Little Star (40 page)

‘That wolf,’ she said. ‘It’s looking at us. It’s wondering who we are. Who are we?’

The conversations died away, and they all looked up at the grey figure lying calmly watching them. Judging by the size, Teresa guessed it was a female.

‘Because we are something, aren’t we?’ she went on. ‘Together we are something, although we don’t know what it is yet. Do you feel it too?’

While the girls were talking, Theres had sat there humming quietly to herself, but now the humming turned into words, flowing out of her mouth like a song. Her gaze was turned inwards, and her hands hovered in front of her as if she were carrying out some complex invocation of which her voice was a part. In a second they were all swept up in its rhythm, and several of the girls began to sway in time with the melody of her speech.

‘All those who are afraid must stop being afraid. No one has done wrong. No one will be alone. The big people want us. They will not have us. I do not understand. But we are strong now. I do not understand we. We. We. I am small. We are not small. We are the red that comes out. We are what they want. No one will be allowed to touch us.’

When the flow of words ceased, there was absolute silence, and all the girls sat gazing into space with unseeing eyes. Then the silence was broken by a muted clapping. It was Ronja, bringing her palms together three times, applauding.

Teresa pulled the wolf skin towards her and took the plate shears out of her rucksack. She cut a strip off the skin and gave it to Linn, who whispered, ‘Thank you,’ and rubbed the coarse fur over her cheek. Teresa carried on cutting and handing out strips until everyone had a piece. Some put it in their pocket, but most sat stroking the grey, dense hair as if it really was a body they held in their hands.

‘From now on,’ said Teresa, ‘we are the pack. Anyone who harms one of us, harms us all.’

The girls nodded and stroked the wolf skin they now shared. Suddenly Ronja laughed out loud. She rocked back and forth, howling with laughter and waving the strip of skin around. Teresa looked at her, listened to the sound of her laughter and recognised something from her time in the psychiatric unit, from the other inmates. Ronja was a combination of letters, a diagnosis. She had some kind of mental illness that Teresa couldn’t put a name to.

When Ronja had finished laughing, she kissed the piece of skin several times, then knotted it around her arm with the help of her teeth before turning to Teresa.

‘You said just now that we are something, although we don’t know what it is yet. I can tell you what we are. We’re a gang of losers who like your songs. And we’re dangerous. Seriously fucking dangerous.’

Over the next few weeks
the group tried to find its direction. Apart from Theres and Teresa’s songs, there wasn’t much that linked them, no interest or activity on which to focus. They only thing they had was the feeling of necessity, the sense that they needed to meet and be together, but in every other way they were a drifting pack with no definite goal.

All of them wanted to be close to Theres. A contradictory mixture of the urge to defend and take care of this fragile girl, and the urge to venerate and fear her as something sent from heaven. They thirsted for her words, her voice when she occasionally sang, her mere presence.

And they thirsted for each other. Gradually they all spoke of the scent Teresa had been aware of during their first meeting. This was the only group where they felt safe. The fear that ruled their everyday lives faded away when they sat down together.

Teresa had begun to regard these Sunday gatherings as her real life, and the group as her family. The other days of the week were merely incidental; she longed constantly for the weekend when she would be with
her family.

And yet there was something missing. Ronja said they were more like an encounter group than a pack. They all had their piece of wolf skin, some had even sewn it on their jackets, but where was this pack actually going, what was it going to
do?

The third time they met, Linn, who had begun to pluck up
the courage to speak, told them that she sometimes pretended she was dead. She mentioned it in passing, but struck an unexpected chord. It turned out that they had found a very clear common denominator.
All of them,
every single one of the girls, played that particular game.

So they began to play it together. Lying on the grass outside the wolf enclosure, they held each other’s hands, closed their eyes and whispered chants such as: ‘The grass is growing through our hearts’, ‘Our bodies are rotting and the worms are eating us from the inside’, ‘We are sinking through the earth and all is silent’. They could lie like that for a long time, and when they rose from their graves it was as if the world had become more alive.

Theres said it was good, but not right. When Teresa asked what she meant, the reply was that Teresa already knew.

Yes. She knew. But it was not the kind of knowledge she could share with the others. Irrespective of how much she valued their affinity, she dared not trust them in the same unconsidered way that Theres did.

Teresa would have liked to tell them, talk about her own experience and show them the scar on her stomach. How she had come to life and how her senses had been heightened, how ever since she had lived in a
present
that had not been accessible before. How this allowed her to sit in the group and really be there, to leave the group and still feel the quiver of life in the rustle of the leaves, the smell of exhaust fumes and the play of colours.

But she dared not tell them. The others were not in the same place as her. When they met it always took a while before they found their common voice, before the fear was driven out. The other six days of the week were stuck firmly to them, and in spite of everything they were just other people with parents and classmates.

So difficult to stay alive! She often thought about it, and remembered what she had been like. Never really
there.
She had caught sight of herself only in fleeting glimpses between her troubles and her thoughts, as someone who breathes and lives and can experience
the moment. Then it was gone.

So different now. Teresa would have liked to tell them. But it was too dangerous. Yet.

The album that was released
in the middle of May was a bit of a hotch-potch. Because they wanted to surf the wave created by ‘Fly’, the producer, the musicians and the studio techs had only a couple of weeks to create a finished product from the bare MP3 files.

Max Hansen tried both the carrot and the stick to get Theres into the studio so that her singing could be professionally recorded. He promised five- and six-figure sums, he threatened her with the police, psychiatric care and throwing her to the ravening dogs of the media, but it was no use. Either his threats were transparent, or she was incapable of grasping the misery he could unleash on her head.

He thought it was probably the former. Either Theres or the freak realised he couldn’t reveal what he knew without implicating himself. Oh, he was ready to do that, but he wanted to wait for the right moment. The moment when he was a long way away from Stockholm, and his only problem was where the money would get the best return.

Despite the fact that the album had been a rush job, it was enthusiastically received. Not one reviewer failed to comment on the poor sound quality; but on the other hand Tesla’s voice had a tone and a timbre that made up for the defects. The production also left a great deal to be desired, but there too the technical aspects were counterbalanced by the quality of the songs. There was no doubt whatsoever that this Tesla, whoever she might be, was a new artist to be reckoned with.

Given what Max Hansen had found out about Theres, he dared not meet her without other people present, but he couldn’t get hold of her by phone or email. Therefore it was impossible to arrange any interviews or photo shoots.

However, just a few days after the album had been released, he came to realise that what he had thought was a weakness was in fact a strength. There was a huge appetite for information about this new star in the Swedish music firmament, but none was forthcoming. Just when Max Hansen had begun to draw up strategies to create fake quotes and interviews, he noticed the change of tone in what was being written about Tesla.

Her silence was interpreted as seriousness, and her absence from the public arena was seen as enigmatic. After an article in
Aftonbladet
which interwove acclaim for Tesla as the great new hope for Swedish music with unabashed speculation about her, other newspapers jumped on the bandwagon. The clips from
Idol
were analysed and pronounced magical, Tora Larsson’s terse responses were interpreted and commented upon. Journalists turned and twisted what they knew, and got nowhere; and the result was a genuine mystique surrounding Tesla. Something exciting.

Max Hansen couldn’t have timed the whole thing any better if he had planned it. It was a three-stage rocket. First the speculation, then Sing Along at Skansen, then…the bomb. A week or so after Sing Along he would drop the bomb, and if that didn’t boost the already-high sales figures, then he didn’t know what would.

But there was a defect in the rocket’s construction.

Tesla’s appearance at Skansen was set for June 26; she was appearing on the same bill as The Ark. Everything was poised for success, and Max Hansen had emailed her all the information. All sorted except for one small point: he had no idea whether she was intending to turn up.

Swedish Television had been after him for her details so that they could contact her directly, but Max Hansen had referred to the girl’s well-known shyness, and said that all communication was to go
through him, and that he could guarantee that she would be there for both the rehearsals and the show, no problem.

But in fact: mucho problem.

The uncertainty gnawed away at him, and Max Hansen began to consider desperate measures.

Insofar as it is possible
to become a different person from the one we are born, Jerry came home from the USA a different person. His focus on the future had changed, his view of the past had changed, and for once he had not been kicked in a new direction, but had taken the step himself.

It happened on the third day of his visit. Paris’ parents lived in a small house on the outskirts of Miami, and Jerry, Paris and Malcolm had gone shopping at a Wal-Mart that made the Flygfyren complex in Norrtälje look like a sausage stall. If the car park had been emptied of vehicles, it would probably have been possible to land a plane on it.

It was unusually humid for April. Paris had told him this was nothing compared to summer, but for Jerry it felt positively tropical. A pressure grew in his skull as they pushed their way among the crowds in the air-conditioned shopping mall, and when they emerged into the car park with their over-stuffed bags and the heat hit them, Jerry was overcome by dizziness.

The car was parked several hundred metres from the entrance, and as they walked across the vast expanse beneath the blazing sun, his legs gave way. The bags landed on the asphalt and he fell to his knees. He bent down, clutching his head with his hands as the sweat poured down his back. He was embarrassed, but he just couldn’t get up. It felt like a failure, a confirmation of what a pathetic specimen he was.

Paris’ parents had welcomed him, and he had almost managed to forget that he had let Theres down in order to make the trip possible.
He felt bad about leaving her alone, but there had been no alternative. He just had to go with Paris. Now, down on his knees on the burning asphalt, it was as if God had punished him. Struck him over the head with his sun club in order to bring him to his knees and make him realise what a shit he was.

He felt Malcolm’s arms around him, the weight of the child’s body against his back as the boy embraced him from behind and shouted, ‘Jerry, Jerry, what’s the matter? Please get up Jerry, please!’

The thin, anxious voice cooled him down a little and he looked up in time to see Paris bend down and caress his cheek. The sun was directly behind her head, and made her black hair shine like a halo as she said, ‘Darling, what happened? Are you OK?’

Jerry straightened up. He was still on his knees squinting into the sun as he looked into Paris’ eyes. The words that came out of his mouth needed no thought:

‘Paris, will you marry me?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you…what?’

‘Yes. When you get up off your knees we can go find the priest, if that’s what you want.’

Jerry gradually managed to get to his feet, but Paris hadn’t been serious about going to find the priest right away. Yes, she wanted to marry him, but she wanted a proper wedding. If she had said she only wanted to marry him as long as it was on top of Mount Everest dressed in deep sea diving gear, Jerry would have started investigating the possibilities. A proper wedding was a piece of cake.

When they got back to Sweden they started making plans, and they decided to get married in Miami in the middle of July, because Paris was the one who had family. It was fun to think about, but basically it was nothing more than a technicality. The key thing had happened in the car park outside Wal-Mart.

Jerry had been down for the count several times in his life; he knew what it meant to be on his knees in both a physical and mental sense. But no one had ever put their arms around him and said
Please
get up Jerry, please
with genuine anxiety in their voice. And no one had ever caressed his cheek, called him darling and asked him if he was OK. No one had ever actually cared whether he got up or not.

But the miracle had happened in that blazing car park, and how could it not change him? There was a future that looked bright, and when he thought about his murky past, there was a point to it after all, because it had led him to
now.

If Ingemar Stenmark’s race hadn’t interrupted his performance on the guitar, perhaps he wouldn’t have got so lost in his teens, and then perhaps he wouldn’t have been interested in Theres. If Theres hadn’t been found and hadn’t killed his parents, then she wouldn’t have been living with him. If he hadn’t played the guitar, if he hadn’t found that wallet, if Theres hadn’t been so violent…in the end everything had led to Paris and his collapse in the car park. And so it was all good.

Perhaps his new-found happiness made him take the difficulties with Theres less than seriously, but it seemed as if she too had sorted herself out. She was communicating with her friends, and seemed to be adapting to a more normal life.

The only cloud on Jerry’s horizon was Max Hansen. A week or so after Jerry got back from the USA, Hansen was on him like a leech, trying to force Theres into the studio. Jerry discovered that Max Hansen was aware of Theres’ background, because he used it as a threat. Jerry asked Theres if she wanted to sing in the studio again, and she said no. Max Hansen refused to take no for an answer, and Jerry changed to an unlisted phone number.

The album still came out, and Jerry entertained many evil thoughts about Max Hansen when the telephone started to ring despite the unlisted number. Journalists asked about Tesla or Tora Larsson, and Jerry said he had no idea what they were talking about. After five calls he unplugged the phone, threw it in the bin and got himself a mobile with a pre-paid card.

At the end of May Jerry received an envelope. It contained ten one-thousand-kronor notes, and a letter which explained in an
aggressive tone that he would get another twenty thousand if he could just guarantee that Theres would turn up at Skansen on the morning of June 26. It would be in his best interests to contact Max Hansen immediately to confirm that he would take care of the matter, otherwise things could get very nasty indeed.

Jerry put the ten thousand kronor away for the wedding, and asked Theres what she wanted to do. She said she didn’t know, and he had to be satisfied with that. What else was he supposed to do? Shove Theres in a sack and carry her off to Skansen? The only thing he could do was keep his fingers crossed, say a prayer and hope for the best.

These days his contact with Theres was mostly limited to practical matters. She had her own life and he had his. He made sure there was baby food in the fridge, and he paid the bills. Apart from that she had to look after herself, while he spent more and more time at home with Paris and Malcolm.

Jerry was so far gone in his new, positive attitude to the world that he didn’t even think twice when he heard by chance at the end of May that the man who used to run the local shop had been robbed and murdered. It was just a tragic story that for once had nothing to do with him.