The Stranglers Honeymoon

by Håkan Nesser

Not the name of the street. Not the drab, brown-coloured building with its three low-ceilinged storeys. Not her room, not the flat, nor the dull, characterless district with its straight, narrow streets and dirty cars and shops, and not even a single tree.

  I’m sixteen years old now, she had begun to think. Three more years at grammar school, then I can move away from here. Then I can look after myself.

  Her conscience pricked her once more as she remained standing by the telephone, looking out of the window over the top of the net curtains at the equally dirty-brown façades on the other side of the street. The narrow, dark windows that were in the shade for eleven hours out of twelve even on quite sunny days like today.

  She remembered a line in a play by Strindberg: ‘You have to feel sorry for human beings.’ Not just sorry for myself or for Mum, but for everybody. Every man jack. But being aware of that doesn’t make it any better.

  She liked having little conversations about life with herself. She didn’t write them down, but kept them in the back of her mind and thought about them occasionally. Perhaps because it helped to place her in a context with other people. A sort of gloomy solidarity.

  Reminded her that she wasn’t so different, despite everything. That life was like this.

  That her mother was just the same as the mothers of other sixteen-year-old girls, and that loneliness was just as devastating for everybody else as well.

  And maybe her mum would get well again one of these days – even if that fat psychologist woman hardly made it sound as if she believed it would happen. Better to keep an eye on it and try to keep it under control with the aid of medication. Better not to hope for too much. Better to keep your sights low.

  Manic depression. That was what it was called. And it was disciplined medication, the psychologist had said.

  Monica sighed. Shrugged, and took the recipe out of the file.

  Chicken in orange with rice and broccoli sauce.

  The chicken pieces had already been purchased and were in the refrigerator – she would need to buy the rest at Rijkman’s. The rice, spices, oranges, salad. And ice cream sorbet for afters. She had noted it all down, and her mother had made her read out the whole list over the telephone.

  Manic, she thought. A sure sign that her mother was moving into a manic phase. That was presumably why she had missed her train. She had been to tend the grave in Herzenhoeg and stayed there too long – not for the first time.

  But her late arrival and the evening meal business were not a problem. Not as far as her mother was concerned: there were virtually no problems when she was in this state. She was experiencing what would be a brief high – it seldom lasted longer than a week. While it lasted there was no reason why everything shouldn’t go like clockwork.

  And the medicine was doubtless here at home in the bathroom cupboard. As usual. Monica didn’t even need to check in order to know that.

  Wouldn’t it be better to postpone the dinner? she had suggested. He was due to arrive at eight o’clock; surely he wouldn’t want to hang around until half past eleven waiting for her mother to get home?

  Her mother had explained that of course he would want to hang around: that was something an innocent sixteen-year-old couldn’t possibly understand. She had already checked with him when he rang her mobile. So could she please be a good daughter and do what her mother had asked her to do?

  Monica tore the page out of her notebook and took the necessary money out of the housekeeping kitty. She saw that it was already half past five, so she had better get moving if she was going to avoid disappointing her mother’s lover.

  Lover? she thought as she pushed her trolley around the shelves, trying to find what she was looking for. She didn’t like the word, but that’s what her mother called him.

  My lover.

  Monica preferred the actual person to what her mother called him, in fact. Thought he was much better. For once.

  Just think if this could be it, she thought. Just think if they could make up their minds to try and live together.

  But it seemed pretty unlikely. As far as she knew they had only met a few times – and most of them did a runner after three or four.

  Nevertheless she allowed herself the childish hope that he would move in with them, and she tried to conjure up his image in her mind’s eye. Quite tall and well built. Probably around forty. Hair greying at the temples, and warm eyes that reminded her a little of her dad’s.

  And he had such a nice voice, that was perhaps the most important thing of all. Yes, now that she came to think of it, that was nearly always how she judged people.

  By their voice, and the way in which they shook hands. Those were two things that couldn’t be falsified. That was no doubt something she had read in another girls’ magazine ages ago, but it didn’t matter. It was true, that was the main thing. You could lie with so many other things: your lips, your eyes, your gestures.

  But never with your voice and the way you shook hands.

  As far as she was concerned, he scored especially highly on those two aspects of character: a calm, deep voice which gave words exactly their right value and never rushed things, and a hand which was big and warm and neither pressed too hard nor felt as if the owner would rather pull it away. It was almost a pleasure in itself to shake hands with him.

  She smiled slightly at her thoughts, and turned her attention to her shopping list. What a brilliant assessor of human character I am, she thought. I’ve only met him for about ten minutes in all. I ought to become a psychologist or something.

  As she prepared the food, she began thinking – as usual – about Loneliness. With a capital L: that was how she often saw it written. Presumably in order to give it some sort of extra dignity.

  Wondering whether she would be able to overcome it now that she was starting in a new class at school, or if everything would turn out to be the same old story. Loneliness, her only reliable companion.

  Would she still not dare to invite new classmates to her home? Because of a mum who put both herself and her daughter to shame the moment anybody new stepped over the threshold.

  Or posed a threat of doing so, at least. Who could lie under a blanket on the sofa in the living room in broad daylight – with a carving knife and a bottle of sleeping pills on the coffee table beside her, begging in a loud voice for her daughter to help her to commit suicide.

  Or float around in the bathtub barely alive, surrounded by her own vomit and with two empty wine bottles standing on the floor.

  Or at the other extreme: as high as a kite, instructing young twelve-year-olds about the most efficient ways of masturbating – since sex lessons at school nowadays were such a lot of rubbish.

  No, she thought. No, three more years will be more than enough – I don’t want to end up like that.

  And the men. The boyfriends who came and went, always during the manic weeks in the spring and the autumn, each of them even worse than the previous one, none of whom she ever saw more than three or four times.

  Apart from Henry Schitt, who claimed to be a writer and smoked hash all day long for four weeks, either in the bathroom or out on the balcony, until Monica plucked up enough courage to phone Auntie Barbara up in Chadow.

  Auntie Barbara hadn’t intervened personally, of course: she never did. But she had arranged for two social workers to call round and throw out Henry. And for her sister to be placed in medical care for a few hours.

  And to be given some more medicine.

  That was in the spring, a year-and-a-half ago; and things had in fact become rather better after that. As long as the medication wasn’t left unused in the bathroom cupboard because her mother had been feeling so well that she didn’t think she needed to take it any more.

  And now this Benjamin Kerran.

  When she thought about him, it occurred to her that this was the first time during all those years that she hadn’t heard the shout for her father echoing inside her chest. Her own shout inside her own body.

  Be
njamin? The only thing she had against him was in fact his name. He was much too big to be called Benjamin. And vigorous and warm and lively. A Benjamin ought to be small and skinny with misted-up glasses and a face covered in pimples and blackheads. And bad breath – just like Benjamin Kuhnpomp, who had spent a term in her class in year five, and who was, as far as she was concerned, the model for all Benjamins the world over.

  But now here she was, cooking a meal for a quite different Benjamin.

  A Benjamin who was her mother’s lover, and was welcome to stay with them for as long as he wished.

  As far as Monica was concerned, she was keen to do her best not to frighten him off – that much was clear, and she was determined to carry it off. She checked the temperature and put the casserole with the chicken into the oven. It was only half past seven: if she skipped washing her hair, she would have time for a shower before he arrived.

  ‘You don’t need to sit here entertaining an old fart just because your mum was delayed. You mustn’t let me interfere with your plans.’

  She laughed and scraped up the final, runny lump of sorbet from her plate.

  ‘You are not an old fart, and I don’t have any plans for this evening. Have you had enough?’

  He smiled and patted his stomach.

  ‘I couldn’t even force down another raisin. Is it your mum who’s taught you how to cook? That was really delicious. An old bachelor like me isn’t used to feasts of this quality, believe you me.’

  ‘Oh, come off it!’ she managed to come out with, and could feel that she was blushing.

  ‘Let’s put some foil over the remains, so that we can warm them up when your mum gets back. I’ll see to the washing up.’

  ‘No, I . . .’

  ‘Enough of that. Sit down and watch the telly, and I’ll sort all this out. Or read a book. Incidentally, speaking of books . . .’

  He stood up and went out into the hall. Fished around in a plastic carrier bag he had left on the hat shelf, then came back in.

  ‘Here you are. A little present as a thank you for the meal.’

  He placed a flat, gift-wrapped little parcel on the table in front of her.

  ‘For me? But why?’

  ‘Why not?’

  He started clearing the table.

  ‘You might not like it, but you sometimes have to take a chance.’

  She ran her finger over the fancy ribbons.

  ‘Aren’t you going to open it? I’ve got something for your mum as well, so she won’t need to feel jealous.’

  She slid the ribbon over the corner of the packet and tore open the wine-red paper. She took out the book, and couldn’t conceal her delight.

  ‘Blake!’ she exclaimed. ‘How did you know?’

  He came over to her and stood behind her with his hands on the back of her chair.

  ‘Songs of Innocence and of Experience. I happened to notice that you had Tyger, Tyger, burning bright pinned up on your noticeboard – it was your mum who insisted that I should take a look at your room – forgive me for intruding. Anyway, I thought he must be a favourite of yours . . . And it’s a beautiful book, with all the paintings and so on.’

  She started thumbing through, and when she saw the mystical illustrations and the ornate script, she could feel that tears were not far distant. In order to keep them at bay she stood up and gave him a hug.

  He laughed, and hugged her as well.

  ‘So there, little lady – that wasn’t much, let’s be honest! Time to leave me in peace now here in the kitchen.’

  ‘You’re so nice. I hope . . .’

  ‘Well, what do you hope?’

  ‘I hope everything goes well with you and my mum. You would be so good for her . . . For us.’

  She hadn’t meant to say that, but it was done now. He held her shoulders, at arm’s length, and eyed her with a somewhat confused expression on his face.

  ‘We’ll see what happens,’ he said.

  Then he steered her out of the kitchen.

  When he came and sat beside her on the sofa, it was twenty past ten. There was over an hour to go before her mother would arrive. She had started watching a French film on the telly, but switched off after a quarter of an hour. She switched on the reading lamp and went over to Blake instead.

  ‘Read something for me,’ he said.

  She suddenly felt her mouth go dry.

  ‘My English isn’t all that good.’

  ‘Nor is mine. But I think all young people speak like native Brits nowadays. Do you have a favourite poem? You don’t need to feel embarrassed if you slip up.’

  She thought for a moment, then leafed back through a few pages.

  ‘Maybe this one.’

  ‘Let’s hear it.’

  She cleared her throat, closed her eyes for two seconds, then started reading.

  ‘O Rose thou art sick

  The invisible worm

  That flies in the night

  In the howling storm

  Has found out thy bed

  Of crimson joy

  And his dark secret love

  Does thy life destroy’

  She closed the book and waited for his reaction.

  ‘Lovely,’ he said. ‘And sad. It’s called “The Sick Rose”, isn’t it?’

  She nodded.

  ‘But it’s really about people. I realize that you’ve had a bit of a rough time. If you want to tell me about it I’d be glad to listen.’

  She knew immediately that that was exactly what she wanted to do. But was it appropriate? she wondered. And if she did tell him, how far should she go? And where should she begin?

  ‘If you don’t want to, then of course you shouldn’t. We can sit here in silence, Or talk about football. Or ropey TV programmes, or the perilous state of hedgehogs in the contemporary world . . .’

  ‘You are just like my dad,’ she said with a laugh. ‘You really are. We used to sit here on this sofa, reading aloud to each other. When I was little, that is – he did most of the reading, of course. I used to sit on his lap.’

  Three seconds passed before she burst out crying.

  Then she sat on his lap.

  Afterwards she had trouble in remembering what they had talked about.

  If they had said all that much in fact, or just sat there in silence for most of the time.

  Probably the latter.

  But she remembered that he smelled nice. She remembered the rough texture of his shirt, and his regular, deep breaths against her back. The warmth he radiated, and his strong hands that occasionally caressed her arms and her hair.

  And she remembered that it was shortly after the old wall clock over the television struck eleven that she felt that sudden movement inside her that ought not to have stirred at all.

  And that at almost exactly the same moment a part of him also moved and made its presence felt, in a way that was absolutely forbidden.

  3

  He rang to apologize the very next day.

  In the late afternoon: her mother was at some preliminary meeting for people who had been out of work for quite a long time, but were now being launched back into the labour market. Perhaps she had told him about that, so that he knew when it would be a suitable time to phone her.

  ‘Please forgive me, Monica,’ he said. ‘No, you shouldn’t do that, in fact. It was unforgivable.’

  She didn’t know what to say.

  ‘There were two of us involved,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he insisted. ‘It was entirely my fault. I don’t understand how I could have let it happen. I was a bit tired, of course, and I’m only human – but for God’s sake, that’s no excuse. It’s probably best if you don’t ever see me again.’

  He fell silent, and she thought she could hear his bad conscience in the receiver.

  ‘We didn’t go all that far,’ she said. ‘And I must accept some of the blame. You’re not a child any longer when you’re sixteen years old.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ he said. ‘I’m in a relations
hip with your mother. This is the kind of thing you read about in dodgy magazines.’

  ‘Do you read dodgy magazines?’ she asked. ‘I didn’t realize that.’

  He burst out laughing, but checked himself.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But maybe I should, in order to discover what I shouldn’t do. But it won’t happen any more, I promise you that. It’s probably best that I put an end to my relationship with your mother as well . . .’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t do that.’

  He paused before responding.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because . . . Because you are good for her. She likes you and you like her. I like you as well – not like last night, that was an accident.’

  He seemed to hesitate again.

  ‘I rang to apologize, and . . . and to say that I thought it was best to accept the consequences and leave both of you in peace from now on.’

  ‘But you didn’t tell Mum that?’

  He sighed.

  ‘No, I didn’t tell your mum that. That would have been the correct thing to do, of course, but I didn’t know how she would take it. And if you’re a coward, that’s what you are. So you see what a shit I am.’

  ‘You’re not a shit. Pack it in now, there were two of us on that sofa and I’m not utterly unaccountable for my actions.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Silence once again. She could feel thoughts buzzing round inside her head like a swarm of bees.

  ‘I must say I think you are treating this less seriously than you should,’ he said in the end. ‘Maybe we should meet and talk it over properly.’

  She thought for a moment.

  ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t do any harm. When and where?’

  ‘When do you have time?’

  ‘Whenever suits you. I don’t go back to school until next week.’

  He proposed a walk in Wollerims Park the following evening, and she thought that sounded like a good idea.

  The following evening was a Wednesday, and one of the hottest days of the whole summer. After quite a short walk they sat down on a bench under one of the weeping willow trees next to the canal, and talked for over an hour. Afterwards they went for a walk through the town. Along Langgraacht, through Landsloorn and out to Megsje Bojs. She did most of the talking. Spoke about her childhood, her father’s death, her mother. About her difficulties at school, and her girlfriends who kept letting her down. He listened and asked a few questions. When they turned off onto one of the pedestrian paths through the woods, she linked arms with him; when they had come deeper into the woods where there were no more lights, he put an arm around her shoulder, and by shortly after midnight they had become lovers for real.