Margit Sandemo - The Ice People 36 -Troll Moon

From dawn till late at night

He got nothing but curses and blows.

The verse was everything a real broadside ballad should be: pompous, clumsy poetry, stumbling rhythms and a halting melody. At times there were several syllables on a single note, at other times you had to extend one syllable across several notes. It was naive, sentimental and tremendously popular. Even now, in the year of our Lord 1927, the broadside ballads were still going. They had had their heyday in the 1890s, but they lived on among the simple-minded and innocent, and would most likely be loved for decades to come.

The ballad of Lindelo was a favourite that year. Christa liked it as well and bore with the miserable waltz in a minor key. The fact that the milkmaid wasn’t the right one to sing it was a different story. She sang it in the worst possible way, with too much glissando and in a sobbing voice.

But wasn’t that the way it was meant to be sung? By one to whom it was addressed? By someone who really liked the song?

Christa had never heard the ballad in its entirety, only bits and pieces. But she was certain that like most broadside ballads it was fairly long. And told the story of a sad fate, just as the milkmaid was now doing as she sang at the top of her voice.

Young Lindelo had a brother,

A sister he also had.

They had no father, no mother.

So Lindelo cared for the little ones.

Then she disappeared back into the barn, giving Christa a friendly smile.

Christa sat swinging her legs, waiting for the foreman, the manager, to come and measure the milk.

She was totally unprepared for what was about to happen.

The moon was showing its sick face here as well. It appeared just outside the small window of the milking parlour, cold and white. It revealed nothing, just held on to its secrets.

“What do you want to say to me tonight?” Christa whispered. “What is it you’re hiding? Why do you seem so sinister?”

The next moment the answer was flung right in her face.

Inside the barn the milkmaids were shouting to one another as the milk splashed down into the pails.

“Monsen’s daughter has arrived. She’s waiting out there.”

“Monsen’s daughter? That’s a good one!” another laughing woman’s voice could be heard saying.

“Well, isn’t that who she is?”

“If she is, my name’s Mads! Ha, you know I was a servant in the parish when her mother gave birth to her. Oh no, Frank Monsen can think what he likes, but I heard what was said at Linden Avenue when the little one came along.”

“What are you saying? Don’t talk so loud or the girl might hear you!”

“Oh, not through these thick doors. No, let me tell, you, a pathetic creature like that overly pious Monsen would never be able to produce such a beautiful girl! No, it takes a great deal more to end up with such a good result! And that family at Linden Avenue know a little more than just the ordinary Lord’s prayer, I can tell you!”

“Yes, but her mother was so pretty.”

“Pretty, yes, but not nearly as beautiful as her daughter.”

“So who is the father, then?”

There was a scraping noise from the milk pails. The door was ajar, which was why Christa was able to hear the conversation so clearly. She sat petrified with fear, straining her ears, but the voices had been lowered to mere whispers. It was obvious that the two speakers had moved closer to one another.

“What?” she heard an incredulous voice ask. “You can’t possible mean that!”

“Well, I’m only repeating what I heard. Of course, no one knows for sure, but there is something supernatural at play, there’s no doubt about that.

“Supernatural? How’s that?”

“I said, I don’t know! But you can tell by looking at the girl! It’s unnatural to be so pretty.”

“I wouldn’t go around spreading gossip like that, if I were you,” the other one muttered. “She’s a nice girl and I’ve always felt sorry for her. Imagine having to go around in such ugly clothes. And she’s bullied, the poor little one – he guards her so possessively all the time. It’s a crying shame!”

They lowered their voices even more, and after a while they started talking about a cow that had an infected udder.

Christa felt like running away. She was so shaken that she nearly sobbed out loud. Her mother – who had been practically sacred to her! Had she cheated on Frank? And did he know anything about it?

No, that was impossible.

Suddenly the women’s voices rose again.

“But how could they tell?”

“They said it had to do with the tongue. There was something wrong with it.”

The tongue? Christa instinctively let her tongue slide back and forth between her teeth. Well, it had always had a small indentation, but ...

Too tight a frenum, the doctor had said when Frank once pointed out the minor defect.

But what was it that boy had said in her first-grade class when she stuck her tongue out at him? A snake’s tongue, he had said. After that she had been very careful not to show her tongue to anyone.

As though that had anything to do with her birth. It sounded awful! But who normally has a snake’s tongue? Supernatural creatures?

Christa couldn’t ever recall feeling as awful and ill-at-ease as she did right then.

Fortunately, the women came out with their pails then, and the foreman came with them. He measured out the milk with his fine half-litre measuring cup with the long handle. Christa curtseyed to him and hurried off, as he licked the tip of his pencil and made a note in the account book of how much milk she had received.

Her eyes were wild with frenzied turmoil as she looked up at the veiled disk of the moon. What she had heard that day had turned her life completely upside down.

But the more she mulled it over, the easier it was for her to accept that Frank wasn’t her real father. It was shameful, of course, practically unbearable, but she couldn’t help the fact that she liked the idea. Hadn’t she always thought that there couldn’t be two people who were more different than her and her father?

She needed to know more.

Of, course she couldn’t mention anything to Frank. That wouldn’t do, and he probably didn’t know anything. But she had to go to Linden Avenue.

There was no doubt that the thought of an unknown father struck her as romantic. She felt a ticklish sensation of excitement alongside a nagging sense of sorrow. She had suddenly become another person, she felt.

For a moment she was a little angry with the other Ice People. Why hadn’t they said anything? She resigned herself to the thought that they probably had good reason for it.

Oh, but she didn’t really believe in the idea of having a supernatural father! But just knowing that she had a father other than Frank was a pleasant thought. For she and he were so utterly different in their tastes and ways of being and in what they valued in life.

So now it was a matter of getting to Linden Avenue. She had to go there now. Go down there and confront them.

So that’s what you wanted with me, she thought, glancing at the moon. To prepare me for the fact that my life was about to be turned upside down. That I would have to start thinking in a different way.

Yes, well, I’ll have to brace myself for whatever is yet to come. Perhaps you have something terrible to tell me about my birth? That my father was mad and is in a straitjacket? Or sitting in jail?

Well, no matter what, he’s bound to be more exciting than Frank, she was tempted to add.

Ugh! How unfair she was being towards him! Poor Frank, who was so kind and so ill!

It was strange that for most of her life she had never thought of him as anything other than Frank and not as “Father”. Yes, when she was addressing him she called him “Father”, but when she mentioned him to others she never referred to him as her father. It was as though she just couldn’t get herself to do it.