The Cruel Stars of the Night

Twenty-six

The stovepipe chimney howled. It usually did in gusty weather, but only if there was a westerly wind. The whistling sounds from the fireplace sounded like someone was sitting in there playing a variety of out-of-tune instruments.

When Laura was little they would make fires there. It was always Alice who arranged the wood to make sure it caught fire. When the flames were well established she would pull out an ottoman cushion and sit so close she grew red in the face after a while. Laura would lie on the floor, not quite so close but still close enough that she would grow warm, which one otherwise seldom did in this drafty house. Sometimes she stretched out an arm to feel her mother’s bare underarm.

One day a chimney cleaner came for an inspection. He declared the stovepipe unfit. It was cracked, not functionable, and if they kept making fires there was a chance the house would burn down. Down to the ground, as he put it. Ulrik grumbled, but her mother knew better than to argue with the chimney sweep. She was raised in the country and knew about chimney fires.

“To the ground,” Laura repeated to herself.

She sat in the armchair at whose side her mother’s basket of wool and knitting needles usually was. It was called the resting chair but Laura never saw Alice rest there.

“Down to ground.” It was a child’s phrase. She didn’t know then what the ground of the house would be exactly, but sensed it meant that everything would be destroyed, all furniture and books, her toys, her mother’s collection of seeds and pressed plants, yes, she saw everything before her and could even touch it. It was a dizzying thought. Frightening and alluring at the same time.

She had dozed off. These last few days sleep seemed to come and go as it pleased. She was becoming more and more tired but blamed it on the work with cleaning all the junk out of the house. She was unaccustomed to this much physical labor.

The chimney whistled. She stared into the open mouth of the fireplace. Now there were no sticks there, just a brass candelabra. It glimmered like gold against all the black.

She had been dreaming. A strange dream that she had traveled to a foreign land in order to find out about their old habits and customs. Laura had brought several older women together in a cobblestone yard, perhaps it was in front of a barn because you could hear the rattling of chains, the thump of hooves, and the occasional melancholy mooing. The women tried to explain what their lives had been like seventy, eighty years ago. They gesticulated and spoke with an intensity that made their wrinkled and weather-beaten faces appear youthful. The problem was that Laura had trouble with the language. Admittedly she had studied this foreign tongue, taken several courses, and could even adequately understand written texts but here she came up short.

The old ladies chattered on. Laura strained herself to her breaking point but was only able to snap up fragments of their vividly related narratives.

Laura picked up a pad and pen from her bag and the torrent of words slowed somewhat. The group grew completely silent when she asked one of the women to write down a few words that Laura had understood were central to the context. It had to do with when they let the animals out onto the lush and thickly herb-sprinkled fields, she understood this much, but she wanted to get it right, with the correct expressions.

The woman grasped the pen clumsily. She formed an A with a great deal of effort, thereafter an L and an O. Then she stopped.

“ALO,” Laura read. The woman handed the pen back without a word and pushed the pad away. The letters were printed in a sprawling, childish style, like that of a first grader. There were several centimeters between the letters, it was hardly a word, and looked more like three squiggles that were leapfrogging across the white paper.

There was shame, anger, and repudiation in the woman’s actions as she, with the help of a knotted stick and with labored movements, stood up and pointed out over the landscape. Laura, who did not understand what she meant, quickly got up and looked out over the exquisite valley that surrounded the village, but the woman waddled off without a word.

Laura woke up at this point and she, in her half-wakened state, searched in front of her with her hand, as if to convince the old woman- messenger from a bygone age-to return.

She closed her eyes and tried to remember anything like this from her real life, but in vain. She had never worked with documenting old habits and customs in the countryside, quite the opposite. She had been focused on the future and her academic research had concerned theoretical models for the direction of companies with a high innovation capacity but with faltering sources of capital. Her dissertation was something that few people had the ability or interest to even try to understand.

When the dissertation arrived from the press Laura had given her father a copy. After having read some ten pages of it he had put the book away without commenting on it.

She got up, stretched into the fireplace and took out the candelabra, walked into the hall, and put it into a trash bag.

The cleanup of the house had slowed down. The whole upstairs was left. She glanced at the staircase but did not go up. She knew what was up there. It looked like the garage, a storage facility for old clothes, furniture, books, and other things.

Ulrik and Laura Hindersten had almost exclusively lived on the first floor the past twelve years. It was as if their energy had not been sufficient for two floors.

Driven by a gnawing ache in her gut she walked out into the kitchen. She had not eaten breakfast or lunch and it was almost two o’clock in the afternoon. The refrigerator was empty except for some shriveled tomatoes and a package of ricotta.

Suddenly the doorbell rang. Laura jumped, returned to the hall, and stared uncomprehendingly at the door. The sound was so unfamiliar that she thought she must have misheard. But then there was a new ring.

She took a couple of hesitant steps with her hand outstretched but then paused. A third ring, short this time, made her pull back. The door handle was pushed down but Laura always locked the door from the inside.

After half a minute she heard someone walk down the exterior steps. It struck Laura that it might be Stig. She hurried over to the window and apprehensively peeked out between the curtains, but saw the back of the policewoman Lindell disappearing between the bushes.

For the first time Laura felt an anxiety that she would not have time to do everything that she had planned. Time was running out. Everything was required of her. Everything. She was the one who had to do everything alone.

A sudden flash of inspiration had her throw open the front door, but then she heard Lindell’s car already driving down the street. It would have been better if she had received answers to her questions and would then be gone for good. Now she would most likely turn up again.

There was only one thing left to do: follow through. She had an idea of how it should be done, but she wavered. Stig had not been in touch with her. Laura imagined him standing in front of her with that hopeless look he had when Jessica turned on him. Jessica did not use many words but her whole body signaled superiority and Stig adopted the posture of a subordinate.

How she hated the sight of a brightly smiling Stig, for in that smile there was no real joy only a desire to please. It affected the entire office. Everyone knew that Stig was a pushover. Barbro would joke about Stickan who was Jessica’s little lap dog and Laura had often wished ill on Barbro because of her taunting laughter and deadly comments.

Laura lifted the receiver, dialed Jessica Franklin’s number, and heard with rising anticipation how the call was connected and the phone rang. When Jessica finally answered Laura smiled and hung up. The sudden elation when the realization sunk in that that voice was going to be silenced for good made Laura teeter, steady herself on the telephone table, and laugh out loud.

Jessica would be allowed to realize that Stig was lost to her, that life was lost, that it was Laura’s time.

“Laura’s time,” she muttered and it sounded unfamiliar, as if she was saying an unknown person’s name.

The mirror above the table reflected a figure who lifted a fist against her own head and struck. The blow landed on her temple and Laura collapsed to the floor. Not so much the force behind the blow but more that the feeling of falling filled her with great happiness.

“That’s how it is,” she said, while she stared out across the naked wooden hall floor, in whose deep cracks decades of grime had gathered.

She sat in bed, naked except for panties and a camisole. Daylight filtered in through the gray-streaked window. She tried to counter the dizziness by chewing on some pieces of crisp bread that she had found in the pantry. They tasted like summer.

An untouched glass of wine stood on the bedside table. She absently brushed the breadcrumbs from her stomach and thighs. The dark scratches stood out on her pale skin.

This was the bed where she and Stig had lain the other night. The bedclothes were unchanged and she thought she could pick out his scent. She was no longer so certain that he was going to come back. He hadn’t called her like he said he was going to. No one called.

The silence in the house was unbelievably dense, as if she lived in a vacuum. She chewed in order to produce some sounds.

She had decided to take a shower but when she walked past the cellar door she had instead gone down to get her suitcase. Now it was in the hall. There was still a tag from the Linate Airport in Milan on the handle. It looked like a good friend who was waiting for her. Without fuss, secure and stable, there it was.

She liked it. Everything else was expendable, everything else could be stuffed into sacks and heaved into garbage containers but this suitcase was going to take her to the sea and the little harbor pub.

Stig would come later. When everything had calmed down he would be standing there one fine day, smiling, the way he did when he was in a good mood.

“Let the final arrow fly,” Laura said softly and reached for the glass of wine.

She spilled a few drops on the already stained camisole.