Translator’s Note
I wish to thank Joe Hognander for his invaluable editorial and processing assistance in completing this translation.
Copyright © 1989, 2011 by Gyldendal Norsk Forlag A/S
Translation copyright © 1994, 2011 by Nadia Christensen
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Originally published in Norway under the title Dinas bok
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
ISBN: 978-1-61145-595-3
To BjØrn
Prologue
Many a man proclaims his own loyalty,
but a faithful man who can find?
A righteous man who walks in his integrity —
blessed are his sons after him! …
Who can say, “I have made my heart clean;
I am pure from my sin”?
— Proverbs 20 : 6-7, 9
I am Dina who sees the sleigh with the person on it rush headlong down the steep slope.
At first I think I am the one lying there tied to the sleigh. Because I feel pain more terrible than any I have ever known.
Through crystal-clear reality, but beyond time and space, I am in touch with the face on the sleigh. Moments later, the sleigh crashes against an ice-covered rock.
The horse actually loosed the carriage shafts and escaped being dragged down the slope! Amazing, how easily that happened!
It must be late in the fall. Late for what?
I do not have a horse.
A woman found herself at the top of a cliff in cold morning light. The sun was not shining. Around her, the mountains rose dark and watchful. The cliff was so sheer that she could not see the landscape below.
Across a wide gorge, an even steeper range of mountains stood in silent witness.
She followed every movement of the sleigh. Until it finally came to a stop against the trunk of a large birch tree at the very edge of a precipice.
The sleigh teetered slightly toward the sheer drop. Beneath were steep bluffs. And, far below, thundering rapids.
The woman looked at the trail leveled by the sleigh as it plummeted down the slope. Pebbles, snow, clumps of heather, broken brushwood. As if a giant carpenter’s plane had swept down, taking with it every protruding thing.
She was wearing leather trousers and a long, fitted jacket. Had it not been for her hair, one might have taken her for a man from a distance. She was very tall for a woman.
The right sleeve of her jacket hung in shreds. It had blood on it. From a wound.
Her left hand was still clenched tightly around a short-bladed knife, the type Lapp women wear in their belts.
The woman turned her face toward a sound. A horse’s whinny. It seemed to awaken her. She hid the knife in a pocket of her jacket.
She hesitated a moment, then resolutely stepped over the stone wall at the side of the road. Toward the sleigh. It teetered less now. As if it had decided to save the person with the battered face.
She climbed down the slope quickly. In her haste she dislodged loose stones. They formed a small avalanche, which rushed past the sleigh and over the edge of the precipice. She stared out into the unseen. As if she were in touch with the stones and followed them, even when she could no longer see them. As if she watched them until they reached a deep pool beneath the thundering rapids below.
She paused for a moment as new stones tumbled past the sleigh that bore the unmoving body. But only for a moment. Then she continued her descent until she could put her hand on the sheepskin robe covering the man and lift a corner of it.
Something that must once have been a handsome male face came into view. One eye was pushed in. Fresh blood flowed thick and evenly from many wounds on his head. During the few seconds she stood there, the man’s head became completely red. The white sheepskin at his neck soaked up the blood.
She raised a long, narrow hand with well-formed pink nails. Lifted the man’s eyelids. One after the other. Thrust her hand onto his chest. Was the man’s heart still beating? Her fumbling hand could not tell.
The woman’s face was a snow-covered world. Immobile. Except for the darting eyes under her half-lowered lids. Her hands became bloodstained, and she dried them on the man’s chest. Then covered his face again with the corner of the sheepskin.
She crawled over the sleigh to the carriage-shaft fastenings. From each fastening she quickly pulled the remains of a worn piece of rope. She gathered them together carefully and put them into her jacket pocket along with the knife. Then she took out two frayed leather straps and coaxed them into the places where the ropes had been.
At one point she straightened up. Listened. The horse whinnied from the road. She hesitated, as if deciding whether her task was completed. Then she crawled back over the sleigh. The battered figure was still between her and the precipice.
The solid birch tree creaked from the cold and from the added weight of her body. She found a footing among the icy stones, then thrust her weight against the sleigh. Calculated the force needed, as if she had performed the same movement many times before.
As the sleigh left the ground, the sheepskin slid away from the man’s face. He opened the eye that was not pushed in and looked straight at the woman. Speechless. A helpless, incredulous look.
It startled her. And an awkward tenderness flashed across her face.
Then everything became movement and air. It went quickly. The sounds echoed through the mountains long after everything was over.
The woman’s face was blank. The landscape was itself again. Everything was painfully good.
I am Dina who feels the downward pull when the man on the sleigh reaches the deep, foaming pool. Then he crosses the vital boundary, I do not catch the final instant, which could have given me a glimpse of what everyone fears. The moment when time does not exist.
Who am I? Where are space and place and time? Am I doomed to this forever?
She drew erect and began resolutely to climb back up the slope. It was harder going up than down. Two hundred yards of icy terrain.
At the point where she could see the torrential autumn river, she turned and stared. The river curved before thundering out of view. Foaming masses of water. Nothing else.
She continued climbing. Rapidly. Gasping for breath. Her injured arm was giving her pain. Several times she nearly lost her balance and fell as the sleigh had.
Her hands grasped for heather, branches, stones. She made sure she always had a firm grip with one hand before moving the other upward. Strong, swift movements.
As she took hold of the stone wall by the roadside, she looked up. Met the large, shining eyes of the horse. It was no longer whinnying. Just stood there looking at her.
They faced each other, resting a little. Suddenly the horse bared its teeth and, angrily, bit into some tufts of grass a
t the side of the road. She had to use both arms to pull herself up onto the road, grimacing in pain as she did so.
The animal bowed its large head over her. The carriage shafts splayed at its sides. An empty decoration.
Finally, she reached for the horse’s mane. Firmly, almost brutally, she pulled herself up to the resisting horse’s head.
This woman was eighteen years old. With eyes as old as stones.
The shafts scraping against the ground were sounds outside the picture.
The horse stamped frozen blades of grass into the ground again.
She took off her jacket and rolled up the sleeves of her sweater and blouse. The injury appeared to be a knife wound. Perhaps she had been injured in a fight with the man on the sleigh?
She bent down quickly and dug into the frozen gravel road with her bare hands. Picked up sand and ice, grasses and debris. Rubbed them energetically into the knife wound. A look of intense pain crossed her face. Her mouth opened and let out dark, guttural sounds.
She repeated the movements. Repeated the sounds at regular intervals. Like a ritual. Her hand dug. Found gravel and sand. Picked them up. Rubbed them into the wound. Time after time. Then she tore off her heavy sweater and her blouse and rubbed them on the road. Ripped and tore the sleeves. Rubbed and rubbed.
Her hands became covered with blood. She did not wipe them clean. Stood there outlined against the autumn sky in a thin lace bodice. But she did not appear to feel the cold. Calmly, she put on her clothes again. Examined her injury through the holes in her clothing. Smoothed her tattered sleeve. Grimaced with pain as she straightened her arm and tested if she could use it.
Her hat lay at the side of the road. Brown, narrow-brimmed, trimmed with green feathers. She gave it a quick glance before beginning to walk north along the rough sleigh road. In dim, silvery light.
The horse trudged after her, dragging the shafts. Soon caught up with her. Put its muzzle over her shoulder and nibbled at her hair.
She stopped walking and moved close to the animal. With a tug of her hand, she forced the horse down on its two front legs as if it were a camel. And seated herself astride the broad, black back.
The sound of horse’s hooves. The shafts weeping against the gravel. The horse’s easy breathing. The wind. Which did not know. Did not see.
It was the middle of the day. The horse and the woman had taken the steep road down the mountain and had come to a large estate. Tall, swaying rowan trees lined a broad lane, which stretched from the white main house down to the two red warehouses that faced each other near the stone pier.
The trees were already bare, with crimson berries. The fields yellow, sprinkled with patches of ice and snow. There were frequent breaks in the clouds. But still no sunshine.
As the horse and the woman entered the courtyard, the young man named Tomas came from the stable. Stood like a post in the ground when he saw the empty shafts and the woman’s disheveled hair and bloodstained clothing.
She slid off the horse slowly, without looking at him. Then she staggered step by step up the wide stairs to the main house. Opened one of the double doors. Stood motionless with her back to him while the light enveloped her. Then suddenly she turned around. As if she had become afraid of her own shadow.
Tomas ran after her. She stood in light from the house, warm and golden. From outside, cold, with bluish shadows from the mountains.
She no longer had any face.
There was great excitement. Women and men came running. Servants.
Mother Karen hobbled with a cane from one of the parlors. Her monocle dangled from an embroidered ribbon around her neck. A gleaming lens that tried in vain to make things cheerful.
The old woman creaked laboriously through the elegant hallway. With a gentle, omniscient look. Did she know anything?
Everyone flocked around the woman at the front door. A servant girl touched the woman’s injured arm and offered to help remove the torn jacket. But she was brushed aside.
Then the clamor broke loose. Everyone talked at once. Questions poured over the woman without a face.
But she did not answer. Saw nothing. Had no eyes. Simply took hold of Tomas’s arm so tightly that he moaned. Then she stumbled over to the man named Anders. A blond fellow with a strong chin. One of the foster children on the estate. She took his arm, too, and made both men accompany her. Without saying a word.
Two horses from the stable were saddled. The third horse had no saddle. Was tired and sweaty after the ride down the mountain. The animal was unhitched from the shafts, wiped down, and watered.
The horse’s large head lingered in the water bucket. People had to wait. It drank in well-deserved slurps. From time to time, it tossed its mane in the air and let its eyes glide from face to face.
The woman refused to change clothes or to have her wound bandaged. Just swung herself onto the horse. Tomas offered her a homespun coat, and she put it on. She still had not said a word.
She led them to the spot where the sleigh had skidded over the cliff. There was no mistaking the tracks. The ravaged slope, the flattened small birches, the uprooted heather. They all knew what was below. The sheer rock. The rapids. The gorge. The deep pool. The sleigh.
They summoned more people and searched in the foaming water. But found only the remnants of a crushed sleigh with frayed straps in the carriage-shaft fastenings.
The woman was mute.
The eyes of the Lord keep watch over knowledge,
but he overthrows the words of the faithless.
— Proverbs 22 : 12
Dina had to take her husband, Jacob, who had gangrene in one foot, to the doctor on the other side of the mountain. November. She was the only one who could handle the wild yearling, which was the fastest horse. And they needed to drive fast. On a rough, icy road.
Jacob’s foot already stank. The smell had filled the house for a long time. The cook smelled it even in the pantry. An uneasy atmosphere pervaded every room. A feeling of anxiety.
No one at Reinsnes said anything about the smell of Jacob’s foot before he left. Nor did they mention it after Blackie returned to the estate with empty shafts.
But aside from that, people talked. With disbelief and horror. On the neighboring farms. In the parlors at Strandsted and along the sound. At the pastor’s home. Quietly and confidentially.
About Dina, the young wife at Reinsnes, the only daughter of Sheriff Holm. She was like a horse-crazy boy. Even after she got married. Now she had suffered such a sad fate.
They told the story again and again. She had driven so fast that the snow crackled and spurted under the runners. Like a witch. Nevertheless, Jacob Gronelv did not get to the doctor’s. Now he no longer existed. Friendly, generous Jacob, who never refused a request for help. Mother Karen’s son, who came to Reinsnes when he was quite young.
Dead! No one could understand how such a terrible thing could have happened. That boats capsized, or people disappeared at sea, had to be accepted. But this was the devil’s work. First getting gangrene in a fractured leg. Then dying on a sleigh that plunged into the rapids!
Dina had lost her speech, and old Mother Karen wept. Jacob’s son from his first marriage wandered, fatherless, around Copenhagen, and Blackie could not stand the sight of sleighs.
The authorities came to the estate to conduct an inquiry into the events that had occurred up to the moment of death. Everything must be stated specifically and nothing hidden, they said.
Dina’s father, the sheriff, brought two witnesses and a book for recording the proceedings. He said emphatically that he was there as one of the authorities, not as a father.
Mother Karen found it difficult to see a difference. But she did not say so.
No one brought Dina down from the second floor. Since she was so big and strong, they took no chance that she might resist and make a painful scene. They did not try to force her to come downstairs. Instead it was decided the authorities would go up to her large bedroom.
Extr
a chairs had been placed in the room. And the curtains on the canopy bed were thoroughly dusted. Heavy gold fabric patterned with rows of rich red flowers. Bought in Hamburg, Sewn for Dina and Jacob’s wedding.
Oline and Mother Karen had tried to take the young wife in hand so she would not look completely unpresentable. Oline gave her herb tea with thick cream and plenty of sugar. And advice against everything from scurvy to childlessness. Mother Karen assisted with praise, hair brushing, and cautious concern.
The servant girls did as they were told, while looking around with frightened glances.
The words stuck. Dina opened her mouth and formed them. But their sound was in another world. The authorities tried many different approaches.
The sheriff tried using a deep, dispassionate voice, peering into Dina’s light-gray eyes. He could just as well have looked through a glass of water.
The witnesses also tried. Seated and standing. With both compassionate and commanding voices.
Finally, Dina laid her head of black, unruly hair on her arms. And she let out sounds that could have come from a half-strangled dog.
Feeling ashamed, the authorities withdrew to the downstairs rooms. In order to reach agreement about what had happened. How things had looked at the place in question. How the young woman
had acted.
They decided that the whole matter was a tragedy for the community and the entire district. That Dina Gronelv was beside herself with grief. That she was not culpable and had lost her speech from the shock.
They decided that she had been racing to take her husband to the doctor. That she had taken the curve near the bridge too fast, or that the wild horse had bolted at the edge of the cliff and the shaft fastenings had pulled loose. Both of them.
This was neatly recorded in the official documents.
They did not find the body, at first. People said it had washed out to sea. But did not understand how. For the sea was nearly seven miles away through a rough, shallow riverbed. The rocks there would stop a dead body, which could do nothing itself to reach the sea.
Dina's Book Page 1