Olga, page 13
Today is the first day I’ve been able to leave Eik on his own. The first day I’m able to think about school again, and about repairing the roof, and the coal for the winter that still hasn’t arrived. I think about you, but I’ve thought about you every day. You should have been with me at Eik’s bedside. You don’t understand that, I know, and my head tells me I can’t reproach you, but my heart is full of accusation.
I see you in my mind’s eye, the way you would look at me when you listened to me. Unsure what it is I want from you, resentful because you haven’t done anything deserving of accusation, guilty because you don’t love me as I love you, hoping everything will soon be fine again. You are a child, Herbert.
Your Olga
Second Sunday of Advent 1913
My dear Herbert,
Perhaps if you hadn’t put your life at risk, I would never have told you. But it has made possible what was previously impossible, and the unsayable can be said.
Eik is your child. I thought that surely you would realize the first time you saw him, or if not the first time, then the second or third. I thought that surely you would recognize your own flesh and blood. He is so like you in so many ways: his build, his decisiveness and fearlessness, the artless egotism with which he hurts others without meaning to hurt them—he simply doesn’t see them. When he’s excited about something, when he succeeds in doing something, he lights up just like you.
I knew I was pregnant a few weeks after you left for German South West Africa. That my body had been blessed—that was what I felt then, even though I didn’t know how I was going to cope with the situation. That is what I feel now too: Eik is a blessing in my life.
I was lucky. Sanne is the sister of a friend from teacher-training college. She helped me with the birth, she reported Eik as a foundling and took him in, and the authorities are glad he’s provided for. I give her what I can. She isn’t doing it for money. We’ve become friends. She isn’t raising Eik as her own child; I didn’t want that. She tells him that she found him, that she liked him and kept him. He knows that she loves him, and he knows that I love him—Sanne’s friend, a sort of auntie.
I was very afraid. Afraid that people would see I was pregnant. That the contractions would start while I was in the middle of moving here. That I would give birth before Sanne managed to get to me. That I would scream during the birth.
But all went well. I made myself the right clothes, sent the neighbor’s boy to fetch Sanne at the right moment, and didn’t scream. Eik entered the world one day after I arrived here.
Why didn’t I tell you? I would have, if you had recognized him. If not as your son, then as my happiness. But you didn’t see him, and so he is mine and mine alone. All I want is for you to know, when you come back, who I am. I am not just the woman you know, the woman who loves you. I am Eik’s mother.
Sometimes I wake up and it feels as if you won’t come back. Sometimes I wake up and it feels as if you’ll come back and I won’t be alive anymore. The games fear plays with us! But if that happens, you must help Sanne. Without demands, without expectations, at best without words.
In spite of everything, I am still
Your Olga
Christmas 1913
Everything is white. It already was when I wrote my last letter, but I couldn’t appreciate it then, when I was writing. And it wasn’t as beautiful then as it is today. It started snowing yesterday morning and only stopped early today. It was still light as I walked to church yesterday for one last rehearsal with the choir before Christmas vespers, but the snow was falling so thickly that I had difficulty finding the path. On the way back it was dark, and I walked right past my house. I soon found it again—it’s not as if there are a lot of houses here—but for a moment I was completely lost in the darkness, the snow, and the cold. Like you.
Now the sky is blue, and the sun is shining, and the snow is glittering. After the service I went to see Eik, but I had to come back soon afterward. My neighbor had lent me a horse and sled—I couldn’t have gotten through otherwise—and he needed both himself that afternoon. I would have liked to have stayed longer. I would also have liked to have driven the sled for longer over the snow. Now I’m sitting at the table looking out at the wide field. The whiteness is blinding. A buzzard is circling in the sky. From time to time it plunges down and finds the mouse beneath the snow; it’s a mystery to me how. I wonder whether it’s the buzzard we saw on our last picnic?
Where are you, my love? On your ship, in the pack ice? In a hut? I read that fishermen, hunters, and explorers had built huts on the islands of the Spitsbergen archipelago. In an igloo? I’ve read about the cozy dwellings that Eskimos build out of snow and ice, and I hope you can do what they do. Both of us are without a Christmas tree this year: you don’t have one, so I didn’t want one either. But you’ll have a light, a candle or a lamp. I lit the fat red candle for you that we bought last year, which will last a long time. Next Christmas we’ll light it again together.
Three years ago today you asked me if I would marry you, and you didn’t understand why I said no. It wasn’t just that I would have lost my job, and not knowing what I would do without it when you’re away on your constant travels. Nor was it just the fear that you would come to resent me one day if your parents cut you off and disinherited you. Or the fear of what we would live on when the inheritance from your aunt was used up. It was Eik. We couldn’t have acknowledged that we were his parents without there being a scandal and a court case and prison.
We wouldn’t have been able to bring him to live with us as a foster child either; they don’t just transfer children from one foster family to another without good reason. So all that would have remained would have been for you and me to live together as man and wife, with him, our child, separated from us. It would be so wrong that I can’t do it.
And there’s something else. As a child, I so longed for a family in which I was loved, one that strengthened me and helped me. I didn’t have that; I had to do everything alone. I had Eik alone too, and I’ve looked after him alone. I managed all of this, and I’m proud of it. It’s too late for me to learn how to live together the way you men expect. I will not adapt myself, will not subordinate myself. Could you learn to live with that? Would you want to?
I dream about it sometimes. That you come back and ask me all the things you never asked me: how I would like to live, whether I would rather do something other than teach children who don’t want to be taught, and what that might be, what I would like to see of the world, where I would like to travel and where I’d like to live, how you could help me with all that. Even in Prussia women can study at the university; I wouldn’t have to go to Zurich anymore, just to Berlin.
Sending you love from my dreams,
Your Olga
New Year 1914
My love,
I was at Sanne’s farm for New Year’s Eve, spent the night there, and walked home early this morning. Between Christmas and New Year it had gotten warmer, the snow had melted a bit, then it got colder again, the snow froze, and this morning the ice crystals sparkled in the sun more brightly and beautifully than I have ever seen. If only you could have seen them with me!
Yesterday evening Eik was as lively and cheerful as before his illness. Sanne’s elder children were allowed to stay up until midnight; Eik had to go to bed with the little ones after the festive dinner, and complained bitterly. But scarcely had he gotten into bed than he was asleep. I’m going to ask the doctor whether Eik still needs to convalesce. If he needs to, then he must, even if it’s not easy to calm him down.
I’ve made a lot of plans for the new year. I want a piano, and I want to practice all the Beethoven sonatas. I want a bicycle, to get to Eik more quickly and easily and to be able to go to a concert or lecture in Tilsit even if there are no trains after it’s over. For both of these I need money, even if I buy them secondhand, and Sanne and I are planning to make jam that she’ll sell at the market in Tilsit. I want to keep chickens and a goat. I’ve always shuddered at the thought of goat’s milk, I don’t know why; I tried it recently for the first time, and it was delicious. I want to read Dante’s Divine Comedy.
I want to talk to you about lots of things. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe a lawyer would tell us we can acknowledge Eik as our child and bring him to live with us and not have to go to prison for all sorts of crimes. Maybe we can marry after all. If I lose my job, I can write a book for you about your expedition; you just have to tell me all about it. The book’s success will mean we’ll be able to manage even after the inheritance from your aunt runs out. Or maybe your parents will show some understanding after all. What are they going to do with the estate if they don’t give it to you?
Oh, Herbert: yesterday a lively and cheerful Eik at the end of the old year, today the radiant morning at the start of the new—I am filled with hope. Perhaps 1914 will be our year!
Your Olga
January 2, 1914
Today the Tilsit newspaper reports that your ship is frozen in pack ice. That it set you down with three companions, but couldn’t pick you up again at the agreed rendezvous. The captain left the ship and, with great difficulty, managed to reach a settlement.
Where are you, my love? Are you spending the winter in a hut? Or did you return to the ship and are spending the winter there? Or have you set out for a settlement too—will I read about you in the newspaper in the coming days, as I did today about the captain? He was completely exhausted and frozen half to death—I’ve read that your toes freeze and fall off first, but that you can still walk and run and dance without toes, and if you run a little less and spend more time here with me, that’s no bad thing, and however exhausted you are, I’ll get you well again. We haven’t danced together often, only once in fact, when there was a church fête in Nidden, and at first you didn’t want to, but then you danced with me so gaily, it couldn’t have been more gay. It was a Ländler; I’d like to dance waltzes with you, and—because I don’t know how and maybe you don’t either—take classes with a dancing master.
There are so many things I would like to do with you. Dance, go skating, go sledding, go mushrooming, look for bilberries, read to and be read to by you, sleep and wake with you, travel with you, in trains and carriages and hotels, like rich people. I would not like to travel with you to the Arctic.
But I would like to be with you now, even if it were bitterly cold on the ship or in the hut or perhaps in a tent or a cave. We would keep each other warm.
Your Olga
February 17, 1914
My love,
A German rescue team set off to search for all of you yesterday. A Norwegian team headed out in January, right after the captain appeared; it had to turn back without success because of adverse weather conditions. The German rescue team is confident. But you were confident too, and Germans are always confident, and Norwegians know their way around best up there. Often I can’t sleep for worry.
And your father’s visit has made the worry even worse. Yes, you read that right: your father came here. He was waiting for me today at the school; I recognized him immediately, although it’s been many years. He’s grown old and walks with a cane; his hair is white and his face covered in age spots. But he was standing very upright in the dirty snow outside the school, in a fur coat and lace-up boots; he walks very upright, though it’s a visible effort for him; his voice is strong, and the cane is topped with a silver knob.
He wanted to know what I knew about your plans. Like me, he and your mother had expected you to return before winter, and now they were wondering whether you had lied to them and had intended all along to spend the winter in Nordaustlandet, or whether you had quite different objectives—the Northeast Passage, the North Pole—that they didn’t know about. Your father wants to support another rescue expedition that would set out in March, when the weather is better and they can be more certain of success. Where should the rescue expedition look?
We walked through the slush in the street and then along the path that leads around the school to my apartment, and your father’s car followed us, even though it’s only a few meters. In my apartment he looked around as if expecting hideous poverty and realized to his astonishment how pleasant it is in my home. He didn’t take off his coat, but he sat down. I made tea and told him what little I knew. He listened to me, and at the end he sat there and said nothing, just nodded a couple of times.
Then he stood. Your father was never patronizing toward me, as your mother and Viktoria in particular could be, just distant. He politely demanded respect, and he treated me in the same way, young as I was, with politeness and respect. I think that sometimes, when he was bothered by the familiarity between you and me, he was cold, but he was always polite. No one could insist more genteelly on the gulf between the lord of the manor and the petite bourgeoise, or whatever it is I am.
He stood before me and raised his head, and I saw that he was weeping. Tears rolled down his cheeks; he shut his eyes tight and pressed his lips together, and his shoulders twitched. “I’m sorry,” he kept repeating, “I’m sorry.” I went over to him and wanted to hug him as I hug my pupils, even the big boys, but he shook his head and left. I followed him to the corner of the street, saw him get into the car, and watched the car drive away.
“I’m sorry”—I can still hear him; it sounds terrible, as if he were speaking of your death as one mourner to another. But that can’t be right; he believes you’ll be rescued and is supporting an expedition. If not that, what was it? What is he sorry for? And why did he come? I would have written and told him what I knew if he had asked me in a letter.
So I’m confused, and the confusion intensifies the worry. If you’re on the way to the nearest settlement, keep going. And if you have to stay in a hut, keep holding on until you can leave or rescue arrives.
I keep holding you with love,
Your Olga
March 8, 1914
It’s spring! I spent the night at Sanne’s and walked across the fields first thing in the morning. If you look closely at the bushes and trees, you can hardly see the green buds. But when the sun had risen and the sky brightened and the birds were clamoring, a tinge of green lay over the gray-brown forest. There are yellow buds on the forsythias beside the church door.
The spring gives me courage. When it was winter here, I envisioned you in winter too. Now it feels as if spring must have come to you too, as if the snow and ice must be melting, the rocks peeping through, and the little streams flowing. Do you remember how you asked me what grows in the icy wastes? Nothing grows in the icy wastes, but on Nordaustlandet there is the tundra, and in spring it will be green here and there, and perhaps one or two little flowers will bloom. I know everything is later with you than it is here. But when the time comes and you see the first blossom—will you think of me? Yes, you will, I know it.
What is longing? Sometimes it’s like an object that can’t be ignored, can’t be moved, that often blocks the way, but that belongs in the room and to which I have grown accustomed. And then it suddenly hits me like a blow that makes me want to scream.
I don’t want to pester you; how could I? You will come when you come. But I won’t let you go again.
Your Olga
March 15, 1914
My husband,
Because that is what you are, whether state and church have married us or not. You are the father of my child, you are my husband.
I was in Tilsit with Eik, and as we were passing the Wilhelm Nagelhort photographic studio I couldn’t resist. I went in and had our photograph taken. Here is the picture. We could have let ourselves be photographed against a backdrop; there was one screen with the High Dune, one with an oak forest, and one with medieval walls. But I didn’t want that. I just wanted us in the photograph, me on the chair and Eik beside me. He found it all a bit uncanny: the screens; the props, which included a lion skin with a lion’s head, a small cannon, and a rocking horse with real horse skin and a leather bridle; the big photographic apparatus on its spindly legs; and Wilhelm Nagelhort under the black cloth. And the magnesium light! We had prepared Eik, had told him it would blind him, but it still came as a shock, and he jumped up and stood there stiff as a poker. He’d been leaning against me until then; I liked that.
But he isn’t keen on leaning and cuddling anymore. He’s turning into a proper boy. He reminds me of you. His eyes are as blue and clear as yours. He’s going to be taller than you, but just as sturdy and strong. He doesn’t run. But he too wants to be somewhere that isn’t where he is; he just doesn’t know where.
Would others see you in him? I do. It makes me happy. It makes me sad. If only you were here and I could say to you: see how Eik stamps his foot defiantly, like you, and you would laugh and reply that my defiance was in my chin, and that Eik has my chin. We would argue about which of us was more defiant, and Eik wouldn’t realize that our argument wasn’t serious and would come up to us, worried, wanting to reconcile us, and we would all hug each other, all three of us.
Another expedition has set off to Nordaustlandet. They say Count Zeppelin is financing it. Should all these expeditions make me take heart? They make me afraid.
I am yours, as you are mine,
Olga
April 5, 1914
Herbert, my dearest,
Today is Palm Sunday, we sang Bach’s choral motet from King of Heaven, Be Thou Welcome, and I would have liked to have had a big choir and a big orchestra. But there are some strong voices in my choir, and the organ stood in for the orchestra. I directed, played, and sang, and the pastor, who never usually says anything, praised me.
