by Stefan Spjut
‘Take this,’ she said to Lukas and handed him a thousand-kronor note. ‘Put it in your pocket.’
‘I don’t want it.’
‘As a matter of fact, you do. Here you go. And you, take off your rings. Lukas thinks they look valuable. They’re probably eighteen carats. In Finland, the standard’s fourteen carats. Everything’s a little bit shitter in Finland.’
When Torgny and Yvonne had twisted off their rings, Stava received them into the palm of her hand.
‘Are these diamonds?’ she said and Yvonne nodded. Stava shook the pillowcase gently, stuck her head in and pulled out a gold ring.
‘Whose ring is this, then?’
‘It’s probably my mother’s ring,’ Yvonne said quietly. ‘Or my father’s. Both were in the safe.’
Stava put the diamond ring in the bag and handed the rest to Lukas.
‘Put them in your pocket,’ she said.
Then she turned to Torgny.
‘You’re going to go to bed now.’
They didn’t move.
‘But I don’t want to,’ Torgny mumbled.
‘It’s late,’ said Stava, who was still digging around in the pillowcase, examining its contents.
Torgny got up slowly. A small amount of blood had trickled from his nose; it looked like the dark cavity of his nostril had widened.
‘Come on,’ he said, but Yvonne angrily snatched her arm away when he tried to make her stand up. He spoke softly to her and in the end, she followed him into the house.
*
He had seen animals stunned with a bolt gun several times, before being exsanguinated, but he had never operated one himself. That was why he was now sitting on the sofa in the living room, trying to figure out how it worked. Lukas was sitting next to him. The boy wanted to know why it was called a gun, since it looked more like a stick than a gun. Anders found the boy’s companionability uncomfortable and didn’t answer his incessantly repeated, pointless questions.
He picked up a cartridge from the cardboard box on the coffee table and once he had figured out which way the primer should go, he slid the cartridge in and screwed the buffer on tight. Then he pulled out the bolt until he heard a clicking sound from the trigger. He grabbed the gun with both hands, held it against the table top and fired. The nail shot through the wood with a bang that made Lukas jump.
‘Did you see how I did that?’
Guided by Anders’ instructions, the boy unscrewed the gun and loaded another cartridge. When he put it against the table top, Anders shook his head.
‘You have to pull it out first. All the way. Now you can do it.’
He let him do a few trial runs, on the table top and on the armrest of the sofa; the boy pulled the trigger with a feeble-minded smile on his face.
Torgny and Yvonne lay in their bedroom, staring up at the ceiling. Stava was standing by the foot of the bed and Moa was sitting on the floor, her face hidden between her knees. Ransu was standing by the window, hunched and naked, with a deranged look in his swivelling dog’s eyes.
Lukas was holding the bolt gun.
‘They’re asleep,’ Stava said.
‘But their eyes are open,’ Lukas protested.
‘Close your eyes,’ Stava said and they did, instantly.
The boy went up to the edge of the bed and put the bolt gun against Torgny’s forehead. He opened his eyes when he felt the steel against his skin.
‘No peeking,’ Stava said.
‘Isn’t it going to be messy?’ Lukas said.
‘I guess we’ll find out,’ Stava replied.
The gun cracked and Torgny’s feet danced wildly under the covers. It looked like he was being electrocuted. But it was a short dance. Within moments, he was still.
‘Torgny?’ Yvonne said.
Stava hushed her and Lukas pushed the nail back into the gun by pressing it against the nightstand. A lamp was knocked to the floor, but Stava told him to leave it. He shuffled around the bed, leaned in over Yvonne and placed the gun against her forehead.
‘Torgny?’
*
Stava wanted Moa to go up to her room and get in her bed, but she refused. She had curled up in a corner of the bedroom and spit was bubbling out between her tightly shut lips. Lukas pulled on her arm, but couldn’t get a good hold on her.
‘There’s no point,’ Stava said. ‘You’re going to have to do it here.’
Every time Lukas aimed the bolt gun at Moa, she jerked her head away or pushed it aside with her hand.
‘Moa, cut it out!’ he said.
Anders left the room. He paced a circle around the living room because he couldn’t stand still. He was suddenly overcome with an impulse to sit down on the sofa and stick the barrel in his mouth. He heard Stava’s hoarse voice from the bedroom. She was explaining something to the boy.
‘This is going to haunt you for the rest of your life,’ she said, ‘you can’t live with these images.’
After a while, she came out and closed the door behind her, carefully, as though she had just managed to put an infant to sleep.
She stood with her arms crossed, watching him. He was sitting on the sofa, poking at one of the holes in the coffee table.
‘Anders,’ she said and sat down next to him. ‘Don’t you think I know what you’re going through? You want me to push that pen against your head too. Don’t you?’
He nodded.
‘I would never do that. What you’re going through, it will pass. I promise you. This is just a phase. A transition.’
‘I can’t, I can’t do this.’
‘What can’t you do?’
He nodded toward the bedroom.
‘They’re just humans,’ she said and stroked his neck.
‘I’m a human too, aren’t I?’
‘You’re my human. That’s different.’
They sat on the sofa for a long while without speaking.
‘I want to go home,’ he mumbled.
‘We’re on our way.’
Suddenly, she whipped her head around to face the bedroom door. A sound had made her react. She listened and after a while she went over and opened the door. What she saw in the gloom on the other side disturbed her. She cursed and spoke heatedly in Finnish and moments later the wolf came shambling out into the living room like an old dog who’s been banished.
‘We have to get out of here,’ she said.
‘What happened?’
‘Grab the bag!’
They jogged back to the car. Anders didn’t know why they were suddenly in such a hurry, but he assumed it had something to do with Ransu no longer walking upright.
He put the rifle in the boot and after the wolf jumped in, he closed the lid. She had already started the car; he didn’t even have time to close the door before she drove off.
Diana couldn’t see anything and all sounds except her own pulse were muffled. She never heard the child, but she heard the woman talking to it in a childish voice. A young woman. Not a local. The voice penetrated her numbed awareness in waves and when she had established that the woman was real and just outside, she started kicking. Inside the hood of warm and sticky scrim-backed plastic that enveloped her head, her screams turned into a wordless lowing. She kicked and thrashed until she heard the woman again.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘what was that?’
Her voice had been lowered to express breathless wonder.
‘What was that? Is there someone in there? Hm! Is there someone in there?’
Diana realised there was no point making a ruckus. Her nostrils flared to their greatest circumference when she sucked in air and tried to think clearly. She was in some kind of cupboard, but she wasn’t sure how she’d got in it. Her memories were slowly coming back, but it was like picking through the debris of a serious bender. She had been at Susso’s. She remembered Susso’s drawn face clearly. Her kitchen. And the squirrel. How it had fixed on her through the uneven window pane. And that figure coming toward her, closing in with jerky steps like somethi
ng out of a horror film. But then there was nothing. The guide in her brain refused to go any further.
She had no idea how long she had been locked in the cupboard. Her hands were wrapped in a clump of tape, so she could neither get to her watch nor remove the tape covering her face. They hadn’t given her anything to eat or drink and from time to time she thought they must have forgotten all about her. That she would have to sit in the cupboard until she was desiccated like an old fruit. Those kinds of thoughts frightened her, so she tried to push them back down. She was severely dehydrated and could ill afford to pant out whatever moisture she had left in her body. In her miserable state, she clung to strangely rational lines of reasoning. That they taped up my mouth is a good thing, she thought, because that helps me preserve fluids. That’s to my advantage. That’s to my advantage. The words got stuck in a feverish loop and she sensed she was losing the ability to think clearly.
She had sunk into a stupor when she suddenly heard voices outside. Several voices, and not quiet, like before. A woman speaking Norwegian. Diana took the fact that they were upset as a sign that they would soon let her out. And that turned out to be correct. The door opened and a hand grabbed her upper arm and pulled her out. Her legs buckled and she collapsed like a puppet whose strings have been cut.
She stayed on the ground, with the smell of grass in her nostrils. She thought she could hear the sound of waves from far away. A quiet conversation in Norwegian. That woman. She couldn’t hear what she was saying; they were too far away and speaking too softly.
A car started, a big car with a rumbling diesel engine, the one she had been locked in. It idled for a while before driving off. It passed by her very close. They’re running me over, she had time to think, before the sound disappeared into the distance.
Now she could hear the young woman who had been talking to the child. She was angry and her voice slid up into falsetto.
‘That’s your fucking problem,’ she screeched.
A door slammed shut and silence fell.
Footsteps on the gravel. Someone was nearby and that made her uneasy, because whoever it was didn’t make themselves known.
‘This is going to hurt.’
It was him. The one who had driven her car, the one who had beaten her unconscious. What was going to hurt? She curled up and tensed her neck muscles, bracing for a blow. When her head was tugged to the side, she yelped, terrified at not knowing what lay in wait.
It took a while before she realised he was peeling the tape off her head. He did it slowly and not without care. Her head moved from side to side as he tore at the strips. She tried her best to stay upright but still fell over; he helped her up while talking soothingly to her.
‘You don’t have to be afraid.’
When he got to her hair, he immediately turned gentler.
‘We don’t want you to be bald. I’m about to wax your eyebrows now. Are you ready?’
But he didn’t tug; he pulled slowly and held the skin in place with his fingers. She cautiously opened her eyes, expecting to be blinded by the light.
He was squatting down, watching her. With his dark curls and brown eyes, he looked more like a French alpinist in a travel catalogue than a Norwegian. An alpinist with frostbite on his face. Behind him, there was nothing. Just a vast, hazy emptiness.
The place was barren like a fell. A mountain plateau without contours, covered in gravelly moraine. Heather and willow crept across the rocks like sparsely woven rugs.
The Audi was parked some way off; next to it was a van. There were no other people in sight, and no sun either, and she couldn’t say whether it was day or night. The wind came at them in violent gusts and in the lulls, there was the faint sound of waves; far below them the sea cut a bay into the grey Arctic landscape.
To separate the tape from her hair, he had to rip it. The pain was superficial but it was as though the nerves in her scalp were hardwired to her tear ducts. He pulled off the tape covering her mouth last. He did it slowly, stretching out her lips. Afterwards, she felt completely raw. Pieces of tape lay in tangles on the ground around her, silvery on one side and completely white on the other; the hair that had been ripped out of her scalp stuck to it in lanky skeins.
He tore off strip after strip from the parcel of tape around her hands. She didn’t want to be near his face, so she sat with her head lowered as if bashful.
The back door of the van swung open and Diana immediately looked over. A young woman. The face under the hood of her sweater was ashen like a dead junkie’s. She shut the door behind her and when she realised Diana was watching her, she glowered back, and in those eyes there was no mercy because there was nothing at all.
The man handed her a plastic bottle, which she accepted with trembling hands and drank from while he gathered up the tape, which he then rolled into a ball.
‘Let’s go.’
He helped her up.
‘Where are we going?’
‘We’re just going for a little walk,’ he said and shoved the ball of tape into his jacket pocket.
They passed the cars; she glanced in through the windows. The sunshade with its suction cups. The hair elastics around the chubby gearstick. Seeing their car there was deeply confusing. It was usually parked outside the garage next to their house on Duvvägen and now it was here, at what felt like the end of the world.
The young woman was leaning against the van with her arms crossed, watching her. Diana was suddenly furious.
‘What the fuck did I ever do to you!’ she screamed. ‘Leave me alone! Leave me the fuck alone!’
The man softly told her to calm down and ushered her on. Across a stony plain. Further on, she could see the roof of a small lighthouse, an orange cone sharply outlined in the haze. The sound of the breaking waves grew louder and soon she could hear gulls screeching mindlessly.
She limped on. Her left leg ached and didn’t want to move. It was as though it had knowledge of something the rest of her was denying. He had given her water; he had been gentle with her hair. We don’t want you to go bald, he’d told her. So they couldn’t very well be planning to hurt her. Maybe if he’d been alone, a murderer who combed his victims’ hair with deranged care. But this wasn’t like that. This was about Susso, that cult she’d crossed. She wanted to ask where Susso was, but was afraid of what his answer might be.
Disorienting swaths of fog were drifting in and the mountain seemed to rise up like a ramp toward the overcast sky. Beyond the sharp edge of the cliffs there was nothing but a hazy void. What could be out there? There couldn’t be anything out there.
‘I need to pee,’ she said and after saying it, she stopped. She turned around and studied the man. He put his hand in his pocket and scooped something out. A slender, hairless body. Some kind of furless weasel with a deformed face and cruel little eyes.
‘You don’t need to pee,’ he said.
‘I’m afraid you’re going to hurt me.’
‘We’re just going for a walk.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘I want to show you something.’
She limped on and when she reached the lighthouse, which wasn’t much taller than her, she stopped. The sea was just about visible as a dark streak at the lower edge of the fog enshrouding the mountain.
The man stared at her until she walked on. Below the lighthouse was a concrete platform that may have supported a cannon in a different time and she thought to herself that there might be other relics further out. Maybe it was something along those lines he wanted to show her?
They came out onto a terrace where limestone cliffs had eroded into discs like the ruins of some ancient megalithic monument. There was no path; that made her uncertain. She turned around and the man motioned for her to walk on, toward the edge.
Her urine-soaked jeans were stiff and cold and she moved with short, faltering steps. As though her shoelaces were tied together, or she was disabled by some neurological walking impediment. Lichen-flecked polygons, pink like salmo
n-flesh, spread out around her. A small flight of concrete steps unexpectedly appeared among the rocks and beyond it was a primitive fortification with a wall made of stone shards. She was hoping there would be something behind that wall, but there wasn’t, just scrap metal, inscrutable, rusty formations.
From time to time, the mist parted to reveal a stretch of coastline in the distance. A promontory like the black back of a whale. Leaden, wave-streaked water disappearing under a curtain of clouds.
The mountain sloped into the sea with geological unambiguousness. After dropping down from a small ledge, she ran a few steps to regain her balance and then carried on running. Her legs moved of their own accord. The cliffs on her right jutted out over a steep drop; below lay a belt of fallen rocks. She stumbled among piles of rocks the size of human heads and ran into hollows deep as cauldrons and up again. She had no plan, she just ran.
The fog lifted and the sea spread out before her, but that was as far as she got because sitting in her path on a hunk of siltstone was that animal. It glared at her with its cold lizard eyes and the will to escape drained out of her in the blink of an eye. Suddenly, she wasn’t afraid any more and she didn’t know why she had run. Her mind couldn’t move so much as an inch, forward or backward.
A hand grabbed her arm and she was led back and she smiled, embarrassed by her inability to remember what she had done wrong.
The man put one of his boots up on a crag like a jaunty explorer and gazed down at the precipice.
‘What do you reckon,’ he said, ‘would falling off the edge kill you?’
‘Am I supposed to fall off the edge?’
‘Do you reckon it would kill you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Have a look.’
She walked over to the edge and peered down.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘if you’re unlucky.’
He nodded and took a step back.
‘Then let’s hope you’re unlucky, Diana.’
‘I think you’d have to get away from the cliff.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’ll need a good run-up.’
