by Annika Thor
“I’m not a schoolmistress, you know,” she says, giving Hedvig Björk a knowing wink.
“Whatever you say,” says Miss Björk. “As long as Stephie passes her entrance exam in English. If she doesn’t, I’ll hold you to blame. And you know what that would mean.”
There’s a special tone to the conversation between Miss Björk and Janice. Slightly playful but with a serious undertone. As if everything they say means more than just what the words are telling, Stephie thinks. They must be very close friends, in spite of being so different. Kind of like her and May.
Stephie misses May. She can talk to her about everything. May always listens and understands. She can be serious when necessary, and make a joke at just the right moment. And she would never, ever, betray a confidence.
Vera’s different. Although it happened long ago, Stephie remembers how Vera let her down that first year on the island, joining in with the other girls when they bullied Stephie. She’ll never trust Vera completely.
It’s true that, in Vera’s company, Stephie’s never bored. Vera laughs and jokes and is full of ideas. But she’s kind of different this summer. Sometimes, when she thinks no one’s watching, a shadow of fatigue crosses her features. She sometimes goes quiet right in the middle of a conversation, as if she has lost track of the world around her. It’s as if there were a second Vera under the bright, happy one. A grown-up Vera Stephie doesn’t know.
One day when Vera has the day off and she and Stephie are at the beach, she suddenly gets sick to her stomach. Stephie’s just poured their coffee from the thermos. Vera takes her cup, but before she has even a single sip, she puts it down. One hand over her mouth, she rushes into the bushes. Stephie watches her bend over double, vomiting.
“Are you ill?” Stephie asks with concern when Vera returns.
“It’s nothing,” says Vera. “Probably something I ate. I’m fine now.”
20
Midsummer’s Eve is the longest day of the year. The sun is high in the sky and stays up longer than any other day.
Since they don’t have a globe, Miss Björk uses an old rubber ball to demonstrate to Stephie how the angle of the Earth’s axis causes the seasons to change. She runs one of Aunt Märta’s knitting needles through the ball and shows Stephie how it rotates around its own axis. At the same time, she orbits it in a wide circle around the lamp that hangs over the table.
“It’s like a dance,” Miss Björk explains. “Everything is in motion. The whole universe. If it stopped, that would mean death. Movement is life.”
But when they step outside after their studies, the sun isn’t even visible. This Midsummer’s Eve is a gray day, with rain hanging in the air. Stephie can see there are already showers over the mainland.
“Do you know why it’s often not rainy out in the archipelago even when it’s raining on the mainland?” Miss Björk asks Stephie.
“No.”
“We’ll work on that tomorrow, then,” her teacher says. “A little meteorology, the study of the weather. Now it’s holiday time, so we’ll take the rest of the day off.”
Janice is sitting outside reading, as she almost always does while Hedvig is teaching Stephie. If the sun is shining, she wears her wide-brimmed straw hat to protect her sensitive skin.
“What a lazy woman!” Aunt Märta mutters. “All she does is read. She could at least do some embroidery.”
In Aunt Märta’s world, reading isn’t for grown-ups. Children read their schoolbooks and the occasional story, while Aunt Märta reads only the newspaper, and a chapter from the Bible every Sunday. That’s it.
Janice sets her book in her lap when she hears their voices.
“All done for today?” she asks.
“Yes,” Hedvig answers. “Come on. Time for our Midsummer celebrations!”
No one who lives on the island makes much of a fuss about Midsummer. On Easter Eve, there’s a bonfire up on the cliffs, but Midsummer has a bad reputation. It’s known as a holiday with a lot of drunken rowdiness, and nobody who lives on the island drinks, at least not when anyone else is looking.
But the summer guests always raise a maypole in the meadow above the beach. Stephie goes along with Miss Björk and Janice.
People have already gathered leaves and branches. Maypoles are usually decorated with birch, but there isn’t much birch on the island, so ash and bird cherry are also used.
“The main thing is that it’s green,” says the cheerful woman who has taken charge of the project.
Stephie recognizes her—she’s Maud’s mother. Theirs is the family renting from Auntie Alma. So Nellie and Maud are probably around, too. Stephie looks for her, but she can’t see her.
Maud’s mother assigns Stephie and Miss Björk to be flower pickers. They find mostly buttercups, red clover, and a few daisies.
“Where I grew up,” says Miss Björk, “we decorated the maypole with daisies, cornflowers, and poppies.”
She sounds a bit homesick, and Stephie wonders why she isn’t spending her summer up north in Värmland, where her family lives. She certainly hopes Miss Björk hasn’t come to the island just for her sake. No, Janice loves the sea, Stephie tells herself.
They take their flowers back to the maypole, where they are given one of the wreaths to decorate. Stephie and Miss Björk make little bouquets, and Janice attaches them. They fill the spaces with leaves, since they haven’t found enough flowers to cover the entire wreath.
Maud’s mother is busy with the other wreath. Suddenly Maud and Nellie appear, at a run. They’re disheveled and excited. Maud tears off some leaves from a nearby tree and showers them down over her mother, who just laughs.
“Nellie,” Stephie calls. “Come here!”
Nellie comes over to them.
“What is it?”
Her voice sounds sullen, and the gleam in her eye has vanished.
“This is my teacher,” says Stephie, “Miss Björk. And her friend Janice. They’re our summer tenants, you know.” To Miss Björk and Janice, she says, “And this is my younger sister, Nellie.”
Nellie shakes hands quite politely.
“Hello, Nellie,” says Miss Björk. “When do I get to have you at grammar school? Are you coming in the autumn? Or do you have another year to go?”
“You’ll never see me there,” Nellie replies. “I’m not going on after sixth grade.”
“What about your friend, then?” asks Miss Björk. “Is she not going to grammar school, either?”
“Maud?” Nellie asks. “That’s a different story. She lives in town. She’s starting this fall, though she doesn’t really want to. She’s thinking about running away to work on a farm as a stable hand. She’s wild about horses.”
When Nellie talks about Maud, her whole face lights up. Her eyes gleam, and a lock of hair falls across her forehead. When she shakes her head, she actually looks like an impatient little pony with a black mane.
“I’ve got to go now,” she says. “Maud’s waiting. We just came to tell her mamma Auntie Alma made us sandwiches, so she needn’t come home to give us lunch.”
She curtsies quickly in the direction of Miss Björk and Janice, and runs off.
“What a great little sister,” Janice says to Stephie. “So lively and energetic!”
“I wouldn’t worry,” says Miss Björk. “She’s sure to change her mind about school. She just needs some time to mature.”
If only that were true, Stephie thinks. And if only my sole worry about her had to do with her education.
But she doesn’t talk to Miss Björk and Janice about it. She can’t share her worries about Nellie with anyone. It’s no one’s business but her own, and Mamma’s and Papa’s.
Oh, how she wishes she could talk to Mamma and Papa! Just for a couple of hours, to unburden herself and tell them how heavily her sense of responsibility for Nellie weighs on her. If only she dared to write to them about how things really are, and if only they could write a real letter back, not just thirty words.
&nb
sp; There are so many things she wishes she could talk with them about, especially with Mamma. She remembers their long afternoon chats when she used to come home from school. They talked about her day, her teachers, her classmates, about birthday parties and outings. Now that Stephie’s older, they would talk about different things, of course. About love, and growing up, and the important things in life.
She has Aunt Märta, Auntie Tyra, and Miss Björk. But none of them knows her the way Mamma does. None of them read bedtime stories to Stephie and sat with her when she couldn’t fall asleep. None of them nursed her through the measles or held her hand on the first day of school. They mean a great deal to her, each in her own way, and she knows they care for her.
But they can never replace her mamma.
21
That afternoon, they dance around the maypole to accordion music and sing. In the circle, Stephie grasps Miss Björk’s hand in her right one, and with her left, she holds onto the little daughter of one of the summer guests. She joins in the singing as best she can.
I saw her yesterday evening
Out in the bright moonlight.
Everyone picks a girl.
I pick one, too,
And if you’re last, you’re out.
Bewildered, she watches as everyone quickly picks a partner. Miss Björk and Janice laugh and hug. The little girl finds her mother and runs into her arms. Stephie’s the last one out, all alone.
Poor her, poor on her
Nobody picked her.
Suddenly, Miss Björk takes Stephie by the hand and pulls her in. They make a little circle of three—Stephie, Miss Björk, and Janice.
“It’s a silly game,” Hedvig Björk whispers. “Nobody should ever be left out.”
After the maypole dancing, they go home. That evening there’s going to be a dance in the harbor on one of the nearby islands. Stephie wonders if Vera is planning to go. She didn’t come down to the maypole even though it’s Wednesday and she ought to have the day off.
“Tonight you’re supposed to pick seven kinds of flowers, you know,” says Miss Björk.
“Seven kinds of flowers?”
“Yes, and put them under your pillow. Then you’ll dream about the man you’re going to marry. But, of course, a good student like you ought to identify the flowers by genus and species first.”
Stephie laughs. “I’ll be sure to do that.”
At the turn in the road that leads to the shop, they run into Vera. Miss Björk and Janice continue on home. Stephie and Vera sit down on the stone wall, side by side.
“Are you going to the dance tonight?” Stephie asks.
Vera shakes her head.
“Don’t you have the day off?”
“I do,” says Vera. “But just look at me.”
Stephie looks at Vera, who appears the way she always does, except maybe that her face is a little chubbier and her blouse seems to be pulling across her chest.
“You look fine,” says Stephie. “But if you’re not going dancing, maybe you’d like to come and pick flowers with me tonight?”
“Pick flowers?”
Stephie explains the custom. Vera didn’t know about putting flowers under your pillow, either. But after listening to Stephie, she shakes her head again.
“No, there’s no point in my doing it.”
“Don’t you want to know who you’re going to marry?”
“Good grief, Stephie,” says Vera. Then she promises to go along and pick flowers after all.
You’re supposed to pick the flowers in silence when the Midsummer Night, never truly black, is at its darkest. So later that evening, Stephie and Vera stumble around in the dusky night, hunting out their seven different kinds. It’s not easy to find so many on this island, with its stony terrain. In the end, they each have six: buttercups, bitter vetch, clover, tufted vetch, crimson cranes-bill, and babies’ slippers. They don’t pick the German catchfly growing on the verge since the sticky stalks would stain their pillows.
Vera points to a flower bed outside one of the houses, where there are plenty of bleeding hearts and peonies growing.
Stephie shakes her head. The flowers have to be wild.
In a crevice, they spy something blue and purple. Wild pansies—the island’s signature flower.
Carefully, they each pick one of the little pansies. Now tradition demands that they go home without either talking or laughing.
Vera starts to tease Stephie, making funny faces and joking around. When that doesn’t make Stephie laugh, Vera starts doing some of her old showpieces. She mimes the shopkeeper’s affectations, the way he fusses over the customers, and she acts out the postmistress and her nosiness, doing all this without saying a word.
Stephie presses her lips together as hard as she can. She is not going to laugh!
By the time they come to the crossroads where they go their separate ways, Stephie’s face is bright red with the effort. They part without a word.
As Stephie tiptoes to the kitchen settle in the basement, where she’s sleeping all summer, she’s as quiet as a mouse so she won’t wake Aunt Märta. The sky is already brightening toward the east, by the mainland. The shortest night of the year is over.
Although Stephie is tired, she can’t fall asleep. She wonders whether Miss Björk and Janice have flowers under their pillows, too. Neither of them is married. But Stephie doesn’t think Miss Björk really wants to get married. She has a job, a nice apartment, and her girls at school.
What about Janice? She looks so romantic. Stephie’s sure she receives huge bouquets of roses from secret admirers at the ballet, and goes out to supper with elegant gentlemen late in the evenings after her performances.
Ballerinas probably can’t marry and have children. Not unless they give up dancing, Stephie thinks. The same way an opera singer has to choose between her career and having a family.
Stephie sighs. “If Mamma never gets to sing the Queen of the Night, I’m to blame,” she says softly.
The idea strikes Stephie like a bolt of lightning. She’s never thought of Mamma that way before. Mamma’s always been Mamma, not a person with dreams and desires of her own. Of course Stephie is aware that Mamma had a life before she met Papa, married him, and had children. That she learned to play the piano and took singing lessons from a very early age. That she sang her first big role at the opera at just nineteen, and that everyone predicted she would have a brilliant career. And that she quit the opera after four years because she was pregnant.
Does getting married and having children necessarily mean having to give up what you want most of all?
Mamma had planned to take up her singing again when Stephie and Nellie were bigger. She went on taking lessons, and singing at home and among friends. But the year Nellie started school, the Nazis came to power in Vienna. The opera was closed to Jewish singers and musicians. Mamma wasn’t even allowed to sit in the audience and watch her former colleagues perform.
Now she’s in Theresienstadt. And she didn’t get to sing there, either. Why?
Eventually, Stephie falls asleep. She is still sleeping deeply when Aunt Märta brings her a cup of coffee in bed. She doesn’t remember anything she may have dreamed.
22
The card from Papa takes a very long time to arrive. It’s dated May 17, but Stephie doesn’t receive it until the end of June.
Theresienstadt, 17 May 1943
Dear Stephie!
It is a great comfort that you want to continue your schooling and can. It is the only way to get anywhere in life. Mamma sang yesterday. Wonderful!
Papa
Mamma sang yesterday. This must mean that the performance of The Magic Flute took place. Whatever was crossed out in Papa’s last card didn’t manage to prevent it after all!
Stephie wishes Papa had written more about Mamma’s singing, instead of urging Stephie on about her future. He doesn’t seem to realize that she’s nearly grown up. That she knows what’s best for her on her own now.
She wa
s just a child when they were separated, a child who looked up to her parents and wanted to be like them. Now she’s almost sixteen and would like to see what it would be like to be with them in a grown-up way. Get to know them differently.
But she cannot. Not until the war is over.
Perhaps it won’t be long now. The victories of the Allies at Stalingrad and in North Africa are followed by further victories. In July, they make land in Sicily. On the Eastern Front, the Germans are on the offensive, but the Russians stop their progress, driving them back westward.
Stephie, Miss Björk, and Janice follow events from one day to the next. Aunt Märta often joins them to listen to the evening news at seven. Sometimes Janice is able to get the English BBC by fiddling with the dials on the old radio. The room is filled with a distant swishing sound, and fragments of words in foreign languages. Now and then, German voices break in, but Janice silences them with a quick twist of the dial.
The BBC has more detailed reports on the war, and Miss Björk says they are more truthful, too. Because of what the Swedes call their neutrality, the Swedish authorities still censor the news bulletins.
Being neutral implies not taking a stand. Sweden means to stay out of the war at any price.
But freight cars carry iron ore to the German armaments industry from northern Swedish mines. And other trains pass, too, full of German soldiers on their way to and from occupied Norway. Many people are very upset about those trains full of Germans, and some demand that they not be permitted to cross Sweden.
“Do you know what the local stationmaster here said to the Germans?” May asks Stephie.
May has two weeks of vacation from the laundry where she is working this summer. She and Stephie sleep head to foot on the kitchen settle. Every midday, they go to the beach and lie in the sun on the cliffs. The weather is lovely, with the sun shining over the sea.
“No, what?”
“A train from Germany stopped and some Germans stuck their heads out the windows. ‘Is this Gote-Burg?’ they shouted. ‘Gote-Burg?’ the stationmaster answered. ‘No, I hate to tell you, but it’s Stalingrad,’ he said.”