turned old. Then he was no longer just the Hunter but someone else, and she was disturbed by it but still had to listen, over and over.
They had had a small firm which sold gardening supplies. He operated it together with his best friend Jack. Dora took care of the books; she was very good at numbers.
“You didn’t have any children?”
She had to ask, to draw out the story.
He made a wild grimace.
“No. We never had the chance.”
He was getting closer to the difficult part, the inevitable part.
“One day when I entered the shed…”
She saw it. He had told the story so many times that she now could see the scene in front of her, the details, the colors, even the scent of Dora’s lily-of-the-valley talcum powder which she put under her arms after washing up in the morning.
She saw the other man, the Hunter’s friend, how he leaned over the woman. She saw it as if it were on a book, a Harlequin cover. The woman’s hair in a page cut, black and slick; it fell down over the bench. The man’s shirt of deer leather, somewhat unlaced. She saw their lips come closer. Shaking with lust, her fingers got cold and she had an unusual feeling of breathlessness.
“What happened then?” she whispered and the cat jumped to the floor and went to the door on its straggling legs.
“I don’t know,” he said with a gravelly voice. “I have no idea what happened to them.”
Then she approached the Hunter and touched his cheek. And it was warm in the kitchen and the stove had begun to glow.
“When you’re big, you’re going to forget all about me,” he said, and the cards disappeared into his huge hands.
“Never till the day I die!” she exclaimed, and then she cried, because she was starting to grow now, starting to be a grown person.
“I usually stand on the top of the bluff and scream,” said the Hunter. “That usually helps. People think you’re crazy, and one of these days I’ll end up in the asylum. But it does help to stand on the top of the bluff and scream.”
She went outside. There was a light in the window, but he didn’t look out at her. He sat at the table with the flowery wax tablecloth and played one game of solitaire after another. She climbed all the way to the edge. Wind in her eyes, wind in her mouth when she opened it wide, like at the dentist’s office.
But no scream came out.
“What do your parents say about you coming here?” he asked, and bent his head a little so that he could see her over his glasses.
She almost mentioned the witch woman. But she was older now, and the word was starting to fade.
“A single man has only one thing on his mind,” he muttered.
“I did it! Look! I won!”
“I’m not talking about that now.”
No, she knew that. He was having grown man thoughts which were filling his head and threatening to spill over.
She took her coat and left.
They hunted her down the cliff by the General Bathhouse, which was near her home. But she hadn’t reached home yet. The blonde archangel Berit with her flowing curls; after her, Evy and Gerd, a girl from Stockholm. She had come as a foster child. Her parents had split up and disappeared like smoke in the wind. At least that’s what Justine overheard Flora say to Pappa.
As smoke in the wind.
Gerd was tall, thin, and mouthy. She was drawn into Berit’s radius from the very first day. And she learned the rhymes.
They had not yet managed the worst, to undress her and show her secret to the world and make fun of it. She knew they might succeed one day, and that gave her the strength to flee.
Gerd, with her long, strong legs. She got closer, caught up, knocked her over. She screamed and defended herself, substances dragged under her fingernails.
“Look how she scratched you!” screamed Berit. “You’re bleeding all the way down your neck!”
Gerd sat on her stomach, keeping her arms under her back. She hit her face, one, two, one, two. Pulling her jacket over her head. They were doing something to her pants, roughly, and it was chilling.
It seemed like animal strength came over her and she threw herself to the side. When she tried to run and pull her clothes on at the same time, she sprained her ankle against the stones and fell off the cliff. As darkness came, she glimpsed their eyes, how they whitened and turned away.
Flora found her.
Two girls had gone to her house and had rung the doorbell. Justine has fallen off the cliff. Flora grabbed her coat and came.
“I grabbed my coat and came as soon as I could. Why were you girls running around near the cliff?”
Justine had come to. She was still lying on the ground and looked up in the mist; she couldn’t walk.
What could a person like Flora do in this situation?
“We have to work together, girls. You carry her legs and I’ll carry her shoulders.”
“We were playing here and then Justine slipped and fell, and we got really scared because she was so strange, she, like, didn’t answer us, and so we said, better run for her mom, and so we both ran and Evy was supposed to stay here.”
“I don’t know you,” said Flora looking at Gerd.
“No, I’m the new foster child at the Ostman’s.”
“So you’re with them. What happened to your own parents?”
“They split up and no one wanted me.”
“They didn’t?” Flora sounded moved.
They carried her into the house, laid her on the blue rug. They didn’t look at her. They said that they had to run home now; it was dinner time.
“Go on, then,” said Flora.
When Pappa came home, he took Justine to the hospital in the car. She lay in the back seat, and Flora had turned to her, held her hand.
“They were playing like calves let loose in the meadow,” said Flora. “Aren’t they getting a bit big for that?”
Pappa kept quiet, driving like crazy over the Traneberg bridge. Once at the hospital, he lifted her up and carried her in.
The ankle was broken. Her leg was put in a cast that reached up to her knee. She felt heavy and happy.
“For six weeks, the girl needs to rest and not move around.”
Pappa said, “I’ll get a tutor for her. Summer vacation is almost here.”
Flora said, “I can teach her, if that doesn’t work out.”
Pappa said, “I’m sure you can. But I know a young man who is free right now. My cousin Percy’s son, Mark. I’ll give him some cash if he comes to our place for a few hours a day.”
Mark’s parents were diplomats. They had lived in Washington, D.C., for many years, but had just returned to Stockholm. They did not yet know where they would be going next.
Mark appeared the next day with a bouquet of yellow tulips.
“To the little sickie,” he said and stepped into the room carefully. He was slim and short; his hands were sweaty. His eyes were brown like nuts.
“What do you want to learn, cousin?” he asked with a grown man’s voice.
“Cousin?”
“Your dad and my dad are cousins and that makes us cousins. First cousins once removed, actually.”
She thought about that for a minute.
“All right,” he said. “What do you want to learn, cuz?”
