Three days later, he came down the mountain, his clothes tattered and his breath reeking of alcohol.
He helped himself to food and drink in the kitchen, then went to bed and slept for twenty-four hours.
He was awakened by Dina, shaking him. At first he thought he was dreaming. Then he stared in amazement and heaved himself into a sitting position.
Pay attention to Dina Gronelv, he thought bitterly, when he realized who was there. For years, he had meekly gathered just a look, a gesture, a word from that direction.
“Well, Tomas, you’ve certainly indulged yourself. Drinking and carousing! And right before Christmas, when everything needs to be done,” she said calmly.
Her words thundered straight into his dulled brain.
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll be asked to leave?”
“No,” he said firmly.
The forthright answer took her aback slightly, but she quickly recovered.
“Get to work now!”
“What does the mistress of Reinsnes recommend? Should I take her from the front or the back?”
Outside, the wind played havoc with a tin pail.
She struck him. Hard. It took several seconds before his nose began to bleed. He sat in bed, looking at her. The stream of blood increased. A red, warm river flowed down his lip and chin. Dripped onto his open shirt, after coloring the golden hairs on his chest red.
He did not wipe away the blood. Just sat there with an ugly grimace and let it flow.
She cleared her throat. Even so, her words came out like an avalanche of stones.
“Wipe your nose, and get to work!”
“You wipe it”’ he said hoarsely, and stood up.
There was something threatening about him. Something completely unfamiliar. She no longer owned his thoughts.
“Why should I wipe your nose?”
“Because you made it bleed!”
“That’s true,” she said, unexpectedly gently, and looked around the room. She spied a towel, fetched it, and held it out to him with a sneer.
He did not take it. So she went over to him and carefully wiped his nose. To slight avail. The blood kept flowing.
Suddenly something flashed between them! Shone like flames in the dim, spartan room. A raw, keen desire! Sister to hate and revenge.
He smelled of drunkenness and the stable. She smelled of ink, rose water, and fresh sweat.
Dina pulled back her hand as if she had burned herself. Then she retreated out the door, with nostrils flaring.
“You made it bleed!” he shouted after her furiously.
The first Sunday after New Year, the banns were read for Stine and Tomas.
“Why would anyone want to have dreams?” asked Oline more than once. “Either they last only a short time and end unhappily, or you drag them with you all your life.”
Dina carried the cello to the master bedroom again. The intermezzo in the cottage was over.
I am Dina. People exist. I meet them. Sooner or later, our ways part. That is what I know.
Once, I saw something I had never seen before. Between two middle-aged people, a bishop and his wife. Love is a wave that exists only for the beach encounters. I am no beach. I am Dina. I observe such waves. I cannot let myself overflow.
Benjamin had gotten used to not living in the same house as his mother. He decided on his own to move into the cottage. Had to forestall Dina from making the same decision.
He had grown the past year. But would never be a big person. Quiet and observant, he moved about asking questions and responding like an oracle. With few, pointed words. He no longer clung to Dina. Something had changed after she went to Troms0. Or was it after Mother Karen died?
They could not see that he specifically mourned her or missed her. But he often stole into Mother Karen’s room, without Hanna.
There, everything remained as before. The bed was made. The decorative pillows were plumped and placed against the headboard. Like motionless wings of an angel that had flown away.
The bookcase still had the key in the door. Benjamin opened it and forgot everything else until someone called him.
He learned easily but avoided work whenever possible. He went to the main house now only in order to get books, or to sit cross-legged on the floor, reading by Mother Karen’s bookcase. Although Johan had taken the philosophical and religious works, the novels were still there.
Benjamin read aloud for Hanna. They sat for hours by the white stove in the cottage with Mother Karen’s books.
Stine did not bother them if they behaved well. Occasionally she said:
“There’s not much wood left.” Or: “The water bucket is empty.”
Benjamin knew it was his job to be the chore boy when nobody else was around. Sometimes he was surprised when he came from the warehouses or the beach and saw the large white house. Then he quickly shifted his gaze to the dovecote in the middle of the courtyard and thought about something else.
Now and then, he knew he felt pain but he could not tell where.
Benjamin had noticed many things without really being aware of them. Such as that Tomas had always been Dina’s. Just like Blackie and the cello. Until Stine and Tomas got married and moved into the cottage.
‘They had not spent many winter evenings sitting by the tile stove, doing their separate tasks, before Benjamin understood that Tomas no longer belonged to Dina. And did not belong to Stine either, even if he slept with her. Tomas belonged to himself.
But the idea that you should belong to yourself when you lived in the cottage was frightening to Benjamin. Dina and the cello were distant sounds in the master bedroom.
Benjamin was in the cottage to learn to belong to himself.
Chapter 18
He who finds a wife finds a good thing, and obtains favor from the Lord.
— Proverbs 18 : 22
Anders went to the Lofoten Islands in January to buy fish. He had no sooner returned than he began preparing for the trip to Bergen. His life was one long sea voyage. And if he began to feel restless after a few weeks ashore, he did not trouble anyone with that.
Sometimes travelers arrived on the steamboat and needed lodging. But not as often as in the past few years.
At the Reinsnes store, however, people crossed the threshold constantly. Dinars flour imports from Archangel proved to be more than a bright idea. She earned large sums by saving flour until shortages occurred in the spring. Then the rumor spread that at Reinsnes you could get flour, fishing equipment, and various necessities in exchange for dried fish. So Anders was given firm commitments for fish shipments to Bergen.
Stine no longer ate in the main house. She prepared food for her husband and the children. But did her other tasks as always. Her smooth, continuous movements kept one from noticing that she worked from early morning until late at night.
She changed only imperceptibly, over a long time. It began the day she moved her few humble belongings to the cottage. She smiled as she carried the kettles she used for cooking salves. She crooned something in the strange language she rarely used as she transferred herbs from the cellar in the main house to the cellar in the cottage.
First she scoured and cleaned. Swept and dried. Got Hanna and Benjamin to help her cut elaborate shelf borders from colored paper. Aired the bedclothes. Placed all the household goods Dina had given her in cupboards and chests of drawers.
Stine’s home was open to everyone. Whether they came out of curiosity or to seek advice about sickness and sores.
In many ways she outshone Oline. People were more likely to stop at Stine’s after being at the store than to visit the blue kitchen in the main house. They came, first and foremost, for her herb drinks and salves. But also for reasons that nobody said aloud.
Stine’s hands were warm and willing. Her eyes could glisten with dark joy. This spring she had more eider ducks than ever. She fed them and plucked their down. Built shelters with boards and boxes to protect them from the wind and rain while they brooded
on their nests. And later she gathered the chicks in her coarse burlap apron and carried them to the seashore.
For several weeks after his marriage, Tomas was a half-stunned ox. Then he could resist no longer. His face slowly grew smooth and unwrinkled. As if Stine had washed him, morning and evening, in herb decoction and rose water. Or had used unseen powers.
When her stomach rounded visibly under her apron, Tomas began to smile. Carefully at first. But soon he glowed as brightly as the sun and his bronzed arms when he followed the plow.
Tomas initially thought it was Lapp magic. Because as the days and nights passed, it was impossible not to be affected. Warmth streamed from her.
In the beginning, she never tried to touch him. She cared for his clothes, set food before him. Was concerned that he got rest. Came to the fields with sour milk in a pail. Put it down with a gentle greeting and left again.
She had never received anything without having to pay for it. On their wedding night he took her quickly and angrily, while he thought about her having borne two illegitimate children.
Just before he emptied himself, he lay between Dina’s ample thighs. Afterward, Stine covered him and wished him good night. But Tomas was not able to sleep. Lay awake looking at her face in the dim light.
The weather had been bitterly cold. Suddenly he saw that she was shivering. So he got up and put wood in the stove. To make her happy. Because he suddenly realized that she was a human being. And that she had not asked to have him in her bed.
He soon discovered that if it was a Lapp spell she had put on him, he wanted it to continue.
With shy happiness, he came to her more and more frequently. Experienced the wonder of never being rejected.
He quickly learned that the more gently he touched her, the more willing and warm she became. And even if her strange eyes lived their own life, she was with him. Day and night.
Meanwhile, the child grew within her. A legitimate child with a father both genetically and on paper. If originally she had not longed for precisely that man, she never let anyone hear that. If she knew that she had inherited him from her mistress, as she had inherited underclothing and dresses and various fragrant pieces of soap, she made him her own.
The day Stine revealed she was pregnant, Tomas leaned toward her and whispered unmanly words. Without feeling he should be ashamed. He did not know much about love. Other than that it meant waiting for Dina’s word, Dina’s nod, Dina’s horseback rides, Dina’s good humor, Dina’s all-devouring desire. Such love had subdued him and made him hide all during his youth. Suddenly he was free of it.
There were days when he did not remember who owned Reinsnes. Days in the fields. In the barn. In the woods. For he was working for Stine and the child.
Chapter 19
Do not call conspiracy all that this people call conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread.
— Isaiah 8 : 12
One day the sheriff’s outrigger glided up to the pier unexpectedly.
He was grave and gray and wanted to speak with Dina privately.
“What’s happened?” she asked.
“They’ve arrested a Russian in Trondheim,” he said.
Dina bridled.
“What sort of Russian?”
“That Leo Zjukovski, who’s been a guest at Reinsnes a few times.”
“Why did they arrest him?”
“Espionage! And offense to his majesty!”
“Espionage?”
“The bailiff said they’ve been watching him a long time. He even made it very easy for them: they arrested him near the prison. After he’d gone to the prison to get a package. Apparently the prison director knew he’d come, sooner or later. The chief magistrate thinks the previous director was a courier for subversive political activities. This Leo Zjukovski walked right into the trap. The package had been there a long time… It apparently contained a coded message.”
The sheriff had been speaking in a low, threatening voice. Now it became a deep growl:
“And the prison director said Dina Gronelv from Reinsnes brought the package!”
“What’s this all about?”
“About the fact that my daughter can be accused of disgraceful espionage! That she was on familiar terms with a spy! And this man even ate and drank with the sheriff!”
Dina’s face was cut from an old sail. Her narrowed eyes twitched nervously. Peered from the window to the sheriff and back again.
“But the book, my dear sheriff. The book I delivered was just Pushkin’s poetry! Leo and I entertained ourselves by reading it together. Of course, he had to translate it, because I don’t understand Russian.”
“What foolishness and fabrication!”
“It’s true!”
“You must say that you didn’t deliver the book!”
“But I did deliver the book!”
The sheriff sighed and put his hand to his heart.
“Why do you do such ridiculous things?” he shouted.
“The underlining we did in the book isn’t a secret spy code. It’s just words I tried to learn.”
“There was other underlining, you see. The code must have been there already.”
Neither the sheriff, nor his heart, could stand to have his daughter involved in such a thing. At first he simply refused to state in his report that she had delivered the book in Trondheim. He stared at Dina from a wide crack with bushy white eyebrows above it. Icy cold. As if she had offended him personally by admitting she had left that unfortunate package at the prison. He refused to have his name implicated in any scandal!
“I must remind you that I have Jacob’s name! And it’s my duty not to conceal information. You surely know that, don’t you?”
He suddenly collapsed, as if someone had hit him in the back of the neck with a large steak hammer. One could almost hear the thud before his head cracked against his breast. He held both corners of his mustache and pressed them together over his mouth with a humble expression.
In the end, he retreated and decided to take the whole situation as a gift. It would make him, the father and sheriff, very important in the bailiff’s eyes. In fact, in the eyes of the whole Norwegian court system!
It would be a great satisfaction to shake things up and prove that this was all a ridiculous mistake. That the man was just a harmless vagabond who did not like to work. A spy? Nonsense! War and famine made people so suspicious of everything from the east. While the English and French went free, even though they actually caused all the trouble. He berated the Germans too, just for good measure. Russians, on the other hand, had never done anything wrong in the north except get drunk, sing in harmony, and ship grain!
The sheriff wrote his terse report. Dina signed her statement.
But the Crimean War continued in Dina’s head. The cello music that evening showed she was trying to ride all the way to Trondheim.
The sheriff thought her testimony would help to free the fellow. No question about it. After all, he had even helped put out a terrible barn fire at Reinsnes. Thanks to his cleverness and courage.
Dina was summoned to Ibestad to testify before the chief magistrate. About Pushkin’s unfortunate book of poems and all the underlining that was supposed to be a code.
The chief magistrate received Dina and the sheriff politely. A clerk and two witnesses were already in place. After the initial formalities, the magistrate read aloud from his documents.
A translation of the underlined words apparently showed that Leo Zjukovski accused Oscar I, as well as respected citizens and theater director Knut Bonde, of being in league with Napoleon III. Moreover, he tried to get unnamed persons to support a plot against the Swedish king!
Dina laughed heartily. The chief magistrate must forgive her. Her feelings about the Swedish king were supported by Mother Karen’s posthumous reputation. After all, Mother Karen had sailed Reinsnes cargo boats under the Dano-Norwegian flag!
The sheriff was shamefaced. But since he was involved in the c
ase as a father, he could not express himself. Far less, make Dina stop laughing.
‘Tour testimony will be written down word for word and sent to Trondheim,” the magistrate warned.
“I realize that.”
Calmly, he began to question her. She answered briefly and clearly. But ended almost every answer with a question.
The magistrate smoothed his mustache and drummed his fingers on the table.
“Are you saying the whole thing is merely private, entertaining insults against his majesty?”
“Absolutely!”
“But the Russian did not testify to that. He did not mention Dina Gronelv’s name in connection with the code. Admitted only that she evidently delivered the book of her own free will, without his knowledge.”
“I guess he wants to keep me out of it.”
“Do you know this man well?”
“As well as one knows most guests who spend a night or two. Many people come ashore at Reinsnes.”
“But you swear this man did the underlining in the above-mentioned book during a so-called party game?”
“Yes.”
“Were there witnesses?”
“No; unfortunately not.”
“Where did it occur?”
“At Reinsnes.”
“But why did you bring the book to the asylum?”
“Because I was in Trondheim, traveling with my cargo boat. He had forgotten his book, and I knew he was going to Trondheim.”
“How did you know that?”
“He mentioned it, I think.”
“Why was he going there?”
“We didn’t talk about that.”
“But it’s an unpleasant place for a woman to deliver a book, isn’t it?”
“It’s not particularly pleasant for men either!”
“Can you explain why a book would be so important to this man?”
“It’s his favorite book. As Your Honor is well aware, people who like books often drag them along. Mother Karen brought two large bookcases to Reinsnes when she arrived. Leo Zjukovski knew Pushkin. He always brings his books when he travels. I’m sure he explained that himself.”
Dina's Book Page 45