The Darkest Room

There was no reply, but he went in anyway.

At the steep wooden staircase leading up to the hayloft, he stopped. Then he began to climb. The steps were cold and damp.

When he got to the top, he couldn’t see any hay, just pools of water on the wooden floor.

Katrine was standing over by the wall, with her back to him. She was wearing her white nightgown, but it was soaking wet.

Are you cold? he asked.

She shook her head without turning around.

What happened down by the shore?

Don’t ask, she said, and slowly began to sink through the gaps in the wooden floor.

Joakim walked over to her.

Mom-mee? called a voice in the distance.

Katrine stood motionless by the wall.

Livia has woken up, she said. You need to take care of her, Kim.

Joakim woke up in his bedroom with a start.

The sound that had woken him up was no dream. It was Livia calling out.

“Mom-mee?”

He opened his eyes in the darkness, but stayed in bed. Alone.

Everything was silent once again.

The clock by the side of the bed was showing quarter past three. Joakim was certain he had fallen asleep just a few minutes ago-and yet the dream about Katrine had lasted an eternity.

He closed his eyes. If he stayed where he was and didn’t do anything, perhaps Livia would go back to sleep.

Like a reply the call echoed through the house once more:

“Mom-mee?”

After that he knew it was pointless to stay in bed. Livia was awake and wouldn’t stop calling until her mother came in and lay down beside her.

Joakim sat up slowly and switched on the lamp on the bedside table. The house was cold, and he felt a crippling loneliness.

“Mom-mee?”

He knew he had to take care of the children. He didn’t want to, he didn’t have the strength, but there was no one else to share the responsibility with.

He left his warm bed and moved quietly out of his bedroom and over to Livia’s room.

She raised her head when he bent over her bed. He stroked her forehead, without saying anything.

“Mommy?” she mumbled.

“No, it’s just me,” he said. “Go to sleep now, Livia.”

She didn’t reply, but sank slowly back onto her pillow.

Joakim stood there in the darkness until she was breathing evenly again.

He took a step backward, then another. Then he turned toward the door.

“Don’t go, Daddy.”

Her clear voice made him stop dead on the cold floor.

She had sounded wide awake, despite the fact that she was lying in bed like a motionless shadow. He turned slowly to face her.

“Why not?” he asked quietly.

“Stay here,” said Livia.

Joakim didn’t reply. He held his breath and listened. She had sounded awake, but he still thought it seemed as if she were asleep.

When he had been standing there, silent and motionless, for a minute or so, he began to feel like a blind man in the dark room.

“Livia?” he whispered.

He got no answer, but her breathing was tense and irregular. He knew she would soon call out for him again.

An idea suddenly came into his head. At first it felt unpleasant, then he decided to try it out.

He crept out of the door and into the dark bathroom. He groped his way forward, bumped into the hand basin, then felt the wooden laundry basket next to the bathtub. The basket was almost full; nobody had done any washing for almost a week. Joakim hadn’t had the strength.

Then he heard the call from Livia’s room, as expected:

“Mom-mee?”

Joakim knew she would carry on calling for Katrine.

“Mom-mee?”

This was how it was going to be, night after night. It would never end.

“Quiet,” he muttered, standing by the laundry basket.

He opened the lid and started burrowing among the clothes.

Different aromas rose up to meet him. Most of the items were hers; all the sweaters and pants and underclothes she had worn in the final days before the accident. Joakim pulled out a few things: a pair of jeans, a red woolen sweater, a white cotton skirt.

He couldn’t resist pressing them against his face.

Katrine.

He wanted to linger there among the vivid memories the scent of her brought into his mind; they were both blissful and painful-but Livia’s plaintive cry made him hurry.

“Mom-mee?”

Joakim took the red woolen sweater with him. He went past Gabriel’s room and back into Livia’s.

She had kicked off the coverlet and was waking up-she raised her head when he came in and stared at him in bewildered silence.

“Sleep now, Livia,” said Joakim. “Mommy’s here.”

He placed Katrine’s thick sweater close to Livia’s face and pulled the coverlet up to her chin. He tucked her in closely, like a cocoon.

“Sleep now,” he repeated, more quietly this time.

“Mmm.”

She mumbled something in her sleep and gradually relaxed. Her breathing was calmer now; she had placed her arm around her mother’s sweater and buried her face in the thick wool. Her sheep from Gotland was lying on the other side of the pillow, but she ignored it.

Livia was asleep again.

The danger had passed and Joakim knew that next morning she wouldn’t even remember that she had been awake.

He breathed out and sat down on the edge of her bed, his head drooping.

A darkened room, a bed, the blinds pulled down.

He wanted to fall asleep, to sleep as deeply as Livia and forget himself. He just couldn’t think anymore; he had no strength left.

And yet he couldn’t sleep.

He thought about the laundry basket, about Katrine’s clothes, and after a couple of minutes he got up and went back into the bathroom. To the laundry basket.

The thing he was looking for was almost right at the bottom: Katrine’s nightgown, white with a red heart on the front. He took it out of the basket.

Out in the corridor he stopped and listened outside both the children’s rooms, but all remained silent.

Joakim went into his room, put the light on, and remade the double bed. He shook and smoothed the sheets, plumped up the pillows, and folded back the coverlet. Then he got back in, closed his eyes, and breathed in the