Amatka

by Karin Tidbeck

  Every time someone walked past the reception, Vanja half expected them to stop and tell her that Evgen was dead, that Evgen had reported her, that they’d found Ulla’s body, that they’d found the papers in Ulla’s room, that Nina and Vanja were to be arrested on account of the papers. But each time, it turned out to be something else, and she breathed a bit more easily. The visitors looked harassed and tense. Anders’s virtually cheerful mood from yesterday had mutated into a kind of grim hysteria. He accompanied administrators to the archive and watched them come out again carrying sturdy boxes Vanja had never seen before, which must have come from the secure archive. She refrained from asking. It felt safer to go unnoticed.

  In the afternoon, the same clerk who had taken Vanja’s report came downstairs and handed a form over to Anders. “They’ve arrested that librarian now,” he said.

  Anders brightened. “Have they, now!”

  The clerk nodded and ran his fingers through his beard. “Yep.”

  Vanja tried to look suitably interested. “What will happen to him?”

  The clerk peered at Vanja and then at Anders. “He’ll be interrogated. I suppose the next step is finding out whether he was acting alone or not.” He went back to combing his beard.

  —

  On the plaza around the commune office people walked with drawn-up shoulders and frequent glances toward the horizon. A couple of them just stood there, staring. Vanja followed their eyes. They were all looking eastward, in the direction of the lake. Beyond the low houses of the colony, a narrow silhouette rose toward the sky. It was curved at the end. It seemed to grow taller by the minute. Somewhere in the plaza, someone let out a shrill noise that went on and on. The rest of the colony had discovered the pipes.

  FOURDAY

  The children were sent away on Fourday morning. They were packed into the passenger car, the freight cars, the locomotive, the youngest children in the arms of the older. A huddle of parents who couldn’t let their children go without saying good-bye waited on the platform. They couldn’t touch them, just watch. Many of them tried to smile and look proud. Some called out, wishing the children an exciting trip, telling them to behave. Nina stood at the edge of the group. She was hugging herself, clutching Vanja’s hand hard enough to make it painful. Tora and Ida were nowhere to be seen; they had been among the first to get on the train. The last of the children were climbing up the stairs now, each with a small satchel slung across his or her shoulder.

  A man left the group and rushed over to a blond boy who stood in line to board the passenger car. He picked the boy up and held him close. Over the boy’s shoulder, Vanja could see his father’s face contorting in pain, his teeth bared. She had to look away.

  In the shocked silence that descended on the platform, the only sound was the man’s hacking sobs. Eventually, a platform worker took him by the shoulder—not unkindly—and pried the boy out of his arms. The father stood with his hands outstretched while the boy was lifted onto the train. The last door closed with a crash that reverberated down the platform. Nina winced, as though she had been struck. She turned around and walked back into the colony, her strides so long Vanja had to follow at a trot.

  —

  Through couriers and overseers, the committee saw to it that everyone remembered that sending the children away was just a safety precaution. After all, this had been done before, on occasion, just in case. Every time, the children had been allowed to return within a week.

  Vanja was asked to telephone Essre to inform them about the children’s imminent arrival. The person on the other end sounded bewildered.

  “You’re breaking up,” he said. “What’s that?”

  “We’re sending the children,” Vanja repeated.

  “I can’t hear you properly,” said the operator. “If there are more of you, please take turns speaking.”

  “It’s just me,” Vanja said.

  “I’m hanging up now,” the operator said. “I’ll try calling you up.”

  The telephone went dead. Vanja waited for the call for fifteen minutes before trying herself. There was only the hiss of an empty line.

  —

  Paint and brushes were distributed at midday, to supplement verbal marking with text. Anders sent Vanja out to mark corridor walls, doors, and stairs. The departments were all buzzing with quietly frantic activity: hurried steps across office floors, agitated voices behind closed doors. Occasionally someone would open a door to peer suspiciously down the corridor where Vanja was marking a wall or a staircase. She tried to make out the conversations but was only able to catch random words here and there, none of which made her any the wiser. The black paint had an overpowering smell and wouldn’t quite stick to the walls; it took two layers to make the letters solid. When Vanja finally ran out of paint, her shoulder hurt and her right hand was cramping. She just made it back in time for the three o’clock marking in the reception.

  —

  The line to the leisure center wound all the way into the street. Everyone was on time and waited in line in silence. Nina looked pale and somehow shorter than usual. She clutched Vanja’s hand tightly.

  Vanja had come home from work to find Nina in the kitchen with a pair of administrators. One of them had led Nina outside; the other had asked Vanja to sit down. The administrators had seemed stressed and distracted. They asked only a handful of questions: when Ulla was last seen, if Vanja had been into Ulla’s room (once), if she had noticed this one box on that occasion (no), if she knew whether Ulla harbored subversive opinions (no), if it was her opinion that Ulla might be senile (yes, maybe). They had soon made to leave, parting with an explicit promise to return.

  “Where’s the next one?” one of them had asked the other as the front door closed behind them.

  Vanja had gone upstairs. The door to Ulla’s flat was still sealed. Then it had been time for leisure.

  —

  When the evening meal, consisting of nothing more than mushroom and bean porridge, had been served and people were busy eating, committee member Jolas’ Greta climbed the dais. She talked about what had happened to the library. Her voice was firm, with an undertone of suppressed anger.

  “A citizen has been apprehended. He is a librarian. We have received a confession.” Greta paused and looked out at her audience.

  Vanja held her breath. What had he told them? Had he mentioned her name? Wouldn’t they have arrested her if that were the case? “During the interrogation,” Greta continued, “he confessed that he started the fire on purpose. He also admitted that his intention was to undermine the commune by destroying all our good paper.”

  Greta paused again and looked down at her hands. When she raised her head again, she fixed on each citizen in turn. “We know that this type of act, this way of thinking, could not have…come to fruition…had not something been amiss in the group as a whole. In a healthy commune, each member safeguards the group. In a healthy commune, the librarian doesn’t burn down the library.”

  Greta smiled wistfully. “This man was lonely. He had no one to talk to, no one to confide in. Loneliness is dangerous. Silence is dangerous. Through loneliness and silence, a small feeling of discontent can grow into illness. If only he had had someone to talk to. If only he had felt part of this community, if he had felt a sense of responsibility toward the commune.”

  She shook her head. “Looked at this way, we are all to blame for what happened. We must never let our comrades feel alone.”

  Someone began to clap. The applause spread like thunder through the hall. Greta raised her hands in a calming gesture until the crowd had settled down. “Tonight, we’re going to start treating the disease that is loneliness. We are going to talk about our pain, our thoughts, and through this become closer to one another. No one will be angry with you. No one will punish you. Your comrades will greet you with sympathy. Don’t be afraid! Come.” Greta took a step to the side and made a beckoning gesture.

  As if on cue, a young woman stepped up onto the dais. Sh
e talked about how she had uncharitable thoughts about her housemates, but it was really because she felt inferior to them. The crowd applauded her. She stepped down from the dais with tears running down her face. She was met by her housemates, who embraced and kissed her.

  People were almost launching themselves at the dais after that. Citizens stood up one after the other, shouting their loneliness to the commune, their disloyal thoughts, their petty thefts of office supplies, their unkind deeds toward their fellow comrades. One after the other, they were applauded and embraced by their friends. The atmosphere turned frenzied. The dais wasn’t enough. Some stood up on benches and tables to speak to those nearby. Vanja and Nina were still seated, Nina gazing into the distance, her hand in Vanja’s a warm, calm spot in the swirling chaos. The hysteria spread to their table. Their neighbors got up to tell everyone about doubt, pettiness, loneliness. They wept as they unburdened themselves of their minor infractions. Eventually a momentary silence descended. The others turned to Vanja and Nina.

  “Say something,” a man next to them urged.

  His face was streaked with salt and tears. He had confessed to once slapping his daughter for being loud on a Sixday.

  Vanja’s arms and legs went numb. Next to her, Nina gave a start, as if only now realizing where she was. The silence grew longer.

  The man with the tear-streaked cheeks took Vanja’s free hand and caressed it. “You can tell us.”

  His hand was clammy against her skin. Disgust drove her across a line she hadn’t been aware of.

  “I have nothing to confess,” she said loudly. “I’m not going to say sorry.”

  The others stared at her, openmouthed. Vanja pulled free of the man’s grip. She took a clumsy step backward over the bench. Nina was still holding her other hand. She looked up at Vanja with something like horror.

  “I haven’t done anything wrong,” Vanja told her. “I haven’t.”

  Nina didn’t try to hold her back. Vanja pushed through the ecstatic crowd, out into the damp night.

  “Wait!”

  It was Nina. The rec center’s doors swung shut behind her. They were alone in the street, bathed in the murmur from the hall. Nina raised her hands and let them fall back down. She came close enough to put a hand on Vanja’s shoulder. “Where are you going?”

  Vanja looked at the hand on her shoulder, her eyes tracing the length of the arm to Nina’s shoulder and face. Nina’s features had become hollow, gaunt. The solid security that Vanja had curled up against was no longer there. “I’m going home,” she replied.

  Nina’s eyes welled up. Her chin trembled. “No you’re not. You’re a lousy liar.”

  “I’m not going to sit in there and tell them I did something wrong. I’ve always had to do that, and I’m tired of it.” That part at least was true.

  “Look, Vanja, everyone makes mistakes. That’s why we’re in there right now—not to point fingers, but to acknowledge that we all make mistakes sometimes so that we don’t have to feel like we’re the only ones….”

  “Sometimes! It’s wonderful how you only make mistakes sometimes, isn’t it! Big and strong and healthy and two children and saving lives every day, but sometimes things go a little awry. It must be nice to go and have a nice little confession, then, so you can go home and feel pleased about being such a good girl.”

  Nina had clapped a hand over her mouth. She took a couple of steps back, frowning. Vanja realized that she might have been yelling. It didn’t matter.

  Vanja tapped her own chest. “But what about me. I’m nothing but wrong. I’m supposed to go inside and be sorry about it?” Vanja shook her head. “Go inside and do some confessing if it makes you feel better. I’m done.”

  Nina was quiet for a long moment. “I understand.” Her voice was small. “So. Are you going home?”

  Vanja was silent.

  Nina swallowed and blinked several times. “I’ll leave you alone.”

  She turned and walked back toward the leisure center. Shouts and cries poured into the street when she opened the doors and stepped inside.

  —

  Vanja set off westward. She slowed down when she passed Leisure Center Three. Two couriers in gray overalls were exiting, holding a woman who seemed to be struggling to break free.

  “But we were supposed to tell!” she said, despair in her voice. “It was supposed to be good for us!” Her eyes locked on Vanja’s. “Hey, you! Can’t you see what they’re doing?”

  The couriers halted and turned toward Vanja. “Go home,” one of them said. “Now.”

  Vanja kept walking, her eyes on the ground in front of her. The arrested woman called after her until her voice was suddenly cut off.

  Vanja stayed close to the walls, forcing herself to walk at a normal pace. She slipped into a side street whenever she spotted other pedestrians. Once, she encountered another pair of couriers escorting a citizen between them. Vanja walked over to a nearby residential building and pretended to be busy scraping dirt off her shoes.

  When she finally reached the plant-house ring, it was deserted. The plant-house lamps were lit, but no night growers cast shadows on the walls. The first pipe loomed about fifty meters beyond the plant houses, faintly illuminated by the domes. Its angled top end cut a sharp silhouette against the dark gray of the night sky. Vanja halted by the outer edge of the plant-house ring. Snatches of song drifted through the streets behind her, along with cries of anger, drunkenness, or fear. The breeze coming in from the tundra smelled of wet grass and old vehicles. The sight of the impossibly huge pipes made it hard to breathe, hard to take the first step. Instinct shrieked at her to run before it was too late, run and go to ground, hide in a faraway corner, under a bed, in Nina’s arms, be quiet and invisible until the pipes moved elsewhere. But there were no safe places anymore. The only way was onward. She forced her feet forward, step by step, toward the pipe that led down to the machine.

  —

  When she finally found the right spot, she had come out on the other side of fear. Her skin felt stretched and prickly, her legs soft and unsteady, but it was like looking out a window. She was inside, her body and the tundra outside. The low opening was still there. The ladder was still attached to the inside. Resting her hand on the edge, she realized she hadn’t brought a flashlight. She would have to do this in the dark. Terror came creeping back.

  “It’s only my body doing this,” Vanja whispered to herself. “It’s not me. It’s only my body.” She swung a leg over the rim.

  The weak light from above faded almost immediately. When she finally set her foot on firm ground, the darkness was complete, aside from the colorful trails and blotches her brain created to fill the absence of light. The vibration was stronger here, the noise clear and suddenly complex; it wasn’t a single buzzing, but the sound of many small parts working in unison. She wasn’t alone in the tunnel. Something else was in there with her. Vanja stood still, waiting while bile rose in her throat. Nothing happened. There was only the awareness of a vast presence. She walked slowly toward the sound, sticking closely to the rough wall.

  Her left foot hit the door with a crash that made her crouch against the wall and shield her head with her arms. In the echo that followed, she thought she could hear small, quick footsteps down the tunnel. She reached up and fumbled for the handle. It allowed itself to be pushed down. She slunk in through the opening and closed the door as quickly as she could without making a racket.

  On the other side, the greenish-white lichen that dotted the ceiling beat the darkness into retreat and illuminated the staircase. Vanja sat on the steps until she no longer had to struggle to breathe, then continued down, to the door that waited at the bottom. When she opened it, the noise suddenly swelled to a deafening roar.

  The air was damp and heavy with a stench of salt and sewage that stuck to the roof of her mouth. The machine working in the middle of the room seemed to have grown. The wheel had cut a deep furrow in the chamber’s ceiling. Shards and chipped stone littered t
he ground around the engine, which looked more rounded somehow. Someone was standing in front of the machine, watching Vanja.

  Vanja’s eyes slipped when she tried to focus on whoever it was. It was a person, but what features or coloring or shape they had was impossible to tell. It was neither, indeterminate, not entirely there. Vanja had to avert her eyes. At the edge of her vision, she could see the shape approach. Looking indirectly seemed fruitful: she could make out an eye, hands that weren’t entirely hands, skin, but everything kept flowing and shifting. She knew who it had to be and took a deep and shaky breath.

  “Are you Berols’ Anna?”

  The figure paused. “Are you Berols’ Anna?” Its voice vibrated through Vanja’s chest. “Are you?”

  “Are you?”

  Laughter. “Are you are you?”

  It came closer. Heat radiated from its mass. Something soft touched Vanja’s cheek, tracing the contours of her face. “Are you?” It no longer sounded like mimicry. A short pause. “Yes. Also.”

  “Did you build the machine? And the tunnels? And the pipes? What does the machine do?” Vanja asked.

  “Everyone built. We and you. The machine is ours.” The thing caressing Vanja’s face suddenly pinched her cheek. “You thought it. We thought it.”

  Vanja tried to focus on Berols’ Anna’s shape again, only to be rewarded with a twinge of pain between her eyes. “Are you happy?” she asked. “Are you a happy commune?”

  Berols’ Anna laughed again. “The word…the language. Is too small. Yes. We are everything. But you”—a soft touch against her cheek again—“you are not.”

  “Happy? Or too small?”

  Warmth twined itself around Vanja’s body. A heavy scent of something like blood crowded out the stench of sewage. The heat made her fear dissipate. “Yes,” Berols’ Anna murmured above her. “Wan-ja. Your shell is too small.”

  Vanja grasped what felt like an arm. It was solid, yet not. It buzzed with restrained energy. “Can you come and save us? In Amatka?”