I Am Behind You (15 page)

There was plenty to do on the farm, and Uncle Joel was one of those grown-ups who was always interested, but didn't interfere. You could do stuff with him and wish it would never end.

The day before they were due to go home, while his mother was having a lie-in, Peter went out into the pasture with his bow. Uncle Joel had given it to him, and it was a ‘top present'. His mother hadn't been very pleased, but Joel had placed his hands on Peter's shoulders and said that he was sure Peter would handle it responsibly—wasn't that right?

Absolutely, if only because Uncle Joel had said ‘handle it responsibly' assuming that Peter knew what that involved.

The bow was made of fibreglass, and was almost as long as Peter was tall; he could only just manage to draw back the string. He had also been given five arrows; they too were top quality, with sharp, weighted points and rainbow-coloured fletching. Uncle Joel said the feathers had been plucked from a peacock's tail, but that was probably a lie.

There were a number of old pine trees on the edge of the pasture, and Peter had asked Uncle Joel if he could use them for target practice. Joel had inspected the thick bark and given his permission.

Halfway across the meadow, Peter stopped. It was a beautiful summer's day, pleasantly warm. The old pasture was strewn with dandelions, and the bumblebees were busy shuttling from flower to flower. One bee would take off, and another would land seconds later. Peter didn't understand how this could possibly be an efficient way of working, and made a mental note to ask Uncle Joel about it at dinner.

He turned his face to the sky and sent up a little message of thanks, a simple
here I am, thank you for letting me be here
, but without words. He sent the feeling instead.

Then he got an idea and immediately acted upon it. He placed an arrow in the rest, pulled the string back as far as he could, and fired the arrow straight up into the sky. In a fraction of second it was out of sight, and however hard Peter peered up into the blue, he couldn't see it.

Then he got scared.

He had sent the arrow straight up, which should mean that it would come hurtling back towards him once it had turned.

He ran a short distance towards the caravan, still looking upwards. His mind was racing. Presumably the shot hadn't been straight after all, and as the arrow flew higher and higher, it was impossible to say how great the deviation might be, and in which direction. Would he be able to see the arrow as it came down, and thus be able to avoid it, or would he—scary thought—see it only a nanosecond before it penetrated his eyeball? And what about God? What did God think about people shooting arrows at Him? Admittedly God was probably a lot further away than an arrow could reach, but…

A few more seconds had passed as Peter considered the problem; he spun around, but couldn't make up his mind. He didn't dare look directly up at the sky, but nor could he risk not looking up at all, because the arrow might land on his head, giving him no chance to get away.

He decided he had no alternative but to crouch down with both arms over his head and his eyes screwed tight shut. If the arrow landed on him it would hit an arm, which seemed like a better option.

He waited for five seconds, then another five, but nothing happened. He opened his eyes and looked around. He should have heard a thud when the arrow came down, but he had heard nothing, and there was no sign of an arrow anywhere nearby, so he concluded that his shot hadn't been straight after all.

He searched for a little while longer, then gave up and set off towards the pine trees once more. He spent ten minutes on target practice with the four remaining arrows, taking great care not to lose any more. Then he went back to the caravan to see if his mother had woken up.

She hadn't; the door was still closed, so Peter gathered a handful of dandelion leaves for Diego. When he reached the hutch, he dropped the leaves first of all, then the arrows. An ice-cold wind passed through the summer's day.

Diego was lying in the middle of the run with the missing arrow through the back of his neck. Blood spattered the grass all around him, the grass he had been nibbling, and his paws were splayed in all directions. The feathers on the shaft of the arrow protruded through the wire netting.

This just couldn't happen. Of all the millions of places the arrow could have come down, it had chosen to land in the rabbit run, in the exact spot where Diego happened to be at the time. Peter simply stood there staring for a long time, as rage and guilt overflowed in his breast, making his cheeks turn bright red and his eyes fill with tears.

He looked up at the sky and whispered: ‘Why? Why? He was just a little rabbit!'

God was sitting up there watching, but as usual he didn't say a word. Peter carried on glaring furiously at the sky as tears blurred his vision. God refused to say anything in his defence. When Peter finally lowered his gaze, he saw a figure walking across the meadow, heading straight for the caravan. It was as if he was looking through
a mist, but he rubbed the tears from his eyes and focused. A second later he was tearing open the caravan door, yelling at the top of his voice: ‘Mum, Mum, wake up! Dad's coming!'

On that day Peter stopped believing in God. He was still aware of His existence, but he no longer believed. If God could do such evil things just because a person had fired an arrow in his direction, then he simply didn't deserve to have people believe in Him. He was worthless, or worse. Peter ended their relationship forever, broke off all contact.

Twenty-seven years later Peter is crouched down in an endless field with the wretched arrow in his hand. Now he knows what is wrong. He sensed it as soon as he realised that the sun had gone, but didn't dare follow the thought to its conclusion.

All his life he has felt God's silent presence, but since that day he has refused to respond to the wordless call.

Now it has disappeared. The presence has dissolved, the constant question is no longer being asked.

God is not here.

2. Inside

Everyone has returned to the campsite. Donald was the last to arrive, because he almost got lost. He tells the others about this, but nothing else. Stefan is not particularly communicative either. Like Donald, he seems uncomfortable with the meeting, and avoids the questions that are put to him.

When Lennart and Olof have come straight out and said that they saw nothing, but have started to take an interest in the soil itself, Majvor cannot keep quiet any longer.

‘We're marked,' she says. ‘Someone has marked us.'

The entire group follows her on a tour around the caravans as she points out the four crosses. As she suspected, no one can remember seeing these marks previously.

‘So what do you think it means?' Olof asks.

‘I've no idea,' Majvor replies. ‘But there must be a connection, surely?'

‘Then again, a cross can mean lots of things,' Lennart says.

‘Lots and lots of things,' Olof agrees.

A discussion follows about the cross on a map showing the location of hidden treasure, the universal sign for
here it is
, the unknown factor in an equation, and the intersection between two lines. Majvor becomes increasingly frustrated during this debate, and for once she wishes that Donald would step in, but he is just standing there, staring at the ground.

‘But don't you understand?' she says eventually. ‘It doesn't matter what it means. The important thing is that it's there for a
reason
. Someone has marked us, done this to us.'

‘But who?' Carina says. ‘And how?'

‘I haven't a clue,' Majvor snaps, gesturing towards the endless expanse of grass. ‘But there's someone…something out there that wants to do something to us.'

*

Peter stands with his hands in his pockets, watching the others as they speculate on Majvor's discovery. He has nothing to add. His thoughts are not here, nor are they concerned with God's absence. Or perhaps they are, when they zoom in on the penalty against Bulgaria in the World Cup qualifier in 2005, as so often in the past. He can never work out what actually happened.

The match was absolutely critical to Sweden's participation in the World Cup. A win was vital. The score is 1–1 with a minute left to play. Sweden is awarded a penalty, and Peter is the one to take it.

He doesn't know how often he has gone over that moment in his mind, how many times people have reminded him of it.

He rotates the ball in his fingers several times before placing it on the penalty spot and taking four steps backwards. The whole Swedish team is behind him, thirty-two thousand spectators in the stadium, and many hundreds of thousands, even millions, watching on TV, all of them following his every movement.

Peter now has tunnel vision. The ball, the goal. The ball has to go over the line. His foot is going to kick the ball and put it in the net. Nothing else exists. This is what his life is about right now. Running forward and kicking the ball so that it…

Something happens. The blinkers fall away and the situation becomes crystal clear to him. He realises that right now he is as far from freedom as it is possible for a human being to be. The hopes of millions of people depend on his ability to carry out a fixed number of mechanical movements in a certain sequence. This is his job, his fate, his allotted task.

That is when he decides to protest. He knows which direction the Bulgarian goalie usually favours; Peter takes a couple of steps forward, and it is as if something within him breaks free from its chains, and eternity is his as he fires a loose ball exactly where the goalie wants it.

He knows that he is letting down an entire nation with this action, and that he will be the target of much venom and derision, probably for years to come. But at that precise moment it feels as if it is worth it, simply to experience that intoxicating sense of freedom. He lets the
goalkeeper know just where he intends to shoot, and taps away a ball that even a rank amateur could stop.

And the stupid bastard hurls himself as far as possible in the opposite direction. The shot is so weak that the goalie has time to get back on his feet and dive the other way, but he misses by an inch, and Peter has scored the coolest penalty in the history of Swedish football.

He takes his hands out of his pockets and steps in front of the group, who are studying the cross on Majvor's caravan.

‘Listen to me,' he says. ‘There is nothing out there. Nothing. Nix. Nada. Something fucks with your head and makes you start imagining things. That's all. There might be a darker line on the horizon, and if you want to put a positive interpretation on that, then of course you can. But there's nothing here except us and what we have now. That's what we have to accept. If you want to speculate about other stuff, then carry on. But it's a waste of time. There is
nothing
.'

Peter flings his arms wide in a final, definitive gesture, then he walks away, heading back to his caravan. Something is bubbling inside him; it could be panic or happiness, it's hard to tell. But it's to do with freedom, and it is fizzing as if he has carbon dioxide in his blood.

He has to do something. Play something.

*

This business of the cross is a miscalculation on Majvor's part. She had thought that her discovery would have a particular effect on the group, and it hasn't turned out the way she imagined at all.

In her day-to-day life, Majvor regards it as her role to unite and to gather people together. It doesn't have to involve a big party, not at all; it could be something as simple as getting the whole family to settle down for an evening in front of the TV, or inviting friends along on a boat trip in the summer.

She hadn't thought that the revelation of the crosses would create any kind of festive atmosphere, or would cheer people up, but she had believed it would lead to a sense of
community
. We have all been
marked in the same way, we are all subject to the same conditions, so let us unite on that basis.

But no. They're talking about hidden treasure and equations instead of seriously considering the idea that the crosses have a
meaning
. That's the way things are in society these days. A meaning isn't on the agenda. She stares morosely at the group. The little boy is tugging at his father's hand, ‘Tell them, Daddy. Tell them what we saw,' but his father shushes him with a gesture.

Majvor notices that Isabelle has heard what the boy said; she crouches down and whispers something to her daughter, pointing at the boy.

Secrets. Secrets and nonsense, that's what people are really interested in. Despite Majvor's general goodwill, there is no denying it: sometimes she thinks everyone else is just a pile of shit.

Donald comes over to her. Majvor has hardly been able to get a word out of him since he came back. He grabs her hand and pulls her towards their caravan. Which is probably just as well, as Majvor is feeling increasingly bitter towards the group.

She's not the kind of person who solicits admiration or praise, but just once in a while it would be nice to have a little appreciation. Without her they would still be ignorant of the meaning they are now refusing to accept. Whatever. Majvor offers no resistance; she follows Donald into the caravan, and he closes and double locks the door.

‘Sit down.'

Majvor does as Donald asks, or rather commands; she sits down on the sofa and watches as he walks around closing the blinds and making sure the windows are tightly shut.

‘Donald? What are you doing?'

It is gloomy with the blinds drawn. Majvor can only just make out the shape of her husband as he stands there with his hands by his sides, looking around. He nods to himself, then sits down at the other end of the sofa.

‘The thing is…' he says, holding up his index finger.

Majvor leans back and prepares herself for a lecture. The tone
of voice and the finger suggest that this is what is about to happen. Donald has used the gesture for as long as she can remember, and whenever she saw Göran Persson do exactly the same thing during his time as prime minister, she always thought:
a damaged child who has acquired too much power
.