Blackwater (53 page)

More often than might be imagined, it was possible for these loners and leftovers to put their misery into words. But as therapy, that was worthless. It never changed anything. Antidepressant drugs were just as useless in the long run. Cabin life sometimes ended with a shotgun in an open mouth. Björne at least had been caught by the social services in time and had spells in the Frösö clinic, where they reckoned electric shock treatment had a positive effect on him.

From the beginning, Birger had thought of warning Annie that Björne was not quite so teddy-bear nice as he might seem when he came lumbering with carriers of birch bark and resin-soaked sticks to light her stove. As an eighteen-year-old, he had tried to rape a girl of his own age. She had been in quite a bad way. It was never reported but it came out all the same. Torsten had settled the matter with the girl’s father. It was said that he had helped out with a sum when the father was exchanging his old car for another one, thus enabling him to buy a heavy, four-wheel-drive American vehicle.

No one believed Björne had meant to rape the girl. He no doubt thought that was how it was done. Afterwards he found himself isolated. The girls kept their distance and he was never again alone with any of them.

When Birger heard how Annie had made his acquaintance, that she had gone with him into the company caravan, he understood why Björne had become her knight errant. She had rehabilitated him. She became his link with the village long after his parents had ceased to be so. The fact that she approved of his romantic explanation for his lone existence bound him even more strongly to her.

No, Birger had never warned Annie. He realised there was no need to. The bad talk about Björne must have eventually reached her and she had ignored it. She knew he would never do her any harm. Birger was convinced she had been right.

The activities of the Brandbergs that Midsummer night had been banal and were preserved in Vemdal’s cardboard box. Pekka had got hold of some woman. There had been no intention of continuing the acquaintance and she had been embarrassed when she had had to tell the police that he had gone back home with her. She was Norwegian and lived in a hamlet seventy kilometres across the border.

But what was her statement worth? Or that of Per-Ola’s girl? Väine and a friend had gone fishing that night. They had probably not had any success at the community centre, nor even managed to get hold of any Norwegian liquor. There was a caravan by Röbäck waters and they broke into it; whether out of mischief or to steal something was not stated. The owner of the caravan appeared with a mate and caught them. They got beaten up – and what might be called an alibi. But everything said about the Brandberg boys’ Midsummer night and their father’s seemed fragile and transparent now, so many years later. It was as if the threads had slid apart so that the fabric was on the verge of disintegrating. Who could swear to anything now?

Johan lay fully dressed on his hotel bed. His face was grey and stiff and there were lines round the corners of his mouth. The balance of fluids in him was awry. Birger brought him some mineral water and cautiously woke him.

‘Try to drink a little,’ he said. ‘What the hell have you been up to? Did you go out again last night?’

‘Yes, I went and had a glass or two,’ said Johan. He closed his eyes as he drank.

Ylja, Ylja? She couldn’t remember how the name had arisen.

‘It was something you said, another name. It sounded Finnish,’ said Johan. But they couldn’t pin it down.

He reckoned she was staying in the shadows, the darkness of the heavy drapes and furniture, just out of reach. She was not only bold, she was also cautious. She could never stand making a fool of herself.

He drank. He felt gutted, cleaned out, and now he was rinsing himself out inwardly. No headache, no dangers and no ridicule. Just pure liquor.

‘Did you know John Larue was handsome?’ she said.

She was no longer bothering to have secrets. There was a bloodstained shirt between them. It was a lie, but it was powerful and would work. In a way, it was a pity that was needed, he thought. We might have come to some agreement anyway. But she was probably not a person to make agreements with.

‘Not difficult to imagine the sacrificial knife in his body. He never became a spring god. But no doubt he wanted to.’

Johan suddenly remembered the yellowing paper in her academic tome, the acrid smell from it.

‘Christ, how I suffered in that guesthouse with its knotted rugs and wood carvings all round me. When I realised they’d gone after all. The streams running wildly up there, flowing over the marshlands. On Starhill. And she had him there. You like to think lust is just chemical whims and itching, Jukka dear. But you know it’s worse than that. She was as infatuated with him as I was. Though fatally. She had him and had him. How many times do you think they managed it? And all I had was a pillow that tasted synthetic and drab daylight in the room all night. So I left. And met you. The night had been stingy but the morning was bountiful.

‘What do you think happened up there?’ said Johan.

She grimaced.

‘I don’t know. I think it’s another story. Not theirs.’

‘But they were actually butchered – to put it bluntly.’

‘I’m glad it wasn’t you. But you should watch out. I think your difficulties are still to come.’

He tittered in the semi-darkness and drank deeply. The liquor no longer burnt; it was as tasteless and cool as stream water.

‘Are you clairvoyant?’

‘You reminded me of the deer hunter who saw Artemis naked. He saw her in the middle of the day, in bright sunlight. She turned him into a deer. But he was still a human being inside, with a memory and guilt. Though mute.’

‘How did he manage to turn himself back again?’

‘He didn’t manage.’

She emphasised the word as she repeated it, and with those broad vowels and her strong irony, it was pure scorn.

‘He was butchered by his fellow huntsmen. All they saw was a deer. In those damp Germanic forest sagas we were brought up with, the hunter sees the appealing eyes. But in the dazzling white sunlight down there, they saw nothing. Only prey.’

‘You like your stories,’ he said. ‘You play with them.’

‘So do you.’

That was true. He sometimes thought that he was under the rule of Njord in the mists and dragging rain. Or that Tjas Olmai sent him a flood in answer to his officious forecasting.

He had slept on the sofa with its dog hairs. She was not in the room, or else was occasionally. Looking at him. He could sense her smile, which might just as well have been Gudrun’s, and he slept raggedly and dreamt. The early morning was grey. He saw that the table by the window with its faded green velvet curtains was an altar. A cloth with wide lace was spread over it and between two candelabras stood a photograph. A young man in uniform. Fighting against the Russians had meant fighting for the Germans in the Continuation War, Johan thought. That was what obligation looked like. Or duty or honour, or whatever the upright young officer might have called it. Her grandfather had lost his money because he refused to cooperate with the Germans. Or was that a lie? Was Trollevolden on the contrary confiscated in the settlement after the war? Had he perhaps been a collaborator?

Why were these rooms almost untouched? Was she being faithful to something beneath all that mockery? But he didn’t really want to know.

He met her on his way to find a lavatory. She now looked as she had when Birger and he had first seen her. Sallow and grey, absentminded. He splashed for a long time in the lavatory, which had a seat of lovely dark wood and was flushed by pulling a china handle on a chain. It solemnly roared and hurt his head. Light and sound made him feel sick.

She had put out ham and eggs in the kitchen. There was dark bread cut into slices, butter and coarse-grained cheese. She was making coffee in an old-fashioned percolator as she talked about Artemis, though not in the way she had during the grey night. Now she was lecturing him.

‘For a long time it was thought the famous statue of Artemis of Ephesus had a huge burden of breasts. That she bore her attribute of motherliness to excess. Round, bunlike and fruitful. Then the archaeologists started looking a bit closer at them. Two Austrians, they were. They saw the buns didn’t really look at all like breasts.’

Off she skips, it hurts her tits, raced through Johan’s head. Please God, keep my mouth shut. This isn’t a hangover. I’m still not sober, though greyer. I’m fifteen. She has never met me.

‘Have you seen a picture of Artemis of Ephesus?’

How would he know? He had perhaps seen it in some art book. A staring face. Bunches of breasts. Ylja put a plate in front of him. On it lay a slice of ham at least five millimetres thick. The moist meat was pink and interspersed with white fat. There were segments of meat with something translucent in between. Water? Aspic? She had fried an egg so carefully that it had hardly solidified, the yolk shimmering like oil.

‘Do you know what it was?’

He closed his eyes to avoid looking at the egg.

‘The feast of Artemis of Ephesus was celebrated by the priests castrating young bulls before her altar. They tied the scrotums together into a wreath. That’s what she wears round her neck and on her chest, Jukka. The virgin mother. Not a pleasant acquaintance.’

He turned his head and slowly pushed the plate away.

‘Can’t you eat it?’

Then she broke an egg into a glass and poured in some vodka. She twisted the peppermill twice over the liquor and handed him the glass. He closed his eyes. The contents slid down like an oyster.

‘I must go,’ he said. ‘I want to be back before Birger wakes.’

‘Be careful, Jukka,’ she said.

‘Do you know something, or are you just talking?’

He had thought of saying, ‘talking shit’. He was sick of her stories. And yet he felt like telling her she was right. Profound desire is not chemical. The soul is not a transformation of the ego. But he couldn’t collect his wits enough to say anything. Well, he said goodbye. Quite politely, although he was pale and the palm of the hand he held out was moist.

He had to rest on his way back to the hotel. There was a park, the place where Birger had wanted to pat someone on the behind. A goddess. She was standing there on her plinth in the morning chill. He didn’t want her to turn round and reveal a garland of bull’s testicles and bloody shreds of scrotum round her neck. Otherwise everything was as usual, a grey late-summer morning. Fat tree sparrows. Ice-cream wrappers.

Johan and Birger were at the McDonald’s near the crossroads in Odengatan in Stockholm, watching a door on the other side of Sveavagen. Teenagers in red peaked caps were collecting trays, but on their table the greasy cartons and plastic litter were accumulating. Birger reckoned you had to keep fetching more if you sat there for so long. They had taken a table on the pavement. The traffic was roaring by and sometimes they couldn’t see the door. A bus stopped in their line of vision, the stench gaseous in the humid air. It was difficult. That made Birger feel they were being useful. But the coffee was good.

‘The Foundation,’ said Birger. ‘Funny name for a second-hand bookshop.’

‘Must be second-hand SF,’ said Johan.

Birger didn’t understand what he meant, but it didn’t matter. They would soon find him there. Vemdal had tracked him down for them. Birger thought they ought to ask Vemdal out to dinner, but Johan didn’t want to. He was afraid of him.

He said quite honestly that he didn’t know why he was afraid. But Vemdal must still have some of his police instincts. Suddenly it might be too much for his conscience or his vanity and then he’d pick up the phone, Johan had said. We might just as well lie low.

It was a narrow, brown door with a grid-covered glass window in the upper part and a brass letter box in the brown wood, a newspaper stuck in it. They had looked closely at the door. There was no notice of opening times, only two locks, one of which looked like a new double lock. There was only one shop window. They hadn’t bothered about the books, but Birger now regretted not taking a look at them. He went in to fetch two more cardboard mugs of coffee and when he came back with the tray, Johan said:

‘Something’s happened.’

‘Has he come?’

‘No. Look at the letter box and you’ll see.’

‘Has someone stolen the paper?’ said Birger.

‘It was pulled into the shop from inside. There’s someone there, although it’s locked.’

‘Hell, then we’ll bang on the door until he opens up.’

‘Wait.’

The door opened and he came out. As he turned round to lock both locks, they looked at him. He was wearing a dark-brown jacket with narrow cream-coloured stripes. His jeans looked new and his boots were black. His long hair was tied at the back with a ribbon or a rubber band. It was no longer golden but dark blond, though it still came far down his back. There were some lighter streaks in it, but it was impossible to see whether they were silvery.

Birger wanted to leap up and rush across the street, but he couldn’t move. He saw the slim figure setting off towards Odengatan, his back very straight. Then he swung round the corner by the bank and disappeared.

‘Hell’s bells!’

Johan looked at Birger in the way you look at a sick man but can’t do much for him.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘He’ll probably be back soon. I think he lives there.’

‘It’ll soon be half past ten,’ said Birger. ‘Christ!’

Johan levered the lid off one of the mugs and practically inserted it into Birger’s hand. He’s afraid I’ll start crying, Birger thought. What an old wreck I am! He thought of himself as full of garbage, like the table. The garbage of time. And there, on the other side of the street, Dan Ulander was walking quite unmoved through time.

Less than ten minutes later he was back, a paper bag in his hand.

‘Fresh white rolls,’ said Birger, so bitterly that Johan laughed. They left their coffee and made their way across Sveavägen.

The second-hand bookstore was small but deepened and darkened as they went further in. In the first section there was a stand of colourful pamphlets and books, rather like comics, Birger thought, but then he saw they were all science fiction.