by Linn Ullmann
“Dear Ragnar. My dear friend…”
Palle Quist furrows his face in friendly concern.
“The idea is not for you to shake and gasp for air and feign the spasms of a dying man. You’re an angel. The idea is…”
Palle Quist hesitates.
“The idea is…”
Ragnar fixes him with a look and says: “So the idea is what?…You’ve really got me curious now!”
“The idea is that the angel—that is, you!—is life itself! And as a symbol of life, you mustn’t frighten the audience with those death spasms, but embrace them! Like this!”
Palle Quist throws out his arms, hugs Ragnar, and cries happily: “I AM AN ANGEL FROM THE NORTH!”
He lets go of Ragnar, looks at him and smiles.
“See what I mean?”
Ragnar smiles churlishly but does not answer.
There is nothing about the thin boy’s smile remotely reminiscent of life itself, and Palle Quist muses bitterly, as he does whenever encountering any resistance, great or small, that his play is going to be a total disaster.
In all fairness, it was not his idea to give Ragnar the part of life itself. He is not at fault, and that is important to Palle Quist. Neither Ragnar nor Ragnar’s mother had contacted him about the possibility of a part before the tenth of May deadline had passed, and Palle Quist was therefore under no obligation to write the boy into the play. It was Isak who insisted.
“But why?” Palle had said.
“Because…,” replied Isak, faltering. “Because this is something I must ask you to do, and which you simply cannot refuse. The lad must have a part!”
Deep in his heart, which is big and capacious and beats for the meek of the world, Palle Quist is a defender of children. He sits on various committees in Stockholm devoted to promote the UN’s Year of the Child and the importance of children’s rights. Still, he finds Ragnar an irritating individual. He is forever running off to the toilet and disrupting rehearsals. His hand shakes, his small, small hand, apart from everything else that is peculiar about him. But instead of accepting Palle’s concern, for Palle is one of the few to show him any, Ragnar pushes him away. Palle Quist has reached the limit of his strength. He knows very well how important it is to show care for other people, regardless of who they are or how they look or where in the world they come from, and Palle is not one to stint in demonstrating his good nature: touching, comforting, hugging, or offering the encouraging word. But Ragnar is a thankless child. He shows no signs of gratitude much less for his inclusion in this year’s Hammarsö Pageant, or for the generosity and warmth with which Palle Quist has enfolded him. He has done all he can for Ragnar, ungrateful whelp!
Not so much as one unforced smile in return.
It’s hopeless. It’s all so hopeless.
Chapter 61
And Ragnar runs along the strip of land by the sea with a train of children after him. He runs and runs. What year is it? What month? What day? Everything that happened last year is happening again this year, and never ends. Nothing changes. All he can hear is their shouts and his own breathing. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. The worst thing that can happen now is that he might get a stitch. Then he’ll have to stop and squat down and try to throw up. Run through the pains in his stomach. Ragnar doesn’t want to stop. He doesn’t want to be sick. He doesn’t want to surrender to them. And so he breathes steadily. In. Out. In. Out. He runs faster than the lot of them, and now and then when he’s on top of the world, he stops and waves to them and jumps up and down and shouts something, just to annoy them. They catch him only once in a while, and then it’s as if they have been longing for him, because it is a kind of longing, this: they long to embrace him, hug him, consume him, pummel him, rip him to pieces! When Frida grabs his hair and bangs his head against a stone wall, he knows it’s not the last time and he doesn’t cry then, or when they strip his clothes off in the woods, sit him on a tree stump, and stand around him in a ring and jeer: weakling, wimp, mongrel, cunt licker, bastard, faggot, psycho boy, thicko, stupid. It happens only once in a while, but when they get him they are insatiable, unstoppable, he is their fondest, the most beloved, and when they run out of words to shout they simply start again, because everything that has happened happens again, everything that has been said once is said once more; it never ends. When he was ten, Marion closed her eager hands around his dick and pulled and pulled at the foreskin and shouted at him that his penis was barely a scrap of skin and not the size of real boy’s. She pulled and pulled and pulled until it swelled and started bleeding as girls do and that made him cry and beg her to stop. Marion! Marion! Marion with the long black hair! Once she sat on the back of his big yellow ladies’ bike and they rode together along the winding lane to the shop to buy ice cream, and then he taught her how to ride the bike, because she hadn’t known how before he showed her what to do. He gets beat up by the boys, blows and kicks and punches in the face, and then it’s over until the next time, when they force him to drink horse piss, rub dog shit into his hair and call it shampoo, force him to French kiss a girl called Eva who starts crying almost immediately, so after that they leave her alone. He’s the one they can’t get enough of. That’s the way it is. Ragnar, their loveliest, their dearest. He is the one they desire. Ragnar, the blessed. He runs and runs and runs and only once in a while they catch him.
Ragnar can hear his breathing, an even in-and-out.
They are way behind him now. He can still hear their shouts. And laughter. But the distance between them just grows, and soon they are gone and he is utterly alone and now free.
Chapter 62
The plan had been to celebrate their fourteenth birthday together in the secret hut. They were going to meet at seven in the evening and swap presents and drink Coca-Cola and share some leftover birthday cake. Erika and Ragnar had agreed long ago. It wasn’t really a thing you needed to plan, Ragnar said. Ever since they were eleven they had celebrated their birthday together in the hut. Just the two of them and nobody else.
Erika didn’t think you had to keep doing the same thing year after year just because. And people did need to make arrangements with each other.
She had lots to do on her birthday, she said, and she wasn’t sure if she and Ragnar would still be celebrating their birthdays together in the secret hut when they were, say—Erika took a deep breath—twenty-five or thirty or something.
That brought the tears to Ragnar’s eyes, and he took her hand and said: Please say we will.
Ragnar cries many times that summer, and Erika doesn’t know what to do. One time she holds him. Another time she puts his hand on her naked breast and kisses his eyelids. The third time she rests her head on his shoulder, and then he rests his on hers and they sit like that until he has finished crying.
There isn’t much to say. She knows they beat him up. She knows they torment him. But it’s mostly just horsing around. Even Ragnar says they’re only joking and it doesn’t matter much and, anyway, she can’t stop them. She can’t say that she and Ragnar are a sort of couple. She can’t say it.
She tries picturing it, though. Erika pictures herself opening her mouth and saying that she and Ragnar are together and that the others have to leave him alone.
“Just lay off him!”
She pictures their faces: Marion, Frida, Pär, Emily, Fabian, and Olle. The silent laughter. The looks. Then she’ll run into them on the beach or on the way to the shop or at the community center and Marion and Frida or Frida and Emily or Marion and Emily will come up to her, stand right up close—as close as they possibly can without actually touching her—and then start a conversation with each other. If Erika says anything, they’ll pretend not to hear. If she looks at them, they’ll look straight through her. If she jumps up and down and screams or crumples to the ground or starts singing, they’ll just carry on talking to each other. She’ll be thin air to them. She’s seen them do it many times. But they’re only kidding. It’s not that serious. Even Ragnar says they’re only k
idding. They mean no harm.
“Father.”
“Yes.”
Isak looks up from the newspaper.
Erika says: “They won’t leave Ragnar alone.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do they do?”
“They fight.”
“They did in my day, too.”
“Your day?”
“When I was young.”
“Father, you don’t understand.”
“I get what you’re saying, Erika, but boys will fight. They always have.”
“It’s just as much the girls.”
Isak laughs.
“Ragnar ought to kiss the girls instead.”
“You don’t understand.”
“What is it then? What is it I don’t understand?”
“They say things.”
“What do they say?”
“I don’t know. Disgusting things.”
“Well, I expect he asks for it.”
Erika looks at her father.
“What do you mean, asks for it?”
Isak gets up from his armchair, folds the paper, and puts it on the table. He says: “There’s something about him…something about his eyes. He’s got dog eyes.”
About the fourteenth-birthday celebrations: Erika has to tell Ragnar she can’t meet him at seven o’clock in the secret hut after all. It’s the day before the big day and Rosa has given her permission to invite some friends over. For a sort of party, on the veranda.
She doesn’t say that she finds that a more tempting prospect than sitting in the hut with Ragnar.
Hearing the news, Ragnar is quiet. Is he going to start crying again? Erika looks at him. She wants to say: It’s not just your birthday. It’s mine, too. It’s for me to decide what I feel like doing. Listen to me! It’s only a day, Ragnar! It’s only one stupid day among other stupid days! She wants to shake him. Shout at him. Make him listen. You’re so…you’re so…you’re so…heavy!
She says: “You can come, too, if you feel like it.”
Ragnar gives a little laugh and shakes his head incredulously.
“No. But thanks anyway.”
They are sitting beside each other on the camp bed in the secret hut, sharing a Coca-Cola. Ragnar in black trousers and a black Tom Verlaine T-shirt. On his head an old hat pulled down over his forehead hiding the birthmark between his eyebrows. He inherited the hat from his dad, he says. Erika knows nothing about Ragnar’s dad. She doesn’t know if he’s dead or alive or sick or married or divorced or has just shoved off to Australia. It’s the evening before their fourteenth birthday and they are sitting on the camp bed in the secret hut and Erika really wants to leave—she wants to be anywhere but here, feels as if she’s been sitting here for years—but he takes her hand and she just continues sitting there. His is a little kid’s hand. Ragnar has always been thin. Slender wrists. Thin legs. The boy with matchstick legs, they used to call him.
Once, a long time ago, Erika and Laura lay in the long grass and saw a thin boy in an I’VE BEEN TO NIAGRARA FALLS T-shirt running toward Isak’s door. He was running with a flock of other children after him. Erika tries to remember. Where did the other children come from? Did she know them then? Wasn’t it just Ragnar running, that time? She remembers Ragnar collapsing on the doorstep and Isak opening the door with a great bellow and lifting him up in his arms and carrying him indoors. It was only many hours later that they saw him again; they had been lying waiting forever, shifting repeatedly because of the sun. And when they finally saw him down by the house, they got up and ran after him. The boy first, with Erika and Laura behind him.
“HEY YOU…WHERE ARE YOU GOING?…WHY DID YOU RING OUR FATHER’S DOOR?…WHAT’S YOUR NAME?…WHAT DID OUR FATHER SAY TO YOU?”
“I’ve got to go,” says Erika, and she gets up from the camp bed.
“Don’t go,” says Ragnar, squeezing her hand.
“I’ve got to.”
Ragnar says: “I don’t want to be alone. Please.”
Erika gives him a hug and whispers: “Bye then.”
She looks at her watch. It’s late. Nearly eleven.
“Just an hour left of being thirteen,” she says.
Ragnar gives her a smile. He is still sitting on the camp bed with his dad’s hat pulled down over his eyes. He raises his hand and waves, doesn’t look at her.
“Happy birthday!”
Erika nods back.
“You, too,” she says, and runs home.
Chapter 63
Having them at her house. Marion, Frida, Emily, Pär, Fabian, and Olle. Seeing everything through their eyes: the white limestone house by the sea is small and messy and old-fashioned; like everything died sometime in the sixties; Isak is just an old man and Rosa is fat and stupid with dust on her brain—must she keep coming out onto the veranda, saying More lemonade? More hot dogs? More cake? as if they were ten? And that’s not all. Laura sits gorging herself on hot dogs and yakking away even though she knows she has no business being there.
Laura promised her, she vowed not to show herself for as long as the party lasted.
These are Erika’s friends.
As for Molly, nobody pays any attention to her. She’s sitting completely still under the table on the terrace, wearing the cloak that makes her invisible to everyone but Erika. Her sister gave her the cloak for her birthday. The cloak of invisibility is actually a red anorak with a SAVE THE RIVER badge on the arm. Erika didn’t have time to buy Molly a present, or she forgot. In any case, she then came up with the idea of the cloak of invisibility. Molly pulled it over her head right away. It came down to her ankles and really could be called a cloak. A poppy-red cloak. Molly twirled around and shouted: Am I invisible now? Am I invisible now?
And Rosa and Isak and Laura gasped and took turns to reply:
“Where’s Molly?”
“What’s happened to Molly?”
“Has Molly vanished?”
And when Molly threw off the anorak and shouted Here I am! they were all equally astonished and said: Oh, there you are!
Molly sits quite, quite still under the table in her poppy-red cloak of invisibility, listening to all the voices, and now and then Laura throws a bit of hot dog or cake onto the floor for her. Like she’s a dog. But she isn’t a dog. She’s invisible.
Laura knows she promised to keep away from the birthday party, but Marion with her ravishing hair stretched out a hand as she passed the table and stroked Laura’s sweater and said it was nice, and so then Laura sat down beside her instead of going for a walk down to the beach as she’d intended. And nobody minds. Only Erika. Not the others. Erika always wants to keep her out of things. Imagine if they knew that Erika’s really paired off with Ragnar and not with that boy called Fabian. Imagine if they knew what Erika and Ragnar get up to when nobody’s looking. Ragnar, of all people. With the horn on his head and the squeaky voice and black clothes.
The first present is from Frida, followed by presents from Marion and Emily. The boys have brought presents, too. Fabian’s is a fancy box of chocolates from the mainland and Erika reads out the card: To Erika. Roses are red. Violets are blue. The stars are shining and so are you. Happy birthday! Best wishes from Fabian. They all laugh. Even Fabian. Erika blushes and gives him a hug and says wow thanks and she had no idea he liked her so much. She rests her head on his shoulder.
And then suddenly:
“Erika is Ragnar’s girlfriend!”
Laura says it out loud, and they all go quiet and look at her.
Erika gets up and sits down again.
“Get lost, Laura,” she says. “Just get lost.”
But Laura doesn’t get lost. She says: “Erika sneaks out of the house at night and goes to his hut in the woods and they make out all night.”
They all look at Erika. For a moment everyone around the table is utterly silent. Nothing but the roar of the sea and the screech of gulls and a warm wind caressing their cheeks.
&n
bsp; Fabian lets go of Erika’s hand and Marion sticks her finger down her throat and says EWW! Then they all start laughing again.
“Get lost,” Erika whispers to Laura.
“No!” says Laura.
“It’s not true,” Erika tells them. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
She turns back to her sister.
“You little brat!”
“I was only kidding,” Laura whispers. But when everyone turns away from her and starts talking to one another again, she says: “I was only kidding. But it’s true all the same. Erika and Ragnar are going out.”
Marion tugs Laura’s plait and asks: “How old are you, anyway?”
“Nearly thirteen,” says Laura.
“She’s eleven,” cries Erika, and groans. “Get lost, Laura!”
They all look at her. They all look at Laura.
She says: “And I know where his hut is!”
Erika rolls her eyes.
“Everyone knows where his stupid hut is.”
“Not me,” says Marion.
“I don’t, either,” says Frida.
“Time for a trip to the woods,” says Fabian, and they all laugh.
They all laugh. They get up from the table and laugh. They run around the house and off into the woods and along the path and left onto another path, laughing and screeching and yelping, and twenty-five years later Erika isn’t sure who is showing them the way. Erika herself, walking or strolling or sauntering with the others, arm in arm with Fabian, calling No, no, go left here, around the bend there, through those bushes, or Laura, running ahead with her long, dancing plait, or Molly in the ankle-length, poppy-red cloak of invisibility, hop-skipping, scampering, cheering. The woods get thicker. The path peters out and is just a thin line on the ground. You can see someone has been that way before, but it’s hard going. In the end, only Molly is walking upright. She marches on like a little red soldier. The rest have to hunch under branches, climb over logs, hold the bushes aside. They prick themselves on thorns, they scrape their knees, but they make it through the undergrowth and out into the clearing. Laura puts a finger to her lips. No laughter now. No voices. Not even Molly says anything. She hop-skips back into the woods and lies down behind a bush, gets up again and lies down behind a different bush.