Карин Тидбек - Amatka

“It opened away from us,” Vanja mumbled after a moment.

“What?” Evgen stopped.

“The door. When we came into the chamber with the machine. The door opened into the chamber.”

Evgen nodded.

“But when we found it again,” Vanja went on, “then it was turned the other way. It opened onto the stairs.”

They stared at each other for a long moment. Evgen abruptly leaned over and vomited.

Nina was still fast asleep when Vanja stole into bed. It wasn’t long until dawn. Then Ivar would get up, and she’d tell him that it was all true, that he wasn’t insane. That there really was something underneath the colony.

The tunnels they had gone through—it was either a system or the tunnels themselves shifted. That, or Ivar had seen the machine but not mentioned it. Who had built the machine? Who had dug the tunnels? What were they for? Travel , Ulla had said. Tunnels are for travel. Who was traveling to Amatka? The memory of her dream by the lake came back: feet across the ice, voices, flutes. Voices had called out to Ivar underground. Amatka wasn’t alone anymore.

It was well after the breaking of the ice. Vanja had taken yesterday’s leftovers out of the fridge and was reheating them on the stove. The coffee was brewing. She could smell Nina on her clothes.

The steps coming down the stairs were slow and heavy. Nina entered the kitchen with a small note in her hand. She sat down at the kitchen table in silence. Vanja took the pan from the heat and plucked the note from between Nina’s fingers.

I know you don’t believe it but they’re going to come get me to do a procedure on me. I’m heading out on the ice. Don’t tell the children what I did. They shouldn’t have to hear it. I’m sorry.

Nina scrunched her face up. She pressed her fists against her eyes. “I can’t. I can’t go down there.”

Her body was so taut it trembled.

Vanja wrapped her arms around Nina from behind and put her cheek against hers. “I’ll go.”

The streets were almost empty in the gray light. It was far too early to be up on a Sixday. The only thing that moved was the shadow of the night growers on the plant-house walls. Vanja caught the sound of sprinklers as she passed, following the water-supply pipe to the lake. Stiff grass rattled against the irrigation pipeline. Vanja halted as an unfamiliar shape appeared at the edge of her vision. It stood far away on the tundra—long and thin, with a curved top end. Vanja squinted. It looked like a pipe, like the ones she had seen in a cluster the other night. Possibly. She turned in a slow circle and counted one, two, three slender silhouettes on the horizon, which until now had always been flat and featureless.

Vanja found Ivar’s shoes among the rocks on the beach, and his coat at the water’s edge. A ways out she could see the rounded shape of a back. Even though the waves seemed mere ripples on the surface, the body was drifting quickly toward the shore. Vanja took a couple of steps into the water, sucking in breath as her boots flooded with painful cold. She forced herself to move forward. After only a few feet, the water reached halfway up her thighs. She gasped as the cold made her legs burn, but the body was close enough now that she could grasp the pale yellow sweater. She pulled it to her and grabbed hold under the armpits. Only once the body was halfway out of the water did she turn it over.

Ivar had walked out on the ice dressed in nothing but his underclothes, and the lake had thawed underneath him, dropping him into the frigid water. The warm tone of his skin had turned pallid. His eyes were only closed halfway, revealing a glimpse of dark brown iris. Vanja crouched next to him. She took her mitten off and gently stroked his cheek. It was cold and unyielding. His unrelenting frown had been smoothed out; his lips had parted slightly, as if in sleep. But Ivar himself wasn’t in there anymore. Vanja carefully pulled him all the way out of the water. Thin as he was, his body was very heavy. She fetched his coat and draped it over him. It wasn’t long enough to cover both his head and feet, so she chose the feet. Cold feet were the worst. “I went and looked.” She tucked the edges of the coat under him. “I was going to tell you this morning. That you’re not crazy, that there’s something down there.”

Talking made her throat ache. “I wish you could have waited just a little while.” She patted his cheek. “I’m going to get some help. You won’t have to stay out here.”

Vanja walked back toward Amatka on numb legs. When she was almost there, she realized Ivar wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves. He would be cold.

No. He wouldn’t be.

At the clinic, two orderlies ushered her into an exam room, where they undressed her and swaddled her in heating blankets. They didn’t seem surprised by what she’d found in the lake. “Here we go again,” one of them said. “We’ll send someone to get him.”

“I have to tell our housemates,” Vanja said.

They noted her address. Vanja wasn’t allowed to go anywhere until they were sure she was unharmed.

They finally released her three hours later. Nina was still sitting at the kitchen table. She had stopped crying.

She looked up at Vanja, her eyes remote. “They were here.”

“I had to stay at the clinic. The water, I went into the water to get him, it was cold.”

Nina nodded. They were silent for a moment, Vanja by the door, Nina at the table. Finally, Nina pushed her chair back. Her voice was raspy and flat.

“Well, he finally went and did it. At least now I don’t have to wonder when it’s going to happen. That idiot. I saw it coming for years.” She went over to the stove and started making coffee.

Vanja sat down and watched Nina do the dishes and then violently clean the counter and stovetop. Nina talked while she cleaned. She talked about a quiet boy who became a melancholy but kind youth, who became the Ivar of recent years, slowly wasting away. “They tried everything,” she said. “Medication, light therapy, psychotherapy. Shocks. And at best he was… he functioned. He could get out of bed, get dressed, eat. He could go to work.”

She had given up on drying her cheeks. Fresh tears ran down her face now and then, and dripped onto her sweater. “Maybe he would have been all right in the end. But then this. Or… maybe he would never have been okay. Maybe he was incurable. Maybe he was just broken.” Her last word was accompanied by the loud bang of the scrubbed frying pan being slammed down on the counter.

Vanja topped up their cups. “I’m hungry,” Nina said.

She walked over to the fridge and took out a bowl, then fetched a fork.

Vanja rose halfway from the chair. “Let me heat that for you.”

“No need.” Nina mechanically shoveled bits of mushrooms and root vegetables into her mouth. “Talk. Talk about something. Tell me about Essre.”

Vanja told her about Essre: the square plant houses radiating out from the center; the massive commune office that housed the central administration; the circular streets; the throng of people. Nina stared into the wall, chewing and swallowing. When the bowl was empty, she pushed it aside.

“I know you’re up to something,” she said. “With the librarian, that Evgen guy.”

Before Vanja had time to reply, Nina continued: “Are you fucking him?”

Vanja started. “What? No.”

“Fine. Then what are you doing?”

“We talk.”

“About what?”

Vanja turned to the window. “For example… what happened to Ivar. What’s under the mushroom farm.” She took a deep breath. “I went out last night. I went down that pipe. To prove Ivar right. I was going to tell him this morning. But when I woke up he was already gone.”