I ASKED:
“Can you always tell?”
My mum’s response was emphatic:
“Yes.”
Like a speeding car that had shot over a bump, wheels only briefly leaving the road, she returned to her account without the slightest elaboration.
I played Mia’s last words over in my mind, and it struck me as an unusual way to finish a conversation. The reference to the hermit was surely a cryptic instruction that I should pay this man a visit. The more I thought about it the more certain it seemed to me that this had been Mia’s intention. I wouldn’t wait. I’d visit him right away. So instead of returning home, I cycled up the road past my farm, past Håkan’s farm, searching for the hermit’s farmhouse. Eventually I saw the old house, stranded in the middle of the fields like a stray animal. It was hard to believe that anyone lived there since it was so run-down and neglected. The driveway was entirely unlike the perfectly maintained entrance to Håkan’s farm. There were waist-high weeds between loose stones, and the fields on either side were closing in, the countryside swallowing the path. Abandoned farm equipment dotted the approach, eerie and sad. There was the footprint of a barn, recently torn down.
I dismounted my bike. With each footstep I told myself there was no need to check if Håkan was watching. I was almost at the farmhouse when my willpower faltered. I turned, just to reassure myself. But there he was, his giant tractor on the horizon black against the gray sky. Though I couldn’t distinguish his face from this distance, there was no doubt in my mind that it was Håkan—imperious, atop his tractor throne. Part of me wanted to run and I hated him for making me feel so cowardly. Refusing to give in to fear, I knocked on the hermit’s door. I didn’t know what to expect, perhaps a glimpse of some gloomy interior with cobwebs and dead flies. I didn’t expect a gentle giant of a man framed by a tidy hallway. His name was Ulf Lund, a man with Håkan’s strength and size but touched with sadness, his voice so soft I had to strain to hear him. I introduced myself, explaining that I was new to the area, hoping we could be friends. To my surprise he welcomed me inside.
Walking through to the kitchen, I noticed that he seemed to prefer candlelight to electric light. There was a churchlike solemnity about his home. He offered coffee and took a cinnamon bun from the freezer, placing it in the oven and apologizing for the fact that it would take a little time to defrost. He seemed content to sit opposite me in silence while the lonely bun warmed in the oven. I summoned the courage and asked whether he was married, fully aware that this man lived alone. He said that his wife had died. He wouldn’t say how. He wouldn’t even tell me her name, serving instead the strongest coffee I’ve ever tasted, so bitter I was forced to sweeten it. His pot of loose brown sugar had hardened. I cracked my spoon against the crust, realizing that no one visited him anymore. He duly presented me with the bun on a plate and I thanked him profusely even though the center hadn’t defrosted entirely, smiling as I swallowed a ball of cold sweet-spiced dough.
Afterwards, as I sat in the hallway, slowly putting on my shoes, examining my surroundings, two observations struck me. There were no trolls, none of the figures carved by Håkan. Instead, the walls were covered with framed quotes from the Bible, quotes stitched into fabric, each decorated with biblical scenes, stitched pharaohs and prophets, the Garden of Eden in colored thread, the parting of the Red Sea in colored thread, a burning bush, and so on. I asked if he’d done these. Ulf shook his head: it was the handiwork of his wife. There must have been over a hundred from the floor all the way up to the ceiling, including this one—