“Marina,” he says in his soft voice over by the sink, it’s as if I am hearing him from a distance. “Stop making a fuss now, darling.”
I recognize the look in his eyes, it’s the same as it was in the bedroom when he got angry because I was wearing Stella’s cardigan, it’s a look that seems to be full of anger and concern at the same time. He takes a few steps toward me, and I jump up from the chair and run toward the door, it feels as if the whole room is tilting now, like a ship in choppy waters, I grab hold of the doorpost for support then carry on out through the hallway, through the curtain, the back porch, Stella’s boots are standing there, I quickly push my feet into them. My hands are shaking as I clumsily unlock the door, I hurry outside and down the steps, out onto the lawn, I can hear Gabriel on his way out of the house, I hear the rattle of the bamboo curtain, all the little wooden tubes dancing as he pulls it to one side.
“Marina!” he shouts, I keep on going, right to the end of the lawn, I know exactly where I’m going. A small ditch separates the garden from the field next door, I step over it easily, the exterior lights reach this far but after a few steps the darkness wraps itself around me. The field is muddy and wet, my feet slip and slide. It is a mild evening, there is a fine drizzle in the air, almost standing still, the air is milky, thick. I hear Gabriel call my name again, he seems to be in the garden still but I don’t turn around, I keep on going, stumbling, it is so dark, the sky high above me, velvet black and studded with stars beyond the mist, like a wet curtain between me and space. I can see the apple tree at the end of the field, the glow of its lights flowing out into the wet air, its outline is blurred but it is clearly visible, like a lighthouse on the horizon. I fix my gaze on it. It’s not far, it didn’t take me long to walk there when I went up the road and it’s a shorter distance across the field, as the crow flies, I remember the first time I heard that expression, Stella explained it to me when I was little, the shortest distance between two places, the route a bird would take. I remember picturing it in my head, the same picture that still comes back to me whenever I hear the expression: a bird plunging down the steep slope leading to the water at my parents’ house, speeding across the water and the cornfield on the other side, it is always summer in my mind, the air is always clear, the corn yellow and ripe, there was no bridge, you had to go all the way around, it was closer as the crow flies.
It is quiet, the darkness is immense all around me, I can hear only the sound of my own breathing, and my steps in the mud, I haven’t the strength to run anymore. My feet squelch with every step, Stella’s boots are slightly too big I realize now, perhaps half a size, I used to inherit her boots when we were little, and her shoes, always half a size too big. We picked flowers on the morning of midsummer’s eve every year to make into garlands, this is an early memory, old, I was little, it was me and Stella and Mom, we wore our best dresses with our Wellington boots because there might be snakes, you never knew if there might be snakes. That was by a field too, the horizon far away and there were cornflowers and red clover and daisies at the edge of the field, our best dresses and our Wellington boots, a little bit too big, flapping at my heels, the smell of rubber and freshly ironed cotton and an early summer’s morning. The garlands soon wilted, the white petals of the daisies, slimy and drooping, the red clover lasted best, tough stems, hard to break, Mom taught Stella the names of the flowers and Stella taught me. Trifolium pratense, am I crying or is it the rain? Every step takes an eternity now, my whole body is exhausted, I want to lie down here, simply sink to the ground, my dress is like a wet membrane around my body, a wet carapace that has stuck fast to me, like the cocoon butterflies have to wriggle out of before they can fly away on wings that are brand-new, delicate, trembling. Stella and I found a caterpillar in the garden once, fat and furry on a branch, we put it in a jar, a big jar that had once held gherkins, several kilos of gherkins that we had eaten with our Sunday dinner and our bubble-and-squeak, and we looked up the caterpillar in a book about insects: the tiger moth, it overwinters as a caterpillar known as a woolly bear, the book said it eats willow, we searched out a tree in the forest and fed it and it took big bites of the leaves, we could hear it munching as it ate, we giggled as we listened to it. Then it turned into a chrysalis, a white cocoon on one of the branches, we kept the jar in the garden shed along with the lawn mower and wood for the stove and fishing rods and a hammock and a croquet set. This was in the spring, a chilly March, April maybe, still frosty at night, the moss on the lawn beneath the lilac bushes was white in the mornings, crunching underfoot when you walked across it, leaving darker footprints where the frost had melted beneath the soles of your shoes. The caterpillar was gone one morning, the jar was empty, Stella said it had turned into a butterfly and flown away and I wondered how it had managed to get out of the jar, the air holes in the lid were so small. It was many years before she told me it had died, that it had turned into a butterfly and died in the jar, wriggled out of its cocoon and been ready to fly away, but it had been unable to get anywhere, perhaps it had died of exhaustion during its attempts to find a way out of the jar, it had been lying motionless on the bottom of the jar one morning, she and Mom had found it before I woke up and agreed not to say anything to me.
The tree is suddenly closer. Am I moving my feet? I have to look down, I can hardly see my boots, I am so tired, I want to lie down now, curl up somewhere warm. Perhaps I would be able to retain my body heat if I were to lie down on the ground right here and curl up, I could wait for morning, wait for someone to find me, wrap me in a blanket, speak to me gently and tell me that everything will be all right.
Suddenly I hear Gabriel’s voice, I hear him calling my name across the field, he sounds far away but it’s difficult to tell, the dampness in the air muffles every sound, insulates, wraps itself around the sound waves like wadding and cotton wool. Perhaps he is closer than I think, perhaps he is right behind me, following the sound of my footsteps and my breathing, he will soon be right behind me, he will place his hand on my shoulder. He is strong, his firm grip on my wrist, his body on top of mine, heavy, I wouldn’t be able to free myself even if I really tried. I peer behind me, trying to see something, a movement, an outline, trying to listen for footsteps. But everything is quiet, empty, my breath turns to vapor as it comes out of my mouth, it is suddenly chilly, the air is clearer and the contours of the apple tree are sharper now, is there snow in the air? The first snow? It is December now, I have lost track of the days, and the weeks in fact, I don’t know how long I’ve actually been here, or how long I’ve been in this field, ten minutes? An hour? I should be colder, it’s strange that I’m not. The new chill in the air sharpens my brain, I take a deep breath, look up, the sky is clear and full of stars now. The North Star shines bright and cold, almost immediately above Anders and Karin’s apple tree, around it I can make out constellations I thought I had forgotten, I suddenly remember their names: the Great Bear and the Little Bear, the Big Dipper, Orion’s Belt, Cassiopeia, Dad taught me, he had a star chart, we used to stand on the balcony at home looking up, the clear winter evenings were best, the entire sky was a vast sparkling dome above us.
Then there is only one ditch left, the ditch separating Anders and Karin’s garden from the field, I am just about to step across it when I stop for just a moment, enchanted. The grass is sparkling beneath the apple tree with all its lights, it is frosty now, frozen mist, the whole garden is covered in a white frosting, it is so beautiful, it looks so peaceful. I breathe out, I see the apple tree glittering through my steaming breath.
Then he grabs hold of my arm. His grip is hard and takes me completely by surprise, I spin around, try to pull away but instead my feet slip. Beneath the thin layer of frost the ground is still soft, perhaps there will be no deep frost this winter. The grass slides against the mud beneath my feet, I slip, fall, he doesn’t loosen his grip on my arm but falls with me, he looks surprised as he loses his balance. He lands half on top of me, muttering a curse.
&nbs
p; I can feel one elbow aching, I must have banged it when I fell, but nothing else hurts, it’s nice to lie down even though it’s cold, I am so tired, too tired to be afraid anymore. Perhaps Gabriel can see it in my face, the fact that his quarry has been brought down, that I am not going to offer any further resistance, because he doesn’t attempt to hold on to me. Instead he sits up, looks at me.
“What happened?” he says.
I have to close my eyes, I am so tired. I can feel how the frost has melted underneath me, turned to moisture that has been sucked up by my dress, I will leave an impression of my body in this spot, like a gingerbread man cut out of floury dough, I realize I am so cold I am shaking.
“I’m so tired,” I say.
I don’t know how we got home. Perhaps Gabriel dragged me back across the field, perhaps I managed to walk under my own steam. I remember warm water on my body and when I wake up I am wearing my nightdress and panties, I am lying in the big bed upstairs, with an extra blanket on top of the duvet. Gabriel is sitting on the bed looking at me.
“How are you?” he says.
I shrug my shoulders.
“I don’t know.”
My voice sounds hoarse, my throat is sore. I realize I hurt all over when I try to move, my whole body feels tender, as if every muscle is aching slightly from too much exercise. Twilight is falling, the clock radio by the bed is showing half past two in the afternoon, the sky is unusually clear with just a few fluffy clouds on the horizon, burning pink and yellow. I can tell by the light outside the window that the snow which fell last night is still lying. The room is warm, it smells of hyacinths and cigarette smoke, I understand why when I see the big ashtray with the brass dolphin on the bedside table. One cigarette still glows among the pile of stubs. The daily paper lies next to the ashtray, with one of the blue-and-white coffee cups on top of it. I realize Gabriel has been sitting on the edge of the bed for a long time, waiting for me to wake up.
He looks at me, contemplates me with that dark, serious expression for a few seconds before he leans over and kisses me. I return the kiss, he touches me, his hands pull away the covers and slide down my arms, down my body and my thighs, I close my eyes.
Suddenly I feel a stabbing pain on the inside of my thigh, high up, at first I have difficulty in placing the sensation and my initial thought is that something is biting me, a snake, that something has penetrated my skin and is on its way into my bloodstream, some kind of poison, a fever, I can almost feel it spreading through my body, I know that when it reaches my heart I will die. Then the stabbing turns into a different type of pain, deeper, it feels strange, ice cold or red hot, at first I can’t decide which. Then it hurts so much I have to scream, and he leans over me and kisses me again, holds me tight and presses his lips to mine, suffocating my scream, it is such a passionate kiss that for a moment I forget the pain and then it is gone and only the kiss remains and I am kissing him back, clinging to him, he gently caresses my thigh, brushes against the mark, I feel another stab of pain.
He gets up and stubs out the glowing cigarette in the ashtray, gazes at me as I lie there with my thighs parted, his expression is dark and warm at the same time, he lies down beside me again, buries his face in my hair and whispers in my ear that I have been a good girl.
When he has fallen asleep I gently extricate myself from his arms and slide out of bed. My body feels stiff, the floor is cold to my bare feet, I push them into a pair of slippers that happen to be in the bedroom. Even though it is dark in the room the mark on my thigh is clearly visible in the mirror, burning dark against my winter-pale skin, I touch it cautiously with my fingertips. In spite of the fact that it hurts it is not unpleasant, it is something else. This is the proof, I think.
I make my way carefully down the stairs, I have begun to learn how to avoid the spots that creak the most. The scent of hyacinths fills the entire house, soft and perfumed. It is as if the change in the weather has affected the whole atmosphere, even indoors, as if the house itself has relaxed beneath its blanket of snow, grown calm and still.
There isn’t a sound downstairs. I cross the hallway and the porch to let Nils in, he meows and slides in through the door as soon as I open it, padding quickly toward his food dishes in the kitchen. The air outside is fresh, chilly. I inhale deeply, drawing it into my lungs, it feels as if my brain immediately becomes clearer.
When I have closed the outside door I notice the pot on the bureau. It must have been there ever since that Friday evening, I have lost track of the days. It is cold in the porch, there is no heating, and dark, only a small amount of light seeps in through the old beveled glass in the window of the outside door. Too dark for an orchid, I think, perhaps just as dark as down on the floor of the rain forest. And nothing to climb up in order to get closer to the light.
The whole plant is slimy and drooping, collapsed. The pink flower is dark, the stem soft and rubbery. I take it through to the kitchen, open the cupboard under the sink, and drop the pot in the garbage bag.
The darkness outside the window is different now, less dense. The field that extends on the far side of the garden is covered in snow, a thin layer, it gleams in the darkness. Stella’s diary with the shiny red cover, what happened to that yesterday? I had it in my hand when I ran through the house last night, but what happened to it after that?
Perhaps I dropped it in the field, somewhere on the way toward Anders and Karin’s apple tree. In my mind’s eye I can see it lying there, in the mud that is frozen now, it is covered with snow, the words inside it will be dissolved by the dampness, they will be obliterated, disappear. I can see it lying there as the snow melts and the muddy earth becomes soft and wet, until the time for the spring sowing arrives, the farmer who cultivates the land will plow the field and the sharp blades of the plow will slice through it, shredding it into strips of white and red, digging them down into the ground. And then he will scatter seed across the field, seed that will germinate and sprout, growing into corn that will stand ripe and yellow beneath next summer’s sun.
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