The Forbidden Place

by Susanne Jansson

  She cast a glance at the nurse, who was taking notes and didn’t appear to be paying them any attention.

  “He fell in the swamp, is that right?” his mother continued. “He was out running? He’s always running. But how could he have fallen in? One of the police officers said someone might have attacked him. Do you know anything about that?”

  Nathalie looked at her. She had dark hair in a medium-length ponytail and was wearing simple clothes that gave the appearance of being well put-together.

  “I don’t know any more than you do,” she said.

  “Do you know Johannes well? Are you from the school too?”

  Nathalie hesitated. “We had just started getting to know each other, you could say.” She looked at the floor. “I live right next to the mire and… that’s where I found him. Quite a way into it. Totally knocked out.”

  “But what could have happened to him? I don’t understand. His ankle was swollen too.” Her eyes grew shiny and her gaze seemed to swim anxiously about Nathalie, as if it were searching for something to hang on to.

  “We might not find out until he wakes up and can tell us himself,” Nathalie said.

  “The doctor says,” his mum said, swallowing, “that the next few days are critical, to find out whether they have to operate. If it swells any more in there, then… then they have to relieve the pressure. By… opening his skull.”

  Nathalie placed her hand on the woman’s arm as she pressed on.

  “Apparently the injury has affected an area that regulates consciousness and sleep. So even if it doesn’t get worse, he might not wake up for a while longer. As far as I understand it.”

  She looked away.

  Nathalie felt speechlessness settle over her. She felt distant, disconnected, as if none of this actually had anything to do with her.

  “Okay,” she said. “Then I suppose all we can do is wait.”

  She stood up and looked at Johannes and then at his mother. “I’m going to take off. I didn’t want to leave him all on his own, but now you’re here, so…”

  His mother hugged her hard. “Thank you. Thank you so much, dear.”

  “If he doesn’t wake up soon,” Nathalie said, “I can come back and sit with him if you want. Otherwise maybe you could give me a call if he wakes up. I mean when he wakes up. The nurses have my mobile number.”

  She headed for the exit but turned around in the doorway.

  “By the way,” she said softly. “The police have his jogging gear. And a little bag… full of a bunch of ten-kronor coins. Must be a hundred of them.”

  Johannes’s mother looked at her in bafflement.

  “Apparently they were in his pockets when he was found.”

  The house Maya Linde had bought in Fengerskog was big and old and had originally been built to house a mechanic’s shop. Bicycles had been built there in the 1930s, and since production stopped in the eighties, various owners had tried to create homely spaces, at least in parts of the building.

  The house looked like an unusually spacious and imposing traditional Dalsland cottage: a two-storey wooden building painted red, with large mullioned windows and white lettering on the façade: C.W. Haraldson Mech. Workshop.

  Maya herself was surprised, as she’d never expected she would settle in her old home district again—she had grown up in Åmål, only about twenty kilometers away. But then her dad became seriously ill and she didn’t want to leave her mum on her own. What’s more, one of her closest friends had moved to Fengerskog, just as so many other artists had done in recent years.

  While people moved steadily and increasingly away from most of “Vänerland”—as Maya liked to call the area surrounding the border between Dalsland and Värmland, at the northwestern corner of Lake Vänern—the small community of Fengerskog was bucking the trend. Certainly the handicraft school had been there for several decades, but recent years had brought elements that made the district even more lively throughout the year, and sometimes throughout the day and night. A more progressive fine arts school had been started two years ago. With the school came student housing and a number of guest studios; as a result, new artists arrived every six months, not only from Sweden but from all over the world.

  The schools had gradually taken over the abandoned paper mill nearby, thus gaining large spaces for exhibitions, theater and other performance shows—and, not least, parties. There had been a café there for a long time, but before long a bar and a small restaurant opened their doors too. More and more students—and teachers—were moving in. Other artists who, like her, had left the area years ago, were moving back, buying up the cheap property, and having families.

  The schools attracted visitors year round: there was a craft market at Christmas-time, theater in the summer, an art crawl at Easter and various exhibitions between times. According to the latest estimate, the cultural center was the third-largest tourist attraction in the municipality.

  Darkness had fallen outside the windows, and it was warm in the room. The glow from the candles and the fireplace flickered on the walls. Maya had invited her friend Ellen, who was also the rector at the new art school, to dinner along with Oskar, who had come to Fengerskog as a guest artist a few months back. Maya had met him at the bar in the old paper mill a few times, and the whole reason behind the dinner was that Oskar had offered to help Maya move in.

  Now, after some box-carrying and the following dinner, he and Ellen were each lying on a sofa while Maya stretched out on the huge, worn Oriental rug.

  “Have you two ever been out to the bog?” Maya asked, her eyes on the ceiling.

  Oskar and Ellen turned toward her.

  “No,” Ellen said. “Are you thinking about what happened?”

  “I was there today. First time in probably forty years.”

  “It was someone from the school, wasn’t it?” Oskar asked, looking meaningfully at Ellen.

  “Yes,” Ellen replied. “It’s scary when things hit so close to home. I suppose we’ll have to have an assembly at school on Monday; a bunch of strange rumors have already started spreading. But isn’t that why you were there?”

  Maya nodded. “Although that’s not why I was thinking about it; there was such a… magic isn’t the right word—but such a powerful feeling up there. I took some pictures. For my own use, I mean.”

  “Anything we’re allowed to see?” Oskar asked.

  “Just sketches. Maybe later,” Maya said. “But have any of the students been up there to paint or anything?”

  “Not that I know of. That’s a good idea though, Maya,” Ellen said. “The basic course in painting doesn’t actually have a theme this autumn; maybe we could do something around the idea of nature.”

  At that moment Maya regretted having brought up the bog. The last thing she wanted was a bunch of art students there.

  The wine was almost gone and Ellen had got on to the topic of how she had met her future, now ex, husband in New York by mistake.

  “Or more accurately, it was Maya’s mistake,” Ellen clarified for Oskar. “We were there visiting Maya in New York the same week, my ex and I. That is, before we were together, or even knew each other. Not only did Maya forget she’d invited me, she also invited him the same week. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, she herself was booked solid.”

  “Okay, so what happened?” Oskar said.

  “Well, she didn’t have much time for us, so I guess it’s lucky we had each other,” Ellen said, throwing an acidic look Maya’s way.

  “Yeah, it was lucky!” Maya said.

  “So we went to museums and galleries for a week,” Ellen went on, “and then I moved in with him in Stockholm. We ended up with a son and almost ten years together. It didn’t end until four months ago, when I found him at our summer cabin with a man. I probably could have lived with that too, for what it’s worth. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he was truly in love.”

  “Now what?” Oskar asked.

  “It might end with me moving in here.”
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  “You’re welcome to.” Maya smiled. “I have to atone for my mistake. You can vacuum and polish the windows instead of paying rent. I do have a hell of a lot of windows.”

  “Maybe I’ll move in too,” said Oskar. “The guest houses are so small.”

  “All joking aside”—Maya said—“I think I prefer to live alone.”

  “What about Vanja?” Ellen asked. “Where’s she going to live?”

  “Who’s Vanja?” said Oskar.

  “That’s my assistant, from New York. We’re not going to live together; she bought a cheap house not far from here.”

  “Oh right, I think I heard something about that,” said Oskar.

  “She’s arriving tomorrow. But I suppose I’ll need extra help in the next few days,” Maya said, turning to Ellen. “Would one of your students be interested? Mostly just to get things in order. I was planning to put up a notice on the bulletin board.”

  “Don’t,” said Oskar. “Don’t put up any notices. I’ll do it.”

  “You? But it’s unpaid.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  Maya brought her glass of red wine to her lips and smiled. “Okay.” The alcohol was starting to make her sleepy. “Is there any cheese left, do you think?”

  Oskar stood up and went to the kitchen.

  Once Ellen and Oskar had left, Maya took a quick shower, pulled on her nightdress, and crawled under the blankets. She read a few pages of the paper before setting it aside and gazing out at the room.

  An idea had taken root in her mind. An idea about doing a series of photos from the bog at Quagmire Manor: quiet, simple images of the varied landscapes. Wide-open spaces. Maybe a few houses. As scaled back as possible, so that the atmosphere up there would shine through in the pictures.

  She took out her laptop and brought up one of her photographs in full-screen view. It showed how the open bog met the sky, two fields with differing structures. Maybe it had no artistic merit as it was now, but at least she had got the idea and knew how to bring her intentions to fruition. Black and white, a square format. It would be suggestive and lovely.

  She brought up another picture, then another. She was just about to close her laptop when something on the screen caught her attention.

  The picture had been taken from the walkway, straight across the bog. A few trees were visible on the right. But there, quite far back in the image, partially hidden by the trees and bushes—it looked like someone was standing there.

  She flipped through the other pictures from the same series. In the first few, it looked like the person was moving forward, only to have stopped and turned toward the camera in the later ones. The body was vaguely hunched. As if it were stooping. It could be a woman; it could be a man.

  In the following pictures, the person was gone.

  She looked through the series once more. Maybe it was just someone out enjoying nature. Or exercising, she thought, because who else would have any reason to be out there?

  Sorry if I’m intruding,” said Agneta, the manor house manager. “I just wanted to hear how you are doing. And find out what’s going on.”

  Agneta was standing outside the cottage door, calm and collected, yet eager somehow. She was clearly anxious to find answers to what had happened out in the bog. And for Nathalie to give her those answers.

  “I don’t know much,” said Nathalie, “just that he’s still unconscious. But come in. Would you like anything?”

  She had just sat down at the table to eat a few open-topped sandwiches with hard-boiled eggs. She gestured at the kitchen table, at the coffee, the bread, butter and a box of juice.

  “There’s something familiar about you,” Agneta said as she stepped in. “I thought so from the very start.”

  “I get that a lot,” Nathalie said. “Would you like something to eat?” she repeated.

  “No, I’m fine, thanks,” said Agneta. “But won’t you tell me more about what happened when you found that man? You knew him, didn’t you?”

  “No, not really. He liked to jog by here; beyond that we only saw each other a few times.”

  “But you sat with him at the hospital?”

  Yes, it had ended up that way.

  They sat down on either side of the table and Nathalie saw no other option but to tell Agneta how she happened to be out there on the mire. To explain how nervous she had become and how she had set off to look for Johannes.

  “If you hadn’t acted so quickly, he might have died,” Agneta said gravely. “You saved his life.”

  Nathalie looked away. “Well…” she said. “Maybe. It was mostly just luck.”

  “There’s something I don’t quite understand,” Agneta said, her gaze sharpening. “He wasn’t really out there long enough for you to start worrying, was he? You had a feeling, didn’t you? That something had happened?”

  Nathalie hesitated to answer the obtrusive question.

  “I don’t really know… or, okay, maybe. I just got it into my head that something wasn’t right. And the weather was so terrible.”

  “Well, in any case, we’ll cross our fingers that everything will be fine,” Agneta said. “He’s come by on his run just about every day for over a year, no matter the weather. I was so impressed,” she went on as she stood up. “Anyway, outstanding job, Nathalie, really—just sensing something like that. That’s what I call intuition.”

  “I don’t know,” said Nathalie.

  “By the way,” Agneta said, lowering her voice as if anyone could overhear, “we don’t want any incidents to give the area a bad name, do we?”

  So that was what she was after, Nathalie thought once Agneta had left.

  Business as usual.

  As if Mossmarken wasn’t already tainted, after everything that had happened.

  The most important rooms were furnished, the office among them. Handymen would be coming this week to start the renovation of the remaining areas: she had plans to build a darkroom for developing traditional black and white photographs, as well as a photography studio with an exhibition space, plus a small bar.

  Maya glanced at her computer, which was on the floor next to her bed. She would have liked to pick it up and take another look at the photos from the mire—the yellowed landscape, the stooping figure—but she felt drained. A journalist and photographer from a monthly magazine had just interviewed her about her return home and her future. Fengerskog versus New York.

  It had been an interesting meeting. The journalist, Tom Söderberg, was well-read and familiar with most of the projects she had worked on in recent years. She was flattered by how deeply he had analyzed her images and pleased at how sharp his observations were.

  She also approved of him because he hadn’t just stuck to flattery—at one point he had also challenged her with some well-founded criticism in a manner she wasn’t used to. It had sparked her interest, at least in his intellect, and at least temporarily. She could take his criticism with ease, with a smile, maybe because she understood that he was already enamored with her. And that those feelings had probably appeared even as he read about her art and career.

  This wasn’t the first time that had happened.

  The photographer arrived near the end of the interview. She had seemed a little tense and uncertain, and she wanted pictures of Maya from various spots in the house but also out in the middle of the cow pasture and on her way into the barn. Tom came along; they smiled at each other and exchanged quiet glances as the photographer’s camera buzzed and clicked.

  When it was all over, she offered to let Tom borrow a couple of articles about her he hadn’t been able to get hold of.

  Once she was on her own again, she put together a lunch out of some deli items she had in the fridge. She sat down at her large dining table and looked out at two brown cows who were staring at her from their field. She caught sight of herself in the big mirror on the facing wall, and was reminded of a few lines from a book she had read some time ago, a description of a person who appeared to ha
ve “a body full of food, drink, and years lived.”

  She had her father’s round face and short neck. His narrow lips and nut-brown hair; his, too, had begun to go gray after fifty. Even her wrinkles were in the same places as his. Her father’s face rested inside hers, like an image sinking below the surface of the water.

  She remembered almost to the day when she first felt the line-graph of her body swing downwards, like an elegant movement in the eternal cycle. The process had actually begun much earlier, of course, but she remembered when she noticed it: everything from the way her vision started to get worse to the realization that her skin was abandoning its former posts and beginning to sag. She could see the way her neck formed an accordion of folds when she turned her head and observed her reflection at the same time.

  She remembered how she had been filled with the awareness that her body was a compostable organism like any other plant or animal on earth. It had given her a feeling of total freedom. Like a whisper from above, from inside, of letting go. In that moment, she felt like a leaf falling from the branch, only to float to the ground, where the decomposition process would take over.

  Free to fall.

  Like an uncomplicated leaf.

  Teach me to decay like a simple leaf, as a poet once wrote.

  Maya hadn’t even needed to learn how. She was a natural.

  Nathalie stood at one of the windows in the cottage, watching the landscape; the forest and that familiar desolation.

  So much was coming back to her now.

  But so much was different, too.

  She could tell that she was more jittery. Or more open. Movement in every layer. Something had awoken, wanting up, wanting out. It was as though she were no longer in charge. If she ever had been.

  The glow from the kerosene lamps made sharp shadows that streaked across the walls, hard and fast with the tiniest movement, like bats at night.

  The indoor warmth creaked through the timber walls; there was scratching at the floor, probably mice who had returned from their leaf piles and holes in the ground.