“No,” she whispered.
“Nor any you are in close contact with? The children of siblings, or of neighbors, for instance?”
“Why do you ask?” she managed.
“Lock away your medicine. Never let any child come near it. The fact is, it tastes far from unpleasant.”
She took the commuter train to Södertälje. When Arthur left her she had also lost her home. Well, or his, if you had to pick nits. His condo in the Tantolunden area of Stockholm. A two-room apartment with a breathtaking view. He had more or less just thrown her out. Jannike had gone back to her mother and lived with her for a few days, but they had rubbed each other the wrong way. Her mother had managed to get her the secondhand lease on the single-bedroom apartment in Södertälje.
“How old are you now, Jannike? Thirty-six, isn’t it? Won’t you ever grow old enough to stand on your own two feet?”
Jannike knew that deep down her mother was relieved that she and Arthur had split up. He was a Muslim, and not only that; he was black as well. Her mother had never been comfortable with anything that was different.
She looked out on the snow-covered suburb and remembered the first time they had met, her mother and Arthur. The sudden aggressiveness. “Do you want to put a burka on her as well?” Arthur had remained silent; he was a quiet man. He carried most things within, but at the end he had been unable to take any more. He had put his coffee cup down on the table so hard that its little handle had broken. Grandma Betty’s cups, the ones with the ivy. She had had to run downstairs after him, all the way out on the yard. Beg and beg.
“Don’t be mad, she can be so clumsy sometimes, my mom. She didn’t mean it.”
Though deep down she knew that what she said wasn’t true. Her mother had meant every word she’d said. And as far as she herself was concerned, she had no other alternative than to choose. Arthur or her mother.
She picked Arthur. He was kind to her and took care of her, comforted her when she was sad. He was good in bed as well. She had never been as satisfied with anyone else as she was with Arthur. And when she lost her job, or at least during the first period after it happened, he was there for her. Bought delicacies on his way home from work. Spoiled her. Got in touch with the union and asked them if Swedish law really allowed someone to sack a conscientious employee without any cause at all.
There were negotiations. And then of course the reasons why she had been laid off crept out. Fucking Gunhild and her lies. She and Arthur on one side of the table, Gunhild on the opposite and between them, at the short end, the trade union representative. Gunhild the hag had taken off her ugly, old-fashioned glasses. Her hands shook, you couldn’t miss it. You might wonder who actually had liquor problems.
“Your girlfriend has been intoxicated practically every day during the last several months. We have been patient with her, very patient. But . . . we simply can’t take it any longer.”
Jannike heard Arthur draw a breath.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you to be quite full of truth.” He spoke Swedish well for being an immigrant, but sometimes he made mistakes. Right now she wished that he’d be silent and not meddle in this.
“Indeed? And what do her colleagues have to say about it?” The union representative was jiggling a bottle opener. He seemed tired and aloof.
Gunhild, the hag who had been her boss, opened her briefcase and pulled out a rolled paper.
“This,” she said. Slowly, and without taking her eyes off Jannike, she slid the rubber band from the rolled paper. The paper was full of signatures. Ten of them. All of her fellow workers. Even Marja, whom she had liked so much. Who had been her confidante.
The train was entering the commuter station in Södertälje. Jannike stood up and stepped out. She rummaged in her knapsack and thought about the prescription she had had filled at the Scheele pharmacy, two boxes of fifty capsules each. Her chest grew hot and she felt her heart flutter. Everything would be fine. Soon there would be an end to her suffering.
Her apartment was on the ground floor and, because people could so easily look in her windows, she always had the curtains drawn. Sometimes kids were running about outside, banging her windows or sometimes throwing dirt and mud. Telling them off was pointless. The best you could do was to turn a blind eye to them. Four or five kids were standing outside the door to the building. They didn’t move as she approached. One of them stuck his tongue out. She thought of the capsules, of their taste which was “far from unpleasant.” She pushed herself past the children and opened the door. She felt a little dizzy.
Inside her apartment, she had to lie down at once. Hear heart was thudding, sweat ran from her pores. She closed her eyes, moaning. After a while she got up and walked into the kitchen. Poured a glass of silver rum and emptied it. At last the world steadied around her. But the images returned, the images from the meeting with the trade union.
Sustained abuse of alcohol at her place of work. Nothing had helped. Neither reprimands, warnings or confidential discussions with her hag boss. Arthur grew more and more quiet as the meeting progressed. His silence spread like cold and it scared her. In the evening, when they had returned home, he had to go to work. He was a ticket salesman at the Old Town subway station, one of the hardest places to work on the line. That’s where the skinheads hang out, on the helipad nearby. Sometimes they felt like fucking with someone. Despite his skin color his lips were pale when he turned to her.
“I want you out of here when I get back home.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Pack your things and get out!”
“But Arthur, you can’t . . .”
He raised his hand and for a moment she thought he would strike her.
“You’ve lied to me. What you’ve done is worse than if you’d been unfaithful.”
“It’s all of them lying!” she cried. “That fucking hag Gunhild, she’s made it all up, you have to believe me. I love you.”
His face was tense and closed.
“And the name lust?” he said in a hard voice.
List, she thought, but it wasn’t funny; sometimes she could joke with him and laugh when he said a word wrong. He had used to laugh too, and topple her onto the bed. “Just you wait and see what I’ll give you for daring to tease me.”
He looked like a stranger standing there in his subway uniform. She had thought it made him look sexy but now all of that was gone, only despair remained.
“She’s written those names herself, she hates me. I’m a threat to her, I’m so much younger. She can’t stand me.”
He took his shoulder bag. His sketch pad stuck up out of it; when things were quiet he liked to draw.
“It’s enough now, Jannike.” The exact words the hag cunt had said to her, that last day at work. “You know what we’ve talked about before, you and I. And now it’s enough.”
Jannike had started laughing, a strange, gurgling sound.
“And just what do you mean by that?”
Red blotches had appeared on Gunhild’s wrinkly chest. “Don’t pretend to be stupid.”
“I don’t. I don’t understand what you’re talking about, you’re imagining things. Making things up. You’re a mythomaniac, that’s what you are.”
She was happy about that word; it had come to her at exactly the right moment.
“If you prefer I can get all the others in. Hold a staff meeting. But I suspect it wouldn’t be very enjoyable for you.”
She felt strong and indifferent. She cut her laugh off, as with a knife.
“Let me tell you something,” she said, smacking her palms together. “Nothing at this place has been very enjoyable. Ever! And as I’m sure you know, it’s always the boss who sets the mood.”
Then she walked out.
The pharmacy bag was on the kitchen sink. Her dizziness had passed. She took out the two cardboard packs and looked at them. The angry red triangles that meant danger. Dextromordiphene. She pronounced the word aloud to herself, moving her lip
s very deliberately. Carefully she opened one of the packs and pulled out a blister strip, each cell containing a little pink, oval pill.
To be swallowed whole, she read.
She took down two tumblers. Her mother had given Jannike her old ones, the chipped ones. She had decided to throw them away but when Jannike moved out they came in handy. In one glass she poured hot water. In the other a little silver rum. While she fingered two of the pills out of their protective foil she felt her mouth go a bit dry, but nothing more. One pill in each glass, a spoon to stir. Wait for a little while, two minutes, ten.
Yes!
She shouted the word standing in her kitchen. YES! It worked. The pills were entirely dissolved, both in the water and in the rum. No trace of them left, nothing at all.
But of course, she thought. Of course they have to dissolve, how else could your body absorb them?
That night she slept well for the first time since moving to the apartment. She dreamt of flying, of Arthur and her sailing around above downtown Stockholm, dressed in white shifts. It was delightful.
A couple of days after he had thrown her out she had gone to the Old Town to look for him in the ticket booths. She couldn’t find him. She asked a young guy in one of the booths.
“Excuse me, do you happen to know when Arthur’s shift is supposed to start?”
He gave her a cold stare.
“Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
She fell silent. Lost her words.
“You’re holding up the line,” he said. “Do you want a ticket or not?”
She felt like grabbing hold of his booth and toppling it. Could it be that Arthur had warned his coworkers about her? “If some skinny broad comes looking for me, don’t speak to her.”
Was that what had happened?
For a moment her anger turned towards Arthur, writhing within her, but then it stilled and again centered on her place of work. Gunhild and her former fellow workers. The list of names. Their hands holding pens, quick, flourishing movements. All of it on the sly, to push her away.
She hurt when she thought about it. And even Marja. Her name had been there, at the bottom of the list, as if she had hesitated until the very last moment but then finally had signed after all. Marja Hammendal. Marja, with whom she’d sometimes had gone to the movies. Marja, who had cried herself out at her place when she had quarreled with her husband.
Those times she had felt motherly. Sat there holding Marja’s hand, pulling out tissue papers for her.
“It’ll pass,” she had comforted her. “You’ll be friends again tonight.”
Marja, who at last had started laughing. “You’re so kind and wise, such a wonderful pal, what would I do without you?”
Even Marja.
She went four times to the Old Town subway station. Arthur was never there. He had been transferred. Systematically she began checking all the inner city stations. It was an unreliable method, since she didn’t know his work schedule. But finally she succeeded. At the Rådmansgatan station and at two twenty-five in the afternoon. Coming down the stairs she already saw that it was him. She waited for a moment while the hallway emptied. Then she walked up to him and showed herself.
His beautiful, beautiful face, his mouth. Those eyes that had regarded her with so much love. Not now. No longer.
“Where do you want to go?”
As if he’d never before seen her.
“But Arthur, love . . . It’s me.”
They had all let her down. Deserted her. In a sudden jerk she lifted one of the two glasses and emptied it down the drain. Then the other. Ran the faucet at full.
At that moment the doorbell rang. At first she thought not to open. Then that crazy, wild thought that it might be Arthur.
It wasn’t. It was Inga-Lisa. She had on a black turtleneck sweater that made her face seem older. Her eyelids shone, green metal. She looked like a snake or a lizard.
“Hi, honey. So you’re back now.”
Jannike stepped aside and let her in.
“I just wanted to hear how it went. Was the nice doctor real good to you?”
“Yes. He gave me the same as you, Dextromordiphene.”
“Great. Then you’ll soon feel better.”
“Yes.”
“How about coming along to my place for a cup of coffee? I was just going to make some.”
Jannike accepted. Her friend’s apartment looked as if a tornado had just passed. The place was full of boxes filled with Christmas decorations, candlesticks, Santas, ornaments made from straw and crackers. One box was overflowing with different-colored tinsel.
Jannike made place for herself at the very edge of the couch.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Just sorting some stuff. You end up with so much junk. I sure won’t celebrate another Fanny and Alexander Christmas.” She took a painted ceramic Santa with furiously red cheeks. Held it out to Jannike. “Ever seen an uglier thing?”
Jannike smiled uncertainly.
“Got it from my mother-in-law. A hundred and eighteen years ago. I’ve kept it all, can you imagine? But now it goes.”
“What? Are you going to throw it away?”
“Well, I’ve always believed the kids might want it. But no fucking way. I never even hear from them any longer. Can hardly remember if I ever had any.”
Jannike had heard it before. Inga-Lisa had two grown children, a son and a daughter. They didn’t seem to put a high priority on keeping in touch with their mother.
Inga-Lisa pressed her lips together.
“The fuck with all that. I won’t torture you with any more old nostalgia. I’ll carry it all down to the garbage room. And then I’ll be rid of it. Unless you happen to want it?”
Afterward she thought it had been part of the plan. As if some divine director sitting up among the clouds had pointed a knobby finger. Do this. Do that. While Inga-Lisa poured the coffee and chain-smoked cigarettes Jannike rummaged about in her boxes. She found several things that could be useful to her. Small things, which wouldn’t be hard to carry. And best of all, a Lucia nightgown which fit her perfectly and a Lucia crown to go with it. Inga-Lisa was carried along by her enthusiasm and got her a new battery for the crown. She put it on Jannike’s head and twisted one of the electric candles.
“Yes. It works.”
“Can I still take it? Are you really sure?”
“Of course, honey. Everything you don’t want is for the garbage bin.”
She didn’t ask what Jannike wanted the Lucia outfit for. She was great in that way, a true friend and comrade. As opposed to Marja and the others.
Early on Saint Lucia’s Day she fixed the mulled wine. She warmed it in a pot she had borrowed from Inga-Lisa and poured it into a large thermos jug. She had borrowed that as well. It looked like one of the thermos jugs at work. Once she had jokingly painted eyes on it, making it look like a mad penguin. Of course Gunhild had failed to appreciate the humor. “We’re having a board meeting, are you out of your mind?” As if the board members didn’t need something to laugh about.
Over the weekend she had washed the Lucia gown and ironed it and the wide, red sash that went with it. The one said to symbolize the blood of the saint. She folded it neatly and put it in a paper shopping bag. In another she put her ten small Christmas presents. They were things Inga-Lisa had let her take from her boxes, nothing remarkable, but still. Santas, candlesticks, stars made from straw. She had taken great care and the presents had turned out beautifully, with ruffled strings and labels where she’d written the names of her ex-colleagues and the words Merry Christmas in her very best hand.
She put the thermos with the mulled wine upright into her knapsack and braced it with towels so it wouldn’t fall over and start leaking.
Later, as she sat on the commuter train, it felt as if she was now one of them, one of all those going in to the city to work. Tired, pale faces, the aisles full of slush. The outside temperature this Lucia’s Day morning was just aroun
d the freezing point and wet snow was falling. She took one of the free dailies and since she got on at the first station she got a seat. She leafed through the paper disinterestedly while some school teens with glitter in their hair were messing about, having celebrated all night. She smiled at them. As opposed to them, she was absolutely sober.
Thank heaven, the lock code remained the same. She took the elevator to the top floor of the building and continued up the half stair to the attic door. Up here, behind the elevator’s control cubicle, she changed her clothes. She had been shivering from the cold while she walked from the train station. Now she no longer felt cold. She put her garments in one of the paper bags and pushed it close to the wall. Then she tied the red ribbon around her waist and put the crown of lights on her newly washed hair. In the glass pane of the elevator well she could see her own reflection. She twisted one of the candles and the crown lit up. So far everything had gone according to plan. She cleared her throat and sang softly.
Then in our darkened house,
Walking with gleaming lights . . .
After that, she glided slowly downstairs.
There was a wreath of boxwood on the door to her former place of employment. The smell of cat pee was persistent. It had been the same way all the previous years. That they never learned, that they didn’t get lingonberry wreaths instead. They didn’t smell at all.
It was a quarter to nine in the morning. Jannike steadied her grip on the thermos bottle and rung the bell.
Marja opened. Sudden worry flashed across her face.
“Who . . . oh! It’s you!”
“Hush!” Jannike put a finger across her mouth. “I’ll leave in a few minutes, I just wanted to . . .”
She held out her paper bag with the small presents.
“I wanted to ask all of you to forgive me,” she mumbled and managed to make her voice sound just as thick and full of regret as she had planned. “I brought some mulled wine as well. Please, Marja, help me out.”
Marja’s bad conscience. It radiated from her. It came to her help. It was Marja who went out to the others and convinced them all to come to the conference room. All of them were there, all ten of them; it hardly happened every day, but on just this day it did, everything went her way. It was also Marja who went to the canteen to get ten cups.
A Darker Shade of Sweden Page 9
