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23
KAREN
A NOVEL
T HIS woman Karen was a norwegian. She was
dressed in heavy men’s clothes, the trousers put down
into boottops. She was not old, she was not ugly, she
was workworn.
She stood looking through a crack in the barn
door up at the farmhouse on the hill. Dorothea was dead...
Dorothea. The daughters would be coming up to the funeral
tomorrow. Dorothea had slipped and fallen on the icy ground.
Karen had heard the doctor telling the neighbours at church;
but no daughters had come to take care of her. All the week
before Dorothea died Karen was tortured with a longing to
do something for her. She wished she had the courage to go
to her, to offer to serve her, to die for her. But they were fine
people, they had not come from her part of the country, there
was something about her that made people shun her.
Early in the morning she had begun watching the house up
the road. Hours and hours passed and she did not move. A
harsh low day outside. Inside the sound of cattle chewing,
blowing, sleeping, the smell of hay, wet bran and strong manure.
Throughts scratched across Karen’s brain like long thorns or
spread out thin and were nothing when she tried to hold them.
Only pictures and feelings turned and turned in her mind
today. She pictured Dorothea in church...the pastor saying
her name twice when he spoke to her., .calling her Fru. A
little flat white lacepiece on black black hair, thin slant eyes, dark
skin, cheekbones, lappblood...reindeer lapp. Jewelry: a
carved silver scentbottle, heartshaped with a crown on the top,
chain and rings. Long hands folded on the black dress.. .not
listening to the pastor.. .Dorothea brooding for the old coun
try, filling the church with quiet brooding. She sat beside
arrogant redhaired Andreas. Karen did not listen to the pas
tor either. It was not like church since he .had taken off his
collar.. .everything in this new country was the same. She
watched Dorothea, she could not take her eyes away. Doro
thea always nodded goodday to her. Karen knew that it was
