The Lily Pond

by Annika Thor

  May and Sven have one thing in common: they both think society is unfairly organized. But May believes that the Social Democratic Party is in the process of changing all that, and that the most important thing is for people like her, “ordinary people,” as she says, to have the opportunity to get an education and become decision makers in society. She wants to be a politician herself.

  “Then they’ll see what May from Mayhill can do,” she says, laughing.

  “May from Mayhill” is an expression someone in the class started using one of the very first days of the semester. May wasn’t offended, though her neighborhood is anything but hilly: she even calls herself that sometimes so no one can use the expression to make fun of her.

  The sun disappears behind one of the tall trees on the other side of the pond. It’s getting cold. Stephie heads for home.

  She unlocks the front door with the key she has safety-pinned to the inside of her coat pocket. At first she was told to go to the kitchen door and ring the bell when she got home, but Elna got tired of her “eternal comings and goings” and asked Mrs. Söderberg to arrange for Stephie to have a key of her own.

  “The girl has a good head on her shoulders,” said Elna. “She won’t lose your key.”

  Mrs. Söderberg ranted on at Stephie about everything that could happen if she lost it: the apartment could be broken into, the silver and the paintings could be stolen—“priceless works of art, you know”—the East Indian china might be broken, and the Persian rugs trampled with dirt.

  Stephie finds Elna polishing the hall mirror.

  “There’s a letter for you,” Elna says.

  The letter is on the table under the mirror along with the rest of the day’s mail. It’s postmarked from Vienna, the first letter from home to reach Stephie in Göteborg.

  The handwriting is Papa’s.

  My dear little Stephie!

  We are so pleased you were able to go on to grammar school. You won’t lose any time now that you’re continuing your education just as you would have here if life had rolled along as we all imagined it would.

  You wouldn’t recognize anything here anymore. The war is a heavy burden on everyone, but of course it is worst for us Jews. The dwelling in which Mamma and I are living is already freezing cold, and I hardly dare to think about what it will be like when winter comes. Every morning Mamma has to walk the long distance to the home of the old woman she cleans and cooks for, while I walk to my work at the Jewish hospital. At the end of the working day, she has to walk for half an hour in the wrong direction to reach a shop where Jewish people are allowed to buy food. There are a grocery store and a dairy shop on the block where we live, but Jews may not shop there. You can imagine what a strain it is on Mamma. She is very thin now, and always tired. As I write, she is sleeping, which is why this letter will only be from me. Next time I’m sure you will hear from her, too.

  Still, I do not mean only to complain about our conditions. The main thing is that you and Nellie are safe and have what you need. I do not think there is any risk that Sweden will be drawn into the war; you need not worry about that. And as I said, you have been able to continue your schooling. I’m sure you’ll find the city environment more stimulating, too, than the isolation of the island. You’ll be able to spend time with cultivated people and make friends of your own kind.…

  Stephie puts the letter aside.

  Cultivated people. Friends of your own kind.

  What does Papa mean? Who are her own kind? Vera on the island obviously isn’t. Stephie imagines that Papa wouldn’t think May Karlsson is, either, not with her parents and six siblings all living in a one-bedroom apartment in Mayhill. Is dark-haired, nervous Alice Martin of Stephie’s own kind? Are Harriet and Lilian? For the first time in her life, she has the upsetting feeling that her papa may not always be absolutely right, may not always know what is in her best interest.

  early September Hedvig Björk takes the class on a biology excursion. Their other classes have been canceled, since they’ll be gone all day. They take the tram and then have quite a long walk from the stop to Lake Delsjön. Their rucksacks are heavy with glass jars and bottles to collect aquatic animals and insects in. Hedvig Björk takes long strides at the head of the class.

  The Söderbergs have lent Stephie a pair of Karin’s old rubber boots; they’re a little big and they flop as she walks along. She knows she looks silly with her too-big boots protruding from the nearly outgrown skirt she’s wearing so as not to dirty her nice ones. She wishes she had a pair of trousers. Or a burgundy wool leisure suit with matching trousers and jacket, like Alice has.

  The girls spread out along the lakeshore with their bottles and jars. Their prey is every living thing: worms and water spiders, beetles and leeches.

  From a distance the water gleams blue in the sunshine, but standing at the edge, Stephie sees that it’s brown and muddy, not clear like the seawater at the island. There is a scent of damp earth. The bottom is slushy and squishy underfoot. If you walk out too far, you sink in the sludge, and the water runs over the tops of and into your boots.

  Hedvig Björk isn’t the least bit bothered by wet feet. Her culottes are hiked up and she’s wading around quite far out, more excited than any of her pupils.

  “Look, girls,” she shouts, “a whirligig beetle!”

  Aquatic animals have peculiar names: diving beetles and backswimmers, marsh treaders and pond skaters. As if there were a whole little community down in the water, peopled by creatures, each with its own occupation.

  A shimmering dragonfly lands on Stephie’s arm, turning its round head and bobbing its little body. It’s so lovely, with its transparent wings, that she’d rather let it fly away, but for Hedvig Björk’s sake she turns a glass jar upside down over it, reverses the jar carefully making sure to place her free hand across the opening. Then she screws a top poked with holes over the dragonfly.

  After a couple of hours, hot, dirty, and wet, the girls eat their packed lunches while sitting on a rocky ledge overlooking the lake. As usual, Alice keeps to herself. Stephie notices she doesn’t have a single spot of dirt on her leisure suit.

  “Alice,” Hedvig Björk asks, “aren’t you going to eat?”

  Alice shakes her head. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Didn’t you bring any sandwiches?”

  “No.”

  “Have one of mine,” Hedvig Björk says, offering her a cheese sandwich.

  “No thank you.”

  “Do as I say, now,” Hedvig Björk replies. “You need to eat if you’re going to spend a whole day out of doors. Take it!”

  Alice accepts the sandwich, taking tiny bites and eating extremely slowly.

  After lunch break, Hedvig Björk inspects their bottles and jars. She admires Stephie’s dragonfly.

  “Lestes sponsa. A damselfly. And a fine specimen at that.”

  At first Stephie thinks she must be joking, but it appears the insect is really called a damselfly.

  The afternoon is to be devoted to gathering plants for their herbaria. They are allowed to go one by one or two by two, as long as they don’t get out of earshot of the whistle Hedvig Björk borrowed from the phys ed teacher, and can find their way back.

  May isn’t there—she’s sick today—so Stephie heads off on her own. Alice walks away without so much as a glance at the other girls. Stephie goes in the same direction—not following on her heels, but more or less the same way. They are collecting ferns, mosses, and lichens. When spring comes, there will be flower excursions.

  “Blue anemones, wood anemones, lilies of the valley! We’ll go out into the woods once a week and watch spring develop,” Hedvig Björk told them in class with great enthusiasm.

  For a while Stephie keeps Alice in sight among the trees, but then she loses her. All she can hear is the cracking of twigs under her own rubber boots, the tweeting of the birds, and the wind murmuring softly in the treetops.

  Stephie picks her plants carefully, folding them in pressing pap
er. When she gets home, she’ll put them in new paper and lay them under a heavy pile of books. Some of the girls have real plant presses, but she wasn’t able to afford one out of her scholarship money. When they’re dry, each plant must be glued into a herbarium and tagged with its Swedish name, its Latin name, and the site where it was found.

  Deep in the woods the moss is as thick and soft as an elegant carpet. The evergreen trees are dark and dense. Here and there are boulders, encrusted with moss and gray shield lichen. Stephie has never before been in a forest like this one. In the woods near Vienna, the wind whistles in the crowns of broad-leafed trees. On the island, what people called the woods was just stunted, windswept pine trees and bristly juniper bushes.

  Suddenly something cranberry red appears among all the greens and grays. Alice is leaning into a bramble. At first Stephie thinks she must be picking a plant, but as she approaches, she realizes that Alice is bent forward throwing up. Stephie sees bits of Hedvig Björk’s cheese sandwich in the moss.

  “Alice,” Stephie cries. “Are you all right?”

  Alice looks up. “Go away,” she says.

  “Do you need something to drink? I’ve got some milk left.”

  “Get lost!” Alice yells. “Didn’t you hear what I said?”

  “There’s no need to shout,” says Stephie. “I was only trying to help!”

  “I don’t want any help,” Alice retorts. “Especially not yours. Go away and don’t you dare tell a soul about this.”

  Alice straightens up, brushing her hair back from her face. Her eyes gleam, black as pitch, against her pale skin. She’s so pretty, Stephie thinks. Haughty, pretty, and lonely.

  Stephie is seized by a sudden longing to be Alice’s friend. Now they have something else in common, a shared secret.

  “I promise …,” she begins, but Alice has already turned her back on Stephie and walked off in the other direction.

  Sven has breakfast in the kitchen with Stephie. Elna makes them oatmeal and prepares Sven’s lunch sandwiches. Stephie makes her own.

  The doctor has coffee in the library before going to his office. His wife is almost always still in bed when Sven and Stephie leave for school. Sometimes, though, while they’re eating, a loud bell rings and the number-five window on the panel by the door pops open. When that happens, Elna hurries to make up Mrs. Söderberg’s breakfast tray.

  The panel by the door is there to tell Elna what room the person is ringing from. Each room has its own button and its own number, which shows up in the kitchen when the bell rings. Stephie’s room is number eight, but there is never any question of her ringing the bell. As Elna says, those bells are for the master and mistress. If Stephie wants Elna, she’s supposed to go find her in the kitchen.

  Stephie sees very little of Mrs. Söderberg and even less of the doctor. Some afternoons Mrs. Söderberg knocks on Stephie’s bedroom door to ask if she’s all right, and whether things are going well at school. But she never comes into the room; she stands in the doorway, as if she just happened to be passing.

  About once a week Stephie is invited to the dining room for dinner. The rest of the time she eats in the kitchen with Elna. Sven thinks Stephie ought to be allowed to have dinner with the family all the time. He and his mother have quarreled about it.

  Stephie doesn’t really think it matters. Dinners with the doctor and his wife are stiff and formal and make Stephie feel bashful. When Sven’s parents are around, she and Sven can’t talk the way they usually do. She actually prefers sitting in the kitchen with Elna, at least on the days when Elna’s in a good mood.

  One afternoon Mrs. Söderberg knocks on Stephie’s door. Stephie recognizes her knock, short and emphatic: tap, tap, tap. Elna knocks only once and then waits for a bit before knocking again, while Sven usually pounds out the rhythm of one of the swing melodies he plays in the evenings on the little portable Victrola in his room.

  “Come in.”

  Mrs. Söderberg opens the door. “How is our little Stephie faring?” she asks.

  “Fine, thank you.”

  “How is school?”

  “Just fine.”

  That’s usually the end of the conversation, but today Mrs. Söderberg doesn’t leave.

  “Incidentally, Stephie, we’re having a dinner party on Saturday.”

  “Yes?” Stephie asks hesitantly. “I was thinking … I was planning to go home this weekend. I’ve been here for a month already.”

  “I expect that could wait,” Mrs. Söderberg says, not even formulating her remark as a question. “We’d like so much for our friends to meet you, Stephie dear.”

  Stephie considers. She was really looking forward to going out to the island for the weekend. She’s already phoned Aunt Märta to say she’ll be coming, and her timing is good, since Uncle Evert is going to be spending both Saturday and Sunday in port. Fishermen can’t let the days of the week govern their work.

  Aunt Märta has surely told Nellie she’ll be coming. And Vera’s expecting her as well.…

  But a real dinner party! She hasn’t been to one in several years. A white tablecloth, folded napkins, candlelight, and floral centerpieces. Fine food, and wine gleaming in the grown-ups’ glasses. Like in the old days, when Mamma and Papa had people to dinner.

  “Yes,” she hears herself say. “It can wait another week.”

  She phones Aunt Märta to say that she has to spend the weekend in Göteborg. If Aunt Märta is disappointed, she doesn’t let on.

  The company is coming at seven o’clock, Elna tells Stephie. Early Saturday morning the cook arrives, and even before Stephie and Sven have left for their half-day of school, she and Elna are squabbling in the kitchen. Elna rushes out of the room, her face flushed.

  When Stephie comes home, calm reigns in the kitchen. Elna asks her to help set the large mahogany table. They begin by inserting an extra leaf. Then they lay a soft felt protective cloth on the table and cover it with the shiny, ironed damask tablecloth, with its pattern of vines and bunches of grapes. Elna sets out two branched silver candleholders and a crystal vase that will later hold flowers on the table.

  Stephie starts getting ready in good time. She puts on her flowery dress, the one Aunt Märta made for the final day of school last spring, and brushes her hair until it’s shiny and smooth. She spits on her fingertips and curls her eyelashes, then pinches her cheeks to give them some color.

  Mrs. Söderberg knocks while Stephie is standing in front of the mirror. She turns around, hoping for a compliment on her dress. Looking displeased, the doctor’s wife raises her eyebrows and sighs.

  “Don’t you have a dark, solid-color dress?” she asks.

  Clearly Stephie doesn’t look right.

  Mrs. Söderberg walks decisively over to the closet and searches through Stephie’s clothes. That doesn’t take long, and she obviously doesn’t see the kind of dress she is hoping to find.

  “Just a moment,” she says, leaving the room.

  She returns shortly with a dress on a hanger. It’s a woolen one, so dark blue it looks almost black, long-sleeved and with a little white collar.

  “This,” she says, “will do, I think. Try it on!”

  She stands just inside the doorway as Stephie wriggles her way out of her dress from the island and pulls the dark blue one over her head. Mrs. Söderberg helps her with the clasps at the neck and cuffs. Taking a step or two back, she surveys the results.

  “Perfect!” she exclaims. “Elna has an apron for you in the kitchen.”

  “Apron?”

  “Yes,” says Mrs. Söderberg. “For serving. I did say, didn’t I, that I want you to help serve the meal? Don’t worry, it’s not difficult. Elna will tell you exactly what to do.”

  Stephie’s eyes burn with humiliation. She hasn’t been invited to this dinner party as a guest; she’s expected to be a serving girl in an itchy woolen dress that is much too heavy for this time of year. She feels like tearing the dress off and shutting herself in her room for the evening. But she
doesn’t. At six-thirty she’s in the kitchen, where the cook has pointedly scattered dirty utensils for Elna to pick up and wash. Elna is muttering.

  Stephie gets a little white apron to tie around her waist, and Elna helps her pin a protective bib over the front of her dress. She’s wearing the same getup herself, with a starched white embroidered band in her hair. Fortunately there isn’t a second one for Stephie.

  The guests arrive and are served sherry in the living room. Elna carries the glasses on a silver tray. When Mrs. Söderberg has clapped to get everyone’s attention and has bid them all welcome, she tells them that dinner is served in the dining room. Now Stephie must collect the empty sherry glasses and carry them back to the kitchen. She tries to make herself as invisible as possible, and apparently no one notices her. Not even Sven, who’s guiding an elderly woman by the elbow into the dining room.

  Head bowed, Stephie serves the hors d’oeuvres, little sandwiches she offers from the right, as Elna has repeatedly instructed her: “Plates from the right, platters from the left!”

  When she gets to Sven, she expects him to speak to her, but he continues his conversation with the elderly lady next to him, saying no more to Stephie than a simple “thank you.”

  Hors d’oeuvres, soup, main course, and dessert. Sherry, Madeira, red wine, and port. Gold-rimmed plates, silver cutlery, and crystal wineglasses.

  Elna and Stephie do all the carrying in and out while the guests eat and chat.

  “Yes, please, just a little more.”

  “No thank you, I’ve had quite enough.”

  As dessert is being served, Mrs. Söderberg claps everyone to attention once more. Stephie is pouring liqueur into one of the ladies’ glasses.

  “The hostess doesn’t normally give a speech,” Mrs. Söderberg says, “but I would very much like to introduce someone. This is little Stephie, our lodger. She’s the foster daughter of the fisherman’s family we rented from last summer.”