by Will Dean
My mouth is dry. I reach up with wool in my hand and stroke my cheek with it and smell the angora, and my eyes burst open with tears, spraying and pouring as my chest convulses and my stomach tightens until it is just a stone. My neck is straight and I’m looking up at the sky at Dad.
Mum has white hair in my memories, but she was blonde before he died. She was happy, too, reclusive and awkward, but still happy in her own way. I resent the newspapers for ruining all that, and I although I hate myself for it, I resent Mum for a hundred different things. And now I’m here on this rock and she’s two hours’ drive away and all on her own in a hospice receiving palliative care and dying on her own. And I’m here. On my own. The wool in my hand is wet and it smells stronger now. I hold it up to my eyes and mop them and look through its crazed angora threads to the grey sky, now almost indigo in its heaviness. Mum failed me and now I’m completely failing her.
Gunshot. My head bolts forward. My eyes are full of tears, like lenses of water I can’t quite see through. The shot’s muffled with my aids turned down this low, but I feel it. I blink hard and look out.
And there it is. I can hardly see it at first because it’s so perfectly still, standing between two bold spruce trees. It hasn’t flinched. Not like the one on the road. This one looks older and more distinguished. It’s lower down than me, its antlers lower than the rock I’m perched on. I’m looking down at an elk and it’s looking up at me and neither one of us moving and in a single breath I forgive it completely. It didn’t mean to take my Dad with its own life. It didn’t want to do that, there was no plan. The elk shakes its heavy head, the grey beard under its jaw swinging into my vision as it evades a horsefly. Then it bends down to chew berries or saplings, I can’t see from this angle. I’m just up here staring down at its antlers and they’re as wide as my truck, maybe wider.
The tears come and come, along with noises, animal noises that stir him from his munching and make him look up at me again. I sob. I retch. I crack through more layers and I ball and my whole body shudders, but I am not afraid at all. Not one bit. I look up at the sky and away from him even though he’s just metres from me. I look up and cry out and try to smell them both one more time, the way they were back then; the Vosene and the knitting, and I manage it for just a blink. I can actually smell them. The sobs start to ebb. My chest aches and my collar feels wet against my neck. I look down and the elk’s disappeared back into the woods. I stand up and turn around. There’s movement near the chimney stack. I can hear the rustling of branches, and then I notice a man dressed in grey and he’s holding a zip-up rifle case.
41
My mouth’s so dry my lips are stuck together. I wait. I can sense everything moving, the living things all around me, nature getting on with its business; me frozen and out of place. The man’s gone, I think. I only saw his back and now he’s disappeared through the pines. I’m still not moving, no way, not yet. He looked like Viggo, but it could have been anyone, could have been any random hunter from Hannes’s team. But it did look like Viggo. A little broader at the shoulder, perhaps. Thank God it’s daylight.
I stay perfectly still. I’ve made peace in a way, with nature and with Mum and with Dad. Not completely, but in some small way. I feel lighter. I wait for another five minutes and then I follow the red yarn back to the tree and back to the path, and then I walk to my truck and get in and drive the hell away.
I get home and rest and shower and put on the smartest non-funeral clothes I own: a pair of fitted dark blue trousers and a white long-sleeved T-shirt and a navy merino wool cardigan. The cardigan’s got a moth hole from my London years but it’s under my armpit so it’s fine.
Storgatan is quiet for a Saturday night on account of the wind. I’m driving out of town. It’s twenty-one metres per second and strong enough to blow your wig off, as dad used to say. Bengt would know. Hanging baskets of heather are swinging wildly on their chains outside the hairdresser, and the boar sign outside Björnmossen’s hunting shop has fallen flat on its face.
I stop at the lights and glance over towards Tammy’s takeout van on the outer edge of the supermarket car park. There’s a crowd of people queuing on the far side of it. My truck sways a little as I crest the small hill out of town and drive under the motorway and past the digger yard. I’m okay in my warm driving seat with the truck’s sturdy chassis all around me. They use this model in the deserts of Africa and the mountains of Alaska, at least that’s what the rental guy told me.
I’m not going to drink tonight. This is work. I need to investigate and work out if Hannes is involved, and then I need to write it up accurately, because nobody else will. And I need to help end it. I can do all these things. I’m not drinking tonight but God knows I need one.
And then I see the tip of Utgard forest and the trees swaying hard in the wind. The birches and pines lurch at different tempos. The weight of their needles and branches must be distributed differently. The pines look solid and strong, whereas the birches appear bendy and loose, and they whip about, and then when the gusts hit, they thrash wildly like headbanging teenagers. The sky’s thick with dense clouds that look so low they’re almost stuck in the treetops, but they’re moving fast, speeding as if to get the hell out of this damn storm. I put my wipers on low speed. It doesn’t feel like it’s blowing itself out, it feels like it’s working itself up.
I turn onto the Mossen village track and the rain comes quicker now, almost horizontal squalls like someone throwing buckets of water at me from offstage. The rain is thick and sticky, it’s sleet really. Hoarder’s home, and his optimistic solar lights are blinking faintly and they look like eyes in his garden. Taxi’s home, Volvo in the driveway, TV on. Up the hill, and I see water flowing back down the other way, rivulets of ice-cold rain gushing back down the slope. At the top it gets darker. I notice the temperature on the dash fall from two degrees to zero, but it’s not snowing. I can smell the smoke of the workshop before I get to the sisters’ place, and they’re both there, carving and sanding and lathing and not looking my way as I drive past their demonic little operation. But, no. I brake and reverse. I can do this. After today, I can do anything. I back up and stop right outside their workshop. If I can face the woods, I can face them.
The run from my truck to the sisters’ workbenches takes about ten seconds and I keep my hands over my ears the whole time.
‘What you looking for, girl?’ the talking one asks.
‘I’m looking for no more trolls turning up at my apartment.’ I’ve got my hands on my hips and I already feel better for saying it. I feel like how Tammy and Lena must feel every day.
She looks over to her sister who’s gouging out slivers of pine with what looks like an apple corer. ‘We lost any trolls, Alice? Any gone missing? Any escaped?’
‘Nope.’ Says Alice.
‘Not our trolls, girl,’ says the talking sister.
I look at her and she holds my stare, and then I have to look away. It’s the eyes with no lashes that does it. They don’t look quite human.
‘If I find another troll I’ll call the police on you, and I’m not talking about the Gavrik police.’
‘You call whoever you want, girl,’ the talking sister says. ‘Now . . .’ she moves towards the back wall where two identical rifles rest against the rough-sawn siding. ‘We got work to do for the craft fair in Munkfors, and you ain’t helping Alice’s concentration one bit. I reckon you’ll be swinging your butt back in your pickup and driving away right about now, wouldn’t you reckon so, Alice?’
‘Yep.’
They get back to carving. I don’t budge.
‘Why did you leave Norway?’ I ask.
Cornelia, the talking one, looks up at me with a steel gouger in her hand.
‘Maybe you need new hearing aids. I said you’ll best be driving away about now, girl. We’ll be seeing you.’
I get in and turn the key and switch my wipers up a gear and set off. My pulse is racing and my lungs feel like they might burst out
of my chest, but I fucking did it. I was fourteen again standing up to that shitbitch who bullied me for having no pappa. Stood up to her and now I’ve stood up to them. I turn my heated seat down and then I see there’s something in front of me so I slam my right foot down and the truck skids as it stops. I’m pushed tight into my seatbelt. Deer on the track. It’s the spotted-Bambi-cutesy variety, and it’s standing still and looking straight at me. Legs like matchsticks. Idiot. I focus on its head. It looks dead still, like it’s been stuffed, all except for its ears, they’re very much alive, two furry radar dishes, spinning in the wind this way and that. It looks away and walks across the road like it’s not scared at all and then another deer follows close behind it, seemingly oblivious to me or the howling gale or the sleet or the villagers. They jump the ditch and disappear into the trees, me stalking them with my eyes like they’re a celebrity couple crossing Oxford Street.
I scratch my lip and set off again, this time much slower. I drive past Ghostwriter’s house. There are lights on inside but I can’t see the dog. There’s a line of sawdust on the track up ahead from where Hannes has cut up the fallen tree, and it looks like some kind of marker, some sort of boundary. I drive over it and along the twisty final stretch to the very centre of Utgard forest.
Frida’s house looks welcoming, always does. Maybe it’s the roof with its dainty protruding windows, or the fact that the lights seem to be on all of the time. And that little grey hut makes it feel more like a hamlet in a strange sort of way, it feels less isolated than the neighbours’ houses.
Their cars are parked side by side. The flagpole’s bending and it looks like it could snap like a toothpick. As I get out of my truck with a bottle of Chilean screw-cap merlot in my hand, I rush past it with my chin pressed to my neck to avoid the worst of the sleet.
I approach the double front doors and they swing open and Frida pulls me inside. She hugs me awkwardly and dusts the sleet off my hair. It’s turning to snow now.
‘You look smart,’ I read her lips. ‘Can I get you a towel or a hairdryer? Don’t want you catching a chill.’
‘I’m fine,’ I say, one eye keeping lookout for Hannes. ‘It’s my hearing aids that hate water, not me. I reach into my pocket and hook them over my ears. Frida looks both intrigued and somehow embarrassed as I switch them both on right in front of her. Music fills my ears. It’s coming from the living room. ‘The Leader of the Pack’ is playing softly on the Carlssons’ Bose stereo.
‘Glass of wine?’ she asks.
I pass her the bottle of Merlot and the wet label is starting to peel off.
‘Can’t tonight, I have to drive back through this storm later. You have one and I’ll drink water if that’s okay.’
She cringes sympathetically and I hear a new rock and roll love song start up in the other room.
‘We’re out of mineral water I’m afraid. Tap water okay?’
I nod and we walk into the kitchen and it smells amazing. She hands me a glass of water that’s not quite transparent. It’s pale brown, which is pretty normal in a village like this one. No municipal supply. Each home has its own well in the garden and the iron in the acidic forest soil makes it brown. Centuries of decaying organic matter. Rot. I take a swig and the water’s cold and it tastes like screws. The windows are fogging up. The floor’s warm under my socks. Frida offers me a plate of little crisp things topped with crème fraiche and gravadlax and lemon zest and a curl of red onion and a frond of dill. I eat seven of them without even realising.
‘I hope I’m not prying,’ she says, turning her head from the saucepan of soup on the hob. ‘But are you feeling okay, sweetie? You look like you’ve been crying.’
How the hell can she see that? After hours and a nap and a shower and make-up and a torrent of eye drops, how can she tell?
‘Hormones,’ I say, waving it away with my hand. ‘Where’s Hannes?’
‘Oh, didn’t I say? Hannes has one of his migraines. He works so hard you know; a lot of pressure in that kind of position, lots of late nights. He’s gone upstairs early. I’ll take him up a tray. It’s just you and me eating down here tonight. He says hello, though.’
‘Hope he feels better soon.’
‘Just popping out for my secret ingredient, I’ll only be a jiffy.’
‘Can I come with you?’
She smiles and then frowns. ‘No, no. You stay in here and keep warm. Won’t be a sec.’
I watch out of the window as she bends down and walks to the grey hut, a fleece jacket thrown over her head against the sleet. The weather vane on top of the hut is spinning this way and that. In the white glare of the security light, she looks almost heroic, the brightness picking out each fat droplet of sleet as it falls.
She comes back inside and pushes three ice cubes into the bubbling saucepan and then puts the rubber ice cube tray into the dishwasher. She stirs for a while, adding coarse sea salt and cracked black pepper, and six large herb dumplings from the oven.
We sit down at the table. She’s at the head and I’m adjacent to her like two lovers on a date. The wild mushroom soup’s incredible; rich and doused with cream and flat-leaved parsley. It’s gamey and even better than the last one. And the dumplings, huge rye dough-balls really, taste like being a kid again. Soft, bready dough with a crusty shell, each one soaking up broth with tiny chunks of chopped walnuts attached. I can’t eat it fast enough. I feel nourished with every spoonful.
‘This is delicious,’ I tell her. ‘So delicious.’
She smiles and tells me they’re all Utgard mushrooms and then she ladles me more soup and takes up a tray to Hannes, along with a bottle of beer.
I’ve finished the second bowl by the time she comes back down. I butter a piece of flat Norrland bread and as I pull the wooden knife out of the butter, it catches on my cardigan sleeve and leaves a smudge. I dab it with a paper napkin but the smudge stays.
Frida walks to me.
‘Give it here and I’ll bung it in the washer. I’ve got a special cycle for delicate woollens.’
She holds out her hand so I slip it off and pass it to her.
‘That way the stain won’t have time to catch hold, if you know what I mean. I’ll take care of it.’
She walks through a door to what I presume is her laundry room and then a moment later she walks back.
‘I was watching a deaf man on television last night and he didn’t talk nearly half as well as you do. I thought to myself, it’s impressive the way Tuva speaks just like a normal person. I wanted to tell you that. It’s impressive. Well done.’
I almost spit the bread out of my mouth
‘I endured years of painful speech therapy. It was hell, actually.’
Frida clears away the soup and brings out two smaller bowls from the fridge filled with thick creamy liquid.
I continue. ‘After school, every day, all my childhood, special classes so I could intonate, so I could pronounce words like a hearing person.’
‘Well, I’d say it was well worth it, you sound lovely.’
This isn’t going anywhere good. She doesn’t know how God-awful her words sound right now. But I need to stick to my plan.
‘Can I ask you a question? I’m thinking of building an outbuilding for my mum. Not actually building it myself, of course, just instructing a carpenter. For when she moves back home.’ This lie tightens my stomach into a knot. ‘I don’t know much about it and your hut out there looks so smart. Do you think I could take a look with you, just for inspiration?’
‘What does your mother want a hut for?’
Her tone isn’t aggressive, just curious.
‘Storage mainly, and perhaps a guest room in case she needs a live-in carer. It’s quite a nice spot, her place, close to Lake Vänern.’
Frida looks at me.
‘You know, it’s all Hannes’s private stuff in there. We shouldn’t go in without asking him. It’s all his tools and things, he’s quite protective.’
‘Just a peek?’
&n
bsp; She smiles, her eyes glancing through the window towards the hut, then back to me.
‘Oh, come on then.’
She pulls out an umbrella from the stand in the hall. I pop out my aids and place them in my coat pocket. Frida can hardly open the front door, the wind’s so strong. We go out and for the first few metres our heads are covered by the porch awning, but then as we emerge from underneath it, we run. Frida’s umbrella snaps violently inside out, the metal struts spiking out like a porcupine under attack. I see her hair blow across her face and she’s trying to say something, but I can’t read her lips out here in this weather. I go to the hut door but she doesn’t come with me, she heads to the corner of the building and reaches under the lowest part of the timber and pulls a key from a gap in the stone foundation. She joins me, sleet freezing my cheeks, and unlocks the door. We fall into the hut and the door slams shut on its own.
I dry my hands on my trousers and put my aids back in. Frida switches on the fluorescent strip lights. We stand together, half-drowned, looking into a garage with no car in it. There’s a lot of pine shelving with paint tins and chainsaws and boxes of screws and nails. The floor’s chipboard and it’s sagging in places. There’s a mousetrap poised by a low shelf, a small piece of Marabou milk chocolate balanced on one end. I can see the raised M letter on the dusty brown surface. There’s a chest freezer humming against one wall and it looks like the one Mum used to have. The far end of the space has looped electrical extension cords hanging from long nails, and a sleeping bag and a pack of razors and a camping lantern. I can see car-cleaning equipment, and a series of padlocked wooden boxes screwed to the wall. One of them has a shamrock or clover symbol etched on the front.
‘Gun storage?’
Frida wipes the sleet from her eyelashes, mascara running down her cheeks like black tears.
‘Just weedkiller and that sort of thing. Fertiliser. When Peter lived with us Hannes had to lock all this up as a precaution.’
‘Peter?’
‘Our boy,’ she smiles and sighs. ‘We haven’t seen him for almost twenty years.’ She pulls a cross out from her sweater and holds it.