The Memory Theater

by Karin Tidbeck

  “How did you end up here?” Nils asked.

  The boy didn’t respond.

  Nils carefully took off the boy’s boot and felt his foot. It was warm and pink. He nodded to himself.

  “Good,” he said. “Your leg will be all right.”

  “Please don’t hurt me,” the boy said.

  “Of course not,” Nils replied. “Now let’s see if we can get you up.”

  “My sister,” the boy whispered.

  “Where’s your sister?” Nils said.

  “She was here…” The boy trailed off.

  The other body.

  The boy didn’t need to know about that right now.

  “Don’t you worry about your sister,” Nils said.

  Nils took his scarf and put a makeshift bandage around the boy’s leg. Nils put the boot back on, then helped the boy sit up.

  “Let’s get you indoors,” Nils said.

  The boy was heavier than he looked, but Nils managed to get him onto the rack of his bicycle. He wrapped the boy’s arms around his own waist, told him to hold on tight, and trudged homeward.

  * * *

  —

  Elna had never let anything go to waste. Half the chest of drawers in the attic was filled with scraps of old bedsheets and clothes too worn to mend. Elna would turn sheets into pillowcases and the pillowcases into handkerchiefs and, when that didn’t work, wraps. She had kept the bandages that she’d wrapped around their sons’ navel stumps when they were born. Even after she died, Nils couldn’t bring himself to throw them away. They were so soft that Nils could barely feel them in his hand. He plucked what cobwebs he could find from the windowsills and corners—cobwebs prevented wounds going bad, he knew that much—and went back downstairs.

  The boy wept as Nils cleaned his leg, but he made no noise, just gripped the bed frame until it creaked. When the wound was clean, Nils squeezed the edges together and covered them in cobweb, then wrapped the leg with the old bandages.

  “There,” he said. “All done. Now let’s hope there won’t be an infection.”

  He cleaned up the boy’s face. The cuts were many but shallow, and looked like they would heal on their own.

  “I’ll need to feel your belly,” Nils said. “Make sure nothing’s broken in there.”

  As he tried to unbutton the boy’s clothes, the boy resisted.

  “Very well,” Nils said. “I understand modesty. Let me at least feel it.”

  The boy lay back, eyes still fixed on the wall. Nils lightly prodded his abdomen and then his ribs. The boy wasn’t coughing blood and his belly wasn’t hard.

  Nils nodded to himself. “You will be all right. We just need to make sure to keep that leg clean.”

  He unfolded a blanket and draped it over the boy, then added a sheepskin.

  “Where is my sister?” the boy asked.

  Nils couldn’t bring himself to say it. “She’s outside,” he said instead, which was true.

  “I need her.”

  “I’ll tell her you asked for her.”

  “Good,” the boy said, and promptly fell asleep.

  The boy slept all day. Nils went about his daily tasks, mulling the whole thing over. He should really go down to the village right away, ask about the boy he had found. But he couldn’t just leave the boy alone. It could wait until tomorrow. And the girl wasn’t going anywhere.

  In the evening, Nils bedded down on the kitchen bench and listened to the boy’s breath. Outside, the meadows and moors lay quiet save for the occasional small animal noise. This was the best time of year, the best time of day, when everything was alive but asleep; the sun just below the horizon, and the sky alight. It was the perfect light for dancing, had he been young. Nils hummed his song, one-two-three-four-five, one-two-three-four-five-six, tapping his knuckle on the wooden armrest, but he couldn’t fathom where he’d learned the tune.

  22

  The boy was sitting up in bed when Nils entered the chamber the next morning. There was nothing left but to tell the truth.

  “I’m sorry, lad,” Nils said. “Your sister is dead.”

  The boy stared at him. “You said she was on the mountain.”

  “She was. I saw her,” Nils replied. “She didn’t survive.”

  The boy’s eyes emptied of all life, and his face went slack.

  “I couldn’t tell you yesterday,” Nils continued. “You were too weak.”

  “Where is she?” the boy whispered.

  Nils hesitated, then said: “She’s buried on the mountain.” It wasn’t a lie, after all.

  “I want to see,” the boy said. “I need to see.”

  “It’s too far,” Nils said. “Your leg needs to heal. Soon.”

  The boy didn’t scream or cry; he sagged back against the pillow and stared into empty space.

  He didn’t speak for a few days after that. He didn’t drink or eat on his own, but opened his mouth for the spoonfuls of gruel that Nils fed him. Nils sat by the bed and read to him from the books his sons had once enjoyed: Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe, The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. If the boy listened, he didn’t show it, but Nils persisted.

  Nils was true to his word. When the wound on the boy’s leg had closed, he brought him outside for the first time. They walked to a pile of rocks on the nearest hill, Nils supporting the boy on his arm. It was a tourist spot, really; hikers would place a rock at the top as a sign that they had been there. They had done so for decades, and the pile was high enough to look like a little cairn.

  “This is where you can mourn your sister,” he told the boy.

  The boy sat down by the rocks, face just as empty as it had been for the last week. He was motionless until the sun started to dip toward the horizon and a cold wind blew in.

  * * *

  —

  After that, the boy showed no sign of wanting to leave; he showed no sign of wanting anything. He sat in the kitchen or on the bench outside the house. Nils knew that he should have reported the event to the authorities, but something stopped him. If he did, they would take the boy away. And Nils very much wanted to keep the boy. There was just something about him.

  * * *

  —

  August segued into September. Nils didn’t mind the boy’s apathy. He fed him, made sure he was warm, made sure he bathed every now and then. The boy refused to let Nils see him without clothes, though, always keeping his sleeves rolled down and his shirt well tucked into the trousers Nils had given him. Nils let the boy wash himself in the bedchamber with the door closed. The boy wouldn’t shave, would in fact shy away from anything that looked like a knife, and grew a scraggly auburn beard.

  He seemed to like the cows. He started following Nils into the barn in the mornings; at first, he merely stood by the wall and watched as Nils milked the cows. Then one day he put a hand on Rosa’s neck, and she let him. After that, whenever Nils had been in town or to see Johanna, he would come home to find the boy in the barn, quietly running a brush over a cow’s flank.

  The boy wouldn’t talk about his past, or give his name, and Nils didn’t press the issue. He would talk when he wanted to. These things could take time. From the looks of it, he had been to hell and back.

  In October the boy was still there, a quiet presence. Nils had put off checking on his sister’s body for so long that it by now seemed pointless. She would be devoured by birds and foxes. It was the way of things. Neither had he told Johanna or anyone else about the boy. He found that it wasn’t hard to keep that particular secret.

  The day came when the boy sat down on a milking stool of his own accord. After that, he took over the morning milking. Nils showed him how to make cheese and filbunke from the milk. It turned out that the boy was a fast learner. He went from sitting by the stove for hours every day to spending just the evenings there. He still wouldn�
�t smile, but there was a different air about him, as if he had started to breathe properly.

  But there were changes that came with the boy’s recuperation. Nils found a cache in the bedroom where the boy had squirreled away some things: a spare shirt, socks, a box of matches. As if he was planning to go somewhere. When confronted with this, the boy merely shrugged and said that they might come in handy. Nils put them back in their original places. But after that, when going into the room, he would find things: a rope under the mattress, clean socks in a corner. The boy merely watched as he took the things away. Nils had to do this again and again. It was like this with boys. You had to be consistent.

  * * *

  —

  Temperatures had dropped dramatically in the past week, and the first snow lay in thick drifts around the house. Nils and the boy had potatoes and the last of the salted pork for supper, washed down with barley coffee. Nils pushed his plate away.

  “I’m going into the village tomorrow,” he said. “We need to stock up for winter.”

  “Take me with you,” the boy said.

  Nils glanced at him. “Why?” he asked.

  “I just thought it was time,” the boy replied. “I think my sister would have wanted me to go on.”

  “Go on to do what?” Nils asked.

  “There’s someone I need to find.”

  “Who?”

  The boy wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Someone,” he said.

  “And do you think that this someone is in the village?”

  “No, but it’s a start.”

  “There’s nothing there to see,” Nils said. “Just some houses and a general store.”

  “I think it’s time for me to go see it. I have things to do.”

  “You’re better off staying here,” Nils said.

  “But I want to—”

  “I said no!”

  The boy shrunk back, and Nils realized he had been shouting.

  “I have to try,” the boy said, very quietly. “It’s time.”

  “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

  The boy went out to milk the cows. Nils washed the dishes. Why had he been shouting? Why was it so important to keep the boy here? It just was. But this anger didn’t feel like him. Nils had never raised his voice to anyone in his life. He tried to shrug it off, sharpened a pencil, and wrote a shopping list. He’d have to borrow Andersson’s horse and cart if he wanted to get everything home in one go. Maybe see Johanna on the way into town. She would be happy to make him lunch. He should talk to Persson about borrowing his bull while he was in town, too. It was time to have at least Svana covered.

  Nils couldn’t really afford to feed another mouth. Except maybe if the owner of that mouth earned his keep. The boy could certainly earn his keep, if only he’d stay.

  If only he’d stay. But he’d want to leave as soon as he saw the village.

  After all Nils had done for him, the boy had no right to leave. He belonged to this house now. There was that thought again. Why was it important to keep the boy? He just had to. Nils folded up the list, put it in his breast pocket, and picked up a worn sock from the mending basket.

  The boy came back inside, bringing the smell of night air and cow dung. He drank the barley coffee Nils had made, sat in silence on the kitchen bench for a while and watched Nils darn the sock, then went to bed.

  It wasn’t long before the breaths in the bedchamber lengthened. Nils got up from the kitchen bench and quietly locked the door. Then he went outside, closed the chamber’s window shutters, and barred them with a plank.

  The air was cold and clear. Faint waves of green light swept across the sky. It reminded him of something. It made him want to dance. Perhaps the boy would be in a better mood if they had a little party. A real party, with sweets and wine and dancing.

  Back in the kitchen, he made himself a fresh cup of barley coffee. He made a new list of things to buy in the village. Sweets and wine. Let them wonder. He didn’t care. Should he see Johanna? Perhaps not. It was too important to get food for the feast.

  They were going to have a feast, the boy and he.

  23

  The smell of rock. Hard things digging into her back. Dora opened her eyes and saw nothing.

  She lay on her side, embedded in something heavy. She could breathe but it was hard to move. Heart pounding, she flexed her arms and legs; they creaked and popped, as if she had lain still for a long time. Dora reached upward with a grunt, digging through the cold mass until her hand suddenly felt nothing. She gathered her legs under her and pushed herself upright.

  Dora was standing on a mountainside, in a hollow that had filled with snow. The mountainside above looked like it had collapsed, and she herself was at the edge of the rocks that had spilled out from its wound. The shape of the rockslide was softened by the blanket of snow that covered everything. Below, warped and angry-looking trees dotted the slope.

  “Thistle?” Dora called. “Apprentice?”

  There was no reply. A few steps away, something like a twig stuck out of the snow. Dora climbed over the rubble toward it. Her limbs were so stiff it hurt. How long had she lain there?

  The twig was a near-skeletal arm, wrapped in tatters of blue cloth. Its fingers were missing. Dora flung the rubble aside. Half-covered by a large stone lay a corpse dressed in blue coveralls. Long strands of dark blond hair clung to its skull. Those were Apprentice’s coveralls. That was her ruined face, eyes eaten away, lips receded from her teeth.

  “Apprentice?” Dora said.

  Apprentice’s corpse stared back at her with empty sockets. She had been so happy about going on an adventure. No more adventures for her now.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Apprentice. “I hope it was quick.” Then she called out, “Thistle?”

  The rounded hilltops looked soft, as if smoothed down by giants. A carpet of fir trees covered the valley’s bottom. The cloud cover was thin and low.

  “Thistle!” she called again. “Thistle! Thistle!”

  A fat white bird on the ground stared at her and wandered off.

  Dora walked around the rockslide in a spiral, lifting rocks, searching for traces of Thistle. There were none. No tracks in the snow except for hers. She returned to where Apprentice lay and picked her up. Only the blue coveralls held the body together.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Apprentice. “It won’t be a proper funeral.”

  Dora walked to a flat area, put Apprentice down, and dug into the snow with her fingers until she felt hardened dirt. Even frozen, this earth felt familiar. The smell, the feel. It told her that even though it would soften for her, the soil here was too meager for a burial.

  Not too meager for her birth. Dora had first come to consciousness in a place like this.

  “Wake up,” a voice had said. “Wake up, child.”

  And Dora had woken up, climbed out of the soil that smelled and felt just like here. Long hands had caught her. The morning sun had warmed her skin. The tall woman had looked down at her with burning eyes.

  “Look at you,” Ghorbi had said. “You’re perfect. Let’s get you to your father.”

  Dora shook off the memory and picked up Apprentice again, trudging through the snow away from the rockslide. She would find better ground for Apprentice while searching for Thistle. She would go into the valley. Thistle would have done the same.

  Wading through the snow was slow going, but the work made the stiffness go away. Dora’s breath left her mouth in thick clouds. Frost gathered on her eyelashes. Apprentice’s hair swayed in the wind. There were no sounds except those that Dora made, and even those were muted by the snow. She made her way past twisted birch trees that glittered with ice; then the pine forest took over as she came to the bottom of the valley. The snow cover was thinner here, which made it easier to walk. A tree had fallen over, its roots point
ing into the sky. Dora dug into the hollow underneath, into the cold ground, and lay Apprentice down. She adjusted Apprentice’s body so that she almost looked asleep. A flat rock under her head and her hair untangled, and it was done. Dora lifted her hands, and the frozen soil enveloped Apprentice’s body. Apprentice would be part of this land now.

  The slope steepened slightly as Dora walked farther in among the trees, into a sharp scent of needles and sap. At the very bottom of the valley, a stream flowed down a rocky riverbed, too swift to freeze in the middle. Dora crouched by a little pool, punched a hole through the ice, and stuck her hands in the water. It tasted like she knew it would, of winter and minerals. If Thistle had come this way, he would have stopped to drink, and he would have complained about the cold water. There was a little wooden bridge. Dora crossed it.

  * * *

  —

  The light gradually waned, but Dora had no trouble finding her way between the trees; her feet and nose and ears told her what her eyes didn’t, as if she was made for finding her way here. She trudged up the other slope, among firs that stood so close together that Dora saw the opening in the mountainside only when the tree line abruptly ended.

  Boulders were piled up and scattered around the hole in the rock. The snow on the ground here was patterned with footprints, human and something else. A light glowed inside. And Dora could hear, faintly, the flat clank of bells.

  As Dora came closer to the opening, she could sense that it was the flickering sheen of an open fire, accompanied by a rich smell of baking bread that made her stomach twist. The voices of a man and a woman. They were laughing. It wasn’t the demented cackle of lords and ladies, nor the troupe’s eerie giggle. These people laughed like Dora and Thistle did with each other.

  As Dora reached the opening, it was as if she could almost see them. The tunnel sloped downward into a cavern with rushes on the floor. There was the heavy sound of a hoof scraping on the ground, deep animal calls, a bell. Dora slipped on a rock. It skipped down the tunnel with a loud noise.