The world shrinks in the snow. Collapses into a dark space that contains everything under the atmosphere. Packed together into a sluggish black hole.
You’re hiding secrets, Malin thinks. You dark old Ostgota forest. The snow is harder than last time, the crust is bearing my weight. Maybe the cold has slowly turned the snow into ice? An ice age created in just a few months, forever changing the vegetation, the landscape, the tone of the forest. The trees around them are rough, abandoned ancient pillars.
One foot in front of the other.
Of all the children whom no one sees, who are abandoned, whose fathers and mothers don’t care about them, who are forsaken by the world, some will always fall out, go mad, and the world that deserted them will have to take the consequences.
In Karin’s Thailand.
In Janne’s Bosnia and Rwanda.
In Stockholm.
In Linkoping.
In Ljungsbro, Blasvadret.
It’s no more complicated than that, Malin thinks. Look after those who are small, those who are weak. Show them love. There is no innate evil. Evil is created. But I still believe that there is such a thing as innate goodness. But not now, not in this forest; goodness fled from here long ago. Here there is only survival.
Aching fingers in gloves that can’t be made thick enough.
‘Fuck, it’s cold,’ Zeke says, and it feels as if Malin’s heard him say that a thousand times in the past month.
Her legs are becoming less and less willing the more darkness descends, the more the cold seeps into her body. Her toes have vanished, as well as her fingers. Not even pain is left.
The Murvall cabin lies cold and deserted. The snowfall has erased any trace of ski tracks.
Malin and Zeke stand still in front of the cabin.
Listening, but there is nothing to hear, only an odourless, silent winter forest around them.
But I feel it, I feel it, you’re close now.
I must have nodded off, the stove is cold, no burning lumps of wood. I’m freezing, have to get the fire going again, so it’s warm when they come to let me in.
My hole is my home.
Has always been my only home. The flat on Tanneforsvagen was never home. It was just rooms where I slept and thought and tried to understand.
I get the wood ready, light a match, but my fingers slip.
I’m freezing.
But it has to be warm when they come to let me in, when I’m to receive her love.
‘There’s nothing here, Fors. Listen to me.’
The clearing in front of the cabin: a completely soundless place, encircled by trees, by the forest, and an impenetrable darkness.
‘You’re wrong, Zeke.’
‘It’s going to be completely dark in five minutes. I’m going back now.’
‘Just a bit further,’ Malin says, and starts walking.
They walk perhaps four hundred metres into the dense forest before Zeke says, ‘Okay, we’re going back.’
‘Just a bit further.’
‘No.’
And Malin turns round, walks back, never sees the clump of trees fifty metres further on, where grey smoke is starting to seep out of a narrow chimney in the roof of an earthen cellar.
The engine roars as the car gets going properly, just as they are passing the golf course at Vreta Kloster.
Peculiar, Malin thinks. They leave the flags out over the winter. I’ve never noticed them before. It’s like they’ve hung them out in someone’s honour.
Then she says, ‘Let’s go and see Rakel Murvall. She knows where he is.’
‘You’re mad, Malin. You’re not going within five hundred metres of the old woman. I’ll make sure of that.’
‘She knows where he is.’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
‘Yes, it does.’
‘No. She’s reported you for harassment. Turning up there now would be career suicide.’
‘Shit.’ Malin bangs the dashboard. ‘Take me back to my car. It’s in the multistorey near McDonald’s.’
