Nature loves Lillus. It comes running up with a wet kiss and a hug the moment she comes down the steps. Big embrace— little piglet! And Lillus loves nature back, mud and water, grass and cow shit. A horrible child, the way she looks.
Nature tries different strategies with the parsonage girls. Sanna stretches out and grows taller and thinner, as if nature is determined that she not weigh one unnecessary gramme while at the same time giving her perspective and control. In Lillus’s case, just the opposite. She stops growing in height but increases in girth, as if nature’s plan was to see that she’ll never have far to fall when she’s knocked down.
Later in the spring, when they can spend more time outdoors, they are often seen on Church Isle—tall Sanna followed by her short, stocky satellite. They chatter constantly, for it’s Sanna’s responsibility to teach Lillus to talk. It’s an entertaining process. Whenever she learns a new word, Lillus laughs and takes a little jump so the knowledge will distribute itself evenly throughout her body. Lillus is fun because she’s surprisingly cheerful so much of the time, considering how little she’s able to do and how little she knows. That doesn’t seem to bother her much, and although Sanna sees it as a duty and a job to look after Lillus and keep her busy, she often thinks it’s great fun to be with her as she plays.
Mama has a lot to do. Writes letter after letter to thank all the people who have written letter after letter. She has the animals to take care of and all her household chores. She goes back and forth in the kitchen and is angry at everyone who asks about her future plans. But mostly people do their wondering in the villages, for there aren’t many who come to Church Isle now, except to services, which are held every other week. Then everyone looks at her, top to bottom and back up again. Mama is so vexed she turns red in the face. It’s the reported pregnancy that’s behind it, the posthumous son, a phantom that never takes physical form no matter how much they look. It’s the loose-tongued Martha, her busybody mother-in-law, who has started this groundless rumour, which has leaped like wildfire from the Örlands to every Swedish-speaking community in Finland, where this son is already born and christened.
It’s an assault on her person to expose her to gossip this way, and it’s typical of Martha to elicit oh’s and ah’s from people while at the same time pretending to give Mona something to live for, as if it were the Son of Man himself she carried in her belly. For she will never let Martha know how she grieves and eats her heart out. On account of her rheumatoid arthritis, they decided to wait a little. They were planning a new baby for the late winter or early spring of 1950, and she had been looking forward with all her being to the intense love life of the coming spring and summer. Now there would be nothing, never anything more, all spoiled because of exaggerated consideration and caution.
Although Mama works and runs about all day long, Sanna sometimes sees her late in the evening sitting quite still at the table, her letter paper in front of her. But she isn’t writing, and her eyes stare into empty space. The bedspread is still on her bed, maybe she’ll never move again. But in the morning she’s off to a flying start, and they all have to be ready fast, fast, as if it were the most shameful thing in the world for anyone to come before they’re all dressed and their beds made.
Fredrik Berg comes with Post-Anton every other week to conduct services and confirmation classes. He stays for a few days, and while he’s there Mellom has to make do without a priest, which, as Fredrik acidly explains, they do not find at all difficult. The little girls at the parsonage greet him joyously and Mona feels a stab of rancour, jealousy, God knows what, when she sees how ready Lillus is to trade the father she no longer remembers for Fredrik Berg, to whom she gives her unconditional love. She sits on his knee smiling benignly, her head on one side, all the words she knows pouring seductively from her mouth, with accompanying gestures. Sanna stands alongside, jealous for once of her little sister, and doesn’t give up until Fredrik Berg has put Lillus down and picked her up, while Lillus leans against his leg and gazes up at him with passionate, tear-filled eyes.
She can grow really angry seeing them like this, as if there was something so special about being a man that even little girls, as soon as they have a specimen within reach, go all slinky and fawning and signal eternal fealty and show an entirely different kind of love than they’re prepared to show their mother. Lillus is absolutely insufferable, gives him her undivided attention, sparkles and beams at the dinner table and engages him in a conversation that excludes everyone else. She behaves exactly like a Kummel, as if she’d never been raised to a stricter standard of behaviour, and Mama lifts her down from her highchair and tells her that’s enough, Mr Berg is here to work, with the church’s books and correspondence and the confirmation classes, and he doesn’t have time for a lot of clingy children. She practically drives him to the office and closes the door behind him, for the girls’ enchantment just emphasizes how much harder everything is for her.
It’s too painful. She can hardly stand to have another priest at her table and feel the enormous difference but also the degrading desire to try so hard to be pleasant, as if in maleness itself there was something so irresistible that it must at any price be courted and idolized. Ugh, the way a person can behave sometimes! And yet Fredrik is her friend and the closest thing she has to a confidant, Petter’s friend and colleague. The only one she can discuss her future with, and the only person who loyally keeps her informed about the discussions at the cathedral chapter about the Örlands’ clerical needs. The first person to make an entry in the church record in a different hand, under Deaths: Pastor Petter Leonard Kummel, deceased by drowning at an age of 31 years, 4 months, 15 days.
The teacher in the west villages is about to retire, and people on the Örlands think it natural that Mona should take the job. She has thought about it, but no. How can she live here and be constantly reminded? Among people who are naturally moving away from him and the memory of him, people whose attention is focused on new people and new events, new tragedies, while she herself, never. No, it’s too hard. Better to return to the mainland, she tells Fredrik Berg, where she has relatives and colleagues and isn’t automatically associated with the tragically dead priest, at whose name people glance sidelong at her and go silent.
Fredrik Berg thinks this very sensible. He doesn’t want to influence her one way or the other, only to support her in the choices she is eminently suited to make for herself. He admires her decision to stay at the parsonage for half her year of grace so she can manage the move as carefully as possible and avoid doing anything hasty. “I hope they don’t send a new priest too soon,” he says quite honestly. “I have nothing at all against coming out to the Örlands now that spring is on its way and it’s all so beautiful. And you’d be left in peace here at the parsonage.”
If only the cathedral chapter were equally insightful, but they feel that the best thing they can do for the Örlands is to find them a new priest quickly. For the bishop and the assessor, with their lively memories of the new vicar’s heart-warming installation the year before, Örland parish is a particular favourite. No stopgap solutions, no half measures—it needs to be a proper priest, and right away. However, it turns out that all the men who have warm feelings for the Örlands and found their visits to the place unforgettable have pressing reasons to remain on the mainland. Among the younger guard, priests who have not yet passed their pastoral examination, there seems to be an actual fear of the appointment. They have children who must go to school, elderly parents who need support, important duties in their new positions. If only they were younger and not so bound. If only they were older and not so bound …