To Mervas (10 page)

“Did you get scared?” he asked at last. “I mean, did the dog scare you?”

He placed a hand on the dog's head while he studied Marta carefully.

“Not at all,” she said foolishly.

“Okay,” he said. “You didn't get scared. Well,” he continued, drawing out the words and clearing his throat, “I thought my dog here scared you and that's why you . . .”

He nodded at the steering wheel, but didn't say anything.

“I was on my way to Mervas,” Marta said. “I got lost. Or rather, I couldn't find it.”

He stared at her for a moment.

“I see,” he said, emphasizing each word. “I see. You're going to Mervas, you say.” He pushed the hat farther back on his head. Then he smiled.

“Well, you were lucky to come to Deep Tarn instead!” he said with gusto, straightening himself. “You know, in Mervas,” he continued, “there's nothing. Absolutely nothing. And what might happen to be there, no one wants to know about.”

He was silent for a while and looked away, past her. “Are you from there?” he asked.

Marta shook her head.

“I didn't think so,” he said. “But there are those who were. And they want to go there and see the place.” He laughed. “The only problem is: there's nothing to see in Mervas! Nothing! There's nothing in Mervas but blueberries, we always say. And bears. There are bears in Mervas.”

Marta listened to what the man was saying as if under a spell. The entire time, he spoke in a very loud voice. It was almost as if he were yelling. Or as if he were making a speech. And he had a thick accent; he didn't say “bear” but “beear” or even “bearn.” She couldn't stop watching him. There was so much life in this man, more than she could recall ever having seen in anyone.

Yet he was older than she was, probably almost seventy.

“Yeah, well,” he said, straightening up again. “Now that you've ended up here in Deep Tarn, you might as well step out of the car and have some coffee. You drink coffee, don't you?”

“Certainly. Thank you,” Marta said.

She glanced at the dog and the man smiled a little again.

“Just come on out,” he said. “No need to be scared of Tasso, not at all. He's a damned good hunting dog, that is all. And he's always on alert!”

Marta had to support herself against the car as soon as she stepped out. Her numb legs felt dead underneath her; she thought they wouldn't carry her.

“I've been driving all day,” she said apologetically.

He drew in some air between his front teeth. Then he took her hand.

“Arnold,” he said.

“Marta,” she answered.

Perhaps it was for real, she wasn't quite sure, but she followed close behind the man with the shining eyes. They were heading for the residence about fifty yards away. The present moment suddenly had a tinge of fragility. She couldn't rely on it; it seemed that at any time it could spill onto the ground where she walked and disappear forever. Nor did she know if what she saw was entirely clear, if she saw it in the right context. The little courtyard she now moved across – didn't she recognize it from a dream, from a very different kind of dream? She shivered. She'd said only yes, she did drink coffee, and that wasn't really very much to say. Most people drink coffee, if only to be polite. She supposed it was possible that anyone could step into a house and get the vague feeling they'd been there before, perhaps in a dream or through a book, or in the distant past of childhood. The man ahead of her walked with such determination, with long, easy steps. He didn't even turn around to make sure she was still there; he knew she was. His entire being watched with those luminous eyes and he didn't doubt for a moment that she wanted to come and have coffee with him. Marta got it into her head that she had somehow taken a step in the wrong direction, that she'd taken one step to the side and slid into something she did not recognize, one tiny faux pas that had brought her into other worlds, other orders. It struck her that this had already begun that day in the library back home, when she found
Mervas in the atlas. That's when the first false step took place. It was impossible to change that now, to undo what was done. This is what everything had turned into; it wasn't what she'd previously decided but where she helplessly found herself. Here. She was here; she was actually following the man up ahead. She knew she was here, a strangely new feeling.

Just as she placed her foot on the landing by the front door she noticed the birdsong, and it was decidedly real. It rose from every treetop and every shrub, from the sky and from the ground so that she was closely surrounded by tones, submerged in a bath of bird voices. Only then did the man turn around to look at her, making sure she was there. He then turned his gaze to the vista below the house, toward the mountain curling its back away from them toward the sky, which was bright even though it was evening.

“Yes,” was all he said as he looked at her again.

After this, he slid through the door, which was half-open, and she followed him uncertainly. Two steps through the vestibule, the kitchen was on the left, and its door was open.

“We've got a visitor,” the man called with a loud voice as he stepped over the threshold.

Relieved, Marta discovered a woman standing by the stove. She was short and had frizzy gray hair and wore a greenish wool sweater that went down to her knees.

“Well, I can see that,” the woman said in a soft voice. She smiled a little at Marta. “I saw you coming,” she said, nodding at one of the three windows. Marta's car was out there, left in the middle of the road as if it were still on its way to the house.

The woman poured some coffee onto the lid of the pot, and then poured it back.

“Sit down now,” she said. “I'm Lilldolly of Deep Tarn and we don't have guests here very often.”

She had set the table with two cups and saucers, bread, butter, and cheese. She poured the steaming hot coffee and returned to the stove.

“Well, I'll have my coffee over here,” she said. “I share neither table nor bed with Arnold over there, even though I'm married to him,” she added with a wink, and chuckled.

“No, that's right,” Arnold muttered. “One's been shown to the gate, or whatever it is people say.”

He gave Marta a mischievous glance and slurped some of his coffee.

“Now, have some cheese and bread,” Lilldolly said from over by the stove. “And drink your coffee.”

After this, silence settled on the kitchen. Marta spread some butter on a piece of the soft bread and cut into the cheese, which looked homemade and had a tart, sharp smell of milk and stable. The dog was curled up in an old armchair in the corner and was looking at them with its head between its paws. Sometimes Marta looked at the dog and sometimes out the window. She didn't dare look at Arnold or Lilldolly. Everything was too quiet; it felt as if they all were naked, as if they didn't have as much as a rag to cover themselves with. No words could protect them. It felt as if time were holding its breath and soon would implode from the effort, from the pressure. But she couldn't break the silence herself; she didn't trust her voice to carry itself. She was also afraid her voice would burst through the room like something foreign, something outside herself.

“You know, Lilldolly, she was on her way to Mervas, this woman, so I told her it was lucky she had come to Deep Tarn instead.”

Arnold broke the silence as if it had never existed. As always when he was speaking, the words rang out. It was beautiful, Marta thought. She saw the landscape and the heavens when she heard his voice, it
belonged out there in the sea of air, it moved easily through the vast and the spacious.

Lilldolly's voice was low and quiet.

“Was there something you needed to do in Mervas?” she asked softly, and Marta squirmed under her gaze for a while before she figured out what to say.

“No, nothing in particular. I just wanted to see it.”

“I see. Well, everything's gone up there,” Lilldolly said, without taking her eyes off Marta. “But in the old days it was like going to town when we went to Mervas, there were lots of people, an open-air dance floor and a movie theater and everything. And barracks full of bachelors!”

She laughed her funny little giggle and shot Arnold a playful glance.

“But now there's not a house left up there. Not a single one. That's right. And it's quiet.” Lilldolly bent down to get a stick of firewood and put it in the stove.

“All that's left up there is blueberries,” Arnold added. “I told her already, nothing but blueberries and bears.”

What about Kosti?
Marta wondered.
Is Kosti still there?

“They just dismantled the houses and took them away on big trucks. They left the cellars behind, of course, couldn't remove the cellars, so you can see where everything used to be, where the houses were placed along the streets. The cast concrete stairs and the foundations, those're still there.”

“There's the little kiosk over by the dance floor,” Arnold interjected. “It's still there.”

“True, it's still there. The little kiosk by the dance floor is there because the mining company didn't build it. I think it was the young people who put that up, I guess they got permission to do it. Otherwise, no one was allowed to build in Mervas except for the company, that's how it was,
people couldn't build anything because nothing was allowed to remain. That was the plan for Mervas. That nothing would be allowed to remain.”

Lilldolly was quiet. They all looked out the window at the evening sky. It was growing darker at last; the shadows were long. Marta felt worried. They probably wanted to go to bed soon, as it was already past eleven.

“Well, look at that,” Arnold said. “It's night already.”

“Yes,” Lilldolly said, “there's still a little darkness left for the night.” She yawned before she continued: “But what shall we do with our guest? Where shall our guest sleep tonight?”

“
Marta!
” Arnold called out so the whole kitchen resounded. “Her name is Marta!”

“I'll sleep in the car,” Marta said quickly. “That's what I do every night.”

“No, no, no,” Arnold said.

“Out of the question,” Lilldolly agreed.

“But . . .”

“No.”

“She'll sleep in the
lavvu
with me.”

“She won't sleep in the
lavvu
with you when we've got a whole house full of beds!”

“Well, she shouldn't have to sleep alone in the house with an unknown man, that's for sure! She'll sleep in the
lavvu
.”

“This woman is so goddamned difficult you almost have to scream for her to understand,” Arnold roared, banging his fist against the table so the cups rattled.

Marta stiffened and stared straight into the opposite wall without a thought. Now, was all she thought. Now.

“Watch it, you're scaring her,” Lilldolly whispered. “Now she's afraid.”

Arnold instantly turned to Marta, pinched her arm lightly, and looked at her with those eyes that were still luminous in the dim evening light.

“You don't actually think I'm scary, do you?” he asked, smiling sweetly, as if at a child. “I've got to,” he said in dialect. “I've got to rile her up a bit, this one here, so she knows she was once married to a real man.
Right,
Lilldolly?”

“Very true. Exactly.”

She'd been sitting on her stool by the stove the whole time while they were drinking coffee, but now she got up and went over to the table.

“Good night, Arnold,” she said, and stroked his hand. “We're going down to sleep in the
lavvu
now, Marta and I.”

Long before the arrival of morning, while it was still supposed to be night, the birds began singing. It was the end of May, the time of light. For a few months, the world was coming out of its dark hiding place, radiant and prominent. It was also the time of birds. Everything breathed hot and fast, had light rapid heartbeats, and pulses as quick as moving wings. It was the time of light, of birds, of water; everything was released and rinsed clean and each morning was supposed to be like the very first one, new and translucent blue under thin skin.

There was a smell of water in the air. All of Deep Tarn and the land around it smelled of fresh water. Marta smelled it inside the
lavvu
– the smell of melted and dissolved ice, of soil that water had flowed through. She'd been awake for a while. Inside her sleeping bag on top of the reindeer hide, she was watching the light through the opening in the roof. A good distance away from her, on the other side of the fireplace and kitchen area, Lilldolly was still sleeping deeply, wrapped in her sheets and blankets.

But none of the things outside, the birdsong, the smells, the sound of the wind through the trees that filtered into the
lavvu,
could help Marta get away from herself. She lay listening to her heart beating in her chest like a small, evil, sharp hammer. Arnold and Lilldolly's faces danced in front of her, grotesquely enlarged, sometimes bobbing and floating
around as in an aquarium, other times in pulsing flashes. They actually didn't appear threatening; there was nothing angry or dangerous about the faces, but they came so close that they filled her entire field of vision and there was no way she could get rid of them. She could see them, but she couldn't see herself, couldn't see that she had a face just like them. She was nothing but a growing field of darkness. Now, when for the first time in years she was among other people, she found that she had no idea who she was. She lost herself in the company of these people. It was as if she had been blinded by their attention. She stumbled over everything in her way, had to feel the walls to orient herself. It was almost impossible for her to move naturally, or be herself, as we say, because she couldn't see clearly or relate to anything around her.