“Now tell me what happened in Borgå. I’ve been really anxious. You did pass didn’t you, after all your studying?”
“Oh yes. Approved, but not with honours. It’s really embarrassing that I did so poorly even when it came to questions where I was on home ground, what should have been like mother’s milk to me.” When he says ‘mother’s’, he gives a little grimace of pain, which she picks up at once.
“Don’t tell me your mother has anything to do with this!”
“You read my mind. Yes. I don’t know where to start. You remember Hilda?”
Dear God, of course she remembers Hilda. Their marriage was preceded by detailed confessions. No sin was left untouched. Hilda was the greatest. Hilda was also the sin he’d wanted to confess to everyone in the perfervid atmosphere of a Moral Re-Armament meeting. Hilda is the person Mona hates most in the world. Her pulse quickens. She gets red spots on her neck and the tip of her nose turns white. She would like to scratch the woman’s eyes out. “What does Hilda have to do with your pastoral exam?”
“Mama had written to tell her I was going to be in Borgå. She came to the hotel. Completely hysterical. Her husband had left her and she had to talk to someone. I reminded her of my examination but there was no stopping her. It was like I’d been drugged. You can imagine what I was feeling. As a priest, it was my duty to listen. No priest can refuse a human being in spiritual need. You can imagine the horrible conflict I felt. Privately, I was in despair. Time was passing. As she talked, I developed a terrible headache. Then I couldn’t get to sleep.”
“She was in your room?” He nods. “Dear God.”
“Yes, it was awkward. It was ghastly.”
“What time did she leave?”
“Twelve-thirty.”
“Twelve–thirty! What’s wrong with you? You know what a slut she is, and you let her destroy your peace of mind and your future career? It’s one thing to talk to her for an hour and send her on her way, it’s another thing altogether to let her sit there—what was it? Over four hours!—and let her sabotage your prospects. And what do you think people thought!”
“She was desperate.”
“And what about you?”
“In such a situation, a priest isn’t supposed to think about himself.”
“You really believe she came to you for spiritual counselling? From you?”
“It’s not an either or. It’s a matter of both and. She came because it was me. That doesn’t mean she wasn’t also miserable and desperate. That’s what I had to keep telling myself.”
“And comfort her? Are you out of your senses? I can just imagine the kind of comfort she had in mind. You must have known that yourself.”
“When you put it that way, yes. But I was so intensely uncomfortable that I couldn’t imagine that she … Ugh!”
“Did she try?”
“In words maybe. I changed the subject to Jesus.” He gives her a crooked smile. She doesn’t smile back.
“The fact is that you allowed her to destroy your examination. What kind of Jesus complex do you suffer from? Although not even Jesus … There are lots of examples of him going out into the desert because he couldn’t deal with people any more. Sometimes I don’t understand you at all.”
She stands up vehemently and begins pacing back and forth. Mona at her most unreasonable. Mona when she is most like her temperamental father, who can pace about in a rage for several hours amidst a torrent of words. The whole household cowers and keeps its mouth shut, and now Petter stays silent and draws his head down between his shoulders. It’s not his fault that Hilda appeared at the hotel. Even if he had shown her the door, she would have ruined his night’s sleep. There is no possible defence, because Petter owed it to his wife to throw out the baggage that has caused so much unhappiness!
Quite right, but he was so flustered, he was virtually paralysed.
Rubbish! For a year and a half, she’s walked on eggshells because of his pastoral exam, and then he throws it away in a single evening, one night, with a trollop who had led him astray once already. Doesn’t he ever learn? Is he a complete idiot? A total milksop?
While she rants, she starts working in the kitchen, refusing to let her indignation interfere with the efficient performance of her duties. Food is scrubbed, peeled, sliced, shredded, and mashed while she scolds him. He just sits there, unproductive in his stupidity and lack of enterprise, a sheep rather than the shepherd he had meant to become.
An oppressive afternoon, which he spends as a refugee in his study, with his letters and newspapers. At some point, he must also concoct a sermon for Sunday, which under the present circumstances he needs to manage discreetly and without complaint. Now that he’s free of his studies, he has also promised to spend more time with Sanna. She stands looking at him from the door. “Come,” he says. “I’ve been so sad without you.”
At the supper table, she puts his plate down hard. “I was mad because I missed you so. I could hardly wait for you to come home. And then all this. As if you hadn’t learned a thing. It’s almost enough to make me lose my mind. And of course I’m maddest of all because it was so unpleasant for you. I should have gone with you, but how would that have looked, with a two-month-old baby? Then it would have been my fault that you couldn’t sleep! And anyway at your age you ought to be able to take care of yourself!”
She’s well on her way to starting again, and Sanna sits in her chair stiff with fear. But she stops talking, sits down, and bursts into tears, and Petter is no longer a failed clergyman but a husband, who finally knows how to use the beautiful voice he’s been given, the unshaven cheek that he can press against hers. A warm breast and good, knowing hands.
Chapter Eighteen
A TERRIBLE STORM ON CHRISTMAS EVE. If it keeps up, there won’t be a soul at the early service Christmas morning. It’s not a problem of thin ice, because the ice hasn’t set yet, only made small attempts in the bays, where snow and ice trim the beaches while the open sea rolls free. Now full storm, squealing, wailing wind, and dark as a coal cellar by three in the afternoon. It rains as if the sea lay not only around the Örlands but also above it, pouring its water over them in great cascades. In the worst gusts, the beacon light is invisible, and the whole world is drowned by the merciless waves.
“For those in peril on the sea,” the pastor prays. “And keep the parsonage afloat, too,” he adds, more or less as a joke. For the rain forces its way in where the window frames are in poor condition, and the foam from the wave tops is thrown against the glass like snow. The wind howls through the house and drives the smoke down the chimney. Open doors slam shut, the boards creak in the walls, the rag rugs meander across the floor. It’s impossible to get the Christmas prayer on the radio, which just crackles and stutters in Russian and Finnish.
The pastor understands better than he did last year why Christmas prayers are not held on the Örlands. At this time of year, it’s enough that the congregation comes to the Christmas morning service. Earlier, when the weather was nice, he thought they might hold private Christmas prayers in the church, just the four of them, but now he’s lost the desire. It’s bad enough that Mona has to go out to the cow barn in this storm. They don’t really know how much of a fire they dare have in the tile stoves, and the kitchen range spits out smoke and sparks through the burner rings in the worst gusts of wind, so someone, he, must be both babysitter and fire warden. He lights the hurricane lamp, checks that it’s filled with lamp oil. Mona bundles up, they joke about her getting lost on the prairie. “Aim for the light in the window!” he calls farewell as the door closes.