The Circle (Hammer)

5



ANNA-KARIN GETS UP, staggers down the aisle of the lurching bus and resolutely aims for the door. She is so tired of being afraid that someone is going to say something nasty to her as she walks past. Or, even worse, that she’ll hear a stifled snigger. When neither happens, she hears echoes of previous insults in her head. Voices that whisper how fat she is and how she stinks of manure.

But today no one even looks up. Everybody on the bus is whispering, but not about her. Today nobody’s talking about anyone except Elias.

The bus takes a final curve and stops with a jolt that causes her to stumble. She feels her stomach drop in the tenth of a second when she thinks she’s going to fall and make everyone laugh, but she regains her balance without anyone noticing. The doors open and she steps down on to the soft verge.

She takes a few deep breaths as the bus disappears down the road. As soon as she sees the cow pasture, her lungs double in size. She can breathe freely.

The gravel crunches beneath her feet as she walks up to the house. When she reaches the field she goes over to one of the big, brown-eyed animals. ‘Hello, my beauty,’ she mumbles, as Grandpa always does.

The cow’s big tongue licks her hand when she holds it out. Flies are buzzing around its warm coat. Yes, it smells of manure, and she loves it. Anna-Karin is a completely different person at home. Her back straightens and her fear of sweating disappears. She can think about other things than whether or not the angle of her head gives her a double chin, or if her breasts are jiggling beneath her shirt in a way that might invite comment.

She reaches the front garden. Two red-painted wooden houses, one with two floors and the other just one, built at right angles to each other. The barn and a few smaller buildings stand further away.

Anna-Karin goes up to the two-storey house and opens the front door. She takes off her shoes and plucks Pepper out of her pocket. He’s fallen asleep and moves a little as she gently lays him in a basket in the hallway. She’s made it nice and cosy with the remains of an old rag carpet.

Loud peals of laughter can be heard coming from the living room. Anna-Karin looks in and sees her mother lying on the sofa. She’s fast asleep, with her mouth wide open. There’s an American living room on the TV screen. Anna-Karin considers taking the remote and turning down the volume, but she doesn’t want to risk waking her mother and being shouted out.

Instead she tiptoes into the kitchen. She takes out a box of chocolate balls from the refrigerator and a bag of French rolls from the breadbin on the counter. She hollows out the little white rolls, places a chocolate ball in each one and flattens them into patties. She eats them standing at the counter, with gulps of milk. The full sensation in her stomach makes her feel nicely drowsy.

Anna-Karin looks towards the kitchen window through which she can see Grandpa’s house. She spots the hunched figure inside and waves. Grandpa gestures for her to come over. Anna-Karin eagerly leaves the house with the hysterically laughing TV personalities.



Grandpa’s front door leads into a tiny hall where one of his work overalls hangs on a hook. To the left you can see into the kitchen. Nearest the door stands a bluish-grey wooden bench. This is where Grandpa’s friends usually sit when they visit, before it’s time to move to the kitchen table for coffee. That’s where Grandpa is sitting now, looking out of the window as he slurps a cup of coffee.

Anna-Karin doesn’t like coffee, but she loves the smell. Grandpa’s little house always smells of coffee, newly chopped firewood and animals. Today it also smells of the freshly ironed clothes that lie folded neatly in a basket by the bedroom door.

‘Hello, sweetheart,’ Grandpa says.

‘Hello,’ answers Anna-Karin. She sits down at the table.

Grandpa is wearing a red and green checked shirt and corduroy trousers. He always takes off his overalls before he comes inside. He doesn’t want to bring dirt inside.

He gazes at her inquisitively. ‘Back already?’

‘They let us out early.’

‘Really?’

It’s an opening to say more, but Anna-Karin’s throat tightens. She doesn’t want to talk about Elias, doesn’t even want to think about him.

Suddenly she wishes she were a little girl again. When she’d fallen and hurt herself, it was always in Grandpa’s lap that she’d wanted to sit. Now she wants to go back to that time. Then maybe she’d have the courage to cry, to let out all the stuff that has stuck and hardened in her chest. Anna-Karin hasn’t cried properly since primary school. There’s just too much to cry about. Now it’s as if a manhole cover is blocking her tears.

‘Has Mama been out today?’ she asks.

‘Don’t think she was quite up to it.’

‘She’s out of bed anyway,’ Anna-Karin says, and feels the hard, bitter anger inside her.

‘Mia doesn’t have it easy,’ Grandpa says.

Anna-Karin regrets having brought it up. Officially her mother has taken over the farm, but Grandpa still does most of the work. Some days she loads everything on to him. Still Grandpa never has a bad word to say about his daughter.

Sometimes Anna-Karin is seized by terrible pangs of guilt because she’s so angry with her mother. She understands that she’s probably depressed, that she didn’t want to take on the farm and is stuck with it. But at the same time it seems as though she lives to complain. Because what would she do without it? She’s always the one who’s most wronged, who suffers most, is the most deserving of sympathy in the whole world. That’s how it’s been for as long as Anna-Karin can remember.

Anna-Karin looks at Grandpa as he gazes out of the window. He can sit there for hours. She often wonders what he’s looking for.

Grandpa was seventy-seven last spring, but it’s only over the past year that he’s really started to look old. Anna-Karin doesn’t want to think of what will happen when he’s gone.



Vanessa lays her towel on the lawn in front of Jonte’s house. It has a washed-out pattern of yellow and brown flowers and doesn’t seem completely clean. Who cares? She just wants to lie down and forget everything. Without getting grass stains on her clothes.

She glances up at the red two-storey house, which also looks washed-out – the paint is sun-bleached and flaking. She hears a bass line throbbing inside. It’s making the windowpanes rattle. Through the living-room window, she sees the gigantic TV and the silhouettes of Wille, Jonte and Lucky against the explosions on the screen.

She lies down, pulls her shirt up to her bra and lets the sun warm her stomach.

Wille had been in a bad mood when he’d picked her up from the school. ‘I’m not a bloody taxi,’ he’d mumbled.

‘Well, go f*ck yourself then!’ she’d shouted, and had thrown open the door while the car was moving.

Wille had jammed on the brakes and the car behind them had come close to crashing into them.

Vanessa had stared at him, fear pulsating through her.

‘Shut the door,’ he had said, in a low voice, and she had done so immediately.

‘F*cking old man.’

That had hurt, she could tell. Wille is twenty-one and she knows he finds the age difference between them embarrassing.

When they had got together she had just turned fifteen. By then she had already heard a lot about Wille. Vanessa recognised something of herself in him. He wanted more – to feel more, experience more. She had thought that life with him would be an adventure.

And now she’s lying here while he’s playing video games with his slacker friends.

But he’s still the best-looking guy she knows. And he kisses her in that firm way she likes.

Vanessa angrily swats at a fly that refuses to understand it’s unwelcome on her face. The sun is warm, but she can detect the first hint of autumn chill. Big clouds have started to gather on the horizon.

‘Nessa?’ Wille calls.

She raises a hand and waves.

‘Vanessa?’ Wille says again.

‘Yeees!’ she shouts back. ‘What do you want?’

No answer. She sits up on her towel. Wille is standing at the open window, staring at her.

No. He’s staring right through me. It’s happening again. ‘Wille!’ she shouts, panic-stricken.

No reaction. Wille cranes his neck and scans the lawn. ‘Where the hell are you?’

‘I’m here!’ Vanessa shrieks, waving her arms.

But he can’t see or hear her. She grabs her towel and waves it. He doesn’t react, so she tosses it aside in frustration.

Wille almost falls over. He’s still not looking at her but at the towel on the lawn. ‘What the … What the f*ck?’ he gasps.

‘What is it?’ Jonte asks, as he comes up to the window. Lucky tries to squeeze between them.

‘That towel,’ Wille says. ‘It just appeared out of nowhere. I swear! It wasn’t there before.’

Jonte and Lucky stare at him. Then they stare at the towel and back again. They burst out laughing.

‘Chill, Wille. You’re tripping!’ Lucky bellows.

Jonte says something and closes the window with a bang.

Vanessa stands in the sunshine for a moment. She sees her own hands clearly in front of her. Her tanned legs. But something’s missing. Something doesn’t feel right.

She almost starts crying when she realises what it is.

She’s not casting a shadow on the lawn.



The sweet-smelling smoke hits her as she sneaks into the house. Wille is sitting in an armchair, staring at the TV and smoking a joint. He’s lit from behind by the sun – his blond hair looks like a halo. Vanessa’s heart somer saults. Sometimes she’s taken by surprise when she looks at him.

She wants to go up and touch him but she’s too scared to try. She has to keep hidden the strange thing that’s happening to her. At least until she knows what it is.

‘Vanessa?’ Jonte asks.

She whirls round. Jonte scans the room but sees nothing. His eyes are unusually alert and focused beneath the dark blue woollen hat he’s pulled down over his eyebrows.

‘You’ve got the Noaidi, dude,’ Lucky mumbles pointedly.

‘There’s somebody’s here, he says. ‘I’m f*cking sure.’ Lucky is lying half upright on the couch gripping the PlayStation handset. His fat belly is poking out beneath his T-shirt, which reads Pride of Engelsfors. Lucky, whose real name is Lukas, was in Vanessa’s class in year nine, but he never made it to year eleven. Instead he spends his days as Jonte’s errand boy, going out for beer, ordering pizza and helping with the plantation in the basement.

‘Did you hear about the priest’s kid?’ Lucky says, frantically punching away at the handset.

Vanessa sees how Jonte tenses, just slightly. Wille slowly releases the smoke he’s been holding in his lungs. ‘What?’ he asks.

‘Elias Malmgren. The priest’s son. He killed himself. At school. They found him today.’

‘Are you sure it was him?’ Wille asks. He tries to sound blasé, but Vanessa hears the unease in his voice.

Of course, she thinks. They knew each other. Elias used to come here to score weed. But that was ages ago, like the Christmas holidays in year nine.

‘Positive,’ Lucky says.

‘Shit,’ Jonte says. ‘He was here yesterday, buying weed.’

‘You think he had a bad trip or something?’ Lucky asks.

‘A bad trip?’

Jonte and Wille burst out laughing. Lucky smiles in his ingratiating way that makes Vanessa’s skin crawl.

‘He tried a few times before,’ Jonte says. ‘Probably wanted to be completely out of his skull when he did it.’

But he’s feeling guilty, Vanessa can tell. She wonders why. Jonte doesn’t usually care about anyone except himself.

‘He was, like, a total loser,’ Lucky says. ‘Cutting his arms and shit. I thought only chicks did that kind of thing.’

‘Shut up,’ Jonte says suddenly.

Both Wille and Lucky tense and stare at him.

‘There’s someone in the house,’ he whispers.

The others glance around. Vanessa holds her breath.

‘Maybe it’s Elias’s ghost, come to haunt us,’ Lucky says, and gets a smack on the back of the head from Wille’s open hand.

Vanessa feels the hairs on her arms stand up. Suddenly it’s as if the air billows around her, like a gust of wind. Jonte stares straight at her.

‘Where the hell did you spring from?’

Wille looks round and laughs nervously. ‘You shouldn’t sneak up on us like that, Nessa. You’re going to give your uncle Jonte a heart attack.’

Lucky laughs as well, for a bit too long. Vanessa does her best to smile indulgently.

She goes and sits on Wille’s lap. She needs to feel his arms around her. Needs to feel that she’s here. He nuzzles her neck. She presses herself hard against him.

Outside it starts to rain.