Chapter Forty-Four

 

THE OBITUARY, COMPOSED by the doctor, lay on the sideboard in the parlor.

 

The village of Hult is in mourning. The widely known Grim Larsson is gone. His many friends will remember evenings spent at Ramm, where Grim held forth with a warmth and an intelligence that never failed to move. His battles were fought for the good of all, and the Provincial Council will miss his voice, as will Hult and the villages around it. Even his horses nickered and turned their heads when they heard his steps. A great man has died. He lived well, and at Valhalla he has surely taken his seat at the table.

 

On the morning of the funeral, Björn stood in the courtyard greeting the guests. Elias had spread hacked-up branches of fir on the path to the front door. In the bedroom, where white sheets covered the windows and the walls, Rammen lay on lit de parade. The coffin was blackened with carbon and a book of hymns propped up his chin.

Upstairs, in the sal,the guests served themselves food, mostly eggs and pickled herring. The scarcity of the offerings was in keeping with the times. Not even at Rammen’s funeral should there be signs of abundance.

The family was closing ranks.

“So sudden,” a farmer’s wife said, as she stood by the table. “No signs that his heart was strained?”

“Death comes when we least expect it,” Aunt Hedvig said. “It peers through the windows while we feast and laugh.”

No one dared ask about Ulrika.

By the time the procession left Ramm, rain was falling. Rammen’s warmbloods pulled the wagon with the coffin, Nils Lind at the reins. Walking behind, we all leaned into the wind. The villagers lined the road, which was strewn with fir all the way to the church. Despite the rain, the men held their hats in their hands. Even Erik was there to honor Rammen. He nodded as I passed.

When the bell ringers saw the procession approach, they pulled the ropes. I was told that the wind carried the sound for miles, first the heavy muted sound of the large bell, then the clear light sound of the small. When the pauses between the chimes grew longer, the procession came to a halt. We stopped, bowed, and remained motionless as the bells continued to toll.

When the bells rang faster, the procession started forward. The black blanket on Rammen’s coffin was soaked. Rain trickled under my collar and funneled down between my breasts. I felt the child move, a slight nudge, so slight I was not even sure it was there. When it moved again, it was more like a push.

Ahead, barely visible through the rain, stood the church, its spires and turrets disappearing into the lowering sky, its octagonal shape still causing travelers to point and wonder. “Step inside,” Rammen used to say when he showed them around. “The soothing colors and the soaring ceiling will convince you that this too is a house of God, be it ever so uncommon.”

That was when I knew I must stay. I was not about to run away, pretending to be what I was not. It was not the kind of story I wanted to tell my child.

 

BJÖRN NODDED WHEN I told him. “Glad to hear it. I can use your help with the books.”

Björn and Agnes were married a week later. The following morning Björn and Elias were in the forest at dawn. We could hear the whack of their axes.

Kristina stopped me outside the bank. “Never thought I’d live to see it. Rammen’s trees coming down.”

It was the same day Agnes went to fetch Ragnar, a small boy who stared at his father in silence. Disa and Ragnar instantly took to each other. It was as if the two of them knew each other on sight. On those rare occasions when Ragnar still visits Hult, he always brings flowers for her grave.

By October, my clothing could no longer hide the fact that I was pregnant. Talk travels widely, and soon Fredrik heard about it too. This time I opened his letter and read. He wanted to know my plans.

I wrote back. “At first I meant to move to Stockholm but I’ve decided to stay in Hult. When the child is old enough to decide for itself, I’ll take it to Stockholm, if that’s what it wants. Perhaps it can spend summer vacations at Trotta. I never intended to keep it away from you.”

One morning, when I arrived at the bank, Miss Rydelius was waiting.

“I wish it could be otherwise,” she said, “but I have to dismiss you. My superior in Varberg says we must ensure that all our employees are of irreprehensible moral fiber. Those are his words, not mine.”

I thanked her for all her help, packed up my belongings, and left. The women outside the store stopped talking as I passed.

Through the doctor we heard about Ulrika. We were told to stay away as she needed to be around people with no ties to her past. Treatment, in fact, consisted of isolating her from relatives and friends, whose presence might increase her excitement and worsen her condition. The doctor reassured us that she was in good hands, walking with her nurse through the grounds and enjoying the gardens. She seemed to benefit from the routine, meals brought to her room at exact hours, warm baths, regular sleep. But the delusions were still with her and she must not return home, at least not for a long time. Patients like Ulrika could easily regress. He asked if we could find a way to keep her at the sanitarium, and Erling and Tekla offered to pay.

Once I took eggs to the store. They broke as I struggled to get down from the wagon and dropped the basket. The stares of the villagers stung like nettles in the spring. No one came to my aid. Caesar swished his tail, and as soon as I managed to get the basket and myself back onto the wagon, he bolted for Ramm. By the time I turned the broken eggs over to Agnes, there was still enough for a cake.

“Shameless like the Virgin Mary,” Andrasson was heard to say. “And yet she’s nothing but a common whore.”

On November 8 the Kaiser abdicated. In Stockholm, workers marched through the streets, shouting, “Down with the King.” When the armistice was signed on November 11, we all went about our lives as usual. It was as if we had stopped reacting to good news as well as bad, or perhaps we were simply overwhelmed by the momentousness of the occasion. The only exception was Gustafa. All she could talk of was the queen, who was imprisoned in a castle in Germany, guarded by a Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council.

In early December, a north wind packed drifts of snow against the house, which groaned and sighed under the weight. All the stoves were fired up to fight back the coldness that crept through the walls. Elias had built a cradle and Disa brought down baby clothes from the attic. My skin was stretched so thin I thought I could see the child. While Ella watched, Agnes rubbed my legs and ankles. At night she gave me a few camphor drops to slow my heart.

On December 9, my labor started. Agnes put me to bed in the small upstairs room that Ulrika had used for birthing. The head of the bed faced the wall so the light would not bother my eyes. Gustafa padded across the rag runners, adding more wood to the tile stove and heating up the water bottle.

As the hours passed, Gustafa sat by my bed, always so that I could see her, darning socks or dozing. Disa was weaving in the other room and I could hear the creak of the treadle and the faint clicking of wood. From the shed came the banging of the hammer, the echo frozen in the air. Gustafa said there was frost on Elias’ beard.

Now and then Gustafa rose to smooth the sheets or shake out the pillow. When the contractions grew stronger, I kept asking if something was wrong. Gustafa put her ear to my stomach and told me to hush. She could always tell by the strength of the heartbeat if it was a girl or a boy, but this time she could not be sure. Outside the door, Björn turned the pages of his newspaper. Each time he changed position, his chair rasped against the wooden floor.

The child was born at noon. Emilia held my knees apart, while I dug my heels into the mattress, straining and bearing down. The pain clutched me so hard I called for Ulrika. As soon as the child pushed out, Emilia told Björn to telephone the doctor.

The doctor said it was the first case of syphilis in the parish. When I told him I had been tested, he said that no test was conclusive.

“Otter’s past is well known,” he said. “The disease may lie dormant for years, only to surface in the next generation.”

He said he would treat me with Salvarsan although he could not promise that I would ever be cured. For the child, there was nothing he could do.

Throughout the nights I paced with the crying child in my arms, asking God to transfer her suffering to me. Her skin was thick and scaly, like that of a fish. I tried to nurse her, but my breasts ran dry. She took the bottle willingly enough, but she did not gain much weight, even though I added cream. I patted her skin with glycerol to keep it from cracking, and I dusted the raw spots with potato flour to soothe the burn. Even so the wounds kept blistering, the pus turning into a yellow crust. On the morning of the seventh day, her fever climbed and we had to send for Wikander. He christened her Ingrid and called her God’s child. An hour later the crying stopped.

I have been told that I sat with the dead child in my arms and refused to let anyone near us. Of this I have no remembrance. They said I made no sense at all, even less than Ulrika. I made as if I stood at the gates to the Garden of Eden, pleading to God to let me back in. Then my frame of mind turned even darker. “Come show yourself!” I shouted, holding the tiny corpse high. “Stop hiding behind the cross!”

This, they said, went on for hours. The doctor finally managed to get close enough to give me an injection. I entered into a deep sleep, empty even of dreams, and when I awoke, they had taken the child.

 

WIKANDER APPEARED PLEASED that I wanted the child buried in the old graveyard rather than the new. Perhaps he thought I wanted her hidden away, at long last admitting that she was a bastard. Truth was, I wanted her close to her great grandfather Lars.

The small, white coffin stood on the table in the sal, while I sat by the window looking out at the snowy forest. Gustafa placed the tin box with my caul at the child’s feet. Disa, losing patience with Gustafa’s ways, reached to remove it.

“Leave it,” I said. “It’ll be safe with the child.”

I overheard Disa’s words to Agnes about me staring out the window, like the mare that covered her dead foal with straw and then wanted out.

“Not normal,” Disa said. “Unless she gets some sleep, she’ll go the same way as Ulrika.”

Björn came to tell me that Fredrik was downstairs. I said I did not want to see him.

“Anna,” Björn said, as if pleading for himself as much as for Fredrik. “It’s his child too.”

I watched as Fredrik walked over to the coffin. By then it had been closed and he ran his hand over the lid. His thick wool jacket pulled tight over his back as he sobbed. I told him I could never forgive him for killing our child. I also said I wanted him gone.

Björn carried the coffin to the old graveyard. It seemed even smaller in his large, awkward hands. I walked between Agnes and Disa, slogging through the snow. Gustafa and Elias followed.

Wikander waited at the arched stone gate. The grave was next to Lars’, just as I had asked. Klas had actually begun to dig one in the far corner of the graveyard, next to the large oak, the very tree under which Fredrik used to read. Björn had to pay him twice, before he could convince him that a bastard child could be buried out in the open, just like everyone else.

The ceremony was short. Wikander cleared his throat. “The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away.”

When the earth struck the coffin, I steadied myself against Björn. The jackdaws cawed and the branches of the aspens scratched the pewter-gray sky. Later I heard that Fredrik had been watching from the meadow below, a wreath on his arm. Only after the rest of us left, did he approach.

 

WHEN TIME CAME for my churching, Wikander offered to make an exception. He said it could be done in private, with Björn as the only witness. I told him I wanted it done the usual way, just like all those women who had knelt at that threshold before me.

Still numb from the loss of the child, I stood outside the church, waiting for the service to be over. I walked up to one of the horses, took off my glove, and held my palm to its muzzle, all softness and warm breath. The horse jerked its head away when Klas approached to tell me it was time.

As I knelt at the threshold, I kept my gaze on the hem of Wikander’s robe. There were the usual coughs and stirrings from the congregation. Wikander’s voice was distant. “For marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled, but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge. Walk in peace and sin no more.” As the church bells began to ring, I thought of the woman who died in the lake. 

In the bedroom, I looked out the window and saw the women coming up the hill. Snow was falling and at first it was difficult to see who they were. I recognized Emilia and Alfrida, and as they came closer, I recognized the others too, wives and daughters of village farmers, some of them arm-in-arm. Agnes greeted them in the hall. By the time I had put on my black dress again and entered the parlor, Disa was putting out coffee and cake. She made excuses for what the house had to offer, and for once she truly meant it, for not even Disa could have foreseen that we would have guests.

The miller’s wife gave a short speech. She said they were sorry about the loss of my child. “We shouldn’t have shunned you when you needed us the most.” Emilia added that it was time to look forward and not to the past. 

Agnes, every bit the mistress of Ramm, asked them all to step up to the table, but no one moved until I went first.

None of the women, not even Disa, seemed real to me then. My only company was the woman who had waded out into the lake. She fixed her gaze on the opposite shore, where banks ran steep and a colony of ground swallows would nest in the spring. When her feet no longer found purchase, she fought her urge to swim, the murky water closing above her, not her enemy but her friend. With the stark practicality of someone determined to die, I reminded myself that the lake was frozen and I would have to find another way.

An hour later, shawl wrapped over my head and shoulders, I took my rifle and left for the forest. The women had delayed me and darkness happened early that time of year.

I did not expect the buck. He stood in the middle of the path, his side exposed, snow blanketing his back. He seemed to know that my life could be saved, as long as he would offer his.

I fired at his heart. He did not fall but turned sharply and disappeared among the trees. Tracking the blood that had splattered on the snow, I remembered Björn’s words. “If you wound a deer, give it some time. Most likely it won’t go very far but find a spot to lie down in.”

Björn was wrong. This buck kept going. He even jumped a stone fence. When I finally found him, he was still standing, blood spreading down his leg and blackening his coat. I brought up my rifle and fired another shot, this time aiming at the base of his brain. His legs gave out and he fell on his side. Ready to shoot again, I watched as he tried to rise, his front hooves pawing. Then, as life drained out of him, he put his head down. His nostrils foamed and his eyes dimmed over, those dark, bottomless pupils dilated and fixed.

I set my rifle against a tree and pulled out my knife.

Björn’s voice reached me from behind. “Let me help.”

I raised my hand and he stood back. 

The blood of the buck was pooling in the snow. It was then that I saw the scar. The claw marks ran clear across his buttock and down his right thigh. I thought I could see the lynx in the night, its lips drawn back, its white fangs glowing. Perhaps there had been the faint snap of a twig, perhaps the wind had just turned, but by the time the buck tried to escape, the lynx would have been in close pursuit, its deadly paw reaching out to trip him. Still, the buck had lived. Perhaps he knew that this was not his time and that he and I would meet.

I slit him open and dropped to my knees. Steam rose from his innards, his heart sliding as I cut it loose. Holding it up to the sky, I could feel its firmness and weight. I sliced off the tip and placed it on my tongue. It tasted of heather and sun-flecked moss, of cobweb glimmering wet at dawn. I had taken a life. I had taken it poorly, and yet it had to be so.

The snow was whirling now, and a wild and raucous laughter seemed to issue from the depths of the earth. This was the hardest part, willing myself to go on, knowing that nothing could be changed. I must abandon everything that had sustained me and learn to laugh in the presence of death. When I prayed, I prayed to the fierceness of the buck and to the great indifference of the forest.

Björn helped me cover the buck with branches. “Let’s get you home. I’ll haul him out in the morning.”