Inertia, page 20
I feel immediately ashamed and put the book in my lap.
‘I was going to go and buy something,’ she says, ‘over by the marina.’
‘Down by that campsite?’
Her eyes darken.
‘Have you been there?’
‘No, I just . . .’
‘Stay away,’ she says. ‘It’s a real den. Drugs, stolen goods for sale and God-knows-what-else.’
Rachel has been stressed out and worried ever since we found those footprints in the flower bed. Even though she seemed cool when it happened, she has asked me several times if the man I saw in the garden might have been Igor. I repeatedly explained to her that it wasn’t, because I would have recognised him.
I think she may be worried that it was one of the junkies from the campsite who came here to do reconnaissance. Somebody who wanted to break into the house.
‘OK,’ I say.
Rachel nods.
‘I’ll be back in an hour or so.’
Then her demeanour softens.
‘You know, you’re so good with Jonas. I’m so glad that you came to us. I just want you to know.’
I feel so self-conscious I don’t know what to say.
Rachel waves her hand, then closes the door as she leaves me alone with zombie-Jonas. A minute later I hear the front door close. The car starts and soon after the sound of the engine fades into the distance.
‘I’m going to go see if I can find a better book,’ I tell Jonas.
I’m not sure why, but I’ve started to talk to him, as if he could understand what I was saying.
Maybe I’m going a bit loopy from living out here.
I leave the bedroom and carefully close the door behind me.
It’s as if my feet know where to go, as if they’re leading me to the spiral staircase and on up towards the top floor.
When I get there I end up standing in front of the door of what Rachel called Olle’s study. The sun pours in through the large windows, cutting through the oppressively hot air. Through the windows I can see the expanse of the sea – seemingly infinite. There are only light ripples on the surface that glimmers in the sunlight.
I try the handle to the room.
The bloody door is locked.
But people are very predictable. And I guess there is no real reason to think Rachel would be any different.
I think of the key for her medicine cabinet, the one that lay on top of the cabinet, and walk over to the bookcase. Let my hand slide across the shelves at the very top.
It takes me less than a minute to find the key. It is at the far right on the top shelf, in front of a book about Swedish lighthouses.
The key slides easily into the lock and a few seconds later I am in the room.
It is pretty small, but has windows on two sides. The only furniture is a low shelf with books and a few folders, and a large, old-fashioned desk with an office chair. On the desk there is a printer and next to it is a stack of A4 paper. Next to that are a few framed photographs.
I go up to the desk, lean over and look at the pictures.
They are of Jonas as a child. In one picture he is smiling with a football under his arm and in the other he is posing in front of a moped.
I look around.
Next to the low shelf there is a navy blue duffle bag. It looks something like a gym bag, but a bit nicer. Like a bag you pack when you are going away for the weekend.
I go over and open it. Inside there are men’s clothes – T-shirts, knitted sweaters and jeans. I dig around a bit among the clothes that seem clean and are neatly folded. At the bottom I notice a brown envelope.
I pull it out – no more than five ounces – and open it.
Inside there is a passport, belonging to Olle Berg, thirty-one years of age and five feet ten inches tall. Under the passport there is a credit card.
I look at the photo in the passport.
He doesn’t look wholly dissimilar to me – the brown, tousled hair, the dark eyes.
Really it is only the beard that is different. And our ages, of course. He is thirteen years older than me, but if I grew a beard I might be able to pass for thirty.
Somewhere in the back of my mind a plan is coming together. It is still vague, loose around the edges like an egg over easy, but I know I am on to something.
The passport, the clothes. These are the puzzle pieces I have been missing.
Carefully I replace the envelope, pull the zipper shut and stand up. Go over to the desk again and reach for the thin stack of paper next to the printer.
At the top is a yellowed newspaper clipping.
A young man was found at midnight, badly injured, on road 53 by Sparreholm’s castle. He was found by passers-by and it is not clear at present how his injuries occurred. The police are calling on any witnesses to get in touch with—
I put the clipping back down and pick up the papers underneath.
It is a printout titled ‘Inertia’.
I leaf through it carefully. Under the cover there are a few pages of handwritten notes and a printout of what appears to be a long poem.
Olle is an author – he must have written it.
I think of zombie-Jonas down there, lying panting in the bedroom.
What would happen if I read something he recognised, or perhaps even had read before? Something Olle had written, for instance.
What if that would sort of set off some kind of reaction in his poor shutdown brain, like when you start a computer.
What if he were to wake up?
I close the door behind me and return to Jonas’s room, sinking into the old chair beside him. It squeaks under my weight, but zombie-Jonas doesn’t react.
I put the papers in my lap, clear my throat and begin to read.
You were the dove, I was the lamb
Paradise was our home,
our thorn-rimmed cemetery
Each day you flew further away
Like a storm you darkened the sun with your games,
like soot you befouled the air with your haughtiness,
like arrows your betrayal hurt
You were the dove, I was the lamb
You dismissed my warnings,
laughed at my words
You did not want to drink of my love
Your plumage quivered in excitement
Your mouth repeated ‘no’
Your thoughts were everywhere,
but never here with me
I take a break.
What the hell is this shit?
I thought Olle wrote novels, not sick poems.
There’s a noise from the bed.
Zombie-Jonas groans and his eyelids twitch. The bony fingers on one hand shake slightly and the muscles in his arm become taut.
His index finger lifts and he points toward the bedside table, just like the last time he woke up a little.
Does he understand what I am saying? Does he recognise the text?
Zombie-Jonas’s arm reaches further and further, until it’s just a few inches from the scratches in the varnish on the bedside table.
My heart beats faster and I continue to read.
You were the dove, I was the lamb
The rocks broke your wings,
the sun singed your feathers,
the lies blackened your beak
I fell, I died, I did not awake,
but in my greatest grief
a lion came to me
‘Mahhrg . . .’
Zombie-Jonas gurgles from over in the bed and my pulse quickens.
You were the dove, I was the lamb
I cared for your wounds
I bid you to drink of my tears
I carried you out of your inertia
to the paradise that was ours
Despite me saying that I forgive,
you only wanted
your wings back
In the same instant I hear steps by the front door and a key in the lock.
I shoot up out of the chair and stash the papers under Jonas’s mattress, but only have time to push them halfway in, one edge is still poking out.
Seconds later the door to the bedroom opens.
Rachel looks in.
‘Hello, is everything all right?’
‘Yes,’ I say and glance over at Jonas who is lying still again.
Rachel goes up to the bed, bends forward and tucks him in. Gives him a light kiss on the forehead.
The papers rustle a bit and Rachel freezes mid-movement.
My heart stops and my stomach drops.
But Rachel’s hesitation only lasts a second. She smiles and stands up.
‘Would you like some food?’
Pernilla
I
slept poorly; woke up several times and had a hard time going back to sleep. Listened to the blackbird who carried on in the cage in Samuel’s room. Twisted and turned in the damp sheets. Cried and prayed alternately.
I cannot understand that Father is gone.
That his soul was called home by the Lord while I was digging up a bag full of drug money – because those bills hardly came from selling Brownie biscuits.
When I arrived at the hospice one of the nurses escorted me into his room.
There were fresh cut flowers on his bedside table and a candle was burning next to them. Father’s hands were folded over the Bible on his chest. It was beautiful and terrible at the same time. Commonplace, even as it defied the imagination – that a beloved person can be here one second and gone the next.
And in the midst of sorrow I felt anger.
Father chose a very convenient time to die. Now I will never have any answers to why he didn’t tell me that Mother wanted to see me.
We are alone now, Samuel and I.
I think of him. Remember the tiny body that the midwife placed on my chest and the joy in Father’s eyes when he saw his grandchild for the first time, despite the unfathomable shame. Despite his unmarried teenage daughter having sinned and given birth to an illegitimate child.
And then the fat little two-year-old, with rolls on his legs and arms. The one who was always happy, as long as he got double portions of formula.
And now?
Money in a bag under a rock.
Tiny bags full of drugs, spread out like rose petals across the linoleum floor in the apartment.
Expensive designer clothes that I knew he couldn’t afford.
And it is all my fault. It has to be, because of course Samuel was born perfect and innocent like all God’s children.
I put the last of the cheese sandwich in my mouth and glance at the bag on the floor.
‘Just do it,’ it says.
I couldn’t keep myself from looking inside the bag when I got home.
Samuel was right – it was full of money. And as soon as I’d seen the stacks of bills lying randomly the fear came creeping back in and I began thinking about the man in the stairwell again – Igor.
My body remembered too, because the place where he grabbed my arm ached and the skin stung as if I’d got sunburnt.
I had to get up several times. Check that the front door was locked and that the safety chain was on. And when I stood in the dark behind the thin curtain in the living room I thought I saw someone in the shadows outside – a dark figure hiding by the trees on the other side of the road.
But that had to have been my imagination?
In any case I do not intend to keep this money in my room a minute longer than necessary. I have made plans to meet Samuel by the dock in Stuvskär at five o’clock this afternoon, but I have decided to leave in the morning.
It is Midsummer’s Eve.
I always spent Midsummer with Father. This will be my first time without him. Without pickled herring, sour cream and finely chopped chives. Without visiting the maypole. Without beer and aquavit and rain and sun and sun and rain.
I look out through the window.
The sun is shining down from a clear sky and the tree canopies don’t appear to move an inch.
It is a beautiful day, as good a day as any to tell Samuel that his grandfather has passed away.
And to give him that godforsaken bag.
I still haven’t unpacked the backpack I was supposed to bring on the hike. I decide to bring it to Stuvskär, in case Samuel needs to borrow something when he leaves.
I have a shower and brush my teeth. Put on a layer of mascara and pull a thin summer dress over my head. Then I take my backpack in one hand and the gym bag in the other and go out to the car.
*
Around the time I pass Länna I begin to get suspicious.
The black BMW that has been behind me since I got onto the Nynäs road is still there, even though I have tried slowing down as well as speeding up.
The vehicle is too far away for me to be able to see who is driving, but whoever it is, they are very concerned with maintaining distance.
A cold feeling spreads across my chest and my mouth goes dry. Despite the sunshine and the lush summer greenery surrounding me I feel unsafe.
I tell myself I am imagining things and turn the sound up on my stereo, so that I can hear the music through the roar from the open windows that are the closest my old banger comes to having AC.
The radio station plays ‘Dancing Queen’.
ABBA was the only modern music group that Father would play when I was growing up. Really he preferred classical music and Christian bands, but I suspect he was so fond of ABBA that he just couldn’t help listening to them.
The result was that we would play ABBA until the records were so worn that he was forced to buy new ones. And I knew every song by heart, despite not understanding the words.
The fact is that I would recount the names of the songs to myself if I got scared for some reason. Like a mantra.
‘Dancing Queen’
‘Mamma Mia’
‘Chiquitita’
‘The Winner Takes It All’
I adjust the rear-view mirror a bit and notice a white Volvo that has overtaken the black BMW and is now in the space between us.
My heart finds its normal rhythm and I draw a deep sigh of relief. Focus on the road in front of me. Loosen my white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and wipe the sweat – first from the palm of one hand, then from the other – against the thin fabric of my skirt.
Then I raise the volume again and sing along to the lyrics.
But when I drive into Stuvskär a while later I see the black car again, maybe seventy-five yards behind me. It is rolling so slowly it is almost standing still.
The panic surfaces again.
My heart is beating out of my chest and sweat trickles between my breasts. Keeps running, like a small stream of anxiety, along the side of my belly.
What are my options?
Should I park, as if nothing has happened, and just go and lie down on a rock without worrying about the car, or should I try to shake off my shadow – if that is what it is.
Shake off my shadow?
That’s a line straight out of a crime novel. Do I even know how to do such a thing?
Still I decide to try to do just that. Drive around the small roads in the area in the hope of losing the black BMW, as if it were an annoying insect crawling on my clothes.
I turn around by the ferry dock and drive back towards the black car. It immediately turns onto a forest road.
When I pass I slow down to try to get a glimpse of the driver, but it is impossible so I accelerate and continue a few hundred yards before I take a right on a small gravel road.
The road is terrible – there are large potholes here and there and I repeatedly have to dodge rocks.
I am surrounded by a forest of sparse, tall pines. The sun is filtering through the canopies and creating lace-like patterns on the roadway. Between the thin trees chubby slabs of granite poke through, partially overgrown with white moss. In the crevices I catch glimpses of ferns and blueberry bushes.
The air is cooler here in the shade. Cooler and saturated with the scent of conifers and rich soil.
I see fantastic villas from the last turn of the century and box-like summer homes from the 1950s. I see caravans and expensive sports cars parked on neat driveways, but I don’t see any people.
Where is everyone? Have the Midsummer festivities already begun?
I glance in my rear-view mirror.
Nothing.
I slow down and continue winding along the narrow dirt roads around Stuvskär. Then I drive across a small bridge leading over glimmering water and onto one of the small islands.
There are fewer houses here. At one point I glimpse a driveway and I see one building a bit further into the woods, but generally speaking the area is oddly deserted.
Just as I am about to begin making my way back to the dock I discover the black car in my rear-view mirror.
I feel as if someone kicked me right in the gut.
Maybe it would be better to return to Stuvskär and go and lie on the rocks after all?
I slow down and drive around a large rock that has fallen onto the roadway. At the same time I see a narrow driveway on my right. There is a motorbike parked next to a black Volvo and something about the motorbike looks familiar. Something about the black paint and the flames on the petrol tank.
I look in among the pines. Glimpse the top floor and roof of a beautiful old wooden house.
I accelerate and look in the rear-view mirror again.
The car is still there and I say a prayer:
‘Please, God. Help me get to Stuvskär safely. In Jesus’ name. Amen.’
I squeeze the steering wheel as I whisper these words. Close my eyes for a moment trying to get in touch with Him.
When I open my eyes again I am blinded by a ray of sunlight. I squint and try to make out the contours of the road.
The forest has got denser. It is darker and in places there are fir trees growing among the pines.
I look in the rear-view mirror.
The car is gone.
Is it possible? Has my prayer been heard?
At first I don’t dare believe it’s true. I drive around the small roads for probably fifteen minutes before I realise that the BMW really is gone.
‘Thank you, God,’ I murmur and begin to find my way back to Stuvskär. ‘Thank you, God, for hearing my prayer.’
