“It’s because you have been called,” says Sanna. “He wants you. If you don’t say yes now, you could be lost forever. You can’t postpone your decision until later, because you might never feel this longing again.”
When the three weeks are up, all except two of the participants have given themselves to God. Among those newly saved are Viktor and Rebecka.
“W hat about you and Viktor, then?” Thomas asks Rebecka when the summer church is almost over. “What’s going on between you two?”
He and Rebecka are walking to the local supermarket to buy some milk. Rebecka breathes in the wonderful aroma of warm, dusty asphalt. She’s pleased that Thomas wanted to come with her. Most of the time she has to share him with everyone else.
“I don’t know,” says Rebecka hesitantly as she decides not to tell the truth. “He might be interested, but I haven’t time for anyone but God in my life right now. I want to invest one hundred percent in Him for a while.”
She breaks a thin twig from a birch tree as they walk by. The fragile green leaves smell like a happy summer. She puts a leaf in her mouth and chews.
Thomas grabs a leaf as well and pops it in his mouth. He smiles.
“You’re a sensible girl, Rebecka. I know that God has great plans for you. It’s a wonderful time when you’ve just fallen in love with God. It’s good that you’re making the most of it.”
She heard Sanna’s voice, at first from a long way off, then close by. Sanna’s hand on her upper arm.
“Look,” squeaked Sanna. “Oh, no.”
They had arrived at the police station. Rebecka had parked the car. At first she couldn’t see what Sanna was looking at. Then she saw the reporter running toward their car with a microphone at the ready. A man was standing behind the reporter. He lifted the video camera toward them like a black weapon.
In the Crystal Church, Pastor Gunnar Isaksson’s wife, Karin, sat with her eyes half closed, pretending to pray. There was an hour to go before the evening’s meeting. On the stage at the front, the gospel choir was warming up. Thirty young men and women. Black trousers. Lilac sweatshirts with an explosion of yellow and orange and the word “Joy” on the front.
Once she had been so in love with this church that it almost hurt. The divine acoustics. Like now. Long, drawn-out notes swirling up toward the ceiling, then cascading down to a depth only the bass voices could reach. The warm light. The polar night outside the immense glass windows. A bubble of God’s strength amid the darkness and the cold.
The musicians on the electric and bass guitars were tuning their instruments. There was a dull thud as the lighting technician switched on the spotlights on the stage. The boys who were looking after the sound were struggling with a microphone that was refusing to work. They were talking into it, but you couldn’t hear anything, and then all of a sudden it gave a piercing whistle.
Her arms itched. This morning the rash had been angry and red. She wondered if it could be psoriasis. Just as long as Gunnar didn’t catch sight of it. She didn’t want his intercession.
They had rearranged the furniture in the church. The chairs had been placed around the spot where Viktor had been lying. It looked just like the circus. She looked at her husband, sitting in the front row. His thick neck bulging over the white shirt collar. Next to him sat Thomas Söderberg, trying to concentrate before the evening’s sermon. She saw how Gunnar was forcing himself to look down at the Bible, determined not to distract the other man, only to forget himself and start babbling. His right hand shot out and started to paint pictures in the air with great sweeping strokes.
After Christmas he had decided to lose some weight. This afternoon he had skipped lunch. She had sat at the kitchen table twirling spaghetti around her fork, while he stood at the sink eating three pears. His broad back bending over the draining board. Slurping and gobbling. The sound of the pear juice dripping into the sink. His left hand pressing his tie against his stomach.
She looked at the clock. In a quarter of an hour he would leave his place at Thomas Söderberg’s side, sneak off to the car, drive into town and eat a hamburger in secret. Come back with his mouth full of spearmint gum.
Lie to somebody who cares, she thought. I don’t.
In the beginning he had been a different man. He’d been filling in as caretaker at Berga School, where she’d been working as a teacher. And she’d been to college, he thought that was wonderful. It was an energetic and very obvious courtship. Made-up errands to the staff room when she had a free lesson. Fun and laughter and an endless stream of bad jokes. And beneath all this, an insecurity that moved her. The delighted comments of her colleagues. How he clapped his hands with pleasure when she’d had her hair cut, or bought a new blouse. She watched him with the children in the playground. They liked him. A kind caretaker. It didn’t bother her then that he didn’t read books.
It was later, when he found himself in the shadow of Thomas Söderberg and Vesa Larsson, that the urge to assert himself was aroused.
But then she started to go with him to the Baptist church. At the time it was a church threatened with extinction. No, that was wrong, it was doomed to extinction. The members of the congregation looked as though they’d just dropped in for a rest on the way to the grave. Signe Persson, his gossamer-fine transparent hair carefully waved. His scalp shining through, pink with brown patches. Arvid Kall, once a loader for the LKAB mining company. Now half asleep in a pew, his huge hands lying powerless on his knees.
Naturally they hadn’t been able to afford a pastor; there was hardly enough money to heat the church. Gunnar Isaksson ran the church community like a one-man business. Mended and maintained what they could afford. Sighed over the rest. For example, the damage caused by the damp in the cloakroom. The wall that bellied out like a swollen corpse. The wallpaper that kept peeling off. The idea was that members of the congregation should take it in turns to preach; services were held every other Sunday. Since nobody else volunteered, Gunnar Isaksson stepped in.
There was no kind of thread to be found in his sermons. He drove here and there at random through the landscape of the free church he’d known since his youth. But still the routine was always very similar, with obligatory stops in well-known places, such as "the Spirit of God descending like a dove," "Behold, I am making all things new" and "Those who drink of the water that I will give them." Without exception the journey always ended with a revivalist call to the cooperative souls sitting there, saved long ago.
One consolation was that things weren’t much better in the other churches around the town. God’s temple in Kiruna: a dilapidated hovel where the stale air stood completely still.
Gunnar stood up and came toward the exit. Slowed down to show respect as he passed the place where Viktor Strandgård’s body had lain. A pile of flowers and cards was already lying there. He gave her a brief smile and a wink. A sign that appeared to mean he was just going to the bathroom, or to have a quick word with someone in the cloakroom.
He wasn’t stupid. Not in the least. The very fact that he’d managed to get where he was today. Right at the top of the church, along with Thomas Söderberg and Vesa Larsson. Without any formal training as a pastor. Without any talent as a fisher of men. That very fact demanded a certain talent.
She remembered when Gunnar had told her that the Mission had a new pastor. A young married couple.
A week or so later Thomas Söderberg came to a service in the Baptist church. Sat in the second row nodding in agreement throughout Gunnar’s sermon. Encouraging smiles. Serious consideration. His wife, Maja, like a model pupil by his side.