Ice

Chapter Twenty-Two

AS WINTER DRAWS CLOSER, his third on the Örlands, it seems to Petter that he has come far. He has just as much work as before but is calmer and more at ease with his duties. The sermons have begun to come easier, at last. The text and the length provide the framework, and as his own experience of life on the Örlands has grown, he is able to find more and more natural associations between the biblical texts and the life of his congregation. The points of contact are no longer limited to the Sea of Galilee and the desert as a metaphor for the sea, but now include all the human strengths and weaknesses that unite people in the distant past with today’s Örlanders. They resemble Zacchaeus and Caiaphas and Naomi and Ruth and the wise and the foolish virgins.

It is easier, now, to make it clear that Jesus is talking about them. The Örlands have become a biblical landscape that he makes use of in his sermons. When Jesus went up on Storböte and saw the glory of the archipelago, the devil appeared and said all these things will I give thee. He has to add that it would have been a great temptation for the priest himself. But we need not own what we love. If we’re at peace with God, if we’ve retained an unaffected soul, we can read God’s presence in all of creation. A presence is not something we can own, we can only gratefully receive the blessed moments when it is revealed to us. It is then we glimpse the face of God, like an intimation, in the constant subtle changes in nature’s countenance.

When he roams through the biblical stories, the scenes change and well-known figures vanish from sight and wander on unseen. The same thing happens on the Örlands, where so many people leave. People on the islands talk a great deal about the problems that arise from seeing more and more young people move to Sweden. They come back during their summer vacations, and those who suffer most from homesickness or who know that they’re needed for the fishing take the whole summer off and find new jobs in the autumn. There is a great deal of coming and going, and Post-Anton carries all of them, the cocky and the frightened, the heedless and those who already know that nothing is easy.

Others travel quietly and with self-restraint. The hardest to part with is Doctor Gyllen. Both Mona and Petter still have trouble expressing their friendship for her, stiff and guarded as she still is, but on a deeper level, they feel a love and a gratitude that fill their hearts. Once they’ve reconciled themselves to the fact that much of this must remain unspoken, it begins to be easier to behave naturally around her. Everyone knew that she would move as soon as she’d passed her licensing exam, but when it happens, they feel deprived, as if they will now find it difficult to live their lives.

Yes, Doctor Gyllen has passed her Finnish medical exam, grilled by a professor with an aversion to her Russian accent who hunts for a weak spot that will bring her down. Little does he realize that he is a trifling amateur beside the tyrants she has had to deal with. One little Russophobe? Ha! A pinprick. Somewhat foreign in her oral presentation, but an admirable grasp of the clinical questions, impossible to shake her professional expertise in that area, and superb when it comes to her speciality, gynaecology and obstetrics. Harrumph, but unquestionably approved with honours.

Helsingfors no longer frightening, unnatural, but unsuspecting, safe. Nice to stay with Mama and Papa, comfortable. Opera in the evening after the exam, shopping the next day—hard to imagine what to wear. Mama buys appropriate presents for the Hindrikses and suggests that she herself buy a suit, walking shoes, winter boots, rubber boots, blouses, a new skirt, undergarments. A jacket, a winter coat, maybe ski pants and a windbreaker for night calls in winter. Oh, she could buy a house for all the money spent, some of it Papa’s. She also sees to the Örlands’ medicinal needs, and her own, and discusses some purchases for the Health Care Centre with the National Board of Health. They apologize for all the forms and papers and, her guard down for one moment, she laughs. “For a person coming from Russia …”

And then a thing that she will touch on briefly when the priest asks about it: a visit to Papa’s diplomatic friends, to the foreign office, to the President’s chancellery, to the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, to contacts within emigrant circles, to the Mannerheim League for Child Welfare. Even a letter of appeal to the Soviet Union’s newly expanded legation in Helsingfors. Nothing.

Back to the Örlands, warm congratulations, great sadness. Of course the Örlands haven’t a chance of keeping their own doctor. Doctor Gyllen’s four years become a happy interlude when, thanks to strict Finnish regulations, they had a doctor and a midwife of their own, four years when all the babies born can be identified by their deep, well-hidden Russian navels. Now Doctor Gyllen is looking for a job somewhere else. She has a hard time with Finnish and wants to stay on Åland, and there’s a position open in a clinic in the northern archipelago, which of course she gets. The Health Care Centre on the Örlands isn’t finished yet, and she won’t have a chance to enjoy any of its benefits. That’s just the way it is, she says, you leave places you’ve loved and learn to appreciate other places. Soon, the Örlands will get a registered nurse instead, and then it will be good to have a brand-new building to go with the job.

Sadness and activity. Money is collected from every farm for a handsome cash gift to be presented at the farewell coffee. Lydia Manström letters the inscription. “To Doctor Irina Gyllen, with gratitude from the people of the Örland Islands. Years of labour for the doctor, years of good fortune for the Örlands.” Since Doctor Gyllen was located physically in the west villages, the balance is restored somewhat by organizing the coffee at the school in the east villages, where Lydia heads the entertainment committee. The eastern side will also have the Health Care Centre, in whose creation the doctor was so involved, and so it is right and proper that the party take place nearby. A damned shame, say a hundred voices, that she never got to see it in use.

In memory of the doctor’s arrival one early spring, they sing “Winter’s Rage is Over”.

Most of all, they love the line about “the purple waves of summer”, at which point the whole room joins in, and Petter wonders if he might not be able to express his feelings more adequately by singing his thanks. Fortunately, council chairman Sörling speaks first, and Lydia presents the cash gift. Doctor Gyllen, impassive in her new brown suit, thanks everyone by bowing slightly to right, left, and centre, thinking that the poorer people are, the more generously they give. No Bohemian crystal vase with a silver foot for them, thank heaven. And then the vicar, with a warm smile, and his redcheeked wife by his side.

“My heart is full to overflowing as I attempt to convey the gratitude, loss, and emptiness we all feel,” he begins. “There is probably no home on the Örlands where people have not waited eagerly for the doctor and felt their pain and worry lessen when they heard her footsteps in the hall. It seems to me that my wife and I owe her a greater debt of gratitude than anyone else, but I know several others who feel precisely the same way about themselves and their families. We can’t rank gratitude, no more than we can rank love or sorrow. We can only unite in extending our deeply felt thanks for the years that have passed and for the help we’ve received. We offer our congratulations on your Finnish medical examination and on your new medical post and ask for God’s blessing on your future career.”

The doctor bows and thanks him, and then Bergström is on his feet to thank Doctor Gyllen on behalf of the provincial council for her tireless work for public health, for her unsparing toil and dedication. We shall never forget our doctor, he promises, and many Örlanders have tears on their cheeks.

Then Doctor Gyllen herself must speak before they can all have coffee. She has calculated her dosage carefully. One and a half tablets in the evening gave her a good night, half a tablet that morning keeps her stable. A little distance to what’s going on, a measured emotional delay.

“Esteemed Örlanders,” she begins. She has rehearsed. “It is with regret that I shall now leave the Örlands. You are good people, and I have had a good life among you. But human life consists of movement and change. I leave the Örlands to return to my true mission in life, which is that of physician. Perhaps we shall see one another, for one day I hope to open my own practice in Mariehamn, and then I can serve you there. How happy I will be when some good friend from the Örlands comes through the door. So dear people, I say only ‘Till we meet again.’”

The good Hindrikses weep openly, the mother and the daughters, but the sprightly Marthas start singing “I Love My Native Soil” and then go off to get the coffee. Big-bellied copper pots and modern ones of enamel, all of them full and steaming, the first cup to Doctor Gyllen. The platters they bring in are overflowing with sandwiches, rolls, and cakes. Doctor Gyllen recognizes Mona’s sweet rolls and the Hindrikses’ bread, which she saw them baking the day before. Who baked the cakes is less certain, but the butter has to come from farms with milking cows, and the farmer cheese could be from the parsonage. Adele has probably bought the sausage, maybe the ham as well. A big party, drowned in the rising buzz of conversation. She sits between Sörling and the vicar, both of them remarkably tongue-tied.

“That was tremendous,” Doctor Gyllen begins, to the surprise of both Sörling and the vicar.

“Yes,” the vicar says. “But only the tip of the iceberg. All the things we can’t manage to express are thirty times greater.”

“Fifty times,” Sörling overbids chivalrously. “But you were here while the war was raging, Doctor, and you shared everything with us, and you know we didn’t have a lot.”

Doctor Gyllen smiles. “The war didn’t rage much here. I came to peace when I came to the Örlands. The Finnish army to protect me, and no bombardment. At first I could not believe that people could live this way. Always fish, potatoes, bread. Often butter. Good for people’s health.”

“Yes!” says the vicar enthusiastically. “People think this is a poor place, but the diet is ideal. All thanks to Baltic herring and the other fish. There was much more hunger in the cities.”

They continue to talk of such things, which is good, because if they tried to say what they’re really feeling, they would deeply embarrass the guest of honour. In Doctor Gyllen’s company, you really understand the importance of keeping things superficial. Goodwill is expressed in a different form: several pairs of eyes keep watch on the doctor’s cup and plate, and as soon as her supply begins to ebb someone immediately rushes up with the pot and the platter. When all the plates start to look empty, the vicar and his wife stand up. They have been asked to contribute to the entertainment with some songs. They sing folk songs they grew up with along with some humorous duets, and then they tell the crowd that in June they’re going to make a little tour of their home province with these songs, plus several songs from Åland. They’re going to show off their children, and Petter will be marrying relatives on a virtual assembly line, but the singing will be to raise money for the Health Care Centre. Everyone applauds, and Doctor Gyllen catches their eye and thanks them with a little smile and a little bow.

The half-pill has worn off, and for the first time, she’s forgotten to bring the box. And the worst is still to come, the part she fears, when they gather and sing “Shall We Gather at the River” as a farewell. Although they know she’s not a churchgoer and probably doesn’t believe in God, nothing can stop them. Then the party breaks up. She hardens herself as they come forward one by one and thank her and say goodbye. Younger women whose babies she’s delivered curtsey, somewhat older ones assure her that they will have no more children now that she’s leaving. Patients of all kinds display healed wounds, show broken arms without a sign that anything was ever wrong, assure her that their headaches have lessened and the ringing in their ears subsided.

Thank you, thank you,” she says to all of them. “Goodbye, goodbye.” Many cry. They want to see her cry as well, but that’s not possible. She has trained herself never to show any emotion that might betray her. Finally she walks to the school dock with the Hindrikses. She won’t have to say goodbye to them until tomorrow, and now they surround her as usual, chatting amiably, for the last time. With dismay, a result of the medicine’s having worn off, she wonders what it will be like to live by herself in the clinic in the northern archipelago, without the Hindrikses. Do they understand how much she has loved them, indirectly, in the gaps between pills? Erika Hindriks hasn’t changed since she arrived, but the girls have grown and become young women. She says to them, “Take care of yourselves when you head out into the big wide world.”

Do they realize how painful it would have been for her to involve herself closely in their lives as they were growing up? In them, she has seen the time pass. In the face of their hopefulness, she has watched her own fade. Thank goodness they’re girls. It would have been worse with boys, who would have grown into great louts while she was there, hardly recognizable from the eight-year-olds they once were.

A great many random thoughts go through her head during the boat trip home. Her only defence is silence, never say too much, never reveal yourself. Very impolite, ungrateful, after such a party, but the Hindrikses forgive this too. They’d probably be frightened if she were suddenly to change. If she were to disturb the picture of her they’ll come to preserve. Accept her, ask nothing more of her than what she lets them see.

“How will we manage?” is a question people ask in every house. Five years is long enough to forget what it was like to do without. On the other hand, people have a wealth of terrible stories about people who died of peritonitis, intestinal obstructions, blood clots, gangrene, blood poisoning, because they didn’t get to the hospital in time. “You people from the Örlands always arrive when it’s too late,” is a remark that can be cited in every house. During Doctor Gyllen’s time things have been different. Whatever she couldn’t deal with herself she sent in before it had progressed too far, using the Coast Guard as emergency transport. Now they’re being abandoned. How are they supposed to know, how can they make such judgments? They can’t expect much from a newly graduated nurse, and it will take a long time for her to learn.

“How did we manage before?” is the obvious question. The answer is equally obvious: “Worse.” This is said in every house, but perhaps least of all at the organist’s, where Francine has had a hard time with Doctor Gyllen’s matter-of-fact tone and firm methods. She is aware that the doctor’s praise for brave, capable women having babies does not apply to herself. Francine doesn’t want any part of it, doesn’t want to be present, resists. “No,” she says. “It’s not happening. I can’t do it.” The doctor mentions her four strong, healthy, beautiful children. “They were also born somehow,” she says impatiently. “We try again. We push again.” As if she were the one having the baby. And the boy, of course, damaged, retarded. Hole in his heart. Now dead. For the best, but never again. Didn’t dare ask Doctor Gyllen about birth control, just wanted to disappear, never see her again.

Lydia Manström is now more alone than ever. Not that she and the doctor were close, rather that she took comfort from that fact that they could be. If the opportunity arose, if the circumstances were right. She has something she’d like to discuss. Is it the doctor’s impression, too, that boys and young men force themselves on many of the girls in the period when young people are experimenting and forming relationships? That it’s almost a given that the man, the boy, violates the girl he’s decided will be his? Or that a girl, in the worst of cases, can circulate among several of them? And suffer a merciless contempt, not to put too fine a point on it.

The problem is hard to define. Obviously there are different degrees of willingness and different degrees of resistance. Certainly there are girls who expect it, prepare for it, provoke, entice. That’s the best case. But those who don’t want to. Those who haven’t decided. That can be hard. On the other hand, maybe it’s these very girls who need some kind of physical persuasion. So the question is, doctor, do you see this as a problem? Or is it just life? She herself has brought heifers to a bull and seen how frightened they are, and how eager.

In short, what’s the definition of rape? Lydia has pondered this question for years. And now she’ll never be able to bring it up. Maybe just as glad she never did. She would only have got tangled, implied something that she would have been ashamed of later. Maybe it’s not a problem for other people, not even for the ones who are its victims when they’re young. Maybe in fact that’s the way it is for most of them, and everyone accepts it as the way it has to be. A part of becoming a woman, an introduction to womanhood?

What could the doctor have said about that? The doctor, who is so reserved and strict? For four years, she has imagined that they might talk, quietly and without a lot of fuss, these two who can both keep secrets, and no one who saw them would suspect. There is of course a chance that the doctor would have looked at her with complete incomprehension—a woman with a professional education, a salaried position, the mistress of a farm, chairman of the Martha Society, active in the parish and in public health. And the problem? Well, excuse me, it was really nothing.

Ill at ease, she stands up, takes a swing through the kitchen and into the parlour. There are school papers waiting to be corrected, but nevertheless she takes out stationery, unscrews the ink bottle, dips her pen, and writes.

“Tomorrow we’ll start saying ‘In the doctor’s days,’ for tomorrow she leaves. Never again will the Örlands have a doctor of our own. It was edifying to witness the touching expressions of gratitude that these fisherfolk extended to her today. There was not a dry eye in the assembly when the chairman of the local council and the local priest expressed everyone’s thanks for her admirable contributions to public health. Now we feel nothing but emptiness when we think of our future without our doctor.”

In the performance of her important duties, Adele Bergman has the support of an iron constitution. Elis, on the other hand, often feels there is something wrong with his heart. So Doctor Gyllen has listened, tapped him on the back, taken his pulse, looked into his eyes, and remarked how nice it is to see a healthy man for once. Now they’re wondering what will happen. As long as Doctor Gyllen was on the Örlands, she held sickness and death in check. Those who died while she was there were the victims either of old age or accidents. A few sad cases of cancer, but otherwise “state of health—good”, as she herself said over the telephone to the provincial health director and which the operator passed along for the edification of all the islanders.

Adele was one of the doctor’s most faithful supporters, and she feels her absence deeply. Nevertheless, she is not entirely unhappy that the Örlands’ most prominent free-thinker has now moved away. It has been a thorn in her side that the doctor, however unintentionally, has given easily influenced young people reason to believe that it is modern and even admirable to turn their backs on church and religion. The priest doesn’t seem to take it that seriously, and when she brings up the doctor’s liberal views, he looks embarrassed and mumbles something about how hard it is to see into the human heart. Even though Doctor Gyllen doesn’t know God, God knows Doctor Gyllen and uses her skills for the benefit of many.

An evasion that doesn’t entirely please Adele Bergman. Hard-boiled in business, burning with Christian zeal, she aspires to complete surrender, a deeper insight into the need for salvation. It is not enough to seek it for your own sake, all Christians should also take responsibility for their brothers and sisters and open their eyes to the Divine light.

Thanks to the new priest, spiritual life on the Örlands is on the upswing. Many now go to church quite often, prayer meetings in the villages are well attended. That’s good. But Adele sees many habitual Christians among the participants, and for them religion is form without content. Where is the heartfelt, personal faith that permeates and transforms the entire life of the true believer?

The priest, from whom she hopes so much, won’t look her in the eye. “I’m wary of the term ‘habitual Christian’,” he says a bit apologetically. “When people come to church, we mustn’t push them away by calling them that. Isn’t habit itself a source of firmness and fortitude in the life of faith? Maybe habit is precisely the thing that sustains people’s personal faith. Where we hold our devotions, the door is open. God is present. We must believe that.”

“But what about personal commitment?” Adele insists. “People are so dreadfully lukewarm. It’s enough for them to go to church once in a while as if they were buying an indulgence. Then it’s back to normal. Egoism, personal advantage, cold calculation. How are we supposed to open their hearts?”

If Adele didn’t know what a good Christian he was, she could swear he was embarrassed. “I ask myself that same question when I write my sermons. What do we know about the hearts of our neighbours? Open to scripture but at the same time open to temptation and pressure and even to direct exploitation. We see that in many sects.”

“Your fear of sectarianism is really very High Church! I’m talking about the need for revival, the spiritual winds that should not blow only at Pentecost!”

“You are so right. But I’m uncertain. Revival divides a community. Most of all, I just don’t think I’m up to leading a revival. How do you do it?” He smiles disarmingly, but of course he could if he wanted to! His reluctance is a barrier, as is the way he takes refuge in all his administrative duties and the work on his farm. He is getting to be more and more like other Evangelical Lutheran priests, who divide their duties into segments—preaching, parish work, administrative duties, farming. Forgetting that their entire lives must be a lesson from scripture. The smallest activity must be a sermon about God’s goodness to those who give themselves without reservation! That’s what priests should be, like medieval monks whose only duty was to love God and their fellow men.

Petter’s ideal is absolute truthfulness, yet there is something about Adele that makes him less communicative, makes him weigh his words. It seems to him suddenly that there’s no point in saying certain important things. For example, that when he looks into the beloved faces of the Örlanders, what he most wishes for them is not revival’s constant self-examination. He’s more inclined to wish them the freedom of a Christian soul. The freedom to be unharassed, untormented, untroubled. Happy, if that is possible more than momentarily. Life is full of worry and want and sickness and sorrow; he would so very much like to spare them eternal damnation.

If God is love, he loves the Örlanders, with their foxy ways, their wolfish grins and their cloven hooves, their sheep’s clothing and their borrowed feathers, their rabbit paws and tiger hearts. Rapid shifts and dodges, all of God’s spirited creation embodied in them in sparks and flashes. Snouts and paws, fur and scales, whistles and calls. An auk, an eider duck, a wagtail, a snipe. A wing brushing the brow, the round head of a seal breaking the surface. A smile spreading over all of it, quickly gone, rapidly returning. Beyond categorizing and moralizing, the priest sometimes thinks.

The priest struggles with a strong sense of sin and is diligent about self-examination. Is this actually something he wishes on others? He doesn’t want a return to church discipline and refuses to be a religious policeman, with God on his tongue as he condemns. No killjoy, which he has been for himself often enough. But rather a guide towards true joy in Christ, not deflated by anxiety and fear of discovery, derision, and punishment. A road you travel in daylight, with a burden no greater than you can bear.

The Örlanders are as social as herring and combine in different, shifting communities, most eagerly in their families and villages. Instigating a religious revival that bursts those bonds is not for Petter. “No,” he has to say to Adele, spelling it out. “I’m not the man to lead a revival. As best I can, I will preach the Word, which redeems and liberates. Guide, not compel. Example rather than decree.”

“If only it were that easy!” says Adele. “People are simply too stiff-necked. Contrary and hardened. They wear smooth, happy faces, but oh my.”

“Yes,” Petter says. Simply. For of course she’s right. Deadly sins cut a wide swath through the villages, virtues are shadowy figures of derision. But they are rampant among people who also have a capacity for sympathy and compassion, trust and goodwill. They can’t live without other people, and therefore they are attentive to society’s rules, which mustn’t be violated. A light side and a dark side, open as a book, full of secrets. Smiling, turning away. Benevolent, malicious. Never only the one or the other.

When you get right down to it, he thinks, the Örlanders have opened the path to Christian fellowship for him much more effectively than he could have done it for himself. The Örlanders have freed him from constant introspection, which is a form of egocentricity—as if everyone kept a constant eye on him. Maybe that’s what people do on the Örlands, but in that case it’s a happy and indulgent eye, more forgiving than the devastating gaze he used to fix on himself. He speaks better when he’s not looking at himself so grimly, and he thrives on the fellowship that the congregation so generously offers him.

On the Örlands, it seems natural to avoid a petty focus on people’s shortcomings, seductively easy at times to be indulgent towards wickedness that can’t be ignored. The free-spoken Örlanders open the box a bit and out slips something about tyrannical husbands, swindlers, and adulterers, and, secondhand and only as a rumour, and in whispers, a hint about rape and bestiality. He can talk seriously with a sinner who seeks him out, he can try to help a victim, but the public condemnation that Adele expects of him is beyond his capacity. “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” is a fine exhortation even today, but it is hardly an adequate answer when considering the plight of those who’ve been subjected to an outrage. So what kind of priest is he to be? An attentive friend, always ready to talk and listen. But is he to render himself half blind and deaf in the process? Maybe so. And the alternative? The path to salvation is not as straightforward as Adele wants him to paint it.

Chapter Twenty-Three

THEIR THIRD WINTER. Petter has lived through every kind of weather out here on the Örlands and moves easily on land and water across his parish. The darkness is not completely dark. Because the islands are not covered with forest, the land lies open to the sky. Starlight and moonlight can reach it, or the gliding streak of light between sky and sea. “Out here we’re always in touch with heaven!” he says to people who ask if he’s not afraid of getting lost in the dark. He feels strongly that just because the church lies at one edge of the parish, its priest must not use that fact as an excuse for withdrawing during the winter months. As pastor, he must live with his congregation, and when do they show a greater openness to the church’s message than during the dreary winter months, when the wind whines among the scattered houses, and the meagre flames of the oil lamps flicker?

Mona is happy that this is the last winter he’ll have to go out on the ice or in a boat in full storm. The work on the bridge has progressed, if not far enough then at least satisfactorily. All the work is being done by volunteers, so they can’t insist on regular hours, just be grateful when some fellow appears with a horse and sledge. Petter has put in countless days of labour, hauling, pulling, carrying, hammering and nailing, and, most of all, keeping everyone in in good spirits. When he gets home, he’s frozen stiff and exhausted, for his cheer-spreading and bridge-building require a kind of mental energy that takes its toll.

It’s cold, wet work, exposed to the weather, and no one likes it. That it gets done at all is proof, according to Adele, of the priest’s unusual ability to lead and inspire. If anyone complains, she snorts loudly and points out that the bridge is not being built for the benefit of the pastor’s family but in order to make it easier for the whole congregation to get to church! But it will soon be done, and with the bridge in place, next winter will be a piece of cake, and in the spring he’s going to do something about that motorboat as well.

He is happy and full of faith in the future, and Mona, who never stops working, has stopped worrying and listening for him as much as she used to do in previous winters when he came home late. You can’t blame a wife for having confidence in her husband and for accepting the fact that he lets people stand and talk to him for far too long so he’s never on time. She simply has to believe that he’ll finally get home. Sometimes so late that she has to fight to stay awake. She doesn’t want to miss having tea with him and talking over the events of the evening before they collapse into bed.

It has been a winter without dependable ice. The post comes rarely, and then only on the Aranda, a ship that can break thin ice. Post-Anton has overexerted himself and torn open an old hernia. He’s had an operation in Godby, where he’s in hospital for a second week. Without the Aranda, there would have been no post at all. Now in early February there’s been a real cold snap, and there is hope that the ice will finally freeze hard. And then just as the weather changes, there are suddenly northern lights.

They’re the first northern lights Petter has ever seen. The family is long since in bed. He blows out the lamp in his office, hardly able to keep his eyes open. But he notices that there is something odd about the light outside, which flames up such that he thinks for a moment something is on fire. But it’s too green, and when he looks out, he sees that the whole sky is billowing. Enormous swatches of greenish light are whirling around in the sky. The northern lights—the actual aurora borealis here on the Örlands! He rushes into the bedroom. Mona is asleep, the girls are asleep. The room is dark, but the northern lights are streaming on the window shades. “Mona!” he says. “Wake up! You have to see this.”

She wakes up with a start and sits bolt upright in bed. “What is it?”

“The northern lights. It’s unbelievable. Get dressed and we’ll go out on the steps and look.”

“Can’t we see just as well through the window?”

“Yes. But it’s completely different when you’re outdoors.”

“The window will be fine for me. Don’t stay out too long and get cold.”

They rarely share each other’s experiences, and now that they can, she doesn’t want to. He wakes Sanna instead, lifts her up in her quilt although Mona hisses indignantly, “For goodness’ sake, let the girls sleep! What do the northern lights mean to them? Nothing.”

But Sanna has awakened in his arms. “Papa!” she says, and knows immediately where she is. “Do you want to come outside and look at the northern lights with me?” he asks. “It’s a fantastic phenomenon in the sky that most people never get to see. Come, sweetheart.” He wraps her quilt around her and carries her like a child, his big girl. “We’ll let Lillus sleep,” he says. “She’s too little to understand what she’s seeing.”

Despite Mama’s protests in the background, they go out, closing the door behind them so as not to let out the heat, and stand silently on the steps. The whole world is aflame in green and white. “It’s a kind of optical phenomenon that has to do with temperature, moisture in the air, reflected light, stuff like that,” he says. “I can’t explain it exactly, I have to find out, but the important thing is that we’re seeing it and will always remember how it looked. It’s one of the wonders of nature.”

“Yes,” Sanna says. If she wasn’t sitting on Papa’s arm, she’d be afraid. The light tumbling above them doesn’t reach the ground, which is pitch-black. It doesn’t light up anything on earth, it’s only the sky that flames and seethes, a huge, cold, burning radiance. But more important than the view is Papa. The warmth in his enthusiastic body, which vibrates when he talks, the feeling of being huddled up so close. The cold air on her back, his warm chest in front, her cheek against his. That they’re out on their own, without Mama and Lillus. Just her, his confidante and assistant in his study of the northern lights.

He himself feels Sanna’s involvement intensely, the firm body under the quilt, the wakeful intelligence in this attentive and concentrated little figure. He feels the grace and joy of this living child especially strongly today, against the background of the sorrow afflicting the Örlands at the moment. The little eight-year-old who was sent to Åbo with a burst appendix several days ago has died of peritonitis. Now once again everyone notes how defenceless life has become since Doctor Gyllen’s departure. He will conduct her burial service once they’ve brought her home and then speak to her memory at a prayer meeting he intends to hold in the west villages. His thoughts are already occupied with what he will say, and Sanna, alive in his arms, makes him think of how he would not be able to bear her loss, while the parents of the little eight-year-old have no choice but to bear their own.

There are a great many people in church the following Sunday. The ice has begun to look more dependable, and people have come on foot, carefully, leaving space between them, without mishaps. A relief after this unusually troublesome winter. Many people, almost everyone from the east villages, attend the burial, the parent’s grief heart-rending to see, the priest powerfully involved because of Sanna.

The evening is dark, cloudy, perhaps it will snow. So far there has been almost no snow on the Örlands, and in order to make it easier to travel on the village roads, he takes his bicycle and rides it across the ice to the west villages. With the help of the headlight he can follow the path the congregation took, and if he maintains an adequate speed he’ll go straight and true and run no risk of skidding and falling on the slippery ice. On the carrier he has his briefcase with the incessant tracts sent out by the Seamen’s and Heathen’s Mission and the Evangelical Society, which he feels bound to distribute. Quickly and safely he makes it across. It’s not far to the farm, and he arrives just half an hour after leaving the parsonage. He’s early, so he has a chance to chat before they begin. Mostly they talk about the ice, how much easier everything is now that it’s finally freezing hard. The men sit contentedly talking while the women change clothes after the evening milking before joining them.

The temperature rises once the women arrive. They talk about the dead girl and they talk about her mother, how she’s doing, and the pastor says he’s been thinking a lot about his own little girls, how it would feel to lose them. There is no one at the meeting who has not suffered some loss. At such times, the comforts offered by the church can feel meagre and God’s word seem pale.

“But then,” he says, rising to his feet, and they all understand that the meeting has begun. “But then we fail to consider that the words and the promises work in the longer term. They don’t fall unheard to the earth and die, but lie there and sprout in secret, like seeds, and bide their time. Sorrow grows slowly into hope and trust. The words that appear to fall to the ground are not wasted, no more than a life cut short before its time is wasted. Our little Anni rests securely near the heart of Jesus. Down here, she still lives in memory as the songbird of our Sunday school and as the beloved child she was in her home. We grieve with her parents and sister, and we miss her everywhere we’re accustomed to seeing her, holding her mother’s hand, safely beside her father on a pew in church. Her death can seem cruel to us, and God, who permitted it, can seem a heartless God.

“I wish you could see her walk across the bridge of light that leads from our world to the heavenly world. Free from earthly bonds, as we sing in the hymn, with buoyant steps on her way to her heavenly father. We can entrust her to his embrace, free from fear and pain. As a reminder that there is ‘a joy beyond the grave and a future full of song’, as we sing in another hymn, I suggest that we sing hymn 222, ‘In Heaven, in Heaven’.”

That they are all in tears is not a source of pride to him. As they sing, their voices break in the middle of a line and words are swallowed. He himself holds the melody steady, and he knows the words by heart. His voice carries. Their fellowship is strong and warm by the time the meeting is over and coffee, bread and butter appear on the table, the real bread and wine of the outer skerries. Their faces are ruddy, but their tears dry up, and people begin to chat. This is the way people make their way in the world, with talk, with a thousand ways of expressing interest, pleasure, horror, sadness. They are all in very good humour when it comes time to sing “Shall We Gather at the River”.

Most of them leave on foot. Petter is left standing alone with his bicycle beside the house. He has a hard time handing out books and tracts that he doesn’t think his sturdy, lively parishioners will have much use for, and his briefcase is as heavy as it was when he arrived. He ties it firmly to the carrier and walks his bicycle out through the gate.

“Be sure to watch out for that spot near Kläppar where the current’s made a hole in the ice,” his host calls after him.

“Not to worry,” says the pastor confidently. “I’ll just follow the path you all took this morning.”

The clouds have thickened since he arrived, and it takes a while for his eyes to get used to the dark. He pedals hard to get the dynamo going, but can’t see much beyond the little cone of flickering light produced by his headlamp. The surroundings are gone, the path barely distinguishable from the well-grazed slope around it. Then he comes out onto the gravel road where the wheel tracks glisten with ice. In the middle, his tyres grip well. Soon he’s down by the dock and wheels his bike out onto the ice. Concentrating on his balance and pedalling hard, he keeps himself upright.

It is very dark. He can see neither the moon nor the stars, but the shiny ice gleams in the bicycle headlamp, and when he comes around the point he can see the light in the parsonage window. On evenings when he’s away, Mona puts a lamp in the window towards the bay so it will shine like a guiding star and welcome him home. Now that the ice is in, all he has to do is head for the light and ride until he’s into Church Bay.

He’s moving well, singing “Shall We Gather at the River” as he pedals. He isn’t thinking much about where the congregation walked, because suddenly, when he’s already into the bay, the ice breaks under him, a crashing of glass and a hole that swallows him and his bicycle. They go straight to the bottom, and he kicks his way upward and breaks the surface and swims.

At first he feels only intense embarrassment. Goes hot with shame in the ice-cold water. He’s muddled, half his head is throbbing where he hit it on the edge of the ice or on the handlebars. He wants to laugh at himself—it’s actually the first time he’s gone through the ice. It’s in the summer when the water is pleasantly warm that he likes to capsize his sailboat, and even then only occasionally. He can hear Mona lecturing him, relieved that it wasn’t worse, telling him he should have walked his bicycle and felt his way forward instead of zipping along as if he were on a road. The last thing the verger said as he left was that the ice wasn’t safe. Yes, yes, but this isn’t so bad.

His body is warm and he’s a strong swimmer and he knows what to do. As he treads water he twists his way out of his coat and gets his boots off, first one and then the other, and heaves them up on the ice. The effort required is unexpectedly great. Until you’re in the water, you don’t realize how low you are, and suddenly he’s tired, as if his strength had run out all at once. With a jolt in his aching head he remembers his briefcase tied to the carrier, full of tracts, a Bible, a hymnal, and a copy of The Songs of Zion. If he can get them out of the water quickly, perhaps they won’t be completely soaked and can be saved. It’s a question of money, quite a bit, which he will feel obliged to replace. He makes the quick dive that he likes so much—swivels like a seal and kicks his way downward. Searches a little along the bottom; yes, there’s the bike. On its side, handlebars sticking up, and then the carrier, his briefcase firmly in place.

He has to come up for air, dives again and comes straight down to the bicycle, starts working on the twine, remembers how he tied it. It seems to him that his hands are warm and supple, but they are oddly stiff. It feels hopelessly difficult, but you mustn’t lose courage over a little setback, and he swims up again to get a breath and then back down. He picks at the knot without result, pulls and the whole bike moves, lets go and swims up for air. He’s winded and exhausted, though he figures he’s been in the water fifteen minutes at the most. Dives again. Doesn’t try to pick at the knot again but puts his foot on the saddle and drags and pulls on the briefcase. This doesn’t seem to work either, but then something gives, the briefcase jerks free and comes up with him. He’s been down too long and taken a mouthful of water, and he flaps his arms wildly when he gets to the surface and snorts and almost vomits. The briefcase weighs him down like an anchor, but with a great effort he gets it up on his shoulder and heaves it onto the edge of the ice. The movement strains his shoulder, and his arm feels unusable, harder now to pull himself up.

Funny that you can get so tired. He’s really looking forward to getting up on land, can see himself running up the hill so he doesn’t freeze solid. Then through the door. Whew! Mona’s horror, the warm tile stove. How nice it is to peel off the heavy wet clothes and get help towelling himself dry. Warm pyjamas, wool socks and wool sweater, fire in the kitchen range, the heat streaming straight out, boiling water in a pot. Hot tea. “Let me catch my breath first and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Now all he needs to do is find an edge of the ice that will bear his weight. Then he just has to heave himself up, pull himself forward, roll until he dares stand up and walk. But he finds that it is more difficult in practice than in theory. It ought to be a simple matter, he thinks, to break the ice until he comes to an edge that bears, but it goes slowly and his movements are strangely languid and his limbs are heavy. Again and again he has to rest with his arms on the ice. And when he’s come far enough that he dares to lift himself up, he can’t, and because of his sore shoulder, he lacks the strength to pull himself forward.

The important thing now is not to panic. Rest for a while, then try again. Don’t rest too long, however, for then he risks freezing to death. Try again. No. Recalls that the Örlanders always say that the first thing to remember when you’re going out on the ice is to have something sharp, an ice pike, a knife in your belt. Why doesn’t he have anything sharp with him? He admires the Örlanders for all they know and can do, but he’s learned nothing from them. If he dives back down and breaks a mudguard from his bicycle, he’s got a chance. But he knows he no longer has the strength for such an extended effort under water.

Only then does it occur to him to call for help. It’s embarrassing, it’s humiliating, he who’s the eldest and an example for others. He should not put himself into such situations, he’s behaved like a complete idiot, and the fewer who know it the better. Nevertheless, he now hollers “Help!” and hears for himself how feeble it sounds. The parsonage is near, but of course the windows are closed and sealed. Unless Mona goes out on the steps and listens, she’ll hear nothing. He needs to make a bigger noise. It’s hard to get his voice to carry from down so close to the water, but it’s absolutely necessary. If he yells and moves around, maybe he can stay warm a little better. If he’s to get out of this ice hole, someone has to hear him.

“Help!” he shouts, louder now. For heaven’s sake, his big booming bass must carry far enough for someone to hear it. Anyone! Mona going out to listen for him, the verger on the other side of point with something to do outdoors and stopping to listen to the wind. Someone he hasn’t thought of, out on the ice on some late errand.

And above our earthly troubles, God in his heaven who sees to us in his mercy and feels our plight. Between his calls for help—which carry better if he doesn’t try to form consonants but just brays, aaaaah aaaaah—he prays. To God who lets no sparrow fall to earth, to the God of compassion, the God of mercy. Send me your angels, send Mona on swift feet, feather-light across the ice, the verger out to test his sledge. Maybe the wind will carry his voice to the east villages. Maybe someone will hear. Dear God.

The pain boring into his head no longer feels quite as strong. It’s as if his shouts were deadening all pain. He shouts steadily, repeatedly now, like a foghorn, with brief intervals to catch his breath. Everything is going black, he slides down and gets a mouth full of water, which wakes him up and he coughs and shouts. Have mercy upon us. Deliver us from evil. It occurs to him that he is dying.

In the parsonage, Lillus has a cold, she’s snivelling and fussing and can’t sleep. Mona has her hands full—warm honey water, turpentine on her chest, a scarf and a knit cap. Blow! In between, she wanders around and scolds herself for being so uneasy. Petter should have come by now, his endless evening meetings can drive a person crazy. But it really is terribly dark. What if he’s lost, what if he’s ridden up on some rock and knocked himself unconscious! If he’s not here in fifteen minutes, she’s going to call central and ask if they’ve heard anything. She goes out on the steps and listens but hears nothing. Not his whining dynamo, not the creaking and squeaking of his bicycle, nothing. She goes back in and is mad at herself for being so scared. She tries to sit down but can’t get anything done. The minute hand on the clock doesn’t move.

In the east villages, a man has heard odd sounds across the ice, but as far as he can tell they’re coming from the west villages, and if someone there has fallen through the ice, they can pull him out themselves. He’s on his way back in but takes a swing around the boathouses, and there’s another man standing and listening. “Could that be someone in the steamboat channel?” Both are struck by the same awful thought: the Aranda passed by yesterday, and the thin ice that’s frozen in its wake could be a death trap for anyone who didn’t know it was there. Now there are three of them gathering ice pikes and ropes, but the voice is coming less often now and sounds hardly human. Maybe an animal, but what animal sounds like that? In the houses, people have started calling around, and the central switchboard operator sends the message onward. Is there anyone who hasn’t come home this evening? Has anyone ventured out near the steamboat channel? Is there anyone out on any kind of errand who hasn’t yet come home?

It takes a while for this message to get out. It’s late, many have gone to bed, and there are many to call. There is discussion and speculation in every household. Could it be . .? But tonight? No, I don’t think so. The operator calls the villagers, relatives. The parsonage isn’t on the unofficial list, but then, finally, the host of the prayer meeting remembers. “My God, the priest was here! No! He must have got home a long time ago! Do we dare call the parsonage and disturb them?”

The operator arms herself with her most official voice when she gets the pastor’s wife on the line, whose voice sounds unusually timid. “This is the operator. We apologize for calling so late. But a question has come up. Is the vicar at home?”

The west villages have later habits than the east, and there are several men ready to go out with sledges and ice pikes and ropes. Quickly, in single file, the lightest first, they move towards the steamboat channel. Stop often and listen. Quiet now. Was it all in their imagination? A fox howling on one of the islands? Dark as the inside of a sack, you can hardly see where the channel goes, notice it only when their ice pikes hit slush. Then they all back up. They make sweeps across the channel with their flashlights, turn them off in between. Easy to miss a hole if no one calls. But something has made everyone uneasy. Everyone out there on the ice has known someone who fell through and drowned.

Petter is shouting less now, what explodes from his mouth every time he surfaces is mostly water. He no longer has the strength to hold onto the edge of the ice and soon he’ll no longer have the strength to cough the water from his lungs. He can feel his body only occasionally and then only as burning fire. His arms won’t obey, his legs don’t kick any more like the good swimmer he once was, like a seal, like a dolphin. But his head is clear, despite the pain that chases through it. His ears can hear—the splashing that reveals how terribly slowly he’s moving, the chunks of ice banging into each other and into the edge, the rustle around him of water being splashed up onto the ice and slowly freezing. The wind that blows like deep sighs, which then rush across the ice like a train, carrying the voice from the parsonage out over the emptiness of ice and cold.

His eyes can see—different degrees of darkness, the coal-black depths of water, the greyer black of the ice, the murmuring, expanding blackness of the sky, with neither moon nor stars. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he thinks. Darkness shall be as light. Have mercy upon us. Have mercy upon us. He is pushed under the surface and comes back up, has now lost arms and hands, legs, the lower half of his body. A terrible pain in his breast, almost like a wound. His eyes fixed on what has been a bright and living sky. Life that is so hard to relinquish.

All the things he often says. About the dead who have fought their fight and now rest by the heart of Jesus. About the embrace of the Father. About the ways of the Lord which we do not comprehend but later shall understand. About our earthly vision which is like looking into a dark mirror that only imperfectly reflects the light of heaven. The heavenly light that now, in his dying moments, he sees no trace of. Just phrases. Jesus’s heart is nothing to Mona’s, the embrace of the Father cold and dismissive. His own embrace as a father, which should not be denied to Sanna and Lillus and the other children they’ve thought of having.

His shouts like bleats across the ice. The effort makes him lose his grip and sink into the water again, his mouth still open. Water in his lungs, an ineffective snorting when he comes back up, a slow hand and underarm laid on the ice like a block of wood. Have mercy upon us. Have mercy upon us. Before he died, Jesus too felt he’d been utterly abandoned. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Left me on the cross, in a hole in the ice, and forced me to be present at my own death in complete darkness and annihilating cold.

To terribly ill, dying people he often says that perhaps sickness and suffering exist so that we can reconcile ourselves to death and put ourselves confidently in the hands of Our Saviour. When we are no longer capable of anything ourselves. Then we must die. We must let go, we must let go, we must let go. But even when there is no hope, we hope. That Mona will come across the ice with a lantern. Show us thy light.

To let go of everything. Which death requires. It’s no act of will, it is done to us when we die. First he lets go of Lillus. She drops like a fallen mitten, still asleep. For a little while he fights to hold onto Sanna and Mona. Mona, his deeply beloved, strong and incorruptible and capable, who is the basis of his life and happiness. Left now to her loneliness, no less than his own. Cut off, behind a wall of ice. Sanna, his northern-lights girl, for one moment more on his arm, her cheek against his. Then gone, left in a world no easier than his.

No body now, just pain, no longer shaped in his image. But a mind that is still attentive and notes that the pain suddenly slides away and that his body returns in familiar form, warm in the sunshine on the granite by the parsonage, full of pleasure in his health, youth, and vigour. With his intellect, he understands that this is what you feel when death steps in, but even if that is so, he embraces the feeling and thinks that he will live.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“No,” SAYS THE PASTOR’S WIFE, her voice oddly thin. “He hasn’t come home yet. Has something happened?”

The operator pauses for a moment. “Cries have been heard from the ice. We’re trying to determine if anyone is missing.”

“No,” she says. “Not he. He was at a prayer meeting at Månsas farm. It probably ran late.”

The operator doesn’t say the meeting ended a long time ago. Her mouth dry, she says, stiffly, “A number of men are out looking. We’ll send a message for them to search towards Church Bay. I’ll call the organist.”

A deep breath in, a disorganized beginning.

“Please, Mrs Kummel,” the operator says. “Stay inside with the children. Keep the stove hot, boil water. We’ll call as soon as we know anything. Now I have more calls to make.”

She rings off and calls the Coast Guard to tell them it’s the priest who’s missing. Now they head out, one to tell the men at the steamboat channel that they’re looking in the wrong place, one to search the entrance to Church Bay where there’s a strong current. The men from the nearest villages have been summoned and are on their way. Hurry, hurry.

Then she calls the organist. He’s a night owl, and she can hear that he’s still up. He sounds frightened even before she tells him what it’s about. It’s never good news when you get a call this late, when telephone central is officially closed. “No,” he says. “Not the priest. God in heaven, not the priest.”

“I know you’re a good friend of theirs. Could you possibly? It could be you’ll be needed there tonight. Brage will rouse the verger as he goes by. When we know something, I’ll call Sister Hanna.”

Neither of them says it’s probably a false alarm.

Mona opens the door outside, remembers she’s not wearing a coat, puts one on, stocking feet, back in, cow-barn boots the closest to hand. Out, listens. Runs down towards the church dock, nothing. But wait—voices! It must be him coming home, with some companions, talking and talking. She mustn’t let him see how scared she’s been, she must have the tea ready and scold him just a little. She turns and runs back to the parsonage. Lillus is awake, crying and fussing. “Quiet!” says Mama. “Now go to sleep!” Her angry voice wakes up Sanna, too, and both she and Lillus lie quiet as mice, scared to death, and fall back to sleep from pure terror. Mona is busy in the kitchen, then out on the steps. Definitely voices!

It’s the verger and Signe who show up. “Mona,” the verger says, with his reassuring authority. “They’ve found his briefcase and coat on the ice. A hole. We mustn’t believe the worst. They’re dragging for all they’re worth. If they find him, it doesn’t have to be too late. We’ll do our damnedest. We’ll fight with everything we’ve got.”

Mona stares at him, but only for a moment. Her teeth chatter when she talks, but she seems perfectly collected. “We learned first aid in home economics. And the Coast Guard can help. Are there many men out?”

“Five or six. Seven counting Brage. They started searching at the steamboat channel. That was the trouble.”

“Then we have to make sure there’s hot coffee for all of them. And light the lamps. Dear Signe, can you help me set out cups while I make the coffee?”

Neither of them finds it unnatural—she needs something to do or anxiety will kill her. While the two women are busy in the kitchen, the verger goes out on the steps. Voices in the air, then lamps and lights coming up the hill, the steps of people moving quickly and heavily, as if they were carrying a body.

Once they knew it was the priest they were looking for, it was easy to find his bicycle tracks and follow them across the ice and into Church Bay, too close to the rocks. And there was a hole. Dear God. Dark objects on the ice where water had washed over them and frozen them solid. Boots. Overcoat. Gloves. Briefcase. Good God. Not what we think. Surely he’s pulled himself out and lies freezing somewhere on land. But there are no tracks. Brage is equipped with a coil of rope and two drags. But it’s hard to get close enough without breaking the ice. They stand spread out around the hole and calculate. The water isn’t deep, maybe eight or ten feet, but before they can talk it over, Brage has ripped off his outer clothing and his boots, tied a line around his waist and wrapped the other end around Julle’s arm. He goes down, his body protecting him so well against the cold that he hardly notices, feels around with his feet, finds the bicycle almost at once. The others throw in a drag, he fastens it, and they pull up the bicycle empty. A black skeleton, stone dead, it clatters onto the ice. Brage goes down and searches on. Something on the bottom, soft. A body. He kicks his way up. “Here he is. I’ll bring him up.”

He grabs the wool sweater and pulls. The priest comes easily, limp, just a short way, and then Brage feels a tug on his own line as the men give a hand and get them both up quickly, Brage lively as a beaver and the priest dead, a white face in the dark, wet hair, a motionless body. Brage tows him to the edge of the ice and gives orders in rapid gasps—the sledge first, the lightest man behind it, the others behind him ready to pull back. Here. Take him. Back away all of you. Brage himself gets out with almost no help, crawls a ways behind the dragged body, tests the ice, stands up and slides forward, turns the priest on his stomach and tries to get the water out of his lungs.

Someone throws a coat over him, his boots come skittering. Julle shouts, “You need to get somewhere warm, both of you. Run Brage, you’ll freeze to death!”

At the same moment, the organist approaches on his kick sledge, having risked his life at full speed all the way from the southern tip of the west villages, with his ice pike and his sheath knife ready to hand. “Is it him?” he shouts.

“Watch out!” Brage yells. “I’m not going to drag up anyone else today!” They all laugh, a short, voiceless guffaw which is more frightening than a call for help.

“We need to get him up to the parsonage,” Julle says. “Lucky you’re here, since you know his wife. Grab hold and let’s go.”

They leave the sledges, ropes, and drags by the church dock and then they walk quickly with the body between them and their flashlights twinkling, while Brage half runs up the hill, swinging his arms to beat his body. Knows as well as the priest knew how to keep warm if you’ve fallen in the water.

The verger comes to meet them. “No. We’ll put him by the stove and do everything we can.”

The priest’s wife in the door. “Is it him? Thank you, all of you. Carry him into the kitchen, it’s warm there.”

It’s now midnight. The priest lies in front of the stove as if he were sleeping. Soaked through, but they’ve seen him that way before. Brage rolls him onto his stomach and starts working on him. Water spurts from his mouth, there is hope. “Let me take over,” the organist says. “You need to dry off and get something hot into you. Then we can take it in turns.”

“Of course,” the priest’s wife says. “I didn’t see. Change clothes by the tile stove in the dining room, it’s warm. I’ll get some of Petter’s clothes, although he’s wearing his warmest things.” To the others she says, “Signe will give you coffee. Please sit down. You must be frozen stiff.”

Signe shoos them out of the kitchen with the coffeepot in her hand, Mona runs to the bedroom and grabs trousers, underwear, a shirt and sweater and gives them to Brage. “Thank you,” she says. “Without you, this could have ended badly.”

They all look at each other, then into their coffee. Does she think …? Or is she just trying to persuade herself. But she knows. You know, but you hope. When she’s back in the kitchen, they go to the study, close the door and make phone calls. To the hospital—drowned and dead. Is there nevertheless something they can try? Brage comes in when he’s dressed and talks. The hospital confirms what he already knows to do. However pointless. Must anyway try. They also talk to the operator and confirm that it was the priest and that he is dead and leave it to her to spread the news. Brage comes in again and asks them to call the homecare aide. “Tell her I’ll come and get her in the morning, early. They’ll have to find someone else for the Bergfolks, where she is now.” They also call their families to tell them they’ve found the priest dead and will soon be home, there’s nothing more they can do. Then they greedily drink more coffee, which Signe has kept hot. Those who feel superfluous start pulling on their coats, look in at the kitchen where the stove and the oven are spreading warmth. The priest on the floor, limp in Brage’s hands, the last time they’ll see him, they all think. “Goodbye then, and thank you for the coffee,” they mumble to his wife.

“Goodbye and thank you,” she says, smiling appreciatively the way people do when they say thank you. The organist has taken over from Brage and is working like a smith at his bellows. “Thank you for coming,” she remembers to say. “Are you tired? Should I take over for a while? How do you think it’s going?”

“We’ve got out a lot of water,” the organist says. “That’s good. Now we’ll turn him over. I’m going to see if we can’t get his heart going, that would be best of all. Forgive me, I have to press so hard his ribs will creak.”

Mona tries to concentrate on finding a pulse. Nothing at his wrist. Not on his neck. His temples are still. Then she sees the terrible black-and-blue bruise on his forehead. “Oh my. He hit his head badly. But otherwise he doesn’t look so bad. Not rigid from the cold.”

The organist is working intently. He doesn’t need to say that below the surface, where Petter lay, the temperature is above freezing. And then you don’t go stiff. And it’s too soon for rigor mortis.

When Mona searched for a pulse, she also looked at his wristwatch. Half past nine. That’s when he went through the ice, and cries were still heard a little more than half an hour before he was found. He wasn’t on the bottom for long, there’s still hope. He’s young and strong. “Are you tired?” she asks again.

He thinks maybe it would be good for her to work on him herself, to feel for herself that there’s no life in his body. They got his airways open a long time ago, they’ve been fighting to get his heart going for more than an hour, but there hasn’t been the tiniest response, not even a spasm to indicate that some nerve impulses are still functioning.

She knows her first aid, no question about that. She labours by the hot stove until the sweat is on her brow, she groans the way he would groan from her treatment of him if there was the least life left in his body. But he reacts to nothing they do. After all their efforts to bring him back to life, he now looks much more dead than he did when they carried him in. Brage has braced himself with a cup of coffee and a sandwich in the dining room, telephoned the hospital, and comes back into the kitchen. “Let me,” he says.

Again she sits on the floor beside him, trying to find a pulse but then just sitting, holding his hand. His hand that has been so warm. Torn by the sharp edge of the ice and his struggle with the bicycle, but not a drop of blood. Nothing still alive in that body.

Brage is now working just for the sake of appearances. Mostly he looks at her, and she sits quite still, apparently calm. Looks at the organist, sitting at the kitchen table with his back turned, his shoulders heaving. The verger and Signe crying at the end of the table. He lets the body lie quietly on the floor. “I don’t think there’s anything more we can do.”

“No,” she says. “I know.” The last time they will sit this way, united. Never again. “I’m going to sit here for a while. Forgive me. You must be very tired.”

The whole kitchen is crying, all of them, except her. She is the only one of them who can express a complete sentence. “There’s a great deal we have to deal with in the morning, but for now I’ll just sit here.” On the wet, crumpled rag rug by the stove. Beside him for the last time.

Signe remembers that they usually have tea in the evenings, and she pours a cup for the pastor’s wife, who actually drinks it. “Thank you,” she says. “I was thirsty.” Signe fills her cup again, and she drinks it again. The body tells us what it needs to replace its losses. No groaning from her about how she wants to die. She knows perfectly well that she has to live, take care of her girls, provide them with a living, a home when they’ve left the parsonage. Work, work, work. For the last time now, quietly by his side. Time and the clock run on and on, except the one on his wrist, which has stopped.

In bits and pieces, the organist tells what they’ve arranged. “Brage is going to pick up the homecare sister early in the morning. I’ll call the priest in Mellom, who will certainly phone here. We’ll come back in the morning and carry him down. To the shed. What we’re going to do about everything—we’ll work that out tomorrow. But now you have to go to bed and get some sleep before your little girls wake up. The verger and Signe and I will stay here till Hanna comes.”

“No,” she protests. “Not at all! I’ll manage all right. You should all go home now.”

They look at each other. Brage stands up. “There’s nothing more I can do here. But my God if only we could make this not have happened!” He gathers up his clothes, which lie in a wet pile in the dining room. In the hall, his overcoat is still soaked, the priest’s sports jacket on a hanger looks pretty thin. He goes to the study and calls the Coast Guard, which can certainly come and pick him up in their light icebreaker after everything he’s done this night.

The organist follows him to the study. “I’ll ask the verger and Signe to sleep in here tonight. Someone needs to be here to answer the phone if people start calling first thing in the morning and Mona has managed to get to sleep.”

In the kitchen, the pastor’s wife doesn’t want to go to bed, and both the verger and his wife understand that she wants to sit where she is for the last few hours she has with her husband. Signe tiptoes into the bedroom and gets a pillow and a quilt. As she gives them to her, she gets such an utterly dismissive look—an unspoken “Go away!”— that she recoils and retreats to the study. When the others are out of sight, Mona lies down on the floor beside him and pulls the quilt over her. Seems to be asleep, not a sound when Signe looks into the kitchen timidly, turns down the lamp on the table, quietly withdraws. The organist leaves, Signe and the verger try to make themselves comfortable on the bed in the study, ready to jump up if the least little wheeze is heard from the phone. When Brage and the organist have gone, the house is deathly silent—a ghastly phrase!

Word goes out, in the morning by telegraph. The news has gone to the Åland Courier and to the correspondent for Hufvudstadsbladet in the capital and to the national radio. Now it’s a matter of getting word to everyone who needs to be told before the news goes public.

The priest in Mellom is speechless. He says. Although priests are talking machines and have something to say on every occasion, there is nothing he can say. He says. “Unbelievable, incomprehensible. It simply can’t be true. That’s all I can say. He was so young and strong, so full of life. Here today, gone tomorrow. As they say. No!”

“Yes,” the organist says. “I know that you were friends. As was I, a friend. We must contact the cathedral chapter. There are a lot of things to take care of, Sunday service, confirmation classes. But first the funeral. I think I speak for the widow if I say that we hope that you, his colleague and friend, will conduct the funeral service. But it would be good if you spoke to her yourself. The sooner, the better.”

“The widow,” says the Mellom priest. “Mona. It’s inconceivable. The little girls. Of course I’ll call. Thanks for letting me know. We need to stay in touch. We’re going to have to work together these next few weeks.”

“When you call, it would be a good idea to ask Mona if she wants you to call and give the sad news to his parents. I’m not sure, but I believe she isn’t on the best of terms with her mother-in-law.”

“Thanks. I won’t forget. But what will I say? What can you say?”

He is shaken. He is more shaken than he has been for a long time. Naturally he thinks of himself, of how suddenly things happen, of how the fact that you’re young and healthy and strong is no safeguard against death. But mostly, of course, he thinks of Petter, who has become his true friend during the three years they’ve been colleagues in the archipelago. Maybe his only friend, in the sense of being able to open up to someone, let down his guard, set aside his elegant irony. Even now he wants to call him to talk about this dreadful thing that has happened and its repercussions on his own working agenda, but now that possibility is closed. Now it is with fear and displeasure that asks to be connected to Örland Islands twelve, a number that for three years he has asked for with a smile on his lips.

It isn’t Mona who answers but the homecare aide. “Mrs Kummel is in the cow barn,” she reports.

“In the cow barn?” he says. He can’t believe his ears.

“Yes, she absolutely insisted. There’s no stopping her. The verger went with her. I’m staying inside with the girls.”

“I don’t understand. It’s incomprehensible.”

”That’s what we all think. Everyone is crying except Mrs Kummel. We’re worried about her. It would be good if you talked to her. Call back in half an hour.”

Behind Hanna’s collected voice lies an hour of horror. Fetched by the Coast Guard at seven that morning, she climbed the steps to the parsonage with dread in her heart. The pastor’s wife standing in the kitchen, the body lying by the stove, horribly dead. The verger and Signe in tears, Mona white around the nose, distant, but in some way still glad that Hanna has come. Hanna, who was with them through childbirth and illness, now also through a death. Mona tries to avoid her, but Hanna can’t help embracing her and saying, “There, there, dear heart.” She is utterly stiff and hard and struggles a little to get loose, takes a couple of steps backward—space, please. “Thank you for coming,” she says. “Now I can go to the cow barn, now that I know that you can take charge here.”

“But dear girl you can’t go milk the cows! I’ll go, or if you want me to stay here, Signe can go.” She looks at Signe, who nods eagerly, yes, of course, but Mona tosses her head in irritation. “No, I’ll go myself. Why shouldn’t I?”

Then they hear Sanna coming through the dining room, so big now that she can reach the door handle if she stands on her toes, and so strong she can pull it down and open it. The verger and Hanna form a wall in front of the stove. Sanna amazed.

“Good morning, darling,” says Mama. “Did you sleep well? Come, let’s go back to the bedroom. There’s something I have to tell you.” And so they walk away, just the two of them. No one else is invited. The bedroom door closes.

It doesn’t take long. No shriek is heard, or sobbing. What does she say? “Now, the bad news is that Papa is dead. He drowned last night. Fell through the ice. It’s going to take us a while to grasp the fact that he’s gone. Don’t be afraid. I’m here, and Lillus, and Aunt Hanna.” Maybe no more than that. And Sanna, curious and full of questions from dawn to dusk, does not make a sound. Asks no questions, for what do you ask? Just one question, “When is Papa coming home?” And the answer, that he’s not coming home, that he’s in heaven now, what can she say to that? It happens quietly and calmly, and then Mona is back in the kitchen.

“Hanna, maybe you could help Sanna get dressed and get Lillus up, while I see to the cows. And then we need to get some men who can carry …” Away the body, she means. They can’t have him lying there dead, scaring people. The kitchen is the natural gathering place in the morning, and how could they keep Sanna out for any length of time? She gets a sheet and spreads it over him, and the verger notices that the Coast Guardsmen are still there, standing in the lea of the cow barn, smoking. Brage too has thought about the body and wonders if they need help, so he’s in no hurry to leave. The verger asks them to fetch the sackcloth stretcher, which is rolled up in the sacristy in case someone should faint in the heat of the crowded church, and wait outside. There will have to be a shroud, but then it would be a big help if they could do the heavy lifting and carrying.

Sister Hanna is in a quandary, not knowing if she dares to ask, but asks anyway. “What shall we do about a shroud? Will that sheet be enough?”

Mona is banging around with the milk buckets in the hall and answers with little or no show of interest. “Make a shroud if it’s supposed to be done some special way. Then get him out to the shed without letting the girls see.” She goes into the bedroom and sees that Lillus is still asleep. Sanna has climbed into the crib beside her and sits there with an ugly, introverted expression on her face, staring straight ahead. Just looking at her makes her angry. “Wait till I come back,” she says. “Then we’ll have tea.”

She takes the milk cans and goes, and the verger follows her although she says forcefully that she needs no help. When they’re gone, Hanna and Signe work together to shroud the body, awkward and difficult down on the floor. The wartime sheet, with Mona’s monogram, is barely long enough and they have to start over from the beginning with less of the sheet around his head and shoulders so it will reach all the way to his feet. When they’re finished, Signe calls the Coast Guardsmen to come in. They carry in the stretcher and lift the shrouded body onto it. With a thought to the girls, in case they should look out the window, Brage grabs the blanket still there in the kitchen and throws it across the body so it will look like any ordinary load. They each take one end, Hanna opens the door, they go out and walk in step, at a respectful pace, down to the boat shed. They put down the stretcher while they arrange sawhorses and planks, then lift the body in its shroud and lay it out. Brage hesitates but then spreads the blanket over it in case someone should come in accidentally. Then they walk down to the Coast Guard cutter in the sludge of broken ice by the dock. When Hanna sees the boat nosing its way out of the bay, she knows they’ve finished.

Inside the cow barn, Mona plunges into the warmth of her animals, their faith in her ability to feed and meet their needs, to gently draw the milk from their udders. Apple and Goody mumble in a friendly way, but the sheep bray and bleat as if there were some danger she would forget them. The hens flap their wings, wanting and not wanting her to collect their eggs, praise them, and leave an empty hollow in the hay. It seems to Mona that she could endure it here. She takes the milking stool and sinks down by Goody’s side, an outrageous case of lèse majesté, because the laws of the universe require that Apple should be milked first. She shuffles and shifts and bawls. “Pardon me,” Mona says and almost laughs. She moves to Apple’s stall, teat salve in hand, milk pail in place. And just sits there, her head resting against the indignant cow, who must now be slaughtered in the autumn.

“As if she were crying,” the verger thinks as he busily gathers forkfuls of hay and wanders back and forth between the cows and over to the manger in the sheepfold. Yes, there by the cows, she’s crying, wiping her eyes and nose on the sleeve of her milking coat, starts milking again, stops, shakes and sobs. Goody, the only creature on the earth she could live with, stops eating and looks over the edge of her stall, growls like a little bear deep in her stomach—don’t cry. Then Mona starts to cry big tears that roll down onto the cement floor. “Good,” the verger thinks, weeping openly as he takes the water buckets and draws water from the cowbarn well and goes back in and gives it to the cows and sheep. He glances at her as he mucks out and cleans the floor. Between attacks of sobbing, she milks evenly and energetically, moves to sit beside Goody, and Goody, better than any human being, lets her cry, all four of her stomachs bulging with sympathy.

The verger does all he can to help. Sees that she’s finished milking and takes the two pails from her. The big milk basin in position, the cloth in the strainer, in with the first batch of milk.

“Thanks,” Mona says. She stands up, takes her stool in one hand, pats Goody. “We have to go now. So much butter and milk and cream we’re going to need these coming days!” She’s already thinking about all the food that will have to be prepared for the funeral, about what she’ll have to order from the shop, about where she’s going to put all of Petter’s unavoidable relatives. Who take a laden table and good beds for given.

She dries her nose a last time, and lifts her head, ready for battle. “Yes, dear Lord. I’m guessing the phone is going to start ringing off the hook.”

Together, she and the verger walk back to the parsonage, talking about everyday things. She kicks off her boots in the hall and hangs up her milking coat, hesitates about whether to go into the parlour or the kitchen but goes resolutely into the kitchen. Lillus comes toddling gaily towards her. Her cold is much better and she’s had a good long sleep. “Papa,” she says, and it makes Mona furious that it’s Papa Lillus thinks of when she sees her Mama! She thinks Papa has been in the cow barn with Mama, which he is sometimes, and how she’ll sit on his lap and have her morning tea.

“Papa’s not here!” she says, incensed. “Papa’s dead!”

Lillus doesn’t know what it is to be dead, but she can see that it makes Mama really angry. She looks scared and backs away. The tears come as if someone had pushed a button. “For shame! Be quiet, Lillus! Where is Sanna?”

Sanna comes at once, not a word, and takes Lillus by the hand and takes her to the table. Sister Hanna lifts her into her highchair. She and the verger and Signe feel helpless and uncertain. They expect her to pick up her children and hug them, but she keeps them, too, at a distance.

“Come, Mona,” says Sister Hanna. “Hot tea and sandwiches. Eat while you can. The Mellom priest will be calling soon.”

“He doesn’t need to!” she says. But she sits down and eats, to everyone’s surprise, but quite logically, for she has to keep up her strength. If she doesn’t, who will? Now and then she glances at the floor by the stove. The rug, she saw, had been hung over the railing by the steps to dry. The wet spot on the floor is a good deal smaller. A person’s traces are cleaned away at breakneck speed. No one can ever imagine what it was like to live beside him.

While Mona drinks her tea and eats her sandwich, and while Sanna sits silently and Lillus fusses, the priest in Mellom paces and suffers agonies. His own parishioners call, one after another, to ask if it’s true. Which it is, although it’s hard to grasp. But beg pardon, he can’t talk now because he’s promised to call Pastor Kummel’s wife on the Örlands. Although to himself he wonders why, what can he say? His wife wonders too. Maybe she ought to offer to speak to Mona Kummel, but they’ve only met the one time, at Kummel’s installation, and what can she say? “You talk to her,” she tells her husband. “You know what to say.” She wonders what it would be like if it had been Fredrik who’d drowned. Conflicted feelings, obviously. Grief, worry about the children, loss, regret for the loss of their routines. But also relief. Back to Grankulla. Back to a life of her own.

Mona Kummel answers in an amazingly energetic voice. It sounds as if she was just swallowing some food. “Yes, hello?”

“Fredrik Berg here. I heard the unbelievable news. My wife and I want to extend our deepest sympathies for your loss.”

“Thank you,” says Mona Kummel. There is silence.

“Where do you find the strength? How are you getting along?”

“Thank you. I don’t have much choice.”

“Do you have anyone there with you?”

“Yes. The homecare sister. The verger and his wife, all of them terribly helpful. The organist is a great support. We’re not alone. In fact I don’t know how I’m going to put up with all the people who will come rushing to the house these next few days.”

She sounds more irritated than prostrated with grief. Pretending to understand, he goes on. “Maybe it’s well that there is much to do and think about. It forces a person to keep going. You have the girls—a big responsibility. You can always count on me, under all circumstances. You know that Petter was not only my colleague but also my best friend. And now, presumably, I will have responsibility for the Örlands until … Well, they’ll let us know. I’ve already spoken to the organist. I know that Petter valued him highly. It will be easy to work with him.” He rambles on.

Now and then she says “Yes.” And like a wind-up mouse that scurries around on the floor, he prattles on. “It’s too soon to talk about the funeral, but of course I want to be there.” He draws a breath to continue, but she breaks in.

“No, it’s not too soon. We need to decide as soon as possible so that I can tell everyone who calls and we won’t have to get in touch a second time. Here on the Örlands, funerals usually take place quickly. And I think that’s right. What would you say to next Sunday, the thirteenth?” He can see her looking at the wall calendar in the study, pen in hand, ready to mark the day. With a cross? With a neatly written “Petter’s funeral”?

“Of course,” he says. “We’ll make the arrangements.”

“Good,” she says. “Then it’s decided. Those who can’t come will simply have to miss it.”

Is he hearing her right? A tone of triumph? But she continues. “I wonder if you would like to deliver the eulogy and conduct the burial service? I know that both Skog and Uncle Isidor will want to do it, but you’re his good friend and colleague. You’ve had a lot in common out here these last few years. It feels right to ask you.”

“Of course, it would be an honour. And unworthy. Of such a man. How in the world can I do justice in a single speech to his personality, the effect he had on everyone he met? The joy he brought to the congregation. And now the sorrow. It will be hard. But of course.”

“Thank you,” Mona says. “Then we’ve answered the essential questions, and you can feel free to report what we’ve decided to anyone who asks. And one more thing. I must call his parents, but I hate the thought. His mother. No, I’d really rather not.”

“Of course I can make the call,” says Fredrik Berg, amazed at the organist’s psychological insight. He permits himself a crooked smile. “Priests are supposed to be experts at delivering bad news, although I haven’t done so well this time.”

“Not at all,” says Mona Kummel. “I appreciate the fact that I can speak to you plainly.”

“Good,” says the priest in Mellom. “When I’ve spoken to his parents, I’ll notify the deanery and the cathedral chapter. And remember, you can contact me for any reason. I’ll try to do all I can.” “Good,” says Mona, too. “Thanks for calling. Give my best to Margit.” She rings off. The operator stands with her mouth open, as does the Mellom priest. It’s true, as he often says, that grief has many faces. As a spiritual guide, you must confront your own inadequacy more often than another human being. He pulls himself together, ignores Margit who asks how it went, just says dismissively, “I have to call his parents now. Time’s passing, and it would be awful if they heard about it from someone who thought they already know.”

Talking to Petter Kummel’s mother, he does at last encounter something expected and predictable. Silence. Horror. Denial. “No, it can’t be true. It must be someone else. A terrible misunderstanding. Petter is an excellent swimmer. Thoroughly familiar with waterways and ice conditions around the Örlands. It’s unthinkable. No, my dear Mr Berg, please get your facts straight before you try to frighten us to death.”

“I sincerely wish I was mistaken! But unfortunately it’s true. I’ve spoken to the organist, who was present when they carried his lifeless body to the parsonage. They worked all night trying to revive him, but it was impossible, he’d been in the water too long. Had perhaps frozen to death before he went to the bottom. I have spoken with Mona. She asked me to call. She was there and knows that he’s dead. She’s keeping herself under such tight control that I’m afraid her heart may break.”

“I don’t understand.”

“None of us do. It seems incomprehensible. It is so painful to have to break the news to you, his dear parents.”

“I had three sons. Now two are already dead. What’s the meaning of it all? How am I to bear such grief?” Now her voice breaks, and she gives the phone to her husband.

Petter’s father, whom he remembers as peculiar, something of a dreamer, very unlike his son, sounds astonishingly calm. “How is it possible? Petter, who is so much wiser than I! But he is dead, you say, and I must live.”

“Yes,” says the Mellom priest. “I know that you have a brother, Dean Isidor, who can talk to you much better than I can. I’ll call him and ask him to get in touch.”

“Yes, Isidor,” says Leonard Kummel. “He has had much affliction on account of my children. First Göran. Now Petter.”

Just as well to get it said at once. “I hope he can come to the funeral. But Mona has asked me to conduct the service, as Petter’s friend and closest colleague.”

A short pause. Fredrik begins to suspect that Mona has perhaps carried out a coup. Best not to let on, and in any case the elastic Leonard Kummel moves quickly on. “Yes, yes, I see. That sounds appropriate. You must forgive me … It’s so hard to think clearly. My daughter, my son, they must be told. I’m crushed.”

“I understand. There must be many you’ll need to contact. I too have other calls to make. But don’t hesitate for a second to call me if there’s anything I can do. Anything at all. I’m so terribly sorry for your affliction.”

As they’re speaking, the morning’s news goes out across Finland, and now all hell breaks loose. The operator on the Örlands sets her own priorities and puts through calls to the parsonage first. Others can wait, including even the Co-op. They’re put through in the intervals and are interrupted when necessary. Calls wait in an endless queue, everyone needs to talk to everyone, exclaim, express their horror, pour out their feelings. Calls to the organist have the second highest priority, right after the parsonage, because official calls go through him, from the rural deanery, from the cathedral chapter. On Åland and the mainland, the coordination is not as good. There are unexpected and inexplicable traffic jams, some lines are completely blocked, on others there are unreasonable delays. Some people call a second time to find out what became of their first call, which doesn’t make things better. “We’re putting them through in the order they were placed, so please be patient,” say operators all along the coast.

For every minute that passes, Petter Kummel has been dead one minute longer. Mona doesn’t want to be distracted, she wants to concentrate, she wants to be alone, but the telephone rings. The only voice that could make her happy is his, but to her surprise, her mother’s cheers her a bit when she calls. Mama, who never makes a big fuss. Mama, whom she can copy at a time like this—close up, button your soul, give nothing away!

“I thought I’d heard a ghost when I heard the news on the radio. Tell me it’s all a mistake.”

“No. Petter drowned last night.”

“Dear heaven, how could God let such a thing happen?”

This from Mama, who hardly believes in God. Mona decides to answer as if she’d said, “How did it happen?” She describes the accident, the bicycle, the items on the ice, the search at the steamboat channel. Too late. “I didn’t hear a thing, though I was out on the steps, listening. Lillus had a cold and was fussing and crying so I was in the bedroom with her. If I’d been alone in the kitchen, I might have heard something.”

“Mona, sweetheart,” Mama says, appalled but also fearful, afraid for her daughter and the powerful feelings that at some stage must come out. “How are you? Dear child, how are coping?” She remembers last summer’s visit to the Örlands, Mona full of energy, radiant with well-being, Petter so obviously all she wanted in life. And now this.

“I’ll just have to deal with it,” says Mona angrily. It’s her way of dealing with everything—with anger. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work. The funeral is set for next Sunday. All Petter’s relatives. It’s enough to make you crazy. I don’t think you need to come.”

“Of course we’ll come, Papa and I. Papa doesn’t know yet. He was out in the stables, and now he’s out ploughing. It snowed here last night. It’s beautiful. We’ll figure out some way of getting to Örland. Maybe the Coast Guard can help.”

“Yes. I’ll call when I know more.”

“Thank you. But first and foremost, you’ve got to promise me not to work yourself to death. Get all the help you can find. Tell me if there’s anything I can do. Anything we can bring. Anything at all. You understand, we want to help. And those poor little lambs! How are they doing?”

“Lillus doesn’t understand a thing. Sanna gets it, more or less, but … oh, they’re both so little that most of it goes right over their heads. The homecare sister is here, they’re being well taken care of.”

“Good,” says Mama, who has learned not to ask follow-up questions. “Tell Sanna that Gram and Gramps will be coming for a visit soon. And now don’t forget to tell me if there’s anything I can do.”

“Yes, yes,” Mona says. Ever since she was a little girl, she has totally lacked confidence in her mother’s ability to get things done. Of course she can get her to read stories to Sanna, but she, Mona, faster and more efficient, will have to do all the practical work herself!

In any case, phew, another phone call out of the way, and more to make. Brave, kind people along the coast, and of course her mother-in-law has to talk, although she should have realized that Mona asked Fredrik Berg to call because she didn’t want to speak to them herself. But no one can avoid her fate, and Martha Kummel chatters and weeps while Mona grows more and more distant, never crying or sniffling so that Martha can tell the world that she’s gone completely to pieces! “What can I say?” is all she says when Martha wants some kind of emotional response from her, wants her to sob and carry on and be grateful for Martha’s platitudes about how we can’t understand the ways of the Lord, how he lets no sparrow fall to earth (but he let Petter), how Petter will always be with them in their hearts. Mona knows that every word she utters is repeated and embroidered by the unctuous Martha, and therefore she says almost nothing. Let her report that Mona is dumb with grief! She only tells her about the funeral and insists that Petter would certainly have wanted his good friend and colleague to conduct the service.

Phew! She gets sweaty and worn out from all the phone calls, a constant harping about the same things. The whole time forced to say something other than what she would rather put like this: Petter is dead, and all joy and happiness are gone from my life. Nothing can compensate for such a loss. If only I could drive all of you away, if only I could chase you off with an axe, if only you’d all vanish from the face of the earth. It would not ease my grief, but it’s what I’d prefer.

Chapter Twenty-Five

I know only what I’ve heard. That he drowned. You might also say that he drowned because he was a good swimmer. While he still had time, it never occurred to him that he couldn’t pull himself out. He did everything he should have, got out of his boots and his overcoat, and thought it was a small thing, strong and athletic as he was, to heave himself onto the ice. Or you could say that he died of bad judgment. What was he thinking when he used up his strength rescuing his briefcase? A contributing cause of death was the good breeding that taught him you must take better care of other people’s property than of your own. Would he have done that if he’d been thinking clearly? Another cause of death was perhaps the blow to his head that knocked so much sense out of him that he didn’t know enough to start calling for help before it was too late. Carelessness was another cause of death. Here on the islands, no one goes out on the ice without a knife in their belt, whereas he pedalled away like some kind of Jesus who thinks he can walk on water. The Aranda also contributed to his death. If she hadn’t passed that way, the men who heard him wouldn’t have assumed that someone had fallen into the steamboat channel.

No, my friend, there isn’t a single cause of a person’s death, it’s not that simple. People die from a number of different factors that work together to prevent a rescue.

Of course people ask me if I didn’t have some foreboding. What sort of premonition do you think I could get in Godby, well inland, among strangers? That you have a weight on your chest and feel anxious and helpless is completely understandable. In retrospect you can see all that as some kind of warning, but what good does it do you to know that something dreadful is happening, when it could be anything at all and you know nothing and are fearful as a child? I can’t say that I thought of the priest and felt he was in danger. I didn’t think of anything in particular. It was just a general sense of uneasiness and depression, the kind of thing that can affect anyone who’s completely in the dark.

If only the thing could be undone! There’s such a small margin, so much that could have happened just a tiny bit differently, and the priest would stand today in the Co-op laughing about his cold bath. Much more likely than his being dead. It’s that I wonder about—if those who were out there with him, curious and importunate, if they didn’t understand that they only needed to lighten him a bit, just enough to let him get his chest up on the ice. Is it true, as I suspect, that they don’t exist unless you sense their presence? The way the air gets thicker when they gather, how strongly you have to drive your thoughts for them to understand. They wish us no harm, I have many examples of that, but unless you yourself urge them on, they’ll just hang around the hole in the ice and watch you die, as if they had forgotten even the fact that a person who is dying has the strongest desire to live.

The priest’s wife has a few days’ respite before the funeral. She has saved and separated milk, churned butter. The Co-op has delivered flour and she has baked and baked. She has cleaned and cleaned. She tends her animals in exemplary fashion. Some community representative is always nearby—Sister Hanna, the verger, the organist on a worried visit. “Please, Mona,” they say. “Everything doesn’t have to be perfect. You’ll make yourself sick. At least let us help you. Sit down. Rest. This is terrible.”

She doesn’t tell them what she’s feeling. She says very little. When she talks to Sister Hanna, it’s only about practical matters. She is closed to the concerned helpers trying to keep an eye on her without being too obvious. When she walks down towards the church dock, they know she’s going to the dead man in the shed. A coffin has been delivered, lined in white, but it has not yet been closed, and Mona goes there once a day to make certain he is actually dead.

The temperature is still below freezing. The body is frozen. It doesn’t change in any objective way, but grows day by day more irreclaimable. Mona has examined every mark on the body, which is covered with traces of the accident and the rough attempts at resuscitation—the black mark on his forehead, the skin scraped from his hands, the pressure marks on his chest, the scratches and discolorations from the rescue operations. His nose slimmer than in life, his mouth white and narrow, as it might have become in old age. His eyes, the lids open a tiny slit, give hope, even now, for a glimmer of life. A man so loved, so dead. How could you?

According to the verger who watches over her, she cries in the shed. Wails, with open mouth, terrible to hear. But good that it comes out, they all agree on that. Maybe it will be better when her own relatives arrive, they tell each other, hopefully, thinking secretly that it will be a relief to hand off the responsibility.

For what happens at a funeral is that the survivor is thrust back into the family and clan that she believed she had escaped. The priest’s wife sees them approaching and surrounding her and cutting her off from the parish community she has been a part of, from the new friends who are not burdened by ties to the past or by double loyalties. From the settings in which she is a free and independent individual, freed from the troubles and failings of her youth. All this will be taken from her. The dear people of the Örlands will be shoved aside by the approaching relatives, who will return her triumphantly to the scenes of her deepest defeats, where she had constantly to assert her right to a life of her own, now spent.

If she could commit murder, she thinks. If she could close every unctuous mouth, cut off the empty phrases with a knife. If she could sweep them away, put the whole bunch of them on a desert island. If she could be an angel of vengeance and dispense punishments in accordance with what their sins deserve, if she could expunge them from the surface of the earth. Even then he would not come back to life. Even then she would not regain her life with him.

When the first funeral guests arrive, the deceased’s parents and relatives from Åland, delivered by the Coast Guard in its light icebreaker, she takes the fish casserole steaming from the oven. Oven-warm bread on the table, freshly churned butter, the best china. The pastor’s wife herself: “Welcome, welcome. You must be frozen and worn out. Hang up your coats, there’s food on the table.”

She has roses in her cheeks from the heat of the stove and her usual rush of activity. She successfully parries her mother-in-law’s effort to embrace her. She notes the tears on Martha’s cheeks with irritation—such an exhibition. They have also brought some huge, hideous wreaths, which clutter up the hallway, as if their coats and suitcases weren’t clutter enough. “Come in, come in,” she hurries them along. “Don’t let the heat out. Come in and sit down.”

She thumps down herself for a moment, but she can’t stand to look at their long faces and their grimaces. “Where do you find the strength?” her mother-in-law chirps, and she answers, angrily, “Where would we be if I didn’t?” A good question. Sister Hanna has left the parsonage because the guests need the guest room, so there’s no one but Mona to keep everything going, a child can see that. Stupid questions, terrible hypocrisy. What could they possibly help her with, these people who are used to being waited on hand and foot at the Parsonage Hotel!

The little girls are silent as the grave, the guests have forgotten to greet them. Now they shower them with attention, since they don’t know how they’re supposed to deal with Mona. Sanna recognizes both her Papa’s mother and father but looks anxiously at Mama when they ask her things. May she speak or will Mama get mad? Lillus stretches her arms out to Grandpa, but Mama shoves her back down into her highchair. “Sit still! You’ll tip it over!” It’s unnatural, the girls as quiet as mice, Mona unreachable in her efficiency, Petter dead.

Full of anxiety, they meet the next wave to appear. It is Mona’s parents, Petter’s siblings, and Uncle Isidor, who came from the east, got off the steamboat in Mellom, and were conveyed onwards by the Coast Guard. Mona is in the parsonage with the girls and her preparations, and in the icy cold on the church dock they fall weeping into each other’s arms, groaning and grieving. The Åland phalanx, which arrived first, reports that they don’t know what to do with Mona. It’s impossible to reach her, she refuses to talk about anything but the practical arrangements and turns a deaf ear to every effort at solicitude or sympathy. We can’t help her, we can’t do anything, we can only sit there like a guest while she rushes around doing things. It’s not natural. What are we to do?

“We can go inside before we freeze to death,” says Mona’s mother drily. They are startled, and the flood of emotions abruptly stops. Quiet, courteous Mrs Hellén sounds amazingly like her daughter. She starts walking up to the parsonage, followed by her husband. The others look at each other and eventually follow along in a loose cluster, fluttering and wobbling in their despair and horror, while the Helléns walk straight ahead into the parsonage.

No emotional scenes here. They take one another by the hand. “Sweetheart! My poor little bird,” Mama says. “Stop,” says Mona. “Here come the girls.” Cautiously, Lillus hiding behind Sanna. Gram pleased, Gramps delighted. Give us a hug! Sanna remembers them, she is Gram’s friend and intimate. Mona knows that Mama doesn’t know how to deal with children until she can talk to them, but she looks at Lillus and, in a conversational tone, says “Peep.” Lillus takes a little hop and says “Peep” back. Then she rises into the air on Gramps’s arm and sits there as if cast in bronze. Quite pleasant. Mona wouldn’t have believed this of the parents she criticizes so harshly. But just as she might have said something, they hear the inescapable troop from Åland murmuring hesitantly outside. The door opens and nothing happens.

“Come in, come in!” Mona shouts. “You’re letting out all the warmth!” She greets the newcomers, tells them they can eat in the dining room and then they’ll have coffee in the parlour. And no, thank you, of course she needs no help. She sets out the coffee things on the sideboard and slices bread in the pantry. Then this new group seats itself at the table and eats, for they wouldn’t dare do otherwise. Ready to burst with sympathy, which now lies like a cold lump in their bellies. The floods of tears that flow so freely when they talk among themselves have ceased. Attempts at conversation get prompt, dismissive answers. What are they to do? How will it all end?

Coffee in the parlour as promised. A braided coffeecake, brushed with egg, sprinkled with pearl sugar. Please help yourselves! Deathly silence, all the more noticeable because it’s normally impossible to get the Kummels to shut up. Only Mrs Hellén converses, and Hellén himself rumbles agreement in his bass. “Good coffee cake,” Mrs Hellén says. “You can certainly bake—better than I.” That almost makes Mona smile, because she’s not wrong. In adversity, when there’s no way out, Mrs Hellén escapes into diversionary remarks, just now about the food, the wind, the temperature. The Coast Guard, the boat trip, seasickness, the length of the trip, the relief of getting back onto dry land. She continues with friendly questions to the surviving Kummel siblings about their jobs and homes, their future plans and hopes. She gets a conversation going, although the young people shake their heads and signal each other that they can’t believe their ears. All her life, Mona has found her mother’s refusal to confront unpleasant situations annoying. Now she suddenly sees that it has some advantages, can even save her from a still more unpleasant situation, namely, that her self-control might run the risk of collapsing. If she has an ally in this assembly, it is, to her astonishment, her mother.

And when everyone has been assigned a place to sleep in the guest room, study, dining room, parlour, or attic, and when it’s been decided who the pallbearers will be, and a number of other exhausting questions have been answered, Mrs Hellén says in friendly conversation that she doesn’t suppose the Co-op will have a black veil. And therefore she has brought an old veil with her, which she can help Mona fasten to her hat. In fact, she is wrong—Adele Bergman promptly delivered a veil—but the thought was excellent and allows Mona and Mrs Hellén to withdraw to the bedroom while the others cluster at the other end of the house with their sighs and tears and their gestures of complete helplessness whenever Mona’s situation is cautiously broached.

Mama has her own funeral hat with her in a carton and Mona brings out the pretty black felt hat she had to buy for Petter’s ordination. The veil would fall better if the hat had a broader brim, but it will do. The veil her mother brought hangs nicer and smells better than the stiff, unused one from the Co-op, which has absorbed the stink of tobacco smoke and kerosene in the store. “Thanks,” Mona says. She starts sewing it to the hat right away, while Mrs Hellén stitches on her own. Mona knows what she looks like in it, but Mama sees her eldest daughter in mourning for the first time. As soon as she’s hidden behind it, her shoulders begin to tremble and there is a snuffling sound, as if she were sobbing. Quickly, she throws it back over her hat. “Oh, just because I’m wearing a veil, I think I have to start crying.”

Mrs Hellén smiles evasively, the way she does, and says, “Yes, yes. It’s hard. It’s dreadful, having all of us here in the house. Tell me if you think there’s anything I can do. I’d really like to help, even though I’m the way I am.”

Mona gives her a quick evaluating look. “If you could keep your old friend Martha from interfering constantly, that would be a real boon. If you talk to her, she can’t talk to me.”

“True enough,” Mama says. “And I can spend time with the girls. Read to them, for example.”

“They’re going to be hopelessly spoiled!” Mona says. “No routines and no rules. They’re impossible if they get too much attention.”

While the two women sit in the bedroom, the verger comes in through the kitchen right into the group of funeral guests, like living proof of the saying that no matter what you’re doing, you’ll be interrupted. Surprised, he excuses himself for his work clothes—he has come to help the widow with the evening milking. Whereupon they all start talking at once. For heaven’s sake, Mona can’t possibly go out to the cow barn under the circumstances! Can’t someone else go? Is there no one who knows how to milk? No one to ask? This is terrible!

No one in the group knows how to milk a cow or else they would. With pleasure. Finally the verger himself raises his voice to say that it’s Mona herself who insists on going. “She says she wants to go by herself, but I go with her anyway. And I must tell you”, he adds with all the weight of his office, “that I don’t know how we’d get through this without the cow barn, because in the cow barn she can weep.”

That gives them something to think about. Mona too heard him come and emerges from the bedroom followed by Mrs Hellén. “You came this evening too!” she says. “You know I can manage by myself. But let’s go. If Berg and Skog arrive while I’m out, make them some tea. I’ll come and throw together some supper for everyone when I’m done. In the meantime, make yourselves at home.” A general invitation, but the order to make tea is directed to Mrs Hellén and banishes the elder Mrs Kummel to the outer circle. Nothing more to be said, she closes the kitchen door, puts on her milking coat in the hall, pulls on her boots, and then off she goes with the verger in her wake.

Almost as if they’d been waiting around the corner of the house for a signal, Berg and Skog come in. When the Coast Guard unloaded the mourning relatives at the church dock, Berg and Skog continued to the west villages, where they prepared the next day’s funeral service with the organist. They ate and talked and are now going to spend the night in one of the attic rooms at the parsonage.

Mrs Hellén thinks that Berg looks terribly down in the mouth, while Skog can hardly contain his desire to arrange and direct. As Petter’s predecessor in this parish, he had, on his own initiative, decided and announced that he, who knows his Örlanders, would deliver the sermon. Until he was informed that Berg had been asked to conduct the funeral, he had simply assumed that the call would come to him. Hard to explain why they’ve chosen the colourless Berg from the neighbouring parish, who has had very little contact with the Örlands, while Skog himself, with the ability to play on the Örlanders’ emotions like a keyboard, must content himself with a sermon. Well, he can say a lot in that sermon! In the course of the discussion at the organist’s table, he has expressed his views on a great many subjects and was irritated by Berg’s tenacious resistance. It seems that he and the widow have made all the decisions and that they have completely won over the organist to their point of view.

Well, what’s done is done. But now they have to greet the relatives from the mainland all over again, having met them once already, on the boat, and make a much greater effort with those who came from Åland to the west—the grieving parents and the male representatives of Petter’s father’s home farm. Many think them empty phrases. Even Fredrik Berg thinks his words sound hollow, although he means it from the bottom of his heart when he says that he, who counted Petter as a friend and brother, knows better than most what they have lost. It is difficult to pull his thoughts together into something personal when the food seems to have a higher priority than the death. Mona’s mother, Mrs Hellén insists on serving tea to the new arrivals, although they try to insist on waiting until Mona returns. “These are Mona’s orders,” Mrs Hellén says as she pours. “It seems to be a rule of the house that everyone must get something warm in their gizzard as soon as they come through the door. Drink this now, and then you can have a second cup with the rest of us.”

With Skog on hand, there is at least no problem with the conversation. He quickly takes over the grieving parents and, at last, says all the things that a proper priest is supposed to say to the devastated parents of a beloved son who has died before his time, in the bloom of youth. They hang on his every word, and, trembling and weeping, they speak of the absolute incomprehensibility of what has happened. Berg sits silent, but it doesn’t matter, for Skog leads the discussion with authority. Mrs Hellén tiptoes carefully to the kitchen. Ingrid, Frej’s little seasick wife, is unobtrusively washing the dishes, and Mrs Hellén peeks into the pantry. Everything prepared—sliced bread, butter on small plates, farmer cheese. She chats a bit with Ingrid and has her suspicions confirmed. The seasickness is a result of a newly confirmed pregnancy. “So strange, just at the same time as Petter’s death.” “Yes, yes,” says Mrs Hellén. “Such things happen. It’s so nice of you to do the washing-up, Ingrid. Maybe Charlotte could dry. I’ll start setting the table for evening tea in a few minutes.”

Charlotte comes in, weeping, and Mrs Hellén looks around for the little girls, both of whom are anchored on Hellén’s lap. She has to admit that he has a fatherly touch with children. She goes around on sore feet and sets the table, conscious of the fact that Mona doesn’t want her to, but it’s a way of getting them all into bed a little earlier so her poor daughter can rest and gather her strength for an exhausting Sunday. “Where will we find the strength?” she wonders, as she’s wondered for thirty years, padding about, all but invisible under Skog’s ringing voice.

Almost everything is ready when Mona comes rushing in. The verger has gone on to the church. If he builds a fire in the boiler this evening, then all he’ll have to do early in the morning is add wood. She looks around, displeased. “What in the world have you been up to? I was going to do all this when I came back! Go sit down, Mama! I’ll do the rest.” She greets Skog quickly and waves away his condolences, greets Berg, an ally, more heartily. And she keeps her emotions under control, under tight control as she puts the girls to bed and her mother reads them a story. Mona leads them quickly through their bedtime prayers (“God who holds all children dear”) and then goes back out to the others, who are starting to gather their things and get ready for the night. The only sensible thing is to get to bed. The ones just arrived have a long, trying journey behind them, and the day to come will be heart-rending and difficult. Another reason not to sit up and talk half the night is that they’re afraid of Mona and don’t know how to behave. Darkness and silence may be preferable.

Still, it’s wrong to say that the house lies at peace. It is not necessary to express the thoughts of the people lying in bed, shivering, afraid they will never get to sleep. It’s enough to take a look into the attic room under the northernmost gable. The energetic Skog has built a fire in the tile stove, but it’s still cold. He and Berg sit opposite one another at the wobbly table that has stood here since long before Skog’s time. Berg puts his briefcase on the table and opens it to take out his aspirin. Skog extends his hand. “May I see?”

Berg, timid, as if he were trying to hide something shameful, “What?”

“The eulogy. Surely that’s what you were going to show me.”

“No, not really.”

“You have written it, I suppose?”

“Naturally.”

“Well then, give it here. I’ll tell you what I think. I know exactly what will work with these Örlanders.”

Berg, feeling coerced, “I don’t know that I want it improved. It’s hard to explain. Imperfect as it is, it’s what I want to say.”

“What sort of nonsense is that? You want it to be good, don’t you?”

“Of course. But I also want to speak to Petter’s memory in my own words.”

“I could really help you. I know how the Örlanders think.”

“It’s hard for me to compromise about this.”

“I simply don’t understand your attitude. Can’t you take criticism?”

“Yes, I guess that’s the problem. You didn’t know Petter the way I did. I’m grieving. I have a hard time seeing the whole thing coldly and critically.”

“All the more reason to listen to an experienced colleague.”

“Perhaps. My arguments are weak. But I can’t.”

“Don’t be such a little girl. We’re colleagues. This is a professional consultation.”

“Why is it so important to you to read my poor eulogy?”

“You seem so uncertain. As if you needed help.”

“I get the feeling that you want to direct and control me.”

“You’ve buried yourself out here for too long. There are fresh ideas in the city. We no longer speak of individual effort. Now it’s all about teamwork, working together.”

“I’ve read about that. But I’ve wrestled with this eulogy. I’m the one who’s going to deliver it. It’s not a matter of teamwork.”

And so on. Skog, somewhat older, does not give up. Fredrik Berg can feel that his cheeks are red, his eyes moist. His forehead sweaty, his armpits damp, the cassock that must on no account smell bad tomorrow. He hasn’t even the strength to get up and go to bed, just sits there like a sullen child and refuses. His gaze wavers, can’t look this self-important man in the eye, this Skog, who thinks it’s only a question of time until unreasonable Berg has been beaten into submission and his eulogy criticized to death.

Because that’s what it’s about. If Skog says a single dismissive word about the eulogy, Fredrik will never be able to deliver it. He’ll be forced to flee with his tail between his legs while Skog pulls out the unctuous speech he has probably already written. Why must a person have good arguments against a conceited and contemptuous authority? There is nothing he can do but refuse.

“No. It’s a principle of mine. I let no one read my speeches and sermons in advance.”

“The vicar calls on principle?”

And so forth. Finally, Fredrik manages to get up, dizzy with exhaustion. “We’re getting nowhere. We need to go to bed. We have a great deal to do tomorrow.” The voice of reason. He starts getting ready. The oil lamp on the table leaves the rest of the room in merciful shadow, but he is as timid as a girl as he tries to avoid exposing himself as he undresses. He brushes his teeth at the washstand, anxious about spitting and making noise. In everything he does, he behaves like a toffee-nosed young lady, and, going grey with shame, he lies down finally in his bed, frozen to the marrow, afraid to move, afraid to make the slightest peep that would arouse Skog’s contempt. He would like to take his briefcase into bed with him; on the grounds that his aspirin are in it, he has instead placed it as close to the headboard as possible.

Skog, on the other hand, takes his time going to bed. Without embarrassment he empties his bladder in the chamberpot, snorts and hawks, wipes his armpits, undresses and puts on his nightclothes, throws himself into bed, rolls over, lies still and prays a semi-audible evening prayer, which to tell the truth Fredrik Berg has not uttered, changes position several more times, then lies still and quickly falls asleep, deep breathing, with a little pup-pup-pup as he breathes out. Sacerdotal snoring. Dear God.

The sleep of the righteous. A good conscience the best pillow. All that hogwash that people say, whereas Fredrik, sleepless, desperate, ill, lies awake as if paralysed. The perpetrator sleeps like a pig, the victim lies awake in guilt and shame.

Downstairs, those who don’t fall asleep hear the priests’ discussion only as a distant murmur, as if they were exploring some profound theological question about the mystery of death prior to the great burial service on the following day. Mona is sleeping in the bedroom, making the best of a few poor hours of exhaustion before waking at four o’clock to an icy room. Petter’s bed has been carried out to the dining room, where Uncle Richard is camping. The coffin in the shed has been closed and the cover nailed down. Now there is nothing left but duty.

In the doctor’s apartment in the attic of the medical clinic in the northern archipelago, Doctor Gyllen spends the night before the funeral pacing. Even without drugs, her feelings are blocked. “Incomprehensible,” she has said, like everyone else. “That dear, good man. And his wife and the little girls. How can such a thing happen?” But at the same time, an inexplicable feeling of guilt is eating at her heart despite her efforts to reject it.

She heard about the death days earlier, on the radio, like everyone else, and when her father called a short time later, she thought that was what he’d called to tell her. Together they would repeat the words. “Incomprehensible. Dear Petter Kummel who’s become such a friend.” And they did so. But Papa had another reason for calling.

“Irina. A letter came. Our Kolja is alive. We have an address.”

Complete silence. Her self-control so practised that she can no longer show emotion even in an empty room. Not even a sigh. No tears.

“Irina, are you there?” Papa says. “Did you faint?” To Mama: “I’m afraid she fainted.”

“No,” Doctor Gyllen says. “Don’t tell me such things. I no longer dare to hope.”

“But it’s true, Irina. Be happy! We’ve been waiting for this for nine years.” He starts telling her who the letter came from— the child’s aunt in Kazan—and how the letter made its way to Finland. They can’t make contact directly because of the regime, but they have a go-between, a good person, whose name can’t be mentioned over the phone, with contacts in the legation. “Irina, you can write. They can write.”

“Thank you,” Doctor Gyllen says. “There’s nothing I can say. My heart too full. I’ll write to you later this evening. To him. Yes? Oh God. What can I say?”

Now Mama comes on. “How wonderful that I’ve lived long enough to see this happen!” She talks on, while Doctor Gyllen stares out the window. A light wind, a little snow. The first patient already arriving, sweeping the snow off his boots on the steps. The medical assistant pottering about downstairs, wondering why she doesn’t come down. They usually do a little run-through before the day starts.

“I have to go to work,” Doctor Gyllen says. “We’ll talk later, we’ll write. It’s like Pastor Kummel’s death, but the opposite. It’s incomprehensible.”

She rings off and is about to go downstairs, but instead she makes another call, to her dear friends the Hindrikses on the Örlands. Greta answers, and when she hears that it’s Doctor Gyllen, she says, “We do nothing but cry. We just can’t believe it’s true. If only the doctor had been here, we keep saying. If the doctor had been here, maybe he could have been saved. But they say he was in the water too long. They worked on him all night, but not a sign of life. How could it happen?”

It could be that Doctor Gyllen called to tell them about her son, but she sees that on the Örlands there is no space for anything but the priest. That’s as it should be, and she’s glad she said nothing, for in the course of the day’s work and later, at home, having her evening tea, Doctor Gyllen works through a lot of thoughts—religious superstitions she never imagined she was capable of. It’s about a simple coincidence, one of many in the course of a long life, nothing to get worked up about. No cause for a lot of overwrought religious speculation.

But the connection can’t help but inspire quite alien ideas. Pastor Kummel had promised to do everything in his power. Smiling, he spoke of the miracles that a man in his position could hope for. Every cell in her body tells her that Pastor Kummel went to the foot of the throne and offered his own life in exchange for her son’s.

For much of her adult life, the resources have been so meagre and the need in some cases so pressing that it seemed to her more and more that there was a fixed, inadequate quantity of things in the world. If someone comes up in the world and basks in the sun a bit, then that well-being and sunshine are denied someone else. It’s the same way with things like joy and success. The sum total is paltry. If a little love and happiness come our way, someone else is deprived of them. Envy, which is such a stone in our path, derives from this insight, as does our reluctance to reveal our good fortune to others.

She has now regained her son, while Mrs Kummel has lost her husband. The thought is childish and shameful, unworthy of a well-educated, rational adult. It’s a passing impression, the result of two shocks one right after the other. Of course that’s all it is, and she needs to remind herself of that fact forcefully. She must resist, establish some distance from the rational woman scientist who finds herself weeping by her teacup. Half the night before the funeral of Pastor Kummel, whose stiff, frozen, dead body she can picture all too clearly. She weeps, too, for the care and attention she knows this body is being shown, in contrast to the countless labour-camp prisoners, her husband perhaps one of them, whose bodies are disposed of like so much offal. And alongside them, her son, risen from the dead. Behind him and Pastor Kummel are millions of people born and died, without meaning, suffering unfathomable pain. How can the Christian church call its God good?

She manages to prevent herself from falling on her knees and thanking God for her son’s rebirth and asking him to receive Petter Kummel’s soul. It’s a good thing that she doesn’t have to attend his funeral, she who in her present state would disgrace herself by weeping uncontrollably.

Chapter Twenty-Six

BEFORE THE FUNERAL CAN BEGIN, they must pass all the stations of the cross—rising; washing quickly at the washstand; dressing, which is no small matter considering the cutting wind outside; making the beds; building a fire in the tile stove; carrying out the chamberpots; waiting in line for use of the outhouse; breakfast. Frightening to see Mona, white against black, utterly self-controlled. “Eat!” she commands. “It will be a while before we get anything else!” Sanna in a dress and a cardigan, quiet. Lillus in everyday clothes on Gramps’s arm. Unreal, the guests think as they eat their oatmeal. This is not happening. None of us are here.

But here they sit, like terrified hares in the path of a harvester. Let it stop. Don’t let it come. But there’s a knock on the door, the proper front door, and it’s the organist and the verger who enter. Black suits, white scarves, white faces. “Good day to the house of mourning. We will bring in the coffin now. Maybe some of you would …?” Frej and Ragnar and Uncle Richard galvanized. “Yes, we’re coming.” Quickly into their outdoor wraps, stumbling out the door with unbuttoned coats, down to the boat shed. The verger has the carrying straps from the sacristy and says it might be a good idea to practise before people arrive. There are now four of them, counting the verger. There will be six at the actual burial, but that’s more for form’s sake than because it will be too heavy for four. It is an honour for representatives of the parish to be among the pallbearers.

It appears that Frej, despite his youth, has the most experience carrying coffins. He organizes and instructs, excusing himself with “There were quite a few during the war.” He avoids the expression “wooden overcoat”. It’s good to have something to do at last. They walk in step, the coffin swinging slightly as they carry it up the incline. A pause in front of the tall steps, then all together, the organist behind to catch it if it starts sliding backwards. Into the parlour. The coffin placed on the trestles.

Mona refuses permission to open the coffin. Petter’s relatives have to bend to her wishes, although they remember the opening of Göran’s coffin, the body already putrefying, and his mother’s relief that it was done. Now it’s Mona who is Petter’s next of kin, and she has declared that they will remember him alive, what lies in the coffin is only a body. They have to give in, but even around a closed coffin, they all fall apart. It is the last time the family will stand gathered around Petter. They’ve decided to sing “Into Thy Mercy, Gentle Lord”, but they are unable to bring it off. The organist gives them all a note in a strained voice but has to stop. They burst into tears at the very first words and, wailing, throw themselves down into any empty chair and sob in desperation. All except the dry-eyed Helléns, most notably the unconsolable widow.

Almost a little disdainful, unseeing, she stands there avoiding them all, at a safe distance from anyone who might possibly try to embrace her. She holds Sanna by the hand, a slightly cold and sweaty hand. She is quiet, Sanna is quiet and good these days and all the following days, and Mona can take her along to church with confidence.

Skog and Berg avoid looking at each other, but they do check their watches. The noise of motorboats can be heard in Church Bay, where the Coast Guard has broken up the ice. People are already walking past the house, glancing through the parsonage windows. The verger and the organist look at each other, the verger clears his throat at length, blows his nose in a large handkerchief. “I’ll go on ahead. Give me a signal when you’re ready to start.” On his way out, he runs into Elis Bergman and Brage Söderberg, who’ve been chosen to be pallbearers. They’re walking around wondering if they should go in. The verger waves them in. “Yes, at least into the hall. Skog will tell you what to do.”

And sure enough, as Berg notes, Skog takes the first opportunity to give orders and take charge. As soon as he hears the newcomers in the hallway, he goes out and starts to confer in a loud whisper. “Yes, it’s almost time. I’ll get the family moving. Tactfully, of course. One needs to use psychology on these occasions.” Deliriously self-satisfied, he is convinced that nothing will happen unless he makes it happen. In fact, the organist is already talking to Frej, and the three pallbearers from the family move out to the hall to meet those from the Örlands. “We’ll take out the coffin now. We’ll manage. The steps are the worst. Careful you don’t slip in your leather shoes. The verger sanded, but it’s still treacherous.”

There are teachers and office workers in the funeral procession, and even they are looking at their watches. Mona is helping Sanna into her coat and cap, then she reaches for her hat, her veil still thrown back, and puts on her own coat. “Now we can go,” she says, impatiently, in the direction of the parlour. And it’s suddenly crowded in the front hall, sweaters and coats and hats, five fluttering veils, burial wreaths in hands. “Do we have everything? Come, Sanna. I’ll hold your hand.”

Sister Hanna watches them go with Lillus on her arm. Although everyone wants to attend the funeral, someone has to make the sacrifice and stay home with Lillus. Crying hard, she stretches out her arms towards them when she sees they’re leaving, but not even Sanna cares, they just close the door and disappear. Outside, Mona nods to the pallbearers and, solemnly, they take their place around the coffin. They give it a trial lift and look at each other—yes, we’re ready. The organist raises his hand towards the bell tower. The pallbearers start to move. The bell-tower bays are open, and the bells start to swing, the first stroke of the clapper against the side of the big bell muffled and stiff with cold. But then the speed picks up, both bells together, dark and light, the little bell scrambling above the weight of the big bell’s authority, together the preponderant bright tone that is the distinctive sound of Örland church. The people up on the crown of the hill stop to let the funeral procession pass, those in the churchyard turn their faces towards the parsonage, the first hats and caps come off.

This is what they see: the coffin white, the mourners black, the little girl hidden behind the wreaths. A collective gesture as the women sweep their veils forward over the brims of their hats. The pallbearers coax the coffin down the steps and begin their steady pace. One more priest leaves the Örlands. The widow with her daughter, the parents, the siblings, the in-laws, Uncle Isidor. The organist wrings his hands to keep them warm enough to play. Nothing is spared them, every stone on the path, every grain of sand on the ice, every gust of wind, every freezing degree of chill, every peal of the bells, every second—they must suffer all of them, one by one.

The gates to the churchyard stand open, but in keeping with local custom, the coffin is set down on the coffin stone outside. The bells go silent, the two visiting priests and the organist meet the procession. When everyone has gathered around the bier, they sing, with the courage of despair, “Into Thy Mercy, Gentle Lord”, and when the first verse is finished, the bells ring, the bearers lift the bier, and, singing, the people follow it across the churchyard and into the church.

By local tradition, funerals are to be conducted at the grave, but on this occasion, because of the many speeches and the considerable crowd, and because the dead man so loved his church, they are adopting a more modern custom and holding the funeral inside the building. The first pews are reserved for the immediate family, but otherwise the church is full to capacity and well beyond, the pews crowded, people standing at the back and on the stairs to the loft. The whole parish is here, and they surge to their feet when the coffin enters, escorted by Berg and Skog. The relatives take their places, the organist pushes through the crowd to the organ. The pumper is ready, though the whoosh of air cannot be heard over the rustling down in the church. The organist put his icy hands on the keyboard, hesitates, strikes a chord. The verger in his place. Skog in command by the coffin.

And now the congregation sings the way the dead man liked to hear them, for the last time, it seems to them. From deep down, broken by tears, but always some of them carrying the tune. They bray and drift, embroider and slip, fall behind or rush ahead, drag the organist with them, run out of breath on the high notes, gasp in unison for more, go silent when the words in the hymnal come to an end.

Skog full of importance, Berg uneasy, unseeing, in the first pew. Skog in the pulpit. “The Lord makes no mistakes,” he proclaims, and Mona’s heart stops beating in her breast. “Does he not say himself that we do not comprehend what comes to pass, but that later we shall do so? When we stand face to face with the Divine. Here on earth, our life is divided. We belong to two kingdoms. A kingdom of sin and death. But we belong also to the kingdom of forgiveness and of life. Everything in life is marked by corruption. These walls are thick, but they will nevertheless decay and fall to pieces. All those who lie in their beds outside in the churchyard are dust. Human life is like a flower—it thrives in the morning and dies in the evening and our body is destroyed.

“As I stand here and look at you, I know you all. But I also see that you have the mark of death in your faces. It is stamped on your features. But as the forces of decay do their work, it is good to remember what my successor has said to you from this very pulpit about the power of life and forgiveness. Now he is gone. He was taken from you just when everything seemed at its best. Weep! But not as they weep who have no hope, rather as they who have hope and know they will meet again on Judgment Day.”

After Skog’s homily, the church choir sings “Nearer My God to Thee” from the loft. They’ve been deprived of their most beautiful soprano and their deepest bass, and in the course of the hymn some voices break off completely and are replaced by deep sobs. “Still all my song shall be” is dreadfully shrill, a harrowing depiction of the defencelessness of anyone who has no other hope but God’s uncertain mercy.

For Fredrik Berg, it’s not as hard as expected to stand up and take his place beside the coffin with paper and prayer book in hand, look at Mona behind her black veil, Sanna a white smudge, and begin. “Anyone who ever met Petter Kummel will always remember the deep and powerful joy that he conveyed. He was open and accessible, and his piety was as honest as his firm handshake and as unaffected as his unpretentious simplicity. He loved his congregation and saw service to all of you as his mission in life.”

Well on his way, his voice steady and clear, the acoustics superb despite the high humidity from the large gathering, he speaks about how much Petter would have liked to live with his family and in his parish, and he describes the night of the death struggle and the spring morning that dawned when the tragedy was complete. In the same way that Easter morning comes to us with its message of the resurrection after the dark night of Good Friday. His warmth and sincerity are no pretence as he turns towards Mona and Sanna and lets his eyes dwell briefly on the weeping parents and siblings.

“Lift up your eyes and cry out to God—and God’s love, which passeth all understanding, will carry you in the eternal arms of the Father. Petter Kummel, whom we now consecrate to the peace of the grave, is also encompassed in God’s love.” An ancient ceremonial, words polished down to their absolute core. “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection unto eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Three handfuls of the thin, greyish soil of the Örlands form a cross on the coffin’s white covering. A hesitant hymn: “Our Years, They Flee Away”.

Silence in the church. Mona rises, folds her veil back over her hat, takes Sanna by the hand, the wreath in the other, walks forward on steady legs, looks out over the congregation and speaks, while the whole church holds it breath. The child stands quietly by her side. She thanks them for the good years she and Petter had in Örland parish. She thanks Petter for the happy years granted her. She remembers his words to the grieving parents of the child they buried only one week ago. They were his words of farewell to her as well, though she did not understand it at the time. She lays the wreath on the coffin, adjusts it a little—good. Takes Sanna by the hand and returns to her pew. The church breathes out.

Then the parents and siblings, shaky and uncertain, broken voices, deep breathing. They are followed by other friends and relatives, and Uncle Isidor speaks for the entire family. “Petter Kummel followed his calling without expectation of success,” he begins, in an old man’s quavering voice, then takes heart and continues. “But success came. Those who heard him were open to his simple but profound message. Almost unnoticeably, all eyes turned to him. His naturally unassuming character and his honesty in both word and deed drew people to him. He struggled with his own sins as much as he did with those of his fellow men. On his travels, he faced storms and heavy seas without fear, but he trembled like a child before the sin and the temptations that carry many a priest to his spiritual grave. Yet that struggle ended in victory. During his years as a spiritual guide, the young priest grew more and more intimate with the power that flows from the gospel of the crucified Christ.

“My dear nephew, whom we miss so much,” he went on, a little less firmly, with many pauses. “You have accepted the call to service in a new temple and need no longer tremble in the face of strong waves of temptation. The sea and its perils will not confront you there.” He is unable to continue and gropes his way back to his seat.

Adele Bergman, deep in grief, hears the organist walk past her down the middle aisle. He is to speak on behalf of the parish and the vestry, but how will he manage, emotional as he is, and devastated by this death?

The vestry’s large wreath in front of him, unembarrassed by his tears, his speech in his breast pocket. Amazingly collected. “Dear Petter, our good friend and spiritual guide. Last Sunday when you laid to rest a little songbird from the east villages, you carried us metaphorically into God’s heaven on a bridge of light. When you headed home that evening, little did you dream that you yourself were stepping onto the bridge of light you had described. You have left us and entered God’s heaven. Your importance for the spiritual life of this community extends far beyond the few invaluable years we had you here. Now as we look forward, we pray, dear heavenly Father, give us again a shepherd who understands us.”

His wreath placed, the local council next. Sörling and Fridolf, sombre, bow towards the coffin and the family. Berg and Skog come forward with the wreath from his clerical colleagues, Adele Bergman, weak with tears, lays the wreath from the Health Care Centre. Sörling reads the council’s memorial and a special message from Doctor Gyllen. Then he reads a mass of condolences and memorials from a great many people who’ve been touched in some way by Petter’s life and death, foremost among them the bishop and the assessor.

In conclusion, with fearless courage and one hand on the keyboard, the organist sings “A Precious Thing to Thank the Lord”, all the way, across a bridge of light, safely ashore.

And then, no turning back. The church goes silent. No voices, only the rustle of people who have been crowded together too long and need to stretch. A pause, and the pallbearers step forward, raise the straps to their shoulders. Now. Berg and Skog start walking, the coffin follows, then the immediate family from their pews and then the congregation, row by row.

Digging the grave was no easy task, they can be grateful that the ground wasn’t frozen all the way down. It turns its dark maw towards the procession with its defenceless casket. For the Örlanders, the climax of the funeral is the moment when the coffin is surrendered to the earth. There is then no longer any need for self-control, they weep, they cry out, they kneel and stagger, grief, at this moment, need know no bounds.

All through the long funeral service they have stared at Mona Kummel’s veiled head and shoulders. No trembling, no bowing of the head, no leaning to the right or the left to get support from mother or mother-in-law. She sits with Sanna beside her as if they were alone in the world, condemned to endure and survive. Ever since the death, the widow’s unnatural self-control has been a source of collective concern on the Örlands. Everyone knows that open mourning is a good thing, everyone hopes that something will call forth the sobbing that wholesome grief requires.

Now all of them move towards the grave. Pushing and crowding are permissible at such times. No one thinks about priorities and status. When the coffin is lowered, which those standing farther away cannot even see, a wail goes up like a flame. The crowd surges, cries are heard above the weeping, people grab hold of one another, women call out, “No! No!” Those standing close to Mona try to save her, they sob loudly and try to draw her along, but even in the tightly packed crowd at the grave, she manages to parry their efforts and withdraw. Stiff and cold, she stands there and refuses to cooperate on their terms, strives only for distance.

Higher up in the churchyard, where she can see, is Cecilia. Why can’t they leave the pastor’s wife in peace? Don’t they understand that she’s not like them? Why can’t they respect the fact that she needs air between herself and the world? The one she feels sorriest for is Sanna, who is small and short and can’t see a thing among all these large, black people crowded around her. She is scared to death and is crying out loud with open mouth. Cecilia can see Mona saying, “Quiet, Sanna!” She moves towards them, but then Grandmother Hellén works her way through the crowd and takes Sanna’s hand. No one hears, but what she says is, “Don’t be afraid. This will be over soon and then we’ll go home.”

But it doesn’t go that quickly, because on the Örlands the custom is to fill in the grave while the widow stands at its edge and watches the coffin disappear beneath the soil of the churchyard. So thin it is, she thinks again. A miracle that anything can grow in it. Almost laughs out loud—a miracle, yes indeed. Sanna cries loudly, pushed dangerously close to the hole. Soon they’ll throw her in and shovel dirt on her until she dies!

Maybe I shouldn’t have brought Sanna with me, Mona thinks, distractedly. She floats a little, loses contact with the ground a bit, hears nothing even though they’re all making so much noise. The veil is good. She’d like to wear it always. No one can see you, it doesn’t matter that you’re not here. She feels nothing, everything slips and slides away, and just then her mother takes her under one arm, Sanna is still screaming, and her mother gives her a little shake. “Mona! They’re starting to go! What an ordeal! Poor Sanna!”

Through her veil she sees that several of the women curtsey to her before they turn to go. The men bow reluctantly, the way they do at the Communion table. She nods back, as is proper. “Goodbye. Thank you.” Quite clearly. Petter’s family stands by the grave, their arms around each other. Skog is with them, Berg by himself, near Mona and Sanna and Mrs Hellén. Sorrow or just fear? What is it he’s supposed to say? What should he do? Adele Bergman knows. She works her way to Mona. “Dear heart! God give you strength! We are all crushed. Such grief.”

“Yes,” Mona says. “Thank you.” She extends her hand in its black glove. Goodbye. Adele: “You’ll stay here with us! We can talk more later. Dear girl!” She walks away, bent over, black hat with veil among the women’s shiny black silk shawls. The men in black below their freezing heads, only putting on their fur hats after passing through the churchyard gate. While they were inside the church, the wind freshened and then steadily increased out in the churchyard. The dry grave soil whirled up into people’s eyes, and now the wind is whistling ominously and the wreaths are flapping and rustling, the soil left over from filling the grave is being swept away like smoke. Everyone needs to get home while it’s still light, and the sacramental wind cuts right through their coats!

It exceeds even Mona’s ability to treat five hundred people to funeral coffee. The refreshments are for family. Even the very dearest Örlanders leave. The organist takes her hand at the grave, unable to say anything at all, but she thanks him in a clear voice for his wonderful singing and lovely words, which she would like to have a copy of, and for his beautiful playing during the whole, long ceremony. The verger’s dignity has never suited him better as he says, “The funeral was a great tribute to you both. And this evening, Signe and I will do the milking.” “Thank you,” she says again. “Thank you for all your trouble. The duties of a verger are no easy task under these circumstances!” He moves on and says goodbye to the Kummels and the priests, while Signe, waiting down by the gate, doesn’t think she’s capable of walking up and taking her leave.

It is dreadfully cold, the gale cuts right through bone and marrow. In order to survive, they must abandon the dead priest to the earth and move towards the parsonage as quickly as decency permits. Hellén, a practical man, speaks for everyone. “Now we should go. It was a fine funeral, but the longest one I’ve ever seen. Look at Sanna! Poor little thing is blue with cold!”

Everyone looks at Sanna, half dead. Grandfather Hellén lifts her up and starts walking, and Mona follows. Sanna is what she still has, and now she lives for the sake of Sanna and Lillus. And then the whole group, nearly trotting as soon as they get through the churchyard gate. They struggle through the wind, and there is hope. Hot air welters from both chimneys, and they can see that Sister Hanna has put more wood in the kitchen stove. Now she greets them in the hallway. “You poor dears, you’re frozen solid. Come in. Come in where it’s warm. I’ve made coffee and tea.”

Mona adds her own, “Come in, come in.” Quickly, she hangs up her coat, and now that her icy outer wraps are off, Lillus can come up in her arms. Everyone is now concerned about Sanna, who gets wrapped in a blanket and placed in a chair where she falls asleep of exhaustion and distress before she’s had even a sip of hot currant juice or had time to bite into a raisin roll. “Poor little darling! Dreadfully thin!” says Grandma Kummel, and Mona hears the criticism—can’t she see to it that Sanna gets enough to eat? Lillus, on the other hand, still has her baby fat, she’s had a good long nap and is wide awake and happy, tries sitting in everyone’s lap and likes Frej’s best. When the mawkish Kummels see her enthroned in his arms, they get tears in their eyes. Quite clearly, she chooses the person most like her Papa!

Hanna has set the table and made everything ready, even warmed the rolls in the oven. “You’ve saved our lives!” they tell her, thinking but not saying: but not his, irretrievably dead. They look stealthily at Mona, who sits at the table drinking coffee and eating a roll as if it were a job. Poor, poor Mona, how can they reach her? How make her see that she’s not alone, that she’s surrounded by people who want nothing more than to support and comfort her?

There are many burning questions they need to discuss before they have to leave the next morning. Father Leonard, who has been quiet far too long, begins to discuss the funeral—the splendid speeches that warmed the soul and were comforting in a wonderful way. The fantastic flowers, in the middle of winter, way out here on the Örlands, an absolute miracle. The gripping expressions of sorrow from the Örlanders, the hymns they sang straight from the heart. The sheer number of condolence messages, greetings, letters and telegrams. Moving and touching, every one of them. They lie in great piles on the sideboard …

“Yes, please have a look,” Mona interrupts. “Feel free to go through them and read them. There are so many we’ll have to put a thank-you notice in the newspapers. It will be impossible to write a personal note to all of them. Although I mean to write to many of them, when things have become a little quieter.”

And then Martha Kummel can no longer control herself. “What are you actually going to do? Eventually, you’ll have to think about moving. Where will you find the strength?”

Mona is no frail little widow, and there is a gleam of triumph in her eye when she answers. “There’s no hurry about that. They probably won’t send a new priest until next summer. Until then, Berg will come out from Mellom now and then. He says in any case that I have the right to a year of grace and that I can live in the parsonage until February next year. So I think I’ll stay here, at least over the summer.”

Sensibly and rationally reasoned, and no problem talking to Mona as long as you stick to practical, concrete subjects.

Martha Kummel goes on. “That sounds sensible. You’ll have time to think things over and look around for a job. You’re lucky you have an education. But don’t be hasty, you maybe have more immediate things to think about.”

Fishhooks out, but she doesn’t bite. What Martha Kummel is referring to is what’s being discussed in every home on the Örlands and by many well-informed people on the mainland— what if the widow is with child! It’s not unthinkable. If the child is born in the summer or the autumn, that would put two years between the baby and Lillus. In fact, it’s not only possible, it is more than likely, and in many homes they already know that it will be a boy and that his name will be Peter. Mona knows very well what Martha is thinking, and she doesn’t intend to honour her with a reply. “Of course there’s a lot to think about!” she says, ready for a fight. “How else am I supposed to get through this?”

Silence, but Mrs Hellén, who is experienced at filling awkward pauses, smiles pleasantly. “No, there is really no rush about making decisions. I’ve already told Mona that of course she’s welcome to come live with us while a decision crystallizes as to what she’s going to do. She can take her time looking at the teaching positions that are advertised, and then we’ll see how it goes.”

Naturally, Martha Kummel will take the first opportunity to waylay Karin Hellén and ask her whether Mona is pregnant, and naturally Mrs Hellén will look at her blankly, express astonishment, and say, “At least she hasn’t said anything to me.” Mrs Hellén is content to say no more, whereas her old friend Mrs Kummel has already expressed her suspicions, bordering on certainty, to a number of the funeral guests who discreetly asked her the burning question.

This wall of resistance that meets every effort at a more intimate relationship with the disobliging widow creates despair among the in-laws—near panic when they realize that they leave tomorrow without a breakthrough having taken place. It comes from the heart when they say, “You can always turn to us!” And “Don’t forget that the girls have a Grandma and Grandpa Kummel!” but their words bounce back at them like platitudes and empty phrases. Ringing hollow to a heart that is closed, frozen to the core.

The verger comes into the hallway, not wanting to come all the way in, just to report that he and Signe are going to do the milking. “Thank you. I really don’t have the strength this evening. It’s been such a day.” Mona stands there isolated from everyone, from the girls who must be put to bed, from the funeral guests who must be fed, from tomorrow’s breakfast that must be prepared. The sandwiches that must be made for their journeys. How could you leave me so? Thinks, very quickly, of the frozen dead body in the wood coffin beneath a layer of cold soil, in the storm that blows and blows. How cold it is, although they feed the fires steadily.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

WHEN SANNA WAKES UP, it is only to be sent to bed. But first she gets hot soup and the warm juice and bun she didn’t have time to eat before she fell asleep. Then she falls asleep again, and when she wakes up in the morning, everyone is still there. She knows that Papa is dead and that there’s been a funeral, which is why everyone has come, but she remembers nothing of the funeral except that she wondered how Papa, who is so big, could fit into the little chest on the floor. She can’t remember Papa either, except as a flash when she looks at Frej.

Much more than about Papa, they’re all talking about Valvoja, the pilot boat that will take the funeral guests to Mellom. From there they’ll travel on towards Åbo or the main island of Åland. First they need to eat, and Mama warms up the fish soup. The stove warms the whole kitchen if the door is kept shut, and Sanna sits on a stool in the warmth while Lillus is carried from window to window by Uncle Frej, who deplores this unending wind that makes poor Ingrid so seasick. If Sanna says nothing, people stop talking to her, and if she sits still, the cat comes for company.

There is then no end to their departure. They say goodbye and goodbye and goodbye, and instead of going they start talking about something else and then they say goodbye and goodbye all over again. Mama dresses Lillus and Sanna and herself and goes down to the church dock with them to get them to go, but the whole time, those in front come running back because they have something else on their hearts. Only Mrs Hellén stays steadily on course, and Sanna walks beside her. Lillus has deserted and gone over to the Kummels, who repeat delightedly that she and they are birds of a feather. This makes Sanna angry. Lillus isn’t a feather, although she’s certainly a bird, a chirpy little bird! The Coast Guard is at the dock to take everyone the short distance to the steamboat pier, where the Valvoja lies waiting.

Now they have to hurry, but oh, it’s awful to see poor Mona and her fatherless girls standing alone and abandoned on the dock. How will they manage? What will become of them? If only the distance wasn’t so great! If only there was something they could do! But the widow has made it clear that it’s unnecessary for her in-laws to stay longer, and when Martha Kummel asks Karin Hellén if she ought to stay anyway, Mrs Hellén, with her impenetrable smile, says no, if she understands Mona correctly, she needs time to collect herself and regain her balance.

“But isn’t she afraid of being alone here?” Charlotte wonders. She herself has not dared go out after dark, what with the churchyard so close and the howling wind that sounds like she doesn’t know what. “I wouldn’t want to,” she says, and no, they can all see that, but Mona isn’t like Charlotte. She would be happy to see the dead rise and walk again. To set him down at the table, brush the soil from his clothes, serve him tea and buttered bread, wonder how everything got so crazy—how would that be frightening?

There is something about farewells, boats putting out, that makes you want to cry with regret even though it’s a relief when the group is finally on board and no longer has to be provided with meals. There they stand, three small, dark figures in the fading February light. Mona and Sanna wave, Lillus, in Mona’s arms, cries loudly and stretches out her arms towards Frej, wouldn’t hesitate to leave everything behind and go with him. Everyone on the boat is crying, except Mrs Hellén and the Coast Guardsmen. Brage waves energetically and calls out cheerily, “Just let us know if you need anything, and we’ll be here in a jiffy!”

Goodbye and goodbye and whew. If she herself turns to go, the guests can go into the cabin and get out of the wind. On Valvoja they’ll be comfortable and can lie down flat so they don’t get seasick, Mona explains to Sanna as they walk. Up on the steps they forget to look towards the churchyard, and Mona opens the weather-beaten door. Inside it’s like an abandoned gypsy camp, the air thick with Frej’s and grandfather Hellén’s tobacco smoke, but at least it’s peaceful. “Oh, how nice,” says Mona, perfectly serious. “I have to start cleaning up, but first let’s sit down and have some coffee. And some bread and butter would taste wonderful! And the buns were good, weren’t they?”

“Yes,” Sanna says, feeling a little happier. Everything is more like usual. Mona has retained the Hellén custom of really enjoying the refreshments only when the guests have gone.

Mona spends two days getting everything in order. The verger comes the first evening and offers his help, but now that the guests are out of the house, Mona can handle the milking perfectly well by herself. She puts Lillus in her playpen where she can toddle about without hurting herself, and Sanna is so sensible that she needn’t worry about her. It’s fortunate that the girls can keep each other company. It would be harder with only one.

It’s especially lucky that Lillus has Sanna. As long as the house was full of people, no one noticed that she could no longer talk. In the midst of all the people, no one paid attention to the fact that she just waved her arms and squealed and babbled and shrieked. There is nothing left of all her many words and complete sentences, and Sanna has to start from beginning and teach her what everything is called. There is a lot that Lillus has lost. One day Sanna notices that she has also lost her good baby smell. That’s why Mama doesn’t like her as much any more, for she’s stopped calling Lillus her rosebud but just says she’s a filthy little piglet. And it’s true, because nowadays Lillus just smells like a grubby child and nothing else.

Nature loves Lillus. It comes running up with a wet kiss and a hug the moment she comes down the steps. Big embrace— little piglet! And Lillus loves nature back, mud and water, grass and cow shit. A horrible child, the way she looks.

Nature tries different strategies with the parsonage girls. Sanna stretches out and grows taller and thinner, as if nature is determined that she not weigh one unnecessary gramme while at the same time giving her perspective and control. In Lillus’s case, just the opposite. She stops growing in height but increases in girth, as if nature’s plan was to see that she’ll never have far to fall when she’s knocked down.

Later in the spring, when they can spend more time outdoors, they are often seen on Church Isle—tall Sanna followed by her short, stocky satellite. They chatter constantly, for it’s Sanna’s responsibility to teach Lillus to talk. It’s an entertaining process. Whenever she learns a new word, Lillus laughs and takes a little jump so the knowledge will distribute itself evenly throughout her body. Lillus is fun because she’s surprisingly cheerful so much of the time, considering how little she’s able to do and how little she knows. That doesn’t seem to bother her much, and although Sanna sees it as a duty and a job to look after Lillus and keep her busy, she often thinks it’s great fun to be with her as she plays.

Mama has a lot to do. Writes letter after letter to thank all the people who have written letter after letter. She has the animals to take care of and all her household chores. She goes back and forth in the kitchen and is angry at everyone who asks about her future plans. But mostly people do their wondering in the villages, for there aren’t many who come to Church Isle now, except to services, which are held every other week. Then everyone looks at her, top to bottom and back up again. Mama is so vexed she turns red in the face. It’s the reported pregnancy that’s behind it, the posthumous son, a phantom that never takes physical form no matter how much they look. It’s the loose-tongued Martha, her busybody mother-in-law, who has started this groundless rumour, which has leaped like wildfire from the Örlands to every Swedish-speaking community in Finland, where this son is already born and christened.

It’s an assault on her person to expose her to gossip this way, and it’s typical of Martha to elicit oh’s and ah’s from people while at the same time pretending to give Mona something to live for, as if it were the Son of Man himself she carried in her belly. For she will never let Martha know how she grieves and eats her heart out. On account of her rheumatoid arthritis, they decided to wait a little. They were planning a new baby for the late winter or early spring of 1950, and she had been looking forward with all her being to the intense love life of the coming spring and summer. Now there would be nothing, never anything more, all spoiled because of exaggerated consideration and caution.

Although Mama works and runs about all day long, Sanna sometimes sees her late in the evening sitting quite still at the table, her letter paper in front of her. But she isn’t writing, and her eyes stare into empty space. The bedspread is still on her bed, maybe she’ll never move again. But in the morning she’s off to a flying start, and they all have to be ready fast, fast, as if it were the most shameful thing in the world for anyone to come before they’re all dressed and their beds made.

Fredrik Berg comes with Post-Anton every other week to conduct services and confirmation classes. He stays for a few days, and while he’s there Mellom has to make do without a priest, which, as Fredrik acidly explains, they do not find at all difficult. The little girls at the parsonage greet him joyously and Mona feels a stab of rancour, jealousy, God knows what, when she sees how ready Lillus is to trade the father she no longer remembers for Fredrik Berg, to whom she gives her unconditional love. She sits on his knee smiling benignly, her head on one side, all the words she knows pouring seductively from her mouth, with accompanying gestures. Sanna stands alongside, jealous for once of her little sister, and doesn’t give up until Fredrik Berg has put Lillus down and picked her up, while Lillus leans against his leg and gazes up at him with passionate, tear-filled eyes.

She can grow really angry seeing them like this, as if there was something so special about being a man that even little girls, as soon as they have a specimen within reach, go all slinky and fawning and signal eternal fealty and show an entirely different kind of love than they’re prepared to show their mother. Lillus is absolutely insufferable, gives him her undivided attention, sparkles and beams at the dinner table and engages him in a conversation that excludes everyone else. She behaves exactly like a Kummel, as if she’d never been raised to a stricter standard of behaviour, and Mama lifts her down from her highchair and tells her that’s enough, Mr Berg is here to work, with the church’s books and correspondence and the confirmation classes, and he doesn’t have time for a lot of clingy children. She practically drives him to the office and closes the door behind him, for the girls’ enchantment just emphasizes how much harder everything is for her.

It’s too painful. She can hardly stand to have another priest at her table and feel the enormous difference but also the degrading desire to try so hard to be pleasant, as if in maleness itself there was something so irresistible that it must at any price be courted and idolized. Ugh, the way a person can behave sometimes! And yet Fredrik is her friend and the closest thing she has to a confidant, Petter’s friend and colleague. The only one she can discuss her future with, and the only person who loyally keeps her informed about the discussions at the cathedral chapter about the Örlands’ clerical needs. The first person to make an entry in the church record in a different hand, under Deaths: Pastor Petter Leonard Kummel, deceased by drowning at an age of 31 years, 4 months, 15 days.

The teacher in the west villages is about to retire, and people on the Örlands think it natural that Mona should take the job. She has thought about it, but no. How can she live here and be constantly reminded? Among people who are naturally moving away from him and the memory of him, people whose attention is focused on new people and new events, new tragedies, while she herself, never. No, it’s too hard. Better to return to the mainland, she tells Fredrik Berg, where she has relatives and colleagues and isn’t automatically associated with the tragically dead priest, at whose name people glance sidelong at her and go silent.

Fredrik Berg thinks this very sensible. He doesn’t want to influence her one way or the other, only to support her in the choices she is eminently suited to make for herself. He admires her decision to stay at the parsonage for half her year of grace so she can manage the move as carefully as possible and avoid doing anything hasty. “I hope they don’t send a new priest too soon,” he says quite honestly. “I have nothing at all against coming out to the Örlands now that spring is on its way and it’s all so beautiful. And you’d be left in peace here at the parsonage.”

If only the cathedral chapter were equally insightful, but they feel that the best thing they can do for the Örlands is to find them a new priest quickly. For the bishop and the assessor, with their lively memories of the new vicar’s heart-warming installation the year before, Örland parish is a particular favourite. No stopgap solutions, no half measures—it needs to be a proper priest, and right away. However, it turns out that all the men who have warm feelings for the Örlands and found their visits to the place unforgettable have pressing reasons to remain on the mainland. Among the younger guard, priests who have not yet passed their pastoral examination, there seems to be an actual fear of the appointment. They have children who must go to school, elderly parents who need support, important duties in their new positions. If only they were younger and not so bound. If only they were older and not so bound …

No, but there is one established middle-aged man, married but childless: Andreas Portman, ordained at a mature age after earning a laborious Bachelor’s degree in Theology. High points for persistence, but a dubious pass on his exams. Raised in an agricultural community and thus able, presumably, to speak to the Örlanders as a fellow farmer. In need of an appointment, which arrives along with an enthusiastic introduction by the bishop himself: a singing congregation in an enchanting island landscape, everyone’s mind open to the Christian message after the tragedy the parish has suffered. A rich domain, a wonderful opportunity to make a lasting contribution. A brand-new bridge facilitates communications between the church and the community—no risk of a repetition of the recent tragedy. The widow and her children are still living in the parsonage but will move out before the autumn. They have a right to live in the house, but some arrangement can certainly be worked out for the summer. There are attic rooms, for example, and the new priest and his wife can undoubtedly be accommodated there.

Portman, slightly suspicious, looks up the Örland Islands in his atlas, where they are not found. Too far out to sea from the perspective both of the mainland and of Åland. Hmm. On the other hand, a place where he can count on being left in peace from academic sophistries for much of the year. A place where the priest is an absolute, unquestioned authority, the obvious leader of the parish. A private little kingdom. A sphere of operations entirely under his control.

Not worth raising objections, much wiser to accept the appointment humbly from the bishop’s hand. Grant me, Lord, to be thy obedient servant, a shepherd according to thy commandments.

And on the seventh of May, when Berg has confirmed his candidates and completed his duties on the Örlands, acting pastor Andreas Portman arrives with his wife and his goods and chattels. Both over fifty, with heavy bodies and stiff limbs. I feel sorry for them, for it won’t be easy to stand comparison with the young couple that came ashore here three years earlier, slim and smiling, the dead man already a legend. It will never be like it was with the Kummels, people are saying already, in advance, and there is distrust and antipathy before anyone has seen even the tips of their noses. They don’t seem to be unaware of all this themselves, for they look unhappy, morose and shivering in the morning chill. “Well, well,” he says when I show him the church when it appears. “Cold,” he says. “Like a desert.” He doesn’t say that it’s beautiful, and never reflects that it’s the gateway to heaven.

You can’t help thinking back. The reception committee back then, eager and expectant. The arriving couple delighted. Today, the dead pastor’s wife has made breakfast, and the organist and the verger have come to welcome them and help them store their things in the shed, where they’ll remain until the widow has gone. Those meeting and those arriving look at each other while we dock. Laboured goodwill, a sense of loss that strains the smiles of the organist and the verger. She, the widow, has her little girls with her and she occupies herself with them, but then she walks over to the railing and wishes them welcome, quite heartily.

Goodwill, but such distress. The verger starts to say something, but Portman interrupts. “Later! Right now we need to be a little methodical and get these things ashore. Careful there!” Like ordinary day labourers, Kalle and I and the organist and the verger stand there taking orders and lifting and carrying. “Careful!” comes from Mrs Portman as well, as if Kalle and I hadn’t spent half our lives loading and unloading freight. It’s the sort of thing that gives you a malicious desire to put down a box just a little harder in hopes of hearing the faint tinkle of broken glass. We’re happy when everything’s unloaded and we can start the engine and get away. But we’re there long enough for me to hear that it’s the dead vicar’s wife, not the Portmans, who thanks the organist and the verger for their help. And when she invites them all in for breakfast so they can get to know each other, Portman says, “Oh, we’ll have time for that later. Right now, what’s important is to get ourselves inside and get our bags unpacked.” The organist, who has already taken several steps towards the parsonage, turns around, looking hurt and uncertain. Then he says, “Goodbye, then,” to the widow and goes towards his dinghy pulled up on shore.

The verger remains where he is, almost choking on all his unused words, but he’s then ordered to carry up two suitcases before he goes home. I can see from his back how deeply wounded he feels, and I wonder how in the world their collaboration is going to work. Although I don’t often go to church, I know that things go badly when the priest and verger don’t get along. The numbers on the hymn board squeak more than usual, and the gate in the altar rail sticks when the priest goes in and out. The weathervane on the roof of the church already squeaks so loudly we can hear it all the way down on the dock, and what that means you can work out for yourself.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

WHAT WAS TO HAVE BEEN their fourth summer on the Örlands becomes their first. For Mona, the first in a long life of perennial loneliness. For the girls, the first they remember, in an existence where Papa has always been dead.

This summer, too, there are a quantity of guests, people who feel sorry for the widow, who must do everything by herself and needs company and comfort. This means that in addition to her preparations for the move, she must also feed and house visitors. With the Portmans in the parsonage, this is no easy task. She no longer has the use of the attic rooms or the office, and in the kitchen she has to make space for Mrs Portman to prepare meals. They have worked out a schedule that keeps them out of each other’s hair as much as possible, but all the extra coming and going accentuates the Portmans’ feeling that they’re in the way, and consequently they’re consumed by ill will and rancour and wish to heaven that Mona and her crowd were all out of the house.

Lillus is afraid of them. Mama has taught them just to say hello and go on about their business, but Lillus can’t manage that. “Waah,” she howls the moment he looks at her, for Portman is in direct touch with the abyss in Lillus where the howling lives. Sanna looks pained, curtseys, and says “H’lo” and at the same time, “Quiet, Lillus!”, dragging her along through the kitchen and out onto the steps. Outside they can live, if they stay away from the paths the Portmans use. They never appear near the cow barn, so they can hang out there, and in the cow pasture. It’s a relief to be out of the house, but even though Sanna is wise far beyond her years, she has a hard time figuring out the Portmans’ movements in order to keep them from looking at Lillus. Because she howls as soon as they do, and then Mama gets angry.

Mama is always angry. She has so much to do and never has time for everything she’s planned, even though she’s at it from dawn to dusk. They’re going to move to the Helléns, but not yet, so Sanna doesn’t have to think about that. Mama gets everything done that needs doing, but there’s so much to think about, and it’s good that Sanna can help by keeping an eye on Lillus!

Apple and her calf will go to slaughter in August. Goody will go with them to the Helléns and live in the cow barn there. The sheep and the chickens will be auctioned, along with the equipment from the cow barn. The congregation has divided the haymaking, which has now been hauled away from Church Isle. The barn is empty, and may never be filled again, for the Portmans do not intend to keep cows. They will buy milk from the parsonage crofters and rent out the pastureland. It’s a crying shame, but perhaps it’s only right that the vicar’s animal husbandry should be eliminated now that he himself is gone and his survivors are about to live out their loss in another place.

A thousand things to think about. With a light heart, Petter broke up the moving crates and used the boards to build bookcases; now the verger has to tear apart the bookcases and nail together packing crates. She can pack the books, but there’s much of the other stuff she’ll need access to right up to the day they leave. First she gathers together everything to be auctioned. A lot of people cast sidelong glances at the furniture, because they know she’s going to live in an attic room at first, but of course eventually she’ll have a house and home again, so the furniture will go with her.

Best not to think about the joy with which she unpacked everything and arranged it all in the parsonage. It’s a feeling she’ll never have again, but she can still have order and method in her life, and perspective. It’s a job, a project, a duty, and it can be done effectively and without a lot of sloppy sentiment. If she has to blow her nose, it’s because it’s been cold and raw all summer and because dust gets in her nose when she roots around in cupboards and sheds.

Now that the Portmans are here, there’s a service every Sunday again, and they sit there all three, farther back than before. Mona and Sanna greet everyone, Mrs Portman, for the time being, no one. The congregation’s reservations are clearly visible. Portman can’t sing the Mass, so the organist sings the responses a little against his will, and the congregation joins in half-heartedly. The sermon is well prepared but dry. Kummel’s sermons were always full of life and spirit even when he wasn’t all that well prepared. But even then it was a pleasure to follow along and wonder how he was going to bring it ashore with the rather slender thread he was using as a lifeline. And the way he could sing! Everyone talks about it very openly so the Portmans will hear.

After the very first service, the organist is criticized for his slow tempos. That the congregation like them slow is no excuse. It is obviously the cantor’s job to teach them to adopt modern hymn-singing styles! And the verger … Well, the verger should be more obedient and not constantly plead local custom. Young, uncertain priests lean on customs, but experienced people prune and select and introduce new practices where they’re called for.

Now neither the organist nor the verger stop in at the parsonage after the conclusion of High Mass, and only occasionally can they talk openly with Mona. How will this all turn out? They both wonder, the verger more openly offended than the organist, who is struggling to achieve a more friction-free collaboration with his superior. He fears for the next meeting of the vestry. It’s difficult to prepare an agenda for a priest who doesn’t care in the least how things have always been done on the Örlands. He just invokes the excellent practices of his home parish in northern Ostrobothnia.

“It was hard enough”, the organist says, “when we had to become Protestants in the fifteen hundreds. The church needs to be a rock, steadfast. We don’t like all these changes. There’s enough of that in society as a whole.”

And the verger can only agree, especially since every normal person can see that the traditions on the Örlands are beautiful as well as functional.

Within the congregation, the customary division into two camps has asserted itself quickly. In this instance, the east villages are first with their attacks, the organist notes a little maliciously. But in addition, the formidable Adele Bergman tries to take the Portmans under her wing. For the first time, a slight coolness has found its way into the relationship between the Co-op’s manager and the chairman of its board.

“It’s not easy for him in the beginning,” Adele explains. “So we have to keep open minds and welcome him without reservation. We must respect his calling and give him our confidence. We haven’t yet seen how he means to work among us.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” the organist says. “We’ve seen some ominous examples. He certainly hasn’t kept an open mind towards us.”

“So much the more reason to be encouraging and understanding. If the core of the message is sound, the outward forms don’t matter so much.”

“How do you get to the core of the message if the outward forms drive us away?”

“Now you’re being too quick to judge him. ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.’”

“Dear Adele, I’m talking about our collaboration, which is going to be hard.”

“It takes two to make a quarrel.”

“If you say so.”

“Now I’ve offended you.”

“It doesn’t seem that the confidence you talk about extends to me.”

“Of course it does. I have complete confidence in you, and I’m trying to gain confidence in him. I’m defending him because it isn’t easy to do. I don’t want the priest we’ve been given to be disliked and persecuted. People are merciless, you know that yourself. But what if the ways of our Lord are such that he chooses a less popular and less radiant person to complete the revival that Kummel didn’t have time to accomplish. What if even Kummel’s death is a part of God’s plan for us?”

“Then I have a bone to pick with Our Lord.”

“This is not a joke. I’m saying we should be open to the possibility that Portman is God’s instrument, sent to us for our salvation.”

“Forgive me, Adele, but you’re the only one of us who thinks that. The priest is also a public official, and what’s happening here is a hopeless clash. And now I have to go. Thank you for the coffee.”

A brief handshake is all, his dark, imposing features a little too dark at the moment. Out of the house, he walks straight down to the dock, doesn’t look up even once as he cranks his Wickström into life and heads out. Sitting motionless in the boat, he turns away, as he must to be able to drive south. There is no light around the cup he drank from, the minutes he signed are lifeless. A wedge driven invisibly between her, who works to come closer to God, and him, who follows the ways of the world. Between her, who loves, and him, who doesn’t return that love.

It was Mona who saw to it that Adele and the Portmans got acquainted. She invited Adele and Elis to coffee one Saturday afternoon when the shop closed at one, and she invited the Portmans as well. “The church has a real friend in Adele,” she told them. “She’s on the vestry, and it would be nice if you got to know each other.”

It is as pleasant as always at Mona’s table, and the food is good. The Portmans are dignified and austere, with courteous smiles. Adele is in her element. Goes straight to the need for revival and a deeper faith among the Örlands’ lukewarm Christians, says how pleased she is that the venerable bishop has sent them a steady, experienced priest, hopes and believes that he will be a blessing for the parish. Unctuous and teary-eyed when she speaks of the work their former priest did not have the time to complete. Puts her faith now in the hope that he, Portman, has been guided by God to this isolated island parish.

“A demanding task,” Portman agrees, and Mrs Portman nods. “A shot in the arm is undoubtedly called for. What’s needed out here is a firm hand. The people are like big children.”

Mona laughs happily, to everyone’s astonishment. “You can’t imagine!” she says, a remark worthy of Mrs Hellén, her mother. She passes the cake plate and then rushes out to say something to her little girls, whom she’s been watching through the window. They’re playing a game Lillus has invented. She yells, “Potman’s coming!” and then they both scream and run and hide. When Sanna yells “He’s gone!” they come back and start the game over again. “Stop screaming like that, good heavens!” Mama says. She hurries back in and interrupts the conversation once again. Small talk, a little of this and a little of that, until it’s time to say their thank-yous and go.

Adele’s heart breaks when she sees Mona active and brisk, at full speed, but without the dash and ardour that were characteristic of her as Petter Kummel’s wife. Now she’s the mother of these little girls, and it will take many years of work until they can stand on their own two feet. How will she manage? It’s the question everyone asks, and Mona gives always the same answer. “I’ll have to manage. That’s all there is to it.”

Mrs Portman has no children, and therefore Lydia Manström is counting on her to be an asset for the Marthas as well as for the work on public health. New energies and talents are always a good thing, so she bids Mrs Portman a hearty welcome. Now, in the beginning, she is a little aloof and makes no promises. It’s understandable that she doesn’t want to play a visible role until Mona Kummel has gone, but it can’t hurt to pave the way and welcome her into the community of women in the east villages.

Arthur Manström’s attitude towards Portman is, on the other hand, both prejudiced and dismissive. He regards him as a crashing bore, an unimaginative cretin, a self-important little pope. “You need to hear him only once to realize that he has nothing to say,” he declares after the first church service. He used to go to church now and then to show his friendship for Kummel, and he had a very high opinion of the social gatherings at the parsonage, but now he goes on strike. No one so utterly without a silver tongue can possibly value it in someone else. So there is no point in wasting his eloquence on Portman, our sounding-brass prelate, as Arthur calls him. This makes it harder for Lydia to cultivate Mrs Portman’s friendship, but by no means impossible, for who is it who sits on the vestry? Arthur or his better half? And who is chairman of the Marthas? Not Arthur. You need perseverance and patience while you wait for the parish to regain its even keel after the heart-rending events of the past year. Then it will become clear where people stand, and where the strengths and talents of the newcomers lie.

The little girls cannot imagine that the summer will end. For Mama, it passes at a dizzying speed. Their departure date at the end of August is already fixed, transport to the slaughterhouse for Apple and her calf has been arranged. Before she knows it, it’s time to milk her for the last time and ferry her to the steamboat pier, pursued by Goody’s anxious bellowing from the shore. From the steamboat pier, she is chased on board and down into the open hold of the freighter that will carry the Örlands’ wretched autumn beasts to the abattoir in Åbo. It’s all done harshly and mercilessly. For a person with Mona Kummel’s background, there is nothing unusual about sending animals to slaughter, and among all the cows she’s milked in her day, the obstinate and haughty Apple is not one of her favourites, but nevertheless. Her cow. Her life. Now over. And it’s awful to see how lost Goody feels, even though she’s had to put up with a lot of hard bumps from Apple and move out of her way all her life. Looking at Goody now is like looking at Lillus if Sanna were sent away.

Silly thoughts, as if cows were human beings. They’re not, and she has to get Goody under control and lead her into the cow barn and tie her up so she doesn’t rush around Church Isle bellowing all night.

The girls are nearly as unaware as the cows about having to leave. Sanna knows they’re going to move, though she doesn’t know what that means, but she has started to worry and sleeps badly, and Lillus, now two years old, is getting more troublesome. In order to get anything done, Mama has to hire Cecilia for a few weeks. Cecilia is calmer than Mama, and everything gets easier. Above all, Cecilia is Sanna’s friend, and whoever Sanna likes, Lillus likes. And with Cecilia in the house, Mama has to control herself and try to seem cheerful. She doesn’t mind that the girls are much happier in Cecilia’s company than in her own, for all that matters now is getting through the next few weeks, whatever the cost.

The days fly by. The sheep are sheared one final time and the wool packed away. On auction day, they stand on display in their sheepfold, naked and trembling. The cat is allowed to stay with the Portmans once Mona has told them about the mice, but the four hens are too much trouble and will be sold. On the day of the sale, all three of them go to Sister Hanna’s by boat—not because she couldn’t stand to be present, Mona assures them, but because she thinks the auction will go more smoothly if people don’t see her and grow depressed. The organist keeps the books for the auction. In light of all that’s happened, there is no reason to cry over the sale of the sheep and chickens, the milk cans and the farming equipment. “So what?” she says defiantly.

Yes, so what? She packs and organizes. Like a machine. Has to stop when the vestry appears to pay their respects. The organist speaks for them all, thanks her for the hospitality of the parsonage, looks back at the past three years as an unusually happy time in the life of the parish, hopes that the bonds between them will never be broken. He wishes Mona and her girls good fortune in the future, wants them to know they will never be forgotten on the Örlands. “Don’t forget us, either,” he admonishes her—and to help them to remember, he removes the brown paper wrapping on a lovely painting of Church Isle commissioned from an artist in Mariehamn.

The vestry in tears, the widow self-controlled, as she was at the funeral, but slightly less so now as she thanks them for the painting, for their friendship, and for the best years of her life. Turns quickly away, puts more wood on the fire, has a bit more colour in her face when she looks at them again and glances around the parlour. Packing crates stand in rows on the floor. Some have already been nailed shut, others will be filled with last-minute items. Her china has also been packed, so she doesn’t know if …

No, no, of course no one expects her to give them coffee in the midst of moving. They are leaving, but nevertheless they want to thank her, officially, on behalf of the parish, for everything, even though every one of them has thanked her personally as well. Adele Bergman in tears, Sörling clearing his throat and uncharacteristically quiet, Lydia Manström concerned, hoping they can leave without any further outbursts of emotion. The organist so tense that he can’t bring himself to suggest a verse of “Shall We Gather at the River” now that they must say farewell.

The vestry out onto the steps, for the last time. Everything packed except the most essential things, which will go into a suitcase in the morning. Cecilia is to go home this last evening. Mona doesn’t want a farewell committee on the shore, she wants to say goodbye in an orderly manner. “Thank you, Cecilia, for all your help, we’ve been so happy to have you here.” An envelope with her payment is put in her hand, real money. Sanna is allowed to go with her all the way to the bridge and then come straight back home.

Lillus cries when they leave, just Sanna and Cecilia. The evenings are already a bit chilly in late August, and Sanna shivers. Cecilia holds her hand and tries to be cheerful, but she cries when she says how awfully sad it is that they have to move. But Sanna shouldn’t be sad, she’ll have fun with Gram and Gramps and all the animals, and when she gets bigger she can come to the Örlands for a visit. “And I’ll write letters to you,” she promises, “and Mama can help you write back.”

All too quickly they arrive at the bridge. It still doesn’t have a railing, but it stands on solid pilings. Now that it’s there, no one need drown on the way to Church Isle. This is where Sanna will turn back and Cecilia continue on. But they stand where they are and hold hands. Cecilia cries, and tears run down Sanna’s cheeks and the tip of her nose. Anxiously, Cecilia realizes that because she’s older, she must decide when to go. She lets go of Sanna’s hand, feels how reluctantly it is withdrawn. Cecilia can’t look at her when she says, “Now I have to go. And you have to go straight home, otherwise Mama will worry. Goodbye, Sanna. Run home now.”

Sanna is frighteningly wise and sensible. She doesn’t ask even once if she can go with Cecilia a little farther. Nor does she beg Cecilia to stay. She doesn’t say she’s scared to walk home alone. Dusk comes quickly in August, and now they both have to go. She dries her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater and starts to run. Cecilia walks out onto the bridge and stops and looks around. Sanna is so little and slim that she quickly disappears among the junipers and shadows. The path is empty, as if she had never existed.

But Sanna has no way to leave her own life. She’s in it all the time, and she’s afraid. Although she and Cecilia came from the parsonage, she can’t know for certain that it will still be there when she gets back, for the path is different from when they were together, goes uphill where before it went down, zigs where it used to zag. She works herself up so badly she forgets to cry, and then the parsonage is there, oddly crimson in the twilight with white trim that seems to sail out ahead of the red. She stops and starts buttoning her sweater, otherwise Mama will scold her and tell her it’s her own fault if she catches cold. It’s hard. The cardigan is tight and there are lots of buttons and buttonholes and they’re small and she can hardly see the top ones at all. She furrows her brow and squints and has to do it all over again from the beginning when it doesn’t come out even. Maybe Mama will come out on the steps and say, “Come, Sanna,” but the house is completely quiet as if no one lived there. She goes up the steps and pulls hard on the door to get it open. It’s dark in the hallway and she stumbles over a box and hurts herself. Then Mama comes out the kitchen door. “So there you are!” Behind her, Lillus has been crying but hops with joy now that Sanna has come back. It’s like Mama says to everyone—how fortunate that Lillus has Sanna.

It’s unexpectedly difficult to get the cow aboard. I’ve seldom seen such a bewildered beast. She’s lost her leader cow and has no idea what to do, throws her head about and bawls and foams at the mouth and can’t stand still when we finally get her tied up. She’s on her way to Åbo, where they’ll force her into a truck and drive her someplace near Helsingfors. There they’ll lead her into a cow barn with ten gigantic Ayrshire cows she’ll have to live with. The concentrated feed and ensilage they’ll give her will be way too rich and you don’t have to be a dairyman to realize how much gas that will produce, and what godawful diarrhoea. She may get through her first calving, but then she’ll get milk fever and be slaughtered. Better if she’d been sent to slaughter right away, with Apple. Poor, pathetic parsonage cow.

The widow doesn’t want to give her up, she’s all she has left of everything that flourished on Church Isle. Well, the children of course, but they’re as bewildered as the cow and just as scared. A perfect disaster now that they’re on their way. She made it known that she didn’t want a farewell committee, so it’s only the verger and Brage who are there to carry crates and furniture and help Kalle and me get it all stowed. She’s in a terrible rush. It all has to go quickly, and she runs back and forth directing the loading and the little girls run after her, crying. She screams at them, tells them to stay where they are and just wait, she’ll be right back. “Quiet, Lillus!” she commands, and the girls stand deathly silent on the dock while she runs up to the parsonage one last time.

I don’t know but what somewhere deep inside she still imagines that everything will be all right. That she’ll open the door and see him standing there in his everyday clothes, happy, wondering where she’s off to in such a hurry. That all the rest of it has been a long illness, bouts of heavy fever with restless nightmares. Now finally over. In any case, something drives her up to the house one final time.

In the hall, she collides with the Portmans, who have come down a little too soon, they can’t wait to take possession of the house. “Oh, excuse me!” she cries, “I was just going to …” She has already said goodbye to them and runs past them into the parlour, nothing, the bedroom, empty, as if they’d never, hurries on, dining room, kitchen a final survey, got everything, back down the steps, no glance towards the churchyard where the grave is groomed and the rosebush blooms, back down to the church dock. There we wait, loaded. The men in the machine room as usual, in the saloon, several women on their way to Åbo, Brage and the verger at a loss on the dock.

The cow moos on deck and the widow Kummel comes running down the hill. She shoves Sanna on board, the little one is lifted across the railing. “Hold tight,” she calls, and they hold on as tight as they can. And when I say to Kalle, “Okay, then we’re off,” they hold on for dear life. He pulls in the gangplank and closes the grating. The verger stands by the rail. Maybe he was more attached to her than anyone else, and he has the most to lose by the change in priests. She can’t ignore him. He says, “Mona! I won’t say goodbye …”

“No!” she says. “We’ve done that.” She sounds angry and remote, but he goes on.

“I’ll say ‘Until we meet again!’” He covers his large honest face with the whole sleeve of his coat, and she, small, the tip of her nose white, says, “Good!” She sweeps the girls with her down into the saloon, and when she decides, no one dares grumble. There will be no teary-eyed looks at the church and the parsonage and the sea and the land. The saloon is under the deck, and from there you can see nothing unless you press your nose against the portholes, which I must admit have never been washed.

Once the engine is going, you can’t hear a thing, and when you can’t hear, it’s harder to see. I can’t even say if the verger and Brage waved or just stood there. The women told me that the widow greeted everyone and was careful not to look out. The girls were as quiet as mice, and neither one cried.

It was a great disappointment to the women that Mrs Kummel had chosen this particular time to travel. When there are several of them, and they’ve got hours to kill, they really open up and talk away as if they were drunk or ecstatic. Anything at all, and in whatever order, and the unspoken agreement is that no one will be held responsible later for what she says in the frenzy of the moment. They talk about the living and the dead and friends and enemies, urge each other on and get obscene, laugh and interrupt, start over and exaggerate and turn themselves inside out like wartime clothing. Most of all they love scandals and horrible accidents. The worst of all is still the death of the vicar, and here sits his wife, so how can they?

Here sits his wife, and they have to talk but restrain themselves and watch what they say. The whole pleasure of the trip is gone when they have to be so careful, and although they gossip about much and many, the absence of all the other things they might have said is great and vivid. The remaining subjects are dry and the hours stretch on.

Human beings are made to live on the surface, and for long periods at a time they can forget what lies underneath. Some things sink to the bottom and other things rise up instead. What has happened in the past moves steadily away from the real world, precisely the way the priest grows more and more unlike the man he was when he walked among us, and more of a stranger. This is as it should be, for everything flows and shifts and changes. It’s the way of the world, and on the Örlands the priest is already a story, which people are happy to embroider. As long as his widow and his little girls stay put, the flow is interrupted, and depression and sorrow cling to the discussion, although new currents ought to wash them away.

There they sit, the widow feigning interest and the little girls unnaturally well-behaved. They produce a dejection among the women that feels like shame. Their sympathy has been exhausted, and people don’t like to look their own inconstancy in the mirror. On board the steamer, they get through the night sighing, and in the morning they watch as a truck backs down to the edge of the pier and the poor cow is dragged ashore and furniture and packing crates are reloaded. Goodbye, they say, with relief, as they start towards the city, goodbye and goodbye. When they’ve rounded the corner, the truck disappears from view along with the vicar’s widow and children, and when the women come back in the afternoon, the surface is clean and unruffled. It was best for everyone that they left.