Blackwater (31 page)

Brita wasn’t bothered, indeed didn’t seem to be listening, her eyes following the runnels of water streaming down the window. Lotta was sunk into herself, and Önis kept biting and tearing at her already bleeding cuticles. Petrus and Dan were the attentive ones; Bert, too, to some extent. Difficult to say with Enel, her expression not easy to fathom.

‘Perhaps we could look at it,’ said Annie.

‘Is there something you object to?’ said Petrus.

He was hostile. What had she expected? I’m making myself unpleasant, she thought. How stupid of me. And just like me, Dan would say. Nevertheless she went on. But she had to fetch the work rota herself. Petrus had put it on the sideboard when they had gone through the tasks for the following day and he made no move to fetch it back.

‘According to the rota, Dan was to do the milking on Midsummer Eve and Midsummer Day because he was on his own here. But it must have been Petrus.’

She handed the rota over to Petrus, who read it without touching it. She then handed it on to Enel and it went round without arousing any interest. Only Sigrid was eager, her cheeks still scarlet.

‘Uh-huh,’ said Petrus. ‘It’s possible. Not that I understand why you sound so sure. Mistakes happen. Does it matter?’

Annie took the milking record out of her pocket, unfolded it and smoothed it out.

‘I’m perfectly sure,’ she said. ‘Sigrid is, too. First, Dan can’t milk, anyhow not well enough to be able to manage on his own.’

‘He wasn’t on his own.’

‘Wasn’t he?’

‘He was here with Barbro Torbjörnsson.’

She didn’t want to look at Dan, but she could sense he was sitting absolutely still. Then Önis and Lotta both began talking at once.

‘She wanted to see Starhill.’

‘She might move up here.’

‘It’s a chance for us. She weaves and has sold lots of her stuff. So Dan had to show her.’

He doesn’t even have to defend himself, she thought. He was leaning back with his eyes closed.

‘Maybe so,’ said Annie. ‘But it was Petrus who recorded the quantity of milk on Midsummer Eve.’

He took the piece of paper and read.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Good. Isn’t it, Sigrid? Are you satisfied now?’

She was childishly triumphant and flushing.

‘That’s that, then.’

‘No.’

Annie avoided Dan’s eyes as she went on.

‘It was wrong when the police were here. You referred to this erroneous work rota. They were given wrong information.’

‘I think we’ll call it a day now,’ said Petrus, getting up. ‘Dan, explain to Annie what the situation is. Once and for all.’

But Dan explained nothing. He went out ahead of her and when she entered their room he was lying in silence on his bed. Annie thought that was because Lotta had come too. She had been allowed to move back again with her cat pictures and the two bags containing all her possessions. Mia liked her and enjoyed her things. She used to sort out the faded T-shirts and cotton pants, then line the rest up on her bed while Lotta, in her slightly hoarse voice, told her the story of the things. She had an electric hair dryer and a radio that could not run on batteries, and three pairs of shoes with heels impossible for walking at Starhill. A hairpiece of dull, coarse, light-brown hair and a chocolate box of photographs. A plastic bag containing a coral necklace and Indian jewellery of blackened silver with bloodstones and dull turquoises. A teddy bear made of synthetic plush. A wallet packed with snapshots, bus tickets and cards with addresses on them.

They were playing pelmanism at the table with a pack of dirty cards from the days of the fishing club. Lotta seemed to realise that Annie and Dan wanted to be on their own. Annie lay down on her bed and waited. The room was full of the energy coming from the immobile body on the bunk above.

Annie couldn’t talk to him, nor could she say anything to Lotta. Her strength was trickling away like the rain on the window. It was possible to be mute or immobile in dreams, but she was awake and presumably could move. If she gave way to this sense of powerlessness, she would never be able to go on. She took the radio off the chair beside the bed and switched it on. It crackled and the sound of a voice reading the news billowed back and forth with fading strength. The batteries were running out.

Mia got a card she didn’t want and shouted angrily. Annie turned up the volume. In a capricious wave, the power came back and a voice boomed that
the reuter news agency reports that sources from hanoi
before she could turn down the volume. The bunk above swayed and creaked. Dan jumped down to the floor and momentarily she saw his torso cut off by the upper edge of the bed and his hands held out with the fingers splayed as he shouted, ‘
for christ’s sake, stop it
!’

He was out of the room before she had time to do anything. Nor was there anything to do. The volume was already turned right down. Mia sat without moving, a card in her hand. For a long moment nothing could be heard except the abundant splashing of the rain out of the broken drainpipes.

‘You know he doesn’t like the news,’ Lotta said. ‘Dan’s not interested in politics.’

‘He used to be,’ said Annie. ‘He was the only one involved at college.’

‘Not exactly politics. I mean the party. All that came to an end two years ago.’

She talked about him with a confidential officiousness and sounded as if she were imitating someone. Dan had explained, ‘She doesn’t know how we live. Not what an ordinary life is like. Everything has to be learnt. She has lived in something you can’t grasp.’

‘I’m going to Mats.’

Mia flung down the cards she had been holding and went out. The door slammed and shook in its frame. Annie had wanted to remember herself as a quiet child, not submissive but brooding on the injustice of having to live as a lodger in Enskede with no right to yell and scream. But now and then there was something familiar about Mia’s awkwardness and angry outbursts. She had left because she didn’t want to hear anything said about Dan, Annie thought, and she turned cold, although she had really known that for a long time.

‘I know he’s left the party,’ she said to Lotta. She couldn’t really remember which of the minor parties it was, but didn’t want to reveal that. She realised how foolish it was, the two of them trying to outdo each other in their knowledge of Dan’s life.

‘He didn’t leave it, he was thrown out,’ said Lotta. ‘They were a group that had broken away and he was the leader. But another guy came along and took over and then Dan had to do some self-criticism. They hung out in the Nacka woods, by Nyckelviken, on a hill.’

It sounded as if Lotta thought Dan had been playing Tarzan and although she didn’t really want to ask about Dan, she said:

‘What do you mean – hung out?’

‘His self-criticism. They had a rope with them and had tied it to a pine tree and made a noose. He was to hang himself, because his life was, like, pointless. He was rotten. Poisoned from the start.’

‘What by?’

‘By being bourgeois.’

‘How could he be that? He would never agree to anything so stupid.’

‘He didn’t, either. Though it was a close thing. Then he ran off into town, and that was when I met him. He used to smoke hash and then started on junk. Well, guys of his background usually have a safety net, and he ended up in the bin. His dad fixed that. Then he went to college. And now he doesn’t want to hear anything about politics. Nor about the general.’

‘What general?’

‘His dad.’

Lotta had been trapped for a whole night in a metro lift with a heroin addict who had a razor in his hand. Dan had told her that. Now Lotta was telling her, turbulence in her head and stories arising from it. Annie had to remind herself that they were called cock-and-bull stories.

She went out without saying anything to Lotta about what she was going to do. She knew that she was leaving her to endlessly picking over the contents of those two blue canvas bags.

The house was on a slope covered with willows and birches. Above it stood Mount Langvass, but the birch woods rose so steeply that the peak couldn’t be seen from the yard. The road wound its way up from Langvasslien village down by the lake.

One of the people who had owned the house before Per had covered it with asbestos sheeting the same colour as watery milk. It was a two-storey house and from the green-painted metal roof protruded a disproportionately large attic room, with a balcony with rusty iron railings.

Below the steps was a drying stand with broken plastic lines and two red plastic wash bowls. Grass and wild chervil shot straight up through a scooter sled. There were empty beer crates at one end of the house and a piece of bent piping propped against the wall. Flakes of green had snowed down from the roof into the grass and the bowls. When they got right up to the house, Johan could see a rat-gnawed elk antler and a rolled-up plastic mat below the kitchen window.

Gudrun had changed her shoes and was making her way through the grass on narrow heels. Per had come out on the steps, Sakka behind him, her hands dripping wet. She was alternately greeting them and apologising: she had been doing the dishes and couldn’t shake hands. But she put her own hands together and shook them in front of her chest. Johan thought with astÖnishment that it was just as if she were delighted. Their son, the same age as Johan, also came out to greet them, but he was shyer and stayed on the porch. He was mostly called Pergutt or the Pergutt – Per’s boy – and the Brandberg boys had always thought he was a twerp.

All three had round faces and he recognised his own eyes, nose and cheeks in them in a way he had never done before. Gudrun and he had been to see them only when they were slaughtering or marking the calves up in Tjørn Valley. Johan had never seen the house down here in Langvasslien before. On Gudrun’s behalf, he was embarrassed by the mess in the yard and in front of the steps. Gudrun was very particular. Sakka wasn’t. Perhaps that had something to do with what Gudrun had said about Sakka’s appearance and age: ‘She’s letting herself go.’

Per was small and rather bandy-legged. Johan thought about Oula Laras, whose legs were slim and unusually long for a Sami, and about how the Pergutt was the very image of Per.

He would be able to see Oula Laras now, might run into him any day. He thought it just like Gudrun to say nothing, but to let him live so close to him. Otherwise it would have been simply banishment to dump him in this mess, especially if you looked at it her way, he knew that. She couldn’t stand disorder.

The Dorjs wanted to offer them food although they themselves had just eaten. They wanted to talk and have coffee, and Sakka took out thin pancakes, spread butter on them and sprinkled them with sugar. They wanted to know how Johan had hurt his foot and what the doctor had said and when he had to go back for a check-up. They were so kind, it embarrassed him. Even Per was sympathetic about the foot. Yet Johan knew he was a tough man. Two winters ago, he had driven the scooter over a precipice up in Tjørnfjell and had got stuck on a ledge with a broken leg. He had slithered down to the scooter, but hadn’t been able to get it started again, so he’d had to make his way down the slopes in deep snow, dragging his leg behind him. He had been away for two days and everyone had thought that was the end of him. But here he was, eating sweet pancakes with the Pergutt, Sakka and Johan. Gudrun ate nothing, but she smoked another cigarette, which surprised Johan. He had never seen her smoke so much before.

They said nothing about what had happened by the Lobber. Johan had the impression Gudrun had banned the subject over the phone. Nor did they ask why he had left home. The fact that he was to stay with them and start school down in Steinkjer seemed to have already been agreed on. Gudrun must have had long telephone calls with Sakka the night before.

He thought the Pergutt would talk about the murder by the Lobber when they were alone together, but he didn’t. He was rather shy and simply asked Johan if he’d like to see the pups. They went out to the dog run and the Pergutt tied up the bitch so that Johan could go in to the pups. There were three of them and they looked about a couple of months old.

‘Them’s one part Lajka and two parts Lapphound, then there’s a bit of Siberian, too,’ he said. ‘Them’s bitches. Then we’ve the dog she mated with, he’s half Swedish hound. So there’s five sorts. Aren’t they great?’

One of them had light-blue eyes and Johan liked that one in particular. He said it must be the Siberian that had come through.

‘If you’d like a dog you can have it,’ said the Pergutt.

By then Johan was thinking everything had become so unreal he must be dreaming and that he had been dreaming for a long time. When he thought about Ylja, he could no longer see her face in front of him, only a blurred, shifting surface. And he thought about the well, and for a brief moment, he thought he had injured his foot when he fell into it.

But that was not how it happened. He had jumped from a first-floor window of a house in roadless country. Where? He had told Gudrun a Finn had given him a lift. The Finn seemed almost real to him. Then he realised it was the Silver Fox. He stared at the Pergutt and tried to think what to say to sound natural, what to reply. Pergutt had asked him something and his round open face was glowing with eagerness for a reply.

Sakka called out to them and when they went in, Gudrun was all ready to leave and Per was putting some money into his wallet. Johan flushed when he saw it. He hadn’t considered that Gudrun and Torsten would have to pay for him. He was to board with them. It was amazing that Torsten had agreed to pay money for him, surely a lot of money. Gudrun had none of her own, he knew that. She was talking to Per about the money, but they were speaking the Sami language; Johan couldn’t understand and realised he wasn’t meant to.

He was feeling peculiar. His foot ached and he was feeling rather sick after the pancakes and weak coffee. Gudrun was in such a hurry to leave, he could hardly believe it. Wasn’t she going to stay until evening, or even stop overnight, now that they wouldn’t be seeing each other for several days? He wanted to ask her lots of things. About money, for one. Was he going to have any of his own?