It was as if she were talking to herself or to the stove. Her eyes roamed fitfully around the room as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other.
Finally, she sank onto the armrest.
Dina suddenly threw her arms around Mother Karen, drew the frail body into her lap, and began rocking back and forth.
The old woman sat like a little girl in the ample lap.
They rocked one another. As their shadows danced across the wall and the flames slowly subsided.
Mother Karen felt as if she were a young woman again, sitting in a rowboat that was taking her to a sailing vessel for her first trip to Germany with her beloved husband. She smelled again the sea and
mist as she sailed out of the Trondheim Fjord in her bonnet and traveling outfit.
“He had such a sensitive mouth, my husband did,” she said dreamily, letting Dina rock her.
Her eyes were closed and her legs dangled slightly.
“He had such blond curls,” she added, smiling toward the veins inside her eyelids. They gave a reddish pulse to the dreams.
“The first time I sailed to Hamburg with him, I was two months pregnant. But I didn’t say a word to anyone, for fear of not being able to go along. People assumed my symptoms were seasickness,” she said, bubbling with memories and laughter.
Dina leaned against Mother Karen’s neck. Pulled her more comfortably into her lap and rocked her rhythmically in strong arms.
“Tell me about it, Mother Karen! Tell me!” she said.
Strong gusts of wind buffeted the cottage. Winter had arrived. The shadows of the two figures in the armchair slowly merged into one. Jacob sat there patiently, causing no trouble.
Meanwhile, love searched endlessly along the Russian roads, in the Russian forests and great cities.
“But I can’t propose to him, Mother Karen!” she said desperately. Right in the midst of the old woman’s story about how they arrived in Hamburg and when Jacob’s father learned she was pregnant he threw her into the air like a feed sack and caught her as if she were a piece of delicate glass.
Mother Karen was lost in her own thoughts and blinked several times.
“Propose?”
“Yes, if Leo comes back.”
“Of course Jacob’s widow can propose to the person she wants to share her life. No question about it. Of course she can propose!”
The old woman’s outburst made Jacob uneasy, and he disappeared into the wall.
“But if what if he says no?”
“He won’t say no!”
“But if he does?”
“Then the man has good reasons that I don’t know about/’ she said.
Dina bent her head toward the other woman.
“You think I’ll get him?”
“Yes. You can’t let love disappear from your life without lifting a finger.”
“But I’ve looked for him.”
“Where? I thought you were waiting for some sign of him. And that was why you were acting like a caged animal.”
“I looked for him, in both Bergen and Trondheim …,” Dina said humbly.
“It would have been quite a stroke of luck if you’d seen him.”
“Yes …”
“Do you know where he might be?”
“Maybe at Vard0 Fortress, or farther east …”
“What’s he doing there?”
“I don’t know.”
There was silence for a moment. Then Mother Karen said in a firm voice:
“I’m sure the Russian will come back! With his powerful singing and disfigured face. I wonder how he got that scar.”
Johan received a large sum. As an advance against his inheritance. It was meticulously recorded in the presence of witnesses.
Mother Karen wrote letters. In utter secrecy. To try to locate Leo Zjukovski. But found no trace of him anywhere.
This detective work on behalf of Dina and Reinsnes made her feel healthy and useful. She also undertook to tutor Benjamin and Hanna in reading and writing and got Dina to teach them arithmetic.
And so the winter continued, with snowdrifts and lighted candles, with preparations for Christmas and for voyages to the Lofoten Islands.
One day Dina went to the stable to find Tomas.
“You can go on the Lofoten trip with Anders this year,” she announced unexpectedly.
Rime covered the windows. The inside of the stable door was laced with frost. Howling winds whipped around the corners of the building.
Tomas did not want to go anywhere. He stared straight through Dina with one blue and one brown eye and continued feeding the horses.
“Tomas!” she said gently, as if she were Mother Karen. “You can’t just throw yourself away here at Reinsnes!”
“Do you think I’m throwing myself away?”
“You aren’t anywhere. Don’t see anything…”
“I was supposed to go to Bergen last summer. That didn’t happen.”
“And so now you’re not going to Lofoten?”
“I’m no Lofoten fisherman.”
“Who says so?”
“I do!”
“How long are you going to be angry that you didn’t get to Bergen?”
“I’m not angry. I just don’t want to be sent away when you think it’s too hard to have me here!” he said, almost inaudibly.
She left the stable with a wrinkled forehead.
Dina grew restless when Anders left for Lofoten that year. She paced around the cottage nervously and had no one with whom to share a carafe of wine and a cigar.
She began rising at the crack of dawn to start working. Or she sat under the lamp with Hjertrud’s book. She read it fitfully. The way one drives sheep down the mountain in autumn or climbs steep slopes, just to be done with it.
Hjertrud rarely came. And when she did, it was with the terrible scream. It tore through the bedroom like a blast of wind. The curtains stood straight out, and the glasses shuddered. Then Dina would get dressed and go down to Andreas Wharf, to comfort and to be comforted.
She brought the small, gleaming mother-of-pearl shell. Let it glide slowly between her fingers, while the lantern drew Hjertrud from the eastern corner. Where the herring nets hung, side by side, from the ceiling. As immobile as sad thoughts. The waves washed beneath the floorboards in powerful, rhythmic surges.
Now and then she sat on the enclosed veranda and drank wine. Until the moon was full and she toppled over.
* * *
When the light returned, Johan returned too. He would rather be at Reinsnes teaching the children than freezing to death among strangers who had no education or faith in God, he said. But his mouth trembled as he glanced at Dina.
Mother Karen was dismayed that he had left the Lord’s calling so abruptly.
Johan said he had a legitimate reason for leaving. He was ill. Had been coughing for several months and could not live in the drafty parsonage. Only one stove worked, and that was in the kitchen. Was he supposed to sit in the kitchen with the maid when he planned his sermons and did his official correspondence as a servant of the state church?
Mother Karen understood. She wrote a letter to the bishop about the matter, and Johan signed it.
Benjamin distanced himself from the grown-ups. Developed a forbidding look. And a sullen, know-it-all attitude that annoyed Johan intensely. But the boy was intelligent and an apt pupil when he wanted to be. He was happy with only three people: Stine, Oline, and Hanna. Three generations, which he utilized for different, but complementary, purposes.
One day Stine discovered him avidly exploring Hanna’s lower body as she lay quietly with her eyes closed on the bed that the two children shared.
Stine immediately decided that Benjamin would sleep in a room by himself. He wept bitterly, over the separation more than over the shame that people foisted on him.
No explanations were offered. But Stine was adamant. Benjamin was to sleep by himself.
Dina, who did not hear the commotion, let Stine’s word be law.<
br />
That evening as Dina came from the office, she saw the boy in the moonlight. He was standing naked at a window on the second floor.
The window was open, and the curtains wrapped around him like banners. She went upstairs, stood behind him, and said his name. He would not go to bed. Would not be comforted. Would not let anyone talk to him. And he did not howl in rage, as he usually did.
He had ripped the soles off his best shoes and cut apart the rose leaves and stars in the crocheted bedspread.
“Why are you so angry, Benjamin?”
“I want to sleep with Hanna. Like I always did.”
“But you carry on with Hanna.”
“Carry on how?”
“You take off her clothes.”
“I have to take off her clothes when she’s going to bed. I always do that. She’s so little!”
“But she’s too big for that now,”
“No!”
“Benjamin, you’re too big to sleep with Hanna. Men don’t sleep with women.”
“Johan sleeps with you!”
Dina took a step backward.
“What did you say?” she asked hoarsely.
“He sleeps in your bed. He doesn’t like to be alone either.”
“That’s nonsense!” she said sternly. And held the most sensitive hairs on his neck until he climbed down from the windowsill.
“No! I saw it myself!”
“Hush! And go to bed now, before I give you a shaking!”
Terrified at the sound of her voice, he stood staring at her. And like a flash, lifted both hands over his head as if expecting a blow.
She let go of his hair and walked briskly out of the room.
All evening he stood by the window. Motionless. Staring at the cottage.
Finally, she went back to him. Dragged his trembling body from the windowsill and put him to bed. Then she gathered her skirts around her and calmly lay down beside him.
The bed was wide enough for two. It must seem terribly large to someone who was used to sleeping with Hanna’s warm body.
It was the first time in years that Dina had seen Benjamin asleep. She stroked his moist forehead and stole downstairs, across the courtyard, and back to her own room.
Hjertrud needed her that night, so she paced the floor restlessly until morning was a gray sail at the window.
Chapter 13
Be broken, you peoples, and be dismayed;
give ear, all you far countries;
gird yourselves and be dismayed.
— Isaiah 8 : 9
The Crimean War created excellent economic conditions for shipping, trade, and fishing. But it led to a break in the usual trade with Russia. The White Sea had been blockaded the previous summer. And it appeared the same would be true this year. Russian cutters could not leave.
The past autumn, Troms0 cutters needed to go all the way to Archangel to get grain.
Anders had planned to sail with an eastbound ship after he and Dina returned from Bergen. But instead he took charge of equipping the Lofoten fishermen and otherwise did what he was “suited for,” as he put it.
Dina watched the newspapers all spring to see if, once again, the war would require sending cutters to Russia. She tried to contact skippers in Troms0 who were willing to procure supplies. But it was like skinning live eels.
“I should be there myself to negotiate an agreement,” she said one day, when she and Tomas were discussing the matter with Mother Karen.
Although several places in the parish had harvested a bumper grain crop, with twenty- to twenty-five-fold yields, it did not help much.
They did not cultivate grain at Reinsnes. Had just one small field, because Mother Karen insisted on it. Tomas found the enterprise more trouble than it was worth. Every year, alone in his room, he lambasted Mother Karen’s grain field.
But the good harvest encouraged Mother Karen to try to convince the others that they should increase the size of their grain field. Especially in view of the dangerous blockade.
Today she triumphantly read aloud to Dina and Tomas an article in the newspaper. Chief Magistrate Motzfeldt wrote that the war had made people aware of their gifts, and he emphasized the uncertainty of harvesting only ocean fields. He challenged them to the heroic achievement of surviving without Russian grain sacks. Our people must be frugal about bread, the chief magistrate wrote. They must harvest grain from their own earth and eat it in the sweat of their brow.
“That’s what I’ve always said. We should have a bigger grain field,” Mother Karen remarked,
“Reinsnes isn’t suited to growing grain,” said Tomas meekly,
“But people should be self-sufficient, as far as possible. That’s what the chief magistrate says,”
Oline had come to the door. She peered toward the newspaper and noted dryly:
“That Motzfeldt doesn’t sweat as much for his food as we do at Reinsnes, I’m sure!”
“None of us knows much about growing grain,” said Dina, “But if Mother Karen feels we absolutely should have a bigger field, I’m sure we can get good advice from the Agriculture Association. And we’ll do what we wish with it. But growing more grain means the tenant farmers must put in more work for the estate. Do you think that’s fair, Mother Karen?”
“Surely we can hire people?” replied Mother Karen, who had not thought much about the practical aspects.
“We must consider what’s profitable. We can’t grow hay for just as many animals and cultivate grain at the same time. We know that here in the north not every year has a good grain harvest. But we certainly could have a somewhat larger field. We could plow more ground in the south field, even if it’s open to the sea winds.”
“It will take a lot of work to make that ground near the birch grove yield a profit,” said Tomas,
“Reinsnes is a trade center. That’s what is profitable, as all the figures show,” said Dina. “I know Mother Karen means well, but she’s no grain farmer, even though she’s met the chief magistrate and likes him very much.”
“He doesn’t realize that we can’t depend on the first frost coming late!” said Oline.
Mother Karen found nothing to say but was not angry.
When Anders returned from Lofoten with the crew and the catch in the longboat and cargo boat, Dina had decided to go to Troms0 on business.
It appeared this war would continue, so she had to arrange to purchase flour in Archangel, she declared.
It was not going to be like the previous year, when they had to pay exorbitant prices for Russian flour, which the Troms0 merchants had procured. This year she would hunt the bear, lure it out of hibernation, and try to get her share of the pelt.
She did not want yet another winter in which they had to pay four to six speciedaler for rye and three to six speciedaler for barley. Anders agreed with her.
So they went through the Bergen transactions and calculated their Lofoten fishing profits. Then they made a rough estimate of how much Archangel flour to purchase. They had plenty of storage space.
Dina planned to buy more flour than they needed for provisioning ships and selling in the store. She wanted to make sure they had a reserve for the spring. Flour might be in scant supply, both in Strandsted and along the sound.
Anders said that if she offered cash to Troms0 merchants when they needed it for supplies, it would be easier to negotiate a price for flour.
Several merchants brought grain from Archangel and did it well. The best would be to start with old business contacts. It was simply a matter of talking with them.
He was sure Dina would manage better than he. She just had to watch her sharp tongue. Troms0 merchants understood her speech more easily than people in Bergen. She must remember that.
The task was as if made to order. She did not mention that she planned to go north to Vard0 Fortress. Only Mother Karen knew that. She had no idea how she would get from Hammerfest to Vardo Fortress. But there was always a ship sailing east in the shipping channel.
&n
bsp; * * *
The fact that Dina gave Anders a percentage of the Bergen cargo profits, and also let him carry on his own business by floating lumber from Namsos, caused much speculation and a great deal of envy.
Could there be something between them that nobody knew about? And that could not stand the light of day?
The rumors grew stronger. Especially after Anders was deceived by a timber merchant in Namsos and Dina settled the bill He had paid for lumber he floated home with him the previous spring, without knowing the timber merchant was bankrupt and selling lumber he did not own. The new owner demanded payment as well. Since Anders had no witnesses to the original settlement of the account, there was nothing to do but pay once more.
The story was like a warm cowpie in the spring, flies buzzing around it. People let their imaginations run wild.
There must be something special between the two, since Dina Gronelv, who was so tightfisted in business dealings, shared her skipper’s financial loss. And as if that were not enough, she drew up a will in which she gave him her finest cargo boat.
Coarse rumors reached Mother Karen’s ears. The old woman sent for Dina, wrung her hands, and asked if the rumors were true.
“And if they were? Would that matter? Who’s powerful enough to do anything about it?”
But Mother Karen was not satisfied.
“Are you thinking of marrying Anders?”
Dina bridled visibly.
“Do you want me to marry two men? After all, haven’t you given me your blessing to go and find Leo?”
“You must understand, the gossip is not good. That’s why I ask.”
“People have a right to talk when there’s nothing else they should be doing.”
But the thought was put into words. The thought of Anders as the master of Reinsnes.
Dina paced under the beam where Niels had dangled and made him appear.
He was meek and full of explanations. But she did not accept them. Just hung him back on the rope and nudged him so he swung like a pendulum without a clock.
She reminded him that he was not safe, even if he was no longer a boarder at Reinsnes. Because she held his reputation in the hollow of her hand. Before she went to bed, she made it clear that if he did not stop all the rumors she would take him at his word. Marry Anders. Publicly and with great festivity.
Dina's Book Page 40