David and Sture

David and Sture are drawn together by the need to care for Magnus as the family faces Eva’s condition and the upheaval at the Heath. Their relationship is shown less through declarations than through shared tasks: accompanying Magnus to the hospital, making room for his distress, and burying his rabbit. Sture’s steady presence does not solve what has happened, but it helps David keep caring for his son when both are exhausted and answers remain out of reach.

Family and Shared Circumstances

Sture is David’s father-in-law and Eva’s father. He is a carpenter; his newly washed Volvo 740 still carries the smell of wood and linseed oil, and he lives in a hexagonal cottage with a front extension he designed for summer guests. These practical details frame him as someone accustomed to making and repairing things, though the crises confronting the family are not problems that craft or knowledge can simply mend.

On the journey toward the Heath, Sture searches through maps torn from a phone book, trying to locate the place. Magnus climbs into the back seat with Balthazar in a basket, while David takes the passenger seat. Sture’s map-reading and David’s correction that the Heath is not on the map make their cooperation immediate and unceremonious: they are navigating unfamiliar circumstances together, with Magnus and the rabbit in their care. The small, improvised journey establishes a pattern that continues later, as each adult makes space for Magnus’s needs while the larger crisis remains unresolved.

That pattern becomes especially clear when they take Magnus to see Eva on his birthday. Magnus wants to bring the rabbit he has received and show it to her. At the hospital, David puts a hand on his shoulder before following Roy into Eva’s room. The room’s sparse furnishings and medical equipment make the visit feel stark: Eva sits upright in bed, connected by cables to a machine, with thick gauze covering the damage to her face. David and Sture cannot make the encounter ordinary, but they accompany Magnus into it rather than leaving him to face it alone.

Caring for Magnus Around Eva

Magnus’s visit turns into a moment of acute distress. He screams at Eva, hits her, and tears loose the cables attached to her head. David responds physically, catching him from behind, holding him tightly, and carrying him out while trying to comfort him. His response is immediate protection: he removes Magnus from a scene neither of them can manage safely, even though words of reassurance have no effect.

Sture remains with Eva and addresses the confusion surrounding her. When David explains that Eva keeps returning to the Fisher, something that frightens her and that the family does not understand, Sture recognizes the reference. He tells them that Eva nearly drowned when she was seven, and that she was brought back to life after his wife intervened. He also recalls blaming himself for not watching her closely enough. The disclosure gives David information about the childhood event behind Eva’s recurring fear, while revealing that Sture has carried a painful sense of responsibility for it.

The rabbit’s death creates another difficult encounter. Eva handles Balthazar’s damaged head, and Sture gently takes it from her dark red hands and sets it on the nightstand. Instead, he places two wooden dolls in her hands, identifying them as the dolls of Eva and David. This quiet substitution does not erase the shock of the moment, but it changes what Eva is holding: from the rabbit’s remains to a representation of the couple. Sture’s action is careful and concrete, an attempt to redirect the encounter without forcing an explanation. It complements David’s response to Magnus: where David carries his son away from the distress, Sture offers Eva something else to hold.

Balthazar’s Burial

After returning from the Heath, Magnus cries, then begins talking about the funeral and what should be done. David understands that the burial gives his son a task that words and comfort alone have not provided. At Kungsholmen, in an overgrown thicket along the beach halfway between the apartment and the parliament building, David stands guard while Magnus and Sture dig a hole large enough for the shoebox containing Balthazar.

The three of them have prepared a cross from pieces of string and skirting board. Magnus writes BALTHAZAR on it with a felt pen; flowers are to go with the box. Sture’s participation makes the funeral a shared family act rather than an arrangement left to Magnus or David alone. David watches over them while Sture digs beside the boy, allowing Magnus to take part in shaping the farewell. The burial is small and improvised, and David recognizes its purpose from this reduced scale: the cross and the work of preparing the grave satisfy Magnus in a way that spoken consolation cannot.

The scene also clarifies the different but complementary places David and Sture occupy in caring for Magnus. David observes his son’s grief and protects the space in which he can act; Sture joins the physical work of digging. Neither treats the rabbit’s death as something to dismiss. Their shared attention makes room for a child’s mourning even as the crisis around Eva and the Heath continues.

Exhaustion and Continuing Uncertainty

After Magnus falls asleep, David tells Sture that his son is exhausted: he has barely slept for several nights, and the day has been too much for him. Sture answers that Magnus will manage if David does. The reassurance acknowledges that the child’s endurance depends, in part, on the adult caring for him, and turns the exchange into an affirmation of David as well as an assessment of Magnus. David looks toward a bottle of wine but refuses it, saying that the situation is hard; Sture answers that he knows. Their brief exchange makes their mutual strain visible without suggesting that either has an easy remedy.

They talk haltingly, with long pauses, about what happened at the Heath, but reach no conclusions. The area remains in uproar after their departure, and visits may not resume for a long time. Their private conversation therefore takes place against a practical loss: the family cannot assume that it will be able to return. Sture then brings up the Fisher, the subject David had raised in the hospital, and begins to speak, but the conversation is left unfinished in the available scene. The unresolved question links their domestic care to the larger mystery surrounding Eva without turning their bond into a source of answers.

Across these episodes, David and Sture’s relationship is defined by shared responsibility under pressure. They take Magnus where he wants to go, protect him when the visit overwhelms him, and help him make a funeral when grief needs a form. Their support is neither grand nor conclusive. It consists of a hand on a shoulder, a safe removal from a dangerous moment, a grave dug together, and the willingness to sit in an inconclusive conversation after the child has gone to sleep.