Blackwater. Part 13

'How?'

'Guess.'

'But you're telling me now.'

'You, yes. You're the new Traveller. He's the only one who's allowed to know. In the past he would kill the old one and replace him.'

'As what?'

'Priest. King . . . chieftain. Whatever you like.'

'You mean a sect? And he's the leader.'

'No. He's just the Traveller. He's theirs.'

'So they don't marry?'

'Of course they do,' she said. 'They marry and have children and become wives and get an education and become professional. They live normal lives.'

'Whereabouts?'

'Everywhere. They're all over the place dispersed, perhaps. But they keep the secret. And occasionally they meet him and have their rituals. He travels around, meets them at one of the sacred places, whichever is nearest to where they live.'

'So they never meet all at once?'

'That's impossible. Some live in Israel. In America. But most of them live in Europe. Whenever they can, they try to go to the place where he is to appear. Like here.'

'That's all piffle,' he said, gripping her upper arms, almost too hard.

'Of course,' she said lightly. 'But watch out for the old Traveller. If he realises you're going to replace him, he may kill you. Such things have happened. In the old days the old one killed all newcomers who threatened to take his place. Or else he himself was killed. Nowadays the old one just gives way.'

'What do you mean, gives way?'

'Goes away. Tries to find a new life. A normal life, or whatever. But that's not all that easy these days. He has never worked.'

'What has he lived on, then?'

'The women. Some of them are wealthy. They donate money. For the other ones' travels, too.'

'Are they going to the cave?'

'Yes.'

'What are you going to do there?'

'You won't be told that until you've been initiated. You mustn't show yourself until this festivity is over. We'll let the old one know afterwards.'

'You're lying,' he said. 'You think I'm childish enough to agree to this.'

She laughed. It sounded soft. She had become much softer, much kinder. He was not so afraid of her as he had been at first. But he didn't like her teasing him.

'Tell me what you're going to do tomorrow. Seriously. And who those women are.'

'We're going to the Stone G.o.d Cave.'

'I don't believe it exists.'

'Oh, yes, it does, up on the high mountain. The path past the ice house. You can look through the gap in the curtains tomorrow morning and you'll see the whole company crossing the river.'

As she lay on her back with her eyes closed, he could look at her properly. He looked and felt with his tongue. Her skin was so thin at the temples, he could see blue veins through it; those were thin, too. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s flattened as she lay like that, the teaspoonful middle rosy brown like the sweet spoonful of jam on top of a pastry; there were blue veins on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as well. She had been vaccinated on her left arm, but otherwise had no scars. The fair curly hair in her loins was even coa.r.s.er than elsewhere, tickling his nose and smelling of the sea. She was kind now. Perhaps she wasn't teasing him, but just amusing herself. Tomorrow she'll tell me who she is, he thought. Tell me things that are real, about herself. She likes me now.

After she had left him, he couldn't sleep. He had slept nearly all day. He no longer knew what day it was, Sunday or Monday. The two had merged into each other. He was tired and his eyes were smarting, but he went out into the bright, clear night and its birdsong. That was better than lying on the bunk counting the timbers in the cabin walls.

They were all asleep in there now and he could wander round the house, looking at it. He stared at the rough wooden s.h.i.+ngles covering the walls. Silhouettes of dragon heads crowned the ridges, and there was an iron weather vane shaped like a three-tongued flag. The gla.s.s in the windows was old and distorting, gleaming reddish in the morning sun, and all the curtains on the upper floor were drawn.

He wondered where the cave was, if it actually existed. She had said it wasn't far. The path began at the ice house, crossed the river over a footbridge of two logs and went on across a marshland sloping upwards. The path was easy across the marsh between islands of firm ground with birches and one or two small spruces. He took that way and enjoyed moving quickly without having to think. His body warmed and all his anxiety vanished. Hundreds of birds were calling and whistling all round him, thousands, he thought, thousands of birds calling and I just keep on walking.

The path appeared to lead up to the high mountain. After he had walked for twenty minutes, it became steeper, over stony ground extending in what must be an eastwest direction, long rocky offshoots from the mountain. In the end he was balancing on a very narrow ridge and approaching the hillside. Or the mountainside, he thought. Norwegians called every b.u.mp a mountain.

The path ran along ledges in the mountain, and pretty soon he had to climb. He turned round when the going got slower on the cliff face and what he saw was incredible. The sea. The whole sea, misty blue in the morning sun, the mist on the horizon reddish and glowing. Out there was the sun, and above the mountain ridges the clouds had begun building up.

He had thought they were far up in the high mountains towards the Swedish border, but they were close to the sea, at the most a few kilometres from the sh.o.r.e, and he could b.l.o.o.d.y well see all the way to America. The ridge he was balancing on probably extended from northeast to northwest. He decided to climb right up and look.

On his way up, keeping to the crevices, he regretted his decision as the precipice began to frighten him. The path was still clear, but zigzagged up the cliff. Below was a ravine where he could see birds flying. When the first puffs of cloud came drifting, his face turned wet, then for a few moments he could see clouds below him, floating in the ravine, ragged and steaming. He could just see the tops of pines in the watery mist, from above, as the birds saw them.

He decided not to look down any more, but just continue up from ledge to ledge, being careful before stepping off a safe place, checking whether a stone was loose under his foot. Onwards and upwards. He'd have to find a better path down, a less steep one. There was no sign of any cave. That was all just b.l.o.o.d.y nonsense. He had gone on walking as if drunk and was now stuck on the mountainside, clouds drifting below and above him, soaking him with their moisture.

As soon as he got to the top and found firm, lichen-covered rock beneath his feet, squalls of rain came racing in and he could no longer see the sea. He hunched down and waited for a better view, but the air thickened more and more and he found himself sitting in the cloud, dripping wet. He realised he would never find a better path and the risk was that he would lose his way, so he started down. His stomach pressed to the rough, cracked mountainside, he felt with his foot for loose stones below and held on until his fingers ached whenever he had to s.h.i.+ft his weight.

A squall brought a cold shower over his back, but then another came and seemed to sweep away the worst. The sun flashed. He dared to look over his shoulder and could see right down. The sea was there again, boiling with light.

When he had gone so far that he could walk upright without the support of his hands, he noticed a thick rope fastened to a pine tree and hanging down the other side of the cliff. He went over to it and looked down. The rope had knots in it and ended just above the worn and trampled ground, a path apparently beginning where the rope ended.

He realised that you were supposed to let yourself down. The path led into the perpendicular mountainside, and opened up into a large, almost oval entrance.

The cave. So it did exist after all. As he slithered down the rope, he realised that he done the worst bit quite unnecessarily. The cave wasn't all that high up and the path to it was easy. There were ferns in the entrance, hanging from the roof of the cave inside, the dark rock covered with lichen, but not far inside. Then it became sterile. The mountain had crumbled and cracked when the cold had lifted in the spring, and he was now standing on stone and gravel.

Only the first bit was smooth, the ground beginning to slope steeply down into the darkness. Must be a d.a.m.ned big cave. He would tell her he had been there now she wasn't expecting that of him. But he had to go a little further in. There must be something there he could say he had seen, so that she would believe him.

It was too steep to walk down, so he had to sit and slide through the mess of gravel and mud beneath him. That's the end of my jeans, he thought, when occasionally he had to brake quite hard against the ground. Large rocks protruded, firmly rooted in the ground, and he could hold on to them. His eyes soon got used to the dark and the meagre light from above. The smell of rock and mud was harsh and lifeless, the smell of the underworld, nothing but stalagmites and stalact.i.tes in the roof. Not a single patch of moss.

Finally he came down to more level ground. To test out the size of the s.p.a.ce around him he tried with his voice, but his throat locked and it hurt to call out. The damp and cold went right through him and he became clumsy, wis.h.i.+ng he could squat down and just wait. But nothing would happen. He was alone with this harsh odour, with the darkness and cold that was the mountain's.

When he turned his head, he could see the cave entrance and it dazzled him. He had to sit for a while with his head turned away to get his night vision back again. He picked up stones from the cave floor and flung them around, bouncing them off the walls. He threw systematically, like fly-fis.h.i.+ng, fanning stones out from where he was standing. On their way down, the stones didn't strike the wall at right angles and he heard them hitting the ground far away.

So there was a path there the cave went on, but how far? He didn't want to know. He would turn back now. He would tell her this, anyhow, in which direction it went.

He had closed his eyes as he threw, to be able to hear the stones landing. When he opened them, he could see a bit further in front of him.

It was a rock. High and rough, upright, narrowing towards the top, taller than a human being.

Quite suddenly he was frightened out of his wits, fear coming without warning. Before he had been uneasy, but now it was terror, so great that he didn't think to be careful. He rushed back up, gravel and stones falling below him, then slid down again. Against all his instincts, he made himself calm down to be able to get out, thrusting with his feet into the ground, sliding. When he finally reached the cave entrance, he pressed his face into the harsh crowberry scrub and moss, and after a while was aware of the taste and smell of earth that was alive.

He didn't know what had frightened him, nor did he want to think about it. That served no purpose. All he knew was that he must get away, at first down to the hunting lodge, then out to the road. Hitch.

The women came along the path just above the river. He heard them from a long way away and leapt up to hide behind one of the mounds, ducking right down behind a thick, fungus-clad, rotting birch trunk from where he could peer out at them.

The Silver Fox was in the lead. They were all talking and laughing loudly, wearing flashy sports wear. Ylja was somewhere in the middle, apparently elated, hallooing away, her hair tied up with a cord in a short ponytail.

He calmed down once they had disappeared. Presumably he had plenty of time before they returned, so he decided to go back and rest. His fears had vanished as soon as he saw and heard the little troop of walkers. They looked ordinary. Everything was ordinary down there, but all the same, he was determined to leave.

He fell asleep and woke too late, he thought, but rested. He would have to hurry, but couldn't leave without any money. He needed at least enough to be able to buy some food and rent a cabin until he got some planting or clearing work. He thought he would take some from her handbag, that long brown thing, made of something k.n.o.bbly and stiff. Crocodile skin, she had told him when he asked. He didn't want to wait until she came back, or ask her for money. Then he would never get away.

The house wasn't locked and there were paraffin lamps and a board game on the veranda table. Someone had been lying on the faded sofa cus.h.i.+ons. What if any of them were still there?

Well, so what? It couldn't be forbidden to go inside. He went into the dark hallway. The floor was littered with trainers, boots, dog-chewed b.a.l.l.s, a shotgun leaning in one corner. Bits of polystyrene, an otter board. The framed photographs on the walls looked as if they were taken at the beginning of the century, all men. Men in tweed caps and lace-up leather boots. One posed with his foot on a bear's head, a thick stick jammed into its mouth to hold it open. Torsten had a similar photograph on the parlour wall at home. In one photograph, two men were carrying a salmon on a stake between them. Another showed a whole company with their dogs in front of heaps of dead birds.

The gla.s.s in the frames was dusty and two were broken. Some of the frames contained large sprigs of dried flowers. It all looked as if no one bothered about the pictures any longer; they simply hung there, the men's faces staring rigidly down at the mess in the hall.

He could see a kitchen, which looked relatively modern and was very small. They must have had a cookhouse outside. Leftover food lay everywhere, and wine bottles. They must have carried a lot in their rucksacks. There was a smell of garlic and the acid smell of spilt red wine. He spread some overripe dessert cheese on some bread and quickly ate three or four pieces, then put some bread and cheese into his pocket.

The dining room had a rustic table and a whole lot of stuffed animal heads on the walls and birds on the sideboard. They looked moth-eaten and decaying, noses withered and claws missing, only the gla.s.s eyes clear.

He wasted no time on the ground floor. The bedrooms were upstairs, sleeping bags all over the place, three or four in each room there must be fifteen or twenty women. He found Ylja's room at the south end of the house. Why was she allowed to sleep on her own? The Silver Fox didn't seem to have a room up there. Perhaps he slept with one of the women? Though in that case he must sleep with three or four of them? Or with Ylja? Were they married?

To h.e.l.l with it, he thought. I'm going. I'll never see any of them ever again.

He felt different as he picked up her handbag, half anxious again. It was on the chair by the bed. On another chair lay a number of packs of those pale-blue paper panties. The bed was unmade and smelt of her, though more faintly, and the sheets were also paper.

When he first opened the bag, he thought of looking for her driving licence to see what her name and age were, but then he thought h.e.l.l, it didn't matter. He would never see her again, perhaps never even think about her again.

He found a wallet with Finnish banknotes in it and in one compartment some Norwegian ten-kroner coins. At first he thought he was stuck and would have to stay, but then he found the centre compartment in the bag, closed with a zip. There was a whole wad of Norwegian hundred-kroner notes, and the exchange certificate. She had got almost eighteen hundred Norwegian kroner. She wouldn't notice if he took two hundred. Not even if he took three. In the end he took five hundred. It happened so quickly he had no time to think it through.

There was a folded chemist's bag in the handbag as well, flat but not empty. He looked inside and found several packets of condoms bought at the chemist's in Byvngen, the receipt still there. But they had never used them. He couldn't understand and it filled him with anger, though he couldn't really work out why.

He had just closed the bag when he heard voices. Shortly afterwards, a door downstairs rattled and the house filled with women. They were laughing as they thumped up the stairs several on their way up. He was caught like a rat in a trap. There was only one door, and that led straight out to the stairs.

Without thinking, he had backed over towards the window. Now he turned round and glanced down at the ground. It looked soft and wasn't too far down. He opened the window and wriggled out. At first he intended to hang on to the windowsill and drop down once he was hanging straight. That would shorten his fall by his length. But he hadn't time. He thought he heard someone at the door, so he jumped.

He immediately realised it had gone badly wrong. The ground wasn't soft; the tall gra.s.s had deceived him. He felt a sharp pain in his hip, but soon found it was his left foot that had landed really badly. Something had happened to it. His fall was still shuddering within him, from fear as much as shock and pain, and he couldn't feel his foot at all.

He could hear nothing from above. He was lying almost hidden in the tall gra.s.s and birches. Slowly he started getting up, his foot throbbing, not hurting all that much except when he put his weight on it. He slithered over to the wall of the house and hauled himself upright, then hopped clumsily round the house, clutching at the tarred wooden s.h.i.+ngles. He didn't once turn round as he limped out into the birch woods down towards the river, then made his way to the grouse shed from one slim tree to the next.

She didn't come until late that evening, bringing with her cold breast of hazel-grouse, still sticky with sauce, which had solidified and was rather greasy. She also gave him some dessert cheese, the same kind he had taken up at the house, but he hadn't eaten that. His foot hurt so much he felt sick. His ankle had swollen and reminded him of his grandmother's ankles every time he looked at it bluish, puffy, though the skin wasn't as rough as hers.

Ylja didn't say much, as if her thoughts were still up at the house. She poured vodka into his gla.s.s, broke an egg into it, then peppered it. Beside his plate lay four yellow tablets.

'What are those?'

'Vitamin B.'

She's nuts, he thought. But he should have realised that from the beginning. He was afraid of her now. Perhaps she had noticed some money was missing. It would be like her to say nothing. To wait. He didn't dare do anything except empty his gla.s.s. The egg and the liquor slid down surprisingly easily.

She left without having s.e.x with him. There was something wrong. Had she tired? Or had she already opened her handbag?

He said nothing about his bad foot, just stayed lying on the bunk with the blanket over his legs. Nor did she ask him anything. Not until after she had gone did he realise that now he couldn't leave. He was her prisoner. But perhaps she didn't know that?

If the phone went at night, he always thought the worst, that it was an abdomen or an accident. Possibly a heart. Sharp voice over the phone, shrill with fear. It aches. It thumps and flutters. I have red flashes. The thigh. The artery. It went in deep. 'Bandage it up. Bandage it tight, but not too tight.'

And eleven suicides in six years, four of them messy.

On county-fair days, he usually did conjuring tricks, coins coming out of people's ears and crotches. No one had expected that of him.

He never risked ignoring an abdomen. But on this June night, it was a retired teacher up in Tuviken with palpitations. She often had them. Although he had done an ECG on her and knew it was a benevolent arrhythmia, he gave in. That was idiotic she would demand more and more house calls but he fell for the temptation of the road, the emptiness of mind, the roar of the engine and the radio on low. Mile after mile, as far as he liked for he could no longer sleep.

Barbro had not said a word about Midsummer Eve. She had remained silent, busying herself with her clothes and working materials, some packed into cardboard boxes and suitcases. But they had still been in her workroom when he left.

He lied to the teacher in Tuviken and said he happened to be pa.s.sing on his way to a call nearby. She wanted to know where and her curiosity stabilised her heart better than the quinine. He was given a cup of coffee, unable to refuse since it was real coffee and dark brown, and that banished any last thoughts of sleep. Anyhow, the murky hour would soon be over. Streaks of mist were floating, lit through in the watercourses. He saw elks munching, though sometimes they turned out to be lichen-covered blocks of stone.

He would be home again in less than an hour, and Barbro would be lying in the bed he was to lie in. That was why he was driving through forests and marshlands, driving without noticing the scents or the harsh damp.

Every day, his conscience tormented him over what had happened, though she didn't believe him. It had been happening for a long time and still nothing had been said about it. But he was certain of inevitable misfortune. Necrosis.

He was driving far too fast along a narrow dirt road that often ran alongside lakes sliced through by the wash behind divers and goldeneyes. The dark waters by the sh.o.r.es were as glossy as metal and there were reflections above the depths in the middle of the lakes, some pinkish like skin with blood running through it, others s.h.i.+mmering blue like the whites of children's eyes. Under the anaesthetic of speed, he had emotions. But they were not pure.

Back in Byvngen, there was an unaccustomed east light over the village, illuminating the wrong houses. All was still. As he drove up the hill past the council offices, he noticed the curtains were drawn across in the police office, grey curtains with a pattern of blue-grey and yellowish-green leaves, and he thought he could see a light behind them. The curtains were quite thick but there were strip lights behind them.

I must, he thought. Now.

He knocked on the window pane and the crack widened between the curtains. Then Vemdal came out and opened the door. He looked grey, patches of pigmentation from his sunburn uneven over his face, his blood retreating inwards. A slightly sour smell came from him.

He said nothing, but went on ahead into his curtained office. Birger had expected piles of papers, files and card indexes, but it was almost empty. A pad of paper lay on the green underlay; Vemdal had drawn spiral patterns with a ballpoint all over the top page and two words written and filled in over and over again: Nasi Goreng. Above the pad was the cage with the rat in it, sitting perfectly still, its eyes fixed on Birger as he sat down in the chair opposite.

'Thanks for phoning,' said ke.

That was just what he hadn't done. But then he remembered having phoned about Lill-Ola and the oddities in his freezer and boiler room. Vemdal sounded as if Birger had looked in on any ordinary afternoon, not at three o'clock on a Monday morning.

'We searched that boiler room.'

'What did he say about it?'

'Made a h.e.l.l of a fuss about human rights. Though nothing worse than they usually do north of ostersund. I'd got my papers from the prosecutor. Lill-Ola was up there on Midsummer Night. So we raked out the boiler and swept the floor. He had burnt rubber boots and unplucked birds. Well, his wife did it for him, of course. Bojan.'

'So they weren't sleeping-bag feathers?'

'Could have been both. They're being a.n.a.lysed. He said he had told her to burn two capercaillie that had been in the freezer too long. That's a load of s.h.i.+t.'

'I saw the capercaillie packets in the freezer. The first time I opened it.'