Trolls

by Stefan Spjut

  For the time being, though, I had a view and as I sat there on my stool, craning my neck to see if Ella was among the gaggle of teenagers hanging about the square, Roland appeared from behind a building site fence. He zigzagged between transport racks and steel crates and the bikes the teenagers had left strewn about with quick strides, and since he usually moves at a leisurely pace, I figured something must have happened.

  ‘Have you seen this?’ he said.

  ‘What?’ I said, not bothering to get up.

  ‘He’s escaped. The cult leader.’

  He handed me his newspaper, one of the tabloids. When I saw the headline, which read ‘LENNART BRÖSTH ON THE LAM’, an icy wave surged through my gut and it was probably a good thing I was already seated.

  Lennart Brösth, the leader of the so-called Jillesnåle Cult, has escaped from Sundsvall Psychiatric Hospital. Brösth absconded last Saturday from the local A&E, where he had been taken after sustaining an arm injury.

  The police have added helicopters and canine units to the search for the escaped prisoner. They also welcome information from the public.

  ‘A nationwide alert has been issued; members of the public are advised not to approach the prisoner,’ says Robert Öhman, from the county police.

  At the time of absconding, Lennart Brösth was dressed in a grey top and black trousers, both bearing the logo of Västernorrland County Council.

  ‘A lot of people will have seen his picture in the paper, but he also has a very distinctive gait; he walks a bit like a movie villain. And he’s big, over six foot three, and powerfully built,’ Öhman says.

  That Lennart Brösth was supposedly born in 1914, as his barrister claimed during his trial, and therefore a hundred years old, is something the police take with a pinch of salt. So too, Börje Bratt, interim medical consultant.

  ‘We have always suspected that the information we have about the patient’s age does not correspond with his real age; this incident would seem to confirm that suspicion,’ he says.

  The Jillesnåle Cult kidnapped children and raised them in isolation on a farm outside Sorsele in inland Västerbotten. The children were given new names and in time forgot their true identities. Lennart Brösth was identified as the cult’s leader and, in 2006, sentenced to prison for kidnapping and arson. A few years later, he was moved to the Sundsvall Regional Psychiatric Hospital.

  When I had finished reading, I pushed the paper away and looked at Roland, who had his hands in his pockets and was eyeing me searchingly. He put his hand on the paper and turned it ninety degrees.

  ‘Doesn’t he look a bit like that terrorist,’ he said, ‘what was his name, the Jackal? In those dark glasses.’

  I stood up and paced up and down between the shelves, trying to collect my thoughts.

  ‘It just doesn’t seem real. Here I’ve been walking around, waiting for him to die in prison. And then he escapes. Did you know they’d moved him to the psych ward? Let those alone; they’re decorative!’

  Roland was standing by the shop window, gazing out at the square; when he straightened up after putting the fruit back in its place next to the orchid, he accidentally bumped into a ptarmigan suspended from the ceiling on fishing line. It swung back and forth like it had come to life; I wrapped my arms around myself.

  ‘Isn’t it odd,’ I said, ‘that no one from the police has been in touch?’

  ‘They probably don’t see any reason to,’ he said and stilled the white grouse with his hand.

  ‘They’re clueless!’

  I had snapped at him; he made a lengthy pause before responding.

  ‘In that case, it’s no wonder they haven’t been in touch.’

  ‘I have to warn her.’

  ‘Gudrun. The last time you went out there, you were depressed for a month afterwards.’

  ‘So what am I supposed to do then? I have to do something!’

  ‘I find it hard to believe he would go after Susso.’

  ‘You finding it hard to believe is not a great comfort.’

  ‘She’s taken the website down, though, right?’

  ‘But he was caught because of her! Do you think he’s forgotten? Well, you might think so, but I don’t.’

  Customers had entered the shop, so I had to stop talking and slap on a welcoming smile instead.

  *

  I spent the rest of the day in a numb haze. When I got home, I went straight to my bedroom and changed. Then I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the picture of Susso on the wall. It’s a school picture. She is thirteen or fourteen in that picture; it was before she moved away from Riksgränsen. Away from me. Down here. That girl no longer existed and I was trying to remind myself of that fact. I tried to squeeze out a definitive grief that I could fold across my face like a veil. I really tried. It wasn’t easy. The pictures clashed, and the one on the wall was incredibly powerful.

  Roland was standing in the doorway with his glasses in his hair like an Alice band.

  ‘Keep sighing like that and there won’t be any oxygen left in this flat,’ he said and sat down next to me on the edge of the bed.

  ‘How are you doing?’ he said.

  I shrugged.

  ‘My hands are cold.’

  He grabbed my hand but said nothing about its temperature. His hand was warm and rough, as ever.

  ‘And I’m feeling dazed. I had a customer today; he wanted to buy one of those little wooden table flags, a Sápmi flag; he put it down on the counter and I just stared at it and didn’t understand what he wanted until he pushed it forward with his index finger like this. And then when we were waiting for the payment to go through, he said, “So, it’s finally starting.” And it scared me that he seemed to be able to tell what I was thinking. So I asked him, “What do you mean?” and then he gestured at the square and it turned out he thought all the closed-off streets and the chaos in the square had something to do with the relocation of the town. Which was pretty funny, but I didn’t even have it in me to correct him, I just said, “Yes, yes, it’s finally starting.”’

  ‘They’ll catch him in no time. It’s a nationwide alert. And he’s on the front page. Everyone knows what he looks like.’

  ‘Maybe it’s already too late.’

  ‘Do you want to head over there? If it’s what you want, it’s what we’ll do.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Then what do you want to do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Roland said nothing for a while.

  ‘Have you talked to Mona?’

  ‘No. God, no.’

  ‘If he’s looking for revenge, which I doubt, and I want to be clear about that, shouldn’t he be going after Magnus? He was the one who testified against him. He was the one who got him convicted. Not Susso.’

  ‘It’s not really Lennart Brösth I’m afraid of. You know, to be honest, I’m not actually afraid. I’m just tired. Tired of walking around with this secret like a millstone around my neck. Tired of having to joke around with people who come into the shop to see the picture.’

  ‘People come in to see the picture? You’ve never told me that.’

  ‘It happens. From time to time. And sell-out that I am, I play along. I turn mysterious like a fortune-teller and tell them not to ask questions they don’t want to know the answers to. Whatever that’s supposed to mean in this context. They think it’s all a gimmick to lure in more customers. And I play along so hard I don’t know what to believe any more. Can you understand how hard that is?’

  ‘Don’t dwell on it. It’s not good for you.’

  ‘They come into the shop and ask me if I believe in trolls, but I can tell what they’re really asking is if I’m an imbecile. And whatever I tell them, it comes out wrong. One time, I said: “Look, I wish I did.” And that’s the truth. I wish I believed in trolls. Because a person who believes in trolls is just an oddball. But if you know they exist, you’re cursed.’

  ‘Cursed?’

  ‘It’s a curse.’


  ‘There’s no such thing as a curse.’

  ‘My father brought a curse on himself when he took that picture. When he soared away in his plane until it was nothing more than a tiny letter in the sky that dwindled into nothingness. He abandoned his family to snap pictures of the wilderness, and abandoning one’s family comes at a cost. It always comes at a cost. As far as I can tell, that’s a universal law. That’s why things are the way they are. There was a price for taking those postcards, and we’re paying it, even now.’

  ‘If there’s a curse, it’s in here, in your head.’

  ‘I know what I know, Roland. I can’t unknow it. The only thing I can do, to stay functional, is to not think about it. Look the other way. And I’m so bloody tired of it. My neck hurts from the strain.’

  He threw a pillow down on the floor and when my bottom had slid down onto it he moved in behind me and pressed his thumbs into my shoulders, pushing hard like I have taught him. It crackled like electricity in my head and a warmth that seemed magically curative branched out through my body.

  ‘Then maybe this might help?’ he mumbled.

  ‘I hardly think so, but it can’t hurt.’

  A patient. That was Diana’s immediate thought when she spotted the little old lady who closed the gate to the animal enclosure behind her and came waddling toward her. One in the endless procession of embittered faces she encountered at the hospital. No name came to her, so she simply shot the woman a polite smile before turning back to the laminated note on the cage.

  ‘Their eggs are white,’ she said, ‘and weigh approximately thirty grams. Hens often take good care of their chicks.’

  Kiruna was a bit scared of the rooster strutting about on the other side of the fence, brandishing his silky-smooth feather swords over the hens that huddled in a corner, round balls of an unremarkable shade of brown. She disliked him because she knew he could crow terribly loudly and that there was no telling what would set him off. After he sauntered off to the other side of the cage, she dared to move in closer. She hooked her fingers into the wire fence and asked where the chicks were. Diana said she didn’t know. The girl felt they should go look in the henhouse.

  ‘We’re not allowed,’ Diana said and prodded the padlock, making it rattle. ‘It’s locked. And if the chicks are in there, we shouldn’t disturb them. They’re resting after their meal, like you do at nursery.’

  The little old lady had stopped right next to them, unpleasantly close; Diana was just about to take Kiruna by the hand and lead her off to the shed the goats were filling with their braying when she realised this wasn’t a patient at all, this was Susso’s mother.

  ‘Oh my God, hi,’ she exclaimed. She was surprised, but above all mortified, which she tried to hide behind a stunned expression. Which Gudrun saw straight through. At least that was what it felt like when she met her eyes. Gudrun had called several times and left messages; Diana had planned to call her back, but had never got around to it, and now here they were, face to face.

  Many of her old schoolmates’ parents came into the clinic from time to time and it often depressed her to see how frail they had become. But Gudrun looked more or less the same. Glamorous designer glasses and spiky hair with dyed tips. She wore a hooded jacket and trainers and was holding a Lindex bag.

  Diana pulled Kiruna closer, placing her between them like a shield. For some reason, she tore off her hat as well. Which the girl immediately wanted back; when Diana held it up, out of her reach, she started climbing on her.

  ‘This is Kiruna,’ she said.

  The girl was given her hat back and pulled it down over her ears. Tilted her head back to look out from under the edge.

  ‘And how old are you?’ Gudrun said.

  The little girl pressed herself against Diana, butting at her, rubbing the top of her head against her hip. Felt the phone in her pocket and immediately wanted it.

  ‘She’ll be five this summer,’ Diana said and fended off the little hand trying to get into her pocket. ‘In July.’

  Gudrun nodded and Diana knew there was no way around it.

  ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘How is Susso doing?’

  She had used her professional voice. The solid doctor’s timbre that was about an octave lower.

  ‘Well,’ she replied. ‘If only I knew.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She’s moved away. Maybe you heard?’

  ‘No, but I haven’t seen her about in a long time, so I suppose I might have suspected. That she wasn’t here any more.’

  ‘You suspected.’

  The old lady was cornering her. There was no question about it.

  ‘How about a cup of coffee?’ she said and nodded toward the brown hut that housed the park’s café. She put a hand on Gudrun’s shoulder to guide her, gently but firmly. She sent Kiruna off to the playground, which was under siege by a swarm of toddlers in hi-vis vests.

  A couple of big bird dogs were stretched out on a rag rug by the hut. Their tails started wagging automatically when Diana went up to the counter, but only one of the dogs had the energy to lift its head up to look at her. Its jaw was chewing air.

  She ordered coffee. And a juice box for the little girl. To avoid Gudrun’s level stare, she gazed off toward the black ridge of the mining mountain. She studied her wallet and her nails. The dogs’ water bowl was a clear plastic tub, wholesale packaging that had once held foam bananas; a leaf was floating in it; she could see its shadow moving across the bottom of the tub like a flatfish.

  She carried the steaming plastic cups over to the wooden benches on the edge of the circle where they made a skating rink in the winter. The goats brayed dejectedly from inside their shed; the shrubberies around them were full of twittering bramblings. A child suddenly hollered shrilly over by the playground. Ship ahoy! Ship ahoy!

  ‘Now tell me,’ she said and sipped her coffee.

  Gudrun was cradling her cup in her hands, looking down at the gravel.

  ‘I don’t know how much you know about what happened to us.’

  ‘Only what I read in the papers, actually.’

  ‘Quite a bit then.’

  ‘I know Susso helped find that boy who was kidnapped. That she took some kind of photograph that helped the police.’

  ‘I know what you think, Diana. About us. About our family.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Gudrun sighed.

  ‘I suppose you could say Susso was damaged by what happened.’

  ‘What do you mean, damaged?’

  ‘She’s not herself. To put it succinctly.’

  ‘But what is she doing, is she on sick leave or is she working …’

  Gudrun shook her head.

  ‘She does nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘But how does she get by?’

  ‘Would that I knew. She lives in Vittangi.’

  ‘In Vittangi! Why?’

  ‘She wants to be left alone. The last time I went out there, I couldn’t believe my eyes when she opened the door. She had lost so much weight I barely recognised her. Her clothes were hanging off her. And her eyes were so black; she looked like when she was little and woke up from the anaesthesia after they took her tonsils out. She looked at me with those big eyes, but it was as though she didn’t see me, or know what dimension she was in.’

  ‘Could it be drugs?’

  ‘Drugs. If only.’

  Diana raised her eyebrows.

  ‘She let me into the kitchen and we sat there staring at one another like two strangers. I felt about as welcome as a vacuum salesman. It was obvious she wanted to know why I’d come, but I also had the distinct feeling she wasn’t entirely clear on who I was, and that was deeply unsettling.’

  ‘My God.’

  ‘She’s a different person, Diana. It’s not Susso.’

  ‘Is she living with someone?’

  Gudrun didn’t answer straight away. She sipped her coffee and stared off into the distan
ce. The wind soughed through the birch trees and a flock of cumulus clouds drifted into view, spreading a black blanket over the mining mountain.

  ‘It depends on how you see it.’

  ‘Does she have a boyfriend?’

  ‘I have a hard time picturing that.’

  ‘Is she not in touch with Tobe at all any more?’

  ‘She’s not in touch with anyone. She doesn’t even have a phone.’

  A toddler was trying to climb up the slide, her shoes squeaking against the metal. Kiruna was sitting at the top, patiently waiting to go. And then she went. Straight into the toddler. Diana put her cup down on the bench. But she stopped when she realised there was no crying, and none of the other adults sitting on the benches by the playground reacted.

  Gudrun watched the children.

  ‘Don’t blink, Diana,’ she said. ‘Because when you open your eyes again, she’ll be gone. That’s how fast it happens.’

  ‘Do you want me to go out there?’

  It was pretty clear that was what she was angling for. That was the reason she had been calling and calling. Diana was Susso’s best friend. Had been at least. And a doctor to boot.

  But Gudrun was lost in thought.

  ‘I have thought a lot about that, you know. About love, I guess. The limitless love people have for their children. That you can’t imagine not being together forever. The bedrock of love is that darkness at that distant horizon. It grows out of it. Do you understand what I mean? It’s what makes it strong. The inevitable end. The seconds tick by while we hold each other. All the time, we can hear the seconds ticking by. But we ignore that sound and we don’t talk about the end because it can’t be talked about. We ignore the end. Instead we hold each other, as tightly as we can. While time just slips away.’

  Diana wanted to interrupt but couldn’t bring herself to.

  ‘Your little girl doesn’t know anything yet,’ Gudrun pressed on. ‘She’s too young. Later on, the end will enter her life and reshape her, from the bottom up. Which is terrible when you think about it. You’re a child and life is wonderful, and one day Mummy and Daddy lean over you and tell you you’re going to die, but before you die, we’re going to die and leave you all alone. It’s like one of those permanent residence permits that is suddenly swapped for a temporary one. What a cruel system. Though I can’t think of a better alternative. It comes out wrong no matter what you do.’