Blackwater. Part 18

'We're a couple of old bachelors, you and me. Irretrievably.'

'Don't know about irretrievably. And you're married, after all.'

'Have been.'

'I've had so little time. Though sometimes I think this way takes up more time. All this b.l.o.o.d.y what's it called? courting. Unless you take the very simplest way out.'

He wanted some coffee anyhow.

'You keep the place in order, I see,' he said, out in the kitchen.

'I keep it in order and I cook dinner every day. I'm living kind of . . . under a gla.s.s dome. Palpating people's bellies and groins but not talking to them. I've given up reading about the case, too.'

'No need to bother. There's nothing new. You've read about Ivo Maertens, have you?'

'No.'

'He turned up at his home. His parents phoned. He came home on the first of July. It wasn't him. He'd had a tiff with the girl in Gothenburg and they'd parted. He had no idea who it was she had with her in the tent. Nor have we.'

'What was the tiff about?'

'There was a major rock concert in Gothenburg. Ivo Maertens and Sabine Vestdijk were staying at the camping site in Lngedrag and made contact with someone who wanted to sell them tickets. Black market, but at a reasonable price. Ivo didn't believe it. He was sure they'd be cheated, that the tickets weren't valid and they would never get in with them. So he didn't want to. So they fell out and he started sulking. I think he's pig-headed. She went to the concert. He doesn't know who she was with, whether it was the person selling the tickets or someone else. Ivo never saw who it was. But he thought it was a man. She didn't come back that night. He got d.a.m.ned worried by the morning and thought of going to the police. He went and asked at reception if they'd seen her and he asked in the tents next to theirs. However, she did come in the end. Out of another tent. That was the end between them. He was so furious, he packed up his things and left. He hitched home and that took a few days. He knew nothing about what had happened when he got back to Leiden. There they received him as if he had been resurrected from the dead. He doesn't know what plans she had when they parted in Lngedrag. But there had been no talk about the mountains, ever. So it seems as if that was the other man's idea. Sagittarius's.'

'Sagittarius? Had he shot someone?'

'Not as far as we know. The only thing of his we found in an old bag was a notebook. It had a sign of the zodiac on it: Sagittarius. That's really the only thing we think we know about him.'

'Why?'

'The notebook was bought here, from the general store in Byvngen. You can see that from the price tag. They had all the signs of the zodiac to choose from. So why should he have chosen one other than his own? They remember him. Though not that he bought a notebook. There were lots of people there on the day before Midsummer Eve. We've been able to trace Sabine Vestdijk and him all the way from Lngedrag, because they stayed at camping sites all the way up. In that big tent. There's been such a hullabaloo in the papers, people have phoned in. They arrived in Byvngen the day before Midsummer Eve and rented a room there for the first time. That was at the Three Pines. In her name only. The landlady doesn't remember if they said he was her husband. Anyhow, Sabine went to bed in the middle of the afternoon and he went to the chemist's. The a.s.sistant there remembers him. She thought he was good-looking. Though unpleasant. She reckoned he was a druggie. He had a headband and looked a bit sloppy, she thought. Though you never know. That depends on her own standards, and in the store they said nothing about his appearance except that he had quite long hair. He kept on saying he wanted Saridon. He couldn't understand that all strong drugs are on prescription. I don't think the a.s.sistant had much English, either, and he only spoke English. "Painkiller," he kept saying, over and over again. At first she didn't understand. She noted the word "killer" and thought he was unpleasant. I think Sabine Vestdijk was feeling ill and needed a painkiller.'

'Period pains.'

'Yes, if they can be that bad. I don't know.'

'Young women can have very severe period pains.'

'Anyhow he drifted around the place. It's not definite that he bought the notebook himself. The a.s.sistant in the store can't remember his doing so. She remembers him because he spoke English. She doesn't know any English, she's an older woman, so she had to go and get help. That's how she remembered what the man wanted beer. Nothing else. The store manager who helped her remembers the same he bought only beer. So who bought the notebook? There were crowds of people the day before Mid-summer Eve, but no other customer spoke English. We don't even know if it was Sagittarius who wrote the telephone number in it. Norwegian. He was extremely careful with it anyhow, and hid the notebook under a plastic-covered piece of cardboard at the bottom of the bag. I got quite excited about that. But the number was to a small self-service store in a backwater on the coast above Brnnysund. They know nothing about him there. And I think that's true. There were some Norwegians at the Three Pines that night and they've been questioned, too, of course, but they didn't even know where the place was. Hard to say whether they were lying. But they weren't people who'd normally have anything to do with long-haired youths in ragged, grubby jeans. They were a teacher couple from Namsos and a vet from Steinkjer. The poor girl never got any painkillers, but may have drunk some vodka, since there was an empty bottle in the room. Koskenkorva.'

'What about the powder you showed me?'

ke looked embarra.s.sed.

'I had the same thought about him as the chemist's a.s.sistant had. But when they a.n.a.lysed the powder, it turned out to be mostly acetylsalicylic acid. Caffeine, too, and cola seeds. Same as in Coca-Cola.'

's.e.m.e.n colae,' said Birger. 'But I don't recognise that mixture.'

'No stronger than aspirin, anyhow. That was all she had taken. They had gone in the morning left without paying. Probably very early. No one knows what they got up to in the morning. Eventually she appeared at Lill-Ola Lennartsson's. The man went shopping at the store. He actually asked about a mountain. But I'm beginning to think they had simply driven the wrong way, for it wasn't a mountain anywhere around here.'

'Which was it then?'

'Starhill. That isn't here. Meanwhile she's at Lill-Ola's. So it's possible Lill-Ola thought she was alone. In that case, it wasn't all that strange that he flannelled around and lent her a tent and so on. He's quite a one for the ladies. They say he's so b.l.o.o.d.y cheeky, he goes in to lone wives in rented cabins when their husbands are out fis.h.i.+ng at night. I don't know.'

'You've had to listen to an awful lot of s.h.i.+t.'

'Yes, I've heard quite enough about Lill-Ola Lennartsson. He was the one who said he saw you crossing the road and going into the forest. Up by the Lobber.'

'Then he's insane.'

'He may have seen someone else, of course. And thought it was you. But I think he said it because I had his boiler room searched. He realised you had tipped me off.'

'I find it hard to believe . . .'

'You're nice, Birger, that's what you are. But wait that's not all. He said I began to persecute him afterwards. Searching his cellar and house. That I was protecting you. He's lying, the b.l.o.o.d.y creep. But they believe him.'

It had gone quiet, the turntable whirling round, but Birger couldn't bring himself to choose another record. He was so disgusted, he didn't want to hear any more, but nevertheless said: 'So they really do think I went up to the Lobber?'

'No, they don't. They don't think anything. They're trying to work without any presumptions. And I think they've got nowhere with your things, boots or whatever it was. You would have heard from them again. You mustn't take it so hard that there's been so much questioning. Lill-Ola. His wife. She may have been up there wanting to see what he was up to. She's not unaware of his little peccadilloes. They've questioned Dan Ulander and Annie Raft and the whole Starhill lot. Yvonne and her men. They've turned over every stone in the village. But they did believe one thing, and that was that he had mentioned seeing you. That he said it to me at the very first interrogation. They think I thought it absurd because I'd been with you, and that I thought we'd been in contact all the time. But they think I couldn't know that, not for sure, and that I ought to have included his statement in the records. Even if it wasn't believable.'

'So that's why they've taken you off the case?'

'Yes. I've made a formal error, they say. However foolish I thought his statement was, I should have taken it down. But it doesn't exist! And they don't believe that. Recently I've been thinking I was going crazy. That s.h.i.+t! That shady b.a.s.t.a.r.d! He burnt a whole load of Three Towers boots. He was afraid the police would come snooping into the house. They must have been stolen goods, for there's no such delivery in his account books. He has no delivery note, no invoice, nothing. And he sold them incredibly cheaply. Almost everyone in the village bought some. That doesn't exactly make the investigation any easier. And they believe him.'

'What about the capercaillies? Why did he burn those? He's paid his dues and has shooting rights for small game. Surely there was nothing to be afraid of there?'

'I don't know. It's conceivable they've got somewhere with that, but I've heard nothing about it. They're looking for sleeping-bag feathers.'

ke wasn't looking at Birger as he spoke. He was gazing over in the direction of the big window facing the garden, but there was nothing to see except reflections in the gla.s.s. He was gazing at nothing, looking inwards at winding marshland paths disappearing into the night mist. He could see people moving around the Area. He could see them appearing and disappearing from his gaze, which was no gaze, but grinding thoughts.

He was obsessed. He was following the paths in the marshlands and along the highways from the village as Birger each day followed the whorls in the latticework of the veranda. He had been taken off the case, but all his energy was still going into it. To no purpose.

Dan was lying on her bed as she came in. He was alone in the room and lay half turned to the wall, naked, the light from the window reflected in his brownish skin, which looked slightly moist. He was holding his p.e.n.i.s and moving his wrist and lower arm. She started backing out, but he had already noticed she was there.

'What are you doing?' she said, hearing herself laughing what was not a real laugh.

'Masturbating,' he said in a not entirely clear voice. Annie sank to her knees and slipped the papers and books to the floor, trying to do so as quietly as she could. Then she didn't know what to do. She picked up a bundle of papers and a few diaries, then put them under the bed. She could hear his breathing had got faster. He made a movement and the bed creaked, then it was quite quiet.

Her mouth filled with saliva, making her swallow, but she went on pus.h.i.+ng the diaries in towards the wall. He had got up off the bed. When she had finished and had to get up, he was standing in the doorway wiping himself on a towel. Confusedly, she thought that it belonged in the kitchen.

'You mustn't disturb me when I'm thinking about you,' he said. She pretended to straighten the shawl she had used as a tablecloth as she tried to find something to say. All she could think of was, He's more natural than I am. He would laugh if he knew how I feel. How dramatically I take everything. She hurriedly slapped shut the notebook lying on the table and when she turned round, he had gone.

In the last few days, Dan and she had made love several times in the hayloft above the barn. The hay was dry and sharp and p.r.i.c.kled through the material of her blouse. Afterwards she had wanted to stay there in that scent of summer. She would have liked to fall asleep there, but the smell was not really all that pleasant. It was old hay.

He wanted them to do it in the room at night as well, but she didn't want to because of Mia. She couldn't rely on her being asleep. It rustled up there occasionally. Mia played with her dolls in the dark, whispering to them.

Annie had hidden in the hayloft when the journalists had come. She had heard them walking past with Petrus, and she heard him telling them about keeping goats and breeding sheep. She was the one they wanted to meet. They wanted her to tell them what the slashed tent by the Lobber had looked like and how much she had seen of the bodies. Instead Petrus had told them all about how to make cheese when there is no electricity.

They stayed for a long time and now and again she heard their voices. To pa.s.s the time, she had taken the opportunity to look for the box for her diaphragm, which she had lost in the hay. Stirring up dust and chaff, she rummaged around, and soon felt a hard edge. It wasn't the box, but a white plastic medicine jar. A tranquilliser. Prescribed for Barbro Torbjornsson, and almost empty.

She went on searching for her box and found it, as well as a nailfile and a small hotel soap container. The contents of a sponge bag must have fallen into the hay. She showed the things to Dan and he took them. She said she was feeling dispirited.

'Why?'

'I thought it was our hayloft. Our hay. Yours and mine.'

He said she couldn't expect that they should have any place to themselves up there. Private bedroom. Individual hayloft.

She was having to make many changes. Stop listening to the radio. She was tied to the little plastic box, listening in bed, the round speaker pressed to her ear. Couldn't sleep if she hadn't heard the eleven o'clock news; Vietnam, Cambodia, Mozambique. She had to hear the words.

'Changes don't happen so quickly you have to listen every hour,' said Dan. 'It's poison.'

He might have been right, but that was the way she was. Dependent. On one thing or another. As he was on her body, she had thought before. But was he really?

Sometimes she thought he was weird. But she realised that was a word with which you disposed of anything that didn't really interest you. And yet it was the other way round she was intensely aware of him. How thin he was, how slim his back and fine his hands and feet. The way the colour of his hair changed in the lamplight from ash to gold. More than every fifth strand was golden. She often lay with a lock of it on her arm or breast, examining it hair by hair.

She had noticed him among a group of more than twenty new students standing outside the door of the cla.s.sroom. He was unlike them with his slim, supple body, and he moved like a dancer. In the lecture room, in the dullness of a winter afternoon and the m.u.f.fled atmosphere of wool and exhalations, he was a core of pure energy which she had to reach.

At first, before anything personal had pa.s.sed between them, she had thought of him as that strange student. She started fantasising about him. He might say something in a lesson that bewildered her or made her feel uncertain. Afterwards she would think out a continuation. She found clever answers and it became a conversation. A kind of conversation.

In fact they were monologues she held, always silent. She had found a great deal clarified when she said it to herself, to him. But in reality she hadn't said much, not even when they had started sleeping together.

Her reserve still came from a kind of dependency. Poison in his fierce words. Something she held on to with an atavistic, dark and tangled part of herself. She thought it came from Enskede, and later from the Academy and Karlbergsvagen. From a life that would be utterly inexplicable to him.

Sometimes they had agonising scenes, misunderstandings, conflicts whatever it was called. It felt like knives in her stomach, and she didn't dare touch him because that cold point ruled. She could see it in his eyes, at the centre of the pupil: mistrust.

Sometimes he mistrusted her, thought it was nothing but a game to her. An affair of a few weeks. A nice little game with political ideas and strong s.e.xual attraction. Sometimes he actually said he was nothing but a body to her. Golden and fuzzy. Like an apricot. That he was too young.

There were nine years between them. Occasionally he had said she didn't take him seriously. He seemed to sense sometimes she had that feeling, the feeling that he was weird. Totally unknown. Like living tissue that is rejected. Alien, incompatible tissue of the soul.

onis was standing in the doorway asking her if she had forgotten the evening milking. Yes, she had forgotten, and she was uneasy about the smell in the room. She picked up the towel and bundled it up under the blanket. onis watched her, but said nothing. She had Sigrid at her heels and Sigrid said it wasn't really Annie's turn to do the milking. The rota had been drawn up wrongly.

Annie put on a large ap.r.o.n Brita had given her and went out with them to the goat shed. She didn't like the goats and she had never done any milking before she came to Starhill. She a.s.sumed that was why she was not allowed to do it with Dan, who was slow and clumsy. She was in onis's team, in which Lotta should also be, but Lotta was nowhere to be seen.

They were variegated goats, brownish grey, yellowish white, streaky and spotted, no two alike, but she hadn't yet learnt to tell them apart. They had bulging, slightly hairy udders with stiff teats. They leapt up on the milking table quite willingly and it wasn't difficult to squeeze the milk out of them, though more so to remember all the stages. The udders had to be wiped clean, and the first splashes of milk were not to go into the bucket, because they were full of bacteria. Petrus had taught her that if she forgot to wipe them, no suckling reflex would be released.

The smell of goat was overwhelming. If she turned away and stopped the squeezing and pulling for a while, the goat was uneasy. The animals had strange ruptured eyes with oblong pupils. They gleamed like crushed amber. Some had dangling growths on their necks, little clappers of flesh. She didn't want to know what they were. She would rather have worked with the gentle, lanolin-smelling sheep, but they needed nothing at this time of year.

Afterwards, they had to deal with the milk. They cooled it by carrying down the churns and putting them into the stream. They had to boil the curds every day now because of the heat. When the milk had curdled she had to stir it with large forks they called riddles. It took for ever and her arms ached. She wasn't trusted with squeezing the lumps and putting them into moulds, but she was allowed to deal with the whey. That had to be boiled until it was brown and thick and could be ladled up into soft cheese.

Mia refused to have anything to do with it all. The first time she had held her nose, then she had disappeared with Mats and Gertrud. Sigrid always wanted to help and Annie noticed she was a good milker. She also kept a check on the milking rota and found it very difficult to admit she might have made a mistake.

'Dad did the milking on Midsummer Eve, not onis. It's not onis's team today. It's wrong.'

Annie knew she oughtn't to start arguing with her. She was only nine, but she was obstinate. She followed Annie to the kitchen, going on and on about it. Annie's arms and back were aching and she could feel her irritation rising. She stopped in the doorway and held on to it to show she wanted to go in alone.

'I did the milking for the first time on Monday,' she said. 'And the second time was today, Thursday. There are two days in between, as there has to be when there are three teams. That's OK, isn't it?'

'But the rota's wrong.'

'So you say. Let's drop it now. Your father can't have done the milking on Midsummer Eve because he was in Roback then.'

She went on in and closed the door, regretting it the moment she had done so, but it was good to be alone for a while. She could see Sigrid through the window, pacing back and forth, hitting at the gra.s.s with a stick, clearly furious. A future dogmatist?

'Just let her be right,' onis said as they heaved the milk churn across the threshold together. 'She's fearfully upset. The pastor's coming to fetch her and Gertrude on Wednesday.'

'The pastor in Roback?'

'No, their dad. Didn't you know?'

One clergyman had already come up to Starhill and Annie had kept out of the way that time as well. She thought he was the same one who had opened up the parish hall on Midsummer Day and invited people in for coffee and buns. For the shock. She'd heard about it while sitting in Oriana Stromgren's kitchen and the police were going in and out. But this was a pastor who had been married to Brita and was the father of Sigrid and Gertrud. onis said they were in dispute over custody.

She couldn't take it in. There was something so primordial, so primaeval about Petrus's little family. She had thought the girls looked like Petrus. They had his long goat face. If Brita had been a clergyman's wife, that at least explained why she knew her St Paul. Annie wished Dan had told her something about all this.

'The pastor has got the court to say that Starhill is an unsuitable place for the girls, but for their sake he was going to take it easy. Come up here and persuade them. I'm not sure that's needed, for that matter. His trump card was the school. That they had to live in Roback in the winter and be away from their mother. Yvonne isn't all that suitable, of course. I mean, from the authorities' point of view. But then they heard you were coming to be the teacher here. Then it looked as if Brita might have won. Until this happened. Down by the river. Now they'll come and fetch them. Will you see to the milk?'

Annie was left alone with the boiling. She stood with the thermometer in her hand, staring down into the milk still swirling round after onis's stirring. So that was how they saw it. If Mia had had a father who'd known she was here, he would perhaps have arranged to have her taken away because it was dangerous for her to live here. It's as if there are two worlds, she thought. One out there. Where it happened. And another here.

'Would you write down how much milk, please?'

onis had opened the door and called out. Her face was rosy and smooth. She wore no make-up and her lips were a touch blue. A lovely fat girl. She could have been one of Krishna's milkmaids whose lips had taken on some of their colour from kissing his skin.

If there had been any danger here, deadly and nearby, she wouldn't be occupied with milk quant.i.ties and concentrated feed. onis was a sensible person. She could milk. She was from ohn in Jamtland and had been a social worker.

The milk records were pinned to the wall and a ballpoint hung on a string beside them. Annie wrote down '38 litres' and signed it. The others put abbreviations of their given names. Her AR looked rather officious, but she didn't want to change it because that was how she had started. Petrus wrote P-us. She saw his name in the column for Midsummer Eve. '36.5 1. P-us. 40 1s. P-us.'

Her first thought was that Sigrid had been right. She ought to go out at once and tell her so. Then she remembered the work rota in Brita and Petrus's house which they went through every evening. According to that, Sigrid was wrong.

The girl was still walking round, slas.h.i.+ng with a stick at the tall gra.s.s outside the cookhouse. She was slender and thin, and Annie could see her spine outlined under the T-s.h.i.+rt as she bent forwards. Annie felt like asking her about the milk rota, but was ashamed of wanting to manipulate her. Several people had done that. She looked defenceless and miserable from behind, a row of small vertebrae, brittle as sh.e.l.ls. A small stalk of a neck and heavy hair hanging forward in two greasy plaits. She ought to wear trousers, not a skirt. Her legs were swollen with insect bites.

Soon she would be taken away from Starhill. Or not. Regardless of what she wanted. Have her hair cut, or not. She probably didn't really know what she wanted. How could she? The voices around her were loud. One of them must have told her to go and fetch Annie and Mia from the bus on Midsummer Eve.

There had been only children at the bus in Roback; Sigrid, Gertrud, Mats and Pella. The number was right. She had seen them. Mats' Inca cap and their Lapp shoes and birch-bark knap-sacks. No adult had been with them. Sigrid was sure to have been in charge of the troop. She was dutiful. One of the adults had said, 'Go and meet Dan's girlfriend and her little daughter. They're coming on the bus today.' But the children had gone back and said that Annie and Mia hadn't come.

She had been in the churchyard, washed over for the first time by the chilly mountain air, and she had seen the children, but she hadn't realised they were looking for Mia and her. The bus driver hadn't known Mia and she were members of the commune. She had actually denied it.

Now she could call out to that disappointed, angry little creature and ask her where Petrus had been on Midsummer Eve. How easy it is to push little girls. .h.i.ther and thither, she thought. With emotions.

Then Sigrid stopped. She dropped the stick and looked over at the window as if expecting Annie to call out to her at last. But Annie moved away, letting her face fade into the dim light of the dairy. From Sigrid's shoulders and back it looked as if she had given up. Perhaps she already knew they were too many. That they were adults and would never admit she could be right.

Annie carefully took the drawing pins off the four corners of the milk records, folded the paper up and put it into her ap.r.o.n pocket.

After ke Vemdal had left, the was.h.i.+ng-up was left to do and the brown gravy had dried and stuck.

Telephoning. Getting the meat out of the freezer. Doing the shopping. Cooling the vodka and letting the wine breathe. Cooking dinner. Altogether, it had taken hours. Sitting opposite each other and talking about their obsessions. Talk, talk. Apart from chewing, and some drinking sounds. Looking at the cut gla.s.s, explaining when his father had been given them.

Not the way it really was, but light-heartedly. He had not mentioned that they sang the Horst-Wessel Song on Father's fortieth birthday in 1941. It would have been impossible to explain that that was just to annoy Mother.

Father said she was one eighth Jewish, though he hadn't really cared about it. Nor about National Socialism. All he cared about was tormenting her for having been born rich and for having to put up with life on the estate, one housemaid, the Co-op and once a year a trip to Stockholm. They had been very close, and that close tie was their only reality.