This background made it easier for her to support his decision to ask for an appointment to the outermost outer islands. Here they will be isolated from the whole world’s Christian cliques and coteries. Here they will have more time for each other and be able to live a life of concord and true love.
In truth, it is hardly possible to find a congregation less given to sectarianism than the people of the Örlands. The prevalent, cheering belief out here is that the church is one, and that that one church is the Örlands’ church. Its priests are the object of healthy interest and indulgence—the way they sometimes behave! But they are theirs, for better, for worse, as long as they have them. Often they serve with a wandering eye, on their way to richer pickings, and are quickly forgotten. But this one says he wants to stay and meets their interest with great candour and goodwill.
There is something special about him, which his wife is the first to acknowledge. That’s why she loves him, why she married him. But wherever he goes, he attracts people like a magnet, she might almost wish he were a little less attractive. As it is, there is no one who doesn’t want to talk to him and bask in his glow. He himself is unaware of this magnetism and is astonished that people are so friendly. Extraordinarily friendly, he keeps saying. A little less would be plenty, his wife thinks. Moderately cordial would be just fine. So that he could do what he needs to do, hold his meetings and functions, and then come home!
The pastor’s wife is no clinging vine. Wherever you plant her, she sends out strong stalks and leaves. She handles herself with the greatest competence, organizes and manages and keeps an eye on her domains. She is happy to work alone, for then everything stays on track. But of course she listens for him. And of course she goes from window to window sometimes and wonders if he’s never going to come. What kind of a marriage would it be if she never wanted him at home?
Of course she understands that the church and the congregation are his primary responsibility and that he’s never really off duty. He gets up from his supper with a smile, he closes his textbooks and comes out of his study happily, delighted to be disturbed. Come right in! Talks at length about the weather, which out here is a subject of life and death, asks about family members, whose names he’s already learned, discusses boat connections and the fishing prospects, compares notes about the hay. Lets people take their time before getting to the point—some kind of certification from the parish register, as is often the case, or a christening or maybe even a wedding. Then both parties grow exhilarated, for the priest can recommend marriage warmly. So now at last! He sounds so enthusiastic that it warms their souls. If they have doubts, they forget to mention them.
It takes time, like everything else he does—a simple trip to the post office, a visit to the Co-op. He might as well announce his schedule from the pulpit, the crowds could hardly be larger. People stand waiting for him on his way home. If he catches up to someone on his bicycle he stops and chats. Every cottage asks him to look in as he passes. The church is one and the priest is one, but he ought to be eight people, so there’d be something left over for his wife.
Smiling, he tells her it will be like this only briefly, as long as he has the novelty of newness. Now, after the long winter, they’re eager for new people, but it will be different when summer comes. Then they’ll start with the hay, the children who work in Sweden will be coming home, and there will be sailboat visitors and summer guests. In August, they’ll start on the autumn fishing. They’ll be busy. This is only a honeymoon, the workaday world will soon begin.
The pastor’s wife had no honeymoon. They got married during the Continuation War, at the Helléns’. That evening they were driven by horse carriage to the school where she was substituting. In the morning, she went down to her schoolroom while he studied exegetics in the teacher’s quarters. This is the way she usually describes the unromantic beginning of her married life, concealing the fact that there were also oceans of shyness, tenderness, and bliss.
As a result, she doesn’t really like it that he can compare his feelings for the Örland congregation with love and marriage. Of course she ought to be pleased at his lively interest and strong feelings. She can’t admit even to herself that she wants those feelings reserved for herself alone. It’s obviously a good thing that he’s put himself on such a solid footing with the congregation right from the outset. Naturally she’s proud of his ability to capture people’s affection. She notes proudly that he’s just as good at making friends as his father ever was, Leonard the famous chatterbox. But in contrast to him, Petter has substance and an unaffected manner that goes straight to people’s hearts.
Here on the Örlands they can work side by side. His salary is meagre, so their little farm is of the greatest importance if they’re to pay off his student debts and buy a boat and a horse. Much of it is in a sorry state, but it also has great potential. They can enlarge the kitchen garden, dig up a new potato patch, and clear bushes and undergrowth for an extra fairly good-sized hay meadow. They will also have to build a new fence and clean out and rebuild the cow barn. By next year, the whole place will look very different.
The priest is interested in farming, his wife is an expert. She is already looking ahead to the end of the summer when she will be leading two bountiful cows and a heifer into a freshly limed barn with a loft full of fragrant, nourishing hay. They’re going to get a household pig and three hens. They need to get some seed potatoes as soon as possible, although Petter says that no one in the villages would ever think of planting potatoes when the ground is still so cold. They do it closer to midsummer. “Not here!” says Mona, who has already dug a couple of furrows in the kitchen garden and planted parsley, dill, radishes, lettuce, and carrots. Onions and beets, peas and beans will follow as soon as the soil is a bit warmer. And she hasn’t forgotten flowers. She’s brought seeds for columbines, daisies, and marigolds, and she can dig up some sod with cowslips and wild pansies from the cow pasture and transplant them to her flowerbed. Later in the summer, she can collect all sorts of seeds from the churchyard and set out tulip and narcissus bulbs in the autumn. As early as next year, everything will be more the way she imagines it—blazing flowerbeds, a well-tended vegetable garden. If the pastor is to be a model for the community, then the parsonage should be one too, and the pastor’s wife goes to work with confidence.
They work for their common future, and Mona thinks that when they’re old they’ll be able to look around and agree that these hardworking years were the best of their lives. They will then be old and weak and lack the urgency and the briskness of youth. Now they are young and healthy and can deal with anything. Even if it seems overwhelming, there is little they can’t accomplish—and they have time.
Chapter Seven
He says it’s fun to be on the move and happily jumps aboard and comes with me to visit the priest at Mellom, his closest colleague. The engine thumps along and we stand and talk while he looks around and asks me to repeat the names of the islands in the order we pass them, because that will be useful to know when he gets his own motorboat and can make the trip under his own power.
He’s already good friends with Brage Söderberg and is very impressed with what he knows. “You’ve got to have unbelievable concentration if you’re going to make it through the islands in fog and darkness the way Brage does, using only a clock and a compass, and be certain that you’re exactly where you’ve reckoned you ought to be. That’s what I call competence. It’s almost uncanny. Of course you have to have grown up out here.”