‘I know you’re awake,’ he said. ‘But I’m going to go now. I’ll leave you some reading material.’
She waited until she heard the key turn in the lock.
Then she slowly turned over to face the room.
On the table by the door was a book.
49
The book was leather-bound and looked like a diary. She opened it to find that the text on the first page was ornate, written in ink: A Family History, recorded by Sigrid Kristina Augusta von Bärensten. The fact that she was holding that book in her hands was so incredible that, for a brief moment, she forgot about the hopeless situation she was in. She’d searched for this family history for over a year while she was working at ViaTerra. Even after her escape, she’d fantasized about getting her hands on it. And here it was, right in her lap, not even looking particularly remarkable. But the question was, why had Oswald given it to her? Why did he want her to read it?
There was food on the table too, and not just any old grub. A large platter of thinly-sliced chicken, bread, cheeses, and grapes. A bottle of sparkling water and a bottle of wine. Next to the platter was a vase holding a red rose. She wondered what the hell this was all about. Some sort of atonement? There was a sinking feeling in her stomach; it was better when he was cruel all the time, easier to understand than his peculiar whims. But when she picked up the note that lay next to the vase, she was once again certain that he was rotten to the core. Thanks for a lovely evening, it said.
She threw the vase at the wall and it smashed into a thousand pieces. The rose fluttered to the floor and lost all its petals. She sank into the chair, pulling her legs up and hugging them, rocking herself and forcing back tears. She managed to quell her despair and decided to eat after all. She drank all of the water but left the wine, then went to the cleaning closet for a brush and dustpan to clean up the shards of glass. She picked up the family history, sat on the bed, and began to read.
A Family History
Recorded by
Sigrid Kristina Augusta von Bärensten
This is a brief account of my humble life.
There are rumours spread and stories told of the manor house on Fog Island, so perhaps it is time that people learn the truth of what happened there. In some respects, I am forever caught in the night the manor burned. Memories of the fire echo through my dreams and daydreams. The heat, the smell of the smoke, the shrieks of the animals, the flames licking at the sky, and the billowing smoke that spread over the island. But I cannot yet bring myself to write about that.
And this is meant to be a history. So I will begin at the beginning. When we first came to this Godforsaken island.
My name is Sigrid Kristina Augusta von Bärensten, daughter of Artur and Amelia von Bärensten. I am writing down this chronicle, our story, with the hope that it will bring insight into why the von Bärensten family has been so befallen by tragedy.
Father was a wealthy businessman from Gothenburg. He was a bear of a man, with raven hair, an aquiline nose, and a strong jaw. His eyes were like an augur – it sometimes hurt when he looked at one. Mother was delicate, blonde, and pale. She looked like a fairy alongside Father’s towering frame.
I was born on 8 March 1920, just two months before my father had the manor house built here on west Fog Island. Certainly no one could understand why he wanted to live here, in particular. It was a desolate, barren landscape. There was not much of a village here back in those days. And the fog swept in from the sea, settling over the island like a thick blanket during the winter.
Yet it was here on Fog Island that his manor must be, and the day we first set foot on the island was captured for eternity in a photograph which I have pasted in here. There is Father with shovel in hand, Mother with me on her knee, and my brother Oskar standing beside us. He was six years old when the photograph was taken. It was the same day the yet-unbuilt manor received its name. Her name was to be Vindsätra Manor and Estate.
Each time I look at this photograph I curse the fate that brought us here.
The first few years are blurry in my mind. My first true memory is a scream. Mother’s scream, coming from the attic.
‘Why does Mother scream at night?’ I asked my nurse, Emma.
‘I suppose she has nightmares. Just like you do, sometimes.’
‘But the screams come from the attic.’
‘No, you’re just imagining things. No one is allowed into the attic, you know that. Your father keeps important papers there, that no one must touch.’
‘But they do come from the attic.’
My curiosity grew and made me brave.
It was storming that night. Bolts of lightning and roaring thunder, one after the next. I was frightened and I needed the bathroom and then came the screams, in the space between a flash of lightning and a boom of thunder. The stairs were cold beneath my feet. I held onto the railing, pulling myself up step by step, gasping when I saw that the attic door was open. I heard the scream again, but this time it was muffled, like a moan.
There was something white stretched out across a bench in the attic. It’s a pig, I thought. I had seen a slaughtered pig on a farm. That’s what it had looked like, all splayed out and bound at the legs. It’s the pig that screams at night, I reasoned, and just then my father turned and spotted me. His eyes were wild and angry. In a trice he scooped me up in his arms and carried me down the stairs. I thought he seemed sweaty and strange, but I was glad he was holding me – he so seldom did. He brusquely lay me in my bed, in my room.
This was the only time he ever tucked me in. When I tried to speak, he put his hand over my mouth.
‘You were dreaming,’ he whispered. ‘It was only a dream.’
As he left the room, I realized he was naked.
The last thing I heard was a key turning in the lock.
‘There’s a pig that screams in the attic,’ I said to Oskar as we ate supper.
Only this, and Father was on top of me. It all happened so fast. I didn’t have time to swallow; I didn’t even have time to think a single thought. The blow was so hard that my chair flew backwards and I landed on the floor with a thud.
I began to cry, and then Oskar began to sob, but no one did a thing.
‘Get up,’ came Father’s voice from across the table. ‘I am tired of your lies and inventions. Go to your room immediately.’
I waited for Mother to come pick me up. But nothing happened.
I took hold of the edge of the table and pulled myself up; I noticed that I had food on my chin and chest, and I was still crying, but my howling had settled into quiet tears.
Mother sat staring down at her plate. Her fork quaked in her hand. But otherwise she didn’t move.
Oskar had fallen silent. Father was trembling with rage. I slowly walked out of the dining room, dragging my feet after me, but not in a provocative way.
Never again did I mention the pig. When it screamed at night, I held my ears, and when that didn’t help, I sang to myself in the dark. My door was always locked now. Father said I sleepwalked, that it was dangerous. Mother agreed.
I saw the bruises on her arms. The red marks on her neck. How she almost staggered when she walked, sometimes. It was as if all of that had been invisible before.
But I didn’t say anything.
Mother is sick, I thought. That’s why she looks this way.
Once Father began to strike us, he didn’t stop. All it took was an expression, a moment of awkwardness, and he would throw himself at Oskar and me. But mostly me. We simply had to stay away from him. And it got worse.
Sometimes Emma asked permission to take us out around the island. There was a small pond in the forest where we liked to go. When the weather was good, she let us play there.
I was five or six years old when it happened. My uncle Markus, Father’s brother, and his wife aunt Ofelia were visiting. I didn’t like Uncle Markus; he had rough hands that lifted me high in the air and spun me around until I felt ill. Aunt Ofelia was sickly and weak
.
On that day I was sitting on the swing and spinning around and around and around until I got dizzy, and then I spotted them. Mother, Father, and Uncle Markus on their way out of the gate. I sneaked after them, keeping my distance. I got distracted, because I saw a squirrel in a tree, but then I heard voices from the pond. I peered through the leaves and saw them.
Mother was floating on the surface, naked, her body gleaming like mother-of-pearl against the dark water. Father was standing behind her, holding her arms. Uncle Markus stood between her spread legs. Mother was screaming and whimpering. Father shoved her head under the water.
I forgot that I wasn’t supposed to be there. I thought Mother would drown, so I cried out, losing my footing and sliding down the slope to the shore. I stood up and tried to run away, but Uncle Markus was there to grab me. He was naked and wet; the water streamed off him and onto my clothing. He sat on a rock and laid me over his knee, pulled down my underpants, and spanked me so hard it stung.
Out in the pond, Father castigated Mother.
‘What is that damn brat doing here? Isn’t anyone looking after her?’
He turned around and saw me struggling and yelling. And my unruliness triggered something inside him; he came up and yanked me from Uncle Markus’s grasp. He carried me to the water and dunked me beneath the surface. It was black and cold, and all I could see were the bubbles that came from my attempts to scream I’m sorry. But his hands held me down so hard. They took my hair and pulled me up so I could gasp for breath. They shoved me down again.
When I was above the surface, in that brief moment, I heard Mother’s voice: ‘Artur, you’ll kill her!’
But he didn’t, not that day.
Mother was sent home with me. Wet and miserable, we walked through the forest.
She didn’t say a word, all the way home. That was the worst part.
The captain popped up like a jack-in-the-box once Father disappeared. His name was Broman, and he was nice to me and Oskar: he gave us presents from foreign lands, followed us to the cliffs and let us play by the sea, spoke to Mother in a calm voice, so we wouldn’t hear. But I did see and hear. How he brushed his fingers over Mother’s bruises and said, ‘This cannot continue, Amelia.’
‘The captain is our secret,’ Mother said to Oskar and me. ‘He’s only a dream, do you understand? Like the pig in the attic, Sigrid. If Father hears about Captain Broman, he will be terribly angry.’
And of course, none of us wanted that.
This roller-coaster lasted for a year. Heaven when the captain came to the island. Hell when Father returned and spread his wrath over us.
But then came the fire and put a stop to it all. I’ll save that for last, because everyone got it all wrong: the police, the doctors, the firefighters, and the newspapers. I am the only living soul who knows what happened that night, and I have made an oath to myself that I will tell the story before I die. And I don’t have much time now, because the cancer is spreading through my body like a drop of ink through water.
The servants put out the fire and saved the manor house, but the barns were destroyed. Smoke blanketed the island. Oskar and I were put in the servants’ quarters and were not allowed out under any circumstances. Emma held me, whispering to me like I was a baby, saying that Mother and Father had gone to Heaven, that everything would be fine. Oskar stood in a corner, crying.
‘Oh, what a horrible tragedy,’ Emma whimpered.
‘But Mother’s not dead,’ I said stubbornly. ‘I saw her. She’s coming back.’
‘No, my little darling, she isn’t.’
‘Yes, she is.’
‘No, sweetheart.’
Then I covered my ears and shrieked, ‘Stop! Stop!’ until she was quiet.
That was the same night Oskar fell ill. The colour of his face shifted until he was a pale green. His body shook with a high fever. His lungs whistled and his breaths were raspy; I couldn’t get any sleep. I lay there shivering with a lump in my throat, until I padded out of bed and gazed out at the courtyard.
The darkness was heavy over Vindsätra. The charred wreckage of the outbuildings pointed scornfully at the sky. The moon vanished behind a cloud and a cold gust of wind came through the gap at the window, bringing the odour of smoke. As I stood there, I could have sworn I felt her breath against my cheek.
A faint whisper in my ear, barely audible.
Sigrid, I’m coming back. I’ll come back to you.
They arrived with pomp and circumstance. Uncle Markus and Aunt Ofelia. Eager to take over Vindsätra, less excited at the prospect of taking on Oskar and me. But there were nurses, of course.
At first, it was all like a dream. Uncle Markus made considerable changes as the new lord of the manor. Parties were held on the property at weekends. The mood at Vindsätra was suddenly carefree and lively.
I was sent to school in the village and allowed to roam free on the island. I could even travel to the mainland if I was accompanied by a nurse. Oskar, who now had double pneumonia, was never allowed these freedoms, but for me it was like the start of a marvellous new life.
Some changes didn’t make sense to me. Why were the new servant girls so young? Why did Emma disappear, only to be replaced by my new nurse Hilda, who was only sixteen? Why was she always so nervous and giggly when Uncle Markus was nearby? Sometimes I ran into her in the middle of the night, wearing only a shift. She often smelled unfamiliar, as if a little cloud of the men’s tobacco smoke had sneaked into her long hair.
When Oskar died of pneumonia I was only eleven years old. It was as if his soul left the earth, while his emptiness lingered inside me. He withered away, until at last he was no more.
Aunt Ofelia told me, her voice authoritative, that Oskar had departed the earth and gone to God’s kingdom, where he was playing harp with the other angels. I thought this was ridiculous, because Oskar had never been musical or angelic.
Uncle Markus’s views on the matter were entirely different; he laid them out one evening during our supper.
‘It’s always been the case that the weak and feeble are weeded out of the von Bärensten line. That’s the law of nature. Although it’s certainly peculiar that we lost Artur. I suppose God does have His exceptions.’
He glanced at me and laughed when he found that I was choking on my soup.
‘Don’t look so frightened, Sigrid! There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re going to be one of those wildcats. Hard to tame.’
And that was the end of any conversation with me about Oskar’s death. We never spoke of him after the funeral. Whenever I tried to bring him up, Aunt Ofelia cut me off.
‘We will not disturb those who are at rest in the kingdom of God.’
Something inside me burst when Oskar died. A wound of loneliness that refused to heal. Some stubborn part of me refused even to accept that Mother was dead. After all, she had promised to take care of me.
One night I went to the sea to seek peace. The sun had just slipped below the horizon, but its glow lingered over the heath. I climbed down to Devil’s Rock and stood at the very edge, letting the wind stroke my face. I could taste salt on my lips. Then I called for her, out loud, but my cry was carried off on the wind.
On the way home I was roused from my thoughts by a cracking sound in the forest, twigs breaking under someone’s feet. I stopped. Sensed her presence. The back of my neck went stiff as if it had iced over. In that moment, I knew I must not turn around. What I would see would scare the daylights out of me.
I walked all the way back to Vindsätra as if I were wearing blinders.
I knew I wasn’t ready to stare death in the eye.
I have always believed that there is a transitory point in each girl’s life when she changes from child to woman. The way she moves, the way her entire being becomes more pliable, softer. For me, this point came during the summer I turned fourteen.
I wandered around the island in long, flowing skirts and straw hats – sometimes the wind carried these across the meadow
s. I realized that something had happened to me, but I didn’t know what it was. I had grown forgetful and dreamy. It seemed that the colours of the world were sweeter.
Uncle Markus wasted no time in noticing this. He was like a bloodhound on a hot trail. I recall the exact moment he saw and felt it. We were sitting at the dining room table. I dropped a spoon and bent down to pick it up. When I sat up again, his eyes were on the neckline of my blouse. Then our eyes met. His gaze was so raw that I had to turn away. But when I looked back, his eyes were still on me. The tension was so unbearable that I dropped my spoon again, but it landed on my plate this time.
My aunt saw what was happening. Her throat went blotchy and red, as it always did when she was nervous. She cleared her throat, and he looked away from me. At that moment, I realized something between us had changed.
That very evening, he came to my room. I was almost asleep. He came over and sat on the edge of the bed.
‘Pull down the covers, Sigrid,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘Sigrid, I’m going to tell you something and I want you to listen closely. From now on, you will do everything I ask of you. Otherwise, Sigrid, I will destroy your life. I will claim that you are feeble-minded and confused like your mother. And soon enough, you will be in an asylum. I promise you that.’
I pulled down the covers, because I had always had respect for him and now I was terrified. He pulled up my nightdress and scrutinized my body. His hand slid over my belly, under the top of the nightdress, and cupped my breast. Then down into my undergarments where he slowly inserted a finger into my very innermost part. It was tremendously painful. I recoiled. An image of my mother flickered through my mind. Mother, not a pig – I knew it now.
He pulled my nightdress back over my legs, stood up, and left the room.
He didn’t come back that night.
I lay in my bed, my eyes closed, trying to shut out what had just happened. The tears wouldn’t come, because my throat had constricted and everything was caught below it. Then the bed sagged ever so slightly. A cool hand on my forehead. I squeezed my eyes shut, but I could feel her presence in every cell of my body. The faint scent of her lilac perfume. A cold gust of air swept through the room. I slowly opened my eyes and saw her shadow vanish in the dark. I didn’t dare fall asleep, because I was suddenly afraid of the dark. The hours dragged on. When morning dawned, foggy and overcast, I was finally able to fall asleep and I allowed the rush of the sea to rock my anxious mind to peace.
Shadow of Fog Island Page 27