Blackwater (30 page)

Her first thought was that Sigrid had been right. She ought to go out at once and tell her so. Then she remembered the work rota in Brita and Petrus’s house which they went through every evening. According to that, Sigrid was wrong.

The girl was still walking round, slashing with a stick at the tall grass outside the cookhouse. She was slender and thin, and Annie could see her spine outlined under the T-shirt as she bent forwards. Annie felt like asking her about the milk rota, but was ashamed of wanting to manipulate her. Several people had done that. She looked defenceless and miserable from behind, a row of small vertebrae, brittle as shells. A small stalk of a neck and heavy hair hanging forward in two greasy plaits. She ought to wear trousers, not a skirt. Her legs were swollen with insect bites.

Soon she would be taken away from Starhill. Or not. Regardless of what she wanted. Have her hair cut, or not. She probably didn’t really know what she wanted. How could she? The voices around her were loud. One of them must have told her to go and fetch Annie and Mia from the bus on Midsummer Eve.

There had been only children at the bus in Röbäck; Sigrid, Gertrud, Mats and Pella. The number was right. She had seen them. Mats’ Inca cap and their Lapp shoes and birch-bark knap-sacks. No adult had been with them. Sigrid was sure to have been in charge of the troop. She was dutiful. One of the adults had said, ‘Go and meet Dan’s girlfriend and her little daughter. They’re coming on the bus today.’ But the children had gone back and said that Annie and Mia hadn’t come.

She had been in the churchyard, washed over for the first time by the chilly mountain air, and she had seen the children, but she hadn’t realised they were looking for Mia and her. The bus driver hadn’t known Mia and she were members of the commune. She had actually denied it.

Now she could call out to that disappointed, angry little creature and ask her where Petrus had been on Midsummer Eve. How easy it is to push little girls hither and thither, she thought. With emotions.

Then Sigrid stopped. She dropped the stick and looked over at the window as if expecting Annie to call out to her at last. But Annie moved away, letting her face fade into the dim light of the dairy. From Sigrid’s shoulders and back it looked as if she had given up. Perhaps she already knew they were too many. That they were adults and would never admit she could be right.

Annie carefully took the drawing pins off the four corners of the milk records, folded the paper up and put it into her apron pocket.

After Åke Vemdal had left, the washing-up was left to do and the brown gravy had dried and stuck.

Telephoning. Getting the meat out of the freezer. Doing the shopping. Cooling the vodka and letting the wine breathe. Cooking dinner. Altogether, it had taken hours. Sitting opposite each other and talking about their obsessions. Talk, talk. Apart from chewing, and some drinking sounds. Looking at the cut glass, explaining when his father had been given them.

Not the way it really was, but light-heartedly. He had not mentioned that they sang the Horst-Wessel Song on Father’s fortieth birthday in 1941. It would have been impossible to explain that that was just to annoy Mother.

Father said she was one eighth Jewish, though he hadn’t really cared about it. Nor about National Socialism. All he cared about was tormenting her for having been born rich and for having to put up with life on the estate, one housemaid, the Co-op and once a year a trip to Stockholm. They had been very close, and that close tie was their only reality.

His hatred was hopeless. Once she had said, ‘Your father had a strong character.’ He had been dead for fifteen years then. But she remembered the rapes, of course. Sometimes Birger had heard them through the wall in his bedroom. Still she bothered with the euphemism so as not to humiliate herself. Father’s silly National Socialism had also been a euphemism, perhaps for a hatred the strength of which he never understood.

Rinsing the dishes. Putting them in the dishwasher. Putting away the glasses and never taking them out again.

Having people to dinner.

Finishing off with a small whisky. Two.

Never again talking with his lips to an ear, a warm ear.

When he had finished the dishes, he went out, cutting across the hay meadows. It was almost dark, but he could see the linseed field in all its degradation, rotting heaps of tough stalks soaked from the rain.

He realised that Karl-Åke and he now had a reason for their mutual enmity. It was one of those absurd, far-fetched reasons that lay behind every village hostility, manufactured according to a pattern as complicated as crochet work. Yes, absurd to the point of childishness, almost imaginary. But the hatred was real.

Gudrun Brandberg drove her son in the Audi up towards Steinkjer. She was looking angry. He glanced sideways at her, but he didn’t get the sense that she was angry because he had run away. He himself was pretty angry, but as usual she scarcely noticed that.

She hadn’t driven up to the guesthouse, but had phoned from the Statoil petrol station on the outskirts and said he should come and meet her there. When he explained that he could hardly walk and had nothing to put on his feet, she’d told him to take a taxi.

Taxi!

He had paid the landlady with Ylja’s money and got a lift to the petrol station. He hadn’t really wanted to touch the money. Gudrun didn’t ask him how he had been able to pay, and not until after driving quite a while did she ask him what he had done to his foot.

The Audi was going much too fast along the hot strip of asphalt. Gudrun’s profile remained the same and it occurred to him that it wasn’t anger. It was absence, an absence so total, he was grateful they were not heading for Grong. She might have driven off the road on a bend and aquaplaned straight out into the Namsen.

She hadn’t come the previous evening. At about eleven, she had phoned to say there was a lot to do. He had gone to bed and tried to sleep despite the pain. She’ll regret it when she sees my foot, he thought.

‘Don’t phone anyone,’ she had said in a small, sharp voice. ‘Do you hear? Don’t talk to anyone.’

At the Statoil station the Audi was there, the back seat full of stuff – bags, cardboard boxes and loose objects. He saw to his astÖnishment that his ice-hockey skates were there, and his club. She was drinking apple juice from a carton, and he noticed that her lips were dry and she was very thirsty.

‘Do you want some?’ she said, handing him a fiver to go and buy some juice. He didn’t take it. She had on the same floral dress she had been wearing on Midsummer Eve, and the same white cardigan was folded up on top of one of the bags in the back. It looked as if she hadn’t been out of her clothes since, or as if time had stopped over there in Blackwater.

‘I saw in the paper . . . there was a murder. By the Lobber.’

‘Get in,’ she said.

Once they were out of Namsos, he asked who had been murdered. At first she was silent for a long time, as if she didn’t want to answer, but then she said they were tourists. Foreigners.

‘Has it been cleared up?’

‘It never will be.’

He couldn’t understand how she could say that. He said he didn’t think it was right.

‘What do you mean, right?’

Proper, he had thought of saying, but he didn’t. She must have noticed how peculiar it sounded, because she tried to explain.

‘I only meant that it’s almost hopeless. An evening when there were so many tourists around. And foreigners.’

‘Aren’t people scared?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it. We’ve had enough of that back home these last few days.’

She sounded as if she were reproaching him for having gone off when things were at their worst.

‘I went off because I was furious,’ he said. ‘Per-Ola and Pekka were shitty, and so were Väine and Björne. They went too far. They followed me up to Alda’s.’

‘I don’t want to know anything about that. And you’re not to knock Björne. If it wasn’t for him, you’d really be in trouble now.’

She was angry with him after all. And she didn’t ask where he had been. Only whether he’d talked to anyone. What did she think – that he’d hidden in the forest?

‘Why have you brought all my things?’

He could hear how whiny he sounded as he said it, but it was too late to make his voice any deeper. Her voice was at least kinder when she answered.

‘We’ve got to arrange something else for you. The atmosphere at home isn’t good.’

‘Was Torsten furious?’

She didn’t answer directly and he felt sick inside at how unfair it all was. He wasn’t allowed to tell her, either. She simply didn’t want to know.

‘It’ll go to court,’ she said. ‘Vidart’s been raving about a rake handle. But that’ll all get straightened out. Anyhow, we’d better arrange something else for you. I thought of Langvasslien.’

The name caused a soft jolt inside him. A wave of blood, throbbing all the way out into his ears, into his lips. And he waited. He even imagined what tone of voice she would use when she at long last told him. Low and confidential, a little embarrassed. Or half angry and defiant, as if to emphasise it was her business what she had done, not his.

Should he say he had had some idea all the time? Guessed that he was really Oula Laras’s son. Not Torsten’s. Or should he pretend not to know, to make it easier for her?

She didn’t go on. Not just now, he thought. It’ll come later. She’s ashamed. It’s as hard for her as it would be for me to tell her about Ylja. Impossible. But she must. Before we get to Langvasslien. Probably before Steinkjer, and that couldn’t be more than ten kilometres now.

When they drove into Steinkjer, she said they were to stop and get something to eat.

‘I’ve got to go to the hospital,’ Johan said, realising she was never going to suggest it. She didn’t seem to be interested in his foot.

‘Is it that bad?’ was all she said.

When they got to Emergency, he took off his sock as they sat waiting, and she gasped.

She probably hadn’t reckoned it would take half the day. They had agreed to meet at the cafeteria when he was ready and there she was, looking exhausted. As usual, he felt guilty. Then he was angry. He couldn’t help it that she had had to wait for so long. She could have asked the doctors. He told her that his shin bone was broken and the ligaments in his ankle torn. He was in plaster. He had been given some crutches so he could move, but they had to pay for them because they weren’t Norwegian citizens. She went off to reception and told them that he was to start senior high in Steinkjer in the autumn and that he lived in Langvasslien and could bring the crutches back when he came for a check-up.

Saying he already lived in Langvasslien was a bit much, but the woman behind the counter accepted it without comment and asked for the address.

‘He’s living with Per and Sakka Dorj,’ said Gudrun. ‘Post Box 12, Langvasslien.’

Sakka. His aunt. Gudrun’s older sister. He didn’t ask if what she had said was true until they got in the car.

‘Am I going to stay with Sakka?’

‘Yes, of course. What did you think? Who else lives in Langvasslien?’

That evening the rain came. To begin with, the wind brought clouds of thin, chilly vapour, which settled like a membrane on the grass and across their faces. It turned dark and the wind got up. By the time they were all inside with Petrus and Brita, it was raining hard.

The kitchen was transformed. Once no sunlight fell on the slate slabs, the brick wall of the fire place appeared to grow and the window framed the dark greenery behind the broad belts of rain.

Now she saw them for the first time without the strong sunlight. In the dim light, their faces looked worn and grey, except Dan’s. His face was relaxed; he was calm, playing with a strand of hair. The skin on Bert’s face was too loose. He must once have been much fatter. His cheeks were scarred and pitted. Perhaps it was the memory of his spotty youth that had made him so repulsive.

Enel’s face was taut under her kerchief, her skin sunburnt and tight over her cheekbones. Perhaps they had all grown thinner – thinner – except Önis. She had told Annie that walking up to Starhill had given her sores between her thighs, so she was reluctant to go down to the village. She was biting her sore, swollen fingertips. Mia had screwed up her face and was watching her.

Brown shadows flitted over Brita’s face, and her eyes were hollow. She was very heavy despite her thinness, almost as if the foetus were on its way down. She held on to it with her hands, not listening while Petrus talked about cooling the milk. Lotta sat curled up on the floor below her, like a child, her face the colour of well-worn linen.

Even Sigrid had this worn and weary air, and she was only nine. All of them had it, except Dan. Admittedly, they were dressed up. But with no electricity, no dissembling was possible. You can’t just pretend; you bear it. An existence devoid of irony slowly twisted their joints, stretching their sinews thin and hard. Annie felt a fierce longing for town; for trying on clothes, people and rooms the way you try out a quotation in your mouth. Starting. Driving fast. Touching on terror or desire. Turning and forgetting.

They had come to the time for criticism. Petrus avoided the word, but she recognised the set-up. On the first evening, he had used the word ‘problem’. Now he just asked whether they had anything.

‘I’ve got something.’

His face was bearded; hairy, rather, soft grey-brown hair swirling down from his temples and untidily uniting with the stiff beard. His lower lip was red and full. But it was never easy to see his expression beneath all that hair. She thought his gaze had become fixed, rather than attentive. He reckoned she was going to make a fuss.

‘I’d like to apologise to Sigrid,’ Annie said.

The girl flushed scarlet. What a child she was – her skin so easily suffused with blood, her eyes defenceless against this, which would surely be of no joy to her. Annie had an impulse to drop it and just say, ‘I was mistaken when it came to the milking rota.’ But instead, she said:

‘Sigrid has observed that the way the work rota has been written down is wrong as regards the milking. I wouldn’t listen to her. But she’s actually quite right.’