He looked better in the evening light than in lamplight. Dina examined him without shyness. They walked along the crunching shell path. He in shirtsleeves and vest. She with a red silk shawl around her shoulders.
“You weren’t born in this country?”
“No.”
There was a pause.
“Would you rather not talk about your country?”
“It’s not that. But it’s a long story. I have two countries and two languages. Russian and Norwegian.”
He seemed embarrassed.
“Mother was Norwegian,” he said curtly. Almost insolently.
“What do you do when you’re not traveling?”
“I sing and dance.”
“Can you live on that?”
“Sometimes.”
“Where are you from?”
“Saint Petersburg.”
“That’s a very big city, isn’t it?”
“Very big and very beautiful,” he said, and began talking about the churches and city squares in Saint Petersburg.
“Why do you travel so much?” she asked after a while.
“Why? Because I like to travel. And besides, I’m searching.”
“For what?”
“The same thing everyone searches for.”
“What’s that?”
“The truth.”
“About what?”
He looked at her in surprise that bordered on mild disdain.
“Don’t you ever look for truth?”
“No,” she said crisply.
“How can you live without looking for it?”
He withdrew a little. Jacob was there between them. Quite content.
“There’ll be time for such things, I’m sure,” the tall man said softly. He grasped her elbow firmly and pressed Jacob outside time and space.
They walked past the damaged barn. Met only an odor of scorched hay and timber. The cattle were lowing loudly inside. But otherwise everything was quiet.
Then they strolled through the white gate and into the garden. She wanted to show him the summerhouse. Set like lace amid all the greenery. White with ornate blue carving. An octagonal building with dragon spires at each angle. Well maintained. But the winter had taken a few stained-glass panes.
He had to duck his head to get through the door. She laughed. Because she needed to do the same.
The light was dim inside. They sat beside each other on the bench. He asked her about Reinsnes. She replied. Their bodies were very close. His hands lay on his knees. Calmly. Like sleeping animals.
He behaved very properly, despite sitting so close. Jacob watched every movement. As if sensing this, the Russian said it was getting late.
“It’s been a long day,” said Dina.
“It’s been a wonderful day,” he said.
He rose, took her hand, and kissed it. His lips were warm and wet.
The next morning, they stood in the upstairs hallway. At the top of the stairs.
There was not much light, and the air still smelled of sleep, chamber pots, and soap.
He was the last traveler to leave the house. The others were already on their way to the steamboat.
“I’m coming south before winter,” he said, giving her an inquiring look.
“You’ll be welcome,” she replied, as if he were just anyone.
“May I hear you play the cello then?”
“Probably. I play almost every day,” she said.
“But not yesterday?”
“No, not yesterday.”
“Maybe you weren’t quite in the mood? There was a fire…”
“There was a fire.”
“And now you’ll make sure the roof gets repaired properly?”
“That needs to be done.”
“Do you have many responsibilities? Many servants?”
“Why do you ask about such things … now?”
His scar turned upward. His smile was a revelation.
“I’m playing for time. It’s not so easy. I’m courting you, Dina Gronelv.”
“An unfamiliar situation for Barabbas”
“Not completely … So I am Barabbas?”
They laughed toward each other, exposing their teeth and throats. Two dogs playing, and measuring their strength, in the shadows.
“You’re Barabbas!”
“He was a thief,” he whispered, as he came nearer,
“He was set free!” she said, drawing a quick breath.
“But Christ had to die instead.”
“Christ always has to die…”
“Wave good-bye to me,” he said softly, and kept standing there somewhat irresolutely.
She said nothing. But with a lightning gesture, she took his hand in both of hers and bit his middle finger. Hard. He gave a surprised cry of pain.
Everything was thrown into confusion. Enough so that he pulled her close and hid his head against her breast. And drew a deep breath.
They stood like that for a moment. Without moving. Then he straightened up, kissed her hand, and put on his hat.
“I’m coming south before winter,” he said hoarsely.
Stair after stair came between them. He turned around completely a few times and looked up at her. The outer door slammed.
He was gone.
The steamboat had been delayed an entire day.
Leo Zjukovski stood on the bridge with his hand raised in farewell. He was in just his shirtsleeves. It made all the dressed-up, buttoned-up people look ridiculous.
She watched everything from her bedroom window. He knew she was standing there.
I am Dina. We drift across the beaches. Close together. The scar is a torch among the seaweed. His eyes are the green ocean. The light above the sandy bottom. That wants to show me something. And to hide something. He drifts away from me. Behind the headlands. The mountains. Because he does not yet know Hjertrud.
Johan stood on a rock on the seaweed-strewn beach. He shouted something to the steamboat. Leo Zjukovski nodded and waved his hat.
Then the whistle blew. The propellers started churning. The voices drowned. She hung the green eyes around her neck.
The sheriff’s family had left Reinsnes at dawn. Anders and Niels took them in the Mother Karen. The brothers were going to Strandsted anyway, to buy the materials they needed to repair the barn roof. It was no use to think about cutting timber from their own forest. They needed dry lumber of the proper dimensions.
They had decided to use the cargo boat to bring back all the materials. So the sheriff’s farmhand had to struggle alone with the horses over the mountain pass in the blazing sun.
Mother Karen tried to have a heart-to-heart talk with Johan. About the true meaning of life. About death. About Johan’s future. His vocation.
Dina went riding alone. And did not return until late afternoon,
Tomas regarded that as a bad sign. He decided he should wait to talk with her until another day.
Amid all the confusion of the fire and Johan’s homecoming, no one had told Dina that a large, oblong box had been brought ashore from the steamboat.
When the clerk came with the message, she went down to Andreas Wharf. Her strides were long and light.
She unpacked the box on the spot. It had been in the warehouse a whole day!
Lorch felt betrayed. But he did not reproach her. His smell became more and more evident the nearer she got to the cello. The instrument was well packed.
She lifted it from the box carefully. And tried to tune it then and there.
The strings wept at her. They refused to be tuned. She talked to Lorch about it. Became flustered and angry. Tightened the strings and tried again. But got only bewildered weeping.
Small waves sloshed against the rocks beneath her, irritatingly carefree. Glistened between the cracks in the floor.
She howled with rage and disappointment at being unable to tune the instrument.
She would bring it to the master bedroom. It probably had to be all the way home before it could
be tuned.
But when she came out into the sunshine, she understood. The cello had given up on the trip. It was dead. The worst had happened. The instrument was cracked!
Mother Karen tried to comfort her. Blamed the temperature and the changing moisture along the long coastline.
Dina put the cello in her bedroom. In the corner. Beside her own. The dead and the living. Together.
Chapter 12
Thus I was, by day the heat consumed me, and the cold by night, and my sleep fled from my eyes.
— Genesis 31 : 40
There was a breathing space between haying season and potato digging. So the roof repair had to be completed during this time, before workers were needed in the fields again.
Also, fishermen began to arrive with dried cod. It had to be carefully sorted, compressed into forty-kilo bundles in the fish press on the top floor of the warehouse, and stored for shipment to Bergen and foreign markets.
The livers, brought with the dried fish, were burned to cod-liver oil during the fall Everyone reeked of it. The odor hung like a plague over the whole estate. Clung to hair and clean clothes. Settled like an evil spirit in the unfortunate workers who burned the oil.
Everything took time. And required people. But it provided skillings and security for everyone.
Problems arose with the new young milkmaid. She was almost afraid of the bell cow.
Since the fire, the cow and the milkmaid seemed to get on each other’s nerves. Nearly every day, the milk spilled in the stall and the milkmaid came to Oline in tears.
Dina overheard the commotion one evening.
She went to the kitchen and heard the unhappy story about how, once again, the milk had spilled on the barn floor.
“Do you know how to milk properly?” asked Dina.
“Yes.” The girl sniffed.
“I mean, do you know how to milk live cows?”
“Yes” said the milkmaid with a curtsy.
“Well, how do you do it?”
“I sit on the stool and put the pail between my knees and …”
“And the cow? What do you do with the cow?”
“I … wipe the teats … you know …”
“But besides that?”
“Besides that?”
“Yes. Do you think you’re milking a stool?”
“No-o-o …”
“A cow is a cow and must be treated like a living creature. Do you understand?”
The milkmaid squirmed uncomfortably.
“She’s so nasty.”
“She gets nasty when you come to milk her.”
“She wasn’t like that at first.”
“Only since the fire?”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“It’s because you’re impatient, because you want to get to the servants’ quarters and see what’s happening there. To the cow, you’re like a fire.”
“But …”
“That’s the truth. Come! We’re going to the barn.”
Dina found some suitable clothing in the servants’ quarters. Then she and the milkmaid went to the barn.
Dina left the pail and stool outside the stall. She walked over to the lowing animal and laid a hand on its neck. Calmly and firmly.
“Stop that!” she said quietly, and began stroking the cow.
“Be careful, she’s nasty!” the milkmaid cautioned anxiously.
“So am I,” replied Dina, and continued stroking.
The milkmaid watched, wide-eyed.
Dina went into the stall and beckoned the milkmaid to follow her. The girl hesitantly put one foot in front of the other.
“Now be nice to the cow,” Dina ordered.
The milkmaid patted the cow, apprehensively at first. Then more calmly.
“Look her in the eye,” Dina commanded.
The milkmaid did her best. Gradually, the cow quieted down and took a few mouthfuls of hay from the manger.
“Talk to her like a person!” Dina ordered. “Talk about the weather and about the past summer.”
The girl started a conversation with the cow. At first she was reluctant and uneasy. Then she grew more confident and, in the end, almost sincere.
“Let her see the pail and the rag, and talk the whole time,” said Dina, withdrawing from the stall but still watching the girl.
The final result was that the cow turned its large head and gave the milkmaid a look of understanding and interest while she milked.
The girl beamed. Strong white streams of milk squirted into the pail and foamed over the edge.
Dina waited until she was finished.
As they walked back across the courtyard with the milk pails, Dina advised in a serious voice:
“Talk to the cow about your sorrows. About your sweetheart. Cows like stories!”
The milkmaid had been about to thank Dina for her help but stopped short in alarm.
“What if people heard me?” she asked, embarrassed.
“They’d be struck by lightning and disaster,” said Dina gravely.
“But if they talked about me in the parish before lightning struck them?”
“That won’t happen,” said Dina confidently.
“How did you learn all this?” asked the milkmaid.
“Learn? I grew up in the sheriff’s barn and stable. But don’t bother to tell people that, because the sheriff is nastier than any cow.”
“Did you learn to milk there?”
“No, I learned that on a cotter’s farm. They had just one cow.”
The girl gave her a strange look and swallowed the next question.
The young milkmaid could not stop thinking about what a fine mistress she had. She told everyone who would listen. About the mistress who knew how to handle animals. So friendly and helpful.
She elaborated on the story, and it went from one estate to the next. A triumph for Dina, the milkmaid, and the cow.
Clearly, Dina of Reinsnes knew more than the Lord’s Prayer. And she sided with the lower classes. People remembered the story of the stableboy Tomas. Who had grown up with her. He had respect and responsibility at Reinsnes.
And then there was the Lapp girl Stine. Who bore two illegitimate children, one dead and one living. She became part of the family. And carried Benjamin at his baptism!
People added small details that made the stories better and heightened Dina’s sensitivity to the common people. Her sense of justice. Her generous heart.
The less flattering stories about Dina eventually lost their negative effect. Rather, they became evidence of a distinctive quality that distinguished her from other mistresses. And made her even stronger and more special.
Autumn heather colored the riding path a reddish purple. Large drops of water fell like rain showers as they rode under the trees. The sun was a mere spot overhead, without strength or warmth. And the bracken slapped apathetically against the horses’ hooves.
For months, Tomas had felt that Dina stared right through him, as if he were air. So now he spoke to her:
“Would you like me to find a post somewhere else?”
Dina reined in her horse and turned toward him. Her eyes showed surprise.
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know, but …”
“What are you trying to say, Tomas?”
Her voice was quiet. Not a trace of the rejection he had feared.
“I think … I so often think about that day. The bear hunt …”
Tomas could go no further.
“Are you sorry?”
“No! No, never think that!”
“You want to go bear hunting again?”
“Yes …”
“In the master bedroom?”
“Yes!” he said firmly.
“And how long do you think you’d last at Reinsnes when people started stumbling over you in the upstairs hall?”
“I don’t know,” he said in a thick voice. “But would you, could you … ?”
He reached for her reins an
d looked desperately her in the eye.
Tomas. A horse afraid of large hinds. Still, he jumped.
“Could you?” he repeated.
“No,” she said brutally. “I am Reinsnes. I know my place. You’re very bold, Tomas! But you know your place too.”
“But if it weren’t for that, Dina? Then could you … ?”
“No,” she said, tossing her hair from her face. “Then I’d go to Copenhagen.”
“What would you do there?”
“See the rooftops. And the towers! Study. Find out everything about numbers. Where they hide when you can’t see them. Numbers are constant, Tomas. But not words. Words lie all the time. When people speak and when they keep still … But numbers! They’re true.’”
Her voice. Her words. Were like a whiplash. Beating him. Mercilessly.
But still … She talked to him! About her thoughts. If he could not come to her bedroom, he would try at least to learn something about her thoughts.
“What about Benjamin, Dina?”
“Benjamin?”
“Is he mine?” he whispered.
“No,” she said harshly. Then she jabbed Blackie with the tip of her shoe and rode away.
I am Dina. The living need someone too. Just like animals. Need someone to stroke their flanks and talk to them. Tomas is an animal like that. I am Dina. Who strokes my flanks?
The flag knoll was a good place. The wind blew almost constantly there. Nothing was forever, everything was fleeting and incessantly in motion. Grasses and trees, birds and insects. Snowflakes and snowdrifts. The winds lived on that hill.
But the knoll itself stood firm. Windswept, covered with tangled grass. There, many years ago, the owner of Reinsnes had raised a flagpole. It stood more sturdily than most flagpoles along the shipping channel. Despite its dramatic location, which was directly in the path of every wind and squall.
The flag usually could be mended. Still, they often had to order a new one. But nobody criticized that expense. For the flag at Reinsnes was visible from a great distance in the sound, when coming from both the north and the south.
Dina had always felt drawn to the windy knoll. This fall she practically lived there. Or she reached for her cello. The strings shrieked loudly. People held their ears, and Mother Karen hobbled into the hall and called to her to come downstairs.
Or she climbed into the rowan tree. To conjure up Jacob and give her an object for revenge.
Dina's Book Page 23