I’m sitting in her best armchair, trying to remember if I ever told her how much she meant to me. I want to thank her for loving me unconditionally. And I want to thank her for never restricting me – I could come and go like a pet cat, but she was always there to heat up a bowl of soup or make me a sandwich or two if I was hungry. Mother used to say that Anni spoilt me. It’s true. She did. I want to thank her for that. My mother was so different, with all her hang-ups: drama, tears, screams and curses one minute, red-eyed, emotional and guilt-ridden the next. “Please forgive me, my darling: you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Can you plea-plea-please forgive me?” In the end I became an ice-cold teenager. “Pass the sick bag,” I used to say when she became devastated and wet and tearful and hiccupy. Anni said, “Wilma can come and live with me. If she needs a bit of a break. And she can start revising her maths.” Mother thought I’d go mad out here in the sticks. “I did when I lived there,” she said. But she was wrong.
I’m sitting in Anni’s best armchair and thinking how much I loved her. I never told her, perhaps because I’m allergic to the word. Mother must have used it thousands of times, but she’s about as mature as a nestling. I ought to have told Anni, though. All those times when she sat on the kitchen sofa with her legs up, trying to reach her feet so that she could massage them: I ought to have massaged them for her. I ought to have brushed her hair. I ought to have helped her up the stairs every night. I never realized. I used to lie on my bed, listening to music.
I look at her more closely. The light is dim in the room, and I can’t see her chest moving. Is she breathing?
I hear a voice from the kitchen doorway saying, “Is that you, sitting there?” And when I turn round, there she is.
She looks exactly like she always did, but not at all like the Anni lying on the sofa.
“No,” she says with a smile when she catches on to my question. “I’m just asleep. I’m going to live for another sixteen years. But it’s time for you to go now. Don’t you think?”
Yes, says something inside me. And suddenly there we are, standing on the shore of the lake. It’s summer. The far shore doesn’t look at all like the other side of Piilijärvi. But the boat is Anni’s. It’s her old rowing boat, the one her cousin made for her ages ago. The water is gurgling beneath the bows, which smell of tar. The sun glitters like trolling-spoons in the ripples. Mosquitoes sing their hymns to summer as Anni unties the painter and holds onto the boat while I jump aboard and lay the oars in the rowlocks.
Anni pushes off, then jumps aboard as well. I do the rowing.
As I’m rowing, I see Hjalmar.
He’s standing in the prison chapel, singing away. He’s with seven other inmates. The prison chaplain is a thin-haired man in his forties. He’s quite good on the guitar, and they’re singing “Childhood Faith”, the religious song made famous by the north’s favourite singer, Lapp-Lisa. The sound echoes back and forth, to and from the melancholy walls. The chaplain is glad that Hjalmar has joined his group. Hjalmar is big and commands respect, and, as some of the other prisoners want to keep on his good side, they turn up for every Wednesday service. The chaplain can demonstrate the results of his prison activities to his own congregation, so everyone is happy. For it is surely marvellous that these criminals are allowed out on parole to attend Sunday service at the Philadelphia Pentecostal Church. They pay homage to Jesus. And are only too pleased to describe the miserable lives they led before they saw the light, so that the whole congregation is inspired.
Happiest of them all is Hjalmar. He has new maths books in his cell.
His fat cheeks are rose-pink. He enjoys singing, likes to belt out “Childhood faith, childhood faith, you are a golden bridge to heaven”.
He always jokes that he’s never going to appeal against his sentence.
I carry on rowing. Two ravens come flying over the tops of the pine trees. They circle above us. Round and round. I glance up at their long black outstretched pinions, their wedge-shaped tails. I hear the sound of their wings beating above our heads. Then they glide down and perch on the rail of the boat. Just as naturally as if they were taking seats they’d booked in advance. I wouldn’t be surprised if they each produced a little black suitcase from under their wings. Their feathers are shimmering like rainbows in the sun, their beaks are so full of strength, curved and sharp, with little moustaches near the base, and they have thick, feathery collars. One of them lunges at a horsefly that has accompanied them out over the water. They chat to each other with all their r-sounds; they seem to be saying, “Rave-rave-raven”. But then one of them suddenly sounds like a clucking cockerel, and the other one seems to burst out laughing. I don’t know what to think about these birds.
I carry on rowing. Dip the oars deep into the water. I enjoy feeling my body again. The sweat running down my back. The wood of the oars made smooth by many years of handling. The feeling in the muscles of my back and arms with each stroke, summoning up the strength, the effort, the tiredness, the recovery.
The sun is hot. The ravens open their beaks. They are silent now. I feel nothing but happiness. It wells up inside me like the sap in a birch tree.
The ravens cry and take off. They fly with powerful beats of their wings in the direction from which I came. Disappear through the sky.
I row. I am strong and as untameable as a river, and I row.
I press hard with my feet, and row with long, powerful strokes.
I’m coming, I think happily. I’m coming now.
SUNDAY, 3 MAY
The weekend is over. The soft light of the evening sun glides into Rebecka Martinsson’s kitchen in Kurravaara.
Måns Wenngren looks at Martinsson. Even though she is sitting only half a metre away, he wants her so badly. Her dark, straight hair. Her eyes with that dark grey edge round her irises. He has hugged her. Made love to her. Albeit cautiously. She is covered in bruises. Still feels sick, has dizzy spells and is very tired from the concussion.
He looks at the scar above her lips. He likes it. He particularly likes that scar. Especially as it is ugly. He is filled with the same kind of tenderness he felt when he held his daughter for the first time.
“How do you feel?” he asks, pouring a glass of wine.
Martinsson reads the label. Much too fine. Wasted on her.
“I’m O.K.,” she says.
She has no feelings about what has happened. No thoughts. What was it like, being in that hole in the ice? Being dragged under the ice? Awful, of course. But it is all over now. She can feel that Måns is worried. That he thinks she is going to have a relapse. His voice is gentle, too gentle.
There is some kind of barrier between them. She longed so much for him to come up and give her a hug, but now that he is here she is hiding herself away in her tiredness and her bruises.
And there is something she cannot stop thinking about. When Tore Krekula came towards her on the snow scooter and she thought her number was up. When she almost drowned under the ice. At no time did she think of Måns. She thought about her farmor and her father. But not about Måns. She did not think of him until Mella handed her the mobile.
They hear a car pull up outside. Martinsson walks over to the kitchen window. It is Krister Eriksson. He gets out of the car and walks towards her front door, stooping noticeably. She taps on the window pane, points at him and then points upwards, making a come-on-up gesture with her other hand.
Then he is standing in the kitchen doorway. Wenngren gets up.
“Forgive me,” Eriksson says. “I didn’t know… I should have rung first…”
“No, no, it’s O.K.,” Martinsson says.