His shoelaces are undone, and he looks happy. She strokes Martin’s face gently with her finger and thinks about how he never learned to tie his shoelaces, so he was always tripping. And she thinks about the laughter that meant she could never resist hugging him.
She loses herself in the photograph, his eyes, his skin. She can still remember the way his skin smelled after a day in the sun, after his evening bath, in the morning when the folds of his pillow were still visible on his cheek. She thinks about their final hours together.
Sofia shuts her eyes, folds her arms across her chest, hugs herself.
The pipes beside the bed begin to roar. Then she hears footsteps on the stairs. Footsteps whose weight she recognises.
Her heart is beating so hard she almost can’t breathe. It wasn’t me, she thinks.
It was you.
She hears him clattering around in the kitchen, then turning the tap on. Then he turns it off and disappears down into the basement again.
She doesn’t want to remember anything else, just wants to put an end to it all. All that remains is going down to them and doing what she came here to do.
She leaves the room and goes down the stairs, but stops at the kitchen doorway. She goes in and looks around.
There’s something different.
Where there used to be an empty space under the worktop there’s now a shiny new dishwasher. How many hours did she spend down there, hidden behind the little curtain, listening to the adults talking?
But something else is still there, just as she suspected.
She walks over to the fridge and looks at the cutting from Upsala Nya Tidning, now extremely yellow after almost thirty years.
TRAGIC ACCIDENT: 9-YEAR-OLD BOY FOUND DEAD IN FYRIS RIVER.
Sofia looks at the cutting. After reading it daily for several years, over and over again, she knows it by heart. She is taken aback by a sudden sense of unease, not what she usually felt when she read it.
The unease isn’t sadness, but something else.
Just as it used to, it comforts her to read about how nine-year-old Martin had inexplicably drowned in the Fyris River. That the police didn’t think there was anything suspicious about it, and were treating the incident as a tragic accident.
She feels a sense of calm spreading through her body, and the feelings of guilt gradually subside.
It had been an accident. Nothing else.
City of Uppsala, 1986
DOWN ON THE jetty she moves her hand back and forth in the water.
‘It’s not that cold,’ she lies.
But he doesn’t want to go out to her.
‘Can’t we go back? It smells, and I’m freezing.’
She finds his indecision annoying. First it was the Ferris wheel, then he changed his mind. Then he wanted to swim, but now he doesn’t.
‘Well, hold your nose if you think it smells. Look at me, you can see it isn’t cold!’
She looks around to make sure there’s no one around. The only people who could possibly see her would be anyone sitting in the big wheel, but she can see it isn’t moving at the moment and is standing there empty.
She takes off her knitted cardigan and top and sits down on the jetty. Then she pulls off her trousers and socks, and stretches out on the jetty in just her underwear. Her skin rises in goosebumps as a cold wind sweeps her back.
‘See, it isn’t cold. Please, Martin, come here!’
Carefully he walks out to her and she rolls onto her side and unties his shoes.
‘We’ve got our coats with us, so we won’t freeze. Anyway, it’s warmer in the water than it is on land.’
She reaches in front of her and pulls the forgotten towel from the post. ‘Look, we’ve even got a towel to dry ourselves on. It’s not wet, and you can use it first.’
Suddenly there’s a shrill alarm from the Kungs?ngen Bridge, over by the sewage treatment plant. Martin gets scared and jumps. She laughs because she knows it’s just the signal that the bridge is about to be raised to let river traffic pass. The first signal is followed by several shorter ones, and it’s gloomy enough down on the jetty for the rhythmic flashing of the red light to be reflected in the trees above them. But the bridge itself isn’t visible.
‘Don’t be scared. It’s just the bridge opening to let the boats through.’
He looks lost standing there.
When she sees that he’s still freezing, she pulls him closer and hugs him tight. His hair tickles her nose and she giggles.
‘You don’t have to go swimming if you don’t dare …’
The bascule bridge opens, and soon a little wooden boat with its lanterns lit glides past, followed by a larger racing boat with its cab covered.
They lie entwined on the jetty as the boats pass. She thinks how empty it will be when autumn comes and he will no longer be there with her.
He lies there quietly curled up beside her.
‘What are you thinking?’ she asks.
He looks up at her and she can see him smiling.
‘How much fun it’s going to be moving to Sk?ne.’
She turns utterly cold.
‘My cousin lives in Helsingborg and we’ll be able to play nearly every day. He’s got a really long car track and he’s going to give me one of his cars. Maybe a Ponsack Farburg.’
She can feel her body starting to go limp, almost paralysed. Does he want to move to Sk?ne?
She thinks that they’re going to take him away from her and she thinks about how she’s going to disappear out of his life.
She looks at him. He’s lying beside her gazing dreamily up at the sky.
There’s a shadow over his face, like a bird’s wing.
She wants to get up, but it’s as if someone’s got an iron grip on her arms and chest.
Where can I go? she thinks, terrified. She wants to erase everything he’s said, and she wants to take him away from there.
Back to her home.
Then something happens.
Her vision blurs and she feels she’s about to be sick.
And it sounds like a crow is crying directly into her ears.
She looks up in horror and right in front of her is his laughing face.
No, it’s not him, it’s his dad’s eyes and his disgusting wet lips laughing at her scornfully. And now the crow is inside her head, and black wings are flapping over her eyes. Every muscle in her body tenses, and, terrified, she tries to protect herself.
Crow Girl grabs hold of his hair, so hard that big clumps come out.
She hits him.
In the head, in the face, on his body. Blood pours from his ears and nose and in his eyes she sees first only fear, but then something else as well.
Deep in his eyes he doesn’t understand what’s happening.
Crow Girl hits and hits, and when he’s no longer moving her blows get weaker.
She’s crying as she bends over him. He doesn’t make a sound, just lies there staring at her. There’s no expression in his eyes, but they’re moving, and he keeps blinking. He’s breathing fast and his throat is rattling.
She feels giddy, and her body is heavy.
As if in a fog she gets up, walks off the jetty and fetches a large stone from the riverbank. Her vision is spinning as she goes back to him with the stone.
When it hits his head it sounds like when you stamp on an apple.
‘It isn’t me,’ she says. Then she lets his body sink into the water.
‘Now you’ve got to swim …’
Grisslinge – Bergman House