She lit the paraffin lamp in the kitchen, took it into the living room. Noticed the burnt-out logs at the back of the fireplace. Mailin must have been in a hurry. Neither of them ever left the cabin without tidying it up. The place should be clean, the ash removed and fresh logs brought in, so that all the next one to visit had to do was put a match to them. Now Liss had to sweep out the fireplace and then go out to the wood shed for more logs. Viljam and Tage had taken a quick look in there, as had someone from the police. Had they perhaps made a fire? It wasn’t like Mailin to ignore the strict rules they had made themselves.
Later she turned on the radio, tuned in to some piano music. Even that was too much and she switched off again, needed to empty the room of sound. She stood by the window and looked down towards Morr Water through the dim evening. Many years since she had stood there like this, Mailin by her side; that had been a winter day too, the sun about to disappear behind the hills, the trees full of twinkling needles. We’ll never give up this place, Liss. It’s ours, yours and mine.
Liss wept. Didn’t understand what was happening, had to touch her cheeks to feel. Mailin, if this is my fault… she murmured. It is not your fault. You couldn’t do anything about what happened. I must turn myself in. I killed him.
She pulled on the head lamp, picked up the two buckets and walked down through the trees. Followed the little stream down to the rock. It was as steep as a cliff. Deep below it. In the summer they could dive in from it. Had to dive far enough out to clear the shelf. Below the rock there was a channel in the ice. If it was glazed over, the ice was thinner than cut glass. The current from the stream kept the water open, no matter how cold it got. Old trees decomposing in the depths of the water released gases that also hindered the formation of ice. She threw one of the zinc buckets in, kept a tight hold on the rope, it fell almost three metres before it hit down below. She hauled it up, eased it over the outcrop, then did the same thing with the second bucket.
Further away on the left, there was a little bay. Our beach, they called it, because it was covered in rough sand. It was just big enough for both of them to lie there and sunbathe. Naked, if they were alone out there. Above it, between the trees, an old boathouse that contained a rowing boat and a canoe.
She returned via the beach. Put one foot on the ice, tested her weight on it; it would hold if she walked straight ahead. If she headed right, towards the rock and the stream, it would break, she would go through, sink down into the icy water. Death by water, she thought. If Mailin had gone this way… She hadn’t. The car was found in Oslo. Could someone have driven it there?
She got the wood stove going, boiled water. Went out on to the steps and lit a cigarette. Mailin didn’t allow smoking indoors. The stink lingers for years, she said, and Liss would never break the rule.
After a bowl of minestrone soup, she had a thorough look through the living room, the kitchen and the two bedrooms. She examined the cupboards, used her head lamp to look under the beds. Lifted up the mattress on the upper bunk bed, where Mailin used to sleep. Apart from the ashes in the fire, everything appeared to be as it should be.
She put on two more logs, curled her legs up under her in the corner of the sofa. Let her gaze wander. The antlers on the wall, next to the barometer. They were absolutely huge and must have belonged to a giant of an elk. She was the one who had found them. Down by Feren Lake. In summer they used to take the canoe out and carry it between the waters. Searched for beavers’ dams. Spent the nights out under the open sky. Woke at dawn and crept over to the place where the grouse fought each other in mating duels. All this she could remember; she was twelve and Mailin sixteen. But from the time when she was younger, there were just stray memories and diffuse recollections. When Mailin spoke of things that had happened when they were children, she was always surprised at how little Liss remembered of it. Don’t you remember how you nearly drowned in Morr Water? Liss didn’t. You were in your first year at school and thought you knew how to swim. I had to jump in with my clothes on and rescue you.
Her gaze stopped at the photo albums on the shelf. They were Father’s. At home, there was nothing that had belonged to him, but because it had been his cabin before he gave it to the two of them, he had left the albums here. She took one of them down. Hadn’t flipped through any of them since she was eleven or twelve. There was a certain thrill about it, almost forbidden. Father’s past. There had always been something about that side of the family. Something that was never talked about. Liss could just about remember her grandfather, huge and white bearded. Mailin said he always wore a suit and could imitate all sorts of bird calls. Cuckoos and crows and tits, of course, because you heard them there all the time. But, strangely enough, vultures too, and condors and flamingos. Not easy to say where he’d picked these up from, because he never travelled anywhere and hardly ever watched television.
Her father looked seriously out at her in one of the photos. Tall and pale and long haired, he was standing outside his parents’ house on the edge of the forest. It was pulled down years ago. Now there was an institution for difficult children there. In another photo her father was skiing somewhere in the mountains, wearing an anorak with the hood up. Liss turned to the picture she liked best. She was sitting on his shoulders, holding on to his long brown hair as though she were riding a horse. She felt a prickling in her stomach as she looked at the photo, and suddenly she remembered: he stumbles, and she shrieks as she falls towards the ground, but he recovers just in time. And then he does it again. She sobs for him to stop, put her down, but he realises she wants him to do it again, and then again.
The brown photo album was older. From Father’s childhood. He was helping out on one of the neighbouring farms; Mailin had pointed it out to her once. Father helped to round up the cows in the evening. Or to hang the hay out for drying. His body was thin and angular, like hers. She was standing in the doorway. His mother. You look exactly like her, Liss. Can you see that? Her father’s voice saying this. She could recall the timbre of it. Maybe they had been sitting here in the cabin, on this sofa. They’re flipping through this album together when he says this about how alike they are, as though it were a secret that she mustn’t tell anyone… The photo of Grandmother was black and white, but Liss was certain that even their colouring was the same. That tall, skinny woman in the blouse and the long skirt, pale and with a strange look in her eyes, half there, half dreaming. The hair pinned up in an old-fashioned way. In one of the other pictures she was standing out on the steps, smiling and looking even more like certain pictures Liss had seen of herself. Everything she knew about her came from Ragnhild. Grandmother had had her own studio where she spent the days painting, although nothing ever came of it apparently. She had left the family when Father was ten years old, but Liss didn’t know where she’d gone. Maybe Father had never known either. According to Ragnhild, she was ill in some way and ended her days in the mental hospital at Gaustad.
Liss took out the notebook. Mailin’s book.
Why do you remember everything, Mailin, and I’ve forgotten?
She sat for a while, considering the question, before she continued writing.
All the things I want to ask you about when you come back.
There is something in Viljam’s eyes that reminds me of these pictures of Dad, have you noticed? Something around the forehead too. And something about the way he talks. But the mouth is different.