The Lily Pond

by Annika Thor

  “Hang on,” says Lilian. “I want a look, too.”

  She reaches for the amulet, but Stephie is quicker, stuffing it inside her coat again. And the bell rings.

  “What did she mean?” May asks Stephie as they head up the stairs to the classroom.

  “Who?” Stephie asks to gain time.

  “Lilian, of course. What was all that about ‘a very special friend’?”

  “Gosh, nothing.”

  “So why didn’t you let her see it?”

  May’s questions remain hanging. They’ve reached the classroom and Stephie has been saved by the bell—for the moment, at least. Stephie sees to it that she and May aren’t by themselves during the rest of the afternoon breaks. But she has a feeling May is giving her funny looks, searching and concerned.

  On the way home she has no choice but to face May’s questions.

  “Stephanie, is there something about Sven you haven’t told me?”

  What can she say?

  “Stephanie, don’t you trust me?”

  “I love him.”

  Now that she’s said it, there’s no taking it back.

  May says nothing. She takes Stephie by the arm and walks silently for a while.

  “May I give you a piece of advice?” she says finally.

  “Like what?”

  “Try thinking about Sven in some other way. Be his friend instead, if you can.”

  “I can’t.”

  May sighs.

  “Don’t you think he could fall in love with me? Not now, maybe, but in the not-too-distant future?”

  “I don’t know,” says May. “The only thing I can say is that if I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t go around waiting for it to happen.”

  “Haven’t you ever been in love?”

  “No,” May says firmly, “and I don’t intend to be, either. Not until I’ve finished school and can have a say about things. Maybe then I’ll get married and have a family. Maybe.”

  “Well, I wasn’t talking about getting married.”

  “Right,” says May, “but where I come from, it’s not unusual for girls not much older than you and me to get married because they have to. Because they’re pregnant.”

  Stephie’s cheeks go red. “Do you imagine Sven and I …”

  “No, no,” May says reassuringly. “I wasn’t thinking that. All I meant was, well, he’s so much older than you are.”

  “Five years isn’t such a big difference, is it?”

  “Maybe not to you.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” May says.

  They’ve arrived at the tram stop and are standing, waiting. May looks at Stephie. Although Stephie can’t pinpoint why, she has a feeling May knows something she isn’t saying. Something about Sven.

  “May?” she asks.

  But the green tram arrives, clattering around the corner. May climbs aboard and waves to Stephie from inside the door. If she has anything more to say, it will have to wait.

  two weeks into the spring term, Miss Krantz announces a test. Stephie has made up her mind that this time she’s not going to make a single mistake. She’ll show Miss Krantz she’s worth an A. She spends several evenings at her desk, hunched over her German grammar book. Sven teases her, calling her a crammer.

  To him, homework doesn’t seem to be very important. His reading appears to have very little to do with school, even though in a couple of months he’ll be starting the long haul of first written and then oral exams that will determine his final grades.

  “I’ll be all right,” says Sven. “And all I want is to pass. A writer doesn’t need an outstanding transcript.”

  Sven is standing in the doorway to her room, with Putte scurrying around his legs, wagging his tail. “Don’t you want to come for a walk with us?”

  “I’ve got to study. The test is tomorrow.”

  “Okay, be boring, then,” says Sven. He shuts the door before she has time for second thoughts.

  The whole auditorium is filled with girls from several classes waiting to take the test. Miss Krantz sits on the stage, watching over them. One of the younger teachers Stephie doesn’t know is standing next to her with a stack of tests in her hand. No other books or study aids are allowed on the writing surfaces. Nothing but paper, pencils, and erasers. Any girl who has a question or needs to sharpen her pencil or go to the bathroom has to raise her hand and wait for the monitor to come by. Everyone who goes to the toilet has her name registered in a black book.

  If you stay suspiciously long in the bathroom, a teacher comes and bangs on the door, although the only light in there is a single lightbulb, painted blue, which gives off such a dim glow you can barely see.

  Stephie is seated along the center aisle, toward the back of the room. A girl from the other first-year class is next to her. May is in the row behind her, and Alice is diagonally in front of her. The chatter ends. Everyone sits quietly, waiting for the teachers to distribute the test papers.

  Miss Krantz passes out tests to the right of the aisle; the other teacher hands them to the left. It seems to take them forever, Stephie thinks, though she knows it can’t really be more than a couple of minutes.

  The purple letters on the paper give off a strong smell of duplicating fluid. Stephie takes a quick look through the instructions and the questions before she begins.

  The big clock on the wall ticks. They have three hours; the test period ends at eleven.

  When the clock strikes nine, Stephie looks up. Ahead of her there is a sea of bent heads, necks, and backs. Some hands fly, light and eager, across the paper; others are more lingering and hesitant, crossing things out and starting over again.

  Alice has raised her right hand. Miss Krantz is on her way down off the stage to see what she wants. Alice whispers; Miss Krantz nods. Alice gets up and walks past Stephie on her way to the toilet. Miss Krantz goes back to the stage and makes a note in her black book. Stephie knows what she’s writing: Alice Martin, 9:02 a.m.-____. After the dash, she will write the time Alice returns.

  Stephie can’t resist looking up again when she hears the bathroom door open. It’s six minutes after nine. Alice spent four minutes in the bathroom.

  Now she’s walking down the aisle to her seat. She’s wearing a dress with a cardigan over it. Just as she passes Stephie’s seat, something white drops from the sleeve of her cardigan to the floor.

  Alice stops and begins to bend down to pick it up, but at that very moment Miss Krantz looks up, gazing across the auditorium. Alice straightens and walks on before Miss Krantz has time to notice. Stephie leans into the aisle to see what Alice dropped. A piece of paper, folded tightly over and over again. Instinctively, Stephie picks it up. Alice turns around. Their eyes meet.

  Stephie slowly unfolds the note under her desk. It’s the German test, but not mimeographed in purple ink. It’s typewritten, with scrawled notes here and there!

  Stephie has a flash of the afternoon in the staff room—the day before the math test, when Alice was rummaging through Hedvig Björk’s desk.

  The paper is burning in her hand. She folds it up very small again, wanting to throw it away without Miss Krantz’s noticing. Instead, she lets her hand glide slowly along her own leg, dropping it on the floor under her seat. Then she waits until Miss Krantz is busy noting down someone’s name in the toilet register. She kicks the note as hard as she can with the tip of her shoe. It ends up in the aisle, diagonally in front of her.

  She has lost time and has to concentrate now. She writes, erases, rewrites.

  “What might this be?”

  Miss Krantz’s voice pierces the silence in the auditorium. Everyone jolts upright. She’s standing in the aisle near Stephie’s seat, a folded piece of paper in her hand. You could hear a pin drop as Miss Krantz unfolds it.

  “This is terrible,” says Miss Krantz. “Someone stole a copy of the test paper. Someone in this room has been cheating.”

  Stephie holds her breath. She wonders wheth
er anyone but her saw Alice drop the note. Well, she certainly isn’t going to say anything. Cheating is wrong, but informing on someone is even worse.

  “Well,” Miss Krantz asks, “whose note is this? Or rather, who took the test from my desk?”

  No answer.

  “All right, then,” Miss Krantz goes on. “Everyone put down your pencils and clasp your hands on the writing surface. No one will write another word until I get an answer. The faster I do, the more time you’ll have to work on your tests. If there is no answer, you will all turn in your test papers exactly as they are at this moment, and be graded accordingly. Understood?”

  Just then the unthinkable occurs. Alice raises her hand.

  “Yes, Alice?”

  “The note belongs to Stephanie, Miss Krantz,” Alice says, loud and clear. “I saw her drop it. I was on my way back from the bathroom.”

  “Stephanie, is that true?” Miss Krantz says, looking right at her.

  Stephie has no voice. All she can do is shake her head in silence.

  “Answer me!” Miss Krantz orders her. “Is it true?”

  “No,” Stephie whispers.

  “Well, whose is it, then?”

  “I don’t know.” Her head is spinning.

  “Stephanie, you might as well admit it,” says Miss Krantz. “Or do you want to ruin the grades of all the other girls, as well?”

  “No.”

  “All right, then, admit it.”

  Stephie doesn’t answer. She cannot admit to something she didn’t do. At the same time, she cannot get herself to tell the truth, even though Alice tried to save her own skin by blaming her. She is silent.

  “Stephanie, please gather up your things and go out into the hall. I will join you as soon as I can get someone to step in for me. The others may continue to work.”

  Silently, Stephie collects her papers and walks to the door. May tries to catch her eye, but Stephie just stares stubbornly at the floor as she walks out.

  like a nightmare, one of those dreams when you’re lost in a labyrinth and can’t find the way out. If she tells the truth now, Miss Krantz won’t believe her. And it would be her word against Alice’s. There’s no question about who Miss Krantz would choose to believe.

  She feels as if she’s been anesthetized. She hears Miss Krantz talking to her, but only isolated words penetrate her consciousness.

  “Extremely serious, cheating … suspension from school … lack of moral fortitude … your background …”

  Why? she keeps wondering. Why did Alice say it was me? Was it because she thought I was going to tell on her? Or was something else driving her?

  “You have a scholarship, don’t you?” Miss Krantz asks.

  Something threatening in her tone pushes Stephie to make the extra effort to listen.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then,” says Miss Krantz. “It won’t be up to me alone to decide on this matter. I will discuss it with your homeroom teacher at the next teachers’ meeting. Until then, you will go to classes as usual. You will, of course, fail today’s test. You may go now.”

  When Miss Krantz dismisses Stephie, it is a quarter past ten. There is forty-five minutes of test time left. The girls will just be starting to make clean copies of their translations.

  Without making a conscious decision, Stephie finds herself walking out of the schoolyard toward the lily pond. The gravel path leading to it is slushy and has been sanded, but alongside the path the snow gleams, clean and white.

  The whole pond is frozen over. The ice is as dark and glossy as the surface of the water was last fall, but it is immobile. Hard, cold, and still. There is only one place where the water is visible, all the way over on the far side, where the red water lilies grew last summer. There must be an underwater current over there keeping the ice open.

  Her bench is occupied by a young couple sitting there hugging and kissing. The girl is wearing a brown beret over her blond hair. The boy has no cap on and his back is to Stephie.

  They kiss for a long time.

  Stephie looks away, wishing they would leave. She pokes at the snow with the toe of her boot, waiting.

  The next time she looks toward the bench, the two have stood up. They’re holding hands and walking in her direction.

  Now she can see the young man’s face.

  It’s Sven.

  She shuts her eyes, as if to erase the image. But when she opens them again, it’s still there.

  “Stephanie!”

  She wants to turn and run, but her feet seem to be frozen to the ground. Eagerly, he pulls the girl in her direction. Now Stephie recognizes her, too. She works at the tavern.

  “Hi, Stephanie,” says Sven. “Are you on a break?”

  She nods. Inside, she is frozen as solid as the lily pond.

  “This is Stephanie, the girl I’ve told you about,” Sven says to his companion.

  “How do you do?” she says, extending a hand. “My name is Irja.”

  Stephie’s paralysis is released. Her heart pounds and her head spins. Irja and Sven. She turns and runs.

  “Stephanie,” she hears Sven shout. “Wait!”

  She heads for school, though she has no intention of going in. What would she do there? They’re going to suspend her anyway and lower her conduct marks; she’ll lose her scholarship and not be able to continue her education.

  None of it matters. The only thing that makes any difference is Irja and Sven.

  “Stephanie!”

  It’s not Sven’s voice. May comes running toward her.

  “Stephanie! Where are you going?”

  May grabs her by the sleeve of her coat and holds her still.

  “Why didn’t you tell Miss Krantz it wasn’t you? I know that note wasn’t yours. I know you didn’t cheat.”

  “Leave me alone!” Stephie screams. “Let me go and leave me alone!”

  She pulls her sleeve away so fast and hard May loses her balance on the icy ground and falls.

  Just as Stephie is about to abandon May in the snowdrift alongside the path, she has a realization.

  “You knew,” she says, turning to May. “You saw them together.”

  “Who? What are you talking about?” May fumbles her way to standing and adjusts her glasses.

  “Sven and Irja,” says Stephie. “The girl from the tavern. You knew, didn’t you?”

  May’s eyes look sad behind the fogged-up lenses of her glasses.

  “Yes,” she says. “I saw them during Christmas vacation. I wanted to tell you, but I just couldn’t.”

  “If you’d been a real friend,” says Stephie, “you would have.”

  She wants to get away from May, away from Sven, away from school and from everyone. Suddenly she knows: she’ll go home to the island.

  “No, you idiot!” May shouts after her. “The reason I couldn’t get myself to tell you is precisely because I am your friend.”

  yaps eagerly from the other side of the front door when he hears Stephie’s key in the lock. Usually no one comes home at this time of day: the doctor is at his office, his wife is running errands or going to the hairdresser, and Stephie and Sven are normally at school. Elna may be at home if she isn’t out grocery shopping, in which case she uses the kitchen entrance.

  “Hush, Putte,” Stephie whispers once she’s inside. She doesn’t want Elna to hear that she’s come in, and start wondering what may be wrong. She takes her shoes off and, still in her coat, tiptoes to her room, leading Putte by his collar. If she doesn’t take him with her, he’ll just stand outside the door whining, and Elna will turn up.

  Putte wants to play, but Stephie doesn’t have time. She has to pack and get out again before anyone notices she’s there. She knows there is a boat around one o’clock, and she has time to make it.

  “Sit, Putte,” she says, and he sits obediently.

  Stephie takes out her suitcase and starts packing. She tosses in all her belongings from the dresser and closet helter-skelter. She packs her framed photos fr
om home among the clothing to keep them from breaking. She removes the sheets from the bed she made that morning, folds the quilt, and puts the bedspread back on.

  When Stephie lifts her jewelry box out of the drawer, she remembers the amulet around her neck. Unlocking the chain, she lets the coin drop into her palm. She leaves it on top of the dresser, for whoever finds it. She doesn’t want anything to remember Sven by. Let him give it to Irja. It certainly hasn’t been a good-luck charm for Stephie, anyway.

  No, she thinks a moment later. Nobody is going to get it. She’ll take it with her and throw it into the sea from the deck of the boat. For now, it goes into her coat pocket.

  When the bells ring noon from the church on the other side of the park, she’s ready. She closes the suitcase and clasps it shut. All that remains for her to do is to say goodbye to Putte.

  She squats down next to him, stroking his shiny coat gently. Putte puts his muzzle in her lap and looks at her with those brown eyes of his.

  “Goodbye, Putte,” she says softly. “I guess I’ll never see you again.”

  Putte licks her hand. He seems to understand what she means.

  “Take care of Sven,” she says, standing. “But don’t you be friends with that … Irja.”

  Her name feels like a stone in Stephie’s mouth.

  She bends back down and gives the little dog a hug, closing her eyes and burying her face in his fur. Then she stands up, takes the suitcase and her shoes, and opens the hall door.

  Before she goes out the front door, she has to set the suitcase down to put on her shoes. As she is bending down to tie them, she hears the sound of a key in the lock. It must be Mrs. Söderberg.

  I’ll tell her Aunt Märta’s been taken suddenly ill, she thinks quickly, and that I’m going home for a few days to help out. Then Aunt Märta can phone to say I’m not coming back.

  But it’s Sven standing in the doorway.

  “Stephanie?” he says. “Where are you going? What’s happened?”

  “Home,” she says. “I’m going home.”

  “Home?”

  “Let me out,” she says. “I’m in a hurry.”

  But Sven is still blocking the doorway. She can’t get past.