The Fire Dance

by Helene Tursten

  Irene walked up the stone stairway and rang the doorbell. A bronze nameplate with a green patina revealed the name Malmborg in an elegant script. Irene could hear the echo of the doorbell on the other side of the heavy oak door, but no other sounds of movement. She pressed the bell a second time with the same result.

  As she started back along the slippery stone pathway, which was almost entirely overgrown, she felt as if the house itself were staring at her back. She couldn’t resist the impulse to turn around when she closed the gate behind her. The crumbling, ancient home appeared to brood threateningly from its place in the middle of the melancholy garden. Its black, empty windows stared at her. Involuntarily, Irene shivered. Sometimes, her imagination was much too vivid for a police officer.

  * * *

  Max Franke's email was waiting when Irene returned to her computer after lunch. Irene printed it out and was surprised by the number of pages, then thought, well, what else would you expect from a writer?

  Filled with curiosity and expectation, Irene sat down in her desk chair and began to read:

  Please remember that this is for your eyes only. This has been written in haste and with no forethought for literary quality. My hope is that my memories of Ernst and Sophie, as well as the other members of the Malmborg family, will be able to help you solve Sophie’s murder.

  My cousin Ernst and I were very close, ever since we were children. One reason was that we were born on the same day, the second of August, although he was born ten years earlier. We were also the only boys in our generation of the family. Ernst had an older sister named Elsy. Even though she was only fourteen years older than I was, I always considered her to be a cold, haughty old lady. I usually called her “Snooty Elsy”. Not ever to her face, of course. I knew she wouldn’t see herself that way. To tell the truth, I believe she was born with a genetic lack of humor (the most difficult handicap a human being can have). Like her brother, she was quiet and kept to herself. She was also tall and gangly and definitely not attractive. She never made any attempt to improve her appearance, either. She never married, but studied to be a pharmacist.

  Rumor has it she knew the entire range of pharmaceutical medicines by heart and even knew exactly which compounds each one contained. As far as I know, she never left Stockholm—not even for vacation! She lived in the family mansion in the Östermalm District her whole life. She worked for forty years at the same apothecary and died six months after her retirement. I’d say she died of sorrow, but my sister Bettan says she had a heart condition from birth.

  Elsy and I never had a good relationship, perhaps due to the difference in our ages. We would meet at family events through the years, but that’s all. The reason I started off this email with Elsy is that she and Ernst shared a great number of personality quirks, which they inherited these from their father, Hilding Malmborg.

  Hilding married my maternal aunt Alice. He was her exact opposite. My mother and Aunt Alice were identical twins. They were so similar that even family members had trouble telling them apart. Both of them were happy people and enjoyed life. They made similar choices—except the choice of a partner. My mother married a journalist, Gustaf Franke, who was socially competent and extremely extroverted.

  Meanwhile, Hilding Malmborg was the exact opposite of my father. Hilding was a professor of biology and studied the exciting field of snake nests. Quite honestly, he was more interested in the lives of creepy-crawlers than he was in those of his own family, never mind other members of the human race. As time went on, he turned into a really odd duffer, and at the end of his life, he was definitely showing signs of dementia.

  My Aunt Alice was fifty-nine when she died of colon cancer. After she died, cousin Elsy lived with her ever-more-senile father in the family mansion. I believe that he eventually had a fatal stroke either in 1973 or 1974, as far as I can recall.

  The last time I saw Elsy was at his funeral. After that, we only exchanged birthday and Christmas cards. She died in 1990 and I am absolutely convinced that she never bothered to read a single book I wrote.

  I have three older sisters, but only Bettan made the effort to see Elsy on occasion, the main reason being that Bettan lived close by, also in the Östermalm District. But Bettan said that she went over to see her because she felt sorry for her. They didn’t have much in common, besides being unmarried. Bettan is the oldest of all my siblings. She’s a nurse, trained by Sophia Nursing School, and for all these years she’s worked at Sophia Hospital. She is the sister who has the most caring nature. She’d often say, “Poor Elsy. She is so alone. I try to cheer her up and invite her over for dinner and conversation. She never invites me back. At times, I’d try to tempt her to come with me to the theater or to a nice restaurant, but she wouldn’t want to go. She’d always say she was under the weather or that it would be too expensive. Quite honestly, she never was much fun.” In my most evil thoughts, I always suspected that Elsy was Bettan’s equivalent to a medieval hair shirt.

  Ernst was similar to his sister in appearance, but what was ugly and unfeminine in her was masculine and attractive in him. At least, that’s what the women around him would say. Still, most of his difficulties with women would come later in life, after he was somewhat renowned, which increased his attractiveness level. Ernst was my substitute big brother, and he probably saw me as the younger brother he never had. I admired him a great deal and was unbelievably flattered that he wanted to celebrate his birthdays with me.

  There’d be a big group of us under the lilac arbor at our family’s summer place in Roslagen. I could always invite all my neighborhood friends, as well as my sisters, and sometimes their friends would come, too. At times my maternal uncle Kalle and his large family from Gävle would attend, too. They’d stay at a bed and breakfast, and I’d be really jealous of them. That Bed and Breakfast was famous for its extravagant breakfast spread. Rumor had it that fresh waffles with whipped cream and marmalade were served every single morning. Ernst would come with his parents and sour-faced sister, but he never brought a friend; he never seemed to have any. They stayed at the guesthouse on the property, which was fairly large and had two bedrooms.

  Bettan and Ernst were the same age and they’d hang out, sometimes with Bettan’s friends. Elsy would sit nearby as the rest of us played cards or Chinese checkers. As I think about it, she must have been in her twenties, but I have her in my memories as a real old boring biddy even then.

  The Malmborg family would stay with us for four or five days, swimming or sunbathing if the weather allowed. Then they’d head back home, probably because Uncle Hilding was afraid his snakes would starve in their nests. Ernst had revealed mathematical genius already by age four. Elsy was also good at math, but not compared to her brother. Hilding probably rubbed his hands together in glee as he dreamed of his son’s bright future career as a mathematician. However, the old biology professor was disappointed—Mozart and Bach dashed his dreams.

  When he was eight years old, Ernst found some old 78s in an attic. He would spend whole days winding up Aunt Alice’s gramophone so he could listen to them. A few weeks later, he asked if he could have piano lessons. The family owned a piano. His sister had already banged on it for years, but she was hopeless. Her long-suffering piano teacher had already told her parents that she was completely tone deaf and had no musical talent whatsoever. After that, there were no more piano lessons for Elsy. Ernst, on the other hand, was a musical prodigy. He attended the Music Academy in Stockholm and graduated with highest honors. He was invited to study at many European music schools, but he refused them all. He believed he could not endure a change of environment and decided not to become a concert pianist for the same reason. He couldn’t handle the touring life.

  After he completed his studies, he said he wanted to be a composer. I wasn’t interested in what happened after that. I was in the middle of puberty and had just discovered swing and jazz music after the war. Now even more fascinating music was arriving from the other side of the Atlantic:
rock and roll! While I was in the middle of this music revolution, Ernst withdrew into his parents’ melancholy house—which he never left—and began to plunk out incomprehensible music on the piano.

  “Atonality!” Bettan would say and roll her eyes. I thought atonality was something obscene and was wondering if cousin Ernst would turn out to be a homosexual. No one ever saw any girls around him. He was twenty-four then. According to Aunt Alice, he had a girlfriend at the Academy, but no one in the family had ever met her. As the years went by, I became more and more convinced that this girlfriend was fictional.

  Ernst would be at the piano composing for days on end. He would hardly leave the house. Heaps of sheet music grew around him. Aunt Alice was starting to worry about his mental health and finally had a chat with my father. My father believed it was time for Ernst to come out of his shell and meet people. He had a great number of contacts due to his work at the newspaper, and after pulling a few strings; he was able to arrange a performance of Ernst’s brand new compositions. The event was held at the Music Academy—one of the smallest concert spaces. The concert was advertised as “experimental”, and I had a bad feeling about it.

  Only five musicians were on stage, including Ernst himself. The others were fellow former students from Ernst’s Academy days. All the relatives had been invited and we took up more than half of the seats. It was a good thing that we were there to fill the space, because only ten other people came. What we didn’t know at the time was that one of the country’s most famed music critics, the tastemaker Bertil Neanderthál from the newspaper Dagens Nyheter, was also there. He would go on to praise this concert to the skies and write things like “an epic breakthrough for contemporary music” and “world class musical provocation” and his conclusion was that “a new musical artist has been born!” With this article in DN, Ernst’s future success was guaranteed. It was lucky that there was a professional music critic in the audience because after the concert, all the relatives were touchingly in agreement for a change: it was the worst throbbing and wailing thing any of us had ever heard. Naturally, we had no idea about modern music, and we weren’t used to listening to it, my kind mother would say to smooth things over. Still, my sisters and I agreed totally: that stuff Ernst was composing could never be called music. Uncle Kalle said, “I thought Judgment Day had come at last.” He said this in such a serious mien that my father couldn’t hold back his laughter any longer. He laughed so hard, tears started to stream down his face.

  But Ernst would have the last laugh. Ernst’s star started to rise in the heavens of experimental music. A few years later, his name was well known. He began to appear at various cultural events and hopeful young women began to appear at his side. None of them seemed to touch Ernst in any deep way, and he never talked about any of them. So when the news broke that he’d started a relationship with the actress Anna-Greta Lidman, it hit us like a bombshell. He hadn’t told anyone in the family. My mother read about it in a tabloid. Old cousin Ernst began to rise in my estimation, while my mother and Aunt Alice moaned and groaned, and Uncle Hilding disappeared even more deeply into the world of snake nests. My father rubbed his hands in glee. As a newspaperman, he knew the value of having a front-page story within the family. Anna-Greta Lidman was just over thirty when the two of them met, but she appeared much younger. At the time, people compared her appearance to a mix of Birgit Bardot and Doris Day. As an actress, however, her talent was definitely on par with the likes of Ingrid Bergman. At the beginning of her career, she was advertised as “Sweden’s Number One Sweater Girl”, but soon the blonde, busty pinup queen showed she could really act. The director Ingmar Bergman put her into some of his films, and from then on her career was assured. She appeared in a great number of movies during the fifties and sixties, almost all of which became classics.

  Ernst and Anna-Greta met at the premiere of one of her movies. It was a small, independent film influenced by Buñuel’s The Andalucian Dog: a film the history of cinema has now forgotten. Anna-Greta played a pretty small part, “for the sake of an old friendship”—she and the director were good friends—and Ernst had composed the music for the movie, of course.

  They were married in 1958. The ceremony took place in Riddarholm Church, in the company of family, the Swedish cultural elite and a collection of reporters from the worldwide press. Ernst was so stylish in his tuxedo that the ladies felt faint and Anna-Greta’s neckline had the same effect on the male guests—or at least something similar…

  During the reception, the bride drank too much champagne and it came to light that she was pregnant. The press was jubilant. This was too good to be true! They honeymooned in Italy and the rest of the family could follow their adventures in the newspapers, which is how we found out Anna-Greta was in the hospital for acute blood loss. A few days later, her miscarriage was reported. Her first miscarriage was followed by two more. The doctors told her to avoid getting pregnant again. Her last miscarriage was late in the pregnancy and almost cost her her life. Anna-Greta had roles in some French and Italian films. Ernst was a productive composer and had reached cult status within a small circle of music experts. It appeared to be idyllic how both of them could continue their careers without any jealousy between them.

  Ernst never talked about his marriage with the family, but we speculated about it quite a bit. From the outside, it appeared harmonious and we never noticed any major crisis during the first decade of their marriage. My cousin didn’t earn much money for his music, but Anna-Greta earned a great deal for her acting. They were in a secure financial state, especially since Anna-Greta had been an only child in an extremely wealthy Göteborg family that surprisingly supported her despite her choice of career. They covered the expenses of acting, dancing and singing lessons.

  You also have to realize that she was gifted in languages and she had a good education. She entered Kalle Flygares Theater College, and the rest of her career went on from there, as I’ve mentioned. But in the seventies, the same thing happened to her as happens to all sex symbols: it became apparent that she was starting to age. Her childlessness had also dealt a hard blow to her emotional life. She started to look for solace in the bottle. Rumors began to fly. Her looks began to show the signs of hard drinking. It didn’t matter if she was a good actress—offers for movie parts dried up. Her parents also passed away. Her depression became so great that she was placed in a mental institution for a while. When she was released, she decided to move back to Göteborg. She took over the mansion of her parents. To the surprise of everyone in our family, including me, Ernst agreed to move with her. To be blunt, he didn’t have much of a choice. She was the one with the real money. He’d have nothing at all and no place to live if it wasn’t for her. Otherwise, he’d have had to move back in with his sister, Elsy, and his now-all-but-senile father.

  Hilding died a few years later, and it was at his funeral that I saw Ernst for the first time after he’d left Stockholm for Göteborg. I also remember that he was happy about his situation in the mansion in the Änggården District. He told me that he had an entire floor to himself, which he’d turned into various music rooms. His grand piano was the focal point in one room, and another room had become a recording studio.

  A few months later, I was in Göteborg on business and decided to pay Ernst a visit. Everything he told me about his living circumstances was true. Unfortunately, the rumors of Anna-Greta’s decline were also true. It was tragic to see the once great star turned into such a wreck of a human being in just a few years. One thing that the tabloids did not know was that she’d undergone an unsuccessful facelift. The operation wounds became infected, leaving ugly scars, and she’d also suffered nerve damage. Whenever she would eat or drink, the numbed nerve endings would prevent her from closing her mouth, so something was always dribbling out. She could not speak without slurring, a catastrophe for an actress.

  The plastic surgeon was one of the most famous in Stockholm, and he had to pay her a huge amount in damages to keep
her from going to court. But what did it matter, when her beautiful features were gone forever? She spent most of her days in a drug-induced torpor. Whenever she was awake, she rushed back into her fog as quickly as possible. When I saw them, Anna-Greta was deeply depressed. Ernst was his old self. He devoted himself to his music and, after encouragement from my sister Bettan, he hired a housekeeper to cook and clean. She was always called “Mrs. Larsson” and I never was able to ascertain whether she even had a given name.

  This woman was a real treasure. She stayed with Ernst until his death in 2002. I believe she must have been seventy when she retired after he passed away. In 1977, we were shocked by another bombshell. Ernst had met another woman—a twenty-year-old ballet dancer! And she was pregnant with his child! At the same time, I was wrestling with my own midlife crisis, and I may have been the only one in the family who halfway understood him. Once I saw a picture of beautiful Angelika, I understood him even better. I hadn’t seen Anna-Greta in over seven years, but I had no illusions that the intervening years had done anything to improve her sorry condition. Cousin Ernst had had enough and realized that life was too short to let the years fly by.

  Trying to save Anna-Greta was a hopeless project. To tell the truth, I don’t think he even tried. He was who he was. Ernst had always lived in his own little world; his music was the center of his life. He certainly would never be an ideal therapist for a woman with mental health issues and a drug problem. Ernst and I kept in closer contact during those years. I was usually the one to give him a call, but at times he called me, which he’d never done before. I was in the middle of a messy divorce and perhaps we both needed some support. Since Anna-Greta was so sick—and she certainly wasn’t going to get any better after she heard that Angelika was pregnant—Ernst had to endure a great deal of criticism for his actions. I believe, however, that for the first time in his life, Ernst was in love. He was able to handle all the accusations and stood fast in his decision to live with Angelika. Still, Ernst wouldn’t be Ernst if he didn’t have his own prerequisites. He’d moved in with Angelika, who had a tiny apartment in the Kortedala District.