The Hidden Child (49 page)

‘I already know that,’ said Kjell. ‘What else?’

‘He got a job working on boats that carried cargo down the coast, but he spent his free time with us. We were actually two years younger than he was, but that didn’t seem to bother him. We enjoyed each other’s company. Some more than others,’ he said, and sixty years hadn’t erased the bitterness that he’d felt back then.

‘Hans and Elsy,’ said Kjell drily.

‘How did you know that?’ asked Frans, surprised to find that he still felt a pang at the thought of those two together. His heart definitely had a longer memory than his mind.

‘I just know. Go on.’

‘Well, as you say, Hans and Elsy got together, and I’m sure you also know that I wasn’t happy about it.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Well, it’s true. I had a crush on Elsy, but she chose him. And the irony was that Britta was infatuated with me, but I wasn’t interested in her at all. Of course I sometimes imagined sleeping with her, but something always told me that it would be more trouble than it was worth, so I never did.’

‘How magnanimous of you,’ said Kjell sarcastically. Frans merely raised one eyebrow.

‘So what happened then? If Hans and Elsy were so close, why did he leave?’

‘Well, it’s the oldest story in the world. He promised her the moon, and when the war ended, he said that he had to return to Norway to find his family, and then he’d be back. But . . .’ Frans shrugged and smiled bitterly.

‘Do you think he was just toying with her?’

‘I don’t know, Kjell. I honestly don’t know. It was sixty years ago, and we were very young. Maybe he meant what he said to Elsy, but then was overwhelmed by commitments back home. Or maybe he intended all along to run off as soon as he got the chance.’ Frans shrugged. ‘The only thing I know is that he said goodbye and told us that he would be back as soon as he straightened things out with his family. And then he left. And to be honest, I’ve hardly given him a thought since. I know that Elsy was upset for a while, but her mother saw to it that she got into some sort of school, and I have no idea what happened after that. By then I had already left Fjällbacka and . . . well, you know what happened then.’

‘Yes, I do know,’ said Kjell grimly, picturing once again the big grey prison gates.

‘So I don’t understand why this would be of any concern to you,’ said Frans. ‘He came here and then he disappeared. And I don’t think any of us ever had contact with him again. So why all the interest?’ Frans stared at Kjell.

‘I can’t tell you that,’ replied his son crossly. ‘But if there’s any mystery about his departure, I’ll get to the bottom of it, believe me.’ He gave his father a defiant look.

‘I believe you, Kjell. I believe you,’ replied Frans wearily.

Kjell glanced at his father’s hand, lying on the armrest of his chair. It was an old man’s hand. Wrinkled and sinewy, with age spots on the wizened skin. So different from the hand that had held his when they went for walks in the woods. That hand had been strong and smooth, and so warm as it enveloped his own small hand. So safe and secure.

‘Looks like it’s going to be a good year for mushrooms,’ he heard himself saying.

Frans stared at him in surprise. Then his expression softened, and he replied quietly: ‘Yes, it looks like it will be, Kjell. It does indeed.’

Axel packed with military precision. Years of travelling had taught him to do that. Nothing was left to chance. A pair of trousers carelessly folded might mean having to laboriously press them on the hotel’s ironing board. A poorly replaced top on a tube of toothpaste might mean an even worse disaster: a caseload of laundry. So he placed everything into the big suitcase with the greatest care.

He sat down on the bed. This had been his room when he was growing up, but in later years he had chosen to change the furnishings. Model airplanes and comics didn’t really belong in a grown man’s bedroom. He wondered whether he would ever return here. It had been difficult to stay in the house over the past weeks. At the same time, it had seemed necessary.

He got up and headed for Erik’s bedroom, a few doors down the long corridor. Axel smiled when he went in and sat down on his brother’s bed. The room was filled with books. Of course. The shelves were crammed with leather-bound volumes, and there were piles of them on the floor, many with little Post-it notes stuck to them. Erik had never grown tired of his books, his facts, his dates, and the solid reality that they offered him. In that sense, things had been easier for Erik. Reality could be found in black and white. No grey zones, no political chicanery or moral ambiguities, which were everyday fare in Axel’s world. Just concrete facts. The Battle of Hastings was in 1066. Napoleon died in 1821. Germany surrendered on 5 May 1945 . . .

Axel reached for a book lying on Erik’s bed. A thick volume about how Germany was rebuilt after the war. Axel put it back on the bed. He knew everything about that topic. His life for the past sixty years had revolved around the war and its aftermath. But most of all, it had revolved around himself. Erik had realized that. He had pointed out the shortcomings in Axel’s life, and in his own life. Recounted them as dry facts. Apparently without any emotion. But Axel knew his brother well, and he was aware that behind all the facts was more emotion than most people he’d met would ever be capable of feeling.

He wiped away the tear that was trickling down his cheek. Here, in Erik’s room, things were suddenly not as crystal-clear as he’d like them to be. Axel had based his whole life on the absence of ambiguities. He had built his life around right and wrong. Presented himself as the person who could point and say which of these camps people belonged to. Yet it was Erik, in his tranquil world of books, who had known everything about right and wrong. Somewhere deep inside, Axel had always understood that. Understood that the battle to remove himself from the grey zone between good and evil would take a greater toll on his brother than on him.

But Erik had fought hard. For sixty years he had watched Axel come and go, heard him talk about the efforts he’d made in the service of good. Allowed him to construct an image of himself as the man who brought everyone to justice. In silence, Erik had watched and listened. Looked at him with those gentle eyes of his behind the glasses he wore, and let him keep his delusions. But somewhere deep inside, Axel had always known that he was fooling himself, not Erik.

And now he would have to continue to live the lie. Go back to work. Go back to the laborious hunt that had to continue. He couldn’t ease up on the tempo, because soon it would be too late, soon there would be no one left who could remember, and no one left to punish. Soon there would be only history books left to bear witness.

Axel got up and glanced around the room one more time before he went back to his own bedroom. He still had a lot of packing to do.

It had a been a long time since Erica had visited the graves of her maternal grandparents. The conversation with Axel had reminded her of them, and on her way home she decided to make a detour to the cemetery. She opened the gate, hearing the gravel crunch under her feet as she walked along the path.

First she passed the gravesite belonging to her parents. It was straight ahead, on the left-hand side of the path. She squatted down and pulled out a few weeds around the headstone so that it looked tidy, reminding herself to bring fresh flowers next time. She stared at her mother’s name etched into the stone. Elsy Falck. There were so many things Erica wished she could ask her. If it weren’t for the car accident four years ago, she could have talked to her mother in person instead of having to fumble around, trying to find out more about why Elsy was the way she was.

As a child Erica had always blamed herself. As an adult too. She’d thought there was something wrong with her, that she had somehow failed to meet her mother’s expectations. Why else had her mother never hugged her, never really talked with her? Why had her mother never said that she loved her, or even liked her? For a long time Erica had harboured the feeling that she wasn’t good enough and never had been. Of course her father Tore had done his best to compensate. He had lavished so much time and love on her and Anna. He was always willing to listen, always ready to blow on a grazed knee, and his warm embrace always felt so safe and secure. But that had never been enough. Not when their mother seemed unable even to stand the sight of her daughters, let alone give them a hug.

That was why Erica was so astonished by the image of her mother that was now emerging. How could that warm and gentle girl, as everyone described her, have turned into someone so cold, so distant that she treated her own children like strangers?

Erica stretched out her hand to touch her mother’s name on the headstone.

‘What happened to you, Mamma?’ she whispered, feeling her throat tighten. When she stood up a few minutes later, she was more determined than ever to uncover as much of her mother’s story as she could. There was definitely something there, something that still eluded her and that needed to be brought to light.

And no matter what it cost her, she was going to find out what it was.

Erica cast one last look at her parents’ grave and then moved on a few metres to the plot where her maternal grandparents were buried. Elof and Hilma Moström. She had never met them. The tragedy that took her grandfather’s life occurred long before she was born, and her grandmother had passed away ten years after he died. Elsy had never talked about them. But Erica was happy that so far in her research she had heard them described as kind and warm. Again she squatted down and stared at the headstone, as if trying to make it speak to her. But the stone was mute. There was nothing for her to learn here. If she wanted to find out the truth, she was going to have to look elsewhere.

She walked towards the hill, heading up to the church slope to take a shortcut home. At the foot of the hill she automatically glanced to her right, towards the big, grey, moss-covered gravestone that stood off by itself, right at the base of the granite cliff that formed the border of one side of the cemetery. She took another step up the slope, but then stopped short. She backed up until she stood in front of the big, grey stone, her heart pounding hard in her chest. Disconnected facts, disconnected remarks started whirling through her head. She squinted to make sure she was seeing correctly, then took a step forward so she stood very, very close to the stone. She even ran her finger over the text, to be sure that her brain wasn’t playing tricks on her.

Then all the facts fell into place in her mind with an audible thud. Of course. Now she knew what had happened, or at least some of it. She took out her mobile and punched in Patrik’s number with trembling fingers. It was time for him to intervene.

Herman’s daughters had just left. They came over every day, his blessed, blessed daughters. It did his heart good to see them sitting next to each other at his bedside. So alike, yet so unlike one another. And he saw Britta in all of them. Anna-Greta had her nose, Birgitta her eyes, and Margareta, the youngest, had inherited those little dimples that Britta always had when she smiled.

Herman closed his eyes to prevent himself from crying. He didn’t have the strength to cry any more. He had no more tears left. But he was forced to open his eyes again, because every time he shut them, he pictured Britta the way she had looked when he lifted the pillow away from her face. He hadn’t needed to move the pillow to know. But he had done it nonetheless. He wanted to have his suspicions confirmed. Wanted to see what he had done through his impulsive action. Because of course he had understood. The very moment he entered the bedroom and saw her lying there, motionless, with the pillow over her face, he had understood.

When he lifted it away and saw her rigid expression, he had died. At that precise moment, he too had died. He could only lie down next to her, take her in his arms and pull her close. If it had been up to him, he would still be lying there. He would have gone on holding her as her body grew colder and colder, letting the memories flood his mind.

Herman stared up at the ceiling as he thought about the past. Summer days when they took the boat out to the beach on Valö, with the girls in the cabin and Britta sitting on deck, her face tilted up towards the sun, her long legs stretched out in front of her, and her silky blonde hair hanging down her back. He saw her open her eyes, turn her head to him, and smile happily. He waved to her as he sat at the tiller, feeling in his heart how fortunate he was.

Then a shadow passed over his face. He was thinking about the first time that she told him about that unmentionable subject. A dark winter afternoon when the girls were at school. She told him to sit down because she needed to tell him something. His heart had nearly stopped, and he was ashamed to remember that his first thought had been that she was going to leave him, that she had met someone else. So what she told him had come almost as a relief. He’d listened. She’d talked. For a long time. And when it was time for them to pick up the girls, they had agreed never to speak of the topic again. What was done was done. He hadn’t viewed her any differently afterwards. Hadn’t felt differently about her or talked to her in a different way. How could he? How could that have forced out the images in his mind of the days that had flowed together to form their quiet, happy life, or the marvellous nights they had shared? What she had told him could never outweigh all that. And so they had agreed never to mention it again.

But her illness had changed that. Had changed everything. It had come roaring through their life like a tsunami, tearing up everything by the roots. And he had allowed himself to be swept along. He had made a mistake. One fateful mistake. One phone call that he should never have made. But he had been naïve, believing it was time to air out what was musty and rotten. He had thought that if he just showed how Britta was suffering because of what had been hidden away for so long in her mind, then it would be clear that the time had finally come. It was wrong to fight it any longer. What had happened in the past had to come out so that they might have peace of mind. So Britta would have peace of mind. Good Lord, how naïve he had been. He might just as well have put the pillow over her face himself. He knew that. And now he couldn’t bear the pain.