The wind hurries, the clouds hurry, the brook hurries, the soughing summer hurries, and it will soon be past, and then autumn will come.
In the great grassland, the grass is no longer green, but there it stands in flower with reddish violet wisps at the top. The haymaking has started; Jutta’s father and uncle are out with their scythes, while Jutta’s mother and some other women and girls spread the hay and then, when evening comes, rake it together into small stacks. And there it stands, looking like some big dwarf city.
Jutta and Merrit help with the haymaking as well.
But then, one day, Merrit is on her own in a corner among the stones by the brook, making a wreath of dandelions and stinking mayweed and other late summer flowers. It is to be put on her sister’s grave, for it is this sister’s fifteenth birthday today.
“What was your sister called, Merrit?”
“She was called Merrit – the same as me. She died before I was born, and so I was given her name. Mother says I’m like her as well. And perhaps I am her.”
“Oh no, how could you be her, Merrit?”
“Well, perhaps her soul went over into my soul. And then, do you know what? That means I’m dead and buried even if I’m standing here as well.”
“That means you’re two people then. Is that possible?”
“Yes, it’s possible. There are lots of people who are two people. Just think of all the women going around with babies in their stomachs.”
Merrit’s voice sounds so cheerful and she looks radiantly happy, although she is not smiling, for you mustn’t smile in the churchyard.
“See, we’ll put the wreath here. Now please, Amaldus, wait a moment while I say the Our Father.”
Merrit kneels by the grave and sits there with her hands together and her head bowed. A few bedraggled cornflowers can still be seen in the grass. It’s a dark, blustery day and it looks like rain. The wind blows over graves and crosses as though with brooms and dusters at the height of the spring cleaning.
Then Merrit has finished her prayer. She gets up and makes the sign of the cross over the grave.
“Rest in peace, Merrit dear.”
It makes you shudder in some strange way to hear her say her own name over the grave, for suppose it was she, the live Merrit, who lay there dead in the ground. Horror and sympathy go through your mind in hot and cold waves; you want to take her hand and say her name, or simply to touch her a little and feel that she’s still alive.
Then we slowly go out of the churchyard, looking at graves and gravestones on the way. Lovely white crushed shells have been strewn on the narrow paths between the Window Man’s seven little grass-edged graves; the wind is whispering in them, and each of the graves has its own little wooden cross.
“And can you see the angel on watchmaker Girlseye’s grave, Amaldus? She can’t fly, because you can’t fly when you’ve got stone wings. That’s why she looks so miserable. Don’t you think she looks terribly miserable?”
“Yes. But why was he called that?”
“Watchmaker Girlseye? Well, that wasn’t his real name, of course. But that’s what everybody called him. Perhaps because he had beautiful eyes. Or perhaps because he was one for the girls… Oh, God forgive me for what I’m saying; you mustn’t say that kind of thing here in God’s garden.”
There is an enormous hawthorn bush standing on an almost obliterated grave. It’s so bent and twisted that it seems to be writhing in despair. Merrit hurries past it as though she is afraid it might catch her in its claws.
At the gate, she makes the sign of the cross again.
“Rest in peace.”
And then we are outside the churchyard.
“Do you know who’s buried under that funny-shaped bush, Amaldus?”
“Yes. A suicide (everybody knows that).”
“Yes, and do you know what he was called?”
“No?”
“Snorky. A dreadful name, isn’t it? And do you know what else? Come on, we’ll go into Grandmother’s garden and I’ll tell you more about Snorky.”
We go in and sit down on a bench in the open summer-house in the corner of the garden. It’s cold and draughty here. But from inside Grandmother’s house there comes the sound of warm, scurrying notes on the piano.
Then Merrit tells about Snorky, the suicide. It’s a nasty story about evil people, so it’s a good thing that Grandmother is playing such a cheerful tune.
For suicides don’t go to heaven, and so they have to stay on earth and be ghosts until Judgement Day. And Snorky has to live under his bush in the churchyard. So during the summer you can see his eyes deep down in the darkness behind the branches of the hawthorn bush. But in winter he has to hide in the ground with all the black beetles and worms and centipedes.
“Dare you listen to some more? No, it isn’t all that dreadful after all, ’cos it all happened ages ago. But just listen: ’cos when Snorky was dead and buried, he came back and was seen in the dark by his wife Emma. For Emma was a nasty piece of work and she had always refused to give Snorky decent food or wash his clothes, and she used to biff him on the head with a broom handle when he was drunk.”
“Did she kill him?”
“No, ’cos he did that himself. But do you know how he showed himself to her? Like a big black spider. And when Emma saw this big spider run across the kitchen table, well, bang! She stabbed it with the bread knife. And then there was a scream in the broom cupboard.”
“Why was there a scream in there?”
“’Cos that was the cupboard he hung himself in. And then there were splashes of blood on the cupboard floor.”
“Then what, Merrit?”
“Then Emma came with a cloth and wiped the blood up. And then she flung the cloth in the fire. And then she said something.”
“What did she say?”
“No, I daren’t say it now. Perhaps another time. Amaldus.”
“Yes?”
“Amaldus, you’ll have to take me home, ’cos I daren’t go past the churchyard on my own. Come on. And you’ll have to hold my hand.”
“Yes, but that looks so peculiar.”
“Yes, but then we must run. But make sure you run alongside me.”
So we run and don’t stop before we are outside the door of Svensson’s house. There we stop and puff and catch our breath.
“Now I can tell you what Emma said when she threw the cloth with blood into the fire. Dare you listen? Come on, and I’ll whisper it in your ear.”
Then you felt her mouth against your ear and heard her voice as she whispered:
Vanish like smoke in the earth below
Melt like wax before fire and glow
Vanish into fire and flame
And never again let me hear your name.