Ulla-Lena Lundberg - Ice

Mama flares up. “Hush! What is all this constant whining! You’re impossible! Stop it!” She jumps up and grabs a dish cloth, wipes up the soup with big swipes of the cloth, swiping Sanna’s face as well, who is now wailing. There is nothing here for a natural conciliator like Petter Kummel to do, only draw in his head and hope that the storm will pass.

“Now eat!” Mama commands. She shovels soup into Sanna, who doesn’t dare do anything but swallow. Papa can see that she’ll throw up before the evening is over. The day that began so well with church and best wishes for a good journey for those travelling to market has gone off the rails and overturned in a ditch. Sanna is the scapegoat, just one and a half years old, not old enough to understand that she should get out of the way and let her parents reproduce.

Papa stands up and lifts Sanna from the table. “I’ll go and put her to bed, and then I’ll wash the dishes. Just sit and rest for a few minutes. Have you even opened Thursday’s paper that came yesterday? Darling, don’t be so angry.”

Mama stands up also and snatches Sanna away from him. “Potty! And then she has to be washed! Put her to bed, indeed!” she snaps.

In fact, Papa knows the routine, but when Mama is mad he suffers a kind of paralysis and loses a good deal of his common sense. “I can do all that,” he says.

But just as Mama taught Apple and Goody a lesson earlier this evening, she must now teach Sanna a lesson as well. Nothing is easy. She demands submission, but neither of them knows how. Papa sits in the parlour and pretends to be deaf while Mama is severe with Sanna, who tightens up and produces nothing in the potty and who screams and struggles when she’s washed and sure enough throws up on the kitchen rug.

“Yuck!” Mama cries. “For shame Sanna! What a mess!”

Papa looks in horrified. “How’s it going? Can I help?”

“Stay away!” she shouts, and Sanna’s defender retires. She is alone with a force of nature that Papa sometimes tenderly calls his wife. Her distress is stretched to its absolute limit before she is finally dumped into her slatted crib. The pastor advances to perform his calling and read the evening prayer, but he is sent away. Mama delivers a “Now I lay me down to sleep” as if it were a call to battle, and rounds it off with “Not a sound! Now go to sleep! Good night!”

Blows out the lamp, leaves Sanna in the dark and goes. There’s a light in the parlour, and Sanna can hear them talking, but she is utterly forlorn and cries and cries. Then falls asleep.

So the pastor’s wife is hardly in the mood, and the pastor feels inhibited and inadequate. Still, he wants to show his goodwill, so he puts his arm around her shoulders and tries to turn her towards him. She pulls free energetically and snorts as only she can. “After a day like this, it’ll be exegetics for you,” she says. “And a letter to dear mother,” she adds sarcastically. “And I need a bath. Where will I find the strength to deal with it all?”

Now is not the time to say that if anyone can find the strength, it’s she. He wishes he had some errand in the village he could retreat to. A sudden call to a deathbed or some other watertight reason to disappear. Too late, it occurs to him that he could have started doing the dishes while she put Sanna to bed. Now she’s already in the kitchen, banging around, the door closed to the hall and his study in order to save heat. No fire in the study, where it’s a bit cold and raw, but at this late hour it doesn’t make sense to build one. Shivering, he sits down at his desk, his books within reach, church law completely lacking in insights into the vacillations and miseries of ordinary human beings.

There is reason to fear that the whole reproductive scheme will get badly sidetracked, but fortunately the couple’s youth makes it possible for them to make a sudden change of course. A night’s sleep works miracles, and had it not been for Sanna’s waking up early, something might have happened that very morning. Sanna has a baby’s short memory and wakes up free of last night’s abysmal unhappiness. She smiles and coos when she sees her beloved idol and says “Papa morning” and, for the sake of fairness, “Mama morning”. She is happy and good all day and falls asleep that evening without a murmur.

So the pastor and his wife lift her slatted crib into the study and return to the bedroom. “Wow, it’s cold! Get in quickly! Oh, your feet are freezing.”

While the market folk are away and the Örlands catch their breath after all the hectic activity, the parsonage is steaming hot. Mona’s passion is as powerful as her rage, and Petter has good health and staying power. Even before the market boats have returned, weeks later, the pastor’s wife can say with certainty that she is with child.

BY THE TIME THE MARKET TRAVELLERS RETURN, autumn has taken a great leap forward. They have done well. Post-war Finland cries for salt herring, hazelnuts, wool yarn, everything. Lovely wads of cash warm their breasts, the men are dressed like gangster bosses, with padded shoulders and, here and there, the gleam of a new gold tooth. The children’s cheeks are puffed with goodies, the women have dress fabrics spread across their kitchen tables, scissors poised hesitantly above the patterns pinned to the material. There are new oilcloths, cooking pots, two or three battery-driven radios, shiny shoes, winter coats, nylon stockings. Solvency soothes them, the fishing is over, there is no rush.

He sees new sides of his beloved parish constantly, so many expressions on their graphic faces, so many words in their mouths, the pastor takes joy in every reunion. People stay ashore and are sociable and content and go happily to parties and Bible study in the villages. The Public Health Association holds a members meeting about the Health Care Centre, which will be built partly with donated money, partly with the labour of the Örlanders themselves. The membership consists of the pastor (chairman) and Irina Gyllen (secretary) plus thirty members, most of whom are also members of the local council and the vestry. Among them are the organist and Lydia Manström and a carefully balanced selection of worthy persons from the two halves of the community. Plus the manager of the Co-op, Adele Bergman, a key figure as the person who requisitions building materials and furnishings.

The organist has told him that the two blocks are equal in strength. The priest himself and Doctor Gyllen are the wild cards. Before the meeting starts, the villages count their troops and a noticeable unrest is discernible. The east villages have fifteen members present, the west villages the same. Doctor Gyllen will vote strictly in accordance with the best interests of the Health Care Centre, not specified in advance, while the pastor is thought to lean towards the west on account of his close friendship with the organist. If both he and Doctor Gyllen vote on the west side, things will go badly for the east villagers. Gustaf Sörling is seen to stride to the telephone, turn the crank and ask to be connected to Erik Johansson, the only member of the steering committee not present. Something that sounds like an order is discharged into the receiver. Gustaf Sörling rings off and walks to the rostrum, leans forward and wonders if the meeting might be delayed for a short time so that Erik, who’s had some trouble with his horse, can get to the meeting.

“Yes of course, by all means,” the pastor says, knowing that everyone will welcome the opportunity for further intrigue. It takes a good long time for Erik Johansson to appear, wearing a suit jacket thrown over everyday clothes, and with a bad cold. He slinks in on the east side and gets his instructions from Gustaf Sörling, who then nods to the pastor.