Ulla-Lena Lundberg - Ice

After midsummer, scruples sweep through the guests at the parsonage, and a few days later all of them are gone. The pastor and the verger cut the grass, and Cecilia curtseys and asks if she can rake. She can keep an eye on Sanna at the same time. She stands with her eyes on the floor and avoids looking at the older woman’s belly beneath her apron, but it escapes no one that she, young as she is, is thoughtful enough to think that the pastor’s wife, in her condition, shouldn’t spend hour after hour in the hay meadow. It takes longer for Signe and Cecilia to rake up the hay now that they’re working at Örland speed. Last summer, Signe had to hurry to barely keep up; the pastor’s wife worked like a whirlwind. It rains in the middle of the process and the hay has to be turned yet again. If the pastor’s wife weren’t so impatient she might learn a lesson from how calmly and imperturbably Signe and Cecilia go about their work. The hay must be turned yet one more time, and the pastor’s wife can smell and see with her naked eye how the quality declines, but Signe and Cecilia move placidly along the windrows—two goddesses of fate who weave and weave. The pastor’s wife suffers and snorts, but then comes a period of high pressure that lasts, and the hay that the Holmens and the pastor cart into the barn, with raking help from Signe and Cecilia, retains nevertheless a decent nutritive value. The pastor’s wife provides the meals and is still so quick that anyone deciding to help hardly has time to rise from the table before she’s already up and running.

Once the hay is in, there is a period of relative calm at the parsonage. Cecilia and Sanna play outdoors in the fine weather, and Sanna asks lots of questions and shows what she can do: climb and run and count to four and, as it happens, five and six as well, and sing “Baa, Baa, Little Lamb”. After supper they sit and read and read until Mama comes in from milking and reads the evening prayer and says good night. Despite the beauty of the summer, Papa spends the quiet days in his study, preparing for his pastoral exams. “I can’t deny that it’s terribly boring,” he confesses to Cecilia, “but it’s a thing I have to do if I’m to become the vicar here. Next year I’ll be happy I did it, although it’s not so much fun right now.”

The pastor’s wife still goes out and milks the cows, but whenever he’s home, the pastor goes with her and carries the milk pails and washes them. It’s hard for her to bend over, and when she sits down to do the milking, she has a hard time reaching the udders and getting to her feet again. But there will be no mawkishness on that score, it’s all perfectly natural, and he ought to know that other women have had a much harder time and have still done what they had to do! On 13 July, she stands in the choir loft and sings “Where the Birches Whisper” at a wedding. The whole church whispers as they turn around, but her stomach is hidden behind the loft railing, which they should have known it would be. She has declined an invitation to the wedding feast. The pastor is there but says his thank-yous early and bicycles home. Those who see him report that he rides like the wind.

On the morning of the fourteenth, the pastor’s wife goes out to the cows as usual. They don’t answer when she calls, so the pastor has to go find them. They’re not as familiar with him, and it takes time for him to drive them back to the meadow gate. She is sitting on a milk pail looking thoughtful. When she starts to milk, it goes slower than usual, and she stops now and again as if listening.

“How are you?” he asks timidly.

“Fine,” she says. “But it may be today.”

Nervously he says, “Shall I call?” Doctor Gyllen, he means, and she snorts.

“No! We’ll wait and see.”

They walk slowly to the well with the strainer and the pails. Petter hauls up water in the pail and washes it out, then he lowers the milk containers so they stand on the bottom. The water is only a few centimetres deep. In a matter of days the well will be completely dry. “With our hay already in, it would be nice to get some rain,” he says. “But for the rest of the Örlanders it needs to hold off another week or so.”

For once, she doesn’t say that the Örlanders have only themselves to blame for waiting too long to make their hay. She walks a little as if she were wading, and climbs the steps slowly. They come into the kitchen, and Mona shows him where she put the big pot with the fish soup she made the evening before, in case anything should happen. Everything is ready, the sheets have been changed, and clean sheets are waiting in the cupboard. He wanders around stricken with tenderness but feeling a little like a young bull following a heifer uninterested in mating. She dismisses him irritably and says, “Stop fussing! What good does it do?”

Nevertheless, she suggests that they eat earlier today, and by eleven o’clock they’ve already got the soup steaming on the table along with good fresh bread and butter. “Goody,” says Sanna. She’s in a frisky mood, and Petter notes that she doesn’t seem to have the least idea that something is afoot. Cecilia looks both worried and uncertain. In her imagination she can see the boat with the doctor sinking so that she herself will have to act as midwife. What is she supposed to do? She hasn’t the least idea! And how will she dare?

The pastor’s wife herself stands up before they’ve eaten their rhubarb pudding. “For supper, there’s soured milk in the cellar, and you can fry eggs and put them on bread,” she instructs them. “Maybe Cecilia would be kind enough to wash the dishes.” It is almost noon. She goes into the bedroom and the pastor follows. When he comes back out, he goes to the telephone and calls Doctor Gyllen.

While the operator spreads the news across the Örlands, Cecilia stands in the kitchen washing dishes. Sanna stands beside her, talking happily and handing her one dish at a time. The pastor comes in and says that maybe Sanna can take her nap in the sauna today, since it’s so warm in the house. Then they can take a walk out to Hästskär and see if they can find any wild strawberries. Sanna is excited at the prospect and again unaware that the pastor has a frog in his throat and is talking oddly. Through the kitchen window they see there’s a boat on its way into the little bay. “It’s the Hindrikses’ hired man coming with Doctor Gyllen,” Cecilia identifies them.

“Thanks be to God,” the pastor says. He hurries back to the bedroom with the news, much more relieved than his wife, who knows that nothing is going to happen right away. Cecilia gets ready, taking Sanna and grabbing a hat and rubber boots and a blanket for Sanna. On their way to the sauna they meet Doctor Gyllen on her way up from the dock. She walks at her usual brisk pace and carries her black doctor’s bag, which the youngsters in the village believe to contain babies. When she’s rummaged around a bit, she finds an appropriate infant to leave behind when she leaves the house. Cecilia’s not allowed to tell that story to Sanna, because the pastor’s wife has told her not to repeat old wives’ tales but to tell things the way they are so that Sanna doesn’t get all confused by a lot of nonsense.

“Good day.” Cecilia curtseys and looks at the ground; Sanna hides on her safe side. “Good day, good day!” says Doctor Gyllen. “So you girls are going out to walk. Good idea.” She walks on, but not as if she were running. Cecilia and Sanna go to the sauna, and of course Sanna can’t even think of sleeping in a new place. She twists and turns on her blanket on the shelf and then sits up, her eyes full of life. Cecilia sings all the songs she knows along with several hymns, and Sanna sings along. Normally, she quiets down after a while, but not today. Cecilia sings several lullabies, but no child was ever more wide awake than Sanna. There are mosquitoes in the sauna, and Cecilia has to agree that it’s not a good place for a nap. But at least they’ve managed to kill almost an hour. Cecilia takes the large dipper from the sauna to hold their wild strawberries, and in boots and sunhats, they head off.