by Stefan Spjut
She touched the dishrag hanging over the tap. It was rigid. She went into the hallway, glanced at the stairs leading up to the first floor, where the sun formed a floating window on the wallpaper. For some reason, she didn’t want to go up there.
She opened a door. A closet. Then the bathroom. There was nothing to suggest she was in the home of a drug addict in either room, and she was ashamed at having thought that. She had made an assessment of Susso’s situation based on what Gudrun had told her. Gudrun who was, by all appearances, clinically insane.
A red, heart-shaped rug. An open box of tampons next to the toilet brush in its plastic holder. A handful of crime novels, a folded-up gossip rag. A foot file. A toothbrush sitting all alone in a glass. A small brown medicine bottle with a dropper. She picked it up and read the label. Nail and cuticle oil. One drop per fingertip twice daily strengthens nails and promotes growth. She smiled as she put the bottle back down on the sink. Anyone bothering with nail and cuticle oil couldn’t be too far gone.
She put the lid up, undid her trousers and sat down. Bent over and dug her phone out of her pocket. But her thumb stiffened before it could touch the glass of the screen. A thin, squeaking sound had reached her ears.
Old brake pads.
A car.
Anders studied the strange woman lying in his bed. The soft curve of her spine, a trail of clearly defined vertebrae. The dark cascades of her hair, tumbling across the pillow, greying from the inside. Under the little lamp that used to spread a mild glow over Johanna as she read at night.
This was it. Rock bottom. It was always overwhelming during the aftershocks of his orgasms, but it could come over him any time. In this moment, he wished she would go away; he wished her hair would turn blonde and curly and that it would be Johanna lying there. He closed his eyes and wished it so intensely his eyes welled up.
But she didn’t go away.
Stava. With an open, Finnish a.
Did she exist? Was she really real?
Yes, she was real. As surely as there was a pine needle in her hair. A yellow hair grip being swept away in that black river.
He looked at the clock radio. He had been awake for almost an hour, torn between violent repulsion and burgeoning desire. The door was ajar and the parquet floor outside a radiant plane. Dots of light stacked on the blinds.
‘You’re looking sad again.’
Anders swallowed hard before replying.
‘How do you know?’
‘Am I wrong?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t see myself.’
She rolled over and looked at him.
She was almost beautiful. But just almost. Something about her nose was off. Her darkly squinting eyes were placed oddly far apart. He figured she might be around sixty, but it was hard to tell. She moved so quickly and in the areas where women usually had fat deposits, her skin was taut. Touching her was like touching a starving animal. She weighed nothing.
She reached out and pushed her index finger against his cheek until it hurt so much he had to turn away.
‘Don’t be sad. I forbid it.’
‘You forbid it?’
She sighed.
‘My aunt used to tell me that. I forbid it. She couldn’t cope with sadness. So she forbade it.’
‘And that worked?’
‘It probably did for her.’
She had rolled onto her back.
‘Is your mother alive?’ She pinched the lampshade and scrutinised it. ‘Where did you buy this, IKEEE-A?’
‘Yes, she’s alive.’
‘I’ve been to IKEA once. In Haparanda. Twice. But I didn’t buy anything. A bag of tealights, but that’s it. Do you go to IKEA a lot? The happy little family?’
He had grown used to her sarcasms, which seemed to spring from searing envy, and didn’t bother to make a reply; he just shook his head. She spun around to lie on her front. Balled the pillow up under her chin and looked at him between the dark curtains of her hair.
‘Have you changed your mind, are you pining for Johanna? Do you long for her sweet scent?’
‘Stop.’
‘Then why are we here, Anders? Why are we in this bed? In this bedroom that is so bright and harmonious it makes me gag. Dad is waiting for us.’
She put the nail of her pinkie against his nipple and scratched it.
‘Why did you ask if my mother’s alive?’
‘I know she’s alive all right.’
‘Yes, because I told you.’
‘No, I can tell.’
‘How?’
‘A man doesn’t become a man until her mother dies.’
‘Her mother?’
‘Fine, his mother. Vittu! You know what I mean.’
‘Then what am I? A boy?’
‘Yes, a bald little boy who wants to crawl back inside the beachball. Where it’s so warm and cosy and the food comes through a tube.’
‘I’m not bald. My hair might be thinning a bit, but I’m not bald.’
‘And what about this little boy? Oh my, so soft.’
His prick lay limp and wrinkled on his stomach, but soon swelled between her bony fingers. She pulled back his foreskin without mercy, tugged it down, again and again, and laughed as he writhed to get away from the pain. In the end, he had to heave her off him. He ended up on top. He looked down on her. Her hair across the pillow. Her lips parted in a mischievous grin. The sharp shadows of her ribs and her four hard teats. A shaggy patch of fur below her bellybutton.
At first, he had found her four nipples unsettling. She barely had any breasts, only those four colourless buttons that were always stiff. Now, they made him insanely horny. Her strange appearance filled him with a feeling he’d never experienced before. It was as though he’d found something unknown and forbidden in the forest, which he could stick his cock in as often as he pleased. Some kind of folkloric hulder in heat, risen from the decomposing remnants of a porn mag, hidden for years under a spruce tree.
She waited for him to enter her. But he made her wait. His cheeks were hanging down and growing heavy with blood. His small, gold identity tag dangled between their mouths. His upper arms trembled with the effort. In the end, she couldn’t take it any longer. Her head shot up, she sank her teeth into his shoulder and once she bit down, she kept biting until she drew blood; that much he had learnt. He thrust his hips; it was like driving a stake into the heart of a vampire. Her scrawny body stiffened into an arc and her face tensed. He gathered up her arms and pinned them down above her head and picked up a leg and pushed it down into the mattress by holding it under the knee. He thrust a few more times before picking up the other leg as well. She was unresistingly bendy; her legs went back as far as he wanted, and she let him bend them; she let him do whatever he wanted. The headboard banged against the wall. She lay there, rubbing her fingers on her genitals, trying to catch his eyes with a mesmerising, dangerous gaze. The smell emanating from her bushy slit was so concentrated he turned his face away. She growled, that was the only word for the sound she made.
He closed his eyes and let out a dark groan; in the next moment, he was overcome with a sense of acute revulsion. It happened every time. She tried to stop him when he wanted to pull out, but he tore free so violently he almost fell out of bed.
In his aroused state, his ears had caught a sound he’d been able to process. He snatched up a towel and wrapped it around his waist while he ran toward the front door.
William was crossing the yard at a brisk pace.
Anders called out after him and he turned around.
His backpack slung over one shoulder. An uncomprehending, grief-stricken face.
He knew he should go over to him and say something and hug him, but it was as though he couldn’t leave the house. Like the gravel was a sound. They just stood there staring at each other from opposite beaches and eventually, the boy left. Trudged off with his head bowed.
Anders sank down onto the front steps. He couldn’t go after him and he didn’t want to go back
inside, into the twilight of the bedroom with its powerful sex smell.
After a while, she came outside. She sat down next to him, wrapped in a cotton shirt. He looked at her furtively.
‘Do you dislike me wearing her clothes?’
He made no reply. He sat watching the opening between the lilacs, where the spectre of William seemed to linger like the trembling remnants of a mirage.
‘Her H&M clothes. That reek of fabric softener. Smell it. Can you smell the shiny green apples?’
‘Stop.’
Her fingers were brown like an Indian’s and she pulled them into the sleeves of the shirt.
‘You’re wondering if he saw us. He didn’t.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I heard him coming. And he didn’t venture beyond the hallway. But he did hear us.’
‘Why didn’t you say something?’
She giggled at him.
They sat in silence for a while.
‘We can bring him if you want.’
He looked at her.
‘We can bring him with us when we go.’
‘No, we can’t.’
She got to her feet.
‘Then stop sulking.’
Grete sat gazing out the window, her scarf-covered little head propped against the wall. Filled with light, her eyes beamed like two yellow lamps. Her red lips had stiffened in a melancholic smile. Lennart took a seat and studied her, but she was in a world of her own.
‘How’s your hand?’
He looked at the bandage but said nothing.
‘When I was young, I chopped off my foot. I did it two or three times. Two times. Then I gave up.’
She pulled off her glove and held her hand up to her face, turning it this way and that. Her ring finger and pinkie were grey and woolly and bent like an old monkey’s.
‘I never tried it with my fingers. Not like that. They only started looking like this when I was a teenager, and by then I’d realised it wasn’t the best idea to cut things off. I’ve obviously groomed them; for a while I did it daily. And I’ve painted my nails. If I can call them that. I’ve put plasters on them too.’
She put the glove back on and immediately started massaging her fingers, methodically and vigorously.
‘How did you get him to come?’
‘I promised Fanny they can stay with us. That they can live with me. All of them.’
‘Where? On Andøya?’
She nodded.
‘It’s the only place the little boy will feel at home and have a decent life.’
‘Is Erasmus going to leave you alone?’
‘You and the thurse could live there too. Nearby.’
‘This business with Susso Myrén,’ he said. ‘It’s just a shot in the dark. A straw to grasp at. And we both know it. We don’t know if he’ll turn and in the unlikely event that he does, we don’t know what he’ll be like. He’s never been alone.’
‘Do you hate her?’
‘Who?’
‘The girl. The troll hunter.’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I’ve wondered where the idea came from. If it came from the thurse or from you. But maybe you don’t know yourself.’
‘It was the only thing I could think of. And he’s angry. He’s furious. But he can’t get it out. It’s like it’s stuck inside him.’
‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘I think I might try to have a little nap.’
She made sure the pillows were where they should be before leaning back. He watched her disappear behind the table and then he sat staring at the table top like a wiped-out gambler.
The car was turning around when Diana stepped out of the house. It was slowly reversing into the shade under the trees. Then it just sat there, with glaring red brake lights. A green Mazda with a dark semicircle in the grimy film that covered the rear window. She went down the front steps and walked into the yard to show herself. Even so, nothing happened. What if she doesn’t recognise me? Or it’s not her?
The next moment, the door swung open.
The person climbing out of the car was sickly pale. And skinny. Her collarbones were sharply etched and her clothes baggy. She wore a frayed denim shirt with a thin top underneath. No bra. She stopped. Stood there with a plastic carrier bag hooked onto her fingers. The same angular face, just emaciated. The same glasses. Something had changed around her mouth.
‘I’m sorry I went inside. I just really needed to pee.’
Susso didn’t speak; she just stood there.
She doesn’t recognise me, Diana thought to herself.
‘Dana.’
There was no pleasure in her voice; there was nothing. Except maybe vague wonder at rediscovering a name long forgotten.
For Diana, the word was a signal. She stepped forward and put her arms around Susso and when she smelled her warm hair, which was pulled back into a messy bun at the nape of her neck, she teared up and was overcome by a sudden vertigo. Because it was really her. An older version of Susso, anaemic and anorexic, but even so, it was her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she squeaked.
Susso stared at her. Her jaw muscles worked underneath her skin. As though she wanted to say something but instead chose to grind it up between her teeth. She wore no earrings, just the pinpricks in her earlobes.
Diana followed her into the kitchen and watched her put the groceries in the fridge. She didn’t know what to say, so she just stood in the doorway in silence. The walls were a shade of apricot and the cupboard doors yellow with brown knobs. A bench and four stools encircled the kitchen table. She sat down on a stool. When she did, Susso looked at her. She tied the carrier bag into a knot and threw it into the cupboard under the sink.
‘Did Mum ask you to come?’
She instinctively shook her head. Then she shrugged.
‘She’s worried. And I am too.’
She regretted it instantly. Saying you were worried about someone was a kind of reproach. A moral reprimand. Which Susso’s feelers instantly picked up on.
‘Why?’ she said.
‘I think about you. A lot.’
Susso was holding the percolator, seemingly pondering whether to accept that explanation. She rinsed out the coffee pot and while she filled it with water, she gazed out the window. At the slow-moving river. A viscous, grey mass. Diana was dead certain she was going to mock her for opening up like that; when no comment seemed forthcoming, she apologised.
‘You know what it’s like. Old age makes you sentimental.’
After a while she continued.
‘But it’ll all be over soon!’
‘Into the ground we go, finally.’
‘Not one day too soon.’
They shared a quiet smile. Once upon a time, that had been the pillar of their worldview. That everything was really shit at heart and it was incomprehensible that people didn’t see it. The percolator started hissing and spitting. Susso had her arms crossed and was looking down at the floor, the rag rug. She had pulled one foot out of its slipper and was lifting it with her toes, up and down. Diana looked at the slipper as well. A red Croc. It was the only thing moving in the kitchen.
‘So how are you?’
She shrugged.
‘I’ve seen ghosts with healthier tans.’
After saying that she immediately tried to think of something to say that wasn’t about Susso’s health. To show her she had come as a friend, not a doctor on a home visit.
‘I have a daughter.’
‘I know.’
‘Her name’s Kiruna.’
‘I know.’
Susso fetched the percolator and poured the coffee into two drinking glasses that she put on the table. Then she sat down on the bench.
‘So are you divorced yet?’
‘Me and Håkan? No, it looks like it might be a while yet.’
‘Everyone gets divorced.’
‘Not us.’
‘Give it some time.’
‘Well, it’s never too late to give u
p.’
‘Besides, you weren’t supposed to get married.’
‘I know.’
‘We weren’t supposed to ever get married.’
‘I know. But,’ she said and raised her index finger, ‘we’re both called Sillfors.’
‘Because he was sick of being called Håkan Hellström.’
‘True, but still.’
‘Traitor.’
Diana giggled.
‘So that’s why you’re living like this?’
‘Like what?’
‘Here, all alone?’
‘How do you know I’m all alone?’
‘I assumed. I used your bathroom. It looked feminine.’
‘Maybe I’m living with a woman.’
Susso’s steady gaze suddenly made her feel awkward and she looked around the kitchen.
‘Are you renting this place?’
‘No.’
‘It’s yours?’
She nodded.
‘Where did you find the money? Well, I guess you owned a flat. Though I thought that was actually your dad’s.’
‘It was. But he gave me the money.’
‘That was nice of him.’
‘He’s nice now. In his old age.’
‘How long have you lived here?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘A few years.’
Silence fell in the kitchen and it was painfully clear Susso had an easier time enduring it than her, whether due to habit or because they were on her turf.
‘It’s lovely. Lovely location.’
‘Are you still on Villagatan?’
‘Villastigen? No, we’re on Duvvägen. If you know where Stina Taube’s mother used to live.’
Susso shook her head.
‘Well, that’s where we are. The house next door. To the house where she lived.’
They sat in silence.
‘So why did you move out here?’
‘It’s lovely, you said so yourself.’
‘But what do you do?’
‘What I do?’
‘Yes. Are you working as a carer or what?’
‘You might say that.’
From time to time, there was a secretive glint in her eye that Diana didn’t recognise at all. It made her feel unsure of herself. Uneasy.
