The Resting Place, page 6
“See? Nothing.”
“How did you know the letters were gone?” asks Sebastian, who is standing next to me in the doorway.
“I came back in to put my cigarettes away, and saw that somebody had been poking around. So I reached inside and lo and behold they were gone.”
She looks at Sebastian and me with contempt.
“When did you last see them?” Sebastian asks, still with that same calm voice. I’m probably the only one who can hear how much her vitriol is wearing him down.
Veronika rolls her eyes.
“Thanks, Starsky, but there’s no need to pull this shit with me. I know somebody took them, OK? And I know who it was.”
Veronika looks at me again.
“This is so fucking low. I genuinely didn’t expect this of you. Though I suppose you were raised by her, so more the fool me, I guess. Just tell your shitty little lawyer to give me back my letters, OK? I don’t care what little game you think you’re playing, but they’re mine. They were the last words my father wrote to me.” Her voice trembles again, but only for a second. Then the flintiness returns.
“Give me the letters. Or else, I swear, I’ll give you hell.”
ELEANOR
Only once Veronika has stormed out of the room and down the stairs do I feel like I can breathe again.
I look at Sebastian and gulp.
“Should we go … look for them? The letters, I mean?” I ask hesitantly.
Sebastian shakes his head. His mouth is drawn, and there’s a crease between his eyebrows. He doesn’t like conflict, hates it when people lose their cool or raise their voices. Shouting is unheard-of in Sebastian’s family—just like drinking too much, or taking a gap year before college.
“Why should we? It’s not like we’ll find anything. If the letters even exist, I’m sure they’re back in her apartment in Stockholm. She just forgot them. She’s not exactly…” He clears his throat. “I mean, from what you’ve said, she has trouble remembering things when she’s been drinking.”
“Sebastian!” I say quickly, looking back at the lawyer.
This doesn’t leave the family, Victoria, you hear?
It’s no one’s business but ours.
Vivianne’s voice sounds so clear in my head that she could just as well be standing in this room.
I do the only thing I feel I can do.
“I’m so sorry,” I say to the lawyer. “I think it’s hard for Veronika to be here. After what happened to Vivianne.”
The lawyer’s eyes are inscrutable. He shakes his head quickly.
“I understand. This can be a very … fraught process,” he says. His words sound strangely rehearsed.
I bite my lower lip and turn to Sebastian.
“I think it might be good for us to look, anyway. She could have taken them into the maid’s room—she slept there last night.” I pause. “We can just look. Quickly.”
I can see that he’s about to refuse, but then he glances at the lawyer and sighs. The knot in my belly loosens a little.
I walk into the maid’s room, Sebastian’s footsteps behind me. When he closes the door I sit down on the bare, stripped mattress and run my fingers through my hair. The coolness of the room feels nice on my hot face.
“Sorry,” I say to Sebastian.
“It’s fine; it won’t take long. Just a quick look.”
“No, I mean about Veronika. I know she’s … difficult.”
“Do you have any idea why she thinks someone would want to steal her letters? What could be in them?” he asks.
I’ve been asking myself the same thing.
“She gave you a weird look when you asked why anyone would have taken them,” he adds.
“Yeah,” I say. “I saw that, too.”
I can’t take closed doors. Not at Solhöga.
I sigh.
“I think she just finds it hard to be here. I don’t think she even meant what she said. I mean, why would I want to cheat her out of this place? It’s not like I’ve been here before; I have no emotional ties here. And if it was about the money, well, she probably needs it more than me.”
“What’s even weirder is why she would think the lawyer would have taken them,” says Sebastian, shrugging. “What would he do with old letters? It’s not like they’re going to help with the inventory.”
I pause.
For a few seconds I weigh up whether to tell Sebastian about the phone call I overheard this morning. About Rickard’s strange turn of phrase, and his evasive look when he realized I had heard him.
But after Veronika’s bizarre, wild-eyed accusations, it suddenly feels ridiculous to start insinuating about the well-ironed, freshly shaven lawyer.
“You’re right,” I say. “She probably just brought them in here last night and forgot. If we find them maybe that’ll get her to calm down a little, at least.”
“She’s not your responsibility, Eleanor,” Sebastian says, slightly more softly now, and I hear an echo of my therapist’s voice in his. Carina’s calm, well-modulated tone.
You can’t save Veronika, Eleanor.
You couldn’t have saved your grandmother, Eleanor.
You didn’t kill her, Eleanor. It wasn’t your fault.
(But if I had just gotten there a few minutes earlier, if I had called her back the day before, if I had been a better granddaughter, if I hadn’t—if I had…)
I shake my head.
“Come on. Let’s see if there’s anything here. If not we can give up. It’s time for lunch, anyway.”
Sebastian nods, kneels down by the bed, and peers under it. I stand up, lift up the mattress, and feel between the slats.
I can’t find anything, and Sebastian doesn’t seem to have any luck either. He picks up the small pewter bowl that I suspect is a chamber pot, looks under the Windsor chair at the end of the bed, and shuffles over toward the far wall. The room is so bare that it’s hard to imagine anyone being able to lose something in here.
I turn to ask if we should give up and head downstairs, only to see Sebastian pressing his fingertips to the floor.
“What are you doing?” I ask, puzzled.
Sebastian pushes the floorboard again.
“I was just getting up when I noticed this plank is springy.”
“Do you think it’s rotting?” I say.
Sebastian doesn’t reply. He just presses the plank again, harder this time.
“Sebastian?”
He wedges his fingertips into the gap at the end of the plank and carefully pulls it up. It comes out like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle.
I look on as he reaches into the hole and pulls out a small notebook.
“What the…,” I begin, but he whistles quietly.
“Look at this.”
I sit down on the floor next to him and peer over his shoulder as he flicks through the brittle pages.
“Those aren’t letters,” I say, stating the obvious, when Sebastian stops on one page. The book is clearly old, and the pages are swollen with damp. They are filled with neat, blue handwriting and at first I think it’s the damp that’s making the words unreadable, but when I lean in a little closer I realize the characters are entirely legible; I just can’t understand the words.
“I think it’s Russian or something,” says Sebastian.
“No, Russian doesn’t use the Latin alphabet,” I say.
“Oh yeah. Another language then. Not Swedish, at least.”
He flicks back a few pages.
“Wait!”
He stops flicking.
“Look,” I say, and point.
Sebastian reads the sentence I’m pointing at aloud.
“‘I must say, I did think you had better taste than that, Klaes.’”
He looks at me.
“Do you know who Klaes is?” he asks.
“Not a clue,” I say. “But that’s definitely Swedish.”
Sebastian looks back down at the notebook.
“What do you think this is?” he asks, an audible hint of curiosity in his voice.
“Not a clue,” I say again.
I reach over and take the notebook, close it, and check the cover. It looks anonymous, a green, bound notebook that once had glossy, lined pages.
Instinctively I open it to the very first page. There, down in the corner. In the same blue ink as the rest of the book. Crossed out but legible.
“‘An—,’” I try to read, squinting. “I think that says ‘Anushka. Anushka, 1964.’”
Sebastian stares at the small, carefully inscribed name on the first, blank page of the book.
“Who’s Anushka?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I reply.
But as I’m saying it I think of those two small letters in the stable.
A + M
ANUSHKA
OCTOBER 9, 1965
How can it have been two months?
Sometimes I wonder if I’m losing myself.
Not losing my mind: losing myself. Losing Anushka. Losing sight of that little ferret, burying her rather than hiding her. I’m becoming Annika. The name they have given me.
It has been so long since I was called Anushka that even the name has started to feel strange in my mouth. “Annika” is all I hear. When Ma’am calls for me, when she needs something, when she berates me. “Annika!” “Annika!” “Annika!”
I have come to hate every one of those three syllables. They make my head stoop, my chin nod, my eyes sink submissively to the floor.
Annika is the stupid, contemptible girl they see. But Anushka is the voice in my head. And she—I—am fading.
Something about this dark, stuffy apartment makes it all the worse. In the country house it wasn’t so bad. Out there at least there was some sky beyond the window, sunlight bouncing off the lake, a breeze that swept through the open doors, carrying on it the scent of summer. And there were people there too—people like me, people with uniforms and bowed heads. People I could talk to. The cook who helped me with my pronunciation in those long, hot afternoons, the stableboy who showed me how to pet the horses.
Not to mention—empty spaces to hide in. Nooks and crannies. Places where I could be myself for a little while every now and then.
Here I have nowhere to disappear.
Last week, while I was dusting the bookcase, I paused for a few seconds to look at one of the books. I didn’t take it out, just brushed it with my fingertips, but then I heard Sir say my name softly behind me:
“Annika.”
I jumped, spun around, and started to apologize.
“Sorry, sorry,” I said, grabbing my feather duster, “I am so sorry; I beg pardon; I—no.” My cheeks burned.
“I beg your pardon,” I whispered. “Forgive me.”
“You don’t need to apologize.” He chuckled, but his eyes were sad. “You are welcome to look at the books.”
I swallowed.
“I just…,” I started. “I wonder if this book is maybe for child.”
“A child,” he corrected me, but his voice wasn’t sharp or contemptuous like Ma’am’s usually is. It was kind. Like he wanted to help.
He walked over to me, reached out, and pulled the book from the shelf. He inspected the cover and then looked at me.
“Would you like to read it?” he asked.
I stared into his eyes, searching for the trap, something to suggest what he might want in return for that tempting little book, a book I might actually be able to read. The first of many.
“I have much work,” I said, tentatively. “I must work first.”
He smiled at me then, or half smiled, like he understood what I had left unsaid. Of course he did. He has lived with her for years, after all.
“You needn’t worry,” he said. “You’re very capable, Annika. I just know you can keep up with both.”
He placed the book in my hand, paused for a moment with his index finger on the spine, then nodded at me and left the room.
Just before I fell asleep that night I thought:
I want my name back.
No. That wasn’t what I thought, not really.
What I thought was:
I want Sir to call me by my real name.
ELEANOR
As I step inside the master bedroom, I barely dare breathe.
Vivianne never let me set foot inside her bedroom in the apartment in town, and although no one has slept in this room for over forty years, my brain still files it neatly under the heading “Vivianne’s room”—a forbidden place, out of sight and out of reach.
It’s much bigger than the other bedrooms—it must be the same size as the dining room downstairs. The bed is enormous and looks antique, its canopy resting on four carved posts that tower in spiraling dark wood. The bedspread is made of a creamy white silk that stands out beautifully against the thick, expansive Oriental rug on the floor.
Under the window there is a dainty couch in a pale pink satin, and in the far corner stands a masonry heater with hatches in polished brass.
There is even an en suite bathroom. The door is shut, and I’m just on my way to it when the dressing table catches my eye.
It looks like something out of a doll’s house, enlarged to human scale: ornate and gold, with a matching chair and a round, gilded mirror that flings my own unfamiliar face back at me. A single tube of lipstick stands, lonely and deserted, on the table, and I can’t resist picking it up and pulling off the lid.
It’s impossible to see what color it once was: time has left it hardened and black. I hold it under my nose and inhale. It smells of dust and oil. No hint of Vivianne’s scent, her heavy perfume, Chanel No. 5—always Chanel No. 5. The smell of luxury, as she would say, though to me it just smelled strong and musty. Even when I couldn’t recognize Vivianne’s face, I could always recognize her scent.
I want to shatter this stupid, pointless mirror; I want to take one of the sharp knives from the kitchen and run it straight through the beautiful face in the portrait in the hall. I want to scream at that face: You broke me! You never loved me; you treated me like a pet, like a lapdog. You told me I was stupid and worthless and ugly, that it was my fault Mom got cancer, my fault my father left her, and that you were the only person who could ever love me.
You told me never to leave you.
But then you left me. You left me, and now I’m alone.
I wipe my cheek with the back of my hand. I had hardly noticed I was crying.
Carina said that it can all be true at the same time: that I can love Vivianne as much as I hate her, that can I miss her so much my body aches, while also enjoying those first few hints of a shameful freedom. In one session Carina pulled off her glasses, dried her eyes, and told me that she was mourning Vivianne, too. Carina had known Vivianne a long time, but Vivianne had stopped speaking to her when she started treating me. All my healthcare contacts came from Vivianne’s circle of friends: my family doctor, dentist, gynecologist …
Carina was something of a departure. Vivianne usually despised psychologists. Not in her social circle, of course—psychologists were more than refined enough to qualify for Vivianne’s dinner parties, so long as they came from the right background. But she loathed the prospect of therapy. When I told Vivianne my high-school teacher had suggested I “talk to someone,” at first I thought she was going to slap me. She looked disgusted, her nostrils flared, and her pupils constricted, and I saw her slender, white fingers twitch.
She said they went digging around in matters that didn’t concern them.
Like what, Vivianne? Like this house?
What really happened out here that made you abandon this place over forty years ago?
My gaze sweeps along the walls. They are completely bare. Not one painting, not one photograph, just that little mirror above the dressing table. There is nothing at all on the walls—except a little handle on the wall opposite the bed.
Is it some sort of built-in closet? The door is pretty big, at least three feet by three feet. I take the small metal ring and pull.
The door glides open without a sound.
Behind it there is a small recess, completely empty. It would be big enough to fit a grown person in, if she was curled up. I bend over and stick my head inside, squint into the darkness.
I see two chains running along the back wall.
I hesitate for a second, then lean farther in to get a better look.
There isn’t much space, but if I perch on my knees on the edge of the hatch I can get my cell phone out and see what’s back there.
This is stupid, I think. What does it matter what it is? It was probably a liquor cabinet. I’m sure they must have had them in bedrooms in those days. That wasn’t unheard-of back then.
My phone is slipping between my sweaty, clammy fingers, but I adjust my grip and point it up at the chains.
Suddenly I feel a hard shove from behind. My feet fly into the recess and the door slams shut behind them.
The chains start to rattle, and the walls begin to move.
I try to sit up, but there’s not enough space: my head smacks straight into the ceiling, so hard it leaves me seeing stars. My phone drops and bounces on the surface beneath me. The beam of light disappears.
I lie curled up in the small space, my feet pressed up against a wall that wasn’t there just a few seconds ago. It’s pitch-black now; what little daylight there was is gone.
The closet has transformed into a small, enclosed box with no opening. A coffin.
My breaths start to quicken. In the small space they sound amplified, seem to bounce off the narrow walls.
“Hello?” I say, my voice weak and pathetic.
Nothing.
I try to kick the door, but there’s barely any space to move my legs. Whichever way I move I only have a few inches to work with. I can’t roll over or move my arms.
I gulp. The first inklings of panic start to slither into my bloodstream. What happened? Did the door hit me? Did it shut by itself?
I kick again, harder this time. The door won’t budge, but something happens. The closet starts to sink.
Now I scream, loud and hard, my voice cracking with fear. I can’t keep it in, or make myself stop. With my arms and legs constricted I’m helpless, and the dread makes my mouth taste of blood and iron.
