Barbro and Her Menfolk

I

ON the day that Barbro had read, all in one sitting, the story of Tobias and the fish’s gall as set forth in the Old Testament, the ‘arrivals and departures’ in the Nautical Gazette, and the morrow’s tidal phenomena and planetary gyrations out of the Royal Almanac, and Ingjald, standing before her with his elbows resting in her lap, had asked, ‘Read some more, Barbro’ — on that day it was decided that something had to be done about the boy’s education. The decision was reached without ado; no family conclave was held; no prospectuses from likely schools were sent for. Barbro removed her steel-rimmed spectacles, wiped them deliberately on her apron, and opined: —

‘Bein’ a parrot to you, boy, is gettin’ to be too much for a body. To-morrow I’ll lend you a hand with the alphabet.’ ‘Oh, Barbro, I never could!’ said the boy, falteringly. Then, thrilled at the thought of the new adventure and a bit afraid that his scruples might be taken seriously, he burst out: ‘Leastways not so loud as you, Barbro. You read beautifully.’

The boy spoke without malice. Barbro read very loudly, but, considering the text she invariably chose, her volume of voice was appropriate. The movements of Israel’s tribes, of ships and of heavenly bodies, were weighty matters and were not to be treated or read of lightly. And yet the beauty of Barbro’s voice was not its clarity or husky strength, both unusual in an old woman; rather it was its warmth and intensity that fascinated the boy. When she read aloud, she let herself go recklessly — turned herself inside out, so to speak. It was a becoming trait, for the best of Barbro was her inner self. Her outer was a trifle forbidding, unless, as in Ingjald’s case, she squandered upon one not elocution alone but love as well.

Now in the year 1900 Barbro was old — so old, in fact, that all that kept her alive was her feeling for the boy and an ambition to see the birth of the twentieth century and its twin, the Royal Jubilee Almanac, which the publishers had promised would be an extra-gala one, presented gratis, plus a complimentary scroll suitable for framing, to any subscriber of the past twenty-five consecutive years. As Barbro could qualify twice over, with something to spare, this was too good an opportunity to be cheated out of by such a common and, on the whole, trivial occurrence as death.

This attitude of hers was remarkable, as death had influenced the course of her life deeply. When a girl of eighteen, her man (Barbro, who was honest and strong on legal phrases, always said ‘man,’ never ‘husband’) had drowned while seafaring. Shortly thereafter her only son was born. Alone and destitute, she had been forced to turn the child over to the Seamen’s Orphanage. To be near him, she became a charwoman in the institution. There she saw her son grow up to be sent to sea when his turn came; there she watched the word ‘Perished’ being painted underneath his name on one of the many alumni tablets which covered the walls of the dingy mangle hall which fooled nobody by being designated as the ‘aula.’

Barbro was still a young woman when her son died. Tall and strong, her pleasant enough face crowned with a shock of unruly flaxen hair, she might well have gone out into the world and found something more worth-while to bend over than cement floors and diapers. But it did n’t seem right to her to desert the old stone buildings where the tinkle of the bell in the shielded entrance alcove and the hurried steps of a fleeing woman might at any moment announce that once again the wicker basket contained a whimpering parcel aching for the very necessities which Barbro was so well fitted to produce — namely, dry things, a bottle of milk, and something warm, pulsating, to cling to. So she stayed — and, as it turned out, for life.

At about this time it was noticed that Barbro had faults other than that of being too slow about having her marriage banns read. Now, people pointed out, she was too hasty and given to partiality when deciding important matters. It would be of little use to defend her: Barbro had become rash and partial — there were no other words for it. She would fall in love with some particular newcomer almost at the first moment she laid eyes upon him. These newcomers were all baby boys, of course, girls being of no earthly use on water. She attached herself to an infant for the most perverse reasons. The way he might try to kick her on the chin with his bare feet, or make passes at her throat with his small clenched fists, or mumble at her bare arm with a solitary glistening tooth, seemed to be quite sufficient grounds for Barbro to single him out and thereafter treat him as her own, no matter how ugly or gnomelike he might be.

The clothes the institution provided were not good enough for the boy from then on. Barbro made his clothes in her spare time, which was late at night, and spent her meagre wages on toys and candy. When the superintendent decided that the boy had become ripe for caning (a matter of stamina only; the guiltiness was inborn, accruing perennially) her soul suffered more than the boy’s sternpost; and she pulled all the slender ropes in her power so that he might join a well-thought-of ship when that day drew near.

Once on his own, the ward was gone for good; but as the supply was inexhaustible, and Barbro unable to withstand tampering with it, another adoption would be on the way soon. Her love and labor were by no means wasted. She had an album pasted three-quarters full with colored postal cards depicting tame aborigines and violent sunsets; and almost every Christmas the mail brought a fancy pincushion or an imitation ostrich plume, frightfully squashed in transit. Barbro was happy when she opened the clumsily sealed package and strange lovely odors from Tamatave or Talcahuano struck her. She had no use for the trinkets, as such, but the knowledge that someone across the globe remembered her to the extent of a week’s wages was invaluable. Her little investments were paying huge dividends.

II

The Jubilee Almanac arrived and Ingjald could read after a fashion. Barbro, having felt poorly of late, was sitting up in bed listening to the boy as he wrestled, orally and physically, with the heavyweight Bible, printed in the days of Carolus XII. It was a warm day in the late spring. The exciting story and the sultriness of the air made perspiration stand out on the boy’s forehead and stubby nose. The picture of the too-warm youngster kneeling on the thick counterpane, balancing an oversized book, was commonplace, the sound of his shrill, eager, singsong voice was trying; but the tired, feverish old woman did not find them so. The Lord had sent a cherub with a gleaming halo circling his pink and white brow to comfort her with the music of trumpets and cymbals. When the boy shifted position and thoughtlessly nudged her pain-ridden body with a clumsy boot top, she felt thankful for his nearness and proud to have been given opportunity to teach cherubs to move about and produce heavenly sounds.

She ought not to be proud, though. Her life had not been perfect by any means. There had been deeds in that life that a more gifted person would have executed differently and far better than she had been able to do. She saw her failings clearly; nevertheless, she was not sorry for them; they had not hurt anybody that she could recollect — herself excepted, of course. And herself mattered little just then. The cherub grew dimmer and dimmer, and, as the boy noisily turned a leaf, it was only with difficulty that she could hear the soft rustle of his wings.

Ingjald suddenly stopped reading; he felt instinctively that Barbro was not listening. She had fallen back upon the pillow and seemingly was asleep. The boy closed the Bible without the customary bang and sat thinking awhile before going back to the dormitory. To-day’s visit had been an eventful one. He had found Barbro ‘putting her house in order,’ as she called it. ‘It’s all yours,’ she had said, pointing at the postal-card album and the exotic gifts which fought for space on the dresser. She had explained that in the office was an envelope with his name written on it, containing three one-pound notes. Barbro had inherited this money from her son — the amount his dunnage had brought when auctioned off on half deck according to law. Barbro was a liberal spender, but she had not had the heart to spend this sum or even exchange it into crowns.

She had torn her few letters into bits. One had been hard to part with; it was written in greenish ink on faded stationery embellished with a corpulent Eros, waving a starred banner as if in distress from overeating. The letter was dated, ‘Baltimore, Md., U. S. A. 1836.’ ‘Who wrote it? ’ asked Ingjald. ‘ My man,’ said Barbro. ‘Is Baltimore in Afriky?’ questioned the boy. ‘If it ain’t, it must be close to it,’ answered Barbro, dreamily.

The boy did not know what to make of this reply. Barbro used to know for sure where every seaport in the world was situated. Her self-assurance must be failing with her strength. Her voice had changed, too. It sounded as if it came from a place where you had to speak carefully so as not to waken someone. She told him that she was going away soon, but that it really did n’t mean anything. She would be around just the same — not exactly up here in her attic room or down in the dormitory, but still she would manage to look after him.

And her name would always be for him to see on the stone in the Admiralty parish churchyard, where she owned a plot. Ingjald knew this place well. Every Sunday, when the weather was fair, they had visited there. In the centre of the stone were Thomas Erlandson’s and Erland Thomason’s names and their ages, which if added together amounted to thirty-seven years, followed by the legend, ‘Resting peacefully in foreign waters.’ Way down in the left-hand corner it said, in smaller letters, as befitted a mere woman fated to die in bed:

BARBRO HARALDSDOTTER 1818

WHO RAISED THIS STONE

Barbro had planted two birches there, which grew up in slender, thoughtful simplicity. In the spring she bought assorted flower seeds and planted them in the earth. She and Ingjald never knew what kind of flowers were going to sprout. Somehow they mostly turned out to be forget-me-nots, which pleased them both immensely. They never brought cut flowers; Barbro did not believe in breaking living things.

When they heard the organ play ‘Our Lord is a staunch fortress,’ they went into the church. Barbro timed their entrance expertly, for the main sermon was concluded by then. The carefree, smiling boy and the tall, gaunt old woman, with her seamed, still-ruddy face, marched unconcernedly up the main aisle and posted themselves opposite the pulpit. Their shamefully late appearance did not endear them to a congregation that worshiped by timetable, and, unless some new usher offered them a seat, they were left well alone. Barbro always waved him away. She had formed her own conceptions of how one should behave in the Lord’s house and she followed these rigidly, kneeling or standing humbly, lolling never.

The semi-religious announcements were due to begin. Barbro lifted the boy in her arms so that he might get a perfect view of the captured, bloodstained battle flags from the Thirty Years’ War, the blackened ship’s models suspended high in the nave, and the stained-glass Moses cavorting in the bulrushes, while she listened to the reading of the parish news. First would come the past week’s births and the churchings of the mothers; then the confirmations, if in season; then the betrothals, banns, and marriages; dissolved marriages from other causes than death; and finally the deaths and burials. It was this condensed record of life itself that she had come to hear.

One Sunday, Ingjald had felt Barbro press him close to her breast. This happened when the clergyman declared the crew of a missing trawler to be legally dead. Decenniums ago she had stood on that same spot and listened when first her man and later her son had been given the benefits of the same rating. The news of her birth and her confirmation had been read from that pulpit; so would be her demise in due time; only her banns and churching had been omitted. When the pastor put away the legal documents and reached for the psalter, Barbro lowered the boy to the floor, took his hand to prevent him from excessive skipping, and strolled out.

Barbro was pious after her own fashion — a state of grace apt to irritate contemporary Sunday-Christians. She had endeavored to see things through and to work out her own special blend of salvation while scrubbing floors or sitting up with batches of small boys suffering from measles or mumps. She was so used to talking with an easygoing, weekday God, across the washtubs or with mop or needle in her hand, that when she encountered Him all dressed up, among stained-oak pews and plushcovered altar rails, He was half a stranger to her; and, anyhow, she was well-mannered enough to stand aside in order to give Him free scope for concentration on a flock that was more at ease among such trimmings.

Barbro read something out of the Old Testament every day in the week, but she read not in awe or because she was afraid to be caught on the wrong side of the fence in case of emergency. To her the Bible was a ‘serial’ of glorious, true adventures, written solely for entertainment. The catastrophes, love affairs, brawls, heroics, dastardly deeds, and the unlimited faith delighted her no end. She drew no lessons from the Bible; she got her lessons from her immediate surroundings. The Bible was her fountain of romance; the Royal Almanac and the Nautical Gazette she relied upon for hard-shelled facts. The house chaplain, who once had caught her in the act of closing the Bible and muttering enviously, ‘Such goings-on!’ esteemed her even if he did refer to her as ‘the pious pagan.’

III

The following day everybody behaved mysteriously and said that Ingjald could not see Barbro; according to the matrons, she had gone away. Remembering that Barbro had hinted that she might go away, the boy took the news composedly and merely remarked that he knew all about it. The women stared at him incredulously and asked if he was n’t sorry. ‘No,’ said he, tranquilly; ‘why?’ Heads were shaken and eyes, bulging with amazement, sought explanation of the ceiling. One woman blamed the spring season and gave him an adult dose of brimstone and treacle on the spot; another patted him on the head and cooed, ‘Poor, poor mite!’ The rest said, in undertones, ‘That’s what she got for working her fingers to the raw for an ungrateful child,’ and, ‘I always knew that brat had a cruel streak in him.’

The superintendent called him into the office and said that certain valuables were stored there for safekeeping until the day Ingjald should come of age; and that in the meantime (here, by the purest chance, the superintendent looked in the direction of the umbrella stand where the Malacca cane ruled the roost) he expected him to behave himself. The boy, knowing that Barbro had not intended that any strings should be tied to the envelope and the mess of pincushions, thought to himself that the final clause about behaving himself smacked of high-handed usury; but, knowing already how to finesse, he scraped his right foot twice, bowed, and said, ‘Thank ye kindly, sir.’

The fat, jolly Carolus XII Bible was locked up in the library, and in its stead he was given a skinny tract called the Longer and Shorter Catechisms, with the picture of a dour fellow, named M. Luther, on the flyleaf. Ingjald tackled it with misgivings, and, true enough, the reiterated ‘thou shalt’ and ‘thou shalt not’ took all the joy out of life. He reverted to the Jubilee Almanac, which, miraculously, had escaped being forbidden fruit.

Life had suddenly turned dark and dreary. All that sustained him was the thought of the coming Sunday; he had decided to visit the churchyard then and read Barbro’s name on the stone. The happy hours they had spent together there haunted him. He knew the rules too well to ask for permission to go there alone; boys of six had no business outside of the institution. The walls were much too high to scale, but . . .

The gardener, who was expected to raise a great deal of various berries and whose faith in boys consequently had addled, was not overly enthusiastic when a small inmate offered his services to help with the weeding of a pea patch next to the wall, where the earth was damp and soft. However, as the patch actually needed weeding and green peas were cheap and not likely to be eaten excessively, consent was given. The boy worked surprisingly well. Saturday afternoon the weeding was completed — and, incidentally, a small tunnel which was hidden by some old sacking. The boy was rewarded by a minor coin and the promise of the weeding monopoly of the spinach and horseradish department. He pocketed the coin, but did not commit himself about future work.

Long before breakfast on Sunday morning, Ingjald sneaked out of the dormitory and made for the pea patch. Nobody had discovered the tunnel — that is, nobody but some gophers, which made it necessary for him to do some more excavating, with the result that when he at last reached the street level he was covered from top to toe with damp soil. It did not matter. Being dirty during everyday humdrum circumstances had never handicapped him; and now, intoxicated with newfound freedom, it struck him as a fitting cloak of Liberty, to be worn proudly. The streets were empty so early on a Sabbath morning, and he trudged joyously away towards the churchyard, humming what little he remembered of a chantey Barbro had sung to him which sounded like

Passing a bakery, he was tempted to go the limit and make a field day of it, so he invested the wages of sin and weeding in buns.

To welcome the small visitor, the two aloof birches unbent a little and swayed gracefully in the soft breeze, as faithful sentinels should do. The green sod was a magnificent, fragrant carpet; and, best of all, the familiar letters on the stone were there in all their golden glory to be spelled out and gloated over. To the ‘1818’ under Barbro’s name had been added ‘1901’; directly before the stone, the turf had been disturbed; otherwise everything was as before. Ingjald got busy right away, smoothing the earth and putting things in order. For a moment he felt a bit put out because he had no assorted flower seed, so necessary in planting time. Whoever attends to such matters must have noticed the boy’s dilemma and suggested to him that common pebbles would do just as well if sown with the correct touch of deliberate seriousness and fantastic imagination. Middle-aged amateur horticulturists may snicker, but, nevertheless, things came out just right. The unpromising stones grew right then and there into forget-me-nots, lovelier and more pensive than any that are dependent upon fickle seasons and instructions on the back of the cover for their existence.

The hours melted away rapidly. Ingjald was lunching when the organ began thundering out the ‘staunch fortress’ psalm, reminding him that it was time to go to church. Following Barbro’s custom, he walked up the main aisle and stopped in front of the pulpit. In his right hand he still held a partially eaten bun.

He really did not intend to eat in the Admiralty church; he knew much better than to do that; but in his hurry he had carried the remains of his lunch with him. Once inside the church, he was forced to keep on eating in order to get rid of the morsel, because his pinafore had no pockets and the slot in the almsbox was too narrow.

At first he enjoyed himself thoroughly. He compared the Oriental spryness of the stained-glass Moses with the Nordic heaviness that engulfed the pews set aside for the seamen from the Naval Barracks, who were commanded to represent the King’s fleet and find solace in the Word, and who carried out their orders with bowed heads, closed eyes, open mouths, and queer noises. Then he spied a particularly weatherbeaten Hanseatic cog hanging in the nave, and he was embarking for a voyage to Gothland when he felt the first pangs of discomfiture. Half hidden behind a pillar, a big man in shiny shoes and nextcousin-to-a-clawhammer coat was eyeing him sharply. Ingjald hastily swallowed the last bit of bun and embarked again — this time, as he thought, with unquestionable clearance papers. Meanwhile, the big man had edged closer to him. Ingjald moved, but the big man moved faster. He tapped the boy on the shoulder and whispered, ‘Where do you belong, my little man?’ Ingjald remembered Barbro’s recipe for getting rid of unwelcome meddlers and executed a haughty ‘go away’ gesture with a grimy hand. It did not take so well; the big man refused to be impressed or to budge.

Ingjald still put up a bold front. Barbro had told him about churchgrith: how nobody had the right to touch you if you were in the Lord’s house. In the old days you could enter a church that was frequented by your worst enemies and no harm would befall you. Even a hunted animal or a fleeing highwayman could find sanctuary there. But the tolerant spirit of the olden days apparently did not prevail in that year. The sexton (for that is who he was) kept his hold on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Have you run away from home, boy? Better come with me,’ he whispered. Ingjald became panicky. He could imagine the heavy hand crushing him until he became a mere splotch disfiguring the white marble aisle. Thousands of cruel white faces stared at him from the pews as though they would devour him. His lips quivered; then came tears and muffled sobs. ‘Don’t you dare! I’ll tell Barbro!’ he cried.

The sexton, taken aback by the mention of this unknown name, let go of his hold for a second too long. Ingjald turned around and scurried up the aisle toward the altar, hoping to find sanctuary there; but an usher blocked his way. At his wit’s end, the boy dived headlong into the bottom of the nearest pew, among the stiff pleated skirts and the trousered legs. From then on he could not be seen, although his movements could be traced. Startled worshipers rose and sank rhythmically, in one row of pews after another, like waves, as something unknown and terrifying suddenly jolted their extremities and then quickly vanished. The sexton and the ushers followed franticly the crest of the wave, but, being poor surfmen, they floundered in the backwash.

If it had not been for the agility of the boatswain’s mate in charge of the naval contingent, Ingjald might have remained at large indefinitely. This fellow, abruptly awakened by the commotion, readily grasped the fact that only by using the same means of locomotion employed by the phantom could a successful capture be effected; consequently he went into action on all fours. His disgust when he brought to light an urchin, whose face was disfigured with tears and grime, was clearly visible. He had, at the very least, expected to bag a dog crazed with rabies; or, if good luck so would have had it, a black panther on rampage, as a traveling menagerie was just then visiting the city. When he glimpsed the crossed anchors and crown stitched in yellow on the boy’s blue pinafore, he realized that he had been a misguided, if innocent, tool employed in the trapping of an embryo future seafarer, and he sympathetically thrust the boy back where he had found him. But the harm was already done. A more worthy upholder of the faith grabbed Ingjald and turned him over to the puffing, indignant sexton.

The clergyman had had an unobstructed view of the happenings from his post of vantage. But the actor in him prompted that, come what may, the show must go on, and he calmly read the announcements in his clear, rightly renowned barytone, without displaying the least sign of being cognizant of the vulgar tumult below. He had finished the reading of the names of those who had been joined in holy matrimony during the past week, and, reaching for the roster of the dead, he was too preoccupied with shifting his voice and features from jubilant to grave to be more than vaguely aware of a hopelessly forlorn boy child being carried down the aisle.

The badly shaken congregation settled down to enjoy the delivery, and the writhing bundle in the sexton’s arms suddenly turned still and limp as the Heavenly and Royal Appointee, having found the true pitch, sonorously intoned : —

Deceased

BARBRO HARALDSDOTTER

Single

Age 83