Ice

by Ulla-lena Lundberg

  “I sincerely wish I was mistaken! But unfortunately it’s true. I’ve spoken to the organist, who was present when they carried his lifeless body to the parsonage. They worked all night trying to revive him, but it was impossible, he’d been in the water too long. Had perhaps frozen to death before he went to the bottom. I have spoken with Mona. She asked me to call. She was there and knows that he’s dead. She’s keeping herself under such tight control that I’m afraid her heart may break.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “None of us do. It seems incomprehensible. It is so painful to have to break the news to you, his dear parents.”

  “I had three sons. Now two are already dead. What’s the meaning of it all? How am I to bear such grief?” Now her voice breaks, and she gives the phone to her husband.

  Petter’s father, whom he remembers as peculiar, something of a dreamer, very unlike his son, sounds astonishingly calm. “How is it possible? Petter, who is so much wiser than I! But he is dead, you say, and I must live.”

  “Yes,” says the Mellom priest. “I know that you have a brother, Dean Isidor, who can talk to you much better than I can. I’ll call him and ask him to get in touch.”

  “Yes, Isidor,” says Leonard Kummel. “He has had much affliction on account of my children. First Göran. Now Petter.”

  Just as well to get it said at once. “I hope he can come to the funeral. But Mona has asked me to conduct the service, as Petter’s friend and closest colleague.”

  A short pause. Fredrik begins to suspect that Mona has perhaps carried out a coup. Best not to let on, and in any case the elastic Leonard Kummel moves quickly on. “Yes, yes, I see. That sounds appropriate. You must forgive me … It’s so hard to think clearly. My daughter, my son, they must be told. I’m crushed.”

  “I understand. There must be many you’ll need to contact. I too have other calls to make. But don’t hesitate for a second to call me if there’s anything I can do. Anything at all. I’m so terribly sorry for your affliction.”

  As they’re speaking, the morning’s news goes out across Finland, and now all hell breaks loose. The operator on the Örlands sets her own priorities and puts through calls to the parsonage first. Others can wait, including even the Co-op. They’re put through in the intervals and are interrupted when necessary. Calls wait in an endless queue, everyone needs to talk to everyone, exclaim, express their horror, pour out their feelings. Calls to the organist have the second highest priority, right after the parsonage, because official calls go through him, from the rural deanery, from the cathedral chapter. On Åland and the mainland, the coordination is not as good. There are unexpected and inexplicable traffic jams, some lines are completely blocked, on others there are unreasonable delays. Some people call a second time to find out what became of their first call, which doesn’t make things better. “We’re putting them through in the order they were placed, so please be patient,” say operators all along the coast.

  For every minute that passes, Petter Kummel has been dead one minute longer. Mona doesn’t want to be distracted, she wants to concentrate, she wants to be alone, but the telephone rings. The only voice that could make her happy is his, but to her surprise, her mother’s cheers her a bit when she calls. Mama, who never makes a big fuss. Mama, whom she can copy at a time like this—close up, button your soul, give nothing away!

  “I thought I’d heard a ghost when I heard the news on the radio. Tell me it’s all a mistake.”

  “No. Petter drowned last night.”

  “Dear heaven, how could God let such a thing happen?”

  This from Mama, who hardly believes in God. Mona decides to answer as if she’d said, “How did it happen?” She describes the accident, the bicycle, the items on the ice, the search at the steamboat channel. Too late. “I didn’t hear a thing, though I was out on the steps, listening. Lillus had a cold and was fussing and crying so I was in the bedroom with her. If I’d been alone in the kitchen, I might have heard something.”

  “Mona, sweetheart,” Mama says, appalled but also fearful, afraid for her daughter and the powerful feelings that at some stage must come out. “How are you? Dear child, how are coping?” She remembers last summer’s visit to the Örlands, Mona full of energy, radiant with well-being, Petter so obviously all she wanted in life. And now this.

  “I’ll just have to deal with it,” says Mona angrily. It’s her way of dealing with everything—with anger. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work. The funeral is set for next Sunday. All Petter’s relatives. It’s enough to make you crazy. I don’t think you need to come.”

  “Of course we’ll come, Papa and I. Papa doesn’t know yet. He was out in the stables, and now he’s out ploughing. It snowed here last night. It’s beautiful. We’ll figure out some way of getting to Örland. Maybe the Coast Guard can help.”

  “Yes. I’ll call when I know more.”

  “Thank you. But first and foremost, you’ve got to promise me not to work yourself to death. Get all the help you can find. Tell me if there’s anything I can do. Anything we can bring. Anything at all. You understand, we want to help. And those poor little lambs! How are they doing?”

  “Lillus doesn’t understand a thing. Sanna gets it, more or less, but … oh, they’re both so little that most of it goes right over their heads. The homecare sister is here, they’re being well taken care of.”

  “Good,” says Mama, who has learned not to ask follow-up questions. “Tell Sanna that Gram and Gramps will be coming for a visit soon. And now don’t forget to tell me if there’s anything I can do.”

  “Yes, yes,” Mona says. Ever since she was a little girl, she has totally lacked confidence in her mother’s ability to get things done. Of course she can get her to read stories to Sanna, but she, Mona, faster and more efficient, will have to do all the practical work herself!

  In any case, phew, another phone call out of the way, and more to make. Brave, kind people along the coast, and of course her mother-in-law has to talk, although she should have realized that Mona asked Fredrik Berg to call because she didn’t want to speak to them herself. But no one can avoid her fate, and Martha Kummel chatters and weeps while Mona grows more and more distant, never crying or sniffling so that Martha can tell the world that she’s gone completely to pieces! “What can I say?” is all she says when Martha wants some kind of emotional response from her, wants her to sob and carry on and be grateful for Martha’s platitudes about how we can’t understand the ways of the Lord, how he lets no sparrow fall to earth (but he let Petter), how Petter will always be with them in their hearts. Mona knows that every word she utters is repeated and embroidered by the unctuous Martha, and therefore she says almost nothing. Let her report that Mona is dumb with grief! She only tells her about the funeral and insists that Petter would certainly have wanted his good friend and colleague to conduct the service.

  Phew! She gets sweaty and worn out from all the phone calls, a constant harping about the same things. The whole time forced to say something other than what she would rather put like this: Petter is dead, and all joy and happiness are gone from my life. Nothing can compensate for such a loss. If only I could drive all of you away, if only I could chase you off with an axe, if only you’d all vanish from the face of the earth. It would not ease my grief, but it’s what I’d prefer.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I know only what I’ve heard. That he drowned. You might also say that he drowned because he was a good swimmer. While he still had time, it never occurred to him that he couldn’t pull himself out. He did everything he should have, got out of his boots and his overcoat, and thought it was a small thing, strong and athletic as he was, to heave himself onto the ice. Or you could say that he died of bad judgment. What was he thinking when he used up his strength rescuing his briefcase? A contributing cause of death was the good breeding that taught him you must take better care of other people’s property than of your own. Would he have done that if he’d been thinking clearly?
Another cause of death was perhaps the blow to his head that knocked so much sense out of him that he didn’t know enough to start calling for help before it was too late. Carelessness was another cause of death. Here on the islands, no one goes out on the ice without a knife in their belt, whereas he pedalled away like some kind of Jesus who thinks he can walk on water. The Aranda also contributed to his death. If she hadn’t passed that way, the men who heard him wouldn’t have assumed that someone had fallen into the steamboat channel.

  No, my friend, there isn’t a single cause of a person’s death, it’s not that simple. People die from a number of different factors that work together to prevent a rescue.

  Of course people ask me if I didn’t have some foreboding. What sort of premonition do you think I could get in Godby, well inland, among strangers? That you have a weight on your chest and feel anxious and helpless is completely understandable. In retrospect you can see all that as some kind of warning, but what good does it do you to know that something dreadful is happening, when it could be anything at all and you know nothing and are fearful as a child? I can’t say that I thought of the priest and felt he was in danger. I didn’t think of anything in particular. It was just a general sense of uneasiness and depression, the kind of thing that can affect anyone who’s completely in the dark.

  If only the thing could be undone! There’s such a small margin, so much that could have happened just a tiny bit differently, and the priest would stand today in the Co-op laughing about his cold bath. Much more likely than his being dead. It’s that I wonder about—if those who were out there with him, curious and importunate, if they didn’t understand that they only needed to lighten him a bit, just enough to let him get his chest up on the ice. Is it true, as I suspect, that they don’t exist unless you sense their presence? The way the air gets thicker when they gather, how strongly you have to drive your thoughts for them to understand. They wish us no harm, I have many examples of that, but unless you yourself urge them on, they’ll just hang around the hole in the ice and watch you die, as if they had forgotten even the fact that a person who is dying has the strongest desire to live.

  The priest’s wife has a few days’ respite before the funeral. She has saved and separated milk, churned butter. The Co-op has delivered flour and she has baked and baked. She has cleaned and cleaned. She tends her animals in exemplary fashion. Some community representative is always nearby—Sister Hanna, the verger, the organist on a worried visit. “Please, Mona,” they say. “Everything doesn’t have to be perfect. You’ll make yourself sick. At least let us help you. Sit down. Rest. This is terrible.”

  She doesn’t tell them what she’s feeling. She says very little. When she talks to Sister Hanna, it’s only about practical matters. She is closed to the concerned helpers trying to keep an eye on her without being too obvious. When she walks down towards the church dock, they know she’s going to the dead man in the shed. A coffin has been delivered, lined in white, but it has not yet been closed, and Mona goes there once a day to make certain he is actually dead.

  The temperature is still below freezing. The body is frozen. It doesn’t change in any objective way, but grows day by day more irreclaimable. Mona has examined every mark on the body, which is covered with traces of the accident and the rough attempts at resuscitation—the black mark on his forehead, the skin scraped from his hands, the pressure marks on his chest, the scratches and discolorations from the rescue operations. His nose slimmer than in life, his mouth white and narrow, as it might have become in old age. His eyes, the lids open a tiny slit, give hope, even now, for a glimmer of life. A man so loved, so dead. How could you?

  According to the verger who watches over her, she cries in the shed. Wails, with open mouth, terrible to hear. But good that it comes out, they all agree on that. Maybe it will be better when her own relatives arrive, they tell each other, hopefully, thinking secretly that it will be a relief to hand off the responsibility.

  For what happens at a funeral is that the survivor is thrust back into the family and clan that she believed she had escaped. The priest’s wife sees them approaching and surrounding her and cutting her off from the parish community she has been a part of, from the new friends who are not burdened by ties to the past or by double loyalties. From the settings in which she is a free and independent individual, freed from the troubles and failings of her youth. All this will be taken from her. The dear people of the Örlands will be shoved aside by the approaching relatives, who will return her triumphantly to the scenes of her deepest defeats, where she had constantly to assert her right to a life of her own, now spent.

  If she could commit murder, she thinks. If she could close every unctuous mouth, cut off the empty phrases with a knife. If she could sweep them away, put the whole bunch of them on a desert island. If she could be an angel of vengeance and dispense punishments in accordance with what their sins deserve, if she could expunge them from the surface of the earth. Even then he would not come back to life. Even then she would not regain her life with him.

  When the first funeral guests arrive, the deceased’s parents and relatives from Åland, delivered by the Coast Guard in its light icebreaker, she takes the fish casserole steaming from the oven. Oven-warm bread on the table, freshly churned butter, the best china. The pastor’s wife herself: “Welcome, welcome. You must be frozen and worn out. Hang up your coats, there’s food on the table.”

  She has roses in her cheeks from the heat of the stove and her usual rush of activity. She successfully parries her mother-in-law’s effort to embrace her. She notes the tears on Martha’s cheeks with irritation—such an exhibition. They have also brought some huge, hideous wreaths, which clutter up the hallway, as if their coats and suitcases weren’t clutter enough. “Come in, come in,” she hurries them along. “Don’t let the heat out. Come in and sit down.”

  She thumps down herself for a moment, but she can’t stand to look at their long faces and their grimaces. “Where do you find the strength?” her mother-in-law chirps, and she answers, angrily, “Where would we be if I didn’t?” A good question. Sister Hanna has left the parsonage because the guests need the guest room, so there’s no one but Mona to keep everything going, a child can see that. Stupid questions, terrible hypocrisy. What could they possibly help her with, these people who are used to being waited on hand and foot at the Parsonage Hotel!

  The little girls are silent as the grave, the guests have forgotten to greet them. Now they shower them with attention, since they don’t know how they’re supposed to deal with Mona. Sanna recognizes both her Papa’s mother and father but looks anxiously at Mama when they ask her things. May she speak or will Mama get mad? Lillus stretches her arms out to Grandpa, but Mama shoves her back down into her highchair. “Sit still! You’ll tip it over!” It’s unnatural, the girls as quiet as mice, Mona unreachable in her efficiency, Petter dead.

  Full of anxiety, they meet the next wave to appear. It is Mona’s parents, Petter’s siblings, and Uncle Isidor, who came from the east, got off the steamboat in Mellom, and were conveyed onwards by the Coast Guard. Mona is in the parsonage with the girls and her preparations, and in the icy cold on the church dock they fall weeping into each other’s arms, groaning and grieving. The Åland phalanx, which arrived first, reports that they don’t know what to do with Mona. It’s impossible to reach her, she refuses to talk about anything but the practical arrangements and turns a deaf ear to every effort at solicitude or sympathy. We can’t help her, we can’t do anything, we can only sit there like a guest while she rushes around doing things. It’s not natural. What are we to do?

  “We can go inside before we freeze to death,” says Mona’s mother drily. They are startled, and the flood of emotions abruptly stops. Quiet, courteous Mrs Hellén sounds amazingly like her daughter. She starts walking up to the parsonage, followed by her husband. The others look at each other and eventually follow along in a loose cluster, fluttering and wobbling in their despair and horror, while the H
elléns walk straight ahead into the parsonage.

  No emotional scenes here. They take one another by the hand. “Sweetheart! My poor little bird,” Mama says. “Stop,” says Mona. “Here come the girls.” Cautiously, Lillus hiding behind Sanna. Gram pleased, Gramps delighted. Give us a hug! Sanna remembers them, she is Gram’s friend and intimate. Mona knows that Mama doesn’t know how to deal with children until she can talk to them, but she looks at Lillus and, in a conversational tone, says “Peep.” Lillus takes a little hop and says “Peep” back. Then she rises into the air on Gramps’s arm and sits there as if cast in bronze. Quite pleasant. Mona wouldn’t have believed this of the parents she criticizes so harshly. But just as she might have said something, they hear the inescapable troop from Åland murmuring hesitantly outside. The door opens and nothing happens.

  “Come in, come in!” Mona shouts. “You’re letting out all the warmth!” She greets the newcomers, tells them they can eat in the dining room and then they’ll have coffee in the parlour. And no, thank you, of course she needs no help. She sets out the coffee things on the sideboard and slices bread in the pantry. Then this new group seats itself at the table and eats, for they wouldn’t dare do otherwise. Ready to burst with sympathy, which now lies like a cold lump in their bellies. The floods of tears that flow so freely when they talk among themselves have ceased. Attempts at conversation get prompt, dismissive answers. What are they to do? How will it all end?

  Coffee in the parlour as promised. A braided coffeecake, brushed with egg, sprinkled with pearl sugar. Please help yourselves! Deathly silence, all the more noticeable because it’s normally impossible to get the Kummels to shut up. Only Mrs Hellén converses, and Hellén himself rumbles agreement in his bass. “Good coffee cake,” Mrs Hellén says. “You can certainly bake—better than I.” That almost makes Mona smile, because she’s not wrong. In adversity, when there’s no way out, Mrs Hellén escapes into diversionary remarks, just now about the food, the wind, the temperature. The Coast Guard, the boat trip, seasickness, the length of the trip, the relief of getting back onto dry land. She continues with friendly questions to the surviving Kummel siblings about their jobs and homes, their future plans and hopes. She gets a conversation going, although the young people shake their heads and signal each other that they can’t believe their ears. All her life, Mona has found her mother’s refusal to confront unpleasant situations annoying. Now she suddenly sees that it has some advantages, can even save her from a still more unpleasant situation, namely, that her self-control might run the risk of collapsing. If she has an ally in this assembly, it is, to her astonishment, her mother.