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

Ebba knew her husband through and through and was able to handle him. He believed that a wife should work in the house and have the satisfaction of breeding children, but spare him a raunchy woman! Karl never understood that he did everything he could to arouse his wife, with the sole aim of having an excuse to punish her for her desire.

Ebba wasn’t like most other women. The philosophy of many free churches was that the woman had to be passive and merely receive her husband so that he could claim his rights. At first, a woman might put an arm around her husband’s neck at intimate moments and whisper that she liked him, but the reply would be a slap in the face. This taught her body to be insensitive and extinguished the glow in her eyes.

Ebba wasn’t like that. She saw through Karl immediately and knew exactly what she could expect and how she could avoid being actually beaten. The lashes he gave her were mostly a matter of form. They never really hurt. For many years, she had really loved her handsome missionary; she knew perfectly well that he depended on her.

But now things had changed. Karl was no longer quite well. He had problems with his stomach and his waterworks and for the past year he had been unable to perform the sexual act, which had really made him cross. Now he truly battered Ebba. Gunilla often saw her mother with bruises and wounds and traces of tears in the corners of her eyes.

It hurt Gunilla terribly. By now, she understood what her parents were up to when they whispered and moaned in the evening, and she began to feel awful and would burrow down under the blankets so she wouldn’t hear them. Her mother had been so strong. Now it seemed that she was letting her mask slip. Over the past year, Gunilla had seen her mother talking more and more frequently with itinerant men and once she had seen her having sex with one of these men when her father was away. They hadn’t seen Gunilla, who had run out into the forest and flopped down on the ground to cool her blushing cheeks against the damp moss.

The poor girl had nobody to talk to about her difficulties, and she became so silent, introverted and nervous that she had to sit with her hands tightly clenched so that nobody would see them trembling or understand the anguish she was suffering. Once she plucked up courage and went to the priest, because he was someone for whom her father had great respect. Gunilla sat for a long time, hands clenched in her lap; she answered the priest’s questions about whether she went to church on Sundays as she ought to and whether she said her prayers every evening. At long last, she managed to ask her question:

“I wondered whether the priest would kindly speak to my father?”

The priest looked at her. He was puzzled.

“Yes,” she said, swallowing because she was so frightened. “Because he beats my mother so badly, and it really upsets me. Mother hasn’t done anything wrong but yesterday she had a black, swollen eye and she wept a lot, which she never does normally.”

The good priest didn’t really know what to say. Karl of Knapahult was an exceedingly pious man who always put a tidy sum in the collection box on Sundays.

“Why does he do that? Why does he beat her?”

“I don’t know. He does it often.”

“When? Doesn’t she cook his food the way she should?”

“Yes, she works hard. It’s in the evenings ...”

Gunilla was blushing now.

After a short pause, the priest said in a firm voice: “Well, then I had better speak to your mother, and not your father! Maybe she can’t submit in the way a wife should. Maybe she’s not compliant? An obstinate and defiant wife can often irritate her husband so that he becomes violent, which would never otherwise be his intention. Ask her to think about that! Or send her over here and I’ll talk some sense into her!”

Gunilla suddenly felt awfully tired. “No, I’ll speak to my mother,” she said quickly. Then she said goodbye and apologised for taking up the priest’s time. The priest nodded graciously.

Gunilla was eighteen now. It was high time she was married because she was such a pretty girl that the boys hid in the bushes to catch glimpses of her when she walked across the courtyard. Once she surprised one of them near the spot where she went to obey the call of nature. This made her so angry that she threw stones at the boy, who dashed away as fast as he could. Another time, two boys hid in the cowshed. They threw themselves at her when she walked in to milk the cows. Gunilla swung the milk pail at one of them as forcefully as she could, and she had plenty of strength after a life of toil and hard work. The other boy she kicked so brutally that both of them ran away, but mainly because she was shouting for help while she fought them. They had a lot of respect for Karl’s paternal anger! But he hadn’t been in. Gunilla had just shouted to scare them off.

Perhaps it was just as well that Karl didn’t get to know about it. Boys? Bumpkins? They weren’t good enough for his daughter. No, she would have to aim higher. When you were unfortunate enough to have only one daughter, you certainly had to be compensated for your disappointment! In recent years, Karl had done a good job of preparing Arv Grip of the Ice People! What an immense relief that Erland of Backa, that rascal and the biggest obstacle, had been sent to Eksjö. Hardly had the young man arrived there when he caught the eye of an officer who knew that Sweden’s King Gustav III wanted broad-shouldered soldiers in his lifeguard. Erland was sent to Stockholm. The smallholding would have to wait.

Gunilla missed him, her childhood playmate. Even so, she knew very well that that time was past and would never come back. When her longing for Erland was tormenting her the most, she would think of the one time that he had visited them. That was when Erland had asked to see her legs. He wanted to know whether they were just as fine as the rest of her.

“My legs?” Gunilla had exclaimed angrily. “You’ve damned well seen my legs before, stupid!”

She had jerked and pulled her skirts right up to her knees. Erland had gasped for breath and blushed, and before she had read his intentions, he had pushed his hand up under her skirt and touched her. Gunilla had yelled with anger and surprise, then grabbed a lump of soil and rubbed it into his face, long and hard and carefully. Then she had run away while he spluttered and spat out the dirt. These were good memories to have when sadness gripped her.

A few days after her unsuccessful visit to the priest, her mother came out of the bedroom with another black eye and a wry, cold, defiant look in her eyes. Later in the day when her father had gone out, an itinerant carpenter came to the house. He said that he sharpened knives. Gunilla had seen him before and knew perfectly well what would happen now. And she was quite right: shortly afterwards, both her mother and the man disappeared.

Gunilla wept. She wandered around the kitchen restlessly and felt paralysed. She was unable to think. She stood for a long while, gazing down the road without really noticing the group of men standing there. Her father ... Two other smallholders she knew ... And Inspector Arv Grip. They were obviously talking about the surrounding fields. Her mother had been gone for quite some time now. Gunilla knew how long those episodes usually lasted. She felt nauseated and had a heavy feeling in her stomach.

The men didn’t seem to be making their way towards Knapahult, so that wasn’t why Gunilla felt bad about it. In apathy and deep despair, she sat down at the kitchen table. A knife was lying there. Gunilla seized it absentmindedly. She got up again and stood by the window. With her eyes firmly fixed on Arp Grip’s straight, strong figure, which seemed to promise feelings of safety and security, she put the knife to her wrist and drew it up along her forearm so that the blood splashed. The pain in her soul exceeded the pain in her arm. Unconsciously, she put the knife back on the table again. Her arm rested limply on the table while the blood dripped on to the floor. Beautiful, red spots on the worn, grey, wooden floor.