by Alice Munro
“I looked quite stern in the photograph because I think people will not trust me if I smile,” said Sophia. “Is it not something the same for physicians?”
“It may be. I am not accustomed to being photographed.”
Now there was a slight constraint between them; it was up to her to put him at ease. It had been better before he told her. She returned to the subject of Bornholm. It was bold and rugged, he said, not gentle and rolling like Denmark. People came there for the scenery and the clear air. If she should ever wish to come he would be honored to show her around.
“There is the most rare blue rock there,” he said. “It is called blue marble. It is broken up and polished for ladies to wear around the neck. If you would ever like to have one—”
He was talking foolishly because there was something he wanted to say but couldn’t. She could see that.
They were approaching Rostock. He was becoming more and more agitated. She was afraid he would ask her to sign her name on a piece of paper or a book he had with him. It was very seldom that anybody did that, but it always made her feel sad; there was no telling why.
“Please listen to me,” he said. “Something I must say to you. It is not supposed to be spoken of. Please. On your way to Sweden, please do not go to Copenhagen. Do not look frightened, I am completely in my right mind.”
“I am not frightened,” she said. Though she was, a little.
“You must go the other way, by the Danish Islands. Change your ticket in the station.”
“May I ask why? Is there a spell on Copenhagen?”
She was suddenly sure he was going to tell her about a plot, a bomb.
So he was an anarchist?
“There is smallpox in Copenhagen. There is an epidemic. Many people have left the city, but the authorities are trying to keep it quiet. They are afraid of a panic or that some people will burn down the government buildings. The problem is the Finns. People say the Finns brought it. They don’t want the people to rise up against the Finnish refugees. Or against the government for letting them in.”
The train stopped and Sophia stood up, checking her bags.
“Promise me. Do not leave me here without promising me.”
“Very well,” said Sophia. “I promise.”
“You will be taking the ferry to Gedser. I would go with you to change the ticket but I must go on to Rutgen.”
“I promise.”
Was it Vladimir he reminded her of? Vladimir in the early days. Not his features, but his beseeching care for her. His constant humble and stubborn and beseeching care.
He held out his hand and she gave him hers to shake, but that was not his only intention. He placed in her palm a small tablet, saying, “This will give you a little rest if you find the journey tedious.”
I will have to talk to some responsible person about this epidemic of smallpox, she decided.
—
BUT THAT SHE DID NOT DO. The man who changed her ticket was annoyed at having to do anything so complicated and would be even angrier if she changed her mind. He seemed at first to answer to no language except Danish, as spoken by her fellow passengers, but when he finished the transaction with her he said in German that the trip would take a good deal longer now, did she understand that? Then she realized that they were still in Germany and he might know nothing about Copenhagen—what had she been thinking of?
He added gloomily that it was snowing on the islands.
The small German ferry to Gedser was well heated, though you had to sit on wooden slat seats. She was about to swallow the tablet, thinking that seats like these might be what he meant when he spoke of the journey being tedious. Then she decided to save it, in case of seasickness.
The local train she got into had regular though threadbare second-class seats. It was chilly, however, with a smoky almost useless stove at one end of the car.
This conductor was friendlier than the ticket master, and not in so much of a hurry. Understanding that they really were in Danish territory, she asked him in Swedish—which she thought might be closer than German to Danish—whether it was true that there was sickness in Copenhagen. He replied that no, the train she was on did not go to Copenhagen.
The words “train” and “Copenhagen” seemed to be all he knew of Swedish.
In this train there were of course no compartments, only the two coaches with their wooden benches. Some of the passengers had brought their own cushions and their blankets and cloaks to wrap around themselves. They did not look at Sophia, much less try to speak to her. What use would it be if they did? She would not be able to understand or reply.
No tea wagon either. Packages wrapped in oiled paper were being opened, cold sandwiches taken out. Thick slices of bread, sharp-smelling cheese, slabs of cold cooked bacon, somewhere a herring. One woman took a fork out from a pocket in the folds of her clothing and ate pickled cabbage from a jar. That made Sophia think of home, of Russia.
But these are not Russian peasants. None of them are drunk, or garrulous, or laughing. They are stiff as boards. Even the fat that blankets the bones of some of them is stiff fat, self-respecting, Lutheran fat. She knows nothing about them.
But what does she really know about Russian peasants, the peasants at Palibino, when it comes to that? They were always putting on a show for their betters.
Except perhaps the one time, the Sunday when all the serfs and their owners had to go to church to hear the Proclamation read. Afterwards Sophia’s mother was completely broken in spirit and moaned and cried, “Now what will become of us? What will become of my poor children?” The General took her into his study to comfort her. Aniuta sat down to read one of her books, and their little brother Feodor played with his blocks. Sophia wandered about, making her way to the kitchen where house serfs and even many field serfs were eating pancakes and celebrating—but in a rather dignified way, as if it was a saint’s day. An old man whose only job was to sweep the yard laughed and called her Little Missus. “Here’s the Little Missus come to wish us well.” Then some cheered for her. How nice they were, she thought, though she understood that the cheering was some kind of joke.
Soon the governess appeared with a face like a black cloud and took her away.
Afterwards things went on pretty much as usual.
Jaclard had told Aniuta she could never be a true revolutionary, she was only good for getting money out of her criminal parents. As for Sophia and Vladimir (Vladimir who had snatched him away from the police), they were preening parasites, soaking up their worthless studies.
—
THE SMELL OF THE CABBAGE and the herring is making her slightly sick.
At some farther point the train stops and they are all told to get out. At least that is what she assumes, from the conductor’s bark and the heaving up of reluctant but obedient bodies. They find themselves in knee-deep snow, with no town or platform in sight and smooth white hills around them, looming up through what is now lightly falling snow. Ahead of the train men are shovelling away the snow that has collected in a railway cut. Sophia moves around to keep her feet from freezing in their light boots, sufficient for city streets but not here. The other passengers stand still, and pass no comment on the state of affairs.
After half an hour, or perhaps only fifteen minutes, the track is clear and the passengers clamber back onto the train. It must be a mystery to all of them, as to Sophia, why they had to get out in the first place, instead of waiting in their seats, but of course nobody complains. On and on they go, through the dark, and there is something other than snow driving against the windows. A scratching malevolent sound. Sleet.
Then the dim lamps of a village, and some passengers are getting up, methodically bundling themselves and collecting their bags and packages and clambering down from the train, disappearing. The journey resumes, but in a short time everybody is ordered off again. Not because of snowdrifts this time. They are herded onto a boat, another small ferry, which takes them out onto black water. Sophia’s
throat is so sore now that she is sure she could not speak if she had to.
She has no idea how long this crossing is. When they dock everybody has to enter a three-sided shed, where there is little shelter and no benches. A train arrives after a wait she cannot measure. And when this train comes, what gratitude Sophia feels, though it is no warmer and has the same wooden benches as the first train. One’s appreciation of meager comforts, it seems, depends on what misery one has gone through before getting them. And is not that, she wants to say to somebody, a dreary homily?
In a while they stop in a larger town where there is a station buffet. She is too tired to get off and make her way to it as some passengers do, coming back with steaming cups of coffee. The woman who ate the cabbage is, however, carrying two cups, and it turns out that one is for Sophia. Sophia smiles and does her best to express gratitude. The woman nods as if this fuss is unnecessary, even unseemly. But she keeps standing there till Sophia takes out the Danish coins she received from the ticket agent. Now the woman, grunting, picks out two of them with her damp mittened fingers. The cost of the coffee, very likely. For the thought, and for carrying it, no charge. This is the way of things. Without a word the woman then returns to her seat.
Some new passengers have got on. A woman with a child about four years old, one side of its face bandaged and one arm in a sling. An accident, a visit to a country hospital. A hole in the bandage shows a sad dark eye. The child puts its good cheek down in its mother’s lap and she spreads part of her shawl over its body. She does this in a way that is not particularly tender or concerned, but somewhat automatic. Something bad has happened, more care has been added on to her, that is all. And the children waiting at home, and perhaps one in her belly.
How terrible it is, Sophia thinks. How terrible is the lot of women. And what might this woman say if Sophia told her about the new struggles, women’s battle for votes and places at the universities? She might say, But that is not as God wills. And if Sophia urged her to get rid of this God and sharpen her mind, would she not look at her—Sophia—with a certain stubborn pity, and exhaustion, and say, How then, without God, are we to get through this life?
They cross the black water again, this time on a long bridge, and stop in another village where the woman and child get off. Sophia has lost interest, does not look to see if there is somebody waiting for them, she is trying to see the clock outside the station, lit up by the train. She expects the time to be near midnight, but it is just past ten o’clock.
She is thinking of Maksim. Would Maksim ever in his life board such a train as this? She imagines her head lying comfortably on his broad shoulder—though the truth is he would not care for that, in public. His coat of rich expensive cloth, its smell of money and comfort. Good things he believes he has a right to expect and a duty to maintain, even though he is a Liberal unwelcome in his own country. That marvellous assurance he has, that her father had, you can feel it when you are a little girl snuggled up in their arms and you want it all your life. More delightful of course if they love you, but comforting even if it is only a kind of ancient noble pact that they have made, a bond that has been signed, necessarily even if not enthusiastically, for your protection.
They would be displeased to have anybody call them docile, yet in a way they are. They submit themselves to manly behavior. They submit themselves to manly behavior with all its risks and cruelties, its complicated burdens and deliberate frauds. Its rules, which in some cases you benefited from, as a woman, and then some that you didn’t.
Now she had an image of him—Maksim, not sheltering her at all but striding through the station in Paris as befitted a man who had a private life.
His commanding headgear, his courtly assurance.
That had not happened. It was not Maksim. Assuredly it was not.
—
VLADIMIR HAD NOT BEEN A COWARD—look how he had rescued Jaclard—but he did not have the manly certainties. That was why he could grant her some equality those others couldn’t and why he could never grant her that enveloping warmth and safety. Then near the end when he came under the Ragozin influence and changed his tune—desperate as he was and thinking that he might save himself by aping others—he turned to treating her in an unconvincing, even ridiculous, lordly style. He had given her then an excuse for despising him, but maybe she had despised him all along. Whether he worshipped or insulted her it was impossible for her to love him.
As Aniuta loved Jaclard. Jaclard was selfish and cruel and unfaithful and even while she hated him she was in love with him.
What ugly and irksome thoughts could surface, if you didn’t keep a lid on them.
When she closed her eyes she thought she saw him—Vladimir—sitting on the bench across from her, but it is not Vladimir, it is the doctor from Bornholm, it is only her memory of the doctor from Bornholm, insistent and alarmed, pushing himself in that queer humble way into her life.
—
THERE CAME A TIME—surely it was near midnight—when they had to leave this train for good. They had reached the border of Denmark. Helsingor. The land border, at least—she supposed the true border was somewhere out in the Kattegat.
And there was the last ferry, waiting for them, looking large and pleasant, with its many bright lights. And here came a porter to carry her bags on board, and thank her for her Danish coins and hasten away. Then she showed her ticket to the officer on board and he spoke to her in Swedish. He assured her that they would make connections on the other side with the train for Stockholm. She would not have to spend the rest of the night in a waiting room.
“I feel as if I have come back to civilization,” she said to him. He looked at her with slight misgiving. Her voice was a croak, though the coffee had helped her throat. It is just because he is a Swede, she thought. It is not necessary to smile or pass remarks among the Swedes. Civility can be maintained without that.
The crossing was a little rough, but she was not seasick. She remembered the tablet but she did not need it. And the boat must have been heated, because some people had taken off the upper layer of their winter clothing. But she still shivered. Perhaps it was necessary to shiver, she had collected so much cold in her body in her journey through Denmark. It had been stored inside her, the cold, and now she could shiver it out.
—
THE TRAIN FOR STOCKHOLM was waiting, as promised, in the busy port of Helsingborg, so much livelier and larger than its similarly named cousin across the water. The Swedes might not smile at you, but the information they gave out would be correct. A porter reached for her bags and held them while she searched in her purse for some coins. She took a generous number out and put them in his hand, thinking they were Danish; she would not need them anymore.
They were Danish. He gave them back to her, saying in Swedish, “These will not do.”
“They are all I have,” she cried, realizing two things. Her throat felt better and indeed she had no Swedish money.
He put down her bags and walked away.
French money, German money, Danish money. She had forgotten Swedish.
The train was getting up steam, the passengers boarding, while she still stood there in her quandary. She could not carry her bags. But if she could not, they would be left behind.
She grasped the various straps and started to run. She ran lurching and panting with a pain in her chest and around under her arms and the bags bumping against her legs. There were steps to climb. If she stopped for a breath she would be too late. She climbed. With tears of self-pity filling her eyes she beseeched the train not to move.
And it did not. Not till the conductor, leaning out to fasten the door, caught her arm, then somehow managed to catch her bags and pulled all aboard.
Once saved, she began to cough. She was trying to cough something out of her chest. The pain, out of her chest. The pain and tightness out of her throat. But she had to follow the conductor to her compartment, and she was laughing with triumph in between spells of coughing. The co
nductor looked into a compartment where there were already some people sitting, then took her along to one that was empty.
—
“YOU WERE RIGHT. To put me where I cannot. Be a nuisance,” she said, beaming. “I didn’t have money. Swedish money. All other kinds but Swedish. I had to run. I never thought I could—”
He told her to sit down and save her breath. He went away and came back soon with a glass of water. As she drank she thought of the tablet that had been given her, and took it with the last gulp of water. The coughing subsided.
“You must not do that again,” he said. “Your chest is heaving. Up and down.”
Swedes were very frank, as well as being reserved and punctual.
“Wait,” she said.
For there was something else to be established, almost as if the train could not get her to the right place otherwise.
“Wait a moment. Did you hear about—? Did you hear there is smallpox? In Copenhagen?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” he said. He gave a severe though courteous nod and left her.
“Thank you. Thank you,” she called after him.
—
SOPHIA HAS NEVER BEEN DRUNK in her life. Any medicine she has taken, that might addle her brain, has put her to sleep before any such disturbance could happen. So she has nothing with which to compare the extraordinary feeling—the change of perception—which is rippling through her now. At first it might have been just relief, a grand though silly sense of being favored, because she had managed to carry her bags and run up the steps and reach her train. And then she had survived the fit of coughing and the squeezing of her heart and been able somehow to disregard her throat.
—
BUT THERE IS MORE, as if her heart could go on expanding, regaining its normal condition, and continuing after that to grow lighter and fresher and puff things almost humorously out of her way. Even the epidemic in Copenhagen could now become something like a plague in a ballad, part of an old story. As her own life could be, its bumps and sorrows turning into illusions. Events and ideas now taking on a new shape, seen through sheets of clear intelligence, a transforming glass.