
C_{ijkq}$ \cite{H}, \cite{E2},
\begin{eqnarray}
E_{ij}&=& \frac{1}{c^2}C_{ikjq}u^k u^q , \label{el} \\
\nonumber \\
H_{ij}&=& \frac{1}{2c^2}\eta_{ip}^{\hspace{2mm}kq}C_{kqjs}u^p u^s .
\label{mag}
\end{eqnarray}
\\where, $\eta_{ijkq}$ is the covariant permutation tensor of the spacetime.
\section{The Electromagnetic Field}
\subsection{The Electromagnetic Field Tensor}
The electromagnetic field is represented by the second-order antisymmetric
Maxwell tensor $F_{ij}$, satisfying
\begin{equation}
F_{[ij;k]}= F_{ij;k}+F_{jk;i}+F_{ki;j}=0 . \label{Ften}
\end{equation}
The components of $F_{ij}$ are derived from a potential, $V_i$, according to
\begin{equation}
F_{ij}=V_{j;i}-V_{i;j}=\frac{\partial V_j}{\partial x^i}-\frac{\partial V_i}{%
\partial x^j}, \label{emf}
\end{equation}
\\ where $V_i=\left( V_\mu ,-\Psi /c\right) $ are the covariant components
of the 4-potential relative to a freely-falling frame. The quantities $V_\mu
$ and $\Psi $ are the vector and the scalar potentials respectively.\\
\subsection{The Electromagnetic Field Components}
As seen by an observer moving with 4-velocity $u_i$, the electromagnetic
field tensor decomposes into an electric ($E_i$) and a magnetic ($H_i$)
part, defined by \cite{E2},
\begin{equation}
E_i=F_{ij}u^j=-F_{ij}u^i, \label{ef}
\end{equation}
\\ and
\begin{equation}
H_i=\frac 1{2c}\eta _{ijkq}u^jF^{kq}, \label{mf}
\end{equation}
\\ respectively. From definitions (\ref{ef}), (\ref{mf}) and the total
skewness of $F_{ij}$ and $\eta _{ijkq}$, we obtain
\begin{eqnarray}
E_i u^i&=&0 , \label{P1} \\
\nonumber \\
H_i u^i&=&0 , \label{P2}
\end{eqnarray}
\\to ensure that both $E_i$ and $H_i$ are 3-vectors in the observer's rest
space.
The projection of $F_{ij}$ onto the 3-surface $\Sigma_{\perp}$, the
observer's instantaneous rest space, provides the decomposition
\begin{equation}
F_{ij}= \frac{1}{c^2}\left(u_i E_j-E_i u_j\right)- \frac{1}{c}\eta_{ijkq}u^k
H^q , \label{demf}
\end{equation}
\\and shows how $E_i$ and $H_i$ completely determine $F_{ij}$.
\subsection{Maxwell's Equations}
The first of Maxwell's equations has the form
\begin{equation}
F^{ij}_{\hspace{2mm};j}=\frac{1}{c}J^i , \label{Max1}
\end{equation}
\\where $J_i$ is the 4-current which generates the electromagnetic field and
obeys the conservation law $J^i_{\hspace{1mm};i}=0$. The second equation,
\begin{equation}
F_{[ij;k]}=0 , \label{Max2}
\end{equation}
\\is a direct consequence of the existence of the 4-potential.
As measured by a fundamental observer equipped with the projection tensor $%
h_{ij}$, equations (\ref{Max1}) and (\ref{Max2}) decompose into temporal and
spatial parts as \cite{E2}
\begin{eqnarray}
E_{\hspace{1mm};i}^i+2\omega ^iH_i-\frac 1{c^2}E^i\dot u_i &=&\epsilon c,
\label{M1} \\
&& \nonumber \\
\left( \sigma _{\hspace{1mm}j}^i+\omega _{\hspace{1mm}j}^i-\frac{2\Theta }%
3h_{\hspace{1mm}j}^i\right) E^j+\frac 1c\eta ^{ijkq}u_j\dot u_kH_q-c\eta
^{ijkq}u_jH_{k;q}-ch_{\hspace{1mm}j}^iJ^j &=&h_{\hspace{1mm}j}^i\dot E^j,
\label{M2} \\
&& \nonumber \\
H_{\hspace{1mm};i}^i-\frac 2{c^2}\omega ^iE_i-\frac 1{c^2}H^i\dot u_i &=&0,
\label{M3} \\
&& \nonumber \\
\left( \sigma _{\hspace{1mm}j}^i+\omega _{\hspace{1mm}j}^i-\frac{2\Theta }%
3h_{\hspace{1mm}j}^i\right) H^j-\frac 1{c^3}\eta ^{ijkq}u_j\dot u_kE_q+\frac
1c\eta ^{ijkq}u_jE_{k;q} &=&h_{\hspace{1mm}j}^i\dot H^j, \label{M4}
\end{eqnarray}
\\ where the vorticity vector ($\omega _i$), and the charge density ($%
\epsilon =-J^iu_i/c^2$) are new variables. Note that $\omega _{ij}$ and $%
\omega _i$ are related by the formula
\begin{equation}
\omega_{ij}=\frac{1}{c}\eta_{ijkq}\omega^k u^q , \label{vt}
\end{equation}
\\which ensures that $\omega_i\omega^{ij}=0$.\\
\subsection{The Energy-Momentum Tensor of the Electromagnetic Field}
The electromagnetic energy-momentum tensor ($T^{ij}_{em}$) is a symmetric
and trace-free second-order tensor of the following general form
\begin{equation}
T^{ij}_{em}= F^{ki}F_k^{\hspace{1mm}j}- \frac{1}{4}g^{ij}F_{kq}F^{kq} .
\label{Tem}
\end{equation}
Relative to a fundamental observers, $T_{em}^{ij}$ splits as \cite{E2},
\begin{equation}
T_{em}^{ij}=\frac 1{2c^2}\left( \frac{E^2}{c^2}+H^2\right) u^iu^j+\frac
16\left( \frac{E^2}{c^2}+H^2\right) h^{ij}+\frac 2{c^3}u^{(i}\eta
^{j)kqs}u_kE_qH_s+M^{ij}, \label{Tem1}
\end{equation}
\\ where $E^2=E_iE^i$ and $H^2=H_iH^i$ are the magnitudes of the field's
electric and the magnetic components respectively; $M_{ij}$ is a traceless
and completely spacelike symmetric tensor given by
\begin{equation}
M^{ij}= \frac{1}{3}\left(\frac{E^2}{c^2}+H^2\right)h^{ij}- \frac{1}{c^2}E^i
E^j-H^i H^j . \label{Mten1}
\end{equation}
The expression (\ref{Tem1}) allows a direct comparison to be made between $%
T_{em}^{ij}$ and the energy-momentum tensor, $\mbox{}^{*}T_{ij},$ of a
general imperfect fluid possessing viscous and heat conduction contributions:
\begin{equation}
\mbox{}^* T^{ij}=\mbox{}^* \mu u^i u^j+ \mbox{}^* ph^{ij}+ \frac{2}{c^2}%
\mbox{}^* q^{(i}u^{j)}+ \mbox{}^* \pi^{ij} . \label{Tim}
\end{equation}
\\The resulting correspondence, which provides a ``fluid description'' for
the electromagnetic field, is
\begin{eqnarray}
\mu _{em} &=&\frac 1{2c^2}\left( \frac{E^2}{c^2}+H^2\right) , \label{muem}
\\
&& \nonumber \\
p_{em} &=&\frac 16\left( \frac{E^2}{c^2}+H^2\right) , \label{pem} \\
&& \nonumber \\
q_{em}^i &=&\frac 1c\eta ^{ijkq}u_jE_kH_q, \label{qem} \\
&& \nonumber \\
\pi _{em}^{ij} &=&M^{ij}, \label{piem}
\end{eqnarray}
\\ and leads to the familiar equation of state of radiation $p_\gamma =\mu
_\gamma c^2/3$. The last expression suggests that $M_{ij}$ contributes an
anisotropic electromagnetic pressure.\\
\section{The Key Gauge-Invariant Variables}
\subsection{ The ${\bf D_i}$, ${\bf Y_i}$ and ${\bf {\cal Z}_i}$ Spatial
Gradients}
In their covariant and gauge-invariant study of cosmological perturbations
Ellis and Bruni \cite{EB} describe spatial variations in the energy density (%
$\mu c^2$), the pressure ($p$) and the expansion ($\Theta $) by projecting
their gradients onto the instantaneous rest space of an observer comoving
with the expanding fluid. Assuming that the unperturbed background universe
is represented by a FRW spacetime, they consider the following basic
variables
\begin{eqnarray}
X_i &=&\kappa h_i^{\hspace{1mm}j}\mu _{;j}c^2=\kappa \mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla
_i\mu c^2, \label{X} \\
&& \nonumber \\
Y_i &=&\kappa h_i^{\hspace{1mm}j}p_{;j}=\kappa \mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla _ip,
\label{Y} \\
&& \nonumber \\
Z_i &=&h_i^{\hspace{1mm}j}\Theta _{;j}=\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla _i\Theta ,
\label{Z}
\end{eqnarray}
\\ where $\kappa =8\pi G/c^4$ is the Einstein gravitational constant. All
three vectors $X_i$, $Y_i$ and $Z_i$ vanish in a FRW model, thus ensuring
their gauge-invariance.\footnote{%
The simplest gauge-invariant quantities are scalars that are constant in the
background, or tensors which are zero there. The only other possibility is a
tensor written as a linear combination of products of Kronecker deltas with
constant coefficients (Stewart and Walker lemma \cite{SW}).} Ellis and Bruni
then define the following ``comoving'' variables
\begin{equation}
D_i=\frac{SX_i}{\kappa \mu c^2}, \label{D}
\end{equation}
\\ namely the comoving fractional orthogonal spatial gradient of the energy
density, and
\begin{equation}
{\cal Z}_i=SZ_i, \label{cZ}
\end{equation}
\\ which is the comoving orthogonal spatial gradient of the expansion.
Besides being invariant under gauge transformations, $D_i$ and ${\cal Z}_i$
also describe the spatial variations of $\mu c^2$ and $\Theta $
respectively, within a perturbed FRW universe \cite{EB}.\\
\subsection{A Gauge-Invariant Variable for the Magnetic Field}
The assumption of a large-scale primordial magnetic field requires that the
fictitious background universe must include some degree of anisotropy and a
spatially homogeneous non-rotating Bianchi-I spacetime provides the simplest
example of such a universe. However, later we shall primarily consider the
case of an unperturbed FRW spacetime. This is an acceptable simplification
provided that the field is too weak to affect the model's isotropy and
allows us compare our approach with the existing (Newtonian) results
directly.
Although Ellis and Bruni restricted their study to almost-FRW geometries,
the gauge-invariance of their key variables also holds in any spatially
homogeneous, non-rotating background spacetime, such as a Bianchi-I
universe. Furthermore, the same variables can describe spatial gradients in $%
\mu c^2$, $p$ and $\Theta $ within an almost Bianchi-I model, as it has been
argued by Dunsby \cite{D2}.
Let us consider a spatially homogeneous universe permeated by a large-scale
magnetic field (i.e. $H_i=H_i(t)$) with no accompanying electric field (i.e.
$E_i\equiv 0$). Following Ellis and Bruni \cite{EB}, we define the
second-order tensor
\begin{equation}
{\cal H}_{ij}=\kappa h_i^{\hspace{1mm}k}h_j^{\hspace{1mm}q}H_{k;q}=\kappa %
\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla _jH_i, \label{Hten}
\end{equation}
\\ namely the orthogonal spatial gradient of the magnetic field. When the
vorticity is zero, ${\cal H}_{ij}$ vanishes (see Appendix A.1), and so
provides a new gauge-invariant variable. Moreover, the quantity
\begin{equation}
{\cal M}_{ij}=S{\cal H}_{ij}, \label{MHten}
\end{equation}
\\ namely the comoving orthogonal spatial gradient of the magnetic field,
describes the spatial variations of $H_i$ between neighbouring world lines
in a perturbed FRW universe (see Appendix A.2). Following Dunsby \cite{D2},
we can extent this result to a nearly Bianchi-I spacetime if required.
The quantity ${\cal H}_{ij}$ is a completely spacelike and traceless tensor
\begin{eqnarray}
u^i{\cal H}_{ij}&=&{\cal H}_{ij}u^j=0 , \label{cH1} \\
\nonumber \\
{\cal H}^i_{\hspace{1mm}i}&=&0 , \label{cH3}
\end{eqnarray}
\\where the last result is derived from (\ref{M3}) under the assumption of a
zero electric field.
\section{Specifying the Medium}
\subsection{The Case of Infinite Conductivity}
In order to specify the material content of the universe, we consider the
covariant form of Ohm's law \cite{J},
\begin{equation}
J_i+\frac 1{c^2}J^ju_ju_i=\frac 1c\overline{\sigma }E_i, \label{cOhm}
\end{equation}
\\ where $u_i$ is the fluid velocity and $\overline{\sigma }$ represents the
conductivity of the medium. Projecting onto the instantaneous rest space of
a fundamental observer, we obtain
\begin{equation}
h_i^{\hspace{1mm}j}J_j=\frac{1}{c}\overline{\sigma}E_i . \label{Ohm}
\end{equation}
Thus, non-zero spatial current densities (i.e. $h_i^{\hspace{1mm}j}J_j\neq 0$%
), are compatible with a vanishing electric field as long as the
conductivity of the medium is infinite (i.e. $\overline{\sigma}%
\rightarrow\infty$). Under this assumption, formulae (\ref{M1})-(\ref{M4})
become
\begin{eqnarray}
2\omega^i H_i&=&\epsilon c , \label{Mi1} \\
\nonumber \\
\eta^{ijkq}u_j\left(\dot{u}_k H_q-c^2 H_{k;q}\right)&=& c^2 h^i_{\hspace{1mm}%
j}J^j , \label{Mi2} \\
\nonumber \\
H^i_{\hspace{1mm};i}-\frac{1}{c^2}H^i \dot{u}_i&=&0 , \label{Mi3} \\
\nonumber \\
\left(\sigma^i_{\hspace{1mm}j}+\omega^i_{\hspace{1mm}j} -\frac{2\Theta}{3}%
h^i_{\hspace{1mm}j}\right)H^j&=& h^i_{\hspace{1mm}j}\dot{H}^j . \label{Mi4}
\end{eqnarray}
Equation (\ref{Mi3}) can be rearranged as
\begin{equation}
h_i^{\hspace{1mm}j}H_{\hspace{1mm};j}^i=\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla _iH^i=0,
\label{Mi12}
\end{equation}
\\ to provide the familiar 'vanishing 3-divergence' of the magnetic field.
Some useful expressions can be obtained from (\ref{Mi4}); in particular,
\begin{equation}
h_{\hspace{1mm}j}^i\left( S^2H^j\right) ^{\cdot }=\left( \sigma _{%
\hspace{1mm}j}^i+\omega _{\hspace{1mm}j}^i\right) S^2H^j, \label{Mi41}
\end{equation}
\\ is the covariant analogue of the `induction' equation and verifies that
within an exactly FRW universe the magnetic field decays adiabatically as
the inverse square of the scale factor. An additional formula, which will be
used later to simplify the energy-density conservation law, is obtained
after contracting (\ref{Mi4}) with $H_i$
\begin{equation}
\sigma_{ij}H^i H^j=\frac{2\Theta H^2}{3}+ \frac{\left(H^2\right)^{\cdot}}{2}
. \label{Mi42}
\end{equation}
The introduction of a perfectly conducting medium, as opposed to the
assumption of a pure magnetic field with no electric field and zero spatial
currents, is important in this approach. As we shall see, it allows
perturbations in the energy density of the fluid to be coupled with magnetic
irregularities in a straightforward and natural way (see further discussion
in Appendix B).
\subsection{Magnetized Perfect Fluid with Infinite Conductivity}
In a medium with infinite conductivity (i.e. $E_i=0$), the electromagnetic
energy-momentum tensor (see (\ref{Tem1})) takes the form
\begin{equation}
T^{ij}_{em}=\frac{H^2}{2c^2}u^i u^j+ \frac{H^2}{6}h^{ij}+ M^{ij} ,
\label{Tem2}
\end{equation}
\\where
\begin{equation}
M^{ij}=\frac{H^2}{3}h^{ij}-H^iH^j . \label{Mten2}
\end{equation}
The energy-momentum tensor of a single perfect fluid (i.e. zero energy-flux
and no anisotropic stresses) is
\begin{equation}
T^{ij}_m=\mu u^i u^j+ph^{ij} . \label{Tm}
\end{equation}
Thus, the energy-momentum tensor that describes a single magnetized perfect
fluid of infinite conductivity has the form
\begin{equation}
T^{ij}=\left(\mu+\frac{H^2}{2c^2}\right)u^i u^j+ \left(p+\frac{H^2}{6}%
\right)h^{ij}+ M^{ij} , \label{Tten}
\end{equation}
\\with trace $T=3p-\mu c^2$.
A comparison between (\ref{Tten}) and (\ref{Tim}), the stress tensor of an
imperfect fluid, shows that a single magnetized perfect fluid of infinite
conductivity can be represented as an imperfect fluid with the following
properties
\begin{eqnarray}
\mbox{}^* \mu&=&\mu+\frac{H^2}{2c^2} , \label{cor1} \\
\nonumber \\
\mbox{}^* p&=&p+\frac{H^2}{6} , \label{cor2} \\
\nonumber \\
\mbox{}^*q&=&0 , \label{cor4} \\
\nonumber \\
\mbox{}^* \pi^{ij}&=&M^{ij}=\frac{H^2}{3}h^{ij}-H^iH^j . \label{cor3}
\end{eqnarray}
We can now derive the conservation laws that characterize the medium. We
start by setting the divergence of (\ref{Tten}) equal to zero. The resulting
formula is then split into a temporal and a spatial part, respectively
expressing the conservation of the energy and of the momentum densities.
More precisely, contracting with the observer's 4-velocity and using (\ref
{Mi42}) we find
\begin{equation}
\dot{\mu}c^2+\left(\mu c^2+p\right)\Theta=0 , \label{edc}
\end{equation}
\\which coincides with the energy-density conservation law for a single
non-magnetized perfect fluid. The conservation of the momentum-density is
obtained after projecting (\ref{Tten}) onto the observer's instantaneous
rest space,
\begin{equation}
\left(\mu+\frac{p}{c^2}+\frac{H^2}{c^2}\right)\dot{u}^i+ h^{ij}\left(p+\frac{%
H^2}{2}\right)_{;j}- h^i_{\hspace{1mm}j}H^j_{\hspace{1mm};k}H^k- H^i H^j_{%
\hspace{1mm};j}=0 , \label{mdc}
\end{equation}
\\and can be rewritten, in order to involve the spatial gradients $Y_i$ and $%
{\cal H}_{ij}$, as
\begin{equation}
\kappa\left(\mu+\frac{p}{c^2}+\frac{2H^2}{3c^2}\right)\dot{u}_i+ Y_i- 2{\cal %
H}_{[ij]}H^j+ \frac{\kappa}{c^2}\dot{u}^j M_{ji}=0 . \label{mdc1}
\end{equation}
Equation (\ref{mdc}) (or (\ref{mdc1})) naturally connects spatial
fluctuations in the magnetic field, with the acceleration and gradients in
the pressure, and subsequently with spatial variations in the energy density
(see also Appendix B).\\
\section{The General Propagation Equations}
\subsection{The Field Equations}
The general form of Einstein's field equations is
\begin{equation}
R^{ij}=\kappa T^{ij}-\frac{\kappa T}{2}g^{ij}+\Lambda g^{ij} , \label{fes}
\end{equation}
\\where $R_{ij}=R_{i\hspace{1mm}jk}^{\hspace{1mm}k}$ is the Ricci tensor, $%
g_{ij}$ is the spacetime metric and $\Lambda$ is the cosmological constant.
The Ricci scalar ($R=R^i_{\hspace{1mm}i}$) and the trace ($T$) of the
energy-momentum tensor, that describes the material content, are related by
\begin{equation}
R=4\Lambda-\kappa T . \label{traces}
\end{equation}
Using the observer's projection tensor, the Ricci tensor splits as
\begin{equation}
R^{ij}=h_{\hspace{1mm}k}^ih_{\hspace{1mm}q}^jR^{kq}-\frac 1{c^2}\left( h_{%
\hspace{1mm}q}^iR^{qk}u_ku^j+u^iu_kR^{kq}h_q^{\hspace{1mm}j}\right) +\frac
1{c^4}R^{kq}u_ku_qu^iu^j, \label{Rd}
\end{equation}
\\ which shows that the decomposition is entirely determined by the sums $h_{%
\hspace{1mm}k}^ih_{\hspace{1mm}q}^jR^{kq}$, $h_{\hspace{1mm}j}^iR^{jk}u_k$
and $R^{ij}u_iu_j$.
When dealing with a single perfect fluid of infinite conductivity, permeated
by a large-scale magnetic field, $T_{ij}$ is given by (\ref{Tten}) and
consequently we find
\begin{eqnarray}
h^i_{\hspace{1mm}k}h^j_{\hspace{1mm}q}R^{kq}&=& \left(\frac{\kappa}{2}%
\left(\mu c^2-p+\frac{H^2}{3}\right) +\Lambda\right)h^{ij}+ \kappa M^{ij} ,
\label{Rdsp} \\
\nonumber \\
h^i_{\hspace{1mm}j}R^{jk}u_k&=&0 , \label{Rdst} \\
\nonumber \\
R^{ij}u_i u_j&=& \frac{\kappa c^2}{2}\left(\mu c^2+3p+H^2\right)- \Lambda
c^2 . \label{Rdtem}
\end{eqnarray}
Thus, the Ricci tensor associated with our cosmological model, decomposes
into purely spatial and temporal parts only,
\begin{equation}
R^{ij}=\left(\frac{\kappa}{2}\left(\mu c^2-p+\frac{H^2}{3}\right)
+\Lambda\right)h^{ij}+ \kappa M^{ij}+ \left(\frac{\kappa}{2}\left(\mu+\frac{%
3p}{c^2}+\frac{H^2}{c^2}\right)- \frac{\Lambda}{c^2}\right)u^i u^j ,
\label{Rd1}
\end{equation}
\\while the Ricci scalar becomes
\begin{equation}
R=\kappa\left(\mu c^2-3p\right)+4\Lambda . \label{Rsc}
\end{equation}
These equations allow us to derive the formulae that determine the
time-evolution of the expansion, the shear and the vorticity.\\
\subsection{Propagation of the Kinematic Quantities}
The evolution of basic kinematic variables such as the expansion scalar ($%
\Theta$), the shear tensor ($\sigma_{ij}$) and the vorticity vector ($%
\omega_i$), along the world line of a fundamental observer, is governed by
their respective propagation equations. These are derived from the following
formula, describing the evolution of the relative velocity between
neighbouring fundamental fluid-flow lines
\begin{equation}
h_i^{\hspace{1mm}k}h_j^{\hspace{1mm}q}\dot v_{kq}-\frac 1{c^2}\dot u_i\dot
u_j-\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla _j\dot u_i+v_{ik}v_{\hspace{1mm}%
j}^k+R_{ikjq}u^ku^q=0. \label{rvpr}
\end{equation}
Contracting (\ref{rvpr}), recalling that $v_{ij}=\sigma _{ij}+\omega
_{ij}+\Theta h_{ij}/3,$ and using (\ref{Rdtem}), we find that under the
influence of a cosmological magnetic field Raychaudhuri's relation becomes
\begin{equation}
\dot{\Theta}-A+ 2\left(\sigma^2-\omega^2\right) +\frac{\Theta^2}{3}+ \frac{%
\kappa c^2}{2}\left(\mu c^2+3p+H^2\right)- \Lambda c^2=0 , \label{Ray}
\end{equation}
\\where $A=\dot{u}^i_{\hspace{1mm};i}$, $\sigma^2=\sigma^{ij}\sigma_{ij}/2$
and $\omega^2=\omega^{ij}\omega_{ij}/2$ by definition.
The shear propagation formula is obtained by taking the symmetric,
trace-free, part of (\ref{rvpr}). In order to derive the final expression,
we employ (\ref{Ray}), the definition of the Weyl tensor along with
equations ({\ref{Rdsp}), (\ref{Rdtem}) and (\ref{Rsc}). The outcome is }
\begin{eqnarray}
h^{ik}h^{jq}\left(\dot{\sigma}_{kq}-\dot{u}_{(k;q)}\right)+ \frac{1}{3}%
\left(A-2\sigma^2-\omega^2\right)h^{ij}- \frac{\kappa c^2}{2}M^{ij}- \frac{1%
}{c^2}\dot{u}^i\dot{u}^j+ \sigma^{ik}\sigma_k^{\hspace{1mm}j}+&\mbox{}&
\nonumber \\
\frac{2\Theta}{3}\sigma^{ij}+ \omega^i\omega^j+E^{ij}&=&0 , \label{shpr}
\end{eqnarray}
\\where $E_{ij}$ is the electric part of the Weyl tensor and $M_{ij}$ is
given by (\ref{Mten2}). In deriving (\ref{shpr}) we have used the result $%
\omega_{ik}\omega^k_{\hspace{1mm}j}=\omega_i\omega_j-\omega^2 h_{ij}$, which
relates $\omega^2$ to the vorticity tensor and vector. Comparing (\ref{shpr}%
) with the corresponding formula in the case of a non-magnetized imperfect
fluid (see \cite{E2}), we notice again that the distortion generated by the
field is analogous to that induced by anisotropic stresses. The proportional
to the projection tensor term, simply subtracts off the trace.
Finally, the skew part of (\ref{rvpr}), provides the equation governing the
rate of change of the vorticity vector
\begin{equation}
h^i_{\hspace{1mm}j}\left(S^2\omega^j\right)^{\cdot}= \frac{S^2}{2c}%
\eta^{ijkq}u_j\dot{u}_{k;q}+ S^2\omega^j\sigma_j^{\hspace{1mm}i} ,
\label{vorpr}
\end{equation}
\\where, $\omega^i=\eta^{ijkq}u_j\omega_{kq}/2c$. Notice that the magnetic
effects are felt indirectly through the shear and the acceleration.\\
\subsection{Propagation Equations for the Key Variables}
From definitions (\ref{X})-(\ref{cZ}) we can derive the propagation formulae
for the various spatial gradients. The most important equation determines
the evolution of the comoving fractional orthogonal spatial energy-density
gradient ($D_i$)
\begin{eqnarray}
h_i^{\hspace{1mm}j}\dot D_j &=&\frac{p\Theta }{\mu c^2}D_i-D_j\left( \sigma
_{\hspace{1mm}i}^j+\omega _{\hspace{1mm}i}^j\right) -\left( 1+\frac p{\mu
c^2}\right) {\cal Z}_i-\frac{2\Theta }{\kappa \mu c^2}{\cal M}_{[ij]}H^j+
\nonumber \\
&&\mbox{}\frac{2S\Theta H^2}{3\mu c^4}\dot u_i+\frac{S\Theta }{\mu c^4}\dot
u^jM_{ji}. \label{Dprop}
\end{eqnarray}
\\ It is obtained by taking the time derivative of (\ref{D}) and then using
the conservation laws (\ref{edc}) and (\ref{mdc1}). Notice that the field
gradients are already connected with those in the energy density, unlike the
Newtonian approach, where the coupling occurs at the next level. This
coupling arises from the presence of the quantity $\dot u_i$, which will
then bring $D_i$ and ${\cal M}_{ij}$ together via the momentum-density
conservation law.
The vector ${\cal Z}_i$, the comoving orthogonal spatial gradient of the
expansion, has a rate of change determined by the following propagation
formula,
\begin{eqnarray}
h_i^{\hspace{1mm}j}\dot{{\cal Z}}_j&=& -\frac{2\Theta}{3}{\cal Z}_i- {\cal Z}%
_j\left(\sigma^j_{\hspace{1mm}i}+\omega^j_{\hspace{1mm}i}\right)- \kappa\mu
c^4 \left(\frac{1}{2}D_i+\frac{1}{\kappa\mu c^2}{\cal M}_{ji}H^j\right)- 3c^2%
{\cal M}_{[ij]}H^j+ \nonumber \\
&\mbox{}&S{\cal R}\dot{u}_i+ \frac{3\kappa S}{2}\dot{u}^j M_{ji}+ SA_i- 2S%
\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla_i \left(\sigma^2-\omega^2\right) , \label{cZprop}
\end{eqnarray}
\\where $A_i =h_i^{\hspace{1mm}j}A_{;j}=\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla_i A$, and
\begin{equation}
{\cal R}=\left( \kappa \left( \mu c^2+\frac{H^2}2\right) -\frac \Theta
{3c^2}+\frac{\sigma ^2}{c^2}-\frac{\omega ^2}{c^2}+\Lambda \right) +\frac
A{c^2}-\frac 3{c^2}\left( \sigma ^2-\omega ^2\right) , \label{R}
\end{equation}
\\ with the quantity in brackets representing, as we shall see in section 7,
the 3-Ricci scalar of the observer's instantaneous rest space. To derive (%
\ref{cZprop}) we start with the time derivative of (\ref{cZ}), and then use (%
\ref{mdc1}), together with (\ref{Ray}).
The third key variable is the comoving orthogonal spatial gradient of the
magnetic field (${\cal M}_{ij}$). In order to derive the propagation formula
for ${\cal M}_{ij}$, we first split the covariant derivative of the field
with respect to irreducible kinematic quantities, employing the observer's
projection tensor and equation (\ref{Mi4}) to obtain,
\begin{equation}
H_{i;j}=\frac 1\kappa {\cal H}_{ij}-\frac 2{c^2}H_k\sigma _{\hspace{1mm}%
[i}^ku_{j]}+\frac 2{c^2}H_k\omega _{\hspace{1mm}(i}^ku_{j)}+\frac \Theta
{3c^2}\left( 2H_iu_j+u_iH_j\right) -\frac 1{c^4}\dot u^kH_ku_iu_j.
\label{dHi;j}
\end{equation}
\\ The time evolution of the spatial gradient of the magnetic field can now
be obtained by applying the Ricci identity to the field vector, in
connection with (\ref{dHi;j}). The outcome,
\begin{eqnarray}
S^{-2}h_i^{\hspace{1mm}k}h_j^{\hspace{1mm}q}\left( S^2{\cal M}_{kq}\right)
^{\cdot } &=&-{\cal M}_{ik}\left( \sigma _{\hspace{1mm}j}^k+\omega _{%
\hspace{1mm}j}^k\right) +\left( \sigma _i^{\hspace{1mm}k}+\omega _i^{%
\hspace{1mm}k}\right) {\cal M}_{kj}-\frac{2\kappa }3H_i{\cal Z}_j- \nonumber
\\
&&\mbox{}\frac{2\kappa S}{c^2}H_k\omega _{\hspace{1mm}(i}^k\dot u_{j)}+\frac{%
2\kappa S}{c^2}H_k\sigma _{\hspace{1mm}[i}^k\dot u_{j]}+ \nonumber \\
&&\mbox{}\kappa SH^k\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla _j\left( \sigma _{ik}+\omega
_{ik}\right) -\frac{\kappa \Theta S}{3c^2}\left( 2H_i\dot u_j+\dot
u_iH_j\right) + \nonumber \\
&&\mbox{}\frac{\kappa S}{c^2}\dot u^kH_k\left( \sigma _{ij}+\omega
_{ij}+\frac \Theta 3h_{ij}\right) -\kappa Sh_i^{\hspace{1mm}k}R_{kqjs}H^qu^s,
\label{Mprop}
\end{eqnarray}
\\ shows how the Riemann curvature tensor $R_{ijkq}$ acts as an additional
source for magnetic inhomogeneities. Notice that so far there has been no
formula determining the rate of change of spatial gradients in the pressure.
When an equation of state for the non-magnetic fluid is introduced, the
propagation of $Y_i$, along the observer's worldline, can be obtained from (%
\ref{Dprop}).
Dunsby~\cite{D1} applied the covariant and gauge-invariant technique to the
study of cosmological perturbations in an almost FRW universe filled with an
imperfect non-magnetized fluid. As mentioned earlier, our stress can be
written as corresponding to an imperfect fluid with the special properties
given by (\ref{cor1})-(\ref{cor3}). When Dunsby's fully non-linear
propagation formulae for $D_i$ and ${\cal Z}_i$ are applied to this
particular imperfect fluid, we recover equations (\ref{Dprop}) and (\ref
{cZprop}). Of course, there is no expression equivalent to (\ref{Mprop}) in
Dunsby's analysis.\\
\section{Aspects of the Spatial Geometry}
The three-dimensional Riemann tensor ($\mbox{}^{(3)}R_{ijkq}$), that
determines the curvature of a fundamental observer's instantaneous rest
space, $\Sigma _{\perp }$, is defined via the commutator for the 3-D
gradients of any spacelike vector. In particular, provided that $v_iu^i=0$,
we have \cite{EBH},
\begin{equation}
\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla _i\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla _jv_k-\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla _j\mbox{}%
^{(3)}\nabla _iv_k=-\frac 2{c^2}\omega _{ij}h_k^{\hspace{1mm}q}\dot v_q+%
\mbox{}^{(3)}R_{qkji}v^q, \label{3Rid}
\end{equation}
\\ where, by definition
\begin{equation}
\mbox{}^{(3)}R_{ijkq}=h_i^{\hspace{1mm}p}h_j^{\hspace{1mm}s}h_k^{\hspace{1mm}%
r}h_q^{\hspace{1mm}t}R_{psrt}-\frac 1{c^2}v_{ik}v_{jq}+\frac
1{c^2}v_{iq}v_{jk}, \label{3cten}
\end{equation}
\\ with $v_{ij}=\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla _ju_i=\sigma _{ij}+\omega _{ij}+\Theta
h_{ij}/3$. The successive contractions of (\ref{3cten}) provide the 3-Ricci
tensor ($\mbox{}^{(3)}R_{ij}$) and the 3-Ricci scalar ($\mbox{}^{(3)}R$) of $%
\Sigma _{\perp }$, by
\begin{equation}
\mbox{}^{(3)}R_{ij}= h_i^{\hspace{1mm}k}h_j^{\hspace{1mm}q}R_{kq}+ \frac{1}{%
c^2}R_{ikjq}u^k u^q+ \frac{1}{c^2}v_{ik}v^k_{\hspace{1mm}j}- \frac{\Theta}{%
c^2}v_{ij} , \label{3Rten}
\end{equation}
\\and
\begin{equation}
\mbox{}^{(3)}R=R+\frac 2{c^2}R_{ij}u^iu^j-\frac{2\Theta ^2}{3c^2}+\frac{%
2\sigma ^2}{c^2}-\frac{2\omega ^2}{c^2}. \label{3Rsc}
\end{equation}
Notice the vorticity term that appears in equation (\ref{3Rid}). In a
rotating spacetime, this term prevents the commutation between the
3-gradients of scalars. In particular, the formula
\begin{equation}
\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla_i\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla_j f- \mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla_j\mbox{}%
^{(3)}\nabla_i f= -\frac{2}{c^2}\omega_{ij}\dot{f} , \label{3sc}
\end{equation}
\\holds for any scalar quantity $f$. This non-commutativity, reflects the
fact that the fluid velocity does not consist a hypersurface orthogonal
vector field if $\omega_{ij}\neq0$ (see Appendix in \cite{EBH} for more
details).
Equations (\ref{3Rten}) and (\ref{3Rsc}) characterize the curvature of the
observer's rest space within a general spacetime. We shall rewrite (\ref
{3Rten}) and (\ref{3Rsc}) for a magnetic universe containing a single
perfect fluid of infinite conductivity. Using (\ref{Rdsp}), (\ref{rvpr}) and
(\ref{Ray}), we obtain
\begin{eqnarray}
\mbox{}^{(3)}R_{ij} &=&\frac 23\left( \kappa \left( \mu c^2+\frac{H^2}%
2\right) -\frac{\Theta ^2}{3c^2}+\frac{\sigma ^2}{c^2}-\frac{\omega ^2}{c^2}%
+\Lambda \right) h_{ij}-\frac A{3c^2}h_{ij}+\kappa M_{ij}+\frac 1{c^4}\dot
u_i\dot u_j- \nonumber \\
&& \nonumber \\
&&\mbox{}\frac 1{c^2}h_i^{\hspace{1mm}k}h_j^{\hspace{1mm}q}\left(
S^{-3}\left( S^3\sigma _{kq}\right) ^{\cdot }-\dot u_{(k;q)}\right) -\frac
1{c^2}h_i^{\hspace{1mm}k}h_j^{\hspace{1mm}q}\left( S^{-3}\left( S^3\omega
_{kq}\right) ^{\cdot }-\dot u_{[k;q]}\right) . \label{3Rten1}
\end{eqnarray}
Moreover, from (\ref{Rdtem}), (\ref{Rsc}) and (\ref{3Rsc}), we find the
following 3-curvature scalar
\begin{equation}
{\cal K}\equiv \mbox{}^{(3)}R=2\left( \kappa \left( \mu c^2+\frac{H^2}%
2\right) -\frac{\Theta ^2}{3c^2}+\frac{\sigma ^2}{c^2}-\frac{\omega ^2}{c^2}%
+\Lambda \right) . \label{K}
\end{equation}
Combining (\ref{3Rten1}) with (\ref{K}), we can now decompose the 3-Ricci
tensor into its trace and its trace-free parts
\begin{eqnarray}
\mbox{}^{(3)}R_{ij}&=&\frac{{\cal K}}{3}h_{ij}- \frac{A}{3c^2}h_{ij}+\kappa
M_{ij}+\frac{1}{c^4}\dot{u}_i\dot{u}_j -\frac{1}{c^2}h_i^{\hspace{1mm}k}h_j^{%
\hspace{1mm}q} \left(S^{-3}\left(S^3\sigma_{kq}\right)^{\cdot}-\dot{u}%
_{(k;q)}\right)- \nonumber \\
\nonumber \\
&\mbox{}&\frac{1}{c^2}h_i^{\hspace{1mm}k}h_j^{\hspace{1mm}q}
\left(S^{-3}\left(S^3\omega_{kq}\right)^{\cdot}-\dot{u}_{[k;q]}\right) .
\label{3Rten2}
\end{eqnarray}
The evolution of ${\cal K}$, along the observer's worldline, is governed by
the following propagation equation, derived from (\ref{K}), (\ref{Mi4}), (%
\ref{edc}) and (\ref{Ray})
\begin{equation}
\left({\cal K}-\frac{2}{c^2}\left(\sigma^2-\omega^2\right)\right)^{\cdot}= -%
\frac{2\Theta}{3}\left({\cal K}+\frac{2}{c^2}A\right)+ \frac{4\Theta}{3}%
\left(\sigma^2-\omega^2\right)- 2\kappa\sigma_{ij}M^{ij} . \label{Kprop}
\end{equation}
The 3-curvature scalar qualifies as an additional gauge invariant variable,
provided that it is constant in the unperturbed cosmological model. In a
spatially homogeneous irrotational background, the 3-gradient ${\cal K}_i$
is always independent of the gauge choice, as is implied by the relation
\begin{equation}
{\cal K}_i\equiv \mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla_i{\cal K}= \frac{2\kappa\mu c^2}{S}
\left(D_i+\frac{1}{\kappa\mu c^2}{\cal M}_{ji}H^j\right)- \frac{4\Theta}{%
3Sc^2}{\cal Z}_i+ \frac{2}{c^2}\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla_i
\left(\sigma^2-\omega^2\right) , \label{Ki}
\end{equation}
\\which will be useful in discussing the case of isocurvature perturbations.
It should be emphasized that all the relations given above refer to the
instantaneous rest space of an individual fundamental observer. For
non-rotating spacetimes, the same formulae (without the vorticity terms)
determine the geometry of the observers' common rest space.\\
\section{Approximations}
\subsection{Linearization About a FRW universe}
Let us assume that the background universe is described by a FRW spacetime
containing a perfect fluid and a weak large-scale magnetic field (i.e. $%
H^2\ll \mu c^2$). The gauge-invariant variables are the shear ($\sigma _{ij}$%
), the vorticity ($\omega _{ij}$), the acceleration ($\dot u_i$), the
divergence of the acceleration ($A$), its spatial gradient ($A_i$), the
electric and magnetic parts of the Weyl tensor ($E_{ij}$, $H_{ij}$), the
spatial gradients of the energy density ($X_i$, $D_i$), the spatial gradient
of the pressure ($Y_i$), the spatial gradient of the expansion ($Z_i$, $%
{\cal Z}_i$) and of the magnetic field (${\cal H}_{ij}$, ${\cal M}_{ij}$),
together with the spatial gradient (${\cal K}_i$) of the 3-curvature scalar.
All these quantities vanish in a Friedmann universe. According to (\ref
{Kprop}), the 3-curvature scalar is independent of the gauge choice,
provided that it vanishes in the background spacetime.\\
The formulae above are the exact, fully non-linear, propagation equations.
We shall linearize them about the FRW model. In the process we shall retain
the mass density ($\mu $), the pressure ($p$), the expansion ($\Theta $) and
the magnetic field ($H_i$), which are all spatially independent in the
background, as zero-order quantities. Variables that vanish in the FRW
background, together with their derivatives, will be treated as first order.
The anisotropic pressure ($M_{ij}$) generated by the primordial field will
be also considered as of order one, since it must disappear within a FRW
spacetime. Finally, terms of order higher than the first will be
disregarded. Under these conditions, the conservation law (\ref{edc}) for
the energy-density remains unaffected, whereas law (\ref{mdc1}), for the
momentum-density, changes. In particular, we have
\begin{equation}
\dot{\mu}c^2+\left(\mu c^2+p\right)\Theta=0 , \label{ledc}
\end{equation}
\\and
\begin{equation}
\kappa\left(\mu+\frac{p}{c^2}\right)\dot{u}_i+ Y_i- 2{\cal H}_{[ij]}H^j=0 .
\label{lmdc}
\end{equation}
Raychaudhuri's equation, (\ref{Ray}), becomes
\begin{equation}
\dot \Theta -A+\frac{\Theta ^2}3+\frac{\kappa c^2}2\left( \mu c^2+3p\right)
-\Lambda c^2=0, \label{lRay}
\end{equation}
and the time-evolution formula for the vorticity vector, (\ref{vorpr}),
reduces to
\begin{equation}
\dot{\omega}^i+ \frac{2\Theta}{3}\omega^i= \frac{1}{2c}\eta^{ijkq}u_j\dot{u}%
_{k;q} . \label{lvorpr}
\end{equation}
Linearization permits the omission of the projection tensor from the
left-hand side of the remaining propagation equations and the weakness of
the field implies that $D_i/2+{\cal M}_{ji}H^j/\kappa \mu c^2\simeq D_i/2$.
Hence, equations (\ref{Dprop}), (\ref{cZprop}) and (\ref{Mprop}), which
describe the evolution of $D_i$, ${\cal Z}_i$ and ${\cal M}_{ij}$
respectively, become
\begin{equation}
\dot{D}_i= \frac{p\Theta}{\mu c^2}D_i- \left(1+\frac{p}{\mu c^2}\right){\cal %
Z}_i- \frac{2\Theta}{\kappa\mu c^2}{\cal M}_{[ij]}H^j+ \frac{2S\Theta H^2}{%
3\mu c^4}\dot{u}_i , \label{lDprop}
\end{equation}
\\
\begin{equation}
\dot{{\cal Z}}_i= -\frac{2\Theta}{3}{\cal Z}_i- \frac{\kappa\mu c^4}{2}D_i-
3c^2{\cal M}_{[ij]}H^j+ S{\cal R}\dot{u}_i+ SA_i , \label{lcZprop}
\end{equation}
\\where now ${\cal R}={\cal K}/2$, with ${\cal K}=2\left(\kappa\mu
c^2-\Theta^2/3c^2+\Lambda\right)$, and
\begin{eqnarray}
\dot{{\cal M}_{ij}}&=& -\frac{2\Theta}{3}{\cal M}_{ij}- \frac{2\kappa}{3}H_i%
{\cal Z}_j+ \kappa SH^k\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla_j\left(\sigma_{ik}+\omega_{ik}%
\right)- \frac{\kappa\Theta S}{3c^2}\left(2H_i\dot{u}_j+\dot{u}_i H_j\right)+
\nonumber \\
&\mbox{}&\frac{\kappa\Theta S}{3c^2}\dot{u^k}H_k h_{ij}- \kappa Sh_i^{%
\hspace{1mm}k}R_{kqjs}H^q u^s . \label{lMprop}
\end{eqnarray}
Linearization leaves Maxwell's equations unaffected: hence,
\begin{equation}
H^i_{\hspace{1mm};i}-\frac{1}{c^2}H^i\dot{u_i}=0 , \label{lMi3}
\end{equation}
\\and
\begin{equation}
\left(\sigma^i_{\hspace{1mm}j}+\omega^i_{\hspace{1mm}j} -\frac{2\Theta}{3}%
h^i_{\hspace{1mm}j}\right)H^j= h^i_{\hspace{1mm}j}\dot{H}^j . \label{lMi4}
\end{equation}
The key role played by the acceleration ($\dot u_i$), by its divergence ($%
A=\dot u_{\hspace{1mm};i}^i$) and by the latter's spatial gradient ($A_i=%
\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla _iA$) will become clear below. Therefore, it is useful
to derive expressions for these three variables. The momentum-density
conservation law (\ref{lmdc}), immediately provides a useful formula for $%
\dot u_i$, that leads to the following expression for A
\begin{equation}
A=-\frac 1{\kappa \left( \mu +p/c^2\right) }\left( \mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla _iY^i-%
\frac{\kappa H^2{\cal K}}3+\frac{\kappa \mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla ^2H^2}2\right) .
\label{lA}
\end{equation}
\\ This is derived by applying the commutator (\ref{3Rid}) to the spacelike
vector $H_i$, and substituting the zero-order part of the Ricci tensor
associated with $\Sigma _{\perp }$ from (\ref{3Rten2}). Furthermore, the
spatial derivative of (\ref{lA}), combined with (\ref{Mi4}), (\ref{edc}), (%
\ref{3Rid}) and (\ref{3sc}) provides an expression for $A_i$ within a
perturbed FRW universe:
\begin{eqnarray}
A_i &=&\frac 1{\kappa \left( \mu +p/c^2\right) }\left( \frac{{\cal K}}3-%
\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla ^2\right) Y_i+\frac 1{2\left( \mu +p/c^2\right) }\left(
{\cal K}-\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla ^2\right) B_i+ \nonumber \\
&&\mbox{}\frac{H^2}{3\left( \mu +p/c^2\right) }{\cal K}_i-2\Theta \left(
\frac{c_s^2}{c^2}+\frac{2H^2}{3\left( \mu c^2+p\right) }\right) \mbox{}%
^{(3)}\nabla _j\omega _i^{\hspace{1mm}j}, \label{lAi}
\end{eqnarray}
\\ where $c_s^2\equiv \dot p/\dot \mu $ is the sound speed and $B_i=\mbox{}%
^{(3)}\nabla _iH^2$ is an additional first-order variable.
We make one further comment about the 3-curvature scalar ${\cal K}$. Its
linearized propagation formula,
\begin{equation}
\dot {{\cal K}}=-\frac{2\Theta }3\left( {\cal K}+\frac 2{c^2}A\right) ,
\label{lKprop}
\end{equation}
\\ contains a first-order term generated by the divergence of the
acceleration. Thus, to zero-order, we find
\begin{equation}
{\cal K}=\frac{6k}{S^2}, \label{zlKprop}
\end{equation}
\\ where $k$ is the 3-curvature constant (i.e. $\dot k=0$) of the background
FRW spacetime~\cite{EB}. One can replace ${\cal K}$ by (\ref{zlKprop})
whenever the 3-Ricci scalar is coupled to a quantity of first or higher
order. Such a substitution further simplifies equations (\ref{lcZprop}) and
(\ref{lAi}). We shall adopt this approach in what follows. Finally, equation
(\ref{Ki}) reduces to
\begin{equation}
{\cal K}_i= \frac{2\kappa\mu c^2}{S}D_i- \frac{4\Theta}{3Sc^2}{\cal Z}_i ,
\label{lKi}
\end{equation}
\\which can be used to modify (\ref{lAi}), if required.
\subsection{Pressureless Fluid}
Let us assume that the perturbed FRW universe, described in the last
section, is dominated by a single non-relativistic (i.e. $p=0$) perfect
fluid. Under this restriction the equation of continuity, (\ref{ledc}),
becomes
\begin{equation}
\dot{\mu}+\mu\Theta=0 , \label{pledc}
\end{equation}
\\and leads to the familiar evolution formula for the mass density of a
dust-dominated cosmological model
\begin{equation}
\mu=\frac{M}{S^3} , \label{plmupr}
\end{equation}
\\with $\dot{M}=0$.
An important result emerges from the conservation of the momentum-density.
In particular, the contraction of the pressure-free form of (\ref{lmdc})
with the magnetic-field vector provides the relation
\begin{equation}
\dot {u_i}H^i=0. \label{perp1}
\end{equation}
\\ Hence, within a magnetized dust-dominated nearly FRW universe, the
acceleration must always be normal to the magnetic field, a result
consistent with the Lorentz force law of special relativity. Furthermore,
equation (\ref{perp1}) may be rearranged to give
\begin{equation}
\dot H_iu^i=0, \label{perp2}
\end{equation}
\\ and ensures that the field's derivative actually lies in the observer's
rest space. Also, $p=0$ in (\ref{lmdc}) leads to the following expression
for the acceleration
\begin{equation}
\dot {u_i}=\frac 2{\kappa \mu }{\cal H}_{[ij]}H^j. \label{pacc}
\end{equation}
\\ This demonstrates how the geodesic motion of the matter is disturbed by
the spatial variations of the magnetic field. We can express (\ref{pacc}) in
a more familiar form: ${\cal H}_{[ij]}$ is an antisymmetric 3-tensor, the
generalized curl of $H_i$ projected onto the observer's rest space. Such a
tensor has only three independent components and corresponds to a 3-vector,
namely the covariant spatial curl of $H_i$. In particular (see Appendix
C.1), we find
\begin{equation}
{\cal H}_{[ij]}=-\frac{\kappa}{2}\epsilon_{ijk}curlH^k , \label{H[ij]}
\end{equation}
\\where $\epsilon_{ijk}=\eta_{ijkq}u^q /c$ is the covariant spatial
permutation tensor. When substituted into (\ref{pacc}), (\ref{H[ij]})
provides the following expression for the acceleration, familiar from
classical magnetohydrodynamics
\begin{equation}
\dot{u}_i=\frac{1}{\mu}\epsilon_{ijk}((curlH^j)H^k) . \label{pacc1}
\end{equation}
\\Notice that results (\ref{perp1}), (\ref{perp2}) and (\ref{pacc}), or
equivalently (\ref{pacc1}), also hold within a pressure-free almost
Bianchi-I universe.
An additional familiar result is obtained when we adapt the vorticity
propagation formula, (\ref{vorpr}), to our cosmological model. From $%
\omega^i=-curlu^i /2$ and equation (\ref{pacc1}), we find that
\begin{equation}
(curlu^i)^{{\bf .}}+ \frac{2\Theta}{3}curlu^i= \frac{1}{\mu}\epsilon^{ijk}%
\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla_j \left(\epsilon_{kqs}(curlH^q)H^s\right) ,
\label{curlupr}
\end{equation}
\\in agreement with Wasserman's analysis~\cite{W}.
The adaptation of Maxwell's equations to this cosmological model gives
\begin{equation}
H^i_{\hspace{1mm};i}=0 , \label{plMi3}
\end{equation}
\\and
\begin{equation}
\left( \sigma _{\hspace{1mm}j}^i+\omega _{\hspace{1mm}j}^i-\frac{2\Theta }%
3h_{\hspace{1mm}j}^i\right) H^j=\dot H^i, \label{plMi4}
\end{equation}
\\ with the latter providing the standard expression $H^2\propto S^{-4}$ for
the evolution of the energy density of the magnetic field with the expansion
scale factor $S(t)$.
We shall now proceed with some additional simplifications. Suppose that
spacetime is flat (i.e. $R_{ijkq}=0$) and that there is no cosmological
constant (i.e. $\Lambda =0$), then Raychaudhuri's equation (\ref{lRay})
reduces to
\begin{equation}
\dot \Theta =A+\frac{{\cal K}c^2}2-\frac{3\kappa \mu c^4}2, \label{plRay}
\end{equation}
\\ since ${\cal K}=2\left( \kappa \mu c^2-\Theta ^2/3c^2\right) $.Using (\ref
{perp1}) and (\ref{pacc}), the propagation equations for the spatial
gradients (\ref{lDprop}), (\ref{lcZprop}) and (\ref{lMprop}) become
\begin{eqnarray}
\dot{D}_i&=& -{\cal Z}_i- \frac{2\Theta}{\kappa\mu c^2}{\cal M}_{[ij]}H^j ,
\label{plDprop} \\
\nonumber \\
\dot{{\cal Z}}_i&=& -\frac{2\Theta}{3}{\cal Z}_i- \frac{\kappa\mu c^4}{2}%
D_i- 3c^2{\cal M}_{[ij]}H^j+ SA_i+ \frac{6k}{S^2\kappa\mu}{\cal M}_{[ij]}H^j
, \label{plcZprop} \\
\nonumber \\
\dot{{\cal M}_{ij}}&=& -\frac{2\Theta}{3}{\cal M}_{ij}- \frac{2\kappa}{3}H_i%
{\cal Z}_j+ \kappa SH^k\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla_j\left(\sigma_{ik}+\omega_{ik}%
\right)+ \frac{2\Theta H^2}{9\mu c^2}{\cal M}_{[ij]} , \label{plMprop}
\end{eqnarray}
\\respectively, where the pressure-free expression for the quantity $A_i$,
that appears in (\ref{plcZprop}), is
\begin{equation}
A_i= \frac{1}{2\mu}\left(\frac{6k}{S^2}-\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla^2\right)B_i+
\frac{H^2}{3\mu}{\cal K}_i- \frac{4\Theta H^2}{3\mu c^2}\mbox{}%
^{(3)}\nabla_j\omega_i^{\hspace{1mm}j} , \label{plAi}
\end{equation}
\\$B_i=\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla_i H^2$, and ${\cal K}_i$ is given by (\ref{lKi}).
The antisymmetry of ${\cal M}_{[ij]}$ means that the indices $i$ and $j$ in (%
\ref{plDprop}) must take different values ($i\neq j$). Thus, irregularities
in the energy density are not influenced by the component of the field that
acts parallel to them, a result which is also apparent in the analysis given
by Ruzmaikina and Ruzmaikin~\cite{RR}. Combining equations (\ref{plDprop})-(%
\ref{plAi}) and ignoring the non-linear terms, we obtain the following
second-order differential equation for the time-evolution of the comoving
fractional orthogonal spatial gradient of the energy density,
\begin{eqnarray}
\ddot D_i &=&-\frac{2\Theta }3\dot D_i+\frac{\kappa \mu c^4}2D_i-\frac
S{2\mu }\left( \frac{6k}{S^2}-\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla ^2\right) B_i+\frac{6k}{%
S^2\kappa \mu }{\cal M}_{[ij]}H^j+ \nonumber \\
&&\mbox{}\frac{4\Theta SH^2}{3\mu c^2}\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla _j\omega _i^{%
\hspace{1mm}j}-\frac{2\Theta S}{\mu c^2}\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla _{[j}\dot
H_{i]}H^j. \label{plDprop1}
\end{eqnarray}
\\ In a perturbed Einstein de Sitter universe (i.e. $k=0$ and $\Lambda =0$)
this reduces to
\begin{equation}
\ddot{D}_i= -\frac{2\Theta}{3}\dot{D}_i+ \frac{\kappa\mu c^2}{2}D_i+ \frac{S%
}{2\mu}\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla^2 B_i+ \frac{4\Theta SH^2}{3\mu c^2}\mbox{}%
^{(3)}\nabla_j \omega_i^{\hspace{1mm}j}- \frac{2\Theta S}{\mu c^2}\mbox{}%
^{(3)}\nabla_{[j}\dot{H}_{i]}H^j \label{plDprop2}
\end{equation}
The first three terms on the right hand side of (\ref{plDprop2}) also appear
in the Newtonian treatments presented by Ruzmaikina and Ruzmaikin \cite{RR},
and by Wasserman \cite{W}; the first two are immediately identifiable, while
the third is obtained after a transformation (see Appendix C.2). The latter
becomes obvious, when the gauge-invariant approach is applied within the
non-relativistic context, as it has been shown by Ellis in \cite{E3}. The
resulting second-order differential equation contains only the three
aforementioned standard terms. Consequently, our relativistic approach
provides the classical equation plus two extra relativistic terms. The first
term links the vorticity to the time evolution of linear density gradients
through the 3-divergence of the vorticity tensor. It appears because in a
general spacetime 3-D surfaces need not be orthogonal to the fluid-flow.
However, the term's coefficient suggests a weak effect since $H^2\ll \mu c^2$%
, or no effect at all if the universe is static. Such a `correction term'
does not appear in the Newtonian treatment, because there the hyperplanes
orthogonal to the fluid flow are always tangent to the 3-surfaces of
absolute time \cite{EBH}. Also, using (\ref{vt}) and the covariant
definition of a vector's spatial curl we find
\begin{equation}
\frac{4\Theta SH^2}{3\mu c^2}\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla _j\omega _i^{\hspace{1mm}j}=%
\frac{4\Theta SH^2}{3\mu c^2}curl\omega _i, \label{ct1}
\end{equation}
\\ where $\omega ^i=-curlu^i/2$.\\ Let us focus on the last term in (\ref
{plDprop2}). It emerges from the coupling between $D_i$ and ${\cal M}_{ij}$
in (\ref{Dprop}). We see that its presence also depends on the universal
expansion, but it also creates only a weak effect, since it contains the
ratio $H^2/\mu c^2\ll 1$. Similarly to the acceleration case above, the
quantity $\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla_{[j}\dot H_{i]}$ represents the generalized curl
of the field's derivative projected onto the instantaneous rest space of a
fundamental observer. Thus, it can be mapped onto the covariant spatial curl
of $\dot H_i$. As a result, the second relativistic `correction term' can be
reshaped into the following easily identifiable form
\begin{equation}
\frac{2\Theta S}{\mu c^2}\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla_{[j}\dot{H}_{i]}H^j= \frac{%
\Theta S}{\mu c^2}\epsilon_{ijk}(curl\dot{H}^j)H^k . \label{ct2}
\end{equation}
\\Thus, according to (\ref{ct1}) and (\ref{ct2}), equation (\ref{plDprop2})
becomes
\begin{equation}
\ddot{D}_i= -\frac{2\Theta}{3}\dot{D}_i+ \frac{\kappa\mu c^2}{2}D_i+ \frac{S%
}{2\mu}\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla^2 B_i+ \frac{4\Theta SH^2}{3\mu c^2}curl\omega_i-
\frac{\Theta S}{\mu c^2}\epsilon_{ijk}(curl\dot{H}^j)H^k . \label{plDprop3}
\end{equation}
\\
\subsection{Long-Wavelength Solutions}
The gradient $D_i$ describes spatial variations of the energy density
orthogonal to the fluid flow. One can extract the information contained in $%
D_i$ by considering the following local decomposition \cite{EBH},
\begin{equation}
S\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla _iD_j\equiv \Delta _{ij}=\Sigma _{ij}+W_{ij}+\frac
13\Delta h_{ij}, \label{Delij}
\end{equation}
\\ where $\Sigma _{ij}\equiv \Delta _{(ij)}-\Delta h_{ij}/3$, $W_{ij}\equiv
\Delta _{[ij]}$ and $\Delta \equiv S\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla ^iD_i$ are all
gauge-invariant quantities. The symmetric, traceless tensor, $\Sigma _{ij}$,
describes the evolution of anisotropic structures (e.g. pancake or
cigar-like structures). On the other hand, the skew tensor $W_{ij}$
characterizes the rotational behaviour of $D_i$. Hence, the scalar $\Delta $
contains the information regarding the spatial aggregation of matter. When
dealing with the problem of structure formation, the latter quantity is the
crucial one \cite{BDE}, \cite{DBE}. The propagation formula for $\Delta $ is
found by taking the 3-divergence of (\ref{plDprop1}) and using the
properties of the 3-D gradients as well as the fact that, in the linear
approximation, the total divergence of the vorticity tensor is zero (see
section 7 and also~\cite{EBH}). We obtain
\begin{equation}
\ddot \Delta +\frac{2\Theta }3\dot \Delta -\frac{\kappa \mu c^4}2\Delta=
-\frac{S^2}{2\mu }\left(\frac{4k}{S^2}-\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla ^2\right){\cal B}
+\frac{S^2}{2\mu}\left(\frac{3k}{S^2}+\frac{2\Theta^2}{3c^2}\right)
\left(\frac{4k}{S^2}-\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla^2\right)H^2
\label{Delprop}
\end{equation}\\
where ${\cal B}=\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla ^iB_i=\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla ^2H^2$. The
final form of (\ref{Delprop}) is obtained only after treating the field's
energy density ($H^2$) as a perturbation itself.\footnote{%
Although it has not been explicitly used yet, the characterization of $H^2$
as a gauge-invariant perturbative term is in line with our treatment of $%
M_{ij}$. Nevertheless, up to this point, we have only used the restriction
that the ratio $H^2/\mu c^2$ is very small.}
Assuming that spatial and temporal dependences are separable, we express
every gauge-invariant first-order quantity in (\ref{Delprop}) as a sum of
time-independent scalar harmonics $Q^{(n)}$, defined as eigenfunctions of
the Laplace-Beltrami operator, \cite{H},
\begin{equation}
\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla ^2Q^{(n)}=-\frac{n^2}{S^2}Q^{(n)}, \label{sh}
\end{equation}
where the eigenvalue $n$ directly corresponds to physical wavelengths only
if $k=0$ \cite{DBE}. Thus, in an almost Einstein de Sitter universe, and for
low frequency (i.e. $n\rightarrow 0$) fluctuations, we may ignore all the
terms in the right-hand side of (\ref{Delprop}). Consequently, the
large-scale evolution of matter perturbations is determined by
\begin{equation}
\ddot{\Delta}^{(n)}+ \frac{2\Theta}{3}\dot{\Delta}^{(n)}- \frac{\kappa\mu c^4%
}{2}\Delta^{(n)}=0 , \label{Delprop1}
\end{equation}
\\where $\Delta^{(n)}$ is the nth harmonic component of $\Delta$, with $%
\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla_i \Delta^{(n)}\approx 0$. Its solution,
\begin{equation}
\Delta ^{(n)}=\Delta _{+}^{(n)}\tau ^{2/3}+\Delta _{-}^{(n)}\tau ^{-1},
\label{Delsol}
\end{equation}
contains a growing and decaying modes, exactly as in the case of a
dust-dominated non-magnetized universe and in agreement with~\cite{RR}. The
variable $\tau $ measures the observer's proper time, while the quantities $%
\Delta _{+}^{(n)}$ and $\Delta _{-}^{(n)}$ remain constant along its
worldline.\\
\section{Two Special Cases}
\subsection{The False Vacuum Assumption}
The introduction of a medium that obeys the ``inflationary'' false vacuum
condition (i.e. $p+\mu c^2=0$), implies that the spatial gradients $X_i$ and
$Y_i$, defined by (\ref{X})-(\ref{Y}), are related by the simple formula
\begin{equation}
Y_i=-X_i . \label{YiXi}
\end{equation}
The exact propagation equation for the orthogonal spatial gradient of the
energy density, $X_i$, is obtained by taking the time derivative of (\ref{X}%
). From the conservation laws (\ref{edc}) and (\ref{mdc1}), we have
\begin{eqnarray}
S^{-4}h_i^{\hspace{1mm}j}\left( S^4X_j\right) ^{.} &=&-X^j\left( \sigma _{%
\hspace{1mm}i}^j+\omega _{\hspace{1mm}i}^j\right) -\kappa \left( \mu
c^2+p\right) Z_i-2\Theta {\cal H}_{[ij]}H^j+ \nonumber \\
&&\mbox{}\frac{2\kappa \Theta H^2}{3c^2}\dot u_i+\frac{\kappa \Theta }{c^2}%
\dot u^jM_{ji}, \label{Xprop}
\end{eqnarray}
\\ where $Z_i$ has been defined in (\ref{Z}). In an almost-FRW magnetized
universe, the false vacuum assumption, together with the momentum-density
conservation law, reduces (\ref{Xprop}) to the following evolution formula
\begin{equation}
X_i=\frac XS, \label{Xev}
\end{equation}
\\ with $\dot X=0$. Hence, spatial gradients in the energy density die away
as $S^{-1}$, independent of their wavelength and in line with the cosmic
``no-hair'' theorems for expanding inflationary universes.
According to (\ref{edc}), however, the energy density of the material
component remains constant along the observers worldline. Consequently,
definition (\ref{D}), along with (\ref{Xev}), suggests that the fractional
density gradients do not change on comoving scales
\begin{equation}
D_i=const. \label{Dev}
\end{equation}
\\ In other words, fundamental observers experience no variation in $D_i$
within their event horizons: density contrasts remain ``frozen-in'' as long
as the equation of state $p=-\mu c^2$ holds.\\
\subsection{Isocurvature Perturbations}
We define isocurvature perturbations as fluctuations evolving in a
non-rotating (i.e. $\omega _{ij}=0$) spacetime of constant spatial curvature
(i.e. ${\cal K}_i=0$). Within an almost-FRW universe, equation (\ref{lKi})
provides a condition for the occurrence of isocurvature inhomogeneities:
\begin{equation}
X_i=\frac{2\Theta}{3c^2}Z_i . \label{ic}
\end{equation}
The consistency condition for this kind of disturbance is obtained by
linearizing the time derivative of (\ref{ic}) about the background FRW
spacetime, giving
\begin{equation}
\frac{6k}{S^2}\left( Z_i+\frac \Theta {c^2}\dot {u_i}\right) +\frac{2\Theta
}{c^2}A_i=0, \label{cic}
\end{equation}
\\ where $A_i$ is given by (\ref{lAi}).
Provided that the smooth model has $k=0$, we can ignore the first term in (%
\ref{cic}), which means that isocurvature disturbances cannot survive in a
non-static universe so long as $A_i\neq 0$. On the other hand, in the
absence of pressure, formula (\ref{lAi}) implies that the remaining term is
unimportant on large scales. Consequently, the matter era seems capable of
preserving long-wavelength isocurvature fluctuations.\\
\section{Discussion}
We have pursued the study of cosmological density perturbations in a
universe that contains a large-scale primordial magnetic field by means of
the Ellis-Bruni covariant and gauge-invariant method. We have defined a new
variable that is independent of the gauge choice and describes the spatial
variations of the magnetic field. Assuming a universe that contains a single
perfect fluid of very high conductivity, we have derived the exact, and
fully non-linear, equations that determine the model's time evolution. When
the linearized equations are applied to the simple case of pressure-free
matter, familiar results are recovered. The energy density of the matter is
found to evolve as the inverse cube of the scale factor and the energy
density of the magnetic field as $S^{-4}$. The acceleration is provided by
the well known expression of classical magnetohydrodynamics, and is always
normal to the magnetic field in accord with the Lorentz force law.
We also identify the general-relativistic corrections to the Newtonian
treatment. These are introduced by the two extra terms (\ref{ct1}) and (\ref
{ct2}) on the right-hand side of the propagation equation, (\ref{plDprop2}),
of the density gradient. The first term is due to universal rotation and
does not affect the gravitational clumping of matter. A similar vorticity
term also appears in the treatment of a perfect fluid with non-vanishing
pressure, \cite{EBH}. Here the fluid pressure is zero, but there exists a
residual isotropic pressure, induced into the model by the magnetic field
(see (\ref{cor2})). Technically, the second relativistic correction, which
modifies the evolution of both $D_i$ and $\Delta $, appears because
everything is projected onto the observer's instantaneous rest space (where
all measurements take place). Physically, its source is the anisotropic
pressure, also introduced by the field (see (\ref{cor3})). In Dunsby's
imperfect fluid analysis, \cite{D1}, such a term is incorporated into the
time derivative $(\mbox{}^{(3)}\nabla _j\pi _i^{\hspace{1mm}j})_{;k}u^k$.
By focussing upon the spatial aggregation of matter, we have obtained
long-wavelength solutions for (\ref{plDprop1}), which reveal the relative
unimportance of the magnetic field on the growth of large-scale density
fluctuations. We also provide solutions during a period of de Sitter
inflation. The results show that density gradients decay, but slower than in
the non-magnetized case investigated by Ellis and Bruni, \cite{EB}.
Furthermore, within the immediate neighbourhood of a comoving observer
perturbations freeze out. Our analysis permits a transparent approach to
isocurvature inhomogeneities. We have obtained a criterion for the
occurrence of this kind of disturbances as well as a consistency condition.
The latter shows that a dust-dominated almost-FRW universe, can sustain
long-wavelength isocurvature perturbations.
A major advantage of the Ellis and Bruni technique is that the non-linear
propagation equations can be often linearized about a variety of background
models. For example, we can linearize our exact equations about a smooth
Bianchi-I universe. This cosmological model is anisotropic. The shear no
longer behaves as a first-order variable and the model's evolution becomes
more complicated, \cite{Ba}. The formalism we have established here, will
enable a full gauge-invariant analysis to be carried out to determine the
effects of cosmological magnetic and electric fields on the early universe,
and on the temperature anisotropy of the microwave background.\\
\section*{Acknowledgements}
C.G.T. is supported by the Greek State Scholarship Foundation and J.D.B. by
the PPARC. The authors wish to thank V.G. Gurzadyan, K. Subramanian and
particularly R. Maartens for helpful discussions.\\
\section*{APPENDICES}
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
}
| 8,638
|
{"url":"https:\/\/proofwiki.org\/wiki\/Divisibility_by_9\/Corollary","text":"Divisibility by 9\/Corollary\n\nJump to navigation Jump to search\n\nCorollary to Divisibility by 9\n\nA number expressed in decimal notation is divisible by $3$ if and only if the sum of its digits is divisible by $3$.\n\nThat is:\n\n$N = \\sqbrk {a_0 a_1 a_2 \\ldots a_n}_{10} = a_0 + a_1 10 + a_2 10^2 + \\cdots + a_n 10^n$ is divisible by $3$\n$a_0 + a_1 + \\ldots + a_n$ is divisible by $3$.\n\nProof\n\nFrom Divisibility by 9 we have that:\n\n$N = \\sqbrk {a_0 a_1 a_2 \\ldots a_n}_{10} = a_0 + a_1 10 + a_2 10^2 + \\cdots + a_n 10^n$ is divisible by $3^2$\n$a_0 + a_1 + \\ldots + a_n$ is divisible by $3^2$.\n\nSo:\n\n $\\displaystyle \\paren {a_0 + a_1 10 + a_2 10^2 + \\cdots + a_n 10^n}$ $\\equiv$ $\\displaystyle \\paren {a_0 + a_1 + a_2 + \\cdots + a_n}$ $\\displaystyle \\pmod {3^2}$ $\\displaystyle \\leadstoandfrom \\ \\$ $\\displaystyle \\paren {a_0 + a_1 10 + a_2 10^2 + \\cdots + a_n 10^n}$ $\\equiv$ $\\displaystyle \\paren {a_0 + a_1 + a_2 + \\cdots + a_n}$ $\\displaystyle \\pmod 3$ Congruence by Divisor of Modulus\n\n$\\blacksquare$","date":"2020-12-06 01:23:15","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 2, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.8532450795173645, \"perplexity\": 145.4173927203326}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": false, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": false}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2020-50\/segments\/1606141753148.92\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20201206002041-20201206032041-00543.warc.gz\"}"}
| null | null |
Bradysia nigrispina är en tvåvingeart som beskrevs av Menzel 2006. Bradysia nigrispina ingår i släktet Bradysia och familjen sorgmyggor.
Artens utbredningsområde är Tjeckien. Inga underarter finns listade i Catalogue of Life.
Källor
Sorgmyggor
nigrispina
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
}
| 9,363
|
package org.krysalis.barcode4j;
import java.util.Collection;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Set;
/**
* This is a simple implementation of a BarcodeClassResolver.
*
* @version $Id: DefaultBarcodeClassResolver.java,v 1.13 2009/03/13 08:01:40 jmaerki Exp $
*/
public class DefaultBarcodeClassResolver implements BarcodeClassResolver {
private Map classes;
private Set mainIDs;
/**
* Main constructor.
* <br>
* Already registers a default set of implementations.
*/
public DefaultBarcodeClassResolver() {
registerBarcodeClass("codabar", "org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.codabar.Codabar", true);
registerBarcodeClass("code39", "org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.code39.Code39", true);
registerBarcodeClass("code128", "org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.code128.Code128", true);
registerBarcodeClass("ean-128", "org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.code128.EAN128", true);
registerBarcodeClass("ean128", "org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.code128.EAN128");
registerBarcodeClass("2of5", "org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.int2of5.Interleaved2Of5");
registerBarcodeClass("intl2of5",
"org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.int2of5.Interleaved2Of5", true);
registerBarcodeClass("interleaved2of5",
"org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.int2of5.Interleaved2Of5");
registerBarcodeClass("itf-14", "org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.int2of5.ITF14", true);
registerBarcodeClass("itf14", "org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.int2of5.ITF14");
registerBarcodeClass("ean-13", "org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.upcean.EAN13", true);
registerBarcodeClass("ean13", "org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.upcean.EAN13");
registerBarcodeClass("ean-8", "org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.upcean.EAN8", true);
registerBarcodeClass("ean8", "org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.upcean.EAN8");
registerBarcodeClass("upc-a", "org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.upcean.UPCA", true);
registerBarcodeClass("upca", "org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.upcean.UPCA");
registerBarcodeClass("upc-e", "org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.upcean.UPCE", true);
registerBarcodeClass("upce", "org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.upcean.UPCE");
registerBarcodeClass("postnet", "org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.postnet.POSTNET", true);
registerBarcodeClass("royal-mail-cbc",
"org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.fourstate.RoyalMailCBC", true);
registerBarcodeClass("usps4cb",
"org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.fourstate.USPSIntelligentMail", true);
registerBarcodeClass("pdf417", "org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.pdf417.PDF417", true);
registerBarcodeClass("datamatrix",
"org.krysalis.barcode4j.impl.datamatrix.DataMatrix", true);
}
/**
* Registers a barcode implementation.
* @param id short name to use as a key
* @param classname fully qualified classname
*/
public void registerBarcodeClass(String id, String classname) {
registerBarcodeClass(id, classname, false);
}
/**
* Registers a barcode implementation.
* @param id short name to use as a key
* @param classname fully qualified classname
* @param mainID indicates whether the name is the main name for the barcode
*/
public void registerBarcodeClass(String id, String classname, boolean mainID) {
if (this.classes == null) {
this.classes = new java.util.HashMap();
this.mainIDs = new java.util.HashSet();
}
this.classes.put(id.toLowerCase(), classname);
if (mainID) {
this.mainIDs.add(id);
}
}
/**
* @see org.krysalis.barcode4j.BarcodeClassResolver#resolve(String)
*/
public Class resolve(String name) throws ClassNotFoundException {
String clazz = null;
if (this.classes != null) {
clazz = (String)this.classes.get(name.toLowerCase());
}
if (clazz == null) {
clazz = name;
}
Class cl = Class.forName(clazz);
return cl;
}
/**
* @see org.krysalis.barcode4j.BarcodeClassResolver#resolveBean(String)
*/
public Class resolveBean(String name) throws ClassNotFoundException {
String clazz = null;
if (this.classes != null) {
clazz = (String)this.classes.get(name.toLowerCase());
}
if (clazz == null) {
clazz = name;
}
Class cl = Class.forName(clazz + "Bean");
return cl;
}
/**
* @see org.krysalis.barcode4j.BarcodeClassResolver#getBarcodeNames()
*/
public Collection getBarcodeNames() {
return Collections.unmodifiableCollection(this.mainIDs);
}
}
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
}
| 9,517
|
The Family Day is an invitation to children, teens and parents to spend a fun and art-filled day at the Fondation Beyeler. This year's programme of events is specially designed around the current exhibition. There are art workshops in the gardens, the museum and the studios, exploring the artist's works and themes in hands-on activities. Short guided tours offer an informative and fascinating encounter with the originals. Our museum game allows you to experience the exhibition in an entertaining and interactive way.
The Family Day accompanying the exhibition "The Young Picasso – Blue and Rose Periods" is devoted to the theme of Masquerade".
On May 5, the Fondation Beyeler transforms into a family celebration in blue and rose. Inspired by Picasso's paintings, harlequins, acrobats and artistes from his pictures are brought to life. Visitors young and old can discover more about Picasso's art via game stations and guided tours of the museum, and explore the artworks and themes of the exhibition in fun, hands-on workshops and by playing a museum game. With additional attractions and tasty snacks in the gardens, the Family Day offers artistic enjoyment for the whole family.
Guided tours, workshops and museum games, as well as admission for children, teens and young adults up to 25 years, are free of charge. Adults pay the regular museum admission.
The Family Day is supported by Dr. Christoph M. Müller and Sibylla M. Müller.
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
}
| 7,354
|
Emeghara is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Ifeanyi Emeghara (born 1984), Nigerian footballer
Innocent Emeghara (born 1989), Nigerian-born Swiss footballer
Surnames of Nigerian origin
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
}
| 7,578
|
{"url":"https:\/\/math.stackexchange.com\/questions\/2385309\/a-problem-about-the-existence-of-acute-triangles-in-n-points","text":"# A problem about the existence of acute triangles in $n$ points\n\nHere's the problem that I got first:\n\nGiven five points on a plane such that no three of the points are collinear. Show that among the triangles which are drawn using any three of these five points as vertices, at least three of the triangles formed are not acute-angled triangles.\n\nMy attempt:\n\nI tried separating into two cases: The five points are a convex set or not.\n\nIf the five points are a convex set, then its convex hull must be some five sided convex polygon, meaning that at least one angle is larger than $108^\\circ$. (Pigeonhole principle)\n\nBut then what should I do next? I have no idea.\n\nThen I got the second version of the problem:\n\nGiven any 100 points on a plane such that no three of the points are collinear. Show that among the triangles which are drawn using any three of these 100 points as vertices, at least 30% of the triangles are not acute-angled triangles.\n\nThis seems even harder, but I think if I can solve the above, it would be pretty easy to solve this version as well.\n\nCan anyone please help? This is very hard for me, and I really want to know the solution.","date":"2019-09-21 15:48:49","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.5286213159561157, \"perplexity\": 113.44673570595769}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2019-39\/segments\/1568514574532.44\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20190921145904-20190921171904-00372.warc.gz\"}"}
| null | null |
/**
* @license Highcharts JS v6.0.0 (2017-10-04)
*
* Support for parallel coordinates in Highcharts
*
* (c) 2010-2017 Pawel Fus
*
* License: www.highcharts.com/license
*/
'use strict';
(function(factory) {
if (typeof module === 'object' && module.exports) {
module.exports = factory;
} else {
factory(Highcharts);
}
}(function(Highcharts) {
(function(H) {
/**
* Parallel coordinates module
*
* (c) 2010-2017 Pawel Fus
*
* License: www.highcharts.com/license
*/
/* eslint max-len: ["warn", 80, 4] */
/**
* Extensions for parallel coordinates plot.
*/
var SeriesProto = H.Series.prototype,
ChartProto = H.Chart.prototype,
AxisProto = H.Axis.prototype;
var pick = H.pick,
each = H.each,
wrap = H.wrap,
merge = H.merge,
erase = H.erase,
splat = H.splat,
extend = H.extend,
defined = H.defined,
arrayMin = H.arrayMin,
arrayMax = H.arrayMax;
var defaultXAxisOptions = {
opposite: true,
type: 'category'
};
/**
* @optionparent chart
*/
var defaultParallelOptions = {
/**
* Flag to render charts as a parallel coordinates plot. In a parallel
* coordinates plot (||-coords) by default all required yAxes are generated
* and the legend is disabled. This feature requires
* `modules/parallel-coordinates.js`.
*
* @sample {highcharts} /highcharts/demo/parallel-coordinates/
* Parallel coordinates demo
* @since 6.0.0
* @product highcharts
*/
parallelCoordinates: false,
/**
* Common options for all yAxes rendered in a parallel coordinates plot.
* This feature requires `modules/parallel-coordinates.js`.
*
* The default options are:
* <pre>
* parallelAxes: {
* lineWidth: 1, // classic mode only
* gridlinesWidth: 0, // classic mode only
* title: {
* text: '',
* reserveSpace: false
* },
* labels: {
* x: 0,
* y: 0,
* align: 'center',
* reserveSpace: false
* },
* offset: 0
* }</pre>
*
* @extends {yAxis}
* @excluding alternateGridColor,breaks,id,gridLineColor,gridLineDashStyle,
* gridLineWidth,minorGridLineColor,minorGridLineDashStyle,
* minorGridLineWidth,plotBands,plotLines,angle,
* gridLineInterpolation,maxColor,maxZoom,minColor,scrollbar,
* stackLabels,stops
*
* @product highcharts
* @sample {highcharts} highcharts/parallel-coordinates/parallelaxes/
* Set the same tickAmount for all yAxes
* @since 6.0.0
*/
parallelAxes: {
/**
* Titles for yAxes are taken from
* [xAxis.categories](#xAxis.categories). All options for
* `xAxis.labels` applies to parallel coordinates titles.
* For example, to style categories, use
* [xAxis.labels.style](#xAxis.labels.style).
*
* @excluding align,enabled,margin,offset,position3d,reserveSpace,
* rotation,skew3d,style,text,useHTML,x,y
*/
title: {
text: '',
reserveSpace: false
},
labels: {
x: 0,
y: 4,
align: 'center',
reserveSpace: false
},
offset: 0
}
};
H.setOptions({
chart: defaultParallelOptions
});
/**
* Initialize parallelCoordinates
*/
wrap(ChartProto, 'init', function(proceed, options) {
var defaultyAxis = splat(options.yAxis || {}),
yAxisLength = defaultyAxis.length,
newYAxes = [];
/**
* Flag used in parallel coordinates plot to check if chart has ||-coords.
*
* @name hasParallelCoordinates
* @memberOf Chart
* @type {Boolean}
*/
this.hasParallelCoordinates = options.chart &&
options.chart.parallelCoordinates;
if (this.hasParallelCoordinates) {
this.setParallelInfo(options);
// Push empty yAxes in case user did not define them:
for (; yAxisLength <= this.parallelInfo.counter; yAxisLength++) {
newYAxes.push({});
}
options = merge({
legend: {
enabled: false
}
},
options,
// Disable boost:
{
boost: {
seriesThreshold: Number.MAX_SAFE_INTEGER
},
plotOptions: {
series: {
boostThreshold: Number.MAX_SAFE_INTEGER
}
}
}
);
options.yAxis = defaultyAxis.concat(newYAxes);
options.xAxis = merge(
defaultXAxisOptions, // docs
splat(options.xAxis || {})[0]
);
}
return proceed.call(this, options);
});
/**
* Initialize parallelCoordinates
*/
wrap(ChartProto, 'update', function(proceed, options) {
if (options.chart) {
if (defined(options.chart.parallelCoordinates)) {
this.hasParallelCoordinates = options.chart.parallelCoordinates;
}
if (this.hasParallelCoordinates && options.chart.parallelAxes) {
this.options.chart.parallelAxes = merge(
this.options.chart.parallelAxes,
options.chart.parallelAxes
);
each(this.yAxis, function(axis) {
axis.update({}, false);
});
}
}
return proceed.apply(this, Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments, 1));
});
extend(ChartProto, /** @lends Highcharts.Chart.prototype */ {
/**
* Define how many parellel axes we have according to the longest dataset
* This is quite heavy - loop over all series and check series.data.length
* Consider:
* - make this an option, so user needs to set this to get better
* performance
* - check only first series for number of points and assume the rest is the
* same
*
* @param {Object} options User options
*/
setParallelInfo: function(options) {
var chart = this,
seriesOptions = options.series;
chart.parallelInfo = {
counter: 0
};
each(seriesOptions, function(series) {
if (series.data) {
chart.parallelInfo.counter = Math.max(
chart.parallelInfo.counter,
series.data.length - 1
);
}
});
}
});
/**
* On update, keep parallelPosition.
*/
AxisProto.keepProps.push('parallelPosition');
/**
* Update default options with predefined for a parallel coords.
*/
wrap(AxisProto, 'setOptions', function(proceed, userOptions) {
var axis = this,
chart = axis.chart,
axisPosition = ['left', 'width', 'height', 'top'];
proceed.apply(axis, Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments, 1));
if (chart.hasParallelCoordinates) {
if (chart.inverted) {
axisPosition = axisPosition.reverse();
}
if (axis.isXAxis) {
axis.options = merge(
axis.options,
defaultXAxisOptions,
userOptions
);
} else {
axis.options = merge(
axis.options,
axis.chart.options.chart.parallelAxes,
userOptions
);
axis.parallelPosition = pick(
axis.parallelPosition,
chart.yAxis.length
);
axis.setParallelPosition(axisPosition, axis.options);
}
}
});
/**
* Each axis should gather extremes from points on a particular position in
* series.data. Not like the default one, which gathers extremes from all series
* bind to this axis.
* Consider:
* - using series.points instead of series.yData
*/
wrap(AxisProto, 'getSeriesExtremes', function(proceed) {
if (this.chart.hasParallelCoordinates && !this.isXAxis) {
var index = this.parallelPosition,
currentPoints = [];
each(this.series, function(series) {
if (defined(series.yData[index])) {
// We need to use push() beacause of null points
currentPoints.push(series.yData[index]);
}
});
this.dataMin = arrayMin(currentPoints);
this.dataMax = arrayMax(currentPoints);
} else {
proceed.apply(this, Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments, 1));
}
});
extend(AxisProto, /** @lends Highcharts.Axis.prototype */ {
/**
* Set predefined left+width and top+height (inverted) for yAxes. This
* method modifies options param.
*
* @param {Array} axisPosition
* ['left', 'width', 'height', 'top'] or
* ['top', 'height', 'width', 'left'] for an inverted chart.
* @param {Object} options {@link Highcharts.Axis#options}.
*/
setParallelPosition: function(axisPosition, options) {
options[axisPosition[0]] = 100 * (this.parallelPosition + 0.5) /
(this.chart.parallelInfo.counter + 1) + '%';
this[axisPosition[1]] = options[axisPosition[1]] = 0;
// In case of chart.update(inverted), remove old options:
this[axisPosition[2]] = options[axisPosition[2]] = null;
this[axisPosition[3]] = options[axisPosition[3]] = null;
}
});
/**
* Bind each series to each yAxis.
* yAxis needs a reference to all series to calculate extremes.
*/
wrap(SeriesProto, 'bindAxes', function(proceed) {
if (this.chart.hasParallelCoordinates) {
var series = this;
each(this.chart.axes, function(axis) {
series.insert(axis.series);
axis.isDirty = true;
});
series.xAxis = this.chart.xAxis[0];
series.yAxis = this.chart.yAxis[0];
} else {
proceed.apply(this, Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments, 1));
}
});
/**
* Translate each point using corresponding yAxis.
*/
wrap(SeriesProto, 'translate', function(proceed) {
proceed.apply(this, Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments, 1));
var series = this,
chart = this.chart,
points = series.points,
dataLength = points && points.length,
closestPointRangePx = Number.MAX_VALUE,
lastPlotX,
point,
i;
if (this.chart.hasParallelCoordinates) {
for (i = 0; i < dataLength; i++) {
point = points[i];
if (defined(point.y)) {
point.plotX = point.clientX = chart.inverted ?
chart.plotHeight - chart.yAxis[i].top + chart.plotTop :
chart.yAxis[i].left - chart.plotLeft;
point.plotY = chart.yAxis[i]
.translate(point.y, false, true, null, true);
if (lastPlotX !== undefined) {
closestPointRangePx = Math.min(
closestPointRangePx,
Math.abs(point.plotX - lastPlotX)
);
}
lastPlotX = point.plotX;
point.isInside = chart.isInsidePlot(
point.plotX,
point.plotY,
chart.inverted
);
} else {
point.isNull = true;
}
}
this.closestPointRangePx = closestPointRangePx;
}
});
/**
* On destroy, we need to remove series from each axis.series
*/
wrap(SeriesProto, 'destroy', function(proceed) {
if (this.chart.hasParallelCoordinates) {
var series = this;
each(this.chart.axes || [], function(axis) {
if (axis && axis.series) {
erase(axis.series, series);
axis.isDirty = axis.forceRedraw = true;
}
});
}
proceed.apply(this, Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments, 1));
});
function addFormattedValue(proceed) {
var chart = this.series.chart,
config = proceed.apply(this, Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments, 1)),
formattedValue,
yAxisOptions,
labelFormat,
yAxis;
if (chart.hasParallelCoordinates && !defined(config.formattedValue)) {
yAxis = chart.yAxis[this.x];
yAxisOptions = yAxis.options;
labelFormat = pick(
/**
* Parallel coordinates only. Format that will be used for point.y
* and available in [tooltip.pointFormat](#tooltip.pointFormat) as
* `{point.formattedValue}`. If not set, `{point.formattedValue}`
* will use other options, in this order:
*
* 1. [yAxis.labels.format](#yAxis.labels.format) will be used if
* set
* 2. if yAxis is a category, then category name will be displayed
* 3. if yAxis is a datetime, then value will use the same format as
* yAxis labels
* 4. if yAxis is linear/logarithmic type, then simple value will be
* used
*
* @default undefined
* @memberOf yAxis
* @sample {highcharts}
* /highcharts/parallel-coordinates/tooltipvalueformat/
* Different tooltipValueFormats's
* @apioption yAxis.tooltipValueFormat
* @product highcharts
* @since 6.0.0
* @type {String}
*/
yAxisOptions.tooltipValueFormat,
yAxisOptions.labels.format
);
if (labelFormat) {
formattedValue = H.format(
labelFormat,
extend(
this, {
value: this.y
}
)
);
} else if (yAxis.isDatetimeAxis) {
formattedValue = H.dateFormat(
yAxisOptions.dateTimeLabelFormats[
yAxis.tickPositions.info.unitName
],
this.y
);
} else if (yAxisOptions.categories) {
formattedValue = yAxisOptions.categories[this.y];
} else {
formattedValue = this.y;
}
config.formattedValue = config.point.formattedValue = formattedValue;
}
return config;
}
each(['line', 'spline'], function(seriesName) {
wrap(
H.seriesTypes[seriesName].prototype.pointClass.prototype,
'getLabelConfig',
addFormattedValue
);
});
}(Highcharts));
}));
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
}
| 6,270
|
Der Steinküppel ist eine hohe Erhebung in der Rhön auf dem Gebiet des Truppenübungsplatzes Wildflecken. Der markante Felsriegel ragt nur etwa 20 m aus dem Südhang der Dammersfeldkuppe empor. Der Steinküppel ist ein guter Aussichtspunkt, darf von Zivilpersonen in der Regel aber nicht betreten werden, da er sich in Militärischem Sperrgebiet befindet. Lediglich an den Volkswandertagen am letzten Juliwochenende ist der Steinküppel in manchen Jahren öffentlich zugänglich.
Einzelnachweise
Berg in der Rhön
Truppenübungsplatz Wildflecken
Geographie (Wildflecken)
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
}
| 8,993
|
La Flèche de Paris est un journal politique bimensuel qui a eu 209 numéros entre le et le . C'était l'organe du Front commun contre le fascisme, contre la guerre et pour la justice sociale de Gaston Bergery.
Déçu du parti Radical dont il était député, Gaston Bergery a fondé le Front commun, parti pacifiste, très à gauche, mais hostile au communisme. En 1936, il crée le Parti Frontiste avec Georges Izard, qui collabore à son tour à La Flèche de Paris. Leur but est de trouver une voie anti-capitaliste qui ne soit pas liée aux communistes. En 1937, Izard quitte le parti Frontiste pour rejoindre la SFIO. Tout en soutenant les républicains espagnols et en étant opposé au racisme et à l'antisémitisme, Bergery, et dans une certaine mesure la ligne éditoriale de son journal, se déportera vers la Droite.
Parmi les collaborateurs du journal, on compte Francis Delaisi, Henri Jeanson (parfois sous le pseudonyme d'« Huguette ex-Micro »), Galtier-Boissière, André Hunebelle ou encore Jean Mazel. Parmi les dessinateurs, on compte Valère Sorokine, dit « Soro », et Claude Garnier.
Presse bimensuelle disparue en France
Presse politique en France
Titre de presse créé en 1934
Titre de presse disparu en 1939
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
}
| 6,832
|
Politicsreproductive rightsRoe v. Wade
Heartbeat Bills Are Part of the Endgame for "Roe v. Wade"
by Mallory McMaster
Published on April 26, 2019 at 12:17pm
Lauren Handy, third from right, of Anti-Choice Project DC, and other pro-life demonstrators participate in a 'pray-in' outside the Longworth office of Speaker John Boehner to protest a canceled House vote that would ban abortions after 20 weeks, March 25, 2015. (Photo credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images)
Abortion is a common and safe medical procedure that gives some of us the freedom to control our lives and others the security and reassurance to protect our health and our families. Yet, horrifying abortion bans are seemingly introduced every day; 28 state legislatures have introduced anti-abortion bills in the first three months of 2019 alone. Earlier this month, Ohio joined five other states—Georgia, Mississippi, Kentucky, Iowa, and North Dakota—that have passed "heartbeat bills," which that ban abortion at the first sign of a detectable heartbeat. These laws are tantamount to total abortion bans since most people learn of their pregnancies within the first five to six weeks and that's also when the first heartbeat can be heard through an ultrasound.
As these "heartbeat bills" show, unprecedented levels of anti-abortion legislation at the state and national level—fueled by anti-abortion rhetoric—are happening more frequently and becoming more extreme. While abortion opponents started this current wave of attacks in 2011 with a slew of 20-week bans, there's a long history of proposed laws that create an undue burden, including banning specific reasons for having an abortion; making it harder for clinics to dispose of medical waste; and forcing patients to endure needless waiting periods, have medically-unnecessary ultrasounds, and listen to state-mandated misinformation. Now—feeling energized and emboldened by Brett Kavanaugh's appointment to the Supreme Court—anti-choice advocates are championing laws that are even more draconian.
Thousands of Ohioans, myself included, have been speaking out against the state's heartbeat bill as it has snaked it ways through the state legislature over the past eight years. In 2011, when it was first introduced by Representative Christina Hagan, the bill seemed like it had to be a joke—how could something so extreme have a chance of ever becoming law? Former Ohio governor John Kasich vetoed it in 2016, giving Ohio's pro-choice organizers time to strategize. But during its subsequent cycles of failure and re-introduction, the bill has increasingly found support. Hagan left the Ohio legislature in 2018, but returned to the statehouse earlier this month to celebrate the bill's passage and signing, tweeting "Such a historic moment for Ohio & the nation in turning the tide on abortion—working & leading together to end the greatest human atrocity."
Ohio's current governor, Mike DeWine, campaigned on the promise that he would abolish abortion, and signed the bill immediately after it was passed. During the signing ceremony, DeWine told reporters that he hoped the bill would be used to directly challenge Roe v. Wade: "Taking this action really is the time-honored tradition, the constitutional tradition of making a good-faith argument for modification, reversal of existing legal precedent…. So this is exactly what this is, and the United States Supreme Court will ultimately make a decision."
Challenging Roe v. Wade before the Supreme Court has been the endgame for anti-abortion organizations since they first began introducing these bills; this time, their plan might work. Since Donald Trump took office, more than 80 ultraconservative judges known to oppose issues like abortion access and LGBTQ rights have been confirmed to various seats in circuit and district courts. The Trump administration, guided by the powerful, Koch-funded right-wing organization the Federalist Society, has strategically nominated relatively young anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court—both Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh were on their list—ensuring they will be on the bench when current cases move upward through the courts.
The good news is that most of the six-week bans that have been challenged in court have been put on hold temporarily while the legal cases around the laws progresses. This means abortion will remain legal for a while, at least in Kentucky and Iowa, though the confusion and stigma created by this flurry of anti-abortion activity is undoubtedly preventing some people from accessing abortion care. Some people in those states might not know that the laws are on hold, and even if they want an abortion, they might not seek care because they think it's already inaccessible. For those of us who live in states where abortion has been restricted, it feels like there's not much left to do. Hours after DeWine signed Ohio's abortion ban, I spoke to a group of progressive Democrats in Cleveland about how to fight bills designed to restrict abortion access. I tried for hours to write something but I couldn't. I had no idea what I would say.
"I've never had to say these words before, but Ohio banned abortion today," I said while holding back tears. Then I told the group about my own abortion: In 2013, while Ohio lawmakers were trying to pass an early version of the six-week ban, I found myself unexpectedly pregnant. In another context, it could have been a joyous occasion, but my husband was physically abusive. I could barely protect myself; I knew that I wouldn't be able to protect a child. My decision to have an abortion was easy, and I was able to navigate the Ohio's existing barriers—including receiving counseling that deters pregnant people from having abortions—with relative ease. My marriage ended soon after; I remarried and now have a child with a wonderful partner and each year since has made me increasingly grateful that I was able to have an abortion when I needed it.
I then told the group that we need to combat abortion stigma in our everyday lives and collectively support people—whether they are friends, family members, neighbors, or total strangers—who need abortion care. No matter where you live, you can do the same: You can donate to your local abortion fund's bowl-a-thon fundraiser to give much-needed funds to organizations who pay for abortion care, transportation, childcare, and other costs when people who need abortions don't have the financial resources they need. You can ask your local city officials to pass a resolution in support of abortion access and encourage them to file an amicus brief in support of lawsuits challenging these unconstitutional laws. You can organize abortion speakouts and strategy sessions where members of your communities share their own stories and brainstorm ways to make a difference at home.
Whatever we do, we must keep the people who have abortions centered in our work. This fight isn't about political candidates or elected officials, and it's not about large national organizations emailing you asking for money. It's about people like me who know they need to end a pregnancy and need somewhere safe accessible to do so. It's about the freedom we need to live our lives, make our own decisions, and care for our families. We have a long fight ahead of us, but if we never give up and keep talking, organizing, and pushing, we'll ultimately win. We always do.
Read this Next: Preparing for a Post-Roe America
by Caroline Reilly
Robin Marty's "Handbook for Post-Roe America" is the resource guide for anyone who wants to dedicate their time, money, energy—or all of the above—to keeping abortion accessible in this country while it's legal, and even if it's not.
Mallory McMaster is a Cleveland Heights, Ohio mom, communicator, and agitator.
"Birthright" is the Chilling Documentary All Women Must See In 2017
by Evette Dionne
Not Your Belly, Not Your Business
by Jenn Jackson
Backtalk: Planned Parenthood Drama & White Feminism
by Sarah Mirk
by Abby Minor
|
{
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}
| 2,072
|
Cultures and Customs A look at traditions around the globe
Cultures and Customs
Rhetoric and Civic Life
Takanakuy
Chumbivilcas Province, Peru
With the arrival of each new year, people of almost every nationality around the globe make resolutions to improve their lives. Amid the celebrations, there is a common desire to leave the troubles of the past year behind. One region of Peru has combined the joyous celebration that typically precedes the new year with the concept of communal betterment. In a unique tradition known as Takanakuy, a growing number of Peruvians in the Chumbivilcas area prepare for the arrival of the new year by settling old arguments with neighbors, friends, and family. As part of the annual celebration, the name of which translates to "when the blood is boiling," quarreling parties clear the air over any disputes with physical fights, often ending in a knockout.
[http://xaxor.com/bizarre/37453-peruvian-drunk-fights-takanakuy.html]
While trying to make peace through violent brawls may seem like a counterproductive notion, the Peruvians who take part in Takanakuy would disagree. The fights are not primarily about violence, and certainly not about vengeance; instead, they are an honorable way to settle disputes, putting a definite end to petty arguments and preventing them from escalating. Furthermore, the spirit of Takanakuy, which takes place on Christmas Day, is far more about community and solidarity than conflict.
There are many non-violent components of Takanakuy, including traditional dress that celebrates regional history. Ski masks are so common in the Peruvian provinces that are located in the Andes Mountains, including Chumbivilcas, that those belonging to each region have developed unique designs and color schemes designating their place of origin. Masks in the Chumbivilcas style (red, green, yellow and white), an easily recognized sign of pride, are a frequent sight at Takanakuy. Elaborate costumes emulate historical periods, with popular outfits fashioned after Andean horsemen and colonial slave drivers.
[http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/14/world/americas/vice-peru-takanakuy]
Music at Takanakuy also holds important ties to the past. Although the tradition has spread to urban areas, Takanakuy belongs primarily to the indigenous people of the Chumbivilcas region, who live under their own law without government interference. Their preferred style of music, known as Huaylia, originated in the sixteenth century as part of a revolutionary movement; its lyrics emphasize the common Chumbivilcas ideals of freedom and independence, a spirit reflected by Takanakuy itself.
The fights themselves, which draw hundreds of spectators to a small region of the Andes, are not entirely unstructured. The crowds are called together and process to a designated area, where those wishing to settle an argument may challenge an opponent by calling out his or her full name. During the match, several officials keep the spectators in line with whips while another observes the fight. Most fights end in a knockout, but all, by requirement, end with a handshake or hug.
[http://supermookinfiends.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/small-takanakuy.jpg]
While violence is an unorthodox way of making peace, it has worked for generations of Takanakuy participants. Shared tradition, pride, and honor serve to unify the natives of the Chumbivilcas province. With such a strong focus on community, Takanakuy allows those involved to see past petty conflicts and focus on repairing relationships. And if all else fails, the days of heavy drinking before and after Takanakuy are often enough to build camaraderie.
Tags: Chumbivilcas, Culture, Customs, Cuzco, Lima, New Year, Peru, Takanakuy
This entry was posted on Monday, November 4th, 2013 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Cultures and Customs. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
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Takanakuy | Cultures and Customs
This is amazing! The funny thing about it is that it makes sense – and it works for them! I love the traditions tied to it, and I almost wish I could be there. It seems like a fun (and even useful) way to start another year of your life.
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|
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{"url":"https:\/\/matchmaticians.com\/questions\/vikmkb\/explain-how-the-mean-of-discrete-variables-is-mu-sum-x-p-x","text":"# Explain how the mean of discrete variables is $\\mu = \\sum[x P(x)]$\n\nInstead of just memorizing this formula, I'd like a detailed explanation\/proof on why this is the case.","date":"2023-01-30 17:25:56","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.9330869317054749, \"perplexity\": 368.600735057127}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.3, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2023-06\/segments\/1674764499826.71\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20230130165437-20230130195437-00460.warc.gz\"}"}
| null | null |
The Khazar Lankaran 2013-14 season is Khazar Lankaran's ninth Azerbaijan Premier League season. It is their first full season with John Toshack as manager. They started the season by competing in the 2013–14 UEFA Europa League, reaching the 2nd qualifying round, after defeating Sliema Wanderers, before losing 0-10 on aggregate to Maccabi Haifa. As runners up in the previous season Azerbaijan Cup, Khazar took part in the revamped Azerbaijan Supercup, emerging victorious against Neftchi Baku. They currently taking part in the 2013–14 Azerbaijan Cup and 2013–14 Azerbaijan Premier League.
After a poor start to the season, in which Khazar only picked up 14 points from 14 games, Toshack resigned from his post following their 3-0 defeat to Baku on 22 November 2013. Giovanni Melkiorrenin was placed in temporary charge with Mustafa Denizli taking over on 3 December 2013, on a 1.5 year contract. On 16 May 2014, Denizli had his contract with Khazar mutually terminated.
Squad
Out on loan
Reserve
Transfers
Summer
In:
Out:
Winter
In:
Out:
Competitions
Friendlies
Azerbaijan Supercup
Azerbaijan Premier League
Results summary
Results by round
Results
League table
Azerbaijan Cup
UEFA Europa League
Qualifying phase
Squad statistics
Appearances and goals
|-
|colspan="14"|Players away from the club on loan:
|-
|colspan="14"|Players who appeared for Khazar Lankaran no longer at the club:
|}
Goal scorers
Disciplinary record
Other information
Qarabağ have played their home games at the Tofiq Bahramov Stadium since 1993 due to the ongoing situation in Quzanlı. Qarabağ vs Khazar Lankaran was played at the Bakcell Arena due to the Tofiq Bahramov Stadium1 pitch being relaid.
References
External links
Khazar Lankaran at Soccerway.com
Khazar
Khazar Lankaran FK seasons
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
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| 6,364
|
{"url":"https:\/\/pypi.org\/project\/pyscaffoldext-django\/0.1.1\/","text":"Integration of django builtin scaffold cli (django-admin) into PyScaffold\n\n## pyscaffoldext-django\n\nIntegration of Django\u2019s built-in generator (django-admin) into PyScaffold\n\nPyScaffold is a development tool focused in distributable Python packages. This extension allows the development of Django websites using PyScaffold sensible project structure, by tapping into the django-admin cli.\n\nLOOKING FOR CONTRIBUTORS - If you use PyScaffold or Django and would like to help us as a contributor (or even as one of the maintainers) for this extension, please send us an email or open an issue, we would love to have you on board.\n\n### Quickstart\n\nThis extension can be directly installed with pip:\n\npip install pyscaffoldext-django\n\nOr, if you prefer pipx:\n\npipx install pyscaffold # if you haven't installed pyscaffold yet\npipx inject pyscaffold pyscaffoldext-django\n\nNote that, after the installation, putup -h will show a new option --django. Use this option to indicate when you are trying to create a django app. For example:\n\nputup --django myapp\n\n### Alternative Procedure\n\nUsing Django extension in PyScaffold is roughly equivalent to first create an app using django-admin and then convert it to PyScaffold. The following manual procedure can be used to replace pyscaffoldext-django:\n\ndjango-admin startproject myapp\nmkdir myapp\/src\nmv myapp\/myapp myapp\/src\nmv myapp\/manage.py myapp\/src\/myapp\/__main__.py\n\n# edit the location of the database in myapp\/src\/myapp\/setttings.py\n# to point to one directory up, similar to:\n#\n# PROJECT_DIR = os.path.dirname(BASE_DIR)\n# DATABASES = {'default': { ..., 'NAME': os.path.join(PROJECT_DIR, 'db.sqlite3')}}\n\nputup myapp --force\n\nWe move\/rename the manage.py file to myapp\/src\/myapp\/__main__.py. This makes it possible to manage the application using python -m myapp when it is installed as a package (instead of python manage.py). All the arguments remain the same. Please check the next section for more information.\n\nRunning the script with python -m requires your package to be installed (a simple pip install -e . will suffice), however we also generate a new manage.py file that is a simple stub pointing to the __main__.py and works without explicit installation.\n\nFor complex use cases, maybe a better option is to do the conversion manually. If you find problems running PyScaffold with --django please try to execute this procedure.\n\n### Distributable Django Packages\n\nDjango is a framework for creating web applications, and PyScaffold is a tool that helps to build re-usable, distributable packages - which most of the time correspond to libraries or command line tools.\n\nWhile those two definitions are not mutually exclusive, it is a bit tricky to create a package with PyScaffold that serves a Django app. The first reason is that applications usually require concrete dependencies (pinned version numbers), while libraries are more relaxed and tend to use abstract dependencies (ranges of version numbers). You can read all about the differences between those two approaches in PyScaffold\u2019s documentation, however the main point is: when creating packages for webapps you have two options\n\nUse concrete dependencies:\n\npin the exact version number for your dependencies to avoid bugs (it works on my machineTM), but instruct your users that the package should be installed within a dedicated virtual environment to avoid dependency hell; or\n\nUse abstract dependencies:\n\nprefer relaxed dependency ranges (e.g. relying on stable APIs of dependencies that use semver), but test extensively your module against different installed versions to make sure nothing breaks (tox and nox are good tools for that).\n\nThe second reason is that Django expects the user of your application to have control on where the source code is placed, and this simply doesn\u2019t go well with pip installing locations deeply hidden somewhere in the file system (e.g. \/home\/username\/my-venvs\/web-app\/lib\/python3.6\/site-packages\/my-web-app)\u2026\n\nFor example, before starting a Django application server you are supposed to run migrations to prepare the correct structure in the database to receive your data. This is usually achieved by running python manage.py migrate at the root of your directory, however, if someone is installing your app using pip, how does this person knows where to find the manage.py file?\n\nTo solve this problem, pyscaffoldext-django renames manage.py to __main__.py and moves it inside your web application package. Since it becomes part of your package, the script will be accessible via python -m YOUR_PACKAGE_NAME <commands> from everywhere in the system, and therefore no one installing it with pip needs to know where it is.\n\nAnother example of the same behaviour is the default SQLite database Django creates. If you simply turn an Django app that was not created with PyScaffold into a package, install it and run the migrations, Django will generate an SQLite file in an arbitrary location in your disk. PyScaffold cannot automatically solve this problem for you. Instead you can follow a few approaches:\n\n1. (NOT RECOMMENDED) place your SQLite database inside your package and distribute it as a package data, accessing it via importlib.resources. (Please note resources are supposed to be immutable and not re-written to disk)\n\n2. Allow the person installing your package to specify a different configuration via environment variables. According to the Mozilla\u2019s tutorials, the library dj-database-url is good for that.\n\n3. Place your SQLite database somewhere in the user home.\n\nFor the sake of pragmatism, PyScaffold will reconfigure settings.py to place the database inside the project root in the development environment, but it is your responsibility to change this when going into production.\n\nFinally, it is important to notice that, while it is popular in the Django community to create separated top-level folders for independent applications, this is more or less incompatible with the concept of a Python package\u2026 One entry in PyPI should install a single package in your machine. Ideally, if you use multiple apps, you should deploy a different package for each of them and declare them as dependencies of your main project. Alternatively you can also deploy new applications nested inside of your main project package (the one generated by PyScaffold\/django-admin startproject). Therefore, caution is required when using python manage.py startapp (you should either provide the optional directory parameter as somewhere inside of your main package, or skip it completely). One example on how to use nested apps is:\n\nputup --django website\ncd website\n# \u2026 do some coding\nmkdir src\/website\/subapp\npython manage.py startapp subapp src\/website\/subapp\n# OR python -m website startapp subapp src\/website\/subapp\n# if you have the package installed in the dev environment\n# \u2026 then you can add \"website.subapp\" to INSTALLED_APPS in src\/website\/settings.py\n# \u2026 remeber to use relative imports or the full package name \"website.subapp\" when needed\n\n### Tips\n\n1. Have a look on Django\u2019s guides, but remember that PyScaffold already do the heavy lifting for you (no need to write packaging configuration from scratch) and that we use a src-based layout\n\n2. Do not assume anything about the file system where the package will be installed.\n\n3. If you really need to write things to disk, you can follow the XDG standards and write to \\$XDG_DATA_HOME (the package appdirs might help).\n\n4. Accept configurations via environment variables, and throw meaningful errors when they are not provided. Even if you prefer reading configurations from a file, you can always let the person installing your package to specify a location for this file as an environment variable.\n\n5. Use environment variables as flags\/switches to enable\/disable features or select alternative implementations.\n\n6. Be extra careful to not store secrets and confidential info in your source repository.\n\n7. Be extra careful with secrets and confidential info IN GENERAL. If really required to store them, use well known cryptography techniques and tweak file\/folder permissions in your operating system (e.g. the command chmod og-rwx is your friend, but you can also consider 400 permissions). Instructing the person installing your package to create a separated system account to run your web app with limited privileges might also be good.\n\n8. Provide extensive documentation on how your users are supposed to install and run your app (e.g. virtualenv installation instructions, ngnix\/apache\/systemd configuration examples, etc\u2026)\n\n### Making Changes & Contributing\n\nThis project uses pre-commit, please make sure to install it before making any changes:\n\npip install pre-commit\ncd pyscaffoldext-django\npre-commit install\n\nIt is a good idea to update the hooks to the latest version:\n\npre-commit autoupdate\n\nPlease also check PyScaffold\u2019s contribution guidelines,\n\n### Note\n\nThis project has been set up using PyScaffold 4.0a2. For details and usage information on PyScaffold see https:\/\/pyscaffold.org\/.\n\n## Project details\n\nUploaded source\nUploaded py2 py3","date":"2023-01-28 11:22:37","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.1996360421180725, \"perplexity\": 4306.1120994133435}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2023-06\/segments\/1674764499541.63\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20230128090359-20230128120359-00341.warc.gz\"}"}
| null | null |
Benito Juárez (președinte) a fost un amerindian de origine zapotecă, care a fost președintele Mexicului de cinci ori.
Benito Juárez se mai poate referi și la
Locuri din Mexic
Benito Juárez, D.F., Mexic
Benito Juárez, Guerrero, statul Guerrero
Benito Juárez, Quintana Roo, statul Quintana Roo
Benito Juárez, Sonora, statul Sonora
Benito Juárez, Tlaxcala, statul Tlaxcala
Benito Juárez, Veracruz, statul Veracruz
Ciudad Benito, Juárez, statul Nuevo León
'''Benito Juárez International Airport din Mexico City, Mexic.
Altele
Benito Juárez Partido, Provincia Buenos Aires, Argentina
Nume
Nume proprii
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
}
| 1,758
|
Sturmia aurieventris är en tvåvingeart som först beskrevs av Villeneuve 1910. Sturmia aurieventris ingår i släktet Sturmia och familjen parasitflugor. Inga underarter finns listade i Catalogue of Life.
Källor
Parasitflugor
aurieventris
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
}
| 9,889
|
Lepturginus tigrellus is a species of beetle in the family Cerambycidae. It was described by Bates in 1874.
References
Acanthocinini
Beetles described in 1874
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
}
| 590
|
\section{Proof of Theorem \ref{thm:main_thm}}
\label{sec:proofs}
In the proofs, $a \wedge b$ denotes $\min\{a, b\}$ for any $a, b \in {\bbR}$.
\subsection{Proof of discrete version }
\label{sec:proof_discrete}
\begin{proof}
Define a matrix $\Pi$ as:
$$
\Pi(i,j) =
\begin{cases}
0, & \text{if } C(i, j) > 2 \lambda \\
\Pi^*_2(i, j), & \text{otherwise}
\end{cases}
$$
Also define $s \in \mathbb{R}^n$ and $t \in \mathbb{R}^m$ as:
$$
s^*_1(i) = -\sum_{j=1}^m \Pi^*_2(i, j) \mathds{1}_{C(i, j) > 2 \lambda}
$$
and similarly define:
$$
t^*_1(j) = \sum_{i=1}^n \Pi^*_2(i, j) \mathds{1}_{C(i, j) > 2 \lambda}
$$
These vectors corresponds to the row sums and the column sums of the elements of the optimal transport plan of Formulation 2, where the cost function exceeds $2 \lambda$. Note that, these co-ordinates of the optimal transport plan corresponding to those co-ordinates of cost matrix, where the cost is greater than $2\lambda$ and contribute to the objective value via their sum only, hence any different arrangement of these transition probabilities with same sum gives the same objective value.
Now based on this $\Pi$ obtained we construct a feasible solution of Formulation 1 following Algorithm \ref{algo:f1-f2}:
$$
\Pi^*_1 =
\begin{bmatrix}
\mathbf{0} & \Pi \\
\mathbf{0} & {\sf diag}(t^*_1)
\end{bmatrix}
$$
The row sums of $\Pi^*_1$ is:
\[
\Pi^*_1 \mathbf{1}=
\begin{bmatrix}
\mu_n + s^*_1 \\ t^*_1
\end{bmatrix}
\]
and it is immediate from the construction that the column sums of $\Pi^*_1$ is $\nu_m$. Also as:
$$
\sum_{i=1}^n s^*_1(i) = \sum_{j=1}^m t^*_1(j) = \sum_{(i, j): C_{i, j} > 2 \lambda} \Pi^*_2(i, j)
$$
and $s^*_1 \preceq 0, t^*_1 \succeq 0$, we have:
$$
\mathbf{1}^{\top}(\mu_n + s^*_1 + t^*_1) = \mathbf{1}^{\top}p = 1 \,.
$$
Therefore, we have $(\Pi^*_1, s^*_1, t^*_1)$ is a feasible solution of Formulation 1. Now suppose this is not an optimal solution. Pick an optimal solution $\tilde \Pi, \tilde s, \tilde t$ of Formulation 1 so that:
$$
\langle C_{aug}, \tilde \Pi \rangle + \lambda \left[\|\tilde s\|_1 + \|\tilde t\|_1\right] < \langle C_{aug}, \Pi^*_1 \rangle + \lambda \left[\|s^*_1\|_1 + \|t^*_1\|_1\right]
$$
The following two lemmas provide some structural properties of any optimal solution of Formulation 1:
\begin{lemma}
\label{lem:R1-structure}
Suppose $\Pi^*_1, s^*_1, t^*_1$ are optimal solution for Formulation 1. Divide $\Pi^*_1$ into four parts corresponding to augmentation as in algorithm \ref{algo:f1-f2}:
$$
\Pi^*_1 = \begin{bmatrix}
\Pi^*_{1, 11} & \Pi^*_{1, 12} \\
\Pi^*_{1,21} & \Pi^*_{1, 22}
\end{bmatrix}
$$
Then we have $\Pi^*_{1, 11} = \Pi^*_{1, 21} = \mathbf{0}$ and $\Pi^*_{1, 22}$ is a diagonal matrix.
\end{lemma}
\begin{lemma}
\label{lem:f2_characterization}
If $\Pi^*_1, s^*_1, t^*_1$ is an optimal solution of Formulation 1 then:
\begin{enumerate}
\item If $C_{i,j} > 2 \lambda$ then $\Pi^*_1(i, j) = 0$.
\item If $C_{i, j} < 2 \lambda$ for some $i$ and for all $1 \le j \le n$, then $s^*_1(i) = 0$.
\item If $C_{i, j} < 2 \lambda$ for some $j$ and for all $1 \le i \le m$, then $t^*_1(j) = 0$.
\item If $C_{i, j} < 2 \lambda$ then $s^*_1(i) t^*_1(j) = 0$.
\end{enumerate}
\end{lemma}
We provide the proofs in the next subsection. By Lemma \ref{lem:R1-structure} we can assume without loss of generality:
$$
\tilde \Pi =
\begin{bmatrix}
\mathbf{0} & \tilde \Pi_{12} \\
\mathbf{0} & {\sf diag}(\tilde t)
\end{bmatrix}
$$
Now based on $\left(\tilde \Pi, \tilde s, \tilde t\right)$ we create a feasible solution namely $\Pi^*_{2, new}$ of Formulation 2 as follows: Define the set of indices $\{i_1, \cdots, i_k\}$ and $\{j_1, \dots, j_l\}$ as:
$$
\tilde s_{i_1}, \tilde s_{i_2}, \dots, \tilde s_{i_k} > 0 \ \ \ \ \text{and} \ \ \ \tilde t_{j_1}, \tilde t_{j_2}, \dots, \tilde t_{j_l} > 0 \,.
$$
Then by part (4) of Lemma \ref{lem:f2_characterization} we have $C_{i_\alpha, j_\beta} > 2 \lambda$ for $\alpha \in \{1, \dots, k\}$ and $\beta \in \{1, \dots, l\}$. Also by part (2) of Lemma \ref{lem:f2_characterization} the value of transport plan at these co-ordinates is 0. Now distribute the mass of slack variables in these co-ordinates such that the marginals of new transport plan becomes exactly $\mu_n$ and $\nu_m$. This new transport plan is our $\Pi^*_{2, new}$. Recall that, $\|\tilde s\|_1 = \| \tilde t\|_1$. Hence, here the regularizer value decreases by $2 \lambda \|\tilde s\|_1$ and the cost value increased by exactly $2 \lambda \|\tilde s\|_1$ as we are truncating the cost. Hence we have:
\begin{align*}
\langle C_{\lambda}, \Pi^*_{2,new} \rangle & = \langle C_{aug}, \tilde \Pi \rangle + \lambda \left[ \|\tilde s \|_1 + \|\tilde t\|_1\right] \\
& <\langle C_{aug}, \Pi^*_1 \rangle + \lambda \left[\|s^*_1\|_1 + \|t^*_1\|_1\right] \\
& = \langle C_{\lambda}, \Pi^*_2 \rangle
\end{align*}
which is contradiction as $\Pi^*_2$ is the optimal solution of Formulation 2. This completes the proof for the discrete part.
\end{proof}
\subsection{Proof of equivalence for two sided formulation}
\label{sec:proof_two_sided}
Here we prove that our two sided formulation, i.e.\ Formulation 3 (\eqref{eq:F_3}) is equivalent to Formulation 1 (\eqref{eq:robot1-d}) for the discrete case. Towards that end, we introduce another auxiliary formulation and show that both Formulation 1 and Formulation 3 are equivalent to the following auxiliary formulation of the problem.
\textbf{Formulation 4:}
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}
& \min\nolimits_{\Pi\in{\bbR}^{m\times n},s_1\in{\bbR}^m, s_2 \in {\bbR}^n} & & \langle C,\Pi\rangle + \lambda \left[\|s_1\|_1 + \|s_2\|_1\right] \\
& {\sf subject\ to} & & \Pi1_n = p + s_1 \\
& & & \Pi^T1_m = q + s_2 \\
& & & \Pi \succeq 0
\end{aligned}.
\label{eq:F_1}
\end{equation}
First we show that Formulation 1 and Formulation 4 are equivalent in a sense that they have the same optimal objective value.
\begin{theorem}
\label{thm:f12}
Suppose $C$ is a cost function such that $C(x, x) = 0$. Then Formulation 1 and Formulation 4 has same optimal objective value.
\end{theorem}
\begin{proof}
Towards that end, we show that given one optimal variables of one formulation we can get optimal variables of other formulation with the same objective value. Before going into details we need the following lemma whose proof is provided in Appendix B:
\begin{lemma}
\label{lem:negativity}
Suppose $\Pi^*_{4}, s^*_{4, 1}, s^*_{4, 2}$ are the optimal variables of Formulation 4. Then $s^*_{4, 1} \preceq 0$ and $s^*_{4, 2} \preceq 0$.
\end{lemma}
\noindent
Now we prove that optimal value of Formulation 1 and Formulation 4 are same. Let $(\Pi^*_{1}, s^*_{1,1}, t^*_{1,1})$ is an optimal solution of Formulation 1. Then we claim that $(\Pi^*_{1}, s^*_{1,1}, t^*_{1,1})$ is also an optimal solution of Formulation 4. Clearly it is feasible solution of Formulation 4. Suppose it is not optimal, i.e.\ there exists another optimal solution $(\tilde \Pi_{4}, \tilde s_{4, 1}, \tilde s_{4, 2})$ such that:
$$
\langle C, \tilde \Pi_{4} \rangle + \lambda(\|\tilde s_{4, 1}\|_1 + \|\tilde s_{4, 2}\|_2) < \langle C, \Pi^*_{1, 12} \rangle + \lambda(\|s^*_{1, 1}\|_1 + \|t^*_{1, 1}\|_1)
$$
Now based on $(\tilde \Pi_{4}, \tilde s_{4, 1}, \tilde s_{4, 2})$ we construct a feasible solution of Formulation 1 as follows:
$$
\tilde \Pi_{1} =
\begin{bmatrix}
\mathbf{0} & \tilde \Pi_{4} \\
\mathbf{0} & -{\sf diag}(\tilde s_{4, 2})
\end{bmatrix}
$$
Note that we proved in Lemma \ref{lem:negativity} $\tilde s_{4, 2} \preceq 0$, hence we have $\tilde \Pi_{1} \succeq 0$. Now as the column sums of $\tilde \Pi_{4}$ is $q + \tilde s_{4, 2}$, we have column sums of $\tilde \Pi_{1} = [\mathbf{0} \ \ q^{\top}]^{\top}$ and the row sums are $[(p+\tilde s_{4, 1})^{\top} \ \ \ \tilde s_{4, 2}^{\top}]^{\top}$. Hence we take $\tilde s_{1, 1} = \tilde s_{4, 1}$ and $\tilde s_{1, 2} = \tilde s_{4, 2}$.
Then it follows:
\begin{align*}
& \langle C_{aug}, \tilde \Pi_{1} \rangle + \lambda \left[\|\tilde s_{1 , 1}\|_1 + \|\tilde s_{1, 2} \|_1\right] \\
& = \langle C, \tilde \Pi_{4} \rangle + \lambda \left[\|\tilde s_{4 , 1}\|_1 + \|\tilde s_{4, 2} \|_1\right] \\
& < \langle C, \Pi^*_{1, 12} \rangle + \lambda \left[\| s^*_{1, 1}\|_1 + \|t^*_{1, 1}\|_1\right] \\
& = \langle C_{aug}, \Pi^*_{1} \rangle + \lambda \left[\| s^*_{1, 1}\|_1 + \|t^*_{1, 1}\|_1\right]
\end{align*}
This is contradiction as we assumed $(\Pi^*_{1}, s^*_{1, 1}, t^*_{1, 2})$ is an optimal solution of Formulation 1. Therefore we conclude $(\Pi^*_{1}, s^*_{1,1}, t^*_{1,1})$ is also an optimal solution of Formulation 4 which further concludes Formulation 1 and Formulation 4 have same optimal values. This completes the proof of the theorem.
\end{proof}
\begin{theorem}
\label{thm:f13}
The optimal objective value of Formulation 3 and Formulation 4 are same.
\end{theorem}
\begin{proof}
Like in the proof of Theorem \ref{thm:f12}
we also prove couple of lemmas.
\begin{lemma}
\label{lem:struct_f3}
Any optimal transport plan $\Pi^*_{3}$ of Formulation 3 has the following structure: If we write,
\[
\Pi^*_{3} =
\begin{bmatrix}
\Pi^*_{3, 11} & \Pi^*_{3, 12} \\
\Pi^*_{3, 21} & \Pi^*_{3, 22}
\end{bmatrix}
\]
then $\Pi^*_{3, 11}$ and $\Pi^*_{3, 22}$ are diagonal matrices and $\Pi^*_{3, 21} = \mathbf{0}$.
\end{lemma}
\begin{lemma}
\label{lem:negativity_2}
If $s^*_{3, 1}, t^*_{3, 1}, s^*_{3, 2}, t^*_{3, 2}$ are four optimal slack variables in Formulation 3, then $s^*_{3, 1}, t^*_{3, 1} \preceq 0$ and $s^*_{3, 2}, t^*_{3, 2} \succeq 0$.
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof}
The line of argument is same as in proof of Lemma \ref{lem:negativity}.
\end{proof}
Next we establish equivalence. Suppose $(\Pi^*_{3}, s^*_{3, 1}, t^*_{3, 1}, s^*_{3, 2}, t^*_{3, 2})$ are optimal values of Formulation 3. We claim that $(\Pi^*_{3, 12}, s^*_{3,1} - s^*_{3,2}, t^*_{3, 1} - t^*_{3, 2})$ forms an optimal solution of Formulation 4. The objective value will then also be same as $s^*_{3, 1} \preceq 0, s^*_{3, 2} \succeq 0$ (Lemma \ref{lem:negativity_2}) implies $\|s^*_{3, 1} - s^*_{3, 2}\|_1 = \|s^*_{3, 1}\|_1 + \|s^*_{3, 2}\|_1$ and similarly $t^*_{3, 1} \preceq 0, t^*_{3, 2} \succeq 0$ implies $\|t^*_{3, 1} - t^*_{3, 2}\|_1 = \|t^*_{3, 1}\|_1 + \|t^*_{3, 2}\|_1$. Feasibility is immediate. Now for optimality, we again prove by contradiction. Suppose they are not optimal. Then lets say $\tilde \Pi_{4}, \tilde s_{4, 1}, \tilde s_{4, 2}$ are an optimal triplet of Formulation 4. Now construct another feasible solution of Formulation 3 as follows:
Set $\tilde s_{3, 2} = \tilde t_{3, 2} = 0, \tilde s_{3, 1} = \tilde s_{4, 1} $ and $\tilde t_{3, 1} = \tilde s_{4, 2}$. Set the matrix as:
\[
\tilde \Pi_{3} = \begin{bmatrix}
\mathbf{0} & \tilde \Pi_{4} \\
\mathbf{0} & -{\sf diag}(\tilde s_{4, 2})
\end{bmatrix}
\]
Then it follows that $\left(\tilde \Pi_{3}, \tilde s_{3, 1}, \tilde s_{3, 2}, \tilde t_{3, 1}, \tilde t_{3, 2}\right)$ is a feasible solution of Formulation 3. Finally we have:
\begin{align*}
& \langle C_{aug}, \tilde \Pi_{3} \rangle + \lambda \left[\|\tilde s_{3, 1}\|_1 + \| \tilde s_{3, 2} \|_1 + \| \tilde t_{3, 1} \|_1 + \| \tilde t_{3, 2} \|_1 \right] \\
& = \langle C_{aug}, \tilde \Pi_{3} \rangle + \lambda \left[\|\tilde s_{4, 1}\|_1 + \| \tilde s_{4, 2} \|_1 \right] \\
& = \langle C, \tilde \Pi_{4} \rangle + \lambda \left[\|\tilde s_{4, 1}\|_1 + \| \tilde s_{4, 2} \|_1 \right] \\
& < \langle C, \Pi^*_{3, 12} \rangle + \lambda \left[\|s^*_{3,1} - s^*_{3,2}\|_1 + \|t^*_{3, 1} - t^*_{3, 2}\|_1 \right] \\
& = \langle C_{aug}, \Pi^*_{3} \rangle + \lambda \left[\|s^*_{3, 1}\|_1 + \|s^*_{3, 2}\|_1 + \|t^*_{3, 1}\|_1 + \|t^*_{3, 2}\|_1 \right]
\end{align*}
This contradicts the optimality of $(\Pi^*_{3}, s^*_{3, 1}, s^*_{3, 2}, t^*_{3, 1}, t^*_{3, 2})$. This completes the proof.
\end{proof}
\subsection{Proof of continuous version}
\begin{proof}
In this proof we denote by $F_1$ the optimization problem of \eqref{eq:robot1-cts} and by $F_2$ the optimization problem \eqref{eq:robot2-cts}. Let $\mu, \nu$ be two absolutely continuous measures on $\mathbb{R}^d$. Moreover, we assume $c(x,y)=\|x-y\|$ for some norm $\|\cdot\|$ on $\mathbb{R}^d$. We assume that $\int \|x\| \nu(\mathrm{d}x), \int \|x\| \mu(\mathrm{d}x) < \infty$.
\textbf{Step 1:} Let $K_{\epsilon}$ be a compact set such that $\int_{K_{\epsilon}} \|x\|\mu(\mathrm{d}x), \int_{K_{\epsilon}} \|x\|\nu(\mathrm{d}x) >1-\epsilon$.
Also, let $\tilde{K}_\epsilon=\{x_1,\dots,x_{n_\epsilon}\}$ be a maximal $\epsilon$-packing set of $K_{\epsilon}$. Starting from $\tilde{K}_\epsilon$, define $\{S_1,\dots, S_{n_{\epsilon}}\}$ as a mutually disjoint covering of $K_{\epsilon}$ with internal points $x_1,\dots, x_{n_{\epsilon}}$ respectively, so that Diam$(S_i) \leq 2\epsilon$.
With $p_i=\int_{S_i} \mu(\mathrm{d}x)$, $q_i=\int_{S_i} \nu(\mathrm{d}x)$ for
$i=1,\dots, n_{\epsilon}$, $p_0=\int_{K_{\epsilon}^C} \mu(\mathrm{d}x)$, $q_0=\int_{K_{\epsilon}^C} \nu(\mathrm{d}x)$ and $x_0=0 \in \mathbb{R}^d$, define
\begin{eqnarray}
\mu_{\epsilon}&=&\sum_0^{n_{\epsilon}}p_i \delta_{x_i} \nonumber \\
\nu_{\epsilon}&=&\sum_0^{n_{\epsilon}}q_i \delta_{x_i} \nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
A coupling $Q$ between two probability distributions is a joint distribution with marginals as the given two distributions. The Wasserstein distance between two distributions $P_1$ and $P_2$ is defined as:
\begin{eqnarray}
W_1(P_1,P_2)= \inf_{Q\in \mathscr{Q}(P_1,P_2)} \int Q(x,y)\|x-y\|\mathrm{d}x\mathrm{d}y,
\end{eqnarray}
where $\mathscr{Q}(P_1,P_2)$ is the collection of all couplings of $P_1$ and $P_2$.
Define $Q(x,y)= (\mathbbm{1}_{x=x_0, y \in K_{\epsilon}^C}+ \sum_{i=1}^{n_\epsilon} \mathbbm{1}_{x=x_i, y \in S_i})\mu(\mathrm{d}y)$. Then $Q$ is a coupling between $\mu$ and $\mu_{\epsilon}$.
Therefore, clearly,
\begin{eqnarray}
W_1(\mu,\mu_{\epsilon})\leq \int_{K_{\epsilon}^C} \|x\|\mu(\mathrm{d}x) +2\epsilon \left(\sum_{i=1}^{n_{\epsilon}} p_i\right) \leq 3 \epsilon
\end{eqnarray}
Similarly, $W_1(\nu,\nu_{\epsilon}) \leq 3 \epsilon$. Therefore $\lim_{\epsilon \to 0} W_1(\nu,\nu_{\epsilon})=0$.
Moreover, $W_1(\mu,\nu)=\lim_{\epsilon \to 0} W_1(\mu_{\epsilon},\nu_{\epsilon})$, as $W_1(\mu_{\epsilon},\nu_{\epsilon})-6 \epsilon \leq W_1(\mu,\nu) \leq W_1(\mu_{\epsilon},\nu_{\epsilon})+6 \epsilon$ by triangle inequality.
\textbf{Step 2:}
Let $S$ be an arbitrary measure with $\|S\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}= 2\gamma$, so that $\mu+S$ is a probability measure with $\int \|x\| (\mu+S) (\mathrm{d}x) <\infty$. Also, let us define $\epsilon_n=2^{-(n+1)}$.
Let $S=S^+-S^-$, where $S^+$ and $S^-$ are positive measures on $\mathbb{R}^d$. Then, $\|S^-\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}=\|S^+\|_{ \mathrm{TV}} =\gamma $.
Clearly $(\mu-S^{-})/(1-\gamma),\mu, \nu,S^+/\gamma$ are tight probability measures. So we can construct compact sets $K_{\epsilon_n}^{(1)}$, similar to Step 1 to approximate all the four measures. Without loss of generality we assume that $0 \in K_{\epsilon_n}^{(1)}$ for all $n$. Moreover, we can also construct approximate measures $(\mu-S^-)_n=((\mu-S^-)/(1-\gamma))_{\epsilon_n}$ and $(S^+)_n= (S^+/\gamma)_{\epsilon_n}$ defined as in Step 1. $\mu_n=\mu_{\epsilon_n},\nu_n= \nu_{\epsilon_n}$ are defined similarly. All four of the measures have support points in $K_{\epsilon_n}^{(1)}$.
Next, we define $(\mu+S)_n=\gamma(S^+)_n +(1-\gamma)(\mu-S^-)_n$. Then by the construction, from~\citep{Villani-09}, $\lim_{n \to \infty}W_1((\mu+S)_n,\mu+S) \to 0$ and thus $\lim_{n \to \infty}W_1((\mu+S)_n,\nu_n) \to W_1(\mu+S,\nu)$. Therefore we can define a signed measure $S_n=(\mu+S)_n- \mu_n$. Moreover,
\begin{align}
\label{eq:STV}
\|S_n\|_{ \mathrm{TV}} & \leq \gamma\|(S^+)_n\|_{ \mathrm{TV}} +\|(1-\gamma)(\mu-S^-)_n-\mu_n\|_{ \mathrm{TV}} \\
& = 2\gamma= \|S\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}
\end{align}
Note that $\mu_n,\nu_n,(\mu+S)_n$ put masses (sometimes zero masses) on a common set of support points given by $\tilde{K}_{\epsilon_n}^{(1)} \subset K_{\epsilon_n}^{(1)}$.
The $\tilde{K}_{\epsilon_n}^{(1)}$ is sequentially defined so that $\tilde{K}_{\epsilon_{n+1}}^{(1)}$ is a refinement of $\tilde{K}_{\epsilon_n}^{(1)}$. This can easily be achieved by the choice of $\epsilon_n$ defined.
Consider $\tilde{s}_n,\Pi_n$ such that
\begin{eqnarray}
\label{eq: argmin s}
F_1(\mu_n,\nu_n)=\int\|x-y\|\Pi_n(\mathrm{d}x\mathrm{d}y) +\lambda\|\tilde{s}_n\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}
\end{eqnarray}
By the discrete nature of $\mu_n,\nu_n$, using the proof of the discrete part $F_1(\mu_n,\nu_n)= F_2(\mu_n,\nu_n)$.
Since, $\min\{\|x-y\|,2\lambda\}$ is a metric, whenever $\|x-y\|$ is, therefore, it is easy to check that $F_2(\mu,\nu)=\lim_n F_2(\mu_n,\nu_n)=\lim_n F_1(\mu_n,\nu_n)$.
Moreover, by construction, $F_1(\mu_n,\nu_n) \leq \int\|x-y\|\Pi(\mathrm{d}x\mathrm{d}y) +\lambda\|S_n\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}$ for any arbitrary coupling $\Pi$ of $\mu$ and $\mu+S$. Also $\lim_n W_1(\mu_n,\mu), W_1(\mu+S,(\mu+S)_n) \to 0$.
Thus, combining the above result with \eqref{eq:STV}, we get
\begin{eqnarray}
\lim_n F_1(\mu_n,\nu_n) \leq \int\|x-y\|\tilde{\Pi}(\mathrm{d}x\mathrm{d}y) +\lambda\|S\|_{ \mathrm{TV}} \nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
for any coupling $\tilde{\Pi}$ of $\mu$ and $\mu+S$.
Therefore, $F_2(\mu,\nu) \leq F_1(\mu,\nu)$.
\textbf{Step 3:} Consider $\tilde{s}_n$ defined in \eqref{eq: argmin s}. As $\tilde{s}_n$ has support in the compact sets $K_{\epsilon_n}^{(1)}$ defined in Step 2, therefore, $\{\mu_n+\tilde{s}_n\}_{n \geq 1}$ are tight measures.
Therefore, by Prokhorov's Theorem for equivalence of sequential compactness and tightness for a collection of measures, there exists a probability measure
$\mu \oplus s$ and a subsequence $\{n_k\}_{k \geq 1}$ such that $\mu_{n_k}+\tilde{s}_{n_k}$ converges weakly to $\mu \oplus s$. Moreover, by construction $\lim_{R\to \infty} \limsup_{n \to \infty} \bigintss_{\|x\|>R} \|x\| (\mu_n +\nu_n)(\text{d}x) =0$ and so $\lim_{R\to \infty} \limsup_{n \to \infty} \bigintss_{\|x\|>R} \|x\|(\mu_n + \tilde{s}_n)(\text{d}x) =0$.
Thus, by Definition 6.8 part (iii) and Theorem 6.9 of~\citep{Villani-09}, $W_1(\mu_{n_k}+\tilde{s}_{n_k}, \mu\oplus s)\to 0 $. Moreover, $W_1(\mu_{n_k},\mu)\to 0$. Therefore $\|\tilde{s}_{n_k}\|_{ \mathrm{TV}} \to \|\mu \oplus s -\mu\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}$. Thus, $W_1(\mu_{n_k}+\tilde{s}_{n_k}, \nu_{n_k}) + \lambda\|\tilde{s}_{n_k}\|_{ \mathrm{TV}} \to W_1(\mu \oplus s,\nu)+\lambda\|\mu \oplus s -\mu\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}$. But by the proof of the discrete part,
$W_1(\mu_{n_k}+\tilde{s}_{n_k}, \nu_{n_k}) + \lambda\|\tilde{s}_{n_k}\|_{ \mathrm{TV}} = F_1(\mu_{n_k},\nu_{n_k}) =F_2(\mu_{n_k},\nu_{n_k}) \to F_2(\mu, \nu)$. Therefore, with $s=\mu \oplus s -\mu$, $ W_1(\mu + s,\nu)+\lambda\|s\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}= F_2(\mu,\nu)$.
Therefore, $F_2(\mu,\nu)=\limsup_{n \to \infty} F_1(\mu_n,\nu_n) \geq F_1(\mu,\nu)$. Thus the equality holds.
\end{proof}
\section{Proof of Theorem \ref{thm:bound}}
\label{sec:theorem_bnd}
\begin{proof}
The proof is immediate from the Formulation 1. Recall that the Formulation 1 can restructured as:
$$
\mathrm{ROBOT}(\tilde \mu, \nu) = \inf_{P} \left\{\mathrm{OT}(P, \nu) + \lambda \|P - \tilde \mu\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}\right\} \,.
$$
where the infimum is taking over all measure dominated by some common measure $\sigma$ (with respect to which $\mu, \mu_c, \nu$ are dominated). Hence,
$$
\mathrm{ROBOT}(\tilde \mu, \nu) \le \mathrm{OT}(P, \nu) + \lambda \|P - \tilde \mu\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}
$$
for any particular choice of $P$. Taking $P = \mu$ we get that
\begin{align*}
\mathrm{ROBOT}(\tilde \mu, \nu) & \le \mathrm{OT}(\mu, \nu) + \lambda \|\mu - \tilde \mu\|_{ \mathrm{TV}} \\
& = \mathrm{OT}(\mu, \nu) + \lambda {\epsilon} \|\mu - \mu_c\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}
\end{align*}
Taking $P = \nu$ we get $ \mathrm{ROBOT}(\tilde \mu, \nu) \le \lambda \|\nu - \tilde \mu\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}$ and finally taking $P = \tilde \mu$ we get $ \mathrm{ROBOT}(\tilde \mu, \nu) \le \mathrm{OT}(\tilde \mu, \nu)$. This completes the proof.
\end{proof}
\section{Proof of Lemma \ref{lem:entropy-f2-f1}}
\label{sec:lemma_sinkhorn}
As defined in the main text, let $\Pi^*_2$ be the optimal solution of~\eqref{eq:robot2-d} and $\Pi^*_{2, \alpha}$ be the optimal solution of \eqref{eq:robot2-d-entropy}. Then by Proposition 4.1 from ~\citet{peyre2018Computational} we conclude:
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:cuturi}
\Pi^*_{2, \alpha} \overset{\alpha \to 0}{\longrightarrow} \Pi^*_2 \,.
\end{equation}
Now we have defined $\left(\Pi^*_{1, \alpha}, \mathbf{s}^*_{1, \alpha}\right)$ as the \emph{approximate} solution of \eqref{eq:robot1-d} obtained via Algorithm \ref{algo:f1-f2} from $\Pi^*_{2, \alpha}$. Note that we can think of Algorithm \ref{algo:f1-f2} as a map from $ {\bbR}^{m \times n}$ to ${\bbR}^{(m+n) \times (m + n)} \times {\bbR}^{m}$. Define this map as $F$.
$$
F(\Pi_2) \mapsto (\Pi_1, \mathbf{s}_1)
$$
Hence, by our notation, $\left(\Pi^*_{1, \alpha}, \mathbf{s}^*_{1, \alpha}\right) = F(\Pi^*_{2, \alpha})$ and $\left(\Pi^*_{1}, \mathbf{s}^*_{1}\right) = F(\Pi^*_2)$. Now if we show that $F$ is a continuous map, then by continuous mapping theorem, it is also immediate from \eqref{eq:cuturi} that:
\begin{align*}
F(\Pi^*_{2, \alpha}) \overset{\alpha \to 0}{\longrightarrow} F(\Pi^*_2) \,.
\end{align*}
which implies:
\begin{align*}
\Pi^*_{1, \alpha} & \overset{\alpha \to 0}{\longrightarrow} \Pi^*_1 \\
\mathbf{s}^*_{1, \alpha} & \overset{\alpha \to 0}{\longrightarrow} \mathbf{s}^*_1 \,.
\end{align*}
which will complete the proof. Therefore all we need to show is that $F$ is a continuous map. Towards that direction, first fix a sequence of matrices $\{\bar \Pi_{2, i}\}_{i \in \mathbb{N}} \to \bar \Pi_2$. Define $F(\bar \Pi_{2, i}) = \left(\bar \Pi_{1, i}, \bar \mathbf{s}_{1, i}\right)$ and $F(\bar \Pi_{2}) = \left(\bar \Pi_{1}, \bar \mathbf{s}_{1}\right)$. By Step 3 - Step 5 of Algorithm \ref{algo:f1-f2}, we obtain $\bar \Pi_{1, i}$ by first setting $\bar \Pi_{1, i, 12} = \bar \Pi_{2, i}$ and for each of the columns of $\bar \Pi_{1, i, 12}$, dumping the sum of its entries for which the cost is $> 2 \lambda$ to the diagonals of $\bar \Pi_{1, i, 22}$. Also, we have all the entries of the first $n$ columns of $\bar \Pi_{1, i}$ to be $0$. In step 6 of Algorithm \ref{algo:f1-f2}, we obtain $\mathbf{s}_{1, i}$ by taking the negative of the sum of the elements of each rows of $\bar \Pi_{1, i, 12}$ for which the cost is $> 2\lambda$. Note that these operations (Step 3 - Step 6 of Algorithm \ref{algo:f1-f2}) are continuous. Therefore we conclude:
\begin{enumerate}
\item $0 = \bar \Pi_{1, i, 11} \to \bar \Pi_{1, 11} = 0 \,.$
\item $0 = \bar \Pi_{1, i, 21} \to \bar \Pi_{1, 21} = 0 \,.$
\item $\bar \Pi_{1, i, 12} = \bar \Pi_{2, i} \odot \mathds{1}_{\mathcal{I}^c} \to \bar \Pi_{2} \odot \mathds{1}_{\mathcal{I}^c} = \bar \Pi_{1, 12} \,.$
\item \begin{align*}
\bar \Pi_{1, i, 22} & = {\sf diag}\left(\mathbf{1}^{\top}\left(\bar \Pi_{2, i} \odot \mathds{1}_{\mathcal{I}}\right)\right) \\
& \to {\sf diag}\left(\mathbf{1}^{\top}\left(\bar \Pi_{2} \odot \mathds{1}_{\mathcal{I}}\right)\right) \\
& = \bar \Pi_{1, 22} \,.
\end{align*}
\item \begin{align*}
\mathbf{s}_{1, i} & = -\left(\bar \Pi_{i, n} \odot \mathds{1}_{\mathcal{I}}\right)\mathbf{1} \\
& \to -\left(\bar \Pi_2 \odot \mathds{1}_{\mathcal{I}}\right)\mathbf{1} = \mathbf{s}_1 \,.
\end{align*}
\end{enumerate}
where $A \odot B$ denotes the Hadamard product (element-wise multiplication) between two matrices. Hence we have established:
\begin{align*}
F(\bar \Pi_{2, i}) & = \left(\bar \Pi_{1, i}, \bar \mathbf{s}_{1, i}\right) \\
& \overset{n \to \infty}{\longrightarrow} \left(\bar \Pi_{1}, \bar \mathbf{s}_{1}\right) \\
& = F(\bar \Pi_2) \,.
\end{align*}
This completes the proof of continuity of $F$.
\section{Proof of auxiliary lemmas}
\subsection{Proof of Lemma \ref{lem:R1-structure}}
\begin{proof}
The fact that $\Pi^*_{1, 11} = \Pi^*_{1, 21} = \mathbf{0}$ follows from the fact that $\Pi^*_1 \succeq 0$ and $\Pi^*_1\mathbf{1} = \mathbf{Q}$. To prove that $\Pi^*_{1, 22}$ is diagonal, we use the fact that the any diagonal entry the cost matrix is $0$. Now suppose $\Pi^*_{1, 22}$ is not diagonal. Then define a matrix $\hat \Pi$ as following: set $\hat \Pi_{11} = \hat \Pi_{21} = \mathbf{0}$,
$\hat \Pi_{12} = \Pi^*_{1, 12}$ and:
\[
\hat \Pi_{22}(i, j) =
\begin{cases}
\sum_{k=1}^m \Pi^*_{1, 22}(k, i), & \text{if } j = i \\
0, & \text{if } j \neq i
\end{cases}
\]
Also define $\hat s = s^*_1$ and $\hat t$ as $\hat t(i) = \hat \Pi_{22}(i, i)$. Then clearly $(\hat \Pi, \hat s, \hat t)$ is a feasible solution of Formulation 1. Note that:
$$
\|\hat t\|_1 = 1^{\top}\hat \Pi_{22} 1 = 1^{\top}\Pi^*_{1, 22} 1 = \|t^*_1\|_1
$$
and by our construction $\langle C_{aug}, \hat \Pi \rangle < \langle C_{aug}, \Pi^*_1 \rangle$. Hence $(\hat \Pi, \hat s, \hat t)$ reduces the value of the objective function of Formulation 1 which is a contradiction. This completes the proof.
\end{proof}
\subsection{Proof of Lemma \ref{lem:f2_characterization}}
\begin{proof}
\begin{enumerate}
\item Suppose $\Pi^*_1(i, j) > 0$. Then dump this mass to $s^*_1(j)$ and make it $0$. In this way $\langle C_{aug}, \Pi^*_1 \rangle$ will decrease by $> 2 \lambda \Pi^*_1(i, j)$ and the regularizer value will increase by atmost $2 \lambda \Pi^*_1(i, j)$, resulting in overall reduction in the objective value, which leads to a contradiction.
\item Suppose each entry of $i^{th}$ row of $C$ is $< 2 \lambda$. Then if $s^*_1(i) > 0$, we can distribute this mass in the $i^{th}$ row such that, $s^*_1(i) = a_1 + a_2 + \dots + a_m$ with the condition that $t^*_1(j) \ge a_j$. Now we reduce $t^*_1$ as:
$$
t^*_1(j) \leftarrow t^*_1(j) - a_j
$$
Hence the value $\langle C_{aug}, \Pi^*_1(i, j) \rangle$ will increase by a value $< 2\lambda s^*_1(i)$ but the value of regularizer will decrease by the value of $2 \lambda s^*_1(i)$, resulting in overall decrease in the value of objective function.
\item Same as proof of part (2) by interchanging row and column in the argument.
\item Suppose not. Then choose ${\epsilon} < s^*_1(i) \wedge t^*_1(j)$, Add ${\epsilon}$ to $\Pi^*_1(i, j)$. Hence the cost function value $\langle C_{aug}, \Pi^*_1 \rangle$ will increase by $ < 2\lambda {\epsilon}$ but the regularizer value will decrease by $2 \lambda {\epsilon}$, resulting in overall decrease in the objective function.
\end{enumerate}
\end{proof}
\subsection{Proof of Lemma \ref{lem:negativity}}
\begin{proof}
For the notational simplicity, we drop the subscript $4$ now as we will only deal with the solution of Formulation 4 and there will be no ambiguity. We prove the Lemma by contradiction. Suppose $s^*_{1, i} > 0$. Then we show one can come up with another solution $(\tilde \Pi, \tilde s_1, \tilde s_2)$ of Formulation 4 such that it has lower objective value. To construct this new solution, make:
\[
\tilde s_{1, j} =
\begin{cases}
s^*_{1, j}, & \text{if } j \neq i \\
0, & \text{if } j = i
\end{cases}
\]
Now to change the optimal transport plan, we will only change $i^{th}$ row of $\Pi^*$. We subtract $a_1, a_2, \dots, a_n \ge 0$ from $i^{th}$ column of $\Pi^*$ in such a way, such that none of the elements are negative. Hence the column sum will be change, i.e.\ the value of $\tilde s_2$ will be:
\[
\tilde s_{2, j} = s^*_{2, j} - a_j \ \ \ \forall 1 \le j \le n \,.
\]
Now clearly from our construction:
$$
\langle C, \tilde \Pi \rangle \le \langle C, \Pi^* \rangle
$$
For the regularization part, note that, as we only reduced $i^{th}$ element of $s^*_1$, we have $\|\tilde s_1\|_1 = \|s^*_1\|_1 - s^*_{1, i}$. And by simple triangle inequality,
$$\|\tilde s_2 \|_1 \le \|s^*_2 \|_1 + \|a_1\|_1 = \|s^*_2 \|_1 + s^*_{1, i}
$$
by construction $a_i$'s, as $a_i \ge 0$ and $\sum_i a_i = s^*_{1, i}$. Hence we have:
$$
\|\tilde s_1\|_1 + \|\tilde s_2\|_1 \le \|s^*_1\|_1 - s^*_{1, i} + \|s^*_2\|_1 + s^*_{1, i} = \|s^*_1\|_1 + \|s^*_2\|_1 \,.
$$
Hence the value corresponding to regularizer will also decrease. This completes the proof.
\end{proof}
\subsection{Proof of Lemma \ref{lem:struct_f3}}
\begin{proof}
We prove this lemma by contradiction. Suppose $\Pi^*_{3}$ does not have the structure mentioned in the statement of Lemma. Construct another transport plan for Formulation 3 $\tilde \Pi_{3}$ as follows: Keep $\tilde \Pi_{3, 12} = \Pi^*_{3, 12}$ and set $\tilde \Pi_{3, 12} = \mathbf{0}$. Construct the other parts as:
\begin{align*}
& \hspace{-1em}\tilde \Pi_{3, 11}(i,j) = \\
& \begin{cases}
\sum_{k=1}^{m} \Pi^*_{3, 11}(i, k) + \sum_{k=1}^{n} \Pi^*_{3, 21}(k, i), & \text{if } i = j \\
0, & \text{if } i \neq j
\end{cases}
\end{align*}
and
\[
\tilde \Pi_{3, 22}(i,j) =
\begin{cases}
\sum_{k=1}^{n} \Pi^*_{3, 22}(k, i), & \text{if } i = j \\
0, & \text{if } i \neq j
\end{cases}
\]
It is immediate from the construction that:
$$
\langle C_{aug}, \tilde \Pi_{3} \rangle \le \langle C_{aug}, \Pi^*_{3} \rangle
$$
As for the regularization term: Note the by our construction $\tilde s_4$ will be same as $s_4^*$ as column sum of $\tilde \Pi_{3, 22}$ is same as $\Pi^*_{3, 22}$. For the other three:
$$
\tilde s_3(i) = \tilde \Pi_{3, 11}(i, i) = \sum_{k=1}^{m} \Pi^*_{3, 11}(i, k) + \sum_{k=1}^{n} \Pi^*_{3, 21}(k, i)
$$
$$
\tilde s_2(i) = \tilde \Pi_{3, 22}(i,i) = \sum_{k=1}^{n} \Pi^*_{3, 22}(k, i)
$$
and hence by construction:
$$
\|\tilde s_2 \|_1 = \mathbf{1}^{\top} \Pi^*_{3, 22}\mathbf{1} = \|s^*_2\|_1 - \mathbf{1}^{\top} \Pi^*_{3, 21}\mathbf{1}\,.
$$
$$
\|\tilde s_3 \|_1 = \mathbf{1}^{\top} \Pi^*_{3, 11}\mathbf{1} + \mathbf{1}^{\top} \Pi^*_{3, 21}\mathbf{1} = \|s^*_3\|_1
$$
And also by our construction, $\tilde s_1 = s^*_1 + c$ where $c = (\Pi^*_{3, 21})^{\top}\mathbf{1}$. As a consequence we have $\|c\|_1 = \mathbf{1}^{\top} \Pi^*_{3, 21}\mathbf{1}$. Then it follows:
\begin{align*}
\sum_{i=1}^4 \|\tilde s_i\|_1 & = \|s^*_1 + c\| + \|s^*_2\|_1 - \mathbf{1}^{\top} \Pi^*_{3, 21}\mathbf{1} + \|s^*_3\|_1 + \|s^*_4\|_1 \\
& \le \sum_{i=1}^4 \|s^*_i\|_1 + \|c\|_1 - \mathbf{1}^{\top} \Pi^*_{3, 21}\mathbf{1} \\
& = \sum_{i=1}^4 \|s^*_i\|_1
\end{align*}
So the objective value is overall reduced. This contradicts the optimality of $\Pi^*_3$ which completes the proof.
\end{proof}
\section{Change of support of outliers with respect to $\lambda$}
For any $\lambda$, define the set $\mathcal{I}_{\lambda} = \{(i, j): C_{i, j} > 2\lambda\}$, i.e. $\mathcal{I}_\lambda$ denotes the costs which exceeds the threshold $2\lambda$. As before we define by $C_\lambda$ to be truncated cost $C \wedge 2\lambda$. Denote by $\pi_\lambda$ to be the optimal transport plan with respect to $C_\lambda$ and the marginal measures $\mu, \nu$. Borrowing our notations from previous theorems, we define a "slack vector" $\mathbf{s}_\lambda$ as:
$$
\mathbf{s}_\lambda(i)= \sum_{j=1}^n \pi_{\lambda}(i, j) \mathds{1}_{C(i, j) > 2\lambda} = \sum_{j: (i, j) \in \mathcal{I}_\lambda}\pi_\lambda(i, j) \,.
$$
And we define the observation $i_0$ to be an outlier if $\mathbf{s}_\lambda(i_0) > 0$. It is immediate that for any $\lambda_1 < \lambda_2$, $\mathcal{I}_{\lambda_1} \supseteq \mathcal{I}_{\lambda_2}$. We goal is to establish the following theorem:
\begin{theorem}
For any $\lambda_1 < \lambda_2$, if $\mathbf{s}_{\lambda_2}(i_0) > 0$, then $\mathbf{s}_{\lambda_1}(i_0) > 0$, i.e. if a point is selected as outlier for larger $\lambda$, then it is also selected as outlier for smaller $\lambda$.
\end{theorem}
\begin{proof}
Fix $\lambda_1 < \lambda_2$. Note that for any $\pi \in \Pi(\mu, \nu)$ we have:
\begin{align*}
\langle C_{\lambda_2} - C_{\lambda_1}, \pi \rangle & = \sum_{(i, j) \in I_{\lambda_1} \cap \mathcal{I}_{\lambda_2}^c} (C(i, j) - 2\lambda_1) \pi(i, j) \\
& \qquad \qquad + 2(\lambda_2 - \lambda_1)\sum_{(i, j) \in \mathcal{I}_{\lambda_2}} \pi(i, j) \\
& := T_1(\pi) + T_2(\pi) \,.
\end{align*}
Now as $\pi_{\lambda_2}$ is optimal with respect to $C_{\lambda_2}$ and $\pi_{\lambda_1}$ is optimal with respect to $C_{\lambda_1}$ we have:
\begin{align*}
& \langle C_{\lambda_1}, \pi_{\lambda_2} \rangle + T_1(\pi_{\lambda_2}) + T_2(\pi_{\lambda_2}) \\
& = \langle C_{\lambda_2} , \pi_{\lambda_2} \rangle \\
& \le \langle C_{\lambda_2} , \pi_{\lambda_1} \rangle \\
& = \langle C_{\lambda_1}, \pi_{\lambda_1} \rangle + T_1(\pi_{\lambda_1}) + T_2(\pi_{\lambda_1}) \\
& \le \langle C_{\lambda_1}, \pi_{\lambda_2} \rangle + T_1(\pi_{\lambda_1}) + T_2(\pi_{\lambda_1})
\end{align*}
Therefore we have:
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:ineq_1_bound}
T_1(\pi_{\lambda_2}) + T_2(\pi_{\lambda_2}) \le T_1(\pi_{\lambda_1}) + T_2(\pi_{\lambda_1}) \,.
\end{equation}
\textbf{But this is not enough.} Note that we can further decompose $T_1$ (and similarly $T_2$) as:
\begin{align*}
T_{1, i}(\pi) & = \sum_{j : (i, j) \in I_{\lambda_1} \cap \mathcal{I}_{\lambda_2}^c} \left(C_{i, j} - 2\lambda_1\right) \pi(i, j) \\
T_{2, i}(\pi) &= 2(\lambda_2 - \lambda_1)\sum_{j : (i, j) \in \mathcal{I}_{\lambda_2}} \pi(i ,j) \,.
\end{align*}
Hence we have:
$$
T_1(\pi) = \sum_{i=1}^n T_{1, i}(\pi), \ \ \ T_2(\pi)= \sum_{i=1}^n T_{2, i}(\pi) \,.
$$
In \eqref{eq:ineq_1_bound} we have established that $T_1(\pi_{\lambda_2}) + T_2(\pi_{\lambda_2}) \le T_1(\pi_{\lambda_1}) + T_2(\pi_{\lambda_1}) \,.$ In addition if we can show that:
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:ineq_2_bound}
T_{1, i_0}(\pi_{\lambda_1}) + T_{2, i_0}(\pi_{\lambda_1}) = 0 \implies T_{2, i_0}(\pi_{\lambda_1}) = 0 \,.
\end{equation}
holds for all $1 \le i \le n$ then we are done. This is because, suppose $\mathbf{s}_{\lambda_1}(i_0) = 0$, Then $$
T_{1, i_0}(\pi_{\lambda_1}) + T_{2, i_0}(\pi_{\lambda_1}) = 0 \,.
$$
This in turn by \eqref{eq:ineq_2_bound} implies
$$
T_{2,i_0}(\pi_{\lambda_2}) = 0 \,,
$$
i.e. $\mathbf{s}_{\lambda_2}(i_0) = 0$.
\begin{lemma}
\label{lem:cost_2dim}
Suppose $C$ is a $2 \times 2$ cost matrix with all unequal cost:
$$
C = \begin{bmatrix}
C_{11} & C_{12} \\
C_{21} & C_{22}
\end{bmatrix}
$$
If $C_{22} > 2\lambda_2$ and $C_{21} < 2 \lambda_1$, then the following two inequalities won't occur simultaneously:
\begin{align*}
C^{\lambda_2}_{11} + C^{\lambda_2}_{22} & \le C^{\lambda_2}_{12} + C^{\lambda_2}_{21} \,,\\
C^{\lambda_1}_{12} + C^{\lambda_1}_{21} & \le C^{\lambda_1}_{11} + C^{\lambda_1}_{22} \,.
\end{align*}
\end{lemma}
Now suppose $i_2$ is an outlier with respect to $\lambda_2$ but not with respect to $\lambda_1$. Then there exists $j_1$ and $j_2$ ($j_1 \neq j_2$) such that:
$$
C_{i_2, j_1} < 2\lambda_1, C_{i_2, j_2} > 2\lambda_2
$$
such that $\pi^{\lambda_2}_{i_2 ,j_2} > 0$ and $\pi^{\lambda_1}_{i_2, j_1} > 0$.
\paragraph{Case 1: }Now assume that we can find $i_1 \neq i_2$ such that $\pi^{\lambda_2}_{i_1, j_1} > 0$ and $\pi^{\lambda_1}_{i_1, j_2} > 0$.
Then $(i_1, j_2), (i_2, j_1) \in {\sf supp}(\pi^{\lambda_1})$ and $(i_1, j_1), (i_2, j_2) \in {\sf supp}(\pi^{\lambda_2})$. Hence from c-cyclical monotonicity properties of the support of the optimal transport plan we have for $\pi^{\lambda_1}$:
$$
C^{\lambda_1}_{i_1, j_2} + C^{\lambda_1}_{i_2, j_1} \le C^{\lambda_1}_{i_1, j_1} + C^{\lambda_1}_{i_2, j_2} \,,
$$
and for $\pi^{\lambda_2}$:
$$
C^{\lambda_2}_{i_1, j_1} + C^{\lambda_2}_{i_2, j_2} \le C^{\lambda_2}_{i_1, j_2} + C^{\lambda_2}_{i_2, j_1} \,.
$$
which is a contradiction from Lemma \ref{lem:cost_2dim}. This completes the proof.
\paragraph{Case 2: Need to be proved} Now we need to consider the other case, there does not exist any row $i_1 \neq i_2$ such that both $\pi^{\lambda_2}_{i_1, j_1} > 0$ and $\pi^{\lambda_1}_{i_1, j_2} > 0$ occur simultaneously. This means that the columns $j_1, j_2$ are orthogonal, i.e. $\langle \pi^{\lambda_2}_{:, j_1}, \pi^{\lambda_1}_{:, j_2}\rangle = 0$.
\end{proof}
\subsection{Proof of Lemma \ref{lem:cost_2dim}}
As $C_{21} < 2\lambda_1$ and $C_{22} > 2\lambda_2$ we can modify the inequalities in Lemma \ref{lem:cost_2dim} as:
\begin{align}
\label{eq:cost_ineq_1} C^{\lambda_2}_{11} + 2\lambda_2 & \le C^{\lambda_2}_{12} + C_{21} \,,\\
\label{eq:cost_ineq_2} C^{\lambda_1}_{12} + C_{21} & \le C^{\lambda_1}_{11} + 2\lambda_1 \,.
\end{align}
Now as we have assume $C_{21} < 2\lambda_1$, from \eqref{eq:cost_ineq_1} we obtain:
\begin{align}
& 2\lambda_1 > C^{\lambda_2}_{11} - C^{\lambda_2}_{12} + 2\lambda_2 \notag \\
\iff & 2(\lambda_2 - \lambda_1) < C^{\lambda_2}_{12} - C^{\lambda_2}_{11} \,.
\end{align}
Hence $C^{\lambda_2}_{12} - C^{\lambda_2}_{11} > 0$, which implies $C_{11} < C_{12}, C_{11} < 2\lambda_2$ and also both $C_{11}$ and $C_{12}$ can not lie within $(2\lambda_1, 2\lambda_2)$. We divide the rest of the proofs into four small cases:
\paragraph{Case 1:} Assume $2\lambda_1 < C_{11} < 2\lambda_2, C_{12} > 2\lambda_2$. In this case from \eqref{eq:cost_ineq_1} we have:
\begin{align*}
C_{11} + 2\lambda_2 & \le 2\lambda_2 + C_{21}
\end{align*}
i.e. $C_{21} \ge C_{11}$ which is not possible as $C_{11} > 2\lambda_1$ and $C_{21} < 2\lambda_1$.
\paragraph{Case 2:} Assume $C_{11} < 2\lambda_1, C_{12} > 2\lambda_2$. Then from \eqref{eq:cost_ineq_2} we have $C_{21} \le C_{11}$ and from \eqref{eq:cost_ineq_1} we have: $C_{11} \le C_{21}$ which cannot occur simultaneously.
\paragraph{Case 3:} Assume $C_{11} < 2\lambda_1$ and $2\lambda_1 < C_{12} < 2\lambda_2$. Then from \eqref{eq:cost_ineq_1} and \eqref{eq:cost_ineq_2} we have respectively:
\begin{align*}
C_{11} + 2\lambda_2 & \le C_{12} + C_{21} \,,\\
2\lambda_1 + C_{21} & \le C_{11} + 2\lambda_1
\end{align*}
From the second inequality we have $C_{21} \le C_{11}$, which putting back in the first inequality yields:
$$
C_{11} + 2\lambda_2 \le C_{12} + C_{11} \implies C_{12} \ge 2\lambda_2
$$
which is a contradiction.
\paragraph{Case 4: } Assume $C_{11} < 2\lambda_1$ and $C_{12} < 2\lambda_1$. This form \eqref{eq:cost_ineq_1} yields:
\begin{align}
C_{11} + 2\lambda_2 & \le C_{12} + C_{21} \notag \\
\label{eq:cost_ineq_3} \implies C_{21} & \ge C_{11} - C_{12} + 2\lambda_2 \,.
\end{align}
Also from \eqref{eq:cost_ineq_2} we have:
\begin{align}
C_{12} + C_{21} & \le C_{11} + 2\lambda_1 \notag \\
\label{eq:cost_ineq_4} \implies C_{21} & \le C_{11} - C_{12} + 2\lambda_1 \,.
\end{align}
From \eqref{eq:cost_ineq_3} and \eqref{eq:cost_ineq_4} we have:
$$
C_{11} - C_{12} + 2\lambda_2 \le C_{11} - C_{12} + 2\lambda_1
$$
i.e. $\lambda_2 \le \lambda_1$ which is a contradiction. This completes the proof.
\begin{table*}[ht!]
\caption{Robust mean estimation with GANs using different distribution divergences. True mean is $\eta_0 = \mathbf{0}_5$; sample size $n=1000$; contamination proportion ${\epsilon}=0.2$. We report results over 30 experiment restarts.}
\label{table:robogan_cauchy}
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{lccccc}
\toprule
Contamination & JS Loss & SH Loss & ROBOT\\
\midrule
$\text{Cauchy}(0.1 \cdot \mathbf{1_5}, I_5)$ & 0.2 $\pm$ 0.06 & \textbf{0.17} $\pm$ 0.04 & \textbf{0.17} $\pm$ 0.05 \\
$\text{Cauchy}(0.5 \cdot \mathbf{1_5}, I_5)$ & 0.3 $\pm$ 0.07 & 0.26 $\pm$ 0.05 & \textbf{0.25} $\pm$ 0.05 \\
$\text{Cauchy}(1 \cdot \mathbf{1_5}, I_5)$ & 0.45 $\pm$ 0.14 & 0.37 $\pm$ 0.06 & \textbf{0.36} $\pm$ 0.07 \\
$\text{Cauchy}(2 \cdot \mathbf{1_5}, I_5)$ & 0.39 $\pm$ 0.3 & 0.26 $\pm$ 0.06 & \textbf{0.2} $\pm$ 0.07 \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\end{table*}
\section{Robust mean experiment with Cauchy distribution}
\label{sec:robot_cauchy}
In this section we present our results corresponding to the robust mean estimation with the generative distribution $g_{\theta}(x) = x + \theta$ where $x \sim \text{Cauchy}(0, 1)$. As in Subsection \ref{sec:robust_mean_est}, we assume that we have observation $\{x_1, \dots, x_n\}$ from a contaminated distribution $(1 - {\epsilon}) \ \text{Cauchy}(\eta_0, 1) + {\epsilon} \ \text{Cauchy}(\eta_1, 1)$. For our experiments we take $\eta_0 = \mathbf{0}_5$ and vary $\eta_1 \in \left\{0.1 \cdot \mathbf{1_5}, 0.5 \cdot \mathbf{1_5}, 1 \cdot \mathbf{1_5}, 2 \cdot \mathbf{1_5} \right\}$ along wth ${\epsilon} = 0.2$. We compare our method with \citet{wu2020minimax} and results are presented in Table \ref{table:robogan_cauchy}.
\section{Proof of Theorem \ref{thm:main_thm}}
\label{sec:proofs}
In the proofs, $a \wedge b$ denotes $\min\{a, b\}$ for any $a, b \in {\bbR}$.
\subsection{Proof of discrete version }
\label{sec:proof_discrete}
\begin{proof}
Define a matrix $\Pi$ as:
$$
\Pi(i,j) =
\begin{cases}
0, & \text{if } C(i, j) > 2 \lambda \\
\Pi^*_2(i, j), & \text{otherwise}
\end{cases}
$$
Also define $s \in \mathbb{R}^n$ and $t \in \mathbb{R}^m$ as:
$$
s^*_1(i) = -\sum_{j=1}^m \Pi^*_2(i, j) \mathds{1}_{C(i, j) > 2 \lambda}
$$
and similarly define:
$$
t^*_1(j) = \sum_{i=1}^n \Pi^*_2(i, j) \mathds{1}_{C(i, j) > 2 \lambda}
$$
These vectors corresponds to the row sums and the column sums of the elements of the optimal transport plan of Formulation 2, where the cost function exceeds $2 \lambda$. Note that, these co-ordinates of the optimal transport plan corresponding to those co-ordinates of cost matrix, where the cost is greater than $2\lambda$ and contribute to the objective value via their sum only, hence any different arrangement of these transition probabilities with same sum gives the same objective value.
Now based on this $\Pi$ obtained we construct a feasible solution of Formulation 1 following Algorithm \ref{algo:f1-f2}:
$$
\Pi^*_1 =
\begin{bmatrix}
\mathbf{0} & \Pi \\
\mathbf{0} & {\sf diag}(t^*_1)
\end{bmatrix}
$$
The row sums of $\Pi^*_1$ is:
\[
\Pi^*_1 \mathbf{1}=
\begin{bmatrix}
\mu_n + s^*_1 \\ t^*_1
\end{bmatrix}
\]
and it is immediate from the construction that the column sums of $\Pi^*_1$ is $\nu_m$. Also as:
$$
\sum_{i=1}^n s^*_1(i) = \sum_{j=1}^m t^*_1(j) = \sum_{(i, j): C_{i, j} > 2 \lambda} \Pi^*_2(i, j)
$$
and $s^*_1 \preceq 0, t^*_1 \succeq 0$, we have:
$$
\mathbf{1}^{\top}(\mu_n + s^*_1 + t^*_1) = \mathbf{1}^{\top}p = 1 \,.
$$
Therefore, we have $(\Pi^*_1, s^*_1, t^*_1)$ is a feasible solution of Formulation 1. Now suppose this is not an optimal solution. Pick an optimal solution $\tilde \Pi, \tilde s, \tilde t$ of Formulation 1 so that:
$$
\langle C_{aug}, \tilde \Pi \rangle + \lambda \left[\|\tilde s\|_1 + \|\tilde t\|_1\right] < \langle C_{aug}, \Pi^*_1 \rangle + \lambda \left[\|s^*_1\|_1 + \|t^*_1\|_1\right]
$$
The following two lemmas provide some structural properties of any optimal solution of Formulation 1:
\begin{lemma}
\label{lem:R1-structure}
Suppose $\Pi^*_1, s^*_1, t^*_1$ are optimal solution for Formulation 1. Divide $\Pi^*_1$ into four parts corresponding to augmentation as in algorithm \ref{algo:f1-f2}:
$$
\Pi^*_1 = \begin{bmatrix}
\Pi^*_{1, 11} & \Pi^*_{1, 12} \\
\Pi^*_{1,21} & \Pi^*_{1, 22}
\end{bmatrix}
$$
Then we have $\Pi^*_{1, 11} = \Pi^*_{1, 21} = \mathbf{0}$ and $\Pi^*_{1, 22}$ is a diagonal matrix.
\end{lemma}
\begin{lemma}
\label{lem:f2_characterization}
If $\Pi^*_1, s^*_1, t^*_1$ is an optimal solution of Formulation 1 then:
\begin{enumerate}
\item If $C_{i,j} > 2 \lambda$ then $\Pi^*_1(i, j) = 0$.
\item If $C_{i, j} < 2 \lambda$ for some $i$ and for all $1 \le j \le n$, then $s^*_1(i) = 0$.
\item If $C_{i, j} < 2 \lambda$ for some $j$ and for all $1 \le i \le m$, then $t^*_1(j) = 0$.
\item If $C_{i, j} < 2 \lambda$ then $s^*_1(i) t^*_1(j) = 0$.
\end{enumerate}
\end{lemma}
We provide the proofs in the next subsection. By Lemma \ref{lem:R1-structure} we can assume without loss of generality:
$$
\tilde \Pi =
\begin{bmatrix}
\mathbf{0} & \tilde \Pi_{12} \\
\mathbf{0} & {\sf diag}(\tilde t)
\end{bmatrix}
$$
Now based on $\left(\tilde \Pi, \tilde s, \tilde t\right)$ we create a feasible solution namely $\Pi^*_{2, new}$ of Formulation 2 as follows: Define the set of indices $\{i_1, \cdots, i_k\}$ and $\{j_1, \dots, j_l\}$ as:
$$
\tilde s_{i_1}, \tilde s_{i_2}, \dots, \tilde s_{i_k} > 0 \ \ \ \ \text{and} \ \ \ \tilde t_{j_1}, \tilde t_{j_2}, \dots, \tilde t_{j_l} > 0 \,.
$$
Then by part (4) of Lemma \ref{lem:f2_characterization} we have $C_{i_\alpha, j_\beta} > 2 \lambda$ for $\alpha \in \{1, \dots, k\}$ and $\beta \in \{1, \dots, l\}$. Also by part (2) of Lemma \ref{lem:f2_characterization} the value of transport plan at these co-ordinates is 0. Now distribute the mass of slack variables in these co-ordinates such that the marginals of new transport plan becomes exactly $\mu_n$ and $\nu_m$. This new transport plan is our $\Pi^*_{2, new}$. Recall that, $\|\tilde s\|_1 = \| \tilde t\|_1$. Hence, here the regularizer value decreases by $2 \lambda \|\tilde s\|_1$ and the cost value increased by exactly $2 \lambda \|\tilde s\|_1$ as we are truncating the cost. Hence we have:
\begin{align*}
\langle C_{\lambda}, \Pi^*_{2,new} \rangle & = \langle C_{aug}, \tilde \Pi \rangle + \lambda \left[ \|\tilde s \|_1 + \|\tilde t\|_1\right] \\
& <\langle C_{aug}, \Pi^*_1 \rangle + \lambda \left[\|s^*_1\|_1 + \|t^*_1\|_1\right] \\
& = \langle C_{\lambda}, \Pi^*_2 \rangle
\end{align*}
which is contradiction as $\Pi^*_2$ is the optimal solution of Formulation 2. This completes the proof for the discrete part.
\end{proof}
\subsection{Proof of equivalence for two sided formulation}
\label{sec:proof_two_sided}
Here we prove that our two sided formulation, i.e.\ Formulation 3 (\eqref{eq:F_3}) is equivalent to Formulation 1 (\eqref{eq:robot1-d}) for the discrete case. Towards that end, we introduce another auxiliary formulation and show that both Formulation 1 and Formulation 3 are equivalent to the following auxiliary formulation of the problem.
\textbf{Formulation 4:}
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}
& \min\nolimits_{\Pi\in{\bbR}^{m\times n},s_1\in{\bbR}^m, s_2 \in {\bbR}^n} & & \langle C,\Pi\rangle + \lambda \left[\|s_1\|_1 + \|s_2\|_1\right] \\
& {\sf subject\ to} & & \Pi1_n = p + s_1 \\
& & & \Pi^T1_m = q + s_2 \\
& & & \Pi \succeq 0
\end{aligned}.
\label{eq:F_1}
\end{equation}
First we show that Formulation 1 and Formulation 4 are equivalent in a sense that they have the same optimal objective value.
\begin{theorem}
\label{thm:f12}
Suppose $C$ is a cost function such that $C(x, x) = 0$. Then Formulation 1 and Formulation 4 has same optimal objective value.
\end{theorem}
\begin{proof}
Towards that end, we show that given one optimal variables of one formulation we can get optimal variables of other formulation with the same objective value. Before going into details we need the following lemma whose proof is provided in Appendix B:
\begin{lemma}
\label{lem:negativity}
Suppose $\Pi^*_{4}, s^*_{4, 1}, s^*_{4, 2}$ are the optimal variables of Formulation 4. Then $s^*_{4, 1} \preceq 0$ and $s^*_{4, 2} \preceq 0$.
\end{lemma}
\noindent
Now we prove that optimal value of Formulation 1 and Formulation 4 are same. Let $(\Pi^*_{1}, s^*_{1,1}, t^*_{1,1})$ is an optimal solution of Formulation 1. Then we claim that $(\Pi^*_{1}, s^*_{1,1}, t^*_{1,1})$ is also an optimal solution of Formulation 4. Clearly it is feasible solution of Formulation 4. Suppose it is not optimal, i.e.\ there exists another optimal solution $(\tilde \Pi_{4}, \tilde s_{4, 1}, \tilde s_{4, 2})$ such that:
$$
\langle C, \tilde \Pi_{4} \rangle + \lambda(\|\tilde s_{4, 1}\|_1 + \|\tilde s_{4, 2}\|_2) < \langle C, \Pi^*_{1, 12} \rangle + \lambda(\|s^*_{1, 1}\|_1 + \|t^*_{1, 1}\|_1)
$$
Now based on $(\tilde \Pi_{4}, \tilde s_{4, 1}, \tilde s_{4, 2})$ we construct a feasible solution of Formulation 1 as follows:
$$
\tilde \Pi_{1} =
\begin{bmatrix}
\mathbf{0} & \tilde \Pi_{4} \\
\mathbf{0} & -{\sf diag}(\tilde s_{4, 2})
\end{bmatrix}
$$
Note that we proved in Lemma \ref{lem:negativity} $\tilde s_{4, 2} \preceq 0$, hence we have $\tilde \Pi_{1} \succeq 0$. Now as the column sums of $\tilde \Pi_{4}$ is $q + \tilde s_{4, 2}$, we have column sums of $\tilde \Pi_{1} = [\mathbf{0} \ \ q^{\top}]^{\top}$ and the row sums are $[(p+\tilde s_{4, 1})^{\top} \ \ \ \tilde s_{4, 2}^{\top}]^{\top}$. Hence we take $\tilde s_{1, 1} = \tilde s_{4, 1}$ and $\tilde s_{1, 2} = \tilde s_{4, 2}$.
Then it follows:
\begin{align*}
& \langle C_{aug}, \tilde \Pi_{1} \rangle + \lambda \left[\|\tilde s_{1 , 1}\|_1 + \|\tilde s_{1, 2} \|_1\right] \\
& = \langle C, \tilde \Pi_{4} \rangle + \lambda \left[\|\tilde s_{4 , 1}\|_1 + \|\tilde s_{4, 2} \|_1\right] \\
& < \langle C, \Pi^*_{1, 12} \rangle + \lambda \left[\| s^*_{1, 1}\|_1 + \|t^*_{1, 1}\|_1\right] \\
& = \langle C_{aug}, \Pi^*_{1} \rangle + \lambda \left[\| s^*_{1, 1}\|_1 + \|t^*_{1, 1}\|_1\right]
\end{align*}
This is contradiction as we assumed $(\Pi^*_{1}, s^*_{1, 1}, t^*_{1, 2})$ is an optimal solution of Formulation 1. Therefore we conclude $(\Pi^*_{1}, s^*_{1,1}, t^*_{1,1})$ is also an optimal solution of Formulation 4 which further concludes Formulation 1 and Formulation 4 have same optimal values. This completes the proof of the theorem.
\end{proof}
\begin{theorem}
\label{thm:f13}
The optimal objective value of Formulation 3 and Formulation 4 are same.
\end{theorem}
\begin{proof}
Like in the proof of Theorem \ref{thm:f12}
we also prove couple of lemmas.
\begin{lemma}
\label{lem:struct_f3}
Any optimal transport plan $\Pi^*_{3}$ of Formulation 3 has the following structure: If we write,
\[
\Pi^*_{3} =
\begin{bmatrix}
\Pi^*_{3, 11} & \Pi^*_{3, 12} \\
\Pi^*_{3, 21} & \Pi^*_{3, 22}
\end{bmatrix}
\]
then $\Pi^*_{3, 11}$ and $\Pi^*_{3, 22}$ are diagonal matrices and $\Pi^*_{3, 21} = \mathbf{0}$.
\end{lemma}
\begin{lemma}
\label{lem:negativity_2}
If $s^*_{3, 1}, t^*_{3, 1}, s^*_{3, 2}, t^*_{3, 2}$ are four optimal slack variables in Formulation 3, then $s^*_{3, 1}, t^*_{3, 1} \preceq 0$ and $s^*_{3, 2}, t^*_{3, 2} \succeq 0$.
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof}
The line of argument is same as in proof of Lemma \ref{lem:negativity}.
\end{proof}
Next we establish equivalence. Suppose $(\Pi^*_{3}, s^*_{3, 1}, t^*_{3, 1}, s^*_{3, 2}, t^*_{3, 2})$ are optimal values of Formulation 3. We claim that $(\Pi^*_{3, 12}, s^*_{3,1} - s^*_{3,2}, t^*_{3, 1} - t^*_{3, 2})$ forms an optimal solution of Formulation 4. The objective value will then also be same as $s^*_{3, 1} \preceq 0, s^*_{3, 2} \succeq 0$ (Lemma \ref{lem:negativity_2}) implies $\|s^*_{3, 1} - s^*_{3, 2}\|_1 = \|s^*_{3, 1}\|_1 + \|s^*_{3, 2}\|_1$ and similarly $t^*_{3, 1} \preceq 0, t^*_{3, 2} \succeq 0$ implies $\|t^*_{3, 1} - t^*_{3, 2}\|_1 = \|t^*_{3, 1}\|_1 + \|t^*_{3, 2}\|_1$. Feasibility is immediate. Now for optimality, we again prove by contradiction. Suppose they are not optimal. Then lets say $\tilde \Pi_{4}, \tilde s_{4, 1}, \tilde s_{4, 2}$ are an optimal triplet of Formulation 4. Now construct another feasible solution of Formulation 3 as follows:
Set $\tilde s_{3, 2} = \tilde t_{3, 2} = 0, \tilde s_{3, 1} = \tilde s_{4, 1} $ and $\tilde t_{3, 1} = \tilde s_{4, 2}$. Set the matrix as:
\[
\tilde \Pi_{3} = \begin{bmatrix}
\mathbf{0} & \tilde \Pi_{4} \\
\mathbf{0} & -{\sf diag}(\tilde s_{4, 2})
\end{bmatrix}
\]
Then it follows that $\left(\tilde \Pi_{3}, \tilde s_{3, 1}, \tilde s_{3, 2}, \tilde t_{3, 1}, \tilde t_{3, 2}\right)$ is a feasible solution of Formulation 3. Finally we have:
\begin{align*}
& \langle C_{aug}, \tilde \Pi_{3} \rangle + \lambda \left[\|\tilde s_{3, 1}\|_1 + \| \tilde s_{3, 2} \|_1 + \| \tilde t_{3, 1} \|_1 + \| \tilde t_{3, 2} \|_1 \right] \\
& = \langle C_{aug}, \tilde \Pi_{3} \rangle + \lambda \left[\|\tilde s_{4, 1}\|_1 + \| \tilde s_{4, 2} \|_1 \right] \\
& = \langle C, \tilde \Pi_{4} \rangle + \lambda \left[\|\tilde s_{4, 1}\|_1 + \| \tilde s_{4, 2} \|_1 \right] \\
& < \langle C, \Pi^*_{3, 12} \rangle + \lambda \left[\|s^*_{3,1} - s^*_{3,2}\|_1 + \|t^*_{3, 1} - t^*_{3, 2}\|_1 \right] \\
& = \langle C_{aug}, \Pi^*_{3} \rangle + \lambda \left[\|s^*_{3, 1}\|_1 + \|s^*_{3, 2}\|_1 + \|t^*_{3, 1}\|_1 + \|t^*_{3, 2}\|_1 \right]
\end{align*}
This contradicts the optimality of $(\Pi^*_{3}, s^*_{3, 1}, s^*_{3, 2}, t^*_{3, 1}, t^*_{3, 2})$. This completes the proof.
\end{proof}
\subsection{Proof of continuous version}
\begin{proof}
In this proof we denote by $F_1$ the optimization problem of \eqref{eq:robot1-cts} and by $F_2$ the optimization problem \eqref{eq:robot2-cts}. Let $\mu, \nu$ be two absolutely continuous measures on $\mathbb{R}^d$. Moreover, we assume $c(x,y)=\|x-y\|$ for some norm $\|\cdot\|$ on $\mathbb{R}^d$. We assume that $\int \|x\| \nu(\mathrm{d}x), \int \|x\| \mu(\mathrm{d}x) < \infty$.
\textbf{Step 1:} Let $K_{\epsilon}$ be a compact set such that $\int_{K_{\epsilon}} \|x\|\mu(\mathrm{d}x), \int_{K_{\epsilon}} \|x\|\nu(\mathrm{d}x) >1-\epsilon$.
Also, let $\tilde{K}_\epsilon=\{x_1,\dots,x_{n_\epsilon}\}$ be a maximal $\epsilon$-packing set of $K_{\epsilon}$. Starting from $\tilde{K}_\epsilon$, define $\{S_1,\dots, S_{n_{\epsilon}}\}$ as a mutually disjoint covering of $K_{\epsilon}$ with internal points $x_1,\dots, x_{n_{\epsilon}}$ respectively, so that Diam$(S_i) \leq 2\epsilon$.
With $p_i=\int_{S_i} \mu(\mathrm{d}x)$, $q_i=\int_{S_i} \nu(\mathrm{d}x)$ for
$i=1,\dots, n_{\epsilon}$, $p_0=\int_{K_{\epsilon}^C} \mu(\mathrm{d}x)$, $q_0=\int_{K_{\epsilon}^C} \nu(\mathrm{d}x)$ and $x_0=0 \in \mathbb{R}^d$, define
\begin{eqnarray}
\mu_{\epsilon}&=&\sum_0^{n_{\epsilon}}p_i \delta_{x_i} \nonumber \\
\nu_{\epsilon}&=&\sum_0^{n_{\epsilon}}q_i \delta_{x_i} \nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
A coupling $Q$ between two probability distributions is a joint distribution with marginals as the given two distributions. The Wasserstein distance between two distributions $P_1$ and $P_2$ is defined as:
\begin{eqnarray}
W_1(P_1,P_2)= \inf_{Q\in \mathscr{Q}(P_1,P_2)} \int Q(x,y)\|x-y\|\mathrm{d}x\mathrm{d}y,
\end{eqnarray}
where $\mathscr{Q}(P_1,P_2)$ is the collection of all couplings of $P_1$ and $P_2$.
Define $Q(x,y)= (\mathds{1}_{x=x_0, y \in K_{\epsilon}^C}+ \sum_{i=1}^{n_\epsilon} \mathds{1}_{x=x_i, y \in S_i})\mu(\mathrm{d}y)$. Then $Q$ is a coupling between $\mu$ and $\mu_{\epsilon}$.
Therefore, clearly,
\begin{eqnarray}
W_1(\mu,\mu_{\epsilon})\leq \int_{K_{\epsilon}^C} \|x\|\mu(\mathrm{d}x) +2\epsilon \left(\sum_{i=1}^{n_{\epsilon}} p_i\right) \leq 3 \epsilon
\end{eqnarray}
Similarly, $W_1(\nu,\nu_{\epsilon}) \leq 3 \epsilon$. Therefore $\lim_{\epsilon \to 0} W_1(\nu,\nu_{\epsilon})=0$.
Moreover, $W_1(\mu,\nu)=\lim_{\epsilon \to 0} W_1(\mu_{\epsilon},\nu_{\epsilon})$, as $W_1(\mu_{\epsilon},\nu_{\epsilon})-6 \epsilon \leq W_1(\mu,\nu) \leq W_1(\mu_{\epsilon},\nu_{\epsilon})+6 \epsilon$ by triangle inequality.
\textbf{Step 2:}
Let $S$ be an arbitrary measure with $\|S\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}= 2\gamma$, so that $\mu+S$ is a probability measure with $\int \|x\| (\mu+S) (\mathrm{d}x) <\infty$. Also, let us define $\epsilon_n=2^{-(n+1)}$.
Let $S=S^+-S^-$, where $S^+$ and $S^-$ are positive measures on $\mathbb{R}^d$. Then, $\|S^-\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}=\|S^+\|_{ \mathrm{TV}} =\gamma $.
Clearly $(\mu-S^{-})/(1-\gamma),\mu, \nu,S^+/\gamma$ are tight probability measures. So we can construct compact sets $K_{\epsilon_n}^{(1)}$, similar to Step 1 to approximate all the four measures. Without loss of generality we assume that $0 \in K_{\epsilon_n}^{(1)}$ for all $n$. Moreover, we can also construct approximate measures $(\mu-S^-)_n=((\mu-S^-)/(1-\gamma))_{\epsilon_n}$ and $(S^+)_n= (S^+/\gamma)_{\epsilon_n}$ defined as in Step 1. $\mu_n=\mu_{\epsilon_n},\nu_n= \nu_{\epsilon_n}$ are defined similarly. All four of the measures have support points in $K_{\epsilon_n}^{(1)}$.
Next, we define $(\mu+S)_n=\gamma(S^+)_n +(1-\gamma)(\mu-S^-)_n$. Then by the construction, from~\citep{Villani-09}, $\lim_{n \to \infty}W_1((\mu+S)_n,\mu+S) \to 0$ and thus $\lim_{n \to \infty}W_1((\mu+S)_n,\nu_n) \to W_1(\mu+S,\nu)$. Therefore we can define a signed measure $S_n=(\mu+S)_n- \mu_n$. Moreover,
\begin{align}
\label{eq:STV}
\|S_n\|_{ \mathrm{TV}} & \leq \gamma\|(S^+)_n\|_{ \mathrm{TV}} +\|(1-\gamma)(\mu-S^-)_n-\mu_n\|_{ \mathrm{TV}} \\
& = 2\gamma= \|S\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}
\end{align}
Note that $\mu_n,\nu_n,(\mu+S)_n$ put masses (sometimes zero masses) on a common set of support points given by $\tilde{K}_{\epsilon_n}^{(1)} \subset K_{\epsilon_n}^{(1)}$.
The $\tilde{K}_{\epsilon_n}^{(1)}$ is sequentially defined so that $\tilde{K}_{\epsilon_{n+1}}^{(1)}$ is a refinement of $\tilde{K}_{\epsilon_n}^{(1)}$. This can easily be achieved by the choice of $\epsilon_n$ defined.
Consider $\tilde{s}_n,\Pi_n$ such that
\begin{eqnarray}
\label{eq: argmin s}
F_1(\mu_n,\nu_n)=\int\|x-y\|\Pi_n(\mathrm{d}x\mathrm{d}y) +\lambda\|\tilde{s}_n\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}
\end{eqnarray}
By the discrete nature of $\mu_n,\nu_n$, using the proof of the discrete part $F_1(\mu_n,\nu_n)= F_2(\mu_n,\nu_n)$.
Since, $\min\{\|x-y\|,2\lambda\}$ is a metric, whenever $\|x-y\|$ is, therefore, it is easy to check that $F_2(\mu,\nu)=\lim_n F_2(\mu_n,\nu_n)=\lim_n F_1(\mu_n,\nu_n)$.
Moreover, by construction, $F_1(\mu_n,\nu_n) \leq \int\|x-y\|\Pi(\mathrm{d}x\mathrm{d}y) +\lambda\|S_n\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}$ for any arbitrary coupling $\Pi$ of $\mu$ and $\mu+S$. Also $\lim_n W_1(\mu_n,\mu), W_1(\mu+S,(\mu+S)_n) \to 0$.
Thus, combining the above result with \eqref{eq:STV}, we get
\begin{eqnarray}
\lim_n F_1(\mu_n,\nu_n) \leq \int\|x-y\|\tilde{\Pi}(\mathrm{d}x\mathrm{d}y) +\lambda\|S\|_{ \mathrm{TV}} \nonumber
\end{eqnarray}
for any coupling $\tilde{\Pi}$ of $\mu$ and $\mu+S$.
Therefore, $F_2(\mu,\nu) \leq F_1(\mu,\nu)$.
\textbf{Step 3:} Consider $\tilde{s}_n$ defined in \eqref{eq: argmin s}. As $\tilde{s}_n$ has support in the compact sets $K_{\epsilon_n}^{(1)}$ defined in Step 2, therefore, $\{\mu_n+\tilde{s}_n\}_{n \geq 1}$ are tight measures.
Therefore, by Prokhorov's Theorem for equivalence of sequential compactness and tightness for a collection of measures, there exists a probability measure
$\mu \oplus s$ and a subsequence $\{n_k\}_{k \geq 1}$ such that $\mu_{n_k}+\tilde{s}_{n_k}$ converges weakly to $\mu \oplus s$. Moreover, by construction $\lim_{R\to \infty} \limsup_{n \to \infty} \bigintss_{\|x\|>R} \|x\| (\mu_n +\nu_n)(\text{d}x) =0$ and so $\lim_{R\to \infty} \limsup_{n \to \infty} \bigintss_{\|x\|>R} \|x\|(\mu_n + \tilde{s}_n)(\text{d}x) =0$.
Thus, by Definition 6.8 part (iii) and Theorem 6.9 of~\citep{Villani-09}, $W_1(\mu_{n_k}+\tilde{s}_{n_k}, \mu\oplus s)\to 0 $. Moreover, $W_1(\mu_{n_k},\mu)\to 0$. Therefore $\|\tilde{s}_{n_k}\|_{ \mathrm{TV}} \to \|\mu \oplus s -\mu\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}$. Thus, $W_1(\mu_{n_k}+\tilde{s}_{n_k}, \nu_{n_k}) + \lambda\|\tilde{s}_{n_k}\|_{ \mathrm{TV}} \to W_1(\mu \oplus s,\nu)+\lambda\|\mu \oplus s -\mu\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}$. But by the proof of the discrete part,
$W_1(\mu_{n_k}+\tilde{s}_{n_k}, \nu_{n_k}) + \lambda\|\tilde{s}_{n_k}\|_{ \mathrm{TV}} = F_1(\mu_{n_k},\nu_{n_k}) =F_2(\mu_{n_k},\nu_{n_k}) \to F_2(\mu, \nu)$. Therefore, with $s=\mu \oplus s -\mu$, $ W_1(\mu + s,\nu)+\lambda\|s\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}= F_2(\mu,\nu)$.
Therefore, $F_2(\mu,\nu)=\limsup_{n \to \infty} F_1(\mu_n,\nu_n) \geq F_1(\mu,\nu)$. Thus the equality holds.
\end{proof}
\section{Proof of Theorem \ref{thm:bound}}
\label{sec:theorem_bnd}
\begin{proof}
The proof is immediate from the Formulation 1. Recall that the Formulation 1 can restructured as:
$$
\mathrm{ROBOT}(\tilde \mu, \nu) = \inf_{P} \left\{\mathrm{OT}(P, \nu) + \lambda \|P - \tilde \mu\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}\right\} \,.
$$
where the infimum is taking over all measure dominated by some common measure $\sigma$ (with respect to which $\mu, \mu_c, \nu$ are dominated). Hence,
$$
\mathrm{ROBOT}(\tilde \mu, \nu) \le \mathrm{OT}(P, \nu) + \lambda \|P - \tilde \mu\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}
$$
for any particular choice of $P$. Taking $P = \mu$ we get that
\begin{align*}
\mathrm{ROBOT}(\tilde \mu, \nu) & \le \mathrm{OT}(\mu, \nu) + \lambda \|\mu - \tilde \mu\|_{ \mathrm{TV}} \\
& = \mathrm{OT}(\mu, \nu) + \lambda {\epsilon} \|\mu - \mu_c\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}
\end{align*}
Taking $P = \nu$ we get $ \mathrm{ROBOT}(\tilde \mu, \nu) \le \lambda \|\nu - \tilde \mu\|_{ \mathrm{TV}}$ and finally taking $P = \tilde \mu$ we get $ \mathrm{ROBOT}(\tilde \mu, \nu) \le \mathrm{OT}(\tilde \mu, \nu)$. This completes the proof.
\end{proof}
\section{Proof of Lemma \ref{lem:entropy-f2-f1}}
\label{sec:lemma_sinkhorn}
As defined in the main text, let $\Pi^*_2$ be the optimal solution of~\eqref{eq:robot2-d} and $\Pi^*_{2, \alpha}$ be the optimal solution of \eqref{eq:robot2-d-entropy}. Then by Proposition 4.1 from ~\citet{peyre2018Computational} we conclude:
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:cuturi}
\Pi^*_{2, \alpha} \overset{\alpha \to 0}{\longrightarrow} \Pi^*_2 \,.
\end{equation}
Now we have defined $\left(\Pi^*_{1, \alpha}, \mathbf{s}^*_{1, \alpha}\right)$ as the \emph{approximate} solution of \eqref{eq:robot1-d} obtained via Algorithm \ref{algo:f1-f2} from $\Pi^*_{2, \alpha}$. Note that we can think of Algorithm \ref{algo:f1-f2} as a map from $ {\bbR}^{m \times n}$ to ${\bbR}^{(m+n) \times (m + n)} \times {\bbR}^{m}$. Define this map as $F$.
$$
F(\Pi_2) \mapsto (\Pi_1, \mathbf{s}_1)
$$
Hence, by our notation, $\left(\Pi^*_{1, \alpha}, \mathbf{s}^*_{1, \alpha}\right) = F(\Pi^*_{2, \alpha})$ and $\left(\Pi^*_{1}, \mathbf{s}^*_{1}\right) = F(\Pi^*_2)$. Now if we show that $F$ is a continuous map, then by continuous mapping theorem, it is also immediate from \eqref{eq:cuturi} that:
\begin{align*}
F(\Pi^*_{2, \alpha}) \overset{\alpha \to 0}{\longrightarrow} F(\Pi^*_2) \,.
\end{align*}
which implies:
\begin{align*}
\Pi^*_{1, \alpha} & \overset{\alpha \to 0}{\longrightarrow} \Pi^*_1 \\
\mathbf{s}^*_{1, \alpha} & \overset{\alpha \to 0}{\longrightarrow} \mathbf{s}^*_1 \,.
\end{align*}
which will complete the proof. Therefore all we need to show is that $F$ is a continuous map. Towards that direction, first fix a sequence of matrices $\{\bar \Pi_{2, i}\}_{i \in \mathbb{N}} \to \bar \Pi_2$. Define $F(\bar \Pi_{2, i}) = \left(\bar \Pi_{1, i}, \bar \mathbf{s}_{1, i}\right)$ and $F(\bar \Pi_{2}) = \left(\bar \Pi_{1}, \bar \mathbf{s}_{1}\right)$. By Step 3 - Step 5 of Algorithm \ref{algo:f1-f2}, we obtain $\bar \Pi_{1, i}$ by first setting $\bar \Pi_{1, i, 12} = \bar \Pi_{2, i}$ and for each of the columns of $\bar \Pi_{1, i, 12}$, dumping the sum of its entries for which the cost is $> 2 \lambda$ to the diagonals of $\bar \Pi_{1, i, 22}$. Also, we have all the entries of the first $n$ columns of $\bar \Pi_{1, i}$ to be $0$. In step 6 of Algorithm \ref{algo:f1-f2}, we obtain $\mathbf{s}_{1, i}$ by taking the negative of the sum of the elements of each rows of $\bar \Pi_{1, i, 12}$ for which the cost is $> 2\lambda$. Note that these operations (Step 3 - Step 6 of Algorithm \ref{algo:f1-f2}) are continuous. Therefore we conclude:
\begin{enumerate}
\item $0 = \bar \Pi_{1, i, 11} \to \bar \Pi_{1, 11} = 0 \,.$
\item $0 = \bar \Pi_{1, i, 21} \to \bar \Pi_{1, 21} = 0 \,.$
\item $\bar \Pi_{1, i, 12} = \bar \Pi_{2, i} \odot \mathds{1}_{\mathcal{I}^c} \to \bar \Pi_{2} \odot \mathds{1}_{\mathcal{I}^c} = \bar \Pi_{1, 12} \,.$
\item \begin{align*}
\bar \Pi_{1, i, 22} & = {\sf diag}\left(\mathbf{1}^{\top}\left(\bar \Pi_{2, i} \odot \mathds{1}_{\mathcal{I}}\right)\right) \\
& \to {\sf diag}\left(\mathbf{1}^{\top}\left(\bar \Pi_{2} \odot \mathds{1}_{\mathcal{I}}\right)\right) \\
& = \bar \Pi_{1, 22} \,.
\end{align*}
\item \begin{align*}
\mathbf{s}_{1, i} & = -\left(\bar \Pi_{i, n} \odot \mathds{1}_{\mathcal{I}}\right)\mathbf{1} \\
& \to -\left(\bar \Pi_2 \odot \mathds{1}_{\mathcal{I}}\right)\mathbf{1} = \mathbf{s}_1 \,.
\end{align*}
\end{enumerate}
where $A \odot B$ denotes the Hadamard product (element-wise multiplication) between two matrices. Hence we have established:
\begin{align*}
F(\bar \Pi_{2, i}) & = \left(\bar \Pi_{1, i}, \bar \mathbf{s}_{1, i}\right) \\
& \overset{n \to \infty}{\longrightarrow} \left(\bar \Pi_{1}, \bar \mathbf{s}_{1}\right) \\
& = F(\bar \Pi_2) \,.
\end{align*}
This completes the proof of continuity of $F$.
\section{Proof of auxiliary lemmas}
\subsection{Proof of Lemma \ref{lem:R1-structure}}
\begin{proof}
The fact that $\Pi^*_{1, 11} = \Pi^*_{1, 21} = \mathbf{0}$ follows from the fact that $\Pi^*_1 \succeq 0$ and $\Pi^*_1\mathbf{1} = \mathbf{Q}$. To prove that $\Pi^*_{1, 22}$ is diagonal, we use the fact that the any diagonal entry the cost matrix is $0$. Now suppose $\Pi^*_{1, 22}$ is not diagonal. Then define a matrix $\hat \Pi$ as following: set $\hat \Pi_{11} = \hat \Pi_{21} = \mathbf{0}$,
$\hat \Pi_{12} = \Pi^*_{1, 12}$ and:
\[
\hat \Pi_{22}(i, j) =
\begin{cases}
\sum_{k=1}^m \Pi^*_{1, 22}(k, i), & \text{if } j = i \\
0, & \text{if } j \neq i
\end{cases}
\]
Also define $\hat s = s^*_1$ and $\hat t$ as $\hat t(i) = \hat \Pi_{22}(i, i)$. Then clearly $(\hat \Pi, \hat s, \hat t)$ is a feasible solution of Formulation 1. Note that:
$$
\|\hat t\|_1 = 1^{\top}\hat \Pi_{22} 1 = 1^{\top}\Pi^*_{1, 22} 1 = \|t^*_1\|_1
$$
and by our construction $\langle C_{aug}, \hat \Pi \rangle < \langle C_{aug}, \Pi^*_1 \rangle$. Hence $(\hat \Pi, \hat s, \hat t)$ reduces the value of the objective function of Formulation 1 which is a contradiction. This completes the proof.
\end{proof}
\subsection{Proof of Lemma \ref{lem:f2_characterization}}
\begin{proof}
\begin{enumerate}
\item Suppose $\Pi^*_1(i, j) > 0$. Then dump this mass to $s^*_1(j)$ and make it $0$. In this way $\langle C_{aug}, \Pi^*_1 \rangle$ will decrease by $> 2 \lambda \Pi^*_1(i, j)$ and the regularizer value will increase by atmost $2 \lambda \Pi^*_1(i, j)$, resulting in overall reduction in the objective value, which leads to a contradiction.
\item Suppose each entry of $i^{th}$ row of $C$ is $< 2 \lambda$. Then if $s^*_1(i) > 0$, we can distribute this mass in the $i^{th}$ row such that, $s^*_1(i) = a_1 + a_2 + \dots + a_m$ with the condition that $t^*_1(j) \ge a_j$. Now we reduce $t^*_1$ as:
$$
t^*_1(j) \leftarrow t^*_1(j) - a_j
$$
Hence the value $\langle C_{aug}, \Pi^*_1(i, j) \rangle$ will increase by a value $< 2\lambda s^*_1(i)$ but the value of regularizer will decrease by the value of $2 \lambda s^*_1(i)$, resulting in overall decrease in the value of objective function.
\item Same as proof of part (2) by interchanging row and column in the argument.
\item Suppose not. Then choose ${\epsilon} < s^*_1(i) \wedge t^*_1(j)$, Add ${\epsilon}$ to $\Pi^*_1(i, j)$. Hence the cost function value $\langle C_{aug}, \Pi^*_1 \rangle$ will increase by $ < 2\lambda {\epsilon}$ but the regularizer value will decrease by $2 \lambda {\epsilon}$, resulting in overall decrease in the objective function.
\end{enumerate}
\end{proof}
\subsection{Proof of Lemma \ref{lem:negativity}}
\begin{proof}
For the notational simplicity, we drop the subscript $4$ now as we will only deal with the solution of Formulation 4 and there will be no ambiguity. We prove the Lemma by contradiction. Suppose $s^*_{1, i} > 0$. Then we show one can come up with another solution $(\tilde \Pi, \tilde s_1, \tilde s_2)$ of Formulation 4 such that it has lower objective value. To construct this new solution, make:
\[
\tilde s_{1, j} =
\begin{cases}
s^*_{1, j}, & \text{if } j \neq i \\
0, & \text{if } j = i
\end{cases}
\]
Now to change the optimal transport plan, we will only change $i^{th}$ row of $\Pi^*$. We subtract $a_1, a_2, \dots, a_n \ge 0$ from $i^{th}$ column of $\Pi^*$ in such a way, such that none of the elements are negative. Hence the column sum will be change, i.e.\ the value of $\tilde s_2$ will be:
\[
\tilde s_{2, j} = s^*_{2, j} - a_j \ \ \ \forall 1 \le j \le n \,.
\]
Now clearly from our construction:
$$
\langle C, \tilde \Pi \rangle \le \langle C, \Pi^* \rangle
$$
For the regularization part, note that, as we only reduced $i^{th}$ element of $s^*_1$, we have $\|\tilde s_1\|_1 = \|s^*_1\|_1 - s^*_{1, i}$. And by simple triangle inequality,
$$\|\tilde s_2 \|_1 \le \|s^*_2 \|_1 + \|a_1\|_1 = \|s^*_2 \|_1 + s^*_{1, i}
$$
by construction $a_i$'s, as $a_i \ge 0$ and $\sum_i a_i = s^*_{1, i}$. Hence we have:
$$
\|\tilde s_1\|_1 + \|\tilde s_2\|_1 \le \|s^*_1\|_1 - s^*_{1, i} + \|s^*_2\|_1 + s^*_{1, i} = \|s^*_1\|_1 + \|s^*_2\|_1 \,.
$$
Hence the value corresponding to regularizer will also decrease. This completes the proof.
\end{proof}
\subsection{Proof of Lemma \ref{lem:struct_f3}}
\begin{proof}
We prove this lemma by contradiction. Suppose $\Pi^*_{3}$ does not have the structure mentioned in the statement of Lemma. Construct another transport plan for Formulation 3 $\tilde \Pi_{3}$ as follows: Keep $\tilde \Pi_{3, 12} = \Pi^*_{3, 12}$ and set $\tilde \Pi_{3, 12} = \mathbf{0}$. Construct the other parts as:
\begin{align*}
& \hspace{-1em}\tilde \Pi_{3, 11}(i,j) = \\
& \begin{cases}
\sum_{k=1}^{m} \Pi^*_{3, 11}(i, k) + \sum_{k=1}^{n} \Pi^*_{3, 21}(k, i), & \text{if } i = j \\
0, & \text{if } i \neq j
\end{cases}
\end{align*}
and
\[
\tilde \Pi_{3, 22}(i,j) =
\begin{cases}
\sum_{k=1}^{n} \Pi^*_{3, 22}(k, i), & \text{if } i = j \\
0, & \text{if } i \neq j
\end{cases}
\]
It is immediate from the construction that:
$$
\langle C_{aug}, \tilde \Pi_{3} \rangle \le \langle C_{aug}, \Pi^*_{3} \rangle
$$
As for the regularization term: Note the by our construction $\tilde s_4$ will be same as $s_4^*$ as column sum of $\tilde \Pi_{3, 22}$ is same as $\Pi^*_{3, 22}$. For the other three:
$$
\tilde s_3(i) = \tilde \Pi_{3, 11}(i, i) = \sum_{k=1}^{m} \Pi^*_{3, 11}(i, k) + \sum_{k=1}^{n} \Pi^*_{3, 21}(k, i)
$$
$$
\tilde s_2(i) = \tilde \Pi_{3, 22}(i,i) = \sum_{k=1}^{n} \Pi^*_{3, 22}(k, i)
$$
and hence by construction:
$$
\|\tilde s_2 \|_1 = \mathbf{1}^{\top} \Pi^*_{3, 22}\mathbf{1} = \|s^*_2\|_1 - \mathbf{1}^{\top} \Pi^*_{3, 21}\mathbf{1}\,.
$$
$$
\|\tilde s_3 \|_1 = \mathbf{1}^{\top} \Pi^*_{3, 11}\mathbf{1} + \mathbf{1}^{\top} \Pi^*_{3, 21}\mathbf{1} = \|s^*_3\|_1
$$
And also by our construction, $\tilde s_1 = s^*_1 + c$ where $c = (\Pi^*_{3, 21})^{\top}\mathbf{1}$. As a consequence we have $\|c\|_1 = \mathbf{1}^{\top} \Pi^*_{3, 21}\mathbf{1}$. Then it follows:
\begin{align*}
\sum_{i=1}^4 \|\tilde s_i\|_1 & = \|s^*_1 + c\| + \|s^*_2\|_1 - \mathbf{1}^{\top} \Pi^*_{3, 21}\mathbf{1} + \|s^*_3\|_1 + \|s^*_4\|_1 \\
& \le \sum_{i=1}^4 \|s^*_i\|_1 + \|c\|_1 - \mathbf{1}^{\top} \Pi^*_{3, 21}\mathbf{1} \\
& = \sum_{i=1}^4 \|s^*_i\|_1
\end{align*}
So the objective value is overall reduced. This contradicts the optimality of $\Pi^*_3$ which completes the proof.
\end{proof}
\section{Change of support of outliers with respect to $\lambda$}
For any $\lambda$, define the set $\mathcal{I}_{\lambda} = \{(i, j): C_{i, j} > 2\lambda\}$, i.e. $\mathcal{I}_\lambda$ denotes the costs which exceeds the threshold $2\lambda$. As before we define by $C_\lambda$ to be truncated cost $C \wedge 2\lambda$. Denote by $\pi_\lambda$ to be the optimal transport plan with respect to $C_\lambda$ and the marginal measures $\mu, \nu$. Borrowing our notations from previous theorems, we define a "slack vector" $\mathbf{s}_\lambda$ as:
$$
\mathbf{s}_\lambda(i)= \sum_{j=1}^n \pi_{\lambda}(i, j) \mathds{1}_{C(i, j) > 2\lambda} = \sum_{j: (i, j) \in \mathcal{I}_\lambda}\pi_\lambda(i, j) \,.
$$
And we define the observation $i_0$ to be an outlier if $\mathbf{s}_\lambda(i_0) > 0$. It is immediate that for any $\lambda_1 < \lambda_2$, $\mathcal{I}_{\lambda_1} \supseteq \mathcal{I}_{\lambda_2}$. We goal is to establish the following theorem:
\begin{theorem}
For any $\lambda_1 < \lambda_2$, if $\mathbf{s}_{\lambda_2}(i_0) > 0$, then $\mathbf{s}_{\lambda_1}(i_0) > 0$, i.e. if a point is selected as outlier for larger $\lambda$, then it is also selected as outlier for smaller $\lambda$.
\end{theorem}
\begin{proof}
Fix $\lambda_1 < \lambda_2$. Note that for any $\pi \in \Pi(\mu, \nu)$ we have:
\begin{align*}
\langle C_{\lambda_2} - C_{\lambda_1}, \pi \rangle & = \sum_{(i, j) \in I_{\lambda_1} \cap \mathcal{I}_{\lambda_2}^c} (C(i, j) - 2\lambda_1) \pi(i, j) \\
& \qquad \qquad + 2(\lambda_2 - \lambda_1)\sum_{(i, j) \in \mathcal{I}_{\lambda_2}} \pi(i, j) \\
& := T_1(\pi) + T_2(\pi) \,.
\end{align*}
Now as $\pi_{\lambda_2}$ is optimal with respect to $C_{\lambda_2}$ and $\pi_{\lambda_1}$ is optimal with respect to $C_{\lambda_1}$ we have:
\begin{align*}
& \langle C_{\lambda_1}, \pi_{\lambda_2} \rangle + T_1(\pi_{\lambda_2}) + T_2(\pi_{\lambda_2}) \\
& = \langle C_{\lambda_2} , \pi_{\lambda_2} \rangle \\
& \le \langle C_{\lambda_2} , \pi_{\lambda_1} \rangle \\
& = \langle C_{\lambda_1}, \pi_{\lambda_1} \rangle + T_1(\pi_{\lambda_1}) + T_2(\pi_{\lambda_1}) \\
& \le \langle C_{\lambda_1}, \pi_{\lambda_2} \rangle + T_1(\pi_{\lambda_1}) + T_2(\pi_{\lambda_1})
\end{align*}
Therefore we have:
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:ineq_1_bound}
T_1(\pi_{\lambda_2}) + T_2(\pi_{\lambda_2}) \le T_1(\pi_{\lambda_1}) + T_2(\pi_{\lambda_1}) \,.
\end{equation}
\textbf{But this is not enough.} Note that we can further decompose $T_1$ (and similarly $T_2$) as:
\begin{align*}
T_{1, i}(\pi) & = \sum_{j : (i, j) \in I_{\lambda_1} \cap \mathcal{I}_{\lambda_2}^c} \left(C_{i, j} - 2\lambda_1\right) \pi(i, j) \\
T_{2, i}(\pi) &= 2(\lambda_2 - \lambda_1)\sum_{j : (i, j) \in \mathcal{I}_{\lambda_2}} \pi(i ,j) \,.
\end{align*}
Hence we have:
$$
T_1(\pi) = \sum_{i=1}^n T_{1, i}(\pi), \ \ \ T_2(\pi)= \sum_{i=1}^n T_{2, i}(\pi) \,.
$$
In \eqref{eq:ineq_1_bound} we have established that $T_1(\pi_{\lambda_2}) + T_2(\pi_{\lambda_2}) \le T_1(\pi_{\lambda_1}) + T_2(\pi_{\lambda_1}) \,.$ In addition if we can show that:
\begin{equation}
\label{eq:ineq_2_bound}
T_{1, i_0}(\pi_{\lambda_1}) + T_{2, i_0}(\pi_{\lambda_1}) = 0 \implies T_{2, i_0}(\pi_{\lambda_1}) = 0 \,.
\end{equation}
holds for all $1 \le i \le n$ then we are done. This is because, suppose $\mathbf{s}_{\lambda_1}(i_0) = 0$, Then $$
T_{1, i_0}(\pi_{\lambda_1}) + T_{2, i_0}(\pi_{\lambda_1}) = 0 \,.
$$
This in turn by \eqref{eq:ineq_2_bound} implies
$$
T_{2,i_0}(\pi_{\lambda_2}) = 0 \,,
$$
i.e. $\mathbf{s}_{\lambda_2}(i_0) = 0$.
\begin{lemma}
\label{lem:cost_2dim}
Suppose $C$ is a $2 \times 2$ cost matrix with all unequal cost:
$$
C = \begin{bmatrix}
C_{11} & C_{12} \\
C_{21} & C_{22}
\end{bmatrix}
$$
If $C_{22} > 2\lambda_2$ and $C_{21} < 2 \lambda_1$, then the following two inequalities won't occur simultaneously:
\begin{align*}
C^{\lambda_2}_{11} + C^{\lambda_2}_{22} & \le C^{\lambda_2}_{12} + C^{\lambda_2}_{21} \,,\\
C^{\lambda_1}_{12} + C^{\lambda_1}_{21} & \le C^{\lambda_1}_{11} + C^{\lambda_1}_{22} \,.
\end{align*}
\end{lemma}
Now suppose $i_2$ is an outlier with respect to $\lambda_2$ but not with respect to $\lambda_1$. Then there exists $j_1$ and $j_2$ ($j_1 \neq j_2$) such that:
$$
C_{i_2, j_1} < 2\lambda_1, C_{i_2, j_2} > 2\lambda_2
$$
such that $\pi^{\lambda_2}_{i_2 ,j_2} > 0$ and $\pi^{\lambda_1}_{i_2, j_1} > 0$.
\paragraph{Case 1: }Now assume that we can find $i_1 \neq i_2$ such that $\pi^{\lambda_2}_{i_1, j_1} > 0$ and $\pi^{\lambda_1}_{i_1, j_2} > 0$.
Then $(i_1, j_2), (i_2, j_1) \in {\sf supp}(\pi^{\lambda_1})$ and $(i_1, j_1), (i_2, j_2) \in {\sf supp}(\pi^{\lambda_2})$. Hence from c-cyclical monotonicity properties of the support of the optimal transport plan we have for $\pi^{\lambda_1}$:
$$
C^{\lambda_1}_{i_1, j_2} + C^{\lambda_1}_{i_2, j_1} \le C^{\lambda_1}_{i_1, j_1} + C^{\lambda_1}_{i_2, j_2} \,,
$$
and for $\pi^{\lambda_2}$:
$$
C^{\lambda_2}_{i_1, j_1} + C^{\lambda_2}_{i_2, j_2} \le C^{\lambda_2}_{i_1, j_2} + C^{\lambda_2}_{i_2, j_1} \,.
$$
which is a contradiction from Lemma \ref{lem:cost_2dim}. This completes the proof.
\paragraph{Case 2: Need to be proved} Now we need to consider the other case, there does not exist any row $i_1 \neq i_2$ such that both $\pi^{\lambda_2}_{i_1, j_1} > 0$ and $\pi^{\lambda_1}_{i_1, j_2} > 0$ occur simultaneously. This means that the columns $j_1, j_2$ are orthogonal, i.e. $\langle \pi^{\lambda_2}_{:, j_1}, \pi^{\lambda_1}_{:, j_2}\rangle = 0$.
\end{proof}
\subsection{Proof of Lemma \ref{lem:cost_2dim}}
As $C_{21} < 2\lambda_1$ and $C_{22} > 2\lambda_2$ we can modify the inequalities in Lemma \ref{lem:cost_2dim} as:
\begin{align}
\label{eq:cost_ineq_1} C^{\lambda_2}_{11} + 2\lambda_2 & \le C^{\lambda_2}_{12} + C_{21} \,,\\
\label{eq:cost_ineq_2} C^{\lambda_1}_{12} + C_{21} & \le C^{\lambda_1}_{11} + 2\lambda_1 \,.
\end{align}
Now as we have assume $C_{21} < 2\lambda_1$, from \eqref{eq:cost_ineq_1} we obtain:
\begin{align}
& 2\lambda_1 > C^{\lambda_2}_{11} - C^{\lambda_2}_{12} + 2\lambda_2 \notag \\
\iff & 2(\lambda_2 - \lambda_1) < C^{\lambda_2}_{12} - C^{\lambda_2}_{11} \,.
\end{align}
Hence $C^{\lambda_2}_{12} - C^{\lambda_2}_{11} > 0$, which implies $C_{11} < C_{12}, C_{11} < 2\lambda_2$ and also both $C_{11}$ and $C_{12}$ can not lie within $(2\lambda_1, 2\lambda_2)$. We divide the rest of the proofs into four small cases:
\paragraph{Case 1:} Assume $2\lambda_1 < C_{11} < 2\lambda_2, C_{12} > 2\lambda_2$. In this case from \eqref{eq:cost_ineq_1} we have:
\begin{align*}
C_{11} + 2\lambda_2 & \le 2\lambda_2 + C_{21}
\end{align*}
i.e. $C_{21} \ge C_{11}$ which is not possible as $C_{11} > 2\lambda_1$ and $C_{21} < 2\lambda_1$.
\paragraph{Case 2:} Assume $C_{11} < 2\lambda_1, C_{12} > 2\lambda_2$. Then from \eqref{eq:cost_ineq_2} we have $C_{21} \le C_{11}$ and from \eqref{eq:cost_ineq_1} we have: $C_{11} \le C_{21}$ which cannot occur simultaneously.
\paragraph{Case 3:} Assume $C_{11} < 2\lambda_1$ and $2\lambda_1 < C_{12} < 2\lambda_2$. Then from \eqref{eq:cost_ineq_1} and \eqref{eq:cost_ineq_2} we have respectively:
\begin{align*}
C_{11} + 2\lambda_2 & \le C_{12} + C_{21} \,,\\
2\lambda_1 + C_{21} & \le C_{11} + 2\lambda_1
\end{align*}
From the second inequality we have $C_{21} \le C_{11}$, which putting back in the first inequality yields:
$$
C_{11} + 2\lambda_2 \le C_{12} + C_{11} \implies C_{12} \ge 2\lambda_2
$$
which is a contradiction.
\paragraph{Case 4: } Assume $C_{11} < 2\lambda_1$ and $C_{12} < 2\lambda_1$. This form \eqref{eq:cost_ineq_1} yields:
\begin{align}
C_{11} + 2\lambda_2 & \le C_{12} + C_{21} \notag \\
\label{eq:cost_ineq_3} \implies C_{21} & \ge C_{11} - C_{12} + 2\lambda_2 \,.
\end{align}
Also from \eqref{eq:cost_ineq_2} we have:
\begin{align}
C_{12} + C_{21} & \le C_{11} + 2\lambda_1 \notag \\
\label{eq:cost_ineq_4} \implies C_{21} & \le C_{11} - C_{12} + 2\lambda_1 \,.
\end{align}
From \eqref{eq:cost_ineq_3} and \eqref{eq:cost_ineq_4} we have:
$$
C_{11} - C_{12} + 2\lambda_2 \le C_{11} - C_{12} + 2\lambda_1
$$
i.e. $\lambda_2 \le \lambda_1$ which is a contradiction. This completes the proof.
\begin{table*}[ht!]
\caption{Robust mean estimation with GANs using different distribution divergences. True mean is $\eta_0 = \mathbf{0}_5$; sample size $n=1000$; contamination proportion ${\epsilon}=0.2$. We report results over 30 experiment restarts.}
\label{table:robogan_cauchy}
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{lccccc}
\toprule
Contamination & JS Loss & SH Loss & ROBOT\\
\midrule
$\text{Cauchy}(0.1 \cdot \mathbf{1_5}, I_5)$ & 0.2 $\pm$ 0.06 & \textbf{0.17} $\pm$ 0.04 & \textbf{0.17} $\pm$ 0.05 \\
$\text{Cauchy}(0.5 \cdot \mathbf{1_5}, I_5)$ & 0.3 $\pm$ 0.07 & 0.26 $\pm$ 0.05 & \textbf{0.25} $\pm$ 0.05 \\
$\text{Cauchy}(1 \cdot \mathbf{1_5}, I_5)$ & 0.45 $\pm$ 0.14 & 0.37 $\pm$ 0.06 & \textbf{0.36} $\pm$ 0.07 \\
$\text{Cauchy}(2 \cdot \mathbf{1_5}, I_5)$ & 0.39 $\pm$ 0.3 & 0.26 $\pm$ 0.06 & \textbf{0.2} $\pm$ 0.07 \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\end{table*}
\section{Robust mean experiment with Cauchy distribution}
\label{sec:robot_cauchy}
In this section we present our results corresponding to the robust mean estimation with the generative distribution $g_{\theta}(x) = x + \theta$ where $x \sim \text{Cauchy}(0, 1)$. As in Subsection \ref{sec:robust_mean_est}, we assume that we have observation $\{x_1, \dots, x_n\}$ from a contaminated distribution $(1 - {\epsilon}) \ \text{Cauchy}(\eta_0, 1) + {\epsilon} \ \text{Cauchy}(\eta_1, 1)$. For our experiments we take $\eta_0 = \mathbf{0}_5$ and vary $\eta_1 \in \left\{0.1 \cdot \mathbf{1_5}, 0.5 \cdot \mathbf{1_5}, 1 \cdot \mathbf{1_5}, 2 \cdot \mathbf{1_5} \right\}$ along wth ${\epsilon} = 0.2$. We compare our method with \citet{wu2020minimax} and results are presented in Table \ref{table:robogan_cauchy}.
\section{Introduction}
Optimal transport (OT) is a fundamental problem in applied mathematics. In its original form \citep{monge1781Memoire}, the problem seeks the minimum-cost way to transport mass from a probability distribution $\mu$ on $\mathcal{X}$ to another distribution $\nu$ on $\mathcal{X}$. In its original form, Monge's problem proved hard to study, and \citet{kantorovich1942translocation} relaxed \citeauthor{monge1781Memoire}'s formulation of the optimal transport problem to
\begin{equation}
\text{OT}(\mu,\nu) \triangleq \min_{\Pi\in\mathcal{F}(\mu,\nu)}{\bbE}_{(X_1,X_2)\sim\Pi}\big[c(X_1,X_2)\big],
\label{eq:OT-problem}
\end{equation}
where $\mathcal{F}(\mu,\nu)$ is the set of couplings between $\mu$ and $\nu$ (probability distributions on $\mathcal{X}\times\mathcal{X}$ whose marginals are $\mu$ and $\nu$) and $c$ is a cost function. In this paper, we assume $c(x, y) \ge 0$ and $c(x, x) = 0$.
Compared to other common measure of distance between probability distributions ({\it e.g.} $d$-divergences), optimal transport uniquely depends on the geometry of the sample space (through the cost function).
Recent advancements in optimization for optimal transport \citep{cuturi2013Sinkhorn,solomon2015convolutional,genevay2016stochastic,seguy2018LargeScale} enable its broad adaptation in machine learning applications where geometry of the data is important; see \citep{peyre2018Computational} for a survey. Optimal transport has found applications in natural language processing \citep{kusner2015word,huang2016supervised,alvarez2018gromov,yurochkin2019hierarchical}, generative modeling \citep{arjovsky2017Wasserstein}, clustering \citep{ho2017multilevel}, domain adaptation \citep{courty2014domain,courty2017joint}, large-scale Bayesian modeling \citep{srivastava2018scalable}, anomaly detection \citep{tong2020fixing}, and many other domains.
Many applications use OT as a loss in an optimization problem of the form:
\begin{equation}\textstyle
\theta\in{\arg\min}_{\theta\in\Theta}\text{OT}(\mu_n,\nu_\theta),
\label{eq:mke}
\end{equation}
where $\{\nu_{\theta}\}_{\theta \in \Theta}$ is a collection of parametric models and $\mu_n$ is the empirical distribution of the samples. Such estimators are called \emph{minimum Kantorovich estimators (MKE)} \citep{bassetti2006minimum}.
They are popular alternatives to likelihood-based estimators, especially in generative modeling. For example, when $\text{OT}(\cdot,\cdot)$ is the Wasserstein-1 distance and $\nu_\theta$ is a generator parameterized by a neural network with weights $\theta$, \eqref{eq:mke} corresponds to the Wasserstein GAN \citep{arjovsky2017Wasserstein}.
One drawback of optimal transport is its sensitivity to outliers. Because \emph{all} the mass in $\mu$ must be transported to $\nu$, a small fraction of outliers can have an outsized impact. For statistics and machine learning applications in which the data is corrupted or noisy, this is a major issue. For example, the poor performance of Wasserstein GANs in the presence of outliers was noted in the recent works on outlier-robust generative learning with $f$-divergence GANs \citep{chao2018robust,wu2020minimax}.
The problem of outlier-robustness in MKE has not been studied except in two recent works proposing changes to the OT formulation that are challenging to handle computationally \citep{staerman2020ot,balaji2020robust}. Our goal is to derive an outlier-robust OT formulation compatible with existing efficient computational OT methods \citep{peyre2018Computational}.
In this paper, we propose a modification of OT to address its sensitivity to outliers. Our formulation can be used as a loss in \eqref{eq:mke}, so that it is robust to a small fraction of outliers in the data. For simplicity, we consider the ${\epsilon}$-contamination model \citep{huber2009Robust}. Let $\nu_{\theta_0}$ be a member of a parametric family $\{\nu_\theta:\theta\in\Theta\}$ and let
\[
\mu = (1-{\epsilon})\nu_{\theta_0} + {\epsilon} \tilde \nu,
\]
where $\mu$ is the data-generating distribution, ${\epsilon} > 0$ is the fraction of outliers, and $\tilde \nu$ is the distribution of the outliers. Although the fraction of outliers is capped at ${\epsilon}$, the value of the outliers can be arbitrary, so their effect on the optimal transport problem can be arbitrarily large. We modify the problem so that it is more robust to such outliers, targeting the downstream application of learning $\theta_0$ from (samples from) $\mu$ in the ${\epsilon}$-contamination model.
Our main contributions are as follows:
\begin{itemize}
\item We propose a robust OT formulation suitable for statistical estimation in the ${\epsilon}$-contamination model using MKE.
\item We show that our formulation is equivalent to the original OT problem with a clipped transport cost. This connection enables us to leverage the voluminous literature on computational optimal transport to develop efficient algorithm to perform MKE robust to outliers.
\item Our formulation enables a new application of optimal transport: outlier detection in data.
\end{itemize}
\section{Problem Formulation}
\subsection{Robust OT for MKE}
To promote outlier-robustness in MKE, we need to allow the corresponding OT problem to ignore outliers in the data distribution $\mu$. The ${\epsilon}$-contamination model imposes a cap on the fraction of outliers, so it is not hard to see that $\|\mu - \nu_{\theta_0}\|_{\ \mathrm{TV}} \le {\epsilon}$, where $\|\cdot\|_{\ \mathrm{TV}}$ is the total-variation norm defined as $\|\mu\|_{\text{TV}} = \int \frac{1}{2}|\mu(\mathrm{d}x)|$. This suggests we solve a TV-constrained/regularized version of \eqref{eq:mke}:
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}
& \min_{\theta\in\Theta,\tilde\mu} & & \text{OT}(\tilde \mu,\nu_\theta) \\
& {\sf subject\ to} & & \|\mu - \tilde\mu\|_{\ \mathrm{TV}} \le {\epsilon}; \ \ \tilde \mu \in \mathbf{P},
\end{aligned}
\label{eq:constrained-mke}
\end{equation}
where $\mathbf{P}$ is the set of all probability measures. The constrained version, however, suffers from identification issues. It cannot distinguish between ``clean'' distributions within TV distance ${\epsilon}$ of $\nu_{\theta_0}$. To see this, fix $\theta\in\Theta$, and note that the optimal value of \eqref{eq:constrained-mke} is zero whenever $\mu$ is within ${\epsilon}$-TV distance of $\nu_\theta$. Thus \eqref{eq:constrained-mke} cannot distinguish between two parameter values $\theta_1$ and $\theta_2$ such that $\|\nu_{\theta_1} - \nu_{\theta_2}\|_{{\sf TV}} \le {\epsilon}$. This makes it unsuitable as a loss function for statistical estimation, because it cannot lead to a consistent estimator. As an alternative, its regularized counterpart does not suffer from this issue:
\begin{equation}\label{eq:tvregularized}
\min_{\substack{\theta\in\Theta \\ s: \mu + s \in \mathbf{P}}} \text{OT}(\mu+s,\nu_\theta) + \lambda\|s\|_{\ \mathrm{TV}},
\end{equation}
where $\lambda > 0$ is a regularization parameter. Note that, the constrained and Lagrangian formulations are equivalent, but the equivalence depends on the two distributions in the arguments of the Wasserstein distance. In other words, as we vary the distributions (keeping ${\epsilon}$ fixed), the equivalent $\lambda$ will change. In our formulation, we are fixing $\lambda$ and varying the distributions, so the solution paths are different, making the parameter identifiable. In the rest of this paper, we work with the TV-regularized formulation \eqref{eq:tvregularized}.
The main idea of our formulation is to allow for modifications of $\mu$, while penalizing their magnitude and ensuring that the modified $\mu$ is still a probability measure. Below we formulate this intuition in an optimization problem titled ROBOT (ROBust Optimal Transport):
\textbf{Formulation 1:}
\begin{align}
\begin{aligned}
& \min_{\pi, s} & & \iint c(x, y) \ \pi(x, y) \ dx \ dy + \lambda \|s\|_{\mathrm{TV}} \\
& {\sf subject\ to} & & \int \pi(x, y) \ dy = \mu(x) + s(x) \geq 0 \\
& & & \int \pi(x, y) \ dy = \nu(y) \\
& & & \int s(\mathrm{d}x) = 0.
\end{aligned}
\label{eq:robot1-cts}
\end{align}
where $\pi$ is a density function on $\mathcal{X} \times \mathcal{X}$. The first and the last constraints ensure that $\mu + s$ is a valid probability measure, while $\lambda \|s\|_{\text{TV}}$ penalizes the amount of modifications in $\mu$. We can identify exact locations of outliers in $\mu$ by inspecting $\mu+s$, i.e.\ if $\mu(x) + s(x) = 0$, then $x$ got eliminated and is an outlier. We will use this property to propose an outlier detection method.
ROBOT, unlike classical OT, guarantees that an adversarially-picked outliers cannot increase the (robust) transport distance arbitrarily. Let $\tilde \mu = (1-{\epsilon})\mu + {\epsilon} \mu_c$, i.e., $\tilde \mu$ is $\mu$ contaminated with outliers from $\mu_c$, and let $\nu$ be an arbitrary measure; in MKE, $\tilde \mu$ is the contaminated data and $\nu$ is the model we learn. The adversary can arbitrarily increase $\text{OT}(\tilde \mu, \nu)$ by manipulating the outlier distribution $\mu_c$. For ROBOT, we have the following bound:
\begin{theorem}
\label{thm:bound}
Let $\tilde \mu = (1-{\epsilon})\mu + {\epsilon} \mu_c\,$ for some ${\epsilon}\in[0,1)$. Then,
\begin{align}
\label{eq:bound}
\mathrm{ROBOT}(\tilde \mu, \nu) & \le \min\left\{\mathrm{OT}(\mu, \nu) + \lambda {\epsilon}\|\mu - \mu_c\|_{\mathrm{TV}}, \right. \notag \\
& \qquad \qquad \left. \lambda \|\tilde \mu - \nu\|_{\mathrm{TV}}, \mathrm{OT}(\tilde \mu, \nu)\right\},
\end{align}
\end{theorem}
This bound has two key takeaways: since TV norm of distributions is bounded by 1, the adversary can not increase ROBOT$(\tilde \mu, \nu)$ arbitrarily; in the absence of outliers, ROBOT is bounded by classical OT. See Appendix \ref{sec:theorem_bnd} for the proof.
\paragraph{Related work.} We note a connection between \eqref{eq:robot1-cts} and unbalanced OT (UOT) \citep{UOT,chizat2018scaling}. UOT is typically formulated by replacing the TV norm with KL$(\mu + s | \mu)$ and adding an analogous term for $\nu$. \citet{chizat2018scaling} studied entropy regularized UOT with various divergences penalizing marginal violations. Optimization problems similar to \eqref{eq:robot1-cts} have also been considered outside of ML \citep{piccoli2014generalized,liero2018optimal}. \citet{balaji2020robust} use UOT with $\chi^2$-divergence penalty on marginal violations to achieve outlier-robustness in generative modeling. Another relevant variation of OT is partial OT \citep{figalli2010optimal,caffarelli2010free}. It may also be considered for outlier-robustness but has a drawback of forcing mass destruction rather than adjusting marginals to ignore outliers when they are present. \citet{staerman2020ot} take a different path: they replace the expectation in the Wasserstein-1 dual with a median-of-means to promote robustness.
It is unclear what is the corresponding primal problem, making their formulation hard to interpret as an optimal transport problem.
A major challenge with the aforementioned methods, including our Formulation 1, is the large scale implementation of the optimization problem. \citet{chizat2018scaling} propose a Sinkhorn-like algorithm for entropy regularized UOT, but it is not amenable to stochastic optimization. \citet{balaji2020robust} propose a stochastic optimization algorithm based on the UOT dual, but it requires two additional neural networks (total of four including dual potentials) to parameterize modified marginal distributions (i.e., $\mu + s$ and analogous one for $\nu$). Optimizing with a median-of-means in the objective function \citep{staerman2020ot} is also challenging. The key contribution of our work is a formulation \emph{equivalent} to \eqref{eq:robot1-cts}, which is \emph{easily compatible} with the large body of classical OT optimization techniques \citep{cuturi2013Sinkhorn,solomon2015convolutional,genevay2016stochastic,seguy2018LargeScale}.
\paragraph{More efficient equivalent formulation.} At a first glance, there are two issues with \eqref{eq:robot1-cts}: it appears asymmetric, and it is unclear if it can be optimized efficiently. Below we present an \emph{equivalent} formulation that is free of these issues: \\
\textbf{Formulation 2:}
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}
& \min_{\Pi \in \mathcal{F}^+(\mathbb{R}^{d} \times \mathbb{R}^{d})} & & \mathbb{E}_{(X,Y) \sim \Pi}\left[C_{\lambda}(X, Y)\right] \\
& {\sf subject\ to} & & X \sim \mu, \ \ Y \sim \nu \,.
\end{aligned}
\label{eq:robot2-cts}
\end{equation}
where $C_{\lambda}$ is the \emph{truncated cost} function defined as $C_{\lambda}(x, y) = \min\left\{c(x, y), 2\lambda\right\}$. Looking at \eqref{eq:robot2-cts}, it is not apparent that it adds robustness to MKE, but it is symmetric, easy to combine with entropic regularization by simply truncating the cost, and benefits from stochastic optimization algorithms \citep{genevay2016stochastic,seguy2018LargeScale}.
This formulation also has a distant relation to the idea of loss truncation for achieving robustness \citep{shen2019learning}. \citet{pele2009fast} consider the Earth Mover Distance (discrete OT) with truncated cost to achieve computational improvements; they also mentioned its potential to promote robustness against outlier noise but did not explore this direction.
In Section \ref{sec:theory}, we establish an \emph{equivalence} between the two ROBOT formulations, \eqref{eq:robot1-cts} and \eqref{eq:robot2-cts}. This equivalence allows us to obtain an efficient algorithm based on \eqref{eq:robot2-cts} for robust MKE. We also provide a simple procedure for computing the optimal $s$ in \eqref{eq:robot1-cts} from the solution of \eqref{eq:robot2-cts}, enabling a new OT application: outlier detection. We verify the effectiveness of robust MKE and outlier detection in our experiments in Section \ref{sec:experiments}. Before presenting the equivalence proof, however, we formulate the discrete analogs of the two ROBOT formulations for their practical value.
\subsection{Discrete ROBOT formulations}
In practice, we typically encounter samples from distributions, rather then the distributions themselves. Sampling is also built into stochastic optimization. In this subsection, we present the discrete versions of the ROBOT formulations. The key detail is that, in \eqref{eq:robot1-cts}, $\mu,\nu$ and $s$ are all supported on $\mathbb{R}^d$, while in the discrete case the empirical measures $\mu_n \in \Delta^{n-1}$ and $\nu_m \in \Delta^{m-1}$ are supported on a set of points ($\Delta^r$ is the unit probability simplex in ${\bbR}^r$). As a result, to formulate a discrete version of \eqref{eq:robot1-cts}, we need to augment $\mu_n$ and $\nu_m$ with each others' supports. To be precise, let $\mathrm{supp}(\mu_n)=\{X_1,\dots,X_n\}$ and $\mathrm{supp}(\nu_m)=\{Y_1,\dots,Y_m\}$. Define $\mathcal{C} = \{Z_1, Z_2, \dots, Z_{m+n}\} = \{X_1, \dots, X_n, Y_1, \dots, Y_m\}$.
Then discrete analog of \eqref{eq:robot1-cts} is
\textbf{Formulation 1 (discrete):}
\begin{align}
\begin{aligned}
& \min_{\Pi, \mathbf{s}} & & \langle C_{aug},\Pi \rangle + \lambda \left[\|s_1\|_1 + \|t_1\|_1\right] \\
& {\sf subject\ to} & & \Pi 1_{m+n} =
\begin{bmatrix}
\mu_n + s_1 \\ t_1
\end{bmatrix},\quad
\Pi^{\top}1_{m+n} =
\begin{bmatrix}
0 \\\nu_m
\end{bmatrix}
\\
& & & \Pi \succeq 0,\quad
1_{m+n}^{\top}\mathbf{s} = 0,
\end{aligned}
\label{eq:robot1-d}
\end{align}
where $C_{aug} \in \mathbb{R}^{(m+n) \times (m+n)}$ is the augmented cost function $C_{aug, i, j} = c(Z_i, Z_j)$ ($c$ is the ground cost, e.g., squared Euclidean distance), $\mathbf{s} = (s_1, t_1)$ and $1_r$ is the vector all ones in ${\bbR}^r$. The TV norm got replaced with its discrete analog, the $L_1$ norm. Similarly to its continuous counterpart, the optimization problem is harder than typical OT due to additional constraint optimization variable $\mathbf{s}$ and increased cost matrix size.
The discrete analog of \eqref{eq:robot2-cts} is straightforward:
\textbf{Formulation 2 (discrete):}
\begin{align}
\begin{aligned}
& \min_{\Pi\in{\bbR}^{n\times m}} & & \langle C_{\lambda},\Pi \rangle \\
& {\sf subject\ to} & & \Pi1_{n} = \mu_n,\quad
\Pi^{\top}1_{m} = \nu_m,\quad
\Pi \succeq 0,
\end{aligned}
\label{eq:robot2-d}
\end{align}
where $C_{\lambda,i,j} = \min\{c(X_i, Y_j), 2\lambda\}$. As in the continuous case, it is easy to adapt modern (regularized) OT solvers without any computational overhead, and formulations of \eqref{eq:robot1-d} and \eqref{eq:robot2-d} are equivalent. It is also possible to recover $\mathbf{s}$ of \eqref{eq:robot1-d} from the solution of \eqref{eq:robot2-d} to perform outlier detection.
\paragraph{Two-sided formulation.} So far we have assumed that one of the input distributions does not have outliers, which is the setting of MKE, where the clean distribution corresponds to the model we learn. In some applications, both distributions may be corrupted. To address this case, we provide an \emph{equivalent} two-sided formulation, analogous to UOT with TV norm:
\textbf{Formulation 3 (two-sided):}
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
\begin{aligned}
\min_{\Pi, \mathbf{s}_1 , \mathbf{s}_2} & \ \ \ \langle C_{aug},\Pi\rangle + \lambda \left[\|s_1\|_1 + \|t_1\|_1 + \|s_2\|_1 + \|t_2\|_1\right] \\
{\sf subject\ to} & \hspace{5em}\Pi 1_{m+n} =
\begin{bmatrix}
\mu_n+s_1 \\ t_1
\end{bmatrix} \\
& \hspace{5em} \Pi^{\top}1_{m+n} =
\begin{bmatrix}
s_2 \\ \nu_m + t_2
\end{bmatrix}
\\
& \Pi \succeq 0,\quad 1_{m+n}^{\top}\mathbf{s}_1 = 0,\quad 1_{m+n}^{\top} \mathbf{s}_2 = 0
\end{aligned}
\label{eq:F_3}
\end{split}
\end{equation}
where $\mathbf{s}_1 = (s_1^{\top}, t_1^{\top})^{\top}$ and $\mathbf{s}_2 = (s_2^{\top}, t_2^{\top})^{\top}$.
\section{Equivalence of the ROBOT formulations}
\label{sec:theory}
In this section, we present our main theorem, which demonstrates the equivalence between two formulations of the robust optimal transport:
\begin{theorem}
\label{thm:main_thm}
For any two measures $\mu$ and $\nu$, \text{ROBOT}$(\mu, \nu)$ has same value for both the formulations, i.e., Formulation 1 is equivalent to Formulation 2 for the discrete case. Additionally, if the (non-truncated) cost function $c(\cdot,\cdot)$ is a metric, then the equivalence of the two formulations also holds for the continuous case. Moreover, we can recover optimal coupling of one formulation from the other.
\end{theorem}
Below we sketch the proof of this theorem and highlight some important techniques used in the proof. We focus on the discrete case as it is more intuitive and has concrete practical implications in our experiments. A complete proof can be found in Appendix \ref{sec:proofs}. Please also see Appendix \ref{sec:proof_two_sided} for the proof of equivalence between Formulations 1, 2 and 3 in the discrete case.
\subsection{Proof sketch}
In the remainder of this section, we consider the discrete case, i.e., \eqref{eq:robot1-d} for Formulation 1 (F1) and \eqref{eq:robot2-d} for Formulation 2 (F2). Suppose $\Pi^*_{2}$ is an optimal solution of
F2. Then we construct a feasible solution $\Pi^*_1, \mathbf{s}^*_1 = (s^*_1, t^*_1)$ of F1 based on $\Pi^*_2$ with the same value of the objective function as F2 and claim that $(\Pi^*_1, \mathbf{s}^*_1)$ is an optimal solution. We prove the claim by contradiction: if $(\Pi^*_1, \mathbf{s}^*_1)$ is not optimal, then there exists another pair $(\tilde \Pi_1, \tilde \mathbf{s}_1)$ which is optimal for F1 with strictly less objective value. We then construct another feasible solution $\Pi^*_{2,new}$ of Formulation 2 which has the same objective value as of $(\tilde \Pi_1, \tilde \mathbf{s}_1)$ for F1. This implies $\Pi^*_{2,new}$ has strictly less objective value for F2 than $\Pi^*_2$, which is a contradiction.
The two main steps of this proof are (1) constructing a feasible solution of F1 starting from a feasible solution of F2 and (2) showing that the solution constructed is indeed optimal for F1. Hence step (1) gives a recipe to construct an optimal solution of F1 starting from an optimal solution of F2. We elaborate the first point in the next subsection, which has practical implications for outlier detection. The other point is more technical; interested readers may go through the proof in Appendix \ref{sec:proof_discrete}.
\begin{algorithm}
\caption{Generating optimal solution of F1 from F2}
\label{algo:f1-f2}
\begin{algorithmic}[1]
\STATE Start with $\Pi^*_2 \in \mathbb{R}^{n \times m}$, an optimal solution of Formulation 2.
\STATE Create an augmented matrix $\Pi \in \mathbb{R}^{m+n \times m+n}$ with all $0$. Divide $\Pi$ into four blocks:
$$
\Pi = \begin{bmatrix}
\underbrace{\Pi_{11}}_{n \times n} & \underbrace{\Pi_{12}}_{n \times m} \\
\underbrace{\Pi_{21}}_{m \times n} & \underbrace{\Pi_{22}}_{m \times m}
\end{bmatrix}
$$
\STATE Set $\Pi_{12} \leftarrow \Pi^*_2$ and collect all the indices $\mathcal{I} = \{(i, j): C_{i, j} > 2 \lambda \}$.
\STATE Set $\Pi_{12}(i, j) \leftarrow 0$ for $(i, j) \in \mathcal{I}$.
\STATE Set $\Pi_{22}(j, j) \leftarrow \sum_{i=1}^n \Pi^*_2(i, j)\mathds{1}_{(i, j) \in \mathcal{I}}$ for all $1 \le j \le m$ and set $\Pi^*_1 \leftarrow \Pi$.
\STATE Set $s^*_1(i) = -\sum_{j=1}^m \Pi^*_2(i, j)\mathds{1}_{(i, j) \in \mathcal{I}}$ for all $1 \le i \le n$.
\STATE Set $t_1^*(j) = \Pi_{22}(j, j)$ for all $1 \le j \le m$.
\STATE return $\Pi^*_1, s^*_1, t^*_1$.
\end{algorithmic}
\end{algorithm}
\subsection{Going from Formulation 2 to Formulation 1}
Let $\Pi^*_2$ (respectively $\Pi^*_1$) be an optimal solution of F2 (respectively F1). Recall that $\Pi_1^*$ has dimension $(m+n) \times (m+n)$. From the column sum constraint in F1, we need to take the first $n$ columns of $\Pi^*_1$ to be exactly $0$, whereas the last $m$ columns must sum up to $\nu_m$. For any matrix $A$, we denote by $A[(a:b) \times (c:d)]$ the submatrix consisting of rows from $a$ to $b$ and columns from $c$ to $d$. Our main idea is to put a modified version of $\Pi^*_2$ in $\Pi^*_1[(1:n) \times (n+1:m+n)]$ and make $\Pi^*_1[(n+1:m+n) \times (n+1:m+n)]$ diagonal. First we describe how to modify $\Pi^*_2$. Observe that, if for some $(i, j)$ $C_{i, j} > 2 \lambda$, we expect $X_i \in \mathrm{supp}(\mu_n)$ to be an outlier resulting in high transportation cost, which is why we truncate the cost in F2. Therefore, to get an optimal solution of F1, we make the corresponding value of optimal plan $0$ and dump the mass into the corresponding slack variable $t_1^*$ in the diagonal of the bottom right submatrix. This changes the row sum, which is taken care of by $s_1^*$. But, as we are not moving this mass outside the corresponding column, the column sum of $\Pi^*_1[(1:(m+n)):((n+1):(m+n))]$ remains same as column sum of $\Pi^*_2$, which is $\nu_n$. We summarize this procedure in Algorithm \ref{algo:f1-f2}.
\begin{figure}[ht!]
\centering
\includegraphics[scale=0.39]{Pics/robot_equivalence.pdf}
\caption{Constructing optimal solution of Formulation 1 from optimal solution of Formulation 2.}
\label{fig:construction}
\end{figure}
\paragraph{Example.} In Figure \ref{fig:construction}, we provide an example to visualize the construction. On the left, we have $\Pi^*_2$, an optimal solution of Formulation 2. The blue triangles denote the positions where the corresponding cost value is $\le 2 \lambda$, and light-green squares denote the positions where the corresponding value of the cost matrix is $> 2 \lambda$. To construct an optimal solution $\Pi^*_1$ of Formulation 1 from this $\Pi^*_2$, we first create an augmented matrix of size $6 \times 6$. We keep all the entries of the left $6 \times 3$ sub-matrix as $0$ (in this picture blank elements indicate $0$). On the right submatrix, we put $\Pi^*_2$ into the top-right block, but remove the masses from light-green squares, i.e.\ where cost value is $> 2\lambda$, and put it in the diagonal entries of the bottom right block as shown in Figure \ref{fig:construction}. This mass contributes to the slack variables $s_1$ and $t_1$, and this augmented matrix along with $s_1, t_1$ give us an optimal solution of Formulation 1.
\subsection{Outlier detection with ROBOT}
Our construction algorithm has practical consequences for outlier detection. Suppose we have two datasets, a clean dataset $\nu_m$ (i.e., has no outliers) and an outlier-contaminated dataset $\mu_n$. We can detect the outliers in $\mu_n$ without directly solving costly Formulation 1 by following Algorithm \ref{algo:outlier}. In this algorithm, $\lambda$ is a regularization parameter that can be chosen via cross-validation or heuristically (see Section \ref{sec:exp-outliers} for an example). In Section \ref{sec:exp-outliers}, we use this algorithm to perform outlier detection on image data.
\paragraph{Outlier detection with entropic regularization.}
Algorithm \ref{algo:f1-f2} allows us to recover solution of Formulation 1, which ultimately is used for outlier detection in Algorithm \ref{algo:outlier}, by solving the simpler truncated cost Formulation 2 problem in \eqref{eq:robot2-d}. Similarly to the regular OT, it can be solved exactly with a linear program solver---\citet{pele2009fast} propose a faster exact solution based on min-cost-flow solvers benefiting from the cost truncation---or approximately using entropic regularization techniques, e.g.\ Sinkhorn algorithm \citep{cuturi2013Sinkhorn}. In the following lemma, we show that Algorithm \ref{algo:f1-f2} recovers a meaningful approximate solution of Formulation 1 from an approximate solution of Formulation 2 obtained with entropy-regularized OT solvers.
\begin{lemma}
\label{lem:entropy-f2-f1}
Let $\Pi_{2, \alpha}^*$ be a solution of the entropy regularized version of \eqref{eq:robot2-d}:
\begin{align}
\begin{aligned}
& {\arg\min}_{\Pi\in{\bbR}^{n\times m}} & & \langle C_{\lambda},\Pi \rangle + \alpha H(\Pi)\\
& {\sf subject\ to} & & \Pi1_{n} = \mu_n,\quad
\Pi^{\top}1_{m} = \nu_m,\quad
\Pi \succeq 0,
\end{aligned}
\label{eq:robot2-d-entropy}
\end{align}
and let $\left(\Pi_{1, \alpha}^*, \mathbf{s}^*_{1, \alpha}\right)$ be the corresponding approximate solution of Formulation 1 recovered from $\Pi^*_{2, \alpha}$ by Algorithm \ref{algo:f1-f2}. Then
$$
\| \Pi^*_{1, \alpha} - \Pi^*_{1}\|_F + \|\mathbf{s}^*_{1, \alpha} - \mathbf{s}^*_{1}\|_2 \rightarrow 0
$$
as $\alpha \to 0$, where $\left(\Pi^*_{1}, \mathbf{s}^*_{1}\right)$ is the exact solution of Formulation 1 in \eqref{eq:robot1-d}.
\end{lemma}
When the solution of \eqref{eq:robot2-d} is non-unique, then the solution of \eqref{eq:robot2-d-entropy} converges to the solution of \eqref{eq:robot2-d} with maximum entropy (see Proposition 4.1 of \citet{peyre2018Computational}) and consequently recovers the corresponding maximum entropy solution $\left(\Pi_{1}^*, \mathbf{s}^*_{1}\right)$ of \eqref{eq:robot1-d} by Algorithm \ref{algo:f1-f2} in the limit. Please find the proof in Appendix \ref{sec:lemma_sinkhorn}.
\begin{algorithm}
\caption{Outlier detection in contaminated data}\label{algo:outlier}
\begin{algorithmic}[1]
\STATE Start with $\mu_n$ (contaminted data) and $\nu_m$ (clean data).
\STATE Solve Formulation 2 and obtain $\Pi^*_2$ using a suitable value of $\lambda$.
\STATE Use Algorithm \ref{algo:f1-f2} to obtain $\Pi^*_1, s^*_1, t^*_1$ from $\Pi^*_2$.
\STATE Find $\mathcal{I}$, the set of all the indices where $\mu_n + s_1^* = 0$.
\STATE Return $\mathcal{I}$ as the indices of outliers in $\mu_n$.
\end{algorithmic}
\end{algorithm}
\section{Empirical studies}
\label{sec:experiments}
To evaluate effectiveness of ROBOT, we consider the task of robust mean estimation under the Huber contamination model. The data is generated from $(1-{\epsilon})\mathcal{N}(\eta_0,I_d) + {\epsilon}\mathcal{N}(\eta_1,I_d)$ and the goal is to estimate $\eta_0$. Prior work has advocated for using $f$-divergence GANs \citep{chao2018robust,wu2020minimax} for this problem and pointed out inefficiencies of Wasserstein GAN in the presence of outliers. We show that our robust OT formulation allows to estimate the uncontaminated mean $\eta_0$ comparably or better than a variety of $f$-divergence GANs. We also use this simulated setup to study sensitivity to the cost truncation hyperparameter $\lambda$.
In our second experiment, we present a new application of optimal transport enabled by ROBOT. Suppose we have collected a curated dataset $\nu_m$ (i.e., we know that it has no outliers)---such data collection is expensive, and we want to benefit from it to automate subsequent data collection. Let $\mu_n$ be a second dataset collected ``in the wild,'' i.e., it may or may not have outliers. We demonstrate how ROBOT can be used to identify outliers in $\mu_n$ using the curated dataset $\nu_m$.
\begin{table*}[t]
\caption{Robust mean estimation with GANs using different distribution divergences. True mean is $\eta_0 = \mathbf{0}_5$; sample size $n=1000$; contamination proportion ${\epsilon}=0.2$. We report results over 30 experiment restarts.}
\label{table:robogan}
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{lccccc}
\toprule
Contamination & JS Loss & SH Loss & RKL Loss & ROBOT & UOT\\
\midrule
$\mathcal{N}(0.1 \cdot \mathbf{1_5}, I_5)$ & \textbf{0.09} $\pm$ 0.03 & 0.11 $\pm$ 0.03 & 0.115 $\pm$ 0.03 & 0.1 $\pm$ 0.03 & 0.1 $\pm$ 0.04 \\
$\mathcal{N}(0.5 \cdot \mathbf{1_5}, I_5)$ & 0.23 $\pm$ 0.04 & 0.24 $\pm$ 0.05 & 0.24 $\pm$ 0.05 & \textbf{0.117} $\pm$ 0.03 & 0.2 $\pm$ 0.04 \\
$\mathcal{N}(1 \cdot \mathbf{1_5}, I_5)$ & 0.43 $\pm$ 0.05 & 0.43 $\pm$ 0.06& 0.43 $\pm$ 0.06 & 0.261 $\pm$ 0.06 & \textbf{0.25} $\pm$ 0.05 \\
$\mathcal{N}(2 \cdot \mathbf{1_5}, I_5)$ & 0.67 $\pm$ 0.07 & 0.67 $\pm$ 0.08 & 0.67 $\pm$ 0.08 & 0.106 $\pm$ 0.03 & \textbf{0.1} $\pm$ 0.03 \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\end{table*}
\begin{figure*}[htp]
\centering
\subfigure[Varying proportion of contamination]{\includegraphics[scale=0.31]{Pics/Varying_eps_normal.pdf}}\hspace{1cm}
\subfigure[Varying outlier distribution mean]{\includegraphics[scale=0.31]{Pics/Varying_eta_normal.pdf}}
\caption{Empirical study of the cost truncation hyperparameter $\lambda$ sensitivity.}
\label{fig:sim-performance}
\end{figure*}
\subsection{Robust mean estimation}
\label{sec:robust_mean_est}
Following \citet{wu2020minimax}, we consider a simple generator of the form $g_\theta(x) = x + \theta$, $x \sim \mathcal{N}(0,I_d)$, $d$ is the data dimension. The basic idea of robust mean estimation with GANs is to minimize various distributional divergences between samples from $g_\theta$ and observed data simulated from $(1-{\epsilon})\mathcal{N}(\eta_0,I_d) + {\epsilon}\mathcal{N}(\eta_1,I_d)$. The goal is to estimate $\eta_0$ with $\theta$.
To efficiently implement ROBOT GAN, we use a standard min-max optimization approach: solve the inner max (ROBOT) and use gradient descent for the outer min parameter. To solve ROBOT, it is straightforward to adopt any of the prior stochastic regularized OT solvers: the only modification is the truncation of the cost entries as in \eqref{eq:robot2-d}. We use the stochastic algorithm for semi-discrete regularized OT \citep[Algorithm 2]{genevay2016stochastic}. We summarize ROBOT GAN in Algorithm \ref{algo:robogan}. Line 5 - Line 11 perform the inner optimization where we solve the entropy regularized OT dual with truncated cost and Line 12 - Line 14 perform gradient update of $\theta$.
For the $f$-divergence GANs \citep{nowozin2016f}, we use the code of \citet{wu2020minimax} for GANs with Jensen-Shannon (JS) loss, squared Hellinger (SH) loss, and Reverse Kullback-Leibler (RKL) loss. For the exact expressions of these divergences, see Table 1 of \citet{wu2020minimax}. We report estimation error measured by the Euclidean distance between true uncontaminated mean $\eta_0$ and estimated mean $\theta$ for various contamination distributions in Table \ref{table:robogan}. ROBOT GAN performs well across all considered contamination distributions. As the difference between true mean $\eta_0$ and contamination mean $\eta_1$ increases, the estimation error of all methods tends to increase. However, when it becomes easier to distinguish outliers from clean samples, i.e., $\eta_1 = 2 \cdot \mathbf{1_5}$, performance of ROBOT noticeably improves. We present an analogous study with data simulated from a mixture of Cauchy distributions in Appendix \ref{sec:robot_cauchy}\footnote{All codes are available at \url{https://github.com/debarghya-mukherjee/Robust-Optimal-Transport}.}.
\begin{algorithm}
\caption{ROBOT GAN}
\label{algo:robogan}
\begin{algorithmic}[1]
\STATE \textbf{Input: } robustness regularizion $\lambda$, entropic regularization $\alpha$, data distribution $\mu_n \in \Delta^{n-1}$, $supp(\mu_n)= \mathcal{X} = [X_1,\dots,X_n]$, steps sizes $\tau$ and $\gamma$
\STATE \textbf{Initialize: } Initialize $\theta = \theta_{init}$, set number of iterations $M$ and $L$, $i = 0$, $\mathbf{v} = \tilde \mathbf{v} = \mathbf{0}$.
\FOR{$j=1,\dots,M$}
\STATE Generate $\tilde z \sim \mathcal{N}(0, I_d)$ and set $z = \tilde z + \theta$.
\STATE Set the cost vector $\mathbf{c} \in \mathbb{R}^n$ as $\mathbf{c}(k) = \min\{c(X_k, z), 2\lambda\}$ for $k = 1,\dots,n$.
\FOR{$i=1,\dots,L$}
\STATE Set $\mathbf{h} \leftarrow \frac{\tilde \mathbf{v} - \mathbf{c}}{\alpha}$ and do the normalized exponential transformation $\mathbf{u} \leftarrow \frac{e^{\mathbf{h}}}{\langle \mathbf{1}, e^{\mathbf{h}}\rangle}$.
\STATE Calculate the gradient $\nabla \tilde \mathbf{v} \leftarrow \mu_n - \mathbf{u}$.
\STATE Update $\tilde \mathbf{v} \leftarrow \tilde \mathbf{v} + \gamma \nabla \tilde \mathbf{v}$ and $\mathbf{v} \leftarrow (1/(j+i))\tilde \mathbf{v} + (j+i-1/(j+i))\mathbf{v}$.
\ENDFOR
\STATE Do the same transformation of $\mathbf{v}$ as in Step 7, i.e.\ set $\mathbf{h} \leftarrow \frac{\mathbf{v} - \mathbf{c}}{\alpha}$ and set $\Pi \leftarrow \frac{e^{\mathbf{h}}}{\langle \mathbf{1}, e^{\mathbf{h}}\rangle}$.
\STATE Set $\Pi(k) = 0$ for $k$ such that $c(X_k, z) > 2\lambda$ for $k=1,\dots,n.$
\STATE Calculate gradient with respect to $\theta$ as $\nabla \theta = 2\left[z\sum_{k}\Pi(k) - \mathcal{X}^{\top} \Pi\right]$
\STATE Update $\theta \leftarrow \theta - \tau \nabla \theta$.
\ENDFOR
\STATE \textbf{Ouput: }$\theta$
\end{algorithmic}
\end{algorithm}
We also compared to the Sinkhorn-based UOT algorithm \citep{chizat2018scaling} available in the Python Optimal Transport (POT) library \citep{flamary2017pot}; to obtain a UOT GAN, we modified steps 5-12 of Algorithm \ref{algo:robogan} for computing $\Pi$.
Unsurprisingly, both ROBOT and UOT perform similarly: recall equivalence to Formulation 3, which is similar to UOT with TV norm. The key insight of our work is the equivalence to classical OT with truncated cost, that greatly simplifies optimization and allows to use existing stochastic OT algorithms. In this experiment, the sample size $n=1000$ is sufficiently small for the Sinkhorn-based UOT POT implementation to be effective, but it breaks in the experiment we present in Section \ref{sec:exp-outliers}. We also tried the code of \citet{balaji2020robust} based on CVXPY \citep{diamond2016cvxpy}, but it is too slow even for the $n=1000$ sample size. In Subsection \ref{sec:balaji_comp} we present a comparison to \citet{balaji2020robust} on a smaller sample size.
\paragraph{Hyperparameter sensitivity study.} In the previous experiment, we set $\lambda = 0.5$. Now we demonstrate empirically that there is a broad range of $\lambda$ values performing well. In Figure \ref{fig:sim-performance}(a), we study sensitivity of $\lambda$ under various contamination proportions ${\epsilon}$ holding $\eta_0=\mathbf{1}_5$ and $\eta_1=5 \cdot \mathbf{1}_5$ fixed. Horizontal lines correspond to $\lambda=\infty$, i.e., vanilla OT. The key observations are: there is a wide range of $\lambda$ efficient at all contamination proportions (note the $\log_{10}$ $x$-axis scale), and ROBOT is always at least as good as vanilla OT (even when there is no contamination ${\epsilon}=0$). In Figure \ref{fig:sim-performance}(b), we present a similar study varying the mean of the contamination distribution and holding ${\epsilon}=0.2$ fixed. We see that as the contamination distribution gets closer to the true distribution, it becomes harder to pick a good $\lambda$, but the performance is always at least as good as the vanilla OT (horizontal lines).
\subsection{Outlier detection for data collection}
\label{sec:exp-outliers}
Our robust OT formulation \eqref{eq:robot1-d} enables outlier identification. Let $\nu_m$ be a clean dataset and $\mu_n$ potentially contaminated with outliers. Recall that ROBOT allows modification of one of the input distributions to eliminate potential outliers. We can identify outliers in $\mu_n$ as follows: if $\mu_n(i) + s^*_1(i) = 0$, then $X_i$, the $i$th point in $\mu_n$, is an outlier. Instead of directly solving \eqref{eq:robot1-d}, which may be inefficient, we use our equivalence results and solve an easier optimization problem \eqref{eq:robot2-d}, followed by recovering $\mathbf{s}$ to find outliers via Algorithm \ref{algo:outlier}. When using entropy-regularized approximate solutions to detect outliers with Algorithm \ref{algo:outlier}, in step 4, $\mu_n + s^*_1$ will not be exactly 0 for the outliers, so a small threshold should be used instead. We modify step 4 to ``Find $\mathcal{I}$, the set of all the indices where $\mu_n + s_1^* < 1/n^2$'' when using entropy regularization.
To test our outlier-identification methodology we follow the experimental setup of \citet{tagasovska2019single}. Specifically, let $\nu_m$ be a clean dataset consisting of 10k MNIST digits from 0 to 4 and $\mu_n$ be a dataset collected ``in the wild'' consisting of (different) 8k MNIST digits from 0 to 4 and 2k outlier MNIST images of digits from 5 to 9. We compute ROBOT$(\mu_n,\nu_m)$ to identify outlier digit images in $\mu_n$. For each point in $\mu_n$ we obtain a prediction, outlier or clean, which allows us to evaluate accuracy. \citet{tagasovska2019single} use last-layer features of a neural network pre-trained on the clean data $\nu_m$---it is straightforward to combine ROBOT and other baselines we consider with any feature extractor, but in this experiment we simply use the raw data.
We compare to the Orthonormal Certificates (OC) method of \citet{tagasovska2019single} and to a variety of standard outlier detection algorithms available in Scikit-learn \citep{scikit-learn}: one class SVM \cite{scholkopf1999support}, local outlier factor \cite{breunig2000lof}, isolation forest \cite{liu2008isolation} and elliptical envelope \cite{rousseeuw1999fast}. All baselines except one class SVM and local outlier factor use clean data for training as does our method.
\begin{table}
\centering
\caption{Outlier detection on MNIST.}
\vspace{.05in}
\begin{tabular}{lccc}
\toprule
Methods & Accuracy \\
\hline
One class SVM & $0.496 \pm 0.003$ \\
Local outlier factor & $0.791 \pm 0.001$ \\
Isolation forest & $0.636 \pm 0.010$ \\
Elliptical envelope & $0.739 \pm 0.002$ \\
Orthonormal Certificates & $0.819 \pm 0.008$ \\
ROBOT & $0.859 \pm 0.002$ \\
ROBOT-Sinkhorn & $\textbf{0.897} \pm 0.004$
\end{tabular}
\label{table:outliers}
\end{table}
\begin{figure}[!ht]
\centering
\includegraphics[scale=0.15]{Pics/MNIST_io.pdf}
\qquad
\centering
\includegraphics[scale=0.15]{Pics/MNIST_oi.pdf}
\qquad
\begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|}
\multicolumn{2}{c}{$\overbrace{\rule{9.5em}{0pt}}^{\text{Inliers detected as outliers}}$}&
\multicolumn{2}{c}{$\overbrace{\rule{9.5em}{0pt}}^{\text{Outliers detected as inliers}}$}\\
\hline \hline
digit & count & digit & count \\
\hline \hline
0 & 10 & 5 & 191\\
1 & 1 & 6 & 94\\
2 & 53 & 7 & 175 \\
3 & 32 & 8 & 181 \\
4 & 22 & 9 & 309 \\
\hline \hline
\end{tabular}
\captionlistentry[table]{A table beside a figure}
\caption{Insights into ROBOT-Sinkhorn performance: the top left figure is a collection of random inlier digits miss-classified as outliers; the top right picture represents random outlier digits miss-classified as inliers and the table illustrates frequency distribution of miss-classified images. The majority of the errors are on digit 9, possibly due to its similarity to 4.}
\label{fig:mnist}
\end{figure}
Results of 30 experiment repetitions are summarized in Table \ref{table:outliers}. ROBOT, i.e.\ Algorithm \ref{algo:outlier} where \eqref{eq:robot2-d} is solved exactly with a linear program solver, and ROBOT-Sinkhorn, i.e.\ Algorithm \ref{algo:outlier} where \eqref{eq:robot2-d} is solved approximately using Sinkhorn \citep{cuturi2013Sinkhorn}, produce the best results. In this experiment ROBOT-Sinkhorn outperforms ROBOT, but it is not necessarily to be expected in general. We conclude that our method is effective in assisting data collection once an initial set of clean data has been acquired and is compatible with entropy-regularized OT solvers ensuring scalability.
Elliptical envelope assumes that clean data is Gaussian, while one class SVM, isolation forest and local outlier factor correspondingly attempt to fit SVM, random forest and $k$-nearest neighbors classifiers to distinguish clean and outlier samples. All these baselines work best when the clean data is unimodal, which is not the case for the MNIST 0 to 4 digits considered in our experiment. The orthonormal certificates method is rooted in PCA and assumes that clean and outlier data live in different subspaces. This assumption is reasonable for the MNIST data, but it might not hold broadly in practice. We believe that empirical success of our method is due to its optimal transport nature. OT is a geometry-sensitive metric on distributions that can distinguish multi-modal distributions and distributions supported on the same subspace. We provide additional insights into the ROBOT performance in Figure \ref{fig:mnist}. A theoretical investigation of ROBOT outlier-detection guarantees is an interesting future work direction.
\paragraph{Hyperparameter selection.}
To select the cost truncation hyperparameter $\lambda$, we propose the following heuristic: since we know that $\nu_m$ is clean, we can subsample two datasets from it, compute vanilla OT to obtain transportation plan $\Pi$ and set $\lambda$ to be half the maximum distance between matched elements, i.e.\ $2\lambda = \max_{i,j}\{C_{ij}:\,\Pi_{ij}>0\}$, where $C$ is the cost matrix for the two subsampled datasets. This procedure is essentially estimating maximum distance between matched clean samples. To avoid subsampling noise we use 99th percentile instead of the maximum. Our experiments also revealed that increasing $\lambda$ increases the set of outliers progressively, i.e. if a sample is detected as outlier for some value of $\lambda$, then it will be detected as outlier for all higher values of $\lambda$. A rigorous theoretical analysis for this observation is a potential future work.
The Orthonormal Certificates method \citep{tagasovska2019single} also requires setting a threshold. It computes the null-space of the clean train data and uses the norm of the projection into that space as a score to distinguish outliers. Similarly to ROBOT, and as the authors do in their code, we use 99th percentile of those scores computed on the clean train data as the threshold. For other baselines, we use the default hyperparameters.
\subsection{Comparison with \citet{balaji2020robust}}
\label{sec:balaji_comp}
We conduct additional experiments comparing to the recent robust optimal transport method of \citet{balaji2020robust}. Their method relies on CVXPY and does not scale to the sample sizes considered in our previous experiments. We compare on smaller data sizes.
\textbf{Robust mean estimation.} We set $n = 200$ samples with contamination distribution mean equal to 2 and true mean equal to $0$ (same configuration as in the last row in Table \ref{table:robogan}). The runtime and the estimation error is reported in Table \ref{table:est_balaji}.
\begin{table}
\centering
\caption{Robust mean estimation for $n =200$.}
\vspace{-.05in}
\begin{tabular}{lccc}
\toprule
Method & Estimation error & Run-time\\
\hline
ROBOT-Sinkhorn & $0.196 \pm 0.1$ & $35s \pm 0.6s$\\
\citet{balaji2020robust} & $0.212 \pm 0.074$ & $7745s \pm 1670s$
\end{tabular}
\label{table:est_balaji}
\end{table}
\textbf{Outlier detection experiment.} In this experiment, we consider the size of the entire dataset (inliers + outliers) to be $n=1000$ (with $800$ inliers and $200$ outliers). The results (accruacy and run-time) are provided in Table \ref{table:mnist_balaji}.
\begin{table}
\centering
\caption{Outlier detection for $n=1000$.}
\vspace{-.05in}
\begin{tabular}{lccc}
\toprule
Method & Estimation error & Run-time \\
\hline
ROBOT-Sinkhorn & $0.86 \pm 0.015$ & $6 \pm 2s$ \\
\citet{balaji2020robust} & $0.8 \pm 0.0005$ & $3343 \pm 960s$
\end{tabular}
\label{table:mnist_balaji}
\end{table}
The method of \citet{balaji2020robust} is significantly slower as expected. Comparing the performance, we think that ROBOT performs better because it is based on TV norm, while the method of \citet{balaji2020robust} uses a chi-squared constraints on the marginal perturbations. A TV constraint on the marginal perturbations is more closely related to the ${\epsilon}$-contamination model for outlier detection, suggesting that a TV-based constraint/regularizer could be a better choice for the outlier detection applications. We also note that in the outlier detection experiment, using chi-square divergence results in a non-sparse solution and requires tuning a threshold parameter to perform outlier detection, in addition to the chi-square distance hyperparameter. We tuned those parameters, but were not able to achieve significant performance improvements for the method of \citet{balaji2020robust}.
\section{Summary and discussion}
We propose and study ROBOT, a robust formulation of optimal transport. Although the problem is seemingly asymmetric and challenging to optimize, there is an equivalent formulation based on cost truncation that is symmetric and compatible with modern stochastic optimization methods for OT.
ROBOT closely resembles unbalanced optimal transport (UOT). In our formulation, we added a TV regularizer to the vanilla optimal transport problem. This is motivated by the ${\epsilon}$-contamination model. In UOT, the TV regularizer is typically replaced with a KL divergence. Other choices of the regularizer may lead to new properties and applications. Studying equivalent, simpler formulations of UOT with different divergences may be a fruitful future work direction.
From the practical perspective, in our experiments we observed no degradation of ROBOT GAN in comparison to OT GAN, even when there were no outliers. It is possible that replacing OT with ROBOT may be beneficial for various machine learning applications of OT. Data encountered in practice may not be explicitly contaminated with outliers, but it often has errors and other deficiencies, suggesting that a ``no-harm'' robustness is desirable.
\section*{Acknowledgements}
This paper is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grants no. 1830247 and 1916271. J. Solomon acknowledges the generous support of Army Research Office grants W911NF1710068 and W911NF2010168, of Air Force Office of Scientific Research award FA9550-19-1-031, of National Science Foundation grant IIS-1838071, from the CSAIL Systems that Learn program, from the MIT–IBM Watson AI Laboratory, from the Toyota–CSAIL Joint Research Center, from a gift from Adobe Systems, and from the Skoltech–MIT Next Generation Program. We also thank anonymous reviewers, whose comments were extremely helpful for further improvement of our paper.
\include{Appendix_2}
\newpage
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaArXiv"
}
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Q: Getting date info into an array in Objective-C Cocoa framework I have a function that returns an array to hold date info.
- (NSArray*) getTodayArray
{
NSDate *today = [NSDate date];
NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"YYYY"];
NSString *year = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:today];
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"MM"];
NSString *month = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:today];
[dateFormatter release];
NSArray *res = [NSArray arrayWithObjects: year, month, nil];
return res;
}
*
*Q1 : Is there any easy way to get all the info (year, month, date, hour, minute ...) in an array not using setDateFormat over and over again?
*Q2 : Is there a way so that I can access the content of array using res['year'] or similar? I mean using dictionary?
*Q3 : Do I need to release NSArray *res in the caller of this function?
A: @prosseek
1 - I dont think you have another choice to get the year, month, date, hour, minute ... from NSDate other than this.(I am not sure about it though.)
2 - you can access the objects in the dictionary in the above format but something more like objective-c style. like this
[dateDictionary obectForKey:@"year"];
but you need to define the dictionary in that format
like this
NSDictionary *dateDictionary = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjects:year,min,hr,nil forKeys:@"year", @"min", @"hour", nil];
3 - no you dont need to release or autorelease the NSArray in the above method . but i think you need to retain it in the array that is receiving res array if you want to use it after a while.
A: A1: You can do smth like this:
NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"YYYY|MM"];
NSArray* d_arr = [[dateFormatter stringFromDate: [NSDate date]] componentsSeparatedByString: @"|"];
A2: Use NSDictionary:
[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys: [d_arr objectAtIndex: 0], @"year", [d_arr objectAtIndex: 1], @"month", nil]
A3: return value is autoreleased. you don't need to release it.
A: Why don't you just use a NSArray of NSDates?
You can probably get all of your desired functionality out of its plethora of functions.
A: A1: You could dump it all out into a string, but then you'd have to parse the string, which wouldn't be any easier.
A2: You could do that if you used an NSDictionary instead of an NSArray.*
A3: No, it's already autoreleased.
* Why don't you write a category for NSDate instead?
NSDate+Convenience.h
@interface NSDate (Convenience)
- (NSInteger)year;
- (NSInteger)month;
@end
NSDate+Convenience.m
@implementation NSDate (Convenience)
- (NSInteger)year {
NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"YYYY"];
NSString *myYear = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:self];
[dateFormatter release];
return myYear;
}
- (NSInteger)month {
NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"MM"];
NSString *myMonth = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:self];
[dateFormatter release];
return myMonth;
}
@end
Just #include NSDate+Convenience.h wherever you want to use your handy date and month accessors. All of your NSDate instances will then get them:
NSDate *myDate = [NSDate date];
NSLog(@"%ld %ld", [myDate year], [myDate month]);
No need for loosely-typed NSArrays or NSDictionaries to store this stuff.
(Note you could modify the above code to use a shared NSDateFormatter.)
A: Q1: Not an array, but you can use -[NSCalendar components:fromDate:] to get an NSDateComponents object. You can use it directly or build an array from it, if that is your preference.
Q2: No, but if you return an NSDateComponents object, then you can use -year, -month, etc methods on it.
Q3: No, you don't need to release it in this method or the caller, unless the caller retains it (which may be desirable).
A: *
*You're looking for the NSDateComponents class. You'll need to create an NSCalendar object first, then call the components:fromDate: method to get the DateComponents object, after which you can access the object's month, year etc. properties.
*Not quite sure what you want here. As it stands, the array cannot be accessed in the manner you describe, though if you want you could always create a dictionary and assign values for keys such as 'month' or 'year'. However, it might just be easier to return the DateComponents object, and access its properties.
*No, there is no need to release the NSArray. You constructed it using the NSArray class method, which is already autoreleased.
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{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
}
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/* Function Helpers */
"use strict";
/** Serialize JavaScript function as string.
* @param f {function} The function to be serialized.
* @returns {string} The function serialized to JavaScript string.
*/
module.exports = function function_toString() {
var f = this.f;
if(!(f && (f instanceof Function))) {
throw new TypeError("argument is not Function");
}
var s = ''+f;
if(s.substr(0, 8) !== 'function') {
throw new TypeError('Failed to serialize function: ' + f);
}
return s;
};
/* EOF */
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
}
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RB Sports Discussion >
Monday Morning Quarterback (Moderators: HogFansReunited, Tomhog™, SPAL, Jason Carroll, Razorbacks#1, ErieHog, marty houston, jbcarol, Scott Marshall, Wisco Pig, A_R_K_A_N_S_A_S, Alyssa Orange, Otis Kirk) >
Topic: This is all you need to know about Morris...
Author Topic: This is all you need to know about Morris... (Read 6711 times)
This is all you need to know about Morris...
Worst SEC coaching tenures of the modern era:
Chad Morris, Ark: 4-18, 0-14
Rod Dowhower, Vandy: 4-18, 1-15
Ed Orgeron, Ole Miss: 10-25, 3-21
Woody Widenhofer, VU: 15-40, 4-36
Joker Phillips, 13-24, 4-20
Derek Dooley, Tenn: 17-21, 5-19
(4 people liked this)
WorfHog
neH wa' Qap
Re: This is all you need to know about Morris...
Not saying Chad would ever make a comeback, but it's odd that Ed O now has the #1 team in the nation.
TeufelHog
Never Forget, Never Yield!
I think Ed Orgeron is the prototypical figurehead. He has a FANTASTIC staff (OC/DC) and TREMENDOUS athletes. Those all make HCs look better than they are! It will be interesting to see what happens to LSU in the future after the OC and DC leave for HC positions.
PORKULATOR
Hall of Fame Hogvillian
knows how to 'dunk the crumpets'
He'll go somewhere else and be a winner I guarantee it. We are cursed we are an embarrassing shame and we've ruined coach before if the next coach isn't the perfect fit it will set our program back a decade.
Nobody does more with less then who's ever playing us every week and nobody does less with more than who's ever coaching the Arkansas Razorbacks.
Hogvillian
The Little Red Hen was obviously a conservative.
And for those saying Chad needed a 3rd year, the records of those listed would indicate otherwise. All but Dowhower got at least 3 years with no improvement at all.
Surfing the web at Hogville.net
Quote from: TeufelHog on November 10, 2019, 12:21:19 pm
It certainly doesn't hurt that Ed is probably the single best recruiter in the college football world.
Quote from: PORKULATOR on November 10, 2019, 12:23:12 pm
I have this terrible feeling he will end up as the OC at A&M and will lay 50 on us year in and year out.
TNRazorbacker
Its also possible it was just a learning process
Redhogs
Time to cruise.
Quote from: Razor1997 on November 10, 2019, 12:24:37 pm
Ha, ha, ha, yea, I'm not going to worry about that just now.......
Killean
Chaos From Order
I doubt it. He might end up as the OC at A&M and then their offense will crater and he'd get himself and Jimbo fired.
Bacons Rebellion
Heck Clark was 0-36 at Sewanee before they dropped out of the SEC.
Kind of a pity we didn't let Morris go for the all-time record.
(notOM)Rebel123
Gold Hogvillian
Hogville.net
Dang dude. You worry waaaay too much.
hog of steele
Taxi, Take to Arkansas!
Quote from: WorfHog on November 10, 2019, 12:15:59 pm
It isn't impossible for Chad to become a good coach. He has some positive characteristics. He does recruit well. He does do well in interviews (that aren't all about how crappy he is coaching).
He just has some stuff to learn. Sometimes failure teaches you what you need to learn. So he will go coach on another staff. He will pay more attention to how the coach builds winning culture, organizes his team for winning and balances offensive philosophy with the player's ability.
It is totally possible that chad gets it all together and breaks through. But this was clearly not his moment.
Quote from: Killean on November 10, 2019, 12:31:30 pm
Is that how it worked at Clemson?
Quote from: hog of steele on November 10, 2019, 12:43:55 pm
They got rid of Chad and went on to win national titles.
Chad isn't the first OC to build an unwarranted rep based on the exploits of a great player. He won't be the last.
He will NEVER be an FBS head coach again. It's doubtful that he will be an FBS coordinator again, although some group of 5 team in desperate need might take a flyer.
BroyledNutts
That's what happens when you have the ability to get highly ranked recruiting classes and players.
I would dare to think you could even place someone like Morris into a situation like LSU and have wins - maybe not #1 in the nation wins, but more wins than at Arkansas.
The capability of the head coach does have something to do with it - either through his own talents, or getting the most out of his assistants - but, in the end, it all depends on the recruiting pool.
hogfan10
Gus malzhan - McFadden/Newton.
Muleriderhog
For the love of God, please hire Drinkwitz
Ed O is a perfect CEO coach, he recruits and manages the Dline and let's his coordinators do their job.
Jimbo won't hire this loser.
TheEnemy
Quote from: Muleriderhog on November 10, 2019, 12:56:45 pm
I believe he is on record saying that he learned that after being fired from Ole Miss.
Recognized that his talents were recruiting and motivating player. Now he focuses on hiring good assistants and letting them coach and staying out of their way.
31to6
Go Hogs!
Ed O learned this the hard way.
He was bad at OM. They had problems just getting players on and off the field. Complete clown show.
His success shows that it is possible for a motivational CEO-HC to do well, but he has to surround himself with top-notch coordinators and a seasoned staff.
jim hog
It would be prudent for the AD to solicit information from Ken Hatfield, Lou Holtz, Houston Nutt and possibly others who have experience at Fayetteville in the coaching position before making a decision.
PearlHarbor
Quote from: jim hog on November 10, 2019, 01:14:38 pm
Houston Nutt?
SMB Hogfan
Yeah! He can ask the Hooter about airplanes, banners, and a piece of rope.
farmhawg
Quote from: porque on November 10, 2019, 11:19:21 am
So what, it's over.
HogPharmer
It certainly doesn't hurt that he is from Louisiana and coaches at Louisiana and has the state of Louisiana, which is full of 4 and 5* recruits, to pick players from.
I_Called_That_Play_Brotha
Never beaten a P5.
Here's what I don't get: CCM legitimately believed his job was safe?!?! HOW?!?!
Rumors are he went apesh*t when cut loose. Any truth to that? 🤔
Sivad
Of course not. Chex's dream of coaching the Aggies has gone up in smoke.
ballz2thewall
i laugh at the posts like "he's only good because he's got good players or good assistants".
well.....YEAH!!
Hoggish1
It isn't odd when you consider he wakes up each morning in one of the richest recruiting grounds in the nation and it's all within 100 miles of Baton Rouge.
Swinelake
Learned how to be a CEO. It's why Bret was starting to show serious progress before either he got lazy or his old demons rose up (depending on which rumor you believe)
The recruiting grounds will be just as fertile when those assistants leave and they can hire new staff that will be talented and hungry like the old staff.
Band Nerd
Orgeron is the CEO of the LSU program, but that's not a bad thing. Saban is the CEO of Alabama. He's no more hands-on with players than Orgeron is. Not saying the two are comparable, but Orgeron is the one who put this "FANTASTIC" staff together, so what's to say that he can't or won't go hire other fantastic assistants to replace those who leave? And he's shown the willingness to get rid of staff who doesn't mesh or doesn't work out...ie, Canada. He's also the front man for LSU's recruiting success and getting all those "TREMENDOUS" athletes. It's easy to bash on Coach Yaw Yaw, but he's doing a great job at LSU and this is his team.
N HOG
Yep...he amazingly gets those Louisiana kids to want to go to LSU.
Hey, a fellow Mulerider! I'm class of '99.
Hawgphat
Three Positive Indicators Promoting Unbridled Optimism Embedded In The Morris Firing:
(1) Morris is gone.
Quote from: N HOG on November 10, 2019, 09:09:25 pm
Two things. One, Louisiana kids are famous for leaving Louisiana. Saban has pretty much been able to hand-pick who he wants from Louisiana for the last several years. So if Coach Yaw Yaw can close down the borders, then that really is an accomplishment.
Two, Orgeron has been known as a good/great recruiter for most or all of his career. And I just took a look at LSU's current class. Only 8 of their 25 commitments are from Louisiana. He has 3 from Georgia and Texas...2 from Virginia, Maryland, and Florida...and 1 from Alabama, Cali, Colorado, DC, and Washington. So you can't diminish his ability to recruit when he has the no2 class (according to 247) from 10 different states and DC.
Coach Obvious
Just sayin' what everyone is really thinking...
Maybe we shoulda let him finish the year out.
You know, to get sole possession of the record.
If you you look deeper you will see that he has been a stellar recruiter everywhere he has coached.
RebelliousHog
Razorbacks: Hostile and mobile
Jimbo should do that. Because I don't see what he does will translate as an OC at Aggieland. Jimbo ain't Dabo
HognitiveDissonance
I have always had the general philosophy that you have to give a guy 4-5 years, and a BARE MINIMUM of three.
I still believe that, it's sound philosophy.
However, I can't fault Yuracek's decision. First, Morris is not Yuracek's hire, so this move is not surprising. Every AD wants their own people in place.
I do hate the bad precedent it sends, as it could encourage guys to cheat, cut corners, and do things the quick and dirty way instead of the honest and right way. If you know that you may be gone in less than two years...how fair is that?
However, I will readily admit that Morris had not shown anything in two years on the field. He had shown above average recruiting ability, for sure. Last year's recruiting class was very, very good. But he had not given Hog fans any spark of optimism that better days were ahead. No visible signs of progress were spotted.
I hate the quick trigger, but I honestly can't sit here and make a coherent argument against it.
So I'm ok with it.
ifghog
I agree about the head coach but you are very wrong about the OC. He will land a big power 5 oc job next year or the year after.
bennyl08
Ever since the war I've had a drinking problem
Quote from: HognitiveDissonance on November 10, 2019, 10:59:05 pm
Bielema inherited a way worse roster than Morris did. Even after he left, there were no rumors that he did anything dirty in regards to football. Only the alcoholism in his personal life. Yet, Bielema was able to get the team bowling in year 2.
We could hire 100 coaches and probably 95% percent of them would at least to get start year 3. You have to be in rare company to fired after just two seasons, and in Morris's case, before your 2nd season ends.
In another thread a while back, I went through all 14 SEC schools which culminated in ~1400 seasons of combined football. I found about 3 coaches in that entire span among the entire conference of coaches who had been fired for bad performance. Moreover, at best, there were no more than 5 coaches that maybe deserved to be fired after the 2nd season.
Morris went from defeating an FCS school by 30 something points to barely beating them by one td. We throttled Tulsa near the end of the season but were throttled by WKU near the end of this season. Aggie game was in the grand scheme similar. OM game we did worse. Most the others were all such blowouts that it's hard to even compare say a 47 point loss to a 38 point loss or something. With the LSU game coming up, hard for me to predict we do anything close to keeping that game within 7 points this year. All signs point to the 2018 team whooping the 2019's team butt up and down the field. Heck, the 2017 team would beat this team by nearly 50 most likely.
2-10 is the worst season in the history of hog football. Objectively speaking. Lowest win percentage of all time. Morris basically did a "hold my beer" to his first season to somehow make year 2 even worse.
No coach is going expect that they will be as historically bad as Morris was. And I'd hope that any coach that sets records for terribleness and is hammer down in reverse as a team would want to be fired.
Tejano Jawg
GO HOGS! BEAT BLUE!
The Orgeron-Morris situations are interesting contrasts.
Coach O showed up at LSU and, as it turns out, is just what they needed. In our case, we needed a new head coach, AND a witch doctor, AND a miracle worker, AND an executive chef, AND a TV repairman.
It's easier to look at the other side, more similar to the Coach O side. Great example—I present Gene Chizik. Before he got hired at Auburn he was 5-19 at Iowa State (that ratio kinda looks familiar) and 0-8 in his last season in the Big 12. His first year at AU he went 8-5...second year, when they were the high bidder on Cam Newton, he was 12-0 and the National Champion. It wasn't long before he came back to earth.
We are very different than most other programs. You fall into an abundance of talent, some good things can happen.
Hogs fan, and I don't do bandwagon.
The Burrow transfer in 2018, put it all together with (like you said) other tremendous athletes at the skill positions...
After Burrow is gone, LSU will not look as good as they do this year.
To say nothing of the fact that LSU has always been able to recruit better than Hogs ever could.
WBChogfan
With LSU, the natural advantages allow a great recruiter to be very successful.
And I don't mean just the players. The program is top-tier, and the local recruiting ground is very fertile, to be sure. That helps with players tremendously. But that also means you're going prospective coordinators and position coaches who want to be highly compensated and positioned either to take the jump to the next level, if they want to be head coaches, or to grow in their positions, if they are content to be assistants. A coach that has the charisma to recruit players likely (but not always) has a pretty good shot a being persuasive for hiring the best assistants.
And if you leave LSU in a few years, you have likely made some really good recruiting connections for yourself that you can use in your next job. Plus the "SEC experience" on your resume doesn't hurt at all.
You can't just go on auto-pilot at a place like LSU, but it's one of the easiest places to attract top-level talent in coaching staff and in players. It's the kind of place that can make average coaches look good, good coaches look great, and great coaches look legendary.
If you keep your nose to the grindstone and don't get complacent, you can eventually find a world-class athlete or two, and they can put you in a position to compete for national championships. That same athlete at a place like Arkansas would probably make a major impact, but there's a world of difference in potential for success being surrounded mostly by 3 star athletes vs mostly by 4-5 star athletes.
And that's why you'd need to be miracle worker or cheater at Ole Miss or Arkansas to be as successful as you can be at LSU by being just a really good coach.
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{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
}
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A escola peripatética foi um círculo filosófico da Grécia Antiga que basicamente seguia os ensinamentos de Aristóteles, o fundador. Fundada em c. , quando Aristóteles abriu a primeira escola filosófica no Liceu, em Atenas, durou até o .
"Peripatético" () é a palavra grega para "ambulante" ou "itinerante". Peripatéticos (ou "os que passeiam") eram discípulos de Aristóteles, em razão do hábito do filósofo de ensinar ao ar livre, caminhando enquanto lia e dava preleções, por sob os portais cobertos do Liceu, conhecidos como perípatos, ou sob as árvores que o cercavam.
A escola sempre teve uma orientação empírica - em oposição à Academia platônica, muito mais especulativa. Tal característica se acentua quando Teofrasto assume a direção.
O mais famoso membro da Escola peripatética depois de Aristóteles foi Estratão de Lâmpsaco, que incrementou os elementos naturais da filosofia de Aristóteles e adotou uma forma de deísmo.
Outros membros destacados da escola Peripatética foram:
Aristóxeno de Tarento;
Sátiro, o Peripatético;
Eudemo de Rodes;
Andrônico de Rodes;
Critolau;
Alexandre de Afrodísias;
Temístio.
Doutrinas principais
A visão filosófica de Aristóteles caracteriza-se pelo esforço em captar a realidade de modo unitário (contra o dualismo de Platão) e, ao mesmo tempo, pela tentativa de restituir as causas últimas de tudo aquilo que é mutável e contingente a um princípio único transcendente. Com este propósito, Aristóteles postula quatro causas fundamentais: a matéria e a forma (para explicar a estrutura intrínseca das realidade corpóreas), o agente e a finalidade (para explicar a origem das coisas e seu dinamismo).
Vale-se desses princípios para resolver todos os grande problemas:
Problema cosmológico: composição hilemórfica de todas as coisas, ou seja, todas elas são constituídas de matéria e forma, as quais se encontram na relação de potência e ato; teologia: o dinamismo das coisas e o seu devir são provocados pelo primeiro Motor Imóvel, o que é seu fim último.
Problema antropológico: o homem não é apenas alma, como afirmava Platão, mas é o resultado da união substancial de alma e corpo, a primeira concebida como forma e o segundo como matéria; entretanto, a alma compreende um elemento espiritual, divino e imortal.
Ver também
Filosofia helenística
Movimentos filosóficos
Filosofia helenística
!Mais Teoria da História na Wiki (Wikiconcurso de edição)
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"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
}
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using namespace std;
Symbol::Symbol(const std::string& name, size_t address, size_t size, SymbolType type)
:
name(name),
address(address),
size(size),
type(type)
{
}
Symbol::~Symbol()
{
}
SymbolTable::SymbolTable()
{
}
SymbolTable::~SymbolTable()
{
}
void SymbolTable::add(const std::string& name, size_t value, size_t size, SymbolType type)
{
symbols.push_back({name, value, size, type});
}
Symbol* SymbolTable::find(const std::string& name)
{
for(Symbol& symbol : symbols)
{
if (symbol.name == name)
return &symbol;
}
return nullptr;
}
void SymbolTable::read(const ElfSymbolTable& symbolTable, const ElfSectionStringTable& stringTable)
{
int symbolCount = symbolTable.getSymbolCount();
cout << "Reading " << symbolCount << " symbols into symbol table" << endl;
for(int i = 0; i < symbolCount; ++i)
{
const Elf64_Sym* sym = symbolTable.getSymbol(i);
string name = stringTable.getName(sym->st_name);
SymbolType symbolType = getType(sym->st_info);
cout << " [" << typeToChar(symbolType) << "]" << name;
add(name, sym->st_value, sym->st_size, symbolType);
}
cout << endl;
cout << endl;
}
char SymbolTable::typeToChar(SymbolType symbolType) const
{
switch(symbolType)
{
case SymbolType::Function:
return 'F';
case SymbolType::File:
return 'D';
case SymbolType::Object:
return 'O';
case SymbolType::Section:
return 'S';
case SymbolType::Unknown:
return '?';
}
return '!';
}
SymbolType SymbolTable::getType(unsigned char symInfo) const
{
int val = ELF64_ST_TYPE(symInfo);
switch(val)
{
case STT_FUNC:
return SymbolType::Function;
case STT_FILE:
return SymbolType::File;
case STT_OBJECT:
return SymbolType::Object;
case STT_SECTION:
return SymbolType::Section;
}
return SymbolType::Unknown;
}
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
}
| 1,543
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Hood Coins
A group of South African cryptocurrency investors have voiced concerns about the fate of their investment in the Fight to Fame (F2F token) after they reportedly were unable to withdraw their funds as promised.
Token Sale Attracts Over 2,000 Applicants
According to an IOL report, the investors had invested in a token that was promoted by Marius Fransman, a former regional leader of South Africa's governing party, the ANC. Some media reports suggest Fransman's company may have received over 2,000 applications from investors that include actors, writers, musicians, and directors that wanted to be a part of the project.
Fransman had planned to use the funds that were raised to promote an international TV reality boxing show called "Fight to Fame." The report adds that Fransman's company, F2F SA, would host large entertainment events at venues such as big casinos, where the tokens would be the means to access the venue and also to be exchanged for gambling chips.
Yet as one anonymous holder of the token explained, problems began when investors were unable to access their funds as promised. Instead of honoring the pledge to enable withdrawals after nine months, Fransman's company allegedly told investors they were only entitled to a loan that amounted to just a portion of their initial investment.
It is seemingly this unilateral change to the terms of the investment agreement that has sparked fears among F2F token holders that they may not recover their funds.
Impact of Pandemic on Fransman's Plans
Meanwhile, the report quotes Fransman — who appears to acknowledge that this company is failing to honor its pledge — explaining how Covid-19 and lockdowns have affected his company's plans. He said:
The unpredictability of Covid-19 and its variants has meant that the ICO could not take place then or now, at least until the pandemic starts to dissipate or die down completely. Arising from this hiatus, F2F SA has now received requests from various individuals wishing to opt-out, as they have their own challenges.
Fransman insists his plan was to only allow individuals to trade in their tokens after the launch of the ICO. However, Fransman suggested that his company is willing to consider, on a case-by-case basis, the buyback of the F2F tokens.
What are your thoughts about this story? Tell us what you think in the comments section below.
© 2022 Hood Coins.
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
}
| 6,073
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typedef struct Header
{
uint32_t magic; // Magic number, for ID'ing
bool is_hole; // Is this a hole?
size_t size; // Size of allocated memory, including header & footer
} Header;
typedef struct Footer
{
uint32_t magic; // Same magic number as above
Header *header; // Pointer to block header
} Footer;
void print_block(Header *header, Footer *footer);
typedef struct Heap
{
Ordered_array index; // Index of block headers
uintptr_t start_addr; // Start of allocated space
uintptr_t end_addr; // End of allocated space
uintptr_t max_addr; // Maximum value of end_addr
bool supervisor; // Should extra pages be supervisor-only?
bool readonly; // Should extra pages be read-only
} Heap;
Heap *create_heap(uintptr_t start, uintptr_t end, uintptr_t max,
bool supervisor, bool readonly);
int32_t find_smallest_hole(Heap *heap, size_t size, bool align);
void expand( Heap *heap, size_t new_size);
size_t contract(Heap *heap, size_t new_size);
bool header_comparer(void *a, void *b);
Header *make_header(uintptr_t loc, size_t size, bool is_hole);
Footer *make_footer(uintptr_t loc, Header *assoc_header);
Footer *assoc_footer(Header *header);
Header *header_for(uintptr_t ptr);
int32_t find_header_index(Heap *heap, Header *header);
#define HEAP_START 0xC0000000
#define HEAP_INIT_SIZE 0x100000
#define HEAP_MIN_SIZE 0x70000
#define HEAP_MAX_SIZE 0xFFFF000
#define HEAP_INDEX_SIZE 0x20000
#define HEAP_MAGIC 0xBEEFACED
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
}
| 1,915
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Duckweed on the loose?
Site of pool. Photo I. Evans
View of pool. Photo I. Evans
Carpet of fat duckweed (Lemna gibba). Photo I. Evans
Fat duckweed (Lemna gibba). Photo I. Evans
Most botanists when visiting Assynt tend, predictably, to make for the limestone, hills or coast. However, for us locals, engaged in the 'serious' business of recording, it is the relatively built-up areas that tend to yield the longest lists. Gardens and 'waste ground' can often house species that are found across much of the British Isles, but may be rare up here, and occasionally there are real surprises.
There was one such surprise on 8th October 2017, when Gwen Richards and I were recording the 1km square NC 0822, which stretches west from Inverpark to Baddidarrach. At the bottom of Inverpark there is an area of no-man's land where people tend to deposit their garden rubbish, but which abuts onto an unspoilt stretch of saltmarsh and other coastal vegetation. Slithering down a bank, through a sallow thicket, we came across a pool just above high tide mark completely carpeted with a tiny floating plant which was instantly recognizable as one of the duckweeds Lemna spp.
No species of duckweed had been recorded from the North-west Highlands until 2014, when I happened upon two in a garden pond at Drumbeg (NC1232) belonging to the late Teresa Weinburg, ivy-leaved L. trisulca and fat L. gibba. I have since found the latter species in other garden ponds at Clachtoll, Kinlochbervie and Rhue near Ullapool.
Duckweeds are not the most charismatic of plants. Four of the five species now found in the British Isles consist just of rounded floating fronds adhering in small groups, with few distinguishing characters. However past experience did enable me to identify the Inverpark example as fat duckweed, probably the first time it has been found 'in the wild' north of the Central Belt. It must have escaped, or been accidentally transferred, from someone's garden pond, and seems to be thriving.
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
}
| 4,294
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This is a list of soups made with fish or seafood.
Seafood soups
Bisque, usually lobster bisque
Bouillabaisse — a Provencal dish, especially in the port of Marseilles
Buridda
Caldillo de congrio
Caldillo de perro
Cantonese seafood soup
Chowder
Bermuda fish chowder
Clam chowder
Fish chowder
Spiced haddock chowder
Chupe
Cioppino
Clam soup
Cullen skink
Dashi
Fish soup
Fish soup bee hoon
Fish tea
Halászlé - Hungarian spicy fish soup
Gumbo – often includes seafood, made with shrimp or crab stock
Ikan kuah kuning — a Maluku and Papua dish
Herring soup
Jaecheopguk
Lohikeitto
Lung fung soup
Maeutang
Mohinga
Moqueca
Paila marina
Phở – some versions use seafood
Pindang
Psarosoupa
She-crab soup
Sliced fish soup
Sopa marinera — a Spanish seafood dish made with oysters, clams, seashells, crab, lobster, shrimp and spices like achiote and cumin
Sopa de peixe - Portuguese fish soup, usually made using a tomato base. Very rich, it can include a variety of different seafood at the same time, and be a meal in itself.
Tom Yum
Ukha
See also
Fish soup
List of cream soups
List of fish soups
List of soups
List of seafood dishes
List of stews
References
Fish and seafood
Seafood
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
}
| 8,696
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SOUPER BOWL CANNED FOOD DRIVE!
Fall picture retakes will be Friday, December 14, 2018. If your child was absent, or wants to retake their picture, they will need to return their picture package and plan for picture retakes on that day.
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
}
| 9,902
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{"url":"http:\/\/benchmarks.juliadiffeq.org\/html\/ParameterEstimation\/DiffEqBayesLotkaVolterra.html","text":"# Lotka-Volterra Bayesian Parameter Estimation Benchmarks\n\n## Parameter Estimation of Lotka-Volterra Equation using DiffEqBayes.jl\n\nusing DiffEqBayes\n\nusing Distributions\nusing OrdinaryDiffEq, RecursiveArrayTools, ParameterizedFunctions, DiffEqUncertainity\n\nERROR: ArgumentError: Package DiffEqUncertainity not found in current path:\n- Run import Pkg; Pkg.add(\"DiffEqUncertainity\") to install the DiffEqUncertainity package.\n\n\nusing Plots\nusing DiffEqMonteCarlo\n\nERROR: ArgumentError: Package DiffEqMonteCarlo not found in current path:\n- Run import Pkg; Pkg.add(\"DiffEqMonteCarlo\") to install the DiffEqMonteCarlo package.\n\n\ngr(fmt=:png)\n\nPlots.GRBackend()\n\n\n#### Initializing the problem\n\nf = @ode_def_nohes LotkaVolterraTest begin\ndx = a*x - b*x*y\ndy = -c*y + d*x*y\nend a b c d\n\nERROR: LoadError: UndefVarError: @ode_def_nohes not defined\nin expression starting at none:1\n\nu0 = [1.0,1.0]\ntspan = (0.0,10.0)\np = [1.5,1.0,3.0,1,0]\n\n5-element Array{Float64,1}:\n1.5\n1.0\n3.0\n1.0\n0.0\n\nprob = ODEProblem(f,u0,tspan,p)\n\nERROR: UndefVarError: f not defined\n\nsol = solve(prob,Tsit5())\n\nERROR: UndefVarError: prob not defined\n\n\n#### We take the solution data obtained and add noise to it to obtain data for using in the Bayesian Inference of the parameters\n\nt = collect(range(1,stop=10,length=10))\nsig = 0.49\ndata = convert(Array, VectorOfArray([(sol(t[i]) + sig*randn(2)) for i in 1:length(t)]))\n\nERROR: UndefVarError: sol not defined\n\n\n#### Plots of the actual data and generated data\n\nscatter(t, data[1,:], lab=\"#prey (data)\")\n\nERROR: UndefVarError: data not defined\n\nscatter!(t, data[2,:], lab=\"#predator (data)\")\n\nERROR: UndefVarError: data not defined\n\nplot!(sol)\n\nERROR: UndefVarError: sol not defined\n\npriors = [Truncated(Normal(1.5,0.5),0.5,2.5),Truncated(Normal(1.2,0.5),0,2),Truncated(Normal(3.0,0.5),1,4),Truncated(Normal(1.0,0.5),0,2)]\n\n4-element Array{Distributions.Truncated{Distributions.Normal{Float64},Distr\nibutions.Continuous},1}:\nTruncated(Distributions.Normal{Float64}(\u03bc=1.5, \u03c3=0.5), range=(0.5, 2.5))\nTruncated(Distributions.Normal{Float64}(\u03bc=1.2, \u03c3=0.5), range=(0.0, 2.0))\nTruncated(Distributions.Normal{Float64}(\u03bc=3.0, \u03c3=0.5), range=(1.0, 4.0))\nTruncated(Distributions.Normal{Float64}(\u03bc=1.0, \u03c3=0.5), range=(0.0, 2.0))\n\n\n#### We use the uncertainity quantification plots to decide the tolerance to be passed.\n\ncb = AdaptiveProbIntsUncertainty(5)\n\nERROR: UndefVarError: AdaptiveProbIntsUncertainty not defined\n\nmonte_prob = MonteCarloProblem(prob)\n\nERROR: UndefVarError: prob not defined\n\nsim = solve(monte_prob,Tsit5(),num_monte=100,callback=cb,reltol=1e-5,abstol=1e-5)\n\nERROR: UndefVarError: cb not defined\n\nplot(sim,vars=(0,1),linealpha=0.4)\n\nERROR: UndefVarError: sim not defined\n\n\n### Parameter estimation with Stan.jl backend\n\nThe solution converges for tolerance values lower than 1e-3, lower tolerance leads to better accuracy in result but is accompanied by longer warmup and sampling time, truncated normal priors are used for preventing Stan from stepping into negative values.\n\n@time bayesian_result_stan = stan_inference(prob,t,data,priors;reltol=1e-5,abstol=1e-5,vars =(StanODEData(),InverseGamma(3,2)))\n\nERROR: UndefVarError: prob not defined\n\n\nPlots of the chains generated to show convergence.\n\nplot_chain(bayesian_result_stan)\n\nERROR: UndefVarError: bayesian_result_stan not defined\n\n\n### Parameter estimation with Turing.jl backend\n\n@time bayesian_result_turing = turing_inference(prob,Tsit5(),t,data,priors)\n\nERROR: UndefVarError: prob not defined\n\n\nThe chains seem to have not converged and require longer chains but there isn't anyway to pass warmup samples to Turing.jl's HMC sampler which has been used as the sampler in the implementation.\n\nplot_chain(bayesian_result_turing)\n\nERROR: UndefVarError: bayesian_result_turing not defined\n\n\n## Conclusion\n\nLotka-Volterra Equation is a \"predator-prey\" model, it models population of two species in which one is the predator (wolf) and the other is the prey (rabbit). It depicts a cyclic behaviour, which is also seen in its Uncertainity Quantification Plots. This behaviour makes it easy to estimate even at very high tolerance values (1e-3).\n\nIn case of Stan.jl backend we obtain quite accurate values by setting sufficiently low tolerance at 1e-5 and passing 500 warmup samples, because as evident from the plots as it didn't converge before it which was observed from multiple runs, which ensures both high accuracy within 1.84 minutes, 1.7 minutes for warmup sampling and 14 seconds for sampling. Decreasing the tolerance leads to more accurate results but at the cost of significant increase in time taken.\n\nTuring.jl backend implementation doesn't seem to have converged, inability to pass warmup samples is one of the drawbacks, the results obtained are quite accurate and it recorded 33.33 seconds.\n\nUsing DynamicHMC.jl as the backend gives good accuracy and takes 197 seconds but the exploration of the domain seems to be more constrained as compared to other backends as evident from the plots which is due to the lower stepsize, this can be adjusted by passing the kwarg \u03f5.","date":"2019-08-18 15:04:42","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 1, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.5264729857444763, \"perplexity\": 11888.76334315468}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": true, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2019-35\/segments\/1566027313936.42\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20190818145013-20190818171013-00115.warc.gz\"}"}
| null | null |
{"url":"https:\/\/www.physicsforums.com\/threads\/greens-theorem.179723\/","text":"# Greens theorem:\n\n1. Aug 8, 2007\n\n### smoothman\n\nhow can greens theorem be verified for the region R defined by $$(x^2 + y^2 \\leq 1), (x + y \\geq 0), (x - y \\geq 0) .... P(x,y) = xy, Q(x,y) = x^2$$\n\n> okay i know $$\\int_C Pdx + Qdy = \\int\\int \\left(\\frac{dQ}{dx} - \\frac{dp}{dy}\\right) dA$$\n\nso: $$\\int_C xy dx + x^2dy = \\int\\int_D \\left(2x - x\\right) dy dx$$\n\n..........................................\nhere's my problem:\nthe limits of integration for the region D expressed as polar co-ordinates are:\n$$-\\frac{\\pi}{4}\\leq \\theta \\leq \\frac{\\pi}{4} \\mbox{ and }0\\leq r\\leq 1$$\n\ni understand \"r\" is from 0 to 1 because of the radius...\nbut how do you explain why theta is from -pi\/4 to pi\/4\n\n-------------------------------\nanyways using those limits for integration this is what i got:\n\nok so using polar co-ordinates:\n2x - x = x\nin polar terms: x = rcos\\theta\n\nso the integral is now:\n\n$$\\int_C xy dx + x^2dy = \\int^{\\pi\/4}_{-\\pi\/4}\\int^1_0 \\left(rcos\\theta\\right)(r) drd\\theta = \\int^{\\pi\/4}_{-\\pi\/4}\\left[\\frac{1}{3}r^3cos\\theta\\right]^1_0d\\theta = \\int^{\\pi\/4}_{-\\pi\/4}\\left[\\frac{1}{3}cos\\theta\\right]d\\theta = \\left[\\frac{1}{3}sin\\theta\\right]^{\\pi\/4}_{-\\pi\/4} = \\frac{2}{3}sin(\\pi\/4)$$\n\nis my result correct?\n--------------------------\nlastly, the curl integral can be shown using three line integrals:\n$$\\bold{r}_1(t) = t\\cos \\frac{\\pi}{4}\\bold{i}-t\\sin \\frac{\\pi}{4}\\bold{j} \\mbox{ for }0\\leq t\\leq 1$$\n$$\\bold{r}_2(t) = t\\cos \\frac{\\pi}{4}\\bold{i}+t\\sin \\frac{\\pi}{4}\\bold{j} \\mbox{ for }0\\leq t\\leq 1$$\n$$\\bold{r}_3(t) = \\cos t\\bold{i} + \\sin t \\bold{j} \\mbox{ for }-\\frac{\\pi}{4} \\leq t\\leq \\frac{\\pi}{4}$$\n\ncan you please explain why the line integrals are as they are.\n\n2. Aug 8, 2007\n\n### matness\n\nFirst draw the region given to you .\n$$(x^2 + y^2 \\leq 1), (x + y \\geq 0), (x - y \\geq 0)$$\n\nThe boundary of region is determined by the lines x=y, x=-y and the circle $$x^2+y^2\\eq 1$$\nCircle gives you first limit $$0\\leq r\\leq 1$$\nand these two lines gives you limit for theta\n(x=y and x=-y makes angle pi\/4 w.r.t x-axis)\nAnd by the inequalities you conclude theta should be between -pi\/4 and pi\/4\n\n3. Aug 8, 2007\n\n### matness\n\nThey are the curves on which you will evaluate your line integral directly\nIf you did draw the region correctly\nyou will see (it is like a slice of a pizza) r1 r2 and r3 are the linesegmentsbounding the region\nTo be more clear\n\nr1 is part of x-y=0\nx=rcos(theta) y=r sin(theta) and you know theta =pi\/4 and r changes from 0 to 1 (you can replace r by t anyway just notation)\nThe others are similiar\nr2 is part of x+y=0\nr3 is part of the circle which is an arc from -pi\/4 to pi\/4 with radius 1\nedit:region is drawn in the picture\n\n#### Attached Files:\n\n\u2022 ###### int.gif\nFile size:\n6.7 KB\nViews:\n76\nLast edited: Aug 8, 2007\n4. Aug 8, 2007\n\n### heyo12\n\njust checking\n\n5. Aug 8, 2007\n\n### smoothman\n\nthanks for this one: from the information provided here is what i managed to work out:\n\ni know $$\\int Pdx + Qdy = \\int xy dx + \\int x^2 dy$$ since P=xy and Q=x^2\n\nfor r1(t)\n$$\\bold{r}_1(t) = t\\cos \\frac{\\pi}{4}\\bold{i}-t\\sin \\frac{\\pi}{4}\\bold{j} \\mbox{ for }0\\leq t\\leq 1$$\n\nso:\n\n$$\\int_c xy dx + \\int_c x^2 dy= \\int^1_0 -\\frac{1}{2}t^2(sin\\frac{\\pi}{2})(cos\\frac{\\pi}{4}) dt$$ + $$\\int^1_0 t^2(cos^2\\frac{\\pi}{4})(-sin\\frac{\\pi}{4}) dt$$\n\n= $$\\int^1_0 -\\frac{1}{2}t^2(cos\\frac{\\pi}{4}) dt$$ + $$\\int^1_0 -\\frac{1}{2}t^2(sin\\frac{\\pi}{4}) dt$$\n\n= $$\\left[-\\frac{1}{6} t^3 cos(\\pi\/4) \\right]^1_0$$ + $$\\left[-\\frac{1}{6} t^3 sin(\\pi\/4) \\right]^1_0$$\n\n= $$-\\frac{1}{6}cos(\\pi\/4) + -\\frac{1}{6}sin(\\pi\/4)$$\n\nfor r2(t)\n\n$$\\bold{r}_1(t) = t\\cos \\frac{\\pi}{4}\\bold{i}-t\\sin \\frac{\\pi}{4}\\bold{j} \\mbox{ for }0\\leq t\\leq 1$$\n\ni got: $$\\frac{1}{6}cos(\\pi\/4) + \\frac{1}{6}sin(\\pi\/4)$$\n\nSO THE LINE INTEGRALS OF r1(t) and r2(t) cancel each other out.\n\nfor r3(t)... This is where im having problems\n\n$$\\bold{r}_3(t) = \\cos t\\bold{i} + \\sin t \\bold{j} \\mbox{ for }-\\frac{\\pi}{4} \\leq t\\leq \\frac{\\pi}{4}$$\n\n$$\\int_c xy dx + \\int_c x^2 dy = \\int^\\frac{\\pi}{4}_\\frac{-\\pi}{4}-cos(t)sin^2(t) dt$$ + $$\\int^\\frac{\\pi}{4}_\\frac{-\\pi}{4}cos^3(t)$$\n\nbut i cant seem to do any more of it.. stuck here.. how do i complete it\n.......................................................\nok the questions:\n(a) were my line integrals of r1 and r2 correct\n(b) what is the answer of r3\n(c) is the final answer of these line integrals $$\\frac{2}{3}sin(\\pi\/4)$$\n\n6. Aug 8, 2007\n\n### matness\n\n(c) We have to find $$\\frac{2}{3}sin(\\pi\/4)$$\nBecause using greens theorem you did so.\n\n(b)$$\\int_c xy dx + \\int_c x^2 dy = \\int^\\frac{\\pi}{4}_\\frac{-\\pi}{4}-cos(t)sin^2(t) +cos^3(t)dt$$\n\nIt seems you have done hard part but stopped at the easy part.\nUsing identity$$cos^2^(t)+sin^2(t)=1$$ write\n$$cos^3(t) = cos(t) (1-sin^2(t))$$ then substitude\nYou will find\n\n$$\\int^\\frac{\\pi}{4}_\\frac{-\\pi}{4}-2cos(t)sin^2(t) +cos(t)dt$$\n\nUse the substitution\n$$u=sin(t)$$\n\nAnyway you will find at the end by substituting $$sin(\\pi\/4) = \\frac{ \\sqrt{2} }{2}$$ integral is equal to $$\\frac{2 \\sqrt{2} }{3}$$\n\nwhich is not an expected result for you\n\nthe reason is the answer of the question (a) is not yes\n\n(a) You did good computations and \"computationaly\"\nyour line integrals for r1 and r2 are correct .On the other hand you did mistake in the directions(please look at the attachment) .\nFor r2 : t does not go from 0 to 1 , it goes from 1 to 0 .\nSo just multiply by -1 to revert the direction of the integral\nAs a result sum of the line integrals of r1 and r2 not equal to zero\n\nConclusion= If you add them all , you get $$\\frac{ \\sqrt{2} }{3}$$\n\n#### Attached Files:\n\n\u2022 ###### int2.GIF\nFile size:\n2.4 KB\nViews:\n66\nLast edited: Aug 8, 2007","date":"2017-02-28 13:21:15","metadata":"{\"extraction_info\": {\"found_math\": true, \"script_math_tex\": 0, \"script_math_asciimath\": 0, \"math_annotations\": 0, \"math_alttext\": 0, \"mathml\": 0, \"mathjax_tag\": 0, \"mathjax_inline_tex\": 0, \"mathjax_display_tex\": 1, \"mathjax_asciimath\": 0, \"img_math\": 0, \"codecogs_latex\": 0, \"wp_latex\": 0, \"mimetex.cgi\": 0, \"\/images\/math\/codecogs\": 0, \"mathtex.cgi\": 0, \"katex\": 0, \"math-container\": 0, \"wp-katex-eq\": 0, \"align\": 0, \"equation\": 0, \"x-ck12\": 0, \"texerror\": 0, \"math_score\": 0.8807447552680969, \"perplexity\": 2099.8116152844423}, \"config\": {\"markdown_headings\": true, \"markdown_code\": false, \"boilerplate_config\": {\"ratio_threshold\": 0.18, \"absolute_threshold\": 10, \"end_threshold\": 15, \"enable\": true}, \"remove_buttons\": true, \"remove_image_figures\": true, \"remove_link_clusters\": true, \"table_config\": {\"min_rows\": 2, \"min_cols\": 3, \"format\": \"plain\"}, \"remove_chinese\": true, \"remove_edit_buttons\": true, \"extract_latex\": true}, \"warc_path\": \"s3:\/\/commoncrawl\/crawl-data\/CC-MAIN-2017-09\/segments\/1487501174159.38\/warc\/CC-MAIN-20170219104614-00223-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz\"}"}
| null | null |
Mexico is now on record against SB-4
October 23, 2017 EHN Staff Recent News 0
Mexico files a brief against the Texas sanctuary city law
By Silvio Canto Jr.
This is about as silly as anything I have seen in years. Mexico is now on record against SB-4:
A Texas law banning sanctuary cities would harm diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Mexico, Mexico argues in a brief submitted to the appeals court reviewing the law.
The brief, filed Thursday with the Fifth District Court of Appeals in New Orleans, says whenever state or local officials act improperly in upholding the sanctuary law, the U.S. federal government would be unable to resolve the problem or prevent similar ones. Thus it runs the risk "that actions of a state or its officials regarding immigration enforcement could irreparably damage U.S. foreign policy interests with respect to a particular country."
Texas' sanctuary law, known as SB 4, may be the toughest in the country. In addition to banning sanctuary cities — jurisdictions that choose not to comply with federal immigration enforcement — it allows local law enforcement officers to question the immigration status of people they detain or arrest.
And the law seeks to punish local government department heads and elected officials who don't cooperate with federal immigration "detainers" — federal requests to turn over immigrants possibly subject to deportation. Punishment could come in the form of jail time and penalties that exceed $25,000.
Again, very silly and highly hypocritical. Wonder if there are any sanctuary cities in Mexico for Central American immigrants?
This is the just the latest case of Mexico sticking its nose in U.S. politics.
Back in 2010, President Felipe Calderon spoke in the U.S. Congress and found time to criticize the Arizona law. Nobody asked "Sr. Presidente Calderon" about the incredible similarity between the Arizona law and Mexican laws.
As a legal resident in Mexico in the 1980s, I had first-hand experience with all of this. I recall that my work visa (known then as FM-2) clearly stated that I had to carry identification just in case I had to prove to the authorities that I was in the country legally. I was also quite clear about "Articulo 33" that forbids foreigners from getting involved in politics.
Don't get me wrong. I had a wonderful time in Mexico and would recommend the experience to anyone.
However, hearing Mexico getting this involved in our immigration politics confirms how dependent on remittances the country is.
We know that billions of dollars are sent south every year by Mexicans here legally and illegally. This is not healthy for Mexico, as any honest Mexican will tell you!
Last, I have to laugh and remember a Mexican friend who told me: "Somos hipocritas, verdad?" or loosely translated to "we are hypocrites, true?"
With respect to immigration, the Mexican government is! They love to enforce theirs and would never allow a local jurisdiction to shelter an illegal immigrant from Central America or anywhere else.
P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
President Donald J. Trump Recognizes Minority-Owned Businesses
Military.com | By Hope Hodge Seck Three Marines who sprang into action to restrain a hostile and disruptive fellow passenger are now being recognized by their unit commanding officer for their bravery and quick thinking. The incident happened Monday [Read more...]
White House points on Tax Reform
FBI Finds 30 Pages of Clinton-Lynch Tarmac Meeting Documents – Wants Six Weeks to Turn Over Doc
Irving Native Serves with the U.S. Navy Half a World Away
Now it's Biden's turn
ESCAPE TO A MEXICAN MILAGRO
U.S confirms the capture of Mustafa al-Imam
Tnme memo is out and it's bad
Was the 'sonic attack' an inside job to oust Castro?
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
}
| 3,094
|
/*
* To change this license header, choose License Headers in Project Properties.
* To change this template file, choose Tools | Templates
* and open the template in the editor.
*/
package it.cnr.ilc.openerserviceswrapper.app;
import io.dropwizard.Application;
import io.dropwizard.setup.Bootstrap;
import io.dropwizard.setup.Environment;
import it.cnr.ilc.openerserviceswrapper.app.resources.OpenerServiceTokenizerResource;
import it.cnr.ilc.openerserviceswrapper.app.resources.ReadMeResource;
import it.cnr.ilc.openerserviceswrapper.app.resources.TokenizerHelpResource;
import java.util.logging.Level;
import java.util.logging.Logger;
/**
*
* @author Riccardo Del Gratta <riccardo.delgratta@ilc.cnr.it>
*/
public class OpenerServiceApp extends Application<OpenerServiceConf> {
private static String CLASS_NAME = OpenerServiceApp.class.getName();
/**
* You can execute as java -jar ABC.jar server [file]. file specify the
* configuration file. If not provided the 8080 as port and the / as root
* context are used.
*
* @param args the arguments provided. The first is server to start the
* server. The second is optional and specifies the yaml configuration file.
* Usually this last one is under src/assembly/conf
* @throws Exception The possible exception thrown during the process
*/
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
String message;
message = String.format("Init App -%s-", "OpenerServiceApp");
Logger
.getLogger(CLASS_NAME).log(Level.INFO, message);
new OpenerServiceApp().run(args);
}
@Override
public void initialize(Bootstrap<OpenerServiceConf> btstrp) {
}
@Override
public void run(OpenerServiceConf t, Environment environment) throws Exception {
String message;
message = String.format("Loading Resources -%s-", "");
Logger.getLogger(CLASS_NAME).log(Level.INFO, "{0} {1}", new Object[]{message, environment.getApplicationContext().toString()});
ReadMeResource readmeResource = new ReadMeResource();
OpenerServiceTokenizerResource tokenizer = new OpenerServiceTokenizerResource();
tokenizer.setProp(t.getProp());
TokenizerHelpResource tokenizerhr = new TokenizerHelpResource();
environment.jersey().register(readmeResource);
environment.jersey().register(tokenizer);
environment.jersey().register(tokenizerhr);
}
}
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
}
| 9,475
|
<?php
/* BSUserBundle:Upload:index.html.twig */
class __TwigTemplate_cdd04154832b3ac5e4e0801b354078341f7d7400101207965592cd1cb636cd98 extends Twig_Template
{
public function __construct(Twig_Environment $env)
{
parent::__construct($env);
$this->parent = $this->env->loadTemplate("BSUserBundle::layout.html.twig");
$this->blocks = array(
'body' => array($this, 'block_body'),
);
}
protected function doGetParent(array $context)
{
return "BSUserBundle::layout.html.twig";
}
protected function doDisplay(array $context, array $blocks = array())
{
$this->parent->display($context, array_merge($this->blocks, $blocks));
}
// line 3
public function block_body($context, array $blocks = array())
{
// line 4
echo " <form action=\"#\" method=\"post\" ";
echo $this->env->getExtension('form')->renderer->searchAndRenderBlock((isset($context["form"]) ? $context["form"] : $this->getContext($context, "form")), 'enctype');
echo ">
";
// line 5
echo $this->env->getExtension('form')->renderer->searchAndRenderBlock((isset($context["form"]) ? $context["form"] : $this->getContext($context, "form")), 'widget');
echo "
<input class=\"btn btn-lg btn-primary\" type=\"submit\" value=\"Upload\">
</form>
";
}
public function getTemplateName()
{
return "BSUserBundle:Upload:index.html.twig";
}
public function isTraitable()
{
return false;
}
public function getDebugInfo()
{
return array ( 36 => 5, 31 => 4, 28 => 3,);
}
}
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
}
| 7,976
|
Q: Crash in CollectionView For Invalid Header I want to understand what this error means?
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason:
'the view returned from -collectionView:viewForSupplementaryElementOfKind:atIndexPath: was not
retrieved by calling -dequeueReusableSupplementaryViewOfKind:withReuseIdentifier:forIndexPath:
for element kind 'UICollectionElementKindSectionHeader' at index path <NSIndexPath: 0x8aeb905cf5be0ed2>
{length = 2, path = 0 - 0}; supplementary view:
<UICollectionReusableView: 0x7f9236dc4ff0; frame = (0 0; 0 0); layer = <CALayer: 0x600001018620>>'
I am using custom header for UICollectionView.I am getting this crash as soon as the view is loaded. even before cellforrowatindexpath is called and the issue is not with the custom header, it is with the return UICollectionReusableView()
func collectionView(_ collectionView: UICollectionView, viewForSupplementaryElementOfKind kind: String, at indexPath: IndexPath) -> UICollectionReusableView {
if kind == UICollectionView.elementKindSectionHeader && indexPath.section == 2
{
return someCustomHeader
}
return UICollectionReusableView()
}
A: When you work with custom header you have to register first the header class.
collectionView.register(AppHeaderCollectionView.self, forSupplementaryViewOfKind: UICollectionView.elementKindSectionHeader, withReuseIdentifier: AppHeaderCollectionView.headerIdentifier)
and after that for use the header you have to do it this.
override func collectionView(_ collectionView: UICollectionView, viewForSupplementaryElementOfKind kind: String, at indexPath: IndexPath) -> UICollectionReusableView {
let header = collectionView.dequeueReusableSupplementaryView(ofKind: kind, withReuseIdentifier: AppHeaderCollectionView.headerIdentifier, for: indexPath) as! AppHeaderCollectionView
return header
}
A: You must always obtain the section header with the method dequeueReusableSupplementaryViewOfKind:withReuseIdentifier:forIndexPath:, before calling it you must also register a header class. If you want to show only the header of the third section you must implement collectionView(_ collectionView: UICollectionView, layout collectionViewLayout: UICollectionViewLayout, referenceSizeForHeaderInSection section: Int) to hide unwanted headers by giving them a .zero size (you can' t simply return an instance of UICollectionReusableView for unwanted headers).
import UIKit
class CollectionViewController: UICollectionViewController {
private let headerId = "headerId"
override func viewDidLoad(){
super.viewDidLoad()
// Registers a header class
self.collectionView.register(YourClass.self, forSupplementaryViewOfKind: UICollectionView.elementKindSectionHeader, withReuseIdentifier: self.headerId) // Replace YourClass with the name of your header class
}
func collectionView(_ collectionView: UICollectionView, viewForSupplementaryElementOfKind kind: String, at indexPath: IndexPath) -> UICollectionReusableView {
// This method must always call dequeueReusableSupplementaryView, even if section!=2
if kind == UICollectionView.elementKindSectionHeader{
return self.collectionView.dequeueReusableSupplementaryView(ofKind: kind, withReuseIdentifier: self.headerId, for: indexPath)
}
return UICollectionReusableView()
}
func collectionView(_ collectionView: UICollectionView, layout collectionViewLayout: UICollectionViewLayout, referenceSizeForHeaderInSection section: Int) -> CGSize{
// Shows only the header of the third section
return section == 2 ? desiredSize : .zero // Replace desiredSize with the size of the visible header
}
}
A: After the iOS update to 15.0, I had to subclass UICollectionReusableView for my header view.
guard let headerView = collectionView.dequeueReusableSupplementaryView(ofKind: kind, withReuseIdentifier: MenuTitleHeaderView.sectionHeaderID, for: indexPath) as? MenuTitleHeaderView else {
fatalError("Unexpected Sumplementary View")
}
switch kind {
case UICollectionView.elementKindSectionHeader:
...
}
Don't forget to return the size for the header or footer as well.
One more thing, don't forget to return the number of sections. Or you will only see one section display.
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
}
| 2,903
|
*** (out of 5)
Mandy Moore as ANNA FOSTER
Matthew Goode as BEN CALDER
Jeremy Piven as ALAN WEISS
Annabella Sciorra as CYNTHIA MORALES
Caroline Goodall as MICHELLE FOSTER
Mark Harmon as JAMES FOSTER
Directed by: Andy Cadiff
"Chasing Liberty" is one of those films that independent, anti-Hollywood types complain about. It was made strictly for a demographic in mind with very little focus put on artistic originality and creativity. While a lot of people will take digs at this movie for this, my response is a simple, "So what?"
What's wrong with playing to an audience? What's wrong with identifying a demographic that will pay money to see a film? What's wrong with making a Hollywood cliche?
In the case of "Chasing Liberty," the demographic is teenage girls. Let's face it, we're not going to see too many members of Hell's Angels racing out to see this flick. So, when I saw this film, I tried to keep that in mind. And the audience filled with teenage girls at the theater where I saw this loved the movie.
Anna (Mandy Moore) is a typical 18 year old trying to find love in a big city. Her only problem is that her big city is Washington D.C. and her father (Mark Harmon) happens to be the President of the United States. She's fed up with being followed by the secret service on her dates, so she makes a deal with her dad to let her have a night alone with a friend in Prague.
Her father sends agents along to protect her anyway, and when Anna figures this out, she makes a break for it. Anna manages to give the agents the slip with the help of a good looking photographer named Ben Calder (Matthew Goode). However, it turns out Ben is with the U.S. government as well, unbeknownst to Anna. Figuring he'd give her a taste of freedom, the President allows Anna to run around Europe with Ben on the condition that she is never told he is an agent. The only problem is that Ben never figured he'd actually start to have feelings for Anna.
The quintessential romantic comedy of the modern age in my opinion is "Pretty Woman." To me, this is the benchmark to which all other romantic comedies can be compared. In this respect, "Chasing Liberty" is a bit sub-standard. What made a film like "Pretty Woman" top the list is the simple chemistry between the actors and the internal struggles they went through.
Mandy Moore is a cute girl, but she's not quite reaching the level she needs to as an actor. She doesn't have the elegance of Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock, and she doesn't have the cuteness of Hilary Duff or Amanda Bynes. While Matthew Goode is easy on the eyes for the ladies, he's a bit understated as an actor – kind of a Hugh Grant without the charming stammer.
One sinkhole this film tended to fall into now and then was pulling its punches. I'm not sure quite the reason for this, but I would imagine it had to do with where the executives saw the exact age of the target demographic landing. Several scenes had a sexual undertone that was actually suppressed, I would imagine to make the film more appealing along the PG/PG-13 fence.
For example, in a scene where Anna and Ben admit they have feelings for each other, they disappear into a tent. The next morning, they wake up to find Ben in nothing but his undershorts and Anna pulling the covers discreetly over her chest. Did they have sex? Or did they not? In today's movie, the assumption is that they did. But when Anna is confronted by Gabrielle (Beatrice Rosen), she's asked, "Was it sex?" Anna's response is, "No. Love." So there's an implication there wasn't sex – just heavy petting apparently.
Additionally, as much as I appreciate a nude scene with Mandy Moore, the not-so-subtle cinematic trick of her taking off her top and just showing her back (or more likely the back of a body double) was overused. It really wasn't necessary to the plot and could have been dealt with a different way.
As far as this kind of movie goes, "Chasing Liberty" didn't quite live up to last year's "What a Girl Wants" and "The Lizzie McGuire Movie," the most recent stories about girls coming of age while tooling around Europe. Still, "Chasing Liberty" had some overly familiar elements to these two films, mainly the now-cliche story of a girl riding around a foreign city on the back of a motorbike.
The story of a president's wayward daughter is also nothing new. Disney did a TV movie several years ago called "My Date with the President's Daughter," and not too long ago the show "Seven Days" had a similar storyline. Moore's portrayal of Anna was fairly route, considering the real character of a spoiled president's daughter who had been protected since she was four years old would probably result in a real brat.
And although this was meant to be a light-hearted romantic comedy for teens, there could have been a little more threat to Anna than just a pickpocket on a train and some harassing juveniles in Berlin. After all, tooling around Europe isn't all that safe for any 18 year old girl alone, regardless of who her father is.
Posted in Movie Reviews | Tags: Andy Cadiff, Annabella Sciorra, Caroline Goodall, Chasing Liberty, Jeremy Piven, Mandy Moore, Mark Harmon, Matthew Goode |
« 'Mona Lisa Smile' Movie Review
'Torque' Movie Review »
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
}
| 7,238
|
Q: SQL Array with Null I'm trying to group BigQuery columns using an array like so:
with test as (
select 1 as A, 2 as B
union all
select 3, null
)
select *,
[A,B] as grouped_columns
from test
However, this won't work, since there is a null value in column B row 2.
In fact this won't work either:
select [1, null] as test_array
When reading the documentation on BigQuery though, it says Nulls should be allowed.
In BigQuery, an array is an ordered list consisting of zero or more
values of the same data type. You can construct arrays of simple data
types, such as INT64, and complex data types, such as STRUCTs. The
current exception to this is the ARRAY data type: arrays of arrays are
not supported. Arrays can include NULL values.
There doesn't seem to be any attributes or safe prefix to be used with ARRAY() to handle nulls.
So what is the best approach for this?
A: Per documentation - for Array type
Currently, BigQuery has two following limitations with respect to NULLs and ARRAYs:
*
*BigQuery raises an error if query result has ARRAYs which contain NULL elements, although such ARRAYs can be used inside the query.
*BigQuery translates NULL ARRAY into empty ARRAY in the query result, although inside the query NULL and empty ARRAYs are two distinct values.
So, as of your example - you can use below "trick"
with test as (
select 1 as A, 2 as B union all
select 3, null
)
select *,
array(select cast(el as int64) el
from unnest(split(translate(format('%t', t), '()', ''), ', ')) el
where el != 'NULL'
) as grouped_columns
from test t
above gives below output
Note: above approach does not require explicit referencing to all involved columns!
A: My current solution---and I'm not a fan of it---is to use a combo of IFNULL(), UNNEST() and ARRAY() like so:
select
*,
array(
select *
from unnest(
[
ifnull(A, ''),
ifnull(B, '')
]
) as grouping
where grouping <> ''
) as grouped_columns
from test
A: An alternative way, you can replace NULL value to some NON-NULL figures using function IFNULL(null, 0) as given below:-
with test as (
select 1 as A, 2 as B
union all
select 3, IFNULL(null, 0)
)
select *,
[A,B] as grouped_columns
from test
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
}
| 7,104
|
La è una fermata ferroviaria delle Ferrovie Hankyū situata nella città di Takarazuka, nella prefettura di Hyōgo, e serve la linea Imazu delle Ferrovie Hankyū.
Linee
Ferrovie Hankyū
Linea Hankyū Imazu
Struttura
La stazione è dotata di due binari passanti con due marciapiedi laterali in superficie collegati da un sovrapassaggio.
Stazioni adiacenti
Altri progetti
Collegamenti esterni
Obayashi
Obayashi
Takarazuka (città)
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
}
| 1,090
|
The wall of the container should be smooth, clean and dry.
Create a mixture of forget-me-nots.
Measure the volume of the wall of the container (length, height). Measure the size of the wall on the base or at least map it out approximately. Sprinkle the mixture of forget-me-nots onto this surface. Straighten the forget-me-nots next to one another so they lie flat on the surface.
Apply stripes of glue to the wall of the container. Spread out the glue using the spatula.
Place the forget-me-nots onto the glued wall. Slowly turn the container. Do not press too hard. Individually fill in any areas where the forget-me-nots have failed to stick. Gently press all of the forget-me-nots to the base. Leave it to dry according to the glue instructions.
Complete the decoration. Tie a bow on a ribbon or add a tag. Place a tealight in the candle holder.
If you do not use gloves, first check that you can wash the glue from your hands.
Fill the jar with jam before decorating it. Boil it and allow it to cool.
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
}
| 119
|
Q: How should I proceed relating to factory usages for testing purposes? I am using Ruby on Rails 3.0.9, RSpect 2 and FactoryGirl. I would like to know how I should proceed in my case relating to factory usages for testing purposes.
I have seeded the database (by using the /db/seed.rb file) with some data that is necessary in order to initialize a make my application to work. Now I am in trouble because I implemented\created some factories and when I instantiate them (eg: Factory(:user), Factory(:user_authorization), ...) those are "combined" with the seeded data present in the database.
So, the question is: should I use factories exclusively (that is, to use only factory data by not considering the test database data) or can I use those in "combination" with the seeded data in the database? That is, should I consider also database seeded data or I should implement\emulate all seeded data with factories?
A: You can use factory_girl within in seed.rb. This post explains it a little more. http://xtargets.com/2011/02/06/seeding-your-rails-db-with-factory-girl/
A: In my projects I use seeding for the data my application really needs to get started. E.g. the first user (admin), domain tables, ... For these I do not use factories.
Secondly I use factories during testing to simulate any data that should be present.
In my opinion those co-exist perfectly. I use the factories when the contents of the data is actually not that important (there has to be some user, some post, some comment ...), but with the seeding the actual data in the database is very important, and if I would be using factories for that, I would be redefining every attribute anyway, so for me there would be no benefit of using a factory.
I hope this helps.
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
}
| 8,216
|
Malick Koly est un batteur, compositeur et interprète surtout connu pour ses œuvres aux côtés du quintet de Wallace Roney.
Biographie
Débuts
Koly a grandi entre trois continents différents, l'Afrique, l'Europe et l'Amérique du Nord. Il est né à Abidjan et est d'origine Guinéenne et Malienne. Il a commencé à étudier la musique dès son plus jeune âge grâce à sa mère la chanteuse malienne et Musiques du monde Grammy Award nominée Awa Sangho et son père Souleymane Koly le Franco-Guinéen impresario et dramaturge fondateur de l'Ensemble Koteba D'abidjan.
Discographie
En tant que sideman
Jazz Traficantes du groupe Le Deal, sortie sur le label Favorite Recordings en 2020
WAF par Les Go de Koteba, sorti en 2008
Ala Ta de Awa Sangho, sorti en 2014, motema music
Références
Liens externes
Site personnel
Malick Koly sur Twitter
Malick Koly sur Instagram
Malick Koly sur Facebook
Compositeur français
Batteur français
Naissance en mars 1998
Naissance à Abidjan
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaWikipedia"
}
| 7,701
|
Q: Integrating with polar coordinates, can't find the proper integration limits. The task is to evaluate
$$\int_{0}^{\frac{\sqrt3}{2}} ~dx \int_{1 - \sqrt{1-x^2}}^{\sqrt{1-x^2}} \sqrt{x^2 + y^2 }~dy$$
using polar coordinates.
I don't have any attempts here because I don't get how to find the limits. The lower limit of inner integral doesn't even look like a circle and I don't know what to do.
A: A diagram should convince you the region $1-\sqrt{1-x^2}\le y\le\sqrt{1-x^2},\,0\le x\le\tfrac{\sqrt{3}}{2}$ is equivalent to $0\le\theta\le\tfrac{\pi}{2},\,0\le r\le\min\{2\sin\theta,\,1\}$. (In particular, the curve $1-y=\sqrt{1-x^2}$ satisfies $2y=r^2$ after you square and rearrange.) This is a union of two disjoint regions: one is $0\le\theta\le\tfrac{\pi}{6},\,0\le r\le2\sin\theta$, while the other is $\tfrac{\pi}{6}\le\theta\le\tfrac{\pi}{2},\,0\le r\le1$. Now just evaluate $\int r^2drd\theta$ over each and add.
A: Note that in polar coordinates $x= R \cos \theta.$ But even better, notice that from the top limit, $x^2 + y^2 \leq 1\dots$
|
{
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
}
| 1,862
|
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