Strange Bird (2013) Page 2

  Uninvited thoughts of Angela appeared again, although he tried to push them aside with more important things. It was time to order more wood and the packing on the faucet in the kitchen needed to be changed and he had to drive in to the Central Association in town and get feed for the pigeons. Angela, what do you want from me? It was getting impossible for him to defend himself against the memories that kept crowding in.

  Angela tore herself from his embrace and ran off to the others who were gathered around Erik and his new Harley-Davidson.

  “Will you take me for a spin?” she said and Erik nodded. Ruben watched her climb up on the pillion and take hold of Erik’s new leather jacket. In a cloud of dust they took off down the gravel road.

  Damn it, now it really got bad! In a weak moment Ruben wished his brother bad luck and misfortune on the ride; he was willing to admit that afterward. Not to anyone else, but to himself. But he truly never wished for what happened next. As a child you have ideas that you can control the world with mental power. As an adult you sometimes have relapses to that magical way of thinking. When Angela came running back all out of breath with scratches on her face, Ruben felt guilt like a hand squeezing his throat.

  “Help! I think Erik’s dead! He’s not moving. He doesn’t answer. He’s bleeding! I think he hit his head on a rock. We drove off the road. Come!” Her tense voice broke and she started sobbing. Ruben had not meant that he wanted to see his brother dead. He wanted to see him less arrogant and a little chastened, that was all.

  They ran in the direction Angela pointed. Ruben arrived first at the scene of the accident, his eyes blurry from sweat or perhaps it was tears.

  “Erik!” My dear little brother! He didn’t answer. He didn’t move from under the motorcycle, his body at a strange angle. There was blood on the stone alongside his head and blood stained the white shirtfront alarmingly red.

  “Erik!” Ruben bent over to lift the motorcycle and got help from several arms. Please let him be alive! He shook his brother’s shoulders and held his hand over his face to feel whether he was breathing. The others had gathered behind him.

  “How is he? Does he have a pulse?” Ruben found the inside of Erik’s wrist. Did he feel a pulse? Perhaps it was his own. He couldn’t tell.

  “Feel the carotid artery,” said Gerd Jakobsson, who often helped out with the district nurse. Then everything got very quiet. A hollow, impatient waiting. And everyone’s eyes were turned toward Ruben, as if he could perform miracles and raise his brother from the dead by will. He noticed that in his terror his fingers were pressing too hard and he eased his grip. Yes, there on the neck he felt a pulse. Now he felt it clearly. And now Erik was moving and opening his eyes, and a murmur of voices broke through the silence.

  “He needs to go to the hospital; he probably has a concussion,” someone said.

  “No way!” Erik sat halfway up and then sank back against the ground and held his head. His face was very pale; he tore open his shirt and looked at his stomach. There was a sizeable scratch, but nothing deeper. “What happened to the motorcycle?” he moaned.

  Yes, Ruben remembered it as if it happened yesterday. What happened to the motorcycle? was the first thing his brother asked when he regained consciousness. He didn’t ask about Angela. She was sitting in the ditch, crying. Erik didn’t see her. She could easily have been dead or seriously injured.

  There was no trip to the hospital in town. Erik had consumed more than a quart of moonshine and did not want to lose his driver’s license. So Ruben got the transport moped and drove him back to the Jakobsson place and then led him to the bed in the maid’s chamber beyond the living room.

  “We can’t leave him alone,” said Gerd. “He mustn’t fall asleep. That can be dangerous. Svea says so,” she added quickly, so that no one would question the assertion. If District Nurse Svea had expressed that opinion, it was gospel. An indisputable truth.

  Angela pushed the hair from her face.

  “I can stay with him.” She slipped past Ruben in the doorway without so much as looking at him. “I’ll stay here,” she said. “Go on, Erik needs peace and quiet. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

  Ruben bought his flounder from the fisherman where he usually shopped. That would be his contribution to lunch. Berit had promised to make an omelet with the creamed morels. That could easily be a little tasteless. He didn’t think she would say no to a couple of fresh-smoked flounders. Perhaps he should bring a bunch of flowers, too. Over the years he had discovered that women like that sort of thing. They didn’t have to be expensive store-bought flowers. It was just as good to stop by the side of the road and pick blueweed and daisies and lady’s bedstraw, red clover and columbine, and then edge the bouquet with ferns that grew on the north side by the corner of the house. It may seem a little sad that it took fifty long years to passably understand women, but better late than never. Women like to be surprised.

  Angela had a half-withered wreath of meadow flowers around her head when they met at the ballast wharf on the afternoon of Midsummer Day. She sat dangling her legs in the water in an irritated way, like when a cat bats its tail, and pretended not to notice him. Her hair was disheveled. She looked tired.

  “Want to swim?” he finally asked, after a long time had passed and neither of them had said anything. There was relief in being able to tear off their clothes and jump in the water. It was cold and Angela screamed, but seemed to come alive in the chill. A quick dip. He reached for her towel to dry her off and she let him do that. Her skin was almost pale blue and goose pimply with cold and her nipples were clearly visible through the fabric of her white bathing suit. He dried her hair, which had darkened several shades from the water, rubbed and rubbed so that it would regain its proper color. He wanted her to look like usual, be like usual. When she tried to free herself he kissed her on the tip of her nose, all that was sticking out of the beach towel.

  “How’s Erik doing?” she asked.

  “Good, I think. He left on the boat for the mainland. There was nothing seriously wrong with him. Not with him or the motorcycle, miraculously enough.”

  Suddenly Angela threw her arms around Ruben, tripped him, and wrestled him down onto the ground. They rolled around like kids in the grass and she tried to get him to eat dandelions like a rabbit.

  “I’m not a vegetarian, I want meat,” he growled, biting her on the arm. She laughed as only Angela could, a rippling giggle. Then she straddled his stomach. He had nibbled her arm from the elbow up to the shoulder and was now in a sitting position. Then she suddenly got serious.

  “Will you ever grow up, Ruben?”

  He laughed out loud and continued to pretend to eat her other arm up too, without understanding that the game was over, that she expected something else.

  “I mean, what do you think about the future? What do you want with your life?” she clarified.

  “Want with my life?” he asked stupidly. “I think it’s good the way it is. I’m a carpenter. I can do a little masonry—I can support myself that way.” He showed her his big, sinewy hands.

  “Don’t you want to study, like Erik, and be somebody?”

  “I am somebody. I’m Ruben.” He placed his cheek against her soft, soft skin and drew in her scent of salt and summer heat. Sought her mouth and got an unexpected response.

  “Do you love me?” she asked when he opened his eyes and saw the aurora of hair shining again around her face, like he wanted it to, like it always did later when he remembered her.

  He nodded in reply.

  “How do you know that? How do you know that you really love someone? You don’t know me. The real me.” And then she burrowed her head next to his neck. “You can’t even be sure you know yourself, Ruben. Don’t you understand that?”

  Chapter 3

  Later that afternoon Ruben took the car up to Klinte cemetery to put flowers on the graves. Usually he rode his bike, but his body ached. Perhaps there was a change in the weather.

  J. N. Donner, of a ship
-owning family and owner of Klinteby’s, had been buried up under the wall. But he found no peace in the soil of the cemetery and Klinteby’s horses refused to go past, so the body was moved home to the lovely park that belonged to the farm. On the dark north side of the cemetery second-class citizens were buried: suicides and religious dissenters. State-church members and true believers who died of old age and sickness were given a place on the south side. On the north side were his grandfather and grandmother, who belonged to the Baptist congregation. Ruben usually took the opportunity to say a few words to Grandfather Rune. Grandmother had always been a bit more reserved, but the conversations with Grandfather Rune did not need to end just because he found himself on the other side of the line. He had always been a good listener.

  “The price of gas has gone up again. You’d turn in your grave if you knew what it costs now—and yet we fill up our cars anyway. You have to. I really need to buy a new pair of pants, but I can’t afford it. You know, Grandfather, all of a sudden there I’ll be, filling up bare-assed, ‘cause I’ve got to have gas.” The eloquent silence was answer enough. Ruben placed a bunch of blueweed in the tapered vase and limped across the road to the other part of the cemetery below Klinteberget. It was sunnier here, yet Ruben felt raw and cold. Here was his mother, Siv Nilsson, and little Emelie who died the year after Erik was born. Ruben could vaguely remember her as a shrieking bundle in a basket dressed in layers of thin pink cloth. A pair of tiny kicking feet and a cap with lace that almost completely concealed the little face.

  His father was still alive—at the old folks’ home in his own world, where Siv was within earshot in the kitchen with the coffee pot simmering on the stove. At five o’clock he always wanted to get up and milk the cows, but fell back asleep gratefully when the night staff promised to take care of it. And when he got coffee in bed, even though it wasn’t his birthday, he thought it was as if he’d gone to heaven. Well, not really, but well on the way.

  “Listen, Mom, do you remember when you wanted to talk with me about Angela?” he said, resting his hand heavily on the gravestone. “That’s fifty years ago now and it was the worst day of my life.” Ruben sat down on the grass by the grave and leaned his head against the stone. He suddenly felt so weak. He was definitely coming down with a cold; he felt it in his throat. Presumably he had a fever. That was bad, considering the homing pigeon competition over the weekend. With the fast young pigeons he had picked out he should have a reasonable chance of winning the traveling trophy. He closed his eyes, and the memory of Angela returned with full force. The muscles in his stomach tightened in defense. There was an ache behind his eyes and he let the thoughts and tears come. It was the fever that made him so miserable and sentimental, he was sure of it. Otherwise, he would not be sitting there snuffling and making a fool of himself where people could see him.

  Angela had changed somehow since that Midsummer Eve. Ruben had a hard time explaining how. She often brooded about life and death and the meaning of it all, but after the accident with the motorcycle it was worse than ever.

  “You only have one life and there are so many possibilities. How do you know you’re choosing the right one? I mean, so you don’t change your mind later when it’s too late.” He didn’t know, he had never thought along those lines. Everything was just fine the way it was. You got up in the morning, you did your work, and that was all there was to it.

  Angela got a job at Klinteby’s canning factory. In the evenings, when Ruben came to visit on his bicycle, she just wanted to sleep. But on weekends when she was off they might bicycle to Bjorkhaga or Tofta to swim. She no longer invited kisses and hugging. It seemed as if the magic had been lost after that playful moment on the ballast wharf, and he did not know what to do to get it back.

  “We could have died, Erik and I,” she said again and again. “What if we had … if we actually died … and this life isn’t real, but just something we keep on pretending because death is so awful? Not existing scares me. Do you understand that, Ruben? Do you understand what I’m saying? But maybe we can live parallel lives; do you believe that? I like that idea, because then you don’t need to choose and then you can’t go wrong. Many parallel lives, the way a tree branches out, do you understand?”

  “Well, not really, but I’m happy to listen anyway,” he answered in an attempt to be truthful and still try to please her.

  They spent time together more as friends or siblings than as lovers. So it surprised him when one evening she invited him to go with her up to her room. There was something in her eyes. It was not like usual that evening.

  “Nobody’s home,” she said. “They’re not coming back until tomorrow afternoon.” With astonishing casualness she started to undress in front of him. As if petrified he stood there watching her. When she pulled her sweater over her head and had no bra on underneath, he didn’t know where to look. Then she stepped out of her skirt and panties and looked at him seriously. She had never been more beautiful and never looked more sorrowful than at that moment. He hardly dared breathe, much less move. Then she took him by the hand. Come. As in a dream he followed her to the bed. He fumbled with the buttons on his shirt and she helped him. When the paralysis went away they made love frantically. All the playfulness was gone. There was a hunger in her, as if she were possessed, as though she were making love to keep death away.

  “How much do you love me?”

  He kissed her and caressed her so that she would understand that he loved her more than life itself, more than anything or anyone else. He had never had the words; his language was in his hands. He hoped that would be enough.

  The tears came unexpectedly. She cried, and he consoled her without words. Is it something I did? He could not ask the question and got no answer—not then.

  Toward morning he finally fell asleep and discovered when he woke up that she was no longer lying next to him in the bed. Her scent was in the sheets. It was light outside, but it was not even six. The door to the bathroom was locked and he heard her sobbing between fits of retching.

  “Don’t you feel well, Angela?” She laughed shrilly, and then sobbed. “What is it? Can I do anything? Angela, open up!”

  “Go home, I want to be alone.” And he still did not understand a thing until later that evening, when his mother Siv took him aside to say what had to be said. She pushed the hair from her face, smoothed her apron, and straightened her back the way she always did when she had to collect herself before a difficult task. Her face was so serious that he got scared and her voice was as brittle and dry as last year’s twigs.

  “I’ve spoken with Angela’s mother.”

  “Yes?” Something in her gaze made him lower his eyes in shame.

  “As I’m sure you know, Angela is pregnant.”

  “What?” The thought was dizzying. It wasn’t possible, they had just …

  “Angela is going to the mainland on the evening boat. To be with Erik. Erik is the child’s father. It happened accidentally on Midsummer Eve. Even so, Erik has to take responsibility for what he’s done and take care of them.”

  “What the hell!” Ruben leaped out of the chair so that it turned over. “That bastard.” His concussion had just been a way to go after Angela … “I’ll kill him. I’m going to kill—”

  “Calm down, Ruben. Angela has agreed to it and she has chosen to go to him on the mainland. I’ve sensed that you had different hopes, but things don’t always turn out the way you want in life. You’ll meet another nice girl….”

  He couldn’t hear anymore. He rushed from the room so that he would not break down in front of her. He had to be alone. Had to get away from her sympathetic eyes—they made the pain even worse. He ran through the village and past the church, not stopping until he got lost on a path in the Buttle forest. There he collapsed on the moss and pulled his knees up to ease the cramp in his belly. He tried to think clearly. Angela was leaving on the evening boat. He could still stop her. Maybe he could convince her to stay. Did he want her to stay after
what she’d done? Yes, if she regretted it and didn’t go to Erik on the mainland he would forgive her and take care of her and the child. But only if she chose to stay behind and never see Erik again. He must have time to talk with her before the boat left. Must.

  But the Buttle forest is not like other forests. Once she has caught someone in her green embrace, she does not let go that easily. He did not know how long he wandered around, trying to get his bearings. When he came out on the road at Alskog a few hours later, it was already starting to get dark and hope was lost. All that was left was the anger and, after a while, the bitterness.

  There had never been anyone but Angela. And there would never be another nice girl, as his mother said in her clumsy attempt to console him. He had had one brief conversation with his brother during the fifty years that passed.

  “If you come home I’ll kill you, Erik. You should know that.”

  Word was that Erik opened his own law firm and that things went well for him. Siv travelled to the mainland a few times a year and visited them and her little granddaughter Mikaela. There were also rumors that Angela was in a sanitarium for her nerves, that she had been given electric shock treatments and refused to talk. It was Sonja Cederroth who said that. Whether it was true or not was uncertain. Ruben had made it very clear that he did not want to hear one more word about Angela and then she had the good sense to remain silent. There was plenty of talk as it was. Ruben withdrew, as if the shame were his alone. If he’d been worth having, Angela wouldn’t have taken off, wasn’t that so?

  “Sure I missed Erik, Mom. Of course I did. I lost both of them. But if I let them come to the island as if nothing had happened, I would have lost my mind. Would that have been better?”

  Ruben parked the car under the oak tree, but as he was getting out he felt as though his strength was gone. He remained sitting a while with the car door open and must have dozed off with his face against the steering wheel—he was wakened by a loud car horn. When he looked up still half-asleep he saw Berit Hoas waving on the other side of the fence. She probably thought he was honking at her. She could just as well believe that. Ruben shivered as he walked toward the outbuilding to see to the pigeons for the night. It was a little early, but he should probably think about going to bed. The stairs up to the dovecote were an exertion. One step at a time; he kept firm hold of the handrail. On the top step he had to stand a long time and catch his breath. His chest ached. The scoop for the feed was gone. It should have been in the sack but it wasn’t. Ruben cupped his hands, filled them with grain and then went to the first nest, where he had made a bed for the Belarusian. There was the scoop. He had discovered the dead pigeon there below the window and dropped the scoop and carried the bird down. That was it.