Part 8 (2/2)

'I remember what it was like when we came here,' she replied. 'Astrid wondered why on earth we had come. ”What can a place like this be to people like you?”' she said. Both she and Karin Arvidsson phoned to ask if they could come and pick currants. Helga's old mother appeared on the steps one morning with two pails. 'They're too much for you,' they said. And we let them pick. We were full of how the soil just gave and gave. We wanted to be the same. But I got hardly any redcurrants for the freezer and I had to pick those from all twenty-one bushes, wherever they'd left some. Then we heard nothing from them. But Norrs almost broke Bonnie's back with a stake. And Wedin shot our cats. Picked them off one by one. And no one has ever said a word about us healing the wounds in this ground. Presumably they don't see it. But if I had gaudy petunias or evil-smelling marigolds in plastic pots or cartwheels painted pink and cream for nasturtiums to wind their way round then they would see it and I would be praised.'

There was hatred and contempt in her voice. Not only pain.

'I've made cakes for their parish evenings and taken English cla.s.ses and given books away as Christmas presents imagine! Books! But, of course, you reported Norrs for cruelty to animals when he left his sheep with no water. It makes me sick to walk along the road in case I meet that animal-tormentor or that cat-killer. And since the miscarriage, I've been afraid to meet anyone at all. Before, I thought I had life in me. Then they took it off me. Like the redcurrant bushes.'

'They?'

'I had a miscarriage after picking cranberries under the power lines.'

'This isn't sensible, Barbro.'

But she didn't hear him.

'I didn't dare use the road after the miscarriage because I didn't want to meet anyone. But I had the forest. Pretty soon I'll have no forest. It belongs to them, according to you. The forest is Karl-ke's. Geranium silvatic.u.m is the name of that mauve mist under the elders.'

She drank great gulps of the wine and he thought, What if she takes to drink?

'The midsummer flower. It has its image imprinted in its cell. But human beings don't carry their image within them.'

'Genetically I suppose we do . . .'

She went on without listening.

'A human being can become anything, can grow askew. But there is a template of the midsummer flower within the plant itself, a small clear image. The flower doesn't go beyond that. It can be cross-bred, s.h.i.+ft from deep purple to pale pink or pure white. It can be streaky or all one colour. But it doesn't go beyond its image which it has deeply imprinted inside the innermost nucleus of its cell.'

'That is an image,' he said. 'Weave it instead. Don't just talk. It's not good for you.'

He meant it seriously. There was something wrong with talking in that way, apart from what she said. Long periods of silence alternating with moments of chat. Talk. No healthy person talks like this, he thought. She sits brooding for days and thinks all this out. Then she talks. She doesn't weave. Doesn't design any pictures, no patterns. Talks. It's great sometimes, but not really healthy.

'No! I can't weave. You want me to replace the forest with images. The county council would put them up on hospital walls. But I want to have the forest. The sick want the forest. They want to live.'

That March, one of the saviours of the river had come from Stockholm to give a lecture in the parish hall. Birger didn't get there until it was all over because he had been out on call. The parish ladies were was.h.i.+ng up. In the main hall, all the lights were out except the one above the rostrum. In the semidarkness below the stage, Barbro was sitting with the river-saver at a hardboard table from which the ladies had removed the paper tablecloth. Barbro and he had their heads close together, a yellow light from the rostrum casting a halo round them. The environmentalist had dark-blond hair falling below his shoulders, parted in the middle. He was wearing a striped carpenter's s.h.i.+rt and Lapp boots. All those who had stayed to wash up were standing in the doorway watching when Birger caught sight of them.

'Was it him?' he asked her now. 'The river-saver? The one with the Jesus hair?'

And it was.

'But why in the name of heaven did you say he was your son?'

'It was a joke.'

She was in the bedroom putting rolled-up stockings and thick socks into a box. He didn't know whether she was packing or cleaning out drawers. She went on with a box of sweaters and jumpers. When she went to fetch another box from the wardrobe, he followed her. He knew he ought to say something that would stop her, if she was packing. But if she was just tidying up, it would be unnecessary and perhaps even risky to say anything.

'Shall we get a bottle of wine up?' he said. 'I think I've got a Moselle cooling.'

'No, thanks.'

That was when he had really understood that the therapeutic wine drinking was over.

'You must phone Vemdal,' Birger said.

'Oh, we weren't even anywhere near.'

'Where were you last night?'

'Up at Starhill. I didn't see anything.'

'You'd better phone him anyhow.'

'Why?'

'They're looking for him.'

She snorted. It couldn't be called a laugh.

'They'll have to sort that out themselves.'

He told her how he had found the eel. But before he talked, he was given something to eat at an inn in Steinmo. The woman ate a little, too, and drank yellowish wine, but most of all she kept looking at him. And she was amused.

He had salmon trout with cream sauce and morels and boiled potatoes, large and yellow, real pebble-shaped ones. When the proprietress had brought the menu in its plastic folder, the woman had waved it aside.

'The salmon trout,' she said. 'And wine.'

They hadn't exchanged many words in the car. He had been ashamed of his muddy jeans as well as his s.h.i.+rt, which he had dried above the stove in the cottage. It smelt of fish in the heat.

'It's the eel,' he said, so then he had to tell her. She kept calling him Johan every other sentence. He must have told her his name in the car. Although he was horribly embarra.s.sed, he asked her: 'What's your name?'

'Ylajali,' she said. 'Ylajali Happolati.'

He was sitting in a ray of sunlight from the window, hot and drunk from the food. There was a smell of gra.s.s and cattle dung coming through the open window, and below the hay meadows he could see the river, a sluggish ribbon of colourless, gleaming water. She poured more wine into his gla.s.s. He would have preferred milk, as he was still hungry. She must have understood, because she asked and a girl brought some in a gla.s.s jug. He was also given maize pudding with cloudberry preserve and thick yellow cream. The woman had no dessert.

When they had finished, he had to go to the toilet of course and he felt ashamed of that, too. But he said he had to change the water in the eel pail. In the car, he fell asleep at once and when he woke, his s.h.i.+rt stank so much, he noticed it himself. He pulled it off. It felt strange sitting there naked to the waist, but he couldn't very well put his thick sweats.h.i.+rt on in that heat.

They were driving westwards, so she must have been heading for the coast. They had not discussed how far he would go on with her. When he was awake, he thought he ought to say something, but he couldn't come up with anything except to ask whether Happolati was a Finnish name. No, it wasn't, she said, apparently making fun of him.

'I thought you had a Finnish accent.'

She burst out laughing.

'Never say that to a Swedish Finn! My name's not Happolati. I just said that because you were so hungry.'

He could make nothing of it all.

'What about your other name then? Ylja . . .'

'You can call me Ylja. That's good.'

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