The Black Path Read Free Page B

than her. They simply didn’t have that much in common. If they met by chance in town or in a shop when they weren’t working, it was always so difficult to make conversation. But at work they’d chat away and get on really well.
    Sven-Erik looked at Anna-Maria. She really was a little woman, no more than one meter fifty, she almost disappeared inside the big snowmobile overalls. Her long blonde hair flattened by the hat. Not that she cared. She wasn’t one for makeup and that sort of thing. Probably didn’t have the time either. Four kids and a husband who didn’t seem to do all that much at home. Apart from that, there was nothing wrong with Robert, things seemed to be good between him and Anna-Maria, he was just so lazy.
    Although how much had he actually done at home when he and Hjördis had been married? He didn’t really remember, but he did remember not being used to cooking when he was first living on his own.
    “Okay,” said Anna-Maria. “What if you and I fight our way through the snowstorm and go round the arks, while the others take the village and the tourist station?”
    Sven-Erik grinned.
    “Might as well, Saturday night’s ruined anyway.”
    It wasn’t really ruined. What would he have been doing otherwise? Watching TV and maybe taking a sauna with his neighbor. Always the same old routine.
    “True,” replied Anna-Maria, zipping up her overalls.
    Although she didn’t really feel like that. This wasn’t a ruined Saturday night. A knight can’t just stay at home nestling in the bosom of his family, he’ll go mad. He needs to get out there and draw his sword. To come home, tired and sated with adventures, to the family who have no doubt left their empty pizza boxes and fizzy drinks bottles in a heap on the living room table, but it didn’t matter. This was life at its best. Knocking on doors out on the ice in the darkness.
    “Hope she didn’t have kids,” said Anna-Maria before they went out into the storm.
    Sven-Erik didn’t reply. He was a little ashamed. He hadn’t even thought about children. The only thing he’d thought was that he hoped there wasn’t a cat shut in an apartment somewhere, waiting for his mistress.

N OVEMBER 2003
    R ebecka Martinsson is discharged from the psychiatric clinic at St. Göran’s hospital. She takes the train up to Kiruna. Now she’s sitting in a taxi outside her grandmother’s house in Kurravaara.
    Since her grandmother died, the house has belonged to Rebecka and Uncle Affe. It’s a gray stone house down by the river. Worn linoleum on the floors, damp patches on the walls.
    The house used to smell old, but lived in. A permanent background aroma of wet Wellington boots, the barn, cooking and baking. Grandmother’s own, safe smell. And Daddy’s, of course, at that time. Now the house smells abandoned, closed up. The cellar is stuffed full of glass wool to keep away the chill that strikes up through the ground.
    The taxi driver carries her suitcase inside. Asks if it’s to go upstairs or downstairs.
    “Upstairs,” she replies.
    She used to live upstairs with her grandmother.
    Daddy lived in the flat downstairs. The furniture is standing in there in a strangely silent, timeless sleep beneath big white sheets. Uncle Affe’s wife, Inga-Britt, uses the ground floor as a storeroom. More and more banana boxes full of books and clothes are being gathered here, along with old chairs Inga-Britt has picked up cheaply and is intending to restore one day. Daddy’s furniture beneath the sheets has to shuffle closer and closer to the walls.
    The fact that it doesn’t look the way it used to is no help. For Rebecka, nothing changes the flat on the ground floor.
    Daddy has been dead for many years, but as soon as she walks through the door she can see him sitting there on the kitchen sofa. It’s time for breakfast, upstairs with Grandmother. He’s heard her coming down the stairs and has sat up quickly. He’s wearing a red and black checked flannel shirt