He reached the room containing the reflector. No Maja.
Barely half an hour ago he had photographed her here. Now there was no trace of her. Nothing. He screamed,'Maaaajaaaa! Out you come! This isn't funny any more!'
The sound was absorbed by the narrow room, making the glass vibrate.
He walked all the way around the room, looked out across the ice. Far below he could see Cecilia following the track that had led them here. But the red snowsuit was nowhere to be seen. He was gasping
for air. His tongue was sticking to his palate. This was impossible. This couldn't be happening. Desperately he stared out across the ice in every direction. Where is she? Where is she?
He could just hear the sound of Cecilia's voice shouting the same thing as he had shouted so many times. She got no reply either.
Think, you idiot. Think.
He looked out across the ice again. There was nothing to interrupt his gaze, no cover at all. If there had been holes in the ice, they would have been visible. However good you are at hiding, you still have to have a place to hide.
He stopped. His eyes narrowed. He could hear Maja's voice inside his head.
Daddy, what's that?
He went over to the spot where she had been standing when she asked the question, looked in the direction where she had pointed. Nothing. Only ice and snow.
What was it that she saw?
He strained to try and see something, then realised he was still wearing his rucksack. He pulled out the camera and looked through the viewfinder, zoomed in and panned across the area where she had been pointing. Nothing. Not a hint of another colour, not the slightest nuance in the whiteness, nothing.
His hands were shaking as he dropped the camera back in his rucksack. Out on the ice there was only white, white, but the sky had grown a little darker. It would soon be afternoon, it would be dark in a couple of hours.
He put his hands to his mouth, stared out into the vast emptiness, heard Cecilia's distant cries. Maja was gone. She was gone.
Stop it, stop it.
And yet a part of him knew that it was so.
It was just after two when Simon's telephone rang. He had spent the last hour fiddling with old conjuring props that his hands, stiff with rheumatism, could no longer use. He had considered selling them, but had decided to keep them as a little family treasure.
He answered the telephone on the second ring. He'd hardly managed to say hello before Anders interrupted.
'Hi, it's Anders. Have you seen Maja?'
'But surely she's with you?'
A brief pause. A quivering exhalation at the other end of the line. Simon sensed that he had just extinguished a hope. 'What's wrong?'
'She's gone. I knew she couldn't have got back to the land, but I thought-I don't know, Simon, she's gone. She's gone.'
'Are you at the lighthouse?'
'Yes. And she can't…it's just not…there's nowhere…but she isn't here. Where is she? Where is she?'
Two minutes later Simon had pulled on his outdoor clothes and kicked the moped into life. He rode out on to the ice where Elof was sitting on a folding chair, gazing down into the hole he had made with Simon's drill. He looked up as he heard the moped approaching. Simon braked.
'Elof-have you seen Maja, Anders' daughter?'
'No-what, here? Now?'
'Yes. In the last hour or so.'
'No, I haven't seen a soul. Or a fish, come to that. Why?'
'She's disappeared. Out by the lighthouse.'
Elof turned his head towards the lighthouse, kept his eyes fixed in that direction for a few seconds and scratched his forehead.
'Can't they find her?'
Simon clenched his teeth so tightly that his jaw muscles tensed. This bloody long-winded way of going about things. Elof nodded and started reeling in his line.
'I'd better…get a few people together then. We'll come over.'
Simon thanked him and set off towards the lighthouse. When he turned to look back after fifty metres or so, Elof was still fiddling about with his fishing gear, making sure it was all neatly packed away before he set off. Simon ground his teeth and rode so that the snow whirled up around his wheels as twilight fell.
Five minutes later Simon was out by the lighthouse helping to search, despite the fact that there was nowhere to look. He concentrated on riding around on the ice to check if Elof had been right, that there could be weak spots. He didn't find any.
After another quarter of an hour a number of dots could be seen approaching from Domarö. Four mopeds. Elof and his brother Johan. Mats, who owned the shop, had his wife Ingrid on the back. Bringing up the rear, Margareta Bergwall, one of the few women in the village who had their own moped.
They rode around the lighthouse in ever-widening circles, searching every square metre of the ice. Anders and Cecilia wandered aimlessly around on the lighthouse rock itself, saying nothing. After an hour it was so dark that the moonlight was stronger than the small amount of sunlight that remained.
Simon went up to Anders and Cecilia, who were now sitting by the lighthouse door, head in hands. Far out on the ice the faint lights of the four mopeds were just visible, still circling round and round like satellites of a desolate planet. A police helicopter with a searchlight had arrived to extend the search area.
Simon's joints creaked as he crouched down in front of them. Their eyes were empty. Simon stroked Cecilia's knee.
'What did you say about the tracks?'
Cecilia waved feebly in the direction of Domarö. Her voice was so weak that Simon had to lean forward in order to hear.
'There weren't any.'
'You mean they didn't go off in a different direction?'
'They stopped. As if…as if she'd been lifted up into the sky.'
Anders whimpered. 'This can't be happening. How can this be happening?'
He looked into Simon, right through Simon, as if he were looking for the answer in a knowledge that lay somewhere behind Simon's retina.
Simon got up and went back down on to the ice, sat on the back of his moped and looked around.
If only there were somewhere to start.
A nuance, a shadow, anything that could serve as a loose edge where they could begin tearing away. He pushed his hand down into his jacket pocket and closed it around the matchbox that lay there. Then he placed the fingertips of his other hand on the ice and asked it to melt.
First the snow melted, then a deepening hollow appeared, filling up with water. After perhaps twenty seconds there was a black hole in the ice, perhaps as big as a clenched fist. He let go of the matchbox and, with some difficulty, lowered his arm into the cold water. The surface of the ice was just above his elbow before he was able to grip the lower edge.
The ice was thick. There was absolutely no chance that Maja had fallen through somewhere.
So what has happened?
There was no loose edge. Nowhere for his thoughts to poke and prod, widen the crack, work things out. It was just impossible. He went up and sat down with Anders and Cecilia, giving them a hug and saying a few words from time to time, until in the end it was completely dark and the mopeds began to spiral their way back towards the lighthouse.
Domarö and time
During the course of this story it will be necessary occasionally to jump hack in time in order to explain something in the present. This is regrettable but unavoidable.
Domarö is not a large island. Everything that has happened remains hoc and influences the present. Places and objects are charged with meanings that are not easily forgotten. We cannot escape.
In the scheme of things, this is a very small story. You could say it would fit in a matchbox.
What the cat dragged in (May 1996)