The Circle (Hammer) - By Elfgren, Sara B.,Strandberg, Mats Page 0,78
with energy. Wouldn’t she like to be that person rather than the woman who lay glued to the sofa every night, chain-smoking? Anna-Karin doesn’t want to go back to being the person she was a few months ago.
‘Was this what Mum was like before Daddy left?’ Anna-Karin asks.
‘What do you mean?’
‘That maybe she’s finally happy again. And that this is the person she was before Daddy … ruined everything.’
Grandpa gets up slowly from his armchair. He comes over to the sofa on which Anna-Karin is half lying. She pulls her legs underneath her to make room for him.
‘I sometimes forget that you don’t remember how things were before,’ he says, and pats Anna-Karin’s knee. Then he looks at her, a little too probingly. ‘I’ve never seen Mia like this before. Not even when Staffan was still around.’
For a moment she considers forcing him to tell her more about her father. It would be so easy, in the same way that it was easy to make Ida tell the truth about her Elias speech. But Anna-Karin feels sick just thinking about it. She could never, ever, do that to Grandpa. ‘I don’t even remember what Daddy looked like,’ she says. She’s seen photographs of him, of course. She’s looked at some so often that she feels as if she can remember the moment they were taken, but she knows that’s just her imagination. Beyond the frame of the photo, there’s nothing. She can’t see her father’s face move, can’t hear his voice.
‘I just don’t understand how someone can simply up and leave their family, like he did,’ she says.
Grandpa opens his mouth to answer, but her mother breaks into song in the kitchen.
Anna-Karin and Grandpa look at each other.
It’s as if her mother has heard them talking and wants to reassure them that everything is wonderful, just wonderful. She pronounces each word with exaggerated crispness, singing in a loud, chirpy and somehow far too young voice.
Suddenly the kitchen is silent. No singing. No clattering.
A scream cuts through the air. It’s shrill and full of pain, and reminds Anna-Karin of something she’s heard before.
Grandpa leaps up from the sofa, but she sits there petrified. That scream. When Anna-Karin was little they’d had pigs on the farm. When they were going to be slaughtered …
Grandpa flings open the kitchen door and Anna-Karin finally jolts out of her paralysis. She runs after him.
Her mother is standing at the stove, and turns to them with a smile. She’s wiping her hands frantically on her apron.
‘What, in God’s name …?’ Grandpa says.
‘Bah! I’ve been a proper lummox,’ her mother says cheerfully. She holds out her hands. The skin is a deep dark red, almost purple. Her fingers are so swollen that her rings are digging into her flesh. ‘I was just trying to take the silver out of the boiling water,’ she says, with an embarrassed laugh.
Grandpa’s frailty has disappeared. He grabs his daughter’s hands and shoves them under the tap to run ice-cold water over them. Anna-Karin looks at the pot on the stove and only now becomes aware of the bubbling sound coming from it. The steam.
I’m going to stop, she thinks. I’m going to stop it. Soon. I swear.
But, deep down, she doesn’t know if she can.
III
29
MINOO IS WALKING briskly along the dirt track towards Kärrgruvan. There is a layer of frost on the ground and the air smells of snow. She’s wearing salopettes, a down jacket, hat and mittens, and feels like a Sumo wrestler.
She normally sleeps until at least ten, sometimes twelve, at weekends. This morning she came down to breakfast at seven thirty. Her mother was at the kitchen table with her life-giving cup of coffee, and a magazine that was incomprehensible to anyone who didn’t know at least ten thousand Latin terms. She’d raised her eyebrows when she saw Minoo. ‘Is your clock not working properly?’ she asked, and turned the page.
‘I’m trying to develop some better habits,’ Minoo answered, and almost puked at how chirpy she sounded.
‘Minoo. You don’t always have to work so—’
‘We’re rehearsing a play today,’ Minoo said, to put a stop to the lecture.
‘God, I’d do anything for some culture up here,’ her mother said, pushing away the magazine. ‘Which play is it?’
Minoo wanted to turn the clock back. Idiot, she thought. ‘Romeo and Juliet. It’s for English.’
‘You’re putting on Romeo and Juliet?’
‘Just a few scenes.’
‘But, still, Shakespeare in year eleven English. Ambitious teacher. What part are you playing?’