Free The Drifters by James A. Michener Page B

women, including those shy Laplanders who in their brightly woven garments came down from their reindeer herds in the north. The reader will understand that Britta did not tell me in so many words, ‘I was counted among the beauties in Tromsø,’ for she was modest, but I could see for myself. Also, some of the things she told me in our conversations in Spain could have happened only to a girl who was quietly sure of her attractiveness.
    That spring, when we talked so often, she was eighteen, not overly tall, superbly proportioned, with large white teeth, a flawless northern complexion and exquisite hair in a pageboy bob, not platinum as is so often found in Finland and northern Norway, nor honey-colored as occurs in the southern areas, but a soft white with a touch of amber champagne. She laughed easily, had passed the stage of embarrassment and was constantly being touched and approved and even kissed by the free-and-easy patrons of the bar in which she worked. The American sailors, who were obviously charmed, referred to her as ‘our Viking,’ and she did indeed have a quality of composure and robust good nature which must have characterized those daring people. Also, like most educated Scandinavians, she spoke English without a heavy accent but with just enough peculiarity to add to her winsomeness. But when I have said all this, I have missed the essential quality of this lovely girl. She gave the impression of largeness; she was neither tall nor plump, but her shoulders were broad and so were her hips. She walked with assurance and had about her countenance an openness that was disarming and a cleanliness that caused all men to be attracted to her. She was big in spirit.
    In this fifteenth summer her mother arranged once more for Mr. Mogstad to take the children out to visit the sunken
Tirpitz
, and although Britta had seen it often, she went along, and when she found below her the shadowy monster she appreciated for the first time the courage it must have taken to oppose this dreadful force, and tears might have come to her eyes, except that she used her fists to push them back. Mr. Mogstad saw this and said a few comforting words, which Britta rejected. When thelaunch docked and Mrs. Bjørndahl took the other children home, Britta stayed behind to help stow the gear, and as she carried a set of cushions to the sail locker, she suddenly found Mr. Mogstad behind her, grabbing at her and forcing her down onto the floor.
    She was so startled she did not cry out, a fact which Mr. Mogstad interpreted as coyness, and before she knew what was happening, he had her mostly undressed and himself as well and was forcing himself upon her. She had discussed sex with her schoolmates and knew a good deal about it, but was quite unprepared for this assault and in a kind of dumb panic allowed him to have his way, not certain what other course might be available to her. It was a messy business, clumsy, frightening and totally disgusting, with Mr. Mogstad’s dirty mustaches and fetid breath adding to the ugliness. When it was over, the shipbuilder leered: ‘We won’t tell anyone, will we?’ She was so perplexed by his behavior that she merely looked at him and went home.
    Frequently that summer Mr. Mogstad approached her with invitations to the sail locker, and now that she had an opportunity to study him more carefully, she found him to be a fat man in his middle forties even more objectionable than she had thought, with gray teeth and a nervous twitch. He was really quite repulsive and she found it distasteful even to acknowledge his unctuous civilities. As to his invitations for additional sex, which he said he was willing to pay for if she preferred, they were preposterous, and one day she snapped, ‘Go away! You’re disgusting!’
    In mid-July she struck up a serious friendship with a neighbor boy, a good-looking fellow of seventeen named Haakon, and together they located various dark corners where others would not expect