“And Liisa is a competitive shooter.”
“Then that’s clarified,” he said. “But now I have to leave.”
He saw a quick smile from the shooter.
“Leave?” she said. “You’ve broken in and then you think you can just trot off, after having been introduced?”
“Yes, you have every reason in the world to let me go.”
“And that would be?” asked Birgitta.
“Your father’s posthumous reputation,” said Karsten Haller, turning halfway around and looking at her. “The Nobel Prize winner, the renowned professor.”
“Posthumous reputation, what kind of rubbish is that?” Liisa hissed.
“What do you mean?” asked Birgitta.
“Nobel Prize or not, if I were to tell what has happened in this cellar the image of the scientist would be different.”
Was there a trace of fear in the daughter’s face? Did she know something about what happened in the cellar over sixty years ago?
“Now you have to explain yourself!” Liisa ordered.
“I don’t want to hear,” said Birgitta.
“Of course we have to hear,” said Liisa.
“Calling the police equals scandal, just so you know,” said Karsten calmly.
“I see your cards,” said Liisa.
“This is not a poker game!” Birgitta shouted.
“Do you see that bed over there?”
“Stop! That’s just filthy talk. Have you spoken with Wiik?”
“I don’t know any Wiik,” said Karsten. “On the other hand I do know, or knew, an Anna Haller, née Andersson.”
“I see,” said Liisa. “Go on!”
“We’ll let him go,” said Birgitta.
“Anna Haller was my mother,” said Karsten.
“That’s a lie! She just wanted to extort money from Daddy.”
“What does she have to do with Bertram? Is that some-”
“Get out!” screamed Birgitta, waving the spear.
Karsten looked at Liisa. He saw hesitation in her eyes.
“What do you have in your pockets?” she asked.
“An inheritance,” said Karsten. “Or damages, if you wish.”
“Have you stolen money?” screamed Birgitta.
“Damages for what?” asked Liisa.
Karsten did not answer but instead looked at Birgitta von Ohler. When he saw her in the garden he had already felt repugnance and now that feeling was strengthened. The woman was totally out of balance. He himself felt calm and the woman with the Finnish accent seemed to be as cold as anything. He understood that he had to assure her to be able to leave the cellar. He had to give her something.
“Assault,” said Karsten, ignoring the pistol and walking quickly up to the bed, taking hold of the wrought-iron headboard and shaking it so that it rattled.
He felt, in the contact with the iron and the sight of the checkered frame of flat iron bars, a violent fury.
“In this bed my mother was raped! Raped! There is no other word.”
The two women stared at him.
“There is your fine Nobel Prize winner! Your father. Who is now being rewarded for his efforts.”
“What evidence do you have?”
He stared at Birgitta with contempt and hate in his eyes. He could strike at her.
“Evidence! Her life was the evidence. Because she got no reward, only a life sentence.”
He spit out the words. Liisa had lowered the gun.
“Are you sure? Perhaps it was mutual?” she said.
Haller shook his head vehemently.
“I know,” he said in a low voice. “I know exactly how it happened.”
He could tell about the pregnancy and the abortion that followed, tell about his mother’s despair, about the naked and painful words in the diary, but he did not want to expose her shame. He knew what awful guilt she had felt about what happened.
It was as if her words were meant only for him. He realized now that she had saved the diary for his sake. It should not be thrown away, it should be read. She wanted him to read it. Read and understand. In order to thereby forgive her for the worry and anxiety that sometimes seized her and indirectly also affected him as a child.
“She was lured down here by Ohler,” he continued. “I don’t know how, perhaps with promises or that she should fetch something. She was used to his caprices. She shined his shoes and washed his underwear, so why shouldn’t she obey when he told her to follow him down to the cellar?”
“Could she have been that innocent?” Liisa objected.
“Just that innocent. She did not know much about life, other than she should obey the gentry. But it really doesn’t matter if she had been an experienced woman or not, a rape is always a rape. Isn’t it?”
Liisa nodded.
“She came from Gräsö,” said Birgitta in a toneless voice.
Karsten turned around. He had directed all his attention toward the Finnish woman.
“Yes, and from a deeply religious family besides,” he said.
“You call it rape but perhaps she was in love with Bertram. And later it went further than she had imagined, and even further than what he had imagined. Perhaps they sneaked down here to cuddle a little and then they got carried away.”
The Finnish woman’s words made her sneer.
“You don’t believe that yourself,” he said. “This was 1944. She was at his mercy.”
“Just like today,” said Liisa.
“What do you mean?”
“That doesn’t matter,” she said, putting the pistol into her waistband. “It’s just as well that you disappear from the house.”
“Never!” screamed Birgitta.
“Calm down, Birgitta. He goes away, everything is forgotten and remains like before, that is, false and depressing. Bertram gets his prize and his glory. You can wallpaper the whole house with money if you want.”
“Don’t mock me! This thief and liar can create scandal just to get at Daddy. He wants to create scandal! He hates us!”
“No, I just want to disappear,” said Karsten.
“He hates us,” repeated Birgitta. “He hates us because we have a big, fine house, a name, because Bertram is appreciated.”
“I don’t want to see you anymore,” said Karsten, but the words made no impression on her.
He took a few steps closer to the exit. Birgitta raised the spear.
“You hate us simply because your mother fucked my father. She wanted to! But then she was ashamed. That was it, wasn’t it? She was ashamed of her sanctimonious father.”
He shook his head. He didn’t want to hear more, he didn’t want to see her. Yes, he hated Bertram von Ohler and he hated her. He hated the whole lot!
“Go to hell,” he said softly.
Liisa took a few quick steps toward them both and raised her hands in an attempt to calm the situation down.
“You and your rapist father!”
“Stop! Liisa, he’s lying! He’s mocking us!”
“I think you know more than you’re letting on,” Karsten continued. “But here secrets, dirtiness, and violence are preserved as family relics.”
“Shoot him!”
“Calm down, damn it! He means nothing to you, to us. You know that. He disappears and then it will be calm. He takes the money and leaves. He isn’t interested in anything else.”
Karsten suddenly smiled.
“I’m going to Africa in four days,” he said.
“There you are,” said Liisa.
“He’s bluffing,” said Birgitta. “Don’t you see that he wants to harm us?”
“You are the most fucked-up bitch I have ever met,” said Karsten with emphasis.
“Don’t talk a lot of shit now,” she said, but he did not let himself be stopped.
“You don’t believe in a dead woman’s story, but ask her sister, she must know the whole story.”
“She doesn’t know a thing, she was a child in 1944,” said Birgitta, now considerably calmer, as if Liisa’s comment had placated her.
“Not even about the abortion?” It came out of him.
“What abortion?”
“Anna got pregnant. Down here,” he said, pointing at the bed. “And down here your grandfather performed the abortion and your amazing daddy assisted. An intervention that she never would have accepted if she had known what it meant. Confused and afraid as she was she thought that the professor was only going to examine her, but she was drugged and they took the fetus from her. I know that it sounds completely improbable but that’s what happened.”