Eva and the Irishman

by Janne E Toivonen

  Victor carried all the rest, with Father in tow, instead of the other way around. Victor had suddenly taken on much more responsibility.

  “Victor, you don’t have to do all this,” Father said.

  “I am fine. It keeps me busy and not nervous about Eva and how she’s feeling.”

  On top of everything, Victor was furiously working to finish the cabin so that he and Eva could move in right away, even for their wedding night. My sweet Eva, he thought. I can’t wait to have you again. I want our wedding night to be here. He was so busy in the two weeks before the wedding he hardly had time to see her. Everything was almost finished with the house. The roof was ready for the harsh winter months; the chinking, the chimney, the cook stove, and the bedroom ceramic stoves were installed and functioning. Stacks of seasoned firewood stood neatly near the back door and sauna.

  All we need is a bed, he thought. With his newfound knack for woodworking, he decided to surprise Eva by building their bedstead himself. He would not let Eva go down to the lake, let alone go into the cabin, until their wedding night. He had the feather mattress already, having ordered it from the dry goods store in Rauma. He snuck it past Eva when he knew she was at the big farmhouse.

  “Why can’t I go to the cabin, Victor?” she said one day. “I want to put things in our house to be ready.”

  “I’ll take them down. Just put everything in the buckboard. You stay out!” He was adamant, and Eva acquiesced with no more argument. Then he gave her a passionate kiss, hopped into the buckboard, and drove back to the lake with his supplies and Eva’s things. “I love you,” he hollered over his shoulder, grinning sweetly.

  ~~~

  That afternoon Pappa Mattson asked Eva if she could drive a load of grains to the Niemi farm.

  “It’s the regular delivery time for this load and Victor is at the cabin and Hannes is at your farm. If you’re feeling up to it, all you have to do is drive, and Niemi will unload it. I’d hate to miss this delivery.”

  “I think I can do that. It shouldn’t take long and I’m feeling fine. It’s just the mornings … besides Victor won’t let me go to the lake. I have nothing to do at the moment.”

  Pappa Mattson saw her off. She actually liked the idea of getting away from the farm. She rarely did. Her thoughts were on how her life had changed so rapidly. She was having a baby. She was so in love with Victor. He was building their homestead. She was happy she had gotten over the humiliation she initially felt when she found out she was pregnant.

  Up ahead was the turn-off for the Niemi farm, making a T in the road. She saw a figure standing on the corner of the turn-off. It was Sally, the eldest of the Niemi children, about four years older than Eva. She didn’t dislike Sally, but she was not friendly with her. Sally had always clung to Victor and condescended to the rest of the children when they were growing up. She always thought that Sally was … not stupid, just not very smart. I wonder what she’s doing there.

  As she arrived at the turn-off and steered the draft horses into the drive, Sally glared at her.

  Eva managed a smile. “Hello, Sally. How are you?”

  She stood from the lichen-covered boulder she was sitting on and put her arms akimbo. “Where’s Victor?” Sally blurted.

  “He’s busy building our cabin at the lake.”

  “What does ‘our’ mean?”

  “We’re getting married in two weeks.”

  “What?”

  Eva felt herself become irritated with Sally’s rudeness. “He’s asked me to marry him. As a matter of fact, I’m with child. I’m due next March.” She blanched at making the “with child” announcement, but she wanted to take the wind out of this rude girl’s sails. She was obviously waiting for Victor. She didn’t wait for a response. She clicked her tongue and shook the reins, and drove on with the load of grains.

  While Mr. Niemi unloaded the grain sacks, Eva watched Sally come back down the road. A feeling of dread overcame her. She still carries a torch for Victor. She never did like me anyway. I don’t know what I’m so worried about. Victor is marrying me. He’s chosen me.

  Mr. Niemi thanked Eva and she drove away. Her mind was on getting back and seeing her betrothed. At the same corner, but across the road she saw a male figure. He seemed to be waiting for someone. As she got closer she realized it was Eino. His beard had grown out and his hair was scraggly. She nearly wet her bloomers but then became aroused in her fear at seeing him. Their last meeting hadn’t gone well. When she arrived at the corner to turn right to go home, Eino walked up to the horse and stopped it. She noticed nothing in his demeanor that would suggest he felt differently than the last time she saw him. His gaze was as severe as always, cutting right to her soul.

  “Have you decided to come back home?” she asked.

  “No. I was hoping to somehow see you privately.”

  “You are not going to change my mind. What’s done is done.”

  “I wanted to say goodbye to you. I heard talk that you … I just can’t stay anymore. If I can’t have you, I can’t live here. Not even in Rauma.”

  Eva’s heart sank. She started to cry. “Where will you go?”

  “I’m going to sea. I decided to travel the world. I’ll never come back.”

  She felt a shock surge through her. “Eino …” She put her hand out to him. Her tears blinded her.

  He jumped on the buckboard and took the reins. She tucked her arm in his and held onto him for dear life. He drove down the road, away from the farm and turned onto an old timber road, past an old windmill. After two or three minutes down the timber trail, he pulled up to a rudimentary camp with a lean-to built from pine boughs with a fire pit.

  “Is this where you’ve been living?”

  “Most of the time I’ve stayed in town at the docks. If I want to be near you, this is where I come. Then I hike to the farm and watch you.” He took Eva’s hand and helped her off the wagon. He held her and looked into her eyes.

  She felt the hurt in her own heart that she had caused him from the time she refused him.

  “Will you let me say goodbye to you?”

  “Yes,” she said, barely audible.

  He walked her to the lean-to. Even though she knew how he wanted to say goodbye to her, she knelt and crawled in anyway. She sat on the soft pine boughs that were his bed. He crawled in and sat next to her. His lips met hers and she let herself go. She felt her desire throb.

  “Come to me, Eino.”

  He unbuttoned his trousers. He laid her back and pulled her skirts up. He climbed between her legs. She opened wide and he entered her. Her legs went around his hips, his rhythm was slow.

  “I want you to remember me, the way we are right now,” he whispered tenderly.

  Moaning and clutching him with her arms and legs, she felt her love and passion match his, meeting him thrust for thrust. He kept his eyes on hers, mesmerizing her, speaking without words of his love for her. His eyes were nearly closed when he fell over the edge, breathing heavily in her ear, his whiskers raspy on her cheek. She heard herself cry out in her climax. It was her strongest one yet. He held her for moments, both hidden in each other’s neck. He lifted his head and gazed into her eyes again. His tears began to fall onto her face. He tried to blink them away.

  “I want to remember you in this very moment forever,” he said. “I’ll never love another like I’ve loved you, Eva.”

  Eva felt a giant, painful ball in her throat. Tears fell from the corner of her eyes. She was unable to speak. She could barely breathe. She pulled him back to her to hold him.

  After a time, he sat up. She did too, and pulled her skirts back into place. She felt him drip down her inner thighs.

  His gaze remained on her, studying her, as he buttoned himself back in. “It’s true you loved me. Don’t deny it.” He gazed at her for many moments. “What if I did come back, Eva?”

  She continued to cry. “You can’t come back. It’s too late. I’m having Victor’s baby now. We’re getting married. Don�
��t come back if you can’t accept that.”

  He crawled out of the lean-to. She followed. He assisted her in standing. “Will you ever be able to accept how this has turned out?” he asked her. “Because, I’ll never accept it.”

  “I’m going to have to.”

  He looked out into the woods, perhaps to somewhere beyond, and through his nose, took a deep breath and exhaled. Then he looked back at her. “You’re not Victor’s. I don’t care that you are having his baby or marrying him. You’re mine. I loved you first.” He turned to walk away.

  “Eino.” She grasped at him when he started to walk away. He took her hands off him gently and looked at her one more time. Then, Eino Mattson, the handsomest of the three brothers, and Eva Maki’s other love, simply walked out of her life, leaving her with the chafe of his whiskers on her face, and the memory of a single secret coupling. She could never tell anyone that it happened, and … that she was glad that it did.

  Eva cried all the way home, heartbroken with Eino’s final departure and how much her choosing Victor had hurt him. How did it all turn out this way? Love is not supposed to hurt, so why … she couldn’t bear the pain in her heart. She was grateful the horse knew his way home because she could not see the way.

  She thanked God that no one was around when she drove the buckboard into the yard and left it for one of the Mattsons to tend to later. She walked home, and without being seen there, went into the sauna and thoroughly washed Eino Mattson away.

  ~~~

  For the next two days, she grieved his parting. Mamma called her back in when she was on her way out the door to do evening chores in the middle of it all.

  “No one is here. We are alone. Tell me what you are so sad about,” she implored her.

  “Mamma, if I tell you, you mustn’t tell anyone, not even Mamma Mattson. It would hurt her terribly.”

  “What is it?”

  She hesitated, but she knew she must tell her something. She was carrying on so melodramatically. “I saw Eino. He told me goodbye. He’s going to sea and will never be back,” she blurted. “That’s why I’m crying. I feel it’s my fault that he left. He loved me, and I refused him. It hurt him terribly. Now he’s gone. He hates Victor …” Eva could not hold back her hard grieving.

  “My poor child …” Mamma held her fast.

  Eva knew Mamma would never tell anyone. She figured the rest would attribute her weepiness to early pregnancy emotions and wedding nerves. Mamma made her go to her bed and rest.

  ~~~

  Victor had rarely thought of Olga all those weeks since juhannus. He hadn’t seen her since then, and he avoided going into town altogether, other than the one time to get the mattress. Seeing Olga would just make him want her. He knew she and Vilho had married recently, and they were expecting their first child next May, two months after his first child was due. The thought of Vilho Hautala living and sleeping with the first woman Victor had ever had sex with, with whom he had lost his virginity, and who told him she loved him, was too much to bear. The fact that Victor was with Eva, and she was expecting and they were planning a life together, made it much easier to try to forget Olga. Perhaps it’s not ever meant to be, that Olga and I would be together. Hell, I told her I didn’t want to marry her. Look how it’s all turned out. I can’t even say in my mind that I loved Olga, because I may lose my mind. It’s Eva now, and I love her. All Eva asks is that I love her. He declared adamantly to himself, it is Eva, now.

  That conviction didn’t stop his compulsion for illicit sex, altogether. The next time he made a hay delivery to Niemi’s farm and the opportunity presented itself for a quick round of oral sex with Sally at the old windmill down the road, he didn’t resist. It was too great a temptation. Eva and I are not married. When we are, I must stop with Sally and stay true to Eva.

  “You must not say a thing to anyone,” he warned Sally at the windmill as he prepared to leave, “if you like a tryst now and again with me. If I think you can’t keep this secret right now, I will not come back to you.” He glared at her.

  She submitted. “I promise Victor. I want you to come back.” She put her arms around his neck and kissed him goodbye.

  ~~~

  Eva was able to recover from her chance meeting with Eino fairly well after a few days, and resumed her plans with Victor with a renewed zeal. He had been able to find time to spend with her when he heard she had been melancholy.

  “I’m not happy when my girl is not happy,” he had said to her. “How can I help?”

  They were alone in the Maki barn hay loft where he held her in his lap, and spoke sweet things into her ear, as a parent would to cheer a child up, and the sweet nothings quickly turned into a sweaty coupling on Eva’s zealous initiation.

  She lay back in the hay, hitched her skirt, and spread her knees. “Come to me, Victor. Can you see I left my bloomers off?”

  “Why, yes, I can. Unbutton me so I can come inside you.”

  She unbuttoned him and took him out. “Oh, I want it.” She wiggled her hips the way Victor said made him want her. Her arms were splayed above her head.

  He laughed.

  The only way I’m going to forget Eino is if I concentrate fully on my new life with Victor. He’s very good at paying attention to me while we are making love. From now on, Victor is my love and my life. She was lying under him in a far corner where no one would easily see them. She came strongly. He was smiling and kissing her in their post-coital lethargy.

  “You are my Villi Russu. I can tell we are going to have a very hot marriage bed.”

  Eva liked being called Victor’s Wild Rose. She smiled and nuzzled into his neck.

  ~~~

  Two days before the wedding, while Eva was helping in the Mattson kitchen, Mamma Mattson’s sister Sally and her husband, Big Hannes, arrived at the farm to help out with the wedding.

  “I see, sister, that you can barely function,” Sally declared. “I don’t blame you. Your firstborn is about to get married.”

  “I’m glad you are here, Sally. I’m happy Uncle Hannes is here, too.”

  Sally gave Eva a kiss on the cheek. “Eva, you’ve grown into such a beautiful young woman. It makes me feel so much older. I can’t believe my eldest nephew is marrying.”

  “I’ll get some coffee ready, Mamma Mattson, and then I have to leave for home.”

  It was always a reunion between the two sisters. Eva had seen it before: a raucous walk down Memory Lane. In the evenings, they would sip on ashberry wine and laugh at the funny things that happened to them many years ago. They would talk about visiting friends and chasing boys to find husbands. Of course, all of this childhood activity had been hush-hush so their parents would not know. It had not been easy living in a small city where everybody knew everybody.

  ~~~

  There was plenty of activity the last day before the wedding. After chores, Eva and her mother and sisters gave the final touches to the wedding dress. Eva had always loved the lacy, high-necked, creamy white dress, and she was thrilled to be wearing it for her own special day. There was not much left to do except for ironing it carefully. All the alterations had been completed a few days before. Since Eva and her mother had such a similar shape, not much altering had to be done. There was a little to be taken out at the waist, since Eva had put on a bit of weight. The veil, which was the prize piece, was trimmed in her mother’s handmade bobbin lace. It made Eva look like an angel. She decided to wear her hair half up and allow the rest to lay down one shoulder, long and wavy, with her perennial ringlets at the bottom. She knew it would make Victor melt, but she kept that part to herself.

  Before the ironing, there was one last fitting. Eva stood before the one long mirror they had.

  “Victor’s going to fall over and die when he sees you,” Liisa said.

  They all burst into fits of laughter, letting loose the nerves and excitement. Mamma tried to admonish Liisa’s irreverent language, but was unable.

  “Let’s get this dress off and ironed,
before we rip it,” Mamma said through hiccups of laughter.

  ~~~

  At the Mattson house, the women had food preparations underway. Victor was amazed how his mother and aunt always worked so well together. The ham was cooked, and the bread had been baked early that morning. Sally was making the beet salad and would make pickled cucumbers next. Maria was making rutabaga casserole and would be making the cake next.

  Victor looked around the kitchen. “I didn’t know the army was coming to our wedding,” he said.

  “Why do you say that?” Sally asked.

  “I’ve never seen so much food.”

  “Your Uncle Hannes is here, he eats as much as an army would,” Sally quipped.

  His mother laughed, then said to Sally, “Sinnikka Maki promised to bring two apple pies. And Aili and Liisa are bringing a batch of piggy cookies that they usually make at Christmas."

  “Where’s the cake? We don’t have enough desserts,” Victor said.

  “It’s next on the list.”

  He chuckled.

  Before long, the Maki girls showed up, minus the bride and the bride’s parents, to see how they could help.

  Sally gushed over Liisa and Aili, “You two have grown and look so beautiful. I can’t wait to see the bride tomorrow.”

  “She’s going to look beautiful, just wait,” Aili whispered in a fun, gossipy way.

  They all tittered, looking to see where the men were, and hoping Victor hadn’t heard.

  ~~~

  From the kitchen window, the women could see the men setting up saw horses and planks of lumber for tables and benches underneath the mountain ash tree.

  “Look at them, Maria,” Sally said to her sister. “I’ll bet they are telling bawdy jokes and reminiscing about their prowess in their younger days to impress Victor.”

  “Yes. Look at little Hannes. He’s as red as a beet. They must be telling dirty jokes. My husband and big Hannes are laughing. Victor is shaking his head in disgust, almost laughing.”