Arnold told me all this almost without a breath between the words. And I, I’d been sitting there staring at him the whole time while he was talking and it was as if his face gradually transformed into something ugly and foreign and unapproachable. More and more, he ceased to be my Arnold. Instead, he became something large and terrifying and unfamiliar and I became scared of him, scared of the kitchen where we sat, and scared of the bright, quiet summer night outside. I became scared of life itself, I’ll tell you, scared of how it can be and what it can do to you. And this fear was so intense that when I heard Anna-Karin whimpering from the bedroom I couldn’t move but sat there as if frozen to the chair and I saw Arnold get up and run over to her. I heard his voice as if there were a great distance separating us and he was yelling that she was having fever cramps, but I couldn’t get up, I couldn’t move my arms or legs or get my mouth to speak. When Arnold came out with the girl in his arms and I saw how sick she was it was as if a great darkness closed in on me and I couldn’t find my way out of it, all I remember is how frightened I was in there. Images flashed through my head. I saw the moose calf and Anna-Karin, razor-sharp images that merged and became one. Anna-Karin with her head crushed, her broken little face belonging to the moose calf body dangling against Arnold’s chest. And as you must know, that night when I sat in my darkness on that chair, our little girl died from fever cramps while the ear infection moved inside her brain and extinguished her.
When the taxi arrived to take her to the nurse’s station, she was already gray and dead and I don’t even remember how they transported the three of us in the taxi, I didn’t come out of my darkness and I couldn’t say a word until we came into the doctor’s room and I looked at Anna-Karin where she lay incomprehensibly stiff and still on the table.
He shot her, I said then. He injured her, I said to the doctor and pointed at Arnold. He had to kill her with a rock.
~ ~ ~
Everything stopped when Lilldolly finished her story. There was nothing more to follow. But a slight breeze slipped into the cabin, swirled around, and left. It seemed to want to remind them of the shiny new world the sun had painted for them outside. The clear, bright air hovered, trembled. The sky that had hastily been swept clean proudly announced its blue color. In the sharp sunlight, the budding, still-naked branches sparkled with crystal raindrops while the conifers, like cattle, seemed to drink the light in long, deep sips.
Inside the cabin, the two women sat within the silence that arched over them. Marta shivered and felt cold from hearing Lilldolly’s story. Her hands were stuck in each other’s grasp, tightly clenched, like icy clumps. She had wanted to say something after Lilldolly’s long story, but she stumbled on the words, they stuck in her throat. She felt as if she were bursting with things to say, but at the same time she knew her voice wouldn’t obey her. Instead, it would turn into rapidly spinning blades that cut everything around her into bits and pieces until nothing but the terrible and unrecognizable remained, nothing but bloody pulp.
A bumblebee awakened by the sun paused and buzzed for a moment outside the open door. Outside, the tarn reflected everything in its gaze: trees, sky, birds. It was an open eye, and the only thing that would make it blink quickly was the wind. It’s always watching, Marta thought, and she felt the burning sensation, the effort it took not to close her eyes, to force her eyes to see.
Marta bent her head and peered up at Lilldolly, but she was in her own world. Her hands were like two small animals curled up on her lap and she looked out the door with calm, heavy eyes. Quickly and clumsily, Marta got up from the table and rushed out of the cabin. When Lilldolly ran after her, she found Marta leaning against a thick willow, vomiting.
“My dear child, what’s happening?” Lilldolly asked. She leaned over Marta and touched her neck and hair.
“What’s going on? Did you get sick?”
Marta eventually stopped throwing up but started sobbing and weeping instead. Lilldolly fetched some water in an old coffee can and wiped Marta’s mouth and face and let her drink from her cupped hand. Marta was on all fours with her hair hanging over her face. She didn’t want to look up. It struck her that she wanted to be nothing but an animal from here on; it would be a relief. She wanted her mouth to be a muzzle and she wanted to keep drinking from the cupped hand. She wanted to be an animal and hold her face toward the ground and never again stand upright with her breasts and belly and eyes exposed. Now she wanted her sounds to be loud, deep, and hollow; she wanted every sound that left her mouth to be a roar or a bellow.
“Dear child,” Lilldolly mumbled, and stroked Marta’s back slowly where she was planted firmly on her hands and knees, shaking with tears. She wouldn’t let herself be pushed into a sitting or lying position. Lilldolly stroked her as if she were an old sheep, groaning from contractions.
“You can stay like that if it feels good. I’m not going to force you to move. You just stay there and finish crying.”
“Oh, oh,” Marta moaned after a while, her tears pushing and pulling inside her. “It’s not me; it’s not me, not me. .”
“That’s right,” Lilldolly said, leaning her cheek against Marta’s head. “It’s not you; of course it’s not.”
“It’s not me,” Marta tried again. “I shouldn’t be the one crying. You should be crying, not me,” she whimpered. “This is about you, Lilldolly.”
“It doesn’t matter who does the crying, dearie. If it’s you or me. It doesn’t matter.”
“But I don’t want to take it away from you, don’t want to take anything away from you with my own troubles and stand here and. . You having to comfort me.”
Marta had to force the words out between her sobs. It was as if she were pushing them through a perforated wall, which made them come out in mangled, deformed threads.
“You’re the one,” she continued without making much sense. “I’m the one who, I mean, you’re the one — who should be comforted.”
“You cry and I’ll tell the story. It’s as it should be. The one who tells the story can’t cry. The one who tells the story has to find her way past the tears if she’s going to get anywhere. You go on crying. You can cry for me.”
“Yes, and you, you. .”
“I’ve had my share of crying, I’ve cried enough for you too.”
“But I can’t, can’t. . I can’t tell you, Lilldolly. I have. . but I can’t, can’t tell you — ”
“No, you do the crying and I’ll do the talking. That’s how it’ll be. Now you’re the one crying.”
Lilldolly’s hands kept working Marta’s back and shoulders while she talked, they pinched and kneaded and stroked and pushed and Marta closed her eyes and let it happen. She was an animal now, she could allow herself to be stroked, she was an old, ugly animal who had nothing left of shame or pride to defend. It didn’t matter that she was sobbing and drooling, that some vomit was stuck in her hair. She could stay here and be without a soul and let her tears stab her apart.