The Forbidden Place

by Susanne Jansson

  “Play with the grandchildren, then, or something.”

  “We don’t have any grandchildren, Leif.”

  He swirled his snifter and brought it to his lips. “Anyway, soon I’ll leave for good,” he said, turning to Maya.

  “So you keep saying. But okay, we have two years until your retirement, so two years to solve this, then?” she said, leaning across the armrest and clinking his glass with hers. “Two more years, that is a pretty long time.”

  Man Ray jumped up and curled himself in Maya’s lap. His whole cat body expressed pleasure, rising and falling with his purring breaths.

  “Everything but the motive points to Alex Hagman. But it feels like we’re about to put the wrong person away,” Leif said in resignation.

  “Why don’t we ignore Alex for the moment,” Maya said, “and concentrate on what happened around the mire before all these murders. The Lingonberry Girl was discovered exactly two years before. The same summer that Tracy Larsson died and the Nordström family’s tragedy occurred.”

  Maya stroked the cat and turned to gaze into the fire.

  “There are so many question marks. Why did Tracy walk into the bog? And Nathalie’s parents, why did Jonas kill his wife and then take his own life? And spare his daughter? I’m thinking…” she began as she followed the moving flames. “I’m thinking that’s where we should look for our answer.”

  The muted October light rested over the cemetery. An older woman sat on a stool she’d brought along next to a large family grave, and two children were bounding down the gravel path nearby. Otherwise the cemetery was deserted.

  Nathalie looked at the sketch she’d received from a helpful man at the parish office.

  Over there. It was supposed to be over there, her parents’ grave. Her legs felt heavy and she broke into a cold sweat.

  Now she could see the grave.

  Nordström, carved into stone.

  She hadn’t borne that name for such a long time; she had changed it immediately afterward, taking Harriet and Lars’s shorter one, Ström. As if to draw a line, to get some distance. Instead it turned into a different sort of symbol, a symbol of how part of her had been erased, hidden. How she had fled, in silent panic, from a shame that was never her own.

  The gravestone was small, simple and unassuming. Names and year, nothing more. Someone had decorated it with a lantern and a vase of a few maple twigs. She wondered who that could be—maybe one of her father’s brothers. All her grandparents were dead and the aunt who’d tried to keep in touch had moved to Västerbotten.

  Her Aunt Eva had been single and wanted Nathalie to come and live with her in Åmål, but she had refused. There had been only one way. She wanted to get away from her former life, away from school, away from Åmål, as far away from Mossmarken as possible. Today she felt a pang of regret that she had been so firm and decisive on that front.

  She crouched down and tried to work out how you were supposed to act at a graveside. What to think; how to think. What the point even was.

  “Hi,” she began in a whisper.

  She looked around anxiously, but there was no one nearby.

  “It’s me.”

  The effect of those short words was shocking: her feelings welled up, blowing through her body like a storm and forcing it into a minor convulsion.

  Out came a tear. One single tear. She caught it on her fingertip and looked at it as if it were a valuable discovery.

  She turned back to the gravestone.

  “It’s been… a very long time. Since I saw you.”

  Silence.

  “Mum. Dad. What the hell happened?”

  Silence again.

  “I miss you.”

  Then came the rest. Her body relaxed and the tears fell from her like a cleansing rain. She spread out her jacket and sat down.

  Half an hour later, she was still there. The wind had dried her face. Her gaze wandered and fell upon another stone in the memorial park nearby.

  The name “Tracy Larsson” and the year. It was hands down the most decorated site within view. She stood up, stretched, and moved to a bench by the gravel path. From there she could look at both graves, and she thought about how long she had been trying to protect herself from it, from this reality. How much it had scared her all these years. And how nice it was to stop fighting. To finally see reality, dressed in cut and carved stone. It wasn’t so bad.

  Nothing was as bad as running away.

  Then a man came walking down the gravel path. She recognized him. He was the same, strangely enough, with his neat beard and sturdy build. Many years of hard work, mostly to his benefit, it seemed.

  He approached Tracy’s grave and stood there for a while. He tidied up the decorations and planted something. Then he turned around cautiously and looked at her.

  “Hi, Peder,” she said. “It’s been a long time. Do you remember me?”

  Her voice felt strong. Clear.

  He stood up and walked over to her, leaning forward as if to get a better look.

  “Is that you, Nathalie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well isn’t that… I heard you were in the neighborhood. Otherwise I never would have recognized you.”

  “I know. It’s been years.”

  It was surprisingly easy to chat to Peder. It seemed almost as if he had the need to talk to someone, and she just happened to be on hand.

  They discussed the recent events, all the bodies that had been found, and how surreal and horrible it was. Then they started talking about Julia, how she was doing.

  “I’m sure she’d be happy to hear from you,” he said.

  His smile caught her off guard. She remembered thinking, as a child, that he seldom laughed. Now it transformed his whole being, breaking up his aged face and rearranging all the lines.

  “I’m sure she’d be very happy,” he repeated. “You were such good friends.”

  “I’ve been meaning to,” she said. “Soon.”

  Then she steeled herself and asked the question straight out. It was on a whim, but she couldn’t help herself now that he was right there.

  “Peder,” she said, her voice thin, “can you tell me a little about my parents? I need to understand how Dad could have done what he did.”

  He sat down and gazed at her; a sympathetic look came across his face.

  “I know there’s no way you can know for sure,” she went on, “but it would mean a lot to me if I could just find some clue. I can hardly remember them any more…”

  “We didn’t know each other that well,” Peder began. “I thought it seemed like they were pretty happy together, your parents, I mean; of course they fought now and then, but who doesn’t?” He ran his hand over his beard. “We’ve talked a lot about it, Yvonne and me.”

  “You saw them the night it happened?” Nathalie said.

  “We had a meeting at your house,” he said, nodding.

  “But they weren’t fighting at the time?”

  “It was so long ago, Nathalie. And there was so much unpleasantness that summer.” He stood up. “Well, I have to be getting back. But promise me you’ll visit Julia. And please do drop by our place too. You live in Gothenburg now?”

  “Yes, but for the time being I’m staying at the manor.”

  “Good, maybe we’ll see each other tomorrow. Agneta has invited everyone to a new neighborhood meeting. It will be the first one in fourteen years.”

  When Nathalie came back to her cottage, at first she wasn’t able to unlock the door. It took a while for her to realize it was because her hand was shaking. Finally inside, she went into the room, leaned against the wall and sank down on the floor. Everything was spinning. Everyone was watching her. She got up, covered the windows in a frenzy and sat back down, but she still felt like she was being watched. The walls. The bed. The air.

  She didn’t understand. The unexpected encounter with Peder seemed so gentle and undramatic when it happened, but it must have set something off, or else she was going
crazy. Or both. She could sense it, how the dams were buckling, how the past was rushing toward her like cold water, in under her skin.

  She could hear her parents’ voices clearly now, upset as they were arguing about some mundane thing—it was always about the small things, whether to have the windows open at night, or if Nathalie could go by herself to this or that place.

  But what did she not remember? What darkness did she not recall? It must have been there all along, in her father’s eyes. How else could he have done what he did?

  I want to know!

  She wasn’t sure if she screamed out loud or not.

  All she could hear was a thundering in her ears, as though from something inside her that was about to burst.

  Welcome!” Göran was wearing an apron and holding oven gloves when he opened the door. “Come in. Great to see you again!”

  “Nice to be back,” Maya said.

  She hung up her coat and followed him into the kitchen. It smelled of garlic and herbs.

  This had been his idea. He’d called that afternoon to ask if he could invite her to dinner. She was well aware that he might have a hidden motive or agenda: to get some inside information on what was going on in the investigation. But after their last meeting she had grown more interested in him, and not only because he had directed her right to Alex Hagman but just as much for his knowledge and ideas about the mire. She had accepted without a moment’s hesitation, even though she had Oskar visiting.

  So Oskar drove her to Mossmarken and dropped her off at Göran’s door.

  Call when you want me to pick you up.

  Sure.

  Now she was standing in Göran’s kitchen, watching him pour two glasses of wine.

  “Oh… you want some, right?”

  “I’d love some. I’m getting a lift later.”

  “Was that your husband in the car?”

  She laughed. “Sure, who else?”

  She took a sip of wine and leaned against the doorjamb. “What about you, you live alone here?”

  “Yes. I’ve been on my own since my wife vanished,” he said. “So, you’re married?”

  Maya chuckled. “No, he’s not my husband, I was only joking. It’s just me. And the cat, these days.”

  “Then who drove you over?” he asked.

  “Well…” she said, walking into the living room and having a look around. “He’s this guy named Oskar. An assistant.”

  Her gaze moved across the walls, trying to absorb everything she hadn’t had time to see on her last visit. She liked this room, with its walls covered in books about ghosts. The atmosphere of his quiet, intellectual madness.

  She sipped her wine. She spotted two enormous glass jars on a shelf by the fireplace. She approached them and looked at their labels. They said “June 22, 2015” and “Feb. 2, 2016.”

  “What are those?” she asked.

  “That’s…” Göran leaned into the room to find out what she was talking about. “They’re just samples from the bog. I like to try to bring some material home when I run into something noteworthy out there.”

  “Noteworthy?”

  “It might be that I feel some sort of presence, or I see those veils of mist I told you about. Then I scoop up some air in a special sampling pouch, and I try to transfer it to these jars.” He was speaking loudly to be heard from the kitchen.

  “So it’s… air?”

  He came out with a large earthenware casserole, which he set on the table. “Yes. It’s probably just air. So it seems. They’ve been there for a long time now, and… well. Nothing has happened.”

  I just have to let go, Maya thought. There was nothing to hold on to in what Göran said, so there was no point in even trying. She just had to go along with it. And in some ways, it was liberating. The exact opposite of how it sometimes felt when people had very firm conceptions of so-called true phenomena. Opinions they sometimes defended as if they were a matter of life and death.

  She had often been privy to such discussions. Sometimes she had to excuse herself and leave the room. And it wasn’t to make a point, it was a purely physical reaction. She couldn’t breathe.

  “Dinner is served! Chicken casserole,” Göran said. “I hope you like it.”

  “If it tastes half as good as it smells, you’re a genius.”

  She sat down and took a helping. Tasted it. Closed her eyes. “You are a genius.”

  “Let’s not exaggerate. But it’s true you aren’t the first to praise my cooking.”

  He served himself and leaned back. “How is your photography project going?”

  “Well. There’ll be an exhibition. Nothing big, mostly for fun. Even if the theme is a serious one.”

  “Oh, that big? A solo exhibition? You’re established on that level… as an artist?”

  He didn’t know who she was. Heat flared in her chest. All the interviews in the local paper she’d agreed to; all the pictures they’d published of her—a man like Göran should have an inkling who she was.

  He smiled at her. “I’m just kidding. I’ve read about you. Didn’t I tell you that last time? You’ve been in the paper every other week. Since even before you moved here.”

  “I know. It was mostly while I was working on that exhibition with the portraits of naked children. There was a lot of debate over it.”

  “But you live in Fengerskog now?”

  “I just bought a house there.”

  “That art school has done a lot for this area.”

  “It really has.”

  “Or those art schools, I should say. Since there are two now.”

  “Exactly. This wine is good, by the way,” Maya said, taking the bottle to look at the label. “Is it Italian?”

  Göran nodded.

  “Well, my God,” he said, taking a deep breath.

  And they began to talk about everything that had happened.

  Four hours later they had moved to the sofa and chairs and nearly emptied a second bottle of Italian wine. Maya realized she hadn’t called Oskar.

  “It’s almost midnight. Someone was going to pick me up.”

  She went to check her phone, which was in her handbag in the hall.

  “Someone was trying to reach me,” she said with a mildly guilty look. “Someone wants to go to bed.”

  “Can’t you just get a taxi? Or sleep over. That’s fine too.”

  “Are you sure? It wouldn’t be too weird?”

  “It feels perfectly natural at the moment.” Göran laughed. “So we can keep talking for a while. I don’t think we’re done yet.”

  She sent a text to Oskar to explain. They drank more. Laughed and buzzed and eventually started talking about a volume of essays Göran had read called Visiting with Ghosts. It was about the ghosts that moved in linguistic, literary, scientific and political worlds. Amusingly enough, it had been written by a man with the same name. Göran Dahlberg.

  “It’s not your book?”

  “It is my book,” he said with a laugh, “but I didn’t write it.”

  “Really?”

  “Definitely. It contains over one hundred micro-essays, and it’s really something. To be honest, that’s probably where I got most of the knowledge I consider relevant, nowadays, on the nature of ghosts.”

  “Does it say how to keep from being affected by them, on a physical level?”

  “Well, other books are probably better for that, but in general it’s quite comprehensive.”

  Maya countered by telling him about one of her favorite photographers, Francesca Woodman, whose esthetic she considered ghostly, to say the least.

  “I suppose that’s what I like most about her,” she said, Googling some pictures on her phone. They were largely black and white staged photographs from the seventies, often with the young artist’s own nude body erased and dissolving, or vanishing into the wallpaper.

  “Look at this,” Maya said. “It’s not just that she takes control, flipping the traditional perspective and making herself the subject. It�
�s also the way she does it. By exposing her own body in such a straightforward and uncompromising way, she makes herself invisible. Her body becomes transparent, sort of. A neutral channel for what she wants to convey.”

  They bent over the screen and studied the photographs.

  “Lots of people read self-destruction and desperation into the way she portrays the dissolution of her own form, her own identity,” Maya went on. “And I suppose that’s understandable, since she took her own life when she was twenty-two. Although not even the portrayal of a death wish is necessarily destructive, in my opinion.”

  “No?” Göran asked, straightening his back.

  Maya leaned back and thought for a moment.

  “No, I see it more as… a secret longing for home. For what we are. In my eyes, her pictures are playful examinations of the relationship between body and being, between form and formlessness.”

  “A longing for home?” Göran asked. “How so?”

  She picked up one of the tealights on the table and blew it out. “Like that, I mean. See the smoke dissipating?”

  “Yes…” he said hesitantly, after a moment. “Or, no. It’s gone now.”

  “Exactly. Don’t you see yourself in that?”

  Göran looked at her, smiling dejectedly. “Sounds kooky to me.”

  Maya let out a peal of loud laughter.

  “What?” Göran asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “That just sounded so funny, coming from you.”

  The leather chair squeaked as she shifted and leaned forward.

  “Göran, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “After Tracy died—is there anything particular you remember from that time?”

  He appeared to be racking his memory, then shook his head. “I know I’m heading for dementia, but… no. It depends what you mean.”

  “What about that neighborhood meeting at Nathalie’s parents’ place?” Maya asked, afraid she wouldn’t remember his response. The wine was really starting to make her fuzzy.

  “Right, it was the last one,” Göran sighed. “We ran out of steam, and then everyone just wanted to move away from here.”

  He told her that they’d once held meetings at least once a year, in each other’s homes, to discuss common concerns. More people lived around the mire back then, but not everyone attended each time.