Stallo Stefan Spjut - Bonnier Group Agency

Stallo
Stefan Spjut
Sample translation and synopsis in English
Contact:
Gustaf Bonde
Agent | Fiction, General non-fiction
gustaf.bonde@bonniergroupagency.se
Bonnier Group Agency
Mobile +46 765 26 10 84
Box 3159, 103 63 Stockholm
Visitors: Sveavägen 56
http://www.bonniergroupagency.se
1

The minute he jumps out of the car the mosquitoes settle on his naked legs. It is as if
they have been waiting for him and they come from all directions, landing gently, and
are such a teeming mass they make his skin look mottled. He does not even attempt to
brush them away but stiffens and lets out a plaintive yell which carries far into the
gloom of the forest and lodges among the pine trees. His mother heaves the bag onto the
bonnet, unzips it and rummages around inside until she finds a bath towel which she
wraps around him, tucking it in at the waist. The towel is patterned with a faded Smurf
skateboarding on a leaf. The rough towelling scratches his skin.
“Come on,” she shouts, and sets off running through the tall grass.
In one hand she is holding the bag and in the other the supermarket plastic carrier
swings from side to side. An oblong sweat mark has spread out between her shoulder
blades. The flared jeans flap around her ankles.
He follows after her. He has to hold on to the towel with both hands to stop it coming
undone and that makes it hard to run. His steps grow shorter and in front of him the
dense greenery closes in on his mother and it looks as if she will disappear. The blades
of grass that brush against his legs hum and tick with insects. On each side of the path
the ferns have gathered in clumps and beyond them the forest sticks up like a black
comb against the sky. He calls out to her to wait but all she does is call over her
shoulder:
“Come on, Magnus!”
He runs as fast as he can, his fingers gripping the towel. The little figures rattle inside
their plastic box in his bobbing back pack and the mosquitoes whine at his neck.
The cabin is dark brown and the trees make a black dappled pattern on the window
panes. Drifts of pine needles have collected in the grooves between the metal sheets of
the roof and there are pine cones and thin twigs up there too, and the tops of the pine
trees are swaying against a colourless sky.
His mother has reached the door. She is bending over, chewing her lips as she pushes
her hand under a window sill.
“Oh please,” she says, bending up the metal and forcing her fingers underneath as she
blows out puffs of air to each side to keep the mosquitoes away from her.
The boy has covered his head with the towel like a head scarf and is making pirouettes.
His trainers thump against the decking. Patches of grass are encroaching on the decking.
2

In places stalks are growing up between the planks and he does not want them to do
that. He stamps them under his feet, stamps them down.
Resting on the wooden veranda rail is an ash tray and when he catches sight of it he
becomes still. A fly is floating in the brown water, or is it a beetle? Only the legs are
sticking out. When he looks closer he notices more insects. It is like a disgusting soup in
the ash tray, a witch’s brew.
His mother has knelt down and is trying to look under the window sill.
“I don’t believe it,” she says.
Then she starts hunting in the grass below the window. The key might have dropped
down.
Beside the door a wind chime casts an immobile shadow onto the wall. It looks almost
like a pattern in the actual wood. There is a surprising clinking sound as he taps the
metal tubes and they swing in time with the shadow. Then he feels the door handle.
And opens the door.
“Mum,” he says. “It’s open.”
She lifts her head, studying the door with a bewildered look.
She pushes him in front of her, lifts in their luggage and lets the door close behind them
with a slam. He stops in front of a wall-hanging stitched with dark curlicues and
wonders what it is supposed to represent. An owl? Then he gets another push from the
hand holding the plastic bag and the bag is cold from the milk cartons at the bottom.
“In with you, then!”
The sharp words seem to fasten in something inside, a web that the silence has left
behind after reigning for so long inside the cabin unhindered. The boy notices it and
feels hesitant, would prefer to stand where he is for a while.
“Get in now!”
With the small rucksack hanging from one shoulder he enters the cabin and looks
around guardedly. The walls are covered in unpainted pine panelling with woven
wallpaper above. There is no TV, he knows that.
Through a doorway he sees a bunk bed. The bedspreads are dark green with fringes. He
peers in. The room is very small. Beside the bed is a stool with a book lying on top of it.
Outside the window stands a tree and the leaves are trembling against the window pane.
The tree is trembling.
He lays his rucksack on the kitchen table and takes out the plastic box. It is an old ice
cream container with BIG PACK written on a lid held in place with an elastic band. He
pulls off the elastic band gingerly because he knows it might snap, then he tips the
3

figures out onto the table. Most of them come from packets of Donald Duck biscuits but
there are also some Smurfs. Animals, too: a hippopotamus with a gaping mouth, a gorilla
beating its chest, a galloping horse unable to stand up and a blue man sitting down.
There should be a tractor to go with him but he has lost that.
Opposite the wood burning stove is a little sofa and he sits down on it. A floor lamp with
a pleated shade leans over him. There is no bulb in it, only a gaping hole. The cabin
belongs to someone who works at his mother’s new job and he wonders why he has not
put in a light bulb. Perhaps it is for the same reason that he does not have a TV. He runs
his hands over the sofa’s upholstery which is mustard yellow and knobbly. There is a
small kitchen area and he walks over to it. The fridge is so tiny he has to bend down to
open it. There is nothing inside, the light is not even on and it doesn’t feel cold. He has to
shut the door firmly to make sure it stays shut. On the wall above the draining board is
the same cork covering as the floor, reddish-brown with a hexagonal pattern.
When his mother comes he has just caught sight of a string of plastic garlic hanging from
a nail. He points at it and asks if he can take it down and she says that he can. By putting
one foot on a stool he can get onto the draining board. He sits on the stool and touches
the stiff plastic leaves, working out how well they are glued on. Not that he can do much
with the string of garlic but it is only pretend anyway. His mother walks opening doors
and drawers. She opens the fridge too, and closes it again.
The boy says there is floor on the walls.
“Yes,” she says. “And wall on the floor.”
There is electricity but no water and no toilet, and the first thing they do, after
thoroughly rubbing each others’ cheeks with a stick of mosquito repellent which has a
picture of a long-legged mosquito on the outside, is to walk to the outside dry toilet. Just
so he knows where it is if he needs to poo. He can pee anywhere he likes.
With the hood of his red sweatshirt pulled up over his head he follows close behind his
mother who is flapping her hands and swearing at the mosquitoes.
“You get used to it,” she promises. “They are worse with people who don’t come from
these parts.” The boy is silent and also flaps his hands. They are walking as if they are in
a little parade.
The outside lavatory is a shed standing so close to a fir tree that his mother has to push
the prickly branches out of the way with her back to get to the door. He prepares himself
for a bad smell, making sure to breathe in air through his nose. With wide eyes he peeps
in from under her arm. The walls are covered with masonite, patterned from the damp.
4

There is a pile of newspapers on the bench, which has a real toilet seat made of plastic.
In the window are insects that have turned into empty shells, strewn under a ragged
grey curtain held in place with drawing pins.
Water is collected from a pump. Dark green, it sticks up like a knotty plant in the sunlit
grass. But no water comes out of it. There is only a rattling sound from down below
when his mother pulls the lever. It irritates her. She has tied a brightly patterned scarf
round her head and is now digging her fingers under the edge and rubbing her forehead
which is already lumpy with bites.
“Is there any Fanta left?”
He shakes his head: the glass bottle is lying on the car floor and he knows it is
completely empty. He sucked up every last warm drop of it.
She disappears into the cabin and when she comes out she is carrying a saucepan.
“Come on,” she says, and scissors one leg over the fence.
She pushes the fir tree branches aside. They are grey-brown and wilted and look as if
they might crack, but they bend. When he rests his foot on a thick branch embedded in
the moss the far end lifts up and surprises him. It is as if the branch is lifting its head to
look at him, to see who is coming and causing a disturbance.
A tarn shines black among the rough tree trunks. All around are tufts of grass, their long
thin leaves reflected in the water. The sky floats there too, completely white between the
billowing tree tops.
She crouches down and lowers the saucepan into the water. The boy swats at the
mosquitoes as he watches. Are they really going to drink that? It’s black.
“Just you wait and see,” she says.
She carries the saucepan in one hand, carelessly, causing the water to spill over the top.
There is a gap at the top of the pump and she pours the water into it.
“You have to wet the collar,” she says, pumping the handle up and down. She does it
slowly, a concentrated expression on her face that makes him so expectant that he stops
asking questions. He studies her as he lethargically waves his hand at the mosquitoes.
At first there is a rattling sound, the same as before, but then there is a sigh and a hissing
noise.
Is that good or bad? The boy does not know. He looks at his mother who carries on
pumping. She grimaces at every effort she makes but otherwise it is impossible to tell
what she is thinking.
What comes up is a rust-brown sputum, but when the hand pump has been in action for
a while the water clears and splashes down onto the grass in a thick stream. It is yellow,
5

ice-cold and tastes stale and the boy says it is because she poured the dirty forest water
into the hole.
“Do you know what Granddad did once?” she asks, hanging a plastic bucket on the pump.
She smiles conspiratorially at him.
The boy shakes his head.
“He peed in a beer can and poured it into a pump like this.”
Was she serious?
She smiled.
“Disgusting, eh?”
The boy is confused and carries on looking at the bucket.
As the water rises the plastic gets darker.
Later that evening they lie on the bunk bed under a quilt patterned with huge fantasy
flowers and spiralling leaves. The fir trees are silhouetted like black rags against a night
sky and it is still light. They have fitted a mesh mosquito window and the whole cabin
echoes to the chirping of grasshoppers.
“Listen,” she whispers, her lips against his hair. “It sounds as if they are inside. Like they
are here, in the cabin, playing. Under the bed, maybe?”
The boy nods. Then he asks her about the shepherds’ huts she told him about in the car.
“Where are they?”
“In the forest.”
“Can we go there?”
“Perhaps.”
“Can we?”
“We’ll see.”
In the early morning it starts to rain. In a faint light they are woken by a pattering
against the metal roof. It is raining continuously. It is not the grasshoppers that are
inside the house now, it is the rain. It pours and pours and pours. The gutters overflow
and rain streams down into the grass. The room has turned cold.
“Mum. It’s raining.”
“Can you see my glasses?”
He can. They are lying on top of a pile of comics underneath the bed. He reaches out his
arm and picks them up. The frames are made of transparent plastic and the lenses are
big. When she has put them on she shoves him so that he almost falls out of bed. There is
6

a wrestling match. His mother yelps because he pinches her under her warm nightdress,
his hands like crabs.
The rain drops are hitting the ashtray on the veranda rail so hard the water looks as if it
is boiling. The chill of the chair’s wooden seat makes him hunch over, his sweat shirt
over his knees which are covered in goose bumps. He is waiting for breakfast.
Once again he asks about the shepherd’s huts: are they far away?
“We’ll do it another day,” she says.
He protests loudly, only to be told they have no rain clothes with them. That makes him
disappointed and he complains. He has his Wellingtons, after all. He whines until she
strokes his hair. She looks at him, her thick shiny brown fringe falling over her glasses.
Nothing of her forehead can be seen.
They eat cold rosehip soup and bread spread with margarine.
“Boring sandwich,” she says.
“Pouring sandwich,” he answers.
Afterwards they play cards. Beggar my neighbour. He is an expert at beggar my
neighbour. You have to be really careful when you lift your card so that the other person
doesn’t see it. His mother does not understand that. She sits with her chin resting
heavily on her hand, studying the cards she turns up – she doesn’t stand a chance. He
triumphs again and again, slapping his palm hard on the table top.
Finally she gives up, moves away from the table and climbs up with a book on the sofa.
She rests her feet on the armrest and curls her toes so the tendons stand out. Her nails
are squares of red varnish. She has a neck chain and as she reads she pulls the pendant
backwards and forwards, making a rasping noise. There is no point in trying to talk to
her any more, he knows that only too well.
There is a small door in the wood burner with a space behind. He puts his little figures in
there, kneeling down and making a squeaking noise along with the doors, a high-pitched
squeal. The stove is a prison and the figures hate being shut in. It is dark in there and
there is nothing but ash to eat. Goofy tries to escape but is caught near the log basket
and returned to the sooty cell, howling in protest.
His mother giggles at him.
He dislikes that so he keeps quiet.
7

Towards afternoon the rain stops and he becomes excited: now they can go out and look
for the shepherds’ huts! But she shakes her head. She says it is still raining in the forest.
The trees will be dripping with water and it will be wet everywhere.
“We’ll be soaking in no time,” she says, and turns the page.
Then she says:
“You can always go out on your own and play.”
Yes, he can. He rolls mosquito repellent onto his forehead and chin, and the upper side of
his hands all the way out to the fingers. Even on his sleeves and the front of his jeans.
Just to be sure. Then he puts on his Wellington boots, pulls up the hood of his sweatshirt
and opens the door.
The plot is not large, more like a little glade in the forest, and he has soon explored it.
The door of the wood shed is open and inside floats a greyish white ball. A wasps’ nest. It
looks uninhabited but he does not dare to take a closer look.
In another shed he finds a croquet game. The colours on the ball have been worn away.
With one of the clubs in his hand he runs up to the veranda and knocks on the pane of
glass, showing her what he has found. But she does not want to play. She shakes her
head, and when he opens the door she says:
“Not now.”
And when he nags:
“Shut the door!”
The boy knocks the ball about and immediately it disappears into some undergrowth
outside the fence. When he pushes in the club he brings out a ball he knows is not one he
hit there. It has lost almost all its colour but he thinks it was once green. He thinks the
ball has made the bushes its hiding place.
There are other things in the shed. From a broken plastic log basket on the floor he pulls
out a Frisbee and underneath is a crumpled, deflated beach ball. He inflates the ball and
kicks it away. It makes a bumping noise and there is not much more he can do with it. He
tries out the Frisbee but cannot make it fly very far. No matter how hard he hurls it, all it
wants to do is sink to the grass and roll away.
Bored, he sticks his head through the door and nags about croquet and the shepherds’
huts, but still his mother has no desire to go out. All she does is shake her head.
The silence brought on by the rain hangs over the forest. From the top of the steep
glistening wall of pine trees comes an isolated trill, testing. He walks slowly and tries to
catch a glimpse of the birds but it is impossible. The pines reveal nothing that moves
within them. They have secrets.
8

It drips and seeps and dribbles. The glossy, weighted vegetation shines. He feels as if it is
coming towards him, like the big wet brushes that spin against the windows in the car
wash.
Here and there are pinkish-red streamers. Those plants are called fox’s brush, he knows
that. The name is not hard to remember. He walks along the path, thinking he might
come to the car soon. He is unsure what he will do when he does. Perhaps look at it, peer
in through one of the windows and then go back.
But then he catches sight of a ditch. It runs out from under the path and carries on into
the trees. The water is green so he cannot see the bottom but it does not look deep. He
wonders where the ditch is going and decides to follow it. He stumbles over ground
bulging with tussocks of grass. He tries as far as possible not to put his feet where it
looks risky and hollow. Making detours and small leaps from stumps to rocks he makes
his way forwards. He cannot hear much because his ears are covered by his woolly hat
but the sounds come mainly from cones and twigs cracking beneath his boots and the
wind slowly moving between the wet trees.
A shepherds’ hut is an unpainted wooden shack – he knows that much at least. No-one
lives there but in the old days, long ago, the animals lived there.
Alone.
A shack with animals. What would such a building look like? Has it got windows? If so,
did the animals stand inside looking out, bored? It was a strange thing to imagine. He
was sure animals were often bored.
Occasionally the ditch disappears behind some impenetrable undergrowth and spiky
clusters of reeds with their long leaves. The grass swishes against his boots and his
trousers are soon so wet at the bottom that they have changed colour. It makes his
thighs feel cold too. His mother was right and he wonders if he should turn back.
Then a wooden bridge gives him something else to think about. It is made of a couple of
dark brown tree trunks with planks nailed across them.
He stands there, his legs cold, hesitating a while.
The water below has a pea-green skin. It looks poisonous and turgid. A pine cone is
floating in it. He could end up like that if he was not careful. He knows that. Someone
floating, immobile, face down. Someone drowned.
But the bridge looks safe and holding onto the rail he walks across. In his heart his
mother’s lips are moving but he is already on his way into the sea of grass that waits on
the other side.
9

It is so tall that he disappears in it. When the wind blows the leaves bend and brush
against each other and become waves that whisper and whisper.
He can be in the grass just like an animal. A shrew, he thinks. He can see nothing but
strips of green slicing against each other. He holds his hands in front of him and uses
them to part the rustling reeds. This is what it is like for the shrew. Exactly like this.
He pushes up his hat to expose one ear and hears a huge rushing sound in the reeds and
realises it has started raining again, although it does not show in the air. He blinks a few
times in the direction of the sun: it looks like a skin of cold light behind the blurry tops of
the pines. He sees no sign of any mosquitoes. They probably think it is pointless flying
out here.
He carries on walking further and further out on the moss.
If he sees a shiny wet surface in front of his feet he immediately steps to the side. He
does not like the bogginess of it. From time to time one of his boots gets stuck, as if the
ground is sucking it down and after once almost stepping out of his boot he has had
enough and turns back, but instead of going back to the wooden bridge he cuts
diagonally across the moss and in among some birches and soon the forest closes in.
Now he is walking on a carpet of spongy moss. It is soft to walk on and seems to want to
spread everywhere. It has even crept up the tree trunks. It is on the stones too, making
them look evenly rounded. He likes the way they look.
The branches fan out above him like a roof so he does not feel any rain, and the wind
that combed the gigantic grass cannot find its way in here.
He looks into the depths of the forest. There is not a sound.
Nothing is moving, not even the small leaves on the bushes or the tops of the grass.
There is not much space between the trees, only narrow gaps. He walks forward,
choosing his way depending on how the forest opens out or closes in. At the top of one
tree hang clusters of fat yellow-brown cones. He has probably never seen pine cones on
a tree before, only on the ground. They look like birds, he thinks. He picks up a cone
from the ground and throws it up at the tree top, but it is impossible to reach so high.
The desire to throw things rises up in him: he wants to throw more and more, throw
anything and everything. As well as cones he finds sticks and pieces of bark, but he soon
tires of it, scratches his cheek and starts to feel hungry. He has been gone quite a long
time.
A few blue-black orbs shine in the scrubby undergrowth at his feet. He squats down to
pick them, at the same time batting away the mosquitoes with his other hand that he has
pulled up into his sleeve so that only his finger tips are peeking out. He can only gobble
down a few berries before the mosquitoes find their way in under his hat and start
10

annoying him. They bump against his face, brush against his eyelashes and lips and buzz
in his ears, and the sound is almost worse – it is as piercing as their biting mouths. They
dodge out of the way when they smell the repellent he has painted on himself. Serves
you right, he thinks.
There is a lot to explore on the ground, things that are dead that no-one has found. A
tree has split open and its insides are bright red like meat, and just beyond he sees a
rotted birch trunk that has fallen open. Birch bark surrounds it in scaly shards. He digs
the toe of his boot into the birch and presses carefully. It is soft right through.
Another tree trunk is dotted with yellow saucer shapes that look like ears. He tries to
count them because there are so many, but he loses count when the mosquitoes fly into
his face.
A hollow stump looks like a clay pot nestling among the blueberry bushes and a crown
of moss surrounds the cavity. He looks down into the stump but there is nothing
particularly interesting inside it, only dampness and pine needles stuck together in
clumps. He would like to put in his hand and feel down to the bottom – perhaps a mouse
is sleeping there – but he does not quite dare. You can be bitten. Mice can bite. Deep
inside the forest a woodpecker flies soundlessly from one tree to another, moving in a
line between the tree trunks. He can see it out of the corner of his eye. Immediately he
stands up and walks on, now singing a little and talking to himself in a low, jokey voice.
He is not especially afraid, for there is nothing in the forest to fear, so his mother has
promised him. No wolves, no bears, nothing that wants to eat him up. Apart from the
mosquitoes. But still, when an upturned tree root towers above him, his stomach churns
because he thinks it is an old man standing there, waiting for him. An old forest man
who you cannot escape from.
The root formation is so unlike anything else in the forest. It is wide and shapeless and
dark. Moss growing high up looks like hair and there is a ripped-off root that could be a
nose.
He stands for a long time, his hands hanging loose at his sides, before he plucks up
enough courage to approach and walk round it. The shattered far side is encircled with
roots and at ground level a void opens up, covered by some branches of bracken. It is
completely black between the fronds, unpredictable and very deep. Someone lives down
there, he is sure. A badger, perhaps. Badgers belong to the underground. Piggy-eyed and
crotchety. And they only come out at night to root around and whisper.
As he stands there, peering down in the bowl of the root crown, he hears a crack, like a
stealing footstep, very close to him.
11

Swiftly he adjusts his hat so he can see properly. His eyes wander between the patches
of lichen on the pine trunks. The gloom hangs like a tapestry in there. Someone was
there, he is convinced of that.
He takes a little step sideways and at the same time cranes his neck to see what is
behind the upturned roots. He hardly dares look.
A streak of grey fur.
That is what he glimpses.
Then he runs, runs with his mouth gaping open, away, away towards the light where the
forest thins out. Undergrowth and branches thrash hard and sharply against his boots.
When he comes out on to the moss he follows the forest edge, skidding and stumbling
forwards. He looks quickly over his shoulder but cannot see if anyone, or anything, is
following after him.
Not until he has staggered out onto the path does he stop for a minute. He beats at the
mosquitoes circling his face. His fear seems to excite them, as if they can smell it.
His mother is sitting curled up on the sofa with her book and when he comes plunging in
through the doorway she looks up at him with a sharp little wrinkle between her eyes.
She has folded the book so she can hold it in one hand. Around the fingers of the other
she twists the chain. It is cutting into the skin of her neck.
She asks where he has been and when she notices how wet he is she lays the book aside
and helps him off with his jacket. His hair is standing on end in damp little tufts and his
jumper has ridden up over his stomach in wrinkles but he hurries to pull it down as he
tells her. That he has seen an animal.
“What kind of animal?”
“Just an animal.”
Roughly she twists off his boots. He was forbidden to go into the forest alone, surely he
knew that?
She finds his socks squashed up and wringing wet in the toes of his boots. His feet have
turned red.
“Magnus,” she says.
To remove his jeans he has to lie down while she tugs and drags at the legs, but the wet
fabric has glued itself to him. The boy thumps his head against the floor and that makes
them laugh.
“Let go!” she shouts.
“I can’t,” he giggles.
12

Finally he has to stand up and stamp the trousers off instead. She picks up the jeans and
asks him if he has been swimming. He didn’t go to the tarn, did he?
In the bag which is open on the floor he finds a pair of dry underpants - patterned with
motor bikes and hotrods spurting fire – and after he has put them on he climbs up onto
the sofa and buries himself under the quilt. The zip is a track of cold steel teeth against
his thigh and he moves over to avoid the feel of it on his skin. The knobbly sofa fabric is
rough against his legs.
His mother is rustling behind the log basket, stuffing wads of newspaper into his
Wellingtons, and hanging up his clothes on the chairs around the table.
He wants to tell her about the animal. That it was grey.
“But what kind of animal was it?”
He sits with his mouth open for a while as he thinks.
“I think it could have been a lynx.”
“I don’t think so.”
“A wolf, then?”
“It was probably only a bird. It’s nearly always a bird.”
“No. It wasn’t a bird. Birds don’t have fur.”
She has sat down beside him. With her index finger she lifts a heavy lock of hair from his
forehead. He stares out though the window and is still in the forest.
“It was an animal, Mum.”
She nods.
It has started to rain again and soon it is thundering on the roof.
The fox’s brush down by the path has been flattened to the ground by the downpour.
Everything is flattened, wet and shining. It is still raining slightly and now a wind has
started blowing. The pine trees sway, the broadleaf trees flicker and reflect the light.
Small gusts of wind hurl handfuls of raindrops at the window panes. The blue and white
beach ball is rolling around out there, unable to make up its mind where to settle.
On the window sill groups of dead insects have collected, mostly flies but also wasps,
become flimsy. There is a butterfly with closed wings. It has shut itself together like a
book but otherwise you would not think it was dead because it has retained all its
colours. He has asked his mother what the butterfly is called but she does not know for
sure.
“A peacock butterfly, perhaps. Or a small tortoiseshell. I don’t know…”
13

He reaches for the little box made of bark that is standing on the table. He has looked
inside it before and knows it is empty but he looks inside anyway. There ought to be
something in there it but he doesn’t know what.
Then he has an idea. He picks up the folded butterfly and lays it in the box. He does it
with care and his dry lips part slightly. When he has replaced the lid he shakes the little
box to hear that the butterfly is inside. That is all.
The darkness has deepened in the forest. It is black under the trees and around the glass
lamp beside the door moths are flitting about. They rustle against the illuminated globe,
entranced. The boy stands with his toothbrush in his hand and tries to count them but
he does not succeed because only one of them is still, resting on the wall. A brownish
little triangle. The wings look as if they are covered in down. He wonders why this one is
so calm when all the others are so erratic. Perhaps because it is sleeping, even though it
is night. It is not like the others, he thinks. Not everyone is like everybody else. His
mother is leaning forward, one hand resting on the veranda rail. She looks at him over
her shoulder.
“Get brushing,” she says. “Take out the toothbrush and make white spit marks in the
grass.”
She clicks on the lamp and light radiates across the wallpaper.
“But only a short one!”
He nods.
She reads from one of the new comics and right in the middle of a speech bubble she
falls silent because the boy has lifted his head from her arm and is staring towards the
window, his mouth gaping.
“I heard something!”
His mother raises herself up on one elbow and she listens too. The grasshoppers are
making their rasping sound and the shadows under the bunk bed turn her face pale and
her eyes into dark pockets. Her lips are apart. She is listening.
Then she sinks down again.
“It’s nothing.”
The boy does not want to believe that. He jumps down onto the floor and pulled aside
the towel that hangs at the window. He stretches his neck and looks down the path and
beyond the black stripes of the boundary fence.
“It sounded as if something was walking out there. Something big.”
His mother has laid her head on the pillow.
14

“Magnus,” she says.
So he creeps back under the quilt again, but he is lying there alertly, listening.
“Shall I carry on reading?”
He sniffs and nods.
Afterwards, when they have turned off the light, they hear a faint rustling on the roof.
It is raining softly.
They lie there in silence.
He can hear a mosquito moving about the room but it seems unable to find its way to the
bed. It stops momentarily and he thinks it is waiting. Waiting for the scent of their skin.
“Mum,” he says.
But she has already fallen asleep.
On the floor a splinter of sunlight flickers and then grows to a curved fragment that
darts wildly in all directions as the towel flaps. He lies on his stomach studying the pile
of comics for a while before stretching out his hand to open the top comic, Pellephant.
The baddie is called Filur. He is a clown who does tricks. There is also a mouse called
Pip. He looks like the House Mouse in the Bamse books and usually sits on Pellephant’s
hat, which is not actually a hat but a yellow doily with a red tassel. He has a similar doily
on his back, too.
He flicks through one of the other comics, which is in black and white. They are all about
cowboys. Narrow-eyed faces in the squares. All the words come out from between their
teeth. In one place the revolvers are blasting. One person dies. Dying looks very painful.
He is folding over, his hand pressed to his stomach, his fingers bent like claws.
After flicking through all the comics and looking at the picture on the back page of the
last one, which shows what the next comic will be about, he shuffles out into the main
room.
Outside the window he sees a movement. His mother is standing out there, her hair a
shining curtain in the morning light. She is bending over something. When he pushes
open the door she immediately straightens up.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
She is wearing a jacket and on her it is big and puffy. One of her hands is stuffed into a
large work glove.
“I think,” she says, “there can be a bat around here somewhere. A dead one.”
“A real one?” he asks, and moves closer.
15

They help each other to look and he is the one to find it.
The little animal is hanging in the grass. It does not have the weight to slide down and
stays there trapped, like a brown leaf.
He has never seen a bat before. He did not think they could be so small. A long and oddly
curved claw is sticking out from the wing and his mother pinches hold of it as she picks
up the bat. The skin opens out, a crumpled rag criss-crossed by fine veins. The
abnormally large eyelids are covered with the same sheer ancient-looking skin.
“It’s got a ring,” he says.
She holds up the bat and the thin wing becomes pink as it is met by the sun. In one ear is
a tiny, shining silver ring.
She touches it gently with her index finger.
“Why has it got a ring?”
“I don’t know,” she says slowly.
She has taken hold of the ring and is studying it closely. It must be marked in some
way…
“Why is it dead?”
His mother does not reply so he asks again.
“Why is it dead, Mum?”
She is studying the ring and answers distractedly:
“It crashed into me in the night,” she says, letting go of the ring.
“I went out to pee and it flew at me. Here.”
She puts her fingers on her temple.
Then she releases the ring and dangles the bat as if to show what a confused bat would
look like.
“I expect it got confused by my nightdress,” she says. “They are attracted by light
colours, I think. It fastened in my hair and I yanked it out and threw it away from me.
Right into that wall. And it died. It’s so tiny. I didn’t mean it to die, I just wanted to get it
away from me.”
She twitches her hand and the bat bobs up and down.
“Do you want us to bury it?”
The boy leans up close to the ugly little snout. Deeply set in the crumpled face are two
screwed up black eyes like beads. The teeth in its open mouth are like shards of glass. It
looks as if it is screaming out loud, as if it died in the middle of the scream.
He shakes his head.
“Sure?”
He nods.
16

His mother walks over the grass and throws the bat into the nettles which are growing
like a venomous green sea on the other side of the wooden railing. After that she creaks
water out of the pump and rinses her hands, and as she walks towards him she dries her
hands on the nightdress that is hanging down under the old jacket.
They eat breakfast outside, in the sunshine that is so bright.
“We must make the most of it,” she says, laying out a bedspread on the decking. The
grass that pokes up through the planks is so stiff that it makes points in the bedspread
and together they stamp them down to make it flat and comfortable to sit on. The
mosquitoes that are flying around in the morning sun do not trouble them: they are so
few and do not seem to know what they want.
They have a loaf of white bread and a tube of caviar spread.
They chew the food and look at each other. He is crouching and she is sitting crosslegged
with the sun falling like a banner across her legs. The boy is wearing a white cap
with a plastic peak. It says NORDSJÖ PAINT on the fabric.
Between bites she tells him that his grandmother was not affected by the mosquitoes.
That was because one day when she was out picking blueberries she was bitten so
dreadfully by the mosquitoes that she got lost and had a fever. Ever since that day she
was immune because the mosquitoes had injected her with so much saliva that she got
mosquito inside her. For ever. Since then never bothered about mosquitoes at all. She
could not even understand why people complained about them.
“But what about bats?” he wanted to know. “Can you become immune to them as well?”
She explains that bats do not suck blood.
“Only in stories,” says the boy. “Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, and not in Sweden.”
With a finger tip she wipes away a spot of caviar from her upper lip.
“Bats here only eat old butterflies and things like that,” she says.
That information disappoints the boy. He has seen for himself that bats have sharp teeth.
Like needles. He thinks it is likely they can drink blood, if they want to.
“Yes,” she says. “If they are really hungry.”
“Then perhaps you are immune now, Mum.”
He squints at the sun.
“Except it didn’t bite me.”
“But think if it had!”
“Yes,” she says, and nods with her moth full of bread. “Well, maybe I am then.”
17

There is a beach on the lake nearby and now while the sun is standing still and pouring
down between the billowing clouds they decide to go swimming. They also need to do
some shopping. They pack their swimming things and a mask in a cloth bag and hurry
down the path. The boy carries his bath robe and flaps it about. He allows the
mosquitoes in close before he hits out. The sun is beating down on the car and has been
doing so for hours. A strong smell of upholstery and overheated rubber hits him as he
climbs into the back seat, which is so burning hot that he has to sit on his bath robe,
crouching like a chimpanzee.
There is a stripy ice cream wrapper on the floor and when he sees it glinting there he
remembers the ice cream he was given on the journey up.
Can he have an ice cream now, as well?
His mother nods but it seems as if she is not listening. She inserts the car key, turns it
and reverses so fast on the uneven track that the boy is thrown about on the seat.
“Sit still,” she says, and that makes him laugh and throw himself from one side of the seat
to the other. He wants her to do it again but she only shakes her head and smiles at him
in the rear view mirror.
It is not far to the beach and he is surprised when after only a short while they pull up on
a gravel car park surrounded by tall bushes. Pine cones crunch under their feet as they
follow the path down towards the water.
Alders with large shiny leaves hang down over the jetty and entangle themselves with
the whispering rushes. They are alone but someone has been there recently because in
the grass on the lakeside is a glittering pile of shells. Every shell is tiny and fragile. The
boy dares not touch them, not wanting to spoil it. The water has a strange red colour
which he tries to collect in his cupped hands but the red does not come with the water. It
is only in the lake, which in reality is not a lake but part of the Dal River, his mother tells
him, as she sits on the jetty with a towel draped around her shoulders and her hand like
a sun visor above her glasses.
With a black stick he dredges up dripping sea weed that he collects in a pile. It is a silent
game. The only sound is the water trickling back into the lake. From time to time the sun
breaks through a gap in the clouds.
Later he tries the swimming mask, seeing the undulating gravel on the lake bed.
Something is swimming down there, a young fish, he thinks, and he tries unsuccessfully
to catch it in his mask.
18

The shop is located in an old wooden building with empty advertisement boards on the
walls and sun-bleached awnings. It looks closed but his mother says it is open. There are
steps up to the door and the metal railing is encrusted with rust.
His mother is walking quickly, as if she is in a hurry all of a sudden.
Through the metal pattern of the steps he can see something shining below and before
his mother has time to stop him he has run round and crept underneath, kneeling among
the rubbish. He digs out a small white plastic spoon, empty cans, cigarette butts, paper –
but no coins, only bottle tops. He puts some in the pocket of his towelling robe.
“What do you want those for?” says his mother, but he does not answer because he can
hear it is not really a question.
They both fill the basket, the boy putting in a Falu sausage which he thinks would be
good for dinner. He fetches the milk cartons, too, but they are difficult to find because
they don’t look like the ones at home, so his mother has to show him.
In the queue for the checkout, where they stand behind an old woman who is only
buying a bottle of elderberry juice, she lays her hand on his head and feels how his hair
has begun to dry and lift from his scalp.
“Was it nice to go swimming?” she asks, but he does not answer: he is engrossed in the
comic he has been allowed to have.
The grass is dry now and they ought to cut it, she says, and she stands holding the
shopping bags and looking around the plot. Then perhaps they can play croquet later.
But first they have to carry in the food and he can make a start on that because she is
desperate for a pee and rushes off to the outside toilet.
He lugs the heavy paper carrier onto the veranda using both hands. He has not forgotten
the mosquitoes so he hurries to carry in the bag and shut the door behind him. The air
inside the cabin has turned warm and he hears an insect buzzing against a window pane.
He wonders how long it has been doing it.
He places the bag on the floor by the fridge, lifts out a carton of milk and opens the door.
He draws back. It is lying there, on the metal rack, beside the tube of caviar spread.
Small and rumpled, greyish-brown, with its crinkled wings closed around its body. Its
little dog-like face, the strange, concave ears.
He runs so fast the hood of his bath robe flies off his head.
His mother is walking from the toilet holding a folded newspaper and she looks at him,
puzzled.
When he tells her, out of breath and in a high-pitched voice, what is in the fridge, she
does not believe him and without speaking walks ahead of him into the cabin.
19

She stares at the bat and then gets angry. She swears. She says: “What the hell…?” And
she blames him. He was the one who put it there. Then he starts crying but when she
realises his tears are desperate and angry she collects herself and crouches in front of
him. She asks if he is sure it was not him.
“Yes, of course!”
He rubs his tear-filled eyes, wiping them with the flat of his hand and sniffing.
“In that case,” she says, “Someone is playing a joke on us.”
She rips off a piece of kitchen roll and uses it to lift out the dead animal. From her
tightly-pressed lips he sees that she finds it disgusting. She goes outside and throws the
bat from the same place as before but this time she hurls it further away, far in among
the tree trunks. The paper comes free and floats down like a white leaf.
Then she goes back inside to fetch the metal shelf from the fridge. She holds it under the
pump, scrubbing it with the washing-up brush. The boy asks if there is any blood on the
shelf but she does not answer.
The lawnmower stands behind a shed, covered by a tarpaulin. Lines of pine needles
have collected in the folds and they fall off in stiff piles. Spread over the hood is a layer of
flattened cardboard boxes over which earwigs are racing like brown sparks.
“What are they doing? What are they doing?” shouts the boy.
His mother pulls the starter string. After a couple of attempts she straightens up, rests a
hand on her hip and wipes her forehead with the other, grimacing at the sun.
“Is there juice in it?” he asks, scratching his cheek and the row of mosquito bites. He is
still wearing his bath robe.
It amuses her that he says juice. Her smile widens as she shakes the handle of the mower
so that sounds of splashing come from the fuel tank.
“Yes,” she says. “There is juice in it.”
When the motor finally starts with an angry rumble he runs out of the way and sits on
the wooden decking. He covers his ears with his hands and watches as she forces the
machine through the overgrown grass. It is a struggle. It will not work and the lawn
mower keeps stopping. It growls and falls silent. The boy calls out that it is broken but
she does not answer.
He watches her with one eye only because the sun has wedged itself between the tree
trunks and is shining directly at him now. He has put on a hat, one with a brim all the
way round. It is called a sun hat.
She crouches down to clear out the clippings from under the hood and he can hear the
sound it makes as she tears out the grass that has wound itself around the rotor blade. It
20

is boring to watch. He studies his kneecaps and the down shining on them. Where there
was once a scab the skin has turned light red and is slightly raised and there might be a
scar, so his mother has said. He presses his thumb against the redness and immediately
changes to scratching his calves until he makes holes. He has been careful to shut the
door of the cabin but the mosquitoes come in anyway. It is worst on his calves and
ankles – they really go to town there while he is asleep. After that they go and sit on the
wallpaper and the ceiling and no-one knows they are there until night comes. Then they
let go and drop down.
“Magnus!”
His mother has half risen and is pointing to the edge of the forest diagonally behind the
cabin where the brush-like branches of the trees weave in together and make everything
dark.
What is she pointing at? He wants to go closer but does not really dare. There is
something in her voice that makes him anxious.
At first he can see nothing among the branches but then he notices that something is
moving and the next second a grey head sticks out from behind a brown branch. It has
knobbly, backward-leaning ears, and whiskers that hang straight down from its mouth
like long strings of saliva. A matted, flattened forehead that is turned towards them.
“Can you see?” she shouts happily. “Can you see the hare?”
It feels exciting having a forest animal here on their doorstep, that it wants to be with
them, and because they do not want to frighten it they go indoors. The grass cutting will
have to wait, there is no rush, and perhaps it has its young in the grass. Small rabbits, he
thinks, even though he knows rabbits and hares are not the same.
His mother opens a can of vegetable soup and heats it up on the stove while the boy sits
glued to the window, reporting on the hare’s movements. Not that there is much to
report. Mostly it just sits. Its jaws move from time to time but mainly it stares.
As they sit with their bowls in front of them, blowing on the soup, he asks who left the
bat in the fridge.
She does not know.
Perhaps it’s the man they have borrowed the cabin from?
“It’s just someone,” she replies quietly, stirring her spoon among the steaming
vegetables. “Someone who was walking in the forest and saw us throw the bat. There
are lots of people here, fishing and camping. It’s just someone wanting to play a joke on
us.”
Does she think it is a good joke?
21

“No,” she says. “I don’t.”
“No, I don’t think so either.”
They play cards.
“Snap!” he yells and shuffles the cards that have a blue chequered pattern on the back.
His mother rests her elbows on the table and pretends to be angry and he finds that
funny. She is wearing a strappy top with horizontal stripes. The skin shines on her
protruding collar bones. On the outside of her upper arms the skin is sunburned. You
can see where the towel covered her. He gets grumpy when she wants to stop playing,
sits with the cards and tries to play on his own, but of course it is not the same. He finds
a fountain pen and scribbles in some of the comics, on the white bits between the
squares. Then he draws on his knuckles, mainly to see if it works, but the ink will not
stay in place very well.
Only when he looks to see if the hare is still there does he catch sight of the fox. It is
standing at the bottom of the path with its jutting, white furry breast, staring with
round, shining yellow eyes at the window.
The boy leaps up like a spring and shouts out loud.
“Come here! Quick!”
His mother puts down her book and walks to the window.
“Oh, look,” she says and leans forwards, laying her cheek next to the boy’s. In silence
they watch the fox for a while and then she says:
“It knows there has been a hare around here,” she explains. “The smell stays in the grass
for a long time. It thinks the hare is here somewhere.”
“It is,” he says. “It’s there.”
He points and she cranes her neck, and sees that the boy is right. The hare has not
moved from the spot. It sits there, a dark grey patch behind the clumps of grass.
“It will probably be all right,” she says. “It’ll get away, you’ll see.”
The fox has opened out his ears so they stand like two scoops on top of his head. He
directs his black nose towards the hare.
“Now he can sense it,” she says. “The trail.”
The fox is standing still. Behind the dipped back and skinny dog’s body with ribs
outlined like bars, is his tail, large and grey and bushy. The corners of its mouth turn
downwards, making the fox look dissatisfied.
Now the animal creeps closer, tiptoeing forwards with its head to the ground. The thin
legs are dark at the front, as if it has stepped into in a forest pool.
The boy feels a whispering breath against his hair.
22

“It smells very strange because we’ve been out there too, so he can’t find the hare.”
But he can.
The fox walks in a straight line up to the long ears that are sticking up out of its grassy
trap. The two animals regard each other for an instant and then the fox sits down,
immediately next to the hare. And there they sit, beside each other in the grass, their
eyes directed at the cabin.
They appear to be friends!
The idea of the hare and the fox being friends makes his mother move her head until her
nose is almost touching the window. Her eyes are staring, enlarged behind the lenses of
her glasses.
Finally it becomes too much for her and she slaps the palm of her hand against the pane
of glass. The boy, who has climbed on to the table, jumps at the sound. She slaps the
window again, and then thumps it, making the glass rattle.
“Don’t do that,” he howls.
But the animals do not let the sound scare them.
They simply sit there.
From the kitchen she fetches a couple of saucepans but on her way to the door she
exchanges one of them for the axe.
The animals jerk when the door flies open and she comes out onto the step and they
move slightly apart, but they do not run away. She calls to the boy to stay inside but
naturally he cannot do that. He tiptoes behind her. He also wants to see.
There is a clang, clatter, clang as the axe hits the saucepan.
She stamps her feet as she strides forwards through the grass.
The fox stands up and runs a short distance away, looking at her sideways with sad eyes
that are so wide apart they look as if they are about to slide off its face. Its legs are bent
and its chest down in the grass.
Then it opens its mouth and bares its teeth.
His mother stops, but only for a moment, because then she rushes forwards, striking the
saucepan, and the fox slinks away between the fence posts and is swallowed up by a
bush.
But the hare sits as if glued to the spot. It looks as if it is forcing its skinny shanks to be
still. It is shuddering and gaping and yellow shards of teeth in its sloping lower jaw are
visible. Its ears are black-tipped and look worn.
Not until she is standing directly over it does the hare leap aside, remarkably elongated.
It lopes in a circle around them, coming so close to the boy that he shouts out. After that
it rushes off, leaving a small stirring in the grass. His mother stands with the axe and
23

saucepan in her lowered hands, breathing heavily through her nose. Her forehead and
cheek bones are oily with sweat and her nostrils are shiny. Her lips are pressed tightly
together.
The boy inundates her with questions. What he wants to know most of all is why she
chased the animals away. They were friends! But all she does is shove him ahead of her
into the cabin, and when they are inside she even locks the door.
“There was something wrong with them,” she says, as she slices his sausage. It surprises
him that she is cutting up his food because she is always nagging him to do it himself.
“They were sick. Don’t you understand?”
Her voice sounds tense.
He gulps.
Her gaze keeps wandering to the window. He has not put any food on his plate yet. It is
shiny and all that is on it are scratches. There are still flickers of sunlight in the grass
down at the bottom of the path but below the trees everything has become black and
melded together.
After a moment she leans forwards, staring at him.
“Do you want to go home?”
The boy has stuffed his mouth full of macaroni.
He chews and looks at her.
“Do you?” he asks, reaching for his glass of milk.
Then she snorts and small wrinkles form round her eyes.
But she does not answer.
He should have gone to bed ages ago but it seems she has forgotten all about him as he
sits by the wood burner. The cork flooring there is scattered with splinters of wood and
small strips of paper covered in newspaper lettering. He has pulled up one leg and is
resting his chin on his kneecap. The little figures are lined up: he is planning some kind
of competition.
His mother has remained at the table, looking out through the window. She has turned
to stone over there, her back hunched and both her elbows resting on the table top. That
is why he jumps when she suddenly stands up. The chair scrapes the floor, almost
toppling over behind her.
He boy stares.
“What is it?” he asks.
But she does not reply and only stares out of the window.
24

He walks up to her.
“Is it the fox?” he asks.
She has poked her head under the curtain and cupped her hands against the glass.
“Mum!”
It is as if she does not hear him, as if he does not exist.
He tries to climb up on the table but she pushes him back down so roughly that he
almost falls backwards.
“No!” she cries.
That makes him sad. He only wants to see what she can see.
He makes a second attempt to approach the window and when she blocks his way he
runs towards the door.
“Magnus!”
She shouts as loudly as she can, a bellow that makes her voice crack. Her hip knocks
against the table, she tries to grab hold of him and shouts at him to stop.
But he has already run outside.
He has already gone.
Because the first news picture of Magnus Brodin, carried in the Gefle Dagbladet on the
twenty-fourth of July nineteen hundred and seventy-eight, spreads over four columns
there is no need to read the headline to realise something bad has happened to the boy.
That is always the case, of course, when the photograph has been enlarged. This picture
was reproduced in several newspapers and was the only one to be published, a passport
photo, probably taken in one of those little booths that have to be fed with coins. His hair
is unusually thick and cut bluntly across his forehead. You can tell the decade from the
size of his collar, which is outside the neck of his jumper. I think he looks quite happy,
and that is strange because you like to think the eyes know, somehow, and that his fate
would be revealed in them as a dark glimmer.
Another news photo shows two men in grass reaching up to their waists. They are
wearing white short-sleeved shirts with epaulettes and the hairs on their arms catch the
light. Sunglasses, pilot model, and bushy sideburns. One of them is carrying a black
briefcase and it looks odd, a case like that out in the forest.
The caption tells us they are inspectors in the forensics division of Falu police force.
They look bewildered and you could say it is a photo that speaks volumes.
25

At first the newspapers said that Magnus had been kidnapped. A couple of days later
however they are not quite so sure. In Expressen the question was posed directly: WAS
MAGNUS KIDNAPPED? That switch from certainty to uncertainty expressed in the
papers reflects the thought processes of the investigating police.
Magnus’s mother insisted that a giant had come out of the forest and taken her child,
and despite the fact that the Falu police forensics team found proof that strangely
enough appeared to support her statements – footprints of an unprecedented size and
depth had been found in the vicinity of the cabin – no particular importance was
attached to the unlikely details of her testimony. People preferred to think that the boy
had been kidnapped by a taller than average man who, in the eyes of the terrified
mother, had grown to incredible proportions. A man who then melted back into the
pitch black fir trees from which he had so threateningly appeared. Either that or the
tracks were from someone who had nothing to do with the case. And in that case, what
had happened to the boy?
As far as I know no formal charges were ever made against Måna Brolin but her
credibility was reduced to practically zero. According to Sven, who liked to involve
himself in both news reporting and police investigations, that was a result of two things:
a prescription for Librium in her handbag plus the fact that Magnus’s mother continually
spoke about the forest animals, and that she insisted she had seen a hare and a fox
showing no indication of their natural timidity on the same day the boy disappeared. It
was as demented as it was irrelevant. It did not appear in the newspaper.
Could medication have caused a hallucination? Was there no kidnapper? Could she have
taken the boy’s life herself? These questions, and especially the latter, lay like a
repugnant slime over the story and soon there was no-one who would touch it. Readers
want to hear about tragedies but not if they stem from misery. And so the newspapers
ceased to write any more about the case, and in that respect Magnus disappeared a
second time.
The articles, from Expressen and GD and another unidentified newspaper, have been cut
out neatly, if not to say extremely carefully. It could have been Sven holding the scissors
but I think it was Barbro – the cuttings about Erika Löf have edges similarly straight and
neat, and she disappeared in the early summer of seventy-nine, a couple of months after
Sven had passed on, that is. Erika lived in Ockelbo but her clothes were found in
26

Hedesund Bay, not that far from the area surrounding Färnebo Bay, where they had
searched for Magnis Brodin the previous summer, and for that reason there were many
who feared it involved the same attacker. Perhaps there was a kidnapper after all, a
madman who roamed the forests, abducting and murdering children. Barbro also
thought there was a connection. She saved the articles about Erika because she thought
it was happening again.
But that was not the case.
Erika lay in the river, not far from the place where her clothes had been fished out of the
water a few weeks earlier. She had been strangled. Someone mentally disturbed had
committed the crime. His motive was never known. I read on the internet that he
became angry because the girl had scribbled with crayons on some steps he felt were his
responsibility, but I do not know if that can be called a motive or even if that is how it
happened.
One thing at least was clear.
Erika’s murderer had nothing to do with the disappearance of Magnus Brodin.
After sitting leaning over the newspaper cuttings for who knows how many hours – it
feels like years, actually – I hardly dare say anything about my own recollections of the
kidnapping which, in the beginning at least, caused such a sensation in the press and on
radio and TV. A jigsaw puzzle of yellowing strips of paper with columns of text and
grainy photographs of helicopters, policemen and remote forest roads lined with
luxuriantly green birches has eclipsed the almost transparently vague memories I once
had. Going back step by step in my mind just will not work. It is like trying to scrape one
layer of paint off another. His face is there like a blurred stain and I know I thought the
whole story was particularly nasty, that a kid could be abducted like that. In Sweden. By
a completely unknown person. During the seventies several children were kidnapped in
the States and Italy, for example. People spoke about a wave of kidnappings and I, along
with many others, thought that now it had reached Sweden. Like a trend. I presume I
thought a great deal about his mother, what she must have gone through. But to be
honest, it was never more than that.
How deeply have I not dug for premonitions?
For premonitions of evil?
That summer I was carrying Susso and even if I have no particular memory of it I am
sure that on occasions I must have cupped my hands over my stomach when I saw the
27

kidnapped boy’s face in the newspaper. Shouldn’t I have felt then that my unborn child’s
destiny was linked to that boy’s? Shouldn’t I have felt a shudder go through my body?
Sunday 12 December 2004
She drove through intermittent snow showers, particles streaming in the light of the
headlamps, smattering against the windscreen in waves. At times they came in such a
mass that she had to lean forward over the steering wheel to be able to see the road,
peering through the white cloud with her eyes narrowed behind her glasses. The
windscreen wipers squealed at full speed but hardly made any difference.
Even when there was a break in the snow showers she could still not relax. Clouds of
snow would swirl up without warning. If someone overtook her, which happened from
time to time, she was completely blinded for a second or two. If she met an oncoming
bus or truck she became enclosed in a white chamber for two or even three seconds. At
those moments she held her breath, clenched her hands on the steering wheel and
exhaled abrupt obscenities from between her clenched teeth.
It was still light, however, or as light as it could be this time of year. The forest was a
dark, fringed belt that separated the land from the greyish white sky. She glanced in the
rear view mirror but saw nothing apart from the flurry of snow spray that chased the
car, wild from the speed.
She could not bear the chatter on the radio, or the Christmas songs that were being
played already, so for the past two hours she had driven with only the sound of the
engine in her ears. Her ear drums felt numb. She looked quickly down at the floor in
front of the passenger seat. She had thrown Nettan’s discs down there, disappointed not
to find any music she felt like listening to, but now she was forced to pick up something.
She leaned forwards and found a disc that was unmarked. That might be exciting.
Disappointingly there was no music on it, at least none that the CD player could decode.
A quick click on the eject button and the disc shot out onto the floor again. It lay there
shining in the pile of rubbish that included an ice scraper, crumpled receipts, a bendy
straw, snus tins with warning texts face up and an empty plastic windscreen washer
container. There was also shrivelled clementine peel, a small glove with a protruding
name tag without a name on it and paper tissues from Statoil that she had used to blow
28

her nose and thrown on the floor because really, what did it matter? Her sister kept her
home clean and tidy but she was certainly not as particular about the car.
She picked up her mobile and checked the time. Surely she should be there soon?
She tried to think when she had last seen a road sign but could not remember. At a slip
road she caught sight of something behind the wall of snow. Swiftly she lifted her foot
from the accelerator. It could be a snow scooter. Sometimes they came driving right out,
as stupid as the bloody reindeer.
Coming towards her was a man hunched over his quad bike. He was ploughing. His small
face was red and compact. His hat had ear flaps that stood out. Not that he had much to
plough: it was mostly habit that had brought him out. And the pleasure of sitting on his
vehicle which looked almost new.
She took a deep breath, leaned as far back as the seat would allow and stretched her
neck until it clicked.
Immediately before Jokkmokk she swung off to the right and onto a road that wound
alongside the oblong lakes which ran through the river valley. Like beads on a necklace
they led away towards Kvikkjokk and the empty expanse of the fells.
Thick snow covered the road and there were wheel tracks. She slowed down. The depth
markers at each side of the road were long sticks stripped of bark, some with black sacks
hanging from them, flapping like crows in the corner of her eye and acting as a warning
to the reindeer. But she had not seen a single reindeer.
Under its layer of frost a brown sign indicated that this was the way to Sarek national
park. The only way. An ancient route, she knew that. Linnaeus had walked it when he
was still called Linnaeus. Or had he ridden along it, perhaps? Now the road came with a
number. Reindeer were still herded along it, but enclosed in lorries.
Her eyebrows shot up. Why had that not occurred to her? How close she actually was?
Soon she saw the name, surrounded by a tangle of birch branches. White lettering on a
blue background: VAIJKIJAUR. On top of the sign was a ridge of snow. It looked almost
arranged, suitable for a post card.
She slowed down, put the car into second gear and leaned over the wheel, letting her
gaze wander between the wooden houses scattered on either side of the road.
There were Advent stars in the windows, white and red, and light strings climbing round
and round naked branches. Council rubbish bins of green plastic were frozen fast in
snow drifts. Grey satellite dishes sat on gable walls. Snow clearing tools were lined up on
porches: scrapers,
29

shovels, piassava brooms. Every household had the same collection. Someone had hung
out a clothes hangar with a claret red blouse that moved in the wind. That was the
closest thing to a human being she saw.
In order to read what was written on the letter boxes she moved from one side of the
windscreen to the other as she zigzagged slowly along the road. Åke and Maud
Kvickström. And Thomas… She drove on, screwing up her eyes to read.
She found the name quite soon, painted by hand on an old metal lid.
Mickelsson.
The house was sulphur yellow and looked weighed-down by the bulging layer of snow
that hung from the roof. The garden sloped down towards the lake and on the opposite
side of the completely flat, white sphere it was just possible to discern glades of stunted
birches in a grainy mist. Was it snowing over there?
She pulled up beside the car that was parked in the driveway and switched off the
engine, but sat where she was for a while, looking at the house. The car was an old Opel.
On the rear side window was a faded sticker, a huge flower, the logo of a children’s
charity. Snow had been cleared to make a very narrow path up to the front steps. The
seven glowing lights of the Advent candlestick were shining in a pointed arch on the
kitchen window sill. A stepladder of flimsy metal was leaning against the roof, on every
step a lip of snow.
To announce her arrival she slammed the car door shut and with her eyes on her mobile
display she walked towards the house. Her boots creaked on in the snow – without a
doubt it was much colder here than at home. Reception was okay, three bars, and that
came as something of a surprise until she recalled a mast in the half darkness, just
before she had turned off the main road, the lights shining ruby red in the distance.
A wreath of dark green box decorated with bows hung on the door, which opened before
she had time to knock. Raising her eyebrows in surprise she took a step backwards,
grabbing hold of the snow-covered handrail.
Inside stood a thin woman, looking at her with round, wary eyes. Her light grey hair was
straight and shiny and cut bluntly just below her ears. She wore small pearl earrings.
Underneath her long knitted waistcoat was a blouse with curling embroidery around the
neck. She pressed her left hand to her chest; it looked as if she was in pain.
“Are you Edith?”
The old woman nodded.
30

“Susso Hörnell,” said Susso, stretching out her hand and closing it around a bunch of
knobbly but warm fingers which did not feel nearly as fragile as they looked. When they
had greeted each other Edith backed into the hall only to disappear into the kitchen, as if
she had suddenly thought of something, such as a saucepan on the stove. Susso stepped
out of her boots but kept her jacket on: she might be leaving very soon. That usually
became obvious fairly quickly. The only lighting she could see in the kitchen was the
electric candlestick, so it was quite dark inside the house, and chilly as well. The
refrigerator hummed loudly, on its last legs by the sound of it. Fixed to the door were
vouchers, a handwritten receipt and a lottery scratch card. On the wall a collection of
trays hung in an embroidered band. There were crocheted Christmas decorations, small
paintings of various shapes and sizes, a calendar with notes written in neat ink lettering.
Standing in the sink was a fuchsia in its plastic flower pot and on the table lay a
newspaper, the Kuriren.
“Do you live here alone?” asked Susso, as she pulled her jeans straight.
Edith nodded.
She had clamped her mouth together so tightly that her pink lips had disappeared.
“It’s lovely here,” said Susso, pulling aside the cotton curtains and looking up the road.
“In the village.”
Between Edith’s eyes a sharp, vertical line appeared, looking as if someone had marked
her with a brand. She was troubled. She had no time for small talk, that was perfectly
obvious.
“How,” she said in a thin voice, but that was all. She placed her hand on one of the copper
discs covering the hotplates on the stove. It slipped sideways and she moved it back in
place.
Susso drew out a chair and sat down at the table. She pushed the newspaper aside and
took her notepad and a ballpoint pen from her jacket pocket – not because she wanted
to write anything in particular but mainly to get straight to the point. There was a click
when she pressed the pen, but it did not work, it had probably frozen. Susso looked
around and picked up a pencil that was lying on the table. She looked encouragingly at
Edith who was fiddling with a button on the sleeve of her blouse. The lines on each side
of the old woman’s mouth were deeply etched as if it required deep concentration to
fiddle with that button.
“I don’t know…” began Susso.
“Shall I show you where it was? How I saw him?”
She spoke quickly, sounding rushed, sucking in air between her lips.
Susso nodded, slightly surprised, and put down the pen.
31

The percolator had finished gurgling but Seved let it stand in silence for a while before
he stood up. He took a cup from the sink, held it under the tap and gave it a rinse. After
he had poured the coffee he sat down again and looked out through the window, his
hand resting on the shiny surface of the pine table and two fingers wedged in the cup’s
handle. From Gunvor’s direction came a sticky little sound when she licked her
fingertips to turn the pages of the newspaper. It had been snowing all morning. It just
kept on falling. What had happened in the dog enclosure was anyone’s guess because the
netting was clogged up with snow, and the snow on the upturned Volvo 240 out in the
yard was now so thick that it was hard to distinguish the various components of the
undercarriage. Only the catalyst and the silencer box could be made out. As soon as he
had drunk his coffee he would go out and try to turn the damn thing upright. Most of the
damage had already been done so there was no immediate hurry, but he disliked the
thought of not being able to get away in the event something happened. The engine
heater was still connected and he wondered whether that would damage the engine.
What if the antifreeze seeped out? Or acid dripped from the battery? He was unsure but
he thought Börje should have told Gunvor in that case. But she had not said a word. Both
of them behaved as if they were alone in the kitchen. The only sound was the hum of the
central heating boiler and occasionally a sticky little noise from Gunvor as she licked the
tops of her fingers and turned the pages of her newspaper.
Reindeer horns decorated the barn wall, sticking out like old branches, and above the
black rectangles of the double doors a huge lamp was mounted on a curved metal pole. It
shed light over the whole yard. Many years ago they had plundered an electricity pylon
brought down by the wind alongside the road to Nalovardo and sawn off the heavy light
fittings, leaving the pylon beside the motorway like a mutilated cadaver. Börje was
careful to switch off the lamp during daylight hours because it used a lot of electricity.
But it was shining now. That was an indication of how stressed he must have been
before he left. He could well have forgotten to tell them about the car too. Snow flakes lit
up as they floated close to the lamp and Sevek was staring at these slowly descending
sparks when Gunvor put down the newspaper.
“Don’t I get a coffee?” she asked.
“I didn’t think you wanted one,” he said, and pushed back his chair.
“I can have small one.”
32

He took down a cup and saucer from the cupboard above the draining board, placed it in
front of her on the table and poured. From the shiny silver spout came both coffee and
spiralling steam.
“That’s enough,” she said quickly, raising her hand.
He sat down and cradled his cup.
He could probably talk to her now.
In a confused memory from the early morning hours he remembered hearing a diesel
engine idling for what seemed like an eternity. Slamming car doors, Signe’s mumble,
Börje’s commands. A barking dog. He looked at the clock that hung on the wall beside
the Christmas wall- hanging with dancing elves that Gunvor had put up. It was almost
eleven.
“When did they go?”
Gunvor sipped her coffee then replaced the cup on the saucer, so gently it made no
sound.
“Yes, when did they go? They tipped over the Toyota too,” she said. “Not upside down
but on its side, so it must have been seven by the time they left.”
“I heard a hell of a noise about three o’clock.”
She flipped through the paper and then put it down on the table. She looked at him with
eyes half-closed.
“And one of the dogs,” she said. “The small bitch. They had fun with her, threw her up
onto the roof of the barn. She just stood there, barking in fear. She couldn’t get down and
Börje and I were too frightened to go outside until they had gone in, so she was up there
at least a couple of hours, poor little mite. She was scared out of her wits.”
Seved leaned forwards and looked at the barn roof.
“They’ve never done that before, have they? Had a go at the dogs?”
Gunvor sat in silence for a while, licked her finger and turned a page.
“Once, in the seventies,” she said. “They got into the enclosure and killed every single
dog. Tore them to pieces, as if they wanted to find out how many pieces you can tear a
dog into. It looked like a slaughterhouse when I came out in the morning. Eleven dogs,
and three of them pups. I cried like a child when I saw it.”
It took a moment or two for Seved to grasp what she had told him – that she had told
him! – and he noticed how his mouth had turned dry in a second, or so it felt.
“You never told me.”
“It’s so rare.”
She did not want to say more. Stern wrinkles had stitched her lips together.
Still he kept on. He was so shaken.
33

“But why? What caused it?”
“Of course it was much worse when there were four of them. They got each other
worked up. We separated them after that.”
“Because of what happened with the dogs?”
“Among other things.”
Seved stood up and walked over to the window. He pulled the light blue curtains aside.
Directly opposite the barn was the house they called Hybblet, a building with dirty grey
fibre cement cladding. Now, with the roof covered in snow, the building had
disappeared. The only things to be seen clearly were the door and the darkened window
panes, and the plastic tubes taped to the downpipes, protruding like yellow trunks. On
the gable end was a satellite dish but of course there was no television – Börje had fixed
it there to make the house look like any other house. Or had it been Lennart’s idea?
On the front porch stood a pile of empty blue plastic storage boxes beside a row of black
plastic sacks, filled to the top. Flattened cardboard boxes poked out of one opening. The
snow had blown in and settled in the folds of the sacks.
“Is it you who’s been cleaning up?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
“But we weren’t going to clean up, we were going to wait.”
“It won’t make it any better, being filthy in there, that’s for sure.”
She spoke without looking at him. The words she spat out angrily seemed to emanate
from a repressed rage which Seved met with silence. She was not angry with him, he
knew that. But that was of no importance. Because if he continued, if he repeated what
Lennart had told them, then she would vent her anger on him and he wanted to avoid
that at all costs.
But perhaps it was already too late. Without a word she left the kitchen and walked
slowly up the staircase. She usually went off like this when she was in a bad mood. To
hide herself away. And he was left sitting there.
Seved finished his coffee and felt overwhelmingly weary. He caught sight of the back
page of Gudrun’s newspaper. It was copy of Västerbottens-Kuriren, a week old at least. At
nights he could only lie there, blinking into the darkness, listening. Waiting. Looking at
the clock face every few minutes because he knew when it usually kicked off and as soon
as he heard something he would hold his breath. That was the worst thing, waiting for it
to start. Some nights nothing happened.
He watched the snow falling.
34

The cable that ran in an arc from the frosty socket post to the house wall had a fin of
white. He thought it should be much higher than it was. To think there was a limit to the
number of snow flakes that could collect on a cable? But how did it end? Did the pile fall
off or did it just stop growing?
They plodded through the snow which was a metre deep and it was extremely difficult
to make any progress. Susso glanced towards the ice. The bottom of a boat, pulled up on
the shore, stood out like a sky blue segment against the field of white that was so flat it
was impossible to tell exactly where the shoreline was. In the distance she could make
out a low hill but it could just as easily be a patch of dark sky. A cold wind was blowing
up from the lake and it stung her cheeks.
“There,” Edith said quietly, pointing towards some angled birch trees. “At the edge there,
that’s where he stood.”
Susso continued walking forward until she reached the trees Edith had indicated, which
in appearance were more like shrubs. It was such a struggle to walk in the deep snow
that she had to swing her arms to keep her balance.
“Here?” she asked, turning around, one hand straightening her hat.
Edith nodded. She had taken a few steps backwards and was standing near the house
wall with her shoulders raised, wrapped in a rose-patterned shawl with long tassels that
moved in the wind.
Susso leaned forward slightly and peered in among the sparse pine trees. The
neighbours’ house, a white single-storey building with blue painted corners and window
frames, was visible through the trunks only a hundred metres away. She took a step
sideways to keep her balance, but it was difficult and she had to put her hand down on
the snow for support. She was not wearing gloves and her hand turned cold.
“And all he did was stand there?” she shouted.
“Yes,” said Edith. “And grin.”
After saying this she rearranged the shawl and with a lowered head stepped into the
track made by Susso. Her long waistcoat trailed after her.
“Perhaps he was only making a face,” she said. “It wasn’t very easy to see what he looked
like. But I still think he was laughing, because that’s what Mattias said he was doing.”
“How old was Mattias?” asked Susso.
“Four,” said Edith, pulling the shawl and her blouse collar tighter around her. She looked
freezing but it was probably just a shudder that went through her, because then she
said, almost in a whisper:
35

“You know, I was standing in the kitchen and then I heard the boy. He was talking to
someone. Out here. ‘Why are you laughing,’ he said. Edith altered her voice to sound like
her grandchild. “I thought it was a game, but then he said it again: ‘Why are you
laughing?’ And he sounded almost angry, I thought, as if he was getting impatient. I
became curious, of course, because he doesn’t have any friends. There are no other
children here.”
She turned around to face the house and pointed.
“He was sitting there on the steps with his hands on his rucksack, as if he was afraid
someone would take it from him. He sort of had his arms round it. Then he looked over
here and then, when I came out, that’s when I saw him. Here. Where we are standing
now,” said Edith.
Susso took out her snus tin and opened it without taking her eyes from Edith.
“He wasn’t at all shy, and you don’t expect that. You think a thing like that would be.
That’s what it’s like: you want them at least to run away, if it’s true they’re so secretive
that people don’t even know whether they exist or not.”
Susso put a pouch of snus into her mouth and nodded.
“But not this one,” said Edith, in a tense voice. “He didn’t run away and hide. Do you
understand what I’m saying? He didn’t run away.”
“Okay,” said Susso. A lock of hair had fallen down over her eyes and she pushed it under
the edge of her hat.
“I dragged the boy with me into the house and locked the door. Then we went into that
room there to watch him through the window.” She nodded towards the side of the
house.
“And then, you know, he came even closer. He was standing right below the window,
looking at us. He was staring so stubbornly back at us that I closed the curtain. I couldn’t
bear him looking at us the way we were looking at him.”
“So you saw him close up?”
“I did,” said Edith. “I had a good look at him. He was wearing a down jacket and a hood
over his head - he had one of those sweat shirts underneath. Yellow, I think it was. And
his eyes … that was the worst thing about him. It was like looking at an animal’s eyes.
They were all yellow, with pupils like a line.”
“Like a cat?”
“Yes,” said Edith, suddenly gripping Susso’s arm. “Just like a cat.”
Susso nodded, and looked away to the trees.
“And it was obvious that he was thinking,” Edith continued. “He was standing there
planning something.”
36

After a few moments of silence she added:
“Theft, probably.”
“Do you think so?”
“Oh yes. He had some kind of purpose, you could easily tell that. We didn’t know what to
do so I phoned Carina, that’s Mattias’s mother, and when she pulled into the drive he ran
off immediately. Straight over there, towards the Westins’.” Edith pointed towards the
neighbouring house. “And since then I haven’t seen him.”
“And Mattias’ mother,” said Susso. “Did she see anything?”
“Carina? No, no.”
Edith leaned towards Susso.
“And she didn’t believe us either. That was the worst part. She insisted we had made it
up, all of it. Me and the boy. Even though I showed her the tracks he left when he ran.
Well, they’re gone now, but I took pictures of them.”
Susso looked at her: that was news to her.
Edith waved her hand. “But you can’t see anything. When you take pictures in the snow
they don’t turn out well. It’s mainly white. Anyway, when I wanted to show her the
tracks she got angry. She put Mattias in the car and drove home. And they haven’t been
back since. He doesn’t want to, says Carina. And Per-Erik, my son, won’t say anything at
all.”
“And the neighbours?” asked Susso. “The Westman’s, wasn’t it? Have you spoken to
them?”
“I have,” said Edith. She shivered. “But he’s funny like that. He just shrugged his
shoulders.”
“And that’s just it,” said Edith, fixing her gaze on Susso, who had turned to face the
Westman’s house. “If you don’t know what he looked like, how strange his face was with
those eyes, and how little he was – hardly a metre tall, I would guess – then it’s difficult
to care. To take it seriously.”
Susso pulled down the zip of her jacket pocket and took out her mobile. It was working
slower in the cold. It was almost half past two and would be completely dark soon.
“Do you know what, Edith?” she said, replacing her phone in the pocket. “I’d like to set
up a camera if that’s okay with you. It can sense if anyone gets close to the house.”
Edith looked a little uncertain but did not protest, so Susso waded off and fetched her
rucksack from the car. The camera she dug out had a camouflage pattern and two Velcro
straps wrapped round it. She put the cycle lock, a chain coated in transparent plastic,
back into the bag again. It would not be needed.
37

The downpipe was the obvious choice. She positioned the camera about one metre off
the ground, the lens aimed at a spot between the birches and the drive. She attached the
top strap over the wall mounting that held the pipe in place, so that the camera would
not glide down.
While she fixed the straps she explained to Edith how the sensor worked, how you could
check if the batteries had run out or the memory card became full. Edith listened
silently, leaning forwards in concentration, her eyebrows wrinkled sternly.
“Because he was here in the daytime,” said Susso, “I’ll set it to take pictures day and
night. Remember that, so that you don’t walk over there and we get a load of pictures of
you.”
“Oh, I see,” said Edith, taking quick step backwards.
“But you can actually walk there now,” said Susso.
“Now?”
“Yes,” she said, rubbing her hat where her scalp had started to itch. “So I know the
camera is working as it should. Walk around the cars and come from that direction.”
Edith walked off and disappeared behind the Opel and the second she came into the
camera’s field of vision the movement indicator began to flicker.
“Good!” shouted Susso. “You’ve been detected.”
Out of the pockets of his down jacket he pulled a pair of work gloves that had rolled
themselves into dried-out knots. The snow was falling silently from a white sky and
landed on his face as he walked down the front steps. It was not very cold, perhaps
minus seven or eight. There was a yap from the dog enclosure and a low growling from
one of the dogs, but no barking. He tapped the wire netting and the snow fell off so that
he could see the dogs. They stood watching him from inside: two Swedish Elkhounds, a
Finnish Lapphund cross, and the little Laika with her bushy arc of a tail.
“Were you up on the roof last night?” he said and the dog put her head on one side.
The Volvo lay with its bonnet and windscreen against the ground, and the rear wheels
were some way above Seved’s head. He rested a hand on one tyre and rocked the car
gently.
While he was wondering what to do to get the car turned the right way up he
disconnected the engine heater cable and wound it up. Messing about with the tractor’s
snow bucket attachment was no alternative – the metal would ruin the bodywork and he
38

would never hear the last of it. He would have to get the car upright in some way, but
how?
One of the side mirrors was hanging loose but luckily all the windows were undamaged.
He crouched down in front of the bonnet. There were no traces of oil as far as he could
see but water had leaked out, smelling strongly of antifreeze.
The front door of the house slammed shut and Gunvor came walking towards him with
the hood of her down coat covering her head so that the fir circled her small face like a
fluffy crown.
Seved caught hold of a lock of her hair and tucked it behind her ear.
“How did you bloody well do it last time?” he asked.
“We just tipped it,” she answered, and made a pushing gesture with her hands. “But then
it was lying on its right side. And Lennart was with me.”
He nodded.
“I’ll have to use the tractor.”
“Shouldn’t you wait until Börje comes home?”
“It can’t be left like this.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not good.”
She did not understand, or did not want to, he could see that. But she said nothing, only
half closing her eyes.
“I think if I fasten a ratchet strap between the front and back wheels and hook the chain
in the middle I ought to be able to turn it upright with the tractor, don’t you think?”
Gunvor stood silently and tried to work out what he meant.
“As long as the car doesn’t drag along behind you like a plough.”
“I’ll have to pull slowly.”
“I really think you should wait. It won’t hurt the car.”
He had no intention of doing that. He strode off to the barn, knocked off the hasp with
his fist and opened up both doors. One door always swung shut and he propped it open
with pointed stake. The chain and hook hung on a wall and rattled heavily when he laid
it in the tractor’s snow bucket, where patches of snow still lingered. He climbed up into
the cab, took the ear defenders off the steering wheel and put them on. They were cold
against his ears but they would soon warm them up. The engine spluttered a couple of
times before it rumbled into life.
When he had driven up in the tractor he reversed it so that the rear faced the car. Then
he jumped down. Gudrun stepped aside and he shouted at her in order to be heard over
the engine.
39

“The ratchet straps are in the car!”
He had to stand on tiptoe to open the car boot and then he walked around the car and
dropped down on all fours, looking in through the side windows. Everything that had
been loose in the car had collected in a pile further along the roof, which was now a
floor. There was a snow scraper without a handle, empty plastic bottles, jump leads in a
tangle, an empty wind screen wiper pack, and a black corduroy cap.
He tried to open the car door but it stuck in the snow and would only open a gap, but it
was enough for him to get his arm inside and reach the strap. It was made of woven
orange polyester and the neat loops that Börje had coiled it into were held in place with
double rubber bands. When Seved pushed in the strap’s slanted end behind the front
wheel axle Gudrun quickly pulled her hand out of her jacket pocket and pointed to the
opposite wheel.
“You should put it on that side,” she said. “So you can turn the car in that direction.
Otherwise we will soon have two broken side mirrors.”
She was right, of course. Seved walked around the car, worked the strap under the
wheel axles with Gunvor’s help and he pumped the ratchet.
“That will have to do,” he said, and lifted the chain out of the snow bucket.
He placed the hook in the centre of the taut strap and asked Gunvor to hold it in place
while he walked round the car with the chain, which sliced off the snow as he pulled it
across the chassis.
Gunvor proved to be right: the Volvo slid after the tractor, not like a plough but more
like a sledge, silently and easily, and it was annoying to see. Seved remained behind the
wheel, thinking, while the tractor ticked over.
After a minute or two he jumped down and disconnected the chain from the hook.
“If we put something here,” Gunvor said, indicating a place on the ground, “to stop the
car gliding, then it might think otherwise and allow itself be turned upright.”
“I’ll try with the bucket,” said Seved, who had already clambered back into the cab.
When he had turned the tractor so that the nose was directed at the car he wrapped the
chain a couple of times around the base of one of the loading arms. Then he slowly
raised the bucket. The hydraulics hissed and Gunvor shouted something he could not
hear. He could only see her mouth working.
When the chain was completely straight he put the engine into reverse.
And this time it went better. With a groan the roof lifted from the ground and Gunvor
gesticulated without taking her eyes off the 240, which gradually tipped onto its side
and then landed on its wheels with a squeak from the suspension.
40

They ate soup that Edith had cooked from a packet. The taste eluded Susso, whose nose
was continually running, but it was scalding hot and she liked that – it almost burned
her palate. It was not more than thirteen or fourteen degrees in the house. She ate with
her face over the bowl and with of tresses of hair hanging loose. Her skull felt worryingly
heavy.
Edith talked slowly but practically non-stop. Carrying an experience like that had been
unbearable, she explained. She had tried talking to her son but he did not know what to
believe. The bottom line was that he did not trust her.
“But he is too scared,” said Edith. “Afraid of conflict, as they say these days. He dare not
go against Carina who will absolutely not hear a word about … these things.”
She had phoned her sister, but had felt a sneering hostility. Talking about mythical
beings and supernatural happenings was all right, it could even be amusing, but only as
long as it was in fun. When it was in earnest, when people insisted, the mood changed.
Edith twisted her watch on her wrist and sighed.
“In the end I didn’t dare say anything,” she said.
Susso’s nose was streaming and she tore off a piece of kitchen roll and blew her nose.
“So you haven’t told anyone else?” she said, opening the paper to study the snot. It was
streaked a greenish-yellow.
“Oh yes,” she replied. “I phoned the Kuriren, of course.”
“You’re joking?” said Susso.
Edith shook her head.
“They thought it was an amazing story and said they might send a reporter.”
“They said that?” said Susso, wiping her nose and still smiling. “That they would send
someone?”
“Yes,” said Edith, and looked out of the window. It was completely black out there now.
All that could be seen in the glass was the reflection of the candles and a white oval that
was Edith’s face. “But nobody has come.”
And then she added:
“It’s too far to come for such a thing, I suppose.”
“Haven’t they got a local reporter in Gällivare?”
Edith was not listening. She pushed her bowl aside and looked at her fingers before
continuing.
“They can write about hockey and basketball day after day, but a thing like this, an
absolutely incredible thing like Mattias and I experienced, well, they want nothing to do
with it.”
41

They sat in silence for a while.
“Is it a troll? One of those stallo trolls you write about?”
Susso looked up and met Edith’s clear eyes. They were asking her for something.
She sank down heavily, her elbows on the table, and picked at the cuticle of one thumb
with the tip of other. She had short nails, bitten down.
“I presume you have asked your neighbours?”
Edith nodded.
“I have even gone to Randi and Björkholmen to ask, but it…”
Edith shook her head.
“What?”
“Same as with the Westman’s. People just mock.”
“Yes,” said Susso. “That’s what usually happens.”
The bathroom was off the hall. The sludge green wallpaper had begun to come loose and
bulging bubbles stood out on the walls making the large flowered pattern come alive.
When she carefully pushed the shower curtain to one side there was a soft scraping
from the curtain rings. She stared at a row of plastic bottles of various colours neatly
lined up on a little shelf. There was also a foot file. She did not know why she was
checking the shower. It was probably because the curtain had been closed. As if to hide
something.
The toilet seat was fitted with support rails. So she had not been alone very long,
because surely you would not hang on to support rails for sentimental reasons?
Susso turned on the tap in the basin and opened the bathroom cabinet slowly so that the
hinges would not creak. Inside were cosmetics, creams, nail clippers, dental floss and a
necklace with orange-coloured stones that could be amber. But no medication. Not even
a painkiller.
When Susso returned Edith had laid out coffee cups on the glass table in the sitting
room. On a red Christmassy serviette spread on a plate were heart-shaped ginger
biscuits. Susso took one and sat herself down in the beige leather sofa that exhaled
under her weight.
“How long have you been alone?”
Edith stood waiting beside the coffee machine. The answer came immediately. It was as
if she had been waiting for the question.
“Two years. At Christmas it will be two years.”
42

Susso told her she worked occasionally in homecare, so she knew how hard it was, being
the one left behind. That that was worst thing.
“Everyone says so,” said Susso.
Edith disappeared out of sight so she called after her:
“As if anyone could know!”
When Edith came back into the room almost immediately with the coffee thermos in her
hand Susso smiled at her, but Edith did not seem to realise that Susso was trying to be
funny. With a pensive expression the old woman poured coffee into the cups which
were decorated with small frosty-looking sprigs of flowers.
“No,” she said. “There’s a lot that can’t be proved.”
Susso agreed: there were philosophers who said that nothing at all could be proved, not
even a thing like sitting at a table and drinking coffee. Although that of course was taking
things a bit too far. If you carried on like that you would end up crazy.
“Like me,” said Edith, looking up and blinking at her.
Susso had her cup to her lips but stopped. Had Edith heard her looking in the bathroom
cabinet?
“You think I’m imagining things.”
“I don’t think that at all.”
“Yes you do. You think I’ve got bats in the belfry.”
“If anyone’s got bats in the belfry then it’s me,” said Susso, trying to force a conciliatory
smile that somehow turned into a grimace. She sipped the strong coffee and then
replaced her cup on the table which had a runner patterned with a chain of green hearts.
“I’ve read about it,” said Edith. “On your website. About hoaxers and all the trouble they
cause. The people who excavated a wight dwelling or whatever you want to call it.”
Susso nodded.
“But I’m no hoaxer,” said Edith.
“Of course you’re not.”
“They looked at each other, smiling a little. They could both settle for that.
They drank the coffee, poured a second cup, munched on the biscuits and chatted briefly
about the weather: it was supposed to be a little milder over Christmas.
“Isn’t it very cold in here?” said Susso, hunching up her shoulders and rubbing her arms.
Edith agreed. Perhaps she should light a fire, she said, and gesticulated towards a corner
of the room where there was a wood burning stove with sooty glass doors.
43

The light from the torch in Edith’s hand meandered over the flat snow and Susso
followed her carrying a large log basket. In the air hung a faint smell of wood smoke –
the neighbour’s chimney, she thought. Westman’s chimney.
“Will we be caught on camera now?” said Edith, sniffing.
“No,” said Susso. “We won’t. But you never know. That camera is pretty paranoid. It sees
more than it ought to.”
The storage shed appeared as a cube of dense darkness diagonally behind the cars. Edith
pulled open one of the doors and felt about with her hand on the inside. A blinding light
struck the walls of rough unpainted planks: the bulb had to be at least 75 watts. Susso
was forced to raise her hand and say “Oh!”. The bulb with its lopsided plastic lampshade
hung from a wire that ran across bent nails in the ceiling.
On the floor was a pile of kindling and oddments of wood: the remnants of a kitchen
chair, an axe handle, creamy-white bars that in all likelihood had once been a child’s cot,
wooden coat hangers. Edith moved about with her back bent, picking up pieces, while
Susso looked out into the darkness that stood densely behind her exhaled breath.
“That will do,” said Edith, wiping her palms together.
When Susso lifted the basket the wicker handles creaked.
As the old woman prepared the wood burning stove with kindling and newspaper and
an egg carton that she tore into small pieces, she told Susso about the stove, that Edvin
had died the same year it was put in. He had never had any joy from it, apart from the
joy of buying and installing it. He had been talking about a wood burning stove for many
years, that it would be nice with a little top-up heating, as he used to say. She herself had
been against it. She imitated herself:
“It’s going to smell like a boiler room in here!”
“It certainly doesn’t,” said Susso, who had curled up on the sofa and was squeezing her
feet. She had wrapped a woollen blanket around her shoulders and back.
Edith was kneeling, looking at her narrow hands. A ridge of hardened skin ran along the
tips of each index finger.
“But it gets sooty,” she said. “And it makes a mess.”
“Look at this,” she said, holding up a coat hanger of light-coloured wood. “Gösta
Svensson. Gentlemen’s Outfitters. Telephone six zero nine. Hässleholm. How has this
found its way up here?”
After slowly unscrewing the metal hook she poked the hanger into the stove and shut
the door.
44

“There is so much you never know about each other,” she said. “Even after a whole life
together.”
When it started to crackle and spit behind the glass doors Edith stretched up and closed
the damper, after which she sank into the armchair, rubbing her hands against the arm
rests. She looked troubled, as if she had happened to wander into a room inhabited by
sorrow. The tip of one of her ears peeped out from her shiny grey hair.
“You think about him often, don’t you?”
Edith nodded and took a deep breath.
“I have become afraid of the dark,” she said with a faint smile. “I wasn’t like that before.
It’s not him I’m afraid of, he was so little. No, I’m afraid of being afraid. Of seeing him
again, in among the trees. I try not to look there.”
Edith turned her head, looked at the wood burner where the fire was making the logs
crack.
“I’ve started locking the front door. Securely. I even go back and make sure,” she said.
“And when I drive home and see the windows in darkness I sit in the car, not wanting to
switch off the headlights. Once I even ran into the house first and put the kitchen light
on. That’s when I heard Edwin, having a good laugh at me. Actually,” she continued, “I’ve
thought about moving in with Per-Erik and Carina. Not for good, just over the winter
perhaps. It’s just that I don’t know what to tell them. That I’m afraid of the dark?” She
snorted. “That sounds better than the truth, at least. That I’m scared of a Christmas elf
who comes sneaking around here.”
Susso giggled, briefly.
Edith did not respond to the smile but simply looked at her, saying:
“Some nights I have thought about a water leak – a controlled one of course, because I
don’t want to ruin the house. That would take about six months to repair…”
“Are you serious?”
“No,” replied Edith, throwing out her hands. “I would never dare to do a thing like that.
It’s just a silly idea, that’s all.”
They sat in silence for a while, listening to the fire.
“We’ll have to wait and see if anything happens,” said Susso. “You said the Mattias hasn’t
been here since it happened?”
“No. I don’t know if Carina’s stopping him or if he doesn’t dare to come here. He was
really frightened. But I’ll phone and talk to Per-Erik.”
Susso removed her glasses and rubbed one of her eye lids. It felt as if she had something
in her eye. She blinked a couple of times, replaced her glasses and said:
“Well, you don’t need to say anything about the camera. If that’s their attitude, I mean.”
45

Edith snorted.
“Oh, no. That’s our little secret.”
For some reason he had no desire to climb down from the cab after he had driven the
tractor into the barn and switched off the engine. He sat there, the ear defenders in his
hand, and pressed the stop button with his thumb. The snow streamed down in the
lamplight outside the door.
He wondered if he ought to drive the Volvo into the barn, as a preventative measure.
There was plenty of room. If he moved the snowmobile there would be room for the
Toyota as well.
But was that wise?
It was impossible to say what the consequences would be. If they saw that both cars had
gone they could get anxious and agitated, because being alone was something they
hated, especially during the winter months when their lair was surrounded by darkness.
And then, what if they got into the barn and discovered the cars? That would confuse
them, of course, but if the worst came to the worst they would also be able to work out
that the cars had been put there so they could not get at them. That would be like
pouring fuel onto a fire because then they would feel betrayed as well. It was likely that
anything could happen then. He would have to talk to Börje about it. They simply could
not have it like this, not under any circumstances.
He hung the chain on the wall and shut the doors, sliding the hasp into place, then he
trudged back over the yard and got into the car. Gunvor had already started the engine
and done a little test drive in front of the house so they knew it had not been entirely
destroyed. Of course they could hardly know whether any damage had been done, such
as cracks or leaks, that might be revealed later. He had asked Gunvor whether they had
lifted the car and thrown it onto its roof or only tipped it over gently, but she was not
really sure. Probably they had only nudged it over: it was doubtful whether the windows
would have remained in one piece otherwise.
He pushed the seat back and kneeling on the front seat set about cleaning the interior of
the car, throwing into the boot everything that belonged there. There was so much
rubbish that he ought to get rid of while he was at it, but he had no sack to put it in and
could not be bothered going to get one, so he left it as it was. He picked up a coin, a
chewing gum wrapper, cassette tapes, a pen and screws. A phone charger. Much of this
46

had been lying under the seats, hidden and mainly inaccessible to rooting fingers. That
was perhaps the only advantage with the car getting turned upside down.
He did not know what to do with the black cap so he put it on. After that he picked up
the broken side mirror and inspected it. It would have to be stuck on with gaffer tape. As
he sat there with the mirror in his hands, he stiffened.
He had heard a shout.
He sat motionless before shaking his arm to reveal his watch. It had just gone three.
Then he must have imagined it? Knowing what it had sounded like at night recently, and
how badly he had been sleeping, it was possible the noise was inside his head. Like an
echo.
He heard the sound again.
First a short muffled moan, followed by a whimpering that gradually increased and
culminated in a piercing howl.
Gunvor had also heard it because when Seved came into the hall she was standing there,
her head bowed, putting on her jacket. She was fiddling with the zip, trying to fasten it at
the bottom. Seved saw that her reddened hands were shaking. In his hurry he had
brought the side mirror in with him, so he placed it on the hat rack, along with the cap.
“Are you sure you should go in?
“It’s not dangerous,” she said, pulling up the zip. “But if I get thrown up onto the barn I
would appreciate it if you came and got me down.”
From one of the pegs on the hat rack she took down the head lamp. Inside the plastic
cover were four diodes. She checked that the lamp was working and when she had fitted
it over her head she arranged the elastic strap so that it lay under her knot of hair at the
back.
“We’ll see about that,” said Seved, who had stepped into the kitchen. He opened the
larder door and let his eyes wander over the shelves where everything stood tightly
packed. “I think it might do you good to sit up there for a long time, if that’s the case.”
“You’ll have to make the food yourself.”
“I thought I’d heat up some beef soup. Do you want beef soup?”
“Beef soup?” she said, taking the tin out of his hands and turning it round and round.
“You know what? The use-by date was last century.”
She slipped it into her pocket and said:
“But the trolls don’t know that.”
47

It was late and time to leave. If Susso did not get the car home in time there would be
hell to pay from Nettan, although that would probably happen anyway – she had not told
her she would be taking the car all the way to Jokkmokk. She stood the cups and saucers
in the sink, put in the plug and turned on the hot water tap. But she was not allowed to
wash up.
“Leave it,” said Edith with a wave of her hand.
“As I already explained,” Susso said as she tied the laces of her boots and put on her hat,
“If it gets cold the batteries won’t last very long, so you’ll have to think about that.
Otherwise the memory card will be full in about three weeks. It all depends. Do you get
many animals running about the place?”
Edith shook her head.
“Only trolls.”
Susso walked outside and down the steps, looking for her car key and turning round.
“I’ll be in touch,” she said and nodded at Edith who was standing in the darkened hall
with her hand on the door handle.
“Will you write that it was me who saw it? Will you put Edit Mickelsson?”
Susso took a deep intake of breath while she considered what Edith meant.
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
“No, I don’t think I do.”
“I don’t have to write anything at all. Not yet.”
“Perhaps that’s best. For the time being.”
“Okay,” Susso replied, walking towards the car.
“Are you sure you have to go?” Edith burst out. “In the dark. With the spray from the
snow and everything. I’ve got an extra bed, if you want to stay the night.”
Susso smiled.
“Thanks, but I really have to get back. My sister,” she said, pointing at the car key. “It’s
her car. She’ll murder me if she doesn’t get it back. And I’ve probably got to go to work
tomorrow.”
Edith nodded.
And then before she closed the door, she said:
“Drive carefully.”
There was a car in front with its rear fog lights on. Susso adjusted her speed to its speed,
to have something the fix her eyes on. She held both hands on the steering wheel which
was cold plastic, stared at the light red dots that were being sucked in and out of the
dark haze. The temperature had fallen and the fan heater was roaring at full pelt. The
48

asphalt was scraped in dark uneven streaks so the snow plough could not be too far
ahead of them. She had inserted one of the CDs, picked at random, into the car stereo.
It was slow music. Someone was brushing a drum and a woman was singing in a husky
voice and sounding sleepy. ‘You,’ she sang. ‘You-ou-ou…’. It was monotonous but
relaxing.
In Porjus she had to stop for a pee. She had drunk far too much coffee at Edit’s. Now her
bladder was pressing so much her left leg was vibrating. She reduced speed, threw a
glance over her shoulder, swung off the road and parked by the viewing platform from
where the power station could be seen.
The facility lay down below in the river valley, in a foreign land, or so it seemed, a
burning fortress that filled the night sky with a dusk-blue sheen. The pylons rose up like
many-armed giants with straddled legs and handfuls of cables in their fists. The power
cables rose in loops up the slope, from giant to giant, running over the tops of the birch
trees and hanging over the road. Susso could hear they were making a sound. That they
were speaking.
She wondered if the snow was causing the sound or if in reality it was the sound of high
voltage, of fast-travelling electrons. Did electricity have a sound? She did not know. She
stuffed her hands inside her jacket sleeves and walked closer to listen. They were
emitting a humming noise, a secret song. She could not decide if there was a hissing
when snow flakes landed on the cables. All she heard was the song. Dark and strange.
She sat on the toilet, looking down at the patterned lumps of snow made by her
footsteps. It was freezing cold in the little room. She hunched over. There were goose
bumps on her knee caps.
She took out her mobile and tapped in a text. She knew that soon Nettan would ring and
be annoyed. Half past seven, they had agreed. Home half eight, she texted. That meant
she could arrive at nine. She knew that Nettan did not need the car. What would she
want it for? Joel was asleep at this time of night. It was to make a point, that was all. A
way of subjugating her little sister, her half-sister. Probably it happened totally
unconsciously.
She flushed the toilet and looked at herself in the mirror as she washed her hands. The
red blotches on her cheekbones, her pale lips. The watery shine of her eyes. Her lank,
unwashed hair beneath her childish bobble hat. When she came out of the toilet, out into
the calm snowfall, she stopped to listen to the electricity again. Did all power lines sound
49

like this, if you got close enough? She made a mental note to ask someone about it.
Torbjörn would know for sure.
She got into the car, picked up the snus tin and inserted a pouch before starting the
engine and driving back onto the motorway. She switched on the windscreen wipers.
Now someone was playing a saxophone. It sounded relaxed and unstructured, the
mouth piece hanging loosely between the musician’s lips. The tones were far too
melancholy so she fast forwarded a track, but the saxophone followed, blaring gloomily,
so she let it play. She pulled down the zip of her jacket, ripped off her hat and slung it on
the seat. The car was starting to get warm.
She remembered the 240 and was troubled. She really ought to fix it, but if she was
going to get it through the MOT it would cost more than the car was worth, so Ingemar
had said. Actually, she doubted that. It was almost rust free. Original stereo. Ingemar
was so bloody negative. Though she needed new tyres too, preferably winter tyres,
Ingemar had told her, smiling and showing his gums. And he was right, of course.
She had in fact considered selling the car. That would be easiest, just to avoid all the
problems connected with it. But who would want to buy it? There was no way she could
turn to her father again. She had sold her last car to him, the 244, but he had only bought
it because he could not refuse, because she was in such desperate need of money at that
time. He could be so dreadfully kind that it pained her, because she could not stop
herself taking advantage of him whenever she had the opportunity. She knew it but
could not stop herself. It made her feel ashamed.
He had never even driven a metre in the car: it stood in the hangar. For that reason she
always thought of the car as her own. In an emergency she could always drive up to the
border and take the tyres.
She reached for the phone and tapped out Torbjörn’s number.
“Are you asleep?”
“Nope,” he mumbled.
“What are you doing then? You sound out of it.”
“Sitting at the computer…”
Silence, then a mouse click.
“Didn’t Wennberg have tyres for the 240 that I could have?”
“I don’t know about ‘have’.”
“If he gets the money later.”
“If that’s what he said…”
50

“Well, you were there when he said it.”
“Was I?” He livened up now, and stopped clicking.
“When I met you at Statoil a couple of weekends ago, and I gave you a lift home. Don’t
you remember?”
“Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think he’ll give them to you.”
“He’ll get the money later.”
“I can ask.”
“Do that.”
She threw the telephone on the seat, peered at the instrument panel and remembered
that there was no clock there. Picked up her mobile again.
She would make it home before nine.
The hands of the clock had passed four, then five, and then five-thirty and still Gudrun
had not returned. Seved thought it strange that it was taking such a long time. He had
told her he was hungry and their hunger always meant a lot to her. She ran her life
according to it, holding it at bay, always producing food or asking about food. But
perhaps she thought he would make himself something to eat.
He sat by the window, looking at the white façade of the house on the far side of the
yard, visible in the darkness. It was still snowing but now the flakes were being blown
by the wind. You could see them in the light of the lamp on the barn.
On the rare occasions she went in there during the evening she used to place an oil lamp
on the draining board and the beam from her head lamp would flash past sooner or
later.
But now the window panes were in darkness and as shiny as steel.
He must have stood there waiting for fifteen minutes, but the ray of the head lamp did
not appear, and that could only mean she had gone down into their hide. Probably
because Lennart had forbidden that also.
He looked at the clock again. Nearly six.
He opened the fridge and inspected the shelves, finding a ring of Falu sausage, mustard
and margarine. He got out a slice of crisp bread, spread it, cut a few slices of sausage and
lay them on top. He decorated the sausage with a squirt of mustard, coarse grained and
51

strong, and ate while standing at the window, his hand cupped beneath his chin to catch
the crumbs. Shouldn’t Börje and Signe have been back by now?
He had hardly finished eating when he went to the telephone. Both the flat receiver and
the wall mounting were made of the same bone white plastic that had turned a shade of
yellow. The spiral flex had coiled itself into a tangle.
There was mustard on his thumb and he licked it off before tapping in the number.
“We’re on our way,” said Börje. ““We’re on our way,” said Börje. “We’re just passing the
flooring factory.”
“Gunvor went in and has been there for almost three hours.”
“What did you say? I can’t hear you.”
“Gunvor. She went into Hybblet at three-thirty and hasn’t come back yet.”
“She’s cleaning, then. That’s what she said she would do.”
“No, she went in because they shouted. She’s already done the cleaning.”
“What?”
“They shouted. And so she went in. So I think she’s down in their den.”
“Who shouted?”
“I don’t know. Carats, I think. But I don’t know.”
Börje mumbled something that Seved did not catch: no doubt it was to Signe.
“We’ll be home soon. Don’t do anything until I get back.”
“I’ll go in and have a look.”
“Okay.”
“Yes, okay, but don’t go down into the den.”
Anette was sitting in a corner of the sofa wearing jogging pants with vertical stripes and
watching TV when Susso stepped through the door, cold and short of breath. She lay the
car key down on the small round glass table in the hall, making a demonstratively loud
clatter. She had been longing for a tissue ever since she had left Vaikijaur, so she went
straight to the bathroom to blow her nose. At the very moment she flushed the paper
away she remembered that making a noise was forbidden because Joel woke up at the
slightest sound.
“Don’t flush!” came the voice from the sitting room. There was nothing more she could
do apart from shut the bathroom door quietly and make an apologetic face which her
52

sister did not even notice. With the tips of her shoes on the gilt strip between the hall
floor and the parquet flooring of the sitting room she leaned against the doorframe and
stood looking at the TV screen.
“What are you watching?”
“Beck.”
Marie Göransson was sitting behind a desk and talking about something that seemed
immensely serious, so serious that Susso did not dare to interrupt her. When she had
finally finished speaking Susso quickly butted in:
“I’ve left the car in the square.”
Her sister nodded without taking her eyes from the screen. She was furious, you could
tell. Susso tried to think of something to say to soften her up but could think of nothing.
Finally she said: “Have you spoken to Mum?”
Anette picked at the hem of her trousers and sighed.
“Not today.”
With a tug she removed a piece of thread which she rolled between her thumb and
forefinger. On the coffee table stood a purple candle on a ceramic dish filled with shells.
“I don’t think she’s very well.”
“Her as well?” said Susso, breathing in through her nose, making a sniffling sound.
Annette looked at her with interest and asked:
“Can you work in the shop on Saturday?”
Susso knew they were negotiating the loan of the car and the cost of the fuel, which she
had not even mentioned yet. There was no way out.
“I think so,” she said, wiping a cold knuckle under her nose. “If I don’t get any worse, I
mean.”
“Because Joel’s going to some dressing-up thing, a friend from nursery.”
Susso nodded.
“I’m sure it’ll be okay,” she said, lifting up her mobile. She did this quite unnecessarily,
looking at the digits of the clock without registering the time. She turned and walked
towards the door but was stopped by Annette’s question:
“What have you been doing?”
She took a deep breathe, wanting to avoid this part.
After a few seconds she said:
“I went to visit an old lady.”
“An old lady?”
“Who has seen something.”
“Where?”
53

It was pointless trying to lie: she would be able to see anyway by looking at the mileage
counter.
“In Vaikijaur.”
There was a momentary silence.
And then it came:
“And where’s that?”
Annette knew well enough where Vaikijaur was, she was sure, but it was not about that:
she was really going to get it because she had driven the car more than five hundred
kilometres.
Her sister was enjoying dragging it out.
“North of Jokkmokk.”
Surprisingly enough there was no “shiiit” from the sofa. Anette slowly tucked her feet
beneath her as she reached for the silver-coloured plastic snus tin on the coffee table.
She looked at her little sister with narrowed, glittering brown eyes. A square of oily skin
shone on her forehead where the fringe has parted.
“How did that go, then?”
The question took Susso so much by surprise that she let go of the door handle and
walked back, leaning in the doorway to see if her sister was being sarcastic. But she
looked totally genuine. She wanted to know.
“She seemed fairly sound,” Susso said, shrugging her shoulders. “So I set up a camera.
Reconnaissance.”
Anette inserted a snus pouch.
“Is that the one you got from Henry?” she asked, clicking the lid shut.
Susso nodded and unwillingly her eyes were drawn to the television. It was chaos now,
men shouting and rampaging. It could never end well. The action on the TV was
distracting Anette as well.
“Tell Mum,” she said slowly, “That you’ll stand in for me.”
Never a day went by without Susso looking in on her mother. It happened naturally
because they lived in the same block of flats on Mommagatan 1A, Susso on the second
floor and Gudrun on the third. It was a shabby three-storey building painted a dirty pink,
situated opposite the big hotel where the frost patches spread over the façade of dark
brown brick.
Whenever she opened the door the dog started barking and thrashing its bushy tail
about. Susso crouched down and was forced to grab hold of a coat hanging in the hall to
54

stop herself from being knocked backwards, he was so eager. The dog was part terrier
but also part Spitz, you could tell that from his curled tail. With a touch of irony had been
called the Hound of the Baskervilles but was also known as Basker.
“Hasn’t he had a walk today?” she shouted into the flat.
“Yes, but only one. I’m not well!”
“So I heard.”
Susso removed her jacket and hung it on a hook under the hat rack. Through the
doorway she saw half of her mother who was sitting at the kitchen table reading the
paper. Her sleeves were pulled up, revealing her watch with its thin strap of blue
leather. The radio was on, the volume turned to a pointlessly low level. There was a
smell of burnt coffee.
When Susso sat down at the table Gudrun looked up and smiled quickly, wrinkles
radiating out from the corners of her eyes. There were beads of mascara on the tips of
her eyelashes: so had she been working in the shop anyway? Either that or Ingemar had
been to say hello.
Susso pulled off her hat, laid it on the table and rested her hand inside it, playing with
the wool which was still cold.
“Do you want a coffee?”
“Coffee? Now?”
Gudrun folded the newspaper and looked at her.
“Wine, then?”
Susso shrugged: “Might as well.”
With a sigh she worked her way out of the straps of her salopettes, took out a stick of lip
salve and rubbed it against her lips: they were always dry when she was out in the cold.
There was something wrong with her, some gene that made her unsuited to the subarctic
climate. Gudrun stood up, took two glasses out of the cupboard and walked with
them over to the work top where the wine bottles lay in a cast iron rack next to the
microwave. She was wearing a loose-fitting apricot-coloured viscose top, the fabric so
thin that her bra straps and even the hooks at the back were visible through it.
The glasses arrived on the table and Gudrun sat down, one foot under her, the way she
always did when she drank wine: it was her relaxed mode. There was a short clucking
sound from the bottle then shards of red in the glasses.
“What’s this?” asked Susso, reaching out for a piece of paper that lay on the table.
Signatures in both ink and pencil covered the lower half.
“That,” replied Gudrun, looking weary, “That is a petition the neighbours have brought
round, because of the drilling. But I don’t know where they think it will get them.”
55

“Lower rent?” said Susso. She screwed up her eyes to make out the names listed below
the large word FLYER. The shorter names were the easiest to read: Esko, Snäll, Spett,
Holm, Kemi…
“Yes, but they have to drill to finish the job.”
Susso raised her glass.
“Yes, they certainly come up with ideas, our neighbours.”
Gudrun lifted her glass and before she drank she snorted:
“We’re not putting our names on any bloody list.”
“Not likely,” said Susso.
And they drank a toast to their decision.
Through the window you could look down onto Hjalmar Lundbomsvägen. The high piles
of snow on each side of the road were as rugged as mountain sides. The road was bathed
in a brilliant yellowish light. In the distance the Ore mountain towered up with the cone
of a Christmas tree at the top. It looked small from a distance but the tree was in fact
twenty metres high and hung with thousands of lights. It was snowing. Immediately
outside the window pane it was falling sparsely but rapidly in all directions, but in the
light of the street lamps the flakes seemed to hover motionless in the air.
Susso tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
“The woman I was with today,” she said slowly, “could have seen something, I think. The
one in Vaikijaur. She’s called Edith.”
Gudrun pulled at her top but said nothing. There was a clink as the neck of the bottle
touched the wine glass.
“It was like a little old man who came creeping into her garden. About a metre tall. She
said he had eyes like a cat.”
“A cat?”
“You know. Pupils like straight lines. And that wasn’t too far from Rapadalen.”
“Well, it has to be a hundred kilometres, at least.”
“That’s not far, Mum.”
“But do you believe her? I mean, has she got any proof?”
“She saw him in full daylight. From a distance of two metres, I would think, or perhaps
not even that. Through the window. That makes it an absolutely unique observation.”
Gudrun placed the tips of her thumbs and index fingers on the foot of the wine glass and
turned it a half circle.
“Did you set up the camera, or what?”
56

Susso nodded.
“So in a few weeks’ time I’ve got to borrow your car so I can drive up and collect it
because I don’t want to ask Nettan again, she gets so shitty about it. She lives to lend me
her car and then make me pay her back somehow.”
“You know she’s going to sell it. So she can get out and walk more.”
“Yes, but I don’t know what she’s thinking of. How can she manage without a car?
“We’ll share.”
“What, the Passat?”
Gudrun nodded.
“I thought about something,” said Susso. “When I stopped in Porjus. There are power
lines there, running over the road, coming directly from the power station. And they
kind of sing. From all the electricity flowing along them. And I thought that perhaps
that’s what it felt like for the trolls, because it’s often said they disappeared when
electricity was put in everywhere. Perhaps they felt the current as strongly as I did in
Porjus, but everywhere, in every power line. Couldn’t that be the case?”
“It might be.”
“But don’t you think that seems logical?”
Gudrun pushed up her sleeves and looked at the clock.
“Are you working tomorrow?”
When he had replaced the receiver he remained standing in the dark kitchen, hesitantly.
He had detected a naked tension in Börje’s voice and that made him uncertain. He
regretted telling him he was going to go in and have a look.
He went out to the steps, turning back immediately to get his torch which was attached
to the fridge door by a magnet. There was no lighting in the building. There had been too
much playing about with the switches.
The snow landed sharply against his throat and he stopped to pull the zip all the way up.
Then as he walked across the yard he realised he was unwilling, and afraid. And he knew
why. The beam from the torch swept over the wire netting of the dog enclosure, meeting
the rows of eyes inside. The dogs stood up, silent, tense. No wonder. They were terrified
after the previous night. The little one was literally shaken.
Why had they not said anything about what happened with the dogs, why had no-one
had told him that they might actually commit such mindless cruelty? He knew that
57

others might run a risk, but Börje and Gunvor had always convinced him that they were
completely safe themselves. Not only that, but safer than other people.
“They know their limits with us,” Gudrun always said.
Seved knew that to be true more than anyone.
But if they could attack the dogs what else were they capable of doing?
Where did they draw the line?
Was there any line?
“It’s some kind of bloody raptus.”
That was all Börje had said when Seved had asked him what was going on.
He knew it was serious – more serious than Börje and Gunvor liked to show. Lennart
had turned up three times during the last month and that if anything was a measure of
the seriousness of the situation. On one occasion he had even had with him a couple of
people Seved had never seen before: a bearded, older man who had walked with a limp
around the outside of Hybblet, and an older woman in a wheelchair he had only
glimpsed the back of, and a young woman who was pushing the wheelchair. Seved had
never before experienced strangers coming to the yard before. So something was going
on.
He had reached the veranda. Before lowering the door handle he listened carefully but it
was so silent he could hear the snow flakes falling onto the black refuse sacks.
Because he knew the door was warped and difficult to open he tugged it hard.
The stench hit him, coming like a warm and sickening blast from inside the darkness. It
was the fumes of a strong alkaline cleaning solution blended with the smell of rotten
meat, rancid dry fodder and faeces. He did not even want to imagine what it had smelled
like while Gunvor was cleaning up. No-one had cleaned Hybblet for almost three weeks.
All they had done was carry in plastic bags and boxes of food.
With his left hand covering his nose and mouth he stepped over the threshold and
carefully kicked the snow off the soles of his boots, but not too loudly because he did not
want it to sound as if he was knocking.
He let the beam of light shine across the pattern of the vinyl flooring and then glided up
towards the faded flowered wallpaper on the narrow wall that separated the two doors
on the opposite side of the entrance hall. There was a rustling of small clawed feet in one
of the rooms. He stood motionless, listening, and after a while he was forced to let go of
his nose and draw in breath.
Shit, what a stink. He pulled a face and forced himself to stay where he was and not run
outside.
58

Should he make his presence known? It went against his instincts but the big ones did
not like it when people crept up on them. They were exactly like bears in that respect.
They could be dangerous, unintentionally violent.
“Gunvor,” he said.
After waiting a moment he said:
“Mother?”
Shouting would not be a good idea. Sudden noise could irritate them and the little ones
would certainly become distressed and things could quickly become unpleasant.
Because he could not see her he thought it was as he assumed, that she had gone
downstairs into their den. She could not be up here, surely?
While shone the ray of light up the stairs but quickly swung it back down because he did
not want to spark off anything up there. He was not sure which of them were in the
house and bearing in mind that it was highly unlikely that Gunvor was upstairs it was
unnecessary to disturb them.
He took one long step, leaned forwards and peered into the kitchen.
“Gunvor?”
They had already made a mess again, a real mess. Deliberately, it seemed. On the floor
lay polystyrene trays with remnants of minced meat that had turned grey, half-eaten
packages of black pudding and liver pâté, an opened packet of bacon. An upturned paper
carrier bag from the Co-op, its contents of apples and potatoes strewn across the floor. It
looked as if they had amused themselves by trampling on them. Judging by the amount
of dry fodder that surrounded the plastic buckets standing in a long row by the sink they
had dug down deeply to see if there was anything apart from pellets at the bottom.
They did not usually crap in the kitchen but he could tell from the smell that they had
and it was while he was looking for their droppings that he caught sight of her, only a
few metres away.
She was sitting with her back propped against the wall and her legs straight out in front
of her, her hands resting limply on the floor.
Since it never occurred to him to approach her he must have instantly felt something
was wrong, but he stood with the torch aimed straight at her for several seconds before
it occurred to him that the back of her head with the shiny knot of hair was where her
face should be, and that she was staring straight at the wallpaper without seeing it.
59

STALLO - Synopsis
There are two narrative strands at the close of pg 59:
That of Susso, a journalist and troll-obsessive who is investigating the possible
sighting of a troll.
That of the family - Gunvor and Borje, with their supposedly adopted children
Seved and Signe – who live on a farm which houses strange creatures in the
barns. The mother, Gunvor, has just been found dead, apparently murdered by
one of these creatures. The family are in contact with Lennart, who lives on an
adjoining remote farm and who appears to advise them on the care of the
creatures. They are clearly in his thrall & under his command.
Susso:
We learn the story of Sven Hornell, Sussos’ grandfather. He was a famous nature
photographer, (he actually exists though there are no records of his ‘troll’ photo:
http://www.svenhornell.se/) who took aerial pictures of the Swedish mountains
and Finnish coastlines.
One day in 1987 he took a picture of a bear running over the marshes. The bear
was carrying on its back a small creature, a little like a monkey. After consulting a
number of experts who failed to provide any explanation, he decided to call the
creature a ‘troll’. Today (2004) Susso is following in her grandfather’s footsteps,
running a webpage www.riktigatroll.se (TRANS: www.realtrolls.se) seeking and
documenting sightings of trolls and other strange creatures. The myths and Sami
folklore about the Stallo people are her passion and obsession. The Hörnell
family owns a souvenir shop with Sven’s name.
After a few weeks Edith calls Susso to tell her that the supposed troll has been
spotted outside her house again. When Susso downloads the images from the
hidden camera, she finds a number of pictures of a very short person, with
60

yellow eyes, wide apart, and a nose almost like the one of a dog. Is it a child or a
prank, or is it in fact a troll: a stallo?
The Farm (Gunvor and Borje)
Seved and Börje are devastated and scared after Gunvor’s death. They are
instructed by Lennart not to move her body, as he claims the ‘adults’ will be
furious. According to Lennart the only thing that will placate them now, and
prevent their fury is the presence of a child. Lennart has had his eye on a boy in
Vaikijaur, who is not attending kindergarten and who spends most of his days
alone. They kidnap the boy and bring him back to the farm using a small
creature, seemingly under their power, to lure him away.
Susso
The missing boy is of course Edith's grandson Mattias. Susso publishes her
pictures of the supposed Stallo on her website, which are immediately adopted
by the media who dub it the ’Vaikijaur-man’. Media attention grows, and Susso is
suddenly depicted as the ‘troll hunter of Kiruna’.
The police are forced to investigate, and back on the farm, it is transpiring that
Seved and Signe are not in fact adopted, but were also both kidnapped as
children years before in order to placate whatever lives in the barn. Mattias is
being groomed for this role.
The Farm
Lennart fears that Susso is getting too close to the truth and may need to
‘disappear’. Susso gets word that the ‘troll’ has been sighted near a remote
‘Laestadian’ (a strict orthodox Christian community) farm outside of Kvikkjokk.
Susso alerts the police, who go to what turns out to be Lennart's farm and
discover the Vaikijaur-man, known as Jirvin to Lennart and the family. Jirvin
runs and hides in one of the barns; when the police catch up with him, all they
find is a pile of clothes and a fox, which slips away.
61

Susso
Lennart organizes an attempt on the lives of Susso and her boyfriend (Torbjorn’),
but they escape.
Susso is contacted by a man named Mats who claims that he recognizes the troll
on her website, and that it lived in his garage for a year in the ‘80s. Susso, her
mother Gudrun and Torbjörn leave and drive the 120km south to Mats’ house in
Avesta to investigate the claim.
When Lennart learns where Susso is headed, he also leaves for Avesta, but in a
huge campervan, which appears to have something large and heavy inside.
In Avesta, it is clear that it was indeed Jirvin who lived with Mats’ family, but
Mats informs them that the last he saw of Jirvin was when he drove him to an
address by Lake Vattern, another 350km away. Susso, Gudrun and Torbjorn
follow the trail.
By Lake Vättern, Susso & co arrive at what turns out to be the house of John
Bauer. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bauer_(illustrator)) Bauer is a 19 th
Century well-known Swedish illustrator of fairytales. His most famous works are
paintings of – trolls.
The current owner tells them they are not the first ones searching for a missing
child at the house. Years before, a journalist visited the Bauer house investigating
another missing child – Magnus Brodin, the boy from the opening pages who
disappeared in 1978, and whose mother claimed he had been abducted by a
giant. The name of the journalist was Sven Jerring, a very popular radio
journalist who now has been dead for 20 years. Susso & co decide to go to
Stockholm, where Jerring’s widow lives.
Lennart learns of their progress, and heads for Stockholm as well.
62

In Stockholm Jerring’s widow tells the story of John Bauer and the stallo people:
a story told to Jerring by John Bauer’s wife, only days before the entire Bauer
family were drowned in a shipwreck on Lake Vattern in 1918.
In 1904, Bauer went to Lapland to illustrate a book. There he met some Samis
(Laplanders) who introduced him to a squirrel; a bewitchingly intelligent animal
which became Bauer’s pet for the trip. The Samis agreed that Bauer could take
the squirrel back with him, if he agreed to let them adopt his unborn child. Bauer
agreed
15 years later when the Bauer’s son Bengt turned four years old, three men
arrived at the Bauer house: one a giant, almost 3 meters tall, another shorter
than a three year old child. They had come for Bengt.
Bauer, desperate to keep his son, asked for some time, and decided the family
should flee to Stockholm. The day before they left on the ship for Stockholm, Mrs
Bauer contacted Jerring and told him the story, asking him to write about it.
When in ’78 Jerring heard about Mona Brodin who claimed that her son had been
taken by a giant, he started to investigate. Jerring visited the Bauer house, and
returned without an explanation, but accompanied by the squirrel – now
understood to be a shape-shifting stallo - which still lives with his widow.
Susso, Gudrun, and Torbjörn decide to travel to Mona’s house. They take the
squirrel-stallo with them
The Farm
Seved decides that he wants to save the little boy Mattias. He explains that his
real name is not Seved, but Magnus, the boy who was kidnapped years before,
and that he no longer remembers his family name.
Susso
63

Mona lives just outside of Stockholm and when Susso & co arrive they are
greeted by Lennart, who confronts them and releases a huge stallo: the one that
killed Gunvor. Lennart leaves them, expecting the stallo to kill them all.
A fight ensues on the frozen lake outside Mona’s house. In the fight, Susso shoots
the Stallo, who turns into a giant bear as he dies.
Taking Mona, Susso and Co. leave to return north to find Magnus and Mattias.
The Farm
Seved is trying to escape with Signe and Mattias. The other giant troll who lives
on the farm senses the death of the stallo in the South. He too changes into a bear
and runs away.
Seved, Signe and Mattias flee, and leave Mattias by the first house they find. They
then return to the farm to persuade Borje to run. However Lennart has returned,
furious, and Seved and Signe are captured and imprisoned in the basement. Borje
is killed in the fight.
Susso
Mona takes Susso & co to a family who it was rumoured had a giant living with
them. The family eventually reveal that the giant living with them is another bear
stallo, and is the giant who took Magnus years ago. His name is Urtas, and says he
was subsequently banished from the Farm. Urtas agrees to take them to where
he took Magnus.
When they arrive at the farm they meet Lennart, who appears terrified at Urtas’
arrival. Lennart, who throughout the story has kept his left hand hidden in a
bandage, tears it off to reveal a bear’s hand, screaming that Urtas should
recognize him. Urtas picks Lennart up and takes off into the woods.
64

Seved and Signe are released from the basement. Mona recognizes Seved, but he
cannot understand who she is.
Seved is arrested and tried for the kidnap of Mattias, which he admits. The
sentence is lenient.
ENDING…
Susso is booked to present a slide show of her grandfather’s photographs. She
plans to follow this with a public discussion of her search for Mattias and her
subsequent knowledge of the Stallo. She is prevented, however, by a strange
encounter just after the slide show, with a woman whose hand is furred, like an
animal, and who speaks of the intensity of the love between a child and its
parent. Susso decides not to speak of her Stallo knowledge.
It transpires, then, that Stallo-human breeding is not only limited to Lennart…
who knows how many more there may be.
65