Sun Storm aka The Savage Altar

“What were you thinking, then?”

“I don’t know,” said Sanna, and put her hands on her head as if to console herself. “I think I screamed, but I’m not sure about that either.”

“You told the police Viktor woke you up, and that’s why you went there.”

Sanna lifted her eyes and looked straight at Rebecka.

“Do you really think that’s so strange? Have you started to believe that everything stops because your body no longer works? He was standing by my bed, Rebecka. He looked so sad. And I could see that it wasn’t him, not physically anyway. I knew something had happened.”

No, I don’t think it’s strange, thought Rebecka. She’s always seen more than the rest of us. A quarter of an hour before somebody came to visit completely unannounced, Sanna would put the coffee on. “Viktor’s on his way,” she’d sometimes say.

“But…” began Rebecka.

“Please,” begged Sanna, “I really don’t want to talk about it. I daren’t. Not yet. I’ve got to keep it together. For the girls’ sake. Thanks for coming up. Even though you’ve got your career to think about. You might think we’ve lost touch, but I think about you loads. It gives me strength just to know that you’re down there.”

Now Rebecka was squirming.

Stop it, she thought. We’re not friends. Her opinion of me used to mean so much. The fact that she said I was an important part of her life. But now… now it feels as if she’s spinning a web around my body.

Virku was the first to hear the sound of the snowmobile, interrupting them with a sharp bark. She pricked up her ears and looked out of the window.

“Is somebody coming?” asked Rebecka. She wasn’t sure where the noise came from, but thought it sounded as if the snowmobile was idling not far from the house. Sanna leaned her forehead against the windowpane and shaded her eyes with her hands so that she could see past her own reflection.

“Oh, no,” she exclaimed with a nervous laugh, “it’s Curt Backstrom. He was the one who gave us a lift out here. I think he’s got a bit of a thing about me. But he’s really good-looking. A bit like Elvis, somehow. Might suit you, Rebecka.”

“Stop right there,” said Rebecka firmly.

“What? What have I done?”

“You’ve been doing it for as long as I’ve known you. You attract endless brainless admirers, and then announce that they might suit me. Thanks but no, thanks.”

“I do apologize,” said Sanna in an offended voice. “I’m sorry if people I know and associate with aren’t good enough or smart enough for you. And how can you call him brainless? You don’t even know him.”

Rebecka went over to the window and looked out at the yard.

“He’s sitting on his snowmobile, it’s practically the middle of the night, and he’s staring at the house you’re staying in, instead of coming to the door,” she said. “I rest my case.”

“Besides, it’s not my fault if some men are attracted to me,” Sanna went on. “Or maybe you agree with Thomas and think I’m a whore.”

“No, but you can damn well stop making comments about my appearance or offering me your cast-off admirers.”

Rebecka grabbed her travel bag and rushed into the bathroom. She banged the door so hard that the little red wooden heart that said “Here It Is” swung violently.

“Ask him to come up,” she shouted out to the kitchen. “He can’t sit out there in the cold like an abandoned dog.”

God, she thought as she locked the door. Sanna’s witless admirers. Sanna’s loose way of dressing. It’s not my problem anymore. But it upset Thomas Soderberg. And at the time, when Sanna and I used to share an apartment, in some peculiar way it was my responsibility.

“I would like you to speak to Sanna about her clothes,” Thomas Soderberg says to Rebecka.

He is displeased with her. She can feel it in every pore. And it is as if she is being crushed to the ground. When he smiles, heaven opens and she can feel God’s love, even though she cannot hear His voice. But when Thomas has that disappointed look in his eyes, it is as if a light goes out inside her. She becomes nothing more than an empty room.

“I have tried,” she defends herself. “I’ve told her that she must think about how she dresses. That her necklines shouldn’t be so low cut. And that she should wear a bra, and longer skirts. And she understands, but… it’s as if she doesn’t see what she’s putting on in the mornings. If I’m not there to keep an eye on her when she’s getting dressed, she just forgets, somehow. Then I meet her in town and she looks like…”

She hesitates, the word “whore” sticks in her throat. Thomas wouldn’t like to hear that word from her mouth.

“… well, I don’t know what she looks like,” she goes on. “You ask her what on earth she’s got on and she looks at herself in amazement. She doesn’t do it on purpose.”

“I don’t care whether she does it on purpose or not,” Thomas Soderberg says harshly. “As long as she can’t dress decently I can’t let her take any kind of leading role in the church. How can I let her bear witness, or sing in the choir, or lead the prayers, when I know that ninety percent of all the men who are sitting there listening are just staring at her nipples sticking out under her top, and the only thing they can think about is shoving a hand between her legs.”

He stops speaking and looks out through the window. They are sitting in the prayer room at the back of the Mission church. The clear light of the late winter sun pours in through the high, narrow windows. The church is in an apartment block designed by Ralph Erskine. The people of Kiruna call the brown concrete building “The Snuffbox.” And consequently the church becomes known as the Lord’s Pinch. Rebecka thinks the church was more attractive before. Spartan and austere. Like a monastery, with its concrete walls, its concrete floor and the hard pews. But Thomas Soderberg had the fixed pulpit removed, and replaced it with a movable one made of wood. At the same time he had a wooden floor laid at the front. So that it wouldn’t be so depressing. And now the church looks just like any other free church.

Thomas lets his gaze wander up to the ceiling, where there is a huge patch of damp. It always appears in the early spring, when the snow on the roof begins to melt.

It is his way of falling silent and not meeting her eyes that makes Rebecka understand. Thomas Soderberg is angry with Sanna because she is tempting him as well. He too is one of those men who want to shove their hand inside her knickers and…

Fury bursts out like a burning rose in her breast.

Bloody Sanna, she swears to herself. You little slag.

She knows it isn’t easy to be a pastor. Thomas is tempted in every possible way. The foe would like nothing better than to catch him in a trap. And he has a weakness when it comes to sex. He was quite open about this with the young people in the Bible study group.

She remembers how he told them about a visitation by two angels. Without being able to help himself, he had been attracted to one of them. And she had known it.

“That would be the worst thing that could happen,” the angel had said. “I would become the opposite of myself. As much of the darkness as I am now of the light.”

Sanna knocked timidly on the bathroom door.

“Rebecka,” she said. “I’m going to go down and ask Curt to come up. You are going to come out of there, aren’t you? I don’t really want to be alone with him, and the girls are asleep…”

When Rebecka came out, Curt Backstrom was sitting at the table. He held his mug of coffee with both hands when he drank. He lifted it carefully from the table, and at the same time lowered his head so that he wouldn’t have to lift it too high. He had kept his boots on, and just shrugged off the upper part of his snowmobile overalls so that they hung down below his waist. He glanced sideways at Rebecka and said hello without meeting her eyes.

Where’s the resemblance to Elvis? thought Rebecka. Two eyes and a nose in the middle of his face? His hair, of course. And his moody expression.

Curt had black, wavy hair. His thick fur hat had pressed it down so that it was plastered to his forehead. The