I’m jana I said. I’m going to visit my brother.

And your brother’s name is bror he said. I know who you are.

Where were you going I screamed to be heard above the wind. It was gaining strength.

Nowhere he screamed back. I just like the wild weather.

He pointed towards a track where faint footsteps were still showing in the snow. I live along there, not far. Let’s go to my house and warm up. Then you can start out again when the blizzard has died down.

I hesitated because I didn’t recognise him but I ought to have. Besides, I knew that the track led to eskilbrännström’s house.

Do you live in the deserted house I asked and he nodded.

I didn’t know one could live there. With your family or do you live alone.

It’s the kind of place where one can only live alone he said.

The wind was still whipping snow against my neck. My face had lost all sensation long ago. I followed him. 9

He kindled the fire in the stove and found a pink woollen blanket to spread over me where I sat on the kitchen sofa in my longjohns and top while my clothes were drying over a chair.

It’s from the ume valley asylum he said. When the loonies were moved out all the stuff was sold at auction.

There was something familiar about the room and I thought that maybe I had been there before. The kitchen was worn in a quiet, gentle way. Apart from the sofa there was an ancient folding table a few handmade västerbotten chairs a tall dresser and a ticking clock though it showed the wrong time.

So it seemed he lived there. Probably slept in the tall old pullout bed that I was sitting on with my legs dangling because my feet didn’t reach the floor.

Do you live in the kitchen I asked as I cupped my hands around the hot mug he handed me.

Yes mostly he replied. In the winter anyway. In the summer I sleep in the attic or in the bestroom.

That bestroom now I wondered and held on to a distant memory. Does it have a painted ceiling. He nodded slurping his coffee from a saucer with a lump of sugar between his teeth like old people do.

I saw the bestroom in my mind as it had been. A pair of yellow rubber boots on a black chest. A chest that wouldn’t open. And how I finally had set to work with a flattened iron bar I had found plunged into the ground as a border marker. I shoved the bar in between the lid and body of the chest and heaved until the lock snapped.

Twentyfive years later I couldn’t remember what was in that chest. Perhaps nothing more than stale air.