They laugh, two rogues who have found a means of diversion, and Fredrik’s wife looks a bit less nervous, as if she knows that she won’t be criticized when Petter has gone. Now the two men go out for another walk and manage to cover the Mellom pastor’s entire domain and all its villages and harbours, woods, hills, and beaches. All the same, not as pretty as the Örlands, Petter thinks, with considerable secret pleasure. He delivers his thank-yous with warmth and sincerity, asks the children to forgive him for monopolizing their father all day, assures Mrs Berg that he will long remember her hospitality with deep gratitude. It’s hard to know when Post-Anton will appear, but he means to go down to the dock and read the newspaper until the boat arrives, for it’s now high time for life in the parsonage to return to normal!
Fredrik would like to go with him to the dock and sit there all night if it came to that, but he has office work to do, and when he’s at home it’s his job to read the children their bedtime stories. “Now don’t forget that we’re going to stay in touch,” he admonishes Petter almost anxiously.
Giddy from all this friendship, Petter wanders down to the steamboat dock. It’s already getting colder, and naturally he forgot his sweater on the boat. Before sitting down in the lea of a boathouse wall, still warm from the sun, he stands looking out to sea, white as ice in the failing light. There are streaks of gold, violet and black in the sky, and they draw grooves of darkness and gold across the smooth surface of the water. It is utterly quiet, if by silence we mean the absence of human activity. Far out, there are strings of eiders clucking and ahoohing. As if the entire space before him was actually populated by powers and spirits alongside those that are visible.
Post-Anton comes precisely when he sees in his mind’s eye that the priest, whose sweater is lying on the hatch cover, has begun to shiver and wrapped a newspaper around his shoulders. Petter hears the thumping of the diesel for quite a long time but thinks it’s a larger boat farther out. He stands up to look, and it is Anton, now with passengers on the boat and a lot of freight that he’s picked up in Degerby for the Co-op. The passengers have climbed down from the Stockholm boat in the Degerby roads and are on their way home to the Örlands after spending all winter in Sweden. They are talking and laughing, full of anticipation, and the priest is finally a minor figure in the crowd. No chance to continue this morning’s conversation with Anton, and that may be just as well. On thinking it over, he realizes that it dealt with experiences for which he has not quite got the words.
Chapter Eight
THE PASSENGERS IN POST-ANTON’S BOAT are a sign that the summer season has begun. The priest is right that his congregation now has other things to think about. By comparison with the newcomers, he is already naturalized, a familiar figure on his bicycle and in the pulpit. Everyone greets him heartily, but conversations are brief. The hay is what everyone thinks about now, hoping they’ll get enough rain to keep the grass from burning up where it stands and that it will then stop raining so they can get it in before it mildews and rots. They present their wishes clearly, and of course their priest knows enough to stand in the pulpit and pray for good weather and the growth of the soil.
The crops are of great interest at the parsonage as well. The pastor’s wife is especially attentive. She grasps things quickly and is aware that out here you have to fight for every blade of grass if your cows and sheep are going to have enough fodder to get them through the winter and spring. For the moment, her crew of animals is doing well. Goody has produced a heifer that they mean to keep, and Apple has had a bull calf that they’ll fatten over the summer and slaughter in the autumn—cash in hand plus a little meat. After the calving, the milk and butter situation is brighter, and Mona cranks the separator happily, saves the cream and churns it while the family drinks buttermilk and skimmed milk and soured milk. She looks forward to the haying, a clean, fresh outdoor labour at the prettiest time of summer. She and Petter working side by side to produce visible and lasting results. It smells good, and it is very satisfying to fill the barn with good, fresh hay while threatening rain clouds line up in a row.
It is always a mistake to anticipate pleasure, because naturally she and Petter are not left to work in peace. Even before midsummer, the first small sailboats arrive from Helsingfors. During his school years, Petter looked on people with the flag of the Nyland Yacht Club on their boats as indescribable snobs and bullies, but when they glide in to the church dock to tie up and jump ashore in their white sailing trousers, they are pleasant and talkative and full of admiration for the beauty of the journey and of the Örlands. Of course they are welcome to tie up at the church dock, it’s a pleasure to have them! And yes indeed I’ll show you where the well is. They invite him for coffee in the cockpit and are neither scornful nor pitying when he turns down the cognac. Together, they celebrate the fact that they can finally move about freely and sail among the islands again. While they’re talking, another boat sails into their little bay, and they call from one to the other. The new arrivals sit on the edge of the dock and are given a mooring brandy. Lovingly they look at their boats and trade survival stories—how close the boats came to being destroyed in some bombardment, how sadly leaky and corroded they were when they could finally begin to restore them, the sails mere mouldy rags. How hard it was to get hold of what they needed. Who’d have believed you’d have to buy linseed oil and varnish and canvas on the black market? They exchange the names of dealers and contractors while they caress the railings and admire the shiny hulls, red as gold in the evening sun.
A couple of them even go to church on Sunday and sit there benevolently, like white men among the natives. After the service, they talk with the pastor about the local sights, and before he knows what’s happening he has agreed to give a guided tour after lunch. True, he and his wife usually rest for a while on Sunday afternoons, the only day of the week they have the chance, but he can make an exception. They will enjoy themselves, he assures them. “I rarely have time to get away, and I’m as eager as you are to see everything!”
It really is a great pleasure to show them around. The distances are not as small as people tend to believe when the see the Örlands as a collection of fly specks on the map. It takes half a day to see Church Isle and the hills west of it with their stone labyrinth and ancient hiding places from pirates and Russians, their newly excavated bronze-age settlement and, as a contrast, their recent artillery emplacements blasted out of solid rock for the Continuation War. Also the greatest sight of all in the eyes of the Örlanders—the little lake in its crater of grey granite that all visitors must be dragged out to see. “All fresh water, all the way down!” the Örlanders explain proudly, blind to the whole great sea which lies heaving all around them, even in the calmest summer weather, and which is the source of the sailboat people’s enthusiasm. Someone is interested in plants, so they stop to botanize. Yes, indeed, there are a number of odd species to be discovered among the stones! Others look at birds. Someone else recalls the proud history of the Örlands during Prohibition. My goodness, yes! They gaze meaningfully at a couple of the larger houses in the west villages, which can be seen from the hill, and they chuckle. Several stories suitable for the ears of a pastor make the rounds, about smuggled liquor and restaurants in Helsingfors.
The weather is wonderful, and it’s a fantastic luxury to be free from work and out of doors in pleasant company. Looking at the time, he draws a deep breath and declines the offer of an evening snack, says goodbye and hurries home. He can’t understand how it’s grown so late, and he appears at the parsonage feeling guilty. “Forgive me, I had no idea it would take so long. Has anyone called?”