Elisabeth Rynell - To Mervas

“There’s the little kiosk over by the dance floor,” Arnold interjected. “It’s still there.”

“True, it’s still there. The little kiosk by the dance floor is there because the mining company didn’t build it. I think it was the young people who put that up, I guess they got permission to do it. Otherwise, no one was allowed to build in Mervas except for the company, that’s how it was, people couldn’t build anything because nothing was allowed to remain. That was the plan for Mervas. That nothing would be allowed to remain.”

Lilldolly was quiet. They all looked out the window at the evening sky. It was growing darker at last; the shadows were long. Marta felt worried. They probably wanted to go to bed soon, as it was already past eleven.

“Well, look at that,” Arnold said. “It’s night already.”

“Yes,” Lilldolly said, “there’s still a little darkness left for the night.” She yawned before she continued: “But what shall we do with our guest? Where shall our guest sleep tonight?”

“ Marta! ” Arnold called out so the whole kitchen resounded. “Her name is Marta!”

“I’ll sleep in the car,” Marta said quickly. “That’s what I do every night.”

“No, no, no,” Arnold said.

“Out of the question,” Lilldolly agreed.

“But. .”

“No.”

“She’ll sleep in the lavvu with me.”

“She won’t sleep in the lavvu with you when we’ve got a whole house full of beds!”

“Well, she shouldn’t have to sleep alone in the house with an unknown man, that’s for sure! She’ll sleep in the lavvu .”

“This woman is so goddamned difficult you almost have to scream for her to understand,” Arnold roared, banging his fist against the table so the cups rattled.

Marta stiffened and stared straight into the opposite wall without a thought. Now, was all she thought. Now.

“Watch it, you’re scaring her,” Lilldolly whispered. “Now she’s afraid.”

Arnold instantly turned to Marta, pinched her arm lightly, and looked at her with those eyes that were still luminous in the dim evening light.

“You don’t actually think I’m scary, do you?” he asked, smiling sweetly, as if at a child. “I’ve got to,” he said in dialect. “I’ve got to rile her up a bit, this one here, so she knows she was once married to a real man. Right, Lilldolly?”

“Very true. Exactly.”

She’d been sitting on her stool by the stove the whole time while they were drinking coffee, but now she got up and went over to the table.

“Good night, Arnold,” she said, and stroked his hand. “We’re going down to sleep in the lavvu now, Marta and I.”

Long before the arrival of morning, while it was still supposed to be night, the birds began singing. It was the end of May, the time of light. For a few months, the world was coming out of its dark hiding place, radiant and prominent. It was also the time of birds. Everything breathed hot and fast, had light rapid heartbeats, and pulses as quick as moving wings. It was the time of light, of birds, of water; everything was released and rinsed clean and each morning was supposed to be like the very first one, new and translucent blue under thin skin.

There was a smell of water in the air. All of Deep Tarn and the land around it smelled of fresh water. Marta smelled it inside the lavvu — the smell of melted and dissolved ice, of soil that water had flowed through. She’d been awake for a while. Inside her sleeping bag on top of the reindeer hide, she was watching the light through the opening in the roof. A good distance away from her, on the other side of the fireplace and kitchen area, Lilldolly was still sleeping deeply, wrapped in her sheets and blankets.

But none of the things outside, the birdsong, the smells, the sound of the wind through the trees that filtered into the lavvu, could help Marta get away from herself. She lay listening to her heart beating in her chest like a small, evil, sharp hammer. Arnold and Lilldolly’s faces danced in front of her, grotesquely enlarged, sometimes bobbing and floating around as in an aquarium, other times in pulsing flashes. They actually didn’t appear threatening; there was nothing angry or dangerous about the faces, but they came so close that they filled her entire field of vision and there was no way she could get rid of them. She could see them, but she couldn’t see herself, couldn’t see that she had a face just like them. She was nothing but a growing field of darkness. Now, when for the first time in years she was among other people, she found that she had no idea who she was. She lost herself in the company of these people. It was as if she had been blinded by their attention. She stumbled over everything in her way, had to feel the walls to orient herself. It was almost impossible for her to move naturally, or be herself, as we say, because she couldn’t see clearly or relate to anything around her.

Over the years, being watched or spoken to had come to feel invasive, like a violation. She’d wrapped layer upon layer of solitude around herself to protect her from a gaze, yet she wasn’t exactly sure whose. If she was really honest with herself, she knew it was her own eyes watching her, but she nevertheless kept wrapping that solitude around her; there was nothing else to do.

She tried to sit up a little in the bed to calm down. It can be scary to lie on your back, stretched out and vulnerable. She tried to think of how she’d come to Deep Tarn, how she’d come to Arnold and Lilldolly. This was unknown territory for her, all the trees and the great solitary lakes watching over everything. She contemplated that she’d arrived in a place of still, ancient mountains and loud, winding, gouging rivers and that it was a landscape you couldn’t grasp. It was both open and closed, it was din and silence and emptier than anything she could have imagined. This was where she’d come, to this little pocket called Deep Tarn and to the two people who lived here. She tried to think that she was with them now; they’d been here for a long time and they’d let her in, invited her into their world as if that were completely normal. As if her neighbors back home would’ve opened their door and said: Just come on in and sit down, and then just let her be part of their life. As if there were space for her. As if it were possible, and people didn’t have to stick to their own schedules and their own lives.

She tried to stay as present and alert as possible. But something kept telling her she’d misunderstood the situation and made a mistake by staying. Arnold and Lilldolly had probably expected her to decline firmly everything they’d offered and to sleep in the car again. They probably expected her to leave for Mervas, or wherever it was she was going, as early as possible in the morning. They’d insisted on her staying only to be polite, all the while hoping she’d say: No, no thanks, you’re so kind but I have to go.

The strange thing was that she’d never felt that they thought she should have said no and left quickly, and this made everything feel blurry and complicated in the early hours of dawn; their generosity confused her, made her lose track of herself. It would have been easier if she’d been turned away, if they’d sullenly muttered: Well, you can’t stay here, that’s for sure. Or if they’d at least established some firm boundaries so she’d know exactly what was going on. But to just invite her in — it was like falling and sinking into something bottomless. Who was she to receive this hospitality? Did she exist other than as a cast of herself, the remains of something that had long been in ruins? She didn’t have a sense of herself other than as a dead weight, dead weight and patches of darkness. Her thoughts pecked at her: how could she let herself be exposed to this? And then the other thoughts: she had to respond to life, she had to find an answer to her life. Then again: how could she be so mindless, so stupid?