Strindberg's Star (9 page)

The pattern was everywhere: the shaft, the crossbar, the eye; and soon sheets with snaking symbols lay spread out all over the table.

Erik shook his head in order to rid himself of the feeling of paralysis, of being only some sort of …
onlooker
?

Then there were two flashes in quick succession, and in the subsequent thunder he finally managed to stop—
drop the pencil
—and slowly, slowly, get his hands to start moving once again the way he wanted them to.

And what he wanted most of all right now was to shuffle the sheets of paper with their winding symbols together into a pile in the middle of the table. In the hazy light it was difficult to really see what he was doing. The only thing he knew for sure was that all of this had to go away immediately.

Erik crumpled the bunch of scribble-covered papers between his hands and carried it all over to the stove. There he sank down into a crouch, opened the door, and threw it in. He lit a match, guiding the burning flame, and let it go. At first nothing happened; then there was a crackle, and the paper burned.

He sank down until he was sitting, hugged his knees, and saw before him how that damn ankh actually disappeared in the lake, not just an impossible thought, it ought to be done now, right away; he never wanted to touch it again. Maybe it was just the liquor, but over by the table there had—

The sudden pain caused him to jerk his head to the side.

What was that?

He felt the back of his head with his hand.

Why, there was something that … had
burned,
like an electric
shock, from the base of his neck like a projectile up to his forehead, and as Erik turned around toward the kitchen table and the barred windows:
Was there someone there?

He could see only a faint reflection of himself; the sheets of rain had blurred the windows into a mirror. Another flash of lightning, and now the thunder was directly above him.

He stepped to the shelter of the wall alongside the window and the wooden bench and carefully widened the gap in the curtain so he could peer out.

S
omeone there?

A
t first he couldn’t even see the yard through all the misty fog, but then his eyes adjusted themselves, and he could make out the contours of the sunporch.

Erik let his eyes wander down the drainpipe toward the waterlogged grass, farther along toward the nearest gatepost, and there was …
a hand?

A black figure rising up over the gate in the fence.

The curtain trembled as Erik slid back in toward the wall.

Titelman?

Soon, from the window, a white rectangle began to appear against the kitchen floor of the cottage, and Erik slowly pushed himself away from the wall. His fingers left marks: two fans, ten damp prints.

When he ventured up to the gap in the curtains again, the thunderheads had broken up outside the window. Through the haze, he could make out the sun, and the pouring rain had been wrung out into a light mist. And there, in the drizzle at the gate, stood …
a woman?

She was dressed in a transparent plastic poncho, and under the hood he glimpsed a face that was half turned away. Erik could follow her slender silhouette all the way down to her tall boots through the slats of the fence.

In the time it took for his eyes to wander back up toward the woman’s face, she must have had time to turn her head. Because now she was looking straight at him, there in the gap of the curtains, and although he should have been impossible to see, their eyes met. She was very young, and it was as though she had waited for him to finish looking.

“S
ignor Hall?”

The words were spoken at the same instant that Erik opened the outer door of the sunporch.

He took a few steps out onto the stairs and looked over toward the woman through the last flickers of rain. She waved at him.

“
Mi scusi, uscire un attimo?
”

Her voice was so delicate. Yet the words carried straight across the yard, as though she were standing right next to him, whispering into his ear.

“Signor Hall?”

He touched the tender spot on his neck and had a strong sense that the best thing to do would be to turn around, shut the door, and lock it. But then he noticed that his body had already begun to move forward between the puddles in the gravel path.

She continued to wave, smiling at him. Erik noticed with surprise that he was actually smiling back and that his own hand was raised to wave. This was just a girl, after all … a young girl, couldn’t even have turned twenty. A teenager standing at his gate. Now there were only a few steps to go.

“Scusi per l’intrusione, Signor Hall …”

The woman stretched out a hand; it was so small, and as they shook hands, Erik noticed that the edge of her light pink blouse was sticking out from under the arm of her cardigan. Now he really must try to say something:

“Speak English?”

She took off the hood of her poncho and looked at him with smoky green eyes.

“Oh yes, of course,” answered the woman, smiling sweetly.

Her hair was cut short; it was almost stubble. He let his eyes slide down to the woman’s neck, following the fine veins, and he could almost make out her slow pulse. Then her voice made him look up again:

“I am terribly sorry for the intrusion, Signor Hall. Well … my name is Elena Duomi …”

“Elena … ?”

“Elena Duomi. I work for the Italian magazine
La Rivista Italiana dei Misteri e dell’Occulto
.”

Erik’s hand stiffened as he was about to unhook the hasp that held the gates closed. After that photographer, he really couldn’t handle any more journalists.

“Yes, well, I really …” he began before the woman interrupted him with her lightly accented English:

“It’s been a very long journey here, and I wonder … would it be possible to come in for a little while for an interview? And maybe you would allow me to hang this up to dry somewhere?”

She shook the soaked poncho and smiled again. She had a wide mouth, soft lips, no lipstick.

“Well, Signor Hall … certainly that would be possible, right?”

He looked down at his hand, which was still holding the hasp.

“How did you know where I live?” he said.

“Oh, it was the police, they helped me. We had already written about
l’uomo sotto sale
in the last issue, but our readers’ interest has been so great …”

She took a step closer.

“That’s what we call him,
l’uomo sotto sale
, the salted man, that magically well-preserved man that you found down there in the mine. As I said, I have already gotten the police’s version, and …”

The woman glanced up at him and then gently took his hand and helped him lift the hasp out of its position. Erik hesitantly pulled the gate open.

“I’ve already been to look at the shaft where everything happened,” the woman continued once she had taken a few lithe steps onto the gravel path. “I realize that it’s short notice, but a meeting with you, Signor Hall, and getting the story of your dive … that would really entice our readers. You should see the letters to the editor!”

Once again, Erik touched the tender spot on his neck and tried to organize his thoughts about the small girl. In the end, he could only grin at it all, and he nodded at her to follow him up to the cottage.

W
hile Elena Duomi pulled off her boots, Erik went ahead of her into the kitchen. There he took the ankh from the table, in order to avoid making a fool of himself again.

He turned it between his fingers and looked around. Then he decided on the pile of newspapers next to the stove. He slid in the ankh and nudged the shaft so that it disappeared into the middle of the pile. He had just managed to get up when he heard her steps.

They sat down at the kitchen table. Elena opened her bag and took out a small gray Dictaphone, which she placed between them. Then she pressed
RECORD
.

“Exclusive to
La Rivista
… Italy’s weekly magazine about mysteries and the occult: an interview with the Swedish diver Erik Hall.”

W
hen the Italian journalist began to ask all the questions that he had gotten so many times now, the answers came so automatically that Erik could take the time to examine her face more closely. She was perhaps not quite so young, after all. There was something sad about her, and sometimes her eyes seemed uncertain, flickering around along the kitchen walls as though they were searching for something.

But soon Erik no longer had time to think about how Elena looked,
because Italian journalists were apparently terribly scrupulous. Despite his halting English, she managed to walk him back and forth through the mine paths and write down observations that not even the police had cared about.

The Italian woman was most interested in the vault where he’d found the corpse of the vitriol man. She asked questions about the chalk marks but already seemed to know that the verses about Niflheim and Náströndu came from
Völuspá
(
The Prophecy of the Seeress
) in the Icelandic
Poetic Edda
.

And not only that. From her questions, it was soon clear that the Italian woman knew considerably more about the ancient Scandinavian doctrine of hell than he did, even though Erik had had time to search out a lot of information before the Æsir murder theory had fizzled out.

When she finally paused, and he looked out through the kitchen window, Erik noticed that it had already become evening. He began to contemplate how long he would actually be able to get her to stay.

“N
o, now you must have something to drink.”

Elena had been in the middle of a question when he’d interrupted her. She waved him off, but Erik had already stood up.

He started to clatter around in the cupboards and happened to catch sight of some candles in verdigris-covered candlesticks. He placed them on the table and lit them.

Then, back at the cupboards, he finally found the three bottles of Pata Negra that Mom had left behind a long time ago. He usually preferred liquor, himself, when he wanted to get sloshed, but he could make an exception.

He filled two glasses to the rim, and handed one to her between the burning candles. For an instant he thought she was going to refuse it, but then she lifted her hand.

“
Grazie
, thanks.”

The Italian woman took a large gulp and closed her black-lined eyes. When she looked up again, the nature of the conversation changed.

They began to talk about what the vitriol man could actually have been doing down there in the mine. What were Signor Hall’s own thoughts on it? What did he think about the dating and about the newspapers that had been found? Elena nodded thoughtfully, almost submissively, at his answers, and when Erik switched over to whiskey, she didn’t bat an eye.

This was just a little girl, he thought, no matter how much she had made up her eyes. A sexy little Italian, who for some unfathomable reason was sitting in his kitchen.

And now, as the night drew near, it came with a stifling warmth. A sticky physical heat, which, along with the liquor, made his face begin to run with sweat. Erik had just dried off the salty moisture with his sleeve when the Italian woman took a newspaper clipping out of her bag: the article from
Dalakuriren
’s Saturday supplement.

“That last bit, with the ankh … is it true?” she said, pointing to the concluding paragraph.

He must have had a stupid look on his face, because she laughed. “One of the policemen translated it for me; he seemed to think that it was something you had probably just … made up? Is that right?”

Erik felt himself grinning.

“Well, I believe you, in any case!” said the Italian woman. “Besides, I’ve already called my editor, who says that this story about the ankh makes everything so much more exciting. So he actually insisted that I bring back at least one picture.”

He barely heard her; his thoughts had drifted to the photographer cunt. The Italian woman tried again: “Just one picture, and then I’ll go. I really think I can’t leave here without it.”

Can’t leave here without it.
Erik looked over toward the pile of newspapers.

“Yes, the ankh would make a good picture,” he said.

“I would really appreciate it.”

He swayed a bit as he got up from his chair, steadied himself with the help of its arm. The sweat came faster along his back, down toward his buttocks.

The Italian woman turned off her Dictaphone and placed it in her bag. Then she positioned herself very close to him: “I can help,” she whispered, “if you just tell me where the ankh is.”

Erik felt the Italian woman’s breath against his ear and couldn’t quite make out why she was suddenly so anxious. But he understood this much: Once he had shown her the ankh, she would leave him and go.

“Okay … but in that case, you’ll have to do something for me first,” he said. He looked down at her and saw that she was nodding. She was smiling, actually.

“Come with me out into the fresh air for just a little bit—”

Erik didn’t wait for an answer; instead he continued with a thickening voice:

“If you come out with me, I’ll show you something, and then you can take your pictures of the ankh. As many as you want.”

When he heard her voice, he had to ask again, and it took a minute before he realized that she had actually said yes.

S
he looked so fragile, standing and waiting on the gravel path at the bottom of the stairs to the sunporch. When Erik approached the Italian, he made an attempt to seize her with an arm around her shoulders, but she slipped away.

Then he heard himself say something incoherent about the house and Mom, and he was surprised when the small woman laughed and pretended she had understood.

He gestured toward the fence that led around to the back of the cottage, and when she walked ahead of him, he felt how he just wanted to grab the soft movements of those hips.

Just behind the house was a small shed, and Erik fetched a few
towels and brought them out into the moonlight. Then he motioned to the Italian woman to follow him over to the opening in the fence, which led them down to the path toward the pine slope.