Blackwater (6 page)

Then he remembered the eel and was more frightened than he had been before. Not of the eel, but of what might happen. His thoughts had touched on that occasionally. That anything could happen. And that things didn’t always go well. They could go badly. It’ll be too late.

The worst thing could happen. The kind no one can think to a conclusion.

Old man Annersa had lain dead in his cottage for five weeks, his horse dying of thirst in the stable.

The goldeneye with a hook through its beak, and its soaking wet, semi-rotten feathers.

The Enoksson boy sawing straight through his thigh with a chainsaw. How? No one knew. Things just went badly.

I must get up. The eel woke me.

He started moving his toes and fingers, and slowly feeling came back even into in his calves and lower arms. In the end, he heaved himself up with his back to the wall, feeling like a collapsed hay-drying rack that had to be raised. He hooked his fingers in the protruding shale slabs and hoisted himself into an upright position, at last succeeding and stamping again to get warm. Then it struck him, like an electric shock.

Shale protruded from the wall, probably all the way up. The well had settled. Get the toe of his boot in far enough for support. Dig out the moss further up with the knife if he couldn’t find a bit of shale far enough out. Climb.

Bloody hell! Heave himself up step by step. Dig out. Prop his backside against the wall and hoist himself on up.

He started at once and soon found a foothold for his boot, then another, which was not so good but enough if he pressed his back hard against the wall. He was no longer standing in water.

Suddenly he remembered the eel. He knew it was a kind of madness, recklessness anyhow, but he did it all the same. He climbed down again and squatted down to rummage round in the water and muddy leaves until he got hold of the strong, slippery body skulking among the stones.

It was a bloody big eel! It twisted and turned in his grip. He fumbled for his knife, but then thought perhaps the eel was a hundred years old. Over fifty anyway. For Alda’s husband had probably not been the well digger.

If only he had something to put it in. He tore off his sweatshirt and shirt, quickly putting the sweatshirt back on, for it really was cold. Then he put the shirt down in the water and, once he got a hold on the eel again, he wrapped the material round it, knotting the sleeves hard into a firm parcel while it trembled and thrashed around inside. He fumbled for his belt and tied the shirt parcel beside his knife. The wriggling wet bundle was heavier than he had thought.

He started climbing again. He found three footholds before it became really difficult. There were no shale slabs protruding far enough to get a foothold. It would be better if he were barefoot, but he hesitated to sacrifice his boots. Barefoot, he would have to get back home along the verges. And he didn’t want to go home. He had no intention of returning to his brothers’ scornful grins or Gudrun smuggling glasses of milk and sandwiches up to his room.

Then he remembered the tow rope they had tied him up with. He climbed down again, and as he stood rootling round in the water for it, his excitement faded. Everything seemed to be happening slowly, like in a dream. He would never be ready. Something else always got in the way.

But now he had his boots tied firmly round his waist and he made the two steps up on the three first footholds. They were sharp but he went on, resting on his haunches, leaning forward and clinging to the wall in front of him, his muscles trembling, each new foothold hurting his toes. But he pressed them in. He couldn’t use the knife, as he didn’t dare let go anywhere. Sometimes he had his whole weight on one elbow or one knee.

He hauled himself on up until he felt the light on his face and his arms could almost reach the edge of the well. He hoisted himself up the last bit with his backside. His sweatshirt got caught and his back scraped against the sharp shale, but he ignored the pain and pressed on. The eel thrashed wildly in its shirt bundle, as if making one last effort to get back into its prison. As he tumbled over the edge of the well, the bundle got in the way. I’m squashing the eel, he thought. But he couldn’t help it. He gave one last heave, kicked out as hard as he could against the wall, then hauled himself up the last bit and was over the edge, lying in the grass, the eel wriggling beneath him.

He was not going to stay lying there. They’re not bloody going to find me here, he thought. The sky was blindingly bright, but Alda’s cottage and the forest behind it were in the shade from the ridge. He trotted silently on his bare feet down to the woodshed and went in behind it, untied his boots and put them on. It was twenty to twelve. I left home at seven, he thought. They got me ten minutes later, at the most a quarter of an hour. Then they fooled about a bit, perhaps for ten minutes. I was down in the well before half past seven. I’ve been down there over four hours.

All his joy had gone and now he was simply cold. He remembered the intoxication of his recklessness when he had realised he could climb. But that hadn’t been a very remarkable idea. In fact, it was strange that he hadn’t thought of it at once.

Before leaving his hiding place, he listened carefully for any sound of car engines. He hurried up the path. Where to, he didn’t really know. Away from the village, anyhow.

The insects were tiny, smaller than a pinhead and invisible until there was a cloud of them. They stirred them up as they walked though the tall grass, but as soon as they came to the open space in front of the store, the insects were swept away by the current of air from the lake. There was no real wind and the evening was warm. An hour or two later, insects sought them out up there as well, finding their cheeks and necks and crawling into the corners of their eyes, their stings like sparks. Mia kept crying and thrashing about. It was hard to bear. They had to run across to the little shop and bang on the door, but the shopkeeper and his wife were now watching television upstairs and it was some time before they heard.

He wasn’t surprised to see them again. He or his wife must have peered round the curtains. He was humorous about the insects and implied that you had to be born there to cope. They were called stingers, he said. She said she doubted anyone could cope with them. At that he grew rather heated and said people who worked in the forest couldn’t go home just because of the stingers. You just had to get used to them.

She asked whether they could sit in the shop and wait, though she would prefer to find a place where they could get something to eat.

‘There isn’t anywhere. Not in this village.’

He sounded almost triumphant. His wife was in the living room, only half her attention on the television screen. They had been sitting together on a green velvet sofa, coffee and a large assortment of small cakes and biscuits on a tabletop made of flower-decorated tiles. They were drinking something brown in wide glasses. Cacao liqueur?

‘Wouldn’t you prefer to rent a room instead?’

‘Roland said the camping site was full,’ his wife called. There was malicious pleasure in her voice.

‘There are private cabins, but they’re probably all taken until after Midsummer,’ said her husband in confirmation.

Then it occurred to Annie that perhaps Dan had thought Midsummer Eve was not until the next day. On the Saturday. For it was, really. The old Midsummer Eve.

‘My boyfriend’s probably up there at Nilsbodarna,’ she said. ‘There’s been a misunderstanding. Do you know anyone who could take us there by car?’

‘There’s no road.’

‘I know. But there is up to where the path begins. I have a map with me. It’s not far to walk after that.’

Husband and wife looked at each other. Annie could sense their criticism. This was not aversion but something more subtle. They seemed to have agreed on something and now it had been confirmed.

‘I need to buy some food for my daughter,’ she said, though she hated saying it. From the living room, the wife said nothing. She was staring at the screen.

‘That’s all right,’ said the man. ‘Though we want to watch the feature film first. Perhaps you’d like to watch it as well.’

So Annie had to sit down in an armchair by the coffee table. Mia clambered up on her knee and soon lost interest in the film. Instead, she looked round this room full of objects that must have seemed strange to her. Lots of animals, embroidered, carved or made of glass or pottery. As the woman fetched a cup and poured out coffee, she tried not to take her eyes off the screen, where a familiar actor was moving about in a cassock. Mia started systematically eating the cakes, cream cakes and sugared buns in small pleated paper cups. Annie sat crookedly in the armchair to be able to overlook the area in front of the shop. A car went by now and again, but none stopped. Mia fell asleep after a while, curled up on her lap, her long legs hanging outside and her thumb in her mouth. Annie hadn’t seen her take to her thumb for a long time.

Once the bizarre drama on the screen was over, they went out into the kitchen and the woman made something she called bilberry gruel for Mia. She took the bilberries out of the freezer and boiled them up in water, then whipped some cornflour into them. Of course, Mia wouldn’t touch it. It looked like purple glue. But she ate some bread and salami and drank some milk.

Annie looked into a room alongside the kitchen. It was full of pictures. Above the bed was one made of short-pile plush, brightly dyed in shades of pink, yellow and brown. It depicted a naked girl. She had tight fluffy breasts with budding nipples like large eyeballs gazing at whoever came in. They must look at the wife every time she went in with the duster. For everything was certainly very clean.

They thought Annie ought to stay in the village, but she was beginning to suffocate in the long, narrow kitchen. Besides, something might have happened to Dan. He was all alone up there. But the man whose name was Ola dismissed that.

‘What the hell would happen to him there?’

‘He might have broken his leg?’

She noticed they thought she was peculiar.

‘Living in the Nirsbuan,’ the woman said, snorting through flabby lips like a horse.

In the end, Annie managed to persuade him to drive them there. They were allowed to leave their belongings in his garage, where they changed into boots. Ola said they had to wear boots as they would be walking over marshy ground.

‘Won’t you stay?’ was the last thing his wife said, though not saying where. Hands in the sleeves of her cardigan, she watched them leave from the steps. It was growing chilly out, but was still just as light.

Ola had told them to walk on ahead. They wouldn’t take the main road that went on into Norway, but a turning off in the middle of the village. He would follow later and pick them up.

Annie felt great relief as they left the village. They walked uphill almost immediately, but they didn’t have to go far. Ola came in the car when they were just beyond the last houses.

‘Why did we have to walk the first bit?’ she asked him.

He grinned. But she persisted. It wasn’t exactly frightening that he wouldn’t pick them up until no one could see them. His wife knew he was going to take them. But she was ill at ease.

‘Well, no need to tell everyone you’re giving Red Guards a lift,’ he said.

She was so astÖnished by his words that she couldn’t bring herself to ask anything more. It sounded so idiotic. Or old hat. She remembered Elmer Diktonius’ poem about Red Emil, the mother with her hand round the throat of the bastard child. What did he know about the Reds in Finland’s civil war? She didn’t ask any more questions, but she said:

‘I think my boyfriend will come and meet us. He’s probably just got delayed.’

‘Is he your boyfriend then?’ he said mockingly.

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, I thought you didn’t have special ones. I thought it was just anyone.’

I’ll say nothing more, she thought. Whatever happens.

All the way was forest, no buildings at all. They came to a clearing where he told her to turn and look down towards the lake. You could see the high mountains in Norway from there, and they were black and blue-shaded, the peaks streaked with snow. There was a turquoise patch in the great lake which seemed to have no connection with the colour of the sky, the water all round a deeper blue.

The forest took over again and the road rose steeply. Crooked birches with veils of black lichen mixed with the spruces. When the forest opened out she could see a small lake glinting far down below the road, almost black with the reflection of the spruce forest. Only in the middle was there a lighter oval, which again did not reflect the pale-blue colour of the sky. Instead, it was golden like old red gold. Ola stopped on the roadside, saying this was Strömgren’s, an old homestead really. She didn’t know what this meant. Dogs were barking wildly and hurling themselves at a wire-netting fence. She caught a glimpse of someone in a window, but no one came out when they stopped.

A number of grey timbered buildings lay scattered far apart on the hillside. He showed her the path leading from a woodshed up to a small grey house.

‘It goes on down towards the stream, and you have to follow it up to the last barn. Then you’ll come to the path down from the village. There you must turn left. Otherwise you’ll find yourself coming down again.’

A red car was parked on the roadside, a Renault 4L. It didn’t seem to belong to the holding, because there was an old Opel parked there by the barn wall. So there must be people out there somewhere. That made her feel good. People who had a little red car.

She had a rucksack with her for their sweaters and the sandwiches Ola’s wife had wrapped up for her. She had already taken out the map in the car. Ola helped her find the cottages he called Nirsbuan. On the map they were called Nilsbodarna. She realised now they were outfield farm buildings. The path ran on eastwards across the marshes and towards a river called Mountain River on the map, but which Ola called the Lobber. They had to cross that. There was a ford there and it was easy to find because it was just before the river ran into the Klöppen, a large mountain lake. The path went on up to Starhill. But for their part, they had to turn east towards the little black square marked Nirsbuan.