Marta Oulie: A Novel of Betrayal

Part II

Part II 85 New Year’s Day, 1903 I’ve been sitting here, paging through what I wrote last summer. Only four months ago, but it feels as if it were at least four years. Back then I was so certain that everything would work out. In some ways the autumn has flown by faster than any period in my life, from one Sunday to the next, without my being aware of where the days have gone. I thought the school year had just started, and then Halfred said one day, “Mamma, today it’s only three weeks until Christmas Eve.” Einar and Halfred were very quiet on Christmas Eve— especially at first. After I lit the candles on the tree, I couldn’t help crying. This year there were too few of us to dance around the tree holding hands. I went into the dining room because I didn’t want the maid to see me, or the children , either. Poor things, they should be allowed to forget all their sorrows as much as they can. I remember how it was for me when Pappa died. Even though it made me ashamed and upset with myself, I felt almost angry when, after a couple of months had passed, Mamma would still weep or lament. Children should be spared from grief; that’s what Otto says, too. 86 . . . Marta Oulie Halfred came over to me and put his arms around my neck and kissed me. He bravely tried to hold back his own tears. After he left, Einar came in. They had bought so many presents, my boys. Grapes and flowers for Otto; and for me, in addition to the woodwork crafts they had made, they had bought a pair of elegant, lined leather gloves. I thought it was sheer madness for them to spend so much money on me. But Halfred proudly told me how they had been saving money all autumn. “And then we met Uncle Henrik on the street last Sunday , and he gave each of us two kroner.” I had the greatest urge to put the gloves away, along with my guilty conscience. But for the sake of the boys, I’ll have to keep wearing them as long as even a shred of leather remains. January 3, 1903 Otto doesn’t want to come home. Ever since he had that first violent coughing fit and vomited blood, I think he has understood that he will never return home. It’s my misguided idea to start teaching again that is to blame for his decision to stay up there. But now Otto views it as wise foresight on my part. He has convinced himself that neither I nor the doctor ever believed he would get well last summer, and he has given up all hope. I’m at an utter loss. I can’t tell him the real reason for going back to work, and my explanations sound so hollow. But I can’t give up Marta Oulie . . . 87 my job, which I was so lucky to get. It wouldn’t do to keep changing my mind like that, and I have to be prepared to support my children. Someday when it’s all over, I’ll have to have a talk with Henrik. So far we’ve been avoiding each other. One day he said—this was before Otto got sick again—“When Otto is well, I’m going to take a position in London.” If only I could stop thinking about such things, about trying to make a living and financial troubles and drudgery and school, and instead just grieve and grieve, clinging to every minute we have together, the two of us who will soon be parted. I walk around in a perpetual fever and anguish, tormented by every hour that is wasted when I can’t be with Otto. And when I’m there, I sit and grieve and suffer, almost too frightened to speak. I take along my sewing and talk about the children and acquaintances and news from town, or I read aloud from stories that he likes to hear, by Jonas Lie or Alexander Kielland or Rudyard Kipling, deathly afraid to touch on the one topic that we are both thinking about. Then I acknowledge that it does no good, no good at all, this...