— Job 8 : 11-12
A childish secrecy about resting in a haybarn like two runaway children.
Tomas gathered crumbs and never threw any away. Lived his lonely life in the servants’ quarters, among men with whom he had nothing in common.
He got his pay. And did the work of two men during the busy seasons. As if he needed to show her that he was a man. Never finished showing her. Spring after spring. Ride after ride. Harvest after harvest.
As time went on, Tomas assumed most of the responsibility for the fields, animals, barn, and stable. The old cattle tender was no longer needed. His position was eliminated, with Dina’s blessing.
And Tomas dreamed. About Dina and the horse with empty shafts and no sleigh or master. He dreamed his conscience.
Afterward, Blackie had Jacob’s eyes for days. His eyes asked about Benjamin. It seemed that Tomas had to bear everything.
When Dina did not look in his direction for a long time, he seemed to catch a witch’s scent when she brushed past. He compared her with more slender girls he had seen. Girls with slim wrists and shy eyes.
But the dreams came and destroyed all his defenses. Laid her large, firm body close to his. So he could hide his face between her breasts.
Each time he heard her pacing back and forth in the warehouse for hours, he felt something akin to tenderness.
Once, he slipped into Andreas Wharf and called to her. But she turned him away furiously. The way one repels an impertinent stableboy.
Tomas could not look at Benjamin without examining the boy’s features. His coloring. His gestures. Was this Jacob’s son?
It became an obsession. A thought constantly in the forefront of his mind. He saw the boy’s pale eyes and dark hair. Dina’s characteristics. But what about his other traits?
One thing was certain. The boy would never have a large build like Jacob or Dina.
But Johan was not large either. And Johan was Jacob’s son …,
Tomas drew the boy to him. Won his trust. Became indispensable. Told him he should not fear Blackie, because that horse had stood watch while he was born.
Benjamin came often to see the horses. Because Tomas was in the stable.
Dina worked systematically to find all the missing numbers. Numbers did not disappear by themselves, she said. They always existed somewhere, even if apparently no one discovered them.
Numbers could be like lambs lost in the mountains. But they were always there. In one form or another. And Niels would reveal them. Sooner or later. He knew the answer to the homeless numbers.
But she stopped nagging about it. Just searched with her falcon eyes. Worked backward through old ledgers and papers.
She kept a close watch on Niels’s financial transactions. What he paid for and what appeared to be free.
Until now, she had not found a single entry missing. Niels had ridiculously modest expenditures for clothing. Was as Spartan as a monk. He owned a silver snuffbox and a walking stick with a silver handle. Both were gifts from Ingeborg, long before Dina’s time.
Still, Dina did not give up.
As if the numbers and the search were what really mattered. Not the money.
The accountant from Tromso whom Dina hired after Jacob’s death had taught her the essentials of simple bookkeeping.
The rest came gradually as she grew accustomed to the work. Niels made the daily entries, but she always checked the accounts.
This worked to an extent, until she began to be interested in their stocks of merchandise. Not just what the cargo boats needed for fishing trips and voyages to Bergen, but also daily trade at the store.
In the end, it was Dina’s neat figures that appeared in the various ledgers. Her writing was large and slanted left, with simple curls and loops. It could not be imitated.
Exact quantities of salt and flour, syrup and liquor, must be determined. Small items for household use. Sufficient supplies of rope and fishing equipment must be calculated, both for their own use and for the tenant farmers.
Eventually Anders came to Dina with his figures for boats and gear. And this became a sore spot between the two brothers.
Niels made sure he was not in the office on the days when Dina was there.
One day he arrived expecting to be alone and found her sitting behind the desk.
“You could just as well do all the bookkeeping,” he said darkly.
“And what would our good Niels do then?” she asked.
“Supervise the store and lend the clerk a hand,” he replied quickly. As if he had practiced the sentence for a while.
“Niels doesn’t lend a hand to anyone,” she declared, slamming the ledger shut. Then she changed her mind and opened it again, with a sigh.
“You’re angry. You’ve been angry for a long time. I think there’s something wrong…”
“Oh? What could that be?”
“The new maid hinted that you’ve been pinching her, … and bothering her … while she makes the bed and cleans your room.”
Niels looked away. Fuming.
“You should get married,” she said slowly.
The words awakened a devil inside him. His face darkened. He showed courage he rarely exhibited.
“Is that a proposal?”
He even managed to look her scornfully in the eye.
She was taken aback for a moment. Then a faint smile crossed her face.
“The day I propose, the man concerned won’t need to ask about anything. He’ll answer!”
Dina signed something, biting her tongue in the right corner of her mouth. Then she held the silver knob of the heavy ink blotter that was always on the desk. Pressed it over “Dina Gronelv.”
Her signature was absorbed. A mirror image but clear enough.
I am Dina. Niels and I count everything at Reinsnes. I own the numbers, wherever they are. Niels is doomed to them. “The slave counts. The master sees.” Niels does not give anything to anyone. Not even to himself. He is like Judas Iscariot. Doomed to be who he is. Judas went out and hanged himself.
Niels kept his hands off the servant girls. Lived his lonely existence in the midst of them all.
Sometimes he looked at little Hanna as she trudged past. He did not touch her. Did not call to her. But gave her brown sugar from the drawer. Hastily. As if he were afraid someone would see it.
Or he mumbled a quick order to the store clerk, who cut a large piece of sugar and placed it in the small hand.
Hanna had Stine’s golden skin and dark eyes. But when she felt hurt, anyone who knew the situation could see that she withdrew with the same gestures as Niels. Like a wolf cub frightened by its own pack.
The sheriff heard stories about Dina.
Usually it was old news, which he received calmly. But one day it was whispered in his ear that people said the women at Reinsnes, Stine and Dina, lived like a married couple.
The sheriff became so furious he went to Reinsnes.
Dina heard him raging, like a powerful northwest wind on Bláflag Peak in wintertime.
When he entered the parlor and demanded to speak with her alone, his blustering subsided. He forgot what to say.
The subject was extremely delicate. He was at a loss for words. Finally, he spit it out in crude language, pounding his fist on the table.
Dina’s gleaming eyes stabbed him like knives. The sheriff knew that gaze well. And looked away.
He could see her mind was working, even before he had finished.
She did not comment on anything he had said. Just opened the pantry door and asked the maid to fetch Niels. And she sent for Stine, Oline, Mother Karen, and Anders.
Niels came, out of respect for the sheriff.
Entered calmly and put his well-behaved hands behind his back after shaking hands with the guest.
His sleeve protectors constantly slid over his wrists, and he flushed with uncertainty.
Dina regarded him almost tenderly as she said:
“I hear you know a great deal about Stine an
d me. That we live like a married couple!”
Niels gasped. But stood remarkably steady. Still, his tight collar bothered him enough so that he swallowed. Just for the sake of doing it.
The sheriff was more than embarrassed. The others in the room lowered their eyes, and the doors to the pantry and kitchen were open.
It was not a short conversation. Niels denied everything. Dina was certain she was right. Nevertheless, she listened to him calmly when he called the whole thing wicked gossip designed to cause trouble between Dina and him.
Suddenly Dina leaned toward him with glassy eyes. And spit on the tips of his shoes.
“That’s where the wickedness lies!”
The man was pale. Took a step backward. Was about to say something. But changed his mind. The whole time he looked helplessly from Dina to the sheriff.
Niels had sat in taverns here and there, making comments. And people had interpreted them as if the meaning were unmistakable.
The sheriff set all his powerful machinery in motion against Niels. Made sure the man’s sins came to light. His incompetence as a store manager and his cowardice in paternity matters. His greediness. His dream of acquiring Reinsnes and all its manorial rights by marrying Dina. And her humiliating rejection.
In the end, Niels was a broken man. Nobody could understand that he remained at Reinsnes.
But there was peace between Dina and him. He was no longer a worthy opponent.
Dina asked Oline to make a lamb roast. Pink meat inside a crisp, browned exterior. She had fine wines brought from the cellar and invited the entire household and the relatives at Fagerness for a reconciliation dinner.
Niels declined without a word. He simply failed to appear. Sat in the office smoking his pipe and refused to join the festivities.
His empty place at the table showed everyone that Dina was not to blame.
Stine secretly brought him a basket filled with samples of the feast. Niels refused to let her in, but she left everything outside the door.
When she returned to get the basket before going to bed, the food and drink were gone. Only some gravy and bits of dry garnish remained. And the dregs of a wine bottle. She stole back to the kitchen with the empty plates, Oline asked no questions, merely gave her a sidelong glance and sighed as she continued her work.
Piano music could be heard from the parlor. The notes drifted out to them triumphantly.
One day Dina and Benjamin sat helping Mother Karen straighten a skein of yarn that Hanna had tangled. They were in Mother Karen’s bedroom.
Benjamin pointed to the pictures on the wall and asked about the man who had been at Reinsnes and painted pictures of people.
“He’s sent two letters/’ Dina replied. “He exhibits his paintings, and he’s just fine.”
“Where is he now?”
“In Paris.”
“What’s he doing there?”
“He’s trying to become famous,” Dina said.
Mother Karen took Jacob’s portrait from the wall and let Benjamin hold it.
“That’s Jacob,” she said solemnly.
“The man who died before I was alive?”
“He’s your father,” whispered Mother Karen with emotion. “I’ve showed you this picture before…”
“What was he like, Dina?” asked Benjamin. Mother Karen became too threatening when she was emotional, so it was best to turn to Dina.
“He was the handsomest man around here. He was Mother Karen’s little boy, even if he was big and grown up. We were married. He fell in the rapids before you were born.”
Benjamin had heard the same words before. He had seen some of his father’s shirts and vests. They smelled of tobacco and the sea. Almost like Anders.
“He was an unfortunate man to die so young,” said Mother Karen, and blew her nose in a tiny handkerchief edged with lace.
Benjamin followed her with his eyes. When she was like this, like a little bird, he felt like crying too.
“Nobody is unfortunate to die. It’s the living who are unfortunate,” said Dina.
Mother Karen said no more about the misfortunes of the dead.
But Benjamin realized there was more to say, and he crept into his grandmother’s lap. To comfort her.
He thought Dina was like a very dark attic and stayed away from her the rest of the day.
Dina never talked to him while he played with his things on the floor, and she did not bring him inside when he was in the garden. She never called and shouted if he was on the beach without permission.
One summer night shortly after Mother Karen had talked about Jacob’s misfortune, Benjamin saw Dina sitting in the big rowan tree in the garden.
He had awakened and decided to go and see if the hens had laid eggs, because he thought it was morning.
She sat absolutely still and did not see him.
He forgot the eggs and stood by the picket fence, staring at her.
Then she waved. But he saw that she was not completely herself.
“Why did you climb the tree, Dina?” he asked when she came down.
“I’ve always climbed trees.”
-Why?”
“it’s good … to get a little higher … toward heaven.”
Benjamin heard that Dina’s voice was different. A night voice.
“Is it true what Mother Karen says, that Jacob lives in heaven?”
Dina finally looked straight at him. And he realized he had been longing for this.
She took him by the hand and led him toward the house. The dew was heavy at the bottom of her skirt. Drew her down to the earth.
“Jacob is here. Everywhere. He needs us.”
“Why don’t we see him?”
“If you sit on the steps … Yes, right there! Then you feel him a tiny bit. Don’t you?”
Benjamin sat with his small brown hands on his knees and tried to feel Jacob. Then he nodded energetically.
Dina stood beside him for a moment, deeply serious.
A frightened wind slipped between them. Like a breath.
“Is it only here on the steps, Dina? Is he only here?”
“No. He’s everywhere. He needs you, Benjamin,” she said. As though the thought surprised her.
Then she let go of his hand and walked slowly into the house. Without saying he must come with her or go to bed.
Benjamin had a deep, reassuring feeling that he missed her.
Then he trudged barefoot across the courtyard and into the henhouse. It smelled of hayseed and chicken droppings. He saw the hens sitting on their roost and understood that it was still night.
That afternoon as he stood by the kitchen window, looking across the fields, he suddenly said to Oline in a loud, proud voice:
“There’s Dina riding! Dina rides damn fast!”
“Little boys don’t say damn at Reinsnes,” Oline told him.
“Didn’t Jacob say damn?”
“Jacob was a man.”
“Was he always a man?”
“No.”
“Did he say damn when he wasn’t a man?”
“Oh, dear!” said Oline in bewilderment, as she wiped the backs of her plump hands alternately on her apron. “Too many people are raising you. You’ll be a heathen all your life!”
“What’s a heathen?”
“Someone who says damn!”
Benjamin slid off the stool and padded calmly across the floor. He wandered through the house until he found Mother Karen. There he solemnly announced that he was a heathen.
The matter caused quite an uproar.
Oline did not change her opinion, however. The boy was getting too little proper upbringing. He was becoming wild! Just like his mother.
She squinted at him. It transformed her face into a shriveled potato with old, white sprouts dangling on each side. Tufts of hair always escaped from under her kerchief.
* * *
On nights when the moon was full and sleep would not come, Dina sat in the summerhouse until everything grew calm and
the world floated away in the stripe between sky and sea.
Sat stroking Jacob’s unruly hair. As though nothing had ever come between them. She talked with him about taking a trip. Across the ocean. There was a deep fury in her, which he understood.
Chapter 8
Behold, God is great, and we know him not;
the number of his years is unsearchable.
For he draws up the drops of water,
he distils his mist in rain
which the skies pour down,
and drop upon man abundantly….
Behold, he scatters his lightning about him,
and covers the roots of the sea.
— Job 36 : 26-28 & 30
Mother Karen dated letters 1853. Now and then the world came a little closer. Whenever newspapers arrived with the steamboat. Lud-vig Napoleon Bonaparte had become emperor in France. The papers reported that the monarchists had joined the liberal and conservative Bonapartists under a strong leader, to fight “the Red ghost.” The wave of revolution spread from country to country.
Mother Karen feared the world would be in flames before Johan came home. She had worried a great deal about Johan in the past years. He had been away so terribly long. She did not know what he was doing. If he was taking his examinations. If he would ever return.
His letters did not tell her what she longed to hear. She read them aloud to Dina to get comfort and comments.
Dina stated her opinion bluntly.
“He writes when he needs money! He spends twice as much as he receives from his inheritance. You’re too kind about sending him your own money, Mother Karen.”
She did not mention that Johan had once promised to write her from Copenhagen. That was almost nine years ago. Johan was no longer anything to take into account. Except in the loss column.
* * *
In late April, when winter had lost its grip and the snow had begun to melt, they suffered a new assault. A meter of snow within just a few days, with a wind so strong it sent every loose object into the sea.
The storm left many widows in the homes along the channel. Since the ground stayed frozen and the heavy snow was like a wall between each farm and the next, the corpses were not laid in their graves until well into June.
Dina's Book Page 19