Ice

by Ulla-lena Lundberg

  First they must pass the parsonage. The pastor is sitting on the steps, his face grey, and Cecilia is afraid that Sanna will rush up to him, but she is full of the promised expedition and just calls out, “We’re going to pick wild strawberries!” and hurries along the path as if she were afraid of being captured and stuffed into bed. They stride along in their boots, past the churchyard and out into the wilds of Hästskär, where the world loses sight of them in dense thickets and in deep ravines under high granite walls. Where the cows have grazed, it is open and fine, and, just as Cecilia promised, there are wild strawberries. Masses of wild strawberries. A colossal abundance of wild strawberries. They have ripened large and sweet this lovely, dry summer. There are so many that they have to watch where they step so they don’t crush too many with their boots. Sanna picks them one at a time, smells them and looks at them and puts them in the dipper. Cecilia adds hers and tells Sanna that she can eat some if she likes, but Sanna is focused on the picking and is proud of the pile building in the dipper. Time passes quickly. For the first time, Sanna is far away from Mama and Papa and she feels big and full of her task—picking wild strawberries for dessert!

  Cecilia is not used to small children with such perseverance, but Sanna is enchanted by her berry picking. “Look Cecilia!” she says every time. Cecilia is picking too, and the dipper fills. Too soon? she wonders uneasily. She suggests that they rest for a while, and Sanna leans against her and falls asleep as if on cue. They sit there in the afternoon sun for almost an hour. Far away, Cecilia hears terrible screams. If she didn’t know that the pastor’s wife was giving birth, she would have concluded that some cow had got its horns caught in a tree. Cecilia shivers and imagines it is she herself. It’s awful. But Sanna sleeps calmly and deeply. Then it grows quiet and peaceful, all she can hear is a seabird crying, and then Sanna wakes up. A little groggy, she sits up. “Good morning!” Cecilia says. “Shall we start home with all our wild strawberries?”

  Sanna says she’s terribly hungry, and Cecilia says they’ve been gone longer than she expected and they should have brought some sandwiches and something to drink. “But we’ve got food right here! Let’s eat some strawberries to give us the strength to get home!” They have been sitting in a sort of tiny magic garden, a natural little pasture surrounded by juniper bushes, granite slabs and warm stone cliffs. “Like in a room of our own,” Cecilia says. “And look, here’s our very own privy!” And sure enough, between a big stone and an overgrown juniper bush there’s a little space where they can piddle in complete privacy!

  They wander home hand in hand, in complete agreement that it has been a wonderful afternoon. All the rocks are facing in the wrong direction on the way back, and it’s harder to walk, though Sanna marches along energetically. Like the cat with the seven-league boots that they read about, Cecilia says. She can see by the sun that it must be four-thirty by the time they arrive at the parsonage. She reconnoitres carefully but all seems quiet and calm. The door opens and the pastor comes out, beaming. “Come in, come in,” he begins, but Sanna cries out, “Papa, Papa! Look! We’ve been picking wild strawberries! Thousands of strawberries!”

  “Well, look at that!” Papa says. “You’ve come at just the right moment, my little strawberry girls. There’s wonderful news. Come in and see.”

  The doors to the house stand open, and Doctor Gyllen is sitting in the dining room with her helper, Sister Hanna, calmly drinking coffee. Papa’s cup is half full at the head of the table. Sanna rushes in and shows them the wild strawberries in the sauna dipper. “Let’s put them in a nice dish before we take them in to Mama,” Cecilia suggests. Papa goes to the kitchen with them. Cecilia takes out the good soup tureen and pours the berries into it. Nothing could be prettier, and while Sanna hops up and down with delight and impatience, the pastor says, “Thank you so much, Cecilia. This was perfect. It’s a girl, and now I’ll take Sanna in and show her. Come, Sanna.”

  He carries the wild strawberries like the chalice in church and they walk into the bedroom. The window is ajar and the room smells good. Sanna toddles in, “Look Mama, wild strawberries!” Papa holds out the tureen in all its glory and Mama admires it. “What a splendid dessert for this evening! What a good girl!” She’s lying in bed looking happy and satisfied, and there is a tray of coffee on the chair beside the bed. “Coffee in bed is only for birthdays!” Sanna knows to say, and then Papa says she’s right, because today is a birthday. “You’ve got a little sister today, and it’s her birthday. Do you want to see?”

  Now she sees that there’s a little packet beside Mama, wrapped in the little baby blanket that once was Sanna’s. Papa lifts it up as carefully as if it were lamp glass, loosens the blanket a bit, and there inside is a tiny little baby. A squashed, vivid reddish-purple face, with black hair pasted along its scalp. You can see from far off that it has no teeth and no eyes.

  “Ooh,” Sanna says.

  “Not exactly a beauty,” Papa says, “but she’ll get prettier in just a few days. This is your little sister, and you’re the only sister she has in the whole world.”

  Sanna says nothing. Of course Papa has talked about a sister or brother, but she thought it would be someone like herself, not this thing. When it’s someone’s birthday, you’re supposed to be happy and sing Happy Birthday, but suddenly she just wants to cry, and cry she does, big tears and a loud wail. Papa puts the strawberry tureen down on the bureau, right under Jesus on the cross, and lifts up Sanna. “There, there, Sanna! You’ve been having lots of fun all day and now you’re really tired.” He rocks her and talks to her and then he says they’ll go and see if they can’t find some supper, and then he’s going to call Grandma and Grandpa and Gram and Gramps and tell them about the wild strawberries and Sanna’s sister!

  He would have left the strawberries behind if Sanna hadn’t reminded him. He puts her down and takes the bowl and they walk through the parlour to the dining room, where they see that Sanna has been crying. “It was a shock for her to see her little sister. But she’ll get to be more and more fun every day, I promise.”

  Doctor Gyllen has stood up and asks him to call for the Hindrikses’ hired man, but the pastor says that he hopes she can stay and have supper with them. He can hear they’re already working in the kitchen—nothing very special, soured milk and buttered bread and wild strawberries, but they’d be happy if she’d help herself. They have enough soured milk for everyone. Mona clearly had her suspicions when she made it the day before. And at just that moment Cecilia comes up from the cellar with the bowls of soured milk balanced on a tray, and Sister Hanna comes in from the kitchen with small plates and a basket of bread.

  “Khleb!” says Doctor Gyllen and sits down, because the only thing she misses from Russia is the bread, the loaves of dark bread that keep that afflicted people on its feet. On Åland, loaves are not a part of the culture, but it does belong to the pastor’s mainland heritage, and here it is, thick slices of splendid bread along with home-churned butter piled on a plate, something the suffering Russian people have had to live without for years. “Ah! Kvass!” she says when the small beer is carried in, suddenly realizing that she has missed that, too.

  While Cecilia and Sister Hanna lay out the food, the pastor makes his calls. Sanna stands beside him, and he begins by saying that he has two important pieces of news: Sanna and Cecilia have filled the big sauna dipper with wild strawberries and, meanwhile, Mona gave birth to a daughter. Yes, a fine healthy little girl, although at the moment she looks like a boxer who’s stayed in the ring a few rounds too long, or like Dopey in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. And yes, everything went well, Mona is healthy and happy and sends her love. The homecare sister is in place and ready to do the milking, all is well.

  At the table, Doctor Gyllen has to withdraw her outstretched hand, for the pastor is saying grace. “Bless us, Oh Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty, through Christ, Our Lord. Amen.”

  “And the wild strawberries,” Sanna re
minds him.

  “Yes, of course,” says Papa. “Bless especially the wild strawberries. Thou hast created them, but Sanna and Cecilia have picked them.”

  They can choose how to eat them, either heaped up on the soured milk or by themselves, with sugar and milk, after eating the soured milk with sugar and cinnamon and scraping the bowl clean. Papa and Sister Hanna choose to eat them with the soured milk, but Doctor Gyllen says she’s like a child when it comes to wild strawberries—she means to follow Sanna’s and Cecilia’s lead and eat them separately. “Just with sugar, no milk. Heavenly!” For the first time, Sanna dares to look at Doctor Gyllen, who always looks the same but looks almost happy at the moment.

  No matter how hurried you may be when you arrive, and no matter what your eating habits are at home, at the parsonage you will spend a long time at the table. Until finally Doctor Gyllen says they must call the Hindrikses’ hired man so they can have some peace in the house and Sister Hanna can go to the cows. The pastor will go with her and instruct her, but first he calls the Hindrikses and thanks Doctor Gyllen for her services, and she suddenly hears herself say, “My dear Pyotr Leonardovich, you have a good home here and your wife does you honour. I am happy that I was able to help her a little, but on the whole she did it all herself.”

  He too is a bit surprised to hear his name in Russian, but mostly he feels honoured. Presumably it means that he and the doctor are now on very good terms, and that with him she can open a chink in her harshness and abruptness and surprise herself. Now she goes in to say goodbye to the pastor’s wife and comes out smiling to say that Mona is now hungry. “Everything looks very good, but if anything should occur, you have only to call, day or night.”

  Sister Hanna sends Cecilia in with a tray so that she too can see the new baby, and Sanna goes with her. Cecilia curtseys, blood red in the face, the china rattling on the tray. “Congratulations!” she whispers. “Thank you,” says the pastor’s wife in her normal, energetic voice. “Oh, I’ve been longing for a little something to eat. Bread and butter, soured milk and wild strawberries. You can put the tray right here and then have a look at our little addition!”

  Sanna is suddenly an old hand with her sister, and when Mama turns down the blanket, she encourages Cecilia. “Don’t be afraid. It will look better tomorrow.” Then the baby moves, waves its little fists a bit and opens its eyes a crack, enough that they can see a tiny flash of brightness. She opens her mouth and says waaah waaah. “Ooh,” says Sanna. “Does it want a strawberry?” “No,” says Mama. “The first few months she can only drink milk. But I’m going to eat some of your wonderful wild strawberries. It was so nice of you to save so many of them for me.” It’s hard to talk because the baby screams waaah waaah the whole time. “Quiet!” says Sanna, but the baby isn’t listening, and Mama just lets her cry.

  “We should go,” Cecilia says, but then Mama says she has something she wants to ask both of them. “What would you say to letting Sanna sleep in Cecilia’s room tonight, what with the baby crying and fussing. If Cecilia agrees, of course.”

  “Oh!” Sanna says. “Oh yes!” And Cecilia says, “Yes, of course, if you’ll promise not to chatter all night.” “Good,” says Mama. “Then I’ll ask Papa to carry your bed upstairs when he gets back from the cows. And you need to be nice to Sister Hanna and do what she tells you, because she’s going to be here and help us out for a week. She’s a nice woman and likes children and cows and wild strawberries.”

  When they leave the bedroom, Papa and Sister Hanna have gone out to the cow barn. The Hindrikses’ hired man is on his way into the church inlet, and Doctor Gyllen is on her way to the church dock. She’s in amazingly good spirits and wonders if that means bad news is on its way. It seems to be a part of human mentality that people lull themselves into a state of well-being and security just before some fatal blow befalls them. No doubt a characteristic favoured by evolution, since it gives people a small buffer—lower blood pressure, lower pulse, peace of mind—when the blow arrives.

  As soon as he’s killed the motor, the hired man yells, “It’s a girl, I heard.” Doctor Gyllen has stopped marvelling. She accepts the fact that in some mysterious way (in which the telephone operator can be presumed to play a not insignificant role), every person on the Örlands, every horse, cow and sheep, knows that the pastor and his wife have had a girl, even though the entire congregation has wished them a son.

  Chapter Sixteen

  IT’S NICE HAVING THE HOUSE FULL OF WOMEN—Sister Hanna in the guest preacher’s room, Cecilia in the attic, Mona and the two girls in the bedroom. In the parish, people are saying, “Better luck next time,” because out here people want boys who can work and drive boats. Girls are fine after you’ve had two boys. “We’ve still got time,” says the pastor confidently, and it becomes proverbial: “’We’ve still got time,’ said the pastor.” “If you have girls, you’ll get boys,” is another saying he’s picked up on the Örlands. But for the moment, things are quiet. Like a little island of calm in the midst of all the summer’s activities, where the pastor’s family can be by itself with the help of friendly Sister Hanna and dear Cecilia, who keeps Sanna from feeling neglected.

  Papa calls her Lillus, and after a few days, Sanna stops calling her “it”. When she turns out to have eyes, and then when she grips Sanna’s fingers hard, Sanna begins to think she’ll be able to have her around even though it’s sad how little she knows and can do. Mama insists that Sanna herself was just as little once, but Sanna finds that hard to believe. They must all help her, Papa says, so she’ll grow up and get to be as smart as Sanna. But it will take a long time, he says, realistically. Both Mama and Papa say she’ll surely turn out all right, although she’ll need a lot of help and looking after on the way.

  Sister Hanna is a nice woman and talks to Cecilia and therefore to Sanna. It’s so pleasant to work in the parsonage, she says. Everything is well arranged, and everything was ready when she arrived. They understand her and appreciate her, and she feels like a princess in the guest room. She’s very fond of the pastor’s wife, and the pastor is too good for this world. He takes such good care of his wife! He’s an example for everyone, if only people knew enough to follow his example. This priest’s whole life is like a sermon. You have to admire such a young man who already knows so much about how life should be lived.

  She stays for two weeks, but then she has to move on to a house in mourning, she explains, and Sanna cries. “A house in mourning here too, when you go,” says Papa. Mama thanks her heartily, and Papa makes a little speech. “You have been like a good angel in our house,” he says, and all except Lillus walk with her to the boat that has come to get her. Papa goes straight home and writes a letter to the local council about what a blessing this homecare aide has been to his family. He sends his warm thanks to the elected officials who so wisely decided to create this position in spite of strained finances.

  Thanks to Sister Hanna, he has also been able to spend hours in his study, and there are times when he begins to foresee the end of his efforts and to believe he’s got a handle on his dissertation. Fredrik has of course passed his exams with flying colours and has sent Petter his questions, not a bunch of hopeless theological hairsplitting but problems that, with rigorous study and thoughtful consideration, he ought to be able to tackle.

  Here on the Örlands, it’s a contest between the pastor and Doctor Gyllen as to which of them will finish first. They each ask about the other’s progress when they see one another at the meetings of the Public Health Association. Their conversations these days have an open, friendly tone. They can even tease each other a bit. If only they could do an exchange? So the pastor could get the doctor’s professional experience and the doctor could acquire the pastor’s ability to write Swedish! He has to learn the names of various potentates in the history of the church and she the names of a number of distinguished figures in Finnish medicine and memorize their specialities. She knows clinical medicine from A to Z, but “Ach, Pyotr Leonard
ovich, the cultural! Medicine is same all over Europe, but each country has its authorities! Titles and designations! God have mercy!” She stops herself, for she doesn’t like to refer to God in the pastor’s presence. He notices her embarrassment.

  “Perhaps he will,” he comforts her. “After all, the emphasis must be on your medical, clinical qualifications. And in Latin rather than in Swedish. Which by the way you speak much better than you think. Of course they’re going to pass you. We all think you should have the right to practise medicine even without the Finnish medical exam.”

  “Thank you,” Doctor Gyllen says. “And I think I know that the entire parish, I too, think you ought to be permanent vicar even without extra theological examination.”

  “Thank you,” he says in turn. Seeing them from a distance, the organist thinks they look like a couple of thieves at a market, and the kindly Hindrikses, who can read their doctor better than she suspects, hope that in the pastor, who is well educated like herself, she will find a person she can talk to about the things that weigh on her mind. The Hindrikses, and the Örlanders in general, don’t need to spend years at a university studying psychology to see that people need to talk to each other to ease their burdens.

  Sometimes this thought occurs to Doctor Gyllen herself, who, in moments of weakness, is strongly tempted to speak to this friendly young priest. She would surely be disappointed, as he has so obviously been spared the pain that torments her, but the temptation to expose herself to this disappointment remains distressingly strong. Two things hold her back—the fear that her self-control will collapse and she will go to pieces entirely and sit there sobbing, swaying, unravelling; and the danger that she will calm herself with a pill and then have no need to speak to him, although she has set the time and place.