Chapter Eleven

 

ULRIKA USED TO gather flowers in the meadows. As a child I watched her take the plants out of the tin tube and place them in a wooden press. She told me their Latin names and made me repeat them. They seemed more important after they were dried. She said they now represented their species, not just themselves. Other children’s mothers did not have time to collect flowers, nor did they seem to have the inclination. Ulrika’s scent was different too, a scent of dusk and roses. And her step was soft, much softer than the clatter of the maids. On days when I felt I needed her more than usual, I would follow her from room to room, the low sound of her voice sending waves of pleasure through my body. But when I caught her eye, she would often look past me, as if I were the one who was not there.

I still have her weaving book. She began it when she was a girl. Her handwriting is forceful, yet ornate, with few mistakes and scratch-outs. It contains detailed instructions with precise amounts of rye flour and linseed oil used to size the yarn, and it stresses the importance of keeping the warp taut and the borders straight, something she always tried to teach me.

The cover of the book is a muted brick red, embossed with elaborate designs like those of rich Victorian velvets. Glued to the inside is a black and white print entitled “Coimbra.” Peasants work by the river, and Coimbra itself rises like a magic mountain in the haze behind them. Inside the back cover is another print, called “Dublin.” Here too you see a city in the distance. To the right picnickers rest on a grassy slope. Below them, to the left, a man herds cattle. It seems fitting that neither Coimbra nor Dublin is depicted up close. Ulrika once told me that she would have wanted to see more of the world, but her longest journey was with Rammen to Gothenburg on the day of their betrothal.

When Ulrika married Rammen, she was already pregnant with Wilhelm. As with every future farmer’s wife, she had to prove that she was fertile and able to produce heirs. The custom was as old as the village. Wikander called it “an abominable stain which the parish must do its utmost to wash away.” Like all vicars before him, he found his words went unheeded.

The wedding, held at Brunnsdal, was a grand affair with many guests. On the morning of the second day, the wedding party rode from Brunnsdal to Ramm in a long row of carriages pulled by horses with ribbons braided into their manes and tails. Rammen and Ulrika rode first. Rammen drove himself, with Ulrika next to him. In the seat behind them two fiddlers tuned their instruments, trying to find common ground. The rest of the carriages were so crowded with friends and relatives that the iron wheels dug deep into the gravel road.

At Ramm, the women lingered in the courtyard to admire the view. The men inspected the barn, walking with their hands folded behind their backs to mark that this was a day of leisure. The large barn, with more windows than most, was freshly scrubbed. Three pairs of long-horned oxen stood on peat and freshly hacked twigs. The dunghill in the back was raked, and cows grazed on the strip of grass between the dunghill and the forest. Healthy and serene, they had weathered the winter well. Rammen always did take care of his cows. Other farmers might run low on fodder and underfeed their cattle until some of the animals no longer could stand. In those barns, the first chore of the morning was to “lift” the cows. The last resort was feeding them thatch from the roof.

Ulrika set about to change the rooms at Ramm, making them airy and bright. The chairs in the upstairs sal, with their turned legs, lyre backs, and soft yellow upholstery, were inspired by the French style of furniture that King Gustav III had introduced in Sweden in the late 1700s. Ulrika brought pictures to the village carpenter, who measured and copied and at some point even journeyed to Stockholm to see the originals. Ulrika’s taste may well have been too extravagant for a farmhouse but it was never pretentious. There was a playfulness and a sureness of style that would deflect even the harshest of critics. Even so, we lived in a make-believe world, like a stage set at the opera, that last splash of splendor before the curtain comes down.

The years to follow would wear her down. By the time Johannes was born, all her energy was spent. The doctor used to tell us that she suffered from a weakness of the will. We had no name for it ourselves. I now think of it as a kind of innocent shamelessness, a sensuality of the soul. The doctor said she would sometimes lose the feeling that she existed at all. The present would have the effect of an intrusion, and while the rest of us would wake up from a dream and know that we were awake, she could not be sure. He said the only possible cure would be talking. A doctor in Vienna had achieved some remarkable results with patients suffering from similar afflictions. Rammen always said no. He said Ulrika needed to forget, not remember. Digging up old hurts would truly push her over the edge. Besides, he could not bear the thought of her being away, for this would be part of the treatment—to take her to hospital and not let the rest of us see her.

 

SYLVIA, MRS. HOLMBERG’S sister, was a frequent guest at the inn. As a girl I sat in her room and watched her put on rouge. When she met my glance in the mirror, she turned her attention to me.

“We should all have such skin,” she said and pinched my cheeks. “And those eyes!” she added. “Lucky the young fellow who gets to plumb those depths.”

She bound up my long, blond hair, and said I was pretty. Not like Tekla—everyone knew that Tekla was beautiful—but more in a general sense, perhaps more lasting. When Elias saw me, he laughed and said he had never seen anything like it.

Sylvia staged tableaux vivants at the inn. Björn played the piano. His feet did not reach the pedals, and Sylvia told him not to strike the keys so hard. The rest of us children sat on the floor, staring at the sheets that served as a curtain. Once, when they drew apart, we saw a gypsy camp with swarthy men around a fire. Another time we saw fairies and elves and a milkmaid herding cows. In my favorite scene Disa wafted back and forth among the roses, touching the petals with her magic wand and making them unfold.

Sylvia attended my first communion. I remember this well because I heard her gasp.

That morning, as we left for church, Elias had trapped a lynx. The pelt hung on the barn and was soaked by heavy rain. The lynx, Elias said, had not put up a fight. A wildcat would have spat and clawed, but the lynx sat motionless as he lowered the rope into the cage.

At church, the candles trembled in the dusk, like the lanterns of the mill workers when they returned home on foggy evenings. Standing in front of the congregation, I wore a new black dress and ribbed stockings that itched. I was thirteen years old.

Rammen sat in the first row, his usual seat over by the pillar. Just before we left that morning he had presented me with a silver brooch. “Better not wear it to church. Wikander wouldn’t approve.”

Ulrika sat on the women’s side, in front of Mrs. Holmberg and Sylvia. Of late she had begun to check my underwear at night, although she never told me for what. School was no help either. The book on the human body had chapters on bones and joints and muscles. It had pages and pages about the ear, the eye, and the nose. Women, it said, had a stronger sense of feeling than men. Their capacity to tolerate pain was also greater. But never once did it mention the small mound between my legs, the one that had begun to grow soft, curly hair.

Wikander sounded far away even though he was standing right before me. “What sin does God forbid in the sixth commandment?”

“Whoring,” I answered, my voice barely audible in the vastness of the church.

“Speak up.”

This time I spoke so loudly that even the cherubs in the ceiling must have heard me.

“What else is a sin against the sixth commandment, other than the coarse deed itself?” Wikander asked.

“Everything that leads up to it.”

“And what leads up to it?”

“Gestures that cause foul thoughts in oneself and others.”

That was when I heard Sylvia gasp.

Perhaps it was less a gasp than a protestation. Later, when everyone gathered at Ramm, she said that some day it would all be revealed, just like everything else that was written in the Bible. Then, making sure that only I could hear, she leaned over and whispered, “Take heart, little one. Don’t believe a word they say.”

After the guests left, I walked out to the barn and stroked the pelt of the lynx, now drying in the sun. Elias found me there and said I had better get back to the house.

“Is it really true that it didn’t put up a fight?” I asked.

“Never flinched. Just poked its head through the noose so I could hang it.”

I was still too young to understand. Through the years I would often ask him to tell me the story again, and each time he stuck to his first account, that the lynx had chosen death.

The following summer Sylvia married. She and her husband, Manfred Josefsson, rented a summerhouse at Ramm. It was just a small cottage but they called it a summerhouse. Alfrida had heard that Sylvia and Josefsson slept without clothes.

“I wonder who told her,” I said to Disa when I was washing up in our room one evening. Disa was already in her bed, her thick glasses on her nightstand next to her book of hymns. She did not answer.

“Perhaps Sylvia did. Either that, or someone spied on them through the summerhouse window.”

Disa turned to the wall and pretended to snore.

I bent over the enameled basin, splashed water on my face, and reached for a towel. “What if some of the villagers try to sleep naked too? Just imagine Alfrida and Theodor without clothes.”

“A fool who’s silent may be considered wise,” Disa muttered. “A fool who keeps talking is still a fool.” Soon her sleep was real, her cheek scrunched up against her pillow.

That night I slept without clothes myself. I did not think that Disa would notice. I lay very still, my gaze fixed at the ceiling. After a while I must have fallen asleep, for in the early hours I woke up shivering, my nipples hard against the touch of the sheet. I found my nightgown under my pillow and put it on. It was still an experience, I told myself, lying naked until dawn.

One day, when Björn and I were drifting in a rowboat on the lake, we saw Sylvia and Josefsson swimming close to the shore. I was at the stern, rescuing bees that had landed on the water, carefully scooping them up and depositing them on the railing. Björn lay on his back, his left foot cocked on his right knee, a fishing line tied around his big toe. While he talked about the universe, I watched the swimmers. There was laughter and splashing, as you might expect, but much to my disappointment Sylvia and Josefsson both wore clothes.

Manfred Josefsson came to Ramm for milk and eggs. He talked to Elias, trying to strike up a conversation. Elias never said a word, other than naming the price for what Josefsson wanted to buy. One afternoon I saw Sylvia and Josefsson in the woods. Instead of making my presence known, I hid behind an elderberry bush. Sylvia sat on a blanket, holding a book. I was almost close enough to read the title. The sun shone among the birches, and Sylvia’s blue dress was mottled with light. Josefsson had stretched out on his back and seemed to be asleep. When Sylvia reached out as if to wave an insect away from his forehead, he caught her hand and drew her close. She plucked up her skirts and straddled him like you would a horse. The pungent smell of elderberries all around, my body rocked with Sylvia’s, as my hand found its way inside my underwear and pressed down on that small secretive spot. Sylvia must have known I was there all along, for she caught my eyes and smiled.

After that I never talked to Sylvia again. Whenever I heard that she and her husband were in the village, I took care not to cross their paths.