The Lovers of Svappavaara
 
 

This happened in a Lappland mining town, where I spent a winter during the sixties.

I paid a visit to a house in order to interview a miner, a man who had never left home and still lived with his mother. And that's understandable. What a mother. To be able to just sit in her kitchen. Anyone would have wanted to be her child. One of the many notions about Evelina went like this: When Evelina takes your hand, you can give birth to a baby by way of your elbow.

She could have been seventy or at least nineteen. Her face was bony, she had delicate ankles and she blushed easily. When she walked across the floor you could tell she still had the dance in her body. She didn't say much but she had this warmth that made you want to sit in her kitchen and just exist. I don't really remember her son that well.

And one day he wasn't at home but an older man was there, sitting next to the stove. He was talkative, and conversed about politics -- this was during the Vietnam war. And he knew what he was talking about. About Dien Bien Phu and Tongking Bay and chemical warfare and the farmer's relationship to his land -- he seemed to have first-hand knowledge about it all. He looked more fragile than Aunt Evelina, but he was still a handsome man. Maybe he was seventy-five, or at least fifty-two. When I was ready to leave, he said: "Well, it's about time for me to go home, too."

At which I burst out with such an impertinent remark that I have forgotten the words, but the meaning, more or less, was: "I thought that this was your home!"

They looked at me -- the same expression on both their faces. And it wasn't a reprimand, but instead, an almost mischievous request: "Tell us more about what you think! Does it show? For a stranger! Such a long time after. You should only know!"

They didn't look at each other but their equally fiery eyes -- it was as though I had fanned the embers. Then, in town, by incidents and fragments, I found out the story of these two. Aunt Evelina and Anton.

She had come to town when she was seventeen, and an orphan, and with a baby in her arms. And she became a maid in the house of the meanest old woman in the world -- a widow with a son who still lived with her, despite the fact that he was twice as old as Evelina. This mad old mother got her son married with Evelina. Which, the town said, was so she wouldn't have to pay Evelina a salary.

At certain times, Evelina spent more time living in the barn than in the cottage. That wasn't really as terrible as it might sound. In the thirties, a barn with seven cows, and calves and lambs, could really be a friendly place. A fireplace and sort of a room in front of the cow stall. You could do all sorts of things there -- cook stews, do laundry and look after small children, spin, and bathe and -- but above all, there was never any fighting in a barn.

At that time there were hoboes and peddlers around who were even more homeless than Evelina. They, of course, found this refuge and the rare possibility of getting washed -- so they came and played the harmonica and told her about the world.

So Evelina would have gotten a bad reputation if she had understood her neighbors' allusions and made up excuses. However, her mother-in-law had a tiresome time walking around with her stick, looking for tramps in the hay-barn. One time, when she came to the barn, Evelina was standing on a women's magazine spread out there on the cement floor, trying on a pair of patent leather pumps in front of the nose of the gentlest of cows. And the shoe salesman on his knees in front of her, one hand on her ankle and the other under her arch, so as to feel whether the shoe fit well enough.

At that the mother-in-law burst into such a fit of rage that she collapsed right there. And they had to carry her into the cottage. And she was bed-ridden for ten years.

So Evelina moved in and became mistress of the house and took care of the old one all of the time. And she was so nice about it that the town was amazed. But Evelina wasn't affected by the compliments either. She just did what came naturally. And she was given the honorary title of Aunt Evelina.

And then she started having babies. When a man from the South asked her whether it wasn't hard work to take care of so many children, Evelina said that the first five are pretty bad. But the next five don't make any difference because the firt five take care of them. By now, it's easy.

When she was forty-six, the youngest child started school and after that she didn't have any more babies.

That's when Anton came. The real one. He was big. He filled his shirt. The sort of a man who, when he walks through the woods, well, all the pines bend. He had gotten married in the course of things with a teacher from the South. She had come to him with so much tenderness and romance and had fallen in love as one falls in love with a book -- without being ready for it -- and with Anton away working in the woods or other odd jobs as it was in those days.

And when a wife at home was expected to tend the sheep, weave the wool, and sew the clothes, skin the animals and butcher them for shoes and food. She had given birth to a couple of children but had become weaker and weaker and she suffered from rheumatism. She was very unhappy and was met with little understanding in a place where the first commandment was: Have you found a stream nearby -- then you have food!

And the second commandment: If you can't make it, you're welcome to crawl away!

And Anton tore around the countryside as though blinded by his strength. And it wasn't only the pines that bent when he came.

Until one day on a road-work, Aunt Evelina walked by and the road heaved like an earthquake and Anton was raised to a cloud and it took ten years for the man to land again.

There was no place for them to meet and so they met and were inaccessible like a veritable Northern Lights. The whole village had heated discussions about their secret meetings.

Something else happened: Anton fell in love with his wife. He became aware of her and began to see her. He borrowed books for her and became considerate. He took her along to meetings and carried her in a fell -- she had become like a bundle of roots from all the pain. At the end, she was transparent and assured him that she was happy -- and then she died.

Anton carried her coffin on his shoulder, by himself. He did always what came naturally.

Aunt Evelina's husband died as well. And now the village expected the lovers to move together so that regular people could finally be liberated from that passion.

But then, it so happened that one of Anton's sons and a daughter of Evelina's fell in love -- without the slightest compassion. At that, Anton and Evelina became as if insane. So ordinary. Gossipy and deceitful.

Anton said that slut! If you marry that bitch it'll be over my dead body. And Evelina in the same tone: I'll kick him out with Grandmother's stick! If he shows up here one more time, that rooster! The young ones simply laughed and prepared the wedding. It was held in the school. And the whole village was invited. And the whole village came so as to gawk at the hosts and Anton had sunk down from that cloud -- really.

And Evelina looked like a sulky old woman, with a cold. Oh yes, they were accessible from every direction now.

It was traditional in the village that the dance was to be started by the in-laws crosswise and so now you have to get up and dance after all, there's only the two of you left! don't you know what's right! now we're really going to take a look at them · she with her ankles · and he with his enormous fists · like Amsterdam's red-light district · get up now and finally Aunt Evelina strode to the floor as though across a roadwork and Anton recovered the height he had lost and they began to dance.

And it was ruffs in the spring and swans in the fall it was polka and valse and a fling like the tango it was a dance never danced before in the village in turns they were each in his corner in turns they stood in the middle of the floor like a lone tree in a storm.

The musicians didn't know what they were playing, only that it was different from the usual kind of fiddle music. Finally they danced away from each other -- she danced out the eastern exit and he the one to the west and at the end they bowed to each other and then they didn't meet again.

That's to say, he could pay her a visit some afternoon to talk about the weather and children and aches and pains and politics but their secret meetings were over. As though something wild inside them had been offended by that wedding?

But you should have been here when Anton and Evelina swept the whole village against the walls in the school with their dance! what a bash! said the Village.