Ice

Chapter One

No one who’s seen the way a landscape changes when a boat appears can ever agree that any individual human life lacks meaning. The land and the bay are at peace. People gaze out across the water, rest their eyes, then look away. Things are what they are. In every breast there is a longing for something else, and everything we long for comes by boat. It’s enough that what comes is me, Anton, with the mail, for I might have anyone at all in the cabin. Expectation sweeps across heaven and earth when they first catch sight of me. The landscape is no longer quiet, there’s movement everywhere when the news goes round. Some are already running, shouting, “Here they come!”

It’s the same with those who, ancient and invisible, exist beyond our range of vision. When a human being approaches, the air grows tighter, you feel how they crowd forward and want to know something about you, though you suspect that they no longer understand what it means to be human, that they are no longer human, that the shapes you sense no longer resemble us. All the same, you feel their insistent desire to find out who you are.

Even though I have the throttle at full speed, we move slowly. Restlessness everywhere, as I can see from the way people move. I know they’re waiting and trying to stand still while they do, and I come as I come, steady ahead, cut the engine when I should and glide in towards the dock. Kalle stands there with the hawser, his foot out just in case he has to fend us off, but as usual I barely graze the edge, and so we land. The passengers have left the cabin, people call out and talk from boat to land, and the world looks very different than it did when we were out in the bay by ourselves and the people ashore were unaware.

Today, for a change, I am landing at the church dock, because we have the new priest aboard. Which is why they’ve been watching for us a little more keenly and why they came running as soon as we were spotted in the bay. It’s the verger who kept watch and the organist who saw to it that the boats they and the others came in were all pulled up on the rocks so that we could reach the dock. There is warm smoke rising from the parsonage chimneys, for the women have made fires and have food on the stove. The wind is perfectly calm at this hour of the morning, in coldest May, but oh how glances and thoughts fly through the air. What’s he like? How will it go? But no doubts are visible, for they must receive him heartily and without fear, as if getting used to a new pastor was the easiest thing in the world.

The priest has stood out on deck for quite a while, though his wife has tried several times to pull him in and told him he’ll catch cold. But he stays outside, and when he sees his church climb the hill, signalling to him with its red roof, he grows solemn but wears a broad smile, and when we finally pull into the cove he looks so happy that everyone decides it will all go well. He waves from a long way out, and they wave back and shout “Welcome!” He shouts, “Thank you!” and “Here we are!” and “You good people, you’ve had to get up in the middle of the night to welcome us!”

He has been here once before, so he knows the organist and the verger and Adele Bergman, who is on the vestry and is mightily supportive of the church and the priest. But it’s different now that he is the acting pastor and is going to settle down here with his wife and child. He’s made a good first impression. But when he’s about to step ashore, the boat glides out a bit as if the sea wanted to take him back, and a cold breeze draws across the bay. What that might mean I don’t know.

Adele Bergman knows very well that guests out here are always easy to please. If they’re coming from Åbo, they’ve been travelling for at least twelve hours, not counting the time it took them to get to Åbo in the first place. They’ve been thrown about in all sorts of weather and covered with spray. And when they finally stagger ashore, they have sand in their eyes and cold, damp clothing twined about their bodies. They’re hungry but seasick, shivering but sweaty. They snap at each other and wish they’d never come.

This is the basis of the widespread reputation for hospitality that the Örland Islands enjoy. Human beings are put together in such a way that it takes them only half a day to grow hungry, bored, and tired, so when they finally get a roof over their heads and are presented with a hot stove and warm food, they truly believe they have been snatched from the brink and cannot adequately thank those who have taken them in. Of course the people of the Örlands have been showered with gratitude many times over, but the feeling is always sweet, and they have enjoyed firing up the kitchen range and tiled stoves even though it shortened their night.

They stand there looking pleased—Adele Bergman and her Elis, the organist, the verger and the verger’s Signe—for rarely are people so much appreciated for such a relatively modest effort. It is always a pleasure to observe new arrivals, and now, moreover, these five people constitute an official ecclesiastical reception committee with every reason to stand on the dock and inspect the newcomers and take them under their wing and guide them up to the parsonage.

And guide them into the parish, because it might not be such a bad idea to give the pastor a hint or two about certain tensions within the congregation. This fellow is young, and his wife is even younger, and for the sake of his future success, one can hope that they’re smart enough to learn from others.

The priest is happy. For young people, the trip feels endless because they can’t move and there’s so little to do, and now he’s happy because he’s arrived and can go ashore and shake hands and see to the baggage and shake hands with the mail carrier and thank him for landing at the church dock with all their things. But he’s happy in another way as well, because it’s in his nature, and because there’s a fire burning in his breast, fed by everything he wants to experience and accomplish in his life.

How nice it would be, Adele Bergman often thinks, in her heart of hearts, to have a Catholic priest who would come by himself and belong more to us alone. In our Lutheran church there has to be a wife and children and furniture tying him down and making demands on his time. People almost think there’s something wrong with a priest who doesn’t have all that, and so the wife gets terrifically friendly looks from everyone as she steps ashore and sets down a child so small it’s a wonder it can stand on its own two feet. It’s a girl, in a cap and coat slit up the back. “A real little parsonage lassie,” says the organist, who is gallant and loves children and who greets her personally. “Welcome to the Örlands,” he says, and the child doesn’t start crying but gravely returns his gaze.

The pastor’s wife is small and quick. She doesn’t realize that the boat will stay at the dock until it’s been unloaded but glances angrily at the priest who stands there talking, with the child on his arm, while she scurries about carrying ashore valises and boxes and rolls of bedding and asks what they intend to do about all the furniture lashed to the deck. “Petter, come here!” she finally shouts.

The priest hands the child to Signe, as if he understood how she longs for children. He hurries over to the railing and the others follow. The skipper and Kalle are on their side of the railing, talking, and then they quickly heave ashore the large and the small sideboards and chests and tables and chairs, which now stand newly awakened on the dock.

“Ready to move right in,” says the organist. “Sea view and high ceilings.”

Two beds and a crib follow, then a kitchen table and benches and a dresser and a commode and two bicycles, and finally the household appears to be complete. The pastor’s wife counts and checks while the pastor dandles the child, who squirms in his arms and wants down. Adele looks into the cargo space and wonders how much merchandise the skipper has brought from Åbo for the Co-op, the islands’ only store. “Not so bad,” he assures her. “Things are starting to get back to normal, bit by bit.” Which in truth they all have a right to expect, a year and a half after the war.

The skipper and Kalle will take the boat over to the Co-op’s dock to unload its goods before they can head home, and now they look at the pastor’s wife and wonder if they’ve got everything off. She thinks they have, and the skipper looks to the engine and Kalle loosens the moorings and the priest thanks them once again. The boat starts to leave, but on the dock they all stand around talking, though they ought to go inside where it’s warm and get something to eat. As usual, it’s all up to Adele. “Can’t you all see these people are done in?” she says. “Now let’s put the most important stuff in the cart and go up to the parsonage.”

They amble through the morning dew up towards the big red parsonage, the air above the chimneys quivering with warm air from the tile stoves where the reception committee have built roaring fires. In the kitchen, there are saucepans and a teakettle dancing on the stove. The porridge is warm in its pot, and there is bread, buttered and waiting, covered, by the milk pitcher.

Just as they should, they stop to catch their breath. “My goodness, such lovely warmth! And we thought we’d be coming to a cold, damp house and wondered where we’d find the key!” And, “Is it possible? Is this for us? My dear friends, you’re too good!”

“Do sit down and help yourselves,” say the reception committee in various voices at practically the same moment, taking their own advice and sitting down. Adele has brought cups in a basket, along with enough ersatz coffee for everyone. Bread too, though the idea was that some should be left over for the pastor’s family.

“Oh, oh, oh, so good,” they say. “What bread! And butter! Look, Sanna, Papa’s putting a pat of butter on your porridge. Now a big spoonful! Wasn’t that good? Now show us how you can drink milk from a cup. And what wonderful coffee! Hot enough to warm my toes. I don’t know how we can ever thank you or pay you back!”

And much, much more. It’s lovely to hear, the kind of reward everyone deserves for a job well done. The reception committee sit and talk, though they know that the newcomers need to get themselves organized and get some rest. Such a long way they’ve come and how nice it is to be here at last and get such a warm, hearty welcome. Here they mean to stay, for they’ll never find a better place.

The priest asks what villages they’re from and wants to know if these are distant. The organist, with whom he’ll work most closely, comes from farthest away, but he waves that aside—what does it matter when he has a boat? The pastor has only to call on the telephone and he’ll come. The verger lives close by and has only a narrow channel to row across to get to the church, so he’ll be glad to come and help out. As will Signe, who now thinks she’ll head for the barn and milk the cows.

The pastor’s wife pricks up her ears, for she and Petter have taken over the former priest’s two cows. She brightens with interest and wonders if she can come along but then changes her mind when she stops to think of everything she has to deal with this morning. It will have to be this evening. “Signe, if you would be so kind as to do the milking today too, then maybe we can go together this evening. Starting tomorrow, I’ll take over.”

They look at her. Pastors’ wives don’t usually enter the cow barn, but this one says she comes from a farm and has a special interest in animal husbandry. “So it will be a lot of fun to have my own cows, even though there are only two of them,” she says, and the priest looks at her proudly. “She’s good at all sorts of things, my Mona,” he says. “We’ve certainly come to the right place, because we’re going to like all the farm work, in addition to the church work, I mean.”

He turns again to the organist, who is chairman of the vestry, and smiles and says they’re going to have a lot to discuss. He hopes it won’t intrude too much on his time if he suggests that they get together informally this week and go over the parish routines, and the organist readily agrees. Adele can see that he likes this priest already, likes him even more than expected. He would have been equally obliging, though somewhat more guarded, towards a priest he liked less, but now he’s looking forward to adopting the new man and supporting him. As he’s done with a number of people he’s close to, whether or not it served him well. As he did with Adele, although, to her quiet sorrow, he was already married when she came to the Örlands.

The priest’s wife says she thinks she’ll send Petter to the store this very day, when he’s rested a little, and so he is given directions. He can put his bicycle in the skiff and row across the little inlet, and from there it’s only five kilometres to the store. “It’s nice you’ve got roots in Åland,” says Adele. “It’s been a great source of amusement to watch some of the priests from the city try to row a boat.”

Petter laughs heartily and says how fortunate he is to have already made the acquaintance of the Co-op’s manager, who looks like she might become a friend in need. Adele tells him he’ll be very welcome at the store, and she’ll look forward to his visit. He sits there at the table as if he had all the time in the world, but his wife has grown restless and gets up with her wilting daughter in her arms and looks for a place to put the child down. We ought to get our things into the house, she thinks, and get the essentials in place as quickly as we can.

Adele watches her restrain her irritation at them for not having the good sense to go home, filled to bursting as she is with all the things she wants to do, and she notices quite unexpectedly that she likes the pastor’s wife too, and quite a lot. Because they’re both cut from the same cloth, industrious types, called to step in if anything is going to get done. They look at each other and smile. Mona has also taken the measure of Adele Bergman. Adele stands up and says, “All right, my friends, I think we should let the pastor and his wife put their house in order! Thank you so much. And, once again, welcome to the parish. The men can carry up your furniture from the dock, and then we’ll say thank you for today and hope to see you soon again.”

People in the villages like to say that Adele is bossy, but for many it’s a relief that someone takes charge. The organist and the verger and Elis deliver their thank-yous and head happily for the dock, and Petter runs after them and says for heaven’s sake he can help to carry his own belongings. Four men take care of it all in no time, and soon enough everything is assembled in the parsonage parlour.

Goodbye and thank you and thanks again. The verger and Signe head off to the cow barn and Adele and the organist and Elis walk down to the church dock, happy as children, true friends of the church. Light at heart, for this has gone well.

Chapter Two

IT IS PLEASING TO IMAGINE that the young priest and his wife turn to each other and embrace, now that they’re alone and about to begin a new life in their own parsonage. But it is hardly certain. There is much to do in a life, and unless they get a move on they won’t have time for more than a fraction of it all.

There will be little rest, for where will they find the time? To begin with, Sanna, who’s fallen asleep on the floor in her good coat, must be put to bed, but first the bedclothes must be unrolled, and the child’s mattress and blankets must be warmed against the tile stove before the crib can be made up and the child tucked in. And as long as they’re at it, they might just as well carry in the other beds and unroll the bedclothes and get that out of the way. And now that everything is so inviting, why not take a little nap themselves, since it’s only eight o’clock and they have the whole day ahead of them? It is the priest’s wife who makes this wise suggestion, considering they’ve been travelling day after day and have had far too little sleep. But the priest is wound up and says he’s too restless, there’s so much to see and do.

“We’ll get plenty of sleep in the grave,” he says brightly, but a laughing voice replies, “That’s no way for a priest to talk!”

It’s Brage Söderberg, from the Coast Guard, who in keeping with local custom has walked right in, especially since the door stood open. He has promptly demonstrated the proposition that Mona Kummel will repeat bitterly and triumphantly again and again in the years to come. “If you even think of lying down for half a second, for once in your life, for the first time in months, someone will walk in.”

He has undeniably walked in, smiling benignly, radiating a geniality and good humour that both Petter and his wife find indescribably captivating. Unembarrassed, he stands there in the midst of the crates and boxes, grinning. Also in keeping with local custom, Brage Söderberg has not introduced himself. They get his name later from the verger. He greets both of them heartily and welcomes them to the Örlands and says he has the Coast Guard cutter at the church dock and if they’re thinking of going to the Co-op for all the stuff they surely must need, then it would be no trouble to take them because he’s headed there himself to take on fuel.

“Thank you!” Petter says. “What a welcome offer, but are you sure it’s no trouble?”

“No trouble at all,” says the Coast Guardsman. “When you live on an island, you’ve got to chase your chances.”

To the Kummels’ ears this sounds wonderfully original, for they haven’t yet learned that this saying is a part of the standard local idiom. It’s a way of articulating the obvious nature of neighbourly help, a way of expressing any number of independent measures and creative solutions that do not always fit strictly within the limits of land-based law. The priest picks up the scent of an independence he has longed for all his landlocked life, and it ignites a great feeling of friendship towards the still nameless Brage Söderberg. He has come on the wings of dawn and made a laborious expedition seem weightless as a feather.

But the priest’s wife gets a jolt. She jumps up and pulls a sheet of paper from one bag and a pen from another. Standing at the sideboard, she writes frantically, stamps her feet and calls out apologetically, “Just another few seconds!” Brage Söderberg looks surprised and Petter begins to suspect that there’s maybe no need for such a rush. But his wife has no time to reflect on that possibility. The urgency that she believes must motivate the Coast Guardsman drives them off at good speed and, nearly running, she tells her husband all the things he must remember to buy, ask for, and place on order. She has certainly forgotten much, she cries, waving the list in the air, so he’ll have to use his wits, summon up all his common sense, think for himself. Now they just need to get moving, get a move on, away, and does he have the ration coupons? No, dear heaven! “Sorry, I’ll run,” and she runs back up at full speed.

“Wow!” Brage Söderberg does not know them well enough to comment, but Pastor Kummel, a little embarrassed, says his wife is afraid they’re intruding on his work day. She’ll calm down once they get organized a bit. While they wait, he inspects the Coast Guard cutter with genuine interest and the two of them discuss horsepower and seaworthiness, and the priest hopes he may ask for advice when he has the means to buy a motorboat, something he eagerly anticipates doing. But by then his wife is already back, a little short of breath, her cheeks red. She gives him not just the ration cards but also, triumphantly, his wallet, which she has found lying on the kitchen table. In among the dishes! Must he always unburden himself of his wallet as soon as he enters the house? Couldn’t he just leave it in the pocket of his coat, thin as it is? Anyway, thanks to her attentiveness and presence of mind, he will not have to shame them by asking for credit on his very first visit to the store.

But now get going! And as the boat growls away across the sound, it seems to move more slowly than Mona Kummel, who steams back up to the parsonage one more time. But when she’s out of sight up on the crown of the hill, she slows down just a bit. She is alone, although there’s a roaring in her ears from all the engine noises and all the talk and the lack of sleep these last twenty-four hours, and she allows herself to catch her breath and gaze out at the church, which stands there red-capped in a hint of spring greenery against a blazing blue sea and bright sky. Beautiful, she lets herself think. Fresh air, though a little raw. I’ll need to bundle up Sanna properly until midsummer!

She also thinks about how they now have a house and a home and a life of their own, and with joy in her heart she goes into the parsonage and starts dragging the furniture into place and unpacking their belongings. But first, in her own kitchen, she reaches out her hand and takes the last slice of bread, heavy with butter, which maybe she should have offered to the Coast Guardsman, although she didn’t think of it at the time. From now on, she’ll churn her own butter, bake her own bread, do everything one does on a small farm. She sees that the verger’s Signe has carried in a pail of milk, still warm, and if Petter can get some flour, she’ll make pancakes, and if he brings home some potatoes, all will be well. This evening he can row out and lay a net by the dock, because they bought the old priest’s boat and his perch net at auction. (Where their agents were Petter’s much too chatty and therefore inattentive and easily cheated relatives, but disappointments of that kind are only to be expected.)

Mona Kummel loves her husband. Love between young married couples is hardly uncommon, but the glow in her breast is something more. It’s hard to hold inside her chest, hard to keep it from breaking out like a welder’s flame and singeing the hair and eyebrows of everyone who comes near and encroaches on his time and on the space that is rightfully hers. Because the priest is so often away or occupied with church business, she uses industrious activity to control the flame.

Sanna, who is now awake, knows she’s better off sitting quietly in her crib than chasing out into the whirlwind now rushing through the house. Mama dashes past the open door and sees that Sanna is up. “Sleep, go to sleep!” she calls. “Mama’s here.” There’s a scraping and squeaking as she shoves the big sideboard into place in the parlour. A momentary pause while she judges the distance between the two corners of the wall, then another scrape and squeak so it’s exactly in the middle, to the centimetre. Then the table and chairs are put in place. The boards of the packing crate break open with a crack, and she begins to unpack and fill the sideboard. The sounds move farther away and Sanna cries in her loneliness. Mama is so far away in the strange house that she has to cry as loudly as she can and stand up in her bed and scream “Mama! Mama!” at the top of her lungs before Mama finally hears.

“Hush, Sanna!” she says. “There’s nothing wrong with you. Do you want to get up?” Quickly she lifts Sanna from her crib and carries her through the parlour and the dining room into the kitchen. She feels the back of her pants and is pleased that she’s managed to get out the potty and plant Sanna on it before she’s had an accident. “Good girl!” says Mama, and suddenly Sanna is sitting on her throne and looking around. She’s seeing many things for the first time, and there is much to remark upon, but she doesn’t know the words. “Beh” maybe, or “Deh”. “Deh! Deh!” she says and points. “Yes,” Mama says. “Window! We’ll get curtains when we can. Paper curtains are so tiresome, I think the kitchen will have to wait until we’ve got some fabric.”

“Deh!” Sanna says. But Mama is lying down looking for signs of mice on the kitchen cupboard floor. “You never know what to expect in an old house like this with big cracks between the floorboards,” she confides to Sanna. “So we’ll need to get a cat right away. Would Sanna like a kitty?” “Deh!” says Sanna. “We’ll get one,” Mama decides. She has her hands full, because she wants everything to be ready when Petter gets back, so he’ll just stand there open-mouthed. As she scampers back and forth on her very nimble feet, she wonders if, as usual, he’s letting himself be talked to death so he’ll never get away, and simultaneously she hopes he won’t be in too much of a hurry so she’ll have time to get everything in order.

She’s hungry, too, because no one can work for hours on end without eating something. There’s milk in the pitcher, but not even Sanna lives on milk alone. She’s crying now, tiny and thin as she is, and soon she’ll be crying inconsolably, while their supposed protector, for whom Mona has left a salaried position, is off in the village making himself popular with the locals. Mona fills a pot with water the reception committee carried in and gets a fire going under it. There’s a good draught in the kitchen stove, but then there’s a good draught on this whole blustery island, not a tree to windward of the chimney. Out here, she instructs Sanna, you can’t open the damper more than a crack or the firewood will get pulled right up the chimney!

“Wah,” says Sanna, and Mama takes out the box of cold food. She’s not so dumb and inexperienced that she’s let herself be transported to a desert island without the wherewithal to throw up a barricade against trouble and want. There’s tea, which she and Petter will enjoy at the table in the parlour this evening, and sweet rusks, one of which she moistens with a little milk that she’s warmed on the now hot stove and feeds to Sanna. “Good!” she commands, and Sanna eats and stops crying. “Papa will be home soon, and then we’ll make some real dinner. Then Mama will go out to the barn, and tomorrow will be just an ordinary day.”

Just an ordinary day is what she longs for most of all, after the years of war, after Petter’s first assignment as a substitute preacher, housed in one room and kitchen with wife and newborn baby. A routine of their own is the loveliest dream in the world for people who have had to adapt to all manner of changing circumstances, all of them out of their control. Every family in Finland is calling for a home of its own, and this one has come sailing along and landed right here at the end of the Baltic Sea. And now it’s furnished. In a couple of hours, Mona Kummel has made it habitable, and the only thing missing is the honest smell of cooking food. Mona cannot relax. With Sanna on her arm, she wanders from window to window and looks out. She has water boiling like mad in two pots so that whatever he brings home can be cooked without wasting a moment.

“It’s awful how fast the time goes!” she says to Sanna. “It’ll soon be time to do the milking and I haven’t even started on the food. Where is he?”

“Geh,” says Sanna. “Papa-papa-papa.”

“He’ll be here soon,” says Mama. And when she’s said that a number of times, in he comes, knees buckling under the load, while the Coast Guard heads back to base. Mona had thought they’d make a tour of the house, but when Petter has picked up Sanna and begun to express his admiration, she cries out that they haven’t time, they need to eat something. Signe will be there any minute, and then they have to do the milking. “Well, what were you able to get?”

Petter is pleased with himself. Praise God, what a provisioning it’s been. “If I weren’t married to you, I would have proposed to Adele Bergman,” he says. “What a woman! She sits there on her throne like some higher being that everyone looks up to. Guess what she did! She called me into her office and invited me to sit down. I realized right away that she would talk and I would speak when spoken to. She said she imagined that we needed practically everything in the way of groceries except milk, and so this morning she’d set aside some things for us. Because otherwise it would all be gone! ‘It’s astonishing,’ she said, ‘the way people grab stuff just because certain things are no longer rationed. When they needed coupons at least we could estimate the rate of consumption.’

“I sat there stunned and thought to myself that when they ran out of everything, then Adele Bergman still had a secret little reserve that she portioned out to specially deserving people. And now we’re among them. I have flour, Mona. I have sugar. I have rolled oats and semolina. I have powdered eggs. I have peas. I have herring for this evening, and then we’ll fish for ourselves. I have salt. I have crispbread until we can do our own baking. I even have a loaf of fresh bread as a welcoming gift. That wonderful woman had even arranged for a sack of potatoes from the village until we can find some closer by.”

“Give!” says Mona, and a number of potatoes are energetically scrubbed in the kitchen basin and dumped into boiling water, followed by a shower of salt. “Twenty minutes!” she shouts. “Where’s the flour? I’ll make a white sauce. I brought pepper with us. Put that jar of herring on the table! What wonderful flour! I’ll make pancakes, we’re famished. Oh it’ll be so great to have a real meal. Can you wait? Take a piece of crispbread!” She works frantically, whips the batter, makes the sauce, throws plates and knives and forks on the table, starts making pancakes in the little frying pan. “If only we had some jam,” she says, and her husband smiles to himself and pulls out a little jar of apple sauce. Apple sauce! The first commercial apple sauce since the war. My goodness!

No one who’s seen Mona Kummel dash about would ever suspect that she can actually sit still—and longer than you might think, once she’s got the food on the table and the family in place. They eat herring and good potatoes with white sauce, and they wolf down the pancakes with sugar and apple sauce. They eat a great deal for such a small family. So much that they go on sitting when they’re done, in the gentle intoxication that a hot meal can offer when it’s several hours late. Sanna wears a melting smile, with a border of sugar and apple sauce around her mouth. Mona asks Petter about the people he saw at the store, what they looked like, what they said, and he tells her how polite and friendly they all were. Everyone shook his hand and welcomed him and spoke to him so freely and easily that it was a joy. “People are easy to talk to here,” he says. “What good people! And what a day we’ve had! My head is spinning. Hard to believe that it’s just one day since we stood on the pier in Åbo wondering if the boat would ever get under way.”

He glances in towards the parlour and on towards the bedroom that lies beyond, for now he wants to see what miracles his wife has performed. “Well why not? Come on, although I’m expecting Signe any minute and I would have liked to clear the table before she got here. But come.”

Papa picks up Sanna and they go on their tour of inspection— everything in its place, everything put to rights. “How did you find the time? How did you manage? My dear, you shouldn’t have moved the sideboard and the table by yourself! Here I’m away just a few short hours and when I come back—order from chaos.”

“Well, well,” his wife says. “The book boxes still aren’t unpacked, because you’ll have to use the boards to build a bookcase. And your suitcase and office things, I’ve just put them in your study. You can unpack them yourself while I’m milking the cows. Where is Signe? It’s almost six o’clock.”

She looks out the window, towards the water and towards the land, and the priest follows her gaze and sees how pretty it all is, naked granite and a light green cloud like smoke between the hills this early May. Evening sun, and the church roof glowing with a subtly different shade of red than it had this morning. In the churchyard, black and white crosses, an entire congregation.

“Do you think she doesn’t dare come in?” Mona wonders.

“Of course not,” Petter says. “We’ve already met them, and they know we don’t bite.”

“Well, yes,” Mona says, “but we should have said a time. There are all sorts of things I should be doing, and here I am just going from window to window.” But as she goes, she clears the dishes from the table and pours wonderfully hot water into the dish tub. “So I guess I’ll just get started,” she says. “Maybe it’s a way of getting her to come, as soon as I’m up to my elbows in the dishes.”

“I’ll fetch some more water,” he says. “And if she really doesn’t dare come in, I’ll see her. The well is down there by the garden somewhere, if I remember rightly.” He goes and comes back without seeing any sign of Signe, but the water is soft and sweet with a lot of meltwater, golden brown the way well water often is in the spring.

Mona finishes the dishes and puts Sanna on the potty for another session, and still Signe doesn’t come. “If they weren’t so friendly, I’d be really annoyed,” she says. “Do you think she misunderstood me? Do you think I should go to the barn by myself? But of course then she’ll be hurt that I didn’t wait for her. What a nuisance! I so wish we could be on our own.”

Mona Kummel is dying to go out to the cow barn. In the beginning, the congregation is going to think her enthusiasm for the two cows and three ewes is play-acting, to show that she’s trying to share their everyday lives in every way, but in fact there is no one on the Örlands with a more fanatical partiality for livestock than the pastor’s wife. As a child on her family’s farm, she liked the creatures in the barn and the stable rather more than the ones in the house, and even now that she’s got her beloved husband and, through him, a family of her own, she still loves the animals that first made her human. But this is not a sentimental attachment or romantic nonsense, because Mona Kummel sends animals to slaughter, punishes those that misbehave, and never says that she loves cows. She just keeps them with a passion. Rational and realistic as she is, she loves animals for their contribution to self-sufficiency and because these cows guarantee her family a life of its own.

She can’t rush out to the cow barn now, because she’s agreed to go with the verger’s Signe, but how is it possible that the verger’s Signe doesn’t show up at the hour when all of Finland, yes, all of Scandinavia, milks its cows?

“Maybe they milk their cows later here, since they don’t deliver their milk to a creamery?” says her husband, who sometimes shows evidence of a practical intelligence that amazes his wife. She admits that he may be right, and says it might be just as well to put Sanna to bed now. On the other hand, she needs to be washed first. There’s warm water on the stove, which it would be a shame not to use, so maybe after all … “If Signe comes you’ll have to take over.”

There is time to wash Sanna and tuck her in and give her a good-night blessing before Signe arrives. And not just Signe but the verger with her. They come in quite calmly, with no apology for being late, which in their own eyes they are not. The verger asks how the day has gone. He supposes that they’re tired and says that he and Signe can go to the barn by themselves so they can rest a bit.

“Out of the question!” Mona says. She is ablaze with anticipation. “It will be great fun to meet our cows. I saw that the pails had been washed—thank you so much, Signe—so let’s just grab them and go!”

It’s possible that the verger and Signe had in mind a somewhat longer prelude to the milking, but they adapt smoothly and follow her out into the passage where she makes an energetic racket with the milk pails and the strainer and grabs a package of cotton filters. “There’s soap in the cow barn?” she says, and Signe nods. The pastor explains that he’d be happy to come along but that someone has to stay inside with Sanna this first evening in case she wakes up and is frightened in her new surroundings.

Mona leads the procession to the cow barn. She’s wearing a milking smock from the old days, and she’s slipped into a pair of old, worn shoes in the passage, but on the inside she’s dressed for a ball. She opens the door and steps straight into the cow barn, no milk house of the kind she’s used to. Two stalls for the cows, an empty calf’s crib, and against the far wall a sheep fold with three ewes and a partition full of butting heads and wobbly legs that add up to a total of five lambs.

The cows turn their heads and moo. Signe introduces them. The bigger, older, dark red cow is Apple, and the smaller one with the lighter coat and gentler disposition is Goody. Both are pregnant and will calve in June.

Too late in the year! Mona thinks. And Signe says that the covering kept getting postponed. The old priest and his wife knew they were leaving and neglected the cows a bit. Now they’re going dry, but they’re still giving a litre or so every morning and evening, and of course even that much milk is always welcome.

Mona claps their flanks with a firm, practised hand and examines their udders, which are relatively small and firm, Goody’s in particular. They sniff at her cautiously and moo again to remind everyone of food. And yes, the haymow is attached, with a door between. There’s almost no hay left, but on the other hand the cows can soon be put out to pasture. The villagers who’ve run out have already done so.

“And so have we,” the verger adds. “Keeping them in hay over the winter is really a struggle. There’s not a lot growing right now, but they eat leaf buds and reed sprouts along the shore.”

Mona scratches around with the pitchfork and pulls together a clump of hay that she forks up in front of Apple, then Goody gets her own dusty, meagre share. In the whole cow barn not a trace of fodder grain. Apple and Goody both have tight round bellies around their pregnancies, but their hipbones stick out like knobs, and a woman from the hay barns of Nyland can see that they’re too thin.

“Spring is coming not a minute too soon!” she says. To herself, she’s thinking that the former priest took miserable care of his animals, but she doesn’t want to criticize. She searches around with the pitchfork and finds some dried leafy twigs for the sheep. Then she finds the dung fork and starts mucking out, in spite of the verger’s offer to do it for her. It’s easily done. These bony cattle have produced small, firm pancakes that stay in one piece, and this primitive cow barn actually has a drain that carries out the urine through a hole in the stone foundation. The verger shows her that the well in the corner is full of meltwater now, in spring, and he gets in ahead of her and pulls up a couple pails of water that he empties into their troughs.

The cows mumble peacefully and sweep up the dry hay while Mona and Signe wash their udders and sit down to milk. The next day, the verger and Signe are able to tell everyone that the priest’s wife milks better than anyone they’ve ever seen and that she has a way with animals that takes your breath away. Apple and Goody turn around to look and then turn around and look again, because in a cow’s life this is quite sensational. They don’t release a lot of milk, but still enough to produce a good stream when Mona Kummel sets to work.

“Good teats, firm udders,” she declares. “All they really need is a little fat on their bones. We have a lot to look into—the cow pastures and the hayfields.”

To judge by conditions in the haymow, there is every reason to fear that they haven’t enough meadowland, but the verger, who takes an interest in such things, starts in at once on a long report about the church’s lands. “You’ll always have hay, I think. And the church crofters will help with the haymaking, they owe you that for the land they use.”

“You can’t mean that the church still has crofters, not these days,” she says, and the verger agrees that she’s right. Legally, they own their land, but they need a little more pasture and they work off the rental.

“I see,” she says, seeing complications down the road. She is quick enough to understand that their neighbours compete hard for grass. She wonders how things stand with the parsonage pastureland, and the verger replies solemnly that there is always plenty of pasture for the parsonage cows on Church Isle. But the erstwhile crofters have a harder time of it. He shouldn’t tell her, but he will anyway, that they have sometimes let their fences get into such a state of disrepair that their cows get through and stuff themselves with the pastor’s grass.

“Oh, my,” she says. Complications indeed, for she’s has already made up her mind to secure ample pasturage for Apple and Goody. She pours the milk in the strainer and claps the cows one more time so they’ll understand that now she’s in charge. In their eyes, the verger’s Signe vanishes in the mist. Now other powers rule.

Mona asks Signe about their cows, and yes, they have two. There’s Gamlan and Gamlan’s heifer that’s going to calve for the first time this spring. “The hay harvest will decide if we keep her over the winter or send her to slaughter this autumn,” the verger explains, sounding pleased, and she knows that no matter what happens, the heifer and the heifer’s calf and the summer’s milk will be not insignificant assets.

“I’m glad we’ve got to know you,” Mona says sincerely. “There’s so much we need to ask you about. The sheep, for example. What shall we do with them? We can’t put them to pasture with the cows, there isn’t any fence that will keep them in.”

The verger explains that the priest and his wife are very fortunate, because the two large islets beyond Church Isle are sheep islets for the parsonage. If they shift their sheep from one to the other every few weeks, they’ll have pasture all summer, so that’s no problem at all.

“If you look in the haymow, you’ll see we should move them out there tomorrow!” she says. “Maybe we can borrow a boat in the village?”

“Ours, for instance!” the verger suggests, for he’s not insensitive to the fact that she’s clever and pretty and can put in a good word for him with her husband.

“Thanks!” she says. “You can decide the day and time with Petter. I hope you’ll come in and have some tea with us now that we’re done in the cow barn.”

Friends already, they walk back to the parsonage. The verger shows her how the ropes work in the well so that she can lower the pails and cool the milk overnight. Then she’ll separate it in the morning and get the cream. Petter’s father bought the separator at auction and it now stands in the passage. Mona washes the milk pitchers vigorously, blows life into the fire in the stove, heats water in a saucepan, and sets out some food—rusks and fresh bread with apple sauce!

Nothing comes of Petter’s plan to set out nets, because the verger and Signe sit and talk and are in no hurry to leave. But he does raise the subject of fishing, and then the verger slaps his forehead. “Oh good heavens! I brought a mess of perch with me, a meal for tomorrow, and I left it on the steps. Let’s hope no animal’s got into it!”

“You were reading my thoughts!” Petter says. “Thank you so much! But from tomorrow on, we’ll manage on our own. All this friendly help will spoil us completely. What a day we’ve had!”

He can’t help it, he can’t suppress a colossal yawn, and then his wife yawns too, like a cat. And then the priest has to yawn again, so hugely that all the movable parts of his cranium creak audibly. The verger and Signe look politely away and chat for a few minutes more, but then they get up and Signe says they have to get home to milk their own cow. It’s ten o’clock, and Mona leaps up. “No, you don’t mean your cow has gone unmilked because you came to help us! That’s terrible!”

“Not at all,” Signe reassures her. “She gives so little milk now that it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t milk her till morning!”

But Mona won’t let it go. She thinks it’s so dreadful that Signe’s cow has had to suffer that Signe’s own conscience begins to bother her. And when they’re finally gone, the pastor and his wife are so tired they’re cross-eyed. They mumble and slur their words and can hardly make their way to the outhouse or find their faces when they try to wash up before finally collapsing into bed.

“I’m so grateful you made the beds,” Petter says. “We couldn’t have managed it now. I don’t think I’ve ever been so utterly done in. Or so happy.”

Like a clubbed burbot—and like a second clubbed burbot— the pastor and his wife spend their first night in the parsonage. The last thing each remembers is that the other has fallen asleep.

Chapter Three

SHE CAME TO FINLAND on foot across the ice, through the forests, tied to the underside of a freight car, in a submarine that surfaced for one short moment by the outermost skerries where a smuggler’s speedboat waited. She jumped into the Carelian forests by parachute. She changed clothes with a Finnish military attaché and rode to Finland first class on his diplomatic passport. Once over the border, cars with dimmed headlamps waited on secret forest tracks. Signals were flashed. Finally—Papa! General Gyllen, without whom there would have been no hope.

Well and good. The more versions the better. How it actually happened, no one will ever be told. Except for Papa, the names of the people intentionally or unintentionally involved will never be revealed. The fact itself is momentous enough—in 1939, Irina Gyllen was the only known case of a former Finnish citizen managing to flee to Finland from the Soviet Union.

If any other human being is ever going to do it again, it is of the utmost importance that no one ever finds out how it all took place.

Irina Gyllen sleeps alone. If she has to spend a night among other people on a boat, she doesn’t sleep. When she goes to bed, she takes a pill. Which makes her hard to wake up when she has to deliver a baby. The Örlanders know this, it is one of her peculiarities, along with the fact that her medical licence is Russian, so she cannot practise in Finland until she has taken the necessary Finnish examinations. In the Soviet Union, she was a gynaecologist. In Finland, she took a course in midwifery and has now taken this job on the Örland Islands while she studies for her Finnish medical certification.

The Örlands are safe. Mama and Papa have spent their vacations there and know that the locals have boats that can get to Sweden in any weather. They also know that no stranger can slink in unseen. Persons that Irina Gyllen has reason to fear never come ashore without the islanders reporting on their every movement. For much of the year no one comes at all.

It is quiet. You can hear your own heart, your breathing, your digestion. All in good condition though she’s already into her second life. She lost a lot on the other side, she hardly looks like a woman any more. Tall and angular without any visible softness. A sharply sculptured face, feet that have walked and walked, hands that have worked and worked.

Her body has smoothed over the fact that she has given birth, but people on the Örlands know that Irina Gyllen has left a child behind. A son.

When she wakes up, she takes a pill. Her hand is then steady, her mind adequately dulled, her memory manageable. It is then she works, writes, and keeps her records. She lives in the Hindrikses’ little cottage while the community builds a Health Care Centre with the help of a Swedish donation. The people are good—friendly and considerate—but they make no attempt to treat her as one of them. They call her doctor, although she assures them she is not one, and they do not gossip about her in the village. It is only much later that she realizes the reason they don’t is that their silence implies that they know things which can’t be told.

The Hindrikses are good people—happy, talkative, lively. Being always greeted with friendly smiles, always getting an analysis of the weather before she goes out, being praised for having the sense to dress warmly, eating her meals with the family and not forgetting to thank them for the food—all of it helps to keep other things at a distance. There is nothing to see on the surface. Or is her closed expression striking evidence of unnatural self-control?

Of what, exactly? Of the terrible desire to live that forces people to sacrifice everything. As a doctor, you have no illusions. Early on, you notice the hope in dying patients, see how they take note of the slightest sign of improvement, refuse to admit that it’s only a matter of days. The will to live is stronger than any pain or affliction, even medical students make that sober observation. It adjusts to any reality if it means that life can be augmented by one small measure. Just a few more moments, during which salvation may appear.

In theory, Irina Gyllen had understood the situation precisely. In practice, the feeling ambushed her and knocked her senseless. All she could think about was saving her own life. They took her husband first. For the boy’s sake, she did what they had agreed on. Repudiated him, filed for divorce. Continued to work, because the regime always needs doctors, doctors are not something they could afford to discard. Except he was a doctor too. Yes, but surrounded by informers and jealous men. As if she wasn’t. Born in Russia, father a Finnish general.

Working isn’t enough. Even the best disappear. There is no way out except Finland. Even that exit is closed because she has given up her citizenship. But Papa has connections, contacts, and she can still be in contact with Papa through the Finnish legation. Which in recent years she has not dared to visit. But there are employees whom, with her heart in her throat, she can run into on the street.

Papa Gyllen is also a former officer in the Imperial Russian Army. The reason she will be arrested, that she should already have been taken, even before her husband. Will he be pressed to inform on her? Just a matter of time. No.

You live out your final days, you prolong them, if you can hold out, one more day, a week, then something may save you. You think only about saving yourself, everyone else can be sacrificed. It’s why people become informers. The only reason Irina Gyllen doesn’t become an informer is that she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself.

In order to save yourself, you can also abandon a child. You don’t even take him to your husband’s parents and entrust him to their care. You just run over to the neighbours, whom you hardly know, and ask if he might stay with them for an hour while you run to the hospital. In his pocket he has a slip of paper, fastened with a safety pin, with the address of his paternal grandparents. It’s like pushing him out onto the Nile in a basket of reeds. Maybe he’ll be sent to his grandparents, themselves deeply compromised, perhaps about to be arrested. Maybe he’ll be put in an orphanage where his identity will be erased. Maybe they can be reunited quite soon. Through the Red Cross, now that the war is over.

He was eight, understood a great deal. Had stopped asking about Papa, knew that was best. Don’t think about what he’s going through now. Above all, don’t think about what he’s thinking and feeling. Think instead about how adaptable children are, how they manage to adjust to every new situation. Remember how they’re able to find pleasure even in small irrelevant things. Don’t forget for a moment that they can so easily grow attached to new people, that they forget. Don’t forget that they forget.

Don’t think about the fact that seven years have passed, half his life. That he is now a difficult teenager, nearly an adult. All further contact impossible, grandparents unreachable, evacuated during the war, gone. Broken diplomatic relations during the war made all efforts impossible. But now that there’s peace, there’s hope. The Red Cross, new personnel at the legation, sooner than you might think.

Yes. But Papa Gyllen is old, retired, so too are his contacts. The new people look at them with suspicion. You have to hurry slowly, arm yourself with patience. If the boy made it through the war, he’ll make it now, in peacetime. Become an independent person. Do what he likes. May not want to have anything to do with her. Entirely understandable. But there must be some way to find out where he is.

But what if he is not? A helpless child dying alone in an epidemic hospital, frozen, starving, not even thinking “Mama”. Then she takes a pill. It’s quiet on the island, everyone is friendly, the women giving birth are brave and capable, she likes her work. It was a piece of luck that someone told her about this job. Nice that Mama and Papa, who’ve grown so old during the war, like it so much out here and rent a place every summer. Everything has worked out much better than she might have feared.

She saved her own skin. An odd expression. It makes her think of skin and bones, which is all she is—tall and gaunt and stiff. Her skin and her bones are the crutches that keep her going, and it’s going well, it’s all going very well. The main thing is that you have something to keep you busy. Of course she gets called out as a doctor sometimes, though she’s always careful to point out that she has no medical licence and no right to treat patients or make decisions that should only be taken by a licensed physician. Yes, yes, they say, we know, but doctor, if you would just please come, it’s impossible to get to the hospital in Åbo. Well, all right, she supposes she can come and have a look, maybe give some advice, a bit of help, as long as it’s understood that it’s unofficial, the way old women through the ages have helped those who sought them out.

That’s an argument they understand. Yes! That’s the way it’s always been. The previous midwife, who’d never been to medical school, was a thousand times better than the nearest doctor! Suddenly she’s swamped with effusive stories about the previous midwife’s miraculous cures. And she herself? She does indeed answer their calls, and soon the stories about her own deeds begin to make the rounds. They are seldom difficult things—cuts and wounds that need stitches, broken bones that need to be set and splinted, simple remedies for pneumonia and catarrh, medicines for pain. She sends thrombosis to the mainland, and when she finds cancer, she persuades them to take the boat to Åbo. They have an operation, come home and eventually die. Good practical experience for Irina Gyllen, who plans to be a general practitioner. She gets daily practise in diagnostics, and the stories they tell in the villages confirm that she is always right.

She treats a relatively rugged population, sheltered from epidemics by the islands’ winter isolation, surprisingly well-nourished during the war years thanks to their healthy diet of Baltic herring, their mental state robust. When she sometimes commends them for eating sensibly and not coddling themselves, they are as pleased as punch.

But they cannot understand why she has such a strong Russian accent and often has trouble finding the right Swedish words, although General Gyllen speaks fluent Finland Swedish and even her Russian-born mother manages well enough. Why does Russian cling to her speech although she wants to forget it? Why can’t she find her way back to the language that was her father’s native tongue? Why does she have such a frightful accent, even though she spoke Swedish as a child? Why do the Russian words come more quickly than the Swedish ones even though she lives in a completely Swedish environment? As soon as she opens her mouth, Russian jumps to her lips and renders her monosyllabic and abrupt.

Of course people speculate. For example, that maybe she’s not Irina Gyllen at all but a completely different Russian, a famous spy smuggled into the country perhaps, or a defector, a female scientist that Russian agents are looking for, a person whose head is full of Russian state secrets! Someone who’s taken Irina Gyllen’s identity, with General Gyllen and his wife standing surety. Because does she really resemble them? No, not a bit. Papa Gyllen is a head shorter and stout, Mother Gyllen is taller and thinner but not like her in any other way. There is definitely something fishy, because “Irina Gyllen” speaks Swedish like a Russian.

Undeniably. But whoever she is, she has a good name on the islands, and whoever she is, the Bolsheviks have been outsmarted and taken it in the chops. Which is excellent and makes people proud and protective. Not that she can’t take care of herself, if it comes to that.

Yes, she can and does take care of herself, and she works hard at being normal, although it doesn’t come naturally. Out here you’re supposed to be full of fun and jokes, and that’s the hardest part for her. The loss of her sense of humour is perhaps the most striking evidence of everything she has left behind. Large parts of her are missing as she moves among the people and tries to generate interest in the local chatter, at the moment all about the newly arrived pastor and his wife. Eyewitnesses have seen him at the Co-op and shaken hands, and the Coast Guard has seen her on Church Isle—a woman with get-up-and-go. They also mention that there is a one-year-old among the household goods and give her a meaningful look, warning her in good time that she may have another expectant mother to attend to. Now every last one of them will be going to church on Sunday to hear him and have a look at her. There will be several boats going from the village, and Doctor Gyllen is heartily welcome to ride along!

A difficult point, this. She who’s been saved from the Godless Soviet Union is supposed to throw herself into the arms of the church. Of course she’s thankful to be in a country with freedom of religion. And if she really was a stranger who’d taken on Irina Gyllen’s identity, she would be a devout member of the congregation. But Irina Gyllen doesn’t believe in God. On the contrary, she sees what has happened to Russia as proof that a benign Divine power does not exist. Truth to tell, the very young Irina Gyllen was a free-thinker even before the revolution, and what has happened since has not given her any reason to reconsider her views.

Religion is an opium of the people. The Örlanders go to church. Irina Gyllen takes a pill. Opium is what all of us need. So in essence, perhaps, she’s a friend of the church. Here, where she lives very visibly among the people, she will stand out less if she occasionally goes to church on the big holidays or, like now, when the new priest is going to be closely examined right down to his buttonholes. She’s going to have a lot to do with him, for the pastor is usually the chairman of the Public Health Association. And the priest’s little daughter will be coming to have her regular check-ups with her mother. So why not, yes of course, she’ll go. There will be a lot of people, and she likes that better than when the pews are nearly empty and everyone looks around at her to see if she sings along and reads the general confession and how she reacts to passages that they imagine will be painful to her.

“Yes, thank you,” she says. “I think if you have room in the boat, I’ll come.”

Her Russian accent thickens whenever she’s conflicted. That doesn’t escape them, but they look at her sunnily and say there’s always room for the doctor, and she’s heartily welcome to ride along.

Chapter Four

IF THE PRIEST WERE NOT in such a howling rush, he’d be seriously nervous about his first sermon on the Örlands. He remembers it intermittently and tells himself he must take some time with it. Early in the morning. Late at night. Maybe a little while after lunch. This first time, he needs to be well prepared. Calm. Everything on paper in case he loses his way.

But how can a person get up early when he’s gone to bed so awfully late? And how can he retreat to his study after lunch when he is responsible for so many things that have to be mended and assembled and put away, and then when an unexpected visitor comes wandering up from the church dock? That means talk, and it’s nice to have such a talkative congregation. He wouldn’t dream of sending away anyone who needed to speak to him.

Two more days, then one. Then he begins, in a state of desperation, early in the morning. Slumps in his armchair like a dead fish and tells himself that if he digests the material thoroughly now, then his brain will work on it during the day and he’ll be able to shape it into a passable text in a few hours this evening. All day he leaps anxiously from one task to another so he will also have time to go through the procedures in church. The verger and the organist describe the traditions of the congregation and the signals to be used when necessary between the organist in the loft and the priest before the altar. The verger explains the ins and outs of bell ringing in great detail and when he mentions the priest bell, the pastor pricks up his ears.

“The priest bell?” he asks. “What’s that?”

The verger tells him that they observe the ancient custom of ringing the small bell when the priest arrives at the church. “Not before a quarter to and not later than ten to. I stand in the belfry and keep watch, and when I see you leave the parsonage, I start to ring the bell, and I keep ringing it until you’re through the church door. Then I climb down and come to help you get robed.”

Both the verger and the organist look at him uneasily and the organist adds, “It’s the way we’ve always done it.”

He sees that they’re afraid that because he’s young, he’ll think this custom is old-fashioned and set himself against it, but he smiles and says, “Of course. If that’s the way you do it, then that’s what we’ll do.”

They look relieved, and when they rehearse the key points in the Mass with the organist at the organ, the pumper working invisibly at the bellows, the verger in his pew, and the priest at the altar, a kind of exhilaration and good fellowship spreads through the building. For when the organist gives him his note and the pastor frees his voice and sings, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen,” the organist and the verger can hear that this priest can truly sing the Mass. The organist’s playing acquires life and reverence, and the Mass goes brilliantly while the verger does his work smartly, turning the hymn numbers for the congregation, opening the altar rail for the priest, and following him to the sacristy when he will change from his robes into his cassock during the pre-sermon hymn.

Petter recalls that this congregation is often described as a singing congregation, and the thought makes him happy. He has already heard that the last priest’s greatest failing was that he couldn’t sing the Mass. There will be no problem in that area for Pastor Petter Kummel, who sings more readily than he preaches. The final liturgy goes swimmingly, and he feels a little chill when he remembers that when he does all this for real, tomorrow, he will already have delivered his sermon. He can only hope that he won’t be dying of shame.

“The old priest couldn’t sing, the new priest can’t preach,” is what they’ll say. And what with one thing and another, even though Mona makes an early supper and gets Sanna to bed and tries to steer him to his study, it is dreadfully late when he sits down to work.

And sits and sits, deep in self-contempt, thinking how much he needs someone to guide him through the key points here too, the verger and the organist, so that there will be a sermon. What is the matter with him? Why is he pleasant, collected, and wise when he has other people around him, and why does he feel only emptiness and panic when he sits down by himself to concentrate on writing a sermon?

And sits, in a kind of panic-stricken hubris, his need to be dazzling, brilliant, unforgettable an impediment to his preaching. As if the purpose was to show off Petter Kummel rather than the Word. Which it is his duty to administer and expound.

The Word, the Word, Pastor Kummel reminds himself over and over as the minutes pass. He looks at the texts yet again but has so little time that he can’t manage to read them carefully. There’s nothing wrong with the lessons. It’s the lead-in that’s lacking. And the payoff, the elegant conclusion. And the brilliant discourse in the middle.

Would he have become a priest had he known how nerve-racking it was to preach? Not a chance. When he wrote his practise sermons at the university, he thought they would flow automatically once he was free from all the supervisory eyes and acrid comments. Once he could “speak with his own voice”. So he’d believed. Word for word.

So now here’s your chance, Pastor Kummel. Your own voice. But there is silence. He can picture himself climbing up into the pulpit, praying a little prayer and looking out over the congregation, people who are five times as critical as the theology faculty, people who have spent so much time in church that they know at once that he’s on thin ice. He opens his mouth and hopes that something will come out, but nothing does. Then he reads the day’s lesson, and when he’s done he closes his mouth. He opens it again, but nothing comes out. Then he reads the notices and gives a signal to the organist for the collection hymn. It starts up a little sloppily. There is a great agitation in the church. His first sermon—silence.

Mona looks in. “How’s it going?”

“It’s not.”

“You’re too tired. We have to start going to bed in the evenings. We’re running ourselves ragged.”

“It’s not just that I’m tired. I can’t do it. I’ve got no talent for it. I’ll have to resign the post.”

“When we just got here? Don’t talk nonsense! Use your sermon from last autumn. Nobody here has heard it.”

“That’s real bankruptcy, a priest recycling his sermons.”

“It will give you an idea. It’s here in this box somewhere. Read through it calmly. Then go to bed, and during the night it will all come together. Tomorrow morning you’ll know what you’re going to say.”

“What would I do without you?”

“Don’t be silly. Thank heaven you keep your papers in order. Here it is.”

“Thanks, I’ll look at it. Go to bed now. I’ll be in soon.”

He hopes she’ll fall asleep quickly, tired as she is. She’s been cleaning furiously, and baking. The whole house smells good. They’re going to have the parish council and the vestry for coffee after High Mass. How is he going to be able to look these intelligent people in the eye after his fiasco? His fiasco—there he goes again, thinking only of himself and the impression he’ll make. Instead of what he was put here to proclaim: the Word of God.

It’s not about his own brilliance. It’s about conveying the Word, which is without blemish, the support and bulwark of every second-rate preacher. But the introduction, the personal touch that puts the text in a new light? Something to make them listen? Something from their own world, which they understand and take an interest in?

In this specific instance, it’s the new pastor they’re interested in, however much he tries to convince himself that his own person is of no importance. Is it then wrong, is it simply ingratiating to say things they want to hear, to talk about his first impressions of the parish?

This thought fills him with strong, clear pictures and he knows what he will say. And he is calm, not deceptively calm, but calm enough to sleep. He looks at last year’s sermon with new eyes, sees that he can use bits of it after his new introduction. It’s going to work.

Almost unconscious, he staggers into bed. Mona is already asleep, clearly not as nervous as he. It is soothing that she seems to think he’ll manage. It’s far too late for him to get up early, but he’ll still have time to think through the text and get it under control.

Or so he thinks, the simpleton. Because in the morning, Papa has to mind Sanna while Mama does the milking, and Sanna is not the kind of person you can just dump in a crib and close the door. On top of which, Sanna is irresistible when she has Papa to herself. She smiles and chirps and puts her cheek against his, and he thinks that he must be allowed to spend a few minutes every day with his daughter. What does it say about his Christianity if he won’t let his own child come to him?

Then Mona comes back in a rush, changes clothes and bangs about setting the table. No miracle occurs in his study. He gathers up his prayer book, the parish announcements, his old sermon, his new ideas jotted down as notes. He’ll have time to glance through them before it’s time to go, he thinks, but then there’s a commotion in the passage where someone has wrenched open the swollen door. Because the church handles all vital statistics and the parish record-keeping, people bring their administrative business to him right before the Sunday service, since Church Isle is a bit out of the way and now here they are anyway.

Perfectly understandable, and once you’re aware of it, you can make allowances, but this first time it’s unexpected. He hurries to his study door and meets the man with a smile, because he can hear that Mona is not very welcoming. “Come right in!” he says warmly, although she’s in the act of saying this isn’t a good time. And when the matter has been dealt with—and the good cheer and the high hopes—it appears that the clock has taken a jump and it’s time to put on his cassock and collar. Mona helps him, proudly. The cassock was tailored at considerable cost and fits him very well! He’s told her about the priest bell, and she keeps a close eye on the clock so she can send him off at a quarter to. She’ll follow along with Sanna a bit later. Of course she wants to be there for his first High Mass and to see the congregation. She’s more nervous than he knows. It’s important that he should see her calm and without misgivings. If only he could organize his time so he was better prepared!

The church bells have already rung at ten-thirty, a lovely racket in the clear air. At a quarter to eleven, they see the verger climb into the bell tower again, and so he takes his Bible, his prayer book, papers, and notes and gets ready to go. Faint-heartedly, he prays a silent prayer that all will go well, a schoolboy’s timorous prayer for help in a fix for which he can blame no one but himself. Sanna whines and wants to go with him, and Mama is angry. “Hush, Sanna! You can’t come to church at all if you can’t be quiet!”

It feels like when the first Christians were driven out into the arena, except they were heartened by confidence and faith. He is fearful and timid, a poor servant of Our Lord. Unworthy of his calling, he opens the door and walks out onto the steps.

Such a lot of people already gathered in the churchyard! He stands for a moment on the steps and sees a steady stream of people walking up from the boats past the parsonage. When they see him on the steps, they leave a space for him, and he moves out into it. The priest bell starts to ring.

Only the small bell, as the verger said, and it tolls more sparely than the rich sound of the two bells swinging together. As the pastor walks and the bell rings, he becomes another person. He lays aside Sanna’s screaming and Mona’s scolding. Mona’s nervous silence, her hopes that it will all go well. He sets aside his ego, his fear of inadequacy, of making a fool of himself, of being criticized and mocked. He is no longer his own imperfect self, he is the congregation’s shepherd, who unravels mysteries for them and provides them with the means of grace. He walks towards the church the way priests on this island have been doing since the Reformation, maybe even in the days of the cloister.

He reaches the gate and walks up the gravel path, and although there is a great crowd of people, he is always surrounded by open space. As long as the bell rings, no one speaks to him, and he stops to speak to no one, smiles just slightly, and bows his head. The church door is open, and as he steps across the threshold, the bell tolls for the last time.

The church seems larger now that it begins to fill with people, the ceiling higher, the choir loft farther away. The air inside is so thick that he feels he must push his way through. The verger has left the door to the sacristy ajar. The priest puts his books down on the table and sees that his robes are ready—a white alb, a purple chasuble with a cross embroidered in gold. The verger hurries in followed by the organist with fresh sea air in his clothes. They greet him and speak to him differently than on Saturday. They look at his collar rather than make eye contact. Today they treat him like a priest.

“It’s going to be full today,” the organist says and rubs his hands, perhaps with delight, but maybe just because they’re cold and he has to play the organ. In low voices, they exchange words about the different parts of the service— that they’ll have to start the collection hymn over from the beginning if the verger can’t finish in time, and that they’ll have to be prepared for at least two settings of the Communion table. The priest asks the Lord to bless their devotions, and the organist goes to his loft, very nervous, as the priest notes to his surprise. He is so young that he thinks that he alone is tormented and uncertain, whereas all the others must surely be calm, confident in themselves and in their duties.

The verger really is calm, always ready to offer support and to explain how things are done in this parish. The priest puts the wide alb on over his head and the chasuble on top. Silently, the verger hands him a comb so he can smooth his hair. They look at the clock and the verger peeks out—full. And more coming up the hill. He notes that the ones who live closest to the church have the most trouble arriving on time.

It’s almost time, and the verger goes off to ring the congregation to the service. Now both bells are working together beautifully, and the sound is powerful and seductively bright. He must remember to tell the verger he rings the bells well. And when the bells have been tolling for several minutes, the organ starts to play. He can hear the bellows pumping all the way into the sacristy, the hissing and wheezing before the machinery has warmed up and the organist has laid his hands on the keyboard. He begins with arabesques on the processional theme, variations from the hymnal, soothing, enveloping, while the coughing and rustling continue down in the church. But when the verger starts to sing “Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven”, everyone joins in.

Never has the priest heard such song. Suddenly he understands why churches have vaulted ceilings—to make room for the singing that lives in a congregation’s breast. They sing in full voice, with good support from well-trained diaphragms, they sing from expanded chests and open windpipes. They sing powerfully, and they sing slowly, and there is a wonderful tension between the men’s sonorous rumble and the women’s voices, so dangerously high they fling defiance in the face of death.

The priest can hardly stand still, but the hymn has only three verses so he can go in at once. He tries not to bounce but to walk with dignity, in through the altar rail, catching sight of Mona and Sanna in the first row—Sanna’s face lighting up, both arms in the air, her mouth forming the word Papa!—but he can’t hear a thing for the singing. He places the chalice on the altar and genuflects. Tries to pray, but the singing fills his world. And when you sing, you become a different person, more certain, happier. They finish reluctantly, as if they wanted a fourth and a fifth and a sixth verse, and he turns around. Prayer book in hand, he sees the organist’s attentive back, hears the note the organ gives him. Responds, a resonant trombone, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

It’s clear that the congregation likes his voice. They respond with a lingering and wholehearted “Amen”.

The liturgy is the product of difficult schisms and agonizing committee meetings, but now it lies there polished and shiny like a gift from God. It has been formulated for him so that a priest need never fall short and be faced with his own imperfections as he works to establish a direct relationship between the parishioners and the Divine. He leads them through the service, singing, reading, and they answer him with song. He is not vain, merely relieved to see that he has won their affection because he can sing. Thank you, God! He sounds happy, certain that he’s made contact when he reads the General Confession with its “I call unto Thee from the depths, O Lord” and then the Absolution, from his heart. He sings “Lord have mercy upon us” with the congregation, which roars and drags and forces him to take it slower despite the organist’s attempt at compromise up in the loft. And then pure joy when they stand and sing Laudamus: “We praise Thee, we beseech Thee, we laud and honour Thee”, a difficult medieval melody that they sing with the utmost confidence. Their voices carry through even the extreme registers, so grandly that he, singing along at the altar, feels chills run down his spine. He adapts to their singing and drags out the ornamentations the way he realizes they’ve been dragged out since the days of the early church.

He no longer holds the service in his hand, the service has instead gripped him and has him firmly in its grasp. The congregation creates the service, and he feels himself in its keeping, without responsibility, like a child, and then in a flash he remembers his sermon. It will simply have to do, because now he is reading the Epistle, and, after the next hymn comes the Creed. Hardly a murmur is heard from the congregation, and he realizes that when they sing they are completely involved, but that when they speak they hold something back. Like their shepherd, alas. He turns towards the altar and the organist begins the sermon hymn. It’s long—“O that I Had a Thousand Voices”—and he is glad for the respite as he walks to the sacristy, followed by the verger, who will help him remove his chasuble and surplice and put on his cassock. Arms into the sleeves and buttons buttoned while they sing inside. The Bible open to the text, sermon underneath, announcements at the bottom. All set, and he’s ready to go, but the verger shakes his head. One more verse, and only then does he send him out.

A straight line from the sacristy to the pulpit. No sidelong glance at Mona’s anxious, encouraging face, straight up the little staircase. Bows his head in prayer, which is nothing but black terror. Help me! While the congregation sings a convincing “Should earth and heaven cease to be, Yet shall I find my joy in Thee.” Simultaneously a creaking from the number board, which the verger sets swinging to signal them to stop.

The church grows quiet, and the priest stands alone in the pulpit, no longer protected by his prayer book. He raises his head from his simulated prayer and looks out over the congregation. Nothing but friendly, solemn, interested faces. Now he knows what to say.

“Dear friends, brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ. We are gathered for worship in our own church. For me, it is the first time, and I will never forget my first meeting with this church on the bay. As you know, the journey out here is a long one, and during the night a person can almost lose his courage and regret coming. But the journey’s end comes into view with the morning light. All of you know the joy you feel when you see the church and the bell tower begin to take shape in the distance, and you know you are almost here. It was so beautiful, I was so delighted, and so happy. And I thought, in the words of the Bible, This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

The church is silent, but he hears a slight, friendly murmur, as if his words were being well received. He goes on, as if speaking in confidence to good friends. “Let us pray. Dear Lord. You look deep into our hearts and see us as we are, imperfect and inconstant. But you also see our hope and our toil. Thank you for your mercy towards us, your compassion and your forgiveness. Thank you for allowing us to turn to you today and all other days. Amen.” And then he reads the text from the Gospel of John, “ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.” And the wonderful final verse, “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”

The priest is moved and inspired and he thinks that last year’s sermon on this theme is not so terribly dreadful after all. With certain embellishments and additions it will be like new, which in truth it is for this audience, and, carefully, he moves into his text, which does have its moments. His voice is cheerful, and he allows himself to look out over the congregation and feels he has made contact. They are with him, even the ones who are asleep, old people who have heard all the sermons they need to hear and now take a blessed pause in the heavy air of a full church.

Yes, they’re going to say that he sings better than he speaks, but on the other hand, he sings better than many others! As the sermon of a young priest at the beginning of his career, it isn’t half bad, and, exhilarated, he rounds it off and turns to the announcements: a thanksgiving for the life of an old man who has died and a reminder of next week’s service.

Finally the collection, which this day will go to the Evangelical Society. Lord bless our offering. The organist’s baritone takes up “Jesus, lead my steps, I pray” and the parishioners shift in their pews, dig into pockets and purses, snap open or shut their pocketbooks, and begin to sing “To follow in Thy blessed way”. The verger emerges from the sacristy and begins making his rounds with his collection bag. The priest comes down from the pulpit and pulls off his own cassock and puts on his robes and surplice for Communion and the closing liturgy.

They sing and sing, and the verger moves solemnly from pew to pew. The collection bag is passed along to those sitting closer to the wall, and it all takes time. They sing slowly, and the hymn is long enough. During the eighth verse, the verger comes in and checks to see that the priest is presentable. Prayer book and Bible in hand, he goes out into the church, which has gone so quiet that he can hear Sanna whining and whimpering. He knows Mona is holding her arm hard and hissing at her to be quiet. It’s been a long service for such a small person, and there’s a lot more to come—some lovely antiphonal song, the Invocation to Holy Communion, the Our Father, a trembling “O Lamb of God”. The invitation, “Draw near with faith.”

But no one comes. They look sullen, stare at the floor or glance at one another, need to be urged as if they were at a party. Wasn’t it the organist who tried to hint that they didn’t like Communion? If only the Sunday service could consist entirely of singing! Then they’d be the most Christian people in the world, but now it’s apparent that they shrink from an individual commitment, from surrender, from the requirement to seem pious.

What if no one comes? The organist has to play, and the verger has his duties. Mona is sitting with Sanna, they agreed on that. It’s unpleasantly quiet. No one looks up, but then he hears someone stand up in the middle of a row. It’s Adele Bergman. She looks negative and distant, but someone has to. She crowds her way past those sitting closer to the aisle, who shift out of her way reluctantly, certainly not about to follow her example. Adele’s gentle husband follows her, and then things start to loosen up in the rest of the church, the vestry and the parish council perhaps. But all of them hesitant and shame-faced, unwilling to meet anyone’s gaze.

They curtsey and bow before the altar, and genuflect. So few come, and there is no second setting of the table. The priest himself is trying to get used to Communion, which he would like to see as a symbolic act. The problem is that wherever he goes there is someone who will argue with him and insist that he, as a priest of the church, must believe that the wine is actually transformed into the blood of Christ. When he explains that we drink from the chalice in memory of the blood shed for us, the person in question grows indignant and accuses the

priest of lack of faith and heresy. He still likes best the Sundays that have a service without Communion. Here on the Örlands, that means three Sundays of four, and that suits him fine.

The organist plays beautifully and the priest passes out Communion wafers and follows up with the chalice, drying the cup with a linen cloth after every sip. “Shed for thee.” And then, bowing and curtseying, relieved, a little happier because it’s over, they walk back to their pews. The priest takes Communion himself, and when he drinks he notes how thirsty he is, and he still has the closing liturgy ahead of him.

The organist plays, and the priest sings the Anthem of Praise with the congregation and reads the blessing. And now the congregation kicks into life, forgets its ill humour and sings the closing hymn, “Like Shining Sunrise in the Spring”, with such a will that he realizes that in future he needs to pick longer hymns. When the three verses have been sung, they would like to go on, but the verger has scurried away on tiptoe to ring the bells, and the organist sets to work on his postlude, which the priest recognizes as Cappelen’s “Prayer” (adagio). The organ has a lovely, bright sound, which breaks down once or twice when the pumper pauses at his work.

It is over, and he is back in the sacristy. Off with his gown, the alb over his head, and back into his cassock. People are on their way out of the church, coughing and talking quietly as their feet move towards the door, leaving behind them a cloud of cough drops and naphthalene. The bells are still ringing, but soon they stop and the verger returns, along with the organist, who comes nimbly down the steps from the organ loft, warding off with his hand a corner of the upper floor that seems designed to knock an intruder senseless. They all look pleased, and the priest thanks them warmly. “And how they sing!” he adds. “I’m going to be really happy here.”

He can hardly wait to go out and speak to those who are still in the churchyard, but the verger reminds him that the collection must be counted in the presence of witnesses and entered in the account book. There are a great many small coins, and it takes time, but finally it’s all locked in the chest and at last they can go outside. The sun is shining the way it can in May. Many are on their way to the church dock, but many remain, in contrast with other parishes where people hurry away when the pastor appears. These people stand still and smile warmly, and when he greets them and shakes their hands, they wish him welcome. None of them give their names, and in the end he starts to ask, for he wants so very much to get to know them by name as well as by face. A little group gathers around him, people who want to say hello, and they’re all in such a good mood after all their singing that it’s a joy to be with them.

He almost forgets to look for Mona and Sanna, but then he catches sight of them at one side of the churchyard, isolated in a struggle, with Sanna twisting and screaming and Mona holding her tight and looking angry. They’re fighting bitterly, and big tears are rolling down Sanna’s cheeks. The pastor is still standing there talking and smiling but he feels a pang of depression. Must she always? Sanna has been angelically quiet and good during the service and slept a little during the sermon. It’s only natural that someone so little is now worn out and cries and squirms. But he and his wife have sworn each other a solemn oath that they will be consistent in raising their children. Whatever one of them says will be supported by the other, and no child will get a no from one parent and a yes from the other. Because where would that lead? To a tyranny of the children, Mona has declared, and he has wholeheartedly agreed—they will show firmness, unity, and cooperation.

But he feels sorry for Sanna, who ought to be getting praise, not reproach. “Excuse me a moment,” he says. “I see Mona, who would also like to say hello.” He rushes off. “Now, now, Sanna! You’ve been such a good girl. Come to Papa!”

Sanna raises her arms to him pathetically, her face streaked with tears, her mouth contorted, but Mona pulls her back. “Careful of the cassock,” she hisses. “She’s wet!” As if that were a terrible disgrace in a fourteen-month-old child. Mona is very proud of the fact that Sanna is already almost completely potty trained at home and can be plunked down as soon as she wakes up and after every meal. Now it’s been too long, and after her nap in church it happened. So Mona is angry and scandalized and Sanna is inconsolable. Petter is on edge, but he has no choice.

“I realize you want to go home, but come over anyway and say hello. I promised to come and fetch you.”

Mona bristles. “Did you have to drag me into it? Couldn’t you see what was going on?” But she follows him as she promised, for better or for worse, and manages a smile when she arrives with the wet, whimpering Sanna on her arm.

“And this is my family,” he introduces them. “Mona and Alexandra, but we call her Sanna.” The little group greet them warmly and bid Mona welcome, and they all remark on how incredibly quiet and well-behaved their little girl was in church. They all pretend not to notice that she’s wet, but Mona mentions the chilly breeze and says she needs to get home and change her before she catches cold. “And then too, we’re having the vestry and the parish council for coffee.”

She’s just leaving when a tall, angular person steps forward from the group. She doesn’t smile but stretches out her hand towards Mona and says, with an odd accent, that she would like to introduce herself. Her name is Irina Gyllen, and she is the midwife on the Örlands.

Mona almost curtseys, and Sanna is quiet. The priest collects himself and presses her hand warmly. “So nice to meet you! Thank you for coming! I’ve heard so many good things about you from my predecessor, and I’m looking forward to working with you on health care.”

“Thank you,” says this brown person. “I wish you good comfort on the island. Now I should go, there are so many who want to speak to you.” As she turns away, she glances at Sanna and Mona, who is ill at ease. “Sweet little girl,” she says. “Maybe we will see you at the surgery? Goodbye.”

She heads off for the gate and the Hindriks family follows. They very pleasantly fall in with Mona as they walk and chat, and when they reach the parsonage, Mona says goodbye and the rest of them stroll on towards the dock. Doctor Gyllen lives with the Hindrikses, they have explained to Mona, and she’s an excellent woman in every way.

The only people left in the churchyard are now the members of the vestry and the parish council. The priest shakes all their hands and learns their names and which villages they come from. Fortunately, the organist and Adele Bergman are among them, for he already views them as old friends. He looks with interest at a tall, slender woman wearing a long black velvet skirt, a tailored jacket and a hair net—Lydia Manström, teacher, married to a farmer fisherman in one of the eastern villages. She radiates … well, what is it she radiates? Great self-control and originality, perhaps? Not easy to say what she’ll be like. She has a teacher’s authority, of course, and he hopes that Mona will get along well with her and make a friend.

They begin to drift towards the parsonage, and he notices that Adele Bergman and Lydia Manström hang back. They’re trying to give Mona as much time as possible, whereas the men are thinking of coffee and sandwiches and push ahead. When they come into the passage, Mona, warm and red, meets them and welcomes them and asks them to come in. She ground the coffee, buttered the bread, and set the table before they went to church, and when she came back she quickly lit the fire in the stove before changing Sanna and putting her in her crib. Now she has also brought out her freshly baked rolls, and the coffee water is simmering on the stove. The pastor needn’t have worried. She may have a hasty temper, but she also has an admirable haste when it comes to practical activities.

Adele Bergman looks around appreciatively. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you had a maid, Mrs Kummel, who prepared all this while we were in church,” she says, warmly, and Mona is happy to get praise from such a capable woman. “Please do sit down,” she repeats. “The coffee will be ready in a minute.”

She goes into the kitchen, but the vestry and the council are still on their feet and need more encouragement before they’ll sit down at the table. They inspect the furnishings, which they’ve already heard described by the people who were on the boat, and the priest looks embarrassed and says that Mona received a small inheritance from an aunt, without which they would have nothing but a kitchen table and some spindle chairs. He nods towards the table and says, “We got our china the same way. And now we’re going to use it. Please do sit down!”

But they are still standing, shifting their weight from one foot to the other when the pastor’s wife comes in with the coffeepot, and they let her fill their cups before they’ll approach the table. They only sit when she commands, “Please! If you don’t sit down your coffee will get cold!” Then at last they take their places and begin to relax and grow cheerful, pass around the sugar bowl and carefully pour big dollops of thick, yellow cream from the pitcher. The sandwiches look delicious. The pastor’s wife has baked bread like they have on the mainland, churned butter from cream she’s saved up all week, sliced cheese from the Co-op on half the sandwiches and put sausage on the rest and garnished all of them with parsley from the kitchen garden that has survived the winter. The food is good and plentiful, and the rolls she serves with the third cup of coffee do her credit. They are all appreciative, and the conversation runs freely and smoothly. The pastor has many questions to ask and they are happy to answer them. It will be some time before he realizes that there are two factions, equal in strength, and that they have seated themselves by village groups. The two blocks communicate only amongst themselves, but he doesn’t know this yet. He sees them only as incomparably friendly, easy to talk to, altogether excellent people.

“I’m absolutely overwhelmed by such a warm reception,” he says yet again. “To think that so many wanted to come to church today. And such singing!”

“Well of course everyone wanted to come and see the new priest,” Lydia Manström points out. “And they were pleased with what they saw. We can hope it will mean an upswing in church attendance.”

It’s almost like a little meeting of the vestry as they go through items that the next real meeting should take up. They also enlighten him about the customs of the parish. It’s good that he doesn’t want to change everything, the way certain previous priests have done. They do not raise any immediate problems. That will wait until they all know each other better.

This is only a first courtesy visit, but they take so much time that the pastor’s wife begins to wonder if they’re expecting further refreshments. They must realize that almost all food is still rationed, and that the two of them have already used way too much of their allowance. If they’re to go on at this rate, they won’t make it. Adele Bergman at least must understand, she thinks, and looks at her in desperation. Adele Bergman gets the message and understands, has already calculated the approximate expenditure of coupons and wonders how they’re going to manage. Although they’ve got cows in the pasture and fish in the sea. She gives the pastor’s wife a friendly look and hears the little girl complaining in the bedroom.

“May I come say hello to the pastor’s daughter?” she asks, following Mona into the bedroom. Mona lifts Sanna from her baby bed, feels her backside and determines that she’s dry. “But now I’m going to the kitchen to put her on the potty before she has another accident.”

Exactly as Mona had thought, Adele Bergman has used Sanna as an excuse to get a look at the bedroom. But be my guest. It too is very proper. Two beds with light brown bedspreads, each with a chair as a nightstand, and a bureau. Still a bit bare, but they’ll have time to acquire a variety of things. A little crucifix hangs above the bureau, and that pleases Adele Bergman. This young priest seems thoroughly Christian every day of the week, and God knows that such a priest is what this parish needs.

She helps to get the vestry and the council up and out, and just as she’d calculated, the organist offers her a ride in his boat and promises to put her ashore at the Co-op dock, since of course Elis took their boat home much earlier. “It’s been a good day,” she says confidentially, both to the organist as they sit talking pleasantly above the clatter of the engine, and to Elis when she gets home.

Chapter Five

IT FALLS TO THE ORGANIST to carefully instruct the priest about the divisions within the parish. He treats the subject lightly, as if it were only a question of a little good-natured rivalry between the two equal halves of the community, and as if he himself stood above the whole struggle and looked down on it with amused condescension. But he grows more serious as he speaks, the furrow between his eyebrows deepens, and his face darkens.

“There are people in the east villages who wouldn’t pull a west villager from a hole in the ice if they were drowning,” he says.

“It can’t be as bad as all that!” says the pastor, trying to laugh it all off. “And if it’s an east villager who’s fallen through the ice? What would the west villagers do?”

But the organist, who had stood above the fray, now says “we”. “We’d probably pull him out, most of us. But you never know. There’s so much personal rancour in a place like this. Real hatred, to tell you the truth. Only a few. But it can poison a whole community.”

“How does it express itself?” the priest asks, hesitantly.

“Indirectly. So the divisions are passed down from one generation to the next. The local council consists of two equal blocks, which makes it almost impossible to get anything important done. The chairman has the deciding vote, and pity the poor devil who gets elected chairman. There’s always pressure, not so much from the other side as from his own side. Same thing in the vestry. I’m the chairman there,” he adds, and now he smiles as if he couldn’t stand to look serious. Here on these islands, everyone wears a happy face. That much the priest has already learned.

The priest smiles too. “I’m sincerely happy to hear it,” he says from the heart. “I’m glad you told me all this. What do you think it will mean for me as pastor?”

The organist considers. “You’re different from the man we had before. He was older and more cunning, if I may use that word. Over the years, he grew very adept at playing off one side against the other. He knew what to say to get the outcomes he wanted. Don’t forget that in the parish council, you’re the chairman, and you need to chair those meetings forcefully. As for the vestry, it would be a good idea for us to talk things over in advance so I know where you stand.”

The priest is not as dumb as he may look. He takes the hint, amused and interested. “So you can explain the hidden tensions and intrigues to me and help me figure out what I think. Thank you. Yes. You’re a great help, and I hope we can work together in future, too, and talk to each other frankly.”

The organist is pleased by the priest’s appreciation and confidence. “I’m telling you this also because you need to know that there’s always a terrible tug of war for the pastor. Of course the church is supposed to be neutral, but this isn’t about politics. It’s personal. If you can make friends with the pastor, you can draw him to your side and get his ear.”

“Oh, my,” the pastor says. “I can see that I’ve already been drawn towards the west villages. You and your family and the estimable Adele Bergman and Doctor Gyllen and the Hindrikses. And the verger and Signe, although they live so close to the church that we can almost count them as neutral. But it can’t be helped. I don’t intend to sit here like a hermit and treat both sides with suspicion. I mean to go out and meet people in all the villages! You know, I didn’t pick up any of this when the council and the vestry were here for coffee. Everyone was so nice, and I liked every one of you.”

“Of course you did,” the organist says. “There’s nothing wrong with us one at a time, we’re all very ‘nice’, as you say. That’s why this division is so deplorable. Because it divides people who could be best friends. Instead we have to be cautious and on guard. It’s a shame.”

This has been a lot for him to swallow, the organist can see that, but the priest is looking ahead. “It’s good you’ve told me all this,” he says. “But now in the beginning I think I’ll act as if I didn’t know a thing. Even though you’ve told me, I’m sure I don’t yet understand all of it in depth. First I need to get a bit closer to people.”

“You’re off to a good start,” says the organist warmly, which gives the priest time to formulate what he’s feeling.

”You’ll probably think I’m childish, but I already like it here so much that I don’t ever want to leave. Do you think you could stand me for the next forty years?”

The organist laughs, as if the divisions had never been raised. “Sounds wonderful. That will be the news item of the year—a priest who isn’t on the lookout for a richer parish.”

As friends, they set to work on what looks to be a long collaboration. Even in a small parish—or especially in a small parish—there are a host of questions to be aired at every meeting of the vestry. There is already quite a pile of official post. They read it together and the organist sifts through it with an experienced hand and decides what needs to be given to the vestry and what the priest can deal with himself. This one sits with pen in hand and looks capable of sending off letters in a steady stream. He seems almost eager, as if his fingers were itching to get started, and the organist is happy at the thought of working with a priest who respects the way things have always been done and doesn’t immediately want to make changes.

The priest himself looks on the organist the way a young man looks on an experienced older man, with almost childish confidence. As they sit there in his study, working, glancing at one another appreciatively, the pastor feels an uninhibited pleasure in having an older man as support, guide, and friend. Almost a father figure, if the organist had been a little older. He is in fact only fifteen years older, but he has life experience and practical skills, which the priest well knows do not necessarily come with increasing age.

He thinks of his own father, and how different his life could have been if he’d had a father like the organist, who could have given him guidance in difficult matters and taught him useful lessons. Instead, he’s had to figure everything out on his own, by trial and—especially in his youth—by painful error. He has had to learn carpentry, construction, and repair, for Leonard, his father, is unable to do any of these things. He has suffered shame and fled from this same father’s high-blown declarations, such as “I know what people are like!”, although anyone following his advice would have met with misfortune. All his life, he’s had to rely on learning from experience, and now he sits here opposite the organist and thinks what it might have been like to have had a father who was sensible and just.

Petter is the oldest of three brothers and it happens that the organist too has three boys and, even more remarkably, a beloved and spoiled daughter, exactly like the Kummel family’s adored Charlotte. The youngest of the sons is the family’s sunshine child, just like the Kummels’ Jösse, forever twenty years old in his hero’s grave, whom Petter still thinks of with a curious distaste and … shame?

The similarities are striking, and it is with great interest that he makes his first visit to the organist’s home. Where he is amazed to see that this incomparable father figure doesn’t seem to have a very good relationship with his sons. On the contrary, they avoid him, always seem to have important things to do that drive them away from the table and out the door as quickly as they can manage. To have such a father and to shun him, that surely indicates that no son can have had a good relationship with his father, at least not once he’s entered puberty.

It sometimes seems to Petter that biology has an answer for almost everything that happens in a human life, but there is no explanation for puberty. He can understand the importance of liberation and the development of an independent personality, but why must this period last so long and the alienation be so profound? Why must people reject the value of learning and actively oppose the acquisition of knowledge during the very years when their capacity to internalize instruction is at its height? And why do human beings see themselves as hopeless, ugly, and miserable when in fact they are at their most attractive age? What is nature’s purpose with puberty, which is as cruel as death?

Although when you look at the three adolescent organist sons, you have to admit that if they’re feeling ugly and miserable, they hide it well. They’re just a bit reserved because they’re sharing a dinner table with the pastor. In their different ways, they’re as shamelessly attractive as their parents, well built, with a startling loose-limbed elegance. But no camaraderie between them and their father, no visible trust, no understanding, only a barely discernible smile of ridicule whenever the organist tells a story. To his horror, Petter recognizes certain glances he himself exchanged with his brothers when father Leonard got going. Otherwise there are few similarities between the wise and capable organist and the sadly foolish Leonard Kummel, who is such an embarrassment to his sons. All they have in common is fatherhood, which a son must turn away from if he’s to become his own man. This is what the organist’s sons dream of, just as the teacher’s sons once did. But still, these boys’ highest aspiration—to become unlike their father—is much harder to understand than that of the Kummel brothers!

For his part, Petter would be happy to adopt the organist as his father, if such a thing were possible. He feels a warmth of spirit, as if for the first time in his life he stood under someone’s protection and was not required to be the oldest and wisest, a model for his siblings, a support for his mother, and an ideal schoolboy. A beast of burden collapsing under the weight of hopes and demands. A dried herb in a plant press of expectations.

Now, at last, he sits side by side with a man in whom he has absolute confidence, a man who says, “This is the way we do things here.” A man who expects nothing more than that he be young and ignorant and in need of help. A man he has already impressed with his pragmatism and common sense. A man who is easy to talk to and whose replies show that has listened and understood.

Giddy as he is from all the friendship he feels, it will take a while for him to realize that the organist is not universally loved here on the islands. Many bear him a grudge. His payment in kind is a thorn in their flesh, especially during the hay harvest when he drives home the yield from the splendid hayfield that belongs to the church and is reserved for the benefit of the parish organist. Later, he learns that the organist was a hated customs officer during Prohibition. There are those who consider him self-righteous—in his own eyes a head higher than everyone else—and who therefore think he needs to be cut down to his ankles. They bide their time.

This is a side of island life that lies in the shadows when people show their smiling faces, but the priest is young and learns quickly. He does not regret the respite he enjoyed when he first arrived, believing he had come to an ideal community. It was what he needed so that love and loyalty could take root for all time.

He has ridden through the villages on his bicycle, on roads with a strip of grass down the middle and lots of gates. Sometimes he has to stop and ask, but he’s already learned the names of many farms. The bicycle is a good thing to have, but all the houses face the sea where the real traffic is. Spanking dinghies, thumping herring boats, creaking skiffs. Out there is where he would like to be, and he’s been talking to the organist about getting a motorboat, which he could use both for fishing and for getting around.

Mostly for getting around, although he loves the idea of putt-putting about in his own boat, free and independent. He reviews his assets under the friendly eye of the organist. His salary is small and his student loans large. Unlike the local people, who spend big when they’ve had a good fishing season or sold seal oil to the government and then later live close to the bone, the priest has little chance of acquiring a large sum of money. But it will work itself out, and he now tells the organist proudly that he learned to sail when he was still a boy. The skiff that goes with the house has a hole for a mast in the thwart, and there’s an old spritsail. He’s going to fix it up and use it. But in the future he’s going to have a motorboat so he can move about in all kinds of weather. If the organist hears of any good deals, he should let him know.

The organist is happy to find the pastor so open and trusting. Maybe too much so, he thinks fleetingly, knowing that there are those who would exploit those qualities. Of course he does need a little guidance, and when it comes to figuring out how to organize their lives on Church Isle, he is ready to help in word and deed.

As if to confirm this thought, and to make both of them jump, the phone rings. It is Adele Bergman, who has heard that the priest cycled by. It was easy to guess where he was headed, and now she wants to say that if he’ll stop in at the Co-op on his way home, he can pick up the paint and thinner he ordered. Some good brushes have also come in, and some coffee biscuits if he wants to splurge.

The priest smiles when he gets this message, for here is another person who will support him in word and deed. “Whether you like it or not,” the organist says, who nevertheless is an ally of Adele Bergman’s and chairman of the Co-op board. “We wouldn’t have got through the war half so well without Adele,” he adds quickly. “When you live as far out as we do here, it goes without saying that we’re last on the list, and when the Central Co-op got to our order, there was never anything left. But Adele didn’t take it lying down. I’ve heard her talk to them on the phone. ‘Our Co-op members are just as valuable as those in the city, and according to the Co-op bylaws, we have the same rights. As a Co-op manager, I won’t bend an inch, and I demand that we get the deliveries we’re entitled to. Without delay. Because we’re farthest out, we should get our deliveries first, since the small amounts we need are hardly noticed.’ And so on. She never let them forget us. It was a lot easier for them to carry our orders down to the boat than to try and explain to Adele why we weren’t going to get them. When things got really bad, 1944 for example, and it was simply impossible to get your hands on any boat fuel at all, she went to Åbo herself and got her hands on two barrels of petrol, which she had them carry down to the boat with her. Then she stood there and guarded them until the boat left, and then at every stop along the way. Word got here before Anton did, and when the boat arrived in the wee hours, there was a crowd of people on the Co-op dock with canisters. And then things got really hot. ‘The store will open at eight o’clock and not one minute earlier,’ she told them. She must have been dead tired, but there she stood at eight o’clock on the dot and measured out what everyone had a right to. Adele gets more done than a man. People laugh at her, but they count on the fact that she’ll get her hands on what we need. When we went to the herring market in Helsingfors after the peace was signed, everyone from here was astonished at how little there was to buy in the shops—compared to what Adele could plunk down on the counter for us if she thought we were worthy and had earned it.”

The pastor and his wife are unquestionably among the worthy. Even if you specifically refuse all privilege, it’s impossible to refuse Adele’s goodwill. And a good thing, too, because the locals find all sorts of things in their sheds and boathouses that they can make use of when things get tight, whereas the pastor and his wife have to start with two pretty much empty hands. God helps those whom Adele Bergman helps, he thinks, laughing, on his way home, heavily burdened. A poor man would have an easier trip home.

He has fixed up the skiff and raised the sail and heads off. Not slowly, either. The boat hisses through the water and there’s spray from the waves when he turns.

He learned to sail when he was still a boy, he says, and he’s always liked to sail as close to the wind as he dares. To press ahead before you come about, that’s life. Of course he’s turned over on occasion, but that’s no big deal. And he suspects that he’ll do it again a few times before he gets the hang of the skiff.

I catch him in the act, you might say. I’m approaching the bay when the priest comes streaking out behind the point. He shoves the rudder over so hard that the boat just lies down, the way you might blow down a house of cards. The priest is in the water, swimming like an otter with the sheet firmly in hand. Though it’s heavy going with the boat in tow, he drags it onto a skerry and turns it over easy as pie and wraps the painter around a stone.

He’s standing there wringing out his clothes when I come up, cut my motor and throw out a grapnel. “In God’s name,” I start, but I have to laugh when I hear myself, for that’s usually the priest’s line. He laughs too and cries hello. “Are you all right?” I call.

“You bet,” he says. “I’ve got to test the limits a bit and see what the skiff can do. She needs coddling, the little dickens.”

My own skiff drifts towards the skerry as far as the grapnel permits and there we sit and talk, I in my boat and he on land. He spreads his clothes out on the granite and then sits down himself on a dry spot. “I’ll just have to sit here until everything’s dry. Otherwise I’ll be in trouble when I get home.”

He makes it sound like a great joke, but it’s easy for me to believe that his wife would give him a dressing down, and he deserves one. He sails like an idiot just because he’s young and strong and swims like a fish.

“You need to be careful till you know how the winds twist in among these islands,” I warn him. “They’re nothing to play with, the sea and the weather, and it doesn’t always end this well.”

It’s then he says that stuff about having turned boats over lots of times. And then he says, “You must have done the same, you’ve lived your whole life on the sea.”

Then I really have to think. I’m taken aback when I have to tell him the truth. “No, not that I can remember. I’ve always kept my feet in the boat, even if the rest of me hung out over the gunnels.”

He sighs but then laughs again. “I guess that’s the difference between doing this for a living, like you, and doing it for fun and excitement, like me.”

“Yes,” I say. “And there aren’t a lot of us who can swim, either. They figure it just prolongs the suffering if you go overboard in open water. What’ll happen to you if you turn her over in a big bay and you’re not up to swimming ashore?”

“Maybe I’ll have the wits to make my turns a little wider,” he says, and I understand why people like him, because he’s not cocky, however foolhardy he may be.

He’s funny too, sitting there drying out. Even if I don’t intend to say anything to his wife, I haven’t made any promises to keep my mouth shut otherwise. We’ve always kept an eye on our priests and talked about how they behave. If it’s something hilarious, so much the better. We have the post office in our home, and when I tell the story to Julanda the news will spread quickly. For we forward the news from a laughing mouth free of charge, without ink and envelopes and stamps.

Chapter Six

THE CONGREGATION SEES HIM SUNNY. Smiling, interested, eager to learn. Friendly, unaffected. Full of energy. Unassuming and appreciative, always with a good word for everyone. Full of fun, once you get to know him and realize that there is more than gravity beneath that cassock. So charmed by everything the parish has to offer that everyone melts. He likes the landscape: bleak, improbably beautiful in all its moods, fresh breezes and open vistas. The people: indescribably appealing. Charming. Intelligent. Handsome, lively, quick-witted. Knowledgeable, amazingly well-informed. Talkative and articulate. Exceptional. His new life as an island priest: a gift from God.

So cheerful that you might think he’s never suffered a setback, that what lies behind the delight that wells forth is a lack of deeper life experience or an inborn naiveté.

Nothing about him indicates that he comes from the great affliction. The endless war. An intense aversion to himself and to everyone who ran after him with their senseless expectations. A Christianity rendered stiff and almost dumb. A greyness and brownness drawn across all of existence. In spite of it, people’s terrible will to live, and, as if to mock them, death’s endless variety and the cycles of disease, anguish, and loss that everyone is forced to pass through on their way to death.

She draws a short biography from him, Lydia Manström, who takes it in and only passes along such things as will cause no one embarrassment. What she retains within her tailored velvet jacket with its braids and trimmings is this: the oldest son of an overly ambitious teacher and an unpredictable father, forced to start school a year ahead of his own age group, always teased and excluded. Unable to honour his father, plagued by his mother’s overblown expectations. At the age of fourteen, stricken with tuberculosis of the stomach and the knees, a year in hospital, in the tear-filled eyes of his mother, dying. In an adult ward, among repulsive men with indecent stories and suggestions—the poor nurses!—and no reservations about his innocence. And then to see how they died, suffocating in their obscenity, drowning in their slime. How he prayed and promised to serve the Lord with joy all his life if only he could escape the hospital alive and make a life of his own. How he recovered, became a star pupil in school, took up sports to get into condition, graduated, and began to study theology. Studied and studied, often with distaste and without pleasure. The war that broke out. His stricken conscience at being exempt from military duty while brothers and friends were dying at the front, his resolve to be always ready, without complaint, to help those who needed him—Mrs Vale O’Tears, Miss Gloomquist, Mr von Woe. Food supply commission, Home Guard, fire brigade, war orphans. His studies like wading through tar. Debilitating anxiety, despair at the alliance with Germany and Finland’s unfortunate invasion of East Karelia. Pangs of conscience like a fire blanket over his rebellious spirit. Should I or shouldn’t I? But yes! You must. Always.

And then the things that Lydia Manström can calmly pass along: Mona, who saved him, her teacher’s apartment that made it possible for him to complete his studies. His ordination, his brief service as an army chaplain, his first appointment as temporary pastor in a parish that had lost its priest. The birth of Sanna. And then across the water to a life that is open and bright and fantastic. Ten times better than he had humbly hoped for as an unattainable future goal. Freedom. Openness. Warmth. Beauty. And the word he avoids saying for fear of losing it, the word that nevertheless insists on making itself heard like a paean—Happiness.

And now he gets effusive, talking about how theology itself has suddenly burst into bloom, how he sees that beauty in nature is an analogy, a metaphor for God’s love, for life in Jesus Christ. That we can celebrate the beauty around us because that affirmation is a recognition of God’s love. Christianity is not gloom and doom. Christianity is an affirmation! He means to preach this message.

Yes. A little embarrassed at being so emotional, but still very happy. He smiles at Lydia Manström as they sit catching their breath after his first parish catechetical meeting in the east villages. “And you yourself, Mrs Manström? How did you come out here?”

“Across the water”, she says evasively, although he has a right to a confidence from her after all he’s told her about himself. He waits, feeling a bit snubbed. Surely he hadn’t been that pushy? She has to go on. “We met in Åbo. I came down to the boats. He sold fish. Then I came out here and gave a class in weaving. When it was over, we were engaged. Simple as that.”

It sounds as if she would rather have a tooth pulled. It’s clear that you don’t ask personal questions of Lydia Manström. It’s a different story with her husband, Arthur Manström, a man of wide experience, who is always enthroned as the central figure in the tales he tells. He now comes sweeping in, impressive, Roman nose, velvet voice like a lover. Lazy as a god, courted and admired, he claims proudly to be a farmer fisherman but lives on his wife’s salary as a teacher. The foundation of it all is eloquence … indeed, when eloquence was passed out, Arthur Manström stood at the head of the line and helped himself.

The priest is a bit overshadowed here, although he too has a beautiful voice and can both sing and talk. But Arthur can talk the sparrows off the roof, he draws people’s attention like a wood sprite, he scrapes and smiles and flatters and bows. Once, he lured the chaste Lydia from Åbo to the Örlands. Knew that he couldn’t let her return a virgin, because it would then be too easy for her to reply evasively to letters, to make other plans, to be sadly unavailable when he wanted to visit. A secret engagement would not do, either. No, he needed to speak calmly, smoothly, fluently, back her into a corner, down onto the floor, in under her skirts, a calm voice through all the No! No! while his hand makes its way past waistbands and openings, into position. Accomplished. And then she can only become engaged and marry him, for in Lydia’s world if you lie with a man then he’s the one you must marry.

There is much gossip, and it will eventually reach even the pastor’s ears. There was only one child, now the adult heir apparent, today in the process of fathering his own children. What everyone would like to know: Did he tire of her once he had her? Is she perhaps revolted by the act of sex? Was she injured so severely in childbirth that she is incapable of …? But on the other hand she isn’t sickly and in pain like women with uterine prolapse and a damaged urethra but rather energetic and full of drive, with good posture, a slim figure, a rapid gait, and she’s a real disciplinarian at school. Active in the Martha Association and People’s Health, a leader in the food supply commission during the war, a promoter of adult education, practical skills and handicrafts. Writes letters to their member of parliament and the county council and lobbies for the interests of the Örland Islands. Writes “we” in her letters, but is absolutely “she”, an outsider. Silent as the grave when it comes to personal matters.

Arthur reigns in the masculine world of the farmer fishermen without overexerting himself, rests up at home when Lydia is at school, has all manner of errands and activities in the afternoons that require him to be out once school is over. Appears in Lydia’s company mostly at the table and especially when they are invited out. He then leads her by the elbow, smiles and speaks like a seraph, with a heavenly sweetness. He has many names for her: my better half, my consort, the mistress of my house, my treasured companion, my wedded wife. She calls him Arthur, which stamps her as an outsider, because on the Örlands, women call their husbands “himself”.

Arthur, well, here he is. He sits down beside the priest on the Åbo sofa in the parlour, his bass voice purring with pleasure. He has eaten his fill and has had some real coffee. Perhaps, too, he has fortified himself from some bottle of two- or three-star cognac, because those who can’t stand his flash and twinkle will hint later to the priest that he hasn’t a sober moment. If so, we are viewing genteel inebriation at its most appealing— he’s a kindly and communicative fellow with a broad register and converses about Church Isle in the Middle Ages and tells stories about the former priest who preached in his Home Guard uniform. Once as he climbed into the pulpit, his revolver fell from its holster, and when he bent down to pick it up, the church’s famous acoustics picked up someone whispering clearly, “Duck thy heads, for now he reloadeth.”

“There are many such stories,” the silver-tongued Arthur adds, and the pastor laughs and says that he’s sure there are. It’s like being taken by the hand and led through the steps of a dance—you nod and smile when you get the signal and are then swept away across the floor. The pastor glances around surreptitiously and notes that Lydia is no longer present. Somewhere in the great convivial flow she was washed towards the kitchen, where she clearly has much to do now that dinner is over. The dishwater steams and there are towers of pots and bowls and plates. Arthur holds forth, and the priest, who learned at home to regard his father’s conversation with a certain scepticism is nonetheless charmed and seduced. Arthur must have sold his soul to be able to talk this way! Lydia still has hers, a hard pod in a vault, a petrified dream deep inside an active and laudable sense of duty. The priest has revealed some of his to her, and she has observed it without asking a single question, but in such a way that he’s been led to reveal still more.

Mona has been at home with Sanna, which she all too often has to be, and when he finally gets home after this long day and would simply like to read the newspapers, he wanders around with Sanna around his neck and tells Mona about everyone he’s met, intelligent and well-spoken every one, but the prize goes to Arthur Manström. He repeats a couple of the anecdotes he can recall and adds, “Lydia is a different story. Probably smarter than all the rest of us put together but discreet as a spy ring. I believe she’s the least gossipy person I’ve ever met.”

Mona gives him one of those penetrating looks that make him look away. He knows more or less what she’s thinking. He should watch his tongue and not quite so frankly reveal his innermost thoughts to anyone and everyone. A person needs to button up and caulk his hull. Things said in confidence sound entirely different when shouted from the rooftops. This is what she’s thinking, among other things, and she’s right as usual.

But. It’s not true that he babbles indiscriminately. It you expect candour from others, you have to open the door to yourself a bit. If you want to reduce people’s reservations, you have to thin out your own. And yet it’s something of a problem for Mona that he sits there chatting with people as if he had all the time in the world. Time that ought to be hers. Theirs. Of course it’s fun and exciting to have a new priest who’s young and full of fun, happy and accommodating, of course everyone wants to talk to him, sit there and bask in his attention and waste the time he ought to devote to so much else.

While the priest lingers in the village, eating party food and drinking coffee until his belly is stuffed, talking and singing hymns, his wife has done the milking and washed the dishes, put the laundry in to soak, cranked the separator, scrubbed the kitchen floor where he has thoughtlessly tracked in mud, built a fire in the bathhouse to heat laundry water, hauled up water from the well, washed clothes with a will, fed herself and Sanna at appropriate intervals, chased off the tenant farmer’s cows which had broken through the fence, pounded in some posts ostentatiously with a stone without attracting any attention whatsoever from the tenants, who do not show themselves in any window. And when she looks inside, there is not a living soul. It’s like the Mary Celeste—a fire in the stove, food warm on the plates, sails set for a light breeze, but no life. Back in the parsonage, there’s no end to it. If she has a free moment, there are clothes to be mended, letters to be written. Food must be prepared—though he’ll hardly be hungry when he gets home—and kept warm in case he comes late, as usual. The evening milking will have to be done soon, and Sanna will have to go with her because there’s no one else in the house. She’s sensible for her age, but you still have to keep an eye on her so she doesn’t get covered with dirt or go too close and get stepped on. Gnats and mosquitoes enough to drive you crazy. Sanna screams and cries, and the cows throw their heads and stamp their feet—they’d step right into the milking pail if she wasn’t careful. It takes forever even if she hurries, and then she has to stand there and filter the milk and lower it into the cowshed well. The warm milk warms up the well water, and the whole thing is an inefficient joke for someone from a real dairy farm with a basin and ice stacked under a layer of sawdust. But you have to be grateful to have milk at all, so she can’t complain. “Come, Sanna. Now we can finally go. Good girl.”

Yes. Sanna. It’s not right that he so rarely has time for his own daughter. His own family. Of course he has to do his job, but shouldn’t he have some time for himself? But then he has to write his sermon, and study for his pastoral exams, and read through the endless pile of correspondence from the diocese. He has to stay abreast of the local news, and the world news, otherwise he’ll be hopelessly out of touch, and then there are all those theological journals. He has to write letters to his mother, all too often and all too detailed, and she immediately responds with dreadfully long and closely written replies. More’s the pity, because then he has to write again promptly, also closely written and at length, and sympathize. There’s no end to it.

The parsonage is on Church Isle, isolated from the parish, and in human terms it offers a haven of peace for the priest when he finally gets home. And it certainly looks peaceful for a moment or two when he comes jogging up the hill from his boat. The wind dies at dusk, and the evening air is raw and damp. He takes the steps in a couple of bounds, lifts the latch, smells the fire in the stove, opens the door. A scream of joy and Sanna throws herself into his arms. Mona, angrily, “Sanna! Go straight to bed! Once you’re there, you stay there!” She takes Sanna by the arm, hard, and Sanna yelps and clings to him tightly. Strict loyalty a requirement, but he must be loyal to his child as well, and he holds Sanna close and says, “Just a little while. I haven’t seen her all day.”

No indeed, but he hasn’t seen Mona all day, either. Mona, who sees him mostly when he’s worn out and dog-tired and still has lots of work to get through even though it’s already late. The parish never sees him that way, whereas she … But what is she thinking? The husband she loves has come home at last, and she ought to be happy. And of course she is happy. She’s only irritated because she can never have enough, because she’s jealous of the parish that gets such great gulps of him while she gets him back when he’s dead tired and should just be allowed to go to bed.

“Sit down,” she says. “We’ll have some tea and you can tell me about the catechetical meeting. What the food was like, and who you talked to. Sanna can stay up for a little while, but then to bed.” With Sanna’s arms around his neck, he starts to tell about the meeting—how well they read, how openly they answered his questions. How the organist is clearly on his guard in the east villages. About the baked pike and about Arthur Manström and his lawfully wedded wife Lydia. About the way his head buzzes with all the talk and the singing. How nice it is to be home. How absolutely wonderful it is to come home to his two girls. He never in his life expected to feel such happiness.

They sit there a bit dizzy with exhaustion, drink their tea and know a little more about the nature of happiness than they did when they were even younger. Then Mona had taken their relationship for granted. Later events made her terribly jealous and put her on her guard. Not that he would have been unfaithful or allowed himself to be tempted. It was rather that he behaved as if he lacked a sense of self-preservation and believed that he was some sort of Jesus put on earth to bear the world’s sorrows.

In plain language, Mona had to murder a whole religious movement in order to save him. This was the Oxford Movement, an intellectual and theological renewal of faith, with great ethical demands, which had a powerful influence on Petter and his closest friends during their studies at the School of Theology at Helsingfors University. During those same years, the movement was hijacked by the Americans and transformed into Moral Rearmament, MRA. In Petter’s second parish, where he served temporarily as assisting pastor, MRA had a solid foothold among a leading group of parishioners. A person with as much common sense as Mona had only to look at them as they greeted Petter to hear alarm bells. Unrealistic dreamers, the whole bunch, who managed to monopolize him in no time and pull him into endless evening meetings that fairly reeked of confession and tormented self-examination. So persuasive were they that Petter got the idea that it was his duty to stand up in the pulpit before the entire congregation and confess the erotic missteps of his youth as well as the vice of self-abuse, a plan averted only when Mona threatened to beat him senseless with a cast-iron frying pan rather than let him leave home for church, and when Uncle Isidor made an emergency visit. In the course of this private conversation, Isidor stressed the fact that a priest must by all means be truthful, but that he must also be an example for his congregation, as prescribed in his clerical oath. What kind of example will he be if he stands in the pulpit and wallows in youthful sins, no longer of any consequence. If a priest could … well then, couldn’t anyone? That’s what many will think. Others will laugh at him behind his back and he will lose all his authority and, worse, his legitimacy as a priest. Does he want to be relieved of his office? Has he lost his mind? Has he thought this through all the way to the bitter end? Think of Mona and his little daughter. Think of his mother! Who has already suffered such grief.

It does not help him to cite the Oxford Movement’s four absolutes: absolute purity, absolute honesty, absolute unselfishness, absolute love … (“Absolute idiocy!” Mona calls from behind the door) … because those are abstract concepts, even if they are a distillation of the most beautiful thoughts in the Sermon on the Mount. But we live as best we can here on earth, where our actions have consequences on a social plane. Think, dear Petter. Think. And if you won’t think about those consequences, then think instead about the four absolutes. Which of them did Our Saviour place first? Yes, love. And if you want to be absolutely honest with yourself, who is it that you love most? Yes, Mona and your little girl. Your mother. You have no absolute right to cause them such distress.

All that is bad enough. Even worse is that in the overheated atmosphere of those evening meetings, when Mona must of course stay home with Sanna, there are romantic young women who confess their wicked thoughts and, weeping, throw themselves on the priest’s breast. And the priest, who stands for absolute love, what is he supposed to do? Unable as he is to see through their cunning, he tells himself that it’s all pure spiritual anguish when in actual fact it’s an irresponsible effort to captivate a married man and father. Moreover a priest and a model for the parish. Where is he supposed to put his hands? What is he supposed to do when they cry, “God! I cannot go on like this!”

They. Well, one. Who is so terribly in love that she can’t stand it but comes rushing to his home in her despair. Right past Mona as if she were a simple servant girl, no one who mattered. Straight to the priest. “Oh God! Help me! Pray for me!”

His face a picture of masculine helplessness. She is about to push him into his study. She doesn’t see Mona, doesn’t reckon with her, she is meaningless, a person lacking spiritual life and love in Christ, a person who in a deeper sense has no right to him. She, Mona, with a teaching degree, steps forward and takes the overwrought young woman by the arm, hard. “Calm yourself!” she commands. Miss N stops in her tracks. Her tears freeze on her cheeks. Her hand halfway to his breast. Her thought cut off in midstream.

“Forgive me,” she says. “I didn’t mean … I don’t know why I’m here.”

“So it seems,” says the pastor’s wife. “I suggest that we drink a cup of coffee in the kitchen and then maybe you’ll feel better.”

She bustles about in the kitchen. Angry as a bee, Petter sees, but frighteningly polite to the fervid young woman, who sits at the table and shrivels, without a sob or a sigh. “Here you go,” Mona says, and Miss N dares do nothing but drink her coffee. Looks at no one, least of all at the priest, who stares into his cup. He can think of nothing to say, although he’s the one licensed to preach, and his wife is forced to continue.

“To my way of thinking, MRA has gone way too far. Its demands are terribly exaggerated and people get all worked up and overwrought and lose their heads. I can’t give you any advice, but I can’t help thinking you’d be better off staying away from those meetings. And I’ll give the same advice to my husband, who has many duties here in this parish without MRA trying to draw the last drop of his blood.”

Now Miss N looks at Mona, eyes wide, and draws a breath almost like a mortal sigh. “Yes,” she breathes. “Thank you. I hardly recognize myself. It’s like a dream.”

“Yes,” Mona says. “Reality is different. Work, for example.” She looks at her husband, the priest, a penetrating gaze. So blue, so powerfully blue. So indescribably, incomprehensibly, powerfully blue. The fifth absolute—blueness. “Yes,” she concludes. “And now I have to get on with mine. Perhaps you’d like more coffee?”

“No thank you,” she breathes. “I have to go. What you said about the meetings is right.” She says goodbye to them both, and no one who sees her go can help feeling sorry for her, the way we feel sorry for any young person who has lost her faith and hope. What passes later between the priest and his wife occurs in private, but we can presume that it is not the priest who emerges triumphant.

“How could you be so blind?” she cries, for example, after he’s assured her, scandalized, that there was of course no physical attraction on either side. “Everyone must have seen it but you! Don’t you understand anything? What would you have done if I hadn’t managed to stop her?”

He looks like a schoolboy, not like the beloved man she married. “I suppose I would have prayed with her. You know in the Movement we talk a lot about prayer. About its power to change our lives.”

“Ha! She threw herself at you! She was this far from a declaration of carnal lust.”

“Then naturally I would have calmly talked sense to her. Explained that we’re brother and sister in Jesus Christ. Nothing more.”

“I wonder if you really don’t realize how overheated the atmosphere gets at those meetings of yours. Your demand for honesty has pretty much the same effect that pornography has on a dirty old man. There are thoughts and inclinations that people are better off keeping to themselves. A little common decency never hurt anyone. You encourage simple, unbalanced souls to vent the feelings that they’d keep under wraps in a more sceptical atmosphere. Has it occurred to you that you’re acting like a sect, though you belong to the church?”

He can hear how weak he sounds as he admits that there is much in what she says. That it takes someone with her analytical ability to put a finger right on the sensitive point. Yes, people’s feelings ran away with them. Yes, the atmosphere was thoroughly overheated. As a priest, he should have realized that they expected leadership from him, not simply a confirmation of their surging emotions. What she says about sectarianism is perfectly true. Distressed as he is, it’s still interesting to see how it starts. You think it’s just an internal revival, and then it turns out that you stand at the forefront of a little group that is distancing itself from the rest of the congregation. It’s not healthy, she’s absolutely right about that.

By and by he also agrees to decline to attend any further evening meetings. Doesn’t intend to make excuses but means to be absolutely honest when he informs Westerberg that he is taking this step because he has grown increasingly dubious about the overheated atmosphere within the movement. It is becoming too naked and intrusive. It’s becoming sectarian, he will say, and then add that he would also like to spend more time at home with his wife and newborn child.

They talk and talk, though neither one of them has the time, and of course the result is that, both of them in tears, they reaffirm their love and agree that he naturally never and that she naturally never thought.

The priest stops going to the meetings, which gradually die a natural death when one after another of the little group stops coming. Some internalize the absolutes and continue to have them as lodestars in their personal lives. Others remember the whole episode with shame. In any case, the movement does not recover. Across Finland, a few faithful enthusiasts support it for a time, but it wavers and fades and eventually gives up the ghost.

She who murdered it feels a certain triumph at first. Then doubt and unease as well. That he could actually be so naive. That she has to act the policeman. Save him from things he should have the sense not to stick his nose into. That she has to get so angry in order to make him see what’s going on.

This background made it easier for her to support his decision to ask for an appointment to the outermost outer islands. Here they will be isolated from the whole world’s Christian cliques and coteries. Here they will have more time for each other and be able to live a life of concord and true love.

In truth, it is hardly possible to find a congregation less given to sectarianism than the people of the Örlands. The prevalent, cheering belief out here is that the church is one, and that that one church is the Örlands’ church. Its priests are the object of healthy interest and indulgence—the way they sometimes behave! But they are theirs, for better, for worse, as long as they have them. Often they serve with a wandering eye, on their way to richer pickings, and are quickly forgotten. But this one says he wants to stay and meets their interest with great candour and goodwill.

There is something special about him, which his wife is the first to acknowledge. That’s why she loves him, why she married him. But wherever he goes, he attracts people like a magnet, she might almost wish he were a little less attractive. As it is, there is no one who doesn’t want to talk to him and bask in his glow. He himself is unaware of this magnetism and is astonished that people are so friendly. Extraordinarily friendly, he keeps saying. A little less would be plenty, his wife thinks. Moderately cordial would be just fine. So that he could do what he needs to do, hold his meetings and functions, and then come home!

The pastor’s wife is no clinging vine. Wherever you plant her, she sends out strong stalks and leaves. She handles herself with the greatest competence, organizes and manages and keeps an eye on her domains. She is happy to work alone, for then everything stays on track. But of course she listens for him. And of course she goes from window to window sometimes and wonders if he’s never going to come. What kind of a marriage would it be if she never wanted him at home?

Of course she understands that the church and the congregation are his primary responsibility and that he’s never really off duty. He gets up from his supper with a smile, he closes his textbooks and comes out of his study happily, delighted to be disturbed. Come right in! Talks at length about the weather, which out here is a subject of life and death, asks about family members, whose names he’s already learned, discusses boat connections and the fishing prospects, compares notes about the hay. Lets people take their time before getting to the point—some kind of certification from the parish register, as is often the case, or a christening or maybe even a wedding. Then both parties grow exhilarated, for the priest can recommend marriage warmly. So now at last! He sounds so enthusiastic that it warms their souls. If they have doubts, they forget to mention them.

It takes time, like everything else he does—a simple trip to the post office, a visit to the Co-op. He might as well announce his schedule from the pulpit, the crowds could hardly be larger. People stand waiting for him on his way home. If he catches up to someone on his bicycle he stops and chats. Every cottage asks him to look in as he passes. The church is one and the priest is one, but he ought to be eight people, so there’d be something left over for his wife.

Smiling, he tells her it will be like this only briefly, as long as he has the novelty of newness. Now, after the long winter, they’re eager for new people, but it will be different when summer comes. Then they’ll start with the hay, the children who work in Sweden will be coming home, and there will be sailboat visitors and summer guests. In August, they’ll start on the autumn fishing. They’ll be busy. This is only a honeymoon, the workaday world will soon begin.

The pastor’s wife had no honeymoon. They got married during the Continuation War, at the Helléns’. That evening they were driven by horse carriage to the school where she was substituting. In the morning, she went down to her schoolroom while he studied exegetics in the teacher’s quarters. This is the way she usually describes the unromantic beginning of her married life, concealing the fact that there were also oceans of shyness, tenderness, and bliss.

As a result, she doesn’t really like it that he can compare his feelings for the Örland congregation with love and marriage. Of course she ought to be pleased at his lively interest and strong feelings. She can’t admit even to herself that she wants those feelings reserved for herself alone. It’s obviously a good thing that he’s put himself on such a solid footing with the congregation right from the outset. Naturally she’s proud of his ability to capture people’s affection. She notes proudly that he’s just as good at making friends as his father ever was, Leonard the famous chatterbox. But in contrast to him, Petter has substance and an unaffected manner that goes straight to people’s hearts.

Here on the Örlands they can work side by side. His salary is meagre, so their little farm is of the greatest importance if they’re to pay off his student debts and buy a boat and a horse. Much of it is in a sorry state, but it also has great potential. They can enlarge the kitchen garden, dig up a new potato patch, and clear bushes and undergrowth for an extra fairly good-sized hay meadow. They will also have to build a new fence and clean out and rebuild the cow barn. By next year, the whole place will look very different.

The priest is interested in farming, his wife is an expert. She is already looking ahead to the end of the summer when she will be leading two bountiful cows and a heifer into a freshly limed barn with a loft full of fragrant, nourishing hay. They’re going to get a household pig and three hens. They need to get some seed potatoes as soon as possible, although Petter says that no one in the villages would ever think of planting potatoes when the ground is still so cold. They do it closer to midsummer. “Not here!” says Mona, who has already dug a couple of furrows in the kitchen garden and planted parsley, dill, radishes, lettuce, and carrots. Onions and beets, peas and beans will follow as soon as the soil is a bit warmer. And she hasn’t forgotten flowers. She’s brought seeds for columbines, daisies, and marigolds, and she can dig up some sod with cowslips and wild pansies from the cow pasture and transplant them to her flowerbed. Later in the summer, she can collect all sorts of seeds from the churchyard and set out tulip and narcissus bulbs in the autumn. As early as next year, everything will be more the way she imagines it—blazing flowerbeds, a well-tended vegetable garden. If the pastor is to be a model for the community, then the parsonage should be one too, and the pastor’s wife goes to work with confidence.

They work for their common future, and Mona thinks that when they’re old they’ll be able to look around and agree that these hardworking years were the best of their lives. They will then be old and weak and lack the urgency and the briskness of youth. Now they are young and healthy and can deal with anything. Even if it seems overwhelming, there is little they can’t accomplish—and they have time.

Chapter Seven

He says it’s fun to be on the move and happily jumps aboard and comes with me to visit the priest at Mellom, his closest colleague. The engine thumps along and we stand and talk while he looks around and asks me to repeat the names of the islands in the order we pass them, because that will be useful to know when he gets his own motorboat and can make the trip under his own power.

He’s already good friends with Brage Söderberg and is very impressed with what he knows. “You’ve got to have unbelievable concentration if you’re going to make it through the islands in fog and darkness the way Brage does, using only a clock and a compass, and be certain that you’re exactly where you’ve reckoned you ought to be. That’s what I call competence. It’s almost uncanny. Of course you have to have grown up out here.”

“Yes, you only learn that from experience.”

“But not from experience alone. It takes a special focus, I think. I’m sure you’ll agree that not everyone can learn to do it. You can live your whole life out here without the slightest idea of how long it takes between islands at whatever speed you’re travelling.”

“A lot of people are good at that. Not many as good as Brage.”

“I’d go anywhere with him. And with you, too. I hear you’ve pretty much seen it all.”

“Well, I’ve seen a bit. But to tell you the truth, before I go out I can see how it’s going to be. When the bays are frozen, for example, I see where the ice is rotten and where the currents are running. I’ve never fallen through the ice, not yet. Because I go where I’ve seen the ice will hold, and I come home all in one piece.”

He sounds, how should I put it, reverential. “You mean you know these parts so well you can see the tricky spots ahead of you?”

“That, too. But also that I can see how it’s going to be.”

“Do you have what they call second sight?”

“Yes, nearly everyone does in my family. There’s nothing special about it. You see what’s going to happen. You can’t change it. I knew my old lady was going to die. Signs and warnings everywhere, but nothing I could do anything about. When I’m going out on the water it’s a little different. Then it’s more active, like a collaboration. I keep my eyes open and I’m told how things are. Then it’s up to me if I pay attention to what I’ve seen or just do what I want.”

Reverence again. “You mean it’s like a higher guidance? Like a guardian angel?”

“Yes, you could say that, yes. I don’t doubt there are guardian angels. But I can tell you that there are powers out here that were old when Jesus was young.”

“How do you mean?” he asks. Not the way you ask in order to keep the conversation going but because he wants to know. We can both see out, so it’s perfectly natural that we don’t need to look at each other, and the watches are long out here so you don’t have to worry that you’ll run out of time.

“I see it like this, that when Jesus was young and out on the Sea of Galilee, there were powers out on the lake that were ancient. The people who’d grown up there knew about them and had run into them in certain situations. Jesus was an outsider. When he saw where his disciples should cast their nets, he thought it came from God, but it was from them, out on the lake. They realized that this man was something special, and they let him see. And he was the sort of man who saw. And who do you think it was who let him walk on water? It wasn’t God.”

The priest stares straight ahead. The bay is as smooth as glass, and the thumping of the engine echoes between the islands. “Have you ever felt their presence?”

“We all did, back in the days when we sailed. Back then, you couldn’t use your engine to outrun the weather, you had to keep your eyes and ears open. The whole world was full of signs. They told you when you should run for home before the storm caught you. They showed you where the fish were. They woke you up so you didn’t oversleep. They were there all the time, but you had to interpret them and understand them.”

“Have you seen them, ever?”

“Yes indeed. Old codgers dressed in hides who stand up on land and signal you to make it home as fast as you can. They warn you about storms. At first you think it’s some old guy from some other village, but when you sail around the island you don’t see a boat anywhere, and the old man has vanished so completely that you think you dreamed it. Nodded off and dreamed it. But several times I put the helm hard over and sailed for home leaving my herring nets to their fate, and every time the seas nearly swamped me before I was back in the lea of my own island.”

The priest looks deep in thought about something, but I go on. “It often seems to me that the ones you can see, they’re among the very youngest. They’re like human beings, and they know what it’s like to be unprotected on the sea when there’s a storm lurking. They know how we live, and they help us. There you’ve got your guardian angels, almost. But the much older ones, they’re more difficult. They don’t understand you, because they’ve been in their world such a long time that they don’t really know what it’s like to be human any more. They’re curious, and you can tell they’re all around you, as if they’d really like to know what it would be like to be in your shoes, but they don’t always understand that you’re about to get yourself in trouble. Sometimes they do nothing, although they could have reached out a hand and saved your life.

“I remember one time when I was out with my herring boat at night. It wasn’t exactly a storm, but there was a heavy sea. Pulling and sucking like mad. I wasn’t worried because my motor was running like a sewing machine, and I was keeping a good distance from those steep cliffs on Klobbar. But there was a terrible power in the waves, and even though I was steering seawards I was being drawn in steadily towards the land. It was pitch-black, but I could hear the way we were getting sucked closer and closer, that horrible gulping sound from the cliffs and the short rattling echo of the motor. I could feel in my gut how the cliffs were pulling me in, in spite of my steering away at full speed.

“The whole time, I felt there was someone right behind me. Curious as hell, the way they are when something’s up, as if he thought it would be interesting to see what happened when we were driven onto the rocks. You can’t talk to them, because I think they come from a time when they didn’t talk like us. They don’t understand what you say, so you have to get them to respond on some other level. I was thinking so feverishly that it wasn’t just language but a cry so primitive that anything could understand it, ‘Now you’ve got to help me to get round that point!’

“Then I could feel how he gave me a push so the boat picked up speed and we made it around Klobbar by a hair and out into open water. ‘Praise and glory!’ I said, but I don’t think they understand stuff like that. The next time I passed that way, in full daylight, I went ashore and put half a loaf of bread on the rocks. I’ve learned from experience that there’s nothing they’re as wild about as bread. The smell of bread is the best thing they know, because it reminds them of something they once loved dearly. That’s what I believe. There’s nothing they like better than bread, and if you want to stay in their good graces, then leave some buttered bread behind when you sit and eat your lunch on some skerry.”

The priest mumbles something about gulls and terns. “Of course,” I say. “Naturally they take those shapes, you can understand that. It’s like in dreams when white birds hover like a cloud above swarms of herring. When they show us where to fish, they take the form of white birds.”

“I don’t know what to say,” the priest says, but I like quite a bit what he nevertheless does say. “What you’re saying is incredibly interesting. You and Brage are the most skilful, most competent boatmen I know. The only conclusion I can draw is that there’s another kind of wisdom than the one we learn about in school and at the university. Call it another kind of sensitivity if you like. Anyway. I respect it and esteem it.”

“I know that a lot of people call it superstition,” I say, gently.

“Not I,” he says. “But all that was a lot for a fairly green priest to swallow. Some time I’d like to continue this discussion, but right now I’m most interested in how you’re going to navigate in to Mellom. The channel goes between two islands that look like just one. Tricky!”

From one world to another. Handshake with the postal-boat skipper, quickly up onto the dock at Mellom, a smiling face for the Mellom priest, who has come down to meet him. A rare chance for a meeting with a colleague, a great joy!

Fredrik Berg is only a few years older than Petter Kummel, but he’s had his pastorate for two years and is wise and disillusioned. Soon enough, this young pastor will wake up to his congregation’s less attractive sides. There will be feuds, discord, obstinate silences, letters to the newspaper, ugly messages to the diocese. Just wait. But at the same time he can’t help finding Petter’s enthusiasm infectious, as is the friendship he immediately offers. “I was hoping for that!” Petter says when Fredrik, the older of the two, suggests that they should call each other by their first names, even though they’ve never met before. Fredrik studied theology in Åbo and Petter was at the University of Helsingfors. Nevertheless they have more in common with each other than with anyone else in the archipelago—two young priests strolling from the dock to the parsonage in lively conversation.

They are both nature lovers, it turns out. The beauty of nature makes up for a lot, Fredrik acknowledges, and Petter makes comparisons. The smell is different because of the pines on Mellom; there are no conifers out on the Örlands. For a moment, the scent of pines and their deep green reflection on the water make him nostalgic for the security of the inner archipelago, but at the same time he’s as proud as a child of how wild and salty and windswept the Örlands are. Never green reflections on the water, only dark grey-blue and silver and ash grey, or a bright blue glassy surface like today. “I’ll never tire of that. I’m thinking of staying on the Örlands my whole life,” he declares.

Fredrik Berg has a penchant for sweet-and-sour smiles, but he can’t quite pull one off as he says to his new friend, very cheerfully, “Just wait till autumn. And winter.”

“Oh I will!” Petter says. “I’m looking forward to it!”

They saunter towards the parsonage, two men at leisure, in no hurry, but so young that even a slow walk covers a lot of ground. Soon they’re walking up the parsonage steps. Fredrik looks a little uncomfortable when his wife comes out the door. She is nervously eager to make a good impression and fears she has already failed. “Welcome,” she says. “Did you have a good trip?”

That stops him for a moment as he thinks back. “A good trip? Well, yes, I suppose so. Anything can happen out here. You go out on a little boat trip and get a lecture on pre-Christian thought into the bargain. Post-Anton is unbelievable.” He shakes his head. “Excuse me, that isn’t what we were going to talk about.”

“They’re so fantastically superstitious out here, they all believe in ghosts. There’s hardly a one would dare walk past the churchyard after dark. But now come in, both of you, and sit down at the table. Come in, come in!”

She waves them into the dining room and goes into the kitchen herself. A child peers at them from the stairs, another from behind a door. A third is screaming from the bedroom. The table is set, and Mrs Berg comes in with potatoes and boiled carrots, then comes back with a baked pike, resting golden and beautiful in its own juice. Petter looks at his colleague with interest. “Do you fish?”

“With the greatest pleasure. I caught this one on a spinner. But mostly I fish with nets. I wasn’t raised on it, so I’ve had to learn by experience. Fortunately, there were people happy to teach us when we first came. What about you?”

“Yes, indeed. Papa was from Åland and I’ve been laying nets with him since I was six. And my brothers and I pulled spinners so fast in a rowboat that everyone thought we had a motor. When we got here there were some nets in the boathouse that we’ll set out when we’ve got the time. Big holes. If my highly esteemed predecessor had any that were better, I believe he must have sold them.”

Fredrik laughs heartily at that. “I think you’ve got his number. Our friend Skog never misses a bet. Did he manage to sell you his generator?”

“My uncle Richard bought it at the auction. You mean it doesn’t …?”

“Nope.”

“Good money down the drain! Oh my. There are so many holes I could have mended with that money.”

Fredrik is just glad it didn’t happen to him. In a good mood, he calls in the two self-propelled children and has them say hello to Pastor Kummel. They look at him critically, one curtseys and the other bows. Petter is fond of children and talks to them and asks questions, they twist and writhe and let Mama answer. She urges them to eat before the food gets cold. Petter is hungry, and he can’t praise too highly the island custom of stuffing hot food down the craw of anyone who’s come a great distance. “And this is delicious! Thank you so much for your hospitality.” He looks around discreetly for the salt, but they do things differently here.

There are many conventions to follow, many questions they must ask him, and much for him to report. How they’re getting along, if Mona likes the place, about their little girl and whether she tolerates the constant breeze on the island without getting ill. About their impression of the congregation. “Old scoundrels and cocky youngsters,” Fredrik Berg sums them up. “How are things going?”

Petter, earnestly: “I don’t know what to say,” and then, as if he’d been awarded first prize, “But what a parish! What a joy to work with such people.”

Fredrik is about to say, “Just you wait!” but controls himself. “Well, yes. But I was thinking of the vestry and the parish council.”

“Excellent. Though the organist tells me that the divisions in the community are serious. That’s not really news. All parishes have factions. I think I won’t let on that I know anything but just play it by ear from case to case.”

“Good luck with that,” says the Mellom priest, who decides to wait with his examples until the two of them are alone. The meal is being cleared away, it looks to be a beautiful day outdoors, and both men long to go out. Kummel’s thoughts are already racing as he thanks his hostess. They make their escape with ease, leaving Mrs Berg with her pots and pans. She looks the way Petter recalls that his mother often looked, and fleetingly he wonders if Mona will come to look that way. But Mona’s industrious and strong and a completely different sort of woman!

To begin with they walk with their hands behind their backs, but gradually they loosen up and Petter actually begins to gesture a bit with his arms. “A whole world!” he says. “There’s no branch of science, no academic area that couldn’t find subject matter in such a place. Oddly enough, I’ve grown much more interested in my studies out here than I ever was at the University.”

He observes the plant life with interest, subtly different from that on the Örlands. Pines predominate, even on the south side facing the open sea and the Örlands. Out there the granite is bare, with stripes and grooves from the ice age, great boulders that tumbled from the glaciers and have worn depressions in the granite where they’ve lain for thousands of years. The two men move from botany to geology, an area both know something about. The words “weathering” and “gneiss” are mentioned, and Petter has already learned that parts of Paris were built with granite from the Örlands. Fredrik grows more relaxed the farther they get from the village, even though he did exchange pleasantries with a couple of fishermen they met among the boathouses. But when they’re alone again he says that they’re nice enough face to face, but behind your back they say other things entirely.

Petter thinks about this and says that the important thing for him is that they’re friendly to his face, it creates goodwill and makes all transactions so much easier. “Of course I realize that there will be occasional confrontations, but then it’s good to remember that their faces are normally so friendly. For the time being, until I’ve got a clear picture of the battle lines, I’m going to assume that all the friendliness is genuine.” He stops and adds, abashedly, “Call me naive if you like, but I really believe it is. The same way my friendliness is genuine. What would I have to gain by ingratiating myself with a lot of grinning?”

“Quite a bit,” Fredrik thinks, but he says, “It’s not a question of their ingratiating themselves. It’s more about a frightening desire to question. To object. Delay. Resist. Obstruct. Stall. Conspire. Betray. Deny. As if all of that was so much fun that it’s impossible to resist—practically the meaning of existence. Even the ones you’ve come to know as wise, temperate, experienced, fair-minded people. Even them.”

They stand looking out to sea, in the general direction of Petter’s islands to the south, not visible now but sometimes appearing above the horizon like a mirage on a hot summer day. He struggles with the thought that Fredrik wants to spoil his devotion to his congregation, which in Petter’s case includes even their weaknesses. It also occurs to him that Fredrik’s remarks are not general observations but rather the result of personal disappointment, maybe even bitterness. He smiles. “It sounds like you speak from experience.”

In the face of such sunniness, the priest of Mellom melts once again. He smiles back and suggests that they find somewhere pleasant to sit down—out of the wind, with a good view and a nice rock ledge to sit on.

And then he says, “As you’ve certainly noticed, we’re alone out here. No fatherly dean to ask for advice. We have the theological authority, although we’re young and green, whereas the old men are polished politicians to a man. You can’t let them see you’re inexperienced. You’re the one who can read canon law. You’re the one who understands the instructions from the cathedral chapter. You’re the one responsible for seeing that the rules and decrees are followed. If you show any uncertainty, they’re like wolves. And if you give as good as you get, then suddenly they present a united front.”

Petter waits. It’s about Fredrik’s parsonage. In winter so cold it’s almost uninhabitable. The curtains blow right out into the room. The rag rugs ripple in the draft through the floor. Raspberry bushes are forcing their way between the floorboards in the parlour. The tile stoves have been condemned, the brickwork is cracked. The water buckets are covered with ice in the mornings. The children would be better off in an igloo, which would keep them warmer even in the Arctic. But the crux of the matter is this: the decision was made to build a new parsonage back in his predecessor’s days. The place was chosen, and the plans were drawn. The church’s Central Fund came through with its usual contribution. The minutes of the parish committee show a decision to provide the congregation’s share in the form of lumber and labour. But the execution of this decision is a joke! Nothing has been done. Nothing is being done. And because the decision’s been made to build a new parsonage, no repairs can be made to the old one. Every meeting of the committee is a battle. Every meeting ends with postponement. If he weren’t their opponent, he’d be impressed by their delaying tactics. Such calculated infamy! Such insinuations! The members of the congregation have to pay for their own labour and materials when they build a house, but the priest wants to put others to work so he can lounge about in the finest house on the island.

“It’s not about me!” he says. “I mean, it’s not my house they’re going to build, it’s the property of the parish and it will benefit every priest who comes here. They refuse to see that.”

“Goodness!” says Petter. “I haven’t even given a thought to next winter. We’re going to have a draughty time of it ourselves.”

“A decision has been made. It’s right there in the minutes. There are letters from the church’s Central Fund. It’s my official duty to see that a new parsonage is built. I’m neglecting my duty if nothing happens. I mean to stay here until the new parsonage is almost finished, then we’re going to move. They’ll realize it wasn’t for my own sake I pushed the project through.”

Petter greatly admires all this determination. “Moving is the last thing I have in mind,” he says. “I’m only afraid that someone else will go after the post before I’ve taken my exams and can apply to be permanent vicar myself.”

That sends Fredrik Berg into gales of laughter. “And who would that be? They haven’t had anything but temporary pastors out there since I don’t when.”

“But there must be other people like me,” Petter says. “I won’t rest easy until I’ve got the paper in my hand. But how I’m going to have time to study with everything we have going on is more than I can imagine. I’m only one person, although I need to be at least two.”

Fredrik Berg is also studying for his pastoral examination— not, however, so he can stay but so that he can find a post somewhere else. They agree that the paper is a good thing to have, because it gives them more room to manoeuvre. But they also agree that it’s a real nuisance having to prepare for yet one more examination, and pull together a dissertation, while at the same time struggling on as a lonely priest in a remote parish where you can only laugh hollowly at the thought of finding textbooks in the local library. Those books are going to cost a pretty penny, but the lack of time is even worse.

“Most of all, the lack of blocks of uninterrupted time,” Petter expands on the theme. “Of course I’m used to that, but somehow I thought it would be different when you controlled your own time. How dumb can you get?”

Fredrik Berg sounds resigned. “You said you had only one child so far. We have three. And we’re careful not to have more. I never thought, either, that life could be so stressful. Wife and kids is the most natural thing in the world, I thought. Human beings have lived in families for thousands of years, you think the routine is built in. I simply couldn’t imagine how chaotic it would be.”

Petter laughs, what else can he do?

Fredrik Berg looks happy, too, but he means what he says. Petter has a moment of terror—what if the demands on his time never lessen but only increase? How will he deal with it? But on the other hand, it’s different with Mona and Sanna. There’s no one quite like Mona. And he couldn’t live without Sanna. There’s no chaos with them. An oasis. Life. Quickly he returns to the subject of the pastoral examinations, picks up the discussion of the heavy volumes they have to plough through, the dissertation topics they’re considering.

“It frightens me,” Petter says, “that out here, theology seems less relevant than a lot of other academic subjects.” Fredrik agrees. Amazingly little of what they studied is of any use to them in real life. For their work as pastors, they should instead have studied finance and had someone really good teach them how to manage with minimal resources.

“Like Mona,” says Petter with a full heart. “She studied home economics and keeps books that take my breath away. When it comes time to discuss the annual budget in the vestry, I’m going to ask her for advice. And of course I’ll look at what they’ve done before.”

“They’ll like that,” Fredrik says. “If you try anything new, your life won’t be worth living.”

“Yes, I know,” Petter says. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m no reactionary, but in this case I really don’t think it’s necessarily an improvement to replace customs that have evolved over a long time and worked out their kinks with new ones, just because they’re modern and up-to-date.” He looks a little embarrassed and goes on. “Take the liturgy, for example. It’s taken a thousand years to polish it, and I doubt I could come up with something better in an afternoon.”

He gives Fredrik a friendly little box on the shoulder—just kidding. But at the same time, he thinks fleetingly of Post-Anton and it occurs to him that the customs on the Örlands may date back further than he can imagine and that if he violates them he will be defying not only the living but also people long since dead. “I’m glad I’ve got my organist,” he says. “He’s a wise man, very experienced, very diplomatic. He’d do very well wherever he was. It’s really a tremendous waste of talent that people as strikingly intelligent as many of the people are out here get no education beyond elementary school.”

A shadow passes across Fredrik’s profile. “Like the war,” he says. Lightly, but with feeling.

Petter draws a quick breath. Is it possible that Fredrik thinks the way he does? “I’m glad you brought it up!” he bursts out. “For years I’ve been thinking about all the ones who never got a chance. Full to bursting with talent and special knowledge. Full of hopes and expectations. Shot, maimed. Tragic on the personal level, a terrible waste for the nation economically.” He pauses, cautiously. “I suppose you were in it?”

“Yes. As a chaplain. I was ordained just in time for the outbreak of the Continuation War. I happen to know that you were a chaplain as well.”

“Only at the very end, when the war was already over, and even then only with the troops on Åland. A real sinecure, compared with what you fellows went through.” He feels compelled to add a few words about his illness as an explanation. “I had a medical exemption during the war. I had TB when I was in middle school and it was there in my papers. So I was in the Home Guard and the food supply commission and the fire brigade instead. I’m sure it saved my life. I managed to finish my studies, with delays, of course, and I was ordained in 1943. I often had a bad conscience because I thought Hebrew and exegesis were so boring, but of course a lot of men at the front would have given anything to be in my shoes.”

Fredrik looks at him with sympathy. He’s been feeling a slight superiority simply because Petter was never at the front. That experience gives you a sharpness and a vigilance that Petter lacks. “As for me, I was in Eastern Karelia first, then on the Isthmus. I can tell you, it tests your faith. And as if you weren’t wrestling with your own doubts, the boys see to it that you’re really forced to confront your beliefs. For example, I led prayers with the ones who wanted to pray before going out on patrol, and of course I prayed for success in their work and asked God to send them back in one piece. Immediately someone shouted, ‘What kind of a priest are you who doesn’t pray for our enemies and those who persecute us?’” Fredrik pauses for effect, and Petter obliges.

“What did you say?”

“I said he was right to put his finger on one of the most important points in Christianity, a fundamental principle that we find difficult in times of war and calamity when our existence is under threat from an enemy pursuing an unjust cause. Maybe our Lord didn’t mean that we should pray for our enemies’ success but that we should think about their welfare and pray that their hearts might be enlightened so that they cease to make war against us and persecute us and agree to a just peace.”

“Well said,” Petter says.

“Some of them laughed and a couple of guys from Österbotten shouted ‘Amen!’, but there was one man in real distress who said, ‘Many of the Russians we’re shooting at are here because they have to be, not because they want to attack us.’ ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘That’s why we put our cause in God’s hands. It’s he who can see the whole picture. We’ve been put here to do our duty as soldiers. And as soldiers, we have every right to pray for help in doing our duty successfully. If we can also pray for our enemies’ enlightenment and conversion, so much the better.’”

He drops his slightly preachy tone and goes on. “I guess you never struggle harder with your conscience than you do in a war. Do the things we’ve been taught really hold up? What do we actually know about God’s plan for the human race? How far does our loyalty to the state go? For me, it was terribly ominous to cross the old border during our advance in 1941. Nevertheless, I had to publicly thank God for our progress. I was appalled by what the Germans were doing down in Europe, but I still had to pray for our comrades in arms. Then in 1943, I was convinced that we had to make peace in order to save whatever could still be saved. But as a chaplain I was nevertheless required to do my best to instil courage and optimism in boys being sent straight to their deaths by the men commanding the army, who could see everything was going to hell but still didn’t have the guts to start negotiations.”

The genial Fredrik Berg has set his jaw and doesn’t look at Petter. His expression says it doesn’t matter to him in the least what Petter thinks. But Petter has straightened up and seen a community of thought. “You mean you sympathized with the peace opposition? So did I.” They turn and stare at each other with real pleasure. What good luck that they’ve been placed in adjacent parishes! Two young priests with such similar values! They talk at length and from the heart about the war and the terrible choices Finland faced, and about their own agony. It is almost unbelievable that now, after all of that, they sit and speak openly in a free country, when things could have turned out so very much worse! They talk about the everyday happiness of living in peace, with young families and realistic hopes that their lives will get much better.

As regards the larger situation of the church, they cannot avoid talking about the increasing secularization and godlessness and, almost with nostalgia, about the powerful trust in God that people felt during the war—so quickly pushed aside in the material strivings that have followed it. But here, alone together and in almost identical circumstances, they can put such thoughts to the side and speak instead of the pleasures of peace and the joy of believing in the future.

The advantage of being an island priest is that you control your own time and can make up neglected duties later. Petter will return to the Örlands with Post-Anton that evening, so they have the whole day to themselves. The early summer weather is beautiful. They take a turn to the parsonage and have afternoon coffee, then out again and have time to wander across all of Mellom while they continue their conversation and lay the basis of a lasting friendship. When they were in school, Fredrik would have been an older boy with the right to snub and make fun of a little kid like Petter. But childhood comes to an end. As adults, they can be equals, share experiences, discuss career, family, life, books, open themselves without being mocked or isolated.

Perhaps Fredrik is not always so pleasant and full of smiles. When they stop by the parsonage, his wife says, “It’s nice to see that Fredrik’s found a friend and colleague he can talk to.”

“And that I have a colleague like the priest at Mellom!” says Petter warmly. “I feel much better knowing we can talk on the phone any time we like. I think I’m going to need that.”

“It’s so far to the dean that we’ll just have to get along without him. So here and now let’s create our own Archipelago Deanery. We’ll confer and make our own decisions. What do you say?”

“Brilliant!” Petter agrees. “We’re going to have to elect you dean for the time being—until I’ve grown into my clothes a bit and can run against you.”

They laugh, two rogues who have found a means of diversion, and Fredrik’s wife looks a bit less nervous, as if she knows that she won’t be criticized when Petter has gone. Now the two men go out for another walk and manage to cover the Mellom pastor’s entire domain and all its villages and harbours, woods, hills, and beaches. All the same, not as pretty as the Örlands, Petter thinks, with considerable secret pleasure. He delivers his thank-yous with warmth and sincerity, asks the children to forgive him for monopolizing their father all day, assures Mrs Berg that he will long remember her hospitality with deep gratitude. It’s hard to know when Post-Anton will appear, but he means to go down to the dock and read the newspaper until the boat arrives, for it’s now high time for life in the parsonage to return to normal!

Fredrik would like to go with him to the dock and sit there all night if it came to that, but he has office work to do, and when he’s at home it’s his job to read the children their bedtime stories. “Now don’t forget that we’re going to stay in touch,” he admonishes Petter almost anxiously.

Giddy from all this friendship, Petter wanders down to the steamboat dock. It’s already getting colder, and naturally he forgot his sweater on the boat. Before sitting down in the lea of a boathouse wall, still warm from the sun, he stands looking out to sea, white as ice in the failing light. There are streaks of gold, violet and black in the sky, and they draw grooves of darkness and gold across the smooth surface of the water. It is utterly quiet, if by silence we mean the absence of human activity. Far out, there are strings of eiders clucking and ahoohing. As if the entire space before him was actually populated by powers and spirits alongside those that are visible.

Post-Anton comes precisely when he sees in his mind’s eye that the priest, whose sweater is lying on the hatch cover, has begun to shiver and wrapped a newspaper around his shoulders. Petter hears the thumping of the diesel for quite a long time but thinks it’s a larger boat farther out. He stands up to look, and it is Anton, now with passengers on the boat and a lot of freight that he’s picked up in Degerby for the Co-op. The passengers have climbed down from the Stockholm boat in the Degerby roads and are on their way home to the Örlands after spending all winter in Sweden. They are talking and laughing, full of anticipation, and the priest is finally a minor figure in the crowd. No chance to continue this morning’s conversation with Anton, and that may be just as well. On thinking it over, he realizes that it dealt with experiences for which he has not quite got the words.

Chapter Eight

THE PASSENGERS IN POST-ANTON’S BOAT are a sign that the summer season has begun. The priest is right that his congregation now has other things to think about. By comparison with the newcomers, he is already naturalized, a familiar figure on his bicycle and in the pulpit. Everyone greets him heartily, but conversations are brief. The hay is what everyone thinks about now, hoping they’ll get enough rain to keep the grass from burning up where it stands and that it will then stop raining so they can get it in before it mildews and rots. They present their wishes clearly, and of course their priest knows enough to stand in the pulpit and pray for good weather and the growth of the soil.

The crops are of great interest at the parsonage as well. The pastor’s wife is especially attentive. She grasps things quickly and is aware that out here you have to fight for every blade of grass if your cows and sheep are going to have enough fodder to get them through the winter and spring. For the moment, her crew of animals is doing well. Goody has produced a heifer that they mean to keep, and Apple has had a bull calf that they’ll fatten over the summer and slaughter in the autumn—cash in hand plus a little meat. After the calving, the milk and butter situation is brighter, and Mona cranks the separator happily, saves the cream and churns it while the family drinks buttermilk and skimmed milk and soured milk. She looks forward to the haying, a clean, fresh outdoor labour at the prettiest time of summer. She and Petter working side by side to produce visible and lasting results. It smells good, and it is very satisfying to fill the barn with good, fresh hay while threatening rain clouds line up in a row.

It is always a mistake to anticipate pleasure, because naturally she and Petter are not left to work in peace. Even before midsummer, the first small sailboats arrive from Helsingfors. During his school years, Petter looked on people with the flag of the Nyland Yacht Club on their boats as indescribable snobs and bullies, but when they glide in to the church dock to tie up and jump ashore in their white sailing trousers, they are pleasant and talkative and full of admiration for the beauty of the journey and of the Örlands. Of course they are welcome to tie up at the church dock, it’s a pleasure to have them! And yes indeed I’ll show you where the well is. They invite him for coffee in the cockpit and are neither scornful nor pitying when he turns down the cognac. Together, they celebrate the fact that they can finally move about freely and sail among the islands again. While they’re talking, another boat sails into their little bay, and they call from one to the other. The new arrivals sit on the edge of the dock and are given a mooring brandy. Lovingly they look at their boats and trade survival stories—how close the boats came to being destroyed in some bombardment, how sadly leaky and corroded they were when they could finally begin to restore them, the sails mere mouldy rags. How hard it was to get hold of what they needed. Who’d have believed you’d have to buy linseed oil and varnish and canvas on the black market? They exchange the names of dealers and contractors while they caress the railings and admire the shiny hulls, red as gold in the evening sun.

A couple of them even go to church on Sunday and sit there benevolently, like white men among the natives. After the service, they talk with the pastor about the local sights, and before he knows what’s happening he has agreed to give a guided tour after lunch. True, he and his wife usually rest for a while on Sunday afternoons, the only day of the week they have the chance, but he can make an exception. They will enjoy themselves, he assures them. “I rarely have time to get away, and I’m as eager as you are to see everything!”

It really is a great pleasure to show them around. The distances are not as small as people tend to believe when the see the Örlands as a collection of fly specks on the map. It takes half a day to see Church Isle and the hills west of it with their stone labyrinth and ancient hiding places from pirates and Russians, their newly excavated bronze-age settlement and, as a contrast, their recent artillery emplacements blasted out of solid rock for the Continuation War. Also the greatest sight of all in the eyes of the Örlanders—the little lake in its crater of grey granite that all visitors must be dragged out to see. “All fresh water, all the way down!” the Örlanders explain proudly, blind to the whole great sea which lies heaving all around them, even in the calmest summer weather, and which is the source of the sailboat people’s enthusiasm. Someone is interested in plants, so they stop to botanize. Yes, indeed, there are a number of odd species to be discovered among the stones! Others look at birds. Someone else recalls the proud history of the Örlands during Prohibition. My goodness, yes! They gaze meaningfully at a couple of the larger houses in the west villages, which can be seen from the hill, and they chuckle. Several stories suitable for the ears of a pastor make the rounds, about smuggled liquor and restaurants in Helsingfors.

The weather is wonderful, and it’s a fantastic luxury to be free from work and out of doors in pleasant company. Looking at the time, he draws a deep breath and declines the offer of an evening snack, says goodbye and hurries home. He can’t understand how it’s grown so late, and he appears at the parsonage feeling guilty. “Forgive me, I had no idea it would take so long. Has anyone called?”

Mona can put up with the sailboats. It’s fun for Petter to socialize with people from Helsingfors, and they’re pleasant enough and, on the whole, take care of themselves, stay on their boats, in cabins where they can’t stand up straight, sleep in bunks where they can’t even sit up, and live on canned goods they’ve brought with them and on fish and bread they buy in the villages. But all the relatives and friends who come to visit are another thing entirely.

It’s no exaggeration to call it an invasion. They come like outright raiding parties, and primarily of course it’s Petter’s rabble that can’t stay away. Petter stands on the steamboat dock and receives them with a warm smile and a hearty welcome, while he timidly wishes there was a custom that required parents to keep their distance during the first few years of a child’s marriage. For his part, he takes boyish delight in showing them his church and all the villages and people in his parish, his cows and sheep, his sailing skiff and his nets, but he is keenly aware that Mona is not happy, although she controls herself. “Two weeks!” she cries. What did she expect? That they’d make that long journey merely to turn right around and head back?

“You know they’re unpretentious, don’t ask for much. They want to get to know Sanna and see how we’re getting along. Mama will be happy to help with the housework if you’ll let her.”

Mona snorts. As if she’d want to have her mother-in-law pottering around in her kitchen! She cleans frenetically before they arrive, sure that the old lady will criticize and complain about everything that’s not absolutely perfect. She’ll inspect and examine and scrutinize. Nothing Mona does will be good enough for her eldest, idealized son. Mona is angry, angry, angry before they come, takes Sanna by the arm, hard, “Not a peep!”, snaps at Petter when he comes in with water buckets so full they splash over the sides, lies awake at night foaming and steaming. When he’s fallen asleep, she lies awake repeating quietly to herself, “And here I’m supposed to be their servant and cook their meals and take care of them from morning to night. Not a moment’s peace all day long while you can at least take a rest now and then and have a really good time as their guide in this beautiful weather! And I slave on, have the coffee poured and the meals ready whenever it pleases them to saunter in. All you have to do is sit down at the table. Cook, maid, hired girl all in one, but their chamberpots they can carry out themselves!”

And so on. Her exhaustion black as night. But she also has a motor that shoves her out of bed when the alarm clock rings and it’s time to go out to the cows, which have all of Church Isle for a pasture but usually come when she calls. “Come bossy, bossy! Come!” Apple first, the lead cow, ploughing her way through the bushes under protest, gentle Goody in her wake. As a teacher, you can’t have favourites, but with cattle it’s allowed. Gentle Goody following temperamental Apple because it’s her sweet nature.

Cows calm and comfort people, or anyway they do Mona. She milks them promptly, feeling almost happy, talking to them a little when no one can hear. But she hurries—strains the milk, carries the can to the well, peels off her dairy smock on the steps, quickly in through the door. Petter has built a fire in the stove. Sanna is up, they’re eating breakfast. Happy, at this stage. Thank God they’ll be arriving by cargo boat this afternoon, not in the middle of the night. But they will soon have that experience too, for who arrives in the following wave but Petter’s brother Frej and his wife Ingrid. Then a long series of Petter’s cousins, and when they’ve all been placed, yet another one shows up unannounced: “I figured I’d surely be able to find a room in the village in case you have no space for me.”

“Church Bay Inn”, it should say on the door. “Free food and lodging, first-rate service” in smaller letters underneath.

In a family, there’s always something. The worthy Kummels show only a cursory interest in their granddaughter and in Petter’s domains. He remembers what he got when he was a boy and showed them something he had made—a pat on the head. They’ve other things on their minds. They arrived worn and harried, and both of them take him aside for endless conversations he doesn’t have time for. Petter is twenty-eight years old but has never yet felt free of his parents. Papa has to be kept in good humour, Mama needs help and sympathy. Now that he’s an adult himself, he has to be their marriage counsellor. They’re over sixty—in heaven’s name, why can’t they accept the fact that they’re married and stop having all these crises?

They’ve been belabouring the present problem for years, with all its branches and offshoots. Papa is retired and has gone to ground on Åland with no intention of returning to the schoolhouse on the coast of Finland, which he has come to loathe. Mama stubbornly continues to teach there, despite the fact that she now has the right to retire. He thinks she ought to move to Åland and take care of him. She is hurt that he has abandoned their conjugal home in Finland and allows her to struggle on alone, without his help. Now, when they come out to the Örlands, they haven’t seen one another for nine months, and they are not happy to do so now.

Mama suffers from her famous sense of duty, and both she and Petter know how it will end. But not right away. Not with some kind of smiling resignation. First there must be a great deal of talking, sympathizing, commiserating, soothing noises, and the speaking of quiet words of wisdom. While more and more time passes. Mama is aware that Papa, in frail health and completely impractical, will have a hard time getting through another winter alone. “It was awful,” she says, “to come into the house and see the way it was, as if he’d been living in a lumber camp. Burned food stuck to the frying pan, indescribable rags in the bed, the whole place messy as a den of thieves, soured milk in the pitcher, everything to make me feel as bad as possible. I know I can’t leave him like that for another winter.”

Her certainty makes Petter’s compromise proposal sound almost welcome. “How about this? You live in peace at the school for one more year. Then you can get your pension and move to Åland. If this is a long, hard winter, Papa can live here for six months, let’s say from November to April. The Örlands are still part of Åland, and new faces would make a little change for him. What do you say?”

While Mama is thinking it over, Petter speaks cautiously to Mona, who is surprisingly agreeable. She likes her father-in-law better than her mother-in-law, and why not? The parsonage attracts a lot of visitors, and if father Leonard entertains them, maybe Petter will get a chance to work on his pastoral examination. Papa is immediately keen on the arrangement, always happy to sit down to a good meal. Mama needs to carry on a good deal longer about her duties and about everything she will have to leave behind—relatives, friends and clubs, villages and the landscape itself, Helsingfors with its shops and cultural amenities, but it is clear that she finds the suggestion attractive. Much can happen in a year. Of course she cannot wish that Leonard, sickly, nervous, impractical, might be called to his forefathers, but some great intervention from above is nevertheless not beyond the bounds of possibility, and a year, which has not yet even begun, seems at this stage a satisfying length of time.

With all these complicated negotiations going on, and with all the time-consuming emotions they engender, there is still the hay harvest to plan, in all haste. Mona has been looking forward to it eagerly, under the verger’s supervision. The Holmens, who lease one of the church’s meadows in the western villages and do a couple of days’ work each year in payment, usually get called upon when it’s time to make hay. “Of course they’ll come. They’ve been waiting for this since the day you arrived! It’s always been done this way.” The verger promises to come himself and help with the mowing but is surprised when Petter sticks his head in one evening and suggests the next morning. “This early?” he wonders, almost shocked. “No one starts haying here until sometime in July.”

“The sea level’s dropped and there seems to be a real high pressure on the way. And Mona says we should cut the grass when it’s still juicy and full of nourishment. I count on her completely.”

“Well, maybe,” says the verger doubtfully. “If you’ve got enough grass. Here we let it grow as long as it will get, and even then it’s barely enough.”

When it comes to church customs, the pastor sticks to the local traditions. When it comes to agriculture, he sticks to Mona. The Örlanders are part-time farmers. In season, the fishing is more important to them. Mona is a farmer’s daughter from the grain fields of Nyland. She knows better than anyone on the Örlands when to cut the grass and harvest the crops. For example, her potato tops are plump and ready to blossom when the last of the Örlanders are still planting their last seed potatoes. No one questions her expertise, not even the verger, who is a born traditionalist. On the contrary, he is pleased that there will be no collision with his own haymaking or the Holmens’, since the pastor clearly means to have his cut and into the barn before it’s time for the rest of them to mow.

The pastor’s wife may think that the vicarage’s hay meadows are on the small side, with poor soil, but in fact they have many advantages and lie enviably close together on Church Isle. For the villages in general, hay meadows are spread out all over the map. Farmers have their land in the village, in outlying fields, and on the larger islands. In some cases, fishermen with one or two cows have no meadow at all but have to gather grass around their cottages and out on the islands where the farmers don’t harvest the meagre sedge that grows among the rocks.

Mona gets Petter to sharpen the scythes that evening, and early the next morning the verger arrives and has coffee. Mona goes out to the cows and the men to the meadow, still wet with dew, which is how it should be when the mowing begins. They decide how to proceed. “Best you go in front,” says the pastor politely, but before very long the verger gives up. The pastor works like a mowing machine, long sweeping strokes, a supple back, good stride. During the midday meal—pike and potatoes with white sauce, fruit cream—the pastor explains that he used to work as a summer boy on his uncle’s farm on Åland. Cutting grass is something he’s been doing since he was eleven years old. Naturally he’s developed a certain technique.

Mona is never sunnier than in haying season. It’s the best time in a farmer’s year. The workers need to be kept well fed and in good spirits. But much is done differently on the Örlands. For example, they don’t stack the hay on pikes but let it dry on the ground in long windrows, which are turned in the sun till the grass is dry enough to store. If the weather is good, you take in first-class hay with this method, but if it rains and the hay gets turned too many times, its quality declines dramatically. Mona figures that the farmers on the Örlands have transferred their fishing mentality to farming—it’s all a question of luck and the weather gods. If the fishing goes well, so much the better. Getting in the hay before it’s lost its vigour, well, that’s another piece of good luck.

She looks at the pasture grass, where no one has ever sowed a seed of clover or timothy and thinks that drying pikes would stand quite far apart on these fields. But when they’ve been mowed and she goes out to do the evening milking she is met by a fragrance without compare. “Petter, come here,” she calls. “Bring Sanna!” They stand on the steps and breathe. The smell of the grass is strong and sensual. Every plant gives off its aura and essence, building an atmosphere that awakens waves of longing and desire. Sanna sits perfectly still on Petter’s arm, and he puts his free arm around Mona. “That there is such a thing in the world!” he says. “I’ll put Sanna to bed. Come as soon as you can.”

The next morning they decide to go out with their plant book and identify every plant growing in the meadow, but the telephone rings, and a new flock of sailboaters tumbles in. They’ve sailed all night and are filled with the beauty of the experience. Water, coffee cream, directions to the Co-op, general chatter, it all takes time. Off on errands, but some of the fragrance lingers, reinforced by memory. Every day it changes a bit—more hay, less grass—but what hay! The sea level is still low, the sun shines, there is a light breeze. A dry spell so perfect that Mona ventures out after only two days to start turning the windrows, in the afternoon when the hay on top is completely dry. The windrows are so light and fine that it’s a joy to let the breeze help as she turns them with her rake. At times the windrows seem to turn themselves. She walks beside the verger’s Signe, who works the neighbouring row. It’s not heavy work and they talk as they go, about the animals and their hope that the weather will hold and folks will finish their haymaking well before they start getting ready for the herring fishery. Signe tells her how it used to be, when they all went off to the fishing camps and stayed until well into September. She talks more than she could have in the verger’s company, and before the day is over, the hay is turned and the smell has changed—more barn, less heaven. Both of them are pleased and sweaty. “Almost makes you want to jump in the sea, if it weren’t for all those sailboats,” says the pastor’s wife. But Signe says that you jump in the sea if you want to kill yourself. Otherwise you wash in the sauna!

For the next few days, Mona is deeply nervous. She runs around doing her chores and suddenly stops to look at the sky. This strangely beautiful weather can’t last, it’s only natural for the sea level to rise a bit at the shore, it’s starting to get cooler and there are banks of clouds above the outer skerries. Everyone who came to church on Sunday was astonished that the pastor’s hay was already mown. If it rains on the hay now, everyone will say that they were in too great a hurry. She passionately wants to show them that this is the time to cut grass, not when the hay is overgrown, and with all her might she tries to keep the clouds away. “Stay out there!” she commands them silently. “Don’t you dare come in over these islands!”

The verger, who is her friend and admirer, states with all his authority that the granite is now so warm that the rain will go around it. “Even if it rains at sea, that doesn’t mean it will rain on land.” He is wise and experienced, no nonsense about God’s will. Why would he want it to rain on her hay! She walks down to the meadow one more time to check. If it doesn’t rain, it needs only one more day. At least one, because the humidity is higher now and the hay is drying more slowly. She noticed that with the laundry she hung out.

The pastor’s wife is far too experienced to hope for beginner’s luck, but the pastor is entitled to believe in a miracle. Although a little rain drifts in during the evening and, in mourning, she gives up the hay for lost, there is no great downpour. In the morning there is a damp mist in the air, but no more rain. Towards evening, the sun peeks out, the water recedes a bit from the cliffs, and the breeze freshens and blows away the mist.

Just one day late, they phone for the Holmens and Brage Söderberg’s horse, who comes swimming across the inlet behind Brage’s boat. “A sea horse!” says the pastor. “Now I’ve seen everything!” There is a dilapidated hayrack in the parsonage shed, and Brage, aware of conditions on Church Isle, has brought some harness, and soon they have the sea horse harnessed up and ready. Brage cannot stay, but he can see that his horse is in good hands. The pastor handles it well, and his wife chats easily about all the horses she grew up with. Meanwhile, unnoticed, the Holmens have arrived in their boat and wandered up to the meadow with a pitchfork and a rake. They greet the others warmly, and the pastor is once again charmed by members of his congregation. There is intelligence in these two smiling faces and a lively interest in their clear eyes and in the expressive words from their lips.

It goes so well it’s as if they had worked together always, with Mona and Tyra raking up and Petter driving and tramping down and Ruben loading. No friendships arise as effortlessly as those formed at work. Like old friends, they throw themselves down by the barn and drink coffee that has stood in glass bottles wrapped in thick wool socks along the south-facing wall. Cheese sandwiches and rolls have been inside in the cool darkness. The food is good, just right for haymakers, and their conversation is just right for four pairs of ears. But of course that’s precisely when a couple of the sailboaters come wandering by and ask if they can help. Since the war, the whole country has learned to smell its way to coffee and fresh-baked bread, and Mona has to go back to the house for more cups and to butter some more bread. They certainly don’t need their city help. They just confuse things and fail to see what needs to be done. Petter puts them in the haymow in the barn, which is already nearly full, and asks them to tramp down the hay so there’s room for more. They’re willing enough, but it’s harder work than they’d imagined, and sweatier, and itchier, and hard stalks push right through their deck shoes.

Unnecessary extras that need to be humoured. Things never turn out the way you think. The next time someone asks if they don’t get lonely out here, they’re likely to get a punch in the nose!

She looks around. They’re not going to get in all the hay this evening, but if all goes well they can finish the next day. If so, the hay will be of very good quality and will last a long time. They can collect leafy twigs as a complement for the sheep, but leaves aren’t plentiful either, and the cows eat the reeds as soon as they stick up their heads.

“The way we have to work for fodder!” Tyra says. “We’re so happy to have the church meadow. I don’t know how we’d manage otherwise.” She tells how they used to go to the outer islands when she was a girl and rake up a little grass here and there. “After Easter, our cow had to eat moss and twigs. Every day Mama went to the barn to see if the cow was still alive.” Mona realizes that she’s been afraid the pastor and his wife would take back the meadow for their own use, since they’ve shown themselves to be such serious farmers. And it had been a close call. If the organist hadn’t explained that the church meadows beyond Church Isle have always been leased in exchange for work. “There are those who could hardly manage otherwise,” he’d said, and the pastor gave in.

Tyra goes on. As nice as the weather is, they’ll surely get their grass cut and into the barn before it’s time for the fishing. The meadow isn’t so big that they’ll need to borrow a horse. Ruben can carry it in on his back, she can tramp it down, and the children can rake.

“An admirable desire to stand on his own two feet,” the priest says later to the organist, but the organist looks uneasy and says he offered his horse, but Ruben has a hard time accepting help. He’d rather break his back with a tumpline. “The worst part is that everyone needs to get in their hay at the same time. So the fishermen have to wait, and then it starts to rain on the dry hay before they can get it under cover.”

Although the pastor and his wife see themselves as small-holders and active farmers, putting new land under cultivation, they have a privileged situation. No matter how collegial they try to be, there is a gap between them and others. They can always fall back on his salary, the others must depend on what a capricious Mother Nature can provide. It sounds cheerless, but in fact the Örlanders are like the fish they catch, quick and glittering. They smile as they talk about the toil of the autumn fishing, how hard they work, how little sleep they get, how exhausted they are. It is something they look forward to as they labour at the haying. The pastor’s wife has her hay literally high and dry when the weather grows unsettled and the Örlanders start cutting. Every time Petter has been in the village, she asks him how the hay harvest is progressing. Surprisingly slowly, he has to admit. No one likes haymaking, it’s heavy and boring, they tell him, and Mona is amazed. It’s fishing that’s hard work! Not boring, but still hard. Night work, cold and raw, deadly dangerous in a storm, expensive nets that can drift away if luck is against them.

Yes, but people are full of stories, the fishing is what life is about. It’s where they find their identity and their self-image and the pictures that describe their lives. They value variety and risk-taking more than security and routine. Standing on a safe piece of meadow, turning wet hay, is deadly dull. Struggling in rain and wind in an open boat, that’s life! You’re thrown around like a rag doll, but you come ashore weighted down with herring.

They still come to church on Sundays and make little detours to look at the pastor’s well-raked meadows and to peer through the cracks in the overstuffed barn and stare out across the potato patch that seems to flourish somewhere far to the south of the Örland Islands. What they have to say about all of it is not so clearly heard, but when the parsonage cows come strolling along, blooming matrons, they remark loudly that, well, for those who have good grass …

For his part, the pastor has paid close attention to the popular mood at the prospect of the autumn fishing and in his sermons makes many allusions to the fishing in the Sea of Galilee and to the fact that the disciples were fishermen, recruited beside their boats. The congregation picture their own shores and boathouses, and after the service, the former verger tells the pastor straight out that if you didn’t know they were Jesus’s disciples and became apostles and evangelists, you’d have every reason to think it was very wrong of them to just wander off in mid-season and leave all the work to the poor women and children.

“And the boats lying there to dry out in the sun!” he adds disapprovingly, aware that the Lord moved in a warm, dry climate.

“Yes indeed,” says the pastor. “I’m sure everyone on Galilee agreed with you. But that’s what’s so remarkable about Jesus— that he gets us to drop everything and follow him.”

Silently, to himself, he’s thinking what a tough battle it would be if Jesus were to appear and ask Mona to abandon everything and follow him. Petter could burst out laughing when he thinks how successfully she’d struggle. “Impractical,” she’d call him, with reason. “Visionary. Dreamer.” And Petter himself, trying to mediate between them, with nothing but weak arguments in both directions.

He’s in the process of acquiring a little kingdom on earth, with brimming barns and root cellars. An example for the parish, which, however, has its eyes firmly on the sea. The Örlanders work hard at the autumn fishing, up before dawn so they can be out at sea when the sun comes up and raise their nets, gut the fish, rinse them, pack them in barrels in neat rows, salt them, then rest in the afternoon, if they have the time, before heading out again with their herring nets. A long trip out to the fishing waters, a long way home. From Church Isle, you can see dark boats far in the distance working their way through rain and waves.

Several people have mentioned how important the church is to them when the weather’s bad and it’s hard to see. Even though they know the right heading and know where they are, when the church appears on the top of its rocky knoll it’s still a reassurance that they’re headed right and will make it home this time too.

“Can you explain it?” they say. “When we come to church it seems like she sits in a hollow, but when we’re out at sea, we see her up on a hill, as if she were keeping watch. It’s like a miracle. She stands up on the hill and looks for us, and when we come up from our boats on Sunday she stands down by the churchyard and welcomes us.”

“Like the Holy Mother of God, as we’d say if we were Catholics,” he says. “It’s a beautiful thought.”

“It’s not a thought, it’s the way it is,” the old verger says. He’s hurrying after the others, who are on their way to their boats, moving faster than they do in summer. They’ll eat and rest and be ready to go out with their nets as soon as the Sabbath is over at six o’clock.

The summer has turned on its heel. The sailboats are sparse in the bay, and one day the last of them has gone. The guests at the parsonage have thinned out too, and soon they’ll be alone in the house. She and he and Sanna, who’s run wild and been spoiled by all the attention. “Now we’ll need to tighten the reins a bit,” says Mona, “and pull her back into shape.”

Chapter Nine

STILL AUGUST AT ITS MOST BEAUTIFUL, but the evenings are dark and there is a cold breeze. The parish around them is very hard at work, and days go by without anyone setting a foot through the parsonage door. It’s quiet at the store and the post office. There is time for heartfelt conversations with Adele Bergman and Julanda at the post office, well-informed and full of goodwill. She knows a lot because she asks questions—for example, if they won’t soon be expecting a little one at the parsonage—and she gets him to lay out his Åland family tree back to Adam. In return, she tells him how the fishing is going: not too bad, though the fisherman has never been born who would admit that it’s going well. By the middle of September, they should have taken what they need, so they’ll have time to salt down their herring and get ready for the autumn market.

The organist has a farm and his organist’s salary, so he isn’t dependent on the herring catch the way the fishermen are, but he fishes by tradition and so that his boys can earn a little money of their own. He comes rushing to church on Sunday mornings without having rehearsed, his fingers stiff with cold, and doesn’t play as well as he does in the spring and summer; this too is a tradition. The congregation yawn and sleep discreetly during the sermon, an indulgence no one begrudges them. Then they fly away in their boats, and the verger is left in the church, pottering about and chatting with the priest, who basks in the peace and quiet like a cat. Young man that he is, surely the rush and bustle of the summer has not worn him out? Of course not, but this calm is now a welcome part of existence. Perhaps he’s become too materialistic, he tells the verger, and it’s high time he thought about the spiritual side of his work.

But as soon as he says this, he starts laughing and has a story to tell the verger, whose cow grazes on the other side of the narrow inlet separating Church Isle from the main island. “Early this morning I was sitting in the sacristy thinking about my sermon. The light wasn’t good, and suddenly it got even darker. I thought the sun must have gone behind a cloud and I looked up at the window. And there I saw a large, dark, unmoving face with big eyes staring straight at me. I was as frightened as a child, and all sorts of thoughts went through my head. I thought of the devil, though I’ve never imagined him so substantial, and the expression ‘God sees you’ occurred to me, though I’d never pictured God looking like that either. Staring, dark. Myself, I just stared back, without moving a hair, and then I blinked and looked again. Do you know what it was? It was Gertrude, with her dark face, who’d swum across to Church Isle and now stood there staring in at me through the sacristy window. Probably as terrified as I was, and just as incapable of understanding what she saw.”

They both laugh, but the verger is uneasy that his cow has invaded the parsonage’s pasture. “She’s a dickens of a cow for wandering off,” he says. “We’ve run the fence clear out into the water, but she swims around it, the old devil. I assume Mona sent her packing.”

She had indeed. Armed with a big alder switch, she came dashing up and drove the blasted cow back across the island and out into the water. As if it wasn’t enough that she had to keep an eye on the tenant farmer’s animals, now she’s also got the verger’s cow to watch. There is nothing to eat on the verger’s land, grazed bare, so of course she swims over. And the tenant’s cows stretch the barbed wire till it breaks in order to get at some grass, but that’s no reason for the pastor’s cows to suffer. They’ve both been properly covered and can now graze on the meadow where fresh growth has exceeded expectations because they cut their hay so early and the dew has been rich and also the evening mist.

It’s as if they were closer to the primitive forces of nature out here, and Petter observes that they work in harmony with the primitive forces in Mona, who has acclimatized astonishingly well. If he asks her if she likes it here, she snorts and says she doesn’t have time to think about it. She has so much to do, and when you’ve got a lot to do, you’re happy!

Sanna is one and a half years old in September and has started to talk like a grownup. Petter falls head over heels in love. “She says ‘summer people’, she says ‘salt herring’. Isn’t that fantastic?” he says. He can’t get enough of his daughter, who acts silly and writhes with delight, and Mona gets angry. “Such nonsense!” she says. “Don’t encourage her! She has to get it through her head she’s not the queen of the castle.”

She lifts Sanna from her Papa’s arms and Sanna screams and cries because Mama is mad. “Shame on you!” Mama says. “What a way to act! Now you can just sit in the bedroom till you can be good!” She whisks her off and puts her down in her crib with a careful thud. “No one feels sorry for you!” she says. “The way you carry on. Now you can sit here and calm down.”

She closes the door and goes back to Petter, who looks sheepish and unhappy. Poor Sanna! She wails in despair. Why shouldn’t she be queen of the castle now and then? But he doesn’t dare say so to Mona, who is absolutely convinced that children should be kept on a short leash and not allowed to believe that they were put on earth to be courted and indulged. Discipline hurts, but it’s necessary if the child is not to become a pest. Sanna has been spoiled by all the summer guests and given an altogether exaggerated sense of her own importance. They have to take that out of her.

Mona gives her husband a piercing look. “It’s high time she had a little brother or sister, so she’s not ruling the roost alone!”

They’ve talked about it before and considered and planned. The best time for a new baby would be after the haymaking, when the worst of the work has been done and it’s still summer and warm. The end of July, to be exact. She counts on her fingers. “Middle of October. We can start then.”

She makes it sound like one more job, but she looks bashful and turns away, puts her hands to her face and smiles between her fingers. He’s up from his chair and takes her in his arms. She writhes like Sanna. “Not yet! First two weeks of pastoral work till late at night.”

This is the way the pastor and his wife practise birth control. Work their heads off so they get to bed very late and then collapse as if they’d been clubbed. And in the day, anyone at all can walk in at any time, which promotes abstinence and chastity.

The time is well chosen. The herring market in Helsingfors begins the second Sunday in October, and large portions of the congregation head off well in advance. The last Sunday they’re at home, many of them come to church. It’s like a thanksgiving celebration for the completed fishing season. The pastor prays for those travelling to the market, and they sing a hymn about the changing seasons, “As Transformation Overtakes the Brightest Summer Day”. You can hear that the voices are hoarser and less exuberant than they were in the summer. The wind roars in the roof, and draughts make the candles flutter. Mona has put clusters of rowan berries in the altar vases since there are no longer any flowers. When the congregation heads off for home, the following wind is so strong that the boats’ exhaust fumes blow forward. When the verger has gone, they’re alone. For three weeks, so many people are gone that it no longer pays to plan gatherings of any kind. Complete tranquillity reigns.

They look at each other and then look away. He stretches out his hand, and she backs off. She takes Sanna by the hand and walks with small birdlike steps. He follows closely, gently exultant, his body as warm as liquid bronze despite the storm. Into the parsonage, off with his kaftan. And?

Barely past noon. Potty time for Sanna. Sunday lunch on the table. Petter can hardly stand to watch the spoon going in and out between his wife’s lips. Sanna fusses. She’s usually so good and now she’s difficult, whining and complaining for no reason. He doesn’t want to hold her, even though she’s reaching out for him in tears. Mama takes her arm hard. “Now you be quiet! Time for your nap!”

Normally, Sanna takes a good long nap in the great quiet of a Sunday afternoon, but getting her to fall asleep today is like pulling teeth. She bounces up and down in her crib and cannot rest. Mama gives up trying and goes out to the kitchen to wash the dishes. “Let her fuss for a while,” she says to Petter, who throws himself down with a three-day-old newspaper and tries to read. When it’s quiet in the bedroom, he looks up. Mona looks out through the kitchen door and stands still, listening. “I’m just going to …” she says, finish up, or whatever it was she meant to say, but just as he hears her throw the dishwater quickly into the slop bucket, Sanna gives a howl from the bedroom. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with her, except that she senses that they desperately want her to fall asleep. And sleep long and deep. Not on her life!

It gets later and later, and for the first time ever when Sanna doesn’t want to take her nap, Mama gives up. Mama always wins, but now she looks at the clock and goes into the bedroom and picks up Sanna from her crib. “If it doesn’t suit you, then you can just please stay awake until tonight!” she says angrily. “Otherwise you’ll never get to sleep this evening!” Sanna hiccups from fear. When Mama is this angry, knowing a lot of words and whole sentences doesn’t help. The only thing to do is cry, and Papa has taken shelter and pretends not to hear.

Sanna, usually so bright and curious, always finding something to do, is now nothing but unhappy. Tired, despondent. When it looks like she might be wilting, sitting on the floor and rubbing her eyes, Mama gives her a shake. “It was you who wanted to stay awake, little lady, so now just be so kind!” she says. They drink their afternoon coffee, and Sanna won’t drink a drop of milk or chew on some bread, she just sobs. The evening is so far off that it’s hard to imagine the day will ever end. Mama is mad and in a terrible mood and Papa doesn’t dare say a word.

“Do we really want another one?” she says to him. He laughs timidly, cautiously, maybe not understanding what she means any better than Sanna. Only that she’s angry and won’t ever forgive her for not taking her nap.

Then finally she goes out to do the milking, and Papa takes Sanna in his arms and they read the paper together. Much has happened on Åland and in the world, and Papa’s voice rumbles so pleasantly when she leans her head against his chest. She almost falls asleep, but then Papa moves and says, “Well, well, Sanna, we’ll eat as soon as Mama comes back, and it’s a good idea for you to stay up. Then you can go to bed right after supper.”

He says it nicely, but she is so tired that she starts to cry again, and he’s sorry. “Sweetheart,” he says. “Darling girl. Believe me. This will pass. Tonight you’ll sleep like a log and tomorrow morning you’ll be happy again. Come, we’ll get everything ready so we can eat as soon as Mama comes in.”

They go to the kitchen and Papa puts water in the saucepans and gets the fire going in the stove, and then he sets the table. There’s fish soup to warm up, and he slices the bread and puts out the butter and sets out plates and silverware and glasses and Sanna’s cup. Mama should come now, but she doesn’t, and again they don’t know what to do. Papa can’t leave Sanna alone in order to go out and see what’s keeping her, and if he takes her along on his arm, Mama will be angry because she’s crying.

They wait, Papa more nervous that he will admit, and finally she comes. Rips open the door, closes it with a bang. Clatters angrily with the milk cans, tears off her coat, slams her boots against the wall. Papa looks cautiously into the hall. “What’s wrong? We started to worry. I would have come out, but …”

“Confounded cows! First I couldn’t find them anywhere and they didn’t come when I called. I was up on the hill to see if I could spot them, and then I went down towards the tenants’, and that put me in such a rage I almost had a heart attack. This time it was our cows that had flattened the fence and gone over to their cows. Wretched animals! As if they didn’t have good grazing on our own meadow even after we cut it, at least compared with the tenants. Their cows are grazing on bare rock. And I had to go in and beg their pardon. You can’t imagine how painful that was. Here I’ve complained to them so, because they let their cows come over to us, and now it was ours that went over to them. You can imagine how smug they looked! I could have … Anyway, I chased them out of there quick as a wink, and when we got to the milking place, Apple wouldn’t let me tie her up. She balked and knocked into Goody, who also started to run away. If I’d had a gun, Apple would have got a bullet between the eyes! I’m not going to put up with it! Tomorrow I’m putting them in the barn. They’ve been out too long already, and we’ve got plenty of hay. You’ll have to fix that fence the first thing you do in the morning!”

All the pastor can manage is an occasional “Oh my.” Sanna sits paralysed on his arm. “Supper is ready to eat,” he says timidly. “The soup is warm. Come in and sit down and catch your breath. You must be done in.”

She gives a loud snort. Clearly she’s not going to calm down right away. She’s going to be angry all evening, it’s going to be awful. She’s been out so long that it’s already pitch dark. The oil lamp stands cosily on the table. Within its cone of light, a little family could be happy together. But not tonight. Mama gives in and takes her place at the table, and Papa serves the soup and tries to feed Sanna. He spreads the soup thin in the bowl to let it cool, but it’s still too hot when he tries to give her a spoonful and she jerks her head aside and hits the spoon. “Oh no! Sanna!”

Mama flares up. “Hush! What is all this constant whining! You’re impossible! Stop it!” She jumps up and grabs a dish cloth, wipes up the soup with big swipes of the cloth, swiping Sanna’s face as well, who is now wailing. There is nothing here for a natural conciliator like Petter Kummel to do, only draw in his head and hope that the storm will pass.

“Now eat!” Mama commands. She shovels soup into Sanna, who doesn’t dare do anything but swallow. Papa can see that she’ll throw up before the evening is over. The day that began so well with church and best wishes for a good journey for those travelling to market has gone off the rails and overturned in a ditch. Sanna is the scapegoat, just one and a half years old, not old enough to understand that she should get out of the way and let her parents reproduce.

Papa stands up and lifts Sanna from the table. “I’ll go and put her to bed, and then I’ll wash the dishes. Just sit and rest for a few minutes. Have you even opened Thursday’s paper that came yesterday? Darling, don’t be so angry.”

Mama stands up also and snatches Sanna away from him. “Potty! And then she has to be washed! Put her to bed, indeed!” she snaps.

In fact, Papa knows the routine, but when Mama is mad he suffers a kind of paralysis and loses a good deal of his common sense. “I can do all that,” he says.

But just as Mama taught Apple and Goody a lesson earlier this evening, she must now teach Sanna a lesson as well. Nothing is easy. She demands submission, but neither of them knows how. Papa sits in the parlour and pretends to be deaf while Mama is severe with Sanna, who tightens up and produces nothing in the potty and who screams and struggles when she’s washed and sure enough throws up on the kitchen rug.

“Yuck!” Mama cries. “For shame Sanna! What a mess!”

Papa looks in horrified. “How’s it going? Can I help?”

“Stay away!” she shouts, and Sanna’s defender retires. She is alone with a force of nature that Papa sometimes tenderly calls his wife. Her distress is stretched to its absolute limit before she is finally dumped into her slatted crib. The pastor advances to perform his calling and read the evening prayer, but he is sent away. Mama delivers a “Now I lay me down to sleep” as if it were a call to battle, and rounds it off with “Not a sound! Now go to sleep! Good night!”

Blows out the lamp, leaves Sanna in the dark and goes. There’s a light in the parlour, and Sanna can hear them talking, but she is utterly forlorn and cries and cries. Then falls asleep.

So the pastor’s wife is hardly in the mood, and the pastor feels inhibited and inadequate. Still, he wants to show his goodwill, so he puts his arm around her shoulders and tries to turn her towards him. She pulls free energetically and snorts as only she can. “After a day like this, it’ll be exegetics for you,” she says. “And a letter to dear mother,” she adds sarcastically. “And I need a bath. Where will I find the strength to deal with it all?”

Now is not the time to say that if anyone can find the strength, it’s she. He wishes he had some errand in the village he could retreat to. A sudden call to a deathbed or some other watertight reason to disappear. Too late, it occurs to him that he could have started doing the dishes while she put Sanna to bed. Now she’s already in the kitchen, banging around, the door closed to the hall and his study in order to save heat. No fire in the study, where it’s a bit cold and raw, but at this late hour it doesn’t make sense to build one. Shivering, he sits down at his desk, his books within reach, church law completely lacking in insights into the vacillations and miseries of ordinary human beings.

There is reason to fear that the whole reproductive scheme will get badly sidetracked, but fortunately the couple’s youth makes it possible for them to make a sudden change of course. A night’s sleep works miracles, and had it not been for Sanna’s waking up early, something might have happened that very morning. Sanna has a baby’s short memory and wakes up free of last night’s abysmal unhappiness. She smiles and coos when she sees her beloved idol and says “Papa morning” and, for the sake of fairness, “Mama morning”. She is happy and good all day and falls asleep that evening without a murmur.

So the pastor and his wife lift her slatted crib into the study and return to the bedroom. “Wow, it’s cold! Get in quickly! Oh, your feet are freezing.”

While the market folk are away and the Örlands catch their breath after all the hectic activity, the parsonage is steaming hot. Mona’s passion is as powerful as her rage, and Petter has good health and staying power. Even before the market boats have returned, weeks later, the pastor’s wife can say with certainty that she is with child.

Chapter Ten

BY THE TIME THE MARKET TRAVELLERS RETURN, autumn has taken a great leap forward. They have done well. Post-war Finland cries for salt herring, hazelnuts, wool yarn, everything. Lovely wads of cash warm their breasts, the men are dressed like gangster bosses, with padded shoulders and, here and there, the gleam of a new gold tooth. The children’s cheeks are puffed with goodies, the women have dress fabrics spread across their kitchen tables, scissors poised hesitantly above the patterns pinned to the material. There are new oilcloths, cooking pots, two or three battery-driven radios, shiny shoes, winter coats, nylon stockings. Solvency soothes them, the fishing is over, there is no rush.

He sees new sides of his beloved parish constantly, so many expressions on their graphic faces, so many words in their mouths, the pastor takes joy in every reunion. People stay ashore and are sociable and content and go happily to parties and Bible study in the villages. The Public Health Association holds a members meeting about the Health Care Centre, which will be built partly with donated money, partly with the labour of the Örlanders themselves. The membership consists of the pastor (chairman) and Irina Gyllen (secretary) plus thirty members, most of whom are also members of the local council and the vestry. Among them are the organist and Lydia Manström and a carefully balanced selection of worthy persons from the two halves of the community. Plus the manager of the Co-op, Adele Bergman, a key figure as the person who requisitions building materials and furnishings.

The organist has told him that the two blocks are equal in strength. The priest himself and Doctor Gyllen are the wild cards. Before the meeting starts, the villages count their troops and a noticeable unrest is discernible. The east villages have fifteen members present, the west villages the same. Doctor Gyllen will vote strictly in accordance with the best interests of the Health Care Centre, not specified in advance, while the pastor is thought to lean towards the west on account of his close friendship with the organist. If both he and Doctor Gyllen vote on the west side, things will go badly for the east villagers. Gustaf Sörling is seen to stride to the telephone, turn the crank and ask to be connected to Erik Johansson, the only member of the steering committee not present. Something that sounds like an order is discharged into the receiver. Gustaf Sörling rings off and walks to the rostrum, leans forward and wonders if the meeting might be delayed for a short time so that Erik, who’s had some trouble with his horse, can get to the meeting.

“Yes of course, by all means,” the pastor says, knowing that everyone will welcome the opportunity for further intrigue. It takes a good long time for Erik Johansson to appear, wearing a suit jacket thrown over everyday clothes, and with a bad cold. He slinks in on the east side and gets his instructions from Gustaf Sörling, who then nods to the pastor.

He looks out over the assembly. They are all of them older than he, and they know how everything is to be done, but they look at him with friendly faces when he sits down at the table and thanks them for their trust. “We are all friends here,” he says, “so just tell me if I make a mistake or miss something important.” He turns to Doctor Gyllen. “The key person sits right here. We can count ourselves fortunate to have our real expert on hand. Doctor Gyllen knows better than anyone what the Health Care Centre should include in order to serve its purpose as effectively as possible.”

“It is a great help that our foremost donator is also doctor,” Doctor Gyllen says. “He has sent a drawing. I send it around. We see here thoughtful plans. Practical. First floor—hallway, two small patient rooms. One examination room. Small operations can be done. Larger if crisis. School health care, vaccinations, doctor. Little kitchen for sterilizing, maybe cup of coffee to pep up. WC. Upper storey—office space. Small kitchen, WC. Flat for nurse. Cellar—furnace room, large kitchen for cooking food. Dressing room. Storage room. WC, sauna, laundry. Well planned. I recommend.”

The drawing is passed around. Like a whole little hospital, unbelievably well equipped. What a fantastic thing for the whole community! Everyone agrees on this, and it is a happy thought that a part of the cost will be borne by the Örlands’ own successful son.

Adele Bergman studies the drawings with particular interest. The financing is all arranged! she thinks triumphantly. Cooperative Central in Åbo will now get an order that will shut their mouths. Calmly, slowly, methodically, she will call in her order, then complement it with a neatly typed list, sent by post, detailing each item. The largest order ever to come from the Örlands. Yes, we’re building a Health Care Centre out here. Cement mixer, cement, bricks, sheet metal, lumber—for starters. “Yes, a cargo boat will be hired and sent to collect the materials when they’re ready. Thank you! Goodbye.” Sweet.

“I venture to say”, she says solemnly, unable nevertheless to suppress a smile, “that as far as the Co-op is concerned we will manage the requisitions and deliveries. We can handle most of it through the Co-op Central Office. We have contacts for the remainder. The most important thing right now is to form a building committee to find a contractor in Åbo or Mariehamn who can estimate our materials requirements and oversee construction. That we can do with our own labour, with the exception of a plumbing contractor who knows central heating and can lay water lines and water closets.”

The members look at each other in wonderment. Central heating! Water closets! Uttered calmly by Adele Bergman as if they were the most ordinary things in the world. She ought to be chairman, the pastor thinks. What a woman!

“Thank you,” he says. “It is reassuring that we have Mrs Bergman’s expertise and business contacts to fall back on. The next step is to establish a building committee. You, my friends, know much better than I who among you has the necessary experience and is best suited to be on the committee. I call for suggestions. Or, ah, perhaps we should have an informal discussion first.”

He has noticed a meaningful glance from the organist. He and Adele Bergman are in a huddle—the two of them have long been in general agreement on communal issues. The organist has a seat on the Co-op’s steering committee and both of them are members of the vestry. The organist is also on the local council. They confer quietly for a moment. A certain uneasiness spreads through what the pastor now knows to be the block representing the east villages. Sörling clears his throat. “Mr Chairman!” Petter nods.

”I would like to point out that in this community we strive for a fair distribution of representatives from the two halves of the parish.” The east block nods and murmurs its agreement.

“A commendable goal. You need only make nominations. The usual thing is a committee with four members. And in cases where the vote is two against two, the chairman has the deciding vote.” He looks around. His friend the organist looks pained and asks for the floor.

“Mr Chairman. In this case we need to think first and foremost about competence. On the western side we have Fridolf Söderström who has worked as a carpenter in America. He’s just the man. As is Brynolf from Udden, who has built houses and fishing boats. Anyone who wants can go out to Udden and look at the house he built there last year.”

“That’s two,” says Petter in his innocence.

“Mr Chairman!” says Adele Bergman. She looks the way she looks when she takes Holy Communion—someone has to. “Most of all we need a chairman for the building committee. Our excellent organist has been foreman for the construction of both the Co-op store and the Coast Guard station. I nominate him.”

The organist looks pained. “I understand the viewpoint of the east side. Let us first hear their nominations. They have good candidates.”

The pastor notes that the east villagers are not impressed by the organist’s magnanimity. The word “tactic” is perhaps included in their muttered discussion. “Mr Chairman!” It is Lydia Manström, their designated spokesperson. “I nominate Gustaf Sörling and Håkan Ström. Sörling has been active in local government for many years and is very experienced. Ström is known as a good builder and shipper. We have here an excellent candidate for chairman and a committee member with a strong practical bent.”

“Second,” says the whole east block and the organist. The pastor looks at him furtively. “Are there other nominations? … No? … Yes? Please go ahead.”

It is Gustaf Sörling himself. “I nominate Viking Holm. A relatively new force on the council who has already demonstrated his abilities.”

The entire east side says “Second!” A certain unease is visible on the west side, which puts its heads together. The pastor has a sense of the situation. If the west side splits its votes among three candidates and gives too many votes to one of them without calculating in advance how many votes each candidate should get, the east side, with disciplined voting, has a chance of electing three candidates. Coup! A dilemma. The pastor proposes a recess and then a vote by secret ballot. Everyone agrees. The west side gathers quickly at one end of the schoolroom and the east side at the other while the pastor and Doctor Gyllen prepare the ballots at the speaker’s podium.

They smile at one another. “You know what will happen?” Doctor Gyllen asks.

“Two–two,” the pastor mutters. “In this case, the best solution. All the candidates are qualified.”

“I hope. Was worse when they chose the site. Then was war.”

The pastor sniffs. “The east side won, so that’s where we’ll build. The organist seems to think it best that the chairman of the building committee should come from there.”

“He is right. We shall see. We’re ready.”

The pastor looks out across the gathering. Both camps still lively, but there is more structure on the east, where Gustaf Sörling looks to be giving directives. The pastor clears his throat, taps gently with the gavel. “Hello, everyone, we’re ready to get started. Each person will get a blank ballot on which to write the name of your candidate. Then fold it and give it to Doctor Gyllen, who will put them in the basket. As you can see, it’s empty.”

Everything properly done. The names are written, placed in the basket, which the pastor then empties demonstrably, showing it to be empty. He and Doctor Gyllen put the ballots in two piles and count them. Eastern discipline is exemplary— of their fifteen votes, six are for Sörling, five for Ström, and four for Holm. The western ballots are less carefully thought out—seven for Fridolf, four for Brynolf, four for the organist. Sörling, Fridolf Söderström and Ström are elected. A second round of voting for Holm, Brynolf, and the organist. The easterners sense victory, since Holm will get fifteen votes and beat Brynolf and the organist, who will divide the votes on the western side. But the organist asks for a recess and whispers an urgent appeal to the westerners. There are visible protests, even anger, and the pastor’s young ears pick up Adele Bergman threatening to turn in a blank ballot. But when the votes are counted, the east side is silenced. Fifteen for Brynolf, zero for the organist.

Now the chairman’s vote will decide. The pastor would love to object that he is too young and no match for this clever gathering, but he does not dare to show the slightest uncertainty. Above all, he must not look at the organist to seek confirmation. If he does that, he’ll have the east side against him forever. He smiles, sunnily he hopes. “Here I need the help of King Solomon. We have two good candidates with practical experience. If we view the thing positively, we get a good outcome however we decide. On the negative side, a good candidate will be eliminated whichever way we vote.”

A whisper of goodwill is heard through the room, and Doctor Gyllen, who has been sitting straight and attentive, smiles a little. He goes on. “In this case, we should perhaps consider the balance between the villages, since both will provide labour.” He smiles. “And Brynolf really did receive massive support in the second vote. So I will award the chairman’s vote in favour of Brynolf Udd. Let me congratulate the elected members of the Health Care Centre’s building committee—Gustaf Sörling, Fridolf Söderström, Håkan Ström, and Brynolf Udd. They may now choose their own chairman among themselves.”

The assembly erupts into life and clamour. If there is anything they love it’s strategic voting. Even though the committee is going to select their own chairman, everyone gets involved body and soul in speculation. The organist, who arranged to get no votes for himself, is now heard speaking out for Sörling, which upsets several people on the west side. “Fridolf possesses enormous practical knowledge that he ought to be allowed to use,” the organist explains. “Sörling is a politician. Let him struggle with the paperwork. A world of accounts and disbursements that Fridolf won’t have to deal with. Sörling likes being chairman. And the east villages win a prestige victory, which we can turn to our credit at some later date.”

The pastor and Doctor Gyllen listen discreetly and exchange a quick glance. The pastor waits until he can catch the organist’s eye and nods imperceptibly. If it is possible for Doctor Gyllen to have roses in her cheeks, they appear as tiny pink suggestions above her cheekbones. The pastor himself is noticeably amused and interested. He turns to Doctor Gyllen and says out of the corner of his mouth, “We’ll vote for Sörling?” She nods. Done. Then they remember at the same time that the voting will be internal, limited to the newly elected building committee members, and they both burst out laughing. Quite suddenly they are as deeply engaged as the villagers, in a matter they have no say in. Still, everyone hopes that the members of the committee have listened to the arguments on both sides.

“Now then,” the pastor says. “Has the building committee reached a decision about a chairman?”

“Yes. Sörling has had three votes, Fridolf one. Sörling is elected.” There is a buzz in the gathering. Before heading out into the night and the darkness, Fridolf feels compelled to make a statement. “Sörling knows this stuff,” he begins generously, but it’s too painful, and he continues: “And if he’s occupied with his papers at least I can work in peace!” Everyone laughs, even Sörling chooses to laugh. Fridolf glances around triumphantly.

“Excellent,” the pastor says. “My friends, I think we’ve done good work today. We’ve studied the plans and been inspired by them. And we’ve elected a competent and effective building committee. At Doctor Gyllen’s suggestion, I propose that the steering committee should meet in the near future with the building committee and Mrs Bergman and make some decisions about the next steps to take. According to the bylaws, special meetings of the entire membership can be called when necessary, which I will bear in mind. So I herewith declare the business portion of this meeting concluded.”

In cities, everyone rushes for the doors when a meeting is over, but on the Örlands, people stay and talk. And today there is plenty to talk about—their own Health Care Centre and their own share of the construction work. Even Adele Bergman, who otherwise always winds up at the pastor’s side, has other things to think about, and for a while Petter and Doctor Gyllen stand by themselves at the speaker’s stand, gathering up their papers. Sörling is to have the plans, but for the moment they lie on the table like a bond between them. Over the course of the evening, they have developed an understanding, and now they both look at the plans and smile.

“Another experience richer,” the pastor says. “It all went rather well, don’t you think? I have to admit that even though I try to be neutral, I got really caught up. One of these days I’ll stand here conspiring with all the other politicians.”

“Yes,” says Doctor Gyllen. “It pleases me greatly to see freedom of speech used so well.” She speaks more fluently now. “And their tactics work well. They chose good people, and a good chairman. Sörling needs to be chairman, otherwise he’s difficult. As chairman, good.”

“You’ve come to know them well.”

“Yes. And I think they know us better than we think.”

The pastor gives an appreciative laugh. “Well put. I’m glad we’ve had a chance to talk. I know you’re very busy with work and studying, but we’ll be seeing each other quite often, I think. My wife will be coming to see you soon. We’re expecting an addition.” He looks a little embarrassed.

“Congratulations,” says Doctor Gyllen, neutral but not unfriendly. “I will be happy to see Mrs Kummel your wife.”

“Thank you,” the pastor says. “She’s convinced that it will all go well. I worry more.”

The doctor nods. “Many times it is the man who more needs the doctor’s help. It is reassuring that Mrs Kummel is not worried. She is young. The second child is easy.”

They both look down at the plans. “Just think if the Centre was already built!” the pastor says. “With a delivery room and everything. Now it will be at the parsonage, and that’s a long way for you to come.”

“I’m sure I’ll have ample warning,” the doctor says. But she too looks longingly at the plans. “It is difficult in many homes. Small spaces. Hygiene. But healthy surroundings, strong people. I believe you like them very much?”

“Yes,” says the pastor, drawing a deep breath to continue, but then Sörling walks up and he switches gears and sticks out his hand. “Congratulations. They made a good choice.”

Sörling is in good spirits. “Thank you, thank you. I think we can make this thing work.” He too looks down at the plans and smiles.

“We stand here staring at these drawings and can’t drag ourselves away,” the pastor says. “I’m looking forward to the next meeting when we take the first steps towards concrete action. Mrs Bergman can hardly control herself she’s so eager to start ordering. We’re all enthusiastic.”

“And getting such a big donation! But he knows us and wants us to do the work ourselves so we’ll feel the Health Care Centre is really ours.”

“He” is the Örlands’ famous son, chief physician and professor, member of the Nobel-committee-otherwise-he-would-have-won-the-prize-himself for his epoch-making work on heparin, which is used to treat blood clots and has saved innumerable lives. “Even for a man in his position, that’s a very large gift,” the pastor says. “I doubt there are many people who remember their native places in such a grand manner.”

“He had help,” Sörling says, a little barb in his voice. “The teacher took him under her wing, went to Åbo and arranged for a scholarship to the lyceum. Then a scholarship to the University and medical school. He had help the whole way. Others have to make do without.”

One of the others is apparently Gustaf Sörling. The pastor chimes in. “Yes, my guess is that there’s more talent here than most places. And it’s true that all too few get the help they need. Maybe he feels the same way and wants to show his gratitude.”

Fridolf has heard the end of this conversation and walks over. “We’re from the same family by way of my mother’s father’s father,” he says. “I can tell you from the time he was a little kid you could see he was a different calibre. So there aren’t so many of us here who could have done what he’s done.” His wears his family tree well, and he gives Sörling a kindly look. “We’ve done well this evening. You can put on a suit and go to Mariehamn and talk to builders. You’re good at talking.”

“And let’s hope you’re good at building,” Sörling says. “Seeing you’ve been in America and built things for Rockefeller.”

“Yes indeed,” says Fridolf. “There have been no complaints about those buildings.”

The pastor and Doctor Gyllen gather up their papers and walk towards the western group, where Adele Bergman’s voice rings out more sonorously than the pastor has ever heard it, and where the organist can be heard in the background, still under pressure, explaining why he didn’t want to be elected. “These are new times, and at some point we have to start thinking more about the individuals than about the relative balance of power between the villages. As it is, we’ve got the most qualified people, and I’ve been spared yet another job.”

“Well said,” the pastor says as he joins the group. “And isn’t it fun to spend other people’s money for a change. This evening really warmed my heart.”

Politely, they turn to him and Doctor Gyllen, who remains a little in the background. No one really wants to go home, not even the pastor, who has the farthest to go. He had to ride his bicycle around the whole island in the pitch dark. Longingly he looks out the window. “If I had my own motorboat it would save me a lot of time.”

“Wait till it freezes over,” Sörling says. “You’ll see what a short trip you have. If it’s clear ice, you can skate. Otherwise a kicksled.”

“But I don’t have time to wait for that now. Brr, it’s really cold tonight. Now what did I do with my scarf?” He says good night to those around him and out to the whole room in general, wraps himself up as best he can and goes outside. It is November fifteenth, cloudy, only a couple of degrees above freezing, so dark that he has to stand still for a moment before he can see his bicycle where he leaned it against the corner of the building. The Petromax lamp shines brightly inside the school, but he can’t see a thing outdoors. He has to walk his bike through the gate so he won’t ride into it. Out on the road, he swings up and starts to pedal, and then the dynamo whirs into life, a scraping sound like a locust. Now he can see enough to stay on the road at least, and thank God everyone has taken in their cattle, so the gates are open and he doesn’t have to worry about riding into a cow lying in the road. When he picks up speed and pedals down the east village hills, his own dynamo also kicks in. It spreads warmth and builds a fire under his bass voice so that it starts to sing. He is a vehicle with a motor, central heating, and the radio’s evening concert. So equipped, he travels through the night, pleased to be alone, pleased at the thought of arriving home soon to warmth and light.

Chapter Eleven

FATHER LEONARD HAS A HARD TIME tearing himself away, stubborn as a child at bedtime, but now he’s coming. Brings his bicycle on the boat along with two big suitcases and a certain method behind the contents, which consist of a great deal of dirty laundry. Innocently he pours the entire load out on the floor. Petter is angry but Mona is triumphant—just what I expected! There is something about Leonard that dissolves a person in smiles. Mona and her father-in-law are absolute opposites, but she puts up with him, and he admires her, so it could be worse. At their very first meal, Petter feels transported back to the home he believed he had left behind him for all time. His father talks a blue streak, speaks with authority of things he knows nothing about and with astonishment about things that ought to be well-known to him. Meanwhile he eats methodically, and then comes the formulaic “This was good, Mother, I must say.” Then they all stand up, and father offers his help by fetching water, taking out the slop bucket, and carrying in wood. Mona thanks him kindly and says it was nice of him, because this way Petter can concentrate on his pastoral dissertation. And it’s true that the house seems homier when he sits in his study and can hear Papa in the distance commenting on the newspapers while Mona carries on with her work. Maybe it really will work out. He sincerely hopes so.

Leonard spends the night in the preacher’s guest room, where he will live until some actual travelling preacher appears. He feels better when he’s among other people. When he’s alone, his sighs echo through the room and his body tosses and turns on the groaning springs of his bed. Even if he’s out of sight, no one can forget that he is a martyr to the rheumatism that makes his jaws creak, and to a bad stomach and to pain between his shoulder blades. That first evening he walks from window to window and notes that you can’t see a single light from the parsonage, only the lighthouse, which blinks but bears witness to the presence of no living being.

That makes him think of America and the snowstorms on the prairie. He suggests that they rig a line from the parsonage to the cow barn so that Mona doesn’t get lost in a blizzard where a person can lose her sense of direction and location in no time flat. Many people have missed the corner of the house by a metre or so and frozen to death on the prairie, helplessly, only a hundred metres from home. Mona laughs heartily. She thinks it’s hilarious to imagine stepping from the parsonage on the Örlands straight out onto the North American prairie. Petter looks at them and thinks that maybe Mama once looked at Leonard the way Mona does now, disarmed and amused against her will. In an absence of filial love that he can’t help, Petter sighs much the way Mama did when she was older. But at least he offers him a roof over his head!

He must see to it that his father enlarges his circle of acquaintance quickly, for the little parsonage family is not big enough for his social needs. Petter lets it be known that his father, a schoolteacher, will be happy to jump in if any teacher needs a substitute, and the young people’s organizations are tipped off to the presence of a willing lecturer. He goes himself to visit Örlanders with connections to America. It is an effort to visit people here on the islands, but without complaint he rows across the sound with his bicycle in the boat, struggling along against a headwind. Then he sits at farms and talks about America, places and events that mean something only to those who’ve been there, who’ve frozen and starved and spoken English.

Winter sweeps in across the Örlands, piles up drifts but sweeps them away again before there’s time to shovel. The wind howls around the house, and rugs and curtains flutter. Sanna is dressed in several layers of wool and scratches her legs through her stockings and complains and cries. When she’s to sit on the potty, she says she’s wearing so many clothes she can’t find her bottom. There’s a fire in the kitchen stove all day long, and fires are lit in the tile stoves morning and evening. Sanna’s clothes are warmed on them before they can dress her. Keeping the house warm is an all-day job and they have father Leonard to thank for it. He’s good with fires. The firewood is one of the pastor’s payments in kind and has arrived on a cargo vessel. Many of his parishioners are not so fortunate and search the shores for driftwood all year long. The shortage of firewood is a big problem, and most of the farms heat only the main room and maybe one other. The parlour in the parsonage is between the dining room and the bedroom and has to be kept warm for the meetings and functions held there. The study must also be heated, and the guest room.

When the dampers are closed and the tile stoves are warm, the air in the house is fresh and clean and tempers are calm. They have to teach Sanna to stay away from the hot metal parts, but she can sit with her back to the stove and enjoy the warmth, along with the cat. At least once a day, Sanna and Grandpa wrap themselves up in all their warmest clothes and take a walk on Church Isle. Grandpa talks about the ice freezing and his thoughts rush forward to the spring, when the ice will break up. “A first-class spectacle!” he assures Sanna. “Mother Nature demonstrating her grandeur and power.” He doesn’t think she understands what he’s saying, but how could she fail to understand talk about greatness and might!

She is not allowed to sit on Papa’s lap when he’s studying or when he’s instructing confirmation candidates. The latter turns out to be a great annual delight. The young people of the Örlands have a radiance that no shyness can disguise. They are just entering the most attractive period of their lives, but they are completely unaware of it. They feel ugly and hopeless as they sit there blazing with beauty, glowing with life. They’re embarrassed because they’re not polished and smooth but can’t disguise their charm as they beam and blush. They think everything they say is silly and stupid, although they’ve already demonstrated their inborn way with words—a dominant gene out here, thinks the pastor, who has read about Mendel and his peas.

Now he’s studying the catechism with them, and as he talks and instructs, the girls look at him to show that they’re paying attention. But otherwise they look down, for at least half of them are in love with him and will nearly perish of shyness if he speaks to them either before or after the class. Of course they like the pastor’s wife, who is nice and gives them hot tea when it’s cold out, and the little girl who opens the door a bit and stares at them though the crack is sweet, but imagine if the pastor was single! Imagine if he lived in a cold, untidy parsonage and dreamed of someone who could be his beloved and take care of him and love him for the rest of his life!

Then he might see their blushes for what they are, a sign of ardent devotion. Then he would see the happiness offered him, the boundless love! Now he stands there with his lovely hair and his wonderful eyes and his melting smile, blind as a statue, and comments on the tenth commandment. Thou shalt not covet they neighbour’s wife nor his asses or camels, and so on. But not a word about not coveting thy neighbour’s husband. Ha! And how dumb does he think they are when he asks, “What is it we mean by ‘covet’?”

“That you want something,” says one of the boys helpfully.

“Absolutely right. Sometimes it can also mean that a person wants something that he has no right to. Here the commandment helps us to draw boundaries. We should not covet anything that belongs to someone else. In this way, the tenth commandment is a follow-up to the seventh commandment, which tells us that we must not steal. The tenth commandment deals with more difficult and less unambiguous problems. The thief who steals knows that he shouldn’t. Legally, theft is a crime. If the thief is caught, he goes to jail. Coveting is not quite so simple. Today, for example, we do not consider a wife in a marriage to be her husband’s property, which people did in Moses’s day and even later. In modern times, adultery is not punishable by law, unless it leads to violence. Looking at your neighbour’s wife with desire is no crime. So why do you think the commandment is still valid?”

Now he’s captured their interest. Several of them have something to say, and he waits for a moment. As usual, it’s a farm boy who speaks up first, the fisherman boys later, if at all. The girls only if he calls on them. First Ollas’s Kalle. “Because it’s hard to see where it will lead.”

Good. And Grannas’s Markus pursues the thought. “If there’s a child, you don’t know for sure whose it is. Though you can guess.” There is murmuring and rustling in the room, as if everyone except the pastor knew of a particular case.

“Yes,” he says. “In that case we’re talking about adultery that goes badly for those involved and has consequences for others as well. But why does the commandment warn us even against desire?”

He sees that one of the girls gestures as if she wanted to say something. “Yes?” he encourages her. She blushes and looks out the window at snow blowing by in streaks and ribbons. “So that it won’t go that far,” she says.

“Absolutely right!” the pastor says. “Gretel has hit the nail on the head. We’re getting right to the heart of it. The commandments aren’t just a long list of prohibitions and don’ts and thou shalt nots that we’ve heard about no end since we were babies. Most of all, the commandments are about consideration and kindness. If we read on, we see how the Bible continues: ‘Ye shall walk in all the ways which the Lord your God hath commanded you, that ye may live, and that it may be well with you and that ye may prolong your days.’ On the surface, the commandments are about rules and prohibitions, but deep down they speak of the Divine benevolence that shines on God’s children.”

Although they’re not supposed to, they whisper and talk a little whenever he looks in the other direction. Nothing interests young people as much as the relations between the sexes. Their eyes are wide open, and they feel their way forward. Everything else is unimportant by comparison, old and boring and tedious, a lot of talk, whereas everything about their roles as women and men is a matter of life and death. The catechism speaks as if the only thing that matters is learning to know our saviour Jesus Christ, while the teachers and unwilling students know perfectly well that a good future love life is the only thing that matters. When older people sing “thy eternal bliss”, the youngsters sing “thy eternal kiss”. They perk up their ears if you say “love” but lose interest if what you’re talking about is God’s love. It’s a paradox that there are Bible classes for people at an age when their thoughts are full of sex, but at the same time you can see the sense in choosing an age when youngsters are most open and unguarded. People experiencing the bottomless despair of youth are prepared unconditionally to throw themselves weeping at the feet of Jesus.

Petter knows that he has priestly colleagues who exploit the depth of emotion and vulnerability of confirmation candidates to extort confessions and decisions that belong in the private sphere, a thing people learn to appreciate with increasing age and experience. In certain quarters, priests go so far as to coax forth statements that they find erotically stimulating. The pastor on the Örlands is on guard against any such impulse. He means to maintain a respectful attitude towards the feelings that run so high in young people.

He thinks about such things as he stands before his clutch of candidates. But most of all he thinks how, after his death, he is going to stand at the pearly gate and argue and plead until they have been let through, every last one!

The pastor’s wife wears a sunny smile and is friendly, and none of the girls who curtsey to her dream that she is keeping an eye both on them and on Petter. She looks at the beautiful Örlander boys with their smiles and smooth glances the way she might look at objects in a museum, so little desire she feels for anyone except her husband. It’s different for him. He has a tendency to confuse physical desire and spiritual passion. Maybe because they are related? But she pushes that thought away quickly. She is attentive to the transition from religiosity to eroticism, whereas Sanna, little as she is, is tempted by the atmosphere in the room and stands stock still, staring through the crack in the door as if waiting for the day when she will belong inside.

Before it got too cold to be in the church, they practised their singing with the organist. The pastor tells them about the hymnal’s different sections and their use during the ecclesiastical year. He also lends support to their voices whenever the boys, whose voices are changing, have trouble. This sends a shiver through the girls. His voice is sure and warm and deep and comes from a breast that they would like to lean on. The church smells of cold and damp and naphthalene from the previous Sunday’s silk shawls, plucked from bureau drawers. The girls feel lonely and left out during choir practise. The boys disappear up into the loft and take turns pumping the organ while the organist plays. Like all adult work, it is harder than they imagined, and although it looks mechanical it requires concentration. The organist plays as softly as possible and gives them their notes. The girls sing beautifully, the boys drone, and the pastor starts the hymn with his strong voice, “As gleaming pearls of dew …”

And so they head home. They say their thank-yous and goodbyes, and in a cluster they wander out to the gate and through it. A few more steps and the boys start to run. Run and compete, punch each other, shout. The girls walk on properly and modestly past the parsonage, then they too run down to the church dock. Some of the boys have been allowed to take boats, space enough for everyone. They arrange themselves by destination, jump into the boats so lightly that they bounce, flywheels turn, the Wickström motors start with a clatter, their exhaust shooting out like white flames. Laughter and shouts as they jostle their way out through the harbour entrance, last man out’s a monkey, and at breakneck speed they crowd out into open water and separate, east villagers to the east, west villagers to the west.

The pastor and the organist stand there smiling and watch them go. “Just think if we’d been that free when we were that age,” says the pastor longingly. “What would it be like if human life was organized so that we could hold on to youth’s passion and boldness even after we’d gained experience and self-control.” He turns to the organist. “Were you like that as well, a generation earlier?”

“As far as I remember,” the organist says. “But boys didn’t get to take the boat, we had to walk and wade and take rowing boats across the sound. It was a real trek. But still fun when we went in a group. On our way to church we were free from our chores and had a legal right to hang out together. We were often glad it was so far. But the pleasures of youth are not shared out equally. It was a heavy trip for those who had to walk alone.” Then he adds, as an afterthought, “And what you say about their being so free, we didn’t see it that way. And I’ll wager they don’t, either.”

“No,” the pastor says. “There’s a lot we don’t understand until we’ve lost it. Heavens, I sound like Ibsen.” He looks embarrassed, but suddenly the parsonage door opens and Grandpa Leonard and Sanna come down the steps, wrapped up well against the cold. Leonard starts calling and talking from a distance, can’t stop the words from tumbling out as soon as he has someone in sight. He talks about the candidates, pleasant youngsters, nice to see young people in good spirits getting along together. “I’m sure these boat trips lay the foundations for any number of marriages,” he predicts. “And so they should. What better way to meet than in youth, at Bible study, which is the gateway to life as an adult?”

He appropriates the organist and wanders off with him, the pastor following with Sanna’s hand in his. He has devoted himself to teaching confirmation candidates, and they have no idea what they have taught him—to be happy, and quick, warm in body and full of desire. It would be ingratitude without compare not to affirm the freedom in the life he now lives. To experience all this after his sullen, inhibited youth is the very epitome of grace.