Authors: Åsa Larsson
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.”
Bertil holds up his hands in a gesture that means he doesn’t want to get involved in a discussion they’ve had several times before.
“I respect you both,” he says. “And I’ve agreed not to place a woman in your district, Stefan. I want to stress once again that you’re placing both me and the church in an extremely difficult position. You’re shifting the focus to a conflict. And I want to ask you both not to get involved in polemics, above all not from the pulpit.”
He changes the expression on his face. From stern to forgiving. He almost winks at Mildred, as if they share a secret understanding.
“I’m sure we can make an effort to concentrate on our common goals. I don’t want to have to hear words like male power and the power balance between the sexes being bandied about in church. You have to believe Stefan, Mildred. It isn’t a value judgment if he doesn’t come to church when you’re preaching.”
Mildred’s expression doesn’t alter at all. She stares Stefan straight in the eye.
“It’s what the Bible says,” he maintains, staring right back at her. “I can’t find a way around that.”
“Men hit women,” she says, takes a deep breath and carries on. “Men belittle women, dominate them, persecute them, kill them.
Or they cut off their genitals, kill them when they’re newborn babies, force them to hide behind a veil, lock them up, rape them, prevent them from educating themselves, pay them lower wages and give them less opportunity to take power. Deny them the right to become priests. I can’t find a way around that.”
There is complete silence for about three seconds.
“Now, Mildred,” ventures Bertil.
“She’s sick in the head,” yells Stefan. “Are you calling me… Are you comparing me with men who abuse women? This isn’t a discussion, it’s slander, and I don’t know…”
“What?” she says.
And now they’re both on their feet, somewhere in the background they can hear Bertil Stensson and Mikael Berg: calm down, sit down.
“What part of that was slander?”
“There’s no room to maneuver,” says Stefan, turning to Bertil. “There’s no common ground. I don’t have to put up with… it’s impossible for us to work together, you can see that for yourself.”
“You never could work with me,” he hears Mildred saying behind his back as he storms out of the room.
* * *
Bertil Stensson stood in silence in front of the locker. He knew his young colleague was waiting for him to say something reassuring. But what could he say?
Of course she hadn’t burned the letters, or thrown them away. If only he’d known about them. He felt very annoyed with Stefan because he hadn’t said anything about them.
“Is there anything else I should know?” he asked.
Stefan Wikström looked at his hands. The vow of confidentiality could be a heavy cross to bear.
“No,” he said.
To his amazement, Bertil Stensson discovered that he missed her. He had been distressed and shocked when she was murdered. But he hadn’t thought he’d miss her. He was probably being unfair. But what had seemed good about Stefan before, his helpfulness and his… oh, it was a ridiculous word, his admiration for his boss. Now Mildred was gone, it all seemed somehow coquettish and irritating. They had balanced each other out, his little ones. That’s how he’d often thought of them. Although Stefan was over forty and Mildred over fifty. Perhaps because they were both the children of parish priests.
She’d certainly known how to annoy a person. Sometimes in the smallest ways.
The Epiphany dinner, for example. Looking back now, he felt that it was petty of him to have got so annoyed. But then he hadn’t known that it would be Mildred’s last.
* * *
Stefan and Bertil are staring at Mildred’s advance down the table in front of them as if they are under a spell. The church is holding its Epiphany dinner, a tradition that’s been established for a few years now. Stefan and Bertil are sitting next to one another opposite Mildred. The staff are clearing away the main course and Mildred is mobilizing her troops.
She started by recruiting soldiers for her little army. Grabbed the salt cellar in one hand and the pepper mill in the other. Brought them together, then took them for a bit of a march around while she followed the conversation, apparently lost in thought; it was probably about how busy things had been over Christmas, but now at least it was over, and maybe about the latest winter cold that was doing the rounds, that sort of thing. She was pushing down the edges of the candle too. Even at that stage Bertil could see how Stefan was almost having to hold on to the edge of the table to stop himself snatching the candle off her and shouting stop fiddling with everything!
Her wineglass still stood by her side like the queen on a chessboard, waiting for her turn.
When Mildred starts talking about the wolf that was in the papers over Christmas, she distractedly pushes the salt and pepper over to Bertil and Stefan’s side of the table. The wineglass is on the move as well. Mildred says the wolf has made its way across the Russian and Finnish borders, and the glass makes great sweeps across the table, as far as her arm can reach, crossing all possible borders.
She keeps talking, her cheeks rosy from the wine, constantly moving the objects on the table. Stefan and Bertil feel crowded and strangely disturbed by her advance across the tablecloth.
Keep to your own side, they want to shout.
She tells them she’s been thinking. She’s been thinking they ought to set up a foundation within the church to protect the wolf. The church owns the land, after all, it’s part of the church’s responsibility, she thinks.
Bertil has been somewhat affected by the one woman game of chess on the tablecloth, and comes back at her.
“In my opinion the church should devote itself to its main task, working within the community, and not to forestry. Purely as a matter of principle, I mean. We shouldn’t even own any forest. We should leave the administration of capital to others.”
Mildred doesn’t agree.
“Our task is to take care of the earth,” she says. “Land is exactly what we should own, not shares. And if the church owns land, it can be looked after in the right way. This wolf has made its way into Swedish territory, onto land owned by the church. If it doesn’t get special protection, it won’t live for long, you know that. Some hunter or reindeer farmer will shoot it.”
“So this foundation…”
“Would prevent that, yes. With money and cooperation with the Nature Conservancy Council, we can tag the wolf and keep an eye on it.”
“And by doing so you would push people away,” objects Bertil. “There must be room for everybody within the church, hunters, the Sami people, people who like wolves—everybody. But the church can’t take sides like that.”
“What about our duty of care, then?” says Mildred. “We are supposed to care for the earth, and that has to include species threatened with extinction, surely? As for not adopting a political stance, if the church had had that attitude down the ages, wouldn’t we still have slavery?”
They have to laugh at her in the end. She always has to exaggerate and go too far.
* * *
Bertil Stensson closed the locker door, turned the key and dropped it in his pocket. In February Mildred had set up her foundation. Neither he nor Stefan Wikström had objected.
The whole idea of the foundation had irritated him. And now as he looks back and tries to be honest with himself, it irritates him to realize that he didn’t stand up to her because of cowardice. He was afraid of being seen as a wolf-hater and God knows what else. But he did get Mildred to agree to a less provocative name than the Northern Wolf Protection Foundation. It became Jukkasjärvi Community Wildlife Protection Foundation instead. And he and Stefan were signatories along with Mildred.
And later in the spring, when Stefan’s wife took the youngest child and went to stay with her mother in Katrineholm and didn’t come back for a long time, Bertil hadn’t really thought anything of it.
Now, of course, it bothered him.
But Stefan should have said something, he thought in his defense.
R
ebecka parked the car outside her grandmother’s house in Kurravaara. Nalle jumped out and scampered around the outside of the house, curious.
Like a happy dog, thought Rebecka as she watched him disappear around the corner.
The next second her conscience pricked. You shouldn’t compare him to a dog.
September sun on the gray building. The wind blowing gently through the tall autumn grass, faded and lacking in nutrients. Low water, a motorboat far away. From another direction, the sound of someone chopping wood. A soft breeze against her face, like a gentle hand.
She looked at the house again. The windows were in a terrible state. They needed taking out, scraping down, new putty, fresh paint. The same dark green color as before, nothing else. She thought about the mineral wool packed in the entrance to the cellar to stop the cold air that would come pouring up otherwise, forming rime frost on the walls that would turn to patches of gray damp. It needed pulling out. The place needed sealing properly, insulation, install the right kind of ventilation. Make a decent cellar for storage. Somebody ought to save the hollow-eyed house before it was too late.
“Come on, let’s go in,” she shouted to Nalle who had run down to Larsson’s red-timbered storehouse and was tugging at the door.
Nalle lumbered over the potato patch. The bottom of his shoes was soon thick with mud.
“You,” he said, pointing at Rebecka when he had reached the veranda.
“Rebecka,” answered Rebecka. “My name’s Rebecka.”
He nodded in reply. He’d ask her again soon. He’d already asked her several times, but still hadn’t said her name.
They went up the steps into her grandmother’s kitchen. A bit damp and chilly. Felt colder than outside. Nalle went first. In the kitchen he opened every wardrobe and closet, every cupboard and drawer, completely without embarrassment.
Good, thought Rebecka. He can open them and all the ghosts can fly away.
She smiled at his big lumbering figure, at the crafty, crooked smile he directed at her from time to time. It felt good to have him there.
A knight can look like that too, she thought.
A sense of security came over her—everything was just the same. It put its arm around her. Pulled her down onto the sofa beside Nalle, who’d found a banana box full of comics. He sorted out the ones he liked. They had to be in color, and he chose mostly Donald Duck. He put Agent 69, The Phantom, and Buster back in the box. She looked around. The blue painted chairs around the old gate-legged table, shiny with use. The refrigerator humming away. The tiles above the black Näfveqvarn stove, decorated with pictures of different spices. Next to the woodstove stood the electrical one, with knobs of brown and orange plastic. Grandmother’s hand everywhere. The rack above the stove was crammed with dried flowers, pans and stainless steel ladles. Uncle Affe’s wife Inga-Lill still hung bunches of flowers there to dry. Cat’s foot, tansy, cotton grass, buttercups and yarrow. There were also some bought pink everlasting flowers, they’d never have been there in Grandmother’s day. Grandmother’s woven rag rugs on the floor, even on the sofa to protect it. Embroidered cloths on every surface, even covering the treadle sewing machine in the corner. The embroidered tray holder, where the tray Grandfather had made out of matchsticks the last time he was ill still hung.