Midwinter Sacrifice (41 page)

Markus’s parents’ house is in Ramshäll, among houses owned by Saab directors, successful entrepreneurs, well-heeled doctors and successful small businessmen.

The villas are almost in the middle of the city, clambering up a slope with a view of the Folkungavallen Stadium and Tinnis, a large communal outdoor swimming pool whose site every property developer in the country covets greedily. At the end of the slope the settlement disappears into the forest or rolls away in narrow streets down towards Tinnerbäcken pond where the dirty-yellow boxlike hospital buildings take over. Best of all is living on the slope, with a view, closest to the city, and that’s where Markus’s parents live.

Malin and Tove are walking side by side in the glow of the streetlamps, and their bodies cast long shadows along the well-gritted pavements. The residents would probably like to put up a fence around the whole area, or an electric fence with barbed wire and a security guard on the gate. Ideas of gated communities aren’t entirely alien to certain right-wing politicians on the city council. So a fence around Ramshäll isn’t perhaps as unthinkable as it might seem.

Stop. Thus far but no further. Us and them. Us against them. Us.

It doesn’t take more than fifteen minutes to walk from the flat to Ramshäll, so Malin decided to brave the cold, in spite of Tove’s protests: ‘Look, I’m coming with you. So you can walk with me.’

‘I thought you said it was going to be fun?’

‘It will be fun, Tove.’

On the way they walk past Karin Johannison’s villa. A yellow-painted house from the thirties with a wooden façade and a veranda.

‘It’s cold, Mum,’ Tove says.

‘It’s healthy,’ Malin says, and with every step she feels her restlessness subsiding, how she is preparing herself to get through the dinner.

‘You’re nervous, Mum,’ Tove suddenly says.

‘Nervous?’

‘Yes, about this.’

‘No, why would I be nervous?’

‘This sort of thing always makes you nervous. Going to someone’s house. And they
are
doctors.’

‘As if that makes any difference.’

‘Over there,’ Tove says, pointing along the street. ‘Third house on the left.’

Malin sees the villa, a two-storey building of white brick, surrounded by a low fence and with clipped shrubs in the garden.

Inside her the house expands. It becomes a fortified Tuscan hill-town, impossible for a lone foot-soldier to capture.

Inside the house there is a smell of warmth and bay leaves and the cleanliness that only a hard-working Polish cleaner can conjure forth.

The Stenvinkels are standing in the hall, they have shaken Malin by the hand and she is swaying, unprepared for the unrelenting friendliness.

Mum, Birgitta, is a senior physician at the Ear Clinic, and wants to be called Biggan, and it’s sooo lovely to meet Malin at laaast, when they’ve read so much about her in the
Correspondent
. Dad, Hans, a surgeon, wants to be called Hasse, hopes they like pheasant, because he got hold of a couple of lovely ones down at Lucullus. Stockholmers, upper middle class, brought to the back of beyond by their careers, Malin thinks.

‘Am I wrong,’ she asks, ‘but can I hear that you’re both from Stockholm?’

‘Stockholm? Does it really sound like it? No, I’m from Borås,’ Biggan says. ‘And Hasse’s from Enköping. We met when we were studying in Lund.’

I know their life history, Malin thinks, and we haven’t got further than the hall.

Markus and Tove have disappeared into the house, and now Hasse is leading Malin into the kitchen. On a sparkling stainless-steel worktop sits a misted cocktail shaker and Malin capitulates, doesn’t even contemplate trying to resist.

‘A martini?’ Hasse asks.

Biggan adds, ‘Watch out, though. He makes them
very
dry.’

‘Tanqueray?’ Hasse says.

‘Please,’ Malin replies, and minutes later she is standing with a drink in her hand and they say a toast, and the alcohol is clean and pure and she thinks that at least he knows his drink, Hasse.

‘We usually have an aperitif in the kitchen,’ Biggan says. ‘It livens up the atmosphere so.’

Hasse is standing by the cooker. With one hand he waves Malin over to him as his other hand opens the lid of a blackened, well-used cast-iron casserole.

The smell hits Malin as she approaches.

‘Take a look,’ Hasse says. ‘Have you ever seen such lovelies?’

Two pheasants swimming in a puttering yellow sauce and Malin feels hunger grip her stomach.

‘Well?’

‘That looks wonderful.’

‘Oops, that disappeared quickly,’ Biggan says, and at first Malin doesn’t understand what she means, then she sees the empty glass in her hand.

‘I’ll mix you another,’ Hasse says.

And as he is shaking the cocktail in the air Malin asks, ‘Does Markus have any brothers and sisters?’

Hasse stops shaking abruptly.

Biggan smiles before saying, ‘No. We tried for a long time. But then we had to give up.’

Then the ice rattles in the cocktail shaker again.

65

Her head.

It’s heavy, and the pain is like a fruit-knife thrust between the lobes of her brain. If you feel pain like that you don’t sleep. In dreams there is no physical pain. That’s why we love them, dreams.

No, no, no.

She remembers now.

But where’s the engine? The car? She isn’t in the car any more.

Stop it. Let me go. I’ve got someone who needs me.

Take this blindfold off my eyes. Take it off. Maybe we could talk about this? Why me?

Is there a smell of apples here? Is that earth under my fingers, cold but still warm earth, biscuit crumbs?

There’s a stove crackling.

She kicks in the direction the warmth is coming from, but strikes no metal; she tenses her back but doesn’t get anywhere. Only a dull thud, a vibration through her body.

I am . . . Where am I?

I’m lying on cold earth. Is this a grave? And I am dead, after all? Help me. Help me.

But it’s warm around me and if I was in a coffin there’d be wood.

Take this rope off, for God’s sake.

The rag in her mouth.

Strain hard enough and it might break, the rope. Twist back and forth.

Eventually the cloth is pulled away from her eyes.

A flickering light. A vaulted cellar? Earth walls? Where am I? Are those spiders and snakes moving around me?

A face. Faces?

Wearing a ski mask.

The eyes. Looking, yet not looking.

Now they’ve gone again, the faces.

Her body aches. But now is where the pain starts, isn’t it?

I wish I could do something.

But I am powerless.

I can only watch, and I will do, because the look in my eyes may give you some comfort.

I shall stay even if I would rather avert my gaze and disappear to all the places I can disappear to.

But I stay in the fear and the love and all the other feelings. It isn’t over yet, but do you have to do that? Do you imagine they’ll be impressed?

It hurts, I know, I had to feel the same. Stop it, stop it, I say, but I know, you can’t hear my voice. Do you think her pain will eradicate another pain? Will her pain open the doors? Mine didn’t, after all.

So I beg you: stop, stop, stop.

Did I say stop?

How can a single noise come out of my mouth when it is taped up, the rag pressed deep between my teeth?

She is naked. Someone tore off her clothes, splitting the seams with a knife and now someone brings a candle close to her shoulders and she is frightened, the voice mumbling, ‘This must, must, must happen.’

She screams.

Someone brings the candle close, close, and the heat is sharp and she screams as if she doesn’t know how to scream, as if the sound of her burning skin and the pain are one. She twists back and forth but gets nowhere.

‘Shall I burn your face off?’

Is that what the mumbling voice is saying?

‘Perhaps that would be enough. Perhaps I wouldn’t have to kill you then, because you won’t exist properly without a face, will you?’

She screams, screams. Soundlessly.

The other cheek. Her cheekbone burns. Circular movements, red, black, red, the colour of pain, and there is a smell of burned skin, her skin.

‘Shall I get the knife instead?

‘Hang on now.

‘Don’t faint, stay awake,’ the voice mumbles, but she wants to be gone.

The blade shines in the light, the pain has disappeared, adrenalin is pumping through her body and the only thing is her fear that she might never get away from here.

I want to get home to my loved ones.

He must be wondering where I am. How long have I been here? They must be missing me by now.

The knife is cold and warm and what is that warmth running down my thighs? A woodpecker with a steel beak is pecking at my breasts, eating its way down to my ribs. Let me vanish; my face burns when someone hits me in vain attempts to keep me awake.

But it doesn’t work.

I’m going now.

Whether you like it or not.

How much time has passed? I don’t know.

Are those chains rattling?

I’m tied to a post now with forest around me.

I’m alone.

Have you gone? Don’t leave me here alone.

I’m whimpering. I can hear it.

But I’m not freezing and I wonder when the cold stopped being cold.

When does pain stop hurting?

How long have I been hanging out here now? The forest is thick around me; dark but white with snow. There’s a little clearing, and a door leading down to a hole.

My feet don’t exist. Nor my arms, hands, fingers or cheeks. My cheeks are burning holes, and everything around me lacks any smell.

Away.

Away from here.

That’s all that’s left.

Away, away, away, at any cost.

But how can I run if I don’t have any feet?

Something is approaching again.

Is it an angel?

Not in this darkness.

No, it’s something black approaching.

‘What have I done?’

Is that what the black thing says?

‘I have to do this.’ That’s what the black thing says.

She tries to lift her head but nothing happens. She makes a real effort and there, there, she slowly lifts her head and the black thing is close now and is swinging a cauldron of boiling water backwards and she thinks herself away, and then the sound, someone roaring as the water is thrown at her.

But it doesn’t reach. No heat arrives, just a few drops of warmth.

Now the black thing itself again.

With a branch in its hand?

What’s that for?

Shall I scream?

I scream.

But not because anyone will hear me.

66

Candles are burning in the dining room and on the wall behind Hasse and Tove hangs a large oil painting by an artist called Jockum Nordström, who according to Biggan is supposed to have become some sort of big noise in New York. The painting is of a coloured man dressed in boy’s clothes against a blue background, and Malin thinks the painting looks naïve and mature at the same time; the man is alone but still anchored in a sort of context on the blue background, and in the sky drift guitars and billiard-cues.

The pheasant tastes good, but the wine is even better, a red from a region of Spain that Malin doesn’t know, and she has to exert all her willpower not to slug it down, it’s so good.

‘More pheasant, Malin?’ Hasse gestures towards the pot.

‘Have some more,’ Markus says. ‘It’ll make Dad happy.’

The conversation during the evening has covered everything from Malin’s work to weight-training, the reorganisation of the hospital and local politics and the ‘reaaally dull’ programme at the city’s concert house.

Hasse and Biggan. Equally politely and genuinely interested in everything, and no matter how Malin has tried, she hasn’t been able to find a single false note.
They seem to like us being here, we aren’t intruding
. Malin takes a sip of the wine.
And they know how to get me to relax.

‘Great about Tenerife,’ Hasse says, and Malin looks at Tove across the table. Tove looks down.

‘Are the tickets all booked?’ Hasse asks. ‘We need an account number before you go so we can pay in some money. Remind me, will you?’

‘I . . .’ Tove begins.

Malin clears her throat.

Biggan and Hasse look at her anxiously and Markus turns towards Tove.

‘My dad changed his mind,’ Malin says. ‘I’m afraid they’ve got other guests that week.’

‘Their own grandchild!’ Biggan exclaims.

‘Why haven’t you said anything?’ Markus says to Tove.

Malin shakes her head. ‘They’re a bit odd, my parents.’

Tove breathes out, and Malin realises that the lie has made her feel relief, at the same time as she feels ashamed at not having the bravery, the honesty to come out with the simple truth: that it was Markus who wasn’t welcome.

Why am I lying? Malin thinks.

So as not to disappoint anyone?

Because I’m ashamed at my own parents’ social incompetence?

Because the truth hurts?

‘How strange,’ Hasse says. ‘Who could possibly be more welcome than their own granddaughter and her friend?’

‘It was an old business acquaintance.’

‘Well, never mind,’ Biggan says. ‘Now the two of you can come with us to Åre instead. As we suggested in the first place. I don’t mean to criticise Tenerife, but winter is for skiing!’

Malin and Tove are walking home along the well-lit villa-lined streets.

A cognac after the meal makes Malin’s mouth run away with her. Biggan had one, but Hasse didn’t, had to work the next morning. ‘A small martini and a glass of wine. No more than that if I’m going to be wielding a scalpel!’

‘You should have explained how things were to Markus beforehand.’

‘Maybe, but I—’

‘And now you’ve made me lie. You know what I think about that. And Åre, have they asked you to go to Åre? You could have mentioned that. Who am I really, you—’

‘Mum. Can’t you just be quiet?’