By the time I’ve helped Tone into the tent and zipped up the door behind us I can feel some sweat under my arms, but in the dim light of our electric lantern it’s clear that Tone is dripping with it. My stomach turns when I see how bloodless her face is.
I brush my teeth while she silently pulls off her jeans and puts on long johns to keep warm through the night, every single movement sending a visible jolt of pain through her leg.
I stick my head out of the tent to spit out my toothpaste, and give a start when I find Max standing at the door.
“Sorry!” he says softly, a tentative smile on his lips. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say, wiping my mouth. “What is it?”
“Could I borrow some toothpaste?” he asks. “I can’t find mine.”
I look over my shoulder into the tent and fumble around for my and Tone’s huge toiletry bag, which we’ve crammed full with everything from Band-Aids to toothpaste and shampoo.
“Knock yourself out,” I say, handing it to him. “Wait, does that mean you haven’t brushed your teeth since we got here?”
Max grins mischievously while rummaging around for the toothpaste. When he finds it, he squeezes half of the tube into his mouth, says a thick “thanks”, and hands the bag back to me.
I laugh.
“Go to bed, you sicko,” I say, then blow him a kiss before pulling my head back into the tent. I put on my thick socks and look up at Tone.
“Look…” I start.
“What is it?”
“Let’s get you to a hospital.”
I hate myself for saying it, but I would have hated myself even more if I didn’t.
“Honestly, Tone, I know you’re tough, but you’re in so much pain. What if it’s broken? Or if it heals badly?”
Tone purses her lips and shakes her head.
“It isn’t,” she hisses. “It’s just a bad sprain.”
“Are you sure?” I ask doubtfully. “It doesn’t look so good.”
“I can tell,” she says sharply. “Look, I don’t want to go to the hospital, and I don’t need to, either.”
She pokes around in the toiletry bag without meeting my eyes.
“I don’t want you to stay here for my sake,” I say. “My film isn’t more important than your health.”
Now she looks me straight in the eye.
“This isn’t your film, Alice. You aren’t the only one who’s invested a lot into this project. You aren’t the only one who cares about it.”
It stings enough to silence me.
If a sprained ankle is the worst thing to happen on this trip, then I guess maybe it won’t be so bad, after all.
THEN
Elsa trundles drowsily down the stairs and stops in the doorway to the kitchen. There’s a twinge in her chest, a sinking feeling. It’s an unfamiliar sensation, and it takes her a few seconds to put her finger on it.
Hopelessness.
On the table in front of him stands a half-empty bottle of schnapps.
Elsa has no idea where it could have come from: she refuses to have that stuff in her house, and he knows it. She hates the smell. The times he’s stumbled home giddy and reeking from the Petterssons’, she’s made him sleep on the sofa in the dining room. That must be why he didn’t even try to come up to the bedroom.
At least she hopes that’s the reason.
When he wakes up he’ll be hurting. His back has troubled him ever since an accident he had in his early thirties, but so long as Elsa massages him every evening it still works just fine.
Were it not for the thinning blond hair at the top of his head, he could be a boy lying slumped there on that table. He’s still tall and lanky, with only the small pouch on his belly to suggest he’s started to pile on the pounds. That has come on in the last few months. He eats more now, she’s noticed. He doesn’t have much else to do.
Elsa throws a quick glance behind her up at the staircase. Aina isn’t awake yet—and a good thing, too. For once she’s relieved her daughter has a tendency to sleep away her mornings. Though, it should be said, she has been getting up early of late—even on a Sunday, when she doesn’t need to be in school. She gets herself dressed up for church. Elsa suspects she’s taken a fancy to the new pastor. Which isn’t so peculiar, really: he’s a handsome man, and in Silvertjärn there’s a dearth of men for a young girl to look at.
She walks over to the table and gently puts her hand on Staffan’s shoulder.
“Staffan,” she says quietly.
He doesn’t make a sound. She gives his back a cautious rub.
“Staffan,” she says again.
Now she feels him start to stir. He raises his head slightly, then, with a low groan, lifts it all the way off the table. It takes his eyes a few seconds to focus, but she can already make out the shame in them before he blinks.
Nowadays it always seems to be there.
He looks at her. His eyes are bloodshot, and he hasn’t shaved. He looks like a drunkard, the way Einar always looked whenever she’d found him in the church and had to haul him back into the chapel to sleep it off.
She waits for the anger, as does Staffan—she can see it from the way he contracts beneath her gaze. But she doesn’t have the heart. She feels no anger. Only sadness.
“Get up and go to bed, Staffan,” she says quietly.
She strokes his head. Staffan purses his lips and gives a short nod, his eyes glassy.
As Staffan lumbers upstairs, Elsa’s eyes stay fixed on his empty chair. It needs repainting. They all need repainting. The kitchen chairs are a brilliant turquoise, which always brings a smile to visitors’ faces on entering the house. It’s something unexpected, like their green front door. Elsa likes color. If it were up to her, the whole house would be fizzing with it—blues and purples and oranges and turquoise—but that would look a sight. So she’s reined herself in to the odd splash here and there: the front door, the kitchen chairs. The flowerbeds in spring and summer, and the glossy apples in autumn.
She pulls a peeling flake of paint from the back of the chair. The gray, lifeless wood peers out from underneath.
It’s as though the spark within him has died.
Elsa closes her eyes.
Elsa has always known what needed to be done. Even in her very darkest moments, she has always known what was required of her. She had looked after her mother when she was at death’s door; spoon-fed her, held her over the chamber pot, changed her diapers. All without letting her see her shed a tear.
Elsa has always been able to give advice, has always been the kind of person others could lean on. Ask Elsa, that’s what they say down in town. Be it for help or advice, or simply a kind ear, just ask Elsa. It’s something she takes pride in.
But now she wakes up in the mornings with the feeling that she can’t breathe.
What shall we do?
They still have a little money left, but nowhere near enough to buy a house elsewhere. It’ll keep them going for a few more months if she asks to defer their bills, but after that …
There’s no work to be had. Not in Silvertjärn. But there’s nowhere else they can go. The world is closing in around them.
She opens her eyes. She doesn’t have the time for this. It’s no use thinking that way.
Elsa quickly takes the gingerbread, what remains of the cold chicken, and the last of the black-currant juice, and puts them in the basket. She needs to buy more. She tries not to think about what feeding Birgitta is costing her now that they hardly have enough for themselves.
The morning air is cold and crisp, with a late-winter sharpness. The village stands in stark relief against the brightening sky, which is high and clear. Only the odd bright cloud is hovering on the horizon, and the snow crunches underfoot as Elsa sets out toward Birgitta’s hut.
It’s empty down in the village. This time a year ago it would have been bustling, even before sunrise. The villagers on the Sunday shift would have been out on their way to work
, and there would always be something to look forward to on the way out to see Birgitta; Elsa would share a joke with the boys heading off to the mine, ask after their mothers and sisters and wives. Now she almost fears these early morning walks, for if she does see anyone it’ll be because they’ve spent the night on the streets, tired and befuddled, or that they’re drifting around with nowhere to go, like listless ghosts.
It’s colder out than Elsa had imagined—she should probably have put on a scarf just in case—but despite the cold it feels like spring is in the air. The river has started to course faster, and although the evenings and mornings are still dark, the midday sun is strong and warm. She can feel her heart start to lift as she walks. It’s going to be all right; it always is. However bad things might seem, they always come good in the end.
By the time she reaches Birgitta’s hut she can give the door her usual sprightly knock.
“Birgitta,” she says. “It’s me, Elsa.”
Birgitta recognizes her voice and opens the door. She seems more timid than normal, and when Elsa steps inside she realizes Birgitta has been hurting herself again. There are bruises on her face.
“Oh, Birgitta,” she says softly.
At times Elsa almost wishes she could take Birgitta in her arms and rock her like a child, even though Birgitta isn’t so much younger than herself. But Elsa knows that Birgitta would panic if she even tried to. She dislikes physical contact, as Elsa has learned over the years.
As she watches Birgitta start to unpack the food according to her own special ritual, Elsa feels an echo of that horrible sinking feeling in her chest.
The house isn’t the only reason why they can’t leave Silvertjärn. For if they left, then who would look after Birgitta?
THURSDAY
NOW
The church is only a few blocks up from the square, but in Silvertjärn terms that’s virtually the other side of town. The wind has picked up this morning, and the building looms ominously against a background of heavy, dark clouds.
The church is today’s first port of call, but in the gray mist it feels like it could be almost twilight.
I’ve decided that the four of us will do the church together, and then we can split up afterward. Tone agreed. She’s going to stay at the camp and go through yesterday’s pictures while we’re out exploring. She was looking better today; her eyes were sharp, and there was some color in her cheeks. I didn’t feel the need to say anything, but at breakfast I saw her pop two Advil tablets and wash them down with her instant coffee.
The tall lattice windows above the church doors are still intact, except one small blue pane in the middle, which has cracked. The stucco walls are in surprisingly good shape, too—still a brilliant white—and the doors look alarmingly stable.
“Are they bolted?” Emmy asks when we stop at the bottom of the crumbling church steps. Those, at least, bear witness to the abandonment of the village: the concrete slabs are laced with fissures and pine needles.
I walk up the steps and tentatively push the church doors. I have to put some weight into it—the doors are heavy and seem to have swollen in the years of damp and cold—but with a creaking, slightly grumbling sound, they slowly swing open.
There’s a faint, musty smell of mildew inside, but it’s not as bad as in the school, presumably because most of the windows are still intact. The dampness hasn’t been able to insinuate itself here like it has in the row houses. The dark wooden pews stand in silent rows, and the altar looms large at the front, apparently untouched. An emaciated, bleeding Jesus on the cross above the altar stares down at us with empty eyes. It’s enormous, and hard not to stare at, much larger than the majority of crucifixes I’ve seen. The carved figure must be at least as tall as I am, and as heavy, too. It is also disconcertingly lifelike: the cheekbones seem to press up from under its skin, the contours of the ribs are clearly visible, and the stomach has sunken in, as though after many months of hunger. Unlike many other hale and hearty, inexplicably Aryan Jesuses I’ve seen on crosses throughout this country, this one has dark hair and is clearly in pain. Despite an untidy paint job, the eyes look bottomless, black and accusatory. Like the lake beneath the clouds.
“Fucking hell,” Emmy says quietly. When I turn around, her eyes are also fixed on the figure.
“I can get that you’d start believing in a wrathful god if you had him glaring down at you all the time,” she says. Her words are chipper but the tone rings false. She can’t seem to tear her eyes from it.
A sudden click makes me jump. It’s Robert, getting a shot of the cross. He takes some more pictures of the church as viewed from the doorway, then slowly starts walking up the aisle.
The ceilings are high. I look up to see thick wooden beams crisscrossing above us, yet not a single word echoes. I slowly make my way up to the altar.
I can picture him standing up there with his sleeves rolled up, those beautiful, angelic features red in animation. My image of his face is so clear that I’m sure I must have seen it somewhere before; it probably belongs to some innocent passing stranger, someone who happened to match the image I’ve formed of him in my mind. Smooth skin, a high forehead, piercing eyes and long eyelashes. Thick, pronounced eyebrows and a narrow nose. Like a renaissance painting of an angel—a Scandinavian prophet for the deep forests.
He was always what fascinated me most about Grandma’s story.
He was a young man, scarce over thirty, with a smooth, boyish face. He wasn’t particularly tall, but he had broad shoulders and a pleasant smile. The village women suddenly started wearing their best dresses to church of a Sunday, where they would sit in the front pews and listen, eyes gleaming, to Pastor Mattias’s sermons.
I’ve toyed with the idea of trying to do a reenactment for the documentary, to bring in some actors and shoot here, on location. I’ve even scripted a few short scenes: a church sermon; a scene with Birgitta. We could even do something with the stoning. It would give the documentary something extra, sensationalize it. But it’s just not realistic: we don’t have the budget to make it look good enough. Better to stick to a straight documentary format and focus on making the story enough of a hook.
You have to do whatever you can to stand out. With Netflix, HBO, and a media market full to bursting point, we’re going to have to throw everything we can at getting ourselves seen.
I look up again. I wonder how the pastor’s voice sounded in here as it bounded up toward the ceiling. I tried to ask Grandma about his accent a few times, but she could never give me an exact answer, only something vague about it sounding different, like he wasn’t from these parts. I could never get any more from her than that.
My eyes are drawn to the small, closed wooden door beside the altar. A closet of some kind? I walk around the altar toward it, take hold of the small brass doorknob, and twist.
There is a small but homely room behind it. The windowpanes have lasted pretty well in here, too, and the dull gray light from the spring day outside filters in through dirty glass panes. Beyond them I can see the blurred image of a pleasant little churchyard. It’s perversely idyllic, lush and green.
The room feels most like a kitchen or living room, with a small kitchenette and a simple pinewood table. An empty glass jar with a few extremely crisp, faded dried flowers balances on the windowsill, and there’s a small, old-fashioned coffeepot on one of the stovetops on the kitchenette. I walk over to it and lift the lid. The inside is thick with a black, dried-in slush. I smell it and, impossible as it may be, think I can almost make out the faint scent of coffee grounds.
Was this where the Bible group held their meetings?
He had an unshaking belief in the Bible, Pastor Mattias. He said that he had read it four times cover to cover, and thought that every good Christian should do the same. And so Aina started plodding her way through the Bible, too. She wrote that she read it every evening. Pastor Mattias had asked her to help him set up a youth group for Bible studies, and she was so proud she could almost have bur
st.
Grandma’s voice always lost its color when talking about Aina. As though it were easier for her to put a lid on those feelings.
“What’s this?” Emmy asks behind me. I look around, startled by her voice.
“I think it’s some sort of meeting room,” I say. “Or office,” I add, as my gaze lands on a messy pile of papers on one of the corduroy seat cushions.
I pick them up cautiously. They are filled with dense, tight handwriting. The paper has yellowed and the ink faded with time, but the writing is still legible.
I hardly dare touch the pages for fear of damaging them; I don’t know how brittle paper can get after sixty years. So I put them down on the table and lean in to read the top page.
He who is true and faithful to God need have no secrets.
“What is it?” Emmy asks as her eyes skim the writing.
“I think it’s a sermon,” I say, suddenly breathless.
Pure hearts have nothing to hide—neither from God, nor from each other. Standing here, I can see that you want to hide; that you want to flee His penetrating gaze and true light; to conceal the darkness within you; to suppress that of which you are ashamed. That is the Devil speaking, the rot within you that shuns the light, for your souls know no fear. But they are drowning, drowning from the weight of evil. They want to see, and be seen by, God.
It is only in completely submitting yourself to the Lord that you can become one with Him; only in giving up your worldly possessions, your petty worldly thoughts and concerns, that you can be pure. And only when you are pure can you be free.
You cannot move forward or change until you are pure. He who is pure does not sink down into darkness; he walks on water, like Jesus himself.
“Not particularly forgiving,” Emmy remarks quietly.
“No.”
There’s a boom overhead. I jump, look up, and see the first raindrops start to land on the windowpanes.
“Shit,” I swear, grinding my teeth so hard my jaws hurt. I had hoped that the rainclouds would hold out.
The Lost Village Page 10