They returned to the house, which was hidden away in a copse comprising a few birch trees and a single mountain ash. Her brother and sisters were indoors, despite the fact that this autumn day was not particularly cold. But they played less and tended to be quiet when they were hungry. Their life was a never-ending wait for food, and not much else.
They stopped outside the door, as if Elin had decided never to allow her daughter inside again.
‘My uncle Axel lives in Sundsvall,’ she said. ‘Axel Andreas Wallén. He works in the docks. He’s a nice man, and he and his wife Dora don’t have any children. They had two boys, but both of them died, and after that they didn’t have any more. Axel and Dora will help you. They won’t turn you away.’
‘I don’t want to go to them as a beggar,’ said Hanna.
The slap came without warning. Afterwards, Hanna thought the blow was reminiscent of the impact from a bird of prey diving down at her cheek.
Elin might possibly have slapped her before, but in that case it would have been triggered mainly by fear. If Hanna had wandered off alone to the river in the spring when it was a raging torrent, and risked falling in and being drowned. But now Elin hit her as a result of irritation. It was the first time.
It was a slap given by a grown-up person to another grown-up. Who would understand why.
‘I don’t abandon my daughter in order to make her a beggar,’ said Elin angrily. ‘I only have your best interests at heart. There’s nothing for you here.’
Hanna had tears in her eyes. Not because of the pain — she had experienced much worse pain than that in her life.
The slap she had received confirmed what she had just been thinking: now she was alone in the world. She would have to leave and travel eastward, towards the coast, and she would never be able to return. What she left behind would sink deeper into oblivion for every metre a sleigh’s runners whisked her away.
It was early autumn, 1903. Hanna Renström was seventeen years old, and would be eighteen on 12 December.
A few months later she would leave her home for ever.
7
Hanna thought to herself: the time of sagas and make-believe is over. Now it’s time for real-life stories.
She realized that when Elin told her what was in store for her. It sometimes happened that businessmen from the coast who travelled over the mountains in winter to Norway for the Røros market didn’t take the usual and shortest route back home, along the River Ljusnan and down to Karböle. Some of them headed northwards after crossing the Sweden — Norway border and then, if the weather permitted it, turned off via Flatruet and along the River Ljungan so that they could do business in the villages on the riverbanks.
There was one businessman in particular, Jonathan Forsman, who usually travelled home via the villages north of Flatruet.
‘He has a big sleigh,’ said Elin. ‘On the way home it’s never as heavily laden as it is when he’s on his way to Røros. He’s bound to be able to make room for you. And he’ll leave you in peace. He won’t try to make advances to you.’
Hanna looked doubtfully at her. How could Elin be so sure? Hanna was well aware what life had in store for her, she had never been totally devoid of other young girls to talk to. Not least the girls who used to act as maids in the shacks up in the mountains when the farmers’ and shepherds’ flocks were grazing in their summer pastures: they had all kinds of strange tales to tell with a mixture of giggles and badly concealed discomfort. Hanna knew what it was like to blush, and what could happen inside her body, especially in the evenings, just before she fell asleep.
But that was all. How could Elin know what might or might not happen on a long sleigh-ride to the distant coast?
She asked her straight out.
‘He’s seen the light,’ said Elin promptly. ‘He used to be an awful man, just like most of those old devils with their sleighs. But since he became a Christian he’s a sort of good Samaritan. He’ll let you travel with him and won’t even ask for payment. And he’ll lend you one of his fur coats so that you won’t freeze.’
But Elin couldn’t be absolutely sure if he would come, or when. The usual time was shortly before Christmas, but there had been occasions when he didn’t turn up until into the New Year. And he had been known not to come at all.
‘He might also be dead, of course,’ said Elin.
When a sleigh set off and was swallowed up by flurries of snow, you never knew whether that might be the last you ever saw of a person, no matter how young or old he was.
Hanna would be ready to travel at any time after her birthday on 12 December. Jonathan Forsman was always in a hurry, never stayed anywhere longer than necessary. Unlike people who always had no end of time to spare, he was an important person and hence was always in a hurry.
‘He generally comes in the afternoon,’ said Elin. ‘He comes out of the forest to the north, heading southwards along the sleigh-tracks that skirt the edge of the bog and lead down to the river and the valleys.’
Every afternoon Hanna would go out and gaze in the direction of the forest as darkness began to fall. She sometimes thought she could hear the bells of a horse-drawn sleigh in the distance, but one never appeared. The forest door remained closed.
She slept badly all the time she was worrying and waiting, kept waking up and had incoherent dreams that frightened her, although she didn’t really understand why. But often her dreams were as white as snow: empty and silent.
One of her dreams kept recurring and haunting her; she was lying in the sofa bed with two of her siblings: the youngest of the family’s children, Olaus, and the sister closest to her in age, Vera, twelve years old. She could feel the warm bodies of her brother and sister up against her own; but she knew that if she were to open her eyes they would turn out to be different children lying there, unknown to her. And the moment she set eyes on them they would die.
Then she would wake up, and realize to her great relief that it had all been a dream. She would often lie there awake, watching the blue moonlight shining in through the low windows covered in ice crystals. Then stretch out her hand and feel the wooden wall and the newspaper covering it. Right next to her was the cold, writhing and twisting away in the ancient timber.
The cold is like an animal, she thought. An animal tethered in its stall. An animal wanting to break out.
The dream had a meaning that she didn’t understand. But it must have something to do with the journey she would have to make. What would be in store for her? What would be demanded of her? She felt awkward in both body and soul when she tried to imagine people living in a town. If only her father had still been alive: he would have been able to explain it to her, and prepare her for it. He had once been to Stockholm, and he’d also been to another big and remarkable town called Arboga. He could have told her that she didn’t need to be afraid.
Elin came from remote Funäsdalen and had never been anywhere else, apart from the short journey northwards with the man who became her husband.
Nevertheless, she was the one who had to answer when Hanna asked her questions. There simply wasn’t anybody else.
But Elin’s answers? Vague, taciturn. She knew so little.
8
One day at the beginning of November, when they were at the edge of the forest with an axe and a saw, collecting firewood for the winter, Hanna asked her mother about the sea. What did it look like? Did it run along a sort of giant furrow, like the river? Was it the same colour? Was it always so deep that you couldn’t reach the bottom?