My foot lands on something squishy, and I look down, expecting more mud. Instead, I find myself staring straight into a pair of glassy eyes the size of peppercorns. Tiny legs stick out from under my shoe. I jerk my foot away but can’t stop staring at the brownish-red jumble of intestines and guts lying on the ground. When I finally realize what I’m looking at, the merciless nausea returns. It’s a squirrel. A disemboweled squirrel. I spin around and vomit into a juniper bush. Then I flee.
8
In the middle of the lake, I reduce speed and finally cut the motor completely. I take off my shoes and lean over the side of the boat to rinse them. I tell myself that another animal could have attacked that squirrel. Maybe a fox or a cat. I don’t want to think about the knife lying nearby or what it might have been used for. I throw up again, this time into the lake. The vomit claws at my throat. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and then have to rinse that off too.
With an effort, I force myself to focus on what I should do next. My search was fruitless, but I can’t give up. I refuse to give up. Again, I picture Smilla’s smiling face, her dimples and chubby cheeks. Feeling a pang in my heart, I straighten my spine to summon more strength. Then I survey the area around me. Lake Malice is big, much too big for me to take in its whole expanse from this position. But what I do see can only be described as a summer paradise. Glinting sunlight, gentle ripples on the water, numerous docks where skiffs and small motorboats bob at their moorings, and two separate swimming areas, one of them with a diving tower. All around the lake are cottages and cabins of various sizes. Some of them are set so close to the shore that I can see the red-painted gables and flagpoles. Others, like the cabin that belongs to Alex’s family, are clustered farther from the water.
I twist around to look first in one direction, then the other. I let my gaze sweep along the shore, moving from house to house. No sign of life anywhere. The summer’s over, and Marhem’s sun-worshippers are gone. For most people, fall means a return to daily routines, to school and their jobs. That’s one of the reasons why we came now. For some peace and quiet. To be alone.
The breeze picks up, spraying cold drops onto my arms. I shiver, noticing the clenching in my stomach. Something is moving in there, something that is me, and yet is not me. Maybe it’s not just the summer that’s over. Maybe life as I know it is coming to an end. How can I go on? Will I be able to handle all this? Or will it defeat me?
Suddenly, I’m sitting very close to the side of the boat, leaning over and staring into the dark water. Something is drawing me down, down. I can’t look away, can’t even blink. Then I hear something. It gets louder, rising from a muted humming to a whirring, then to a whispering, a hissing. Like a distant voice, the sound rises up from the water, becoming more frightening, more ominous. I shudder, realizing that I should get out of here. I should clap my hands over my ears and close my eyes. But I seem to have lost all ability to blink or to turn away. And my hands are clamped on the gunwale of the boat. Out of the corner of my eye I see my knuckles, hard and white.
Then I lift up, raising my body until I’m no longer sitting down but leaning forward over the side. I am physically doing the moving, but I’m not the one in charge, not the one deciding. Someone—or something—else has taken command of my body. I feel a rocking under my feet. My weight tips the side of the boat, taking me closer to Lake Malice’s dark, mysterious eddies. As if the lake is opening for me, wanting to make the decision easier. A slight movement would be enough, a step forward, a leap into the air. That would be sufficient. I would slice through the surface of the water and then continue down into the deep. That’s all I would need to do. Nothing more, never anything more. I would simply fall. Fall freely, out of time, through eternity. Like Papa. Exactly like Papa.
9
The last night. The night Papa disappeared, when he fell out of our lives. Considering how much it affected me, you’d think the images that play in my mind would be detailed and clear. Razor sharp. But they’re not. The more crucial the detail from that night, the closer I get to the truth about what happened, the more impenetrable the fog becomes surrounding the events.
What I do remember is what happened before, the little things. For instance, there was a change in the weather a couple of days earlier, and it got colder. From where I was hiding in the dark outside Mama and Papa’s bedroom, I could feel a cool breeze seeping into the apartment. The parts of my body not covered by my nightgown, my calves and feet, quickly grew cold. The fresh air was mixed with the smell of smoke. I didn’t need to peek into the room to know what that meant. Papa had opened the tall bay window and was perched on the windowsill with a cigarette hanging from his lips. And he was probably holding a drink in his hand. I could tell by the way his voice sounded. It was loud and scornful. Mama’s was low and bitter. They were repeating the usual accusations, the same old complaints.
Why do you have to…?
Don’t you understand how humiliating it is for me when…?
Cunt.
I clutched my old teddy bear under my arm. A couple of months earlier, I had turned eight. I was a big girl now. That’s what all the grown-ups said. But I still slept with Mulle every night. I hugged his body, once so woolly but now matted and worn, as I lay in bed and dreamed of a time that must have existed, though I could no longer really remember. A time when Mama and Papa were happy together. A time before Papa began coming home late at night with strange smells on his skin and clothes. Before I could hear Mama crying through the thin walls of the apartment and Papa swearing loudly in reply.
A cunt. That’s what you are.
I flinched and pressed Mulle against my face, squeezing my eyes shut. There it was again. The word Papa used whenever he ran out of arguments. Cunt. For some reason, that particular word got under Mama’s skin, deflated her, demolished her. But Papa kept right on hurling it whenever they argued. Even though he knew how much it hurt her. Or maybe because of it.
The choice of swear words wasn’t the only thing that was repeated. My parents’ fights also followed the same pattern, based on the same building blocks. When that particular curse was uttered, it meant the end was near. And a resounding silence would soon set in. At first, Mama and Papa’s argument on that particular night seemed to unfold predictably. There was nothing to indicate that this argument would be the fateful exception to the rule. Mama had gone on the attack, this time because of a stain on his shirt collar, and Papa had responded with a scornful remark. She demanded an explanation and an apology, but he refused. When she pressed him, he pulled out his sharpest weapon. And once again, the air rushed out of Mama.
It was right then, after I’d already turned around to tiptoe back to my own room, that the fight rapidly and unexpectedly changed character. They kept going, even though it should have been all over. Their voices sounded distorted and hateful in a whole new way.
I know what you did to Greta. Hitting your own child… How could you?
The words reverberated like gunshots. Then it was quiet in there. I froze. There was a rushing in my ears, and I saw it again: the raised hand whistling through the air and slapping me across the face. An image, an event, I’d pushed out of my mind. Now it came back, overwhelming me, striking me full force.