Blackwater (7 page)

‘Thanks for the lift,’ she said, feeling she had to, but not daring to offer to pay. She was quite simply afraid his answer might be indecent.

‘Why doesn’t Dan come?’ said Mia, as soon as they were alone.

‘I don’t know. He’s probably got the wrong day.’

She couldn’t hear the sound of Ola’s car, but he must have gone. Now there were only birds and even they sounded hesitant. Perhaps most of them were asleep, although it was so light. It was past midnight. A bird kept calling on the same monotonous note and there was strong scent of birch leaves all around them, the leaves not as far out as down in the village. The grass in the pastures was also shorter than on the slopes down below.

The homestead consisted of a modern red building and a barn, a couple of dog runs and a group of small grey cottages on a slope. The light was so uncertain now that the houses furthest down by the lake seemed to be moving. Mia held Annie’s hand as they trudged along, listening attentively in towards the forest.

‘The way he goes on,’ she said. Annie realised she meant the capercaillie whistling on its one note. The pasture sloped down to a stream, and in the dip the path divided where there was a small building with a collapsed shingle roof.

‘We go left here.’

The path curved, then climbed again. After a while they could see the woodshed again and the house from the back. Annie was uncertain. The map told her nothing about the network of paths across the pasture, nor about the numerous small wooden buildings gleaming in the night light. To make sure, they plodded back to the stream, and at the little house they set off in the other direction.

The path seemed larger now, apparently leading somewhere and taking them away from the little grey timber houses. They came into forest consisting almost entirely of twisted birches hung with lichen. Some had fallen and were slowly rotting; grey fungus grew like tumours out of them. Ferns protruded from the ground beneath the birches, their hairy brown tips still curled up. The forest with its hanging black lichen and fallen trees was full of bird calls, whistles, clicks and flutings. But they saw no birds.

They had come up into upland terrain and she thought this odd, for they ought to have been nearing the lake. Now they seemed to be going up to a ridge and the path had joined a much larger and more used one. She suddenly realised they were going in the wrong direction. Ola had said to be careful not to get on to the path from Blackwater. That would take them down into the village again if they went on.

‘We must turn back,’ she said. Mia gave her a look which made her seem adult.

‘Or . . . hang on. We’ve probably come on to the right path from the village. But we’re on our way down. We must turn round, not go down the way we came, but take this big path to the lake. Wait, and I’ll show you.’

She sat Mia down on a tree trunk and started unfolding the map. It was difficult to see the details for the light was grey under the trees, and she realised she needed a compass. But when they had left Ola’s car, she had had no idea the landscape was so full of paths branching off and dissolving into long wet streaks of marshland, diffuse grey buildings and human installations where there should have been wilderness, heights and hollows she had not expected. Not even the names matched those on the map.

She had been in a hurry to get away and had felt pressured by Ola’s unpleasant semi-aggressive curiosity. He was nothing like what she had imagined people here would be.

‘Ssh!’ said Mia. She was listening intently. Then Annie could hear a sharp regular sound and a thumping. It was coming closer and she realised someone was moving along the path further up and coming towards them. She put her arm round Mia and almost pushed her down behind the tree trunk. The girl landed on the map, which rustled. Then Annie heard the noise again and realised the sharp sound was someone breathing. Panting. But she couldn’t make out whether it was an animal or a human being. She held Mia pressed to the ground, but the tree trunk wasn’t high enough to conceal Annie too.

He never even saw her. He was lumbering up the slope, looking straight ahead, his mouth open, his sharp breathing coming in small laboured gasps. He was very dark, with long, dead-straight hair he had tucked behind his ears. His eyes were narrow and black and he was carrying something in his arms. She had no time to identify it, seeing only that it hindered him as he hurried on. Then he was gone.

She had frightened Mia and was now regretting it. But getting her down out of sight had been an instinctive action.

‘It was only a boy,’ she said, trying to talk away the fear she saw in Mia’s face.

‘Are there animals here?’

‘I don’t know. We must hurry now. It’s not far to Nirsbuan. We might meet Dan. He’ll realise he’s got the wrong day.’

She walked quietly, listening as they went on. The tall, dark-haired boy might turn and come back. Mia noticed she was tense and no longer let go of her hand.

It was colder up there so they escaped the insects. To start with the path was clear and easy, leading down into lowland ground that became wetter until it finally ran into a long marsh, white flowers looking like tufts of wool gleaming in the night light. There were thousands of them in a layer of air moving just above the shifting reddish yellow and green of the sedge. Their boots squelched and it was heavy going. Once or twice the path divided, but Annie had no difficulty distinguishing which was the most used.

The forest had withdrawn to the higher slopes. They got further and further away from it as it grew darker. She reckoned it would soon be growing lighter. Mia said nothing about being tired and Annie didn’t dare ask. They had to go on. But the path was much longer and rougher than she had imagined, the marshy soil sucking at their feet and dragging them down.

They came to a little stream and crossed it. They thought of having a drink of water, but the mosquitoes attacked the moment they stopped. After balancing on stones and crossing to the other side, they found the path divided into several indistinct branches. They trudged round for a while to find the right one, getting further and further away from the stream. When they went back to find the fording place, it had gone.

Stones and clear water rippling with a chattering sound over the fine sandy bottom. Marsh marigolds, not yet out. Some woolly greenish-grey clumps of willow leaning over the water. Twisted birches festooned with black veils. It looked much the same everywhere. She couldn’t tell where they had crossed.

‘You know what,’ she said, trying to sound decisive. ‘I think it’s difficult finding the path up here in the marshland. Suppose we go straight across and try to find the river instead?’

She couldn’t see the water, but it must be the river there behind a broad belt of green clumps and occasional birches. To start with, they followed the stream, but walking there with no path was quite another matter. The ground was uneven and large, hard tussocks of grass grew nearest the stream. She wondered what Mia was thinking as she swiftly glanced around. The tussocks looked like scrubby skulls sticking out of the earth; the birches were twisted and full of knots.

On the last stretch down to the river, they cut across some marshland which swayed under their feet. They could hear the water now, a murmur as talkative as the stream’s, but with several voices. According to the map, the river ran down from the mountain, its winding bends ceasing at the Klöppen. As they rounded a little island of birches in the marshland, she caught sight of the lake. A white sheet, a metallic gleam lighter than the sky’s.

The same fuzzy grey willows grew along the river as on the banks of the stream, but the undergrowth was higher, apparently impenetrable. The ground was firmer among the birches, but very uneven. She was beginning to feel really tired. With her much shorter legs, how long would Mia be able to cope with walking up and down dips and uneven ground?

Quite unexpectedly, the undergrowth thinned out, leaving a slope running down to the river. Something blue glinted and once past the last obscuring bushes, they could see two twisted spruces close to each other and beside them a small tent. A circling bird with its wings outspread suddenly dived, its wings pressed close to its body, and they heard a whistling sound that was perhaps a call. It looked like a projectile as it dived through the air.

The tent was not big enough for more than two people. It had been pitched close to the water, which raced along between smooth, round stones. At first she felt a tremendous relief. Whoever was sleeping inside would have walked there and must know where the path led and where to ford the river. Then she saw Mia’s eyes fixed on the bright-blue little tent, and they were wide with fear. She ought to tell her everything was all right now. They had found people. They would soon find Nirsbuan and their journey’s end. But she said nothing. She took Mia’s hand and pulled her slowly behind the undergrowth.

‘Let’s go,’ she whispered, though it was totally unnecessary to whisper. Inside that tent no one could have heard anything above the noise of the water.

A silvery light was gleaming round the cottage, which lay high up, and through the screen of wild chervil, Johan could see how everything seemed to rise and fall in the uncertain light – like the earth breathing.

He didn’t go in by the door. The key to the cottage always used to be kept on a nail under the eaves on the gable facing the lake. But Torsten had said that if the Starhill people occupied it, he would report them to the police for breaking and entering. Then he put an iron crossbar across the door and locked it with a padlock. Nowadays, he kept the key at home.

It was possible to ease out the nails that held the hingeless bedroom window in place. Once he had climbed inside, he threw the eel parcel on the kitchen table and at once started the lengthy process of lighting the stove. It had to be started with meths, so he soaked some old newspaper, stuffed it inside and lit it. At first there had been a rustle when he pulled out the damper, as if something, perhaps the body of a bird, had fallen down a bit. Then a thick cloud of yellow smoke came billowing out as he set fire to the sticks and firewood. He almost started crying, as if he had lost ten or twelve years of his life as he crouched down in front of the stove, chilled to the bone and shaking. Acrid smoke soon filled the cabin.

He opened the window, pulled out the burning wood and put it into a basin. Then he started from the beginning again, the meths flared up this time and the roaring sounded different.

Running along the path, he had been thinking about the warmth of the cabin, hot cocoa and the old quilts he would wrap round himself. He would be in a nest. But once he got the stove going and the smoke had more or less dispersed, there was much to do before he could curl up and think. He wanted to think. He had to. But first he had to fetch a bucket of water from the lake, and to do that he had to climb out through the kitchen window. Then he had to put the bedroom window back into its frame and slot the nails back in. He had to hang his wet jeans over the stove and could find nothing else to wear while they were drying. There were some old jackets, but no trousers. He wrapped a blanket round his legs and stumbled around as if in a long skirt.

There was some cocoa left in the packet, but only a few yellowish lumps remained of the dried milk, sticky with damp. The cocoa he made was watery, but at least hot. The biscuits tasted of the cottage.

What a bloody hassle just to get a bit of warmth and something to eat! The sun had risen as he crawled under the quilts. All this time, the eel had lain writhing in its shirt parcel; Johan forgot all about it until he was well bedded down. He got up, untied the shirtsleeves and let the eel down into the bucket of water. For a while its long glossy body thrashed around and the water swirled from the force of those hidden muscles. Then it lay still in a circle at the bottom of the yellow plastic bucket and Johan was too tired to watch it any more. Or to think. That had to be postponed. He had to get some sleep.

But he was so damned cold, he couldn’t sleep. It was too light, and he could hear the noise of the birds through the ill-fitting window, especially a great tit constantly repeating two shrill notes. Behind his tightly closed eyelids, his eyeballs were still smarting from the smoke and he could only relieve that by opening his eyes.

After a while, he got up and put some more dry birchwood full of mouse droppings into the stove. When he thought about Torsten being the one who had chopped the wood, who had hauled the beaver-felled trunk with the scooter, he felt panic-stricken. Torsten had made the warmth for him. Everything he had eaten since he was born, Torsten had provided. He could see him in front of his eyes, bare torso, work trousers sagging. Brown skin with powerful bunched muscles. Black hair growing in a cross on his chest, the foot of the cross rooted firmly in that invisible area in his loins.

He was wide awake now, shuddering with cold under the damp quilts. The sun was shining brightly through the east window, the great tit persisting.

He had wanted to think. But not like this. Thoughts and images were forcing their way into him like the sunlight from outside. He couldn’t shut them out or sort them.

He could see Torsten by the washstand, snorting in the water, his powerful body leaning forward, spots and blotches on the skin of his back. He pictured Gudrun’s hand on that back, her fingers sliding over the spots. How the hell could he see that so clearly, something he had never seen?

He was trapped. Caught in a web, captured. The food he ate was Torsten’s muscular strength. Everything he knew, truly deep down knew, came from the minds of Torsten and Gudrun. They loaded their programs into him. And now his mind was exhausted and heated from the mass of data he wished to shut off, but could not stop as it all went on racing through his skull.

He got up and switched on the radio. It was hanging on a nail in the ceiling to escape the barrier made by the hillside behind, but the batteries were low and all he could hear was crackles.

Perhaps he’d feel better after he’d had something to eat. He found a tin of baked beans, opened it and ate them without heating them up. They tasted sweet and revolting. Afterwards, a warmth gradually began to spread from within, especially in his loins and thighs. Together with a kind of drowsiness, this feeling often crept up on him in the afternoons, making him horny. He took hold of his member and it felt warm and large. Then he forgot it and could no longer hear the great tit. Sleep fluttered in his mind, using no force, but nonetheless he would have been unable to resist it.