Lindstrom Alone

by Moss, John

  “Why?”

  “Were they alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Skadi.”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you start the fire?”

  “Which fire?”

  “The shed.”

  “Yes.”

  The question was intuitive, the answer spontaneous. Skadi’s reprieve had collapsed. Bernd groaned again.

  Everything changed. Harry gazed into Skadi’s eyes. Their eyes locked. She offered a beguiling smile but no further explanation. As if nothing had changed at all.

  “More coffee?”

  “No,” said Harry. Her smile slowly collapsed into sadness as he watched. “No, thank you.”

  She fidgeted in her chair, got up, and went over to the settee. She pulled a blanket over Bernd, tucking it around his shoulders. He wrapped his arms around himself under the blanket. She returned to the table. She sat down, staring at the surface.

  “Skadi.” Harry spoke in a conciliatory voice. Almost conspiratorial. “You love your brother, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” She stared at the dregs of her coffee, picked up the cup and swirled it. “Very much.”

  “You wanted to protect him, didn’t you?”

  Leading question, Harry. Let her speak for herself.

  She’s not exactly bubbling with candour.

  “But you also wanted him to die, didn’t you?”

  She looked alarmed.

  He realized his mistake. He amended his statement.

  “You needed him to die. It was necessary. Something you had to do. You weren’t trying to kill me. It was him.”

  She raised her eyes to his.

  “No,” she said, “I was not trying to kill you, Professor Lindstrom.”

  “I was collateral damage?”

  “But you didn’t die. Neither did Bernd. Everything is like it was.”

  No, not really.

  “Skadi, tell me why you set the shed on fire.”

  “I was afraid that Bernd was in trouble.”

  “Was it something Inspector Arnason said? Skadi?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she tell you about your mother?”

  “What about her?”

  Bernd said he hadn’t told her. They drove up from Visby together, and he didn’t tell her their mother was dead, and certainly not that he’d killed her. Perhaps Hannah Arnason told her, assuming Hannah and her demonic familiar had been there at all.

  She seems remarkably calm.

  Remarkably.

  Maybe Birgitta’s death seemed justifiable, measured against the pitiless murders she’d committed, if she did them, and if Skadi knew.

  Then why punish Bernd?

  Bloodguilt, Harry.

  She has to know about the other murders, the earlier ones as well.

  And?

  Maybe that’s why she tried to kill Bernd.

  To save him from himself.

  She’s a very strange girl.

  Almost thirty, Harry. Hardly a girl, but strange, yes. There’s a definite disconnect with reality.

  “Skadi, you and I need to talk.”

  She smiled demurely, as if he had just asked her to dance.

  “Of course, Professor. What shall we talk about?”

  Innocence contrived in the face of depravity is not to be trusted, Harry.

  With the storm howling outside, the day fading into afternoon twilight, and the smell of burnt human flesh vying in the air with the scent of coffee, there was no reason to expect this strange young woman across from him would not sprout fangs and cry havoc.

  “Cry havoc,” he muttered.

  Harry, you’re speaking out loud. Say something sensible.

  Skadi stared at him, bewildered. The television had fallen silent.

  “Cry havoc?” Skadi repeated in a loud voice. “What’s that?”

  “‘Cry ‘Havoc,’ And let slip the dogs of war!’” declaimed Aunt Annie, who had appeared unnoticed in the kitchen doorway.

  She rolled her head to indicate the rousing impact of the storm all around them. Aunt Lenke, who was as plump as Annie was slender, leaned close against her.

  “Julius Caesar, Marc Antony,” said the thin stooped woman in sonorous English, “For myself, for the dramatic expression of hopelessness, I prefer the Scottish play.

  Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

  Creeps in this petty pace from day to day …”

  She pulled away from her sister, who was helping her to maintain equilibrium.

  “Out, out, brief candle!

  Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,

  That struts and frets upon the stage,

  And then is heard no more.

  “And this is the best part,” she declared, as if her own words were coming from the mouth of Macbeth, himself. “Listen, the words rise, they resonate, and then they collapse; the music falls.

  It is a tale

  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

  Signifying nothing.

  “Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Amen. Good night, sweet children. Lenke and I are going in for our naps.”

  The two old ladies disappeared down the dark hallway, brushing noisily against the walls, and Harry heard first one door shut and lock and then another.

  He looked at Skadi for a reaction, but Skadi seemed not to have noticed anything unusual.

  22 FAMILY SECRETS

  HARRY PEERED OVER AT BERND THROUGH THE GLOOM. THE barn out back had been displaced in the window by the reflection of the kitchen as the overhead light struggled to counter encroaching darkness. Bernd’s eyes were wide open. His face registered a sort of startled disbelief, but he gazed at the ceiling and made no effort to speak.

  When Harry looked back at Skadi, she had transformed. What had seemed a fey unawareness of her aunt’s declamation had been the initial stages of shock. A shadow slowly descended over her face as an appearance of profound horror set in. She looked as if she had seen Banquo’s ghost.

  Harry observed her with as empty and open a mind as it was possible to sustain.

  Skadi turned in her chair and said something to Bernd in Swedish. Surprisingly, Bernd answered.

  She turned back to Harry.

  “We did not know she speaks English,” Skadi said in a plaintive voice.

  This family never ceases to amaze me.

  Harry addressed Skadi, “You’ve lived with her all your life. Bernd’s known her all of his. She never spoke English before?”

  “Not ever. Bernd and I used English in front of the aunts when we wanted to talk privately. It was our secret language.” Her eyes darted around the room, trying to see invisible things. “My God, they know everything.”

  “Skadi, what do you mean, everything?”

  “Our secrets.”

  She looked over at Bernd. He seemed to have lapsed into a comatose state.

  “Skadi, have your aunts always been here on Fårö?”

  “In this house, yes. Except during the war. Aunt Annie went away. She was an actress.”

  Of course she was. Harry calculated, if Annie were eighty-five now, give or take, she would have been in her late teens, early twenties.

  “In Stockholm?” he asked.

  “Helsingborg. They sometimes played to Nazis who came over the channel from Denmark, but mostly to Swedes. I knew they did Shakespeare. I always assumed in translation. She never, not ever, not once, told us she spoke English. Never.”

  “She played Lady Macbeth.”

  “She spied on us. All her life, she spied on us. On Birgitta, too. The three of us spoke English so the aunts wouldn’t understand.” Her face contorted like a portrait by Edvard Munch. “She knows all about us.”

  “Skadi, why do you think she waited until now? She could have gone to her grave without letting on.”

  She gazed at him helplessly, hopefully, as if he might penetrate the unfathomable. He tried:

  “I imagine it reached a point early on, long before you were b
orn, where it would have been far too compromising to admit that she understood. After years of being a voyeur, she couldn’t suddenly appear naked herself. And yet, Skadi, she’s done just that. She’s stripped away the disguise. She knows. And Skadi, she wants me to know.”

  This isn’t about you, Harry.

  This time, it is!

  “Skadi, Annie has been silent for sixty years. And now she’s revealed herself. What is it she wants me to know? Tell me, what secrets?”

  The young woman glowered at him. Her pale eyes were as cold as ice, her complexion was ashen, her lips were pulled into a grimace, and her teeth gleamed in the dull light. He thought of his previous allusion to fangs, but she looked less like the undead than the damned. A soul in torment.

  “Tell me,” he repeated. He reached across the table in what seemed a habitual gesture and took one of her hands in his. It was cold.

  He waited.

  Skadi’s eyes seemed to focus on some invisible spectre between them. “She came home after the war.”

  “Your Aunt Annie?”

  “Yes. She had a baby. Here, on Fårö. In this house.”

  Harry tilted his head, trying to draw Skadi’s eyes back to his.

  She spoke softly, “Her baby’s father was a German officer. He and Annie were in love. At the end of the war, he was shot. In Denmark. Executed, perhaps. Unofficially. The baby was sent to Canada.”

  “To relatives?”

  “Yes.”

  “Emigrants, anarchists from Lund.”

  “Yes. My mother was born Birgitta Sviar. She became Birgitta Shtoonk—they were refugees, they foolishly thought a Jewish name would gain them sympathy in Canada. I knew all this from when I was very small, but I did not know Aunt Annie spoke English. I wonder if Auntie Lenke does, too.”

  “She doesn’t need to.”

  “Why would Annie betray us?”

  “Was it betrayal? Can’t you imagine it gave her a kind of magical power? She knew things that nobody imagined she knew. I think it was the only real power she had left in the world. It made her special.”

  “Lenke never went away; she’s never been to Stockholm. She visited Visby a few times when she was younger.”

  “And the two of them shared secrets. That’s how they survived, that’s how they endured. Just like you and Bernd. Your secret lives kept them going.”

  “There really were no secrets, were there?”

  “Did you ever talk to Annie about your mother?”

  “No, but about her lover, yes. Bernd and I, when we were small and fearless, we asked her about him and she said, ‘Ach, he was just a man. You expect a villain with horns or a hero who lived in a castle like Bernd’s puzzle. He was killed in reprisal for his country’s mistakes, and I came home to Fårö. It was not a time to keep souvenirs; we sent your mother away. That is all the story you need to know.’ She was not angry with us, but we never asked her again.”

  “And your mother came back to visit and had you.”

  “Yes, when she grew up. She came back often.”

  “After she was married? Her own family were poor.”

  “Her adopting family called her their Aryan bastard. She was their little Nazi reject with perfect blonde hair and perfect blue eyes. They despised her for being perfect.”

  “Skadi, did you ever meet her parents?”

  “The Shtoonks, no, never. When she was seventeen, she ran away.”

  “Did you ever meet your father?”

  “My father? I don’t know. If I did, it doesn’t matter. I am a Sviar. We are an ancient family. My father is Sweden. That’s what I liked to think when I was small. And it is true.”

  “How do you know so much about your mother?”

  “Birgitta told me herself. We would sit on the boathouse ramp and watch the sunset at the end of each summer, and she would tell me her story. She would tell me how much she loved me and how much she wanted to keep me safe on Fårö. She said I would stay all my life with my aunties. She would rock me in her arms and tell me how special I was. Then, the next morning, she would leave.”

  “Why didn’t she take you back to Toronto?”

  Skadi looked puzzled.

  “After she and Vittorio separated? Did you ever ask?”

  Skadi shyly responded, “Birgitta told me I was like her. I did not belong in Canada.”

  “Was she ashamed of you?”

  “Of course not! She wanted to protect me.”

  “From Bernd?”

  “From things that could happen. As each of my sisters died, she treasured me more—those were her words, she treasured me. But I needed to stay here.”

  “For protection?”

  The young woman paused to gather herself, then continued, “Every year, Bernd would come. Even after we were grownups, he came two and three times each winter and every summer. He spent more time with me than anyone else except my aunties. I remember Isabella and Sigrid quite well. Giovanna has always been a ghost. And when Birgitta came to visit us she was my mother, and she would tell me terrible things about Bernd in secret. This was the bond between us, that Bernd had murdered my sisters. It was our secret.”

  “And yet she sent him off to stay with you, alone.”

  “My aunties were here.”

  “But Birgitta wasn’t.”

  “Sometimes she was. She believed I was in danger in Toronto, but here I was safe.”

  “Why?”

  Skadi tilted her head in a fey gesture that might have been condescending or simply expressing disinterest. Either way, Harry felt the chill.

  “Did you believe Bernd was a killer?”

  “It didn’t matter.”

  “Were you frightened?”

  “No. I wasn’t a Ghiberti.”

  Harry sucked in his breath.

  “Is that why she thinks Bernd killed them, because they were their father’s daughters?”

  “It is hard to say. Birgitta was very definite in her opinions, but she was often obscure.”

  “Do you think she wanted them dead?”

  “Oh, that is horrible. Of course not.”

  “And you and your mother were close.”

  “The three of us, yes.”

  “Including Bernd?”

  “Birgitta was his mother. She was my mother. He is my brother. We loved Bernd. I love Bernd, now.”

  “But you tried to kill him.”

  Her face opened into a sweet and guileless smile. If she had felt any guilt for setting the fire, she had forgiven herself.

  “You know about your mother’s research?”

  “About those dead girls? Yes.”

  “One or two, sometimes three a year, for the last ten years.”

  “Not so many, I think. But yes, I know about them. They died very peacefully. They fell asleep in the snow.”

  “Do you know who killed them?”

  “Nobody killed them. They lay down in the arms of winter. They gave up their lives to the natural world. Imagine, imagine how gently they slipped away.”

  She might have been talking about a mythical cult, about death as a sacred rite of passage.

  “Before they expire, you know, a warmth seeps through their bodies, and their minds are flooded with memories, and their souls turn into celestial music, which only the dead can hear. They are very happy.”

  “Bernd told you this?”

  “I study such things. I travel for my research.”

  “Skadi, have you been to each place where these girls died?”

  Her smile turned almost beatific and her eyes widened, and then her features buckled into a sullen mask. She stood and walked to the window, peering out into the storm.

  “It’s letting up.” She spoke in a voice devoid of personality. It was as if she were trying to obliterate the cheerfully morbid young woman she had been only a few moments earlier.

  Harry wasn’t ready to move on but when he asked about why the dead girls were blonde she demurred. When he asked if she associated them in her
mind with her sisters, the bland lustre for an instant left her eyes, but she recovered and smiled. When he asked if she were jealous of them, she responded, “Not after they were dead. Of course not. They were my sisters. I loved them. They were very pretty. My mother is pretty.”

  In Harry’s perception, the storm had not abated.

  The winds still beat against the house and wailed in the eaves. Snow caught by the light of the kitchen window streaked horizontally, obscuring the night in a swirl of reflected particles too frenzied for the eye to sort out from the blur.

  He heard the click and rattle of a door opening down the hall.

  Aunt Annie appeared in the kitchen doorway, framed in darkness but her face washed in the harsh illumination from the overhead light so that every crease and furrow looked like scratch marks on velvet.

  The young woman and the old woman stared at each other, caught up in a moment of incomprehension. Then there was another click and rattle, followed by the shuffling sounds of another old woman making her way down the corridor. Aunt Lenke appeared in Annie’s frail shadow, peering around her sister until the light caught her eyes.

  Harry rose, even Bernd stirred on the settee, but the tension between Annie and Skadi sucked the air from the room and left the others suffocated and feeling extraneous. Skadi stood up and moved away from the table, arresting any gesture to get closer to the old woman. She wavered on the balls of her feet.

  Harry, Karen whispered, say nothing.

  But there was no risk of Harry intruding.

  “Skadi, darling, I can’t sleep,” said Annie. She might have been Vanessa Redgrave. She was speaking in perfect stage English. “Skadi, it is over, now, dear.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Skadi. She turned to Harry. She seemed to be recapitulating in her mind, working out where they were in her narrative.

  Harry looked to Aunt Annie, but the old woman’s watery eyes were fixed on her pretty, unworldly granddaughter.

  “Skadi, tell Professor Lindstrom.”

  Harry turned back to face Skadi. The young woman looked into his eyes, searching.

  What does she want, Harry. Absolution? Understanding?

  Affection.

  “Skadi,” he said, reaching out and guiding her back to a chair. The aunts remained in the doorway.

  She gazed up at him with an empty face. He glanced over at Annie. The old woman smiled. It was a genuine, warm, embracing smile. It was meant to take in the world. It was a forgiving smile, meant to forgive the world.