23 Meeting destiny
But though such mysteries filled me with pleasant unrest, they were quickly forgotten in the new excitement that descended on our household. Einar Halson had persuaded papa to buy his house. He had not the heart to continue in this town, now that Jorun was dead. He, too, would try his luck at the coast, and papa might have the house on whatever terms he could afford. Well, think of that! It wasn’t much of a place, to be sure, but it stood on a hill beneath whose stony breast ran a full-throated brook that tumbled over itself to reach the wide blue waters of the St. Louis River. The land on which it stood was part of a sixty-acre tract, and under the agreement of rental you might put in whatever garden you pleased, and could, besides, pasture a dozen cows on the green slips of meadows that threaded through the hills. There were other houses built farther up the slope, where fat German women waddled about in the tangled fields, shooing flocks of geese and fierce ganders that made a furious din, hissing like angry kettles forgotten on a hot stove, and flapping their wings with incredible impertinence. Geese must be a paying proposition, thought papa. He had a good mind to buy a few and become rich.
‘Frightful creatures!’ cried mamma. No, the thing to do was to get hold of some leghorns and a cow. You knew where you stood with chickens, and the baby had to have fresh milk. Well, dear me, you can imagine how many cups of coffee were consumed before all this tremendous business was settled—how many pancakes mamma had to fry before the few dollars which had been tucked away in a handkerchief box were properly spent. None of us slept very much, for what was the use of spending time so dully when you could be repapering the house, painting the pantry, laying out a garden, and counting a harvest of hens?
Best of all, for me, was the knowledge that, for years to come—probably for ever and for ever, until our heads were grey, Tilly and I were to be honest-to-goodness neighbours! The idea was so delicious that, in representing it to Tilly, I found myself for the first time so eloquent that we were forced to sit down upon a stone to support the onslaught of so much tender emotion.
‘For, think of it,’ said I, ‘every single morning we can go to school together. We can be blood sisters, Tilly. We can be faithful and true for ever and ever and ever. We could even read together, if you ever get free of the babies—and if I had anything to read,’ I finished, on a gusty sigh, considerably deflated after my flight of fancy, and suddenly plunging into despair as I reflected that, although a cow and chickens would lend us an air of respectability, they added little to the glamour of life, and nothing whatever to my private happiness. And then it was that Tilly made the first and only spectacular contribution to my painfully unfolding consciousness.
‘Why don’t you get a card from the library,’ said she, shaking her dear little blonde head, on which a veil of fluffy snowflakes had settled wetly. ‘There’s a nice children’s section. I’ve read all the Dinsmore books, myself.’
‘What!’ said I, hopping up, and almost choking with excitement. ‘What do you mean, get a card—do you mean, you can borrow books—anybody—just for nothing?’
‘Sure, why not? That’s what a library is for,’ Tilly replied, looking at me with oblique suspicion, as she often did. Well, for once I did not resent it. How stupid I must seem—what a crazy foreigner.
‘Dear goodness! Think of it, I didn’t know. And I can read like anything, too!’
Never was there an adventure like that one, when, in my shabby brown coat, buttoned tightly against the wind and snow, I set out for the local library. It was not much of a place, to be sure, just a long, dingy room in a low, dingy building housing offices and stores, but the moment I opened the door to see before me row on row of books on the unpainted shelves that lined the walls, all to be had for the mere asking, such a flood of emotion filled me that I could only stand there rooted in wonder, my legs like jelly, and the heart in my breast beating like mad. What a sight I must have been in my queer, made-over coat and knitted toque, wet pigtails down my back, like yellow snakes, and heaven knows what sort of dumb expectancy convulsing my round, colourless face. For the shameful truth was, I wanted to bawl—I wanted to howl to the stars. It was suddenly so clear what I wanted most in life, and always would want. And I had wasted seven whole months. Think of it, I could spell out whole words, almost as big as inch worms, even that long ago, and I had not known there were books to be had!
From somewhere, at a seemingly vast distance, some kind voice spoke, jolting me, red hot and prickly, back to the present.
‘You want a book, little girl?’
Want a book? What a question—and how to answer, with a lump as hard as coal in one’s throat? Somehow or other, I managed to squawk that was meant for politeness, and thoroughly ashamed of myself, hurried toward the desk, where a grey-headed lady sat watching me out of kind, very blue eyes.
‘There is nothing to be afraid of, dear,’ said the voice. Such a kind, low voice. Not at all like most American voices, that even I knew mamma was right in pronouncing shrill and unsympathetic. But, even so, I could not answer because something very queer was happening inside me, some travail of spirit, that had no words for its pain.
‘You have only to sign a card—you can write, can’t you, dear?’ And a soft hand closed on my faded sleeve, sending a thrill of happiness through my tangled senses.
Yes, I could write, I managed to mumble, and forthwith proceeded to decorate the precious card with round gobs that looked like tiny eggs strung on a wobbly string. But it made sense. That was the important thing. Laura Goodman, Ramsey Street. For the first time in my life, the funny characters had infinite meaning. They stared up at me from the face of the card, and seemed to say: Now you have really come into being. This is yourself, this string of wobbly ovals. This is your passport into the world of men.
‘So now you want a book.’ The small, grey lady arose, and the swift rising was like a little wind that blows away the perfume of delicate flowers. Silently, I followed her to the shelves, where the children’s books were stacked. Books with rabbits, and strange-looking animals, and stranger children, disporting on the covers. Pretty books with coloured pictures, and big round print. ‘Here you are,’ said the lady. ‘These are a good beginning for a little girl whose English is still young.’ And she left me, with a smile, to look the treasures over and make my selection.
That was very nice, of course. But what did I want with rabbits, and pert little hens, I, who had been fed on papa’s heroic narratives and mamma’s proud tales? Little by little, I edged over to the other shelves, and came, at last, to a huge, blue volume, where a man’s austere features arrested my wandering eyes. The Conquests of Julius Caesar. But here was some one I knew! I had wept when papa explained the perfidy of plunging knives into so true a son of liberty! Thrilled to the marrow, I opened the book.
The closely printed page danced before my eyes. Truth to say, there was scarcely a word that I could understand. Yet there was something here that I wanted, something vital, some proud defiance that captured my fancy. The written word was beyond me, but the pictures were of fighting men, of splendid palaces whose ruins were like broken music, or rare and graceful images, which, even to my child’s mind, expressed the perfection of beauty: poetry of line and motion, crystallized in immortal marble.
These pictures moved me then, as, indeed, they were destined to move me throughout my bit of time—moved me to a passion to live in this splendid past—to suffer the shocks of turbulent fate, and thrill to those ancient dreams, that even now, refusing death, breathed from these dull pages an irresistibly stirring charm.
How long I was lost in these pictures I have no way of telling. Several children, and a man in a bulky coon coat, drifted in and out again. But I remained there, locked in a trance that was at once an exquisite rapture and a frightening melancholy. For I was suddenly overborne by the meaning and majesty of books, conscious, for the first time, of the truth of papa’s statement that to be a maker of books was the greatest destiny. Again and again, lifting his tired eyes from some yellowed page, he had paused in his passionate reading to remark with worshipping envy that only a maker of books had the power to immortalize his age. For he it is who gives fame to the great, justice to the vanquished, doom to the traitor; and out of his own troubled hour of life he creates an imperishable fabric that reflects the torment and splendour of his age.
Yes, I had heard this said so often it had become commonplace, no more arresting than mamma’s strictures about rubbers and cod-liver oil. But now I understood. I understood that even in this one small, unbeautiful room were a hundred empires and a gleaming host of immortals, into which mighty company I might enter at will, thanks to the makers of books. Thanks to the sagaman, who wrote on the walls of time.
It was more than understanding. It was a conviction that sprang from something deeper than any mental process. It was a feeling that spread like fire through my consciousness. Standing there, rapt as a sleepwalker, an odd figure, surely, in my funny, made-over clothes, I was face to face with my own predestined Vafarlögar—with those fatal flames that quicken desire, and feed upon human vanity and hope.
In the light of that consuming fire, I could see that nothing in the world mattered, except the faculty to see and to feel and to understand what went on in the world of men, so that it might be caught up at a centre, and called a book. And then, in a blinding flash of terrifying impertinence, the wild thought leaped to my mind.
‘I too, will write a book, to stand on the shelves of a place like this—and I will write it in English, for that is the greatest language in the whole world!’
