17 The American scene opens

In due course we arrived at my aunt’s comfortable house in Duluth and were well received, as was to be expected of that most hospitable of relatives. The house itself impressed me little at the time, for my aunt was such an overwhelming individual that everything else dwindled into insignificance before her. If ever a human being was magnificently clothed in her unique personality it was Aunt Haldora. Everything about her was large: her ungainly figure, which for all its bulk moved with dignity and surprising lightness; her head, with its fine broad brow and penetrating grey eyes, behind which one sensed a brain in keeping with this imposing character—and indeed in her thinking there was no room whatever for the petty meannesses and irrelevant trifles which constitute so large a part of the average female’s mental gymnastics. For gossip and small talk she had no taste, and this indifference to insignificant details was extended to all those unimportant matters that clutter up most people’s lives. There were no useless knick-knacks begging care in her severe house, which breathed wholesome comfort and cleanliness and an immense peace. I use the word advisedly; nothing else explains the feeling that swept away your preoccupation whenever you entered there—a feeling of being cut loose from cramped moorings and set adrift on a large quiet body of waters.

Presiding at her table, Aunt Haldora seemed to me a figure out of a Viking legend: impersonal, cold, but sincerely concerned with the fate and fortunes of her ragged, impecunious guests. She inquired after our health, thought we looked undernourished, and predicted that our starchy pallor would soon fade when papa had established us in this civilized country. She admired the baby, which had been named after her, and also predicted that, unlike myself, it had promise of good looks. I had nice hair, to be sure, but it ought to be cut, she said—so much hair on a puny girl ate up the vital energy for nothing. It was all well meant, but created in me an extremely painful awareness of insufficiency—made me feel that I was one of those unnecessary encumbrances that burden the earth. I did not resent this implied criticism of my worthless person, for it was so self-evident that never in this or any other world could I hope to attain to the magnificent stature of my aunt, or clutch for my own such unshakable self-esteem. I was ashamed to sit and stare at her in stupid silence, but what else could I do?

Every gesture of her really beautiful, well-kept hands fascinated me. The curt way she spoke, which brooked no doubts nor opposition, was a revelation in forcefulness. Everything she did and everything she thought and everything she expressed in words was so firmly fixed in a sense of absolute perfection, according to her lights, that even the most foolish person realized the futility of opposition. That she was an autocrat in every sense of the word is certainly true—but the sort of autocrat who rigidly abides by, and at all costs maintains a moral code predestined for a certain cast by an all-wise deity. She was utterly sincere and utterly without vanity. Her person, like her house, was dedicated to service. Her clothes were clinically severe; the only ornament she permitted herself was a velvet band that she always wore about her neck. I think she even slept with it. Her whole life was centred in her profession, of which she was justly proud. And, unlike most married women who dabble in professionalism, she had the good sense to leave the details of housekeeping to others. That was not her business. Often enough she was cheated in the kitchen, where a wasteful cook might happen to rule at the moment. Well, what of that? Such people knew no better! That phrase, more than any other, sums up my aunt’s character. With all her heart she believed that ‘the lower orders’ were as God had made them. How foolish, therefore, to expect any sort of perfection from the poor creatures. She would as soon have blamed a crow for not singing sweetly as find fault with the stupidity or moral flabbiness of an individual whose racial inheritance was suspect. Conversely, she was critical and severe and alert for signs of shameful weakness in those who ought, in themselves and their behaviour, to be a credit to a decent family.

Naturally, I did not understand any of this at the time. But I certainly felt that, in addition to resembling my mother’s people rather than her own, which she could hardly help thinking a sad misfortune, I was not a promising-looking shoot of an ancient, though somewhat sin-gnarled, branch. Fixing her clear grey eyes upon my abashed countenance, which had nothing whatever to commend it, she expressed the hope that I would take kindly to school, and brushed aside with a wave of her capable hand my mother’s explanation that ill health, not dullness, had kept me at home so far. ‘No matter,’ said my aunt curtly, ‘she will have to start now. She will be all the better for having something to think about beside these silly notions. I must say I am surprised at you, Ingiborg, coddling a great girl into believing she is sick! What do you say, child, wouldn’t you really like to start school like a sensible creature?’

Indeed I would! I wanted to shout, but, instead, only nodded my head, turning red as a beetroot. It was a thrilling thought, which excited and scared me into a fever of anxiety. I wanted nothing quite so much and yet I shook in my shoes when I pictured in my mind what the experience would entail. I was nearly ten years old, and, except for a few words and phrases picked up from my brother, understood nothing of English. And I was so shy that even an innocent glance from a stranger threw me into such profound confusion that my mind seemed to go soft as putty. What was worse, I realized thoroughly what a fool I looked at such times—how utterly stupid my behaviour was to others.

The prospect of this much-desired, though terrifying, adventure seems to have absorbed me so completely that I have no recollection of just how or when we moved into a hideous barn of a house, one of a dozen project houses that occupied a block of treeless, unimproved land. Everything in the immediate neighbourhood was ugly, with the one exception of the big brick schoolhouse, which was handsomely situated upon the side of a sharply inclined hill. It was a fine modern building, boasting a square tower that stood out boldly against the grey skies, like the turret of some medieval castle that commands a squalid town.

Squalid in every respect was this American counterpart of the frontier town we had just quitted. There wasn’t a splinter to choose between them! the same ugly, hastily erected houses offended the eye; the same unkempt streets and dirty alleys despoiled an otherwise decent plain. We still fetched water from a pump that rose like an iron-wraith from an oozy grave. The same sort of rigs rattled over the ruts and the same sort of humdrum humanity hurried by. Nothing in the adjacent environs enlisted wonder or inspired the imagination. We had not even the remote beauty of the flawless prairie skies on which to fix our searching hearts.

Here in the Lake Superior country grey clouds, gloomy and low-lying, obscured the sun hours on end, and by night spread a blanket of mist over the stars. The weather was cold and depressing; dank winds, like the breath of a corpse, blew from off the huge sheet of frigid water, congealing the marrow in my bones; rain pounded from the leaden skies, to rush in brown rivers through deep gutters. All in all it was a disheartening beginning to a decade which, as my aunt predicted, was yet to prove reasonably filled with contentment, and productive of the only security our wandering household was ever to know. But in those first trying months it was difficult even to dream of such an eventuality. To begin with, our resources were so straitened that I suspect mamma went to bed on black coffee most of the time. Father was still in Winnipeg, you see, working off our fares and saving for his own. What he could send us out of the pittance paid him at the saddlery was so incredibly small that to mention the sum would lead my dearest friends to suspect me. Not even a relief recipient would believe me! Yet the rent was paid. We somehow managed to buy oil for the lamp and slabs for the kitchen stove. There were no sugared pancakes, however, nor turnips to flavour the thin oatmeal soup. Still, mamma managed to be cheerful—very cheerful, let me say, when, on rare occasions, my aunt had the time to drive by in her neat buggy drawn by a stout bay mare, never stopping long, but always anxious to know how we fared, when papa was expected to arrive, and what progress I was making in school. Mamma was often lonely, I suspect, for now there were no Icelandic youngsters to run in for a yarn; no band-boys to bring down the rafter with rollicking marches. Brother had found a few young friends of whom mother had no high opinion, being as she was a very clannish Norsewoman who wished to know the history of your family at least to the fourth generation before she felt easy in her mind as to what your reactions to the possible temptations of this vale of tears might reasonably be expected to be. I was away in school, fighting my own peculiar battles; she had only the baby, her weekly letter from papa, and her thoughts, which she kept to herself.