Blackwater. Part 12

'Uh-huh . . . you've taken care of her? To help her.'

'We have taken care of her,' he said. 'You, too.'

Before she went to bed, she went out to fetch Ken and Barbie. The cross was still there, and the handkerchief supposed to be a tent, and the flowers. But the dolls had gone. d.a.m.ned kids, she thought. Hypocritical little monsters. Though it was human. They wanted nothing greater. And tomorrow I'll stop thinking bad things and talking sharply. They're only children.

Petrus and Brita had already gone to bed. Annie was embarra.s.sed when he opened the door in a grey-striped, almost full-length nights.h.i.+rt. She whispered quietly that Sigrid and Gertrud had taken Mia's dolls with them. He pulled her in through the door, for midges and mosquitoes poured in towards the warmth when it was open.

'The girls didn't go and get them,' he said. 'I did. Mia won't miss them. You heard that yourself. She accepted they were dead.'

'Maybe so,' said Annie 'But I think it'd be better for us all if they've been resurrected from the dead when she wakes up tomorrow morning.'

He stared at her with round blue eyes. There was sorrow in them.

'Give them to me,' she said.

Slowly he went across to the wood box and opened it. As he handed her the dolls, he was looking infinitely sad. But she felt she already knew him. He isn't sad, she thought. He's just d.a.m.ned annoyed.

He should never have told her his name, should have said something else, as she had done. Now she knew his name was Johan and she had turned it into Jukka. Well, they did call Per-Erik Pekka at home, but Jukka was much too Finnish.

'Jukka, Jukka, Jukka . . .'

She said it as she sat astride him and moved with him inside her. He was ashamed, but the shame was sweetish, and she laughed.

He had slept far into the morning and woken soaked with sweat with the sun directly in his face. He felt anxious, not really afraid, but apprehensive. Would she tell him it was time for him to go? He had no money. He had to stay at least until after the Midsummer holiday was over. Or borrow some money. But would she lend him any? Maybe she would laugh at him, or give him a lot, several hundred. He didn't know.

She had brought mugs for tea and a teapot in a basket with her, and sandwiches. Everything seemed ordinary, almost normal. At first he thought it was soft goat's cheese spread on the bread, but it was peanut b.u.t.ter. She ate nothing, but she drank some tea. At first she had spoilt it by putting milk into it. She might have asked him first.

'I'll go and make some more,' he said.

'You're not allowed out,' she said, laughing.

'I have to go out!'

'All right, but don't go and pee where they can see you from the house.'

When he was down by the river and the birch leaves were moving, glittering above him, he remembered a dream he had had just before he woke up. He had been flying over vast forests. It was a blue twilight, his body flying without causing him any surprise, nothing below him except the tops of trees. He was flying low and saw smoke and swirling sparks from fires glowing down in the felling areas.

Back inside, he remembered she had told him something as they had lain on the mattress. Europe had once been covered by vast forests from the Caucasus all the way to the Atlantic, though the Caucasus had been called something else then, something that had been forgotten. People had lit fires at the Midsummer solstice all over Europe, throughout the forests called Europe.

The strange thing was that he had dreamt about it and seen deciduous trees in the twilight. Chestnuts and oaks, dark elms, limes and ash trees. Thick hazelnut bushes. The guelder rose. Dogwood. He wasn't even sure he had ever seen all those trees in reality. She had said the words and he had dreamt he had seen them.

When he had finished eating, she locked the door, went over to the window and drew the curtains. He thought of saying he wanted to clean his teeth but didn't dare. He was afraid she would laugh at him. She pulled down the zip and got out of her jeans, leaving them on the floor with the holes from legs and feet still there. He thought about a cartoon film if she stepped backwards they would roll back up her legs and close round her slightly protruding, firm little bottom. She's not as old as I thought yesterday, he thought. For then she would be flatter there. Or was she sway-backed?

She flung away the striped jersey and again he saw her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, like the kind of pale pointed jam m.u.f.fins Gudrun used to make. That thought put him in a good mood and his anxiety vanished. He felt like saying, Do you want to greet an old acquaintance? That raced through his mind once they were down on the mattress on the floor and he was about to enter her. But he was afraid it would sound stupid. She still had her pants on and when he pulled at them, they tore. She ripped them off and flung them impatiently away.

'They're made of paper!'

She didn't reply. But he almost forgot what he was doing because he was looking at the soft little heap of pale blue paper. That was good, because in that way he could hold back longer.

She was more pleased with him now, though she had a strange way of showing it, slapping his bottom so that it stung, patting and slapping alternately on his right and left b.u.t.tock.

When she had dressed again and went to pull back the curtains, she called over to him and they looked through a crack.

'Can you see him?'

He saw a man with quite a few grey silvery streaks in thick hair that had once been black. But he probably wasn't all that old. He was sitting by the river looking out over the water, in green windproof trousers with flap pockets on the thighs and a green check s.h.i.+rt.

'He mustn't see you. Don't forget.'

Johan said it was impossible to hide away indoors for a whole day in an old grouse shed. She said he didn't have to do that, as long as he just kept away from the house.

'It doesn't matter much if the others see you at a distance. But watch out for him. 'He's daangerous,' she drawled.

It was impossible to tell whether she was joking or not. But he had to stay all the same.

Sunday was another hot day. He roamed around without going anywhere near the house. There was a large dog run but no dogs. The kennels had been broken up by the birch scrub, pale shoots making their way out of the entrances. He found the ice house, which was empty and likely to have been so for decades. It would have been really good to have found some ice under the sawdust, for there was no electricity here. In a shed full of old tools and rusty fish buckets, he found a rat cage. He rummaged among the rubbish and finally found a long otter line in a wood store. He fetched his soap and the pail with the eel which he had put by the river, and in the shelter of the forest he made his way down to the little bowl-shaped pool he had seen the morning they arrived. He went round to the north side of the mere, where the banks were steep and rocky.

The eel was exhausted, motionless in the too warm water, so it wasn't difficult transferring it to the rat cage. He lowered it under the water for a moment to revive it, then hauled up the cage and looked carefully at it. Long fins ran along its body, its head narrowing towards the front, its nose flat and glossily black. Its body was one long, powerful muscle. Nothing but willpower. Or instinct. Just a strong embodiment of will. Its belly was white.

If what he had read was true, it could make its way to the sea even from here, wriggling through the dew, climbing along channels. A travelling eel moved as fast as a human being on foot. It always knew what it wanted. Perhaps it didn't know anything else.

He tied the line firmly to the wire netting and then threw the cage out into deep water. He felt he was tormenting the eel, but he didn't want to release it. The line ran in the crevices in the rocks up to where he tied it to a pine root.

When he had finished with the eel, he took off his jeans and underpants and started was.h.i.+ng them. They were difficult to clean with nothing but soap and water so cold his hands froze. When the clothes seemed more or less rinsed, he hung them in a birch, then lay down on a flat stone to wait for them to dry.

It was too warm for the tiny stinging insects and not even the mosquitoes had really got going. He struck out at a horsefly with a birch switch. The sun was baking on the stone and the breezes wrinkling the water sent a shudder through him, but he soon relaxed as it grew still.

He fell asleep, his cheeks flaring in the heat of the sun as if he had a fever. The soughing from the birches in the breeze penetrated into his torpor. Clouds started trotting across the sky like driver-less horses. He sensed their shadows like s.h.i.+vers, and as they pa.s.sed by, the light rose and pressed in through his closed eyelids. The smells of the forest came right into his sleep.

He was lying with one knee bent, his d.i.c.k resting against his thigh when he woke. He thought he had dreamt that something or someone had been standing looking at him. As he let his gaze wander along the sh.o.r.e, he could see nothing but a jumble of green upon green. Finn the green hunter come into his mind, something Grandmother had told him, or he'd read in a magazine. Green in green among green. He felt strangely empty inside, a green jumble of oblivion, and his skin felt licked by eyes.

He got up and scrambled into his wet jeans. He was cold now. He didn't know where Ylja was or when she was coming to find him. He was hungry again. He had to go back to the grouse shed to lie down and wait until she appeared and gave him the right to exist. This was all b.l.o.o.d.y stupid s.h.i.+t and he must have been crazy to have left home. Torsten knocking down Vidart behind the enclosure wasn't the third world war. Letting him down Alda's old well had been a cruel thing to do, but since he had got himself out on his own, he would have had an advantage if he had stayed.

No, not an advantage. Possibly the right to exist.

What an expression. He had got it on the brain. Before he left, he hauled in the rat cage and looked at the eel. It was a big b.a.s.t.a.r.d. With a better knife than his little fish-gutter, he could have cut its head off, gone up to the house and been king for a while. There must be a smokehouse somewhere.

He threw the cage out and carefully hid the line with stones.

There was nothing to do but sleep, sleep away his hunger. Women's voices penetrated through to him in the cottage, many of them, light voices, occasionally shrill. He could see no one through the window facing the river. Cautiously opening the door a crack, he saw a whole group of women round the green-clad man. As he closed the door again and lay down on the bunk, the voices sounded like the screeching of gulls.

The man was like a fox. A silver fox. Slim, slightly pointed nose, slanting eyes. And his voice could clearly be heard through those of the women. He had a Finnish accent, too, though you weren't supposed to say that.

Ylja did not appear until long into the evening, but then she had food with her. Smoked reindeer heart, only a little bit carved off it. Wholemeal bread. Salt b.u.t.ter and cold fried salmon trout. Almond-shaped boiled potatoes, still warm. And Finnish Koskenkorva vodka.

It was strange she should drink that, because everything else about her was upper-cla.s.s. He told her so, though politely, he thought. But she said it suited her best and caused the least hangover. It all sounded like quite a habit. She offered him some and he tried to drink it as if he was used to it too, or anyhow didn't think all that much of it. Though it was hard to see how much he was given as she poured it straight into his tumbler. He had already had a rather acid Norwegian pilsner, and next time he was thirsty, he went to fetch water from the river.

He ate all the food, which must have been the remains of dinner up at the house. She laughed to see him put away the entire reindeer heart. Then she pulled him down on the mattress.

He was bewildered and dislocated, now and again even momentarily frightened, sometimes totally exhilarated, beyond everything then there seemed to be nothing else but her soft body and the light coming from the window. Birdsong and murmuring water. The intense, almost unbearable pleasure when she held something under his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es and made the o.r.g.a.s.m continue although it had begun to fade, on and on, to the borders of pain, until in the end he realised it was the vodka bottle. They cooled it in the river every time either of them had to go out to pee.

He didn't know where he was when he woke, but he was horribly thirsty. She gave him some water and told him he was in the grouse shed at Trollevolden, that his name was Johan Brandberg and he was born on 21 February 1957. So he had told her when he was born? What else had he said?

She gave him a splash of vodka in his gla.s.s when he had finished the water. He asked her when she was born, thinking he had a right to know.

'I'm a Scorpio,' she replied, and he got no more out of her.

She whimpered slightly when it was good for her. He thought he would do anything to make her whine and whimper like that. She seemed young and sensitive then, and as if clinging to him. His head spun, though perhaps that was the liquor. And exhaustion.

He presumed she was going back up to the house after he had fallen asleep, so thought it best to ask her some questions while he was still able to keep his eyes open. He wanted to know why he wasn't allowed to be seen, and when would she be coming back? She replied only that he wouldn't be seeing much of her during the day.

'We're going for a long walk.'

'Where to?'

'To the Stone G.o.d Cave, if you must know.'

'Who's going? All those women? And the Silver Fox?'

She laughed at his name for the man in green.

'The Stone G.o.d Cave? Is it a real cave?'

'It certainly is,' she said, in some kind of Norwegian.

'Why can't I come, too?'

'It's complicated,' she said. 'Come on, Jukka. Forget the cave. Forget those females.'

But he persisted. He wanted to know who they were. As well as the man in green.

'Why is he dangerous?'

'He's not that dangerous,' she mumbled sleepily against his throat.

'You said he was.'

'Only dangerous to you, little Jukka.'

'I'm not little.'

'No, so big, so big,' she said caressingly, softly taking his d.i.c.k, and it responded although he didn't want to at that moment. He was thirsty from the reindeer heart and that helped him maintain his concentration. He lay on top of her and grasped her upper arms, firmly, but not hurting her. To make sure, he asked her.

'No, you're not hurting me. You do me good. But hurry and come on in. You're cold.'

'Not now.'

He really wanted to know.

'Are you sure you want to know?'

'Yes, of course.'

'But once you know, you'll be caught, little Jukka.'

'Know what? Who they are, do you mean?'

'They're women from the old tribe,' she mumbled. 'He's the Traveller. And you are the new.'

'New what?'

'The new Traveller.'

He let her go and she wriggled over towards the bottle and cautiously poured a little into their gla.s.ses. When she had drunk hers, she lay on her back with her eyes closed and there was no tension in her body, her fair hair sliding roughly like sand between his fingers. Her lips were pale and she had red blotches on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and throat. Perhaps he had rubbed too hard against her. She was also slightly red round the mouth.

'The Traveller always comes walking with a living animal. Like you. Then you know it's him. The animal is his companion. That's how they recognise him. Or some of them do. The others will soon know.'

'Who?'

'The women. Then they take you instead of the old Traveller.'

'The Silver Fox?'

She laughed, her eyes closed.

'Yes. He came with a fox. That's right. You, Johan, you have talents.'

'What kind of women are they?'

'They belong to an old tribe.'

'Like Finnish Sami, or something like that?'

'No . . . not so northern. They existed in the great forest between the Caucasus and the Atlantic.'

'There aren't any tribes like that left.'

'In a way, no. But all the same. They were matrilinear.'

He tried to find some meaning in the word, but felt stupid. Matrix, he thought, and then linear. But no meaning came of it.

'They reckon their origins down the female line,' she said, almost whispering. He didn't want her to fall asleep now. He wanted to know. He slid into her again and woke her up with small movements. She was almost too moist. They were wet together. He had created much of it.

'And then there was the secret,' she said. 'They protect it.'

'What?'

'Their secret. Of the Traveller, and that they belonged to the old tribe. The tribe was dispersed, you see. They were abducted. Married off. Had daughters. But they told their daughters the secret. And they never told anyone else because that was dangerous. Perhaps someone said something once. But that went wrong.'