Читать книгу The Ice People 36 -Troll Moon - Margit Sandemo - Страница 6

Chapter 1

The darkness had fallen too quickly. It had taken him by surprise.

He no longer knew where he was. It must have been the rain clouds that had caused the sudden complete darkness. The rain and the wind, that had arisen just as unexpectedly, were now whipping the back of his neck.

He should have put on his sou’wester, but who could have predicted this? The evening had been like any other autumn evening, and he had been much too absorbed in his own affairs to notice any change in the weather.

It would be no use shouting. No one would hear him: he was too far away from home.

An intense feeling of discomfort gripped him. But it wasn’t from fear of the weather, as bad as it was. No, there was something else that scared him.

“Is anyone there?” he shouted uncertainly.

There was no answer. How stupid of him to think that anyone would respond. He forced out a somewhat hysterical laugh.

But still ...

Still, there was something in front of him. Someone was sitting before him.

Impossible!

A cold chill ran down his spine. I can’t bear this, he thought. I’m too old, my heart can’t take such things. Wind and weather and ... now this!

He swallowed. He felt helplessly caught between the fury of the elements and whatever was facing him.

“Get thee hence, Satan!” he cried, but his voice drowned in the wind. “Who are you? What do you want?”

He hadn’t expected an answer and didn’t get one, either.

He had to escape! He knew what was behind him. The deep. The great abyss. And before him was this creature standing in his way. But there was nothing on either side.

He felt fear overpower all his senses. His breathing grew strained.

“I am a good Christian man,” he shouted as the wind hurled a shower of rain against his cheeks and neck. “I say grace and evening prayers and go to church every Sunday, and I make a contribution to the church collection. So you have no business with me, spirit of the abyss! I have led a better life than most people. I’m no sinner!”

Silence. The gusts of wind almost tipped him off balance.

This darkness! It was as dark as inside a bag. He sensed, rather than really seeing, that there was someone right in front of him.

And that it had a human form.

Impossible! Impossible! There couldn’t be anyone here.

He had to hold on with both hands in order not to become a victim of the storm’s rage. He felt nauseous and near death.

But what if it were death itself that was with him now?

No, that was rubbish. Though he wasn’t exactly a spring chicken anymore, he wasn’t ancient either. Everyone thought of him as a man of steel whom nothing in the world could break.

“Make yourself known,” he shouted brusquely, but immediately regretted it.

A shadow emerged before him. It towered over him. He tried to walk backwards but that was the direction of the abyss, of course.

“No!” he gasped hoarsely. “You? No, no, not you!”

He fumbled with his hands behind him but there was nothing there to support him. “Lord Jesus Christ, save me from this ... abomination!”

He was forced back as the apparition came closer. The abyss awaited him ...

But that was all a long time ago.

“What a moon!” Christa whispered, euphoric, her eyes shining. “Magic, sorcery, and all evil powers conspiring.”

She was standing by the window, watching the natural phenomenon of a perfect lunar corona. A diffuse, glowing ring in all the colours of the rainbow surrounded a pale and mysterious moon disk.

Of all the Ice People, Christa was probably the most romantic. She lived in a world of myths and in real life knew only good and kind people. She could never see evil in anyone. In her mind, evil was the preserve of those mysterious creatures that populate that world we humans never see.

There was a steady line in the family of surprisingly similar women, from Anna Maria, her daughter Saga and Saga’s grandchild Vanja, to Vanja’s daughter Christa. Gentle, beautiful and tender women, with lovely hair, lithe figures and wistful thoughts. Christa was, aside from being the most romantic, also the most beautiful among them. And the most naive. If she didn’t watch her step she might easily become prey to unscrupulous individuals.

For they were the kind of women that attract hard, strong men.

“Christa?”

The weak voice of the old man gently and innocently seeped into her consciousness.

It took a moment for her to shift her attention away from the sky. The moon seemed sick and tremulous this evening. The veils in front of it almost made it seem bewitched. It had a look of foreboding, she thought.

A magical night.

It’s as though the moon wants to tell me something, she thought in her usual way of romanticizing nature. Meanwhile, yet another humble but persistent cry, “Christa,” came from the next room.

She reluctantly turned away from the window. She felt that she had been in very good communication with the moon, but she went into the living room. She would never have dreamed of answering its call, “Yes, what is it now?” She never had impatient thoughts of that kind, that wasn’t her style at all.

“Yes, Father, what is it?”

Frank Monsen was sitting in the best chair of the house with a blanket covering his legs. His nose was red, as though it were chronically cold, and it glowed in contrast to his pale face. He seemed so old that he looked more like a grandfather than a father.

“I couldn’t ask you for a cup of coffee, could I? I hate to be a burden, but ...”

“Of course!” she answered eagerly and fetched the coffee pot.

His old hand with its prominent veins reached out, trembling, to receive the cup. “Thank you, my dear, how very kind of you. What would I ever do without you, my beautiful child?”

She looked at him absentmindedly. Poor Father, he was much younger than the robust Henning at Linden Avenue, yet he was already a wreck. And he had been for as long as Christa could remember. Always a wreck, always demanding compassion. Of which he got more than enough from her. His health had been destroyed all those years ago when he had been to the East.

It never occurred to Christa that Frank might have given up a little too easily. That one day when he had been in pain he had just sat down in a chair and stayed there. He wanted an excuse to be waited on by others. It had happened gradually, almost imperceptibly. There had been a time when he would at least go out. He had taken her with him to revival meetings in the Free Church to get her involved in what he considered to be his life. He had accompanied her to and from school and kept a careful fatherly eye on her.

But as the years passed, it seemed that Frank became increasingly sure that he wasn’t going to lose her any time soon. Or was it the other way around? That now she had reached adolescence she had to be kept at home? It was hard for an outsider to determine whether he had calmed down now or had grown more suspicious. And Christa never had thoughts of that kind at all. She accepted everything Frank said and did. She had never had the feeling that his love and compassion for her might be a deliberate form of control on his part.

It’s nice of him to say that I’m beautiful, but is it true? She had often wondered to herself, with a slight touch of concern. Fathers always think that about their daughters, but what about others? I don’t have anyone I can ask and, besides, it’s not something you ask about. But I would so much like to know!

How can two people be as different as Father and me? She thought as she brought him more cakes. He accepted them, apologizing once again for being such a burden. We don’t have a single facial feature in common, she reflected, and we resemble one another even less in the way we think. I try to be as meek, gentle and good as him but I’m probably much too thoughtless and impulsive.

“Oh, Father,” she sighed. “I would so much like to go out to Linden Avenue tomorrow. Can’t we go?”

Frank Monson shifted uneasily in his chair. “You know that I won’t refuse you anything, dear child, but it just doesn’t suit me to go this time.”

Christa thought with sadness that it had been a long time since he had wanted to go to Linden Avenue.

“But it’s Henning’s seventy-seventh birthday and he is in a way my grandfather.”

“He most certainly is not! He was married to your grandmother, but that’s different.”

She had always considered Henning to be her grandfather but didn’t want to contradict her father. “They invited us both ...” she attempted.

“I can’t go, you know that! And it wouldn’t be appropriate for you to travel alone.”

Christa couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was that made her feel uneasy. It didn’t occur to her that it was his whining tone that jarred in her ears.

Then he tried to appeal to her. “You know that I can’t manage without you any longer. It is the great tragedy of my life to have to burden you, my beloved child, but if you leave me I may develop breathing problems.”

That really made her feel guilty! It was true that he sometimes suffered from shortness of breath: she had seen it happen several times and it was terrible. The fact that it was psychosomatic was something she knew nothing about. And it didn’t make the attacks any less serious, either for him or for her.

“And Linden Avenue isn’t a fit place for you. Their faith in God is not sincere enough.”

“They are the best and finest people I know,” she answered impulsively.

Frank gave her an uncomprehending and sorrowfully reproachful look. “My child, you are seventeen years old. That’s a dangerous age, full of traps for young girls. I can’t allow you to travel alone.”

He had been talking about “a dangerous age for young girls” ever since she was thirteen. But she swallowed it whole. Her father was the authority, the one who knew everything.

“Another thing, Christa ... I noticed in one of your books that you had written ‘Christa Monsen Lind of the Ice People’. I don’t want you to do that. Your Ice People descent is shameful!”

Once again she felt a sense of unease run through her. That was a book that she kept by her bedside. Had her father really been ...?

But, of course, he had a right to. It was his house after all.

However, there was something else that preoccupied her more, which made her blurt out rashly: “Are you ashamed of Mother? She was one of the Ice People.”

“Your mother was a good woman, although her faith was a little weak. She couldn’t help being born into the Ice People. She was very beautiful and took good care of me.”

“Oh, I do try to be like her, I really do try to take good care of you, Father. But I understand why you feel you can’t trust me, I’m so thoughtless.”

“Naturally I trust you, dear child. But the world is full of temptations, and the road to Linden Avenue is paved with the dangers of the Devil. Would you be so kind as to hand me the newspaper, please?”

In complete innocence and naivety, Christa said: “You are having a difficult day today, aren’t you, Father? I mean, you are having difficulty moving around. But on other days it must be a little bit easier for you, I suppose. I mean, you must have felt all right when you managed to get all the way up to my room without help. So there’s still hope, isn’t there?”

Frank Monson stared at her. But her expression was completely neutral and didn’t show a trace of irony. His face began to turn red.

The disappointment that they weren’t going after all affected Christa deeply. In order to conceal just how sad she was about it, she murmured something about fetching milk from the dairy and went out to the kitchen.

The moon shone down upon her. It was almost full but completely veiled by a thin covering of cloud, making it shine a little less brightly. The moon was so mysterious, as though it were hiding terrible secrets that it had witnessed on earth and had therefore wrapped itself in a veil.

Frank sat in the living room, insulted and alone. He was in a bad mood and wanted Christa to understand that, but she had gone now.

Christa looked at her own reflection in the battered little mirror in the kitchen. Her black hair was pulled tightly back from her face and rolled up into an ugly bun at the back of her head. That was how all women of the Free Church wore their hair, so Frank wanted her to do hers that way as well. So it must be nice-looking, I guess, Christa thought. She was the only one who couldn’t see it.

Her secret dream was to be allowed to cut her hair short, as most girls did these days. The ones who weren’t part of the congregation, that is. But of course, she couldn’t ask for permission to do that, it would be completely out of the question!

Am I pretty? she thought self-critically. Well, her face seemed to be all right as far as she could tell. She had big dark eyes and her features were delicate but had character. At least she thought so.

Now, now, don’t get too pleased with yourself, your father wouldn’t approve.

She was so insecure about her appearance. She had a nice body, even though her legs were a bit more robust than she would have liked. Not that much, but they weren’t quite as shapely as many other girls’. It was too bad that short skirts had become fashionable: the previous generation had had an easier time of it, because they had been able to conceal their legs under their long dresses.

But the ones who had elegant legs to show off were probably very satisfied.

She frowned at her own reflection in the mirror and picked up the milk pail.

“I’m leaving now,” she shouted and rushed out before her father could make any more requests. She knew that he was feeling all right, so she could leave the house with a clear conscience. It was perhaps a bit early, but she longed to get out, wanted to enjoy the unique light of the moon, the hopeless romantic that she was.

They lived to the northeast of Oslo, which was now the capital of Norway, in a house in a rural setting. It was good for Frank’s weak lungs. They acquired all their agricultural produce from a nearby farm, as that was the cheapest solution. For Christa, the daily walk to the dairy was the most exciting event in her otherwise monotonous day. That was when she got the chance to meet ordinary people. Sinners, Frank would call them, but she couldn’t see the difference between them and the brothers and sisters of the congregation. The people in the barn seemed freer and happier, but it was her impression that that wasn’t considered a good thing.

The Ice People were also free. That was why she wanted so badly to visit them.

She and Frank lived on the good investments they had made with Vanja’s fortune. Christa wanted to get a job, but Frank wouldn’t hear of it. Who would look after him, if she did that? And think of all those demonic temptations! Anyway, she should be happy to stay at home with him; he probably wasn’t going to live very much longer anyway.

Whenever he talked that way it would make Christa very sad. Though he had always done it, ever since she was very little, and of course, he really was sick, so she lived with her heart in her mouth. If only he would stop reminding her that he wasn’t going to live forever – it hurt so much to hear it!

She didn’t understand that it was the best way Frank knew of exerting pressure on her. Her cautious, gentle suggestions that perhaps he would feel stronger if he got out and moved around a bit more were always immediately rejected.

Nor could she understand why she always felt so dejected when she was in his presence. She assumed it was due to his illness and her concern for his health.

She felt simply useless. And a constant sense of guilt hovered over her.

Visits to Linden Avenue and the Volden family were like the elixir of life to her. Without realizing it, she felt a lot more at home there than with her own father. The Ice People understood her and, even though they never went against Frank’s wishes, they seemed to disagree with him on most issues relating to her upbringing. Filled with a sense of guilt, Christa listened to them with rapt attention. She was also allowed to let her hair down there and wear it down her back – when her father wasn’t looking, of course – and Malin and Hanne allowed her to try on their fashionable clothes and cosmetics. She could chat about the farmer’s son, who was nothing special, but who was the only young man she saw aside from the ones in the Free Church, and she didn’t like them at all.

She did like Abel Gard, one of the most important men in the congregation, but since Frank was always saying that she ought to marry Abel, who was a widower with a lot of children, she avoided him, even though he was good-looking and always nice to her.

It was hard being so obedient all the time. And constantly having to be a good person.

She swung the empty aluminium pail back and forth as she walked across the crunching snow. The moon emerged between the trees every so often, and Christa couldn’t shake off the feeling that she was connected to it, as though they were both a part of an entirety, of a cosmos. The moon was her friend: it was trying to tell her something. And she didn’t know how to interpret its message.

Was it a frightened, terrified moon hiding its face in fear?

That sounded a bit ridiculous!

Winter was coming to an end, and Christa felt that spring was already in her blood. She felt capable of anything. Whether it was spring fever or the magic of the moon that made her feel that way, she wasn’t sure.

All at once she knew she was in a dilemma. No matter what she chose to do she would end up hurting someone. She felt that it would not only be annoying but also hurtful to her sweet old grandfather if she didn’t attend his birthday. She knew that he cared deeply for her, Vanja’s daughter. But her father wouldn’t allow her to go.

So whom would she be forced to hurt?

As she passed the road that led to the centre of the parish she caught sight of a young man leaning against the stand where the farmers left their milk churns. Or rather, he was sitting on it and had crossed his long legs at the ankles.

She didn’t know him. The moon shone on his blond hair, which looked practically white. He was very poorly dressed, in tattered garments he must have inherited from his father. They were much too thin for this late-winter evening.

As she walked past him she gave him a quick, shy glance, and she couldn’t help smiling a little.

He smiled back, looking friendly, gentle and wistful, and for a moment she thought that she recognized him. But that feeling soon disappeared. One thing she had noticed, however, was that his hair really was white. He had a lock of white hair at his left temple. It looked strange on such a young man. He couldn’t have been more than twenty and was probably even younger.

Christa felt like turning around and looking at him one more time, for she felt that he was following her with his gaze, but she didn’t dare. Instead she swung the pail with such nonchalance that it bumped against her wrist. She calmed down a little and continued walking at a normal pace.

The snow crunched cheerfully under her feet. This had to be winter’s last desperate effort to hold on: tomorrow the sun would hit it and there would be black spots everywhere.

She was longing for spring now. The winter had been long.

The barn ... It was so good to enter the noisy milking parlour and to listen to the cows and hear people shouting to one another. Clogs clattering on the floor. One of the women came out to empty her foaming milk pail into the big tank. She was singing in a shrill and sentimental voice one of the latest broadsheet ballads.

The ballad of Lindelo ... that was a song the romantic Christa could appreciate. She knew that it was nothing but a blatant tearjerker, but Lindelo’s bitter fate made an impression on her.

“A ballad I sing for thee,” shrieked the milkmaid.

So let us shed a tear

For the boy who laboured for Peder

Through his sorrowful childhood years.

She turned to Christa. “Oh, are you here already, young Miss? It’s early, and the foreman isn’t ready to measure the milk yet.”

“That’s all right, I’ll just wait,” said Christa, smiling, and she sat down on a bench.

The girl went on singing. It was as though she really was shedding a tear for Lindelo’s sorrowful life.

Only toil and slaving and scolding

All through poor Lindelo’s days.

From dawn till late at night

He got nothing but curses and blows.

The verse was everything a real broadside ballad should be: pompous, clumsy poetry, stumbling rhythms and a halting melody. At times there were several syllables on a single note, at other times you had to extend one syllable across several notes. It was naive, sentimental and tremendously popular. Even now, in the year of our Lord 1927, the broadside ballads were still going. They had had their heyday in the 1890s, but they lived on among the simple-minded and innocent, and would most likely be loved for decades to come.

The ballad of Lindelo was a favourite that year. Christa liked it as well and bore with the miserable waltz in a minor key. The fact that the milkmaid wasn’t the right one to sing it was a different story. She sang it in the worst possible way, with too much glissando and in a sobbing voice.

But wasn’t that the way it was meant to be sung? By one to whom it was addressed? By someone who really liked the song?

Christa had never heard the ballad in its entirety, only bits and pieces. But she was certain that like most broadside ballads it was fairly long. And told the story of a sad fate, just as the milkmaid was now doing as she sang at the top of her voice.

Young Lindelo had a brother,

A sister he also had.

They had no father, no mother.

So Lindelo cared for the little ones.

Then she disappeared back into the barn, giving Christa a friendly smile.

Christa sat swinging her legs, waiting for the foreman, the manager, to come and measure the milk.

She was totally unprepared for what was about to happen.

The moon was showing its sick face here as well. It appeared just outside the small window of the milking parlour, cold and white. It revealed nothing, just held on to its secrets.

“What do you want to say to me tonight?” Christa whispered. “What is it you’re hiding? Why do you seem so sinister?”

The next moment the answer was flung right in her face.

Inside the barn the milkmaids were shouting to one another as the milk splashed down into the pails.

“Monsen’s daughter has arrived. She’s waiting out there.”

“Monsen’s daughter? That’s a good one!” another laughing woman’s voice could be heard saying.

“Well, isn’t that who she is?”

“If she is, my name’s Mads! Ha, you know I was a servant in the parish when her mother gave birth to her. Oh no, Frank Monsen can think what he likes, but I heard what was said at Linden Avenue when the little one came along.”

“What are you saying? Don’t talk so loud or the girl might hear you!”

“Oh, not through these thick doors. No, let me tell, you, a pathetic creature like that overly pious Monsen would never be able to produce such a beautiful girl! No, it takes a great deal more to end up with such a good result! And that family at Linden Avenue know a little more than just the ordinary Lord’s prayer, I can tell you!”

“Yes, but her mother was so pretty.”

“Pretty, yes, but not nearly as beautiful as her daughter.”

“So who is the father, then?”

There was a scraping noise from the milk pails. The door was ajar, which was why Christa was able to hear the conversation so clearly. She sat petrified with fear, straining her ears, but the voices had been lowered to mere whispers. It was obvious that the two speakers had moved closer to one another.

“What?” she heard an incredulous voice ask. “You can’t possible mean that!”

“Well, I’m only repeating what I heard. Of course, no one knows for sure, but there is something supernatural at play, there’s no doubt about that.

“Supernatural? How’s that?”

“I said, I don’t know! But you can tell by looking at the girl! It’s unnatural to be so pretty.”

“I wouldn’t go around spreading gossip like that, if I were you,” the other one muttered. “She’s a nice girl and I’ve always felt sorry for her. Imagine having to go around in such ugly clothes. And she’s bullied, the poor little one – he guards her so possessively all the time. It’s a crying shame!”

They lowered their voices even more, and after a while they started talking about a cow that had an infected udder.

Christa felt like running away. She was so shaken that she nearly sobbed out loud. Her mother – who had been practically sacred to her! Had she cheated on Frank? And did he know anything about it?

No, that was impossible.

Suddenly the women’s voices rose again.

“But how could they tell?”

“They said it had to do with the tongue. There was something wrong with it.”

The tongue? Christa instinctively let her tongue slide back and forth between her teeth. Well, it had always had a small indentation, but ...

Too tight a frenum, the doctor had said when Frank once pointed out the minor defect.

But what was it that boy had said in her first-grade class when she stuck her tongue out at him? A snake’s tongue, he had said. After that she had been very careful not to show her tongue to anyone.

As though that had anything to do with her birth. It sounded awful! But who normally has a snake’s tongue? Supernatural creatures?

Christa couldn’t ever recall feeling as awful and ill-at-ease as she did right then.

Fortunately, the women came out with their pails then, and the foreman came with them. He measured out the milk with his fine half-litre measuring cup with the long handle. Christa curtseyed to him and hurried off, as he licked the tip of his pencil and made a note in the account book of how much milk she had received.

Her eyes were wild with frenzied turmoil as she looked up at the veiled disk of the moon. What she had heard that day had turned her life completely upside down.

But the more she mulled it over, the easier it was for her to accept that Frank wasn’t her real father. It was shameful, of course, practically unbearable, but she couldn’t help the fact that she liked the idea. Hadn’t she always thought that there couldn’t be two people who were more different than her and her father?

She needed to know more.

Of, course she couldn’t mention anything to Frank. That wouldn’t do, and he probably didn’t know anything. But she had to go to Linden Avenue.

There was no doubt that the thought of an unknown father struck her as romantic. She felt a ticklish sensation of excitement alongside a nagging sense of sorrow. She had suddenly become another person, she felt.

For a moment she was a little angry with the other Ice People. Why hadn’t they said anything? She resigned herself to the thought that they probably had good reason for it.

Oh, but she didn’t really believe in the idea of having a supernatural father! But just knowing that she had a father other than Frank was a pleasant thought. For she and he were so utterly different in their tastes and ways of being and in what they valued in life.

So now it was a matter of getting to Linden Avenue. She had to go there now. Go down there and confront them.

So that’s what you wanted with me, she thought, glancing at the moon. To prepare me for the fact that my life was about to be turned upside down. That I would have to start thinking in a different way.

Yes, well, I’ll have to brace myself for whatever is yet to come. Perhaps you have something terrible to tell me about my birth? That my father was mad and is in a straitjacket? Or sitting in jail?

Well, no matter what, he’s bound to be more exciting than Frank, she was tempted to add.

Ugh! How unfair she was being towards him! Poor Frank, who was so kind and so ill!

It was strange that for most of her life she had never thought of him as anything other than Frank and not as “Father”. Yes, when she was addressing him she called him “Father”, but when she mentioned him to others she never referred to him as her father. It was as though she just couldn’t get herself to do it.

“You’ve really managed to shake up my life,” she whispered to the moon, which hovered shining across the white plains all around her in the districts of Östre Aker and Nittedal. “You certainly had something to tell me! But now I know. So you can stop hiding yourself behind that veil of mist. I took it all very well, as you can see.”

But the moon remained just as pale and scary as before.