And when all was lost in the Baltic States, boats started coming from Estonia. They were overloaded, unseaworthy, badly off course. Many of them thought they were already in Sweden. They had no food or fresh water, none of them, just a handful of worthless money to pay their way. Poor souls. Drowned bodies pulled from the sea—everyone remembers the handsome officer with his little black book filled with the addresses of Estonian girls. On the other hand, no one involved says a word about the handguns left behind as thanks for provisions and fuel and sea charts. “Because of course we helped them. The Russian Control Commission was already sitting in Helsingfors, we were required to report refugees to the authorities. But the police was our own Julius, and he didn’t get in our way. ‘It could be our turn next,’ he said.”
“Civil courage,” says father Leonard with sincere admiration. “Julius, you say? From the east villages? I think I’ve seen him.”
Not hard to figure out where Leonard means to take his sledge some day soon. But the verger has weighty things to say about the Estonians. “Two of them are buried here,” he says, “as ‘Unknown Estonian Refugees’. They had no papers on them. We showed them to some others that came ashore, but they turned their heads away and said they didn’t know them. ‘It might have been me,’ said one of them who spoke Swedish. Since the Estonian government had been dissolved and there was no one to take responsibility, we buried them at parish expense. We made a wooden cross, too. Mona, you could plant something on their grave in the spring if you’re willing.”
Of course she is willing, and she contributes to the discussion by saying what a close call it was for everyone in Finland. If the Finns hadn’t had their modern German antiaircraft guns, which forced the Russians to drop their bomb loads in the sea and in the woods, it could have been really bad for Helsingfors. She’d stood out on the granite outside her parents’ house and watched—smoke and flames and searchlights and the drama when one of the bombers got caught in a cone of light and was hit and somersaulted out of the firmament. How the cheers echoed on the Helléns’ hillside!
She sounds so bloodthirsty that Petter wants to tone things down a little. “Yes, weather like today’s was the worst of all. Perfect flying weather, good visibility, you could count on spending the night in the shelter. In those days we could only relax when it was cloudy and raining hard. What a joy that we can now be happy about the lovely weather without a qualm. It’s unbelievable. Every day since the war ended I’ve thanked God for peace. Every day it seems to me a miracle that we live in peace and freedom and that we’re not dead or banished to Siberia. I hope the day will come when we can take it all for granted.
The organist thinks of his sons and the Bible school youngsters and joins in. “Yes, indeed. The young take it for granted already. They don’t look at time the way we do. For them, the war is already the distant past.”
“And may it always be so,” the pastor says. He looks out the window at the moon reflected in the ice, the stars like glittering inlays. “More tea?” Mona says, but Adele takes a different tack for all of them and says that tomorrow is another day and now they need to go home. But first the verger wants them to sing “Shall We Gather at the River”, which the people of the Örlands are accustomed to singing when they part and head home across dark waters.
Sanna wakes up as they sing “That flows by the throne of God” so heartily and warmly that it sounds as if the tiles, stoves and the kitchen range were singing along. “Baa, baa,” Sanna sings too, in her warm cocoon. Now she hears them rise from their chairs, their joints creaking after sitting for so long. Chair legs scrape on the floor and the door to the hallway is opened—Oh, so cold! Mama says, “I’ll bring your things into the kitchen to warm them up a bit. Come on in here to put your coats on!” The hanging lamp in the kitchen is lit, and one after another, the guests put their storm lanterns on the stove and light them. They stand there in their great boots, the women winding long shawls around their heads, all of them pulling on wool or fur coats, unfolding lap rugs. The pastor and his wife can’t stand to see them go, so they too wrap themselves up warmly and accompany their guests down to the shore.
The kicksleds wait eagerly, drawn up on land, and now they are shoved happily out onto the ice, the women take their seats and the men push off, slowly at first, like the first revolution of a flywheel, but then off and away. They call to the pastor and his wife, whose strong voices fade backwards and grow thinner as the kicksleds pick up speed. Maybe they’re not competing, not directly, not grown men, but they certainly give that impression as they strike out across Church Bay in a tight pack held together by their calls. The verger and Signe holler good night and swing round the island in towards their house while the Manströms, the Bergmans, and the organist and his wife head full speed out onto the long bays that separate the parish into two equally large, competing parts. They stay together for a long way until the Manströms head off towards the east villages and the others continue on together towards the deep inner waterways of the west. They are almost home before they part company, the organist and his wife heading a bit farther south at a good clip, the Bergmans swinging off to the west where the hills rise black before falling into the sea, which lies frozen far beyond the territorial limits.
“We can go all the way to Estonia if we like,” the organist shouts recklessly, but he slows down anyway in the narrower passages between the islands and into their own shallow bay. He crosses it brilliantly and, just as he does in his boat, he knows exactly when to slow down enough to land smoothly at his dock.
Kicksleds are faster than boats. When the ice has set, you grasp clearly what the resistance of the water means for a body moving through it. Arthur Manström is silent as he kicks, otherwise he could undoubtedly deliver a lecture on the laws of physics. Beneath the moon and the stars, gliding over the moon and the stars, Lydia is absorbed, utterly and completely happy. No present obligations, no future to worry about, everything is now. As a child, she’d scream with joy when she went sledging. It is not much different from what Arthur Manström thinks he hears beneath his own breathing, in his thoughts. Deeply embedded in his fur hat and wolfskin collar, he is already formulating a description of the majesty of ice as it covers the waterways, sweeping away the wakes of skiffs, dinghies and fishing boats, sealing the fishermen’s pastures and the yachtsmen’s gentle billows.
The pastor and his wife stand shivering on the shore for a while after their guests have sledged away, listening to their shouts far out on the ice. Then these too die away, and they can hear the indescribable silence that comes when the ice has set. Otherwise you hear the sea incessantly out here. It is never so calm that the swells don’t rustle and sigh, and the calm itself is carried by a voice that underlies the lazy days of blazing sunshine. Then the wind freshens and the surge grows stronger. When the wind begins to whistle it is time to take care, but even deep among the islands and indoors, the roar presses in and remains, like a delayed echo after the storm has passed.
Now it could not be more silent, or closer to the moon. The pastor and his wife shiver and put their arms around each other. Their steps squeak in the snow that lies here and there on the ground. The lamp burns in the parsonage window. The sheep in their pen, the cows in their stalls, Sanna in her bed. Peace at last on earth.