The Best Intentions (31 page)

Ernst:
Not alone. She and Miss Lisen, of course.

Anna
(
impatient
): Yes, of course. I mean, wasn't anyone going to visit her? Wasn't she invited to any of the brothers or sisters?

Ernst:
I don't think so. Anyhow, she said nothing about it.

Anna:
Couldn't you and Maria have considered having her over Christmas?

Ernst:
That wasn't possible. We were to spend Christmas with Maria's parents.

Anna:
Couldn't you have . . . ?

Ernst:
Why didn't you invite her yourself?

Anna:
You know the situation with Henrik. I didn't even dare suggest it.

Ernst:
Does he still hold grudges?

Anna:
He finds it hard to forget humiliations.

Ernst:
Oh, well, we weren't all that nice to him at the time.

Anna:
No, we weren't.

Ernst:
Time heals all wounds. (
Pats her
.)

Anna:
He was sorry our child was born at the Academic Hospital in Upsala and not here at home. The moment Mama came to see me, Henrik left. And vice versa. He wasn't just sorry. He was furious. And he refused to go to Trädgårdsgatan. He kept telling me I had let the women in the parish down. The midwife in Forsboda wasn't all that pleased, either. My milk ran out for a few days, I was so miserable. Though it's all right again now. But he keeps bringing up a whole lot of things from the past. I don't understand how someone like Henrik, who's so kind, can go around carrying so much hatred in him. I want to help him, but . . .

Anna falls silent and runs her hand down her face from forehead to chin and throat.

Ernst:
Mama talked kindly about Henrik. She didn't mention any of what you've just told me. She just said you were happy, and she was pleased you seemed so content.

Anna:
Yes. (
Silence
.) Henrik had a letter in October, in shaky, almost illegible handwriting. It was from his grandfather. (
Silence
.) His grandfather was asking for a reconciliation. (
Silence
.) The old man was ill, seriously ill. (
Silence
.) He wanted Henrik and me to go and see him. (
Silence
.) Henrik showed me the letter. I asked him what we should do. He answered quietly that he could see no reason to seek reconciliation with the man.

Ernst:
And you?

Anna:
Me? What could I do? Sometimes I can't make head or tail of anything. Sometimes a chasm opens up. I keep away so as not fall into it.

Ernst:
Can
one keep away?

Anna:
I
keep away. And
say nothing
. A few hours later everything's normal again, and Henrik is the kindest, happiest, sweetest — well, you'll see.

Ernst:
Anna!

Anna:
No, no. He's coming.

(I write what I see and hear. Sometimes it all goes well, and I forget to listen to tones of voice, which might be more important than the words. Could there possibly be a note of sheer suppressed anxiety in Anna's voice? Does Ernst take in her possible uneasiness? Did Anna have in mind Henrik's carefully concealed and seldom revealed wounds, the inflamed unhealed wounds of the mind? Or is she much too occupied with the present, with all that is new and unexpected? Anna has a talent for lighthearted recklessness. Henrik is tenderhearted, loving, and mostly happy. The day runs its course. Without thinking about the course, they become concepts of each other. “I can't tell,” says Anna apologetically. “How could I understand?” says Henrik in astonishment. “Surely one can't
always!”
protests Anna. “I don't know why I should have a guilty conscience,” mumbles Henrik.)

Henrik comes into the hall stamping his feet. “Is Ernst here? Has he come?” He is wearing a short military sheepskin coat, a knitted cap on his head, and a wool scarf around his neck. His trousers are stuffed into sheepskin-lined boots, and in his hand he has a square leather bag containing his cassock, vestments, and a little wooden box of the sacred requisites for communion. The Lapland dog, Jack, is circling his legs.

As Ernst appears in the doorway to the dining room, Jack goes rigid with resentment and growls. “Quiet, Jack!” cries Anna, pulling at his collar. “This is Ernst, you stupid dog. My brother. We have the same scent, if you could trouble yourself to take a sniff!”

“Dear old Laban, how welcome you are here,” says Henrik, embracing his brother-in-law. “Dear old Luvern, let me look at you. God, you've filled out!” says Ernst, patting Henrik's cheeks. “You're beginning to look like a real pirate. Where's that elegiac poet got to now?” “Living in the forest's good for you,” says Henrik, pulling off his gloves, cap, scarf, coat, and boots.

He flings his arms around Anna and Ernst and suddenly says: “This way I'm happy!” He is fiercely moved and lets his arms fall, orders Jack to say hello to Ernst, saying that Jack is his armor-bearer. “The way things are around here, you need something of Jack's caliber to defend you.” “Jack's church-inclined, too,” says Anna. “When Henrik's preaching, he lies at the door of the sacristy. He's quite familiar with altar service as well as communion. We really must have dinner now! The women are coming at seven.” “What women?” says Ernst. “We have a sewing bee on Thursdays, when womenfolk, young
and old, from all over the parish come. Sometimes forty souls. Henrik reads aloud, and we have coffee, and everyone brings something to eat. You wait and see, it's not bad at all. When we came here, they were all stuck out on their own in their homes. Now you could say there's some sort of
communication
going on! Wait and see!”

My mother told me quite a lot about her sewing bee. As soon as they took on the parish and had got the house in order, they had systematically gone around and introduced themselves. She had said that every Thursday at seven o'clock, there would be open house at the parsonage, a sewing bee, reading aloud, and evening prayers.

The suspicion they met with was unmistakable: Oh, yes, indeed, new brooms! Pentecostalists and Mission Society members all declined. This was seduction of the devil. The communists were unfriendly. Were their womenfolk to have coffee with the church, the moneybags, and the military? Inconceivable! The unemployed shook their heads. What? Bring something to eat? Who could do that when you didn't know how to get from one day to the next? So at first the number of people who came to the meeting was fairly minimal. A few church people from the bigger farms came, and three older women from the workers' quarters, possibly in defiance of views held in the kitchen at home. Gradually (but very slowly) curiosity got the upper hand. And it should not be forgotten that my mother was a trained nurse and it was twelve kilometers of bad roads to the provincial doctor, the midwife nearly always out on her rounds. Mother had a good hand with people's ailments, children, animals, and flowers. She consulted with the doctor and was able to acquire a set of instruments and administer some harmless medicines. There were plenty of ailments, and Mother felt needed and energetically active. Father, according to Mother's testimony, made modest but effective progress.

It all began with an accident in the forge. A worker had his arm torn off and died from loss of blood before the doctor and ambulance could get to the place. The men wanted to stop work and go home, as was traditional when a death occurred. The management refused to allow it, citing delivery dates and the pressure of time (it was wartime, and important goods were being manufactured). Suddenly the men's anger exploded. There was still much antagonism below the surface after the humiliations of 1909 and the local conflicts that followed. The main switches were turned off, the machines stopped, and an irongray dusk descended over both workshops and men.

When Nordenson finally made his way down to the office, the pastor was already there, sitting on a bench by the wall with some of the older men. People were standing, sitting, or lying on the floor — it
was warm, at the end of August. Nordenson spoke calmly and politely, one knee shaking violently No one replied. He appealed to the pastor, who remained as silent as the others: dusk, silence, heat. Nordenson left the foundry and telephoned to the minister himself. The minister then summoned the pastor and severely reprimanded him, referring to the Master's rather obscure words, render therefore unto God the things that are God's and unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's.

This episode was much discussed at the Works and on the farms, and possibly overvalued. The pastor was regarded as “one of us.” He also got on well with people, had a good memory for faces and names, visited the old and the sick, talked to them in a way they understood, and sometimes sang a verse from a hymn or something equally appropriate. Without telling anyone, he reformed the confirmation classes and told his pupils both what would be asked and what the answers should be at confirmation. He abolished their homework and talked to them about things that interested both them and him. He held parish evenings once a month, often at the parsonage, for the chapel was difficult to heat. He ordered lantern slides and printed lectures from the diocesan publishers. He sought out the chairman of the Mission Society and suggested working together. That was an inappropriate step. The minister forbade such contacts, and the pastor of the Mission Society declined with harsh words.

Steadily, modest spiritual activity began to grow in the parish, a fact that was good for both the Mission Society and the Pentecostalist movement, for competition increased and the battle for souls intensified. Once the early curiosity had waned, the pastor had preached to a fairly empty chapel, and in the big church the desolation was even more evident. Slowly, extremely slowly, people began to come to morning service and evensong.

Mother and Father were also a handsome couple living in obvious harmony on the brightly lit stage of the parsonage, its doors all open. No one doubted their good intentions.

The sewing bee, particularly in the winter, is a lengthy but functional procedure. On this evening, at seven o'clock, twenty-nine women assemble at the parsonage. They are all well wrapped up and have brought with them handwork bags and food (everyone brings a basket, in the basket a thermos of coffee, cream, sugar, cup, spoon, plate, and buns and cakes of varying richness and quality). Mia, Mejan, and some confirmands see to the baskets. The dining room table quickly
becomes a coffee table, the coffee all poured into the big household copper pot (because it is the third winter of the war, the coffee is mostly chicory). Then they unwrap themselves, and outdoor clothes pile up on the chairs in the hall and on the stairs. They blow their noses politely, smooth down their hair in front of the mirror, and there is a quiet mumbling and buzz of talk. Anna and Henrik stand in the doorway greeting them. There are paraffin lamps, candles, fires in the tiled stoves, tables moved in, and all the chairs in the house assembled or borrowed from neighbors. “Good evening, good evening, how nice, Mrs. Palm (Gustavsson, Aimers, Flink, Danielsson, Berger, Ahlqvist, Nykvist, Johansson, Tallrot, Gertud, Kama, Alma, Ingrid, Tekla, Magna, Alva, Mrs. Dreber, Gullheden, Ander, Marta, Mrs. Flink, Werkelin, Kronstrom) that you could come. We're going to be quite a crowd tonight despite the cold. This is my brother, Ernst Åkerblom. He's just come from Norway, where it's even colder at the moment. A cup of coffee would be really good now, wouldn't it? I've got a packet of real Java coffee from my mother. We've put it in the pot. I'll come and see you tomorrow, if that suits you, Mrs. Werkelin, then I can take a look at your mother-in-law.”

Anna finds that Mrs. Johansson is holding her left hand behind her back, two fingers bandaged with linen cloth and string. “I burned myself badly on the stove ring.” “We'll see to that. I have some ointment the doctor gave me. We'll do that when the reading starts. I've also got some pills for the pain.” “Yes, it hurts something awful,” mumbles Mrs. Johansson.

They all bustle around together with ceremonial politeness. At last the big copper pot is on the table. The intensity of the talk rises by a few decibels; there's a rattle of spoons and porcelain. This is the prelude to long notes and controlled tempo.

Henrik takes his place by the window table, sharing a paraffin lamp with Miss Nykvist, Mrs. Flink, and the good-tempered Alva, who is simpleminded but good at all kinds of handwork. He opens the book and asks for silence. Then he recaps what happened in the last chapter. His choice of literature is unconventional, not to say bold.
Anna Karenina
by Tolstoy.

Henrik
(
reading
): “The same day that they came, Vronskey went to his brother's, where he also met his mother, who had just arrived from Moscow on certain errands. His mother and sister-in-law received him as usual. They asked him where he had been abroad and talked to him about mutual old acquaintances, but they said not a word about his relationship with Anna. His brother, on the other hand, who came to
see Vronskey on the following day, asked him about her, and Alexey told him that he regarded his connection with Anna as if it were a marriage, and that he hoped to effect a formal divorce so that he could then marry her, but that even before that, he regarded her as his wife.”

While the reading was going on, Anna had retreated into the kitchen with Mrs. Johansson, fair-skinned, plump, blue-eyed, her usual red cheeks pale from the pain in her hand, her lips trembling when Anna exposed the burn, now already infected. The skin is already gone from the inside of her middle and third finger. They have to get her rings off. Anna and Mrs. Johansson are alone in the kitchen, except for Jack, who is asleep under the sink. ‘T1I fetch my brother and a sharp pair of pincers,” says Anna decisively “This can't wait until morning. Gangrene might set in.” Ernst turns pale, but arranges the pincers and cuts the rings, which are then forced apart. Then Anna spreads ointment on the burns, bandages the hand, and makes a sling. Ernst fetches brandy and pours it out. Mrs. Johansson nods gravely, and Anna and Ernst nod back. They empty their glasses in one draft, almost to the bottom.