The True Deceiver (12 page)

“Really?” Katri said. The word came out like a blow. “You don’t say! An improper topic?” She had gone pale, and she took an uncertain step towards Anna.

“What’s the matter?” Anna said, backing away. “Don’t you feel well?”

“No, I don’t feel well. I feel really ill when I see how you throw money down the drain for no reason at all. Because what you throw away, what you so utterly despise, is quite simply possibilities. Don’t you
understand
? The possibility of becoming so secure you don’t have to think about money, the possibility of being generous, the potential for new ideas that can’t grow without money. Without money, a person’s thinking gets narrow. It shrivels! You have no right to let them cheat you this way…” Katri had been speaking in a very quiet voice – a new, frightening voice – and now she stopped. The silence stretched on and grew awkward.

“I don’t understand,” Anna said.

“No. You don’t understand.”

“You’re so pale. Is there anything I can do..?”

“Yes, there is something you can do,” Katri said. “You can let me manage your affairs. I know how. I do. I can double your income.” When the silence descended again, she added, “I beg your pardon. I’ve said too much.”

“Indeed,” said Anna. “But you seem to be feeling better.” She was using her mother’s voice, that
long-gone
, benevolent, supercilious voice. “My dear Katri, you may do precisely as you like. But you mustn’t get the idea that I am in any way deficient in security or generosity. And my ideas, I can assure you, are quite independent of my income.” Anna gave Katri a little nod, a slight flexure of the neck, and left the room. On the stairs, she felt suddenly exhausted and had to stop for a moment. Then it passed.

“Rashly?” Anna whispered contemptuously. “Rashly? She, Katri, who thinks she never speaks rashly? And what did she mean? What is it that’s my fault?”

Downstairs the dog lay glaring at her with his yellow eyes, the superior, dangerous dog that she was not to touch or feed. For the first time, Anna went straight over to the big animal and clapped him on the head, and it was a powerful clap that was anything but friendly.

* * *

“Dear Sirs, We regret that Miss Aemelin has not had an earlier opportunity to answer your query of the…” Katri looked at the query. It was two years old, but maybe it wasn’t too late. The offer was very advantageous. Katri set down her pen and stared blankly out the window. Beside her on the table she had a
Guide to Business Correspondence
and an English dictionary. The letters in English were difficult, but she managed. Teeth clenched, Katri wrote her stumbling but exceedingly explicit letters to the people who, for their various reasons, saw the flowery rabbits as a source of profit.

The unavoidably simple wording of the letters gave them an air of finality that was almost brutal. Every time Katri managed to inflate a fee or trade a one-time payment for a royalty, she noted her success in the black notebook. She also noted down the amounts preserved by saying no to all sorts of charities, amateur enthusiasms, and general cries for help from
impractical
but obstinate individuals. Everything was written into the notebook, every penny honourably recorded. Katri told herself it was money she had earned for Mats by not giving in and never rashly asking for too much. The answers she got to her letters were cold but respectful, and very rarely did she have to modify her demands. Neither party added a polite closing sentence about the weather.

On the cover of the black notebook, Katri pasted a label on which she wrote “For Mats”. This serious game of challenging and recovering became a utilitarian game of hazard that occupied her thoughts
continuously
. Katri was in the grip of the collector’s peculiar mania. Every time she wrote a captured sum of money into her notebook, she felt the collector’s deep
satisfaction
at finally owning a rare and expensive specimen. Scrupulously, Katri figured out what should rightfully belong to Anna and what could belong to Mats. Into Anna’s pot she put whatever Anna herself would have accepted. Of what Katri managed to recover or repair, Anna got two-thirds. But when it came to people who wanted something without offering anything in return, the whole profit went to Mats. There were
borderline
cases where Anna’s pliancy could have meant additional sales over the long run, and these Katri divided evenly.

* * *

“So the plastics company is all set,” Katri said. “It went better than I expected. And their option won’t collide with United Rubber.”

“Really,” Anna said.

“There’s another letter from your publisher.”

Anna read it and remarked that it wasn’t as friendly as usual.

“Of course not. They know they can’t cheat you any more. We want a royalty next time instead of a flat fee. I hope you haven’t given them an option for future books.”

“Maybe. I don’t remember exactly…”

“There’s nothing about it in your papers. For that matter, you should think about changing publishers if they won’t give you better terms.”

Anna straightened up, but before she could say anything, Katri continued. “Here’s an amateur theatre that wants to use flowery rabbits. They paint the flowers themselves. They don’t have any money, but they charge for the tickets. I’ve suggested a very small royalty.”

“No,” said Anna flatly. “Nothing at all.”

“They’ve agreed to two percent. We can’t change our position. Here’s a textile company, three percent, I’ve raised it to five. Probably wind up at three-and-a-half, four tops. No, don’t say it. They just lose respect if we don’t try. And this is United Rubber again. They want to reduce the royalty so they can put a speaker in the rabbits. It will be expensive, but they’ll raise the price. What can we accept?”

“What do they say?”

“Three percent.”

“No, I mean the rabbits.”

“The letter doesn’t tell.”

“Rabbits don’t make sounds. Though I think they squeal if they’re scared. Or when they die.”

“Please, Anna. This is work we have to do. A job.”

“Yes and no,” Anna burst out. “I don’t want a squealing rabbit, it’s ridiculous.”

“But you don’t ever have to see it. It’s going to squeal somewhere in Central Europe. And nobody there knows you, and you don’t know them.”

“What do they want to give us?”

“Three percent.”

“Two!” Anna shouted and leaned across the table, her neck turning bright red. “Two percent! One percent for me, and one for you.”

Katri was silent. When her silence continued, Anna understood that she’d said something important. She repeated it. “One for me and one for you. We’ll share. We’ll share Central Europe.” It sounded adventurous. She said it again. Katri drew a deep breath and said, with a certain chill, that it was out of the question. But if Anna had no objection, they could assign half the royalty from United Rubber to Mats.

“Do so,” said Anna. “That’s fine. And not another word about United Rubber, ever.”

Katri opened the black notebook and, in her own sweeping hand, wrote, “Mats 1%”.

“Is there anything else of importance?”

“No, Anna,” Katri said. “We’ve done what matters most.”

A
T TWILIGHT
, just as work in the boat shed stopped for the day, Katri walked down to the fish piers. The wind was blowing hard again. The Liljeberg brothers were walking home, and Katri met them. She stopped in front of Edvard Liljeberg. The others walked on.

“It’s blowing so hard,” Katri said. “Could we get out of the wind for a moment?”

“I don’t know,” Liljeberg answered. “What’s it about?” He recalled their last conversation quite clearly, and he was a little wary of her.

“It’s about a boat. I want to order a boat.”

Liljeberg just looked at her. So Katri shouted into the wind, “A boat! I want you to build a boat for Mats!”

He didn’t answer but turned back to the shed and unlocked the door. Katri had never been inside. The wind was making a racket against the metal roof, but the vast room seemed hugely calm and peaceful. The hull of a boat under construction was visible in the
half-light
, its giant ribcage in silhouette against the far wall of windows. Broad boards that would soon be planking hung in bundles from the ceiling, and there was a smell of shavings and tar and turpentine. Katri understood why her brother always wanted to come back here to this protected world where everything was correct and clean. She turned to Liljeberg and asked if he had time for a large boat with a cabin.

“How large?”

“Nine and a half metres. Carvel-built.”

“We may very well have time. But it’s likely to be expensive. What about the motor?”

“A four-cylinder paraffin engine,” Katri answered. “A forty- or fifty-horsepower Volvo Penta. Mats has done the boat designs. I think they look good. Though I know nothing about boats.”

“It sounds like you know quite a bit,” said Liljeberg.

“I’ve gone through his notes.”

“Well, well, yes, he ought to know a thing or two by now. Maybe I could have a look at those drawings.”

“There’s just one small difficulty,” Katri said. “I don’t want Mats to know about this until I’m sure.”

“You mean sure you can pay for it.”

Katri nodded.

“And can you?”

“Yes. But not now. Later in the spring.”

“I have to say”, Liljeberg said, “that, everything considered, this is a pretty strange order. What am I going to tell the others? There has to be a purchaser. Is it Miss Aemelin?”

“No. No, it’s not.”

“And you don’t want to figure in this?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Listen here,” said Liljeberg, looking her straight in the eye. “What is it you want me to do? Am I supposed to tell stories on your behalf because you can’t do it yourself?”

Katri didn’t answer. She walked over to the wall where the tools hung, gleaming, each in its own rack, in perfect order. Tentatively, she touched one tool after the other. Just like her brother, Liljeberg thought. They take things in their hands the same way. I can’t give her away. With this kind of dubious order in the works, they’ll be all over her again, the little witch. And if she can’t pay for it, I’m sure I can sell it to someone else. He said, quite brusquely, “Let’s go. I’ll see what I can do.”

* * *

Later that evening, Liljeberg came to the rabbit house and asked for Mats. He’d heard something about plans for a boat, and he wanted to have a look at them. They went through the drawings together. “That’s very good, right in here,” he said. “But there’s room for improvement. Bring these with you in the morning. But don’t tell anyone.”

At home, he said they’d received an order for a
carvel-built
, nine-and-a-half metre, and the purchaser wanted to remain anonymous.

“And when did you hear about this?”

“A while ago,” Liljeberg said, and the lie came easily, like a gift to someone you value.

A
NNA HAD GROWN QUIET AND SULLEN
. A nasty
suspicion
had taken hold of her, namely, that she, a kind and friendly person, had been thoroughly cheated. For the first time in her life, Anna became distrustful, and the feeling did not agree with her or with those around her. She went around brooding about all of them – neighbours, publishers, innocent little children, everyone. Absolutely everyone had cheated her.

She dug back in time and stopped only when she got to Papa and Mama. And, of course, Sylvia. Everything outside the rabbit house became an uncertain world of pettiness and secret ridicule. No one respects gullible people, Katri had said. And now Katri sat there again with her papers and her patient, insistent voice urging Anna to listen, to stop working against her own interests by simply saying no before she even knew what it was all about, because this time there was a large sum of money involved, and think what you could do with so much money if only you could see how much more it might become if the party of the second part could be made to deal honourably, and so forth, and so on.

“Katri,” Anna said, “now listen to what I’m going to tell you. It’s this: that I would much rather be cheated than to go around distrusting everyone.”

Then Katri made a mistake. “But it’s too late for that, isn’t it?” she said. “You can’t make that choice, because you already don’t trust them any more. Isn’t that right?”

Anna stood up from the table and left the room. In the hall, she opened wide the door to the yard and then walked right over to Katri’s dog and whispered, “Get out of here!” Her hands could feel the big animal’s powerful muscles under his rough coat, but Anna was not afraid. She gave the dog a substantial shove and got him out in the snow. She grabbed a stick from the woodpile and threw it as far as she could, shouting, “Fetch! Retrieve!” The dog just looked at her without moving. Anna threw another stick. “Fetch! Play! Do as I tell you!” She was sobbing with rage. It was very cold. When she went back inside, she left the door wide open.

* * *

Anna persisted. Every time she knew the house was empty, she chased the dog outdoors. Stubbornly, teeth clenched, she threw sticks into the woods, time after time, day after day. Finally the dog retrieved one, very slowly, then drew aside with his ears laid back and stood motionless in the snow and stared at her.

“What are you doing?” asked Mats, who had come up the hill and stopped at the corner of the house.

“Teddy’s playing,” Anna said, startled. “All dogs like to retrieve…”

“Not this one,” Mats said. “He’s not allowed to take orders from anyone but Katri. Come inside.” Mats had never before spoken to Anna sternly. He held the door open and she walked quickly past him into the hall.

New books had arrived. “Take whatever you like,” Anna said. “But I don’t want to read this evening.”

Mats picked up the books one after another and put them down again. Finally he said anxiously that trained dogs were different, you couldn’t upset them and confuse them. You had to be careful with them. Katri had never made the dog retrieve.