Inertia, page 28
I promise myself that I will go back if we get hold of this woman now, because then I will at least have something concrete to show them. Something to make them act, rather than sit there and stare at me as if I were truly crazy.
The phone rings and Björn picks up with a resigned look.
He looks at me and I nod encouragingly, raising a thumb in the air.
‘Uhm, hi?’ Björn says and his voice breaks.
Stina looks at me and nods, smiling; I can tell that she is proud of her son.
‘OK,’ Björn continues.
And then: ‘No, well not specifically, but I have had a part-time job at an old people’s home. But that was mostly cleaning. And of course I couldn’t give them any medicine or injections or anything.’
He is silent and nods several times.
‘Nineteen. In three months.’
He is silent again and I hold my breath, saying a prayer that it will work.
‘The thing is, I dropped out,’ Björn says, managing to sound exactly as embarrassed as I have instructed him to. ‘I was pretty sick of school and just wanted to work. I mean, I haven’t been truant or anything I just like . . .’
He goes quiet again, looking at me.
‘Yes,’ he says, hesitantly. ‘That works.’
Then he writes something on the paper as he nods.
‘OK, see you there.’
He hangs up.
I don’t dare ask, but Björn’s face, which cracks a broad Colgate smile, betrays him.
‘Stuvskär harbour, the day after tomorrow, at eleven o’clock,’ he says triumphantly, holding up his hand so that Stina can give him a high five.
I do as Stina does, slapping my palm against his and draw a deep sigh of relief.
‘What did she say?’ I whisper.
‘That she would love to meet me and talk a bit. That it was hard to find good people. That she hoped we would get along.’
Stina looks at me and her green eyes gleam.
‘I told you it would work out,’ she says and smiles so that I see all the fillings in her nicotine-stained teeth.
‘Thank you,’ I say, with tears in my eyes, nodding first at Stina and then at her son. ‘Thank you so much. I don’t know how I will ever be able to repay you.’
Manfred
M
y mother used to say that time heals all wounds. As if time were a nurse in a starched white uniform, with lily-white hands, going around serving hot dinners, rather than a grim reaper lurking behind every corner. Just waiting for you to commit that fateful mistake that will cost you your life.
Or somebody else’s life – your child’s, for instance.
I taste the wine and smile at Afsaneh and Martin, her colleague at the university.
They laugh at something that Martin is saying – something I don’t catch, but smile at anyway, because I have neither the energy nor inclination to share my dark ruminations. Besides, I cannot stop thinking of what Hanne said about the lamb, the dove and the lion.
The lion who is Olle Berg.
We have to find him and we have to do it fast. Because although the poem likely won’t hold up as evidence in court, we can tie him to at least one of the victims via DNA. Besides, he has a documented history of violence, so the likelihood that his DNA ended up there by chance should be negligible.
Anyway, I don’t believe in chance.
I let my gaze wander across to Martin.
He is the same age as Afsaneh and has a pale, long, thin face with a disproportionately large nose. His hair is light brown and curly and appears to defy gravity. The impression is enhanced by the cut, which makes him look like a poodle.
Martin looks at me and nods, as if he is waiting for me to comment on something he just said.
I hurriedly guide the conversation to a different subject so that he won’t notice how distracted I am.
‘Afsaneh says your thesis is going well,’ I say.
Martin smiles and glances quickly at Afsaneh.
‘Well,’ as I was saying, ‘I will be getting my PhD in October, unless something goes terribly wrong. Of course you have to assume it will. And my old professor at the psychology department has gone and slipped a disc, so we shall see.’
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘My thoughts were somewhere else entirely.’
Martin raises his hand. ‘No worries. God knows you have other things to worry about than my dusty old thesis.’
There is a pause and I look down at the kitchen table. Study the dents in the wood that Nadja made last spring. I remember how angry I was with her and promise myself that will never happen again.
As long as she gets well. As long as everything goes back to normal.
Afsaneh clears her throat. ‘I would hardly call it dusty,’ she says. ‘It paints a pretty good picture of our time.’
‘What are you writing about?’ I ask.
Martin runs his hand through his curls and cocks his head a bit so that his hair almost touches his plate and his large nose gleams in the glow of the ceiling light.
‘Narcissism, or to be more specific, why the prevalence of narcissistic personality traits is increasing so dramatically.’
‘Is it?’ I ask. ‘Increasing, I mean.’
Martin leans forward and places his elbows on the table.
‘It is actually. Two American researchers, Twenge and Campbell, have shown that the prevalence of narcissistic personality traits has increased as much as obesity since the 1980s. And that is especially true of women.’
Martin winks at Afsaneh and pours more wine into their glasses, before continuing: ‘And several other studies confirm this,’ he says.
‘Could you call it an epidemic?’ Afsaneh asks, emptying her glass in one gulp.
‘We are doing exactly that,’ Martin says quickly. ‘Because it is an epidemic.’
‘But why?’ I ask. ‘Why should we have become more narcissistic?’
Martin smiles a crooked smile.
‘Society has changed. Social structures have dissolved, the smallest unit is no longer the family, but the individual. Add to that the emergence of social media. More than a billion people use Facebook each month. A billion, you hear me? And other social platforms are growing exponentially. And there’s a strong link between social media and narcissistic behaviour. It is actually clinically proven. And really it’s not that strange, because everything is about presenting a façade that gets you the maximum amount of followers, likes, comments, or whatever it is you’re looking for.’
‘We’re looking at this in the Project too,’ Afsaneh says, suppressing a yawn.
‘But haven’t people always been dependent on social approval?’ I ask.
‘Yes,’ Martin says, lowering his voice. ‘But technology has taken hostage our natural quest for social approval and acceptance. There are people now who don’t go out. All they do is photograph themselves or film themselves in different situations in different clothes and post the pictures to social media. And all their friends are online. It’s sort of like they have become one with technology.’
Afsaneh leans forward, pouring more wine into her glass. Her movement is clumsy and the bottle hits the table hard when she puts it down dangerously close to the edge.
‘It’s a bit like Chinese weddings,’ she says, giggling.
‘Chinese weddings?’ I ask, moving the bottle to the middle of the table.
‘Well, I heard from a Chinese guest researcher at SU that it is common not to have a wedding celebration when you get married. Instead you go to the photographer and take lots of photos with props. You get champagne glasses to hold in your hands, you cut a fake wedding cake. You kiss in front of a set and so on. All so that you can show off the album to your family and friends afterwards. And in Japan you can apparently rent wedding guests, so that it looks better in the photos.’
‘Exactly,’ Martin says. ‘It’s the same mechanism. It’s like it is more important to be able to show off the pictures than to actually have experienced your wedding with friends and family. That’s precisely what I’m looking at. But you don’t put pictures in an album, you post them on some kind of social media platform. Online, the opportunity for validation is endless. I was at Auschwitz last winter. Do you have any idea how many people are there taking selfies? As if it’s more important to show off having been there than digesting what actually happened.’
Afsaneh grimaces.
‘Are you serious? I’d have thrown up if I had seen someone gurning in front of the gas chambers.’
‘And yet that’s exactly what they were doing.’
Martin leans back in his chair, looking resigned.
He goes on: ‘We’ve only seen the beginning. The internet has changed the social contract. The one that regulates how often it is acceptable to say “look at me!”. And real life doesn’t offer nearly as many or as frequent opportunities for positive validation as the internet does. So why focus on real life?’
‘So Facebook has won?’ I say, mostly joking.
But Martin doesn’t smile.
‘Did you know that Facebook virtually exploded when they invented the like button? A woman named Leah Pearlman came up with that, if I don’t misremember. In any case that was almost ten years ago. And that little icon, the thumbs-up, would change the entire internet. It has changed human behaviour, it has helped companies succeed or caused them to perish. It has made and broken presidents.’
‘Aren’t you exaggerating just a little?’ I ask.
Martin shakes his head vehemently.
‘Social media will fundamentally change society. It will fundamentally change us. And not necessarily for the better. Beyond our addiction to likes, there is the risk that we’re rendered passive. How does the world change when we access everything second-hand rather than take part ourselves? It is a bit like reading about the colour blue, but never seeing it. Internet separates us from real reality. We live our lives through a camera lens, where there is always a layer between the individual and reality. A film. So I think there is a risk that the new technology makes us dumber. That it brainwashes us and puts us into some kind of . . .’
‘Inertia?’ I ask.
Martin nods enthusiastically.
‘Come on,’ Afsaneh says. ‘I don’t think we need to worry. Not in the longer term, anyway. Of course we will continue to interact. Interacting with only technology is not sustainable in the long term. We wouldn’t even be able to reproduce.’
‘Now you are talking like a biologist,’ Martin says, making it sound like a severe insult. ‘Besides there are other problems. For instance, it is impossible to know what’s true on the internet.’
‘Do people even care what’s true anymore?’ I ask.
‘Interesting question!’ Martin exclaims and I immediately regret posing it, because I can feel my eyelids growing heavy. ‘I think we are on our way towards a society in which our model of explanation is primarily phenomenological.’
‘Phenomenowhat?’
‘Sorry,’ Martin says running his hand through his curls. ‘When I talk about a model of explanation I mean how we explain our reality. For instance, there are religious models of explanation. Imagine that you don’t feel good and you wonder why. Based on a religious model of explanation you might draw the conclusion that you have distanced yourself from God. So the cure is to . . . well, pray for example. And then there are scientific models of explanation. You may draw the conclusion that you aren’t feeling well because you are deficient in iron. The cure is a pill. A phenomenological model of explanation is based on the individual’s own experience, like, I feel bad because I have experienced this trauma, or because I am the way I am. I have the right to my own experience, my own trauma. What I feel is true and cannot be questioned. That is exactly how it is online today. Besides, there is so much information online but only that which supports your own point of view and goes viral penetrates the noise.’
I get up and begin to clear the table hoping that Martin will get the hint.
‘What makes something go viral?’ Afsaneh asks.
‘Extreme things go viral,’ Martin whispers, as if he were revealing a big secret. ‘The quotidian lifestyle is dead! You need to be more of a Dostoevsky than a Tolstoy online, if you follow me.’
There is a brief pause and I look Afsaneh in the eyes.
‘Um . . .’ I begin.
‘Tolstoy wrote about the quotidian,’ Martin continues without waiting for my answer. ‘People don’t give a shit about the everyday on social media, unless you are super famous. They don’t care about your geraniums, your puppy, or the salad you just made. They don’t give a flying fuck about your new couch or how many miles you jogged this weekend. If you want to make it big on social media you have to be extreme. Dostoevsky wrote about lunatics. That works very well online. Feel free to quote me on that.’
Martin makes a theatrical gesture of thanks with his hands, as if he is bowing in front of a large audience.
A mobile rings and Afsaneh gets up. Goes over to the countertop, picks up the phone and looks at it. Then she hands it over to me.
‘For you,’ she says.
I reluctantly take the phone.
It’s Letit.
‘We have him,’ he says. ‘We’ve found Olle Berg. You need to come in.’
Samuel
T
he darkness is cool and odourless.
I walk around on what might be a floor, pecking a bit. Not because I am hungry, but because that’s what pigeons do. They fly and peck food and coo and groom their feathers and do other bird stuff.
Somewhere in the distance I hear human voices, but the words blur into a strange cackle that is impossible to comprehend.
Then something happens.
It is the exact same feeling as when the light pulls me out, only there is no light. Everything is just darkness.
Still I land in my body again.
Everything tingles and prickles and I slowly become aware of my arms and legs. Feel my hands resting against the smooth surface of the blanket. Notice the bitter taste in my mouth, the throbbing in my head and the burning pain in my nose, as if I had been snorting coke non-stop for weeks.
I try to scream, but my mouth and my vocal cords won’t obey me. The roar becomes a weak puff that leaves my lungs with a faint hiss.
I remain immobile in bed, panic clawing at my chest.
Minutes pass, maybe they become hours, it’s hard to say, because I have no real sense of time. But it’s still dark, except for the thin streak of moonlight creeping in through the window and curling up on the floor like a sleepy pet.
What if this is it? What if this is death?
Tears burn under my eyelids and a knot grows in my throat.
What have I done with my life really? What has become of Samuel Stenberg?
Not a damn thing, but I could have told you that long ago, if you had taken the time to listen.
I think of the only person I miss right now, the only one I would give anything to meet again.
Mum.
And suddenly it is almost as if she is standing by the bed, as if I can feel the warmth from her body and the scent of her lavender soap. For a moment I even think I can see the gold cross she wears around her neck gleam in the dark. But in the next instant I understand that I have imagined it all.
The tears come.
They roll slowly down my cheeks, like a gentle summer rain, as the night slowly lightens into a blue-grey dawn. And as the sky grows pale outside the window my body comes to life.
I try clenching my fist and the muscle does what I want it to – it clenches my fist over and over again. Then I wiggle my foot a bit under the blanket and my limbs continue to do as I say, as if I were in charge and not the other way around.
I turn my head, brace my arms against the mattress and heave myself up.
My head aches and the nausea lurks just under my ribs, but I can move.
Mysteriously I have triumphed over my body. Whatever disease I’ve had it’s over now, and I am not going to stay here a minute longer than I have to.
Outside the window an early bird sings, and soon another one chimes in.
Carefully, I touch my face and feel surgical tape on my cheek. It is attached across something long and thin that feels like a soft straw. Without hesitation I pull the tape off and pull at the straw.
It stings and I realise that I am holding a tube that runs through my nose and into my stomach.
I recall Rachel’s words.
Jonas is tube-fed. But you don’t need to worry about it. I take care of all that.
Panic explodes in my chest and I tear the tube out without regard for the consequences. Pull violently, as if it were a tapeworm that had crawled into my stomach. Inch after inch of slimy tube slides out of my sore nostril.
I cough and have the urge to vomit, but just as the vomit is on its way up my throat the tube is out. I toss it away, stumble over to the window and open it.
The next instant it hits metal.
I reach my hand out through the crack and feel the bars that I screwed on, testing them.
Like rock.
I inhale deeply.
The night air is humid and smells like grass and soil. The birdsong is deafening, so loud that I am afraid someone will wake up and force me back down into Jonas’s bed.
The room is at ground level and it would have been easy fucking peasy to climb out if it weren’t for the bloody bars. I am locked into a giant cage now, because I’ve been so bloody helpful.
I pull the window shut and continue to the hallway.
Everything is quiet and still.
The only sounds are the hum from the fridge and the birds.
The floorboards creak under my weight. Creak and pop, as if they were calling to Rachel to come.
I stop. Listen, but can’t hear anything out of Rachel’s room, so I take another step and grab the handle on the front door. It rests cold in my hand when I turn the lock.
But the door doesn’t open, the deadbolt must be locked.
I try again, but the door won’t budge. It might as well be made out of stone.
Disappointment washes over me like an icy wave. Slowly I slide down into a sitting position with my back to the fucking door.
