Anna Stina carries Karl, and Cardell carries Maja, as warmed by her trust as he is terrified at the prospect.
“What if I trip and drop her?”
“Do you usually fall as you walk along the street?”
He has adjusted her on his right arm with the left in front as a shield against the world. At first she wriggles, disgruntled in her unfamiliar seat, but then it is as if she remembers their first encounter, his large body with its smells of sweat and blood and Stockholm nights, and accepts them. A sigh of relief escapes him and he is surprised at how much he dreads the judgment of a child. In the darkness of the burrow they accepted him, but back then they had no one else to comfort them in their mother’s absence. Only when their way has brought them across the bridge, opposite the hospital and the Royal Mint, is he struck by something else, and his steps lag so that Anna Stina is far ahead. At the edge of the fields she turns around with an inquiring expression and he shakes his head in confusion.
“Sorry, it’s nothing.”
“Come on, tell me.”
“It’s my arm, I can’t feel it anymore.”
She gives him an amused look and shifts Karl in her arms to show him how.
“Change your grip if it’s gone numb.”
He lets her misunderstanding go uncorrected, but the girl Maja looks up, reaching her soft fingers towards flaking scabs and day-old stubble, and gives a burbling laugh as if she knew.
High clouds float lazily across the blue abyss, and the sun that is each day lower than the day before, as if growing weary of climbing the sky, shows itself in between. Although the air is chilly, its rays yet bestow some warmth. At each crossroads, Cardell nods in the right direction, and soon they see the house.
Anna Stina’s eyes grow wider with each step. Soon they are down by apple trees, where the harvest is in full swing. Children in warm woolen coats laugh and help each other, some balancing among the branches on ladders, others standing ready to catch the fruit that is thrown down to collect in baskets. Everything that he saw during his first visit now becomes clear also to her. These children are unlike the others. Here is a place beyond the disease and corruption of the city. Here is hope and comfort.
“How can this be possible?”
“You shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Your children will have a home here, the best one I can think of.”
“Whatever must this cost you?”
Emil Winge’s pale face, lined by fearful tears, floats up out of his memory, and Cardell feels his stump burn as if the wooden fist had just struck the wall of his room. Despite the pain, he knows that he has no other choice.
“I can never repay you.”
“You’ll never owe anything to me.”
In the distance he recognizes the girl Klara Fina and the boy Joakim, and also sees the look of recognition in their faces as they wave and rush away. Soon they return with the bald Rudstedt in tow, who gives them a wide smile from the stairs of the house.
“Maja and Karl, I assume? You are expected. Dear children, be so kind as to greet your new sister and brother.”
Joakim bows and Klara Fina curtsies, holding her skirt above the ground. Rudstedt bows to Anna Stina.
“Welcome to Horn Hill, ma’am. Cots for the little ones have already been prepared. Won’t you follow me in to see for yourself?”
Upstairs, the smaller children have a separate room to that of the older ones. There is no trace here of the sour smell of the orphanage, of neglected little bodies collected in dirty and crowded conditions. It is as if Rudstedt can read her mind.
“The children themselves are in charge of cleaning, and scrub the floors every other day. If there’s lice or vermin, we do what we can to find the ones who are affected, so we can wash them and comb them, while their friends smoke out the rooms.”
Rudstedt gestures to a woman who is waiting in the room.
“Greta is one of our wet nurses.”
She is young, but stocky, of robust build, with a commonplace face, dimples in her cheeks, and light brown hair under her shawl. She curtsies to Anna Stina.
“Ma’am, would you care to show me how your children prefer to be held?”
Rudstedt puts a hand on Cardell’s shoulder and closes the door behind them. They go down the stairs. Rudstedt winds a scarf around his neck before he excuses himself and goes out into the orchard.
“It promises to be a good harvest.”
Cardell sits down to wait on the bottom step. He closes his eyes and turns his face to the sun in order to make the most of the little warmth it gives.
When the girl Greta has pulled her blouse over her head and revealed her bosom, Anna Stina instinctively turns away.
“You don’t have to be coy on my account, ma’am. Come and show me how they feed best.”
Anna Stina puts Maja at the left breast and Karl at the right, just as they have always preferred, but Greta’s arms are a stranger’s, and they kick agitatedly in their attempts to settle in. Karl is the first to cry, a low wailing that slowly but surely grows louder as the color rises in his face and a heavy tear is pressed out of each eye, to hang on the ends of his long eyelashes. His sister soon follows, despite Greta’s soothing. She tries for a while to get them to suckle before she changes their places and nods approvingly as their lips find their mark and they relax. She smiles at Anna Stina.
“That’s funny. With me they prefer the other way around.”
They still let go from time to time, bewildered at their new place and perhaps at milk of a different taste. They roll their eyes and look for their mother, whimpering sometimes and making small attempts to turn towards her. Anna Stina does as she usually does. Karl wants to feel a warm hand on his stomach, Maja wants to be stroked over the head, Karl wants to squeeze the ragdoll cat he has inherited from an unhallowed grave. Under his mother’s familiar touch, they soon fall asleep. Karl has found her thumb and wrapped his fist around it, as he normally does. In his grip, she can feel the fast little beats of his heart. Gently, so she won’t interrupt his rest, she coaxes her hand away and wraps his hand around Greta’s finger instead. In his sleep, he doesn’t notice the difference.
For a long time the only sound in the room is the rhythmic suckling of the children, halfway between sleep and wakefulness, peaceful and satisfied, until Anna Stina becomes aware of another sound, a strange whimper as if from the squeaking wheel of a wagon or some small, anguished animal. She wonders what it can be. Then she hears Greta’s tentative whisper.
“Would you like to borrow my handkerchief, ma’am?”
Soon she feels Rudstedt’s gentle hand on her shoulder, his eyes full of tenderness, and as if it were a turn in a slow quadrille, he spins her around and leads her out over the threshold.
“There, there, let us leave now, when they are so contented. They are still so young. They will soon forget.”
When her strength leaves her legs and her knees buckle, he is ready to prop her up. Behind her, the door falls shut and hides the two little ones, rocked on Greta’s knee as she sings them a little song.
“Little Karl, sleep now content, you’ll wake in a while, soon you’ll see how time is bent, and taste her bitter bile.”
Her eyes are dry but red when Cardell hears her steps coming down the stairs behind him, meticulously wiped so he won’t think her gratitude hasn’t drowned in tears. He sees how things stand, and rises in silence. They start walking towards the road. A girl who has playfully tossed an apple core at another is scolded by the older children. The children’s laughter dies away with the evening as they are called to the supper table and leave their brimming baskets in neat rows on the stairs. Only when they have climbed over the edge of the valley, out of sight of the house, does Cardell clear his throat.
“I wish I could say something, but I’ve never had a gift for words.”
She takes him by the arm.
“If anyone should say something, it’s me. I am so grateful for what you have done for me, Mickel, and I wish I could show you how happy I am. But my grief is larger.”
“And now?”
“Tomorrow I go to pay a debt.”
“Will we meet again?”
“Let’s hope so.”
Her first thought at the question she keeps to herself. If they were to ever see each other again, she is not sure that he would recognize her.