We Know You Remember
Tove Alsterdal
Chapter 1
There it was, the looming shadow of the mountains. A petrol station flashed by out of the corner of his eye, followed by yet more trees. He’d needed to pee for over two hundred kilometers by then.
He pulled off onto a side road and stumbled out of the car, through the wildflowers on the verge. Turned towards the forest and relieved himself.
There was something about the scents. The flowers along the edge of the ditch. The dew in the grass and the haze in the evening air, the buttercups and fireweed and cow parsley, standing a meter tall. Or maybe it was timothy grass, what did he know. He just recognized the smell.
The tarmac was bumpy with frost damage, and soon gave over to gravel. He could take a left in twenty or so kilometers and be back on the highway; it wasn’t a big detour. The landscape opened out in front of him, green hills and low valleys. There was something comforting about it, like the gentle curves of a soft, warm woman’s body.
He drove past sleepy farms and abandoned houses, a small lake so calm that the reflection of the forest looked just like the forest itself. Each tree identical to the next. He had once climbed a mountain and looked down at the endless forests of the ?dalen Valley, realized they went on forever.
There were no other cars around when he reached the fork in the road. He recognized the yellow wooden building straight ahead. These days all he could see through its dusty display window were piles of construction waste, but the sign was still there; the shop had once sold food. Olof remembered sweets on a Saturday, the taste of jelly frogs and salty licorice fish. He turned the wrong way, heading farther inland. He would still be able to reach the northern fringes of Stockholm before morning. Besides, the boss would be asleep; no one would check the mileage or the exact amount of petrol he’d used. Another five kilometers was no big deal. Olof could always blame the caravans and roadworks; everyone knew what the Swedish roads were like during the summer.
At this time of year. Late June.
The scents, the light, they made his mouth turn dry and his legs go numb. Every fiber of his being knew it was that time of year. After term had ended and the boredom took over, the longest days, when he was thrown out of sync. Olof remembered it as a grayish half-darkness, though it must have been just as bright as now, an endless summer night, pale midnight hours when the sun simply dipped below the horizon.
He drove past things he had long forgotten or simply never thought about. Yet they had been there all along. The yellow house that always had guests in the summer, their children forbidden from cycling on the main road. The old schoolhouse, closed down before he could remember; the fields where the trotter horses huddled together, staring at the road. The white plastic bales of hay, you could climb on top of those and pretend to be king of the hill; and there was the weeping birch on the left, where he slowed down and turned off. It had grown so big. Branches bowed low, clouds of vivid green leaves hiding the letter boxes.
He knew exactly which one it was: gray plastic, the third along. There was a newspaper sticking out of it. Olof hauled himself out of the car and walked over to check the name.
Hagstr?m.
He swatted at the mosquitoes and pulled out the local newspaper. There were another two beneath it, hence why it didn’t quite fit. Ads for fiber broadband, a bill from Kramfors Council. Someone still lived there, received post and newspapers; someone was still paying for the water and to have the bins emptied, or whatever else the bill might be for. Olof felt a shiver pass through him as he read the name on the envelope.
Sven Hagstr?m.
He shoved everything back into the letter box and returned to the car. Grabbed a chocolate biscuit from the bag on the floor, just for something to chew on. He knocked back a can of energy drink and killed the mosquitoes that had followed him in. One had already drunk its fill, and a fleck of red spread across the leather seat. He rubbed it away with some spit and toilet paper, then continued slowly along the old tractor road. The grass in the middle brushed against the bumper, and the car bounced through one pothole after another. Past the Strinneviks’ place, their gray barn visible among the greenery. Down one hill and then up again, he reached the top, where the dark pines ended and nature seemed to open out onto the river and beyond. Olof didn’t dare look. The red house flashed by at the edge of his field of vision. He turned at the end of the road and slowly drove back.
The paint around the windows was peeling. He couldn’t see a car, but it could easily be in the garage. The grass was tall around the woodshed, dotted with small saplings that would soon turn to brush.
Olof didn’t know why he had expected it to be any different: abandoned and dilapidated, or sold to strangers who had since moved in.
And yet, it wasn’t.
He pulled over behind the bin and switched off the engine. Golden dandelions studded the lawn. He remembered how hard they were to pull up. You had to get rid of them before they went to seed, otherwise they would spread in the wind. Use a hoe to dig down to the roots so they wouldn’t come back. In his memory, his hands were so small. He looked down at the broad hand that should have been turning the ignition key now.
The sun rose above the tops of the spruce trees, its rays hitting the rearview mirror and blinding him. He closed his eyes and pictured her in front of him, or inside him, he couldn’t quite tell where she was, but that was how he had seen her over and over again, night after night through all these years, whenever he didn’t doze off immediately, blind drunk or exhausted, half-dead, that was how he always saw her, walking into the forest. She wandered in and out of him. So close, not far from there, down towards the river.