“Good teats, firm udders,” she declares. “All they really need is a little fat on their bones. We have a lot to look into—the cow pastures and the hayfields.”
To judge by conditions in the haymow, there is every reason to fear that they haven’t enough meadowland, but the verger, who takes an interest in such things, starts in at once on a long report about the church’s lands. “You’ll always have hay, I think. And the church crofters will help with the haymaking, they owe you that for the land they use.”
“You can’t mean that the church still has crofters, not these days,” she says, and the verger agrees that she’s right. Legally, they own their land, but they need a little more pasture and they work off the rental.
“I see,” she says, seeing complications down the road. She is quick enough to understand that their neighbours compete hard for grass. She wonders how things stand with the parsonage pastureland, and the verger replies solemnly that there is always plenty of pasture for the parsonage cows on Church Isle. But the erstwhile crofters have a harder time of it. He shouldn’t tell her, but he will anyway, that they have sometimes let their fences get into such a state of disrepair that their cows get through and stuff themselves with the pastor’s grass.
“Oh, my,” she says. Complications indeed, for she’s has already made up her mind to secure ample pasturage for Apple and Goody. She pours the milk in the strainer and claps the cows one more time so they’ll understand that now she’s in charge. In their eyes, the verger’s Signe vanishes in the mist. Now other powers rule.
Mona asks Signe about their cows, and yes, they have two. There’s Gamlan and Gamlan’s heifer that’s going to calve for the first time this spring. “The hay harvest will decide if we keep her over the winter or send her to slaughter this autumn,” the verger explains, sounding pleased, and she knows that no matter what happens, the heifer and the heifer’s calf and the summer’s milk will be not insignificant assets.
“I’m glad we’ve got to know you,” Mona says sincerely. “There’s so much we need to ask you about. The sheep, for example. What shall we do with them? We can’t put them to pasture with the cows, there isn’t any fence that will keep them in.”
The verger explains that the priest and his wife are very fortunate, because the two large islets beyond Church Isle are sheep islets for the parsonage. If they shift their sheep from one to the other every few weeks, they’ll have pasture all summer, so that’s no problem at all.
“If you look in the haymow, you’ll see we should move them out there tomorrow!” she says. “Maybe we can borrow a boat in the village?”
“Ours, for instance!” the verger suggests, for he’s not insensitive to the fact that she’s clever and pretty and can put in a good word for him with her husband.
“Thanks!” she says. “You can decide the day and time with Petter. I hope you’ll come in and have some tea with us now that we’re done in the cow barn.”
Friends already, they walk back to the parsonage. The verger shows her how the ropes work in the well so that she can lower the pails and cool the milk overnight. Then she’ll separate it in the morning and get the cream. Petter’s father bought the separator at auction and it now stands in the passage. Mona washes the milk pitchers vigorously, blows life into the fire in the stove, heats water in a saucepan, and sets out some food—rusks and fresh bread with apple sauce!
Nothing comes of Petter’s plan to set out nets, because the verger and Signe sit and talk and are in no hurry to leave. But he does raise the subject of fishing, and then the verger slaps his forehead. “Oh good heavens! I brought a mess of perch with me, a meal for tomorrow, and I left it on the steps. Let’s hope no animal’s got into it!”
“You were reading my thoughts!” Petter says. “Thank you so much! But from tomorrow on, we’ll manage on our own. All this friendly help will spoil us completely. What a day we’ve had!”
He can’t help it, he can’t suppress a colossal yawn, and then his wife yawns too, like a cat. And then the priest has to yawn again, so hugely that all the movable parts of his cranium creak audibly. The verger and Signe look politely away and chat for a few minutes more, but then they get up and Signe says they have to get home to milk their own cow. It’s ten o’clock, and Mona leaps up. “No, you don’t mean your cow has gone unmilked because you came to help us! That’s terrible!”
“Not at all,” Signe reassures her. “She gives so little milk now that it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t milk her till morning!”
But Mona won’t let it go. She thinks it’s so dreadful that Signe’s cow has had to suffer that Signe’s own conscience begins to bother her. And when they’re finally gone, the pastor and his wife are so tired they’re cross-eyed. They mumble and slur their words and can hardly make their way to the outhouse or find their faces when they try to wash up before finally collapsing into bed.
“I’m so grateful you made the beds,” Petter says. “We couldn’t have managed it now. I don’t think I’ve ever been so utterly done in. Or so happy.”
Like a clubbed burbot—and like a second clubbed burbot— the pastor and his wife spend their first night in the parsonage. The last thing each remembers is that the other has fallen asleep.
Chapter Three
SHE CAME TO FINLAND on foot across the ice, through the forests, tied to the underside of a freight car, in a submarine that surfaced for one short moment by the outermost skerries where a smuggler’s speedboat waited. She jumped into the Carelian forests by parachute. She changed clothes with a Finnish military attaché and rode to Finland first class on his diplomatic passport. Once over the border, cars with dimmed headlamps waited on secret forest tracks. Signals were flashed. Finally—Papa! General Gyllen, without whom there would have been no hope.
Well and good. The more versions the better. How it actually happened, no one will ever be told. Except for Papa, the names of the people intentionally or unintentionally involved will never be revealed. The fact itself is momentous enough—in 1939, Irina Gyllen was the only known case of a former Finnish citizen managing to flee to Finland from the Soviet Union.
If any other human being is ever going to do it again, it is of the utmost importance that no one ever finds out how it all took place.
Irina Gyllen sleeps alone. If she has to spend a night among other people on a boat, she doesn’t sleep. When she goes to bed, she takes a pill. Which makes her hard to wake up when she has to deliver a baby. The Örlanders know this, it is one of her peculiarities, along with the fact that her medical licence is Russian, so she cannot practise in Finland until she has taken the necessary Finnish examinations. In the Soviet Union, she was a gynaecologist. In Finland, she took a course in midwifery and has now taken this job on the Örland Islands while she studies for her Finnish medical certification.
The Örlands are safe. Mama and Papa have spent their vacations there and know that the locals have boats that can get to Sweden in any weather. They also know that no stranger can slink in unseen. Persons that Irina Gyllen has reason to fear never come ashore without the islanders reporting on their every movement. For much of the year no one comes at all.
It is quiet. You can hear your own heart, your breathing, your digestion. All in good condition though she’s already into her second life. She lost a lot on the other side, she hardly looks like a woman any more. Tall and angular without any visible softness. A sharply sculptured face, feet that have walked and walked, hands that have worked and worked.
Her body has smoothed over the fact that she has given birth, but people on the Örlands know that Irina Gyllen has left a child behind. A son.