Dina's Book

by Herbjorg Wassmo

  Stine and Dina had a silent mutual understanding.

  Now and then they leaned over the cradle together, without saying much. This Lapp girl was hardly a chatterbox.

  One day Dina asked:

  “Who was the father of your child?”’

  “He’s not from around here.”

  “Is it true that he has a wife and children?”

  “Who said that?”

  “The fellows at the store.”

  “They’re liars!”

  “Then why can’t you say who he is?”

  “It doesn’t matter. The baby died….”

  This harsh philosophy of life seemed to please Dina. She looked Stine in the eye, and said:

  “You’re right. It doesn’t matter. It’s nobody’s business who the father is.”

  Stine swallowed hard and met the other woman’s gaze gratefully.

  “Our baby will be named Benjamin, and you’re going to carry him at the baptism!” Dina continued, as she grasped the bare little foot kicking in the air.

  He was not wearing a diaper. Here on the upper floor, the summer heat was suffocating. The house smelled sun-scorched, day and night.

  “Would that be right?” asked Stine, aghast.

  “Of course it’s right! You saved the little fellow’s life.”

  “You could have given him cow’s milk…”

  “Nonsense! You’ll need a new skirt, a new shift, and a new bodice. And the pastor will perform the baptism.”

  The sheriff flew into a rage when he was told he would not carry his first grandchild to the baptismal font and the child would not be named after its father.

  “His name should be Jacob!” he thundered. “Benjamin is just a strange female notion you got from the Bible!”

  “Benjamin is Jacob’s son in that same Bible,” Dina said stubbornly.

  “But nobody in the two families has had the name Benjamin!” shouted the sheriff.

  “After next Sunday, somebody will! Now please go to the smoking parlor, so we can have some peace.”

  The sheriff did not move. His face was flaming. Those in the kitchen and the parlors heard the entire scene. He had come to Reinsnes to put things in order. And this was the thanks he got!

  He was supposed to stand in church side by side with this Stine, a Lapp servant girl who had borne an illegitimate child.

  The sheriff could feel so offended that his rage got blocked on its way out of his body. When the anger eventually emerged, no one could interpret the sounds.

  Finally, he turned on his heels and announced that he was leaving this madhouse. And that Benjamin was no more a man’s name than Virgin Mary.

  “In Italy men are named Maria,” Dina noted dryly. “If you’re going home, don’t forget your pipe. It’s lying in the other room. And his name is, and will remain, Benjamin!”

  In the upstairs hallway, Stine wept silently for a long time. She had overheard every word.

  Oline muttered something, but nobody paid any attention. The seasonal farmhands eating their evening porridge in the kitchen felt uncomfortable.

  But as soon as they got to the servants’ quarters, the laughter exploded. This young mistress was certainly a stubborn one! They could not help liking that. Nobody in the parish had a mistress who allowed a servant to carry her child before God the Father Almighty, just because the girl had nursed the baby!

  Sheriff Holm tramped toward the outrigger with a heavy, furious stride.

  But as he left the gravel road behind, he seemed to collect himself somewhat. His steps slowed until, with a sigh, he stopped completely at the boathouse.

  Then he turned on his heels, for the second time that day, and retraced his steps. Clattered unnecessarily on the stairway, and shouted through the open door:

  “All right, let him live in sin and be named Benjamin! For God’s sake!”

  It was a hard blow for Dagny. She had not even been asked to stand at the baptismal font. This obvious, public humiliation tortured her day and night.

  The day of the baptism, she was ill with a cold. Had a miserable headache and red eyes.

  The boys could not go either, without her supervision. There were two of them by now.

  Under her accusing gaze, the sheriff felt guilty for a moment. But he pulled himself together, sighed, and declared that this was his first grandchild, after all. It was his duty to be at the church!

  He left with a baptism gift in his pocket and played the role of an important man. Immensely relieved to escape Dagny’s accusations and disapproving looks, which constantly said:

  “See the kind of daughter you have, my good man! It’s a shame.”

  As if he did not know!

  His harshest judges were Dagny’s expressive eyes and her comments about her own excellent behavior as a young girl “down south.” They made him so angry that on several occasions he had to restrain himself from placing his large hands around her neck.

  But the sheriff neither choked nor hit people. He fastened two dark-blue eyes on them. And was deeply offended and unhappy when something was wrong.

  Still, he always achieved his wishes, noisily and good-naturedly, both in court and otherwise. At least after Dina was safely at Reinsnes.

  More than once he felt grateful to his dead friend and to Mother Karen. But he was afraid to pursue his thoughts about the situation at Reinsnes.

  Few people dared to pass on rumors. So it was only when Dagny wanted to punish him for some reason that he heard how bad conditions could be at Reinsnes. With a mistress who was not in her own parlors, but would go riding at night. Who associated with boys and servant girls.

  Sometimes he thought about Dina’s upbringing. She had no contact with good manners for so long. Until that strange fellow Lorch arrived. He was neither fish nor fowl, as Dagny put it.

  An unformulated twinge of conscience flashed through the sheriff’s brain. But he thought it an insult, sent only to harm him. And felt he had a perfect right to reject it.

  Chapter 3

  Now when your words come true, what is to be the boy’s manner of life,

  and what is he to do?

  — Judges 13 : 12

  The sweet-sour smell of baby and breast milk had a remarkable effect on everyone. Especially since it had been twenty-three years since they last had that smell at Reinsnes.

  Sometimes Oline made comparisons.

  “He looks like Johan!” Or: “It’s like seeing little Johan! He had the same expression when he dirtied his diapers!”

  She was very enthusiastic about the family’s progress. And showed great interest in how little Benjamin’s ears were placed on his head. She loved the way they protruded slightly. This was not a family trait. She looked at Dina, whose ears were always hidden in her hair.

  Oline had to restrain herself from investigating whether the boy’s pointed faun ears were inherited from his mother.

  But since one did not just march over and touch Dina, she had be content with remarking that she had forgotten to note whether the sheriff had ears like that.

  “The sheriff’s ears were chopped off when he was small, because they were so ugly,” Dina said disrespectfully.

  Oline was offended. But she understood the hint. From then on, she did not mention the boy’s appearance when Dina was present.

  But she told Stine one thing and another. First, the baby did not have a hair on his head, which worried Oline most. Also, he had a large birthmark on his left shoulder.

  The older woman pestered Stine with questions about whether her milk did not have enough nourishment to make his hair grow.

  It made little difference that both Mother Karen and Stine reassured her. Told her about children they knew who had been bald even as toddlers. And said this was often nature’s way with human babies.

  * * *

  Benjamin’s first summer was unbearably hot.

  Stine’s breast cloths soured quickly, and a dozen always hung drying on the clothesline behind the washhouse.
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  The lilacs finished blooming so quickly one scarcely noticed the fragrance. Crops suffered from drought. The heat made people sluggish and irritable.

  Meanwhile, young Benjamin ate, cried, and slept like a puppy from a good brood. Everything grew visibly, except his hair.

  He veritably devoured the small, lean wet nurse. She developed a toothache in a molar. And became thinner and thinner, despite the cream and butter Oline fed her to make her milk flow profusely.

  Dina’s triumph in having Stine carry Benjamin at the baptism gave the Lapp girl an unwritten and unspoken status far beyond Reinsnes.

  Dina seemed to forget the whole thing as soon as the baptism was over.

  And Stine took on the nighttime care, the breast-feeding, the diapering, and all the stories. She enjoyed her new esteem. Straightened her narrow back against the gossip and allowed herself the privileges of breakfast in bed and cloudberries with thick cream on weekdays. As well as newly churned butter and milk sweetened with honey to strengthen and sharpen her appetite.

  She fearfully pushed out of her mind the question of what would happen when the boy was weaned. That was still several months away, and nobody talked about it.

  Each time Stine placed the baby in Dina’s arms, a magic circle was drawn. In the end, Dina never held the child except when Stine put him in her arms. Stine was the first and the last to hold him.

  One day when Mother Karen and Oline were bending over Stine as she nursed the baby, Dina announced:

  “Stine will stay here at Reinsnes as long as she wishes. We need her for more than breast feeding!”

  Mother Karen quickly recovered from her disappointment at not being asked for advice.

  So it was decided that Stine would have a secure position at Reinsnes, even with dry breasts.

  From that day on, she began to smile. Her toothache stopped once she found courage to let the blacksmith pull the molar.

  * * *

  Tomas remembered the day of Jacob’s funeral. As a time of pure madness.

  He saw Dina sliding down the banister. Large and naked, with her shift between her and the polished wood to help her glide.

  Sometimes he thought he had dreamed it. Other times he was not sure.

  Then all at once the realization overpowered him. He, Tomas, had lain on the sheepskin in the master bedroom.

  He secretly became both dignified and doomed. He no longer belonged to his own class. It did not matter that only he knew this.

  He stood more erect and had an arrogant, introspective look un-suited to a cotter’s son and a stableboy.

  Many saw this, but no one knew its genesis. He was a stranger at Reinsnes. Someone whom Dina had brought.

  None of the farmhands would think of teasing Tomas, however. Because nobody could match his pace in the fields. So they all avoided mowing beside him.

  They asked him to slow down a little, but he seemed not to hear them. He always put several meters between him and his mowing partner.

  In the end, they found ways to hold him in check. They let him stand all day with a pitchfork, tossing hay onto the wagon. Then they let him mow the most difficult parts of the field in the evenings, alone. They let him bring whetstones and pails of sour milk during rest periods.

  Tomas never protested. For his head was filled with images and experiences. Smells. While he lifted his arms over his head with heavy loads of hay for hours. Or ran between the fields and the courtyard. Found new whetstones, turned the grindstone, or filled pails of sour milk in Oline’s kitchen.

  The summer that Dina gave birth, his body was oily and dark from sweat and sun.

  Each evening, he plunged his head and chest into the watering trough near the stable and shook himself along with the horses.

  Still, the fire within him blazed. Riding with her was the closest he came to quenching it. His heavy stirrup was always between them.

  Tomas would have sold himself to the devil to remove that iron.

  * * *

  Dina often floated in the small, deep bay behind the flag knoll. It was well hidden among mountain peaks and birch forests. And at a good distance from the fields and the shipping channel.

  She lay with the cool water up to her chin, while her breasts floated above, like animals trying to learn to swim on their own.

  Sometimes when she came ashore, Hjertrud stood at the edge of the woods, waving with her arm half raised.

  Then Dina stopped and stood with her shift or towel wrapped around her. Until Hjertrud spoke to her or disappeared.

  When Dina was on her feet again after childbirth, Tomas used all his powers to discover when she bathed. It was at the strangest hours.

  He had his own alerting system. Which was successful whenever he was not in the fields.

  He awoke at night, ready to steal outside. Had a keen sensitivity to rustling in the grass past the servants’ quarters and down to the cove. A fox could envy it.

  One day he suddenly stood before Dina. After respectfully having spied on her until she was dressed and heading up the path.

  Small birds flitted in the shadows among the trees.

  They could hear the dinner bell from a farm across the sound.

  Bläflag Peak stood newly clad in deep-blue evening shadows, and the air hummed with insects. The fragrance of heather and sunbaked seaweed permeated everything.

  Dina stopped and regarded the person facing her. Questioningly. As if wondering who he was. She had a deep furrow between her brows. That made him uncertain. Still, he had to take the risk.

  “You said you’d send me word…”

  “Word? About what?”

  “Wanting to see me.”

  “And why would I want to see you?”

  He felt her voice crush every bone in his body. Nonetheless, he stood upright.

  “To … because … the day Jacob … Because that day in your room …”

  He whispered it. Wailed it. Offered it to her like a sacrificial lamb.

  “That was a time for other things!”

  She said it definitively, as if she were underlining twice a final sum in the account books. So-and-so much profit. So-and-so many debts to collect. So-and-so much lost due to poor fishing.

  “Yes … but…”

  She used her smile. Which everyone misunderstood. Except Tomas.

  Because he had experienced another Dina. In the master bedroom. Since then, he did not like her to smile.

  “Things are different now. People do what they have to do,” she said, looking him straight in the eye.

  Her pupils grew larger. He saw the amber flecks in the left iris. Felt the coldness of the lead-gray eyes as physical pain. It paralyzed him. He did not move. Although she clearly indicated she wanted to get past him. He did not dare to try to touch her, even though she was so close that only skin and clothing separated them.

  Then suddenly she seemed to think of something. She reached up and laid her hand on his downy cheek. It was damp with heat, excitement, and shame.

  “It’s time to heave to and not do hotheaded things,” she said absentmindedly. “But you can still ride with me.”

  They rode across Skar Pass the same evening, before Dinars hair was even completely dry.

  Several times she guided Blackie so close to him that her boot hit his leg.

  Autumn had come. Leaves were turning yellow, and from a distance the aspen seemed to be ablaze.

  He was afraid to bother her or ask for anything. He could not bear further rejections that day.

  But the fire consuming his body was not quenched. Tomas slept fitfully, with many confusing dreams that could not be told in the servants’ quarters.

  He would stop in the midst of his work and sense her smell. He would think she was standing behind him and turn quickly. But she was never there.

  Meanwhile, the willow herb spread its magenta flowers across the meadows and along the roadside.

  The baby birds had learned to fly long before. Terns and seagulls subdued their cries to
a listless cooing when someone came ashore with coalfish. And the well was beginning to go dry.

  Chapter 4

  Whoever steals a man, whether he sells him or is found in possession of him, shall be put to death.

  — Exodus 21 : 16

  Mother Karen saw with growing concern that ever since Dina had shunned people completely, her behavior had become whimsical and inappropriate again.

  Dina attracted attention among strangers. She had the air of a wealthy man with a high reputation. Calmly smoked cigars after dinner at every opportunity. Seemed determined to shock and upset people.

  When the gentlemen withdrew to the smoking parlor, Dina accompanied them as a matter of course.

  She stretched out on the chaise lounge with her legs crossed. The hand holding the cigar was flung lazily on the plush upholstery.

  She might even kick off her shoes.

  She did not say much. Rarely took part in the discussions but briefly corrected anything she thought was an error.

  The men felt scrutinized and uncomfortable. Relaxing with a cigar and a glass of punsj was not what it used to be.

  Dina’s presence, and the expressions on her face, unnerved the men. Since she was the mistress of the house, you could not even hint politely that she was not welcome. And she refused to be coldly ignored.

  It was like having the pastor there. Somehow you could not stand tall or tell real stories.

  For Dina sat there with her smile, listening. Gave them the uneasy feeling they were acting like fools.

  It was particularly shameful when she interrupted the conversation to correct them about numbers, dates, potential profits, or items in the newspaper.

  At first they thought she would leave when there was a sound from Benjamin somewhere in the house. But she did not even raise an eyebrow.

  After a while it became too much for Niels. He moved the after-dinner jo././ to the office. Eventually created a small sitting room in one corner.

  But Dina refused to be banished. She examined the accounts vigilantly. And drank punsj in the office.