‘Annette?’
The dark figure doesn’t seem to have heard her and just walks past.
‘Annette?’ Sofia repeats in a louder voice, and this time the woman stops and turns round.
Sofia takes a few wary steps towards her. Annette Lundstr?m flinches as if she is frightened.
Annette just stands there with a vacant expression while the wind whistles around them. Her face is droopy and grey beneath the red hat.
‘Where are you heading?’ Sofia tries.
She can see that Annette is only wearing slippers, and has no tights on. She’s moving her lips slightly, but Sofia can’t make out what she’s saying. She realises that something has happened to Annette. It’s her, yet somehow it isn’t.
‘Annette … How are you?’
Then she looks at Sofia. ‘I’m going to move …’ she says quietly in a weak voice. ‘Back to Polcirkeln.’
She takes Annette’s hand, which is ice-cold. She must be freezing.
‘You’re very lightly dressed,’ Sofia says. ‘Wouldn’t you like to come with me and I’ll get you some coffee?’
Reluctantly Annette Lundstr?m allows herself to be led to St Paulsgatan and up to Sofia’s office.
‘Sit yourself down here for a bit,’ Sofia says to Annette, pulling a chair over for her. As she sits down, one sleeve rides up, and Sofia catches sight of a plastic bracelet around her wrist. A white patient’s bracelet, marked PSYCHIATRY, SOUTH STOCKHOLM.
Of course, Sofia thinks.
She asks Annette to wait a moment, and goes to see Ann-Britt. In a low voice she asks her to get some coffee and mineral water. ‘Annette Lundstr?m is a patient at one of South Stockholm’s psychiatric units. Can you call around and check?’
Five minutes later Annette Lundstr?m starts to thaw out. Her face has regained a bit of colour, but is still slack and expressionless. She lifts the coffee cup to her lips with trembling hands and Sofia notices that Annette’s fingertips are covered in cuts.
‘What am I doing here?’ The woman’s eyes are darting about and she looks confused.
She puts her cup down, raises her hand to her mouth and starts biting at a cut on her index finger.
Sofia leans across the desk. ‘We’re just warming up for a bit. But you said you were on your way to Polcirkeln. What are you going to do there?’
The answer is confident. ‘Go to see Karl and Viggo and the others.’
She pulls off a scrap of skin and rolls it between her fingers before popping it in her mouth.
Karl and Viggo? Sofia thinks. ‘What about Linnea?’
Annette shuts her eyes, and a faint smile appears at one corner of her mouth. ‘Linnea is back home with God.’
Sofia starts to feel worried, even if it’s possible to interpret Annette’s words in many different ways, considering the state she’s in. ‘How do you mean, “Linnea is back home with God”?’
Annette opens her eyes and smiles broadly. The look in her eyes is distant and, together with her smile, forms an image that Sofia recognises.
Psychosis. A portrait of a person who isn’t the person she used to be.
‘First I have to go to Polcirkeln …’ Annette mutters. ‘To Karl and Viggo, then I’m going home as well, to God and Linnea … Viggo gave me money, and said Linnea didn’t need to see any more psychologists. So she could go home to God.’
Sofia tries to gather her thoughts. ‘Viggo Dürer gave you money?’
‘Yes … Wasn’t that nice of him?’ Annette looks at her with glassy eyes. ‘I can use the money to go to Polcirkeln and build a temple where we can prepare for the glory that will soon be here.’
They’re interrupted by the phone. Sofia apologises and picks up the receiver.
‘She’s a patient at Rosenlund,’ Ann-Britt says. ‘They’ll be here to pick her up in fifteen minutes.’
Sofia hangs up and regrets not waiting longer before asking Ann-Britt to call the psychiatric clinics. Rosenlund is pretty much just round the corner, less than a kilometre away, and Sofia would have liked longer to talk to Annette.
Now she’s only got fifteen minutes, and will have to be extremely efficient.
‘Sigtuna and Denmark,’ Annette Lundstr?m says, out of nowhere, evidently immersed in herself. ‘Everyone from Sihtunum is welcome to live in Polcirkeln. That’s one of the ground rules.’
‘Polcirkeln, Sihtunum and Denmark, you say? And what are these ground rules?’
Annette Lundstr?m smiles as she looks at her bleeding fingers with her head bowed.
‘The Original Order,’ she says. ‘Pythia’s instructions.’
Village of Polcirkeln, 1981
And I make wild strawberries for the children, because I think they deserve them,
And other nice little things that are right when children are little.
And I make such lovely places, where the children can run around,
Where the children can be full of summer, and their legs full of life.
PARIAH.
She has found the word in the dictionary, and she knows the definition by heart.
An outcast, a despised person.
The entire Lundstr?m family are pariahs up here, and no one in the village talks to them.
It’s the games that others don’t like. But that’s only because they don’t understand them. They can’t sing the Psalms of the Lamb, and they’ve never heard of the Original Order.
The fact that she has been engaged to Karl for almost a year, since she turned twelve, is something else that the others find ugly. Karl is almost nineteen, and he’s her cousin.
She loves him, and they’re going to have a child of love as soon as she’s old enough.
The others don’t understand that either.
And now things have gone so far that they’ve got to move away from here. Fortunately Viggo has been able to help them sort everything out, and she’s going to start school in Sigtuna in the autumn. There will be friends there, people who are like them and understand.
She knows that if it weren’t for Viggo, they would be nothing.
He’s the one who has shown them the way, and helped them to understand how the world really is. And he’s the one who’s going to help them now, when everyone else, every single neighbour, has turned against them.
Viggo looks focused and nods silently when he sees her. He has a large paper bag with him, and she knows it contains presents for her. He’s been travelling, as far away as the Soviet Union.
He smiles at her, and she goes into her room.
If only they could stop talking soon, he can come in and give her the presents, and after that they can continue with the preparations for her impending marriage to Karl.
She’s going to be a good mother to her child, and a good wife to her husband, and for that to happen, she needs to practise.
Mariatorget – Sofia Zetterlund’s Office
‘EVERY MORNING WHEN I wake up, I think everything’s normal,’ Annette Lundstr?m says. ‘Then I remember that Linnea isn’t here any more. I wish I could make the most of that short moment when everything feels normal.’