Mona stares at him, but only for a moment. Her teeth chatter when she talks, but she seems perfectly collected. “We learned first aid in home economics. And the Coast Guard can help. Are there many men out?”
“Five or six. Seven counting Brage. They started searching at the steamboat channel. That was the trouble.”
“Then we have to make sure there’s hot coffee for all of them. And light the lamps. Dear Signe, can you help me set out cups while I make the coffee?”
Neither of them finds it unnatural—she needs something to do or anxiety will kill her. While the two women are busy in the kitchen, the verger goes out on the steps. Voices in the air, then lamps and lights coming up the hill, the steps of people moving quickly and heavily, as if they were carrying a body.
Once they knew it was the priest they were looking for, it was easy to find his bicycle tracks and follow them across the ice and into Church Bay, too close to the rocks. And there was a hole. Dear God. Dark objects on the ice where water had washed over them and frozen them solid. Boots. Overcoat. Gloves. Briefcase. Good God. Not what we think. Surely he’s pulled himself out and lies freezing somewhere on land. But there are no tracks. Brage is equipped with a coil of rope and two drags. But it’s hard to get close enough without breaking the ice. They stand spread out around the hole and calculate. The water isn’t deep, maybe eight or ten feet, but before they can talk it over, Brage has ripped off his outer clothing and his boots, tied a line around his waist and wrapped the other end around Julle’s arm. He goes down, his body protecting him so well against the cold that he hardly notices, feels around with his feet, finds the bicycle almost at once. The others throw in a drag, he fastens it, and they pull up the bicycle empty. A black skeleton, stone dead, it clatters onto the ice. Brage goes down and searches on. Something on the bottom, soft. A body. He kicks his way up. “Here he is. I’ll bring him up.”
He grabs the wool sweater and pulls. The priest comes easily, limp, just a short way, and then Brage feels a tug on his own line as the men give a hand and get them both up quickly, Brage lively as a beaver and the priest dead, a white face in the dark, wet hair, a motionless body. Brage tows him to the edge of the ice and gives orders in rapid gasps—the sledge first, the lightest man behind it, the others behind him ready to pull back. Here. Take him. Back away all of you. Brage himself gets out with almost no help, crawls a ways behind the dragged body, tests the ice, stands up and slides forward, turns the priest on his stomach and tries to get the water out of his lungs.
Someone throws a coat over him, his boots come skittering. Julle shouts, “You need to get somewhere warm, both of you. Run Brage, you’ll freeze to death!”
At the same moment, the organist approaches on his kick sledge, having risked his life at full speed all the way from the southern tip of the west villages, with his ice pike and his sheath knife ready to hand. “Is it him?” he shouts.
“Watch out!” Brage yells. “I’m not going to drag up anyone else today!” They all laugh, a short, voiceless guffaw which is more frightening than a call for help.
“We need to get him up to the parsonage,” Julle says. “Lucky you’re here, since you know his wife. Grab hold and let’s go.”
They leave the sledges, ropes, and drags by the church dock and then they walk quickly with the body between them and their flashlights twinkling, while Brage half runs up the hill, swinging his arms to beat his body. Knows as well as the priest knew how to keep warm if you’ve fallen in the water.
The verger comes to meet them. “No. We’ll put him by the stove and do everything we can.”
The priest’s wife in the door. “Is it him? Thank you, all of you. Carry him into the kitchen, it’s warm there.”
It’s now midnight. The priest lies in front of the stove as if he were sleeping. Soaked through, but they’ve seen him that way before. Brage rolls him onto his stomach and starts working on him. Water spurts from his mouth, there is hope. “Let me take over,” the organist says. “You need to dry off and get something hot into you. Then we can take it in turns.”
“Of course,” the priest’s wife says. “I didn’t see. Change clothes by the tile stove in the dining room, it’s warm. I’ll get some of Petter’s clothes, although he’s wearing his warmest things.” To the others she says, “Signe will give you coffee. Please sit down. You must be frozen stiff.”
Signe shoos them out of the kitchen with the coffeepot in her hand, Mona runs to the bedroom and grabs trousers, underwear, a shirt and sweater and gives them to Brage. “Thank you,” she says. “Without you, this could have ended badly.”
They all look at each other, then into their coffee. Does she think …? Or is she just trying to persuade herself. But she knows. You know, but you hope. When she’s back in the kitchen, they go to the study, close the door and make phone calls. To the hospital—drowned and dead. Is there nevertheless something they can try? Brage comes in when he’s dressed and talks. The hospital confirms what he already knows to do. However pointless. Must anyway try. They also talk to the operator and confirm that it was the priest and that he is dead and leave it to her to spread the news. Brage comes in again and asks them to call the homecare aide. “Tell her I’ll come and get her in the morning, early. They’ll have to find someone else for the Bergfolks, where she is now.” They also call their families to tell them they’ve found the priest dead and will soon be home, there’s nothing more they can do. Then they greedily drink more coffee, which Signe has kept hot. Those who feel superfluous start pulling on their coats, look in at the kitchen where the stove and the oven are spreading warmth. The priest on the floor, limp in Brage’s hands, the last time they’ll see him, they all think. “Goodbye then, and thank you for the coffee,” they mumble to his wife.
“Goodbye and thank you,” she says, smiling appreciatively the way people do when they say thank you. The organist has taken over from Brage and is working like a smith at his bellows. “Thank you for coming,” she remembers to say. “Are you tired? Should I take over for a while? How do you think it’s going?”
“We’ve got out a lot of water,” the organist says. “That’s good. Now we’ll turn him over. I’m going to see if we can’t get his heart going, that would be best of all. Forgive me, I have to press so hard his ribs will creak.”
Mona tries to concentrate on finding a pulse. Nothing at his wrist. Not on his neck. His temples are still. Then she sees the terrible black-and-blue bruise on his forehead. “Oh my. He hit his head badly. But otherwise he doesn’t look so bad. Not rigid from the cold.”
The organist is working intently. He doesn’t need to say that below the surface, where Petter lay, the temperature is above freezing. And then you don’t go stiff. And it’s too soon for rigor mortis.
When Mona searched for a pulse, she also looked at his wristwatch. Half past nine. That’s when he went through the ice, and cries were still heard a little more than half an hour before he was found. He wasn’t on the bottom for long, there’s still hope. He’s young and strong. “Are you tired?” she asks again.
He thinks maybe it would be good for her to work on him herself, to feel for herself that there’s no life in his body. They got his airways open a long time ago, they’ve been fighting to get his heart going for more than an hour, but there hasn’t been the tiniest response, not even a spasm to indicate that some nerve impulses are still functioning.
She knows her first aid, no question about that. She labours by the hot stove until the sweat is on her brow, she groans the way he would groan from her treatment of him if there was the least life left in his body. But he reacts to nothing they do. After all their efforts to bring him back to life, he now looks much more dead than he did when they carried him in. Brage has braced himself with a cup of coffee and a sandwich in the dining room, telephoned the hospital, and comes back into the kitchen. “Let me,” he says.