Ice

by Ulla-lena Lundberg

  Regular habits and sound morals are well and good, but it’s a little sad for children raised with such consistency. Sanna, who is Lillus’s other influential mentor, makes no such demands but is more sensitive to Lillus’s nature. When she has fallen asleep somewhere, Sanna doesn’t report the fact, although she answers when Mama asks, and when the sisters work on something together, there are no screams or tears. But there are when Mama gets involved and gives Lillus instructions. Poor Mona, Petter thinks. Someone has to do the essential parenting and so be the least popular person in the house. It’s not fair. Easy for him to be popular, he who only appears in their lives sporadically and gets all the love.

  The question now is whether he has witnessed a newly awakened sense of humour in his fifteen-month-old daughter. There are many reasons to think so, and there is a great deal going on in her present phase of development. In the kitchen they have a newly arrived household piglet in a box by the stove. There he squats, shivering and unhappy, bereft and fearful. Here the priest sees the awakening of compassion in Lillus, the realization that other creatures are like us. She sees how frightened he is, and how utterly alone. His skin, which is like her own, trembles over his whole body, his eyes blink in terror, he drools a little the way she does and whimpers. “Oink, oink,” says the piglet, and then Lillus goes to him in his distress. Glowing with compassion, like the angels who came to Swedenborg in his deepest adversity, she sits down by the box and pats his head, the way Sanna often pats hers. She talks to him in a friendly tone of voice, and the piglet listens and understands. He takes small hops with his legs and leans across the edge of the box and nudges her with his head, and she nudges back. He has stopped trembling and found courage and hope, secure in the knowledge that there is another creature like himself in this world.

  The telephone rings in the study, and Papa has to answer it. It’s a long call and, when he comes back to see what’s become of Lillus, she’s lying in the box beside the piglet. Both of them are asleep, lightly, silently. In his sleep, the piglet is sucking on the hem of her dress, and she has a potato skin in her hand that she has shared with him. It is hardly a sanitary arrangement and ought to be stopped, but Petter finds it difficult to tear her away. It’s as if he were looking into another world where there is no distinction between species. Carefully he retreats to the dining room and sits down with a newspaper so he can keep an eye on Lillus but can pretend that he didn’t see her climb into the box with the piglet.

  Soon Mama and Sanna come back from the cow barn and Mama gives a shout. “Come and look!” she cries and grabs Lillus out of the box. The piglet collapses, trembling, when the dress is torn from his mouth, and Lillus screams in terror at being so abruptly awaked from her animal sleep. “Usch!” says Mama. “Pugh! You stink of pig! Look at this mess! She’s been lying right in the pig filth! You were supposed to be watching her!”

  This last to Petter, who is ashamed of his disloyalty. It’s not as if he didn’t know what Mona thinks of Lillus’s piglet life. It’s hard, because he’s so impressed by the humanity he has seen awakening in Lillus, even if it’s directed towards a pig. He mumbles that he’d begun to read and was apparently blind to space and time. While he’s excusing himself, she gets the clothes off the screaming child and mixes bathwater in the big washbasin. The dress, which was washed and ironed, must now be washed and ironed, and the child, too, needs washing, not gently, while she screams and squirms.

  Sanna looks at the pig with interest, and at Lillus, and when order has been restored, Swedenborg banished to a partition in the cow barn, and Lillus scrubbed and stuffed into her nightgown, Sanna suggests that Lillus behaves the way she does because she doesn’t know she’s a person.

  Papa is awestruck. What a daughter he has! Yes, how could Lillus know that she’s a person? She’s at an age when she could just as well live with the cows in the barn or the sheep in the sheepfold. She would see it as perfectly natural, even though her prospects for the future wouldn’t be good. Compared with calves and lambs, she is little and defenceless. Sharp hooves would step on her and large bodies crush her to death. It’s not clear that she would understand how to suckle a cow, and nevertheless she would not know enough to wish for any other life.

  Sanna obviously has a scientific bent, and she immediately tests her hypothesis. Lillus is sitting in her crib and is wide awake, as she usually is when it’s time to sleep. Sanna hangs over the edge and gets her sister’s undivided attention. “Lillus, are you a pig?”

  Lillus is in a good humour and ready to go along with whatever Sanna suggests. “Oink, oink,” she yelps and laughs.

  “Are you a cow?”

  “Moo!” Lillus shouts and laughs at the top of her lungs. This reply can be considered a yes, and Sanna continues. “Are you a sheep?”

  “Baa,” comes the answer, strong and persuasive.

  “Are you a kitty?”

  Papa notes with surprise that Lillus is thinking it over. She does not continue the game with the animal noises but is clearly considering her relationship with the cat and looks uncertain and unhappy. She looks at a big scratch she got on her underarm when she tried to eat from the cat’s bowl and the cat struck out with claws bared. Her mouth trembles at the memory, Mama chasing out the cat and scolding Lillus for not knowing better than to steal its food. No, Lillus is no cat, and Sanna continues.

  “Are you a dog?” Sanna looks at her disapprovingly, angrily, and shakes her head, and Lillus shakes her head and looks appalled, for Sanna hates and fears dogs and does not want a sister who is a dog. “No! No!” Lillus assures her, and Sanna summarizes. “Lillus thinks she’s a pig and a cow and a sheep. But not a cat or a dog.” “Right,” says Papa, and Sanna goes on.

  “Are you a person?”

  This is hard. Sanna gives her no hint. How is Lillus to know if she’s a person? She looks at Papa for help, and he smiles and nods just slightly. Aha, but she hesitates when she looks at Sanna, the great authority, who says only, “Answer. Are you a person?”

  Lillus vacillates. Papa seems to think that she is, but she has no strong feelings one way or the other, not like pig or cow or sheep. Uncertain, she looks at Sanna. “Yes?” she tries.

  Sanna is pleased. “She doesn’t know. You heard it yourself!” she says to Papa.

  “But she’s inclined to think she is,” he says. “Good, Lillus! Sanna is a person and Mama is a person and Papa is a person and you’re a person. We’re all people. The organist and the verger and the whole congregation!”

  That’s a large group, and Lillus looks overwhelmed but rather pleased since both Sanna and Papa are included. Mama comes in and puts Lillus on the potty. Sanna reports that she has taught her she’s a person, not a pig.

  “Good!” says Mama. “A big improvement. Now I want my two human children in their beds and I’ll read you a story.”

  Papa stays and listens to Children of the Forest, although Mama signals that he can go. Sanna is completely absorbed. She knows the story by heart and moves her lips as it’s read. Lillus lies in her own world, a worm in the mould. What she reacts to is direct address, touch, smells, tastes in her mouth, things that move—a story read aloud still has no meaning for her. He has no memory of when they noticed that it was time to start reading to Sanna. How could he be so unobservant about his own child? Now he has a second chance with Lillus, and he means to be there when Lillus responds to her first story.

  PART THREE

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  AS WINTER DRAWS CLOSER, his third on the Örlands, it seems to Petter that he has come far. He has just as much work as before but is calmer and more at ease with his duties. The sermons have begun to come easier, at last. The text and the length provide the framework, and as his own experience of life on the Örlands has grown, he is able to find more and more natural associations between the biblical texts and the life of his congregation. The points of contact are no longer limited to the Sea of Galilee and the desert as a metaphor for the sea, but now include al
l the human strengths and weaknesses that unite people in the distant past with today’s Örlanders. They resemble Zacchaeus and Caiaphas and Naomi and Ruth and the wise and the foolish virgins.

  It is easier, now, to make it clear that Jesus is talking about them. The Örlands have become a biblical landscape that he makes use of in his sermons. When Jesus went up on Storböte and saw the glory of the archipelago, the devil appeared and said all these things will I give thee. He has to add that it would have been a great temptation for the priest himself. But we need not own what we love. If we’re at peace with God, if we’ve retained an unaffected soul, we can read God’s presence in all of creation. A presence is not something we can own, we can only gratefully receive the blessed moments when it is revealed to us. It is then we glimpse the face of God, like an intimation, in the constant subtle changes in nature’s countenance.

  When he roams through the biblical stories, the scenes change and well-known figures vanish from sight and wander on unseen. The same thing happens on the Örlands, where so many people leave. People on the islands talk a great deal about the problems that arise from seeing more and more young people move to Sweden. They come back during their summer vacations, and those who suffer most from homesickness or who know that they’re needed for the fishing take the whole summer off and find new jobs in the autumn. There is a great deal of coming and going, and Post-Anton carries all of them, the cocky and the frightened, the heedless and those who already know that nothing is easy.

  Others travel quietly and with self-restraint. The hardest to part with is Doctor Gyllen. Both Mona and Petter still have trouble expressing their friendship for her, stiff and guarded as she still is, but on a deeper level, they feel a love and a gratitude that fill their hearts. Once they’ve reconciled themselves to the fact that much of this must remain unspoken, it begins to be easier to behave naturally around her. Everyone knew that she would move as soon as she’d passed her licensing exam, but when it happens, they feel deprived, as if they will now find it difficult to live their lives.

  Yes, Doctor Gyllen has passed her Finnish medical exam, grilled by a professor with an aversion to her Russian accent who hunts for a weak spot that will bring her down. Little does he realize that he is a trifling amateur beside the tyrants she has had to deal with. One little Russophobe? Ha! A pinprick. Somewhat foreign in her oral presentation, but an admirable grasp of the clinical questions, impossible to shake her professional expertise in that area, and superb when it comes to her speciality, gynaecology and obstetrics. Harrumph, but unquestionably approved with honours.

  Helsingfors no longer frightening, unnatural, but unsuspecting, safe. Nice to stay with Mama and Papa, comfortable. Opera in the evening after the exam, shopping the next day—hard to imagine what to wear. Mama buys appropriate presents for the Hindrikses and suggests that she herself buy a suit, walking shoes, winter boots, rubber boots, blouses, a new skirt, undergarments. A jacket, a winter coat, maybe ski pants and a windbreaker for night calls in winter. Oh, she could buy a house for all the money spent, some of it Papa’s. She also sees to the Örlands’ medicinal needs, and her own, and discusses some purchases for the Health Care Centre with the National Board of Health. They apologize for all the forms and papers and, her guard down for one moment, she laughs. “For a person coming from Russia …”

  And then a thing that she will touch on briefly when the priest asks about it: a visit to Papa’s diplomatic friends, to the foreign office, to the President’s chancellery, to the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, to contacts within emigrant circles, to the Mannerheim League for Child Welfare. Even a letter of appeal to the Soviet Union’s newly expanded legation in Helsingfors. Nothing.

  Back to the Örlands, warm congratulations, great sadness. Of course the Örlands haven’t a chance of keeping their own doctor. Doctor Gyllen’s four years become a happy interlude when, thanks to strict Finnish regulations, they had a doctor and a midwife of their own, four years when all the babies born can be identified by their deep, well-hidden Russian navels. Now Doctor Gyllen is looking for a job somewhere else. She has a hard time with Finnish and wants to stay on Åland, and there’s a position open in a clinic in the northern archipelago, which of course she gets. The Health Care Centre on the Örlands isn’t finished yet, and she won’t have a chance to enjoy any of its benefits. That’s just the way it is, she says, you leave places you’ve loved and learn to appreciate other places. Soon, the Örlands will get a registered nurse instead, and then it will be good to have a brand-new building to go with the job.

  Sadness and activity. Money is collected from every farm for a handsome cash gift to be presented at the farewell coffee. Lydia Manström letters the inscription. “To Doctor Irina Gyllen, with gratitude from the people of the Örland Islands. Years of labour for the doctor, years of good fortune for the Örlands.” Since Doctor Gyllen was located physically in the west villages, the balance is restored somewhat by organizing the coffee at the school in the east villages, where Lydia heads the entertainment committee. The eastern side will also have the Health Care Centre, in whose creation the doctor was so involved, and so it is right and proper that the party take place nearby. A damned shame, say a hundred voices, that she never got to see it in use.

  In memory of the doctor’s arrival one early spring, they sing “Winter’s Rage is Over”.

  Most of all, they love the line about “the purple waves of summer”, at which point the whole room joins in, and Petter wonders if he might not be able to express his feelings more adequately by singing his thanks. Fortunately, council chairman Sörling speaks first, and Lydia presents the cash gift. Doctor Gyllen, impassive in her new brown suit, thanks everyone by bowing slightly to right, left, and centre, thinking that the poorer people are, the more generously they give. No Bohemian crystal vase with a silver foot for them, thank heaven. And then the vicar, with a warm smile, and his redcheeked wife by his side.

  “My heart is full to overflowing as I attempt to convey the gratitude, loss, and emptiness we all feel,” he begins. “There is probably no home on the Örlands where people have not waited eagerly for the doctor and felt their pain and worry lessen when they heard her footsteps in the hall. It seems to me that my wife and I owe her a greater debt of gratitude than anyone else, but I know several others who feel precisely the same way about themselves and their families. We can’t rank gratitude, no more than we can rank love or sorrow. We can only unite in extending our deeply felt thanks for the years that have passed and for the help we’ve received. We offer our congratulations on your Finnish medical examination and on your new medical post and ask for God’s blessing on your future career.”

  The doctor bows and thanks him, and then Bergström is on his feet to thank Doctor Gyllen on behalf of the provincial council for her tireless work for public health, for her unsparing toil and dedication. We shall never forget our doctor, he promises, and many Örlanders have tears on their cheeks.

  Then Doctor Gyllen herself must speak before they can all have coffee. She has calculated her dosage carefully. One and a half tablets in the evening gave her a good night, half a tablet that morning keeps her stable. A little distance to what’s going on, a measured emotional delay.

  “Esteemed Örlanders,” she begins. She has rehearsed. “It is with regret that I shall now leave the Örlands. You are good people, and I have had a good life among you. But human life consists of movement and change. I leave the Örlands to return to my true mission in life, which is that of physician. Perhaps we shall see one another, for one day I hope to open my own practice in Mariehamn, and then I can serve you there. How happy I will be when some good friend from the Örlands comes through the door. So dear people, I say only ‘Till we meet again.’”

  The good Hindrikses weep openly, the mother and the daughters, but the sprightly Marthas start singing “I Love My Native Soil” and then go off to get the coffee. Big-bellied copper pots and modern ones of enamel, all of them full and steaming, the f
irst cup to Doctor Gyllen. The platters they bring in are overflowing with sandwiches, rolls, and cakes. Doctor Gyllen recognizes Mona’s sweet rolls and the Hindrikses’ bread, which she saw them baking the day before. Who baked the cakes is less certain, but the butter has to come from farms with milking cows, and the farmer cheese could be from the parsonage. Adele has probably bought the sausage, maybe the ham as well. A big party, drowned in the rising buzz of conversation. She sits between Sörling and the vicar, both of them remarkably tongue-tied.

  “That was tremendous,” Doctor Gyllen begins, to the surprise of both Sörling and the vicar.

  “Yes,” the vicar says. “But only the tip of the iceberg. All the things we can’t manage to express are thirty times greater.”

  “Fifty times,” Sörling overbids chivalrously. “But you were here while the war was raging, Doctor, and you shared everything with us, and you know we didn’t have a lot.”

  Doctor Gyllen smiles. “The war didn’t rage much here. I came to peace when I came to the Örlands. The Finnish army to protect me, and no bombardment. At first I could not believe that people could live this way. Always fish, potatoes, bread. Often butter. Good for people’s health.”

  “Yes!” says the vicar enthusiastically. “People think this is a poor place, but the diet is ideal. All thanks to Baltic herring and the other fish. There was much more hunger in the cities.”

  They continue to talk of such things, which is good, because if they tried to say what they’re really feeling, they would deeply embarrass the guest of honour. In Doctor Gyllen’s company, you really understand the importance of keeping things superficial. Goodwill is expressed in a different form: several pairs of eyes keep watch on the doctor’s cup and plate, and as soon as her supply begins to ebb someone immediately rushes up with the pot and the platter. When all the plates start to look empty, the vicar and his wife stand up. They have been asked to contribute to the entertainment with some songs. They sing folk songs they grew up with along with some humorous duets, and then they tell the crowd that in June they’re going to make a little tour of their home province with these songs, plus several songs from Åland. They’re going to show off their children, and Petter will be marrying relatives on a virtual assembly line, but the singing will be to raise money for the Health Care Centre. Everyone applauds, and Doctor Gyllen catches their eye and thanks them with a little smile and a little bow.