The operator arms herself with her most official voice when she gets the pastor’s wife on the line, whose voice sounds unusually timid. “This is the operator. We apologize for calling so late. But a question has come up. Is the vicar at home?”
The west villages have later habits than the east, and there are several men ready to go out with sledges and ice pikes and ropes. Quickly, in single file, the lightest first, they move towards the steamboat channel. Stop often and listen. Quiet now. Was it all in their imagination? A fox howling on one of the islands? Dark as the inside of a sack, you can hardly see where the channel goes, notice it only when their ice pikes hit slush. Then they all back up. They make sweeps across the channel with their flashlights, turn them off in between. Easy to miss a hole if no one calls. But something has made everyone uneasy. Everyone out there on the ice has known someone who fell through and drowned.
Petter is shouting less now, what explodes from his mouth every time he surfaces is mostly water. He no longer has the strength to hold onto the edge of the ice and soon he’ll no longer have the strength to cough the water from his lungs. He can feel his body only occasionally and then only as burning fire. His arms won’t obey, his legs don’t kick any more like the good swimmer he once was, like a seal, like a dolphin. But his head is clear, despite the pain that chases through it. His ears can hear—the splashing that reveals how terribly slowly he’s moving, the chunks of ice banging into each other and into the edge, the rustle around him of water being splashed up onto the ice and slowly freezing. The wind that blows like deep sighs, which then rush across the ice like a train, carrying the voice from the parsonage out over the emptiness of ice and cold.
His eyes can see—different degrees of darkness, the coal-black depths of water, the greyer black of the ice, the murmuring, expanding blackness of the sky, with neither moon nor stars. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he thinks. Darkness shall be as light. Have mercy upon us. Have mercy upon us. He is pushed under the surface and comes back up, has now lost arms and hands, legs, the lower half of his body. A terrible pain in his breast, almost like a wound. His eyes fixed on what has been a bright and living sky. Life that is so hard to relinquish.
All the things he often says. About the dead who have fought their fight and now rest by the heart of Jesus. About the embrace of the Father. About the ways of the Lord which we do not comprehend but later shall understand. About our earthly vision which is like looking into a dark mirror that only imperfectly reflects the light of heaven. The heavenly light that now, in his dying moments, he sees no trace of. Just phrases. Jesus’s heart is nothing to Mona’s, the embrace of the Father cold and dismissive. His own embrace as a father, which should not be denied to Sanna and Lillus and the other children they’ve thought of having.
His shouts like bleats across the ice. The effort makes him lose his grip and sink into the water again, his mouth still open. Water in his lungs, an ineffective snorting when he comes back up, a slow hand and underarm laid on the ice like a block of wood. Have mercy upon us. Have mercy upon us. Before he died, Jesus too felt he’d been utterly abandoned. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Left me on the cross, in a hole in the ice, and forced me to be present at my own death in complete darkness and annihilating cold.
To terribly ill, dying people he often says that perhaps sickness and suffering exist so that we can reconcile ourselves to death and put ourselves confidently in the hands of Our Saviour. When we are no longer capable of anything ourselves. Then we must die. We must let go, we must let go, we must let go. But even when there is no hope, we hope. That Mona will come across the ice with a lantern. Show us thy light.
To let go of everything. Which death requires. It’s no act of will, it is done to us when we die. First he lets go of Lillus. She drops like a fallen mitten, still asleep. For a little while he fights to hold onto Sanna and Mona. Mona, his deeply beloved, strong and incorruptible and capable, who is the basis of his life and happiness. Left now to her loneliness, no less than his own. Cut off, behind a wall of ice. Sanna, his northern-lights girl, for one moment more on his arm, her cheek against his. Then gone, left in a world no easier than his.
No body now, just pain, no longer shaped in his image. But a mind that is still attentive and notes that the pain suddenly slides away and that his body returns in familiar form, warm in the sunshine on the granite by the parsonage, full of pleasure in his health, youth, and vigour. With his intellect, he understands that this is what you feel when death steps in, but even if that is so, he embraces the feeling and thinks that he will live.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“No,” SAYS THE PASTOR’S WIFE, her voice oddly thin. “He hasn’t come home yet. Has something happened?”
The operator pauses for a moment. “Cries have been heard from the ice. We’re trying to determine if anyone is missing.”
“No,” she says. “Not he. He was at a prayer meeting at Månsas farm. It probably ran late.”
The operator doesn’t say the meeting ended a long time ago. Her mouth dry, she says, stiffly, “A number of men are out looking. We’ll send a message for them to search towards Church Bay. I’ll call the organist.”
A deep breath in, a disorganized beginning.
“Please, Mrs Kummel,” the operator says. “Stay inside with the children. Keep the stove hot, boil water. We’ll call as soon as we know anything. Now I have more calls to make.”
She rings off and calls the Coast Guard to tell them it’s the priest who’s missing. Now they head out, one to tell the men at the steamboat channel that they’re looking in the wrong place, one to search the entrance to Church Bay where there’s a strong current. The men from the nearest villages have been summoned and are on their way. Hurry, hurry.
Then she calls the organist. He’s a night owl, and she can hear that he’s still up. He sounds frightened even before she tells him what it’s about. It’s never good news when you get a call this late, when telephone central is officially closed. “No,” he says. “Not the priest. God in heaven, not the priest.”
“I know you’re a good friend of theirs. Could you possibly? It could be you’ll be needed there tonight. Brage will rouse the verger as he goes by. When we know something, I’ll call Sister Hanna.”
Neither of them says it’s probably a false alarm.
Mona opens the door outside, remembers she’s not wearing a coat, puts one on, stocking feet, back in, cow-barn boots the closest to hand. Out, listens. Runs down towards the church dock, nothing. But wait—voices! It must be him coming home, with some companions, talking and talking. She mustn’t let him see how scared she’s been, she must have the tea ready and scold him just a little. She turns and runs back to the parsonage. Lillus is awake, crying and fussing. “Quiet!” says Mama. “Now go to sleep!” Her angry voice wakes up Sanna, too, and both she and Lillus lie quiet as mice, scared to death, and fall back to sleep from pure terror. Mona is busy in the kitchen, then out on the steps. Definitely voices!
It’s the verger and Signe who show up. “Mona,” the verger says, with his reassuring authority. “They’ve found his briefcase and coat on the ice. A hole. We mustn’t believe the worst. They’re dragging for all they’re worth. If they find him, it doesn’t have to be too late. We’ll do our damnedest. We’ll fight with everything we’ve got.”