He thinks of his own father, and how different his life could have been if he’d had a father like the organist, who could have given him guidance in difficult matters and taught him useful lessons. Instead, he’s had to figure everything out on his own, by trial and—especially in his youth—by painful error. He has had to learn carpentry, construction, and repair, for Leonard, his father, is unable to do any of these things. He has suffered shame and fled from this same father’s high-blown declarations, such as “I know what people are like!”, although anyone following his advice would have met with misfortune. All his life, he’s had to rely on learning from experience, and now he sits here opposite the organist and thinks what it might have been like to have had a father who was sensible and just.
Petter is the oldest of three brothers and it happens that the organist too has three boys and, even more remarkably, a beloved and spoiled daughter, exactly like the Kummel family’s adored Charlotte. The youngest of the sons is the family’s sunshine child, just like the Kummels’ Jösse, forever twenty years old in his hero’s grave, whom Petter still thinks of with a curious distaste and … shame?
The similarities are striking, and it is with great interest that he makes his first visit to the organist’s home. Where he is amazed to see that this incomparable father figure doesn’t seem to have a very good relationship with his sons. On the contrary, they avoid him, always seem to have important things to do that drive them away from the table and out the door as quickly as they can manage. To have such a father and to shun him, that surely indicates that no son can have had a good relationship with his father, at least not once he’s entered puberty.
It sometimes seems to Petter that biology has an answer for almost everything that happens in a human life, but there is no explanation for puberty. He can understand the importance of liberation and the development of an independent personality, but why must this period last so long and the alienation be so profound? Why must people reject the value of learning and actively oppose the acquisition of knowledge during the very years when their capacity to internalize instruction is at its height? And why do human beings see themselves as hopeless, ugly, and miserable when in fact they are at their most attractive age? What is nature’s purpose with puberty, which is as cruel as death?
Although when you look at the three adolescent organist sons, you have to admit that if they’re feeling ugly and miserable, they hide it well. They’re just a bit reserved because they’re sharing a dinner table with the pastor. In their different ways, they’re as shamelessly attractive as their parents, well built, with a startling loose-limbed elegance. But no camaraderie between them and their father, no visible trust, no understanding, only a barely discernible smile of ridicule whenever the organist tells a story. To his horror, Petter recognizes certain glances he himself exchanged with his brothers when father Leonard got going. Otherwise there are few similarities between the wise and capable organist and the sadly foolish Leonard Kummel, who is such an embarrassment to his sons. All they have in common is fatherhood, which a son must turn away from if he’s to become his own man. This is what the organist’s sons dream of, just as the teacher’s sons once did. But still, these boys’ highest aspiration—to become unlike their father—is much harder to understand than that of the Kummel brothers!
For his part, Petter would be happy to adopt the organist as his father, if such a thing were possible. He feels a warmth of spirit, as if for the first time in his life he stood under someone’s protection and was not required to be the oldest and wisest, a model for his siblings, a support for his mother, and an ideal schoolboy. A beast of burden collapsing under the weight of hopes and demands. A dried herb in a plant press of expectations.
Now, at last, he sits side by side with a man in whom he has absolute confidence, a man who says, “This is the way we do things here.” A man who expects nothing more than that he be young and ignorant and in need of help. A man he has already impressed with his pragmatism and common sense. A man who is easy to talk to and whose replies show that has listened and understood.
Giddy as he is from all the friendship he feels, it will take a while for him to realize that the organist is not universally loved here on the islands. Many bear him a grudge. His payment in kind is a thorn in their flesh, especially during the hay harvest when he drives home the yield from the splendid hayfield that belongs to the church and is reserved for the benefit of the parish organist. Later, he learns that the organist was a hated customs officer during Prohibition. There are those who consider him self-righteous—in his own eyes a head higher than everyone else—and who therefore think he needs to be cut down to his ankles. They bide their time.
This is a side of island life that lies in the shadows when people show their smiling faces, but the priest is young and learns quickly. He does not regret the respite he enjoyed when he first arrived, believing he had come to an ideal community. It was what he needed so that love and loyalty could take root for all time.
He has ridden through the villages on his bicycle, on roads with a strip of grass down the middle and lots of gates. Sometimes he has to stop and ask, but he’s already learned the names of many farms. The bicycle is a good thing to have, but all the houses face the sea where the real traffic is. Spanking dinghies, thumping herring boats, creaking skiffs. Out there is where he would like to be, and he’s been talking to the organist about getting a motorboat, which he could use both for fishing and for getting around.
Mostly for getting around, although he loves the idea of putt-putting about in his own boat, free and independent. He reviews his assets under the friendly eye of the organist. His salary is small and his student loans large. Unlike the local people, who spend big when they’ve had a good fishing season or sold seal oil to the government and then later live close to the bone, the priest has little chance of acquiring a large sum of money. But it will work itself out, and he now tells the organist proudly that he learned to sail when he was still a boy. The skiff that goes with the house has a hole for a mast in the thwart, and there’s an old spritsail. He’s going to fix it up and use it. But in the future he’s going to have a motorboat so he can move about in all kinds of weather. If the organist hears of any good deals, he should let him know.
The organist is happy to find the pastor so open and trusting. Maybe too much so, he thinks fleetingly, knowing that there are those who would exploit those qualities. Of course he does need a little guidance, and when it comes to figuring out how to organize their lives on Church Isle, he is ready to help in word and deed.
As if to confirm this thought, and to make both of them jump, the phone rings. It is Adele Bergman, who has heard that the priest cycled by. It was easy to guess where he was headed, and now she wants to say that if he’ll stop in at the Co-op on his way home, he can pick up the paint and thinner he ordered. Some good brushes have also come in, and some coffee biscuits if he wants to splurge.
The priest smiles when he gets this message, for here is another person who will support him in word and deed. “Whether you like it or not,” the organist says, who nevertheless is an ally of Adele Bergman’s and chairman of the Co-op board. “We wouldn’t have got through the war half so well without Adele,” he adds quickly. “When you live as far out as we do here, it goes without saying that we’re last on the list, and when the Central Co-op got to our order, there was never anything left. But Adele didn’t take it lying down. I’ve heard her talk to them on the phone. ‘Our Co-op members are just as valuable as those in the city, and according to the Co-op bylaws, we have the same rights. As a Co-op manager, I won’t bend an inch, and I demand that we get the deliveries we’re entitled to. Without delay. Because we’re farthest out, we should get our deliveries first, since the small amounts we need are hardly noticed.’ And so on. She never let them forget us. It was a lot easier for them to carry our orders down to the boat than to try and explain to Adele why we weren’t going to get them. When things got really bad, 1944 for example, and it was simply impossible to get your hands on any boat fuel at all, she went to Åbo herself and got her hands on two barrels of petrol, which she had them carry down to the boat with her. Then she stood there and guarded them until the boat left, and then at every stop along the way. Word got here before Anton did, and when the boat arrived in the wee hours, there was a crowd of people on the Co-op dock with canisters. And then things got really hot. ‘The store will open at eight o’clock and not one minute earlier,’ she told them. She must have been dead tired, but there she stood at eight o’clock on the dot and measured out what everyone had a right to. Adele gets more done than a man. People laugh at her, but they count on the fact that she’ll get her hands on what we need. When we went to the herring market in Helsingfors after the peace was signed, everyone from here was astonished at how little there was to buy in the shops—compared to what Adele could plunk down on the counter for us if she thought we were worthy and had earned it.”