The Lily Pond

by Annika Thor

  Hello, Stephanie,

  I’m glad you’re here and hope you will like living with all Karin’s ruffles and frills. I’m hiking in the mountains. I’ll be back Sunday. See you!

  Sven

  Stephie reads this short message over and over, then folds it carefully and inserts it between the pages of her diary.

  When Aunt Märta’s ready to leave, Stephie walks her to the door.

  “Take care,” Aunt Märta says to Stephie. “Keep your clothes neat and clean, and remember your laundry when you come home. Do your best at school and try not to be any trouble to the doctor and his wife.”

  “Say hello to Uncle Evert from me,” Stephie says.

  As she’s walking out the door, Aunt Märta turns to Stephie and gives her a long look.

  For just an instant her voice softens. “Goodbye, dear child,” she says. Then she opens the gate to the elevator. The last thing Stephie sees is Aunt Märta’s straw hat, going down.

  had Stephie imagined, really? That she would be like a new daughter in the Söderberg family? That Dr. Söderberg would invite her into his study after dinner and read aloud to her or challenge her to a game of chess, like Papa used to? That the doctor’s wife would tuck her in at night, like Mamma?

  If she had any such expectations, she was very wrong. In the Söderberg home, she is a boarder, not a member of the family.

  The first evening Stephie is invited into the dining room for dinner with the doctor and his wife. The doctor asks a few distracted questions about Stephie’s parents in Vienna and her father’s work. Stephie tells him how the Germans forced Papa to close down his private practice two years ago. Now he works at the Jewish hospital, where the patients are dying for want of medicines.

  At that, Dr. Söderberg looks uncomfortable and changes the subject, turning to his wife and complaining about the new nurse in his office.

  “She pays no attention to detail,” he grumbles. Stephie soon stops listening and finishes her dinner in silence.

  After dinner, when Mrs. Söderberg has told Elna she can serve the coffee in the parlor, she turns to Stephie.

  “Good night, dear,” she says.

  Obviously, she doesn’t want Stephie to spend the evening with them. Stephie mumbles good night, thanks them for dinner, and withdraws to her room.

  Something is bothering her. Where is Putte, the family dog, whom she got to walk so often last summer that he almost felt like her own? What if he’s gone to live with Karin and Olle? As soon as the possibility crosses her mind, she’s so upset she nearly starts to cry. If Putte had been here, he could have slept on her bed.

  The next morning Stephie wakes up early. It’s Sunday, and silence reigns outside her closed bedroom door. She’d like to get up and use the bathroom, but until she knows that the doctor and his wife are up, she doesn’t dare. Around nine she hears the front door close and tiptoes down the hall to the bathroom at the far end. Afterward, she heads toward the only open door; it leads to the kitchen, where Stephie finds Elna preparing a breakfast tray. Elna tells her that Mrs. Söderberg always breakfasts in bed, and that on Sundays the doctor goes for a morning walk and has only coffee when he comes back. He never eats anything before lunch, Elna explains to Stephie.

  “How about you? Are you hungry?”

  Stephie nods.

  “Sit down here, and I’ll get you something once I’ve taken the tray in.”

  When she returns, Elna gives Stephie a cup of tea and a cheese sandwich and has a cup of coffee herself. Elna shows her the bread box, and where the butter and cheese are kept in the pantry, a big walk-in cupboard. Starting tomorrow, Stephie is supposed to make her own breakfast and her lunch sandwiches for school, Elna tells her. And she’s to have dinner with Elna in the kitchen, unless Mrs. Söderberg gives other instructions.

  “Who’s paying your way, your parents?” Elna asks curiously. “Do they send money from abroad?”

  Stephie blushes. No, her parents have no money to send. Everything they had is gone, confiscated by the Nazis. Her beautiful, elegant mamma is now someone’s maid, just like Elna. But she doesn’t say any of this out loud. And she doesn’t tell Elna that some of the money Aunt Märta and Uncle Evert are paying the Söderbergs for her room and board comes from the Swedish relief committee; they took up a charity collection on her behalf. She doesn’t even say she’s been awarded a scholarship for “gifted girls of little means” to pay for her schoolbooks.

  All she says is “My foster parents.”

  Stephie spends the whole long Sunday in her room while the sun shines outside her tall window. Everything is unfamiliar. Her window looks out not onto the park, but onto the courtyard with the rubbish bins and the shed. A high wall separates their courtyard from the one next door, with rubbish bins and a shed of its own. The only difference she can see is that there is a green bush in one corner of the next courtyard. She could, of course, have taken a walk in the park, but to do that, she would have had either to ask for a key or ring the doorbell to get back in. She doesn’t want to trouble Elna unnecessarily. Not to mention that Sven might come home at any time, and she wants to be there when he does. She wishes she had asked Elna when he was expected.

  Two little girls are playing in the courtyard. They must be about Nellie’s age, around eight. One of them looks a little like her, although she has light brown braids, not black as soot, like Nellie’s.

  Stephie no longer has braids. Since she cut off her long hair last year, it hasn’t grown back like it should. It won’t get really long, and it’s straggly, so before they left for Göteborg, she asked Aunt Märta to give her a haircut. Now her hair ends even with her chin, with a side part. It makes her look older.

  On the other side of her closed door, she hears noises. The front door opens and shuts when Dr. Söderberg comes in from his walk. He starts talking to his wife, though Stephie can’t make out the words. She can hear Elna working in the kitchen, and the toilet flushing. The telephone rings once, and Mrs. Söderberg has a long conversation.

  The sounds don’t seem real. It’s as if they have nothing to do with her. In her room, time stands still. She listens to water running in the pipes. Finally, as the afternoon draws to a close, Elna knocks on her door and says it’s time for dinner.

  “Didn’t you have anything better to do than spend such a beautiful day inside?” she asks. “If I’d been free, you wouldn’t have caught me sitting staring into thin air like that.”

  The doctor and his wife have already had their Sunday meal in the dining room, even though Sven hasn’t yet come home. He was supposed to return by dinnertime, Elna tells Stephie, and Mrs. Söderberg changed her mind back and forth before deciding they would go ahead without him. She finally gave in when the doctor said that all the military transports on the railway might mean Sven would be delayed for hours. The kitchen is hot and Elna is grumpy. She bangs down the platters and almost whisks Stephie’s plate out from under her nose before she’s finished. Elna is supposed to have Sunday evenings off, but now she can’t leave until Sven has come home and had his dinner.

  Stephie thinks Elna must have a gentleman friend waiting for her; that must be what’s making her so impatient. Just as impatient as Stephie feels waiting to see Sven again.

  Stephie and Elna are eating a gooseberry compote for dessert, there is a sudden commotion at the other end of the apartment. Footsteps, banging, voices.

  The next instant something brown and white shoots down the narrow passage and into the kitchen. Stephie slides off her chair and bends toward the floor. Crouching, she opens her arms wide.

  “Putte,” she whispers into the dog’s white fur, then into his ear. “Putte, Putte, Putte.”

  Putte sets his paws on Stephie’s shoulders, licking her cheeks and nose. Elna watches disapprovingly.

  “That dog’s not supposed to be in the kitchen,” she starts.

  Before she can go on, Sven fills the kitchen doorway.

  “Stephanie!”

  Sven is even
more suntanned than when he was vacationing on the island. His brown hair has grown; it hangs in his eyes. He’s wearing hiking pants, a plaid shirt, and heavy boots. When she sees him, her insides go all warm.

  “Sven, would you please remove that dog?” Elna asks. Then she falls silent, glaring at the floor around Sven’s feet. Stephie’s gaze follows hers, and she sees all the mud and clay he’s brought in on his hiking boots. And not just here, of course, but all the way through the apartment.

  “Don’t be angry, Elna,” Sven cajoles. “I’ll sweep it up. I wasn’t thinking. I’m really sorry.”

  Elna smiles at that, and Stephie can see she finds it difficult to be mad at Sven for long.

  Sven takes Putte by the collar.

  “Coming with me?” he asks Stephie.

  Then he notices that she was eating dessert.

  “Dinner in the kitchen? Why didn’t you eat with Mother and Father?”

  Elna answers first. “Mrs. Söderberg thought it best so.”

  Sven’s gray eyes narrow for a moment, and his jaw muscles stiffen. Then he laughs and settles in at the kitchen table, too.

  “All right, I’ll have my dinner here as well, then. That is, Elna, if there’s anything left for me.”

  Elna hurries to set out a plate, a glass, and cutlery and to heat up the leftover Sunday roast.

  “When did you arrive?” Sven asks.

  “Yesterday.”

  “Alone?”

  “Aunt Märta came along.”

  Their words come out one by one, like drops from a dripping faucet. It’s as if they have become shy with each other, not having seen each other for so long.

  When Sven and his family rented Aunt Märta and Uncle Evert’s house on the island over the summer, she and Sven weren’t bashful. Sven is five years her senior, but he always treated Stephie as his equal. They took Putte for long walks and talked about everything: books they had read, the war, the future.

  In spite of his parents’ wishes that he become a doctor or a lawyer, Sven is planning to be a writer. One time he read Stephie a short story he’d written. It was about a young man who volunteered for the Spanish Civil War, to fight for freedom and democracy. The story wasn’t actually about the soldier, but about his younger brother, who wasn’t old enough to go along. The story described the younger brother’s feelings when he finally heard the news that his brother had been killed. Stephie thought the story was good, though she couldn’t imagine why anyone would volunteer for a war.

  And now they’re sitting at the kitchen table, being shy with each other. Sven eats his roast veal, potatoes, gravy, and cucumber salad. Stephie pokes at her gooseberry compote. Elna has shut Putte out of the kitchen and is sweeping up the mess on the floor.

  Mrs. Söderberg comes into the kitchen.

  “Goodness, Sven. Why are you sitting in here?” she asks, startled.

  “Did you think I’d have dinner by myself in the dining room?” he asks back. “You’ve already eaten.”

  “All right,” says his mother. “When you’re finished, change your clothes. We’re going to the station to pick up Karin and Olle. Father promised them a lift to their new apartment, since they have so much luggage.”

  “You go ahead,” says Sven. “I think I’ll take Stephanie for a walk and show her the way to her new school.”

  His mother opens her mouth to protest, but Sven is faster.

  “How is she supposed to find it in the morning otherwise?” he asks. “Are you going to walk her there? Is Elna? I won’t have time. I start at eight myself.”

  “I see. You can’t be bothered to welcome your sister back,” his mother says, but her tone makes it clear she has abandoned the fight.

  “Don’t mope, Mamma,” says Sven. “We’ll walk Putte at the same time so no one will have to do it later.”

  When his mother has left the kitchen, Sven says, “Families are all right, but I prefer them in small doses. I’ll have a shower and change my clothes, and we’ll leave in half an hour. Okay?”

  Stephie nods. She helps Elna clean up the kitchen when Sven vanishes to the bathroom. Then she waits in her room. She hears Sven pass by in the hall, whistling. A few minutes later there’s a knock on the door between their rooms.

  “Ready?”

  With Putte trailing his leash, they run down the four flights of stairs. Putte’s so eager to get out that he beats them to the door, then stands there glaring as if to ask what took them so long.

  Once they’re outside, Sven turns left from the doorway, and shortly left again. This brings them down to the wide tree-lined avenue, but not at the same spot where Stephie and Aunt Märta got off the tram yesterday.

  In front of them is an open square with yellow brick buildings on three sides. They’re all very modern, with shiny glass-and-chrome details on the facades. A fountain—at the center of which is a statue of a huge man with seaweed in his hair, surrounded by fish and sea creatures—sits in the middle of the square.

  “That’s Poseidon,” says Sven. “The Greek god of the sea. This square is called Götaplatsen.”

  He tells her about the buildings: “That one’s the city theater, that one’s the art museum, and that’s the concert hall.”

  How strange, Stephie thinks, that they’re all new. In Vienna theaters and museums are housed in ancient buildings with columns and huge entryways, domes and sculptured figures.

  They cross Götaplatsen and turn down a narrow pathway between the theater and the steps leading up to the art museum.

  “There you are,” Sven says, pointing. “That’s the Girls’ Grammar School.”

  “Wow.”

  “Better than the prison I go to, that’s for sure,” says Sven. “I’ll take you there another time. Come on, let’s bring Putte over by the lily pond, where he can run around awhile.”

  They walk on past the school, and soon they arrive at a small pond with a little sandy bank and dark, still water. In the middle there are white water lilies, and farther out a few red ones. Swans and ducks swim among the flowers, and weeping willows hang out over the water, which reflects them. On the far side Stephie can see a lawn and a large brick mansion covered in ivy. It looks like something out of a fairy tale.

  Stephie and Sven walk along the water’s edge until they come to a bench under a tree. They sit down, and Sven lets Putte off the leash.

  “Nervous about starting school?” asks Sven.

  “A bit.”

  “No need,” he replies. “I swear you’re going to be the smartest girl in the class. If you ask me, though, don’t worry about grades. Just focus on what you think will be most useful to you in life. That’s the most important thing.”

  Stephie knows he’s right, but she also knows that only top grades will ensure her a continued scholarship, without which Aunt Märta and Uncle Evert won’t be able to keep her in school. She has to do well.

  “One thing,” says Sven. “I don’t know what it’s going to be like at your school, but at mine there are teachers who favor the new German order and who wouldn’t mind seeing it introduced in Sweden. Watch out for those teachers. Don’t let them snare you into a trap. And if anybody treats you badly, just tell me about it.”

  Stephie can’t help giggling. “What would you do if I did?”

  Sven chuckles, too. “Come galloping on my white stallion to rescue you from the dragon, of course.” he says. He stands up. “Come on, time to head home.”

  While Sven is putting Putte on the leash, Stephie stares out across the dark and mysterious water of the lily pond. This is a place she plans to return to, often.

  clock on the yellow brick school building reads ten to nine the next morning when Stephie arrives. The Swedish flag is flying and the schoolyard is full of girls. The youngest ones are her age; the older ones look like young ladies, in their skirts with matching jackets and hats.

  Nobody is playing here, as the children did on the island schoolyard. Just a couple of the younger girls are throwing a ball against one
of the walls, but very quietly. Most girls are walking around arm in arm or standing in clusters chatting. Some, like Stephie, are all alone.

  She catches a glimpse of Sylvia, the daughter of the shopkeeper on the island, who was in Stephie’s class there. She’s with Ingrid, another of their old classmates. They don’t notice Stephie, and she doesn’t call out to them.

  Stephie was right last evening when she guessed that the tall windows in the upper floor of the annex belonged to the auditorium. Now the girls all go in and sit in the wooden seats on either side of the aisle. The principal welcomes them to a new school year. The school chorus sings. Then the girls’ names are called, along with their assigned classes.

  “Stephanie Steiner?”

  “Present.”

  Stephie is going to be in 1A; Sylvia and Ingrid, in 1B. That’s a relief. It’s not that Sylvia intimidates her the way she used to last year on the island. But Stephie’s looking forward to starting from scratch, in a class where no one knows her or has preconceived notions about what she’s like. A class where she can be Stephanie.

  They leave the auditorium and go to their homerooms. The homeroom teacher for 1A is young, with short dark hair, and she’s wearing culottes. She introduces herself as Hedvig Björk; she’s going to be their math and biology teacher.

  “Science, girls,” she says. “Science is the future. I hope after four years with me that all of you will decide to continue on to a science program.” She gives them a cunning look from behind her long, dark bangs. It’s hard to tell whether she’s joking or in earnest. Stephie likes Hedvig Björk already.

  On the blackboard is a list of books they’re supposed to have by tomorrow morning. Everyone copies down the titles, and Hedvig Björk explains that when they’re finished in homeroom, anyone who wants to can go to the lunchroom and buy used books from the older girls.

  There are thirty-five girls in the class. Tall, short, heavy, slim, with and without glasses. Most are more or less blond, but there are a few brunettes and one girl who looks as little like the fair Swedish girls as Stephie does. Stephie wonders what her name is and where she comes from. She decides to ask, but by the time she gets out of the classroom, the dark-haired girl is nowhere to be seen.