The Summer Book Read online

  “It feels like a thunderstorm,” Grandmother said. “And the well stinks worse than ever.”

  “It’s full of rubbish,” Sophia said.

  They peered down into the narrow hole of the well, through all the rings of cement down into the darkness. They always smelled the well. Then they inspected the pilots’ rubbish heap.

  “Where’s your father?”

  “He’s asleep.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Grandmother said. “Wake me up if you do anything that’s fun.” She found a patch of sand among the juniper bushes.

  “When are we going to eat? When are we going to go swimming?” Sophia said. “When are we going to walk around the island? Do we get to eat and go swimming, or don’t you ever do anything but sleep?”

  It was hot and quiet and lonely. The house was crouched like a long, squat animal, and the black swallows circled above it with piercing shrieks, like knives in the air. Sophia walked all around the shoreline until she was back where she started. On the whole island, there was nothing but rock and juniper and smooth round stones and sand and tufts of dry grass. The sky and the sea were veiled by the yellow haze, which was stronger than sunshine and hurt the eyes. The waves heaved in towards land like hills and curled into breakers at the shore. It was a very heavy swell. “Dear God, let something happen,” Sophia prayed. “God, if You love me. I’m bored to death. Amen.”

  Perhaps the change began when the swallows went silent. The shimmering sky was suddenly empty, and there were no more birds. Sophia waited. The answer to her prayers was in the air. She looked out to sea and saw the horizon turn black. The blackness spread, and the water shivered in dread and expectation. It came closer. The wind reached the island in a high, sighing whisper and swept on by. It was quiet again. Sophia stood waiting on the shore, where the grass lay stretched on the ground like a light-coloured pelt. And now a new darkness came sweeping over the water – the great storm itself! She ran towards it and was embraced by the wind. She was cold and fiery at the same time, and she shouted loudly, “It’s the wind! It’s the wind!” God had sent her a storm of her own. In His immense benevolence, He thrust huge masses of water in towards land, and they rose above the rocky shore and the grass and the moss and roared in among the junipers, and Sophia’s hard summer feet thumped across the ground as she ran back and forth praising God! The world was quick and sharp again. Finally, something was happening.

  Papa woke up and remembered his nets. The boat lay bumping broadside to the shore, the oars were clattering back and forth, and the motor was digging into the twisted mat of sea grass. He untied the line and pushed out against the waves and started rowing. Mountainous waves angled around the lee shore, while over his head the sky was still yellow and bright and empty, and there sat God and granted Sophia her storm, and all along the coast there was the same confusion and surprise.

  Sound asleep, Grandmother felt the rumble of the breakers resounding through the rock, and she sat up and cocked an ear towards the sea.

  Sophia threw herself down on her back in the sand beside her and shouted, “It’s my storm! I prayed to God for a storm and here it is!”

  “Wonderful,” Grandmother said. “But the nets are out.”

  It’s never easy to take up a net alone, and in the wind it is nearly impossible. Papa put the motor on slow and headed into the wind and started hauling in. He saved the first net with only one rip, but the second was caught on the bottom. He put the motor on idle and tried to pull it from the side. The line on the edge of the net broke. Finally, he gave up trying to ease it free and simply hauled, and the net came up in a tangled snarl of seaweed and fish, and he heaved it into the bottom of the boat. Sophia and Grandmother stood and watched as the boat approached the shore in overwhelming seas. Papa leaped out and grabbed one side of the boat and pulled, a broad storm wave washed around the point and smacked into the stern and pushed, and when the water swept back out again, the boat was firmly ashore. Papa made it fast, picked up the nets in his arms, and walked towards the house, leaning into the wind.

  The other two followed along behind him, side by side. Their eyes burned and their lips tasted salty. Grandmother walked with her legs wide apart and planted her walking stick firmly in the ground with each step. The wind stirred up the rubbish by the well and blew it towards them. Everything that had settled down to rot – and turn to soil in a hundred years – rose up and whirled out over the shore and into the storming sea: the pilots’ old rubbish and the stink from the well and the slow sadness of a great many summers. The whole island was washed clean by breakers and flying white foam.

  “Do you like it?” Sophia shouted. “It’s my storm! Say you’re having fun!”

  “Lots of fun,” said Grandmother, blinking the salt water out of her eyes.

  Papa threw down the nets by the steps, where the nettles had blown down into a grey rug, and then he hurried out alone towards the point to have a look at the waves. He was in a great rush. Grandmother sat down on the ground and started picking fish out of the net. Her nose was running and her hair was flying in all directions.

  “It’s funny about me,” Sophia said. “I always feel like such a nice girl whenever there’s a storm.”

  “You do?” Grandmother said. “Well, maybe …” Nice, she thought. No. I’m certainly not nice. The best you could say of me is that I’m interested. She extracted a perch and bashed its head against the rock.

  Papa broke the padlock on the door with a big stone. He did it to save his family.

  The front hall was a narrow, dark corridor that divided the house into two rooms. On the floor were some dead birds that had been lying there for years, birds that had entered the disintegrating house and never found their way out. There was a smell of rubbish and salt fish. From inside, the constant sound of the storm changed; it had a threatening undertone, and seemed closer. They went into the room on the west side, which still had its roof. It was quite a small room, with two naked iron beds, a white stove with a hood, and a table and two chairs in the middle of the floor. The wallpaper was very pretty. Papa put their basket on the table and they drank juice and ate sandwiches. Then he went back to his work, and Grandmother sat down on the floor and started picking fish out of the net again. The walls of the house trembled steadily with the thundering of the sea, and it began to get cold. Spume from the breakers covered the windowpanes and ran over the sill and across the floor. Every now and then Papa would get up and go out to see to the boat.

  The seas breaking against the sheer outer side of the island had grown. One after the other, the waves rose up in their white immensity to a tremendous height, and foam hissed against the rocks like the blows of a whip. Tall curtains of water flew across the island and sailed on west. The storm was titanic! Papa fixed another line to the boat, and when he came back in, he went up to the attic to look for fuel. The stove was somewhat obstinate, but when it finally caught, the fire burned with a furious draft. They stopped being cold even before the room was warm. Papa put a herring net on the floor in front of the stove for anyone who wanted to sleep, and the net was so old it crumbled in his hands. Finally, he lit his pipe, sat down at the table, and went back to his work.

  Sophia climbed up into the tower. The tower room was very small and had four windows, one for each point of the compass. She saw that the island had shrunk and grown terribly small, nothing but an insignificant patch of rocks and colourless earth. But the sea was immense: white and yellow and grey and horizonless. There was only this one island, surrounded by water, threatened and sheltered by the storm, forgotten by everyone but God, who granted prayers. “Oh, God,” said Sophia solemnly, “I didn’t realise I was so important. It was awfully nice of You. Thank You very much. Amen.”

  Evening came on and the sun turned everything crimson as it went down. The fire burned in the stove. The west window glowed red, which made the wallpaper even prettier. It was torn and spotted, but now the whole pattern was visible – light blue and pink, with carefu
lly painted vines. Grandmother cooked fish in a tin can. Luckily enough, she had found some salt. When he was done eating, Papa went out to see to his boat.

  “I’m not going to sleep all night,” Sophia said. “Think how awful if we’d been home when it started, instead of out here!”

  “Well, I suppose,” Grandmother said. “But I’m a little worried about the dory. And I can’t remember if we closed the window.”

  “The dory,” Sophia whispered.

  “Yes, and the cold frames. And we never did stake the gladioli. And I left some pots soaking in the bay.”

  “Don’t say any more,” Sophia shouted.

  But Grandmother continued on thoughtlessly. “And then I keep thinking about all the people out at sea … And all the boats that will be wrecked.”

  Sophia stared at her and screamed, “How can you talk like that when you know it’s my fault? I prayed for a storm, and it came!” She started crying out loud as a caravan of dreadful, incriminating visions passed before her eyes: broken boats and gladioli, windows and people, pots and pans rolling about on the bottom of the sea, and flags shredded by the wind! Oh, God! She saw everything shattered and destroyed.

  “I think we did pull up the dory, anyway,” Grandmother said.

  But Sophia wrapped her arms around her head and wept beneath the weight of the catastrophe that had struck all Eastern Nyland.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” her grandmother said. “Listen to me. There would have been a storm in any case.”

  “But not as big!” Sophia wept. “It was God and I who did it!”

  The sun had gone down, and the room became suddenly dark. The fire was still burning in the stove. And the wind had not let up.

  “God and you,” Grandmother repeated angrily. “Why should He listen to you, especially, when maybe ten other people prayed for nice weather? And they did, you can count on that.”

  “But I prayed first,” Sophia said. “And you can see for yourself they didn’t get nice weather!”

  “God,” Grandmother said. “God has so much to do, He doesn’t have time to listen …”

  Papa came back and put more wood on the fire. He gave them an old blanket that smelled bad and went out again to look at the waves before it got completely dark.

  “You said yourself that He listens,” said Sophia coldly. “You said He hears everything you pray for.”

  Grandmother lay down on the herring net and said, “Yes, He does. But you see I was first.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I prayed for a storm before you did, that’s what.”

  “When did you pray?” asked Sophia suspiciously.

  “This morning.”

  “But then why,” Sophia burst out sternly, “why did you take along so little food and not enough clothes? Didn’t you trust Him?”

  “Yes, of course … But maybe I thought it would be exciting to try and get along without …”

  Sophia sighed. “Yes,” she said. “That’s just like you. Did you take your medicine?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Good. Then you can go to sleep and stop worrying about all the trouble you’ve caused. I won’t tell anyone.”

  “That’s nice of you,” Grandmother said.

  The next day at about three o’clock, the wind let up enough for them to get home. The dory lay upside down in front of the veranda, with its duckboards, oars, and bailing bucket all intact. And they had closed the window. There were a number of things God had not had time to save, because Grandmother asked Him too late, but when the wind changed He did roll the pots and pans back up onshore again. And the helicopter came, as they had hoped, and put down their names and the name of the island on a list.

  Day of Danger

  ONE VERY HOT DAY ABOUT NOON, the midges started dancing above the tallest spruce tree on the island. Midges – not to be confused with mosquitoes – dance in vertical clouds and always in tempo. Millions and billions of microscopic midges rise and fall in perfect precision, singing stridently.

  “The wedding dance,” Grandmother said, trying to look up without losing her balance. “My grandmother always used to say you had to be careful when the midges were dancing and the moon was full.”

  “How come?” Sophia said.

  “It’s the great mating day, and nothing’s safe. You have to be very careful about tempting fate. You mustn’t spill salt, or break a mirror, and if the swallows leave your house, you’d better move before sunset. It’s all a terrible nuisance.”

  “Where did your grandmother ever get such dumb ideas?” asked Sophia in disbelief.

  “Grandmother was superstitious.”

  “What’s ‘superstitious’?”

  Grandmother thought for a moment, and then she said that superstitious was when you didn’t try to explain things that couldn’t be explained. Like, for example, cooking up magic potions when there was a full moon and actually getting them to work. Grandmother’s grandmother had been married to a priest, who didn’t believe in superstition. Every time he was sick or depressed, his wife would cook up an elixir for him, but the poor woman was forced to do it in secret. And when it made him well, she had to pretend it was Innosemtseff’s Tonic that had done the trick. It was a great strain on her over the years.

  Sophia and Grandmother sat down by the shore to discuss the matter further. It was a pretty day, and the sea was running a long, windless swell. It was on days just like this – dog days – that boats went sailing off all by themselves. Large, alien objects made their way in from the sea, certain things sank and others rose, milk soured, and dragonflies danced in desperation. Lizards were not afraid.

  When the moon came up, red spiders mated on uninhabited skerries, where the rock became an unbroken carpet of tiny, ecstatic spiders.

  “Maybe we ought to warn Papa,” Sophia said.

  “I don’t think he’s superstitious,” Grandmother said. “For that matter, superstition is old-fashioned, and you should always believe your father.”

  “Of course,” Sophia said.

  The swell carried in a big crown of twisted branches, as if some gigantic animal were wandering slowly in along the sea bed. The air above the rock stood still and quivered with the heat.

  “Didn’t your grandmother ever get scared?” Sophia said.

  “No, but she liked to scare other people. She’d come in to breakfast and say that now someone was going to die before the moon set, because the knives were crossed in the drawer. Or she would have had a dream about black birds.”

  “I dreamed about a guinea pig last night,” Sophia said. “Do you promise to be careful and not break any bones before the moon sets?”

  Grandmother promised.

  The odd thing was that the milk actually did go sour. They caught a stickleback in their net. A black butterfly flew into the house and lit on a mirror. And then towards the evening Sophia discovered that the knife and the pen on Papa’s desk were crossed. She moved them apart as quickly as she could, but of course the damage was done. She ran to the guest room and banged on the door with both hands, and Grandmother opened it right away.

  “Something’s happened,” Sophia whispered. “The knife and the pen were crossed on Papa’s desk. And no, nothing you say can make it any better!”

  “But don’t you understand?” Grandmother said. “My grandmother was just superstitious. She made things up because she was bored, and so that she could tyrannise her family …”

  “Quiet,” said Sophia seriously. “Don’t say anything. Don’t say anything to me.” She left the door standing open and walked away.

  The first cool of the evening arrived, and the dancing midges disappeared. The frogs came out and started singing to each other, while the dragonflies seemed to be dead. In the sky, the last red clouds sank into the yellow ones, making orange. The forest was full of signs and portents, its own secret written language. But what good did that do Papa? There were footprints where no one could have stepped, crossed branches, one red bluebe
rry bush in the midst of all the green ones. The full moon rose and balanced on the top of a juniper bush. Now was the time for unmanned boats to glide out from their shores. Huge, mysterious fish made rings on the water, and the red spiders gathered wherever it was they had decided to meet. Implacable fate sat waiting just over the horizon.

  Sophia searched for herbs to make an elixir for her father, but all she could find were plain, ordinary plants. It is never clear which plants can be considered herbs. They are very small, presumably, with soft, pale stems. If possible, they should be slightly mouldy and grow in swampy places. But how could you tell for sure? The moon rose higher and began its inevitable orbit.

  Sophia shouted through the door: “What kind of herbs did she cook, that grandmother of yours?”

  “I’ve forgotten,” Grandmother said.

  Sophia came in. “Forgotten?” she said between her teeth. “Forgotten? How can you forget a thing like that? If you’ve forgotten, then what am I supposed to do? How do you expect me to save him before the moon sets?”

  Grandmother put aside her book and took off her glasses.

  “I’ve turned superstitious,” Sophia said. “I’m even more superstitious than your grandmother was. Do something!”

  Grandmother got up and started putting on her clothes.

  “Forget the stockings,” said Sophia impatiently. “And the corset, too. We have to hurry!”

  “But even if we pick the herbs,” Grandmother said, “even if we pick them and make an elixir, he won’t drink it.”

  “That’s true,” Sophia admitted. “Maybe we could pour it in his ear.”

  Grandmother pulled on her boots while she thought.

  Suddenly Sophia started to cry. She had seen the moon over the sea, and a person never knew about the moon. It can set all at once, on its own peculiar schedule. Grandmother opened the door and said, “Now you mustn’t say a word. You mustn’t sneeze or cry or belch, not even once, until we’ve gathered everything we need. Then we’ll put it all in the safest place we can find and let it work from a distance. In this case, that will be very effective.”