Читать книгу Seal Woman - Solveig Eggerz - Страница 8

The Second Time in Her Life

Each lady slipper that grew on the edge of the field contained a drop of water at its center that sparkled in the early morning dew. Sometimes Charlotte bent to touch the liquid with her tongue as she had seen Ragnar do. But today she walked, stiff as a robot, turning the hay with a methodical twist, counting eins, zwei, drei. By noon, her nose itched from the hay dust. She stopped and placed her hand on the small of her back.

Ragnar put his rake down and came to her. Working the last row, the old woman tilted her face toward the sun.

"Hold it like this," he said, gently rearranging her grip.

His warm voice soothed her. But the narrowest part of her back—the spot where the day's work settled—still hurt. Later, she struggled to pack the hay into bundles against the side of her foot. But she couldn't rake it tightly enough. He had a functional way of touching her. Kneeling, he caressed her ankle.

"Like this."

At night, she imagined his rough warm hands on her skin, his strong arms around her shoulders—strong enough to pick up a sick ewe. She'd seen him carry a sheep and croon into its ear.

One day toward the end of that first summer, Charlotte bent over the washtub in the cowshed. The sunlight from the open door played over her hands as she soaped Ragnar's long underwear and rubbed it over the grooves of the board. Her eyes measured the contrasts on her hands, the shadows and their opposites, adjusted the angry red of her skin to a delicate pink, placed her hands demurely in the burgundy silk-swathed lap of a 16 century Dutch dowager, all without releasing Ragnar's underwear.

The door should have led to a courtyard in Delft. But it opened onto the lush green hillside, brighter than any color from a tube. It went dark as Ragnar's large body filled the doorframe. He lingered there, gazing at her. She stopped moving her hands. He walked toward the tub, rolling up his sleeves.

"Can I help?"

Together, they twisted the underwear in opposite directions until the water poured out, thick and gray. Carrying the basket of wash with her to the clothesline, he said a few words, and she said nothing. But they both laughed at the underwear dancing in the wind between his pajamas and the old woman's socks.

He smiled shyly. "I was cutting hay—I want to show you— "

She tilted her head, closed her eyes. A concert—front row seats, with Max years ago. She nodded acceptance.

They walked in the bristly growth of the moorland without speaking. Ragnar bent to pick a small cluster of little white flowers, grass of Parnassus, that grew at their feet and held them out to her.

"Good for the liver—mother says."

Charlotte examined the five petals, marked with delicate green lines, and smelled the sorrel on his breath. He stepped back, as if retreating from a line he hadn't meant to cross.

She touched her tongue to the roof of her mouth, pronouncing her thanks just right. Takk. Every time Max had brought her red and white roses, she'd scrambled to find a pitcher to hold them. Up ahead, the farmhouse seemed very small.

"Here, on the hillside…"

She waited.

He pointed to a post.

"…we call that a staur."

Words tumbled from him—steinar, girðing—rocks, fence. He opened his arms—sól, himinn—sun, sky. Repeating the words, she laughed at her own pronunciation. His ears reddened as if he'd said the words wrong in the first place.

Years later, after their conversation had calcified into monosyllabic exchanges or hand signals across the fields, she would realize that their early verbal giddiness had resembled the bucking of the cows in the early spring—the tumult that preceded the dull grazing pattern of the rest of the summer— the rest of their lives.

They climbed higher, and the grass gave way to small pebbles. Charlotte was breathing quickly now. He lowered himself to the ground and pulled her down next to him.

"Smell the lamb's grass," he said, pointing to a tussock covered with tiny pink blossoms.

She buried her nose in the flowers. The earthy sweetness stirred a sadness in her. Just beyond the next knoll, the fog rolled like surf all the way out to the mountain. At last they found the place where he'd left his scythe that morning. He gripped the handle, so that the blade extended over his shoulder. They walked in silence to the farmhouse.

The next day, he taught her how to walk sideways into sheets of rain.

Rigning. Vindur.

Rain. Wind.

She moved her lips around the words, imitating the way he spoke, probing the speech pattern of the hillside. At night in bed, she strung together nouns and verbs. One morning, after weeks of this, she decided to say a whole sentence. She came up behind him in the cowshed, stood in the stall gutter, and spoke carefully.

"Will we turn the hay before the rain?"

He turned around and smiled. His pride warmed her. The old woman's eyes were on her, wanting something too. Charlotte hadn't had a real conversation since she'd traveled with Gisela. Things unsaid knocked about in her head. She thought for a moment, then pursed her lips.

"Skjalda's milk is blue today."

The old woman's face cracked into laughter.

That night Charlotte reached across the distance between the beds to nudge the old woman out of a snore. But she wasn't sleeping. In a voice of stifled laughter, she repeated Charlotte's words, "Skjalda's milk is blue today."

After that, Ragnar often walked with Charlotte, teaching her new words, sometimes touching her. She wrote to Gisela:

I've learned to milk a cow and rake hay. This is an interesting agricultural experience for me. But I'm still thinking of moving to the city even though it's very beautiful here, and I think the farmer's mother likes me. How's the farmer's brother? Hah. Hah. Please write. I can't speak properly yet, and I've never been so quiet in my life. Any word from home? Charlotte.

It was a sunny day, and she was in the tool shed, searching for a rake that had all its teeth. Through the sunlit crack in the corrugated iron, she recognized his overalls and boots as he approached the shed. He stumbled a little in the dark. His arms circled her waist. She caught her breath, and even before he spoke, his deep voice sang inside her.

"Let me help you," he said.

She placed her hands on his and leaned back against his chest. Somewhere between her shoulder blades, his blood made a thudding sound. Aside from pressing up against strangers in bread lines in Berlin, she hadn't been close to a man since—

Stepping out of the shed, she trembled in the warm sun.

All morning, they turned the drying grass, the old woman bringing up the rear. Each time they came to the end of a row, Charlotte tilted her face toward him, so that his gaze could brush her cheek.

During the dry spell, they worked furiously to get all the hay into the barn. Then, as black clouds scudded across the sky, they baled and bound the hay to the horses' backs. Holding the bridle of the lead horse, Ragnar looked ready for a long and difficult journey. The barn was ten minutes away. Charlotte saw the change in his face, like the trembling of the track before the train arrives. She waited.

"Is it alright then?" His look said he meant her—and him.

"Yes," she said for the second time in her life.

The buttocks of the last horse quivered as the hay bundles swayed on its flanks.

Next day, she sat on the milk stool, and he stood above her.

"Did you learn to rake hay in Berlin?" he asked.

The question made her laugh until she had to wipe away tears. When she opened her eyes again, he was gone and Skjalda was studying her. The swirl of hair on her flank blurred into a vision of the years of raking, digging, and milking that lay ahead.