Mattias Berg - The Carrier

The fact that other people had reported feeling seriously unwell after the accident had found an easy explanation. Members of the inquiry team were quoted as saying that aircraft fuel exploding in such large volumes could cause those sorts of unpleasant, but nevertheless temporary, secondary effects.

Such, then, was the situation just before Christmas. Everything hidden, artificial, distorted: awaiting some kind of resolution. Both heavy and light, suspended, unpredictable, yet in some way predestined.

On the evening of Christmas Day—after we had spent two days checking the hybrid, the portable command terminal and the news, and I had updated my notes, all of it some kind of paradoxical peace—Ingrid poured herself some more grappa by the oven and said that the turkey was ready.

“Just go and wash your hands, my treasure.”

I went into the bathroom, bolted the door as well as I could, let water run into the basin. Looked at my wrist-watch. 21.29 here in southern Europe, high time for the turkey to be ready even at home—or whatever I was to call it—on the other side of the Atlantic. I keyed in Amba’s number. Waited, hesitated, before pressing the green button.

Then I hung up after just two ring tones. I had promised myself. Never again listen to Amba’s voice, not even her voicemail.

Instead I went ahead with the other call. The woman who answered was very friendly, knew at once who I wanted to speak to, and went to fetch her. When she came to the telephone her voice was as upset as it was every year.

“Hello? Is it you?”

“Who else would it be, Mom? It’s that time of year. A really Happy Christmas to you! And in case you were wondering, I’ve won again this year.”

I heard her hesitate, some unspecified fear, anticipating something terrible.

“Won our bet! I was the first to call this Christmas too, Mom.”

If I had not heard her breathe, I would not have known she was still there. The silence was dense and seemed almost brittle.

“We’re just about to eat the turkey, your great recipe as always. The simplest possible stuffing, you know: sage, onion and breadcrumbs.”

“The turkey…?” she said slowly, before that irrational rage surfaced: “I never made turkey, Erasmus. I hated poultry!”

I let her anger subside. As well as that eerie feeling I always got when she spoke about herself in the past tense.

“I’ve got to go now, finish things off here, Mom. But a really Happy Christmas to you.”

She had fallen silent. Probably wondering which of her stock of standard expressions she should now use. Phrases from the past.

“I understand… And the same to you, my darling. Look after yourself and the whole of your wonderful family,” she said.

“Absolutely. They send their warmest Christmas greetings to you too. We’ll speak again soon, Mom.”

“Of course we will, Erasmus. And don’t forget now, give everyone my love.”

I pressed the red button, filled the sink with ice-cold water and took as much oxygen into my lungs as I could. Then I dunked my head in the water. Counted to myself—thirty seconds, forty, fifty, sixty—before coming up for air, flushing the toilet as I bawled out my pain.

As I came out of the bathroom, Ingrid put down her cell phone by the oven.

“I took the opportunity to make a call, since you were in there for a while.”

Her movements were strangely heavy. Maybe it was the grappa. Maybe more than that.

“Sixten sends his Christmas greetings to you too, Erasmus.”

“Sixten?”

“He said he’ll be coming here when it’s time. For real, he said, no alias this time. He’s got Aina’s full approval to join in the final battle between good and evil. Perhaps get himself crucified, become a martyr along with us, my treasure. That is what he told me. Aina will stay at home. That pure little angel.”

“And Lisa? Is she safe?” I said.

She did not answer, but bent to take the turkey out of the oven: at least seven pounds just for us. Said nothing, focusing on getting it onto the table—and then disaster struck. First she swayed, her balance failing her, which in turn caused the fat to drip from the oven tray. Then she slipped on the greasy floor. The turkey flew in a gradual arc, as if in slow motion, bounced a few times on the floor and came to rest with its legs sticking up in the air.

I would probably have started to roar with laughter, for the first time since our flight in September, if Ingrid had not begun to cry. Like a little girl, shaking and trembling.

I went to her, tried to put my arms around her, console her. She just shook her head violently and shut her eyes tight. When she opened them, they were blurred from the alcohol and some sort of sorrow, like a misty mirror.

“I’m sorry…” she managed to say.

“For what?”

She did not answer, just squatted down and tried to pick up the slippery bird, dropping it on the floor once more. Only when she had managed to put the plate with the turkey on the table did she turn to me.

“For spoiling our Christmas dinner.”

She kept fiddling about with the plates, straightening the cutlery. Seemed to take a deep breath before asking:

“But could you possibly bring yourself to eat the turkey anyway?”

I nodded slowly. “Why ever not?”

She sat down, poured water into one of our glasses and drained it in one go, blinked, opened her eyes again. The tears still covered her retinas like a layer of glass.

“Thank you, my treasure.”

I sat down opposite her, while she began to carve the bird as if she were carrying out a medical dissection.

“But to answer your question… Lisa is free and safe again, thank heavens. But she’s not coming here. Even though Sixten said she desperately wants revenge on the people who took her hostage.”

“So why isn’t she coming?”

Ingrid got to her feet again, went to one of the kitchen cupboards, opened the door and stared at its contents. Maybe to hide her expression when at length she answered:

“Sixten promised me that I would never have to see her again.”

She took the wine bottle out of the kitchen cupboard, moved the plate with the turkey aside and put the bottle in the center of the table with a certain emphasis.

“Château Latour. Already seven years old when I bought it in the ’60s, recommended by a woman in a small specialist store in Oxford. These days it’s one of the more expensive ones at auctions. Would you like a glass?”

I did not have time to raise my hand to stop her: had planned not to drink a drop until our move on the M.U.O.S. base, and I still did not know if it was to take place this evening or in one year’s time. She filled my cracked wine glass to the brim. It looked like a magic potion. Dark red, dense.

“My idea was to give it to Sixten. But it never happened.”

She poured at least as much into her own glass, raised it with a slight smile.

“I think we should try it right away. Skål , Erasmus! To the irony and deadly earnest of history.”

I raised my glass. The liquid ran thickly across the roof of my mouth. It was a divine wine—and exceptionally ill-suited to the situation we were in. Our miserable little safe house, the dreadful assignment, my state of dependence. On just this woman.

Then she began to pile the turkey and trimmings onto my plate. I just let it happen. Both white and brown meat, stuffing heavy with the smell of sage, potatoes, cooked small onions, Brussels sprouts and finally the cranberry preserve and the gravy, shiny with the turkey fat.

Ingrid treated every dish with equal precision and care. Because she wanted to dwell on the importance of each one to the whole. Handled them all like the most delicate crystal, even the potatoes which had been over-cooked in an eerily familiar way.