A Blessed Child (13 page)

Chapter 48

Lars-Eivind and the children knew Laura was going. They had all slept in the same bed, some lying straight, others crossways.

It was early morning and still dark when Laura got into the car and drove the short distance from the Colony to Majorstua. Molly lived in a three-room flat on Schønningsgate. Laura didn’t need to ring the bell to tell her to come down. Molly was standing outside, ready and waiting. She had a big red suitcase on the pavement beside her.

Laura had to get out to help her load the suitcase into the car.

“Are you thinking of moving in with the old man?” Laura asked, short of breath, indicating the big suitcase. “Are you going to move to Hammarsö and put some life back into the Hammarsö Pageant?”

Molly laughed.

“As director?”

“Naturally.”

Laura started the car.

“I can still remember some of my lines from that summer,” Molly said.

She looked out at the road.

“Let’s hear them, then,” said Laura. “I can’t remember any of mine.”

“And though the night is falling,”
said Molly slowly,
“the full moon is bright as day.”

“And what comes next?”

“That’s all. That’s all I remember.”

Laura got on the E
6
motorway and drove toward Stockholm.

“We can stop in Örebro,” she said. “We can get a good dinner there and spend the night at a very nice hotel, then drive on in the morning.”

“Fine,” said Molly. “Good idea.”

Laura located her mobile phone without taking her eyes off the road. She was a good driver. She rang Erika’s number.

“Hello,” she said. “We’re on our way now. Can you ring Father and tell him we’re all coming to Hammarsö?”

She looked at Molly and smiled.

“Tell him all three of us are coming.”

Part III: The Hammarsö Pageant

Molly hop-skips her way along a path through the woods that she’s never seen before; it’s not really a path, just a thin rut on the ground, and at the end of it the woods open out and there’s a little green meadow, and in it stands a crooked wooden hut. Molly knows that if she lies down on the ground a little way from it, behind some scrub or a bush, lies down in the long grass, then no one will be able to see her. She’ll be invisible. She can lie here by herself under the sun and eat wild strawberries until she’s red all over. That’s what she’s going to do.

Chapter 49

If God happened to open His big black eye and look down on the little island of Hammarsö, He might be surprised that He had ever created such a striking, weather-beaten place and then gone and forgotten it. Admittedly there are places on Earth more striking and weathered than Hammarsö, and Hammarsö is not the only island in the world that God has forgotten. The truth is, every time God went through His creation and called every thing and every place by its proper name and decided whether it was good or bad, Hammarsö was no more than a tiny speck among all the things God had neglected to name. To be forgotten by people is painful enough, but to be forgotten by God is, many say, to live without grace, like staring down into the abyss; but as far as the residents of Hammarsö could tell, God’s memory lapse where they were concerned had not resulted in any major catastrophes there. Year after year they had cleared soil and broken stone—tilled, dug, and plowed—and it proved possible to subsist, if only just, as they coped in spite of everything, the men and women going out to sea and hunting seals, sometimes returning and sometimes not—and so the history of Hammarsö could be that of virtually any stubborn little island in the world. Starvation and toil and storms and children crying and death and drowning, yes, all that, but no more of it than could be expected of any spit of barren land in the sea. The residents—who grew ever fewer as subsequent generations gradually moved to the mainland—lived on, reconciling themselves to the long winters, the inhospitable heath reminiscent of the African savannah, the pale lakes, and the silent white cows with their wide, bleak gazes; to the music upon the waters, beautiful yet unbearable; to stories of the dead who could find no rest and haunted old kitchens, the pigsty, the lilac hedge, or the space under the spiral staircase, frightening the wits out of little children and dogs; they lived on and reconciled themselves (at least in part) to a God who had forgotten them.
Dear God,
their evening prayers ran,
who reigns over Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and large parts of Hammarsö, bless our children and let many great ships loaded with gold run aground here that we might live happily all the days of our lives.
The residents of Hammarsö had their friends and their enemies and it had always been that way. They could boast a murderer or two, and the murders were described in graphic detail by those who could still remember them; and there’d always been madmen, there was always somebody who would set fire to a barn, or engage in bestial acts with sheep or spread lies about other people, and there was always somebody who didn’t get enough at home and chased things in skirts; there was Big Dick himself, and Big Dick’s son and grandson, these things ran in families, they said on Hammarsö. But apart from a few minor things like that, the people of Hammarsö had lived peaceably with one another whether as friends or as enemies. It was only the tourists to whom they couldn’t reconcile themselves. Not that they complained. The tourists, who started coming in the late fifties and spread like weeds or poisonous algae, proved profitable; they bought food in the shop, hot dogs and newspapers at the kiosk, and sheepskin slippers and landscape paintings at the community center’s summer craft fair; but as for their being friends or even considered worthy of enmity—never!

If God ever did catch a glimpse of Hammarsö, He would most definitely be astonished by the scenery, the people, and everything He had created and forgotten. Perhaps He would catch sight of the little girl squatting down to pick wild strawberries, threading the berries on a stalk of straw to make herself a necklace of red pearls. She puts the chain of berries down between some stones in the tall grass in the meadow above her daddy’s house and forgets it. She’s going to do something else now. Perhaps someone’s calling her or perhaps she’s going to take a dip in the sea while nobody is looking. One can only imagine the girl’s pleasant surprise when she awakes the next morning and remembers her treasure lying hidden in the grass, waiting for her to come and adorn herself with it, or to eat it up and turn herself red all over. God would raise His huge, heavy fist and rub His great black eye so He could view all this very clearly, and then He would see not only the little girl with the wild strawberries; He would see children playing on the beach, building peculiar things out of stones and objects washed up by the sea; He would see an old widower sitting alone at his kitchen table, and two girls, each with a dripping ice-cream cone, on their way home from the shop; He would see a gaudy cockerel in the middle of the main road—the road that winds its way from the ferry terminal in the north to the sandy beach and summer cottages in the south—and a perspiring family of mainlanders cranking down the window of their Volvo to shout at the cockerel to get out of the way; He would see a dying lamb under a tree, rejected by the flock because its mother wants nothing to do with her offspring and the farmwife has decided the little wretch is not to be raised on the bottle—that’s the way it is, she says, and nature must take its course; He would see vivid red poppies on a heath and a spindly boy running and running through the pine forest with a procession of clamoring children after him; He would see a crooked, hidden hut on a patch of heath, and He would see a man donning a long white fake beard and doing his best to declaim something to his wife, but the words he utters are mere nonsense and not even God can understand what he is saying. All this God would see if He looked down for a moment at this little splinter of forgotten things. He would look at it all and tell Himself, That’s the way it is, I created this and everything has a name, this island is a place on Earth and these people exist now.

Chapter 50

Palle Quist (known among the children of Hammarsö as Emily and Jan’s dad) was the brains behind the locally renowned Hammarsö Pageant. Every year from
1971
to
1979
he wrote a brand-new full-length revue, which after a hectic period of rehearsals with amateur actors and extras was performed at the community center at the end of July, before the summer visitors packed their cars and left. Palle Quist was not a writer by profession, but he had published two novellas in the
1960
s. One was ninety pages long, the other eighty, and then his “creative vein ran dry,” as he put it in an interview for the local paper in
1979
. In the sixties he divorced his first wife, Magdalena, the mother of his then two-year-old daughter, Emily. In the seventies he remarried and had another child, a son, Jan, and was also appointed to a minor position in Olof Palme’s first government. “Once a writer of incomprehensible novellas and active member of the Communist Party—now a loyal Social Democrat with a Volvo, a family, and a dog—he has rediscovered his creative gifts on Hammarsö,” the newspaper squib ran. What the journalist failed to mention was that Palle Quist had twice—in
1976
and
1977
—attempted to write plays with political overtones. The indirect but nonetheless malicious portrayal of Prime Minister Thorbjörn Fälldin in the play
Sweden, My Homeland
upset a few members of the audience, but to be perfectly honest it was the spiteful royal palace parody that made many get up and walk out. Palle Quist swore he had not had Carl Gustaf and his bride Silvia in mind when he wrote the scene. On the contrary: he worshipped Silvia!

The year before, he tried his hand at a play about nuclear power and its dangers. It was entitled
P!P!P! Plutonium,
and the review in the local paper was lukewarm. Much was made of the fact that nobody knew what
P!P!P!
stood for. Was it a secret message? Or did
P!P!P!
simply stand for the word
plutonium
? In that case it was utterly superfluous and merely proved the playwright was trying too hard to impress, thought the reviewer, a twenty-two-year-old on summer holiday from Örebro who did not bother making any reference whatsoever to the plot, the overall message, the acting, direction, or stage design. This hurt Palle Quist, who had hoped by
P!P!P! Plutonium
to mobilize the younger generation in particular. In the late seventies, Palle Quist took the decision to avoid all controversial political subjects and, as appropriate for Hammarsö, concentrate on writing spectacles inspired by old ballads, classic drama, music halls, and folk tales.

Palle Quist shared the director’s chair with Isak. The newly written pieces were produced jointly by these two gentlemen, with general meetings twice a week at which everybody who was involved in any way could make suggestions, whether about the script, the direction, or the scenery. Palle Quist thought on principle that a nonhierarchical organizational system was the only way to live and work together, but the truth was, he hated nonhierarchical organizations. He hated the general meetings because the proposed changes to the script and direction always led to the trivialization and intellectual dilution of his vision.

All residents and summer visitors who wanted to try their hand at acting and were on hand those three weeks of July were welcome to join in. This applied in
1979
as in all other years. The only condition was, as ever, that they register their interest by the start of May, the tenth at the latest—either by letter or by telephone to Palle Quist.

The demanding work of writing began as early as June. The players were expected at every rehearsal in Linda and Karl-Owe Blum’s garage and at every general meeting. Absence resulting from, say, nice beach weather could lead to your being written out of the play without notice.

In the summer of
1979
, Isak asked to be excused from the rigors of co-direction; he wanted to try his hand as a performer, he said. Palle Quist immediately agreed, and sat down at his typewriter to write the tailor-made part of Wise Old Man, an omniscient narrator or prophet, a part with which Isak was content, though he admitted privately to Rosa that he had misgivings about the long, rhyming poem that concluded the play, about the longing of the dead to come back to life. That year’s Hammarsö Pageant—a tribute to the natural world and the people, history, and rich storytelling tradition of the island—was Palle Quist’s most ambitious piece of theater to date.

The reason Palle was so keen to accommodate Isak’s wish to act rather than direct was that Isak had as director displayed certain tyrannical tendencies toward the ensemble. The year before, he had criticized one crucial scene in Palle Quist’s script, a scene with which Palle Quist himself was particularly pleased. Isak thought the scene sentimental and lacking originality and he, as one of those artistically responsible, could not defend it. Later the same day, he told off the Hammarsö Pageant’s faithful leading lady, Ann-Marie Krok (Marion’s grandmother), for not remembering her lines; he even managed to cast doubt on Ann-Marie Krok’s suitability as Queen of the Elves.

It was basically the same cast that took to the stage each year, and by degrees the Hammarsö Pageant became as much of a fixture as the Hammarsö Open Tennis Championship and the annual community sing-along in the living room of Caroline and Bosse Althof (Pär’s aunt and uncle). In
1978
, the pageant had finally received good reviews in the local paper, and Palle Quist was therefore feeling himself under such pressure to win favor again that the whole project almost came to nothing.

In the summer of
1979
the rehearsals once again lasted twenty-one days, and as usual they planned three public performances: the dress rehearsal, the premiere, and the closing night.

Chapter 51

Ragnar is running through the forest. Ragnar is faster than all the others. They don’t know where he hides. They know nothing about this island. They come here every summer with their parents; they come here to hate him and they know nothing. NOTHING! Marion is the worst. Marion is a whore. Psycho boy, she shouts whenever she sees him, but she’s the psycho. It’s Marion and her whole gang who are psycho. He can hear them, a long way behind him. He can hear them shouting at him. He can hear his own breathing and his own pounding feet, then suddenly he can’t even hear the pounding. Only the breathing. He goes swiftly, almost as if he isn’t touching the ground. He’s out of breath, but he’s still got something in reserve. He hasn’t got a stitch. He’s faster than them. Marion has roped in more of the gang this summer; she’s got some of the boys as well. Before, Ragnar used to hang out with the boys who are running after him now. Ragnar showed them the island and everything you could do there (except the hut!), and he stole a few dregs of whiskey and vodka and gin from his mother’s liquor cabinet and mixed them all up in a Pommac bottle and like a brother shared it with them all. Now the boys all preferred the idea of fucking Marion, and if they didn’t manage to fuck Marion they would have Frida or Emily instead. He had always run faster than them. He knows Fabian, Olle, and Pär are running after him, running and running, along with Marion, Frida, and Emily. Erika hates Marion. When Ragnar and Erika were younger, they planned to creep into her room one night and cut off all her long black hair while she was asleep. Pär has grown gigantic and hairy since last summer, big and hairy and muscular. I’M FASTER THAN ANY OF YOU! Ragnar turns round. He stops for a moment and catches his breath; he shouts: FUCK OFF! FUCK OFF! LEAVE ME ALONE! His voice carries. They don’t dare touch him. Marion, who now has Pär as her boyfriend, says she’s going to rip off all his clothes and force Jocke Junior to give him one up the ass, or she’s going to stick her grandma’s knitting needle up his dick, or maybe one of the girls will sit on the lump between his eyebrows and rub her pussy on it. YOU’RE SO FUCKING UGLY, RAGNAR!

In the crooked hut in the woods, which he built himself and repairs and extends every year, hangs a mirror. He has a birthmark between his eyebrows, but Erika leans over him and kisses him, first on the mouth, then on the eyes. He isn’t always ugly. It depends on the light; it depends on the faces he makes and what he’s wearing. In the checked sun hat from London and a size XXL T-shirt, he looks kind of handsome. The birthmark doesn’t show then. If he sees himself through Marion’s eyes, he’s deformed, a mongol, a fucking monster; but if he sees himself through Erika’s eyes, he’s none of those things.

The face in the mirror, if he concentrates all his energy into his eyes, looks okay in a rugged sort of way. In a city like London people would leave him alone. Or New York. He doesn’t belong here. He hates Sweden. He hates all the damned Social Democrats and damned social workers. He stares at himself.
You talking to me? You talking to me? You talking to me?
They can’t find him in the hut, and the summer holidays on Hammarsö are not so very long, and after the holidays he and his mother go back to Stockholm, where there are more places to hide. In parks and cinemas and on a bench under a streetlight, where nobody else sits and which he calls his own. He wants to sit on that bench with Erika one day. Erika lives in Oslo. One day he’ll go to Oslo. But life is no better in Norway; it’s the same shit there. Maybe they could run away to Los Angeles or even farther, to Sydney or Hong Kong. In Stockholm the bastards aren’t called Marion and Emily and Frida and Pär and Fabian and Olle; they have other names there. But they’re out to get him, whatever they’re called. Ragnar makes another face.
You talking to me?

Once, many years ago, before he got to know Erika, he and Marion had been best friends. Going out together, even. Eight years old and they were a couple. He’s almost forgotten it; it was so long ago.

“I don’t believe you,” says Erika. “You and Marion?”

Erika is often with him in the hut. She brings cinnamon buns and milk and O’boy and sometimes a drop of wine she’s managed to get her hands on without Rosa and Isak’s noticing.

“It’s true. We walked along the beach, hand in hand, and said we were going out together.”

Erika turns to him.

“Why does she hate you now?”

Ragnar doesn’t answer. Most of all he wants to lie still on the mattress with Erika and not say anything, or at least not talk about Marion and the others. It means nothing.

“It means nothing,” he says.

It’s awful, this: counting the days until he and his mother will have to leave Hammarsö and go back home to Stockholm, away from those bastards. It’s true, he prefers the bastards in Stockholm to the bastards on Hammarsö. Marion isn’t in Stockholm. That’s to say, she is in Stockholm, but not in his Stockholm. They live in two different cities. Just as they live on two different islands here. Nobody knows Ragnar’s Hammarsö, except perhaps Erika, a little. And nobody knows Ragnar’s Stockholm.

Once, last winter, he ran into Marion in town, outside Rigoletto on Kungsgatan. They nodded to each other as if they were perfectly normal acquaintances. She had a cold and looked washed-out, and wore a stupid hat pulled down over her ears and a quilted jacket buttoned right up to her chin. He couldn’t see her long black hair. He would never admit, even under torture, that he thinks Marion is beautiful, and that day on Kungsgatan she wasn’t beautiful or even cute, just a very ordinary girl in a stupid hat. In his Stockholm there is Puggen, and Puggen is grown up. Puggen and Ragnar are friends. It’s awful! The problem with counting the days until he leaves Hammarsö is that he’ll also be counting the days until he leaves Erika. When he was little, he counted the days to Christmas and his birthday and even his name day (as if there were anything to celebrate if your name was Ragnar!) because his mother would always give him a present. But not even a lunatic counts the days until he’s going to be plunged into acid or leave the person he loves. Ragnar can’t be bothered counting the days to his birthday anymore.

Ragnar and Erika have the same birthday.

This year they’re going to be fourteen. And when that day comes, there will only be three days to go until the opening night of the Hammarsö Pageant and six days to go until he and his mother return to Stockholm. Six days. That’s not even a week. Six days, however you look at it, is an unbearably short time.

Ragnar studies his face in the mirror.
Then who the hell else are you talking to?
One day he’s going to have an operation to remove the birthmark between his eyes, and then he’ll come to Hammarsö and everyone will gasp. SHIT, IS THAT RAGNAR? they’ll say. Because not only has he got rid of that goddamned mark, not only has he got a smooth, tanned forehead, but he’s also grown; he’s taller and stronger than Pär and all those total losers. And he’ll grab Marion’s black hair and drag her along the road after him. He winks at himself and shoots with his index fingers from his hips, a pistol in each hand.