Olga and Bengt

Olga’s story

Love seeketh not her own

The whole exercise book, translated from the Swedish. In a few places the pencil is so faint that words cannot be read – these are marked with …

It was a beautiful spring day. The lark was trilling in the sky. The birches’ “mouse-ear leaves” shone in the sunshine as if they had just been varnished. Yes, it was truly a lovely spring day.

Along the road from the vicarage comes a crowd of children. They are the confirmation pupils. Hand in hand, ahead of the others, come a boy and a girl. He is tall for his age, she small and slight. The other children … call out: “Look at Arne and Eva, how they always have so much to talk about!” They are so used to the two walking hand in hand that they hardly take any notice of it.

And Arne and Eva wander in a little world of their own and hardly care much about the other children either. Arne is the son of a prosperous farmer, while Eva is the foster daughter of an equally prosperous farmer.

From the very first day they began going to the vicar they were drawn to each other. … They walked along the dusty country road. It was not petty worldly words they exchanged; it was about flowers and birds and the lesson that their talk turned … mostly they walked in silence. Soon they reached the fork in the road, and there their ways parted. It was always hard to leave each other. But in a couple of days they would meet again.

Eva and her friends had twenty kilometres to walk to the vicarage. But nobody grumbled about the road; it was simply such fun every day to go and “read”, as it was called. Soon they would be confirmed, and the girls had a great deal to talk about – how they would be dressed and how they would have their hair plaited …

Eva had come to her foster parents as a little girl of five. Her parents were dead, and she had no one in the world who was close to her. It was a good home Eva had found.

The foster mother was a capable woman, but strict and stern. She often looked with stern eyes at Eva, whose cheerful, lively temper she did not understand. But Eva took scoldings and admonitions with the same good cheer. “Yes,” the foster mother often sighed, “it’s like water off a goose! She is just as cheerful anyway.”

Her cheerful temper was, after all, the only wealth little Eva owned in this world. … to take little Eva on one’s knee or to stroke her cheeks – nobody thought of that, and so she went about with her longing. Then she turned to the animals. The cows, the horses, the sheep with their lambs – yes, nearly all the animals on the big farm became her friends in time. And she could sing. She sang all the time. So you could always hear where Eva was.

She had been allowed to take part in all the chores. She was not very strong, but her good will and cheerful temper always helped her. The thing she liked best was milking the cows. It was so warm and quiet in the big cowshed, where the cows stood in long rows, well-groomed and glossy. Eva talked to them … Elsa was a dear girl who served on the farm. Eva and Elsa were good friends. They shared all the work gladly.

The day began at half past four. The girls had a custom that one of them got up first and made coffee for the other. But there was no lying in bed. The milking had to be done by half past six. Then the milk was to be driven to the dairy, ten kilometres from the farm.

Still, Eva enjoyed all the work – out in the cornfields, the turnip patch, the potato field, the kitchen chores and all the indoor work; yes, everything was fun. But her dearest occupation was reading. If she got hold of a book, why, then she forgot everything … “Eva ought to be allowed to go on studying, she has such a good head for books.” Eva wished to become a teacher, but how that could come about she did not know. She understood, of course, that it was unthinkable.

But the very best thing now was the confirmation classes. A dreamy longing had come into her big grey eyes. She herself, luckily, was unaware of it. Eva was, after all, only fifteen.

In a couple of days they were to be confirmed. Eva’s black dress was ready. It was so fine. She had been given a fine hymn book and a fine confirmation handkerchief.

The girls had agreed to plait their hair in little braids so that it would be curly. Then the hair would only be held together with a certain silk ribbon … When Eva told her that they had agreed on this, her foster mother refused at once: “Nothing will come of that. Do you think you’ll be allowed to wear your long hair loose? Don’t imagine any such nonsense. You’ll be combed the way you have always been combed and plaited – you’d shame yourself before the whole parish.”

And so it was. Eva’s long hair was plaited into one long braid that reached well below her waist, where it ended in a white bow. Neither pleas nor tears helped.

Then off they went to the church. The confirmands gathered in the … cottage. With a single glance Eva saw that all the girls had their hair done the way they had agreed. She was the only one who stood out from the crowd … she was, after all, the only one who was a foster child … away into a corner, and her eyes filled with tears.

Two by two the girls walk into the church. She just has time to get an encouraging smile from Arne as they pass the boys, who were to follow the girls. Then they come into the beautifully flower-decked church.

Then Eva forgets all her sorrows. She is one of the dean’s favourite pupils. She has to answer many questions and recite long passages by heart. Small and slender she stood in her long black dress, but her face shone. Many people fixed their eyes on Eva and thought she did well. Everyone knew she was the foster daughter at the Olssons’.

“You did well in church, Eva,” said her foster father when they had come home. … He was always so good and kind. He always wanted to take her part. When the foster mother complained about Eva, he said: “I think Eva is fine, I do. Cheerful and willing all the time – that’s more than our own girls are.”

The next day the young people took their first communion. What Eva experienced at the altar rail she could never describe to anyone. It became something she always kept as her most precious treasure. Then the young flock walks out of the church. The sunshine beams towards them. Soon these young people must part. Life calls them to different tasks; soon they will have to stand on their “own feet”, as the saying goes.

Eva and Arne say goodbye to each other. Arne squeezes Eva’s hand and whispers: “Come to church next Sunday!” Eva promises. Arne … is to go to town and attend school. Eva was happy for him. She thought of her own longing to learn something.

The days of the week went quickly. When Sunday came Eva went to church; often they drove there, for Eva’s foster father was a devout churchgoer. Arne was always in church. When the service was over they would walk for a while and look at the graves. They always stopped at one little grave. On the headstone was the name “Frida”. Under the little mound rested a little daughter of her foster parents; Eva’s foster parents had taken Eva in place of the little girl they had lost. Eva often wondered how things would have turned out for her if little Frida had not died … “One man’s death is another man’s bread.” Eva felt great gratitude to God for the good home she had been given. She always wanted to bring flowers to the little grave – it was something she hid in her heart.

The summer passed quickly. It was the happiest summer Eva could ever remember. Then came autumn, and with it Arne’s journey to town and the grammar school. After that they did not meet until Christmas. Now and then Arne had sent Eva a postcard. It was always an especially happy day when that happened. She herself never wrote. It was not proper, said her foster mother. Eva thought all the more.

Then something remarkable happened. A good friend of Eva’s mother had given Eva two thousand kronor. For a long time Eva did not dare believe it was true. The first thing she asked her foster father was: “Is it enough to train as a teacher?” Her foster father promised it was. In 1915 Eva started at the teachers’ seminary. After two years she was a teacher. The dream had come true. Arne became a clergyman. Their ways parted, but the sunny days of childhood remained a beautiful memory for them both.