Margit Sandemo - The Ice People 30 - The Brothers

She might be the one who was in this hospital.

Not that he wanted anyone to die but ...

The door opened. The deaconess entered, leading a woman by the hand.

He tried to say: “Belinda!” but he was so moved that he was unable to speak.

“This is your wife,” the deaconess said and led Belinda to his bed. Her entrance caused quite a stir in the ward, but the nurse told the other patients to be quiet.

“Here’s your husband. Do you recognize him?”

Belinda’s eyes? Good heavens, what had happened to her?

She looked at him with an empty, enquiring expression on her face. She seemed a little frightened. And yet? Didn’t she seem to wonder? As if at a person you know you’ve met but can’t really place?

Something about the man in the bed seemed to register in Belinda’s mind. She was dressed in the hospital’s simple floppy gown, and she was thin and unkempt, but he thought that she was just as beautiful as always. In Viljar’s view, Belinda had always been a beauty even if others might have considered her quite ordinary. He was so immensely fond of her and it hurt him so much to see her like this, beyond all human reason. He wanted to caress her cheek as he always had, because he wanted her to know that it was him. But he didn’t dare show her his hands, didn’t want to frighten her as she stood there, scared, nervous, ready to flee from this virtual stranger in the bed.

The confused look in her eyes! She looked like a lost child.

He could hardly see her because his eyes were brimming with tears.

Then she began to speak.

Viljar got a shock. He understood the meaningless words. He turned to the deaconess and said: “It’s many years since I heard her talk like that. This was how she used to burble to our son when he was a baby. He’s the one she’s talking to now.”

The deaconess said nothing. She was just terribly sad. She thought it meant that the son had been with them in the boat and that losing him was why Belinda was now in a bad mental state.

“Belinda, do you recognize me?” he asked her in despair. “I’m your husband, Viljar! We’ve spent so many years together.”

A shadow glided over her eyes but they were still just as empty as before. Immense sorrow gripped him and he let out a painful sob. He was in a daze: his body and his mind were unable to accept this terrible disappointment, this despair at seeing his dearest friend like this.

There was so much he wanted to say to her. But everything became too much for him, no matter how hard he tried to fight against it.

But Belinda stayed. She sat on the edge of his bed, burbling to him like a baby. The deaconess gazed at her. All Belinda’s movements, her voice and her expressions, were very confusing. She didn’t seem to know who she was dealing with, it was merely a creature who needed her assistance – just as a baby does. This was exactly how her husband seemed to her now: an infant. Someone she could burble to and take care of. The deaconess wondered what was going on in her mind right now and what she was thinking. Her husband didn’t seem to frighten her; on the contrary, she probably vaguely remembered him. But she seemed to be unable to order her thoughts about him and reality.

Poor woman! She must be terribly confused.

The deaconess tried to take her back to the women’s ward. Then Belinda clung onto the edge of the bed with her hands, horrified at the thought of having to leave this man who depended on her.

Depended on her? The deaconess was a true Christian. She didn’t think of her own salvation, but focused on the fact that Belinda felt an instinctive responsibility for the man.

She asked Belinda: “Can you help me cut his hair and shave his beard?”

To her own surprise, the deaconess discovered that this was the way to reach Belinda. Nobody had been able to establish contact with her before, but now Belinda grasped what she was talking about.

It was an enormous step forward.

The deaconess immediately got hold of a pair of scissors and everything else that was needed. No time was wasted at all!

It was as if Belinda’s apathetic mind came alive when she had somebody to care for. She treated the unconscious Viljar so carefully that the deaconess was quite touched. When his beard had gone and his hair had been cut, it was as if a new and more alert Belinda had woken up, and her eyes showed that she was puzzled.

The deaconess thought that sooner or later Belinda would recognize him. Was that really a good idea? Because it would also trigger the memory that Belinda had lost her son. Wouldn’t it be better for her to stay in her present state? In her own fantasy world?

When evening fell, the deaconess had to cajole Belinda to return to the women’s ward. She promised the confused woman that she would certainly be allowed to tend to the man the following day. When the deaconess entered the sickroom the following morning, Belinda was already sitting on the edge of Viljar’s bed, spoon-feeding him with the nourishing gruel they had been giving him recently, which was doing him so much good. He was no longer so deeply unconscious. He seemed to be half asleep, dozing, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to eat.

The other men in the hall were extremely interested in Belinda’s presence. Some were shocked, others were quite cheeky. The rest of them were beyond any human contact and didn’t grasp anything.

But all Belinda saw was Viljar.

The deaconess wanted to speak to the doctor about their progress. He immediately saw an opportunity. “Get them out of here so that we can make room for new patients! The queue is endless. Let her nurse him! He’s getting stronger by the day, and then he’ll be able to take care of her.”

“The trouble is they have nowhere to go!”

“Old Jepsen at Hvidemose needs to be admitted but they haven’t been able to take him because of the shortage of beds. Just let them swap beds with him!”

“Jepsen’s house is out in the wilderness. It’s a miserable little hovel, that’s what it is.”

They discussed the problem a little until the deaconess gave in. As she had become attached to the unfortunate couple, she personally saw to it that they were conveyed to Jepsen’s little house and that they had food and fuel to last them for some time. When they had been brought to the hospital, Viljar had had a purse, which he carried close to his body. The deaconess had taken care of it for him, and now she returned it to him, placing it around his neck where it used to be.

“May the Lord be with you,” she whispered when they had been placed in the cart. He was dozing, as usual, while the woman was confused but happy to have him to take care of. The cart carried the bedridden and very weak Jepsen back to the hospital.

Now Belinda was alone with her dazed patient. She tried to do her very best, though she was admittedly clumsy. She wasn’t capable of taking care of herself, let alone somebody else.

However, there were no limits to what she wanted to do for this man. She didn’t know who he was, only that she somehow knew him and that he needed her. In that filthy little hovel, full of smelly old rags and bad food, among the mice and the lice, there was only one thought in her mind: She wanted her “little baby” to have a good time. She didn’t know how to clean the place. But she fed Viljar and nursed him as if he were a prince. In due course he woke up, but was much too weak to do anything but accept her loving care.

Viljar understood perfectly well that he wasn’t in such a miserable state just from having frozen in a small open boat for an unknown number of days, although those days had been tough. After all, most of the people in the boat had perished, having frozen to death or died from hunger, he didn’t know which. Probably both. No, he was very sick, and he believed he knew the cause. He had an extremely vague memory of pain in his chest and an irritating cough, probably during his first weeks in hospital. The acute danger was over, but he had contracted something in his lungs – he could feel that when he moved or breathed deeply. Once, when Belinda was out, he had had a very bad attack of coughing and had coughed up some blood. He had managed to hide it from Belinda because he didn’t think she could cope with real sickness.