A Blessed Child Read Online Free PDF

but obviously it had to be worse than false croup.
    “With croup, you don’t stand a chance,” Erika said. “You just die. And that’s that.”
    “But—” objected Laura. She wanted more details.
    Erika stopped her with a scream. If she screamed, she wouldn’t have to give details. She got to her feet and staggered over the meadow, screaming HELP HELP I CAN’T BREATHE, I’VE GOT CROUP, I’VE GOT CROUP, before finally collapsing beside Laura.
    Erika lay in the middle of a flower meadow. The backs of her knees and the insides of her wrists and her neck and scalp were itching: it was the insects climbing over her; it was the ticks latching on to her to suck. If you had a tick attached to you, there was a great commotion in Isak’s house. In Norwegian it was called a
flått.
In Swedish it was a
fästing.
She liked the Swedish word better. If you had a
fästing,
you would have both Isak and Rosa staring at your armpit, or bent over your bottom or leg, or pushing your hair off your neck so they could study it. It was a bit like going to school in new shoes: everyone said
Aren’t you smart,
pointing at your shoes; it was nice and embarrassing at the same time. And then there was the whole business of removing the tick with butter and tweezers, especially when it was big and fat and ready to pop and all bluey-mauve because it was full of blood. If you pressed the tick, blood would squirt out of it. The most important thing was not to leave the head behind. That could lead to blood poisoning, Rosa said. Splinters in your fingers or toes could also lead to blood poisoning if they stayed there too long, or if you didn’t manage to get the
whole
splinter out. And blood poisoning could lead to fever and convulsions, which could lead to gangrene, which could lead to amputation, sometimes without anaesthetic because it had to be done in such a rush. So you could end up having your arm or leg cut off, wide awake and conscious while they did it—and all because you hadn’t removed the tick or the splinter properly.
    Beyond the trees, a hundred meters from the gray, uneven, stony beach and silver-gray sea, lay Isak’s white limestone house. Erika said to herself: I am Erika Lövenstad. Isak Lövenstad is my father. We live here on this island and my sister is called Laura and I’m the eldest.
    She opened her eyes and stared straight up into the blue sky.
    And so, the summer days were indistinguishable, as were the summers themselves. Erika and Laura spent most of their time lying in the long grass in front of that house, reading Donald Duck comics and later
Starlet,
which was really too advanced for them. They ate wild strawberries, staining their hands and mouths red. The sun shone every day, and it was outdoors time, which meant they weren’t allowed to go into the house and be a nuisance. Outdoors time was decreed. It was never discussed, had never been explained. Everyone knew what it was. It was unchangeable, like the sun and the moon and the seasons. Outdoors time meant you stayed outside. You didn’t go in to get a glass of water or use the toilet, because the pipes would gurgle and Isak would hear. You didn’t go to your room to fetch things you’d forgotten to take out with you (like maybe a tennis ball for a game of sevens), because the floorboards would creak. Erika learned all this during her first week on Hammarsö. If Isak was disturbed, it broke his concentration and sabotaged his working day. He would storm out of his room, stand in the middle of the kitchen, and bellow. Laura had stories to tell about Isak bellowing, about how scared she’d been, alone with him in the kitchen, about how his face blanched with all that bellowing. First white, then red, then mauve, like a tick ready to pop. Isak would get so angry that saliva dribbled from his mouth.
    There was no reason not to believe this. Her mother had warned Erika before she came to Hammarsö that Isak could be moody; but her mother didn’t call it