The Darkest Room

26

Joakim was making one last trip with the children before Christmas. It was the first day of the Christmas break and he drove down to Borgholm with them.

There were plenty of people out shopping for Christmas presents. The Westin family went into the big supermarket on the way into town and wandered up and down the long aisles full of food, stocking up on supplies for the holiday.

“What shall we have for Christmas dinner?” asked Joakim.

“Grilled chicken and fries,” said Livia.

“Juice,” said Gabriel.

Joakim bought chicken, fries, and raspberry juice, but also potatoes and sausage and ham and Christmas beer and crackers for himself. He bought frozen minced beef to make meatballs, and when he saw that they were selling Öland eel on the fish counter, he bought some smoked pieces. It had presumably swum past just off Eel Point.

He also bought a couple of pounds of cheese. Katrine had always liked to eat bread with thick slices of this particular cheese at Christmas.

It wasn’t entirely sensible, but the previous week Joakim had actually bought her a Christmas present. He had been down in Borgholm looking for presents for the children, and in the window of a store he had seen a pale green tunic Katrine would have loved. He had gone on to the toy store, but then went back to Danielsson’s boutique and bought the tunic.

“Could I have it gift wrapped please… as a Christmas present,” he had said, and the assistant had handed over a red package with white ribbons.

At the parking lot next to the food store, they were selling Christmas trees wrapped in plastic. Joakim bought a big Nordman fir that was tall enough to reach up to the ceiling on the ground floor. He fastened it onto the roof of the car, then they drove home.

It was cold on the island, minus ten degrees, but there was hardly a breath of wind when they got back to Eel Point. The water was just beginning to freeze again, but there was still only a thin layer of snow on the ground. Joakim’s breath billowed out in white clouds, slowly drifting away, as he carried the bags of food across the courtyard and into the house. Then he brought the tree into the warmth. Thousands of tiny insects would come in too, tucked among the branches, he knew that, but most of them were in the middle of their long winter sleep, and would never wake up.

That would be the best way to die, Joakim thought-in your sleep, without any warning.

He put up the tree in the drawing room, beneath the white ceiling. The table with its high-backed chairs was already here, but not much else. The rooms on the ground floor were feeling more and more empty as Christmas drew closer.

The Westin family spent the rest of the day cleaning and getting everything ready in the house. They had two big cardboard boxes of Christmas decorations to unpack: the Christmas crib, the candlesticks, the red-and-white hand towels for the kitchen, the Christmas stars to hang in the windows, and a goat and a pig made of straw, which they placed on either side of the tree.

When all the Christmas decorations had been unpacked, Livia and Gabriel helped to dress the tree. They had both made paper decorations and wooden figures at nursery school, which they hung up where they could reach, on the lowest branches. On the higher branches Joakim placed tinsel and baubles and Christmas candles, with a golden star right at the top. The tree was ready for Christmas.

Finally they got out the bags of Christmas presents and arranged them under the tree. Joakim placed the gift for Katrine next to the other presents.

Everything fell silent around the tree.

“Is Mommy coming back now?” asked Livia.

“Maybe,” said Joakim.

The children had almost stopped talking about Katrine, but he knew that Livia in particular really missed her. For children the line between what was possible and what was impossible didn’t exist in the same way as for adults. Perhaps it was just a question of wanting to see her enough?

“We’ll have to see what happens,” he said, looking at the pile of packages.

It would be wonderful to see Katrine one last time. To be able to talk to her and say goodbye properly.

The TV weather forecasters had warned of storms and snowfall over Öland and Gotland during Christmas, but two days before the festivities began Joakim looked out of the

window and saw only fine wisps of cloud in the sky. The sun was shining, it was minus six degrees, and there was hardly any wind.

Then he looked at the bird table outside the kitchen window, and had the feeling that a storm was on the way after all.

The table was empty. The fat balls and piles of seed were still there, but there were no birds pecking at them.

Rasputin jumped up onto the counter next to Joakim and confirmed for himself that the table was empty.

The meadow leading down to the shore was equally deserted, and there were no mute swans or long-tailed ducks out at sea. Perhaps they had all sought shelter over in the forest. Birds don’t need to look at a weather chart to know when a storm is on the way, they can feel it in the air.

That same morning Joakim let Livia and Gabriel sleep in until eight-thirty. He would have liked to take them off to nursery school so that he could be alone, but they would be at home with him for the next two weeks, however he felt about that.

“Is Mommy coming home today?” asked Livia as she got out of bed.

“I don’t know,” said Joakim.

But the atmosphere in the house was different now, he could feel it, and the children seemed to sense it too. There was an air of tense expectancy in all the white-painted rooms.

He got the candles out straight after breakfast. He had bought them in a store in Borgholm, despite the fact that you really ought to make your own Christmas candles as people had done in the kitchen at the manor house in days gone by, after the children had plaited the wicks; that made the candles personal. But these factory-made candles were all the same length and burned with an even glow in the windows,

on the tables, and in the circular holders suspended from the light fittings.

Living flames for the dead.

The family ate a light lunch in the kitchen in the middle of the day, when the sun was just above the roof of the outbuilding. It would soon begin to go down again.

After lunch Joakim dressed the children in thick jackets and took them for a walk down to the sea. He glanced at the closed door of the barn as they walked past, but didn’t say anything to the children.

They continued on down to the shore in silence. The fine, feathery cirrus clouds were still hovering above the point, but away on the horizon a storm front had begun to loom like a dark gray curtain.

The ice was thin and frosty white by the shore, but firm and dark blue further out. The children threw pebbles and bits of ice that bounced and slid across the shining surface, meeting no resistance, out toward the black cracks.

“Are you cold?” asked Joakim after a while.

Gabriel’s nose was red, and he nodded gloomily.

“We’d better go home, then,” said Joakim.

It was just past the shortest day of the year-it was only half past two, but the sky was dark blue, like twilight on a late summer evening, as they walked back up to the house. Joakim thought he could feel the breath of the approaching snowfall on the back of his neck.

When they got inside in the warmth, he lit the candles again. In the evening the glow from the house would be seen all the way up to the road, perhaps even as far away as Offermossen, the sacrificial peat bog.

When Livia and Gabriel had fallen asleep that evening and everything was quiet in the house, Joakim put on his padded jacket and left the house with a flashlight in his hand.

He was going to visit the barn. These last few weeks he had rarely managed to stay away for more than a few days at a time.

It was a clear, starry night, and the thin covering of snow in the courtyard had become hard and dry in the cold. The ice crystals crunched beneath his boots.

He stopped by the door of the barn and looked around. Dark shadows surrounded the outbuilding, and it was easy to imagine that somebody was standing over there. A thin woman with a ravaged face, gazing at him with a dark expression…

“Stay away, Ethel,” Joakim muttered to himself as he dragged open the heavy door.

He walked in and listened for the sound of yowling from Rasputin the mouser, but heard nothing.

Tonight Joakim didn’t go over to the steps leading up to the hayloft. He took a walk around the ground floor first, past the empty feeding troughs and stalls where the cows had once stood in a line in the winter, chewing away.

A rusty horseshoe had been nailed to the gable-end wall at the far side of the barn.

Joakim went over to look at it. The ends were pointing upward, presumably so that the luck wouldn’t run out.

The light from the bulbs on the ceiling didn’t quite reach this far, so he switched on his flashlight. When it illuminated the roof beams up above, it occurred to Joakim that he must be directly underneath the hidden room in the loft. Then he lowered the flashlight.

Someone had swept the stone floor. Not everywhere, but in a strip along the walls. There was no dried dung or piles of old hay there.

It could hardly be anyone other than Katrine who had swept in here.

In the right-hand corner on the gable wall, old fishing nets and thick ropes hung from a row of nails. Several of them reached right down to the floor, like a curtain. But behind the curtain, the wall appeared to sink inward.

Joakim took a step forward and shone the flashlight, and the shadow by the wall moved silently away, revealing a low opening down by the floor. Part of the wooden wall was missing, and when Joakim pushed the curtain of ropes and nets smelling of tar to one side, he could see that the stone slabs continued beyond it.

There was some kind of opening by the floor in the gable wall. It only reached up to Joakim’s knees, but was at least six feet wide.

He was driven on by his curiosity, and bent down to try and see what was on the other side of the opening. All he could see was more closely packed earth, and dancing balls of fluff.

In the end he lay down on his belly and started to crawl. He took the flashlight with him, and wriggled under the wooden planks.

He just managed to get under the wall before it came to a stop; there was another wall, made of limestone this time. It was ice cold-it must be the outside wall. The space between was only about three feet wide. When Joakim had brushed aside some curtains of freshly spun cobwebs, he could actually stand up.

In the beam of the flashlight he could see that he was in a narrow space between two walls: the inner wall made of wood that he had crawled under, and the western outer wall of the barn. A couple of yards away an old wooden ladder led straight up into the darkness.

Someone had been here before him. It looked as if someone had been moving around in here, creating walkways in the hundred-year-old dust.

Was it Katrine? After all, Mirja had said she didn’t know anything about a hidden room anywhere at the manor.

The ladder in front of him rose almost vertically into the darkness. Joakim shone his flashlight upward and saw that it led to a square hole. It was pitch black up there, but he didn’t hesitate for a second. He started to climb.

Eventually he perched on the edge of the opening and heaved himself up from the ladder.

He was on a wooden floor. To his left was an unpainted wooden wall. He recognized the wide planks, and knew that he had found the hidden room behind the hayloft.

He stood up and swept the flashlight around in front of him.

In its yellow glow he saw benches-rows of benches.

Church benches.

He was at one end of something that looked like an old wooden chapel inside the loft. It was a little room dedicated to worship beneath the high, angular roof, set out with four benches and a narrow aisle alongside them.

The wooden benches were dry and split and the edges were battered, completely without any kind of ornamentation; they looked as if they came from a medieval church. They must have been put here when the barn was built, Joakim realized. There was no door through which to carry them in.

There was no pulpit in the room. And no cross. High up on the wall in front of the pews was a filthy window. Below it a sheet of paper was hanging from a nail, and when he went over he saw that it was a page ripped out of a family Bible: a Doré drawing of a woman, Mary Magdalene perhaps, staring in amazement at the stone rolled away from the entrance to Jesus’ tomb. The big round stone lay cast aside on the ground, and the opening to the tomb gaped above her like a black hole.

Joakim looked at the picture for a long time. Then he turned around-and discovered that the wooden benches behind him were not empty.

In the glow of the flashlight he could see letters lying on them.

And dried-up bunches of flowers.

And a pair of white children’s shoes.

On one of the benches lay something small and white, and when he bent down he saw that it was a set of false teeth.

Possessions. Mementos.

There were also several small plaited baskets containing pieces of paper. Joakim reached down and carefully picked one out. He shone the flashlight on it and read:

Carl, forgotten by everyone, but not by me or the Lord.

Sara

In another basket lay a yellowing postcard with a black-and-white picture of an angel on the front, smiling serenely. Joakim picked it up, turned it over, and saw that someone had written on the back in ink, in ornate handwriting:

Tender loving thoughts of my dear sister Maria, sadly missed. My daily prayer goes to the Lord our God that we may soon meet again.

An unbearable loss.

Nils Peter

Joakim gently put the card back in the basket.

This was a prayer room-a sealed-up room for the dead.

A book lay on one of the benches. It was a thick notebook, Joakim saw when he picked it up. Inside was page after page of handwriting, too small and spidery to read in the darkness, and on the title page The Book of the Blizzard was written in black ink.

He pushed it inside his jacket.

Joakim straightened up, looked around for one last time, and noticed a small hole in the wall beside the bench at the front.

He went closer, and realized what it was: the hole he himself had hacked in the wall of the hayloft a few weeks ago.

He had reached through with his arm that evening, as far as he could. On the bench just below that little opening lay the object he had touched:

A folded cloth bundle.

A pale blue, tattered denim jacket, which Joakim thought he had seen before.

When he recognized some of the small badges on the front, which said RELAX and PINK FLOYD, he knew whose jacket it was. Joakim had seen it night after night when he looked out into the street from behind the curtains at the Apple House.

It was his sister Ethel’s denim jacket.

I was the one who discovered the big hayloft in the barn, but I enticed Markus up the steps with me and we explored it together. It was my first romance, and perhaps my best.

But it was so short.

– MIRJA RAMBE