She tried to sit up a little in the bed to calm down. It can be scary to lie on your back, stretched out and vulnerable. She tried to think of how she’d come to Deep Tarn, how she’d come to Arnold and Lilldolly. This was unknown territory for her, all the trees and the great solitary lakes watching over everything. She contemplated that she’d arrived in a place of still, ancient mountains and loud, winding, gouging rivers and that it was a landscape you couldn’t grasp. It was both open and closed, it was din and silence and emptier than anything she could have imagined. This was where she’d come, to this little pocket called Deep Tarn and to the two people who lived here. She tried to think that she was with them now; they’d been here for a long time and they’d let her in, invited her into their world as if that were completely normal. As if her neighbors back home would’ve opened their door and said: Just come on in and sit down, and then just let her be part of their life. As if there were space for her. As if it were possible, and people didn’t have to stick to their own schedules and their own lives.
She tried to stay as present and alert as possible. But something kept telling her she’d misunderstood the situation and made a mistake by staying. Arnold and Lilldolly had probably expected her to decline firmly everything they’d offered and to sleep in the car again. They probably expected her to leave for Mervas, or wherever it was she was going, as early as possible in the morning. They’d insisted on her staying only to be polite, all the while hoping she’d say: No, no thanks, you’re so kind but I have to go.
The strange thing was that she’d never felt that they thought she should have said no and left quickly, and this made everything feel blurry and complicated in the early hours of dawn; their generosity confused her, made her lose track of herself. It would have been easier if she’d been turned away, if they’d sullenly muttered: Well, you can’t stay here, that’s for sure. Or if they’d at least established some firm boundaries so she’d know exactly what was going on. But to just invite her in — it was like falling and sinking into something bottomless. Who was she to receive this hospitality? Did she exist other than as a cast of herself, the remains of something that had long been in ruins? She didn’t have a sense of herself other than as a dead weight, dead weight and patches of darkness. Her thoughts pecked at her: how could she let herself be exposed to this? And then the other thoughts: she had to respond to life, she had to find an answer to her life. Then again: how could she be so mindless, so stupid?
She sat very still in bed and stared at the dark timber on the walls. She tried to breathe with long, slow breaths, tried to breathe herself free from the shapeless burden, the weight of being herself. It wasn’t possible to know if she, with her past and her actions, could be accepted among human beings, if she could move among them as if she were one of them.
But even on this morning, she found ways of escaping her anxiety for a little while. They were brief, these moments, small breaks from the ribbon of worry winding through her mind. During these moments, she felt present, almost happy. Then, she almost wanted to head into the dark city and, like an old-fashioned night guard, walk around and light the streetlights one after another.
Her own mother was locked up in that dark city. In there, she was faceless — large and frightening. The darkness had dissolved her features a long time ago; it was too late for Marta to assemble them into a whole again. It was as if her mother’s face had been scattered in the dark and the different pieces would never find each other again.
She now longed for that face, longed for it the way you may long for a place, a town, a room. In the short moments when she escaped her anxiety, she felt a deep longing. As a small child she’d never really felt that she’d had her mother, but her mother’s face had once been all she’d known. It had been the very firmament of life, and through it, she had come into the world. She’d lived with the scattered and blurred image of that face almost her entire life. Why she’d come to think of it so intensely now, here in Deep Tarn, she didn’t know. Something about the landscape had seized her and now it held her. The landscape was breathing, it was a pulse that she could feel, and it was heavy and monotonous and beautiful.
Perhaps the landscape was also a face; perhaps it resembled the first face she’d known. It was a gate, an entrance, to something.
~ ~ ~
Whenever Marta mumbled something about setting out for Mervas, Arnold and Lilldolly would interrupt her.
“Mervas will be there,” they’d say. “No need to be in a rush to Mervas.”
They’d show her the way there when it was time, they promised. They’d take a day trip there together in Marta’s car since Arnold and Lilldolly no longer owned one, at least not one you could drive. They were content to stay around Deep Tarn now that they were retired and didn’t have to chase after money. They had the whole world here, they said. Sun, moon, stars, and forests. Birds, fish, and all the animals. The water and the earth. They had food delivered to them once a month and got their milk, butter, and cheese from their two cows. They grew their own potatoes and got meat from the forest, from their calves and their sheep.
“But Arnold is the one who needs the meat. I’m a peaceful person, I don’t eat humans or animals,” Lilldolly declared, and emitted her little giggle.
“She’s sensitive, that one,” Arnold said. “She has looked too deep into the animals’ eyes, so to speak. Saw herself in there.”
She was an extraordinary person, Lilldolly. And she looked like a little girl, but with wrinkles. Her eyes were small and brown, with a razor-sharp gaze. Her movements were also like those of a girl, light and bouncy. She was like a squirrel. Next to her, Marta felt old and slow, even though she was many years younger.
Since Marta came to Deep Tarn, it had been windy, and the rain from the north had been cold. All the snow had melted, and there was water everywhere. It was an in-between time, a time for waiting. Everything was waiting for warmer weather to arrive and drive every shoot of grass up from the cold, wet ground, and lure the birch leaves out of their casings.
“All this water will blossom and grow green,” Lilldolly said. “When the early summer drinks its fill.”
Most of the time, Marta followed Lilldolly at her tasks. Arnold was busy with the firewood. They dug holes and spread manure on the potato field and they took care of the animals. When the sky cleared, they walked together from one farm building to the next, over wet paths in last year’s grass, zigzagging between rusty old farm equipment and broken-down cars, troughs, and graying wooden constructions. Everything was sinking into the grass, into the ground, moving down into the underground.
“Soon, the wind will be the only thing left here in Deep Tarn,” Lilldolly said. “Nothing but the wind, opening and closing doors and windows. It will be the only thing following the forest paths and visiting the houses. This place will become something else. Everything will change, will go back to what it used to be. Nature, she’s strong, my daddy used to say. She can conquer cities. This little place will be nothing but a morsel to her. She’ll swallow it whole without even bothering to chew.”
Lilldolly’s laughter rippled through the woods. It was always there, even when she was quiet. Suddenly, at a turn or behind a corner, it would appear again. Or when you stumbled a little.
Marta walked around breathing in the scents. There was the scent of water, of melted ice, and then the scent of burning wood and the odor of soil and dung and decomposing plants. The lavvu smelled of sharp wood smoke; the house had a sweet cottage aroma. Around some of the huts and barns there was a faint aroma of tar in the air and arching over all the other scents was that of forest, of conifers and pine needles, of turpentine and wind filtered through branches. Marta let the scents fill her like wine, like a young and vibrant wine. They made everything around her, the light, the deep yet muted colors, become visible as if they’d been created and shaped by them.