A Blessed Child

by Linn Ullmann

  Outside the little lopsided hut stands a supermarket cart loaded with stones. Nothing out of the ordinary otherwise. A patch of green heath. A crooked tree. The hut, looking as if it might collapse at any moment. Erika takes a few steps forward, away from the others, stops, and stands utterly still. She hopes he is not there. She clasps her hands and whispers, Please let him not be there.

  Marion comes after her and stops beside her.

  “Do you think he’s in there?”

  Erika shrugs. “I don’t know.”

  “Are you going in to see?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you should go in and see.”

  She puts her arm around Erika and Erika rests her head on Marion’s shoulder. But that isn’t what Marion means. She doesn’t mean for them to stand there in the clearing with their arms around each other. Erika feels a hard shove in her back. A shove forward.

  “Go and see,” says Marion.

  When Erika opens the door and sees Ragnar sitting on the camp bed with his hat pulled down over his eyes, her first reaction is to think he’s been sitting there since the night before. It’s virtually pitch-dark inside the hut except for a lit candle on the table in front of the bed. He’s wearing a new Jimi Hendrix T-shirt.

  “Hi,” says Erika.

  Ragnar looks up. She can see his face—eyes, nose, mouth—in the candlelight.

  “Hi,” says Ragnar.

  “Happy birthday,” says Erika.

  “Happy birthday,” says Ragnar.

  “New T-shirt?” asks Erika.

  “From a friend in Stockholm. It came in the mail today. It’s Jimi Hendrix,” says Ragnar.

  Erika nods.

  Ragnar looks down at the floor again.

  “How come you’re here, Erika?”

  Erika looks at him. She breathes in, ready to say something. And then she starts to cry.

  Ragnar gets up from the camp bed, shoves her aside and goes to the door. He opens it and looks out.

  “Fucking hell,” he says. “Fucking hell, Erika.”

  Then he runs.

  Ragnar runs, runs through the woods. He has almost no head start because they ambushed him this time, so he takes the shortcut down to the beach. His breathing is uneven. He tries to breathe evenly, but can’t. He will end up with a stitch. He will have to stop and crouch down, but there’s no time. Some of them are already right behind him, only ten or twenty meters away. He breathes. They are certain to hear his breathing now. They have his scent. The woods open out and he runs onto the wide, deserted stony beach and down to the sea, and the sea opens out, too, and he runs into it and it receives him, the most beloved.

  Molly runs and hops through the woods. It isn’t very easy when you’re wearing Erika’s ankle-length, poppy-red anorak. Every now and then she trips and scrapes her knees. It isn’t only because of the anorak. It’s also because it has got dark. Borlänge means day, but this is night. The others have run ahead and she is going to find them. They didn’t wait for her. They didn’t see her. But it’s not because she’s wearing her cloak of invisibility; it’s because she was hiding behind a bush.

  Now she emerges onto the beach.

  Now she comes to a complete stop and looks.

  Now they are all throwing stones at Ragnar in the water and screaming to one another.

  Now she raises her face to the sky and shouts HOY! HOY! HOY!

  And Erika will never be able to say who started to throw stones. Ragnar runs along in the shallows, the water splashing around his feet, and suddenly he turns and shouts HA HA HA HA and waves his arms, and they all laugh and wave their arms and shout HA HA HA HA, too.

  It’s as if they are all joining in the same big sing-along. Some call, others respond. Ragnar dances his way backwards, out to sea. The water comes up to his hips. He puts his hands up in front of his face and shouts at them.

  “No! Don’t do it! Don’t! Stop!”

  But who started throwing and who threw the stone that hit him on the forehead before he collapsed there in the water, nobody can say.

  Part IV: Summer, Winter

  “I think we’re in for bad weather tonight,” said Rosa, going to shut the three windows facing the sea.

  Isak looked up from the paper.

  “It couldn’t last,” he said.

  “What couldn’t?” asked Rosa, without turning around.

  “The heat,” said Isak. “It couldn’t go on like that.”

  A strong wind had already sprung up, and Rosa had to pull the windows toward her to get the catches to fasten. A branch knocked against the outside wall; the waves were frothy white and gray. She stood there, looking out over the stony beach.

  “I’d better put the bikes in the garage,” she said.

  Isak was sitting in one of the two armchairs in front of the television and Rosa was standing with her back to him, looking out the window. He felt as if he could disappear from it all and nest in her broad back, the tight floral summer dress and the big gray woolen cardigan she had hanging from her shoulders every evening.

  He said: “But it isn’t raining yet, is it?”

  Rosa did not turn around; she stayed by the window.

  “No, but look at those clouds.”

  She pointed to something outside.

  “It’s already getting dark. This time yesterday, we were sitting outside drinking wine, but tonight it feels like autumn all of a sudden.”

  Isak glanced at the grandfather clock that stood ticking to itself in the corner. This living room, he thought. This clock. The armchairs. The television set. The writing desk. The pine table with the blue china vase. In the evenings, Rosa sometimes says she’s going out for a walk; she says she wants to be by herself for a bit, so she goes out after she has put Molly to bed, Molly who is not her own child but Ruth’s. After a while she comes back with a handful of wildflowers. Red, yellow, white. She fills the china vase with water and puts the flowers in the water. Nothing must change. Be fixed up. Painted over. Scraped off. Here, everything must stay as it is, and none of them will have to talk about what has been or what is to come. No. Here, very quietly, they will eat their meals, watch television programs, say their kind and tender good nights to one another every evening. Here they will grow old and die together, without disturbances or demands, quietly and without guilt.

  “Are the children back?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Was the birthday party a success?”

  “Yes.”

  Then, on reflection, “Well, I think so, anyway.”

  Rosa sighed and pulled the gray cardigan more tightly around her. Isak wanted to rest in her face, her eyes, the corners of her mouth, her cheeks.

  She said: “I’d better go and see to those bikes.”

  Chapter 64

  Night fell, a storm blew up, and the storm wanted nothing better than to wrench up trees, boundary walls, and houses that had stood there so long, refusing to be torn to pieces. The island had weathered worse storms, those who had always lived there would say.

  Erika crawled out of bed and crept into the hall; she thrust her feet into Isak’s green Wellingtons and unlocked the front door. The wind whipped at her nightdress and hair, lifted her and carried her down to the sea. She fell and hurt her knees, and that scared her. First because of the fall and then because of the sound of her own thin voice. It wasn’t a terrified, shout-above-the-noise scream, it was almost nothing, and she rolled around and up into a sitting position. It was dark and she wasn’t able to pick out the grit and dirt that had gotten stuck in the gashes, and there was sticky blood all over her hands, knees, and nightdress. She got up and ran on; ran and hobbled and fell and got up and ran again. She waded out into the waves and stood upright with legs planted far apart, her feet firmly in the Wellingtons. She opened her mouth and the wind tore at her and she wanted to shout louder than it, make it be quiet. But what should she say? What should she shout now that she was standing here, wet, shaking, with bloody knees and
hands and nightdress, gooey, sticky blood? I HATE YOUR FUCKING TOM VERLAINE T-SHIRT! she cried. She screamed. And the sea beat at her and pulled her down and she remembered him saying all you had to do was surrender yourself, let yourself fall backwards, that was the bravest thing they could do. He also said that when it is as dark as this, a light shines across the sea (it was a natural phenomenon here on the island, with a name she couldn’t remember), and she was standing in that light now, and perhaps he could see her, perhaps he was standing a little way off in that clump of trees where the woods stopped being woods and became beach instead, standing half hidden behind a tree. The beach was black and stony, and she had no idea how long she had been standing in the waves, in the rain, but she could feel him watching her. Every time she raised a hand or took a step it was as if she were doing it for him, and she took a step toward him and he said I don’t want to be alone, Erika, please, don’t go.

  And the rain fell from the sky and everything grew heavy, wet, gray, sludgy, and the thunder rumbling in across the sea also brought the power cut that nobody noticed until the next morning. It was night and people were asleep. Those who were awake didn’t turn on the light.

  Molly lay beside Laura in the narrow girl-size bed, and they were both awake because a bumblebee was flying in spirals across the room, from wall to wall. Outside, the storm raged and the thunder boomed, but it was the bee that was keeping them awake.

  “You’ve got to go to sleep now,” said Laura, and she began to cry.

  “Poor Laura,” said Molly, and patted her sister on the head.

  Laura curled up in the bed and put her arms around her sister’s small waist. Then she whispered: “You don’t understand. We can never get up again!”

  “I think we can,” said Molly. “We can get up tomorrow when the man says Borlänge.”

  Laura cried and cried.

  “You don’t understand. You don’t get what I’m saying. You don’t understand what’s happened. We can never get up again.”

  “No,” said Molly.

  Laura let go of Molly and sat up in bed, looking sternly at her sister.

  “But you must never, never, ever tell anybody what happened on the beach.”

  “No,” said Molly.

  “If you say it to anyone, they’ll come in the night when you and your mummy are asleep…and they’ve got keys to every door in every country, so locking the door won’t help.”

  “Who’ll come?” Molly interrupted.

  “The hunters,” said Laura. “And once they’ve unlocked the door, they’ll find their way to your mummy’s room and kill her by shooting five bullets into her head.”

  Molly started to scream.

  “Shhh,” whispered Laura.

  Molly put her hands over her ears and went on screaming.

  Laura dried her own tears, held her sister close, and rocked her slowly back and forth in the bed.

  “Shh, Molly. Shhh. It’ll be all right. You just can’t say anything.”

  Ann-Kristin walked up and down in the cold house she had taken over from her parents. Looked out at the sea and waited for Ragnar, who had stormed off and not come back home. It had been the usual argument, the same words they always exchanged. He said he was going to sleep in the hut in the woods. She said he should come home and sleep in his room. They had had dinner, steak with béarnaise sauce, ice cream with chocolate fudge for dessert. That was his favorite meal, and afterward they ate birthday cake, just the two of them, and watched a comedy on television, a film starring Goldie Hawn. They had sat beside each other on the brown sofa in the light from the television and watched the film and laughed quite a lot. He said he had really liked the dinner, the cake, and his presents, but then he had announced he was going to the hut to sleep. She said no and then he said I’m fourteen, Mom, and stormed out, slamming the door after him. And now here she was, looking out the window, watching for him, listening for his steps outside.

  Palle Quist, who lived in a house not far from Ann-Kristin’s, sat in a chair, trying to relax enough to go to bed. When he saw the lightning flash in the sky and heard the crash of thunder a moment later, he thought that was just his luck. The sun had shone all summer, the hottest fucking summer since 1874, and here came the rain, the wind, the thunder and lightning, right on cue for his premiere in two days. It would ruin everything! God was against him. Now he certainly wouldn’t get to sleep.

  Nor would Isak, thinking about the work waiting for him in Stockholm and Lund, wishing he never needed to leave this house, this island. It was here on Hammarsö he wanted to be. Without friends, without children, without colleagues, without patients, without anything. Just him and Rosa. In total peace and quiet. She was breathing deeply and evenly beside him. She always slept well. She turned on her side, pulled the quilt over her, switched off the light, said good night, and slept until seven-thirty the next morning, when she would open her eyes, ready to tackle a new day. That’s what Rosa was like. He nudged her in the side. Because there was something else bothering him. Not just the fact that they would soon have to leave the island. It was something else. Something he couldn’t really put into words. Rosa turned over and looked at him, sleepy and inquiring. He did not usually wake her when he had trouble sleeping.

  Isak said: “Maybe I should just pull out.”

  He sat up in bed, breathing heavily. Rosa yawned and gave him her hand.

  Isak said: “I shall never remember my lines.”

  Rosa patted his hand as if he were a little child, and said: “I think you ought to sleep on it. It’s not that important.”

  He said: “I don’t want to make a fool of myself. That’s all. I don’t want to make a fool of myself.”

  She shook her head and smiled. Then she shut her eyes and went back to sleep. As for him, he sat there staring out into the darkness. He wondered what she would say if he nudged her again. Would she be cross? How many times could he wake her in the course of a night before she got cross with him? Rosa, who never got cross. Or only once, when Molly was born. That time, Rosa said she was leaving him, moving away from the island, going away forever. He had never seen her like that. He was a bad father. He was a bastard. They would reproach him when they were grown up. Erika, Laura, and Molly. Their mothers were already reproaching him, not Rosa, maybe, but Elisabet and Ruth, and not only them, but also a retinue of other self-righteous women who considered they’d been done wrong. You’re a deserter, Isak! You’re a cold son of a bitch! You’re a liar! Yes, yes, so what? So what? But he had his work and his work was the most important thing; his work filled him and liberated him and he had promised himself once, long ago, that even though he was a bastard privately, he would be the best in his field professionally, and now he was. Isak Lövenstad was the best in his field. Yet still this need to nudge Rosa and wake her to ask her…what? Ask her what? What had he forgotten—what was it that was bothering him? The fact that they would soon have to clean the house, pack up, move back to the city? The fact that he would make a fool of himself as Wise Old Man in this year’s Hammarsö Pageant? Yes, yes, all of that. But there was something more. Isak sat up and looked at the flapping curtains. He got out of bed and went over to the window in his bare feet, unhooked the catch, and pulled it toward him. Then he stopped and looked out. Later—when he was trying to tell Rosa what had happened as he stood in front of the closed window looking out at the storm—he would say it was as if an angel had come to stand beside him and whispered in his ear. He had an idea, a premonition, a sudden and unexpected thought, namely that he must go to fetch his child. So much water everywhere. So wet and cold. So battered and broken. It was vital for him to set off right now and not go back to bed. There was a light over the sea. That was where he should go. He could visualize his child’s face and himself touching that face and the child going calm and quiet. Isak strode out of the bedroom, through the living room, and out to the hall. His Wellingtons were gone, so he put on his running shoes and his big green raincoat. He opened the front door and
the storm bellowed at him. If Laura, who was lying awake in another part of the house, had seen him then, she would have said he bellowed back. But no one saw him and he strode on, like a giant or a huge animal, away from the house and through the woods and down to the stony shore.

  When he saw her, already some way from the beach, wearing only her nightdress and heading out into deeper water, he thought in desperation that he was already too late. There was nothing he could do. He sped up and ran out into the sea, the rain and waves beating against him. It was too late. It was too late, and he grabbed hold of her, pulled her to him, lifted her up in his arms, and carried her to shore. She was shivering and crying, saying nothing. Isak said nothing. She was shivering. She was crying. He stroked her face with one hand and said No more now, no more now. He lifted her and carried her along the beach, through the woods, and home. He took off her soaked nightdress; she was thin, just a child, for God’s sake, he thought, she was just a child; he dried her with a towel and found some dry pajamas that really belonged to her sister Laura. Then he put her to bed, pulled the quilt up over her, and sat on the edge of the bed.