Extract from The Plum Grave

Caroline Söderlund

When Beata’s husband passed away, she buried him in the orchard, planted an apple tree on his grave, and got on with her life. She gave him a fleeting thought when she picked the apples in the autumn, but that was the only sentimentality she felt he deserved.
When Beata died herself, she expected the village to do the same with her. She didn’t anticipate being remembered well or mourned particularly long, the way Åke thought he would be, perpetually delusional about other people’s opinions as he was.
Weeds sprouted up around the apple tree’s foot now, and magpies screeched from their ugly nests and picked at the apples. Åke, who in life had only with reluctance strayed more than ten feet away from his beloved orchard, would have despaired at the state of it.
Good, and may his despair never end, Beata thought, raised the axe high above her head and let it fly against the tree.
It made a pathetic thump and left not the slightest dent in the mossy trunk. Her arms straining, she swung the axe again, and again, with all the might she could muster, which, admittedly, wasn’t a very impressive amount these days. The tree creaked weakly but didn’t budge. Laboriously, Beata bent down to inspect: a handful of barely discernible lines cowered in the bark, only just visible when she brushed her nose up against the rough surface.
‘Damn that August,’ she said, and hobbled back towards the cottage with the axe swinging back and forth in her hand. She had told her son-in-law to sharpen the axe weeks ago, but that stupid boy was too busy doting over her health to obey to even the simplest of instructions.
The prospect of being forgotten didn’t give Beata any particular pleasure, but she didn’t mind it. It was what she had expected since the day she arrived in this godforsaken village. What she did mind, with a wave of disgust so sudden and overwhelming that it surprised her, was being buried next to Åke under the apple tree.
He hadn’t been a bad husband, really. He had been both kind and a hard worker, and he’d had a nice smile, in the days when he still graced Beata with it, which was more than many wives in the village could say. Usually, one or the other was lacking. He just happened to be responsible for every ounce of misery and regret Beata’s pitiful life had cumulated in.
The thought of what would happen to her remains hadn’t bothered her until this morning, when August, the overbearing fool, had sent for the doctor. The doctor. The other day, when he had barged in for tea yet again, unwanted and uninvited, she had complained absentmindedly that her backaches had gotten worse recently and seemed to stem from a particularly angry lump clinging to her spine. Next thing she knew, the doctor from two towns over had wasted a journey all the way up here to tell her that the lump could kill her – in which case, cutting it off ultimately wouldn’t make a difference – or, that it was nothing but a wart – in which case, it would resolve itself. In short, his visit had been a waste of time and money. He hadn’t said it in quite those words, of course, being much too polite and city-like, but his pursed moustache and curt tone had made his opinion of paranoid old widows and their sons-in-law abundantly clear.
All his visit had managed was to remind Beata that she was indeed getting older – as if the various pains and aches plaguing every bit of her body weren’t enough – and that she had done absolutely nothing of value with her life. As such, she’d be buried next to her husband, and rot in the plot of land where she had already rotted away for most of her life.
The moment the doctor had rattled away in his ridiculous ornament of a carriage, she had gone for the axe.
‘Damn that big city-doctor. Devil’s spawn, the lot of them.’
With a scoff, she rounded the corner of her pathetic little cottage, and, as if the morning couldn’t have gotten any worse, was met with a fat toad squatting on the front step. Not just any toad, but a particularly fat one, with a wart and a flap of skin folded over its forehead very nearly like a hat.
Beata was sorely tempted to kick him off – she had told tomten repeatedly that she preferred him to stay in the barn – but then all hell would break loose, and all hell was the last thing she had time for today, the doctor’s visit having already eaten up the better part of the morning. She settled for a glare and a viscous swish of her skirt when she passed him.
‘You’re late!’ he croaked.
She slammed the door shut it its face.
It was truly a hateful cottage Åke had built her. Buckets littered the floor where the ceiling leaked and various old knitting projects were stuffed into the walls where the wind crept through in the winter. The furniture was crooked, the shelves sagged, the rugs were worn down to their last two threads, and everything creaked. Incessantly. The only nice thing was the large iron stove which took up nearly half the main room, and that Beata had bought herself, with the last of her parents’ allowance.
Åke had never paid any heed to Beata’s complaints, not once. They had everything they needed, he said. The buckets were sufficient to stop the leaks, the blankets enough to ward off the cold, and he had neither the time nor the money to fix it up anyway. Then he would disappear into the orchard until supper.
‘Thursday,’ she muttered, and shook off the lingering ghost of Åke. Thinking about him never did her any good. ‘Best get a move on.’
On Thursdays, Beata did the washing. The lump sent a spear of pain up her spine when she bent for the laundry basket, but she ignored it pointedly, ripped the sheets off her narrow, creaking – like everything else – bed and stuffed them into the basket with soap, a pail for water, and a loaf of good, white bread she’d baked yesterday. Couldn’t go to the creek emptyhanded.
With her things promptly gathered, she wrapped two shawls about her shoulders and another one around her head, so that only her warty nose and two white braids stuck out. It was only early September, but autumn was descending quickly, bringing a raw wind from the mountains to the north. Beata hated a lot of things, but nothing put her in quite so sour a mood as the cold.
When she stepped back outside, a grey cat stared reproachfully up at her where the toad had sat earlier. Pitiful tufts of muddy fur stuck out of his forehead.
‘Yes, yes, I’m late, and don’t I forget it.’
The cat meowed.
‘It was that sorry excuse for a doctor. And that stupid tree. Haven’t had a chance at all to make breakfast for myself yet let alone you, just act like a normal folk and have some patience, will you?’
‘Act like normal folk and have some patience, will you?’ the cat repeated in a mocking whine. ‘Where’s my porridge, huh? Want another leak in your roof?’
Beata scoffed, but indeed she did not, so, feeling rather silly, she flung her basket and pail on the ground, and went dutifully to fetch a saucer of yesterday’s milk.
It was no use sticking to principle when it came to tomten. She had learned that through several unfortunate incidents. Forget his porridge for a day or two, and the following night there would be another crack in the wall, right behind the bed, or the scissors would go missing, or if the creature was really offended, the goats would fall mysteriously ill. Better keep his belly full, and the orchard would flourish, the goats yield an abundance of milk, and the holes in the fence fix themselves. Though there was no rule to say Beata had to be happy about it.
‘Spoiled brat,’ she grumbled on her way to the root cellar, ‘worse than a toddler you are, and I would know, oh yes, raised one myself, and she was a spoiled one, let me tell you, but none the worse than you – insufferable devil…’

Åke’s favourite tree hadn’t been one of the apple trees, but the yellow plum tree behind the shed. Hence the apple tree on his grave – a final punishment Beata had seen fit to bestow upon him for the long-drawn disappointment that was her life.
The plum tree was older than both of them and ugly as sin, but Beata suspected it was the reason Åke had picked this wretched spot for their home. Every autumn, its branches used to droop under the weight of its treasure: cascades of yellow plums bursting with sweetness and flooding the cottage with sickening rot. Every day of September, Åke hauled bucketfuls of the accursed fruits inside. From young, tough and greenish at the start of the harvest, to deepening colours as the month waned, from bright yellow to rich gold to brown and worms, with sugar-sweet juice gushing all over the floor and rendering the entire cottage sticky.
Throughout October, Beata was a prisoner to the stove, stewing, marmalading, juicing, pressing, pickling, drying, baking, until her fingers were dyed permanently yellow and even her sweat began to smell like rot. The stench seeped into the walls and remained long into the winter, a sweet, sickly undertone no amount of Beata’s scrubbing ever entirely eradicated. It wasn’t only in her head, either, because during the long winter evenings, Åke would sometimes take a deep, satisfied breath, smile and say, ‘Do you smell plums?’
No matter how many more trees Åke coaxed out of the earth, none of them ever yielded a crop as abundant and sweet as that first one. No one knew where it had come from – by all agricultural laws, plum trees shouldn’t thrive this far north. Åke had cried for weeks after the tree grew too old to bear fruit. For years after its final crop, Beata would find him huddled underneath its corpse with a melancholy look at day’s end. She told him again and again to cut that stupid tree down, but he never would.
Every time she passed the old tree, cracked down the middle of its trunk but stubbornly still alive thanks to a twenty-year-old piece of rope, Beata made sure to give it a ready kick. Today was no exception: she stubbed her toe and nearly toppled over, but for the satisfaction it gave her the shooting pain was a price she more than willingly paid.
Out of principle, she hated the root cellar too, which was inconvenient, because it was the only tolerable place she had for storing food. The deep cavern fitted with rows of sturdy shelves, pretty iron candle holders and sealed with a thick door of carved oak was Åke’s proudest handiwork besides the orchard.
There were no candles in the candle holders – why one would waste candles on a root cellar was beyond Beata – and she couldn’t find the bottle of milk in the gloom. But she could smell that something had gone sour, so she dug out the nearest of the endless jars of pickled plums instead.
Back in the cottage, she poured the contents out on a saucer and put it down pointedly over by the barn for tomten.
‘There,’ she said to the yard, empty but for a lone chicken, ‘You keep your hands off my roof. And I’d like the goats fed.’
The chicken’s cackle was her only answer, but tomten would do as he was bid, she knew. No matter how grumpy he was, his nature was to protect and care for the farm, and only insult would detain him from his task. The splendour of the orchard was his doing, most likely, spoiled rotten with porridge, milk, and plums as he was.
Then, at last, Beata started off to the creek to do the washing. It was Thursday, after all.

A pair of bulging eyes and a leering mouth peered up at her from the creek when she arrived. Sagging cheeks, skin the green of rotting algae, and hair as dark as the river floated like seaweed on the surface of the rushing waters.
‘You again,’ she said, ignored the slight lurch her stomach made, and carefully placed the loaf of bread on a rock a little way off.
It was a pretty little place, even with the creature showing his ugly face every once in a while. Cloudberry and blueberry bushes pushed towards the rushing water and knobbly birches stood guard about the moss-clad rocks. The other women unfortunate enough to have husbands too lazy to dig them a well stayed well clear of it, but Beata had no time for such nonsensical behaviour.
‘Näcken will get you,’ Karina had warned with round, solemn eyes when Beata questioned why they all took the roundabout path to a clearing nearly a half-hour walk away. ‘He’ll lure you in under the guise of a beautiful man and then drown you and your children in the dark, cruel waters.’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ Beata had snapped in reply, and did just as she pleased. A bit of bread or a few spoonfuls of jam were usually enough to convince the creature to stay in his corner.
But today Näcken didn’t move out of the way, or even spare a glance at the good, white bread Beata had so graciously baked for him.
‘Go on then, I haven’t got all day,’ she said, but the creature only stared, with water dripping almost like tears down his bone-hollow face and yellow teeth. With a start, Beata realised tears were exactly what they were. Big, round drops, spilling out of his bulging eyes like pebbles.
‘Your hands reek of death, human. I will have no part of your offering.’
Never before had she heard him speak. His voice was a whisper, yet rushing and dark like the creek. It frightened her more than she would have cared to admit.
‘Don’t be a bully,’ she managed, ‘Get out of my way and let me wash my sheets.’ After a moment, she added, ‘Please.’
‘You deny it?’ He came closer to the edge of the water, and Beata took an involuntary step back.
‘Yes, I deny it, I deny it very much indeed! There is nothing reeking, and therewill certainly be no dying here anytime soon if I can help it, and I can help it. I assure you, I can. Take your bread now.’
A hint of amusement pulled at the creature’s thin lips. He drifted back into the creek’s rushing middle, where he remained, staring.
‘Insipid creature,’ Beata muttered, picking up her laundry basket with shaking hands. ‘Won’t even touch the bread, when I’ve gone to all that effort just to get my washing done, and that flour wasn’t cheap either, I’ll tell you.’
She dumped out the laundry on the flat rock where she normally did – it was a very convenient rock, much better for washing than the shallows upstream where the other women went – and tried to simply get on with her work, but it was more difficult than usual to shake the slithering stare of the creature in the creek.
‘If you were to die,’ came Näcken’s voice after a while, and Beata nearly jumped out of her skin, ‘Would you be satisfied with what you have done?’
‘Would you?’ she shot back. ‘Scared enough poor widows out of their wits, have you? Had your fill of child-flesh?’
His dripping face floated another few feet away in the black water, chastised, perhaps. In other circumstances Beata would have called it a respectable distance and been satisfied, but in this moment, it was still far too near for comfort. That stare was too insistent, too hungry, and ugly.
‘Of course I wouldn’t,’ she said, and gave the sheet a good scrub. Looking up, she saw he was still watching her with hungry eyes. ‘Begone, now. Take your bread and go. I’ll have peace when I do my washing, and I’m not on death’s door yet anyhow, so that’s that.’
The creature said nothing, yet even from a distance, his stare drew her in. His creek-brown eyes brimmed with an infinite sadness beyond their malice, a tragedy too deep for words. She felt her hands drop the sheet into the creek, watched the creek claim it.
A bird cawed and snatched her out of the trance. She made a grab for the sheet, but it had already floated out of reach with the stream, right past Näcken, who made not the slightest effort to catch it for her. She glared at him. He cocked his head to the side, a question.
‘Nobody would be satisfied,’ she said, hoping an answer would incite him to be quiet, ‘Life is an accumulation of bitterness and that’s all. There’s no escape to the miserable business for any of us until the Lord takes us.’
‘Perhaps,’ said the creature, edging closer, ‘Yet you have dreamed of it in the quiet of your heart.’
Her gaze snapped up. ‘What do you know of that?’
‘Where would you go, if you knew your death was certain?’
‘To the mountains.’ The answer was quick on her tongue, and true, uneasily so. ‘I’d seek out the trolls, and I’d bargain for a share of their gold. Reclaim the wealth of my youth. Get away from this wretched place. Die in comfort.’
The creature came closer, closer, boring his eyes into hers, and while his stare held her in its grip, the words tumbled out even though she knew it was foolishness, and she didn’t particularly want them to.
‘It’s what those villagers tell their children to warn them off the mountains in winter – don’t go too close, they say, or the trolls will get you. Don’t you be tempted by their piles of gold – they’ll imprison you and then you’ll never see the sun again.’ She shut her mouth but couldn’t quite stop herself from continuing. ‘I never believed a word of it, myself. Superstitious fools, I called them. But then I saw a sliver of the gold myself, paid for it dearly, I did. One time out of a hundred even a fool gets something right, I suppose. Those trolls aren’t sitting in barren caves.’ She took a breath. ‘That’s where I’d go. If I knew. But I’m not – that doctor is as ignorant as the villagers and not to be listened to. My health is perfectly fine for a woman of my age, and that’s all I’ll say about it.’
Näcken’s thin lips parted in a knowing smile, letting his sharp yellow teeth show. He was close enough now that she could have reached out and touched his slimy hair. He stunk of rot.
‘And what would you know about my health anyway? You’re less than a doctor.’
‘I know,’ said Näcken simply.
Beata narrowed her eyes. ‘You’re trying to trick me, aren’t you? I’m to tell you all my secrets, am I, and run away with you? Then you’ll feast on my corpse once I’m good and drowned.’
He gave no answer, only paddled backwards to a more respectable distance, but continued smiling his slimy smile, as if that would convince her to jump headfirst into the creek like a stupid little girl.
‘That’s what I thought.’ She scoffed. ‘You don’t know anything.’
Though he was further away, he didn’t quite leave, but remained drifting, staring, in the middle of the creek. Round tears leapt from the corners of his eyes. Manipulative bastard.
‘Begone, then!’ Beata picked up the loaf of bread and hurled it in the direction of his head. It splashed sadly a little to the right of him and bobbed away with the stream.
With a laugh like the whisper of seaweed against stone, Näcken vanished into his waters, leaving Beata seething with anger with her pile of dirty washing. She felt suddenly disgusted with herself for the things she had said. To reveal such desires to anybody, let alone a mucous water-man. It was downright shameful.
But her mind kept wandering, upstream, and beyond, where the mountain ridge rose tall and jagged and divided the village from the wilderness.
Out there, the air was cold and sweet, and the trolls counted their treasures in their golden halls. With a pile of troll’s gold, Beata wouldn’t have to fetch water in the mornings, or shiver through the winter underneath a leaking roof. She wouldn’t have to bake bread or fetch milk to keep tomten and Näcken placated. She could hire an army of servants and build herself a mansion properly insulated. She could die in a featherbed and be laid to rest in a beautiful tomb of stone. She would never have to look at another plum in her life.
Leaving was a dream she had dreamt more times than she could count. To disappear into the mountains like her daughter had done, years ago, and never come back. Let the villagers wonder, or not. Let the orchard fall well and truly into disrepair.
‘Don’t be a fool,’ she said and began gathering up her things. ‘Running off like a ditzy maiden on her wedding night, pretty picture that is for a grown woman, an old one no less.’
Back aching, she filled up the pail with water, then hoisted the laundry basket onto her hip and started down the path home. The washing would just have to wait. It was Thursday, but the washing could most certainly wait. She was sick of this creek.
A haunting melody stopped her. It tore through the mountain air, a knife through a vocal cord, breaking at the peaks and digging a rumbling grave in the valleys. It rasped across the notes and shifted awkwardly between high and low, yet it sounded clear and cold like a river shattering against a rock. A cry of earthshattering sorrow.
Everybody knew not to listen when Näcken picked up his violin. Even the villagers, ignorant as they were, knew to plug their ears and turn around quickly. Nobody was that stupid.
But the violin tore at Beata’s heart. She turned around.
Näcken sat naked on a mossy rock in the middle of the river, dragging a bow across the strings of a violin which looked too small for his spindly arms. He wasn’t slimy anymore, but a beautiful man with glistening skin and luscious locks of black hair. Gone too was the leering smile; now tears streamed freely down his cheeks and dripped onto the body of the violin. Sobs fractured the melody in gut-wrenching hiccups. And his tarn-deep eyes stared deep into hers through the tears, as if he knew something she did not.
Beata dropped her pail and basket and ran.