The True Deceiver

  The boy began cleaning up, annoyingly slowly. He started methodically in the far corner and worked his way forwards, moving things and sweeping and organizing, almost silently but not quite. It was like having a rat behind the wall – rustling and then silence, scraping and shuffling and then silence again – until Liljeberg turned around and shouted, “Forget that! Come here. Stand here where I can see you. Okay, I’m fixing my van. Watch what I do. But you’re never going to learn it for real, and I’m not going to explain anything. So don’t talk to me.”

  Mats nodded. By and by, Liljeberg calmed down and forgot his audience and forgave the intrusion and eventually got the motor running properly.

  * * *

  But usually Mats was down in the boat shed. He worked in helpless slow motion, but there was great care and patience in his slowness. They could give him small jobs with complete confidence that whatever they entrusted to him would get done. Mostly, they forgot he was there. The Liljeberg brothers gave Mats boring jobs like polishing or filling screwheads. And then all of a sudden Mats would vanish without anyone’s having noticed when he left. Maybe he’d promised to fix something for a neighbour, or he’d gone to the woods to do nothing at all. You never knew. Mats Kling had no fixed working hours but came and went as he liked, which of course made it impossible to pay him an hourly wage. Now and then, when the spirit moved them, the Liljebergs paid him – but not much. It seemed to them that he saw work mostly as a form of play, and it’s hardly necessary to pay someone for playing. From time to time, Mats would be gone for longer periods, and no one knew or cared where he was.

  If it got really cold, it didn’t make sense to go on working. The shed wasn’t insulated, and the stove was barely able to warm it enough to keep their hands from stiffening. They locked it up and went home. But on the seaward side where the boats were launched, the doors had a latch that was easy to open. Mats would go out on the ice with his cod hook and when no one was in sight he’d go into the boat shed. Sometimes he’d go on with his work, usually details so trivial that no one noticed they’d been done. But most times he just sat quietly in the peaceful snowlight. He never felt cold.

  Chapter Six

  THE NEXT TIME EDVARD LILJEBERG skied to town and came back with mail and groceries, Katri Kling was there again wanting the mail for Anna Aemelin. She didn’t ask, didn’t explain; she just wanted it. Like her brother, she just stood and waited until he gave in.

  “All right, then,” he said. “Take it. But remember, now and in future, that you’re to be very careful with everything having to do with money orders. You’re not to misplace even the tiniest scrap of paper, and when it’s been signed by Miss Aemelin and properly witnessed it’s me who withdraws the money. And when it arrives, she’s to have every last penny.”

  “You amaze me,” said Katri, and her voice was very cold. “When have I ever been careless with numbers?”

  Liljeberg was silent for a moment and then said, “I spoke hastily. I didn’t stop to think. The fact is, there isn’t anyone else I would trust with this kind of thing.” And he added, “One could say a great many things about you, but at least you’re honest.”

  Katri went into the shop and the storekeeper’s hatred. “I’m delivering the mail to Miss Aemelin. Has she called to order anything I can take along?’

  “No. Miss Aemelin eats out of tins and can’t cook. But Liljeberg brought some kidneys.”

  “Eat them yourself,” Katri said. “Eat all the kidneys and liver and lungs you like, but stop being unkind to a woman who can’t defend herself.”

  “But I’m not being unkind,” he burst out, genuinely hurt. “I sell to the whole village, and no one’s ever said I was unkind…”

  Katri interrupted. “One packet of spaghetti, one bouillon cube, two pea soups, small, and a kilo of sugar. I’ll take it with me. Put it on her account.”

  The storekeeper said, very softly, “You’re the one who’s unkind.”

  Katri moved on down the aisle. “Rice,” she said. “The easy kind.” And she added, “Don’t make a fool of yourself.” It was the same kind of indifferent, dismissive remark that had once seared his desire into hatred. She sounded as if she were giving an order to a dog.

  When Katri came to the rabbit house for the second time, she had the dog wait in the back yard. Anna Aemelin had seen her coming up the hill and opened the door at once. After the first, breathless courtesies she became quiet and self-conscious. Katri took off her boots and took the groceries into the kitchen.

  “I didn’t bring fresh meat,” she said. “Only tins, things that are easy to fix. The mail came this afternoon with Liljeberg.”

  “How nice,” Anna burst out, and her relief had nothing to do with the mail or the tins but only with the fact that this peculiar person had finally said something that could be used for a normal conversation. “How nice… Tins are so convenient, especially if they’re small, they don’t go bad… Did I already tell you that raw meat makes me nervous? You know, it doesn’t keep, it’s like houseplants, such a responsibility, don’t you think? Either you water them too little or too much, you never know…”

  “No, you never know. But it’s too warm here. Houseplants don’t like heat.”

  “No, no, that may be,” said Anna vaguely. “I don’t know why people always expect me to have plants…”

  “I understand. Plants, children and dogs.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That you’re supposed to like houseplants, children, and dogs. But I don’t suppose you do.”

  Anna looked up, a sharp look, but the broad, calm face before her expressed nothing. She said, a bit stiffly, “Miss Kling, what an odd remark. Shall we go into the parlour? Although you don’t care for coffee.”

  They went into the parlour. The same soft lighting, the same sense of emptiness and changelessness and dreamlike, compulsory slow motion. Anna sat down and was silent.

  “Miss Aemelin,” said Katri, very rapidly. “You treat me with greater kindness than I deserve.” Suddenly, irrationally, she wanted out of the rabbit house. She put the mail down in front of Anna and mentioned that there was a postal order that needed a signature. Anna lifted her eyeglasses, looked, and said, “I see it’s already been witnessed. But who is this? Such an odd name. Has some foreigner moved into the village?”

  “No, I made it up. It’s quite an unusual name, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t understand,” Anna said. “Surely this isn’t the normal procedure.”

  “I did it to save time.”

  “But there are several of them, every one with the same peculiar name.”

  Katri smiled, a quick, somewhat frightening smile that flashed forth like a neon light and abruptly vanished. “Miss Aemelin, I’m very good at signatures. People come to me with their papers and sometimes they want me to sign their names for them. If it would amuse you, I can sign your name, as well.”

  And Katri Kling signed Anna Aemelin’s name, copied precisely from the autograph she’d been given.

  “Unbelievable,” Anna said. “How clever! Can you draw, as well?”

  “I don’t believe so. I’ve never tried.”

  The wind had risen. It pressed snow against the windows with a powerful whispering that had followed the people of the village for a long, long time. Between squalls there was silence.

  Katri said, “I’ll go now.”

  When Anna opened the kitchen door, she caught sight of the dog. His fur was covered with snowy stars and he breathed snowy smoke through his open maw. Anna screamed and tried to slam the door.

  “He’s not dangerous,” Katri said. “He’s a very well-behaved dog.”

  “But he’s too big! His mouth was open…”

  “He’s not dangerous. He’s just an ordinary shepherd.”

  The woman and the dog walked down the hill, equally grey and furry. Anna watched them go. She was still quivering from fright, but her agitation was coloured by a touch of excited curiosity. Katri Kling is advent
urous, she thought. Not like the others. But who is it she reminds me of, especially when she smiles..? Not one of Anna’s acquaintances, the acquaintances she used to have – no, it was a picture, something in a book. And suddenly Anna began laughing to herself. In fact, the smiling Katri in her fur hat reminded her of the Big Bad Wolf.

  * * *

  A picture book by Anna Aemelin appeared roughly every other year, a very small book for very small children. The publisher supplied the text. Now the publisher had sent a royalty statement and enclosed a couple of old reviews from last year, which had, unfortunately, with apologies and warmest regards, been mislaid. Anna unfolded the clippings and put on her glasses.

  Aemelin amazes us once again with her unpretentious, almost loving treatment of the miniature world that belongs to her alone – the forest floor. Every detail, meticulously rendered, gives us a jolt of recognition and, simultaneously, of discovery. She teaches us to see, to truly observe. The text is really only a commentary for children who have just barely learned to read, and it does not vary much from one little book to the next. But Miss Aemelin’s watercolours are perpetually fresh. Her frog’s-eye perspective, naive as well as terribly accomplished, captures the essence of the forest, its silence and its shadow. What we have before us is the untouched forest primeval. Only the tiniest reader will venture to tread on her mosses, with or without rabbits. We are convinced that every child…

  Anna always stopped reading when they started on the rabbits. The other clipping had a picture, the usual one that they used far too often. The caricature was good-natured, but the artist was thinking “rabbit” more than “Anna”. He had lavished attention on her front teeth, square, with small gaps between, and on the whole she looked fluffy, white and vacant. Now I mustn’t be silly, she thought. After all, it’s not everyone gets their picture in the paper. But next time I must remember not to show my teeth and to hold up my chin. If only they didn’t always insist on a smile…

  Anna Aemelin’s natty little books with their washable covers are always received with pleasure. They have been translated into several languages. This year’s story focuses principally on the gathering of blueberries and lingonberries. With all due respect to Miss Aemelin’s convincing and captivating presentation of the Nordic forest, one must nevertheless wonder whether her really rather stereotyped rabbits…

  Yes, yes, said Anna to herself. Things are not always that simple – not for me, not for anyone…

  The children’s letters would have to wait for another time. Safe in her room, Anna drew up the coverlet, turned on the lamp as the daylight began to wane, opened to her bookmark, and read on. And as she read about Jimmy’s Adventures in Africa, her tranquillity returned, as she had hoped it would.

  Chapter Seven

  IT GREW COLD IN EARNEST. Again and again Liljeberg had to shovel the path to Miss Aemelin’s so that Fru Sundblom, with her bad legs, could get up the hill to clean. She went only once a week, and the upstairs had been shut for years, but it was nevertheless too much for an old woman, and Fru Sundblom often bewailed her fate.

  “But you make a good living crocheting coverlets,” said Madame Nygård. “Tell Miss Aemelin that the cleaning is too hard for you. There are younger women who can take over. Katri Kling quit her job in the shop, and she carries the mail up to the rabbit house. Mention it to her.”

  “To her!” Fru Sundblom exclaimed. “You know yourself that you can’t just go talk to Katri Kling. At least, I can’t. I have my principles.”

  “For example,” said Madame Nygård.

  But Fru Sundblom didn’t seem to be listening. She looked grimly out the window, said the usual things about the snow, then very soon went home. When people came to visit Madame Nygård, they were always offered the rocking chair. Only Fru Sundblom was so nervous and so full of annoyance that she couldn’t stand to sit and rock. She always sat on the bed-sofa by the door. Perhaps she was the only one who failed to sense how unusually peaceful it was in the big kitchen, despite the different generations going in and out, a peacefulness that put people at ease and made them forget to hurry.

  Madame Nygård mostly hovered around the huge cooking stove or sat on her chair by the hearth with her hands folded lightly across her stomach. Everyone else in the village had torn out these stoves because they took so much space, and now their kitchens were dreary and lacked a heart. But the Nygård kitchen was the way it always had been. And when the daughters and daughters-in-law crocheted, they used her patterns and the colours chosen by her grandmother. The Nygård coverlets sold best. There had once been talk of having a shop in the market town to sell the coverlets, and people turned to Katri Kling as usual for advice. But she said, “No, no middlemen. They take too big a commission. You’ll lose money on the deal. Let people come out here, make it hard for them. Make them search for their coverlets, make them hunt.”

  Katri crocheted like all the others. But she used colours that were too strong – and way too much black.

  It snowed on and on and they heard not a word about ploughing, so Liljeberg continued skiing to town although he didn’t like it. Because he was a nice man, he took on private commissions, provided they were small – medicine, for example, maybe underwear or indoor plant food, yarn if some woman had run out completely. He didn’t have much room in a backpack and a sledge, and he had to give first priority to the mail and fresh food for the storekeeper. People sorted out their orders on the storekeeper’s porch. But Liljeberg refused point blank to go to the library. He told Katri she could borrow books for Mats from Miss Aemelin, who had long shelves full of books. He’d seen them.

  But Katri didn’t want to talk to Anna Aemelin about books. She no longer took off her boots when she brought the mail to the rabbit house; just said hello and an unavoidable word or two and then walked on with her dog. Katri had given up. She understood it was not possible for her to make use of an amiability she didn’t possess, the simple friendliness it would have taken to get closer to Anna Aemelin but which lay unattainably beyond the boundaries that Katri in her self-sufficiency had drawn.

  * * *

  Madame Nygård called Anna and asked if she would like to come for coffee. It wasn’t at all far, and one of the boys could come to get her.

  “How kind,” said Anna, who liked Madame Nygård very much. “But it’s grown so terribly cold and, you know, it’s just such an effort to venture out…”

  “Yes, I understand. A person mostly goes out when she has to. Or when she just wants to be outdoors. Let’s wait and see. How are you? Is everything going all right?”

  “Yes, thank you,” said Anna. “Thank you for calling.”

  Madame Nygård was silent for a moment and then added, “Your father often walked through the village. I remember him so well. He had a very beautiful beard.”

  Katri brought mail that same day.

  “Don’t go yet,” Anna pleaded. “Not right away. Miss Kling, you’ve been so helpful. I would very much like to show you Papa’s and Mama’s home.”

  They walked through the house together, from room to room, each with its own untouchable tidiness. Katri saw no great difference between the rooms, all of them a faded blue and vaguely depressing. Anna kept up a running explanation. “Here’s Papa’s chair where he read his newspaper. No one but Papa was allowed to fetch the paper from the shop and he always read them in order, although they arrived so seldom… And here is Mama’s evening lamp – she embroidered the shade herself. This photograph was taken in Hangö…”

  Katri was very quiet except for an occasional gruff comment, and eventually she was guided up to the second storey where it was bitterly cold. “It’s always been cold,” Anna explained, “but it was only the maid who lived up here. The guest rooms were almost always empty. Papa didn’t really like having guests; they disturbed his routines, you know… But he wrote a great many letters and mailed them himself in the shop… You know, Miss Kling, although Papa knew hardly anyone in the village, they would all take off their ca
ps when he walked by, just spontaneously.”

  “Did they?” Katri said. “And he tipped his hat?”

  “His hat,” Anna repeated, puzzled. “If he even had a hat… So odd – I can’t remember his hat…” And she went on with her narrative.

  Katri could see that Anna was very excited. She talked too much. Now it was about her mother, who went around to the poor people in the village and distributed white bread at Christmas.

  “They weren’t offended?” Katri said.

  Anna looked up, quickly, then away again. She continued bravely on about Papa’s stamp album, Mama’s recipe book, the dog Teddy’s pillow, Papa’s almanac in which he made notes on good and bad deeds to be thoroughly reviewed on New Year’s Eve. Anna ran amok through her parents’ house, revealing everything and thus, for the first time, calling its worth and charm into question. She dashed onwards, unable to stop, possessed by a wicked sense of liberation in shattering taboos, forcing her unwilling guest to see more and more, hear more and more of Papa’s anecdotes, little stories whose point was annihilated even before she exposed them to Katri’s silence. It was like laughing in church. The inviolable was opened to a great, treacherous attack, and Anna let it happen. Her voice rose and became shrill and she stumbled over thresholds until Katri very tactfully took her arm and said, “Miss Aemelin, I really must go now.” Anna became very quiet. Katri added, kindly, “Your parents must have been exceptional individuals.”

  Out in the yard, Katri lit a cigarette, the dog joined her, and they walked down to the road. Doubt returned, repeating over and over, Why did I say that? For her sake, so she doesn’t have to feel she’s betrayed her idols? No! For my own sake? No! Somebody goes into a spin and has to be checked, that’s all; someone goes too far and has to be stopped.