I Am Behind You (28 page)

Stefan stood motionless, watching. And that was when the thought came to him:
This moment. Take it in. Save it.

This was perfection. He had everything he had ever wanted. Everything. If Nirvana means freedom from demands and desires, he had achieved it in that instant. And yet he hadn't. Because he still
had one wish: that it would never end, that things would stay like this forever.

With one hand resting on the banister he absorbed the light, the aromas, the sound of Emil's laughter and Carina's murmurs of encouragement, the image of a strand of hair falling forward as she bent over her son, turning to gold as it was caught by a sunbeam. The lawn outside the window, the wagtail on the veranda rail. He wanted to save it all.

He had been standing there for perhaps ten seconds when Carina caught sight of him, smiled and said: ‘Good morning. Coffee's ready.' Emil toddled a few steps under his own steam and shouted : ‘Offee!' Then down he went.

Perhaps it isn't unusual for people to think this way at moments of particular happiness:
Let me hold on to this forever.
What was special about Stefan's situation was that he had succeeded.

It took some work, that was undeniable, but Stefan was a stubborn individual. If he had set himself a task, then he carried it through. This was about preserving ten seconds of his life, and methodically he set to work.

Over the next few days he made sure he went over the scene time and time again, rerunning it in his mind and making use of his other senses until it was imprinted within his consciousness as securely as a photograph on the desk that you glance at every day.

He didn't stop living for the present, or enjoying the happiness that continued to come his way, but from time to time—when he was unpacking a delivery of mineral water, for example—he would go through every detail of the image. The fringes on the rug, Emil's toes, the gleam of the toaster, the dust motes swirling in the sunlight.

Weeks, months, years later, he continued to keep it alive by taking it out and examining it every so often, playing with it by looking at it from different angles from the one he actually saw.

No, Stefan has no unrealistic expectations of life. He has been given everything he could have wished for. And if he doesn't have it
right now, at least he had it once. He finds great consolation in that thought.

When Stefan hears Emil, now five years older, laughing in the caravan, the picture opens up inside him once more, settling like a comforting blanket over the anxiety that is tearing at him from all directions. Carina's absence, his father's illness or possibly imminent death, the lack of food, the fact that the situation they are in makes no sense at all. He will deal with all that in a little while. First he needs some peace.

Stefan places the remaining folding chair at one end of the caravan so that he can keep an eye on the direction in which Carina drove off. He settles down, plugs himself into his MP3 player with one hand and flicks through the track list to ‘MZ' with the other.

At difficult times Monica Zetterlund's voice can reconnect him with life; she has a tone that sounds to him like the
truth
. He has felt that way ever since he found
Ohh! Monica!
among his father's record collection when he was fourteen years old.

He selects ‘Little Green Apples', presses Play and leans back with his eyes closed. As soon as he hears the first few notes of the flute, he begins to relax. When the orchestra softly joins in, accompanied by a single note on the xylophone, Stefan lets out a long, shuddering sigh. Then Monica begins to sing about waking up in the morning with her hair down in her eyes, her lover greeting her with a ‘hi'. A smile plays around Stefan's lips as he listens to the description of an ordinary, loving morning routine. He doesn't know how many hundreds of times he has listened to this song, but he tries not to play it too often these days. He doesn't want it to lose its ability to bring the world to life for him.

It is about him and Carina, and about how love does not manifest itself through grand gestures, but through tenderness, through consideration for each other on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and every other day of the week. How this is the most beautiful thing in the world. The anxiety that has been gnawing at his body ebbs away
a little more, and Stefan takes a deep, relaxed breath as the chorus kicks in.

Then he frowns as Monica tells him there are no seas, no islands, if God didn't make those little green apples. It's as if he is hearing the words for the first time, as if he has no idea of how the chorus goes. His grip on the MP3 player tightens and he holds his breath, waiting for what comes next. Monica sings about the lack of laughter and children playing, the fact that the sun is cold. He switches off the player and opens his eyes, looks up at the empty sky. He glances to the right, to the left. Nothing. No seas, no islands. No mountains, no lakes.

If nothing exists, can love exist?

The love in Monica's song is so great that it is as impossible to deny as the existence of the mountains and the seas. But what happens when there are no mountains, no seas?

The little details. The things that make up everyday life. Working together, sharing leisure time. If all that has been eradicated, what is left?

Stefan removes his earbuds and gets to his feet, still clutching the MP3 player. An object made of plastic and metal. And perhaps God didn't make the little green apples after all. They just exist, like everything else. Until everything ceases to exist.

Tears fill his eyes and he stares out across the field. Then, unsure if he is really seeing what he thinks he is seeing, he scrubs the tears away with his sleeve and takes a closer look.

Ten seconds later he is on the roof of the caravan with the binoculars to his eyes. There is no doubt whatsoever. From exactly the direction in which Carina disappeared in the car, the white figure from the bottom of Mörtsjö lake is now approaching, moving slowly as if it has all the time in the world.

Stefan knows what it wants; he has known ever since their first encounter, which is why he refused to acknowledge its presence when he saw it with Emil. It wants to take everything away from him. Back then he had only his pathetic little life to offer, but now he has more. He
has love, he has those happy moments that he has saved, he has a family.

All this is now going to be taken away from him. He knows this with the same clarity as the condemned man knows that this is the end as he faces the firing squad. Thus far but no further.

*

‘I want to do a puzzle.'

Molly is sitting on the sofa, her penetrating gaze fixed on Lennart and Olof.

‘I'm not sure we've got anything like that,' Olof says. ‘We're not used to…'

Molly interrupts him, pointing at the pile of crossword magazines. ‘In there. The children's pages.'

‘Help yourself, in that case,' Lennart says, peering out of the doorway to see if there's any sign of Peter or Donald.

‘But I'm sitting over here,' Molly says, turning to Olof. ‘Please can you pass me one?'

‘Of course,' Olof says, ignoring the cross look Lennart gives him. He takes a ballpoint pen out of the kitchen drawer and puts it down in front of Molly with a magazine.

Molly gives him a winning smile and flicks through the pages until she finds a join-the-dots puzzle. Olof joins Lennart, looking over his shoulder. Lennart says quietly: ‘You shouldn't just do what she says.'

‘What harm can it do?'

Lennart gives Olof a look:
Wait and see, wait and see
.

The caravan is small, and neither Lennart nor Olof wants to sit at the kitchen table with Molly, so they both start busying themselves with things that don't need doing. Lennart decides to check out the fridge. He rummages around, then holds up a flattened bullet.

‘Hit the side,' he says. ‘What kind of ammunition do you think it is?'

Both of them know that they are just talking for the sake of it. They know next to nothing about guns, but Olof takes the irregular piece of metal, turning it over and over. The only result is an unwelcome reminder of the bullets filed down to sharp points that he found outside the grazing pasture on the day that Holger Backlund shot their cows—bullets that were never fired, fortunately.

‘No idea,' he says, handing back the bullet as if it was burning his fingers. Both Lennart and Olof pick up a cloth and start wiping down worktops and cupboard doors.

Molly is bent over her puzzle, the rose-pink tip of her tongue sticking out as she concentrates on joining up the dots. Without looking up, she says: ‘Why did the cows die?'

Lennart and Olof stop cleaning.

‘What cows?' Lennart asks.

‘Your cows, of course,' Molly says, drawing several short, jagged lines.

‘Our cows aren't dead.'

‘Some of them are,' Molly says, leaning back to study her work. ‘Why did it happen?'

Lennart goes over and leans on the table, lowering his head to try and catch Molly's eye. ‘How do you know about that?'

Molly looks dissatisfied, and adds a couple more lines. ‘You told me.'

‘No, we didn't.'

‘I must have dreamt about it then.'

Using the table for support, Lennart crouches down so that his face is level with Molly's. She draws two more lines, and seems happy with the result.

‘Molly,' Lennart says. ‘What are you up to?'

Molly looks at him with such a big smile that her entire face seems to be made up of a smile. ‘I don't know what you're talking about. What are
you
up to?'

‘I'm not up to anything,' Lennart says, his tone less pleasant this time. ‘But we haven't mentioned those cows, so…'

Olof places a hand on his shoulder. ‘Lennart. Leave it.'

‘Yes,' Molly says. ‘Leave it. If you know what's good for you.'

Lennart raises his eyebrows and turns to Olof with an expression that says
did you hear that?
, but Olof shakes his head and says: ‘Let's go and see how our plants are getting on.'

‘Oh, you've got plants!' Molly says, getting up from the table so quickly that she bumps into Lennart, who loses his balance and has to support himself with one hand on the floor to stop himself from falling over. Olof glances at Lennart to check that he's okay; Lennart waves a dismissive hand, and Molly and Olof go outside.

If you know what's good for you.

Lennart was nine years old when his mother was kicked in the head by a horse. After that she was bedridden for long periods, although no one could say what the problem actually was. After years of fruitless visits to doctors she started to pin her hopes on ‘wise women' as she called them. Lennart's father had another name for them: ‘charlatans'.

Most of them were probably harmless, with their salves and concoctions and amulets, but Lennart remembers the woman who came on the scene when he was thirteen: Lillemor. She was a different kettle of fish.

Unlike many of the others, she made no attempt to convert Lennart and his father to her approach; in fact she didn't even bother to explain it. She did, however, demand full access to the patient with no interruptions. For two hours three times a week the door to his mother's room would remain closed; Lillemor also asked Lennart and his father to leave the house, if possible.

The only reason his father didn't throw Lillemor out, bushy red hair first, was that her treatment was the first that seemed to have any effect. Lennart's mother was able to stay up for longer periods, and there was a clarity in her eyes that had been absent for many years. His father was so pleased that she appeared to be on the road to recovery that Lennart didn't want to rock the boat by saying there was something in that clarity that scared him.

During the fifth or sixth week something changed. His mother started mentioning long-dead relatives as if she had spoken to them recently, and in spite of her isolation she had an astonishing grasp of what was going on in the village. She also began referring to herself in the third person: ‘Kerstin needs to rest for a while', ‘Kerstin thought that was delicious'.

One day Lennart came home on a Lillemor-free day and went into his mother's bedroom to find Lillemor sitting there anyway. The curtains were closed, and a large candle was burning on the bedside table. As soon as Lennart opened the door he recoiled, because there was something…
distorted
about the image that confronted him.

Lennart had just been learning about perspective in his art lessons in school, but that wouldn't have helped him if he had tried to draw his mother's room at that moment. The angles were strange, and things that should have been far away seemed close, and vice versa. He could count the legs on a fly sitting on the bedstead, while the door handle seemed far out of reach.

Lennart closed his eyes and rubbed his eyelids. When he opened them again the room looked just as it always did. Lillemor had got up and opened the curtains.

‘Mum?' Lennart said.

His mother turned her head towards the sound of his voice, but her eyes were unseeing, fixed on a point far beyond him.

‘We are not to be disturbed,' Lillemor said, taking a step towards him.

Lennart swallowed and moved forward. ‘I didn't think this was one of your days.'

Lillemor tilted her head on one side and gave him a smile that revealed unusually white teeth. ‘I had a space in my diary.'

‘Right. But I need some help with my homework.'

Lillemor studied him for a moment as Lennart's eyes darted around the room. That was a straight lie; he had no homework, and when he had, he was perfectly capable of doing it on his own.

‘No,' Lillemor said. ‘You need help explaining where the key to
the school storage shed has gone.'

Lennart stood there, feeling as if it had just started snowing in his belly, cold and fluttery. A week ago he had come across a key that the caretaker had dropped, and with this key he and his friends had been able to unlock the shed outside school hours and help themselves to hockey sticks and footballs which they replaced when they had finished playing. It wasn't exactly the crime of the century, but the possession of the key was far more serious.