Johan Theorin - The Quarry

‘Good morning!’ she said to Max.

‘Mm-hmm.’

He poured himself a cup of coffee and surveyed her efforts. ‘You’ve started on the bread too early,’ he said. ‘It’s supposed to look freshly baked, so that steam comes out when I cut it.’

‘I know, but the problem is that the loaves cool really quickly,’ said Vendela, wiping her forehead. ‘But I’m just going to use these as decoration in the background... I’ll make some more when the photographer arrives.’

‘OK. Have you had breakfast?’

She nodded eagerly. ‘A banana, three slices of bread and cheese, and a yoghurt.’

That was a little white lie; breakfast had consisted of nothing but a cup of lemon tea.

‘Well done,’ said Max. He headed for the bathroom and locked himself in.

Vendela looked over at the front door, longing to be out on the alvar and to see if the coin had gone. She picked up the butter that was left over from her baking and began to form it into curls.

The golden-yellow butter looked good in photographs, but she had nothing but bad memories of real butter, however delicious it might be. She had had to churn it by hand when she was a little girl; Henry had made whisks from birch twigs and taught his daughter how to make butter from cream. It took eight litres of cream to make a tub of butter, and it had been bloody hard work, to say the least. It had given Vendela blisters on her hands.

An hour later, the young photographer from Kalmar turned up. He was met on the steps by a smiling Max, dressed in appropriately rural clothing in shades of grey, brown and blue, picked out for him by Vendela. The two men disappeared into the kitchen to discuss the composition of the pictures and various camera angles, and Vendela went out into the sunshine and walked up the road to fetch the newspaper. The mailboxes belonging to the summer cottages were arranged in a long row, to make life easier for the postman.

As she approached them she saw a tall man in a green padded jacket coming towards her, a newspaper under his arm. It was Per Mörner.

Vendela straightened her back and smiled instinctively. There had been a brief astonished silence at the party when Jerry Morner got out his magazine, but it had quickly passed.

That was when she had recognized him from various interviews and television documentaries. In the seventies Jerry Morner had been a high-profile figure, frequently seen in night clubs and exclusive bars. He had been one of the porn film directors who had taken the image of Swedish sinfulness out into the world, making the Americans and Europeans regard Sweden as a dreamland where every woman wanted sex all the time.

Before that, when Vendela was young, pornography was banned and couldn’t be sold. Then it became legal, but it was still something dirty. These days there were no moral rules; one day the newspapers were writing about the horrors of the sex industry, the next they were listing the best erotic films.

She nodded at Per Mörner, intending to walk past him, but he stopped, which meant she had to do the same.

‘Thank you for last night,’ he said.

‘You’re welcome,’ Vendela said quickly. She added, ‘So now we all know each other a little bit better.’

‘Yes... quite.’

There was a silence, then Per went on: ‘That business my father was talking about...’

Vendela laughed nervously. ‘Well, at least he was honest.’

‘Yes, and the work he did was all above-board,’ Per said. ‘But he’s given all that up now.’

‘I see.’

Vendela was about to ask how Per could be so certain, when her kitchen window was flung open and Max yelled, ‘Vendela, we’re ready now! We’re about to photograph the bread, are you coming?’

‘Just a minute!’ she called back.

Max gave her and Per Mörner a quick glance and nodded briefly without saying anything, then he closed the kitchen window.

Vendela felt as if her husband had passed judgement on her and given her a black mark for conduct, but she was only chatting to a neighbour.

In a sudden burst of defiance she turned to Per. ‘So you’re a jogger too?’

He nodded. ‘Sometimes. I’d like to do more.’

‘Perhaps we could go out for a run together one evening?’

Per looked at her, slightly wary. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘If you like.’

‘Good.’

Vendela said goodbye and went back to the house. That was good, she had been sociable, perfectly normal. And she had got herself a running buddy.

Of course, she wouldn’t run to the elf stone with Per Mörner. That was her place, and hers alone.

Vendela sees the elf stone once again when she has left the village school and started at the bigger high school in Marnäs on the other side of the island, almost four kilometres away.

It’s a long way to walk six days a week, at least for a nine-year-old, but Henry never goes with her, not once.

All he does is take his daughter to the edge of the meadow, where the cows are chewing the cud beneath the open sky. Then he points east, towards the treeless horizon.

‘Head for the elf stone, and when you get there you’ll be able to see the church tower in Marnäs,’ he says. ‘The school is just past the church. That’s the shortest route... but if we get a lot of snow in winter, you’ll have to go along the main road.’

He hands over a packet of sandwiches for break time. Then he sets off for the quarry, humming some melody.

Vendela heads off in the opposite direction, straight across the burnt brown grass. Summer is over but its dryness remains, and dead flowers and leaves crunch beneath her shoes as she walks towards the church tower. She is terrified of adders, but on all those walks to and from school she encounters only nice animals: hares, foxes and deer.

She sees the elf stone again that very first day. It is still there in the grass, isolated and immovable. Vendela walks past it and continues on her way to Marnäs church tower.

School begins at eight thirty, and the children are met by Eriksson, the headmaster, who stands in front of the blackboard looking strict, and fru Jansson, whose hair is in a bun; she looks even stricter. She calls the register, reading each name in a loud, harsh voice. Then she sits down at the pedal organ to lead morning worship with a hymn, and lessons begin after that.

At half past one the first school day is over. Vendela thinks it has gone well. She felt lonely and a little bit scared of fru Jansson at first, but then she thought that the class was just like a herd of cows, and everybody else was afraid too; that made her feel better. Besides which, they had needlework after break, and music and movement at their desks every hour. If she can just make some friends, she will be happy at the high school.

On the way home she passes the big, flat elf stone once again, and stops. Then she walks over to it.

When she stands on tiptoe she can see that there are little hollows in the top of the stone, at least a dozen of them. They look as if they have been made deliberately then polished, like little round stone bowls.

She looks around, but there is no one in sight. She remembers what Henry told her about gifts to the elves and she wants to linger here, but in the end she leaves the stone and sets off home, back to the cows.

From then on hardly a day passes when Vendela does not stop on her way home from school to see if people have left any gifts on the elf stone. She never sees anyone else visiting the stone, but sometimes there are small gifts in the hollows, coins or pins or pieces of jewellery.

There is a strange atmosphere around the stone; everything is so quiet. But when Vendela closes her eyes, thinks of nothing and screws her eyes up so tightly that the light coming through her eyelids turns dark blue, she gets pictures inside her head. She sees a group of pale, slender people standing on the far side of the stone, looking at her. They become clearer and clearer the longer she keeps her eyes closed, and the clearest of all is a tall, beautiful woman with dark eyes. Vendela knows that she is the queen of the elves, who once upon a time fell in love with a huntsman.