Юхан Теорин - The Voices Beyond

‘One more thing... Do you know what a player is, JK?’

His uncle leaned closer. His shirt was unbuttoned beneath his jacket, and Kent was wearing some kind of male fragrance, as heavy and cloying as alcohol.

Jonas shook his head.

‘A player is someone who’s part of a business enterprise, or perhaps a game of some kind. There are small players and major players... and you are a small player in a very big game. Do you understand?’

Jonas nodded hesitantly.

‘Good.’ Kent blinked and lowered his voice so that he was almost whispering in Jonas’s ear: ‘And you know what your father did, don’t you? Why he wasn’t around last summer?’

Jonas nodded again.

‘He’s back with us now, so everything is all right.’ Kent leaned even closer. ‘But if you got the idea that you’re a major player, JK, and you decided to tell the police about the evening when we went to Marnäs... well, they might just decide to take him away again. Is that what you want?’

Jonas shook his head.

‘Nobody wants that,’ Kent said. ‘So you give them basic answers to their questions about the ship, but don’t tell them anything else. OK?’

‘OK.’

‘Good. If you do that, we can win this game.’

Kent straightened up, patted Jonas on the shoulder and went indoors. A little while later, Jonas heard the treadmill start up.

The farm was illuminated by a single floodlight attached to a pole high above the barn. The rest was in darkness, full of the sounds of animals lowing and bleating and thudding against the wooden walls. An old silo loomed up against the sky like a blunt-nosed rocket.

It was Friday, and even though a large farm never closes down, tonight it was likely to be less busy than usual. The working week was over; everybody wanted some time off.

But not the Homecomer. He crouched in the shadow of the silo, keeping quiet and still as he waited for Rita, who had disappeared in the direction of the barns, carrying a plastic bucket.

‘Won’t be long,’ she had said, without asking for any help.

The Homecomer waited. The night air was warm and dry, with the faint smell of dung. He looked around, at the silo and the barn and the new machines. There were still those on the island who made a good living from farming, he realized. Perhaps the old-fashioned smallholdings had all disappeared.

He heard soft footsteps on the grass and saw a slender figure coming towards him — Rita, moving quickly and quietly.

‘There you go,’ she said, sounding out of breath. ‘Nobody saw me.’

The bucket was no longer empty. It was heavy and full to the brim, its lid firmly closed. It was impossible to see what was inside.

The Homecomer took the bucket and looked at the other object Rita was carrying. It was a red plastic box with some kind of long hose. ‘What’s that?’

‘A high-pressure pump. Which means we have everything we need.’

He nodded. ‘Time to visit the Kloss family, in that case.’

‘We can go home now,’ Sven says at the beginning of summer, when the ground has dried out and it is easier to dig. ‘Home to Rödtorp.’

Aron looks at him. ‘Is that true?’

‘It’s true. I’ve handed in my passport to the office, and the secretary has sent it to Leningrad. Soon it will come back with the right stamps for the journey, and then we can go.’

Aron believes him. Now , he thinks. Now.

But the days of summer pass, and there is no sign of the passport.

The only thing that does arrive is an increase in food rations, so that Aron no longer shakes with hunger every morning and night. There is an abundance of berries in the forest this summer, and wagons deliver plenty of meat and apples.

But, just as the food pours into the camp, people begin to disappear.

One of the first to vanish is Michail Suntsov, an old labourer from Minsk who lives in the room next to the one occupied by the Swedes. Suntsov has told Aron extraordinary tales of life in the Soviet Union and has whittled him a beautiful fighter plane from birch wood, which Sven has hung up above their beds.

But one day Suntsov is gone. As they set off in the morning to carry on digging, some strange men in uniform are waiting for him. They take him aside and speak to him, and Suntsov doesn’t turn up to work that day.

He is simply not there any more. His bed is empty and, when Sven asks the others in the room, no one knows what has happened. Or perhaps they do know, but no one is talking.

Those who whisper too much also disappear. This almost always happens at night. They are taken away in the darkness by uniformed men who are no more than shadows in the room. The workers are led out, alone or in twos, and they are never seen again.

And there is still no sign of Sven’s passport.

Autumn comes, bringing back the cold. The grass is covered in frost and the ground is hard.

Sven gradually loses his determined expression; his eyes begin to flicker from side to side. His back is bent, and his limp is worse than ever.

‘We’re going home anyway,’ he assures Aron. ‘I’ve written to the Swedish consulate in Leningrad, explained the situation... told them we’re not free to travel as we wish. So things will soon be sorted out.’

But he sounds less than certain.

And nothing happens. The days pass, the first snow falls, they carry on digging.

One day, Sven is called into the office after work. Aron watches him go, sees the door close. Sven is in there all evening, or so it seems.

When he returns to the hut, he sounds stressed. ‘They had my passport,’ he says. ‘They’ve had it all the time. And the letter, the one I wrote to the consulate... They keep all letters; they’ve also confiscated letters from Sweden.’

He slumps down on the bed and goes on, ‘They’re talking about crushing the conspirators.’

‘What does that mean?’ Aron asks. ‘What’s a conspirator?’

Sven shakes his head and looks over at the closed door of the office. ‘I shouldn’t have handed in my passport,’ he says to himself. ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’

He sits there, mumbling to himself. Aron goes to bed and gazes up at the model plane hanging from the ceiling. The only proof that Suntsov ever existed.

He closes his eyes and tries to sleep. He still has his own passport; he keeps it in his pocket and never shows it to anyone.

Sven is still sitting on the edge of the bed, but Aron falls asleep.

He is woken by a hand on his shoulder. A hard hand in a leather glove, shaking him.

‘Up!’ he hears in Russian.

It is an order, issued quietly.

Aron opens his eyes and sees three men standing in the hut. A tall man by his bed, and two others over by the door. They are all wearing dark coats and caps, some kind of field uniform.

‘Up!’ the man with the leather gloves says again, dragging Aron out of bed.

The floor is ice cold. The man picks up Aron’s clothes and boots and throws them at him.

‘Come with us.’

Aron gets dressed and is led silently out of the hut, half asleep and feeling lost — but then he sees that he is not alone. Another man is being led outside.

Sven. They have woken Sven, too.

A fourth man in uniform is standing in the snow beside a black car, a number of documents in his hand. Aron can see that one of them is Sven’s passport, but the man doesn’t give it back, and nor does he introduce himself. He simply reads out both their names, slowly and in Russian.

‘Is this you?’

Sven nods.

‘In that case, you will come with us.’

They are pushed into the back seat of the car, with a guard on each side, so that Aron has to sit on Sven’s knee. The car drives away from the labour camp, into the darkness.