A Faraway Island

by Annika Thor

  “Hi there!” Sven calls out. “What a beautiful morning!”

  To Stephie there is nothing special about this particular morning. The sun is shining and there is a gentle wind blowing off the water.

  Putte recognizes Sven and grows eager. Sven hops down off his rock and approaches them. Putte romps between his legs, begging to be patted.

  “Hiya, Putte. Hi, you old thing.”

  Sven plays with Putte, but not gently, as Stephie does. He’s rougher.

  “You can let him off the leash now,” says Sven. “He won’t run away.”

  He never runs away from me, Stephie thinks, but she doesn’t say it.

  Sven stops playing with Putte and sits down on a rocky ledge, his feet blocking the path in front of Stephie. She picks up the end of Putte’s leash, but stays where she is.

  “The ocean,” says Sven. “I can look at it forever, can’t you? It’s always changing.”

  “Uh-huh,” Stephie replies. “Depending on the weather.”

  She wishes Sven would move his feet so she could pass.

  “Don’t you like the ocean?”

  “It’s so big. I’d like it better if I weren’t on an island. If it was all one.”

  “One what?”

  “One whole place. The people. The city.”

  “How long have you been here?” Sven asks.

  “Since last August. Ten months.”

  “And your family?”

  “Mother and Father are still in Vienna. My little sister is here, living with a different family.”

  “And what are they like, your family here? The Janssons.”

  “Good,” Stephie tells him.

  “You’re different from them,” Sven says. “That doesn’t mean you have to be alone.”

  Putte whines, pulling at the leash.

  “I’ve got to get going,” Stephie says.

  “Wait,” Sven answers. “I’d like to read you something.”

  He pulls off the little knapsack he’s carrying and opens it, rummaging around. He has to retrieve a crumply bag of sandwiches, a thermos, and a sweater before he gets to the thick book at the bottom.

  “It’s in English,” Sven tells her. “Do you speak English?”

  “No.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll translate.” He leafs through the book until he finds what he is looking for. “‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main….’”

  Stephie stands stock-still, absorbed. Sven’s voice is different when he reads than when he talks, deeper and calmer.

  “‘Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’”

  Sven stops and looks up from the page. He and Stephie are both quiet for a few moments. Then Sven closes the book.

  “That was all,” he says. “But maybe you’re too young to understand.”

  “I understand,” Stephie retorts. “Who wrote that book?”

  “An American named Hemingway,” says Sven. “But what I read you is a quotation from the work of a poet named John Donne, who lived in seventeenth-century England. When you get a little older and have studied English, you’ll be able to read the whole thing.”

  “I’m not going to study English,” Stephie tells him.

  “Why not? You’re good at languages, I can tell from your Swedish.”

  “I’m done with regular school,” Stephie says. “I’m just going to take a home economics course next fall. They can’t afford to send me to grammar school.”

  “That’s really too bad,” says Sven. “You ought to continue your studies. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders and should read, think, and write.”

  He puts his book and other things back into his knapsack.

  “If you’d like, I’ll lend you some books,” he says. “I’ve got some with me, and I can ask Father to bring more when he comes out from the city. Some German books, too, if you’d like.”

  “Oh, please, that would be wonderful,” says Stephie.

  “Feel free to come up anytime. Anyway, aren’t I staying in your bedroom?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What about that painting?” asks Sven. “Did you pick it out yourself?”

  “No,” Stephie says emphatically.

  “I’ve turned it toward the wall,” Sven tells her. “Don’t let Mrs. Jansson know, though. If you’d like I can accidentally knock it to the floor so it breaks.”

  Stephie laughs. “You don’t need to do that,” she tells him.

  Sven gets serious again.

  “One night when the room was too hot, I opened the vent, but it turned out to be blocked with a crumpled sheet of paper. A letter. Yours, I assume, since it was in German.”

  That letter she wrote her first evening on the island, to Mamma and Papa. If you don’t come and get me, I think I’m going to die. Stephie blushes.

  “I didn’t read it,” says Sven. “Word of honor. Do you want it back?”

  “No,” Stephie says. “Throw it out, or burn it. But don’t let anybody read it. I’m going now. Putte’s impatient.”

  When she is at a distance, Sven shouts, “What’s your name again?”

  “Stephanie.”

  She doesn’t really know why she didn’t just say “Stephie.” Maybe because “Stephanie” sounds more grown-up.

  “Pretty name,” Sven shouts back. “Bye, Stephanie.”

  Later the same day Stephie goes to the beach with Nellie. She tries to give her a ride on the back of Aunt Märta’s bike, but it’s hard. Wobbly, and heavy on the uphills.

  Nellie’s playmate Sonja is at the beach. The three of them lie on their towels, sunbathing on the sand. The water’s still cold, but after a while in the sun it’s refreshing.

  Way out on the far cliffs Stephie sees Sylvia and Barbro with two boys she doesn’t recognize. They must be summer guests.

  One day, toward the end of June, Stephie bikes to the shop to buy a package of cookies for the doctor’s wife. Putte runs alongside the bike as usual.

  Some kids are sitting on the stone wall that encloses the shopkeeper’s yard. Sylvia and Barbro are in the middle, each with a summer guest next to her. One is so blond his short hair looks almost white. The other is darker, and freckle-faced.

  Vera’s there, too. She’s sitting at a distance from the others, braiding a chain of dandelions.

  Stephie parks the bike and ties Putte to a hook in the wall. Sylvia and Barbro are whispering and giggling with the boys. She can feel their gazes burning on her back as she opens the shop door and goes inside.

  When she is paying for the cookies, she hears barking.

  “Is your dog making that racket?” the shopkeeper asks grumpily.

  “He’s not mine, but I walk him.”

  “Well, you’d better quiet him down.”

  Stephie puts the package of cookies in her pocket and goes out onto the steps.

  Sylvia, Barbro, and the two boys are standing in a ring around Putte, just far enough away that he doesn’t have a chance of reaching them no matter how hard he strains at the leash. Vera’s still sitting on the stone wall.

  Stephie approaches them. Now she sees that one of the boys, the blond one, is holding something. It’s a sugar cube dangling from a piece of string. He’s holding it over Putte’s snout, teasing him. Every time Putte gets close enough to bite at the cube, the boy snatches it back. Putte yelps unhappily.

  “Leave Putte alone!” Stephie tells them.

  “Putte,” says the boy with the sugar. “Is this mutt named Putte?”

  “Putte,” repeats Barbro, snorting.

  “He’s no mutt,” Stephie says. “He’s pedigreed.”

  “Ah,” says the boy. “A pure canine.”

  Stephie steps forward to unhook Putte’s leash from the hook, but the boy blocks her way. Putte barks and strains at the leash.

  “Shush up,” Sylvia says, striking Pu
tte hard across the muzzle. Putte whines.

  “Don’t you dare touch him!” Stephie cries.

  “My, my,” the other boy, who has been silent until then, says. “She’s got some temper.”

  “Just like the doggie,” says the blond one. “Maybe she’s pedigreed, too. What do you think?”

  Sylvia and Barbro giggle.

  “Racially pure,” says the freckle-face. “A first-class specimen.”

  Stephie just wants to get away, but not without Putte.

  “Move over,” she says to the boy who’s blocking her way.

  He doesn’t move a muscle.

  “Did you hear that?” he asked. “Did you hear her tell me to move over? Do we think someone like her can come and tell us Swedes where we can stand?”

  “She’s the one who should move,” says Sylvia, looking at Stephie. “You don’t belong here.”

  “We know why you’re here,” the freckle-faced boy says. “You people get out of Germany with your money and your jewelry and think you can just buy up our country, like you were trying to do in Germany. But you’ll never get away with it. The Germans will be here, too, before you know it, and they’ll deal with people like you—you filthy Jew-kid.”

  For an instant Stephie feels as if she’s been turned to stone. Then she flies at the boy, aiming her fist right at his grinning mouth, among all those freckles. She hammers at his chest and kicks at his shins.

  The boy is so taken aback, he can’t even defend himself. He hadn’t expected a girl who would fight. Then he grabs Stephie’s wrists and pushes her off him.

  “You get away from me,” he says, his voice resounding with hate. “Just stay away from me, you make me sick.”

  A drop of blood is seeping from a crack in his bottom lip.

  Putte growls, ears pulled back.

  The boy drops Stephie’s wrists and shoves her away so hard she tumbles into the gravel. As he pushes her, he takes a step backward. Putte snaps at the boy’s trouser leg with his sharp teeth, tearing a big hole in the fabric.

  “Ow,” the boys shouts. “The mutt bit me!”

  He aims a kick at Putte, who howls as the boy’s foot strikes him in the ribs.

  Stephie throws herself toward Putte. She can’t reach the hook on the wall, so she unhooks the leash from his collar.

  “Run, Putte!” she shouts. “Run!”

  Putte rushes off, a brown-and-white flash along the ground. Stephie gets to her feet and runs after him.

  When she comes to the road she stops and turns around. They aren’t following her.

  “Putte!” she shouts. “Putte, come!”

  She can’t see him anywhere. Did he run toward home? Or did he just scurry away from his torturers, with no regard for direction?

  She sees two little boys playing with a crate on wheels at the edge of the road.

  “Have you seen a dog?” she asks them. “Brown and white? Running without a leash?”

  “Yup,” says one of the little boys. “He went that way,” pointing down toward the harbor.

  “No,” says the other, pointing to the right, toward Britta’s. “He went that way.”

  Stephie wishes she had the bike; then she might catch up with him. But she doesn’t dare go back to the shop to get it.

  She runs down to the harbor area. No sign of Putte. She asks the old men sitting on the benches in the sun. None of them has seen a dog off its leash. She turns around and runs back to the intersection where the little boys are playing, then up toward Britta’s.

  Britta is on her knees in the vegetable patch, weeding.

  “Hi,” Stephie pants. “Have you seen a dog run by? About ten minutes ago?”

  “I just came out,” Britta tells her. “What dog?”

  Stephie doesn’t take the time to answer.

  At the end of Britta’s road there’s a yellow frame house. The lady hanging her washing on the line thinks maybe she did glimpse a dog a few minutes earlier.

  “I do think something ran past,” she says. “Is it your dog?”

  “Yes,” Stephie says, so as not to have to go into a long explanation.

  “You can cut through our yard,” the lady tells her.

  Stephie does so, crossing a meadow and jumping a ditch. She takes a wrong step and one of her sandals comes up soaked in wet mud.

  “Putte!” she shouts. “Putte!”

  She searches for hours, but he’s nowhere to be found. Once she thinks she hears him barking behind some juniper bushes, but when she’s forced her way through the brambles, he isn’t there.

  In the end she gives up and collapses onto a rock. She’s exhausted from all the running. Her bare legs are covered with scratches.

  What is she to do? Putte’s lost and it’s her fault. Not to mention that she’s been in a fight, with a summer guest, of all people, and split his lip. And Putte ruined the guest’s trousers, trying to defend her.

  Putte’s a city dog, not accustomed to fending for himself in the countryside. Maybe he’s stuck between rocks, or has broken a leg. It may be ages before someone finds him. He may starve to death. Or be caught by a fox. He may already be dead.

  Aunt Märta will be beside herself. She’ll make Stephie apologize to all of them—the doctor’s wife, Karin, the freckle-faced boy. And Jesus.

  No, she’ll never apologize to that boy. Not after what he said. She hadn’t done anything bad to him. But if she tells them what happened, no one will believe her. It will be four against one, and she knows that both Sylvia and Barbro tell lies.

  Anyway, she doesn’t want to tell them what the boy said. She doesn’t want to tell anyone. She’s ashamed. Although nothing that happened was her fault, she’s ashamed just the same.

  She can’t go home.

  It’s hot enough to spend the night outside. But she’ll have to get some food. If she waits until evening, she can sneak into the root cellar at home unseen.

  And she still has that package of cookies in her pocket. She can get through the day on cookies. They’re all broken and crumbly now. She must have fallen on them when the boy pushed her to the ground. She opens the package and takes out a cookie. She’ll save the rest until she’s famished.

  How can a day be so long? Hour by hour, the sun shifts from the east of the island to the very top of the sky. Then it continues west, so slowly you can hardly tell.

  Now and then Stephie thinks she hears Putte barking, but it’s probably just her imagination; at least she never catches sight of him. Her stomach’s growling. Occasionally she allows herself a cookie, to stave off the hunger.

  It’s a hot day. The sun is glaring down and there is hardly so much as a cool breeze. Stephie’s thirsty.

  She tries to pretend she’s shipwrecked on a desert island—a game she played with herself when she first arrived. But a desert island ought to have trees with delicious fruit that fills you up and quenches your thirst. Stephie suddenly remembers the blackberry bramble Vera showed her last summer. But it’s only June, and the bushes are just full of white blossoms.

  Behind the blackberry bushes there’s a crevice in the rocks, dark and deep. The sun can’t penetrate there.

  Stephie takes a couple of cautious steps down into the crevice. The air is cool and damp. Under her feet there’s soft, sandy soil.

  She continues farther in and hears the murmur of running water. There’s a little rivulet springing up out of the stone, running down the side of the rock. Stephie cups her hands, holding them under the trickle. Then she takes a little sip. The water smells of earth and iron, but it doesn’t taste bad.

  Just before the other end of the crevice, she discovers a little cave. Inside, the sandy soil is covered with thin green grass. A cool, shady spot.

  Stephie lies down. The grass tickles her bare arms and legs. It’s very quiet. She can’t even hear the ocean in here. The only sound is the persistent chirruping of a grasshopper.

  She stays in the cave for a long time. Sleeps for a while, lies awake thinking. Nibbles on cook
ies, one at a time.

  In the end she gets cold. Stiffly, she rises and walks back through the crevice. She splashes her face with water and has another drink. Strangely, she no longer feels hungry, just weak and dizzy.

  The sun has begun to sink in the west, down toward the surface of the water. Then it sets so fast, Stephie thinks she can almost see it slip into the water. The sky is cloudless, the pastel colors shifting rapidly from pink to purple to pale blue to green. Just before the sun disappears it is shrouded in a grayish pink haze.

  The warmth in the air vanishes in a hurry. Stephie shivers. She’s got to get something warm. Perhaps there’s an old blanket or sweater in the boathouse.

  It’s getting dark. The sky is deep blue, except in the west, where there is still a band of light. Aunt Märta must be asleep by now. She goes to bed at ten every night, summer and winter. The summer guests might still be up, but she’ll have to take that risk. She’s too cold and hungry to wait any longer.

  Stephie walks along the beach, approaching the house from below. The white paint looks almost iridescent in the twilight. The windows are all dark except the one in her room upstairs. Sven must be up; he’s probably reading in bed. He’ll surely never lend her any more books.

  The door of the root cellar creaks when she opens it. Quickly she gathers some tins, a jar of jam, and a couple of carrots, putting everything in a paper bag.

  Now I’m a real thief, she thinks.

  She needs a bottle to fill with water from the pump.

  They keep empty bottles and jars on the top shelf. Stephie has to stand on a step stool, and even there she has to stand on tiptoe to reach. Just as she’s extending her arm to take a bottle, she loses her balance and grabs the edge of the shelf. It totters and, for a moment, Stephie is sure all the bottles and jars are going to crash to the floor.

  But she’s lucky. The shelf holds. She takes a bottle and gets down off the stool. Setting the paper bag of provisions outside the root cellar door, she heads for the pump.

  As she turns the corner of the yard, Stephie sees to her horror that there’s a light on in the basement.

  She’ll have to pass by the lighted window to reach the pump, and she decides that the best thing to do is to sidle along the wall of the house and crawl under the window, which is only about a yard above the ground.