Margit Sandemo - The Ice People 31 - The Ferryman

Sidsel said no more about the journey. It wouldn’t do any good anyway.

Instead she started strolling along the riverbank, while her parents sat down, each on their own rock, to rest. Sidsel was small and skinny, and the baking sun didn’t bother her at all. She looked at all the pretty stones on the bank and every now and then would throw one into the water as it rushed past.

She bent down to examine something that was shimmering on the riverbed right by the shore. What in the world was that? She put her hand into the water and felt the current pulling it, but she managed to reach the object.

She held it in her hand and saw that it was just a coin with a strange pattern on it. It looked like letters. Or perhaps they were symbols? The coin was in terrible condition and probably not worth keeping. Still, she dried it on the grass and put it in her pocket. Then her mother called and she went back to her parents. They continued their laborious trudge along the country road.

“Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?” Guri asked her husband.

He wasn’t quite so confident any more. “It ought to be,” he said, ill at ease. “But on the other hand, we should have arrived by now. Everything has changed so much since I came here as a child. What with the railway and ...”

“Idiot!” Guri hissed. “Go and ask those little boys over there by the sawmill.”

They had been going in the wrong direction. It took them several hours to get back on the right road – a mistake that Ove would never hear the end of.

At last they stood gazing at the house with a feeling best described as repugnance. Dusk had fallen and the moon had risen again, but tonight the wind wasn’t blowing. The moon was easily able to bathe its favourite house in its cold green light, completely unhindered.

“What a scary haunted castle!” Guri muttered. “Is that really where your aunts live?”

“This is the right address. But it’s worse than I thought it would be,” he admitted. “It must be ages since it was repaired.”

Sidsel didn’t say anything. She was trembling with fear.

“Well, but they were certainly willing to take in the girl,” Ove said, in an attempt to console himself.

“Well, if you can describe that tiny card they sent as an expression of wanting her,” Guri said. “The girl can come. We will, of course, have to be compensated in the form of a small payment. Full stop.”

“They’re old and probably poor,” said Ove in their defence. “But, come on, I’m sure it will be much cosier inside.”

A broken bell could be heard clanging inside the house when they pulled the cord by the entrance. After a while the door opened just an inch, but no more. There was a heavy chain inside it.

“Hello!” said Ove cheerfully to the person on the other side of the door. “We’ve come with our daughter.”

The door was reluctantly opened and they were let into an entrance hall filled with black furniture, dimly lit by an old-fashioned lamp.

“Hello, hello, dear Aunt ... um ... Gerd, it’s been so long!” said Ove.

Sidsel was staring up at a gigantic cameo brooch, and above that a pair of cold fish-like eyes. Aunt Gerd was shapeless and flabby as well as pallid, and her hair was lifeless and tousled. In the doorway stood an equally pallid but older and more scrawny-looking aunt: Agnes. And in the living room sat the chubby youngest sister, Beate, preoccupied with a game of solitaire and a box of chocolates.

“Come in,” croaked Aunt Gerd. “You’re late.”

Ove muttered something about having made a wrong turn, and after everyone had greeted one another Aunt Agnes said: “Where’s the cash, Ove? Your father was always careless with money, so it’s probably best that we have the money for her board right away, because after your vacation you’ll most likely be broke. I’ve looked into what board and lodging costs these days. And we’ll also have to include heat, wear and tear on the furniture and all the accidents and damage that are likely to occur. And our hourly wages for watching her will be 25 kroner, which is a fair price, wouldn’t you say?”

“25 kroner?” cried Guri in dismay. “But ...”

“Well we could make it 30 ...”

“No, I’m sorry, 25 is acceptable,” muttered Guri.

Their travelling funds would be as good as gone.

“Where will she sleep?” Ove wanted to know.

“We’ve chosen the brown drawing room,” said Aunt Gerd. “We don’t have any spare bedrooms and most of the furniture in the brown drawing room isn’t particularly valuable. So it will suit us best for her to have that room.”

What was best for Sidsel was clearly of no importance.

“But that doesn’t mean that she can be careless with the furniture,” Aunt Agnes chimed in. “They are family treasures and they are of great value to us.”

Indeed, there was more than enough furniture crammed into the drawing room. And if they were family treasures, then the aunts were very modest people. The room resembled a store for the kind of items antique dealers don’t expect to sell. There was furniture from various eras arranged in strange groupings, and decorative objects of little value occupied every single nook and cranny. Ove made his way among tables and chairs and whatnots and huge, painted plaster statues to a wobbly bed.

“This is where you’ll be sleeping, Sidsel,” he said encouragingly to the little girl, but her tearful face told him that they had made a terrible mistake in bringing her to his aunts’ house. He understood. He wouldn’t have wanted to stay there himself.

Guri pulled him aside for a small private conversation. She did not look happy.

“Is there really nowhere else for Sidsel to stay?”

He shook his head. “Anyway, it’s certainly too late now.”

“And we’ll have to stay the night here too,” she hissed. “And be delayed for a whole day. But at least that means the girl will have some company tonight. But we can’t stay in here. There’s not enough room for all of us.”

After much quibbling and complaining, the aunts finally agreed to let them sleep on the floor of the best parlour. But first Ove had to offer to pay for it. Because it was going to cause the aunts a lot of extra trouble, they claimed.

But the satisfied look on their faces as he handed them more of his hard-earned money indicated that they could easily be persuaded.

Sidsel stood by the window. Only the brightest stars were visible against the clear light of the moon. The only stars that could be seen of Orion were his shoulders and belt. They looked like a pair of tiny, malicious eyes and a mouth with a wry smile.

The moonlight fell across the brown drawing room, which was a very suitable name for it. The light fell on Sidsel’s bed where she lay quietly sobbing and miserable. Eight endless days and nights lay before her in this nightmare of a house, staying with her aunts who clearly loathed the sight of her. If only she had been allowed to go along with her mother and father! But they kept saying things like now they would “finally be alone,” and this was their chance to “try to patch things up between them” and other silly things.

She would run away tomorrow, that’s what she would do! It didn’t matter where she ended up, or whether she had to freeze and starve, or whether she got sunburnt or had to sleep in the forest. Anything would be better than these cold aunts and their abominable house!

Sidsel suddenly froze and peeped out over the covers. It was hard to distinguish what was what in the chaos of furniture, but she couldn’t see anything unusual. She heard something, though. Something indefinable. There were several rooms between her and the one her parents were sleeping in. It was no use whispering to them. And she didn’t dare shout, for what if there was someone else in the room?