A low yowling interrupted his thoughts. Joakim turned and saw a small four-legged creature crouching on the rag rug.
“Do you want to go out, Rasputin?”
He went over to the glassed-in veranda, but the cat didn’t follow him. It just looked at him, then slunk into the kitchen.
The wind whirled around the house, rattling the small windowpanes in the veranda.
Joakim opened the outside door and felt the wind seize hold of it; it was coming in strong gusts now and seemed to be growing stronger all the time, transforming the snowflakes into needle-sharp shards whirling across the courtyard.
He went carefully down the steps, screwing up his eyes against the snow.
The sky over the sea looked darker than ever, as if the sun had disappeared for good into the Baltic. The cloud cover above the water was a threatening shadow-play of gray and black patches-huge snow clouds in the northeast had begun to descend, moving closer to the coast.
A storm was on its way.
Joakim went along the stone pathway between the buildings, out into the wind and the snow. He remembered Gerlof’s warning, that you could get lost if you went out in a blizzard-but there was only a thin covering of snow on the ground so far, and a short walk over to the barn didn’t seem to pose many risks.
He went over to the broad door and pulled it open.
Nothing moved inside.
A flash of light in the corner of his eye made him stop and turn his head. It was the light from the lighthouses. The barn obscured the northern tower, but the southern lamp was flashing at him with its red glow.
Joakim walked into the barn and it felt as if the wind were pushing at his back, as if it wanted to come with him. But he slammed the door shut.
After a few seconds he switched on the lights.
The lightbulbs hung there like feeble yellow suns in the dark space of the barn. They couldn’t chase away the shadows along the stone walls.
Through the roof he could hear the howling wind, but the framework of solid beams didn’t move. This building had survived many storms.
In the loft was the wall with Katrine’s name and the names of all the others who had died, but Joakim didn’t go up the steps this evening either. Instead he moved on past the stalls where the cattle had stood every winter.
The stone floor in the furthest stall was still free of dust and hay.
Joakim sank down to his knees and got down on his stomach. Then he slowly wriggled in through the narrow opening under the wooden planks, the flashlight in one hand and Katrine’s present in the other.
Inside the false wall he stood up and switched on the flashlight. Its beam was weak and it would soon need new batteries, but at least he could see the ladder leading up into the darkness.
Joakim listened, but everything was still silent in the barn.
He could stand here or start climbing. He hesitated. Just for a moment he considered the fact that a storm was coming, and Livia and Gabriel were alone in the house.
Then he lifted his right foot and placed it on the bottom rung.
Joakim’s mouth was dry and his heart was pounding, but he was more expectant than afraid. Step by step he was getting closer to the black opening in the ceiling. He didn’t want to be anywhere else but where he was now.
Katrine was close, he could feel it.
Markus came back to the island and wanted to see me, but not at Eel Point. I had to go down to Borgholm to meet him in a café.
Torun, who could hardly see the difference between light and darkness now, asked me to buy potatoes and some flour. Flour and root vegetables, that was what we lived on.
It turned out to be a final meeting in a gray town still waiting for winter, despite the fact that it was the beginning of December.
– MIRJA RAMBE
WINTER 1962
The thermometer is showing zero, but there is no snow in Borgholm. I am wearing my old winter coat and feel like the country cousin I am as I walk along the straight streets of the town.
Markus is back on the island to visit his parents in Borgholm, and to see me. He is on leave from the barracks in Eksjö and is wearing his gray soldier’s uniform with stylish creases pressed in his pants.
The café where we have arranged to meet is full of decent, upstanding ladies who study me as I come in from the cold-cafés in small towns in Sweden are not the territory of young people, not yet.
“Hi, Mirja.”
Markus stands up politely as I walk over to the table.
“Hi there,” I reply.
He gives me an awkward little hug and I notice he has started using aftershave.
We haven’t seen each other for several months and the atmosphere is tense at first, but slowly we begin to talk. I haven’t got much to tell him from Eel Point-I mean, nothing
has happened there since he went away. But I ask him about life as a soldier and whether he lives in a tent like the one we built in the loft, and he says he does when he is out on exercises. His company has been in Norrland, he tells me, and it was minus thirty degrees. To keep warm, they had to pack so much snow all over the tent that it looked like an igloo.
Silence falls between us at the table.
“I thought we could carry on until spring,” I say eventually. “If you want. I could move closer to you, to Kalmar or something, then when you come out we could live in the same town…”
These are vague plans, but Markus smiles at me.
“Until the spring,” he says, brushing my cheek with his hand. His smile broadens, and he adds quietly: “Would you like to see my parents’ apartment, Mirja? It’s just around the corner. They’re not home today, but I’ve still got my old room…”
I nod and get up from my chair.
We make love for the first and last time in the bedroom Markus had when he was a boy. His bed is too small, so we drag the mattress onto the floor and lie there. The apartment is silent around us, but we fill it with the sound of our breathing. At first I am terrified that his parents will come in, but after a while I forget about them.
Markus is eager, yet careful. I think this is the first time for him too, but I dare not ask.
Am I careful enough? Hardly. I have no protection-this was something I could never have imagined would happen. And that’s exactly why it’s so wonderful.
Half an hour later we go our separate ways out on the street. It is a short farewell in the bitter wind, with a last clumsy embrace through the layers of clothes.
Markus goes back up to the apartment to pack before he catches the ferry across the sound, and I go off to the bus station to head back northward.
I am alone, but I can still feel his warmth against my body.
I would have liked to catch the train, but the trains have stopped running. All I can do is climb aboard the bus.
The atmosphere is gloomy among the small number of passengers, but it suits me. I feel like a lighthouse keeper on my way to a six-month tour of duty at the end of the world.
It is twilight when I get off to the south of Marnäs, and the wind is bitterly cold. In the grocery store in Rörby I buy food for myself and Torun, then walk home along the coast road.
I can see slate-gray clouds out at sea when I drop down onto the road to Eel Point. Strong winds are on their way to the island, and I quicken my pace. When the blizzard comes, you must be indoors, otherwise things could turn out as they did for Torun on the peat bog. Or even worse.
There are no lights in most of the windows when I reach the house, but in our little room there is a warm yellow glow.
Just as I am about to go in to Torun, I see out of the corner of my eye that something is flashing down by the water.
I turn my head and see that the lighthouses have been switched on before the night comes.
The northern lighthouse is also lit, glowing with a steady white light.
I put the bag of food down on the steps and walk across the courtyard, down toward the shore. The northern lighthouse continues to shine out.