Torhild

Torhild is a Beate, a long-oval, somewhat flattened tuber with smooth clear red skin, shallow eyes that are darker than the skin, and white to cream flesh. The kind was bred by A. P. Lunden at the agricultural college at Ås in 1966 from Carnea crossed with Doon Star x Åspotet. For decades it was the most used potato in Norway, practical, all-purpose, holding together when boiled. It is now being overtaken by newer kinds, and Torhild has noticed that each Fill there are fewer of them in the cellar.

Beate is resistant to wart, very strong against common scab, and fairly resistant to blight in the tuber, though weak in the leaf. That is why Torhild is among the Rot Wardens and sleeps in the Sacks: a body that rarely takes the diseases can walk among those who do. Torhild's skin is the cleanest in the Sacks. What Torhild fears is the inside: Beate often gets internal rust spot, and nothing on the skin shows it.

Torhild's kind and Fenna's kind are the parents of Hårek, crossed in 1985 (Pimpernel). Torhild visits the bins on the one night a week the Sacks are quiet, and Fenna is usually asleep for it. Torhild talks anyway.

Torhild and Lucienne do not get on. One is the potato that was in every Norwegian cellar; the other has a name older than anyone's and will not let the Sacks forget it. Lucienne has also seen the paper upside down, once, and has said nothing about it, which Torhild finds far worse than if Lucienne had.

Brae shares the Sacks and argues with Torhild at every Fill. Brae wants the newcomers brought through before the dark; Torhild wants them kept at the curing corner until their cuts have closed. Torhild has never once won, and has never once stopped checking the ones Brae brings.

Torhild cannot read, not even the keeper's labels, which everyone else in the cellar can. Torhild knows each label by its shape, its nail and the slope of the keeper's hand. The forecast is something the keeper's voice read aloud at the hatch once, and Torhild kept every word of it, the way Brae keeps first sentences. The Sacks take it as news because Torhild says it as news, and because nobody in the Sacks can read it either.

Moments for a card or strip

• Condensation night. In a wet night, warm air comes through the hatch and the cold tubers sweat. Torhild walks all night, turning the wet ones to the air, and in the morning says it was a quiet night.
• The quiet carry. After the quiet carry, the panel shows an empty place in the sack and Torhild sitting beside it, holding up the paper and giving the forecast to nobody.
• Rot in the Sacks. In the seasonal arc Rot in the Sacks, Torhild wants the Sacks sealed off, Brae wants to keep walking newcomers through them, and both are right.
• Upside down. A wordless card: Torhild gives the forecast to the Sacks, paper held high. In the corner of the panel, from the bins, Lucienne, who cannot read print either but knows a picture upside down when she sees one, tilts that whole long body to match it.