“Mother washes....”
“What’s her name?”
“Frida Öberg!”
Then the boy suddenly stopped sobbing and stared Peter boldly in the face with an impudent, horribly precocious look that seemed to indicate that he knew all.
Peter had the sensation of horrid nakedness, of bare shivering flesh. It was as when in a nightmare you suddenly find you have forgotten your trousers. But at the same time he was afraid to betray himself by a hint of weakness. So he seized the boy firmly by the ear and led him to the door:
“Don’t ever steal apples again,” he muttered. “It’s ugly to steal. I won’t thrash you any more this time.”
Quick as a flash the boy disappeared from his grip and was swallowed up in the shadows of the trees. But from the thick silent darkness Peter at once heard a shrill, sharp voice, mad with fury but at the same time pitiful and terrible:
“You damned carcase. I’ll pay you out for that, you damned old carcase!”
Peter closed the shutters. He had long ago had shutters put up. Then he sat down under the lamp and examined the bite in his arm. And he was frightened, frightened as a mouse, of infection from Majängen.