Jagannath

by Karin Tidbeck

  The dreams change a little each night. I’ve discovered that I have a fair amount of control of my actions. I wander around in the cabins and talk to the inhabitants. In true dream fashion, they all come from little villages with names that don’t exist like Höstvåla, Bräggne, Ovart; all located somewhere north of Åre, by the lakes that pool between the mountains.

  Sigvard’s wife is called Ingrid. They have three teenage children.

  6/15

  I’m a little disgusted by the direction this is all taking. I don’t know how to interpret what’s going on. The front doors are always unlocked; I go where I wish. Last night and the night before last, it happened several times that I walked into a house and people were having sex. On all surfaces, like kitchen tables or sofas. They greet me politely when I open the door and then go back to, not making love, but fucking. Nobody seems particularly into it. They might as well be chopping onions or cleaning the floors. In and out and the flat smack of flesh on flesh. And it’s everyone on everyone: man and wife, father and daughter, mother and son, sister and brother. But always in heterosexual configurations. I asked Sigvard what they were doing. We’re multiplying, he said. That’s what people do.

  6/20

  It’s midsummer. I’ve managed just over eighty pages. I’ve gotten as far back as great-great-great-grandfather Anders, son of Mats Nilsson, and if I want to get even further back, I’ll have to do some research on Anders’s five siblings or just ramble out into fairy-tale country. Not that making stuff up seems to be a problem. There’s no end to it. I’ve gone back to the start to fill in holes, like Mother and Gran’s siblings. No editing just yet, just more material. Brita asked me if I wanted to come with her to celebrate midsummer. I declined. All I want to do is write. Besides, it’s freezing outside, and the gnats are out in full force. It’d be a good idea, research-wise, to see Brita, but I don’t feel like being around people.

  6/21

  Sigvard came knocking on my door. He was wearing a wreath of flowers and held a schnapps glass in one hand. We danced to dansband music, the legendary Sven-Ingvars; we competed in sack racing and three-legged racing. Most of the women and girls had large, rounded bellies and moved awkwardly. When the dancing and playing was over, we ate new potatoes and pickled herring, little meatballs and sausages, fresh strawberries with cream, toasting one another with schnapps spiced with cumin and wormwood. It’ll get darker now, said Sigvard. He burst into tears. Yes, I replied. But why is that so terrible? It makes me think of death, he said.

  7/1

  One hundred fifty pages! That’s an average of five pages a day. Very well done. The last ten days have been about putting more meat on the bones I finished building around midsummer. In other words, embroidering what facts I had with more ideas of my own. Editing is going to take a lot longer, but I have a solid structure from beginning to end—no bothersome gaps or holes.

  I decided to stop at Anders. I need to check the other siblings now, especially Anna. I’ve tried to talk to Brita, but she’s always busy whenever I come over. I’m done with this place, though. I’m homesick. I’ve booked a ticket to Stockholm for the sixth. I can go back home with a good conscience.

  7/4

  They’re weeping and wailing. They’re all dressed in black. They won’t say why. I’ve told them I’ll be leaving soon, but I don’t think that’s why they’re sad.

  7/5

  I finally caught Brita for a cup of coffee. She apologized for being so busy. I asked her about Mats Nilsson’s children, but she doesn’t know much outside our own branch. Still, I asked her if she knew anything about Anna, the eldest daughter. Not much, she said. But then there wasn’t much to know about her. She disappeared without a trace when she was twenty years old. The consensus was that she probably drowned herself in Kall Lake or in one of the sinkholes in the quarry. In any case, she was never seen again.

  7/6

  I’m leaving on the night train. I cleaned out the cottage; all that’s left is to hand over the keys to Brita.

  Sigvard knocked on the door in my dream. The whole village was crowding behind him. They looked aged and crumpled somehow, and they were weeping loudly. Some of them didn’t seem to be able to walk on their own—they were crawling around. Sigvard came in first; he dropped to his knees and flung his arms around my legs. I sat down on the floor. He put his head in my lap. My dear, he said. It was the best summer ever. We’re so grateful. Then he sighed and lay still. The others came, one by one. They lay down around me and curled up. They sighed and lay still. I patted their heads. There, there, I said. Go to sleep now, go to sleep. Their bodies were like light shells. They collapsed in on themselves.

  I was woken up just after seven by an ice-cold draft. The front door was open. I went for a last walk in the village. Clusters of tiny spheres hang under the eaves.

  Reindeer Mountain

  CILLA WAS TWELVE YEARS OLD the summer Sara put on her great-grandmother’s wedding dress and disappeared up the mountain. It was in the middle of June, during summer break. The drive was a torturous nine hours, interrupted much too rarely by bathroom and ice-cream breaks. Cilla was reading in the passenger seat of the ancient Saab, Sara stretched out in the backseat, Mom driving. They were traveling northwest on gradually narrowing roads, following the river, the towns shrinking and the mountains drawing closer. Finally, the old Saab crested a hill and rolled down into a wide valley where the river pooled into a lake between two mountains. Cilla put her book down and looked out the window. The village sat between the lake and the great hump of Reindeer Mountain, its lower reaches covered in dark pine forest. The mountain on the other side of the lake was partly deforested, as if someone had gone over it with a giant electric shaver. Beyond them, more shapes undulated toward the horizon, shapes rubbed soft by the ice ages.

  “Why does no one live on the mountain itself?” Sara suddenly said, pulling one of her earphones out. Robert Smith’s voice leaked into the car.

  “It’s not very convenient, I suppose,” said Mom. “The hillside is very steep.”

  “Nana said it’s because the mountain belongs to the vittra.”

  “She would.” Mom smirked. “It sounds much more exciting. Look!”

  She pointed up to the hillside on the right. A rambling two-story house sat in a meadow outside the village. “There it is.”

  Cilla squinted at the house. It sat squarely in the meadow. Despite the faded paint and angles that were slightly off, it somehow seemed very solid. “Are we going there now?”

  “No. It’s late. We’ll go straight to Aunt Hedvig’s and get ourselves settled. But you can come with me tomorrow if you like. The cousins will all be meeting to see what needs doing.”

  “I can’t believe you’re letting the government buy the land,” said Sara.

  “We’re not letting them,” sighed Mom. “They’re expropriating.”

  “Forcing us to sell,” Cilla said.

  “I know what it means, smart-ass,” Sara muttered, and kicked the back of the passenger seat. “It still blows.”

  Cilla reached back and pinched her leg. Sara caught her hand and twisted her fingers until Cilla squealed. They froze when the car suddenly braked. Mom killed the engine and glared at them.

  “Get out,” she said. “Hedvig’s cottage is up this road. You can walk the rest of the way. I don’t care who started,” she continued when Cilla opened her mouth to protest. “Get out. Walk it off.”

  —

  They arrived at Hedvig’s cottage too tired to bicker. The house sat on a slope above the village, red with white window frames and a little porch overlooking the village and lake. Mom was in the kitchen with Hedvig. They were having coffee, slurping it through a lump of sugar between their front teeth.

  “I’ve spoken to Johann about moving him into a home,” said Hedvig as the girls came in. “He’s not completely against it. But he wants to stay here. And there is no home here that can handle people with…nerve problems. And he can’t stay with Otto forever.
” She looked up at Cilla and Sara and smiled, her eyes almost disappearing in a network of wrinkles. She looked very much like Nana and Mom, with the same wide cheekbones and slanted gray eyes.

  “Look at you lovely girls!” said Hedvig, getting up from the table.

  She was slightly hunchbacked and very thin. Embracing her, Cilla could feel her vertebrae through the cardigan.

  Hedvig urged them to sit down. “They’re store-bought. I hope you don’t mind,” she said, setting a plate of cookies on the table.

  Hedvig and Mom continued to talk about Johann. He was the eldest brother of Hedvig and Nana, the only one of the siblings to remain in the family house. He had lived alone in there for forty years. Mom and her cousins had the summer to get Johann out and salvage whatever they could before the demolition crew came. No one quite knew what the house looked like inside. Johann hadn’t let anyone in for decades.

  —

  There were two guest rooms in the cottage. Sara and Cilla shared a room under the eaves; Mom took the other with the threat that any fighting would mean her moving in with her daughters. The room was small but cozy, with lacy white curtains and dainty furniture, like in an oversize doll’s house: two narrow beds with white throws, a writing desk with curved legs, two slim-backed chairs. It smelled of dried flowers and dust. The house had no toilet. Hedvig showed a bewildered Cilla to an outhouse across the little meadow. Inside, the outhouse was clean and bare, with a little candle and matches, even a magazine holder. The rich scent of decomposing waste clung to the back of the nose. Cilla went quickly, imagining an enormous cavern under the seat, full of spiders and centipedes and evil clowns.

  When she got back, she found Sara already in bed, listening to music with her eyes closed. Cilla got into her own bed. The sheets were rough, the pillowcase embroidered with someone’s initials. She picked up her book from the nightstand. She was reading it for the second time, enjoying slowly and with relish the scene where the heroine tries on a whalebone corset. After a while she took her glasses off, switched off the lamp and lay on her back. It was almost midnight, but cold light filtered through the curtains. Cilla sat up again, put her glasses on and pulled a curtain aside. The town lay tiny and quiet on the shore of the lake, the mountain beyond backlit by the eerie glow of the sun skimming just below the horizon. The sight brought a painful sensation Cilla could neither name nor explain. It was like a longing, worse than anything she had ever experienced, but for what she had no idea. Something tremendous waited out there. Something wonderful was going to happen, and she was terrified that she would miss it.

  Sara had fallen asleep, her breathing deep and steady. The Cure trickled out from her earphones. It was a song Cilla liked. She got back into bed and closed her eyes, listening to Robert sing of hands in the sky for miles and miles.

  —

  Cilla was having breakfast in the kitchen when she heard the crunch of boots on gravel through the open front door. Mom sat on the doorstep in faded jeans and clogs and her huge gray cardigan, a cup in her hands. She set it down and rose to greet the visitor. Cilla rose from the table and peeked outside. Johann wasn’t standing very close to Mom, but it was as if he was towering over her. He wore a frayed blue anorak that hung loose on his thin frame, his grime-encrusted work trousers tucked into green rubber boots. His face lay in thick wrinkles like old leather, framed by a shock of white hair. He gave off a rancid, goatlike odor that made Cilla put her hand over her nose and mouth. If Mom was bothered by it, she didn’t let on.

  “About time you came back, stå’års,” he said. He called her a girl. No one had called Mom a girl before. “It’s been thirty years. Did you forget about us?”

  “Of course not, Uncle,” said Mom. “I just chose to live elsewhere, that’s all.” Her tone was carefully neutral.

  Johann leaned closer to Mom. “And you came back just to help tear the house down. You’re a hateful little bitch. No respect for the family.”

  If Mom was upset, she didn’t show it. “You know that we don’t have a choice. And it’s not okay to talk to me like that, Johann.”

  Johann’s eyes softened. He looked down at his boots. “I’m tired,” he said.

  “I know,” said Mom. “Are you comfortable at Otto’s?”

  Cilla must have made a noise, because Johann turned his head toward her. He stuck out his hand in a slow wave. “Oh, hello there. Did you bring both children, Marta? How are they? Any of them a little strange? Good with music? Strange dreams? Monsters under the bed?” He grinned. His teeth were a brownish yellow.

  “You need to go now, Johann,” said Mom.

  “Doesn’t matter if you move south,” Johann said. “Can’t get it out of your blood.” He left, rubber boots crunching on the gravel path.

  Mom wrapped her cardigan more tightly around herself and came inside.

  “What was that about?” Cilla said.

  “Johann has all sorts of ideas.”

  “Is he talking about why we have so much craziness in the family?”

  “Johann thinks it’s a curse.” She smiled at Cilla and patted her cheek. “He’s very ill. We’re sensitive, that’s all. We have to take care of ourselves.”

  Cilla leaned her forehead against Mom’s shoulder. Her cardigan smelled of wool and cold air. “What if me or Sara gets sick?”

  “Then we’ll handle it,” said Mom. “You’ll be fine.”

  —

  What everyone knew was this: that sometime in the late nineteenth century a woman named Märet came down from the mountain and married Jacob Jonsson. They settled in Jacob’s family home, and she bore him several children, most of whom survived to adulthood, although not unscathed. According to the story, Märet was touched. She saw strange things and occasionally did and said strange things, too. Märet’s children, and their children in turn, were plagued by frail nerves and hysteria; people applied more modern terms as time passed.

  Alone of all her siblings, Cilla’s mother had no symptoms. That was no guarantee, of course. Ever since Cilla had been old enough to understand what the story really meant, she had been waiting for her or Sara to catch it, that, the disease. Mom said they weren’t really at risk, since Dad’s family had no history of mental illness, and anyway they had grown up in a stable environment. Nurture would triumph over nature. Negative thinking was not allowed. It seemed, though, as if Sara might continue the tradition.

  —

  Sara was sitting under the bed covers with her back to the wall, eyes closed, Robert Smith wailing in her earphones. She opened her eyes when Cilla shut the door.

  “Johann was here.” Cilla wrinkled her nose. “He smells like goat.”

  “Okay,” said Sara. Her eyes were a little glazed.

  “Are you all right?”

  Sara rubbed her eyes. “It’s the thing.”

  Cilla sat next to her on the bed, taking Sara’s hand. She was cold, her breathing shallow; Cilla could feel the pulse hammering in her wrist. Sara was always a little on edge, but sometimes it got worse. She had said that it felt like something horrible was about to happen, but she couldn’t say exactly what, just a terrible sense of doom. It had started about six months ago, about the same time that she got her first period.

  “Want me to get Mom?” Cilla said as always.

  “No. It’s not that bad,” said Sara, as usual. She leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes.

  Sara had lost it once in front of Mom. Mom didn’t take it well. She had told Sara to snap out of it, that there was nothing wrong with her, that she was just having hysterics. After that, Sara kept it to herself. In this, if in nothing else, Cilla was allowed to be her confidante. In a way, Mom was right: compared to paranoid schizophrenia, a little anxiety wasn’t particularly crazy. Not that it helped Sara any.

  “You can pinch me if it makes you feel better.” Cilla held out her free arm. She always did what she could to distract Sara.

  “Brat.”

  “Ass.”

  Sara smiled a little.
She looked down at Cilla’s hand in hers, suddenly wrenching it around so that it landed on her sister’s leg.

  “Why are you hitting yourself? Stop hitting yourself!” she shouted in mock horror.

  There was a knock on the door. Mom opened it without waiting for an answer. She was dressed in rubber boots and a bright yellow raincoat over her cardigan. “I’m going to the house now, if you want to come.”

  “Come on, brat,” said Sara, letting go of Cilla’s hand.

  —

  The driveway up to the house was barely visible under the weeds. Two middle-aged men in windbreakers and rubber boots were waiting in the front yard. Mom pointed at them.

  “That’s Otto and Martin!” Mom waved at them through the window.

  “I thought there were six cousins living up here,” said Sara.

  “There are,” said Mom. “But the others aren’t well. It’s just Otto and Martin today.”

  They stepped out into cold, wet air. Cilla was suddenly glad of her thick jeans and knitted sweater. Sara, who had refused to wear any of the (stupid and embarrassing) sweaters Mom offered, was shivering in her black tights and thin long-sleeved shirt.

  The cousins greeted each other with awkward hugs. Otto and Martin were in their fifties, both with the drawn-out Jonsson look: tall and sinewy with watery blue eyes, a long jaw, and wide cheekbones. Martin was a little shorter and younger, with fine black hair that stood out from his head like a dark dandelion. Otto, balding and with a faraway look, only nodded and wouldn’t shake hands.