Blackwater. Part 2

'Everyone knows.'

But they hadn't time. Loud voices came from the kitchen, then the door opened and Gudrun was standing on the threshold with the light from the kitchen behind her so that her face looked almost black.

'What are you doing?'

She went over to Johan and touched him.

'He's got nothing to say about this,' she said. 'He just went to get help for Vidart.'

'We have to ask him what happened.'

'To h.e.l.l with that,' said Gudrun. 'Nothing's happened that he's seen.'

She was small. It looked odd as she pulled the tall youth off the sofa and hustled him out with her. He walked with his head down. ke followed.

'You must know there'll be an investigation into this.'

'You carry on and investigate. But Johan's not testifying against his father.'

She shoved the boy out, slamming the kitchen door behind her. ke took a step as if to stop them, but Birger said: 'Leave them. You can't question him now, anyhow.'

They heard Gudrun's car starting up and driving away. Elna and a.s.sar were sitting beside each other on the sofa, looking like guests in their own kitchen.

'Let's go outside,' said Birger.

It wasn't all that easy to tell ke, who knew nothing, about Torsten Brandberg and Vidart. ke had not even been to Blackwater until now, but he belonged to the district. He had come to take up the post a month or two earlier. They had been out together once, a case of suicide up towards the border. ke had had no one to send and no car available. An alcoholic living with his parents had gone up into the attic and killed himself with a shotgun. As they were going back in the car a few hours later, Birger thought he heard a bird screeching. He hadn't realised until later that it had been the mother.

Birger had looked in on them earlier in the summer when he had been out on a call nearby. The mother had been admitted to the Froso clinic at the time, and he had found the father sitting in the kitchen. He had been living on coffee and cigarettes for some time, and he collapsed when Birger came. That was the first time he had wept since the son's death. Birger had gone up to the attic to see if they had cleaned up. But the stains were still there, and dried brain matter and marks from the shot could be seen on the ceiling, a shattered light bulb still hanging from the flex. He cleaned up as best he could with a scrubbing brush and sc.r.a.per, then arranged for a home help to go in to cook for the father, now on his own.

ke and he had got to know each other on that first visit and the long car journey back.

'I know Johan,' said Birger. 'He's at senior high in Byvngen in the same cla.s.s as my boy. He's bright. But his mother Gudrun is the only one who thinks he should go on. The other boys are sons of Torsten and his first wife, Mimmi. She died of a cerebral haemorrhage giving birth to Vaine. Then Gudrun came and helped him with the boys and the household. She's one of a large Sami family. But on the poor side. She worked for Torsten, then became pregnant and Johan was born. That was hardly a year after Mimmi's death. So Vaine and Johan are practically contemporaries.'

'Are they all Sami?'

'No. Only Gudrun. And Torsten has never been a friend of the Sami. Lapps shouldn't live in the village, he says. That's his opinion and he is not alone in that. Torsten's been a d.a.m.ned great fighter in his day. When he was younger and got drunk, he went and asked people: 'Anyone here want beating up?' He could go all the way to Byvngen to knock a man down. I don't think things have ever been good between Johan and the half-brothers, nor really any good between him and his father, either. But you saw Gudrun. They daren't touch a hair on the boy's head when she's looking. So you see Johan may have trouble if they start thinking he's told on Torsten.'

'That can be explained, can't it? He didn't know we were here.'

'I'm not sure they'd listen,' said Birger.

When they got into the hall, she indicated with a movement of her head that he should go straight up to his room. A quarter of an hour later, she brought him bread and cheese and a gla.s.s of milk. Johan was sitting on the bed and hadn't even dared go to the lavatory, he was so afraid Torsten might hear him. But she told him they hadn't come back home yet. Then he went to the toilet on the landing and peed for what seemed to him a quarter of an hour.

Gudrun was at the desk, staring out at the enclosure when he came back. She was looking unhappy, nibbling bits of skin off her lips. He had always felt uneasy when she was unhappy, because it was usually his fault. He irritated Torsten and annoyed the brothers.

'I didn't know the police were there,' he said.

'You've done nothing wrong,' she said, but it sounded mechanical to him. He wondered what she was thinking. It struck him that she knew everything about him, almost, anyhow, but he knew nothing about her. She was his mother and everything she did down there in the kitchen and out on the farm was predictable. Nearly everything she said, too. But he didn't know any of the important things. Nothing about the time she was pregnant. Nothing about her and the man on the scooter. Or why it was Torsten she had married.

'If he's charged with a.s.sault, they'll take his guns off him, won't they?

'We don't know if he's been charged yet.'

'I only meant if he should be. Then he won't be able to lead the shoot?'

'Stop it now,' said Gudrun. She seemed to think he wanted Torsten to lose his licence. Then he started telling her what he had really seen from the window, but she didn't want to hear it.

'Stay here for a while,' she said. 'I'll talk to Torsten later.'

She looked tired as she got up. She was all dressed up in a white cotton cardigan over her flowery dress, and she had high-heeled sandals on. But her face was looking ordinary again. She had nibbled off all the lipstick as she sat there on his bed.

A little later he heard her in the kitchen, a cupboard door slamming and the clatter of china. She was emptying the plate rack, ordinary sounds, and they calmed him.

At about half past six, the cars came back. The brothers' voices were loud and raucous. They had clearly taken quite a lot on board. Torsten was laughing at something Vaine had said. Gudrun had started frying fish and the smell wafted up to John, but they ate their delayed evening meal without her calling up to him. He was shut in his room as if he had done something criminal.

He was the only one of the brothers never to have been thrashed by Torsten, and it was Gudrun who protected him. But although he had never been thrashed, he was the one most afraid of it, and they knew it. Her protection made him look foolish.

He got up and went down. But halfway down the stairs, his fear returned, not of them hitting him, but of Torsten's half-closed, heavy eyes, the way he waited for an opportunity when drunk. Of the swift movements of the brothers, intended to frighten him. He decided to go fis.h.i.+ng.

On these early summer nights, he fished at Dogmere, just by the path up to the outfield buildings. There he could see if anyone went up to the peregrine falcon's nest by the river Lobber. He didn't think the attacks would come from the main road. Henry Stromgren saw every single car up there. Two chicks had disappeared the previous summer.

His jacket was hanging in the hall and his rod and boots were in the porch. He was careful not to clatter with the rod, but when he got outside and started up the moped, he revved up loudly so they wouldn't think he was running away from them. He knew they were watching him from the kitchen window.

He fetched bait up at Alda's, as he usually left the moped there and then walked up to Dogmere. The old woman was in a long-stay ward permanently now and the gra.s.s was already growing in great clumps round the steps. He usually dug for bait behind her woodshed.

He found a tin on the garbage heap just inside the forest, and an old potato digger in the woodshed. He hadn't been digging long before he heard a car. It skidded on the gra.s.s as it took the corner. The doors slammed almost the moment the car stopped. He listened for voices and footsteps.

The brothers had surrounded him before he had time to decide whether to run or not. He stood with the digger in his hand and they were all round him, apparently in a playful mood. They s.h.i.+fted their feet like footballers waiting for kick-off. As they came closer, he could smell aftershave and beer.

They must have got up in the middle of the meal to come after him. Gudrun had not be able to stop them. She was sure to have tried.

He realised something quite new was beginning now. It had begun the moment he left the house, taking the moped, and also when he revved up to show them he didn't care if they did see him.

He put the digger down on the brown soil full of nettle roots and bits of gla.s.s. He picked up his rod and the tin of worms and started up the path to the hut. They followed, shoving him from all sides and asking what he was scared of. He started half-running, although he wished he hadn't. Vaine caught up with him and tripped him up. Pekka grabbed his arm and hauled him back on to his feet.

'Stand up, for Christ's sake.'

'What do you want?'

Bjorne drove his fist into his stomach, though not with full force. Johan doubled up as if bowing and they all laughed. Through his nausea, he caught the scent of the forest, but there was no way out in that direction. They were all round him. Per-Ola and Pekka had lit cigarettes. Bjorne shook his head when they offered him one and put a dose of snuff under his upper lip, which now bulged and looked swollen. He had his mouth open as usual, and was staring at Johan, but he didn't appear to be going to hit him again.

'What are you scared of?' Pekka asked. 'Aren't you going to call the police?'

'What the h.e.l.l's the matter with you? Afraid of p.i.s.sing in your pants?' said Vaine, and the others laughed. Vaine would be regarded as a man after this. He struck out, but playfully and not at Johan's face. They left him alone, perhaps because of their clothes, for they had all changed into light jackets and trousers.

Hoping to show the others what he could do, Vaine grew more and more annoyed when Johan ducked without defending himself. He started making karate blows with stiff hands, checking them just in front of Johan's face.

Bjorne and Pekka had moved away from the others for a moment. Something rattled further up in the forest. When they came back, Pekka said to Vaine: 'Get the tow rope.'

They're going to tie me up, thought Johan. They'll tie me to a tree. Then they'll go. That's all. They daren't do anything else because of Gudrun. Or the police.

Pekka didn't tie him up once he had the tow rope, but just put it round Johan's body under his arms, and pulled. It felt like a noose. Then they pushed him ahead of them. They made a detour off the path and in among the trees he saw a decayed wooden lid leaning against a stone. They kicked him ahead to the edge of a round stone-walled hole. Then he screamed.

As they let him down through the opening he resisted as best he could, kicking out, biting one of them in the arm, and received a blow on the back of his neck. Falling, he felt a violent pain as the rope tightened round his body from its own weight.

He was hanging, the rope cutting deeply under his arms from the weight of his body and legs. He could feel no water. Above, he could hear their voices, but not what they were shouting. Then he fell.

When he came to again, he was at the bottom of a well. It had dried up, he realised, and perhaps never been used in Alda's time. He was half sitting in muddy clay with the rope round his body. At first he thought he had broken something, but when he cautiously moved his limbs he noticed it hurt only where the rope cut in. He had a thick sweats.h.i.+rt on and thanks to that the rope had not cut in too deeply, but he could get at neither the knot nor the end of the rope. They must be on his back. He tried to sit down properly in the narrow s.p.a.ce, then looked up. The well opening was almost white in the light of the summer evening. No face visible up there, and he couldn't hear anything.

He was sitting in loose mud and water, stones underneath. He wriggled to get away from one hurting him, then began fumbling for his knife to cut the rope. Once he had got hold of it and cut through the nylon rope, the pressure lifted and he struggled into an upright position. Nothing broken. It was difficult to know how deep the well was. The circle of light up there had now turned blue and he could also see a little more of the well wall. The water came just over the foot of his boot.

At least they hadn't put the lid back on. They would soon be back to let a rope down. Fairly soon. They wouldn't want anyone else to hear his calls for help.

But he was not going to call out. They were probably sitting in the car waiting for him to begin shouting for help. They had always thought him a coward. He just used to walk away when they started picking a fight, hating to look on when people got knocked down. But down here at the bottom of the well, he felt he had something in him they knew nothing about. He would not shout. They would not have that pleasure. The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

He tired of standing and tried leaning in various ways with his backside and lower arms against the well wall to lighten the pressure. His legs and back ached and p.r.i.c.kled. He wouldn't be able to stay standing in the long run.

How long were they going to leave him here? An hour? Or right into the night? The worst would be if they drove back to the village and got so drunk they forgot him he wouldn't be brought up until long into Midsummer Day. Gudrun would look for him if he didn't come home. She would spot the moped if she drove round in the car. So presumably it was no use starting to shout until early morning. But he was not going to do that. This time Gudrun was not going to take him home. He was finished with that.

She took Mia by the hand and walked down towards the sh.o.r.e. There was a house by the water, an unpainted old wooden house eaten away by rain and age. A confusion of growth surrounded it: clumps of wild chervil flowering together with columbines in beds where the soil had sunk away and dried to a mouse colour. Currant bushes had grown into each other and put down a tangle of shoots that had rooted. On the slope towards the lake, raspberry canes had grown together into an impenetrable tangle. The gra.s.s came up to Mia's waist and there were great clumps of nettles by the steps. She had no desire to go any further into this green ma.s.s, humming with insects, the smell of spices and venom rising from it.

Annie lifted Mia up on the concrete lid of a well and left her there while she went down to the water to fill a flask. But Mia refused to drink lake water, shook her head and clamped her mouth tight shut. The water was perfectly clear, like gla.s.s right down to the brown bed of immobile stones. But she wouldn't drink.

The store was painted white and had the pennants of the two countries above the door. It wasn't far from the house with the nettles. The patch of ground where the petrol pumps stood ended at the remains of a fence that had rotted away, probably once belonging to a cottage now gone. A long narrow wooden building, painted green, a parish hall or a community centre, had a collapsed timbered barn next to it, its s.h.i.+ngle roof fallen in. The house on the other side was clearly occupied, with puckered nylon curtains in all the ground-floor windows. But the attic window had a big hole with a rag stuffed into it, a sheet of hardboard replacing the other pane.

The village was very quiet now the rush at the arrival of the post bus was over. Annie found it hard to make it all out, the decay and desolation jarring against the new buildings and improvements. Why couldn't they be bothered to pull down the collapsed and decayed buildings? Didn't they see them any longer?

Perhaps the villagers saw only what looked like urban developments. They saw modernity where she saw decay and neglect, and where Dan saw simplicity. For neither in his letters nor in his brief telephone calls, presumably made from the phone box by the store, had he described the village as she now saw it in the clear evening light.

The greenery was obscene. It made her think of bushy pubic hair (seen in bath-houses, before turning away). She hadn't expected this, but rather some kind of barrenness. But all the preconceptions she had vividly held during the weeks of expectation and anxiety had now evaporated.

They went over to their cases and sat down to wait. On the other side of the road, gra.s.sy slopes were gleaming in the sun, the colours of the meadow flowers brighter than she had ever seen before. Opposite the store was a modern house, boxlike, painted green and dark brown. As the house was on a steep slope, the bas.e.m.e.nt was high. In it was a small fis.h.i.+ng-tackle shop with the name Fiskebua in pokerwork on a board outside and a Swedish flag hanging from a flagpole protruding from the wall. They could just see a man inside, so Annie took Mia's hand and crossed the road.

The door was locked, but he opened up when she knocked. He had no soft drinks for sale, but he said Mia was welcome to some homemade juice. He refused to let Annie pay for the juice and buns he fetched from the kitchen upstairs, but she had to satisfy his curiosity.

He had greying hair brushed forwards, long at the back and round his ears, and his trousers were flared. She thought he looked idiotic, almost indecent in those tightly cut trousers, but the fas.h.i.+on had penetrated all the way up here, and she hadn't expected that, either. He looked exhausted, with slack, baggy creases under his eyes, his nose big, the pores on it enlarged, his eyelids heavy. But he seemed anything but tired.

She told him as little as possible that they were to be picked up and that they were on their way up to Nilsbodarna. He asked if she meant Nirsbuan. What was she going to do there?

'We're going to live there,' said Mia abruptly. Up to then she had drunk her juice and eaten the buns without a sound. He laughed. Annie never forgot that laugh.

'Are you one of the Starhill people?' he said suddenly.

'We come from Stockholm,' she replied. But his guess wasn't far wrong. It was thanks to the commune at Starhill that Dan had found Nilsbodarna.

'Oh, so you're taking Nirsbuan from the Brandbergs. That won't be easy, I guess,' he said, grinning. She didn't understand what he meant. She didn't like him, and now she didn't want to talk about their circ.u.mstances any more.

They heard a car and Mia rushed over to the window, but it wasn't Dan. Four men got out of large Volvo which had driven up by the house, the tyres scattering gravel. They were really three young men and a boy who was driving. He looked scarcely eighteen. A smell of aftershave and liquor wafted from them as they entered the shop. One of them was dressed in white and had muddy marks on his trousers, as if someone had kicked him. The trousers were tight, the material thin. Annie could see his genitals quite clearly outlined against his thigh and had to avert her eyes when he looked at her. They were dressed for the Midsummer events; once again she saw that fas.h.i.+on was being followed up here, and she felt childish with all her preconceived ideas.

They filled the little shop with their large bodies and loud voices, but fell silent when they saw her, as if no longer aware of what they had come for. They weren't interested in fis.h.i.+ng tackle, nor in the rack of chocolates and evening papers.

'Yes, well then,' said the man behind the counter, looking straight at Annie. She realised he didn't want them in there any longer and that made her feel ill at ease. She took Mia's hand and went out. The moment she had closed the door she heard the voices raised again.

Mia wanted to pee and they went down among the currant bushes. There was still no sign of Dan and it wasn't as quiet as before. A bus had driven up in front of the community centre and musical instruments and large amplifiers were being unloaded from it.

She had considered sitting with Mia on the porch steps of the abandoned house to wait, but insects kept emerging out of the gra.s.s, almost invisible creatures which stung like sparks from a fire. Mia started crying. Annie picked her up and ran off into the tall gra.s.s, every step she took raking up a cloud of the stinging insects. Up on the store stand it was relatively free of them. They seemed to stick to gra.s.s and foliage.

b.u.t.tercups and red campion glowed in the evening sun on the gra.s.sy slopes. The lake was still just as calm, but the colour had deepened. From the community centre came the thump of an electric ba.s.s and keyboard riffs hugely amplified through the loudspeakers. The four men came out of the little shop, got into the car and started drinking beer from bottles, leaving the car doors open and their legs outside. The youngest stayed on the steps of the shop and belched ostentatiously after emptying his bottle, which he threw down on the gravel. The others laughed. The shopkeeper came out and said something in a low voice, then took the bottle back in with him, after a glance at Annie on the other side of the road. She presumed he had no proper licence so the purchase had been illegal.

More cars came skidding on to the gravel at the roadside, nearly all of them full of men, young men. She couldn't make out what they were shouting at each other, but could hear some were Norwegians. Most of them appeared to be good-naturedly drunk.

Cars were also drawing up at the community centre and the instruments were rasping and thumping inside as they sound checked. Outside the little shop, a couple of Norwegians were teasing the young driver of the Volvo. He was now quite drunk, stumbling and swaying as he headed back to the car, singing in a slurred voice a short song she found it hard to catch. Anyhow, it caused some amus.e.m.e.nt and so he kept singing it again, over and over as he strode round in his tight trousers. In the end she could make out the words: 'What the f.u.c.k Dad's c.o.c.k's in front Just as well Mum's got a c.u.n.t.'

He pirouetted clumsily like a bear and almost fell over in front of one of the cars containing an older man in a cap on which it said Roback's Garage.

'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, Vaine, you don't have to tell Evert about your dad and your mother,' shouted the shopkeeper, causing loud and long laughter from the other cars. There was an abrupt silence when one of the men got out of the Volvo, the fattest of them, a large man with curly brown hair that looked sweaty under his peaked cap. He wasn't dressed like the others, but in jeans and a thick blue sweats.h.i.+rt. Strange, wearing that in the middle of summer, she thought. She noticed a sheath knife dangling below the hem at the back.

He strode up to the steps. It was just like watching a film. He raised his hand and she saw they were to witness a show of strength. The hand was rigid, the little finger and the outer edge turned towards the flag hanging out from the wall by the door. He struck out with the rigid hand and the flagpole snapped with a crack. The shopkeeper vanished inside and closed the door. The man who had snapped the flagpole strolled back to the Volvo and crawled into the back. Another man pulled in the youth who had sung the song, switched on and drove down towards the community centre. The other cars followed.

The music had started up properly now. More cars kept appearing. But Dan did not come.

It was not easy to get hold of Torsten Brandberg and his four older sons. ke Vemdal and Birger Torbjornsson gave up after a hour's random driving round and asking, but they found them when they returned to the camping site out at Tangen. All five were drinking beer in Roland Fjellstrom's office. Nor was questioning them particularly profitable. Torsten did not deny hitting Vidart, but said it was in self-defence. As far as the rake handle was concerned, he said he had held it out to protect himself.

'He was unconscious for over twenty minutes,' said ke. 'At least.'

'And you believe that? Any road, he was on his feet when I left.'

The sons grinned. Torsten looked calm, almost amused as he sat there, his hand clasped round a beer can. The boys standing round him were muscular and not one of them had yet acquired the stigmata of the forestry worker. Vaine, the seventeen-year-old, appeared to be drunk, breathing heavily, his mouth open. He was as beefy as the others. Birger felt fat and flabby before all this looming muscularity.

ke again asked about the rake handle, but was given the same answer. Torsten didn't budge. In the end that great hand round the can looked rather forced. He was still sitting in the same position when they left and did not reply when they said goodbye.

By then they were both hungry, so they went to the cabin before leaving. They had reckoned on fish for the evening and hadn't purchased much more than beer and bread. But Birger had bought a sausage ring in case the fis.h.i.+ng was bad.

'Isn't there a bar or a hotel here?' said ke.

'No, not here.'

They ate slices of sausage on crispbread. Birger thought it was good. That was what he ate more and more frequently whenever Barbro was away, though just as frequently he thought he really ought to start cooking properly. He wondered what ke did. He knew he lived alone, though not whether he was divorced or a widower, or simply a bachelor.

Birger felt just like some old bachelor as they got into the car and drove up to the Blackreed River. People were heading for the community centre. The music thumped. They watched girls in summer clothes hurrying down the hill, perceiving them as moist fragrance, despite the thick gla.s.s of the windscreen. He wondered what Barbro was doing. She was out organising an information meeting on the uranium prospecting on Bear Mountain, and he didn't think she would want to join in the Midsummer celebrations. Last year she hadn't even wanted to celebrate Christmas.

There were cars outside Lill-Ola's fis.h.i.+ng-tackle booth and when ke saw the shop was open, he said he wanted to get some more flies. But Birger managed to steer him away. ke would discover that the men in the cars were drunk and at worst he would realise that Lill-Ola Lennartsson sold other things as well as fis.h.i.+ng flies and licences. And ke would not be able to ignore drink-driving. At this rate, they would get no fis.h.i.+ng at all.

A young woman was sitting outside Aronsson's, a small girl beside her. Birger thought they looked old-fas.h.i.+oned, perhaps because the little girl had plaits and the woman was wearing a long blue skirt. They were sitting on cases just below the loading stand and appeared to be waiting for someone. But the woman seemed resigned. For a moment he thought of asking her where she was going and whether anyone was coming to fetch her. But he had no desire to be officious.

He tried shading his watch so that he could see the hands, but the light from above was too bright and at the same time too poor at the bottom of the well to make out the numbers. He had no real idea how long he had been down the well. The sharp stones and the smell of mud, the rough shale and the circle of light above dazzling him it was a shaft right down into timelessness, a vacuum for him and him alone. He found he had to sit down in the mud. The seat of his jeans was already wet, so maybe that didn't matter much, but he was cold. After he had got down, had shoved aside a few stones and was sitting with his forehead against his knees, he thought he felt a movement just by him.

He sat dead still. This was silly. There couldn't be anything in the well. No rats. He considered hallucinations was he so weak he was already having them?