by Philip Teir
Erik was sitting at a table that had been made from an old, gnarled pine tree. The chairs were made from the same tree, their legs twisted into odd shapes. The entire summer house was filled with these kinds of strange artefacts that had been acquired when the house was purchased.
He noticed now the sea breeze, even up here in the woods. He could hear the waves, a gentle and pleasant rushing sound that made him feel as if he were at the ends of the earth. When it got warmer, the air would smell of pine and salt water. In his mind Erik pictured the children, their downy suntanned backs covered with tiny grains of sand.
‘Pappa, there’s no coverage here. I can’t even upload a picture.’
Alice was holding her mobile as she stood near the rocks below the house.
‘Maybe it’s better down at the beach,’ he told her.
She cast a sceptical glance towards the shoreline.
‘But maybe you won’t need your phone now that we’re here. There are plenty of things for us to do.’
‘Like what?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. That’s something you kids need to work out for yourselves. When I was a boy, we were always bored. It’s good for kids to be bored.’
‘So you’re saying we came here to be bored?’
‘I’m just saying that it’s good for your sense of creativity if you’re forced to think up things on your own. Look at your brother. He couldn’t wait to get busy.’
Anton was sitting on the terrace, pressing on the chimney of the little wooden house he’d found.
Alice turned her sceptical gaze on her father.
‘Excuse me if I’m not mentally backward like my brother. Even Spotify doesn’t work out here.’
‘There’s a radio in the kitchen,’ said Erik.
Alice groaned and headed inside the house.
Erik glanced down at his own mobile and read a headline from Helsingin Sanomat. A terrorist attack in Istanbul. Thirty-five people killed. He considered clicking on the link to read the article, but then he saw Julia come out onto the steps.
Should he mention it to her? Most likely she would read about it later, yet it could be that some sort of news threshold existed in a couple’s relationship. Certain news was too big not to mention to your wife.
‘There’s been another terrorist attack. In Istanbul,’ he called to her across the yard.
‘Really?’ she said. ‘Is it bad?’
‘I didn’t read the article, but it says thirty-five people were killed.’
‘That’s awful,’ said Julia, sitting down next to Anton on the terrace. ‘Who did it?’
‘I don’t know. Probably ISIS.’
Anton looked up from the table, suddenly interested. He’d been asking a lot of questions about ISIS lately, wanting to talk about the situation in the world – wondering if there was any risk of terrorist attacks in Helsinki and whether Putin had plans to invade Finland.
‘Pappa? You know what?’ he said now.
Erik moved closer to the terrace.
‘What?’
‘I saw a film about somebody who made a list of the worst things you can do in a video game. There’s a place in Call of Duty 3 where you can be a terrorist and shoot down people in an airport.’
‘That sounds horrible,’ said Julia. ‘Where did you see a film like that?’
‘It was on YouTube. It wasn’t so bad,’ said Anton.
Erik glanced at Julia. They’d talked a lot about Anton’s fixation with YouTube, but had agreed that they needed to avoid the moralistic panic that had seized hold of their own parents when VHS players became popular back in the eighties.
Erik tried to open the link to the online article, but Alice was right, there was no coverage here. He walked around the yard for a while, going towards the woods behind the house, and finally managed to get a few bars on his mobile. It took for ever for the news site to open, but at last he saw a photograph. A bombed-out bus station, sagging steel beams, burned shops, shattered glass, crumpled road signs.
He read the article and then went back towards the house.
‘The death toll is still rising,’ he said as he went up the steps.
But Julia had already gone inside. Anton was still sitting on the terrace, all his attention focused on his new find. He’d managed to stick a few sweets inside the little house, and when he pressed on the chimney, a piece of liquorice tumbled out onto the eaves.
4
THE NEXT MORNING THEY were on their way down to the beach when they heard the sound of a tennis racket hitting a ball. There were several tennis courts nearby, a reminder of a time when Mjölkviken was new and modern, with families building stylish summer houses and buying motorised rubber boats. Erik pictured himself reserving time at a tennis court so he could learn to play the game properly. Maybe Julia would even be interested in joining him. She was so quick and agile.
‘I think the sound is coming from over there,’ said Alice with interest, pointing at a red-painted summer house nestled in a grove of pines close to the road. Erik caught a glimpse of the end of a net, but he couldn’t see any players. They were walking along a path that led down to a small inlet with rounded slabs of reddish granite rocks and a big stretch of sandy beach.
Julia had told her family how much the area had changed over the past twenty years because the next generations seemed more and more obsessed with property lines.
‘When I was a child, we were free to run everywhere. Nobody cared who happened to own the beach where we were playing. But these days none of the neighbours seem to spend much time with each other. Back then, this place was swarming with kids. I think people today lead such comfortable lives that they don’t feel like going out to the seashore any more. It’s too quiet and too far from all the conveniences of the city,’ she explained.
Anton looked at his mother, trying to imagine how it must have been when there were other children here. At the same time, he thought it was nice that his family had the place all to themselves. It always took such an effort to get to know new people.
‘Maybe we just need to talk to our neighbours. That shouldn’t be so hard, should it?’ said Erik.
Julia looked at him.
‘You can try. I think most of them are retired couples. Families with young kids don’t come here any more,’ she told him.
When they reached the shore, she sat down on the sand and poured herself a cup of coffee from the thermos.
The water was cold, and Anton didn’t want to swim, even though his father tried to persuade him.
‘It’ll be warmer in a few weeks,’ said Erik. ‘It’s not even midsummer yet. But the air is warm. Have you noticed? If you can find a sheltered place to lie down, that is,’ he added, turning his face to see which direction the wind was coming from. But it was hard to find a place to sit. The rocks were too low-lying to offer much protection from the wind. He sat down and leaned against a rock that felt much colder than he’d expected. It was as if winter were still lingering in the ground, as if it hadn’t yet relinquished its grip entirely.
Julia didn’t seem bothered by the wind. She sat in the pale sunlight, her eyes closed.
‘It’s so beautiful here,’ said Erik emphatically, loud enough that the others would hear. If he scrunched down slightly, he couldn’t feel the wind.
Julia merely looked at him for a moment and then went back to sunbathing.
The children lay on their towels as they listened to the ricocheting tennis ball.
‘It must be the rocks that make it echo like that, as if the sound is coming from the sea,’ said Erik.
‘Kind of depressing to play tennis all by yourself,’ said Alice.
Julia looked up.
‘An old couple used to live there. It must be their son who’s playing. I suppose he still comes out here once in a while.’
‘I’m freezing,’ said Anton.
‘Stop whining,’ said Alice, prompting Anton to give her a swift kick.
‘Here, wrap up in a towel,’ sa
id Erik. ‘And come closer to me. It’s not so windy over here next to the rocks.’
Julia poured herself a third cup of coffee. She was planning to start on her next book this summer, and now here she sat in the sun, thinking about it and refusing to let the family distract her.
That was the reason she had agreed to come here. Two months of isolation from the rest of the world was exactly what she needed to get going. She was going to write a novel about women in Jakobstad in the mid-twentieth century, and about the old tobacco factory which, at the time, was the town’s biggest employer. That was where her maternal grandmother had worked. Julia already had in mind the main character – a young woman who got a job there in the forties and then ended up pregnant by one of the factory managers. In Julia’s mind, the novel was practically written already. She had interviewed former workers at the factory – she’d been awarded a grant for that purpose – and she had looked at thousands of photographs from back then. She had also visited the local museum, with its collection of items from the factory: old drawings for cigarette packs, labels, time cards and adverts.
She was going to sit in the kitchen and write. This morning she’d looked through her notes and decided she needed an overall theme on which to base her story. Something a little more compelling. She thought about the post-war era with all the torn-apart families, all the alcoholic men who came home from the frontlines, all the young women who were forced to care for their brothers and fathers.
That had led to a few pages, and she wanted to continue with her writing after lunch. She was quite pleased with what she’d written so far. But it was always like that. The beginning was not the hard part.
When she looked up, she realised how much this place had affected her, with all the colours and rocks, the scent of the pine forest and the damp, marshy ground. It was all so familiar from her childhood. They were sitting across from one of the big rocks where she and Marika used to sunbathe. They would spread their towels out on the hot smooth surface and lie there talking. One summer the rocks had been covered with ladybirds, which had kept them preoccupied for a long while. Yet there was something not quite right about that memory; something was giving her goose pimples. It had always felt a little strange to leave the city behind and come out here, where the grown-ups behaved as if all the family boundaries had somehow dissolved. She had written a novel about Mjölkviken and left her childhood behind.
‘I think I’ll go back now,’ she said, brushing off the sand. ‘I want to try to do a little writing before lunch.’
‘Sure, go ahead. The kids and I will stay here for a while. Okay?’ said Erik. ‘Shall we make a sand castle?’
‘Yes!’ said Anton, dropping his towel next to Erik.
The children began building a sand castle at the water’s edge while Julia packed up her things. Erik gave her a look meant to encourage her. His eager support made her feel stressed, as if she were indebted to him because he was so understanding, as if she ought to finish writing the first chapter of her novel before lunch.
She picked up the thermos and her beach blanket and walked back up to the house. She caught a glimpse of the tennis court, but hurried past. She wasn’t ready to socialise with the local populace just yet.
When the sand castle was finished, Alice walked along the shore and went out to the furthest promontory of rocks. There she looked out at the sea. She wished the waves were bigger and a real storm was raging. That would have been more fun to photograph. Maybe there would be storms later in the summer. She thought about her classmates and was glad to be out here right now. Several of the kids she knew were going to spend the summer abroad: taking a road trip through Italy or visiting New York. Her mother was a writer, and Alice had learned that meant they didn’t have as much money as her classmates.
Erik and Anton had begun skimming stones across the water. Alice resumed walking among the rocks. The heather caressed her legs as she climbed from one rock to another. She noticed there was better coverage out here, so she took a picture of the sea and uploaded it to Instagram: ‘#vacation #summer #boring #sea #helpme’.
She continued clambering further along the bay, jumping from a rock into the cold water, choosing a cleft so Anton and Erik wouldn’t see her.
The water was shallow, barely reaching to her knees, and clear. The sand under her feet felt pleasant and cold, as if she were walking on a very soft rug. She walked further and further away from Anton and her father.
Alice had started having her periods this spring. It was as if she’d suddenly grown up on that first day, as if everything in the world had abruptly changed and she could no longer view things with the same childish eyes. Her mother and father seemed different. Everyone in school seemed different, more ridiculous somehow. Above all, she herself felt different. Not in a bad way, but she found it hard to say whether it was better or not. She could hardly remember how she’d felt before. The summer holiday was a welcome break from everything. She hated wearing a swimsuit, but it was tolerable with only her family to see her. They didn’t stare at all the awkward angles of her body, at the bony crook of her arm, or at her podgy feet.
Her mother had told her not to obsess about her body, that all those expectations came from external sources, or ‘social constructs’, as she called them. But Alice wondered whether it was really that simple. When she looked at herself in the mirror, it didn’t seem like she was looking through someone else’s eyes; she was the one who was dissatisfied. She was too short and her nose looked wrong in profile, as if somebody had pressed it slightly towards her face. She’d heard that she had her father’s nose, but she didn’t think it suited her.
A house stood on the shore across the bay. It was painted grey and looked quite modern, as if it were no more than ten years old. It seemed to be vacant. Alice was on her way towards this house when she caught sight of something gleaming in the water. She nudged it with her toe, then tried to pick it up with her foot. When she poked at it again, it floated to the surface. A ring. She plucked it from the water and studied it. The ring was smooth and not especially big. A woman’s ring. And Alice saw a date etched on the inside. Through the drops of water she read: 19.4.1994.
She glanced behind her. Her father and Anton were still playing that ridiculous game of skimming stones. She wanted to tell them about the ring, and yet she wanted to keep it to herself. She thought it might make the discovery seem more important if she told them, but they might react in the wrong way. Even worse would be if they didn’t react at all, but merely shrugged. She considered taking a picture of the ring but that didn’t seem right. The ring was hers.
She stood there in the cold water for a moment, contemplating what to do. In the end, she decided not to tell anyone.
By the time Alice got back to the beach, Anton had already gone up to the house.
‘Isn’t it great out here?’ said her father.
‘Sure,’ said Alice.
The sun had broken through the clouds, and it was now warm enough to lie down and dry off. Alice spent the rest of the morning like that, wrapped in a gentle indolence. The milk-white sky was as motionless as her thoughts, with only the quiet gurgling of the water audible from somewhere in the background, interrupted now and then by the tennis-playing sounds of the neighbour. Alice slipped in and out of sleep. In her hand she held the ring, which she planned to study more closely later.
5
FREEZING COLD, HIS LIPS blue, Anton walked up towards the house without the others.
‘Mamma, do you think there are snakes here?’ he asked as Julia brushed the sand off his legs and handed him his clothes.
‘I’m sure there are. But I’ve only ever seen one.’
‘When was that?’
‘Back when I was a little girl and your great-grandfather was still alive. It was behind the sauna. But that was a long time ago.’
‘Was it a viper?’
‘I think so.’
‘What did you do with it?’
‘I think you
r grandfather hit it with a shovel and sliced it in two.’
Julia actually had a vivid memory of the event. Her family was having a party, and the grown-ups were all drunk. She must have been seven or eight, and some of the guests had seen a snake behind the house when they went there to take a piss. Everybody went over to have a look. It was a very big viper, lying motionless on a bare patch of ground behind the sauna. Julia was shocked when her father fetched a shovel and abruptly chopped the snake in half while everyone else cheered. Somebody stepped forward and poured beer over the snake. She hadn’t been prepared to witness her father killing a snake. The sudden violence made her blood turn cold.
‘But that’s the only time I’ve ever seen a snake out here, so I don’t think there are many of them. Although I suppose it would be wise to be cautious,’ she said now.
Anton seemed to be thinking about what she’d just said. He looked around the yard, as if picturing snakes everywhere.
‘Mamma,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘Do you remember Valter, who went to my pre-school? A snake bit him, and he was almost paralysed.’
‘I know. His mother told me about it.’
The boy had suffered a bad snake bite at a summer house somewhere out in the Åboland archipelago. He had to be airlifted by helicopter to a hospital, and he was forced to spend several weeks in a wheelchair. The teachers at the pre-school had told the other children how to protect themselves from snake bites.
‘If you’re worried about it, you can always wear your rubber boots when you’re outside. And it might be best if you wear them when you run around in the woods,’ said Julia.
‘Okay. I will,’ said Anton.
A short time later Erik and Alice came back from the beach.