Inertia, page 3
Seven thirty-six.
In exactly one day, one hour, and twenty-four minutes, I have to be in the industrial area.
I remember Igor’s words.
‘That package contains samples of our product, so I don’t need to explain to you how important it is not to lose it.’
If I show up there without the package Igor will go insane. But if I don’t show up at all I don’t even want to contemplate what might happen. I suppose they’d send the gangster after me, the one in charge of the fourth meeting.
I sink down on my knees. Staring at the wet tarmac with my back to the wall.
The bracelet of glass beads glitters in the streetlights. Five of the beads have letters on them.
I blink a few times and read the familiar word.
MUMMY.
Pernilla
T
he rain drums against the window, and I can hear the truck’s hydraulic lift as it retrieves the rubbish from our block of flats. A moment later, my thoughts are drowned out by the roar of the truck driving away.
Was I wrong to kick Samuel out?
It’s not the first time – I’ve thrown him out twice in the last three months. But we’ve always reconciled quickly.
A little too quickly perhaps – my friends in the congregation say I’m too nice. That I have to maintain my boundaries and let go. That I can’t take him back two hours after I’ve thrown him out.
I’ve tried to explain to them that the problem is that I don’t know how best to help him. Should I be understanding? Make demands? Encourage those infrequent, but still regularly occurring occasions on which he does show some initiative, behaves like an adult and takes responsibility?
And deep inside, the inevitable guilt resides, like a tumour that grows every time Samuel does another stupid thing. With each year that passes by without him accepting Jesus in his heart.
Everything is my fault.
I clasp my hands and close my eyes. Say a short prayer.
Dear God. Make Samuel understand that you are carrying him. Take him under the shadow of your wings and show him the right path. And guide me so I can help him. And forgive. Forgive. Forgive me for everything. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
I sink to the floor and place my hands on the cool linoleum. Let my eyes wander over the room.
Samuel’s schedule is still taped to the fridge, though it’s been months since he dropped out of high school. I printed it out at double the size and put it up so he wouldn’t forget any of his classes. Tuesdays and Thursdays are marked with a pink pen. ‘Remember your gym clothes!’ I have written above them. Monday is marked with green. ‘Note! First class at 08.05!’ it says next to it. Jars of fish oil stand on the kitchen counter. One of the women in my Bible group swore they could get rid of even the most severe difficulties concentrating.
That and prayer, of course.
But Samuel didn’t want to take the capsules. He claimed they stank of rotten fish, which may be true.
Everything is my fault. My past has caught up with me, my sin has come to light, once again.
I had a very happy childhood until I turned nine.
I grew up in a deeply religious family. My father, Bernt, was pastor at an evangelical church and my mother, Ingrid, a housewife. Mother and Father had wanted a large family, but had only one child, a fact for which I long tried to compensate by being the perfect daughter.
A daughter who was at least twice as good as all other daughters.
We lived in Huddinge, south of Stockholm, in a little yellow house next to Lake Trehörningen.
We were an ordinary family, had a Volvo, two golden retrievers – probably surrogates for the siblings who never arrived – and a large garden filled with fruit trees and berry bushes. I was very committed to the congregation from an early age, and always had the best grades in school.
But if my parents were proud of me, they never said so.
I suspect they felt I was just doing what was expected of me.
Father worked a lot – it was part of his role as pastor to always be available to the members of his congregation, and sometimes it seemed as if he were a curer of souls, a bank and the police in one.
There was always a great deal of commotion in our home – friends, members of the congregation in need of help and guidance, we all broke bread in our Spartan kitchen while the dogs sat wide-eyed and begged for scraps.
At that time, I took everything for granted, material goods, my loving family and, not least, my faith, which so many lack today. It was a blessing to receive all this happiness without reflecting on it, but also a sin, because I didn’t understand what a gift it was, wasn’t thankful for the Lord’s grace.
One day when I was nine, I came home early from school and found my mum naked on the couch with a neighbour from down the street, the father of one of my classmates.
I can still remember the sun shining on their sweaty bodies, as they lay wrapped together on the mustard yellow corduroy couch. I remember how Mother’s long, dark hair flowed over Jöns’ chest and how his hand rested softly on her blushing buttock.
That was the last time I saw my mother.
The next morning she was gone.
Mother was beautiful, perhaps too beautiful for her own good. Also, she didn’t want to obey Father.
The face of an angel and heart of a snake. A rebellious temptress, that’s how Father spoke of her afterwards, and in the same vein he would refer often to the Ephesian letter, said to be written by Paul, during his captivity in Rome: ‘Wives, be in subjection unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.’
But Father wasn’t a tyrant, even if it might sound that way. He loved Mother – even after she left us in a dark void.
Even though she abandoned Jesus and lived in sin until her death.
If Mother’s disappearance was traumatic, that was nothing compared to the three years of silence that followed. Not a phone call, not a letter. Every birthday, I hoped Mother would contact me. I prayed intensely and longed for her to show up.
But she never came and on my thirteenth birthday she died in a car accident just a few miles from our home.
I stand up, take my phone and go into the bathroom. Rinse my face in cold water for a long time, then look at my image in the mirror. The frizzy brown hair, the frown wrinkles at the corners of my mouth, stomach and buttocks bulging out of too-tight pants. The red-rimmed eyes and mascara smeared beneath them.
Still, I see it, there’s something in the eyes and cheekbones – I am my mother’s daughter.
But I inherited more than just my mother’s facial features. I inherited her urge for sin, the one that brooded in my mother’s chest. Maybe she passed it to me in her milk like an invisible but deadly poison, masquerading as nourishment and love.
At least that’s what my father said when I was eighteen years old and met Isaac Zimmermann.
Isaac was everything a good Christian was not. First of all, he wasn’t a Christian, he was a Jew. That alone was catastrophic and shameful in my father’s eyes. Secondly, he was five years older than me, an American, and a ‘hippie musician’.
Father refused to let him set foot in our little yellow house.
But young and stupid as I was, I defied my father and continued seeing Isaac. I found him irresistible, his lanky body, his tattered clothes and his long, curly hair.
He looked almost like Jesus.
And I fell. I fell into the welcoming arms of ruin, and I liked it, because I didn’t know better.
I thought my love for Isaac, my burning passion, would fill the void my mother had left. That it would heal the lasting wounds that still ravaged my soul.
But the only thing that happened was that I got pregnant.
Isaac wanted me to have an abortion, but that wasn’t an option for me. Of course, that was in part because of my upbringing, all that talk about the sanctity of life, but more important was my complete conviction that I already loved the little being growing inside me. That I, who had already lost my mother, wouldn’t lose my child as well. That I couldn’t choose to abandon it as my mother had me.
The last thing I wanted was to be like her.
The face of an angel and heart of a snake.
Isaac got angry, left on tour to Värmland and wasn’t back in touch for several weeks.
Then a letter arrived explaining that he wasn’t ready to start a family, and that if I wanted to keep the child, I’d have to raise it myself.
And that’s what happened.
After almost six months without any contact with my father, I returned to the little yellow house.
Eighteen years old and heavily pregnant.
If Father was ashamed, he didn’t show it. And the congregation received me with open arms. Yes, I was a sinner, but I was ready to heal, to save my immortal soul before it was too late.
Only once did Father put it plainly: the apple does not fall far from the tree.
It was a stormy autumn evening and we were quarrelling, I don’t actually remember about what, only that he raised his voice and proclaimed that I was just like my mother.
That I had the devil inside me.
And now I’ve passed that evil on to Samuel.
I’ve done everything in my power to make a good life for him. I have struggled to provide for us. I’ve never in all the years since Samuel was born treated myself to a holiday or started a new relationship – not because I didn’t want to, but because Samuel was such a demanding child from day one. A child who sucked energy out of me like an insatiable black hole.
I’ve done everything.
And I have prayed.
But God has clearly decided that my trials are not over, and I must accept that.
I just don’t know how I will find the strength.
It is said the Lord never gives us more than we can handle, but sometimes I wonder.
I wipe my face with a towel. It turns black with make-up and I throw it on the floor. Pick up my phone and write a short message. Asking Samuel to come home. Writing that I love him and that I’m sorry I lost my temper.
Then I sit down on the toilet to pee.
A screeching sound comes from Samuel’s room. It must be that blackbird rooting around in its cage.
He can be responsible when he wants to. When it comes to someone or something he cares about.
Like a blackbird.
I delete the message and throw the phone on the floor.
It bounces a few times against the bathroom rug and lands next to the shower.
No, I think.
This time is different.
This time he’s going to learn his lesson.
Manfred
W
e’re sitting on either side of the bed, Afsaneh and I. Nadja is lying between us, surrounded by the machines that are keeping her alive. The electronics beep and sigh. One of her arms is in a large plaster cast, and from a little hole in her throat a hose runs that is connected to the machine that is breathing for her.
Around her are monitors that measure her heart rate, temperature, oxygen level and the pressure on her brain. There are so many machines it feels like we’re on a spaceship.
Out in the corridor, I hear someone hurrying by, probably headed to another sick child.
At the head of the bed is Angelica, the intensive care physician, beside a small white table where a computer sits.
She’s good. Everyone is good at the PICU – the paediatric intensive care unit – where we were moved after the first week in the neurointensive care unit. They care, not just for the children, but also for us, the families. They bring us food, coffee. They explain all that which cannot be explained. They hold our hands and wipe our tears.
I don’t know how they do it.
Nadja is in a medically induced coma.
She suffered severe head injuries when she fell out of the window and the doctors have anaesthetised her to allow her brain time to recover. But no one knows yet if she will ever wake up again, or what kind of life she will wake up to.
It’s been three weeks now.
I thought it would get easier with time; that the uncertainty would become easier to handle, but the opposite is true. With each passing day it becomes more painful to live in limbo.
I let go of Nadja’s damp, warm hand and lean back in my chair. Look over at Afsaneh who is sitting hunched over across from me with her head in her hands and her elbows on her knees.
There is something symbolic, almost fateful, about how we are sitting, on either side of Nadja. I can’t reach Afsaneh, and she can’t reach me, even if she wanted to, because Nadja has come between us.
Her accident has come between us.
Just as it has at home.
Afsaneh and I barely speak to each other, and she no longer touches me.
Do I touch her?
I don’t know. I don’t remember.
There’s so much I don’t remember.
Days pass, like distant ships at sea, and I have lost my ability to reflect on them. There have been times when I have got up in the morning, sat down on the sofa in the living room, and hours have passed until I suddenly realise the sky is getting dark outside.
Time has ceased to exist. Everything has become just a long, painful wait for the day Nadja either wakes up or leaves us for good.
Afsaneh stretches out and massages her neck with one hand.
‘I’m going to get a coffee,’ she says without asking me if I want anything.
I don’t respond. I just stare out of the window where the sun is shining in a clear blue sky and where the wind is playing in the treetops.
Angelica looks up at me from her place behind the computer.
‘Would you like anything?’ she asks. ‘I was just about to head to the kitchen.’
‘No thanks. I’m good.’
I’m never hungry anymore. I, who have always loved food, who have been fat since I was a teenager. I must have lost at least two stone in the last few weeks.
The most effective diet ever: living with a seriously ill child.
All you have to do is stop paying attention for a moment, just long enough for your child to fall out of a window, run out onto a road or fall into the water from a jetty.
Life takes a long time. Life is a tired old donkey.
But death is lightning-fast. Death only needs one second, one step, one breath. Death is a cobra, whose bite arrives without warning. I’ll be buggered if it isn’t faster than its own shadow, just like Lucky Luke.
The phone rings and I look at it uncomprehendingly before I answer.
‘Manfred? It’s Malin.’
It takes a second before I realise that the person on the other end of the line is my colleague Malin Brundin.
Malin, who usually works in Katrineholm, was part of the group that investigated the murders in Ormberg – one of the most infamous crimes in Sweden.
The investigation took a turn that changed Malin’s life forever. It turned out that a relative of hers had kept a woman imprisoned in a cellar for many years, and that Malin was also the woman’s child. In other words, the person Malin grew up with, whom she had called her mother all her life, was not her biological mother.
How do you survive a thing like that?
In fact, I’m surprised that she hasn’t left the force and moved to Stockholm or some other big city, where she can more easily hide from the press or the curious.
Malin has taken a temporary position in Stockholm over the summer, on my advice. I think I had some dim notion that it might do her good to get out of Ormberg. That it might somehow heal the horrible wound that I imagine she carries.
‘Hello,’ I say.
‘How’s it going?’ she asks.
How do you answer a question like that?
People are constantly asking me how I’m doing, but I have stopped answering it, because I don’t have it in me to explain. Not just because it’s painful, but because it takes too long. And besides, I don’t really know what is going on with me, because I’ve stopped paying attention to that.
‘Unchanged,’ I say after a moment’s hesitation.
‘Um, we’re just wondering if you’re on your way, because we thought we’d get started now.’
Damn.
Then I remember.
I was supposed to start working again today. My sick leave is over and life – my working life in any case – has begun again.
‘Damn, Malin, I’m sorry,’ I begin. ‘I must have got the days mixed up. I’m at the hospital with Nadja and I had completely forgotten . . .’
‘That’s fine,’ she says so quickly that I suspect she was expecting that exact answer. ‘You can come tomorrow if that’s better.’
‘No, no, I’ll come in.’
There’s a pause.
‘Wait there instead,’ Malin says. ‘We have a new case. The body of a man washed ashore on an islet in Stockholm’s southern archipelago. We are headed over to forensics in Solna in an hour. You can meet us there.’
She hesitates a bit but then continues.
‘Right. You are already at Karolinska Hospital.’
*
The sun is beating down on the hot tarmac, there is no trace of yesterday’s rain.
Malin stands outside the entrance to the brick building doing something on her phone. I drop the cigarette as discreetly as I can and go over to her. The long brown hair, the slim yet muscular body. The dark eyes squinting at the sun under well-defined brows and the slight hardness around the mouth – Malin looks the same. But her cheeks have become fuller, her hips rounder and the T-shirt is tight over her large belly.
Malin and Andreas are having a baby.
They worked together on the investigation in Ormberg and were at each other’s throats the whole time. Argued about everything from immigration to social assistance and couldn’t even agree on which restaurant to get lunch from.
And now they’re bringing a new person into the world together.
It’s unexpected to say the least.
‘Are you still smoking on the sly?’ Malin asks, raising an eyebrow and nodding to the butt on the ground.
I don’t answer, just pat her on the shoulder.
Standing a short distance to the right of Malin is Gunnar Wijk, whose nickname is Letit.
