Seal Woman

by Solveig Eggerz

  "They're not webbed," he said quietly. She stretched out her hand, spread the fingers, so that he could see her perfectly separated fingers. Raising his eyes to hers, he asked the old question.

  "Who's Lena?"

  Now Henrik had her. She wanted to hug him, but held back, for fear of breaking something between them. The old woman's words rang in her ears. Just say 'I have something to tell you.'

  She took his hand and led him to the sofa in the living room. Behind her Ragnar kept babbling about the seal— everything was animals for him.

  "But it was crazy for land and scrambled back on shore, trailing its umbilical cord. Finally, they gave up. One of them took it home—big family, kids, dogs, chickens. The seal was just one more."

  They faced the painting of the little girl, surrounded by wildflowers.

  "Max painted our daughter many times. This is his best one," she said.

  "What happened to Max?"

  "He died in a concentration camp."

  She'd never said those words out loud.

  Henrik had the hungry look of one who'd just begun to eat. "And Lena?"

  She pored over all the different versions of Lena's fate. The starkest one suited her mood.

  "She also may have died in the concentration camp."

  "May have?"

  "Yes—yes, she did."

  She envisioned her mother looking out the window in Berlin, then putting her keys into her purse, going once again to the Red Cross—just in case they'd found Lena. And now she'd killed Lena without even telling her mother. And what about herself with nothing but the space from the sofa to the wall in which to recover from Lena's death?

  Henrik's face was screwed up tightly in the silent crying of adults. No tears—just distorted features. His sister? No sooner had he met her than she was dead. He got to his feet and stood in front of her, hands on hips, like Lena used to do.

  "Liar," he shouted. "I saw her that night in the meadow. Liar. Liar. Liar."

  Then the sobs came. But he wasn't the same boy she'd left on the beach that day. That boy would have fallen into her arms. Henrik ran from the room and out the front door. She knew he'd cry his eyes out among his bones.

  ***

  The old woman dumped some chopped dandelion heads into Charlotte's coffee.

  "Your liver needs an extra kick today."

  Charlotte looked at the calendar and realized she'd missed most of September.

  She plucked a floating dandelion head from the coffee and chewed on it while she watched the old woman chop the sorrel leaves and dump them into a pan of water.

  "All this excitement," the old woman said, patting her belly.

  She'd save the sorrel tea in a jar and take it as a laxative, disappearing to the outhouse for hours with her herbal books. Knowing the outhouse was occupied, Charlotte often sent the boys to the ditch with an old newspaper.

  Nobody will see you.

  The dandelion coffee got Charlotte's heart going. She picked up the piece of knitting that lay in a heap at the end of the bench, something she'd started ages ago. The old woman stood at the stove, making syrup from bearberry leaves and berries, medicine for the boys' winter colds. Long, dark days loomed ahead.

  She pointed her wooden spoon at the knitting.

  "You'll cut off the kid's circulation with that tightly knitted instep."

  Charlotte unraveled the yarn, threw it down, and went back to bed.

  But the old woman followed her into the bedroom. She sat on the chair while Charlotte undressed, then moved in closer.

  "My man used to row out with seven others in the winter," the old woman began.

  "I know."

  "If I tell you again and again, maybe you'll understand."

  "I already understand."

  The old woman shook her head.

  "The fear started the night before when I soaked his shoes, just to take the hardness out of them. He got up in the middle of the night, wouldn't take anything but cod liver oil, half a cup. 'Anything more'll slow me down,' he said. I pushed oatmeal at him. 'If I drink cod liver oil, the fish won't notice me. I can sneak up on them,' he said.

  "One time, the ocean was so rough, the boat tipped, and we had to haul the men in on ropes. Even after we thought we'd saved them, two died. They lay on the sand, like seals. I saw their chests moving up and down. But then they stopped. When my man saw they were dead, he closed their eyes, made the sign of the cross over them. Back home that night, I had to untie the ropes on him. Sheepskin outfit kept out the sea. Rope was tied around his waist and through the crotch. He couldn't even see the knots that night.

  "After I finally got his sea clothes off, he sat there all soft and wooly drinking his coffee.

  I stood up to get him some blood pudding. He liked it with curds. Then I saw his shoulders shaking. I took the sheepskin off the sofa, wrapped it around him. But he kept shaking. I looked into his face, tight as a purse. He was crying. When he saw me looking at him, he tried to pull it back inside himself. He put his fists in his face and pushed on his eyes. But his shoulders kept shaking and shaking.

  "I did what I did with the cows when they were calving. I stroked and stroked. There. There. Finally he stopped. I had my arms around him like around the head of a cow. I could hear him breathing, real deep each time. When I pulled away, his head fell forward. He was fast asleep. I was strong as an ox in those days, but I couldn't budge him. So he slept sitting on the bench." "Where was Ragnar?" Charlotte asked.

  "Asleep."

  Still, he must have known about his father's near death. Shame flooded her face. She'd never asked him.

  The old woman's eyes gleamed.

  "Nights, he smelled like fish oil, but I always welcomed him back. The other men fought the ocean all day and came back in the evening limp and drained. But my man drank wild orchid tea, and his body was always full of blood in the right places, gave me what I needed in bed. Other women on the hillside envied me. Sometimes I couldn't sit at my spinning wheel the next day."

  Smiling a little at the memory, she went on. "You lose things along the way. Enjoy what you have of life—even if it's only a memory."

  They locked eyes for a second, the way they had several times over the years.

  "Did I tell you about the troll woman Brana?"

  Charlotte rolled her eyes to the ceiling. Brana sounded like the name of one of those fisherwomen who rowed out faster than the men, pulled cod out of the ocean with their bare hands, always gave birth to twins.

  "Her foster father was in love with the king's daughter. What princess could love an ugly hairy troll? But Brana was smart, had a garden like mine, grew wild orchids in it. She chopped up the roots—they look just like testicles—and slipped them into the princess' food."

  "Did it work?" Charlotte asked.

  "It worked for you—you've got two fine boys—that's what I mean about life."

  Charlotte remembered the odd delicacies the old woman fed her during the first year of her marriage.

  "And Brana's father?"

  "The princess climbed up his leg and begged him to make love to her—right then, on the castle floor."

  The old woman rose quickly and left the room. She returned with an envelope labeled orchid, took out two of the pink spotted flowers, and pointed to the root. It had two nodes, like testicles, one dry and shriveled, the other swollen.

  She dropped the flower back into the envelope, patted it as if it contained cash, something to tide you over.

  "I keep it on the second shelf behind the bread," she said, "just in case."

  ***

  That night Charlotte dreamed that a stormtrooper pulled Lena out of bed, stuck a gun into her back, and made her walk in her underwear to a waiting truck. General Eisenhower began describing what he'd found in the concentration camps. General, please stop, she pleaded. But he kept talking.

  Torture. Starvation. Gas chambers.

  Max, skinny as wrapped twigs, walked past. When the guard wasn't looking, he wh
ispered, Save Lena from this.

  She woke up screaming. Ragnar touched her shoulder. "Your phantom lover again?"

  But his tone was gentle.

  "He's dead," she said, her voice breaking on the last word.

  "Yes," he said.

  How did he know? She'd never told him, barely told herself. In the darkness, his nearness, his breath on her shoulder comforted her. Her body responded to his big hands.

  The next day was better. Charlotte milked Skjalda, and Tryggvi was happy to turn the job back over to her. Later she sewed buttons on their overalls. At lunch, the old woman chopped a swollen orchid node into tiny pieces and dropped it into Ragnar's bowl of rhubarb pudding.

  That night, Charlotte lay in bed waiting for Ragnar, thinking of Brana. How would she paint this woman? She envisioned her square face, her orange hair, emerging from the rocks.

  When Ragnar came to bed, she reached for him. He came into her arms, and she stroked his back, careful not to speak, lest she frighten him. He kissed her breasts. As her pleasure mounted, Max came to her and unleashed her deepest feelings. But she kept that to herself, wondering if she too were a phantom.

  I Have Something to Tell You

  When Charlotte poured the steaming milk into the canister, it gave off a rich smell. Skjalda was a healthy cow. Ragnar stood next to her. "I have something to tell you," she said.

  "You've already told me."

  "You promised to show me the fields we're going to level next." "This afternoon." His bare arm touched hers as they put the milking things away. All day she looked forward to the afternoon. The sun was low in the sky when they set out, but it was still warm. They walked the hillside, he higher and she lower. Still, he called down to her, explaining, just like he had years ago when she was first learning the language. They stopped on a level piece of ground. He extended his arm over the field of tussocks below, and she saw the pride in the gesture.

  "When my father came to Dark Castle, all the land looked like that—hard little nubs of dirt that he cut and crushed day and night, sometimes by the light of an oil lamp."

  "I thought he was a fisherman."

  "He fished during the winter. She likes to brag about that. The rest of the time he fought to survive up here. They built the animal sheds with driftwood and other scraps. He and my mother combed the beach for floating trees uprooted on the Norwegian coast, brought them back up here by horseback, one piece at a time. When they had a little pile of wood, they borrowed a saw from one of the farmers."

  He described how they transformed knolls into fields so that a horse could drag a mowing machine across. She'd dreamt of how they'd sell the farm and move to Reykjavík. The glow in his eye told her he'd rather be buried in his own field than in the town cemetery. "I'll call in Nonni and a few others like last time—"

  She touched his arm.

  "I can help."

  "You get a sharp tool and slice off the top of the tussock, like a small square carpet. Set it aside. Cut the next square. Pile up your squares in a neat pile. You'll need them later."

  He was breathing heavily, as if exhausted by his own words.

  "Chop what's left of the tussock into little pieces. Beat the devil out of its center. Make it as flat as you can. Use the little square carpets before the grass dries. Grind up some manure. Strew it over the chopped-up tussocks before you lay the grass squares."

  Last year she and Henrik had ground manure for days, he chattering constantly about elves and hidden people. Ragnar wasn't done yet.

  "Take each little grass carpet. Lay it on top of the manure, like new turf. Make the edges even."

  His face, aglow with a vision of success, contradicted the old woman's words, whispered just last autumn during the hay binding.

  We'll all be working at the fish-packing plant next year.

  But Ragnar preferred squeezing a living out of this hilly piece of land. Summer snowstorms and rain that stayed in your bones all year long didn't bother him.

  She took his hand. "The hollow is near here. Let's get under the breeze."

  The sun had warmed the heather that lined the hollow. The smell of sweet thyme rose in their nostrils as they lowered themselves to the ground.

  "Ankle to ankle? Like last time?" he asked.

  "No, I want to face you," she said. Like 12-year olds who've just thrown off their backpacks to play hooky, they lay down, giggling a little.

  She placed a hand on his chest. "It's about Max."

  He started to say something, but she kept talking.

  "Friends offered to hide him from the Gestapo, but he refused, said he wouldn't risk his friends' lives. He'd rather go East and see the 'real' Jews. He was sure it was just a temporary transport and that it would knock some of the elite Jews off their high horse."

  She took some deep breaths, tried to relax. "When they took Max, my mother said we had to hide Lena. I brought her to a convent. I never saw her again. She might be alive somewhere under a different name."

  He moved his head in a sad gesture, and she realized that he knew all these things. And she remembered his wish for a daughter.

  "I have—"

  She waited.

  "I have something to tell you," he said at last.

  They lay there breathing in silence for several moments until he began.

  "When we were kids, Gunnar and I pushed a rowboat into the surf. We each held an oar. The ocean started pitching. The waves came over us. Gunnar laughed, rowed into them. I was huddled on the floor of the boat. Finally a big wave washed over us and pushed the boat all the way back onto the sand. Gunnar wanted to go out again." His eyes were on her, waiting for her reaction. But she said nothing.

  "I jumped out of the boat, splashed through the surf, couldn't get away fast enough." Poor man. And he'd had to pull his wife out of the ocean. "There's more," he said.

  "About Gunnar—"

  The one they never talked about.

  "Gunnar—he didn't drown."

  "But your mother told me—"

  "It's been so long. By now, she believes he drowned."

  "How then?"

  "Bringing the boat in, he cut himself. Next day he had a high fever. Herbs. Lots of herbs. Then, the hospital—too late."

  He lowered his eyes.

  "Your father?"

  "Disappeared. Went to sea one morning. Never came back. Years later, somebody saw him on a boat on the Western Fjords. He disappeared into the sea. We practiced telling people that."

  She saw the relief in his face, a traveler who'd passed a heavy suitcase to somebody else. But she needn't carry it either. She placed her hands on his chest. He stroked her shoulders and her arms all the way down to her hands. His lips brushed across hers. She arched her back, and he moved his hands to her breasts.

  Slowly, he unbuttoned her blouse. As if they didn't live on a farm where every minute of the day was accounted for, he moved his fingertips very, very slowly across the swell of her breasts. He slipped the front of her brassiere down, brought his mouth to the nipple.

  She stroked his thick hair while images of a dozen Madonnas, rosy-lipped babes nuzzling their breasts, filled her mind. Charity, suckling two babes, and Caravaggio's young woman offering her breast to the starving old man in the painting called Misericordia. Breathing rapidly, she ran her hands over his back, drew him to her. Then with deliberate slowness she pulled away, took off her clothes and placed them next to a cluster of dandelions.

  Shivering, she helped him undress. Like synchronized swimmers, they moved legs and arms gracefully against one another. She rolled onto her side and raised both arms above her head. He stroked the tender skin of her inner arms, ran his fingers over her sides and across her ribs. The sweet spicy smell of thyme blended with the musky warm fragrance of his body. His inner thigh rubbed against hers, and she glided over him, scissoring her legs, brushing his chest with her breasts, running her fingertips along the rim of his ears, down both sides of his neck.

  Her hair brushing over his bell
y and chest, she placed both hands in the heather to either side of his body, and drew her body over his. She took one of his nipples into her mouth, tongued it, then moved to the other. Moaning, he stroked her hair. Throbbing with the need for him, she rolled onto her back, took him inside her, came towards him.

  Eyes closed, she danced slowly over a yellow hill of buttercups in a thin white dress. Moving quickly now, she stepped into an orange, gold and sienna sunset. Her feet left the ground, and she floated over a field of blue gentians, edged with lilacs.