8. There Has Been a Death
Through a haze of dreams Annemarie heard Henrik rise and
leave the house, headed for the barn with his milking pail, at
daybreak. Later, when she woke again, it was morning. She could
hear birds calling outside, one of them close by the window in the
apple tree; and she could hear Mama below, in the kitchen, talking
to Kirsti.
Ellen was still asleep. The night before, so shortened by the
soldiers in the Copenhagen apartment, seemed long ago. Annemarie
rose quietly so that she wouldn't wake her friend. She pulled on her
clothes and went down the narrow, curved staircase to find her
sister kneeling on the kitchen floor trying to make the gray kitten
drink water from a bowl.
"Silly," she said. "Kittens like milk, not water."
"I am teaching this one new habits," Kirsti explained importantly.
"And I have named him Thor, for the God of Thunder."
Annemarie burst out laughing. She looked at the tiny kitten, who
was shaking his head, irritated at his wet whiskers as Kirsti kept
trying to dip his face to the water. "God of Thunder?" Annemarie
said. "He looks as if he would run and hide if there were a
thunderstorm!"
"He has a mother someplace who would comfort him, I
imagine," Mama said. "And when he wants milk, he'll find his
mama."
"Or he could go visit the cow," Kirsti said.
Although Uncle Henrik no longer raised crops on the farm, as
his parents had, he still kept a cow, who munched happily on the
meadow grass and gave a little milk each day in return. Now and
then he was able to send cheese into Copenhagen to his sister's
family. This morning, Annemarie noticed with delight, Mama had
made oatmeal, and there was a pitcher of cream on the table. It was
a very long time since she had tasted cream. At home they had
bread and tea every morning.
Mama followed Annemarie's eyes to the pitcher. "Fresh from
Blossom," she said. "Henrik milks her every morning before he
leaves for the boat.
"And," she added, "there's butter, too. Usually not even Henrik
has butter, but he managed to save a little this time."
"Save a little from what?" Annemarie asked, spooning oatmeal
into a flowered bowl. "Don't tell me the soldiers try to—what's the
word?— relocate butter, too?" She laughed at her own joke.
But it wasn't a joke at all, though Mama laughed ruefully. "They
do," she said. "They relocate all the farmers' butter, right into the
stomach of their army! I suppose that if they knew Henrik had kept
this tiny bit, they would come with guns and march it away, down
the path!"
Kirsti joined their laughter, as the three of them pictured a
mound of frightened butter under military arrest. The kitten darted
away when Kirsti's attention was distracted, and settled on the
windowsill. Suddenly, here in this sunlit kitchen, with cream in a
pitcher and a bird in the apple tree beside the door—and out in the
Kattegat, where Uncle Henrik, surrounded by bright blue sky and
water, pulled in his nets filled with shiny silver fish—suddenly the
specter of guns and grim-faced soldiers seemed nothing more than a
ghost story, a joke with which to frighten children in the dark.
Ellen appeared in the kitchen doorway, smiling sleepily, and
Mama put another flowered bowl of steaming oatmeal on the old
wooden table.
"Cream," Annemarie said, gesturing to the pitcher with a grin.
All day long the girls played out of doors under the brilliant clear
sky and sun. Annemarie took Ellen to the small pasture beyond the
barn and introduced her to Blossom, who gave a lazy, roughtextured
lick to the palm of Ellen's hand when she extended it
timidly. The kitten scampered about and chased Hying insects
across the meadow. The girls picked armfuls of wildflowers dried
brown, now, by the early fall chill, and arranged them in pots and
pitchers until the table tops were crowded with their bouquets.
Inside the house, Mama scrubbed and dusted, tsk-tsking at
Uncle Henrik's untidy housekeeping. She took the rugs out to the
clothesline and beat them with a sticky scattering dust into the air.
"He needs a wife," she said, shaking her head, and attacked the
old wooden floors with a broom while the rugs aired.
"Just look at this," she said, opening the door to the little-used
formal living room with its old-fashioned furniture. "He never dusts."
And she picked up her cleaning rags.
"And, Kirsti," she added, "the God of Thunder made a very
small rain shower in the corner of the kitchen floor. Keep an eye on
him.'"
Late in the afternoon, Uncle Henrik came home. He grinned
when he saw the newly cleaned and polished house, the double
doors to the living room wide open, the rugs aired, and the
windows washed.
"Henrik, you need a wife," Mama scolded him.
Uncle Henrik laughed and joined Mama on the steps near the
kitchen door. "Why do I need a wife, when I have a sister?" he
asked in his booming voice.
Mama sighed, but her eyes were twinkling. "And you need to
stay home more often to take care of the house. This step is
broken, and there is a leaking faucet in the kitchen. And—"
Henrik was grinning at her, shaking his head in mock dismay.
"And there are mice in the attic, and my brown sweater has a big
moth hole in the sleeve, and if I don't wash the windows soon—"
They laughed together.
"Anyway," Mama said, "I have opened every window, Henrik,
to let the air in, and the sunlight. Thank goodness it is such a
beautiful day."
"Tomorrow will be a day for fishing," Henrik said, his smile
disappearing.
Annemarie, listening, recognized the odd phrase. Papa had said
something like it on the telephone. "Is the weather good for fishing,
Henrik?" Papa had asked. But what did it mean? Henrik went
fishing every day, rain or shine. Denmark's fishermen didn't wait for
sunny days to take their boats out and throw their nets into the sea.
Annemarie, silent, sitting with Ellen under the apple tree, watched
her uncle.
Mama looked at him. "The weather is right?" she asked.
Henrik nodded and looked at the sky. He smelled the air. "I will
be going back to the boat tonight after supper. We will leave very
early in the morning. I will stay on the boat all night."
Annemarie wondered what it would be like to be on a boat all
night. To lie at anchor, hearing the sea slap against the sides. To see
the stars from your place on the sea.
"You have prepared the living room?" Uncle Henrik asked
suddenly.
Mama nodded. "It is cleaned, and I moved the furniture a bit to
make room.
"And you saw the flowers," she added. "I hadn't thought of it,
but the girls picked dried flowers from the meadow."
"Prepared the living room for what?" Annemarie asked. "Why
did you move the furniture?"
Mama looked at Uncle Henrik. He had reached down for the
kitten, scampering past, and now held it against his chest and
scratched its chin gently. It arched its small back with pleasure.
"Well, girls," he said, "it is a sad event, but not too sad, really,
because she was very, very old. There has been a death, and
tonight your Great-aunt Birte will be resting in the living room, in her
casket, before she is buried tomorrow. It is the old custom, you
know, for the dead to rest at home, and their loved ones to be with
them before burial."
Kirsti was listening with a fascinated look. "Right here?" she
asked. "A dead person right here?"
Annemarie said nothing. She was confused. This was the first
she had heard of a death in the family. No one had called
Copenhagen to say that there had been a death. No one had
seemed sad.
And—most puzzling of all—she had never heard the name
before. Great-aunt Birte. Surely she would have known if she had a
relative by that name. Kirsti might not; Kirsti was little and didn't
pay attention to such things.
But Annemarie did. She had always been fascinated by her
mother's stories of her own childhood. She remembered the names
of all the cousins, the great-aunts, and -uncles: who had been a
tease, who had been a grouch, who had been such a scold that her
husband had finally moved away to a different house, though they
continued to have dinner together every night. Such wonderful,
interesting stories, filled with the colorful personalities of her
mother's family.
And Annemarie was quite, quite certain, though she said nothing.
There was no Great-aunt Birte. She didn't exist.