C5 Chapter 5

In his low, hoarse voice, Marcel said: “What was it you heard, Paul?”

Paul relaxed.

“I just thought I heard somebody speaking not far from here.”

Marcel looked about. “Surely it can’t have been nearby.”

If Paul heard the irony, he didn’t show it. “No, you’re right. It’s almost as open here as at sea. Only very slim ghosts could hide behind these fir trees. One imagines a lot of things,”

“We’ve been walking for a long time now,” said Marcel. “If we sit down by these bushes nobody will be able see us while we have a good look around.”

“Very sensible! What’s more, I’m hungry.”

The sun was nearly on the horizon. Saga shuddered at the thought of darkness. Even the trees seemed dismissive, almost hostile, but, of course, this was just her imagination playing a trick on her. This undefined anxiety was horrible.

Anyway, she was hungry. Since they had no idea how long it would be before they reached civilization again, they would have to go easy on their provisions. There was no longer any wine for Paul: although they had the wheelbarrow, the bottles had been too heavy to bring with them now that they were travelling on foot. Marcel, who was used to getting about like this, cut his bread and meat sparingly, and Saga told herself that it was only on the first day that hunger was really troublesome. So she also took moderate portions of her own provisions.

Of course, she hoped that the hike would soon be over. She was wasting time with this. A task awaited her in Graastensholm Parish, and here she was wandering about in uncharted territory with two strangers ...

Although she no longer looked upon Marcel as a stranger. Something subtle and confidential now existed between them. They needed neither to look nor to touch one another. Each just fervently felt the other’s presence, as if they were allies.

“Now I simply insist on hearing your story, Marcel,” she said. “You’re still an enigma to me.”

He smiled softly, as Paul began to inspect a blade of grass very intently.

“I’m really not all that enigmatic,” Marcel said. “Rather tragicomic. I was the family’s genius, just like you, Paul. That’s what everybody thought. I think they put great pressure on me when I was young. I simply had to tackle everything, at school, in everything I did.”

“Did you live with the Walloons?” Saga asked.

He looked at her: “The Walloons are no longer a homogeneous group. They’ve begun to integrate with the Swedes and become a part of Swedish society. But yes, it was my Walloon relatives who put pressure on me, and I gave in. I probably tried too hard ...”

“You said that you were a physician?”

He sighed. “Not to begin with. I studied many subjects in earnest – theology, history, psychology ... until I decided to go in for medicine in earnest. I became a physician, but the demands that were made on me were too high and I treated cases I shouldn’t have touched. I was a failure.”

Paul and Saga didn’t say a word.

Saga asked gently: “Did anybody die?”

Marcel looked down at his drawn-up knees. “Just about. I botched an operation and ruined the patient’s life. Of course, I lost my job. Since then, I’ve drifted about. Now I’m on my way to Norway and I have reason to believe that things will brighten up for me. But let’s continue on our way, shall we? The more we walk today, the better.”

They got up reluctantly. Saga could feel her aching legs and she knew she would get blisters if she wasn’t careful. She sat down again and pulled off her shoe.

Marcel immediately bent down at her side and looked at her foot.

“Put a leaf over it,” he said.

“I’ve something better than that,” she said, smiling. “Would you please hand me my bag from the wheelbarrow?”

Marcel was speechless when he saw her supply of medicines.

“Good heavens, who’s really the doctor here?” he exclaimed.

“Oh, it’s only a fraction of the Ice People’s store. I’ve seldom used it because I haven’t the right to do so. I’m not one of the family’s medical experts.”

Marcel had picked up some of the small leather pouches and was inspecting them with immense surprise. “There are powders and drugs here that can no longer be obtained! Asefoetida, dragon’s blood and ... mandrake root. Where on earth did you get this from?”

“Don’t ask me. It’s what I’ve inherited. That’s all I know.”

Marcel shook his head. “Don’t you understand that this represents a fortune?”

She was baffled. “Nobody in our clan has ever regarded the treasure in that light.”

Now Paul was interested as well, and pricked up his ears. He came over to them and squatted down to inspect the small part of the Ice People’s treasure that Saga had brought with her.

A puff of wind made the leaves on the bushes rustle ominously. It sounded like a snake moving through dry grass.

Marcel took out one of the little bottles. “This alone ...” he began, showing her the small green bottle. “This alone would have pharmacists and collectors paying you enough to live on comfortably for a long time.”

Saga laughed nervously. “But I’ve no intention of selling it! Not for my life! I’d rather starve to death!”

Paul now had a strange look in his eyes. He rummaged around with eager, trembling fingers. “What on earth is this?” he asked curiously, holding out a peculiar object. “Is it an animal? Ouch, help! Heavens, it’s alive!”

He let go of the thing as if he had burnt himself and quickly got to his feet.

“It’s the mandrake” Saga explained. She picked it up carefully, putting it back in its wrapping of fine cloth and its little box. “I have no right to it.”

But she had certainly noticed how it had writhed as if in discomfort. That was a strange sensation – she had never believed that it would react when she was near it. Now it frightened her. Or could it be that it was not her proximity that the mandrake didn’t like? Was it Paul’s? Because his handsome eyes were now looking greedily at the Ice People’s treasure?

She met Marcel’s pensive gaze. They both looked up at Paul, who had taken a few backward steps, white in the face because he was so shocked.

“You mustn’t be scared,” she told Paul. “It won’t do anything provided you don’t want to harm any members of the Ice People – which I suppose you don’t want to,” she said with a smile.

Paul calmed down when the mandrake had been wrapped and put away. Then he said in his carefree style: “You should sell it. If you don’t get rid of it you will lose your soul, it’s said.”

“No, the mandrake won’t be sold,” Saga said firmly, as if she believed that the wrapped-up root could hear her. “Besides, it can’t be sold, but you must know that?”

Then Saga told them about the legend of the mandrake, mostly for the sake of Marcel, who had never heard it. That it had to be sold at a lower price than it had been bought for, until finally the one who could not find a lower price had to keep it, and thus sold his soul to Satan.

“That applies to ordinary mandrakes,” she explained quietly. “The Ice People’s mandrake is a bit out of the ordinary. It has linked itself to our clan: it belongs to us and nobody else. I think things would turn out very badly for the one among us who got rid of it.”

Paul shook his head in despair. His expression clearly revealed what he thought of Saga’s intelligence – or stupidity. Anyway, he had no intention of going anywhere near the mandrake again.

Marcel helped Saga bandage her foot. His hands were exceptionally beautiful and gentle. Feeling them against her skin was a much more intense erotic experience than all Lennart’s far more direct advances. She looked down at Marcel’s bent head with its black curls. Every single movement he made showed that he also registered that strange attraction between them. It was like an enchanted moment in that calm, sun-spotted forest, as if a trembling aura of sensuality surrounded them.

Marcel let his hands rest on her leg longer than necessary, as if he wanted to preserve the connection, the solidarity, for a while. Then he let go, stood up and met her glance.

Oh, God, she thought. This must be what I’ve always sought: love. The erotic, deep emotion between a man and a woman. The kind of love that is so much more than just eroticism, the kind of love that transforms all one’s surroundings, entering one’s heart straight away, leaving an eternal mark.

Imagine, I am allowed to experience it!

Then came the immediate afterthought. What now? What will happen next? Will everything stop at this moment of radiant love and fervent dreams, or is there another chapter to come? I have a task that I need to concentrate on. So is it a good idea for me to have such strong feelings for a man? Shira wasn’t permitted to do so. The four spirits deprived her of the ability to love anybody. For a very long time, I felt that my fate would be the same, because in my heart I knew, of course, that my feelings for Lennart weren’t strong enough.

Paul’s voice roused her brutally from her reverie: “Will we never ever get out of this damn forest?”

The moment was over. Saga and Marcel breathed out, as after an enormous physical effort. They had to agree with Paul. They had trudged all day long through the scattered fir trees, crossing bogs and with prickling lichen under their feet, through thickets of bilberry bushes and over boulders covered with moss under the tall trees. When the fir trees were dense they tore themselves on the stiff, dry lower branches. They stumbled and laboured with the wheelbarrow, which was constantly getting stuck in twigs, branches and the uneven forest floor. Then Marcel would swear and Paul would hush him.

“You mustn’t take Satan’s name in vain,” he would say sharply. “That might bring its own punishment.”

Saga couldn’t make Paul out. He was a very complex person, he didn’t seem like anybody she had previously met. He was crude yet pious, good and bad.

Or was he really all that religious, in fact? He seemed to defend Satan rather than God.

Every now and then they came to a lake, which they would have to walk around. At one point they had reached open land and climbed a hill, from where they had seen houses. But they didn’t dare go in that direction – because before meeting anyone they wanted to be sure that they were in Norway. They kept away from the roads, though they couldn’t avoid coming upon forest tracks. At one time, they had been so close to other people that they had heard them speaking. But the language was Swedish so they didn’t dare call out. Besides, they had no idea how far the cholera had spread or how much people here knew about the epidemic and the ban against crossing the border: they didn’t dare take chances. And although they did not voice their anxiety to each other, they were bound to have a certain respect for the cholera ...

But it seemed the place they were in now was completely desolate.

And now, as they set off again, they came to realize just how deserted the area was. The sun had sunk behind some high hills, and although it was still a long time before sunset, everything inevitably seemed gloomier. It was quite a while since they had seen any sign of life. This was the wolves’ fields at their worst.

Saga walked closer to Marcel. She invariably sought protection from him, even against Paul. Yes, it was absurd, but he frightened her because he was unfathomable. Because of his divine good looks, the way he set himself apart from the rest of mankind – by virtue of his noble birth, of course – and because he was so mercurial. She felt increasingly ill at ease in his presence without really being able to put her finger on the reason.

He was a great, unknown, intangible source of danger – that was all she could think.

Paul’s relationship with the other two was also ambiguous. He just about tolerated Marcel. He obviously needed a male companion on the journey, which was, after all, dangerous in this unknown forest. But he treated Marcel with the arrogance of a nobleman towards a commoner, though this didn’t bother Marcel in the least. He didn’t bat an eyelid. Marcel didn’t turn a hair about most things.

Paul was a bit up and down with regard to Saga. Now and then, he would jokingly lay siege to her, but when he didn’t get anywhere he would quickly stop. At other times, he treated her as he treated Marcel – with arrogance and a slight irony, in order to show that she certainly didn’t mean anything to him. He could sometimes be almost dictatorial. At one point, when Paul and Saga were at some distance from Marcel, he had seized her hand and squeezed it hard. Between his teeth, he had almost hissed: “You realize, don’t you, that you’re mine? You’re the one I want, the one I’ve been waiting for, Saga! It’s someone precisely like you I want! I want to see the frost in your eyes melt and give way to passionate love. I won’t give in until it happens!”

Saga felt that his choice of words was rather commonplace, but she didn’t say anything. She merely broke loose from his grip and walked away, anxious and somewhat shaken.

If she had been a silly, romantic fool of a young girl, she would have fallen for such a handsome man straight away. But Saga was like a bird that had had its wings clipped – and besides, her heart was somewhere else.

Was Paul able to sense what was happening between her and Marcel? Had it hurt his vanity? It seemed it might have. Or was there a more profound reason for his behaviour?

They continued walking as the evening darkness gathered around them. The fog rose from the moor and the forest was calm.

It was now that it began to become eerie, and the invisible creatures that lived in Saga’s imagination began to move about. That was how it felt. Nevertheless, she couldn’t rid herself of the thought that the mystical, the frightening, was something that had been following them the whole time. That it was something they had brought with them.

Paul stopped abruptly.

“Look!” he whispered.

They stood by a small lake of black water with brown banks. Behind it lay the heavy, dark forest. On the far bank stood a big elk, mirrored in the water as it drank. As they emerged from the forest, it lifted its noble head and looked thoughtfully at them across the water. Then it shook its ears and began to drink once more.

Paul whispered: “What a handsome animal.”

“Yes,” Saga replied. “It is handsome – and what a good thing that it’s standing on the other side of the lake.”

The two men gave her a smile and walked on. Saga followed them, with a firm grip on Marcel’s hand. But they couldn’t walk much farther now, they needed to find a place to camp for the night. A little later, they saw a few houses beside a bigger lake. They stopped to discuss the situation.

“We must be in Norway by now,” said Paul.

Marcel wasn’t quite so sure.

Paul decided the matter. “I’ll go over and ask. There are two girls walking over there. I’ll seduce them and ask them to put me up for the night.”

“No, you mustn’t do that!” smiled Marcel. “We can’t allow ourselves to get so close to other people. Not if they’re Swedes. But go over to them by all means! They’ll fall for your charm so entirely that they won’t care where you come from. But please just ask them for directions. We don’t have time for orgies!”

Paul smiled. “What a shame,” he said jokingly and walked off.

The atmosphere was more relaxed now that they were among people again. Before, when there had been just the three of them, it had seemed tense. Or was it because Paul had left that everything now felt much more pleasant? Saga followed him with her eyes as he went over to the houses.

She instinctively moved a bit closer to Marcel.

“He confuses me,” she said.

“Me, too,” muttered Marcel.

“I can’t work out what he is.” It sounded shocking, what she had just said. She had said what instead of who!

She shivered.

Paul had reached the girls, who stood stock-still. Paralysed. They didn’t seem to know what to say. Saga could well understand them. A revelation like Paul, walking straight out of the forest! What would they think?

They spoke together for quite some time, while Saga and Marcel simply basked in one another’s proximity. He stood slightly behind her, and it was as if a wonderful, beautiful feeling flowed into her from him. It spoke of ... yearning? About strong, invisible ties, about all that he wanted to give her – if he was allowed to do so, of course. Which he certainly was. For the first time in her life, Saga felt that she was ready to receive a man’s love. Was love too strong a word after such a short acquaintance?

No, strangely, it wasn’t. What filled her thoughts and emotions right now was so intense that she realized that it wasn’t just coming from her but also from Marcel. It was like one great accord that permeated the atmosphere around them. She could feel that her whole body and soul longed to be near Marcel. There was a tingling sensation in her skin that went like tiny ripples through all the fine nerves, and Saga could hear by his slow breathing that he felt the same.

She turned and looked at him. Now that Paul wasn’t there, she could see clearly how strangely attractive Marcel was. Totally different from the extremely handsome “archangel”, as she called Paul.

Marcel had something about him that ran much deeper: a strict seriousness that could be tempered by tenderness. His glorious eyes were irresistibly alluring. They were such a contrast to his dark colouring. His eyes were deeply set. Now they were smiling at her, now serious and urgent, telling her everything that wasn’t said between them ...

But when Marcel opened his mouth, the words that came out weren’t nice. “He desires you, you understand that, don’t you? He’s absolutely wrapped up in you.”

“Do you really think so?” Saga replied nervously. “He said he was but he didn’t sound very convincing.”

“Then you don’t know men’s pride, Saga. Paul would never admit defeat, never humble himself or beg for your love.”

“No, you’re right. He never begs. I’d say that he was angry. He grabbed my arm so hard that it hurt. Anyway ... no, I think you’re wrong, Marcel. You heard what he said about seducing those two girls.”

“Honestly, Saga, you’re so naive! Of course, he said that to make you jealous.”

Saga made an irritated gesture. “Well, there’s nothing special about me. Cold and stiff as I am ... Paul said so himself!”

“Use your common sense! That is exactly what he finds attractive. You give the impression that you are reserved, but he and I both know that you’re deep. You’re difficult to win, and that simply arouses men’s hunting instincts.”

“Lennart said exactly the same thing,” she said with a shudder. “But he didn’t find any hidden warmth in me.”

“He just wasn’t the right one for you, and nor is Paul.”

Marcel let the rest remain unspoken, Saga didn’t dare ask. She looked over at the farm once more. “He’s like a shell, a container of immense beauty,” she said softly. “But what is hidden inside? Who on earth is he? Certainly not Count von Lengenfeldt, I’d swear to that.”

“Does he affect you?” Marcel asked quietly.

Oh, that breathless calm! Now her reply was of the utmost importance.

“It depends what you mean by ‘affect’,” she said slowly. “He can’t help having a certain effect – with his appearance. However, if you mean in any other way, then my answer is no.”

This seemed to make Marcel relax, but his reply was merely pensive: “I’m not so sure, Saga. You can hardly take your eyes off him.”

“No, I’m wondering what the outcome of the conversation with those girls will be.”

Marcel warned: “Just make sure you’re not left on your own with Paul.”

“No, I’m too scared to do that! Because whatever it is behind his smooth façade ... is really frightening. Marcel, I feel the way I’ve felt all along – that we’re dragging something evil along with us.”

“I think you’re right,” he said slowly. “Anyway, I’ll be with you all the time. I’ll see to it that nothing happens to you.”

Saga instinctively took his hand. “You mustn’t leave me, Marcel! Be with me, you mustn’t let me be alone with that ... monster!”

“Monster? Well, I don’t know about that.”

Once more, Saga felt the tremendous solidarity between them. It vibrated around them. She knew that she could love this man. Warmly and passionately with all her emotions and senses, in a way that Saga Simon had never ever loved before.

Marcel’s hand touched her shoulder very gently. Tenderly, as if he was afraid of frightening her. She could feel his dark passion ... his desire for her that permeated the sensuous touch of his hand. She could see his well-shaped fingers squeezing her shoulder slowly and gently.

“Paul is coming back now,” she whispered breathlessly.

With a sigh, Marcel let his hand fall.

When Paul reached them, Saga breathed out slowly. Her experience had been so intense that she could feel perspiration trickling out along the edge of her hair.

“Oh, what pretty girls!” Paul shouted as he was walking up to them. “They agreed that it was fine for us to sleep in the barn tonight.”

“So close to other people?” Marcel said.

“Yes. Not you two, of course,” said Paul, looking at Saga. “The girls and me. By the way, they are Swedes, but we’re very close to the Norwegian border. We should be able to reach it sometime tomorrow.”

Saga and Marcel were confused. “Do you really mean to ...?”

Paul laughed. “No, of course not. I’m just joking. Surely you don’t imagine that I’d leave you alone with Saga? We all know what would happen then. Come, let’s continue our walk.”

Saga pondered what Marcel had said about jealousy. Well, now it was quite obvious that Paul had talked about spending the night with another girl just to make Saga jealous.

Paul’s remark didn’t affect her, but she had registered Marcel’s searching gaze at her. What did he really think? Did Marcel believe that she was physically and emotionally attracted to Paul?

It was just the other way around! Now that he had come back, her fear had returned. She, who had never known terror before! Now it crept into her like a nameless dread.

Who was Paul, really?