A Faraway Island Read Online Free

the fish, and it stares right back at her with its dead, white eye. Aunt Märta cuts the head off hers and uses her knife to remove the skin. Stephie watches and imitates. The fish head is parted from the body with a horrid crack.
    Aunt Märta pours two glasses of milk and hands Stephie a bowl of red preserves. Back home, they had jam with their pancakes, and sometimes raspberry jam in their tea. Papa always said his mother, who was born in Russia, drank her tea with a spoonful of jam in it. But jam with fish? Stephie takes a spoonful and puts it on her plate. To her relief, she sees Aunt Märta do so as well.
    She pokes at the fish with her fork, then puts a tiny bitein her mouth and takes a deep drink of milk, swallowing as fast as she can. The milk masks the fishy taste.
    If only she didn’t have that sickening fish head on her plate! She tries not to look at it. But pretending it isn’t there only earns her a mouthful of bones in her next bite. The bones stick in her throat.
    She’s nearly emptied her glass. Does she dare ask for more milk? And what should she say?
    She drinks up the last drop and points to the pitcher.
    “
Bitte
,” she says. The German word for “please.”
    Aunt Märta nods and pours her another glass. Stephie chews and swallows, chews and swallows. She hides as much of the fish as she can under the pile of skin and bones on her plate. Once again her milk glass is empty. She can’t possibly ask for even more, and can just barely get the last bite of fish to go down.
    Aunt Märta’s finished eating. She gets up from the table, takes a pot of hot water from the stove, and pours it into the sink. Then she points to the plates and to the sink filled with water.
    In the days when they lived in their own large apartment, Stephie’s family had a cook, a housemaid, and a cleaning lady who came once a week. After they moved, Mamma did all the housework herself. Papa thought Stephie and Nellie should help with simpler tasks like the dishes and dusting. But Mamma refused.
    “My daughters are never going to be household slaves,” she told him.
    Well, she should see Stephie now, awkwardly scraping the remains of the fish from the plates down into the sloppail. One at a time, Stephie slides the plates into the hot water. Finding the dishcloth, she washes away the fatty remains; then she rinses each plate in fresh water.
    By the time Stephie has cleaned up after the meal, her hands are swollen and red. She wipes the table and rinses the dishcloth under the cold-water tap. The dishcloth has a sour smell.
    Aunt Märta sweeps the floor and wipes the stove. She inspects each plate and, pointing with one finger, shows Stephie where she hasn’t done a good job on one of them.
    When they’re finished, Aunt Märta unties her apron, turns on the radio in the front room, and settles into the rocking chair. Stephie finds herself standing in the kitchen. If there had been music on the radio she would have gone in and listened. But it’s just the voice of a man speaking words she cannot understand. Aunt Märta doesn’t seem bothered about her right now, so Stephie decides to go up to her room.

Stephie tiptoes quietly up the stairs and into the little room under the eaves. She opens the bottom dresser drawer and removes her stationery and her fountain pen. The pen is new, a gift from her father on her last evening at home.
    “So that you can write us beautiful letters,” he said as he lifted it out of the little box lined in dark blue velvet.
    Stephie takes a sheet of writing paper, along with the pen, and settles herself in at the bay window. She unscrews the cap on the pen and looks out at the landscape.
    Rain clatters against the windowpane. The wind is gusty, but she can see the stony slope that leads down to the water. Patches of grass sprout up here and there, as do a few gnarled juniper bushes. The water’s edge is marked by a rocky shore, stones and pebbles as far as the eye can see.Waves are crashing