Meisis seemed to consider it; she picked a piece of gristle from the bone, then said, “No, no one.” She put the gristle in her mouth and chewed.
I leaned back and thought about pushing the plates from the table suddenly, but the door opened and Edith came in. She stumbled over to the kitchen sink, picked up the pitcher, and poured water over her wrists.
Meisis put down her bone and looked at her. “Yesterday someone was standing in the forest,” she said. Edith turned to us.
“Who?” she asked me.
“Kurt,” I replied shortly.
“And he didn’t want to come in the house?”
I said no.
“Odd,” Edith said, shaking the water from her hands.
“Other people live around here?” Meisis wanted to know.
I bit my lip. Edith laughed shrilly.
“Better if you don’t meet them,” she said. Meisis rumpled her forehead. I didn’t tell her anything more either.
I got up, took Meisis’s bone from the plate, and cleared away the dishes in the sink. I gnawed off the remaining meat from the bone while standing and laid it like a good luck charm on the windowsill.
OUR SILENCE WEIGHS TWICE AS MUCH.
21.
I woke with a start. It took some time before I found my way out of the dream and back into reality. I tried to bring the room around me into focus. Sunlight lay in a bright square on the floorboards. The air smelled of dry wood. I knew that I would have to leave our plot that day. I had put it off for too long. I got dressed, my heart throbbing.
I told Meisis that she would have to stay in the attic all day. I sat her down on my mattress and put three cartons of evaporated milk next to her.
“Don’t move from here under any circumstances, you hear me?” I said.
Meisis wrapped her arms around her knees. “But where are you going?”
I put my hand on her head. “It won’t take long.”
Meisis asked if she could come too.
I said no. “You stay here. When I’m downstairs, close the hatch, understand?”
Meisis nodded. I stroked her hair and climbed down.
The pickup wouldn’t start until the third attempt. It was so hot I had to keep wiping my brow so the sweat wouldn’t run in my eyes. I drove along the road slowly. It cut straight through the overgrown fields. To the left and right stood chestnut trees, their leaves brown and dry. They would instantly crumble to dust in your hand. The sunlight threw their shadows in patterns on the asphalt.
Len and Gösta’s house was up on a hill. The road led directly to it. I parked the pickup in the driveway. Gösta’s salmon Faverolle hens scratched at the dry ground in the front garden. None of them still possessed the color of their name. Instead, they were as pale as the whitewashed house.
Underneath the blooming elderflower bush near the fence, Len was sitting on a plastic chair. She was wearing her sunglasses and had her arms crossed over her faded nightshirt. I went over and crouched down beside her.
“Is that you, Skalde?” she asked. I offered my face to her, so she could examine it with her hands.
To this day I still remember the story of how Len was blinded. It happened long before I was born, and yet she had told me so many times, it seemed as if I had been there. It was the first cloudless day in years, the temperature was below freezing. Len had climbed up a hill in rubber boots. The frozen earth cracked under her soles. She was standing right at the top when, suddenly, the sky grew dark, though it was only noon. The whole horizon reddened like the sun was setting. Astonished, Len raised her head and stared at the sun, which was obscured by a black moon. She was so fascinated by what was happening, she didn’t look away for minutes on end. The sky regained its color, and she squinted. A white spot appeared in her line of vision, burned up, and all that remained was darkness. When they found her, she was blind in both eyes.
“You well? Is it bearable with Edith?” Len asked.
“She sleeps a lot,” I replied.
Len placed a hand on my shoulder. “You have the heaviest heart. It’s never been easy for you.”
“Are you going to come and visit me again soon?”
“I’d like to very much, but I lose my way in this heat.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Maybe we just have to make the best of it, it’s out of our hands,” she added.
“Let’s go in,” I said, helping her up and leading her inside. The window shutters were closed. It was pleasantly cool. Through the open living room door, I could see Gösta. She was sitting forlornly on the sofa. It looked like her wrinkled skin was covered in a coating of dust. Only the flickering of the television illuminated the room.
“Go in quietly,” Len said. Maybe she had sensed my hesitation. She squeezed my hand and slowly walked in the direction of the kitchen, feeling along the wall as she went.
I took a breath and entered the living room. Gösta didn’t move. I sat down next to her on the worn leather sofa. The grayish carpet was so thick my shoes sank into it.
The television showed a jittery shot of the river. The strong water flow kept loosening rocks from the banks and pulling them into its depths. The sky was shrouded by clouds. It was drizzling.
“Had to cover the camera with a plastic sheet, otherwise the rain would have ruined the electronics,” Gösta said, without unfixing her gaze from the television.
The camera’s image established. The sight of the dark water made me sleepy. I propped myself up on the armrest.
“No one can even imagine now that the weather was always like that,” Gösta said. The shot now showed a road, half submerged in fog. The asphalt was broken in a lot of places. Beneath it lay the old cobblestones. Rain had collected in the potholes.
“But it’ll be like that again,” I said insistently, pointing at the television. Gösta took off her glasses and polished them with the hem of her nightshirt.
“It has to. Anything else is frankly no way at all. I never knew temperatures over twenty degrees when I was a child. I slept under the skylight, and every night I’d hear the rain. Now I lie in bed and can hardly move, it’s so hot. It’s enough to drive you mad.” She put her glasses back on and looked at me. “But I always say to Len, we have to be patient. Summer can’t last forever.”
I nodded. I too had talked myself into believing that it was only a matter of time before the fog returned.
I could now see Gösta and Len’s house in the video. It was flanked by bare birch trees. It took a moment before I realized that it wasn’t dust but hoarfrost that covered the branches. Len stepped out the front door. Inside her rubber boots she was wearing thick socks, which she had pulled up to just below her knees. A scarf and hat concealed her face. She stretched her hand out into the air. Fine snow was falling from the sky. A metallic clicking sound came from the video recorder, and a black-and-white flickering replaced the picture.
Gösta rubbed her eyes.
“Shall we?” she said, getting up from the sofa. Without first switching off the television, she went outside. I followed her into the garden.
We walked along the drystone wall until the end of the plot, where the vegetable patch was in a shady hollow. The beds were protected from the hens with a picket fence.
“It all needs watering,” Gösta said. She sat on the bench under the blooming apple tree, and I went to the shed and fetched the watering can. I filled it from the pump next to the house and, careful not to spill anything, carried it to the vegetable patch.
I had to go to the pump a dozen times before all the beds were watered enough. Drenched in sweat, my T-shirt clung to my back. I put the watering can back in the shed and sat down next to Gösta on the bench. A gust of wind drifted through the branches. White blossoms fell all around us. Gösta stretched out her hand and caught one. It made me think of the video. That it used to snow here was hard to imagine.
“I have to tell you something, Gösta.”
“Did you do something wrong?”
I looked around uneasily.
Gösta dropped the blossom. “Go on, spit it out.”
“In the forest …” I didn’t dare look up from the ground. “I found a child.”
“A child? What are you talking about?”
“It’s not from here. It’s got bright red hair.”
“How did a child make it into our territory?”
I shrugged.
“And now?”
“I brought it home.”
“You know what the others will make of that.”
“It’s only a child.”
“One that managed to get over our border. They won’t accept that so easily. Maybe they’ll declare it a changeling.”
“A what?”
“You know the stories.”
“You mean fairy tales.”
Gösta gave me a sharp look.
“Meisis isn’t a changeling,” I said.
“It’s already got a name, has it? Listen, girl, you must get rid of this child. Otherwise you’ll be held accountable.” Gösta wanted to continue talking, but Len had opened the shutters in the house, leaned over the sill, and called to us.
“We’ll be right there,” Gösta answered, and she said to me, “Make the child disappear tonight. Do it like my mother did. She drowned stray cats in the rain barrel. You just need a bag, rocks, and water that’s deep enough. Believe me, you’d be doing the child a favor.”
She got up from the bench. I followed her into the house with my eyes lowered. Len was standing in the corridor, where Gösta’s butterfly collection was mounted in square glass display cases. The iridescent colors had faded long ago.
“Here,” Len said, passing me a cloth bag filled with onions and eggs. “And I can offer you a bowlful of soup; I made too much yesterday.”
I felt Gösta’s hand on my back. “I’ve got to do the mulching today,” I said quickly. My face was reflected in Len’s sunglasses. For the first time, I was glad that she couldn’t see me.
She laughed. “You’re always so efficient.”
Gösta pushed me through the door. I hugged the bag to my chest.
“Come back soon, you know I can always use some help,” she said.
I nodded and stepped squinting into the gleaming sunlight. The door closed behind me.
EVERY PERSON COULD BE WEARING A MASK, BUT SHOWING THE SAME FACE, CONCEALING THE FACT THAT THE CARDS WE’VE BEEN DEALT HAVE CHANGED.
22.
Gösta told me the story of the territory. Before the bridge was blown up, she had worked as a hunter. Nobody knew their way around here as well as she did. Maybe that’s also why Gösta was one of the first to notice things shifting.
“There were a few sunny days during my childhood, but it’s always been cold here. Most of the time it was foggy. None of the houses had curtains, and cars would have to drive with their headlights on during the day. We were settled in this life, we had houses and farms. We were already fending for ourselves back then.
“And then … the animals. Birds, sometimes deer and wild boar. They were sick, straying our way. We knew they had come from the sea and decided to blow up the concrete bridge, shutting off the only way in to completely shield us from whatever still might come. After blowing up the bridge, we had some good years. Everything that we needed we already had here, and nobody bothered us anymore. We could live how we had always wanted to. Only then the weather started to turn. Had you already been born at this point?”
I nodded.
“Then you most probably remember.”
“Can you tell me anyway? What was it like for you both?”
Gösta sighed. “It was bad, terrible. First there were a few days with not a cloud in the sky. Then weeks, months. The fog became less dense. It frayed and only hung in the meadows early in the mornings and in the evenings. The bushes and trees were strange too. Even though it didn’t rain they often came into bloom, but no longer bore fruit. The whole landscape began to shimmer in the heat. There were more and more insects. Our own animals died. We didn’t know why. We burned the dead cows, pigs, and horses in an open field. Mercifully, our chickens survived. It’s madness, the landscape we had salvaged was betraying us. But we were in denial back then, of course. We had to adapt, nonetheless. We stocked up, pumped fuel from the petrol stations, equipped ourselves with fly swatters, hung shimmery yellow adhesive strips from our lamps where insects gradually perished, perfectly displayed in death. From the ever-blooming elderflower we made cordial. By the liter. Soon all the houses had an almost endless supply of it. We only drank water sweetened.
“We had finally settled, as far as possible, into the new state of things. We were fortunate. The soil still yielded a modest harvest. The rabbits and hens survived the great death of the animals. We can adjust to the heat as well. We’re frugal, that’s how we’re able to lead a simple life.”
23.
On my way back I drove over the last remaining cobbled road. The vibrations made by the bumpy road could be felt right up to the seat. I had rolled down the window and was smoking with my left hand, the right on the wheel. I saw Wolf and Levke sitting in the shade of the derelict bus stop from a long way off. They noticed me in return and stood out in the middle of the road. I had to slow down and came to a stop right in front of them.
Their faces were sunburned. They were wearing dark red sports jerseys, cutoff jeans, and sneakers. They each had a plastic bottle clamped under an arm that was filled with a brownish liquid. I could smell the homemade schnapps from the truck.
People in the territory considered it a stroke of luck that the quince trees didn’t suffer in the heat. The harvest was still so good that there was enough to distill into schnapps, which they had always made here.
Wolf and Levke grinned at me.
“What do you want?” I shouted over the running motor.
Levke leaned against the hood. “Got any more?”
She pointed at the cigarette I was holding in my hand. Wolf ambled over to the driver’s door and leaned against the side mirror.
“We’re itching for one.” He mimed smoking while grabbing his crotch. His eyes were glazed over.
“As if you would have something you could give me for it,” I said.
Levke scratched the paint of the pickup with her nails. “Do you think you can just do anything you like?”
“Those who have nothing get nothing. You taught me that.”
“But we’re not hiding a child at our house.”
I looked her straight in the eyes. “Had one too many again?” I asked.
Levke took a large, brazen gulp from the bottle and walked over to the other window.
“That a child with hair as red as anything stands around in your front garden, well, I couldn’t make that up after ten bottles.”
“I can vouch for that,” shouted Wolf. “No one could think up a color like that.”
Levke spat on the passenger seat. She rubbed at it with the base of the bottle. “A little memento,” she said. Wolf laughed mid-guzzle. I stubbed out the cigarette on the dashboard.
“I really don’t have time for your little games,” I said.
“Now, don’t be like that,” Levke said, but gave Wolf a sign with the nod of her head and they stepped back from the car.
“You can’t prove anything,” I said.
“You better watch out,” Levke said, taking another swig. “Don’t forget why the bridge got blown up.”
“Fuck you!”
I hit the gas pedal, shifting into second gear.
In the rearview mirror I saw them once more standing in the middle of the road, holding their bottles in the air.
ON THE RUN IN A CLEARLY DEFINED TERRITORY YOU START GOING IN CIRCLES, WHILE YOUR MIND CONTINUES TO MEASURE THE REAL DISTANCE.
24.
I turned onto the sand track and rolled the truck up to the front of our house. My body felt numb with tension. Hunched over the steering wheel, I looked around through the windscreen, but nothing indicated that
someone had been here.
In the hallway I heard a distant hissing sound coming from the living room. I slowly moved toward it.
Edith was lying on the carpet with the dogs next to the sofa. She was wearing a night-blue woolen dress with rolled-up sleeves. She had drawn her knees up to her chest and pillowed her head on her rabbit fur coat. Pressed against her ear was the radio, which was usually always on the sideboard in the kitchen. She was turning the tuner; it crackled loudly, and I heard the hissing sound again.
“What are you doing?” I asked, standing over her.
Edith rolled her eyes and told me she wanted to hear music. “But the thing doesn’t work properly,” she added, “that’s why it sounds a bit like the sea.”
I wanted to punch her in the face. “The reception’s been faulty for years,” I said.
“But I sometimes still find a transmitter.”
I became impatient. “What are you talking about?”
She held the radio stubbornly to her other ear. “You know, last night I dreamed of the sea. The churning water, and the way it threw itself at the dark rocks over and over again, and how the salt stayed behind on the pebbles. Then waking up felt like I was sinking.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because it’s the child’s fault. It’s bringing up the old images.”
“Meisis?”
“Don’t you feel like something’s shifted since she’s been in the house? The way she looks at me makes me nervous.”
“You haven’t moved from the sofa. When would you have seen her?”
“At night sometimes.”
“I think you have sunstroke.”
“Ask her,” Edith said, grabbing a potato that was lying on the sofa. Dirt clung to the skin. She took a bite out of it.
“How many times have I told you that you can’t eat them.”
“I was hungry.” She wiped her mouth.
“They have to be cooked, otherwise they’re bad for your stomach,” I said, taking the potato out of her hand.
“They taste better this way.”
Milk Teeth Page 4