She feels the ice beginning to sink beneath her feet. It becomes like a hammock. She sinks further and further. Although the ice does not crack and break, she is horrified to see how the hole she is standing in is filling with water. It comes up to her ankles, then her knees.
Tintin comes running towards her across the ice.
“Get away!” Martinsson shouts. “Be careful! Get away!”
But the dog comes closer and closer.
From his window Hjalmar sees his brother disappear through the snow-covered ice. Then he sees the dog struggling as far as the frozen scooter track and scrambling up onto it. Then it races off towards Martinsson.
“Oh God!” he says, and really does mean it as a prayer.
Martinsson is standing in the middle of the ice, as if she herself is frozen. She shouts at the dog, trying to make her turn back. It is as if the prosecutor is standing in a bowl.
Then the ice collapses beneath her feet. Hjalmar sees her flailing arms. The next second she has disappeared.
I am flying in circles above the river. Me and three ravens. Round and round. I see Hjalmar come out of his cottage. He closes the door behind him carefully, so that Vera cannot sneak out. Then he starts running. But he doesn’t run very fast. He’s running along the scooter tracks made by his brother, but they haven’t had time to freeze yet, and are soft and mushy. When he reaches the riverbank, he sinks up to his waist in the snow.
He is stuck. He can’t move. He struggles, but it is like being cast in concrete.
“Rebecka,” he shouts. “Rebecka! I’m stuck in the snow!”
I croak with the ravens. We land in the trees. Cut through the air with our loud, rasping, ominous-sounding cries.
The ice sinks. The water rises. Martinsson is getting wet.
She is up to her knees in water. Then she hears the crust of ice over the old snow-scooter tracks cracking. The next moment she is immersed.
Snow and ice fall over her. She gropes for the edge of the hole, searching for something she can hold on to. She hears Hjalmar shouting her name. He shouts that he is stuck in the snow.
The ice is thick, half a metre at least, but loose; it just keeps breaking. She is lying in a soup of ice and snow. Whenever she tries to grab onto the edge of the hole, the ice breaks and falls onto her in big chunks.
Tintin comes running over to the hole.
Hjalmar cannot see Martinsson; the edge of the hole is too high. But he can see the dog.
“The dog!” he shouts. “The dog’s coming after you!”
And then he sees the dog fall into the hole. The edges are not strong enough to support her.
He hears Martinsson yelling.
“Oh, hell!” she screeches.
And the dog is howling like a banshee. Screaming with fear. Then it falls silent. Is fully occupied with trying to stay alive. It is swimming for all it is worth and scratching at the edge of the hole, but the ice just crumbles away.
Martinsson gropes for the edge of the hole with one hand and grabs hold of Tintin’s fur with the other.
The current is strong; she can feel it trying to drag her legs under the ice. She cannot resist it; it is too strong. The cold is sucking her strength away.
She summons all the strength she can muster and kicks hard with both legs. At the same time she tries to lift Tintin up by her fur.
Tintin scrambles up. She claws her way onto the ice. And it holds her.
“Shout to the dog,” Martinsson yells to Hjalmar. “Shout to her!”
Hjalmar shouts, “Come on, girl! Over here! There’s a good girl!”
The dog makes her way over to him. Teetering with exhaustion the last few metres. Staggers up to Hjalmar. Collapses by his side.
“Have you got her?” Martinsson shouts.
Her legs are sliding under the ice. As if someone were pulling her feet.
“Have you got her?”
Hjalmar responds, sobbing.
“I’ve got her. She’s here with me.”
“Don’t let go of her,” Martinsson shouts.
“I’m holding on to her collar,” he shouts. “I won’t let go.”
Now she cannot shout to him any more. She has to… She has to… Try to resist.
Martinsson struggles in vain as her hips are pressed up against the edge of the hole and she finds herself almost lying on her back. She is well on the way to being dragged under the ice. Snow is tumbling over her face. She wipes it away, only now realizing how fiendishly cold she is.
She cannot resist any more. Her shoulders are under the edge of the ice. The current is tugging at her, pressing her body against its underside.
Then she hears Hjalmar starting to sing.
Hjalmar has a hold of Tintin’s collar. He is holding on to her with a grip of iron. She is shivering.
He tries once again to lift himself out of the snow, but it is impossible.
Martinsson shouts and asks if he has the dog. He tells her that he does.
He holds on to the dog and thinks yes, he has her. She is all he has just now. At least the dog is alive. It is going to live. It starts whimpering. It sounds as if it is crying. It lies down in the snow and whines.
And then Hjalmar also starts crying. He cries for Wilma. For Martinsson. He cries for his brother and for Hjorleifur. For himself. For all the fat stuck in the snow as if in a vice.
And then he starts singing.
It starts of its own accord. At first his voice is hoarse and unpractised, but then it becomes more forceful, stronger.
“I lay my sins on Jesus, the spotless lamb of God,” he sings. “He bears them all and frees us from the accursed load.”
It is several years since he heard that hymn. But the words come without any hesitation.
“I bring my guilt to Jesus, to wash my crimson stains white in his blood most precious, till not a spot remains.”
The early spring sunshine scorches the glittering white snow on top of the ice. There are no human beings for many kilometres around apart from Martinsson, in the hole in the ice, and Hjalmar, in the snow. The shadows lie blue in the scooter tracks and in the footprints where dogs and people have sunk down into the snow today.
Martinsson is lying in the water. Most of her body is under the ice. Over the edge round the hole she can see the tops of trees at the perimeter of the forest on the other side of the river. She did not manage to get that far. The firs have black trunks and are laden with cones near their tops.
The birches are spindly. In the south these slender-limbed trees will be blossoming now. Flowering magnolias and cherry trees will be gracing the parks like young girls in their best frocks. Here the birches are thin, but not in the least like young girls. Knobbly, straggly and bent like old crones, they stand at the edge of the forest looking out for spring.
