The weight of water - Anita Shreve [77]
My brother’s wife had as well, I must add here, a remarkable head of hair, and I can attest to the fact that when she took out her combs and unbraided her plaits, this hair reached all the way to the back of her calves.
With Evan close to her side, Anethe, smiling all the while, recounted for us (with myself translating into English for our boarder, so that, in essence, for me, these tales were somewhat tediously twice-told) the particulars of their marriage vows, of their wedding trip to Kristiania, and of the crossing itself, which the newly weds seemed to have weathered in fine fashion. In fact, so great was their enthusiasm for this adventure to America, though I trust they would have retained a desire for any sojourn so long as it allowed them to be together, that they often interrupted each other or spoke simultaneously or finished the other’s sentences, a practice that began to wear upon me as the afternoon progressed, in the same way that one might come to be irritated by the overworked and frequent repetition of a once-charming trait in a young child. Also, I think it is not necessary to say that I was extremely vexed at my sister, Karen, who was not present that afternoon, but who had deliberately withheld important information from me, for what reasons I cannot think, except to cause me the most acute humiliation. At times, sitting there in my lounge, next to the stove, serving Evan and Anethe and Louis Wagner and John and Matthew the sweets I had made expressly for this occasion, thinking to please with delicacies from our Norway my brother, who, I am sorry to report, ate almost nothing that day, and observing Louis Wagner, who was, from a distance I suspect he would have breached in an instant if he thought he had so much as a chance, practically as entranced by Anethe’s melodious voice and lustrous skin as was her husband, I was nearly overtaken by a rage so powerful at my sister I felt myself quiver in my very soul and had immediately to ask the Lord for forgiveness for the terrible thoughts against her person I was entertaining. I knew that shortly she would come to my house, as she did on most Sundays and certainly would this coming Sunday since it would be her first visit in America with Evan and his new wife, and I thought that I would speak to her most severely about the malign game she had played with me, and of its consequences. If I had been able to, without revealing my innermost feelings and casting some shame upon myself, I would have banished Karen altogether from Smutty Nose, or at least until such a time as she might confess her wicked machinations. Altogether, it was an afternoon of mixed emotions, and more mixed still when Evan and Anethe repaired to their sleeping quarters above the lounge. They went up to their bedroom to lay down their trunks and to change their clothes, and, ostensibly, to rest, but it was quite shamefully apparent, from the sounds emanating from that room just above my head, that resting was the furthest thing from their minds, and so difficult was it to sit there below them listening to the noise of their relations in the presence of my husband, his brother and our boarder, all of whom pretended to hear nothing and to take great interest in the cake which I had cut and served to them, that though it was an evil day outside, I put on my cloak and left that house, and had I had anywhere else on earth to go, I can assure you that I would have done so.
On Sunday, when Karen came, I said no word about my surprise at Evan’s marriage, as I did not want to give my sister the satisfaction of seeing in me the very emotion she had apparently taken such pains to elicit. Indeed, I was most gracious during that particular Sunday dinner, and I like to think I confounded our Karen by openly rejoicing in Anethe’s arrival to our islands, and in pointing out to Karen the comely attributes and domestic skills of the young wife, and if Karen studied me oddly and tried several times to ensnare me in my own trickery by