Part 38 (1/2)

'What did he say?'

'I don't really remember. That he'd found your moped up where the path ended.'

'Up by the river?'

'Yes.'

'What a s.h.i.+t he is!'

'He's the only one of the brothers you've ever had anything in common with.'

'I had nothing in common with him. How could I have done?'

'He said you used to take turns in guarding the buzzard's nest. That you thought Lill-Ola had taken the chicks and was going to sell them. There'd been a Dutchman in the store that afternoon. And the chicks had gone. He thought you'd been . . . you'd just gone on stabbing. At the tent.'

She fell abruptly silent, her face floating out in the lamplight. She had bent back her head, with her mouth wide open. She looked as if she were in pain. He thought about birth pains. But she was quite quiet now.

'How could you have believed him?' he whispered. She didn't answer for a moment. Her lips looked stiff.

'We didn't talk about it all that much. No one at home wanted to say it straight out. We were trying to help you.'

For a moment they looked each other straight in the eye.

'Why didn't you tell us?' she cried. 'You seemed to be afraid of being caught. Why did you agree to move to Langva.s.slien if you hadn't done anything!'

'I thought Torsten was fed up with me. I'm not even his son.'

'What did you say?'

'I'm not his son. We'll have to talk about that some time or other.'

She snorted.

'Are you laughing?'

'Well, what else can I do? Are you saying you're not Torsten's son?'

'I'm Oula Laras's son. The man you were with before Torsten.'

She had clasped her hands and was moving her head, rocking it. Suddenly she reminded him of his grandmother, an old woman rocking her head.

'My dear child,' she said. 'I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Oula Laras! Of all people.'

'Am I wrong?'

'Yes. I've never had anyone except Torsten.'

She was looking at him as if she had never really seen him before. Her eyes slid over his pullover and tight leather trousers. She snorted again, almost imperceptibly this time. But it was ridicule. He could see every s.h.i.+ft in her expression.

'Antelope trousers,' she said. 'Aren't they? Leather trousers. Made of South American antelope skin. Cost four thousand kronor. Oh, so you thought you were Sami? Totally? I ought to have known. The way you carried on about our people's old sacrifical places and all that.'

She thrust her head forwards and stared at him.

'You've never been right down in the s.h.i.+t.'

He couldn't imagine her having been there, either. But he didn't dare say anything.

'We had to go into the privy to speak our own language. My teacher wasn't exactly on the right side. Not like yours, petting the dear little Lapp children. Telling them about the troll drums and all that stuff. When I went to school, they made you ashamed of being a Lapp, like having vermin or tuberculosis. And we didn't even own any reindeer. Dad was a drunk. Did you know that? Did you know your grandfather was a drunk? Well, now you know, anyhow. He sang and drank and talked s.h.i.+t. He wasn't violent. Only silly. I can't stand the way people are now collecting the Sami songs and all that. Singing and singing and singing. Do you know what it means to be poor, Johan? p.i.s.s-poor. 'Patch-pants Lapp, Lapps are c.r.a.p,' the kids used to say, turning their backsides on you. Oh, no, Johan. No ancient places of sacrifice. That isn't what we went around thinking about. But electricity! And patterned sweaters and a stainless-steel sink. Even your aunt Sakka dreamt Swedish dreams.'

Sakka had read the weekly magazines. And saved them all up. Taken them with her up to Langva.s.slien in bundles tied up with string. The Pergutt and Johan had found them in the attic and Sakka had laughed. She remembered how she had tried to forget she had short little legs, a round bottom and dead-straight hair.

'Sakka laughed at those magazine dreams,' said Johan. 'I know she did.'

'She did a complete about-turn as best she could when she married Per Dorj. Borrowed a silver collar for the wedding. Got herself a Sami costume, though it wasn't real wool. Now she's on every single committee there is and Per is chair of the Sami village. But that doesn't make the sun turn.'

'I think they do it well,' said Johan. 'All the same.'

'Sakka's southern Sami is spoken by a few hundred people. Did you know that? A few hundred!'

Yes, Sakka tried to get the sun to turn and the mountain birch to grow with its roots up in the air. She loved her language. But perhaps it had already been squeezed to death under the synthetic material. A stronger myth had swallowed hers. He had thought so himself, many a time. But living up there was so easy. For him it was a life of Sundays; winter life with the dogs, and branding the calves, fis.h.i.+ng and walking in the summer.

'I suppose they do the best they can,' he said. 'Hanging on. Like everyone living here. There's no difference between the Sami and the others in that respect. They make do somehow. It can't be all that grand. They try to live a life that somehow connects to the past. And most of them want to remember. Not everyone can build roads for the company. Not everyone is involved in turning this into the Area.'

'Yes, they are.'

The treetops. The sleeping birds. Sparks between the trees. No more memory here, but a tumour, growing as fast as the destruction.

The Area has no paths. Here are steep slopes and rubbish, stones, log stacks, scrub. A network of roads out on the Area. A system of road networks running out to the cleared areas. Rubble after dynamiting along the roadside slopes. Shattered stony gravel. Dry root systems. Oil drums. Torsten has built the network of roads. Do you hate him for that? Do you hide in the treetops, creep along paths under capercaillie spruces that are no longer there? Then you're lost in the cancer that is called longing.

Hate you. Know what you did, what you took part in. It was the haste, nothing else. The great haste. Everyone was in such a hurry, hurrying towards death.

Paths run and disappear like roads, like forests. But it was fatal that it all went so quickly. Now you have only the presence and a hole of hunger.

Hate you.

Bend over your reflection in the water and hate.

She said it so quietly, he had to lean over towards her.

'Yes, everyone. You, too. And Annie Raft. Though she thought she was so much better than the rest of us. But all the same, she was involved in it.'

'Did you hate her?'

What a word. She didn't reply.

But she does hate. I have never dared disturb my hatred. She touched on hers, and that was enough. It had been sleeping so lightly.

What shall we do with this hatred of ourselves of the devastation? What shall we do? It fills our mouths. Rotten. Bitter. A taste we don't recognise. An unfamiliar vomit.

I would like to glide above it all like Ylja, with ridicule, with sarcasm, with affection. Like gliding above the treetops, above forests on fire, like vapour. Or just work, eyes closed, work to heal, like Birger. Healing. a.s.suaging.