Authors: Åsa Larsson
“You’ve never thought about changing sides, then?” asked Sven-Erik. “They’re always looking for public prosecutors, people don’t stay up here.”
Rebecka’s smile was rather strained.
“Of course,” said Sven-Erik, obviously feeling like a complete idiot, “you must earn three times as much as a prosecutor.”
“It’s not that,” said Rebecka. “I’m not actually working at the moment, so the future is…”
She shrugged her shoulders again.
“But you told me you were up here with your job,” said Anna-Maria.
“Yes, I’m working a bit now and again. And when one of the partners was coming up here, I wanted to come along.”
She’s off sick, Anna-Maria realized.
Sven-Erik gave her a lightning glance, he’d understood as well.
Rebecka stood up, indicating that the conversation was at an end. They said good-bye.
When Sven-Erik and Anna-Maria had gone just a few paces, they heard Rebecka Martinsson’s voice behind them.
“Threatening behavior,” she said.
They turned around. Rebecka was standing on the cottage’s little veranda, her hand resting on one of the posts that supported the roof, leaning against it slightly.
She looks so young, thought Anna-Maria. Two years ago she was one of those real career girls. She’d seemed so super-slim and super-expensive, her long dark hair beautifully cut, not just chopped off like Anna-Maria’s. Now Rebecka’s hair was longer. And just chopped off. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. No makeup. Her hip bones stuck out where they met the waistband of her jeans, and her tired but stubbornly upright posture as she leaned against the post made Anna-Maria think about the kind of grown-up children she sometimes met through her job. Coping with impossible circumstances, taking care of their alcoholic or mentally ill parents, looking after their brothers and sisters, keeping the facade up as far as possible, lying to the police and social services.
“The man with the kittens,” Rebecka went on. “It’s threatening behavior. It appears that his action was intended to frighten his ex-wife. According to the law, a threat doesn’t actually have to be spelled out. And she was frightened, I presume. It might be harassment of a female. Depending on what else he’s done, there could be grounds for an injunction to stop him going anywhere near her.”
* * *
As Sven-Erik and Anna-Maria were walking along the road on the way back to the car, they met a lion yellow Merc. In it sat Lars-Gunnar and Nalle Vinsa. Lars-Gunnar gave them a long look. Sven-Erik raised his hand in a wave, after all it wasn’t that many years since Lars-Gunnar had retired.
“Of course,” said Sven-Erik, gazing after the car as it disappeared in the direction of Micke’s bar. “He lives down here in the village, I wonder how things are going with that lad of his.”
* * *
Bertil Stensson was holding a lunchtime service in Kiruna church. Once every two weeks the townspeople could receive the Eucharist during their lunch break. About twenty people were gathered in the small chapel.
Stefan Wikström was sitting in the seat nearest the aisle on the fifth row, wishing he hadn’t turned up.
A memory popped into his head. His father, also a parish priest, at home on the kitchen sofa. Stefan beside him, maybe ten years old. The boy babbling on, he’s holding something, something he wants to show his father, he can’t remember what it was now. His father with the newspaper held up in front of his face like the veil in the temple. And suddenly the boy begins to cry. Then his mother’s pleading voice behind him: you could at least listen to him for a while, he’s been waiting for you all day. Out of the corner of his eye Stefan can see she’s wearing her apron. It must be dinnertime. His father lowers the paper, annoyed at the interruption to his reading, the only restful time of the day before dinner, feeling injured at the accusation in her voice.
Stefan’s father had been dead for many years. His poor mother too. But that was exactly how the priest was making him feel now. Like that annoying child in need of attention.
Stefan had tried to avoid going to the lunchtime service. A voice inside him had said quite clearly: “Don’t go!” But still he went. He’d persuaded himself it was for Bertil Stensson’s sake, not because he was in need of the Eucharist.
He’d thought things would get easier when Mildred was gone, but on the contrary, everything was more difficult. Much more difficult.
It’s like the prodigal son, he thought.
He’d been the dutiful, conscientious son, the one who stayed at home. He’d done so much for Bertil over the years: taken boring funerals, boring services in hospitals and old people’s homes, relieved the parish priest of paperwork—Bertil was useless when it came to administration—unlocked the church for the youngsters on a Friday night.
Bertil Stensson was vain. He’d taken over all the work involving the ice hotel in Jukkasjärvi. Any weddings or christenings in the ice hotel were his. He also bagged any event that had even the slightest chance of ending up in the local press, like the crisis group set up after the road accident when seven young people on a ski trip lost their lives, or specially arranged services for the Sami district court. In between all this, he was very fond of his free time. And it was Stefan who made all this possible, who covered up for him and took over.
Mildred Nilsson had been like the prodigal son. Or more accurately: like the prodigal son must have been while he was still living at home. Before restlessness took him away to foreign lands. Troublesome and difficult, he must have got on his father’s nerves, just like Mildred.
Everybody believed Stefan had been the one who really couldn’t stand Mildred. But they were wrong, it was just that Bertil had been more adept at hiding his dislike.
Things had been different then, when she was alive. Everything the woman touched was surrounded by trouble and arguments. And Bertil had been pleased to have Stefan, grateful for the son who stayed at home. Stefan could see in his mind’s eye how Bertil would come into his room at the parish hall. He had a particular way with him, a code that meant: you are my chosen one. He would appear in the doorway, owl-like with his thick, silvery hair and his stocky body, his reading glasses either perched crookedly on top of his head or on the end of his nose. Stefan would look up from his papers. Bertil would glance almost imperceptibly over his shoulder, sidle in and close the door behind him. Then he would sink down into Stefan’s armchair with a sigh of relief. And a smile.
Something clicked inside Stefan every time. More often than not Bertil didn’t want anything in particular, he might want to talk about a few minor matters, but he gave the impression that he wanted a bit of peace for a little while. Everybody ran to Bertil, Bertil sneaked off to Stefan.
But after Mildred’s death, things had changed. She was no longer there, like a rough seam chafing in the priest’s shoe. Now it was Stefan’s dutiful conscientiousness that seemed to chafe. Nowadays Bertil often said: “I’m sure we don’t need to be quite so formal,” and “I’m sure God will allow us to be practical,” words he’d adopted from Mildred.
And when Bertil talked about Mildred it was in such glowing terms that Stefan felt physically sick from all the lies.
And Bertil had stopped visiting Stefan in his office. Stefan sat there, incapable of getting anything done, agonizing, waiting.
Sometimes the priest walked past the open door. But now the code had changed, the signals were different: rapid footsteps, a glance through the wide-open door, a nod, a quick smile. In-a-hurry-how’s-things, that meant. And before Stefan had even managed to return the smile, the priest had disappeared.
Before he’d always known where the priest was, nowadays he had no idea. The office staff asked about Bertil and looked strangely at Stefan when he forced a smile and shook his head.
It was impossible to conquer Mildred now she was dead. In that foreign land she had become her father’s favorite child.
The service was almost over. They sang a concluding hymn and departed in the peace of God.
Stefan should have left now. Gone straight out and just gone home. But he couldn’t help it, his feet made a beeline for Bertil.
Bertil was chatting to a member of the congregation, gave Stefan a sideways glance, didn’t let him into the conversation, Stefan could wait.
Everything was wrong nowadays. If Bertil had just acknowledged him, Stefan could have thanked him briefly for the service and left. Now it seemed as if he had something in particular on his mind. He was forced to come up with something.
At long last the parishioner left. Stefan felt obliged to explain his presence.
“I felt I needed to take communion,” he said to Bertil.
Bertil nodded. The churchwarden carried out the wine and the wafer, gave the priest a look. Stefan trailed after Bertil and the churchwarden to the sacristy, joined in the prayer over the bread and wine without being asked.
“Have you heard anything from that firm?” he asked when the prayer was over. “About the wolf foundation and so on?”
Bertil removed his chasuble, alb and stole.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps we won’t dissolve it after all. I haven’t decided yet.”
The churchwarden was taking all the time in the world to pour the wine into the piscina and place the wafers in the ciborium. Stefan ground his teeth.
“I thought we were agreed that the church couldn’t have a foundation like that,” he said quietly.
Besides which it’s the church council’s decision, not just yours, he thought.
“Well, yes, but for the time being it exists anyway,” said the priest, and Stefan could clearly hear the impatience beneath the mild voice. “Whether I think we should pay for protection for the wolf or spend the money on training is something we can take up later in the autumn.”
“And the hunting lease?”
Bertil was smiling broadly now.
“Now now, that’s not something for you and I to stand here arguing about. That’s a decision for the church council when the time comes.”
He patted Stefan on the shoulder and left.
“Say hello to Kristin!” he said, without turning round.
Stefan had a lump in his throat. He looked down at his hands, the long, stiff fingers. Real piano fingers, his mother used to say when she was alive. Toward the end, when she was sitting in her apartment in the care home and mixing him up with his father more often than not, all this talk about his fingers used to upset him. She would hold on to his hands and order the nurses to look at his hands: just look at these hands, completely unmarked by physical work. Piano fingers, desk hands.
Say hello to Kristin.
If he dared to start looking at things as they really were, marrying her had been the biggest mistake of his life.
Stefan could actually feel himself hardening inside. Hardening toward Bertil, toward his wife.
I’ve carried them long enough, he thought. It has to end.
His mother must have realized about Kristin. What he’d fallen for was her resemblance to his mother. The slightly doll-like appearance, the graceful manner, the good taste.
But his mother had definitely realized. “So personal,” his mother had said about Kristin’s home the first time she visited her son’s girlfriend, “very pleasant.” That was when he was studying in Uppsala. Pleasant and personal, two good words to use when you couldn’t say beautiful or tasteful without lying. And he remembered his mother’s amused smile when Kristin showed off her arrangement of dried everlasting flowers and roses.
No, Kristin was a child who had a mediocre talent for imitating and copying. She’d never become the kind of priest’s wife his mother had been. And what a shock he’d had the first time he went to messy Mildred’s house. All her colleagues and their families had been invited to Mildred’s for a Christmas drink. It had been an interesting collection of people: the priests and their families, Mildred herself, her husband with his beard and apron, pretending to be under the thumb, and the three women who had temporarily sought refuge in the priest’s house at Poikkijärvi. One of the women had two children who must have had every kind of behavioral difficulty in the book.
But Mildred’s home had been like a Carl Larsson painting. The same light touch, warm and welcoming without being over the top, the same tasteful simplicity as in Stefan’s childhood home. Stefan couldn’t see how it fitted in with Mildred’s personality. Is this her home? he’d thought. He’d been expecting bohemian chaos, with piles of newspaper cuttings on storage shelves and oriental cushions and rugs.
He remembered Kristin afterward: “Why don’t we live in the priest’s house in Poikkijärvi?” she’d wondered. “It’s bigger, it would be better for us, we’ve got children after all.”
No doubt his mother had seen that the fragile side of Kristin that attracted Stefan wasn’t just fragile, but broken. Something cracked and sharp that Stefan would hurt himself on sooner or later.
He was suddenly seized by an upsurge of bitterness toward his mother.
Why didn’t she say anything? he thought. She should have warned me.
And Mildred. Mildred who’d used poor Kristin.
He remembered that day at the beginning of May when she came in waving that letter.
He tried to push Mildred out of his mind. But she was just as insistent now as she had been then. Pushing. Just like then.
* * *
“Right,” says Mildred, bursting into Stefan’s office.
It’s May 5. In less than two months she’ll be dead. But now she’s more than alive. Her cheeks and her nose are as red as freshly waxed apples. She kicks the door shut behind her.
“No, sit down!” she says to Bertil, who’s trying to escape from the armchair. “I want to talk to both of you.”
Talk to, what kind of introduction is that. That alone tells you everything about what she could be like.
“I’ve been thinking about this business with the wolf,” she begins.
Bertil’s leg crosses over the other leg. His arms fold themselves across his chest. Stefan leans back in his chair. Away from her. They feel criticized and told off before she’s even managed to say what’s on her mind.
“The church leases its land to Poikkijärvi hunting club for a thousand kronor a year,” she goes on. “The lease runs for seven years, and is automatically renewed if it isn’t cancelled. This has been the case since 1957. The parish priest at the time lived in the priest’s house in Poikkijärvi. And he liked to hunt.”