The Pastor by Hanne Ørstavik

Author:Hanne Ørstavik [Orstavik, Hanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2021-10-05T00:00:00+00:00

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The wind swept around the back of the church as I unlocked the door and let myself in. The weather could change in an instant. It had been so like spring just an hour ago, now it felt like January again, as if winter would never end.

They’d pulled my leg about it when I’d first come here. The long winters drove southerners like me up the wall. Just you wait, you’ll be saying it yourself before long: Isn’t spring ever going to come? But then all of a sudden it’s upon us. That’s what it’s like here, they said. Just like that, everything changes.

I hadn’t said it yet, but I’d thought about the snow. It felt as if it had come just after I arrived with my belongings, and it had been here ever since. But I’d arrived in April, and the patches of snow that had still covered the ground then had been from the previous winter. I thought of the yearly cycle here as a circle of snow, with the summer being a little gap. And with each week that passed without the air getting any warmer, the gap would close that little bit more. Perhaps this would be a year when the weather would leap-frog summer entirely and the snow would join up the two ends and make the circle complete.

But it’s still only late March, Liv, I told myself, stamping the snow from my boots before hanging my coat on the peg. I was early today. I reminded myself it was meant to be a day off, only the girl’s parents were coming in to talk about the funeral, because I was leaving for the seminar the day after.

I stood by the door of the office and looked at the little carving, the head of the baby seal emerging from the stone.

I could have a baby. I saw the geologist standing with the newborn child in his arms, and after a few years we could have another. I thought about that first dependence, an infant needing me constantly. It would be a relief.

Yes, I could have a baby. I could give the child what I gave myself every day, food and activities. And once it reached a certain age, we could talk about everyday things. A semblance of life, simply take a chance on it and trust that it was everything I needed, that it was going to hold. Wasn’t that what people did? Gritted their teeth and packed their lunches, with no expectations other than a quiet life? Kept themselves to themselves, watched a film in the evenings; kissed it better when their kids fell and hurt themselves; read them stories at bedtime, put the light out, smoothed their little cheeks, before it was time to say goodnight? Wasn’t that what Nanna and Maja and Lillen did? Wasn’t it what I’d been doing too?

I switched the coffee maker on, took a mug out of the cupboard, tidied my desk. I looked out the window.

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