I wrote back, telling him that a girl who matched Freyja’s description had been seen, but I was feeling discouraged again since a month had passed and I’d heard nothing more. I also had not yet heard from Finn. But then, two days after posting the letter to Bjorn, one arrived. I shook with excitement and thanked God.
May 5, 1915
Dear Ásta,
By now I am sure word has reached home about the many men who died in Ypres. I am alive and recovering in hospital from acute bronchitis, a result of the gas attack. I will convalesce here for a month then be re-assigned. I have written the same to Father. I have told him not to worry and I ask that you do the same.
I will write again soon.
Finn
Summer passed before I had time to realize it. I kept expecting another letter from Finn but none came, only twice-monthly letters from Bjorn, lengthy ones that kept me current on the goings on at home.
One Saturday evening in late September, two weeks before our second year of training would begin, Joanna surprised me once again by coming to our dorm room. This time she looked delighted.
“I have an address,” she said, holding up a paper. “I think we may have found her.”
She explained that a girl named Freyja, who matched the description I’d given, had applied at the Jón Bjarnason Academy in April, hoping to study art.
I was so shocked I barely knew what to say.
“Can we go now?” I asked.
“Tomorrow,” she said. “After church. My husband and I will take you there.”
After she left Thora turned to me, perplexed. “What was that about?”
It came as a relief to finally tell her what I’d kept hidden the past year. As the words spilled out, I realized how unfair I had been, all those times I’d dragged her to places and had secret conversations; sometimes I ignored her, so lost was I in my own thoughts.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, clearly hurt.
“Bjorn and I decided it would be best—”
“Bjorn knows?”
“Yes, I thou—”
“You told him but not me?” she cried. “Why him?”
“Because,” I said, thinking back, trying to remember exactly why I’d taken him into my confidence, “of Amma. You and I could not both leave without hiring a nurse. He spoke to Magnus.”
“So is that the only reason you came?” she asked. “To find Freyja?”
“No,” I said quickly, explaining everything, including the conversation with Petra. “I want to be a nurse. It was the possibility of finding her that gave me the courage to leave Mama and Pabbi.”
Thora was still frowning, but slowly she softened. “Joanna knows where she is?”
I grabbed her hands and started shaking them, giddy at the prospect of seeing Freyja tomorrow—tomorrow!
Before we fell asleep, Thora asked what had made me trust Petra’s word after everything her father had done to my family.
“Every night after Freyja disappeared I prayed for an answer,” I said into the darkness. “God would never be so cruel to send Petra to me if it wasn’t true.”
Joanna’s husband easily found the address and parked in front of a three-storey, brick apartment building on Richot Street in the French part of town. It was no wonder I hadn’t found her, I was looking in the wrong place.
Joanna pulled open the door and we followed her up the creaking stairs to the second floor. As our hushed voices echoed down the hall, it suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t know what to say when Freyja opened the door. Would she be glad to see us? Until then it hadn’t once occurred to me that she might slam the door.
“What’s wrong?” Thora asked when she looked back to see me lagging behind. By then I was feeling dizzy and had stopped, heart pounding in my chest.
“What if—?” I whispered, realizing with tremendous clarity why everyone else was so quick to believe that Freyja was dead. It hurt far less than the other possibility.
“What if she does not want to see you?” Joanna asked softly.
I nodded sheepishly. Why else would Freyja be living right here in Winnipeg but not contacting home?
“A misunderstanding,” Joanna said. “It happens often. You will see.”
Joanna paused until all three of us were in front of the door. She checked the address on the sheet of paper again then rapped hard. We waited. She knocked again. When no answer came, she pressed an ear to the door.
“Nobody is home,” she said.
No. No. No.
“This is most unfortunate.”
Please, please, please open the door.
Joanna sighed. “We will have to return tomorrow.”
Desperate, I glanced back toward the stairway hoping beyond reason that Freyja might come through the front door.
“I am sorry,” Joanna said. “We tried.”
I shook my head. “I cannot leave. Not when we are this close.”
Joanna lifted her wrist to check the time.
“You can go,” I said quickly. “We will find our way back.”
“I do not like the idea of leaving you here,” she said with a sideways glance.
We reassured her that it would be fine. Reluctantly, she looked back at us twice as she went to the front door. “There is a café on the corner of Richot and Taché,” she said, voice echoing loudly. “We passed it coming here. You will be able to catch a streetcar there.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Stubbornness brings either great humiliation or greater honour.
—The Saga of Hrafnkels Freysgoða
Without a pocket watch it was impossible to know how long we waited. I knocked on the door again. When we grew too tired to stand, we sat with our backs against the wall. Bored, Thora began humming. I sang along as we stretched our legs, glanced toward the front door, picked up the song again, laughing and reminiscing about home. Most of the stories involved Freyja—bold, naive, impetuous, sweetly infuriating Freyja.
“Do you think less of her now?” I asked.
It took Thora a few moments to know exactly what I meant. “In what way?”
“That she ran away. For worrying us so.”
Thora thought for a moment. “It will depend on the reason.”
Hours passed. The front door opened and a man came up the stairs. Key in hand, he opened the door to his apartment then went inside. A few moments later he stuck his head out.
“Are you waiting for someone?” he asked with a heavy French accent.
We quickly stood up. “Yes, my sister. She lives in this apartment. Do you know her?”
“What does she look like?”
“Seventeen. Very pretty, with white hair.”
He thought for a moment. “I saw her only once or twice,” he said. “Spoke with an accent. Said she came from a farm on Lake Winnipeg.”
“Lake Manitoba?” I asked. “Siglunes?”
He smiled. “That could be where they went.”
“They?” I asked, glancing at Thora.
“Her husband, but he did not seem like the farming type.” He shrugged. “He works for the Grain Exchange. That is like farming, I suppose, so he must know a bit about it.”
“You said they moved somewhere?”
“Yes. In May. He moved all their belongings out. Left.”
I looked at the door then back at him. “Are you sure?”
“Quite,” he said. “People move in and out all the time. Nobody lives there right now.”
He shrugged in apology then stepped back, closing the door behind him. Reluctantly, we left.
Thankfully it was not dark yet, but it would be soon. Neither one of us was in the mood to eat so we stood outside the café waiting for a streetcar.
“Freyja would not get married,” I said. “That cannot be right.”
/> “He didn’t seem reliable.”
“He said he spoke to her once or twice. That is ridiculous. I can see him not knowing if it were 10 or 15 times, but once or twice?”
“An idiot,” Thora agreed.
“Freyja married?”
“Seems unlikely to me. She was in love with Stefan.”
“He did not even know the difference between the lakes. How foolish. He must be wrong about her moving as well. We should go back tomorrow and see.”
“We should,” she said.
But we both knew we wouldn’t. Telling me what I needed to hear was Thora’s way of softening my disappointment. Through the streetcar window I peered down Richot Street. While I never went to that apartment again, the building haunted my dreams for years.
The next morning it felt good to walk with solid purpose into the warm sun, already blinking up over the river as the city was coming alive. Despite not knowing the man’s name, I was determined to find him and would start at the Grain Exchange. Most people I passed took notice of my uniform, offering a gracious ‘good morning.’
An hour earlier I’d lied to Superintendent Gray, feigning illness, so that I might sneak away. Tinged with guilt, I looked up at the building towering overhead. I hadn’t yet formulated how I was going to find the man who was supposedly Freyja’s husband.
Once inside, I couldn’t help but admire the marble floors and beautiful fixtures. Men dressed in suits streamed in, all wearing hats, and carrying leather valises. They greeted one another, then took the stairs or elevator. I decided to follow one of them.
“Good morning,” the young man said to the elevator operator as we stepped on.
“How are you today?” the operator asked as the cage door closed. He pulled a lever on the wall and the elevator jolted, taking us up four floors, jolted again when it stopped and the young man stepped out.
“Where to, Miss Nurse?” the operator asked.
I said that I needed to find someone who worked there.
“Do you know which floor?”
I told him no.
“Do you know his name?”
I was starting to feel a bit foolish. “No.”
He chuckled. “Well that is like finding a needle in a haystack.”
I’d never heard the expression before but committed it to memory so that I might use it again. I told him the man was a former patient who was looking to hire a private nurse for his ailing grandmother, but I’d misplaced his name.
“He works in this building,” I said. It was alarming how proficient I’d become at lying since the saga with Freyja began. I silently vowed that once I found her, I would never lie again.
“Try this office,” he said taking me up another floor, then pointing to a door at the end of the hall.
“May I help you?” the clerk asked, looking up from her desk.
I told the story again, this time adding that the man I was looking for lived in an apartment on Richot Street.
“How old is he?”
“Late 20s? I am not good at estimating age.”
“Can you tell me anything else about him?”
I said he had a young wife with lovely white hair, blue eyes. Beautiful and petite. Icelandic. She enjoyed music and art. “If you met her you would never forget her.”
Stepping away from her desk, she called out to a dignified-looking man with a moustache that curled up at the ends. He was annoyed until he saw my uniform.
She repeated my lie.
“I went to his apartment but he was not there,” I added.
“Icelandic, you say? Sounds like Barney Thordarson. He works as an intern on the fifth floor, but his grandmother died—I believe it was last year.”
“Then I will offer my condolences,” I said without missing a beat, turned, clicking exactly like Miss Gray, and marched out the door.
Bjarni Thordarson, I remembered the name. He was Finn’s acquaintance, who’d been there the day they took Freyja sightseeing and to the University. He had relatives at Big Point, across the lake. Perhaps he was a relation to poor Arni from who’d died in the bunkhouse.
This time when I stepped off the elevator, I turned to my left.
“I am here to see Bjarni Thordarson,” I said to the receptionist, looking past her at the rows of desks where men sat with their heads down, some writing, others reading. Two stood talking by a window that overlooked the city.
She called out his name and a handsome young man, only a few years older than me, pushed back his chair and stood up. I saw a brief hint of recognition and, dare I suggest, panic?
“Yes?” he asked, straining a smile.
When I did not reply, he was forced to come reluctantly from behind the safety of his desk. He resembled Arni enough that I was convinced the two were related, though his hair was more the shade of sand. He held his chin high in the air, looking down on me as he spoke, different from Arni in that way, too.
“What is this about?” he asked. There was a tint to his cheeks and he refused to look me in the eye. I knew what I would say to him and would do so in Icelandic.
“My name is Asta Gudmundsson and I am here looking for my sister Freyja. I understand that you know her whereabouts.”
Self-consciously he shot a glance at the receptionist, who didn’t understand one word.
“I don’t know who you are talking about,” he replied, equally quick.
“I have been told that you do. By my fiancé, Finn Kristjansson.”
He looked surprised, but it was not genuine. “Freyja—who?”
“Gudmundsson. From Siglunes.”
He shook his head, turning his palms to the ceiling. “I don’t know where that is.”
“Surely you do, it is across the lake from Big Point. You have relatives there.”
Another blank stare.
“Stanley Burroughs. Do you know him?”
Still nothing.
“All I want is to find my sister,” I said. “There was a girl who fit her description that lived in your apartment on Richot Street.”
He rolled his eyes and smirked. “That explains it,” he said. “I’ve never lived there. You mistake me for someone else.”
By then most of the men in the office were snickering, believing they were witnessing a lover’s quarrel. My mind was spinning.
“I am sorry,” he said, taking a few steps back to his desk. “I have a lot to do.”
I could think of nothing else to say, but didn’t believe one word he said.
“Good luck finding her.” He offered a sympathetic wave as I left.
A shadow darkened the front window of the little yellow house on Simcoe Street. It was shockingly easy to find. I simply asked the Pastor if he knew where Bjarni Thordarson lived. He pointed me to it, only three blocks from the church.
“You must have the wrong house,” an old man said when he answered the door. He was fat and leaned heavily on a cane. “I did not call for a nurse.”
“Does Bjarni Thordarson live here?” I asked in Icelandic.
His eyebrows lifted. “My grandson. He is at work. Did he arrange to have you come see me?”
“I am here to see his wife.”
“Nei,” he said shaking his head. “He does not have one. Poor boy. No girl wants him.”
He saw my disappointment as he shuffled back from the door, inviting me in.
“I have made a pot of coffee.”
“I should get back to the hospital,” I said.
Seeing my hesitation, he offered a bit of hangikjöt as well.
“Do you have time to check my feet?” he asked.
It occurred to me that all was not lost as I followed him to the front room. Befriending the old man could lead to information about Bjarni.
Once he’d struggled himself into a chair, he lifted his feet
onto the footstool. I pulled off his heavy wool socks. It was clear by the swelling that his condition was serious. As I began massaging his calves and ankles, I suggested that he come by the hospital to see a doctor.
“How will I get there?”
“Hire a car,” I said, squeezing his instep.
He groaned with delight, telling me to continue.
“Nei, I have always walked. When I was a boy, I was a shepherd. I walked many miles every day through the mountains,” he said. “Here I walked to my job, where I walked some more, and then back home again to this little house.”
“Then walk to the hospital,” I said. “It is not far.”
“I am too old.” He laughed.
“Then I will carry you,” I said, “on my back.”
“Nei.” He laughed again. “I am too fat. You are just a little girl.”
I helped him pull up his socks. Not wanting the ‘ad kvedast a’—silly rhymes we invent to show our wit—to end, he thought hard what to say next.
“I know,” he said, reaching for his cane. “I will hire a car to take me.”
I took him by the arm to help him stand up. “A car?” I said. “Would you not rather walk?”
“I would,” he said, eyes twinkling. “But I am too old. And fat. And I cannot get my shoes over my swollen feet.”
“You can wear these socks.”
“It is what I wore in Iceland in the mountains.”
“Surely you can wear them here.”
“But how will the driver know I wish to hire him?”
I brought my finger up to my chin, pretending to think hard. “I will flag him down and send him here. I will say there is an old fat man living in a yellow house who longs for the mountains in Iceland but must go to the hospital here instead.”
He laughed hard, pounding his thigh.
“I saw you sneak away this morning,” Thora said that night in the dorm. She did not ask for details, so I offered none and we went to bed without saying another word.
The following afternoon we strolled back after our shift, taking the long way around so that we might stop at the confectionery. We’d discovered it earlier that summer and now couldn’t resist the ice cream. The door tinkled as it opened and the clerk, wearing a tidy white uniform, standing behind the soda fountain, greeted us when we came in.
Be Still the Water Page 40