The Savage Altar (11 page)

“I
would like you to speak to Sanna about her clothes,” Thomas Söderberg says to Rebecka.

He is displeased with her. She can feel it in every pore. And it is as if she is being crushed to the ground. When he smiles, heaven opens and she can feel God’s love, even though she cannot hear His voice. But when Thomas has that disappointed look in his eyes, it is as if a light goes out inside her. She becomes nothing more than an empty room.

“I have tried,” she defends herself. “I’ve told her that she must think about how she dresses. That her necklines shouldn’t be so low cut. And that she should wear a bra, and longer skirts. And she understands, but… it’s as if she doesn’t see what she’s putting on in the mornings. If I’m not there to keep an eye on her when she’s getting dressed, she just forgets, somehow. Then I meet her in town and she looks like…”

She hesitates, the word “whore” sticks in her throat. Thomas wouldn’t like to hear that word from her mouth.

“… well, I don’t know what she looks like,” she goes on. “You ask her what on earth she’s got on and she looks at herself in amazement. She doesn’t do it on purpose.”

“I don’t care whether she does it on purpose or not,” Thomas Söderberg says harshly. “As long as she can’t dress decently I can’t let her take any kind of leading role in the church. How can I let her bear witness, or sing in the choir, or lead the prayers, when I know that ninety percent of all the men who are sitting there listening are just staring at her nipples sticking out under her top, and the only thing they can think about is shoving a hand between her legs.”

He stops speaking and looks out through the window. They are sitting in the prayer room at the back of the Mission church. The clear light of the late winter sun pours in through the high, narrow windows. The church is in an apartment block designed by Ralph Erskine. The people of Kiruna call the brown concrete building “The Snuffbox.” And consequently the church becomes known as the Lord’s Pinch. Rebecka thinks the church was more attractive before. Spartan and austere. Like a monastery, with its concrete walls, its concrete floor and the hard pews. But Thomas Söderberg had the fixed pulpit removed, and replaced it with a movable one made of wood. At the same time he had a wooden floor laid at the front. So that it wouldn’t be so depressing. And now the church looks just like any other free church.

Thomas lets his gaze wander up to the ceiling, where there is a huge patch of damp. It always appears in the early spring, when the snow on the roof begins to melt.

It is his way of falling silent and not meeting her eyes that makes Rebecka understand. Thomas Söderberg is angry with Sanna because she is tempting him as well. He too is one of those men who want to shove their hand inside her knickers and
…

Fury bursts out like a burning rose in her breast.

Bloody Sanna, she swears to herself. You little slag.

She knows it isn’t easy to be a pastor. Thomas is tempted in every possible way. The foe would like nothing better than to catch him in a trap. And he has a weakness when it comes to sex. He was quite open about this with the young people in the Bible study group.

She remembers how he told them about a visitation by two angels.
Without being able to help himself, he had been attracted to one of them. And she had known it.

“That would be the worst thing that could happen,” the angel had said. “I would become the opposite of myself. As much of the darkness as I am now of the light.”

S
anna knocked timidly on the bathroom door.

“Rebecka,” she said. “I’m going to go down and ask Curt to come up. You are going to come out of there, aren’t you? I don’t really want to be alone with him, and the girls are asleep…”

W
hen Rebecka came out, Curt Bäckström was sitting at the table. He held his mug of coffee with both hands when he drank. He lifted it carefully from the table, and at the same time lowered his head so that he wouldn’t have to lift it too high. He had kept his boots on, and just shrugged off the upper part of his snowmobile overalls so that they hung down below his waist. He glanced sideways at Rebecka and said hello without meeting her eyes.

Where’s the resemblance to Elvis? thought Rebecka. Two eyes and a nose in the middle of his face? His hair, of course. And his moody expression.

Curt had black, wavy hair. His thick fur hat had pressed it down so that it was plastered to his forehead. The outer corners of his eyes had a slight downturn.

“Wow,” exclaimed Sanna, looking Rebecka up and down. “You look fantastic. It’s really strange, because it’s only a pair of jeans and a sweater, and it looks as if you’ve just pulled any old thing out of the wardrobe. But it’s just so obvious it’s top-quality stuff.

“Sorry,” she went on, her hand covering an embarrassed smile. “I wasn’t supposed to comment on your appearance.”

“Like I said, I just wanted to see how you were,” said Curt to Sanna.

He pushed the coffee mug away slightly to indicate that he was about to leave.

“I’m fine,” replied Sanna. “Well, I say fine… but Rebecka has been an enormous support to me. If she hadn’t come up here and gone with me to the police station, I don’t know if I could have done it.”

Her hand flew out and lightly brushed Rebecka’s arm.

Rebecka saw the muscles under the skin around Curt’s mouth stiffen. He pushed back his chair to stand up.

Well done, Sanna, thought Rebecka. Tell him how nicely dressed I am. What a support I’ve been. And touch me just to make sure he understands how close we are to each other. So you’ve put some distance between you and him, and the only one he’s angry with is me. Like the pawn placed in front of a threatened queen on the chessboard. But I’m not your damned chaperone. The pawn is handing in her resignation.

She quickly placed her hand on Curt’s back.

“No, you stay there,” she said. “Keep Sanna company. She can find some bread and something to put on it and you can both have some breakfast. I’ve got to go down to the car to fetch my cell phone and laptop. I’ll sit downstairs, make a few calls and send some e-mails.”

Sanna followed her with an inscrutable gaze as she went into the hall to put on her heavy boots. They were wet, but she was only going the short distance to the car. She could hear Sanna and Curt talking quietly at the kitchen table.

“You look tired,” said Sanna.

“I’ve been up all night praying in the church,” replied Curt. “We’ve started a chain of prayer, so there’s somebody praying all the time. You ought to go. Put yourself down just for half an hour. Thomas Söderberg has been asking about you.”

“But you didn’t tell him where I was, did you?”

“No, of course not. But you really shouldn’t stay away from the church now, you should find your refuge in it. And you ought to go home.”

Sanna sighed. “I just don’t know who I can rely on anymore. So you mustn’t tell anybody where I am.”

“I won’t. And if there’s anyone you can rely on, Sanna, it’s me.”

Rebecka appeared in the doorway just in time to see Curt’s hands working their way across the table to find Sanna’s.

“My keys,” said Rebecka. “Both my car keys and the key to the house are missing. I must have dropped them in the snow when I was playing with Virku.”

R
ebecka, Sanna and Curt hunted for the keys in the snow with their torches. It hadn’t started to get light yet, and the cones of light swept across the garden, the snowdrifts and the footprints left in the deep snow.

“This is just hopeless,” sighed Sanna, burrowing aimlessly where she was standing. “Keys can sink really deep if the snow isn’t packed.”

Virku went to stand beside Sanna and starting digging like something possessed. She found a twig and shot off with it.

“And you can’t trust that one either,” said Sanna, gazing after Virku, who had been swallowed up by the darkness within a couple of meters. “She might have picked them up in her mouth and carried them off, if she couldn’t find anything else interesting.”

"You and Curt might as well go back inside with the dog," said Rebecka, trying to hide her annoyance. "The girls might wake up, and soon I won’t know which tracks are mine and which are yours."

Her feet were icy cold and damp.

“No, I don’t want to go in,” whined Sanna. “I want to help you find your keys. We’ll find them. They’ve got to be here somewhere.”

Curt was the only one who seemed to be in a good mood. It was as if the darkness gave him some protection against his shyness. And the exercise and the fresh air had made him wake up.

“It was just unbelievable last night!” he told Sanna excitedly. “God was just reminding me of His power all the time. I was completely filled by Him. You should go to the church, Sanna. When I prayed, I could feel His strength pouring over me. I could speak fluently in tongues.
Shakka baraj
. And my soul was dancing. Sometimes I sat down and just let the Bible fall open where God wanted me to read. And it was all about promises for the future. Bang, bang, bang. He was just bombarding me with promises.”

“You might like to pray that I find my keys,” muttered Rebecka.

“It was just as if He was burning some of the words from the Bible into my eyes with a laser,” Curt went on. “So that I would pass them on. Isaiah 43:19: ‘Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.’ ”

“You could pray yourself that you find your keys,” said Sanna to Rebecka.

Rebecka laughed. It sounded more like a snort.

“Or Isaiah 48:6,” droned Curt. “ ‘Thou hast heard, see all this; and will ye not declare it? I have showed thee new things from this time, even hidden things, and thou didst not know them.’ ”

Sanna straightened up and shone her torch straight into Rebecka’s eyes.

“Did you hear what I said?” she asked in a serious voice. “Why don’t you pray for your keys yourself?”

Rebecka raised her hand against the blinding light.

“Stop it!” she said.

“And I think God showed me every single place in the New Testament where it says you can’t pour new wine into old bottles,” said Curt to Virku, who was now standing at his feet and appeared to be the only one listening to him. “Because then they crack. And everywhere it says you can’t mend an old garment with a piece of new cloth, because then the new cloth rips along with the old, and the tear is worse.”

“If you want us to pray to find your keys, we’ll do it,” said Sanna, without shifting the light from Rebecka’s face. “But don’t you stand there and pretend God would listen to my prayers and Curt’s more than yours. Don’t trample the blood of Jesus under your feet.”

“Pack it in, I said,” hissed Rebecka, pointing her torch at Sanna’s face.

Curt fell silent and looked at them both.

“Curt,” asked Rebecka, staring straight into the dazzling beam of Sanna’s torch, “do you believe God listens equally to everyone’s prayers?”

“Of course,” he said, “there is never anything wrong with His hearing, but there can be obstacles in the way of His will being done, and obstacles in the way of prayers being answered.”

“What if you don’t live according to His will, for example. Surely God can’t work in your life in the same way then?”

“Exactly.”

“But then that’s just some kind of doctrine,” exclaimed Sanna in despair. “Where’s the grace in that? And God Himself, what do you imagine He thinks of that kind of read-the-Bible-say-your-prayers-for-an-hour-a-day-and-you’ll-have-successful-faith doctrine? I pray and read the Bible when I long for Him. That’s how I’d want to be loved. Why should God be any different? And all this about living according to His will. Surely that should be one of our goals in life. Not a way of winning the star prize for effective praying.”

Curt didn’t answer.

“Sorry, Sanna,” said Rebecka eventually, lowering her torch. “I don’t want to fight about Christian faith. Not with you, at any rate.”

“Because you know I’ll win,” said Sanna with a smile in her voice, and lowered her torch as well.

They stood in silence for a moment, looking at the pools of light on the snow.

“This business with the keys is going to drive me mad,” said Rebecka eventually. “Stupid dog! It’s all your fault!”

Virku barked in agreement.

“Don’t you listen to her,” said Sanna, throwing her arms around Virku’s neck. “You’re not a stupid dog! You’re the best, most wonderful dog in the whole wide world. And I love you to bits.” She hugged Virku, who reciprocated these declarations of affection by trying to lick Sanna’s mouth.

Curt stared jealously at them.

“It’s a rented car, isn’t it?” he asked. “I can drive into town and pick up the spare keys.”

He was talking to Sanna, but it was as if she couldn’t hear him. She was completely taken up with Virku.

"I’d really appreciate that," Rebecka said to Curt.

Not that you could care less whether I appreciate it or not, she thought, contemplating the slump of his shoulders as he stood behind Sanna, waiting for her to pay him some attention.

Sivving Fjällborg, she thought then. He’s got a spare key to the house. At least he used to have. I’ll go and see him.

I
t was quarter past seven when Rebecka walked into Sivving Fjällborg’s house without ringing the doorbell, just as she and her grandmother had always done. There was no light in any of the windows, so he was presumably still asleep. But that couldn’t be helped. She switched on the light in the little hallway. There was a rag rug on the brown lino floor, and she wiped her feet on it. She had snow over the tops of her boots as well, but she couldn’t get much wetter now. A staircase led up to the top floor, and next to it was the dark green door down to the boiler room. The kitchen door was closed. She shouted upstairs into the darkness.

“Hello!”

A low bark came at once from the cellar, followed by Sivving’s strong voice.

“Quiet, Bella! Sit! Now! Stay!”

She heard footsteps on the stairs, then the cellar door opened and Sivving appeared. His hair had turned completely white, and he might have gone a bit thin on top, but otherwise he hadn’t changed at all. His eyebrows were set high above his eyes, making him look as if he were always about to discover something unexpected or to hear some good news. His blue-and-white-checked flannel shirt just about buttoned over his paunch, and was tucked well into a pair of combat trousers. The brown leather belt holding up the trousers was shiny with age.

“It’s Rebecka!” he exclaimed, a huge smile splitting his face.

“Come, Bella!” he called over his shoulder, and in a trice a pointer bitch came galloping up the stairs.

“Well, hello there,” said Rebecka. “Is it you that’s got such a deep voice?”

“She’s got a really manly bark,” said Sivving. “But it keeps the people trying to sell raffle tickets and the like away, so I’m not complaining. Come on in!”

He opened the kitchen door and switched on the light. Everything was terribly neat, and it smelled slightly musty.

"Sit down," he said, pointing to the rib-backed settee.

Rebecka explained why she was there, and while Sivving fetched the spare key she looked around. The freshly washed green-and-white-striped rag rug was in precisely the right place on the pine floor. Instead of an oilcloth on the table, there was a beautifully ironed linen cloth, decorated with a little vase of beaten copper, holding dried buttercups and everlasting flowers. There were windows on three sides, and from the window behind her you could see her grandmother’s house. In daylight, of course. All you could see at the moment was the reflection of the pine lamp hanging from the ceiling.

When Sivving had given her the keys he sat down at the opposite side of the table. Somehow he didn’t look quite at home in his own kitchen. He was perched on the very edge of the red-stained chair. Bella didn’t seem able to settle either, but was wandering about like a lost soul.

“It’s been a long time.” Sivving smiled, looking closely at Rebecka. “I was just about to have my first cup of coffee. Would you like one?”

“Please,” said Rebecka, sketching out a timetable in her head.

It wouldn’t take more than five minutes to pack her case. Tidying up, half an hour. She could catch the ten-thirty plane, provided Curt turned up with the car keys.

“Come on,” said Sivving, getting up.

He went out of the kitchen and down the cellar steps, with Bella at his heels. Rebecka followed them.

Everything was cozy and homely in the boiler room. A made-up bed stood against one wall. Bella climbed straight into her own bed, which was next to it. Her water and food bowls were sparkling clean, newly washed. There was a washstand in front of the water heater, and an electric hot plate stood on a little drop-leaf table.

“You can pull up that stool,” said Sivving, pointing.

He took down a little coffeepot and two mugs from a string shelf on the wall. The aroma from the tin of coffee blended with the smell of dog, cellar and soap. A pair of long johns, two flannel shirts and a T-shirt with “Kiruna Truck” on it were hanging on a washing line.

“I must apologize,” said Sivving, nodding toward the long johns. “But then, I wasn’t expecting such an elegant visitor.”

“I don’t understand,” said Rebecka in bewilderment. “Do you sleep down here?”

“Well, you see,” said Sivving, running his hand over the stubble on his chin as he carefully counted scoops of coffee into the pot, “Maj-Lis died two years ago.”

Rebecka muttered a few words of sympathy in reply.

“It was stomach cancer. They opened her up, but all they could do was stitch her back together. Anyway, the house was too big for me. The kids had moved out long ago, and with Maj-Lis gone too… First of all I stopped using the top floor. The kitchen and the little bedroom downstairs were enough. Then Bella and I realized that we were only using the kitchen. So then I moved the TV into the kitchen and slept in there, on the sofa bed. And stopped using the bedroom.”

“And in the end you moved down here.”

“Well, it’s much less cleaning. And the washing machine and the shower were down here. I bought that little fridge. It’s big enough for me.”

He pointed toward a little fridge in the corner with a plate rack on top of it.

“But what does Lena say, and…” Rebecka fumbled for the name of Sivving’s son.

“Mats. Ah, the coffee’s ready. Well, Lena makes a lot of noise and plays hell and reckons her dad’s lost the plot. When she comes to visit with the kids, they run about all over the house. And in some ways that’s good, because otherwise I might as well sell up. She’s moved to Gällivare, and she’s got three boys. But they’re getting quite big now, and starting to live their own lives. They do like fishing, though, so they usually come over quite a bit in the spring to fish through holes in the ice. Milk? Sugar?”

“Black.”

“Mats is divorced, but he’s got two kids. Robin and Julia. They usually come on the holidays and so on. What about you, Rebecka? Husband and children?”

Rebecka sipped at the hot coffee. It went all the way to her cold feet.

“No, neither.”

“No, I suppose they wouldn’t dare come near you….”

“What do you mean?” laughed Rebecka.

“Your temperament, my girl,” said Sivving as he got up and fetched a packet of cinnamon buns from the fridge. “You’ve always been a bit fierce. Here, have a bun. God, I remember that time you lit a fire in the ditch. You were a tiny little thing. Stood there like a policewoman with your hand raised when your grandmother and I came running. ‘Stop! Don’t come any closer!’ you shouted, full of authority, and you were so cross when we put the fire out. You were going to grill fish on it.”

Sivving was laughing so much, he had to wipe away a tear at the memory. Bella raised her head and barked happily.

“Or the time you threw a stone at Erik’s head because you weren’t allowed to go with the lads on their raft,” Sivving went on, laughing so that his stomach quivered.

“All barred by the statute of limitations.” Rebecka smiled as she gave Bella a piece of her bun. “Is it you who’s been clearing the snow over at Grandmother’s?”

“Well, it’s nice for Inga-Lill and Affe to be able to do other things when they come here. And I need the exercise.”

He patted his stomach.

“Hello!”

They heard Sanna’s voice on the stairs. Bella jumped up, barking.

“Down here,” called Rebecka.

“Hi,” said Sanna, and came down. “It’s okay, I like dogs.”

She was speaking to Sivving, who was holding on to Bella’s collar.

She bent down and let Bella sniff at her face. Sivving looked serious.

“Sanna Strandgård,” he said. “I read about your brother. It was a terrible thing. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” said Sanna, her lap full of friendly dog. “Rebecka, Curt rang. He’s on his way with the keys.”

Sivving stood up.

“Coffee?” he asked.

Sanna nodded and accepted a thick china mug with a pattern of brown and yellow flowers around the top. Sivving offered her the bag of buns so that she could dunk one in her coffee.

“They’re good,” said Rebecka. “Who’s been baking? Was it you?”

Sivving’s reply was an embarrassed grunt.

“Oh, that’s Mary Kuoppa. She can’t cope with the idea that there’s a freezer somewhere in the village that isn’t full of decent buns.”

Rebecka smiled at his pronunciation of “Mary.” He said it so that it rhymed with “Harry.”

“The poor woman’s called Mary, surely?” said Sanna, and laughed.

“Well, that’s what the teacher at our school thought too," said Sivving, brushing a few crumbs off the cloth; Bella licked them up straightaway. “But Mary just used to stare out of the window and pretend she didn’t realize he was talking to her when he said ‘Maaaary.’ ”

This time he sounded like a bleating sheep. Rebecka and Sanna started giggling, and looked at each other like a couple of schoolgirls. Suddenly it was as if all the awkwardness between them had been swept away.

I still care about her, in spite of everything, thought Rebecka.

“Wasn’t there somebody in the village called Slark?” she asked. “After the parents’ idol, Slark Gabble?”

“No,” laughed Sivving, “that must have been somewhere else. There’s never been anybody called Slark in this village. Then again, when your grandmother was young she knew a girl she felt really sorry for. She was very delicate when she was born, and because they didn’t think she was going to survive, they got the schoolteacher to do an emergency baptism. The teacher was called Fredrik Something-or-other. Anyway, the little girl lived, and then of course she was to be baptized properly by the priest. Of course, the priest understood only Swedish, and the parents only spoke Tornedalen Finnish. So the priest picked up the child and asked the parents what she was to be called. The parents thought he was asking who had baptized the child, so they answered,
‘Feki se kasti,’
it was Fredrik who baptized her. And so the priest wrote
‘Fekisekasti’
in the church register. And you know how people respected the priest in those days. The child was called Fekisekasti for the rest of her life.”

Rebecka glanced at the clock. Curt was bound to be here by now. She could catch the flight, even if there wasn’t an awful lot of time.

“Thanks for the coffee,” she said, and stood up.

“Are you off?” asked Sivving. “Was it just a flying visit?”

“Arrived yesterday, leaving today,” replied Rebecka with a brief smile.

“You know how it is with these career women,” said Sanna to Sivving. “Always on the move.”

Rebecka pulled on her gloves with jerky movements.

“This wasn’t exactly a pleasure trip,” she said.

“I’ll hang the key up in the usual place,” she went on, turning to Sivving.

“Come back in the spring,” said Sivving. “Drive out to the old cottage at Jiekajärvi. Do you remember in the old days, when we used to go up there? Your grandfather and I took the snowmobile. And you and your grandmother and Maj-Lis and the kids skied all the way.”

"I’d like to do that," said Rebecka, and discovered that she was telling the truth.

The cottage, she thought. It was the only place grandmother allowed herself to sit still. Once the berries picked that day had been cleaned. Or the birds that had been shot had been plucked and drawn.

She could see her grandmother now, absorbed in reading a story while Rebecka played cards or a board game with her grandfather. Because the cottage got so damp when nobody was there, the pack of cards had swollen to double its size. The board game was warped and uneven, and it was difficult to balance the pieces on it. But it didn’t matter.

And the feeling of security, falling asleep as the adults sat chatting around the table beside you. Or slipping into dreams to the sound of Grandmother washing up in the red plastic bowl, with the heat radiating from the stove.

“It was good to see you,” said Sivving. “Really good. Wasn’t it, Bella?”