The Memory Theater

by Karin Tidbeck

  16

  Thistle fell asleep on the sofa. Dora went back down to the pond. Little creatures rustled in the grass. She crouched on the beach, stirring her fingers in the water. The sound of footsteps made her turn around. She recognized Journeyman’s scent. He crouched down next to her.

  “Before I played you, I thought you were just slow.”

  Dora waited.

  Journeyman dipped a hand in the water. “I didn’t understand that with slowness comes clarity. That you see everything more clearly, feel more keenly than any of us. When I sat there under the tree…I have never felt peace like that. And when the others came onstage, it was like an explosion. I wanted to scream, I’m not done! Let me be! I don’t know how you can stand it.”

  Dora looked at her fingers in the water.

  “And now I did it to you,” Journeyman said. “Talked your head off. I’m sorry.”

  Dora looked up. Two glowing orbs hung in the sky. Journeyman had changed position.

  “I learned,” Dora said. “How to move fast. I just need to slow down sometimes.”

  Journeyman’s hand was on her left forearm. His fingers ran up and down her skin in a way that made something shift in her belly.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said.

  His scent had changed.

  “Is Journeyman your own name?” she asked him.

  “I gave mine up,” he replied.

  Dora took his hand and raised it to her face. Little hairs on his wrist tickled her nose. She felt the thin skin on the inside with her lips. He gasped. She ran her hand in under the sleeve on his shirt and touched the crook of his arm, brushed her fingers over a little mole there. His smell, the sound of his uneven breaths, the skin under her hand. It seemed to flicker somehow, as if he wasn’t set in his form.

  “Is this your own shape?” she asked.

  “It was, to begin with.” Journeyman let out a long breath.

  His face became a blur, like a picture overlaying another, and another, and another: thin shapes, thick shapes, rugged, soft, masculine, feminine, androgynous, altogether alien. The only firm points were his irises, deep brown and constant. When he spoke, it was with a choir of voices.

  “I am more shapes than you can imagine.”

  He solidified into the youth he had been before.

  “Do you like it? This self?” he said with the clear baritone he had used before.

  Dora nodded.

  Journeyman slipped a hand around her waist.

  Dora removed his hand. “No. I need to be alone now.”

  Journeyman drew back. “Of course. I’m sorry.”

  When his steps had receded, Dora lay on her back by the pool and stared up at the stars. She walked through the memory of him moment by moment—sight, touch, smell, sound—until she could rest in them. He had no form, yet a form: warm, musky. He had wants. And he wanted her but demanded nothing. Dora could rest in that, too.

  17

  The station consisted of a short platform and a tiny wooden station building with a sign that read frostviken. It lay in a shallow bowl, a bog surrounded by mountains. Augusta had been on the train for a long time; dawn lit the sky from below. The cold air carried a smell of herbs and wet grass. Augusta was the only one to disembark. A sharp whistle blew, and the train trundled off into the distance.

  A dirt road ran from the station building and out onto the bog. Augusta walked down the road. Before long, it ended in front of an abandoned house whose roof had fallen in. There was nothing for it but to go out into the wilderness. So, she was here. Phantasos had come here. She would find him and learn his secrets.

  “Phantasos!” she yelled into the air. “I have come for you.”

  She walked across the bog calling his name, shivering in the damp cold.

  The sun rose and drowned the world in golden light. The bog was vast, dotted by twisted birch trees. White-tipped grass edged the pools. Here and there, little plants bore flame-colored berries that tasted spicy and sour-sweet. Augusta’s shoes were soaked through from slipping into the wet hollows that opened up where the ground had seemed solid. She could no longer feel her toes. As the morning passed, stinging insects woke up: little gnats, larger flying things, and a huge fly that stuck itself to her hand and which she had to scrape off. It was maddening. Augusta trudged on toward the nearest mountain, but it didn’t seem to come any closer. It must be enormous.

  “Phantasos!” Augusta cried out again and again. “Lord of the Gardens! I call you by your name. Show yourself.”

  It was midday, and still chilly, when Augusta spotted the old man. He was dressed in rubber boots and trousers and a warm-looking brown sweater, and carried a bucket. He leisurely made his way across the bog, avoiding the larger pools. He halted when he saw her and tilted his head. Then he headed her way, stopping here and there to pick something from the ground. Only when he came close did he straighten and look at Augusta. He was wiry, his blue eyes cold in a face sunburned many times over.

  “Greetings, old man,” Augusta said.

  The man studied her for a long moment.

  “I thought I heard a voice,” he said. Then he looked her over. “What are you doing out here? Are you lost?”

  “Perhaps,” Augusta said, then used her lady voice. “Say, old man, that’s a nice pair of boots and sweater. You should give them to me.”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  Resistance. Odd. “Give them to me,” Augusta repeated. “I’m cold.”

  “No wonder. You’re wet and that suit of yours isn’t any good here.”

  Augusta decided to try etiquette. “Help me, then,” she said.

  The old man studied her for a long moment. “Who are you?”

  “I’m a traveler,” Augusta said. “Just a traveler. From very far away.”

  He sucked air in through his teeth. “Very far away,” he repeated. “Very well. You may call me Nils Nilsson.”

  “Nils Nilsson,” Augusta said. “Please give me your sweater.”

  “I need my sweater,” Nils said, “but if you follow me, I can find another one for you.”

  Without another word, he set off along a small path Augusta hadn’t seen until now. Augusta walked after him, mystified by his resilience. There was something about this man. But she was cold, and she could deal with him when they arrived wherever he was going.

  * * *

  —

  The farm consisted of a small main building, an outhouse, and a barn, all old but well kept. Augusta was exhausted. They had been walking all morning and Nils had kept veering off into the bog to fill his bucket with orange berries.

  “Here we are,” Nils said. “Welcome.”

  The kitchen was small, with a stove and a table with some chairs and a wood-framed bench. Everything was worn but clean.

  “Do you live here alone?” Augusta asked.

  Nils nodded. “I do now,” he said. “My wife has passed, and my sons are watching for Germans at the Norwegian border.”

  “The war,” Augusta said.

  “Yes, the war,” Nils replied. “Now I’m going to fetch you a sweater and some socks. Take those shoes off or you’ll ruin your feet.”

  Augusta sat down on the bench and fiddled with the curtain in the window. It was embroidered with flower stems. Outside, an animal made a lowing noise, and she craned her neck to look for it.

  “The cows,” Nils said from the door to the hallway. “Never mind them.”

  He put a thick knitted sweater and a pair of socks on the table.

  “Here,” he said. “Put these on.”

  Nils walked over to the stove, where he filled a pot from a bucket.

  “We need coffee, I think,” he said. “And you can tell me what you’re doing here.”

  “I’m looking for someone,” Augusta said warily.
/>   “And who might that be?”

  “A man,” she replied, “who might help me.”

  “I see,” Nils said, and poured something like seeds into a small grinder.

  Nils ground the seeds in silence. When the water came to a boil, he poured the grounds into the pot and stirred it. After a moment, he took the pot off the heat. Eventually he poured the mixture into two cups and brought them to the table.

  “It’s not real coffee, of course,” he said. “It’s barley. But it’ll do.”

  The mixture tasted earthy and bland, but it was hot, and Augusta drank it.

  “Now,” Nils said. “Who are you looking for?”

  “Phantasos,” Augusta said. “His name is Phantasos.”

  Nils leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. There was a glint of something in his eyes. “Phantasos. And who might that be?”

  “He was a lord who left my home. He ran away.”

  Nils unfolded his arms and brought the cup of barley brew to his lips. He took a sip, then said, “And do you think he wants to be found? Considering that he ran away.”

  “I don’t care,” Augusta said. “Do you know where he is?”

  Nils’s gaze was sharp. “What do you want with him?”

  “I am…lost,” Augusta said. “He can show me the way home.”

  “And if he won’t?” Nils asked.

  “He has to. It’s all I have.”

  “I had a dream,” Nils said. “Someone was calling my name. I woke up, and I was restless. So I walked out onto the bog. And there you were.”

  Augusta sat motionless.

  “You called my name,” said the man who looked nothing like a lord, who was old and wrinkled and whose teeth were rotting in his skull.

  “Your—?” Augusta managed.

  Nils nodded. “Long ago. And your name?”

  Augusta hesitated. “If you are who you say you are, you would know me.”

  “I’d rather hear you say it, architect,” Nils said.

  “Architect?” Augusta said.

  Nils smiled. “Yes. You have no memory of building the conservatory?”

  Augusta stared at him.

  “Of course you don’t,” Nils said. “Because you fell. Like the rest of them.”

  “You’re Phantasos,” Augusta said numbly.

  “Not anymore,” Nils replied. “I’m just Nils Nilsson now. And I would like you to finish your coffee and be on your way.”

  Augusta rose from the bench. “You have to get me back into the Gardens,” she said. “You know how to get in.”

  Nils looked up at her, still in his chair. “Why did you leave?”

  “Not by choice,” Augusta said. “I learned about time. Mnemosyne cast me out.”

  “Then you can’t go back,” Nils said. “We built that place and agreed to lose time. You broke that pact. Mnemosyne won’t let you back in.”

  “I want to go back,” Augusta repeated. “Mnemosyne will forgive me.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why?”

  “Why would you want to go back?” Nils said. “That place is hell. It was good at first. We were timeless, ageless; we devoted ourselves to art and magic. But none of you could handle living the same day over and over. You became bored, because you forgot your purpose. Then you became cruel, because you were bored. That’s why I left. I couldn’t stand what you had become. I wanted to live a just life again.

  “You were an inventor,” he continued. “You created marvelous things out of wood and bone and glass. Now look at you.”

  “Please,” Augusta said. “I want to go home.”

  “I can’t help you,” Nils replied. “I live here now. I became Nils Nilsson, and I got myself a family, and I grew old. I’ll die here. There’s no going back from exile.”

  Augusta gave him a backhanded slap, and he stood up. He looked at her with something like fear.

  “You will take me back,” she said.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  Augusta gripped him by the throat. Nils’s right hand shot out and clawed at her face. Augusta screamed as a finger dug into her eye. She kicked out and crushed his kneecap under her heel, then hooked her ankle behind his leg. Nils let go of Augusta’s face and fell down on his back. She landed on his chest and dug her knees into his arms. He was strong, but not as strong as she.

  “Take me back!” she shouted.

  “Can’t,” Nils panted.

  “I’ll kill you,” Augusta told him. “I’ll kill you now if you don’t.”

  Nils shook his head. “If you take my life, you’ll have to live it. You will be Nils Nilsson forever or until one of your own recognizes and names you. And they never will.”

  Augusta drove her fist into his face.

  “I curse you,” Nils said between broken teeth.

  Augusta hit him again. Again, and again, and again, until his face was a ruin.

  When Nils had stopped struggling, Augusta rolled over on her back and breathed for a while. She looked up at the underside of the kitchen table, where insects had bored holes into the wood. She closed her eyes. She just needed to rest for a little bit.

  * * *

  —

  Nils woke up alone in the kitchen. His whole body ached. The chairs were overturned, the two cups shattered on the floor. Why were there two cups? There had been a woman, but she was gone. Had she really been here? He held up his hand to his face. Blood had crusted under its thick fingernails. It felt wrong to have such a hand. It was too big, too worn. He got up from the floor with some effort, and pain shot through his lower back. His body felt unfamiliar somehow, like a new and slightly too big suit. Then Svana and Rosa lowed outside, and he realized that they needed milking.

  Part III

  Mountains

  18

  Journeyman smiled as Dora came down the steps of the carriage. The others sat by a huge fire, wrapped in blankets. She looked at the fur Journeyman offered her. It didn’t smell like any animal she had ever seen.

  A handful of stars pricked the black sky. They were on a beach, a thin strip of sand lit by a luminous ocean on one side and guarded by gnarled trees on the other. Shapes moved in the water, emerging so briefly that Dora didn’t have time to see what they were. She turned back to Journeyman.

  “I don’t need it,” she said.

  Thistle was talking to Nestor, who sat in his armchair like an old king on a throne, a thick fur over his shoulders.

  “She was thrown out of the Gardens. And I want to find her. Will you help me?” Thistle said.

  “That way lies death, boy,” Nestor said. “She will overpower you.”

  “I don’t care,” Thistle said. “I have to try.”

  Director and Nestor looked at each other for a long moment. Then Journeyman spoke up.

  “Ghorbi called in her favor,” he said. “We should help them.”

  Apprentice raised a hand. “I agree.”

  Director nodded. “It’s your favor to return, Nestor, but I would say this is the right time.”

  Nestor made a disgruntled noise. “Three against one.” He looked at Thistle and Dora. “Fine. It’s a consensus. We will help you.”

  Thistle let out a sigh.

  “Now,” Director said, “do you have something of hers?”

  Thistle shook his head.

  “Hmm.” Director pursed her lips. “Has she been in contact with you? Mixing bodily fluids? Anything of hers that may have rubbed off on you?”

  “Thistle,” Dora blurted. “She carved you with her nails.”

  Thistle’s face reddened. He glared at Dora.

  Director put a hand on Thistle’s shoulder. He stepped out of her reach.

  “Please show us,” Director said.

  “It’s private,
” Thistle said.

  “I know,” Director said. “But if we can see, we can perhaps find Augusta.”

  Thistle looked at the people gathered around him. He turned and walked down the beach with stiff steps. Director made to go after him.

  Dora stepped in her way. “Leave him alone. He’s thinking.”

  Dora waited until she thought Thistle might have had time to consider things. Then, as Apprentice and Journeyman began preparing dinner, she went looking. She saw a line of footprints and followed them. After a little while, she heard a skipping noise, like pebbles on stone. She walked up a low dune; in the hollow beyond stood the ruins of an amphitheater. Thistle sat cross-legged in the middle, playing with something that looked like old bones. He looked up as Dora approached.

  “Do you still want to be alone?” Dora asked.

  “No,” Thistle said.

  Dora sat down next to him. Thistle dropped the bones, leaned his head on her shoulder, and wept. When he was down to only sniffles, Dora wiped his cheeks with her sleeves.

  “There,” she said. “All better.”

  Thistle let out a short laugh. “No makeup to smudge anymore.”

  “I won’t let them harm you,” Dora said.

  “I don’t think they would. It’s just hard.”

  “I know.” Dora stood and helped Thistle up.

  They climbed the amphitheater’s steps and then descended the dune on the other side. Thistle held Dora’s hand tight as they walked up the beach to where the carriage waited, light spilling out from its open front. The air smelled of spices and frying fish.

  The troupe turned their heads as Dora and Thistle walked toward them. Neither Director nor Nestor spoke, but they sat up very straight in their seats.

  Thistle stopped next to the fire. Without speaking, he rolled up his left sleeve. The thick leaves and stems shone against his arm. The thistles weren’t pretty; they were jagged and warped. Thistle rolled up his other sleeve, then held out his arms, hands clenched into fists.

  “Here they are,” he said.

  “May I touch them?” Nestor asked.