The Darkest Day

by Håkan Nesser

  Or Spain? Was it Spain dragging her down into this muddy puddle of depression? 01.14. Or the fact that she had retired? Had she forfeited the aim and meaning of her life, simply because she no longer had a job to go to? Those blasted kids at Kymlingevik School?

  The whole evening had been a walk through the valley of the shadow of death. A tightrope walk, at that; she had been a fraction of a second away from just throwing plates and cutlery to the devil and screaming out loud. Yet no one had noticed a thing. Mummy this and Mummy that, and your warm cloudberries are the best in the world, Mum. As if it took any sort of finesse to heat up some frozen cloudberries. She had served and cleared and washed up and delivered food-related lines from a script so old and dog-eared that nobody even noticed it was all a piece of theatre. She had fished into the depths of her soul for anything sensible to say – for warm feelings for any of her children (grandchildren and sons-in-law included) – but her hooks had dangled naked on limp lines, way down in the sinkhole. 01.15. Kelvin was a strange and introverted child, it made her wonder if he was quite all there. Autism perhaps, or Asperger’s syndrome, though weren’t they variants of the same thing? The monosyllabic sounds he uttered at long intervals always managed to peculiarly resemble words with sexual connotations. If I were twenty and had to choose one of the others to live on a desert island with, she thought – well, he’d have to be twenty as well, of course – I’m damned if I wouldn’t go for Leif.

  It was a slightly surprising conclusion, but at least Leif wasn’t a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Possibly a pig in a pigskin coat, but a kindly pig, and you never had to try too hard with him. Ebba’s been lucky, she thought. She’ll spend her whole life imagining she traded down, when in fact she drew the winning ticket. Arrogant goose, you should have been called Karl-Ebba! The thought hit her with a sudden flare of anger. She could almost smile at it in the darkness as she wondered whether there was essentially anything beyond a quarter century and differently shaped sexual organs to divide them. Father and daughter. Two peas in a pod, Lord help us! And the boys seemed down in the dumps, both of them. Especially little Kristoffer of course, but then he had had to grow up in the perpetual shadow of his big brother, the golden boy. Yes, Henrik was the third generation in a directly descending line. Karl-Erik, Karl-Ebba, Karl-Henrik. Imagine if it had been Henrik’s birthday tomorrow as well. But when it came down to it, he was actually an unplanned human being, and she hoped that this simple fact might be the detail that proved his salvation.

  And what Kristina saw – or had once seen – in Jakob Willnius was beyond her. Vigour, success, maturity. Charm and self-confidence, false as water. No, that was unfair, but there certainly was something about him that put her in mind of water. Transparency and adaptability, perhaps? Who bloody cares, thought Rosemarie. Why am I lying here analysing them, one after another? I don’t give a damn about any of them.

  But both Robert and Kristina are more me than Karl-Erik, anyway – her thoughts continued despite her, as if she no longer had the least control over them – that becomes more obvious with every year that passes. And maybe there had been a sort of warmth in Kristina’s hug? An intimation, a silent message of collusion and reconciliation, after all. It was still too fragile for words and actions – 01.17 – but in time it could grow into something durable and useful. If she could only keep going, Kristina, and avoid falling apart along the way.

  Like Robert. She dug her hands into the soft flesh above her kneecaps, then laced her fingers together and prayed to the god she occasionally believed in, but generally didn’t, not to let Robert turn into an alcoholic. He had been blind drunk on that television programme, and he had drunk too much tonight as well. Dear God, she mouthed silently, protect my children – at least my youngest two, the eldest will be all right whatever happens – protect them from all the evil that awaits them on their path through life and protect me from myself. Let me at least sleep for a while now, and then hold it together for another day and a half. If I end up in hospital on Wednesday afternoon, it really doesn’t matter – body or soul, it makes no difference, it would be rather lovely, actually. 01.18, I’ll have to get up and take a sleeping pill after all, damn it, I should have realized, before my brain boils over. Before the sinkhole. Before . . . I loathe these nights, truly I do, they’ve been almost worse than the days recently.

  ‘I’m just going out for a bit,’ said Robert. ‘I need a walk and a couple of fags. Why the hell does it have to be so hard to handle this?’

  ‘Handle what?’ asked Kristina, refilling her own glass and Henrik’s from the second bottle Robert had fetched from the kitchen. She spilled a few drops on the table. Christ, I’m drunk, she thought. I’ll have to make this the last glass.

  But actually, it felt rather good. When she thought about it, she hadn’t been properly tipsy once since she found out she was expecting Kelvin. Two years, no, more, two and a half, no wonder there was that pleasant sense of novelty.

  And so strange that it should happen this very evening.

  ‘Coming home,’ said Robert. ‘It’s the coming-home phenomenon I’m talking about. This whole goddamned slough of family despond . . . obviously I don’t include you, Henrik. You know what I mean, Kristina?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ said Kristina. ‘Don’t you remember “My Family”?’

  Robert gave a laugh. It was a classic. The year was 1983. Ebba was eighteen and in her final year at upper secondary. Robert was thirteen. Kristina was nine and in Year 3, and her homework was to write an essay entitled ‘My Family’.

  My family is like a prison. Dad is the prison governor. Mum is the cook. My sister Ebba, who has got really fat and doesn’t fit into her jeans any more, is the prison guard, and my brother Robert and me are the prisoners. We are not gilty of the crimes they say we did but we have been locked away for life.

  Every day we get leave of absunse to go to another prison nearby, it’s called Kymlingevik School and there are loads of other prisoners and guards. It’s a bit more fun, not so strict.

  Dad the prison governor is a mean devil and he always wears a tie except on Sundays when he’s unbutturned. Mum the cook is scared of him and always does what he says. So do the rest of us otherwise he hits us with a big club with nails in.

  My sister the prison guard sucks up to him and is a mean devil as well. Sometimes she can be kind to us prisoners but that’s always only because it’s somebody’s birthday.

  As soon as Robert and me get big we’re running away and reporting our family to child welfare. And the King and Queen Silvia who look after all badly treated children. The King will ride out on his white donkey, shoot Mum, Dad and Ebba dead and set Robert and me free. Then we will live happily ever after until the end of time.

  True, true, true.

  The essay created quite a commotion. It was the mid-eighties; school psychologists and school counsellors were busily going on courses to be told the Tale of Unreported Cases. At least two cases of incest in every class, was the candid assessment. At least three other serious causes for concern; it was just a matter of ferreting them out. The entire Hermansson family was summoned to a meeting, which took place in the counsellor’s pastel-coloured room and was opened by Kristina’s form teacher – a solidly built lass of twenty-five from down south near Landskrona, who later left teaching to become Sweden’s first female frogman – reading out Kristina’s composition.

  Her mother, Rosemarie, fainted. Her father, Karl-Erik the Pedagogical Figure of Respect, went cross-eyed and started to stutter, but it was Ebba who saved the whole situation by bursting out laughing, hugging her little sister and saying that was the daftest thing she’d heard in her whole life.

  Kristina admitted that at the time of writing she had been in a sulk because they wouldn’t let her watch a TV programme about mass murderers and rapists in New York, and that this had made her lay it on a bit thick.

  Robert was given no opportunity to say anything, but by the time Rosemarie regained consciousness, all wa
s basically sweetness and light. The counsellor was happy, the director of studies was happy, and the frogwoman-to-be was as happy as she had the capacity to be, having a certain deficiency in that particular area. Karl-Erik’s stutter also wore off, but his eyes stayed crossed for several days. There was speculation that he might in fact have suffered a slight cerebral haemorrhage.

  ‘You really captured something there,’ said Robert. ‘I’m just popping out for a while, as I say. See you tomorrow, don’t sit up too late.’

  ‘I’ll be off to bed soon,’ said Kristina.

  ‘Me too,’ said Henrik.

  It was five past one when he got down to the main square. Good, he thought. In this dump there isn’t a soul about at this time of night. Nobody I need to hide my face from, if a man walk in the night he stumbleth . . . and so on.

  Even so, a familiar feeling came creeping over him when he stopped in front of the dark entrance to the Royal cinema and looked about him. A wet blanket and suffocation. This corner of eternity had been the hub of his life for the first twenty years, no wonder he had been damaged by it. No wonder things had got screwed up.

  He recognized the whiff of self-pity. Of course. Blaming the inward dreariness of your adult life on the outward ditto of your childhood was what mental wrecks had always indulged in, it was nothing new. Everybody had to be born somewhere. Raising yourself up was what everybody had to learn. He worked out that he hadn’t been home for a year and a half, wondering simultaneously why he called it ‘home’. A black hole that never seemed to lose its power of attraction, but perhaps that was how it was for everybody? You just had to beware of being sucked in. Had to keep your distance. He lit a cigarette and set off along Badhusgatan. What was it that had happened to him in that lay-by? What? You surely couldn’t die of pure anxiety? Only of actions carried out under the influence of that anxiety. Or was it quite simply a physical collapse? Was that how such a thing felt? He had physically fainted. Could you feel so goddamned lousy that you just passed out? Not such a stupid defence mechanism if so. To sleep, sleep, as he had said, and forget both the world and his own putrid uselessness.

  He hadn’t looked his mother in the eye all evening. Nor many of the others, either, possibly only Kristina. She had found the right words when they were talking outside, no doubt about it: ‘You’re a fucking bastard, Robert, and I love you.’ All the others had tried to position themselves on a convenient buoy somewhere between the bastard and the love, but only Kristina had the guts to embrace both extremes. And not give a shit about the space in between. It struck him that Paula had been that sort of woman. A woman who was intimate with both the grime and the grace. The dirty golden gleam of existence, the Madonna and the whore . . . the words were running riot in his head now, it was the whisky and wine of course; he got up as far as Norra Kungsvägen, stopped for a while and contemplated the attractive old water tower. Reddish-brown brick, perfectly round; just think if they could pull down every ugly water tower in this country and rebuild them all like this one. Dotted with small, friendly windows and crowned with a copper roof with a patina of verdigris; surely it ought not to have been so bloody remarkable? That would be a world to live in, thought Robert; in a world with round water towers of reddish-brown brick, I would be able to feel at home.

  But a new Paula, then. That was what he needed, that would be his salvation. It probably wouldn’t be impossible to find a new woman if he went and planted himself in the Canaries for three months. It was swarming with unattached women. He could fix up that brilliant old novel of his while finding his definitive Madonna-whore, yes, it was certainly high time. For both of those things. He lit another cigarette and started walking towards the church. Tomorrow I shall look my mother in the eye, he decided. Tell her not to cry over spilt semen (I mean milk, for Christ’s sake, milk!) and that I’ve got a plan.

  He had scarcely spared a thought for Jeanette Andersson all evening, but as he turned into Fabriksgatan he suddenly realized this was where she lived. Number 26, wasn’t it?

  Why not? thought Robert Hermanssson.

  Admittedly it was twenty past one, but she wouldn’t necessarily have to be up early for work the next day. He took out his wallet and found the scrap of paper with her phone number on it.

  9

  He’s such a good-looking boy, thought Kristina. Hope he can stand up to his mother, that’s all. But where does that sorrow come from?

  ‘Are you happy, Henrik?’ she asked.

  It was the sort of question she could ask on the strength of who she was. His freedom auntie. He had been the one to come up with the phrase; quite a few years ago now, when they had spent a few summer weeks together in Skagen. Ebba and Leif had rented a huge house for an entire month, but Ebba had had conferences and surgical commitments that took up at least half that time and Kristina had been roped in as a kind of supplementary mother for the boys. Henrik had been twelve and Kristoffer seven. Kristina, do you know what you are, he had said one day when they were on the beach, building sandcastles and drinking Coca-Cola. You’re my super yummy freedom auntie!

  And he had hugged her with his bony, boyish body until she could hardly breathe, and then all three of them had wrestled so wildly that the sand went spraying up and the castle was reduced to ruins. With their combined strength, Henrik and Kristoffer managed to get their freedom auntie on her back, kiss her navel and gradually pack her into a thousand tons of sand, leaving only her head sticking out.

  That must have been a good summer, she surprised herself by thinking. Or was it just memory’s usual retouching that had come into play?

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Well no, I don’t think I’m particularly happy.’

  ‘I’ve noticed. You know I’m listening, if there’s anything you want to talk about.’

  He sat there twirling his wineglass. Presumably he was a little tipsy, too, but that surely wasn’t a state with which he was entirely unfamiliar? After a whole term in Uppsala. He’s nineteen, she thought. Twelve years younger than her and not an especially desirable age, when she looked in her own rearview mirror. But what was wrong? Was he short of friends? Were his studies going badly? Drugs? Or had he simply fallen out with that girl of his? Ebba had said he had a girlfriend who was reading medicine.

  ‘Have you failed your exams?’ she ventured, trying to help him get started.

  He shook his head. ‘Haven’t had any. We have the one big exam in January.’

  ‘So you’ve got a lot to do over the holidays?’

  ‘Feels more like a cramming session than a holiday.’

  ‘I see. But you think it’s going all right? You’ve kept up in the autumn term, and so on?’

  He nodded. It struck her that he might think she was stupid. That it was stupid of her to sit there and ask Super-Henrik how his studies were going.

  ‘And you’ve chosen the right course?’

  ‘I think so.’

  OK, so that wasn’t the problem. Have a bit more wine, nephew dear, she thought, so you feel bold enough to tell me what’s troubling you. She raised her own glass playfully. Gave him a wink.

  He took a gulp. Then shot her a look with a new kind of energy in it. He was weighing her up and seemed for a few seconds to be teetering on the brink of a decision. It was suddenly hard to think of him as only nineteen.

  ‘There is one thing I don’t think I can talk about,’ he said finally. ‘You’ll have to excuse me, that’s just the way it is.’

  ‘Not even with me?’ she asked. ‘Not even in the middle of the night?’

  He did not reply.

  ‘Well, if it’s something serious, I hope you’ve got someone else you can trust. Just don’t go bottling it up inside.’

  Bloody cod psychology, she thought. I sound like a school counsellor. She watched him. He had lowered his eyes. Folded his hands, his long, powerful, pianist’s fingers, in front of him, and was sitting in silence again. His thick, dark fringe flopped forward, concealing his face. The intensity of his thought
s was almost palpable now. The decision was bubbling away in there, somewhere between his heart and his larynx, the words were all ready, it would be only a moment’s work to voice them. She wondered if she truly could perceive this so clearly, or was just imagining it because she wanted it so much. But whatever the case, this was the crucial juncture; if he didn’t tell her what was weighing on him now, he was not going to do it later, either. Tomorrow or next week or at any other time. I want to know, she thought. I really like this boy and I want him to open his heart to me. I will be able to help you, Henrik, don’t you see that? I’m not your mum, I’m your freedom auntie. She contemplated putting her hand on his arm, but decided against it. The whole thing was balanced on a knife edge and too much pressure could tip his decision the wrong way.

  She seized the bottle, still half full, and topped up their glasses again. Thirty seconds passed, maybe a minute; she had just decided how silly this all was, the red wine making her so daft and supersensitive and thin-skinned, when he straightened his back, took a gulp from his glass and looked at her with that special energy.

  ‘I’m homosexual, Kristina,’ he said. ‘That’s the problem.’

  Already poised with his mobile phone in his hand, Robert was suddenly plagued with doubt.

  Ringing up a woman who was a perfect stranger at half past one in the morning, would that be crazy? What if she had one leg and weighed a hundred and forty kilos? What if she was a toothless heroin addict?

  Jeanette Andersson?

  But on the other hand, what if she was to be his salvation? What if she was lying there waiting for him? His new Paula. She was clearly aware of the Hermanssons’ 105th birthday, so she doubtless knew he was in town right now. That he had come back.

  But even so. If only it were a Friday or Saturday night.