Читать книгу The Ice People 21 - Devil´s Ravine - Margit Sandemo - Страница 7

Chapter 2

Three years passed.

For the parishioners of Bergunda the Devil’s Ravine became a terrifying reality. They didn’t understand what was hiding there. They were convinced that it was demons that were killing their sheep and other livestock, because they never found any trace of the animals that went missing.

A smallholder who walked into the forest one winter’s day to gather firewood was found with his head smashed in. Another had been chased through the trees by frightful creatures and had barely saved himself. A young woman had disappeared completely. Ebba claimed that she could hear heartrending screams in the quiet nights.

If the smallholders of Bergunda Parish had been more in touch with the outside world, the mystery might have been solved, but people didn’t talk openly about such things. Not even with the estate owner at Bergqvara or his deputy. They were simply too frightened to discuss the demons out on the moor with Arv Grip of the Ice People.

If only they had done so! The explanation was self-evident.

Gunilla was kept at home. They kept a stricter eye on her than ever before. Knapahult was the smallholding that was closest to the Devil’s Ravine, and she wasn’t even allowed to go outside the farm in that direction.

They had been three difficult years for Gunilla. She was an unusual girl in many ways, and she was going through the difficult process of growing up. She could have done with some help and understanding, but her parents, Ebba and Karl, both treated her in quite the wrong way. Karl thundered about sin and depravity, punishing her constantly, although she was now allowed to keep her clothes on when she was beaten. He read aloud from the Bible, above all the twenty-third chapter of the Book of Ezekiel, which he loved. The reading was meant to serve as a warning to Gunilla about what happened to raunchy women who desired pagan men with horse’s penises or whatever it said in the book. She hated to hear about them, especially from her father, and got an ever more distorted view of everything that had to do with eroticism.

The more exuberant Ebba didn’t make matters any easier by implying with giggles and murmurs what Gunilla’s life as a grown-up would involve. “You must let your future husband have his way. However, you must never allow him to have your soul because it belongs to you only.”

Ebba knew her husband through and through and was able to handle him. He believed that a wife should work in the house and have the satisfaction of breeding children, but spare him a raunchy woman! Karl never understood that he did everything he could to arouse his wife, with the sole aim of having an excuse to punish her for her desire.

Ebba wasn’t like most other women. The philosophy of many free churches was that the woman had to be passive and merely receive her husband so that he could claim his rights. At first, a woman might put an arm around her husband’s neck at intimate moments and whisper that she liked him, but the reply would be a slap in the face. This taught her body to be insensitive and extinguished the glow in her eyes.

Ebba wasn’t like that. She saw through Karl immediately and knew exactly what she could expect and how she could avoid being actually beaten. The lashes he gave her were mostly a matter of form. They never really hurt. For many years, she had really loved her handsome missionary; she knew perfectly well that he depended on her.

But now things had changed. Karl was no longer quite well. He had problems with his stomach and his waterworks and for the past year he had been unable to perform the sexual act, which had really made him cross. Now he truly battered Ebba. Gunilla often saw her mother with bruises and wounds and traces of tears in the corners of her eyes.

It hurt Gunilla terribly. By now, she understood what her parents were up to when they whispered and moaned in the evening, and she began to feel awful and would burrow down under the blankets so she wouldn’t hear them. Her mother had been so strong. Now it seemed that she was letting her mask slip. Over the past year, Gunilla had seen her mother talking more and more frequently with itinerant men and once she had seen her having sex with one of these men when her father was away. They hadn’t seen Gunilla, who had run out into the forest and flopped down on the ground to cool her blushing cheeks against the damp moss.

The poor girl had nobody to talk to about her difficulties, and she became so silent, introverted and nervous that she had to sit with her hands tightly clenched so that nobody would see them trembling or understand the anguish she was suffering. Once she plucked up courage and went to the priest, because he was someone for whom her father had great respect. Gunilla sat for a long time, hands clenched in her lap; she answered the priest’s questions about whether she went to church on Sundays as she ought to and whether she said her prayers every evening. At long last, she managed to ask her question:

“I wondered whether the priest would kindly speak to my father?”

The priest looked at her. He was puzzled.

“Yes,” she said, swallowing because she was so frightened. “Because he beats my mother so badly, and it really upsets me. Mother hasn’t done anything wrong but yesterday she had a black, swollen eye and she wept a lot, which she never does normally.”

The good priest didn’t really know what to say. Karl of Knapahult was an exceedingly pious man who always put a tidy sum in the collection box on Sundays.

“Why does he do that? Why does he beat her?”

“I don’t know. He does it often.”

“When? Doesn’t she cook his food the way she should?”

“Yes, she works hard. It’s in the evenings ...”

Gunilla was blushing now.

After a short pause, the priest said in a firm voice: “Well, then I had better speak to your mother, and not your father! Maybe she can’t submit in the way a wife should. Maybe she’s not compliant? An obstinate and defiant wife can often irritate her husband so that he becomes violent, which would never otherwise be his intention. Ask her to think about that! Or send her over here and I’ll talk some sense into her!”

Gunilla suddenly felt awfully tired. “No, I’ll speak to my mother,” she said quickly. Then she said goodbye and apologised for taking up the priest’s time. The priest nodded graciously.

Gunilla was eighteen now. It was high time she was married because she was such a pretty girl that the boys hid in the bushes to catch glimpses of her when she walked across the courtyard. Once she surprised one of them near the spot where she went to obey the call of nature. This made her so angry that she threw stones at the boy, who dashed away as fast as he could. Another time, two boys hid in the cowshed. They threw themselves at her when she walked in to milk the cows. Gunilla swung the milk pail at one of them as forcefully as she could, and she had plenty of strength after a life of toil and hard work. The other boy she kicked so brutally that both of them ran away, but mainly because she was shouting for help while she fought them. They had a lot of respect for Karl’s paternal anger! But he hadn’t been in. Gunilla had just shouted to scare them off.

Perhaps it was just as well that Karl didn’t get to know about it. Boys? Bumpkins? They weren’t good enough for his daughter. No, she would have to aim higher. When you were unfortunate enough to have only one daughter, you certainly had to be compensated for your disappointment! In recent years, Karl had done a good job of preparing Arv Grip of the Ice People! What an immense relief that Erland of Backa, that rascal and the biggest obstacle, had been sent to Eksjö. Hardly had the young man arrived there when he caught the eye of an officer who knew that Sweden’s King Gustav III wanted broad-shouldered soldiers in his lifeguard. Erland was sent to Stockholm. The smallholding would have to wait.

Gunilla missed him, her childhood playmate. Even so, she knew very well that that time was past and would never come back. When her longing for Erland was tormenting her the most, she would think of the one time that he had visited them. That was when Erland had asked to see her legs. He wanted to know whether they were just as fine as the rest of her.

“My legs?” Gunilla had exclaimed angrily. “You’ve damned well seen my legs before, stupid!”

She had jerked and pulled her skirts right up to her knees. Erland had gasped for breath and blushed, and before she had read his intentions, he had pushed his hand up under her skirt and touched her. Gunilla had yelled with anger and surprise, then grabbed a lump of soil and rubbed it into his face, long and hard and carefully. Then she had run away while he spluttered and spat out the dirt. These were good memories to have when sadness gripped her.

A few days after her unsuccessful visit to the priest, her mother came out of the bedroom with another black eye and a wry, cold, defiant look in her eyes. Later in the day when her father had gone out, an itinerant carpenter came to the house. He said that he sharpened knives. Gunilla had seen him before and knew perfectly well what would happen now. And she was quite right: shortly afterwards, both her mother and the man disappeared.

Gunilla wept. She wandered around the kitchen restlessly and felt paralysed. She was unable to think. She stood for a long while, gazing down the road without really noticing the group of men standing there. Her father ... Two other smallholders she knew ... And Inspector Arv Grip. They were obviously talking about the surrounding fields. Her mother had been gone for quite some time now. Gunilla knew how long those episodes usually lasted. She felt nauseated and had a heavy feeling in her stomach.

The men didn’t seem to be making their way towards Knapahult, so that wasn’t why Gunilla felt bad about it. In apathy and deep despair, she sat down at the kitchen table. A knife was lying there. Gunilla seized it absentmindedly. She got up again and stood by the window. With her eyes firmly fixed on Arp Grip’s straight, strong figure, which seemed to promise feelings of safety and security, she put the knife to her wrist and drew it up along her forearm so that the blood splashed. The pain in her soul exceeded the pain in her arm. Unconsciously, she put the knife back on the table again. Her arm rested limply on the table while the blood dripped on to the floor. Beautiful, red spots on the worn, grey, wooden floor.

Ebba walked in and let out a scream.

“Gunilla, what have you done?”

Her daughter turned towards her, her face expressionless. Her voice was just as lifeless. “I cut myself.”

“Cut yourself? Cut yourself?” Ebba shouted loudly. “Well, then do something! You can’t just stand there!”

Gunilla turned away and looked down at the men on the road once more. Ebba followed her gaze and ran out into the courtyard.

“Karl, Karl! Hurry up. Gunilla has hurt herself. She has cut herself. Hurry!”

Ebba’s hysterical voice revealed a deeper anxiety than the wound might have justified.

The men heard her shouts and came running, all four of them. Meanwhile, Ebba ran indoors again and tried ineffectively to wipe the blood off Gunilla’s arm. It was still bleeding quite a lot.

“How could you have cut yourself like that, Gunilla? Why didn’t you watch out? What did you need the knife for?”

Without waiting for an answer, which she was too afraid to hear, she continued to chastise Gunilla until the men appeared.

Arv Grip of the Ice People took charge immediately. “Have you got some clean rags? And warm water? Now, Karl, you take a firm grip here. You must hold the edges of the wound together tightly!”

He noticed that Gunilla flinched when her father touched her. He also noticed something else: deep bruises around her forearm as if from a brutal grip ...

While the other men fussed and were of no use, Arv dressed her wound. Gunilla was completely calm. He couldn’t help noticing the emptiness in her eyes and was puzzled by it ...

Over the past year, Karl of Knapahult had dropped many hints about Gunilla to Arv Grip of the Ice People. The smallholder knew perfectly well that his daughter would often prolong the errands he sent her to the estate manager with, and that they talked as a mature man and a young girl would do. It was a friendship across the generation gap. Karl wasn’t the least envious. On the contrary, he encouraged Gunilla to go to Bergqvara and came up with a lot of excuses so that the two of them could meet as often as possible.

At first, Arv hadn’t thought much about it. Gunilla of Knapahult was a sweet, pleasant young girl and she had an exceptional personality and intelligence, whereas her background seemed dysfunctional. Arv quite enjoyed discussing her small worries. Usually they concerned animals or plants, but at times he sensed a strong feeling of dejection, a lack of understanding of the ups and downs of life. She clearly needed somebody to confide in. At the moment, he didn’t have so much time for her because the dilapidated main building at Bergqvara was about to be demolished and a new one built in its place, so his hands were full. Even so, he spared a few minutes for her every time she turned up. He felt that he owed this to the poor smallholders.

Actually, he noticed that if she hadn’t been to see him for a few days, he began to miss their little chats ...

Arv Grip of the Ice People was a good-looking man. He was over forty, of course, but he looked exceedingly good for his age. He didn’t have the golden hair of his grandfather Vendel, nor his exceptionally blue eyes. But there wasn’t a single grey hair on his head. His profile was clean-cut and he appeared very cultivated. He had received a good education in his youth and Arvid Erik Posse couldn’t do without him on his large farm in Bergqvara.

Nevertheless, Arv Grip was a lonely man. He had married young but lost his wife after a few years. After that he had sworn never to marry again, the tragedy had simply been too great. He felt that his wife’s memory was holy and wanted to keep it that way, and so he hadn’t wanted to marry again.

However, the memory of his late wife was beginning to fade now. After all, she had died many years ago. In order to suppress the thoughts that came to him when he was alone, he devoted all his energy to work on the farm, wearing himself out in his zeal. This was why the innocent little conversations he had with Gunilla were a welcome change.

He discreetly observed her expressionless face. Then he sent the four others off, asking them to do various errands. He wanted to be alone with Gunilla for a moment. As soon as they were gone, he said: “The wound on your arm is something you inflicted on yourself. Why did you do that, Gunilla?”

His voice was so gentle and kind. Gunilla replied as if in a trance: “The priest wouldn’t listen to me.”

Arv wrinkled his brow. At that moment, Ebba returned with the scissors he had asked her to fetch and Karl brought Gunilla’s homespun jacket.

“I’ll take Gunilla with me to Bergqvara,” Arv said. “I have better medicines there.”

“Yes, please do,” Karl smiled encouragingly. He was delighted. This was the best that could happen. For goodness sake, let them walk together right up to the farm.

“I must say that you’re very clever with your hands, Mr Grip,” Ebba said. “You could almost be a doctor.”

Arv smiled. “No, I’m not that clever. But I come from a family that has always been very knowledgeable about medicines and herbs. Some of them were even regarded as witches and wizards.”

“I say!”

“Yes, but not any more. There was a time when we used to have one in every generation, but that is no longer the case. The last one was a lady in Norway, called Ingrid. Then a young girl in the following generation put an end to it. She was called Shira and was a very peculiar person. She was of the generation before me – she was my aunt! She married Mar, the very last wizard, and saved him. So there are none in my generation or the next one. It’s a curse, you see, from which we’ve now been released.”

Arv knew nothing about his cousin, Sölve, who was the same age as him, and Sölve’s son, Heike, who were both cursed.

Ebba and Karl probably thought that he was talking nonsense, but Arv seemed to notice a hint of interest in Gunilla’s expressionless eyes.

Karl urged them to set off on the long walk to Bergqvara, delaying the two smallholders so that they didn’t interfere with the idyll.

Arv and Gunilla walked down the road in silence to begin with.

“I think you need somebody to talk to, don’t you?” Arv asked quietly.

Her eyes darted but Arv could see that his remark had hit the spot.

“And then the priest didn’t want to listen,” Arv continued.

“No, he ...” Gunilla said, but then stopped immediately.

“Did he start to talk about something else?”

“Yes, how did you know?”

“Priests often do. After all, they’re only human, you see, and people’s spiritual questions and concerns can be unpleasant. When you can’t come up with an answer for everything, you have to try another approach in order not to lose face.”

“Well, this time it wasn’t so much a spiritual matter,” Gunilla said, bending her head with a smile. “I’ve always held the Church in the highest esteem. Only this was the first time I asked to speak to the priest in confidence about a personal matter and I was very disappointed. He was so condescending about women!”

There was a slight pause while Arv Grip pondered how he was to tackle this.

“Gunilla,” he said in a kind but firm tone. “I’m no priest, but if you need to talk about your problem, then I’m willing to listen. Maybe I can help.”

“No,” she replied. “I don’t want to betray my parents. It was difficult enough with the priest. It wasn’t a success, so I daren’t try again.”

“What did the priest say?”

“That he would have a serious word with my mother!” Gunilla exclaimed fervently. “But it’s Father ...”

She was silent.

“Yes, Gunilla?”

His voice was so gentle. The scent of the forest surrounded them and Gunilla’s loneliness and confusion was enormous. Now they could see the buildings of Bergqvara on the far side of the fields. The route there seemed far too short. Walking slowly beside Inspector Grip was just so nice. She wasn’t in the mood to talk. She just wanted to feel the closeness of a kind, cultivated person.

“What was it you wanted to dress my wound with?” Gunilla asked softly.

“Nothing. I can see that your real wound is in your soul. That what you did to yourself was a desperate cry for help – although you might not be aware of it yourself. So I wanted to talk to you. Alone.”

Gunilla didn’t answer.

“Does your father treat your mother ... badly? I noticed that she had a black eye.”

Gunilla didn’t say anything, she just bent her head even more.

“Come on, Gunilla. Remember that I’m your friend! We’ve been friends for a long time, haven’t we? Have I ever let you down?”

“No,” she said quietly. Then she lifted her head. Her voice had a desperate note. “I don’t want Father to be angry with Mother. He mustn’t be, because I’ll just go to pieces!”

Arv said: “He has no right to beat somebody who hasn’t done anything wrong.”

Gunilla’s voice trembled. “Oh, but she has! But Father doesn’t know, which is what makes it so difficult. I want so much to defend Mother because she means well even if she doesn’t always behave sensibly. But, of course I know that she ... that she ... No, I can’t bring myself to say it!”

Arv said gently: “Your mother is still a very charming woman.” He could have added: that is, if you like the slightly vulgar, blowsy type, but he didn’t want to hurt Gunilla. Instead he said: “Your father’s getting on in years, isn’t he?”

“So you know that she ...” Gunilla began to say, almost breaking down in tears, but thought better of it. Arv said nothing about Ebba’s obvious attempts to seduce him on the very few occasions she had had the opportunity to do so. Completely in vain, incidentally.

“I’m just guessing,” Arv said quietly. “I certainly haven’t heard anybody talking about your mother. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is whether Karl knows or not.”

“He doesn’t. I’m certain about that,” Gunilla said quickly. “If he did, he would kill her.”

For a moment, Arv looked serious. Then he continued in a sharper tone: “Most importantly, they’re misusing your confidence in them. Your fine little soul is being torn to pieces by the dilemma you’re in. You want to be loyal but both of them are behaving so badly that you don’t know what to believe. Do you want me to have a word with both of them?”

“Oh, no. Please don’t. I should never have said anything.”

“You haven’t said anything, so you’ve nothing to worry about. No, it’s Karl’s fault more than anybody else’s. I’ll make him stop beating your mother without him finding out who has gossiped. But perhaps you had better be on your way home, Gunilla. We’ve walked so slowly that we could have got there and back five times by now. Your parents mustn’t be worried about you.”

She was sad when she thanked him and said goodbye.

Arv gave her a sad smile. “It was nice talking to you. Take care and don’t allow the stupidity of the grown-ups to spoil your genuine and impulsive nature.”

He stood watching her as she walked back towards the forest.

Poor child. How could two such parents have produced such a wonderful daughter? Nature is capricious. He needed to have a serious talk with Karl of Knapahult. He shrank from the thought because Karl was a difficult man and Ebba, his wife, cheated on him blatantly.

How was Arv Grip to put her case?

In fact, he couldn’t have cared less about the parents. It was young, innocent Gunilla who didn’t have a mentor. And he wouldn’t mind being her mentor.

Gunilla had become a ray of sunshine in his lonely world. A child who didn’t deserve to have her spontaneity and charm destroyed.