Margit Sandemo: The Ice People 27 - The Scandal

Christer could hear the commotion as the clothes inside the trunk quickly fell into place and the lid went down with a bang. He sighed despondently. “It’s so unfair, but just you wait. My time will come, and then I’ll surprise everyone!”

They continued packing.

It was a little while before Tula noticed Christer’s silence. She stopped.

“What’s wrong with you? You’re staggering around with a glassy stare and a silly smile on your lips. Has someone knocked you on the head with a bat?”

“I’m in love, Mother,” he smiled idiotically. “Finally, after all these years, I’ve found the right one.”

“As far as I know, ‘all these years’ don’t amount to more than fifteen and you didn’t exactly start looking for someone from the time you were wearing nappies,” Tula said, in a matter-of-fact voice. “Who is she? A little nurse at the sanatorium?”

“No, she was more like a patient. Her name is Magdalena. We were together last night. She’s going to write to me.”

“You were together for one night?”

Christer looked at his mother with dreamy eyes.

“It’s not what you think, Mother! It was chaste and pure. A meeting of two souls. And she was so terribly unhappy. I saved her.”

“Saved her? How?”

He had woken up. Had remembered the night in the loneliness of his room. All the magical formulas of that night and how he had, as ill luck would have it, fallen asleep in the middle of a long, intricate and homemade spell against the evil spirits that had occupied Magdalena’s dreams.

“No, I can’t explain. But she’s out of danger now.”

“I see,” Tula said. “And how old is this marvel, then?”

“Thirteen.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” murmured Tula, who had been imagining a cunning and experienced woman who had caught Christer in her net. “I can understand the romance of it, then. Is she sweet?”

“Like a ...”

He was about to say “rose” but that wasn’t the right flower for the pale and delicate Magdalena. “Like a little anemone growing under dark spruces.”

“She sounds fragile. Hand me the chamber pot and we’ll squeeze it in here!”

“Mother!” Christer said, insulted. “How can you speak of such things in the same breath as Magdalena?”

Tula laughed heartlessly.

So the Ice People left Småland and travelled north. The family were getting closer and closer to one another. And closer too came the great confrontation with the shadow of the past: Tengel the Evil.

The one who had the hardest time leaving was Gunilla. She had always had a slight tendency to melancholy. In order to ease her parting with her old home the others suggested that she take all the animals with her. This idea cheered her up, and even though it meant the journey took twice as long, she took along the cows, the sheep, the pigs, the chickens and the dog. And in fact it wasn’t so far from the Parish of Bergunda to Borensberg. The move took them about a week and it wasn’t too far for the animals to walk.

All five of them fared well in Östergötland. Tomas, who had had a successful stay at Ramlösa Sanatorium, set up his workshop in the little town of Motala. Count Posse had helped him to acquire suitable premises. There was also a small house attached to the workshop in which he and Tula and Christer could live. So they actually became townspeople again.

Erland and Gunilla acquired a small farm in Borensberg. Erland had retired from the army with honour, though he still appeared in his impressive full-dress uniform on special occasions. And he would wear his smart shako in the stables and the barn, parading in front of the enlisted cows and calves when no one was watching. It was hard to let go of old habits.

His big day came when Arvid Mauritz Posse put him in charge of working the locks of the Göta Canal. How he bossed about those he considered his inferiors in rank! They certainly weren’t allowed to forget that they had a former officer as their supreme commander. But he was very competent. Endlessly dutiful.

The Göta Canal was in the best of hands, as Erland himself was the first to declare.

Tula blossomed, and dressed in new, elegant clothes. She thought it was exciting to move to a new place and she excitedly kept up with her husband Tomas’s attempts at becoming accepted. It turned out that there were no other instrument makers in the town, so once the musicians heard about him, he quickly got customers. Tula was jubilant and embraced him joyfully.

If he was racked with rheumatism, he didn’t show it. She cared for him so well and he had had such an expensive stay at Ramlösa that he didn’t have the heart to worry her.

Posse ensured that Christer attended a reputable school and he was a good student.

But he never received a letter from his beloved Magdalena.

For the first few months he eagerly waited for the post to arrive every day, convinced that the letter would arrive at once!

But after a while he began looking for excuses. Perhaps the letters hadn’t been forwarded as they should have been, and were still in Bergunda. Or they didn’t know his new address. Most of all he was bewildered by the stupidity of both of them: they should have given each other more information and proper addresses. He hadn’t known his own address then, but he should have got hers anyway, even though she’d asked him not to write to her. North of Stockholm, south of Stockholm. What kind of addresses were they? Motala wasn’t even anywhere near Stockholm.

Then began a long period during which Christer focused all his occult talents on making her letters reach him. He devised numerous ceremonies and arranged a kind of altar in the outhouse, the only place where he could be alone, on which he would fold a piece of paper to represent Magdalena’s letter and send up an offering of incense to whomever watched over postal matters.

Tula saved the outhouse from burning down. She had to use several pails of water.

Then he started to lose hope. Magdalena had forgotten about him. That was how little he had meant to her!

Of course he had asked his father about her. As soon as Tomas had returned from the sanatorium, Christer had bombarded him with more or less obscure questions. How had it been at Ramlösa after Christer had left?

Tomas thought for a moment. The little girl? Yes, he remembered her. The day after Christer left she had approached Tomas, as though she were seeking his protection in some way, and they had talked a little. She wanted to know all about Christer. But they had barely begun to talk before her uncle came and dragged her away.

Christer sighed. He should have stayed to comfort her: he should never have left! His father had no understanding of the sensitive souls of girls. He was the best father in the whole world but what did adults know about what it meant to be young? Only young people knew what it truly meant to live!

Once you reached twenty you might as well die.

In that respect, Christer’s thoughts were just like those of ninety-nine per cent of all fifteen-year-olds.

He went back to listening to his father’s recollections of his time at Ramlösa.

“Yes, and there was also some trouble ...” Tomas frowned as he tried to recall what it had been about, while Christer, on tenterhooks, kept saying, “Yes? Yes?” until Tula had to ask him to stop repeating that.

Tomas was sorry that he couldn’t remember, but he had been receiving treatment from two nurses just when it happened. But he had heard a girl crying helplessly and loudly, and then the sound of a man’s rough voice – it could have been her Uncle Julius. Christer asked what the man had said but Tomas hadn’t been able to hear it. And then what happened? Christer wanted to know. Tomas wasn’t sure, but he hadn’t seen either the girl or her uncle again after that, so they must have left.