At half past six in the morning, Mimmi took her breakfast break. She’d been working in the bar since five. The aroma of coffee and newly baked bread mingled with the meaty smells of freshly made lasagne and stew. Fifty aluminum food containers stood cooling on the stainless steel worktop. She’d been working in the kitchen with the door propped open so that it wouldn’t be so hot. And because they liked it, the old men. It was company for them, she supposed. Watching her fly about, working, filling up the coffee pot. And they could eat in peace, no critical eyes watching if they happened to chew with their mouths open or spill coffee down their shirts.
Before she sat down to eat her own breakfast, she dashed out into the dining room and gave the customers a little treat, going round with the coffee pot to offer a top-up. She pressed them to accept and offered round the bread basket. At that moment she belonged to all of them, she was their wife, their daughter, their mother. Her stripy hair was still damp from her morning shower, done up in a plait under the handkerchief she wore tied around her head. The looks she got said it all. She would never run around in the bar with loose, wet hair, dripping onto her tight sweater from H &M. Miss Wetter and Wetter T-shirt. She put the coffee pot down on the hot plate and announced:
“Just help yourselves, I’m going to sit down for quarter of an hour.”
“Mimmi, come over here and have a chat,” one of the men sang out in reply.
Some of them were on their way to work. They were the ones taking quick little gulps of coffee to get it down as rapidly as possible, although it was still too hot, bolting their sandwich in two bites. The others spent an hour or so here before they ambled home to loneliness. They tried to start conversations and flicked aimlessly through the previous day’s newspaper, today’s wouldn’t be here for ages. In the village people didn’t say they were unemployed or off sick or had taken early retirement. They said they were at home.
Their overnight guest Rebecka Martinsson was sitting alone at a table by the window, looking out over the river. Eating her muesli and drinking coffee, in no hurry.
Mimmi lived in a one-room apartment in town. She’d hung on to it although she practically lived with Micke in the house nearest the bar. When she’d decided to stick around for a while her mother had said something feeble about moving in with her. It had been so obvious that she’d felt obliged to offer, it would never have occurred to Mimmi to say yes. She’d been running the bar with Micke for just about three years now, and it wasn’t until last month that Lisa had given her a spare key to the house.
“You never know,” she’d said, looking everywhere but at Mimmi. “If anything was to happen… I mean, the dogs are in there.”
“Of course,” Mimmi had replied, taking the key. The dogs.
Always those bloody dogs, she’d thought.
Lisa had seen that Mimmi was annoyed and sullen, but it wasn’t her style to pretend she’d noticed something and to try and talk. No, it was time to leave. If it wasn’t a meeting of the women’s group, then it was the animals at home, maybe the rabbit hutches needed cleaning out or one of the dogs had to go to the vet.
Mimmi clambered up onto the oiled wooden worktop next to the refrigerator. If she drew up her legs she could squeeze in next to the fresh herbs growing in tin cans that had been washed out. It was a good place. You could see Jukkasjärvi on the other side of the river. A boat, sometimes. That window hadn’t been there when the place was a workshop. Micke gave it to her as a gift. “I’d like a window just here,” she’d said. And he’d sorted it.
It wasn’t that she was angry with the dogs. Or jealous. Most of the time she called them her brothers. But when she was living in Stockholm, Lisa never once came to visit. Didn’t even ring. “Of course she loves you,” Micke always said. “She’s your mother after all.” He didn’t understand anything.
There must be something genetically wrong with us, she thought. I mean, I’m incapable of loving as well.
If she met a guy who was a total shit, she could fall in love, of course-no, that was far too tame a word, the cheap supermarket version of the feeling she had; she became psychotic, dependent, an abuser. It had happened. There was one time in particular, when she lived in Stockholm. When you tore yourself free of a relationship like that, you left great chunks of flesh behind.
With Micke it was something quite different. She could have a child with him, if she’d actually believed she was capable of loving a child. But he was good, Micke was good.
Outside the window some of the hens were scratching about in the autumn grass. Just as she sank her teeth into her freshly baked bread, she heard the sound of a moped out on the track. It pulled into the yard and stopped.
Nalle, she thought.
He was always turning up at the bar in the mornings. If he woke up before his father and managed to sneak away without being heard. Otherwise the rule was that he was supposed to have breakfast at home.
After a little while he materialized outside the window where she was sitting and knocked on the glass. He was wearing a pair of bright yellow dungarees that had belonged to a telecom engineer once upon a time. The reflector strip down by his feet was almost completely worn away through frequent wearing and washing. On his head he had a blue cap of imitation beaver with big earflaps. His green fleecy jacket was much too short. Stopped at the waist.
He gave her one of his priceless crafty smiles. It split his powerful face, the big jaw shifting to the right, eyes narrowing, eyebrows shooting upward. It was impossible not to smile back, it didn’t matter that she wasn’t going to be able to have her sandwich in peace.
She opened the window. He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and fished out three eggs. Looked at her as if he’d performed an amazing trick. He usually went into the henhouse and collected the eggs for her. She took them off him.
“Brilliant! Thanks! So, is it Hungry Harry who’s come to visit us?”
A rumbling laugh emerged from his throat. Like a starter motor that isn’t keen, in slow motion, hmmm-hmmm.
“Or maybe it’s Dennis the Dishwasher?”
He answered with a delighted no, knew she was joking with him, but still shook his head vigorously to be on the safe side. He hadn’t come here to wash up.
“Hungry?” she asked, and Nalle turned on his heel and vanished around the corner.
She jumped down from the worktop, closed the window, took a gulp of coffee and a big bite of her sandwich. By the time she got into the dining room, he was sitting opposite Rebecka Martinsson. He’d hung his jacket over the back of the chair next to him, but kept his cap on. It was a habit of his. Mimmi took off the cap and ruffled his thick, short hair.
“Wouldn’t you rather sit over there instead? Then you can see if any cool cars go past.”
Rebecka Martinsson smiled at Nalle.
“He’s welcome to sit with me,” she said.
Mimmi’s hand reached out and touched Nalle again. Rubbed his back gently.
“Do you want pancakes or yogurt or a sandwich?”
She knew the answer, but it was good for him to talk. And to make his own decisions. She could see the word being shaped in his mouth for a few seconds before it came out. His lower jaw moved first in one direction, then the other. Then, decisively:
“Pancakes.”
Mimmi disappeared into the kitchen. She took fifteen little pancakes out of the freezer and chucked them in the microwave.
Nalle’s father Lars-Gunnar and her mother Lisa were cousins. Nalle’s father was a retired policeman, and had been the leader of the local hunt for almost thirty years. That made him a powerful man. He was physically big too, just like Nalle. A policeman who commanded respect, in his day. And nice too, according to what people said. He still went to funerals when some old petty criminal died. On those occasions it was often only Lars-Gunnar and the priest who were there.
When Lars-Gunnar met Nalle’s mother, he was already over fifty. Mimmi remembered when he brought Eva to see them for the first time.
I can’t have been more than six, she thought.
Lars-Gunnar and Eva sat on the leather sofa in the living room. Lisa dashed in and out of the kitchen with cake and milk and more coffee and heaven knows what. That was the time when she was trying to fit in. Later on she got divorced and gave up baking and cooking altogether. Mimmi can almost imagine how Lisa eats her dinner in the cottage. Standing up, her bottom leaning against the worktop, shoveling down something out of a tin, maybe cold meat soup.
But that time. Lars-Gunnar on the sofa with his arm around Eva’s shoulders, an unusually tender expression for a man in this village, and particularly for him. He was so proud. She was, maybe not pretty, but much younger than him, like Mimmi now, somewhere between twenty and thirty. Mimmi can’t imagine where this social worker, a tourist on holiday, met Lars-Gunnar. But Eva gave up her job in… Norrköping, if Mimmi remembers rightly, got a job with the council and moved into the family home, where he still lived. After a year, Nalle was born. Although at the time he was called Björn. A suitable name for a big bear of a baby, but now everybody called him Nalle-“teddy bear.”
It can’t have been easy, thought Mimmi. Coming from a big town to live in a little village. Hauling the pram back and forth during her maternity leave, only the old dears to chat to. It’s a wonder she didn’t go crazy. Although that’s exactly what she did, of course.
The microwave pinged and Mimmi cut two slices of ice cream and spooned strawberry jam over the pancakes. She poured a big glass of milk and spread butter on three thick slices of coarse bread. Took three hard-boiled eggs out of a pan on the gas stove, put the whole lot on a tray with an apple, and took it out to Nalle.
“And no more pancakes until you’ve eaten the rest,” she said firmly.
When Nalle was three, he got inflammation of the brain. Eva rang the emergency helpline. She was told to wait awhile. And so things turned out the way they did.
And when he was five, Eva left. She left Nalle and Lars-Gunnar, and went back to Norrköping.
Or ran away, thought Mimmi.
There was a lot of talk in the village about how she’d abandoned her child. Some people just can’t cope with taking responsibility, they said. And they asked how she could do it. How could she? Abandon her child.
Mimmi doesn’t know. But she does know how it feels to be suffocated in the village. And she can imagine how Eva fell to pieces in the pink concrete house.
Lars-Gunnar stayed in the village with Nalle. Didn’t like to talk about Eva.
“What could I do?” was all he said. “I mean, I can’t force her.”
When Nalle was seven, she came back. Or, to be more accurate, Lars- Gunnar fetched her from Norrköping. The next door neighbor told everyone how he’d carried her into the house in his arms. The cancer had almost eaten her away. Three months later, she was gone.
“What could I do?” said Lars-Gunnar again. “She was the mother of my son, after all.”
Eva was buried in Poikkijärvi churchyard. Her mother and a sister came up for the funeral. They didn’t stay long. Stuck around for the coffee and sandwiches afterward just as long as necessary. Carried Eva’s shame for her. The other guests at the funeral didn’t look them in the eye, stared at their backs.
“And Lars-Gunnar stood there consoling them,” people said to each other. Couldn’t they have looked after the woman when she was dying? Instead it was Lars-Gunnar who’d taken care of all that. And you could see it to look at him. He must have lost fifteen kilos. Looked gray and worn out.
Mimmi wondered what would have happened if Mildred had been there then. Maybe Eva would have fitted in with the women in Magdalena. Maybe she’d have got a divorce from Lars-Gunnar but stayed in the village, managed to look after Nalle. Maybe she could even have managed to stay married to him.
The first time Mimmi met Mildred, the priest was sitting on Nalle’s moped. He was going to be fifteen in three months. Nobody in the village said a word about the fact that an underage mentally handicapped boy was driving around on a moped. Good God, he was Lars-Gunnar’s boy. Heaven knows they hadn’t had an easy time. And as long as Nalle stuck to the road through the village…
“Ouch, my arse!” laughs Mildred inside Mimmi’s head as she jumps off the moped.
Mimmi is sitting outside Micke’s. She’s taken one of the chairs outside and found a place sheltered from the spring breeze; she’s smoking a cigarette and turning her face up toward the sun in the hope of getting a bit of color. Nalle looks pleased. He waves to Mimmi and Mildred, turns and rides off, the gravel spraying up around him. Two years earlier he’d been one of Mildred’s confirmation candidates.
Mimmi and Mildred introduce themselves to each other. Mimmi is a bit surprised, she’s not sure what she was expecting, but she’s heard so much about this priest. That she’s wonderful. That she’s so wise. That’s she’s off her head.
And now she’s standing here looking completely normal. Boring, in fact, if she’s completely honest. Mimmi had expected some kind of electrical field around her, but all she sees is a middle-aged woman in unfashionable jeans and practical Ecco shoes.
“He’s such a blessing!” says Mildred, nodding in the direction of the moped chugging along the village road.
Mimmi mumbles and sighs and says something about how things haven’t been easy for Lars-Gunnar.
It’s like a conditioned reflex. When the village sings its song about Lars-Gunnar and his feeble young wife and his handicapped boy, the chorus is always the same: “feel sorry for… what some people have to go through… things haven’t been easy.”
A deep crease appears between Mildred’s eyebrows. She looks searchingly at Mimmi.
“Nalle is a gift,” she says.
Mimmi doesn’t reply. She doesn’t buy any of that all-children-are- a-gift-and-there-is-a-purpose-in-everything-that-happens.
“I don’t understand how people can keep talking about Nalle as if he were such a burden. Has it occurred to you what a good mood it puts you in, just being with him?”
It’s true. Mimmi thinks about the previous morning. Nalle is too heavy. He’s always hungry, and his father has his hands full making sure he doesn’t eat all the time. An impossible task. The ladies in the village can’t resist Nalle’s pleas for food, and sometimes neither can Mimmi and Micke. Like yesterday. Suddenly Nalle was standing in the kitchen of the bar with one of the hens under his arm. Little Anni, a Cochin, not much of a layer, but nice and affectionate, doesn’t mind being patted. But she doesn’t want to be carted away from the flock. She’s kicking with her little hen’s legs and cackling uneasily under Nalle’s huge arm.
“Anni!” says Nalle to Micke and Mimmi. “Sandwich.”
He twists his head to the left and bends his neck so that he’s looking at them sideways under his fringe. Looks crafty. It’s impossible to decide whether he knows he’s not fooling them for one second.
“Take the hen outside,” says Mimmi, attempting to look stern.
Micke bursts out laughing.
“Does Anni want a sandwich? Well, she’d better have one then.”
With a sandwich in one hand and the hen under the other arm, Nalle marches out into the yard. He puts Anni down and the sandwich disappears into his mouth at top speed.
“Hey!” Micke shouts from the veranda. “I thought that was for Anni?”
Nalle turns toward him with an expression of theatrical regret.
“Gone,” he says haplessly.
Mildred is still talking:
“I mean, I know it’s been difficult for Lars-Gunnar. But if Nalle hadn’t had these problems, would he really have brought any greater happiness to his father? I wonder.”
Mimmi looks at her. She’s right.
She thinks about Lars-Gunnar and his brothers. She can’t remember their father. Nalle’s grandfather. But she’s heard stories. Isak was a hard man. Kept the children in line with the strap. Sometimes worse. He had five sons and two daughters.
“Shit,” said Lars-Gunnar once. “I was so scared of my own father that I wet myself sometimes. Long after I’d started school.”
Mimmi remembers that comment very clearly. She was small then. Couldn’t believe that great big Lars-Gunnar had ever been scared. Or little. Wet himself!
How they must have tried not to be like their father, those brothers. But yet he’s there inside them. That contempt for weakness. A hardness passed down from father to son. Mimmi thinks about Nalle’s cousins, some of them live in the village, they’re in the hunting fraternity, they drink in the bar.
But Nalle is immune to all that. Lars-Gunnar’s occasional outbursts of bitterness toward Nalle’s mother, his own father, the world in general. His irritation over Nalle’s shortcomings. The self-pity and hatred that only come out properly when the men are drinking, but are always there just beneath the surface. Nalle can hang his head, but for a few seconds at the most. He’s a happy child in a grown man’s body. Gentle and honest through and through. Bitterness and stupidity don’t touch him.
If he hadn’t been brain damaged. If he’d been normal. She can work out how the landscape between father and son would have looked then. Barren and poor. Tainted by that contempt for their own enclosed weakness.
Mildred. She doesn’t know how right she is.
But Mimmi doesn’t embark on any discussion. She shrugs her shoulders by way of a reply, says it was nice to meet you, but now she’s got to get back to work.
Mimmi heard Lars-Gunnar’s voice in the dining room.
“For God’s sake, Nalle.”
Not angry. But tired and resigned.
“I’ve told you, we have breakfast at home.”
Mimmi came into the dining room. Nalle was sitting with his plate in front of him, hanging his head in shame. Licking the milk moustache off his upper lip. The pancakes were gone, so were the eggs and the bread, only the apple lay untouched.
“Forty kronor,” said Mimmi to Lars- Gunnar, a fraction too cheerfully.
Old skinflint, she thought.
He had a freezer full of free meat from hunting. The women in the village helped him out for free with cleaning and washing; they turned up with home baked bread and invited him and Nalle to dinner.
When Mimmi started working at the bar, Nalle used to get his breakfast there free.
“You mustn’t give him anything when he comes in,” Lars-Gunnar explained. “He’s just getting fat.”
And Micke gave Nalle his breakfast, but because he didn’t really have Lars-Gunnar’s permission, he hadn’t the guts to take payment for it.
Mimmi had.
“Nalle’s had breakfast,” she said to Lars-Gunnar the first time she had a morning shift. “Forty kronor.”
Lars-Gunnar had looked at her in surprise. Looked around for Micke, who was at home fast asleep.
“You’re not to give him anything when he comes begging,” he began.
“If he’s not allowed to eat, then you keep him away from here. If he comes in, he can eat. If he eats, you pay.”
From then on, he paid up. Paid Micke too, if he was doing the morning shift.
Now he was even smiling at her, ordering coffee and pancakes for himself. He stood at the side of the table where Nalle and Rebecka were sitting. Couldn’t decide where to sit. In the end he sat down at the table next to them.
“Come and sit here,” he said. “Perhaps the lady wants to be left in peace.”
The lady didn’t answer, and Nalle stayed where he was. When Mimmi brought the coffee and pancakes, he asked:
“Can Nalle stay here today?”
“More,” said Nalle, when he saw his father’s mound of pancakes.
“The apple first,” said Mimmi, immovable.
“No,” she said then, turning to Lars-Gunnar. “I’m up to my eyes in it today. Magdalena are having their autumn dinner and planning meeting in here tonight.”
A shiver of displeasure ran through him like a draft. As it did with most men when the women’s group came up in conversation.
“Just for a little while?” he ventured.
“What about Mum?”
“I don’t want to ask Lisa. She’s got such a lot to do before the meeting tonight.”
“One of the other women then? They all like Nalle.”
She watched Lars-Gunnar consider the alternatives. Nothing in this world was free. There were women he could ask, no doubt about it. But that was just the problem. Having to ask a favor. Bother people. Owe someone a big thank you.
Rebecka Martinsson looked at Nalle. He was staring at his apple. Difficult to work out if he felt as if he were a nuisance, or if he just felt it was hard to be forced to eat the apple before he could have more pancakes.
“Nalle can stay with me if he’d like to,” she said.
Lars-Gunnar and Mimmi looked at her in surprise. She was almost surprised at herself.
“I mean, I wasn’t thinking of doing anything special today,” she went on. “Maybe go for a bit of a trip… If he’d like to come along, then… I’ll give you the number of my cell phone.”
“She’s staying in one of the cottages,” Mimmi said to Lars-Gunnar. “Rebecka…”
“… Martinsson.”
Lars-Gunnar nodded a greeting to Rebecka.
“Lars-Gunnar, Nalle’s father,” he said. “If it’s no trouble…”
Obviously it’s trouble, but she’ll brush that aside, thought Mimmi angrily.
“No trouble at all,” Rebecka assured him.
I’ve jumped from the top board, she thought. Now I can do whatever I want.
In the conference room at the police station, Inspector Anna-Maria Mella was leaning back in her chair. She had called a morning meeting as a result of the letters and other papers found in Mildred Nilsson’s locker.
Apart from herself, there were two men in the room: her colleagues Sven-Erik Stålnacke and Fred Olsson. Twenty or so letters lay on the table in front of them. Most were still in their envelopes, which had been slit open.
“Right then,” she said.
She and Fred Olsson pulled on surgical gloves and began to read.
Sven-Erik was sitting with his clenched fists resting on the table, the great big squirrel’s tail under his nose sticking straight out like a scrubbing brush. He looked as if he’d like to kill somebody. Eventually he pulled on the latex gloves as if they were boxing gloves.
They glanced through the letters. Most were from parishioners with problems. There were divorces and bereavements, infidelity, worries about the children.
Anna-Maria held up one letter.
“This is just impossible,” she said. “Look, you just can’t read it, it looks like a tangled telephone wire sprawling across the pages.”
“Give it here,” said Fred Olsson, stretching out his hand.
First of all he held the letter so close to his face that it was touching his nose. Then he moved it slowly away until in the end he was reading it with his arm stretched right out.
“It’s a question of technique,” he said as he alternated between screwing his eyes up and opening them very wide. “First of all you recognize the little words, ‘and,’ ‘I,’ ‘so,’ then you can move on from them. I’ll look at it in a minute.”
He put the letter down and went back to the one he’d been reading before. He enjoyed this kind of work. Searching databases, getting hits, linking registers, looking for people with no fixed abode. “The truth is out there,” he always said as he logged on. He had a lot of good informers in his address book and a wide network of social contacts, people who knew about this and that.
“This one’s not very happy,” he said after a while, holding up a letter.
It was written on pale pink paper; there were galloping horses with flying manes up in the right-hand corner.
“ ‘Your time will soon be UP, Mildred,’ ” he read. “ ‘Soon the truth about you will be revealed to EVERYONE. You preach LIES and are living a LIE. MANY of us are tired of your LIES…’ blah, blah, blah…”
“Put it in a plastic pocket,” said Anna-Maria. “We’ll send anything interesting to the lab. Shit!”
“Look!” she said. “Look at this!”
She unfolded a sheet of paper and held it up to her colleagues.
It was a drawing. The picture showed a woman with long hair, hanging from a noose. The person who had done the drawing was talented. Not a professional, but a skillful amateur, that much was obvious to Anna-Maria. Tongues of fire curled around the dangling body, and a black cross stood on top of a grave mound in the background.
“What does it say down at the bottom?” asked Sven-Erik.
Anna-Maria read out loud:
“ ‘SOON MILDRED.’ ”
“That’s…” began Fred Olsson.
“I’ll send it to the lab in Linköping right away!” Anna-Maria went on. “If there are prints… We must ring them and tell them this has to have priority.”
“You go,” said Sven-Erik. “Fred and I will go through the rest.”
Anna-Maria put the letter and the envelope in separate plastic pockets. Then she dashed out of the room.
Fred Olsson bent dutifully over the pile of letters again.
“This is nice,” he said. “It says here she’s an ugly man-hating hysteric who needs to be bloody careful because ‘we’ve had enough of you, you fucking slag, be careful when you go out at night, look behind you, your grandkids won’t recognize you.’ She didn’t have any children, did she? How could she have grandchildren, then?”
Sven-Erik was still staring at the door Anna-Maria had disappeared through. All summer. These letters had been lying in the locker all summer, while he and his colleagues fumbled around in the dark.
“All I want to know,” he said without looking at Fred Olsson, “is how the hell those priests could not tell me Mildred Nilsson had a private locker in the parish office!”
Fred Olsson didn’t reply.
“I’ve got a good mind to give them a good shaking and ask what the hell they’re playing at,” he went on. “Ask them what they think we’re doing here!”
“But Anna-Maria’s promised Rebecka Martinsson…”
“But I haven’t promised anything,” barked Sven-Erik, slamming the flat of his hand down onto the table so hard it jumped.
He got up and made a hopeless gesture with his hand.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going to run away and do anything stupid. I just need to, I don’t know, sort myself out for a bit.”
With these words he left the room. The door slammed behind him.
Fred Olsson went back to the letters. It was all for the best, really. He liked working alone.
Bertil Stensson and Stefan Wikström were standing in the little room inside the parish office looking into Mildred Nilsson’s locker. Rebecka Martinsson had handed in the key to the house in Poikkijärvi and the key to the locker.
“Just calm down,” said Bertil Stensson. “Think about
He ended the sentence with a nod in the direction of the office where the clerks were sitting.
Stefan Wikström glanced at his boss. The parish priest’s mouth contracted into a thoughtful expression. Smoothed itself out, contracted again. Like a little hamster mouth.The short, stocky body in a beautifully ironed pink shirt from the Shirt Factory. A bold color, it was the priest’s daughter who kitted him out. Went well with the tanned face and the silvery, boyish haircut.
“Where are the letters?” said Stefan Wikström.
“Maybe she burned them,” said the priest.
Stefan Wikström’s voice went up an octave.
“She told me she’d kept them. What if somebody in Magdalena’s got them? What am I going to say to my wife?”
“Maybe nothing,” said Bertil Stensson calmly. “I need to get in touch with her husband. To give him her jewelry.”
They stood in silence.
Stefan Wikström gazed at the locker without speaking. He had thought this would be a moment of liberation. That he would hold the letters in his hand and be free of Mildred for good. But now. Her grip on the back of his neck was as tight as ever.
What is it you want of me, Lord? he thought. It is written that you do not test us beyond our capability, but now you have driven me to the limit of what I can cope with.
He felt trapped. Trapped by Mildred, by his job, by his wife, by his vocation, just giving and giving without ever getting anything back. And after Mildred’s death he had felt trapped by his boss Bertil Stensson.
Before, Stefan had enjoyed the father-son relationship that had grown between them. But now he recognized the price that would have to be paid. He was under Bertil’s thumb. He could see what Bertil said about him behind his back from the way the women in the office looked at him. They put their heads on one side, and there was just a hint of pity in their eyes. He could almost hear Bertil: “Things aren’t easy for Stefan. He’s more sensitive than you’d think.” More sensitive as in weak. The fact that the parish priest had taken some of his services hadn’t gone unnoticed. Everyone had been informed, apparently by chance. He felt diminished and exploited.
I could disappear, he thought. God takes care of the sparrow.
Mildred. Back in June she was gone. All of a sudden. But now she was back. Magdalena, the women’s group, had got back on its feet. They were vociferously demanding more women priests in the parish. And it was as if Bertil had already forgotten what she was really like. When he spoke about her nowadays, there was warmth in his voice. She had a big heart, he sighed. She had a greater talent as a pastor than I myself, he maintained generously. That implied that she had a greater talent as a pastor than Stefan, since Bertil was a better pastor than Stefan.
At least I’m not a liar, thought Stefan angrily. She was an aggressive troublemaker who drew damaged women to her and gave them fire instead of balm. Death couldn’t change that fact.
It was a disturbing thought, that Mildred had set damaged people on fire. Many might say she’d set him on fire too.
But I’m not damaged, he thought. That wasn’t why.
He stared into the locker. Thought about autumn 1997.
Bertil Stensson has called Stefan Wikström and Mildred Nilsson to a meeting. Mikael Berg, the rural dean, is with him in his capacity as the person responsible for personnel issues. Mikael Berg sits bolt upright on his chair. He’s in his fifties. The trousers he’s wearing are ten to fifteen years old. And at that time Mikael was ten to fifteen kilos heavier. His thin hair is plastered to his skull. From time to time he takes a deep breath. His hand shoots up, doesn’t know where to go, smooths his hair down, drops back to his knee.
Stefan is sitting opposite him. Thinking he’ll remain calm. During the whole conversation ahead of him, he'll remain calm. The others can raise their voices, but he’s not like that.
They’re waiting for Mildred. She’s coming straight from a service in a school and has let them know that she’ll probably be a few minutes late.
Bertil Stensson is looking out of the window. A deep furrow between his eyebrows.
Mildred arrives. Walks in through the door at the same time as she knocks. Red cheeks. Her hair slightly frizzy from the damp autumn air outside.
She chucks her jacket onto a chair, pours herself a coffee from the flask.
Bertil Stensson explains why they’re there. The community is being split in two, he says. A Mildred-section and, he doesn’t say a Stefan-section, and the rest.
“I’m delighted with the sense of involvement you spread around you,” he says to Mildred. “But this is an insupportable situation for me. It’s beginning to resemble a war between the feminist priest and the priest who hates women.”
Stefan nearly leaps out of his seat.
“I most certainly don’t hate women,” he says, upset.
“No, but that’s the way it looks,” says Bertil Stensson, pushing Monday’s newspaper across the table.
Nobody needs to look at it. Everybody has read the article. “Woman Priest Answers Her Critics,” says the headline. The article quotes Mildred’s sermon from the previous week. She said that the stole was in fact a Roman female garment. That it’s been worn since the fourth century, when liturgical costume was first worn. “What priests are wearing today is actually women’s clothes, according to Mildred Nilsson,” says the article. “I can still accept male priests, after all it says in the Bible: there is neither female nor male, neither Jew nor Greek.”
Stefan Wikström has also had the opportunity to express his views in the article. “Stefan Wikström maintains that he doesn’t see the sermon as a personal attack. He loves women, he just doesn’t want to see them in the pulpit.”
Stefan’s heart is heavy. He feels he’s been tricked. True, that is what he said, but it’s come out completely wrong in that context. The journalist asked him:
“You love your brothers. What about women? Do you hate women?”
And he’d naïvely answered absolutely not. He loved women.
“But you don’t want to see them in the pulpit.”
No, he’d replied. Broadly speaking that was true. But there was no value judgment in that, he’d added. In his eyes the work of the deaconess was every bit as important as that of the priest.
The parish priest is saying that he doesn’t want to hear any more comments like this from Mildred.
“And what about Stefan’s comments?” she says calmly. “He and his family don’t come to church when I’m preaching. We can’t hold a joint confirmation, because he refuses to work with me.”
“I can’t go against what it says in the Bible,” says Stefan.
Mildred makes an impatient movement with her head. Bertil clothes himself in patience. They’ve heard this before, Stefan realizes, but what can he do, it’s still true.
“Jesus chose twelve men as his disciples,” Stefan persists. “The chief priest was always a man. How far can we move away from the word of the Bible in our attempt to fit in with the values prevalent in modern society before it stops being Christianity at all?”
“All the disciples and the chief priests were Jews as well,” replies Mildred. “How do you get round that? And read the epistle to the Hebrews, Jesus is our chief priest today.”
Bertil holds up his hands in a gesture that means he doesn’t want to get involved in a discussion they’ve had several times before.
“I respect you both,” he says. “And I’ve agreed not to place a woman in your district, Stefan. I want to stress once again that you’re placing both me and the church in an extremely difficult position. You’re shifting the focus to a conflict. And I want to ask you both not to get involved in polemics, above all not from the pulpit.”
He changes the expression on his face. From stern to forgiving. He almost winks at Mildred, as if they share a secret understanding.
“I’m sure we can make an effort to concentrate on our common goals. I don’t want to have to hear words like male power and the power balance between the sexes being bandied about in church. You have to believe Stefan, Mildred. It isn’t a value judgment if he doesn’t come to church when you’re preaching.”
Mildred’s expression doesn’t alter at all. She stares Stefan straight in the eye.
“It’s what the Bible says,” he maintains, staring right back at her. “I can’t find a way around that.”
“Men hit women,” she says, takes a deep breath and carries on. “Men belittle women, dominate them, persecute them, kill them.
Or they cut off their genitals, kill them when they’re newborn babies, force them to hide behind a veil, lock them up, rape them, prevent them from educating themselves, pay them lower wages and give them less opportunity to take power. Deny them the right to become priests. I can’t find a way around that.”
There is complete silence for about three seconds.
“Now, Mildred,” ventures Bertil.
“She’s sick in the head,” yells Stefan. “Are you calling me… Are you comparing me with men who abuse women? This isn’t a discussion, it’s slander, and I don’t know…”
“What?” she says.
And now they’re both on their feet, somewhere in the background they can hear Bertil Stensson and Mikael Berg: calm down, sit down.
“What part of that was slander?”
“There’s no room to maneuver,” says Stefan, turning to Bertil. “There’s no common ground. I don’t have to put up with… it’s impossible for us to work together, you can see that for yourself.”
“You never could work with me,” he hears Mildred saying behind his back as he storms out of the room.
Bertil Stensson stood in silence in front of the locker. He knew his young colleague was waiting for him to say something reassuring. But what could he say?
Of course she hadn’t burned the letters, or thrown them away. If only he’d known about them. He felt very annoyed with Stefan because he hadn’t said anything about them.
“Is there anything else I should know?” he asked.
Stefan Wikström looked at his hands. The vow of confidentiality could be a heavy cross to bear.
“No,” he said.
To his amazement, Bertil Stensson discovered that he missed her. He had been distressed and shocked when she was murdered. But he hadn’t thought he’d miss her. He was probably being unfair. But what had seemed good about Stefan before, his helpfulness and his… oh, it was a ridiculous word, his admiration for his boss. Now Mildred was gone, it all seemed somehow coquettish and irritating. They had balanced each other out, his little ones. That’s how he’d often thought of them. Although Stefan was over forty and Mildred over fifty. Perhaps because they were both the children of parish priests.
She’d certainly known how to annoy a person. Sometimes in the smallest ways.
The Epiphany dinner, for example. Looking back now, he felt that it was petty of him to have got so annoyed. But then he hadn’t known that it would be Mildred’s last.
Stefan and Bertil are staring at Mildred’s advance down the table in front of them as if they are under a spell. The church is holding its Epiphany dinner, a tradition that’s been established for a few years now. Stefan and Bertil are sitting next to one another opposite Mildred. The staff are clearing away the main course and Mildred is mobilizing her troops.
She started by recruiting soldiers for her little army. Grabbed the salt cellar in one hand and the pepper mill in the other. Brought them together, then took them for a bit of a march around while she followed the conversation, apparently lost in thought; it was probably about how busy things had been over Christmas, but now at least it was over, and maybe about the latest winter cold that was doing the rounds, that sort of thing. She was pushing down the edges of the candle too. Even at that stage Bertil could see how Stefan was almost having to hold on to the edge of the table to stop himself snatching the candle off her and shouting stop fiddling with everything!
Her wineglass still stood by her side like the queen on a chessboard, waiting for her turn.
When Mildred starts talking about the wolf that was in the papers over Christmas, she distractedly pushes the salt and pepper over to Bertil and Stefan’s side of the table. The wineglass is on the move as well. Mildred says the wolf has made its way across the Russian and Finnish borders, and the glass makes great sweeps across the table, as far as her arm can reach, crossing all possible borders.
She keeps talking, her cheeks rosy from the wine, constantly moving the objects on the table. Stefan and Bertil feel crowded and strangely disturbed by her advance across the tablecloth.
Keep to your own side, they want to shout.
She tells them she’s been thinking. She’s been thinking they ought to set up a foundation within the church to protect the wolf. The church owns the land, after all, it’s part of the church’s responsibility, she thinks.
Bertil has been somewhat affected by the one woman game of chess on the tablecloth, and comes back at her.
“In my opinion the church should devote itself to its main task, working within the community, and not to forestry. Purely as a matter of principle, I mean. We shouldn’t even own any forest. We should leave the administration of capital to others.”
Mildred doesn’t agree.
“Our task is to take care of the earth,” she says. “Land is exactly what we should own, not shares. And if the church owns land, it can be looked after in the right way. This wolf has made its way into Swedish territory, onto land owned by the church. If it doesn’t get special protection, it won’t live for long, you know that. Some hunter or reindeer farmer will shoot it.”
“So this foundation…”
“Would prevent that, yes. With money and cooperation with the Nature Conservancy Council, we can tag the wolf and keep an eye on it.”
“And by doing so you would push people away,” objects Bertil. “There must be room for everybody within the church, hunters, the Sami people, people who like wolves-everybody. But the church can’t take sides like that.”
“What about our duty of care, then?” says Mildred. “We are supposed to care for the earth, and that has to include species threatened with extinction, surely? As for not adopting a political stance, if the church had had that attitude down the ages, wouldn’t we still have slavery?”
They have to laugh at her in the end. She always has to exaggerate and go too far.
Bertil Stensson closed the locker door, turned the key and dropped it in his pocket. In February Mildred had set up her foundation. Neither he nor Stefan Wikström had objected.
The whole idea of the foundation had irritated him. And now as he looks back and tries to be honest with himself, it irritates him to realize that he didn’t stand up to her because of cowardice. He was afraid of being seen as a wolf-hater and God knows what else. But he did get Mildred to agree to a less provocative name than the Northern Wolf Protection Foundation. It became Jukkasjärvi Community Wildlife Protection Foundation instead. And he and Stefan were signatories along with Mildred.
And later in the spring, when Stefan’s wife took the youngest child and went to stay with her mother in Katrineholm and didn’t come back for a long time, Bertil hadn’t really thought anything of it.
Now, of course, it bothered him.
But Stefan should have said something, he thought in his defense.
Rebecka parked the car outside her grandmother’s house in Kurravaara. Nalle jumped out and scampered around the outside of the house, curious.
Like a happy dog, thought Rebecka as she watched him disappear around the corner.
The next second her conscience pricked. You shouldn’t compare him to a dog.
September sun on the gray building. The wind blowing gently through the tall autumn grass, faded and lacking in nutrients. Low water, a motorboat far away. From another direction, the sound of someone chopping wood. A soft breeze against her face, like a gentle hand.
She looked at the house again. The windows were in a terrible state. They needed taking out, scraping down, new putty, fresh paint. The same dark green color as before, nothing else. She thought about the mineral wool packed in the entrance to the cellar to stop the cold air that would come pouring up otherwise, forming rime frost on the walls that would turn to patches of gray damp. It needed pulling out. The place needed sealing properly, insulation, install the right kind of ventilation. Make a decent cellar for storage. Somebody ought to save the hollow-eyed house before it was too late.
“Come on, let’s go in,” she shouted to Nalle who had run down to Larsson’s red-timbered storehouse and was tugging at the door.
Nalle lumbered over the potato patch. The bottom of his shoes was soon thick with mud.
“You,” he said, pointing at Rebecka when he had reached the veranda.
“Rebecka,” answered Rebecka. “My name’s Rebecka.”
He nodded in reply. He’d ask her again soon. He’d already asked her several times, but still hadn’t said her name.
They went up the steps into her grandmother’s kitchen. A bit damp and chilly. Felt colder than outside. Nalle went first. In the kitchen he opened every wardrobe and closet, every cupboard and drawer, completely without embarrassment.
Good, thought Rebecka. He can open them and all the ghosts can fly away.
She smiled at his big lumbering figure, at the crafty, crooked smile he directed at her from time to time. It felt good to have him there.
A knight can look like that too, she thought.
A sense of security came over her-everything was just the same. It put its arm around her. Pulled her down onto the sofa beside Nalle, who’d found a banana box full of comics. He sorted out the ones he liked. They had to be in color, and he chose mostly Donald Duck. He put Agent 69, The Phantom, and Buster back in the box. She looked around. The blue painted chairs around the old gate-legged table, shiny with use. The refrigerator humming away. The tiles above the black Näfveqvarn stove, decorated with pictures of different spices. Next to the woodstove stood the electrical one, with knobs of brown and orange plastic. Grandmother’s hand everywhere. The rack above the stove was crammed with dried flowers, pans and stainless steel ladles. Uncle Affe’s wife Inga-Lill still hung bunches of flowers there to dry. Cat’s foot, tansy, cotton grass, buttercups and yarrow. There were also some bought pink everlasting flowers, they’d never have been there in Grandmother’s day. Grandmother’s woven rag rugs on the floor, even on the sofa to protect it. Embroidered cloths on every surface, even covering the treadle sewing machine in the corner. The embroidered tray holder, where the tray Grandfather had made out of matchsticks the last time he was ill still hung.
She’d woven or crocheted the cushion covers.
Could I live here? wondered Rebecka.
She looked down on to the meadow. Nobody was cutting or burning it nowadays, that was obvious. Big tussocks, the grass growing up through a rotting layer of the previous year’s grass. Thousands of holes made by field mice and voles, no doubt. From up here she had a better view of the roof of the barn. The question was whether it could still be saved. All at once she felt downhearted. A house dies when it’s abandoned. Slowly but surely. It crumbles away, it stops breathing. It cracks, subsides, goes moldy.
Where do you start? thought Rebecka. The windows alone are more than a full-time job. I can’t put a new roof on. It won’t be safe to walk on the veranda before long.
Then the house shook. The door slammed downstairs. The little chime of bells just inside the door with the text “Jopa virkki puu visainen kielin kantelon kajasi tuota soittoa suloista” shook and emitted a few delicate notes.
Sivving’s voice rang through the house. Made its way up the stairs and pushed through the door.
“Hello!”
A few seconds later he appeared in the doorway. Grandmother’s neighbor. A big man. His hair white and soft as pussy willow on his head. A yellowish white military vest underneath a blue imitation beaver jacket. A big grin when he caught sight of Rebecka. She got up.
“Rebecka,” was all he said.
In two paces he was beside her. Put his arms around her.
They didn’t usually hug each other, hardly even when she was a little girl. But she stopped herself from stiffening. Closed her eyes for the two seconds the embrace lasted. Drifted out on a sea of tranquillity. If you didn’t count handshakes, nobody had touched her since… since Erik Rydén welcomed her to the firm’s party on Lidö. And before that, six months ago when they took blood tests at the clinic.
Then the hug was over. But Sivving Fjällborg held on to her, his right hand around her left upper arm.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Fine,” she smiled back.
His face grew more serious. He held her for a second longer before he let go. Then the smile was back.
“And you’ve got a friend with you.”
“I have, this is Nalle.”
Nalle was absorbed in a Donald Duck comic. Difficult to know whether he could actually read, or whether he was just looking at the pictures.
“Well, I think you should both come with me and have some coffee, because I’ve got something really special to show you at home. What do you think, Nalle? Juice and a cake? Or do you drink coffee?”
Nalle and Rebecka followed close behind Sivving like two calves.
Sivving, thought Rebecka, and smiled. It’ll be all right. I can do one window at a time.
Sivving’s house was on the other side of the road. Rebecka explained that she’d come up to Kiruna because of work, and stayed on for a short holiday. Sivving didn’t ask any awkward questions. Why she wasn’t staying in Kurravaara, for example. Rebecka noticed his left arm was hanging limply by his side, and that his left foot was dragging slightly, not a lot, but still. She didn’t ask either.
Sivving lived down in the boiler room in the cellar. It meant there was less cleaning to do, and it was cosier. He only used the rest of the house when his children and grandchildren came to visit. But it was a very pleasant boiler room. The china and household equipment he needed from day to day were on a string shelf, stained brown. There was a bed and a little Formica table, a chair, a chest of drawers and an electric hob.
In her basket next to the bed lay Sivving’s pointer bitch, Bella. And beside her lay four puppies. Bella got up quickly, wagging her tail, and came to say hello to Rebecka and Nalle. She hadn’t time to allow herself to be patted, just gave them a quick sniff, then butted her master a couple of times and gave him a lick.
“Good girl,” said Sivving. “So, Nalle, what do you think? Aren’t they nice?”
Nalle seemed as if he hardly heard what was said. He was staring at the puppies the whole time, with an ecstatic expression on his face.
“Oh,” he said, “oh,” and squatted down beside the basket, reaching out for a sleeping puppy.
“I don’t know…” began Rebecka.
“No, leave him,” said Sivving. “Bella is a much calmer mother than I’d have thought she would be.”
Bella lay down beside the three puppies that were still in the basket. She kept an eye on Nalle all the time as he lifted the fourth and settled himself, leaning back against the wall with the puppy on his lap. The puppy woke up and attacked Nalle’s hand and sleeve with all its might.
“They’re funny,” laughed Sivving. “It’s as if they’ve got an on-off switch. One minute they’re charging about like lunatics, the next, bang, fast asleep.”
They drank their coffee in silence. It didn’t matter. It was enough just watching Nalle lying on his back on the floor with the puppies tumbling over his legs, tugging at his clothes and clambering up onto his stomach. Bella took the opportunity to beg for a bun at the table. She was dribbling as she sat down beside Rebecka.
“You’ve learned some fine manners,” laughed Rebecka.
“Basket,” said Sivving to Bella, waving his hand.
“You know, I think there’s something the matter with her hearing in the ear on your side,” said Rebecka, laughing even more.
“I’ve only got myself to blame,” said Sivving. “But you know how it is, when you’re sitting here all on your own, it’s easy to give in and share. And then…”
Rebecka nodded.
“Anyway,” said Sivving cheerfully. “Since you’ve got this big strong lad with you, you can give me a hand to lift the jetty. I was thinking of trying to pull it up with the tractor, but I’m afraid it won’t hold.”
The jetty was sodden and heavy. The river low and sluggish. Nalle and Sivving stood in the water, one on each side, struggling away. The summer’s last flies took the opportunity to bite the back of their necks. The sun and the effort meant that their clothes ended up in a pile up on the bank. Nalle was wearing Sivving’s spare boots. Rebecka had fetched some other clothes from her grandmother’s house. One boot was split, so her right foot had soon got wet. Now she was standing on the bank pulling, her sock squelching inside the boot. She could feel rivulets of sweat pouring down her back. And her scalp. Wet and salty.
“This certainly lets you know you’re alive,” she groaned to Sivving.
“Your body, anyway,” replied Sivving.
He looked at her with pleasure. Knew there was a kind of release in hard physical work when the soul was tormented. He’d certainly get her working if she came back.
Afterward they had meat soup and crispbread in Sivving’s boiler room. Sivving had conjured up three stools, they just fitted around the table. Rebecka had found some dry socks.
“Glad to see you’re enjoying that,” said Sivving to Nalle, who was shoveling down the soup along with big pieces of crispbread spread with a thick layer of butter and cheese. “You can come and help me again.”
Nalle nodded, his mouth full of food. Bella was lying in her basket, the snuffling puppies beneath her stomach. Her ears moved occasionally. She was checking up on people even though her eyes were closed.
“And you, Rebecka,” said Sivving, “you’re always welcome.”
She nodded and looked out through the cellar window.
Time passes more slowly here, she thought. Although you do notice that it’s passing. A new jetty. New to me, it’s already been around for many years. The cat disappearing in the grass isn’t the Larssons’ Mirri. She’s dead and gone, long ago. I don’t know the names of the dogs I hear barking far away. I used to know. Recognized Pikki’s hoarse, bad-tempered bark, always looking for a fight. She could keep going forever. Sivving. Soon he’ll need help with clearing the snow and shopping for food. Maybe I could cope with staying here?
Anna-Maria Mella drove her red Ford Escort into Magnus Lindmark’s yard. According to Lisa Stöckel and Erik Nilsson, this was the man who’d made no secret of the fact that he’d hated Mildred. Who’d slashed her tires and set fire to her shed.
He was washing his Volvo, and he turned off the water and put down the hose as she drove in. Around forty. A bit on the short side, but he looked strong. Rolled up his shirtsleeves when she got out of the car. Probably wanted to show off his muscles.
“You’re driving a steam engine,” he joked.
The next moment he realized she was from the police. She could see how his face changed. A mixture of contempt and cunning. Anna-Maria felt she should have had Sven-Erik with her.
“I don’t think I want to answer any questions,” said Magnus Lindmark before she’d even managed to open her mouth.
Anna-Maria introduced herself. Took out her ID as well, although she wasn’t in the habit of waving it about unnecessarily.
Now what do I do? she thought. There’s no chance of forcing him.
“You don’t even know what it’s about,” she ventured.
“Now let me guess,” he said, screwing his face up into an exaggerated expression of thoughtfulness and rubbing his chin with his index finger. “A slag of a priest who got what she deserved, maybe? And now I’m supposed to feel something or other, well no way, I don’t feel like talking about it.”
My my, thought Anna-Maria, he’s really enjoying this.
“Okay,” she said with an unconcerned smile. “In that case I’ll get back in my steam engine and chug away.”
She turned around and walked to the car.
He’ll call out, she just had time to think.
“If you catch the guy who did it,” he yelled, “give me a ring so I can come in and shake him by the hand.”
She walked the last few steps to her car. Turned toward him, her hand on the handle. Said nothing.
“She was a fucking slag who got what she deserved. Haven’t you got your notebook? Write that down.”
Anna-Maria pulled a notebook and pen out of her pocket. Wrote down “fucking slag.”
“She seems to have got on quite a few people’s nerves,” she said, as if she were talking to herself.
He came over to her, positioned himself threateningly close.
“Too fucking right,” he said.
“Why were you annoyed with her?”
“Annoyed,” he spat. “Annoyed, I get annoyed with the fucking dog when she stands there barking at a squirrel. I’m not the hypocritical type, I’ve got no problem admitting I hated her. And I wasn’t the only one.”
Keep talking, thought Anna-Maria, nodding sympathetically.
“Why did you hate her?”
“Because she broke up my marriage, that’s why! Because my son starting pissing in his bed when he was eleven years old! We had problems, Anki and me, but once she’d spoken to Mildred there was no more talk of sorting things out. I said ‘do you want to go to family counseling, I’ll do that if you want,’ but no, that fucking priest messed with her head until she left me. And took the kids with her. You didn’t think the church approved of that sort of thing, did you?”
“No. But you…”
“Anki and I used to quarrel, sure. But maybe you and your old man have words now and again?”
“Often. But you got so angry that you…”
Anna-Maria broke off and leafed through her notebook.
“… set fire to her shed, punctured her tires, smashed the glass in her greenhouse.”
Magnus Lindmark smiled broadly at her and said sweetly:
“But that wasn’t me.”
“So what were you doing the night before midsummer’s eve?”
“I’ve already said, I stayed over with a friend.”
Anna-Maria read from her notebook.
“Fredrik Korpi. Do you often stay over with your little friends?”
“When you’re too fucking pissed to drive home…”
“You said you weren’t the only one who hated her? Who else?”
He made a sweeping gesture with his arm.
“Just about anybody.”
“Well liked, I heard.”
“By a load of hysterical old women.”
“And a number of men.”
“Who are nothing but hysterical old women. Ask any, excuse the expression, real man and they’ll tell you. She was after the hunting fraternity as well. Wanted to cancel their permit and fuck knows what else. But if you think Torbjörn killed her, then you’ve got that fucking wrong as well.”
“Torbjörn?”
“Torbjörn Ylitalo, the church’s forest warden and the chairman of the hunting club. They had a terrible quarrel back in the spring. I reckon he’d have liked to stick his shotgun in her mouth. And then she started that fucking wolf foundation. And that’s a class thing, you know. It’s easy for a load of fuckers from Stockholm to love wolves. But the day a wolf comes down to their golf courses and their terrace bars and gobbles up their poodles for breakfast, they’ll be out there hunting!”
“But Mildred Nilsson wasn’t from Stockholm, was she?”
“No, but somewhere down there. Torbjörn Ylitalo’s cousin had his old dog killed by a wolf when he went down to Värmland to visit his in-laws at Christmas ninety-nine. He sat there in Micke’s crying when he was telling us about finding the dog. Or the remains of the dog, I should say. There was only the skeleton left, and a few bloody scraps of fur.”
He looked at her. She kept her face expressionless-did he think she was going to faint because he was talking about skeletons and scraps of fur?
When she didn’t say anything he turned his head aside, his gaze sweeping away across the pine trees to the ragged clouds scudding across the chilly blue autumn sky.
“I had to get a lawyer before I was allowed to meet my own kids, for fuck’s sake. I hope she suffered. She did, didn’t she?”
When Rebecka and Nalle got back to Micke’s bar, it was already five o’clock in the afternoon. Lisa Stöckel was walking down toward the bar from the road, and Nalle ran to meet her.
“Dog!” he shouted, pointing at Lisa’s dog Majken. “Little!”
“We’ve been looking at puppies,” explained Rebecka.
“Becka!” he yelled, pointing at Rebecka.
“Wow, you’re popular,” Lisa smiled at Rebecka.
“The puppies swung it,” Rebecka replied modestly.
“He loves anything to do with dogs,” said Lisa. “You like dogs, don’t you, Nalle? I heard you looked after Nalle today, thanks for that. I can pay if you’ve had any expenses for food and so on.”
She took a wallet out of her pocket.
“No, no,” said Rebecka, waving her hand, and Lisa dropped the wallet on the ground.
All her cards fell out onto the gravel, her library ticket, supermarket loyalty card, her Visa card and her driving license.
And the photograph of Mildred.
Lisa bent down quickly to gather everything up, but Nalle had already picked up the photograph of Mildred. It had been taken during a coach trip the Magdalena group had gone on, to a retreat in Uppsala. Mildred was smiling at the camera, surprised and reproachful. Lisa had been holding the camera. They’d stopped to stretch their legs.
“Illred,” said Nalle to the photograph, and laid it against his cheek.
He smiled at Lisa as she stood there, her hand impatiently outstretched. She had to exercise an iron control not to snatch it off him. It was a bloody good job nobody else was there.
“They were friends, those two,” she said, nodding toward Nalle, who still had the photograph pressed against his cheek.
“She seems to have been a very special priest,” said Rebecka seriously.
“Very,” said Lisa. “Very.”
Rebecka bent down and patted the dog.
“He’s such a blessing,” said Lisa. “You forget all your troubles when you’re with him.”
“Isn’t it a bitch?” asked Rebecka, peering under the dog’s stomach.
“I was talking about Nalle,” said Lisa. “This is Majken.”
She stroked the dog absentmindedly.
“I’ve got a lot of dogs.”
“I like dogs,” said Rebecka, stroking Majken’s ears.
Not so keen on people, though? thought Lisa. I know. I was like that myself for a long time. Probably still am.
But Mildred had got Lisa to do whatever she wanted. Right from the start. Like when she got Lisa to give talks about budgeting. Lisa had tried to refuse. But Mildred had been… stubborn was a ridiculous word. You couldn’t contain Mildred in that word.
“Don’t you care?” asks Mildred. “Don’t you care about people?”
Lisa is sitting on the floor with Bruno lying alongside her. She’s clipping his claws.
Majken is standing beside them like a nurse, supervising. The other dogs are lying in the hallway hoping it will never be their turn. If they keep really still and quiet, maybe Lisa will forget about them.
And Mildred is sitting on the sofa in the kitchen and explaining. As if the problem was that Lisa didn’t understand. Magdalena, the women’s group, wants to help women who’ve gone adrift in purely financial terms. Long term unemployed, those on benefit because they’re signed off sick for a long time, with the authorities after them and the kitchen drawers stuffed full of papers from debt collecting agencies and God knows who else. And Mildred just happens to know that Lisa works as a debt counselor and budgeting advisor for the council. Mildred wants Lisa to run a course for these women. So they can get their private finances sorted out.
Lisa wants to say no. Say that she doesn’t actually care about people. That she cares about her dogs, cats, goats, sheep, lambs. The female elk that turned up the winter before last, thin as a rake, so she fed her and looked after her.
“They won’t turn up,” Lisa replies.
She clips Bruno’s last claw. He gets a pat and disappears to join the rest of the gang in the hall. Lisa gets up.
“They’ll say ‘yeah, yeah, brilliant’ when you invite them,” she goes on. “But they won’t turn up.”
“We’ll see,” says Mildred, narrowing her eyes. Then her little lingonberry mouth widens into a smile. A row of tiny teeth, like a child’s.
Lisa goes weak at the knees, looks away, says “okay, I’ll do it” just to get rid of the priest before she collapses completely.
Three weeks later Lisa is standing in front of a group of women, talking. Drawing on a whiteboard. Circles and pieces of pie, red, green and blue. Glances at Mildred, hardly dares look at her. Looks at the rest of her audience instead. They’ve got dressed up, God help us. Cheap blouses. Bobbly cardigans. Gold colored costume jewelry. Most of them are listening obediently. Others are staring at Lisa, almost with hatred in their eyes, as if the way their lives have turned out might be her fault.
Gradually she’s drawn into other projects with the women’s group. She just gets carried along. She even attends the Bible study group for a while. But in the end it just doesn’t work anymore. She can’t look at Mildred, because it feels as if the others can read her face like an open book. She can’t avoid looking at her the whole time, that’s just as obvious. She doesn’t know where to turn. Doesn’t hear what they’re talking about. Drops her pen and makes a fuss. In the end she stops going.
She keeps away from the women’s group. Her restlessness is like an incurable illness. She wakes up in the middle of the night. Thinks about the priest all the time. She starts running. Mile after mile. Along the roads at first. Then the ground dries out and she can run in the forest. She goes to Norway and buys another dog, a Springer spaniel. It keeps her busy. She renews the putty in all the windows and doesn’t borrow the rotovator from her neighbor for the potato patch as she usually does, but turns it over by hand instead during the light May evenings. Sometimes she thinks she can hear the telephone ringing in the house, but she doesn’t answer it.
“Can I have the picture, Nalle?” said Lisa, trying to make her voice sound neutral.
Nalle was holding on to the picture with both hands. His smile went from one ear to the other.
“Illred,” he said. “Swinging.”
Lisa stared at him, took the picture off him.
“Yes, that’s right,” she said in the end.
She spoke to Rebecka, a little too quickly, but Rebecka didn’t appear to notice anything:
“Nalle was confirmed by Mildred. And her confirmation classes were quite… unconventional. She understood that he was a child, so there was plenty of playing on the swings and boat trips and eating pizza. Isn’t that right, Nalle, you and Mildred, you used to have pizza. Quattro Stagione, wasn’t it?”
“He had three helpings of meat soup today,” said Rebecka.
Nalle left them and set off toward the henhouse. Rebecka shouted a good-bye after him, but he didn’t seem to hear.
Lisa didn’t seem to hear either when Rebecka said good-bye and went off to her chalet. Answered distractedly, staring after Nalle.
Lisa padded after Nalle like a fox stalking its prey. The henhouse was at the back of the bar.
She thought about what he’d said when he saw the picture of Mildred.
“Illred. Swinging.” But Nalle didn’t go on the swings. She’d like to see the swing he could fit into. So they can’t have gone to the playground together to go on the swings.
Nalle opened the henhouse door. He usually collected the eggs for Mimmi.
“Nalle,” said Lisa, trying to attract his attention. “Nalle, did you see Mildred swinging?”
He pointed above his head with his hand.
“Swinging,” he replied.
She followed him inside. He stuck his hand under the hens and collected the eggs they were sitting on. Laughed when they pecked angrily at his hand.
“Was she high up? Was it Mildred?”
“Illred,” said Nalle.
He stuffed the eggs in his pockets and went out.
My God, thought Lisa. What am I doing? He just repeats whatever I say.
“Did you see the space rocket?” she asked, making a flying movement with her hand. “Whoosh!”
“Whoosh!” smiled Nalle, taking an egg out of his pocket with a sweeping movement.
Out on the road Lars-Gunnar’s car stopped, and the horn sounded.
“Your daddy,” said Lisa.
She raised a hand and waved to Lars-Gunnar. She could feel how stiff and awkward it was. Her body betrayed her. It was completely impossible for her to meet his eyes or even exchange a word.
She stayed behind the bar as Nalle hurried off toward the car.
Don’t think about it, she said to herself. Mildred’s dead. Nothing can change that.
Anki Lindmark lived in an apartment on the second floor at Kyrkogatan 21D. She opened the door when Anna-Maria rang the bell, and peered over the security chain. She was in her thirties, maybe a bit younger. She’d bleached her hair herself, and the roots were showing. She was wearing a long sweater and a denim skirt. As Anna-Maria looked at her through the narrow opening, it struck her that the woman was quite tall, at least half a head taller than her ex-husband. Anna-Maria introduced herself.
“Are you Magnus Lindmark’s ex?” she asked.
“What’s he done?” asked Anki Lindmark.
Suddenly the eyes behind the security chain widened.
“Is it to do with the boys?”
“No,” said Anna-Maria. “I just want to ask a few questions. It won’t take long.”
Anki Lindmark let her in, put the chain back on and locked the door.
They went into the kitchen. It was clean and tidy. Porridge oats, O’Boy drinking chocolate powder and sugar in Tupperware containers on the worktop. A little cloth covering the microwave. On the windowsill stood wooden tulips in a vase, a glass bird, and a little miniature cart made of wood. Children’s drawings were fastened to the refrigerator and freezer with magnets. Proper curtains with tiebacks, a pelmet and frilled edges.
At the kitchen table sat a woman in her sixties. She had carrot-colored hair and was staring angrily at Anna-Maria. Shook a menthol cigarette out of its packet and lit up.
“My mother,” explained Anki Lindmark when they’d sat down.
“Where are the children?” asked Anna-Maria.
“At my sister’s. It’s their cousin’s birthday today.”
“Your ex-husband, Magnus Lindmark…” Anna-Maria began.
When Anki Lindmark’s mother heard her former son-in-law’s name she blew out a cloud of smoke like a snort.
“… he’s said himself that he hated Mildred Nilsson,” Anna-Maria went on.
Anki Lindmark nodded.
“He caused damage to her property,” said Anna-Maria.
The next second she could have bitten off her tongue. “Caused damage to her property,” what kind of official jargon was that? It was the smoking carrot-woman’s narrow eyes that were making her be so formal.
Sven-Erik, come and help me, she thought.
He knew how to talk to women.
Anki Lindmark shrugged her shoulders.
“Anything we discuss is just between you and me,” said Anna-Maria in an attempt to push the continental shelves together. “Are you afraid of him?”
“Tell her why you live here,” said her mother.
“Well,” said Anki Lindmark. “In the beginning, after I left him, I lived in Mum’s cottage in Poikkijärvi…”
“It’s been sold now,” said her mother. “We can’t go out there anymore. Carry on.”
“… but Magnus kept giving me articles out of the evening paper about fires and so on, and in the end I didn’t dare live there anymore.”
“And the police can’t do a thing,” said the mother with a mirthless smile.
“He’s not bad to the boys, you mustn’t think that. But sometimes when he drinks… well, he sometimes comes up and shouts and yells at me… whore and all sorts… kicking the door. So it’s best to live here where we’ve got neighbors and no windows at ground level. But before I got this apartment and found the courage to live on my own with the boys, I stayed with Mildred. But she got her windows smashed and he… and slashed tires… and then her shed caught fire.”
“And that was Magnus?”
Anki Lindmark looked down at the table. Her mother leaned over to Anna-Maria.
“The only people who don’t believe it was him are the bloody police,” she said.
Anna-Maria refrained from explaining the difference between believing something and being able to prove it. She nodded thoughtfully instead.
“I just hope he’ll find somebody new,” said Anki Lindmark. “Preferably have children with her. But things have been better lately, since Lars-Gunnar talked to him.”
“Lars-Gunnar Vinsa,” said her mother. “He’s a policeman, or he was-he’s retired now. And he’s the leader of the hunting club. He talked to Magnus. And if there’s one thing Magnus doesn’t want, it’s to lose his place with the hunt.”
Lars-Gunnar Vinsa, Anna-Maria knew who he was. But he’d only worked for a year after she started in Kiruna, and they’d never worked together. So she couldn’t say she knew him. He had a mentally handicapped son, she remembered. She remembered how she’d found that out too. Lars-Gunnar and a colleague had arrested a heroin user who was playing up down at the Cupola club. Lars-Gunnar had asked if she had any needles in her pockets before he searched her. No bloody chance, they were at home in her apartment. So Lars-Gunnar had stuck his hands in her pockets to go through them and had jabbed himself with a needle. The girl had come into the station with her upper lip like a burst football and blood pouring from her nose. His colleagues had talked Lars-Gunnar out of owning up, that’s what Anna-Maria had heard. That was in 1990. It took six months to get a definite result from an HIV test. After that there was a lot of talk about Lars-Gunnar and his six-year-old son. The boy’s mother had abandoned the child and Lars-Gunnar was all he had.
“So Lars-Gunnar spoke to Magnus after the fire?” asked Anna-Maria.
“No, it was after the cat.”
Anna-Maria waited in silence.
“I used to have a cat,” said Anki, clearing her throat as if she had something stuck in it. “Puss. When I left Magnus I shouted for her, but she’d been gone for a while. I thought I’d come back later to collect her. I was so nervous. I didn’t want to meet Magnus. He kept ringing me. And my mother. In the middle of the night, sometimes. Anyway, he rang me at work and said he’d hung a carrier bag with some things of mine in it on the door of the apartment.”
She stopped speaking.
Her mother blew a cloud of smoke at Anna-Maria. It drifted apart in thin veils.
“Puss was in the bag,” she said, when her daughter didn’t speak. “And her kittens. Five of them. They’d all had their heads chopped off. It was just blood and fur.”
“What did you do?”
“What could she do?” her mother went on. “You lot can’t do anything. Even Lars-Gunnar said the same. If you report something to the police, it has to be a crime. If they’d suffered, it could have been cruelty to animals. But as he’d chopped their heads off, they wouldn’t have suffered at all. It could have been criminal damage if they’d had any financial value, if they’d been pedigree cats or an expensive hunting dog or something. But they were just farm cats.”
“Yes,” said Anki Lindmark. “But I don’t think he’d kill…”
“Okay, what about later then?” said her mother. “After you’d moved here? Don’t you remember what happened with Peter?”
Her mother stubbed out her cigarette, got out a new one and lit it.
“Peter lives in Poikkijärvi. He’s divorced too, but such a nice, kind guy. Anyway, he and Anki started seeing each other now and again…”
“Just as friends,” Anki interjected.
“One morning when Peter was on his way to work, Magnus pulled out straight in front of him. Magnus stopped the car and jumped out. Peter couldn’t drive around, because Magnus had parked sort of diagonally across the narrow gravel track. And Magnus jumps out and goes to the trunk and gets out a baseball bat. Walks over to Peter’s car. And Peter’s sitting there thinking he’s going to die and thinking about his own kids, thinking maybe he’s dead meat. Then Magnus just lets out a loud guffaw, gets back in his own car and screeches away with the gravel spraying up around his tires. So that was the end of the dating, wasn’t it, Anki?”
“I don’t want to quarrel with him. He’s very good to the boys.”
“But you hardly dare go to the supermarket. There’s hardly any difference from before, when you were married to him. I’m so bloody tired of the whole thing. The police! They can do sod all.”
“Why was he so angry with Mildred?” asked Anna-Maria.
“He said she’d kind of influenced me to leave him.”
“And had she?”
“No, she hadn’t,” said Anki. “I’m an adult. I make my own decisions. And I’ve told Magnus that.”
“And what did he say?”
“ ‘Did Mildred tell you to say that?’ ”
“Do you know what he was doing the night before midsummer’s eve?”
Anki Lindmark shook her head.
“Has he ever hit you?”
“He’s never hit the boys.”
Time to go.
“Just one last thing,” said Anna-Maria. “When you were staying with Mildred. What impression did you get of her husband? How were things between them?”
Anki Lindmark and her mother exchanged glances.
The talk of the village, thought Anna-Maria.
“She came and went like the cat,” said Anki. “But he seemed happy with things as they were… I mean, they never fell out or anything.”
The evening was closing in. The hens went into the henhouse and nestled close together on their perches. The wind eased and lay down on the grass. Details were obliterated. Grass, trees and buildings floated away into the dark blue sky. Sounds crept closer, became clearer.
Lisa Stöckel listened to the sound of the gravel beneath her feet as she walked down the track to the bar. Her dog Majken trailed behind her. In an hour the women’s group would be holding its autumn meeting and dinner at Micke’s.
She’d stay sober and take it easy. Put up with all that talk about how everything must carry on without Mildred. How Mildred felt just as close now as when she was alive. All she could do was bite the insides of her lips, hang on to the chair and not stand up and shout: We’re finished! Nothing can carry on without Mildred! She isn’t close! She’s a rotting lump down in the ground! Earth to earth! And you, you can all go back to being home-birds, making the coffee, discussing your fibromyalgia, gossiping like old women. You can read your magazines and serve your men.
She walked in and the sight of her daughter interrupted her train of thought.
Mimmi. Wiping the tables and windowsills with a cloth. Her tri-colored hair in two big bunches above her ears. Pink lacy bra peeping over the neckline of her tight black jumper. Cheeks rosy with warmth, presumably she’d been in the kitchen getting the food ready.
“What are we having?” asked Lisa.
“I’ve gone for a bit of a Mediterranean theme. Little olive bread rolls with dips to start,” answered Mimmi without slowing down her actions with the cloth. It was swishing across the shiny bar counter. She followed it with the hand towel she always carried folded over the waistband of her apron.
“There’s tzatziki, tapenade and hummus,” she went on. “Then bean soup with pistou, it made sense to do vegetarian for everybody, because half of you are grass eaters…”
She looked up and grinned at Lisa, who was just taking off her cap.
“But Mum,” she exclaimed, “what on earth do you look like? Are you letting the dogs chew your hair off when it gets too long?”
Lisa ran her hand over her cropped hair to try and flatten it. Mimmi looked at her watch.
“I’ll fix it,” she said. “Pull up a chair and sit down.”
She disappeared through the swing door into the kitchen.
“Mascarpone ice cream with cloudberries for dessert,” she shouted from the kitchen. “It’s absolutely…”
She finished the sentence with an appreciative wolf whistle.
Lisa pulled up a chair, took off her jacket and sat down. Majken immediately lay down at her feet; just this short walk had worn her out, or she was in pain, probably the latter.
Lisa sat as still as in church as Mimmi’s fingers worked through her hair and the scissors evened it all out to the width of a finger.
“What’s going to happen now, without Mildred?” asked Mimmi. “Your hair grows in three circles in a row just here.”
“I suppose we’ll just carry on as normal.”
“With what?”
“Meals for mothers and children, the clean panties and the wolf.”
The clean panties project had begun as an appeal. When it came to the practical help social services offered women who were on drugs, it turned out to be very much focused on men. There were disposable razors and underpants in the clothing pack, but no women’s panties or tampons. Women had to make do with sanitary towels like nappies, and men’s underpants. Magdalena had offered to work with social services, buying panties and tampons as well as things like deodorant and moisturizer. They had also provided a contact list. The name of the contact person was given to a landlord who could be persuaded to let a room to the woman who was using. If there were problems, the landlord could ring the contact person.
“What are you going to do about the wolf?”
“We’re hoping for some kind of monitoring in association with the Nature Conservancy Council. When the snow comes and they can start tracking on scooters, she’s going to be at serious risk if we can’t get something sorted out. But we’ve got some money in the foundation, so we’ll see.”
“You realize you’re stuck with it now, don’t you?” said Mimmi.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re the one who’ll have to be the driving force in Magdalena.”
Lisa blew away a few prickly hairs that had settled under her eye.
“Never,” she said.
Mimmi laughed.
“What makes you think you’ve got a choice? I think it’s quite funny, I mean you’ve never actually been one for joining clubs and things, I bet you never thought this would happen. My God, when I heard you’d been elected chairwoman… Micke had to give me first aid.”
“I can imagine,” said Lisa dryly.
No, she thought. I never imagined this would happen. There were a lot of things I’d never have imagined I’d do.
Mimmi’s fingers moved through her hair. The sound of the scissors’ blades against each other.
That evening in early summer… thought Lisa.
She remembered sitting in the kitchen, sewing new covers for the dogs’ beds. The sound of the scissors’ blades against each other. Snip, snip, clip, clip. The television was on in the living room. Two of the dogs were lying on the sofa in there, you could almost imagine they were drowsily watching the news. Lisa was listening with half an ear as she cut the material. Then the sewing machine rattling across the fabric in straight lines, the pedal right down to the floor.
Karelin was lying in the basket in the hallway, snoring. Nothing looks more ridiculous than a sleeping, snoring dog. He was lying on his back, back legs in the air and splayed out to the sides. One ear had flopped over his eye like a pirate’s eye patch. Majken was lying on the bed in the bedroom, her paw over her nose. From time to time she made little noises in her throat and her legs twitched. The new Springer spaniel lay happily beside her.
All at once Karelin wakes up with a start. He leaps up and begins to bark like mad. The dogs in the living room jump off the sofa and join in. Majken and the spaniel puppy come racing in and almost knock Lisa over; she has got up too.
As if she might not have understood, Karelin comes into the kitchen and tells Lisa at the top of his voice that there’s somebody outside, they’ve got a visitor, somebody’s coming.
It’s Mildred Nilsson, the priest. She’s standing out there on the veranda. The evening sun behind her turns the edges of her hair into a golden crown.
The dogs are all over her. They’re ecstatic about the visit. Barking, racketing about, whining, Bruno even sings a note or two. Their tails thud against the door frame and the balustrade.
Mildred bends down to say hello to them. That’s good. She and Lisa can’t look at each other for too long. As soon as Lisa saw her out there, it felt as if they’d both waded out into a fast-flowing river. Now they’ve got a bit of time to get used to it. They glance at each other, then look away. The dogs lick Mildred’s face. Her mascara ends up just below her eyebrows, her clothes are covered in hairs.
The current is strong. It’s a question of standing firm. Lisa holds on to the door handle. She sends the dogs to their baskets. Normally she yells and shouts, that’s how she normally speaks to them and it doesn’t bother them at all. This time the command is almost a whisper.
“Go to your baskets,” she says, waving feebly in the direction of the house.
The dogs look at her in bewilderment, isn’t she going to yell at them? But they lope off anyway.
Mildred doesn’t waste any time. Lisa can see she’s angry. Lisa is a head taller than her, Mildred has to stretch her neck slightly.
“Where have you been?” says Mildred furiously.
Lisa raises her eyebrows.
“Here,” she replies.
Her eyes fasten on the marks of summer on Mildred. She’s got freckles. And the light down on her face, on her upper lip and around her jawbone, has turned blonde.
“You know what I mean,” says Mildred. “Why aren’t you coming to the Bible study group?”
“I…” begins Lisa, scrabbling around in her head for a sensible excuse.
Then she gets angry. Why should she need to explain? Isn’t she an adult? Fifty-two years old, surely at that age it’s okay to do what you want?
“I’ve had other things to do,” she says. Her tone is more abrupt than she would like.
“What other things?”
“You know perfectly well!”
They stand there like two reindeer, vying to be leader of the herd. Their rib cages heaving up and down.
“You know perfectly well why I haven’t been coming,” says Lisa in the end.
They’ve waded out up to their armpits now. The priest loses her footing in the current. Takes a step toward Lisa, amazed and angry all at the same time. And something else in her eyes too. Her mouth opens. Takes a deep breath just as you do before you disappear under the water.
The current carries Lisa along with it. She loses her grip on the door handle. Moves toward Mildred. Her hand ends up round the back of Mildred’s neck. Her hair feels like a child’s beneath Lisa’s fingers. She draws Mildred toward her.
Mildred in her arms. Her skin is so soft. They stagger into the hallway entwined around each other, the door is left open, banging against the balustrade. Two of the dogs sneak out.
The only sensible thought in Lisa’s head: They’ll stay in the yard.
They stumble over shoes and dog baskets in the hallway. Lisa is walking backwards. Her arms still around Mildred, one around her waist, one around the back of her neck. Mildred very close, pushing her into the house, her hands beneath Lisa’s sweater, fingers on Lisa’s nipples.
They stumble through the kitchen, land on the bed in the bedroom. Majken is lying there smelling of damp dog, she couldn’t resist a dip in the river earlier in the evening.
Mildred on her back. Off with their clothes. Lisa’s lips on Mildred’s face. Two fingers deep inside her.
Majken raises her head and looks at them. Settles down with a sigh, nose between her paws. She’s seen members of the congregation coupling before. There’s nothing strange about it.
Afterward they make coffee and thaw out some buns. Eat as if they were starving, one after the other. Mildred gives the dogs tidbits and laughs, until Lisa tells her off, they’ll be sick, but she’s laughing all the time she’s trying to be stern.
They sit there in the kitchen in the middle of the light summer night. Each with a sheet around them, sitting on opposite sides of the table. The dogs have picked up on the party atmosphere and are playing about.
Now and again their hands creep across the table to meet.
Mildred’s index finger asks the back of Lisa’s hand: “Are you still here?” The back of Lisa’s hand answers: “Yes!” Lisa’s index finger and middle finger ask the inside of Mildred’s wrist: “Guilt? Regret?” Mildred’s wrist replies: “No!”
And Lisa laughs.
“I’d better come back to the Bible study group, then,” she says.
Mildred bursts out laughing. A piece of half-chewed cinnamon bun falls out of her mouth and onto the table.
“I don’t know, the things you have to be prepared to do to get people to the Bible study group.”
Mimmi stood in front of Lisa and examined her work. The scissors in her hand like a drawn sword.
“There,” she said. “Now I don’t have to be ashamed of you.”
She ruffled Lisa’s hair with a quick gesture. Then she pulled the kitchen towel out of the waistband of her apron and vigorously brushed the hairs off Lisa’s neck and shoulders.
Lisa ran her hand over the stubble.
“Don’t you want to look in the mirror?” asked Mimmi.
“No, I’m sure it’s fine.”
The autumn meeting of Magdalena, the women’s group. Micke Kiviniemi had set up a little drinks table outdoors, just outside the door by the steps that led into the bar. It was dark now, almost black outside. And unusually warm for the time of year. He’d created a little pathway from the road across the graveled yard up to the steps, edged it with tea lights in glass jars. Several handmade candlesticks stood on the steps and on the drinks table.
He got his reward. Heard their ohs and ahs from as far away as the road. Here they came. Tripping along, walking, tiptoeing across the gravel. Thirty or so women. The youngest just under thirty, the oldest just turned seventy-five.
“This is lovely,” they said to him. “It feels just like being abroad.”
He smiled back. But didn’t reply. Sought sanctuary behind the drinks table. Felt like somebody in a hide, watching the wildlife. They wouldn’t take any notice of him. They’d just behave naturally, as if he weren’t there. He felt excited, as if he were a boy lying on the fallen leaves among the trees, spying on them.
The yard outside the bar, like a big room in the darkness, full of sounds. Their feet on the gravel, giggling, chattering, cackling, nattering. The sounds traveled. Soared recklessly upward toward the black star-spangled sky. Rushed shamelessly across the river, reaching the houses on the other side. Were absorbed by the forest, the black fir trees, the thirsty moss. Ran along the road and reminded the village: we exist.
They smelled good and had dressed up for the occasion. Although it was obvious they weren’t well off. Their dresses were out of fashion. Long cotton cardigans buttoned over flowery bell-shaped skirts. Home permed hair. Shoes from the OBS store.
They got through the business of the meeting in about half an hour. The duty rosters were quickly filled with the names of volunteers, more hands in the air than were needed.
Then they had dinner. Most of them weren’t used to drinking, and quickly got tipsy, to their slightly dismayed delight. Mimmi giggled at them as she moved between the tables. Micke stayed in the kitchen.
“Heavens,” exclaimed one of the women as Mimmi carried in the dessert, “I haven’t had this much fun since…”
She broke off and waved her skinny arm around, searching for the answer.
It stuck out from the sleeve of her dress like a matchstick.
“… since Mildred’s funeral,” somebody shouted.
There was silence for less than a second. Then they all burst out into hysterical laughter, telling each other it was true, Mildred’s funeral had been… well, to die for, and they shouted and laughed as much as the feeble joke was worth.
The funeral. They’d stood there in their black clothes as the coffin was lowered. The bright early summer sun had stabbed at their eyes. The bumblebees banging about among the funeral flowers. The birch leaves young and shiny, as if they’d been waxed. The tops of the trees like green churches, chock full of male birds keen to mate, and the females answering them. Nature’s way of saying: I don’t care, I never stop, earth to earth.
The whole of that incredibly beautiful early summer’s day as the background to that terrible hole in the ground, the polished coffin.
The images in their heads of how she looked. Her skull like a broken plant pot inside the skin.
Majvor Kangas, one of the women in the group, had invited them back to her house afterward.
“Come with me!” she’d said. “My old man’s gone to the cottage, I don’t want to be on my own.”
So they’d gone along. Sat there subdued in the lounge on the black, squashy leather sofa. Hadn’t had much to say, not even about the weather.
But Majvor was feeling rebellious.
“Right, you lot!” she’d said. “Give me a hand!”
She’d fetched a tall stool with two steps from the kitchen, clambered up and opened the little cupboard above the hall stand. She’d passed down a dozen or so bottles: whisky, Cognac, liqueurs, Calvados. Some of the others took them off her.
“These are good,” one of them had said, reading the labels. “Twelve-year-old single malt.”
“Our daughter-in-law always brings them for us when she goes abroad,” explained Majvor. “But Tord never opens them, it’s just his home brewed hooch and grog if he offers somebody a drink. And I’m not much of a one for this sort of stuff, but…”
She’d allowed a meaningful pause to finish the sentence. Was helped down from the stool like a queen from her throne. A woman on each side of her, holding her hands.
“What’s Tord going to say?”
“What can he say?” Majvor had said. “He didn’t even open any of them when it was his sixtieth birthday last year.”
“Let him drink his own fox poison!”
And so they’d got a bit tipsy. Sung hymns. Expressed their devotion to each other. Given speeches.
“Here’s to Mildred,” Majvor had shouted. “She was the most indomitable woman I’ve ever met!”
“She was mad!”
“Now we’ll have to be mad on our own!”
They’d laughed. Cried a bit. But mostly laughed.
That was the funeral.
Lisa Stöckel looked at them. They were eating mascarpone ice cream and praising Mimmi as she swept past.
They’ll be all right, she thought. They’ll manage.
It made her happy. Or maybe not happy, but relieved.
And at the same time: loneliness had her on its hook, a barb through her heart, reeling her in.
After Magdalena’s autumn meeting Lisa strolled home through the darkness. It was just after midnight. She passed the churchyard and wandered up onto the ridge that ran upstream alongside the river. She went past Lars-Gunnar’s house, could just make it out in the moonlight. The windows were dark.
She thought about Lars-Gunnar.
The village chief, she thought. The strong man of the village. The man who got the firm with the contract to clear the snow and plow the road down to Poikkijärvi first, before he plowed down to Jukkasjärvi. The one who helped Micke when there was a problem with the bar license.
Not that Lars-Gunnar himself drank in the bar much. These days he hardly ever drank. It had been different in the past. In the old days the men used to drink all the time. Friday, Saturday and at least one day in the middle of the week as well. And at that time they really drank. Then it was a beer or two most days. That’s the way it was. But there comes a time when you had to ease up, otherwise the only way was downhill.
No, Lars-Gunnar didn’t bother much with spirits. The last time Lisa had seen him really drunk was six years ago. The year before Mildred moved to the village.
He actually came to her house that time. She could still see him sitting there in her kitchen. The chair disappears beneath his bulk. His elbow is resting on his knee, his forehead on his palm. Breathing heavily. It’s just after eleven o’clock at night.
It’s not just that he’s been drinking. The bottle is on the table in front of him. He had it in his hand when he arrived. Like a flag: I’ve been drinking, and I’m going to bloody well carry on drinking for a good while yet.
She’d already gone to bed when he knocked on the door. Not that she heard him knock, the dogs told her he was there as soon as he set foot on her veranda.
Of course it shows a kind of trust, coming to her when he’s like this. Weakened by alcohol and his feelings. She just doesn’t know what to do with it. She isn’t used to it. People confiding in her. She’s not the kind of person who invites that kind of behavior.
But she and Lars-Gunnar are related, after all. And she can keep her mouth shut, he knows that.
She stands there in her dressing gown, listening to his song. The song about his unhappy life. His unhappy and disappointing love. And Nalle.
“Sorry,” Lars-Gunnar mumbles into his fist. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
“It’s okay,” she says hesitantly. “You keep talking while I…”
She can’t think what to do, but she’s got to do something to stop herself running straight out of the house.
“… while I get the food ready for tomorrow.”
And so he keeps talking while she chops meat and vegetables for soup. In the middle of the night. Celeriac and carrots and leeks and swede and potatoes and everything but the kitchen sink. But Lars-Gunnar doesn’t seem to think there’s anything strange about it. He’s too taken up with his own affairs.
“I had to get away from the house,” he confesses. “Before I left… I’m not sober, I admit that. Before I left I was sitting by the side of Nalle’s bed holding a shotgun to his head.”
Lisa doesn’t say anything. Slices a carrot as if she hadn’t heard.
“I thought about how things are going to be,” he sighs. “Who’s going to look after him when I’m gone? He’s got nobody.”
And that’s true, thought Lisa.
She’d arrived at her gingerbread house up on the ridge. The moon cast a silvery sheen over the extravagant carving on the veranda and window frames.
She went up the steps. The dogs were barking and charging about like mad things inside, recognizing her footsteps. When she opened the door they hurtled out for their evening pee on the grass.
She went into the living room. All that was left in there was the empty, gaping bookcase and the sofa.
Nalle’s got nobody, she thought.