Open Grave: A Mystery (7 page)

Her father had impressed on her, sometimes with the rod, that her task was to serve God and all other masters, including himself. In his faith there were no mountains. His Old Testament attitude, which aroused a mixture of wonder, respect, and ridicule on Gr
ä
s
ö
n, left no room for thoughts of freedom.

The congregation God’s Army, which in its heyday had two dozen members at most, of which five were from the Andersson family, was long since departed. Her sister Greta and herself, together with a couple of other retirees, were the only survivors who could testify to the reserve and muteness that marked the interior life of the sect. There was not much joy and consolation, only fear and hard work.

Smallholder Aron Andersson’s faith in God was as merciless as the stony ten-acre parcel he had to work, the family’s life as poor of pleasures as the patch of forest, mostly consisting of alder marsh and rocks, that belonged to the place, and their worldly fate as uncertain as the harvests of the often surly sea, sometimes plentiful catches of herring but more often half-empty nets.

For Aron life and the sea were a struggle, a precipice, resistance that, if not overcome, in any event must be endured. That was God’s idea. Everything was meager and harsh but above all unpredictable. Only the Word stood firm and the thought of the Son’s descent was the only refreshment to be had.

The father’s doings left no room for any form of spontaneity or surprises. The only thing that deviated was that all the sisters were allowed to leave the island and the congregation to serve the Ohler family.

This was an anomaly that for Agnes was unfathomable at first. Perhaps it was her mother’s influence that made it all possible. There was a streak of rebellious delight in her. Aron Andersson also harbored an obsequious respect for Carl von Ohler and his lily-white wife, so when the question came up of whether Anna might go with them into town Aron chose to grant his permission. For a couple of summers Anna had been helpful in the Ohler household on the island, so it was perceived by everyone as a natural extension.

Perhaps the father, in all his stern religious zeal, felt a pinch of doubt after all. Perhaps he wanted to crack open a door for his three daughters, away from the island and the meager life. Even he could see how times were changing. Not even the strictest remained unaffected.

When Anna was going to start in Uppsala Aron sailed her over the sound to
Ö
regrund and the waiting bus. When Greta followed later she could take the motorboat and Agnes in turn could take the ferry that had started working
Ö
regrundsgrepen.

Sending the daughters to the professor and the house in K
å
bo was a guarantee besides that they ended up among “educated and cultivated folk.” The expression was her father’s. That the Ohler family were not believers, other than on paper, was less important. The family was a suitable acclimatization to a respectable life on the mainland. The father’s greatest apprehension was that they would end up “at the factory” or “in a store” and thereby be lured into sinful ways.

*   *   *

Agnes observed her toes in
the footbath. God’s ten commandments in accordance with the childhood rhyme, where the words had been drummed in: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” So long ago, but she could still feel the pressure of her father’s fingers around her toes as he made her mechanically repeat commandment after commandment.

Sixty-five years ago. She felt dizzy for a few moments at the insight that she would soon die, be united with her parents. She would never get to experience someone pressing their fingers against any part of her body, not even the crooked toes.

Perhaps I wasn’t made for that,
she thought.
I was destined to serve. I have never loved anyone, not even Birgitta, who took shelter in her arms when it was stormy in the house, when Dagmar and Bertram crossed swords. And no one has loved me. Well,
she corrected herself at once,
Father and Mother.

She remembered when her father had died quickly in his seventies. He dropped dead in the cramped cowshed. Actually, he had nothing to do there, the little herd had been gone for several years, like most of the cows on the island, but he used to go out there and “idle,” as her mother said.

The news came the same day that it was announced that the “old king” had died, so the to-do around Aron Andersson’s death was curtailed somewhat.

She went out to the island. Ohler offered to have her driven out, but she took the bus, got off in
Ö
regrund, crossed the little square, read the newspaper placards about the nation’s grief, and came up to the ferry landing soaked with sweat, even though a stiff breeze was blowing from the northeast. It was Fredell who ran the ferry and he expressed his sympathy; rumors spread quickly on an island. They were the same age and schoolmates, and she wanted him to hug her, a completely unimaginable action for both of them. But he stood next to her during the trip across, silently with his hands on the railing. They looked out over the water, northward toward the island, where they were both born. She was cold, the sweat coagulated on her body, but she remained standing, and he remained standing, even though he always walked around talking. She said, “Thanks, G
ö
sta, that was nice of you.” He went to make sure that the cars got off the ferry. She would never forget G
ö
sta Fredell.

She walked from the ferry home. It was only a few kilometers, if you counted like when she was a child.
I’ll catch pneumonia,
she thought, but trudged on. There was a comfort in the landscape, late yarrow and columbines swayed at the edge of the ditch and the apples shone in the gardens. At old Lidb
ä
ck’s a mare was standing that whinnied as she walked past. She stopped and said a few friendly words.

Her childhood home, a poorly built wooden shack, looked even smaller, as if the house had adapted itself now that it needed to house only two persons instead of three. It was a gray, melancholy house and had been like that since Anna’s return from service with the “old professor.” Later on she left for Stockholm, where she got a position with a businessman with houses in both Saltsj
ö
baden and in France.

She was replaced by Greta, who in turn was replaced by Agnes, a relay team of sisters to keep the Ohler home in good shape.

Agnes could still remember the short walk from the road up toward the house. It was as if it was the last time, even though she realized that was not the case. But it was a painful way to go, a farewell. Thirty-five years ago, she thought, staring at her feet in the bath.

*   *   *

“He went first,” said her
mother as Agnes stepped into the kitchen.

She was sitting at the table, and immediately poured a cup of coffee from a thermal carafe, as if she had been sitting there a long time waiting for her daughter’s arrival. They had their coffee in silence. If her father had become somewhat more easygoing with the years her mother had changed in the opposite direction.

Greta was at the funeral parlor to take care of the practicalities. Agnes helped pack clothes in boxes and bags, which would most likely end up in the attic. Agnes did not ask what her mother intended.

“The office,” the box room under the stairs, which Aron had furnished as his own little den, was mostly cleaned out. Agnes suspected that her sister had been there. But in a drawer she found her childhood. In the warped drawer in a worm-eaten cupboard he had stored the loose tobacco, the only vice he allowed himself. He did not smoke, instead he cut up the long braids and drew the tobacco into his nose. He did it to “clear his nasal passages.”

That aroma was her father, but also a kind of worldly perfume, an almost sensory reminder that there was an existence beyond the home and the congregation.

She had pulled the drawer out completely and brought it to her nose, breathed in deeply, and experienced her father’s mute devotion. So certainly she had been loved, in his reserved way, but loved all the same.

Agnes knew that Greta had tried to get hold of Anna and before she returned to Uppsala she asked whether their big sister had been heard from. Her mother did not answer and Agnes took that as a no.

A few days later Agnes got pneumonia, was bedridden, and could not be at the funeral.

*   *   *

The water had long since
cooled in the tub. Her feet were wrinkled and softened. Agnes filed them long and well, a task that brought her a kind of pleasure.

Eight

“There are rats!”

“It’s mice,” Agnes Andersson corrected.

“Doesn’t matter.” Birgitta von Ohler looked around the library as if she would discover more. “They are rodents,” she continued, “and they can eat up a household from inside.”

Maybe it was the fatigue that made Agnes’s eyes tear up.

“Don’t be sad,” Birgitta exclaimed, taking hold of her arm. “It’s not your fault. I’m just so surprised that it’s happening in this house.”

“Mice make no distinctions,” said Agnes, freeing herself from her grasp. “They make their way indoors this time of year. I usually set out a few traps every fall.”

Birgitta observed her wide-eyed.

“I’ve been doing that all these years,” Agnes added.

“Have you talked with Daddy?”

“About what?”

“The mice.”

“I didn’t know you were so afraid of—”

“I’m not afraid! Don’t you understand? People are coming here now, journalists and others, from all over the world, and you’re walking around with a rat trap. And tonight Daddy’s colleagues are coming here. I’m sure they’ll be sitting in here after dinner.”

Agnes looked at Birgitta with an expression that did not express any of what she felt inside, but possibly Birgitta sensed Agnes’s fatigue, a fatigue that perhaps unconsciously let the contempt be glimpsed from behind the mask she had polished for half a century.

“I know what you’re thinking!”

Agnes turned away.

“You think I’m stuck-up and impertinent.”

“Not at all,” said Agnes with her back toward Birgitta.

“Look at me!”

“I have a few things to do,” said Agnes, but then turned around slowly, as if the movement were associated with an awful pain.

“You believe—”

“Believing you can do in church,” said Agnes, but fell silent out of pure astonishment at her own reply.

Birgitta was staring at her.

“I must say”—this was one of Bertram’s stock phrases that his daughter had inherited—“this prize has certainly stirred things up properly.”

“It’s been stirred up a long time,” Agnes mumbled.

“What do you mean?”

Agnes walked over to one of the windows that looked out from the back of the house.

“Palm
é
r planted the apple tree outside here the same week I came to the house. It was a cold October, I remember the steam from his mouth.”

Agnes’s voice was raspy, as if it hadn’t been used in a long time, and she cleared her throat before she continued.

“I was standing right here, it’s like it was yesterday. He was out there and I was inside here where it was warm. I remember that I wanted to call him into the kitchen for coffee, but that sort of thing was not done. I didn’t know my place and the cook was not gracious either. Your grandfather and grandmother were still alive then, your father had a position at Academic Hospital and I … I didn’t know…”

“What didn’t you know?”

Birgitta had joined her at the window and also observed the tree, heavy with fruit. All that was heard was the sound of the rain striking against the window.

“How life would turn out.”

“Who knows that when you’re young?”

Agnes did not reply. Her eyes rested intently on the shiny fruit that rocked in the wind and was rinsed by the rain.

“I think I’ll make an apple cake,” she said at last.

“Do you regret taking a position here?”

Agnes cast a quick glance at Birgitta.

“Regret or not, I was sent here as a replacement for my sister.”

Agnes made an almost imperceptible movement with her head and left the window, taking quick steps toward the door. With her hand on the doorknob she turned around to say something, but remained standing without a word.

“Are you not feeling well?”

“I should see about the food for dinner,” Agnes replied, leaving the room and carefully closing the door behind her.

*   *   *

Perhaps it was the rain
that made Birgitta von Ohler linger a long while by the window, the way you stay standing by a fire or in front of a fireplace, staring into the flames. Now it was the steady lashing against the windowpane and the stubborn, almost aggressive sound of the drops against the windowsill that captivated her.

She had come to the house to help Agnes with the preparations for dinner. It was obviously at Bertram’s initiative, because when she showed up Agnes acted completely uncomprehending and unusually brusque, refusing all assistance in the kitchen.

Agnes’s reaction was perhaps understandable but nonetheless Birgitta became lost in a gloomy state that corresponded well with the weather. The usually pleasant feeling of being indoors and able to observe the storm from a warm, sheltered position would not appear. On the contrary, she had an impulse to leave the house, expose herself to the foul weather, and let the rain and wind take hold of her.

Her father was in his study; according to Agnes he was spending several hours there every day, and did not want to be disturbed. God knows what he was occupied with. She had asked but didn’t get an actual answer, other than that he was tidying up old papers and notes.

At times she feared that he would not manage the onslaught of callers and journalists and then the ceremony itself in Stockholm on the tenth of December. She could see him wobbling up to receive the prize from the hands of the king, but stumble and fall headlong. Or, in the usual conversation on TV with the other prize winners, lose the thread and start rambling on about inconsequential things, something he was doing more and more often.