Anna Stina knows that fire is a game of angles and space. That whatever is to burn must be carefully arranged, given enough room for the flame to take hold. It is like a living thing, fire, and like everything else it must breathe. Those fires of carefully split wood that she lights in the hearth in Katarina parish are more challenging than what now stands before her. The stack is composed of bundles of kindling and firewood that will burst into flames the moment it is put to the torch. The officiant is waiting for the stroke of seven. When the watchman in Katarina tower calls the hour, this bonfire will be lit for Saint Walpurga.
Anna Stina used to be afraid of fire. In the tales of her childhood, it was always the monster, described by those who had seen the wooden houses of the city reduced to cinder with their own eyes. But Anna Stina is a child of another time, raised in a Stockholm built of stone, not timber, and as the years go by it is harder to see the connection between that ravenous firestorm and the warming, helpful glow of the cooking fire. So also this evening, when for a few hours it is allowed to grow large, but kept tame, fed, guarded, and surrounded by hose and bucket.
The evening is warm but there is a refreshing breeze from the lake. It is welcome since it puts Children’s Lea upwind from the Larder, which has thawed enough that the stench is almost rendered visible by plumes of flies. Between spring and summer, the light of evening is most pleasant. Gone are the pitch-black winter months when the night wanderer has to find his way down the street by feeling with outstretched arms, from the faint cat’s eye of one lantern to the next, and when anything dropped is hopelessly lost in the gutter and the only hope is to ingratiate oneself with the water bearers the next morning, or simply remain standing in place to await the dawn. Of all the seasons, spring is the one Anna Stina likes the best. It is full of promises the year has not yet had a chance to break. All seems possible.
She is not alone in her rejoicing. The meadow is full of people. Children, paupers, and ragamuffins from Katarina and Maria parishes are sitting in the grass, right next to workers from the manufactories, those who have time and energy left over at day’s end. A little farther away are the fine folk, factory owners with friends from the City-between-the-Bridges, a party of noblemen and women dressed in beautiful clothing of satin and lace. Sitting next to her is Anders Petter, the neighbor’s boy. He is a few years older than she is, and already in training to follow in his father’s footsteps and go to sea. One day he will step off the quay and walk with assurance along the gangplank, while white sails will take him out across the ocean. She envies him, and feels fettered to the city by chains that, though invisible, do not bind her any the less.
The wind from the water grows stronger. She pulls her knees up under her chin, and at the same time she hears the call from up above. The torch is brought to the base of the bonfire, where the flames greedily lick at the twigs and branches. It quickly grabs hold and climbs towards the top. A tumult breaks out among those assembled when it turns out that the call did not in fact come from the church tower but from impatient guttersnipes impersonating the voice. But what is done is done. A fire guard sets off halfheartedly up the slope to hunt down the young delinquents, who in practiced fashion disperse in all directions under hails of laughter, but the officiants shrug their shoulders. The joy spreads. Bottles of brandy go from hand to hand. Dusk grows ever deeper. The fire, now a luminous claw grabbing at the stars, makes it hard to make out anything but silhouettes. One of them is unmistakable: an overzealous figure caught in a policeman’s catchpole and kept helplessly at a distance by a long handle, while the jaws have sprung shut around his throat. He flails and tries to run in this direction and then in that. His colorful language and feisty character have won him a following of laughing observers. Only when the group has passed by does Anna Stina notice that Anders Petter has put his hand over hers.
Anna Stina has always known that this day was coming. She is not naive. Anders Petter had been a good companion as they played together, but now they have grown older and his interest has long since extended past friendship. She has nothing against him—he is agreeable in nature and easy on the eye, with his dark hair and blue eyes—but she does not feel ready for the step that he wants to take. She has no longing for togetherness, no more than her mother, Maja, who has managed by herself all of her days. Another evening, perhaps, and maybe not even that far in the future, but not tonight. She has been expecting a moment like this one, has lain awake at night and wondered how she should submit her rejection without hurting their friendship. It surprises her that her reaction comes of its own accord, faster than she can control it. She pulls away her hand. In the silence that follows, she does not know what to say. She is grateful that the darkness is thick enough to conceal her blushing. Instead it is Anders Petter who speaks.
“You know that I am fond of you, Anna. I always have been.”
Words fail her.
“You will soon be of marriageable age, Anna. Your mother doesn’t have her health. When she is gone, you will have no one. We can go to the priest, Anna, and have the banns read for us . . .”
His voice fades away until nothing is left. She still does not know what to say. She hates herself for it, feels his wound deepen with her silence. It is as if she were a slab of marble, dropped among the grassy tufts of Children’s Lea on its way towards the great Sergel’s chisel.
It is his sobbing that rouses her. She can’t see him any longer but she hears the same boy she has comforted over skinned elbows or the blue-black bruises he had from a father who knew how to wield a hazel switch. When she was a child, Katarina parish was not the decrepit shantytown that they learned to see only with age, but a fantastic land of adventures and fun. The ideas were hers, but without him they would not have been possible. She made the roof of a shed into the deck of a ship bound for China and India, while stones and woodchips were the porcelain and jade that would make their fortune. When summer rains brought torrents of water that gushed from the paths down the mountainside, they fought fire side by side. Anna Stina described the flames that only she could see while Anders Petter struggled and laughed with a leaky bucket. With her imagination, she reshaped their days. For a long time, she thought that was why he liked her so.
Once more her reaction comes straight from the heart, without thought or calculation. She turns around and embraces him, wrapping her small arms around his shaking frame, and feels how he has hidden his face in his hands. She rocks him back and forth as she has always done. He answers, wrapping his arms around her and laying his face against her neck while she strokes his hair. It is a cathartic embrace and Anna Stina has time to think that all will be well before his lips seek out hers. He covers her mouth with his as his arms hold her tight. When she pulls away, he follows and together they fall onto the grass. He changes position over her, pressing her onto the ground with heavy hips, and when she wants to protest, his tongue is in her mouth.
Anna Stina feels a confusion as if from a misunderstanding. Fear follows closely. Anders Petter knows that he has been told no. Maybe he hopes that in the heat of the kissing he will get her into a different mind-set, that a becoming modesty and thoughts of her honor were the only reasons to reject him, that she is actually grateful for this persistence so that she can pretend the responsibility is his alone. Whatever sounds Anna Stina makes are smothered by Anders Petter’s mouth—first the attempts to talk to him, then her calls for help. Now she feels panic, and Anders Petter’s chest and shoulders pin her to the ground while with his knees he is trying to pry her thighs apart. Something is about to be taken from her that she has not wanted to give and she can’t do anything about it.
No. She sucks on his lower lip and lets her teeth bite down as hard as they can, tasting a hot saltiness as if from liquid metal. When he pulls away she manages to hit him, one slap, then two. The arms that have been pinning her on her back are suddenly needed to stop the flow of blood, the pressure that has been over her is eased, and Anders Petter rolls off her and into the grass.
Both of them are crying. Anna Stina is the one who stops first. She stretches out a hand to touch Anders Petter again, as a friend, as if to say that what has happened can be forgiven, but it is as if her hand sears his shoulder. He pulls away with a jerk, gets to his feet, and starts to run up the slope.
Afterwards Anna Stina can remember how much she managed to think about during the brief time it took. The conflicted feelings. Part of her whispered that the fault was her own, that what was happening was something natural, that advances like this should have been welcome. They have known each other their entire lives. Why not also in this way? One sees this everywhere in the slums of Katarina parish, how the relationships of childhood ripen into something more serious. How many are not begun with scenes like this, where the boy who has become a man knows best and the girl who has become a woman has to be forced to see reason?
Anna Stina waits awhile before she gets up. Down by the shore, the fire is a glowing heap that will soon be reduced to ash. A toothless old man with his hat tilted and tangles in his beard is sitting close by above her and grinning at her, with one hand in his trousers, which are stained with dirt and vomit. He has been sitting there the whole time. He sends a streak of tobacco juice shooting out between a gap in his front teeth.
“I’d been hoping for a better show, but I’m sure you’ll soon find a partner with a little more gumption and then I’d appreciate it if you sent word to a poor wretch who would be happy to pay a shilling to watch.”
He slaps his thigh and laughs at his own words. She shivers with distaste, brushes the grass from her clothing, and takes the same way as Anders Petter, back towards Katarina parish.