The Ice Child

HAMBURGSUND 1981

She was sick and tired of all their questions. Berit and Tony were always asking her how she felt and if she was sad. She didn’t know how to answer, didn’t know what they wanted to hear. So she kept quiet.

And she stayed calm. In spite of all the hours she’d spent in the cellar when she was forced to eat from a bowl like a dog, she had always known that her mother and father would protect her. But Berit and Tony would not. They might send her away if she didn’t behave, and she wanted to stay here. Not because she was happy with the Wallanders on their farm, but because she wanted to be with Tess.

They had taken to each other from the very first moment. They were so alike. And she had learned so much from Tess. For six years now she had lived on the farm, and sometimes it had been hard to control her rage. She longed to see pain in someone else’s eyes, and she missed the sense of power that she’d had, but with Tess’s help she’d learned how to rein in her impulses and hide beneath a shell of normality.

Whenever their longing grew too great, they would turn to the animals. But they always made sure that the injuries they inflicted looked as if they’d been caused by something else. Berit and Tony never suspected. They simply bemoaned their bad luck. And they never realized that she and Tess had kept watch over the sick cow because they enjoyed seeing the animal’s torment as the light in her eyes was slowly extinguished. Their foster parents were so stupid and naive.

Tess was much better than she was at fitting in and not drawing attention. At night she would whisper about fire, about the all-encompassing euphoria of watching something burn. She said she could hold that desire in her hand and crush it so hard that there would be no risk of ever being caught if she let it out.

The nights were what she liked most. Ever since the beginning, she and Tess had slept in the same bed. At first for the feeling of warmth and security, but gradually something else had crept in. A trembling took over their bodies as their skin touched under the covers. Cautiously they had started to explore each other, running their fingertips over unfamiliar shapes until they knew every millimetre of each other’s bodies.

She didn’t know how to describe the feeling. Was it love? She had never loved anyone, or hated anyone either. Her mother probably thought she did, but it wasn’t true. She didn’t feel hatred, just an indifference towards things that other people seemed to think were important in life. But Tess knew how to hate. Sometimes she would see the hatred blazing in her eyes and hear the contempt in her voice when she talked about people who had treated them badly. Tess asked a lot of questions. About her father and mother and little brother. And about her grandmother. After her grandmother came to visit, Tess talked about her for weeks, wondering whether she was someone who deserved to be punished. She couldn’t understand Tess’s anger. She didn’t hate anyone in her family, she simply had no feelings for them whatsoever. They had ceased to exist the moment she came to stay with Tony and Berit. They were her past. Tess was her future.

There was only one thing she wanted to remember about her old life: the stories her father had told about the circus. All the names, all the towns and countries, all the animals and tricks, the way the circus had smelled and sounded, all the colours that had made it into a magical fireworks show. Tess loved to listen to the stories. She wanted to hear them again every evening, and she would always ask questions about the people in the circus, about how they lived, what they said, and then she would listen breathlessly to the answers.

The more they got to know each other’s bodies, the more she wanted to tell Tess. She wanted to make her happy, and her father’s stories were something she could offer.

Her entire existence now revolved around Tess, and she realized more and more that she had behaved like an animal. Tess explained how everything functioned in daily life. They should never appear weak or allow themselves to be governed by what was inside of them. They had to learn to wait until the right moment; they had to teach themselves self-control. It was difficult, but she kept on practising, and her reward was being able to crawl into Tess’s arms every night and feel her warmth spread through her own body, feel her fingers on her skin, her breath in her hair.

Tess was everything. Tess was the whole world.