It was perfectly quiet in the large dining room. The tables had been shoved alongside the walls and the chairs lined up so that fifty people could sit close together, their eyes on the podium that had been erected for Oswald. Typically, the dining room was full of chatter and noise. But now they weren’t even talking to each other. It wasn’t an awkward silence; rather, it was forced and anxious. They had been waiting for half an hour now.
Sofia was sitting in the front row with Bosse’s gang and those in charge of the various units. In the very last row sat those who had landed in disfavour even before the newspaper article: Madeleine, and Helge, a guy from the household staff who had almost totalled one of Oswald’s cars when he was supposed to bring it in to be serviced. In the middle rows sat the rest, grouped by team. This had all been done according to Oswald’s instructions.
Now they could hear the familiar determined footsteps, but no one dared to turn around. Sofia was the only one who stood up to see if Oswald needed anything, but he shook his head and gestured at her to sit back down. He went to stand behind the podium and placed a sheet of paper on it. He looked up at them with an expression of mild concern.
‘We’re going to have a little chat,’ he began. ‘And figure out what’s been going on in recent days.’
His tone was friendly. The tense mood in the room relaxed a bit.
‘It’s very simple,’ he went on. ‘We had a chance to spread ViaTerra to innumerable people. Most of us worked our asses off to help out. But someone here spread lies to Strid behind our backs, and now we must find who is betraying us all with wicked lies.’
His gaze had hardened, and he fixed his eyes on random individuals. It was still perfectly silent. Sofia could even hear Bosse’s nervous breathing beside her. Oswald stared at Olof Hurtig.
‘Olof, you were Magnus Strid’s personal guide. You didn’t spill any secrets, did you?’
Everyone turned around to look at Olof. This was the first time Sofia had seen him without a smile pasted on his lips. The corners of his mouth usually pulled up a little even when he was being serious. But now he was stiff and pale.
‘No, Franz, absolutely not! We only talked about his program.’
‘You can call me “Sir”. That goes for all of you from now on. Like they do in the US. And you can be sure they have better control over their employees there than we do in socialist Sweden!’ Oswald said. ‘I hope you’re not lying, Olof. Don’t you see that Magnus deceived you?’
‘Yes . . . sir. I do.’
Now Oswald turned to her.
Surely he doesn’t think . . . ?
‘What about you, Sofia? You had a long conversation with Magnus in the library.’
Her voice sounded rough and strange when she answered.
‘We only talked about books, never about anything personal.’
He held her gaze for a moment. An icy chill ran through her, 176 and images along with it. Strid down by the pond. His concerned eyes and questions about her future. But that had nothing to do with the article.
She stared back at Oswald and tried to look unconcerned.
‘I believe you,’ he said at last. ‘Well, if no one will confess right now then you’ll have to figure it out among yourselves. I have more important things to deal with. But before I go we need to talk about the rules.’
He began to read from the paper on the podium.
‘One: I want reinforcements in staff administration. There must always be a guard in the sentry box by the gate and one patrolling the property. And Bosse needs someone to help him with staff ethics. Staff administration works under me. Directly. Understood?
‘Two: Within staff administration there should be a program to handle those who have messed up. They will perform hard labour on the estate and will not be permitted to speak with the rest of the staff. They are absolutely forbidden from speaking to guests. They must wear a red cap so everyone knows who they are. You can call this program “Penance” or something like that.’
He turned to Bosse, who nodded eagerly.
‘Yes, sir. I’ll take care of it.’
‘Three: All access to computer, cell phones, and any other electronic gadgets is banned effective immediately. Even during free time, which I doubt you’ll have much of anytime soon anyway. The computer here in the dining room will be shut down. Bosse, you can gather up everything people are hiding in their rooms. We’ll just have to confiscate it.’
An image of the laptop in her dresser drawer flew through Sofia’s mind. She had to find a better hiding spot.
‘Four: Tonight, before you leave the dining room, you will write a short but friendly email to your families and say you have a lot going on, that you’ll be unreachable for a while, and that they shouldn’t worry. You can write your messages by hand, and Bosse, your unit can send them from the dining room computer before it’s shut down.’ He chuckled suddenly. ‘Don’t look so upset! We’ll get through this. Just a few weeks, and everything will go back to normal and you can tweet and text to your hearts’ content.’
A few of the staff tittered nervously.
Oswald looked down at his notes again.
‘And finally, five: No one here leaves the property without my written permission. Benjamin can make purchases as usual, but the guard will note the times he leaves and returns to the manor. I have more important things to deal with now. Sofia, you can stay here until all of you are done. But tomorrow I need you on hand in the office.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Had she really said something so forced and ridiculous?
He gathered his papers and stepped down from the podium, then walked briskly down the aisle and closed the door behind him.
A screech came from the back of the room.
‘Dammit, Madeleine! Why didn’t you say anything? I saw you talking to Strid!’
It was Mona, and she had transformed. Her face was bright red and spit flew from her mouth as she shook her finger at Madeleine, who had flown up in response to the accusation.
‘I didn’t say anything! He just asked me how things were going and I said I liked working out in the sunshine. That was all.’
‘You’re lying! You talked for a long time.’
Katarina had stood up too. She was usually cool as a cucumber, but now her voice was shrill and strangely hoarse as she shouted at Mona.
‘What about you? You had Strid alone in the library more than once. What did you talk about, huh?’
Sofia wondered why Katarina was defending Madeleine, but she supposed they had become friends as they weeded the flowerbeds together. Mona paid no attention to Katarina, she just moved down the lines to get to Madeleine. She planted herself in front of the other woman and gave her a shove.
‘I know you’re lying!’ she shrieked in that new, strange voice. Then she shoved Madeleine again, harder this time. Suddenly everything happened at once: Madeleine was straddling Mona, whom she had dragged down to the floor. She pinned her arms to the parquet and screamed in her face.
‘Shut up! Shut up, you nasty old bitch!’
Then, the unimaginable: Mona lifted her head from the floor and spat right in Madeleine’s face. The glob of spittle landed in her eye and Madeleine howled in rage. Bosse came running and separated the two of them.
Sofia just stood there staring in amazement; she’d never seen anything like this at the manor — or anywhere else, for that matter.
Then she caught sight of Benjamin, who had a tiny smile on his face.
‘Do you think this is funny, Benjamin?’ she asked loudly.
‘Yeah, it’s pretty funny actually.’
Now everyone was looking at him. Even Madeleine and Mona were distracted.
‘What’s so funny about it?’
‘So it has nothing to do with you?’
‘Nah. I never talked to Strid and I don’t think screaming is going to get us anywhere.’
‘Okay, okay!’ Bosse had walked over to her. ‘Benjamin is being an ass right now, but he’s not wrong. We’ll have to tackle this another way. You can come up one by one and account for what you did with Strid.’
Sofia eyed him with mistrust. ‘All fifty of us?’
‘Can you think of a better way? Franz said he wants to know who the rat is.’
She shrugged and looked at Benjamin, who was making a face. She suppressed the urge to walk up and smack him.
Bosse called the staff up one by one to interrogate them. Others joined in too, if they had questions. It took almost three hours and in the end it all went off the rails, because no one wanted to admit they had spoken negatively about ViaTerra. Sofia was so restless that her skin was crawling; she checked her watch again and again, thinking of the emails they were supposed to write to their families.
Bosse was looking increasingly desperate; they hadn’t uncovered a thing. Everyone who was called up just stood there, stiff as a board, denying every accusation. At last Bosse turned to Sofia and whispered in her ear.
‘What do we do now?’
‘Write the emails we have to send.’
‘Yes, but what do we say to Franz?’
‘We say we’re going to question them all one-on-one until we find the leak. It might not be so easy for the guilty party to confess in front of fifty other people.’
‘You’re right! Let’s do that.’ He turned to the staff, full of energy again. ‘We’ll finish this later. Now you need to write to your families. Put your messages down on paper and include your email address and password.’
‘I’m not giving out my password.’ Benjamin again.
‘Oh, come on! You can just change it next time you log in.’
Benjamin responded with a displeased grunt.
When Sofia sat down to compose her own email to her parents, her brain seemed to get stuck. Her throat was thick with repressed tears and her eyes were burning. But she wrote an awkward message to say she was very busy and wouldn’t have time to call or write for a while. The tone wasn’t at all like her, but she was exhausted and just wanted to go to bed. But they kept at it until early morning. Staff had to be assigned to Bosse’s office. None of the unit heads wanted to give up any of their people, so a bitter fight ensued until the household unit and the farm unit each gave in and offered a few staff members.
Then, at last, they were done. The dining room felt sour and stuffy, and she went out to the yard for some fresh air. It was almost five in the morning; it was already light out and a pink summer sky with fluffy clouds suggested that it would be a beautiful day. She wandered around the lawn for a while, letting the dew drench her shoes and nylons. She looked up at the sharp, barbed-wire fence, trying to recall the sense of well-being she had felt when she was doing the theses, and had floated over the island like a swallow, but the feeling wouldn’t return.
Benjamin had gone straight back to their room and was already asleep when she came in. His clothes were strewn all over the floor and he was snoring heavily under the blanket. She opened the dresser drawer and saw her laptop, still wrapped in a sheet, but she couldn’t think of a better hiding place. It just looked like extra bedding, so she left it there. Slowly she undressed and hung up yesterday’s uniform, then nudged Benjamin until he shifted over. The clock told her that she had to be up again in two hours; she turned off the light and floated into a deep slumber.
I’m going to pause the story now.
Just for a moment, so I can explain something. You may have wondered about Lily. Why it happened, or why I didn’t drag her out of the barn that night.
So it’s important for you to understand the way I think. The way I steer my life.
I see life as a game, and there are many ways a person can play — you just have to pick one.
But there must be clear rules, and Lily and I had our own. She was my slave at night. It was a game we played, and she liked it.
So much that she begged me, nagged me, to play. To take greater risks. To do more dangerous things.
Then, that night, she broke the rules.
She made quite a mess of things, with her screaming and the fire, of course, and put me in considerable danger. And at times like that, you must think of yourself first.
I think Lily had lived out her life, somehow. She never belonged here; she was too weak and gullible.
It’s not as if I don’t think about her sometimes. She was special.
But she was only a part of the game, a chess piece that had been knocked out, no longer playable.
So now I’m going to give you some advice. See life as a game; don’t take it so seriously.
Other people are just game pieces. They can have different roles and can even cause trouble.
But you are in the main role and you always have a choice: use them or put them aside.
And don’t be such a damn bleeding-heart, because they’ll do the same to you, given the chance.
That’s how it was with Lily, and now it’s time to move on.