The Blood Spilt

43

Lars-Gunnar Vinsa looks at Rebecka Martinsson. Halfway to town he’d remembered that he’d forgotten his wallet, and turned back.
What kind of bloody conspiracy was this? He’d told Mimmi he was going out. Had she phoned that lawyer? He can hardly believe it. But that’s what must have happened. And she’s come dashing down here to snoop around.
The cell phone in the woman’s hand rings. She doesn’t answer it. He stares doggedly at her ringing phone. They stand there motionless. The phone goes on ringing and ringing.
* * *

Rebecka thinks she ought to answer. It’s probably Maria Taube. But she can’t. And when she doesn’t answer, it’s suddenly written in his eyes. And she knows. And he knows that she knows.
The paralysis passes. The phone ends up on the floor. Did he knock it out of her hand? Did she throw it down?
He’s standing in her way. She can’t get out. A feeling of absolute terror seizes her.
She turns and runs up the staircase to the top floor. It’s narrow and steep. The wallpaper dirty with age. A flowery pattern. The varnish on the stairs is like thick glass. She scrabbles rapidly on all fours, like a crab. Mustn’t slip now.
She can hear Lars-Gunnar. Heavy behind her.
It’s like running into a trap. Where will she go?
The bathroom door in front of her. She dashes inside.
Somehow she manages to shut the door and makes her fingers turn the lock.
The handle is pressed down from the outside.
There’s a window, but there’s nothing left inside her that can manage to try and escape. The only thing that exists is fear. She can’t stand up. Sinks down on the toilet seat. Then she begins to shake. Her body is jerking and shuddering. Her elbows are pressed against her stomach. Her hands are in front of her face, they’re shaking so violently that she involuntarily hits herself on the mouth, the nose, the chin. Her fingers are bent like claws.
A heavy thud, a crash against the outside of the door. She screws her eyes tight shut. Tears pour out. She wants to press her hands against her ears, but they won’t obey, they just keep shaking and shaking.
“Mummy!” she sobs as the door flies open with a bang. It hits her knees. It hurts. Someone is lifting her up by her clothes. She refuses to open her eyes.
* * *

He lifts her by the collar. She’s whimpering.
“Mummy, Mummy!”
He can hear himself whimpering. ?iti, ?iti! It’s more than sixty years ago, and his father is throwing his mother around the kitchen like a glove. She’s locked Lars-Gunnar and his brother and sisters in the bedroom. He’s the eldest. The little girls are sitting on the sofa, ashen-faced and silent. He and his brother are hammering on the door. His mother sobbing and pleading. Things falling on the floor. His father wanting the key. He’ll get it soon. Soon it will be Lars-Gunnar’s and his brother’s turn, while the girls watch. His mother will be locked in the bedroom. The strap will come into play. For something. He can’t remember what. There were always so many reasons.
He slams her head against the hand basin. She shuts up. The child’s tears and his mother’s “?l? ly?! ?l? ly?!” also fall silent in his head. He lets go of her. She falls down onto the floor.
When he turns her over she looks at him with big, silent eyes. Blood is pouring from her forehead. It’s just like that time he hit a reindeer on the way to G?llivare. The same big eyes. And the shaking.
He grabs hold of her feet. Drags her out into the hallway.
Nalle is standing on the stairs. He catches sight of Rebecka.
“What?” he shouts.
A loud, anxious cry. He sounds like a long-tailed skua.
“What?”
“It’s nothing, Nalle!” shouts Lars-Gunnar. “Out you go.”
But Nalle is terrified. Not listening. Takes a few more steps up the stairs. Looks at Rebecka lying there. Shouts again, “What?”
“Didn’t you hear what I said?” roars Lars-Gunnar. “Outside!”
He lets go of Rebecka’s feet and waves his hands at Nalle. In the end he goes down the stairs and pushes him out into the yard. He locks the door.
Nalle stands outside. He can hear him out there. “What? What?” Fear and confusion in his voice. Can see him in his mind’s eye, walking round and round on the porch, completely at a loss.
He feels an overwhelming rage toward the woman upstairs. It’s her fault. She should have left them in peace.
He takes the stairs in three bounds. It’s like Mildred Nilsson. She should have left them in peace. Him and Nalle and this village.
* * *

Lars-Gunnar is standing out in the yard, pegging out washing. It’s late May. No leaves yet, but one or two things are starting to appear in the flower beds. It’s a sunny, windy day. Nalle will be thirteen in the autumn. It’s six years since Eva died.
Nalle is running around in the yard. He’s good at amusing himself. It’s just that you can never be alone. Lars-Gunnar misses that. Being left in peace sometimes.
The spring breeze tugs and pulls at the washing. Soon the sheets and underclothes will be hanging between the birch trees like a row of dancing flags.
Behind Lars-Gunnar stands the new priest Mildred Nilsson. How she can talk. It seems as if she’ll never stop. Lars-Gunnar hesitates as he reaches for the underpants that are a bit tatty. They don’t come up very white either, although they are clean.
But then he thinks, what the hell. Why should he be embarrassed in front of her?
She wants Nalle to be confirmed in the church.
“Listen,” he says. “A couple of years ago some of those hallelujah types turned up here wanting to pray for him to be healed. I threw them out on their ear. I’m not that keen on the church.”
“I’d never do that!” she says firmly. “I mean, of course I’ll pray for him, but I promise to do it quietly at home, in my own room. But I’d never want him to be any different. You really have been blessed with a fine boy. He couldn’t be any better.”
* * *

Rebecka draws up her knees. Pushes them down. Draws them up. Pushes them down. Shuts herself in the bathroom again. Can’t manage to get up. Crawls as far away as she can, into a corner. He’s coming back up the stairs.
* * *

It was so bloody simple for Mildred to say that Nalle was a blessing, Lars-Gunnar thinks. She didn’t have to look after him day and night. And she wasn’t the one with a broken marriage behind her because of the child they’d had. She didn’t need to worry. About the future. How Nalle would manage. About Nalle’s puberty and sexuality. Standing there with the soiled sheets, wondering what the hell to do. No girl would want him. A mass of strange fears in his head, that he could become dangerous.
After the priest’s visit the village women came running. Let the boy be confirmed, they said. And they offered to organize everything. Said Nalle would be bound to enjoy it, and if he didn’t, they could just stop. Even Lars-Gunnar’s cousin Lisa came to say her bit. Said she could sort out a suit, so he wouldn’t be standing there in something that was too small.
Then Lars-Gunnar lost his temper. As if it was about the suit or the present.
“It’s not about the money!” he roared. “I’ve always paid for him, haven’t I? If I’d wanted to save money I’d have shoved him in an institution long ago! All right then, he can be confirmed!”
And he’d paid for a suit and a watch. If you had to pick two things Nalle had no use whatsoever for, it would be a suit and a watch. But Lars-Gunnar didn’t say a word about it. Nobody was going to say he was mean behind his back.
Afterward it was as if something had changed. As if Mildred’s friendship with the boy took something away from Lars-Gunnar. People forgot about the price he’d had to pay. Not that he had any big ideas about himself. But he hadn’t had an easy life. His father’s brutality toward the family. Eva’s betrayal. The burden of being the single parent of a disturbed child. He could have made other choices. Simpler choices. But he educated himself and returned to the village. Became someone.
He hit rock bottom when Eva left. He stayed at home with Nalle, feeling as if nobody wanted him. The shame of being surplus to requirements.
And yet he still looked after Eva when she was dying. He kept Nalle at home. Looked after him. If you listened to Mildred Nilsson, he was bloody lucky to have such a fine boy. “Of course,” Lars-Gunnar had said to one of the women, “but it’s a heavy responsibility as well. A lot to worry about.” And he’d got his answer: parents always worry about their children. He wouldn’t have to be separated from Nalle, as other parents were when their children grew up and left home. They talked a load of crap. People who hadn’t a clue what it was really like. But after that he kept quiet. How could anybody understand.
It was the same with Eva. Since Mildred had arrived, whenever Eva came up in the conversation, people said: “Poor soul.” About her! Sometimes he wanted to ask what they meant by that. If they thought he was such a bastard to live with that she’d even left her own son?
He got the feeling they were talking about him behind his back.
Even then he regretted agreeing to Nalle’s confirmation. But it was already too late. He couldn’t forbid him to spend time with Mildred in the church, because that would just look like sour grapes. Nalle was enjoying himself. He hadn’t the wit to see through Mildred.
So Lars-Gunnar let it carry on. Nalle had a life away from him. But who washed his clothes, who carried the responsibility and the worry?
And Mildred Nilsson. Lars-Gunnar now thinks he was her target all the time. Nalle was just a means to an end.
She moved into the priest’s house and organized her female Mafia. Made them feel important. And they let themselves be led along like cackling geese.
It’s obvious she had a grudge against him from the start. She envied him. He had a certain standing in the village, after all. Leader of the hunting team. He’d been a policeman. He listened to people too. Put others’ needs before his own. And that gave him a certain level of respect and authority. She couldn’t stand that. It was as if she set herself the task of taking everything away from him.
It turned into a kind of war between them, but only they could see it. She tried to discredit him. He defended himself as best he could. But he’d never had any aptitude for that kind of game.
* * *

The woman has crawled back into the bathroom. She’s curled up on the floor between the toilet and the hand basin, holding her arms up over her face to protect herself. He grabs her feet and drags her down the stairs. Her head thumps rhythmically on every step. Thud, thud, thud. And Nalle’s cry from outside: “What? What?” It’s hard to close his ears to that. There has to be an end to it. There has to be an end to it now, at long last.
* * *

He remembers the trip to Majorca. It was one of Mildred’s bright ideas. All of a sudden the young people in the church were going to a camp abroad. And Mildred wanted Nalle to go too. Lars-Gunnar had said no, definitely not. And Mildred had said the church would send an extra member of staff along, just for Nalle. The church would pay. “And just think,” she said, “how much kids of this age normally cost. Slalom gear, trips, computer games, expensive stuff, expensive clothes…” And Lars-Gunnar had understood. “It’s not about money,” he’d said. But he’d realized that in the eyes of the villagers, that’s exactly what it would look like. That he begrudged Nalle having things. That Nalle had to do without. That when Nalle finally had the opportunity to do something that would be fun… So Lars-Gunnar had to give in. All he could do was get out his wallet. And everybody said to him how nice it was that Mildred was so good to Nalle. Lucky for the boy that she’d moved here.
But Mildred wanted to see him go under, he knows that. When her windows got smashed, or when that idiot Magnus Lindmark tried to set fire to her shed, she didn’t report it to the police. And so there was talk. Just as she’d intended. The police can’t do anything. When you really need them, all they can do is just stand there. It really got to Lars-Gunnar. He was the one who had to put up with the embarrassment.
And then she turned her attention to his place on the hunting team.
It might be the church’s mark on the paper. But the forest belongs to him. He’s the one who knows it. It’s true that the cost of the lease has been low. But really, in all fairness, the hunters ought to get paid for shooting. Elk cause enormous damage to the forest, chewing the bark of the trees.
The autumn elk hunt. Planning with the other guys. Walking through the forest in the early morning. Before sunrise. The dogs are excited, pulling on their leads. Sniffing at the gray darkness deep in the forest. Somewhere in there is their quarry. The hunt itself, during the day. Autumn air, the sound of dogs barking far away. The sense of togetherness when you’re dealing with the kill. Struggling with the body in the slaughterhouse. Chatting around the fire in the cabin in the evening.
She wrote a letter. Didn’t dare bring it up face-to-face. Wrote that she knew Torbj?rn had been convicted of breaking the law on hunting. That he hadn’t lost his firearms license. That it was Lars-Gunnar who’d sorted it all out. That he and Torbj?rn couldn’t be permitted to hunt on church land. “It isn’t only inappropriate, but also objectionable in view of the fact that the church is intending to offer protection to the she-wolf,” she wrote.
He can feel the pressure squeezing his chest as he thinks about it. She would plunge him into isolation, that’s what she wanted. Make him into a f*cking loser. Like Malte Alaj?rvi. No job, no hunting.
He’d talked to Torbj?rn Ylitalo. “What the f*ck can we do?” Torbj?rn had said. “I’ll be glad if I can just hang on to my job.” Lars-Gunnar had felt as if he were sinking into a swamp. He could see himself in a few years. Growing old, stuck at home with Nalle. They could sit there like two idiots, gawping at game shows on TV.
It wasn’t right. All that business about the license! It was nearly twenty years ago, after all! It was just an excuse to do him some damage.
“Why?” he’d said to Torbj?rn. “What does she want to do to me?” And Torbj?rn had shrugged his shoulders.
A week went by without him speaking to a single soul. A foretaste of what life would be like. In the evenings he drank, just so that he could get to sleep.
The night before midsummer’s eve he was sitting in the kitchen having a little celebration. Well, maybe celebration wasn’t quite the word. Shut in the kitchen with his own thoughts. Poured himself a drink, talked to himself, drank the drink on his own. Went to bed in the end, tried to sleep. It was as if something was thumping in his chest. Something he hadn’t felt since he was a child.
Then he got in the car and tried to pull himself together. He remembers he almost put the car in the ditch when he was reversing out of the yard. And then Nalle came running out in just his underpants. Lars-Gunnar thought he’d fallen asleep hours ago. He was waving and shouting. Lars-Gunnar had to switch off the engine. “You can come with me,” he said. “But you need to put some clothes on.” “No, no,” said Nalle, refusing to let go of the car door. “It’s okay, I’m not going anywhere. Go and put something on.”
There’s a kind of fog in his head when he tries to remember. He wanted to talk to her. She was going to f*cking listen to him. Nalle fell asleep in the passenger seat.
He remembers hitting her. Thinking: That’s enough. That’s enough now.
She wouldn’t stop making a noise. However much he hit her. Rattling and squeaking. Breathing. He dragged off her shoes and socks. Shoved her socks in her mouth.
He was still furious when he carried her up to the church. Hung her up by the chain in front of the organ pipes. As he stood up there in the gallery he thought it didn’t matter if anybody came, if anybody had seen him.
Then Nalle came in. He’d woken up and came stumbling into the church. Suddenly he was standing down there in the aisle gazing up at Lars-Gunnar and Mildred with huge eyes. He didn’t say a word.
Lars-Gunnar sobered up at once. He was angry with Nalle. And suddenly terrified. He remembers that very clearly. Remembers dragging Nalle to the car. Driving away. And they didn’t speak. Nalle didn’t say anything.
Every day Lars-Gunnar was expecting them to come. But nobody came. Well, they came and asked if he’d seen anything, of course. Or knew anything. Asked him the same questions they were asking everybody else.
He remembered he’d put his work gloves on. They’d been in the trunk of the car. He hadn’t done it intentionally. Hadn’t been thinking about fingerprints or anything. It had just been automatic. If you’re using a tool like a crowbar, you put your gloves on. Pure luck. Pure luck.
And then everything carried on as usual. Nalle didn’t seem to remember anything. He was just the same as always. Lars-Gunnar had been just the same as always too. He slept well at night.
* * *

I was lying there like a wounded animal, he thinks now, as he stands there with this woman at his feet. Like an animal that lies down in a hollow, but it’s only a matter of time before the huntsman catches up with it.
When Stefan Wikstr?m rang he could hear it in his voice. That he knew. Just the fact that he was ringing Lars-Gunnar, why would he do that? They saw each other when they were hunting, but he didn’t have anything to do with that milksop of a priest otherwise. And now he was ringing up. Telling him the parish priest seemed to be changing his mind about the future of the hunting team. Bertil Stensson might suggest to the church council that it was time to revoke the lease. And he talked about the elk hunt as if… as if he had something quite different to say about the whole thing.
And when Stefan rang, the fog in Lars-Gunnar’s head cleared. He remembers standing by the jetty waiting for Mildred. His pulse throbbing like a jackhammer. He looked up at the priest’s house. And somebody was standing at the upstairs window. He didn’t remember that until Stefan Wikstr?m rang.
What did he want with me? he thinks now. He wanted power over me. Like Mildred.