A TERRIBLE STORM ON CHRISTMAS EVE. If it keeps up, there won’t be a soul at the early service Christmas morning. It’s not a problem of thin ice, because the ice hasn’t set yet, only made small attempts in the bays, where snow and ice trim the beaches while the open sea rolls free. Now full storm, squealing, wailing wind, and dark as a coal cellar by three in the afternoon. It rains as if the sea lay not only around the Örlands but also above it, pouring its water over them in great cascades. In the worst gusts, the beacon light is invisible, and the whole world is drowned by the merciless waves.
“For those in peril on the sea,” the pastor prays. “And keep the parsonage afloat, too,” he adds, more or less as a joke. For the rain forces its way in where the window frames are in poor condition, and the foam from the wave tops is thrown against the glass like snow. The wind howls through the house and drives the smoke down the chimney. Open doors slam shut, the boards creak in the walls, the rag rugs meander across the floor. It’s impossible to get the Christmas prayer on the radio, which just crackles and stutters in Russian and Finnish.
The pastor understands better than he did last year why Christmas prayers are not held on the Örlands. At this time of year, it’s enough that the congregation comes to the Christmas morning service. Earlier, when the weather was nice, he thought they might hold private Christmas prayers in the church, just the four of them, but now he’s lost the desire. It’s bad enough that Mona has to go out to the cow barn in this storm. They don’t really know how much of a fire they dare have in the tile stoves, and the kitchen range spits out smoke and sparks through the burner rings in the worst gusts of wind, so someone, he, must be both babysitter and fire warden. He lights the hurricane lamp, checks that it’s filled with lamp oil. Mona bundles up, they joke about her getting lost on the prairie. “Aim for the light in the window!” he calls farewell as the door closes.
The cow barn is more protected than the parsonage, lower and sheltered by hillocks. It’s still cold inside, and even though Apple and Goody stand there like a couple of stoves their breath is visible. The calves are freezing in their pen, pressed up against each other. The sheep are in their winter coats and doing fine. All of them turn to look at the hurricane lantern and greet her the way they always do, bleating, bellowing, tossing their heads.
Mona is completely at ease in the cow barn. Completely natural. She enjoys herself here in a different way from up at the house with the children whining, Petter on the phone, a thousand tasks waiting to be done, everything she hasn’t had time for like a noose around her neck, keeping her from breathing freely. Here things are simple—mucking out, providing hay and water, washing and lubricating udders, milking, straining, hooking the milk cans to the yoke—Merry Christmas and good night. Those who bleat and bellow never say too much, hurt no one’s feelings, avoid irony, do not philosophize, never quibble. No hidden meanings, no complications. There’s heat and cold, hunger and satisfied hunger, waiting and arrival, peaceful darkness until dawn. It is her repose, although many think the work is hard. She is happy to spend time here, and now that it’s Christmas she talks a bit more, pats and scratches a little longer, is a little more generous with the hay, pours out some oats from the sack special-ordered from the Co-op. The milk is warm and frothy, creamy and nutritious. Peace.
In the cow barn it seems like the wind has died down a little, but when she steps outside, it tears at her hard. If the milk pails weren’t so heavy, she’d fall down. The rain pounds on her like surf, she loses her breath, thinks that out here on the Örlands you can drown on dry land. Makes her way up the steps, which are shiny in the light of her lantern. Pulls open the swollen door, Petter comes to her at once. “How did it go? I was afraid you’d blow away!” He takes the milk cans, the sieve, helps her out of her outdoor clothes. In this weather, they wash the milk cans in the kitchen. No problem cooling the milk today.
They are all bundled up to the teeth, Lillus in her sleeping bag with a cap on her head, Sanna in wool from head to toe, parents wearing all the wool clothes they own, Papa with earmuffs on his sensitive ears, Mama with a large woollen scarf around her head, everyone with layers of warm socks on their feet, the whole family a hymn of praise to the native Finnish sheep. Brrr! And the temperature hasn’t yet fallen below freezing!
But this is Christmas Eve, and now the Christmas supper is put on the table—lutfisk with white sauce, potatoes, a Christmas ham straight from the oven, stewed peas and carrots, Christmas cakes and coffee for dessert. The Christmas candles flutter and drop wax on the Christmas runner. Sanna is exhausted from waiting, and whines and complains. Lillus is screaming in sympathy. It’s enough to take the joy out of being parents, but they make an effort and group themselves around the tile stove in the parlour, very carefully light the candles on their Christmas juniper but have to put them out again, to Sanna’s intense disappointment, because otherwise the draughts will ignite the whole tree.
In the terrible storm, they can’t hear if Santa has come, but Papa goes out to the back hall to have a look. The verger has explained to them that the Örland Santa is a little shy and doesn’t like to come into the house but leaves the presents just inside the door instead. Sanna is afraid he won’t come because it’s blowing so hard, but Papa has heard that he came with Post-Anton two days before Christmas, so it can’t hurt to have a look. And, glory be, it turns out he has snuck in and left a whole pile of Christmas presents in the firewood box!
Oh. But first we need to think about why we get Christmas presents this evening. Well, it’s because the baby Jesus was born this very evening. It’s in memory of his birthday that we receive our own presents. And that’s why the Christmas gospel is read in every home in Christendom this night. So Papa opens the Bible and reads a long story, and even though Sanna loves stories, she gets bored. She twists and slides back and forth in her chair and scratches her itchy wool socks and, finally, bursts into tears. Not exactly the way her parents had pictured this Christmas Eve, which had less squealing and commotion and lacked the nervousness they’re all feeling because of the storm and the danger of fire on a night like this. But they must celebrate Christmas, so Papa closes the Bible and takes Sanna on his lap, and Mama carries in the basket of presents. Red sealing wax and string, it’s a shame to unwrap such pretty packages! First of all, there are books, mostly for Papa but also for Mama and three story books for Sanna! In addition, socks and mittens and a Santa for Sanna and a Christmas angel for Lillus, who immediately stuffs it in her mouth like a cannibal. And still more—marzipan pigs and a box of homemade toffee for everyone. In a bowl on the table are all the Christmas cards Post-Anton brought, along with Christmas magazines to read over the holidays. It’s overwhelming, and Sanna gets sick to her stomach and throws up on the rug before she’s even had a piece of toffee. Sanna! My goodness, as if all the Christmas cleaning wasn’t enough to deal with, now this! Don’t cry, Sanna, Papa knows you’ve got a delicate stomach and you didn’t throw up on purpose.
Whew! When they’ve finally got the girls into bed and might have a little quiet time, just the two of them, there is no peace. They make their rounds and check the tile stoves and the kitchen range, where they now let the fire go out, and Petter says that if he had a slightly more active imagination, he could easily believe he heard calls for help from a shipwreck among all the sound effects produced by the storm. He wanders from window to window and laughs at himself a little. “Soon I’ll be just like Papa in a storm, nervous and confused. For that matter, I’ll bet they haven’t gone to bed yet. Shall I call and thank them for the Christmas presents and get that out of the way?”
His poor mother is celebrating her first Christmas on Åland, resigned and teary-eyed when she thinks about earlier Christmases on the mainland, surrounded by her children and happily anticipating the many Christmas parties given by her relatives and friends. Never been a storm like the one raging across even the large island of Åland this night. Papa will be no comfort, running around the house groaning like a wraith. The least Petter can do is call and talk to her cheerfully and supportively, but when he cranks the phone, with an apology already on his lips for interrupting the operator’s own Christmas celebration, there is no response. He cranks and cranks and waits and tries again, but realizes at last that the storm has blown down the lines somewhere and that they won’t be able to call out until after New Year’s. Poor Mama, who has undoubtedly been counting on a chat.
There isn’t much more they can do except make another circuit to check for fire and see that the girls are firmly anchored under their quilts but have their noses free. The door to the parlour is closed, and the tile stove keeps it warm into the wee hours, but it’s still cold! At last they lie in their own beds, talk a little about the weather and how the excitement was too much for Sanna and wonder if a living soul will come to Christmas morning service. “The one day of the year when the sermon comes easily!” Petter says, disappointed in advance. They doze off but sleep lightly and wake up again. Remarkable, the pastor thinks, how uneasy you can be in a storm even though you’re safe and secure on land with your whole family gathered around you. What must it have been like for the holy family without a roof over their heads that fateful night?
There is a lot of nasty creaking and crackling in the house, and at two o’clock he’s up again with his flashlight in hand, checking the stoves and opening the door to the icy attic stairs, listening and sniffing, but there is nothing to suggest that the stove chimney has cracked or that sparks are smouldering in the insulation. There is still some warmth on the ground floor and all is well. Remarkable that he can nevertheless feel such disquiet, anguish almost. It has stopped raining, and the beacon blinks reassuringly, the storm gusts are not as strong as they were earlier. The storm is putting itself to bed, so you can too! he scolds himself. He finds his way back to his bed where there is still a little nest of warmth.
“What’s wrong?” Mona mumbles.
“Nothing,” he answers. “Everything’s fine. Sorry I woke you.” He sleeps again a little, and when he finally sleeps deeply, the alarm clock goes off. He jumps up as if it were an air raid warning, but sinks back down when he realizes where he is. Still pitch-black, but he smells Mona’s good scent as she gets out of bed. He hears the rasp of the match on the matchbox and then she lights the lamp. They listen—complete quiet. When she gets to the kitchen, Mona suddenly screams and Petter rushes out to her with his trousers at half-mast. It’s nothing. For an instant she thought that the church was in flames, but there is a light in the sacristy window simply because the verger is there to build a fire in the boiler, which is one of his duties.
At least someone believes there will be a Christmas morning service. They’ve thought about how they’ll do this. The simplest would be for Mona to stay at home and fire up the stoves and make breakfast, but Christmas morning is one of the high points of the church year. It’s not a long service, so they’ll have time to build fires and have breakfast at almost the normal time when they get back. Now they have just a cup of last night’s coffee from the Thermos and a quick sandwich. Then Petter goes off to the church while Mona dresses Sanna and Lillus and follows after.
The verger meets him at the church door, expecting praise and getting it, profusely. The bulging radiators in the church are banging away, and the church is getting warm. With every minute that passes, the air is a little less raw. “My dear fellow,” says the pastor, “what time did you get here?” “Four o’clock,” says the verger proudly. This is his big night of the year, when he overcomes his fear of the dark and can calmly proclaim that the dead do not celebrate Christmas Mass at midnight, at least not in Örland church. The pastor reports that he himself was up at two o’clock and the storm was still raging. Then it calmed quickly. “But my goodness the size of those seas!” “Yes, it takes a time for the surf to settle.” They talk quietly as they prepare the church. They had the candles ready back at the beginning of Advent, and two potted tulips stand on the altar. The verger has posted the first hymns on the number board. Now they light all the candles, on the chandeliers, on the altar, on the pulpit. The church is to shine like a lantern as the congregation approaches. While they’re at it, the organist comes running in and takes the pastor by the arm.
“Come! You’ve got to see this!”
The Örland congregation is coming towards them across the hills. The seas are too high for anyone to want to come by boat in the dark. So they’ve started early from all the villages and now they can be seen in a long row of blinking, swinging lanterns descending the last slope. The verger runs to the steeple, for the bells must ring as they approach, the big bell and the small one tolling for all they’re worth.
The organist warms his hands on a radiator, and the pastor hurries to the sacristy. The first to come in fill the church with footsteps and noise, rustling and shuffling. “Merry Christmas!” they wish one another in their strong, Örland voices. The long walk with swinging lanterns, watching their step on the slippery rocks, has made them bright and talkative. But then the voices change and grow rapid and frightened, and soon the organist comes into the sacristy. “You need to hear this before we start.”
It seems one of the last to arrive is a ship’s pilot from the west villages who has heard on the pilots’ radio that a large American freighter has gone aground and sunk off the island of Utö. The pilots on Utö have rescued many of the crew, but a number of them are missing. “Many of us had a bad feeling last night,” he adds, understandably enough.
“Thank you,” the pastor says. “I’m glad you told me. I’ll say a prayer for them.” He looks at the clock and sees that it’s past time. Mona is sitting in the church wondering why they don’t start. The verger stopped ringing the bells some time ago. But now the organist hurries to the loft, the organ pumper starts to work, and the organist begins playing the opening bars of “When Christmas Morn is Dawning”—a little too fast.
The whole church is glowing in its Egyptian darkness and the talking dies down reluctantly. When the organist indicates that the hymn is now beginning, they are ready. It is one of their favourite hymns, which they’ve waited all year to sing, but now they’re distracted, the dissonances are unexpectedly great, the bellowing more distinct, the differences of tempo more audible. The pastor is at the altar, singing as he always does, but not happy, horrified, as is everyone who’s already heard the news. “The Lord be with you,” he sings, as usual, and Lillus answers happily a little ahead of everyone else. Anyone would be inspired in these wonderful acoustics, and the pastor takes them through the liturgical embroidery and through the lesson. When they sing “Starlight on Sea and Sand”, there are people talking out loud in the back rows, and many in the front pews turn around. In the loft, where the younger boys have gathered, they talk and run around without restraint.
No calm, no collective expectation when the pastor climbs into the pulpit. “Dear friends, brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ,” he begins as usual. “Let us pray.” The older people obediently bow their heads and then everyone listens, for now the pastor will give them the information that led to all the hubbub. “This night, on Christmas night itself, the whole crew of a freighter has been fighting for their lives in the storm off Utö. We thank you for the pilots on Utö, who put their own lives in danger to rescue many. We pray for those who have lost their lives at sea. God, be merciful to them and receive them into your fatherly embrace. Let the light eternal shine for them. Amen.”
After this, it’s easy to return to the subject of light, the church lit up for celebration, for the feast of our Saviour’s birth, but also to the light in the bell tower that faithfully and steadily blinked all through the storm-lashed night. And on to the Star of Bethlehem that wandered through the night and led shepherds and wise men to the stable and the manger. We ourselves surrounded by deep darkness, but in the centre a light that guides us from age to age. The light is Christian hope, personified in the body of Christ, which is a lantern to guide our steps and light up our path. In the silence that follows, everyone can clearly hear a foot colliding gently with a storm lantern on the floor, a little clinking that jingles through the church. The candle flames flutter in a draught, no one misses the parallel with their own trek with swinging lanterns through the deep darkness towards the shining church.
They sing “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming from Tender Stem Hath Sprung!” while the pastor changes his robe and returns to the altar. In his closing prayer he prays especially for all those struggling at sea, then the Our Father and the blessing. Finally, Topelius’s “I Seek No Gold or Majesty, No Pearl or Shining Gem”. The organist is about to begin his postlude, his showpiece, but the organ pumper is facing the other way, talking to someone, and people are already standing up in their pews and talking loudly. When the organist finally starts playing, they just talk louder. The pastor takes off his vestments quickly and the verger is back in the church before the postlude is over. As soon as he’s finished, the organist leaves his music on the organ and comes down to the others. In the middle is Anders Stark, the pilot who heard the news on his radio. He’s in a hurry to get home to hear more news, but repeats what he knows once again: The freighter is called Park Victory, a big devil, oh, beg pardon, and he himself was her pilot once. From the American South, lots of Negroes and such people. A crew of at least twenty-five. The pilots on Utö have rescued at least half, they think. The ones still out there haven’t got a chance. The Coast Guard has been out all night but has no hope of finding anyone else alive.
Then the pastor notices that no one from the Coast Guard is at church today. It’s starting to get light outside, and a couple of boys who’ve been up on a hill having a look around come back to tell them that both Coast Guard boats are gone, obviously to take part in the rescue mission along with the military from the base on Utö. They must have been called out during the night, over the radio. “Good Lord, you’ve got to have guts to go out in a small boat in this weather,” someone says. Brage’s parents and wife are in the church but didn’t know he’d gone out. He was on duty at the station and celebrated Christmas there. “First Christmas pike at home and then Christmas ham at the station, because Björklund’s from the mainland and pike won’t do,” Astrid explains. She doesn’t seem particularly worried. It’s another thing the pastor admires in his parishioners— their fatalism. What happens is what’s meant to happen.
Definitely light outside now, grey on grey, black where the sides of the hills are whipped with rain. Icy cold. Mona can guess that there will be a lot of visitors during the day and hurries home with the girls. They have to sit in the kitchen while she gets a fire burning in the range and puts pots of water on the rings. Then she quickly builds fires in the tile stoves and manages to measure out the coffee and slice the bread before the first of them arrive. First they have to count the collection and make certain every candle is out. The verger goes down to the boiler room two extra times to make sure that no coals are smouldering and that the insulation is not smoking anywhere. The radiators have started to go cold, but you never know, and the pastor promises to check again at dinner time.
No one really wants to go home, except Anders, who left in a rush, and by and by the pastor, the organist, the verger, Elis and Adele, and several men from the west villages, who are hoping the pastor’s phone is less dead than other people’s, head for the parsonage. There’s a lovely warmth coming from the tile stoves and the open oven door, and they all crowd around the kitchen table and pass around chicory coffee and bread and butter and slices of Christmas ham. “Such luxury!” Adele says about the ham, and the pastor’s wife thinks the same thought as, mournfully, she watches the disappearance of the ham, which would have lasted them three more days. But she comes from a farm herself, and she knows there’s nothing worse than having a reputation for stinginess and lack of hospitality.
Several of them crank the telephone energetically and fiddle with the radio, and in the midst of the static and the hissing they suddenly hear a clear voice from Finnish Radio talking about the Christmas Eve tragedy, the American freighter Park Victory, that sank off Utö. The U.S. Embassy conveys its gratitude to the pilots on Utö for their heroic rescue efforts. The Embassy has arranged for the survivors to be taken to Helsingfors, where they will be housed until they can travel home. The pilots have rescued fourteen men. Eight bodies have been recovered and two are missing and presumed dead.
The men look out the window. “With this wind, they’ll be coming here,” they predict, and it takes half a second for the pastor to grasp that they mean the two missing crew members, whose bodies will be driven towards the Örlands by the wind and the currents. That’s why they figure the Coast Guard from the Örlands is still out. They’re moving slowly, with the wind, and searching the whole way. Nevertheless, they come home empty-handed, and it’s Post-Anton who finds one of the bodies shortly after New Year’s.
Much can happen to a body that winds up in the water in a storm. You can figure the direction roughly, but you also have to reckon with currents which, in places, can move in the opposite direction to the wind and carry you on great detours. Then, when you start to approach a coastline, you have to deal not only with the current among the islands but also with reefs and rocks that you rub against and have to work your way around before you can move on. In amongst the skerries, the wind trundles around any way it likes, and if you’re a corpse at its mercy, you can end up in odd places.
I thought it was a seal, I did. But when it didn’t move, even though I came so close that it should have caught my scent, since I was upwind, I realized it was a man who’d washed up on the rocks like a big bull seal. A lifebelt and dark clothes, there’s no big difference between seamen and old bull seals.
It was a Negro. Not as black as I’d thought they were but more grey, maybe they lose some of their colour when they die. Otherwise just like a human being. A cap with earflaps so I couldn’t tell if he had woolly hair like they say Negroes have. Oilskins and good shoes on his feet. I wondered if I should try to pull him into the boat, but he was heavy as hell, and postal boats are supposed to carry the mail, not dead seamen. So I just pulled him up a little more so he wouldn’t drift away, and then I stopped by the Coast Guard and told them where he was, and then home with the mail.
“How did you happen to find him?” they asked, of course. “Those rocks aren’t on your usual route.”
“Well, no,” I said. “But I saw which way I should steer.”
Brage knows what I mean. But Björklund was irritated. “What do you mean, you knew which way to steer?” he said. “If you can tell us where the other one is too, then we can stop searching.”
“No,” I said. “If he’s caught on something and is on the bottom, or inside the wreck, for example, then I can’t see anything. Any fool knows that.”
This is the darkest time of the year, and there’s a lot of movement in the water, storms and currents. These are hard trips for me, even though I go only twice a week. That Christmas night I slept like a dead man. All the light was knocked out of me, I didn’t know a thing. Not a dream, not a sound could have woken me. In my sleep there was only the storm thundering away, while I lay deep down in my furs, dry and out of danger.
If I had been awake and able to hear and see, what could I have done, even with a thousand signs? There were a lot of people who did have them. The pastor himself said he was up wandering around the house and heard all sorts of things. The one who should have heard and seen was the captain of the Park Victory. They were waiting for a pilot, and the bridge was fully manned. Their radio was on, calling and crackling, which makes it hard to hear anything else, hard to figure out why there’s such an urgent unease in the pit of your stomach and where your fears are coming from. Do they carry a message, or are you just suffering fearful premonitions in the terrible storm? The pilots said that they tried to call on the radio and tell them to move farther offshore, but others who were out that night said they could hardly hear anything, mostly just occasional words, many of them Russian, so chopped to pieces they were impossible to understand. The engines pound and roar and the props thrash and whip. In that kind of hell, it’s not easy to grasp that there are spirits out there who are trying to get you to see how you can save yourself.
I have the greatest admiration for the pilots. When they are dead and gone, they’ll be out there too, that I know, and anyone with ears and senses will be safe. They were ready to sacrifice their lives, it says in the newspapers, but let me tell you that they knew exactly what to do to save themselves and still rescue as many as possible. You need one man to manage the engine and the rudder, and he needs a voice that can be heard and eyes that can see. And then you need men who know precisely to the tenth of a second when to fend off and which wave to turn on. That they managed to rescue so many in two little pilot boats, I respect them for that. More boats came out later from the military on Utö, but without the pilots they would have pulled out maybe three or four still alive. They all had lifebelts, but there’s a horrific power in the waves, and it was indescribably cold. Those who drifted in towards land were dashed to death on the rocks.
The pilots, yes. As they worked out there, they had others toiling beside them in harmony, I know that. It must have been so, for I’ve had the experience myself, many times.