The Forbidden Place

by Susanne Jansson

  Natti. She hadn’t thought of her old nickname for so long. Much less gone anywhere near her memories of her biological parents.

  “Nighty nighty, Natti.” The bedroom door closing. The knots and lines in the pine ceiling of her room; long, narrow pictures to fix her eyes on when she couldn’t sleep; the winding shapes of women, like The Scream in wood-grain form. A whole heaven of gaping mouths and eyes.

  “We should really have mountain bikes here,” Johannes said, looking at her tentatively. She gripped the handlebars harder, nodded and looked away.

  They turned on to an even narrower road and continued slowly on their way.

  “I think the path is coming up soon,” Johannes said.

  “It’s over there,” she said without thinking.

  Johannes raised his eyebrows. “Have you been here before?”

  “I just thought I saw a path over there.”

  They left their bikes at the side of the road and began to walk into the forest. The sun fell on the soft moss in glowing streaks; the ground was criss-crossed by trees in various stages of decay. Johannes stopped and looked around, and up, at the light filtering through the treetops.

  “It’s like stepping into Sagrada Família,” he said. “Have you been there? In Barcelona.”

  “Only outside it,” Nathalie said, her eyes cast downward at the teeming ground.

  They walked along the half-overgrown path and finally reached the small lake, a clearing protected from the wind by tall green walls of forest. Nathalie sat down on a soft, moss-covered rock and Johannes lay beside her, propping himself up on his elbows.

  “God, it’s so pretty,” he said, closing his eyes and sinking down on his back. After that they didn’t speak for a long time. Nathalie felt a little confused by the silence at first, but she soon relaxed. She had sat there so many times. They had often come here to swim when they took off on their own, she and Julia, and probably other children from around here as well. She remembered how they would dive in and play for hours, how the water closed in around them, moving around their slender bodies in heavy, glossy swirls.

  A bird of prey soared high above them on outstretched wings as Nathalie cautiously glanced down at Johannes. His deep, arched eyelids. His long, straight nose. His mouth at rest, an almost invisible twitch of his lip. Rough stubble, open skin, a landscape.

  She glimpsed something at the edge of her field of vision and turned her head. And there it stood, just a few meters away from them, so matter-of-factly that she was hardly even startled. A roe deer. She hadn’t heard it approach. It was very close, so close that she could see her own reflection in its big black eyes. They looked at each other for a long time, she and the deer, and something inside her transformed. A veil was drawn away. A perspective shifted, a change took place, and everything became so clear and simple.

  Somehow it was as if what she had believed was reality opened up and she fell down into the space between, down into a timeless expanse without words, a place she had never known before. As if a construct burst and split and she realized that she was in fact one with the present moment and everything around her. That she was that moment.

  An instant later, a thought shot through her, like a harsh reflex: What is happening, what am I experiencing?

  A cloud glided by, blocking out the light.

  “Capreolus capreolus,” she managed to say in a faint, sharp voice. The silence was broken. The deer leaped and disappeared.

  “Huh?” Johannes said, sitting up and gazing in surprise at the white rump as it bounced off into the forest.

  Nathalie blinked and swallowed.

  “Roe deer,” she said softly. “In Latin.”

  Johannes often looked in on her once he had finished his run. They would sit in the kitchen and chat for a while, and then he would go home. Their good-bye hugs grew longer and longer, but she always drew back in time, before a kiss became unavoidable.

  She was reluctant to recognize that she looked forward to his visits. That she had got herself into a situation in which she risked falling for a man who passed by her house once a day, and would probably continue to do so no matter what happened between them. This could easily become a complicated element of her time at Quagmire, a threat to her independence and relative peace of mind.

  And besides, she should be focusing on what she had come to accomplish.

  Johannes seemed to be considerably less concerned.

  “I actually have tons of stuff to do at school,” he’d said, “so if you need some time on your own to work it’s fine with me. I promise not to bother you. Just hang a sign on the door.” And then that smile that made her lose her breath, that reappeared in her mind when she had no intention of thinking about him at all.

  She needed to focus.

  One night he asked if she wanted to come back to his student apartment by the old factory. Two rooms plus a kitchen, large enough for a whole family in the good old days and barely sufficient for a young art student today.

  The walls were covered in abstract charcoal drawings, a jumble of thick, high-contrast lines and mazes that made her feel both lost and exhilarated all at once.

  He tidied up as they moved through the apartment, putting away piles of paper with one hand, moving an easel with the other, and shoving a stack of books ahead of him with one foot until it collapsed in a heap against the wall.

  “If I had been planning to invite you over,” he said as he wiped the coffee table with a dishcloth, “it definitely would have looked different in here.”

  He moved newspapers off the small 1970s-era love-seat.

  “It’s clean, at least,” he apologized. “I may be messy, but I can clean. Really.”

  She shrugged and laughed. “Good for you.”

  “And maybe for you,” he whispered, moving right up close to her.

  “I see… what do you mean?”

  He looked at her with a hesitant, searching gaze. “I don’t know.”

  Silence.

  “Would you like a beer? A drink?” he asked.

  She hugged herself. “I have to be up early tomorrow. I won’t stay long.”

  “Okay,” he said, glancing at her. “Well, I’m glad you came, anyway. I hope I’m not scaring you off by showing my true self,” he said mildly, gesturing at the room.

  She froze. True self… what did he mean by that? But she reminded herself that he actually had no idea where she was from, or who she really was.

  “I’m kind of hungry,” she said. “Aren’t you? Do you have anything here at home?”

  Johannes disappeared into the kitchen. “I have two frozen pizzas, will that do?”

  They played Yahtzee as they ate, and listened to Monica Zetterlund and Bill Evans Trio. “Come Rain or Come Shine” filled the room.

  “A sprig of lingonberry in a cocktail glass,” Johannes said as he rolled a full house of ones and twos.

  “Woo, look at that!” she said. “What about lingonberries?”

  “That’s how Monica Zetterlund was described once. I think it was that tall redhead who said it. Tage Danielsson.”

  “Oh right! The guy who had that monologue about probability.” Nathalie looked down at the dice. “Are you really going to use that for your full house?”

  “Why not? Seven points. Works for me. How about you?” he went on.

  “Me? What?”

  “What would you be? If you were a plant in some sort of drinking vessel.”

  “No idea. Not a cocktail glass, anyway.”

  “I know,” Johannes said. “A guksi. A drinking scoop. With a leather thong to hang around your neck.”

  “What about the plant?”

  He thought about it. “A rose, maybe.”

  “A rose? Christ, how boring.”

  He looked at her, and his eyes grew serious. “My main reason for choosing a rose isn’t because it’s beautiful. Or because it smells good.”

  “Okay… then what?”

  “It has lots of layers. And…” He hes
itated. “Because it can be a little… how should I put it? Thorny isn’t the right word. Reluctant.”

  “Reluctant?” she said, tasting the word and feeling her face grow hot. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m sorry. Maybe that was a little too direct. We’ll talk about it another time.”

  Nathalie caught her breath and shook the dice. “All right. I do have to get going. I’m pretty sure you won. Even with that terrible full house.”

  She stood up and went to get her jacket from the hall. As she put it on and wound her scarf around her neck, she walked over and looked at the pictures on the wall.

  “Can’t you tell me a little about your art, by the way?” she asked. “What you’re working on?”

  He stood up and put his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. “I mean, God only knows. I just do it. I have some sort of unfortunate… joy inside that has to get out.”

  She turned to face him. “What did you say?”

  He looked down at the floor, embarrassed. “I know. That’s not usually anyone’s mental picture, exactly, of an artist.”

  “An unfortunate joy?” she repeated.

  “I’ve always had this sense that life is one big happy journey from the start. Like everything that happens just makes it more and more wonderful. I don’t know how I can manage all that joy if I don’t let it out.”

  “Stop it,” she said. “You’re kidding me.”

  He shook his head. “It’s true. That’s me. Take it or leave it.”

  “My God.” She wound the scarf one last time around her neck and tied it in a knot. “Have you ever analyzed yourself? Figured out why you’re like this?”

  “My theory is, it’s because I was a few minutes away from not existing at all. So it feels like everything in life is a bonus. Every second. Even the difficult parts make me happy in some sense. Because I get to experience them.”

  Her eyes widened. “How were you a few minutes from not existing?”

  “My dad ran out the door to buy cigarettes right after he and my mum had sex. He tripped and hit his head on a rock and died. So in other words, the sperm that fertilized the egg that became me just barely made it out. I swear, we’re talking minutes. I wasn’t even one cell-division old. Mum claims that Dad needed a cigarette so badly that she had to convince him to have sex first, instead of waiting until he got back. So… you could say it was a close shave. Then again, it’s a close shave for everyone. It’s really fucking improbable, that those of us who are alive should be the ones who are alive. It was just a little extra obvious in my case.”

  He shrugged.

  “But what do I know? Maybe it’s just genetic. Apparently my dad’s family were all a bunch of happy folks. My mum’s side, though, is full of schizophrenia and depression.”

  Nathalie realized where this conversation was going and felt the urge to end it.

  “Anyway, it’s nice,” she said, raising her eyebrows, “to be so jolly.”

  “Ewwwww!” He made a face. “Jolly. That sounds sexy. Like Santa Claus.”

  He took a sip of beer. She looked at his hand, holding the bottle. Those long, slender fingers, how they could stroke her skin if she let them, cup her breasts, find their way inside her.

  “What about you?”

  “Huh?”

  “What about you?” He put down the bottle. “What defects are you carrying around?”

  She went back to looking at the pictures on the walls. “Well, I don’t have quite this much joy inside me, that’s for sure,” she said.

  Neither of them said anything for a moment. The only sound was her steps as she moved between the pieces.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said cautiously, walking up to her and placing a hand on her back. “I have enough for both of us.”

  She turned to him, and it was like something plummeted inside her.

  They stood perfectly still for a long time, just looking at each other. His gaze didn’t move away, didn’t laugh anything off; he just let everything be as it was. A feeling of pureness, closeness, contact.

  The light reflected in his brown eyes, sliding around, waiting, turning. After a few seconds or minutes she brushed her fingertips across his arm, and then she pulled off his sweater and they undressed each other there, on the floor, dropping their clothing as fast as a chestnut tree drops its leaves in the autumn, and then they tangled themselves in a big knot of skin and hair and arms and legs. Afterward, they walked hand in hand to the bed and fell asleep.

  The next morning, Nathalie woke early with a pressure over her chest and a feeling of deep aversion.

  What have I done?

  Johannes was sleeping with his back to her; she could hear him breathing deeply. She gingerly slipped out of bed, pulled on her clothes, and sneaked away. Images from the night before flickered through her mind.

  Why, why?

  She got on her bike and pedaled home through the dawn as fast as she could, vehemently and vigorously, as if to get away from the images and everything that had happened.

  When she got to the cottage, she took a towel and went straight up to the manor for a shower. She stood under the warm water for a long, long time. She let the water rinse away every trace, every particle of vulnerability. Afterward she scrubbed herself dry. It felt better.

  She saw both Jelena and Alex as she walked up the stairs, but she avoided them and hurried out.

  Back in the cottage, she made a large plateful of oatmeal and sat down with her documents all day, her writings and test results.

  That afternoon she went to Åmål to buy groceries. It happened to be about the time when Johannes usually came by, and maybe that was just as well; after all, they had seen each other every day recently.

  When she got back to the cottage she made a simple pasta dish and tried to think of something other than Johannes. She didn’t call; nor did she contact him in any other way. But it was crawling inside her, teeming under her skin.

  The darkness seemed oppressive again. The chill clung to her from within.

  When she finally went to bed around midnight, she looked at her phone for the first time all day.

  One unread text.

  Thanks. For yesterday. Yours whenever you want. .

  She lay in bed and listened to the sound of a gentle rain against the windowpane. She let several minutes pass without moving, without allowing herself to be caught up in thoughts of everything she should accomplish during the day. She just lay there listening to the rain, staring at the ceiling, as if she were resting.

  It used to be that work and rest were the same thing. For her, resting was thinking about ongoing projects, what had to be done in the next step, what the results indicated—thought patterns that circulated through her system uninterrupted, helping her relax.

  But now she realized that rest had moved. It had taken up residence somewhere else, in a place she could only imagine this morning as the quiet rain struck the window.

  She decided to let go of everything that had to be done that day—to try to remain in this stillness. She was still taken aback by the explosion that had happened the other night at Johannes’s place, but she had to admit to herself that, deep down, she hoped he would visit today.

  Maybe she shouldn’t be so overdramatic about what had happened, or what she thought had happened. Maybe this time she really could have a healthy relationship. It didn’t have to be a dangerous thing, to open up as she had done—if she even had opened up. She didn’t know. Maybe she and Johannes had simply connected, to use a word Harriet liked to toss around.

  You never connected with us, Nathalie. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. But we have to be able to spend time together. We’re your family.

  After spending the better part of the day sitting in front of the tile stove in one of the easy chairs and trying to read a Norwegian crime novel she’d found up at the manor, she noticed that it was starting to get windy outside. At first the breeze swept lightly across the treetops; after a while it began to blow h
arder and harder until it was tearing at everything it could get hold of.

  The dim light of evening settled in slowly, as if to cover over and mute the intensity, but it didn’t succeed. This was truly a raw autumn storm, unusually harsh and ruthless. Like there’s something it wants. Nathalie felt a vague sense of unease, a hint of something eerie and distant but also familiar.

  Then she saw Johannes through the window. It was like receiving a gift: a brief flare of happiness in her chest, until she found the warmth of her spontaneous reaction turning into a sharp, burning pain.

  He stopped at the car park up by the manor and leaned his bike against a lamppost. Though he looked down at the house, he didn’t seem to see her.

  He began to warm up, and she assumed he would come down and knock at her door. If not now, then later—after his run—and she realized that she truly hoped he would.

  This was a desire of a sort she wasn’t used to, and it was growing stronger and stronger, like a grass fire spreading unchecked in every direction, beyond her control. It was moving through unfamiliar territory, across foreign realms, deep down inside her. It felt true.

  She might as well be honest; she couldn’t keep fooling herself. It was an unusually dangerous desire and a destructive longing, and it threatened her very existence.

  She hadn’t expected that anything like this storm of emotions could happen out here in the middle of nowhere—quite the opposite, in fact; she should have been safe.

  Now she wasn’t sure if she was prepared for the consequences. Tears sprang to her eyes. Her thoughts were dizzying.

  No!

  She was not prepared. Full stop. She had to focus on herself at the moment, on everything she needed to do.