“Margareta,” says Ingrid.
Elsa nods, though she doesn’t know if Ingrid can see it.
“And what about Staffan?” Ingrid asks.
“I’ll write to him,” Elsa says. “Once we’ve arrived. When they’re … when we’re safe.”
Far from Silvertjärn.
Far from Pastor Mattias.
“I don’t understand how this could happen,” Elsa says softly, vulnerable words she would never have let herself utter in the light of day.
“Nor I,” Ingrid replies quietly.
Neither of them mentions the name Elsa knows they are both thinking. Neither of them mentions Aina. Aina, who throbs in Elsa’s chest with every heartbeat. Her beloved, her baby. What sort of mother abandons her own daughter?
The baby starts moving and whimpering again, and Elsa gets to her feet. Her knees are shaky and her neck is stiff; she’s too old to be sleeping on anything that isn’t a bed.
Elsa leans in over the girl, picks her up and rocks her gently, but this time the baby won’t be soothed. Her cries are only getting louder. Elsa is always amazed by infants’ cries. That such a small body can make such a noise.
She tries to calm her, cradles her and hushes her, but the baby won’t stop. If she doesn’t quiet down soon it might draw prying eyes to the school.
Elsa blinks at a sudden light. Ingrid has lit a bare candle in her hand.
“Where’s the rag?” Ingrid asks, looking around.
“We’re out of milk,” Elsa says, nodding at the corner where she left the empty bowl.
“Perhaps she can suck on the rag,” Ingrid suggests, but Elsa shakes her head.
“She’s hungry,” she says. “That won’t help.”
Elsa’s stomach begins to tie in knots. She looks around and gives a start when she sees that Birgitta has woken up. Of course she has; only the dead could sleep through the shrill wails filling the room. She has sat up slightly in the bed, her eyes fixed on the girl.
Little Kristina starts up again with renewed voice, and Elsa makes a decision. She cautiously steps over to Birgitta. Birgitta doesn’t look at her. She’s looking at the baby.
Does she understand who she is? Does she see that she’s her daughter?
Elsa can’t imagine that she does.
But still.
When Elsa reaches the edge of the bed Birgitta does something inconceivable: she holds out her arms. At first Elsa hesitates, but then she places Kristina in Birgitta’s outstretched hands.
Her hold is awkward and uncertain, presumably uncomfortable, and although Elsa is afraid to correct her too much, Birgitta holds the baby gingerly—cautiously—while Elsa adjusts her arms.
When Elsa unbuttons Birgitta’s dress she can see her stiffen, but she lets Elsa continue. Elsa is ready and waiting to sweep Kristina away at the slightest hint of agitation, but Birgitta doesn’t make a sound.
Elsa folds back the front of her dress, exposing a swollen, blue-veined breast. Then, placing her hand under Kristina’s back and heavy head, she lifts her to the nipple.
The baby keeps on crying. By now Elsa can sense how tense Birgitta is, how close she is to breaking point.
But then something happens. Kristina’s little mouth finds the nipple and latches on. The cries stop, replaced by the muffled sound of her starting to suck.
Elsa’s shoulders drop. She lets go and takes a step back.
“Ah,” she hears Ingrid say. Nothing else. When Elsa turns around to look at her, her eyes are twinkling with tears.
Elsa quickly dries her eyes and forehead with the back of her hand. She doesn’t know what she is witnessing. She doesn’t know if Birgitta understands what she is doing, or what is happening.
Perhaps this might be something resembling hope. Elsa isn’t sure. All that she is sure of is the quiet instinct that rises up inside her when she sees Birgitta nurse her daughter.
She can’t leave Aina in Silvertjärn.
NOW
I slowly open the door to the girls’ bedroom.
Tone is sitting in the far corner of the room. She’s chosen not to lie on either of the two beds, or to sit on the padded seat at the desk, but to huddle up below the fallen wardrobe, in the small triangular space formed between the wardrobe, wall, and floor.
She doesn’t look at me when I come in, just rocks back and forth on the spot, her forehead pressed to her knees.
“Tone?” I say quietly, against my better judgment.
She doesn’t reply, but makes a quiet, drawn-out sound that is muffled by her thighs. I take this to mean she can hear me.
My body is tense and my armpits sweaty, but when I look at her like this it’s hard to be afraid of her; she looks more like someone to pity than fear. As I stand here looking at her, it dawns on me that she hadn’t seemed threatening in the alleyway, either. She had run away from us, not toward us—fearful, not aggressive. And even when kicking and trying to break free, she had seemed more like someone fighting for her own life.
“I’ve brought you some water,” I say. I take a few steps into the room and around the bed, but then she hunches up even more.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “It’s OK. I’ll put this down here, see?”
I try to keep my voice calm and neutral.
I put the water jug on the ground a few feet in front of her, then raise my hands to show I’m not dangerous. I take a few steps back and sit on the desk chair. The seat is hard, but it’s more comfortable than the floor.
She hesitates for a moment, then lets go of her knees and reaches for the water. There are still traces of her lilac nail polish on three of her nails.
She clutches the jug awkwardly—practically hugs it with both hands—and lifts it to her face. When she drinks, she does so feverishly, in big gulps.
It’s like watching a stranger.
“What has happened to you?” I ask. It’s formulated as a question, but I’m not expecting a reply.
To my surprise she puts down the jug and looks in my direction. Her eyes don’t meet mine, but it’s me she’s looking at—just my left arm rather than my face.
She shakes her head.
That’s something. It’s not much, but it’s something.
I have to ask her, I have to try.
“Was it you who blew up the vans?” I ask.
She says nothing.
It’s harder to look at her face than the rest of her. That terrible scab. It’s not just blood, I realize as I come closer, but dried-in soil and dirt, which have made a hard cake of her hair. The skin around it is red and looks slightly inflamed.
“How did you get that?” I ask. I stick to that practiced voice, stable and calming. I don’t know if it’s having any effect on her, but I’m almost managing to calm myself.
She still doesn’t respond. She has started rocking slightly again, making a sustained, quiet, guttural sound.
“Tone,” I say, pleading and slightly frustrated, because she’s right there in front of me but I can’t understand what’s going on inside her. I can’t align what I’m seeing in front of me with my friend. I can’t align her with what she’s done. It just doesn’t fit.
“Please just say something,” I say, my voice cracking slightly. “Just talk to me, for fuck’s sake. We can try to…”
Yes, what can we try to do?
Try to fix this?
It’s too late for that. Some things can’t be fixed.
I turn away and stare out of the window for a few seconds. The sun is nearing the horizon. In half an hour the whole sky will burst into flame.
One of the desk drawers is still half open. There’s nothing inside it but a few pencils. I pick one of them up. It has a classic yellow grip, and its tip is still sharp. On an impulse, I put it down on the floor and roll it over to Tone.
It stops just in front of her. She picks it up clumsily and holds it. Her grip is strange, her whole hand clenched around the pencil like a fist. The way a child would hold it.
Then she leans f
orward and presses the tip to the floorboards, so hard that it gouges out a trail in the wood.
“It’ll break,” I say. “Be careful, or it’ll break.”
I don’t know why I’m even trying; I know she’s not going to answer.
The pencil tip runs in sharp lines over the planks. A Y with two legs, topped by a head.
A human.
She draws hair around the head in gawky strokes, long, tangled lines that score the soft planks, then she places the tip in the middle of the oval face and starts moving it in a circle. Around and around and around. A mouth like a black, bellowing circle.
The tip of the pencil breaks, and she goes still.
She starts making that wordless hum again, the one that seems to come from somewhere deep in her chest.
She doesn’t look straight at me: her eyes are fixed somewhere to my side, which seems to be as close as they can come to my face. It feels like she’s trying to tell me something.
And yes, I know that figure. It’s a monster I’ve seen before. On a piece of paper and a worn tabletop.
She draws just like her grandmother.
“Just like Birgitta,” I say.
I don’t know if I’m saying it to myself or to her, but when Tone hears the name she looks me straight in the eye.
THEN
Elsa knows Aina won’t be home. It’s been days since she’s so much as seen her.
She races through the house like a whirlwind, hastily shoving clothes into a little bag without even looking at what she’s grabbing. She can’t take too much; it can’t look like she’s on her way somewhere.
By now they have hardly any money left, but Elsa grabs two necklaces she inherited from her mother. The chains are thin and silver, but they must be worth something. She should be able to sell or pawn them in Stockholm.
Elsa pauses over the half-written letter in her underwear drawer, but there’ll be no time to send it now. She leaves it where it is.
It’s when Elsa takes the little tea tin from the top shelf in the kitchen that she hesitates. She can hear her own heartbeats in her chest, fast and rattling and guilty.
It doesn’t feel right to take it.
The tin contains all that is left of their savings; almost one thousand kronor, in different denominations. If she takes it then Staffan will have nothing to live on.
But they will go with her, she tries to persuade herself; Aina will go with her.
It isn’t theft. It’s her money, too.
Elsa takes seven hundred kronor, folds the bills up neatly, and stuffs them in a sock in the mess that is her bag. She leaves the rest in the tin. It feels better this way, but it also feels like capitulation.
She casts a quick glance at the clock over the kitchen door. It’s almost 7:00 A.M. Which means Aina should still be in church.
When Elsa locks the door behind her and starts walking, she wants nothing more than to turn around and go back. She can hardly get her head around the fact that she won’t be coming home tonight to cook dinner. That she won’t be opening that green door as dusk approaches, stepping inside to hear Aina and Karin monkeying around upstairs, giggling over God knows what. To see Staffan in the kitchen with his feet on one of the chairs, and berate him for not taking off his shoes.
Elsa promises herself that she will come back, one day. She and Staffan and Aina, together. Her family will return to this house with its green door. Once all of this is over.
They might even bring Kristina with them, too.
Elsa sets off toward the church. She must keep up appearances, look like everything is normal. Everything could depend on it. She has always been proud of her ability to keep a cool head and take control of situations, but now, when it really matters, she’s trembling like a leaf.
The day that is breaking is beautiful, warm and bright. But despite the light sky stretching out over the village, the church looms ominously. The doors are wide open, as they always are nowadays. The pastor often sermonizes about having no secrets before God or the congregation.
The thought of him and his cold, gray eyes in that young, strangely sexless face sends cold shivers running down Elsa’s spine.
She must be strong.
She walks briskly up the steps and into the church, striding like someone who has nothing to hide or no reason for shame. But the scene before her makes her stop short.
They are lying in circles around each other, curled up like children on their sides, on top of thin blankets that can only offer scant protection from the cold floor. The pale sunlight streaming in through the tall windows washes out their colors, giving them the look of stone angels. Cold, eternal, and perfect.
Elsa freezes on the threshold. There must be over a hundred people on the floor: old and young, men and women. She can see children among them, curled up with their mothers. She knows them all.
Maj-Lis with her bad knees. Karolin, whose oldest was born at almost the same time as Margareta. Back then they had knitted together as their due dates approached, chattering and gossiping about nothing and everything, giddy with nervousness and joy.
Göran, who had been on the same team as Staffan at the mine. He would always stutter when he was nervous, and had tended to blush whenever Elsa was in the room. She had always suspected he had a liking for her when they were younger, but then he had met his Pernilla and stopped stuttering when they talked.
Pernilla. She’s three rows away.
And two steps from her lies Staffan.
Staffan. Her beloved husband.
Elsa has lived with him so long now that she hardly sees him anymore; he’s as familiar to her as the back of her own hand. Elsa was scarce more than a child when they married, younger than Margareta is now.
Elsa has seen him sick as a dog, and so drunk that he can only mumble. She knows that his eyes tear up when talking about his dad, and that his big, heavy face softens when he looks at their girls. She has seen him as a beardless nineteen-year-old, a new father at twenty-two, and bereft as a fatherless thirty-two-year-old. It was Elsa who had found the first gray hairs on his temples, who had held him when the mine shut down, promising him that they would get through it together.
He has been her entire adult life. He is the father of her daughters. And now he’s lying there among them, a frozen angel, and she realizes that she has lost him.
Elsa has never hated anyone—has never understood how one human could hurt another—but in that instant she wishes she could kill Pastor Mattias with her own bare hands. She would like to press the life out of him, see the fear in his eyes.
One of them stirs slightly in their sleep, and Elsa tries to pull herself together. She can grieve later. She has to find Aina, that’s all that matters now.
But, try as she might, she can’t see her.
If Aina isn’t here then where could she be? Could she have come to her senses?
Elsa doesn’t let herself hope. She knows that can’t be.
Then her eyes land on the door on the other side of the church. The door to the chapel.
It’s closed.
Elsa creeps along the wall so as not to wake any of them. A few of them stir or sigh in their sleep, but they must have grown used to the sounds of people creeping around, after days or weeks of sleeping next to each other, breathing each other’s breaths.
Elsa reaches the chapel door and puts her hand on the handle. The metal feels cold against her palm.
She prays a silent prayer not to find what she fears most of all.
But Elsa is no longer convinced anyone is listening.
She opens the door. It swings in without a sound.
The first thing she sees is Aina.
Her thick, dark hair hangs like a veil across her face. She is lying curled up on the floor, in front of the little sofa. Elsa doesn’t recognize the dress she is wearing: white and shift-like, like an old-fashioned nightdress, with neither embellishment nor embroidery. It makes Elsa contract.
Pastor Mattias is sitting on the sofa.<
br />
His beautiful gray eyes are fixed on Elsa, and he looks completely relaxed. As though he’s been expecting her.
“Good morning,” he says.
Elsa stands completely still. For a long time she doesn’t know what to say.
“Good morning,” she eventually replies.
The pastor’s eyes move to her bag and then back to her face. Elsa sees there’s no point in trying to lie.
“So the day has come,” he says calmly.
Aina stirs slightly. The sight of her there, asleep at his feet, fills Elsa with a fury she hadn’t known herself capable of.
“Aina’s coming with me,” she says, her voice like ice and steel in her throat. “Aina’s coming with me, and you can’t stop me.”
“Aina is a grown woman,” says the pastor, while Aina rubs her eyes and props herself up on her elbows. “She can do as she chooses.”
Aina sits up and stares at Elsa, as though she has seen a ghost.
“Mother?” she says, confused.
“Aina,” says Elsa, her eyes still glued to the pastor. “We’re going to Stockholm. To Margareta.”
Aina’s eyes flit from Elsa to the pastor in confusion. He places his hand on her head. It isn’t the sight of his big, bony hand against her silky-smooth crown that cuts at Elsa’s chest; it’s the look she gives him. As though he were the sun itself.
“Don’t touch her!” Elsa exclaims. She can hear how shrill and hysterical she sounds, as though she’s lost all reason. A mad old woman.
When Aina looks back at Elsa, her gaze is blank and dead.
“This is my family now,” she says, and it isn’t Elsa’s Aina speaking, not the Aina who begged, cried, and pleaded for one of the neighbor’s kittens when she was four, not the Aina who huddles up to Elsa so that she can brush her hair, not the Aina who keeps binders of bookmarks under her bed.
She’s a stranger.
The pastor’s hand is still on her head. He looks completely relaxed.
“I take it she has had the child?” the pastor asks Elsa, and she can’t understand his words. Can’t register them.
“Had … h-h-had the…” Elsa stutters, just as Göran once used to do. Her mouth is completely dry.
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