She could see Heikko in her mind’s eye, arriving home. His wife. His son going sadly to his room, closing the door. Continuing to practise on his old violin, far too small for his big fingers.
Damn it, she thought. He was probably lying.
But he hadn’t been lying, and she knew it. That was why she had let him off lightly. The customs witch.
SEPTEMBER 18
Vore came last night. I knew it was him when the dogs started barking. He’s rented the cottage for a week, to begin with.
Roland wasn’t happy. Said it was down to me if there were any problems. He sounds like the Muddler from the Moomintroll stories. The only thing missing is the button collection.
The neighbours came home with a baby girl. Haven’t been to see her yet, but I suppose I’ll have to.
I’m not happy with my life. Bloody Heikko, he showed me that. I don’t like catching people out. Maybe there are those who do. The other people at work don’t seem to have a problem. Perhaps because it’s still a challenge for them.
Roland sulked all evening. The strangest thing about him is that he’s not an alcoholic. It would suit him very well. But then again, he has the TV. I asked Vore if he’d like me to put the small TV in the cottage. He said televisions gave him a headache. Yet another thing we have in common. We talked for a while about herbal remedies.
I’m not allergic to electricity, I don’t want to be allergic to electricity.
But if I had the choice, I wouldn’t want to be indoors at all during the warmer months. It makes my skin itch. Is being allergic to electricity actually an illness? Everybody who has it seems to be loopy.
Went for a walk this evening. Everybody says there are no mushrooms at all this year, but as usual I still keep finding them. They’re few and far between, though.
SEPTEMBER 21
Very windy, the TV aerial is making a noise. Roland has sold two of the puppies and is thinking of getting a satellite dish. Good. That will keep him occupied, and I won’t have to listen to the sound of the aerial.
Pulled up a bodybuilder with eight hundred cartons of M. He got aggressive, smashed the table in the little room. Had to lock him in until the police arrived. He broke the window overlooking the carpark. Didn’t try to jump, fortunately.
The autumn changes the forest. The conifers regain the upper hand. That’s it. That’s exactly how it is. In the summer the forest is a fairground. Bright, laughing colours. All welcome. It’s still like that, with more colours than ever. But everything is moving towards the colours of the conifers. In a couple of months they will be in charge, because they will be the only ones still breathing.
Went to see the addition to the family next door. The other children were playing video games. Looked at the little person all wrapped up in her blanket, and wondered how long it would be before she too was sitting in front of the television. The neighbours were tired but happy. The whole house smells of breast milk and static electricity. I can’t cope with it.
Something has just struck me: perhaps Vore took/takes hormones? How could he be the way he is otherwise? Perhaps that was what I sensed. After all, I have no problem knowing when someone is under the influence of drugs.
He’s hardly ever home. Either he’s off out in the car, or out walking. What does he actually do? I’ve never had a proper conversation with him.
The storm is picking up. The noise from the aerial is terrible. It sounds as if the entire house is moaning.
SEPTEMBER 22
Checked the cottage this afternoon.
Yes, there was a reason. This morning when I was on the way to work I thought I heard a child crying in there. Well, not exactly crying, it was more of a whimper. Of course it could have been something else (I think it was something else, or perhaps it was coming from the house next door), but…
When I got home his car wasn’t there. So I did it.
There was no child, of course. Everything was neat and tidy. The bed was made, everything in its place. Piles of paperback crime novels and The Brothers Karamazov, also in paperback. On the desk lay his binoculars, his camera and a notebook.
Yes. I did read it. And I was none the wiser.
(Did I think there might be something about me? Yes, I did. I admit it.)
But it wasn’t a diary. Just numbers and abbreviations. Terrible handwriting. The numbers might have been times. The abbreviations could have been anything. Insects, maybe. The times when he saw them. Do people do that kind of thing?
The metal box was plugged in. I listened, heard a humming noise from inside. Didn’t dare open the lid. Thought a load of insects might come swarming out.
Now I’m going to say what I think: my life lacks excitement. I make things up. I pick on just about anybody and try to use whatever clues there are to piece together that person’s life. It automatically turns into a mystery. Why did he go there? Why did he do that? What did he mean by that?
It’s only in old-fashioned detective stories that everyone is gathered in the library for the final explanation. In real life there is no explanation. And if there is an explanation, it’s unbelievably banal.
After I’d finished poking about I stayed in the cottage for a long time. Why? Because it smelled so good in there. If anyone ever reads this diary I will immediately commit seppuku. I slipped into the bed. Terrified the whole time, listening for the sound of his car, for the front door of my house. The sheets smelled…I don’t know. But I wanted to stay there. Lie in that smell.
I lay there for just a few minutes, then made the bed exactly the way it had been.
In the afternoon Roland put up the satellite dish. He spent the evening trying to get a picture, but no luck. We played Scrabble. I won.
SEPTEMBER 24
I hate my job, and I hate myself.
I don’t know what got into me today. Out of sheer bloody-mindedness I stopped every single person who was carrying anything. One extra bottle of whisky, a few boxes of Marlboro. Suppressed rage, vicious words directed at me all day. A little old lady weeping, her suitcase full of brandy.
Went into the forest for a few hours when I got home. Grey skies, cold. Went out in a T-shirt but didn’t manage to get really cold. Met an elk. One of the placid ones. He stood there and let me pat him. I wept, pressed my face against his coat. Tried to explain that it was the hunting season, that he should keep away from cleared areas. I don’t think he understood.
Autumn depression, it’s called. As if it were natural to think that life is shit. I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to do what I do.
Elisabet called round this evening with the baby. Burbled on. I got even more depressed, but tried not to show it. ‘Melancholy’, that’s what it always says in the Moomintroll books. Never depressed. If only I could be melancholy instead. Have a sorrow that is somehow enjoyable.
I hated Elisabet too. The baby’s sleeping really well at night. Only wakes up twice for a feed, blah blah. Her cheeks are glowing, her eyes shining. One bullet in the middle of her forehead. I’m a bad person.
Vore came to tell me that he’s staying for another week. That’s good. He asked if he could take a photograph of the baby, and Elisabet said yes. She kind of stiffened up. What is it with people?
Roland has managed to sort out the dish, he was gawping at some film. I chatted for a while with Vore after Elisabet had gone. Didn’t get very far. But I don’t hate him. No. Now I come to think of it. I can actually cope with him. I’m thinking about him now. I feel happier. There you go.
He’s travelled all over Sweden, lived in lots of different places for short periods. Travels to Russia sometimes. On business. But he spends most of his time out walking. Collecting insects and looking around. That’s good. That’s what I’d like to do. No more poking about, no more talking, just…looking around. Like Snufkin.
Now I’m going to bed. Perhaps I’ll feel better tomorrow.
SEPTEMBER 25
Saturday. My day off.
I’m as good as certain. He’
s got a child in there. Or some kind of animal that sounds like a child.
When he’d left I risked checking the cottage again, even though the car was still there. Like me, he goes for long walks.
Nothing.
But this time I did it. I opened the lid of that metal box. I don’t know what I expected to find, but there were definitely insects inside. Or they might all have been flies, I don’t know. Masses of larvae, hundreds, maybe thousands. And a few little ones that had already hatched, crawling around on top of the piles of white larvae. Perhaps I should have found them disgusting, but I didn’t. I thought they were beautiful, somehow.
Felt excited when I left the cottage. I don’t understand myself.
SEPTEMBER 27
Met Vore in the forest yesterday. I think he knows I’ve been in the cottage. He’s started locking the door. (As if I didn’t have a key, ha ha.) But I suppose he’s making a point. It frightened the life out of me when I saw him locking the door as he left. Then I followed him.
Something strange is going on in my head. I hardly pay any attention to what Roland says anymore. Not that he ever says anything important, but we do live together after all. I think he’s going to some show or other this weekend, I don’t know.
I’m going to try writing it down: I’ve fallen in love with Vore. I’m in love with Vore. (I said it out loud as well, but quietly.) No. It isn’t true. I can tell when I write it down, when I say it. That’s not the way it is. It’s something different. Something…better?
I don’t understand it. It’s making me feel slightly unwell.
We bumped into one another down by the rocks I call the Dance Floor. Sort of. I mean, I’d followed him, and he was standing there…waiting?
We talked about the forest. How the autumn changes things. He said he never really felt comfortable indoors (!!!).
I told him I felt the same. And then…I showed him the Dance Floor. He said such a strange thing. When I told him I called this place the Dance Floor because you could imagine the elves dancing there, he said, ‘They used to. Once upon a time.’
And he said it perfectly seriously, without the slightest hint of a joke. (And I believe it’s true, actually. How can I think that? Elves?)
I told him about the tree, the lightning.
And I laughed, I just couldn’t help it, because it’s so ridiculous how everything…I laughed when he told me he’d been struck by lightning too! His beard hides the scars. He let me feel. The skin was knobbly underneath his beard on one side.
We stood there looking at one another, until I started laughing again. What else could I do? How many people have been struck by lightning? One in ten thousand? If that. There was nothing more to say, somehow.
It goes against the grain to write this, it’s not my style (I’m a rational person, I wear a uniform at work), but is there actually such a thing as twin souls? If such a thing really does exist, it would explain a great deal.
Of course that leads to a question. Does he feel the same way? I think he does. To use a childish phrase: he started it. When he kissed me on the cheek last summer. He knew back then.
Or did he?
Yes, I know. All I have to do is ask, right? Of course. Just ask him. I’d rather die. No, I wouldn’t. But it’s difficult. If he says…I don’t know. If he gives the wrong answer. Something will break inside me.
I didn’t pull up a single person at work today. Robert stopped one just out of routine. Five bottles of Kosken over the limit. As I knew perfectly well. Robert gave me a funny look.
I don’t want to do it anymore. I’ve had enough. I just want… what do I want?
SEPTEMBER 29
He’s leaving the day after tomorrow.
We met in the forest yesterday, picked lots of mushrooms. He has the same radar as me when it comes to finding mushrooms (of course). I asked about his childhood. He said he was adopted. I could tell he didn’t want to talk about it, so I dropped the subject.
I spent all evening blanching mushrooms. Roland’s suspicious. So what. Tomorrow he’s going to Gothenburg for a dog show that lasts all weekend, doing his own thing. Getting laid.
Vore is going away. I’ll never see him again.
So my behaviour can be excused.
When I got home today, his car wasn’t there. I fetched the key and went into the cottage. I felt like a thief. I lay in his sheets for a long time, feeling pleasure and fear at the same time. Panic. Even now while I’m writing this I feel as if I want to die.
I’m not going to kill myself, of course I’m not. But I want to die. That’s the way it is. As I lay there in his bed, I knew it was the last time. (Yes, I’ve done it several times.)
I just want to be erased, to disappear.
But I expect it will pass. (It will never pass.)
Help me! What am I going to do?
As I was about to leave, I saw something strange. There was a plate and a bowl on the draining board. Very strange, don’t you think? Well no, but it was what was on the plate. At first I thought it was some kind of pudding. When I took a closer look I could see that it was larvae. Mashed up larvae.
Yes, I did have a taste. It was pretty good. A bit like snails, but a bit more grainy.
Sometimes it feels as if I’m living outside my body. My body does things, and I stand next to it thinking, ‘What are you doing? You’re getting in the bed, you’re eating larvae, what are you doing?’
What am I doing? What am I going to do?
I think I’m coming down with something. He’s going away. I’m not in love, but I…I have to be near him. Perhaps I do love him. Her. Maybe that’s what it is.
Love.
Yes.
I’m falling apart.
On Thursday afternoon Roland packed a suitcase and put it in the car along with Tara and some dog food. The attack of mange had turned out to be a mild one, and he decided to risk going to the show even though he shouldn’t have done. There was virtually a price on the head of anyone who brought mange into kennels.
Tina stood at the bedroom window and watched him go. She had taken the day off work because she wasn’t feeling well. Something to do with her stomach, her chest, her heart. It was the first time in her entire working life that she had been off sick. When she rang work to say she wouldn’t be coming in, they asked if she’d called the local health insurance office. She didn’t know what to do, so she didn’t bother.
When the Volvo had disappeared down the drive she went and sat on the patio for a while and read Comet in Moominland. It was an unusually warm autumn day, and there was the same feeling in the air as there was in the book: a damp, highly charged warmth as if everything was holding its breath, waiting for a change.
The air pressure made her head ache, and she found it difficult to concentrate. She went inside and stood by the kitchen window for a while, looking down towards the cottage.
What’s he doing in there?
As usual when Roland went away she had been shopping for a private party. The snails were on ice in the fridge. This time she had bought extra, but hadn’t yet dared ask the question. She was afraid. Everything had conspired to create a situation where this evening could be crucial. Roland was away, Vore was leaving the next day.
And what is it that’s going to be resolved tonight?
If she had been in her right mind she wouldn’t have been standing here dithering about, putting off asking Vore if he’d like to come over for dinner. She would have called the police. Because she was convinced he had a child in there. Her hearing was better than most people’s, and she’d heard it.
She ought to ring Ragnar at the police station in Norrtälje and explain the situation. They’d come straight away. They knew her.
Nobody knows me.
A long time ago she had read an article about how people choose their partner by smell. At least women did, she thought. Five women had been allowed to smell five T-shirts that had been worn by five different men. Or it might have been more women. The whole
thing had seemed slightly shady and perverted—the combination of a laboratory environment and sweaty clothes.
She had felt some sympathy with the result, and snorted at it. As if you could choose.
She had chosen Roland in spite of his smell. Not that he smelled unpleasant, exactly. But he smelled wrong. Wrong for her. He wasn’t the only one who had answered her ad, but he was the only one who had shown any interest after the first meeting. There’s your freedom of choice.
But Vore. The smell of him, the aroma of him was like coming home. It couldn’t be described in any other way. Lying in his sheets was like crawling into Mummy and Daddy’s bed. Tina’s parents had slept in separate beds, and it wasn’t that smell she was thinking of, but something different, something safe and associated with home rather than anything based on a real memory.
So she didn’t call the police.
Night fell quickly, helped along by black clouds rolling in from the east. The air was heavy, pressing down on her head. Odd raindrops trickled down the kitchen window, and the light went on in the cottage. Anxiety was a trembling sparkler inside her body.
There’s going to be a thunderstorm.
She went around the house pulling out every single plug and electrical connection, the television, the phone. Switched off the power. She couldn’t bring herself to ask him, didn’t dare invite him over. Didn’t know where it might lead. But she wished he would come, come of his own accord.
She drank a glass of white wine, then another. The anxiety pulled and tore at her. She would have liked to go out into the forest, but didn’t dare. The storm would start at any moment. She could feel it, and it was like being trapped inside a castle, waiting for an unconquerable army to arrive. If you fled you would be killed, if you stayed where you were you would be killed.
She sat down on the kitchen floor and pressed her forehead against her knees. Got up quickly, poured herself another glass of wine and sat down again. Her hand shook as she brought the glass to her mouth and knocked the wine straight back. After a few minutes she felt slightly better.