The Kindness, page 28
It is three days since she saw him. He said he would call, and he hasn’t. Same old story. Siw hasn’t called him either, due to the following logic: she was the one who went to the raid in the square, because she saw on Facebook that Roslagsbowser was going. Even if he doesn’t know it, she took the first step. Now it’s up to him to take the next step.
What about the invitation to play minigolf, then? And the invitation to the raid by the Frans Lundman memorial? And whose idea was it to swap phone numbers?
That’s . . . different. Not on the same level as the fact that Siw hurried to the square with aching thighs just to see him. She has gone over and over all this in her mind over the past few days, but now it’s time to let it go. She knew from the start that it was hopeless, and now she has to embrace that knowledge once more. She was fine before Max came along, and she’s fine now.
Her locker is in the smaller changing room. She puts on her uniform – checked shirt and black trousers – while gazing out of the window that faces the roof. A lone gull is perched on a ventilation drum in the middle of the black expanse of emptiness. The gull is looking around as if it isn’t sure what to do next, and Siw gets the idea that it is her soul sitting there.
She goes down the stairs to the store, passing photographs of fellow workers smiling with a touch of hysteria as they demonstrate the correct way to deal with customers. She uses her card to sign in and carries on down.
She nods to her colleagues on charcuterie and cheese before reaching the checkouts. Today she is starting with a left-hand checkout, then right, then finally a stint on Customer Services. She says, ‘Hi,’ to her colleagues on the other open checkouts before taking her place at number five. Once again, she signs in with her card, and removes the ‘Closed’ sign. Another working day has begun.
Lunch, which is often the high point of the day, is definitely a low point today. Siw whisks the powder into water that she has heated in the kettle. According to the packet it’s supposed to be chicken soup with curry, but the only thing it tastes of is . . . powder. She looks longingly at the baskets of free fruit – a banana, just one banana – but controls herself and sits down next to Tanja, who is the same age as her and started at Flygfyren at the same time.
Tanja wrinkles her nose. ‘What the hell is that ?’
‘Meal replacement powder.’ Siw slurps down a spoonful, which at least gives a feeling of warmth in her empty stomach.
‘Are you dieting?’
‘Mmm.’
Tanja waves a hand in front of her nose. ‘Can’t you try the 5:2 or Low Carb, High Fat or something – anything but that ?’
‘I haven’t got the self-discipline. I have to go all in, otherwise it doesn’t work.’
That’s just the way it is. For someone like Tanja, with her freckled nose and a face that was probably very pretty in high school, but is now kind of puffy and would benefit from losing five kilos, a different diet where you take things slowly would no doubt work. But Siw has to jump straight in and go for broke if she’s going to have any chance of success. Make a project of it.
Tanja leans forward and scrutinises the pale yellow, runny soup in Siw’s bowl. ‘I think you’ve got enormous self-discipline if you can eat that shit. How do you do it?’
‘Eating this shit doesn’t hurt.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
When Siw has washed up her bowl and sat for a little while on the roof terrace, warming her face in the setting sun, she gets ready to go back to work. It will be nice to change to a right-hand checkout. Her left forearm is aching from passing items across the barcode reader, and she does not want to end up with carpal tunnel syndrome at twenty-nine. She wants many more happy years on the checkout!
She has left the staffroom and is heading for the corridor where photos of every member of staff are displayed when she hears a voice.
‘Hey, you. Hi.’
Sören is over by the staff fridges in the alcove to the right of the staffroom. He has taken out a plastic box, which he now puts down. Siw gives him a nod and Sören beckons her over as he backs into the alcove. Siw joins him. ‘Hi. What do you want?’
Sören checks over her shoulder to make sure no one is in the corridor, then he grips her bum firmly with one hand and starts kneading her right breast with the other. Siw twists away. ‘Don’t do that.’
‘Oh, come on.’ He grabs the waistband of her trousers and pulls her close. ‘Can’t you just . . . you know . . .’ He pushes his tongue into his cheek, creating a bulge, and nods meaningfully in the direction of the toilet. He wants a blow job.
An absurd thought passes through Siw’s mind as Sören once again reaches for her breast: maybe she should do it, simply because she is so bloody hungry . The idea of having something solid in her mouth for a little while . . . And how many calories are there in an ejaculation? Worth the trouble? She can’t help giggling.
‘What?’ Sören says.
Siw pushes the questing hand away. ‘Sören, you’re such a clown.’
The comment sounds harsher than she’d intended, and has more impact than she’d expected. Sören lets go of her and steps back against the wall, where he goes into a major sulk. Now he really does look like a sad clown. Jesus, he is so unattractive – the bushy eyebrows, the swollen lips, the little beer belly. Before she’s even decided to say it, the words come out of her mouth: ‘Don’t call me again.’
The clown now adds a layer of misery on top of the sulkiness. Sören appears to be on the verge of tears. ‘Don’t be like that, sweetheart, I only wanted—’
‘I know what you want, Sören, but that’s not what I want anymore. You’ve kneaded these baps for the last time.’
Before he can come up with any further objections, or, God help us, actually starts crying, Siw leaves the alcove and walks down the corridor, where something like a hundred faces on the walls watch her go by. Is that applause she can hear?
2
‘High fiiive!’
Anna speaks in the manner of Borat, with a fake Kazakhstan accent as she holds her hand up in the air. Siw smacks her own palm against Anna’s with enthusiasm. They’re on their way to the gym, and Siw has just told her about the incident with Sören.
‘Bloody hell,’ Anna goes on. ‘ You’ve kneaded these baps for the last time ! Isn’t it fantastic when you actually manage to say the right thing in the moment rather than thinking of it half an hour later?
Siw nods. She had been very pleased with herself when she walked away – not so much for the comment, but for what she’d done. Only then did she realise how nice it was to be shot of Sören. For a long time she’s been irritated when he contacts her, like being called in to the most boring job in the world.
‘So what now? The field is lying fallow, waiting for RoslagsBowser to come along and plough his furrow . . .’
‘Anna, be nice. Please. ’
‘I am being nice, I’m just telling it like it is.’
‘Those are two irreconcilable elements.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘You are not being nice. Okay, I admit I’m attracted to him, but there’s no way he’s attracted to me. He said he’d call, and he hasn’t. End of story. And it upsets me when you carry on like that.’
Anna pulls Siw close and lays her head on her friend’s shoulder. ‘Sorry. You know what I’m like. But he might still ring, mightn’t he?’
‘I’m not letting myself hope.’
‘Sorry, darling, but that’s your problem right there. Not letting yourself do things.’
They pass the entrance to the Contiga Hall where a group of teenagers are tossing a handball around, and continue down the hill to the car park. Marko is sitting on a bench outside the gym, texting. He hasn’t seen them yet.
Siw grabs hold of Anna’s arm. ‘I don’t think I can do this.’
‘What is it you can’t do?’
‘I feel so lumpy and clumsy, plus . . . I’m so hungry I already feel as if I’m about to faint.’
‘Sorry, Siw, but you have to help me to let myself do this. It won’t be right for me to show up alone. And surely it’s a good thing if he can teach us? Come on, let’s do it. I promise to drag you into the shower if you pass out.’
Marko looks up and spots them. Even from a distance of twenty metres the Zlatan-smile shines like a mini-sun across the twilit car park.
‘And besides,’ Anna whispers, ‘he might know something about Max.’
‘Don’t you dare ask,’ a horrified Siw whispers back. ‘Don’t even think about it!’
‘Chill out – I can be subtle.’
There are words Siw could use to describe Anna, but subtle is not one of them. She walks towards Marko with something approaching fear in her heart. He greets them with a hug and a kiss on the cheek, which moves Anna to exclaim: ‘Wow! Continental!’
3
As Marko goes around demonstrating the various machines to Siw and Anna, the regular gym hunks glance at him first, then nod when their paths cross, as if the general hunkiness makes them brothers. Marko doesn’t flash his pecs in a skimpy top as the sexy boys do; he is wearing a plain black T-shirt with the word SATS in white letters on the back.
‘The important thing is to keep your spine straight, not to put pressure on any other muscle group apart from the ones the machine is meant to be working.’
Marko is sitting at the pec deck with Siw and Anna standing on either side of him like two admiring hens flanking an impressive rooster. Marko leans forward as he brings the pads together.
‘ Not like this, for example. It puts strain on the back, and can tear the muscles. Like this, slow and steady.’
Marko rests his back against the support and slowly brings the pads towards each other. He’s gone for a hundred kilos, but from his gentle movement it’s easy to believe that there are no weights at all on the ends of the steel bar. He allows the pads to return to their original position and stands up.
‘Your turn.’
Anna happily sits down. It’s obvious that Marko’s presence and interest are making her feel prettier than usual, but the opposite is true for Siw. She sees herself as an anomaly, something that doesn’t belong in the picture and ought to be airbrushed out.
Anna presses on the pads. Needless to say, they don’t move a millimetre, which makes her laugh. She has already demonstrated the same cheery attitude on two previous machines, and Siw is slightly embarrassed on her friend’s behalf.
‘What do you usually go for?’ Marko asks, preparing to adjust the weight.
‘Fifteen,’ says Anna, who actually goes for ten. Siw turns away to avoid seeing the result of Anna’s hubris. What is wrong with her? Does she imagine that Marko will think she’s Wonder Woman because she goes for fifteen kilos on the pec deck? Which she clearly doesn’t, judging by the groaning noises she’s making. In her peripheral vision Siw can see Anna’s feet waving around and kicking. ‘Slow and steady,’ Marko reminds her.
‘Cock,’ Anna says.
When it is Siw’s turn, she can’t help making a point. She settles for five kilos and easily manages ten reps with smooth, flowing movements and a straight spine, which earns her praise from Marko. Anna pulls a face at Siw, who pulls a face right back.
It takes an hour to complete a more ambitious session than usual. Marko explains that it’s normal practice to concentrate on one part of the body during a session – back or legs or chest – but he thinks they’d be better with a more comprehensive programme, since their main focus isn’t increasing muscle mass.
‘How would you know?’ Anna says. ‘I might be going for the She-Hulk look.’
‘Well, if that’s what you want, we can—’
‘She’s joking,’ Siw says. Even though she took it easy with the weights, she thinks she’ll probably either throw up or pass out if she has to use one more machine. Her stomach is screaming with hunger, and she feels dizzy.
‘What about you?’ Anna says to Marko. ‘You’ve hardly been able to do any training yourself.’
‘I mainly stick to free weights, so . . .’
‘So let’s see what you can do.’
‘Anna . . .’ Siw thinks this performance has gone on long enough. Okay, it was good to be shown what to do by someone who really knows what they’re talking about, and Marko has been the embodiment of encouragement and kindness, but Siw feels as if there’s something artificial about the whole thing. It’s as if she’s being forced to participate in a play that makes no sense to her. Unfortunately Marko shrugs and wanders over to the bench.
The last act. Then we’ll be let out.
Marko places four twenty-kilo weights on either end of a bar, securing them with a clip before lying down. One hundred and sixty kilos. Siw can’t help being fascinated in spite of herself. Surely he can’t lift that much?
Anna is standing with her hands clasped to her chest, looking at Marko’s outstretched body with an expression that suggests she’s having to make a real effort not to leap on top of him and ride a cock horse. So to speak.
Marko unhooks the bar and Siw’s eyes widen as she sees it bend because of the weights, while Marko keeps his arms straight. She isn’t usually impressed by muscles and feats of strength, but this is almost unnatural. She can’t take her eyes off Marko as he lowers the bar to his chest, pauses for a second, then raises it again. Anna applauds and Siw shakes her head.
‘He just hit him like this, right on the top of his head. He needed, like, an ambulance and everything.’
‘Man – what had he done?’
Siw glances to the side and sees two men talking next to a rack of dumbbells. One is wearing a T-shirt with ‘Skanska’ on it, while the other is wearing high-vis shorts, for some inexplicable reason, like somebody carrying out roadworks in the summer.
‘That’s the weird part. So, first of all the guy puts two hundred in the cup—’
‘ Two hundred? ’
‘Yes, and the beggar is, like, thrilled and wants to kiss his hand or something, but the guy just walks off with his bag of booze and half an hour later he’s back, right?’
Presumably they’re talking about the same beggar Anna gave a twenty-kronor note to a few days ago, the one who usually sits outside the liquor store.
‘He must have been, like, thinking about stuff, he’s got an empty Explorer bottle in his hand and he, like, hits the beggar on the head with it, the beggar goes down, blood everywhere. And me and Conny were there – you know Conny, right? We like grabbed him and held on to him, because it looked as if he was going to . . . carry on.’
‘But why did he do it?’
‘We asked him the same question. What the fuck are you doing? And guess what he said? He said the beggar made him feel, like, really depressed , for fuck’s sake!’
‘Sounds weird.’
‘Yes, and Conny cut his hand on the broken bottle. You know Conny, right?’
‘Conny Andersson?’
‘No, Gerhardsson – didn’t you do your training together?’
Siw turns her attention back to Marko, who is just replacing the bar on its rests to the accompaniment of Anna’s coquettish little claps, hands close to her chest. Marko gets up and gives a little bow before starting to remove the weights.
No encores, please.
‘Okay, girls. I hope this has been useful.’
Showered and limp with exhaustion, Siw and Anna are standing next to Marko’s car. Siw doesn’t know much about such matters, but her first boyfriend claimed that of all the mass-produced cars, the Audi was the one to go for if you could afford it. Marko can obviously afford it. The car looks as if it rolled off the production line this morning.
‘Absolutely,’ Anna assures him, giving him a pat on the biceps. ‘Especially . . . how would you put it, Siw? Visually?’
Siw has no intention of playing that game. ‘Thank you so much. It was really valuable. Very kind of you.’
‘ De nada ,’ Marko says, then clicks his fingers. ‘By the way – Saturday. I’ve bought a house for my parents, and I’m thinking of having a little party. Max and Johan will be there, along with a few friends from Stockholm. You’re welcome to join us. If you feel like it.’
‘We’ll be there,’ Anna says.
Anna and Marko swap phone numbers so that he can text her the address, then Marko gets into the car, which starts with a purr and glides out of the car park. Marko blows Anna one last kiss, to which she responds with an extravagant kiss of her own. Siw settles for a brief wave.
‘Wow,’ Anna says, pressing her clenched fists to her heart and rolling her eyes, just like Alva when she and Siw parted company this morning.
‘You didn’t ask him about Max,’ Siw says.
‘I didn’t get the chance. And you’ll be seeing him on Saturday.’
‘I’m not sure . . .’
Anna tucks her arm under Siw’s and they set off home. Anna gives her a squeeze. ‘You are sure. And you know why?’
‘No.’
‘Because you are giving yourself permission, Siw. This time you’re letting yourself do it.’
An old woman with a wheeled walker is making her way across Elverks Bridge. The seating area outside the café on the island in the middle of the river is full of people, and there isn’t much room between the chairs. She reaches a spot where she can’t get through, between two well-built men who have their backs to her. People usually move out of the way immediately, but not today.
‘Excuse me,’ she says.
The two men don’t hear her, or they pretend not to hear her. When her second attempt to attract their attention is equally unsuccessful, she takes a deep breath and pushes the walker in between the chairs, which makes the two men leap to their feet.
For a moment it looks as if she’s going to get a smack. Then the men register her age, and come to their senses.
Forward facing
1
When Marko glides onto Carl Bondes väg he thinks this wasn’t a bad way to spend an hour and a half, even if Anna’s constant flirting and innuendo can get a bit much. Oh well, he only has himself to blame. His catastrophic defeat in the minigolf created a need for reparation, and if you’re that vain, you have to take the consequences.
