Smilla, sweet, lovely little Smilla. I’m so sorry.
31
No howl issues from my throat. No accusations, no laments. No sounds at all. Inside I’m fumbling to formulate appropriate remarks, but without success. Finally, a few words do slip from my lips.
“You asked me what I was doing here…”
The girl nods mutely. Makes no attempt to fill the silence, just waits for me to go on.
“And I told you I was looking for a cat.”
Again she nods.
“Are you trying to tell me that… that you found the cat outside my cabin and took him?”
“Yes.”
My mind seems both cloudy and clear at the same time.
“And then…”
Again, the girl refuses to complete my sentence. And this time I leave it unfinished. I see her hand reaching for the newest cross in the clearing, see her touching the top of the stick. Then my eyes shift to the ground where she’s standing, and I picture the black-and-white body buried beneath her feet. I imagine what the cat must have endured before he ended up here. I want to shut out reality. I want to close my eyes, but I don’t dare for fear of the sights that will confront me. Massacred bodies fluttering in the wind like bloody sails. No! I slap my face hard, forcing open my eyelids, which, in spite of everything, had fallen shut. I give the girl a defiant look. It can’t be true.
“I don’t believe you!”
For a moment, she doesn’t move, then she silently reaches into her pants pocket and takes out something. She stretches out her hand toward me, her fingers curled around something. She takes my hand and places a thin pink object on my palm. Tirith’s collar. My eyes blur; I feel like I’m flying forward even though I’m sitting still. As if I’m traveling through a hazy mist. Only when I’m certain that I’ll be able to keep my voice steady do I speak again.
“His name was Tirith,” I say. “He belonged to a four-year-old girl who loves him very much.”
It seems important for this skinny teenager to know. That the animal she captured and deliberately placed in malicious hands had a name and an identity, that he belonged to someone who will be brokenhearted to know he’s no longer alive. But maybe that sort of information is wasted here, I think as I look at the stony mask covering the girl’s face. There are probably very different things that upset her.
“We were bound together by blood,” I add. “My blood.”
I don’t explain about Tirith licking the wound in my hand. Let this girl think I’m crazy—if that’s what she’s thinking. I see her looking at the ground. The ax is still lying there, and it’s closer to her than to me now. Quickly, she sticks out her leg and sets her foot on top of it. Then she picks it up and stuffs the handle under her belt.
“Listen to me,” she says, crossing her arms. “Jorma was the one who said we had to get revenge somehow.”
A joyless laugh escapes from my throat. I can hear for myself that it sounds like the laugh of a lunatic, but I can’t stop it. Revenge? What she’s saying is absurd.
“Is he nuts? Are all of you nuts? What have I ever done to you? Can you tell me that?”
She rolls her eyes, as if exhorting me not to be so stupid. Then she looks away, chewing on her lip.
“I thought Jorma would calm down after we found it again. No harm done, really. I tried to get him to forget about you, but he… When he gets in that kind of mood, it’s impossible to know what… It’s like there are no limits. Sometimes I even think he might…”
She stops and gives me a furtive glance, obviously uncomfortable. Like she’s said too much.
“I thought if he got your cat, then maybe that would be enough.”
I look at her, shaking my head in resignation.
“I don’t understand. I really don’t get what you’re talking about.”
She studies me skeptically, as if I’ve missed something important. Only after several seconds does it seem to dawn on her that I’m actually as clueless as I look. She takes a deep breath and then exhales noisily. She comes over to the fallen tree trunk and sits down next to me, keeping a small space between us. Even though it’s August, she’s wearing heavy leather shoes. She runs the tips over the ground, sketching some sort of abstract pattern.
“The boat,” she says with a sigh. “It’s about the boat, of course.”
She looks at me to see if I’m following, but I shake my head. I still don’t get it.
“Our boats,” says the girl. “It’s about our boats.”
She’s speaking with confidence, emphasizing the word our. I picture two boats in my mind. A skiff and a dirty white rowboat. I see the bloodstains on board, a red blob in one end. The girl sitting next to me is still talking. Maybe it’s because I haven’t eaten or slept properly for days. Maybe it’s because of the pregnancy and its effect on both my body and soul. Or possibly it’s because during the past twenty-four hours I’ve been desperately searching for two people who have disappeared without a trace. And instead of finding them, I’ve wandered farther into the fog, sinking deeper and deeper into the dunes.
That could be why I’m having a hard time seeing where the girl’s explanation is heading. Or maybe it’s some sort of defense mechanism, a way of resisting an idea that’s brewing. It couldn’t be… It can’t be… I hear only fragments of what she’s saying. The last time. Left there. Disappeared. Found. The other side of the lake. Jorma. It was you. Revenge.
From a distance, I hear a roaring sound. It gets so loud that I have to put my hands over my ears. But it doesn’t stop. The world around me is shaking. It keeps going so long that I finally have to scream. Someone pulls my hands away and cautiously moves them down to my sides. Someone is holding their face close to mine and talking to me. I can’t make out any of the words, but the voice is unexpectedly gentle. Finally, I realize it’s the girl, Greta. She’s intoning soothing words in my ear as she strokes my back. And she keeps at it until I calm down. Until the roaring has faded away, until the screams have left my throat shredded and my body exhausted. After that, we sit in silence for a while, next to each other. Then I turn to face her, and she turns to face me. And when our eyes meet, I start to speak.
By the time I’m done, after everything has poured out of me, the sun has reached the tops of the trees, and it’s getting hot. I pull the anorak over my head and wipe the sweat from my brow. Greta pulls the handle of the ax from her belt and gives it back to me.
“I feel sorry for you,” she says. “I wish there was something I could do.”
“There is,” I tell her. “Leave him. Do it now, this instant, before it’s too late.”
She gives me a wan smile.
“You’re going to be a good mother.”
Then I hear it. The ringing. It’s in one of the anorak pockets. For what seems like the thousandth time in a row, I run my hands over the fabric, inside and out, yanking on the zippers and buttons to get to my phone. But this time, it feels different. Because now I know. Actually, I knew all along.
I press the phone to my ear. This time, what I hear is not just silence on the other end. This time I hear the confident, self-assured voice of a man.
“Hi, Greta. It’s Alex. Did you miss me?”
32
That evening when we walked down to the boat. Me trailing behind the other two, my eyes fixed on Smilla’s thin legs sticking out from under her pink cotton dress. Legs effervescent with life, containing so much energy that she had to skip, since ordinary walking wasn’t enough. Something about those legs made me think of the movie that Alex had chosen for us to watch a few days earlier. It was the story of a pedophile, the violence of a child killer, a dark, depressing, merciless drama. When the camera finally zoomed in on the girl’s pale, lifeless legs sticking out from under a bush, I could no longer hold back my sobs. I ran to the bathroom and threw up. Again.