by Annika Thor
All eyes are suddenly on Stephie. She feels herself blushing. Although the glass she was pouring is full now, she can’t seem to stop the thick liquid from running out of the bottle. The glass overflows, a sticky puddle forming on the tablecloth.
An instant later Elna has taken the bottle from Stephie’s hand. Stephie escapes in the direction of the kitchen, hearing fragments of the conversation as she is leaving:
“Oh, the poor refugee child … She’s not accustomed to this kind of dinner.…”
“No, from Vienna …”
“They couldn’t afford to let her go on with her schooling. We’re so pleased to be able to help.…”
In the kitchen she unties her apron furiously. Nothing Elna says can persuade her to go back into that dining room to offer seconds on the dessert.
in the evening Stephie hears a knock on the door that separates her room from Sven’s. By now Stephie has long since taken off the dark blue dress and gotten into bed in her nightgown, but she’s not sleeping. She’s sitting in bed with the light on, legs pulled up under her.
“Stephanie, are you asleep?”
Reluctantly, she answers. “No.”
“May I come in?”
“No,” she says again. “Leave me alone.”
“Please, Stephanie, just for a few minutes. I have to talk to you.”
“No.”
“Stephanie! Don’t be so obstinate. Just give me one minute.”
“All right, then, if you insist.”
Sven opens the door and closes it quietly behind him.
“I know you must be angry with me,” he says. “You’ve got to understand, though, that there was nothing I could do. I’ve tried talking with my mother about her foolish decision for you to have your dinners in the kitchen—you know that. I didn’t have the slightest idea she was planning for you to serve tonight. And in Karin’s old funeral dress at that.”
“You might at least have said hello,” Stephie replies.
Sven is silent for a few minutes.
“You’ve got to understand, I’m dependent on them,” he finally says. “Them and their accursed money. They support me and in return they expect certain behavior from me. Don’t you see?”
“No!” Stephie shouts. “No, I don’t see at all! Get out of here! Now!”
She lies down on her stomach, burying her face in the pillow.
Stephie avoids Sven the whole week. She gets up earlier than usual, wolfs down her breakfast, and has already left the kitchen by the time Sven comes in. She spends the afternoons doing her homework in the school library or sitting on her bench by the lily pond. When she comes home, she sneaks quietly into her room and closes the door. On Saturday, a week after the dinner party, she’s finally going out to the island. Straight from school she’ll take the tram and then the ferry. She packed her bag on Friday evening and brought it with her. There isn’t much in it but dirty laundry and a gift, a box of chalk she bought for Nellie.
When she walks out onto the schoolyard, she stops in surprise. Sven is straddling his bike on the other side of the fence, the brim of his school cap gleaming in the sun.
“Stephanie,” he calls.
Harriet and Lilian, walking behind Stephie, crane to see who’s calling her name. Stephie feels their curious gazes at her back as she walks to the gate.
“I thought I’d ride you to the ferry,” says Sven. “Don’t be angry anymore, Stephanie.”
How can she be angry when he’s looking her straight in the eye, his expression serious, but with the hint of a smile underneath it?
“I’m not angry,” she says. “But we’d better hurry. The boat leaves in twenty minutes.”
Sven puts her suitcase in his clamp and settles Stephie on the handlebars in front of him, his arms around her. Stephie can feel the eyes of every single person in the schoolyard glued to the scene.
“Bye, Stephie,” shouts May. “See you Monday!”
The bike rolls smoothly away from the school across Götaplatsen and along the avenue, merging with the stream of traffic heading for the center of town. Stephie is so close to Sven she feels the warmth of his body on her back. Sven is whistling as he bikes, one of his swing tunes.
The ride to the pier is much too short. Sven slows to a stop and lets her off. He puts the kickstand down and carries her suitcase to the pier.
“See you tomorrow evening,” he says. “Give my regards to the Janssons and say I hope they’ll want us as tenants again next summer.”
Stephie stands on deck until Sven is out of sight. Once they are out on the river, the wind feels colder. The leaves on the trees are beginning to turn yellow. It’s fall, her second fall in Sweden. She goes into the passenger area, opens a book, and sits reading until they approach the island. Then she goes out on deck and looks eagerly to see whether anybody has come to meet her.
Everything looks as it always does: the breakwater, the pier, the little jetties, the fishing boats, the boathouses. Aunt Märta is waiting by one of them with her bicycle. Stephie gets off the boat when it docks and joins her.
“Evert hopes to be back tomorrow,” Aunt Märta begins, “so you ought to get some time together.”
Now, just like the first time Stephie arrived on the island, Aunt Märta gives her a ride on the back of her bicycle, and Stephie holds her suitcase on her lap. She wonders what Aunt Märta would say if she knew this was Stephie’s second ride of the day on someone’s bicycle.
The other on the bicycle of a boy, no less. A boy she loves.
It’s not the kind of thing she’d ever talk to Aunt Märta about.
They stop at Auntie Alma’s on their way home. Nellie runs outside, throwing her arms around Stephie.
“Why didn’t you come last week?” she laments. “I’ve missed you.”
Stephie rummages through her bag until she finds the wrapped box of chalk, and gives it to Nellie. It’s a birthday present, her eighth birthday being just a few days off. Auntie Alma puts the gift away until then.
“I know Nellie. She won’t be able to resist opening it otherwise,” Auntie Alma says, smiling. They sit down to coffee for the grown-ups and berry juice for the children, and a while later Stephie and Aunt Märta continue their bike ride toward the white house on the west side of the island—the house at the end of the world, as Stephie called it when she first arrived.
Stephie takes a tour around the outside before going in. The dinghy is at the jetty, and the sheets hanging on the clothesline smell freshly laundered.
One of the first things Aunt Märta asks Stephie when they sit down to dinner is whether she has been to the Pentecostal church in Göteborg.
Stephie shakes her head.
“It wouldn’t do you any harm to go now and then,” Aunt Märta says dryly.
“We have so much homework,” Stephie replies. “And if I don’t take my schoolwork seriously, my scholarship might not be renewed.”
“Of course you must be attentive to your schoolwork. But your soul also has its needs,” says Aunt Märta. “I worry about you. The city is full of temptations.”
Stephie knows what Aunt Märta means when she uses the word “temptations”: movie theaters and dance halls, lipstick and hair permanents. And boys.
“I study all the time,” she repeats. “There’s no time to even think about anything else.”
“Fine,” says Aunt Märta. “You’re a good girl. You’ll not let us down, I know.”
Tonight Stephie goes up once more to the narrow bed in the room under the eaves. Her old teddy bear is waiting at the foot of the bed. His pitch-black eyes gleam lovingly in the dark.
mornings on the island used to mean Sunday school at the Pentecostal church. But now, when Stephie is there only to visit, she needn’t go. Instead, she takes her bicycle and pedals off to Vera’s.
Vera and her mother live in a little house at the far end of the huddle of homes around the harbor area. The house was once white but is now so dirty and abraded it looks gray. Some roof tiles are
missing, and the door creaks loudly when Vera opens it to let Stephie in.
Vera’s father drowned before she was born, a few weeks before he and Vera’s mother were to be married. Vera is therefore an out-of-wedlock child, and when Aunt Märta says those words, she makes it sound like a terrible thing to be. Still, Aunt Märta likes Vera and doesn’t object to her and Stephie’s being friends.
Vera’s mother pops her head out through the kitchen door to say hello. She’s quite young—in fact, even younger than Stephie’s own mother—but she looks weary and worn. Her hair, as red as Vera’s, is disheveled, and she’s missing two of her top front teeth.
“Come,” Vera says, pulling Stephie up the steps to the attic. During the warmer months Vera has a room of her own in the unheated attic. In the winter she and her mother share a bedroom.
The attic is dark and musty-smelling. All kinds of indeterminable objects have been crammed in along the walls under the sloping roof; old blankets and rags hang over the rough ceiling beams. Stephie finds Vera’s attic a little spooky; she wouldn’t want to be up here on her own at night, and certainly not to sleep.
Vera opens the low door to her room and ushers Stephie in. It’s big enough only for a bed and a box for Vera’s clothes. She used to do her homework in the kitchen. This year, of course, Vera doesn’t have any homework. She stopped school after sixth grade, like most of the other children on the island, and as Stephie would have had to do if it hadn’t been for the doctor’s wife and the scholarship.
She must try to remember that she’s indebted to Mrs. Söderberg. She also owes a debt of gratitude to the people who award scholarships to “gifted girls of little means,” as well as to the Swedish relief committee, which made it possible for her to come to Sweden in the first place.
Aunt Märta and Uncle Evert are different. They don’t expect her to be grateful to them for having taken her in, and for that very reason, she is extremely grateful.
Vera and Stephie sit side by side on Vera’s bed.
“What’s it like,” Vera asks, “in the city?”
Stephie describes the Söderbergs’ big apartment while Vera listens, gaping.
“That’s how I’m going to live when I grow up,” she says.
Stephie has her dream of becoming a doctor. Vera’s dream is to marry a wealthy man and live in the city, with loads of money, beautiful clothes, and housemaids.
When Stephie tells Vera about Alice, who lives in a huge brick mansion on the far side of the lily pond, Vera sighs deeply.
“Is the pond part of their yard?” she asks.
“No,” Stephie tells her. “It’s in a park.”
“I want a mansion with a lily pond of my own in the yard,” Vera says.
Stephie wishes she could tell Vera that wealthy, pretty Alice doesn’t seem to be very happy, while May from Mayhill is a cheerful girl, curious about everything. But she isn’t able to find words that will make Vera understand.
“Good grief,” she says instead. “What is a lily pond compared with having the whole sea outside your window?”
“Still, you don’t miss being here, do you?” Vera asks. “Now that you have what you’d hoped for?”
“But I do. Sometimes. I miss Nellie. And you.”
“Just as much as you miss being at home?”
Stephie answers after some consideration. Being at home would mean being with people she’s known all her life, being able to speak her own language and not having to fear that people will misunderstand. Being at home means being in the place where she can be entirely herself.
“No,” she says in the end. “Not just as much. Or, rather, not the same way.”
“What about Sylvia?” Vera wonders. “Are you in the same class?”
“Nope. She and Ingrid are both in the other class. I never talk to them.”
So Vera tells Stephie what she heard from Gunvor, who heard it from Majbritt, who heard it from Barbro: that a week ago, when Sylvia was home for the weekend, she had a note with her from her homeroom teacher, who wrote that Sylvia was going to have to work harder if she expected to pass.
Stephie nods. She’s not surprised. At the island school Sylvia was considered a good pupil. She didn’t have to put any effort into her schoolwork to get good grades. Things are different at the grammar school. Every pupil there was one of the best in her old class. And they all have to work hard to keep up.
“Serves her right,” says Vera.
“Mmm,” Stephie says, distracted. She can’t really muster up any interest in Sylvia nowadays. To her, Sylvia is a person from the past.
They take a bike ride. It’s a lovely autumn day. The air is clear and crisp. The heather has finished blooming, and the dwarf trees are beginning to yellow. They pick the last of the blackberries from their special bramble and ride along the road on which Vera once taught Stephie to bike. To Stephie, the island and Vera are inextricably linked.
Auntie Alma brings her children and Nellie over to Aunt Märta’s in the afternoon. Stephie notices that when she speaks German with Nellie, Nellie mixes in some Swedish.
“You mustn’t forget your German,” Stephie upbraids her. “It’s really important. What will happen, otherwise, when we see Mamma and Papa again?”
“But there’s no one for me to speak German with now that you’ve left,” Nellie replies sulkily.
“Then read!” Stephie tells her. “Read your old books over again. And I’ll give you mine, too. Write home at least once a week, as well. Promise!”
“I will,” says Nellie. “But don’t nag.”
The grandfather clock on the wall is ticking. The boat back to Göteborg leaves at six o’clock. Stephie hopes Uncle Evert will get home before that. Otherwise another month will pass before she gets to see him.
Auntie Alma and the children leave at four-thirty. Aunt Märta sets three places at the kitchen table, but when the clock in the front room strikes five, Uncle Evert still hasn’t arrived.
“I suppose we’d better eat,” says Aunt Märta. “You mustn’t miss your boat.” By five-thirty they are finished with dinner and the dishes are done. Stephie’s suitcase is packed with her clean sheets and underwear.
“We’d best be going,” says Aunt Märta. “Nothing to be done about it.”
Once again Stephie finds herself on the back of Aunt Märta’s bicycle with her suitcase on her lap. At every turn of the road, she hopes to see Uncle Evert coming toward them.
“You’ll see, he’ll just have come into port and be down at the harbor,” Aunt Märta assures her.
But when they get there, the berth where the Diana usually anchors is empty. Aunt Märta leans her bike against one of the boathouses and walks with Stephie onto the little pier where the steamboat picks up passengers.
Just as the steamboat is pulling out from the pier, Stephie hears a dull throbbing noise: a fishing vessel on its way in. It’s the Diana.
Stephie rushes over to the other side of the deck. At the wheel of the Diana she sees Uncle Evert in his blue overalls and a heavy woolen sweater.
“Uncle Evert!”
“Stephie,” he shouts, waving. “We had some engine trouble. Couldn’t get here earlier.”
“Never mind,” Stephie calls back. “I’ll be home soon again.”
Home. Perhaps the island is home after all, but in a different way.
is he?”
On Monday morning, the minute Stephie sets foot in the schoolyard, Harriet and Lilian pounce on her. Their eyes are bright with curiosity, their voices lowered to a secretive whisper.
“Who is he?” they ask again.
It takes a couple of seconds for Stephie to realize they’re talking about Sven. Just long enough for Lilian to whisper, even more softly, “Gosh, he’s so good-looking.”
And Harriet: “Are you going steady? The two of you?”
“Are you? Don’t keep us in the dark.”
“Look, she’s blushing! Come on, own up!”
“Yes,” Stephie hears herself s
ay, “we are.”
The instant she utters those words, she regrets them. She feels as if she has exposed her innermost self to public view. Not to mention that what she just said isn’t true. She loves Sven, and she knows that when the time is right, he will love her back. But what there is between them now has nothing to do with what Harriet and Lilian call “going steady.”
“Oooh!” Lilian sighs. “Aren’t you the lucky one?”
“What’s his name?” Harriet wants to know.
“Sven.”
“Is he in high school?”
“Yes, he’ll graduate this spring.”
“When did you two meet?”
“Last summer,” Stephie replies, thinking that if she keeps her answers short, they may tire of interrogating her.
“How?”
“He was a summer guest of my foster parents on the island.”
“No, no,” Harriet says impatiently. “I mean, how did you become a couple?”
Stephie knows she is on thin ice. She can’t figure out an answer they’ll believe. Instead of replying, she smiles as mysteriously as she can. “That’s my secret.”
“Oooh!” Lilian sighs again. “Please tell us.”
“Some other time,” says Stephie.
Stephie sees May making her way over to them. She definitely doesn’t want May to hear what she just told Harriet and Lilian. May knows her much too well; she’d see right through her.
“Don’t tell,” she whispers to Harriet and Lilian. “May has no idea. You’re the only ones who are in on it.”
She feels terrible when she says that, being false and letting May down by keeping a secret with Harriet and Lilian. And a secret that’s a lie, to boot.
“Sure,” they say. “Our lips are sealed.”
May doesn’t ask her about Sven. Instead, she wants to know all about Stephie’s weekend on the island. May was born in Göteborg and has lived here all her life, yet she’s never seen the open sea. Stephie hopes Aunt Märta will let her invite May to join her on the island sometime.