I Am Behind You (52 page)

The man shrugs. ‘Of course. That's what I do.'

Even though it makes him feel like a little kid, Emil can think of only one question: ‘Why?'

‘How should I know? The flaws are there. I paint the crosses, I drive around with the caravan. That's what I do. Are you going in?'

He opens the door and at first Emil thinks there is a black curtain hanging just inside. He moves forward, and when he is only a metre or so from the opening he sees that it is not a curtain. Whatever is inside the door isn't
flat
, somehow.

The man leans against the frame. His eyes narrow; he is listening. Then his features soften and he smiles, nods to himself and actually rubs his hands together.

‘Well, what do you know,' he says. ‘It seems as if I need to go in there as well.'

The man eagerly beckons Emil, but Emil hesitates. Even if he thought really hard, he wouldn't have been able to come up with a situation that was a more perfect match for everything his mother had warned him against. Unless of course the man said he had sweets or a fluffy bunny rabbit inside the caravan. Something to tempt him. The
man isn't doing that; on the contrary, he seems totally uninterested in Emil, and is completely focused on whatever it was that he heard. When Emil doesn't move, the man says, ‘Please yourself,' and turns to go inside.

‘Hang on, I'm coming.'

Emil doesn't think the man is dangerous, and even if he doesn't seem all that
nice
, Emil is glad of some company as he enters whatever is behind the door. His chest is starting to hurt again, so he takes the last few steps up to the caravan.

No, it's not a curtain. Behind the door is a darkness so compact that it ought to seep out like runny chocolate mousse. But it stays where it is, and nothing happens to it when the man walks in. However, the man is immediately swallowed up. Emil hurries after him, up the step and into the blackness.

He can't see a thing; it is darker than when he closes his eyes. When he turns around he can see the doorway and the campsite a few hundred metres away, the lilac glow of twilight which doesn't reach one single centimetre over the threshold.

Then he hears the man's voice. When Emil went in he was afraid of bumping into the man, who must be just in front of him. But the voice comes from far away, and Emil can't even work out the direction as it says: ‘Could you close the door so that—'

Emil doesn't hear the rest of the sentence; it is drowned out by the noise of the door slamming shut, and now there is nothing but the darkness. His heart is pounding and he wishes he had Sabre Cat with him. But he is alone. Completely alone. He calls out, ‘Hello?' but no one answers.

The pounding fills his ears, and even if it isn't a very nice sound, it is still a sound, something that means he is alive, he is here. Emil touches his face, sticks his finger up his nose, and it feels just the way it always does when he picks his nose, although of course he's not supposed to do that.

A lilac rectangle begins to appear before his eyes and Emil realises it's the door. As his eyes grow accustomed to the gloom he can see the
outline, but when darkness falls outside it will vanish.

He takes a deep breath and turns away. Then he starts walking. He senses that he will not bump into a wall, and it turns out he's right.

*

Stefan picks up Emil's soft toys one by one, examining them carefully. Apart from the odd burn mark, they are all undamaged. He doesn't know how many hours, days, weeks Emil has spent constructing imaginary worlds where these five animals have been his brothers in arms, his fellow travellers, his companions.

Sometimes Stefan joins in the game, and over the years their characters have crystallised. Bengtson the bear is a little slow on the uptake, but he is totally reliable. Sabre Cat is the one who comes up with crazy plans. Sköldis the tortoise always thinks too highly of himself, and claims that he has been around for a thousand years. Hipphopp the rabbit is modelled on Little Hop from the Bamse the Bear cartoons, and he is always scared. Bunte, who doesn't appear to be a specific animal, often tries to start a quarrel.

Stefan carefully arranges the five animals around Emil in a protective circle, keeping vigil, and whispers: ‘Help him. Please help him.'

The plastic eyes stare blankly into space, and as Stefan looks from one to the other he is struck by a realisation so painful that it stabs at his heart.

The animals are going to die.

He can't bring himself to face the terrible possibility that Emil might die from his injuries, but the adjacent thought attacks him and the knife is twisted around and around.

Without Emil the animals are nothing. Without Emil, these most loyal friends and most courageous adventurers are no more than five worthless objects made of fabric, stuffing and plastic. What would Stefan do if…He wouldn't be able to throw them away. Put them in a box. Put the box in the shed. Try to forget about the box. Find
the box after ten years. See Emil's best friends ruined by damp and mildew. Dead.

‘Please…' Stefan whispers to the animals, to Emil, to the universe. ‘Please don't die…'

Emil suddenly coughs and raises one hand. He gropes in the air and opens his eyes.

‘Daddy?' he says in a voice thick with blood and phlegm. ‘Where are you?'

Stefan takes Emil's hand and leans over him. ‘I'm here, sweetheart. Daddy's here.'

He tries to catch Emil's gaze, but there is nothing to catch. His son's eyes are as empty as those of his animals, and his restless pupils are so dilated that they almost fill the iris. His other hand is now groping at the air as if he is feeling his way in a dark room, and he says: ‘Mummy?'

‘Mummy isn't here, sweetheart.'

Emil takes a few laborious breaths; it sounds as if his tongue is sticky as he asks with difficulty: ‘Where is…she?'

‘She left. She…'

He breaks off as Emil's head twitches from side to side. ‘Fetch… Mummy. Hurry. Go…'

There is a rattling sound from Emil's throat and he starts to cough; droplets of blood fly out of his mouth and land on the back of Stefan's hand, which is still clutching Emil's. There is a part of Stefan that can't take any more. One version of Stefan goes crazy and starts screaming and lashing out inside the prison of his brain, while another version carries on holding Emil's hand, pretending that he can cope.

The coughing fit subsides and Stefan asks: ‘Where? Where do you want me to go?'

Emil takes the deepest breath he can manage with his broken ribcage. ‘The darkness. You. Me. Mummy. Hurry. Soon…dark.'

‘What do you mean, sweetheart? The darkness, soon dark, I don't understand, what…'

But Emil has closed his eyes, and his hand is limp. Stefan gently
lays it down next to Emil's chest, which continues to rise and fall with each shallow breath.

Hurry. The darkness.

There might be a darker line on the horizon—isn't that what Peter said? Stefan had intended to ask him about that, but the opportunity never arose. He has thought about that darkness, wondered whether this world does have some kind of borderline after all, some kind of end.

Hurry.

It is doing nothing that has created the mad version of Stefan that is roaring inside his head. Anything is better than sitting here shaking with his hands clasped, terrified that the crazy Stefan will break out and take over.

The skin on his back pulls and tears as Stefan crouches down and slides his arms under the sofa cushion on which Emil is lying. Sores that were starting to heal break open, and he has to clench his teeth to stop himself from screaming as he straightens up, carrying Emil and the cushion.

He sidles out through the door and manages to get Emil on the back seat of the car. Sköldis and Hipphopp have fallen off en route; Stefan runs and picks them up, then places them next to Emil. He stands there irresolute, holding the seatbelt as he considers different ways of making his son secure.

Hurry.

The madman is waving his arms around in his prison, shouting: ‘What does it matter, for fuck's sake! Put on a helmet when you're drowning, don't forget your lifejacket when the house is on fire, just go you fucking idiot!'

Stefan lets go of the belt, kisses Emil on the forehead, slams the door and gets behind the wheel. He turns to look at Emil, but his eyes are still closed, so instead Stefan addresses the animals, using the phrase he has heard Emil utter so many times: ‘Are you with me?'

Bengtson, who is usually Chewbacca and the co-pilot, nods in agreement.

‘Good. In that case, let's go.'

*

Donald is slumped over the bonnet, his cheek resting on the still-warm metal. He has stopped calling out; he has neither the strength nor the desire left. He doesn't actually want Majvor to come back, partly because he doesn't want to see her ugly face, and partly because he would prefer not to know what state he is in.

The intense pain from shattered bones in the pelvic area has turned into a constant burning that is slowly easing as the blood continues to flow from the stump of his arm.

The loss of blood has made him dizzy and apathetic, and the way things are right now, this is a desirable state of affairs. If the car was moved away, allowing the weight of his body to come down on his midriff, the pain would explode again, to no purpose. He is finished. There is no redemption. Perhaps his condition is making him tractable, but through the mist in his mind he is still surprised at the readiness with which he accepts that fact.

You're going to die, Donald.

Okay. If you say so.

He has always thought, or rather hoped, that Death will be a figure that comes to him in extremis. Nothing to do with solace or comfort; he just wanted Death to appear in some concrete form so that he could punch it right on the nose. Go down with all guns blazing, as it were.

Now the time has come, he doesn't feel that way. He just wants to dissolve, to fade away and disappear in the red mist that is filling more and more of his brain and obscuring his vision.

He mumbles, ‘Buchanan, Lincoln, Johnson, Grant,' as he returns in his mind to Graceland. It is a different Graceland from the one he visited. The other tourists are gone, Majvor is gone, and he is free to stroll through the empty rooms as he pleases.

‘Hayes, Garfield, Arthur…'

He stops in the TV room. The yellow fitted carpet, the huge sofa, the three televisions set into the wall. This time he doesn't have to stay behind the barriers, he can wander into the room, and he drifts
towards the glass table and the white figure who is sitting there.

‘Cleveland, Harrison, Cleve…Cleve…land…'

Almost there.

The white figure is a monkey. A monkey made of porcelain, with one arm looped around its knees. Its eyes are round and black. Donald is drawn towards those eyes. The red mist turns dark red as the black sphere that is the monkey's eye comes closer.

Donald reclaims his awareness for one last look at the world before he goes to the monkey. His vision is blurred and he is incapable of focusing on the figure walking towards him across the field.

For a moment he thinks it really is the monkey, and he tries to clench his remaining hand into a fist so that he can deliver that final blow in spite of everything, but discovers that he cannot even bend his fingers towards his palm.

The figure stops beside him.

‘Hi there,' it says. ‘I have a suggestion.'

*

Neither Lennart nor Olof is completely sure of the year, but it could have been the spring of '98. Olof maintains it was the year Olof Johansson stepped down as party leader, while Lennart tends to think it was around the time that Holmberg's dog was killed by the wolf, which was '99. Or it might have been '97.

Some of the neighbours used to gather towards the end of April for a logging weekend. They had been collecting logs all winter and piling them up on Lennart's land. They would spend the weekend turning the pile into firewood, which was then divided up between all those involved.

At their disposal they had a combined saw and splitter hooked up to a tractor. After the logs had been split, the wood was carried along on a conveyor belt from which it fell onto a growing heap. Everyone could help themselves, take the wood home and stack it safely so that it would be lovely and dry for the following winter.

It was both pleasanter and more efficient to work together. It was the custom to switch between tasks, so that everyone had the chance to bring the logs, chop them, split them and carry them away. The women and children also joined in if they felt like it.

That particular spring, people kept dropping out, one after the other, for various reasons: an illness here, an injury there, visiting relatives, an unexpected calving. As a result, Lennart and Olof ended up standing there at midday all on their own. It wasn't really a problem, the machinery could be handled by two people, but obviously it would take longer.

Lennart and Olof set to work. After half an hour they had found a good rhythm, and the woodpile was growing so fast that you would have thought three people were doing the job. If not four.

The blade of the saw whined and sliced through log after log, then each section was split into four pieces which travelled along the conveyor belt. Lennart and Olof worked as if they were in a trance, caught inside a bubble where nothing else existed apart from the two of them, the machinery and the growing pile of wood.

At two-thirty they took a fifteen-minute break; they simply sat in silence contemplating the fruit of their labours, smiling and nodding to one another. Then they set to work again. By the time they called it a day at five o'clock, they had managed to get through half the logs all on their own.

Olof switched off the tractor which was driving the machinery. The hydraulic compressor fell silent, and the whine of the saw died away. The low sun made the new buds on the birch trees glow, and the air was filled with the fresh smell of sawdust as Lennart and Olof settled down side by side on a log that had rolled away from the rest. No doubt Ingela and Agnetha would have dinner ready back home, but the two men wanted to enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done for a little longer.