CHAPTER 4: WEALTH IN AN INSTANT

It was like waiting for a medium to look in her crystal ball, except that Mrs. Lena Falquist Reynolds bore no resemblance to a gypsy palm reader or spirit medium. She was in her late twenties, dressed in an old sweatshirt and jeans, her boyish-cut blonde hair pushed under a scarf, and her face had a minimum of makeup, leaving her gray eyes the most outstanding feature in her lightly tanned face. She peered at the letter though as if it were just such a magical instrument to divine the future.

Bonnie, in the big armchair with the floral patterned cover, tried to be still. The large, comfortable house had that morning quiet only housewives or househusbands know, those moments when everything is suddenly peaceful. The cat, black with a white chin, having finished its morning’s wash job, purred in the sun on the windowsill, his little pink tongue absentmindedly left poking out from between sharp fangs. Lena’s daughter was in preschool class, her husband, an aeronautics engineer, had gone to work. The world seemed empty of strife. The chubby cat half closed its eyes, settled into encircling paws and with little pink tongue vibrating, began to snore gently.

“I am very sorry,” said Lena abruptly, making Bonnie jump a bit, “to have you to sit and to wait a long time.” She poked a straying lock of hair back under the scarf. She was slender, with that willowyness found in the southern Swedes from Skona. With a nod, she went on, “You were right, it is a government form and it is complicated. It says this and it says that and then it repeats it and then you have to fill out this form on the back. Forbaskad byrakratism!” She shook her head, trying to translate with, “Darn it bureaucracisms!”

“But generally, what does it say?” Bonnie begged.

“Okay, we begin with the brev, the letter that is on top,” her accent was heavy and she was struggling with the words. “One moment, I get dictionary.” She jumped to her feet and hurried to the bookcase in the hall, pulled out two huge orange books, brought them back to the coffee table, and laid them there between her and Bonnie. “Nu, we work.”

Bonnie was somewhat appalled at the seriousness with which Lena was suddenly taking all this. Perhaps appalled was not the word, perhaps it was fearful. When Bonnie had appeared that morning, Lena had been bright and cheery and had happily served up a tray of rich coffee and supremely delicious, and probably highly caloric, Swedish cookies. All was amiable until Bonnie handed her the envelope with the ominous window and the two sheets of airmail paper. Lena’s face had immediately clouded with tension and as she read through the papers, her whole demeanor underwent a transformation.

“You do not know anything of what they write here?” Lena had asked. Bonnie had shaken her head no. It was then Lena had begun the divination of sorts.

The big orange dictionaries looked as formidable as the expression on Lena’s face. “Do you see they have your name spelled correctly? That they have translated the name Seastrand to the Swedish Sjostrand?”

“My father’s real name was Sjostrand,” explained Bonnie, “which makes this all the more mysterious that they should have gotten it right. That’s all I could figure out though, except for the blanks where they want the grandmother’s name, grandfather’s name, and children.”

“Ah, yes, here on the back. That is for you to give the Pastorkirche official enough information to register you in the correct book.”

“Why? What is a Pastorkirche? What book?”

Lena sighed, struggled for more words. “The Pastorkirche is a very, very old institution. Each area in Sweden has one.” She thumbed through the big orange dictionaries. “Ah, you say parish, each parish has one, or county, yes, it can be county. It is like the chief church office of each county. In that office, for centuries, all the people are marked down in a giant book. Of course today everyone is put into a computer list in Stockholm central government as well. All the fodelsen, all the dodsfallen—that is, the births, the deaths, and you say, the marriage, the divorce, everything that happens to the people in that county.”

“But…” Bonnie shook her head again, “why me? Why does this Pastorkirche office want me to fill out a form?” “ Ah,” Lena leaned back into the couch, “because the Swedes are fanatical people about making records. When you fill out the form, this person can put you in the correct book in the correct Pastorkirche. Do you know where your father was born?”

“A place called Mora. I saw it once on some old papers.” Bonnie remembered the yellowed immigration forms hidden away in the trunk, which was now in her own attic, untouched, left as her parents had left it all those years.

“Ah, you are officially going to be registered in Dalarna County. It is a wonderful place, Dalarna. It is where the red horses of wood come from and elfs…is that right? Elfs?”

“Elves. Little fairy people?” Bonnie tried to help.

“Yes, maybe, in Sweden these elfs are very big and not good.” Lena looked back at the letter and the form. “Your registration is the second thing. The first thing is this letter. You are being told that you arvade,” she leaned forward and flipped through the dictionary again. “Ah, you inherit a aga, a…a egendom. You inherit a…estate.”

“An estate!” Bonnie exclaimed. “What estate? Whose estate? Where?”

“Wait, slower, I try to explain,” Lena held up one hand. “Someone who is called Carl-Joran Hermelin died two weeks past and the Pastorkirche says you are his laglighet hustru. It means you are his legal wife.”

Bonnie’s mouth dropped open. She could no longer speak.

Lena, putting a finger on the names, held the letter so Bonnie could read them. “Do you know a person who is called Carl-Joran Hermelin?”

Bonnie shook her head.

“It say you are his wife! You must remember him if you did that,” said Lena, grinning. “And also, he was a baron.”

“Baron?” Bonnie’s voice returned with a sharp squeak, “You mean, like a lord, he was royalty?”

Lena nodded. “Yes, you inherit his slott—his castle and his land.” Lena laughed at the look on Bonnie’s face. “You never know this Baron Hermelin? Never?”

Bonnie, completely perplexed, shrugged a big shrug and raised both her hands. “No, never.”

Pursing her lips, Lena perused the letter again. “It is very unusual for the Swedish byrakratism to make a mistake on these matters. They have wonderful genealogy records. They are very thorough.” The pretty face scowled. “Very thorough, especially when taxes must be paid.”

Whirring back over the years, Bonnie tried and tried to remember anyone she’d known who might conceivably have been called anything like Hermelin. Surely, as Lena pointed out, she’d have remembered being married to royalty! Nothing, absolutely nothing came to mind. She shook her head again.

“Well,” said Lena, “you are now wealthy. You must fill out this form and send it back so you are registered as Swedish. Then you must travel to Norrkoping and take possession of the castle. Let’s see,” she returned to the letter, “there is a younger son who lives at the castle. His name is Sture Nojd Hermelin.”

“Why didn’t he inherit his father’s estate?” asked Bonnie.

“Ah, it says you are legitimate, he is not. It says you did not divorce this Carl-Joran Hermelin, so when he married a woman named Heda Bergshem it was not legitimate. This makes Sture Nojd not legitimate.”

A thought struck Bonnie. She said the name slowly, “Carl-Joran was his first name?”

“Yes.”

“I…” the small, gray-haired woman sat back in the big chair. “ Once, I knew a Swedish man named Carl. Many years ago. In college.”

“Many Swedish men are named Carl. Many are named Carl-Joran. It is common,” said Lena. “What was his last name?”

“I…” and Bonnie thought, this is where things get sticky. She breathed once, twice, and blurted out, “I never actually knew his last name. I mean, his real last name. It was…I was doing a friend a favor. You see…”

“So what was the last name he used?” asked Lena again.

“Mink. He called himself Carl J. Mink.” Bonnie felt the blood rush to her face.

“Mink, what means mink?” Lena grabbed up the dictionary and hurried to the word mink.

Bonnie explained, “It’s a little white animal whose fur gets made into extremely expensive coats.”

“Ah, of course,” she said with glee, “I find it. Mink or ermine in Swedish is hermelin. I thought so because of the crest.” She held up the letter, which had near the middle part with the name Baron Carl-Joran Hermelin: avliden, a small imprint of a shield. On each side of the shield were two creatures, one black, one white, which, if the imagination stretched, could be considered to be a mink and an ermine.

“Oh…my…God.” Bonnie put a hand to her face as it turned scarlet. Trisha was right. There is a bottom line.

Bonnie had had the one moment in her life that could be considered an adventure. None of it had seemed real. A summer, three months that had gone blindingly fast like a movie speeded up. And once over, she had not looked back. How lucky Ike had died last year, she suddenly thought and the import of the statement hit her hard. What an awful thing to believe! She had had many good years with Eisen Ixey. He had been very good to her. What would he have done though, if he had known? She could feel tears start down her cheeks.

Lena saw them, reached across the coffee table, and took her by the shoulder. “It is sad? What can I do?”

“I don’t know,” Bonnie shook her head. “I never thought, how could I, that I was bringing you this!”

With a swift movement, the willowy Swedish lady came to sit on the arm of the big, overstuffed chair. “This paper does not say bad things, Bonnie. It says you are rich. It says you are a baroness.”

“How could this Pastorkirche have found out about me? About that man? He didn’t use his right name. I, myself, never knew his real name. I never knew who he was. I only knew he was in trouble, that he needed help, he needed to hide, and I…I helped.” Bonnie wiped the tears from her cheeks.

“You helped him?” Lena bent to look in her face, “You helped him by marriage. Yes? To give him have a green card.”

Bonnie nodded. “Yes. And…and more, he could have a new identity for a while.”

“Do you know why he needed the identity, a new one?” Lena put an arm around Bonnie’s shoulders.

“No. I didn’t ask questions. We knew we shouldn’t, or couldn’t. The only reason I did what I did was because I trusted Toby, Toby Hughes, our leader. We were all in an antiwar group, helping refugees from Latin America, you know, go to someplace safer. One day Toby came to me and asked me, because my father was Swedish, which would make this seem logical to the immigration authorities, he seemed to think, to take care of this man, well, a boy really, who called himself Carl Mink. And I did.”

A cloud of doubt came over Lena’s face. “Did you get a divorce from this boy, Carl Mink? If you divorced him, you cannot be rich now.”

Bonnie shook her head. “I knew Carl Mink was a made-up name. I didn’t think the marriage was real. How could it be legal if Mink wasn’t Carl’s name? And we did everything in secret. My parents didn’t know, no one at school knew. We got married in Las Vegas, we honeymooned…I mean, we called it that…and I didn’t…” Bonnie choked, “I couldn’t tell the man I met the Christmas after Carl went away…I couldn’t tell Ike before we married, and I could never, ever have told him later.”

“A marriage is a marriage and Mink is the same as Hermelin. It is the same man.” Lena nodded. “You have always been Baroness Bonnie Mari Hermelin.”

“What will I tell my daughters?” Bonnie asked, not Lena, but herself, and no answer immediately came.

Lena went back to her seat on the couch and poured more of the excellent coffee into Bonnie’s cup, stuck a rich butter cookie on the saucer, and forced Bonnie to take saucer and cup in hand. “Do you think Dell and Trisha will object to being rich? Oh, I don’t believe they will.”

“Probably not,” laughed Bonnie, trying to cover her dismay. “Tell me what else the letter says. You said I have to go to Sweden? That I’ll be registered as Swedish?”

After pouring her own coffee, stirring sugar into it, and sipping, Lena scanned the letter again. “Umm—yes, because your father was a Swedish citizen, you are a Swedish citizen. So, first you must go to the Norrkoping Pastorkirche office and report to them. You will be given the proper papers and so you will take possession of the Hermelin Slott, the Hermelin Castle. You must decide what will happen to the poor boy, Sture, if he gets any money or property or something. And you must decide what you want to do with the castle and your bank accounts.”

“Accounts!” Bonnie almost spit out her coffee. “How many accounts? How much money is there?”

“It only says accounts, it does not say how many,” said Lena reading, “but it does say that the total amount of property value and money is, hmmm, let’s figure, from the krona to the dollar…around $280 million dollars.”

Bonnie forced herself to gently put the cup on the coffee table. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably.

“You know,” Lena went on happily, blithely, “a friend of mine won a lottery pris in Sweden five years ago; she won eight million kronor. She had lots and lots of trouble. She of a sudden had so many relatives! And so many friends! Before, she never knew these people! She almost lost the money but then she hired an attorney who protect her. I think you must hire an attorney.”

“And I better hire one in Sweden!” Bonnie agreed. “Can you ask your friend who hers is?”

“I can ask. I think you must do that,” said Lena, secure in her advice.

Bonnie fell back into the big chair and looked at the ceiling. “I think I’m in shock.”

“Come, come,” Lena waved at her, “we must fill out this form. We must send it special delivery right away. The Pastorkirche official, she is named Birgitta Algbak—what a komisk…a comical name!—she must register you immediately in your parish.”

“Okay, okay,” Bonnie took in a deep breath and sat up. “You read to me and I’ll answer.”

“First, you must put in the name of your children.” Lena had a pen poised.

“Children?” A chill went through Bonnie Ixey. That damned bottom line. Again the thought raced through her mind—what would she tell the girls? But especially, how would she, could she, explain all this to Trisha?

When Bonnie arrived home, to the welcoming big yellow house on Ixey Posie Farm, she sat down hard in a kitchen nook chair and gasped four times. This was not about her sudden wealth. This was about the hideous close call.

She had gotten into her car outside of Lena’s, still in a daze. In the corner of her eye, she had noticed what she had thought was a student, a young man, dark, foreign probably, probably up from California Polytechnic State University. There were lots of Middle Eastern students attending Cal Poly down in San Luis Obispo. He was in a droptop, oversized jeep and he started his engine the same moment she did. He drove at a fair distance along behind her.

Then just above the seafood market on that sharp blind curve that Morro Avenue makes, he gunned his engine and slammed the jeep into low gear and roared past her forcing an oncoming delivery truck to swerve and almost crash into her. Front bumpers touching, the truck and her car sat on the curve until she and the truck driver could catch their breaths and step out. They agreed that there was little they could do. No one had been hurt. There were many, many students driving such jeeps at Cal Poly and at the local junior college, Questa. She and the driver had congratulated each other on escaping with their lives and vehicles intact, gotten back in, and driven off.

Slowly, Bonnie turned around in the chair and regarded the bright, warm winter sun reflecting off the patio. Past the patio and the backyard were the rows and rows of winter garden flowers, bulbs, trees, shrubs, and plastic-covered nurseries that were all now tended by a Japanese woman to whom she had given over management after Ike had died last year. The woman had done exceptionally well at converting portions of the land to Oriental spice production. They were going to make an excellent profit from the ginseng alone.

Calmed by the thought of her husband’s, her real husband that is, beloved farm being well cared for, her mind went to present matters. Her heart rate went back to normal and her breathing eased. She decided she really needed to talk to the one person who might clear up the whole business about the Carl J. Mink she had been arm-twisted into helping all those years ago. Bonnie swung the chair back and dug through the telephone desk drawer. There at the bottom was an address book she had not looked in since…well, since the college reunion seven years ago.

Beside the name and address and phone number for Toby Hughes was scribbled with a different colored ink the updated phone numbers and addresses for him. There was a home number and a business number. He had been working for Batelen, Inc., a high security think tank for engineering geniuses in Bethesda, Maryland. It would be midafternoon there. Should she call his home, which might mean having to talk to his wife? No, not wise. She’d leave a message at his work.

The number rang and after a series of buzzes, hums, and beeps put her onto his answering machine. “This is the desk of…” said a tinny recording of a female voice, followed by Toby’s voice, “Toby Hughes;” then the female voice saying, “Please leave a message.”

After the beep, she said slowly and distinctly, “Toby, remember me? Bonnie Ixey? From college? I must talk to you about someone we knew a long time ago, someone you told me was Carl J. Mink. Can you call me right away? This is very important. Thanks. My number, in case you’ve lost it, is 805-555-3024.”