More Bitter Than Death

by Camilla Grebe

  “Uh,” I call from the kitchen, “we’re out of wine.”

  “Do you have any liquor?”

  “Liquor? Are you serious?” I ask her.

  “I have never been more serious.”

  I shake my head at her from the doorway and return to the kitchen to look. Liquor has never been my thing, but maybe Markus brought a few bottles over? I find a blue bottle of gin under the kitchen sink.

  “I have gin. What do you want with it? I don’t have any tonic.”

  “Nothing.”

  Aina is obviously a little off right now, I think, as I pour her a half glass of the clear liquid. The alcohol fumes make my stomach tighten, and right away there’s that familiar feeling of nausea. I support myself on the edge of the sink and turn my face to the side to escape the smell.

  Aina whispers a thank you and downs half of it in one gulp.

  “Carl-Johan is married,” she blurts out, then looks at me. Suddenly I understand why she’s here, why she’s been so sullen, why she needs the gin.

  “Married, can you believe it? That’s really the last thing I would have expected. I was so focused on whether or not I could commit emotionally to just one guy. I totally assumed he wanted to be with me. They always do. I’m the one who leaves them. You know?”

  “Yeah, I know,” I say. Because over the years as man after man has paraded through Aina’s life, it’s always ended the same way. She always leaves them.

  “And now that I . . . the first time I’ve ever felt like I was ready to—”

  She can’t say the word, but I nod quietly at her. Her jaw is clenched and a deep wrinkle has appeared between her eyebrows.

  “How did you find out?” I ask her.

  “She called. His goddamn wife just up and called me.”

  “His wife? How did she get your number?”

  “Oh, Siri, it’s so simple I can hardly stand to tell you. She went through his text messages and found my messages. Evidently he hadn’t had the sense to erase them. Then she called me.”

  “Oh my God. What did she say?”

  Aina wipes a tear from her cheek. “She was totally calm, like she was calling to order a taxi, or food from a restaurant, or something. She said it wasn’t the first time, that he’d done this before, that he’s an addict . . . a sex addict. That he used her. And me. She said I shouldn’t be sad, that I’d get over it, and that I could call her if I wanted to talk. The whole thing was very . . . civilized, in a weird way. I didn’t believe her at first, so I called Carl-Johan. And he admitted it just like that. They have two kids. And a house in Mälarhöjden.”

  I contemplate Aina’s news in silence. I think about how love isn’t always a beautiful, light feeling; sometimes it’s a vicious beast: eternally on the prowl, always hungry, lurking at the edge of our existence, ready to take us down.

  No love without suffering. One person always wants more. One is always disappointed. There is always this pain, I think.

  There is never balance.

  * * *

  That night Aina sleeps in my bed and Markus sleeps on the couch.

  I can tell from her troubled breathing that she’s not sleeping. Outside, the autumn wind chases leaves around the house. Rain drums on the roof.

  I take her hand in the darkness and squeeze it. It’s damp and cold. She squeezes back.

  When I wake up Aina is gone. Her side of the bed is empty.

  It’s pitch-dark and the sweet, harsh smell of wood smoke fills my little bedroom. Outside I hear the wind, which seems to have picked up, howling hungrily at our little cluster of buildings. I can hear the sea too, the waves agitatedly crashing against the rocks outside.

  Soft voices from the living room. I roll over to face the nightstand and fumble for the alarm clock. Five thirty. What is Markus doing up so early?

  When I stand up, the nausea washes over me, my stomach contracts, and I instinctively raise my hand to my mouth. Somewhere behind my temples a headache looms, a weak but perceptible throbbing, like a fresh hangover.

  This constant nausea, which does not seem to want to go away as all the books say it will, the sensitivity to smells, the fatigue, the crushing fatigue, seeping from every cell in my body, not to mention what I had to give up. Right now the craving takes over with terrible force. Just one glass of wine, just one little glass. The sound of the cork popping out of the bottle, the glug of the liquid pouring into the glass. The ritualized tasting that distinguishes a well-raised person enjoying a glass of wine from a pathetic drunk who couldn’t resist the whisper and call of the bottle.

  As soon as I sit up, I feel how cold the room is. I put on my slippers and bathrobe, which—thankfully—still fits.

  * * *

  He is sitting in the dimly lit living room with his back to me. His laptop is sitting in front of him on the dining table, which is covered with crumbs and grease stains from yesterday’s dinner. He’s nursing a half-full cup of coffee.

  I sneak up behind him and put my hands on his shoulders. Without saying anything he raises his right hand and rests it on top of mine, gives my fingers a squeeze.

  There’s a young guy in a T-shirt and cap on his screen. He’s sitting at a big table, leaning back, almost like he’s collapsed. Someone is sitting across from him, but it’s not clear who, since the camera is aimed at the guy. And suddenly it hits me that he reminds me of someone, but I can’t think who. There’s something about his skinny body, his obstinate expression, his gravelly voice.

  “I never touched her. Why would I have?” the guy in the cap says.

  “She reported you twice. I have the report right here,” the other, anonymous voice says. Now I can tell that it’s a woman’s voice, also gravelly, androgynous, raspy like sandpaper, as if she’s smoked tens of thousands of cigarettes and spent her lifetime screaming at naughty children.

  The guy in the cap shrugs and appears unmoved, sinks even further into his chair.

  “Like I said, she’s lying.”

  “She lied, you mean?”

  He shrugs again, this time without saying anything.

  The female voice sighs, and a tapping sound can be heard as if someone were drumming on the table with a pen.

  “Do you even care that she’s dead?” the woman asks.

  The guy’s skinny body jerks. “Are you nuts? Of course I care. She was my mother, you know.”

  Markus moves his left hand over to the keyboard and pauses the playback just as the guy in the cap stands up so abruptly that his chair tips backward against the wall. Now that the picture is suddenly frozen, the moment captured on Markus’s screen, I study the familiar face again.

  Markus says, “You shouldn’t be looking at this, it’s confidential. But . . . what the hell.”

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Working. I couldn’t sleep. Sonja asked me to review a few interviews.”

  “Where’s Aina?” I wonder.

  “She left half an hour ago. Wanted me to tell you good-bye.”

  “Who is he, that guy? I recognize him.”

  “I doubt that. That’s the son of Susanne, the woman who was murdered.”

  “Oh, that’s right, she had an older son too. One of the girls in the support group mentioned that.”

  Markus nods and looks up at me for the first time. His eyes look bleary and red from fatigue.

  “Susanne had him when she was just a teenager. There were problems from day one, at daycare, at school. He’s a drug addict who lives in a group home. Susanne had reported him for drug use before. They used to argue about money and stuff.”

  “A drug addict? But how old is he? He looks really young,” I say.

  “Sixteen.”

  “Sixteen?”

  “Yup.”

  “Shit.”

  “Exactly.” Markus’s bloodshot eyes look down. He closes his computer and sighs deeply, because he’s tired, or maybe for some other reason. “You said you recognized him?”

  I slowly shake my head, not sure
how to word what I want to say. “He reminds me of someone. Do you remember that night in Medborgarplatsen, when Henrik jumped out at me? There was another guy there. Before. Oh, it doesn’t matter.”

  “No, tell me. Was it him?” Markus asks.

  I rub my temples, trying to remember. My headache is raging. I sink down onto the chair next to Markus, lean over and kiss his prickly cheek, inhale the familiar scent of his warm skin.

  “No, I don’t think it was him, but they’re really similar. That guy was also on drugs and awfully young, just like this kid. Is he a suspect?”

  Markus tousles my short hair. “I assume so. Although he actually has an alibi. He was at the group home.”

  “And they keep tabs on all those kids every single second?”

  Markus shrugs. “You’ll have to ask someone else about that. I’m just helping Sonja review a few things.”

  I look at him again, sense the dejection behind his lowered eyes, and am suddenly filled with tenderness for him. This completely perfect man sitting here next to me, the father of my child, this man whom I often forget to fully appreciate. In a world populated by sixteen-year-old drug addicts, a world filled with loneliness and sorrow, at least we have each other.

  “Come on,” I say, taking his hand.

  He looks confused. “What—?”

  “Let’s go back to bed. It’s not even six yet.”

  He gives me a shy smile. I haven’t been particularly amorous lately and I assume my invitation makes him uncertain. But he gets up anyway and follows me into the bedroom with his hands on my shoulders, as if he’s marking that I belong to him. And I discover that I actually like it, that it feels pretty good.

  Being his.

  * * *

  We pull the heavy down comforter over our heads, trying to escape from this world. His kisses taste like cheese sandwiches and coffee and I laugh as he pulls off my underwear and settles on top of me. And for a second everything is perfect. Markus caressing my breasts and kissing my throat, the baby, the embodiment of our love, resting somewhere in the dark within me. Still invisible, motionless, more imaginary than real, like a faint memory from a dream.

  And I let myself think the thought, that this is probably what it feels like . . .

  To be happy.

  SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE STOCKHOLM

  NOVEMBER

  The cramped little space is pitch-dark. If she presses her back against the wall and stretches her legs out in front of her, they hit the door. To the sides she can feel damp wood paneling in both directions. It feels like the walls of the stall in the stable Mama sometimes took her to: hard, damp, and sort of rough.

  The floor is covered with piles of magazines with faded pictures of naked women with goofy smiles and big breasts that hang all the way down to their stomachs; Tilda sees them whenever he opens the door to set the little tray of bread and juice on the floor.

  She knocked the big glass over when she tried to drink the juice, so now she’s sitting in a sticky juice puddle, thirstier and colder than ever.

  The rope is tied firmly around one of her wrists and from there runs up into the darkness, keeping her from touching the floor with that hand. When she sleeps, her tingly hand floats like a balloon in the darkness over her.

  She’s cold.

  The man left a pot in one corner of the little room. Tilda doesn’t really get what she’s supposed to use it for. Besides, she’s scared to take her underwear off in the dark, scared that someone or something will nibble on her butt. So she peed sitting on the floor with her panties still on instead. A short-lived feeling of warmth, like summer, spread around her, and then: wet, cold, itchy pee all over her legs.

  In the corners she can feel soft clumps of dust and small hard things that might be stones, dead insects, or something else, something worse. And once again she thinks about all the monsters she knows there are in the dark. The ones lurking over her, with long insect arms, teeth sharp like awls, and claws as long as her legs. The ones that are just waiting to swallow her up, as soon as she stops concentrating, forgets to think about the woman who keeps the monsters away.

  Mama.

  Tilda wonders when her mother is going to come and rescue her from the man who might be a monster. And she wonders if she’ll recognize her mother when she comes, if her face will have healed. All that pink and red stuff that ran out of her, did they stuff it back in? Papa says they did, that she will be pretty again at the funeral, but that she’ll be lying in a box then. Just like the doll Papa bought her, although Mama’s box won’t be see-through. It’ll be made of wood and is going to be buried underground. And Tilda thinks that sounds terrible, that Mama is going to have to lie there in that dark, little box all by herself and never get to come out again.

  Tilda’s tummy aches with hunger. The bread he put in there for her was hard and cold, as if it had come right out of the freezer; maybe it hadn’t even been in the microwave at all. She sucked and chewed on it until she was able to break off some small, floury pieces that tasted like cinnamon.

  She thinks about Papa too, and about Henrik, and about the teachers at the daycare.

  But still, if she closes her eyes really hard, really squeezes them shut until she sees little glowing balls, it’s her that she sees. It’s always her.

  Mama.

  Sometimes she smells her scent too, that funny mix of perfume, caramel, sweat, and cigarette smoke. But as soon as she tries to figure out where the scent is coming from, it’s gone, and all that’s left is the faint odor of mildew and pee.

  Then she hears footsteps on the stairs somewhere below her. She huddles in the corner, because even though she’s scared of the dark, she’s even more scared of him out there. Suddenly it feels safe in this dark, little room and she thinks that she never wants the door to open again, she wants to keep sitting in this puddle of pee and juice with her mama’s scent in her nostrils.

  Then the door opens and piercing, white light stabs her eyes like a thousand knives.

  She hides her head under her free arm, makes herself as small as she can, like a ball in the corner of the little room.

  “Come on, we’re going,” the voice says from above her, but she doesn’t move, just lies still, curled up, with her one arm hanging from the rope over her head.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said? You have to come now.”

  The voice sounds mad, mad and determined, like an angry teacher who just discovered that one of the kids in the daycare was being naughty. She still doesn’t dare move, squeezes her eyes shut tight and thinks about Mama, about her rough cheeks with the little hollows in them, her happy eyes, her belly that’s so soft she can hide her hands in it, in the skin, in between the folds.

  “Well, come on, you stupid brat. Didn’t you hear what I said?”

  A rough hand drags her up by her armpit, forces her into the white light. She struggles against it. Twirling like a monkey on the piece of rope, around, around, until she droops, nauseated.

  “Mommy!” she screams. “Mommmmmmmmy!”

  “Shut up.”

  The blow on her cheek burns and heat spreads across her face. Tears blend with her snot and form salty, slimy rivers that run down into her mouth.

  “I want my mommmmy.”

  Suddenly she hears that ring tone. He seems to have heard it too, because he lets go of her and takes his cell phone out of his pocket.

  “Yeah?”

  She hears him talking softly and quickly. He hunches his back over the phone as if he were cradling it, as if he were talking to a very small child. Then he turns around and shoves her back into the darkness again, and slams the door shut with a bang.

  “I’ll be back,” she hears him say from the other side.

  Slowly she sinks back down into a squat, sits down on a stack of magazines, wipes the slimy tears from her cheeks with her free hand. Smells the scent again: perfume, sweat, smoke.

  And she knows her mother’s with her, watching over her and protecting her from monsters, both
the one in this room and the one on the other side of the door.

  VÄRMDÖ

  NOVEMBER

  My breakfast is just as uninspired as the gloomy fall morning outside my window—a piece of old, damp crispbread that hangs feebly in my hand, and a cup of tea.

  Markus walks in the front door again. He carries the firewood firmly against his chest, stacks it carefully on top of the already enormous pile by the woodstove, and then brings in some more.

  “Are you stocking up for World War Three, or something?”

  Markus doesn’t laugh, and I can sense his irritation from across the room.

  “There’s a storm coming in tonight. But I suppose you don’t care about mundane things like that, do you? If it were up to you, your refrigerator would be empty and the firewood would stay out there in the shed.”

  I shrug and look over at the black windowpane. Like polished granite, I think. The darkness outside the cottage is impenetrable.

  Then I say, “Boy, are you grumpy.”

  He doesn’t respond, just keeps stacking up the firewood in silence.

  “Snowstorm. There’s a snowstorm coming. I don’t think you should take the car to work today.”

  “I’ll take the bus, as usual. I never take the car into the city, do I? And besides, what does it matter to you?”

  He’s quiet again. He looks at me, and then I see the pain. “I’m worried about you. Why can’t you understand that?”

  Something inside me softens, and a warmth slowly spreads through me. I get up, tug a little at the long T-shirt that is getting tight over my belly, walk over to Markus, and wrap my arms around him. Feel the cold from his quilted jacket, inhale the faint scent of wood smoke in his damp hair.

  “Hey,” I say. “I love you.”

  He pauses, doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move at all. The only sounds are his breathing and the crackling of the fire.

  We stand like that for a long time.