by Stefan Spjut
She heated up leftovers in the microwave and sat across from the little girl while she ate, cutting up an apple. Kiruna reached for a piece. She chewed, her little lips wet with fruit juice, and studied her mother’s face.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘Only if I touch it.’
‘Can I?’
‘Yes. Ow.’
‘Can we go look at the squirrel later?’
She shook her head.
‘Susso picked it up.’
‘I want a squirrel too.’
‘They’re not pets.’
‘Then why does she have a pet squirrel?’
Diana picked up a piece of apple and bit it in half.
‘That’s a good question.’
It frightened me half to death when someone yanked the front door handle. Soon after, the doorbell started ringing and I had no trouble guessing who it was.
‘I didn’t expect you so soon.’
‘What’s the point of lying about in the hospital,’ she said, ‘when I can just as well lie about here.’
She leaned against the wardrobe and stepped out of one shoe and then the other by using her toes as a boot jack. I recognised the right angle her shoes formed on the hallway floor. She had always taken her shoes off that way and now it seemed like a sign she was back. Though of course I didn’t have time to think about that at the time. At that moment, I was focusing all my attention on the grey figure hunkered down on her shoulder.
‘Have you walked through town with him like that?’
She walked straight to the guest room without responding. It wasn’t ready yet. The ironing board was out and sitting on it were piles of laundry I hadn’t had time to sort out. She sat down on the chair by the desk and put her foot on my exercise ball, rolling it back and forth while glaring at me all the while; the animal on her shoulder glared too.
‘Would you like me to get out the air mattress? If you want a rest.’
‘Yes, that would be great.’
Roland appeared in the doorway. Susso and he nodded to each other and I noticed that her treating him so coldly upset me. But I quickly tidied that anger away for fear the squirrel would sniff it out and scratch out God knows what kind of aggressions.
‘Would you mind fetching the air mattress?’
After he had shuffled off, I went into the kitchen and made coffee. Not because I wanted any but because I had a strong need to put my fingers to work and distract my mind.
Susso followed, of course. She sat down at the kitchen table and flipped through the paper. Where the squirrel was I had no idea, but it wasn’t important. I sensed she had already caught hold of the thread that would eventually lead all the way to the empty grave in her garden. I had been here before. Minor invasions of my privacy and major ones. The worst one was when she interrogated me about my divorce and all the misery that followed in its wake. That was down in her flat, and it was probably the last time I set foot in there. With the squirrel as an undisclosed participant, she pumped me for one grim detail after the other. She pecked at me like a woodpecker, and the thoughts I least wanted to put into words, the insects that had crawled furthest into the wood, those were the ones she licked up first. It was bewildering and horrifying, though the horrifying part didn’t hit home until afterwards. She found out things I believe no daughter should know about her mother, or her father for that matter. That being said, I think it affected me more than it did her and since that day, I find talking to her unpleasant.
‘So you’re living together now,’ she said without looking up from the paper.
‘Yes. It seemed easiest.’
I took cups out of the cupboard and put them on the counter.
‘What’s Minerva?’ she said.
‘Minerva? Isn’t that a goddess?’
Susso said nothing and kept her eyes fixed on the paper.
‘Is it maybe Diana,’ I continued, ‘but in Greek?’
Just then, Roland stepped through the door. He went into the guest room and then joined us in the kitchen. He was holding a plastic camping pump. He blew air on me until I pushed him away.
‘Do you know who Minerva is?’ I said.
‘It’s a kind of potato,’ he said. ‘Extremely hardy.’
Diana was out of bed before she even understood what had woken her up. She ran out of the bedroom so quickly she clipped the doorpost and staggered out into the light of the hallway.
Then he shouted again.
‘Disgusting fucking bastard, I’m going to end you!’
Håkan was crouched as if about to hurl himself at the little girl, who had crawled up into a corner of her bed, where a mountain of stuffed animals surrounded her like a bizarre praetorian guard. Diana let out a roar as she lunged at him and pushed him away. She unleashed a flurry of hard punches that drove him backward. He tottered sideways but other than that, barely noticed her. His eyes shone with a searing insanity. She stepped onto the bed, pulled the little girl close and stroked her hair.
‘Daddy’s dreaming, he’s sleepwalking and having a nightmare.’
She had expected the little body to be stiff with fear, but it wasn’t. The girl didn’t even look scared.
Håkan had got down on all fours; he was looking for something under the bed.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Just come out already!’
‘Håkan!’
‘It’s a mouse. There’s a mouse in here.’
Diana sat with her arms around the girl. The blind was up and the sun flooded the room with light.
‘I’m not sure you’re completely awake.’
‘I saw it!’
She climbed out of the bed, sank into a squat next to him and put a hand on his back. He jolted up into sitting. He stared at her and for a few fractions of a second, she glimpsed a desperate insecurity in his eyes. Then he turned back to the little girl.
‘You tell her!’
The girl’s lips were tightly pressed together.
‘You’re scaring her.’
‘Tell her!’
She shook her head defiantly.
Diana pulled on Håkan until he got to his feet.
‘Come with me,’ she said.
But he broke free.
‘She was playing with it,’ he said. ‘That’s why she won’t say anything. I know it’s in here!’
Diana stood motionless. Something about the look on his face made her hesitate. There was no trace of that pathological inertia that had held him in its grasp lately. Simply put, she recognised him, standing there in his underwear, with his hair in a tangle, staring at her. At the same time, she recalled what she’d seen through that window. A creepy ensemble of dressed-up Lilliputians, all with murine characteristics. She swallowed hard without taking her eyes off Håkan. Then she turned to the little girl.
She had lain down and her eyes were closed.
‘Kirri.’
She sat down on the edge of the bed.
The little girl’s eyelids fluttered and her hair was a black, tangled weave across her round cheek.
‘I know you’re not asleep.’
She put a hand on the little girl’s arm and shook it gently.
‘Hey.’
That made her bury her face into the pillow. Diana looked at Håkan. He had closed the door and shoved a blanket into the gap along the threshold; now he was scouring the floor.
‘So, was it a mouse?’
‘What?’
‘Was it a mouse?’
‘Yes, it was a mouse.’
‘A regular mouse?’
He shot her a quick glance. Then he resumed his search.
‘I don’t want any fucking mice in here.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Were you planning on catching it with your bare hands?’
He paced around the room, kicking the things scattered on the floor. Teddy bears. Clothes. Books. Jigsaw puzzles. A pink princess laptop. A spherical horse th
at let out a crazy neigh.
‘You won’t find it.’
‘It’s in here somewhere.’
‘Come with me now.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘What don’t I understand?’
‘It has to go. Okay? It can’t be in here.’
‘Can’t it wait till morning?’
‘No, it can’t wait till morning.’
She dug her hands in under Kiruna to lift her up, but the little girl wanted none of it. She rolled up and whimpered into the wall. There was no question she was simulating sleep. Diana made a new attempt, this time picking up both the child and the duvet she was clinging to. She carried the little girl into the bedroom and sat her down on the bed. Kiruna was hopping mad; she almost expected her head to start spinning around.
‘I want to sleep in my room, I want to sleep in my room!’
Diana closed the door and lay down next to her. She pulled her close and rocked her like she’d done when she was little. After a while, the girl relaxed and then it wasn’t long before her deep, regular breath warmed Diana’s neck.
*
The little girl was still asleep when Diana woke up. Her lips puffy like a rosy-cheeked cherub. It was past eight. Håkan’s side of the bed was empty. She pulled a jumper over her head, padded out into the hallway and opened the door to Kiruna’s room. He wasn’t there. She popped her head into the bathroom and continued down the stairs and had soon established that he was not in the house. Nor was he in the garage nor out back. Could he have gone to work? His holiday didn’t actually start until next week, or did she have that wrong? She went over to the busy wall planner and saw the line he had drawn in blue pen through his column, starting next week. But shouldn’t he have said something if he’d gone to work?
She went back up to their bedroom and picked up her phone from the window sill. No messages. She stood there for a while with the phone in her hand. Then she went downstairs and into the bathroom and whipped the shower curtain aside; thankfully, he wasn’t in there.
Now she could hear the sound of tiny feet from upstairs. Diana hurried up the stairs and intercepted the little girl on her way back to the bedroom with her nightgown fluttering behind her. She grabbed her arm hard.
‘What’s that in your hand?!’
She pried the little girl’s fingers open. A ring lay in the palm of her hand. Håkan’s wedding ring.
‘Where did you find this?’
The girl tried to wriggle free, refusing to speak.
‘Where did you get this?!’ she yelled and she yelled in a way she had promised herself never to yell at her child, a real social group 3 roar it was.
Kiruna backed up until her heels hit the wall. When she saw the look on the little girl’s face, she pulled herself together. She stared at the ring, as though she expected it to tell her where Håkan was, and why he had taken his wedding ring off.
‘Where was it?’
The little girl raised her arm and pointed.
‘Where?’
She followed the girl, who strolled into her room and pointed to one of the bedposts.
‘It was on top of that?’
She nodded.
Diana looked around the room. Then she snatched up the clothes strewn about the floor and dressed the little girl without a word; when the little girl resisted, she forced her arms and legs with relentlessly hard fingers.
*
Gudrun’s partner opened the door and he did it in nothing but a pair of shorts. A gold-mounted shark’s tooth dangled on his chest. He kept his hand on the handle and watched them with raised eyebrows. Then he stepped aside and invited them in. Gudrun was sitting at the kitchen table with her hands on a newspaper. She looked pale, unbecomingly so, and was draped in a hideous tie-dye blouse that should have been left to rest in peace long ago. No one said anything and after a while, Susso appeared in the doorway.
When Roland had turned the TV on for Kiruna and closed the door, Diana sat down at the table and told them about last night’s events. They listened without interrupting. Finally, she placed the ring in the middle of the table as proof.
‘It’s like they’re priming her or something.’
‘But did you see it?’ Gudrun said.
She shook her head.
‘I didn’t have to. I saw what it did to her. She was out of control when I carried her to my bed. It was really creepy to see. It was like when she had night terrors when she was younger; I couldn’t get through to her.’
‘And are you sure that wasn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘Night terrors?’
‘It wasn’t night terrors.’
‘What do you think, Susso?’
‘About what?’
‘About this.’
She said nothing for a while.
‘If they want her, they’re going to take her. Sooner or later. There’s nothing you can do.’
‘But you told me they wouldn’t come here,’ Diana said in a voice that was on the verge of breaking. Susso looked at her with one expressionless eye, tapping the napkin holder against the table top.
‘I was wrong.’
‘There must be something we can do,’ Gudrun said.
‘The only thing you can do,’ Susso said, ‘is hide. But that’s not such a great long-term solution.’
‘I’m just trying to get through one day at a time,’ Diana said.
‘So where are you going to go?’ Gudrun said.
‘We’re not telling you,’ Susso replied.
Lennart was sitting in the hallway, holding Grete’s aluminium crutch. They had arrived. The engine had gone silent out there. Car doors were being gently shut. The old woman was asking quiet questions and getting quiet answers and the rain was coming down hard.
Now he could hear running footsteps on the gravel. Fanny stepped in through the front door with the little boy in her arms. Her eyes took in the antiques in the room; when she spotted Lennart, she stiffened. He tapped the crutch lightly against the floor and when the boy didn’t react, he tapped harder. Eventually, his big brown eyes turned to him. His hair had curled into wet knots and his tongue looked like it was on its way out of his lips like some kind of mollusc.
The old woman hobbled in through the door and continued into the dining room, with Fanny hard on her heels. After a while, Frode entered the hallway with a suitcase in his hand and a yellow IKEA bag slung over his shoulder. He put the bags down on the floor and went back outside.
The IKEA bag was full of clothes and other sundries; Lennart looked at it for a while before going over to study the contents. He poked at it with the crutch. Moved a flannel shirt that was not unfamiliar to him. A nappy decorated with colourful little animals. Another nappy and under that, the mask. Rune’s mouth gaping like the mouth of a spirit about to be sucked into the netherworld.
Lennart stood stock-still, staring at the small, silvery swirls in its hair. The unevenly cut eye holes that showed the inside of the skin, stinking because of the organisms thriving in the remnants of flesh. He stuck the crutch into the bag and stirred around until Rune was no longer visible.
The rain rattled against the roof of the porch. He flared his nostrils and sniffed the air. The van was parked diagonally behind the motorhome and the car he’d stolen in Karesuando.
Stiff-backed, he trudged across the rocky yard. After a moment’s hesitation, he grabbed the handle and opened the door to the back. The vicious reek of wolf’s urine hurled itself at him, followed by a posse of more or less revolting smells. The armchair was in there, but there was no one sitting in it.
He closed the door and looked around. The deserted road. The tundra fading into the rain. He walked around the motorhome and past the garage and down a slope.
The kennel consisted of a log cabin, ringed by a tall, welded chain-link fence. A small lamp was burning invitingly in the window and there was even a valance curtain. There were cutout hearts in the shutters.
There was no gate in
the fence, so he walked around it.
The wolf was standing right in front of the door, watching him with eyes that were clear and calm. The same yellow eyes that had peered out from behind the mask.
‘There’s no one home.’
When he drew closer, the wolf pranced aside.
He tried the door. Then he opened it and bowed into the cabin. Even though the smell of smoke permeated every part of the room, he could also smell the dog-eyed old woman who had dwelt in there for an eternity, filling her days with God knows what activities.
There was a cast-iron stove and a small trestle table but no chairs. A curtain of see-through plastic strips hung in the doorway leading out to the fenced-in area. The strips were grimy and swayed languidly when the wind pulled on them.
The old-fashioned sleigh bed was full of dolls, huddling close together. They were all girls and all wore dresses and all had coiffed, shiny hair and a few of them looked very old and sensible.
The old lady’s paltry clothes were hung on a hook, a tattered gingham dress and a pile jacket. Her wig had fallen down and lay on the floor like an abandoned bird’s nest. Lennart picked it up and hung it back on the hook. Then he stomped his foot hard on the floor and tramped about until the tiny creatures who had been spying on him had darted out of the cabin. The last one to slink over the threshold was a field vole with a fat tail.
‘You can come in if you want.’
The wolf stood outside with its long nose pointed at the wet ground, glowering at him. Then it turned its head. It had heard something; Lennart stepped out to see what it might be.
They were on their way down to the kennel. Frode was carrying the old woman on his back and Fanny was stumbling after with the little boy in her arms.
‘There he is!’
When Frode had put Grete down and handed her her crutch, she waved the wolf over and eventually it padded up to her.
‘This, you see, Rune, this was the home of an adorable little old lady called Uksakka. But she’s gone now. And she’s probably never coming back.’
Grete disappeared into the cabin.
‘Come, let’s go inside so you can have a look. It’s very cosy! Very cosy.’
