After Christmas the weather turns colder. The air is raw and damp, full of salty humidity from the ocean. It prickles their cheeks and stings their nostrils. The steep islets Stephie can see from the bay window are capped with snow. They remind her of mountaintops. It’s as if the mountains had sunk under the water and left only their tops protruding.
Along the shore and in the inlets, the ocean is frozen over. The ice is a dull gray-green, ribboned with white snow. Farther out, the open water gleams, steel blue. Stephie walks on the beach and feels the thin ice shatter, crunching under her feet. Sometimes she goes right through the layer of ice and snow and down into the stiff, frozen seaweed.
Stephie likes the snow; it transforms the island from gray to white. She makes snowballs and finds targets to aim at, like the rocks out in the water. She slides down the slope behind the house over and over, until Aunt Märta scolds her, saying she’ll wear out her boot soles.
By the school there’s a real sledding hill. Nellie got a sled for Christmas, and she spends hours and hours at the hill every day with her friends. She’d probably lend it to Stephie if she asked, but Stephie doesn’t feel like asking. She hasn’t got anyone to go sledding with anyway.
Uncle Evert is out on the fishing boat again. He comes home the morning of New Year’s Eve. It’s a beautiful day, with a blue sky. The air is clear. Stephie’s sitting at the table in her room, using her new paints.
“You ought to be outside on a day like this,” Uncle Evert says. “Youngsters need fresh air.”
“I was out this morning,” Stephie replies.
“The sledding hill over by the school was jammed with kids.”
Stephie nods, not looking up from her painting. Uncle Evert sits quietly for a while, just watching her.
After coffee Uncle Evert asks Stephie to come outside with him. She buttons her coat and puts on her new cap and mittens. Uncle Evert holds the door open as if for a fine young lady, and she accompanies him out onto the front steps.
At the bottom of the steps is a sled. It was red once, but the paint is worn and peeling. It’s a fine sled, though, made of narrow slats and soft, curved runners.
“Do you like it?” Uncle Evert asks.
“Is it for me?”
Uncle Evert nods. “It’s been standing in the shed for years. We’ll give it a coat of paint, but I thought maybe you’d like to try it first.”
“Whose was it before?” Stephie asks, but Uncle Evert’s already ahead of her, pulling the sled toward the slope behind the house.
Stephie sleds for a while. Uncle Evert asks if she’d like to go to the big sledding hill right away, but Stephie wants to paint her sled before she takes it there. They carry the sled down to the basement, and Uncle Evert teaches her how to sand off the old paint. When the surface is smooth he finds a can of paint and a little brush.
It takes a long time to get the brush in between the slats and to do all the edges. When they’re finished painting, though, it’s as shiny and red as new.
“It’ll be dry by morning,” Uncle Evert tells her, “and you’ll be able to take it out.”
In the blue dusk of early evening they roll firm snowballs and put them in a ring to make a snow lantern at the bottom of the front steps. Aunt Märta gives Stephie a little candle to set in the middle. On top of the first ring they make a second, slightly smaller one. Carefully they go on constructing a pyramid of snowballs, until they reach the very top, where there’s room for only a single snowball.
Uncle Evert takes out some matches and lights the candle. It shines from inside the lantern, giving off a lovely glow, a soft, reddish sheen that brightens the whole area.
Stephie sighs. “It’s gorgeous.”
Aunt Märta comes out onto the steps to admire their handiwork.
“Very pretty indeed,” she says.
Coming from Aunt Märta, that’s quite a compliment.
To celebrate the coming of the new year, they have their dinner in the front room, saved for special occasions. Aunt Märta’s made a roast with potatoes, gravy, and peas. It feels like a real celebration, in spite of the fact that it’s just the three of them.
Back in Vienna, the Steiners would have company for dinner on New Year’s Eve, another family with two children Stephie and Nellie’s ages. They’d set the table for a party, with a white cloth and folded napkins, gold-edged china and silver cutlery. Candles made the wine in the grown-ups’ glasses gleam like enchanted gems. The housemaid, in her black dress and white apron, carried in the platters and served each person, while the cook perspired over the pots and pans in the kitchen.
After the meal all four children were sent to rest in the nursery. They would lie there whispering and giggling, much too excited to sleep. Mother came and got them at a quarter to twelve, and they would all go out onto the balcony and listen to the many church bells in Vienna ringing in the new year.
“May I stay up until midnight?” Stephie asks.
“Absolutely not,” Aunt Märta replies.
“Oh, why not?” says Uncle Evert. “It’s New Year’s Eve only once a year. And a new decade, like tonight, only once every ten years.”
Aunt Märta changes her mind. “Well, all right, then,” she says. “Put on your nightgown and be all ready for bed. It’s just this once, though.”
At a few minutes to twelve Aunt Märta turns on the radio. A deep male voice recites a poem:
“Ring out, wild bells…”
Uncle Evert opens the window. The ringing of the bells on the radio mixes with the ringing of the island’s church bells and with the delicate chiming of Aunt Märta’s wall clock.
The year 1939 is over. The new year of 1940 has begun.
“Let this be a better year,” Stephie whispers to herself. “Please, please, let it be a better one. I’ll try my very best to be good, I promise.”
twenty-four
“Well, I was certainly taken by surprise,” the woman behind the counter at the post office complains. “I never expected such a terrible winter!”
Stephie is waiting her turn. She always tries to pass by the post office on her way home from school to see if there’s any mail, hoping for letters from Mamma and Papa.
“That’s right,” says the woman in the line, taking a bill out of her handbag. “Not even my elderly mother, who’s over eighty, remembers a winter as cold as this.”
“And with the ocean frozen so far out.”
“I’ve heard you can walk on the ice all the way to Hjuvik now.”
Stephie listens alertly. Hjuvik’s on the mainland, north of Göteborg. Imagine being able to walk all the way there!
Down at the little harbor, all the boats are frozen in port. The fishermen have to chop runnels in the ice covering the bay and pull the boats through the ice out into the open water. When Uncle Evert comes back from a fishing trip, his overalls are frozen stiff, like armor.
“Do you think it has something to do with the war, Mrs. Pettersson?” the post office cashier asks.
“Goodness only knows,” the lady answers, shaking her head. “These are evil times.”
“Evil indeed,” the cashier agrees, counting the lady’s change onto the counter.
Mrs. Pettersson takes her package, says goodbye, and leaves. At last it’s Stephie’s turn.
“Hello. Is there any mail for the Janssons?”
“Hello, young lady,” the cashier says. “Let me have a look.” She sorts through the drawers, then shakes her head.
“Not today.”
Stephie bites her lip in disappointment. No letters from home since before Christmas. None to her and none to Nellie.
“Wait a moment,” the cashier says. “I’ll just check to make sure there’s been no mistake.” She looks again, but to no avail. “I’m sure you’ll hear soon,” she says comfortingly. “Come back tomorrow, maybe there’ll be a letter then.”