Ulla-Lena Lundberg - Ice

They continue to talk of such things, which is good, because if they tried to say what they’re really feeling, they would deeply embarrass the guest of honour. In Doctor Gyllen’s company, you really understand the importance of keeping things superficial. Goodwill is expressed in a different form: several pairs of eyes keep watch on the doctor’s cup and plate, and as soon as her supply begins to ebb someone immediately rushes up with the pot and the platter. When all the plates start to look empty, the vicar and his wife stand up. They have been asked to contribute to the entertainment with some songs. They sing folk songs they grew up with along with some humorous duets, and then they tell the crowd that in June they’re going to make a little tour of their home province with these songs, plus several songs from Åland. They’re going to show off their children, and Petter will be marrying relatives on a virtual assembly line, but the singing will be to raise money for the Health Care Centre. Everyone applauds, and Doctor Gyllen catches their eye and thanks them with a little smile and a little bow.

The half-pill has worn off, and for the first time, she’s forgotten to bring the box. And the worst is still to come, the part she fears, when they gather and sing “Shall We Gather at the River” as a farewell. Although they know she’s not a churchgoer and probably doesn’t believe in God, nothing can stop them. Then the party breaks up. She hardens herself as they come forward one by one and thank her and say goodbye. Younger women whose babies she’s delivered curtsey, somewhat older ones assure her that they will have no more children now that she’s leaving. Patients of all kinds display healed wounds, show broken arms without a sign that anything was ever wrong, assure her that their headaches have lessened and the ringing in their ears subsided.

Thank you, thank you,” she says to all of them. “Goodbye, goodbye.” Many cry. They want to see her cry as well, but that’s not possible. She has trained herself never to show any emotion that might betray her. Finally she walks to the school dock with the Hindrikses. She won’t have to say goodbye to them until tomorrow, and now they surround her as usual, chatting amiably, for the last time. With dismay, a result of the medicine’s having worn off, she wonders what it will be like to live by herself in the clinic in the northern archipelago, without the Hindrikses. Do they understand how much she has loved them, indirectly, in the gaps between pills? Erika Hindriks hasn’t changed since she arrived, but the girls have grown and become young women. She says to them, “Take care of yourselves when you head out into the big wide world.”

Do they realize how painful it would have been for her to involve herself closely in their lives as they were growing up? In them, she has seen the time pass. In the face of their hopefulness, she has watched her own fade. Thank goodness they’re girls. It would have been worse with boys, who would have grown into great louts while she was there, hardly recognizable from the eight-year-olds they once were.

A great many random thoughts go through her head during the boat trip home. Her only defence is silence, never say too much, never reveal yourself. Very impolite, ungrateful, after such a party, but the Hindrikses forgive this too. They’d probably be frightened if she were suddenly to change. If she were to disturb the picture of her they’ll come to preserve. Accept her, ask nothing more of her than what she lets them see.

“How will we manage?” is a question people ask in every house. Five years is long enough to forget what it was like to do without. On the other hand, people have a wealth of terrible stories about people who died of peritonitis, intestinal obstructions, blood clots, gangrene, blood poisoning, because they didn’t get to the hospital in time. “You people from the Örlands always arrive when it’s too late,” is a remark that can be cited in every house. During Doctor Gyllen’s time things have been different. Whatever she couldn’t deal with herself she sent in before it had progressed too far, using the Coast Guard as emergency transport. Now they’re being abandoned. How are they supposed to know, how can they make such judgments? They can’t expect much from a newly graduated nurse, and it will take a long time for her to learn.

“How did we manage before?” is the obvious question. The answer is equally obvious: “Worse.” This is said in every house, but perhaps least of all at the organist’s, where Francine has had a hard time with Doctor Gyllen’s matter-of-fact tone and firm methods. She is aware that the doctor’s praise for brave, capable women having babies does not apply to herself. Francine doesn’t want any part of it, doesn’t want to be present, resists. “No,” she says. “It’s not happening. I can’t do it.” The doctor mentions her four strong, healthy, beautiful children. “They were also born somehow,” she says impatiently. “We try again. We push again.” As if she were the one having the baby. And the boy, of course, damaged, retarded. Hole in his heart. Now dead. For the best, but never again. Didn’t dare ask Doctor Gyllen about birth control, just wanted to disappear, never see her again.

Lydia Manström is now more alone than ever. Not that she and the doctor were close, rather that she took comfort from that fact that they could be. If the opportunity arose, if the circumstances were right. She has something she’d like to discuss. Is it the doctor’s impression, too, that boys and young men force themselves on many of the girls in the period when young people are experimenting and forming relationships? That it’s almost a given that the man, the boy, violates the girl he’s decided will be his? Or that a girl, in the worst of cases, can circulate among several of them? And suffer a merciless contempt, not to put too fine a point on it.

The problem is hard to define. Obviously there are different degrees of willingness and different degrees of resistance. Certainly there are girls who expect it, prepare for it, provoke, entice. That’s the best case. But those who don’t want to. Those who haven’t decided. That can be hard. On the other hand, maybe it’s these very girls who need some kind of physical persuasion. So the question is, doctor, do you see this as a problem? Or is it just life? She herself has brought heifers to a bull and seen how frightened they are, and how eager.

In short, what’s the definition of rape? Lydia has pondered this question for years. And now she’ll never be able to bring it up. Maybe just as glad she never did. She would only have got tangled, implied something that she would have been ashamed of later. Maybe it’s not a problem for other people, not even for the ones who are its victims when they’re young. Maybe in fact that’s the way it is for most of them, and everyone accepts it as the way it has to be. A part of becoming a woman, an introduction to womanhood?

What could the doctor have said about that? The doctor, who is so reserved and strict? For four years, she has imagined that they might talk, quietly and without a lot of fuss, these two who can both keep secrets, and no one who saw them would suspect. There is of course a chance that the doctor would have looked at her with complete incomprehension—a woman with a professional education, a salaried position, the mistress of a farm, chairman of the Martha Society, active in the parish and in public health. And the problem? Well, excuse me, it was really nothing.

Ill at ease, she stands up, takes a swing through the kitchen and into the parlour. There are school papers waiting to be corrected, but nevertheless she takes out stationery, unscrews the ink bottle, dips her pen, and writes.