Every now and again you see a man or a woman (with me it is more often a woman), who somehow strikes you. The man may not look particularly distinguished, perhaps not even very intelligent, and the woman may not be exactly beautiful—but they have a quality that makes them interesting, and for no reason at all you start wondering about them. Of a woman, perhaps, you say to yourself, “I’d like to know where that girl came from and what has happened to her to make her like that.”
There was a head waitress in a restaurant in Toronto who made me feel that way. She may be there yet for all I know. Of course she was a striking looking girl. She had a body that was simply magnificent. But that wasn’t it. That alone wouldn’t make you wonder where a girl came from and what her history had been. This girl looked a little foreign and she was very austere. She wore a manner like armour. I was going to say “invisible armour,” but it wasn’t invisible. You just know at a glance that a woman of that sort knows how to handle men. And she did.
Anyway, she started me wondering. I made up my mind to find out about her. And what follows is her story. To my sorrow I don’t come into it. It is just the story of how she came to be the way she is.
Her name was Katrin Petursson (pronounced Pee-ay-toor-soon) which is Icelandic. She was twenty eight years old. Her youth had been spent on the rough, rocky land in the neighbourhood of Lake Rosseau where the Icelanders had built a scattered settlement, naming it Hekla after their famous volcano. Her father had been the village schoolteacher, whose wife, dying in childbirth, had left him with Katrin, a baby of three, her sister Asta who was two years older, and a brother Arni who was then eleven.
It was a strange childhood for the Petursson children, growing up in a house where an already ageing man was both father and mother, and who, when they went to school, often walked with them to the door and then left them to mount the platform and become their teacher. He was a lanky, thoughtful man, a great lover of Iceland, and at nights in the little cabin, when the curtains had been drawn across the bunks where the children slept, they would peep out and watch him bending close to the lamp, writing very slowly, or sitting back with the end of the pen in his teeth, staring into space. He was translating the Heimskringla, the Icelandic “Book of Kings,” into English. The scratching of his pen was the only lullaby Katrin could remember.
Her brother Arni went to the war when Katrin was ten years old and never came back. About two years later her father was drowned under circumstances which gave rise to talk of murder or suicide. When he failed to return one night from a trip to Port Carling a search party went out and at dawn his rowboat was found capsized and adrift in the lake. There were no signs of struggle, his body was never found, and his death remained a mystery.
The two girls went to live with Aunt Hulda, their mother’s sister, who late in life had married Captain Jon Tomasson, one of the head men of the village. He held a master mariner’s certificate and was away all summer on a freight boat; but in winter he sat around the stove drinking enormous quantities of beer and “mola kaffi,” chewing snuff, and telling outlandish stories which Asta and Katrin thought were much better than the ones they read in their few books.
Aunt Hulda was delicate and the Petursson girls, who had been used to looking after themselves at home, ran the house. Asta had left school and did dressmaking for several of the women in the settlement. When Aunt Hulda died, just at the time when Katrin was finishing school, Asta became mistress of the little household. She was eighteen, fair-haired, mature in build, and possessed a flashing smile which made her the talk of the village. Katrin was taller, bigger, and at an awkward age. She watched and worshipped Asta, copying everything her older sister did and aching for the time when she would be as old, and able to put her hair up and go to dances.
All this time the Petursson girls had been befriended in many ways by Gudmund Eggertson, the Lutheran minister, who had greatly admired their father and was carrying on the unfinished translation of the Heimskringla which he had left. Pastor Eggertson had little respect for Captain Tomasson and felt that the atmosphere of the house in the long winters when the old man sat around the stove entertaining his cronies, was not good for the girls. The pastor knew something of Captain Jon’s youthful reputation, and when Asta blossomed suddenly into womanhood, he grew more and more anxious that the girls should go to Toronto where he had a cousin who would keep a motherly eye on them and help them find congenial work. He whispered what he feared to his wife and was not reassured when she told him, after a talk with Asta, that the girl not only knew the facts of life but was aware of the danger and had even repulsed the captain two or three times when he had shown signs of drunken amorousness.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” his wife had said. “Asta is a strong, capable girl with plenty of character, and she’s old enough to take care of herself. She wasn’t a bit confused when I talked to her—said it only happens when the captain drinks a little more than usual, and he’s quite easy to handle—”
“But, my dear!” exclaimed the minister.
“I know—I know what you’re going to say,” answered Mrs. Eggertson. “It’s not a nice atmosphere for the girls. I told Asta that, and she admits it, in a way; but she says—and I must say it is the Christian attitude, after all—that the captain is really a good old soul when he’s sober, and that if the girls left him he’d probably be drunk all the time and have no one to look after him.”
Katrin knew nothing about these anxieties until later, but one night while Asta was at a barn dance in the adjoining village and was not expected home until the small hours, the captain got rid of his cronies a little earlier than usual and went to bed. Katrin was wakened by the hearty farewells and by the freezing air which swept past her door while the men stood on the verandah slapping each other’s backs. She was surprised to hear her uncle go to bed without “banking down” the stove as usual. She called to him and he reeled into her room.
“Aren’t you going to fix the stove for the night, uncle?” she said, sitting up in the bed in the dark.
He dropped heavily on the bed and groped for her, pretending to be very gruff. “Wha’ are you doing awake ’t this time o’ night?” he growled, and started tickling her the way he had often done when she was a little girl. She laughed and pushed him away.
“Kiss your ol’ uncle goo’night,” he muttered, groping for her again and digging his fingers into her back while she quickly kissed his beard.
He went out then and rattled about the stove, and presently she heard him throwing his trousers over a chair in his room and heard the springs of his bed creak. She had dropped off to sleep again when he called and wakened her. “Katrin, come here—come here,” he was calling. She put on her slippers and felt her way to his door. It was a cold night and the house was chilly. “Komdu hingad, Katrin,” the captain called again. Moonlight reflected from the snow filled his room with a pale light. He was in bed with the covers drawn up to his neck.
“What’s the matter?” said Katrin, going over to him. “I’m terrible cold,” he said, grasping her hands and making her sit on the bed beside him. “I’m an ol’ man, Katrin. I get terrible cold of a night, sleeping alone.” He was running his hands up and down her body. “But you’re warm—warm ‘s toast,” he said, “Eh? Aren’t you?” He threw the covers back and tried to pull her down beside him. “Get in wi’ me for a minute an’ warm me up—eh? There’s a girl.”
“But why didn’t you fix the fire?” she said, struggling away from him. “I’ll give you Asta’s comforter. By the time she gets home the house’ll be warm.”
“Come on, Katrin—get in here wi’ me,” he pleaded, thickly. “Not afraid o’ your ol’ uncle, are you? Jus’ want t’ get warm.”
She wasn’t frightened, but his breath reeked of beer and he was rough and scratchy. “I’ll get you Asta’s comforter,” she said. But when she came back with it he grabbed her again and pulled her into the bed beside him. She was a big girl—bigger than Asta—and could have prevented him, but she didn’t want to struggle with him when he was drunk. His hands were so big and coarse and his beard was horribly rough. “Just for a minute, then,” she said, thinking he would start snoring almost at once. But when his hands slid over her and touched her breasts she fought him off with clenched fists and ran out of the room.
His muttering soon sank into drawn-out snores, but Katrin did not close her eyes. She propped her head high on the pillow and drew up her knees under the bedclothes, holding herself stiffly. Every few minutes the floorboards would crack with a noise like distant pistol-shots as the frost increased outside. To keep herself awake Katrin counted the sounds and had reached a hundred and twenty three when she heard sleighbells in the distance. It was a cold, calm night and the sound travelled distinctly a long way, but in a few minutes she heard the snorts of the horses and Asta’s low, laughing voice.
Katrin ran on tiptoe to the front window, made a hole in the frost with her breath, and watched her sister unbundle herself and get down from the cutter. In a moment she was in the house and while she warmed her knees at the stove Katrin whispered what had happened. “That settles it,” said Asta. They were crouched in the dark, but in the glow from the little ventilator holes in the door of the stove Katrin could see her sister’s eyes gleam with a cold anger she had never seen before. “Did he ever get you in bed with him?” asked Katrin. She was shivering, although her nightgown was almost scorched by the heat from the stove. “Me!” whispered Asta, pulling her dress down over her knees and jumping up. “Don’t talk about it. We’ll go over to Eggertson’s tomorrow—and they’ll send us to Toronto, to that cousin of theirs—what’s her name?—Valdheidur something—it’s an English name. She married an Englishman. She’s a niece of Bishop Ragnar in Iceland.”
The two girls slept that night in Katrin’s narrow bed, but long after Asta was asleep Katrin lay awake thinking about Toronto and all she had heard about it, wondering what their life would be like in a big city, and what Mrs. Valdheidur something-or-other would be like, and what the shops would be like … and …
Mrs. Valdheidur Digby was married to a connection of the famous seed people in England, an old Quaker family, but her husband, who was a manufacturer’s agent, handling Irish linens and laces, was not a Quaker. He was very fleshy and red in the face, and looked as though he might have a stroke any minute. “My God,” he said, when he saw the Petursson girls, “I don’t know why they don’t get some of these Icelandic girls in the movies, I’m damned if I do.” His wife, who was thin and intellectual-looking, smiled impatiently and said to Asta, “That’s all he thinks about——”
“You’d like to know what I think about,” said Mr. Digby cryptically, looking at Asta’s legs. It was the period of very short dresses and her crossed knees would have attracted attention anywhere.
The girls did not like Mr. Digby, and even Aunt Val, as she insisted on being called, was too intellectual and citified to make them feel at home. A few months later, when they had settled down in a boarding house on Breadalbane Street and Asta had a job in Seaton’s dress department, where she earned enough to send Katrin to high school, they began to appreciate Aunt Val’s good qualities. She introduced them to her friends, gave Katrin piano lessons, and invited them up to Jackson’s Point for their holidays. Because of time missed at Hekla, Katrin was eighteen when she got through high school, and during the summer following, while she was at Digby’s cottage, a young man came out from Iceland with a letter to Aunt Val from her uncle the bishop.
Kari Erlingsson was a tall, squarely-built youngster who had come over with the hope of earning his living as a musician. “At home in Iceland,” he said, “they think you can pick up gold on the ground in this country.”
He was very proud and excessively temperamental, and every second sentence he uttered began with—“At home in Iceland.” He flew into a temper whenever Aunt Val talked English to him and told him he would have to learn it if he intended to stay. Kari accused her of caring nothing for her racial traditions, and made himself generally obnoxious, except in the lake where he flashed powerfully through the water, or at the piano with Katrin in the evenings when he sang the old songs of his homeland, pouring into her eyes all the passion of their plundering Viking forefathers. He called her Katrin Arnadottir, after her father’s name, in Icelandic fashion, and said she should be painted as one of the heroines of the old sagas—the great Gudrun Osvifisdottir, who made her husband kill her lover—or Bergthora, wife of Njall.
Katrin had blossomed like her sister, except that her features were larger and more austere and the dazzling smile flamed less frequently on her lips. She was bigger, heavier, more serious. Her body was proportioned on a heroic scale. The thrust of her limbs and the firm vigorous curves of her bosom and hips gave to her figure a majesty that made one think immediately of sculpture. Kari swore there wasn’t a girl in Iceland like her. One day when she stood on the dock in her bathing suit, about to dive, he called from the water, “Ah, if only Einar Jonsson could see you. Old as he is it would kindle something.” They sat on a rock together, Kari telling her that she should be sent back to Iceland to “inspire a new generation of skalds.” Katrin looked with level eyes across the lake, feeling his passionate gaze fastened on her body and holding herself so that she felt like rigid steel. “He doesn’t love me,” she kept saying to herself. “It’s just my looks. He stares at me the way the boys at Hekla used to look at Asta. That’s not love.”
One night when they had walked out to an isolated, sandy point, screened from the main shoreline by gnarled old willows, and lay in the moonlight close to the lapping water, Kari rolled nearer and kissed the side of her cheek. She grasped his throat, pressed his head down into the sand and knelt over him.
“Thvi kyssir thu mig?” she said through her teeth, with a queer savage playfulness. “Because you are beautiful, Katrin Arnadottir,” he said. She shook his head from side to side and banged it down again in the sand. “Why do you kiss me?” she said again. “I’ve told you,” he choked. “No you haven’t told me,” she retorted. “Do you kiss people unless you love them?”
“Let go of me and I’ll tell you,” struggled Kari. He flung his arms around her, exerted all his strength and rolled over so that she lay under him, her stubborn hands still clinging to his throat. “Let go of me,” he cried, trying to tear her hands away. “Let me tell you something.”
“Why do you kiss me if you don’t love me?” she panted.
“What makes you think I don’t love you—you goose! I’m mad about you. I’ve told you there’s no girl in Iceland like you.”
“Get off me, Kari!”
“I won’t get off you. You want to know if I love you, don’t you?”
She flung him off and battered his head in the sand harder than ever. “Not like that!” she cried. “No one’s ever going to love me like that unless—until —”
She gave his head a final bump, leapt to her feet, smoothed down her dress and walked away. Kari was on fire. He ran after her, tried to embrace her, pleaded, argued, almost wept. But she kept pushing him away and when he became calmer and walked gloomily beside her, she said, “A year from now—if you’ve learned English—and make up your mind to stay—and stop sneering at everything Canadian—and get a job—I’ll know by then whether you love me.”
He sulked for days and Katrin suffered, for she knew now that she was in love. But she doubted him. Everything he had said to her—all his admiration—it all came from his love for Iceland—Iceland—always Iceland: “There’s no girl in Iceland like you.” Yes—Iceland! “If only Einar Jonsson could see you.” Yes—Iceland. Something about “inspiring a new generation of skalds.” Yes—Iceland—always Iceland! And yet that was what she loved— his faith, his passion, his mania for Iceland—her land, which she had never seen. He had brought her a breath of it. Its cold sea was in his eyes. Its winds were in his hair. When she looked at the sharp angles of his forehead she could imagine the rocky, barren shore. Treeless, tragic, glorious Iceland!
She was afraid he would go back—she couldn’t blame him—why should he stay? He would go back—and forget all about her.
But Kari had begun to like the comforts of Canadian life and before many days had passed he was getting her to teach him English. Aunt Val helped, too, and in the fall, in town, he went at it seriously.
It was an exciting fall for Katrin. Asta was getting married in October to the assistant manager of Seaton’s photographic department. His name was William Arthur Cole. He was tall, talked very rapidly and was always brushing his hair back from his high forehead. One of his photographs had won a prize in an exhibition at Chicago. He had been secretary of the Toronto Camera Club for years.
They found a nice little semi-detached house in the Danforth district, which had built up very quickly with small houses as soon as the viaduct over the Don was opened, and by Christmas they were well settled. Katrin had a pleasant, homey place to spend her evenings. In the meantime she had found herself a job in a broker’s office, and was beginning to soften in her attitude toward Kari. He was changing very quickly, and although he had no position he was making money. It was the year 1928 and the stock market was booming. Kari interested his relatives and friends in Iceland and soon had a substantial fund to play with. Katrin, who knew from the inside how risky a game it was, became fearful, feeling that the market couldn’t last. But it lasted right through until fall and was still going up. They became engaged and began looking for an apartment. In the evenings they frequently walked up and down Yonge Street looking at furniture in the store windows. For Christmas presents that year they gave each other articles of furniture for the apartment. They were both making money.
At a New Year’s party at Digby’s they met an Icelandic girl from Winnipeg—Helga Palsson—who had eyes for no one but Kari. She was a sleek, dashing, sophisticated sort of girl, and towards morning became more tipsy than the rest. When she saw Kari in the hall with his overcoat on, ready to take Katrin home, she made a scene, trying to drag his coat off and make him stay. It was very embarrassing for everybody, and on the way home Kari insisted that he hadn’t flirted with her and never wanted to see her again. But it soon became clear to Katrin that he was seeing Helga almost every day, and was completely captivated by her. One night, on the porch of her rooming house, she took off the ring he had given her and without a word pressed it into his hand.
“What does this mean, Katrin Arnadottir?” he said, humbly.
“You’re in love with Helga Palsson.”
“Katrin—!”
“Don’t fool yourself, Kari—and don’t try to fool me. I know when a man’s in love with me and when he’s not.”
“Katrin,” he burst out, “I don’t know what’s happened to me—really, I don’t. I loved you more than I thought I could ever love anybody, and then she came along—and it’s—it’s intoxication—it’s like madness. But I’ll stop seeing her. I’m engaged to you, and I’ll go through with it. I’ll go through with it. Don’t look at me like that, darling. I can’t help it. She is—she —”
“I don’t want to hear about her,” said Katrin wearily.
“I know—but she’s done something to me. It’s a sort of slavery —”
“I’m going in. Goodbye, Kari. Go and tell her—you’re free.”
She saw him only twice after that until the market crash in the following fall. She had expected all summer to hear from Aunt Val that they were married, but when Aunt Val did speak of them it was to say that Kari had been sold out and had lost everything, and that Helga Palsson had gone back to Winnipeg. For a moment tears welled into Katrin’s eyes and she clutched at Aunt Val’s shoulder. She could still grieve for him, and for their shattered future, but when he came one night and tried to tell her that the intoxication was all over and that he had been mad to forsake her, the light went out of her eyes, leaving them stone-grey and lifeless as ashes. He broke down and sobbed, but she was like ice. “It’s gone—on both sides, Kari,” she frowned. A deep wrinkle he had never seen stood like a sign in her forehead. “It’s dead.”
That winter the brokerage firm she worked for was closed up, and three of her employers went to jail. Her savings had gone, thanks to Kari’s advice to buy on margin, and she went to live for a while with Asta who was expecting a baby and was glad of her help. Asta had a miscarriage and nearly died, like their mother. The premature baby lived only a few hours.
William Arthur was now manager of Seaton’s photographic department, and even when Asta was quite recovered he wouldn’t hear of Katrin leaving them, or attempting to pay them anything for board. She wanted to go out and get any sort of job, but William Arthur was optimistic and felt there would be a quick upturn very soon. Their evenings together were quiet and tranquil, Katrin played the piano a good deal and Asta would sometimes sit beside her and sing the old folk songs they had learned as children. She sang them tenderly in a soft, untrained voice which suited their primitiveness. Sometimes a tear would drop on the keys, but Asta would pretend not to notice it. Some of the songs, she knew, reminded Katrin of her summer at the lake with Kari Erlingsson.
When fall came and Asta was stronger Katrin began to look at the “want ads,” and made a few trips downtown alone to apply for jobs. She needed something to do, something to occupy her mind. But times were bad and she found thirty or forty girls ahead of her wherever she went. She gave up the idea of office work. It was overcrowded. One day she saw the Tabarin advertising for an experienced waitress. She went down, told them she hadn’t any actual restaurant experience, but—and they hired her mainly for her appearance.
The Coles were shocked when she told them. William Arthur, talking very quickly as usual, insisted there was no hurry—she should wait—any number of things would turn up. But she took the job, moved to a rooming house, because she knew her hours must be disturbing to Asta, and began to live a secluded life, reading a good deal and making her own clothes. At heart she felt like a widow.
Although William Arthur was “looking around” for her, nothing else turned up, and she stayed at the Tabarin. She was a strong, upstanding girl, and she could look very austere. The cooks and the orchestra players learned to leave her alone. Once she was used to it she liked the work, and before long she had regular customers, mostly middle-aged men, who always came to her tables and enjoyed her shape more than their food.
In two years Katrin became head waitress of the lunch room downstairs. She was just the build for it, and her austerity was a great advantage to her in managing “the girls.” They played no tricks on her, and although they called her “icy-face,” and thought her severe, they got along well with her and really liked her.
After a year downstairs she was moved up as head waitress of the dining room on the second floor where there was an orchestra and dancing every night. She liked the new work better than ever, but still she was not busy enough. She never looked twice at a man, except in sheer friendliness, and her “early evenings off” began to drag. With the notion of starting a tea room of her own some day (she was a great one to save), she had begun to study Interior Decorating and Domestic Science at the Tech. Like most Icelanders she was an excellent student, astonishing Asta with her progress in cooking when she sometimes spent a Sunday with the Coles. An interest in art developed from her other course, and she began to read books about it and attend the picture exhibitions at the Grange.
She never thought of Kari, but she was often aware of the effort she had to make to keep his name and his blue Icelandic eyes out of her mind if she felt the least bit dreamy.