He himself feels Sanna’s involvement intensely, the firm body under the quilt, the wakeful intelligence in this attentive and concentrated little figure. He feels the grace and joy of this living child especially strongly today, against the background of the sorrow afflicting the Örlands at the moment. The little eight-year-old who was sent to Åbo with a burst appendix several days ago has died of peritonitis. Now once again everyone notes how defenceless life has become since Doctor Gyllen’s departure. He will conduct her burial service once they’ve brought her home and then speak to her memory at a prayer meeting he intends to hold in the west villages. His thoughts are already occupied with what he will say, and Sanna, alive in his arms, makes him think of how he would not be able to bear her loss, while the parents of the little eight-year-old have no choice but to bear their own.
There are a great many people in church the following Sunday. The ice has begun to look more dependable, and people have come on foot, carefully, leaving space between them, without mishaps. A relief after this unusually troublesome winter. Many people, almost everyone from the east villages, attend the burial, the parent’s grief heart-rending to see, the priest powerfully involved because of Sanna.
The evening is dark, cloudy, perhaps it will snow. So far there has been almost no snow on the Örlands, and in order to make it easier to travel on the village roads, he takes his bicycle and rides it across the ice to the west villages. With the help of the headlight he can follow the path the congregation took, and if he maintains an adequate speed he’ll go straight and true and run no risk of skidding and falling on the slippery ice. On the carrier he has his briefcase with the incessant tracts sent out by the Seamen’s and Heathen’s Mission and the Evangelical Society, which he feels bound to distribute. Quickly and safely he makes it across. It’s not far to the farm, and he arrives just half an hour after leaving the parsonage. He’s early, so he has a chance to chat before they begin. Mostly they talk about the ice, how much easier everything is now that it’s finally freezing hard. The men sit contentedly talking while the women change clothes after the evening milking before joining them.
The temperature rises once the women arrive. They talk about the dead girl and they talk about her mother, how she’s doing, and the pastor says he’s been thinking a lot about his own little girls, how it would feel to lose them. There is no one at the meeting who has not suffered some loss. At such times, the comforts offered by the church can feel meagre and God’s word seem pale.
“But then,” he says, rising to his feet, and they all understand that the meeting has begun. “But then we fail to consider that the words and the promises work in the longer term. They don’t fall unheard to the earth and die, but lie there and sprout in secret, like seeds, and bide their time. Sorrow grows slowly into hope and trust. The words that appear to fall to the ground are not wasted, no more than a life cut short before its time is wasted. Our little Anni rests securely near the heart of Jesus. Down here, she still lives in memory as the songbird of our Sunday school and as the beloved child she was in her home. We grieve with her parents and sister, and we miss her everywhere we’re accustomed to seeing her, holding her mother’s hand, safely beside her father on a pew in church. Her death can seem cruel to us, and God, who permitted it, can seem a heartless God.
“I wish you could see her walk across the bridge of light that leads from our world to the heavenly world. Free from earthly bonds, as we sing in the hymn, with buoyant steps on her way to her heavenly father. We can entrust her to his embrace, free from fear and pain. As a reminder that there is ‘a joy beyond the grave and a future full of song’, as we sing in another hymn, I suggest that we sing hymn 222, ‘In Heaven, in Heaven’.”
That they are all in tears is not a source of pride to him. As they sing, their voices break in the middle of a line and words are swallowed. He himself holds the melody steady, and he knows the words by heart. His voice carries. Their fellowship is strong and warm by the time the meeting is over and coffee, bread and butter appear on the table, the real bread and wine of the outer skerries. Their faces are ruddy, but their tears dry up, and people begin to chat. This is the way people make their way in the world, with talk, with a thousand ways of expressing interest, pleasure, horror, sadness. They are all in very good humour when it comes time to sing “Shall We Gather at the River”.
Most of them leave on foot. Petter is left standing alone with his bicycle beside the house. He has a hard time handing out books and tracts that he doesn’t think his sturdy, lively parishioners will have much use for, and his briefcase is as heavy as it was when he arrived. He ties it firmly to the carrier and walks his bicycle out through the gate.
“Be sure to watch out for that spot near Kläppar where the current’s made a hole in the ice,” his host calls after him.
“Not to worry,” says the pastor confidently. “I’ll just follow the path you all took this morning.”
The clouds have thickened since he arrived, and it takes a while for his eyes to get used to the dark. He pedals hard to get the dynamo going, but can’t see much beyond the little cone of flickering light produced by his headlamp. The surroundings are gone, the path barely distinguishable from the well-grazed slope around it. Then he comes out onto the gravel road where the wheel tracks glisten with ice. In the middle, his tyres grip well. Soon he’s down by the dock and wheels his bike out onto the ice. Concentrating on his balance and pedalling hard, he keeps himself upright.
It is very dark. He can see neither the moon nor the stars, but the shiny ice gleams in the bicycle headlamp, and when he comes around the point he can see the light in the parsonage window. On evenings when he’s away, Mona puts a lamp in the window towards the bay so it will shine like a guiding star and welcome him home. Now that the ice is in, all he has to do is head for the light and ride until he’s into Church Bay.
He’s moving well, singing “Shall We Gather at the River” as he pedals. He isn’t thinking much about where the congregation walked, because suddenly, when he’s already into the bay, the ice breaks under him, a crashing of glass and a hole that swallows him and his bicycle. They go straight to the bottom, and he kicks his way upward and breaks the surface and swims.
At first he feels only intense embarrassment. Goes hot with shame in the ice-cold water. He’s muddled, half his head is throbbing where he hit it on the edge of the ice or on the handlebars. He wants to laugh at himself—it’s actually the first time he’s gone through the ice. It’s in the summer when the water is pleasantly warm that he likes to capsize his sailboat, and even then only occasionally. He can hear Mona lecturing him, relieved that it wasn’t worse, telling him he should have walked his bicycle and felt his way forward instead of zipping along as if he were on a road. The last thing the verger said as he left was that the ice wasn’t safe. Yes, yes, but this isn’t so bad.
His body is warm and he’s a strong swimmer and he knows what to do. As he treads water he twists his way out of his coat and gets his boots off, first one and then the other, and heaves them up on the ice. The effort required is unexpectedly great. Until you’re in the water, you don’t realize how low you are, and suddenly he’s tired, as if his strength had run out all at once. With a jolt in his aching head he remembers his briefcase tied to the carrier, full of tracts, a Bible, a hymnal, and a copy of The Songs of Zion. If he can get them out of the water quickly, perhaps they won’t be completely soaked and can be saved. It’s a question of money, quite a bit, which he will feel obliged to replace. He makes the quick dive that he likes so much—swivels like a seal and kicks his way downward. Searches a little along the bottom; yes, there’s the bike. On its side, handlebars sticking up, and then the carrier, his briefcase firmly in place.