And then the things that Lydia Manström can calmly pass along: Mona, who saved him, her teacher’s apartment that made it possible for him to complete his studies. His ordination, his brief service as an army chaplain, his first appointment as temporary pastor in a parish that had lost its priest. The birth of Sanna. And then across the water to a life that is open and bright and fantastic. Ten times better than he had humbly hoped for as an unattainable future goal. Freedom. Openness. Warmth. Beauty. And the word he avoids saying for fear of losing it, the word that nevertheless insists on making itself heard like a paean—Happiness.
And now he gets effusive, talking about how theology itself has suddenly burst into bloom, how he sees that beauty in nature is an analogy, a metaphor for God’s love, for life in Jesus Christ. That we can celebrate the beauty around us because that affirmation is a recognition of God’s love. Christianity is not gloom and doom. Christianity is an affirmation! He means to preach this message.
Yes. A little embarrassed at being so emotional, but still very happy. He smiles at Lydia Manström as they sit catching their breath after his first parish catechetical meeting in the east villages. “And you yourself, Mrs Manström? How did you come out here?”
“Across the water”, she says evasively, although he has a right to a confidence from her after all he’s told her about himself. He waits, feeling a bit snubbed. Surely he hadn’t been that pushy? She has to go on. “We met in Åbo. I came down to the boats. He sold fish. Then I came out here and gave a class in weaving. When it was over, we were engaged. Simple as that.”
It sounds as if she would rather have a tooth pulled. It’s clear that you don’t ask personal questions of Lydia Manström. It’s a different story with her husband, Arthur Manström, a man of wide experience, who is always enthroned as the central figure in the tales he tells. He now comes sweeping in, impressive, Roman nose, velvet voice like a lover. Lazy as a god, courted and admired, he claims proudly to be a farmer fisherman but lives on his wife’s salary as a teacher. The foundation of it all is eloquence … indeed, when eloquence was passed out, Arthur Manström stood at the head of the line and helped himself.
The priest is a bit overshadowed here, although he too has a beautiful voice and can both sing and talk. But Arthur can talk the sparrows off the roof, he draws people’s attention like a wood sprite, he scrapes and smiles and flatters and bows. Once, he lured the chaste Lydia from Åbo to the Örlands. Knew that he couldn’t let her return a virgin, because it would then be too easy for her to reply evasively to letters, to make other plans, to be sadly unavailable when he wanted to visit. A secret engagement would not do, either. No, he needed to speak calmly, smoothly, fluently, back her into a corner, down onto the floor, in under her skirts, a calm voice through all the No! No! while his hand makes its way past waistbands and openings, into position. Accomplished. And then she can only become engaged and marry him, for in Lydia’s world if you lie with a man then he’s the one you must marry.
There is much gossip, and it will eventually reach even the pastor’s ears. There was only one child, now the adult heir apparent, today in the process of fathering his own children. What everyone would like to know: Did he tire of her once he had her? Is she perhaps revolted by the act of sex? Was she injured so severely in childbirth that she is incapable of …? But on the other hand she isn’t sickly and in pain like women with uterine prolapse and a damaged urethra but rather energetic and full of drive, with good posture, a slim figure, a rapid gait, and she’s a real disciplinarian at school. Active in the Martha Association and People’s Health, a leader in the food supply commission during the war, a promoter of adult education, practical skills and handicrafts. Writes letters to their member of parliament and the county council and lobbies for the interests of the Örland Islands. Writes “we” in her letters, but is absolutely “she”, an outsider. Silent as the grave when it comes to personal matters.
Arthur reigns in the masculine world of the farmer fishermen without overexerting himself, rests up at home when Lydia is at school, has all manner of errands and activities in the afternoons that require him to be out once school is over. Appears in Lydia’s company mostly at the table and especially when they are invited out. He then leads her by the elbow, smiles and speaks like a seraph, with a heavenly sweetness. He has many names for her: my better half, my consort, the mistress of my house, my treasured companion, my wedded wife. She calls him Arthur, which stamps her as an outsider, because on the Örlands, women call their husbands “himself”.
Arthur, well, here he is. He sits down beside the priest on the Åbo sofa in the parlour, his bass voice purring with pleasure. He has eaten his fill and has had some real coffee. Perhaps, too, he has fortified himself from some bottle of two- or three-star cognac, because those who can’t stand his flash and twinkle will hint later to the priest that he hasn’t a sober moment. If so, we are viewing genteel inebriation at its most appealing— he’s a kindly and communicative fellow with a broad register and converses about Church Isle in the Middle Ages and tells stories about the former priest who preached in his Home Guard uniform. Once as he climbed into the pulpit, his revolver fell from its holster, and when he bent down to pick it up, the church’s famous acoustics picked up someone whispering clearly, “Duck thy heads, for now he reloadeth.”
“There are many such stories,” the silver-tongued Arthur adds, and the pastor laughs and says that he’s sure there are. It’s like being taken by the hand and led through the steps of a dance—you nod and smile when you get the signal and are then swept away across the floor. The pastor glances around surreptitiously and notes that Lydia is no longer present. Somewhere in the great convivial flow she was washed towards the kitchen, where she clearly has much to do now that dinner is over. The dishwater steams and there are towers of pots and bowls and plates. Arthur holds forth, and the priest, who learned at home to regard his father’s conversation with a certain scepticism is nonetheless charmed and seduced. Arthur must have sold his soul to be able to talk this way! Lydia still has hers, a hard pod in a vault, a petrified dream deep inside an active and laudable sense of duty. The priest has revealed some of his to her, and she has observed it without asking a single question, but in such a way that he’s been led to reveal still more.
Mona has been at home with Sanna, which she all too often has to be, and when he finally gets home after this long day and would simply like to read the newspapers, he wanders around with Sanna around his neck and tells Mona about everyone he’s met, intelligent and well-spoken every one, but the prize goes to Arthur Manström. He repeats a couple of the anecdotes he can recall and adds, “Lydia is a different story. Probably smarter than all the rest of us put together but discreet as a spy ring. I believe she’s the least gossipy person I’ve ever met.”