The Circle (Hammer)

58



THE JUNE AIR is refreshing after the rain, as if someone has thrown the windows wide and aired the world. The ground is still slippery and muddy in places and it’s heavy-going, as Anna-Karin pushes Grandpa’s wheelchair across the farmyard towards the main house. Nicolaus offers to take over, but she refuses: she’s got to do this herself.

Grandpa is staring silently ahead. Anna-Karin is unsure that he recognises her but doesn’t want to ask. His lucid moments come more often now, and she knows he finds it demeaning to be fussed over.

He’s recovering. But her mother refuses to acknowledge it. When Anna-Karin suggested they take him to see the farm one last time, she simply said there was no point. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. It would only upset him, assuming he understands where he is.’

Nicolaus helps her get the wheelchair up the front steps. ‘I’ll wait out here,’ he says. ‘Take as much time as you need.’

Anna-Karin looks at him gratefully and unlocks the front door. Luckily it’s wide enough for the wheelchair.

They enter the empty hall. Continue into the kitchen. The living room. The front room, which they stopped using after Grandma died.

Nothing hides the blemishes. Wallpaper has come unstuck, paint flakes along the skirting boards, and there are brownish-yellow spots on the ceiling above where her mother used to sit and smoke.

Somehow the rooms look smaller when they’re empty. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

They had once been full of life but now they’re empty. That’s the difference, Anna-Karin thinks. Before it was a home. Now it’s just a house.

Grandpa still hasn’t said a word, but he reaches back and pats Anna-Karin’s hand when they leave the house. Nicolaus helps her down the steps. She’s afraid they’ll accidentally tip the wheelchair so Grandpa falls out and hurts himself. She doesn’t want to imagine what her mother would say if anything happened. She has no idea they’re here – doesn’t even know that Anna-Karin still has a key.

Anna-Karin aims at Grandpa’s cabin and pushes the wheelchair ahead of her. She follows his gaze towards the new building going up where the barn had stood. Jari’s father, who bought the farm, has decided to raise pigs.

‘It doesn’t look the same,’ Grandpa says.

‘No,’ Anna-Karin agrees. ‘It doesn’t.’

It doesn’t smell of coffee in Grandpa’s cabin. When Anna-Karin pushes the wheelchair into the empty kitchen, she wonders if she’s done the right thing in bringing him here. The kitchen, the little bedroom and the shabby bathroom are so dreary and desolate. Anna-Karin looks at Grandpa. He seems thoughtful. She pushes him up to the window where he used to sit.

She squats next to him and looks out. They gaze up towards the big house, at the meadows where there are no longer any cows grazing. The early summer twilight glows above the treetops.

It’s beautiful here, Anna-Karin thinks. She understands why Grandma and Grandpa chose this particular farm, on this particular spot, when Engelsfors was a town full of promise.

‘Anna-Karin,’ Grandpa says.

She meets his clear gaze.

‘Staffan wasn’t a bad man,’ he continues. ‘Your father. He was afraid, but he wasn’t bad.’

Anna-Karin is mute. It’s hard for her to get the words out when she asks, ‘Then why did he disappear?’

‘I don’t know. That was between your mother and him. But he loved you, Anna-Karin. He did. In his way.’

‘Not enough,’ she mumbles, and warm tears are running down her cheeks.

Grandpa wipes them away. ‘He was wrong to go, but I don’t think he had a lot of love in him to start with. Mia was drawn to those boys. The ones who didn’t have much to give. But whatever love he had, he gave to you. The little he had to give was yours, Anna-Karin. I’m not saying it was enough, but I want you to know that.’

Anna-Karin takes Grandpa’s hand. His skin is softer than it’s ever been. As if it’s thinned.

‘I’ve worked all my life,’ Grandpa continues. ‘I worked, ate and slept, then started again from the beginning. But lately I’ve been thinking. I haven’t been fair to you, Anna-Karin.’

She shakes her head. ‘Don’t say that, Grandpa—’

‘I’m old and I can say what I like. And I’m telling you I did wrong. I closed my eyes to how things were for you. When those young thugs at school were picking on you, Mia always told me to stay out of it, that she’d been bullied, too, and she’d survived. She said I’d only make things worse if I got involved. But I should have anyway.’

He squeezes Anna-Karin’s hand, and she feels he’s got some of his strength back. A strength that she can see in his eyes, too, when he looks at her.

‘Can you forgive me, Anna-Karin?’

‘I’m the one who should be apologising. The fire was my fault.’

‘Answer my question. Otherwise I’ll never have any peace.’

Anna-Karin takes a snivelling breath and nods.

‘You were just trying to get back some of what others had taken from you throughout your life,’ he said. ‘You went too far, but that was my fault, too. I should have been honest with you. I should have told you that you must cherish your gift, not abuse it.’

Anna-Karin isn’t even surprised. ‘You’ve known all along, haven’t you?’ she says.

‘Only as much as my own mind could grasp, and that’s not much,’ Grandpa answers. ‘Now I want to go out into the fresh air.’

They make for the front garden. Nicolaus is sitting in the car, waving to them, as they walk past.

Anna-Karin pushes Grandpa along the dirt track running between the fields. He slips back into a haze again, but continues talking, alternating between Swedish and Finnish.

Sometimes he calls her Gerda, sometimes Mia, sometimes Anna-Karin. He tells her about the family of foxes that lived in a burrow by the edge of the forest. He warns her against false prophets. He tells her about the Norwegian refugees the farm’s previous owner had taken in during World War II. He describes the late nights when he used to play cards with Anna-Karin’s parents, while Grandma Gerda baked flatbread and sang along to old records. Anna-Karin wonders if they were the same songs her mother was singing in the autumn.

Eventually he falls silent. Anna-Karin turns the wheelchair and pushes it towards the car. Grandpa is going back to the care home at Solbacken. It’s only temporary, her mother says, while she and Anna-Karin settle into a rented apartment in the centre of town.

But Anna-Karin knows. There’s a room in the apartment that Grandpa could have, but her mother hasn’t put any of his things in it. She’s decided to leave him at Solbacken.