‘You know that Vanja is sick,’ she said. ‘The illness has progressed quickly, and we don’t know if she’ll survive. She has an abscess in her throat. Dr Madsen can’t cut it out because she might bleed to death.’
‘Why is she sick?’ Daniel asked.
Alma seemed not to hear.
‘The girl is only nineteen years old. That’s not an age for dying. That’s a time to live.’
Alma left him. Serja was doing the evening milking. Daniel waited. When everything was quiet he left the barn. Through the window of the house he could see Alma sitting on a chair next to Vanja’s bed. Alma had fallen asleep. Her hands were resting in her lap, and her head had drooped forward. Carefully he opened the door and went in. Vanja was breathing with a wheezing sound. There were brown medicine bottles on the table. Daniel looked at her face. She was both pale and red at the same time. Her breast was heaving violently. He carefully lifted the covers. He had to know if her knee had swollen up. Whether she was about to die because he had pulled a splinter of wood out of the wooden body that hung on the cross in the church. Her knee looked normal. The abscess in her throat had nothing to do with him. And yet he knew it was a warning. Death was searching, and soon it would find him.
Two days later Vanja died. It was Alma who came out to the barn and told him. She was crying. Daniel thought that he didn’t have much time left. If he was ever going to make it home it would have to be now.
That same night he went up to the hill. Sanna still hadn’t been there, but he knew that she would come soon.
On Saturday the coffin was taken on a wagon to the church. It was raining. Alma brought food for him out to the barn. She was dressed in black. Daniel reached out his hand and took hold of her wrist. He hadn’t done that in a long time.
‘The girl was so young,’ Alma said. ‘So young and now she’s dead.’
Daniel waited until the wagon was gone, then he got up. While the funeral was in progress he would leave Alma and Edvin’s house for the last time. He walked around in the barn and patted the cows.
When he reached the top of the hill, Sanna was sitting there waiting for him.
Chapter 26
Sanna hadn’t noticed the splinter of wood. She hadn’t come to the hill to wait for him — she had gone there to be alone.
Daniel could see at once that something had happened. All her restless energy was gone. She sat still, huddled up, and she hardly noticed when he appeared. He sat down next to her and waited. Even though time was short, he knew that he couldn’t leave without her. He couldn’t talk to her, either. All the invisible doors surrounding her were closed. For once the black birds were quiet. They perched in the tree out in the field, unmoving.
Daniel waited. On Sanna’s face he could see the traces of tears. He sensed that it had something to do with the man who had dragged her off by the hair.
Not until Daniel had a coughing fit did she come to life again and look at him.
‘Who died?’ she asked.
‘Vanja.’
‘What happened?’
‘She got something in her throat that poisoned her and made her stop breathing.’
‘I saw when they drove off with the coffin. First I thought you were the one who was dead. Then I saw that the coffin was big.’
‘I’m leaving. I have to go now. I can’t stay any longer.’
She gave a start. ‘Do you still want me to come with you?’
Daniel was dumbstruck. Was she answering his question before he even had a chance to ask it?
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I want you to come too. But we have to leave now. Before they come back from church.’
Instead of replying, Sanna began to cry. She seemed to cast herself headlong into a sobbing fit, filled equally with rage and sorrow.
‘He raped me!’ she shrieked. ‘That damn devil of a man raped me! And he was supposed to be my father!’
Daniel didn’t know what the word meant. Raped? He had never heard it before.
‘What happened?’ he asked cautiously.
Sanna pulled up her dress to the waist. She was naked underneath and Daniel saw that there was dried blood on the inside of her thighs.
‘Did he beat you?’
‘You’re stupid, you’re a child, you don’t understand a thing. He told me to help him move a calf to another stall. Then he threw me down and stuck it in. I couldn’t even scream. He shoved straw and cow shit in my face. I almost suffocated. And then he said he would kill me if I said a word.’
She suddenly started to scratch and tear at the hair below her belly. Daniel still wasn’t sure that he understood what had happened.
‘What if he got me pregnant?’ she yelled. ‘Then they’ll lock me up in the madhouse in Lund.’
She let her skirt fall and sank back to the ground. Daniel took her hand. She squeezed it so hard with her fingernails that he had to make an effort not to pull his hand away.
Just as suddenly as it began, her fit was over.
‘I’ll come with you. But I’ll never be able to walk on water. I’m too stupid and I’m too clumsy.’
‘We’re not going to walk on water. It’s too late for that now. We’re going to find a boat.’
‘I can’t swim.’
‘We’ll find a boat that won’t sink.’
‘I’ve never seen the sea.’
Daniel dug up the sliver of wood from the mud.
‘This will protect us.’
He told her about his night-time visit to the church.
‘It will protect us from the waves if they get too high.’
She got up and pointed to the road on the other side of the hill.
‘I’ll wait for you there. I just have to run home and fetch something I want to take with me. There’s nobody there now, so I can do it.’
Then she was gone. At the same moment the birds took off from the treetop. They circled around a few times and then vanished across the fields. Daniel followed them with his gaze as long as he could. It occurred to him that they had been there the whole time he had lived with Alma and Edvin. Now they were leaving. Earlier he had walked in the direction they had flown. Now he understood that he had to go in the other direction.
He looked at the house one last time. Then he went down to the road and waited for Sanna.
She came as she had promised. She had wrapped a red shawl around her head. In one hand she had a bundle, in the other something that Daniel couldn’t make out.
‘I took everything he had,’ she said as she came close and opened her hand. There was a bunch of banknotes like the kind Father had often sat and counted.
‘Everything he had,’ she repeated. ‘He didn’t think I knew where he hid the money. In an old hymn book behind the corner cupboard. But I took everything he had.’
‘I don’t think we need any money,’ said Daniel. ‘I know that somewhere a boat will be waiting for us.’
‘It’s important to have money. Otherwise it’s impossible to survive.’
They started walking but stopped after a few steps.
‘Where are we heading?’
Daniel pointed in the direction of the road. ‘To the sea.’
‘I think it’s called Copenhagen,’ said Sanna. ‘It’s on the other side of the water. A city that’s very big.’
They began walking again. Sanna walked so fast that Daniel couldn’t keep up with her. She didn’t stop until he started coughing.
‘You’re sick,’ she said. ‘You might die.’
He shook his head and wiped away the tears once the violent coughing fit was over.
‘I have to go home,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll be well again. And you’re going with me.’