THE HAPPIEST MOMENT OF HIS LIFE
Adolf and Beatrice
Anna and her sister Ida used to take the train to Varberg. They would stand on the open platform of the last car, thrilled by the wind and the speed. Rows of haystacks receded into the distance. Tethered cows grazed calmly along the embankment, undisturbed by the engine and the smoke-mixed steam. As they traveled west, the landscape became more level, the sky higher, and the smell of seaweed and sunbaked rocks reached their nostrils long before they could actually see the sea.
First they walked over to Societétshuset, a building unlike any other in the town of Varberg. Of a delicious pink, it was grand and fanciful, a Nordic Alhambra with cornices, arches, and lacy woodwork. Along the front was a large verandah, with a green tin roof supported by iron pilasters. Here the two sisters had coffee and pastry, as waiters hurried about, eager to please. Almost every table was taken, and the clatter from the kitchen only added to the sense of leisure and privilege. A military band played in the park below, while fashionable couples strolled among the lawns and the flowerbeds. Life at Societétshuset was elegant and exclusive; though foreign to the common citizen, Carl Börjesson’s daughters felt very much at ease.
Later in the day, the two sisters walked on the beach, arm in arm, heads together. Children played in the shallow water, where small flatfish burrowed on the bottom, stirring up clouds of sand as they scattered and fled. Close to the shore, on the lee side of a low, oblong island, the water glistened and bobbed. Farther out, as sea and sky became one, sailboats hung suspended in a shimmering, seamless void. To the south a massive stone fortress — eroding black walls on grass-covered banks — jutted out into the water. Built in the late 13th century, it was one of Sweden’s few surviving structures from the days of Danish supremacy.
The two sisters would have been easy to tell apart. Ida was in her early thirties and rapidly approaching spinsterhood. Short and stocky, with a slight squint, she overcame her natural shortcomings by dressing in style. A good seamstress, she favored the long, straight, and tailored, avoiding belts and frills — sometimes tucking a nosegay of sweet peas into her breast pocket or inside the band of her large straw hat. Her most outstanding attribute was her sense of humor. Friends adored her cutting wit, her terse comments, and her ability to make them laugh even when not proper.
Anna, on the other hand, would wear one of her white dresses, ankle length, perhaps with a ruffled waist and neckline. Now in her early twenties, her body was fully developed. Her figure was slender and trim — it would always stay that way — with an elasticity that made it seem robust and fragile both. Her breasts were full and her hips broad; in the opinion of the day she was all female, meant to carry child. She wore her long brown hair brushed back and gathered in a roll. Her eyes were as blue as her father’s. Her face, too, recalled his. It was not a pretty face, but a strong classic face, still with the symmetry of youth. Even in her sixties — as I remember her — her skin was flawless. Every morning she rubbed her face and body with a soft towel dipped in cold water (in the winter she used snow). I used to help rub her back. “Press harder,” she said, with her warm, full-throated laughter. I never did.
I suspect Ida and Anna talked about matters at Torp. Carl Börjesson, by now, was rarely at home. Even though his run for the Parliament had been unsuccessful, politics took more and more of his time. When at Torp, he almost always brought friends. Anticipating the arrival of one of them, a local road engineer, Ida would go to her room for what she called her “beauty sleep.” Everyone joked about it, not least Ida herself, but the number of “prospects” was truly shrinking.
Lotta, now in her early sixties, showed her age and spent most of her time on a chair next to the stove. Anders, a year younger than Lotta, was becoming more and more difficult, especially when he had been drinking. Only Carl Börjesson could get the better of him. Once, when Börjesson found Anders drunk in the kitchen, he dragged him out into the barn, closed the door, and beat him with a cane. Anders spent the night locked up in one of the hog pens, sobering up. The next day he threatened to leave. A few days later, he announced he was staying, claiming they could not manage without him.
Selma had married a farmer whom she met while attending a school of home management in Herrljunga, a large village in Mark. Ebba, too, had met a young farmer while attending the same school; their wedding a few years later would be one of the grandest events in Kungsäter. Gustav, in his late teens, kept to himself. The rest of the family never quite knew what he was thinking. Sometimes, though, he and Fina stayed up late and talked. About what, Fina never said.
Hjalmar had long since won a reputation for causing trouble. Inheriting his father’s disdain for physical labor, he often left for Varberg, sputtering through the village on his lightweight motorcycle. After several days, when he returned, he would be red-eyed and irritable, the heels of his shoes worn out from negotiating the dirt roads. When not in Varberg, he roamed the parish in search of willing young women, returning with grass spots on the knees of his pants. Back from hunting — another favorite pastime — he would stride into the kitchen muddy and boisterous, tie his wet dogs by the stove, and demand food for himself and the animals, while the maid despaired over her freshly scrubbed floor.
The marriage in 1914 of Adolf and Beatrice, my grandparents, was perhaps the most intriguing topic. Beatrice had come to Kungsäter to help her aunt, the local midwife. For a time both Hjalmar and Adolf courted Beatrice, and it seemed uncertain which of the two brothers would win her. Perhaps Beatrice chose Adolf for the simple reason that he proposed first. Surely he was more attentive and sensitive to her needs. And he was probably irresistible as he knocked on her window at dawn, on his way home from a village dance party, vest open, shirt sleeves rolled up, fiddle in hand, tired and happy and not wanting to leave. Ida found Beatrice provincial and uninteresting, never mind her outstanding good looks. Carl Börjesson, too, found her lacking. “No land, no marriage,” he said. He meant it. Once Adolf married Beatrice, there was no room for them at Torp. The young couple moved to Bollebygd, a nearby village, where Adolf leased land belonging to the vicarage. A year later Birgit, my mother, was born.
Eventually, however, the conversation would turn to Fredrik Lundgren, a popular topic among the women of Kungsäter. Women were drawn to him by the way he held their eyes with his, slightly longer than appropriate, and the way he cupped their elbows with his hand as they stepped down from carriages. His office, said his maid, was filled with books, not just books about farming, but also books of poetry and fiction, in rich leather bindings, with portraits of the authors in gold medallions on the covers. Strewn everywhere were pages of his own manuscripts, which were published in various newspapers. Once, when the maid cleaned up the room more thoroughly than usual, she tossed out some old type-written pages which had gathered dust on one of the top shelves. Fredrik seemed to find it beyond comprehension that she would do such a thing. Yet, it was not his nature to lose his temper in front of those who worked for him. “What’s done is done,” he said. After that he locked the door to his office.
Fredrik cared little for social occasions. He dressed up only when he had to drive a corpse to the cemetery — one of his duties under the lease — and even then he preferred black shirts to white. Ascetic in his eating habits, he took his meals alone in his office, not with his workers in the kitchen. It was not because he was a snob — out in the fields he was their equal in every way — but because their appetites were larger, and he did not want them to feel they should restrain themselves. Each day, at five to one, he rejoined his workers in the kitchen. “Time flies,” he said, and everyone went back to work.
Fredrik’s chief concern was always for the animals. He instructed his farmhands to warm the bit with their hands before inserting it into the horse’s mouth. They were to keep the slides carefully greased so that the straddle would not shift and scorch the horse’s breast. Any man found riding on the cast-iron seat of the farm machinery was sure to be reprimanded. “If he can’t walk behind,” Fredrik said, “he’s not worth having.” Once a farmhand harnessed the horses ten minutes early. With rain on the horizon, he wanted to get the hay under roof. Fredrik made him take the horses back to the stable.
The whole village was divided in the matter of Alma. Attractive and intelligent, Alma had been Fredrik’s housekeeper. When she became pregnant, she left the farm at Fredrik’s request. She moved to a cottage at the outskirts of the village, where she made her living as a seamstress. A few months later she gave birth to Ella, who had Fredrik’s dark and penetrating eyes. Now and then, said the women who went for fittings, Alma talked about Fredrik. When she did, she pinned the dresses all wrong.
Ida likely agreed with those who felt that Fredrik had not acted as he should: if he spent the night with his housekeeper, he had no right to turn his back on her the morning after. With a quick side look at Anna, Ida may well have suggested that Fredrik was a social climber who had bigger game in mind.
Even today, however, there are villagers who leap to Fredrik’s defense. Ella, they say, was not Alma’s only child. Before Ella, there was a son, also born out of wedlock. Fredrik, who found out by chance, was furious with Alma for not telling him. That was why he would not marry her: he was a man of principle, and Alma’s dishonesty was unforgivable. As for his bedding Alma in the first place, it was not unusual for a man to sleep with his housekeeper. Indeed, a woman who took hire with a bachelor often did so with the understanding that she would sleep with him. As Hjalmar would say, “it was just about the only fun she had.”
I doubt, though, that Ida would have left it at that. She knew she had Anna’s attention, and walking on the beach makes a person bold. In one of the boxes stored in the attic of Torp I found a book entitled Woman as Virgin, Wife and Mother, by a Mrs. E.B. Duffy. It was bound in modest brown paper and some of the pages had loosened from the spine. Did Ida rely on it when she rehearsed this talk with Anna? “A man who leads a dissolute life,” wrote Mrs. Duffy, “may be afflicted with the most horrible and repulsive kind of disease. Often dormant, it may strike at any time. Only a virtuous man deserves a virtuous wife. Even more than to herself, a woman owes it to her children to make sure that their father is physically and morally impeccable.”
Anna may well have memorized another passage, in which Mrs. Duffy counsels a young woman to trust her instinct rather than listening to gossip. “If she possesses a pure and noble mind, she herself will know the true nature of her suitor’s character. Her sentiments may seem irrational to others, but her inner voice will lead the way, and she will be wise to follow.”
Later, in the train compartment, Ida conversed with the other passengers as Anna sat by the window, looking out. Her lips tasted of salt. A decanter with tepid water clinked against a metal rack, hopelessly out of rhythm with the steady thunking of the rails. Her thoughts were with Fredrik, and the future they planned. I suspect they first made love in the spring of 1909, the year after Fredrik’s visit to Torp. Fredrik referred to it, briefly, in one of his articles. For some time the signs of spring had been unmistakable: a full moon shone over ice turning brittle, and the midday sun tinged the birch tops violet. He was testing the soil up by the forest’s edge, scuffing at it with the heel of his boot. The past few weeks it had been hard and unyielding, but on this particular morning it felt soft and sticky. He felt a surge of excitement, one he knew he must resist. It was yet too early, but soon enough he could let horses and men out on the fields.
That was also the day he met Anna. She too came to the forest’s edge, a “fair young creature,” no longer child, not yet woman, as much in transition as nature around her. He pulled her towards him, laid her down, and watched her pleasure build. It was, he wrote, “the happiest moment in his life,” before the world changed and that was set in motion which pushed her always out of reach.
©
| Chapter 10 coming soon