He waited behind the shop for several hours. But then he received a message telling him that he need not kill her, but must save his strength for something more important.
Curt goes into the bathroom. In the glow of the candles the steam rising from the bath curls upward and forms a dripping layer of moisture on the white tiles. The air is thick with the coppery stench of blood and the harsh smell of damp wool.
On a white plastic clothes drier above him hangs Virku’s lifeless body. Her back paws are tied to the clothesline. Blood is dripping slowly into the water. Her head lies on the floor beside the bath. Her muzzle is still bound with silver tape.
As he sinks down into the crimson water, he can immediately feel how his body is suffused with the qualities of the dog. His legs become agile and quick. They twitch restlessly as he lies there. He could jump out and set a world record in the hundred meters.
And he can feel Sanna. Can feel her lips against the dog’s ear. Now it is his ear they are touching. She whispers, “I love you.”
He has already taken her rabbit, her cat and even two gerbils. And all the time her love for him has grown.
He drinks the crimson bathwater in great gulps. His hands begin to shake. He loses all control over them when God takes over.
Then God takes his hand and lifts it. Dips the fingers in blood as if it were ink, and writes on the tiles in sprawling letters. The letters spell out a name. And then:
THE WHORE SHALL DIE.
And evening came and morning came, the fifth day
Maja Söderberg is sitting at the kitchen table in the middle of the night. Well, maybe “sitting” is not the right word. Her bottom is certainly on the chair, but her upper body is sprawled across the table and her legs are dangling beneath the chair. Her cheek is resting on one hand, and she is staring at the pattern on the wallpaper as it grows and shrinks, fades and returns. In front of her is a bottle of vodka. It hasn’t been easy for an unpracticed drinker like her to get so much down. But she did it. First of all she cried and sniveled. But now it’s better. Some kind soul has injected the stuff the dentist uses straight into her brain.
Then she hears Thomas coming up the stairs. The evening services during the Miracle Conference are long, drawn-out affairs. The services go on until late. Then people sit in the café and chat. And then there are always a few ardent souls who stay on and pray until the small hours. It’s important for Thomas to be there then. She understands that. She understands everything.
She can hear him treading carefully on the stairs so as not to disturb the neighbors in the middle of the night. He’s so damned considerate. Of the neighbors.
His footsteps rouse her fury.
Hush, she says. But the fury won’t go back to sleep. It has woken up and is pulling at its chain. Let me loose, it gurgles in a muffled voice. Let me loose and I’ll finish him off.
And then he is standing there beside the kitchen table. His eyes and his mouth are open wide with horror. He looks totally ridiculous. Three gaping holes below his fur hat. She smiles a crooked smile. Has to feel for her mouth with her hand. Yes, her mouth is crooked. How did it end up like that?
“What are you doing?” he asks.
What is she doing? Can’t he see? Drinking, of course. She marched down to the liquor store and spent the whole week’s housekeeping on booze.
He is full of accusations and questions. Where are the children? Does she realize how small this town is? How is he going to explain away his wife buying spirits at the liquor store?
Then her mouth opens and she begins to howl. The numbness in her mouth and her head wears off immediately.
“Shut your fucking mouth!” she screams. “Rebecka’s been here. Do you get it? I’m going to end up in jail.”
He tells her to calm down. To think of the neighbors. That they’re a team, a family. That they’ll get through this together. But she can’t stop screaming now. Curses and swear words that she’s never uttered before come pouring out of her mouth. You bastard. You hypocritical fucking bastard.
Much later, when he is certain that Maja is sleeping like the dead, Thomas picks up the telephone and makes a call.
“It’s Rebecka,” he says. “I can’t allow her to carry on like this.”
Friday, February 21
It had stopped snowing and begun to blow. A piercing, ice-cold wind raced across the forests and the roads. It swept the snow along with it, smoothing out the whole landscape with a white, even cover. The morning train to Luleå was delayed by several hours, and the neat piles of snow shoveled to one side by the owners of the villas were pushed back onto their driveways, blocking their garage doors. It whistled round the corners of the house in its quest for more snow, and found its way inside the collars of cursing paperboys.
Rebecka Martinsson was plodding over to Sivving’s house. Her shoulders were hunched against the wind, and she kept her head down like a charging animal. Snow was blowing up into her face so that she could hardly see. She was carrying Lova under one arm like a bundle, and in the other hand she was carrying the child’s pink denim rucksack
“I can walk by myself,” whined Lova.
“I know, honey,” said Rebecka. “But we haven’t got time. It’s quicker if I carry you.”
She pushed Sivving’s door open with her elbow and dropped Lova in a heap on the hall floor.
“Hello,” she called, and Bella answered at once with an excited bark.
Sivving appeared in the doorway leading down to the cellar.
“Thanks for taking her,” said Rebecka breathlessly, trying in vain to pull Lova’s shoes off without undoing them. “Useless idiots. They could at least have told me yesterday when I picked her up.”
When she had arrived at nursery with Lova, she’d been informed that the staff had a training day and that none of the children were to attend. That had been exactly one hour before the hearing about Sanna’s arrest, and now she was really pushed for time. Before long the wind would have blown so much snow up against the car that she might not be able to get out. And then she’d never make it in time.
She pulled at Lova’s shoelaces, but Sara had tied double knots when she helped her little sister get dressed.
“Let me do it,” said Sivving. “You’re in a hurry.”
He picked Lova up and sat with her on his knee on a little green wooden chair that completely disappeared under his bulk. Patiently he started to undo the knots.
Rebecka looked gratefully at him. The route march from the nursery to the car and from the car to Sivving had made her hot and sweaty. She could feel her blouse sticking to her body, but there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that she would have time to shower and change her clothes. She had half an hour.
“Now, you’re going to stay here with Sivving, and I’ll be back soon to pick you up, okay?” she said to Lova.
Lova nodded and turned her face up toward Sivving so that she was looking at the underside of his chin.
“Why are you called Sivving?” she asked. “It’s a funny name.”
“Yes, it is,” laughed Sivving. “My real name is Erik.”
Rebecka looked at him in surprise, and forgot that she was in a hurry.
“What?” she said. “Isn’t your name Sivving? Why are you called that, then?”
“Don’t you know?” Sivving smiled. “It was my mother. I was at college in Stockholm, studying to be a mining engineer. Then I moved back home, and was due to start work with LKAB, the mining company. And my mother got a bit above herself. She was proud of me, of course. And she’d had to put up with a lot of nonsense from other people in the village when she sent me away to study. It was really only posh people who sent their children away to study, and they thought there was no call for her to start getting big ideas about herself.”