Margit Sandemo: The Ice People 27 - The Scandal

When Tomas saw how upset the boy became he was sincerely sorry. Had Christer told him more about Magdalena, Tomas would have made sure to take more of an interest in her. Was she in any kind of trouble?

But Christer didn’t know. All he knew was that she was a very lonely and unhappy little girl who had nightmares.

And now he was living in Motala where he had absolutely no contact with her whatsoever. He wrote to Ramlösa Sanatorium asking them for her address, but he never received an answer from them. Not until after his third try did a letter arrive from them, briefly saying that they never gave away private information about any of their patients.

He had, of course, had wild dreams of going to Bergqvara and asking about the mail there, or to Ramlösa Sanatorium in order to “hold a knife to their throat”. But that kind of thing wasn’t so easy when you were just a schoolboy with no money of your own.

Finally, he turned to his mother to ask for some occult help in finding Magdalena, or, at the very least, to find out how she was. But Christer did not have anything that had belonged to Magdalena, which Tula would need if she were to find out anything for him. She had never seen the girl; she hadn’t even been near her. In desperation, Christer asked Tula to put him in touch with their ancestors – Sol or Tengel the Good, for example – but Tula merely snorted with indignation. Were they really to be disturbed on account of some tragic little love story? And besides, invoking the ancestors was not Tula’s strong suit. Heike was the one who had mastered that art.

The truth was that Tula slightly feared Tengel the Good and his entourage. For her conscience wasn’t entirely clear and her relationship with demons still lay like a heavy burden upon her soul.

Christer felt terribly helpless. Why hadn’t Magdalena written to him?

No matter how much he tried to resist it, the memory of her faded to a sweet dream. But he never entirely forgot her.

The years passed. Christer was eighteen years old and sensible. Well, he was eighteen years old anyway.

Grandfather Erland was no longer as strong as he had been, and after school Christer sometimes had to take over the responsibility of tending to the lock. Erland showed him how to do it, and if you were to believe the old standard-bearer there wasn’t a more responsible task than this in all of Sweden. His voice would take on a serious tone when he spoke of cills, chamber bottoms and lock gates. Christer had already grasped the system before his grandfather reached the first gate. But he let the old man chatter away to his heart’s content, for Christer was, despite his bizarre whims and impulses, an understanding boy.

If truth be told, he didn’t take his new job all that seriously to begin with. After all, he didn’t intend to make a career out of it – he was much too intellectually inclined for that. At least, that was what he thought. He was still at the age where one values intellectual work more than manual labour. The realization that all forms of occupation are of equal value does not dawn on a person until he or she has been knocked down to size a few times.

It wasn’t until one sunny summer day, when the fields around the lock shimmered gold with flowering dandelions, that Christer began to take his work seriously. It had been a tumultuous time, with an exceptional number of boats sailing either up or down the canal at Motala. Christer directed them all with ice-cold authority: a barge that was on its way up, a sailing ship and another barge on their way down, then a very dignified, privately owned yacht at which he gaped in admiration, and two little fishing boats that, strictly speaking, had no business being there, he thought. The fishing boats were sailing in opposite directions and complained loudly because they had to wait.

How hard he had to work! Usually he had a helper who saw to one of the lock gates for him, but today he was working alone. Christer felt he needed to invoke a little magical assistance, and he cast a spell on one of the lock gates while he started to open the next one. He cranked and turned the huge control levers – he had actually acquired a few muscles doing this – and kept his head as the water either rose or sank in the various lock chambers. Imagine Grandfather Erland being able to manage this job – it demanded brains!

The occult forces within him were working extremely efficiently, he could tell. Everything worked the way it was supposed to, without him having to concentrate on anything but what he was doing.

After toiling like a slave for several hours, at last he was able to return to his relaxing, restful spot on the bank. With his hands behind his head, one knee crossed over the other, a blade of grass in his mouth ... what more could one ask for?

This job of Grandfather’s was very convenient, he had to admit. Christer had murmured some magical words to the water so that it would let him know when a new boat was approaching. Receiving intuitive messages of this kind was his forte – he knew that.

His thoughts began to revolve around Magdalena again. Although it was a long time ago, the scent of the grass brought back the memory of that night at Ramlösa Sanatorium. Magdalena ... little girl, where are you now? Can’t you sense that your one friend in the world yearns for a sign of life from you?

Suddenly he heard the sound of an echoing voice from below ground level: “How the hell long are we expected to wait here?”

Christer jumped up as though he had been stung by a bee. The shout had come from one of the lock chambers!

His legs trembling, he went to the ramp and looked down. A boat was grounded at the bottom! It was one of the barges, and the skipper’s face was scarlet with rage. Several other furious faces stared up at Christer.

As he ran to the winch, he heard the skipper shout, “Where is Erland? At least he was smart and dependable. Have they employed an idiot now?”

Oh, how shameful and disgraceful! Christer went on turning the wheel, his heart pounding and his blood boiling from shame. Dear, dear Grandfather Erland, forgive me! Forgive me for betraying the trust you put in me! I promise never to do it again!

He didn’t intend to make any excuses. He wasn’t going to claim that he felt ill and had to abandon the lock for a few minutes. For one thing, he had been gone for longer than that and for another he had a certain notion of honour. And he couldn’t tell the truth: that he had been convinced his supernatural abilities would warn him if anything went wrong.

He hadn’t even had enough intuition to know that he had forgotten an entire boat, a whole lock chamber!

No, that definitely hadn’t been Christer’s day.

One day around midsummer, Tula took a trip to the considerably larger city of Linköping, once the seat of the Ostrogoths’ Ting, or parliament. Its castle had been both bishop’s palace and royal residence, and its market place was bordered by a monastery and a cathedral.

There was no denying that Tula was restless. It would have been strange if she had not been. She was, after all, one of the cursed of the Ice People, one of the wild ones who had had to curb her nature for the sake of her loved ones, which she did gladly because she loved them all and wanted the best for them. But sometimes the itch of restlessness would stir within her. She felt she was wasting all the gifts with which she had been born, and once in a while she needed to try to spread her wings. Or perform a little magic in secret without anyone noticing.

But deep within she knew the cause of her most persistent restlessness. Of course, she longed to own the treasure of the Ice People, which Heike clearly meant to keep for himself permanently. He probably had a sense of how dangerous it would be if it ever got into her irresponsible hands.