The way it should have been.
His mother had set an extra place last Christmas. But of course Ethel never turned up either.
“Can I get down now, Daddy?” asked Livia after ten minutes.
“No,” said Joakim quickly.
He could see that her plate was empty.
“But I’ve eaten everything up.”
“Stay there anyway.”
“But I want to watch TV.”
“Me too,” said Gabriel, who still had a lot of food left on his plate.
“There’s horse riding on TV,” said Livia, as if this were a weighty argument.
“Just stay where you are,” said Joakim, his tone harsher than he had intended. “This is important. We’re celebrating Christmas together.”
“You’re stupid,” said Livia, glaring at him.
Joakim sighed. “We’re celebrating together,” he repeated, with no conviction.
The children kept quiet after that, but at least they stayed put. Eventually Livia went off to the kitchen with her plate, followed by Gabriel. Both came back with a helping of meatballs.
“It’s snowing really hard, Daddy,” said Livia.
Joakim looked out of the window and saw thick flakes whirling by.
“Good. We’ll be able to go sledding.”
Livia’s bad mood disappeared just as quickly as it had arrived, and soon she and Gabriel were chatting about the Christmas presents under the tree. Neither of them seemed concerned about the fourth chair at the table, while Joakim kept glancing toward it all the time.
What had he been expecting? That the front door would open and Katrine would walk into the drawing room?
The old Mora clock by the wall struck just once-it was already half past five, and almost all the light had vanished outside the window.
As Joakim popped the last meatball in his mouth and looked over at Gabriel, he could see that his son was already
falling asleep. He had eaten twice as much food as usual this evening, and now he was sitting there motionless, gazing down at his empty plate with his eyelids drooping.
“Gabriel, how about a little sleep?” he said. “So you’ll be able to stay awake longer tonight?”
At first Gabriel just nodded, then he said, “Then we can play. You and me. And Livia.”
“We sure can.”
Joakim suddenly realized that his son had probably forgotten Katrine. What did he himself remember from when he was three years old? Nothing.
He blew out the candles, cleared the table, and placed the food in the refrigerator. Then he turned down Gabriel’s bed and tucked him in.
Livia didn’t want to go to sleep at such an early hour. She wanted to watch horses, so Joakim moved the small television into her room.
“Is that okay?” he said. “I was just going to go out for a little while.”
“Where?” asked Livia. “Don’t you want to see the horse riding?”
Joakim shook his head. “I won’t be long,” he said.
Then he went and picked up Katrine’s Christmas present from under the tree. He took the present and a flashlight into the hallway and pulled on a thick sweater and a pair of boots.
He was ready.
He stopped in front of the mirror and looked at himself. In the darkness of the corridor he was hardly visible in the glass, and got the idea that he could see the contours of the room through his own body.
Joakim felt like a ghost, one of the apparitions haunting the manor house. He looked at the white English wallpaper around the mirror and the old straw hat hanging on the wall like some kind of symbol of life in the country.
Suddenly everything seemed completely meaningless-why had he and Katrine actually carried on renovating and
decorating year after year? The places where they lived had just gotten bigger and bigger; as soon as one project was finished they had started the next one and made every effort to get rid of any trace of the people who had lived there before. Why?
A low yowling interrupted his thoughts. Joakim turned and saw a small four-legged creature crouching on the rag rug.
“Do you want to go out, Rasputin?”
He went over to the glassed-in veranda, but the cat didn’t follow him. It just looked at him, then slunk into the kitchen.
The wind whirled around the house, rattling the small windowpanes in the veranda.
Joakim opened the outside door and felt the wind seize hold of it; it was coming in strong gusts now and seemed to be growing stronger all the time, transforming the snowflakes into needle-sharp shards whirling across the courtyard.
He went carefully down the steps, screwing up his eyes against the snow.
The sky over the sea looked darker than ever, as if the sun had disappeared for good into the Baltic. The cloud cover above the water was a threatening shadow-play of gray and black patches-huge snow clouds in the northeast had begun to descend, moving closer to the coast.
A storm was on its way.
Joakim went along the stone pathway between the buildings, out into the wind and the snow. He remembered Gerlof’s warning, that you could get lost if you went out in a blizzard-but there was only a thin covering of snow on the ground so far, and a short walk over to the barn didn’t seem to pose many risks.
He went over to the broad door and pulled it open.
Nothing moved inside.
A flash of light in the corner of his eye made him stop and turn his head. It was the light from the lighthouses. The barn obscured the northern tower, but the southern lamp was flashing at him with its red glow.
Joakim walked into the barn and it felt as if the wind were pushing at his back, as if it wanted to come with him. But he slammed the door shut.
After a few seconds he switched on the lights.
The lightbulbs hung there like feeble yellow suns in the dark space of the barn. They couldn’t chase away the shadows along the stone walls.
Through the roof he could hear the howling wind, but the framework of solid beams didn’t move. This building had survived many storms.
In the loft was the wall with Katrine’s name and the names of all the others who had died, but Joakim didn’t go up the steps this evening either. Instead he moved on past the stalls where the cattle had stood every winter.
The stone floor in the furthest stall was still free of dust and hay.
Joakim sank down to his knees and got down on his stomach. Then he slowly wriggled in through the narrow opening under the wooden planks, the flashlight in one hand and Katrine’s present in the other.
Inside the false wall he stood up and switched on the flashlight. Its beam was weak and it would soon need new batteries, but at least he could see the ladder leading up into the darkness.
Joakim listened, but everything was still silent in the barn.
He could stand here or start climbing. He hesitated. Just for a moment he considered the fact that a storm was coming, and Livia and Gabriel were alone in the house.
Then he lifted his right foot and placed it on the bottom rung.
Joakim’s mouth was dry and his heart was pounding, but he was more expectant than afraid. Step by step he was getting closer to the black opening in the ceiling. He didn’t want to be anywhere else but where he was now.
Katrine was close, he could feel it.
Markus came back to the island and wanted to see me, but not at Eel Point. I had to go down to Borgholm to meet him in a café.
Torun, who could hardly see the difference between light and darkness now, asked me to buy potatoes and some flour. Flour and root vegetables, that was what we lived on.
It turned out to be a final meeting in a gray town still waiting for winter, despite the fact that it was the beginning of December.
– MIRJA RAMBE
WINTER 1962
The thermometer is showing zero, but there is no snow in Borgholm. I am wearing my old winter coat and feel like the country cousin I am as I walk along the straight streets of the town.
The café where we have arranged to meet is full of decent, upstanding ladies who study me as I come in from the cold-cafés in small towns in Sweden are not the territory of young people, not yet.
“Hi, Mirja.”
Markus stands up politely as I walk over to the table.
“Hi there,” I reply.
He gives me an awkward little hug and I notice he has started using aftershave.
We haven’t seen each other for several months and the atmosphere is tense at first, but slowly we begin to talk. I haven’t got much to tell him from Eel Point-I mean, nothing
has happened there since he went away. But I ask him about life as a soldier and whether he lives in a tent like the one we built in the loft, and he says he does when he is out on exercises. His company has been in Norrland, he tells me, and it was minus thirty degrees. To keep warm, they had to pack so much snow all over the tent that it looked like an igloo.
Silence falls between us at the table.
“I thought we could carry on until spring,” I say eventually. “If you want. I could move closer to you, to Kalmar or something, then when you come out we could live in the same town…”
These are vague plans, but Markus smiles at me.
“Until the spring,” he says, brushing my cheek with his hand. His smile broadens, and he adds quietly: “Would you like to see my parents’ apartment, Mirja? It’s just around the corner. They’re not home today, but I’ve still got my old room…”
I nod and get up from my chair.
We make love for the first and last time in the bedroom Markus had when he was a boy. His bed is too small, so we drag the mattress onto the floor and lie there. The apartment is silent around us, but we fill it with the sound of our breathing. At first I am terrified that his parents will come in, but after a while I forget about them.
Markus is eager, yet careful. I think this is the first time for him too, but I dare not ask.
Am I careful enough? Hardly. I have no protection-this was something I could never have imagined would happen. And that’s exactly why it’s so wonderful.
Half an hour later we go our separate ways out on the street. It is a short farewell in the bitter wind, with a last clumsy embrace through the layers of clothes.
Markus goes back up to the apartment to pack before he catches the ferry across the sound, and I go off to the bus station to head back northward.
I am alone, but I can still feel his warmth against my body.
I would have liked to catch the train, but the trains have stopped running. All I can do is climb aboard the bus.
The atmosphere is gloomy among the small number of passengers, but it suits me. I feel like a lighthouse keeper on my way to a six-month tour of duty at the end of the world.
It is twilight when I get off to the south of Marnäs, and the wind is bitterly cold. In the grocery store in Rörby I buy food for myself and Torun, then walk home along the coast road.
I can see slate-gray clouds out at sea when I drop down onto the road to Eel Point. Strong winds are on their way to the island, and I quicken my pace. When the blizzard comes, you must be indoors, otherwise things could turn out as they did for Torun on the peat bog. Or even worse.
There are no lights in most of the windows when I reach the house, but in our little room there is a warm yellow glow.
Just as I am about to go in to Torun, I see out of the corner of my eye that something is flashing down by the water.
I turn my head and see that the lighthouses have been switched on before the night comes.
The northern lighthouse is also lit, glowing with a steady white light.
I put the bag of food down on the steps and walk across the courtyard, down toward the shore. The northern lighthouse continues to shine out.
As I stare at the tower something suddenly blows past me on the ground, something pale and rectangular.
Even before I catch up with it and pick it up, I know what it is.
A canvas. One of Torun’s blizzard paintings.
“So you’re back, are you, Mirja?” says a man’s voice. “Where have you been?”
I turn around. It’s Ragnar Davidsson, the eel fisherman,
walking toward me from the house. He is wearing his shiny oilskins, and he is not empty-handed.
In his arms he is carrying a great bundle of Torun’s paintings-fifteen or twenty of them.
I remember what he said about them in the outbuilding: It’s all just black and gray. Just a lot of dark colors… looks like crap.
“Ragnar…” I say. “What are you doing? Where are you going with my mother’s pictures?”
He walks past me, without stopping, and replies, “Down to the sea.”
“What did you say?”
“There’s no room for them,” he shouts back. “I’ve taken over the storeroom in the outbuilding. I’ll be keeping the eel nets there.”
I look at him in horror, then at the ghostly white light of the northern lighthouse. Then I turn my back on the sea and the wind and hurry back to the house and Torun.
30
The wind along the coast had increased to storm force. The gusts shook the car, and Tilda clutched the wheel tightly.
Blizzard, she thought.
The falling snow whirled across the road like a black-and-white film, spinning in the beam of the headlights. She slowed right down and leaned closer to the windshield so that she could make out the road ahead.
The snowfall looked more and more like thick white smoke swirling in across the coast. Drifts were beginning to form everywhere that the snow was able to stick, and they quickly turned into banks.
Tilda knew how quickly it could happen. The blizzard transformed the alvar into a white, ice-cold desert and made it impossible to travel by car anywhere on the island. Even the snowmobiles would sink and get stuck in the drifts.
She was on her way north now, with Martin still following
her. He wouldn’t give up-but she had to forget him and concentrate on looking ahead.
Snowdrifts covered the road, and it was difficult for the wheels to grip the surface properly. It felt like driving through cotton wool.
Tilda was looking out for the headlights of approaching cars, but everything was gray beyond the falling snow.
When she was somewhere in the region of the peat bog, the road in front of the car disappeared completely in the driving snow, and she looked in vain for markers showing where the edge of the roadbed was. Either they had already blown away, or nobody had put them out.
She noticed in her rearview mirror that Martin’s car was getting closer-and that was partly what caused her to make a mistake. She looked into the mirror for a second too long, and didn’t notice the bend ahead in the darkness. Not until it was too late.
Tilda turned the wheel as the road curved to the right, but not enough. Suddenly the front wheels sank down into the snow.
The police car stopped with a violent bang. A second later she felt an even bigger bang and heard the sound of breaking glass. The car was pushed forward and stopped, stuck in the ditch by the peat bog.
Martin’s car had driven into hers.
Tilda slowly straightened her back behind the wheel. Her ribs and the back of her neck seemed okay.
She floored the accelerator to try and pull back up onto the road again, but the back wheel spun around in the snow, unable to find a grip.
“Shit.”
Tilda switched off the engine and tried to calm down.
In the rearview mirror she saw Martin open the car door and step out into the snow. The wind made him stagger slightly.
Tilda opened her door as well.
The storm came roaring across the road, and the gray-black landscape made Tilda think of the picture of the blizzard she had seen at
Eel Point. When she stepped away from the car, the wind grabbed hold of her and seemed to want to drag her out onto the peat bog, but she fought against it and felt her way along the side of the police car.
The front of the car was pushed right down into the ditch. The car was at such an angle that one of the back wheels, the right-hand one, was actually in the air.
The whirling snow had begun to pile up against the doors and was already covering the tires.
Tilda fought her way back along the side of the car, with her hand on her police cap to keep it in place, and made her way over to Martin.
She had finally decided how she was going to treat him: not like her former tutor at the police academy, not like her former lover, but like an ordinary mortal. A civilian.
“You were too close!” she said through the wind.
“You slammed the brakes on!” he shouted back.
She shook her head. “Nobody asked you to follow me, Martin.”
“Well, you’ve got a radio car,” he said. “Call the breakdown truck.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
She turned her back on him, but knew he was right. She would call-although presumably every breakdown truck would be working flat out tonight.
Martin got back in the Mazda and Tilda struggled back to the warmth and quiet of the police car. Once inside she used the radio to call Borgholm for the second time-and this time a rasping voice actually came back over the loudspeaker.
“Central control?” she said. “1217 here, over.”
“1217, received.”
She recognized the voice. Hans Majner was manning the radio, and he was speaking more quickly than usual.
“What’s the situation?” asked Tilda.
“Chaos… more or less complete chaos,” said Majner. “They’re wondering whether to close the bridge completely.”
“Close it?”
“Overnight, yes.”
In that case the winds over the island had already reached storm force, Tilda realized-it was only in extremely bad weather that the Öland bridge was closed to traffic.
“And where are you, 1217?” asked Majner.
The Darkest Room Page 30