“We’re going to visit your mom.”
With some effort, we managed to open the heavy iron gate, but then we couldn’t figure out how to close it again. We left it open. Justine knew exactly where the grave was; she led us straight for a while, then to the right. The stone was tall and white and there was a name that I no longer remember.
“I wonder what she looks like now,” I said. “Probably just bones left. And a lot of hair. They say that hair keeps growing on the dead when they’re in the casket. Hair and nails, too.”
“I don’t want to be a skeleton!” shrieked Jill. “I don’t want my fingernails to keep growing!”
“Nobody does,” I said.
Justine said, “You have to have a skeleton inside yourself, or you’ll fall into a heap.”
We wandered toward the white building which was a bit farther in. An old man was right behind it, raking the pathway.
“That’s the house of the dead,” I said. “The bodies lie in there, the ones that need to be buried, and wait their turn.”
The old man stopped raking and yelled at us. We pretended not to hear. We hid behind a hedge. After a while, he hung up the rake and left. He went through the gate and shut it firmly behind him. Now we were alone in the cemetery.
There was a rain barrel beside the house of the dead. There was a great deal of rain in the barrel, which I saw when I peered in, and the sides were slick with algae.
“Let’s play fish,” I said, because I noticed that Jill was going to say that she wanted to go home.
“What do you mean, play fish?” asked Justine.
“Aquarium,” I said. “The rain barrel can be our aquarium.”
Jill said, “We shouldn’t be playing here.”
“The old guy’s gone.”
It was totally quiet. The wind moved through the birch leaves, but no birds. They must have left for warmer climates already. I remember all this so well. It’s strange. I was only seven years old.
“Justine’s going to be the fish,” I said, and noticed that she wanted to protest, but then pulled herself together as if she were gathering courage to say yes.
“Do I have to take my clothes off?” she asked.
“What do you think, Jill? Should she take off her clothes?”
Jill bit her lip and nodded. Then she began to giggle; she had this way of suddenly exploding into giggles. I was giggling, too. We told her to take off her clothes, and she did so. She didn’t have to. Everyone has free will. She probably liked it somehow? Maybe she liked it when Flora put her in the washtub? Otherwise, why tell us about it?
There were pee marks in her underwear; I saw that when she put them aside. She had goose bumps. She couldn’t climb in the rain barrel by herself, so we had to help her. There was a splash when she slid in. She screamed a bit; the water was cold against her naked tummy.
“Now you’re our fish,” I said.
She splashed a little, pretending to swim.
“We’ll give you some food. What do fish eat?”
“They eat… worms.”
Something happened with Justine, she stood straight up like a rod in the barrel and her eyes were wide open.
“No worms! I’m not that kind of fish! I only eat leaves!”
“Be quiet,” I said. “Fish don’t talk.”
We pulled some leaves from the bushes and rained them down on Justine in the rain barrel. She calmed down. Her hair was wet, and her teeth were starting to chatter.
I don’t know what came over me, what was going on with me; I was just a child, seven years old. I saw the hose hanging next to the wall of the house; I unrolled it and turned on the faucet.
“You’re going to get more water in your aquarium,” I said to Justine and she began to jump up and down and protest.
I’ve thought about it since then. I really wanted to see her with water up to her chin, yes even to her mouth and nose. I knew she could drown, but that was something that didn’t affect me. Or rather, it would be interesting to see how that could happen. When people drowned. I pulled the hose to the edge of the rain barrel and began to spray water into it.
First she screamed and flailed around wildly. I couldn’t stop myself from spraying her right on the head. Water streamed down her face and into the edges of her mouth. Afterwards I thought it must have been really cold. Now the water was up to her chin.
Jill said, “You should turn off the water.”
It was almost as if I couldn’t help myself.
“Turn it off, Berit! Turn it off!”
When I didn’t react, she went and turned it off herself. Justine was so cold she was shivering violently.
I walked around a while, thinking. Then I took a stick from the ground.
I held it a bit over the edge.
“Look! I’m fishing!”
Jill ran and got a stick, too.
“Who’ll get a bite?” I called out. “Who will get a bite first?”
Maybe I thought that she would grab the sticks and we could pull her out and she could get her clothes back on. But she didn’t do it. She stood there in the barrel and howled. I hit her with the stick, right over one of her ears. Jill looked at me, and then she did the same thing.
If she only would have cried.
Then I remember that we heard footsteps on the gravel, and Jill and I threw away the sticks and ran. Good Lord, how we ran, down the hill which is now the meadow of remembrance for those who have been cremated, out the gate and into the forest to the right, and then we threw ourselves into the moss. I don’t think we thought so much about Justine, how she was doing, if we had hurt her. The only thing we were worried about was that she might tattle, that we would get caught.
She couldn’t sleep. The lit clock on the wall showed it was twelve-thirty. Tor was lying with his face toward her; he was snoring slightly and audibly. She got up. There must be some sleeping pills in the cabinet, once she had received a prescription for Sobril when her nerves were acting up, but she’d never opened the package. Yes, there it was. Maybe the medicine was too old; she couldn’t read the date without her glasses. She popped a few of the small white tablets into her mouth and swallowed them with a bit of water she poured into her toothbrush mug.
Chapter THIRTEEN
Hans Peter’s apartment was on Fyrspannsgatan with a view over the cemetery. On All Saints Day, he usually lit two candles and placed them in the living room window. He would stand still for a minute. Outside, the grave votives shone their solemn light. It was the only time of the year that the cemetery parking lot was full. Cars were even parked along Sandviksvagen.
At that time, with darkness like a cape over city and countryside, it was natural that he thought about his sister. She would have been thirty-eight years old now, probably a happy mother of two children and maybe a preschool teacher or the owner of an organic food store. This was how he imagined her. She and her husband would most likely have a single family house in Stuvsta, near their parents. Oh, his mother would have been happy.
This morning he woke from the light and the sound of a snowplow driving back and forth, clearing the sidewalks. An ache, almost a real pain, was situated behind his temples. He hadn’t been able to sleep when he came home at five in the morning; he dozed a bit, dreamed strange and sick dreams. What was the time now? Ten-thirty. Might as well get dressed.
