The Summer House
Page 9
Erik nodded. He thought he could suddenly picture what Chris meant. He could feel the wind blowing, he heard how it actually sounded in his ears, like a voice, as if it were whispering to him.
‘So you’re saying that it’s selfish to try and save the planet, which is a human way of thinking?’ he said, feeling as if he’d suddenly had an epiphany.
Chris smiled.
‘Absolutely true. A lot of activists think that we’ll be able to live well in the future if only we put our efforts into wind energy and low-energy lights and do some recycling. But it’s already too late for all that. Folks in the environmental movement don’t want to hear that, because it’s viewed as counterproductive, as if we’re taking away their last hope. Some people among them have even started talking about nuclear energy and solutions that might appeal to the right-wing. For me, it’s not a question of right-wing or left-wing. My sense of the world has more to do with the magic of nature, if that doesn’t sound too pretentious. It’s about holding on to a small part of that magic. Nature will continue to exist, even without us. Maybe it would be just as well if human beings were obliterated,’ he said.
Erik listened in silence. He thought he might actually be able to understand how enticing that was. To renounce civilisation. But it seemed so short-sighted. If that’s what you decided today, you still had a life to live tomorrow. And for that you needed to get money from somewhere.
Yet he felt that his personal reservations were starting to be dispelled. Chris’s voice sounded more and more convincing.
Helena and Ville came back to the blanket and sat down.
‘I think we’re ready now,’ said Helena.
Chris leaned forward, raised his glass of whisky, and looked at it without responding.
He glanced at Erik and took his hand.
‘Erik, I’m not saying we shouldn’t give a damn about anything. At the same time, we shouldn’t pretend that we’re not in despair. We’re all in despair,’ he said, without releasing his grip.
Erik wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. There was something about Chris’s expression that mesmerised him.
Finally Chris let go of Erik’s hand and continued: ‘What I’ve been feeling lately is a great sense of sorrow. I’m grieving. I’m tired. And that’s what our movement is really about – accepting the grief instead of talking about hope all the time. Hope is a completely meaningless concept.’
‘Exactly,’ said Helena.
Erik thought about this. Suddenly his job at the department store seemed so petty. What did quarterly reports and business expansion matter when an entire cosmos could be found in the flames of a fire? He felt an urge to phone Jouni and tell him that he didn’t care about being given the sack because he wanted to get out of the rat race.
‘It’s also about injustices,’ said Helena. ‘The fact that the countries which produce the biggest percentage of emissions don’t take responsibility. It’s the poorest countries that suffer the most, and yet they didn’t cause the problem. That’s a discussion we also need to have.’
Chris didn’t seem to agree.
‘A discussion about global politics doesn’t belong here. What I’m trying to say is that I’m not interested in politics. Some people take the view that it’s bourgeois to talk about the intrinsic value of nature. That it’s something the middle-class can afford to discuss, the idea of saving trees and land and rocks. People say that Hitler was a nature romantic – especially left-wing people who have gone green and want to turn this into a post-colonialism struggle. But that’s beside the point. As if a factory worker can’t enjoy nature, or a fisherman in Bangladesh. I’m talking now about the fact that we need to teach ourselves to see nature again, to become truly aware of it,’ he said with such conviction that Erik felt himself nodding as if hypnotised.
Helena tried to apologise. ‘You’re totally right, Chris. What I meant is that …’
But Chris motioned for her to stop, and she immediately fell silent.
Erik suddenly felt that Chris’s voice was speaking to him in a way that literally got under his skin. Yet he now came to a realisation that struck him with full force: Chris was actually grieving because he was no longer a child and out hiking with his father. The idea made him shiver, and he felt euphoric as he thought about his own father, who had always been working, who had never been home, and maybe that’s what Chris had been talking about all along. Erik hadn’t thought about this earlier, but he now realised that he’d had almost no contact with his own father, and that must mean something in the big picture of things.
It was as if Chris were now continuing with this thought as he said: ‘You grow up and your happiness is no longer pure. You realise that you also have to let go, you can’t stay an idealist your whole life. So, now I think it’s time to prepare the bonfire,’ he said. Erik felt like applauding.
It was a sculpture made of branches and straw, about three metres in height, depicting a man. It resembled some strange sort of maypole. Erik had never seen anything like it. He’d thought they were going to gather sticks in the woods and build a traditional bonfire on the beach.
‘Did you make this yourself?’ he asked Chris.
‘With some help from the others. It doesn’t take that long if you’ve done it before. About three hours,’ he said.
‘So what’s going to happen now?’
Roger, Helena and Ville had helped fasten the sculpture, or whatever it was, to a structure made of boards. Then they had placed rocks around it in a circle.
It was still light out, and it would probably stay that way all night. Ylva and Roger had emerged from the house. They had changed clothes and were wearing kimonos. Julia and Marika came back from the sauna. So now everyone was gathered on the beach.
Chris got out what looked like masks made of bark, and he suggested that everyone sit in a circle around the sculpture. Roger began reading aloud from a poem, which he introduced as T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Hollow Men’, translated into Swedish.
When he was finished, Chris lit a joint and passed it around. Ville fetched several drums and slowly started tapping on them. Roger went to the sauna and fetched a big horn, which he began to play. It made a surprisingly low sound, a deep and hypnotic rumbling. Erik took a drag on the joint and passed it on.
They sat like that for at least an hour, until Chris stood up and lit the bonfire. The sculpture didn’t flare up immediately. Instead, it slowly began to burn with a timid blue flame that spread inside of the figure. It seemed barbaric for them to be setting fire to a human form, but Erik didn’t want to question the symbolism behind the act. Maybe this was also part of obliterating humankind. His body was feeling too relaxed for him to care about trying to interpret everything.
Gradually they all got to their feet, one by one. Chris went down to the water, and the others followed. At the shoreline Chris leaned down and began drawing something in the sand. Ville had brought along one of the drums and began striking it harder as Roger blew on the horn, bumping and grinding his hips, thrusting his pelvis.
Ylva took off her kimono and stepped into the water, where she smeared her body with sand and mud. Now and then Helena made a grunting sound, and Marika responded by barking like a dog. She danced around in a circle while she looked up at the pale sky.
Only now did Erik look at Julia, who seemed as fascinated by the whole scene as he was.
‘What the hell are they doing?’ asked Julia, sounding drunk.
Erik merely smiled. Much to his surprise, he noticed he had an erection. His dick was pressing against his trousers.
While the others danced on the beach, Julia sat down a short distance away to watch. She’d brought a glass of wine. She asked Erik to sit down with her, but he began laughing uncontrollably and went over to join the dancers.
‘Isn’t this amazing?’ called Marika to Julia as she danced in the water and welcomed Erik to the ritual. He kept on laughing and began copying Chris, writing words with big letters in the sand.
Julia felt drunk and worn out. She could see somebody moving over the rocks some distance away. At first she thought it was one of the children, but then she realised it was a grown-up.
‘Who’s that over there?’ she asked the others.
Chris paused and looked.
‘That’s our neighbour. I invited her to the party, but she declined,’ he said.
‘I think she radiates a sad energy,’ said Helena.
Chris shouted to the woman.
‘Hey there! Would you like to come over and have a glass of wine with us?’
The woman turned around to look at them, then shook her head. She kept walking across the rocks.
Ville was now playing an intense rhythm on the drum, and he started chanting a yoik.
Julia stood up and brushed off the sand.
‘Shall we go?’ she asked Erik, who was standing on the beach looking at the others.
Erik’s head was spinning pleasantly after Julia fell asleep. He’d enjoyed the sex more than usual, as if he were sensing more things all at once, both his own desire and Julia’s, as if his consciousness had left his head and seeped into his whole body, all the way out to his fingertips.
First he had sent the children up to the attic, and for once they offered no protest. Alice had seemed tired but happy. Then he and Julia had retreated to the bedroom after getting washed up and brushing their teeth. Erik had looked at himself in the mirror and grimaced. For the first time he noticed there were streaks of grey at his temples.
He could still feel the rush like a loud buzzing in his head. He was wide awake as he lay in bed, facing the window.
The house was wrapped in silence, as if the discussions of the evening had nothing to do with it, as if the house wanted to say that it was too old to care about such matters.
Erik turned over in bed and realised he couldn’t sleep. Besides, he was hungry.
He got up and walked barefoot through the house to the kitchen. He opened the fridge, noticing now what Julia had mentioned earlier. There was an odd smell coming from the drain. A damp and slightly sour smell, like old pipes.
The bottle of Bacardi stood on the worktop. He saw that it had been opened. He’d bought it with the romantic notion of having a drink every evening in Mjölkviken, but so far he hadn’t felt like it.
He rummaged in the fridge, taking out some cold cuts and butter. He made himself four big sandwiches and greedily ate them all. He could hear his jaws working steadily. The whole process of eating filled his mind. He poured himself a shot of rum.
He stood in the kitchen for a while, looking out of the window at the shadows of Midsummer Eve stretching across the yard. It was so quiet. He was overcome by a feeling that he had a hard time fending off. A feeling that he was useless, replaceable, as if someone else entirely could be standing here holding a glass of rum.
He’d managed to forget all his worries for one evening, but now they came back to him full force.
He would probably find another job. He’d be doing pretty much the same thing no matter where he worked. He’d receive complaints from people and then try to explain as pedagogically as possible how they needed to solve the problem. And once in a while he’d be confronted with unusually difficult problems, but in the end he’d be able to solve those too. And he’d have colleagues he was able to stand, maybe even a few that he liked, and they would all grow older, and eventually it would become apparent to all of them that this was how things had turned out. This was their life.
He went back to the bedroom, got into bed and pulled up the covers as he tried to burrow into the darkness. But he couldn’t sleep. The house was breathing quietly, and suddenly he heard that sound coming from the tennis court.
Erik got up again but didn’t even put on his shoes. He simply went out the front door and walked straight down to the road, then followed the path to the beach.
It was light outside.
The air was clear and still. A faint rushing came from the sea. He felt sand and pine needles under his feet as he walked.
He slowed down as he approached the tennis court and moved more cautiously so as not to draw attention.
He was practically holding his breath as he went up the short driveway and around the red-painted house that stood at one end of the court.
There was no car in sight, but he could hear someone playing tennis, just like a few days ago.
A small incline made it impossible for him to see what was happening on the tennis court. He took a few more steps forward and could make out a figure, animated and distinct in the clear midsummer night. The ball slammed against the opposite wall.
It was a woman. She had on black sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and a pair of neon-yellow shoes. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail.
Abruptly she stopped playing. Erik could hear his own breathing. The woman picked up a bottle of water and took a swig. He felt himself glued to the spot. He couldn’t stop looking at her. By the time he came to his senses and realised she was bound to see him, it was too late.
Erik backed away. ‘Shhh!’ he said. ‘I mean, I’m sorry! There’s no reason to be scared. I mean, I didn’t intend to scare you … I was just out for a walk, and I heard somebody playing …’
But he’d frightened her. She ran from the tennis court and disappeared into the shadows, carrying the water bottle in one hand and the tennis racket in the other.
5
THE BEDROOM WAS BATHED in light. Julia had forgotten to hang up the sheet over the window, and now she’d been awakened by the sun shining in her face.
When she got up her crotch felt sticky. Slowly memories of the night came back to her – the party, the conversations, the gloomy mood at the beach, the water, the wine.
After the kids had gone to bed in the attic, Julia and Erik had made love, and they’d been much too loud about it. She’d been a little drunk, and Erik seemed to be high. It had taken him a long time to come. Right now he was still lying in bed and didn’t even react when she pulled off the covers and wrapped them around her shoulders before going into the kitchen.
A headache started up somewhere in the nerve canals of her brain. Alice was sitting in the kitchen eating breakfast and reading a book. Had she been awake when her parents had sex? If so, had she heard everything? Maybe it didn’t matter. Yet Julia thought it was awkward seeing her daughter here in the sunny kitchen when all the sensations of sex still lingered in her body.
They didn’t speak to each other. Julia went over to the sink and poured herself a glass of water from the tap. She drank it quickly, followed by two more glasses of water.
She looked out of the window. It was a radiant day.
‘Is Anton up?’ asked Julia.
‘I have no idea,’ said Alice.
‘I think I’ll go back to bed.’
Julia stopped in the bathroom to wash herself and then climbed back into bed. She lay perfectly still, thinking that otherwise she might get sick. She stared up at the ceiling and tried not to make any sudden moves.
Like most people suffering from a hangover, she had a feeling that something embarrassing had happened during the evening. But what could it be? In her mind she went over the first two hours and found nothing to worry about. She thought about how they had all greeted each other, about the dinner they had shared, and about the conversation regarding the climate. It had all been enjoyable and quite harmless.
But then she recalled what was bothering her: Marika. There was something about the whole mood between them, an air of insincerity. She thought now about the way she had talked about Erik, the way she had listened to Marika, nodding at what she said. She’d become the old Julia who never dared contradict her friend. Yet she also thought about her novel. It was a form of betrayal, and Marika had no idea what Julia had written about her. And then
she thought about the party on the beach and Erik’s strange behaviour, and the sexual energy … It was all too much, and Julia buried her head in the pillow as if to hide from the world.
Why was she acting like this? Why had she decided to drink? She was supposed to be writing.
She could easily avoid Marika for the rest of the summer if she tried. They’d hardly spent any time talking to each other, maybe an hour or two but no more than that. It was embarrassing to think that somewhere inside she was the same person she used to be as a child, and that Marika could cast the same spell over her. Why did Julia still want to impress the little rich girl who lived nearby? Yet she was also annoyed with the grown-up Marika. Her relationship with Chris seemed like play-acting, a performance.
She could hear Anton coming down from the attic. He came into the room and crawled into bed next to her without saying a word. His movements made her feel a surge of nausea, and she forced herself to lie very still.
‘Did you have a nice evening?’ she asked.
For a moment he didn’t speak.
‘Mamma?’ he said then.
‘Yes, sweetheart?’
‘You were gone a long time. I didn’t know when you were coming back.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. But today we’ll do something fun,’ she said, giving him a hug. He turned to face her and crept nearer so he was lying very close. If she lay totally still, she could almost forget the pounding headache and the nausea ominously gathering in her stomach. She closed her eyes and stroked Anton’s hair. He’d always been incredibly attached to her, and that scared her a bit. But she saw so much of herself in him. He was always talking about the way things tasted and smelled and felt, as if his senses were more acute than most people’s. Maybe she could make the world a little gentler for him, not as cruel. She’d been the same way as a child, just as overwhelmed by the world, just as aware of her own sensory impressions and emotions.