“I’m sorry.”
Thea finished her task. With scarcely a sound.
The big black belly rumbled and roared. Heat began to spread through the room.
Dina remained lying in bed, still fully dressed, until Thea had disappeared and she heard the girl knock on the guest room door.
Then she got up and turned the strange night inside out on a chair. One garment after another. Poured tepid water over naked skin and forced Jacob to stay at a distance.
She took a long time brushing her hair and dressing. Chose a black cloth skirt and red bodice. No brooch or other decoration. Tied a moss-green knitted shawl around her shoulders and waist, as servant girls did. Then she took a deep breath and slowly went downstairs for breakfast.
Mother Karen had just returned from Strandsted and apologized for not being home the previous evening when their guest arrived.
Oline was offended about something or other and pursed her mouth ominously.
Dina said with a yawn that it did not really matter. After all, he was neither a government official nor a prophet. They could certainly make amends with a proper dinner in the middle of Advent.
Mother Karen began by ordering a fine breakfast.
Oline shot a furious look at the old woman’s back and thought about all the things she needed to do that morning. The baking woman would arrive the next day. Everything was behind schedule. An outbreak of measles and other illnesses in the parish had kept people bedridden for days. All the extra help she had ordered was delayed. And the new milkmaid was still inexperienced, although she was a willing worker. Stine had her hands full with the children, and Dina was no help in the house.
What was a poor woman to do? A fine breakfast! Puh!
“So Leo Zjukovski is visiting us before summer?” Dina’s voice was icy.
She heard him coming downstairs and went into the hall.
The smile he had sent her stiffened.
“Maybe you don’t take guests so close to Christmas here at Reinsnes?” he asked, walking toward her with outstretched hands.
“At Reinsnes we always receive guests, both those who have promised to come and the others…”
“So I haven’t arrived at an inconvenient time?”
She stood looking at him, without replying.
“Where did you come from?”
“From the north.”
“The north is a big place.”
“Yes.”
“Are you planning to stay long?”
He held her hand in both of his, as if wanting to warm it.
“Until the next steamboat, if that’s all right? I won’t be a bother.”
“Did you bring some of those good cigars you brought last time?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll have one before breakfast! By the way, a book printed in the unreadable Russian alphabet came to my room. Last night.”
His eyes smiled, but he was serious.
“You may keep that for now…. Books get so damp, the binding pulls loose with constant sea voyages. But Fd like to translate the poems. They’re jewels. In a mad world. I’ll write a translation that you can keep with the book. Do you know Pushkin?”
“No.”
“Fd like to tell you about him, if you’re interested.”
She nodded. Her eyes still reflected blind rage.
“Dina …” he said gently.
The frost had created lacework on all the windows. A faint aroma of cigar smoke seeped from the parlor.
“Barabbas is no blacksmith,” she whispered, as she rubbed his wrist with her index finger.
Chapter 14
He opened the rock, and water gushed forth;
it flowed through the desert like a river.
— Psalms 105 : 41
Niels moved in Leo’s shadow, as if seeking the Russian’s protection. He even came to the main house for meals and spent evenings in the smoking parlor. The two men held long conversations in low voices.
Anders was busy preparing for a fishing trip to the Lofoten Islands after Christmas. One of his longboats had returned from Andenes with an excellent coalfish catch. In the past year he had become known as the “Coalfish King” far beyond the parish. He had bought new nets, both sink seines and dragnets.
One day when the sheriff and his family were at Reinsnes, Anders came with some sketches just before they all sat down for dinner. Proud as a rooster, he spread out the papers at the end of the table.
The steaming salted meat had to wait while everyone looked at the wonderful drawings.
Anders wanted to build a cabin on a longboat and put in a stove, so they would no longer need to go ashore to cook. Then they could remain at sea day and night, sleeping in shifts under a roof.
The sheriff nodded and stroked his beard. The boat would look rather clumsy, he thought, but the idea would probably work. Had he consulted Dina?
“No,” Anders said, glancing at her.
Niels thought it was a crazy plan. A longboat like that would be downright dangerous! High and hard to maneuver, and impossible to tow.
Leo liked the idea. Russian lodjes were also bulky but were seaworthy fishing boats nonetheless. He examined Anders’s drawings and nodded approvingly.
Mother Karen clasped her hands and praised the undertaking, but she urged everyone to the table before the food got cold*
Dina thumped him on the shoulder and said cheerfully:
“You’re an excellent fellow, Anders! There’ll be a cabin on the longboat, I’m sure.”
They looked at each other for a moment. Then Anders folded the drawings and sat down. He had achieved his goal.
“I am Dina, Eve and Adam had two sons. Cain and Abel. One killed the other. Out of jealousy,
Anders will not kill anyone. But he is the one I want to keep.
Niels’s presence at the table, and his constant turning to Leo, infested Dina’s food like insects. At first she watched him with her small smile, then she demanded Anders’s and Leo’s attention.
Stine was also on guard as long as Niels was present. She spoke to the children in her low, penetrating voice when necessary. Handled them in a gentle, authoritative way. Contrary to usual household decorum, they sat at the table with the grownups. When they finished eating they could leave.
It was hard to get the children to bed. But whipping rods were not used at Reinsnes. Dina made that decision. If you could control a wild horse by simply showing it the whip, you could certainly manage two small children with no whip other than a stern look.
Stine did not always agree, but she kept that to herself. When she felt she needed to pull Benjamin’s hair, that was between the two of them.
Benjamin accepted Stine’s punishments because they were always fair. Besides, Stine secreted a special smell when she exerted herself. That smell had blessed Benjamin ever since he was a baby.
He accepted her discipline, whether given with anger or with composure, as one accepts shifting weather and seasons. He bore no resentment and cried everything out of his system at once.
Hanna was different. If she was punished without knowing why, it could unloose an avalanche of sounds, anxiety, and revenge. And no one could comfort her, except Benjamin.
The day the sheriff and his family were at Reinsnes for a pre-Christmas visit was a day Benjamin chose to be especially restless at the table.
The sheriff muttered irritably that it was not right to have two youngsters growing up at Reinsnes without a father’s discipline.
Stine bowed her head, her face flaming with shame. Niels stared at the wall as if he had caught sight of a rare insect in the middle of winter.
But Dina laughed and told Benjamin and Hanna to finish eating in the kitchen with Oline.
They took their plates and left the table, happy and unabashed.
“My father didn’t need to be there in order for me to grow up. We all know that.”
It was as if someone had spit tobacco juice in the sheriff’s face.
Mother Karen looked desperately from one person to another. But she could not find anything to say. The atmosphere in the room became rancid liver fat when Dina added:
“Little Dina didn’t get much of a father’s upbringing while she was boarded with the cotter’s family at Helle. And now she’s mistress of Reinsnes.”
The sheriff was on the verge of losing his temper. But Dagny gripped his arm. She had given him an explicit warning. If he could not keep peace with Dina when they visited her, she would never set foot at Reinsnes again.
For Dina’s spitefulness and revenge in response to the sheriff’s reprimands affected Dagny too. In fact, she was the only one humiliated. Because when it came to scratches and battles, the sheriff was as thick-skinned as a walrus in mating season.
He pulled himself together with effort and chuckled the whole thing off as a joke. Then launched into lively conversation with Anders about the cabin on the longboat.
For the rest of the meal, Leo’s eyes were two falcons hovering above the people at the table.
Everyone seemed paralyzed by all that Dina did not say when she hurled her shameless reply.
Stine did not raise her eyes before she was well out of the room a half hour later.
The evening was short, people went to bed early. The next morning, the sheriff and his family returned home.
Mother Karen tried to repair the damage. Sent many gifts with them and spoke kindly to Dagny before they left.
Dina chose to sleep late, so she had to shout good-bye from her bedroom window as they trudged down to the pier.
“Have a blessed Christmas week!” she called unctuously, and waved.
* * *
The days before Christmas changed pace from pitch-black morning to afternoon’s dark mirage above frozen tracks in the snow. Hectic activity slowly merged into evening and heavy repose. Even the animals were affected by this rhythm, although they scarcely saw daylight.
Lorchas cello was heard from the master bedroom late in the evenings, and lighted candles shone from all the windows. They did not ration candles now. The normal quota was six candles in the living room on weekdays during the winter. Two at a time. Plus the four large lamps.
The house smelled of green soap and baking, birch logs and smoke. Oline hired a woman to help with the baking, which left a wonderful aroma in the kitchen and pantry. But some tasks she trusted to no one but herself. The butter dough, for example. Her floury hands created it on the large table in the entryway. With the doors open to the cold December evening.
Wearing a fur coat and a baking kerchief, she held sway like a large bustling animal. Her cheeks turned rosy from the cold.
Stacks of lefse filled wooden boxes in the boathouse loft. Cookies were stored in the huge pantry. Pickled meat lay in a press in the cellar. For an entire day, the cookhouse rang with the sound of a chopping knife as Oline prepared meat for sausages. Curdled-milk cheese was placed in bowls, sprinkled with cinnamon, and covered with a linen cloth. Loaves of bread lay ready in boxes and chests, enough for the Lofoten trip as well.
There were many rooms, both large and small, at Reinsnes. Dina could certainly have had Leo Zjukovski to herself if she tried. But there were many doors. And they all opened and closed, without first knocking. So Leo became everyone’s guest.
The steamboat was not expected until the week after Christmas. Perhaps not until after New Year!
The visitor discussed politics and religion with Johan. With Mother Karen, he talked about literature and mythology. He paged through her books. But admitted that he read Russian and German better than Norwegian.
Leo Zjukovski became Mr. Leo to everyone. He gave coins to Thea, who stoked his stove each morning. But no one knew where he came from or where he was going. When anyone asked, he replied convincingly, but briefly, and usually without naming dates or places.
People at Reinsnes accepted this calmly and politely, for they were used to strangers. Instead they interpreted everything about the Russian according to their own abilities and interests.
Dina thought he must have been in Russia since his last visit, because there were Russian books lying in his room. Twice, when she knew he was at the warehouse, she stole into his room on some pretext. Inhaled the smell of him. The tobacco, the leather clothing, the travel bag.
She rifled through his books. They contained underlining, but no notes as in Johan’s books. Just pale pencil lines.
Shortly after Leo arrived, Anders asked when he had last traveled to Bergen.
Leo merely answered:
“I was there last summer.”
Then he began to praise the Mother Karen, which lay on the beach waiting to be launched on its Lofoten voyage.
“Nordland vessels are true vessels!” he said. And Anders’s eyes shone, as if he had bought and paid for the cargo boat himself.
Leo removed his jacket and vest, and danced and sang in the evenings. His strong, dark voice filled the whole house. The parlor doors were opened, and people came from the kitchen and the surrounding buildings to watch and listen. Squinting winter-season eyes began to glow toward the warmth and the singing.
Dina learned the melodies and played the piano by ear.
Lorch’s cello never came downstairs. She insisted it could not stand changes.
On Christmas Eve the sky was milky with snow. An unexpected thaw had begun. It did not augur well for Christmas visits and festivities. The road could become impassable for sleighs in less than a day, and the sea was already rough. The sound churned with a winter storm that seemed reluctant to reveal itself. One did not know its strength.
Dina rode on the ebb-tide beach, because riding on porous snow with a sharp crust underneath could hurt a horse’s hooves.
Blackie trotted with slack reins as she stared at the cloudy horizon.
She had wanted to invite Leo to ride with her, but he had already gone to the warehouse. Wanted to make him reveal his feelings. For he had not repeated anything he had said in the upstairs hall the day after the fire.
She wrinkled her forehead and squinted toward the cluster of buildings around the courtyard.
Shafts of yellow light shone from the many rows of windows. Frozen rowan berries and sheaves of grain were ravaged by small thieves of heaven on quick wings. Amid all the whiteness, traces of animals and humans, rubbish and manure, formed gray and brown patches around the buildings. Icicles hanging from the roof created shadows on the snowdrifts that looked like voracious teeth.
Dina was not a pleasant sight.
But an hour later, when she rode up to the stable, she was smiling.
That made Tomas uneasy. He took the reins and held Blackie as she dismounted and clapped the horse’s flank.
“Give him a little extra …,” she said.
“What about the other horses?”
“Do as you wish.”
“Can I have a few days off, the week after Christmas?” he asked, kicking a clump of ice with horse manure in it.
“Just make sure there’s someone in the barn and stable,” she replied indifferently, and turned to leave.
“Will he be here long? Mr. Leo, I mean.”
The question gave him away. Showed that he demanded an accounting from her. That he assumed the right to wonder.
Dina seemed ready to hurl a devastating reply. But suddenly restrained herself.
“Oh, why do people at Reinsnes put on such acts, Tomas?”
She leaned toward him.
He thought about chewing the first sorrel grass in early summer. Raw summer …
“People come and go …,” she added.
He was at a loss for an answer. Clapped the horse absentmindedly.
“Merry Christmas, Dina!”
His eyes brushed her mouth. Her hair.
“Be sure to eat Christmas dinner before you go home,” she said lightly.
“I’d rather take home something extra, if that’s possible.”
“You can do both.”
“Than
k you.”
Suddenly she became angry.
“Don’t stand there looking so unhappy, Tomas”’
“Unhappy?”
“You’re the perfect picture of gloom!” she elaborated. “No matter what happens, you always look like a funeral.”
It grew very quiet. Then the man drew in his breath. Deeply. As if preparing to blow out all the tallow candles at one time.
“A funeral, Dina?” he finally said, emphasizing each word.
He looked straight at her. Mockingly?
Then it was over. His firm shoulders sank. He led the horse inside and fed it oats, as she had ordered.
Leo was just leaving his room as she came upstairs.
“Come!”
She said it like an order, with no preliminaries. He looked surprised but followed her. She opened the door to the master bedroom and invited him inside.
It was the first time she had been alone with him since he arrived. She pointed to a chair by the table.
He sat down and gestured for her to sit on the chair nearest him. But Jacob was already sitting there.
She began to take off her riding jacket. He rose and helped her. Laid the jacket carefully on the imposing bed.
She ignored Jacob and sat down by the table. They were figures in a tableau. Jacob watched them.
Not a word had been said.
“You look serious,” said Leo, breaking the silence. He placed one thigh over the other and regarded the two cellos. Let his eyes glide to the window, to the mirror, to the bed. And finally back to Dina’s face.
“I want to know who you are!” she declared.
“Does it need to be today? Christmas Eve?”
“Yes.”
“I keep trying to discover who I am. And whether I belong in Russia or here in Norway.”
“Meanwhile, what do you live on?”
For an instant, his green eyes flashed.
“The same as Mistress Dina, my family’s property and privileges.” He rose, bowed, and sat down again.
“Do you want payment for my lodging immediately?”
“Only if you’re leaving tomorrow.”
“I owe you more with every passing day. Perhaps you want a security deposit?”
Dina's Book Page 25