Blackwater (35 page)

Was this some kind of consideration? He was uncertain, but then he remembered the way the path went.

‘You can’t see the river from here.’

‘A little further down. There’s a plateau – there’s a view over the river and the marshes towards the homestead from there.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not here in the steep bit. It’s thick forest all the way. In that case, it’s probably over towards Björnstubacken. And you can’t see the ford from there. It’s several kilometres away. If that was where you planned to watch me.’

‘I’ll find the place,’ was all she said. Then neither of them knew what to do. Sooner or later he had to go on down. Was she going to follow him at a distance? That would be ridiculous. She must have thought something similar, because she said:

‘I can come with you for a bit. Until we find the place. The viewpoint.’

‘It doesn’t exist.’

Of course, she didn’t believe him, or she pretended not to. They went on, he ahead, she just behind. His head was completely empty. He couldn’t for the life of him find anything to say to her, but that didn’t seem to worry her. After they had been walking for five or perhaps ten minutes, she stopped.

‘This is where the path divides,’ she said.

‘Yes, the one to the right goes down to Björnstubacken.’

She stood still, and he thought she was looking strange.

‘I’m going back now,’ she said.

There was no point in asking her anything. Her face was closed in on itself, on some kind of sadness. Or fear.

“Bye then.’

She turned abruptly, and not until she had done so and gone a bit of the way up the path did the uneasy atmosphere release its hold on him. She looked comical from behind. Those jeans with the legs cut roughly off with scissors were so thin at the back that they looked like a grid of pale-blue cotton threads. Between them he glimpsed her not altogether white panties, her buttocks swinging a little as she walked.

‘Hey, you,’ he called. ‘What kind of weird trousers are those?’

He had meant it as a joke. But she swung round and stared at him. He could see her eyes in the dim light of the forest, wide open and dark.

‘Lucky I’ve seen you from behind before,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I’d think you were hollow at the back like a witch of the forest.’

But she didn’t reply, presumably because she didn’t think it funny. After a moment she turned round and started up towards Starhill again.

Her mood still had a hold on him when he got down to the river. He didn’t look round. All he could think about was that in twenty minutes, at the most half an hour, he would be up at the Strömgrens’. It wasn’t that late. He would go in to Oriana and Henry and talk about ordinary things. Fishing. The level of the water in the river. Offer them some cheese.

Now all he had to do was to cross the river, quickly. Up into the silence of the marshland, away from the water, from the sounds that were like small screams and mewings. From the splashing over the stones and the pull of the dark, racing water.

Henny had acquired a pale-blue quilted jacket and white sailing boots. She was wearing a white beret with a silk pompom on top. After walking for two hours, she wasn’t even out of breath. She had her famous singer’s diaphragm to fall back on. Besides, Henry Strömgren was carrying her pack in a rucksack; she had arrived at his place in Ivar Jönsson’s taxi. Whether she had paid Henry or whether he had agreed anyway was not certain. Henny didn’t paralyse people as Annie had thought when she was younger, but people were always taken with her, even captivated. Henry had seen her in an old feature film.

‘Just imagine! There he sits, watching me as some gangster’s moll starring with Åke Söderblom, then a fortnight later I’m outside his door right up in the mountains saying, “Help! Where is my daughter?”’

Not starring with Åke Söderblom. Sickan Carlsson or Anna-Lisa Ericsson starred with him. In the same film as. In a scene with.

Annie had started correcting Henny’s statements when she was about fourteen, but always silently. (Don’t mention puberty! It passed Annie by!) Since Henny had appeared in the hollow by the stream, they had all been staring at her and listening to what she had to say. Even Petrus. He was the one most affected. His mouth fell open.

She made her way through the grass without showing any signs of fatigue, her voluminous hips swinging. She had always had the most feminine figure, narrow-waisted, big-busted and curved behind. Nowadays the kilos were visible. (If only I’d had Gaby Stenberg’s
height
to my voice!) She was sixty-eight, her profile still clean but flowing out below her chin. She raised it against the wind.

‘God, how beautiful it is here! Do you
know
how beautiful it is?’

Perhaps they thought she was stupid or didn’t think before she spoke. She sat down with Mia on her knee and praised the slate wall of the fireplace.

‘What exquisite stonework!’

Not for a moment had Annie expected her to be anything but exuberant. Henny had seen every grotty boarding house in the country, had acted on wooden stages put up in public parks for the evening, and tussled with the drunks. She had never complained and always got her own way.

I’m pregnant.

The moment that white pompom, that beret, that quilted jacket had emerged from the hollow, realising that it was
her
(her walk, her voice), Annie had had the thought. At that very moment, not a minute earlier. Missed three times. Been feeling rotten. And my breasts. Although I’m so thin.

I’m pregnant. I’ve been so since Midsummer Day in Aagot Fagerli’s cottage. That time with no diaphragm, when I was so frightened I forgot it. That’s when it happened. I must have known it. But not known, after all. As if I were two people. And now knowing immediately. Just seeing her. Before she even gave me that look. Will Mia feel like this one day?

‘My dear child, how sunburnt you are, and how healthy you look! You don’t usually go so brown.’

Had the brown shadow come? The first signs? Or can she see it round my eyes? Is it like she used to say – it shows round the eyes?

Dan. She’ll ask after Dan.

But she didn’t. She unpacked the presents, a pink tracksuit for Mia, rabbit slippers with ears of fluffy material and large shiny eyes. Two bottles of red wine. For Annie a blouse which would show her breasts.

Henry Strömgren couldn’t stay for the evening, although he wanted to. You could see he wanted to. They would drink red wine and try some of the maturest cheese in the store. Petrus wanted to show her the earth cellar and the well so that she would see some truly excellent old stonework. Henny arranged with Henry Strömgren to be fetched at Björnstubacken in twenty-four hours’ time. Åke was still in the village, at the camping site. Walking in the woods was not for him. They had rented two cabins, one for Annie and Mia, another for themselves. Incredibly nice!

In the middle of all this, Annie thought of the camping-site shower room. And the television set. Then she thought: I must be left in peace. For an hour. Or a moment, at least. I’ve never been so tired in all my life.

But she couldn’t go away. The programme accelerated. The stone cellar. The cookhouse. The goat shed. Mia fetched the young kids. The clubhouse with Annie and Mia’s room. The beds. Mia’s dolls. The rabbit slippers under the bed beside the box of paper dolls. Not a word about Dan, about Dan’s bed. Not yet.

Tea drinking in the afternoon. Henny maintained you really always ought to drink herb tea because it was better for you. After that, the milking. She had a go herself, amid much laughter. The milking rota was suspended; they all milked. It was like a feature film. Starring Henny Raft, though not Åke Söderblom.

There was beet soup for dinner with bilberry pancakes afterwards, plus red wine and the cheeses. Henry loved strong cheese. She also loved fermented Baltic herrings, spiced aquavit, griddled blood pancakes, marinated herring and so on, none of which Annie could bear. They talked about it and it turned out that Petrus loved boiled ling fish that had been soaked in lye, and he was going to do the same with the dried pike nailed to the wall of the cookhouse. He had netted them in the Klöppen, and he explained that the lake was low. In that way, they came to the Lobber and, without a moment’s hesitation, Henny asked them whether they weren’t
frightened
?

‘Yes,’ said Brita. ‘Sometimes I think it’s all so horrible.’

She had never said that before. None of them had ever admitted that it had concerned them. In the end, Annie had begun to think she alone had that desolate feeling on the edge of the pastureland, and the fear of the forest as soon as she went a little further in.

That was where they had found the earthstar. Mia had spotted it between the spruces, its dark tips splayed out in the moss. Mia hadn’t realised it was a fungus. She thought it was a rare animal, the same kind as a starfish, and that it would move when she touched it. It had smelt like Dan. But Mia didn’t know that.

Henny had got Brita to say what it was like – that she was sometimes frightened. She had said it in a quiet, sorrowful voice, and Henny clearly felt this was something you only touched on lightly, for she hugged Mia and suggested they sing ‘The Maiden to the Well Did Go’. Mia was to be the maiden and Grandma the hazel branch. As they had no accompaniment, Annie was to sing harmony. She didn’t know it; Henny said, ‘Oh, have a go’, but Annie didn’t want to. So Henny asked Mia to go and get the melodica. Then Mia sang with Grandma and it was lovely:

Annie thought the melodica was a dreadful instrument, but everything livened up when she played it. Petrus changed the words on his own initiative and sang, ‘I feed on cheese and drink wine.’ He was given an ovation.

Suddenly Henny was standing by the fireplace, leaning lightly against the stonework and about to sing. I’ll go out, Annie thought. But she knew she would stay. If they laughed, she would look straight into Henny’s eyes and hold her gaze. She had tried to do that in Mälarvåg. Åke and Henny had come to a social evening. They had listened to the obscenities in the student revue without batting an eyelid and with expressions of cheerful appreciation and mild absent-mindedness. Afterwards, persuaded by the principal’s wife, they had gone up to the rostrum. Henny had sung, Åke accompanying her on the battered piano. At first the students had just fidgeted and scraped their chairs. But when Henny sang ‘Turn to me, turn from me, like a fire, let me burn’, throwing dark looks at Åke, who had closed his eyes behind his thick glasses, some had begun to yell, and then there were various ill-suppressed sounds. Many of them had been drinking beer and needed to belch. The sounds caused a few laughs and finally general laughter and the crash of chairs tipping over. Henny threw back her head and sang on loudly right to the very end.

When the dancing began, they had vanished. Annie had found them back at her home, sitting at the kitchen table, the light out, with a glass of brandy each from Åke’s pocket flask.

But now Henny was singing and although Annie felt she must be dreaming, she accompanied her on the melodica. Henny’s voice was full and rich:

She had appeared in
Show Boat
in the 1940s, bubbling around in the part of Nolie’s sharp-tongued mother. But it was the part of the disreputable Julie she had dreamt of. She sang it now and they all stared at her, Annie prepared to slap the face of anyone who thought her ridiculous. But no one did. She had touched them with her dark voice.

Next, Mia was to sing again. She sang ‘When Little Mouse Goes for a Walk’, and they applauded and said she had inherited her grandmother’s voice. According to the programme fixed fifteen years ago, Henny should now have said, ‘Voice! No, my dears, the voice is
there
.’ And they would have looked at Annie. But Henny said nothing.

It’s over, thought Annie, as the merry-making continued. She’s expecting nothing more. I’m too old. She’ll never torment me again.

Desolation was what she felt, not relief. What was Henny feeling? How would she survive now – with no hopes even for her daughter? Annie had always been convinced that Henny would go mad when her engagements ceased. Åke had gone on playing in restaurants and at rehearsals until the day he qualified for an old-age pension. He stopped on that day and had never said anything about missing it.

By the time Annie had graduated from school and gone to music college and the Academy, Henny’s engagements were already few and far between. Still, Annie had inherited her voice and was to become a trained singer. (Training! Just think if I’d had a proper training!) But Annie suffered from stage fright. Just standing there made her feel sick and break out in a cold sweat. She thought she would faint and could never get her breathing right. However, Henny said that would pass with training.

But Annie hadn’t got what Henny still had, whatever that was. Her way of moving her hips, among other things. Church music had gone better for Annie. She didn’t have to be seen. She could stand on the platforms in churches and sing at simpler funerals. The court singers sang at the grander and more lucrative ones.

Henny enjoyed hearing her in church and always appeared clad dramatically in black. Annie was afraid they would think she was one of those persistent attenders of funerals. She herself was troubled by the words. She found that the most beautiful music in the world had been created to put across words that at best were stupid but more often senselessly cruel. She hunted out their origins in the Bible and found something she had never known before because she had never been interested in religion: a compost of superstition, war-frenzy, and mysticism about rotting corpses.

She sang nonetheless. ‘
Bist Du bei mir
,’ she sang, seeing a man with dark, curly hair above a warm, swelling penis and a wrinkled blue-brown scrotum. To produce the notes, she had to put everything she found warm and sensually appealing against that repugnant shattered head, dripping saliva and blood, the stinking bandages and the gust from the opened grave. With her images, she drove away the staring head of the prophet on the dish, the raging swineherds and soldiers slaughtering children. If for once she found something in these insane and cruel litanies that reflected earthly desire or beauty, it filled her with warmth. One simple act of friendship towards another human being or anything that wasn’t solemn and lethal.