Savage Spring

by KALLENTOFT MONS

  Some girls the same age as Tove are standing in the middle of the square, hugging each other, crying, whispering to one another.

  Candles everywhere.

  Maybe five hundred in total, spread out across the square. The flames light up this everyday space like anxious little beacons, and Malin thinks that it looks as if goodness itself is seeping from the paving slabs, rising up against the violence that has hit them all.

  The flames are flickering muteness, their holders little cocoons of hope that everything might turn out to be a mistake, a misunderstanding, and that what happened didn’t really happen. The light spreads across the world, trying to find a foothold, trying to take over. Will it succeed?

  On the Correspondent’s website Malin has just read that all the churches in the city are open. That anyone can go along to talk, meet people, grieve for their anxious souls. A service is underway in the cathedral, and at least a thousand people have made their way to the great stone chamber, and it must be very safe and beautiful in there, but Malin still doesn’t want to go, she wants to go home now, has no need of collective fear and sorrow and denial.

  Her body is aching with exhaustion and confusion, and there is still a hint of the smell of dust and burned fabric and flesh in the air. At the Central Hotel, glaziers are busy putting new windows in, and outside Mörners some waiters are mopping down the wooden decking of the terrace.

  Mörners is open, insanely enough. It’s completely empty.

  A beer?

  That would be wonderful.

  Just one, Malin thinks as she walks past the bar on the way down towards Ågatan.

  But no.

  No, no.

  However much her body might want it, no matter what the scent of the flowers whispers.

  Her dad and Tove are at home in the flat. She’s just spoken to them, they’re expecting her, watching television, and Malin hopes they’re tired and don’t want to talk about anything. It feels as if today has already used up all its words.

  She sees Tove before her, one, two, three, four, five, six years old. She sees Tove doing all the things the girls were doing in the photographs in the bedroom. Sees Tove doing everything she’s done since she was that age. All the good things she has experienced, in spite of everything, and will doubtless go on to experience.

  Then she feels a pang of conscience. Thinks that she neglects Tove too much.

  It’s got a lot better since I stopped drinking, but I still work too much, Malin thinks, I still can’t quite get a grip on her world.

  That’s just the way it is.

  I can’t try to deceive myself about any of this, and she curses her weakness, wants to be part of Tove’s world, her dreams, her life.

  But is that what Tove wants?

  She’s sixteen now. More independent with each passing day. Strong and uncomplicated in a way that I never have been.

  A scent of summer in the spring evening.

  A scent of summer and a stench of evil that’s been hidden under snow. Two little girls’ tattered, burned bodies.

  10

  Malin hesitates at the front door of the building on Ågatan. She listens to the hubbub from the Pull & Bear pub on the ground floor. It’s as if she can hear the beer fizzing as it gets piped out of the barrels and into the waiting misted glasses.

  The sound is an illusion, she knows that, and it doesn’t scare her, she knows she can control any feelings that it awakens.

  She digs her fingernails deep into her arm. Pain helps. She’s spent more time than ever exercising since she dried out. Endorphins and physical pain keep the urge in check, even if they can’t banish it. Running back and forth along the banks of the Stångå, swimming ten kilometres in the Tinnerbäck pool, fifty-metre lengths without taking a breath, feeling her body about to burst from the inside, feeling the urge for alcohol crumbling.

  Hours in the gym of the police station last winter. The bar of the bench press dangerously close to her throat, carrying more than a hundred kilos. Push it up, otherwise you’re dead, there’s no one to help you down here in the basement, no one to hear your mute cries for help if you lose your grip and crush your larynx.

  The longing for alcohol is cured by danger and pain that get the body’s reward centres going once they’ve been overcome. The longing fades with physical exhaustion.

  But it can reappear at any moment. Show its leering face and whisper gently: ‘Do what you like, Malin, I’m always here, I’ll always be here, and I’m in charge.’

  She tries to brush aside the noise from the pub.

  Springtime in the city.

  Blinding sunlight during the day, lighting up all the dirt that’s been hidden by the snow.

  Scantily clad girls for the men to dream about after a winter spent in frigid abstinence. Nature reawakened, only to die again in a few months’ time in an endless cycle. Carnivores waking hungry from hibernation and setting out to hunt. Stalking and killing other animals’ young to feed their own and help them survive.

  Lightly clad men. Her own lust unshackled, everyone’s innocent search reduced to a dance of hormones.

  Slack bodies.

  Hard bodies.

  She stands still outside the building.

  Presses her nails harder into her arm, but not hard enough to break the skin.

  I’m going in circles, Malin thinks. Is disappointment etched in my face? Bitterness. I’m almost thirty-seven years old. Time is passing me by. There has to be something more to all this apart from this fruitless hunt for something.

  Something needs to happen.

  Secrets.

  The search for something that can make my feet carry on moving me forwards. Faith in myself, other people. Something that can cure my fucking restlessness. An ordinary spring can’t do that.

  Can a bomb? Two innocent, dead girls.

  Maria Murvall? The rape victim from an unsolved case that I’ve become obsessed with. Can you help me move on, Maria, you, still sitting in your room in Vadstena Hospital and refusing to come out of yourself, or what was once yourself?

  You feel longing, don’t you, Maria? A longing for non-existence, in the same way that the two Vigerö girls are probably longing, screaming, and crying for more life.

  She lets go of her arm.

  Her black dress is grubby and crumpled.

  The funeral that morning.

  It feels like a thousand years ago. Can’t be bothered to think about it. Better to look forward, surely?

  Malin opens the door, and a minute later she’s standing in the hallway watching Tove pull on her beige trenchcoat, a Burberry copy from H&M. Malin thinks the coat makes Tove look older, more self-aware, better than this grubby rented flat, better than she herself has ever been.

  ‘Are you heading back to your dad’s? You’re welcome to stay here.’

  ‘I know. But it’s been a long day, and I’ve got books there that I need for school tomorrow.’

  Sure, Tove.

  You’re running away, aren’t you? Just like your dad has always done.

  ‘Can’t you stay?’

  ‘Mum, please.’

  OK, Malin thinks. OK. But I’ve been sober now for almost eighteen fucking months, can’t you stay here a bit more often?

  ‘For Grandad’s sake?’

  ‘I’ve spent all evening talking to Grandad. He said it was OK.’

  The television is on. Some gameshow, and Malin can hear her dad’s heavy breathing in the living room, but he isn’t asleep, he’s waiting for her, his daughter, for them to see out the day together, the day on which he buried his wife, and she her mother.

  Malin looks at Tove. Then she gives an involuntary shake of the head.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m just tired. Off you go, so you don’t miss the bus. Be careful. Anything could happen out there. Would you rather take a taxi?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK. Get the bus.’

  Malin lets the word bus hang in the air like a weary cur
se.

  ‘You’re not upset, are you, Mum?’

  ‘Tove. I buried my mother this morning. Of course I’m upset.’

  Tove looks at her.

  The look in her eyes reveals that she can hear how false what Malin has just said sounds. So Tove smiles, takes two steps forward and gives Malin a hug, and mother and daughter stand in the hall, in the dull light of the weak bulb, and Malin can smell Tove’s cheap perfume, how it makes her smell sweet and soft, the most familiar scent on the planet.

  But at the same time Tove smells different, like something new, an unfamiliar being that Malin will never learn anything about, will never understand.

  She hugs Tove tighter.

  Tove responds.

  And Malin has to hold back tears, force her wretched tears back down into her throat.

  The door closes behind Tove with a dull thud, as Malin sinks onto the sofa beside her dad.

  He switches off the television with the remote and they sit next to each other in silence, watching the verdigris tower of St Lars Church loom outside the window, as high clouds cover the vibrant evening sky.

  Her dad’s profile is sharp, and she thinks how handsome he must have been once, that he’s still an attractive man, and that she hopes he’ll meet someone else, someone nice, because she doesn’t think he’ll be able to cope with being alone.

  ‘How are you?’ she asks.

  ‘Fine,’ her dad replies.

  ‘Sure?’

  Her dad nods, and Malin has a feeling that he wants to tell her something, that he’s finally going to tell her what she knows he has to tell her.

  She gets up. Goes over to the window and looks out for a while before turning around again.

  The look in her dad’s eyes is clear, but weary.

  ‘Isn’t it time to tell me?’ Malin asks.

  ‘Tell you what?’

  And her dad looks lonely and scared, scared of loneliness itself, and Malin realises that there’s no point in pushing him, that if he has anything to say that might jeopardise anything, he’s not going to say it now, not tonight.

  ‘I’m tired,’ Malin says. ‘It’s been a long day.’

  ‘Do you want to go to bed?’

  She nods.

  ‘I should probably go home.’

  ‘Why did you both come back here? You could just as easily have stayed at yours.’

  Her dad looks at her pointedly.

  ‘Did Tove want to come back here?’

  ‘No, she didn’t say so.’

  ‘So you wanted to. Why?’

  I’m interrogating him, Malin thinks. I’m interrogating him.

  ‘Why did you want to come back here? Did you want us to talk about Mum? But there can’t be much to say about her, not really? You know damn well we never really got on.’

  Her dad gets up.

  Stands beside the living-room table with his hands in the pockets of his grey cord trousers, and his face looks oddly round in the light of the orange floor-lamp.

  ‘Please, Malin. She’s only just been laid to rest.’

  ‘And not a moment too soon, if you ask me.’

  And she feels how a sudden burst of anger throws the words from her, as impossible to stop as the old impulse to drink herself senseless, wonderfully and hopelessly drunk.

  Why am I saying this? Malin thinks. Mum was an ice-cold person, but she never did me any physical harm. Or did she? Did she used to hit me, even though I don’t remember? Have I suppressed the memory?

  ‘I’m going now,’ her dad says. ‘If I don’t see you before, I’ll see you for the reading of the will at the solicitor’s.’

  But he doesn’t go.

  ‘Malin,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t my fault she was the way she was. I tried to talk to her about it. Get her to care more about you, about Tove.’

  ‘And now it’s too late.’

  ‘Don’t judge her too harshly, Malin. Because then you’ll be judging everyone.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that you can only throw the first stone if you’re free from guilt.’

  ‘So now it’s my fault that Mum was an emotionless fucking bitch?’

  Her dad closes his eyes, it looks as if he’s suppressing anger and wants to say something, but instead he just breathes out in a long sigh.

  ‘You need to get some sleep,’ he says. ‘The square must have been a terrible sight. Those girls.’

  The girls.

  The eye.

  The face.

  And Malin feels her anger drain away, and she nods to her dad, she nods several times.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘It was wrong of me to speak ill of Mum today.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ her dad says. ‘We need to talk some more another day. Forgive me if I’m acting oddly.’

  Oddly?

  You don’t seem very upset, you’re not desperate with grief, you’re not in pieces because you’re a widower now. So how do you seem, Dad? Secretive, empty, bewildered?

  ‘I’m going now, time to get some sleep,’ her dad says.

  Then he goes out into the hall, and Malin hears him put his coat on before calling: ‘Goodnight, sleep well!’ into the living room, and Malin calls back: ‘Bye, Dad, goodnight.’

  Tove sees the letter on top of the chest in the hall of the house out in Malmslätt. Dad must have put it there when he got home from work.

  She sees the logo in the corner, and can hear Dad doing something in the living room. Is he hoovering? She has a feeling that someone’s just left the house, that someone else, a stranger, has just been there.

  Dad.

  There he is, and she gives him a hug, and he’s more solid than Mum, more reliable and simpler, but also more boring, she can’t help thinking it, feeling it.

  ‘You’ve got a letter,’ he says when they break the hug. ‘I couldn’t work out where it’s from.’

  ‘It’s just an advert from some school,’ she replies, hoping that he can’t see through her lie. ‘Has someone been here?’

  Her dad looks at her in surprise.

  ‘Here? Who’d be here on an ordinary weeknight except you?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Tove says, and now it’s her turn to sense a lie in the air, and she takes the letter and starts to go upstairs to her room.

  ‘I’m tired,’ she says. ‘I’m going to go to bed.’

  Her dad looks at her. Nods, before asking: ‘How’s your mum?’ and his voice has a dutiful tone that instinctively annoys Tove.

  ‘Fine,’ she says curtly.

  ‘And Grandad?’

  ‘He’s fine as well.’

  The letter in one hand.

  She feels her hands shaking as she tries to open the envelope without damaging the contents.

  The school’s logo on the outside.

  The dream.

  Something better that the damn Folkunga School. Far away from all her problems.

  From Mum.

  God, she feels ashamed of thinking like that.

  She drops the envelope. Picks it up again and manages to open it neatly.

  A single sheet of paper.

  Extra thick. That can only mean one thing, can’t it? She takes the letter over to the bed, turns the lamp on, and unfolds it. Then she reads, and smiles, and feels like jumping up and leaping in the air and shouting, but then she feels her stomach clench, Mum, Mum, how am I going to tell Mum about this?

  Malin has undressed and got into bed, under the cheap duvet cover.

  She feels the soft, familiar, lonely mattress under her body.

  Tries to summon an image of her mum from inside, but it doesn’t work, her mum’s face won’t assume real features, only an outline.

  Why can’t I see you, Mum? Why don’t I feel any grief? Have I suppressed it?

  I don’t think I have. You abandoned me once, didn’t you, and the sorrow I ought to be feeling now hit me then, is that it? Maybe that’s the sorrow I’ve felt throughout my life?

  Is there ever a valid reason for letti
ng your child down? Abandoning it? Abusing the only unquestionable loving relationship? Turning against it with cruelty? Exploiting it?

  No.

  If you do that, you deserve to die. That makes you guilty of betrayal.

  The secret is Dad’s now, but I know that something’s going to snap.

  Malin rolls onto her side.

  Tries to get to sleep, worries that sleep might be a long time coming, but it comes to her at once.

  In her dreams she sees Maria Murvall.

  She sees a little boy lying in a bed in another hospital room, and the boy has no face, but he has a gaping black mouth, and out of the mouth come words in a language Malin can’t understand, and she doesn’t even know if it’s a human language.

  Then the girls from the square are with her in the dream.

  They’re drifting, white and beautiful, above their mother’s sickbed.

  A life-support machine bleeping in the dream.

  Bleeping that there’s still life, there’s still hope. The girls drift onwards, upwards, out across the forest, and on towards a quiet, dark stretch of coast.

  Then the girls scream. They turn their faces to Malin and scream straight out in terror. Other children’s voices join in, and soon Malin’s sleep is one single scream.

  ‘Let us out,’ the scream goes.

  ‘Let us out. Let us out!’

  11

  Sven Sjöman couldn’t sleep, the bedroom was too warm, so he got up and made his way down through the dark house, over the creaking stained floorboards, down to the kitchen, where he made himself a cheese sandwich with his wife’s homemade bread.

  Then he did what he’s done thousands of times before.

  He went down to the cellar of the villa, to his carpentry room, whose walls had been insulated with old eggboxes. He ate the sandwich standing at the lathe, unable to bring himself to start the machine, let alone pick up any of the pieces of wood he was currently working on.

  Now he’s sitting down on the stool looking at his lathe, his tools, and feeling the loneliness of this room, and thinking about all the bowls he’s made, sold to new owners in the handicrafts shop in Trädgårdsgatan.

  A bomb has exploded in his city.

  Who would ever have dreamed that something like that could happen, but now it has. Two girls are dead, and while everyone else is rushing about, while the general public is suffering from collective panic, he stands there like an ancient pine tree, unbreakable by any storm.