Should I feel ashamed that he does that to me…. that it happens in sleep …. there is intimacy which is not the same as what you think of usually as intimacy
I suppose this is why I try to step out into the freezing cold — to free my mind from the confines of walls. Feeling boxed in within walls and mountains
it is hard to think with Jörn so in my head. So…. I am thinking about beyond myself and what his need is to have me, if only while sleeping
….always it was….he comes to me in dreams ….
like a memory ….reaching through the subconscious ….and through time ….that horizon I chase so blindly …..walking ….behind him? wasn’t that the great shadow that was always there in front of me in those foggy, hazy, misty dreams…..mixed with the bats on the walls ….I remember the bats now as part as when those memories first started surfacing
So he is reaching for ….Elan ….when he makes love to me ….he is making love to her ….it isn’t me….is it….or is it….?
I try to step out of myself. I try not to feel upset. I don’t understand my emotions ….lately….I just don’t make sense —everything in the lens just went surreal like one of those films from avant guard film class ….
But if her is me…. I am really her….that is—it explains the irrational nightmares of being lost ….of looking for something I cannot find but not knowing what it is ….then this means ….
I have been looking at all of this wrong ….the way Jörn masqueraded as the psychiatrist back in Chestertown back when he was on that case and there was something about Dr Rothschild —he had found something about me ….the case study she did —? I forget ….
I think ….i shut my eyes….the cold goes up my sleeves and I turn into the building to brace from the wind….
My face is in the wall as I think, huddled from the wind ….and even this strange action —triggers memories of the man with the vampire eyes and the hut….i recall the cold and the thought of the hides ….they were our source of warmth; I remember this—and the smell of the skins; the way it would sting your nose when the heat from the fire filled the hut inside. This I see and feel all at once as I shiver off the wind…. and right now, I find that I feel—I long so desperately for the hides and— the heat of our hut….it comes to me like ice water on my face, a sharp pain, like a stab in my heart—
Dracula magic? ….is he causing me to remember more? —and I half expect to see him behind me when I hear someone approach
But when I turn around I see Josef
His appearance at this moment throws me completely off guard —I half gasp
“mitt kära barn, you look like you’re seeing a ghost! It’s just me, kära…. I just wanted to see if you are all right standing there as you are—you seem in some kind of a state, why don’t we go inside and have some tea? It’s quite cold even for a Viking!” And he chuckles at the last bit
Because it seems inevitable we should confront I don’t object. I only stand there feeling confused.
Of course I am imagining him at the dinner table with Elsa in the other long house behind this one….so I am imagining her serving from a big Steuben Crystal soup tureen some blood-red liquid for dinner….it makes me gag
“We don’t do it like that,” Josef says to me
“Did you just read my mind?—do none of you guys have any ethics on mind privacy?”
“Kära, you are dealing with a very unusual matter here and I am only trying to be a supportive father figure, believe me, I have had years of experience and you have had little—let’s go inside and have some tea….”
It would have taken a feather to force me to go, suddenly, I was glad of his appearing because hearing it not from Jörn might make better sense
“It was Elsa’s fault….” Josef says as we walk along the heavily snowed walk to the house’s wide back deck where I left from, the garage is further past the deck towards the kitchen. The sliding glass door leads into the lounge living area
“Hmmm?” I ask mildly as we walk, he is behind me
He tugs on the back of my coat so I stop and turn around to look at him
He looks at me with his frosty white brows and icy Nordic blue eyes with their curios twinkle; he waves his hands at himself and twirls his hands.
Still I have no idea. I look blankly at him.
So he raises an index finger and apes the Hollywood version of a vampire sucking someone’s blood
I stand glued to the spot. I don’t notice the cold. But I stare blankly.
“It was Elsa’s idea —all this….” he raises his brows at me, “how long can a husband be angry at his wife? A few centuries?”
Is he joking?
Is this like a gag joke he does and I’m missing the humor?
“Huh….” I think I said. Maybe it was a question. Or ….maybe it was my attempt to make my mind catch up with events
“I ….feel I should tell you before we go inside,” Josef says
“Tell me what?”
“Jörn didn’t ….he was trying to save your life….Elan’s—“
“You knew Elan?”
“Of course!” Josef stares at me
He stares at me ….in that way Jörn does when it is Elan he sees in me. It makes me feel upset. I don’t know why ….
I look up at Josef as I feel this but I feel him in my thoughts and something strange occurs; like a wrinkle smoothed out, if a thought could have a wrinkle —he smoothed it. And the correct lens dropped into view
“Adelsö….” Josef whispers to me
I knew when he said the word that it was a place. And as he said the word a vision came to me. I saw the hallways and the tables and knew—he was there ….he was one of the judges on the island…. It was before arriving at the other place —they were there ….they were all there, even Andres and Hanna….
I feel so dizzy, I lose my balance and fall into the side of the house, but then I lean against it for support as I look back up at Josef
“How was it her idea—what did he think he was doing?”
“He—you must understand, it was a bad time for him— he’s never recovered, kara….he was willing to do anything to—to—bring you back….he himself was a walking corpse ….”
“Are you saying Elsa knows black magic?”
Josef actually laughs when I say this. It’s a laugh not intended, like the surprise of what I said caused his laugh unchecked
“She’d love you to think so,” he amends
He walks beside me and then leans against the wall too next to me,
“she knew of a woman ….we were pagan in those days….there are a lot of myths about our gods and there are a lot of things that have been hidden from what modern people may think of as Common Knowledge. And that’s the way the rest of us like it to stay but….thats for another time…. There was a ritual—it required all of us, or so Elsa said ….i don’t ever think she wanted to resurrect you but back then, we didn’t know it couldn’t be done. Elsa knew. So she duped us—he kept the body frozen ….the ‘witch’ I guess you’d call her today….she came to the ….it was a structure, a small building where the welding was done, where he lived in that clan’s settlement as their welder ….they were not a good people but at Adelsö it was decided that was where the terms from a —a past blood feud it was —we—they sent him there, it was Hovgården….”