"Bye then.'

She turned abruptly, and not until she had done so and gone a bit of the way up the path did the uneasy atmosphere release its hold on him. She looked comical from behind. Those jeans with the legs cut roughly off with scissors were so thin at the back that they looked like a grid of pale-blue cotton threads. Between them he glimpsed her not altogether white panties, her b.u.t.tocks swinging a little as she walked.

'Hey, you,' he called. 'What kind of weird trousers are those?'

He had meant it as a joke. But she swung round and stared at him. He could see her eyes in the dim light of the forest, wide open and dark.

'Lucky I've seen you from behind before,' he said. 'Otherwise I'd think you were hollow at the back like a witch of the forest.'

But she didn't reply, presumably because she didn't think it funny. After a moment she turned round and started up towards Starhill again.

Her mood still had a hold on him when he got down to the river. He didn't look round. All he could think about was that in twenty minutes, at the most half an hour, he would be up at the Stromgrens'. It wasn't that late. He would go in to Oriana and Henry and talk about ordinary things. Fishing. The level of the water in the river. Offer them some cheese.

Now all he had to do was to cross the river, quickly. Up into the silence of the marshland, away from the water, from the sounds that were like small screams and mewings. From the splashing over the stones and the pull of the dark, racing water.

Henny had acquired a pale-blue quilted jacket and white sailing boots. She was wearing a white beret with a silk pompom on top. After walking for two hours, she wasn't even out of breath. She had her famous singer's diaphragm to fall back on. Besides, Henry Stromgren was carrying her pack in a rucksack; she had arrived at his place in Ivar Jonsson's taxi. Whether she had paid Henry or whether he had agreed anyway was not certain. Henny didn't paralyse people as Annie had thought when she was younger, but people were always taken with her, even captivated. Henry had seen her in an old feature film.

'Just imagine! There he sits, watching me as some gangster's moll starring with ke Soderblom, then a fortnight later I'm outside his door right up in the mountains saying, "Help! Where is my daughter?"'

Not starring with ke Soderblom. Sickan Carlsson or Anna-Lisa Ericsson starred with him. In the same film as. In a scene with.

Annie had started correcting Henny's statements when she was about fourteen, but always silently. (Don't mention p.u.b.erty! It pa.s.sed Annie by!) Since Henny had appeared in the hollow by the stream, they had all been staring at her and listening to what she had to say. Even Petrus. He was the one most affected. His mouth fell open.

She made her way through the gra.s.s without showing any signs of fatigue, her voluminous hips swinging. She had always had the most feminine figure, narrow-waisted, big-busted and curved behind. Nowadays the kilos were visible. (If only I'd had Gaby Stenberg's height to my voice!) She was sixty-eight, her profile still clean but flowing out below her chin. She raised it against the wind.

'G.o.d, how beautiful it is here! Do you know how beautiful it is?'

Perhaps they thought she was stupid or didn't think before she spoke. She sat down with Mia on her knee and praised the slate wall of the fireplace.

'What exquisite stonework!'

Not for a moment had Annie expected her to be anything but exuberant. Henny had seen every grotty boarding house in the country, had acted on wooden stages put up in public parks for the evening, and tussled with the drunks. She had never complained and always got her own way.

I'm pregnant.

The moment that white pompom, that beret, that quilted jacket had emerged from the hollow, realising that it was her (her walk, her voice), Annie had had the thought. At that very moment, not a minute earlier. Missed three times. Been feeling rotten. And my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Although I'm so thin.

I'm pregnant. I've been so since Midsummer Day in Aagot f.a.gerli's cottage. That time with no diaphragm, when I was so frightened I forgot it. That's when it happened. I must have known it. But not known, after all. As if I were two people. And now knowing immediately. Just seeing her. Before she even gave me that look. Will Mia feel like this one day?

'My dear child, how sunburnt you are, and how healthy you look! You don't usually go so brown.'

Had the brown shadow come? The first signs? Or can she see it round my eyes? Is it like she used to say it shows round the eyes?

Dan. She'll ask after Dan.

But she didn't. She unpacked the presents, a pink tracksuit for Mia, rabbit slippers with ears of fluffy material and large shiny eyes. Two bottles of red wine. For Annie a blouse which would show her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Henry Stromgren couldn't stay for the evening, although he wanted to. You could see he wanted to. They would drink red wine and try some of the maturest cheese in the store. Petrus wanted to show her the earth cellar and the well so that she would see some truly excellent old stonework. Henny arranged with Henry Stromgren to be fetched at Bjornstubacken in twenty-four hours' time. ke was still in the village, at the camping site. Walking in the woods was not for him. They had rented two cabins, one for Annie and Mia, another for themselves. Incredibly nice!

In the middle of all this, Annie thought of the camping-site shower room. And the television set. Then she thought: I must be left in peace. For an hour. Or a moment, at least. I've never been so tired in all my life.

But she couldn't go away. The programme accelerated. The stone cellar. The cookhouse. The goat shed. Mia fetched the young kids. The clubhouse with Annie and Mia's room. The beds. Mia's dolls. The rabbit slippers under the bed beside the box of paper dolls. Not a word about Dan, about Dan's bed. Not yet.

Tea drinking in the afternoon. Henny maintained you really always ought to drink herb tea because it was better for you. After that, the milking. She had a go herself, amid much laughter. The milking rota was suspended; they all milked. It was like a feature film. Starring Henny Raft, though not ke Soderblom.

There was beet soup for dinner with bilberry pancakes afterwards, plus red wine and the cheeses. Henry loved strong cheese. She also loved fermented Baltic herrings, spiced aquavit, griddled blood pancakes, marinated herring and so on, none of which Annie could bear. They talked about it and it turned out that Petrus loved boiled ling fish that had been soaked in lye, and he was going to do the same with the dried pike nailed to the wall of the cookhouse. He had netted them in the Kloppen, and he explained that the lake was low. In that way, they came to the Lobber and, without a moment's hesitation, Henny asked them whether they weren't frightened?

'Yes,' said Brita. 'Sometimes I think it's all so horrible.'

She had never said that before. None of them had ever admitted that it had concerned them. In the end, Annie had begun to think she alone had that desolate feeling on the edge of the pastureland, and the fear of the forest as soon as she went a little further in.

That was where they had found the earthstar. Mia had spotted it between the spruces, its dark tips splayed out in the moss. Mia hadn't realised it was a fungus. She thought it was a rare animal, the same kind as a starfish, and that it would move when she touched it. It had smelt like Dan. But Mia didn't know that.

Henny had got Brita to say what it was like that she was sometimes frightened. She had said it in a quiet, sorrowful voice, and Henny clearly felt this was something you only touched on lightly, for she hugged Mia and suggested they sing 'The Maiden to the Well Did Go'. Mia was to be the maiden and Grandma the hazel branch. As they had no accompaniment, Annie was to sing harmony. She didn't know it; Henny said, 'Oh, have a go', but Annie didn't want to. So Henny asked Mia to go and get the melodica. Then Mia sang with Grandma and it was lovely: 'I feed on sugar and drink wine that's why I'm so very fine!'

Annie thought the melodica was a dreadful instrument, but everything livened up when she played it. Petrus changed the words on his own initiative and sang, 'I feed on cheese and drink wine.' He was given an ovation.

Suddenly Henny was standing by the fireplace, leaning lightly against the stonework and about to sing. I'll go out, Annie thought. But she knew she would stay. If they laughed, she would look straight into Henny's eyes and hold her gaze. She had tried to do that in Malarvg. ke and Henny had come to a social evening. They had listened to the obscenities in the student revue without batting an eyelid and with expressions of cheerful appreciation and mild absent-mindedness. Afterwards, persuaded by the princ.i.p.al's wife, they had gone up to the rostrum. Henny had sung, ke accompanying her on the battered piano. At first the students had just fidgeted and sc.r.a.ped their chairs. But when Henny sang 'Turn to me, turn from me, like a fire, let me burn', throwing dark looks at ke, who had closed his eyes behind his thick gla.s.ses, some had begun to yell, and then there were various ill-suppressed sounds. Many of them had been drinking beer and needed to belch. The sounds caused a few laughs and finally general laughter and the crash of chairs tipping over. Henny threw back her head and sang on loudly right to the very end.

'You and only you follow me for love of my glowing youth!'

When the dancing began, they had vanished. Annie had found them back at her home, sitting at the kitchen table, the light out, with a gla.s.s of brandy each from ke's pocket flask.

But now Henny was singing and although Annie felt she must be dreaming, she accompanied her on the melodica. Henny's voice was full and rich: 'Maybe he's lazy maybe he's slow maybe I'm crazy maybe I know . . .

Can't help loving that man of mine.'

She had appeared in Show Boat in the 1940s, bubbling around in the part of Nolie's sharp-tongued mother. But it was the part of the disreputable Julie she had dreamt of. She sang it now and they all stared at her, Annie prepared to slap the face of anyone who thought her ridiculous. But no one did. She had touched them with her dark voice.

Next, Mia was to sing again. She sang 'When Little Mouse Goes for a Walk', and they applauded and said she had inherited her grandmother's voice. According to the programme fixed fifteen years ago, Henny should now have said, 'Voice! No, my dears, the voice is there.' And they would have looked at Annie. But Henny said nothing.

It's over, thought Annie, as the merry-making continued. She's expecting nothing more. I'm too old. She'll never torment me again.

Desolation was what she felt, not relief. What was Henny feeling? How would she survive now with no hopes even for her daughter? Annie had always been convinced that Henny would go mad when her engagements ceased. ke had gone on playing in restaurants and at rehearsals until the day he qualified for an old-age pension. He stopped on that day and had never said anything about missing it.

By the time Annie had graduated from school and gone to music college and the Academy, Henny's engagements were already few and far between. Still, Annie had inherited her voice and was to become a trained singer. (Training! Just think if I'd had a proper training!) But Annie suffered from stage fright. Just standing there made her feel sick and break out in a cold sweat. She thought she would faint and could never get her breathing right. However, Henny said that would pa.s.s with training.

But Annie hadn't got what Henny still had, whatever that was. Her way of moving her hips, among other things. Church music had gone better for Annie. She didn't have to be seen. She could stand on the platforms in churches and sing at simpler funerals. The court singers sang at the grander and more lucrative ones.

Henny enjoyed hearing her in church and always appeared clad dramatically in black. Annie was afraid they would think she was one of those persistent attenders of funerals. She herself was troubled by the words. She found that the most beautiful music in the world had been created to put across words that at best were stupid but more often senselessly cruel. She hunted out their origins in the Bible and found something she had never known before because she had never been interested in religion: a compost of superst.i.tion, war-frenzy, and mysticism about rotting corpses.

She sang nonetheless. 'Bist Du bei mir,' she sang, seeing a man with dark, curly hair above a warm, swelling p.e.n.i.s and a wrinkled blue-brown s.c.r.o.t.u.m. To produce the notes, she had to put everything she found warm and sensually appealing against that repugnant shattered head, dripping saliva and blood, the stinking bandages and the gust from the opened grave. With her images, she drove away the staring head of the prophet on the dish, the raging swineherds and soldiers slaughtering children. If for once she found something in these insane and cruel litanies that reflected earthly desire or beauty, it filled her with warmth. One simple act of friendship towards another human being or anything that wasn't solemn and lethal.

Like Aron's staff sprouting on the blood-stained altar in the preacher's tent, greening with buds and flowers and ripe almonds.

It didn't work in the long run. She felt guilty, and she tried, but it didn't work. ke had found her a studio flat in Karlbergsvagen and Annie knew it had cost him his life savings. You must stay out of debt, Henny said. Annie took on all the work she could get to be able to live free of debt funerals, singing cla.s.ses, school choirs.

She was capable. That was what she was. She played the piano or the ba.s.s at a.s.sembly-room gigs and at student unions. But she couldn't sing solo before an audience. When she tried, there was a sour smell of sweat in her clothes afterwards. Henny went on saying it would pa.s.s, but ke no longer said anything.

He was an imperturbably dignified man, well-dressed and courteous. She had always admired him. But she began to understand that he wasn't driven by any high ambitions. Gradually she realised that his elegance was also questionable. Co-respondent shoes, brown and white, still lay in the attic, and spats, the kind called dog-jackets, to wear over pumps. An excessively loud striped jacket.

Henny's life was a drama. She wept and stormed when she was cheated of an engagement or got slated in a review. But things had mostly gone well with her. She had found her slot, the amusing, bold female supporting role. She drove out vapidity by bandying words and putting a spin on the romance in operettas. This was written into the parts, it was the way it should be. But the amazing thing was that there always seemed to be a role and a stage in the world specifically for Henny. On the other hand, none for Annie.

ke was a fine musician and he had a good ear. But he was remarkably uninterested. Or had he become so over the years? Annie couldn't remember his ever playing at home, except when Henny had wanted him to accompany her. He used to read.

He was short-sighted and wore gla.s.ses with thick lenses, behind which he lived like a goldfish in a round bowl. He read his way through decades of bus journeys and life in a one-roomed flat with Henny ceaselessly talking, practising and vacuum cleaning. He had a leather briefcase with large metal catches which Annie used to play with. He carried it, crammed full, to and from the City Library. Annie had taken this for granted, just as it was taken for granted that Uncle Gote had read one book in his whole life, the memoirs of a great liar called Kalle Moller.

Without giving it a thought, she herself had become a reader. Once she had left school and escaped from the ramshackle wooden house in Enskede, she wanted just one thing, a room of her own. To be left in peace. To read. But since she had got a place at college, she agreed to start studying singing, and Henny had said how tremendous and fantastic it was simply to have been accepted.

After two years she realised she was not doing well at the Academy and she really ought to change to the music-teacher course. That meant failure, and she wouldn't be able to bear it. She was at a total standstill, incapable of leaving, incapable of singing. That was when Sverker Gemlin became one of her teachers.

He taught harmony and counterpoint. He was a quiet, sensitive man; Mia got her brown eyes from him. They would look into each other's eyes and quietly talk about commonplace things. She would lie on her bed for hours, a.n.a.lysing the meaning of what had been said. Once they held hands, in a taxi after a party, hiding their hands under her coat.

She had lived a cautious and parched life. s.e.xually she was not inexperienced; she had had light-hearted relationships, though when she thought about it they hadn't been much fun. But with Sverker, a gra.s.s fire started.

One morning, he came and stood behind her at the photocopier and pressed his crotch up against her behind. He didn't kiss her, only held his lips pressed against the nape of her neck, parting the hair first to reach it. His hands were on the photocopier. She could see them on either side of her, the tips of his fingers whitening. He had a strong erection and she could feel it through their clothing. He stood like that for a little while, not quite still, and she almost fainted.

Two evenings later, she stayed behind on the premises when she knew he was teaching. They met in the corridor and stood still for a long spell at quite a distance from each other. A few minutes later they were locked in his office. She had just had a bath and had bought a lace bra, making all these preparations without really thinking about their significance.

Beside themselves with desire, they tried to make do with the narrow blue couch in his room. The main difficulty was trying to avoid the wooden arm rest. Either she had the back of her head pressed against it, making the angle of her neck lethal, or her head hung right off the sofa.

From then on they met at Annie's place. It couldn't be very often, because he had My. Presumably that wasn't her name, but it was what he called her. It was even in the telephone directory. Annie stared at the angby address and the number, but she never phoned.

He spoke of his marriage in graceful circ.u.mlocutions such as, we must cherish of what we have. What he had, of course, was My, the children Jesper and Jannika, the house in North angby and a summer place in Kullen together with My's parents. Annie had her small flat in Karlbergsgatan and her precious freedom. He talked about that a lot. But it was Annie who had brought up the subject.

When summer came, he went with his family to Kullen, where she couldn't contact him. They didn't write. 'That's impossible because down there we all live on top of one another,' he had explained. She turned over his words again and again. Sometimes she pictured the whole household with in-laws and children and the c.o.c.ker spaniel as a great snakepit of lecherous writhings.

She sang at a summer wedding and was choir leader at an adult-education course that summer. In July, she spent a few days at home and took the opportunity to go to the college to photocopy notes. She ran into Sverker in the entrance. He knew her times. She had written them down in case he was able to make himself free during the summer.

He said the trip from Kullen had been unplanned and he had forgotten which days she would be in town. At that, she realised what the situation was.

A raging woman took over the stage. It was not Annie; it was Brangane or Medea. Her performance lasted scarcely an hour, but long enough for him to retreat for ever. Temporarily he calmed her down on the blue couch. She had no contraception with her, since she hadn't known they would meet. She left the Academy. The time before she knew she was pregnant was very difficult to remember. She had been in the eye of the storm, unbudging grief and hatred, but she couldn't remember what it was like.

As soon as she realised she was expecting, she had decided to apply for teacher training. She told ke and Henny she was going to have a child. When they were alone, Henny had said: 'But what are you going to do?'

She had meant an abortion, though she would never have taken that word into her mouth. For the first time in her life, Annie had known what she wanted to do. As she was to have a child, she had to have a job. To support herself and the child. Not dither around. Not sing at funerals. Not have an affair with a married teacher. Nothing of what had gone before. Just herself and the child.

At first she had considered registering the father as unknown. That would be revenge, but he wouldn't notice. She realised it would be an injustice to the child. At the time, she imagined it was a boy. A boy couldn't grow up without having at least a name for his father.

All this was unpleasant and she thought about it during endless walks across the city. It was a wet autumn. She felt disintegrated, whipped through by water and wind. Brooding led to nothing. She wanted to hurt him but couldn't. There was no way to do that except by writing to My and she didn't want to be mean. Without being mean, she couldn't get at him.

Gradually she extracted from herself the germ of revulsion from which all this had grown: she was afraid he would question his paternity. It was like the fear of reviews. Someone would write that she had a thin, sharp, hopeless little voice and an affected manner.

She hadn't slept with anyone else, with one exception right at the beginning, when she was confused and hadn't known whether the affair would continue. But what did he think?

He became paralysed and thought nothing and said just as Henny had: 'What are you going to do?'

She explained she wasn't going to do anything except get herself a training as a teacher, and he dropped a piece of his almond cake into his cup of coffee. It was sodden and he had held it in the air too long. They were at Tosse's and it was very warm inside. Both of them had kept on their outdoor clothing and he had beads of sweat along his hairline. She thought, What if he wants to bring Christmas presents? Or come on the child's birthday? What shall I say?

'Have you thought about it carefully?' he said. 'I mean, it's a big decision. There are other ways of thinking. If that's how you put it.'

He didn't want to say the word, either. Then they parted. He knew what Mia's name was and her date of birth, but not where she was. He had no idea that at the moment his maintenance payment was essential for the existence of the Starhill commune, because Pastor Wigert had stopped his payments.

She could never think calmly about Sverker, nor with indifference. All the same, seven years had pa.s.sed since he had silenced her outburst on the blue couch.

'Where's the ephebe?'

Henny went on talking to Petrus, but Annie was sure she had caught that aside.

This had happened before. Henny's outpourings of friendliness were always under control. They were not questioned as long as feelings ran warm. Then a lightning attack. Pure surgery.

Ephebe? Something from an operetta. A youth with spa.r.s.e down. Now Annie felt a greater weariness than ever. But it was not possible to get away yet.

Clear, cold scorn. Because she knew, sensed, sniffed the scent of what? Something more than bickering. Sadness and fatigue.

Fear. No, she could not guess that.

Henny had very properly written in advance and said they were coming and Annie had written back to say it was no good. They couldn't be fetched from Blackwater because Dan had the car he was away on behalf of the commune. But naturally Henny was not to be stopped and Annie should have known that. The moment when she appeared by the stream had been illuminating in any case. Although this kind of thing would inevitably become clear sooner or later. Worse had been the moment when that chubby doctor had turned round and called out: 'Whatever kind of trousers are those?' She had ripped the trousers off as soon as she got home. That had been really disgusting.

Yet she regarded it as an illuminating moment. Though not decisive. She couldn't decide anything. That had happened time and time again in her life. Standstill.

'As if it had nothing to do with you,' Henny had said at the time Annie was messing around at the Academy. And later in Malarvg. All had gone well at first. She had liked it in a dull way. Gradually it had come to a standstill, though she had never noticed until Dan came and started asking about her life.

She had thought of burning the jeans, but couldn't think where. She wanted no one to see her doing it and the thick denim probably wouldn't burn well. She realised that was why she still had them. They had been wet way up the legs when she saw them hanging outside the tent. Over a spruce branch.

She must have recognised them all along. The grid of threads at the back. The label. It was as if she were two people. One who knew. And one who happily pulled on the jeans when she had grown tired of wearing skirts. Cut off the legs, which were too long. Too long for Dan, too. She ought at least to have thought about that.

But she hadn't. Not until that doctor had called out he had no idea, of course, she realised that afterwards 'Whatever kind of trousers are those?' Then she knew.

She had wanted to rip them off there and then. Thought she would vomit on the path. But she just ran and it kept thumping in her head: he lied he lied he lied.

She had suspected that there was no viewpoint from which you could see the tent. And it was just as she had thought. He must have been right down by the tent. Or else they had all been down there. He had gone on lying, although he'd said he would tell her exactly what they'd done. He had never slept at Nirsbuan.

But that night she had dreamt that he was back and lying in her arms. He smelt strongly; out of his newly washed body rose a smell of earthstar, autumnal and brown, and she recognised it. In her dream, they exchanged fluids and they were still pouring out of her when she woke; she wept and she was wet.

Henny poked and pried. She sensed something, perhaps not the worst. She thought Annie had begun to tire, that she was ripe for a minor attack.

Ephebe.

She loathed making a fool of herself and Henny knew it. In that respect Annie was like her father, and Henny knew them both. It was the lesson of her life and one she had had to learn properly.

She meant well, of course. Annie tried to imagine Mia as a grown-up. Mia mindlessly, perhaps fatally in love.

Mia unhinged.

Evening came and she withdrew. The ewes were grazing by the stream, the gra.s.s rustling as they tugged at it. After a while they gathered round the stone she was sitting on. The leader ewe lay down first to ruminate and as she chewed, she blew through her nostrils. A sigh. The air was chilly, the insects no longer daring to emerge. The ewe's udder had shrunk and the sores from insect bites had healed. But she was in lamb again. She laid her long, slightly curved nose in Annie's hand. Annie could feel the hard jawbone and the soft tissues between. She was pressing hard.

A weariness was visible in the very gra.s.s and leaves. They had paled and bent over, the turning inwards had begun. Towards the root. Towards the placenta. That had nothing to do with knowing. It could elude all light. It happened. Throbbing like water in the flooded moss by the stone, the pulse beats, gently touching the lobes of flat fungus.