How long would he be standing here waiting? He could have walked to Lena’s house if only he knew where she lived. Soon his own memory would freeze solid.
The old man came out again with an empty box.
‘Cosmos,’ he said. ‘The cosmos is only an idea. Think about that.’
‘What?’ said Mik, his teeth chattering.
The old man lifted his sledge and turned it round.
‘Synchronicity.’
‘Synchro what?’
‘You’ve got snow on your head.’
And off he went.
Mik moved his legs up and down. He couldn’t work it out. His feet started to go numb. He couldn’t stand here any longer. He would freeze to the spot and be left there like a big-eared snowman. And no doubt one strange person after another would come up to him and say strange things.
Mik went into Konsum and stood in the warm air between the inner and outer doors.
The woman at the till and a few customers looked at him. He pretended not to see and fixed his eyes on a notice board.
Someone was selling a pram. Someone else wanted winter tyres for a Saab. A man called Tore was hoping to find his cat, a black one with a white patch on its neck and one white front paw. There was no mention of a reward, so Mik thought that was probably the last Tore had seen of his cat. Bea Svensson’s cat was also missing. It was a farm cat, a tabby. The reward was fifty kronor. Someone called Lisa Erikson was asking for information about her tortoiseshell female cat that had been missing since October. The reward for Lisa’s cat had also been fifty kronor but that had been crossed out and increased to a hundred.
Mik read on and was surprised, because among the notices about sledges, freezers, lingonberries, fishing reels and tyres there were at least ten about missing cats. Some with rewards, some without. It was odd. He looked out through the glass doors. Somewhere out there in the forest must be a whole herd of lost cats.
Mik went through the inner automatic doors, stood in front of the till and asked, ‘When is the next bus home?’
The cashier smiled at him.
‘Home?’ she said.
‘Yes, home.’
‘You mean the next bus to leave here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thursday.’
THE HAWK OWL
A dirty old Volvo estate rolled into the square. Out of the car stepped a woman in a green anorak. She had large eyes and long dark hair. People who guessed her age usually put it at just under thirty, but she was actually forty-two. The woman looked around the empty square, bewildered. Customers inside Konsum stared out through the window.
A woman who stood by the checkout paying for her items snorted, ‘Oh, her. She’s crazy.’
The woman leaned over towards the checkout lady and whispered very loudly, ‘She’s one of those lezzies.’
The cashier handed over the change and said, ‘She can be whatever she likes, as long as she does her shopping here at Konsum. And that’s only a rumour. Spiteful gossip.’
The woman took her change and very carefully put it into her purse.
‘I think she should do her shopping at ICA. Everyone knows what’s going on. Why would an attractive woman like her be living on her own?’
‘We don’t have any prejudice here,’ said the Konsum checkout lady.
‘And she calls herself a district nurse,’ said the woman, packing her shopping. ‘Imagine someone like that being allowed to have that kind of job. And why hasn’t she got any children?’
Mik picked up his bag and walked out into the square. He had recognised her. It was Lena, his dad’s sister. She saw him and came rushing up.
‘There you are. Sorry, I had to see to Gustavsson. He’s a right old moaner and refuses to go to the health centre even though his toes have turned blue.’
She crouched down and gave him a big hug. Mik stiffened. Something strange was happening inside his body. His joints locked. Lena noticed it immediately.
‘It’s a long time since anyone held you, isn’t it?’
She pushed Mik away from her, holding onto his shoulders, and looked down into his eyes. She gave a hoarse laugh.
‘Have you been waiting long?’
Mik just nodded.
‘Sorry again. My time-keeping’s so bad. Haven’t got a watch.’
Mik got another hug then. It made him go completely giddy.
The car smelled of wet dog. Lena started the engine, looked at Mik, ruffled his hair and skidded round the square and out onto the road, sending up a shower of snow.
‘Have you got a dog?’ asked Mik.
‘No. It disappeared through the ice last winter. The stupid …’ She shook her head.
‘Oh,’ said Mik.
‘It was caught by the current.’ Lena ran her hand over the seat. ‘But the dog hair is still here.’
Mik sat in silence as they drove through the snow-covered village. The car rattled and creaked and the fan belt screeched. The houses were dotted about randomly; smoke rose from their chimneys and every one had a satellite dish pointed up into space.
They swung off the road and onto a drive in front of a large yellow house. Two snowmobiles were parked by the steps. There were lights in the windows and people were looking out from behind the curtains.
‘Hilma has dementia. She is looked after by her relations. Sometimes she goes missing, and she’s just done it again. She got cold and it’s affected her lungs.’
They walked into the house without knocking.
‘Hello!’ called Lena.
Mik hid behind her.
The girl with the birthmark appeared suddenly in the hall.
‘Hello, Pi,’ said Lena. ‘How’s your grandma?’
‘Being awkward.’
The girl called Pi looked at Mik. More people came out into the hall, Pi’s parents and the confused granny. Lena handed over the medication and explained how and when it should be taken.
‘Oh, and this is Mik,’ said Lena, laying a hand on Mik’s head. ‘He’s going to be living with me for a while.’
‘Well, that’ll be nice, getting away from Stockholm for a bit,’ said the dad.
‘Stockholm,’ said the confused granny and slapped her knees. ‘Stockholm. It’s all murder and drugs, murder and drugs. Trouble, nothing but trouble.’ She looked like a troll.
Pi pulled on her earlobe and laughed.
Mik ran out and sat in the car. He breathed on the window. His breath turned to ice immediately. He melted it with his hand. He blew out ice and tried to think, but his thoughts froze to death, all mixed up. Was this where he was going to live? People here seemed crazy.
Lena opened the car door and threw a pair of winter boots onto the back seat.
‘Look what I’ve got for you. Pi’s grown out of them. You won’t survive here in trainers.’
Lena slowed down and stopped in the middle of a bridge.
‘Come and look at the river. It’s powerful and … well, I don’t know what to call it. It gives this place life.’
Mik got out of the car. He held onto the railing and looked down. His eyes adjusted to the darkness. The water flowed black and sluggish. Heavy, slow-moving eddies among the snow white banks. Vapour rose from the surface. It felt as if the bridge was travelling along the water. As if he stood at the prow of a huge boat, looking down.
‘It won’t be freezing yet awhile,’ said Lena. ‘But down by Lake Selet, where I live, the ice has started to form. A few more cold nights, that’s all.’
‘To think it’s flowing, even though it’s so cold,’ said Mik.
‘Yes, it hasn’t frozen just because it’s flowing. Otherwise it would be ice.’
‘I don’t want to fall in.’
‘Over there is the school. See, Mik? The building we passed before the bridge.’
She pointed across the river.
‘That little building?’
‘Yes,’ said Lena. ‘That’s where you’ll be going.’
‘I’m freezing.’
‘Twelve pupils, thirteen with you.’
‘In the class?’
‘No, in the whole school. You start on Monday.’
‘There’s four hundred of us in my school at home.’
‘You’re in the country now, way out in the wilds. The furniture factory has shut down, the school is threatened and Konsum is probably going to close in the spring. And where are we going to do our shopping then?’
‘At ICA,’ said Mik.
‘Here you either shop at Konsum or you shop at ICA. You don’t hop between the two. You’re either an ICA person or a Konsum person.’ Lena laughed.
Mik saw a man chopping wood in the dark and a dog on a long rope, barking. It raced along the road, following the car until it came to the end of the rope with a jerk. Mik watched through the rear window as the dog flew up in a somersault and fell down onto its back. It’s probably dead, he thought. Nothing would survive a yank like that; it’s like being hanged.
‘That’s Gustavsson’s dog,’ said Lena. ‘That leash he keeps it on is far too long. It chases cars and has been run over seven times and is now brain damaged and savage. It was a fine dog, but Gustavsson has ruined it. He got it from me, a puppy from my dog.’
‘That died,’ said Mik.
‘Yes, that died.’
Mik thought that was just as well but didn’t say so.
They swung into a front drive and stopped outside a blue house. At least it looked blue in the darkness. Three wrecks of cars, without windows or tyres, stood covered in snow. One had a door missing; another had no bonnet.
‘This is where I live.’
‘Good,’ said Mik. ‘Lots of cars.’
‘They’ve got to go, but I use them for spare parts to keep this one going.’
Mik picked up his bag.
Lena looked up at the sky. ‘It’s a clear night. It’s going to be cold. Minus twenty-five, at least.’
The bed was comfortable and clean, the sheets a bit stiff and frayed. A soft mattress and a cool, thick duvet and three feather pillows.
It was so quiet, no traffic blaring, no commuter trains clattering. No video shop, no pizzeria, no people yelling on the street. Nothing. Only a bus leaving every Thursday.
It was so quiet that for the first time he heard the sound in his head. It was a faint rushing, like the sound in a shell. In his right ear was a low, almost inaudible tone that came and went.
Had it always been there?
He turned onto his side. Blue light from the moon lit up the small room. The walls were covered in dark red wallpaper with a medallion pattern, and the ceiling was low. It was an attic room with a bed, a desk, a chair and a chest of drawers. Nothing more. It smelled nice.
He had noticed it as soon as he had come into Lena’s house. It was a kind house and untidy everywhere. There were books all over the place, huge piles that threatened to topple over. They were on the floor, on the table, on shelves and in boxes and bags. Had she robbed a library?
Lena seemed a bit odd. She had no TV, no computer, not even a radio. And naturally she had no DVD or video player. Only books.
To think it could be this quiet.
He folded back the duvet, slid out of bed and sat by the window. The snow shone blue and sparkled a little in the moonlight. Lena’s house was on a hill. Far away in the distance there were mountains covered in forest. The village lay in a valley where the river formed a lake, called Selet. The place he had come to was also called Selet. It took its name from the lake.
Smoke was rising from the chimneys, but no lights shone from any of the windows. The houses slept, breathing gently. A little village and then forest, forest, forest. The two closest houses below were exactly the same. A high fence ran between them, as if one of the houses couldn’t tolerate the other one. A kick sledge was parked outside each one, at the foot of the front steps.
Which direction was home? He recognised the moon. But that was all.
A peculiar round bird landed high up in a birch tree. But was it a bird? It looked more like a little troll. A flying troll? No, it looked more like an animal than a bird. Although birds are animals too. But this one was –
The stairs creaked. Mik turned to look at the door. No one could creep up on him here in the attic. He would be warned. But if the stairs creaked and no one came … it was haunted. The footsteps had almost reached the top. He looked at the door handle and thought, if someone comes and the stairs don’t creak, then it’s a ghost.
The door handle was pushed down, the door opened and Lena came in carrying a tray with two cheese sandwiches and a big glass of milk.
‘You haven’t eaten all day. All you’ve done is travel. I forgot that.’
She put the tray on the desk and crouched down beside Mik at the window.
‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’ she said in the darkness, quietly so as not to spoil all the loveliness. ‘I love this village. It’s small and everyone knows everything about everyone. Well, they think they do. I’ve lived here for seven years and I’ll probably stay.’
‘There’s a flying troll sitting in the tree. Should it be doing that?’
Lena laughed. ‘No, it’s a hawk owl. It usually sits there. It comes for a while late every evening. It’s keeping an eye on me, seeing if everything is as it should be. Then off it flies again. Eat up, now.’
Mik took one of the sandwiches, chewed and looked at the owl.
A light went on in one of the houses behind the high fence.
‘Here’s Bertil coming out with his potty.’
The door opened, a man came out onto the steps and emptied the potty on a heap of snow beside the door. Then he went back in again.
‘He pees badly,’ said Lena. ‘Little and often.’
‘Hasn’t he got a toilet?’
‘Yes.’
‘But why does he pee in a potty?’
Lena gave a quiet laugh in the darkness. ‘I don’t know. He’s just like that.’
The light went off, and a moment later a light went on in the other house behind the high fence.
‘Now Bengt’s coming out with his potty.’
The door opened and a man came out onto the steps and emptied a potty onto the snow heap beside the door.
‘Does he pee badly too?’ said Mik.
‘Yes.’
‘And has a toilet and is just like that, him as well?’
‘Yes,’ said Lena. ‘They’re twins, but they haven’t spoken to each other for thirty years.’
‘Why?’
‘Old men. It’s probably some elk hunt or piece of forest or fishing rights they can’t agree on. And that can take several hundred years to resolve.’
‘Now I understand,’ said Mik. ‘I saw the same old man twice today. He went into Konsum with fish, then I thought he came back with fish for ICA. But there were two of them.’
‘Yes,’ said Lena. ‘The Selström brothers.’
‘Who piss badly,’ said Mik.
‘Yes, and the only difference is that one of them is slightly crazier than the other.’
Lena laughed again. She laughed often. Mik liked that, and she smelled nice too. He ate up the last sandwich and drank the milk.
‘Right, now you must go to sleep. It’s school tomorrow.’
The hawk owl had gone. Mik hadn’t seen it fly away. He got into bed and pulled up the heavy duvet. Lena picked up the tray.
She turned around in the door and said, ‘It’s nice having a boy in the house.’
They looked at each other silently for a while. She smiled.
‘The moon up there and a boy here in this room. That’s nice.’
NEW AT SCHOOL
Mik woke up and at first didn’t know where he was. Then a grinding, stomach-churning anxiety set in.
School. He was the thirteenth pupil.
They would tear him apart. Rub snow in his face. There was certainly plenty of snow to do it with. And he would get an ice ball in each
eye. He got dressed and went downstairs.
Lena was crouching in front of the wood-burning stove, getting a fire started. She was feeding the flames with books. She threw in book after book. Then she closed its brass door.
‘It’ll soon be warm.’
‘Books?’
‘I’ve read them, and a book is only something while it’s being read. A book is something that happens in your head.’
Lena held up a book and went on, ‘And then all that’s left is paper. And they burn well and it’s warm for a while.’
‘Where did you get all the books from?’
‘Inherited them from my crazy mum. Three thousand of them. I counted. They’ll keep the place warm all winter.’
‘Have you read all the books?’ Mik looked round at the piles and boxes.
‘No, far from it. But a lot of them are the same. Love, murder, that kind of thing. And lots of them are really awful, so they’ve got to be burnt up straight away.’
‘How do you know if you haven’t read them?’
‘You can feel it when you hold a book. Here, feel.’ Lena threw a book at him. ‘Is that good or bad?’
Mik weighed it in his hand and looked up at the ceiling.
‘Bad.’
‘Chuck it in the stove, then.’
Mik opened the brass doors and threw in the book. The pages flapped and the fire caught hold immediately. It was a dry book.
It wasn’t far to school. The slippery slope down to the road junction, right at the main road and over the bridge. He would have time. If he hurried. It was minus twenty-two degrees. Lena had lent him a large red ski jacket, an ugly woolly hat and an old pair of knitted mittens. Steam came out of his mouth. The cold stung his nose and neck.
An old woman on a kick sledge went past and then a car with a trailer full of logs. Mik trudged along the side of the road where the snow was deep. The boots felt like massive army tanks and were filled with two layers of socks. If he had worn these on his feet at home his life would have been made a total nightmare. Bigboots. Bootboxes. Bootroots.
He looked up and came to a sudden halt.
There sat Gustavsson’s dog, attached to its rope. It glared at Mik and gave a low growl. The dog was a dirty white colour, big and looked like a wolf. Mik stood perfectly still and realised he wouldn’t be getting to school. He hated dogs, and this was the only road to the bridge. And how long was the dog’s rope? How far did it reach? Could it get as far as the bridge?
Thin Ice Page 5