When they eat they are all silent, except for the father, of course. The father can’t help but talk. He often speaks with his mouth full, so they can almost never understand what he’s saying. Bengt cringes. He doesn’t want his father embarrassing himself in front of Gun, because it will make her stronger. So he glances at her to see what she is thinking about his father. Gun glances back at Bengt and laughs. She is still laughing when the father offers her some liquor, but as she laughs, she holds her hand over her shot glass. Though it’s none of his business, Bengt is somehow pleased. Maybe not because she’s laughing, but because she doesn’t want to drink. His own glass is filled. And as the father screws the cork back on, Bengt gets a strange idea.
He personally finds it absurd, but he doesn’t do anything to stop it. He takes Gun’s shot glass and puts it in front of Berit, who is sitting next to him, poking at her food with a fork. She has her coat on, but he knows she is still cold, and therefore she should have a drink. The father also thinks it’s funny and pours a few drops – or several, really. When Berit refuses to drink, Bengt forces her by grabbing her harshly by the neck and raising the shot glass. Then she drinks voluntarily, so that he won’t cause her any real harm. After she drinks it, he is glad she did.
In the middle of the meal something beautiful happens. Gun suddenly points to the sea and they all look. A gray destroyer is coming in from the sea, clearing an ivory path through the water. Like a tiny rat, it scuttles rapidly into its hole between the high island and the mainland. Then it disappears. The ship isn’t what is beautiful. It’s what happens after the ship has disappeared. It is then that the swell comes gushing toward the island, no, toward the cottage, toward their porch – blistering, glass-green, and shimmering edges. This is when they instantly, and so beautifully, feel like they’re sitting together, all four of them, in a little boat. They are frightened by the vast size of the wave, but knowing that nothing could happen, nothing other than a little splashing, they become euphoric. There’s not a joy in the world that can bond people as strongly as fear does. Even Berit screams a little, out of enchantment, fear, and perhaps a little alcohol. Gun’s shoulders are soaked from sitting closest to the sea. So she pulls her robe down, and the father dries her off with his hands. When Bengt sees her shoulders, he thinks they are shamelessly naked, even though the swimsuit straps are covering them.
Now he is no longer happy. He has already started craving his revenge, and he will get it through a memory. Suddenly he says to his father:
Do you remember that time in Tjärholmen?
Bengt remembers it well. They had once taken a trip to an island in Lake Mälar. With a little white motorboat that belonged to a coworker. It was the year before the war, just a Midsummer’s Eve. The father and his colleague, who was steering, were sitting in the stern, eating sandwiches and drinking beer and hard liquor. Bengt was lying in the prow and reading a book by Marryat. The mother was sitting next to the motor and mending socks. The boat was moving quite slowly, so they were already very drunk by the time they got to Stora Essingen. Then the boat started wobbling, and when they got to Tjärholmen, the father fell in the water. He had wanted to jump ashore and moor the boat. But it wasn’t very deep, so no harm was done. But the mother still started crying.
Yes, the father says, I remember Tjärholmen.
When he says it, he looks at the son and grins. It isn’t until Bengt sees his smirk that he perceives his own stupidity. Because for anyone who wants revenge, Tjärholmen is a dangerous memory. He mentioned Tjärholmen because they had once been on that island with Mama on a Midsummer afternoon. Now he remembers that they both hated his mother at the time because she had ruined their Midsummer. Every minute of that Midsummer was filled with her complaints. When they set up the tent, she complained that they were pitching it in the worst possible place, even though there was no other place to put it. When they ate, she complained that they didn’t appreciate the trouble she took with the food but that they ate voraciously like animals. At night, she kept them from sleeping by complaining with incessant stubbornness that the mosquitoes were keeping her awake. Of course, it was their fault there were mosquitoes since they were the ones who chose the spot for the tent. She complained about the island all Midsummer Day because everything on it was wrong: the rocky and dirty swimming spots; the ugly and brushy woods; the muddy ground. Bengt had wanted to get back at her, but he couldn’t. But on the way back home, the men got their revenge by drinking the rest of the alcohol together, and they most certainly would have been taken in by the police at Bergsund Beach if Bengt hadn’t managed to catch a taxi in time.
With his question, Bengt only intended to arouse the father’s memory of his mother and not all the embarrassing things that accompanied it. Or did he? In any case, he’s remorseful and tries to forget it, but he simply can’t. Though he doesn’t want to, he can’t help comparing this new, peaceful Midsummer with the old, forgotten one. And to his burning shame, he notices that he feels better now, and to escape his shame he drinks a little more, and his eyes become beautiful. He looks at Gun with these eyes. But you eventually long to touch the one you have been staring at, so when he gets up from the table, he notices that Gun has some salt on her shoulders. He wipes the salt off with his fingers because it needs to be wiped off. Then he ventures to ask why the dog isn’t there. Gun says that dogs are simply bothersome on trips. Besides, they don’t like small islands like this one. Bengt agrees.
From then on, that Sunday passes by rather peacefully. They lie on blankets and beach towels at the inlet’s shore. When they are warm and dry after a swim, they go for another, immersing themselves, splashing around boisterously, swimming to the bottom and snorting as they emerge in almost the same place, even though they thought they had swum several feet under the water. And when the speedy boats make swells, all three of them leap into them, laughing at whoever gets knocked down. Bengt laughs most of all. After all, it is Gun’s body that he hates, so he enjoys seeing it roughed up, if only by a wave of water.
Berit isn’t laughing. Every time they come in from the water, shouting and wet, she pretends to be asleep as she lies in her black dress with a thin blanket over her lap. To be sure, she does look up whenever they splash water in her face, but she doesn’t like it. Bengt is irritated with her because she isn’t having fun. For he knows they’ll be having fun for only so long. Being happy is just the beginning of his revenge. As they drink their afternoon coffee, made on an open fire in the cleft, he tries getting her to drink a shot of vodka. He just wants to arouse some pleasure in her. She drinks it because she’s still afraid, but even after she drinks it, she still isn’t happy. So when the father pushes out the boat to row them around the island, she doesn’t join them – she doesn’t want to. When Bengt climbs into the boat, Gun says to him very kindly:
You can’t leave Berit alone.
So he climbs out again, leaving Gun and his father alone in the boat, and flings himself furiously into the sand next to his sleeping fiancée. He watches the boat as it quickly glides away from the inlet and around the point, leaving only a streak of darkness in the water. He is furious with himself for letting himself be outwitted. He is furious at Gun because she has outwitted him and stopped him from taking out his revenge, the part that’s to make certain they aren’t alone for a single second. But when the fiancée pretends to wake up, he is most furious at her for pretending to be asleep and not joining them on the boat. However, Berit is glad when she wakes up and finds they are alone. She joyfully wipes the water from his hair, but, annoyed, he jerks away and starts digging a hole in the ground. He is digging out a footprint, digging deeply and laying wet sand over it.
Meanwhile, Berit is staring at the sea and the distant coastline. Because she is in good spirits, she thinks the ocean is beautiful. It is quiet and pristine and the sails are becalmed.
The sea isn’t cold today, she says, almost whispering. When the water is cold, it quakes and makes breakers, and children are told th
at the sea is wicked. But the sea isn’t wicked – it’s just cold.
Bengt flattens the sand over the buried footprint. He makes the mound hard, very hard, and he’s also hard on her. Harshly, he says:
I don’t want to be your child.
What do you want to be, then? she whispers, still very happy.
Your lover, he says. He is still harsh.
Then she lies down, spreading the blanket over her face. He looks at the blanket to see if it will start quivering, but it doesn’t.
After a moment, he quietly gets up and begins exploring the island. A long time has passed, but the boat hasn’t returned. Not a cry was heard, not a splash of the oar, not even a whistle. He is walking very fast, and he is very upset. Maybe they rowed out far. It’s dangerous to row out so far when the boat is so small. But when he reaches the cliff facing the sea, the boat is there and very close to the shore. It is anchored and rocking in the swell. He cannot see them, so they are probably lying at the bottom. To scare them, he throws a rock pretty close to the boat, but only playfully. They don’t seem to hear the splash. In any case, neither of them looks over the gunwale, so he wants to scare them even more. He manages to slip silently into the water even though it’s even colder on this side. After about thirty long and quiet strokes, he glides underneath the boat’s thin shadow. Then he actually thinks about shouting, a high and playful yell, full of laughter and recklessness. But after swimming, he is now too strained to do anything but pant, so he’s content with only grabbing the edge and rocking the boat harder than the waves are able to do. As he rocks it, he doesn’t hear a single sound from the boat. And it feels suspiciously light. So when he heaves himself over the edge, it’s naturally empty.
Furiously, he swims back. He can’t help it, and he knows it’s absurd, but he feels betrayed. He is panting and thirsty when he reaches the shore. His mouth is full of saltwater and it burns. His rage subsides a little, but his thirst is unbearable. To get to the drinking water faster, he decides to climb over the porch and go straight to the kitchen, where the can is. One of the shutters is closed. When he climbs over the rail, the floor of the porch is damp from wet footprints. When he tugs at the kitchen door, it is locked. And when he runs around the cottage and tries to open the front door, it is locked, too. So he shakes it, pounds on it with clenched fists, and kicks it – what he wouldn’t do to quench his thirst. When the father comes and opens the door, he looks scared and pretends he was asleep.
Why have you locked all the doors? Bengt yells.
What do you want? the father asks.
A drink of water, the son answers.
When he walks into the room with the open fireplace, he notices that the curtain covering the alcove is trembling as if someone is standing behind it, someone who is panting. He drinks some water in the kitchen, and when he’s done, he drinks some more. But he never quenches his thirst.
They eat dinner late. Bengt has no appetite. Berit hardly eats anything either. And Bengt doesn’t give her anything to drink, because he has no desire to make her happy. The father picks at his food and tries to come up with something to say that will make them all laugh, but they finish before he can think of anything. As Gun gathers up the dishes, she asks whether they want to go out rowing. Nobody wants to.
But a little while after they have all gone to bed, Bengt slowly and silently escapes through the window. He pushes the boat out into the deep water, rows around the island and then straight into the ocean. A little ways out, the swell is rougher, beating against the plank, like whips. The wind is more acrid, scratching his face with its nails. It gets harder and harder to row. But the harder it gets, the more he enjoys it. And the deeper the island sinks into the sea, the more he likes that, too. He wants to row until the island completely disappears, as far into the sea as the boat can take him. He wants to row straight into the night. Until the last of the darkness ultimately swallows him up. After a while, the waves develop white crests and shower the boat with dazzling water. It is still fairly light, but darkness is beginning to descend over the coast. Finally, he is completely surrounded by water, nothing but water. But when he rows past a skerry, which is nearly black except for where it is mottled with white specks of birds, he notices how terribly slow he is going. So he lunges with the oars so powerfully that they start to bend. What gives him so much power is a vision, a vision that has compelled him to take the boat out in the middle of the night. In the vision, it is morning and bright. Gun steps onto the stairs in her red bathing suit. Just as she’s about to head into the water, she notices that the boat is gone. Terrified, she runs up to the house. Where’s Bengt?! she shouts to Berit. Then they feel around for him in his bed, but it’s cold and empty. She runs to the father’s room. Knut! she screams, Bengt is gone and so is the boat! So they run around the island, peer into the sea, and look back at the land. The most they can hope for is that he only rowed to the mainland and that he’ll come back as soon as he has calmed down. That is when Berit suddenly discovers the boat, the rowboat, floating bottom up and coming toward them – black, like a coffin. Finally, they realize he is dead, that he has avenged himself for all the pain they have caused him.
The vision is so vivid and so real that he suddenly starts crying. There were many times before in his life when he contemplated suicide, but he has never enjoyed it like he does now. In reality, he is so thoroughly riveted by his vision that he doesn’t know what he’s doing at all, where he is, or into what danger he is drifting. He could row all the way to Finland without realizing it. Not until he hit Finnish soil would he know that he was sitting in a boat and that he had rowed it across the ocean.
However, for anyone who could row to Finland, something always manages to wake him from his dream. For Bengt, it’s that his boat abruptly hits a rock. The impact makes him fall flat on his face, almost breaking one of the oars, but he barely manages to let go of it. As he struggles to get up, he sees that he’s on top of a modest yet sharp submerged rock. A ghostly green shines underneath the black water. That is when he, to his horror, realizes where he is. The faint darkness floats like a black and ominous fog between the sea and the sky. Invisible birds are squawking. They must be horribly massive since they can’t be seen. And the water surges high and gloomy all around him, threatening to flip his boat over at any moment. He is freezing down to the marrow, and with a fear that’s absurd for someone who is going to die, he breaks an oar loose and repeatedly beats the rock until the boat is free. With violent exertion, he gets the boat around it. The sea is high. Every wave that approaches seems ready to leap into the boat and fill it to the brim. With eyes wide open, he looks the sea in the eye. Then he rows the way people row when they’re terrified and utterly alone: short, wild strokes of the oar and oarlocks screeching. Canted and jerky, the boat drifts slowly onward. He doesn’t dare turn around until much later. Then the island is lopsided in the sea’s right-hand corner, lopsided but very near. It’s his vision that has tricked him into thinking he was gone so infinitely long. And it’s his fear that fed the lie.
It isn’t until he is standing and panting in the alcove that he realizes how dead tired he is. Soaked, limp, and heavy as lead, he is barely able to climb up into bed. He is even too exhausted to open the sliding door to the room and the alcove with the closed shutter. Nevertheless, beneath his extreme exhaustion is a lump of happiness. Because he is glad to have been saved. So he doesn’t need anything else to make him happy. And when the fiancée leans out of her bed, and up to his, and says in a whisper, I’ll be better tomorrow, he can only manage to sigh an incomprehensible word, a single little word. Then he falls asleep. Berit does not sleep.
They are quite happy on Midsummer Eve. People are almost always happy on Midsummer Eve, even they who have no reason to be. They eat and go swimming. Even Berit swims to show Bengt that she is well. Otherwise, she is afraid of swimming, she doesn’t swim well, and she freezes in the water. But she swims all the same. They row into the tall, brazen waves, away from t
he boats that rattle or glide past them by motor or wind. They row so close to the mainland that they can see all the flags waving in the yards. The four of them are together the whole day, for each one of them knows that it’s dangerous not to be together. At night, each one of them has felt it, whether consciously or in their dreams.
They put the record player on the table outside on the porch. There’s also wine, glasses, and flowers that the women picked from a skerry. It is late and beautiful, and they hang a kerosene lamp by a nail to illuminate all the beauty. Then they dance underneath the light. That is, only three of them dance – Bengt does not. He can’t dance. Well, maybe a little foxtrot. Besides, he doesn’t even want to, at least not with Gun. Because then he would be forced to touch her, but after last night he knows that isn’t possible. Besides, they are only playing hambo and old-time waltzes. Bengt doesn’t watch when the father dances with Gun. He just drinks. But he does look when the father dances with Berit, and he drinks some more. After so much wine he becomes rather tipsy. Gun has been drinking, too, but only enough to make her carefree. They are all drinking wine, but none so much as he.
The stack of records gets smaller and smaller. Gun is glowing and happy. She is wearing her bathing suit and a black skirt over it. The father dances mostly with her and is therefore able to dance faster. He has to dance slowly with Berit or else she gets a headache. And maybe she already has one, because she is pallid under the light of the lamp. At last, the bottles are empty. Bengt grips the table as Berit strokes his arm. Excited, Gun and the father are standing by the rail and watching the sea. Boats with lights and music onboard glide by in the distance. Suddenly, a rocket shoots up from the low island. They cheer in awe as a dazzling shower of blue and green sparks flutters down. They wait for another one, but nothing comes. Then they get cold and want to go to bed. But Berit, who is standing next to Bengt, is flipping through the records. She finally finds a foxtrot and puts it on. She wants to dance with Bengt. He knows he’s a clumsy dancer, but when he dances with Berit, he only does it to show the two others he can, but that he didn’t want to before. Because Berit also dances pretty badly, they are already dissatisfied with each other before the song is over. When they finish, the father says:
A Moth to a Flame Page 15