The Alpine Obituary by Mary Daheim

Author:Mary Daheim
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307416858
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

December 1916

The joints in Olga Iversen’s fingers were stiff with cold as she held up the pair of woolen stockings she’d just finished knitting. Not a single dropped stitch, she thought with satisfaction—red with blue and white stripes, like the Norwegian flag. Olga loved her native land’s flag. Her brother had sent her a small replica of it after Norway finally gained its independence from Sweden. Olga wished she had been there for the celebrations.

During the winter, it had been cold and snowy in Trondheim, too. But not so damp as Alpine. The moisture seemed not only to come from the sky, but to ooze out of the ground. And the logging town was so small. . . .

Olga gazed out through the four wavering glass panes that o fered the best view of Alpine. The mill, with its huffing-puffing smokestack. The social hall that reminded her of a barn on one of the many farms outside of Trondheim. The bunkhouses, like army barracks. There were no shops, no grand homes, no factories, no harbor, no shipbuilding yards, no scent of the sea.

Most of all, there was no church. Olga missed the great Nidaros Cathedral that soared above Trondheim. Kings were crowned there, near the tomb of King Olaf II, Norway’s patron saint. It was where King Haakon VII’s coronation had been held eleven years earlier, but Olga hadn’t been there to see it. She’d received letters from home, picture postcards, even a souvenir silver spoon that she kept tucked away in her underwear drawer.

Home. How she missed it. How she missed her family, her friends, the festivals, the familiar gathering places for the university students. She had fallen in love with one of them, Bjorn Bjornsen, but his family had insisted that he marry a richer, prettier wife. Olga had thought she’d die of a broken heart when Bjorn returned home to Levanger.

Then Trygve had come back to Trondheim. She’d known him when she was younger, not well, but in the way that a fourteen-year-old girl and a nineteen-year-old man acknowledge each other’s presence with a smile and a nod, as if to say, “Some day, perhaps, when we are older . . .”

So, to salve her broken heart, she’d found a safe haven in Trygve’s strong arms. Like so many big men, he was gentle with weaker creatures. He had promised a new life in a new world, and at the time, Olga had wanted to flee her shattered dreams.

But that was over twenty years ago, and almost ten since they moved to Alpine. She’d borne four children, three sons and a daughter. That was enough. The youngest, Lars, had been a difficult birth. Olga had almost died. There would be no more babies. There would be no more lying in Trygve’s strong arms.

At first, she’d hated Lars, resented him for taking away a part of her life that she’d come to enjoy. But he had been an outgoing child, cheerful, even clownish. Olga didn’t laugh often, but when she did, it was because of Lars.

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