Anders stopped and gazed open-mouthed. It was so beautiful.
From the darkness we ascend towards the light. He made his way up the dark staircase, and it was a shock to reach the top. Apart from a whitewashed border right at the bottom, the circular walls were made entirely of glass, and everything was sky and light. In the middle of the room stood the reflector, an obelisk made up of prisms and different coloured, geometrically precise pieces of glass. A shrine to the light.
Maja was standing with her nose and hands pressed against the glass wall. When she heard Anders coming, she pointed out across the ice, towards the north-east.
‘Daddy, what’s that?’
Anders screwed his eyes up against the brightness and looked out over the ice. He couldn’t see anything apart from the white covering, and far away on the horizon just a hint of Ledinge archipelago.
‘What do you mean?’
Maja pointed. ‘There. On the ice.’
A gust of wind made the powdery snow whirl up, moving like a spirit across the pristine surface. Anders shook his head and turned back to face the room.
‘Have you seen this?’
They examined the reflector and Anders took some pictures of Maja through the reflector, behind the reflector, in front of the reflector. The little girl and the kaleidoscope of light, refracted in all directions. When they had finished Cecilia came up the stairs, and she too was amazed.
They ate their picnic in the light room looking out across the archipelago, trying to spot familiar landmarks. Maja was interested in the graffiti on the white wall, but since some of it required explanations unsuitable for the ears of a six-year-old, Anders took out the information leaflet and started reading aloud.
The lower parts of the lighthouse had been built as early as the sixteenth century, as a platform for the beacons lit to mark the navigable channel into Stockholm. Later the tower was added and a primitive reflector was installed; at first it was illuminated using oil, then kerosene.
That was enough for Maja, and she was off down the stairs. Anders grabbed hold of her snowsuit.
‘Just hang on, sunshine. Where are you off to?’
‘I’m going to look at that thing I said I could see.’
‘You’re not to go too far.’
‘I won’t.’
Anders let go and Maja carried on down the stairs. Cecilia watched her disappear.
‘Shouldn’t we…?’
‘Well yes. But where can she go?’
They spent a couple of minutes reading the rest of the leaflet, and learned that the Aga aggregate had eventually been installed, that the lighthouse had been decommissioned in 1973 and had then been taken over by the Archipelago Foundation, which had put in a symbolic hundred-watt bulb. These days it ran on solar cells.
They looked at the graffiti and established that at least one instance of sexual intercourse must have taken place on this floor, unless of course it was just a case of wishful thinking on the part of the writer. Then they gathered their things together and set off down the stairs. Cecilia had to take her time because of the palpitations, the pressure on her chest, and Anders waited for her.
When they got outside there was no sign of Maja. The wind had started to get up and the snow was swirling through the air in thin veils, glittering in the sunlight. Anders closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. It had been a fantastic outing, but now it was time to go home.
‘Maaaja,’ he shouted. No reply. They walked around the lighthouse, looking out for her. The rock itself was only small, perhaps a hundred metres in circumference. There was no sign of Maja anywhere, and Anders gazed out across the ice. No small red figure.
‘Maaaja!’
This time he shouted a little more loudly, and his heart began to beat a little more quickly. It was foolish, of course. There was no chance that she could have got lost here. He felt Cecilia’s hand on his shoulder. She was pointing down at the snow.
‘There are no tracks here.’
There was a hint of unease in her voice too. Anders nodded. Of course. All they had to do was follow Maja’s tracks.
They went back to where they’d started from, by the lighthouse door. Anders poked his head inside and shouted up the stairs, just in case Maja had come back and they hadn’t heard her. No reply.
The area around the door was covered in footprints made by all of them, but there were no tracks leading off to the right or left. Anders took a few steps down the rock. He could see their own tracks leading up towards the lighthouse from the ice, and Maja’s footprints heading off in the opposite direction.
He stared out over the ice. No Maja. He blinked, rubbed his eyes. She couldn’t have gone far enough to be out of sight. The contours of Domarö merged with those of the mainland, a thicker line of charcoal above a thinner one. He turned to face the other way, catching Cecilia’s expression: concentrated, tense.
There was no sign of their daughter in the opposite direction either.
Cecilia passed him on her way out on to the ice. She was walking with her head down, following the tracks with her eyes.
‘I’ll check inside the lighthouse,’ Anders shouted. ‘She must be hiding or something.’
He ran over to the door and up the stairs, shouting for Maja but getting no reply. His heart was pounding now and he tried to calm himself down, to be cool and clear-headed.
It just isn’t possible.
It’s always possible.
No, it isn’t. Not here. There’s nowhere she can be.
Exactly.
Stop it. Stop it.
Hide and seek was Maja’s favourite game. She was good at finding places to hide. Although she could be over-excited and eager in other situations, when she was playing hide and seek she could keep quiet and still for any length of time.
He walked up the stairs with his arms outstretched, stooping like a monkey so that his fingers brushed the edges where the staircase met the wall. In case she’d fallen. In case she was lying in the darkness where he couldn’t see her.
In case she’d fallen and banged her head, in case she…
But he felt nothing, saw nothing.
He searched the room at the top of the stairs, found two cupboards that were too narrow for Maja to be able to hide in. Opened them anyway. Inside were rusty, unidentifiable metal parts, bottles with hand-written labels. No Maja.
He went over to the door leading to the upper tower, closed his eyes for a couple of seconds before he went inside.
She’s up there now. That’s where she is. We’ll go home and we’ll file this with all those other times she’s disappeared for a while and then come back.
Next to the staircase was a system of weights and chains, the cupboard containing the light’s mechanism secured with a padlock. He tugged at it and established that it was locked, that Maja couldn’t be in there. He went slowly up the stairs, calling her name. No reply. There was a rushing sound in his ears now, and his legs felt weak.
He reached the room containing the reflector. No Maja.
Barely half an hour ago he had photographed her here. Now there was no trace of her. Nothing. He screamed, ‘Maaaajaaaa! Out you come! This isn’t funny any more!’
The sound was absorbed by the narrow room, making the glass vibrate.
He walked all the way around the room, looked out across the ice. Far below he could see Cecilia following the track that had led them here. But the red snowsuit was nowhere to be seen. He was gasping for air. His tongue was sticking to his palate. This was impossible. This couldn’t be happening. Desperately he stared out across the ice in every direction.
Where is she? Where is she?
He could just hear the sound of Cecilia’s voice shouting the same thing as he had shouted so many times. She got no reply either.
Think, you idiot. Think.
He looked out across the ice again. There was nothing to interrupt his gaze, no cover at all. If there had been holes in the ice, they would have been visible. However good you are a
t hiding, you still have to have a place to hide.
He stopped. His eyes narrowed. He could hear Maja’s voice inside his head.
Daddy, what’s that?
He went over to the spot where she had been standing when she asked the question, looked in the direction where she had pointed. Nothing. Only ice and snow.
What was it that she saw?
He strained to try and see something, then realised he was still wearing his rucksack. He pulled out the camera and looked through the viewfinder, zoomed in and panned across the area where she had been pointing. Nothing. Not a hint of another colour, not the slightest nuance in the whiteness, nothing.
His hands were shaking as he dropped the camera back in his rucksack. Out on the ice there was only white, white, but the sky had grown a little darker. It would soon be afternoon, it would be dark in a couple of hours.
He put his hands to his mouth, stared out into the vast emptiness, heard Cecilia’s distant cries. Maja was gone. She was gone.
Stop it, stop it.
And yet a part of him knew that it was so.
It was just after two when Simon’s telephone rang. He had spent the last hour fiddling with old conjuring props that his hands, stiff with rheumatism, could no longer use. He had considered selling them, but had decided to keep them as a little family treasure.
He answered the telephone on the second ring. He’d hardly managed to say hello before Anders interrupted.
‘Hi, it’s Anders. Have you seen Maja?’
‘But surely she’s with you?’
A brief pause. A quivering exhalation at the other end of the line. Simon sensed that he had just extinguished a hope. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘She’s gone. I knew she couldn’t have got back to the land, but I thought—I don’t know, Simon, she’s gone. She’s gone.’
‘Are you at the lighthouse?’
‘Yes. And she can’t…it’s just not…there’s nowhere…but she isn’t here. Where is she? Where is she?’
Two minutes later Simon had pulled on his outdoor clothes and kicked the moped into life. He rode out on to the ice where Elof was sitting on a folding chair, gazing down into the hole he had made with Simon’s drill. He looked up as he heard the moped approaching. Simon braked.
‘Elof—have you seen Maja, Anders’ daughter?’
‘No—what, here? Now?’
‘Yes. In the last hour or so.’
‘No, I haven’t seen a soul. Or a fish, come to that. Why?’
‘She’s disappeared. Out by the lighthouse.’
Elof turned his head towards the lighthouse, kept his eyes fixed in that direction for a few seconds and scratched his forehead.
‘Can’t they find her?’
Simon clenched his teeth so tightly that his jaw muscles tensed. This bloody long-winded way of going about things. Elof nodded and started reeling in his line.
‘I’d better…get a few people together then. We’ll come over.’
Simon thanked him and set off towards the lighthouse. When he turned to look back after fifty metres or so, Elof was still fiddling about with his fishing gear, making sure it was all neatly packed away before he set off. Simon ground his teeth and rode so that the snow whirled up around his wheels as twilight fell.
Five minutes later Simon was out by the lighthouse helping to search, despite the fact that there was nowhere to look. He concentrated on riding around on the ice to check if Elof had been right, that there could be weak spots. He didn’t find any.
After another quarter of an hour a number of dots could be seen approaching from Domarö. Four mopeds. Elof and his brother Johan. Mats, who owned the shop, had his wife Ingrid on the back. Bringing up the rear, Margareta Bergwall, one of the few women in the village who had their own moped.
They rode around the lighthouse in ever-widening circles, searching every square metre of the ice. Anders and Cecilia wandered aimlessly around on the lighthouse rock itself, saying nothing. After an hour it was so dark that the moonlight was stronger than the small amount of sunlight that remained.
Simon went up to Anders and Cecilia, who were now sitting by the lighthouse door, head in hands. Far out on the ice the faint lights of the four mopeds were just visible, still circling round and round like satellites of a desolate planet. A police helicopter with a searchlight had arrived to extend the search area.
Simon’s joints creaked as he crouched down in front of them. Their eyes were empty. Simon stroked Cecilia’s knee.
‘What did you say about the tracks?’
Cecilia waved feebly in the direction of Domarö. Her voice was so weak that Simon had to lean forward in order to hear.
‘There weren’t any.’
‘You mean they didn’t go off in a different direction?’
‘They stopped. As if…as if she’d been lifted up into the sky.’
Anders whimpered. ‘This can’t be happening. How can this be happening?’
He looked into Simon, right through Simon, as if he were looking for the answer in a knowledge that lay somewhere behind Simon’s retina.
Simon got up and went back down on to the ice, sat on the back of his moped and looked around.
If only there were somewhere to start.
A nuance, a shadow, anything that could serve as a loose edge where they could begin tearing away. He pushed his hand down into his jacket pocket and closed it around the matchbox that lay there. Then he placed the fingertips of his other hand on the ice and asked it to melt.
First the snow melted, then a deepening hollow appeared, filling up with water. After perhaps twenty seconds there was a black hole in the ice, perhaps as big as a clenched fist. He let go of the matchbox and, with some difficulty, lowered his arm into the cold water. The surface of the ice was just above his elbow before he was able to grip the lower edge.
The ice was thick. There was absolutely no chance that Maja had fallen through somewhere.
So what has happened?
There was no loose edge. Nowhere for his thoughts to poke and prod, widen the crack, work things out. It was just impossible. He went up and sat down with Anders and Cecilia, giving them a hug and saying a few words from time to time, until in the end it was completely dark and the mopeds began to spiral their way back towards the lighthouse.
Domarö and time
During the course of this story it will be necessary occasionally to jump back in time in order to explain something in the present. This is regrettable but unavoidable.
Domarö is not a large island. Everything that has happened remains here and influences the present. Places and objects are charged with meanings that are not easily forgotten. We cannot escape.
In the scheme of things, this is a very small story. You could say it would fit in a matchbox.
What the cat dragged in (May 1996)
It was the last week in May and the perch were plentiful. Simon had a simple method of fishing. He had spent several years experimenting with his nets, laying them out in different places, and had come to the conclusion that all this travelling around was unnecessary. It worked just as well if he tied one end of the net to the jetty and towed the other end out with the boat. Easy to lay and even easier to empty. He hauled the net in from the jetty, and could usually disentangle the fish he didn’t want on the spot and throw them back in the sea.
This morning’s seven perch were in the fridge, cleaned and ready, and the dace he had released had swum off. Simon was standing by the drying rack picking bits of seaweed out of the nets, while the gulls finished their meal of fish guts. It was a bright, warm morning, the sun was beating down on the back of his neck and he was sweating in his overalls.
Dante the cat had been following him all morning; he never seemed to learn how extremely unusual it was to find herring in the net. The odd herring he had been given was sufficient to keep the flame of hope burning in his head, and he always followed Simon down to the jetty.
Once Dante realised that no herring had manag
ed to entangle themselves in the net this morning either, he had settled down on the jetty to glower at the gulls fighting over the fish guts. He would never dare to attack a gull but no doubt he had his fantasies, just like every other living creature.
Simon unhooked the net and rolled it up so that it wouldn’t become brittle in the sun. As he made his way down to the boathouse to hang it up, he could see that the cat was busy with something out on the jetty.
Or rather, fighting with something. Dante was jumping back and forth, up in the air, batting with his paws at something Simon couldn’t see. It looked as if the cat was dancing, but Simon had seen him play with mice in the same way. And yet this was different. The game with mice and frogs really was a game, in which the cat pretended his prey was harder to catch than it actually was. This time it looked as if the cat was genuinely…afraid?
The fur on his back was standing up, and his jumps and tentative attacks could only be interpreted as an indication that he was dealing with something worthy of respect. Which was difficult to understand, since nothing was visible from a distance of twenty metres, and Simon’s eyesight was good.
He twisted the net to avoid tangles, laid it down on the ground and went to see what the cat was doing.
When he got out on to the jetty, he still couldn’t see what was making the cat so agitated. Or…yes, the cat was circling around a bit of rope that was lying there. This wasn’t like Dante at all; he was eleven years old and no longer deigned to play with balls or bits of paper. But obviously this piece of rope was great fun.
Dante made a sudden attack and got both paws on the piece of rope, but was hurled backwards with a jerk, as if the rope had given him an electric shock. He swayed and fell sideways, then flopped down on the jetty.
When Simon got there the cat was lying motionless next to the furthest bollard. The thing he had been playing with wasn’t a piece of rope, because it was moving. It was some kind of insect, it looked like a worm of some sort. Simon ignored it and crouched down next to the cat.
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