The Stonecutter (50 page)

Agnes gave him a suspicious look. His expression was inscrutable. It bothered her that she could never really read him, the way she’d always been able to read other men. Yet that might be why, for the first time in her life, she felt that she’d met a man who could live up to her expectations. And it was about time. Of course she looked extremely good for fifty-three, but the years had brought unwelcome changes even for her. Soon she might not be able to rely on her looks any longer. The thought frightened her, and that’s why it was so important for Per-Erik to keep all the promises he’d made to her. During the years their relationship had lasted, she had always been the one who was in control. At least that was how she viewed it. But for the first time, Agnes felt a pang of doubt. Maybe she had let herself be duped. She hoped for his sake that wasn’t the case.

Harald Spjuth was content with his life as a pastor. But as a human being he sometimes felt a little lonely. Although he was forty years old, he had not yet found anyone to share his life with, which pained him deeply. Perhaps his pastor’s collar was the problem. At heart, he was pleasant and genuinely kind, even if he was too modest to describe himself that way. Nor could his looks be blamed for his loneliness. He might not be a movie star, but he had pleasant features and a full head of hair. He also possessed an enviable metabolism, never gaining an ounce despite his fondness for good food and the many coffee klatches that life as a pastor in a small town entailed. And yet things hadn’t really gone his way.

But Harald had not despaired. He wondered what his congregation would say if they knew how industrious he had been when it came to placing personal ads recently. After trying both square dancing and cooking courses with no success, he had sat down in the late spring and written his first classified ad. Since then, things had just rolled along. He hadn’t met the love of his life yet, but he had gone on several enjoyable lunch dates and had acquired a couple of very nice pen pals in the bargain. At home on the kitchen table, three more letters were waiting. But duty first.

He’d been to visit some of the elderly folks who appreciated the opportunity to chat for a while and often passed by the parsonage on their way to church. Many of his more ambitious colleagues would probably have thought that the congregation was a trifle too small, but Harald was flourishing. The yellow parsonage was a lovely home, and he was always struck by how imposing the church was as he walked up the little hill on the tree-lined lane. When he passed the old church school that stood across from the parsonage, he was reminded of the vitriolic debate that had flared up in town. An estate developer wanted to tear down the dilapidated building and put up an apartment building. But the project had immediately generated a strong protest, including a number of articles and letters to the editor from people who wanted the building to be preserved at any cost. In a way Harald could understand both sides, but it was still remarkable that most of the opponents were not year-round residents but summer guests with residences in Fjällbacka. Naturally they wanted their retreat to remain as gloriously picturesque as possible to enjoy while they wandered about town on weekends and counted themselves fortunate that they had such a pleasant refuge far from the workaday world in the big city. But a town that did not develop would die sooner or later; a living world couldn’t be frozen for ever. Fjällbacka’s residents needed the apartments, and it was impossible to make everything in Fjällbacka a national landmark without affecting the very life-pulse of the town. Tourism was fine, of course, but there was a life after summertime as well, Harald reflected as he ambled up the hill toward the church.

Before entering he looked up at the tower, as was his habit, tipping his head back as far as he could manage. In windy weather like today he had the illusion that the tower was swaying, and the imposing sight of thousands of tons of granite about to fall on him always made him feel respect for the men who had built the majestic church. Sometimes he wished that he had lived in those times and been one of the stonecutters of Bohuslän. Those men lived in obscurity, yet had used their hands to create everything from the simplest roads to the most magnificent statues. But he was wise enough to know that this was all a romantic dream. Life had probably not been much fun for those men, and he appreciated the comforts of the present day far too much to fool himself into thinking he’d be better off without them.

After permitting himself a moment of daydreaming, he opened the door. Guiltily he caught himself crossing his fingers that Arne wouldn’t be there. There was nothing really wrong with the fellow, and he did a good enough job, but frankly Harald had a problem with the old adherents of Schartus’s pietistic Lutheranism, and gloomy Arne was one of the worst. He seemed to revel in misery and constantly sought the negative in everything. Sometimes when Arne was standing next to him, Harald could feel all his own joy in life being literally sucked away. Nor did he have much patience for the man’s eternal harping about female pastors, either. If Harald had five kronor for each time Arne had taken offense over his predecessor, he would be a rich man today. Personally, he couldn’t understand what was so terrible about a woman preaching God’s word instead of a man. Whenever Arne launched into one of his tirades, Harald had to stifle a desire to say that it didn’t require a willie to preach God’s word, but he always bit his tongue just in time. Poor Arne would probably drop dead on the spot if he heard a pastor say anything like that.

Once inside the sacristy, all hope vanished that the verger might have stayed home. Harald heard Arne’s voice and thought that he was probably talking to some poor tourists who had run into the most conservative verger in the Swedish realm. For a moment Harald was tempted to sneak back out. Then he sighed and thought he should do the Christian thing and go in and rescue the poor creatures.

But there were no tourists in sight. Instead, Arne was standing high up on the pulpit and preaching in a thunderous voice to the empty pews. Harald stared at him in disbelief, wondering what on earth had taken possession of the fellow.

Arne was waving his arms and working hard as if he were holding a sermon on the mount; he stopped only for a moment when he saw Harald come in the door. Then he went on as if nothing had happened. Now Harald also saw all the papers strewn beneath the pulpit. That was explained when Arne with sweeping gestures tore pages out of the psalmbook he held in his hand and let them float to the floor.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ called Harald indignantly, striding up the center aisle of the church.

‘I’m doing what should have been done a long time ago,’ replied Arne belligerently. ‘I’m ripping up the horrible newfangled things. Ungodly is what they are,’ he snorted and continued to rip out page after page. ‘I don’t understand why everything old suddenly has to be changed. It was all so much better before. Now all morality has been made lax, and people dance and sing whether it’s Thursday or Sunday! Not to mention that they’re copulating everywhere, outside of marriage.’

His hair was standing on end, and Harald wondered whether poor Arne had finally completely lost his mind. He didn’t know what had brought on this sudden outburst. Arne had of course been muttering much the same opinions year in and year out, but he had never ventured to do anything this bold before.

‘You’ve got to calm down, Arne. Please come down from the pulpit and we’ll have a talk.’

‘Talk? Ha! That’s all anyone does,’ Arne spouted from his elevated position. ‘That’s what I’m saying, it’s time for action instead! And this place is as good as any to begin,’ he said as page after page continued falling to the floor like big snowflakes.

Watching him, Harald flew into a rare temper. Standing here vandalizing his magnificent church! There had to be a limit to the man’s nonsense!

‘Come down from there, Arne, come down right now!’ he shouted, which made the verger stop short. Never before had the pastor raised his voice. He was normally so gentle, so it had an effect.

‘You have ten seconds to come down from there, or I’ll come up and get you, big as you are!’ Harald went on, his face now bright with rage, his eyes fierce.

Arne’s belligerence was deflated as fast as it had come on, and he docilely obeyed the pastor’s command.

‘All right, then,’ said Harald in a considerably milder voice when he went over to Arne and put an arm round his shoulders. ‘Let’s go over to the parsonage. I’ll put on a pot of coffee, and we’ll have a little of that coffeecake that Signe was so kind to bake. Then we’ll have a talk, you and I.’

And they walked off down the center aisle toward the door, the small man with his arm around the big man. Like an odd bridal couple.

Monica felt a bit dizzy when she got out of the car. She hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before. The thought of the horrible thing that Kaj was accused of doing had kept her awake till the wee hours.

The worst thing was actually the lack of any doubt. When she heard the police officer read off the allegations, she knew from the first moment that they were true. So many pieces of the puzzle finally fell into place. Suddenly there was an explanation for so much that had happened during their years together.

A feeling of disgust turned her stomach, and she leaned against the car and spat out a little gall onto the asphalt. She had fought off the nausea all morning. When she arrived at work, her boss had told her that she didn’t have to work if she didn’t feel like it, considering the circumstances. But she had refused to go home. The thought of sitting at home all day was repulsive. She would rather endure people’s stares than walk about in his house, sit on his sofa, cook food in his kitchen. The thought that he had touched her, although not in a long, long time, made her want to flay the skin from her body.

But in the end she had no choice. After she’d tried to stay on her feet for an hour the boss had told her to go home, and this time he refused to take no for an answer. With a lump in her stomach she had slowly started driving home. By the time she got to the bottom of Galärbacken she was just creeping along. The driver of the car behind her had honked his horn in annoyance, but Monica couldn’t have cared less.

If it hadn’t been for Morgan, she would have packed a bag and driven to her sister’s house. But she couldn’t abandon him. He would go crazy anywhere else than in his little cabin; the fact that they had taken his computers was enough of an upheaval in his world. Yesterday she had found him wandering restlessly among his stacks of magazines. He was lost without his anchors in the real world. She hoped that the police would give back his computers soon.

Monica took out the key to the front door and was about to unlock it when she stopped. She wasn’t ready to go inside yet. A sudden longing to see her son made her stuff the key back in her pocket, go down the steps, and take the path to Morgan’s cabin. He would surely be annoyed that she was breaking the routines and showing up at his place, but for once she didn’t care. She remembered how he had smelled as a baby, how that smell had made her want to move mountains. Now she felt a need to sniff the back of his neck once more, as big as he was, to hug him as if he were her rock, instead of vice versa, as it had been for all these years.

She knocked cautiously on the door and waited. There was no sound from inside, and she began to feel uneasy. Monica knocked again, a little harder this time, and waited tensely to hear the sound of footsteps inside. Nothing.

She tried the door, but it was locked. Nervously, she fumbled above the door for the spare key until her hand finally closed around it.

Where could he be? Morgan hardly ever went anywhere by himself. Never before had he gone anywhere without either taking her along or at least very properly telling her where he was going. Fear began prickling at her throat, and she half expected to find him dead inside his cabin. That was what she had always dreaded. That one day he would stop talking about death and instead decide to seek it out. Maybe the loss of his computers and the encroachment into his world had made him finally decide to set off for the place from which there was no return.

But the cabin was empty. Anxiously she looked around, and her gaze quickly fell on a piece of paper lying on top of a pile of magazines near the door. She recognized Morgan’s handwriting even before she read what he’d written, and her heart skipped a beat. She breathed a sigh of relief as soon as she read the note. She didn’t realize until her shoulders relaxed how hard she’d been clenching her muscles.

‘Computers ready. Went with the police to pick up,’ it said on the paper, and her concern returned. It wasn’t the suicide note she had feared, but there was something that didn’t make sense. Why would the police come to collect him so that he could get his computers back? Wouldn’t they have brought them along and delivered them directly?

Monica made up her mind in an instant. She dashed back to the car and drove off with a squeal of rubber. The whole way to Tanumshede she pressed the accelerator to the floor, and her hands clutched the steering wheel so hard that they began to sweat. When she passed the intersection by Tanum Tavern, she heard sirens behind her and was overtaken by an ambulance driving at high speed. She unconsciously sped up and almost flew past Hedemyrs. At Mr. Li’s store she had to stop suddenly, and the strap of the seat belt locked hard against her chest. The ambulance had stopped right in front of the police station, and a queue of cars had formed from both directions because they couldn’t get past what looked like the scene of an accident. When she craned her neck she could see a dark heap lying in the street. She didn’t need to see any more to know who it was.