Chapter 51

She rested her head in her hands and let out a long breath. Suddenly she began to laugh, shrill and hysterical. Her built-up tension began to dissipate: she couldn’t stop thinking about his absurd twaddle, and soon enough she was cracking up until she was bent double, tears running down her face. But it wasn’t a pleasant, freeing laugh. Just something she had to get out. At last she pulled herself together and began to focus. She picked up the family history and resumed reading.

This was meant to be a history of my family, but it has turned into a confession. What is the use of that? After all, it’s too late.

But there were happier times. When Henrik was born, I was filled with the conviction that everything would be okay. He was a wonderful child. Healthy and cheerful, almost four kilos at birth, and he slept through the night so well, crying only when he was hungry or tired.

I felt so fortunate that I almost forgot my suspicions about his paternity. As determined as I was to hold onto this wonderful thing that had happened to me, that I turned a blind eye to other events. New maids were hired. The sounds that came from the attic couldn’t be shut out. But I convinced myself that perhaps this was better for them than poverty.

But then something happened that triggered a domino effect of incidents that would end in yet another tragedy at the manor. My uncle had decided that Henrik should learn to play the piano. We had a grand piano, and despite Henrik’s tender age, my uncle thought he had a certain talent. So he hired a piano teacher, William Lilja, a stylish man with hair much longer than what was considered appropriate for the day.

From the moment William arrived at Vindsätra, Gustaf was transformed. To think I didn’t understand! Those profound gazes between him and William; the way they grazed past each other so cautiously. And Gustaf’s sudden enthusiasm about Henrik’s playing, although he did no more than plink away.

One evening in January, a snowstorm blew in over the island. William had to spend the night at the manor. I woke to shouting voices and discovered I was alone in the bed. Henrik had been wakened and was whimpering in the nursery. I picked him up and carried him towards the racket; by now I could tell that my uncle was the one shouting. I opened the door to the bedroom. What I saw nearly caused me to drop Henrik.

Gustaf was lying naked on the floor, blood flowing from his nose. My uncle was standing over him, his hands in fists. In the bed lay a terrified William, the covers drawn up to his chin. When my uncle turned around, his eyes were wild with fury.

‘This is what your twisted husband is up to!’ he roared. ‘Take him away, before I kill the pervert.’

I tried to talk to Gustaf back in our bedroom, tried to ask how long this had been going on. But he only turned his back on me and cried himself to sleep.

I thought of William, who was a prisoner of our dark house, of the storm, until dawn, when he would be sent home with his career as a pianist in shatters.

We were awoken early the next morning by a sharp, impatient rap at the door. In stormed my uncle, in full riding gear.

‘Get up and get dressed!’ he shouted at Gustaf. ‘I’m going to make a man out of you.’

And Gustaf, full of terror but hoping to placate my uncle, went with him on the hunt that day. It had stopped snowing, but the morning was cold and raw.

Only an hour later, I heard my uncle calling from the entrance hall. Henrik and I were upstairs, and we ran down right away. Henrik rushed over to Uncle Markus but was brushed aside.

‘Send the boy away, Sigrid. I need to speak with you and Ofelia.’ My aunt had dragged herself out of bed and was also there in the entryway.

As I took Henrik to the nursery, my thoughts became chaos. Why had my uncle returned alone? Why was he so shaken?

‘There has been an accident,’ he said when I was back. ‘It’s Gustaf.’

I screamed and fell to my knees.

‘He was cleaning the barrel, somehow a shot was fired, I don’t understand how that idiot…’

Uncle Markus hauled me off the floor and embraced me. Rocked me. Only once did he hold me like that.

‘I want to see him,’ I said.

‘No, that’s not possible. Believe me, Sigrid, it would be too much. The shot went through his head. I’ll call the police now – you two stay here with Henrik.’

I have always believed that God the Father is the only supernatural being in this world. But there’s something more. The unspoken, the invisible, that which is not concrete but can still be suspended in the air. And in that instant I felt it. It poked at me, nudged at me, until it was clearer than the burbling water of a brook in springtime.

So obvious it was, that lie.

Now, in hindsight, I wonder if I should have let it go. After all, I couldn’t get Gustaf back. Everyone was in agreement that it had been an accident, including the police and the medical examiner. But I was so sure they were wrong. I knew Gustaf and his cowardice. It was unthinkable that he would have cleaned a rifle without making sure it was unloaded. This heedless behaviour was so contrary to his nature that I couldn’t let it go.

The day after the funeral I stood in the doorway of my uncle’s office, waiting for him to glance at me.

‘Uncle, I don’t understand how Gustaf could have died. He was always so careful…’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘I only want to inquire about how it happened.’

‘We’re done talking about this. If you know better than the entire legal system, then you should contact them.’

He had that look on his face. Each time that look appeared, it was very bad news for me. But nothing happened that day.

I woke in the middle of the night to his breath in my ear. To his hand grabbing the back of my neck. He tied my hands to the bedstead with rope. Tore off my nightgown. Began to beat me, so hard I knew he had lost control.

I’m going to die, I thought. This is the end of my life.

But I didn’t die that night. Beat me black and blue – that he did. I was so sore afterwards that I could hardly move, and I was sick with shame. But I survived. And she came to me that night. To comfort me.

Now, I’m sure you are wondering how on earth I could stand all of this, and why I didn’t ask anyone for help. Couldn’t I have taken Henrik and run away? Surely any life would have been better than this.

That question is not easy to answer. If I ran away, I would be sentencing Henrik to a life of poverty. My uncle had inexhaustible resources with which he could hunt us down. And after all, the last time I’d tried to escape, it hadn’t gone so well. I had no other living relatives, no close friends, and no job training. Every part of my life was contained within the manor walls.

I was convinced I was in a trap and would never be able to get out. So I chose the simplest way: I became completely submissive. So compliant and humble that I never provoked Uncle Markus. As long as I remained quiet, took care of Henrik, and cast my eyes downward, he left me alone. And this was a miracle in my miserable life.

I’m doing this for Henrik, I thought. So he can grow up and take over the manor one day, and spread light and warmth here. This is my lot in life, and I have to make the best of it.

Perhaps another woman will someday read this. Perhaps she will be in a similar situation. So I want to say it’s important to be shrewd. I could have gone out on the property to pick some poisonous plant and then mixed it in his liqueur. Perhaps I could have tucked a burr under his horse’s saddle. And now I’m sure you’re saying ‘Oh no, that would be dreadful!’ But life isn’t always pleasant. And when you don’t speak up, there are consequences.

Now I’m thinking about Henrik. Wondering how he turned out the way he did. Whether it was his upbringing, or if it was already there inside him. Or if it was a fatal combination of the two – like pouring magnesium into water.

Henrik was six years old when I realized something was wrong.

It started with the anthill. A piercing, naked scream came from the forest near the annexes. I rushed over and found him brandishing a shovel. He was standing in the middle of the anthill, stabbing the shovel into it as he bellowed. I ran over and lifted him away, trying to calm him. His whole body was covered in angry ants, which I brushed off. When he was quiet, I tried to talk to him.

‘Ants aren’t dangerous if you leave them alone.’

‘I’m not afraid of them, I just want to kill them.’

Two days later, he poured petrol over the anthill and set it aflame.

The strange behaviour continued. First with insects – he would pull off their legs and wings or burn them to death by focusing sunbeams through a magnifying glass. Then he turned to torturing small animals on the farm. At last I got my uncle’s permission to take Henrik to a child psychologist. The doctor first spoke with Henrik, who appeared to give sensible answers to his questions. Thereafter the doctor listened to me as I told him about everything Henrik had done.

‘What could it be? Is he sick?’

‘He’s so young,’ the doctor said, looking at Henrik, who was pressing his nose to the aquarium in the waiting room and making terrible faces at the fish. ‘It might go away on its own.’

‘But what is this – what is wrong with him?’

‘If he were an adult I would say mild psychopathic narcissism, but it may be a phase of development that he’ll grow out of.’

‘Can something like this be hereditary?’ I asked, full of dread.

‘Perhaps, but it’s often a combination of heredity and environment. We’ll let it rest there for a while. Come back if he doesn’t improve.’

And it did go away. As quickly as these ideas had begun, they vanished.

I felt great relief.

Thank God, he won’t turn out like them.

Henrik often brought playmates to the manor. This made me happy, because children spread warmth and cheer to the otherwise empty, gloomy house. My uncle had no objections. Anything to keep Henrik happy, and – above all – normal.

The first incident occurred when Henrik was ten years old. A boy and a girl had come for a visit. When they’d had enough of running around the great rooms, they retreated to Henrik’s room.

It was the silence that bothered me first. My uncle was on the mainland for the day, and my aunt was resting as usual. It was so quiet in the manor that the rhythmic ticking of the Mora clock echoed off the walls. At first I supposed the children were immersed in some quiet game. But then I grew anxious, padded up the stairs, and put an ear to the door of the nursery.

I could only hear a faint murmur inside. I cracked the door and peered in, but all I could see was a pair of feet so I threw the door wide open.

The girl was naked on the floor. Both arms were extended above her head and her hands were tied to a bureau. The boy was holding her feet; her legs were spread, and there between them sat Henrik with a long, blunt object in his hand.

I kept calm to avoid scaring the girl.

I made Henrik untie the rope and helped the girl back on with her clothes. I took the object, which I could now see was a screwdriver, from Henrik’s hand. None of the children said anything. At last I asked the girl why she had let the boys do this to her, and she responded that Henrik had promised her money. And he had plenty of it, because my uncle passed him bills regularly.

I thought of the girl’s parents, about whether I should talk to them, but she seemed relatively unaffected and I decided nothing serious had really happened.

When the children left, I tried to speak to Henrik but he only stared at me.

That night, as I was going to bed, I immediately felt that someone had been in the room. There was a vague sense of danger about. At first everything looked perfectly normal, spic and span thanks to the servants. But then I saw the object on the bed, neatly placed on the pillow. A noose made of thick rope, neatly displayed on the pillow. I screamed and everyone came running – Henrik, my uncle, a few maids. I went to Henrik and shook him, because it had to be the same rope he’d used to tie up the poor little girl. But Henrik pulled away from my grip and flatly denied it. And, as usual, my uncle took his side.

‘You’ve always been a bit forgetful, Sigrid.’

It wasn’t until I was lying in bed that it occurred to me she might have been there. Everything was so unnaturally still in my room. The window was open. The sea whispered quietly as it was stroked by the wind. And I could have sworn I heard her whisper from far off in the sound.

For the next few years, Henrik acted perfectly normal. This seemed to be his pattern – he would make trouble, and then nothing would happen for some time.

It was during this period that Aunt Ofelia suddenly died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-two. Uncle Markus was fifty-five then, virile and in good health, a man in the prime of life. Now we three were the only ones at the manor. And the servants of course – we had plenty of them.

I grew more and more restless. But then, in one of Uncle Markus’s better moments, he suggested I should get involved with charity work in the village. This brought back some of my spark and I created the Sigrid von Bärensten Fund, which still grants stipends to help girls of little means with their schooling.

But back to Henrik. It was his fifteenth birthday. He wanted to have a party at the manor, with his friends, and Uncle Markus really went all out. I had seldom seen such pomp and circumstance on the property.

The girl was perhaps fourteen or fifteen. She was impossible not to notice. She wore knee-length white boots and a clingy patterned dress – even though low necklines were out of fashion in the sixties, her dress did show off a bit of her chest.

And she was dazzlingly beautiful besides.

Henrik’s eyes were on her like glue, and my uncle noticed. I heard them whispering as I walked by.

‘Do you want her?’ Uncle Markus asked Henrik. ‘You can have whatever you like – it’s your birthday. Ask her to sleep over.’

And somehow, remarkably, they convinced her to stay.

Uncle Markus had long since stopped caring what anyone heard from the attic. He often left the door open when he had the maids up there at night. So I didn’t suspect anything when I heard a scream after the party had ended. But then there was another scream, louder this time – as if from someone in distress.

I hurried up the stairs to the attic. The girl was half-lying on an easy chair. My uncle held her down as Henrik stood between her legs. They had torn off her clothes, which were scattered across the floor.

I didn’t want to see any more. I didn’t go in. Dear God, forgive me, but what could I have done?

I waited until the howling stopped and I heard steps on the staircase.

I waited outside the door to my uncle’s office.

‘Uncle, what have you done to that poor girl?’

‘Nothing she didn’t want to have done. She’ll be back. Her family is poor. We have much to offer her.’

‘Henrik must absolutely not… Lord Jesus, she’s underage.’

The blow came so suddenly that I lost my footing and had to grab at the wall.

‘Go ask her! Go! She’s sleeping in one of the guest rooms. Go, I said!’

I didn’t go to see her. I already knew what she would say. I didn’t want to know how they’d bribed her. So I kept my mouth shut. Again. I went up to my room, unsure how much longer I could live with myself. I felt so miserable and alone that I wanted to die.

But by the next time it happened, I had gathered my courage. My conscience was nudging me. The feelings of guilt were growing. The girls were so young.

They had left the door to the attic open that night. I was down in the sunroom working on my embroidery. That damn embroidery I didn’t even care about. But it kept my hands busy and calmed my nerves.

I had seen the girl sweep through the great rooms on her way up to the attic. High-heeled boots. A clingy knit dress. Black eyeliner and red lips that hid her tender age.

The screams began half an hour later.

‘I don’t want to!’ she cried.

I put down my embroidery and went upstairs to the attic. Her screams had died down into a despairing whimper. She stood with her head against the wall, naked. Her hands were bound high above her head with rope. Henrik had a whip in his hand and Uncle Markus was in the corner.

I was filled with thick, oozing shame.

I padded downstairs to my room and took out my camera, which, ironically enough, had been a Christmas present from Uncle Markus. Then I sneaked back upstairs and stopped outside the door.

They didn’t notice me. Henrik was pressing up against the girl’s back; he had entered her from behind. She was silent now, letting him do what he wanted. My son turned around and looked at Uncle Markus with a triumph in his eyes.

I took a picture.

They didn’t notice I was there. I took another.

Right away, I could see in the police officer’s eyes that something wasn’t right. He looked nervous and apologetic.

‘Well, Mrs von Bärensten, we have developed the film you brought in, but there are certain issues.’

I listened, my heart sinking.

‘Your uncle isn’t visible in the image, only a shadow that could be anyone. Your son and the girl are there, but I’ve made some inquiries and the girl says everything was consensual. That she and Henrik were playing in the attic and your uncle wasn’t there at all. I’m sorry, but I can’t do much with this. Surely you don’t want me to apprehend your son – he’s only fifteen. Perhaps you must simply keep a tighter rein on him.’

He handed me the pictures I had taken. You couldn’t see Uncle Markus, only Henrik and the girl in the shameful pose I had captured so well.

‘But what goes on up there – it cannot continue,’ I tried. ‘You have to take me seriously.’

The officer placed his hand over mine.

‘There, there, Mrs Bärensten. Boys are curious creatures. I’m sure he’ll grow out of this behaviour soon. But by all means, if you would like to file a report…’

‘What would you do with it if I did?’

‘I suppose we would have to talk to your uncle. See what he has to say.’ The officer stood up hastily. ‘If you want my opinion, I think you should stop playing detective and set the boy straight instead.’

In that instant, a cold hand squeezed my heart. I was totally alone.

But then, once again, everything seemed to get better. Henrik was sent to boarding school in France. Uncle Markus had business in the capital city and only came home on weekends. For several years, the manor was quiet and peaceful. I volunteered and worked on my trust. I thought the worst was over. Mother had vanished and I hoped she had finally found peace.

Then Emelie and Karin came to the manor, and everything changed. They couldn’t have been more dissimilar.

Karin blew into our lives like a breath of fresh air. She filled every room with her energy, bringing new life into everything that had been dead. Emelie was more like an object, a pattern on wallpaper. She came from a rich family and had been selected by Uncle Markus to marry Henrik; she was quiet and withdrawn.

Karin was our housemaid. Her thick, dark hair fell to her waist. She was round with lovely eyes and a carefree laugh that seemed out of place in the dark rooms.

Uncle Markus was over seventy by now, but the glances he cast after Karin proved that he was in no way limited by his age. But Henrik was the one who fell head over heels. His eyes devoured her; he followed her everywhere. Karin rejected his advances, polite but firm. And there I was again, an onlooker, watching this game of cat-and-mouse which I just knew would end in disaster.

It took several years to happen.

Henrik prowled around Karin like she was a cat in heat. But somehow, remarkably, she managed to keep him in check. Until one ill-fated day.

I had been on the mainland and returned home late that afternoon. It was winter and darkness had already fallen. The door to Uncle Markus’s bedroom was closed and I knew he was having a rest. His age had finally caught up with him and he looked tired sometimes, much to my unspoken joy.

The silence that met me when I walked into the house was broken almost immediately by a piercing shriek from the kitchen. And another. Even louder. By the time I got there, it was too late. Henrik had Karin on the floor, in a chokehold, going at her like a steamroller. As I came through the door, he let out a muffled groan and rolled off her.

I was ten or fifteen minutes too late. If only I had increased my pace a little, jogged back from the ferry! Henrik turned around and spotted me. He sat up. Karin was screaming in frustration. I just stood there as if I had dropped from the sky. I had the urge to gather Karin into my arms, but she got up and glared at me furiously. She reached for a cast iron frying pan and threw it; it barely missed Henrik’s head as he ducked. She ran out of the kitchen as Henrik remained on the floor. He looked at me with a sheepish grin.

‘Shit, Ma, we were just having some fun.’

At that moment it was as if Uncle Markus were sitting there staring at me. The trajectory of life was an infinity symbol and we had returned to the point where all the evil began.

It was six months before we saw Karin again. Uncle Markus was the one who first got wind of what had happened. Karin was pregnant and the child was Henrik’s.

Despite months of diligent begging and fawning, Karin stubbornly refused to have anything to do with us. But Uncle Markus was like a bulldog. The child would grow up at the manor. I have no idea what finally convinced her to change her tune.

One night she was just there, big as a house, with a suitcase in either hand. Her anger was a thundercloud around her.

It was out of the question for Henrik to marry Karin. She came from a poor family. But Uncle Markus would have that child, the greedy old pig. So Henrik married Emelie. She was, and remained, a shadow in our lives.

On the night Fredrik was born, a snowstorm ravaged the island. It was absolutely impossible for the ferry to cross the sound, so the village doctor came to us to deliver the baby.

I held Fredrik in my arms that night. He was wrapped in a blanket. Huge dark eyes gazed at me without fear, wise but unfathomable. I wondered who he was, and whether one day he might flat-out change the world.

The next morning, Uncle Markus didn’t come to breakfast. This was unthinkable, so I went straight to his room. I found him dead as a doornail in his bed, his eyes staring at the ceiling. A heart attack, the doctor said, but whatever it was it hadn’t come a day too soon.

Karin lived in the annexes with her son, but she refused to work for us – she took a job in the village café. I took care of Fredrik each morning. Henrik watched him in the afternoons. They clashed from the start. Fredrik was by turns angry, insolent, and rambunctious. No one but Karin could handle him. Emelie had begun to study on the mainland and wanted nothing to do with Fredrik. So it came to be that Henrik was often alone with the boy.

It happened when Fredrik was three. Karin was at work and I was in the village. A storm was heading for the island, so we both returned home early that day. The house was empty; it felt eerily deserted when we came in. Karin called out for Fredrik, but there was no response.

‘They must be out on the grounds somewhere,’ I said. But Karin was anxious. ‘It’s almost dark. What would they be doing out there?’

‘Maybe checking on the animals? Let’s wait a bit.’

There was a thud and Henrik appeared on the stairs that led down to the cellar. When he spotted us all the colour drained from his face, but he didn’t have time to say anything – Karin shoved him aside and hurtled down the stairs. I followed her.

The first thing I saw when Karin opened the door was Fredrik’s eyes, blinking like an owl’s in the light that streamed in. He was tied to a chair in the middle of the room. Naked. His arms bound behind him, his legs tied to those of the chair. A clothespin was clamped on his little penis.

‘The boy has to learn discipline, dammit,’ came Henrik’s voice from behind us.

It took no more than thirty seconds. Karin loosened the ropes and swept Fredrik into her arms. She shoved past us, up the stairs, and dashed out with Fredrik held close. I could see a bruise on his back. I had the curious thought that it was odd we had never noticed anything.

This was the last time Karin set foot in the manor.

Now I suppose I will have to write about the fire. Everyone got it all wrong. They thought my mother took her own life, crushed by the captain’s death when his ship went down. They thought my father committed suicide when he realized Mother was dead. None of this is true.

I know because I was there. I was only a small child, but my memory of that night is the clearest of all the memories in my senile brain.

My brother Oskar woke me up. He shook my arm so hard I sat up in bed with a start. Someone was shouting downstairs – it was Mother, calling for help. The shot came as we were going down the stairs, and it was so loud we froze. Mother cried out again, screaming our names.

Father was on the dining room floor with a hole in his forehead. His empty eyes stared at the ceiling. A dark stain was beneath his head, spreading across the expensive, speckled rug. A figure was standing behind him. At first I didn’t know who it was. Her face was so badly beaten it looked like an open wound. Her clothes were torn and blood ran down her bare chest. She was holding a large can. She caught sight of us.

‘Run to the annexes! Go!’ she cried.

We took off. Out the door and across the courtyard.

It all happened at once. The flames flickered in the house and Mother’s figure dashed across the yard. She stopped and called out to us.

‘I’ll come back to you.’

Someone saw her on Devil’s Rock before she jumped. At least, that’s what they said.

All that was left of Father once the servants had put out the fire was charred remains. The police labelled it a suicide. After all, the pistol was right there beside him and the room stank of paraffin.

Only Oskar and I saw Mother that night. We were the only ones who heard what she said. We made a secret pact, as only children can do. We had seen and heard nothing. And we were determined to take our secret to the grave.

Now I wonder what would have happened if I had done to Uncle Markus what Mother did to Father, just shot the bastard and burned the place down. Whether my life would have turned out a different way.

She came back to me here at the nursing home. It was almost too good to be true. I was sitting and gazing out of the window, as usual. The delightful scents of summer were blowing in on the breeze. The grove of birches was green. It was around Midsummer when she came. The sound of her rustling skirts behind me. Her breath in my ear. Her hands stroking my old, brittle hair. I thought it was strange that she seemed so young. Here I had been so determined to drive out old ghosts, but there she was beside me again.

The spell was broken when the door opened and an aide came in.

‘Sigrid,’ she said. ‘Listen to this. People have seen the ghost of the countess out at Devil’s Rock. Wearing a cape and everything. Where do folks get such outlandish ideas? Wasn’t she your mother?’

I attempted a smile, but my blood had frozen to ice.

Just a few days after the tragic incident in the cellar, a police officer was stamping his feet on our doorstep. I had already shouted at Henrik until I was hoarse. For the first time ever, I had shouted at him. But what good would it do?

The police investigation went nowhere and Henrik and Emilie soon moved to France. I moved into an apartment in the village.

I haven’t spoken to Karin since that day. We have run into each other in the village a few times, but she only gives me a chilly nod. She moved away from the island and didn’t return until Henrik was gone for good. But now she lives here again, with Fredrik, in their little cottage in the woods. She holds her head high, that Karin, despite everything that has happened.

For many years, neither Henrik nor I could stand the thought of selling Vindsätra. Anyway, we had more money than we needed. But then, a few years ago, a doctor came by and put down an offer. Wanted to turn the place into a convalescent home. It felt like liberation when I handed over the key.

Now we’re rid of this misery, I thought. I expected it would help me forget.

But it didn’t. Because now here I sit at this godforsaken, dreary nursing home, writing as death breathes down the back of my neck, and I still can’t forgive myself for everything that happened.

I cannot find any meaning in the sad little life I have lived.

I can feel her presence now; I can see her sitting in the chair across from me. I want to ask her about the meaning of life, but then I realize that she, too, has grown old, because she has no teeth; her face is wrinkled and her eyes are so sunken in their sockets. And when I reach out my hand to touch her, she fades away. Her mouth and eyes become black holes and her body dissolves into a fine dust that falls over me and this book.

And here I sit, all alone in the world.

They say life is short, but that’s not true. Life is neither long nor short. It is nothing but a bloody game of Russian Roulette – you can only wait and see. Sometimes what happened to me just happens.

But then I look out of the window and see Fredrik.

He can’t see me from where he’s standing in the path. He’s talking to a girl who looks like a fairy. The doctor’s daughter, I think. Maybe they’re on their way to the beach, because he’s wearing shorts and she’s in a sundress. He’s so pretty, Fredrik is. That dark hair gleams like copper in the sunshine. That sinewy, tanned body. He’s so sure of himself; you can tell. He takes after Karin, thank God.

So now I pin all my hopes on Fredrik. I’ll send this book to Karin and ask that one day, when he’s grown, she give it to him. Perhaps he can take over the fading torch that was once our family, and make it burn strong again.

And then my life will not have been in vain.

Recorded and signed on this day by
Sigrid Kristina Augusta von Bärensten