Be Still the Water

by Karen Emilson

“Pjetur,” Mother said, “Your hands, come here.”

  But Pabbi wasn’t listening. His whole body shook as he went back into the barn to examine the damage. Fortunately, the furniture was shielded by the crates, so only the fronts of the boxes were scorched black.

  “He knew I would have to sign it,” he said, storming back outside. “How can a man who professes to be God-fearing be so hateful?”

  “Come,” Mother said, reaching for his arm. “It is over.”

  “Over?” he screamed, wrenching his arm free. “This is not over. It will never be over, not until he drives us away from here.”

  “But there is no proof he did this,” Mother said.

  Pabbi laughed, looking up at the starless sky. “There never is. Never will be. He is so devious, so much better at this than I. Never in my life could I . . .”

  Mother sighed, placing a hand lovingly on his back, but he wrenched away.

  “We could have lost everything,” he hollered, levelling his gaze at her. “Again.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Word carries though mouths stand still.

  —Vápnfirðinga Saga

  Pabbi was so determined, Mother knew there was no talking him out of it. She went to the house to get the butter, bandages, and a blanket, while Signy and I made a bed of hay for him on the barn floor.

  “God help him if he comes back,” he said as Mother carefully salved and wrapped his shaking hands.

  The following afternoon J.K. and Finn came and, with Leifur’s help, loaded everything into the wagons for transport to the school. Pabbi, hands still bandaged and tender, could do nothing except ride along.

  “We should have brought everything here yesterday,” J.K. said.

  “Thank goodness we didn’t,” Pabbi growled. “Otherwise we might have lost the school too. All because of his vendetta against me.”

  “He denied it of course,” J.K. said slowly. “Told me Helgi must have misunderstood. He will likely blame Leifur for the fire. I have never met a man who lied so well.” He waited, perhaps thinking Pabbi might explain the animosity between the two.

  Eyes far away, Pabbi shook his head. He was beyond caring by that point. “I ask this be kept between us,” he said as he rolled his blanket out alongside the school stove. “I will not give him the satisfaction of knowing I am sleeping here on the floor.”

  J.K. agreed. “Half the taxes are collected already. The rest will come once everyone sells their lambs. Bensi has already said Pall and Petra will be taught at home so there will be no money coming from him.”

  “The best news I’ve heard in weeks,” Pabbi said. “I will pay his share if that’s what it takes to keep his children away from mine and him away from our school.”

  Steina Erlendsson was equally fluent in both languages, making her a logical choice as our first teacher. I’ve never forgotten that first day. I see us filing in, unsure what to do. Steina took charge of us immediately, seating Freyja near the front, Thora and I in the middle desks amongst the other children our age; Signy, Leifur, Stefan and Finn took the back rows. Our instruction was in English, as Pabbi said it would be, and fortunately Steina understood how difficult this was for us. If there were times she felt exasperated, it never once showed.

  We girls loved Steina and worked hard to please her because she was so kind and beautiful. The boys—likely for the same reasons—fidgeted and looked down whenever she stood by their desks or called them by name.

  Those first months went by quickly and I remember well our first community event— the school Christmas concert. Weeks ahead of time we began practicing, while Mother sewed long into the night so our new red velvet dresses, purchased with money earned from the mittens, would be ready. I wasn’t the only one who barely slept the night before.

  Steina thought it hilarious when we suggested that Signy play the role of Joseph and Finn dress like the Virgin Mary, but none of us summoned the courage to go through with it, so we stuck to our traditional roles. The younger ones were stable animals and all the mothers in the audience tittered when Freyja pranced out wrapped in a wool fleece.

  Leifur played one of the wise men, but, thinking himself too old for play-acting, he rolled his eyes the entire performance. Thora and I, wrapped in flour sacks with our hair pulled back and hidden under a rag, were cast in the objectionable roles of the two other wise men. Steina drew charcoal beards and moustaches on our faces. We had no idea how we looked until the audience erupted at the sight of us bearing our gifts for baby Jesus, who bore a striking resemblance to ten-month-old Solrun. Little Jesus cried throughout most of the play, probably because she didn’t like being wrapped in swaddling clothes. Asi said something hilarious that we didn’t hear, but the laughter from the crowd rattled me so badly that I forgot my lines.

  How quiet the room became when we began singing yuletide hymns, all in Icelandic. Mother and Gudrun dabbed their eyes as the candles were lit and passed through the audience. After the first verse of our final song, ‘Silent Night,’ J.K.’s voice rose up and everyone joined in. Baby Jesus stopped crying as we sang the song written especially for Him.

  When the performance was over we all lined up so Magnus could give each child a peppermint stick. His kindness endeared everyone to him; for some of the children, it was all they received that year for Christmas.

  Thora and I snuck outside before the dancing started to shake out our hair and wipe our faces, but discovered when we returned that all we’d done was make ourselves look worse.

  Leifur teased us, and the boys with him laughed. I was glad that Bjorn wasn’t there to see my embarrassment. He was at the other end of the room talking to Steina.

  All heads turned when Bensi arrived with his family, bowing his head graciously as he slipped quietly inside. Pabbi stiffened. He leaned in to Mother’s shoulder. “No wonder he keeps her hidden from us,” he whispered.

  It wasn’t like Pabbi to comment on a woman’s homeliness so I was surprised. Then he said: “That is not the same wife he had in Iceland.”

  Mother said that now it all made sense. The girls who disappeared must have been step-daughters. Amma reeled around when she overheard them.

  “The scoundrel,” she said, a little too loudly. “Unfortunately, my prediction was correct. Exactly like his father.”

  More heads turned, including Leifur’s—he hadn’t forgotten Pabbi’s slap. He looked at Bensi with such contempt it surprised even me.

  The two men eventually faced each other; they reached a silent impasse. Pabbi’s confidence grew, having won this first battle. He’d slept on the school floor every night until J.K. had collected enough taxes. When Pabbi had all the money in hand he’d climbed on his horse, ridden defiantly to The Narrows and handed Helgi the money, watching silently as Helgi tore up the guarantee. Helgi had been allowed to make up his own mind about whose word to trust in future.

  “How is the dog turning out?” Magnus asked Pabbi as they sipped coffee while eating cake. Setta hadn’t come up in conversation before so this was Pabbi’s first opportunity to thank him for giving her to us.

  “Not bad,” he said. “Setta can handle the sheep. My lead ewe is a bossy young thing that all the others follow, but Setta will face her down. Other dogs must be taught, but this one is teaching herself.”

  Magnus seemed pleased. “And how is fishing?”

  “Not bad. Hopefully it doesn’t slow down in January again.”

  Magnus said it was impossible to predict. “Fishing smart is as important as fishing hard,” he said. “What do you think of J.K.’s men?”

  “I am most surprised by the Indians who work on the crew. Beneath those silent stares and solemn eyes is a sense of humor and appreciation for irony. The bad stories I have heard must have been told by people who’d never met an Indian.”

  Magnus nodded in agreement.

  “J.K. will speak to us in I
celandic, to them in Saulteaux, but we all curse in English,” Pabbi said. “Especially when someone sets close to us.”

  Magnus laughed at that. “Competition in the bay is getting tighter every year,” he said.

  Pabbi agreed.

  Every man in our community either owned nets or fished on a crew. There was a gentleman’s understanding that you didn’t set nets in front of someone else’s land, but everywhere else on the lake was fair game. Given their competitive nature, most believed that if a man wasn’t ambitious enough to get his nets in early, he probably wouldn’t lift them early either. Nets left too long meant spoiled fish, which took money out of everyone’s pocket. So it was indeed every man for himself.

  “Já, the lake is turning into a beggar’s sandwich with too much bread and not enough meat.” Magnus winked. “With J.K.’s crew to the south and Helgi’s outfit to the north, my nets are stuck in between. But my boys will not give in that easy.”

  Amma came over right then to give him a warm hug. J.K. lifted his fiddle and everyone started dancing a reel.

  The merriment lasted well into the early morning hours. When it came time for us to leave, I wiggled through the dancers, hoping to ask Bjorn if he’d heard anything more about the body washed up at The Narrows. Months had passed but I’d heard nothing.

  Bjorn stood with his hands in his pockets, back against the wall, looking incredibly serious and grown up.

  “Merry Christmas,” I said, and he quietly returned the sentiment.

  “The drowned man, last fall,” I whispered, checking over each shoulder to be sure no one was listening, “was it Einar?”

  He did not look at me and his expression didn’t change. I followed his eyes to the middle of the floor where Steina and Freyja were laughing and dancing.

  “The fool shouldn’t have tried to cross on soft ice,” he said. “Father sent his body back to Portage la Prairie.”

  I inhaled sharply and he shot me a fierce, questioning look. I expected him to ask how much I’d seen that night, but he didn’t. Instead his eyes went back to the dance floor.

  I waited in the doorway long enough to see him cross the floor to take Steina’s hand.

  I was fifteen years old. For the first time since that terrible night in the little room at the castle, I cried myself to sleep.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Bare is his back who has no brother.

  —Grettir’s Saga

  It is surprising what the dying will tell their nurse.

  I imagine that is why Thora asked about regrets, to give me the opportunity to unburden myself. If I don’t answer she will not ask again. Not everyone wants to confess her life’s failings on her deathbed.

  I remember early in my career tending to the elderly, who back in those days convalesced at home. Some made startling admissions. One woman told me that a neighbor had fathered her youngest son. Before she died, she wondered if people in the community had suspected. A man whom no one came to visit wished that he’d been kinder, that he’d allowed himself more happiness; he told me that his worry and grim outlook had made his life miserable. Another woman said she’d been lazy all her life; since being confined to a wheelchair, she’d wished so badly she could get up and run.

  “What are you thinking about now?” Thora asks.

  I’ve never known her to be so inquisitive. I cannot tell her that I am wondering why some events from my life are being shown to me while others are left hidden.

  “I am thinking you are different than I remember,” I say.

  “Really?” she says, eyes bright. “In what way?”

  We are distracted by Solrun coming down the hallway. She looks pleased and surprised to see me out of bed.

  “Where is your sweater?” she asks. “That sun may be hot, but the breeze is still cool.”

  I tell her to stop fussing.

  She hands a blanket to Thora then wheels me around. “Shall we go?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Likely this will be my last trip outdoors so I want it to be memorable.

  * * *

  One day that winter, as I stood looking out the bedroom window toward the barren, snow-crusted lake, a knowing settled inside me. Months had passed and I hadn’t seen Bjorn except from a distance and I could no longer remember his face. Even when I closed my eyes in concentration, the edges were fuzzy.

  Were his eyes blue or gray? All I felt was sadness. I couldn’t even look at Steina, especially after she moved from J.K.’s house to board at the mill. Jealousy possessed me as I imagined her sleeping in the little room and playing chess with Bjorn in the evening.

  I enjoyed the fact she sensed something was wrong, how she tried to mend the tear between us without even knowing what she’d done.

  I resigned myself to Bergthora’s words, that if I ever were to have a relationship with Bjorn, it wouldn’t happen for years. That kept hope alive in me as I looked forward to the times I might see him. Her words helped soften the bite of disappointment when our brief encounters didn’t play out like they did in my dreams.

  “What happened when you were at the mill?” Amma asked one afternoon as we sat together knitting in the front room with baby Solrun asleep on a bed of blankets between us. Skalda’s bull calf had escaped from its pen so everyone else was out looking for it. Later, I would understand that she had waited weeks for the chance to talk with me alone.

  She held up a mitt, turning it to see if it was fit for sale. It was perplexing how the two of us could knit the same thing but the finished product look altogether different. Amma was a loose knitter, whereas all my stitches were tight.

  “Asta?”

  Working was easy but thinking took so much effort. Emotion was drowning me, I felt barely able to breathe.

  “Hmmm?” I replied.

  “I asked you a question.”

  I could hear the words, but it was like listening under water. All I could think about was how Signy had kicked up such a fuss when Mother insisted that Freyja knit as well. Reluctance toward any task had a way of spoiling the result and Signy worried that Freyja’s slipshod workmanship would affect the price Helgi paid for all our mittens. We’d made our first delivery early that fall of twenty pair and had been paid handsomely at 25 cents a pair. He’d told us to keep knitting, he needed every mitten we could make.

  “Did that wool come from Gronn?” I asked. Pabbi had given each of us a lamb two years before and Freyja had named hers Gronn. It was a skinny, bottle-fed orphan that we fed for months.

  Amma sighed heavily. “You are not the same girl,” she finally said, not looking up from her work. “The girl we sent to the mill was bright and inquisitive, willing to please. The girl who came home is solemn and short-tempered, who no longer cares about anything except work.”

  “I am not short-tempered,” I said.

  “Asta,” she said again, this time gently. I heard in her tone that she was not going to let this go.

  We sat in silence for a few minutes. I stared at the mitt in my lap, at the one loose stitch that stuck out. I scratched it with my fingernail, brought the mitt close to look. When we were finished we would shrink them in hot water so the stitches would tighten.

  “I see the tension between you and Bjorn,” she said quietly. “Did something happen when you were there?”

  Nothing I thought about could stop the warmth from flooding my cheeks. Amma knew. I cursed her skyggni, her ability to see things, to foretell the future and understand the past.

  “No,” I said, pushing away Einar’s greedy sneer, hoping she could not read minds as well.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said. “I asked Bjorn and his reaction was the same. He could not even look at me.”

  “Amma, please tell me you did no such thing.”

  “I did.”

  “No . . . Amma, no.”

  “Y
es.”

  Lying was such an impossible thing for me. She stared with such intensity, such determination as she waited. A version of the truth poured out when I opened my mouth.

  “I am in love with him,” I whispered. “But he loves Steina. My humiliation and his pity, that is what you see.”

  It was impossible to fool her completely. She saw how hard this was for me. “Your Mama thought something might have happened between the two of you,” she said. “Do you understand what I mean?”

  My face was as hot as the oven door by then. “Amma, Bjorn would never— Besides I am too young for him.”

  “Some men only like the young ones,” she said with a hint of disgust, watching me closely as she spoke. “When was the last time you washed, or ran a brush through your hair?”

  I thought no one noticed when we took turns bathing that I made an excuse to hide upstairs.

  “Please do not tell anyone,” I begged. “I cannot bear it if Leifur teases me.”

  Amma understood. In that moment, as our eyes locked, I almost blurted out the truth, but shame lowered my eyes instead.

  “I will tell only your Mama because she is worried, but you must make me a promise,” she said. I looked into her old, thoughtful eyes. We’d never had a discussion like this before and she seemed wiser than she had the last time I looked.

  “I know there is more you are not telling me,” she began. “But so be it. Just remember it is the nature of men to want what they cannot have while taking for granted what comes easily.”

  She waited as I absorbed her words.

  “You must promise me that you will never punish yourself over a man again,” she said.

  I agreed. But it would take many years before I understood her meaning and to realize it was a promise I didn’t know how to keep.

  We went to the kitchen when we heard voices. Everyone was back.

  “Did you find the steer?” Amma asked.

  “Someone must have taken it,” Leifur said, echoing the thoughts no one else dared say.