Johan Theorin - The Darkest Room

Mirja leaned forward on the big sofa and poured Joakim a steaming cup of coffee. Then she picked up a bottle of vodka and asked, “A drop in your coffee?”

“No thank you. I don’t drink spirits and-”

Mirja gave a short laugh. “Then I’ll have your ration,” she said, pouring the vodka for herself.

Mirja lived in a spacious apartment close to the cathedral in Kalmar, and had invited the family over for dinner this evening.

Livia and Gabriel finally got to meet their maternal grandmother. Both were quiet and wary when they walked in, and Livia looked suspiciously at a white marble statue of the upper half of a man’s body, standing in one corner. It was a while before she started talking. She had brought Foreman and two teddy bears with her, and introduced all three to her grandmother. Mirja took the family into her studio, where finished and unfinished paintings of Öland lined the walls. They all showed a flat, blossoming green landscape beneath a cloudless sky.

For someone who had hardly bothered about her grandchildren up to now, Mirja was remarkably interested in them. When they had eaten their meat-filled dumplings, she worked hard to get Gabriel to come and sit on her knee, and finally succeeded. But he only stayed put for a few minutes before running off into the TV room to watch children’s programs with Livia.

“So it’s just the two of us,” said Mirja, sitting down on the sofa in the main room.

“Fine,” said Joakim.

Mirja had none of her own paintings on the walls, but two of her mother Torun’s pictures of the blizzard hung in the main room. Both depicted the snowstorm approaching the coast, like a black curtain about to fall on the twin lighthouses. Just like the picture at Eel Point, these were winter

paintings that exuded hidden menace and the premonition of evil.

Joakim looked in vain for traces of Katrine in the apartment. She had always loved bright, clean lines, but her mother had decorated the rooms with dark, flowery wallpaper and curtains, Persian rugs, and black leather sofas and chairs.

Mirja had no photographs of her dead daughter or her half siblings. She did, however, have several large and small pictures of herself and a young man, perhaps twenty years her junior, with a blond goatee beard and spiky hair.

She saw Joakim staring at the pictures and nodded toward the man.

“Ulf,” she said. “He’s off playing indoor hockey, otherwise you could have met him.”

“So you’re a couple…” said Joakim, “you and the hockey player?”

A stupid question. Mirja smiled.

“Does that bother you?”

Joakim shook his head.

“Good, because it bothers a lot of other people,” said Mirja. “Katrine, certainly, even if she never said anything… Older women aren’t supposed to have a sex life. But Ulf doesn’t seem to be complaining, and I’m certainly not.”

“On the contrary, you seem proud of it,” said Joakim.

Mirja laughed. “Love is blind, or so they say.”

She drank her coffee and lit a cigarette.

“One of the police officers in Marnäs wants to carry on with the investigation,” said Joakim after a while. “She’s called me a couple of times.”

He didn’t need to explain which investigation he was talking about.

“Right,” said Mirja. “She’s welcome to do that, I suppose.”

“Sure, if it provides any answers… but it won’t bring Katrine back.”

“I know why she died,” said Mirja, drawing on her cigarette.

Joakim looked up. “You do?”

“It was the house.”

“The house?”

Mirja laughed briefly, but she wasn’t smiling. “That damned house is full of unhappiness,” she said. “It’s destroyed the lives of every family that has ever lived there.”

Joakim looked at her, surprised by the comment. “You can’t blame unhappiness on a house.”

Mirja stubbed out her cigarette.

Joakim changed the subject.

“I’m having a visitor next week, a retired guy who knows the house. His name is Gerlof Davidsson. Have you met him?”

Mirja shook her head. “But I think his brother lived close by,” she said. “Ragnar. I met him.”

“Anyway… Gerlof is going to tell me about the history of Eel Point.”

“I can do that, if you’re so curious.”

Mirja took another huge gulp of her coffee. Joakim thought her eyes were already beginning to look slightly glazed from the alcohol.

“So how did you end up at Eel Point?” he asked. “You and your mother?”

“The rent was low,” said Mirja. “That was the most important thing for Mom. She spent the money she earned from cleaning on canvases and oils, and she was always short of money. So we had to find places to live to fit in with that.”

“Was the place already looking shabby by then?”

“It was getting that way,” said Mirja. “Eel Point was still owned by the state at that stage, but it was rented to someone on the island for a small amount of money… some farmer who didn’t put a penny into fixing it up. Mom and I were the only ones who were prepared to live in the outbuilding in the winter.”

She drank some more of her coffee concoction.

The children were laughing loudly at something in the TV room. Joakim thought for a while, then asked, “Did Katrine ever talk to you about Ethel?”

“No,” said Mirja. “Who’s Ethel?”

“She was my older sister. She died last year… almost exactly a year ago. She was a user.”

“Booze?”

“Drugs,” said Joakim. “Anything, really, but mostly heroin over the last few years.”

“I’ve never really been into drugs,” said Mirja. “But of course I agree with people like Huxley and Tim Leary…”

“About what?” asked Joakim.

“That drugs can open doors in your mind. Particularly for artists like us.”

Joakim stared at her. He thought of Ethel’s blank expression, and realized why Katrine had never told Mirja about her.

Then he quickly finished his coffee and looked at his watch: quarter past eight.

“We’d better get back.”

“So what do you think of your grandmother, then?” asked Joakim as they drove back across the Öland bridge.

“She was nice,” said Livia.

“Good.”

“Will we be going there again?” she asked.

“Maybe,” said Joakim. “But probably not for a while.”

He decided not to think about Mirja Rambe anymore.

“My daughter called me last night,” said one of the elderly ladies on the sofa next to Tilda.

“Oh yes, what did she say?” asked the other elderly lady.

“She wanted to talk things through.”

“Talk things through?”

“Talk things through, yes,” said the first lady. “Once and for all. She says I’ve never supported her. ‘You only thought about yourself and Daddy,’ she said. ‘All the time. And us kids have always been in second place.’”

“That’s what my son says as well,” said the other lady. “Although with him it’s the exact opposite. He rings before Christmas every year and complains and says that I gave him too much love. I destroyed his childhood, according to him. Don’t you give it another thought, Elsa.”

Tilda stopped eavesdropping and looked at her watch. The weather report should be over by now, and she got up and knocked on Gerlof’s door.

“Come in.”

Gerlof was sitting by the radio when Tilda went in to collect him. He had his coat on, but didn’t seem to want to get up.

“Shall we go?” she said, holding her arm out ready to support him.

“Maybe,” he said. “Where was it we were going?”

“Eel Point,” said Tilda.

“Right… and what exactly is it we’re going to do out there?”

“Well, I suppose we’re going to talk,” said Tilda. “The new owner wants to hear some stories about the place. I said you knew lots of stories.”