Sun Storm aka The Savage Altar

going until the spring arrives. Sanna is standing by the stove making sandwiches. The coffee percolator gurgles one last time, then falls silent. She pours two mugs and places them on the kitchen table.

Nausea floods through Rebecka like an enormous wave. She jumps up from the table and rushes into the bathroom. She doesn’t even manage to lift the lid properly. Most of the vomit ends up all over the lid and the floor.

Sanna follows her. She stands in the doorway in her tatty green fluffy dressing gown, looking at Rebecka with anxious eyes. Rebecka wipes away a strand of mucus and vomit from her mouth with the back of her hand. When she turns her face up toward Sanna, she can see that Sanna has realized.

“Who?” asks Sanna. “Is it Viktor?”

“ H e has the right to know,” says Sanna.

They are sitting at the kitchen table again. The coffee has been thrown away.

“Why?” says Rebecka harshly.

She feels as if she is trapped inside thick glass. It’s been like this for a while now. Her body wakes long before she does in the mornings. Her mouth opens for the toothbrush. Her hands make the bed. Her legs make their way to the Hjalmar Lundbohm school. Sometimes she stops dead in the middle of the street, wondering whether it’s Saturday. If she has to go to school at all. But it’s remarkable. Her legs are always right. She arrives in the right room on the right day at the right time. Her body can manage perfectly well without her. She’s avoided going to church. Blamed schoolwork and the flu and gone to visit her grandmother in Kurravaara. And Thomas Soderberg hasn’t asked about her, or phoned.

“Because it’s his child,” says Sanna. “He’s bound to realize, in any case. I mean, it’ll show in a few months.”

“No,” says Rebecka tonelessly. “It won’t.”

She sees how the meaning of what she has just said sinks in.

“No, Rebecka,” says Sanna, shaking her head.

Tears well up in her eyes and she reaches for Rebecka’s hand, but Rebecka gets up and puts on her shoes and padded jacket.

“I love you, Rebecka,” pleads Sanna. “Don’t you understand that it’s a gift? I’ll help you to…”

She stops speaking as Rebecka looks at her with contempt.

“I know,” she says quietly. “You don’t think I’m even capable of looking after myself and Sara.”

Sanna buries her head in her hands and begins to weep inconsolably.

Rebecka leaves the flat. Rage is pounding through her body. Her fists are clenched inside her gloves. It feels as if she could kill someone. Anyone.

When Rebecka has gone, Sanna picks up the telephone and dials. It is Thomas Soderberg’s wife, Maja, who answers.

Patrik Mattsson was woken at quarter past eleven in the morning by the sound of a key being turned in the outside door of his flat. Then his mother’s voice. Fragile as ice in the autumn. Full of anxiety. She called his name, and he heard her go through the hall and past the bathroom where he was lying. She stopped at the door of the living room and called again. After a while she knocked on the bathroom door.

“Hello! Patrik!”

I ought to answer, he thought.

He moved slightly, and the tiles on the floor laid their coolness against his face. He must have fallen asleep in the end. On the bathroom floor. Curled up like a fetus. He still had his clothes on.

His mother’s voice again. Determined hammering on the door.

“Hello, Patrik, open the door, there’s a good boy. Are you all right?”

No, I’m not all right, he thought. I’ll never be all right again.

His lips formed the name. But no sound was allowed to pass his lips.

Viktor. Viktor. Viktor.

Now she was rattling the door handle.

“Patrik, either you open this door right now or I’m ringing the police and they can kick it in.”

Oh, God. He managed to get to his knees. His head was pounding like a pneumatic drill. The hip that had been resting on the hard tiled floor was aching.

“I’m coming,” he croaked. “I’ve… not been too well. Hang on.”

She backed away as he opened the door.

“You look terrible,” she burst out. “Are you ill?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“Shall I ring up and say you’re not coming in?”

“No, I’ve got to go now.”

He looked at the clock.

She followed him into the lounge. Flowerpots lay smashed on the floor. The rug had ended up in one corner. One of the armchairs had been tipped upside down.

“What’s been going on here?” she asked weakly.

He turned and put his arm around her shoulders.

“I did it myself, Mum. But it’s nothing for you to worry about. I’m feeling better now.”

She nodded in reply, but he could see that tears weren’t far away. He turned away from her.

“I must get off to the mushroom farm,” he said.

“I’ll stay here and clean up for you,” his mother said from behind him, bending down to pick up a glass from the floor.

Patrik Mattsson defended himself against her submissive concern.

“No, honestly, Mum, you don’t need to do that,” he said.

“For my sake,” she whispered, trying to catch his eye.

She bit her lower lip in an attempt to keep the tears at bay.

“I know you don’t want to confide in me,” she went on. “But if you’d just let me tidy up, then…”

She swallowed once.

“… then at least I’ll have done something for you,” she finished.

He dropped his shoulders and forced himself to give her a quick hug.

“Okay,” he said. “That would be really kind.”

Then he shot out through the door.

He got into his Golf and turned the key in the ignition. Let the engine race with the clutch down to drown out his thoughts.

No crying now, he told himself sternly.

He twisted the rearview mirror and looked at his face. His eyes were swollen. His lank hair was plastered to his head. He gave a short, joyless bark of laughter. It sounded more like a cough. Then he turned the mirror back sharply.

I’m never going to think about him again, he thought. Never again.

He screeched out onto Gruvvagen and accelerated down the hill toward Lappgatan. He was almost driving from memory, couldn’t see a thing through the falling snow. The snowplow had been along the road in the morning, but since then more snow had fallen, and the fresh snow gave way treacherously beneath his tires. He increased the pressure on the accelerator. From time to time one of the wheels went into a spin and the car slid over to the opposite side of the road. It didn’t matter.

At the crossroads with Lappgatan he didn’t stand a chance, the car skidded helplessly straight across the road. Out of the corner of his eye he could see a woman with a kick sledge and a small child. She pushed the sledge over the mound of snow left by the plow, and raised her arm at him. Presumably she was giving him the finger. As he drove past the Laestadian chapel, the road surface altered. The snow had become packed together under the weight of the cars, but it was rutted, and the Golf wanted to go its own way. Afterward he couldn’t remember how he’d got over the crossroads at Gruvvagen and Hjalmar Lundbohmsvagen. Had he stopped at the traffic lights?