West of the Moon (19 page)

But that is useless daydreaming, so I bend to my task. I've barely got my needle through the first hole when I notice Greta standing over me. “What did you say to Bjørn that sent him away so fast?” she asks.

“Who's Bjørn?”

“The boy you were talking to. The Halling boy who danced so well. Don't you like him?”

“Why should I like him?”

“Why shouldn't you?” Greta asks. “He likes you.”

“How do you know that?”

“Big sister, you are so foolish sometimes,” Greta says. “Would it hurt to be just a little nice? Why don't you show the goodness in you?”

“There isn't any,” I say.

“Pfft!” Greta says. “You're as full of goodness as a hive is of honey. Stop pretending it isn't so.”

Surely she is the only person on the face of the earth who would say such a thing, I think, as she skips away to join the other children.

They are all munching on sandwiches, and the ship's chickens cluster around the children, clucking and receiving bits of bread from them. When a rooster plucks an entire sandwich out of one of the little girls' hands, she howls and cries while the others laugh.

“Oh! You bad rooster!” Greta scolds the bird. He is so surprised that he gives the little girl back the crust.

I laugh to see this, then turn to my darning. I don't suppose I need to explain how it is my stockings came to be so full of holes? After traipsing up and down the mountainsides where thorns tore them, cockleburs grabbed, branches poked, and stones ripped, there is plenty need of repair.

Here's a rip I made running back to the goatman's farm.
I am just putting my needle to the repair of it when who should come up to me but the girl with the glossy hair, hands on her hips. Grace, I've learned her name is.

“I still haven't got one gold coin from that brush you gave me,” she says.

“Like I said, it doesn't work for everyone,” I tell her.

“It doesn't work for
anyone
, more like,” she says.

I shrug and offer to give her the herring cask back.

“Don't want it,” she says.

I shrug again. There's no herring in it anymore anyway.

“I know that the little girl there”—she points to Greta—“is your sister.”

“What makes you think that?”

“She's the only one on the whole ship toward whom you are kindly disposed.”

“Maybe she's the only one on the ship who's kindly disposed toward me!” I exclaim. I suppose there is a fancier way of saying that, more the way the shiny-haired girl said it, but that's the best I can do.

“Maybe if you directed a little kindness toward others,” she says, “they would return the kindness to you.”

I have an urge to poke her in the eye with my needle. Instead, I jam the needle through the stocking and pull it back out again, stitching up an eye-sized hole.

The only way to get her to go away is to ignore her, so I put
all my attention to my task, repairing the snag that I got climbing the birch tree.

I am thinking fondly on those days gone by, for although they were difficult and dangerous, I would prefer them to having this troublesome girl standing over me instructing me on how to behave. Or just standing there breathing with her mouth open, as she is doing now.

When I feel someone sitting down next to me, I steadfastly ignore it, until I feel a soft hand on my arm. I turn, and there is the parson's wife, smiling her good-natured smile and patting my hand with her own. I marvel at its softness. It's a hand that hasn't shoveled a lot of manure, that's certain. She's from a fine family that lives in a fine house and has servants to do that kind of work. The thin gold band around her finger is brand-new and shiny, with nary a scratch on it. She hasn't been married long.

“Margit, isn't it?” she says to me, and I nod, my heart in my throat. Here it comes: the question I've been dreading. Or the accusation. It's one thing to have a silly girl from steerage making accusations; it's quite another having a grown-up, first-class parson's wife raising questions. Another thing: I worry that she can see right down into my black soul. That she knows my every misdeed. And that I've carried a Black Book aboard, risking lives and limbs and immortal souls.

I consider making a dash for the rail, but the sea is calm. I doubt I can feign seasickness.

“It seems your stockings have had quite some little adventures,” says she.

“I guess you could say so, ma'am,” I answer.

“Now,” she says, and I hold my breath. “My first question is: Do you think you might need spectacles?”

“What?” I gulp.

“For your eyes,” she says. “To see better.”

I look at her.

“You're holding your sewing so close to your eyes,” she says. “It seems you don't see terribly well.”

“I didn't know I was doing that.”

“Well,” she says, “you're probably used to it. Once you're in America, though, it would be a good idea to get your eyes examined. My sister recently got spectacles, and she says it made the world look like an entirely different place.”

Was this what she wanted to talk to me about? I swallow and nod and hope that's all she wants.

But she goes on in a musing sort of way. “You and I are maybe a little bit alike,” she says.

I doubt it, but I don't say anything.

She watches the dancing for a moment and then says, “It's strange, but there is this odd feature of my personality that almost always makes me sad when I'm surrounded by joy and cheerfulness. I often succeed in
appearing
cheerful. Once in a while I can even defeat the seriousness, to be happy with
the happy. No, I don't mean to say ‘happy'; I'm often happy, even though I'm serious. I would rather say ‘cheerful with the cheerful.' Ah, well.” She sighs and smiles at me. “I don't really know what I mean!”

What is funny, I think, is that I know what she means. Why, in the midst of merriment, do I so often feel as if I am not really part of it?

So far, I think, this conversation is going fairly well. But then she clears her throat, and I can tell she's going to get serious.

“Well!” she says. “What I really want to say is this.”
Here it comes.
“I know you are alone, and if it would help you, that is, if you are seeking employment in America, I am in want of a maid. Would you be interested in such a position?”

A firebolt from heaven.

To be a maid for a fine lady! Imagine that! A fine, kind lady with soft hands and a gentle voice! Unlike Svaalberd in every conceivable way. In a real house with a wood floor, maybe. This would be a big step up!

“We can't pay much to start, and we'll have very little room to begin,” she says.

What about Greta? I look across the deck, where she is rolling dried peas with the other children. I want us to stay together, but we haven't got a
skilling
between us. What am I going to do about that? How will I finance what might be quite
a journey to find Papa? I can't say no to the parson's wife, can I?

“You are giving it a mighty hard thinking-over!” the kind lady says.

“May I give you an answer tomorrow?” I ask.

“Of course!” she says, then, looking about, adds, “My, it's getting late.”

Night has come on quickly. The dancers disperse. The children are shepherded downstairs. Except for the crew, the deck is soon empty. There is just enough light to see that in the case of my now-knotted, knobbly stockings, the old proverb is true: Sometimes the patch is worse than the hole.

The Pest

he next day dawns, and I do not have to give the parson's wife an answer.

The weather has worsened; the crew has closed the hatches to prevent the seas that slosh across the upper deck from flooding our space below. It makes the dark space even darker. And smellier.

Most people sit on the bunks that line both walls—five to a bunk. The passengers sit holding their heads, or retching into buckets. The exceptions are the fishermen, who are used to this kind of motion. They're trying to catch a barrel that's come loose from the ropes that are supposed to lash it to the wall. The thing rolls back and forth across the floor, banging into bunks while people leap out of its way and the fishermen give chase.

D
ays go by. And nights, although it's not always easy to tell one from the other. It's so dark and the stench is so bad that the crew won't come down here. After several days, the first mate pokes a long, flaming, tar-covered stick down the hatch. This seems to tamp down the smell somewhat. Adequate privies would do a lot more to control the smell than his
tar stick. There is only one privy for 160 people, and the illness that people are suffering creates a lot of bodily waste. I'll say no more on that subject, except to say that sickness—
real
sickness—has arrived.

It sweeps through steerage like a black-winged creature, alighting on first one, then another. It strikes with fever, vomiting, diarrhea. The Pest, they call it. The Blue Death.

And there is no one to help us. There is no doctor on board, and those who aren't sick with the Pest are seasick. The captain and crew are too busy to tend to anyone, for the same reason the passengers are seasick: storms. Meantime, the fever leaps from one to the next to the next.

Greta goes about with a cool, damp cloth, applying it to hot foreheads and saying soft words. Meanwhile, I stand off to the side, wringing my hands, unable to help. My tongue doesn't find the words, sweet and soothing, the way Greta's does. I stay in the shadows, pressing the handkerchief the parson's wife gave me to my mouth. All the while knowing what lies at the bottom of our little bundle of belongings, yet doing nothing about it.

“Are you afraid?” the white bear asked the girl in the story.

No, she said, she wasn't.

But I am.

The Postmaster

he sickness and the foul weather ease up as if using the same calendar. On the upper deck I try to elbow my way to the stoves to cook the last of our barley, but since so many others are trying to do the same thing, it's quite a wait. So I take up my darning again, hoping to repair the mess I made of my stockings the last time I tried to mend them.