‘So Lacke,’ she had asked him, ‘I don’t mean this…but what is it you do? Where do you get your money?’
‘I don’t have any.’
‘But you do have a little money.’
‘This is Sweden. Carry out a chair and put it on the footpath. Sit there in that chair and wait. If you wait long enough someone will come out and give you money. Or take care of you somehow.’
‘Is that how you see me?’
‘Virginia. When you say “Lacke, please leave,” then I’ll leave.’
It had taken a month before she said it. Then he had stuffed his clothes into a bag, his books into another. And left. She hadn’t seen him for six months. During that time she started to drink more, alone.
When she saw Lacke again he had changed. Sadder. He had been living with his father who was wasting away with cancer somewhere in a house in Småland. When his father died Lacke and his sister had inherited the house, sold it and split the money. Lacke’s share had been enough to get him a small condo with a low monthly fee in Blackeberg and now he was back for good.
In the years that followed they met more and more frequently at the Chinese restaurant where Virginia had started to go more often in the evenings. Sometimes they left together, made love in a subdued way and—by silent agreement—Lacke made sure he was gone by the time Virginia came home from work the following day. They were a couple in the loosest sense of the word—sometimes a few months went by without them sharing their bed and this arrangement suited them.
They walked past the ICA store with its advertisement about cheap ground beef and its exhortation to ‘Live, drink and be happy’. Lacke stopped, waited for her. When she reached him he held an arm out to her. Virginia put her arm through his. Lacke nodded at the store.
‘Good old work, huh?’
‘The usual,’ Virginia said. ‘I did that one.’
It was a sign that said ‘CRUSHED TOMATOES. THREE CANS, 5 KRONOR’.
‘Nice job.’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘Sure I do. Gives you a real craving for crushed tomatoes.’
She jabbed him in the side, carefully. Felt her elbow make contact with a rib. ‘You don’t even remember what real food tastes like.’
‘You certainly don’t need to…’
‘I know, but I’m going to anyway.’
‘Eeeeli…Eeeeliii…’
The voice coming from the TV was familiar. Eli tried to back away from it, but her body wouldn’t obey her. Only her hands moved around on the floor in slow motion, searching for something to hold onto. Found a cord. Squeezed it hard with one hand as if it were a lifeline out of the tunnel that ended in the TV that was talking to Eli.
‘Eli…where are you?’
Her head felt too heavy to lift from the floor; the only action Eli managed was to raise her eyes to the screen and of course it was…Him.
The blond tendrils from his wig made of human hair fanned out over the silk robe and made the effeminate face look even smaller than it was. The thin lips were pressed together, drawn into a lipsticked smile that looked like a knife gash in the pale powdered face.
Eli managed to raise her head slightly and saw his whole face. Blue, childishly large eyes and above his eyes…the air came out of Eli’s lungs in ragged spurts, and her head fell heavily to the floor causing a crunching noise in her nose. Funny. He was wearing a cowboy hat.
‘Eeeliii…’
Other voices. Children’s voices. Eli raised her head again, trembling like a baby. Drops of the sick blood ran from Eli’s nose down to her mouth. The man had opened his arms in a gesture of welcome, revealing the red lining of his robe. The lining billowed out, it was swarming, made up of lips. Hundreds of children’s lips that writhed painfully, whispering their story, Eli’s story.
‘Eli…come home…’
Eli sobbed, shut her eyes. Waited for the cold grip around the neck. Nothing happened. Opened her eyes again. The picture had changed. Now you could see a long line of children in poor clothes wandering over a snowy landscape, waddling in the direction of a castle of ice on the horizon.
This isn’t happening.
Eli spat blood out of her mouth at the TV. Red dots punctured the white snow, ran down over the ice castle.
It isn’t real.
Eli pulled on the lifeline, tried to pull herself out of the tunnel. A clicking was heard as the plug was yanked from the socket, and the TV turned off. Viscous strands of blood-tinged saliva ran down the darkened screen, dripping down to the floor. Eli rested her head against her hands, disappearing into a dark red whirlpool.
Virginia put on a quick pot of stewed beef, onion and crushed tomatoes while Lacke was showering. He was taking a long time. When the food was ready she went into the bathroom. He was sitting in the tub, his head between his knees, the detachable showerhead resting against one shoulder. His vertebrae a string of ping-pong balls under the skin.
‘Lacke? The food is ready.’
‘Great, that’s great. Have I been in here long?’
‘Not really. But the water company just called and said their wells are going dry.’
‘What?’
‘Come on, up you go.’ She lifted her bathrobe off its hook and held it out to him. He stood up by steadying himself with one hand on each side of the tub. Virginia winced as she noticed his emaciated body. Lacke saw her reaction. ‘Thus he rose from his bath,’ he said, ‘like a god, beautiful to behold.’
Then they had dinner, splitting a bottle of wine. Lacke did not manage to get much down, but at least he was eating. They split another bottle of wine in the living room, then went to bed. Lay for a while next to each other, looking into each other’s eyes.
‘I’ve stopped taking the pill.’
‘I see. We don’t have to…’
‘I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just I don’t need them any more. Menopause.’
Lacke nodded. Thought about it. Stroked her cheek.
‘Does that make you sad?’
Virginia smiled.
‘You must be the only man I know who would think of asking me that. Yes, a little bit actually. It’s as if…the part that makes me a woman. It doesn’t apply to me any more.’
‘Mmmm. Good enough for me, though.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Come here.’
He did as he was told.
Gunnar Holmberg was dragging his feet in the snow so as not to leave any footprints behind, which would make things harder for the forensic technicians. He stopped and looked back at the traces that led away from the house. Light from the fire made the snow glow orange and the heat was intense enough that beads of sweat had formed along his hairline.
Holmberg had been teased many times for his naïve belief in the basic goodness of young people. That was what he tried to support through his frequent school visits, through his many and long conversations with youngsters who had made bad choices, and that was one reason why he was so affected by what he now saw in front of him.
The footprints in the snow had been made by small shoes. Not even what you would call a ‘young person’, no, these tracks had been made by a child. Small, neat imprints spaced at a remarkable distance from each other. Someone had run here. Fast.
In the corner of his eye he saw Larsson, an officer-in-training, approaching.
‘Drag your feet, for heaven’s sake.’
‘Oh, sorry.’
Larsson started wading through the snow, stopping next to Holmberg. Larsson had large bulging eyes with a constant expression of amazement that was now directed at the tracks in the snow.
‘Damn.’
‘Couldn’t have said it better myself. Made by a child.’
‘But…they are so…’ Larsson followed the tracks for a while with his gaze. ‘Like a triple jump.’
‘Spaced widely, yes.’
‘More than “widely”. It’s…it’s unbelievable. It’s so far.’
‘Wha
t do you mean?’
‘I run a lot and I wouldn’t be able to run like this. More than for…two steps at least. And this goes on the whole way.’
Staffan came jogging along past the houses, made his way through the group of curious onlookers who had gathered, and walked up to the little group in the middle which was overseeing some paramedics manoeuvring a covered female corpse on a stretcher into an ambulance.
‘How did it go?’ Holmberg asked.
‘Uh…went out onto…Bällstavägen and then…can’t follow them…any further…all the cars…we’ll have to…put the dogs on it…’
Holmberg nodded, half his attention claimed by a conversation nearby. A neighbour who was witness to part of the events was being questioned.
‘At first I thought it was some kind of fireworks or something, you know. Then I saw the hands. Her hands were waving in the air. And then she came out like this…through the window…she came out.’
‘So the window was open?’
‘Yes, it was open. And she came out of it…and then the house burned down. I saw it then. That it was all burning up behind her… and she came out…oh, shit. She was on fire, her whole body. And then she walked away from the house—’
‘Excuse me? Walked? She wasn’t running?’
‘No, that’s what was so damned…she was walking. Waved her arms around like this in order to…I don’t know. And then she stopped. Follow me? She stopped. Her whole body on fire. Stopped like this. And looked around. As if…calmly. And then she started walking again. And then it was as if…as if it ended, you know? No sign of panic or anything, she…uh, damn…she wasn’t screaming. Not a sound. She just collapsed like this. Fell to her knees. And then…boom. Down on the snow.
‘And then it was as if…I don’t know…it was so damned strange all of it. That was when I…when I ran in and got a blanket, two blankets, and then I ran back out and…put it out. Shit, you know… when she was lying there, it was…no, shit.’
The man put two sooty hands up to his face, sobbing. The police officer put a hand on his shoulder.
‘We can put together a more official version of this tomorrow. But you didn’t see anybody else leaving the house?’
The man shook his head and the officer scribbled something on his pad.
‘As I said, I’ll be in touch with you tomorrow. Do you want me to ask a medic to give you something, to help you sleep, before they leave?’
The man rubbed the tears from his eyes. His hands left damp streaks of soot in his face.
‘No, that’s…I have something if I need it.’
Gunnar Holmberg looked again at the burning house. The fire-fighters had been effective and now you could hardly see any flames. Only a giant pillar of smoke that rose into the night sky.
While Virginia was opening her arms to Lacke, while the crime technicians were making imprints of the tracks in the snow, Oskar stood by his window and looked out. The snow had blanketed the bushes under the window and made a white surface so thick you would have thought you could slide down it.
Eli hadn’t come by this evening.
Oskar had stood, walked, waited, swung, and frozen down there on the playground between half past seven and nine o’clock. No Eli. At nine he had seen his mum standing in the window and he had gone inside, full of anxiety. ‘Dallas’ and hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls and his mum asking questions and he almost spilled the beans, but didn’t.
Now it was a little after midnight and he stood next to his window with a hole in his gut. He opened the window, breathing in the cold night air. Was it really for her sake that he had decided to fight back? Wasn’t this really about him?
Yes.
But for her sake.
Unfortunately. That’s how it was. If they went after him on Monday he wouldn’t have the energy, the desire to stand up to them. He knew it. Wouldn’t show up for the training session on Thursday. No reason.
He left the window open with the vague hope that she would come back in the night. Call his name. If she could go out in the middle of the night she could come back in the middle of the night.
Oskar undressed and got into bed. Tapped on the wall. No answer. He pulled the blankets over his head and kneeled in the bed. He intertwined his hands and pressed his forehead to them, whispering, ‘Please, dear God. Let her come back. You can have whatever you like. All my magazines, all my books, my things. Whatever you want. But just make it so she comes back. To me. Please, please God.’
He stayed there under the blankets until he was so hot he was sweating. Then he poked his head out again and rested it on the pillow. Assumed the foetal position. Closed his eyes. Images of Eli, of Jonny and Micke, Tomas. Mum, Dad. He lay there for a long time conjuring up the images he wanted to see, then they started to take on a life of their own as he slid off into sleep.
Eli and he were sitting in a swing that was going higher and higher until it loosened from its chains and flew up into the sky. They were holding on tight to the edge of the swing, their knees pressed against each other and Eli whispered, ‘Oskar. Oskar…’
He opened his eyes. The light inside the globe was turned off and the moonlight made everything blue. Gene Simmons looked at him from the wall across from the bed, sticking out his long tongue. He curled up, shut his eyes. Then he heard the whisper again.
‘Oskar…’
It was coming from the window. He opened his eyes, looked over. He saw the contour of a little head on the other side of the glass. He pulled off the covers, but before he managed to get out of bed Eli whispered, ‘Wait there. Stay in bed. Can I come in?’
Oskar whispered, ‘Ye-es...’
‘Say that I can come in.’
‘You can come in.’
‘Close your eyes.’
Oskar shut his eyes tightly. The window opened and a cold draught blew into the room. The window was carefully closed. He heard how Eli breathed, whispered, ‘Can I look now?’
‘Wait.’
The sofa bed in the other room creaked. His mum had gotten up. Oskar was still keeping his eyes shut as the blanket was pulled off and a cold, naked body crept in behind him, pulled the covers back over them both and curled up into a ball behind his back.
The door to his room opened.
‘Oskar?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Is that you talking?’
‘No.’
His mum stayed in the doorway, listening. Eli lay completely still behind his back, pushing her forehead in between his shoulder-blades. Her breath ran warmly down the small of his back.
His mum shook her head.
‘It must be those neighbours.’ She listened for another moment then said ‘Good night, sweetheart,’ and closed the door.
Oskar was alone with Eli. He heard a whisper behind his back.
‘Those neighbours?’
‘Shhhh.’
There was a creaking sound as his mum got back into the sofa bed. He looked up at the window. It was closed.
A cold hand crept over his stomach and found its way to his chest, over his heart. He put both his hands over it, warming her hand. Eli’s other hand worked its way under his armpit then up over his chest and between his hands. Eli turned her head and laid her cheek between his shoulderblades.
A new smell had entered the room. The faint smell of his dad’s moped when it was fully tanked. Gasoline. Oskar bent his head down and smelled her hands. Yes, the smell was coming from her hands.
They lay like that for a long time. When Oskar could tell from his mum’s breathing that she had fallen asleep again, when the lump of their hands was warmed through and starting to get sweaty, he whispered:
‘Where have you been?’
‘Getting some food.’
Her lips tickled his shoulder. She loosened her hands from his, rolled over on her back. Oskar stayed in the same position for a moment and looked into Gene Simmons’ eyes. Then he turned onto his stomach. Behind her head he imagined the figures on the wall eyeing her with cur
iosity. Her eyes were wide open, blue-black in the moonlight. Oskar got goose pimples on his arms.
‘What about your dad?’
‘Gone.’
‘Gone?’ Oskar couldn’t help raising his voice.
‘Shhh. It doesn’t matter.’
‘But…what…is he—?’
‘It. Doesn’t. Matter.’
Oskar nodded, signalling that he wasn’t going to ask her any more questions, and Eli put both her hands under her head, staring up at the ceiling.
‘I was feeling lonely. So I came here. Was that OK?’
‘Yes. But…you don’t have any clothes on.’
‘I’m sorry. Is that disgusting?’
‘No. But aren’t you freezing?’
‘No, no.’
The white strands in her hair were gone. Yes, she looked altogether healthier than when they met yesterday. Her cheeks were rounder, the dimples more pronounced when Oskar joked and asked: ‘You didn’t happen to walk past the Lovers’ Kiosk or anything?’
Eli laughed, then made her voice very serious and said with a ghostly voice, ‘Yes, I did and you know what? He poked his head out and said: “Coooome…coooom…I have candy and… banaaaanas.”’
Oskar buried his face in the pillow, Eli turned her head towards his and whispered in his ear. ‘Cooome…jelly beans…’
Oskar shouted ‘No, no!’ into the pillow. They kept doing this for a while. Then Eli looked at the books in his bookcase and Oskar gave a synopsis of his favourite: The Fog by James Herbert. Eli’s back glowed white like a sheet of paper in the dark as she lay there on her stomach in bed and studied the bookcase.
He held his hand so close to her skin that he could feel the warmth from it. Then he walked his fingers down her back whispering, ‘Bulleribulleri bock. How many horns are sticking…up?’
‘Mmm. Eight?’
‘Eight you say and eight there are, bulleribulleribock.’
Then Eli did the same to him but he was not nearly as good at telling how many fingers there were as she was. On the other hand he was much better at Rock, Paper, Scissors. Seven to three. Then they played again. He won nine to one. Eli started to get a little irritated.