Mattias Berg - The Carrier

From my dissertation work, with all the Swedish source material, I had learned enough of the language to be able to follow what was going on in this documentary. Large parts consisted of a subtitled interview with an American psychologist. Her theories about “false memory” had become the film-makers’ key to understanding what had happened. The historic breakthrough for the theories had come when the psychologist managed to get several subjects in an experiment in the ’90s to recall, in exactly the same way, having been lost in a shopping mall as children, something which had never happened to any of them. During the interview the psychologist called this process “implantation”. Fictitious memories which are deliberately implanted deep within an individual’s mind.

We did not say a word to each other while the documentary was playing. Only when the credits started to roll did Ingrid turn to me.

“She looked much younger with her new hairstyle.”

“Who do you mean?”

“The psychologist, of course. She became my best friend during those first fragile years of study, at Columbia, when I was starting to build up my own double life: in the same way as you yourself some decades later, my treasure. She and I were studying two quite different subjects, but in the academic world there’s a lot of important stuff that crosses over between them, bridges over dark waters.”

At that moment—when I was presented with an unsought opportunity to ask follow-up questions, to try to make some sense of Ingrid’s life story, logistically as well as chronologically—she suddenly got up from the sofa.

“It’s time, Erasmus. A little over two hours before he’s due to collect us. Less than an hour till sundown.”

Then Ingrid led the three of us, with full packs, in among the low line of trees and up toward Luossa Hill. She had managed to track down Jesús María in the hotel. Now she was in front of me and I could hear her breathing. Not because there was anything wrong with her fitness—far from it—but she sounded like a predator out for the hunt.

Once we reached the slope we saw that there was an impressive Saturday crush, low-level chaos. But Ingrid did not hesitate and made her way through the line. Seemed to trust entirely in her new face, confident that no-one would recognize her even here.

“These are my last rentals, ma’am… but everything looks about right for you.” The young blond man in the rental store tested the length of the skis against Ingrid’s height, assessed the bindings. She inverted the poles, placed her hands in the baskets and measured their height in line with her forearm and elbow. “Just to warn you, the lifts close as soon as the sun has gone down, that’s our tradition for the day, for the Polar Night après-ski. The party goes on until midnight…” Ingrid paid him no attention, looked through the window at the mountain. “You’ll have half an hour at the most on the slope, barely ten minutes without sun and twenty with. At 11.45 a.m. it’ll be gone for the year.”

“That will be more than enough,” she said.

“And these two won’t be skiing?” he said, gesturing to me and Jesús María.

“Oh, they’re just my fans.”

“O.K. Got it.” The young man smiled in our direction. “Have you been here before?”

“On top of the hill centuries ago, my friend. But I’ve never skied the slope.”

“So, in that case you won’t have experienced our sun ritual either. It was meant to be a bit of fun when we opened a couple of years ago, on Polar Night, to try to get people in. It turned out to be such a success that we’ve kept it going. It’s our third year now. And the same clear sky as before.”

“What’s this ritual about, then?”

“I think you should wait and see, ma’am. It’s pretty cool, even if I say so myself.”

The young man went out and closed the door while Ingrid put on the boots. I leaned forward and whispered to her:

“Seriously? Ski here, now, among all these people?”

“Have you ever known me not serious, my treasure? I simply can’t leave without trying the piste, can I? And Bettan said that this would be the best day of all. We’ve got enough time before we’re due to be picked up, just after lunch. Only a few runs, before the lifts close.”

As she got into the lift line—she had given me her large backpack but kept her small one—Ingrid fired off her most irresistible smile.

“Besides, I just wanted to show off a bit of my former magic for you, from the good old days. If you just spread out a bit and keep an eye open, I’ll feel completely safe here. This is my natural element, I’m almost on my home turf. And the bigger the crowds, the lower the risk.”

Without further discussion—about who should stand where out of the two of us, any strategic considerations—Jesús María started to half-run up the steep lower part of the slope, stopping just below the tree line. I remained where I was, by the side of the lift line, with not only the large hybrid but also Ingrid’s pack at my feet, which limited my ability to move and intervene. Yet my reflexes kicked in as I began to survey the crowd. Any suspicious-looking individuals or groups, conceivable threats, potential escape routes.

But for the most part it all seemed peaceful. Among the other skiers some, especially the teenagers, appeared to have stolen a march on the ski hut’s planned après-ski party. Their shouts to their friends waiting in line were loud and shrill, but at least the group was preoccupied. Nobody seemed to be taking any notice of Jesús María, who now stood a few hundred feet above me, looking out over the masses. Nor of Ingrid.

Except for me. I could not take my eyes off her. How she let her seventy-year-old body dance and play, dominating the whole piste, at once relaxed and theatrical.

As she took the lift up again, having slid to an elegant stop at the tail of the lift line, my eyes resumed their scan across the people who filled most of the piste. Using the usual profiling. One possible risk group was four men in their fifties. Most of the skiers were in pairs, except for one bunch of six young people. Eight pairs were single-sex—five only men and three only women, who all seemed much younger—and six were mixed.

It was not easy to identify any particular characteristics among them: not when they were all wearing helmets and goggles, with their faces protected against the extreme cold by balaclavas, and the same sort of clothes. They were more or less indistinguishable from each other, except for their height. Even Jesús María and myself.

Only three sets of skiers stood out. The first was a couple who seemed to be absorbed in each other further up the slope and not far from Jesús María. Even at a distance one could see the intensity of their embrace. The woman almost disappeared within the man’s frame.

The next was of course Ingrid, who cut through the swarm of people with the ease of a razor blade. She made a number of turns on her way down, with an expertise which showed us that she could have done as many more or less as she would have liked. She appeared spellbound by the snow and the sun and the skiing, unaware of what was going on around her, buried deep within herself.

When the third conspicuous skier, an enormous man on his own, swung in to the lift line again, I thought I should watch him closely—which was becoming more difficult because an increasing number of people poured in by the minute, some coming up from below. Non-skiers, they stepped off the T-bar, about half-way up. The skiers coming from higher on the slope also stopped at the same point. Within moments it had become nearly impossible to make one’s way through the mass of people just below the point where Jesús María was standing. Two snowcats, each towing a refrigerator, braked suddenly in the crowd—whereupon the drivers jumped off and started to hand out bottles of beer.