Per put down the phone. That was that.
If Jerry hadn’t been fully retired before this weekend, he had no choice now – his workplace was gone. Per would drive him back to his apartment after Easter, and he could live a peaceful life there. Sit in front of the TV and live on his pension. If he had one.
Per went out on to the patio. ‘I’ve just been speaking to the police, Jerry. They’ve found two bodies in your house … Hans Bremer and a woman. Did you see a woman there?’
Jerry looked up at him and shook his head.
Per sat down opposite him. ‘The police seem to think it was Bremer who set fire to the place,’ he said. ‘And that does seem like the logical explanation, doesn’t it?’
But Jerry was still shaking his head. Eventually his mouth formed just one word: ‘No.’
‘Yes, Jerry. They think he wanted to destroy the studio.’
His father appeared to abandon the attempt to speak. He bent down to his briefcase and opened the worn straps. He rooted through a pile of papers and pulled out a magazine. It was the same old copy of Babylon he had whipped out at the party.
‘I don’t want to look at that,’ said Per curtly.
But Jerry started flicking through the pages anyway, as if he were looking for something. Then he found a particular double-page spread, and held it up to Per. ‘Markus Lukas,’ he said.
Per sighed, he didn’t want to look. But he leaned forward anyway.
The pictures Jerry was holding up showed nothing more than yet another sex scene between a well-built man and a young blonde woman – the same scenario his father had published in one magazine after another over the years. The female model was lying underneath the man, but her face was turned away from him and towards the photographer, and the couple seemed to be making every effort to touch each other as little as possible. There could be no hint of love or tenderness.
‘Markus Lukas,’ said Jerry, pointing at the man.
‘OK, Markus Lukas. So that was the name of your male model?’
Jerry nodded.
Per contemplated the naked back of a muscular, broad-shouldered man aged between thirty and forty. He had thick, curly black hair, visible in one picture that showed the back of his head; most of the pictures revealed him only from the waist down.
He thought about the man who had been driving the car that spring day, with Per and Regina in the back seat. Jerry had called him ‘Markus Lukas’. Was this the same man?
‘You can’t see his face,’ said Per.
Jerry nodded, but pointed at the man again. His stiff mouth was working. ‘He … ang—’
‘Angry? Is he angry?’ said Per.
Jerry nodded.
‘Who is he angry with? You and Hans Bremer?’
Jerry looked away. ‘Cheated,’ he said.
‘That doesn’t surprise me … you and Bremer cheated him out of some money?’
Jerry shook his head, but said nothing more.
Per picked up the magazine and leafed through it. There were plenty of pictures of different girls, page after page of close-ups and full-length shots, but the male models with whom they were having sex were only partly visible in the photographs. The camera focused on the women; the men were completely anonymous.
‘Are there no pictures of Markus Lukas’s face?’ he asked.
Jerry shook his head.
Per sighed, but he wasn’t surprised. There was no need to show the men’s faces – only one small part of their body was important.
‘So what’s Markus Lukas doing now? Do you know where he lives?’
Another shake of the head.
‘But he’s not involved in porn any more?’
Jerry didn’t say anything. Per thought he understood why; in a way Jerry no longer worked in the porn industry, although of course it hadn’t been a voluntary decision.
‘And I don’t suppose he was actually called Markus Lukas, was he?’ Per went on. ‘I imagine it was made up, just like all the names you gave the girls?’
Jerry nodded.
‘So what was his name?’
Jerry’s gaze was blank.
‘You don’t remember what Markus Lukas was called?’
A brief shake of the head.
‘In the contract,’ said Jerry.
‘OK, so he had a contract of employment, and his real name is on that?’
Jerry nodded and pointed across the water, in the direction of the mainland. ‘Home,’ he said.
‘Good, you’ve got it at home,’ said Per. He looked down at the pictures in the magazine, at the naked man.
‘Angry,’ said Jerry.
Per looked at the magazine one last time. He remembered the year after his meeting with Regina, when he finally realized why his father took women out into the forest and photographed them: it was to earn money from a magazine he published, a magazine called Babylon. Per had cycled to a newsagent’s on the other side of Kalmar and sneaked in to buy a copy.
BABYLON, it said on the cover in dark-red letters, above a picture of a smiling girl who resembled Regina.
He stuffed it under his jumper, took it back to his room and hid it under the mattress. Late that night when Anita was asleep, he sat there looking through the pages by the light of a torch. He saw page after page of smiling, naked girls, their white skin glowing in the sunshine or under the studio lights. They were all blonde, but several of them looked as if they were wearing a wig.
On one of the pictures he noticed a thin curl of cigarette smoke drifting across from the left – and he knew that Jerry was standing there smoking just a few metres away. Inside his head Per could hear Jerry coughing and encouraging the model to arch her back and show as much as possible. He could hear his voice.
‘Come on, darling, you’re not shy, are you?’
The girl in the picture reminded him of Regina, and Per knew that looking at her ought to give him a warm feeling in his body, but nothing happened. All he could think about was the cigarette smoke.
Per shivered in the spring breeze, and he was back by the quarry.
‘So the only thing we know for certain about Markus Lukas,’ he said, closing the magazine, ‘is that he’s got big muscles.’
He held out the magazine between his thumb and forefinger and passed it to his father, without looking at it.
‘Hide that now, or throw it away. I’m going to wake up the twins.’
27
It wasn’t until six o’clock on Thursday evening that Vendela was able to change and set off for a run across the alvar again. She thought about the elf stone and the coin she had placed in a hollow on the top of the stone, but, just as before, she visited her childhood home first.
The allergy affecting her nose and throat eased slightly as she started to jog, and after a few hundred metres she found a comfortable rhythm. It took her quarter of an hour to run north-east and reach the old farm.
She walked into the garden and stopped.
There was a red car on the grass in front of the house, a big Volvo with a roof rack. The boot and two of the doors were open, as was the door of the house.
The family who owned the place had obviously arrived to spend Easter on the island. But Vendela couldn’t help herself, she still had to move closer, walking towards the open door in the glass veranda.
Suddenly a woman appeared in the doorway. She stepped out into the sunshine and caught sight of Vendela.
‘Oh,’ she said.
She was perhaps ten years younger than Vendela, and looked frightened.
‘Hi,’ said Vendela with a tense laugh. ‘I just wanted to stop and rest for a minute, I’m out jogging and …’
‘Yes?’
‘… and I grew up here. My family used to own this place.’
‘So you used to live here?’ The woman looked more friendly. ‘Well, come in and have a look around, if you like. I should think it’s changed quite a bit!’
Vendela nodded and stepped on to the veranda without saying anything; she walke
d through the porch and into the kitchen. She recognized the rooms, but they appeared to have shrunk since she was a child. The kitchen had been repainted and kitted out with trendy bench seating and a tiled stove. The aromas were different too; the smell of her father and his unwashed clothes was gone.
From the kitchen a staircase led up to the first floor. She went over to it and stopped. ‘Is it OK if I go up and have a look?’
‘Of course, but there’s not much to see.’
Vendela went up the stairs, and the woman followed her. ‘It was almost four years before we could face making a start up here,’ she said, with a weary laugh. ‘But we’re really pleased with it now.’
Vendela nodded without speaking or smiling. She couldn’t find the words; this was very difficult for her. But she moved up the last step and stood on the landing. It was bright and clean now; when she was a child it had been brown with ingrained dirt, and there had been dust everywhere.
And there it was on the right, the shiny door. It led to a little bedroom. There had been a small table by the door, where Vendela had always placed a tray of food before she left for school in the morning.
The door was half-open now; she could see toys and pieces of Lego on the floor, and she could hear a little boy laughing.
She turned to face the woman. ‘Are you staying long?’
‘No, just over Easter. We’ll be going home on Monday.’
‘I’ll be here until the middle of May,’ said Vendela, trying to sound calm. ‘I could keep an eye on the house, if you like. I come past here sometimes when I’m running anyway, so …’
‘Would you do that?’ said the woman. ‘That would be really kind; there have been quite a few break-ins here on the island.’
Vendela looked around. ‘Are you happy here?’
‘Oh my goodness, yes, we love it here,’ said the woman. ‘It’s really cosy here.’
Vendela doubted that. The farm was in the way of the elves – she realized that now. Living here could bring nothing but misfortune.
Patches of snow were still hiding beneath the thickest bushes, and the lakes formed by melting ice and snow on the alvar were wider than ever, but were evaporating in the sunshine. By the time May came, they would be gone.
Vendela was finding her way more easily now, and after running for quarter of an hour she had reached the big stone once more. She saw immediately that the elves had been there.
The old coins were still there in the hollows, but the ten-kronor piece she had offered as a gift for Aloysius was gone.
She wasn’t surprised, just delighted that they still gathered at the elf stone after all these years.
She sat down on the grass with her back against the eastern side of the stone and breathed out. She had had her doubts, but now she knew this was where she needed to be; every other place she had ever visited or yearned for disappeared beyond the horizon. Here by the stone there were no demands on her; the Vendela Larsson that Max and the rest of the world constantly watched did not exist here.
She closed her eyes, but continued to see pictures inside her head. She could see all the way across the alvar to the water, and she thought she could even see the quarry and her own house beside it. Max was sitting there at one of his desks working on the penultimate chapter of Good Food to the Max. He was describing his day-to-day life, in which he was responsible for most of the cooking in the home, simply because ‘the greatest joy in life lies in sharing your own happiness with another person’. So in order to see a happy face in the morning, Max would wake his wife – ‘my beloved V’ as he referred to her in the book – ‘with a groaning breakfast tray laden with freshly baked bread, fruit and freshly pressed juices’.
Vendela knew that at that moment Max was utterly convinced that this was the case, despite the fact that she was almost always the one who made their breakfast. He had treated her to breakfast in bed or had made dinner on the odd special occasion, and she had hoped that if she praised him enough he might help her in the kitchen more often. But cooking had never become part of Max’s everyday life.
That didn’t matter now, out here on the alvar.
She could see their neighbours’ house to the north, the old house built by one of Henry’s workmates, and the family who were living there now. Per Mörner was sitting on the patio with his elderly father. His children were there too. Everything looked very peaceful and festive, but Vendela knew that appearances could be deceptive.
Per was a stressed and tortured soul. It would do him good to get out here on the alvar for a run.
Then she stopped gazing into the distance and her thoughts returned to the place where she was sitting now, to the stone and the little glade among the juniper bushes. For a brief moment everything was bright and shiny, but suddenly she saw the image of a tall man in her mind, dressed in a white robe. He was standing completely still, unaffected by her gaze. He was smiling at her.
The king of the elves? No, Vendela sensed that this was their messenger, a servant indicating that they were aware of her presence. This man was of a lower rank – he actually reminded her of Max to a certain extent.
He remained there inside her head, still smiling, as if he were trying to say: It is you who must take the first step, not me.
But Vendela was not ready to take that step, not yet.
She opened her eyes and looked around. The glade was empty, but she could hear the sound of rustling over in the bushes.
She shivered, just as she always did when she dragged herself back from the world of the elves. She got up and took three coins out of her pocket. She placed them in a row on top of the stone, each in its own hollow.
One coin for Max and herself, one for Aloysius’s health, and one for the neighbours by the quarry. Per Mörner and the others.
Then she turned and set off across the alvar again, loping between the gleaming pools of water. The evening sun was shining in the west, a warm lighthouse guiding her down towards the coast.
It was only seven o’clock when she got home. Time had passed slowly, as it always did in the world of the elves.
28
Gerlof was sitting in the garden. It was Good Friday, the day that Jesus had died on the cross. When he was a little boy, Gerlof had been forced to mark the day by doing absolutely nothing. You were not allowed to play, or listen to the radio, or talk loudly, and you were most definitely not allowed to laugh. All you could do, in fact, was sit still on a chair. As an old man he marked the day in more or less the same way, but now it felt pleasantly restful.
He was waiting for his children and grandchildren to arrive from the west coast. There were things he could be doing; he had customers waiting for ships in bottles, and he was paid well for making them. But it was a holiday, after all, and in any case his thoughts kept returning to the pile of Ella’s old diaries.
He should never have started looking at them.
In the end he got up and went to fetch the diary for 1957. He settled down in his chair, opened the diary somewhere around the middle, and began to read Ella’s neat handwriting.
16th June 1957
Last night we had a storm, and the children and I got up to watch the lightning. It struck three times out in the sound – we could hear the water crackling. Gerlof slept through the whole thing, but I suppose he’s used to noise out at sea.
Yesterday he cycled up to Långvik, bought a new fishing net and cycled back to lay it out, then he got up at five this morning to check it – there were twenty-five flounder and six perch. So today we had fish in white sauce – delicious.
This morning Lena and Julia saw a young deer run across the road into the forest.
Today that poor widower Henry Fors who lives to the north of the village sold his last two calves for slaughter, the wagon came from Kalmar to fetch them at two o’clock, so now he just has the three cows that his daughter Vendela helps him with. It’s sad, but I suppose he needs the money.
Ella was right about Vendela Larsson’s father, Gerlo
f thought; he had never had much money. A few skinny cows grazing on meadows that were anything but lush, and his job in the little village quarry that could no longer compete with the big companies. It wasn’t easy.
He turned to the next page:
27th June 1957
It’s been a while since I wrote; time goes so quickly and I’ve got so much to do that the days just disappear. And I don’t always feel like writing, anyway.
It’s hot and sunny – summer has definitely arrived.
Gerlof has sailed down to Kalmar to measure the ship; he went yesterday and took the girls with him – they’re on holiday from school. I’m perfectly happy up here in the village on my own, though – I mean, there’s the sewing group down in Borgholm, but I don’t really miss it. It’s mostly talk and gossip about whoever hasn’t turned up that evening, so I expect they’ll be busy talking about me right now.
There are cock pheasants all over the place in the evenings; I expect they’re attracted by the hen pheasants down on the farms. The owners of the hens have no intention of letting them get together!
The little changeling from the pasture crept up to the cottage again today, and I gave him some oatcakes and lemonade. He’s full of life, he never stands still, but he doesn’t say much, and he won’t tell me who he is or where he comes from.
He needs a wash. And his hair is really long and matted – I’ve never seen anything like it.
Suddenly Gerlof heard the sound of a car engine, and almost jumped out of his seat. A car was coming along the village road; it slowed down and turned in.
He quickly closed the diary and hid it under the blanket; he was sitting quietly and calmly in his chair when the gate was opened and the Volvo rolled slowly down the path, bringing his two daughters and their families. The car doors were flung open.
‘Hello Granddad! Here we are!’
‘Welcome!’ Gerlof shouted, waving cheerfully. ‘Happy Easter!’
They all climbed out: Lena and her youngest daughter, then Julia and her two youngest stepsons, along with their suitcases and rucksacks.
The family had arrived, and that was the end of his peace and quiet.
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