Blackwater (20 page)

The path appeared to lead up to the high mountain. After he had walked for twenty minutes, it became steeper, over stony ground extending in what must be an east–west direction, long rocky offshoots from the mountain. In the end he was balancing on a very narrow ridge and approaching the hillside. Or the mountainside, he thought. Norwegians called every bump a mountain.

The path ran along ledges in the mountain, and pretty soon he had to climb. He turned round when the going got slower on the cliff face and what he saw was incredible. The sea. The whole sea, misty blue in the morning sun, the mist on the horizon reddish and glowing. Out there was the sun, and above the mountain ridges the clouds had begun building up.

He had thought they were far up in the high mountains towards the Swedish border, but they were close to the sea, at the most a few kilometres from the shore, and he could bloody well see all the way to America. The ridge he was balancing on probably extended from northeast to northwest. He decided to climb right up and look.

On his way up, keeping to the crevices, he regretted his decision as the precipice began to frighten him. The path was still clear, but zigzagged up the cliff. Below was a ravine where he could see birds flying. When the first puffs of cloud came drifting, his face turned wet, then for a few moments he could see clouds below him, floating in the ravine, ragged and steaming. He could just see the tops of pines in the watery mist, from above, as the birds saw them.

He decided not to look down any more, but just continue up from ledge to ledge, being careful before stepping off a safe place, checking whether a stone was loose under his foot. Onwards and upwards. He’d have to find a better path down, a less steep one. There was no sign of any cave. That was all just bloody nonsense. He had gone on walking as if drunk and was now stuck on the mountainside, clouds drifting below and above him, soaking him with their moisture.

As soon as he got to the top and found firm, lichen-covered rock beneath his feet, squalls of rain came racing in and he could no longer see the sea. He hunched down and waited for a better view, but the air thickened more and more and he found himself sitting in the cloud, dripping wet. He realised he would never find a better path and the risk was that he would lose his way, so he started down. His stomach pressed to the rough, cracked mountainside, he felt with his foot for loose stones below and held on until his fingers ached whenever he had to shift his weight.

A squall brought a cold shower over his back, but then another came and seemed to sweep away the worst. The sun flashed. He dared to look over his shoulder and could see right down. The sea was there again, boiling with light.

When he had gone so far that he could walk upright without the support of his hands, he noticed a thick rope fastened to a pine tree and hanging down the other side of the cliff. He went over to it and looked down. The rope had knots in it and ended just above the worn and trampled ground, a path apparently beginning where the rope ended.

He realised that you were supposed to let yourself down. The path led into the perpendicular mountainside, and opened up into a large, almost oval entrance.

The cave. So it did exist after all. As he slithered down the rope, he realised that he done the worst bit quite unnecessarily. The cave wasn’t all that high up and the path to it was easy. There were ferns in the entrance, hanging from the roof of the cave inside, the dark rock covered with lichen, but not far inside. Then it became sterile. The mountain had crumbled and cracked when the cold had lifted in the spring, and he was now standing on stone and gravel.

Only the first bit was smooth, the ground beginning to slope steeply down into the darkness. Must be a damned big cave. He would tell her he had been there now – she wasn’t expecting that of him. But he had to go a little further in. There must be something there he could say he had seen, so that she would believe him.

It was too steep to walk down, so he had to sit and slide through the mess of gravel and mud beneath him. That’s the end of my jeans, he thought, when occasionally he had to brake quite hard against the ground. Large rocks protruded, firmly rooted in the ground, and he could hold on to them. His eyes soon got used to the dark and the meagre light from above. The smell of rock and mud was harsh and lifeless, the smell of the underworld, nothing but stalagmites and stalactites in the roof. Not a single patch of moss.

Finally he came down to more level ground. To test out the size of the space around him he tried with his voice, but his throat locked and it hurt to call out. The damp and cold went right through him and he became clumsy, wishing he could squat down and just wait. But nothing would happen. He was alone with this harsh odour, with the darkness and cold that was the mountain’s.

When he turned his head, he could see the cave entrance and it dazzled him. He had to sit for a while with his head turned away to get his night vision back again. He picked up stones from the cave floor and flung them around, bouncing them off the walls. He threw systematically, like fly-fishing, fanning stones out from where he was standing. On their way down, the stones didn’t strike the wall at right angles and he heard them hitting the ground far away.

So there was a path there – the cave went on, but how far? He didn’t want to know. He would turn back now. He would tell her this, anyhow, in which direction it went.

He had closed his eyes as he threw, to be able to hear the stones landing. When he opened them, he could see a bit further in front of him.

It was a rock. High and rough, upright, narrowing towards the top, taller than a human being.

Quite suddenly he was frightened out of his wits, fear coming without warning. Before he had been uneasy, but now it was terror, so great that he didn’t think to be careful. He rushed back up, gravel and stones falling below him, then slid down again. Against all his instincts, he made himself calm down to be able to get out, thrusting with his feet into the ground, sliding. When he finally reached the cave entrance, he pressed his face into the harsh crowberry scrub and moss, and after a while was aware of the taste and smell of earth that was alive.

He didn’t know what had frightened him, nor did he want to think about it. That served no purpose. All he knew was that he must get away, at first down to the hunting lodge, then out to the road. Hitch.

The women came along the path just above the river. He heard them from a long way away and leapt up to hide behind one of the mounds, ducking right down behind a thick, fungus-clad, rotting birch trunk from where he could peer out at them.

The Silver Fox was in the lead. They were all talking and laughing loudly, wearing flashy sports wear. Ylja was somewhere in the middle, apparently elated, hallooing away, her hair tied up with a cord in a short ponytail.

He calmed down once they had disappeared. Presumably he had plenty of time before they returned, so he decided to go back and rest. His fears had vanished as soon as he saw and heard the little troop of walkers. They looked ordinary. Everything was ordinary down there, but all the same, he was determined to leave.

He fell asleep and woke too late, he thought, but rested. He would have to hurry, but couldn’t leave without any money. He needed at least enough to be able to buy some food and rent a cabin until he got some planting or clearing work. He thought he would take some from her handbag, that long brown thing, made of something knobbly and stiff. Crocodile skin, she had told him when he asked. He didn’t want to wait until she came back, or ask her for money. Then he would never get away.

The house wasn’t locked and there were paraffin lamps and a board game on the veranda table. Someone had been lying on the faded sofa cushions. What if any of them were still there?

Well, so what? It couldn’t be forbidden to go inside. He went into the dark hallway. The floor was littered with trainers, boots, dog-chewed balls, a shotgun leaning in one corner. Bits of polystyrene, an otter board. The framed photographs on the walls looked as if they were taken at the beginning of the century, all men. Men in tweed caps and lace-up leather boots. One posed with his foot on a bear’s head, a thick stick jammed into its mouth to hold it open. Torsten had a similar photograph on the parlour wall at home. In one photograph, two men were carrying a salmon on a stake between them. Another showed a whole company with their dogs in front of heaps of dead birds.

The glass in the frames was dusty and two were broken. Some of the frames contained large sprigs of dried flowers. It all looked as if no one bothered about the pictures any longer; they simply hung there, the men’s faces staring rigidly down at the mess in the hall.

He could see a kitchen, which looked relatively modern and was very small. They must have had a cookhouse outside. Leftover food lay everywhere, and wine bottles. They must have carried a lot in their rucksacks. There was a smell of garlic and the acid smell of spilt red wine. He spread some overripe dessert cheese on some bread and quickly ate three or four pieces, then put some bread and cheese into his pocket.

The dining room had a rustic table and a whole lot of stuffed animal heads on the walls and birds on the sideboard. They looked moth-eaten and decaying, noses withered and claws missing, only the glass eyes clear.

He wasted no time on the ground floor. The bedrooms were upstairs, sleeping bags all over the place, three or four in each room – there must be fifteen or twenty women. He found Ylja’s room at the south end of the house. Why was she allowed to sleep on her own? The Silver Fox didn’t seem to have a room up there. Perhaps he slept with one of the women? Though in that case he must sleep with three or four of them? Or with Ylja? Were they married?

To hell with it, he thought. I’m going. I’ll never see any of them ever again.

He felt different as he picked up her handbag, half anxious again. It was on the chair by the bed. On another chair lay a number of packs of those pale-blue paper panties. The bed was unmade and smelt of her, though more faintly, and the sheets were also paper.

When he first opened the bag, he thought of looking for her driving licence to see what her name and age were, but then he thought hell, it didn’t matter. He would never see her again, perhaps never even think about her again.

He found a wallet with Finnish banknotes in it and in one compartment some Norwegian ten-kroner coins. At first he thought he was stuck and would have to stay, but then he found the centre compartment in the bag, closed with a zip. There was a whole wad of Norwegian hundred-kroner notes, and the exchange certificate. She had got almost eighteen hundred Norwegian kroner. She wouldn’t notice if he took two hundred. Not even if he took three. In the end he took five hundred. It happened so quickly he had no time to think it through.

There was a folded chemist’s bag in the handbag as well, flat but not empty. He looked inside and found several packets of condoms bought at the chemist’s in Byvången, the receipt still there. But they had never used them. He couldn’t understand and it filled him with anger, though he couldn’t really work out why.

He had just closed the bag when he heard voices. Shortly afterwards, a door downstairs rattled and the house filled with women. They were laughing as they thumped up the stairs – several on their way up. He was caught like a rat in a trap. There was only one door, and that led straight out to the stairs.

Without thinking, he had backed over towards the window. Now he turned round and glanced down at the ground. It looked soft and wasn’t too far down. He opened the window and wriggled out. At first he intended to hang on to the windowsill and drop down once he was hanging straight. That would shorten his fall by his length. But he hadn’t time. He thought he heard someone at the door, so he jumped.

He immediately realised it had gone badly wrong. The ground wasn’t soft; the tall grass had deceived him. He felt a sharp pain in his hip, but soon found it was his left foot that had landed really badly. Something had happened to it. His fall was still shuddering within him, from fear as much as shock and pain, and he couldn’t feel his foot at all.

He could hear nothing from above. He was lying almost hidden in the tall grass and birches. Slowly he started getting up, his foot throbbing, not hurting all that much except when he put his weight on it. He slithered over to the wall of the house and hauled himself upright, then hopped clumsily round the house, clutching at the tarred wooden shingles. He didn’t once turn round as he limped out into the birch woods down towards the river, then made his way to the grouse shed from one slim tree to the next.

She didn’t come until late that evening, bringing with her cold breast of hazel-grouse, still sticky with sauce, which had solidified and was rather greasy. She also gave him some dessert cheese, the same kind he had taken up at the house, but he hadn’t eaten that. His foot hurt so much he felt sick. His ankle had swollen and reminded him of his grandmother’s ankles every time he looked at it – bluish, puffy, though the skin wasn’t as rough as hers.

Ylja didn’t say much, as if her thoughts were still up at the house. She poured vodka into his glass, broke an egg into it, then peppered it. Beside his plate lay four yellow tablets.

‘What are those?’

‘Vitamin B.’

She’s nuts, he thought. But he should have realised that from the beginning. He was afraid of her now. Perhaps she had noticed some money was missing. It would be like her to say nothing. To wait. He didn’t dare do anything except empty his glass. The egg and the liquor slid down surprisingly easily.

She left without having sex with him. There was something wrong. Had she tired? Or had she already opened her handbag?

He said nothing about his bad foot, just stayed lying on the bunk with the blanket over his legs. Nor did she ask him anything. Not until after she had gone did he realise that now he couldn’t leave. He was her prisoner. But perhaps she didn’t know that?

If the phone went at night, he always thought the worst, that it was an abdomen or an accident. Possibly a heart. Sharp voice over the phone, shrill with fear. It aches. It thumps and flutters. I have red flashes. The thigh. The artery. It went in deep. ‘Bandage it up. Bandage it tight, but not too tight.’