Margit Sandemo - The Ice People 29 - Lucifer´s Love

At first, he had laughed in amusement at her connection with the Ice People. Never for a moment had he believed the fantastic stories that she had told him about them one night early in their marriage. She had been stupid enough to confide in him that she was one of the chosen and would have a task to carry out – something he would have to understand when it eventually happened.

The change in him came about gradually. He began to mock her for this “task” she had spoken of. He criticized her more and more. Her aloofness, which he had initially found so fascinating, now bored him, and he reproached her for it constantly. He told her that he had thought he could make her loosen up a bit, and had regarded it as a challenge. But there was nothing behind the façade! This was the way she was: cold and aloof through and through. There was no glow, no fire, in the farthest corner of her soul, as he had thought there must be.

These remarks had had a deep impact on Saga, and she had tried to improve. However, she soon realized that all his criticisms had an underlying reason. He stayed out more and more often at night. Saga would stay at home and be sad, and this was when she began to lie to her mother. Kol was already dead by then. Saga assured her mother that the marriage was certainly happy, she was just tired after the long winter ...

Anna Maria became ill and Saga believed that it was serious. She didn’t live very far away from her old home so she was able to visit her mother from time to time – which Lennart probably didn’t mind. So she went to her mother’s house, planning to stay for a few days, but when she arrived she realized that she had forgotten the medicine she had prepared for her mother. She therefore turned the carriage round and drove home again.

She ought to have known. She ought to have seen it coming, but she hadn’t. The shock was terrible. When she reached the house, she went straight up to the second floor to fetch the medicine. She heard voices from the bedroom and went in to see who was there. She caught them in the act: Lennart and one of her girlfriends – their mutual friend, in fact.

Saga closed her eyes to their staring, horrified looks. Then she turned on her heel and left, as the small amount of love she had felt died irrevocably.

She tried to avoid a furious confrontation because somehow that wasn’t her style. She drove over to her mother’s house and, white as a sheet, explained to her mother that she had a bad cold coming so she could only stay one night.

The following day, she went “home” again. Lennart had had time to collect himself. The woman had left and he had clearly made up his mind that attack was the best defence. He began by hurling insults at Saga and blaming her for everything. What had he got out of their marriage? He’d been living in an icebox, he who had such a passionate emotional life!

Saga hadn’t seen much of that: their sex had always been very proper, and it hadn’t been very frequent either. She merely bent her head and said quietly that she knew that she wasn’t very passionate but that she had tried to be kind and see to it that his everyday life was pleasant.

“And you think that’s enough?” Lennart had said in a hostile tone. “Well, yes, you’re sweet, but if that was the only thing I wanted, I could just have employed a housekeeper.”

Now Lennart was being unreasonable, but Saga had had time to collect her thoughts during her long, sleepless night.

“What do you want now, Lennart? Because we can’t go on like this, can we?”

He gave her a swift, frightened look, which she could read like an open book: The money! Saga’s big inheritance! I’ll lose it!

“Well, er ...” was his vague reply. “What do you want yourself?”

Saga straightened her back. “My mother is seriously ill. I don’t want her to experience the grief of seeing her daughter divorced. If we can maintain the façade for as long as she lives, that is all I ask.”

Lennart panicked. “Divorce! That’s impossible. My career will be over, surely you can understand that? Can’t we ...?”

Thank God we never had children, Saga thought. “Can’t we what?”

Lennart stretched out his arms. “Let bygones be bygones and begin afresh?”

“I don’t think that would be fair on you.”

“On me?” said Lennart. “What on earth do you mean?”

“I don’t love you,” she replied. “As a matter of fact, I doubt whether I’ve ever loved you. Quite frankly, I can’t stand you.”

Lennart was deeply offended. Having been the dominant one, he was now most certainly at a disadvantage. Saga detected something new and frightening in his eyes, something sly and swift. He had never been able to conceal his innermost thoughts. Right now, his eyes were saying: There’s only one way out of this – if she dies, the scandal will be averted, and I’ll inherit all the money!

The very next moment, that look in Lennart’s eyes had vanished, and now he felt openly ashamed. But Saga lied from a sheer instinct of self-preservation: “On the way home, I called on my lawyer. I gave him a letter that is to be opened after my death. He’s been fully informed about what has happened.”

“You shouldn’t have ...” he began indignantly but then fell silent. “Saga ... one single, slight faux pas! Surely you could be magnanimous enough to ...”

“I’ve had enough,” Saga said curtly, turning her back on him.

“Right, well leave then,” he shouted after her. “You and your ‘task’! Just leave and carry it out! But don’t come back again! I’ll just say you’ve contracted a serious illness or something. Then we’ll have a decent divorce, which everybody will understand.”

Saga turned around and looked at him with a glance that made him look down.

“This woman ... do you want her?” she asked quietly.

Lennart shrugged his shoulders undecidedly. “If the way is open ...”

“It’ll be as I’ve just said,” she said decidedly. “We’ll continue like this for as long as my mother lives. She is not to suffer from other people’s follies. Afterwards we’ll see.”

Lennart would have to make do with that. He went over to take her in his arms and appease her. But she broke free immediately. “The door to the bedroom is closed. You’ll have to sleep in another room.”

“You want revenge!” he shouted.

“No, it’s aversion!” she replied and walked away.

No one was to be allowed to see the bitterness in her. Outwardly, everything remained idyllic.

However, something was broken inside Saga. The feeling of having failed was crushing. She, who could have done with all the self-confidence she could muster prior to the task that awaited her, was now unsure, fumbling and subdued. If only she had been given time to collect herself again. Now she would have to face the man she had married, day in and day out, which was a test in itself. For the first time in her life, she sensed what fear meant. The fear of not being sufficiently strong when the moment finally arrived.

Saga was allowed to keep her mother until she herself turned twenty-four. That was when Anna Maria died peacefully, confidently assured that her only child was well. Even on one of her last days, Saga had lied to her. She knew how much Anna Maria was looking forward to becoming a grandmother. When Saga saw what was in store for her mother, she told her that she was pregnant. This was a downright lie, but her mother brightened up and said: “I’m looking forward to that!”

Two days later, she passed away.

Saga left her husband straight away and moved back to her now empty childhood home. Her lawyer had been working – quietly, so that no rumours trickled out – on the divorce all the time. All he needed was to put the finishing touches to it. Saga let him take care of everything; she withdrew completely from the outside world and didn’t want to speak to anybody, least of all her husband.