ASA LARSSON ~ THE SAVAGE ALTAR (13 page)

“It’s Rebecka!” he exclaimed, a huge smile splitting his face.

“Come, Bella!” he called over his shoulder, and in a trice a pointer bitch came galloping up the stairs.

“Well, hello there,” said Rebecka. “Is it you that’s got such a deep voice?”

“She’s got a really manly bark,” said Sivving. “But it keeps the people trying to sell raffle tickets and the like away, so I’m not complaining. Come on in!”

He opened the kitchen door and switched on the light. Everything was terribly neat, and it smelled slightly musty.

"Sit down," he said, pointing to the rib-backed settee.

Rebecka explained why she was there, and while Sivving fetched the spare key she looked around. The freshly washed green-and-white-striped rag rug was in precisely the right place on the pine floor. Instead of an oilcloth on the table, there was a beautifully ironed linen cloth, decorated with a little vase of beaten copper, holding dried buttercups and everlasting flowers. There were windows on three sides, and from the window behind her you could see her grandmother’s house. In daylight, of course. All you could see at the moment was the reflection of the pine lamp hanging from the ceiling.

When Sivving had given her the keys he sat down at the opposite side of the table. Somehow he didn’t look quite at home in his own kitchen. He was perched on the very edge of the red-stained chair. Bella didn’t seem able to settle either, but was wandering about like a lost soul.

“It’s been a long time.” Sivving smiled, looking closely at Rebecka. “I was just about to have my first cup of coffee. Would you like one?”

“Please,” said Rebecka, sketching out a timetable in her head.

It wouldn’t take more than five minutes to pack her case. Tidying up, half an hour. She could catch the ten-thirty plane, provided Curt turned up with the car keys.

“Come on,” said Sivving, getting up.

He went out of the kitchen and down the cellar steps, with Bella at his heels. Rebecka followed them.

Everything was cozy and homely in the boiler room. A made-up bed stood against one wall. Bella climbed straight into her own bed, which was next to it. Her water and food bowls were sparkling clean, newly washed. There was a washstand in front of the water heater, and an electric hot plate stood on a little drop-leaf table.

“You can pull up that stool,” said Sivving, pointing.

He took down a little coffeepot and two mugs from a string shelf on the wall. The aroma from the tin of coffee blended with the smell of dog, cellar and soap. A pair of long johns, two flannel shirts and a T-shirt with “Kiruna Truck” on it were hanging on a washing line.

“I must apologize,” said Sivving, nodding toward the long johns. “But then, I wasn’t expecting such an elegant visitor.”

“I don’t understand,” said Rebecka in bewilderment. “Do you sleep down here?”

“Well, you see,” said Sivving, running his hand over the stubble on his chin as he carefully counted scoops of coffee into the pot, “Maj-Lis died two years ago.”

Rebecka muttered a few words of sympathy in reply.

“It was stomach cancer. They opened her up, but all they could do was stitch her back together. Anyway, the house was too big for me. The kids had moved out long ago, and with Maj-Lis gone too… First of all I stopped using the top floor. The kitchen and the little bedroom downstairs were enough. Then Bella and I realized that we were only using the kitchen. So then I moved the TV into the kitchen and slept in there, on the sofa bed. And stopped using the bedroom.”

“And in the end you moved down here.”

“Well, it’s much less cleaning. And the washing machine and the shower were down here. I bought that little fridge. It’s big enough for me.”

He pointed toward a little fridge in the corner with a plate rack on top of it.

“But what does Lena say, and…” Rebecka fumbled for the name of Sivving’s son.

“Mats. Ah, the coffee’s ready. Well, Lena makes a lot of noise and plays hell and reckons her dad’s lost the plot. When she comes to visit with the kids, they run about all over the house. And in some ways that’s good, because otherwise I might as well sell up. She’s moved to Gällivare, and she’s got three boys. But they’re getting quite big now, and starting to live their own lives. They do like fishing, though, so they usually come over quite a bit in the spring to fish through holes in the ice. Milk? Sugar?”

“Black.”

“Mats is divorced, but he’s got two kids. Robin and Julia. They usually come on the holidays and so on. What about you, Rebecka? Husband and children?”

Rebecka sipped at the hot coffee. It went all the way to her cold feet.

“No, neither.”

“No, I suppose they wouldn’t dare come near you….”

“What do you mean?” laughed Rebecka.

“Your temperament, my girl,” said Sivving as he got up and fetched a packet of cinnamon buns from the fridge. “You’ve always been a bit fierce. Here, have a bun. God, I remember that time you lit a fire in the ditch. You were a tiny little thing. Stood there like a policewoman with your hand raised when your grandmother and I came running. ‘Stop! Don’t come any closer!’ you shouted, full of authority, and you were so cross when we put the fire out. You were going to grill fish on it.”

Sivving was laughing so much, he had to wipe away a tear at the memory. Bella raised her head and barked happily.

“Or the time you threw a stone at Erik’s head because you weren’t allowed to go with the lads on their raft,” Sivving went on, laughing so that his stomach quivered.

“All barred by the statute of limitations.” Rebecka smiled as she gave Bella a piece of her bun. “Is it you who’s been clearing the snow over at Grandmother’s?”

“Well, it’s nice for Inga-Lill and Affe to be able to do other things when they come here. And I need the exercise.”

He patted his stomach.

“Hello!”

They heard Sanna’s voice on the stairs. Bella jumped up, barking.

“Down here,” called Rebecka.

“Hi,” said Sanna, and came down. “It’s okay, I like dogs.”

She was speaking to Sivving, who was holding on to Bella’s collar.

She bent down and let Bella sniff at her face. Sivving looked serious.

“Sanna Strandgård,” he said. “I read about your brother. It was a terrible thing. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” said Sanna, her lap full of friendly dog. “Rebecka, Curt rang. He’s on his way with the keys.”

Sivving stood up.

“Coffee?” he asked.

Sanna nodded and accepted a thick china mug with a pattern of brown and yellow flowers around the top. Sivving offered her the bag of buns so that she could dunk one in her coffee.

“They’re good,” said Rebecka. “Who’s been baking? Was it you?”

Sivving’s reply was an embarrassed grunt.

“Oh, that’s Mary Kuoppa. She can’t cope with the idea that there’s a freezer somewhere in the village that isn’t full of decent buns.”

Rebecka smiled at his pronunciation of “Mary.” He said it so that it rhymed with “Harry.”

“The poor woman’s called Mary, surely?” said Sanna, and laughed.

“Well, that’s what the teacher at our school thought too," said Sivving, brushing a few crumbs off the cloth; Bella licked them up straightaway. “But Mary just used to stare out of the window and pretend she didn’t realize he was talking to her when he said ‘Maaaary.’ ”

This time he sounded like a bleating sheep. Rebecka and Sanna started giggling, and looked at each other like a couple of schoolgirls. Suddenly it was as if all the awkwardness between them had been swept away.

I still care about her, in spite of everything, thought Rebecka.

“Wasn’t there somebody in the village called Slark?” she asked. “After the parents’ idol, Slark Gabble?”

“No,” laughed Sivving, “that must have been somewhere else. There’s never been anybody called Slark in this village. Then again, when your grandmother was young she knew a girl she felt really sorry for. She was very delicate when she was born, and because they didn’t think she was going to survive, they got the schoolteacher to do an emergency baptism. The teacher was called Fredrik Something-or-other. Anyway, the little girl lived, and then of course she was to be baptized properly by the priest. Of course, the priest understood only Swedish, and the parents only spoke Tornedalen Finnish. So the priest picked up the child and asked the parents what she was to be called. The parents thought he was asking who had baptized the child, so they answered,
‘Feki se kasti,’
it was Fredrik who baptized her. And so the priest wrote
‘Fekisekasti’
in the church register. And you know how people respected the priest in those days. The child was called Fekisekasti for the rest of her life.”

Rebecka glanced at the clock. Curt was bound to be here by now. She could catch the flight, even if there wasn’t an awful lot of time.

“Thanks for the coffee,” she said, and stood up.

“Are you off?” asked Sivving. “Was it just a flying visit?”

“Arrived yesterday, leaving today,” replied Rebecka with a brief smile.

“You know how it is with these career women,” said Sanna to Sivving. “Always on the move.”

Rebecka pulled on her gloves with jerky movements.

“This wasn’t exactly a pleasure trip,” she said.

“I’ll hang the key up in the usual place,” she went on, turning to Sivving.

“Come back in the spring,” said Sivving. “Drive out to the old cottage at Jiekajärvi. Do you remember in the old days, when we used to go up there? Your grandfather and I took the snowmobile. And you and your grandmother and Maj-Lis and the kids skied all the way.”

"I’d like to do that," said Rebecka, and discovered that she was telling the truth.

The cottage, she thought. It was the only place grandmother allowed herself to sit still. Once the berries picked that day had been cleaned. Or the birds that had been shot had been plucked and drawn.

She could see her grandmother now, absorbed in reading a story while Rebecka played cards or a board game with her grandfather. Because the cottage got so damp when nobody was there, the pack of cards had swollen to double its size. The board game was warped and uneven, and it was difficult to balance the pieces on it. But it didn’t matter.

And the feeling of security, falling asleep as the adults sat chatting around the table beside you. Or slipping into dreams to the sound of Grandmother washing up in the red plastic bowl, with the heat radiating from the stove.

“It was good to see you,” said Sivving. “Really good. Wasn’t it, Bella?”

R
ebecka gave Sanna and the children a lift home and parked outside the apartment block where Sanna lived. She would have preferred to say a quick good-bye in the car and drive off. Quick good-byes in cars were good. If you were sitting in the car it was difficult to hug. Particularly if you were wearing a seat belt. So you escaped the hugs. And in a car there were other things to talk about, apart from “We must meet up again soon” and “We mustn’t leave it so long next time.” A few words about not forgetting the bag on the backseat and not forgetting the bag in the boot and “Are you sure you’ve got everything now?” Then, once the car door had chopped off the rest of the unspoken sentences, you could wave and put your foot down without an unpleasant taste in your mouth. You didn’t have to stand there like an idiot stamping your feet up and down while your thoughts went round and round like a swarm of midges, trying to find the right words. No, she’d stay in the car. And not undo her seat belt.

But when she stopped the car Sanna jumped out without a word. A second later, Virku followed her. Rebecka felt she had to get out as well. She turned her collar up above her ears, but it gave no protection against the cold, which immediately worked its way under the fabric and fastened itself to her earlobes like two clothes pegs. She looked up at Sanna’s apartment. A little block made of panels of forest green wood, with a red tin roof. The snowplow hadn’t been around for a long time. The few parked cars had left deep tracks in the snow. An old Dodge was hibernating under a snowdrift. She hoped she wouldn’t get stuck on the way out. The building was owned by LKAB, the mining company. But only ordinary people lived here, so LKAB saved money by not using the snowplow as often as they should. If you wanted to get the car out in the mornings, you had to clear the snow yourself.

Sara and Lova were still sitting in the backseat. Their hands and elbows kept meeting in some nonsense rhyme that Sara had mastered to perfection; Lova was making a huge effort to learn it. Every so often she got it wrong, and they both exploded into giggles before starting all over again.

Virku was running around like a mad thing, taking in all the new smells with her little black nose. Circled around two unfamiliar parked cars. Read with interest a haiku that next door’s dog had drawn on the white snowdrift in golden yellow sign language; she seemed flattered. Followed the irritating trail of a mouse that had disappeared under the front steps where she couldn’t follow.

Sanna tipped her head back and sniffed the air.

“It smells like snow,” she said. “It’s going to snow. A lot.”

She turned toward Rebecka.

She’s just so like Viktor, thought Rebecka, catching her breath.

The transparent blue skin, stretched over the high cheekbones. Although Sanna’s cheeks were slightly rounder, like a child’s.

And the way she stands, thought Rebecka. Just like Viktor. Head always slightly crooked, leaning to one side or the other, as if it were a little bit loose.

“Right, well, I’d better get going, then,” said Rebecka, trying to start her good-byes, but Sanna was squatting down and calling to Virku.

“Here, girl! Come here, there’s a good girl!”

Virku came hurtling through the snow like a black glove.

It’s just like a picture from a fairy tale, thought Rebecka. The sweet little black dog, her coat tipped with tiny snow crystals. Sanna, a wood nymph in her knee-length gray sheepskin coat, her sheepskin hat on top of her thick, wavy blond hair.

There was something about Sanna that gave her the ability to relate to animals. They were somehow alike, Sanna and the dog. The little bitch who’d been mistreated and neglected for years. Where had all her troubles gone? They’d simply been washed away and replaced by sheer joy at being able to push her nose into freshly fallen snow, or to bark at a frightened squirrel in a pine tree. And Sanna. She’d only just found her brother hacked to death in the church. And now she was standing in the snow playing with the dog.