Itsy Bitsy (7 page)

Simon hung up.

‘He’s not answering. It’s probably switched off. What’s this all about?’

Elof looked out across the bay once more. Then he pursed his lips and nodded, as if he’d come to a decision. ‘I expect it’ll be fine.’ He turned towards the hallway and said, ‘I’ll take the drill for a couple of hours, then.’

Simon heard the outside door open and close. A cold draught whirled around his feet. He picked up the telescope and looked out towards the lighthouse. Three little ants were just clambering up on to the rocks.

‘Hang on a minute!’

Anders waved to Maja and Cecilia to get them in the right position and took a picture, two pictures, three pictures with different degrees of zoom. Maja was struggling to get away the whole time, but Cecilia held her close. It looked fantastic with the two small figures in the snow and the lighthouse towering up behind them. Anders gave them the thumbs up and stowed the camera in his rucksack once again.

Maja and Cecilia headed for the bright red door in the lighthouse wall. Anders stayed where he was with his hands in his pockets, gazing at the twenty-metre-high tower. It was built of stone. Not brick, but ordinary grey stone. A building that looked as if it could withstand just about anything.

What a job it must have been. Transporting all that stone here, lifting it, putting it in place…

‘Daddy! Daddy, come on!’

Maja was standing next to the lighthouse door jumping up and down with excitement, waving her gloves in the air.

‘What is it?’ asked Anders as he walked towards them.

‘It’s open!’

Indeed it was. Just inside the door were a collection box and a stand containing brochures. There was a sign saying that the Archipelago Foundation welcomed visitors to Gåvasten lighthouse. Please take an information leaflet and continue up into the lighthouse, all contributions gratefully received.

Anders rooted in his pockets and found a crumpled fifty-kronor note, which he happily pushed into the empty collection box. This was better than he could have hoped for. He had never expected the lighthouse to be open, particularly in the winter.

Maja was already on her way up the stairs, Anders and Cecilia following. The worn spiral staircase was so narrow that it was impossible for two people to walk abreast. Iron shutters fastened with wing nuts covered the window openings.

Cecilia stopped. Anders could hear that she was breathing heavily. She reached out behind her back with one hand. Anders took it and asked, ‘How are you doing?’

‘OK.’

Cecilia carried on upwards as she squeezed Anders’ hand. She had a tendency towards claustrophobia, and from that point of view the lighthouse was an absolute nightmare. The thick stone walls rising up so close together swallowed every sound, and the only light came from the open door down at the bottom and a fainter source of light higher up.

After another forty or so steps it was completely dark behind them, while the light above them had grown stronger. From somewhere up above they could hear Maja’s voice, ‘Hurry up! Come and see!’

The staircase ended at an open space in a wooden floor. They were standing in a circular room where a number of small windows made of thick glass let in a limited amount of light. In the middle of the room was another open door in a tower within the tower, with light pouring out.

Cecilia sat down on the floor and rubbed her hands over her face. When Anders crouched down beside her she waved dismissively. ‘I’m fine. I just need to…’

Maja was shouting from inside the tower and Cecilia told him to go, she would follow shortly. Anders stroked her hair and went over to the open door, which led to another spiral staircase, this one made of iron. The light hurt his eyes as he climbed the twenty or so steps up to the heart and the brain of the lighthouse, the reflector.

Anders stopped and gazed open-mouthed. It was so beautiful.

From the darkness we ascend towards the light. He made his way up the dark staircase, and it was a shock to reach the top. Apart from a whitewashed border right at the bottom, the circular walls were made entirely of glass, and everything was sky and light. In the middle of the room stood the reflector, an obelisk made up of prisms and different coloured, geometrically precise pieces of glass. A shrine to the light.

Maja was standing with her nose and hands pressed against the glass wall. When she heard Anders coming, she pointed out across the ice, towards the north-east.

‘Daddy, what’s that?’

Anders screwed his eyes up against the brightness and looked out over the ice. He couldn’t see anything apart from the white covering, and far away on the horizon just a hint of Ledinge archipelago.

‘What do you mean?’

Maja pointed. ‘There. On the ice.’

A gust of wind made the powdery snow whirl up, moving like a spirit across the pristine surface. Anders shook his head and turned back to face the room.

‘Have you seen this?’

They examined the reflector and Anders took some pictures of Maja through the reflector, behind the reflector, in front of the reflector. The little girl and the kaleidoscope of light, refracted in all directions. When they had finished Cecilia came up the stairs, and she too was amazed.

They ate their picnic in the light room looking out across the archipelago, trying to spot familiar landmarks. Maja was interested in the graffiti on the white wall, but since some of it required explanations unsuitable for the ears of a six-year-old, Anders took out the information leaflet and started reading aloud.

The lower parts of the lighthouse had been built as early as the sixteenth century, as a platform for the beacons lit to mark the navigable channel into Stockholm. Later the tower was added and a primitive reflector was installed; at first it was illuminated using oil, then kerosene.

That was enough for Maja, and she was off down the stairs. Anders grabbed hold of her snowsuit.

‘Just hang on, sunshine. Where are you off to?’

‘I’m going to look at that thing I said I could see.’

‘You’re not to go too far.’

‘I won’t.’

Anders let go and Maja carried on down the stairs. Cecilia watched her disappear.

‘Shouldn’t we…?’

‘Well yes. But where can she go?’

They spent a couple of minutes reading the rest of the leaflet, and learned that the Aga aggregate had eventually been installed, that the lighthouse had been decommissioned in 1973 and had then been taken over by the Archipelago Foundation, which had put in a symbolic hundred-watt bulb. These days it ran on solar cells.

They looked at the graffiti and established that at least one instance of sexual intercourse must have taken place on this floor, unless of course it was just a case of wishful thinking on the part of the writer. Then they gathered their things together and set off down the stairs. Cecilia had to take her time because of the palpitations, the pressure on her chest, and Anders waited for her.

When they got outside there was no sign of Maja. The wind had started to get up and the snow was swirling through the air in thin veils, glittering in the sunlight. Anders closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. It had been a fantastic outing, but now it was time to go home.

‘Maaaja,’ he shouted. No reply. They walked around the lighthouse, looking out for her. The rock itself was only small, perhaps a hundred metres in circumference. There was no sign of Maja anywhere, and Anders gazed out across the ice. No small red figure.

‘
Maaaja!
’

This time he shouted a little more loudly, and his heart began to beat a little more quickly. It was foolish, of course. There was no chance that she could have got lost here. He felt Cecilia’s hand on his shoulder. She was pointing down at the snow.

‘There are no tracks here.’

There was a hint of unease in her voice too. Anders nodded. Of course. All they had to do was follow Maja’s tracks.

They went back to where they’d started from, by the lighthouse door. Anders poked his head inside and shouted up the stairs, just in case Maja had come back and they hadn’t heard her. No reply.

The area around the door was covered in footprints made by all of them, but there were no tracks leading off to the right or left. Anders took a few steps down the rock. He could see their own tracks leading up towards the lighthouse from the ice, and Maja’s footprints heading off in the opposite direction.

He stared out over the ice. No Maja. He blinked, rubbed his eyes. She couldn’t have gone far enough to be out of sight. The contours of Domarö merged with those of the mainland, a thicker line of charcoal above a thinner one. He turned to face the other way, catching Cecilia’s expression: concentrated, tense.

There was no sign of their daughter in the opposite direction either.

Cecilia passed him on her way out on to the ice. She was walking with her head down, following the tracks with her eyes.

‘I’ll check inside the lighthouse,’ Anders shouted. ‘She must be hiding or something.’

He ran over to the door and up the stairs, shouting for Maja but getting no reply. His heart was pounding now and he tried to calm himself down, to be cool and clear-headed.

It just isn’t possible.

It’s always possible.

No, it isn’t. Not here. There’s nowhere she can be.

Exactly.

Stop it. Stop it.

Hide and seek was Maja’s favourite game. She was good at finding places to hide. Although she could be over-excited and eager in other situations, when she was playing hide and seek she could keep quiet and still for any length of time.

He walked up the stairs with his arms outstretched, stooping like a monkey so that his fingers brushed the edges where the staircase met the wall. In case she’d fallen. In case she was lying in the darkness where he couldn’t see her.

In case she’d fallen and banged her head, in case she…

But he felt nothing, saw nothing.

He searched the room at the top of the stairs, found two cupboards that were too narrow for Maja to be able to hide in. Opened them anyway. Inside were rusty, unidentifiable metal parts, bottles with hand-written labels. No Maja.

He went over to the door leading to the upper tower, closed his eyes for a couple of seconds before he went inside.

She’s up there now. That’s where she is. We’ll go home and we’ll file this with all those other times she’s disappeared for a while and then come back.

Next to the staircase was a system of weights and chains, the cupboard containing the light’s mechanism secured with a padlock. He tugged at it and established that it was locked, that Maja couldn’t be in there. He went slowly up the stairs, calling her name. No reply. There was a rushing sound in his ears now, and his legs felt weak.

He reached the room containing the reflector. No Maja.

Barely half an hour ago he had photographed her here. Now there was no trace of her. Nothing. He screamed, ‘
Maaaajaaaa!
Out you come! This isn’t funny any more!’

The sound was absorbed by the narrow room, making the glass vibrate.

He walked all the way around the room, looked out across the ice. Far below he could see Cecilia following the track that had led them here. But the red snowsuit was nowhere to be seen. He was gasping for air. His tongue was sticking to his palate. This was impossible. This couldn’t be happening. Desperately he stared out across the ice in every direction.

Where is she? Where is she?

He could just hear the sound of Cecilia’s voice shouting the same thing as he had shouted so many times. She got no reply either.

Think, you idiot. Think.

He looked out across the ice again. There was nothing to interrupt his gaze, no cover at all. If there had been holes in the ice, they would have been visible. However good you are at hiding, you still have to have a
place
to hide.

He stopped. His eyes narrowed. He could hear Maja’s voice inside his head.

Daddy, what’s that?

He went over to the spot where she had been standing when she asked the question, looked in the direction where she had pointed. Nothing. Only ice and snow.

What was it that she saw?

He strained to try and see something, then realised he was still wearing his rucksack. He pulled out the camera and looked through the viewfinder, zoomed in and panned across the area where she had been pointing. Nothing. Not a hint of another colour, not the slightest nuance in the whiteness, nothing.

His hands were shaking as he dropped the camera back in his rucksack. Out on the ice there was only white, white, but the sky had grown a little darker. It would soon be afternoon, it would be dark in a couple of hours.

He put his hands to his mouth, stared out into the vast emptiness, heard Cecilia’s distant cries. Maja was gone. She was gone.

Stop it, stop it.

And yet a part of him knew that it was so.

It was just after two when Simon’s telephone rang. He had spent the last hour fiddling with old conjuring props that his hands, stiff with rheumatism, could no longer use. He had considered selling them, but had decided to keep them as a little family treasure.

He answered the telephone on the second ring. He’d hardly managed to say hello before Anders interrupted.

‘Hi, it’s Anders. Have you seen Maja?’

‘But surely she’s with you?’

A brief pause. A quivering exhalation at the other end of the line. Simon sensed that he had just extinguished a hope. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘She’s gone. I knew she couldn’t have got back to the land, but I thought—I don’t know, Simon, she’s gone. She’s gone.’

‘Are you at the lighthouse?’

‘Yes. And she can’t…it’s just not…there’s nowhere…but she isn’t here. Where is she? Where is she?’

Two minutes later Simon had pulled on his outdoor clothes and kicked the moped into life. He rode out on to the ice where Elof was sitting on a folding chair, gazing down into the hole he had made with Simon’s drill. He looked up as he heard the moped approaching. Simon braked.