Be Still the Water

by Karen Emilson

  “I am Sigmar,” the pitcher said. “You are?”

  “Asta.”

  He seemed nervous as we moved across the floor. “This is a nice hall, I have never been here before,” he said.

  Sigmar was a good conversationalist so I concluded, when the song ended, that having lunch with him wouldn’t have been so bad.

  “Your fiancé does not dance?” he asked.

  I must have looked surprised because he tilted his head in Bjorn’s direction.

  “He is not my fiancé. We are just friends,” I said. “You know how it is.”

  He did. Small communities were all the same. I told him my beau was in Winnipeg studying at the University. There was a glint of hope in his smile. The third song was half over when Bjorn came up behind us.

  “May I?” he asked, cutting in for a waltz. Sigmar was reluctant but then stepped back. Bjorn took my hand, turning me away.

  “You don’t like him, do you,” I said as he pulled me across the floor.

  Bjorn shrugged. “Sigmar is full of himself.”

  “He’s not so bad.”

  “All the more reason for me to intervene. Imagine what Finn would think?”

  I cocked my head. “What would Finn say if he saw me dancing with you?”

  “You tell me.”

  I honestly didn’t know. We danced in silence after that until I asked him about the store, telling him the community was anxiously waiting for it to open.

  “Finished stocking the shelves yesterday,” he said. “Will be open Monday.”

  “What made you decide to leave Swan River?”

  His eyebrows narrowed. “Father needs my help,” he said.

  “But he has Siggi and Arn . . .”

  “Yes, but I knew when I left that I didn’t want to work for someone for the rest of my life, and with Bergthora not well—”

  He saw my surprise. “A cough. It began this winter.”

  I thought back to our visit that spring. I hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary.

  “Besides, I like it here,” he said. “Siglunes is my home.”

  “Then why did you leave?”

  “I needed to get away for a while,” he said quietly. He pressed his lips together and the look in his eyes took me back to that terrible night. It had been a year since I’d experienced fleeting thoughts of Einar, but I saw in Bjorn’s expression that the remembrance was still with him; the guilt returning, maybe, even though he tried to hide it, shake it away?

  “How is Siggi?” I asked.

  “Still not over it.”

  We slipped across the dance floor in silence and then he brought his lips close to my ear. “There is one thing I need to ask,” he whispered. “I didn’t have the courage to look at the baby. Could you tell, I mean by how he looked, who . . . the father was?”

  There was no way of knowing which answer might make bring him peace, so I told the truth.

  “He was fair like Siggi.”

  I felt his breath on my ear as he exhaled. He seemed to relax after that. We swayed to the music through another song.

  When he spoke again, his voice seemed lighter. “I was surprised when I saw you the day of the storm. You look so different now.”

  I took it as a compliment, thanking him.

  “You did not answer my question before,” he said seriously. “About Finn. What he would think if he saw us dancing.”

  “What would you think if you saw him dancing with Steina?” I teased.

  His eyes softened. This reminded me of the Bjorn I’d fallen in love with years ago.

  “I’d think that he was trying to steal her away from me,” he said.

  The rest of the night was like walking through a dream. All the conversations and laughter, the music and cigarette smoke, became too much. I went to stand by the door, desperate for air. Thora came bounding over, cheeks flushed. I strained to smile back. She’d spent most of the night dancing with the young man who’d bought her lunch.

  “Do you like him?” I asked.

  She rolled her eyes, giggling. “He asked if I am going to The Narrows picnic next week. Now I can hardly wait.”

  I truly was happy for her, but was having a hard time showing it. She tilted her head in sympathy. “I am sorry,” she said. “Don’t worry, Finn will be home soon.”

  We stepped away from the door to make room for a family that was leaving.

  “I saw you dancing with Bjorn,” she said. “Did he tell you?”

  “About the store?”

  She looked from side to side, hoping no one would hear her gossiping. “No, Steina left him,” she whispered. “She ran off with another man.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The more folk stand in the way of two hearts that yearn for each other, the hotter the flame of love waxes.

  —The story of Víglund the Fair

  “Happy birthday.” Solrun beams as she hurries in the room, carrying a bouquet of yellow lady slippers in a short, fat Mason jar.

  “I know, I know,” she says, placing it on the table by my bed. “I didn’t pick them, I used scissors, so no harm done.”

  She goes on for a bit how the municipality ‘fixed’ the road out by their place. She’d marked each lady slipper mound with a red flag, even showed them to the bulldozer operator before he began widening the ditch, but still he’d flattened the flags, leaving nothing but clay behind.

  “Can you believe it? A protected flower,” she says. “It seems nobody cares about anything anymore.”

  Then as quickly as her anger flared up it vanishes. Just like Mother.

  She pulls the chair close to my bed. Her hands are soft. Short, square nails. I feel the cool smoothness of her wedding band on the back of my hand.

  “Remember when we were girls?” she asks, eyes bright. “Every year on my birthday you’d tell me about the day I was born. You were always such a good storyteller. I liked it so much when you’d call me, ‘Solrun my favorite.’”

  It is my birthday. I’d forgotten.

  And then as if she can read my mind, she picks up the glass from the little table and puts the straw to my lips.

  * * *

  “Stay away from Bensi.”

  Though I hadn’t consciously thought about Magnus’s warning for a long time, the sight of Bensi riding into our yard vaulted those words to the most immediate part of my brain.

  I saw him before he saw me. I was outside in the garden picking weeds but wasn’t making much progress. I’d stop to stare off at nothing, pick a few more. All I could think about was Finn and Bjorn. As I knelt there, the hard soil pressing divots into my knees, I wondered if it was possible to be in love with two people at the same time.

  Bjorn’s comment had been so innocent at the picnic. “Is this what I think it is?” His eyes lighting up as he unfolded the cloth. “Nobody makes kleinur better than you.”

  All the years had rewound in an instant. Then when I heard that Steina had left him, it explained the contented remarks between Amma and Bergthora when we’d left the hall together.

  The next day with Finn had been sweet. We’d kissed passionately. I was sincerely glad to see him. But as The Narrows picnic approached, I grew uncertain. I pretended my throat was sore.

  “I will stay,” Finn had said.

  “The team needs you. I will be fine.”

  What a coward I was, afraid to be near both of them, fearing one might see the cracks of uncertainty in the veneer I hid behind. I should have gone anyway because it would have made no difference in the outcome of what eventually happened between Finn, Bjorn, and me.

  Bensi came without warning into our yard. What caused me to look up I’m not sure, but there he was on his horse, gun across his knees, scanning our yard for what I don’t know. I stayed, like a meadowlark chick, hunched down in t
he potatoes, waiting until he was behind the house, then ran as fast as I could to the back door, latching it behind me.

  By the time I was in the kitchen, Bensi was on the road rounding the corner of our house. I flattened myself against the wall and stole fleeting looks out the window. He continued on towards the barn. When he came to the corral, he dismounted, then went inside carrying his gun.

  I couldn’t think straight. I spoke out loud, trying to calm my thoughts. Likely Setta is with the sheep. If I call her now, he will hear me and know that I’m home alone. That horrible, familiar feeling twisted my gut.

  I waited by the window, watching. He wasn’t in the barn long before he came out, closing the door. He walked all the way around it then mounted his horse, turning its head, gently spurring it toward the house.

  If I were Leifur, full of suspicion and anger, I would load the gun and meet him outside. If I were Freyja, unaware that men were something to fear, I’d probably invite him in. But I was neither of them. My instinct was to hide.

  One more quick glance out the window, seeing him closer, sensing his intention to come inside, I opened the cellar door then silently lowered myself into the darkness. Normally I resisted whenever Mother asked me to fetch something from the dank room, but as I crouched in the corner, listening to the rattle of him pulling at the door, I was thankful for the stillness that surrounded me.

  Moments later, I heard the creak of footsteps overhead at the far end of house as he came in through the front door. I could only imagine what he was doing in our house, but now I see clearly the look of curiosity on his face as he steps into the front room. At first he simply stands there, looking around and then scans Pabbi’s books, leans over the little table by Pabbi’s chair to pick up the novel Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. Pabbi had struggled through that book in English. He’d said: “If a Polish man can write a book in English then certainly an Icelander can teach himself to read it.”

  Bensi carefully opens the book. He cannot read any of it, so the meaning of that story, so important to Pabbi, is completely lost on him. He puts the book down and looks at our family portrait on the wall for an unsettling length of time, then makes his way into the kitchen.

  Below his footfalls I was shaking, eyes staring up at the wooden floor.

  There’s not much in the kitchen that interests him. He moves to the doorway of Pabbi and Mother’s bedroom but does not go in. He slowly climbs the stairs to our bedrooms, ducking his head because the ceiling is low. He barely looks in Leifur’s room, but spends a long time staring at the few things we girls own—a hairbrush, books, ribbons, undergarments in a heap on the floor. Freyja’s stuffed doll. He touches nothing but I feel his frustration.

  I waited in the cellar, eyes wide open to keep away thoughts of Einar, for a long time after he rode away.

  The following night, when we were alone in our room, I warned Freyja to stay away from Bensi. She was examining herself in the mirror, her mind on Stefan. I could tell by the way she was admiring herself, puckering her lips, then smoothing her eyebrows with her fingers, she was not listening to me.

  “Which side am I prettiest?” she said, watching me in the mirror, turning this way and that. All she thought about was herself and Stefan. She was so boy-crazy. We called it that even then.

  “Did you hear me?” I said, still looking at her in the mirror.

  “What?”

  “Stay away from him,” I said.

  “Bensi wasn’t even at the picnic,” she said. “Neither was Petra. Her father doesn’t want her to go to a dance because he’s afraid she will meet a boy.” She rolled her eyes when she said it.

  “You are too trusting. Men can be cruel sometimes.”

  Her expression grew serious and, satisfied that she heard me, I went to the bed and opened a book.

  I’d thought hard about whether or not to tell anyone that Bensi had been in our house. I liked Leifur better without the hint of vengeance in his eyes, which reminded me too much of Bjorn on the day Einar was beaten. I didn’t want to be the reason once again that someone I loved reacted in haste.

  Two weeks before Finn was to leave for Winnipeg, Amma called me outside to help bag carrots. I’d been sitting in the front room studying English, saying words and phrases to Freyja and Solrun who were quickly becoming proficient at the language. In fact, they were helping me. Their new teacher was an English marvel.

  Amma was standing in the garden holding three large sacks. She loved carrots so she planted double what we could eat.

  I began pulling them from the ground, breaking off the tops. Amma was alongside me. I could tell by how she chattered about nothing she was working her way toward what she really wanted to say, and it had nothing to do with carrots.

  “I take it you plan to marry someday?” she finally said.

  “Of course.”

  “Then you’d better start paying attention,” she said, easily handling three carrots at a time, snapping off the greens. “They don’t always say what is on their minds.”

  I thought about Pabbi and how distant he became whenever my sisters or I pressed him for an opinion.

  “They don’t talk for a handful of reasons,” she said, vaulting upright but still straddling the row. She held one fist in the air, opening her thumb first.

  “One, because they have nothing to say. A man’s brain does not fill up with every detail as ours do. Sometimes their minds are completely blank.”

  I giggled.

  “Two, they are thinking of an answer. Most men are slow-witted beasts and they expect we will argue so they want to be prepared.”

  She pulled a carrot from the ground, rolled most of the dirt off on her pant leg then took a bite. “The exception is Olafur. He says the first thing that comes to his mind,” she said, chewing. “And we all know how that turns out.”

  I giggled again.

  “Three, they can’t stand being wrong. How often do you see a man change his mind?”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Exactly,” she said. “And four, they don’t want to upset us. There is nothing a man hates more than seeing a woman he loves cry.”

  Amma paused to take another bite, letting the weight of her words sink in.

  “The last reason?” I asked.

  She looked at her hand. “I can’t remember,” she said. “My point is this—you cannot assume to know what a man thinks or how he feels. You must ask then wait for the answer.”

  Her words made sense but I felt confident I didn’t need the advice. I crawled back, scooping the carrots from my row into a bag. “Finn talks to me all the time,” I said. “I always know what he thinks, not like—”

  “Bjorn?” she asked.

  I’d meant to say Pabbi.

  “Have you spoken to Bjorn about your feelings for him?” she asked.

  I immediately grew frustrated. I’d spent the last few months weighing the merits of staying with a man who I knew loved me against chasing a dream that had brought me only pain and uncertainty. I didn’t want to feel that heartbreak again.

  “Are you still planning to become a nurse?” she pressed.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I promised Finn and Thora I would,” I said. “Because it is the right thing to do.”

  “Are you sure? How do you know that God would not prefer you stay in Siglunes, that your destiny lies right here?”

  “Pabbi wants me to go, so does Mama. They like Finn and hope I marry him.”

  “What do you want?”

  “The same.”

  She lowered her chin, studied me, while I scrambled for something to say. Why did Amma always push me so? How could anyone ever know for certain what they should do?

  “Sharing a bed with a man you do not love makes for a long life indeed,” she said.

  “How would you know?” I
rifled back.

  “There is a good man right here who loves you,” she said, eyes fierce. “My mistakes followed me across the ocean. I don’t want you to look back and wish you’d chosen differently.”

  As we finished bagging the carrots in silence I decided that, while men and women’s brains might fire differently, the reasons we stopped talking were pretty much the same.

  That encounter in the garden was the closest we ever came to discussing sex. Even Amma had difficulty broaching the subject and for Mother it was impossible. Conversations stopped at husbands and children.

  “You are too young,” is all Mother would say.

  She said this again one afternoon, not to me but to Freyja. We were in the kitchen wearing our Sunday best, on our way to Signy’s house for supper. What prompted Mother to start the discussion was seeing Freyja waiting by the window for Stefan.

  “Take this to the wagon,” Mother said, thrusting a covered pot at Leifur.

  “I thought Signy was cooking,” he said.

  “It is good manners to bring something.”

  “It is just Signy.”

  “. . . who is expecting in a few months. Now go.”

  Pabbi picked up Lars, gave Mother a sympathetic look, then followed Leifur outside.

  “Asta, you stay.” Mother stood in the middle of the kitchen with her arms crossed. “Freyja come away from the window.”

  Freyja turned and in the flagrant sullenness that mimicked every teenage girl who’d ever lived, let out a tremendous sigh, annoying even me.

  “You are too young to be spending so much time with one boy,” Mother said.

  “But I love him,” she whined.

  “Stefan is five years older than you—”

  “Six.”

  Mother looked so old to us, it was impossible to believe that she understood love.

  “This nonsense has to stop,” she said. “You must start spending time with girls your own age otherwise Pabbi will forbid you to see Stefan altogether, understand?”