Amatka

by Karin Tidbeck

  “Well, be that as it may, I’m resigning.”

  “You’ll lose your bonus.” The voice had slipped into a whine. “And I won’t write a letter of recommendation.”

  “It’s just soap. Good-bye,” Vanja said.

  “Shit,” the supervisor said.

  Vanja put the receiver down. She let out a long, shuddering breath.

  The receptionist lifted the telephone off the desk and looked at her with raised eyebrows. He had very obviously listened in on the conversation.

  “I’m registering for residence.” Vanja took her papers out of the breast pocket on her anorak. “And I want to sign up for work.”

  Becoming a member of Amatka’s commune was a quick process. A short form to complete the information she had given on arrival, a requisition form for transport of any belongings from Essre, a labor registration form where she listed her skills and work history. The receptionist took the finished forms, read them through, and then dug a list out of one of the piles of paper on the desk. He checked Vanja’s labor registration form against the list, nodded, scrutinized her, and then looked back down at the papers.

  “You’ll be an assistant here at the commune office,” he said. “That’s what’s available. Because I noticed you have no farming experience.”

  “No.”

  “You’ll start on Firstday at eight, work until five, one-hour break at midday.”

  “What will I be doing?”

  “Admin tasks. We’ll go through them when you start. I’m busy at the moment.”

  The receptionist sat back down behind the desk and demonstratively turned his gaze to his piles of paper.

  Vanja stepped out onto the darkening plaza with a gnawing feeling in her stomach. Maybe this was all wrong. Maybe it was completely insane. She walked along the twilit streets, following the weary stream of workers on their way home. The outdoor lamps lit up one after the other. The cold yellow light brought out lines and folds in the introverted faces around her. No one met her gaze.

  When she arrived at the household—no, home—the front door opened a crack. Nina stood in the coatroom, arms folded across her chest. She had been waiting. Vanja felt her face break into a smile. Nina smiled back, at first warily, then broadly.

  “You’re staying,” she said when Vanja reached the door.

  Something in Vanja’s belly clenched hard and then relaxed. She nodded.

  SIXDAY

  Vanja sat at her desk wrapped in the duvet. She finished her last report, in which she noted that the citizens of Amatka had expressed no need for new hygiene products, with two exceptions: a hypoallergenic laundry detergent and a mild antidandruff hair soap. She ended the report with her resignation.

  She looked at the report she had just written, stood up, took a turn around the room, and sat back down. The duvet bunched up under her thighs. There wasn’t really anything else to say. She stared at her notes from the meeting with Ulla. They were unusable. They should be scrapped immediately. Instead, she put them at the very back of the NOTES folder. She gathered up the pages of the official report and popped them into a brown envelope. It wasn’t even midday. She stared blankly at the envelope until the lumpy duvet under her legs brought her back, and she had to stand up and smooth it out. A small noise made her turn around. Tora and Ida stood in the doorway, watching her. It was impossible to tell how long they’d been standing there. Tora’s shirt had food stains. Ida’s mouth hung open.

  Vanja attempted a smile. “Hello.”

  Without a word, they turned and ran.

  —

  Ivar was the one who had fetched the children. Vanja heard him pottering about in the kitchen, talking to them. Ulla was down there as well; the sound of her sharp voice carried up through the stairwell, but Vanja couldn’t hear the actual words. Vanja waited until Ulla had shuffled back up to her own room, then went downstairs.

  Ivar was frying something or other he’d found in the fridge. The children sat at the table, whispering to each other. They fell silent when Vanja entered.

  Ivar turned halfway around. “I heard you’re staying.”

  “Yes.” Vanja hesitated in the doorway. She couldn’t tell what Ivar was thinking.

  Ivar turned back to the frying pan and nodded. “That’s good. Nina will be happy.”

  “Oh. Good.” Vanja stayed in the doorway.

  Tora and Ida resumed their whispering.

  “Could you make some coffee,” Ivar said after a while.

  They ate in silence. Vanja washed the dishes, then went upstairs. After some hesitation, she knocked on Ulla’s door. This time, it took some time before Ulla opened. She looked tired and worn; her usual smile was gone.

  “What?” she said.

  “I need to ask you a question,” Vanja said. “Can I come in?”

  “Certainly.” Ulla took a couple of steps back.

  Inside, Vanja lowered her voice to a whisper. “Were you at the lake last night?”

  Ulla raised an eyebrow. “Where does this come from?”

  “I was there,” Vanja said.

  Ulla’s smile returned. “Went down to the lake at night, did we?”

  “I thought I saw someone who looked like you.”

  “I heard you were drinking.”

  “I was.”

  Ulla nodded. “So you went out to the lake, alone, drunk. What did you see exactly?”

  “Um,” Vanja said. “I saw someone…sticking a pipe into the water…and blowing into it. There was a noise.”

  “You realize how all this sounds, don’t you?” Ulla smiled at her.

  Vanja held her gaze. “I think that was you.”

  “And why would I be doing that?”

  “Someone came from across the lake.”

  Ulla’s eyes brightened for a moment. “Is that so?”

  “Who was it?”

  For a moment, Ulla looked as if she was about to say something. Then she shook her head. “You’re very curious, my dear. And very reckless. I think you need to ask yourself what you’re doing.”

  “So there was someone.”

  “I think maybe you need to stay sober.” Ulla winked at her. “Now off you go.”

  Vanja returned to her room and stayed there until Nina knocked on the door to ask for help with dinner. Ulla was at the kitchen table, talking to the children. She grinned broadly at Vanja.

  Someone eventually showed up to deliver a new bed. Vanja slept in her own room that night. Nina shared her bed with one of the girls. Vanja woke up several times, fumbling in vain for Nina’s warmth. The new bed had a sharp factory smell. She rested her nose on the sleeve of her sleep shirt and breathed in the scent it had absorbed from Nina. It helped, a little.

  SEVENDAY

  Vanja accompanied Nina and Ivar to the leisure center. Nina and Ivar joined a ring dance with the girls. Before long, half of the people in there were dancing in a long, winding line, led by a man in a wheelchair who zigzagged his way through the hall. Those who weren’t dancing clapped their hands to the rhythm and sang along in the chorus. Vanja stood at the back wall, behind the last row of benches. The din of the crowd was an assault on her ears. When someone suddenly tapped her shoulder, she jumped. It was Evgen. He leaned in close and cupped his hand around her ear. “It’s nice to bump into you. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, actually,” Vanja yelled back. Raising her voice hurt her throat a little.

  “And your research?”

  “Well, yes. That’s fine, too, but I’m quitting.”

  Evgen frowned.

  “I mean, I’m quitting and I’m staying here,” Vanja said. “I got a job.”

  “You got what?” Evgen leaned in closer.

  “A job! At the commune office! Administration!”

  Evgen put a hand on Vanja’s arm and steered her closer to the exit, where the noise was less deafening. “Did you say you were going to do admin work?”

  “In the reception. Sorting papers and filing and such.”

  Evgen
squeezed his lips together and looked intently at her. Then he came closer again, his face turned toward the dancers so that he seemed to be commenting on the party. “Listen. What you said, the last time you came to the library.”

  Vanja nodded and smiled at the room.

  “Maybe I can show you something. If you help me in return.”

  “With what?”

  “You said it yourself. You’ll be doing admin.”

  Evgen shifted uncomfortably where he stood and rubbed his hands together. “All right,” he said after a moment’s silence. “When it gets dark, go down to the lake. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Tonight. When everyone’s busy.” He abruptly turned and left.

  Vanja lingered. She even joined in a couple of ring dances. When dinner was served on the long tables, she made her excuses to Nina. She was tired, too many people. Nina smiled, gave her a long kiss, and left with her daughters to sit at one of the tables. The eldest girl looked over her shoulder at Vanja, and for the first time she took her mother’s hand.

  —

  The remains of Old Amatka stood to the south, at the waterline: parts of the central building jutted out of the black ice, an angular husk that for some reason hadn’t been dismantled.

  Evgen had met her by the beach, and they had walked off toward the ruin in silence. Just outside the building, he stopped short. He was buttoned into an enormous overcoat with a thick collar. His face was framed by a brown hat with earflaps. Vanja looked around. He might of course have led her down here to cajole a confession out of her.

  “What is it?”

  Evgen looked over her shoulder and back at her. “Did you…”

  “No, but.” Vanja squinted at the darkness inside the ruin. She thought she could see something move in the doorway.

  “Vanja.” Evgen’s voice was taut. “I’ve decided to trust you, because you’re the first person I’ve met in a long time who’s said anything close to what you told me in the library. Maybe you’re just out to report me, but I…I’m willing to take the risk.” He paused for breath. “If you don’t know what I’m talking about, or if you’re the least bit uncertain, then I want you to leave and this never happened. And if you report me, I’ll report you.”

  The rest of the air escaped him with a sigh. He looked small where he stood against the weak light from the colony. After a moment, Vanja realized that he was as scared as she was, if not more. She took off one of her mittens and held out her hand. After a moment’s hesitation he pulled off his glove and took it. His palm was moist and hot.

  “Good.” Evgen withdrew his hand and pulled out a couple of flashlights from his coat. He gave one to Vanja. “Let’s go.”

  The doorway was partly buried in the ice, and they had to crouch to get through it. The room on the other side was perhaps thirteen by thirteen feet and completely bare. Vanja let the beam of her flashlight sweep across the walls. Flakes of green paint still clung to the rough surface.

  “This was the reception,” Evgen said.

  Here and there, scraps of posters were stuck to the walls. There was no text, only images: a head in profile, a clenched fist, yellow rays over a landscape. Vanja aimed the beam at her feet. The ice was perfectly clear; she could see the floor a foot and a half below, bare save for a few scattered pebbles.

  Further back there was another doorway, blocked with debris from a collapsed ceiling. Next to it, a set of stairs led up to the next floor. Evgen started to climb them. Vanja followed.

  The construction—or deconstruction—had halted at the second floor. From the landing at the top of the stairs, two unfinished corridors led off in either direction. The left one had collapsed in on itself. Below, Vanja could glimpse the nearly buried door to the reception.

  Evgen walked into the corridor on their right, stopping after a few feet. “Careful here. There’s no floor.”

  Vanja walked up to stand next to him. The floor ended in darkness. She angled her flashlight downward. Below them lay the rest of the ground floor, what would have been the lounge next to the reception, if the building conformed to the standard layout. Evgen sat down on the edge and slid forward and down.

  As Vanja peeked over the edge, she saw him climb down the pile of debris from the collapsed floor. She followed. The stack of thick slabs seemed stable. Evgen waited for her on the ice. He waved at her and walked around the pile to the other side. There was another doorway, half-hidden by rubble. Evgen shoved a lump of concrete aside and crawled in on his hands and knees.

  He backed out again with a box in his hands. It looked like one of the boxes from the library archive. He put it down on the ice and sat down on the lump of concrete he’d just pushed away. “Have a seat.”

  Vanja sat down on the edge of a piece of collapsed floor. “Doesn’t anyone else come here?”

  Evgen shook his head. “It’s too close to the water. People are afraid of the lake.” He took the lid off the box and put it to one side. “Only the eccentric and the suicidal go down to the lake.” Inside the box was another lid, which he also opened. He pushed the box toward Vanja. “These should have been given to the committee for destruction, but I couldn’t do it.”

  It was full of good paper, most of it covered in handwriting. Vanja took her mittens off and picked up the topmost sheet. The paper was delicate, but the words were clear in the torchlight.

  Would you believe it, mother. We’ve begun to see cats in the street. Cats and a couple of dogs. It’s funny. They said they haven’t found any animals in this world, at least nothing bigger than insects. But I thought I heard cat noises in the kitchen the other day. I admit I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately. I wrote a little story about her and drew some pictures. It’s so strange that there are no animals here. It feels empty.

  Vanja recognized the childish handwriting. It was the rest of the letter from Jenny, the girl who wrote about her longing for disposable pads. The part Evgen had told her had been culled.

  “Cats,” Vanja said. “Dogs…what are they?”

  “Animals. A type of organism, fairly large.” Evgen gestured at knee height. “In the old world, they were kept as companions. People would eat some of them.”

  Vanja shuddered at the thought. “So they brought those? It says she saw them in the street.”

  Evgen shook his head. “The pioneers didn’t bring any animals at all, I know that much. I’ve read somewhere that they had plans to bring animals later, but it never happened. Something prevented them.”

  “But if they didn’t bring any animals…”

  Evgen looked at her in silence. He pointed at the letter.

  I had been dreaming about the time we spayed Sascha, and she hid behind the sofa in the living room for two weeks. I woke up because there was a noise from the kitchen: a faint knocking, and then a scraping sound, over and over. Tock rasp, tock rasp.

  I got out of bed. Raul was still sleeping. I went out into the kitchen. It was Sascha. I would have recognized her anywhere—her thin, crooked little body, her bow legs, her fur that always looked dusty. She was wearing the cone. She was straining with the cone against a kitchen cabinet, as if she was trying to wriggle free of it. Then the cone slipped across the cabinet door. Rasp. Sascha got up again and drove the cone into the cabinet: tock.

  I called for her. Come here Sascha, come here sweetie, I said. And she turned her head and looked at me. Then she meowed.

  Do you remembered how Sascha had such a ridiculous voice? She sounded like a squeaky toy when she meowed. She was so tiny and crooked and grumpy. She was really not a very nice cat. But it was just because she was such a little runt that I couldn’t help but love her. We belonged together that way, somehow. Do you remember how she was always at the bottom of the pecking order in the yard? She was allowed on the compost heap and under the dumpster. Everything else was claimed by the other cats. She’d sit there on the compost heap and chase flies. She’d never let you pet her. But sometimes, if you sat very still f
or a long time and pretended she wasn’t there, she would slink over and curl up in your lap.

  I’m stalling. The thing that happened in the kitchen. I suppose nothing actually happened. I called for her, and she turned around, and she made a sound. It didn’t sound like a cat. It was a sort of bleat, like a sheep, no that’s not a good description, but it’s as close as I can get. It wasn’t a cat sound. It wasn’t Sascha, it wasn’t a cat at all.

  Vanja turned the paper over, but the other side was blank. If there were more pages, they were missing. “What was it?” she asked.

  “The animal?”

  “Yes.”

  Evgen gave her a long look. “I think you know.”

  Vanja folded the paper. Her hands were trembling.

  “Read more.” Evgen browsed through the pile and pulled something out. “Here. It’s by an industrial inspector.”

  They were pages torn from a book, a log.

  Upon arrival, the controller had immediately gone to the factory’s employee quarters. He didn’t look at the employee log, explaining that he usually didn’t read it until bedtime. Apparently the controllers use the log to leave messages for each other. The controller had cooked himself a dinner consisting of preserves from the storage. He then made a preliminary examination of the factory in preparation for the main inspection next morning.

  According to the controller, everything initially appeared to be in order. The assembly line started at one end of the factory, where the raw material was poured into the blender. The finished product was packaged at the other end of the factory, a hundred yards away.

  When I asked the controller if anything in particular had raised his suspicions, he replied that the sound of the factory was different. Strange noises came from a source the controller was unable to identify. He said: “They sounded like little squeals.” The controller went through the factory and checked the different stations. After some time, he realized the noise emanated from the conveyor belt.