It is summer now, so in a Volvo from 1966, we drive up to Göran’s lake
near Svinnersta. Swedish summer is cold, so we wrap up in blankets and
fleeces, and Göran grills sausages. And there are spicy mushrooms just
plucked from the spongy floor of his forest.
You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but there is a cancer that grows
tight and fast in Göran’s belly. There is not a hint of it as he rows
a little boat out to check on the crayfish traps. As if the
combination of the rowing and the lake and the crisp Swedish air has,
momentarily, made that cancer impotent.
Last winter, we took the path by the lake and walked deep into the
forest. We chose a tree, and with a little axe and his bare hands
Göran felled it. We put it in his Volvo and took it back to the farm
and decorated it in the old tradition: with lit candles dripping wax
like honey on the needles of at the newly dead thing.
Göran’s woman is a pessimist. She does not believe that he will last
the winter. She says the cancer will take him before we get a chance
to fell another tree. Göran laughs and pats her cheek. He lays back on
the bank of the lake and sleeps like a newly dead thing.
Smiling.
