Margit Sandemo - The Ice People 21 - Devil´s Ravine

He would have to get her properly married. Then, maybe, he might see some benefit. Gunilla already had a suitor, but Karl thought: heaven forbid. Erland, that useless pup in Backa, was certainly not going to have her. Karl would jolly well see to that! He was aiming higher. He knew perfectly well who was interested in his daughter. Very innocently so far, but as time went by the estate manager at Bergqvara was bound to discover Gunilla’s charms as she grew into a young woman, and Karl of Knapahult would be a happy man.

But Ebba, that stupid fool, insisted on spoiling the girl all the time. She didn’t want to listen when he said that they should try to get their daughter married above her station. Surely Erland from Backa was good enough?

Bah!

Karl moved into the bedroom and stood for a moment by the bed, regarding his wife’s enticing curves, which he could make out vaguely in the darkness.

That slut! Now she had aroused him again. Even in her sleep, she knew what she was doing. He lifted his hand to slap her but changed his mind when he thought of the shock this would trigger. Instead, he conquered the evil desire she had aroused in him, walked over to the window and looked out. Everything was quiet.

What was it he had heard?

The Knapahult farmer was not a sensitive individual but even he could sense that something strange, something evil, was looming on the moor. Was it the work of the Devil?

His smallholding lay at a little distance from the village, right on the edge of the wide, forested moor. No one else would have heard the screams and Karl wouldn’t for all the world talk about it in the parish. Making an idiot of himself, making everybody laugh at him. He still remembered when he had called down the wrath of the parish sinners by announcing that he had received a sign from the Lord that the Day of Judgement was near and that only the chosen would survive. He even knew the day on which it would happen. When nothing had happened that day, he had been the laughing stock of all the other smallholders. He had saved his honour then by saying – which was true – that it was only his intercessory prayers to the Lord that had saved them all. He wasn’t going to get caught out like that again. If he hadn’t been so grumpy and obstinate but instead had spoken of what he heard on the moor that night, the mystery might have been solved in time. What he had experienced was just the first sign, and his silence only helped the evil powers that had gathered in a ravine out in the wilderness. When others began to realize that something was going on up there, in the place they started to call the Devil’s Ravine, it was already too late. By then, no one could link it with the events that occurred elsewhere in the country at the same time.

Knapahult smallholding wasn’t big but it was well kept. It was poor, but no poorer than most other farms in the parish of Bergunda, near Växjö in Småland. Karl’s wife Ebba stood at the window, gazing out at her daughter Gunilla, who had just fed the animals. Karl sat on the bench by the wall, observing his wife while he reminisced gloomily ...

Knapahult was his childhood home, but as he was the youngest son he had no right to inherit it. This hadn’t bothered him in his younger days. Then he had felt the Spirit in him, and knew that he was predestined to be the people’s preacher. Karl journeyed around with his Bible as an emissary of one of Sweden’s many free churches. He had, of course, joined one of the most radical congregations, because he delighted in telling them what a miserable lot they were.

He travelled widely. He was a handsome young man in those days and it was no coincidence that eight out of ten of those he converted were women. Karl voiced his regret, mortifying his flesh in the face of their temptations. Following violent spiritual revivals, when the praying women had knelt before him and shown him their charms in low-cut dresses, with derrieres pointing invitingly upwards as they lay bent over in remorse and tears, he would whip himself with the birch. This was how he conquered the devilish temptations that Satan sent him.

Then Ebba appeared. Goodness, gracious! Ebba had eyes like flames. She had a low-cut dress, and more to hide in it than anybody else. Her waist was narrow like an hourglass and her hips moved provocatively.

Karl fell head over heels in love with her.

He had taken her into his room to be converted in private, because the girl was permeated with the evil power of Satan. For half an hour he fumed and raged against her, threatening her with constant pain; he spoke incomprehensible, rambling words about desire and joy, which he would take it upon himself to rid her of. He had taken out his Bible, but then it all became too much for him. Suddenly, he dropped his chin, gasping, with a glassy expression in his eyes, and fell to his knees in front of the sobbing, shocked young girl. His hands wouldn’t obey him; in fact he was powerless, and he began to rummage in her clothes, groaning and snuffling like a furious bull. He searched and fumbled, and Ebba, who understood what all this was leading to, didn’t stop the handsome preacher but simply twisted herself down onto the floor in a suitable position. His desire had such a grip on him it was like a whirlwind. He tore and tugged at his own clothes; his belt got stuck as he whimpered impatiently, moaning and puffing like an organ pipe. Finally, he managed to get out his weapon. Ebba spread her legs eagerly and sighed devoutly. Karl screamed as he took her but Ebba didn’t, because she had tried it before, but he didn’t notice. He was like a wild boar charging, and never would he have believed that the Devil’s temptations could be so unbearably delightful!

Since then there had been nobody else but Ebba. Day and night, if she so much as swayed her hips, he was ready. Admittedly, in his fury he slapped her even on their first night, but never so hard that it became unbearable. Ebba regarded it as part of the sex act, took the bitter with the sweet and was quite satisfied with him. After all, he was so handsome and all the other women desired him.

They got married, and now he could spend more time converting her, extricating her from the chains of sin. He ground away at her, but it simply inflamed his desire every time and he would end up in her ample bosom, then hate her even more intensely. Because it was all her fault, wasn’t it? He was the stronger one, he was God’s man! She was the one who tried to lead him astray and away from the straight and narrow.

Then he received a message from his paternal home. His elder brother had died, and Knapahult now belonged to Karl. They travelled home at once and took over the smallholding. They had their young daughter, Gunilla, with them. She was their only child as they had lost a young son, and that injustice made Karl hate his wife even more.

Of course, he felt that he was just as much of a magnet to women as he had been in his younger days. Often, however, he would detect a disgusted grimace when Ebba’s glance glided down the rolls of fat around his waist. He saw her nostrils flare in distaste at the good smell of manly sweat he emitted, and once she had said that she thought his thin, white, hairy legs were horrible. That remark had made him so furious that he had beaten her. She wasn’t to complain! Had she completely forgotten all those women who had gone down on their knees for him and were moist down below when he just looked at them? “Well, those were the days,” Ebba had dared to say, and then she had had her ears clipped once more.

Of course, Ebba hadn’t got any younger, but it didn’t really show. It would be more correct to say that she had matured. Her buxom body had become even more voluptuous. She was an incredibly striking woman, something she was well aware of. Karl called her a slut and a whore and all the sinful nicknames he could come up with, but it was mostly hot air. He never seriously suspected her because he was so sure of her adulation of him. He had no idea about the tranquil moments she had enjoyed up in the hayloft with itinerant traders and tramps when he was working at Bergqvara.