The voices from the living room have fallen silent, the windows are closed, and Victoria hopes that no one heard anything. The front door opens, and four men get into the big black Mercedes that’s parked in the drive. Her dad stands on the steps and watches the car disappear through the gates. Then, with his head bowed and his hands in his pockets, he walks down the steps and round onto the path that leads towards the pool. Victoria can see that he’s disappointed.
The girl looks away when he takes off his pants and changes into his swimming trunks. Victoria can’t help giggling at the tight, flowery-patterned relics from the seventies that he refuses to replace.
Suddenly he turns and takes two steps towards her.
She can see in his eyes what’s going to happen.
He tried to hit her once before, but on that occasion she grabbed a saucepan and hit him over the head with it. Since then he’s never tried again. Until now.
No, not my face, Victoria thinks before everything turns red and she falls backwards against the veranda wall.
Another blow hits her forehead, then one in the stomach. Her eyes flare and she bends double.
Lying on the stones she hears the sound of the hose, then there is a burning sensation across her back and she screams out loud. He remains standing behind her and she dare not open her eyes. The heat spreads across her face and over her back.
She hears his heavy footsteps as he walks past her, down to the pool. He’s always been too cowardly to dive in, and uses the steps before gliding out into the water. She knows he will swim ten lengths as usual, no more, no less. When he’s done he gets out and comes back to her. ‘Look at me,’ he sighs, running his hand down her back.
She can feel that the nozzle of the hose has torn a large cut below her left shoulder blade.
‘You look bloody awful.’ He gets up and holds his hand out to her. ‘Come inside and we’ll get you patched up.’
When he’s taken care of her wounds, she sits on the sofa wrapped in a towel, hiding her smile behind it. Hit, caress, protect, destroy, she repeats soundlessly as he explains that their negotiations have hit problems and that they’ll therefore have to go back home soon.
She takes pleasure in the fact that the Freetown project has evidently turned into a fiasco.
Nothing has worked.
He explains that the agency’s failed irrigation project in the north of the country has had consequences. He says the money disappears, people disappear, and the slogans about constructive nationalism and a new order are about as empty as the government’s coffers.
Thirty people have died from poisoning, and there’s talk of sabotage and curses. The project’s been stopped, and they’ll be going home four months early.
When he leaves the room she sits there and looks at his collection of fetish figures.
He’s managed to get hold of twenty wooden sculptures of female figures, and they’re lined up on the desk, ready to be packed away.
Colonialist, Victoria thinks. Here to collect trophies.
There’s also a life-sized face mask. An ancestral mask from the Tenme tribe that reminds her of their servant girl.
As she runs her fingers over the rough wooden sculpture, she imagines that the face is alive. She strokes its eyes, nose and mouth. The surface begins to feel warm under her fingertips, and the wooden fibres become real skin under her touch.
She no longer dislikes the servant girl, because she has realised that there isn’t any rivalry between them.
She realised that down by the pool.
She is more important to him, their servant girl is merely a toy, a wooden doll, a trophy.
He’s going to take the mask home.
Hang it up somewhere, maybe in the living room.
Something exotic to show to dinner guests.
But for Victoria the wooden mask will be more than an ornament. With her hands she can give it a life, a soul.
If he takes the mask home with him, then she can take the girl. She has no rights, she’s almost a slave. No one will miss her, because not only does she have no rights, she also has no parents.
The girl has told Victoria that her mother died in childbirth, and that her father was executed when he was found guilty of stealing a chicken. An ancient way of testing guilt known as trial by red water.
His empty stomach was filled with dry rice, then he was forced to drink half a barrel of water mixed with bark from the cola tree. Vomiting red water is a sign of innocence, but he couldn’t vomit. He just swelled up with the rice and was beaten to death with a spade.
She has no one here to take care of her, Victoria thinks. She can come back to Sweden, and her name will be Solace.
That means comfort, and she can share the sickness with Solace.
She will also carry something else back to Sweden.
A seed that has been sown inside her.
Gamla Enskede – Kihlberg House
JEANETTE SEES THAT the lights aren’t on in the house and realises that Johan isn’t home yet. His weekend with his grandparents doesn’t seem to have made much difference. He’s just as reserved as before, and she’s at a complete loss. She doesn’t want to admit the problem to herself. Plenty of kids are troubled, but not her little boy.
He’s so fragile now that she suspects that the slightest misunderstanding might break him. He probably never imagined that she and ?ke would split up. After all, they’d always been there for him.
Had it been her fault? Had she, like Billing believed, worked too hard and not devoted enough time to her family?
She thinks about ?ke, who had taken the first opportunity to leave a grey, uneventful life with his wife and child out in the suburbs.
No, she thinks. It isn’t my fault. And we’re probably better off this way, even if it’s hard on Johan.
Once she’s inside the house and has turned the lights on, she goes into the kitchen and warms up the remains of the pea soup from last night. The wound in her head is starting to heal, and the stitches itch terribly.
She pours herself a glass of beer and opens the paper.
The first thing she sees is a picture of Prosecutor Kenneth von Kwist, who has written an article about the lack of security in Sweden’s prisons.
Fucking idiot, she thinks, closing the paper and starting to eat.
Then the sound of the door opening. Johan is home.
She puts her spoon down and goes into the hall. He’s soaking wet from head to toe, and when he takes off his trainers she notices that his socks are so drenched that they squelch on the floor.
Don’t make a fuss, she thinks. ‘Don’t worry about that. I’ll deal with it. Have you eaten?’ she asks.
He nods wearily in response, takes off his socks, and quickly pads past her and goes into the bathroom.
After another ten minutes in the kitchen with her soup and the newspaper, she begins to wonder what he’s doing in there. No sounds from the shower, no sound at all, actually.
She knocks on the door. ‘Johan?’
He eventually says something, but so quietly that she can’t hear what he says.
‘Johan, can’t you open the door? I can’t hear you.’
After a few seconds the lock clicks, but he doesn’t open up.
For a couple of moments she just stands there staring at the door. A barrier between us, she thinks. As usual.
When she finally opens the door he’s sitting curled up on the lid of the toilet. She can see he’s freezing and pulls down a towel to wrap around him.