In the days that followed, a clearer picture emerged.
We ate a great deal. Helga was perpetually famished, and I was trying to find my place in this newly crowded house. Initially it seemed that my place was to make sure everyone consumed enough. Helga had no reservations about eating anything I brought inside, and took a perverse delight in all the unfamiliar flavors. It emerged that the Norwegian sailors who had brought her to Raudfjorden had fed her like a queen, for they, like I, worried that the milk for Skuld would grow thin if Helga wasted away. Helga did not waste. The sea was rough as they threaded the Danish Hole, but it affected her little. This, along with her liberal use of profanity, earned her the sailors’ respect, and they ceased tiptoeing past her cabin. Skuld was hoisted from man to man, given ship’s biscuit to gum, and even carried partway up the topmast to get a better view. Helga, meanwhile, dined and drank with the crew in full appetite, and was occasionally advised—with all the deference in the world, if she would but listen to the humble words of an ignorant sailor—to drink a little less. She said they gave her a rousing hurrah when she descended the ladder into the little whaling boat, which deeply moved her, and the captain made her swear that she would hail the next passing ship with a flare at the first sign that her uncle was less reliable than she remembered. One of the deckhands insisted on donating his waxed tarpaulin jacket to Skuld as a kind of swaddling blanket. It was foul, reeking of fish, and Helga professed her anxiety that the man would die in the next storm, but he would hear nothing of it, wrapping his precious jacket around the baby and filling every pocket with hardtack.
Needless to say, then, seal pie and barely cooked seal liver were of no particular concern to Helga. She was game for anything. MacIntyre, of course, had sent her with a pair of skis, among many other gifts, and she wished to learn the art. She would strap Skuld across her chest, or we would take turns, and trudge along through the deepening twilight.
Helga never apologized or asked if her presence was an imposition. I don’t think she cared either way, but still I was grateful, for it might have forced me to consider the possibility that she was. Whereas if she believed she had a right to be there, so did I.
We spoke easily. It seemed that neither of us had spoken much in the past few years—me in the vast emptiness, her in the stifling crowd of Stockholm and home. Words came bubbling out. Our comfortable dynamic, established when I was twenty-eight and she was three, had changed little. But as any two people who have ever been close in such a way can attest, there will always be friction. After the first few days of laughing and questions and filling in the gaps, tempers began to flare now and then. We bickered in between the laughter, and I tried to find ways to salve her pain without causing more.
She had a great deal of pain. It lay like a shadow under everything—a cold black pool beneath a mountain. For she was like me, and yet unlike. She was strong-willed and impetuous in ways I could scarcely understand, but also resilient. She had set herself apart from the outset, in direct opposition to any plans that Olga or Arvid might have wished to impose, and so her road was hard. Much of this I learned from her, and a little from the letter she carried. She produced it—a sad, damp, crumpled thing—after several days in Bruceneset. The envelope was partially unsealed, as though she had changed her mind in the act of opening it.
She passed it over reluctantly. The hand on the outside was Olga’s. “Don’t read it in front of me,” she said.
I opened the envelope and read.
Stockholm, June 1926
Dear Brother,
Forgive the brevity of this letter. Though it has been several months since I heard from you directly, I do not take it as a personal affront. I know you are making a brave face against the solitary life you have chosen, and though I worry—I will always worry—I take heart in my conviction that you prosper. Charles MacIntyre, the dear good fellow, writes now and then to assure me you are well enough, and to forward the various oddments you have sent (Wilmer displays the narwhal tusk in his dormitory at Stockholm University College, where he studies law—he says it impresses his friends).
All is not well with your niece Helga. She has been a trial from the beginning, as you well know, but since she grew strong and capable, she has developed new ways to do herself harm. Now, as you will find, she is in trouble. I do not blame her for it, and God knows I do not shun her. I have tried to prevail upon her to stay and have the child here, or else visit Arvid’s kindly sister in Östersund. We are not in Victorian times. She can still have a life here. It may be that her marriage prospects will grow slender, though I do not think she cares about such things. If, however, she cannot bear the judgmental looks and whispers of “proper women,” as she calls them, then Stockholm will indeed oppress her. I would deny it, but I cannot. It oppresses me at times, and I am a respectably married woman.
I am almost loath to admit this but I must: It was my idea to send her North. For she has always idolized you in a mocking sort of way, and in a more private, earnest way she felt a kinship with you. As I do, dear brother. I feared she would do damage to herself here. I thought she might try something unspeakable in an attempt to be rid of the baby—we hear stories—or turn inward to such a degree that she cannot get out again. We both know I have some experience with melancholy.
When, at wits’ end, I spoke at last what I had long been contemplating—that she might go to live with you for a while—her face changed. It opened. The jaw that had been clenched for so long relaxed, and the look that raged against me, against the world, against me for bringing her into the world…it softened. Just enough for me to see my Helga again, my dearest daughter, shrewd and wary as a wolf, with joy enough left to carry her through any misfortune. A hard choice is rarely a choice, but I knew the decision was a good one.
Charles has made every arrangement. He says he will make certain she arrives safely. He also says it will do you good. Someone to look after, and to look after you. I know you will do what is right. I have always known it.
Please give my dearest love to yourself, and to Helga, who I hope will learn to forgive my maternal inadequacies, and to my grandchild, whom I task with the heavy burden of redeeming this fractured family, and whom I hope one day to meet.
I remain your loving sister,
Olga
Clearing my throat, for it was heavy with emotion, I looked up from the letter. “You’re worried that she presents you in a poor light?”
Helga nodded, her eyes downcast.
“You needn’t have. She asks that you forgive her.”
“Oh God,” Helga said, and her tears wetted the table. “Why must she always take responsibility for everything?”
“That is her way. She’s the best of us. We can only strive to follow her example.”
“She’s a martyr!”
“She is not. One day you’ll understand.”
“But living in her perfect, responsible shadow—I always felt like some miserable grease stain.”
“It can be exhausting,” I agreed. “Let’s have something to eat.”