Ice

by Ulla-lena Lundberg

  The priest has come in. She curtseys and he takes her hand. Sanna curtseys too and takes Papa’s hand, and the pastor says Welcome! And how nice that she could come. “Just look how happy Sanna is.” Both the priest and his wife hope she’ll feel at home, and she says that she already does. She blushes each time she has to speak and hasn’t the courage to look at anyone but Sanna, who looks back open-heartedly and smiles. “Drink coffee now!” she says impatiently. They can all see that she’s eager to start having fun, but the pastor’s wife tells Cecilia not to be too nice and let herself be ordered around by the little princess, who’s been given too much leeway. “Just tell me if she gets too unruly and headstrong! You’re a sensible girl, and you have younger brothers and sisters, and I’m sure you know it’s a mistake to be too indulgent.”

  Cecilia wants to ask if the pastor’s wife also had little brothers and sisters, but it’s the pastor who answers, almost as if he’d read her thoughts. “Both Mona and I have younger siblings, so we have no illusions. You have to keep after them or they’ll take over the whole house.” But he says it lovingly and is so sweet to Sanna, who looks at him starry-eyed, that anyone can see that his parenting principles allow for many exceptions. And anyway, who would want to be strict and curb this little girl’s eager expectations!

  The pastor and his wife have had great piles of children’s books sent from their childhood homes, and Sanna has received several new books for her birthday. “Don’t read any more than you want to yourself!” says the pastor’s wife, who doesn’t want Sanna to become a tyrant, but Cecilia says she thinks it will be fun. Suddenly she utters several sentences in a row: “I didn’t get to read much when I was little, because no one did. The first stories I read were in my first reader. Once I had learned to read, I read the whole reader in a few days. And I got scolded because I wasn’t helping.”

  They give her a kindly look and nod. They sit peacefully at their coffee, take one more piece of buttered bread before the plate of sweet rolls goes around. After only a few days at the parsonage, Cecilia has learned that the pastor and his wife take mealtimes seriously. They sit down to eat no matter how great a rush they’re in, and meals last long enough that everyone leaves the table refreshed. “It will be a broadening experience for Cecilia, who is clearly intelligent,” she heard the pastor tell her parents when he came to ask if she’d like to come and help with Sanna during her summer vacation, and now she sees how that works. When you get to see the way clever, educated people live, you develop thoughts and plans for your own life that broaden you!

  As she reads aloud to Sanna and takes her out for walks and answers her thousands of questions—the pastor and his wife have taught her to take them seriously and answer them as best she can—June gallops away. Guests arrive from every direction and are stuffed into the house so that Cecilia must occasionally sleep in the sauna. That comes to an end when an amorous visitor from one of the sailboats forces his way in. Cecilia flees to the parsonage in tears, and the pastor and his wife abandon their guests in the parlour and talk to her in the kitchen.

  “He said I was sweet,” she sobs. “He wanted a kiss.” She shudders and cries. The pastor’s wife says she was absolutely right to run away. No one on a sailboat has any business in the sauna, least of all late at night, so of course she was scared. Tonight Cecilia can sleep in the kitchen, and early tomorrow morning the priest will go talk to the sailboat people. The pastor’s wife wants to go herself, and she wants to go now and say what she has in her heart, but the pastor thinks they should sleep on it. He says maybe the man didn’t really mean any harm, but it’s asking too much for a fourteen-year-old girl to know how to deal with a big man who comes barging in at ten o’clock at night. Cecilia is still crying and telling them she’s so sorry for everything, and both the pastor and his wife are kind and tell her not to forget that it wasn’t she who forced herself on someone. She has done nothing wrong and doesn’t need to apologize. “On the contrary, we’re the ones who ought to apologize,” says the pastor’s wife, “for all Petter’s countless relatives who pushed you out to the sauna. It never crossed my mind that you wouldn’t be safe, not even here on Church Isle!”

  She gets more and more worked up, and Cecilia stops crying and is frightened in a different way—well maybe it wasn’t as bad as all that! Oh my! And the pastor, soothing and concerned, says that all’s well that ends well. “Now we need to think about the sleeping arrangements, and tomorrow we’ll come up with a solution of some kind.” The pastor’s wife says indignantly that they no longer have any extra bedlinen at all—not a thing!—because of all the people they have in the house. It’s not a home any more, it’s a kolkhoz! In the end the pastor himself, who’s a man, has to trudge down to the sauna and carry up Cecilia’s bedclothes, which she can spread out on the kitchen floor. “So now we’ll sleep in the sauna,” says the pastor’s wife angrily, “and your parents can move into the bedroom.” Her tone of voice is such that for a moment Cecilia feels sorry for the sailboat tourists, who will now really have to watch their step.

  In the morning, when they’ve slept on it, the pastor attends to the matter with diplomacy and tact. There is no inquisition, he just installs himself and his wife on the shelf in the sauna, speaks calmly with the summer sailors and explains that they have so many people in the house that they themselves were forced out. Cecilia was frightened by something the night before and shouldn’t have to sleep in the sauna by herself. They spend an uncomfortable night in the sauna, and it occurs to Mona that she is in the final stages of pregnancy and at least has the right to demand a decent mattress to sleep on, not just a collection of winter clothing as if they were hobos in a barn, where at least they’d have hay to sleep on. Here the barn has been scraped clean and there are people everywhere! Having a baby now would be very much like giving birth in a certain stable! This is a joke, but the pastor gets very anxious and questions her in detail about pains and premonitions. How is she feeling? Should he go up to the office and call Doctor Gyllen just to be on the safe side?

  “Oh come on! Don’t I have the right to complain just this one time? Other people make a big deal of their pregnancies while I get chased out of my own home. I’m not going to sleep here one night more!”

  No, of course not, and in the morning Cecilia herself solves the problem. Blushing and curtseying, she says that they’ve told her several times that she could happily take a few days off and go home if she wanted, but she herself has wanted to stay. Now she wonders if she might go home over midsummer. She’d be happy to take Sanna with her if that would help.

  “Good heavens, no!” says the pastor’s wife. “If you take her along it won’t be time off. Petter’s sister should be able to do something! You just go on home, and have a nice holiday!”

  The next morning, one of the sailboats sails away, end of story. All the boats and the great crowds of guests at the parsonage are there to celebrate midsummer in the outer islands, and when it’s over, the guests need to understand that it’s time for them to leave so that peace can return to the house. As soon as the holidays are out of the way, they’re going to make hay, and only when it’s been taken in can the pastor’s wife take things a little easier, as befits her condition.

  Midsummer is the year’s biggest holiday on the Örlands. Midsummer Eve is a part of their pre-Christian heritage, and Midsummer Day, the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, is a great church festival. They have no difficulty combining their two religions, and the delicious herbal scents of Midsummer Eve, which cause hymens to break and put new life into old people, has no argument with the chaste smell of birch in the embowered church. The church is full to overflowing, and everyone turns a friendly face to the priest and sings the summer hymns, which the organist plays with newfound feeling. It is not perhaps Saint John the Baptist that appeals to people so much as the lovely summer and all the summery, slim-waisted, broad-skirted dresses, blooming with sprays and garlands, visible proof of the rich herring fishing last summer,
which filled many pockets with cash.

  Sanna too has a new dress, sent to her by the Helléns, beautifully sewn with puff sleeves, a round collar and a wide skirt. To go with it, she has white socks and light summer shoes with a strap. No sweeter child has ever been seen, and the pastor looks at her as if he were in love, and she prances about and flounces her skirt until Mama tells Papa he should stop making so much of Sanna’s dress. The last thing they want is for her to grow vain and insufferable! “Excuse me,” he says, “but it’s just so much fun having such a fresh and darling little girl!”

  “Two girls,” he corrects himself quickly, but she just snorts. “Oh, stop being silly. The way I look!”

  He’s moved to see that Cecilia, too, has come to church with her family, even though she’s on vacation. Sanna greets her with a cry of joy and holds her hand in the churchyard. And without any of Mona’s mixed feelings, Cecilia says, “How pretty you look in your new dress.” Both he and Mona tell the parents how pleased they are with her and how pleasant it is to have her in the house.

  The air is warm, no one is shivering and no one is in a hurry. In small groups, a large part of Örland parish stands gathered by their family graves, pulling weeds and watering occasional flowers, but mostly talking among themselves. Several young people wander down to the church dock and sit there talking and looking at the summer sailors, who feel suddenly very crowded and realize that they’re taking space meant for the churchgoers’ own boats, which swing at anchor anywhere they can find space in the little bay. But none of the Örlanders complains; they all call out cheerful greetings when they see people in the sailboats. The girls sit as if they were posing for a magazine, their skirts arranged prettily around them, their elegant legs in high-heeled shoes draped gracefully along the edge of the dock. Like young dandies, the island boys stand talking casually beside them. The naked eye can see no sign of uncertainty or artificiality, even though the entire arrangement is based on aesthetic calculation and close attention to detail. The weekend sailors are pale. Some of them have drunk too much the night before and are not well. They all feel shabby and unkempt, so one by one they disappear into their cabins and come out again dressed up in their yacht-club blazers, but they are second-rate sales clerks compared with the archipelago gallants, and they would never dare set sail within sight of these sovereign experts!

  After midsummer, scruples sweep through the guests at the parsonage, and a few days later all of them are gone. The pastor and the verger cut the grass, and Cecilia curtseys and asks if she can rake. She can keep an eye on Sanna at the same time. She stands with her eyes on the floor and avoids looking at the older woman’s belly beneath her apron, but it escapes no one that she, young as she is, is thoughtful enough to think that the pastor’s wife, in her condition, shouldn’t spend hour after hour in the hay meadow. It takes longer for Signe and Cecilia to rake up the hay now that they’re working at Örland speed. Last summer, Signe had to hurry to barely keep up; the pastor’s wife worked like a whirlwind. It rains in the middle of the process and the hay has to be turned yet again. If the pastor’s wife weren’t so impatient she might learn a lesson from how calmly and imperturbably Signe and Cecilia go about their work. The hay must be turned yet one more time, and the pastor’s wife can smell and see with her naked eye how the quality declines, but Signe and Cecilia move placidly along the windrows—two goddesses of fate who weave and weave. The pastor’s wife suffers and snorts, but then comes a period of high pressure that lasts, and the hay that the Holmens and the pastor cart into the barn, with raking help from Signe and Cecilia, retains nevertheless a decent nutritive value. The pastor’s wife provides the meals and is still so quick that anyone deciding to help hardly has time to rise from the table before she’s already up and running.

  Once the hay is in, there is a period of relative calm at the parsonage. Cecilia and Sanna play outdoors in the fine weather, and Sanna asks lots of questions and shows what she can do: climb and run and count to four and, as it happens, five and six as well, and sing “Baa, Baa, Little Lamb”. After supper they sit and read and read until Mama comes in from milking and reads the evening prayer and says good night. Despite the beauty of the summer, Papa spends the quiet days in his study, preparing for his pastoral exams. “I can’t deny that it’s terribly boring,” he confesses to Cecilia, “but it’s a thing I have to do if I’m to become the vicar here. Next year I’ll be happy I did it, although it’s not so much fun right now.”

  The pastor’s wife still goes out and milks the cows, but whenever he’s home, the pastor goes with her and carries the milk pails and washes them. It’s hard for her to bend over, and when she sits down to do the milking, she has a hard time reaching the udders and getting to her feet again. But there will be no mawkishness on that score, it’s all perfectly natural, and he ought to know that other women have had a much harder time and have still done what they had to do! On 13 July, she stands in the choir loft and sings “Where the Birches Whisper” at a wedding. The whole church whispers as they turn around, but her stomach is hidden behind the loft railing, which they should have known it would be. She has declined an invitation to the wedding feast. The pastor is there but says his thank-yous early and bicycles home. Those who see him report that he rides like the wind.

  On the morning of the fourteenth, the pastor’s wife goes out to the cows as usual. They don’t answer when she calls, so the pastor has to go find them. They’re not as familiar with him, and it takes time for him to drive them back to the meadow gate. She is sitting on a milk pail looking thoughtful. When she starts to milk, it goes slower than usual, and she stops now and again as if listening.

  “How are you?” he asks timidly.

  “Fine,” she says. “But it may be today.”

  Nervously he says, “Shall I call?” Doctor Gyllen, he means, and she snorts.

  “No! We’ll wait and see.”

  They walk slowly to the well with the strainer and the pails. Petter hauls up water in the pail and washes it out, then he lowers the milk containers so they stand on the bottom. The water is only a few centimetres deep. In a matter of days the well will be completely dry. “With our hay already in, it would be nice to get some rain,” he says. “But for the rest of the Örlanders it needs to hold off another week or so.”

  For once, she doesn’t say that the Örlanders have only themselves to blame for waiting too long to make their hay. She walks a little as if she were wading, and climbs the steps slowly. They come into the kitchen, and Mona shows him where she put the big pot with the fish soup she made the evening before, in case anything should happen. Everything is ready, the sheets have been changed, and clean sheets are waiting in the cupboard. He wanders around stricken with tenderness but feeling a little like a young bull following a heifer uninterested in mating. She dismisses him irritably and says, “Stop fussing! What good does it do?”

  Nevertheless, she suggests that they eat earlier today, and by eleven o’clock they’ve already got the soup steaming on the table along with good fresh bread and butter. “Goody,” says Sanna. She’s in a frisky mood, and Petter notes that she doesn’t seem to have the least idea that something is afoot. Cecilia looks both worried and uncertain. In her imagination she can see the boat with the doctor sinking so that she herself will have to act as midwife. What is she supposed to do? She hasn’t the least idea! And how will she dare?

  The pastor’s wife herself stands up before they’ve eaten their rhubarb pudding. “For supper, there’s soured milk in the cellar, and you can fry eggs and put them on bread,” she instructs them. “Maybe Cecilia would be kind enough to wash the dishes.” It is almost noon. She goes into the bedroom and the pastor follows. When he comes back out, he goes to the telephone and calls Doctor Gyllen.

  While the operator spreads the news across the Örlands, Cecilia stands in the kitchen washing dishes. Sanna stands beside her, talking happily and handing her one dish at a time. The pastor comes in and says that maybe Sanna can take h
er nap in the sauna today, since it’s so warm in the house. Then they can take a walk out to Hästskär and see if they can find any wild strawberries. Sanna is excited at the prospect and again unaware that the pastor has a frog in his throat and is talking oddly. Through the kitchen window they see there’s a boat on its way into the little bay. “It’s the Hindrikses’ hired man coming with Doctor Gyllen,” Cecilia identifies them.

  “Thanks be to God,” the pastor says. He hurries back to the bedroom with the news, much more relieved than his wife, who knows that nothing is going to happen right away. Cecilia gets ready, taking Sanna and grabbing a hat and rubber boots and a blanket for Sanna. On their way to the sauna they meet Doctor Gyllen on her way up from the dock. She walks at her usual brisk pace and carries her black doctor’s bag, which the youngsters in the village believe to contain babies. When she’s rummaged around a bit, she finds an appropriate infant to leave behind when she leaves the house. Cecilia’s not allowed to tell that story to Sanna, because the pastor’s wife has told her not to repeat old wives’ tales but to tell things the way they are so that Sanna doesn’t get all confused by a lot of nonsense.

  “Good day.” Cecilia curtseys and looks at the ground; Sanna hides on her safe side. “Good day, good day!” says Doctor Gyllen. “So you girls are going out to walk. Good idea.” She walks on, but not as if she were running. Cecilia and Sanna go to the sauna, and of course Sanna can’t even think of sleeping in a new place. She twists and turns on her blanket on the shelf and then sits up, her eyes full of life. Cecilia sings all the songs she knows along with several hymns, and Sanna sings along. Normally, she quiets down after a while, but not today. Cecilia sings several lullabies, but no child was ever more wide awake than Sanna. There are mosquitoes in the sauna, and Cecilia has to agree that it’s not a good place for a nap. But at least they’ve managed to kill almost an hour. Cecilia takes the large dipper from the sauna to hold their wild strawberries, and in boots and sunhats, they head off.