Annika Thor - A Faraway Island

One morning when she’s out walking Putte up among the rocks and the scraggly vegetation, she bumps into Sven. She’s standing on a boulder gazing out across the ocean. Luckily, Putte’s on his leash. She’s afraid if anyone in the doctor’s family were to see that she sometimes lets him run freely, she wouldn’t be allowed to walk him anymore.

“Hi there!” Sven calls out. “What a beautiful morning!”

To Stephie there is nothing special about this particular morning. The sun is shining and there is a gentle wind blowing off the water.

Putte recognizes Sven and grows eager. Sven hops down off his rock and approaches them. Putte romps between his legs, begging to be patted.

“Hiya, Putte. Hi, you old thing.”

Sven plays with Putte, but not gently, as Stephie does. He’s rougher.

“You can let him off the leash now,” says Sven. “He won’t run away.”

He never runs away from me, Stephie thinks, but she doesn’t say it.

Sven stops playing with Putte and sits down on a rocky ledge, his feet blocking the path in front of Stephie. She picks up the end of Putte’s leash, but stays where she is.

“The ocean,” says Sven. “I can look at it forever, can’t you? It’s always changing.”

“Uh-huh,” Stephie replies. “Depending on the weather.”

She wishes Sven would move his feet so she could pass.

“Don’t you like the ocean?”

“It’s so big. I’d like it better if I weren’t on an island. If it was all one.”

“One what?”

“One whole place. The people. The city.”

“How long have you been here?” Sven asks.

“Since last August. Ten months.”

“And your family?”

“Mother and Father are still in Vienna. My little sister is here, living with a different family.”

“And what are they like, your family here? The Janssons.”

“Good,” Stephie tells him.

“You’re different from them,” Sven says. “That doesn’t mean you have to be alone.”

Putte whines, pulling at the leash.

“I’ve got to get going,” Stephie says.

“Wait,” Sven answers. “I’d like to read you something.”

He pulls off the little knapsack he’s carrying and opens it, rummaging around. He has to retrieve a crumply bag of sandwiches, a thermos, and a sweater before he gets to the thick book at the bottom.

“It’s in English,” Sven tells her. “Do you speak English?”

“No.”

“That’s all right. I’ll translate.” He leafs through the book until he finds what he is looking for. “‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…’”

Stephie stands stock-still, absorbed. Sven’s voice is different when he reads than when he talks, deeper and calmer.

“‘Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’”

Sven stops and looks up from the page. He and Stephie are both quiet for a few moments. Then Sven closes the book.

“That was all,” he says. “But maybe you’re too young to understand.”

“I understand,” Stephie retorts. “Who wrote that book?”

“An American named Hemingway,” says Sven. “But what I read you is a quotation from the work of a poet named John Donne, who lived in seventeenth-century England. When you get a little older and have studied English, you’ll be able to read the whole thing.”

“I’m not going to study English,” Stephie tells him.

“Why not? You’re good at languages, I can tell from your Swedish.”

“I’m done with regular school,” Stephie says. “I’m just going to take a home economics course next fall. They can’t afford to send me to grammar school.”

“That’s really too bad,” says Sven. “You ought to continue your studies. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders and should read, think, and write.”

He puts his book and other things back into his knapsack.

“If you’d like, I’ll lend you some books,” he says. “I’ve got some with me, and I can ask Father to bring more when he comes out from the city. Some German books, too, if you’d like.”

“Oh, please, that would be wonderful,” says Stephie.

“Feel free to come up anytime. Anyway, aren’t I staying in your bedroom?”

“That’s right.”

“What about that painting?” asks Sven. “Did you pick it out yourself?”

“No,” Stephie says emphatically.

“I’ve turned it toward the wall,” Sven tells her. “Don’t let Mrs. Jansson know, though. If you’d like I can accidentally knock it to the floor so it breaks.”

Stephie laughs. “You don’t need to do that,” she tells him.

Sven gets serious again.

“One night when the room was too hot, I opened the vent, but it turned out to be blocked with a crumpled sheet of paper. A letter. Yours, I assume, since it was in German.”

That letter she wrote her first evening on the island, to Mamma and Papa. If you don’t come and get me, I think I’m going to die. Stephie blushes.

“I didn’t read it,” says Sven. “Word of honor. Do you want it back?”

“No,” Stephie says. “Throw it out, or burn it. But don’t let anybody read it. I’m going now. Putte’s impatient.”

When she is at a distance, Sven shouts, “What’s your name again?”

“Stephanie.”

She doesn’t really know why she didn’t just say “Stephie.” Maybe because “Stephanie” sounds more grown-up.

“Pretty name,” Sven shouts back. “Bye, Stephanie.”

Later the same day Stephie goes to the beach with Nellie. She tries to give her a ride on the back of Aunt Märta’s bike, but it’s hard. Wobbly, and heavy on the uphills.

Nellie’s playmate Sonja is at the beach. The three of them lie on their towels, sunbathing on the sand. The water’s still cold, but after a while in the sun it’s refreshing.

Way out on the far cliffs Stephie sees Sylvia and Barbro with two boys she doesn’t recognize. They must be summer guests.

One day, toward the end of June, Stephie bikes to the shop to buy a package of cookies for the doctor’s wife. Putte runs alongside the bike as usual.

Some kids are sitting on the stone wall that encloses the shopkeeper’s yard. Sylvia and Barbro are in the middle, each with a summer guest next to her. One is so blond his short hair looks almost white. The other is darker, and freckle-faced.

Vera’s there, too. She’s sitting at a distance from the others, braiding a chain of dandelions.

Stephie parks the bike and ties Putte to a hook in the wall. Sylvia and Barbro are whispering and giggling with the boys. She can feel their gazes burning on her back as she opens the shop door and goes inside.

When she is paying for the cookies, she hears barking.

“Is your dog making that racket?” the shopkeeper asks grumpily.

“He’s not mine, but I walk him.”

“Well, you’d better quiet him down.”

Stephie puts the package of cookies in her pocket and goes out onto the steps.

Sylvia, Barbro, and the two boys are standing in a ring around Putte, just far enough away that he doesn’t have a chance of reaching them no matter how hard he strains at the leash. Vera’s still sitting on the stone wall.

Stephie approaches them. Now she sees that one of the boys, the blond one, is holding something. It’s a sugar cube dangling from a piece of string. He’s holding it over Putte’s snout, teasing him. Every time Putte gets close enough to bite at the cube, the boy snatches it back. Putte yelps unhappily.

“Leave Putte alone!” Stephie tells them.

“Putte,” says the boy with the sugar. “Is this mutt named Putte?”