The Black Path (35 page)

“Come on,” said Sivving to Rebecka. “Can’t you turn off that computer? We’re trying to enjoy ourselves here.”

“In a minute,” said Rebecka.

She was sitting there with her laptop, checking out Diddi Wattrang’s family’s financial affairs.

“Maj-Lis,” asked Alf Björnfot, “was she your wife?”

“Yes, she died of cancer five years ago.”

“Look at this,” said Rebecka, turning the computer toward Alf Björnfot. “Diddi Wattrang always reaches his credit limit by the end of the month, minus fifty, minus fifty. It’s been the same for several years. But immediately after Northern Explore found gold, his wife is registered as the owner of a Hummer.”

“They always buy cars,” said Alf Björnfot.

“It would be nice to have one of those,” said Sivving. “How much do they cost? Seven hundred thousand kronor?”

“Diddi Wattrang is guilty of insider dealing. But I just wonder if there was any link to Inna Wattrang.”

“Maybe she found out and threatened to expose him,” said Alf Björnfot.

He turned back to Sivving.

“So you and your wife were neighbors of Rebecka’s grandmother?”

“That’s right, and Rebecka spent most of her childhood there too.”

“Why was that, Rebecka? Did your parents die when you were little?” asked Alf Björnfot, coming straight to the point.

Sivving got up quickly.

“Would anybody like some egg on their sandwich? I’ve got some already hard-boiled in the refrigerator. They’re from this morning.”

“Daddy died just before I turned eight,” said Rebecka. “He was driving a logging machine. He was out in the forest one winter, and got a leak in the hydraulic cable. We don’t know exactly what happened, because he was on his own out there. But he got out and presumably felt at the cable, and it came loose.”

“Oh shit,” said Alf Björnfot. “Hot hydraulic oil.”

“Yes, and the pressure’s so great too. The oil must have hit him full-on. They think he died instantly.”

Rebecka shrugged her shoulders. A gesture indicating that it all happened a long time ago. That it was all a long way from her now.

“Careless and clumsy,” she said in a casual voice, “but we’re all guilty of that from time to time.”

Although he shouldn’t have been, she thought, keeping her eyes fixed on the computer screen. I needed him. He should have loved me too much to be careless and clumsy.

“It could have happened to anyone,” said Sivving, who had no intention of allowing Rebecka to discredit her father in front of outsiders. “You’re tired and you get out of the machine and it’s cold, it was minus twenty-five that day. And no doubt he was stressed as well. If the machine breaks down, there won’t be any money coming in.”

“And what about your mother?” asked Alf Björnfot.

“They separated the year before my father died. But I was twelve when she died. She was living on Åland. I was living here with my grandmother. She was run over by a truck.”

It’s late winter, early spring. Rebecka will soon be twelve. She’s been out with some of the other children from the village, jumping off the roof of a barn. Straight down into the snow. Now she’s soaking wet, right up her back, and her boots are full of snow. She needs to go home and change.

Home, that’s Grandmother’s house these days. At first after Daddy died she lived with her mother, but that only lasted a year. Her mother often works away. It was a bit of a mess at first; she kept leaving Rebecka with her grandmother, sometimes because she had to work, sometimes because she was tired. Then she would come and pick her up and be cross. Cross with Grandmother, although she was the one who’d asked her to take care of Rebecka.

Today when Rebecka walks into the kitchen in her wet clothes, her mother is sitting at the table. She’s in a really good mood. There are roses in her cheeks, and she’s had her hair colored properly at the hairdresser’s, not by some friend the way she usually does.

She’s met a new man, she tells them. He lives on Åland and he wants Rebecka and her mother to move there and live with him.

She says he has a lovely house. And there are lots of children living nearby. Rebecka will have plenty of friends.

Rebecka is getting cramps in her stomach. Grandmother’s house is a lovely house. That’s where she wants to live. She doesn’t want to move.

She looks at her grandmother. Grandmother doesn’t say anything, but she holds Rebecka’s gaze.

“Never,” says Rebecka.

And as soon as she has dared to utter that silent word, she can feel how true it is. She will never move, never move anywhere with her mother. She lives here in Kurravaara. And her mother is unreliable. One day she’s the way she is now. And all Rebecka’s friends think she’s so pretty and she wears such lovely clothes, and she chats to the older girls in the schoolyard. One of them sighed one day, so that Rebecka could hear her: “Wouldn’t it be great to have a mother like that, one who understands stuff.”

But Rebecka knows more about her mother. She can lie on the bed incapable of doing anything, and Rebecka has to run to the shops and live on sandwiches, and she daren’t do anything, because whatever she does is wrong.

Her mother does everything she can to try and persuade Rebecka. She talks in her very best voice. Tries to give her a hug, but Rebecka slides away. She sticks to her guns. Keeps on shaking her head all the time. She sees her mother looking at Grandmother for support, calling upon her to agree when she says:

“It’s too much for Grandmother to have you living here all the time, and I am your mother after all.”

But Grandmother says nothing. And Rebecka knows that means she’s on her side.

When her mother has been all sweetness and light for ages, she suddenly changes completely.

“Don’t come, then,” she snaps at Rebecka. “Please yourself. See if I care.”

And she says she’s been working overtime since Daddy died so that Rebecka can have a new winter coat; she could have been taking a course in something if it hadn’t been for her responsibilities.

And still Rebecka and her grandmother say nothing.

They remain silent long after her mother has left. Rebecka keeps her grandmother company out in the barn. Holds the cow’s tail while her grandmother does the milking. The way she used to do when she was little. They don’t speak. But when Mansikka suddenly belches, they have to laugh.

And then everything is almost back to normal.

Her mother moves house. Rebecka receives postcards telling her how fantastic life is on Åland. Rebecka reads them, and a stab of longing pierces her heart. There isn’t a single word to suggest that her mother is missing her. Or even that she cares about her. The postcards say they’ve been out in the boat, or that there are apple trees and pear trees growing in the yard, or that they’ve been off on a trip.

In the middle of summer, she receives a letter. You’re going to have a little brother or sister, it says. Grandmother reads it too. She is sitting at the kitchen table wearing Daddy’s old reading glasses, the ones he bought at the gas station.

“Jesus siunakhoon ja Jumal varjelkhoon,”
she says when she’s finished reading. The Lord bless us and save us all.

Who told me she’d died? thought Rebecka. I don’t remember. I remember so little of that autumn. But there are certain things I do remember.

Rebecka is lying on the sofa bed in the kitchen alcove. Jussi isn’t lying at her feet, because her grandmother and Sivving’s wife, Maj-Lis, are sitting at the kitchen table, so Jussi is lying under the table. It’s when Grandmother is in the barn or has gone to bed that Jussi usually comes to lie on Rebecka’s bed.

Maj-Lis and Grandmother think Rebecka has gone to sleep, but she hasn’t. Her grandmother is crying. She’s holding a kitchen towel up to her face. Rebecka realizes it’s to keep the noise down, so that Rebecka won’t wake up.

She’s never seen or heard her grandmother cry, not even when her father died. The sound makes her feel very afraid and uneasy. If Grandmother is crying, the world must be coming to an end.

Maj-Lis is sitting opposite her and making comforting noises.

“I don’t think it was an accident,” says Grandmother. “The driver said she looked at him and walked straight out into the road.”

“It must have been tough, losing both parents when you were so small,” said Alf Björnfot.

Sivving was still standing by the refrigerator. Holding on to the eggs as if he didn’t know what to do with them.

When I think about the time immediately afterwards, I feel ashamed, thought Rebecka. I wish I had the right pictures in my head. A little girl standing by a grave, with tears on her cheeks and flowers on the coffin. Drawings of Mummy in heaven, or whatever. But I was completely cold.

“Rebecka,” says her teacher.

What was her name again? Eila!

“Rebecka,” says Eila. “You haven’t done your math homework again. Do you remember what we talked about yesterday? Do you remember promising me you were going to start doing your homework?”

Eila’s nice. She has curly hair and a lovely smile.

“I do try,” says Rebecka. “But then all I can think about is the fact that my mummy’s dead, and I just can’t do it.”

She looks down at the desk so that it will look as if she’s crying. But she’s only pretending.

Eila falls silent and strokes Rebecka’s hair.

“I know, I know,” she says. “I’m sure you’ll catch up with the work sooner or later.”

Rebecka is satisfied. She doesn’t want to do her math homework. She’s got out of it.

Another time. She’s sitting hiding in Grandmother’s woodshed. The sun is filtering in through the gaps in the walls. Thin curtains of dust seem to be rising into the light the whole time.

Sivving’s daughter Lena and Maj-Lis are calling to her. “Rebecka!” She doesn’t answer. She wants them to look for her forever. She feels angry and disappointed when they finally stop shouting.

And another time. She’s playing down by the river. Pretending to hammer and bang on the jetty. She’s building a raft. She’s going to sail it down the river Torne. She knows that the river flows out into the Baltic. She’s going to sail the raft across the sea and down the coast of Finland. To Åland. Then she’s going to go ashore and hitch a ride to the town where her mother lived. Home to the fine house where that man lives. She rings the doorbell. The old guy opens the door. He doesn’t know what’s going on. “Where’s Mummy?” asks Rebecka. “She’s gone for a walk,” he replies. Rebecka runs. She’s in a hurry now. At the very last second she grabs hold of her mother, just as she’s about to walk out into the road. The truck thunders past, almost touching them. Saved! Rebecka has saved her. “I could have died,” says Mummy. “My darling girl!”

“I can’t remember being upset,” Rebecka says to Alf Björnfot. “I was living here with my grandmother, after all. And there have been so many good adults in my life. Unfortunately, I think I might have exploited it. Noticed that the adults felt sorry for me, and used it to get a little extra attention.”

Alf Björnfot looked doubtful.

“Listen, kid,” he said. “They had every reason to feel sorry for you. And you deserved a little bit of extra attention.”

“The things you say,” said Sivving. “You didn’t exploit it at all. Try not to think about it. It was all so long ago.”

E
ster Kallis was sitting in her attic room at Regla. She was sitting on the floor with her arms around her knees, getting herself ready.

She had to go down to the kitchen to fetch the pan of macaroni.

But it was difficult. The house and the whole estate were full of people and activity. There were specially brought-in waiters and waitresses, and a chef to prepare the food. Out in the yard stood men with walkie-talkies and guns. She’d heard Mikael Wiik talking to them a while ago, standing just below her half-open window.

“I want armed guards on the gate when they arrive. Not because they’re actually needed, but so the client’s guests will feel safe and secure. You understand? They do a lot of traveling in areas of unrest, but even at home in Germany, Belgium or the U.S., they’re used to being surrounded by security people. So when they arrive, I want two men on the gate and two up at the house. We’ll reorganize once the guests are safely inside.”

She had to go down and fetch the pan of macaroni. She had no choice.

Ester went down the attic stairs, passing Mauri’s bedroom door, and continued down the wide oak staircase leading to the hall.

She crossed the hall, walking over the Persian rug and passing her own reflection in the heavy eighteenth-century mirror without looking at herself, then went into the kitchen.

Ebba Kallis was standing there discussing wine with the chef, and at the same time delivering instructions to the serving staff. Ulrika Wattrang was standing by the marble worktop arranging flowers in an enormous vase. Both women looked as if they’d come straight out of a glossy magazine, with their simply cut evening dresses protected by aprons.

Ebba had her back to Ester when she walked into the kitchen. Ulrika caught sight of her over Ebba’s shoulder and raised her eyebrows at Ebba. Ebba turned around.

“Hi there, Ester,” she said in a friendly voice, accompanied by an extremely worried smile. “I haven’t set a place for you, I didn’t think you’d want to join us, it’ll just be a lot of talk about business…deathly boring. Ulrika and I are under orders to attend.”

Ulrika rolled her eyes to show Ester how tedious it was to have to be there.

“I just wanted to get my macaroni,” said Ester quietly, her eyes fixed on the floor.

Her feet were prickling. She couldn’t look at Ulrika.

“Oh, but of course we’ll make sure you get something to eat,” exclaimed Ebba. “We’ll send a three-course meal up on a tray.”