Читать книгу Seal Woman - Solveig Eggerz - Страница 6

A Creature Going Ashore

The sunlight drifted through the panes of the little window. Facing the old woman's empty bed, Charlotte dressed slowly. A burlap apron hung on a hook. She tied it around her waist and went to the kitchen. A rust-colored cat sat hunched over a saucer, picking at fish bones. Somewhere outside, milk pails rattled.

Between the kitchen and the cowshed, she made her plan for hitchhiking back to Reykjavík. Getting off the boat, she'd seen smoking chimneys in the town. They'd need maids— maybe German tutors—in those big houses.

A lamb grazed on the shed roof. Charlotte ducked her head under the wooden frame of the door and entered a shed that was dark but for one small window. Unlit oil lamps hung on the walls of piled stone. Under her feet, she felt the grit of a dirt floor. Her lip curled at the stench of ammonia, and she nearly tripped over a tub of soaking overalls.

Ragnar stepped out from behind the wooden framework that separated the cow stalls from the washroom. In this setting he looked almost graceful, walking toward her, trailing his fingers along the cow's spine. Nourished perhaps by the warmth of the animals, his voice had a resonance.

"Good morning."

She imitated the greeting as best she could. A follow-up phrase came to mind, but the words knotted her tongue. She watched him pour milk from a bucket into a waist-high canister that stood in the center of the room.

The angular haunches of cows rose above the wooden framework that separated one stall from the other. The cows' tails were looped up with string attached to the splintered beams over their heads. The old woman wore a smock of burlap bags and a brown bandanna over her forehead. She sat on a stool tugging the teats, sending streams of milk crashing into the bucket.

"Skjalda," she said, introducing the cow.

Shifting her bound hooves, Skjalda sent a canary yellow cascade into the dirt gutter.

The old woman cheered like a Berlin soccer fan, picked up her bucket and spun it away from the downpour of pee. Nimbly, she lifted a jar from the shelf and held it with both hands under the flow. When the cow had squeezed out the last drop, the old woman carried the jar back to the shelf, placed a lid on it, and reached for the milk bucket again. Other jars lined the shelf, each one full of yellow liquid.

Ragnar led Charlotte to the next cow. He tied the cow's hooves together and greased her teats. Then, holding one in each hand, he milked a bluish beam into the bucket. When it was her turn, the rubbery flesh swelled in her hands, but no matter how hard she squeezed only a tiny dribble hit the bottom of the bucket. To relieve the pain, she spread her fingers.

The next day, the milking went better. But later, when Charlotte was pulling up weeds around the yarrow in the garden, her hands hurt. Alone in the kitchen, she held up her right hand, counted the fingers. How many ways could you use a hand? She'd brought her little box of colored pencils. Drawing moss wrapping itself around lava rocks could keep her here.

That and a man's voice—if only he'd use it more.

The old woman entered the kitchen. She handed Charlotte a dirty smock and a pair of work gloves. Back in Berlin, she'd avoided the Imperial School for Secretaries, dreading the short skirt and nubby sweater uniform that typists wore. Now she slipped her arms into a uniform stiff with filth.

A wheelbarrow stood against the wall of the shed. The old woman grasped the handles, and rolled it to the shed door. Charlotte stepped over the high wooden threshold into the winter residence of Dark Castle's sheep. The fresh manure squished under the toes of her boots. Ragnar held the handle of a square shovel with both hands, leaned his weight into it, pushed down with a grunt, and sliced through the layers of manure that had accumulated during the winter. He dumped the dark wedge onto a pile in the front of the shed.

Humming again, the old woman bent over, arms extended, embraced a brown load, staggered toward the door, cleared the threshold and dumped the manure into the wheelbarrow.

The sharp, blue eyes carried a challenge.

Your turn.

Charlotte pulled her sweater sleeve down to the cuffs of her gloves, lifted the waste in her arms, and inhaled the smell. In the sunlight, the layers of manure looked like an archaeological lesson on Germania under the Romans, the layered history of sheep cloistered in the dank shed from October to May, months devoted solely to chewing and defecating.

Pushing the full wheelbarrow to the smoke shed, sweat pearling on her upper lip, Charlotte felt sympathy for the churlish Bavarian farmers her bureaucrat father had laughed at.

Sometime that week, the clouds pulled away from the sun.

"Drying Day," the old woman said, raising her hands toward the crack in the ceiling in a gesture of gratitude.

Charlotte heard the praise in her voice. They hadn't discussed religion yet.

Outside, Ragnar wrapped part of the scythe blade in a towel, grasped it, and cut the manure wedge in half.

But the old woman whacked her wedge with a whalebone paddle. "That's how my mother did it."

Charlotte knew she couldn't measure up to that. With her scythe blade she gingerly halved a wedge. Gradually she built up momentum until she sweated and the breeze chilled her armpits. Finally, the old woman demonstrated how to prop the wedges up against one another to dry. Soon the entire home field was brown, a tent city of manure.

At the end of the day, the old woman was bent double. She gestured for Charlotte to follow her to the cowshed. Together, they wrung out the overalls that soaked in the tub and dumped the granite-colored water into the trough next to the shed. Ragnar brought a pot of hot water from the stove, then more. They added cold water, and the bath was ready.

Several vials lay on the shelf next to the urine jars. The old woman took one. In the weak light from the steamed window, Charlotte saw the long stalk and tiny purple bloom of lavender sketched on the label. The plant grew in the garden behind the yarrow.

"Lavandula—makes you happy," the old woman said and sprinkled drops of oil over the water. Its fragrance edged into the animal odor.

The old woman lit a candle and undressed. A tiny splash signaled her immersion in the tub. Her eyes glistened above the water, like a pond frog's during mating season.

"Get in."

Charlotte stepped out of her clothes, held the side of the tub for balance, and climbed over the edge at the other end. Easing in, she felt the old woman's skin against hers. Her bathing companion made small sighing sounds as she soaped her shoulders and neck, then lay back, eyes closed.

For a moment, Charlotte dozed in the warm, sweet smell. Then she heard the splash of a creature going ashore. The old woman, bones jutting, stood on the floor next to the tub, rubbing herself with a towel. Ragnar appeared at the door, then turned abruptly and disappeared among the cow stalls. Charlotte heard his shovel scraping up dung. She climbed out of the tub, dressed hurriedly, and hung their wet towels on the indoor clothesline. The old woman held the door for her. Turning, she glimpsed his large pale leg scaling the side of the tub.