Ulla-Lena Lundberg - Ice

“Dear heaven, how could God let such a thing happen?”

This from Mama, who hardly believes in God. Mona decides to answer as if she’d said, “How did it happen?” She describes the accident, the bicycle, the items on the ice, the search at the steamboat channel. Too late. “I didn’t hear a thing, though I was out on the steps, listening. Lillus had a cold and was fussing and crying so I was in the bedroom with her. If I’d been alone in the kitchen, I might have heard something.”

“Mona, sweetheart,” Mama says, appalled but also fearful, afraid for her daughter and the powerful feelings that at some stage must come out. “How are you? Dear child, how are coping?” She remembers last summer’s visit to the Örlands, Mona full of energy, radiant with well-being, Petter so obviously all she wanted in life. And now this.

“I’ll just have to deal with it,” says Mona angrily. It’s her way of dealing with everything—with anger. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work. The funeral is set for next Sunday. All Petter’s relatives. It’s enough to make you crazy. I don’t think you need to come.”

“Of course we’ll come, Papa and I. Papa doesn’t know yet. He was out in the stables, and now he’s out ploughing. It snowed here last night. It’s beautiful. We’ll figure out some way of getting to Örland. Maybe the Coast Guard can help.”

“Yes. I’ll call when I know more.”

“Thank you. But first and foremost, you’ve got to promise me not to work yourself to death. Get all the help you can find. Tell me if there’s anything I can do. Anything we can bring. Anything at all. You understand, we want to help. And those poor little lambs! How are they doing?”

“Lillus doesn’t understand a thing. Sanna gets it, more or less, but … oh, they’re both so little that most of it goes right over their heads. The homecare sister is here, they’re being well taken care of.”

“Good,” says Mama, who has learned not to ask follow-up questions. “Tell Sanna that Gram and Gramps will be coming for a visit soon. And now don’t forget to tell me if there’s anything I can do.”

“Yes, yes,” Mona says. Ever since she was a little girl, she has totally lacked confidence in her mother’s ability to get things done. Of course she can get her to read stories to Sanna, but she, Mona, faster and more efficient, will have to do all the practical work herself!

In any case, phew, another phone call out of the way, and more to make. Brave, kind people along the coast, and of course her mother-in-law has to talk, although she should have realized that Mona asked Fredrik Berg to call because she didn’t want to speak to them herself. But no one can avoid her fate, and Martha Kummel chatters and weeps while Mona grows more and more distant, never crying or sniffling so that Martha can tell the world that she’s gone completely to pieces! “What can I say?” is all she says when Martha wants some kind of emotional response from her, wants her to sob and carry on and be grateful for Martha’s platitudes about how we can’t understand the ways of the Lord, how he lets no sparrow fall to earth (but he let Petter), how Petter will always be with them in their hearts. Mona knows that every word she utters is repeated and embroidered by the unctuous Martha, and therefore she says almost nothing. Let her report that Mona is dumb with grief! She only tells her about the funeral and insists that Petter would certainly have wanted his good friend and colleague to conduct the service.

Phew! She gets sweaty and worn out from all the phone calls, a constant harping about the same things. The whole time forced to say something other than what she would rather put like this: Petter is dead, and all joy and happiness are gone from my life. Nothing can compensate for such a loss. If only I could drive all of you away, if only I could chase you off with an axe, if only you’d all vanish from the face of the earth. It would not ease my grief, but it’s what I’d prefer.

I know only what I’ve heard. That he drowned. You might also say that he drowned because he was a good swimmer. While he still had time, it never occurred to him that he couldn’t pull himself out. He did everything he should have, got out of his boots and his overcoat, and thought it was a small thing, strong and athletic as he was, to heave himself onto the ice. Or you could say that he died of bad judgment. What was he thinking when he used up his strength rescuing his briefcase? A contributing cause of death was the good breeding that taught him you must take better care of other people’s property than of your own. Would he have done that if he’d been thinking clearly? Another cause of death was perhaps the blow to his head that knocked so much sense out of him that he didn’t know enough to start calling for help before it was too late. Carelessness was another cause of death. Here on the islands, no one goes out on the ice without a knife in their belt, whereas he pedalled away like some kind of Jesus who thinks he can walk on water. The Aranda also contributed to his death. If she hadn’t passed that way, the men who heard him wouldn’t have assumed that someone had fallen into the steamboat channel.

No, my friend, there isn’t a single cause of a person’s death, it’s not that simple. People die from a number of different factors that work together to prevent a rescue.

Of course people ask me if I didn’t have some foreboding. What sort of premonition do you think I could get in Godby, well inland, among strangers? That you have a weight on your chest and feel anxious and helpless is completely understandable. In retrospect you can see all that as some kind of warning, but what good does it do you to know that something dreadful is happening, when it could be anything at all and you know nothing and are fearful as a child? I can’t say that I thought of the priest and felt he was in danger. I didn’t think of anything in particular. It was just a general sense of uneasiness and depression, the kind of thing that can affect anyone who’s completely in the dark.

If only the thing could be undone! There’s such a small margin, so much that could have happened just a tiny bit differently, and the priest would stand today in the Co-op laughing about his cold bath. Much more likely than his being dead. It’s that I wonder about—if those who were out there with him, curious and importunate, if they didn’t understand that they only needed to lighten him a bit, just enough to let him get his chest up on the ice. Is it true, as I suspect, that they don’t exist unless you sense their presence? The way the air gets thicker when they gather, how strongly you have to drive your thoughts for them to understand. They wish us no harm, I have many examples of that, but unless you yourself urge them on, they’ll just hang around the hole in the ice and watch you die, as if they had forgotten even the fact that a person who is dying has the strongest desire to live.

The priest’s wife has a few days’ respite before the funeral. She has saved and separated milk, churned butter. The Co-op has delivered flour and she has baked and baked. She has cleaned and cleaned. She tends her animals in exemplary fashion. Some community representative is always nearby—Sister Hanna, the verger, the organist on a worried visit. “Please, Mona,” they say. “Everything doesn’t have to be perfect. You’ll make yourself sick. At least let us help you. Sit down. Rest. This is terrible.”

She doesn’t tell them what she’s feeling. She says very little. When she talks to Sister Hanna, it’s only about practical matters. She is closed to the concerned helpers trying to keep an eye on her without being too obvious. When she walks down towards the church dock, they know she’s going to the dead man in the shed. A coffin has been delivered, lined in white, but it has not yet been closed, and Mona goes there once a day to make certain he is actually dead.