They drove home slowly in the snow. The snow fell thick, heavy with water, onto the windshield. The driver gripped the wheel hard, stuck his head close to the glass, fogging two round circles with the breath from his nostrils.
Soon they were home. And Lennart was before him, kneeled, pulling off first one shoe then the other, lifting one socked foot to free the cuff of Bent’s pants, and Bent stood nearly naked, his body one he still did not recognize below him. Himself, his son, his grandson, these unfamiliar bodies.
In bed, he listened to the murmur of the television from the other room. Explosions or laughter. First of February 1940, Bent arrived with a group of five thousand volunteers at Märkäjärvi to relieve the Finnish battalions fighting there. The winter had been harsh, and supply lines from the bases at Boden and Tornio were disrupted regularly. Deep drifts of snow skulked high up the pines. All along the line, trenches and encampments yawned from the frozen earth. He was ordered to a position just north of the line. Through a thick stand of pine to the south, smoke from a Russian fire reached across the gray sky. It was nearing dark. Only midday, but the clouds were so thick the light remained unchanged for the hours he crouched in the trench, rifle trained on the smoke and flicker of movement through the trees. A head, shoulders, rising embers from a stoked fire. First the cold burned but then it numbed. It circled him in bed now. He had never seen so much snow. The first shots stabbed the dirt. Then mortar rounds, more gunfire. Blood an icy continent at the root of what was left of the man beside him. Outside, a fist of clear sky began to open and the storm cleared, snow in the orange light of the courtyard lighter and lighter until it was gone.
Sweet Water
Marie took her daughter to swim at the beach. They splashed around near the shore. Tove emptied the bag of sand toys, looked disappointed to find only a small bucket and a half dozen filthy plastic molds. There was a shell, a crab, a sea star, some animals Marie didn’t recognize. While Tove was occupied with these things, Marie waded out in the water. The cool water gripped her legs. Tove filled the bucket with wet sand, dumped it out, filled it again. She made a messy pile of shells and sea stars. Marie walked backward, watching her daughter, until the water was up to her waist, then her shoulders, and finally deep enough for her to be unable to stand. She floated in the water for a little while. Then she swam back and dried beside Tove in the hot sun.
There was a floating pier just up the beach. Tove had pointed to the children jumping from the pier into the water when she and Marie walked down to the beach from the metro station. She’d said she’d wanted to try. “You’re too young, Tove,” Marie had said. “You don’t swim well enough yet.”
Now sand covered, pink from sunburn on her cheeks and neck, she asked again. “Please,” Tove said.
Marie said, “One time, and then we’ll go home. Lennart’s sister is coming to dinner. I’ll need your help to cook.” She combed a sweaty clump of Tove’s hair back from the girl’s sandy forehead.
Tove helped rinse the sand toys in the water. She hummed a song Marie couldn’t place. Perhaps Tove had made it up. Marie often worried about the person Tove would one day become. Together they walked along the beach toward the pier.
The pier was wobbly and Tove stopped once they’d stepped on it to look up at Marie. Marie smiled. “It’s okay,” she said. “Take my hand.”
At the edge, they stood and looked down into the dark green water. This far inland the saltwater mixed with the fresh and didn’t smell brackish like it did nearer the coast.
“I don’t want to,” Tove said.
“Shall we go home then?” Marie asked, turning back toward the shore and holding her hand out. She tried not to be frustrated, but she couldn’t take her mind off the list of preparations she had before dinner.
“I want to do it,” Tove said. “No, I want to jump.”
Marie turned back to the water. A cold wind whipped drops of water from her legs. “On three,” Marie said. At three, she stopped. Tove’s toes curled over the edge of the pier. A cloud passed in front of the sun, and the hair on Marie’s arms stood up. Children jumped from either side. Water splashed her and Tove’s feet.
A young boy walked up behind them. He touched Marie’s back with cold fingertips. Her bathing suit was nearly dry and the coldness of his touch on the small of her back, too adult, too intimate, made her flinch. He stood still, smiling at Marie. She said, “Hello there.” It was clear to Marie that he had some kind of disability. His eyes were set wide and his nose was flat against a broad face.
“Maybe she’d be brave if I jumped too?” the boy said.
Marie looked around for a parent or a guardian of some sort. What if he couldn’t swim, she thought. Two children in the water would be a challenge and there wasn’t a lifeguard that day. No one on the beach was looking at them. The boy’s smile hadn’t changed at all. He continued to look at Marie and said, as if he’d anticipated her concern, “I’m a very good swimmer. It’s not hard and I like it.”
“What do you think, Tove?” Marie said. “Should we let this boy teach us how to be brave and strong?” Brave and strong, a term she’d picked up from one of Tove’s cartoons or maybe a book. So childish and silly. She’d never thought to criticize such an expression before and was both sad and hopeful about what that meant. Tove would start school in the fall.
Tove turned and lined up at the edge of the pier. She seemed ready to jump and Marie didn’t want to do anything that might change her mind, so she took her hand and turned back to the boy. “Ready?” she asked.
The boy reached out and took Marie’s hand, which she hadn’t expected him to do. She was in between the two children. Their hands were cold and Marie could feel the ridged pruning of their fingertips. “On three,” she said, holding their hands tight to her hips.
Before they jumped, Tove pulled her hand from Marie’s hand. The boy tilted forward a half step, righted himself. “Careful,” Marie said to him. Then to Tove, she said, “Aren’t you ready?”
“This time,” Tove said. But again when Marie started to count, Tove pulled her hand away. Marie knelt on the pier. The water was dark in the shadow of the cloud. She had a pork loin marinating in the refrigerator but the rest of the meal would take time. Asparagus, potatoes, the smoked salmon rolls that Lennart liked as an appetizer. The apartment was a mess, and Lennart always took too long with the cocktails, serving a second round of drinks when he should be putting the meat on the grill. “Please, Tove,” she said. “We’re going to be late. Let’s jump this time.” Mostly it was Lennart’s sister, Matilda, about whom Marie was worried. She was younger than Lennart but Lennart was a little intimidated by her, a little scared to disappoint her, let her witness even the slightest social or personal failure. And he often took this out on Marie, getting angry if a meal was served too late or the apartment was unkempt and messy. This frustrated Marie. She disliked being late for anything when Matilda was involved. Matilda always had something to say about parenting, particularly how hard it was to keep to a strict schedule with kids, but how important. Matilda had two children and Marie had never known her to be late or unprepared for anything.
She stood and turned to the boy. “Are you ready?” She tried to sound cheerful but could sense her frustration with Tove growing in her voice. The boy didn’t say anything. He was quietly singing a song Marie remembered from when she was a girl. It was a song about jumping into cold water. She hadn’t heard it in years. She tried to recall the words but couldn’t get past the first few lines in her head before she gave up and took Tove’s hand. The cloud had passed the sun and it was warm again. Even the wind felt a little warmer. Tove pulled her hand away. “Wait,” she said.