The Survivors Read online

  “We’re clipping our nails!” said Pierre. “We’re going to collect them and put them in the time capsule.”

  “Why would you put fingernails in a time capsule?”

  “What if people look totally different in a thousand years? This way they’ll be able to see what our nails looked like.”

  “Smart,” said Dad.

  It was early morning, the sun was low in the sky and shining from an odd angle, dew still on the grass, flakes of cereal swollen in the sun-warmed milk of their breakfast bowls. The breeze was brisker than usual for so early in the day, and each time a gust came Dad held the morning paper tight and looked up to see what was going on. He was drinking coffee out of a mug that left another brown ring each time he put it down on the morning paper; sometimes he got up to make a trip to the kitchen, where he would cut thick slices of rye and apply such a rich layer of butter you could see the marks left by his teeth when he took a bite. Benjamin and Pierre sat there in their well-worn pajamas, concentrating, clipping their nails and gathering them in a pile on the patio table. When they were done, they put them in an envelope and stuck it in the metal box Dad had given them. The first artifact for their time capsule was secured.

  “Dad, can we have today’s paper for the time capsule?”

  “Of course,” Dad said. “As soon as I’m done reading it.”

  Benjamin observed his father. He was eating two eggs, and Benjamin hoped he’d be done by the time Mom woke up, because she hated to watch Dad eat eggs.

  “Do you have any money?” Benjamin asked. “I want to put a bill in the time capsule too.”

  “Can’t you use one of the five-kronor coins you earned yesterday?”

  “It has to be a bill, so I can write a greeting on it.”

  Dad checked his pockets, stood up, and went to the hall to look in his wallet.

  “I don’t have any money,” he called. “You’ll have to ask Mom when she wakes up.”

  “But what are we supposed to do now?” Pierre asked. Always restless.

  “Why don’t you look for other things to put in your box?” Dad asked.

  “There aren’t any other things,” Pierre replied.

  “Then play with Molly,” Dad told him.

  But that was never really an option for Pierre, or anyone else in the family. Molly wasn’t playful. She was anxious, fragile, and easily startled. During the first summer after she came to them, the family thought it would pass, that she needed time to adjust, but by now they understood that she was just like that. It was as if she was afraid of the world, never wanted to be free, preferred to be carried around. She recoiled from Dad and tried to keep her distance from him, despite his awkward attempts to show her tenderness. Neither Nils nor Pierre demonstrated any great interest in her, and maybe there was some jealousy involved, given that it sometimes seemed like Mom showed more care for the dog than for the brothers. Mom’s love for Molly was strong but spasmodic, which made Molly even more anxious. Mom sometimes wanted to keep Molly to herself and refused to share her; at other times she was chilly with her. Sometimes Benjamin would find Molly kind of cast off, forgotten as a result of Pierre and Nils’s lack of interest, Dad’s resignation, and Mom’s sudden disengagement.

  Benjamin felt a kinship with Molly. They sought each other out, and during the long afternoon hours that summer, when Mom and Dad were having a siesta, they slowly built up their relationship. In secret, Benjamin made her his own. They went down to the lake and threw rocks. They took walks in the forest. They kept each other company.

  “Go play with Molly,” Dad said.

  “But she doesn’t want to play with us,” said Pierre.

  “Sure she does,” said Dad. “We just have to give her time.”

  Pierre trudged off to the barn, where he kept his comic books, and Benjamin approached the dog and picked her up. He went into the kitchen and sat at the table by the window with Molly in his lap. Outside, the real world shifted as he looked at it through the old glass pane; the foliage wavered as he slowly tilted his head back and forth. There went Dad, along the path by the old barn. Down by the water he saw Nils’s hair in the spot on the beach where he liked to sit when he wanted to read in peace. And directly above Benjamin, Mom was sleeping. He was familiar with every step of her awakening, knew what to listen for. Those first, tentative steps as bare feet hit the bedroom floor and, right after that, a sound like whiplash as she pulled up the blind and it hit its own case. A window opened and then came the golden rain outside the kitchen window as she emptied the chamber pot she used when she didn’t feel like going downstairs during the night. The little creak as the bedroom door opened, the sudden, quick steps on the stairs, and then she was in the kitchen. He thought about the risks, and the consequences should someone discover him, but there would be plenty of warning signs, plenty of time to flee. He stood up and snuck into the hall, where Mom’s purse hung from a hook. He found her wallet and peered down into an adult’s universe, so many credit cards in the little slots, receipts and parking slips telling of a rich life, clues to all the great things she was part of when she left her family to go to work. In the billfold were hundred-kronor bills, and fifties and tens, all next to each other. There was an incredible amount of money here. He carefully pulled out a ten, holding it between his thumb and index finger. He reached back toward the purse to return the wallet.

  “What are you doing?”

  Mom was staring at him from halfway up the stairs. Her open robe, hair on end, pillow marks on her cheek. He couldn’t believe it; it was impossible. How could she suddenly just be there, without any warning at all? It was as if she’d never gone to bed last night, as if she had spent the night on the stairs, sitting there in the darkness and waiting in silence for the dawn, for this moment.

  “Answer me, Benjamin. What are you doing?”

  “I wanted to borrow a ten from you for a time capsule, but you were sleeping and…”

  He fell silent. Mom walked down the stairs, took Molly from Benjamin’s arms, and placed her gently on the floor. She let her run off before turning to Benjamin. She looked at him for a moment in silence. Her teeth flashed in a quick grimace.

  “You don’t steal!” she shouted.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Give me that.”

  He handed her the bill.

  “Let’s sit down here for a minute.”

  She took a seat on the bench in the hall and Benjamin sat down next to her. Two figures suddenly on the other side of the window: his brothers had heard Mom shouting and were here to see what was going on. They pressed their noses to the pane, and Benjamin met their gazes.

  He looked out the door, hoping that Dad would come back; he knew it was dangerous when Mom was upset and had him to herself.

  “When I was ten, or maybe nine…,” Mom said.

  She looked up, her eyes searching the ceiling, and she burst out in a little laugh as if she had just thought of an amusing detail in the story she was about to tell.

  “I was nine. One day I stole a one-krona coin from my dad’s coat pocket. And I hopped on my bike to zoom down to the store because I had decided to buy a lollipop. But halfway there I stopped—out of regret. What have I done? I thought. And I stood there for a long time, in anguish. Then I hurried back, and when I got home I snuck into the hall and put the coin back in his coat pocket.”

  In the silence that followed, Benjamin gazed up at his mother. The story was over, that was clear, but he didn’t understand. There was no lesson—it was vague, confusing. What did she mean? Did she want him to put the bill back in her wallet?

  “But this…” She held the banknote up in front of him. “Stealing money. You just don’t do that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Because I knew you wouldn’t give
me the money.”

  She looked at him. “Go sit in the root cellar and think about what you’ve done for a while,” she said.

  “The root cellar?”

  This was a new sort of punishment. In the past he’d always been sent to the sauna, when it wasn’t on. And he had to sit there all by himself on the top bench to think about his mistakes. Mom’s child-raising methods were strict and rule-based—and, at the same time, inconsistent. Mom was tough but ambiguous. He never knew when his time in the sauna was over, when he was allowed to come out again. He had to figure it out for himself. This meant that he walked around afterward with a lingering guilty conscience, wondering if he had left too soon. But the root cellar was another thing entirely. He hated its cold, damp dark. Those times Dad had asked him to fetch a beer from in there, he’d made sure to keep both the inner and the outer doors wide open, and then took his mark and dashed in, quick into the dark and then out again.

  “Can I leave the doors open?” he asked.

  “Yes, that’s fine,” Mom replied.

  He stood up right away and walked out; Pierre and Nils looked away as he passed them. He stopped outside the root cellar, his hand on the knob of the rotting door as he gazed up at the wall of trees that rose above him. He turned around and saw Mom watching him from one of the patio chairs. She took out a cigarette and leaned down below the table so she could light it out of the breeze. He walked into the blackness. The cold air struck him. The scent of soil. Once his eyes adjusted, he could see the contours of the room. Against one of the walls was a six-pack of beer and a carton of yogurt. Some junk left over from summers past, a plastic bag and the box from a cake they’d bought for Mom’s birthday long ago. In the center of the cellar stood an empty beer crate, which he turned upside down to sit on. He gazed down at his bare feet against the gravelly ground. Watched goose bumps rise on the skin of his thighs. He wished he’d brought a jacket, because he was about to get cold. Through the small doorway he could look out at the summer. He saw the tangle of raspberry bushes and a corner of their soccer pitch, the back of the sauna where the nets were hanging. He saw the dog coming through the tall grass, making her way closer to the opening, stopping at the entrance to peer in.

  “Come, Molly,” Benjamin whispered.

  She took a step into the darkness, trying to see Benjamin.

  “Molly,” Mom called from the patio. “Come here.”

  Molly turned to look at Mom and then back to Benjamin.

  “Hey there, hi there,” Mom called in her singsong. “Come let’s have a bite to eat.”

  The dog ran off and was soon out of sight.

  Benjamin watched as a gust of wind suddenly blew across the yard, went through the treetops down by the water and up to the house, and as it reached the root cellar it slammed the door closed. Everything went black. Benjamin shrieked and threw his hands out in front of himself, staggering ahead until he found a wall with his fingertips. He assumed that if he just followed it he would soon reach the door, fumbling along the rough surface, but he seemed only to find deeper darkness and he felt as if he would soon be unable to find his way back. At last he felt a wooden shape, he kicked wildly, and the door flew open. He had made up his mind not to cry, but now he couldn’t help it. He wanted out, even though he knew that Mom would only send him right back in. And then there was that feeling of losing his footing, being lifted out of reality. It was happening to him more and more, and he could never predict when it would come. In music class, when they played the drums and the teacher was showing them how to play a cymbal more and more softly, and there was something about that sound slowly fading, how it trickled away from him, a threat that somehow silence could mean the end for him, and he gave a wild scream there in class, woke up in a different place with his parents’ faces hovering close above his own.

  He looked through the opening to anchor himself with the objects he knew were out there. And maybe it was his emotional state, or the tears, or maybe it was the absolute darkness in here and the absolute brightness out there that made the colors change; they became clearer, more beautiful. As if he were in a dark theater watching an old movie being projected across the doorway to the root cellar. The gray electrical pole turned white before his eyes. The water darkened to raven blue. The lawn glowed, blazing. And there was Dad, coming back from the barn, surrounded by a shimmer, he was like a fairy-tale character, a luminous figure passing by. Dad caught sight of the open cellar door.

  “Dammit, what have I told you about this?” he said, heading for the door. “This door must always be kept closed.”

  “No, don’t shut it,” Mom said calmly from her chair.

  “Why not?” Dad asked.

  “Benjamin’s in there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mom didn’t respond. Benjamin watched as Dad peered into the cellar in surprise, then turned back to Mom.

  “What’s he doing there?”

  “He stole money from me.”

  “He stole money?”

  “Yes. So now he has to sit there for a while.”

  Dad took a step toward the root cellar; now he was right outside. He squinted, trying to see into the dark. Dad was only three yards away but couldn’t make him out. Yet Benjamin sat there on his crate, watching Dad and all his colors and contours, watching him light up the whole doorway, an enormous figure surrounded by a wonderful, golden glow. Dad took off his fisherman’s cap and scratched his head, standing at the doorway for a moment in thought. He looked over at Mom and back into the darkness. Then he went on his way.

  Benjamin doesn’t know how long he sat there. One hour? Two? He watched the sun move outside, creating new shadows, watched the clouds come and go. In silence and darkness he saw and heard everything, with superpower hearing; he heard the wind banging at windows, heard the water pump when someone flushed the toilet, heard swallows scraping at wood, and by the time Mom approached the doorway of the root cellar and said he could come out, his ears ached, ringing with sound.

  Benjamin walked to the barn, where Pierre was sitting on the floor with his comic books. Pierre looked up at him.

  “Hi,” he said. “So you’re out now? Do you want to finish the time capsule?”

  Benjamin nodded.

  The brothers passed the patio, where Mom had settled back down with her newspaper.

  “You can keep this, by the way,” Mom said, pointing, without looking up, at the bouquet of buttercups, which was in a grubby drinking glass on the table.

  Benjamin picked up the flowers and the bread box and they went down to the lake. They knelt by the sauna and dug a hole for the time capsule. Dad had recently planted a tree right next to the sauna, so the earth was freshly turned and easy to dig. Pierre helped for a while but got bored when it seemed to take time, so he went to toss rocks into the boathouse, not far off. Benjamin wanted the hole to be deep, so the capsule wouldn’t be discovered too early by mistake. He wiped the sweat from his brow and saw Dad coming down the narrow path. Benjamin pretended not to see him and kept digging. He felt Dad’s presence as he stood there gazing down at his boy.

  “How’re you doing, son?”

  He didn’t respond, stabbing the earth with his trowel, making the hole deeper.

  “Are you digging?” Dad asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I have something for your time capsule.”

  Benjamin looked up. Dad was holding out the ten-kronor bill. “But that’s Mom’s money.”

  “We don’t need to mention it to her.”

  Dad crouched down. Benjamin opened the bread box and put the ten inside. Then they covered the hole.

  | 9 |

  4:00 P.M.

  They walk in a line back through the forest, heavy steps through the glades where they ran as children. They take it slow on the last little steep bit down the hill, catch themselves among the
trees so as not to lose control, and tumble out into the blazing sun. They sit down at the small table just outside the cottage. Pierre walks off and roots through the car for a moment, then returns with a few cans of beer.

  “The car stinks like ground beef,” he says. “Who the hell brought ground beef ?”

  “That’s the pierogi from Mom’s freezer—they thawed out,” Nils says. “Want one?”

  Pierre laughs, doesn’t answer, suppresses some fresh jab. The beer is warm and hisses and foams and the brothers drink it in silence as they gaze at the lake. Benjamin’s phone rings, an unknown number; he silences it but lets it keep ringing. It rings again. Benjamin silences it again.

  “Aren’t you going to answer?” Nils asks.

  “Hell no,” Benjamin mutters.

  A text arrives. Benjamin reads it, first in silence, and then out loud for his brothers:

  “ ‘Hi, this is pathologist Johan Farkas. I’m the one who opened up your mother and if you want some information about the cause of death please give me a call.’ ”

  “No, thanks,” Pierre says. “Don’t want to know.”

  “Come on,” Nils says. “Of course we’re going to call back.”

  Benjamin throws up his hands, indicating that it’s up to his brothers to decide what he should do.

  “Call him,” Nils says.

  Benjamin dials the number and places the phone between his brothers on the table. He gives his name and immediately hears a familiar echoey sound on the other end as someone turns off speakerphone and picks up the device, and then there’s a voice saying, “Oh, good”—satisfaction that contact has been made.

  “Well,” says the pathologist, “since the circumstances surrounding your mother’s death were a little, uh, how should I put it…”

  Benjamin hears a distant clatter in the background, as if the pathologist is simultaneously unloading a dishwasher.

  “There were some things that weren’t clear, so to speak.”