‘Maybe I don’t feel like it.’
‘Well, in that case you’ll have to show me how the motor works.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
Anna shot him a look, don’t be ridiculous yourself, and Mahler stomped into the house. The largest lifejacket was too small for him, he looked like a giant baby when he pulled the strap across his tummy, so he decided to forgo the vest. Everything seemed to matter less, all of a sudden. He looked in on Elias, lying in the bed under the troll painting. He felt no particular desire to go to him. He picked up the water container and walked out.
‘Well then,’ he said. ‘I guess I’m off.’
Anna had finished hanging up the washing. She crouched down with her hands on her knees.
‘Dad,’ she said in mild tone of voice. ‘Stop it.’
‘Stop what?’
‘Just stop. You don’t have to.’
Mahler walked past her down to the boat. Anna said, ‘Drive carefully.’
‘Sure, sure.’
When the sound of the engine had died away between the islands, Anna lay on her back on the sun-baked rock, shifting around so the warmth would reach as much of her skin as possible. When she had lain like this for a while she went in and got Elias, putting him next to her on the rock, wrapped in the blanket.
She turned on her side, cradling her head in her hand and focusing on a point in the middle of his black-brown blotchy forehead.
Elias?
The answer she received was not articulated in words. It wasn’t even an answer, more of a mute affirmation: I am here. It had happened a couple of times recently that Elias had actually talked to her, the last time when she was mowing the lawn as her father was doing his meaningless exercises.
She had been picking a pebble out of the handmower when Elias’ clear, high-pitched voice filled her head.
Mummy, come! Grandad is angry. I am going to…
Elias did not get any further before his voice was drowned out by a piercing, whining sound. When she reached the house Elias was lying on the floor with the chair on top of him and the whining sound vanished just as the contact with him was severed.
The time before, it had been in the middle of the night. She was not sleeping much and when she did drop off it was from sheer exhaustion. It was difficult to sleep when she knew Elias was lying in his bed, staring up at the ceiling; that she was leaving him alone when she disappeared into the closed room of sleep.
She had been lying on the mattress next to Elias’ bed when she was awakened by his voice. She jerked, sat up and looked at him as he lay in bed, his eyes open.
‘Elias, did you say something?’
Mummy…
‘Yes?’
I don’t want to.
‘What is it you don’t want?’
Don’t want to be here.
‘You don’t want to be in this cottage?’
No. Don’t want to be…here.
They had not been able to get any further before the whining sound had gotten louder. Until it started to get painful, she could feel physically how Elias drew back, disappearing into himself. Something left him for a moment as he talked to her; as soon as he pulled it back they could only communicate without words, weakly.
Another thing.
Every time Elias withdrew, it was from fear. She felt it. What Elias was afraid of was connected with that whining sound.
Out in the sunshine on the rock, with his mummified face sticking out of the blanket, it was clear, terribly clear, that Elias’ body was just the shell that people always spoke of. A skin, dried and shrivelled, that enclosed something else, unnameable and not of this world. The boy Elias who had liked the swings and loved nectarines no longer existed and would not come back. She had understood this even in those first minutes in Mahler’s bedroom in Vällingby.
And yet, and yet…
She was standing on her own two feet now. She was hanging up laundry and humming songs, which she would never have done a week ago. Why?
Because now she knew that death was not the end.
All those times that she had gone to Råcksta and sat by the grave, lain on the grave, whispered to the grave. At that point she had known that his body was down there but also known that he could not hear her, that nothing of him was really left. That Elias had only been the sum of swings, nectarines, Legos, smiles, grumpiness and ‘Mummy, give me another goodnight kiss.’ When all that had gone, only memories were left.
She had been wrong. Completely wrong, and that was the reason she was humming. Elias was dead. Elias wasn’t gone.
She opened the blankets a little, letting in a bit of air. Elias still smelled bad but not like in the beginning. As if whatever it was that smelled bad had been…used up.
‘What is it you are afraid of?’
No answer. She flapped the pyjama top over his stomach and a puff of stale air was released. When the clothes had dried she would change him. They lay on the rocks until the sun sank into the sea of Åland and the cooler breezes began to blow in. Then Anna carried Elias inside again.
The bedclothes smelled mildewed, so she took them out and hung them in an alder tree close to the house. She found an empty kerosene lamp and filled it with fuel for the evening. Checked the fireplace by lighting a sheet of newspaper, placed it on the hearth. The smoke came in. The chimney had probably been closed off. Maybe a bird had built a nest.
Anna made a couple of caviar-spread sandwiches in the kitchen, poured a glass of lukewarm milk and walked out and sat on the rock. When she had finished eating the sanwiches she walked down to the water’s edge to examine the large, silver-coloured object, half-concealed in the grass, that had caught her eye a couple of times.
At first she did not understand what it was. A large cylinder covered in holes. Something you tossed into the air, took a picture of and claimed it was a UFO. Then she realised it was the drum of a washing machine, that it had been used as a fish safe.
She walked along the shore, found an empty tube of shaving cream and a beer can. The clouds were starting to get pink and she thought Mahler would be coming soon.
To get a better view of the sunset, as well as her father, she walked to the cairn on top of the hill behind the house. The view was fantastic. Even though the hill was only a couple of metres higher than the house, it gave her a clear view over all of the nearby islands.
Seen from the side, the mass of evening clouds became one big fluffy blanket draped over the low islands, reflected in a sea of blood. To the east there was nothing between the watcher and the horizon. She understood perfectly why people had once believed that the world was flat, that the horizon was an edge beyond which the great Nothingness lay.
She listened. No engine sounds.
When she stood here like this with a view of the whole wide world, it seemed incredible to her that her father would even be able to find his way back here. The world was so infinitely vast.
What is that?
She trained her gaze on a cluster of trees and bushes in a hollow on the other side of the island. She thought she’d seen something moving there. Yes. There was a rustle, and a flash of something white that disappeared again.
White? What kind of animals are white?
Only animals that live where there’s snow. Except cats, of course. And dogs. Could it be a cat? Forgotten or inadvertently left behind. Maybe it had fallen off a boat, managed to make its way to land.
She started to walk toward the hollow, then stopped.
It had been larger than a cat. More like a dog. A dog that had fallen off a boat and…gone wild.
She turned and walked quickly back to the cottage. Paused outside the door and listened one last time. It had to be past eight o’clock, why didn’t her father come?
She went in, closing the door behind her. It slid open. The lock was gone. She took a broom and threaded it through the handle, jamming the end up against the wall. It was worthless as a lock, but an animal would not be able to get in.
>
The more she thought about it, the more anxious she became.
It wasn’t an animal. It was a person.
She stood at the door and listened. Nothing. Just a lone blackbird trying to sound like a lot of other birds simultaneously.
She could feel her heart, insistent, pumping faster and more emphatically. She was getting worked up over nothing. It was just that she was alone with Elias and couldn’t get away from here—it was putting ghosts in her head. There’s no problem balancing on a piece of wood ten centimetres wide when it’s lying on the ground, but hoist it up ten metres off the ground and sheer terror sinks its claws in. Even though it’s the same piece of wood.
It was a gull, probably. Or a swan.
A swan. Yes, of course. It was a swan that had nested on land. Swans are big.
She calmed down and went and checked on Elias. He was lying with his head turned to the wall and appeared to be looking at the troll painting, just a dark rectangle against the wall in the dusk. She sat beside him on the bed.
‘Hello sweetheart, how is everything?’
The sound of her own voice filled the silence, chasing it away. The anxious feeling in her chest stilled.
‘When I was little I had this kind of painting by my bed. Except it had a troll-daddy and his daughter, fishing. The girl was holding the rod and the father who was—this big—and clumsy, and covered in warts, he was teaching her how she should hold it, holding her arm carefully like this to show her. I don’t know if my mum knew how I stared at that picture and how I thought or fantasised that I had a father who would do that with me. Who showed me what to do and who was so close, standing behind me and was big like that and looked kind. All I know is that when I was little I wanted to be a troll. Because everything seemed simple for the trolls. They had nothing, and yet they had everything.’
She rested her hands in her lap, looking straight at the painting—Whatever happened to it?—recalling how she had kneeled in her bed, tracing the outline of the troll father’s face with her finger.
She sighed, looking at the window. A painted balloon was floating outside. She gasped violently. The balloon was a face. A swollen, white face with two dark slits for eyes. The lips were gone and the teeth exposed. She stared at the face as if turned to stone. The nose was just a hole in spongy, white flesh and it was a face made of floury dough with a lot of big teeth stuck into it.
A hand rose and was placed on the glass. Even this was corpse-white, swollen.
She screamed, deafening herself.
The face drew back from the window, in the direction of the door. She jumped to her feet, hitting her hip against the corner of the table but felt nothing, reached the kitchen—
Mummy?
—and took hold of the door, holding the handle.
Mummy?
Elias’ voice, inside her head. She braced herself against the wall, pulling on the handle as hard as she could. Someone had grabbed it on the outside. She was resisting. The thing on the other side was jerking on it.
Dear merciful God, don’t let it come in don’t let it
Mummy what
don’t let it
is it?
It was strong. She sobbed when the door hit against the frame.
‘Go away! Go away!’
She could feel the dead, mute power through the handle as the creature monotonously pulled on the door, wanting to get in to her and Elias. Terror made her throat a single tensed muscle. She turned her head stiffly toward the kitchen, looking for a weapon, anything.
There was a small axe under the kitchen counter, but she couldn’t let go of the door to grab it. The creature was pulling harder and when the door opened slightly she could momentarily glimpse the whole of the body. It was white and naked, lumps of dough thrown onto a skeleton, and she understood.
A drowned man. It’s a drowned man.
She laughed breathlessly as she continued to resist, getting more glimpses of the creature’s dissolved, fish-eaten flesh.
The drowned ones. Where are they?
In a flash she saw the whole sea filled with drowned people, all the accidents of the summer months—how many? Floating white bodies, scraping against the bottom. Predatory fish, eels that ate through the skin and gorged themselves on the innards.
Mummy!
Elias’ voice was frightened now. She could neither rejoice at the fact that he was speaking to her, nor comfort him. The only thing she could do was resist, stop the thing from entering.
Her arms were starting to feel paralysed by the continuous pulling, the strength required to hold out.
‘What do you want? Go away! Go away!’
It let go.
The door banged shut one last time and some slivers of wood broke off, fluttering down to her feet. She held her breath, listening. The blackbird had stopped singing and she heard rapping sounds on the rock outside. Bone on stone. The creature was leaving.
Mummy, what is it?
She answered.
Don’t be afraid. It’s leaving now.
The whining started, like a fleet of small boats approaching across the bay, coming closer. More than anything Anna wanted to scream, Stop it, leave us alone, go away to everything that seemed to want to get at them, but she did not dare for fear that it would frighten Elias. Elias quickly pulled out of her head and the whining died away.
Anna jumped back from the door, grabbed the axe and took up her post again. She listened outside. Nothing to be heard. The axe slid in her sweaty hand. During the whole episode she had not felt the drowned one inside her head for an instant, and that scared her even more. With Elias there was always a shimmer, a presence. The drowned man was silent.
When the blackbird resumed its song, she dared to leave the door and go in to Elias. She stopped in the door opening, dropping the axe.
The drowned man was standing on the rock outside the window, looking in. She carefully lowered herself down and took up the axe again, as though it were an animal that might be startled by the slightest movement. But the drowned one stood still.
What is it doing?
It couldn’t look, it had no eyes. Anna sat on the edge of the bed squeezing the axe hard, sitting at an angle so that she could not see the thing outside the window. She’d be able to hear if it moved again, though. It was the most repulsive thing she had ever seen. She could not think about it, was not permitted to think about it—as if there was a finely balanced switch inside her head, poised to flip and catapult her into the darkest insanity.
She stared at the troll picture on the wall, the kind troll-man with his big comforting hands. The little child. And she thought:
Daddy, come home.
Kungsholmen 17.00
They had found a spot in an overgrown thicket along the beach at Kungsholm, halfway between their apartment and the parliament building. David assumed it was against the law to bury animals in the city without authority, but what could they do?
Before they set out they had made a cross from some pieces of string and skirting board. Magnus himself had written BALTHAZAR with a felt pen. David stood guard while Magnus and Sture dug a hole in the thicket large enough for the shoebox.
From this smaller perspective, David thought he could understand the purpose of a burial. Magnus busied himself with the box and the flowers that would be added to it, the construction of the cross satisfied him in a way that words and comforting on their own could not. He had cried a great deal on his way back from the Heath, but as soon as they reached the apartment he had started to talk about the funeral and what they should do.
Even David and Sture had become completely absorbed in the project; they had not yet said a word about what happened. What Eva had done and what it might mean could not be discussed with Magnus there, needing all their attention. But one thing you could say for sure: Eva would not be coming home. Not for a long time.
The hole was ready. Magnus opened the lid of the box one last time and Sture hurried to shift the rabbit’s hea
d into place. Magnus stroked the fur with his finger.
‘Goodbye little Balthazar. I hope it will be good for you.’
David could not cry anymore. What he felt was rage. A hopeless, compressed rage. If he had been alone he would have shaken his fists at the sky and screamed at it. Why Why Why? Instead he sank down next to Magnus and put a hand on his back.
It’s his birthday for fuck’s sake. Couldn’t he have had…just one day.
Magnus put the lid back and placed the shoebox in the ground. Sture handed him the shovel and he shovelled earth and more earth until the box disappeared from view. David sat absolutely still, staring at the shrinking pile of dirt, the hole filling up.
If it…comes back…
He clapped a hand over his mouth, forcing his face not to contort in howls of laughter, as he imagined the headless rabbit digging itself up and crawling zombie-like back to their apartment, dragging itself up the stairs.
Sture helped Magnus put the tufts of grass back, pat them in place and bang the cross into the ground with the shovel. He looked at David and they nodded at each other. It was doubtful whether the grave would stay intact for long, but it was done.
Everyone stood up. Magnus started to sing, ‘The world is a sorrow-island…’ like he had seen them do in All of us on Saltkråkan and David thought:
This is the bottom. Now we have reached rock bottom. We have to have reached the bottom.
David and Sture laid one hand each on Magnus’ shoulders and David could not shake the feeling that it was really Eva’s funeral they were enacting.
The bottom. It has to be…
Magnus crossed his arms over his chest and David felt his shoulders draw together, shrinking, as he said, ‘It was my fault.’
‘No,’ David said. ‘It was certainly not your fault.’
Magnus nodded. ‘I was the one who did it.’
‘No, little one, it was…’
‘Yes, it was. I was the one who thought, so Mum did it.’
David and Sture exchanged looks. Sture bent down and asked, ‘What do you mean?’
Magnus wrapped his arms around David’s hips and said into his stomach, ‘I thought bad things about Mummy and that was why she got angry.’
Handling the Undead Page 27
