Caroline Eriksson - The Missing

Alex takes the phone from his ear and speaks to someone nearby. “You’re fine, right? Can you say that you’re fine?” In the background, I hear Smilla’s voice reply. With childish surprise, she repeats the words.

“I’m fine.”

I close my eyes, and the image of the girl’s bare legs under the shrubbery melts away, leaving me finally in peace.

“Who are you talking to, Papa?”

Smilla is only four, but I can clearly hear a certain wariness in her voice. As I listen to Alex’s explanation, something about an old childhood friend, the guilt returns. Guilt over my role in this girl’s life, my intrusion into her world. I picture her. Her defiant little face when we pulled up to the island, and Alex trying to persuade me to go ashore with them. The look in her eyes when he said, with an irony she must have missed entirely, that this was a “family outing, sweetheart.” She wanted her father all to herself. Not to share him with some strange woman.

I glance over my shoulder and see that the young, black-clad Greta has left the clearing. I’m alone once again, in the middle of the woods. In a primitive cemetery for animals, with an ax as my sole companion. On the other end, Smilla sounds unwilling to leave her father in peace, now that she knows he’s talking to someone on the phone. “Papa is just going to talk a little while longer. You can go and use Papa’s tablet if you want. Why don’t you play that game you like so much? Yeah, the one with the girl you can dress up in different clothes.”

Finally I hear a clicking sound, probably a door being closed, and there’s silence in the background. No more Smilla listening nearby, jealously guarding her father. I touch the ax, take a deep breath.

“So tell me what happened that night on the island,” I say. “Tell me.”

And he does. Smilla was starting to get tired of the expedition when they came upon some sort of campsite on the other side of the island. A boat was tied up there, with what looked like bloodstains on the bottom. Smilla refused to get in, so he had to lift her on board. He explained that they were going to play a game and surprise me, that she would have to be very quiet and not yell or fuss. Then he rowed away from the island.

I shiver, in spite of the heat. I picture the white rowboat. I hear Jorma’s hostile voice echoing in my head. You haven’t taken something that belongs to us, have you? Then his voice changes. It’s no longer Jorma I hear but the young Greta. I thought he’d calm down when we found it again. No harm done, really.

“Then what?”

“Well, then…”

Then they walked through the woods, heading toward the traffic sounds from the highway. And when they finally got there, they were lucky enough that one of the city buses happened past only fifteen minutes later. It was amazing timing, actually. Smilla slept most of the way home. He splurged on a taxi from the bus station.

And that was it. There was nothing more to add.

I run my trembling fingers over the anorak that I’d draped over the fallen tree trunk. Home. They’re back home. They’ve been there ever since that night. While the abyss opened up beneath my feet, threatening to swallow me whole, Alex and Smilla were safe and sound. He’s been playing me the whole time. My head wags slowly from side to side. I knew it. Somehow I knew. But knowing something is not the same as understanding it.

“How could you do this?” I ask faintly.

His reply is like the crack of a whip.

“You really don’t know?”

Mutely, I shake my head. Even though Alex can’t see me, he seems to guess my response.

“I wanted to see how you’d react. If you’d leave right away. Or if you’d stay there and wait, try looking for us.”

The tree trunk is hard and rough underneath me. I’m shaking all over. My hand is shaking so much I have to press the phone even harder against my ear or I might drop it.

My phone. The one I found in Alex’s bed after they disappeared. Did it end up there by mistake, or did Alex deliberately put it there when he made the bed? When he decided to disappear with Smilla and make it impossible for me to reach him? Can that really be true?

“You turned your phone off,” I manage to say.

“Not much of a challenge if you could have called me. Right?”

A roaring starts up inside me. Was that why he finally started calling me, but without saying anything? To heighten the tension, to increase the “challenge”? I ask him about the repeated calls, the silence on the other end, but Alex refuses to take credit for them. He steadfastly maintains that he hasn’t called. When I persist, he gets annoyed.

“Who the fuck cares? It’s not important. The important thing is that you didn’t run off. You stayed, and that means you passed the test.”

A whirling dizziness sweeps through my body, making my legs go limp. I’ve never fainted, but from what I understand, this is what it feels like before it happens. This chaos both inside and out, this darkness slowly sucking me in. Is that really what all this has been? A game? A test?

“Don’t you understand it was for your own good? All those stupid things you said… I wanted to give you a chance to come to your senses. It’s as simple as that. Make you realize that you can’t live without me.”

In my mind, I picture the black silk tie. I see Alex’s hands pulling the knot tighter and tighter around my neck, while I, with my hands bound, arch my back in an attempt to get away. My eyes glaze over, my lungs are about to burst. I’m convinced that he’s actually planning to strangle me. For real. Then, at the last instant, he lets me go. Lets me breathe again. Realize that you can’t live without me.

Everything falls away, leaving behind only the truth, as hard and uncomfortable as the tree I’m sitting on. By subjecting me to this ordeal, Alex has purposely yanked away the already-rickety foundation on which my life rests. It was for your own good. The morning breeze sweeps through the trees, stroking its icy hand across my throat. Of everything he’s put me through, this is the worst assault of all.

Somehow, I get up from the tree trunk and pick up the ax, but I leave the anorak where it is. Everything shimmers before my eyes as I walk back through the woods, not looking more than a couple of feet ahead. Branches scratch at my face, but the pain seems to be coming from somewhere far away, as if it’s not part of me.

“And the child?” I hear myself ask.

“What child?”

“The baby that I’m…”

“There is no baby. You know that, Greta.”

His words are charged with meaning. What he’s saying, what he expects, is that it will just be the two of us. Until the next time he decides to play with my life. Because it will happen again, there’s no doubt about that. Maybe he’ll use the tie again, or maybe it will be something totally different. The only thing I know for sure is that he’ll go one step further next time. And then one more step. He won’t let go until I give up. Maybe not even then.

Alex is talking, listing all the clothes and toys they left behind in the cabin. Things that need to be reclaimed. And he’s sure I realize that he can’t possibly get away right now, so he wants me to pack up as many of his belongings as possible and bring them back in the car. He’ll come over to my apartment as soon as he—

“No,” I say.

“No?”

“No.”

I’m thinking about the well, the one I pictured the other night when I was staring down at Lake Malice’s dark waters. If it really existed, I could have pushed you into it. That’s what these days have taught me. That if I’d had the chance, I could have done it. A person either gives up, or she fights back. And I am my mother’s daughter. God help me, but I am. I know that now.