The Lemon Table Read Online Free PDF

therefore one who should wait her turn. As incomers, the Lindwalls kept to themselves, which was proper, while regularly attending church, which was also proper. Gossip said that when Axel first handed Barbro into the rowing boat they acquired that summer, she had asked him, anxiously, “You are sure, Axel, that there are no sharks in the lake?” But gossip, in its honesty, could not be certain that Mrs. Lindwall was not making a joke.
    ONCE A FORTNIGHT , on a Tuesday, Anders Bodén would take the steamboat up the lake to inspect the seasoning sheds. He was standing at the rail by the first-class cabin when he became aware of a presence beside him.
    “Mrs. Lindwall.” As he spoke, his wife’s words came into his head. “She’s got less chin on her than a squirrel.” Embarrassed, he looked across at the shoreline and said, “That’s the brickworks.”
    “Yes.”
    A moment later, “And the deaf-and-dumb asylum.”
    “Yes.”
    “Of course.” He realized he had already pointed them out to her from the klockstapel .
    She was wearing a straw boater with a blue ribbon.
    TWO WEEKS later she was on the steamer again. She had a sister who lived just beyond Rättvik. He tried to make himself interesting to her. He asked if she and her husband had yet visited the cellar where Gustavus Vasa had been concealed from his Danish pursuers. He explained about the forest, the way its colours and textures changed with the seasons, and how, even from the boat, he could tell the manner in which it was being worked, whereas someone else would merely see a mass of trees. She followed his pointing arm politely; it was perhaps true that in profile her chin was just a little underhung, and the tip of her nose strangely mobile. He realized that he had never developed a way of talking to women, and that up to now it had never bothered him.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “My wife maintains that I should be wearing the club-button of the Swedish Tourists’ Union.”
    “I like a man to tell me what he knows,” replied Mrs. Lindwall.
    Her words confused him. Were they a criticism of Gertrud, an encouragement to him, or a mere statement of fact?
    AT SUPPER THAT EVENING his wife said, “What do you talk to Mrs. Lindwall about?”
    He did not know what to reply, or rather how to reply. But as usual he took refuge in the simplest meaning of the words, and pretended no surprise at the question. “The forest. I was explaining about the forest.”
    “And was she interested? In the forest, I mean.”
    “She grew up in the city. She had not seen so many trees until she came to this region.”
    “Well,” said Gertrud, “there are an awful lot of trees in a forest, aren’t there, Anders?”
    He wanted to say: she was more interested in the forest than you have ever been. He wanted to say: you are unkind about her looks. He wanted to say: who saw me talking to her? He said none of this.
    Over the next fortnight, he found himself reflecting that Barbro was a name with a lovely weight to it, and softer-sounding than … other names. He thought also that a blue ribbon round a straw hat made his heart cheerful.
    On the Tuesday morning, as he was leaving, Gertrud said, “Give my regards to little Mrs. Lindwall.”
    He suddenly wanted to say, “And what if I fall in love with her?” Instead, he replied, “I shall if I see her.”
    ON THE STEAMER , he barely managed the normal slow civilities. Before they had cast off, he began telling her what he knew. About timber, how it is grown, transported, hewn. He explained about bastard sawing and quarter sawing. He explained about the three parts of the trunk: pith, heart-wood and sap-wood. In trees which have arrived at maturity, the heart-wood is in the largest proportion, and the sap-wood is firm and elastic. “A tree is like a man,” he said. “It takes three score years and ten to arrive at maturity, and is useless after a hundred.”
    He told her how once, at Bergsforsen, where an iron bridge