He got up and made a hopeless gesture with his hand.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going to run away and do anything stupid. I just need to, I don’t know, sort myself out for a bit.”
With these words he left the room. The door slammed behind him.
Fred Olsson went back to the letters. It was all for the best, really. He liked working alone.
Bertil Stensson and Stefan Wikström were standing in the little room inside the parish office looking into Mildred Nilsson’s locker. Rebecka Martinsson had handed in the key to the house in Poikkijärvi and the key to the locker.
“Just calm down,” said Bertil Stensson. “Think about
He ended the sentence with a nod in the direction of the office where the clerks were sitting.
Stefan Wikström glanced at his boss. The parish priest’s mouth contracted into a thoughtful expression. Smoothed itself out, contracted again. Like a little hamster mouth.The short, stocky body in a beautifully ironed pink shirt from the Shirt Factory. A bold color, it was the priest’s daughter who kitted him out. Went well with the tanned face and the silvery, boyish haircut.
“Where are the letters?” said Stefan Wikström.
“Maybe she burned them,” said the priest.
Stefan Wikström’s voice went up an octave.
“She told me she’d kept them. What if somebody in Magdalena’s got them? What am I going to say to my wife?”
“Maybe nothing,” said Bertil Stensson calmly. “I need to get in touch with her husband. To give him her jewelry.”
They stood in silence.
Stefan Wikström gazed at the locker without speaking. He had thought this would be a moment of liberation. That he would hold the letters in his hand and be free of Mildred for good. But now. Her grip on the back of his neck was as tight as ever.
What is it you want of me, Lord? he thought. It is written that you do not test us beyond our capability, but now you have driven me to the limit of what I can cope with.
He felt trapped. Trapped by Mildred, by his job, by his wife, by his vocation, just giving and giving without ever getting anything back. And after Mildred’s death he had felt trapped by his boss Bertil Stensson.
Before, Stefan had enjoyed the father-son relationship that had grown between them. But now he recognized the price that would have to be paid. He was under Bertil’s thumb. He could see what Bertil said about him behind his back from the way the women in the office looked at him. They put their heads on one side, and there was just a hint of pity in their eyes. He could almost hear Berticlass="underline" “Things aren’t easy for Stefan. He’s more sensitive than you’d think.” More sensitive as in weak. The fact that the parish priest had taken some of his services hadn’t gone unnoticed. Everyone had been informed, apparently by chance. He felt diminished and exploited.
I could disappear, he thought. God takes care of the sparrow.
Mildred. Back in June she was gone. All of a sudden. But now she was back. Magdalena, the women’s group, had got back on its feet. They were vociferously demanding more women priests in the parish. And it was as if Bertil had already forgotten what she was really like. When he spoke about her nowadays, there was warmth in his voice. She had a big heart, he sighed. She had a greater talent as a pastor than I myself, he maintained generously. That implied that she had a greater talent as a pastor than Stefan, since Bertil was a better pastor than Stefan.
At least I’m not a liar, thought Stefan angrily. She was an aggressive troublemaker who drew damaged women to her and gave them fire instead of balm. Death couldn’t change that fact.
It was a disturbing thought, that Mildred had set damaged people on fire. Many might say she’d set him on fire too.
But I’m not damaged, he thought. That wasn’t why.
He stared into the locker. Thought about autumn 1997.
Bertil Stensson has called Stefan Wikström and Mildred Nilsson to a meeting. Mikael Berg, the rural dean, is with him in his capacity as the person responsible for personnel issues. Mikael Berg sits bolt upright on his chair. He’s in his fifties. The trousers he’s wearing are ten to fifteen years old. And at that time Mikael was ten to fifteen kilos heavier. His thin hair is plastered to his skull. From time to time he takes a deep breath. His hand shoots up, doesn’t know where to go, smooths his hair down, drops back to his knee.
Stefan is sitting opposite him. Thinking he’ll remain calm. During the whole conversation ahead of him, he'll remain calm. The others can raise their voices, but he’s not like that.
They’re waiting for Mildred. She’s coming straight from a service in a school and has let them know that she’ll probably be a few minutes late.
Bertil Stensson is looking out of the window. A deep furrow between his eyebrows.
Mildred arrives. Walks in through the door at the same time as she knocks. Red cheeks. Her hair slightly frizzy from the damp autumn air outside.
She chucks her jacket onto a chair, pours herself a coffee from the flask.
Bertil Stensson explains why they’re there. The community is being split in two, he says. A Mildred-section and, he doesn’t say a Stefan-section, and the rest.
“I’m delighted with the sense of involvement you spread around you,” he says to Mildred. “But this is an insupportable situation for me. It’s beginning to resemble a war between the feminist priest and the priest who hates women.”
Stefan nearly leaps out of his seat.
“I most certainly don’t hate women,” he says, upset.
“No, but that’s the way it looks,” says Bertil Stensson, pushing Monday’s newspaper across the table.
Nobody needs to look at it. Everybody has read the article. “Woman Priest Answers Her Critics,” says the headline. The article quotes Mildred’s sermon from the previous week. She said that the stole was in fact a Roman female garment. That it’s been worn since the fourth century, when liturgical costume was first worn. “What priests are wearing today is actually women’s clothes, according to Mildred Nilsson,” says the article. “I can still accept male priests, after all it says in the Bible: there is neither female nor male, neither Jew nor Greek.”
Stefan Wikström has also had the opportunity to express his views in the article. “Stefan Wikström maintains that he doesn’t see the sermon as a personal attack. He loves women, he just doesn’t want to see them in the pulpit.”
Stefan’s heart is heavy. He feels he’s been tricked. True, that is what he said, but it’s come out completely wrong in that context. The journalist asked him:
“You love your brothers. What about women? Do you hate women?”
And he’d naïvely answered absolutely not. He loved women.
“But you don’t want to see them in the pulpit.”
No, he’d replied. Broadly speaking that was true. But there was no value judgment in that, he’d added. In his eyes the work of the deaconess was every bit as important as that of the priest.
The parish priest is saying that he doesn’t want to hear any more comments like this from Mildred.
“And what about Stefan’s comments?” she says calmly. “He and his family don’t come to church when I’m preaching. We can’t hold a joint confirmation, because he refuses to work with me.”
“I can’t go against what it says in the Bible,” says Stefan.
Mildred makes an impatient movement with her head. Bertil clothes himself in patience. They’ve heard this before, Stefan realizes, but what can he do, it’s still true.
“Jesus chose twelve men as his disciples,” Stefan persists. “The chief priest was always a man. How far can we move away from the word of the Bible in our attempt to fit in with the values prevalent in modern society before it stops being Christianity at all?”
“All the disciples and the chief priests were Jews as well,” replies Mildred. “How do you get round that? And read the epistle to the Hebrews, Jesus is our chief priest today.”