A Question Mark is Half a Heart

by Sofia Lundberg

  The forest. An inferno. It was burning high, it was burning everywhere, and the night sky was orange-red. Flakes of black ash were floating in front of Elin, and as she caught them in her hand they crumbled into dust. She ran towards the flames, screaming. Her stomach flipped, as though she needed to vomit or shit, she wasn’t sure which. She stopped and bent over, heaving, but nothing came up. She went on running. The houses were on fire. Gerd’s house, Aina’s too. Flames from the dry grass licked at her legs. She pulled off her top and held it over her mouth. Fire everywhere. She shouted for help. The fire she’d lit to warm herself had spread.

  ‘Wake up! Wake up! Gerd! Fire! Wake up!’

  She screamed through the thin cloth of her t-shirt, but her voice was drowned in the fire’s threatening roar and the words came out as a whisper.

  She ran as fast as she could. Far away she could see the buildings at the Grinde farm rearing up like black shadows in the night. The avenue was already in flames. She headed across the fields, where the fire couldn’t take hold. Fought her way across the porous earth that buried her feet and left thick, sticky traces between her toes.

  ‘Edvin! Erik! Mama!’

  She screamed their names. Screamed until her voice broke. The forest around the farm was burning. It boomed. The light of the flames was like a train shining its way along the tracks. Like ten trains. It was so dry, it went so fast. She approached the buildings, which looked like they were still unharmed. She’d be able to save them! She ran, her feet flying through the air.

  She banged hard on all the doors and shouted continuously. On the stairs she met a dazed Marianne, just out of bed. She wrapped her dressing gown around her and locked eyes with Elin.

  ‘What’s all this about? What are you screaming for? It’s the middle of the night,’ she hissed.

  ‘Can’t you smell the smoke? It’s on fire. Everything’s on fire. The whole forest is on fire, the barn’s on fire.’

  She pushed past Marianne and went on shouting. She ran into Erik and Edvin’s room but their beds were empty. She called their names again and again, pulling at their bedclothes in the weak glow from the nightlight.

  ‘Erik! Where are they? Edvin! Erik! Edvin!’

  Marianne came up to her and shoved her aside.

  ‘Let me look.’

  She felt about with her hand. There were no children there.

  ‘Bloody kids, come out!’ she shouted. ‘Where are you?’

  Elin had already left the room. She ran out into the farmyard, Marianne close behind her. The fire had engulfed the barn: half the roof was on fire, flames licking the sky. The doors were wide open and cows and goats were wandering about nervously on the gravel. Micke was standing at the bottom, throwing buckets of water from the rain butts. The fire hissed gently, as though it were mocking the tiny amount of water he was trying to put it out with.

  ‘The children are gone!’ Marianne screamed at him. He went on throwing his buckets, moving closer to the fire. Now the flames were consuming the walls, and there was a great boom as the beams gave way and the remains of the enormous roof crashed to the floor. A burning beam fell right towards Micke. He sheltered himself with his hands and backed away, but he couldn’t escape. Marianne screamed and ran towards him. The beam lay right across his back. Blood was running from a great wound on the back of his head. Marianne pulled at the burning-hot wood and tried to pull the beam aside. She tipped buckets of water over him. Micke groaned in pain.

  ‘Help me!’ Marianne shouted. Elin ran towards the tractor shed and the secret den. One of the walls was on fire and the whole building was full of smoke. She coughed and shouted her brothers’ names as she made her way in past the tractor and the combine harvester. She clamped her t-shirt over her nose and mouth.

  From the farmyard she heard a roar of boundless rage followed by a drawn-out moan and the nervous yelps of the animals.

  Elin went further in. Flames burned above her head. Furthest in, on their tractor-tyre bed, she saw small naked feet sticking out from behind the oil drum. They were Edvin’s. She pulled at them.

  ‘Wake up, Edvin, wake up, hurry,’ she said, shaking his limp body. Erik lay alongside, just as still. She kicked him with her foot as she hauled Edvin’s body up into her arms.

  ‘Erik, wake up, you’ll have to walk by yourself. You have to get out!’

  He whined a little, and she saw a strip of white as one of his eyelids opened a few millimetres. He was alive. They were both alive. She held Edvin close to her body and ran with him. Towards the fields. Towards the open fields no fire could reach. He looked at her, dazed, one arm hanging down, bumping against her back. She kissed his cheek without stopping.

  ‘You have to be brave now. Promise me.’

  He murmured faintly, no words, she couldn’t hear what he was saying.

  ‘Can you smell the smoke, can you see the fire? It’s all burning. It’s burning so much. We have to get out, fast. We have to get to the sea, to the water, we’ll be safe there.’

  He nodded. He put his little bare feet down into one of the furrows of the field, but his legs would no longer carry his body. He fell in a heap, his hands clutching at his face as though they were cramping. He was rocking back and forth. His face deathly pale, with trembling blue lips.

  ‘I’m just going to get Erik. I’ll be back soon. Here, hold the t-shirt over your mouth. Breathe as little as possible.’

  She gave him her t-shirt. Now she was naked again, apart from her underpants. But the night was no longer cold. The raging fire spread a heat, the like of which she’d never known. When she got back everything was in flames. The barn, the tractor shed, the farmhouse. She couldn’t see Marianne. She couldn’t see Erik. She couldn’t see Micke. Just flames and smoke and darkness.

  ‘Erik!’ She screamed his name, screamed, just screamed. But it was too late. It was burning, everything was burning, and charred remains were falling to the ground in a shower of burning embers. She went back to Edvin. He was sniffing.

  ‘It’s burning everywhere, Elin. It’s burning so much, why is it burning so much?’ he sniffed.

  ‘Shh, don’t talk, don’t waste your energy.’ She stroked his forehead.

  ‘We can’t go anywhere, we’re shut in. Can’t you see?’

  ‘The ground won’t burn. There’s no trees here, no grass. We’re on the biggest field. We’re safe here. We won’t burn up. We’ll sit here for a little while, come, my love. Listen, the fire engines are on the way, we’ll be rescued soon.’

  She let him lie with his head on her lap. The sirens wailed from the main road. A helicopter buzzed overhead, it was approaching quickly. She slowly stroked his hair and forehead. He shrieked as she touched his cheek, which had been burned. Her eyes stung from the smoke. Sweat was running from her legs and arms. The heat and lack of oxygen made her vision fuzzy. Elin coughed. She pulled off Edvin’s t-shirt and pressed it to her mouth. His bloodshot eyes looked at her pleadingly.

  Clouds of red sparks from the trees spread into the sky. Soon the flames blew out the kitchen windows and licked the front of the house with their long tongues. Edvin tried to stand up, wanting to run, but she held him down. He screamed and put his hands over his ears as she clutched him to her.

  ‘Don’t look, Edvin, don’t look. Just lie totally still. Shh, don’t look.’

  ‘Where are we going to live? Where are we going to go?’ Edvin sniffed despairingly.

  Elin closed her eyes and lay down beside him. The ground felt hard and uneven against her side. Edvin was soft and warm. She held him close to her, hugged him tight. Closed her eyes until his body became heavy and still.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, barely audibly, then she let go of him.

  The glow from the burning buildings lit up the sky and turned it orange as Elin stood in the middle of the field and watched a fire engine and an ambulance arrive. She saw men in black jumping out and running across the farmyard, calling to one another as two of them rolled out the hoses. She heard di
stant sirens from more fire engines, further away. The helicopter was flying between the sea and the fire, dropping great containers-full of water over the forest. Elin waved her arms over her head and shouted, but her voice didn’t carry far enough. From a distance she saw them trying to pull away the beam that was covering Micke’s charred body until one fireman held up his hand, stopping the others. Micke was already dead. Elin could barely breathe. Fredrik’s papa, dead. She fell to her knees, croaking Erik’s name. No one was looking in the tractor shed. She knew it was too late, the building had already burned down, but she couldn’t stop whispering his name. The tin roof lay on top of a glowing heap of lumber, which hung askew over the vehicles inside. Everything had collapsed. And underneath lay Erik. All alone.

  Elin saw a fire-fighter trying to put a blanket around her mother’s shoulders, but she batted it away and waved her arms around, agitated, pointing at the house. Elin waved at her but couldn’t make herself move forward; her feet seemed to be fixed to the earth. Everything that was happening in front of her was a nightmare, like standing in the middle of a horror film.

  Now Marianne was running towards the house, her dressing gown flapping open. The firemen stopped her, grabbing her shoulders and pulling her towards the ambulance, lifting her feet off the ground. The paramedics came to meet them with a stretcher and they heaved her up onto it.

  Elin couldn’t breathe any more. The air was thick and heavy, the smell so acrid her nostrils ached. The firemen had masks over their faces, and she could see that Marianne had been given one. Elin stretched her arm out towards them, but her body seized up and she fell flat on her face.

  When the ambulance reversed in order to turn around, its headlights lit up the field. Suddenly it braked and the paramedics jumped out and ran towards Elin, whose arm was still stretched pleadingly. Her mouth was dry and full of earth, and the men were blurry and seemed to be swaying towards her. She saw their faces draw close but couldn’t hear the words coming out of their mouths. She whispered Edvin’s name, wanted to point behind her, but her arm wouldn’t move. The paramedic put his ear right up to her mouth, in an attempt to make out the words. They carried her towards the ambulance, their uneven steps jolting her. Everything went black.

  Black had turned to white. Elin was lying in a bed, the covers pulled up to her chin. She blinked in the uncomfortably strong light. A tube was hooked up to her arm, leading to a drip on the stand beside her. When she moved her arm, the needle attached to the inside of her elbow pulled slightly. Someone came running over and she closed her eyes again as she felt a cool hand on her forehead.

  ‘Are you awake?’

  She murmured and squinted. A nurse with a blonde perm was leaning over her, her face very close.

  ‘Are you an angel?’ Elin asked her softly.

  ‘You’re in the hospital. Don’t worry. Do you know what happened? Can you remember?’

  ‘Mama?’ Elin said, the last syllable hanging on her lip, making it tremble.

  ‘Your mama is here too, on another ward.’

  ‘I want to see her.’

  ‘Not now, you have to wait a while. First you have to get stronger.’

  The nurse sat down on the side of the bed and took Elin’s hand.

  ‘You’re weak, but you were lucky. You only have a few burns on your legs, nowhere else.’

  Elin looked at her. Her eyes welled up. She remembered.

  ‘It was burning so much,’ she whispered.

  ‘You were caught in a forest fire. It’s still burning out there.’

  ‘Erik? Edvin?’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘My brothers. Edvin was there with me. In the field. He was lying on the ground. He fell asleep.’ It was hard to get the words out. Her voice was cracked and hoarse from all the smoke.

  The nurse let go of her hand, sprang up and ran out. Elin heard voices from the corridor, raised in agitation. The tears were spilling down her cheeks.

  ‘Mama!’ she called, as loud as she could.

  The nurse came back. She took her hand again and stroked her forehead.

  ‘We’re in touch with the firemen, they’ll find your brother.’

  Elin shook her head.

  ‘It was too hot, there was too much smoke.’

  ‘They’ve put a lot of it out, I’m sure he’s made it, it hasn’t been that long.’

  ‘And Erik.’

  ‘What happened to Erik?’

  ‘He was in the tractor shed. It collapsed.’

  The nurse crept closer, pulled her legs up onto the bed and put her arms around Elin. Her cool hand stroked Elin’s face.

  ‘Is Mama angry? Doesn’t she want to see me?’

  ‘Her lungs aren’t very well, she’s in intensive care. You can see her when she’s better. We need to keep her there for the time being.’

  ‘Is there anyone else here? Who survived?’

  The nurse shook her head cautiously. Her eyes too were shining with tears.

  ‘Sleep now, my dear. Go to sleep, and you’ll feel better when you wake up.’

  Elin closed her eyes. The nurse rose from the bed and left her alone. Elin opened her eyes a crack as she left and saw her discreetly wiping her eyes.

  One sound after another captured her attention. Beeps and clicks, footsteps in the corridor. There was no clock, so she had no way of knowing whether minutes or hours had gone by. Every time a nurse came in she asked after Edvin. Every time they shook their heads.

  Micke. Gerd. Ove. Erik. Edvin.

  It couldn’t be true.

  She heaved herself up into a sitting position. Her hands were working, they felt strong. She clenched and released them, clenched and released. Her legs felt OK, too, although her ankles were wrapped in white gauze. It hurt to put her feet down onto the ground, but she stood up. The tube in her arm followed her wherever she went, so she took hold of the stand and rolled it towards the toilet, taking small, cautious steps. She felt dizzy, the ground swaying in front of her, and the hospital-issue gown was too thin, making her shiver and hug herself with the other arm. In the bathroom she drank directly from the tap, swallowing the cold liquid greedily. Then she filled her hands with water again and again, rinsing her face. Her hair still stank of smoke so she put her whole head under the tap, letting the water rinse it out.

  There was a girl in the other bed in Elin’s room, sleeping peacefully behind drawn curtains. Elin watched her through a gap. The girl had a bandage around her head, and her arms were resting on her stomach. Her hair was lank and greasy. Her clothes hung in an open cupboard alongside her bed: normal clothes, jeans and a college sweatshirt. At the bottom of the cupboard was a pair of black canvas shoes. Elin pulled the tube from her arm and a dark bead of blood welled up on her skin. She licked it off, sucking hard, tasting the tang of metal in her mouth. She pressed her thumb hard against the vein to staunch the blood.

  The girl moved uneasily in her sleep, but soon lay still again. Elin crept over to her cupboard, holding her breath as she eased the clothes from their hangers. They were too big for her, but she put them on anyway, the jeans slipping down over her hips. The reverse was true of the shoes, which were too small, and her toes were cramped at the end. She looked in the mirror one last time, wiped away her tears and smoothed down her wet tufts of hair. Then she crept carefully out of the room with one hand clutching the waistband of the jeans, before hurrying out of the hospital building.

  NOW

  NEW YORK, 2017

  Alice shrieks and runs out into the rain on the terrace. Elin follows her, reaching out to her, but Alice flails and pushes her hands away, still wailing. She backs away from her mother and presses herself against the terrace railing.

  ‘Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me,’ she spits.

  ‘There was a fire. Let me explain what happened. Please, come inside.’

  Alice shakes her head. She has the blanket wrapped around her, her hair wet from the rain. She is trembling.

  ‘Did you murder your whol
e family?’

  Elin shakes her head. She holds out her hand again.

  ‘Please, come here. It’s not what you think at all. I’ll tell you, I want to tell you.’

  Alice accepts the hand reluctantly, her expression still earnest, reproachful. Elin sits down on one of the rattan armchairs and the moisture from the seat seeps through the thin fabric of her dress. She shivers. Alice lets go of her hand and sinks down beside her, pulling her knees up to her chin. The raindrops bounce off their heads and run down their cheeks.

  ‘Micke, Edvin, Erik, Gerd, Ove,’ Elin says at last, without looking up.

  Alice stares at her.

  ‘What did you do to them? Who are you?’ she whispers.

  ‘I’m Elin,’ she replies. ‘I’m your mom.’

  ‘I don’t know if I want to hear it.’ Alice gets up and goes in, and Elin follows her as she moves listlessly from room to room.

  ‘But I want to tell you now,’ she says.

  Suddenly, it all runs out of her, all the memories. She tells her about the house where she lived with Marianne and Lasse, about her brothers, about the shop and Gerd, about poverty then prosperity, Aina, Micke, the fight, the blow.

  By the end, Alice is sitting quietly on the sofa with her hands resting in her lap and her mouth half-open. Elin sits down close to her, without pausing in her story.

  ‘I lit a fire one evening, down on the beach. And then I fell asleep in front of it. The fire spread. Everything burned.’

  ‘What do you mean, everything?’ Alice put her hands to her cheeks.

  ‘There was nothing left. Everything burned down. The trees, the buildings. And everyone died. Everyone apart from me and Mama.’