Ulla-Lena Lundberg - Ice

The temperature is still below freezing. The body is frozen. It doesn’t change in any objective way, but grows day by day more irreclaimable. Mona has examined every mark on the body, which is covered with traces of the accident and the rough attempts at resuscitation—the black mark on his forehead, the skin scraped from his hands, the pressure marks on his chest, the scratches and discolorations from the rescue operations. His nose slimmer than in life, his mouth white and narrow, as it might have become in old age. His eyes, the lids open a tiny slit, give hope, even now, for a glimmer of life. A man so loved, so dead. How could you?

According to the verger who watches over her, she cries in the shed. Wails, with open mouth, terrible to hear. But good that it comes out, they all agree on that. Maybe it will be better when her own relatives arrive, they tell each other, hopefully, thinking secretly that it will be a relief to hand off the responsibility.

For what happens at a funeral is that the survivor is thrust back into the family and clan that she believed she had escaped. The priest’s wife sees them approaching and surrounding her and cutting her off from the parish community she has been a part of, from the new friends who are not burdened by ties to the past or by double loyalties. From the settings in which she is a free and independent individual, freed from the troubles and failings of her youth. All this will be taken from her. The dear people of the Örlands will be shoved aside by the approaching relatives, who will return her triumphantly to the scenes of her deepest defeats, where she had constantly to assert her right to a life of her own, now spent.

If she could commit murder, she thinks. If she could close every unctuous mouth, cut off the empty phrases with a knife. If she could sweep them away, put the whole bunch of them on a desert island. If she could be an angel of vengeance and dispense punishments in accordance with what their sins deserve, if she could expunge them from the surface of the earth. Even then he would not come back to life. Even then she would not regain her life with him.

When the first funeral guests arrive, the deceased’s parents and relatives from Åland, delivered by the Coast Guard in its light icebreaker, she takes the fish casserole steaming from the oven. Oven-warm bread on the table, freshly churned butter, the best china. The pastor’s wife herself: “Welcome, welcome. You must be frozen and worn out. Hang up your coats, there’s food on the table.”

She has roses in her cheeks from the heat of the stove and her usual rush of activity. She successfully parries her mother-in-law’s effort to embrace her. She notes the tears on Martha’s cheeks with irritation—such an exhibition. They have also brought some huge, hideous wreaths, which clutter up the hallway, as if their coats and suitcases weren’t clutter enough. “Come in, come in,” she hurries them along. “Don’t let the heat out. Come in and sit down.”

She thumps down herself for a moment, but she can’t stand to look at their long faces and their grimaces. “Where do you find the strength?” her mother-in-law chirps, and she answers, angrily, “Where would we be if I didn’t?” A good question. Sister Hanna has left the parsonage because the guests need the guest room, so there’s no one but Mona to keep everything going, a child can see that. Stupid questions, terrible hypocrisy. What could they possibly help her with, these people who are used to being waited on hand and foot at the Parsonage Hotel!

The little girls are silent as the grave, the guests have forgotten to greet them. Now they shower them with attention, since they don’t know how they’re supposed to deal with Mona. Sanna recognizes both her Papa’s mother and father but looks anxiously at Mama when they ask her things. May she speak or will Mama get mad? Lillus stretches her arms out to Grandpa, but Mama shoves her back down into her highchair. “Sit still! You’ll tip it over!” It’s unnatural, the girls as quiet as mice, Mona unreachable in her efficiency, Petter dead.

Full of anxiety, they meet the next wave to appear. It is Mona’s parents, Petter’s siblings, and Uncle Isidor, who came from the east, got off the steamboat in Mellom, and were conveyed onwards by the Coast Guard. Mona is in the parsonage with the girls and her preparations, and in the icy cold on the church dock they fall weeping into each other’s arms, groaning and grieving. The Åland phalanx, which arrived first, reports that they don’t know what to do with Mona. It’s impossible to reach her, she refuses to talk about anything but the practical arrangements and turns a deaf ear to every effort at solicitude or sympathy. We can’t help her, we can’t do anything, we can only sit there like a guest while she rushes around doing things. It’s not natural. What are we to do?

“We can go inside before we freeze to death,” says Mona’s mother drily. They are startled, and the flood of emotions abruptly stops. Quiet, courteous Mrs Hellén sounds amazingly like her daughter. She starts walking up to the parsonage, followed by her husband. The others look at each other and eventually follow along in a loose cluster, fluttering and wobbling in their despair and horror, while the Helléns walk straight ahead into the parsonage.

No emotional scenes here. They take one another by the hand. “Sweetheart! My poor little bird,” Mama says. “Stop,” says Mona. “Here come the girls.” Cautiously, Lillus hiding behind Sanna. Gram pleased, Gramps delighted. Give us a hug! Sanna remembers them, she is Gram’s friend and intimate. Mona knows that Mama doesn’t know how to deal with children until she can talk to them, but she looks at Lillus and, in a conversational tone, says “Peep.” Lillus takes a little hop and says “Peep” back. Then she rises into the air on Gramps’s arm and sits there as if cast in bronze. Quite pleasant. Mona wouldn’t have believed this of the parents she criticizes so harshly. But just as she might have said something, they hear the inescapable troop from Åland murmuring hesitantly outside. The door opens and nothing happens.

“Come in, come in!” Mona shouts. “You’re letting out all the warmth!” She greets the newcomers, tells them they can eat in the dining room and then they’ll have coffee in the parlour. And no, thank you, of course she needs no help. She sets out the coffee things on the sideboard and slices bread in the pantry. Then this new group seats itself at the table and eats, for they wouldn’t dare do otherwise. Ready to burst with sympathy, which now lies like a cold lump in their bellies. The floods of tears that flow so freely when they talk among themselves have ceased. Attempts at conversation get prompt, dismissive answers. What are they to do? How will it all end?

Coffee in the parlour as promised. A braided coffeecake, brushed with egg, sprinkled with pearl sugar. Please help yourselves! Deathly silence, all the more noticeable because it’s normally impossible to get the Kummels to shut up. Only Mrs Hellén converses, and Hellén himself rumbles agreement in his bass. “Good coffee cake,” Mrs Hellén says. “You can certainly bake—better than I.” That almost makes Mona smile, because she’s not wrong. In adversity, when there’s no way out, Mrs Hellén escapes into diversionary remarks, just now about the food, the wind, the temperature. The Coast Guard, the boat trip, seasickness, the length of the trip, the relief of getting back onto dry land. She continues with friendly questions to the surviving Kummel siblings about their jobs and homes, their future plans and hopes. She gets a conversation going, although the young people shake their heads and signal each other that they can’t believe their ears. All her life, Mona has found her mother’s refusal to confront unpleasant situations annoying. Now she suddenly sees that it has some advantages, can even save her from a still more unpleasant situation, namely, that her self-control might run the risk of collapsing. If she has an ally in this assembly, it is, to her astonishment, her mother.