Ch 147
With Toke and Phelan both out of the house, I awkwardly followed Hilda back into the kitchen where she had started preparing supper. The baking was complete and cooling by the open window while the freshly harvested chicken dangled by its feet above the sink, the head removed and body draining blood into a bucket.
On the long table in the middle of the room was an assortment of spices and vegetables laid out for chopping alongside a roasting pan.
There were two chairs set up side-by-side, but only one knife, and I assumed that while my grandmother had allowed me to dry dishes for her, she was not about to have me take part in Sunday meal preparation.
"They will return, they always do," she said, patting the empty chair. "Sit, my beloved grandson. I welcome your company."
I took a seat beside her and picked up one of the potatoes that had been rinsed off. The water that pooled beneath it was peppered with dirt from the garden, and I used an old striped towel on the table to clean up the puddle and rub the potato dry.
"In Paris, do they have machines that cut up and prepare meals?" she asked me.
I grunted. "My wife's supper preparation machines are named Lisette and Apolline."
Hilda gave me a strange look. "Our daughter Lisette and my friend Claude's sister, who has been living with us for the last few weeks," I explained. "Somewhat faulted machines as I'm certain they both lick the spoons when no one is looking."
"Phelan said you have two children."
"Alex and Lisette," I said.
"How old are they?"
"Alex will be nine at the end of October and Lisette will be ten in February."
"Ah, you have been married twice then?"
I turned over the potato in my hand and felt heat rise up the back of my neck as I considered my reply.
"Once," I answered, knowing precisely where the conversation was heading and dreading every second of it. "To Julia since May."
Hilda grabbed the knife, but didn't begin cutting up the zucchini she had in front of her. "I see. Then your son was unintended?"
"Unexpected," I said.
"Born out of wedlock," she commented.
"Quite frankly it makes no difference to me if he was born on the moon. Regardless of whether or not vows were exchanged, I could not imagine my life without Alex and I will not discuss his legitimacy with anyone. He is my son and the circumstances of his birth were not up to him and do not make him unintended or a mistake," I firmly stated.
"And the girl? She was born before you and your wife wed?"
"Lisette is Julia's daughter from a previous marriage."
"Ah, I understand. Where is Alex's mother?" Hilda asked.
"His mother is my wife," I answered.
Hilda glanced at me. She cut into the zucchini longwise and then turned it over, cutting it again into fourths. "The woman who carried him in her womb for nine months and birthed him from her own body is not his mother?"
"The only mother he has ever truly known is Julia. His birth mother Christine passed away."
She turned to me, her lips parted. "My condolences to you and your son. I was not aware of your loss."
I nodded and stared straight ahead, noticing the portraits of my brother on the kitchen wall, as he had previously mentioned on the train.
They were utterly ridiculous, drawn mostly as caricatures that bordered on pretentious in nature, which I assumed is precisely what Phelan intended. In one drawing, Phelan was dressed in a military uniform highly decorated with medals, another he wore what looked like some sort of tribal costume from Africa with beads and a wooden headdress bearing a crudely drawn face with its teeth bared. One drawing was upside down and the other with an inflated head on a small body–which seemed to be the most fitting.
Toward the bottom, the doodle Cristophe had drawn of a donkey with my brother's likeness adorned the wall. In all I counted eighteen different drawings and assumed my brother would gift her with his nineteenth self portrait before the end of our stay.
Hilda chopped up two more pieces of zucchini in the same fashion and placed them into a bowl where she drizzled oil and pinched an assortment of fresh herbs into the mix, shaking the bowl to make certain they were thoroughly coated.
"I agree with you and your brother, my beloved," she said to me as she gathered the potatoes in front of her and began peeling them. "Your grandfather should not be climbing ladders."
"It's dangerous for a man of his age," I said.
"Toke could scramble up a ladder faster than a squirrel climbs a tree and no one ever told him to stop. He kept everything on this farm in working order from the clock in the parlor to the well behind the barn," she said. "Last year he started to slow down for the first time in his life, but there is no giving that man orders."
"What happened last year?" I asked.
Hilda looked toward the back door and windows and placed the potato skins into a heap. "He was injured bringing the cows into the barn one evening. One of them hooked her halter onto the pen gate and became spooked. She kicked, striking another cow, who turned and frightened the rest. He was pinned to the fence when he attempted to shut the gate and they stepped on his feet, turning his ankle."
"Was his ankle broken?"
"Not badly."
My lips parted and eyebrows shot up at the casual way in which she answered. "Not badly? Does Phelan–"
"No, he doesn't know about the injury and God willing he will not," Hilda answered before I finished.
"Phelan would be quite concerned."
"Precisely. Your grandfather doesn't want him to worry. Your brother has enough on his mind as it is and Toke would never wish to add more."
I sighed in dismay, but understood the reasoning considering neither my brother or grandfather were currently in the house.
"Surely there must be someone looking for employment who could work the farm on Toke's behalf," I said. "An able-bodied man or two that could tend to the cows so that he is not put into that position again."
"There are plenty of able-bodied men in Skyderhelm."
"If finances are an issue–"
"It is not," she assured me.
"Then if you are able to afford employing someone around the farm, why not retire, at least in part?"
"Because this is his life. This is my life. For the last sixty-five years we have lived and worked this land, raising cows, planting barley. We make our own cheese and harvest our own fields. What are we if not farmers? This is all we know, Grandson."
"You could still be farmers, but you'd have employees able to tend the herd."
Hilda sighed. "It is not so simple, Grandson."
"It does not need to be this difficult," I argued.
"This has been our pride and joy, our family farm," she said. There was more sadness in her voice than I expected. "Everything we have worked for, from the fields and the herd, this land was supposed to be taken over by…"
She looked away from me, lips pursed and face etched with melancholy and regret.
"You intended to have your son and daughters take over the farm?" I asked.
"Our son and our daughters' husbands, if Gyda and Greta married," she corrected me. "If not, then, Gersan would have taken over the dairy when he was of appropriate age and, God willing, his sons would have taken over for him. But the lord had different plans, I suppose," she bitterly explained.
I sat quietly for a moment, wondering what my mother's siblings would have been like: my aunt and uncle who had died long before I was born. Phelan had only briefly mentioned the two of them and never by name. Given the language barrier and the lack of discussion regarding our mother and her siblings, I was surprised he knew of their existence at all.
"Gersan is the name of your son," I said.
"Was," Hilda corrected. "He was our son." She rubbed her lips together and inhaled sharply. "But he has not been our son for a very long time and I have not said his name aloud in many, many years."
My heart sank for my grandparents and for the boy they had lost, for his memory to have faded over the long decades since his death. I could not imagine anything happening to Alex or Lisette, nor living the remainder of my life without my son or daughter's names ever being spoken again. No matter what, Alex and Lisette would always be my children and I would wish to honor their memories.
"How old was Gersan when you lost him?" I asked.
She didn't answer me readily, and considering my grandparents did not speak of their children, I doubted she would offer up any information.
I dried the remaining potatoes and wiped the table, the silence between us growing uncomfortably long.
"Gersan was only eight when he passed," she said suddenly.
I suppressed a shiver. Her son was the same age as Alex. My vibrant, intelligent, kind little boy who was probably driving Madeline, Meg, and Charles mad with his questions about train travel and the like. His inquisitive nature was exhausting, his desire for knowledge insatiable. I hoped that Claude at least humored Alex, engaging with him in debates over battles between elves and fairies or crocodiles and hippos.
I couldn't imagine waking one day and never again having Alex tap me on the shoulder, his face inches from mine as he said my name and asked if I was listening to him. He was truly the embodiment of sunlight and warmth in my life.
"Gersan had been quite ill for a year before he succumbed to a sudden fever," she continued. Her green eyes glistened with unshed tears. "He had experienced terrible shaking since he was a toddler, shaking that would roll his eyes into the back of his skull. Often in the midst of the episode, his tongue would bleed profusely when he bit it. For several minutes he could not control himself, and then he woke in a daze, his eyes blank as the dead and mouth foaming."
What she described sounded like seizures. I silently hoped the child had not been mistreated or reprimanded for his ailments or for the fits to be mistaken for bad spirits that grabbed hold of him.
"One day he fell outside and hit his head during one such episode. It was early in the spring, when there was still ice on the tree branches and frost turned the grass silver. The wound to his head was so deep that the physician had to sew him up," Hilda said. "It was until the following night that I saw he also received a deep puncture wound between his ribs, but by the time it was noticed, infection had already set in."
"What caused the puncture?"
"A stick he was carrying was the most likely culprit. He loved to sharpen sticks and pretend he was a great warrior out hunting. 'Like a Viking,' he would say. Like Kong Toke." She paused and swallowed back the emotions I could see attempting to overwhelm her. "How odd that I have not uttered his name in years, and yet I remember that week so clearly. My beloved Gersan had his last fit on a Monday morning before sunrise. I was the one who found him lying on the path between the barn and the house. He was so cold when I picked him up and gathered him in my arms, his cheeks bright red and his eyes…"
She paused for a long moment, her gaze distant and brow furrowed as she remained caught in the memory.
"His eyes were blue, same as his father. I had nearly forgotten the color until now. How peculiar, I don't remember what he looks like any longer, the shape of his face or the color of his hair. But his eyes, yes, I remember them now. How he stared at nothing as I held him, the blood dripping from his mouth mixed with his saliva and his eyes bulging. He was not himself. He was afraid. He never looked afraid until the fits seized him."
I stared at the table and envisioned Alex with his curls of dark hair and dark eyes, thankful I could picture everything from his thick lashes to the scar on his forehead from hitting my desk.
He had the brightest, quickest smile of anyone I'd ever met, his gaze always warm with a hint of mischief. As an infant his face had been round, his cheeks red and full like apples, but as he grew older, his jaw had become more prominent and cheekbones higher, like mine. It seemed as though I noticed the changes in him popping up quite suddenly, his baby face giving way to what he would look like as an adult. One day he was still a toddler on my knee, the next he stood chest high, pointing out that he would be taller than me by the following week.
I could not imagine his likeness fading from my memory, forgotten by time.
"By Wednesday Gersan was not able to leave his bed and by Thursday night he could no longer open his eyes. I stayed with him through the night, watching him become weaker and weaker. Just before dawn his breaths became shallow and then he stopped breathing in his sleep, his hand in mine."
She paused for a long moment.
"I waited for his chest to move. I held my breath and sat beside him until I had to gasp for air while he remained so still. It didn't seem possible that in one moment he lived and the next he did not. I didn't wake Toke to tell him our son had died. I didn't want to disturb him with such awful news and I hoped that I was mistaken, that he breathed when I was not looking." She took a long, deep breath and exhaled. "Gersan was still warm to the touch by supper time. We all took turns holding his hand and I kept waiting for his eyes to open and his chest to move, as though death was simply a deep sleep and he would decide to return to me. Foolish, I know, the prayers of a mother losing a child."
She began peeling the potato again, her hands trembling and the knife nearly slipping from her grasp. I reached for her wrist and she let out a sob that shook her whole body. We sat in silence for a long moment, neither of us speaking of her loss.
"I apologize if I have upset you," I quietly said. "It was not my intention."
Hilda closed her eyes and dropped the knife, her fingers grasped tight to mine. She nodded slowly, her bottom lip trembling, and I felt a tear slip from my own eye.
No words seemed appropriate to speak and I was not familiar enough with my grandmother to know what would provide comfort in a time of renewed mourning.
I considered what Madeline would have done if she had been present and decided nothing more was needed than being at Hilda's side, holding her hand in a moment when she recalled the son she had not held in decades.
"Have you ever witnessed a loved one die?" she asked.
"I have. My Uncle Alak, when I was twelve. I buried him with my own hands. Alone." I swallowed back the lump in my throat. "My son is named for him."
She inhaled sharply. "I have lost both of my parents and my brothers, but Greta, Gyda and Garsan were a different type of loss. There are three parts of me missing, one for each of my beloved children," she said. "Holes in my heart and in my life that will never heal completely."
She described how I had felt, the ache that existed whether I thought of my uncle daily or years passed and I didn't utter his name or think of our time together. It had taken me a lifetime to process my grief over a person who had been in my life for mere months. I wasn't sure I could survive losing a child I had raised from infancy, a person who had placed all of his trust and love into being mine.
"I have dreams of him sometimes, dreams of him fearlessly riding horses through the pastures. He was not well enough to be on horseback as the fits would seize him at any time, putting him in mortal danger. He always wanted to ride like his sisters, but we forbid him from doing such reckless acts. I regret holding him back, even if it could have injured him. In the end, I stole from him."
"You must miss Gersan terribly."
Hilda picked up the knife. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. "It would be selfish for me to miss him."
"I'm not sure I understand."
"Gersan was robbed of the life a boy should have, the joy of mischief and mud. We had to keep a close eye on him, always calling his name if he wandered too far from our sight. I had forgotten what it was like to constantly peek out the back window to see if he was well, to keep a boy tethered to his mother when he should have been free to explore the woods and ponds and the pastures he would one day call his own if life were not so cruel and God so selfish."
She briefly resumed peeling potatoes, then paused and stared at a distant point and I wondered if she recalled him with greater clarity, if the shape of his face and the sound of his voice would return to her and bring her peace.
"Were Gyda and Greta close in age to Gersan?"
She shook her head. "He was born when they were six. An unexpected blessing." At last she smiled. "They were all blessings, but he was our boy. He was our son."
"Hilda, may I ask why don't you speak of your son and daughters?"
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Her lips parted, but before she spoke, the front door opened and we both jumped.
"No more, Grandson," Hilda whispered. She grabbed an onion and cut it in half.
"Wife!" Toke shouted, the door slamming behind him.
"I am in the kitchen," Hilda shouted in return.
Toke appeared a moment later, his mouth agape when he noticed his wife weeping. She held up the onion and he nodded, seeming relieved.
"Where is Phelan?" I asked.
"Across the street visiting," Toke answered.
I furrowed my brow. "With whom is he visiting?"
"Family."
I was certain somehow the translation had become misconstrued in my mind. "I beg your pardon?"
"Your Great Aunt and cousin," Toke answered.
"We have additional family members? Here in Skyderhelm?"
"My sister," Hilda answered with a nod. "She lives across the street with her daughter." She placed her hand on my shoulder. "Introduce yourself, Grandson. They will be glad to meet you."