Midwinter Sacrifice

So here I go, flying out of the cramped mortuary box, out into the room, out through the basement window (I prefer going that way, even if walls are no obstacle).

And the others?

We only see each other if we both want to, so I’m mostly alone, but I know all the others, like molecules in a great big body.

I want to see Mum. But maybe she doesn’t know I’m here yet? I want to see Dad. I want to talk to them both, explain that I know that nothing is easy, talk to them about my trousers, about my flat, about how clean it was, about the lies, about the fact that I was someone, in spite of everything.

My sister?

She had enough problems of her own. I understood, understand that.

So I drift over the fields, over the Roxen, take the long way round to the beach and campsite in Sandvik, over Stjarnorp Castle, where the ruins seem somehow to glow white in the sunlight.

I drift like a song, like little German Nicole in the Eurovision Song Contest: ‘Ein bisschen Frieden, ein bisschen Sonne, das wunsch’ ich mir.’

Then over the forest, dark and thick and full of the very worst secrets. So you’re still here?

I’ve warned you. There are snakes slithering along a woman’s leg, their poisonous fangs biting her genitals bloody.

A glasshouse, a nursery, a vast field of strawberries where I sat as a lad.

Then I drift downwards, past the place of nasty kids. I don’t want to linger there, and on instead to Gottfrid Karlsson’s corner room on the third floor of Vretaliden’s oldest building.

He’s sitting there in his wheelchair, Gottfrid. Old and happy with the life he’s lived, and which he will carry on living for a few years yet.

Malin Fors is sitting opposite him, on a rib-backed chair, on the other side of a table. She is rather subdued, unsure whether the old man opposite has good enough eyesight to meet her gaze.

Don’t believe everything Gottfrid says. But most of it will do as ‘truth’ in your dimension.

The man opposite Malin.

Doses of creatine have made his nose broad and full and red; his cheeks are grey and sunken, but still full of life. His legs are bony under the thin beige fabric of the hospital trousers, his shirt white and well-ironed.

The eyes.

How much can he see? Is he blind?

The instinct of old people. Only life can teach us. When Malin sees him, memories of the summer in the nursing home come back to her. How some of the old people had come to terms with the fact that most of their life was behind them, and had found peace, while others seemed absolutely furious that it would all soon be over.

‘Please don’t worry, Miss Fors. It is Miss Fors, isn’t it? I can only see the difference between light and dark these days, so there’s no need for you to try to catch my gaze.’

One of the peaceful ones, Malin thinks, and leans forward, articulating clearly and speaking louder than usual.

‘So you know why I’m here, Gottfrid?’

‘Nothing wrong with my hearing, Miss Fors.’

‘Sorry.’

‘They read out the story in the paper to me, about the awful thing that’s happened to Cornerhouse-Kalle’s boy.’

‘Cornerhouse-Kalle?’

‘Yes, that’s what everyone called Bengt Andersson’s father. Bad blood in that family, bad blood; nothing wrong with the lad really, but what can you do with blood like that, with that bloody restlessness?’

‘Please, tell me more about Cornerhouse-Kalle.’

‘Kalle? By all means, Miss Fors. Stories are all I have these days.’

‘Then please, tell me the story.’

‘Cornerhouse-Kalle was a legend in this community. They say he was descended from the gypsies who used to stay on a patch of waste ground on the other side of the Motala River, over by Ljung, near the manor. But I don’t know about that. Or maybe what they said was true, that he was the son of the brother and sister at Ljung Manor, the ones everyone knew were together like that. That the gypsies were paid to raise him, and that’s why Cornerhouse-Kalle turned out the way he did.’

‘When was this?’

‘It was in the twenties, I think, that Kalle was born, or the early thirties. This area was different then. There was the factory. And the big farms and the estate. No more than that. Kalle was lost to the rest of us right from the start. You see, he was the blackest of black children. Not in his skin, but inside. As if the doubt had condemned him, as if uncertainty became a sorrow that drove him mad, a sorrow that sometimes made him lose his grip on time and place. They say it was him who set fire to the estate farm, but no one knows. When he was thirteen he could neither read nor write – the master had driven him out of the school in Ljung – and then the county sheriff got him for the first time, for stealing eggs from Farmer Tureman.’

‘Thirteen?’