Ulla-Lena Lundberg - Ice

Now it could not be more silent, or closer to the moon. The pastor and his wife shiver and put their arms around each other. Their steps squeak in the snow that lies here and there on the ground. The lamp burns in the parsonage window. The sheep in their pen, the cows in their stalls, Sanna in her bed. Peace at last on earth.

THE HEALTH CARE CENTRE is a gift to the Örlands, but most of all to Irina Gyllen. It is like a lesson in how long-range planning can produce results. How quick the Örlanders are to cite the old maxim, “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” and how easily it comes to Irina Gyllen’s lips when she’s talking to the district doctor. As the plans begin to take more concrete form, so Irina’s hopes grow that the series of quiet inquiries she has made will help her get in touch with her son and eventually bring him to Finland. You need patience while the stones are carried to Rome and the inquiries go unanswered. But the fact that they’ve been made means that a growing number of people are aware of the case, and among them there must necessarily be a few who know the boy’s fate. They do not yet act, but a foundation is being laid, and their knowledge shortens the path to action. Even in the Soviet Union, material conditions have improved since the war, so the boy’s physical situation is less a source of concern that it was earlier.

Especially during the meetings, surrounded by shrewd, self-confident Örlanders, she is able to take courage. She can also let herself take pleasure and amusement in the touching form of democracy they practise. The constant voting and the straightforward distrust of the opposing side is like a lesson in democracy. Oh, if the wretched Politburo could be dragged in, bound hand and foot, and learn how it’s supposed to work! The result is not guaranteed to be good, but the process is honourable, and the project creeps forwards. At times it takes great leaps: when the provincial authorities approve the site and the blueprints, when the first order for materials is called in by the magnificent Adele Bergman, when the first boatload of cement and lumber arrives.

When it comes to her own private project, she can’t help being gripped by anticipation even as she’s seized by panic and impatience. This bitterly cold winter, she sometimes wraps her fur coat around her shoulders and stands on the steps and listens. As long as there is open water, there is the comfort of knowing you can always get away by boat. Now, in this absolute silence, it feels more as if an unseen enemy could attack. Anyone at all could approach silently and invisibly across the ice. Idiocy! Fear of shadows! For shame! Here there is no need to flee, no danger threatens, all is well. Calm. Patience. A cup of tea, a sleeping pill, to bed. She locks her door from the inside, telling herself that the Ministry of Health requires that all drugs be kept under lock and key. Not untrue.

Uninvited, the cold comes straight into the Manströms’ farmhouse, its walls full of wormholes. But Lydia feels younger when she can travel on the ice. Freer, more agile. She takes the kicksled to school, arrives in the morning from the sea and disappears in the afternoon out towards the sound. Like a sea sprite, like who she is. Arthur Manström’s head is full of stories about mermaids and sea sprites, but he doesn’t know he himself is married to one. The sea sprite adapts and lives among people as one of them, but when her boundaries are overstepped, she makes for the sea. That knowledge gives her the peace of mind she needs to stay. Now she steers the sledge into the Manströms’ home bay and goes ashore and in. No one at home except Tilda, who has the coffee ready. Despite being told repeatedly, she always makes it too early and lets it stand and simmer on the stove, God only knows how long. It is hot, at least, and she peels off her plush outer coat, leaving everything else on and pulling on fingerless gloves before sitting down to drink it. A sugar cube between her teeth, coffee in the saucer, the saucer raised in a lovely hand, sipping elegantly. Butters a piece of bread, discusses the temperature outside and in. Seventeen degrees by the stove, six by the window, thirteen in the parlour, minus twelve outdoors. Cold, but refreshing. “The ice is wonderful,” she says to Tilda. Tilda tells her of the traffic she’s seen from the kitchen window. Horses have been out hauling hay from the island hay barns and boys have been out doing what boys do—ducking their work and skating off and ice fishing. But soon the ice will be so thick they’ll get tired of boring holes.

When it’s this cold and brisk, it’s easier to get up and go into the bedroom with her bag of schoolbooks, change quickly from blouse and jacket and school skirt to everyday clothes. Wool all over and finally a big wool shawl, a wool scarf on her head and fishing mittens on her hands. Ought to get started on supper, but sits down instead and starts a “Letter from the Skerries”, a regular feature in the Åbo Reporter :

“How are things out there?” people ask, sympathetically. “Fine, thank you,” we answer. We’re not being brave, it’s the gospel truth. Now that the ice has set, our boundaries have increased a hundredfold, and we’ve got elbow room and polished floors as far as the eye can see. If you care to venture out here, you will see a jolly dance—old and young finding the shortest distance between two errands, giving us traffic like that in New York City but on skates, sleighs, and sledges. A pile of hay glides by over here, a load of sand over there, farther out in the bay comes an Örland grandfather in a go-a-courtin’ sleigh loaded down with goods from the store and Brunte between the traces, as sure of foot as when he was a colt. Boys skate by so fast they are mere streaks, and the smaller children make glassy sliding tracks closer to shore.

“Cold?” you ask. Yes indeed, bitterly cold, but no colder here than in the city where you live. But lonely? Absolutely not!

But she has to stop. There are too many other things to do. Even those are a pleasure, for now that the fire in the stove must be kept going pretty much all the time, she can make baked dishes in the oven that always come out right and that everyone likes. Nestled down into their hay bales, the hens are puffed up like rabbit-fur muffs in the cold, but they are still laying. There is whole milk warming in a spouted bowl. She breaks a couple of eggs into the milk, whisks it a few times, and pours it over sliced potatoes, onion, and salt herring in a baking dish. A few pats of butter on top and into the oven, several sticks of wood onto the fire, and so, an hour later, a splendid, steaming, golden-yellow dinner. Fresh baked bread and home-churned butter to go with it. She will write about that in her next letter when she has time.

By the time Lydia has put her herring dish in the oven, Adele Bergman has closed the store and gone home to the attic apartment. Elis is at home—where else would he be?—and has the coffee ready and warm. She has brought a length of coffee cake that she purchased at the store, which they eat with their coffee. And three hundred grammes of forcemeat that she will fry for supper.

“Lots of people at the store today,” says Elis, “now it’s so easy for them to get here. It’s funny to see them coming on sledges when you’re used to seeing them in boats.”

“Yes,” she says. “There’s almost a party atmosphere. And nearly everyone buys a little something extra. The organist’s boys were here and bought tobacco. They waited until Birgit was alone at the counter, but I saw them from the office. Except this time I didn’t go rushing out and give them a lecture. I let them buy it, but I wonder if I should tell the organist. Sometimes I think we ought to take a vow of secrecy at the store. There’s no other place to shop, someplace where no one knows you, and where are those boys going to get tobacco if they can’t buy it here?”