On a Cold Dark Sea(25)
The Halverssons had always been farmers, not fishermen, but Papa enjoyed the challenge of coaxing a fish onto his line. Already, Anna’s skinny fingers could gut and clean a perch in minutes, and the satisfied nod she got from Papa was better than any monetary reward. Papa was the center of her world, and she was grateful for whatever time she was granted in his orbit. He was always busy: planting, plowing, and helping out neighbors who were also scraping a living from the same stubborn earth. Anna’s oldest sister, Frieda, had been born in the optimistic days when Papa expected a house full of boys and put everything he’d saved into buying more land; when Kirsten arrived three years later, Papa began envisioning future sons-in-law who’d work by his side as his weather-beaten hands stiffened. Anna was a surprise arrival after ten barren years, and Mama always accused Papa of spoiling her.
Anna’s swimming lessons took place in the morning, after the cows had been milked and the pigs fed. She wore bloomers under a shabby dress handed down from Frieda, a dress that would otherwise have been taken apart for scraps. She learned to keep her head up and tuck her skirt under, leaving her legs free to kick. Though the icy lake water pricked at her skin, she pushed her way forward, eager to be rewarded with Papa’s smiles.
The Halverssons weren’t well off, but they owned their own land, unlike many others in their small Swedish village. Mama often held up the Anderssons as a family who had it far worse. Mr. Andersson eked out a living as a hired hand, and Mrs. Andersson was bony and pale, more a spirit than a flesh-and-blood woman.
“God’s plan is mysterious, isn’t it?” Mrs. Andersson asked Anna once. “Your father, with three daughters, must mourn the lack of a son. And here I am, with two fine boys, and I would give anything to have a little girl.”
Anna wasn’t sure how to respond. Would it would be disloyal to admit Mrs. Andersson was right? Papa loved Anna and her sisters, in his quiet way, but disappointment had marked him, like a scar or a limp.
Mr. Andersson was known to be stubborn, and there were some who said the accident was his own fault. He’d pushed his poor horse as if it were an Arabian racer; who could blame the old nag for throwing him off? God punishes the proud, the gossips whispered, but Anna thought God had better things to do than meddle in the affairs of country folk. Their lives were beneath his notice.
Mr. Andersson’s death served no larger purpose, other than increasing the misery of his family. Sickly Mrs. Andersson sat forlornly in her ramshackle one-room house, shunning the few kindly women who came to visit, and her sons, Josef and Emil, walked miles each day in search of work, though Emil barely looked strong enough to lift a pitchfork. The network of family bonds that would have propped up any other family had long since withered; Mrs. Andersson came from fishing folk up north—none of them anxious for more mouths to feed—and Mr. Andersson’s only brother had emigrated to America years before. The Anderssons were alone, and even sober, penny-pinching Mama felt sorry for them. When Frieda married a schoolteacher and moved to Stockholm, and Kirsten was promised to a young farmer more interested in expanding his family’s property than working Papa’s land, Mama proposed an arrangement: Josef and Emil would be brought on as Papa’s new farmhands, in exchange for food and a payment when the harvest was in.
Never having had a brother, Anna found it odd, at first, to spend so much time in the presence of young men. They had such a different way of moving, such different smells. Twelve-year-old Emil was awkward and bashful, with crooked teeth and a protruding nose. He could barely make it through a complete sentence without tripping over his words and seemed more comfortable with pigs and cows than other people. Though he was only a year younger than Anna, she developed a protective kind of sympathy for him. She was grateful, too, for his help with the chores, which left her with free hours she wouldn’t have otherwise.
Anna spent far too many of those spare hours watching Emil’s brother, Josef, trying to sort out her complicated feelings. Unlike Emil, Josef kept his distance from Anna and the house; he was out with Papa until sundown, proud to put in a full day of work. At sixteen years old, his shoulders were filling out, and his face was hardening into sharper angles. His eyes, when they met Anna’s across the supper table, were clear and blue, like the lake in summer. Slowly, promisingly, he began raising his hand in greeting when he spotted her across a field. Rather than walking silently past her, he would stop and ask what she was doing as she watched the sunlight hit a cobweb, or searched for animal shapes in the clouds.
“You see more than the rest of us,” he told her one day.
Was it a compliment? Anna’s dress was sticking to her back after an afternoon pulling weeds and peeling potatoes; her cheeks were flushed with the heat. She wanted to turn away, and yet she also wanted to stare at Josef’s face. He actually looked interested in what she had to say.
“Surely everyone sees the same things?” she asked shyly.
“Ah, but most don’t take the time to look.”
Josef smiled, and Anna felt joy and hope and terror cascade through her, all at once. Anna knew she didn’t have much to offer—she was plain, with limp, dark-blonde hair and a splotchy complexion—but Josef was looking at her as if they’d exchanged a confidence. And though she couldn’t think of anything else to say, and Josef was soon hoisting up his hoe and turning back to the fields, she felt they’d come to an unspoken understanding.