The Lost Village(83)

The tip of the pencil breaks, and she goes still.

She starts making that wordless hum again, the one that seems to come from somewhere deep in her chest.

She doesn’t look straight at me: her eyes are fixed somewhere to my side, which seems to be as close as they can come to my face. It feels like she’s trying to tell me something.

And yes, I know that figure. It’s a monster I’ve seen before. On a piece of paper and a worn tabletop.

She draws just like her grandmother.

“Just like Birgitta,” I say.

I don’t know if I’m saying it to myself or to her, but when Tone hears the name she looks me straight in the eye.





THEN



Elsa knows Aina won’t be home. It’s been days since she’s so much as seen her.

She races through the house like a whirlwind, hastily shoving clothes into a little bag without even looking at what she’s grabbing. She can’t take too much; it can’t look like she’s on her way somewhere.

By now they have hardly any money left, but Elsa grabs two necklaces she inherited from her mother. The chains are thin and silver, but they must be worth something. She should be able to sell or pawn them in Stockholm.

Elsa pauses over the half-written letter in her underwear drawer, but there’ll be no time to send it now. She leaves it where it is.

It’s when Elsa takes the little tea tin from the top shelf in the kitchen that she hesitates. She can hear her own heartbeats in her chest, fast and rattling and guilty.

It doesn’t feel right to take it.

The tin contains all that is left of their savings; almost one thousand kronor, in different denominations. If she takes it then Staffan will have nothing to live on.

But they will go with her, she tries to persuade herself; Aina will go with her.

It isn’t theft. It’s her money, too.

Elsa takes seven hundred kronor, folds the bills up neatly, and stuffs them in a sock in the mess that is her bag. She leaves the rest in the tin. It feels better this way, but it also feels like capitulation.

She casts a quick glance at the clock over the kitchen door. It’s almost 7:00 A.M. Which means Aina should still be in church.

When Elsa locks the door behind her and starts walking, she wants nothing more than to turn around and go back. She can hardly get her head around the fact that she won’t be coming home tonight to cook dinner. That she won’t be opening that green door as dusk approaches, stepping inside to hear Aina and Karin monkeying around upstairs, giggling over God knows what. To see Staffan in the kitchen with his feet on one of the chairs, and berate him for not taking off his shoes.

Elsa promises herself that she will come back, one day. She and Staffan and Aina, together. Her family will return to this house with its green door. Once all of this is over.

They might even bring Kristina with them, too.

Elsa sets off toward the church. She must keep up appearances, look like everything is normal. Everything could depend on it. She has always been proud of her ability to keep a cool head and take control of situations, but now, when it really matters, she’s trembling like a leaf.

The day that is breaking is beautiful, warm and bright. But despite the light sky stretching out over the village, the church looms ominously. The doors are wide open, as they always are nowadays. The pastor often sermonizes about having no secrets before God or the congregation.

The thought of him and his cold, gray eyes in that young, strangely sexless face sends cold shivers running down Elsa’s spine.

She must be strong.

She walks briskly up the steps and into the church, striding like someone who has nothing to hide or no reason for shame. But the scene before her makes her stop short.

They are lying in circles around each other, curled up like children on their sides, on top of thin blankets that can only offer scant protection from the cold floor. The pale sunlight streaming in through the tall windows washes out their colors, giving them the look of stone angels. Cold, eternal, and perfect.

Elsa freezes on the threshold. There must be over a hundred people on the floor: old and young, men and women. She can see children among them, curled up with their mothers. She knows them all.

Maj-Lis with her bad knees. Karolin, whose oldest was born at almost the same time as Margareta. Back then they had knitted together as their due dates approached, chattering and gossiping about nothing and everything, giddy with nervousness and joy.

G?ran, who had been on the same team as Staffan at the mine. He would always stutter when he was nervous, and had tended to blush whenever Elsa was in the room. She had always suspected he had a liking for her when they were younger, but then he had met his Pernilla and stopped stuttering when they talked.

Pernilla. She’s three rows away.

And two steps from her lies Staffan.

Staffan. Her beloved husband.

Elsa has lived with him so long now that she hardly sees him anymore; he’s as familiar to her as the back of her own hand. Elsa was scarce more than a child when they married, younger than Margareta is now.

Elsa has seen him sick as a dog, and so drunk that he can only mumble. She knows that his eyes tear up when talking about his dad, and that his big, heavy face softens when he looks at their girls. She has seen him as a beardless nineteen-year-old, a new father at twenty-two, and bereft as a fatherless thirty-two-year-old. It was Elsa who had found the first gray hairs on his temples, who had held him when the mine shut down, promising him that they would get through it together.