Stig Dagerman - A Burnt Child

Then he goes down to the shore, whistling quietly and carrying a flat stone in his right hand. Except for the inlet, the island is a single cliff, bordered by deadly, steep edges. He walks around the slippery edge and gazes absentmindedly into the naked sea. Faint smoke from invisible boats drifts against the horizon. Silent gulls are poised between the sun and the sea. Three sailboats have anchored by the low island. A quiet blue motorboat sweeps past the one on the right, its noise scarcely reaching him. A narrow, deep cleft runs through their own island, and the water can only surge through it when it’s really windy. It must not have been very windy for quite a while. The cleft is entirely arid and filled with dried-up seaweed and round little rocks. He tosses his flat stone away and meticulously selects a new one, one perfectly round and entirely shiny. For fun, it seems, someone has built a little smooth arch out of brown-painted wood over the cleft. And for fun, he walks over it. This side of the island is utterly barren; the rocks are as smooth as a person’s back. In the middle is a large, level depression where someone has laid soil and sowed grass and flowers. Now the flowers are wild and the grass is sparse. Despite this, he lies here on his back fiddling with the rock and looks up at the clear Sunday morning sky. After resting a while, he feels like a swim. Still lying there, he chucks the stone diagonally and hears it hit the bridge. He undresses and hides his clothes in the crevice, putting rocks over them. Since he still doesn’t remember where he left his swimming trunks, he doesn’t go back to the cottage to get them but instead goes out to the sea naked. He thought about diving from the cliff and straight into the green bottom, but since he is never brave when he’s on his own, he goes to the inlet in-stead—slowly. Partly because it’s cold and partly because he has the absurd feeling he has lost something.

Finally, he finds it. At the bottom where he is wading, he thinks he sees some dark shadows between his own steps. Suddenly, he realizes the shadows are footprints. This discovery makes him curiously anxious. He is no longer cold, and he follows the shadows farther and farther out, blocking the sun with his hands to see them better. There are two rows; first, far apart from each other, then, parallel and close, but where the bottom descended abruptly and steeply, they merge into a single large shadow. He treads into it with his foot, digging into it with his toes, deeper and deeper until it becomes a pit. He stands in it and cautiously looks around as if he were doing something dangerous. The water in the hole is warm. To avoid thinking about why he’s still there, he begins studying the coastline. It’s a few inches high and strikingly blue. He thinks he can see white spots amid all the blue—a bridge, a white house. He sees a black church tower, too. It protrudes from the edging like the point of a knife.

Then a shutter slams from the back of the cottage. His feet jerk from the pit. Fleeing almost in a panic, he thrusts himself into the deep part of the water. He swims with short, nervous strokes as he always does when no one is watching. When he hears someone coming down the stairs, he is already out in the inlet. Freezing, he creeps back to shore and hides behind some sparse bushes. Between the branches, he sees Gun standing on the steps. She is alone and wearing a red bathing suit. He hopes that she’ll wait until the commotion in the water has managed to subside. She walks slowly down to the shore and stands for a while with her hands on her hips, playing in the sand with her toes. Then she goes quietly, almost soundlessly, out into the water. He suddenly recalls his mother so vividly that he freezes up. Alma didn’t swim often; she was rather afraid of the water. Whenever she went in it, she had the habit of frightening the water, splashing it with her fat legs and screaming at it. She always embarrassed them at beaches, that is, when other people were there.

When his mother was gone again, he sees that Gun has stopped. The water is up to her knees now, and with cupped hands she pours water over her thighs so that she won’t be cold. Believing she is alone, she pulls down the strap of her bathing suit and vigorously rubs her back. Almost immediately, she pulls the strap back up. Even so, her shoulder was naked for just a brief moment. But in that moment, he was able to figure out what it was about her that he hates. It is her body.

He also learned why he hates it. He hates it because it’s so unlike his mother’s, because it’s so beautiful, and because it’s so relaxed. The entire time she wades into the water—and that time is infinite—he keeps on hating her. He sees her body under the water, green like glass. But when she starts to swim, it is white. And when she floats on her back, her body shimmers through the water like a white stone. Then he picks up a black rock off the ground and throws it in her direction. He didn’t mean for it to hit her, and it doesn’t. He just wants to startle her. She whirls around in the water and looks in the rock’s direction. Then, when she sees a wide ring on the surface, she swims very calmly to shore, most likely thinking it was a fish. As she swims, he realizes why he threw the rock. He also realizes why he has to get revenge. It’s because her body has shimmered so in the water. It’s because her body is tainted. It’s because it is so beautiful. Furthermore, he realizes that he has been waiting for her all morning. The rock has waited, too.

When he goes back inside, the sliding door has just been shut. It’s warm inside, and her footprints have already dried. When he opens the sliding door, he hears the father snoring, so he closes it again. He darts to his alcove and yanks the curtain from his fiancée’s bed. He pulled the other curtain, too. When he lies down on her coat he sees that she’s awake. Then he becomes aroused and excited, caressing her and then kissing her. She says that she is ill. She said the word ill in that telltale way women do when men ought to know why they are ill without having to ask. With those words, his lips dry up, he releases her shoulder, is irritated, and lies silently next to her.

Draw the curtain, she whispers, someone might come.

He doesn’t draw the curtain but instead hopes that someone will actually come and see him lying there. When some footsteps approach the door, he kisses her again and rather violently. But when the footsteps turn in the opposite direction, he sees that her lip is bleeding. Then he lies silently on her coat for a long time, pondering whether she is really sick. The first time he knew her, he always tried to remember the date, so that in the future he would be able to know whether it was true or not. He can’t remember anymore. So he is upset with her.

Breakfast is late because the father has slept in. They eat it on the porch outside the kitchen. There, they have a view of the long island, just a small portion of the mainland, but a large portion of the sea. While Berit sets the table and Gun clatters about in the kitchen, Bengt and the father are sitting on the red folding chairs at the green wooden table. The father is looking at the sea, which he hasn’t seen in a long time. But Bengt is smoking and looking at the clothesline that stretches from the porch railing to a little pine tree. Gun’s white blouse is hanging out to dry, and the father’s silk shirt is flapping next to it, almost dry. For the first time, except for in his thoughts and dreams, he realizes that his father has another woman. So it’s difficult for him to tear his eyes away from the line.

The father is pleased and content, and for the first time in a long time, he is happy to eat. When he is happy, he likes to touch women, so he grabs Berit by the hips—as a joke, of course. She stiffens up and starts dropping the glasses, but the father doesn’t notice. The one who notices is Bengt, but when Berit looks at him, he still refuses to make eye contact with her. Just then, Gun emerges from the kitchen with fried eggs, but the father still doesn’t let Berit go. Laughing, he says to the son: