She doesn’t reply.
I look down at her. Her white T-shirt is dirty and dusty, and her jeans are ripped and stained, too. The small gold heart pendant she usually wears around her neck—a baptism gift from her grandfather—has fallen out of the neck of her T-shirt.
I put my hand on her arm and her skin is warm, and I think that she must be OK, that she’s just in pain, that that’s why she isn’t replying, and I shake her and say her name again, and again she doesn’t reply, and I shake her harder and her head starts to loll from side to side like a doll’s, and now I shout at her because all I want is for her to reply, to just say something—say something.
“EMMY, FUCKING SAY SOMETHING!”
Silence.
“Please,” I whimper, and now someone tears me away and shouts:
“Emmy?!”
I didn’t even hear him coming. He’s shoved me aside but it doesn’t matter, because the whole world is shut in a giant bubble and I hear nothing and see nothing, and my field of vision has shrunk to a pinprick and in it all I see are her empty, staring eyes.
“Emmy?” Robert whispers, and he stops shaking her, and when he says her name again it’s the worst sound I’ve ever heard.
Because his voice just …
… breaks.
He can’t turn around.
I can’t see his face.
“What…” I hear from behind me as I sit there kneeling on the dusty wooden floor. It seems to be coming from very far away.
“Oh,” is all Max says, and it’s such a small sound. He says it again.
“Oh.”
We all go very, very still. As though we’re trying to imitate Emmy as she lies there.
I reach out and touch the exposed gap of ankle over her muddy white Converse sneakers.
Her skin has started to cool now.
NOW
It’s Max who reaches out and closes her eyes.
Something about the gesture seems so final that it bursts the bubble around me. The world surges back into me.
Robert stands up sharply and walks off, throws open the doors to our right, and disappears into the classroom. I make to follow him, but Max stops me.
“Let him…” he starts, but he doesn’t finish the sentence.
I look at Emmy again. I can’t stop looking at her. It’s like a disgusting instinct I have, a need to always confirm what I already know, again and again.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper to myself. I say it again and again, probe it. “I don’t understand, I don’t understand.”
Is this what shock feels like?
I reach over and grab Max’s arm with a desperate strength that I know must hurt, but his expression doesn’t change. It’s vacant, just as expressionless as his voice, and I’m struck by a sudden need to make him react, make him feel what I’m feeling. To scratch him, scream in his face.
He looks at me with a sleepwalker’s eyes.
“I didn’t realize this would happen,” I force from myself, hoarse and snotty-nosed, and now I retch: “I didn’t realize, I don’t get how this could happen, I didn’t see how badly she was hurt, that—that her ribs had punctured her lungs, or that she’d damaged her spine, or hit her head, or whatever it was, I just…” I let go of his arm, feel my body start to shake like it’s cramping up, and now he seems to finally wake up, and through the fog I see him moving, feel him gently take hold of me, and I want to shake him off me but at the same time I just want someone to hold the pieces of me together.
Like Emmy always used to do.
“We should…” Max begins, his voice shaky and thick with tears, “we should cover her with something, so that she isn’t just…”
I dry my eyes. Try to force my breaths to calm, then pull back slightly from Max.
“I’ll check,” I say. I don’t look at her; I can’t anymore.
I walk over to the room I came in through. The doors are wide open now, after Robert and Max stormed through them. I look out of the window, and for a split second I picture myself jumping out of it, but the image has no real power.
Is it possible to turn back time? Just a few weeks. To delete that email, stop myself from finding her new email address.
To go back to that moment when I paused, unsure, my fingers hovering over the keyboard, and whisper in my ear:
Don’t ask her to get involved. Don’t offer her the job. Just tell her you’re sorry. Tell her you’re doing better now. Tell her you’ll always be grateful for everything she did.
My bottom lip trembles and I bite it hard, bite until I feel the skin break and the taste of blood fills my mouth, until that little red bead of pain gives me something to focus on.
My shaky legs take me over to the bed in the far corner of the room. The sheet is still pulled down, and the faded, dried-on bloodstains make the nausea rise in my belly.
I can’t cover Emmy with those, I just can’t. Nothing with blood, nothing to remind me of what’s happened, of the brutal reality of our bodies. I don’t care if it’s blood from a child’s nose after tumbling in the playground, or the blood of that newborn’s mother.
Emmy deserves to be shrouded in something clean. And whole.
Shrouded.
My mind catches and sticks on the word, while my eyes land on the small cabinet in the corner. It looks like it could contain sheets. I walk up to it and look at the elegant door, but there’s no handle. A small lock gleams mockingly at me.
For one frenzied second I want to kick the cabinet to pieces, but I calm myself down. It’s solid. Kicking it will do nothing.
I walk over to the desk instead, kick away the chair, squat in front of it, and start tearing open the drawers.
There’s nothing in the top drawer. It’s empty except for a pen and a small coin with an unfamiliar face.
I have to give the next drawer down a good pull.
It opens in small jerks, as though something is stuck. It’s full to the brim, mainly old-fashioned paper folders, brown and thin, labeled in neat, boxy handwriting.
I pull out the top one.
KRISTINA LIDMAN
I open it automatically.
For a few seconds my eyes stare, unseeing, at the contents. My stiff, bungling fingers flick through the perfectly preserved, square Polaroid images.
A sound rises in my throat. I put my hand over my mouth to stifle it. The insane laugh tears and scratches at my mouth, trying to force its way through my fingers. I’m afraid of what’ll happen if I move my hand, if I let it come swinging out.
Here it is. Finally.
The breakthrough I’ve been looking for. An unparalleled scoop.
I just never could have guessed the price I would have to pay.
THEN
She hears it before they even make it to the end of the street.
It’s a terrible sound, like an animal in unbearable pain, a muffled bellow that hardly seems like it could come from a human throat.
But Elsa can hear where it’s coming from.
It’s coming from Birgitta’s hut.
Dagny has slowed her jog slightly. She looks around, breathless and red in the face.
“It started a few hours ago,” she says, in response to the question Elsa has not yet asked.
“At first I thought it was just one of her outbursts, but then it got worse. And when she started making those noises I thought it was best to fetch you.”
Elsa nods. Her mouth feels dry as dust and her heart is pounding, but still she manages to say:
“You were right to do so. Thank you.”
Dagny has never helped her with Birgitta, has never offered, but Elsa still feels a wave of gratitude that she has come to her. She is one of the few left.
Elsa doesn’t know what would have happened had the pastor’s followers got there first. Perhaps they’re already on their way.
Elsa stops sharply outside the door.
“Birgitta?” she cries.
No reply. The bellows have quietened.
There’s no time for the normal ritual. Elsa opens the door. Birgitta is curled up in the fetal position on the bed, her arms clasped around her stomach. Her bellow has sunk to a whimper. She is turned away, and her hair is covering her face. This isn’t one of her outbursts. Nothing is broken. The table is where it should be, as are the chairs. Yesterday’s basket is standing exactly where Elsa left it. She doesn’t seem angry or upset; she doesn’t even seem to have noticed Elsa come in.
“Birgitta?” she says.
The whimper dies down to nothing.
The fear in Elsa comes into full bloom.
“Birgitta, may I come closer?” Elsa asks cautiously. “It’s Elsa.”
Birgitta doesn’t reply. She’s lying completely quiet and still.
Elsa goes to Birgitta’s side. She doesn’t want to scare her. She has been standing there for a minute or so when Birgitta starts up again.
It starts as a low humming sound, then Elsa sees her clasp her stomach tighter and fold her head down into her chest. In the dim light of the window it’s difficult to see much, but Elsa squints and leans in a little.
The edge of Birgitta’s loose brown dress is darker. She has soiled herself.
“Birgitta,” Elsa says, putting her hand on her side.
That’s when she feels it.
Elsa snatches her hand back in horror and pulls away. Birgitta curls up even tighter. Her guttural moan rises in volume.
“What’s wrong?” Dagny asks anxiously from behind Elsa’s back.
Elsa just shakes her head.
The space seems to have contracted down to Birgitta’s dark figure and her rolling, muffled laments.
Elsa leans in over Birgitta again. How could she not have noticed? How could she not have realized?
Such a thing would have been impossible to imagine. Unthinkable. It can’t be.
Elsa puts her hand on Birgitta’s belly. Beneath her palm she feels those familiar contractions.
“Dagny,” says Elsa, and her voice sounds almost strangely calm to her own ears. It shouldn’t be audible over Birgitta, but somehow it reaches Dagny anyway. “Birgitta is giving birth. We must get her to Ingrid.”
Elsa hears Dagny inhale sharply behind her.
“But how…” she says, and Elsa just shakes her head. She reaches over and strokes Birgitta’s sweaty hair. Normally Birgitta would recoil at Elsa’s touch, but this time she doesn’t react.
Her voice has started to quiet again. How far apart were the bellows coming? Not long. Four, five minutes at the very most.
They don’t have much time.
“I don’t know,” says Elsa. “But her waters have already broken. We must hurry.”
NOW
I’m still sitting on the floor when Max comes in.
“Alice?” he says.
“Over here,” I reply.
I’m holding the photos. The top one now bears my thumbprint, which stands out on the shiny surface.
The light outside has started to change in character, grow softer, warmer. It rounds out the room’s corners and glistens in the shards of glass in the windows. When I look up at Max, he, too, is more beautiful than he was in the hard glare of the morning sun, despite his deep, sunken eyes, despite the cut on his jaw, despite the grubby clothes hanging from his slender frame.
“Look,” I say listlessly, spreading out the images like a fan in front of me.
There are four Polaroids. The child in them appears to be a newborn. Two of the images are sharp, and two are blurred. You can tell that the baby has been dried off, but there are still traces of something dark and sticky on her chubby arms. In one of them she is naked, shot clinically from above. In another she is lying in familiar arms.
Elsa’s face is visible up to the hairline. She looks like she has aged thirty years since the photograph Grandma left me; her eyes sit deep in her face, her mouth just a limp dash between her cheeks.
A bit like Max looks now, come to think of it.
Me too, I’m sure.
“What is it?” Max asks, a hint of confusion in his voice. He stops behind me, and I feel his shadow fall over me when he leans in to take a look.
“Kristina Lidman,” I say. “Birgitta Lidman was the mother of the baby they found here. Birgitta Lidman was Tone’s grandma.”
“Who…” he begins.
“Gitta,” I say quietly. “Look. It’s dated August 18, 1959.”
I look at the two blurry pictures. Though they aren’t in focus, I can still see what they show.
One of them is the same child again, shot from the side. The other shows her lying on a naked breast. The figure she is lying on is large and shapeless, and her face is turned away. Her long, dark hair winds down over her shoulders and chest.
“Where did you find that?” Max asks.
I nod at the desk.
“In the nurse’s records,” I say.
The folder is still lying open in front of me. The scrawls on the lined paper float in front of my eyes. I didn’t want to read them, but I couldn’t help myself. Anything to distract me from the throbbing, pulsating truth hanging over me like a red mist:
Emmy is dead and it’s my fault. Tone is gone, lost, insane, and it’s my fault.
The scrawls don’t offer much. The birth weight and length. I don’t know what’s healthy for an infant, but it looks normal to me. And the name. Kristina Lidman.
So that was her first name. Before she became Hélène Grimelund.
I wonder what Tone’s mother would say if she could see her own baby pictures. What Tone would say.
Another note, jotted right at the bottom:
FATHER: UNKNOWN.
I shut the folder. It’s a breakthrough. Explosive. It would have made the documentary a success.
But that doesn’t matter anymore, none of it does. There will never be any documentary. No one will ever get to know.
And none of it matters because Emmy is dead.
“I really believed in the film, Alice. Just so you know. I think it would have been fantastic. We could have made something really special.”
“Have you found anything to cover her with?” Max asks quietly.
There it comes, barging in again. The truth. The real world.
“I was going to check the cabinet,” I say quietly, pointing limply at the one in the corner.
He doesn’t say anything, just walks over to it and looks at the doors.
“It’s locked,” he says.
I open the bottom drawer of the desk. There it is, neat and compact, a small brass key on a twisted string.
I pick it up and walk over to the cabinet. The key glides in and turns so effortlessly that it feels as though my hand is following the key rather than vice versa.
The cabinet is unbearably tidy, with bandages and Band-Aids sorted into small compartments. The lower section is taken up by towels and sheets. I pull out the top sheet and hold it for a second.
It’s white, cotton. It has yellowed slightly with age, and is stiff in that way that sheets only get from mangling. An embroidered trim of dainty white flowers lines its edge.
Emmy will like it. She has always liked old things, flowery vintage pieces that contrast with her ripped jeans and ugly T-shirts.
Emmy would have liked it.
She will never like anything again.
What would Emmy have done?
She would have pulled herself together; she would have taken charge.
The floor is steady underfoot as we leave the room. Robert hasn’t come back yet, and she’s still lying there, small and still.
Reality wavers here, but I force my feet to keep moving.
Max and I stand on either side of her, like in some sort of ritual. I unfold the sheet to its full length, while Max straightens out her legs and arms.
I carefully take the golden heart around her neck and lift the hem of her T-shirt to slip it back underneath, where it should be, but Max stops me.
“Wait,” he says.
“What?”
My voice is rusty. Unfamiliar, unused.
Max leans in over her and pushes my hand away from her neck. I flinch at his touch, pull back as though burned, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
His eyes are fixed on the base of Emmy’s neck. On the dark marks on her pale skin.
It’s beautiful, somehow: the suggestion of a bird, ghostly dark tracks winging out and around her neck.
I want to ask what is that, but the words don’t come because they don’t need to. Because I already know the answer.
They’re hand impressions.
Max straightens his back a little. Then he reaches out and puts his hands over her eyes. He opens them again, and that more than anything feels wrong, somehow, and I want to turn away because those still, staring eyes are worse than her stiffening limbs and cold skin, but Max looks for the both of us, he leans in and stares.
“They’re bloodshot,” he says, his voice strange. “I’ve read that the whites go bloodshot if a person’s been…” He swallows the last word.
Strangled.
No broken ribs that pierced soft, vulnerable tissue. No unlucky fall.
No accident.
The marks of someone’s fingers, like a necklace tightened around her neck.
Rage and horror combined have a sour, stale taste, I learn.
I look for Max’s eyes, but he isn’t looking at me. Suddenly tense, he scrambles to his feet and looks at the doors to his right. The realization of what he’s thinking drops into my lap just as I hear him shout:
“Robert!”
Someone managed to do that in the ten minutes that elapsed between Emmy answering our last question and me climbing through the second-floor window. Someone was either following us or waiting for us.
Someone who might still be here in the school.
Here upstairs.
And Robert is alone in the classroom.
THEN
The afternoon heat has given way to a cooler evening air. They haven’t been able to open the windows in Ingrid’s office for fear of the baby’s cries being heard, so some trace of the day’s oppressive heat remains. Between that and the stench, the air in the room feels thick as syrup.
The Lost Village Page 22