The Helios Disaster Read online

  Birgitta was going to buy a new novel in the bookstore.

  ‘I’ll take one by our own,’ Birgitta said, placing the book on the counter. ‘He’s just had a new one come out,’ she said to me, showing me the book.

  ‘Do you want anything?’ she asked me. ‘It would be good for you to read,’ she said then, looking over at the shelf of children’s books.

  ‘That,’ I said, pointing at the wall.

  ‘What is it?’ Birgitta said, looking at it.

  ‘A map of the Mediterranean,’ I said.

  The axe split the wood and the pieces fell in opposite directions.

  ‘You don’t have to put in any effort at all,’ said Urban. ‘The weight of the axe is enough; it’s just the way you move it that’s important. Try again.’

  I tried again. Placed the log on the chopping block and held the axe behind my back. This time I just followed the movement and struck the log without putting any strength behind it, and I was surprised when the wood obediently split with only a little thunk.

  ‘There, now you can do it,’ Urban said, walking off.

  The river was roaring down there as I split one log after another. It forced its way on and seemed to give a relieved sigh as it spread out. The snow hung on the branches and the trees and if you were to walk straight out into it you would sink to your shoulders.

  It was its own rhythm, with the axe ringing and the river speaking down there. It was as if my body were caught in motion and I thought it was like music. I chopped and chopped. I would do the whole pile. The sun was red from the sunset. Steam rushed out of my mouth with each breath. I’m going to write a letter, I said to myself. I will start tonight, I thought, splitting another log. I don’t know how long I stood there, but eventually Urban came back.

  ‘Stop now,’ he said. ‘Come in and have some coffee, at least. Your lips are all blue.’

  I didn’t notice that I was cold until I came into the house, where the evening coffee and snack were set out on the table.

  I took out a pen and paper and sat down at my desk. Stars were shining in the sky. I knew that I just had to start. Nothing was more right than anything else.

  ‘Conrad,’ I wrote. ‘It’s me, writing to you. You remember me. Don’t think otherwise. Soon it will be time for us to meet again. I live with a family. Everyone is nice to me. I’ve learned most things in the last few weeks. I know that you’re in the hospital in the city. You have to tell me everything.

  Your daughter.’

  I sealed the envelope, wrote my address on the back, and paged through the phone book I had taken from the hall table on the top floor.

  I found the hospital and wrote the address and Conrad’s name. There was probably only one Conrad there. The letter would reach him, I was sure of it.

  The mailbox was next to the kiosk beside the grocery store. I put on my down coat and went out in the cold with my letter. The snow crunched and I didn’t think about how I was only wearing a nightgown underneath. I didn’t notice the cold or the stars as I walked. Each breath was steam. The snow shone in the dark. Life is so beautiful came to me and I didn’t know if it was a psalm I had heard or if it was just something I thought. I don’t want to die came to me next, and I didn’t know that. That I had wanted to die, but now I realized that it was true.

  I had a few coins in my pocket, and they were enough for the stamp. I licked the stamp carefully and pressed it to the letter. The mailbox accepted the letter and its door gave a bang as I let go.

  That night I got a fever; my body shuddered and ached as I lay in my bed. I looked at my white cross-stitched moose and at the map, and the sea looked so alive, even though it was drawn. I sensed that Urban and Ulf were in the room, and I felt their hands on my forehead. Birgitta came in with medicine and the throbbing walls stopped throbbing and I slipped into sleep and I saw the pastor’s sons standing in a line and they were singing and it was the end of humanity they were singing about. It was Daniel, Josef, and Benjamin, those were their names; they were standing before the river in pyjamas, singing like this, along with the river, before they suddenly dove in and disappeared. Did I believe in the suffering God, they asked me under the water, could my body lend itself to the one who was highest up, and who watched over us all? What did I really know about mercy, they sang. Did I ever sing praise to the living God, they sang, along with the roaring river.

  The letter. The letter. I woke up. Sat up in bed. It was night. The clock radio on the nightstand shone 4.43. I had sent a letter. This certainty that my father would read what I’d written. That he would first hold the envelope in his hand and then carefully open it and then read it. Read what I had written. What would the words do to him? What would he do once he had read it? Would he put the letter on the nightstand and think through the words? Would the memory of me be there, in that instant? Would he write back, or put aside the letter and never remember it? Would he remember me, his daughter? Would I disappear or be sent for? Earlier, before the letter, I could always hope, but now I had demanded a decision. I repeated that word, decision, and got out of bed.

  The house was quiet, save for Sven’s snores behind his door. I went up the stairs and sat at the kitchen table. Ate a rusk that had been left in the basket on the table. The brown-and-white woven runner lay neatly under it. I sucked on the rusk until it became wet and crumbly.

  Then I took three sugar cubes from a little birch basket and bit them until my mouth was full of rusk crumbs and sugar. I washed it down with milk; I drank it from the carton, which I then set on the counter by the sink.

  I heard the front door open, and Ulf came in. He took off his outerwear quickly, nodded at me, and went down the stairs. I heard him open Sven’s door and I thought he was probably putting the car key back. I heard him go into his room. Then it was quiet in the house again.

  I put on my snowmobile suit, even though it was too unwieldy, and pulled my hat onto my head and put on my mittens. Then I took my skis and clamped them on. It was cold outside; the stars were out, and the snow sparkled in the night. The snow was dry, and my skis ran well, even though there were no tracks cut. I went over a snow bank, down to the big road and across it, and then there was the forest and the trees were perfectly black, although the trail was lit even at night. I fit my skis in the tracks and let the poles do the work for the first few strokes. Then the speed took over and my legs and arms helped. My whole body was set for speed and in the first downhill slope it was as if it was laughing.

  *

  School was a concern. Until now I hadn’t had to go with Ulf and Urban to take the school bus into the city. I had the days to myself and I had started doing embroidery along with Birgitta, and I’d gone skiing, taking long trips out along the river. But after Christmas that was all over. The school administrator, who knew Sven, of course, wanted me to go there, and Sven was thinking about which class I should start in. I could read and write, and there would be no problem with sports; it was more the social aspects, I heard him say on the phone one day.

  It was decided that I would start in the sixth grade. I was a big girl, after all, and I counted my few remaining days of freedom and I was afraid. I didn’t want to. I wasn’t curious about the others, even though I had looked at the class in Ulf’s and Urban’s school catalogue several times. The pastor’s youngest, Benjamin, was in it, and so was Anna-Lisa’s daughter Britta, who always came to the IOGT meetings. Well, many of the others did too, but maybe not every time like Anna-Lisa and Britta. Anna-Lisa was a friend of Birgitta’s, although she looked with such devotion at Sven as he stood there at the lectern. Britta was a girl I should become friends with, said Birgitta.

  ‘A nice girl, a gymnast, very plucky,’ said Birgitta, who secretly hoped that Britta and Ulf would get together.

  After all, she didn’t know anything about the girl Ulf visited at night. Britta had her own sort of beauty, an unusual sort. I liked to
look at her from different angles as we sat together in the meeting hall. From one direction, her mouth looked large and her nose was thick. From another angle, she looked sweetly doll-like; from a third, completely ordinary, just a bit pale. It was exciting to see such a changeable face, and it wasn’t until I had studied her face that I discovered my own in the mirror one day.

  I had two sides, I thought. The left side was dainty, almost small, like my mouth. My right side was coarser, and yet my face was held together by my green eyes and my eyebrows, which were bushy and dark. Birgitta had said that I was a beautiful girl. But that wasn’t what I was looking for. I tried to remember my father’s face in the instant we had looked at each other in complete calm. I remembered his sad green eyes, but everything else was hard to call forth. I remembered his chin. That it stood out a little. And his mouth. That it looked like mine.

  I thought about school. Saw myself walking into the classroom and sitting down at a desk. I thought that I would probably be introduced by the teacher, but then I would be left on my own. I knew that they were afraid of me. That they talked about me at home. I understood that I would be lonesome. Of course, I was lonesome now too. But this lonesomeness would be different. It was one thing to be alone all day with only Birgitta to talk to, and another thing to be alone among many. This is a war, I thought. You are going to war. I don’t know where the word war came from, but once it was there it couldn’t be replaced by any other word. War. This is a war. I must become stronger. So strong that I won’t be the one who is alone, rather those who avoid me will. The loneliness in me must become the loneliness in them. I decided to put as much effort as I could into my schoolwork. I would learn everything. It wouldn’t be hard. Not if I wanted it. I decided to want to start school. By wanting it myself, I would transform the rules. I would win. This calmed me. The anxiety I had felt disappeared and was replaced by a peace I had only, until now, experienced after skiing. I just needed my father, I thought, and I realized that this was true. That Birgitta’s questioning looks came out of this: that I didn’t need them.

  ‘I’m so glad you are here, Anna,’ Birgitta said as I came up to breakfast.

  She placed plates and spoons on the table, and I set the places. I fetched cups for tea, and small spoons. Birgitta put out the breadbasket with the freshly-baked breakfast pastries and butter and marmalade. She liked English breakfasts. Once she and Sven had gone to London, just the two of them. They had been young. That was before the children. They had stayed at a hotel and eaten English breakfasts in the morning and drunk afternoon tea in the afternoons. They had seen a musical too: Jesus Christ Superstar, and they had bought the recording.

  ‘It was totally fantastic, you see,’ she had said one day, and she stood close to me and showed me the album. ‘Do you want me to play it?’

  The music streamed out of the speakers, and when Jesus sang from the cross I tried to follow along with the text that was written down in the liner notes, but I couldn’t speak English so the words didn’t mean anything. But the music was beautiful. Completely different from the psalms of the Pentecostal church.

  ‘It’s so nice to have a girl in the house. It’s so nice to have you. I was thinking about that when I met with Erik, and he said we should all be glad that you’ve come. That you’re a blessing. That’s what he said.’

  Erik is the pastor in the Pentecostal church, and he’s the one who takes care of matters of the spirit in the village. Sven is more in charge of the body and the mind. That’s how they had divided it up between them, so that neither got in the way of the other. There was nothing more important than neighbourliness up here, and the community centre and the church were right next to each other. Erik and Sven sometimes planned the schedule together so that nothing conflicted with anything else, or so that the congregation could move on to the temperance meeting right after church, or vice versa.

  ‘And he’s right about that, Erik is,’ she continued. ‘He’s so good with words. I hadn’t thought of that. That you were a blessing. I had more been thinking that it makes me happy to look at you. Things like that. But blessing. That’s a much better word.’

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just kept setting the table. I got the napkins and put them out; I took the boiling saucepan and poured the water into the teapot. Blessing, I thought, watching the way the water in the pot turned reddish-brown. Is that what I am? Well, Erik ought to know.

  The letter came on the fourth day.

  I sneaked the letter under my shirt, secured it in my waistband, and tried to walk normally past Birgitta, who was sitting on the sofa with her cross-stitching. My heart was pounding hard; it was as if it had fallen down into my stomach and was beating there, and my field of vision was white. My mouth was dry; I could hardly breathe. It was a kind of fear. As if everything had been erased, except for my heartbeat. I took the few steps from the stairs into my room and it was like walking many miles.

  I closed the door and sat down on the bed. I lifted my shirt and took out the letter. I smelled it. It smelled like warm paper and cigarettes. I was far too frightened to open the letter. I needed to read it in peace, I thought, begging my heart to stop striking me.

  I lay on my stomach in the bed, breathing slowly in and out. The pillow smelled like laundry detergent and hair. I squeezed my eyes closed as hard as I could. I tensed my whole body, my fists, my face, and I lay like that for several seconds before I relaxed and felt my body slowly returning to itself.

  I turned onto my back in the bed. I fixed my eyes on the map. I read the words of cities and islands: Thessaloniki, Thasos, Cephalonia, Ithaca, and, far out in the sea, Cyprus.

  I sat up and took the letter. Opened it with my index finger and wriggled out the piece of paper, which was covered in inked letters.

  I started reading:

  Something happened when we came out of the movie theatre yesterday, me and Rolf. I lit a cigarette and after that a person came and ran into the cigarette so the cigarette fell out of my hand. But the question was, where did it fall? And we looked and checked and didn’t find the cigarette and then Rolf said that did it fall in your pocket then? And sure enough we found out it was in the right pocket of my jacket and had burned a hole there and we got so worked up, both of us, that we didn’t talk all night. I even hung up all my clothes in the bathroom at the hospital, I thought that if anything else is burning in them they should be hanging in the bathroom.

  I read the letter several times. I examined every word to try to find something in the words, or behind them. Some message to me, but I didn’t find anything. My heart was still beating like a fist inside my stomach. What did it really say? He had been to the movies with Rolf. Was that the Rolf that Ulf had talked about? Was he allowed to leave the hospital? If he was, that would be good news. And he went to the movies. He went to the movies and he smoked cigarettes. He was afraid of fire.

  I thought that he was describing an incident that must have happened recently. I got the paper and paged to the movie listings at the very back. At the Grand, there was a spy film showing in the big theatre and a Western in the small one. Which film had he seen? I guessed the Western.

  I made two decisions: I would write another letter and I would go to the movies on Saturday. I absolutely wanted to go by myself. I could take the bus into the city, but if I wasn’t allowed, I would have to take Ulf or Urban. Preferably Urban.

  I put the letter aside, in the nightstand drawer, and sneaked upstairs with the paper.

  I had never been to the movies. It made me happy that I would soon be watching the same film my father had seen the week before. I thought about how I would present my visit to the movie theatre to Sven and Birgitta. Surely they would want someone to go with me. But it was also possible that they would encourage me to go on my own. I had been listening to them one evening when they were talking to each other about how it wasn’t good for me to be in the house so much. That I ought
to spend time on a hobby that wasn’t just skiing. A team sport. Volleyball, they had decided, and Sven would talk to the coach.

  I would bring it up with Birgitta while we were sewing. That always put her in a good mood. The worst that could happen was that she would say she wanted to come along. Maybe I would go on a Sunday, when she was busy with the coffee and cookies for temperance. On the other hand, I felt sure—why, I didn’t know—that Conrad had been allowed to leave the hospital on a Saturday. Maybe I would meet him there. At the movie theatre.

  *

  Ulf came and got me. I was lying on my bed, looking at the map. By now I knew the names of all the Greek islands and the cities on the mainland.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Daniel, Joseph, and Benjamin are here. We’re going to the church.’

  I didn’t ask why, I just sat up in bed and followed him into the hall. I put on my down coat and my hat and tied on my winter boots. It was fifteen below outside, and the steam moved in and out of my mouth. I nodded at the pastor’s sons, who were standing in a row on the street, waiting for us.

  Still without speaking to one another, we walked up the hill to the Pentecostal church. Daniel opened it with a key. I had never been in the church when there was no one there. The wooden pews gaped, empty. The hymnals were piled on a wooden table, and at the very front was the altarpiece with the crucified Jesus. I trembled inside. As if from excitement. But I didn’t know if that’s what it was.

  ‘Put her there,’ said Daniel, who was the oldest, pointing at the pulpit.

  Ulf held my arm, and together we walked to the pulpit. He stationed me there and turned me around, out toward the empty rows of pews. The pastor’s sons stood at the very back, and Ulf went to them and he sat down too.

  ‘Now you can begin,’ said Daniel.

  I looked at them. Four blond-haired boys looking at me with their eyes. What did they want? What was I supposed to begin doing? My legs shook because they were looking at me like that. I wanted to go. Sit down with them and laugh it all off, but I kept standing there.