"I'm sorry, Neddy," I'd say, wrapping my arms around his legs, watching the corners of his mouth for the smile I always managed to squeeze out of him. And then I'd go to the kitchen and Mother would scold me yet again.
Neddy
TO SAY THAT MY MOTHER was superstitious would be like saying the great blizzard of 1539 was naught but a light snowfall.
Every single thing a body did in our house was charged with meaning. To sweep dust out the front door was to sweep away all your good luck. To sing while baking bread was to guarantee the arrival of ill fortune. To have an itch on the left side of your body meant certain disaster. And if you sneezed on a Wednesday, you would surely receive a letter—good news if you were facing east and bad if facing north.
Father liked to tell the story of how he first learned of Mother's "birth-direction" superstition.
When Father and Mother announced their engagement to her family, the first words to come out of his future mother-in-law's mouth were "But Arne, we don't even know what your birth direction is!" is
Father said that he gaped at her, totally bewildered.
"Yes, Arne, we must know right away, before you and Eugenia make any more plans."
"Oh, I'm quite certain he's a south, or a southeast," Mother said reassuringly.
"But we must know for sure," said her mother.
Father said he started to laugh then, thinking they were having some elaborate joke with him. But they weren't.
And Father would have us all doubled over with laughter as he described the pilgrimage to my grandparents' farm to interrogate them regarding the direction my father's mother was facing when she gave birth to him. It turned out that the direction his mother was facing when Father was born was southeast, which was a good thing according to Mother.
What wasn't such a good thing is that this turned out to be the last time Father saw his family. There had already been ill feeling between them that Father had hoped to heal during the visit. But if anything, the strange line of questioning from the "city folk" Father was marrying into seemed to make matters worse, and they parted with bad blood.
Father
MY EUGENIA'S FERVENT BELIEF in the birth-direction superstition was unusual to say the least. I have never come across anything like it during the course of my life, but it had apparently been handed down through many generations of Eugenia's family.
They believed that birth direction was of overwhelming importance. Not the alignment of the stars, nor the position of the moon, nor the movement of the tides, nor even the traits handed down from parent to child.
My theory was that this strange notion sprang from their preoccupation with mapmaking.
"And every child born in our family," Eugenia explained to me, "is given a name that begins with the first letter of their birth direction. So a north-facing baby might be called Nathaniel; a southwest-facing child, Sarah Wilhelmina; and so on. I myself was an east-facing baby."
"And what are the attributes of an east-facing baby?" I asked.
"Well, among other things, that I am tidy, a sound sleeper, and somewhat superstitious."
Somewhat?" I countered with a grin.
It turned out that Eugenia went a little further with the birth-direction superstition than any of her forebears. On the night after we were wed, she announced to me that she wanted to have seven children.
"Seven is a good number," I replied. "But why seven? Is that a particularly lucky number?" I said with a teasing smile.
"No, it is that I want one child for each point of the compass," she replied.
Puzzled, I said, "But that would be four, or eight perhaps..."
"I have left out north, of course."
"Why not north?" I asked.
"Surely you know about pure northern children?" she responded in surprise.
"No," I said, refraining from reminding her that no one outside her family would even be engaged in such a conversation.
"Oh, they are terrible! Wandering and wild and very ill behaved. Northern people in general are that way. My own sister—surely I've told you this?—married a north-born (against the advice of our mother, needless to say), and he took off on a sailing ship when she was pregnant with their third child and has not been heard of since. I refuse to have a child I cannot keep my eye on."
I felt a sliver of worry at those words. "I hope you are not going to be an overprotective mother, Eugenia."
"Oh no, Arne," she reassured me. "It's just that norths are particularly wild. Always into trouble. But that is not the only reason I will not have a north bairn. There is another, of much more importance."
"And what is that?"
"Some years ago I went with my sister to a skjebne-soke."
Though skjebne-sokes were scarce in our region, I was not surprised that someone as superstitious as Eugenia had managed to find one.
"She was very gifted, this skjebne-soke. Why, she predicted to the day when Karin Tessel would have her first bairn! And she told my sister that she would lose her husband to the sea..." Eugenia trailed off, then fell silent.
I studied her face. "The skjebne-soke said something about you having a north bairn?"
She nodded, then said in a low voice, "She said that if I were to have a north-born, that child would grow up to die a cold, horrible death, suffocating under ice and snow." She shuddered and instinctively I drew her close to me. Because avalanches were not uncommon during die winter in our country, especially on the seven mountains that surrounded Bergen, I could see that Eugenia took this ominous prediction quite seriously.
I myself considered such prophecy and superstition to be nonsense, and perhaps if I had tried to reason with Eugenia, taken a stronger stand against her many superstitions right from the beginning, I might have averted much of the ill fortune that later befell us. But I did not. I saw her ideas as harmlessly eccentric, even charming at the outset, and I indulged her. I, too, wanted a large family, and seven seemed as good a number as any....
But even Eugenia's own mother thought that methodically planning the birth directions of each of her children was ill advised. Before she died she had cautioned Eugenia against it.
"'Tis meddling in the affairs of God and fate, and only disaster can come of it," she had said.
Eugenia herself had been born due east. Her mother went into labor unexpectedly on a boat that was traveling down the Rauma River, which was notoriously twisty. Fortunately, Eugenia's mother had had a leidarstein and needle with her (she carried both with her at all times during her pregnancy), and the owner of the boat brought a pail of water. While his wife labored, Esbjorn magnetized the needle and floated it in the water, so it turned out that they were able to calculate the birth direction without much difficulty. "To think I might have been a north, had the boat taken a sudden turn!" Eugenia would mutter darkly.
Eugenia began our family with northeast, Nils Erlend. Her reasoning was that she would tackle the most difficult direction first, when she was youngest and most vigorous; and the next most difficult (Neddy Wilfrid) at the end, when she was at her wisest and most experienced as a parent.
It all went just as Eugenia had planned, from northeast to northwest.
Nils Erlend, who liked to roam but had a frugal, organized side.
Elise, the quiet, perfect east; practical and obedient.
Selme Eva, who was comfortable and kind.
Sara, a strong-willed, passionate girl.
Sonja Wende, who was good with animals and a little bit prescient, farseeing.