The Quarry

by Johan Theorin

  She looks more closely and sees that the layer is full of dark-red clumps.

  ‘The place of blood,’ says Henry, straightening up. ‘That’s all that remains of the battle between the trolls and the elves … petrified blood.’

  Vendela realizes that the queen of the elves must have led the battle against the trolls, but she doesn’t want to look at the blood any more.

  ‘Do they still fight, Daddy?’

  ‘No, I think they’ve called a truce now,’ says Henry. ‘Perhaps they’ve decided that the trolls will stay underground beneath the place of blood, and the elves will stay on the alvar – that way they don’t have to meet.’

  Vendela looks up at the top of the quarry and thinks they ought to build a palace up there, with tall windows and walls made of stone. She would like to live there, between the kingdoms of the trolls and the elves.

  Then she looks at her father. ‘Why were they enemies, the trolls and the elves? Why did they fight?’

  Henry merely shakes his head. ‘Who knows … I suppose they each thought the others were just too different.’

  8

  Per and Jesper had to travel several kilometres to find a shop where they could buy food on Friday evening. When they finally reached Stenvik, they drove through a village full of dark, closed-up summer cottages.

  Per turned on to Ernst’s Road by the quarry, and saw that at least there were lights showing in the windows of the two newly built luxury houses. Each house had a big shiny car parked in front of it. Suddenly he recognized one of them as the Audi that had almost run Jesper over. The damage to the car was still clear to see, but all the blood had been washed away.

  So the man and woman he had met in the car park had built a house here in the village. They were his new neighbours.

  ‘A new car,’ he said. ‘That might not be a bad idea … both for us and for the environment.’

  Jesper turned his head. ‘Are you going to get a new car, Dad?’

  ‘In a while. Not right now.’

  His own Saab had worn-out shock absorbers, and it squealed and creaked over the potholes and hollows on the gravel track. But the engine was pretty good, and Per had no intention of being ashamed of his car.

  Nor of Ernst’s cottage – even though it resembled nothing so much as an abandoned builders’ hut this evening, with its low roof and small, dark windows. The cottage had stood in the sun and wind by the quarry for almost fifty years and really needed scraping down and painting, but that could wait until next summer.

  Per had last visited the island to check on the cottage at the beginning of March, and the alvar had been covered in snow. The snow was almost gone now, but the air still wasn’t much warmer – at least not after the sun had gone down.

  ‘Do you remember Ernst, our relative?’ he asked Jesper as he pulled up in front of the house. ‘Do you remember coming to visit him here?’

  ‘Sort of,’ said Jesper.

  ‘So what do you remember?’

  ‘He worked with stone … he made sculptures.’

  Per nodded and pointed in the darkness towards a little shed to the south of the cottage. ‘They’re still in his workshop … some of them. We can have a look.’

  He missed Ernst, perhaps because he had been the complete opposite of Jerry. Ernst had got up early every morning to work with hammers and chisels down in the quarry. He had worked hard – the resounding clang of steel on stone was one of Per’s childhood memories – but when Per and his mother had come to stay, Ernst had always had time for him.

  His old doormat bore the word WELCOME.

  When they opened the door of the summer cottage they were met by the faint aroma of soap and tar, traces of the former owner that had not completely faded away. When he switched on the light, everything looked just as Per had left it in the winter: flowery wallpaper, rag rugs with brown coffee stains, and a worn, shiny wooden floor.

  In the main room was a seaman’s chest that Ernst had made, with a carving on the front showing a knight on a horse chasing a scornfully grinning troll into his mountain hideaway. On a block of stone behind the knight a fairy princess sat weeping.

  The chest could stay, but when Per got some money he intended to start changing the furniture.

  ‘We’ll get some air in here,’ he said to Jesper, ‘and let the spring in.’

  With the windows ajar, the rooms were filled with the soughing of the wind. Fantastic. Per tried to feel pleasure in the cottage he had inherited, both as it was now and as it would one day be.

  ‘It’s only a couple of hundred metres to the shore on the far side of the quarry,’ he said to Jesper as they carried their cases into the little hallway. ‘We’ll be able to swim there a lot in the summer, you and I and Nilla. It’ll be cool.’

  ‘I haven’t got any swimming trunks,’ said Jesper.

  ‘We’ll get some.’

  The twins each had a small bedroom to the left of the kitchen, and Jesper disappeared into his room with his rucksack.

  Per stayed in the little room behind the kitchen with a view over the northern section of the quarry and the ice-covered sound. This could be his study over the summer.

  If he lived another twenty or thirty years he would still have this house, he was sure of it. And the children could spend as much time here as they wanted.

  A telephone started ringing while Per was in the bedroom unpacking his clothes. For a few seconds he couldn’t remember where the old phone was, but the sound seemed to be coming from the kitchen.

  The phone was on the worktop next to the cooker; it was made of Bakelite, and had a dial. Per picked up the receiver.

  ‘Mörner.’

  He was expecting to hear Marika, or the confident voice of a doctor with news about Nilla, but he heard nothing but a rushing noise on the line, a poor connection with the mainland.

  Eventually somebody coughed, then came a quiet, weak voice – an old man’s voice.

  ‘Pelle?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Pelle …’

  Per took his time before answering. Since his mother had died, there was only one person who called him Pelle, and besides, he recognized his father Jerry’s hoarse voice. Thousands of cigarettes and too many late nights had worn it out. And last spring, after the stroke, his voice had become slurred and lost. Jerry could still remember names – and telephone numbers; he rang Per at least once a week, but much of his vocabulary was gone.

  Per had redirected the phone line from his apartment in Kalmar through to the cottage, despite the risk that Jerry might ring.

  ‘How’s it going, Jerry?’ he said eventually.

  His father hesitated, and Per could hear him inhaling cigarette smoke. Then he coughed again and lowered his voice still further.

  ‘Bremer,’ was all he said.

  Per recognized the name. Hans Bremer was Jerry’s colleague and right-hand man. Per had never met him, but it was obvious that Bremer had a better relationship with his father than he had ever done.

  ‘I can’t talk to you today,’ said Per. ‘Jesper’s here.’

  His father said nothing. He was searching for words, but Per didn’t wait. ‘So I’ll speak to you soon,’ he said. ‘Bye now.’

  He hung up calmly without waiting for a response, and went back to his bedroom.

  Two minutes later, the sound of the telephone reverberated through the cottage once more.

  He wasn’t surprised. Why had he redirected it?

  When he picked up the receiver he heard the same hoarse voice: ‘Pelle? Pelle?’

  Per closed his eyes wearily. ‘What’s the matter, Jerry? Can you tell me why you’re ringing?’

  ‘Markus Lukas.’

  ‘Who?’

  Jerry cleared his throat and said something that sounded like ‘that bastard’, but Per wasn’t sure. It sounded as if Jerry had a cigarette in his mouth.

  ‘What are you talking about, Jerry?’

  No reply. Per turned towards the kitchen window and looked out ov
er the quarry. It was completely deserted.

  ‘Have to help Bremer,’ his father said suddenly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Help him with Markus Lukas.’

  Then there was complete silence at the other end of the line. Per looked out of the window, towards the water and the narrow strip of black that was the mainland. Markus Lukas? He thought he’d heard the name before, a long time ago.

  ‘Where are you, Jerry?’

  ‘Kristianstad.’

  Jerry had been living in Kristianstad for the last fifteen years, in a stuffy three-room apartment by the railway station.

  ‘Good,’ said Per. ‘Stay there.’

  ‘No,’ said Jerry.

  ‘Why not?’

  No reply.

  ‘So where are you going, then?’ asked Per.

  ‘Ryd.’

  Per knew that Ryd was a small village in the coniferous forests of Småland where Jerry had a house; Per had given him a lift out there once a few years earlier.

  ‘How are you going to get there without a car?’

  ‘Bus.’

  Jerry had relied on Hans Bremer for more than fifteen years. Before his stroke, when he spoke in full sentences, his father had made his relationship with his colleague very clear to Per: Bremer takes care of everything, he loves his job. Bremer fixes everything.

  ‘Good,’ said Per. ‘Go and spend a few days there. Give me a ring when you get back.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jerry started coughing again, and broke off the conversation. Per put the phone down, but remained standing by the window.

  Parents shouldn’t make their children feel lonely, but that was exactly what Jerry did. Per felt totally alone, without family or friends. His father had frightened them all away. Jerry had even ruined Per’s first experience of falling in love, with a smiling girl called Regina.

  Per exhaled slowly and stayed where he was. He ought to go for a jog on the track along the shore, but it was too dark now.

  Jerry’s persecution mania had simmered inside his head like a bubbling soup for as long as Per could remember. There had been a joyous lust for life too, but after the stroke that had completely disappeared. In the past Per had got the impression that Jerry needed these real or imagined conflicts to spice up his life, that they gave him fresh energy in his role as an entrepreneur, but the voice he had heard on the phone today was confused and weak.

  For as long as Per could remember, his father had imagined that people were after him: usually the Swedish government and its tax inspectors, but sometimes the bank or a rival or a former employee from Jerry’s company.

  Per couldn’t do much about his father right now. He probably needed some kind of supervision, but for Per it was more important to be a father to Nilla than a son to Jerry.

  And Jesper, too. He mustn’t forget Jesper.

  His son’s door was closed, but Per was a good father, he cared. He knocked and popped his head around the door. ‘Hi there.’

  ‘Hi Dad,’ Jesper said quietly.

  He was sitting up in bed with his Gameboy, even though it was really too late to play.

  Per chose to ignore it. Instead he told Jesper about a plan that had occurred to him as he was looking out of the window: why not build a shortcut down to the shore?

  ‘Shall we do some work tomorrow?’ he asked. ‘Build up our muscles and make something worthwhile?’

  Jesper thought about it. Then he nodded.

  They slept in until nine the next morning, and made a start on the flight of steps after breakfast.

  Ernst had left only a rickety ladder leading from the cottage down to the quarry, and Per wanted something more stable. A flight of steps he and the children could use when they went down to the shore on sunny summer days.

  At the southern end of the Mörners’ stony plot the edge of the quarry was several metres lower, and that was where Per had chosen to construct the steps. One by one he and Jesper threw some of Ernst’s tools down on to the gravel at the bottom of the quarry: crowbars, spades and pickaxes. Then they lowered the old wheelbarrow down, pulled on their thick gloves and climbed down after it.

  It was cold at the bottom of the rock face, and there wasn’t a soul in sight. Nor were there many plants, just grass and the odd little bush determinedly clinging to the gravel or growing in crevices. Gulls were standing on top of some of the piles of stone, screaming at each other, their beaks stiff and wide open.

  At about knee height in the rock face a strange layer of dark-red clumps ran through the pale limestone. Per remembered it from his childhood. The place of blood, Ernst had called it, but he had never explained why. It was hardly likely to be real blood.

  ‘What are we going to do, Dad?’ asked Jesper, looking around.

  ‘Right … first we’re going to collect some gravel.’ Per pointed over at the piles.

  ‘But is it OK just to pinch it?’

  ‘We’re not pinching it,’ said Per, realizing that he hadn’t a clue who owned the quarry. ‘We’re using it. I mean, it’s just lying here, isn’t it?’

  Time to start work. Not too hard and not too fast – he had to think about his back – but hard enough to build a flight of steps up from the quarry.

  For over an hour they pushed the wheelbarrow back and forth between the piles of gravel in the middle of the quarry and the rock face below their garden, and slowly they constructed a steep ramp leading upwards.

  It was already half past ten, but Per had warmed up now, and besides, he had spotted a big stack of long, narrow blocks of stone about fifty metres away.

  ‘Shall we start with those?’ he said.

  They went over to begin loading the limestone blocks into the wheelbarrow. Per avoided the biggest ones, but the medium-sized ones were heavy enough. He grabbed hold of the nearest block and got Jesper to take the other end. The surface of the stone was dry and smooth.

  ‘Always lift with your legs, Jesper, never with your back.’

  They lifted together, and placed three blocks at a time in the wheelbarrow.

  By the time they had unloaded the blocks by the rock face and placed them in position as steps, Per was panting – this was hard, heavy work. How had Ernst managed to work here day after day, year after year?

  By about twelve o’clock they had finished the lower section of the steps, and Per’s back, neck and arms were aching. Despite the protective gloves, the skin on his fingers was badly chafed, and he had blisters. And the steps still reached less than halfway up to the top.

  He smiled wearily. ‘Only the rest to go, then.’

  ‘We could do with a crane,’ said Jesper.

  Per shook his head. ‘That’s cheating.’

  They hauled themselves over the edge of the quarry and went back into Ernst’s house.

  Their house, thought Per, and wondered about a name. Casa Grande?

  No. Casa Mörner: that would do nicely.

  That same evening, the wind started to blow ferociously across the island, and by the time darkness came, a gale was howling across the rooftops.

  The telephone on Nilla’s hospital ward had been engaged all evening, but at eight o’clock Per had done what Nilla wanted and sent her a thought.

  Love, he thought, and sent it away with a mental picture of the sunset over the sound.

  No thoughts from his daughter popped into his head in return; it felt completely empty. He didn’t really believe telepathy worked, but they had nothing to lose.

  Per went to bed and fell asleep to the sound of the howling wind; he dreamed that he had found a pale little wooden doll in the quarry. He put it in a cloth bag and brought it into the cottage, for some reason. The doll was angry, and because the bag was torn, he got some tape and tried to repair it so that the fingers wouldn’t stick out. The doll struggled inside the bag and Per kept on trying to tape the bag up; he could hear his father laughing at him.

  No, it wasn’t Jerry’s hoarse laughter that was reverberating through his dream, it was a dull
roar that was making the ground shake.

  Per stopped fighting with the bag. He looked out of the window towards the quarry and discovered something unbelievable: a volcano had begun to form out in the sound between the island and the mainland. The water was boiling, the air was full of grey smoke, and a crater a hundred metres wide was rising towards the sky, higher and higher.

  Lava poured down the sides, starting to fill the quarry.

  Then he woke up, disorientated and confused, fumbling in vain for the doll in his bed.

  The gale was still blowing over the house, but the dull roar had stopped. It didn’t come back, and eventually he fell asleep again.

  Sunday morning was sunny, with a strange rushing noise in the wind. Per got up at about half past seven, and noticed something different as soon as he looked out of the window to the west: the sound was no longer greyish white, it was dark blue.

  He realized what had happened. The roaring din that had woken him during the night was the noise of the ice being broken up by the strong wind. Now there were just odd ice floes drifting around out on the water, and a grey patch of slushy ice bobbing up and down among the rocks by the shore. The rushing noise was coming from the newly liberated waves.

  The ice had left the sound – hundreds of tons of frozen water had been released, and Per had heard their thundering roar.

  Terrific.

  But last night’s dream had been strange and unpleasant. He didn’t want to think about it.

  9

  As Max sat pondering his cookery book, Vendela wandered around the new house thinking about not eating. She had decided to do two things here on the island: jog more and eat less. Not to lose weight – she weighed fifty-two kilos on the bathroom scales at home – but as a way of cleansing her body and getting closer to nature. So on the first morning in the new house she drank only a glass of water for breakfast, alone with Aloysius in her big new kitchen.

  The idea of throwing a party for the neighbours was still in the back of her mind. She had decided to invite everyone she could find in the village. On Ash Wednesday – people didn’t normally give dinner parties on that day, did they? To be on the safe side, she had tapped on the door and run the idea past her husband.