“Yours looks better short.”
We laughed at that, then an awkward silence wedged itself between us. We slipped across the pebbles and sand, mowed through the lake grass where it grew high, skipped around the waves that grasped for our shoes.
I’d heard snippets about his life from family and friends but had dared not ask for details, fearing they might sense how badly I wanted to know.
“You came alone,” I said.
“It is too long a drive for the boys, and we were just here,” he said. “Katherine is looking after the store until I return.”
Hearing him say her name didn’t hurt as much as I’d anticipated.
“Have you been back to Winnipeg?” he asked.
“A few times. But I haven’t visited Freyja’s grave. It feels rather pointless now.”
He didn’t seem surprised. “How did your family take the news?” He picked up a handful of stones.
“Solrun and Lars might still believe she is living happily in Iceland,” I said. “Mama knows. Pabbi, too, but it pains him to talk about it, so I leave it alone.”
Bjorn smoothed his thumb across one of the stones. We stopped for him to skim it out over the water. It skipped only once. He tried again, this time it jumped twice.
He laughed. “Out of practice.”
I picked up a stone, tossing it out. “You are the only one to ask about her,” I said. “All of the neighbors have forgotten.”
“Do you think about her much?”
It was the common bond we shared. Losing a sibling evoked emotions few understood.
“All the time,” I said. “I still can’t believe in my heart that she’s dead.”
“Do you dream?” he asked, saying that after the twins drowned they came to him in a dream. So did Stefan. Those dreams felt different from ordinary dreams, he said, hard to describe. He held his palm up in front of his face. “They were right here. Their faces glowed peacefully. They told me they weren’t really gone.”
“Amma came to me the same way,” I said.
“I wish I understood what it meant.”
We walked for a little while longer then turned back.
“So you enjoy nursing?”
“I do.”
“You are at Lundi?”
“I am.”
“Happy?”
“Yes.”
I sensed there was more he wanted to say, that he was edging toward it, trying to find a way without shattering the pleasant feelings between us.
“Remember Steina, the teacher? I told her about Einar. Not what he did to you, but what I did to him. She didn’t look at me the same after that, especially when I got angry. I believe that is why she left me.”
“Oh, Bjorn,” I said.
“When you didn’t reply to my letter I was certain you felt the same way.”
I thought back to the day I’d torn up the envelope and cast it into the wind.
“Nothing turned out as I expected,” I said.
His lips tightened; he leaned in ever so slightly, away from the wind.
“Finn decided he didn’t want to marry me after all.” It hurt saying it out loud, especially to him, to admit that my loyalty had been misplaced. It was humbling. And terribly sad. “Everyone thought that Finn would die. And I suppose you could say he did. In order to make it home alive, he became someone else.”
“I heard,” he said. “How could he do that to you?”
I shrugged. “The war changed us both.”
Bjorn thought for a moment. “Maybe him, but not you.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Few things are more powerful than fate.
—Vatnsdæla Saga
Magnus slept for the rest of the afternoon. Bjorn sat on the chair, attention divided between a book and his father, looking up every time Magnus moved or took a labored breath.
I busied myself in the kitchen, preparing a meal that neither Bjorn nor I were hungry enough to eat. He came so quietly into the kitchen he startled me as I stood staring out the window, lost in thoughts of years ago.
“Asta,” he whispered, motioning for me to come. “He is talking to someone.”
I followed him silently to the side of the bed. Magnus was completely unaware of us as he muttered cheerfully, eyes fixed on the wall.
“Your Mama,” I whispered, our faces just inches apart.
“He is imagining it?”
“Nobody knows, but I have seen how it brings the dying a sense of peace.”
He seemed fascinated looking into the empty corner. “I wish I could see her too.”
That evening, Bjorn brought in an armful of wood for a fire. I moved a table between our two chairs and set up the chessboard. I brewed a fresh pot of coffee and lit the lamps, casting the room in a golden hue.
“Over the past few days his organs have started shutting down,” I explained as we sat across from each other.
Bjorn made a move then looked at his father. Magnus’s breathing was shallow. “Is he in pain?” he asked.
Moving my rook, I told him no.
Bjorn matched my move.
“The most difficult part will be letting him go,” I said, not looking up from the board.
“How will we know?” he asked.
I peeked at my wristwatch. So many I’d seen, if not waiting for someone, would let go at the beginning of a new day.
“Hear how his breathing stops and starts? Gradually the breaths grow farther apart.”
Bjorn listened as he concentrated on the board, elbow resting on his knee, chin in the palm of his hand.
“Do you think he knows we are still here?” he whispered.
“I am sure of it.”
Hours passed. We began another game.
“What I have always admired most about your father is his kindness,” I said, loud enough for Magnus to hear. “No matter whom he speaks to he always makes them feel like the most important person in the room.”
Bjorn agreed.
This was the most satisfying part of my job. It was exhilarating to save someone, but deeply gratifying to help the dying let go.
“Tell me,” I asked, “what is your fondest memory of life with your father?”
Bjorn’s eyes grew distant and soft. “Fishing. Being out there on the lake with him, working side by side. We talked about everything. I learned so much from him just being out there. It is the reason I love fishing so much.”
“Do you take the boys?”
“I do,” he said. “The fishing is pretty good there. They get so excited. You should see them pulling the fish box up the bank. You’d think it was filled with gold.”
Minutes later, Magnus stirred. We stood beside him. I gently lifted his hand into mine. It had lost all its warmth and strength.
“It is alright,” I whispered. “Everything is going to be fine.”
His body quivered. He opened his eyes. He smiled straight up at us.
“Father?” Bjorn whispered.
There was nothing in his eyes but pure joy, the full glory of his soul shining through. He stayed like that for a minute or so, then slowly his lids closed, but the smile remained. He took a deep breath, then stopped. Another breath and then a long pause.
“Father?” Bjorn said again, a hint of panic in his voice.
I squeezed Bjorn’s arm with one hand and pushed Magnus’s hair back with the other. It always amazes me how my senses come alive while watching someone die. That is how it feels to be totally present, when everything else simply falls away.
“We are here, Magnus. It is alright.”
Minutes later his body shook and he was gone.
Magnus lay in state in the front room for two days, in a beautiful oak casket he’d crafted for himself. People came from all around and shook hands with Bjorn, offered
their condolences, stayed well into the night. There was reminiscing and sympathetic hugs, spirits, laughter, and food. Always there was plenty of food.
The next afternoon we buried him alongside Bergthora. After everyone left I went out to see Bjorn. He was standing at the foot of the grave, leaning on the shovel, his thoughts far away.
He heard the rustle of the leaves and turned. “I am the only one left,” he said.
I almost corrected him, he had his sons. But he wasn’t thinking about the fruit that grew on his family tree, his mind was on the roots. All that remained from his youth was the house, and that now belonged to Asi.
“A toast,” I said, holding up a glass of Magnus’s finest whiskey.
Our glasses clinked.
“To Magnus,” he said.
We sat in front of the fire which burned too hot. Practical matters needed to be dealt with, but all of it could wait until tomorrow.
“There is no reason to mourn,” he said, more to himself than me. “He had a long life. He died content. I should be happy about that.”
“Yes, you should.”
He took a sip from the glass while staring into the fire. “So why do I feel so bad?”
It wasn’t so much a question as a statement. I told him we all felt the same when someone died. But he knew that, too. We were simply filling the air with conversation, allowing the whiskey to warm our throats, make us brave enough to say everything that up until that point had been left unsaid.
“Do you like it?” he asked, clinking my glass again.
“Not much, but I enjoy how it makes me feel.”
He laughed. “Bergthora sipped sometimes but would never admit to it.”
“Oh, how Magnus would have teased her—”
We laughed together at the memory of them. I expect, in the quiet moments that followed, he was recalling their smiling faces the same way I was.
Setting his glass down, he got up to put a record on the phonograph. I joined him in the middle of the floor and we waltzed, remembering together every humorous moment, until the sad ones started creeping in. The music stopped, but we continued dancing, his firm, gentle hand on my lower back.
“Why?” he whispered into my ear. “Why did it turn out this way?”
“It was my fault,” I said, close to his cheek. “After you said you loved me, I knew how impossible it would be to stay true to Finn if I opened your letter and read those words again.”
He kept moving us in a circle. Our hug began with a sob. I felt him release all the emotion built up over the last few days and I held him, feeling his tears soak my neck.
“Father saw my regret,” he finally said.
I closed my eyes as a warm shudder settled deep inside.
“He asked if I was happy,” he said.
“Are you?”
“I love Katherine,” he said. “But I often wonder . . . ”
“So do I.”
His face moved level to mine and our lips touched, tentatively at first, then I fell into his fierce rhythm; his fingers ran through my hair; my body relaxed into warm butter; Bjorn’s arms were taut, his feet planted firmly on the floor. It was a sin to kiss another woman’s husband, but it was impossible for me to think of him belonging to anyone but me.
“I have always wanted you,” he whispered, pulling my body close.
I felt his kiss go all through me. It had been so long since I’d felt a man’s body against mine, I grew dizzy. “This is wrong,” I whispered.
He sighed, letting his lips rest on my cheek. “Oh Asta, mínn, how I’ve missed you.”
Morning came and I awoke alone.
I’d lain awake most of the night in Bergthora’s former room, staring up at the ceiling, willing the darkness to put me to sleep. A part of me regretted turning him down and wondered if he felt regret that we’d not followed our bodies, our hearts. He must have known that I would have welcomed him, had he knocked on my door.
He was leaning on the verandah railing with a cup of coffee in hand, looking out over the water, the wind blowing the hair back from his face.
“I’m sorry,” he said, without looking away from the lake.
“No harm done.” I waved it off. “Come inside. I will make you breakfast.”
Once everything was settled, I stood at the door waiting with my packed bag as he started the car. I mouthed a silent good-bye to the house, not knowing if fate would arrange a return visit.
He drove me home to Lundi and we chatted the whole way. I invited him to stay the night since it was a long drive back to Siglunes in the dark, but he refused, saying he wanted to get an early start back to Swan River the next morning. We stood on the stoop, sharing another, much softer, kiss.
He walked backwards slowly to the sidewalk. This was a wrenching good-bye.
“Asta,” he said into the darkness.
“Yes?”
“Why do I feel it will never be finished between us?”
“Because it never will,” I said softly. “I will wait for you, Bjorn Magnusson, for as long it takes.”
I saw Bjorn again, two years later, at Oli Thorsteinsson’s funeral. He introduced me to Katherine as a family friend.
She shook my hand warmly. By then you would think I was too old for such pettiness, but I noticed immediately that she was much prettier than I’d ever been. Fine-boned, short, blonde, with a young, sweet voice. My fantasy that she was an unbearable shrew came to an abrupt end.
She beamed as she watched him move through the crowd. No harm done, really. It would never occur to her that Bjorn might desire someone like me.
What hurt most was seeing the boy. Their second born looked so much like him.
“Like my father, I will be an old man with young sons,” I overheard him say.
I avoided their family after that, walking home alone after the lunch, holding on to nothing but the memory of the only man I’ve ever truly loved.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Great deeds and ill deeds often fall within each other’s shadow.
—Gísli Súrsson’s Saga
It is night again. I wonder how they do it, decide which of them will sleep on the hard chair. I imagine they stand outside where I can’t see them, flipping a coin or drawing straws. Thora has plucked the short one again.
I feel annoyed but have forgotten why. There is a part of me that wants to die alone. But my heart cannot tell her to go.
“Leifur . . . Signy,” I say.
Her smile is angelic as she wipes sleep from her eyes.
“I have called them. They will be here soon.”
Good, I nod. There is not much time left.
Only one question left to answer, the one she asked earlier.
I came to terms with my regrets long ago. I believe that, given the chance, Bjorn would have kept his promise to come looking for me. There has been solace in knowing that, because we never married, there was no opportunity for day-to-day disappointments, no arguments that ended in frustration and tears. We didn’t lose respect for each other and my love for him remains strong to this day. The vision of what I believed we could have had together remains untarnished. There is some joy in that.
“I have . . . no regrets,” I whisper.
Thora seems relieved. She pats my hand. There are tears when our eyes meet.
“Except,” I manage to say, “Freyja.”
* * *
One morning, Leifur and Pabbi were out on the lake fishing. Pabbi filled the fish box as Leifur took the line over his shoulder and began pulling the net back under the ice. When he turned to shield his face from the bitter wind, he caught a glimpse of Pabbi lying on his back, holding a fish in one hand.
I was in the examination room assisting the doctor, who was draining infection from an old woman’s leg, when Mother came rushing into the waiting area.
I recognized her voice calling my name.
“It’s your Pabbi,” she said.
Leifur and Olafur carried him inside. The diagnosis: heart attack. Severe. Fortunately, he hadn’t lost consciousness, but his heart muscle was severely damaged. The tincture Mother had forced him to sip along the way may have helped.
They stayed with me in Lundi for three days, then we brought him home.
By then Lars was studying history and literature at the University of Manitoba and Solrun was newly married. Signy and Olafur had six boys. Everyone arrived. The older ones stayed outside to make a castle in the snow while the two youngest entertained Leifur and Sigrid’s twins in the front room.
“Girls,” Signy exclaimed. “What I would give for a daughter.”
Mother was nearly sixty-years-old by then. I sensed it was her experience with Solrun, who now walked with only a slight limp, that gave her hope. The doctor said Pabbi had many years left if he stopped working so hard and she was determined that was exactly what he would do.
“I will come help every day once my chores are done,” Olafur said, thick forearms folded on the table. Signy reached out to touch his big, calloused hand. It was an admirable offer but his eternal optimism meant he’d already taken on too much.
“No need,” Leifur said. “I will handle it.”
“You’ll need help,” Olafur said.
Mother and I set supper on the table.
Until then, Lars’s eyes had been downcast, but now he looked up. It is remarkable how calculated he was, that he so easily could conceal his disappointment from us all.
“I will come home,” he said. “When Pabbi is better I will enroll again.”
Pabbi lay sleeping with a soft, faded quilt pulled up to his chin. Had he been awake he wouldn’t have allowed it. Though the newspaper headlines screamed Depression, we were only two years into it and they’d barely felt the affects yet. He would have hired a man from Dog Creek to do his share of the chores. But the decision was made without him and, by the time he realized that Lars had withdrawn from the University, it was too late.
I always thought that I knew Lars. Now I see I barely understood him at all. It may have been the age difference, sixteen years. I was long finished school before he even started. I also question his memories of Freyja: were they genuine, or a compilation of frozen images in his mind of everything we’d said about her?
Be Still the Water Page 47