Ulla-Lena Lundberg - Ice

He grabs the wool sweater and pulls. The priest comes easily, limp, just a short way, and then Brage feels a tug on his own line as the men give a hand and get them both up quickly, Brage lively as a beaver and the priest dead, a white face in the dark, wet hair, a motionless body. Brage tows him to the edge of the ice and gives orders in rapid gasps—the sledge first, the lightest man behind it, the others behind him ready to pull back. Here. Take him. Back away all of you. Brage himself gets out with almost no help, crawls a ways behind the dragged body, tests the ice, stands up and slides forward, turns the priest on his stomach and tries to get the water out of his lungs.

Someone throws a coat over him, his boots come skittering. Julle shouts, “You need to get somewhere warm, both of you. Run Brage, you’ll freeze to death!”

At the same moment, the organist approaches on his kick sledge, having risked his life at full speed all the way from the southern tip of the west villages, with his ice pike and his sheath knife ready to hand. “Is it him?” he shouts.

“Watch out!” Brage yells. “I’m not going to drag up anyone else today!” They all laugh, a short, voiceless guffaw which is more frightening than a call for help.

“We need to get him up to the parsonage,” Julle says. “Lucky you’re here, since you know his wife. Grab hold and let’s go.”

They leave the sledges, ropes, and drags by the church dock and then they walk quickly with the body between them and their flashlights twinkling, while Brage half runs up the hill, swinging his arms to beat his body. Knows as well as the priest knew how to keep warm if you’ve fallen in the water.

The verger comes to meet them. “No. We’ll put him by the stove and do everything we can.”

The priest’s wife in the door. “Is it him? Thank you, all of you. Carry him into the kitchen, it’s warm there.”

It’s now midnight. The priest lies in front of the stove as if he were sleeping. Soaked through, but they’ve seen him that way before. Brage rolls him onto his stomach and starts working on him. Water spurts from his mouth, there is hope. “Let me take over,” the organist says. “You need to dry off and get something hot into you. Then we can take it in turns.”

“Of course,” the priest’s wife says. “I didn’t see. Change clothes by the tile stove in the dining room, it’s warm. I’ll get some of Petter’s clothes, although he’s wearing his warmest things.” To the others she says, “Signe will give you coffee. Please sit down. You must be frozen stiff.”

Signe shoos them out of the kitchen with the coffeepot in her hand, Mona runs to the bedroom and grabs trousers, underwear, a shirt and sweater and gives them to Brage. “Thank you,” she says. “Without you, this could have ended badly.”

They all look at each other, then into their coffee. Does she think …? Or is she just trying to persuade herself. But she knows. You know, but you hope. When she’s back in the kitchen, they go to the study, close the door and make phone calls. To the hospital—drowned and dead. Is there nevertheless something they can try? Brage comes in when he’s dressed and talks. The hospital confirms what he already knows to do. However pointless. Must anyway try. They also talk to the operator and confirm that it was the priest and that he is dead and leave it to her to spread the news. Brage comes in again and asks them to call the homecare aide. “Tell her I’ll come and get her in the morning, early. They’ll have to find someone else for the Bergfolks, where she is now.” They also call their families to tell them they’ve found the priest dead and will soon be home, there’s nothing more they can do. Then they greedily drink more coffee, which Signe has kept hot. Those who feel superfluous start pulling on their coats, look in at the kitchen where the stove and the oven are spreading warmth. The priest on the floor, limp in Brage’s hands, the last time they’ll see him, they all think. “Goodbye then, and thank you for the coffee,” they mumble to his wife.

“Goodbye and thank you,” she says, smiling appreciatively the way people do when they say thank you. The organist has taken over from Brage and is working like a smith at his bellows. “Thank you for coming,” she remembers to say. “Are you tired? Should I take over for a while? How do you think it’s going?”

“We’ve got out a lot of water,” the organist says. “That’s good. Now we’ll turn him over. I’m going to see if we can’t get his heart going, that would be best of all. Forgive me, I have to press so hard his ribs will creak.”

Mona tries to concentrate on finding a pulse. Nothing at his wrist. Not on his neck. His temples are still. Then she sees the terrible black-and-blue bruise on his forehead. “Oh my. He hit his head badly. But otherwise he doesn’t look so bad. Not rigid from the cold.”

The organist is working intently. He doesn’t need to say that below the surface, where Petter lay, the temperature is above freezing. And then you don’t go stiff. And it’s too soon for rigor mortis.

When Mona searched for a pulse, she also looked at his wristwatch. Half past nine. That’s when he went through the ice, and cries were still heard a little more than half an hour before he was found. He wasn’t on the bottom for long, there’s still hope. He’s young and strong. “Are you tired?” she asks again.

He thinks maybe it would be good for her to work on him herself, to feel for herself that there’s no life in his body. They got his airways open a long time ago, they’ve been fighting to get his heart going for more than an hour, but there hasn’t been the tiniest response, not even a spasm to indicate that some nerve impulses are still functioning.

She knows her first aid, no question about that. She labours by the hot stove until the sweat is on her brow, she groans the way he would groan from her treatment of him if there was the least life left in his body. But he reacts to nothing they do. After all their efforts to bring him back to life, he now looks much more dead than he did when they carried him in. Brage has braced himself with a cup of coffee and a sandwich in the dining room, telephoned the hospital, and comes back into the kitchen. “Let me,” he says.

Again she sits on the floor beside him, trying to find a pulse but then just sitting, holding his hand. His hand that has been so warm. Torn by the sharp edge of the ice and his struggle with the bicycle, but not a drop of blood. Nothing still alive in that body.

Brage is now working just for the sake of appearances. Mostly he looks at her, and she sits quite still, apparently calm. Looks at the organist, sitting at the kitchen table with his back turned, his shoulders heaving. The verger and Signe crying at the end of the table. He lets the body lie quietly on the floor. “I don’t think there’s anything more we can do.”

“No,” she says. “I know.” The last time they will sit this way, united. Never again. “I’m going to sit here for a while. Forgive me. You must be very tired.”

The whole kitchen is crying, all of them, except her. She is the only one of them who can express a complete sentence. “There’s a great deal we have to deal with in the morning, but for now I’ll just sit here.” On the wet, crumpled rag rug by the stove. Beside him for the last time.

Signe remembers that they usually have tea in the evenings, and she pours a cup for the pastor’s wife, who actually drinks it. “Thank you,” she says. “I was thirsty.” Signe fills her cup again, and she drinks it again. The body tells us what it needs to replace its losses. No groaning from her about how she wants to die. She knows perfectly well that she has to live, take care of her girls, provide them with a living, a home when they’ve left the parsonage. Work, work, work. For the last time now, quietly by his side. Time and the clock run on and on, except the one on his wrist, which has stopped.