Agnes Andersson stared at her feet. How far had they taken her? Or on the contrary, where had she taken her feet? Assuming now that it was the head and not the feet that decided the direction.
To a footbath. In a house where basically she had spent her entire adult life.
Agnes was the third Andersson sister from Gräsö who worked for the Ohlers. Carl von Ohler rented a house on the island a few summers in the 1930s and then came into contact with the fisherman and smallholder Aron Andersson, who supplied fish and helped out with odd jobs.
Then, when Carl needed a new maid for their home in Uppsala, the oldest of the Andersson daughters, Anna, was talked into starting. When she left the household after a couple of years her place was taken over by the middle sister, Greta, who stayed a few years longer, and who in turn was replaced by their little sister, Agnes.
Bertram and his family had use of the wing rooms, as they were called. When his father died in 1959 he became sole master of a fourteen-room house.
At the time, there was one maid besides Agnes on the serving staff, and a half-time caretaker, all of whom had to take care of Bertram, his wife Dagmar, and the two sons, and as of 1960 a nanny who took care of the afterthought, Birgitta.
Now only Agnes and Bertram were left.
She was sitting in what the family always called the “small parlor.” Fifty years ago it would have been inconceivable that as a servant she would be allowed to occupy a room that was reserved for the “ladies,” then equipped with a couple of small couches and a handful of armchairs. It was intended that the female guests could gather there after dinner, drink a glass of liqueur, and exchange a little gossip. All while the men sat in the library drinking cognac and talking about their business.
Now it must have been thirty years since any ladies drank and gossiped in the house. The parlor had been redone into a kind of living room for her. Next to it was her bedroom. To start with, she had thought it was quite unnecessary, but Birgitta, who had taken the initiative, insisted on it and Agnes moved from her old room to a new one in the wing. And thus got her own parlor in the bargain.
The time she spent with her sore feet submerged in the tub of lukewarm water and Epsom salts was a break for her head too. Every evening she sat like that, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour.
* * *
She heard the professor rummaging about. Quite suddenly it had become important, after years of Sleeping Beauty slumber. He had instructed her in how he wanted it to be and she could tell that if he was often confused he was exact and clear where the arrangements for the study were concerned. The stuffed bird would be removed—“Toss it” was the professor’s curt order—and that made her happy. She had wanted to get rid of it long ago, the ugly and malevolent-looking thing.
He had talked long and well about the picture with the family tree and lost himself in stories and kinsfolk. Tales she had heard ad nauseam. But she let him talk on without listening, while she dusted off the bookcase and stowed away old magazines and loose papers.
Suddenly the monologue had ceased. Their eyes met for a moment and in his features she could glimpse what she thought resembled distress, before he laughed.
“The way I go on, as if these … diagrams, these branches”—he threw out his hand toward the picture—“might interest you. You have your own family out on the island.”
She did not really know what she should say but nodded instead.
“You never married, did you, Agnes,” he observed unexpectedly.
“No, I never did. And there were no branches on the Andersson tree. I, and my sisters too for that matter, have been fully occupied with Ohlers.”
The professor stiffened, without saying a word, and shortly thereafter left the room.
* * *
Perhaps there had not been a line of suitors outside her door, though at one time there had been men. But Agnes never married. That was not something she dwelled on or considered particularly notable or tragic, it was simply the way it turned out, she had always reasoned with herself. A fragile defensive wall, she realized that, but her background, as daughter of the fisherman and lay preacher Aron Andersson, founder of the congregation God’s Army, had given her a fatalistic attitude. A fragile wall, for certainly she had longed many times to be out of the Ohler house, and the only way that had existed at one time would have been marriage.
Her father had impressed on her, sometimes with the rod, that her task was to serve God and all other masters, including himself. In his faith there were no mountains. His Old Testament attitude, which aroused a mixture of wonder, respect, and ridicule on Gräsön, left no room for thoughts of freedom.
The congregation God’s Army, which in its heyday had two dozen members at most, of which five were from the Andersson family, was long since departed. Her sister Greta and herself, together with a couple of other retirees, were the only survivors who could testify to the reserve and muteness that marked the interior life of the sect. There was not much joy and consolation, only fear and hard work.
Smallholder Aron Andersson’s faith in God was as merciless as the stony ten-acre parcel he had to work, the family’s life as poor of pleasures as the patch of forest, mostly consisting of alder marsh and rocks, that belonged to the place, and their worldly fate as uncertain as the harvests of the often surly sea, sometimes plentiful catches of herring but more often half-empty nets.
For Aron life and the sea were a struggle, a precipice, resistance that, if not overcome, in any event must be endured. That was God’s idea. Everything was meager and harsh but above all unpredictable. Only the Word stood firm and the thought of the Son’s descent was the only refreshment to be had.
The father’s doings left no room for any form of spontaneity or surprises. The only thing that deviated was that all the sisters were allowed to leave the island and the congregation to serve the Ohler family.
This was an anomaly that for Agnes was unfathomable at first. Perhaps it was her mother’s influence that made it all possible. There was a streak of rebellious delight in her. Aron Andersson also harbored an obsequious respect for Carl von Ohler and his lily-white wife, so when the question came up of whether Anna might go with them into town Aron chose to grant his permission. For a couple of summers Anna had been helpful in the Ohler household on the island, so it was perceived by everyone as a natural extension.
Perhaps the father, in all his stern religious zeal, felt a pinch of doubt after all. Perhaps he wanted to crack open a door for his three daughters, away from the island and the meager life. Even he could see how times were changing. Not even the strictest remained unaffected.
When Anna was going to start in Uppsala Aron sailed her over the sound to Öregrund and the waiting bus. When Greta followed later she could take the motorboat and Agnes in turn could take the ferry that had started working Öregrundsgrepen.
Sending the daughters to the professor and the house in Kåbo was a guarantee besides that they ended up among “educated and cultivated folk.” The expression was her father’s. That the Ohler family were not believers, other than on paper, was less important. The family was a suitable acclimatization to a respectable life on the mainland. The father’s greatest apprehension was that they would end up “at the factory” or “in a store” and thereby be lured into sinful ways.
* * *
Agnes observed her toes in the footbath. God’s ten commandments in accordance with the childhood rhyme, where the words had been drummed in: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” So long ago, but she could still feel the pressure of her father’s fingers around her toes as he made her mechanically repeat commandment after commandment.
Sixty-five years ago. She felt dizzy for a few moments at the insight that she would soon die, be united with her parents. She would never get to experience someone pressing their fingers against any part of her body, not even the crooked toes.
Perhaps I wasn’t made for that, she thought. I was destined to serve. I have never loved anyone, not even Birgitta, who took shelter in her arms when it was stormy in the house, when Dagmar and Bertram crossed swords. And no one has loved me. Well, she corrected herself at once, Father and Mother.
She remembered when her father had died quickly in his seventies. He dropped dead in the cramped cowshed. Actually, he had nothing to do there, the little herd had been gone for several years, like most of the cows on the island, but he used to go out there and “idle,” as her mother said.
The news came the same day that it was announced that the “old king” had died, so the to-do around Aron Andersson’s death was curtailed somewhat.
She went out to the island. Ohler offered to have her driven out, but she took the bus, got off in Öregrund, crossed the little square, read the newspaper placards about the nation’s grief, and came up to the ferry landing soaked with sweat, even though a stiff breeze was blowing from the northeast. It was Fredell who ran the ferry and he expressed his sympathy; rumors spread quickly on an island. They were the same age and schoolmates, and she wanted him to hug her, a completely unimaginable action for both of them. But he stood next to her during the trip across, silently with his hands on the railing. They looked out over the water, northward toward the island, where they were both born. She was cold, the sweat coagulated on her body, but she remained standing, and he remained standing, even though he always walked around talking. She said, “Thanks, Gösta, that was nice of you.” He went to make sure that the cars got off the ferry. She would never forget Gösta Fredell.
She walked from the ferry home. It was only a few kilometers, if you counted like when she was a child. I’ll catch pneumonia, she thought, but trudged on. There was a comfort in the landscape, late yarrow and columbines swayed at the edge of the ditch and the apples shone in the gardens. At old Lidbäck’s a mare was standing that whinnied as she walked past. She stopped and said a few friendly words.
Her childhood home, a poorly built wooden shack, looked even smaller, as if the house had adapted itself now that it needed to house only two persons instead of three. It was a gray, melancholy house and had been like that since Anna’s return from service with the “old professor.” Later on she left for Stockholm, where she got a position with a businessman with houses in both Saltsjöbaden and in France.
She was replaced by Greta, who in turn was replaced by Agnes, a relay team of sisters to keep the Ohler home in good shape.
Agnes could still remember the short walk from the road up toward the house. It was as if it was the last time, even though she realized that was not the case. But it was a painful way to go, a farewell. Thirty-five years ago, she thought, staring at her feet in the bath.
* * *
“He went first,” said her mother as Agnes stepped into the kitchen.
She was sitting at the table, and immediately poured a cup of coffee from a thermal carafe, as if she had been sitting there a long time waiting for her daughter’s arrival. They had their coffee in silence. If her father had become somewhat more easygoing with the years her mother had changed in the opposite direction.
Greta was at the funeral parlor to take care of the practicalities. Agnes helped pack clothes in boxes and bags, which would most likely end up in the attic. Agnes did not ask what her mother intended.
“The office,” the box room under the stairs, which Aron had furnished as his own little den, was mostly cleaned out. Agnes suspected that her sister had been there. But in a drawer she found her childhood. In the warped drawer in a worm-eaten cupboard he had stored the loose tobacco, the only vice he allowed himself. He did not smoke, instead he cut up the long braids and drew the tobacco into his nose. He did it to “clear his nasal passages.”
That aroma was her father, but also a kind of worldly perfume, an almost sensory reminder that there was an existence beyond the home and the congregation.
She had pulled the drawer out completely and brought it to her nose, breathed in deeply, and experienced her father’s mute devotion. So certainly she had been loved, in his reserved way, but loved all the same.
Agnes knew that Greta had tried to get hold of Anna and before she returned to Uppsala she asked whether their big sister had been heard from. Her mother did not answer and Agnes took that as a no.
A few days later Agnes got pneumonia, was bedridden, and could not be at the funeral.
* * *
The water had long since cooled in the tub. Her feet were wrinkled and softened. Agnes filed them long and well, a task that brought her a kind of pleasure.