Johan had dropped his air gun, which was useless after firing its single shot, and was running up towards the house. Rolf was after him, with the knife in his hand. With a grimace of pain Simon lifted the shotgun to his shoulder, just as Rolf disappeared behind the lilac hedge fifteen metres away.
Simon had never fired a shotgun before, but he knew that the whole point of them was that the shot covers a wide area. He aimed at the lilac hedge and pulled the trigger.
Then a number of things happened in less than a second. There was a deafening bang and the recoil hit Simon so hard that he fell backwards into the hazel bushes, but before he had even begun to fall a hole opened up in the lilac hedge and fragments of leaves flew up like a flock of frightened butterflies. The first hazel twigs were just scratching Simon's back through his shirt as Rolf began to roar.
Simon was still pressing the stock of the shotgun to his shoulder as the branches closed around him and he fell into shimmering greenery. Rolf carried on bellowing. The thicker branches further in stopped Simon falling any further, and he could feel blood on the skin of his back. He clutched the wooden stock and breathed; he stayed where he was and one thought went through his mind in time with his panting breath, in and out:
I hit him. I hit him. I hit him.
It was only a few seconds later, when he had disentangled himself from the branches and saw Anna-Greta sitting with her hands covering her mouth and Marita rocking back and forth that other thoughts began to force their way through:
If I've killed him, if I…
Rolf had stopped roaring. Simon swallowed, but without any saliva.
Thirsty. So bloody thirsty.
A drop of sweat trickled down into his eye, obscuring his vision. He wiped it away and rubbed his eyes. When he opened them again, Anna-Greta was standing next to him. She was squinting, and looked as if she were in pain. She pointed at the hand holding the butt of the gun and tried to say something, but no words came.
Simon looked at the shotgun. Only now did he discover that there were two triggers one behind the other, one for each barrel. He had only pressed the outer trigger. There was one cartridge left. Anna-Greta nodded and put her hand over her ear. She walked towards the lilac hedge and Simon followed her with the shotgun raised.
Rolf clearly wasn't dead, because he was moving. Quite a lot, in fact. He was hurling himself back and forth on the ground as if he were trying to shake off some invisible nightmare. His jacket was ripped and covered in blood from the left shoulder to halfway down his back on one side. Only some of the shot had hit him. If Simon had fired half a second later, Rolf would probably have been lying completely still right now.
Johan came back hesitantly, approaching the man on the ground as if he were an injured wild animal that might leap up and attack at any moment. Then he walked a long way around the thrashing body and fell into Anna-Greta's arms. She stroked his hair and they stood there in silence just hugging each other for a long time. Then Anna-Greta said, 'Take your bike and go and fetch Dr Holmstrom. And Göran.'
Johan nodded and ran off. After thirty seconds he rattled past along the track on his bike. Rolf had settled down and was just lying there clenching and unclenching one fist. Simon still had the shotgun pointing at him, with his index finger resting on the trigger. He felt sick.
This isn't me. This can't be happening to me.
After twenty minutes both the doctor and the police had arrived. Rolf's injuries were not life threatening, just extremely painful. Some fifteen shotgun pellets had penetrated the muscles and tissue in his left shoulder and upper arm around the shoulderblade. He was bandaged provisionally just to stop the bleeding, and the doctor rang for transport. Göran wrote a report that would need to be completed at the police station in Norrtälje. Simon's little finger was put in a splint.
True to form, Marita had vanished, and they later found out that she had managed to catch the tender before anyone started seriously looking for her. Rolf was transported to Norrtälje, and both Göran and Dr Holmstrom went home, after establishing that they would go to the police station together the following day.
Simon, Anna-Greta and Johan sat in silence in the lilac arbour. The torn leaves in the hedge were the only sign that darkness had abused their hospitality just a couple of hours ago. Just as the slight movement of a finger can release a devastating hail of shot, so an event that lasted no more than five minutes can send its repercussions through days and years to come. It is impossible to ignore the consequences, there is too much to say, and the result would be silence.
Johan was drinking Pommac, Simon was drinking beer and Anna-Greta was drinking nothing. They had all saved each other at different points in the complex web created by one simple act of violence; gratitude and embarrassment were mixed up together, and words were difficult.
Simon fiddled with his bandage and said quietly, 'I'm sorry. That you both got dragged into all this.'
'Don't be,' said Anna-Greta. 'It can't be helped.'
'No, but I'm still sorry. I apologise.'
When the initial shock had faded they began to talk hesitantly about what had happened. The conversation continued during the afternoon and later up at Anna-Greta and Johan's house, where they ate a simple dinner. Towards nine o'clock a different kind of silence took over, a fundamental exhaustion of speech. They just couldn't bear to listen to the sound of their own voices any longer, and Simon went back down to his cottage.
He sat down at the kitchen table with the crossword in order to distract his mind, and for once he cut it out, filled in his name and address and put it in an envelope. The summer evening was still lilac outside his window when he had finished, and he regretted turning down the invitation to sleep on the kitchen sofa up in the big house. The day's events were turning over and over in his mind. Until today the future had been dismal but predictable, he had been able to see himself plodding on through the years. Now he couldn't see anything anymore.
Just as the recoil from the gun had thrown him backwards, so he had been thrown outside himself at the moment he fired the shot. It wasn't the action itself that frightened him-that had been born of panic and necessity-but what had happened inside him.
He had seen Rolf's head explode as he pressed the trigger, in fact he had fully intended to blow Rolf's head to bits. When Anna-Greta had pointed to the gun afterwards and Simon had realised that there was one cartridge left, his immediate impulse had been to shoot Marita as well. To execute her. Blow her head off. Get rid of her.
He hadn't done any of those things. But he had thought it, and had experienced a wild desire to do it. Perhaps he would have, if there hadn't been any witnesses. He had been hurled into a different version of himself, someone who wanted to kill whatever stood in his way. It was not a pleasant thought, yet at the same time it was a very pleasant thought: he could be someone different from now on, if he wanted to be.
But who? Who am I? Who will I become?
His thoughts continued to go around and around after he had gone to bed. He was ashamed of himself. For what he had done and what he had not done, for what he thought and who he was. He tried to make himself think about the forthcoming performances in Nåten, how he was going to get through them with a broken finger, but the images were washed away and replaced by others.
After a few hours he fell into an uneasy sleep, which after a short while was disturbed by banging, thumping, knocking. Just knocking. He got up quickly and looked around the room. Somebody had been knocking. Somebody wanted to come in. There was still a hint of light in the sky, and he could see the silhouette of a head outside the bedroom window.