The Darkest Room

29

Joakim was standing in the kitchen in the twilight, watching the thickening snowfall between the buildings. It was going to be a white Christmas at Eel Point.

Then he looked over at the barn door. It was closed now, and no footprints led toward it through the snow. He hadn’t been back inside the barn since the previous evening, but couldn’t stop thinking about the hidden room.

A room for the dead, with its own church benches.

Ethel’s jacket had been lying there neatly folded on one of the benches, among all the other old mementos. He had left it there.

It was Katrine who had put it there. She must have found the room during the fall and placed the denim jacket on the bench, without telling Joakim. He hadn’t even known that Katrine had the jacket.

His wife had kept secrets from him.

It was only when he called his mother that he found out

she had sent the jacket to Eel Point. Until then he had assumed that Ingrid had simply placed Ethel’s clothes in a box and put it in the attic.

“No, I got it down and wrapped it in brown paper,” said Ingrid. “Then I mailed it to Katrine… It was sometime in August.”

“But why?” Joakim had asked.

“Well… she asked me to send it. Katrine called me last summer, wanting to borrow the jacket. She wanted to check on something, she said, and so I sent it to her.” Ingrid paused. “Didn’t she tell you?”

“No.”

“Didn’t you talk to each other?”

Joakim didn’t reply. He wanted to say that of course he and Katrine had talked to each other, trusted each other completely-but he remembered the strange look she had given him the night they found out Ethel was dead.

Katrine had hugged Livia and looked at Joakim with shining eyes, as if something wonderful had happened.

When darkness fell outside the kitchen window, Joakim began to prepare dinner. Serving up Christmas fare on the twenty-third of December was perhaps a little early, but he wanted to get the celebrations under way as quickly as possible.

It had been the same last year. His sister had drowned at the beginning of December, and her name had not been mentioned at all over Christmas-instead Katrine and Joakim had bought more presents and even more food than usual. They had filled the Apple House with candles and decorations.

But of course it had still felt as if Ethel were there. Joakim had thought about her every time Katrine raised her glass of alcohol-free cider to him.

He blinked away the tears, continued flicking through the

recipes in Delicious Christmas Fare, and did the best he could in the kitchen as the shadows grew outside the window.

He fried sliced sausage and meatballs. He cut the cheese into strips, shredded the cabbage, and warmed the spare ribs. He grilled the oven-baked ham, peeled the potatoes, and brushed the freshly baked spiced bread with syrup and water. He dished up eel and herring and salmon, and cooked the children’s specially requested meal: grilled chicken with fries.

Joakim placed dish after dish on the kitchen table, and underneath the table Rasputin got a bowl of fresh tuna.

At half past four he called Livia and Gabriel.

“Time to eat.”

They came in and stood by the table.

“Lot of food,” said Gabriel.

“It’s called the Christmas table,” said Joakim. “You take a plate and fill it up with a little bit of everything.”

Livia and Gabriel did as he said, up to a point. They took some chicken and fries, and potatoes and a little sauce, but the fish and the cabbage remained untouched.

Joakim led the way into the drawing room and the family sat down at the big table beneath the chandelier. He poured cider and wished his children a happy start to the Christmas festivities. He waited for them to ask why he had set a fourth place at the table, but they said nothing.

Not that he really believed Katrine would come back during the evening, but at least he could look at her empty place and fantasize that she was actually sitting there.

The way it should have been.

His mother had set an extra place last Christmas. But of course Ethel never turned up either.

“Can I get down now, Daddy?” asked Livia after ten minutes.

“No,” said Joakim quickly.

He could see that her plate was empty.

“But I’ve eaten everything up.”

“Stay there anyway.”

“But I want to watch TV.”

“Me too,” said Gabriel, who still had a lot of food left on his plate.

“There’s horse riding on TV,” said Livia, as if this were a weighty argument.

“Just stay where you are,” said Joakim, his tone harsher than he had intended. “This is important. We’re celebrating Christmas together.”

“You’re stupid,” said Livia, glaring at him.

Joakim sighed. “We’re celebrating together,” he repeated, with no conviction.

The children kept quiet after that, but at least they stayed put. Eventually Livia went off to the kitchen with her plate, followed by Gabriel. Both came back with a helping of meatballs.

“It’s snowing really hard, Daddy,” said Livia.

Joakim looked out of the window and saw thick flakes whirling by.

“Good. We’ll be able to go sledding.”

Livia’s bad mood disappeared just as quickly as it had arrived, and soon she and Gabriel were chatting about the Christmas presents under the tree. Neither of them seemed concerned about the fourth chair at the table, while Joakim kept glancing toward it all the time.

What had he been expecting? That the front door would open and Katrine would walk into the drawing room?

The old Mora clock by the wall struck just once-it was already half past five, and almost all the light had vanished outside the window.

As Joakim popped the last meatball in his mouth and looked over at Gabriel, he could see that his son was already

falling asleep. He had eaten twice as much food as usual this evening, and now he was sitting there motionless, gazing down at his empty plate with his eyelids drooping.

“Gabriel, how about a little sleep?” he said. “So you’ll be able to stay awake longer tonight?”

At first Gabriel just nodded, then he said, “Then we can play. You and me. And Livia.”

“We sure can.”

Joakim suddenly realized that his son had probably forgotten Katrine. What did he himself remember from when he was three years old? Nothing.

He blew out the candles, cleared the table, and placed the food in the refrigerator. Then he turned down Gabriel’s bed and tucked him in.

Livia didn’t want to go to sleep at such an early hour. She wanted to watch horses, so Joakim moved the small television into her room.

“Is that okay?” he said. “I was just going to go out for a little while.”

“Where?” asked Livia. “Don’t you want to see the horse riding?”

Joakim shook his head. “I won’t be long,” he said.

Then he went and picked up Katrine’s Christmas present from under the tree. He took the present and a flashlight into the hallway and pulled on a thick sweater and a pair of boots.

He was ready.

He stopped in front of the mirror and looked at himself. In the darkness of the corridor he was hardly visible in the glass, and got the idea that he could see the contours of the room through his own body.

Joakim felt like a ghost, one of the apparitions haunting the manor house. He looked at the white English wallpaper around the mirror and the old straw hat hanging on the wall like some kind of symbol of life in the country.

Suddenly everything seemed completely meaningless-why had he and Katrine actually carried on renovating and

decorating year after year? The places where they lived had just gotten bigger and bigger; as soon as one project was finished they had started the next one and made every effort to get rid of any trace of the people who had lived there before. Why?

A low yowling interrupted his thoughts. Joakim turned and saw a small four-legged creature crouching on the rag rug.

“Do you want to go out, Rasputin?”

He went over to the glassed-in veranda, but the cat didn’t follow him. It just looked at him, then slunk into the kitchen.

The wind whirled around the house, rattling the small windowpanes in the veranda.

Joakim opened the outside door and felt the wind seize hold of it; it was coming in strong gusts now and seemed to be growing stronger all the time, transforming the snowflakes into needle-sharp shards whirling across the courtyard.

He went carefully down the steps, screwing up his eyes against the snow.

The sky over the sea looked darker than ever, as if the sun had disappeared for good into the Baltic. The cloud cover above the water was a threatening shadow-play of gray and black patches-huge snow clouds in the northeast had begun to descend, moving closer to the coast.

A storm was on its way.

Joakim went along the stone pathway between the buildings, out into the wind and the snow. He remembered Gerlof’s warning, that you could get lost if you went out in a blizzard-but there was only a thin covering of snow on the ground so far, and a short walk over to the barn didn’t seem to pose many risks.

He went over to the broad door and pulled it open.

Nothing moved inside.

A flash of light in the corner of his eye made him stop and turn his head. It was the light from the lighthouses. The barn obscured the northern tower, but the southern lamp was flashing at him with its red glow.

Joakim walked into the barn and it felt as if the wind were pushing at his back, as if it wanted to come with him. But he slammed the door shut.

After a few seconds he switched on the lights.

The lightbulbs hung there like feeble yellow suns in the dark space of the barn. They couldn’t chase away the shadows along the stone walls.

Through the roof he could hear the howling wind, but the framework of solid beams didn’t move. This building had survived many storms.

In the loft was the wall with Katrine’s name and the names of all the others who had died, but Joakim didn’t go up the steps this evening either. Instead he moved on past the stalls where the cattle had stood every winter.

The stone floor in the furthest stall was still free of dust and hay.

Joakim sank down to his knees and got down on his stomach. Then he slowly wriggled in through the narrow opening under the wooden planks, the flashlight in one hand and Katrine’s present in the other.

Inside the false wall he stood up and switched on the flashlight. Its beam was weak and it would soon need new batteries, but at least he could see the ladder leading up into the darkness.

Joakim listened, but everything was still silent in the barn.

He could stand here or start climbing. He hesitated. Just for a moment he considered the fact that a storm was coming, and Livia and Gabriel were alone in the house.

Then he lifted his right foot and placed it on the bottom rung.

Joakim’s mouth was dry and his heart was pounding, but he was more expectant than afraid. Step by step he was getting closer to the black opening in the ceiling. He didn’t want to be anywhere else but where he was now.

Katrine was close, he could feel it.

Markus came back to the island and wanted to see me, but not at Eel Point. I had to go down to Borgholm to meet him in a café.

Torun, who could hardly see the difference between light and darkness now, asked me to buy potatoes and some flour. Flour and root vegetables, that was what we lived on.

It turned out to be a final meeting in a gray town still waiting for winter, despite the fact that it was the beginning of December.

– MIRJA RAMBE