“Killian’s dad?” She looked surprised. “Why would he do that?”
Sander hesitated. “I actually don’t know. But they had a fight, him and Karl-Henrik. I guess he was at Linda’s house for a few hours after that. But he took off that night. No one knows where to. He says he went home, but no one can confirm that. Did you see him?”
Felicia shook her head.
Mikael had forced himself on her. He had hurt her. Knowing thishad burned inside Sander before, but for some strange reason it didn’t now. Mikael was dead. His father, who had perhaps made Mikael the person he was, had lost his house and his life was ruined; he probably wouldn’t recover. He couldn’t cause any more harm to anyone. Sander didn’t know how it had come about, but when he thought about it he could see a greater, deeper sort of justice in the situation as it stood now. Like the murals in the chapel: being forced to see the whole picture at last. That was justice. This time, it had struck the Söderströms.
“Have you been back?” she asked. “After what happened, I mean? Have you seen it?”
“Only the pictures on TV, in the paper.” And only then, as the words were coming out, did he realize what he was about to say, realize it was true: “I don’t think I’m going to go back.”
“Me neither.”
But she wasn’t as certain. Sander could tell. As though it mattered now, who was certain of what, who wanted or did what, who would stay and who would leave.
He thought of the brilliant white chapel, the dark wooden bell tower. He could hear the bells ringing in his mind. Something inside him had become distorted.
He reached out again and placed his hand near her side. Sander started it, but there was no choice, really. At last she placed her hand in his, more purposefully this time. There was no one else there, they were in the middle of a frigid winter, and she probably needed someone to hold onto.
54
New Year’s came and went, the old millennium was left behind and the new one began, apparently without any major incidents or crises. The banks kept earning money, and so did companies; by all appearances, satellites stayed up in space. The cows were milked, the tractors all started, and life wenton.
Sander’s suit hadn’t been washed, just the shirt, and it stayed out rather than being hung up in his wardrobe. First Mikael, then Killian. Frans Ljunggren observed all the tealights and candles on the graves, all the lanterns and flowers, and said: “Maybe someone should open a store around here.”
Killian was laid to rest on a Sunday five weeks after the landslide, on the twenty-ninth day of the new millennium, under a bright-blue January sky. A cold, white sun shone down on the chapel, making the frost that had settled onto the village overnight sparkle.
Sander’s best friend lay in an ash-colored casket adorned with a lush bouquet of white roses. Sten and Linda had chosen the flowers. When the congregants arrived, Killian’s parents were already seated in the front pew, as though they had rooted there, staring at the roses like they might become brittle and dry, might crumble at any moment. No one could imagine how they could possibly be coping.
Just for today, people were trying to look beyond the rumors ofSten’s role in the landslide that had caused so much destruction. He denied having started it, of course, but few believed him.
Today, though, was all about his son. Oddly enough, this brought a sort of temporary détente for the whole village as they were finally allowed to experience a single, straightforward emotion: they could simply grieve. Maybe. They had all seen the wreck, what was left of the car, but no one had witnessed the fireball itself. In his final moments, Killian had been alone at the brink of the cliff.
Inside the chapel, everyone was looking around for Felicia, but she arrived so late that many began to wonder if she was coming at all. In the end, though, there she was, with Madeleine at her side.
The news that she had been pregnant but lost the baby in the landslide had begun to spread. Many people questioned whether Killian could really have been the baby’s father. Some insisted it had to be Sander, and others even suspected Mikael. Some spoke in a mildly insinuating tone, as if the lack of clarity they all felt surrounding the identity of the father were Felicia’s own fault.
Isidor Enoksson was speaking up by the casket now. His words slipped away through the air, out over the congregation and through the small cracks in the chapel doors, off toward the ruined village. Or perhaps they seeped into the ground and vanished, burrowing all the way to the dead. If words could reach that far. Surely they could, if they were the right words.
“We believe,we say in the Apostles’ Creed. But we don’t say so to account for our understanding of faith. We do this—we all recite the same words at the same time—to remind ourselves that we are not alone, that there’s something we all share: the remarkable thing that is faith. As high as heaven is over the Earth, so great is His mercy to those who fear Him, who believe in Him.”
It was hard to look at the casket. Killian shouldn’t be here, locked up in a big, sealed wooden box; he should be somewhere else. Sander pictured a car driving off into the night on Christmas Eve, wild and careless, over and over again. He couldn’t get rid of the image. He didn’t know where Killian had been trying to go, and when he tried toimagine a place where his best friend would be happy, it was difficult; the only place Sander could imagine was here in Skavböke.
He closed his eyes. Voices echoed like ghosts.
We believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. We believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
III
By the Cemetery Where
Killian Persson from
Skavböke is Buried
55
When he returned one July day, many years later, no one had seen him for a long time. But there he came, as though emerging from a different world, sailing through the summer in a car that looked brand-new.
