The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley [66]
After this Margret went to her chest and opened it and drew forth a piece of red silk and a spindle whorl and she began to pull threads from the silk and spin them together into sewing thread. Such work was easily done in the half light of the spring night, and her hands worked quickly, sometimes spinning and sometimes winding the spun thread onto a length of reindeer antler. Once or twice she got up to put away the pieces of silk that she was not spinning from, but each time she sat down again with the tissue in her hand. After she was done, and had spun all of the threads together, she sat with the roll in her hands. Just before Olaf got up for the morning work, she put everything away again.
As usual, Olaf went out while Margret dished up his morning meal. There were many things she could say to him when he returned, about how Asgeir had loved him, and how familiar and necessary he was about Gunnars Stead, and about her gratitude at the way he had saved them from starvation before, and the way they depended on him to do so even now. Some of these things she formed with her lips, trying out how she would say them when he was sitting before her. But when he was sitting before her, scooping up his sourmilk with a piece of dried sealmeat, she said none of these things, for these things could not be said to this Olaf, who tied a band of wadmal around his head to keep the sweat out of his eyes, and whose shoulders hunched over his trencher as if to protect it from polar bears. Soon enough, telling her he would be manuring the homefield for the rest of the day, he pushed himself to his feet and went out, carrying a skin bag full of cheese and dried reindeer meat.
Margret ran to her chest and drew forth the pieces of silk. It seemed the only virtue now to sew them together as quickly as possible. She took fine stitches with Skuli’s finest needle, and the thread she had spun pulled through the silk as if it were water. Birgitta and Gunnar arose late, laughing, and she had sewn a long seam.
One day not long after this, she went into the mountains wearing her cloak, although the sun was warm on the scree of the mountain sides, and then she lingered here and there in some of the clefts where Skuli had a habit of meeting her. Now she saw him at the bottom of the hill, looking back over his shoulder toward Undir Hofdi church. Then he turned and began again to climb the path. He was wearing simple blue clothing that she had seen many times before, and an ornate band of blue and white tablet weaving around his hair, which hung luxuriantly to his shoulders. He climbed confidently, knowing where to step without looking. From time to time he picked up twigs and threw them down again. No wood in Greenland except driftwood was satisfactory for carving, but Margret smiled that he liked to handle bits of it anyway. Now he looked up, and perhaps caught sight of her, for he seemed to smile and quicken his pace. Margret stepped out of sight into a copse of willow brush, removed her cloak, and waited. The red dress was too long, and fell in folds over her shoes, a good fashion for court ladies with nothing to do, of little use in Greenland, but it pleased her, the flow of the red silk and the cool sway of it against her skin.
Now came the crunch of Skuli’s foot on the scree, a foot she could see, shod in blue, then another one. He spoke her name. She reached forward and pushed aside some branches of willow brush and his face was so close that it startled her and she snorted. He turned toward her, and at first his face had no expression, and then she saw his jaw drop and his eyes widen into perfect admiration and surprise, such as she had never seen on his or any face before in her life, and at the same time that she knew this as sin and vanity she also fell into the terror of never seeing such a look on his face again.
On this afternoon, the two stayed together