The Lost Village

by Sten, Camilla

  By the time I climb back up onto the riverbank and wrap myself up in my ugly, burled Coca-Cola towel, I’m so cold I can barely feel my feet. The air feels almost warm after the ice-cold water, and despite my long, anxious night I feel wide awake.

  Everything seems easier in the daylight, and the night’s worries feel far away. Not that my suspicions have completely disappeared, but as I watch Emmy shivering and cursing as she rinses the lather from her hair, I find it hard to see her as the shadow lurking in my nightmares. I glance at her out of the corner of my eye as she scrubs out her shampoo. She has a tattoo on her hip I don’t recognize—a small stylized owl—and she’s more muscular than I remember her being.

  A sound makes me turn away. Tone is struggling to get out of the water. I give her my hand and help her to pull herself up. She’s so heavy on my arm that I almost lose her, but I manage to regain my balance. And when I take a closer look at her foot, I can understand her difficulty: her throbbing red ankle is so swollen it’s as wide as her calf.

  “How’s the foot feeling?” I ask. The question is redundant, really. I can see how it feels. I just want her to tell me something else.

  Tone nods.

  “Oh, it’s fine,” she says. Her lips are blueish with cold, but her hand feels like it’s burning up. “You just haven’t seen it without the strapping before.”

  I hear Emmy get out of the water behind us and start getting dressed.

  Tone sits down heavily on her towel and, still wearing her wet underwear, starts strapping up her ankle again.

  I open my mouth to say something—what, I’m not sure—when I hear Max’s voice from the buildings.

  “Are you guys done already?” he asks.

  I shut my mouth.

  “We’re ready,” Tone shouts back, her voice unwavering. It doesn’t sound like she’s in much pain. She sounds normal.

  I hastily pull my clothes on over my wet underwear. My jeans cling to my thighs and hips as I pull them up, and my top bunches up stubbornly as I try to put it on. I’ve just got everything in place by the time Max and Robert arrive.

  “How was the water?” Max asks.

  “Cold,” says Emmy, pulling her loose T-shirt over her head. “Really fucking cold.”

  I smirk at him.

  “Your sweater’s on inside out,” I say.

  Max looks down, sees the label flapping under his chin and blushes.

  “Ah, who cares,” he says. “I’m about to take it off again.”

  I smile.

  Robert’s just a few steps behind him. His hair is a dazzling gilded red in this early morning light, and with his invisible eyebrows he has an almost androgynous look.

  “It’ll have to be a quick dip, guys,” I say. “We have a lot to get through today, after losing all of yesterday.”

  Max gives me a thumbs up.

  “Quicker than lightning.”

  Tone, Emmy, and I start making our way back to the square—slowly, so that Tone can keep up. At this time of day we could almost be in any sleepy old Swedish town; a Saturday morning, perhaps, when everybody’s still asleep and the daily bustle has yet to begin.

  “Wait,” I say, slowing down.

  Birgitta’s shack is just ahead, to the left of the road we’ve taken. From this angle the bare, leafless tree at one corner of the house looks almost burnished, and the broken window panes are calling out to me.

  I turn to Tone.

  “Shall we take a quick peek?” I ask. “I know we’re going there this afternoon, but, I mean, it can’t hurt to take a look now.”

  Tone nods.

  “Sure,” she says. Emmy frowns and looks at Tone.

  “Are you sure you feel well enough?” she asks.

  Tone nods.

  “Might as well do it now,” she says. “Make the most of our time.”

  I hesitate, but my curiosity overcomes my bad conscience. I support Tone as we walk over to the little hut. It’s more out of the way than I’d first thought, and I imagine how it must have felt to come out here every day with a basket on my arm, seeing the closed curtains, knowing who waited inside.

  The front door isn’t locked. In fact, it’s ever so slightly ajar, but that’s only visible when we’re standing right by it. I give the door a careful nudge, and it swings open on a creaky hinge.

  The hut is even smaller than it looks from the outside; the three of us will barely be able to get in without difficulty. Despite the broken windows and the bright, clear morning, the inside is also dark and dim: the windows are small, the slant of the roof blocks much of the sunlight, and the dead tree casts a large shadow from the west.

  The bed is small and shabby, and has lain unmade for sixty years. One small, lone pillow lies at its head, and it’s strewn with blankets in drab, clashing colors. There is no sheet on the faded, striped mattress, which is marked in a few places by indistinct light brown stains. The bed can only be two and a half feet wide, but it takes up almost half of the room.

  “You’ll need to move in a little,” Emmy says behind me.

  Tone squeezes past me, hobbles over to the table with its two Windsor chairs, and sits down on one of them. I would have stopped her, but she does it before I can say anything. Despite a creaking protest from its uneven legs, however, the chair holds.

  With the three of us in here there’s hardly any space to move. Emmy looks around the room.

  “No tap,” she says. “Or toilet.”

  I wonder if we’re all thinking the same thing. Standing here, in this tiny, dark space, the distressing reality sinks like a weight on my chest.

  “What a life,” says Emmy, quietly, making my own thoughts echo between the narrow walls. “What a fucking life.”

  I’m surprised she cares. On the other hand, I guess she’s always enjoyed taking care of people, so long as it comes at no cost to her. It’s easier to sympathize with dead people, tragic victims long gone. They aren’t nearly as demanding. As compassion goes, it’s cheap.

  Or perhaps it’s just that, when standing here between these four closed walls, it’s almost impossible to remain cold to how bleak Birgitta Lidman’s life was.

  Tone’s breathing has calmed. Sitting down seems to be doing her good. She leans over the table and runs her fingers across it.

  “There’s something here,” she says. I edge my way over to the table, lean in, and squint at the dark wood.

  It looks like a finger painting, as though someone has scrawled something in thick, clumsy streaks with their fingertips. The color has dried and faded with age, sunk down into the bumpy wooden surface, but I can still see what it is. Stick figures: uneven, clumsily drawn scribbles, like the restless doodles of a child. The figures’ mouths are furious, like black holes, and the crayon has been pressed so hard it has crumbled.

  Suddenly I can’t take it anymore.

  I don’t say anything, just push past Emmy and out of the door. The outside air should make me feel better. I look over to the forest’s edge, try to breathe in the fresh air and make that dark, distressing hut leave me alone. I try not to think about the innate naïvety of those small scrawls on the tabletop; about that child trapped in a grown woman’s body, a grown woman’s strength; about how scared she must have been, the anxiety of not knowing what was happening as she was bound to that pole; about that first stone.…

  Someone puts their hand on my shoulder, and I turn around.

  I’m expecting Tone, but it’s Emmy who’s standing there behind me. I know the look on her face; I’ve seen it a thousand times: every late night I came to her dorm with anxiety gasping at my lungs, every time the black spilled over and she would sit there, taking it in with calm, unyielding eyes, holding my gaze until my heartbeats started to settle, until my breathing calmed.

  “We should get Tone back to camp,” she says. “Get some breakfast in her.”

  This throws me.

  “Yes,” I say, once the words sink in. “Yes, of course.”

  I look back at the hut. To
ne’s still bowed over the table. Her hair is hanging forward, covering almost all of her face, and her bad leg is stretched out in front of her.

  When I step back over the threshold, I can hear her muttering something. But it doesn’t sound like she’s talking to herself; it’s as though she’s responding to something, a disjointed piece of a longer conversation.

  “Tone?” I ask. My uncertainty makes her name shrink in my mouth.

  She doesn’t look up. Her gaze is glued to the tabletop, where she jerks her hand once, and then again, as though re-creating some sort of pattern. It’s only when I take one step more that I realize what she’s doing.

  Transfixed, she’s tracing the outline of one of the small figures on the table, over and over again.

  “Tone?” I say again, louder this time, and she stops and looks up.

  She blinks repeatedly, as though forcing her vision into focus. Her eyes, normally steady as flint, have the look of an autumnal fog. Out of focus. Like Grandma’s toward the end: half-blind and veiled by cataracts.

  My skin starts to prickle. I clear my throat.

  “We thought we’d head back for breakfast now,” I say, conscious that I sound like I’m talking to a child. “Are you hungry?”

  Tone nods and makes to stand up, but grimaces when she puts weight on her foot.

  “Shit,” she says, and it’s as though something clicks. She looks normal again—a tired, wet-haired normal.

  “Here, you can lean on me,” I say. “We’re going to the parsonage later on—maybe we can find you a cane or crutch or something there.”

  “If not, I’m expecting you to whittle me one from an old pine,” Tone mutters with a weak smile. “I mean, what good is all that research of yours if you can’t do that?”

  NOW

  By the time we get back to camp, Tone is hobbling, leaning heavily into my arm.

  “Why don’t you go rest in the tent?” I say, less a question than a command. “We can make breakfast.”

  Tone purses her lips. I expect her to protest, but instead she nods. Her short blond fringe has stuck to her sweaty forehead.

  “Might be a good idea.”

  I help her into the tent and then walk around to the back of Emmy and Robert’s van, where Emmy is on her knees, rooting around in one of the boxes of tinned goods.

  “Could you pass the alcohol stove?” I ask.

  Emmy jumps at the sound of my voice, but then reaches in and pulls out the box containing the stove. She hands it to me with a glance over her shoulder, and a firebolt anger in her green eyes that makes me start.

  I stand there holding the box for a few seconds, then back away to the middle of our little campsite. I get out the alcohol stove while Emmy continues to poke around in our food stores behind me. When she walks over and puts the open packet of instant coffee, the coffeepot, and water down in front of me, I look up.

  “Alice, we need to talk,” she says, then sits down cross-legged on the cobblestones. She does it smoothly, in a single movement. She never used to be so agile. She used to be stiff and a little lazy, slow in the mornings and energized by night; used to yawn like a cat, wide-mouthed and red-tongued.

  How many times have we eaten breakfast together? One hundred? One thousand? Her with hair wet post-shower, like now, me with yesterday’s makeup still clinging to my eyelashes. But this time my face is bare, and hers is closed.

  The alcohol stove stands like a wall between us.

  I light it.

  “What is it?” I ask as the little blue flames appear, then wave the match to put it out. I try to keep my voice cool and professional. I’m her producer, after all. Her project manager. Her boss.

  Emmy drops her forearms to her knees. There are grass stains on her jeans.

  “I know you can see Tone’s sick,” she says bluntly. “And I can get why you wouldn’t want to call off this trip, but this isn’t sustainable. She needs to get to a hospital, now.”

  Her words aren’t aggressive, just direct. Like a hand thrusting into my stomach and squeezing my organs.

  “She says she doesn’t want to,” I say, then reach for the coffeepot and put it on the little stove. “She’s an adult, she knows what’s best for her.”

  Emmy rolls her eyes.

  “Come on, Alice,” she says, her voice somehow both irritated and unfeeling. “Don’t try that shit with me, you can see she’s not well. We both saw her in Gitta’s house—she was raving, for fuck’s sake! She’s probably delirious. She needs to see a doctor—now.”

  “But she doesn’t feel like she has a fever,” I say, clenching my jaw so hard I can feel my muscles strain. Strangely enough, Emmy’s words make my own anxiety start to ebb away. I mean, I practically carried Tone back to camp, and she didn’t feel so hot to me. “She says herself it’s just a sprain.”

  “Sprains don’t look like that, Alice.”

  By now I can’t bite my tongue any longer. I snap:

  “What are you, a doctor?”

  “You don’t need to be a doctor to see she can hardly walk, and it’s only getting worse!” Emmy replies. Her hands are now clenched into small, hard fists.

  “It’s not like I’m her mom!” I say. “Do you think I haven’t talked to her? Do you think I haven’t asked? I’ve asked her time and time again, but she’s insisting she wants to stay. So what am I supposed to do? Throw her into the back of the van, lock her up, and drive away? She’s a grown woman—we have to respect her wishes.”

  “If you say so,” says Emmy. In the space between her words I hear everything she isn’t saying. The curse of knowing someone’s rhythms. Of being able to intuit her meaning, rather than her words.

  “What are you suggesting?” I ask. I can hear I’m overarticulating, letting the syllables draw the lines I can’t.

  Emmy stands up and brushes off her legs. I can’t take having her look down at me, so I scramble to my feet, too.

  “Nothing, Alice,” she says, a rusty edge to her words. “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just saying it’s weird that Tone’s fucking sick and that you, as her friend, don’t seem especially concerned.”

  Her accusation knocks the wind out of me. I’m so angry that my teeth ache.

  “Don’t you dare say that to me,” I bite. “Don’t you dare tell me I’m not worried about Tone. And don’t you dare talk to me like that.”

  Emmy raises her eyebrows and opens her mouth, but I cut her off before she can speak. I’m feeling that delicious sting of being able to say what’s been hanging over me since I first saw her at our recruitment meeting, since I first noticed those delicate little laughter lines that had started to form around her eyes, the new highlights the henna had brought out in her hair, the strangely familiar lines of her ears. The shock and rage and sadness I felt at all of them.

  “It’s great that you’re so worried about Tone,” I say, “you’ve never struck me as someone to worry about someone else’s well-being before. But I’m guessing it’s not Tone that’s the issue here, is it? It’s more about you getting the chance to tell me how self-obsessed and demanding I am. It’s like gold dust to you, any excuse to say that.”

  I’ve heard the expression of someone’s eyes turning black with anger before, but never before have I seen it. Emmy’s pupils dilate, and I take a small step backward.

  She says nothing, and suddenly I’m very aware of how alone the two of us are. Tone’s asleep in the tent, which leaves just Emmy and me; Emmy lithe and muscular, her eyes black with rage, her fists clenched.

  My breath catches in my throat. I try to swallow, only to find that I can’t. Time seems to have stopped still.

  “Hey, how’s it going?” The unexpected break of the silence almost throws me off-balance. I don’t think I’ve ever been so relieved to hear Max’s voice.

  “Fine!” I shout, my voice rough, as I throw a final glance Emmy’s way. She has run her fingers through her hair, all trace of her furious mask gone—all but a lingering streak of stiffness in her face.<
br />
  “How was the water?”

  Max and Robert are walking across the square, all wet hair and clean, refreshed faces. When they arrive I can’t resist giving Max a hug out of pure relief.

  He hugs me back and laughs.

  “Whoa, what a welcoming committee!” he says. “A hug and coffee.”

  When I step back I see that Emmy has poured some instant coffee into the pot of boiling water that she has taken off the stove.

  “Would you get the bread?” she asks Robert, who has stopped next to her. “And the oil, and a skillet.”

  Robert gets out the equipment and ingredients for beans on toast, then helps Emmy to prepare them. I’m still a little shaken up, but the semblance of normality is so convincing that I almost feel like a fraud. The sunshine warms me up through my jacket, and the thin wisps of cloud on the horizon serve only to accentuate just how high and clear the sky is.

  When we sit down to eat, Max asks what the plan is.

  “We’ll do the rest of the church,” I say. “I’d like to finish scouting and do some filming in there. And the parsonage. After that we’ll have to see how we’re doing for time.”

  “In pairs?” Max asks, but before I can answer, Emmy jumps in, her mouth full of half-chewed bread and beans:

  “I’m staying here.”

  Robert looks at her in surprise. I stop short.

  Emmy looks me straight in the eye and says:

  “I think it’s a good idea if someone stays here with Tone. Plus I’d like to go through the material we have and put together a more detailed production schedule for the next few days.”

  Her gaze is steady and completely shut off. Eyes like green marbles.

  The moment seems to last an age, but I find myself nodding. Sure: if it gets her to calm down and drop the issue then it’s a small price to pay. We can finish scouting in a couple of hours without her, and she’s right that there’s work for her to do here. And maybe it is a good thing if someone stays here with Tone.