The Summer Book (14 page)

If only people had known from the outset that everyone would be saved, they could have given the storm their full attention and admiration. For years afterwards, coastal people never met without talking about the storm, where they had been that day, and what they had done when the storm came up.

The day started out warm, wrapped in a yellowish haze, and long swells moved through the sea in barely perceptible surges. Later, there was a great deal of talk about the yellow haze and the swell, and many people were reminded of the typhoons in their childhood sea stories. In addition, the water was unusually shiny, and much lower than normal.

Grandmother packed fruit juice and sandwiches in a basket, and the family reached North Grey-skerry at about noon. Sophia’s father set out two nets west of the island, and Grandmother rowed for him. North Greyskerry always seemed terribly forlorn and melancholy, but they could never resist going there. The abandoned pilots’ cottage was long and low. Its stone foundation had been built by the Russians and was fastened to the rock with iron cramps. The roof had fallen in on one side, but the little square tower in the middle was undamaged. Hundreds of swallows darted around the house, whistling shrilly. The door was secured with a big rusty padlock, and the key was not hanging beside the door. The steps were surrounded by a wall of nettles.

Papa sat down near the water to work. It was very warm. The swell had grown heavier, and the strong yellow light over the water hurt his eyes. He leaned back against a rock and fell asleep.

“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 carefully 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

O
NE 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.