This is only a first courtesy visit, but they take so much time that the pastor’s wife begins to wonder if they’re expecting further refreshments. They must realize that almost all food is still rationed, and that the two of them have already used way too much of their allowance. If they’re to go on at this rate, they won’t make it. Adele Bergman at least must understand, she thinks, and looks at her in desperation. Adele Bergman gets the message and understands, has already calculated the approximate expenditure of coupons and wonders how they’re going to manage. Although they’ve got cows in the pasture and fish in the sea. She gives the pastor’s wife a friendly look and hears the little girl complaining in the bedroom.
“May I come say hello to the pastor’s daughter?” she asks, following Mona into the bedroom. Mona lifts Sanna from her baby bed, feels her backside and determines that she’s dry. “But now I’m going to the kitchen to put her on the potty before she has another accident.”
Exactly as Mona had thought, Adele Bergman has used Sanna as an excuse to get a look at the bedroom. But be my guest. It too is very proper. Two beds with light brown bedspreads, each with a chair as a nightstand, and a bureau. Still a bit bare, but they’ll have time to acquire a variety of things. A little crucifix hangs above the bureau, and that pleases Adele Bergman. This young priest seems thoroughly Christian every day of the week, and God knows that such a priest is what this parish needs.
She helps to get the vestry and the council up and out, and just as she’d calculated, the organist offers her a ride in his boat and promises to put her ashore at the Co-op dock, since of course Elis took their boat home much earlier. “It’s been a good day,” she says confidentially, both to the organist as they sit talking pleasantly above the clatter of the engine, and to Elis when she gets home.
Chapter Five
IT FALLS TO THE ORGANIST to carefully instruct the priest about the divisions within the parish. He treats the subject lightly, as if it were only a question of a little good-natured rivalry between the two equal halves of the community, and as if he himself stood above the whole struggle and looked down on it with amused condescension. But he grows more serious as he speaks, the furrow between his eyebrows deepens, and his face darkens.
“There are people in the east villages who wouldn’t pull a west villager from a hole in the ice if they were drowning,” he says.
“It can’t be as bad as all that!” says the pastor, trying to laugh it all off. “And if it’s an east villager who’s fallen through the ice? What would the west villagers do?”
But the organist, who had stood above the fray, now says “we”. “We’d probably pull him out, most of us. But you never know. There’s so much personal rancour in a place like this. Real hatred, to tell you the truth. Only a few. But it can poison a whole community.”
“How does it express itself?” the priest asks, hesitantly.
“Indirectly. So the divisions are passed down from one generation to the next. The local council consists of two equal blocks, which makes it almost impossible to get anything important done. The chairman has the deciding vote, and pity the poor devil who gets elected chairman. There’s always pressure, not so much from the other side as from his own side. Same thing in the vestry. I’m the chairman there,” he adds, and now he smiles as if he couldn’t stand to look serious. Here on these islands, everyone wears a happy face. That much the priest has already learned.
The priest smiles too. “I’m sincerely happy to hear it,” he says from the heart. “I’m glad you told me all this. What do you think it will mean for me as pastor?”
The organist considers. “You’re different from the man we had before. He was older and more cunning, if I may use that word. Over the years, he grew very adept at playing off one side against the other. He knew what to say to get the outcomes he wanted. Don’t forget that in the parish council, you’re the chairman, and you need to chair those meetings forcefully. As for the vestry, it would be a good idea for us to talk things over in advance so I know where you stand.”
The priest is not as dumb as he may look. He takes the hint, amused and interested. “So you can explain the hidden tensions and intrigues to me and help me figure out what I think. Thank you. Yes. You’re a great help, and I hope we can work together in future, too, and talk to each other frankly.”
The organist is pleased by the priest’s appreciation and confidence. “I’m telling you this also because you need to know that there’s always a terrible tug of war for the pastor. Of course the church is supposed to be neutral, but this isn’t about politics. It’s personal. If you can make friends with the pastor, you can draw him to your side and get his ear.”
“Oh, my,” the pastor says. “I can see that I’ve already been drawn towards the west villages. You and your family and the estimable Adele Bergman and Doctor Gyllen and the Hindrikses. And the verger and Signe, although they live so close to the church that we can almost count them as neutral. But it can’t be helped. I don’t intend to sit here like a hermit and treat both sides with suspicion. I mean to go out and meet people in all the villages! You know, I didn’t pick up any of this when the council and the vestry were here for coffee. Everyone was so nice, and I liked every one of you.”
“Of course you did,” the organist says. “There’s nothing wrong with us one at a time, we’re all very ‘nice’, as you say. That’s why this division is so deplorable. Because it divides people who could be best friends. Instead we have to be cautious and on guard. It’s a shame.”
This has been a lot for him to swallow, the organist can see that, but the priest is looking ahead. “It’s good you’ve told me all this,” he says. “But now in the beginning I think I’ll act as if I didn’t know a thing. Even though you’ve told me, I’m sure I don’t yet understand all of it in depth. First I need to get a bit closer to people.”
“You’re off to a good start,” says the organist warmly, which gives the priest time to formulate what he’s feeling.
”You’ll probably think I’m childish, but I already like it here so much that I don’t ever want to leave. Do you think you could stand me for the next forty years?”
The organist laughs, as if the divisions had never been raised. “Sounds wonderful. That will be the news item of the year—a priest who isn’t on the lookout for a richer parish.”
As friends, they set to work on what looks to be a long collaboration. Even in a small parish—or especially in a small parish—there are a host of questions to be aired at every meeting of the vestry. There is already quite a pile of official post. They read it together and the organist sifts through it with an experienced hand and decides what needs to be given to the vestry and what the priest can deal with himself. This one sits with pen in hand and looks capable of sending off letters in a steady stream. He seems almost eager, as if his fingers were itching to get started, and the organist is happy at the thought of working with a priest who respects the way things have always been done and doesn’t immediately want to make changes.
The priest himself looks on the organist the way a young man looks on an experienced older man, with almost childish confidence. As they sit there in his study, working, glancing at one another appreciatively, the pastor feels an uninhibited pleasure in having an older man as support, guide, and friend. Almost a father figure, if the organist had been a little older. He is in fact only fifteen years older, but he has life experience and practical skills, which the priest well knows do not necessarily come with increasing age.