Dina's Book

by Herbjorg Wassmo

  “It was no fun,” she said tersely, and leaned over the cliff.

  “Did you love Jacob?” he asked after a while.

  “Love?”

  “Yes. I understand he was much older than you.”

  “Older than my father.”

  He looked at her with curiosity and amazement, until she asked:

  “Whom does one love among those one meets? You must know that, having traveled so much.”

  “Only a very few…”

  “Since you feel so free to ask if I loved Jacob, you can surely tell me whom you love among those you’ve met.”

  “I loved my mother. But she’s no longer alive. She never adjusted to living in Russia. Always felt homesick for Bergen. For the sea, I think…. Also, from age twenty to twenty-three, I had a wife. She died too.”

  “Do you ever see her now?”

  “If you mean do I think about her… Yes, sometimes. Like right now … Since you ask. But I didn’t love her as I should. Our families thought we were a good match. I was just an irresponsible medical student who preferred to be a radical and ingratiate myself with artists and rich charlatans in the czar’s court. I studied and drank wine. Gave political speeches and …”

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-nine,” he said with a smile. “Do you think that’s old?”

  “It’s not a question of age.”

  He laughed heartily.

  “Do you come from an upper-class family? Were you received at court?” she asked.

  “I tried.”

  “Why didn’t you succeed?”

  “Because Pushkin died.”

  “The man who wrote poetry?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did he die?”

  “He was shot in a duel. Caused by jealousy, they said. But in fact, he was a victim of political intrigue. Russia is rotting from within. It affects all of us. Pushkin was a great artist surrounded by ordinary people.”

  “He sounds somewhat ‘ordinary” too,” she said firmly.

  “Everyone’s ordinary when it comes to love.”

  She glanced at him quickly and said:

  “Could you imagine shooting someone out of jealousy?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps.”

  “Where did the bullet strike?”

  “In his stomach.”

  “A bad spot,” she said dryly.

  “You don’t show much sympathy, do you, Dina?” he said, suddenly irritated.

  “What do you mean?”

  “For a woman, you certainly take suffering and death very well. When you talk about your dead husband … about Niels … and now Pushkin. That’s unusual.”

  “I don’t know that man Pushkin.”

  “No, but the others …”

  “What do you expect?”

  “A little sympathy in a woman’s voice.”

  “It’s women who care for the dead, after all. Men just lie down and die. You can’t cry about a stupid dueling wound in the stomach. Besides, men don’t lose their lives that way around here. They drown.”

  “Or hang themselves. And women weep in Nordland too.”

  “That’s not my concern.”

  It was not only the words that repelled him.

  “Your mother is dead too? A violent death?” he asked, as if he had not heard her last words.

  Dina bent over and picked up a suitably large stone. Drew back her arm and threw the stone powerfully over the precipice.

  “Masses of boiling lye were dumped on her,” she said firmly, without looking at him. “That’s why the sheriff tore down the wash-house at Fagerness and prefers that I spend my life at Reinsnes.”

  She put two fingers between her teeth and whistled for her horse.

  Leo stood with his arms hanging limply. Somewhere in his green eyes, unbounded tenderness arose.

  “I knew there was something…. That scene with your father at Christmas. You aren’t very good friends with your father, are you, Dina?”

  “He’s the one who’s not friends with me!”

  ‘That’s a childish attitude.”

  “Well,”it’s still true.”

  “Tell me about you.”

  “Tell about yourself first,” she insisted sullenly.

  But after a while she said:

  “What would you have done if your child had touched the handle and made the lye spill? And what would you have done if your wife disappeared before you had shown her a little love, after plaguing her for years?”

  Leo went to her. Put his arms around her. Held her close. And kissed her blindly and hard.

  The waterfalls were a church organ. The sky hid the horse. Jacob was only an angel. For Hjertrud’s new messenger was there.

  “You underline your books. That doesn’t look nice,” she suddenly remarked as they rode down the steep slope.

  He quickly hid his surprise and said:

  “You spy on people. You examine books and travel bags.”

  “Yes, when people won’t tell me who they are themselves.”

  “I’ve told you …”

  “About that man Pushkin, whom you admire like a god. You promised me a translation.”

  “You’ll get one.”

  “It has to be from the book you gave me.”

  “I didn’t give it to you. You took it! I gave you the other book.”

  “You had two identical books. One with underlining and one without. I liked the one with underlining best.”

  “She’s wise,” he said, as if talking to himself.

  She turned on her horse’s back and gave him a teasing look.

  “You need to be more careful!”

  “Yes, after this. That book was important, in fact …,” he said, but stopped abruptly.

  “Who gives you Russian books here in Norway?”

  “You, for example.”

  “I had to take the book I wanted/’

  “You’re shameless,” he said dryly.

  “That’s true.”

  “Why did you take the underlined book?”

  “Because it meant the most to you.”

  He said no more. She had exhausted him.

  “Do you have the other book with you now?”

  “No.”

  “Where did you leave it?”

  “A widow stole it.”

  “In Bergen?”

  “In Bergen.”

  “You’re angry.”

  “Yes, I’m angry.”

  “Are you going to come to my room tonight and translate what you like best in Pushkin’s book?”

  “Would that be appropriate?”

  She laughed, as her body moved up and down on the horse’s back. She sat astride Blackie. Her thighs held the horse’s flanks firmly and gently, and her hips swayed in rhythm with the animal.

  The man wished it were summer. With warm weather. Then he would have tied the horse to the tree.

  The third day, he left. Dina began to pace at night. And springtime struggled with its tasks.

  Chapter 5

  You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s wife.

  — Leviticus 18 : 8

  The women at Reinsnes were like the cargo boats at Reinsnes. Beached on the same shores. But with different destinations when they set sail. Different cargoes. Different sailing characteristics.

  But whereas the cargo boats had a skipper, the women raised their sails into the wind themselves. They were headstrong and obstinate and had great individual power.

  Some people believed Stine could bewitch the wind. Others thought Dina was in league with the devil. Otherwise why would she sit, bundled in wolfskin, drinking wine in a snow-covered summer-house on moonlit winter nights?

  Still others felt there was a balance between good and evil powers at Reinsnes. But Mother Karen’s death would be a catastrophe.

  The old woman held to life tenaciously. Her skin looked like soft, shining birch bark. White, with dark spots. Her hair was carefully combed each day by Stine.
After its weekly juniper rinse it had a golden sheen. And was soft as silk.

  Her prominent hooked nose held her monocle in place. She read for three hours every day. Newspapers, books, old and new letters. It was important to remain alert in old age, she said.

  She took her afternoon nap in the wing chair, with a woolen lap robe over her knees. She went to bed with the farmworkers and got up with the rooster. Her legs gave her considerable trouble, but she did not complain, now that she had moved into the bedroom behind the dining room and no longer needed to climb stairs.

  Mother Karen had been opposed to Dina’s plans for renovating the cottage. But she changed her mind when Dina did not relent and carpenters arrived at the estate.

  The cottage was patched and repaired until it was like a polished jewel.

  When the work was finished and Dina’s things had been moved in, Mother Karen crossed the courtyard to see it all

  She had decided the building should be painted ocher, with white trim.

  Dina agreed. The cottage would be ocher! One white house on the estate was enough. And yet the cottage must not look like a red barn.

  The best thing about the building was the new, enclosed veranda that faced the sea. It had dragon spires and stained-glass windows. Double doors and broad steps. One could sit there, or go in and out, without being observed from the other buildings.

  “An enclosed veranda, with double doors, facing southwest! That means a lot of firewood and drafts,” Oline said firmly. “And the indoor ferns and rosebushes won’t survive even one winter day!”

  “Megalomania,” declared the sheriff when he saw the veranda. “It’s not fitting for a sod-roofed house.” But he smiled.

  Anders supported Dina. Said it was a comfortable place.

  “In wintertime it’s certainly better to sit in an enclosed veranda than in a summerhouse,” he said, and winked at Dina. Boldly acknowledging her vices.

  Mother Karen contributed sturdy geranium cuttings for the new sitting room windows.

  She sat in the rocking chair on moving day and smilingly observed all the wonderful things. She never mentioned that Niels had died in the cottage.

  “My goodness! Jacob should have seen this, Dina!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands in delight.

  “Jacob sees what he sees,” said Dina, as she poured sherry into two small glasses.

  The moving was finished and the men had gone, leaving the women alone in the cottage. Annette had stoked the stove. The smoke rose from the chimney and drifted delicately over the sound. Like a small wisp of reindeer lichen on the huge expanse of sky.

  “We must call Oline and Stine!” said the old woman.

  Dina opened the new window and shouted across the courtyard. Soon they were there. Four women under the cottage beams.

  Oline stole furtive glances at the beam from which Niels had hung himself.

  “Doesn’t the place smell different now?” she asked, twisting the small glass between strong fingers.

  “Like lumber that’s just been cut. And slightly bitter, from the new stove,” Stine said.

  “It’s just wonderful! A white stove! Nobody else in the parish has a white stove!” said Oline proudly.

  Dina had not taken much furniture from the master bedroom. Had declined the canopy bed with thanks. Johan would get that. But she had taken the mirror and the silver candelabra. And the oval table and matching chairs Mother Karen had brought to Reinsnes now held the place of honor in Dina’s parlor. They fit with the pale linen wallcovering and the soft-green wainscoting.

  She would order new furniture from Bergen this summer.

  Dina had told Hanna and Benjamin she was going to buy a desk with secret drawers for gold and silver and precious stones.

  And she had decided to get a good, wide widow’s bed.

  The kitchen was equipped with the essentials. No one thought Dina would do any work there, but they did not say so.

  The cellos stood in the parlor. Both of them. She had carried them across the courtyard herself with a grim expression that sunny day.

  When her glass was empty, she opened the door to the veranda and sat down with Lorch’s cello between her thighs.

  Her back to the others and her face toward the sea, she played polonaises. Behind stained-glass windows on the new veranda. While the sea lay crimson or gold, pale blue or green, depending on which pane she looked through. The world continually changed color.

  Behind her in the parlor, the women of Reinsnes sat listening with folded hands. It was the first time they had all stopped working simply to be together.

  I am Dina. He walks through my freshly painted rooms. He bows his head over the table and listens to Lorch’s cello. The cowlick on the left side of his head is so large that it looks as if all his hairs are spurting from a single point and falling in a brown waterfall over his head. His hair is glacial water that becomes silk threads as it flows to the sea. It splashes my face.

  Leo!

  He is like the old thoughts that constantly recur. Like standing outside the sod-roofed bam at Helle, warming my bare feet in fresh cowpies in late autumn. When he walks through the room I am amazed that I can move, make sounds, feel the wind in my hair. Or set one foot in front of the other. Where does the strength come from? All the sap, all the moisture? All that is fresh at first but changes to disgusting, sticky, stinking shells. And the stone? Who gives the stone such unwieldy power? To lie there forever! And the repetitions. Who determines all these repetitions? Notes continually repeated in the same pattern. Endless numbers following their own law. And northern lights that chase across the sky! In paths I never understand. But that have their system. Which are a mystery. The questions become easier to bear when the man with the large cowlick walks through my rooms. He chases them all away. Because he saw the cliff. He heard about Hjertrud. And did not become mute.

  Will he return?

  Who am I? Who thinks these thoughts? Am I Dina? Who does what she wishes?

  They heard Lorch’s cello from the cottage at night. Dina began to shrivel like a frostbitten winter potato.

  Oline’s hawk eyes saw it first. And she put it bluntly: This was the curse of that house of death. No one could go unpunished under those heavy beams. You could not hide such scandalous sin with buckram, wallcoverings, and paint. It lasted for all eternity. Amen.

  Everyone noticed that the curse had an additional effect on Dina. She worked like a field hand. She rose before dawn. And long after midnight you could see shadows behind her windows and hear music from the veranda.

  Tomas was tied to the weekdays at Reinsnes. He sensed Dina’s aroma even through the odors of herring barrels, boiling cod-liver oil, and Oline’s bread. He blessed the day the Russian left and Dina began working like a horse.

  Tomas smelled her, saw her hips, was surprised that her wrists had gotten thinner. That her hair was losing its vitality.

  She refused to have him along when she went riding. Had stopped acting playful. Her look had become as sharp as a master seiner’s, her voice as rare, but as inescapable, as a thunderstorm.

  When she moved to the cottage he expected she would send for him.

  The door to her veranda could be seen only from the side facing the sea.

  * * *

  One day a letter with a heavy wax seal arrived. For Johan.

  It was a spring day filled with sea gulls’ cries and bustling activity as people prepared to launch the cargo boat on a voyage to Bergen.

  Amid all the din, Johan stood in the warehouse with the letter in his hand. He was alone for the moment. So he opened the seal. And read that he had finally received a parish. In a tiny community on the Helgeland coast.

  He walked outside. Gazed at the wharves, the farm buildings, the main house, and the cottage, which people had begun to call Dina’s Place. Heard the swarms of people on the beach, where the launching was under way. People from the estate, children, and casual passersby. Observers and helpers. Anders and the mate were giving orders.
In commanding voices.

  The land toward the woods and mountainsides was now green as far as the eye could see. Behind the milky, fair-weather mist lay the mountains and the blue-green heights of Vag Peak.

  Was he to leave all this?

  As he turned toward the main house, with its master bedroom windows set in the facade like sparkling eyes, Dina came toward him on the tree-lined path. She wore a crimson bodice, and her hair was flying in the wind.

  His eyes unexpectedly brimmed with tears, and he had to turn away to hide them.

  The letter he had almost lost hope of receiving felt suddenly like a sentence of doom.

  “What are you moping about?” she asked when she reached him.

  “I’ve got a parish,” he replied tonelessly, trying to meet her gaze.

  “Where?”

  He mentioned the place and gave her the letter. She read it slowly, then folded it and looked at him.

  “You don’t have to accept the call,” she said as she handed him the piece of paper.

  She had read him. Seen all the signs he gave her. Signs he scarcely knew he possessed.

  “But I certainly can’t stay here.”

  “We need you,” she said.

  Their eyes met. Hers demanding. His seeking. Full of questions she did not answer.

  “The children need a teacher,” she continued.

  “But that’s not what Mother wanted….”

  “Your mother couldn’t see the future. She didn’t know who would need you. She only knew you should make something of yourself.”

  “Don’t you think she’d be sorry?”

  “No.”

  “But what do you think, Dina? A pastor without a parish!”

  “It’s fine to have a pastor here,” she said with a dry laugh. “Besides, the parish they gave you is so small it’s an insult.”

  Later that day, Dina examined the equipment lists for the Bergen voyage. She walked around the warehouses, checking what remained to be done.

  Suddenly Jacob emerged from a wall, naked. His large organ protruded like a spear.

  She laughed at him for offering himself. But he stood there stubbornly, tempting her.

  Had she forgotten what he was like? How he could glide into her so deeply and beautifully? How he could make her bite the sheets when passion pressed out air and sounds? How he caressed her? What was a stupid, solitary Russian, who wandered here and there like a sinker without a net, compared to Jacob’s erect organ? Could she tell him that? Could she prove this Russian had better equipment? Or gentler hands than Jacob?