Winter went by so quickly and peacefully that Simon began to think Oswald truly had given up on his deranged hunt for Sofia. The pension had been full of Christmas cheer all December. Lights on the trees and lanterns in the snow. After one cold spell, the snow had fallen so heavily that Simon had to shovel every day.
He didn’t have any visitors from ViaTerra. When Sofia called she was always in a good mood; she said that Oswald must have found someone else to harass, and didn’t even want to talk about it. She went on and on about how much she liked San Francisco until Simon almost wished he were there with her.
It was only when he walked by the manor that he felt that unpleasant sensation in his belly. So he kept a watchful eye on them. He had ignored that feeling once before and would never make the same mistake again.
But in late February, he received an email, the strangest one he’d ever gotten. At first he thought it was spam, it was such gibberish, but the sender’s address caught him off-guard: [email protected]. Simon knew the cult’s ethics unit used this address to respond to email from anxious relatives of disgraced members. Since these members were not allowed to have contact with the outside world, the ethics unit would write that the person in question was in good health but unavailable for the time being. It was a standard measure. But now he had received an email from this account. He wondered if Benny might have sent it, but why on earth would he send a bunch of random letters and numbers?
T15GK150B
T14AWT21O
Don’t respond
It was the ‘don’t respond’ part that Simon was hung up on. Why send an email if you didn’t want a response? If anyone but Benny had sent this is, it meant they had taken a great risk. They must have sneaked into the guards’ booth or the staff office to use the computer there. But why send this nonsense to Simon?
Then he realized that the second letter in each word had been replaced by a number. He took out a notebook and a pen and copied down the message, trying to replace the numbers with their corresponding letters of the alphabet. 15 was O, 14 was N, and so on. But the message was still illegible. Now Simon was sure it was a code, a message for him. He turned the paper upside down, feeling hopeless, and then he saw the word ‘book’ written backwards. All at once, he could read the message.
GOT BOOK
WANT OUT
Don’t respond
He had made contact with Jacob. Simon had almost forgotten he’d sent the book. He had the sudden urge to go straight to the ViaTerra gate and demand that they free Jacob. But he knew it wasn’t that simple. The certainty that Jacob wanted out made Simon’s heart beat faster. He’d suspected that there were others who were sick of being enslaved but didn’t know how to escape. This is it, he thought. I really need to think this through. It’s important not to be too rash.
The next day, after work, he went to the village and bought an invitation card for a baptism, the kind where you fill in the date and write a greeting to the recipient. Back at home he thought for a long time about how to formulate his message. He disguised his handwriting, making it elegant and soft. He put the date for the baptism a week away, at five o’clock in the afternoon. That seemed a little late in the day, but he had no choice. Then he wrote his greeting on the blank, right-hand side of the card.
Hi, Jacob!
Hope you can come to Elin’s baptism.
We’ll gather by the little gate outside the church.
Warm greetings
Cousin Beata
He inspected the card before inserting it into the envelope, almost certain that the guards would allow Jacob to receive it. Not because it was innocent, but because this sort of invitation was upsetting to the recipient. Another family event to decline – it was a reminder that they could no longer see their relatives. And the guards liked messing with the staff. Also, they were too lazy to find out if Jacob really had a cousin named Beata.
The letter felt warm and alive in his hand as he addressed and stamped it. The closest mailbox was a few hundred metres away, and as the letter thumped into it he sent up a silent prayer that everything would be as hectic and chaotic as usual over at the manor. That the guards wouldn’t notice it had been postmarked on the island. And that the letter would slip right past the censors.
That was the start of a week of impatient waiting. What if they didn’t have time to deal with the mail? What would happen if they asked Jacob who Beata was? Maybe the email was a trap – maybe Jacob was working with Benny to figure out whether Simon was a traitor. So much could go wrong. And yet he wouldn’t give up hope.
One week later, he was standing outside the small gate at quarter to five, breathless and tense. At first he thought he would wait outside the gate, but then he realized that it would be stupid to whisper over the wall. His mind was going a mile a minute: He’s not coming, he didn’t get my letter, this is completely nuts, I’m acting like the place is a prison, no, worse, it’s like I’m trying to sneak over the border into North Korea.
He was standing behind his usual oak trunk. The yard was deserted, aside from a duck strutting around on the lawn. The aspens and maples had changed colour and created a red-and-yellow dome over the annexes.
There was a sudden snapping sound from the ground next to him. When he turned, Jacob was standing right there. His eyes were wide, as if he was seeing a ghost.
‘You scared me!’ Simon said, sizing up Jacob. Beyond the fear on his face, he hadn’t changed a bit: his farmer clothes, his tan, and the faint odour of cow manure were all the same.
Simon wanted to hug him, but it seemed premature.
‘How did you get in?’
‘I have a key to the gate.’
‘What the hell? That’s incredible!’
‘Great, isn’t it? You can leave with me if you want to. All you have to do is step out into freedom.’
‘Simon, I can’t believe you’re standing right here. This is crazy.’
‘So are you coming with me?’
‘It’s a little complicated. I spent all night thinking about it. It’s the animals. They’ll neglect them if I leave, and maybe even slaughter them. What do I do?’
Jacob’s voice had risen; Simon put a finger to his lips.
‘What did you think about the card I sent? Was it easy to understand?’
‘At first I thought I had lost my mind. That I had some cousin I didn’t even know about, but then I figured it out. This is just insane, that you’re here. That this gate can be opened.’
‘Do you think there’s anyone else who wants to leave? You can pass through freely, there’s no alarm, it doesn’t leave any sort of trace, and they can hide at my place to start with.’
Simon wondered what the heck he had just said, but it did actually seem like a good idea.
‘I’ll ask around. Can you come back in a few days?’
‘Of course, but you have to keep this quiet. Not a word about me, or the gate. Is Oswald back yet?’
‘He’ll be here in early April. Madde’s been turning the place upside down, polishing everything, even the damn doorknobs. I can hardly find time to feed the animals, and the manure is piling up in the barn – as you may be able to smell.’
Simon didn’t say anything, although the odour wafting off Jacob was overwhelming when he stood so close.
‘Listen, Simon, what’s it like out there? Will I be okay?’
‘Definitely. You could easily get a job on one of the farms. The pension is doing better than ever, and all the meat and eggs and stuff come from here on the island. I’m sure they need workers.’
‘Shit, I want to get out, but what about the animals? The cows are already staring at me with their big, sad eyes. It’s like they know I want to take off.’
‘There’s no rush. Just think about it.’
Suddenly they heard a motorcycle roar to life. ‘I have to go. See you the day after tomorrow. Same time. Leave a note at the gate if you get held up. Use your secret code.’
Jacob grinned, gave a thumbs
up, and vanished.
When Simon returned two days later, he was a little late to arrive. Inga Hermansson had come to find Simon out in the field where he was working; she was all keyed up.
‘A member of the jury called. He wondered if you and I would be home this evening. We will be, right?’
‘I just have to run an errand in town, but I’ll be home by dinnertime.’
‘Do you suppose…’ she said.
‘I guess we’ll see.’
When Simon opened the gate to the manor, something seemed off. Everything was quiet and still. Not a single sound was coming from within the walls. He got held up, Simon thought. Something happened. They caught him out. But he opened the gate and slipped in anyway.
There they stood before him, as stiff as statues. Jacob with his mouth agape and Anna with a backpack slung over one shoulder, eyes wide. The beginning of a sound, a cry, came from her mouth when she saw Simon, but Jacob shook his head in warning.
‘I can’t stand it anymore,’ Anna whispered.
Simon could see in her eyes that she truly meant it.
31
Everything got better during that winter. Oswald transformed. His fanatical obsession with Sofia Bauman disappeared. He stopped sending letters to the intermediary loser. He seemed absolutely consumed by the new theses he was writing.
He was sometimes euphoric about them when Anna-Maria showed up for a meeting, and he read them out loud to her, his eyes blazing.
‘Did you know that most people spend more time in their heads than on Earth?’ he said one day. ‘That’s why we have ViaTerra. To give people their lives back.’
She didn’t always understand what he meant, but she supposed he could reach such depths that it was practically inhuman, so she affirmed him with words of praise and delighted cries.
Oswald was so friendly during these months that Anna-Maria was bewildered. Her visits, formerly so hectic and businesslike, now felt like cosy get-togethers for chatting and reading letters from Oswald’s fans. The piles of mail had grown considerably since he’d published his book. Women sent half-naked pictures of themselves, and some of them were incredibly attractive. But Oswald just laughed.
‘Look at that idiot. It’s disgusting how she’s whoring herself out like this. Good thing I have a classy lady,’ he said, running a finger over her cheek.
He was being so tender that Anna-Maria got suspicious. She almost missed those moments of roughness, when he messed with her, and she wanted to reassure herself that that side of him still existed. So she brought up Sofia Bauman, usually a topic that unleashed his rage, but not even that got him going this time.
‘You’ve got to let go sometime, right? Didn’t you see her in those recordings? Just unbelievable. Her guilty conscience about all the lies she spread about me will be the end of her – we don’t need to lift a finger. Believe me, she’s going to self-destruct.’
One day, Anna-Maria put on a blouse with a neckline so low it barely covered her nipples, and she didn’t bother with a bra. She put her hair up to bare her neck and throat, then dabbed on the perfume he said he liked. Standing close to him, she bent her head back, pretending she needed to crack her joints. She knew that, like her, he liked choking sex.
He took the bait right away, squeezing his hand around her throat and shoving her up against the wall. It turned her on – she began to breathe heavily, and he squeezed harder. Just the perfect amount, making her slightly dizzy.
It ended there, but it was enough for her to realize that the spark was in no way gone from him. Still, she wondered sometimes. He’d gone without sex for over a year. It would have been easy to have a quickie against the wall. Not once had a guard entered the room during her visits. But he always stopped himself at the last second, giving some excuse about how he didn’t want to put their future at risk. He was a man who liked to drive things to the very edge, test every last boundary.
Despite this troublesome moment, the whole winter passed in a pleasant rush. He sent her to ViaTerra sometimes – that sure wasn’t an honourable task. Those idiots were a few sandwiches short of a picnic. They mostly looked like zombies, and never got a damn thing done – the place was starting to look neglected. She was glad she wouldn’t be in Bosse’s or Madeleine’s shoes when Oswald was released. He would unleash hell on them.
Christmas and New Year’s came and went, and they got to spend one hour together on Christmas Eve. They didn’t do anything traditional; Oswald hated Christmas. Despite that, however, he gave her a gentle kiss on the lips and said, ‘Merry Christmas, hottie!’ at which point she almost levitated off the cold concrete floor out of sheer joy.
It wasn’t until the end of February, about a month before Oswald’s release, that he began to get restless. He made her confirm the date several times, and the exact procedure for how it would all happen. In the end he decided he would spend his first night out at a hotel in Gothenburg, and head to ViaTerra the next day. He had started asking awkward questions about ViaTerra – how it looked, whether the staff understood the importance of the success he’d found with his autobiography. She told him the truth: the staff seemed lost without a leader. The manor looked neglected, and she had pointed this out to Madde, with no results. This unleashed a tirade that was not, thank God, directed at her, but at the incompetence of the staff.
‘I want you to do me a favour,’ he said one day.
‘Anything.’
‘Get me a meeting with that Damian. I want to talk to him in private.’
‘Not on your life!’ The words slipped out of her before she could stop them. ‘I mean, I’ve broken off contact with him since what happened with the camera,’ she hurried to add.
‘Then you’ll have to initiate contact again.’
‘But why?’
‘Jesus Christ, are you going to pry into my personal business like this when I get out, too?’ he snapped.
‘No, of course not, but I don’t understand. You have that character you were sending letters to. Why do you need to meet with Damian?’
‘For one thing, that guy is no longer working for me in that capacity. For another, this isn’t the kind of thing I’d want to put in writing.’
‘What do you mean? Why can’t you tell me?’
‘Because it’s extremely personal.’
‘I don’t understand why he gets to know about your personal matters, and I don’t.’
‘You don’t have to understand,’ he interrupted her. He had that look on his face. The one that wouldn’t brook any contradiction. Soon everything they had built up over the past few months would be destroyed.
‘The reason you don’t understand is because you still don’t trust me. And I take offence at that.’
But now a sly expression appeared on his face; his eyes looked playful. The realization came to her along with a wave of relief. How had she not seen it? He was obviously preparing something for the two of them for when he was released. Some sort of thank you for her help and her friendship, and maybe even something to celebrate their love. Naturally, that was what was going on. She gave him a hesitant smile.
‘I can call him. But this is all between the two of you.’
‘Exactly. Because I don’t want you there.’
‘But what should I tell the guards? You’re not even related. Or friends.’
‘Tell them he’s your assistant. Taking over your duties for a day.’
When Anna-Maria thought about what Helga McLean would have to say about this, it felt like there was a snake twisting in her belly.
‘Okay, fine,’ she sighed, and his mood changed as suddenly as a chameleon changing colours. He was back to being super pleasant again.
Before she left that day, he took her head between his hands and gazed into her eyes for a long moment.
‘You’re my Annie, my sweet, wonderful Annie,’ he said, giving her a light kiss on the lips. ‘Tell the trash at ViaTerra that they’d better make sure the place is tip-top when I get home,’ he added.
‘The water out at Devil’s Rock is freezing cold.’
32
There it was again, that gaze. Like a magnet from across the room. Sofia didn’t even have to glance up to know he was looking at her. For three days in a row, he had visited the library. He always sat in the reading corner with a periodical, hanging out for a few hours and pretending to read. But in fact, his eyes were following her.
Normally she would have walked over to him and told him to stop staring. But there was nothing threatening about his behaviour, and besides, he was cute. His hair was longish, and a little shaggy. She was sure his eyes were blue. Clean facial features, his nose a little long, his mouth soft and sensual. There was something attractive about his posture; he moved freely and languidly. He seemed at home in his body. And there was something more, too. A feeling that this was an opportunity she shouldn’t blow.
The California winter had exceeded her expectations. Her job was going well, she had made new friends, and the sun shone almost constantly from the clear blue sky. Only in the mornings was Palo Alto shrouded in fog, which soon dissolved into a mild heat haze. The rain didn’t come until January, and when it did arrive it was as a stubborn cloudburst that lasted for a few weeks.
Then the sun returned. She was happy; full of a joyful delirium she hadn’t experienced since before the cult. The days were long and warm; the nights short and mild. Her nightmares had stopped. Now all she needed was the cherry on top: she wanted to experience something special before returning to Sweden. Something exciting, and maybe a little naughty.
And then this super cute guy just walked through the door one day, sat down on a sofa, and checked her out.
She managed to tear her attention away from him and focus on her job. She registered a few new books on the computer. Then she heard an ‘ahem’ and there he was, standing right in front of her. His eyes were definitely blue. His bold smile brought a blush to her face. There was that little jump in her stomach.
‘You’re Swedish, aren’t you?’ he said. In Swedish.
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