Something had been trapped in the atmosphere.
After days of cold rain and wind, the heat had returned and settled heavily over the fields. The sun shone white, stinging against bare skin.
When I went down to the field in the afternoon to bring in the cows for milking, the animals and I were attacked by horseflies and black mosquitoes. A whirring, devilish cloud that went after my sweaty neck and the cows’ tense udders and big wet eyes. The heavy animals moved uneasily, kicking out and rearing at the slightest touch.
“Kipkipkip!”
I had a bruise on my thigh after being caught between a panicked cow and a watering trough the day before, and burn marks on both hands from the rope she’d dragged away with her. It still hurt, but I didn’t want to sit there staring and doing nothing. It was better to get the work done and think as little as possible.
I ran a few steps in front of the cows and opened the wire fence at its two springy plastic handles. Pushed the hot, strong-smelling bodies as they pushed past me, rushing directly toward the open barn door.
Behind the yard, Soffi was yapping, hot-tempered and persistent.
“Do you need any help?”
Sten had suddenly appeared behind me. He strode up next to me, hands in his pockets. He’d put his dagger in his belt, just like he used to when we were younger. Kept picking nervously at its shaft.
I prodded a bony cow’s ass with the stick. For some reason, I couldn’t look at him, even though he seemed more okay than he had in a long time.
“You can help with the milking cups,” I said.
He nodded and hammered a flat hand hard on one of the cows’ asses to prove his perseverance. The animal jumped forward in an uneven run, so I had to chase it down, make soothing noises and click my tongue to calm it.
“Good thing you’re not a bull,” I said.
Sten pointed to one of the reddish cows that had begun to take a shit. Dung ran down over its flaps and legs.
“Ugh, dammit.”
There was something hard in his voice, as though he’d come to pick a fight. I didn’t say anything, just walked into the stable after the animals and locked iron rings around the necks of those already in their boxes. I scratched their wide, greasy foreheads, grabbed their sharp horns and rubbed their thin skin at the root so they shook their heads impatiently. Then I went into the milking parlor and picked up the three buckets, lids and suction cups.
Sten didn’t move.
He was still standing there with his hands buried in his pockets, shaking a little in the cool of the cowshed. His shoulder blades were sharp wing stumps under his T-shirt. The shed smelled of ammonia and cow and fermented straw. The chains rattled, and a little farther down the hall, a cow spread its stiff legs, letting piss splash down into the waste channel.
“You can take water and cloths into the milking parlor,” I said.
He did as I said, and we walked down our respective sides of the hallway, bending and washing the teats of the greenish cakes of dried shit, dust and urine that clung to them. Rubbed the cows down on their hot flanks.
“Thanks for the other day.”
I was happy I was standing with my back to him. Didn’t want to reveal anything natural or vulnerable to this version of Sten.
“Yeah. It was good, wasn’t it?”
I connected the suction cups and milking machines to the vacuum in the ceiling, and Sten put the cups on the first cow. The machine’s rhythmic thump and champing suck mixed with the noises of the cows in the connectors. I started the next machine and went over to a cow whose teats were reddish and fever-warm, and whose udder was hard as stone in my hands. I’d seen what Anton did with these kinds of udder infections before. Started gently with the cow udder cream as I clicked my tongue and gently massaged from the top and down until the first trickles of blood-streaked milk ran into the dung channel. The cow stomped in pain during the first touches, but I continued to milk until the udder was as soft as dough.
“There’s something I’ve been thinking about,” said Sten. “Or we. Me and Karsten.” He’d been standing there, watching me and the cow with shiny large eyes in the dusk.
“Yeah?”
“Anders walks a lot by himself, down to the forest and such.”
“Yeah?”
He smiled, but you could see too much of his teeth. It wasn’t genuine.
“We talked about the fact that he doesn’t know anyone down that way. So that’s a bit strange.”
“He just walks. That’s what adults do.”
I knew where he was going with this. He was unable to think of anything other than Lise lately, and I couldn’t halt the idea that was hatching in his boiling brain.
“Adults, yes. Adults.” He glared at me with a significant look. “But Anders isn’t a real adult, is he? What do you think he does out there?”
“I don’t know, Sten,” I said. “That’s up to him.”
The first bucket was full, so I carried it into the milking parlor and emptied it in the tank. Wiped my forehead with my forearm. The gray striped cat that had snuck in through the open stable door meowed ingratiatingly in the thick reek of warm milk. Sten followed me.
“Haven’t you noticed something strange about him? The way he follows Ellen so closely. It’s disgusting to watch.”
I stiffened. “They just talk,” I said. “He’s not doing anything.” I tried to avoid eye contact with him as I spoke.
“Well, not yet. But we’d like to talk to him without his brother being there.”
He took out a cigarette and lit it without looking at me.
“He’s a peeping Tom, Jacob. A creep who sneaks all over the place, staring at ladies and doing all sorts of perverted things. Tons of people are saying it. Someone saw him hanging around at Damgården.”
“And what—”
“There’re three girls at Damgården. You know that, too.”
“Just shut up, Sten. You don’t know him at all.”
I put the bucket down and grabbed him. I was about to give him a pinch or squeeze his neck. Hard. Why’d he have to be an idiot and start all this now? I could feel his bone as I bore my fingers into his upper arm.
“Ow, hell.” He wrestled himself free, waving the lit cigarette in front of my face, but was still astonishingly calm. As if I were a three-year-old he was trying to calm down. “Are you stupid in the head or what? You’ve seen him yourself, drooling over her. And the police aren’t doing shit anymore. They’re finished. It’s over. They’ve packed up their stuff and have gone back to Randers or Aarhus or wherever the hell they came from.”
I stopped. He was right in a way about Ellen, and the way Anders looked at her. But we all looked at girls all the time. All types.
“You’ve peeped on the girls’ locker room yourself,” I said. “Plenty of times.”
He shook his head.
“You know there’s a difference. He’s old and crazy. Try to imagine it. A whole life without sex. That drives a man insane, and then suddenly . . .” He clicked his fingers. “People can have all sorts of peculiar thoughts in their heads, just like animals. And most people can control it. But not Anders. He’s crazy, and if it is him, who’s . . .”
Sten stopped, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. They were still enormous and shiny.
“Come on,” I said, hearing the pleading tone in my own voice. “You’re not thinking straight, Sten. The way you are.”
“I can see. And you know very well what I’m talking about. Karsten is worried about Ellen, and maybe you should be, too.”
His eyes burned, and his cheeks flushed a hot red under his sharp cheekbones. Something I recognized as a sure sign he was about to start crying. I turned away to save us both the humiliation.
“You don’t have to do anything but call me the next time Anton goes somewhere. We can easily figure out the rest. We’re just going to talk to him, find out.”
“I don’t know, Sten.”
It was strange, because I usually thought Sten was . . . an idiot. He was a friend, of course, but he was the kind of friend it was easy to talk into things. Because he had no one other than me and Jørgen and them. And because he was a little dense. Read like someone in the fifth grade. Stammered with his big Adam’s apple hopping nervously up and down. It was usually me who told him what to do. Not the other way around. Now it was as though what had happened to Lise made it completely impossible to argue with him. Not because I felt sorry for him, but because he seemed older and harder, like he knew what had to be done.
“Maybe.”
He let out a short, unhappy laugh. Raised one hand and made a peace sign while the other fumbled for his cigarettes in his back pocket.
“Thanks, Jacob.”
He sounded like an adult who had just persuaded an unreasonable toddler to hand over the knife he’d been playing with. “You’re still the best. You and him, Karsten. I’ve started sleeping at night again.”
He looked like himself for a moment. The big, stupid boy he should still have been.
“That’s good, Sten.”
He smiled pallidly.
“Yeah, I know what to do now,” he said. “You’re a good friend, Jacob. You always have been.”