The Last Lullaby

by Carin Gerhardsen

  ‘I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,’ he whispered into her hair. ‘Now you have to tell me what happened to you.’

  He felt her relax and adjust her head against his shoulder.

  ‘I trust you,’ she sighed.

  And she told him.

  When he left her an hour or so later, it was with mixed emotions. Enormous relief at having been allowed to come in from the cold. Firm resolve where closing in on the Other Man, as Petra called him, was concerned. And a bitter taste in his mouth in the aftermath of the longed-for confidence. Petra, with a big smile, had let it slip that she had actually managed to make things happen on the love front once recently. But that it would not be anything, could not be anything more. He wondered why. ‘Could not’ usually meant the person was already taken, and he did not like that. Or perhaps it was the case that he didn’t like the idea of her being with anyone at all.

  She had laughed the whole thing off, unconcerned. He regretted having asked.

  * * *

  On the sixth day his courage started to fail. He now felt so weak that he stopped worrying about time and no longer cared when he should sleep and when he should be awake. He could not be certain either if his sleep really was sleep, because he glided in and out of a kind of trance-like state that might be unconsciousness. Now he no longer cared as much about the cold, which he interpreted as the beginning of the end. He did not abandon his one slight hope however; stubbornly he kept stretching the rope around his wrists with brief little jerks whenever he was able to summon enough energy.

  The little pile of bread pieces had been replenished the day before, but even though his stomach ached with hunger he could not make himself eat. His mouth was not hungry. Besides he was put off by the elaborate and painful procedure he had to go through to get to the bread and take in some of the crumbs. He had placed himself beside the water bowl on the other hand, and now and then he forced himself to lap up a few drops. He lay motionless, with aching, numb limbs, changing position only when it was absolutely necessary.

  Thoughts and dreams alternated, flowed together and sometimes he woke up in total confusion, not knowing where he was. His thoughts and memories as well as the insistent reality tormented him, more than the continuous aches. In his dreams he could occasionally be freed from the suffering that was now his whole existence. But during the waking moments there were no dreams. Only a painful, drawn-out understanding that life was again sneering in his face, with its constantly recurring reminders of the guilt he bore and the guilt he would bear in the future. And then all the memories pursued him, memories from the life he had lived. The pitiful, meaningless little life he had lost to a day in May long ago, when the aroma of freshly cut grass filled his nostrils, the aroma of soil where new life would sprout, the aroma of the blossoming hedge on the other side of the street. A day in May when the sun shone from a clear blue sky and the wind stirred a playfully rippling river and ruffled his wife’s blonde hair as she stood in line at the kiosk where she thought she would soon be buying two lollipops, but where she would lose all her words.

  A few grey sparrows sat under the rubbish bin right in front of her and pecked up the crumbs from an ice-cream cone. With small hopping steps they moved around the desirable spoils and when she cast a glance over towards the car she saw that there was movement there too. One of the boys, presumably the younger one, Tobias, had stood up and she thought it looked as though he was about to climb between the seats up to the driver’s spot. She glanced at her watch and thought that by now Einar must be on his way back. At the same time the customer in front of her had finished his purchase and it was her turn.

  ‘Do you have any lollipops?’ she asked the man behind the counter, looking again towards the car, where to her relief she could see the boy not in the driver’s seat but hanging between the seats, with his face pointing downwards, hopefully in the process of sitting down again in the back seat.

  ‘Sure,’ the kiosk-owner answered, holding out a container for her to choose from lollipops of several different colours and sizes. For some reason she pulled out a black one and, still holding it, took a few hesitant steps in the direction of the slowly rolling car and then started running, first with small worried steps and then with big clumsy strides in her heeled shoes towards the car that was now rolling rapidly backwards in the direction of the glistening water.

  Before the back wheels went over the edge she was at the car, trying to tear open the door to the passenger’s side, but fumbled it when the car slipped away from her. She screamed, and her eyes, filled with terror, met the astonished wide-open eyes of one of the boys – she would never remember which – from the back seat, just as the car tipped and with unexpected speed disappeared from the stone-paved promenade she stood on and fell through the clear air down into the black water with a heavy and audible splash. As if paralysed, she stood for a moment and watched the car quickly fill with water through the half-rolled-down window on the driver’s side. With a piercing scream, she threw herself into the ice-cold, rushing water and, taking a deep breath, disappeared below the surface, just as he arrived on the scene. During her struggle against impossible forces, soon helped by himself and two passers-by, the car was pulled deeper and deeper down to the bottom, to settle at a depth that the poorly equipped and severely strained figures struggling in the swift water could not cope with.

  With desperate, exhausted, panting hints of screams, they finally let themselves be hoisted up on to the ground that would never again feel firm under their feet. In the water now only the black lollipop was seen, peacefully bobbing by the edge of the pier.

  * * *

  With pounding heart, and feeling so angry that his ears had turned red, Sjöberg got into the car and tried to calm his breathing. Just as his entire being recoiled from that bitter, self-obsessed creature who was supposed to be his grandmother, he also felt a ray of warmth inside him. And as he sat there, leaning over the steering wheel with the engine not yet turned on, trying to think, he noticed how that feeling of warmth began to take over and at last all the anger against the emotionally cold grandmother was transformed into a kind of admiration for his mother.

  Suddenly he visualized his mother as she must have looked when she was young, before she became a widow. With the help of old photographs he had seen he created a new picture of his young mother: the picture of a young woman full of life with a warm smile. The image of a different woman from the one he knew, strong and secure with her life ahead of her, happily married, living in a cottage in the country and with her little son in her arms. A woman whose life was one day shattered by a fire that left her alone in an inhospitable suburb in a strange city with three heavy burdens: the little son she would have to bring up alone, the sorrow after her life partner had tragically perished, and the great guilt that her in-laws placed on her.

  The silence, the secrecy, it had all been only for his sake, to spare him from the indescribable: the grief for his father and the memories of the fire. That was not the way people dealt with catastrophe today, but it was her way, to help her son grow up into an independent and well-balanced person. And she had succeeded, if you overlooked what had recently been going on in his head, his temporary mental meltdown – but that was the sort of thing that affected everyone. Midlife crisis perhaps? If there was such a thing.

  Sjöberg sighed and turned the key in the ignition. A new page had been written in the story of his mother. Of himself. And he would do what he could to turn his new knowledge into something positive in his relationship with her. But that would have to wait for the time being. Right now he was going to touch down in Einar Eriksson’s old reality.

  For the second time during his visit to Arboga Sjöberg found himself in a reception area, asking to see the employee who had been there longest. The uniformed youngster he spoke to referred him to a room at the far end of a corridor on the fourth floor.

  The room was shared by two police inspectors, Möller and Edin, both in their sixties. M
öller was a tall, sinewy fellow who spoke a distinct Skåne dialect, while Edin was of medium height, broad-shouldered and completely bald. Sjöberg introduced himself and was invited to sit down in one of the two visitor’s chairs against the wall by the door. Möller offered him something to drink and disappeared from the room, while Edin rolled his chair over to Sjöberg. They exchanged a few words about the noisy renovation work a few offices away and the water damage that had caused it. Once Möller had placed a plate of fruit and some bottles of Ramlösa on the little table between the armchairs and sat down himself, Sjöberg outlined his errand.

  ‘I’m working on a case where a woman and her two small children were found in their home with their throats cut. Perhaps you’ve heard about it?’

  Both the police inspectors had.

  ‘Two men who figure in this investigation have their roots in Arboga and the reason I’m here in town is that I have been questioning their relatives. The interviews did not produce much, for a number of reasons, but one of these two men once served as a policeman here, so it struck me that perhaps you might have something to contribute. You both would have been working here already in the early seventies?’

  ‘That’s correct,’ said Edin, and Möller nodded in agreement.

  ‘Is he suspected of the murders?’ Möller asked in his broad accent.

  ‘No,’ answered Sjöberg, giving a doctored version of the truth. ‘But he has a central role in this case and now he’s missing.’

  ‘And the other man, has he vanished too?’ asked Edin.

  ‘No, but he’s in hospital and in no condition to help us.’

  ‘So what’s his name, the policeman?’ asked Möller.

  ‘He worked here between 1975 and 1980, Einar Eriksson.’

  The two police inspectors exchanged a glance which Sjöberg could not interpret.

  ‘Do you remember him?’ he asked.

  Edin leaned forward and with his elbows supported on his knees he put his hands in front of his mouth and nodded seriously. Möller leaned back in the armchair and took a deep breath before he answered.

  ‘We knew him very well. It’s terrible, what happened. It was hard on Einar.’

  ‘Poor devil,’ Edin added, shaking his head mournfully.

  Sjöberg furrowed his brow in surprise. Were they referring to something he was expected to know about?

  ‘Now I’m not following. What was it that happened to Einar?’ he asked.

  ‘Excuse me, I thought you knew,’ said Möller. ‘Well, where should we begin?’

  ‘In brief, it was like this,’ Edin explained. ‘Einar and his wife, Solveig, were asked to mind their neighbours’ children. They were two small boys, about three and five years old. The kids were supposed to be dropped off at the mother’s workplace – she worked at a beauty salon in town. On the way there Einar, who was the one driving the car to start with, stopped to run an errand. It dragged on a little, so Solveig took over the wheel and drove up to the kiosk down by the river, to buy sweets for the boys. She parked the car alongside the kiosk, with the front towards the street and the back towards the water. At that time there was no guardrail there by the river and there was a slight incline. While she was buying the sweets the car started to roll and …’

  Edin stopped and looked urgently at his colleague. Sjöberg sat with every muscle in his body tensed, waiting apprehensively for the rest of the story, even if he thought he could guess how it would end. Möller took over.

  ‘Solveig ran up to the car to try to prevent the catastrophe. But she didn’t succeed, and the car backed over the edge. One window was rolled down, so the car quickly filled with water and went to the bottom. With the kids and everything. She threw herself into the water and tried to get the doors open. Einar arrived then and he tried too. And a few others. But you know, it’s hard when the whole car is under. And then it was probably no fun to have to confess face to face to those poor neighbours. Oh, good Lord, what a tragedy it was.’

  Sjöberg was dazed. For thirty years Einar had borne this: the memories, the anxiety, all the feelings of guilt such an event must carry with it. What a burden.

  ‘Was she punished, Solveig?’

  Edin laughed, a brief, toneless laugh.

  ‘Oh, she was punished. But not in the legal sense.’

  ‘Not in the legal sense’ fluttered through Sjöberg’s brain, but the thought didn’t have time to take root.

  ‘She was never herself again,’ Edin continued sorrowfully. ‘For the first few days she screamed, tried to explain, excuse herself, get forgiveness, take on the guilt, grant herself forgiveness. And then she fell silent. First she was in a hospital, for a pretty long time, I think, but then Einar put her in a home of some kind. For three years he stayed living in town. You can imagine what kind of a life he had here. There was whispering and pity and pointing. And naturally the accusations came thick and fast. But he endured it, for Solveig’s sake.’

  ‘Every day he came to work and did what he was supposed to,’ Möller continued, with admiration in his voice. ‘He was not the same happy man after that, but he was here and he struggled on. All his free time he spent with Solveig, at the hospital at first, and then at that home. It was three years before he gave up hope and moved to Stockholm.’

  ‘He didn’t give up hope,’ Sjöberg interjected. ‘He bought a townhouse for them to move into when she got well. And he still visits her every Saturday. For twelve hours he sits there with her, takes walks with her, talks to her. Her birthday, Christmas and New Year’s he spends with Solveig too.’

  ‘So Einar was punished too, and then some,’ said Edin. ‘And Solveig had not done anything wrong. It was one of the boys, who was car-crazy. And disobedient. He released the handbrake, although he was clearly told not to touch anything in the car. But of course she shouldn’t have left them alone.’

  ‘She could have parked a little better,’ was Möller’s comment. ‘But what the hell, we all make little mistakes. It’s just in most cases it works out okay. After the accident they set up a fence by the river, so it couldn’t happen again.’

  Sjöberg looked at the fruit on the table but suddenly felt no desire to eat. He was shaken by the story about Einar’s and his wife’s fate. Shaken, but also filled with admiration for his co-worker, who had never betrayed his Solveig.

  ‘You mentioned another man too,’ said Edin. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘His name is Christer Larsson,’ Sjöberg replied.

  The two police inspectors exchanged a glance again and Edin’s next comment made Sjöberg’s blood run cold.

  ‘Christer Larsson was the father of the little boys.’

  Thoughts were whirling in his head. He cursed his incompetence and asked himself why this thought had not occurred to him. Overwhelmed by the new information, he quickly ended the questioning and thanked his colleagues.

  ‘I have to sort my thoughts,’ he said, leaving them to their work, without having touched either the fruit or the water.

  * * *

  During the difficult hours that immediately followed the unthinkable catastrophe, and with his beloved wife in the hospital, he had taken upon himself the dreadful task of visiting the beauty salon. He had stood by the mother’s side, sometimes with his arm around her shoulders, and watched the divers searching for the children’s bodies. Only when Christer eventually arrived, escorted by a pair of uniformed police officers, had the split begun.

  In the dark labyrinth of sorrow all four of them had wandered, but not together. No one apart from himself had felt up to seeing Solveig. She screamed in desperation and explained again and again in an increasingly cracked voice how the accident had happened. He caressed her and tried to console her, shared the guilt with her, but as time passed her desire to share anything with him disappeared. At last she gave up her desperate attempts to cling to the life that had been theirs, took on all the guilt alone and closed up. No words could give her absolution before the sternest of judges – herself – so she
fell silent.

  The guilt Ingegärd did not spit out in frothing tirades over Einar she transferred to Christer. It was Christer to whom she had given responsibility for the children when she went to work. It was Christer who had nonchalantly turned the children over to Einar – someone who had no experience with children, who without a thought had left the boys in the middle of the street in a boiling-hot car, along with an even less conscientious woman, a woman with no intuition, a woman who did not know that children are thoughtless, unpredictable.

  Christer tried desperately to free himself from the burden that had been placed on him by passing it on to Einar, and this took the form of a hissing torrent of invective about shattered trust, treachery and selfishness, which later changed to vulgar accusations concerning his choice of wife and graphic descriptions of her negligent character.

  At last there was silence. At last all four of them had moved so far from each other that there was no longer anything that could be said. Every single one of them chose their own solitude. Ingegärd and Christer could not live with the silence in the apartment, and neither of them could bear to be in the presence of the one who most reminded them of the children they missed. They packed up their things and moved to separate places. He himself remained in his and Solveig’s apartment for another three years. Three years of reproaches from himself and others, only the hope that he could help her back to a normal life keeping him going.

  When three years had passed he gave up. He could no longer endure the long looks that followed him on the street or the memories that pursued him wherever he went. So he moved to the noise and anonymity of the big city. He bought a townhouse for himself and Solveig, refusing to abandon the dream of a life together with the wonderful woman he had once known.

  Until one day he met Kate. An Asian woman alone in a circle of shaved heads and black bomber jackets, cowardly little jerks who took to their heels as soon as he raised his voice. He did not even need to show his police identification to make them scatter. But Kate was shaken. He put his arm around her paternally and treated her to a soft drink and a cookie at a café nearby. She asked what his name was and he answered Eriksson. Perhaps she had not understood, perhaps it sounded awkward or just boring. She called him Erik and that didn’t matter. He liked it. They talked about her life in this inhospitable country, about her homesickness for the Philippines, but also about the advantages of Sweden and about her small children, who were doing so well here.