The True Deceiver (3 page)

“I can’t hear!” shouted Anna Aemelin. “Living? Has something happened?”

“Liver,” the storekeeper repeated. “There’s some fresh liver coming in with Liljeberg and I’ll put some aside specially for you, Miss Aemelin, a fine piece of liver…” And then he vanished in the snowstorm; another problem on the line. Anna drew the curtain on the world outside and went back to her book, relieved. Actually, she didn’t much care for pea soup. Or for mail.

When Edvard Liljeberg came back from town, he took off his skis and dropped his backpack on the shop steps. His back hurt, and he wasn’t in a mood to chat with anyone. He dumped the storekeeper’s supplies in a cardboard carton and carried them, still wet with snow, into the shop.

“That took time,” the shopkeeper said. He was lounging behind the counter, still in a bad temper at losing his shop assistant. Liljeberg didn’t answer but went back to the table in the enclosed porch to sort the mail. Katri Kling had seen him from her window as he skied up to the building, and now all at once she was on the porch looking over his shoulder, cigarette in her mouth as usual, examining the mail through the smoke. “That’s Miss Aemelin’s mail,” she said. It was easy to recognize. Most of her letters were decorated with flowers, and the addresses were handwritten by very small children. Katri went on, “Were you going to take it up to her straight away?”

“Can’t a man catch his breath?” Liljeberg said. “Being the postman in this village isn’t always such a picnic.”

She could easily have remarked on the heavy skiing weather, or asked how he could even see the road, or complained about the town not getting its ploughs out – anything at all to show interest or pretend to show interest, the way people talk to make things a little more pleasant – but no, not Katri Kling. There she stood squinting through her cigarette smoke, her black hair like a mane shrouding her face as she leaned over the table. She had wrapped herself in a blanket against the cold and held it closed with both hands clenched. She looks like a witch, thought Edvard Liljeberg.

“I can take the mail up to Miss Aemelin,” she said.

“I can’t let you do that; it’s the postman’s job to deliver the mail. It’s a position of trust.”

Katri lifted her face and opened her eyes at him; in the hard light on the porch they were truly yellow. “Trust,” she said. “Don’t you trust me?” She paused and then repeated, “I can take the mail up to Miss Aemelin. It’s important to me.”

“Are you trying to help?”

“You know I’m not,” Katri said. “I’m doing it entirely for my own sake. Do you trust me or don’t you?”

Afterwards Liljeberg thought that she might anyway have said that, since she was going out that way with the dog in any case, it would be no trouble. But at least Katri Kling was honest – he had to admit that.

* * *

Anna called again. “I can hear you better now,” the storekeeper said. “A small tin of pea soup, you said, and butter. Liljeberg has come with the mail, and he brought the liver. It’s fresh, straight from the belly, so to speak! I’ve set some aside for you specially, Miss, but it won’t be Liljeberg who brings it this time, but Miss Kling. She’s headed out your way.”

“Who?”

“My old shop assistant, Katri Kling. She’s bringing your liver, she’s on her way.”

“But liver,” Anna objected, but she was just too tired. “Liver is so awful-looking and so hard to prepare… But if you were kind enough to set some aside… This Miss… Kling, you said? Does she know to use the kitchen door?”

And then the line began howling again the way it always did in winter. Anna stood and listened for a while, then she went out to the kitchen and put on some coffee.

Mats came home from the boatyard as dusk came on. In winter, the men in Västerby worked only in mild weather to save on fuel, and the boat shed closed before dark to save electricity. They were very thrifty. Mats was always the last to leave.

“So they got you to leave,” the storekeeper said. “I’ll bet you’d sit and sandpaper in the dark if they’d let you.”

“It’s planking now,” Mats answered. “Can I have a Coca-Cola on our tab?”

“Yes, sir, right away! Such a shame that your dear sister doesn’t want to wait on you any more. Really too bad; she was so quick in the shop. So, planking. You don’t say. So you do planking too. Who would have thought?”

Mats nodded without listening and drank his Coca-Cola at the counter, slowly. In the small, overcrowded room, he seemed very large and tall. And his hair was long, much too long, and jet-black like his sister’s. Not local hair. He seemed to have forgotten that he wasn’t alone. But when Katri came down the stairs, he turned around and the siblings exchanged an
imperceptible
nod, a little signal of solidarity that was theirs alone. The dog lay down by the door to wait.

The storekeeper said, “So I hear you’re delivering the mail to the rabbit villa. Here’s the groceries. Watch the liver so it doesn’t drip.”

“She doesn’t like liver,” Katri said. “As you well know. She gave that blood pudding to Fru Sundblom.”

“Liver isn’t blood pudding. Anyway, she ordered it. And remember to go in by the kitchen. Miss Aemelin is particular about her visitors.”

This exchange was quiet and hostile, like two wary animals circling for attack.

He doesn’t forget, this little storekeeper, he hasn’t forgiven me that time. His lust was ludicrous, and I let him know it. I wasn’t objective. Things get out of hand every time I lose my objectivity. I have to get away from here.

* * *

The snow was very blue in the early twilight. Katri motioned the dog to wait at the turnoff and walked on up the hill with the wind at her back. No one had shovelled.

Anna Aemelin opened the kitchen door and said, “Miss Kling, how kind of you. And in this weather, there was really no need…”

The woman who entered the house was tall, dressed in some kind of shaggy fur coat, and she didn’t smile when she said hello.

It smells of insecurity. This house has been quiet for a very long time. She looks like I thought she would – like a rabbit.

Anna repeated, “Yes, it was nice of you… I mean, it’s important to get my mail, but nevertheless…” Anna paused a moment for a reply and then went on. “I’ve made some coffee. You do drink coffee, don’t you?”

“No,” said Katri pleasantly. “I don’t drink coffee.”

Anna was taken aback, more astonished than hurt. Everyone drinks coffee if it’s offered. It’s only proper; you do it for the hostess’s sake. She said, “Tea, perhaps?”

“No thank you,” said Katri Kling.

“Miss Kling,” said Anna abruptly, “you can put your boots by the door. Water will damage the rugs.”

Now I like her better. Let her be an opponent, let me struggle against resistance, amen.

They went into the parlour.

I should have got one of her books. No, I shouldn’t, that would have been dishonest.

“Sometimes,” said Anna Aemelin, “sometimes I think it might be nice to have a wall-to-wall carpet in here. Something light and very soft. Don’t you agree, Miss Kling?”

“No. That would be a shame on such a pretty floor.”

Naturally she wants a fluffy floor. Carpet or no carpet, it’s all fluffy in here anyway – hot and hairy. Maybe there’s more air upstairs. We’ll have to crack the windows at night or Mats won’t be able to sleep.

Anna Aemelin had her glasses on a thin chain around her neck and now she lifted them, breathed on the lenses and started rubbing them with a corner of the tablecloth. They were probably covered with fluff.

“Miss Aemelin, have you ever had rabbits?”

“Excuse me?”

“Have you had rabbits?”

“No… how do you mean? The Liljebergs keep rabbits, but I understand they’re very troublesome animals…” Anna answered automatically in her own vague manner, her tone of voice never ending a sentence. Then she made a move towards the coffee pot and remembered – this guest didn’t drink coffee. Suddenly, sharply, she asked, “And why, Miss Kling, why would I have rabbits? Do you have rabbits?”

“No, I have a dog. A German shepherd.”

A dog? Anna’s attention began to wander in a different direction. You never knew about dogs…

The untouched coffee service troubled the hostess. She rose and remarked that they needed more light. It was already growing dark, and she lit one softly shaded lamp after another, then suggested that Katri take home an autograph. Anna had beautiful handwriting. When she finished signing her name, she began as usual to draw a rabbit, ears first, stopped herself, and took a fresh sheet of paper. Katri had gone out to the kitchen and put the mail on the kitchen table and the groceries on the counter. Pink juice ran from the package of liver.

“How horrid,” said Anna behind her. “Is it blood? I can’t stand the sight of blood…”

“Leave it. I’ll put it away.”

But Anna had opened the package and the liver lay there exposed, brownish red, swollen with blood, small white seams running through the meat. She went pale.

“Miss Aemelin, I’ll give it to my dog. I’ll take it away. I’m going now.”

Quickly, Anna began to explain. She had always been so fearful that things might begin to smell. You put them away and forget them and they start to smell and you start worrying that they’ll go bad and have to be thrown out… “And you can’t throw out food, the way the world is today…”

“I understand,” said Katri. “You hide things, and then they start to smell. Why don’t you stop buying things that can start to smell? If you loathe organ meats, then say so. Why do you order liver?”

“It wasn’t me, it was him! He was nice enough to put some aside…”

“The storekeeper,” said Katri slowly, “the storekeeper – remember this – is not a nice man. He is a very malicious person. He knows you’re afraid of liver.”

Outside in the back yard, Katri lit a cigarette. Darkness was coming on quickly.

Anna Aemelin hurried to the veranda window and watched her guest go down the hill, a tall dark shape, and down on the road there were two silhouettes, as if a big wolf had come out of the twilight to join her. Side by side they walked back towards the village. Anna stayed at the window in irresolute anxiety. Maybe a cup of coffee would be nice… but suddenly she didn’t want one. It was a small but definite insight. She didn’t like coffee. In fact, she never had.

W
HEN
K
ATRI GOT HOME
, she sat down on the bed with her coat on. She was very tired. What had been won? How much had been lost? The first meeting was so terribly important. Katri closed her eyes and tried to get a clear picture of what had happened, but she couldn’t manage it. The picture kept slipping away, as soft and diffuse as Anna Aemelin herself, and her shaded lamps and impersonal, well-tuned room and the tentative way they had spoken to one another. But the liver on the kitchen counter, that was tangible, a reality. Did I take it with me for her sake? No. Was it for my own sake, to win points? No, no, I don’t think so. It was a purely practical act; there was this bloody thing that
frightened
her, and it had to go. I wasn’t being underhand or dishonest. But you never know, you can never really be sure, never completely certain that you haven’t tried to ingratiate yourself in some hateful way – flattery, empty adjectives, the whole sloppy, disgusting machinery that people engage in with impunity all the time everywhere to help them get what they want; maybe an advantage, or not even that, mostly just because it’s the way it’s done, being as agreeable as possible and getting off the hook… No, I don’t think I made myself especially agreeable. I lost this opportunity. But at least I played an honourable game.

Mats had done some new drawings. They lay out on the table as usual. He never talked about his boat designs, but he wanted Katri to see them. The drawings were always on the same blue-squared paper that made it easier to figure scale, and the boat was the same: quite large, with an inboard motor and a cabin. Katri noticed that he had altered the curve of the hull. And the cabin was lower. She went carefully through his notes – cost of lumber, motor, labour – facts she would need to check to make sure he wasn’t cheated. The drawings were beautifully done. And they weren’t just boyish dreams of a boat; they were competent work. Katri knew that they represented long and patient observation, the love and care a person devotes to a single thing, a single overarching idea.

Katri had borrowed books for Mats in town,
everything
the library had on boats and boat construction and stories of great adventures at sea, mostly boys’ books. And at the same time, almost apologetically, Katri had tried to get him to read what she called literature.

“I read them, I do,” Mats said, “but I don’t get anything out of them. Nothing much happens. I understand they’re very good, but they just make me sad. They’re almost always about people with problems.”

“But your seamen, your shipwrecked seamen? Don’t they have problems?”

Mats shook his head and smiled. “That’s different,” he explained. “And anyway, they don’t talk about it so much.”

But Katri went on. If Mats got to read four of his own books, then he had to read one of hers, just one. She worried that her brother would lose himself in a world where the bad parts of life were hidden away behind falsely foursquare adventures. Mats read Katri’s books to make her happy, but he didn’t talk about them. In the beginning, she would ask, and he would say only, “Yes, that was extremely fine.” So she stopped asking.

They rarely talked to each other. They owned a silence together that was peaceful and straightforward.

It had been dark for some time when Mats came home. He had probably been with the Liljebergs. Katri didn’t like that. He was always hanging around the Liljebergs, hoping they would talk about boats. They were nice to Mats the way people are nice to a house pet. They let him hang around, but he didn’t count. Her brother didn’t count. Katri put out the food and they ate as usual, each with a book. These reading meals had always been the most tranquil moment of the day, a complete and blessed peace. But this evening, Katri couldn’t read. Again and again, she returned to Anna Aemelin’s house, and again and again she left it in defeat. She had ruined everything for Mats. Katri raised her eyes from her book, which she no longer understood, and looked at her brother. The lamp between them had a broken shade and the light fell on his face in a gentle network of light and shadow that made her think of the dappled shadow of leaves under trees or the sun reflecting on a sand bottom. No one but Katri could see how beautiful he was. All at once she had an overwhelming desire to speak to her brother about the implacable goal that never left her thoughts: to explain her notion of honour, defend herself, no, not defend, just explain, just talk to him about everything it was unthinkable to talk about to anyone but Mats.