Annika Thor - A Faraway Island

Of course Svante’s interest in Stephie hasn’t passed Sylvia by unnoticed.

“The Princess from Vienna has an admirer,” she says with a sneer. “The Princess and the village idiot, just like in the fairy tales. Except Svante’s not likely to turn into a prince!”

One day Svante pulls a package out of his schoolbag and hands it to Stephie. This happens during lunch break, when everyone is eating sandwiches and drinking milk in the classroom. At first Stephie thinks Svante’s offering her one of his sandwiches, which are wrapped in greasy brown paper.

“No, thank you,” she declines politely. “I’ve got my own.”

Svante laughs loudly. “It isn’t a sandwich,” he says. “It’s a present. For you.”

“Come on, open it,” urges Britta, who sits next to her.

“Yes, open it,” says Sylvia, leaning forward to get a better view. “We want to see what your admirer bought you.”

“I’ll open it at home,” Stephie says, hurriedly pressing the package into her knapsack.

Svante gets angry. “Open it now!” he tells her. “I want to be there when you do.”

Stephie can’t avoid it, so she unwraps the greasy brown paper. The package contains a roughly hewn handmade frame.

“Turn it over,” Svante orders her impatiently.

Stephie turns the frame to the front. There’s a picture in the frame, a familiar face that glares at her. A face she’s seen thousands of times, in newspapers, on posters, in shop windows back home in Vienna. Black hair brushed down over the forehead, a black moustache, sinister eyes. It’s a blurry picture in black and white, probably from a magazine. A framed picture of Hitler.

“I made it myself,” Svante tells her. “Do you like it?”

Stephie stares at the picture, trying to make sense of it.

She remembers seeing Hitler once in real life. It was last March, when the German army made a triumphal procession through the streets of Vienna. Hitler was there, chauffeured in a black Mercedes.

Stephie and Evi snuck out to watch the parade, against the instructions of their mothers. At first it seemed exciting-like a special occasion.

“Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!”

People pushed and shoved to be able to see better. Lots of them raised their arms in the Nazi salute.

A fat woman shoved the girls aside. A uniformed man stared nastily at them. Stephie and Evi tried to push back through the crowd to get away, but they couldn’t. In the end they pressed up against the wall of a building, making themselves as invisible as they could, until the parade passed and the crowd began to disperse.

“Let me see,” says Sylvia from the row behind. “What is it?”

She puts out a hand to take the picture from Stephie, who holds on to it, tight. In the tussle, Stephie knocks over her bottle of milk; the milk spills out over the picture and drips onto the floor.

“Don’t you like it?” Svante asks in disappointment. “I thought you’d be pleased. You do come from Germany, don’t you?”

He leans forward onto Stephie’s desk, pressing his huge hands on the surface and bringing his pimply face right up to hers.

“Let me be,” Stephie cries. “Leave me alone, you idiot!”

Miss Bergström appears in the doorway. “What on earth is going on here?” she asks.

“It’s Stephie,” Sylvia tells her. “Svante tried to give her a present, but she wouldn’t accept it. She called him a stupid idiot.”

“Stephanie,” Miss Bergström says sharply. “That is not how we address one another at our school. Perhaps you do, where you come from. But we don’t, here in Sweden.”

Stephie rushes out of the classroom, down the stairs, and out into the schoolyard. She throws the picture to the ground, crushes it under her heel until that awful face is gone, and stamps on the frame until it breaks. Then she opens the door to the outhouse and tosses the whole thing into one of the holes, straight down into the smelly muck.

“But you must understand that Svante didn’t mean any harm,” Britta says on their way home that day. “He can’t help being stupid. Just imagine what it must be like to be repeating sixth grade for the second time and still not know your multiplication tables! He doesn’t know anything about Hitler, either. I’m sure he honestly thought you’d be happy to get something that reminded you of home.”

Stephie stops abruptly. “You’re the one who doesn’t see!” she screams at Britta. “You’re just as stupid as Svante. You know nothing about it. Absolutely nothing at all!”

Britta looks offended. “But I do,” she begins. “I know Hitler is evil. My father says so, but-”

“Your father doesn’t know anything,” Stephie interrupts. “My father’s been in a labor camp, but you probably don’t even know what that is.”

She’s not being fair, she knows that. So she doesn’t wait for Britta to answer, just takes off, running along the side of the road at full speed.

“Wait!” Britta shouts after her. “Stephie, wait!”

She begins to run, too, catching up with Stephie just before she reaches the crossing where they go in separate directions.

“See you tomorrow,” she says, “at Sunday school?”

“No.”

“Jesus will be angry if you don’t come,” says Britta accusingly.

Stephie looks Britta right in the eye. “Jesus doesn’t exist,” Stephie says, putting all her father’s authority into her voice. “He couldn’t care less about me, or about you, or about anyone else, for that matter.”

Britta blinks. Her bright eyes grow large, and tears well up in them. She takes a couple of steps back.

“Of course He exists,” she cries. “Jesus lives and He loves me. But He doesn’t care about you, because you’re a vicious person. You’re-you’re not a real Christian!”

The minute Britta is out of sight over the top of the hill, Stephie wishes she’d behaved differently. Not because Britta’s friendship is important to her. She’s actually tired of Britta’s endless know-it-all talk about Jesus. And she’s tired of jumping rope, too.

But if she doesn’t have Britta for a friend, then she’s all alone. Alone at recess, alone walking back from school. And what if Britta tells her mother what Stephie said, and she tells Aunt Märta? Then Aunt Märta will realize Stephie hasn’t really been redeemed. That she’s only pretending to believe that Jesus is the son of God, which is kind of like lying. Maybe even worse.

Should she turn around and run after Britta? Tell her she didn’t mean what she said and apologize? No, it’s too late. Britta’s house is just over the rise. Surely she’s already home, sitting with her mother in the kitchen, telling her all about her school day. Telling her about Stephie, Svante, and the picture of Hitler. About their quarrel on the way home. About what Stephie said about Jesus. Britta’s mother may already have lifted the receiver and asked the operator to connect her with Aunt Märta.

It begins to rain. Stephie passes Auntie Alma’s house. She imagines the kitchen, warm and cozy. Nellie and the little ones are surely sitting around the table, eating sweet rolls hot out of the oven. In every single one of the houses she passes there are people, families of people talking to each other, caring about each other. She’s the only one who’s completely alone.

When the village houses are behind her, Stephie is unprotected from the wind. Gusts press the rain down on her, hard. She pushes into the wind, hands over her face to keep the drops off. When she gets to the thicket, it’s not quite so bad, but then comes the long, open downhill path, and the wind takes her breath away.

She ought to run the last stretch toward home, hurry inside and take off her wet clothes, rub herself dry on one of Aunt Märta’s rough linen towels until her skin stings. On cold, rainy days like today Aunt Märta usually has hot milk for her when she comes in from school.