by Linn Ullmann
Chapter 57
The porn magazines Marion pinched from her father, Niclas Bodström, and sometimes she sits on the rock under the sun, surrounded by the other girls, reading aloud from the “readers’ confessions.” Erika thinks the stories in Marion’s father’s porn magazines are rougher and thus more thrilling than stories like this she has read before. The pictures of naked girls parting their legs or thrusting their bottoms at the camera are all exactly the same, and none of the girls wastes much time on them. No, it’s the stories they eagerly turn the pages to find.
Just a few days after Marion cleared out Erika’s room, Marion and Erika are lying alone on the rock. That hardly ever happens, but today it has. Frida is standing on the beach, staring at them and waiting for a sign, and Marion laughs and says: “Look, there’s Frida. Shall we ask her to come over, or say fuck it?”
“Fuck it,” says Erika, feeling the sun suffuse her with warmth.
The two of them pretend not to see Frida, and eventually she goes away and they have the rock and the beach to themselves. Marion reads aloud from one of her father’s magazines and they both snicker, and Erika edges closer and lies beside her stroking her stomach, her thighs, between her legs. Her bikini briefs are made of a thick, soft material and Marion has lots of hair between her legs; Erika has seen it on several occasions. Marion likes taking her clothes off in front of the others, displaying herself, soaking up the small, silent sighs of admiration. She has more hair than Erika, more than the other girls. It’s like running your fingers over a bumblebee. Marion pretends not to be aware of what Erika’s doing and carries on reading out loud. Erika unties the bikini briefs and puts her hand right on the slit. Marion is warm and honey-wet, and Erika rubs with her hand cautiously to and fro, and her hand gets warm and honey-wet, too. Everything is soft and easy and wet. Just the sun, the sea, and Marion here beside her. Erika sticks one of her fingers into Marion and Marion giggles, and wriggles her backside a little, but carries on reading. Erika rubs harder, and simultaneously puts more fingers into Marion. Marion puts down the magazine, shuts her eyes, and yields to Erika’s hand. Erika looks down at her face. It isn’t so pretty now: the mouth is half open and the cheeks very red, the black hair trailing down her neck like stinging jellyfish tentacles. Erika holds her breath, pokes one finger deep into the slit, and pulls it out again. Then she stops. Erika sits still with her hands on her lap and looks down at Marion, who is moaning and writhing.
Marion whispers: “Don’t stop! Please! Don’t!”
It’s an entreaty.
Erika laughs.
“Why are you laughing?”
Marion’s voice is so low, she can hardly hear it.
Erika shrugs.
“I was only messing around.”
Marion shuts her eyes again and Erika rubs her hand to and fro along the slit, rubs hard, until Marion’s breathing grows louder and faster; there’s a little gasp, and the whole thing is over. She knows it’s over when Marion suddenly turns away and lies down on her side with her legs pulled up under her. No cries and moans like the girls in her father’s magazines. No howling. Marion turns away and lies on her side, and when Erika tries to touch her, she slaps her hand away.
“Get lost.”
Erika sits there on the rock and looks down at her: the slender back, the pale backside, the long brown legs. Marion is shivering; she’s cold. It’s one of those days with scorching sunshine one minute and clouds the next. Everyone’s going around saying they can expect thunder. The waves beat against the rock. Erika finds a big sweater in her bag and puts it over Marion’s shoulders, and Marion takes the sweater, pulls it over her head, and sits up. Her black hair is tangled, her eyes are red-rimmed.
“GO!” she screams, not looking at Erika. “Didn’t you hear, I told you to fuck off! Get lost! You fucking slut!”
Chapter 58
Molly isn’t allowed to get up in the morning until the man on the radio has finished talking about what’s going on in the world and another man has read out the temperatures for all of Sweden. The magic word is Borlänge. When the temperature man has declared what kind of weather the people of Borlänge may expect that day, Molly can get up.
Today is Molly’s birthday. She’s five. She wants a bikini. One like Erika’s, with polka dots. Isak says you don’t always get what you want. She might end up with a globe instead.
“There are hard lessons to be learned in life,” says Isak.
Molly has a radio in her room, on her bedside table. It’s small and oblong and gray, with a long aerial sticking up. Sometimes you have to twist the aerial to get a good sound. Molly knows how to do that.
The man on the radio says: Wage earners’ investment funds were the most controversial issue of the 1976 election campaign and led to the Social Democrats’ fall from power. As this year’s election approaches, wage earners’ investment funds have been consigned to the political wilderness, but that particular bear is unlikely to sleep in peace indefinitely.
Molly sits up in bed and yells: “HELLO THERE, RADIO MAN! Bears never sleep!”
Molly wonders if she’ll get up even though the temperature man hasn’t started reading out the temperatures. This is the rule: the temperature man might say Borlänge seventeen degrees Celsius and before that he might say Kiruna twelve and Luleå fourteen and Sundsvall nineteen, but it’s only when he gets to Borlänge seventeen that she’s allowed to get up and run in to Isak and Rosa and shout at the top of her lungs BORLÄNGE SEVENTEEN! and hurl herself into their bed and tug at the quilt and jump up and down without Isak’s getting angry and bellowing that she’s to take herself back to her own bed and go back to sleep.
Birthdays are no exception, Isak told her yesterday evening.
Night is still night and day is still day, even on your birthday.
Molly has asked Laura if bears absolutely, definitely exist, and Laura says they do, and they can attack at any time. She shows Molly a newspaper article about a bear that has torn lots of sheep to bits. Laura reads out: The idyllic scene in this beautiful northern valley has turned into a desperate hunt for corpses.
“What’s a hunt for corpses?” asks Molly.
Laura shrugs. She shows her sister a picture of three mutilated dead sheep. Next to one bloodied sheep stands a farmer with a rifle slung over his shoulder.
Rosa says there are no bears on the island, but Laura says Rosa’s lying because she doesn’t want to frighten her.
“Grown-ups always lie to little children,” says Laura.
“About what sorts of things?” Molly asks.
“They lie about world war and murderers and nuclear power stations and atom bombs and disarmament and fucking and cancer and death and God and Jesus and the Virgin Mary and everything. They lie about everything, get it?”
Molly is quiet for a moment. She eyes her sister.
“But they don’t lie about bears,” she says.
Laura groans.
“They lie about everything! Everything!”
The truth is, at night, when both the yellow ferries between the mainland and Hammarsö are lying still and the ferrymen are asleep in their beds, the bears slowly swim across the sound, one after another, in a long, long row. They paddle through the water like dogs. They have thick, shaggy white coats and sharp teeth and black eyes. Laura says God exists and God sees everything. Molly knows that. Jesus died a long time ago, so did Granddad and the bird that crashed into the window and other birds that crashed into other windows and the kittens the caretaker in Oslo flushed down the toilet. They all live in Heaven, with God, who sees everything.
Laura says it’s important to pretend she’s not afraid of the bears, because if God sees she’s afraid, he’ll cancel her birthday and then she’ll have to stay four for a whole year longer and maybe forever, for all eternity.
“God punishes everybody who’s afraid,” says Laura.
Molly gets out of bed, pulls the blue dress over her head, creeps out of her room and along the hall, and
unlocks the front door. Then she runs down to the sea, and the wind blows around her ears, and she shouts to the wind that she’s Molly. I’M MOLLY! she shouts. HOY, HOY, HOY! The waves roar. Molly can swim although she can’t swim, so she takes off her dress and dips her toe in the water. It’s cold. She’s sure the man on the radio hasn’t said Borlänge yet; he hasn’t read out a single temperature. It’s terribly, terribly early in the morning. Isak would definitely call it night. Molly kneels down and the cold water comes up to her bottom; it laps at her and it’s cold and the sun sparkles on the horizon. The rough stones in the shallows open up an old gash on her knee, but it’s been reopened so many times that it doesn’t hurt anymore. Molly isn’t afraid of anything. I’M NOT AFRAID OF ANYTHING! she shouts, and looks up at the sky.
She puts her hands together and prays.
Most of all she wants a polka-dot bikini.
Chapter 59
Erika is lying on the rock in the sea with Marion, Frida, and Emily. And Frida has brought a magazine, an even dirtier magazine than those Marion steals from her father. The new magazine actually belongs to Frida’s brother Evert, who is eighteen and doing his military service. This raunchier one has mainly pictures and hardly any stories.
“Let me show you! Let me show you!” Frida says eagerly, fending off all the girls’ hands grabbing at the magazine and trying to see.
Frida turns to a picture of a woman lying on her side on the floor and being taken frontally by one man and from behind by another, while a third is kneeling over her face. Frida holds it up so they can all see and then passes it to Marion, who passes it to Erika, who passes it to Emily. Erika looks at the picture and giggles and feels a tingling inside her. To be utterly filled like that. Totally blocked up and torn apart at the same time. Outnumbered and mastered and powerless.
“Take a look at that, Erika!” whispers Marion, who is sitting next to her.
The other girls look at Erika and snicker.
“That could have been you,” Frida says in a low voice.
“You could have been screwed by Fabian on one side and his twin brother on the other side,” says Marion.
“While you sucked Pär’s cock,” says Emily.
“Pär’s mine,” says Marion, with an ominous look at Emily.
“All right, Ragnar then,” says Emily. “While she sucks Ragnar’s cock.”
“Yuck!” says Marion, and sticks her finger in her mouth, in and out, and makes a face as if she’s about to throw up.
Erika giggles. She doesn’t want to giggle; all this stuff they say isn’t worth giggling at, all this disgusting stuff that spews out of them every time they say Ragnar’s name—it’s like spitting on him—but she giggles anyway. It’s like that time, a few days ago, when they were looking through her old album and saw the photograph of her and her father and she said: My dad’s stupid. She didn’t want to say it, but she said it, even so. She doesn’t feel able not to. Marion puts an arm around her and says she’s having a party later in the week and lots of people are coming. Not just Fabian and his brother, but older boys, Frida’s brother’s friends, all on their military service. Erika can feel Marion tickling the back of her neck and bending over her and licking her ear. She thinks of the picture of the woman being taken from the front and the back and in her mouth, and there’s a tingling between her legs.
“NOW!” says Marion suddenly.
Frida grabs Erika’s arms, pushes her down onto her back, and holds her there. Emily pulls off her bikini briefs, forces her legs apart, and holds her there.
“No,” giggles Erika. “Don’t do it.”
Marion goes over to her beach bag and fishes out her vibrator.
“Please, no,” giggles Erika.
She can’t stop giggling. Marion approaches slowly and looks just too comical with the buzzing vibrator held out in front of her and an expression on her face (eyes half closed, pouting lips) that’s supposed to suggest the horny woman in the magazine. It is comical. It’s like being tickled, and Erika can’t keep herself from laughing. She laughs and laughs and laughs. She wants to sit up and recover, but Frida is gripping her wrists and Emily her ankles, and Erika can only writhe there, pinned at each extremity, her legs parted. Now they’re all laughing. Frida at her head, Emily at her feet, holding her down. Marion with the buzzing vibrator. Erika on her back with her legs splayed wide. They laugh and laugh, and the more they look at one another, the more they laugh, and it’s impossible to stop. Marion tries to recompose her incongruous face, but can’t do it. Her face dissolves into more laughter. She kneels down in front of Erika and moves the vibrator toward her, and Erika laughs and shouts: “No! No! No! No! Not that!”
Marion laughs, too, and pushes the vibrator into her, hard, and the pain is like being gored and speared and Erika stops laughing and screams No! Ow! But Marion carries on spearing her, and Erika screams and struggles against Frida’s and Emily’s hands. They keep her pinned and everybody’s laughing.
“Do you want it up your ass as well?” shouts Marion.
Frida and Emily try to roll Erika onto her stomach, but Erika manages to pull herself free, screaming at them to stop.
She’s crying now.
The three girls look at her inquiringly.
“Oh, come on,” says Marion. “It’s only a bit of fun. You were laughing as much as us.”
Erika has found her bikini briefs and wrapped a towel around her body. She doesn’t want to cry. There are so many tears. But she doesn’t want to cry in front of them. So she takes a deep breath and forces herself to smile.
She says: “I’ve got to get home for dinner, okay?”
Marion looks at her. She’s still got the vibrator, buzzing, in her hand, between thumb and forefinger. Everyone can see the traces of blood. Erika looks down at the ground. Nobody says anything. Marion flings the vibrator into the sea.
“There, it doesn’t exist anymore,” she says with a shrug.
Frida and Emily giggle. Erika turns away, doesn’t want them to see the tears streaming out of her. The shame is like vomit.
“Gone! Gone!” whispers Marion.
She takes Erika’s hand in hers and carefully wipes away the tears.
Chapter 60
There are still seven days until the opening night of this year’s Hammarsö Pageant, with the working title An Island in the Sea. Isak and Ann-Marie Krok have both failed to learn their lines. Quite a few of the young people are not turning up at rehearsals; the heat wave continues.
Palle Quist is not happy with the title An Island in the Sea. Too humdrum and inconsequential, he thinks, not least because all islands are by definition in the sea. So he lies in his bed night after night, twisting and turning and trying to think of a better title, all the while knowing that he desperately needs his eight hours’ sleep—because without sleep he will never be able to pull together this year’s production, which already has more problems than anticipated. The leading lady, Ann-Marie Krok, is clearly suffering from senile dementia, and Isak Lövenstad, in his role as Wise Old Man, has not even once managed to get through the crucial long rhyming poem that rounds off the play and is concerned with not only the dead and their longing for life but also the final confrontation between God and Satan. It is a vital monologue! If Isak Lövenstad chokes on opening night, the whole play will be ruined and that loathsome young summer critic wannabe from Örebro will have more than enough ammunition to massacre the playwright’s thoughtful endeavor when writing his review in the local paper.
It is a difficult time for Palle Quist, who has so many things to worry about as he lies awake at night. He worries about the pianist, who—out of sheer devilry—regularly oversleeps, so the actors have to practice their songs without accompaniment. He worries about black-haired Marion, who skips rehearsals and chews gum or just laughs her way through her lines. He worries about his scenery, which is now being completely sabotaged by the caretaker of the community center. The caretaker maintains that for safety reasons it is impossible
to make a hatch in the floor, which—with a great rumble!—would open up and let out the wood sprites. The whole point, said Palle Quist, was for the wood sprites to come out onto the stage as if they really were streaming from underground realms! The caretaker, a tanned, weather-beaten man with blue eyes, a stub of cigarette in his mouth, and a sow in labor back at his farm, had sighed and said he could not authorize any such damage to community center premises and declared that Palle Quist would have to assume all responsibility if any were done. He further considered it his duty to remind Palle Quist that the Hammarsö Pageant was but one of the ongoing programs of the community center that summer, and just imagine what would happen if they all came and demanded their own hatches in the floor and God knows what else. With the sow about to give birth, the caretaker, being extremely short of time, remained intransigent on this and all other points of scenery—and visions of wood sprites streaming from underground realms utterly failed to move him. Just the opposite, in fact. The bastard, who had doubtless never read a book or seen a play in his entire life, was incapable of entering into or being carried along by, much less undertaking himself, any daring leap of the imagination, and he made Palle Quist feel stupid and ridiculous in his big flowing clothes, his long artist’s scarf, his proud beard, and his faltering magnum opus, now so hopelessly close to its premiere. So at night he lies tossing and turning, staring into his own inadequacy, his joints, his muscles, and his head aching, and more than ever he hates the puppy from Örebro, the critic with the pretentious German surname, whose sole mission in life seems to be to ridicule, trivialize, and destroy him. And once he is lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep, he starts thinking about Ragnar, the skinny boy in black with the birthmark between his eyebrows, the boy who stares morosely at him or sneers ironically when given instructions and lets a kind of trembling death throe run through his body every time he reads his line I am an angel from the north!