Dina's Book

by Herbjorg Wassmo

  He was still contemplating going to the main house to plead with stone-cold Dina Gronelv.

  But he could not make the decision. Delayed it minute after minute. Even when he saw her riding out of the courtyard, he could have done it. Rushed after her and grabbed the horse’s reins.

  He had felt her strength before. Knew she would show no mercy unless he groveled completely.

  But he could not do it.

  He should have left while there was still time! Should not have waited until after Christmas, just because a man whom one could talk with like a human being came to Reinsnes.

  And the map! Why had he naively imagined that in order to travel to America one had to have a map? Now he had neither map nor money.

  He found an excuse to go to the kitchen, in time to hear Oline explain that Dina- had ridden to Fagerness.

  “Oddly enough, she has something to say to the sheriff,”’ Oline remarked with a dry laugh.

  A black hood tightened over his head. He could not see clearly. Heard the judge’s voice thundering at him already.

  He refused the coffee Oline offered him.

  The kitchen was bright and much too warm. He had trouble breathing all the way to the cottage.

  Nobody saw him the rest of the day. When a maid came to check on him that evening, he said he did not feel well and refused to let anyone enter. The tray of food stood untouched outside the door when the maid returned later.

  She shrugged her shoulders. Niels had pretended to be sick before. He was like a child in that respect.

  Dina rode across the mountain, carrying an impressive sum of cash to be deposited in the bank.

  Both she and the horse needed to use snowshoes at times. The horse set the pace as they climbed the road, which was icy and partially covered with snowdrifts.

  She paused at the top, where, during most of the year, a roaring river tumbled over the cliff and ended in a deep pool. Today there was just a thin stream of water. Green icicles hung over the edge in ingenious patterns.

  She stood looking down the steep slope where the sleigh had once fallen.

  I am Dina. Jacob is not in the deep pool. He is with me. He is not particularly heavy. Just bothersome. He always breathes on me, Hjertrud is not in the raspberry bushes where the old smithy stood at Fagerness. The scream is there. It drips to the ground when I crush the berries in my hand. And Hjertrud’s face becomes whole again. Like Lorch’s cello. I count and choose for all of them. They need me.

  She swung herself onto Blackie’s back without preparing the animal as she usually did. The horse was startled and whinnied. Did not like being on the cliff. Had memories of it that would not disappear.

  Dina laughed loudly and clapped the horse’s neck.

  “Ho!” she shouted, tightening the reins.

  It was a difficult trip. She did not arrive until late afternoon. Sometimes she had to wade through the drifts ahead of the horse because it sank so deep in the soft snow.

  When she reached the first farms, people came out and stared, as they always did in that region.

  They immediately recognized Dina of Reinsnes. The black horse without a saddle. A fine lady wearing trousers like a man. The women both envied and disapproved of the sight. But above all, they were curious to know why she came riding to her father’s estate in the dead of winter.

  They sent children and hired men on errands that crossed her path. But became none the wiser. Dina greeted everyone politely and rode past.

  Just opposite the sheriff’s estate, she stopped to look for the ptarmigan that she knew was there.

  The bird did not flit away when she and Blackie arrived, both breathing hard. It just sat with shining eyes and thought it was invisible.

  She rode nearer, until it fluttered across the snow a distance. Laughing like a child, she followed it. Finally, she came so close it began to hiss and coo.

  She and Tomas had played this game there in the winter. They had set snares too.

  During the winter the ptarmigan in the bushes around Fagerness were as tame as chickens. They did not get frightened when you chased them.

  It was another matter in the spring and summer, when the ptarmigan had fledglings. Then their small bodies huddled in the bushes or flew low over people’s heads to lure them away and let the fledglings escape.

  Shrieking hoarsely all the while. “Ke-beu ke-beu!” It was amazing that such tiny creatures could be so brave!

  She knew there were bears on Eid Mountain. So for safety’s sake, she rode with Tomas’s rifle under her thigh. But it would be unusual if a bear came out of hibernation at this time of year.

  The sheriff was alarmed. He peered through the office window with nearsighted eyes when he heard the horse. Dropped what he was doing and ran to the hall stairway with outstretched arms.

  His greeting was profuse and filled with reprimands. She had not told them she was coming! She made that long trip, on bad roads, without a saddle! And she, a mother and a widow, did not have the sense to dress like a woman!

  He said nothing about their not having parted as the best of friends the last time he was at Reinsnes.

  But he created a great fuss about her having ridden alone through the dark and disgraced the whole family. Had she met people on the way? Who were they? Did they recognize her?

  Dina took off her fur coat and dropped it on the floor by the stairs. She answered the questions like a calm, everyday oracle. Made no grand gestures. Simply allowed him to release the stream of words.

  Finally, to put an end to it, she shouted:

  “Have you got a toddy in the house? And make it hot as hell! I’m frozen to the bone!”

  Then Dagny and the boys arrived. Oscar, a tall beanstalk of a fellow, showed clear signs of being the eldest, of having been given the most upbringing and responsibility. He already had a cowed expression and did not look directly at people.

  Dina held his chin and regarded him. His eyes flickered, and he longed to escape her grasp. But she held fast. She nodded gravely and shifted her gaze to the sheriff:

  “You’re too hard on the boy,” she said. “Hell run away one day. You’ll see.”

  “Come to Reinsnes if things get difficult,” she whispered loudly to the boy.

  Then she sank onto a chair by the door.

  Egil, the sheriff’s younger son, came running like a puppy between his brother and Dina.

  “Hello, Master Egil Holm. How old are you today?”

  “Ten, pretty soon!” he replied, beaming.

  “Well, don’t just stand there staring! Pull off my boot, and let’s see if there’s gangrene in this frozen foot!”

  Egil tugged like a man. The boot came off, and he tumbled against the wall. He was as short and dark as his brother was tall and blond. And he expressed himself in an entirely different way.

  His frank, persistent love for Dina overshadowed his feelings for everyone and everything else. And led to constant quarrels and fist-fights with Benjamin when they were together.

  Dina never got involved in these squabbles.

  Egil’s obvious love for Dina did not please Dagny. But she murmured politely that it was too bad they had not known Dina was coming, so they could have prepared a special dinner.

  “I didn’t come for a fancy dinner. I came on business!” Dina retorted.

  Dagny was hurt by the haughty remark but said nothing. She always had the uncomfortable feeling that Dina was laughing at her and found her stupid.

  Her cheeks were flaming with humiliation when Dina took the sheriff and a toddy into the office.

  Behind closed doors, Dina explained the reason for her visit. She wanted her father to deposit money in a savings bank.

  The sheriff folded his hands, sighed, and stared as she counted out the large bundle of bills.

  “May I ask the source of all this cash?” he asked breathlessly, speaking in solemn sheriff language. “A surplus after all payments for merchandise? In the midst of Lofoten fishing? Without sending a carg
o boat to Bergen? Does the sheriff’s daughter hide cash in her bureau drawers in these modern times?”

  Dina laughed. But she refused to say where she had gotten the money. Just that it was extra cash, whose whereabouts she had not known until now.

  She did not want to go to the bank herself. It was beneath her dignity to come with an envelope filled with bills. Her father could perform that task. And he could keep the bank receipt until his next trip to Reinsnes. One third was to be deposited in Hanna’s name, one third in Benjamin’s, and one third in her own name.

  The sheriff had been entrusted with a business matter and took the task very seriously. But at first he refused to hear of donating so much money to a Lapp child conceived in sin!

  “Isn’t it enough that you keep both the child and its Lapp mother at Reinsnes? Give them food and shelter and all the necessities? And now, in addition, you want to squander all this money ?”

  Dina smiled, while her eyes furiously plucked off his mustache.

  The sheriff realized he might as well relent. But he was as curious as a child before Christmas Eve about how she had gotten the money.

  As they sat at the supper table, he said:

  “Have you, by any chance, sold a cargo boat or a piece of property?”

  “No,” she said tersely, and gave him a warning look. They had agreed that everything would remain strictly between the two of them. “Why do you ask?” Dagny wondered. “Oh, for no reason … One has all sorts of thoughts.”

  “I asked him how much he thought Reinsnes was worth,” Dina replied calmly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. The latter was to entertain the boys and irritate Dagny.

  Dina’s presence put the sheriff in high spirits. He talked about one of his current cases before the prefect in Troms0. The sheriff thought the prefect paid too much attention to sheriffs who had a legal education, those young fellows from the south who knew nothing about life in Nordland. Whereas old hardworking sheriffs, who understood the parish and its people’s soul, were no longer regarded as worthwhile.

  “Surely there’s nothing wrong with having an education?” said Dina in a teasing tone. She knew this was a particularly sore subject with the sheriff.

  “No, but why can’t they see that others have knowledge too, the kind that comes from experience and wisdom!” said the sheriff, sounding offended.

  “Maybe all your talk will make the case disappear,” Dina suggested, with a wink at Dagny.

  “He’s tried hard to mediate it,” said Dagny.

  “What’s it about?” Dina asked.

  “A thoroughly un-Christian judgment,” growled the sheriff. “A cotter’s widow got sentenced to two months’ imprisonment in Trond-heim because she took a flowered kerchief, three cheeses, and some money from the estate where she had to work! I complained to the chief magistrate at Ibestad. About both the sentence and the witness. But he was already allied with the prefect.”

  “Be careful, Father. Those are powerful enemies.” She laughed.

  The sheriff gave her a hurt look.

  “They treat common people like animals. And respectable old sheriffs like lice! It’s the times, I tell you. The times show no respect.”

  “True, the times show no respect,” Dina agreed, yawning openly. “And what about my father? He has no false judgment on his conscience?”

  “No, by God and my king!”

  “Except his judgment against Dina?”

  “Against Dina?”

  “Yes.”

  “What judgment?”’

  “Hjertrud!”

  Everyone stopped chewing. The serving girl retreated through the kitchen door. The walls and ceiling held each other.

  “Dina, Dina …,” said the sheriff huskily. “You say the strangest things.”

  “No; I keep quiet about the strangest things.”

  Dagny ordered the boys to leave the table and followed them herself. The sheriff and Dina of Reinsnes sat alone under the chandelier. The doors were closed, the past probed infected wounds.

  “You can’t blame a child,” the sheriff said heavily. He did not look at her.

  “Then why is she blamed?”

  “Nobody blames her.”

  “You do!”

  “Oh, Dina …”

  “You sent me away. I was nobody. Until you sold me to Jacob. Fortunately, he was a human being. But I’d become a wolf pup.”

  “What wicked talk! Sold! How can you … ?”

  “Because it’s true. I was in the way. Had no upbringing. If it weren’t for the pastor’s advice, I’d be milking cows and goats at Helle today! You think I don’t know that? And you feel sorry for strangers who steal flowered kerchiefs! Do you know what Hjertrud’s black book says about people like you?”

  “Dina!”

  The sheriff rose ponderously. Silverware clattered, and his glass tipped over.

  “Go ahead and be furious! But you don’t know what Hjertrud’s book says. You’re the sheriff, and you don’t know anything! You collect common people who don’t know you. So you can hang them on your watch chain. So everyone can see that Sheriff Holm of Fagerness is a just man.”

  “Dina …”

  All of a sudden, the sheriff doubled over and turned white behind his beard. Then he collapsed nicely on the chair before plopping to the floor. His legs and body were a folding knife that fit too loosely in its handle.

  Dagny rushed through the doorway. She wept and embraced the man on the floor. Dina sat him on a chair, gave him a drink of water, and left the room.

  * * *

  The sheriff recovered quickly. His heart was running wild, he explained, shamefaced.

  They all ate dessert together, nearly an hour late, in peace and tolerance.

  Clutching the banister and feeling terrible, the sheriff had called Dina, downstairs, in a loud, pleading voice.

  The boys stared at Dina in admiration tinged with fear when she seated herself at the table. Little boys were not supposed to hear, or see. But today, once again, they had seen Dina punish their father’s fury. They learned it did not kill her. Quite the contrary. It was the sheriff who fell on the floor.

  Dagny constantly shifted facial expressions as long as Dina was present. When she looked at the sheriff, she was an early buttercup by the creek. When she turned to Dina, she became rotten seaweed.

  I am Dina. My feet grow into the floor as I stand in the mild winter night and watch the moon roll across Hjertrud”s heaven. It has a face. Eyes, mouth, and nose. One cheek is slightly hollow. Hjertrud still stands by my bed weeping when she thinks I am asleep. But I do not sleep. I walk across the sky and count stars so she will see me.

  Dina entertained herself by moving things when she visited Pager-ness. She put them in their old places. Where they had been before Dagny’s arrival.

  Dagny made no comment. She had known Dina’s ways for years. And would not give her the satisfaction of seeing she was annoyed. She just clenched her teeth and waited until Dina left.

  This time, she had only to wait until the next morning. Then she hurried through the rooms, snarling and sputtering, and returned everything to its place. The sewing box, from the smoking parlor to the sitting room. The portrait of Hjertrud’s family, from the dining room to the upstairs hall.

  Dina had exchanged the portrait with a blue porcelain Prince Oscar platter with a gilded edge.

  God help anyone who got in Dagny’s way or commented on her actions.

  Later that day, as the sheriff was puffing his after-dinner cigar and feeling peaceful and secure, she could not contain herself:

  “I’m sure it takes great intelligence to be as brazen and tactless as Dina!”

  Now, now … What is it this time:”“

  He was tired of women’s ways. He did not understand them. Did not want to know, or to take sides. But still he had to ask.

  “She scolds you! Ruins the dinner! She moves things, as if she were still living here. She emphasizes Hjertrud’s family to show disdai
n for me,” Dagny said shrilly.

  “Dina has a difficult temperament…. I’m sure she doesn’t intend any harm.”

  “Then what does she intend?”

  He sighed and did not answer.

  “I’m glad I’ve got only one daughter,” he mumbled.

  “So am I!” she hissed.

  “That’s enough, Dagny!”

  “Yes, until the next time she rides through the parish like a stableboy, astride her horse without a saddle, and acts as if she owns Fagerness! She even makes your heart go crazy!”

  “It’s not often, after all…”

  “Thank God!”

  He scratched his head and took his pipe into the office. He no longer had the strength to maintain household discipline. Was ashamed that he did not put his wife in her place so emphatically that there would be peace in the house. Felt he was starting to get old and had become less tolerant. At the same time, he had to admit that Dina’s arrival had been like a breath of fresh air. He was doing her a favor! One that nobody else could do. In spite of everything, she was the sheriff’s daughter. Of course he would help her! Besides, he enjoyed having someone who could take a little roaring and raging now and then. Most people had such confounded delicate feelings!

  He sighed, sat down in the big wing chair, laid his pipe on the table, and chose the snuffbox instead.

  A pinch of snuff always helped him think clearly. And right now he had thoughts he wanted to pursue. But he did not know quite where to begin.

  Something about poor Hjertrud … What had Dina said? What did it say in Hjertrud’s book?

  Chapter 2

  Lo, he passes by me, and I see him not;

  he moves on, but I do not perceive him.

  Behold, he snatches away; who can hinder him?

  Who will say to him, “What doest thou”?

  — Job 9 : 11-12

  The silence was a wall when Dina rode into the courtyard.

  Light flickered restlessly from the cottage. A white gleam across the bluish snow. Sheets hung in the windows. Death had come to Reinsnes. A shadow through the frosted window. Tomas had cut him down. A stump of rope remained. It dangled rhythmically a long time,