Outside, Ragnar wrapped part of the scythe blade in a towel, grasped it, and cut the manure wedge in half.
But the old woman whacked her wedge with a whalebone paddle. "That's how my mother did it."
Charlotte knew she couldn't measure up to that. With her scythe blade she gingerly halved a wedge. Gradually she built up momentum until she sweated and the breeze chilled her armpits. Finally, the old woman demonstrated how to prop the wedges up against one another to dry. Soon the entire home field was brown, a tent city of manure.
At the end of the day, the old woman was bent double. She gestured for Charlotte to follow her to the cowshed. Together, they wrung out the overalls that soaked in the tub and dumped the granite-colored water into the trough next to the shed. Ragnar brought a pot of hot water from the stove, then more. They added cold water, and the bath was ready.
Several vials lay on the shelf next to the urine jars. The old woman took one. In the weak light from the steamed window, Charlotte saw the long stalk and tiny purple bloom of lavender sketched on the label. The plant grew in the garden behind the yarrow.
"Lavandula—makes you happy," the old woman said and sprinkled drops of oil over the water. Its fragrance edged into the animal odor.
The old woman lit a candle and undressed. A tiny splash signaled her immersion in the tub. Her eyes glistened above the water, like a pond frog's during mating season.
"Get in."
Charlotte stepped out of her clothes, held the side of the tub for balance, and climbed over the edge at the other end. Easing in, she felt the old woman's skin against hers. Her bathing companion made small sighing sounds as she soaped her shoulders and neck, then lay back, eyes closed.
For a moment, Charlotte dozed in the warm, sweet smell. Then she heard the splash of a creature going ashore. The old woman, bones jutting, stood on the floor next to the tub, rubbing herself with a towel. Ragnar appeared at the door, then turned abruptly and disappeared among the cow stalls. Charlotte heard his shovel scraping up dung. She climbed out of the tub, dressed hurriedly, and hung their wet towels on the indoor clothesline. The old woman held the door for her. Turning, she glimpsed his large pale leg scaling the side of the tub.
A Weather-ruled Man
The script on the envelope was German, but the letter wasn't from her mother. The stamp featured the volcano Hekla erupting. Stony Hill was scrawled on the back. Dear Charlotte,
"My" farm is a little primitive. We have only well water. But I like the farmer. He's nice looking—for a man of 50. I like him better than his brother who chases me and grabs me!!! Of course, I smack the devil. That's the price of being beautiful. Ha. Ha. Ha. I'll marry one of them. You'll come to the wedding! Gisela
Hungry for words, she re-read the letter. Ragnar hoarded words, saving them like the cans of peas and beets she and her mother had stored at the back of the shelf at the beginning of the war.
Sometimes Charlotte pored over the yellowed newspapers—some dating back to 1945—that the old woman tucked behind the kitchen bench, but getting through the long, hairy words wasn't easy.
One evening, the old woman handed Charlotte a leather-bound book and a bread knife. The pages were still uncut. She chopped her way into the story and spent evenings in the big chair in the living room flipping through her dictionary, puzzling together the novel's parts.
A young woman sews homespun on sheriff's farm until her fingers grow blue. Her only source of warmth is the sheriff's son's body rubbing against her at night. When his mother learns that her son has spilled his seed into a hired girl, she sends the girl away. She gives birth in a cave where a vagabond cuts the cord.
Charlotte tried to repeat the plot. Misunderstanding, the old woman gave her some feverfew leaves for headache.
"Chew it, but if your mouth hurts, spit it out."
Finally the old woman had to give her an ointment for the insides of her cheeks.
Even when Charlotte knew the words, talking to Ragnar wasn't easy. His topics were sheep, cows, rake. Charlotte muttered them after him—kindur, kýr, hrífa.
In the cowshed, he grasped the cow's teat—speni, he said.
"Don't squeeze it right away. Wait until the milk comes in."
But his favorite topic was rain—rigning.
"He'll hang dry," he said on good days. Or, "It's wet as a dog's nose," when it rained. On sunny days, he raised his arms toward the sun. Sól. Sól. One evening, he scratched his head and sighed. At last, he took a crumpled paper bag from the chest under the bench, smoothed it with his hands, and wrote a poem on it. With the help of a dictionary, she discovered that a poet named Jónas referred to a weather-ruled man like Ragnar, who begged the goddess of drizzle to send him some sun.
And I'll sacrifice
My cow—my wife—my Christianity!
But on the few Sundays when the village church offered a sermon, the old woman did not attend. She did other things, like talking to the earth, rocking back on her haunches, waiting for an answer. On days when the wind died down to a breeze, the old woman stood on the farmhouse steps, pushed her shoulders back, raised her face to the sky, and sang.
During that first summer Charlotte heard a highpitched warble. She looked up at the gable of the shed and saw a thrush moving its yellow, black-tipped beak. Below it stood the old woman singing back to the bird, begging it to deliver a message to a sweetheart.
O greet most fondly, if you chance to see
An angel whom our native costume graces.
In Berlin, with Lena wriggling in her arms, she'd recited the names of all the birds they saw. When she saw a winter wren scurrying across the ground at Dark Castle, Charlotte shrieked mouse. But the bird's upright tail became suddenly evident. She heard its high tinkling warble just before it flew off and recalled the tiny rodent-like bird from her picture book.
During breaks on dry days, Charlotte walked the meadow until she found a hollow. Lying on her belly and breathing in the moss in the sun-warmed thyme, she dreamed of escape. Part of her vision involved her mother holding out her arms, the same mother with whom she'd argued bitterly until the day she waved goodbye from a train window in the station.
Mamma.
Now Charlotte took the scrap of paper and a pencil
from her pocket and began a letter.
Dear Mamma,
I love the hillside. The fog hangs over the meadows until midday. Sometimes the sun gets so hot you have to wear a straw hat. The farmer doesn't talk much, but I don't mind. The old woman brews leaves and twigs on the stove, makes teas for aches in the back and legs.
In the margins, she drew pictures of horses carrying hay bundles to the barn until her hand, the lower one on the rake handle, ached. She dropped her pencil and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she sensed that Lena's curls had brushed her nose.
The Second Time in Her Life
Each lady slipper that grew on the edge of the field contained a drop of water at its center that sparkled in the early morning dew. Sometimes Charlotte bent to touch the liquid with her tongue as she had seen Ragnar do. But today she walked, stiff as a robot, turning the hay with a methodical twist, counting eins, zwei, drei. By noon, her nose itched from the hay dust. She stopped and placed