Ice

by Ulla-lena Lundberg

  Then he might see their blushes for what they are, a sign of ardent devotion. Then he would see the happiness offered him, the boundless love! Now he stands there with his lovely hair and his wonderful eyes and his melting smile, blind as a statue, and comments on the tenth commandment. Thou shalt not covet they neighbour’s wife nor his asses or camels, and so on. But not a word about not coveting thy neighbour’s husband. Ha! And how dumb does he think they are when he asks, “What is it we mean by ‘covet’?”

  “That you want something,” says one of the boys helpfully.

  “Absolutely right. Sometimes it can also mean that a person wants something that he has no right to. Here the commandment helps us to draw boundaries. We should not covet anything that belongs to someone else. In this way, the tenth commandment is a follow-up to the seventh commandment, which tells us that we must not steal. The tenth commandment deals with more difficult and less unambiguous problems. The thief who steals knows that he shouldn’t. Legally, theft is a crime. If the thief is caught, he goes to jail. Coveting is not quite so simple. Today, for example, we do not consider a wife in a marriage to be her husband’s property, which people did in Moses’s day and even later. In modern times, adultery is not punishable by law, unless it leads to violence. Looking at your neighbour’s wife with desire is no crime. So why do you think the commandment is still valid?”

  Now he’s captured their interest. Several of them have something to say, and he waits for a moment. As usual, it’s a farm boy who speaks up first, the fisherman boys later, if at all. The girls only if he calls on them. First Ollas’s Kalle. “Because it’s hard to see where it will lead.”

  Good. And Grannas’s Markus pursues the thought. “If there’s a child, you don’t know for sure whose it is. Though you can guess.” There is murmuring and rustling in the room, as if everyone except the pastor knew of a particular case.

  “Yes,” he says. “In that case we’re talking about adultery that goes badly for those involved and has consequences for others as well. But why does the commandment warn us even against desire?”

  He sees that one of the girls gestures as if she wanted to say something. “Yes?” he encourages her. She blushes and looks out the window at snow blowing by in streaks and ribbons. “So that it won’t go that far,” she says.

  “Absolutely right!” the pastor says. “Gretel has hit the nail on the head. We’re getting right to the heart of it. The commandments aren’t just a long list of prohibitions and don’ts and thou shalt nots that we’ve heard about no end since we were babies. Most of all, the commandments are about consideration and kindness. If we read on, we see how the Bible continues: ‘Ye shall walk in all the ways which the Lord your God hath commanded you, that ye may live, and that it may be well with you and that ye may prolong your days.’ On the surface, the commandments are about rules and prohibitions, but deep down they speak of the Divine benevolence that shines on God’s children.”

  Although they’re not supposed to, they whisper and talk a little whenever he looks in the other direction. Nothing interests young people as much as the relations between the sexes. Their eyes are wide open, and they feel their way forward. Everything else is unimportant by comparison, old and boring and tedious, a lot of talk, whereas everything about their roles as women and men is a matter of life and death. The catechism speaks as if the only thing that matters is learning to know our saviour Jesus Christ, while the teachers and unwilling students know perfectly well that a good future love life is the only thing that matters. When older people sing “thy eternal bliss”, the youngsters sing “thy eternal kiss”. They perk up their ears if you say “love” but lose interest if what you’re talking about is God’s love. It’s a paradox that there are Bible classes for people at an age when their thoughts are full of sex, but at the same time you can see the sense in choosing an age when youngsters are most open and unguarded. People experiencing the bottomless despair of youth are prepared unconditionally to throw themselves weeping at the feet of Jesus.

  Petter knows that he has priestly colleagues who exploit the depth of emotion and vulnerability of confirmation candidates to extort confessions and decisions that belong in the private sphere, a thing people learn to appreciate with increasing age and experience. In certain quarters, priests go so far as to coax forth statements that they find erotically stimulating. The pastor on the Örlands is on guard against any such impulse. He means to maintain a respectful attitude towards the feelings that run so high in young people.

  He thinks about such things as he stands before his clutch of candidates. But most of all he thinks how, after his death, he is going to stand at the pearly gate and argue and plead until they have been let through, every last one!

  The pastor’s wife wears a sunny smile and is friendly, and none of the girls who curtsey to her dream that she is keeping an eye both on them and on Petter. She looks at the beautiful Örlander boys with their smiles and smooth glances the way she might look at objects in a museum, so little desire she feels for anyone except her husband. It’s different for him. He has a tendency to confuse physical desire and spiritual passion. Maybe because they are related? But she pushes that thought away quickly. She is attentive to the transition from religiosity to eroticism, whereas Sanna, little as she is, is tempted by the atmosphere in the room and stands stock still, staring through the crack in the door as if waiting for the day when she will belong inside.

  Before it got too cold to be in the church, they practised their singing with the organist. The pastor tells them about the hymnal’s different sections and their use during the ecclesiastical year. He also lends support to their voices whenever the boys, whose voices are changing, have trouble. This sends a shiver through the girls. His voice is sure and warm and deep and comes from a breast that they would like to lean on. The church smells of cold and damp and naphthalene from the previous Sunday’s silk shawls, plucked from bureau drawers. The girls feel lonely and left out during choir practise. The boys disappear up into the loft and take turns pumping the organ while the organist plays. Like all adult work, it is harder than they imagined, and although it looks mechanical it requires concentration. The organist plays as softly as possible and gives them their notes. The girls sing beautifully, the boys drone, and the pastor starts the hymn with his strong voice, “As gleaming pearls of dew …”

  And so they head home. They say their thank-yous and goodbyes, and in a cluster they wander out to the gate and through it. A few more steps and the boys start to run. Run and compete, punch each other, shout. The girls walk on properly and modestly past the parsonage, then they too run down to the church dock. Some of the boys have been allowed to take boats, space enough for everyone. They arrange themselves by destination, jump into the boats so lightly that they bounce, flywheels turn, the Wickström motors start with a clatter, their exhaust shooting out like white flames. Laughter and shouts as they jostle their way out through the harbour entrance, last man out’s a monkey, and at breakneck speed they crowd out into open water and separate, east villagers to the east, west villagers to the west.

  The pastor and the organist stand there smiling and watch them go. “Just think if we’d been that free when we were that age,” says the pastor longingly. “What would it be like if human life was organized so that we could hold on to youth’s passion and boldness even after we’d gained experience and self-control.” He turns to the organist. “Were you like that as well, a generation earlier?”

  “As far as I remember,” the organist says. “But boys didn’t get to take the boat, we had to walk and wade and take rowing boats across the sound. It was a real trek. But still fun when we went in a group. On our way to church we were free from our chores and had a legal right to hang out together. We were often glad it was so far. But the pleasures of youth are not shared out equally. It was a heavy trip for those who had to walk alone.” Then he adds, as an afterthought, “And what you say about their being so free, we didn’t see it that way
. And I’ll wager they don’t, either.”

  “No,” the pastor says. “There’s a lot we don’t understand until we’ve lost it. Heavens, I sound like Ibsen.” He looks embarrassed, but suddenly the parsonage door opens and Grandpa Leonard and Sanna come down the steps, wrapped up well against the cold. Leonard starts calling and talking from a distance, can’t stop the words from tumbling out as soon as he has someone in sight. He talks about the candidates, pleasant youngsters, nice to see young people in good spirits getting along together. “I’m sure these boat trips lay the foundations for any number of marriages,” he predicts. “And so they should. What better way to meet than in youth, at Bible study, which is the gateway to life as an adult?”

  He appropriates the organist and wanders off with him, the pastor following with Sanna’s hand in his. He has devoted himself to teaching confirmation candidates, and they have no idea what they have taught him—to be happy, and quick, warm in body and full of desire. It would be ingratitude without compare not to affirm the freedom in the life he now lives. To experience all this after his sullen, inhibited youth is the very epitome of grace.

  PART TWO

  Chapter Twelve

  When the ice sets, you need to keep your ears open and your eyes on stalks. How the ice freezes, where there are dangerous currents. Which way the wind is blowing. Black streaks for weak ice, green for glass smooth, milky blue like a blind eye for the thin layer above an invisible hole—you need to know how to watch for such things. Obvious things. Always have an ice pike and a knife in your belt. Listen to the way the ice creaks. Don’t be timid, because then you’ll get nowhere. Don’t be foolhardy, because then the ice will swallow you. The water is cold, you know, and deep.

  In addition, there is another way of seeing and hearing that can’t be explained. It’s like seeing and hearing alongside others who have been out there from time immemorial and know everything about the weather and the ice, although they exist in a sphere from which they cannot reach out a hand and call “Beware!” It is you yourself who must listen and see and grasp what they mean. They are there, and their messages and warnings are laid out before you, if only you will see them.

  I don’t know how it began. When I noticed them. When they noticed me. As I grew up, we were many children and I was almost never alone. But I was only a little thing when I knew they were there. When I went outside, they stood as close around me as my brothers and sisters did indoors. Not unnatural, not supernatural. Just the world as I heard and saw it. They were part of it, nothing more.

  When you are a suckling babe, mama’s teat is the first thing you know about. The second is the weather. They talk about it all around you all the time. About the outlook, about how long it will last. When it will change. The way the sun goes down in clouds or how, still shining, it sinks straight into the sea and sputters like a fireball. The look of the cloudbanks. How currents of cold air move in. The way heat can stand like a wall, while a storm butts its head against the other side. The way the building groans, which is a sign, and you need to know what they mean by it.

  A toddler stands on the steps and holds on, which is all he can do to keep from tumbling over. But he has already learned that what there is outside is the weather. That it’s full of messages and warnings. That there are voices and eyes and mouths which you don’t see but which you can hear and see within yourself. I don’t remember when I became aware of it, it’s a thing that was there in me before my memory began to flicker into life. Then I remembered that it had always been so for me.

  I was like every other pup of a boy and thought that when people talked about the weather they all meant the same thing I meant. That the weather was the world, and that they were as tight in the world as a hazel thicket whenever there was danger afoot. I remember one time when I was out on the ice as a little boy. I knew suddenly that I needed to get to land as quickly as I could, for they were about to pull the ice out from under my feet. And believe me, the ice broke up behind me as I scurried towards land. But my shoes were dry when I climbed the cliff, and there they knocked me down and smacked me against the rock so hard my whole shank was black and blue. They taught me a lesson that day. You must make your ears hear what they say, although it’s not like ordinary talk or the radio or a voice on the telephone.

  It is something outside me that speaks to something inside me. And shows me the look of things, though it’s not like in a theatre or a movie. Then I know where to go, and the mare that pulls the mail from the ship channel at Mellom knows she can count on me even when the ice is creaking. And when I leave her to walk in to a house on one of the outer islands, she stands quietly on the ice and waits, because even though she’s smart and gentle, she doesn’t see what I see, and she knows it. They crowd around her and she feels that they’re there, but she doesn’t know what they mean, and they don’t know much about horses. I’ve learned that from experience.

  The thing with them and me is that we have something in common. Although they’re no longer like real human beings, nevertheless they once were, and therefore it’s possible to understand the signs and warnings they set out. So you can move securely when you use your common sense and watch out for the things they’re constantly showing you, in pictures, sort of, or inarticulate sounds. They wake you up, make you lift your chin from where it was buried in your fur collar, and look. They’ve opened a passage somewhere and send you an echo to prick up your ears. You can make your way through great dangers with the help of such signs.

  If you’re not receptive to them, you have to cross the ice all alone in the world. Many make it a long way, because the world is not malicious, just heedless. For the world, you’re nothing, but human intelligence can bring us safely through great trials. Horses that are taken out onto the seal ice and tear themselves loose, they often manage to make it home as well, though they show their teeth and lay back their ears in pure terror when the ice creaks under them and they set out across green ice. So I say only that it’s a help to know about those who surround you when you trot along like a dot on the ice and who keep an eye on you when you stop to rest on a skerry. If you leave bread and butter for them they may even shift the wind behind you. That has happened to me many times.

  When the ice has set, it lies like a floor between the islands. The incessant wind sweeps away the snow, and skates and kicksleds come to life in the boathouses. The pastor too digs out a rusty sledge, replaces a couple of dowels on the chair and screws on the handlebars. With a whetstone he removes the worst of the rust from the runners. The rig is adequate, and soon enough he’s kicking his way like a comet across the water world. He gets to the villages so easily and completes his errands so quickly that Mona hardly has time to notice that he’s gone before he’s already back. The kicksled also serves as a family vehicle. Now all three of them can go to meetings and gatherings. The pastor figures that Mona will sit with Sanna in her lap while he kicks the sledge along, but Mona is very eager to drive the sledge herself. It’s hard to get started, but once it’s going the sledge sails along in splendid form. Sanna shrieks with delight because of the speed and because she gets to sit in Papa’s lap with his arms tight around her. Then they switch, for when they’re visible from the village windows, it looks better if he’s pushing. On the way home, he kicks more gently while Mona sits with the sleeping Sanna on her lap. The ice is bright from the moon and stars, the islands dark as rain clouds in the rippling light.

  The ice is seldom this good, and many are out to try their luck. There is a lot of visiting between villages and there are barn dances on Saturday nights. Everyone is out and about, and darkness doesn’t slow them down. There is a party at the parsonage, too. They’ve had friends on the Örlands since their first day here, there are many to thank for help and advice in word and deed, and it is always a pleasure to see their happy, friendly faces. The organist and Francine, the verger and Signe, Adele Bergman and Elis, and Lydia and Arthur Manström. They always have much to talk about, and with father Leonar
d in the house, there is competition for the floor. The pastor notes with a certain satisfaction that here he has found, if not his superiors, at least his equals. The talk is as lively as he could possibly wish, and the faces are happy and full of goodwill and interest.

  With the extra leaf added, the table has space for all of them. The tea water is singing in the kettle, the china service is for twelve, and Mona’s bread, butter, and rolls are worth travelling many miles for. The oil lamp swings gently in the air above their heads, the tile stove spreads warmth. There is a cold draught around their legs, but everyone has had the sense to dress warmly. The door to the bedroom stands ajar, and before Sanna falls asleep she hears Papa’s happy, dark voice, Mama’s bright laughter, Grandpa’s amazement, and the Örlanders’ happiest party voices.

  They talk about the ice, the winter weather, the newspapers that now come only once a week, if that, and about those who believe they’re isolated out here whereas in fact they’ve seldom had such a merry time. The Örlands might well be called the Society Islands in this blessed condition. Oops. They can’t help themselves, they all look at the pastor’s wife, who stares into her teacup, the pastor smiles a little, and for a moment, no one says anything. Then they talk about the way consumer goods are becoming more available and actually beginning to show signs of a peacetime economy, about the situation down in Europe and the terrible poverty and want in the German ports that seamen from the Örlands have reported. About the enormous need for aid everywhere, about the Americans who are starting to get their aid shipments organized, although Finland isn’t allowed to receive anything by order of the Soviet Control Commission in Helsingfors—may it soon return to its Communist paradise! In any case, all this applies only to official aid, because private efforts and family initiatives are getting America packages all the way out to the Örlands.