The Savage Altar

by Unknown

  Vesa Larsson turned and looked at her in horror.

  “What do you mean?” he said. “What knife?”

  Rebecka could have bitten off her tongue.

  “The police haven’t told the press yet,” she said. “But they found the murder weapon in Sanna’s kitchen. In the drawer under the sofa bed.”

  Vesa Larsson stared at her.

  “Oh, my God,” he said. “Oh, God!”

  “What is it?”

  Vesa Larsson’s face changed to a stiff mask.

  “I’ve broken the vow of silence once too often,” he said.

  “Fuck the vow of silence,” exclaimed Rebecka. “Viktor’s dead. He couldn’t give a shit if you break the vow of silence as far as he’s concerned.”

  “I have a vow of silence toward Sanna.”

  "Fine!" Rebecka exploded. "Don’t bother talking to me, then! But I’m prepared to turn over every last stone to see what crawls out. And I’m starting with the church and your financial affairs. Then I’m going to find out who loved Viktor. And I’m going to get the truth out of Sanna this afternoon."

  Vesa Larsson looked at her, his expression tortured.

  “Can’t you just leave it, Rebecka? Go home. Don’t let yourself be used.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  He shook his head with an air of resignation.

  “Do what you think you have to do,” he said. “But you can’t take anything from me that I haven’t already lost.”

  “Screw the lot of you,” said Rebecka, but she hadn’t the strength to inject any emotion into the words.

  “ ‘Let he who is without sin…’ ” said Vesa Larsson.

  Oh, yes, thought Rebecka. I’m a murderer after all. A child killer.

  Rebecka is standing in her grandmother’s woodshed chopping wood. No, “chopping” isn’t the right word. She has picked out the thickest and heaviest logs and is splitting them in a kind of feverish frenzy. Brings the axe down onto the reluctant wood with every ounce of her strength. Lifts the axe with the log hanging from its blade and slams the back of it down onto the chopping block with all her might. The weight and the force drive the axe in like a wedge. Now she must pry it apart and work at it. At last the log is split in two. She splits the halves in two again, then places the next log on the chopping block. Sweat is pouring down her back. Her shoulders and arms are aching from the effort, but she doesn’t spare herself. If she’s lucky the child will come out. Nobody has said that she shouldn’t chop wood. Perhaps then Thomas will say that it was not God’s will that she should be born.

  It, Rebecka corrects herself. That it was not meant to be born. The child. And yet, she knows deep within herself that it’s a girl. Johanna.

  When she hears Viktor’s voice behind her, the tape inside her head rewinds and she realizes that he has been standing behind her for some while and has said her name several times without her hearing him.

  It feels strange to see him sitting there on the broken wooden chair that never quite makes it to the fire. The back of the chair is missing, and there are holes at the back of the seat where the wooden staves used to be. It’s been standing there for years, waiting to be turned into firewood.

  “Who told you?” asks Rebecka.

  "Sanna," he replies. "She said you’d be furious."

  Rebecka shrugs her shoulders. She hasn’t the strength to be angry.

  “Who else knows?” she asks.

  Now it’s Viktor’s turn to shrug his shoulders. The news has got around, then. Of course. What did she expect? He’s wearing his secondhand leather jacket and a long scarf that some girl has knitted for him. His hair is neatly parted in the center, and is tucked into his scarf.

  "Marry me," he says.

  Rebecka looks at him in amazement.

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “I love you,” he says. “I love the child.”

  The air smells of sawdust and wood. Outside she can hear water dripping from the roof. The tears are stuck in her throat, and it hurts.

  “Just like you love all your brothers and sisters, friends and enemies?” she says.

  Like the love of God. The same for everyone. Prepacked and issued to everyone who joins the queue. Maybe that’s the kind of love for her. Maybe she should take what she can get.

  He looks so tired.

  Where have you gone, Viktor? she thinks. After your journey to God, there are so very many people queueing up for a little bit of you.

  “I’d never abandon you,” he says. “You know that.”

  “You don’t understand anything,” says Rebecka; tears and snot are pouring down her face, and she can’t stop herself. “As soon as I answer, I’ve already been abandoned.”

  At half past six in the evening Rebecka arrived at the police station with Sara and Lova. They had spent the afternoon at the swimming baths.

  Sanna came into the meeting room and looked at Rebecka as if she had stolen something from her.

  "Oh, so here you are," she said. "I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about me."

  The girls took off their outdoor clothes and each climbed up onto a chair. Lova was laughing, because a piece of her hair that had been sticking out from under her hat was frozen solid.

  “Look, Mummy,” she said, shaking her head so that the clumps of ice in her hair made a tinkling noise.

  “We had sausage and mash after swimming,” she went on. “And ice cream. Ida and me are meeting up on Saturday, aren’t we, Rebecka?”

  “Ida was a little girl about the same age that she met in the small pool,” Rebecka explained.

  Sanna gave Rebecka an odd look, and Rebecka didn’t bother to add that Ida’s mother was a former classmate of hers.

  Why do I feel as if I have to apologize and explain? she thought angrily. I haven’t done anything wrong.

  “I dived from the three-meter board,” said Sara, creeping onto Sanna’s knee. “Rebecka showed me how.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Sanna indifferently.

  She had already disappeared. It was as if just the shell of her remained there on the chair. She didn’t even seem to react when they told her Virku had vanished. The girls noticed and started babbling. Rebecka squirmed uncomfortably. After a while Lova stood up and started to jump up and down on her chair, shouting:

  "Ida on Saturday, Ida on Saturday."

  Up and down, up and down she jumped. Sometimes she came dangerously close to falling. Rebecka got very anxious. If she fell, she could easily hit her head on the concrete windowsill. Then she’d really hurt herself. Sanna didn’t seem to notice.

  I’m not going to interfere, Rebecka told herself.

  Finally Sara grabbed her younger sister’s arm and snapped:

  “Will you pack that in!”

  But Lova just pulled her arm away and carried on blithely jumping up and down.

  “Are you sad, Mummy?” asked Sara anxiously, putting her arms around Sanna’s neck.

  Sanna avoided looking Sara in the eye when she replied. She stroked her daughter’s blond, shining hair. Tidied up the parting with her fingers, tucked her hair behind her ears.

  “Yes,” she said quietly, “I am sad. You know that I might have to go to jail, and not be your mummy anymore. I’m sad about that.”

  Sara’s face turned ashen. Her eyes enormous with fear.

  “But you’re coming home soon,” she said.

  Sanna put her hand under Sara’s chin and looked into her eyes.

  “Not if I’m convicted, Sara. Then I’ll get life, and I won’t come out until you’re grown up and don’t need a mummy anymore. Or I’ll get sick and die in jail, and then I’ll never come out.”

  The last sentence was added with a laugh that wasn’t a laugh at all.

  Sara’s lips were a thin, strained line.

  “But who’s going to look after us?” she whispered.

  Then she suddenly yelled at Lova, who was still bouncing up and down on the chair like a lunatic.

 
“I told you to pack that in!”

  Lova stopped at once and slumped down on the chair. She pushed half of her hand into her mouth.

  Rebecka’s eyes were shooting flashes of lightning at Sanna.

  “Sanna’s upset,” she said to Lova, who was sitting there like a little mouse, watching her older sister and her mother.

  She turned to Sara and went on:

  “That’s why she’s saying those things. I promise you she’s not going to jail. She’ll soon be back home.”

  She regretted it the moment she opened her mouth. How the hell could she promise something like that?

  When it was time to leave, Rebecka asked the girls to go out and wait by the car. She was grinding her teeth with suppressed rage.

  “How could you,” she hissed. “They’d been out and been swimming and had a nice time for a little while, but you…”

  She shook her head, unable to find the right words.

  “I’ve spoken to Maja, Magdalena and Vesa today. I know there was something going on with Viktor. And I know that you know what it was. Come on, Sanna. You have to tell me.”

  Sanna didn’t say a word. She leaned against the mint green concrete wall and chewed on her thumbnail, already bitten down to the quick. Her face was closed.

  “You’ve got to tell me, for Christ’s sake,” said Rebecka threateningly. “What was going on with Viktor? Vesa said he couldn’t break his vow of silence to you.”

  Sanna remained silent. She gnawed and gnawed at her thumbnail. Bit the skin at the side and pulled it off so that it started to bleed. Rebecka started to sweat. She had the urge to grab hold of Sanna by the hair and bang her head against the concrete wall. More or less like Ronny Björnström, Sara’s father, had done. Until in the end he got fed up of that as well, and cleared off.

  The girls were waiting by the car. Rebecka thought of Lova, who didn’t have any gloves with her.

  “Fuck you, then,” she said in the end, turned on her heel and left.

  Sanna is no longer in her cell. She has disappeared through the concrete ceiling. Forced her way through atoms and molecules and floated out into the firmament above the snow clouds. She has already forgotten the visit. She has no children. She is just a little girl. And God is her Great Mother, who lifts her up under the arms, raising her up to the light so that she has butterflies in her tummy. But She doesn’t let go. God doesn’t let go of Her little girl. There is no need for Sanna to be afraid. She isn’t going to fall.

  Curt Bäckström is standing in front of the long mirror on the living room wall, carefully examining his naked body. Light floods over him from a number of small lamps that he has covered with pieces of transparent red fabric, and from dozens of candles. He has pinned black sheets over the windows so that no one can see in.

  The room is sparsely furnished. There is no television in the apartment, no radio, no microwave. The radiation and the signals they emitted used to make him ill. He used to be woken in the middle of the night by voices from the electrical equipment, although it was switched off. Nowadays nothing like that can harm him, and he has plugged in the refrigerator and the freezer again. But he has no need of television or radio. They only broadcast godless rubbish, in any case. Messages from Satan, day in and day out.

  He can see that he has changed. In the last few days he has become a decimeter taller. And his hair has grown very quickly; soon he’ll be able to tie it back. He has parted it in the center, and leans toward the mirror. He looks frighteningly like Viktor Strandgård.

  For a moment he tries to see if he can find himself in the mirror. His old self. Perhaps there is a glimpse of something in the eyes, but then it’s gone. The image in the mirror disperses and grows blurred. He is completely transformed.

  He turns his hands and holds them up to the mirror. In the red glow he can see blood and oil seeping from the wounds on his palms.

  Sanna Strandgård should be here. She should be kneeling naked before him, gathering the oil that runs from his palms in a small glass bottle.

  He can see her in front of him. How she slowly screws the cork into the shimmering green bottle. Her eyes are fixed on his the whole time, and her lips form the word “rabbuni.”

  True, he has sometimes doubted. Doubted that he is really chosen. Or his ability to contain all of God’s might. The last communion service was almost impossible to endure. People all around him, cackling and dancing like chickens. While he was becoming more and more a part of God. The words came thundering toward him: “This is my BODY; this is my BLOOD.” He had staggered back to his seat, hearing nothing. Didn’t hear the choir. His hands were filled with such strength that they grew thicker. The skin covering his fingers stretched like a balloon, became completely smooth and shiny. He was afraid his fingers would split, like sausages in a frying pan.

  The next day he bought some gloves in the biggest size available. He will have to wear them indoors now and again. Until the time comes for people to see.

  When he paid for the gloves he suddenly had a feeling of intense distaste. The woman behind the counter smiled at him. For a long time he had had the ability to distinguish between souls, and as he took his change she was transformed before his eyes. Her teeth went yellow, her eyes were turned inside out and became opaque, like frosted glass. The red nails on the fingers handing over the coins grew into long claws.

  He waited behind the shop for several hours. But then he received a message telling him that he need not kill her, but must save his strength for something more important.

  Curt goes into the bathroom. In the glow of the candles the steam rising from the bath curls upward and forms a dripping layer of moisture on the white tiles. The air is thick with the coppery stench of blood and the harsh smell of damp wool.

  On a white plastic clothes drier above him hangs Virku’s lifeless body. Her back paws are tied to the clothesline. Blood is dripping slowly into the water. Her head lies on the floor beside the bath. Her muzzle is still bound with silver tape.

  As he sinks down into the crimson water, he can immediately feel how his body is suffused with the qualities of the dog. His legs become agile and quick. They twitch restlessly as he lies there. He could jump out and set a world record in the hundred meters.

  And he can feel Sanna. Can feel her lips against the dog’s ear. Now it is his ear they are touching. She whispers, “I love you.”

  He has already taken her rabbit, her cat and even two gerbils. And all the time her love for him has grown.

  He drinks the crimson bathwater in great gulps. His hands begin to shake. He loses all control over them when God takes over.

  Then God takes his hand and lifts it. Dips the fingers in blood as if it were ink, and writes on the tiles in sprawling letters. The letters spell out a name. And then:

  THE WHORE SHALL DIE.

  And evening came and morning came, the fifth day

  Maja Söderberg is sitting at the kitchen table in the middle of the night. Well, maybe “sitting” is not the right word. Her bottom is certainly on the chair, but her upper body is sprawled across the table and her legs are dangling beneath the chair. Her cheek is resting on one hand, and she is staring at the pattern on the wallpaper as it grows and shrinks, fades and returns. In front of her is a bottle of vodka. It hasn’t been easy for an unpracticed drinker like her to get so much down. But she did it. First of all she cried and sniveled. But now it’s better. Some kind soul has injected the stuff the dentist uses straight into her brain.

  Then she hears Thomas coming up the stairs. The evening services during the Miracle Conference are long, drawn-out affairs. The services go on until late. Then people sit in the café and chat. And then there are always a few ardent souls who stay on and pray until the small hours. It’s important for Thomas to be there then. She understands that. She understands everything.

  She can hear him treading carefully on the stairs so as not to disturb the neighbors in the middle of the night. He’s so damned considerate. Of the neighbors.<
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  His footsteps rouse her fury.

  Hush, she says. But the fury won’t go back to sleep. It has woken up and is pulling at its chain. Let me loose, it gurgles in a muffled voice. Let me loose and I’ll finish him off.

  And then he is standing there beside the kitchen table. His eyes and his mouth are open wide with horror. He looks totally ridiculous. Three gaping holes below his fur hat. She smiles a crooked smile. Has to feel for her mouth with her hand. Yes, her mouth is crooked. How did it end up like that?

  “What are you doing?” he asks.

  What is she doing? Can’t he see? Drinking, of course. She marched down to the liquor store and spent the whole week’s housekeeping on booze.

  He is full of accusations and questions. Where are the children? Does she realize how small this town is? How is he going to explain away his wife buying spirits at the liquor store?

  Then her mouth opens and she begins to howl. The numbness in her mouth and her head wears off immediately.

  “Shut your fucking mouth!” she screams. “Rebecka’s been here. Do you get it? I’m going to end up in jail.”

  He tells her to calm down. To think of the neighbors. That they’re a team, a family. That they’ll get through this together. But she can’t stop screaming now. Curses and swear words that she’s never uttered before come pouring out of her mouth. You bastard. You hypocritical fucking bastard.

  Much later, when he is certain that Maja is sleeping like the dead, Thomas picks up the telephone and makes a call.

  “It’s Rebecka,” he says. “I can’t allow her to carry on like this.”

  Friday, February 21

  It had stopped snowing and begun to blow. A piercing, ice-cold wind raced across the forests and the roads. It swept the snow along with it, smoothing out the whole landscape with a white, even cover. The morning train to Luleå was delayed by several hours, and the neat piles of snow shoveled to one side by the owners of the villas were pushed back onto their driveways, blocking their garage doors. It whistled round the corners of the house in its quest for more snow, and found its way inside the collars of cursing paperboys.