by Stefan Spjut
‘They’re examining her,’ she said. ‘One of her eyes is damaged. Beyond repair.’
‘Beyond repair?’
She nodded.
‘I have to go get Kiruna,’ she said and left at such a high pace she had to pull up short at the sliding doors.
The cafeteria was deserted apart from an old man sitting on a chair in the middle of the room, talking loudly and unabashedly into his mobile phone. Roland and I sat next to each other on a bench in silence.
Half an hour later, I was allowed to go in and see her. She was asleep. At first, I thought they had shown me into the wrong room because I found it hard to believe it was her in the bed. A quarter of her face was hidden under a compress and she had a big bruise on her lip.
I quietly sat down on a chair in a corner of the room and it was a long time before I dared to look at her again. When I did, she was staring at me with her one eye. It made me flinch.
She didn’t say anything, just lay there, studying me, her eye filled with a cryptic darkness, exactly the way she had done lying on my chest thirty-five years ago. In the same hospital.
Then it struck me she was practically blind without her contacts and that she might not be able to make out who I was. So I stood up and went over to her.
Her head shifted slightly on the pillow, but she didn’t look away. Not wanting to spook her, I reached out very slowly before I started stroking her hair.
‘It’s Mum,’ I said.
‘You haven’t changed.’
‘I haven’t?’
She nodded solemnly.
‘I wish I could say the same.’
‘You can.’
‘You haven’t changed,’ I said and received a wan smile in return.
Every once in a while, Anders was somewhere else. He slipped inside himself and was enveloped by memories in constant flux. The cast of the life he had left behind swirled around him and the feelings they evoked obscured everything else. Words reached him as though from a different room and what he saw with his eyes was blurred and irrelevant. This lasted no more than a few moments at a time; sometimes it was just a flash, but each recurrence was horrifying.
Outside the window was the drawn-out, paralysing light and the massive silence that exerted a constant pressure on his ears. She alone could grant him relief, such as it was. With her fingertips, she could caress away the remorse twisting his features and for that reason, he stayed close to her at all times. It made him ridiculous to the others and that was likely why they were now standing outside the door, giggling.
They had been out there for a long time. It might be five in the morning, it might be four, maybe it wasn’t even three; it was impossible to tell.
If they had come to fetch something from the house, whatever it may be, they should have left long ago. He didn’t know who they were, but he thought he’d heard Näcken’s voice.
He had pushed at Stava, but she didn’t wake up and he didn’t dare speak, not even softly, because then they would know they were awake, which might be interpreted as an invitation.
*
It was Näcken and two young men whose names he didn’t know; one of them couldn’t be much older than William. They forced them out of bed and ogled them while they got dressed.
They walked toward the tarpaulins, to a garage with wide-open doors. Erasmus was standing inside and the man standing next to him was Christer, the little girl’s father. He was barrel-shaped and the nipples on the fleshy folds of his chest protruded through his vest top. His beard was plaited into a long finger like the beard of some Ancient Egyptian king.
Anders didn’t want to enter the garage, so he was pushed inside and then he stood there next to Stava, looking at the wolf lying on the filthy concrete floor.
They had wrapped a blue nylon rope around its long muzzle and tied its paws together, the front and back separately. The animal sluggishly raised its head and looked at him, the same way it had looked at him when it had been under a spruce tree in a different time.
Erasmus spoke quietly in Finnish to a young man, who nodded and nodded and then strode off, leapt onto a quad bike and roared away.
‘If you want to,’ Erasmus said, ‘you can remove the rope.’
Stava fell to her knees and stroked Ransu’s chest, which was moving slowly up and down. She untied the knot and pulled the rope off. His maw instantly opened in what looked like a yawn.
It was not until Christer raised his arm that Anders realised he was holding a hammer, a claw hammer with a polymer grip.
The blow landed awkwardly because Stava was in the way. The avenging father shoved her aside and bent down and struck the animal’s temple and then struck it again. When Stava tried to stop him, Näcken took a step forward, grabbed hold of her hair and pulled her backward.
The hammer was raised again; Anders turned away. Näcken was watching open-mouthed; sitting in his cupped hand was a bizarre, hairless creature about the size of a rat, hideously pale and with sensitive bat ears that seemed to be opening toward the unpleasant noises caused by the hammer hitting the skull, which disintegrated a little more with each blow.
When Christer was done, he put the hammer down on the workbench. His breaths were sharp and short, his hand red like a barn painter’s and his vest top speckled. The pale creature sitting in Näcken’s hand stared at the growing pool of blood slowly winding its way toward the drain with eyes as black as screw holes.
‘Anders,’ Erasmus said. ‘You need to prove that I can still trust you.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
The old man made an inviting gesture toward the workbench and the hammer on it.
‘Please, Daddy,’ Stava said.
Erasmus put a finger to his lips, hushing her.
Anders went up behind Stava and weighed the hammer in his hand. He aimed like he would with a nail; a strand of her long black hair stuck to the gory head of the hammer when he pulled his arm back to strike.
Her dad was fiddling with something in the back seat of the car; when Diana pulled into the driveway, he quickly looked up. Seeing it was her, he leaned back in and finished unbuckling the little girl from the car seat.
Kiruna ran up to her and threw herself in her arms. Diana recognised her immaculate plaits from old pictures of herself and without checking, she knew her little nails were both clean and meticulously cut.
‘We were going to head out to the cabin,’ he said and just then, her mother came through the front door with a cooler in one hand and the house keys in the other.
‘You’re back?’ she said.
Diana stroked the little girl’s hair and out of the corner of her eye caught her mother shooting her father an anxiously confused look, as though seeking verification that this was in fact their daughter standing in front of them and not some imposter. Then she walked over for a closer look. She put a cold hand on her unbruised cheek.
‘What are you doing?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You and Susso.’
She put Kiruna down on the ground.
‘Susso’s back. I got her back.’
‘You weren’t supposed to. Dad told you to leave it to the police.’
‘But the police didn’t do anything. Go play with Grandpa. They didn’t do anything. Because they couldn’t.’
‘But you could?’
‘Yes, evidently, since Susso’s back now.’
‘You can’t be doing things like this, Diana, you have to think about Kiruna. What if something had happened to you? I can’t understand how you can put yourself at that kind of risk, especially after what you’ve just been through.’
‘No, I know you can’t understand it.’
‘Then why do you?’
‘Because she’s my friend.’
Her mum snorted derisively.
‘That’s why you don’t understand. Because you don’t have any friends.’
‘I don’t?’
‘Anna-Lena and Dad. And they don’t count. You
’ve never had any real friends.’
‘How would you know?’
‘If you had, I would have known.’
‘So that’s what this is about? Friendship? You and Susso haven’t been close in twenty years. Or at least fifteen.’
‘You’ve always been really awful to Susso.’
‘No, we haven’t.’
‘Yes, you have.’
‘Either way, I don’t think this is about her.’
‘Oh really, what is it about then?’
‘I don’t know. That’s what I don’t understand. That side of you.’
‘What side?’
‘This side,’ she said, tapping her cheek with her fingertips. ‘It’s like you want to hurt yourself. It was the same back then. When you cut class and messed around.’
‘I was thrown in the boot of my own car and beaten up, I can assure you I didn’t go looking for any of that.’
‘But the situation, Diana, why would you end up in that situation? You have a good life, you are good together, you and Håkan, really good, and then one day you drive out to see Susso, who you haven’t talked to in years, and all of a sudden, this happens.’
‘It’s not her fault.’
‘Why is there a squirrel in your car?’
Diana turned around. The animal was scampering back and forth on the dashboard, tail bobbing.
‘It’s Susso’s squirrel. She keeps it as a pet.’
‘That girl’s not well!’
She strode off toward the back of the house and her mother followed.
‘I don’t know what she’s involved in, what kind of people she’s entangled with, that cult and the website and all of that, but you have to be careful. You have to stay away from her. Can’t you see that?’
Kent Sillfors was rocking his grandchild in a hammock tied between two birch trees; when Diana walked over and picked her up, he withdrew, looking dejected.
It didn’t occur to her that letting the girl near the squirrel might be problematic until she was already unlocking the car door. She saw the reflection of the little girl in her arms in the window, the way she pressed herself to a person who had a distinct hint of desperation in her eyes. Glistening with sweat and exhausted, with her battered face shaded by a baseball cap like a woman in the witness protection programme on the run from some monstrous man. She could hear her parents arguing behind the house. Her mother’s shrill voice, her father’s rumbling one. That made her open the door. She buckled the little girl into the car seat.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘it’s just a squirrel.’
*
She explained to the little girl that it was Susso’s squirrel and that it was going to be staying in their garage while she was in the hospital and she had to promise not to tell Daddy, and the little girl nodded, electrified by the idea of keeping a secret. They crept through the laundry room whispering to each other and then carried on whispering in the kitchen.
‘Wait here while I check on Daddy.’
She went upstairs. The door to their bedroom was ajar. The blinds were down and he was in bed with his work computer on his stomach. When he spotted her, he closed it and sat up. His smoothed-out face shone palely and little blemishes had broken out around the follicles on his Adam’s apple. A naked hip bone was peeking out from under the covers.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Where have you been?’
‘Kiruna’s been with Mum and Dad. And me, I went to get Susso. As I wrote on the note in the kitchen.’
‘Get her from where?’
‘I’ll tell you about it later.’
She sat down on the edge of the bed.
‘But either way, she’s back now.’
‘In Vittangi?’
‘No, she’s in the hospital. Have you had anything to eat?’
He stared at her uncomprehendingly.
‘Nutrition. Have you had any nutrition lately? Because you look like it’s been a while. Clinically, I would guess about three months.’
She reached over to the nightstand and picked up the jars sitting on it. After reading their labels, she held one up to him with her eyebrows raised.
‘Are you out of your mind?’
‘I’ve just had a hard time falling asleep.’
She shook the jar like a rattle.
He gritted his teeth in silence.
‘I don’t understand what’s with you.’
‘Just leave me alone.’
‘Look at me. I’m home. Everything went well.’
‘Yes.’
‘It went well, Håkan.’
He nodded and she found his hand and squeezed it. It was warm and damp and she held it until he slowly pulled it away. He crossed his arms and stared at the wall, so she got up. She studied him for a minute. Then she gathered up the jars and left the room.
*
She poured yoghurt into a bowl she had placed on the table in front of the little girl.
‘And we have to leave it alone. So you can’t go in there. You can’t go in and look at it.’
‘Should we give it pine cones?’
‘You think so?’
‘Pine cones and squash.’
‘Eat your food.’
‘But I’m not hungry.’
‘Did you already eat? What time is it anyway? All right. So what would you like to do, would you like to watch TV?’
The little girl said nothing; she was staring at the stairs. Diana turned around and saw him coming down the steps with one hand on the banister. His penis, dangling between his legs, was brown, as though it had been transplanted from a person with different pigmentation.
He shuffled across the kitchen floor like a somnambulist. When Diana realised he was heading for her, she straightened up and took a step back and several seconds ticked by before she raised her arms and hugged him back.
Lennart drove across the long bridge on a morning when the clouds were so low the top of the mountain looming up on the other side of the sound looked completely flat. The road stretched into a blurred haze and the silhouettes of rocky skerries out at sea glided in and out of view like dark trawlers.
Grete’s house slowly appeared in solitary magnificence far out on a plain. It was an old house with pointy gables. The octagonal addition on one side of it looked like a small chapel. At the top of the tar-papered roof lantern was a spire of at least three feet. Stands of hogweed grew in the garden and if you focused on them, the house seemed to shrink to fairy-tale size.
He parked behind the motorhome, opened the door and dragged himself out. Swaths of raw moisture in the air. A tractor with a front bucket. An old Mercedes hidden under a tarpaulin partly blown off by the wind.
Frode was standing on the porch. Jaundiced and unshaven, with his hands deep in the pockets of his raincoat. His hair had retreated into a funny little tuft of wool on his forehead. The old hare was crouching by his feet, staring at the invisible world with the frozen whites of its eyes.
When Lennart approached, Frode stepped off the porch and strode off toward the garage without a word.
She was waiting in the hallway. Her withered little-girl’s hands rested on the armrests of her wheelchair; the one concealed inside a glove was distractedly fiddling with something that didn’t exist.
‘Did you bring her?’
‘Who?’
‘Uksakka.’
He shook his head.
‘Did you see her?’
‘I don’t know. They all look the same to me.’
She wheeled herself into the dining room and he followed; the hare brought up the rear. There was a damask sofa with curved legs by the wall; he sat down on it. The old lady held her sunglasses in her hand and looked at him.
‘Where is everybody?’ he said and pushed the hare, who was huddling against his leg as if for warmth, away.
‘Ingvill’s gone. One morning, she was just gone. And I’ve waited for Abraham for a week now. I don’t think he’s coming. But I didn’t think you were eit
her. To be honest.’
‘What about Fanny, and the little boy? Weren’t they going to come live here with you? Wasn’t that the deal?’
‘It didn’t turn out that way.’
‘So where are they?’
‘I don’t know. When I found out Erasmus had taken the thurse, I gave up. I just wanted to go home. So I left them.’
Lennart looked around the room. A long dining table of oiled oak. An enormous crystal chandelier. Oil paintings of animals and people in old-timey clothing. A mountain ridge could be seen through the window.
‘Skabram’s dead.’
‘Of course.’
‘They’d left him to rot in the woods. Like a piece of fucking offal.’
‘What did you expect?’
‘I actually thought he’d be alive. Since he wanted me to go there. But it must have just been to torture me. To humiliate me. I heard them talking about that Myrén woman like some kind of hero. Bear killer, they called her. Karhuntappaja.’
‘How did they find out he was in the bunker, do you know?’
‘I would have thought it was her? Ingvill. Since she’s disappeared.’
‘I can’t deny the thought has crossed my mind.’ She smiled. ‘All these years, I was sure she thought she was mine.’
‘You see what you want to see.’
She beckoned the hare over and whispered something to it and it hopped away. After a while, Frode entered with it in his arms.
‘Lennart’s hungry,’ she said. ‘You can bring the fish Bigga brought. The cod.’
She watched him while he ate, hunched over the table.
‘What did you think about when you were at the facility?’
He shrugged.
‘What did you get up to then? All day.’
‘Watched TV,’ he said with his mouth full. ‘Drank instant hot chocolate and ate Risperidone. Played Othello with a pyromaniac called Jens. It’s like fucking nursery school in there, just so you know. They’ve painted Goofy on a column in the common room, and some other cartoon characters, I don’t know their names, and underneath someone had written ‘Welcome to Basket Case Nursery’. And that’s what it was like. A nursery school for insane people.’