The weight of water - Anita Shreve [42]
John Hontvedt was not a particularly tall man, not when compared to our father and to Evan, both of whom were well over six feet, but John gave the impression of strength and of size nevertheless. He had brown hair of a cinnamon tint that he wore thick and long, combed across his brow, and he had as well eyes that hinted at a gentleness of spirit. They were hazel, I believe, or possibly gray, I cannot remember now. His face was not narrow, as was Evan’s, but rather square in shape, and he had a handsome jaw. I suspect he had been thin as a boy, but as a man, his body, like his face, had filled out. His chest was round and formed like a fish barrel. He had no fat on him at that time.
Hontvedt had a habit of standing with his hands hooked around his belt, and of hitching his trousers sometimes when he spoke. When he sat, he crossed his legs at the knees, as some women do, but he was never feminine in any other of his gestures. Occasionally, when he was tense or anxious, he would hold his elbow with one hand, and swing the free arm in an exaggerated manner, an odd gesture, I always thought, and one I came to think of as belonging exclusively to John. He had lost one finger of his left hand as a consequence of having severed it in a winch.
I believe our father was, at the time I met John Hontvedt, apprehensive for his two daughters. Certainly this was true as concerns his responsibilities toward Karen, who, at thirty-three, had lost her youth and seemed destined to remain a maid. It was a shame upon a father, then as now, if he could not marry off his daughters, and I shudder to think of all the young women who have been so unsuitably given away, only to live out lives of utter misery simply to assuage the public strain of their fathers.
I will not accuse our father of such base desires, however, for,
in truth, I do not think this was so, but I believe that he was, after having watched his eldest daughter turn herself into a spinster, anxious to see me well married. Also, I must add here that my father had not recently met a man in these parts who was of so good a fisherstock and who had prospered so well as John. And I believe my father had reason to be grateful to John Hontvedt for his having taken on our Evan, and in that way gradually changing the fortunes of our family.
One evening, after Hontvedt had been to our table for dinner, he suggested that he and I go out walking together.
I had not actually wanted to go walking at all, and certainly not with John Hontvedt, but I did not see how I could refuse such a request, particularly as it had been made in front of my father. It was a mild night in early October, with long shadows that caused the landscape to take on a heightened clarity. We walked in the direction of the coast road, toward town, John with his hands in the pockets of his trousers, mine folded at my waist, as was proper for a young woman then. John took up the burden of the conversation, talking, as I recall, with great ease and volubility, although I cannot remember anything of what he said. I confess it was often this way between us, as I frequently allowed my thoughts to wander whilst he spoke, and, oddly enough, he seldom seemed to notice these absences of mine. That evening, when after a time I did begin to attend to what he was saying, I noticed that we were quite far from the cottage. We were standing on a headland that looked out over Laurvigsfjord. The ground was covered with gorse that had gone aflame with the setting sun, and the blue of the water below us had reached that deep solid sapphirine that comes only late in the evenings. We were admiring this view, and perhaps John was addressing me, when I noticed that he had moved closer to me than was strictly comfortable. Nearly as soon as I had this observation, he put his hand lightly at the back of my waist. This was a gesture that could not be misunderstood. It was, I believe I am correct in saying, a somewhat possessive gesture, and I was then in no doubt as