Afterwards, she made the trip to the barn, stocking heavy-duty shopping bags full of the chopped wood he’d dried out the previous summer. She was relieved to see the barn was full of seasoned logs and there would be enough to last the rest of the cold season. It was one of the reasons the family worried so much – out here survival was tough. Harder still, if you were like Jürgen Anderson, choosing to live so simply – there was no alternative to heating his home. No electricity at the turn of a switch or a central heating system. If he ran out of wood it could be fatal.
It was tough and sweaty work, despite the freezing cold air, but when she got back inside the cabin, unpacked the wood and started the fire, it wasn’t long before she was at last able to take off her outer layers.
Her next task was to collect several more buckets of snow to melt for water, so that she could refill the water butt, as well as draw a bath for him. Then they watched the world outside from within the cosy cabin, as the light grew ever darker, and the deer made their way through the forest in this rare hour of light, so precious and over so fast.
Things changed when she insisted upon his bath. She got as far as pulling his shirt off him, before the lights in his eyes began to dim, like the setting sun outside, and he began swearing again, slapping at her hands, and arms, and making them sting. She bit her lip, tears pricking at her eyes; she hadn’t been prepared for how painful it would be when he forgot. Not that anyone had sugar-coated his condition. Their once-gentle hermit was now often sour and mean. It was a bitter pill to swallow.
‘Please calm down, Morfar. You need a bath. You’re starting to smell.’
‘I do not smell!’ he cried, outraged.
She sighed, then picked up his shirt and pressed it to his nose.
He shook his head like a dog, ripping the shirt out of her hands, and throwing it on the floor. ‘Stop it, Marta! I don’t want you here, I don’t need anyone, do you hear me? Get the hell out!’
Narfi started to bark, and Jürgen suddenly looked dazed. ‘Bjørn?’ he said, reaching out a hand towards the dog, his ire momentarily forgotten.
‘Narfi,’ she reminded him. ‘And if you want me to leave, it’s simple – just get in this bath, and soap yourself,’ she said, handing him a bar of home-made lemon verbena soap from the small farm shop half an hour away. ‘I’ll turn my back.’
Which is why she didn’t see it when he kicked the steel tub she’d spent the past twenty minutes filling with steaming water, until it cascaded onto the floor, slamming into the back of her legs.
She whirled around, screaming blue murder. He stood, half-naked in the corner, laughing. His voice suddenly high, little a little boy’s.
‘You should see your face, Küken. Better than that day we stole ol’ Polga’s boat!’ She crossed her arms and he giggled. ‘Come on, Asta, since when can’t you take a joke?’
‘It’s Ingrid,’ she snapped. ‘And it’s not funny – I spent ages filling that.’ She knew he couldn’t help muddling names. But right then she didn’t feel much sympathy. He still smelled and it had taken such a long time to get that bath ready. She sighed, then got the towels and mop and cleaned up the mess.
Afterwards, she walked up the stairs and fetched a clean shirt and a pair of tracksuit bottoms, which she thrust into his arms. ‘Put these on,’ she demanded, in no mood for an argument. She was too cross to be surprised when he complied. Then she gathered up his old, dirty clothes, which she’d take back to her own cabin to run through the washing machine. ‘You can smell for all I care,’ she said between clenched teeth, realising with annoyance that she was behaving just as Marta had, but unable to help herself.
She slipped out of her soaking snow trousers. ‘I’m going to borrow a pair of yours for the walk home.’ She flashed him a hard look; she was different to her cousin – who was all fire and blather – in one respect. Ingrid was like a mountain goat, small and seemingly mild, but inside she was stubborn to the core and not afraid to use her horns if pressed. ‘I will bring them back when I see you in the morning, so I suggest you try and get over it.’ Then she felt a pang of shame, mixed with annoyance – it wasn’t like he could help getting muddled – and she softened. ‘You’ll be all right? You’ve got enough food?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘I’m fine. You don’t have to look after me – I have underpants older than you.’
She gave him a hard stare. ‘Don’t forget to keep the fire burning.’
She ducked as he flung one of his slippers at her. Then she whistled, and Narfi followed her outside.
It was only much later, after her mile-long trudge back through the woods, struggling through waist-high snow, when she was inside her own tiny cabin – one of just eleven in their hamlet, dotted around the vast lake and forest – that she realised he hadn’t been speaking Swedish at all.
He’d been speaking German.
2
He’d called her Küken – little bird. The word turned over in her mind, like a sharp stone lodged inside a shoe, its uncomfortable pricking making her unable to think of anything else.
Ingrid hadn’t even realised the moment he’d switched languages. For her, after nearly ten years of speaking it at home, it was as natural as slipping off her shoes as soon as she entered her apartment after a long day at the office: her boyfriend, Ben, had been German. Ex-boyfriend, she reminded herself, with a pang.
Speaking German had become natural for her over the years, but it was not natural for Morfar. Not even close. It was a language he’d once got so angry at her for learning he’d almost turned violent.
The memory was old, but the emotions were still as sharp as a blade’s edge. The kind of memory that every so often, when you recall it, leaves behind a fresh little wound. She’d been a child, and living in Stjärna – before her parents moved to the city when her father got a new job. Morfar had come into their cabin one day, and heard her practising German phrases. She was nine and wanted to surprise her new friend, Suzie, whose family had moved to their village. Suzie didn’t know Swedish yet and she was having a tough time because the other children kept teasing her, and Ingrid wanted to help. She was excited and pleased when her mother had come home with some second-hand Swedish to German language books and tapes that she’d picked up from the bookstore after her work at a dairy farm, forty minutes away. Ingrid had begun practising every chance she could get. She enjoyed playing with the wooden animals Morfar had carved for her over the years, and having conversations while she sat in front of the fire.
‘Guten Morgen, mein name ist Ingrid. Wie geht’s?’
Suddenly, there was a wild, strangled sound, and she’d looked up in a fright, to see her beloved grandfather, her Morfar, turn grey, like dirty dishwater, like all the blood inside him had run down some invisible drain. Then, all at once, he flew at her, his eyes blazing, his hands curled into claws. The small wooden animals in her hands fell with a clatter to the floor and she yelped.
He was barely recognisable and Ingrid’s bowels clenched in fear.
He pulled her up roughly by the arm, his face a hair’s breadth away from hers as he screeched at her through bloodless lips, ‘STOP! Stop it right this minute! Do you hear me? I FORBID IT!’