Blackwater (38 page)

It’s over.

I am not the place, immovable, to which you will return. I am not marked and demarcated. I happen. Mobility.

When Önis handed her the mug of milky tea, Annie said:

‘I’m going down today.’

The snow was dry, a crystalline powder swirling up round the tips of her skis. There were no tracks over the pasture after the night of cold. The fox had lain still, the capercaillie burrowed down in the powder.

In the afternoon, as the light faded, a procession of titmice had crept in under the wind shields and into the holes left by the dowels in the cottage wall. They had heard them rustling. Twenty-gram bodies pressed against each other during the night, hearts beating as one. Now they were clinging to the lumps of tallow in the sun.

Bear Mountain was so white from the sun that she found it hard to keep her eyes on it; the sun’s glowing core would follow and dazzle her for two and half hours. The sky was thin and a brilliant blue, but at the zenith it blackened before her eyes. All the mountains were white with sides of sharp dark-blue shadow, the ice glistening on the peaks.

There were bird tracks down by the stream. The grouse had been embroidering neatly with their feet, taking birch buds, spilling a little and leaving dry little droppings.

By now she knew this ground better than any floor. She knew what the moss beneath the snow was like, infiltrated with lichens and glossy scrub. She remembered the moist, acidic smell of earth. When it emerged from the snow her own life would begin to smell like sex, like wet hair.

She made her way ahead high above the ground. The birches’ height had been reduced by the one and a half-metre layer of snow. Deep down there were tiny remains of warmth, torpor prevailing, downturning, the precise economy of dearth.

She skied into the forest where the new snow had not reached, her skis scraping against the crust under a spruce. God knows what that sounded like to the voles. She was on her way down to the sound that carried all the way up to Starhill. Sometimes distantly, depending on the wind. On calm days, they could hear it all the time. Rumbling day after day. They no longer talked about it.

She was afraid of the cold. The child weighed her down and the weight was growing in her belly. Every week that went by, she grew more afraid.

‘Now bitter death doth bear upon us.’

That was something she had once sung in church, though she hadn’t understood what ‘bear upon’ meant.

Approach. In reality.

Cold is standstill. The weather forecasts had said that the high pressure was at a standstill. Death doth bear upon us. Petrus thought she was morbid. It was stupid to talk so much.

There were five of them now at Starhill. And three cats, a Norwegian elk hound and nineteen goats. The billy goat. Eight hens. And rats. Not only the cottage mice, which rustled across the floor at night; large rats had gnawed their way into the wooden chests of grain and feedstuff.

Lotta had left in September. She had sent several postcards, all with cats on them, assuring them she would come back in the spring. Suddenly the cards stopped coming.

Was she dead? A syringe in some lavatory. A madman. What thoughts. Now bitter death doth bear upon us. It’s morbid, Petrus would say.

The cold is death, is life curled down low. Wax-covered. With no fluid. No pulse. But inside me blood is throbbing, the waters in the foetal sac shifting with the movements of the ski sticks and skis.

Now she could hear the water. The mountain river. The river Lobber. The same sound that had been heard before the water was given a name. She had got right down to the river but could no longer hear the rumble she had gone to find. The noise of the water was louder, the current rapid here. The stones wore caps of snow, threads and fringes of ice. The waves caught reflections from the sun and threw a mobile net across the riverbed. It looked as if the great black stones down there were moving, gliding silently beneath the golden net.

She had been fearful of the calm part of the river closest to the Klöppen and had gone too far north. Now she was almost up by the rapids. When she set off downhill, she saw that the wooden bridge had been replaced by an iron structure.

She skied about a kilometre back along the uneven terrain by the river before she heard the noise again, growing louder and louder. Up at Starhill they could hear the rumble for hour after hour throughout the short days and long after darkness fell. Petrus had crossed the river at the ford and had seen it. He said it was a processor and the company was going to clear-fell the forest right up to Starhill.

When it suddenly became lighter, she was unprepared. She saw the machine, yellow and as big as a bus. A felled spruce was being edged down to a transport track, branches and twigs flying all round it. The machine nudged the trunk ahead, grabbed it and swung, roaring at every movement. She had to ski away, as the sound was unbearable for any length of time.

She couldn’t quite figure out where she was. The space the forest had formed down towards the river had gone, and there were inexplicable waves and hollows in the snow. She could see a long way over the marshlands on the other side. It was all far more violent than she had thought.

She could see the man right up there in the driver’s cabin. He was wearing a helmet and large ear protectors. He hadn’t spotted her, and she didn’t dare go any closer, afraid a tree might fall on her.

It had seemed so simple to go down and speak to him, but now she didn’t know how to approach the processor. When she saw the destruction down towards the river, she became frightened of the driver, although that was not sensible. He was only a man in a yellow helmet.

She hadn’t realised how quickly it all went. The machine would soon have crept towards Starhill.

When they can’t get the hemp they won’t stay long, someone had said, getting a laugh. In some places, people were pleased the company was clear-felling below Starhill. But many others thought it a pity that the whole of the mountainside down to the Lobber was to be scraped bare. Would it ever grow again after replanting? It was so high up. Frost and sun would scorch it. What would happen to the pastures when the forest no longer protected them?

Dan had written that the company had asked the police to help evict them from Starhill. He would come then, he said. Annie had imagined dogs, Alsatians, police in overalls with harnesses and guns in holsters, Mia terrified. She could picture them marching off with the goats behind them and the children crying. But Petrus had said they were only warning shots. The company didn’t want things written about them in the papers.

Now they had begun clear-felling instead. It went quickly and the change was so violent it was incomprehensible, although it was happening right in front of her nose. At close quarters the sound was terrifying. Perhaps elk were standing there, just as she was. Bears. Perhaps creatures were standing listening between the spruces further up. She hadn’t imagined the felling to be like this. She had thought it would be all right to go up and speak to someone and that there would be more than one of them. Now she had to keep moving on the edge of the forest and wait for the driver. Her face began to grow stiff with cold.

Suppose she got frostbite? Suppose the only result of this trip was frostbite? Perhaps he wouldn’t even speak to her. She hadn’t even considered that he might feel solidarity with the company. She hadn’t said a word to Petrus and Önis about what she planned to do. She couldn’t cope with discussions. There was nothing to discuss. There was only the weight in her belly, growing greater every day.

She skied round and round the felling area, clambering on the uneven ground between the spruces, often pausing to rub her mouth and cheeks.

He finally stopped the machine, and the silence was like a collapse. Some time went by before she noticed she could hear the water again. The driver was climbing down, clumsy in his padded jacket, tough working trousers and steel-capped boots. When he got down to the ground, he lowered his head and stood looking at her.

She skied over to him, but when she tried to speak, her lips were so stiff she had to rub them first.

‘I’d like to ask you something.’

He said nothing, but stood unhooking his chinstrap and taking off his helmet, revealing a lined leather hood underneath it. He was a large man with small, close-set eyes. He was probably dark and presumably quite strong, perhaps fat. But it was hard to see. He nodded and headed off towards the bridge. She didn’t know whether he meant she should follow him and made a few hesitant movements with her ski sticks. He turned round and looked at her. No doubt he thought she would follow him.

She skied behind him across the bridge. It looked like some military arrangement. The old bridge lay tipped over on the side of the road. There was a car parked there, and a blue caravan with the company logo on it.

‘Come on into the hut,’ he said. ‘Looks as if you’ve frozen your face.’

She went in after him and cautiously rubbed her cheeks. It was warm in the caravan. A gas heater was alight and there was a bunk, two chairs and a hardboard table with a newspaper and a coffee cup on it. He took out an aluminium lunch box and lit a gas ring. Annie sat down on one of the chairs and unzipped her jacket.

When he took off his leather hood, she recognised him. She didn’t know what his name was, but he was one of the men who had come into Lennartsson’s fishing store on Midsummer Eve. He had snapped off Ola Lennartsson’s flagpole. His brown hair was sweaty and curly. He made coffee, scarcely looking up as he did so.

‘I’m from Starhill,’ she said, but she could see that the information was superfluous. She was wearing the pale-blue quilted jacket Henny had left behind for her, thinking it made her look like a tourist. But there were no tourists in early January. And there was no other car parked by the bridge apart from his.

‘I was going to ask you if you would take me and my daughter down to the village,’ she said. ‘And our belongings.’

He said nothing, just went on pouring measures of coffee into the pot.

‘Though I didn’t realise you only had a car here. I thought there was a tractor. We can hear the sound all the way up there.’

‘Be all right with t’scooter,’ he said. ‘And t’sled. I could bring that up. On Saturday. When I’m free.’

‘I’ll pay you, of course.’

‘No need,’ he said.

He poured out the coffee and gave her a slice of brown bread and liver pâté. There was a pickled gherkin pressed into the pâté. She wondered who had packed his lunch box for him. It contained meatballs and macaroni.

‘Do you think you could phone Aagot Fagerli for me?’ she said. ‘Ask her if I may rent her cottage by the road.’

‘Then she’d better put the electric heating on this evening,’ he said.

He didn’t ask her about anything, but nonetheless she thought she ought to explain.

‘I’m going to have a child,’ she said.

That only embarrassed him. He bent over his lunch box, eating rapidly.

‘I daren’t have a child up there. If anything should happen. I thought I’d wait at Aagot Fagerli’s until the time is nearer, then go to Östersund.’

It was getting darker. She had no great desire to go out into the cold again, but she had to hurry away before it grew too dark. She thanked him for the coffee. He said nothing.

‘See you on Saturday, then?’

What if he doesn’t come? she thought. What if I’m standing there with everything packed and Petrus and Önis are miserable and angry?

‘You’re sure you can come?’ she said.

Yes, he would come. And before he left on Saturday morning, he would go and light the stove in the cottage.

And we thought he was the Enemy, she reflected as she made her way back up towards Starhill in the failing light. The company lackeys, Dan called people like him. I’ve gone over to the Enemy. She snorted. It wasn’t often she laughed at herself; perhaps hardly anyone ever did. It was as if a lid of cold and ill temper had been lifted that day, a winter’s day like any other. But it was the Day. She realised that; the standstill was over.

He hadn’t woken properly and was feeling no unease, only desire. It came over him as he lay half-asleep and turned into a dream. He was trying to nudge his way into her, cautiously nosing his way in. They were lying in front of a hot, crackling stove. From the base of his swollen, stubby member, desire radiated like the current from a small battery. But he knew he must go carefully and take it easy. The concentrated and at the same time delimited pleasure woke him.

He must have been dreaming about the first time, when there had been fear in her, as if those thin membranes and tensed muscles contained a memory. What had happened to her? He had never been given any answer, and it was all so long ago now.

He wished she would call back but did not want to hear the phone ringing. It was her voice he wanted, her voice close to his ear. Her lips, really. Those warm lips and her warm breath.

The leaves of the birches were glowing now in the sun outside her window. In his room the light was penetrating between the slats of the venetian blind. He slid back down into sleep, and it didn’t seem to him that he slept long. But when he woke up it was half past seven.

She had phoned early in the morning and almost whispered that she had seen the boy who one Midsummer night long ago ran past her on the path to the Lobber. And perhaps towards that tent.

Birger didn’t believe it. Not for a moment. Time must have changed the boy, and besides, he was a foreigner. Why would he turn up in Blackwater almost two decades later? She had seen a face, a face reminding her of the boy’s. Maybe not even that. A feeling had come over her, like dreams or visions in a half-awake state.
Déjà vu
?

A dream and a delusion. He wished she was there with him. Now.

It struck him that she had rung before five. Whom could she have seen at that hour? Had she been out? He had talked to her last thing before he fell asleep. They had said good night. That had been past eleven. It had been her end of term, she had been tired and was going straight to sleep.