Ice

by Ulla-lena Lundberg

  The cows turn their heads and moo. Signe introduces them. The bigger, older, dark red cow is Apple, and the smaller one with the lighter coat and gentler disposition is Goody. Both are pregnant and will calve in June.

  Too late in the year! Mona thinks. And Signe says that the covering kept getting postponed. The old priest and his wife knew they were leaving and neglected the cows a bit. Now they’re going dry, but they’re still giving a litre or so every morning and evening, and of course even that much milk is always welcome.

  Mona claps their flanks with a firm, practised hand and examines their udders, which are relatively small and firm, Goody’s in particular. They sniff at her cautiously and moo again to remind everyone of food. And yes, the haymow is attached, with a door between. There’s almost no hay left, but on the other hand the cows can soon be put out to pasture. The villagers who’ve run out have already done so.

  “And so have we,” the verger adds. “Keeping them in hay over the winter is really a struggle. There’s not a lot growing right now, but they eat leaf buds and reed sprouts along the shore.”

  Mona scratches around with the pitchfork and pulls together a clump of hay that she forks up in front of Apple, then Goody gets her own dusty, meagre share. In the whole cow barn not a trace of fodder grain. Apple and Goody both have tight round bellies around their pregnancies, but their hipbones stick out like knobs, and a woman from the hay barns of Nyland can see that they’re too thin.

  “Spring is coming not a minute too soon!” she says. To herself, she’s thinking that the former priest took miserable care of his animals, but she doesn’t want to criticize. She searches around with the pitchfork and finds some dried leafy twigs for the sheep. Then she finds the dung fork and starts mucking out, in spite of the verger’s offer to do it for her. It’s easily done. These bony cattle have produced small, firm pancakes that stay in one piece, and this primitive cow barn actually has a drain that carries out the urine through a hole in the stone foundation. The verger shows her that the well in the corner is full of meltwater now, in spring, and he gets in ahead of her and pulls up a couple pails of water that he empties into their troughs.

  The cows mumble peacefully and sweep up the dry hay while Mona and Signe wash their udders and sit down to milk. The next day, the verger and Signe are able to tell everyone that the priest’s wife milks better than anyone they’ve ever seen and that she has a way with animals that takes your breath away. Apple and Goody turn around to look and then turn around and look again, because in a cow’s life this is quite sensational. They don’t release a lot of milk, but still enough to produce a good stream when Mona Kummel sets to work.

  “Good teats, firm udders,” she declares. “All they really need is a little fat on their bones. We have a lot to look into—the cow pastures and the hayfields.”

  To judge by conditions in the haymow, there is every reason to fear that they haven’t enough meadowland, but the verger, who takes an interest in such things, starts in at once on a long report about the church’s lands. “You’ll always have hay, I think. And the church crofters will help with the haymaking, they owe you that for the land they use.”

  “You can’t mean that the church still has crofters, not these days,” she says, and the verger agrees that she’s right. Legally, they own their land, but they need a little more pasture and they work off the rental.

  “I see,” she says, seeing complications down the road. She is quick enough to understand that their neighbours compete hard for grass. She wonders how things stand with the parsonage pastureland, and the verger replies solemnly that there is always plenty of pasture for the parsonage cows on Church Isle. But the erstwhile crofters have a harder time of it. He shouldn’t tell her, but he will anyway, that they have sometimes let their fences get into such a state of disrepair that their cows get through and stuff themselves with the pastor’s grass.

  “Oh, my,” she says. Complications indeed, for she’s has already made up her mind to secure ample pasturage for Apple and Goody. She pours the milk in the strainer and claps the cows one more time so they’ll understand that now she’s in charge. In their eyes, the verger’s Signe vanishes in the mist. Now other powers rule.

  Mona asks Signe about their cows, and yes, they have two. There’s Gamlan and Gamlan’s heifer that’s going to calve for the first time this spring. “The hay harvest will decide if we keep her over the winter or send her to slaughter this autumn,” the verger explains, sounding pleased, and she knows that no matter what happens, the heifer and the heifer’s calf and the summer’s milk will be not insignificant assets.

  “I’m glad we’ve got to know you,” Mona says sincerely. “There’s so much we need to ask you about. The sheep, for example. What shall we do with them? We can’t put them to pasture with the cows, there isn’t any fence that will keep them in.”

  The verger explains that the priest and his wife are very fortunate, because the two large islets beyond Church Isle are sheep islets for the parsonage. If they shift their sheep from one to the other every few weeks, they’ll have pasture all summer, so that’s no problem at all.

  “If you look in the haymow, you’ll see we should move them out there tomorrow!” she says. “Maybe we can borrow a boat in the village?”

  “Ours, for instance!” the verger suggests, for he’s not insensitive to the fact that she’s clever and pretty and can put in a good word for him with her husband.

  “Thanks!” she says. “You can decide the day and time with Petter. I hope you’ll come in and have some tea with us now that we’re done in the cow barn.”

  Friends already, they walk back to the parsonage. The verger shows her how the ropes work in the well so that she can lower the pails and cool the milk overnight. Then she’ll separate it in the morning and get the cream. Petter’s father bought the separator at auction and it now stands in the passage. Mona washes the milk pitchers vigorously, blows life into the fire in the stove, heats water in a saucepan, and sets out some food—rusks and fresh bread with apple sauce!

  Nothing comes of Petter’s plan to set out nets, because the verger and Signe sit and talk and are in no hurry to leave. But he does raise the subject of fishing, and then the verger slaps his forehead. “Oh good heavens! I brought a mess of perch with me, a meal for tomorrow, and I left it on the steps. Let’s hope no animal’s got into it!”

  “You were reading my thoughts!” Petter says. “Thank you so much! But from tomorrow on, we’ll manage on our own. All this friendly help will spoil us completely. What a day we’ve had!”

  He can’t help it, he can’t suppress a colossal yawn, and then his wife yawns too, like a cat. And then the priest has to yawn again, so hugely that all the movable parts of his cranium creak audibly. The verger and Signe look politely away and chat for a few minutes more, but then they get up and Signe says they have to get home to milk their own cow. It’s ten o’clock, and Mona leaps up. “No, you don’t mean your cow has gone unmilked because you came to help us! That’s terrible!”

  “Not at all,” Signe reassures her. “She gives so little milk now that it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t milk her till morning!”

  But Mona won’t let it go. She thinks it’s so dreadful that Signe’s cow has had to suffer that Signe’s own conscience begins to bother her. And when they’re finally gone, the pastor and his wife are so tired they’re cross-eyed. They mumble and slur their words and can hardly make their way to the outhouse or find their faces when they try to wash up before finally collapsing into bed.

  “I’m so grateful you made the beds,” Petter says. “We couldn’t have managed it now. I don’t think I’ve ever been so utterly done in. Or so happy.”

  Like a clubbed burbot—and like a second clubbed burbot— the pastor and his wife spend their first night in the parsonage. The last thing each remembers is that the other has fallen asleep.

  Chapter Three

  SHE CAME TO FINLAND on foot across the ice, through the forests, tied to
the underside of a freight car, in a submarine that surfaced for one short moment by the outermost skerries where a smuggler’s speedboat waited. She jumped into the Carelian forests by parachute. She changed clothes with a Finnish military attaché and rode to Finland first class on his diplomatic passport. Once over the border, cars with dimmed headlamps waited on secret forest tracks. Signals were flashed. Finally—Papa! General Gyllen, without whom there would have been no hope.

  Well and good. The more versions the better. How it actually happened, no one will ever be told. Except for Papa, the names of the people intentionally or unintentionally involved will never be revealed. The fact itself is momentous enough—in 1939, Irina Gyllen was the only known case of a former Finnish citizen managing to flee to Finland from the Soviet Union.

  If any other human being is ever going to do it again, it is of the utmost importance that no one ever finds out how it all took place.

  Irina Gyllen sleeps alone. If she has to spend a night among other people on a boat, she doesn’t sleep. When she goes to bed, she takes a pill. Which makes her hard to wake up when she has to deliver a baby. The Örlanders know this, it is one of her peculiarities, along with the fact that her medical licence is Russian, so she cannot practise in Finland until she has taken the necessary Finnish examinations. In the Soviet Union, she was a gynaecologist. In Finland, she took a course in midwifery and has now taken this job on the Örland Islands while she studies for her Finnish medical certification.

  The Örlands are safe. Mama and Papa have spent their vacations there and know that the locals have boats that can get to Sweden in any weather. They also know that no stranger can slink in unseen. Persons that Irina Gyllen has reason to fear never come ashore without the islanders reporting on their every movement. For much of the year no one comes at all.

  It is quiet. You can hear your own heart, your breathing, your digestion. All in good condition though she’s already into her second life. She lost a lot on the other side, she hardly looks like a woman any more. Tall and angular without any visible softness. A sharply sculptured face, feet that have walked and walked, hands that have worked and worked.

  Her body has smoothed over the fact that she has given birth, but people on the Örlands know that Irina Gyllen has left a child behind. A son.

  When she wakes up, she takes a pill. Her hand is then steady, her mind adequately dulled, her memory manageable. It is then she works, writes, and keeps her records. She lives in the Hindrikses’ little cottage while the community builds a Health Care Centre with the help of a Swedish donation. The people are good—friendly and considerate—but they make no attempt to treat her as one of them. They call her doctor, although she assures them she is not one, and they do not gossip about her in the village. It is only much later that she realizes the reason they don’t is that their silence implies that they know things which can’t be told.

  The Hindrikses are good people—happy, talkative, lively. Being always greeted with friendly smiles, always getting an analysis of the weather before she goes out, being praised for having the sense to dress warmly, eating her meals with the family and not forgetting to thank them for the food—all of it helps to keep other things at a distance. There is nothing to see on the surface. Or is her closed expression striking evidence of unnatural self-control?

  Of what, exactly? Of the terrible desire to live that forces people to sacrifice everything. As a doctor, you have no illusions. Early on, you notice the hope in dying patients, see how they take note of the slightest sign of improvement, refuse to admit that it’s only a matter of days. The will to live is stronger than any pain or affliction, even medical students make that sober observation. It adjusts to any reality if it means that life can be augmented by one small measure. Just a few more moments, during which salvation may appear.

  In theory, Irina Gyllen had understood the situation precisely. In practice, the feeling ambushed her and knocked her senseless. All she could think about was saving her own life. They took her husband first. For the boy’s sake, she did what they had agreed on. Repudiated him, filed for divorce. Continued to work, because the regime always needs doctors, doctors are not something they could afford to discard. Except he was a doctor too. Yes, but surrounded by informers and jealous men. As if she wasn’t. Born in Russia, father a Finnish general.

  Working isn’t enough. Even the best disappear. There is no way out except Finland. Even that exit is closed because she has given up her citizenship. But Papa has connections, contacts, and she can still be in contact with Papa through the Finnish legation. Which in recent years she has not dared to visit. But there are employees whom, with her heart in her throat, she can run into on the street.

  Papa Gyllen is also a former officer in the Imperial Russian Army. The reason she will be arrested, that she should already have been taken, even before her husband. Will he be pressed to inform on her? Just a matter of time. No.

  You live out your final days, you prolong them, if you can hold out, one more day, a week, then something may save you. You think only about saving yourself, everyone else can be sacrificed. It’s why people become informers. The only reason Irina Gyllen doesn’t become an informer is that she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself.

  In order to save yourself, you can also abandon a child. You don’t even take him to your husband’s parents and entrust him to their care. You just run over to the neighbours, whom you hardly know, and ask if he might stay with them for an hour while you run to the hospital. In his pocket he has a slip of paper, fastened with a safety pin, with the address of his paternal grandparents. It’s like pushing him out onto the Nile in a basket of reeds. Maybe he’ll be sent to his grandparents, themselves deeply compromised, perhaps about to be arrested. Maybe he’ll be put in an orphanage where his identity will be erased. Maybe they can be reunited quite soon. Through the Red Cross, now that the war is over.

  He was eight, understood a great deal. Had stopped asking about Papa, knew that was best. Don’t think about what he’s going through now. Above all, don’t think about what he’s thinking and feeling. Think instead about how adaptable children are, how they manage to adjust to every new situation. Remember how they’re able to find pleasure even in small irrelevant things. Don’t forget for a moment that they can so easily grow attached to new people, that they forget. Don’t forget that they forget.

  Don’t think about the fact that seven years have passed, half his life. That he is now a difficult teenager, nearly an adult. All further contact impossible, grandparents unreachable, evacuated during the war, gone. Broken diplomatic relations during the war made all efforts impossible. But now that there’s peace, there’s hope. The Red Cross, new personnel at the legation, sooner than you might think.

  Yes. But Papa Gyllen is old, retired, so too are his contacts. The new people look at them with suspicion. You have to hurry slowly, arm yourself with patience. If the boy made it through the war, he’ll make it now, in peacetime. Become an independent person. Do what he likes. May not want to have anything to do with her. Entirely understandable. But there must be some way to find out where he is.

  But what if he is not? A helpless child dying alone in an epidemic hospital, frozen, starving, not even thinking “Mama”. Then she takes a pill. It’s quiet on the island, everyone is friendly, the women giving birth are brave and capable, she likes her work. It was a piece of luck that someone told her about this job. Nice that Mama and Papa, who’ve grown so old during the war, like it so much out here and rent a place every summer. Everything has worked out much better than she might have feared.

  She saved her own skin. An odd expression. It makes her think of skin and bones, which is all she is—tall and gaunt and stiff. Her skin and her bones are the crutches that keep her going, and it’s going well, it’s all going very well. The main thing is that you have something to keep you busy. Of course she gets called out as a doctor sometimes, though she’s always careful to point out that she has no medical lice
nce and no right to treat patients or make decisions that should only be taken by a licensed physician. Yes, yes, they say, we know, but doctor, if you would just please come, it’s impossible to get to the hospital in Åbo. Well, all right, she supposes she can come and have a look, maybe give some advice, a bit of help, as long as it’s understood that it’s unofficial, the way old women through the ages have helped those who sought them out.

  That’s an argument they understand. Yes! That’s the way it’s always been. The previous midwife, who’d never been to medical school, was a thousand times better than the nearest doctor! Suddenly she’s swamped with effusive stories about the previous midwife’s miraculous cures. And she herself? She does indeed answer their calls, and soon the stories about her own deeds begin to make the rounds. They are seldom difficult things—cuts and wounds that need stitches, broken bones that need to be set and splinted, simple remedies for pneumonia and catarrh, medicines for pain. She sends thrombosis to the mainland, and when she finds cancer, she persuades them to take the boat to Åbo. They have an operation, come home and eventually die. Good practical experience for Irina Gyllen, who plans to be a general practitioner. She gets daily practise in diagnostics, and the stories they tell in the villages confirm that she is always right.

  She treats a relatively rugged population, sheltered from epidemics by the islands’ winter isolation, surprisingly well-nourished during the war years thanks to their healthy diet of Baltic herring, their mental state robust. When she sometimes commends them for eating sensibly and not coddling themselves, they are as pleased as punch.

  But they cannot understand why she has such a strong Russian accent and often has trouble finding the right Swedish words, although General Gyllen speaks fluent Finland Swedish and even her Russian-born mother manages well enough. Why does Russian cling to her speech although she wants to forget it? Why can’t she find her way back to the language that was her father’s native tongue? Why does she have such a frightful accent, even though she spoke Swedish as a child? Why do the Russian words come more quickly than the Swedish ones even though she lives in a completely Swedish environment? As soon as she opens her mouth, Russian jumps to her lips and renders her monosyllabic and abrupt.