by Håkan Nesser
‘I really wasn’t trying to . . .’
She didn’t complete the sentence and he didn’t fill the silence for her.
‘I know, Mum. See you tomorrow then.’
‘It’ll be really nice to see you, Robert. Drive carefully. You’ve got studded tyres, I hope?’
‘Yes Mum. Bye Mum.’
‘Bye love.’
He got out of bed. It was quarter past twelve. He went to the window and looked out over the city. It had started to snow for the first time that winter.
He thought about his mother.
Thought about Jeanette. No, didn’t think. Tried to imagine her.
She’d called a week before. The previous Saturday.
‘You don’t remember me, of course,’ she said.
‘Not really,’ Robert agreed.
‘I’m a bit younger than you. But we went to the same schools. Malmen and upper secondary. Though I was a couple of years below you.’
‘Right,’ said Robert.
‘Anyway, you must wonder why I’m ringing.’
‘Kind of,’ said Robert.
‘I saw that TV programme.’
‘A lot of people did.’
‘I bet. But the thing is . . . er, I don’t quite know how to put this. I like you, Robert.’
‘Thanks.’
He thought of hanging up at that point, but there was something in her voice that appealed to him. A little bit gruff and earnest, somehow. She didn’t sound like a stupid bimbo, even though what she had said so far might possibly indicate that she was one.
‘The fact is, I’ve always liked you. You were part of that little gang of boys, there was always something special about them. If you only knew how often I went round thinking about you when I was in my teens. And . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘And you don’t even know who I am. It’s not very fair.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘No need for you to be. Kids generally stick to their own year group at that age. They, like, don’t look below them, it’s only natural.’
Another pause, which he could very well have used to thank her and ring off. As if she were actually offering him that option, or that was how it seemed.
‘Errm, so why are you ringing?’
‘Sorry. Yes, well, I saw that programme and I realize the shit must really have hit the fan for you afterwards.’
‘You’re not wrong.’
‘So I thought maybe you ought to know that there are people who still like you. Self-confidence and all that.’
‘Thanks, but . . .’
‘And then I heard you might be coming home, back here. For your father and sister’s birthdays, I mean. Your dad was my form teacher, you know. So I thought, if you were going to be around for a few days . . .’
‘Hmm,’ said Robert.
‘Yes, well, it was just a suggestion. But I haven’t been in a relationship these last six months. I’d enjoy sharing a bottle of wine with you, and a chat about life. I live in Fabriksgatan, if you remember where that is?’
‘I think so,’ said Robert.
‘No kids, not even a cat. Can’t I give you my phone number, then you can ring if you feel like it. It might be quite nice to get away from the family for a little while?’
‘Hang on, I’ll get a pen,’ said Robert Hermansson.
Her other name was Andersson, she told him before they ended the call.
Jeanette Andersson?
It was no good, he couldn’t dredge her up from his memory. If he’d been able to look at a school photograph he would presumably have recognized her, but he hadn’t kept any of the old school photo catalogues. Robert Hermansson wasn’t the kind of person who hung on to that kind of relic.
But when his mother rang a few days later and nagged him again about coming to the 105th birthday party, it was Jeanette Andersson who tipped the balance. And he was honest enough to admit it.
But only just, and only to himself. Perhaps that was exactly how she had calculated it would be. He couldn’t resist the temptation of going round to the house of an unknown woman, ringing at her door and being admitted.
Of course, Mummy dear. In that case, I’ll come.
Studded tyres? Robert Hermansson?
His years in Australia had been both good and bad. He’d spent his first summer season on the move, up and down the east coast, working in an endless succession of tourist resorts. Waiter, cook, receptionist, steward, animal keeper (sick pandas who slept eighteen hours a day, and ate and crapped for the remaining six). Byron Bay. Noosa Heads. Airlie Beach. Bowling alley manager in Melbourne. None of the jobs lasted more than a couple of weeks. He celebrated the turn of the millennium at an Irish pub in Sydney, and it was in Sydney, too, that he met Paula and embarked on the third (and final?) substantial love affair of his life. Paula was from England and, like Robert, a refugee of sorts. She had run away from a brutal, alcoholic husband in Birmingham, had been in Sydney for two months when Robert met her, and was temporarily lodging with her sister and brother-in-law, both doctors. She had brought with her from England her four-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Judith. Paula, Judith and Robert moved in together in May 2000, after an acquaintance of less than six months. At the same time, they moved to the far side of the mighty continent and settled in Perth.
He loved her. He was hazier on the subject when he looked back on Madeleine and Seikka, but even in the rear-view mirror of hindsight he swore he had loved Paula. She possessed precisely the sort of gentle and forgiving temperament required for a woman to live with an alcoholic for six years, and Robert had the sense not to abuse that temperament. It felt as though they were growing together, and what was more, she was beautiful. Especially for an Englishwoman. Yes, he had loved Paula.
And Judith. As for his own daughter Lena-Sofie, who was five when he met Paula, he hadn’t seen her for quite a few years. Seikka generally sent an email once every two or three months, which he answered in a friendly fashion, and he kept two photographs in his wallet. On some level, of course, Judith became a kind of surrogate and consolation.
It should have lasted, Robert thought, switching on the espresso machine. With Paula and Judith, it should have lasted.
Nor had his third (and final?) relatively serious attempt at living with a woman foundered on his own shortcomings. No, it was a double-edged sword of sudden violent death and sudden violent religiosity that had made Paula and Judith leave him. A ghastly concatenation of unfortunate circumstances, to be precise. Thus, in April 2003, after three happy years (he thought of them in exactly those terms, and with capital letters: My Happy Years), news arrived from England that Paula’s father had been knocked down by an articulated lorry and killed. Paula travelled back to Birmingham with her sister and Judith for the funeral and to support her mother for a few weeks. Robert expected them home on 28 April. Next, he expected them on 5 May, and then on the twelfth. But on the eleventh, a long email arrived, in which Paula explained the improbable thing that had happened: the former wife beater and drinker had found God and been transformed into a good and responsible human being. Geoffrey was Judith’s actual father, after all, and in the weeks she had spent in her old home country she had rediscovered her feelings for him. Besides which, her mother was shattered by her father’s sudden death, and it didn’t seem right to leave her all alone in life.
Robert resigned from the computer company where he had been working for the past eighteen months, crossed the continent again and spent just over six months on Manly Beach outside Sydney. As the antipodean summer slowly waned into autumn, he flew back home to Sweden. He landed at Stockholm’s Arlanda airport on 15 March 2004, called his younger sister and asked if he could come and stay with her.
‘Why don’t you ring Ebba?’ Kristina wanted to know.
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Robert.
‘For how long?’
‘Just until I find a place of my own. A couple of weeks at most.’
‘You do realize I’m about
to have a baby?’
‘If it’s too awkward for you I’ll find somewhere else.’
‘All right, you bastard,’ said Kristina.
He lived with Kristina and Jakob (and Kelvin, born in the first week of May) in their house at Old Enskede in south Stockholm until mid-June, when he was able to move into the more central, sublet apartment on Kungsholmen where he still lived today. At that point, he took a job as a barman in a trendy restaurant, reflecting that his life resembled nothing so much as a reed in the wind.
Or an insect buzzing round a light bulb. Coming too close and being pushed away, coming too close and being pushed away.
Coming too close and burning up? Too close to what?
Things were still pretty much as they’d been then – though in a different trendy restaurant and with a part-time job at the free newspaper Metro – when in May 2005 he read an advertisement in Aftonbladet and put himself forward for the TV programme Prisoners of Koh Fuk, the worst decision of his life, and ever to remain so.
Well, at least I’ve got an espresso machine, he thought, putting in the ground coffee for another cup. Most people on this planet haven’t got an espresso machine.
He was spared further analysis of the traumatic maelstrom of October and November by the ring of the telephone. It was Kristina.
‘How are you doing. Honestly?’
It was exactly the same question his mother had asked him and he gave exactly the same answer.
‘It is what it is.’
‘Sure you don’t want to come with us? You know we’ve got room.’
‘No thanks. I’ll drive myself. Got a few things to do before I head off.’
‘I can imagine.’
What did she mean by that? Were there things he ought to be getting down to? Things everyone else realized he needed to get done, but to which he was blind?
‘Right then,’ he said to round off the call. ‘See you this evening.’
‘Robert?’
‘Yes?’
‘Never mind, I’ll tell you when we meet.’
‘OK. See you.’
‘See you. Bye.’
‘Bye.’
It’s what they’re expecting, he suddenly thought as he ended the call. That I’ll kill myself. The whole lot of them: Max at the paper; my therapist, that’s why he wants me to pay after each session; even my sister.
4
Jakob Willnius pulled up the shutter of his cocktail cabinet and took out the Laphroaig.
‘Want one?’
‘Is Kelvin asleep?’
‘Sleeping like a log.’
‘Just a finger. What was that about Jefferson?’
Kristina leant back in the big Fogia sofa that curved like a banana and tried to work out if she was annoyed or just tired.
Or perhaps it was just a kind of anticipation of the major annoyance to come. Mentally charging up for the silent conflict that would inevitably colour the next few days. I’ve got to ignore it, she thought. It’s ridiculous and unworthy of me, I’ll leave my soul here and dance along. I’m a grown woman and it is just a one-off.
Jakob brought two glasses over to the table and sat down beside her.
‘He rang from Oslo.’
‘Jefferson?’
‘Yes. He’s going to make it to Stockholm after all. It’d be really useful if I could manage a couple of hours with him before Christmas.’
Her annoyance became actual, just for a second.
‘What are you trying to tell me?’
Jakob regarded her as he twirled his glass in his hand. As inscrutable as a cat watching teletext, she thought. As usual. There was no detectable irony in his smile, which curved at exactly the same angle as the sofa, and no calculation in his pale-green eyes, in which she had wanted to walk barefoot, once upon a time, and of course it was the apparent lack of resistance that made it so hard to get the better of him. And that meant . . . she shifted her gaze from him and pondered . . . that meant the playing field for the imminent conflict was entirely within herself. It was unfair, deeply unfair: four years ago, she had fallen for this primitive elasticity of his, or whatever the hell you wanted to call it, and the paradoxical thought flashed through her mind that it was this very same quality which would make her leave him one day. It wasn’t the first time. You’d work better in a film, Jakob Willnius, she thought. Much better.
‘Cheers Kristina,’ he said. ‘What I’m trying to tell you is that if the Americans are willing to invest ten million in the Samson project, it would be pretty stupid to let it slip through my fingers just because I happen to be stuck at some abominable family dinner in Kymlinge. Abominable is a quotation from a well-informed and rational authority, maybe I didn’t—’
‘I get it. And exactly when is this Jefferson due to arrive?’
‘Tuesday evening. And then he flies to Paris Wednesday lunchtime. But a breakfast meeting on Wednesday is within the realm of possibility.’
‘Realm of possibility? We won’t be home until Wednesday evening.’
‘Quite right.’ He was no longer looking her in the eye, but studying his nails instead, counting them or something? ‘Kristina, you know I’ve agreed to make myself available for this extravaganza, but as far as I can see, I could drive up on Tuesday evening. Or overnight. You and Kelvin can either take the train home, or get a lift with Robert. He’ll be driving back sometime on Wednesday in any case . . . great that he’s coming, in spite of everything.’
Great, she thought. What the hell was there about Robert that was great? She knocked back her drink and regretted not having asked for two fingers. Or four.
‘If I understand this right,’ Jakob went on, ‘there’s no plan to make a night of it. We’re staying at a hotel, after all, so they don’t even have to know I’m pushing off a bit early. Don’t you think?’
She took a deep breath and launched in. ‘If Jefferson’s that important, and you’ve already made up your mind, there’s no need for you to discuss it with me, Jakob.’
She gave him a second in which to protest, but he merely sipped his whisky and gave an interested nod.
‘How should I know what they’ve got planned? It’s my sister’s fortieth and my father’s sixty-fifth. It’s the first time you’re meeting the family when they’re all gathered together, and presumably the last, too, now they’re selling the house and moving to the Costa Senilica. The family’s scandalized; Dad’s been striving all his life to be some kind of petit bourgeois pillar of the community and figure of respect, and then his only son decides to have a wank on television . . . so I’ve no idea what they’ve got in store for us down there, but if you’ve got to have breakfast with an American mogul, don’t let this get in your way.’
He chose the easiest way out. Took her at her word, pretending not to pick up on the chasm of irony beneath. ‘Good,’ was his short, neutral response. ‘I’d suggested nine on Wednesday, so I’ll ring and confirm that.’
‘And if the party doesn’t end until midnight?’
‘I’ll drive straight there, however it turns out. It only takes three hours at night. Four or five hours’ sleep, that’s all I need.’
‘Do as you like,’ said Kristina. ‘Who knows, perhaps Kelvin and I will come with you.’
‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure,’ said Jakob with another of his vapid smiles. ‘Don’t you want another finger? Delicious, this asses’ milk.’
She woke at half past two in the morning and it took her an hour to get back to sleep. It wasn’t usually a good time for positive reflections, and nor was it on this occasion.
This isn’t going to work, she thought. There’s no way Jakob and I can stick it out together. We’re not acting in the same sort of play.
Our instruments aren’t in tune . . . slowly and unresistingly, the arguments came streaming up to the surface . . . we’re not in the same room, we don’t speak the same language, oil and water, he never has a single thought that resembles what’s going on in my mind. In five years’ tim
e . . . in five years’ time I shall be a single mum at my first school parents’ evening. And why on earth should I even bother to start looking for a new man? I give up.
I’m demanding too much, she thought, a minute later.
That’s what Ebba would say. Marvellous sister Ebba. Don’t be so bloody self-important, little sis. Be glad of what you’ve got; you could easily have ended up with much worse.
Not that Kristina would ever have taken it into her head to discuss the matter with Ebba.
But if she did. Unrealistic demands, you’re asking too much. Why do you imagine that any human being – especially a man – would have anything to gain from wandering round in your confused feminist soul? Just look at those scripts you struggle with! Everyone else in the team just gets on with it and does the work according to the contract; it’s only you who complicates everything and takes twice as long over the revisions. Rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. Your job is to produce rubbish, so learn to do what you’re asked and then leave it! The world will never understand your genius anyway.
So Ebba could have said. If she’d had any idea how things stood.
A minute later came the inevitable weakness. When she imagined being on Ebba’s side and subjected herself to punishing scrutiny. There’s no genius lurking beneath that brow of yours, Kristina Hermansson! You haven’t an ounce of originality. No genuine creative power. You’re just a dissatisfied little bitch with delusions of grandeur. Always have been, and the only qualitative changes in your life will be turning first into a middle-aged bitch, then an old one.
She got up and drank some apple juice. Ate some crispbread and cheese. Stood in front of the bathroom mirror and looked at her body. It was the same old body as ever, which had been younger, but the breasts were of even size, the stomach was flat and the hips of the right fullness. No cellulite. She did actually look like a woman, and had she been a man she would presumably have appreciated what she saw.
But now she had signed herself up to the same male for the rest of her life, wasn’t that true? And he preferred making love in the dark. Presumably because he didn’t want her to see his bit of flab. So she was the only one who would occasionally look at this body, relatively well preserved so far. Thirty-one years old. Jakob was forty-three. If the twelve-year gap were applied in the other direction, it would mean she could get herself a nineteen-year-old. She felt a slight tingle between her thighs, but nothing more. Not yet.
