The Cruel Stars of the Night

by Kjell Eriksson

  Lars-Erik paused but kept going when she didn’t jump in.

  “And the road association. That was obligatory of course. He—”

  “Do you have any wine at home?”

  He got up halfway then sank down just as fast back on the chair.

  “I put on some coffee. Maybe you want some cognac?”

  “Did you know about this thing with Alice?”

  “What?” Lars-Erik asked and took a bottle out of a cupboard.

  “That she had many men.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “You don’t need to keep up appearances any longer,” Laura said.

  He sat down, put out two cognac glasses and a bottle. His gaze lingered on the bottle as if there was something in it that could explain Laura’s state of mind.

  “I didn’t know anything about it,” he said. “Alice and you lived your life and we ours.”

  “But surely you must know that Mårten and Alice fucked?”

  He winced.

  “I don’t believe that. My father wasn’t like that. Alice was married.”

  Laura let out a laugh and rose up from the table. One of the glasses tipped over but Lars-Erik immediately turned it back up. Laura poked her head in the other room, then turned around and looked at the back of her cousin’s head where the thin neck hair stuck out like a brush.

  He looks like an old man, she thought, as she raised her right hand and made a fist. He poured out two drinks and turned around with a smile on his lips but stiffened when he saw her expression and the raised fist.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She lowered her arm.

  “She probably fucked everybody,” she said.

  “Did it really say that Father and Alice, that they . . .”

  “Not exactly,” she admitted.

  “It’s a lie,” Lars-Erik said calmly. “Mårten never spoke between the lines. When he talked it was direct, unveiled, and never with hidden intentions. You are welcome to come here, I am glad to see you, but you are not allowed to speak ill of my father.”

  “Cheers,” he said and raised his glass. “Let us forget about the past and think about the future.”

  “I caught her in the act,” Laura said. “It is so ugly. She became ugly. Ul-rik knew but he shrank down to a little shit. Then when I called that bastard he cried.”

  Laura let out another laugh.

  “Who did you call?”

  “I caught up with him. He said he was tired of living. Should he be allowed to take his own life without punishment? Would that have been right?”

  Lars-Erik had been sitting with the glass in his hand. Now he moved it up to his lips and drank.

  “But he ruined everything,” Laura sobbed.

  “Have a little cognac,” Lars-Erik urged.

  “She fucked everyone,” Laura mumbled and sat down at the table.

  “Alice was unhappy,” Lars-Erik said, “you can’t blame her for everything.”

  Laura stared at him, raised the brandy snifter, and threw it onto the wall above the sink so the glass sprayed over the kitchen.

  “I don’t want alcohol,” she said, “I want . . .”

  She leaned her head in her hands. Lars-Erik stretched out a hand and patted her on the cheek.

  “You aren’t feeling so well,” he said tenderly. “Maybe you should rest a while and then we can talk more tomorrow. Maybe you’re tired? I remember a time when we were picking lingonberries up on the heath. Do you remember? You were tired and cheated, put moss in the bottom of the pail. How Father laughed. He said you were like a forest troll. What could you have been, twelve, thirteen? Father was pretty funny about that. The berries and everything. He wanted me to tag along. He always said it was so we could check out the elk trails at the same time. Janne also came along. Martin was probably out with some girl. I remember how quick Alice was. It was the same with my mother. They had that in the blood. Their arms went like sawmills. Do you remember? I sometimes go up there when it’s all red with lingonberries and then I think about you and . . . well, you remember . . . how it was.”

  Lars-Erik finished with a sigh. Laura had removed her hands from her face and looked at him.

  “Alice died with a jar of lingonberries in her hand,” she said. “They said I wasn’t supposed to look but I knew what she looked like. Like a whore with her ass in the air and that farmer going at her from behind.”

  Lars-Erik’s dismayed expression made her laugh.

  “Of course I remember the heath. I wished I had died there. That everyone had died. Ulrik asked me once how I was doing. One time. It was at the cottage. He had grabbed me and Ulrik saw the marks.”

  “Ulrik grabbed you?”

  “Not him,” Laura said and drew her breath. Panic was shining from her eyes.

  “Laura, maybe you need help? I don’t get all this but that you’ve had a hard time of it, I understand that much. You are welcome to talk with me, but maybe you need someone who’s good at this kind of thing.”

  “You’re sweet, Lars-Erik,” she said and took his snifter, drained it in one go, and poured another glass.

  “I think about Alice,” he went on, “such a life-loving person. To die like that. It’s so pathetic. On the stairs.”

  Laura took a sip of cognac and grimaced. Lars-Erik thought she was going to throw the glass against the wall again.

  “And if I was the one who did it, what difference does that make? I knew even then . . .”

  “What do you mean?”

  Laura drained the glass again.

  “She laughed at me. Do you understand? She laughed. I just wanted her to be like a mother should be, but in the end she didn’t care. She didn’t even pretend. She laughed at me. I asked her to stop, to be a mother.”

  “You’ve had relationships yourself and know how hard everything can be!” Lars-Erik burst out. “It couldn’t have been easy to live with that block of wood.”

  He poured out a cognac and drank, setting the glass down on the table heavily.

  “She was unfaithful,” Laura said, “and it was just as well that she died.”

  “You can’t kill everyone who’s unfaithful!”

  “Don’t yell at me. I’m warning you, don’t yell at me!”

  Lars-Erik drew a deep breath.

  “She tripped. I can’t help that, can I? She said something about lin-gonberries and laughed. They were his lingonberries. I wanted to smash the jar.”

  “But, Laura . . .”

  “She was my mother and she let me down. She was like an apple that is rotten on the inside. You only saw the outside. But she burst in the end.”

  “Oh dear God.”

  Laura’s face crumpled up. It was as if a great weight had landed on her. Her shoulders were pulled down and her head fell forward.

  “Will you come with me?”

  “Where to?”

  “I know a place. A restaurant by the sea.”

  Laura didn’t notice him shake his head. Lars-Erik thought she had changed into a little old lady.

  “Can’t we go there, just you and me? We can have a good life.”

  “No, Laura. Stay here for a few days instead and get your strength back.”

  Lars-Erik made up a bed in his father’s old room. He walked past the suitcase in the hall but didn’t know what he should do with it. If he carried it up it would give the impression that he expected her to stay longer.

  Laura was still sitting in the kitchen.

  “It’s time to get ready for bed,” Lars-Erik said.

  He had been standing for a while looking at his cousin, how she poured out another glass and downed it.

  She got up on unsteady legs and walked over to the window. Her face was reflected in it. She smiled and started to recite a poem:

  “When evening drives away the shining day

  And our deep night to others brings the dawn

  Sadly I gaze upon the cruel stars

  That formed my body out of sentient earth />
  And I do curse the day I saw the sun

  Until I seem like one reared in the wood.”

  “Beautiful,” she said and turned around, “Stars are cruel. They shine, beaming toward me, but so cold, so cold.”

  The silence in the kitchen lasted several minutes before she let out a sob.

  “That is what I have received. Poems.”

  Lars-Erik walked over to her and put his arm around her shoulders.

  “Do you want to make love to me?” she asked abruptly.

  Her breath was sweet and strong from the cognac. Lars-Erik caught his breath.

  “I don’t think that would be so good,” he said. “Let us be friends.”

  “Friends is good,” she said, still turned toward the window.

  Lars-Erik woke up, as he usually did, shortly before six. It took a while before he remembered he had a guest in the house.

  He tiptoed down into the kitchen and closed the door behind him,turned on the radio and started to make his breakfast. He always ate porridge with lingonberry jam.

  Radio Uppland started their transmission.

  “Violent fire in Uppsala . . . may have a connection to the serial killings the past week . . . earlier missing man found dead . . . female police officer seriously wounded . . . Radio Uppland is on location in Kåbo.”

  Lars-Erik put down the package of oatmeal and stared at the radio. The agitated voice on the radio gave an account of the house that had burned down.

  “The owner of the house, an older man who had been reported missing a month ago was found dead in the basement. It is unclear if the man’s death was caused by the fire. In the basement there was also a female detective inspector, who has been leading the investigation into the three murders that have shaken Uppsala. She is injured and her state is reported as serious but not life-threatening. According to the information that Radio Uppland has been able to gather she was badly injured from the smoke. A thirty-five-year-old woman who is believed to be connected to the fire is now wanted by the police. She is driving a red Ford Fusion. There are facts indicating that she is connected to the murders.”

  Lars-Erik walked over to the window and looked out.

  The radio announcer continued with the report but Lars-Erik did not need to hear more. He sat down at the table where the glass and the bottle still stood.

  He didn’t want to believe it was Laura they were talking about but everything fit. He looked around the kitchen, discovering glass slivers on the floor and got up, unsure of what to do.

  Radio voices went on about the events that had taken place yesterday but he only sporadically registered what they had to say.

  The suitcase was still in the hall. He walked over and checked the address label where it stood. “Associate professor Ulrik Hindersten— Uppsala University.”

  He looked up the stairs, turned his head, and saw the telephone on the wall in the kitchen. He walked over and lifted the receiver but immediately hung up again.

  The stairs creaked as usual even though he was trying to walk as soundlessly as possible.

  If she had only come earlier, he thought and stared at the closed door to the room where she was sleeping.

  In order not to wake her, he pushed the door open gently and peeked in. The bed was empty. It had not even been touched. The blanket at the foot was wrinkled so Laura had perhaps sat there for a while during the night.

  She had turned up so unexpectedly that in a way he was not surprised to find that she had left.

  He walked out of the room and went down, checked the parlor and the TV room before he walked out into the yard. The car was still there. He felt the handle. It was unlocked. A few clothes and a purse were in the backseat.

  The wind was sharp and the clear weather during the night had made the temperature fall below freezing. The lawns were white.

  He called out her name and checked the storage shed, woodshed, and garage but could only establish that Laura was not on the farm.

  He wondered if he should walk over to the early riser Egg-Elsa and ask her if she had seen Laura. But he sensed where she had gone, so he went back in and lifted the receiver again.

  As he was describing the way to the police officer in Uppsala he thought about Rose-Marie, that he had done the same thing before her first visit to Skyttorp.

  After the call he fetched his fleece jacket and walked out into the yard again. Now Egg-Elsa had made a fire. Smoke was coming out of the kitchen.

  From the thin fir forest to the east there came a call from a wood-dove that had apparently decided to stay for the winter.