The Savage Altar (5 page)

T
he plane to Kiruna was almost full. Hordes of foreign tourists off to drive a dog team and spend the night on reindeer skins in the ice hotel at Jukkasjärvi jostled for space with rumpled businessmen returning home clutching their free fruit and newspapers.

Rebecka sank down and fastened her seat belt. The murmur of voices, the synthetic ping as the signs lit up and went off overhead and the humming of the engines lulled her into a restless sleep. She slept for the whole journey.

In her dream she is running across a cloudberry bog. It is a hot August day. The heat of the sun is making the moisture rise from the bog. Sweat and midge repellent are pouring down her forehead and into her eyes. It stings. There are tears in her eyes. A black cloud of midges creeps into her nostrils and ears. She can’t see. Someone is chasing her. They’re right behind her. And as always in her dreams, her legs won’t carry her weight. They have no strength and the bog is waterlogged. Her feet sink deeper and deeper into the peat moss and someone, or something, is chasing her. Now she can’t lift her foot. She’s sinking into the bog. She tries to shout for her mummy, but only a faint sound comes from her throat. Then she feels a hand, heavy on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry, did I frighten you?”

Rebecka opened her eyes and saw a flight attendant bending over her. The woman smiled a little uncertainly and took her hand from Rebecka’s shoulder.

“We’re preparing to land in Kiruna; I’ll have to ask you to put the back of your seat into the upright position.”

Rebecka’s hand flew up to her mouth. Had she been dribbling? Or worse, screaming? She didn’t dare look at her neighbor, but turned to look out into the darkness. It was down there. The town. It shone like a jewel glittering at the bottom of a well, its lights surrounded by the darkness of the mountains. It felt like a blow to the stomach and the heart.

My town, she thought, the melancholy of seeing it again blending with happiness, rage and fear in a strange mixture.

T
wenty minutes later she was sitting in the rented Audi on the way down to Kurravaara. The village lay fifteen kilometers outside Kiruna. As a child she had often traveled the whole way from Kiruna down to the village on her kick sledge. It was a happy memory. Especially in the late winter when the road was covered with a wonderful layer of thick, shining ice, and nobody spoiled it with sand, salt or grit.

The moon lit up the snow-covered forest around her. The snowdrifts along the sides of the road formed a frame.

It’s not right, she thought, I shouldn’t have let them take this away from me. Before I go back I’m going to bloody well get the kick sledge out and have a go.

From when should I have started to handle things differently? she thought as the car swept through the forest. If I could go back in time, would I have to go right back to the first summer? Or even further back? In that case it would have to be that spring. When I first met Thomas Söderberg. When he visited my class at the Hjalmar Lundbohm School. Even then I should have behaved differently. I should have seen through him. Not been so bloody naïve. The others in the class must have been much smarter than me. Why weren’t they tempted?

“H
i, everyone, may I introduce Thomas Söderberg. He’s the new pastor at the Mission church. I’ve invited him along as a representative of the free churches.”

It is Margareta Fransson who is speaking, the Religious Studies teacher.

She’s smiling all the time, thinks Rebecka, why is she doing that? It isn’t a happy smile, it’s just submissive and conciliatory. And she buys all her clothes from A Helping Hand, an ideologically run boutique that sells products made by a women’s collective in the Third World.

“You’ve already met Evert Aronsson, a priest from the Church of Sweden, and Andreas Gault from the Catholic Church,” continues Margareta Fransson.

“I think we should be allowed to meet a Buddhist or a Muslim or something,” says Nina Eriksson. “Why do we only get to meet a load of Christians?”

Nina Eriksson is the class spokeswoman and chief busybody. Loud and clear, her voice echoes round the classroom. Many support her statement and murmur in agreement.

“There isn’t such a wide choice in Kiruna,” Margareta Fransson apologizes halfheartedly.

Then she hands over to Thomas Söderberg.

He looks good, you have to admit. Dark brown curly hair, and long black eyelashes. He laughs and jokes, but from time to time he becomes totally serious. He’s young to be a priest—or pastor, as he says. And he’s wearing
jeans and a shirt. He draws on the board. The picture of the bridge. It’s all about how Jesus gave up his life for them. Built a bridge to God. Because God so loved the world that he gave up his only son. He addresses the class with the friendly “du” form, although he is talking to twenty-four people at the same time. He wants them to choose life. Say yes. And he answers all the questions they put to him at the end. At some of the questions he falls silent for a while. He frowns and nods thoughtfully. As if it’s the first time anyone has asked these questions. As if they have given him something to think about. Much later Rebecka realizes that it was far from the first time he’d heard those questions. That the answers had been prepared a long time ago. But the person who asks the questions is made to feel special.

He ends the visit with an invitation to the Mission church summer gathering in Gällivare. Three weeks’ work and Bible studies, no pay but free board and lodging.

“Dare to be curious,” he urges them. “You can’t be sure the Christian faith isn’t for you unless you’ve found out what it really stands for.”

Rebecka thinks he’s looking straight at her as he speaks. She looks straight back at him. And she can feel the fire.

T
he snowplow had cleared the road right up to her grandmother’s gray cottage. There was a light upstairs. Rebecka lifted out her suitcase and the supermarket carrier bag of food. She had shopped on the way. Maybe they wouldn’t need it, but you never know. She locked the car.

That’s the sort of person I am now, she thought. The sort of person who locks things.

“Hello!” she called when she got inside.

There was no answer, but presumably Sanna and the children had closed the upstairs door leading to the staircase, so they wouldn’t have heard her.

She put down what she was carrying and took a walk around downstairs without switching on the lights. It had the characteristic smell of an old house. Lino and dampness. Musty. The furniture stood there like a collection of tired ghosts, pressing themselves against the walls in the darkness, covered with grandmother’s hand-stitched linen sheets.

She went upstairs carefully, afraid of falling; the melted snow under the soles of her boots had made them slippery.

“Hello,” she shouted up the stairs, but there was no reply this time either.

Rebecka opened the door to the upstairs flat and went into the narrow, dark hallway. When she bent down to unzip her boots something black came flying at her face. She screamed and tumbled backwards. Two cheerful yelps and the black thing turned out to be a lovely little dog. A pink tongue took the opportunity to acquaint itself with her face. Two more encouraging yaps and then the dog licked her again.

“Virku, come here!”

A girl of about four appeared in the open doorway. The dog did a little pirouette on Rebecka’s stomach, danced over to the girl, gave her a lick, then pranced back to Rebecka. But by then Rebecka had managed to get to her feet. The dog shoved its nose into the bag of groceries instead.

“You must be Lova,” said Rebecka, switching on the hall light and edging the dog away from the carrier bag with her foot at the same time.

The light fell on the girl. She had a blanket wrapped around her, and Rebecka realized it was cold in the house.

“Who are you?” asked Lova.

“My name’s Rebecka,” she replied briefly. “Let’s go in the kitchen.”

She stopped at the door and looked at the kitchen, dumbstruck. The chairs had been turned over. Grandmother’s rag rug was screwed up under the kitchen table. Virku scampered up to a pile of sheets that had presumably been covering the furniture. She growled and shook them playfully. There was a powerful smell of Ajax and soap. When Rebecka looked more closely, she could see that the floor was smeared with cleaning fluid.

“What on earth!” she exclaimed. “Whatever has been going on here? Where are your mother and your big sister?”

Lova pointed at the sofa bed in the alcove. A girl of about eleven sat there, wearing a long gray sheepskin coat, maybe Sanna’s. She looked up from her magazine with narrowed eyes, her mouth a thin compressed line. Rebecka felt a stab in her heart.

Sara, she thought. She’s got so big. And so like Sanna. The same blond hair, but hers is straight like Viktor’s.

“Hi,” said Rebecka to Sara. “What’s Lova been up to? Where’s Sanna?”

Sara shrugged her shoulders, making it clear that it wasn’t her job to keep an eye on her little sister or tabs on her mother.

“Mummy got cross,” said Lova, tugging at Rebecka’s sleeve. “She’s in the bubble. She’s lying down in there.”

She pointed at the bedroom door.

“Who are you?” asked Sara suspiciously.

“My name’s Rebecka, and this is my house. Partly mine anyway.”

She turned to Lova.

“What do you mean, ‘in the bubble’?”

“When she’s in the bubble she doesn’t speak and she doesn’t look at us,” explained Lova, and couldn’t help tugging at Rebecka’s buttons again.

“Oh, God,” sighed Rebecka, shrugging off her coat and hanging it on a hook in the hall.

It really was freezing in the house. She must get the fire going.

“I know your mummy,” said Rebecka, starting to pick up the chairs. “My grandparents lived here when they were alive. Have you got soap in your hair as well?”

She looked at Lova’s hair, hanging in sticky clumps. The dog sat down and tried to reach round and lick its back. Rebecka crouched down and called to the dog in the same way as her grandmother used to call the dogs at home.

“Here, girl!”

The dog came straight over to her and showed her submissiveness by attempting to lick Rebecka’s mouth. Rebecka could see now that she was some sort of spitz crossbreed. The thick black coat stood out like a woolly frame round the narrow feminine head. Her eyes were black, shining with happiness. Rebecka ran her hands through the fur and sniffed at her fingers. They smelled of carbolic.

“Nice dog,” she said to Sara. “Is she yours?”

Sara didn’t answer.

“Two-thirds belong to Sara and one-third belongs to me,” said Lova, as if she had learned it by heart.

“I want to talk to Sanna,” said Rebecka, and stood up.

Lova took her hand and led her into the other room. The accommodation on the upper floor consisted of the big kitchen with the alcove for the sofa bed, and another room. This had been the children’s bedroom. Grandmother and Grandfather had slept in the alcove in the kitchen. Sanna was lying on her side on one of the beds, her knees drawn up so that they were almost touching her chin. Her face was turned to the wall, and she was wearing only a T-shirt and a pair of flowery cotton knickers. Her long blond angel hair was spread over the pillow.

“Hello, Sanna,” said Rebecka carefully.

The woman on the bed didn’t reply, but Rebecka could see that she was breathing.

Lova picked up a blanket that was lying folded at the foot of the bed and spread it over her mother.

“She’s in the bubble,” she whispered.

“I understand,” said Rebecka through clenched teeth.

She poked Sanna hard in the back with her forefinger.

“Come with me,” said Rebecka, and took Lova back into the kitchen.

Virku trotted after them once she had checked that her mistress, lying immobile and silent on the bed, was in no danger.

“Have you had anything to eat?” asked Rebecka.

“No,” replied Lova.

“You and I used to know each other when you were little,” said Rebecka to Sara.

“I’m not little,” shouted Lova. “I’m four!”

“Now, this is what we’re going to do,” decided Rebecka. “We’re going to tidy up in the kitchen, I’ll cook us a meal, then we’ll heat up some water on the stove and we’ll wash Lova and Virku.”

“And I need a new top,” said Lova. “Look!”

She opened the blanket and revealed a soap-smeared T-shirt.

“And you need a new top,” sighed Rebecka, exhausted.

A
n hour later Lova and Sara were sitting eating sausage and mashed potato. Lova was wearing a pair of jeans belonging to one of Rebecka’s cousins and a washed-out pale red top with cartoon characters on the front. Virku was sitting at their feet waiting patiently for her share. The wood in the stove crackled and sparked.

Rebecka glanced at the clock. Seven already. And she and Sanna had to go to the police station. The stress gnawed at her stomach.

Sara sniffed at Lova’s top.

“You smell disgusting,” she said.

“No she doesn’t,” said Rebecka with a sigh. “The clothes smell a bit funny because they’ve been folded up in a drawer for such a long time. But her own are even worse, so we’ll just have to put up with it. Give Virku your leftover sausage.”

She left the girls in the kitchen, went into the other room and closed the door.

“Sanna,” she said.

Sanna didn’t move. She lay in exactly the same position as before, her face turned to the wall.

Rebecka went over to the bed and stood there with her arms folded.

"I know you can hear me," she said harshly. "I’m not the same person I used to be, Sanna. I’ve become nastier and more impatient since then. I have no intention of sitting by you, stroking your hair and asking you what’s wrong. You can get up right now and get some clothes on. Otherwise I shall take your daughters straight to Social Services and tell them that you’re unable to look after them at present. Then I’ll get the next plane back to Stockholm."