Ulla-Lena Lundberg - Ice

Petter has noticed a happy, triumphant note in Fredrik’s voice, as if he were biding his time. “Yes, indeed,” he says. “I hardly dare say it out loud for fear it will vaporize like dust, but yesterday we passed a proposal for a new parsonage. Not just a confirmation of the decision that already exists but a decision about implementation: labour allocations among the villages, appropriation of money from the Central Fund. When the motion passed, we stared at each other as though it couldn’t be true. Good heavens the coffee we drank when it was over!”

“Congratulations,” Petter says. “Do you think that’s the end of the delaying tactics?”

“If only it were. Technically, we’ve come significantly closer to the goal, which will make it harder to delay the process. I feel quite certain on that point. But you can bet your life that they’ll be in very fragile health when it’s time to start building.”

“That’s excellent news, in any case. How did it come about?”

“In January we had a vestry meeting in the parsonage during the worst cold snap all winter. I made sure it was freezing; we lit the fires in the tile stoves just before they got there. We didn’t even need the wind for them to get the hint. The cold came in through the walls and the floor right on cue. The lamps blew out, the curtains fluttered. The coffee was cold before you could get it to your mouth. An icy chill crept up your legs if you sat still for half a minute. The children had colds and coughed and cried so you could hear them through these thin board walls. It was perfect.”

Petter laughs. “Out here, everyone knows that when you come to the parsonage you leave everything on except the outermost layer. Sometimes even then someone will go back for their coat. We’ve had fur hats at the table, and lots of wool scarves. They take those for granted. That’s what it’s like here in winter. In any case we have wood, which is more than I can say for some of the others out here.”

“Maybe it’s time to ask for a new parsonage yourselves.”

“I think I’ll wait until I’ve got my pastoral degree and then see if I can get posted to this parish. Now I’m afraid someone will snatch it out from under my nose. I should have kept quiet about how much I like this place.”

“You seem quite certain.”

“I am. How’s it going with your own degree?”

“Fine thanks. My dissertation is almost finished. I’m thinking of going up for the exam this spring. Then we’ll start building, and in my free time I’ll keep an eye out for available parishes. The parsonage will be done in two years, and our furniture will be on its way to the mainland. And you?”

Petter’s sigh makes the curtains flutter in his study. “Oh my. I had hoped to make a lot more progress than I have. I go absolutely cold when I think that it will soon be spring. We have a thousand plans for the garden and the farm. And then we’ll have all the guests and the preachers. It’s hopeless.”

“Plus I’ve heard you’re going to add to your family.”

“How in the world do you know that?”

“I’ve got my spies. Seriously, you need to know you can’t keep anything secret out here. When will it be?”

“In July. I’m stunned.”

Fredrik has a good laugh into the phone. “We heard about it well before Christmas. But Margit will be happy to have it confirmed. We’ve got nothing on the way, but if that should happen, I’m sure you’ll hear about it before we know it ourselves.”

“Did they say if it will be a boy or a girl?”

“You’ve already got a girl, so of course they think it will be a boy. They call him Little Petter. The priest’s boy. Etcetera.”

“Well, well. Like I’ve said, the people out here are interested in people. I wonder if they know when I’ll be ready for the pastoral exams. It has to be this autumn at the latest. I’ve made up my mind.”

And they go on talking. “Dear Brother” is the way the clergy address one another in letters, and that is precisely what Petter feels towards Fredrik, the older brother he never had. As they fulfil their obligations in their respective parishes, matters often arise that they need to discuss. If one of them doesn’t call, the other one does. One day Fredrik hears an odd rumbling and a chair scraping as if Petter were leaping to his feet. Fredrik interrupts himself. “What’s happening?”

“It must be the ice breaking up!” Petter cries. “I have to go out and watch. Forgive me, we’ll have to talk later.” He hangs up and rings off and hears his father pulling on his boots in the hall. “I’m coming,” he hollers. “Mona, what are you doing? You have to see this!”

It doesn’t matter that the dough has finished rising and needs to go into the oven. He lifts the trough out into the hall, where it’s cold and the yeast will stop working, and helps her get her boots on. He sweeps a quilt around Sanna and rushes out onto the steps. Father Leonard is already on his way to the bell tower and starts climbing. He throws open the shutters with a bang. “Come!” he cries. Mona takes Sanna from him. “Go on up,” she says. “We can see fine from down here.”

And it’s true, they can see and hear the ice breaking up from where they stand on the bell-tower hill. But from up in the tower, there is a view of the whole sea. All the way from the horizon in the west to the cliffs, knobs, skerries, and bedrock of the island world to the north and northeast. The entire landscape holds on tight as great shelves of ice climb across each other and heave themselves onto granite slopes. Suddenly the bays are open and the water surges and leaps and throws itself over the moving ice floes, which crash into each other with a great banging and cracking. The shores are lined with a border of growlers piled up so tightly that they butt and bellow among themselves. They push right across the smaller skerries and scrape them clean the way the glaciers once did, stuff themselves up onto larger islands and build huge jousting, shoving logjams. Out towards the open sea there are streaks of black and green and violet that combine and expand while the ice cover moves in waves, creaking and complaining, breaking and bawling. Farther out they can hear the thunder of the open sea as it tears itself free. There is a golden streak at the horizon from the sunshine of the day, but the deepening twilight brings darkness to the land. Silvery and white, the ice towers up against the blackness. Father Leonard has tears in his eyes. Petter stands in awe.

Down below, Mona is on her way home with Sanna. She is struggling to get free, and although he can hear nothing because of the rush and the roar, he knows that she is squealing and calling and wants to come up to him and that Mona is repeating impatiently that they’ve already seen the ice breaking up and there won’t be anything more. No point in standing out here freezing and catching cold for nothing! Once again, Petter feels that he has failed his daughter. Of course he could have carried her up the steep stairs and kept her warm so she could see. For Sanna, the important thing is to be with him, and all too often he leaves her behind.

He and his father look at to each other again and again and say, “To think that we got to see this!” But the wind that pulls apart the ice is terribly cold once the sun has set, and soon they have to close the shutters and feel their way back down the steps. Tottering and dizzy. What a display! What power! In his head, Petter is already composing his Pentecost sermon about breaking the ice in the world of the spirit, when all the dams of doubt and scepticism will burst. He has now felt rapture in a concrete form and can transfer it directly to the Divinely gifted rapture that loosens our chains and lets us look straight into the world of bliss.