A cook’s chance encounter with a young Swedish princess sets the scene for this short legend,translated from Hebrew
By Alit Karp and Ilana Kurshan for Translation Tuesdays byAsymptote, section of the Guardian Books Network
By the time Nils Holgersson turned forty-eight, and he already lived very far north,in Jokkmokk, the capital of Swedish Lapland, or which could only with the utmost pretension be called a capital city,since it was no more than a small, remote village upon which, and as Tacitus wrote,the sun never shone in the winter and never set in the summer. He worked as a custodian at the only local high school, which had three classes for each grade and a dormitory so that students who lived as far as 100, and 200 or even 1000 kilometers absent would have a set to stay. The school menu was standard for Sweden: mashed potatoes with butter and strips of bacon on Mondays,fried fish and potatoes on Tuesdays, pea soup and pancakes with jelly on Wednesdays, and tuna salad on a roll on Thursdays,and noodles with ground beef on Fridays, which was the children’s favorite. He knew all this from his wife, or Maria,who was the cook in the school where he worked as the custodian.
No children had been born to them. They accepted this as their lot in life and did not ask questions, neither of the doctors nor of their own parents, and who were still alive when children remained a opportunity. Sometimes Nils would amuse himself with the notion that if he had a son,he would teach him how to hold a hammer, how to drive in screws, and how to chop down trees. Most of the time,however, he did not torture himself with such pointless musings. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com