“I think we should be allowed to meet a Buddhist or a Muslim or something,” says Nina Eriksson. “Why do we only get to meet a load of Christians?”
Nina Eriksson is the class spokeswoman and chief busybody. Loud and clear, her voice echoes round the classroom. Many support her statement and murmur in agreement.
“There isn’t such a wide choice in Kiruna,” Margareta Fransson apologizes halfheartedly.
Then she hands over to Thomas Söderberg.
He looks good, you have to admit. Dark brown curly hair, and long black eyelashes. He laughs and jokes, but from time to time he becomes totally serious. He’s young to be a priest-or pastor, as he says. And he’s wearing jeans and a shirt. He draws on the board. The picture of the bridge. It’s all about how Jesus gave up his life for them. Built a bridge to God. Because God so loved the world that he gave up his only son. He addresses the class with the friendly “du” form, although he is talking to twenty-four people at the same time. He wants them to choose life. Say yes. And he answers all the questions they put to him at the end. At some of the questions he falls silent for a while. He frowns and nods thoughtfully. As if it’s the first time anyone has asked these questions. As if they have given him something to think about. Much later Rebecka realizes that it was far from the first time he’d heard those questions. That the answers had been prepared a long time ago. But the person who asks the questions is made to feel special.
He ends the visit with an invitation to the Mission church summer gathering in Gällivare. Three weeks’ work and Bible studies, no pay but free board and lodging.
“Dare to be curious,” he urges them. “You can’t be sure the Christian faith isn’t for you unless you’ve found out what it really stands for.”
Rebecka thinks he’s looking straight at her as he speaks. She looks straight back at him. And she can feel the fire.
The snowplow had cleared the road right up to her grandmother’s gray cottage. There was a light upstairs. Rebecka lifted out her suitcase and the supermarket carrier bag of food. She had shopped on the way. Maybe they wouldn’t need it, but you never know. She locked the car.
That’s the sort of person I am now, she thought. The sort of person who locks things.
“Hello!” she called when she got inside.
There was no answer, but presumably Sanna and the children had closed the upstairs door leading to the staircase, so they wouldn’t have heard her.
She put down what she was carrying and took a walk around downstairs without switching on the lights. It had the characteristic smell of an old house. Lino and dampness. Musty. The furniture stood there like a collection of tired ghosts, pressing themselves against the walls in the darkness, covered with grandmother’s hand-stitched linen sheets.
She went upstairs carefully, afraid of falling; the melted snow under the soles of her boots had made them slippery.
“Hello,” she shouted up the stairs, but there was no reply this time either.
Rebecka opened the door to the upstairs flat and went into the narrow, dark hallway. When she bent down to unzip her boots something black came flying at her face. She screamed and tumbled backwards. Two cheerful yelps and the black thing turned out to be a lovely little dog. A pink tongue took the opportunity to acquaint itself with her face. Two more encouraging yaps and then the dog licked her again.
“Virku, come here!”
A girl of about four appeared in the open doorway. The dog did a little pirouette on Rebecka’s stomach, danced over to the girl, gave her a lick, then pranced back to Rebecka. But by then Rebecka had managed to get to her feet. The dog shoved its nose into the bag of groceries instead.
“You must be Lova,” said Rebecka, switching on the hall light and edging the dog away from the carrier bag with her foot at the same time.
The light fell on the girl. She had a blanket wrapped around her, and Rebecka realized it was cold in the house.
“Who are you?” asked Lova.
“My name’s Rebecka,” she replied briefly. “Let’s go in the kitchen.”
She stopped at the door and looked at the kitchen, dumbstruck. The chairs had been turned over. Grandmother’s rag rug was screwed up under the kitchen table. Virku scampered up to a pile of sheets that had presumably been covering the furniture. She growled and shook them playfully. There was a powerful smell of Ajax and soap. When Rebecka looked more closely, she could see that the floor was smeared with cleaning fluid.
“What on earth!” she exclaimed. “Whatever has been going on here? Where are your mother and your big sister?”
Lova pointed at the sofa bed in the alcove. A girl of about eleven sat there, wearing a long gray sheepskin coat, maybe Sanna’s. She looked up from her magazine with narrowed eyes, her mouth a thin compressed line. Rebecka felt a stab in her heart.
Sara, she thought. She’s got so big. And so like Sanna. The same blond hair, but hers is straight like Viktor’s.
“Hi,” said Rebecka to Sara. “What’s Lova been up to? Where’s Sanna?”
Sara shrugged her shoulders, making it clear that it wasn’t her job to keep an eye on her little sister or tabs on her mother.
“Mummy got cross,” said Lova, tugging at Rebecka’s sleeve. “She’s in the bubble. She’s lying down in there.”
She pointed at the bedroom door.
“Who are you?” asked Sara suspiciously.
“My name’s Rebecka, and this is my house. Partly mine anyway.”
She turned to Lova.
“What do you mean, ‘in the bubble’?”
“When she’s in the bubble she doesn’t speak and she doesn’t look at us,” explained Lova, and couldn’t help tugging at Rebecka’s buttons again.
“Oh, God,” sighed Rebecka, shrugging off her coat and hanging it on a hook in the hall.
It really was freezing in the house. She must get the fire going.
“I know your mummy,” said Rebecka, starting to pick up the chairs. “My grandparents lived here when they were alive. Have you got soap in your hair as well?”
She looked at Lova’s hair, hanging in sticky clumps. The dog sat down and tried to reach round and lick its back. Rebecka crouched down and called to the dog in the same way as her grandmother used to call the dogs at home.
“Here, girl!”
The dog came straight over to her and showed her submissiveness by attempting to lick Rebecka’s mouth. Rebecka could see now that she was some sort of spitz crossbreed. The thick black coat stood out like a woolly frame round the narrow feminine head. Her eyes were black, shining with happiness. Rebecka ran her hands through the fur and sniffed at her fingers. They smelled of carbolic.
“Nice dog,” she said to Sara. “Is she yours?”
Sara didn’t answer.
“Two-thirds belong to Sara and one-third belongs to me,” said Lova, as if she had learned it by heart.
“I want to talk to Sanna,” said Rebecka, and stood up.
Lova took her hand and led her into the other room. The accommodation on the upper floor consisted of the big kitchen with the alcove for the sofa bed, and another room. This had been the children’s bedroom. Grandmother and Grandfather had slept in the alcove in the kitchen. Sanna was lying on her side on one of the beds, her knees drawn up so that they were almost touching her chin. Her face was turned to the wall, and she was wearing only a T-shirt and a pair of flowery cotton knickers. Her long blond angel hair was spread over the pillow.
“Hello, Sanna,” said Rebecka carefully.
The woman on the bed didn’t reply, but Rebecka could see that she was breathing.