No answer, driving fast, downward.
Patrik Mattsson parked the car in front of an underground workshop. There was no door, just a large opening in the side of the mine. Inside Rebecka could see men in overalls and helmets. They were holding tools. Huge drills from Atlas Copco were lined up ready for repair.
“This way,” said Patrik Mattsson, and set off.
Rebecka followed him, looking at the men in the workshop and wishing one of them would turn around and see her.
Black primitive rock rose up on both sides of them. Here and there water was running out of the rocks and turning the walls green.
“It’s the copper, the water turns it green,” explained Patrik when she asked.
He stubbed out his cigarette under his foot and unlocked a heavy steel door in the wall.
“I thought you weren’t allowed to smoke down here,” said Rebecka.
“Why not?” asked Patrik. “There aren’t any explosive gases or anything like that.”
She laughed out loud.
“Brilliant. You can hide away down here, five hundred meters under the surface, and have a secret smoke!”
He held open the heavy door and held out his other hand, palm upward, indicating that she should go in ahead of him.
“I’ve never understood the list of commandments in the free church,” she said, turning toward him so that she wouldn’t have her back to him as they went in. “Thou shalt not smoke. Thou shalt not drink alcohol. Thou shalt not go to the disco. Where did they get it from? Gluttony, and not sharing what you have with those in need, sins that are actually mentioned in the Bible, they haven’t got a word to say about those.”
The door closed behind them. Patrick switched on the light. The room looked like a huge bunker. Steel shelves hung from the ceiling on bars. Something that looked like great big vacuum-packed sausages, or round logs, was lying on the shelves.
Rebecka asked, and Patrik Mattsson explained.
“Blocks of alder packed in plastic. They’ve been injected with spores. When they’ve been there for a certain amount of time, you can take off the plastic and just tap the wood with your hand. Then they start to grow, and after five days you harvest them.”
He disappeared behind a large plastic curtain at the far end of the room. After a while he came back with several blocks of wood full of shiitake mushrooms. He placed the blocks on a table and began to pick the mushrooms with a practiced hand. As he picked, he dropped them into a box. The smell of mushrooms and damp wood permeated the room.
“It’s the right climate for them down here,” he said. “And the lights change automatically to give them very short nights and days. Enough of the small talk, Rebecka-what do you want?”
“I wanted to talk about Viktor.”
He looked at her expressionlessly. Rebecka had the feeling that she should have dressed more simply. They were standing here on different planets, trying to talk. She had that damned coat on, and her fine, expensive gloves.
“When I used to live here, you were very close,” she said.
“Yes.”
“How was he? After I left, I mean.”
Behind the curtain the watering system sprang to life with a muted hiss. Moisture sprayed from the roof and trickled down the stiff, transparent plastic.
“He was perfect. Handsome. Devoted. A gifted speaker. But he had a tough God. If he’d lived in the Middle Ages he’d have whipped himself with a scourge and walked to holy places in his bare, wounded feet.”
He picked the mushrooms from the last block of wood and spread them evenly in the box.
"In what way did he punish himself?" she asked.
Patrik Mattsson carried on rearranging the mushrooms; it was as if he was talking to them rather than to her.
“You know. Strip away anything that doesn’t come from God. No listening to anything other than Christian music, because then you’d expose yourself to the influence of evil spirits. He was really keen to get a dog once, but a dog takes up time, and that time belongs to God, so nothing came of it.”
He shook his head.
“He should have got that dog,” he said.
“But how was he?” asked Rebecka.
“I told you. Perfect. Everybody loved him.”
“And you?”
Patrik Mattsson didn’t answer her.
I didn’t come here to learn about growing mushrooms, thought Rebecka.
“I think you loved him too,” she said.
Patrik breathed in sharply through his nose, clamped his lips tightly together and gazed up at the ceiling.
“He was just a sham,” he said violently. “Nothing matters anymore. And I’m glad he’s dead.”
“What do you mean? What sort of sham?”
“Leave it,” he said. “Just leave it, Rebecka.”
“Did you write him a card telling him you loved him, and that what you were doing wasn’t wrong?”
Patrik Mattsson buried his face in his hands and shook his head.
“Did you have a relationship, or not?”
He started to cry.
“Ask Vesa Larsson,” he sniveled. “Ask him about Viktor’s sex life.”
He broke off and fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief. When he didn’t find one, he wiped his nose on the sleeve of his sweater. Rebecka took a step toward him.
“Don’t touch me!” he snapped.
She froze on the spot.
"Do you know what you’re asking? You, who just ran away when things got difficult."
“Yes,” she whispered.
He lifted his hands.
“Do you understand, I can raze the whole temple to the ground! There will be nothing but ash left of The Source of All Our Strength and the movement and the school and-all of it! The town will be able to turn the Crystal Church into an ice hockey rink.”
“ ‘The truth shall set you free,’ it says.”
He fell silent.
“Free!” he spat. “Is that what you are?”
He looked around, seemed to be looking for something.
A knife-the thought went through Rebecka’s head.
He made a gesture with his hand, the fingers together, palm facing her, which seemed to indicate that he wanted her to wait. Then he disappeared through a door farther down the room. There was a heavy click as it closed behind him, then silence. Just the sound of dripping from behind the plastic curtain. The electricity humming through the light cables.
A minute passed. She thought about the man who had disappeared in the mine in the 1960s. He’d gone down, but never came up again. His car was in the parking lot, but he was gone. Without a trace. No body. Nothing. Never found.
And Virku in the car in the big parking lot, how long would she cope if Rebecka didn’t come back? Would she start barking, and be found by somebody passing by? Or just lie down and go to sleep in the snow-covered car?
She went to the door that led out to the road into the mine, and pushed it. To her relief, it wasn’t locked. She had to control herself to stop herself from running toward the workshop. As soon as she saw the people inside and heard the noise of their tools and the sound of steel being bent and shaped, her fear started to ebb away.
A man came out of the workshop. He took off his helmet and went over to one of the cars parked outside.
“Are you going up?” asked Rebecka.
“Why?” He smiled. “Want a lift?”
She drove back up with the lad from the workshop. She could feel him looking at her from the side, amused and curious. Although of course he couldn’t see much in the darkness.
“So,” he said, “do you come here often?”
Virku was full of reproaches when Rebecka got back to the car in the parking lot at the mine.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” said Rebecka, with a pang of guilt. “We’re going to pick up Sara and Lova soon, then we’ll play outside for a long time, I promise. We’re just going to pop into the tax office first and check something on their computers, okay?”
She drove through the falling snow to the local tax office.
“I hope this is over soon,” she said to Virku. “Although it’s not looking too good. I can’t make any sense of it.”