Читать книгу Seal Woman - Solveig Eggerz - Страница 4

A Gift

The boys stood on the steps waving, reclaiming their parents at last. Eleven-year old Tryggvi, named for Ragnar's father, strode toward the car on long, lean legs. His unwashed brown hair stood up stiff as a crow's feather. Henrik, five years old, ran down the steps towards her. Trails of earlier tears marked his cheeks. Pale-skinned and small-boned, he looked as if the cool summer breeze would break him in two.

When the midwife—a heavy-hipped woman from the foot of the hillside—had laid the squalling infant on Charlotte's chest, her father's name, Heinrich, had come into her head. But even as she rolled her shoulders in pain under the baby's hard gums on her nipple, she'd changed his name to Henrik. It would sound better on the hillside. Being the son of the foreign woman would be hard enough for the child.

Henrik's eyes held an accusation.

"Why didn't you tell me you were going?"

She stepped out of the car and caressed his fragile shoulders. Every time she went on an errand, he behaved as if she'd left him forever. Secretly she liked his fear of losing her. It tied her to the farm in a way that Ragnar never could. It matched her own fear for the safety of these pups born to her in middle age. Tryggvi bristled under her caution, but Henrik absorbed her fears, made them his own.

Now he hung on her leg.

"Silly," she said, tweaking his nose.

She must discourage this nervous hugging, help him grow up. Three years old the day they found her on the shore, he'd seen the waves washing over her. After that, she'd promised them. No more climbing on the rocks. Just a little whispering into the waves.

"We'll make pancakes," she said.

Henrik released her and ran into the house.

Tryggvi's features curled into indifference. She wanted to kiss him, but he wouldn't allow that, not since he'd begun to swing a scythe with his father. He rolled up his sleeves, reached into the back seat, and pulled out the bag of grain. Watching him struggle with it across the driveway, she felt a rush of pride.

Before entering the house, she glanced towards the sea. It was her favorite time, that moment of indecision in the ocean when the tide turned.

The old woman sat in the living room, knitting. Above her hung the three oil paintings Charlotte had brought with her. An old man looked tenderly into the eyes of his young son. The boy returned the gaze. The old man held a metallic glint in his hand, indistinguishable as a knife unless you knew how Abraham had hesitated to kill Isaac.

Before their first Christmas together, Charlotte had hung up the painting of Lena as a baby, her face merging with vinca and violets. In a certain light, her eyes sparkled with laughter. But when you stood in the door and looked at the painting sideways, you glimpsed a sadness. Charlotte always faced the painting straight on.

The third painting had stayed longer in Charlotte's suitcase. She was already pregnant with Tryggvi when she hung it in the corner, away from the sun's rays. It depicted a market place crowded with carts and peddlers. A figure ran toward the viewer. On its white cloak was a red dot. Each painting was signed. Max.

The old woman plucked a loop of wool from her needle. She gestured with

her chin to a small table covered with an embroidered doily. On it was a glass of water that contained two scarlet, whitespotted mushrooms. The stalks of the umbrella-like heads were snow white.

"Berserker mushroom—found it this morning," she said.

Charlotte saw the gleam in her eye and wondered if she'd sliced a bit of it into her chamomile tea. Hadn't the mushrooms' muskarin and atropin inspired a hallucinatory courage in the Vikings, helped them rip out the hearts of their enemies? Trying occasionally to dose down her own dreams with the mushroom, Charlotte had created bloody nightmares instead. In the kitchen she reached for her apron and tied it so that the threadbare section was on her side, not over her belly.

Clicking her needles, the old woman sang.

Covered with old and gray moss

Grass and green heather grow into our wound.