The Darkest Room

8

Livia fell asleep each night with Katrine’s red woolen sweater beside her in the bed, and Joakim lay with her nightgown under his pillow. It gave him a feeling of calmness.

Life at Eel Point went on, at half speed. The children had to be taken into Marnäs and picked up each weekday, and Joakim took care of that job. In between he was alone at the manor for seven hours, but there was no peace. The funeral director called him several times with different questions before the funeral, and he had to contact banks and various companies to get Katrine’s name removed from their records. Relatives got in touch, both Katrine’s and Joakim’s, and friends from Stockholm sent flowers. Several of them wanted to come to the funeral.

What Joakim really wanted was to unplug all the telephones and lock himself in at Eel Point. Shut down.

Of course, there was a huge amount of renovation to be done inside the house, and in the garden and to the outside

of the house-but all he really wanted to do was to lie in bed, breathe in the scent of Katrine’s clothes, and stare up at the white ceiling.

And then there was the police. If he had been able to find the strength, he would have spoken to them to find out who was responsible for internal investigations, if there was such a person-but he just couldn’t do it.

The only one who got in touch from that particular authority was the young local policewoman from Marnäs, Tilda Davidsson.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am very sorry.”

She didn’t ask how he was feeling, just kept on apologizing for the mix-up over the names. The wrong name was on the note she was reading from, she said-it was a misunderstanding.

A misunderstanding? Joakim had come home to console his wife, but had found her dead.

He listened to Davidsson in silence, answered in monosyllables and asked no follow-up questions. The conversation was a short one.

When it was over, he sat down at the family computer and wrote a letter to Ölands-Posten, giving a brief outline of what had happened after Katrine’s death. In conclusion he wrote:

For several hours I believed that my daughter had drowned and my wife was alive, when in fact the reverse was true. Is it too much to ask that the police should be able to distinguish between the living and the dead?

I don’t think it is; that’s what the relatives have to do, after all.

Joakim Westin, Eel Point

He hadn’t expected anyone in the police to accept responsibility after that either, and he wasn’t disappointed.

Two days later he met Åke Högström, the priest in Marnäs who was to bury his wife.

“How are you sleeping?” the priest asked over coffee after they had gone through the ceremony one last time.

“Fine,” Joakim replied.

He tried to remember what they had decided. They had called the cantor to choose which hymns were to be played, he remembered that, but he’d already forgotten what they’d decided on.

The parish priest from Marnäs was in his fifties, with a gentle smile, a little beard, a black jacket, and a gray polo-neck sweater. The walls in his study at the vicarage were covered with shelves full of books of all kinds, and on the desk stood a picture of the priest holding a gleaming perch up to the camera.

“The light from the lighthouse doesn’t disturb you?” he asked.

“The light?” said Joakim.

“The constant flashing at night, from the lighthouse tower out on Eel Point?”

Joakim shook his head.

“I suppose you get used to it,” said Högström. “It’s probably similar to having traffic noise just outside your window. You lived in the middle of Stockholm before you came here, didn’t you?”

“A little way out,” said Joakim.

It was only small talk, an attempt to lighten the heavy conversation, but for Joakim it was still a huge effort to find the words.

“So it’s hymn number 289 to begin with, hymn 256 after the prayers, and hymn 297 to finish off,” said Högström. “That was what we said, wasn’t it?”

“That’ll be fine.”

A dozen or so guests from Stockholm arrived the evening before the funeral: Joakim’s mother, his uncle, two cousins, and some close friends of his and Katrine’s. They

moved cautiously around the house and talked mostly to one another. Livia and Gabriel were excited by all the visitors, but didn’t ask why everyone had come.

The funeral took place at eleven o’clock on a Thursday in the Marnäs church. The children weren’t there-Joakim had dropped them off as usual at eight o’clock, without saying anything. For them today was like any other, but Joakim had driven home, put on his black suit, and lay down on the double bed again.

The wall clock was ticking out in the corridor, and Joakim remembered that it was his wife who had wound it up. It shouldn’t be ticking now she was gone, but it was.

He had stared at the bedroom ceiling thinking about all that was left of Katrine in and around the house. Inside his head he could hear her calling to him.

An hour later Joakim was sitting on an uncomfortable wooden pew, his eyes fixed on a large mural. It showed a man of his own age nailed to a Roman instrument of torture. A cross.

The church in Marnäs was high and filled with echoes. The sound of quiet weeping hovered beneath the vaulted stone ceiling.

Joakim was sitting right at the front next to his mother, who was wearing a black veil and weeping with small, careful sniffles, her head bowed. He himself knew he wasn’t going to cry at all, just as he hadn’t shed a single tear at Ethel’s funeral last year. The tears always came later, late at night.

It was two minutes to eleven when the church door opened and a tall, broad-shouldered woman strode in. She was wearing a black coat and a black veil that concealed her eyes, but her lips were painted with bright red lipstick. Her heels echoed on the stone floor, and many heads turned in the church. The woman marched up and sat down in the pew

at the front on the right, next to Katrine’s four half sisters and brothers.

She was their mother and Katrine’s mother: Mirja Rambe, Joakim’s mother-in-law, the artist and singer. He hadn’t seen Mirja since their wedding seven years earlier. In contrast to that particular day, she appeared to be sober now. Just as Mirja sat down, the bells began to toll up in the church tower.

Less than forty-five minutes later it was all over, and Joakim could hardly remember anything about what Pastor Högström had said, or what hymns they had sung in the church. His head had been filled with images and sounds of crashing waves and running water.

Afterward, when they had crossed the bitterly cold churchyard and gathered in the community hall, lots of people came over to talk to him.

“I’m so sorry, Joakim,” said a bearded man, patting him on the shoulder. “We were very fond of her.”

Joakim focused his gaze and suddenly recognized the man-it was his uncle from Stockholm.

“Thank you… thank you very much.”

There wasn’t much else to say.

Several other people wanted to stroke his back or give him a stiff embrace. He let them carry on; he was everybody’s pet.

“It’s so awful… I was only talking to her a few days ago,” said a weeping girl aged about twenty-five.

He recognized her behind the handkerchief she was using to wipe her eyes; it was Katrine’s younger sister. Her name was Solros-Sunrose, he recalled. Mirja had given all five of her children unusual second names; Katrine’s was Månstråle, Moonbeam, but she’d hated it.

“And she’d been so much happier lately,” Solros went on.

“I know… she was glad we’d moved down here.”

“Yes, and she was pleased she’d found out about her father as well.”

Joakim looked at her.

“Her father?” he said. “Katrine never had any contact with her father.”

“I know,” said Solros. “But Mom’s written a book and revealed who he was.”

The tears came again; she hugged him and went off to join her brothers and sisters.

Joakim stayed where he was and saw Albin and Viktoria Malm, friends from the center of Stockholm, sitting at a table with the Hesslin family, their neighbors from Bromma.

He also saw his mother, sitting alone at another table with a cup of coffee, but didn’t go over to her.

When he turned around, Pastor Högström was talking to a small gray-haired woman on the other side of the room. He went to join them.

Högström turned his kindly gaze in his direction. “Joakim,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

Joakim just nodded, several times. It was an appropriate response, it could mean anything. The little elderly lady smiled up at him expectantly and nodded as well, but didn’t seem to know what to say either. Then she took two tentative steps backward and disappeared.

That’s the thing about the bereaved, thought Joakim, they smell of death and are best avoided.

“I’ve been thinking something over,” he said seriously to Högström.

“Oh yes?”

“If you hear someone calling for help here on the island, when you yourself are on the mainland, miles and miles away, what does that mean?”

The priest looked at him blankly. “Miles and miles away… how could you possibly hear that?”

Joakim shook his head. “But that’s what happened,” he said. “I heard my wife… Katrine, when she died. I was in

Stockholm at the time, but I heard her when she drowned. She called out to me.”

The priest looked down into his coffee cup. “Perhaps you heard someone else?” He had lowered his voice, as if they were talking about forbidden matters.

“No,” said Joakim. “It was Katrine’s voice.”

“I understand.”

“I know I heard her,” said Joakim. “So what does it mean?”

“Who knows, who knows,” was all Högström said, patting him gently on the shoulder. “Get some rest now, Joakim. We can talk again in a few days.”

Then he left.

Joakim stood there staring at a poster on the wall advertising a charity collection for those affected by radiation in Chernobyl. Ten years had passed since the catastrophe.

OUR DAILY BREAD FOR THE VICTIMS OF THE RADIATION, said the heading on the poster.

Our daily Chernobyl, thought Joakim.

Finally it was evening again and he was back at Eel Point. This long day was coming to an end.

Inside the house Livia and Gabriel were being put to bed by their grandmother. Lisa and Michael Hesslin were standing by their car out at the front. It was late and they had a long journey back to Stockholm, but they had still come back to the house with him.

“Thanks for coming,” said Joakim.

“No problem,” said Michael, placing his black suit in its plastic covering on the back seat.

There was a tense silence.

“Come up to Stockholm soon,” said Lisa. “Or come over to Gotland with the children, to our cottage.”

“Maybe.”

“We’ll be in touch, Joakim,” said Michael.

Joakim nodded. Gotland sounded better than Stockholm. He never wanted to go there again.

Lisa and Michael got into the car, and Joakim took a step back as they drove off.

When the car had pulled out onto the road and the glow of its lights had disappeared, he turned and looked down toward the lighthouses.

Out on its little island the southern tower flashed its red light across the water. But the northern tower, Katrine’s tower, was just a black pillar in the darkness. He had only seen a light in it once.

After a few attempts he found the path down to the shore and followed the same route he had taken with Katrine and the children several times during the fall.

He could hear the sea in the darkness, feel the bitterly cold wind. Carefully he made his way down to the water, across the tufts of grass on the shore and the strip of sand, out onto the big blocks of stone that protected the lighthouses from the waves.

The waves were like slow breaths in the darkness tonight, thought Joakim. Like Katrine when they were making love-she would pull him down toward her in bed, holding him tight and breathing in his ear.

She had been stronger than him. It was Katrine who had decided they were moving here.

Joakim remembered how beautiful it had been on the coast when they came here for the first time. It had been a clear, sunny spring day at the beginning of May, and the manor house had looked like a wooden palace up above the glittering water.

When they had finished looking at the house, they had walked down to the shore, hand in hand along a narrow path through a field of wood anemones in full bloom.

Beneath the open sky on the coast the flat islands in the north seemed to magically float out at sea, covered in fresh

grass. There were birds everywhere: flocks of flycatchers, oystercatchers, and larks, soaring and diving. Small groups of black-and-white tufted ducks were bobbing along beyond the lighthouses, and closer to the shore swam mallards and grebes.

Joakim remembered Katrine’s face in the bright sunshine.

I really want to stay here, she had said.

He shivered. Then he clambered cautiously out onto the furthest block in the jetty and looked down into the black water.

This is where she’d stood.

The footprints in the sand had shown that Katrine had gone out onto the jetty alone. Then she had fallen or thrown herself in the water, and quickly sunk beneath the surface.

Why?

He had no answers. He only knew that at the moment when Katrine drowned, he had been standing in a cellar in Stockholm and heard her come in through the door.

Joakim had heard her calling. He was sure of it, and that meant that the world was even more incomprehensible than he had thought.

After half an hour or so in the cold, he went back up to the house.

His mother, Ingrid, was the only member of the family left after the funeral. She was sitting at the kitchen table and turned her head with a start when Joakim came in, a furrow of anxiety across her forehead. The furrow had got deeper and deeper over the years, first of all during her husband’s illness and then with every new crisis Ethel brought home.

“They’ve all gone now,” said Joakim. “Have the children gone to sleep?”

“I think so. Gabriel finished his bottle and fell asleep straightaway. But Livia was restless… she raised her head and called out to me when I crept out the first time.”

Joakim nodded and went over to the counter to make a pot of tea.

“She plays possum sometimes,” he said. “She pretends to be asleep to fool us.”

“She talked about Katrine.”

“Right. Do you want some tea?”

“No, I’m fine, thank you. Does she often do that, Joakim?”

“Not when she’s going to sleep.”

“What have you told her?”

“About Katrine?” said Joakim. “Not much. I’ve told her… that Mommy’s away.”

“Away?”

“That she’s gone away for a while… just like when I stayed in Stockholm while Katrine and the children were here. I can’t cope with telling her any more right now.” He looked at Ingrid and suddenly felt uneasy. “And what did you tell her tonight?”

“Nothing. That’s your job, Joakim.”

“I will tell her,” he said. “When you’ve gone… when there’s only me and the children here.”

Mommy’s dead, Livia. She drowned.

When would he be ready for that? It was just as impossible as the idea of slapping Livia across the face.

“Will you move back now?” asked Ingrid.

Joakim stared at her. He knew she wanted him to give up, but he still pretended to be surprised.

“Back? Back to Stockholm, you mean?”

Leave Katrine? he thought.

“Yes… I mean, I’m there after all,” said Ingrid.

“There’s nothing for me in Stockholm,” said Joakim.

“But you could buy back the house in Bromma, couldn’t you?”

“I can’t buy anything,” he said. “I haven’t got the money, Mom, even if I wanted to. All the money went into this place.”

“But you could sell…” Ingrid stopped and looked around the kitchen.

“Sell Eel Point?” said Joakim. “Who’d want the place in this state? It needs fixing up first… and Katrine and I were going to do that together.”

His mother said nothing as she gazed out of the window, her expression morose. Then she asked, “That woman at the funeral, the one who arrived late… was that Katrine’s mother? The artist?”

Joakim nodded. “That was Mirja Rambe.”

“I thought I recognized her from your wedding.”

“I didn’t know if she would turn up.”

“Well, of course she was going to turn up,” said Ingrid. “Katrine was her daughter, after all.”

“But they hardly had any contact with each other. I haven’t seen her once since the wedding.”

“Had they fallen out?”

“No… but I don’t think they were exactly friends. They called each other from time to time, but Katrine hardly ever talked about Mirja.”

“Does she live here?”

“No. She lives in Kalmar, I think.”

“Aren’t you going to get in touch with her?” said Ingrid. “I think you should.”

“I don’t think so,” said Joakim. “But we might bump into each other sometime. This is a small island, after all.”

He looked out of the window at the darkness of the inner courtyard. He didn’t want to see anyone at all. He wanted to lock himself in here in the manor house at Eel Point and never go out again. He didn’t want to look for a new teaching post, nor did he want to carry on working on the house.

He just wanted to sleep for the rest of his life, next to Katrine.