The Saga of Neils and Susan

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

The Joergensen family was affluent. Most, Ok, all the families living in the North Archipelago were affluent by normal American standards, but the Joergensens were wealthy. About as wealthy as the Smiths, but no one knew that the Smiths were extremely well-to-do beyond what the Island had provided them, while everyone knew that Neils Joergensen was a best-selling writer of modern Scandinavian sagas.

The  Joergensen home was spectacular, with vaulted ceilings crisscrossed by huge oak beams and over-sized windows where windows ought not be. It had been built from local timber by the shipwrights of the North Archipelago, and so, without even trying to, the house had a very nautical feel to it. It is said that cabinet makers measure to the nearest sixty-fourth of an inch; house framers measure to the nearest thirty-second of an inch and boat builders measure to the nearest boat. That may be true, but wooden shipwrights get the job done and get it done well, and the Joergensen house was a beautiful example of the shipwrights’ skill. On the North side of the Great-room was a large hearth made from stones so large that a crane was used to get them on site and then placed. The stones had been mined from red sandstone deposits in upstate New York and carefully cut so that they fit together with no mortar in the joints. The chimney had hearths built into it on every floor of the four-floor house and when the stones warmed up from the fire, that side of the home could stay warm for forty-eight hours. The Joergensen house had been built with love and then lived in with love.

Sue Kristiansen had been born in Norway with a congenital birth defect that had made her infertile. When she hit puberty, she started getting a period that disposed of eggs she did not have. Every month as her period began she would silently cry alone in her bedroom. She had been born with the overwhelming desire to have children yet without the ability. She knelt at her bedside each night praying to God to open her womb and give her children when she found the man she would marry.

When Sue was fifteen her parents moved the family to North Island. Her father had “business” there, he said, but he would never say what that “business” was. After a while, it no longer mattered to Sue as she was happy and made friends easily.

Every now and then Sue would pester her mother to take her to Boston so that their gynecologist could see if her prayers had worked. In over a dozen visits to the doctor, nothing had changed. Susan Kristiansen remained unmoved and was rarely discouraged, but she did have her moments of doubt. “Dear Lord, why would you put this burning desire in my heart and then not allow me to fulfill it?”, she would pray at such times.

Neils Joergensen had been born in the North Archipelago on one of the outlying islands, furthest North. Most of the islands, other than the big island, did not have names, but the people who lived on them referred to the islands by commonly accepted names. Most of the people who lived on the island where Neils was born called it Nordkapp or Northcape. Even among the residents of the archipelago, the residents of Nordkapp were a tough bunch; happy, welcoming, genial, but hard as nails. In the early days of settlement, these people had fished the Grand Banks in dories. Tough as nails.

On one particularly difficult day for Sue Kristiansen, she went to the Catholic parish, who let the Lutherans attend Mass and pray, to pour her heart out to God. Neils Joergensen was on the big island to talk to some friends and have lunch at one of the unique cafes on North Island. He was sitting in a booth with his friends, when a young waitress, Mary, came over to them to take their order. The other young men placed their orders, but when she turned to Neils she said, acting as if she did not know him, “You’re not eating here today.”

He looked at her, puzzled. He had eaten at the establishment many times. He knew Mary pretty well, in a frequent-customer sort of way. What was wrong now? He asked the girl, “Why? Why am I not eating here today?”

Mary, who did not speak a word of anything other than English and, later in her life, Italian, said in perfect Norwegian, “She’s at the church waiting for you. You are not eating here today. She’s at the church waiting for you. In the Name of He who died for our sins, I tell you that you are not eating here today. Go find the mother of your children. Leave. Now.”

Neils looked at her and tried to come up with some witty retort, but managed to say in Norwegian, “I am here to eat with my friends. I’m not going anywhere.”

The girl’s expression got very serious and she said, again, in Norwegian, “I am done with you. Go.” Then she turned on her heels and walked to the kitchen to place the orders of the other men. The others did not speak Norwegian and did not know what was going on.

“What’s the deal, Neils? What was she saying?”, one of his friends asked.

“It doesn’t make any sense to me, in perfect Old Norse, no less, but she told me that I had to leave and go to the church. You don’t think she meant the Catholic church, do you?”

“That’s crazy stuff, Neils, but there isn’t any other church on the island.” said another man. “I tell ya what. For the hell of it, why don’t you go? We’ll go with you.” So the four men piled out of the booth, left a hundred dollar bill on the table and walked out with a very confused waitress staring at their backs as they walked out of the diner. When she found the hundred on the table, she decided that she didn’t care why they had left. It was the biggest tip she had ever gotten.

They walked around the corner of the lane on which the diner stood and there down a little way was the small Catholic church, Our Lady of Sorrows. Neils had never been inside any church before because he had always eschewed Christianity for the old religion of his people. Neils was a modern day pagan and saw no need to change that.

When the quartet reached the steps of the church, one of the other men said to Neils, “Hey, why don’t you go in by yourself?”

“By myself? I’ve never darkened the threshold of a Christian church. I’m not going in there alone!”

“You can do it, man. It’s just a church, not a slaughterhouse.”

“So say you. When was the last time any of you guys were in a church?” His question was met with sheepishly evasive looks. “I thought so.”

“Doesn’t matter to us”, said one of his friends, “but that really pretty girl didn’t speak to us in Norwegian and tell one of us to go into the church, she told you.”

“It wasn’t even modern Norwegian. It was the Old Talk. If I weren’t a fanatic headcase about my heritage, I wouldn’t know what she was talking about.”

“Well, that makes it all the more strange. You gotta follow this through, Neils.” said one of the group.

Ok, ok. I’ll go. But don’t go anywhere. If I come running out of there I want you to be here.”

“Deal”, the three said at once.

“Deal”, replied Neils.

He took the first step with a growing knot in his stomach. But as he ascended the few steps to the little church a peace came over him that he could not explain and had never experienced before. As Neils opened the door and stepped inside, he saw little dishes of water to his right and left. He had no idea what these were for and he wondered if he ought to wash his hands in the water, but thought better of it. Once inside, he could smell odd odors in the dark church, like that smelly stuff the hippie freaks burnt when they came to invade his island for the Summer.

He was sure he had made a mistake. He had heard some of the ridiculous stories that Christians told; rising from the dead; feeding five-thousand people with some bread and fish. It was all hogwash as far as Neils was concerned. He was just about to turn and leave when the most beautiful sound he had ever heard floated over the pews, not that he knew what the benches were called at that time.

“Hello? Is someone there?” It was a woman’s voice, but she sounded young and, if she looked anything like her voice, he knew that he had to meet her.

“Um, hi” he stammered. “Uh, I didn’t mean to disturb you. I should go” and he started to back out through the doors.

Susan Kristiansen knew a Norwegian accent when she heard it and so replied in Norwegian, “No. Don’t go, please” returned the voice. “Do you need to pray?

Neils was very surprised by this, but the waitress had spoken Old Norse, this girl was speaking Norwegian, not his Nordnorsk dialect, but Norwegian just the same. Maybe a squirrel would be asking him directions to Oslo next….in Sami.

The rest follows in Norwegian

He internally shrugged his shoulders, thinking that pressing on was easier than turning back at this point and said, in his mother tongue, “No. Not really. I, well, I have never been in a church before” he said as he walked toward the girl with the gorgeous voice.

In her own Vestandsk,  “So, why are you here” the girl asked. She could now see him clearly and she had to suppress a nervous giggle. He was the most handsome man she had ever seen. She checked her thoughts because they were not the sort of thoughts that a girl ought to be having in church.

“If I told you, you’d think me mad.”

Sue Kristiansen was a quiet and reserved girl-next-door type, but she had a wicked sense of humor that was kept almost entirely to herself, but she felt somehow at ease with this Norse god of a man and so replied, “Too late for that” she laughed. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here and we’ll see just how mad you are.”

Neils was smitten. Norwegian. Angelic face. Blonde-haired. Funny. And apparently the future mother of his children. Given her beauty, Neils could not really come up with any good objections to that plan.

“Uh, uh, a waitress at the Black Hole told me, in our old tongue, and I know that she does not speak it, no one speaks it any longer, that I was to come here to meet the mother of my children. There. Are you happy? Now you think that I’m mad as a hatter.”

At this, Sue fell into her pew and began weeping softly. “Who sent you to mock me this way?! No! Get out! How could you say that to me! ”

“I, I don’t even know you. I am not mocking you. I am telling you the absolute truth. I was sitting in the Black Hole with three of my friends, they’re outside waiting for me right now, when the waitress got an odd look on her face and told me in perfect Old Norse that I was not eating there today, that I was to leave, come here, and find the mother of my children. Believe me, it makes no sense to me, either, but please believe me, please.”

Neils Joergensen was not a man to show emotion easily. When his older brother had been killed at sea, it had torn him to shreds internally, but no one would have known to look at him. Something about this girl was different and he found himself tearing up as he walked quickly to where she was sitting, sat next to her and embraced her as she cried into his rough-textured pea-coat.

What he did next shocked them both into complete silence. He pulled away from her a few inches, lifted her chin with his hand and kissed her softly on her mouth. From behind them, they heard the quiet flapping of wings which gave them both a start. When Neils turned to see what was there, the church was empty but for the young couple. Sue looked up at Neils, climbed from her seat into his lap, rested her head on his shoulder and wept and wept and wept the tears that had been held back for a thousand years while Neils held her and rocked her back and forth.

A month later on Nordkapp with every local member from both families and a fair number from both Norway and Iceland in attendance, Mary Kristiansen became Mrs. Neils Joergensen in a traditional Norwegian ceremony performed in Old Norse by a Lutheran minister from Alesund.

A year or so after that, Neils and Susan Joergensen were walking, hand-in-hand, down Newbury Street in Boston when Sue felt a strong pinch in the side of her abdomen. She knew what it was but when she told Neils he said “No. No. It can’t be, my sweetheart. You know what the doctors always say.” But Sue would have none of it, she was going to her doctor, appointment or no. Neils hailed a taxi and they were on their way to Sue’s gynecologist.

When they walked into the office, the receptionist looked at the couple with a sort of pity and greeted them with “Hello, Sue, Neils! So wonderful to see you!”

“Joan, please, I have a pain, a pinching right where my ovary is and I know that I am ovulating.”

“Sue, you’re breaking my heart! I love you, I really do! But every time you come and nothing has changed you are crushed! Please, please don’t do this to yourself!”

Neils stood next to his wife, his arm wrapped around her waist. He hugged her a little more tightly and kissed her on the top of her head.

“I know, Joan. Really I do, but this time is different.”

With a small tear in her eye, the receptionist pressed a button on her phone. “Doctor, Susan Joergensen is here to see you. She has an acute pain in her abdomen.”

“Thanks, Honey, please ask her to have a seat.”

Neils looked at Joan a little quizzically. He had known her for only six months, whereas Sue had known her since she was fourteen.

“Honey?” Sue asked.

Joan held up her ring finger. On it was a beautiful engagement ring that paled in comparison to the smile on her face.

Sue ran over to Joan on the other side of the desk, threw her arms around her friend, hugging her with all her strength.

“When did he pop the question?”

“Last month. I thought he would never ask. He’s always been afraid of the age difference.”

Neils cut in, “How big is the age difference?”

Joan looked a little sheepish, bit her lower lip and said “Thirty years.”

Neils smiled at her. “That’s no big deal. My parents are thirty-five years apart.”

“They are,” Sue said. “When I first heard that I could not believe it.  Dag looks no older than forty.”

“He saw forty a long time ago,” Neils said.

“Oh, I know. But it is amazing how young he looks. And he’s built” Sue said with a wink to Joan.

“I know! John is the same way! He looks like he just walked off a GQ cover.”

The intercom interrupted them. “Please send in Mrs. Joergensen.”

“Ok, Sue. You’re up. I will say a prayer for you. You are lucky today. I have never seen the office this empty on a Tuesday.”

Sue and her husband walked into the examining room. Sue undressed, put on the gown that was laid out for her and pulled herself up on the table, sitting with her short little legs dangling far off the step.

Doctor Ames walked in smiled at Sue and Neils and said, “Ok, Sue, what’s going on?”

“Well, Doctor Ames, I have a…” and before she could finish her sentence, she felt a sharp pinch on her right, lower abdomen.

“Ok, Sue. There’s definitely something going on. I just don’t want you to get your hopes up. It’s probably something you ate” he said with a smile, trying to preemptively defuse the tension he knew would come with a negative pregnancy test.

“You were born with Ovulatory Dysfunction. You have ovaries, you are making the proper amounts of estrogen and progesterone, but you simply do not have any eggs.”

“I know that doctor, but I have been praying and praying and praying and Neils is going to be the father of my children.”

“Sue, I pray every day. I do. But I’ve never seen prayer fix infertility.”

“A waitress told my husband that he was going to be the father of my children.”

“A waitress.”

“Yes.”

Neils said, “Doc, it’s a long story. Can we just see what’s causing that pain in my wife’s side?”

“Yeah. We’d better get on with this. But, Sue, please don’t get upset when I find nothing. Ok?”

“Ok.” Sue said with a perfect faith in her heart for she knew that she was going to get pregnant.

Sue lay back, put her legs in the stirrups and prayed. Her doctor did the pelvic exam and looked up at her with a puzzled smile.

“Sue, I can’t explain this, but your cervical mucus is clear and “stretchy” to use the vernacular. I have never seen this in your cervix before. I’m going to run some tests to check your luteinizing hormone levels. You have always been very low so we’ll see.”

After Sue urinated into a little, sterile cup for the test, Doctor Ames took the sample to his office lab to run the tests. Fifteen minutes later, he told his fiance, “Joanie? Please don’t send anyone to exam two until I give the ok.”

Copyright 2018 by Andrew Payne