I Am Behind You (34 page)

His knees are creaking and his back is aching by the time Donald gets close enough to make out the details of the Bloodman's appearance. He has no hands, and his body is blotchy red with dried blood. He has no hair on his head.

Donald is clear about
one
thing, otherwise he would not have embarked on this mission. The figure in front of him is not his father. It is the image of his father that he created after the accident, the image that supplanted every other image. The Bloodman. Donald's greatest fear, yet at the same time something that is not real.

So what is it then?

Donald's favourite Åsa-Nisse quip comes from the film
Åsa-Nisse Goes a-Hunting
.

Åsa-Nisse and his sidekick Klabbarparn are lying in wait in the forest. It is dark, and visibility is poor. They don't know it, but their wives have come looking for them. Klabbarparn spots them and thinks it might be an elk. Because he's not sure, he wonders out loud whether he ought to shoot.

At which point Åsa-Nisse says: ‘Go on, shoot it so we can see what it is.'

On many occasions when Donald has been unsure about a decision, those words have popped into his mind, and never have they been more apposite than right now.

Shoot it so we can see what it is.

Donald keeps on walking with this mantra going round and round in his head, but with only twenty metres to go, he comes to a halt. The
Bloodman is still moving away from him, but Donald just can't do it any more. His lungs are hurting, his back is aching, and his knees feel like a mechanism that has seized up in the locked position.

There is an alternative, of course. He could shoot the Bloodman in the back. But that would be wrong. We must meet our fears face to face, cowboy ethics or whatever. Anyway, it would be wrong.

‘Hello!' Donald shouts, leaning forward with his hands on his thighs. ‘Hello, you bastard!'

The Bloodman stops. And turns around.

If you've worked in a sawmill all your life, you've seen plenty of blood, both your own and other people's. The upper body and face of the figure in front of Donald are covered in blood, but the blood isn't right. It is far too pale. A child might imagine blood looking that way, but that's not what it's really like. It's a con.

Donald staggers closer. Beneath the blood that isn't blood he can see that the figure has a face which resembles Father's face, but it is blurred and unclear, like an old photograph.

‘Are you trying to frighten me, you bastard?' Donald shouts, raising the gun. Then he meets the Bloodman's gaze.

There's one missing. There's one missing.

Why does that fucking list of presidents have to pop up
now
? Against Donald's will the presidents start chanting inside his head, searching for the missing name.

Roosevelt, Wilson, Harding…

Roosevelt, Wilson, Harding…

A hole as black as the creature's eyes opens up in Donald's mind when he tries to fill in the missing name; he is afraid the hole will widen, sucking in more and more things until he ends up a babbling dementia case.

Blood.

Yes, the blood will carry on pumping around his body while he sits there pointlessly dribbling. What kind of future is that, what kind of life is that? Think of Hemingway. When his strength began to fail and his thoughts were no longer of any value, he picked up his gun,
went out into the forest and shot himself. That's how a man dies.

Blood.

The figure has taken a couple of steps towards Donald, who is seeing things more and more clearly. How much better and more dignified it would be to put an end to everything here and now. To fall like a warrior, like a Lone Ranger on the prairie, letting his

Blood

spread across the ground.

Father comes closer, Father is by his side now.

‘I know,' Donald says. ‘I know.'

Blood. Blood.

He should have done it on that day when he was ten years old. After Father had bled to death, Donald went inside and shut down the saw. Instead he should have put his neck on the bench beside it. One sideways jerk and

Blood

the black hole that looks into his eyes as he turns the gun around and pushes the barrel into his mouth. The metal is cold against his lips, and as he fumbles for the trigger he thinks
cold
and he thinks
cool
and he thinks
Coolidge
.

Donald gasps and pulls the gun out of his mouth.

‘Coolidge!' he yells to the figure, who is standing there looking at him.

Blo—

‘Don't start with me, you bastard! It's Coolidge! Wilson, Harding, Coolidge!'

Donald takes two steps backwards, raises the gun to his shoulder and screws up one eye. The sight's eyepiece is set for a greater distance, and the Bloodman's head is no more than a blurred, pale mass, with the eyes visible as dark pools. Donald aims for a point between and directly above those pools. Then he pulls the trigger.

This is the first time he has fired a gun in an open space where there is nothing for the sound to bounce off. The report when it goes off spreads in all directions, like dropping a stone in a pond, but in
three dimensions. The noise fills the field and soars up into the sky as the recoil smashes into Donald's shoulder, making his weakened body wobble.

The Bloodman is still on his feet, but he has acquired a third eye between the other two, a bright blue eye. It takes Donald a couple of seconds to work out what he is seeing. The bullet has drilled a tunnel straight through the Bloodman's skull, and Donald can see a patch of sky about the size of a ten-öre piece.

The astonishing thing is that the Bloodman hasn't fallen over. He is simply standing there with his arms dangling at his sides, gazing at Donald with a look that expresses nothing. No surprise, no accusation, not even pain. But he isn't dead. Donald reloads the shotgun.

As he puts the gun to his shoulder again, something happens that makes him stop with his finger on the trigger. The Bloodman begins to
run
. Skin, trousers, blood start to dissolve, as if someone has poured a jug of water over a watercolour painting.

Donald lowers the gun, and it falls from his grasp without him even noticing. The Bloodman is no longer the Bloodman. Wet, sticky noises like the sound of bursting membranes can be heard as his face and clothing lose their solidity and turn to liquid, which defies gravity and flows towards the hole in his head.

The figure in front of Donald grows paler and paler as layer after layer of colour and form are sucked into the diminishing hole, and as the Bloodman disappears, something starts to grow inside Donald.

‘Dead…' he whispers.

The metamorphosis is complete. Donald is now facing a white creature with no distinguishing features. No mouth, no nose, no ears. Just those two eyes, still gazing at him. The hole in the forehead has disappeared. The figure turns and walks away from Donald, who stands there watching it go as the process of growth within him reaches its conclusion. When the creature is ten metres away from him, he yells: ‘Dead! You're dead, you bastard! Completely! Fucking! Dead!'

He sinks down on the grass next to his gun, strokes the barrel.
He takes it in his arms, crooning to it like a baby as he continues to caress it.

You killed him. You're such a good gun. You killed the Bloodman.

What happened at Riddersholm sawmill on that summer's day was just a terrible accident, nothing more. Donald tries to think about Father, and discovers that it is possible. He sees a bright, kind person with callused hands and hair that has begun to turn grey at the temples, eyes that look at Donald with love and appreciation. No taste of chocolate mixed with blood in his mouth, no accusing figure with stumps where his hands should be.

All his life Donald has been oppressed by that figure, and now it's over. He's dead. Donald has killed him. He puts down the gun, places his hands on his heart, and what he feels inside is a powerful machine, pumping the blood around his body. He leans back slowly until he is lying down, looking up at the sky. That vast blue surface belongs to him, and he embraces it with his entire being. If this is his dream, then he is

God. I am God.

the sovereign of this place. Nothing can limit him any longer; whatever his eyes can see is his and his alone. It is wonderful. Donald lies there for quite some time, revelling in the feeling that he owns the world.

Only when he sits up and looks around does he remember what happened. Peter, the caravan, the car. He has been dumped here. Driven out, cast out like a scapegoat in the desert.

Fucking bastard.

Donald grabs the gun and uses it as a support to help him get to his feet. He waves the barrel at the sky and shouts: ‘What the fuck?' He has so much energy, but no outlet for it. He looks all around, and is rewarded with the sight of something approaching from the direction in which the white figure disappeared. Fine. He's quite happy to deal with whatever it might be. The pleasure of the report, the thud against his shoulder, the fleeting sensation of reaching beyond himself with lethal power. Wonderful.

He looks through the gun sight, sees what is approaching, lowers the gun and smiles. He sticks two fingers in his mouth and whistles.

‘Come on, little man! Come on!'

In a couple of minutes Benny is standing there panting, his tongue hanging out. In Donald's current state of mind he doesn't find it strange that Benny is accompanied by a cat. The animals have come to fetch him, bless them.

‘Good boy,' Donald says, scratching Benny behind the ears. ‘Good dog.' The cat looks at him, but when Donald reaches out to stroke it, it moves away. ‘All right. Good cat.'

Donald peers beyond the animals, but can see nothing but the horizon. Benny is lying at Donald's feet with his head resting on his paws as he looks up at his master. Donald lets him catch his breath, then says: ‘Can you find your way home?'

Benny pricks up his ears and cocks his head on one side. Then he glances at the cat, which has started washing itself. If the cat could shrug, it would; it seems to have no interest whatsoever in the question.

‘Find your mistress?' Donald says. ‘Find your mistress!'

Benny gets up and goes over to the cat. They look into each other's eyes, and Donald feels as if they are conferring on some level that is inaccessible to him. The cat abandons her ablutions and the two animals set off, heading back the way they came.

Donald hooks his gun over his shoulder and follows them.

*

‘Bandages,' Majvor says. ‘Do you have any bandages?'

Isabelle is lying on the ground outside the farmers' caravan. Majvor and Lennart are kneeling on either side of her, squeezing above Isabelle's elbows as hard as they can to stop the flow of blood. The stab wounds are long and deep, and Isabelle's face has a yellowish tinge.

Olof hurries inside and Majvor catches a glimpse of Isabelle's eyes,
somehow transparent, before her eyelids slowly close. She dare not loosen her grip on Isabelle's arm to pat her on the cheek, so instead she leans forward and blows on her face.

‘Isabelle,' she says. ‘Wake up, Isabelle. You have to stay with us.'

Isabelle's eyelids flicker, and she looks towards the middle of the camp. Majvor follows her gaze and sees that all the incarnations of James Stewart are lying flat on their faces on the grass. Harvey is there too, and with his chalk-white fur and round body he resembles a pile of snow that has been shovelled to one side in the summer.

Olof emerges with a roll of gauze and a roll of duct tape. He and Majvor work together; it feels as if they are trying to zip up an overfull suitcase. Olof clamps together one section at a time, then Majvor places a piece of gauze on the wound and winds the tape around the arm. She is worried about cutting off the blood supply to the hand, but then again there can't be much blood left.

Isabelle's eyes are closed as Majvor and Olof turn their attention to the other arm. Lennart grabs hold of Isabelle's ankles and lifts her legs; it is more important for the blood to reach the brain than the legs.

When they have finished, Lennart gently pulls Isabelle across the grass and places her feet on one of the folding chairs. Majvor and Olof remain where they are, just looking at one another, until Olof breaks the contact by waving to Lennart and saying: ‘Can you give me a hand here—I just need to…'

Lennart helps Olof to his feet. He nods to Majvor—‘Sorry, I…'—at which point he staggers over to the corner of the caravan and throws up.

Majvor doesn't think any less of him for that. There is no denying that it was a very unpleasant task. Clumps of coagulated blood are stuck to her hands, her nose is filled with the smell of blood, and she is astonished at how calm she feels.

‘Good job,' Lennart says. ‘I guess you're the kind of person who always comes through in a crisis.'

That's actually true, but not many people have seen that side of Majvor, and even fewer have praised her for it. It may be inappropriate
under the circumstances, but Majvor can feel herself blushing.

Olof returns, wiping his mouth and apologising. All three of them stand there contemplating Isabelle as if she were a work of art they had created together, or rather restored and preserved for posterity. Hopefully.

Lennart goes into the caravan to fetch a blanket, which he lays over Isabelle. The movement of her chest shows that her breathing is shallow, and from time to time she whimpers quietly. Olof shakes his head. ‘Why did she do it? Can you make any sense of it?'

Lennart has pushed his hands deep in the pockets of his dungarees, and is now looking towards the middle of the camp. His eyes narrow.

‘Majvor,' he says in a tone of voice that Majvor seldom hears. It is respectful, as if she is someone to reckon with. Lennart nods towards the four prostrate bodies. ‘When you look at those…figures, what do you see?'