The Cruel Stars of the Night by Kjell Eriksson Page B

disappeared into the luxurious vegetation, was swallowed up never to reemerge.
    Sometimes it could be frightening because she never knew what awaited her. It could be the realm of death; behind a cleverly alluring curtain there was a sooty and suffocating hellish realm of suffering. She did not want to believe it. Nothing ugly could exist behind the good-tasting fruits in the trees and the shiny nuts on the ground.
    A cat slinked by, freezing in mid-movement when it discovered Laura, and then darted off through a couple of planks in the fence.
    There was nothing here that in any way resembled a heavenly gate that she would be able to walk through. She closed her eyes and tried to will it into being but it did not want to appear. When she opened her eyes the cat was sitting in front of her feet. It had snuck back without a sound. The tip of its tail was moving slowly.
    “I’m alone,” she said softly.
    The cat stared at her with eyes that looked like a concentration of hatred.
    Laura Hindersten let them take away the old Citroën that had been in front of the garage for almost fifteen years. It had started to melt into the surroundings, had assumed a mottled shade of green-brown, hidden under ever-more lush and wild greenery. It was really only the wheels that signaled that it had once been a car.
    The man who came to take it away laughed when he saw the wreck. Laura was upset at first but then joined in. When he had attached the hook and winched the car onto the tow truck she started to laugh again. The squeaking sound of the winch was like the most beautiful postlude over her father and the life she had lived. The man from the scrap yard smiled, unsure of her reaction. The old car protested, the steel frame creaked, leaves that had been lying on the roof slipped off reluctantly, and the deep cracks in the dried-up tires wailed.
    It was when the wreck was settled on the tow truck that the absence came. The space it left in front of the garage became a void in Laura’s interior. Confused, she went and stood where the car had just been. No person had stood in exactly this spot for many years. The last time might have been when she graduated from grammar school. The car worked back then. Her father had picked her up from the Katedral school. Even then the car was basically a wreck, a sorry sight, and she was embarrassed. Her classmates were picked up with horse-drawn carriages, leaf-adorned carts, and shiny American cars, driven through town in celebratory triumph and happiness.
    But she had sunk deeply into the backseat and glared at the back of her father’s head, listening to his disjointed conversation and irritated by his clumsy driving. The gears jammed, there was a rattling sound from under the hood, and she wished she were far, far away.
    Now the car was on its way from here. She absently signed the piece of paper that the man held out to her. He looked at her in a way she knew well. There was wonder, mixed with ridicule and pity.
    That was two weeks ago. Now there was a much fresher car in the driveway. To drive the Ford into the garage was a physical impossibility. The garage was full of discarded furniture, boxes with publications no one read any longer or even knew existed, empty bottles, piles of newspaper, and mounds of other junk.
    Already the new car was her ally, sworn to loyalty. Her secrets were only shared with him. It was a he, she had felt that at once. He obeyed her, took her to the places she had decided to visit. He never doubted whether it was right to go here or there. She talked to the Ford, shared her thoughts and plans. He answered by starting willingly and following her orders.
    Now he stood at the ready, heard Laura rattling the keys. She hesitated for a few seconds. There was still time to put the keys away and go back into the house. She knew that as soon as she got into the car there would be no turning back. The agreement with the Ford had to be upheld.
    She counted silently in her head.