“Are you two just hanging out again? Emma, take the cash register!”
Björne has cut his hair. The dark wisps of hair on his neck are gone. He’s combed a long flap down over one eye. His bowlegged appearance, combined with his new hairstyle and vest, makes me think of Lucky Luke. An arrogant, aging Lucky Luke.
I turn around and go to the checkout without answering him. Thinking about my mother. About my mother and my aunts and everything else that no longer exists. About how terrible it is that those brittle, beautiful memories have been dispelled like smoke in fog and replaced by Björne and stacks of jeans and thongs.
—
I begin to recall a particular Saturday, and the sound of laughter gurgling and rolling through Aunt Agneta’s small apartment on Värtavägen. The smell of freshly brewed coffee hung in the air along with smoke from my mother’s cigarettes. Aunt Christina, who’d just quit smoking, sighed and pointed out that Mom wasn’t being very supportive. I wondered if she was angry, but then she laughed her husky laugh, and I decided it was some kind of joke.
My aunts always had lunch together on the first Saturday of the month. It was a loud, calorie-rich affair to which only the sisters and I were invited.
Voices were lowered to a murmur, occasionally interrupted by a giggle. I didn’t need to listen to know what they were talking about: Lena’s new boyfriend, Christina’s foolish husband, and Mom’s bad back.
My mother was the youngest of the sisters. She was the wild, bad-mannered, but beloved baby of the family who horrified Grandma and Grandpa by getting pregnant with me when she was just eighteen. More laughter filled the rooms, a wave of primitive joy and delight. Agneta snorted; it sounded like she was about to start coughing, but then I heard some dishes rattling.
I sat motionless on the wooden floor of the bedroom with my legs crossed. The glass jar with the caterpillar inside rested in my lap. The leaves had withered long ago and fallen to the bottom of the jar, one by one, and the naked branches now resembled a ball of barbed wire. The pale green caterpillar was no longer visible. Dad had explained what happened. Inside the small smooth cocoon hanging from one of the branches, something amazing was taking place. The caterpillar was transforming, and if I was patient and lucky, I’d be able to watch as a completely different animal hatched from the cocoon.
That worried me a little; I wanted so desperately to be there when that new, transformed animal hatched, but I didn’t know when it would happen. So I made sure I always had the jar with me. The first thing I did when I woke up and the last thing I did before I fell asleep was to carefully investigate the cocoon, to see if I could detect any changes.
I’d asked Dad why the caterpillar couldn’t just stay the way it was, forget about weaving itself into a shiny grayish-brown shell, but Dad just shook his head sadly.
“It has no choice, honey. It has to change or die. That’s how nature works.”
I thought about what he said for a long time, tried to imagine how it would feel to be faced with a choice like that—change or die. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t put myself in the caterpillar’s place.
When I looked up from the jar, I was looking straight at Aunt Agneta’s narrow bed. She hadn’t shared it with anyone for a long time, Aunt Lena had whispered to Mom in the stairwell on the way up. Adults always thought children didn’t hear them, or that if we did we didn’t understand. Neither of which was true, of course. I had to work hard to keep my expression uninterested and childishly uncomprehending every time I was able to hear my aunts’ secrets.
A small painting of football players hung above the bed. I didn’t understand what was so special about it, what made the aunts talk about it with eager, quiet voices when they stood in a semicircle smoking and admiring it. I didn’t say so for fear of making them sad, but the painting was actually quite ugly. The figures lacked any sharp contours, seemed to flow into each other; the artist hadn’t succeeded in reproducing them in a realistic way. I probably could have done a better job. But I didn’t say so, because despite everything I had better manners than that.
“Sweetie, why are you sitting on the floor?”
Aunt Agneta appeared beside me in the doorway. She squatted down next to me. Her thick legs looked even thicker close up, and her knee socks cut into her calves in an unflattering manner.
“Don’t you want to sit in the armchair instead? Or on my bed, maybe?” I shook my head without answering, and Aunt Agneta sighed quietly.
“Oh, well. You do as you like. What do you have in that jar, by the way?”
“It’s a cocoon. It’s what a caterpillar builds in order to transform itself.”
“Ahh. Where exactly is the cocoon?”
I pointed it out to her. She gently took the jar, held it up to the light, squinting until her small blue eyes disappeared under heavy eyelids.
“You can barely see it.”
“That’s the whole point. Otherwise the birds would eat it up. They like caterpillars.” She looked at me gravely and nodded.
“That makes sense. I’ve never thought about that before.”
Aunt Agneta looked older than her age up close. Her cheeks hung down on her neck and her breasts rested heavily on her knees as she squatted.
“In nature, everyone eats each other up as fast as they can.”
Agneta stroked my hair with her callused hand. “Little Emma,” she said in a voice as smooth as chocolate. She made it sound like a question, as if somehow I could answer her unspoken inquiry. She handed the jar back to me, and I put it down gently on the floor.
“How are things at home, Emma?”
Aunt Agneta suddenly sounded worried; there was some strain in her voice that I didn’t really recognize.
“What do you mean?”
She paused and looked across the room. A quiet murmur could be heard from the kitchen. The absence of laughter was a sure sign they were discussing somebody’s husband. All the sisters’ husbands were either nasty or stupid, so Agneta was actually the luckiest one to have skipped getting married.
“Do your mom and dad drink a lot of wine and beer, Emma?”
It was a question I didn’t really know how to respond to. Obviously, I understood the words, but I didn’t know what “a lot” meant. Was she asking me if my parents drank too much? There were always beer cans in the sink and in the living room in the morning, but was it a lot? Was it too much? How many beers and bottles of wine did other moms and dads drink in the evening? These were things I really didn’t know, so I answered truthfully.
“I don’t know.”
Aunt Agneta sighed again and stood up with difficulty, her knees creaking and cracking as if they were made of dry birch instead of tendons and flesh and bone and blood.
“Jesus,” she said, stifling a little belch. “Don’t you want to come out and eat some cinnamon buns with us, Emma?”
“Later. Maybe.”
Once Agneta was back in the kitchen, the murmur fell to a whisper. That usually meant something interesting was being discussed, so I took my jar and crept out into the hall to lie on the floor and listen. I could just make out fragments of what they were saying. I heard Agneta’s raspy voice: “The child’s different.”
And then I heard Mom, her voice a little louder now: “Different isn’t necessarily bad.”
None of my aunts said a word.
Just as I was about to crawl back into Agneta’s bedroom, something in the jar caught my eye. The cocoon was hanging from its branch, just like before, but something had happened. It was as if the shell had started to become translucent, like scratched glass or dirty ice. And inside the glossy shell I sensed a quivering movement.
The metamorphosis had begun.
—
The man standing at the checkout extends his hand toward me and smiles broadly. “Anders Jönsson. I’m a journalist.”
I hesitate, take his hand, and smile cautiously. “I’m Emma.”
His eyes are bright blue and his thinning hair is t
he color of dog pee in snow. He’s wearing a dirty green military parka and jeans, and looks to be in his thirties.
“Can I help you?” I ask when I realize he doesn’t seem to want to let go of my hand. He grins widely.
“I’m doing a story on the working conditions here. They say you’re forbidden to speak to journalists, is that true?”
“Forbidden? Nah, I don’t really know…”
“And you’re barely allowed a bathroom break,” he prompts when he hears my hesitation.
There is something to what he says, of course. Sure, the company has been going through some tough times since Jesper took over, as the media is quick to point out. But I can’t talk about that, especially given my relationship with Jesper.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” I say, and feel the color rising in my cheeks.
“We can meet someplace else if that feels better,” he says, leaning forward. Those watery eyes are fixed on me. “You can remain anonymous; no one will know.”
“I’d rather not.”
I catch sight of a figure approaching from the side.
“She told you she didn’t want to talk to you. What about that don’t you understand?”
The reporter stretches up to his full height.
Björne is standing beside me now. I can see that he’s angry. His hands are fists, and his jaw is clenched. He sweeps his bangs into place behind one ear with a practiced gesture, sticks out his jaw, and slowly says: “This is the second time you’ve come in here to harass my staff. If you don’t leave now, I’ll call the police. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I have every right—”
“Hey, did you hear what she said? Do I have to spell it out for you? She doesn’t want to talk to you.”
Small droplets of saliva fly out of Björne’s mouth as he sputters the words. Then he turns around and starts walking away. Before he disappears, he shouts at me over his shoulder.
“Good work, Emma.”
I look at the journalist again. The broad smile is gone. His face is completely blank. He roots around for something in his jacket pocket, puts it on the counter, and pushes it toward me slowly with his index finger. It’s a business card. His light eyes meet mine again.
“Here. Call me if you change your mind.” Then he leaves.
I bend forward and cautiously pick up the card, examining it before slipping it into my pocket.
—
Jesper Orre. Those large, warm hands. That soft, slightly wrinkled face. The stubble, a mixture of brown and gray, which spreads out over a strong chin. The way he looks at me, like a starving man staring at pastries through a bakery window.
What does he see in me anyway? In my own eyes, I’m just an ordinary person with a boring job and an uneventful life. Why does he spend so much time with me? What is it that makes him able to lie for hours in my arms, running his hands up and down my body? Finding his way to parts of me I have never given much thought to before.
I remember our meeting a few weeks ago at my apartment.
“We’re so alike, Emma,” he murmured. “Sometimes it almost feels like I can read your mind. Do you know what I mean?”
I thought that, no, I actually didn’t. I feel no telepathic affinity with him, don’t know at all what he’s thinking. I love him, but don’t get what he means when he starts babbling on about our connection.
But I didn’t say that to him.
“I’m so lucky,” he whispered as he hoisted his heavy body on top of mine. He spread my legs with his knees, pressed himself closer, closer.
“I’m the luckiest man in the world.”
He penetrated me, before I was ready. Kissed me on the neck, ran a finger across my breast.
“I love you, Emma. I have never met anyone like you before.”
I still said nothing, not wanting to ruin this magical moment. Wanting to stay inside this feeling for as long as possible. It burned. He was being rough, and it wasn’t pleasurable, but it was still magical somehow.
To be loved. Desired. Like a raspberry pastry in a bakery window.
He moved more violently inside me. His grip on my arm tightened. Drops of sweat fell on my cheek, like tears. He whimpered; it sounded like he was in pain.
“Emma.”
It sounded like a question, or maybe a request. “Yes?” I said.
He stopped, his breathing heavy. Kissed me. “Emma, would you do anything for me?”
“Yes,” I said. “I would.”
—
Would I do anything for Jesper Orre? The question is theoretical. He has never asked me for anything, except when he borrowed money from me to pay his contractors. And really, I was the one who insisted he take it. I was the one who wanted him to stay with me rather than going to the bank.
I remember he kissed my eyelids.
“Honey. You know I want to stay, but I promised to pay my contractors today. Cash. And I don’t have a hundred thousand kronor on me. So unfortunately, I have to go to the bank.”
A lunch fuck.
The expression was Olga’s. She’d laughed out loud when I said I was going to eat lunch with my guy. At my house. Olga was blunt. Forthright. Provocative. She always said what she thought, and she wasn’t ashamed of it.
Jesper propped himself up on his forearms.
“I have to go, Emma.”
“You can borrow the cash from me,” I suggested.
“From you?”
He looked surprised, but seemed to ignore my suggestion, because he got up, walked over to the window, and looked out while scratching his crotch.
“I have money at home.”
He turned toward me, amused.
“You have a hundred thousand at home. Here, in the apartment?” He made a sweeping gesture with his hand around the room.
I nodded.
“I have money in the linen closet,” I said, then got up out of bed, and giggled. Then I pulled on a T-shirt, not because it mattered if Jesper saw me without clothes, but out of habit. I didn’t feel comfortable showing off my breasts in broad daylight. Not to anyone.
Not even to Jesper.
He followed me over to the closet, watched in silence as I took down a basket of tablecloths and carefully unwrapped a red Christmas tapestry to uncover bundles of banknotes. “ ’Tis the Season” was embroidered in cross-stitch.
“Are you completely fucking crazy? Do you have a hundred thousand at home, in your linen closet?”
“Yes. So?”
“Why don’t you have that money in the bank? Like a normal person.”
“Why?”
“What if you get robbed or something? Only old ladies keep their money under mattresses and in linen closets.”
I reminded him that I inherited the apartment from exactly that kind of old lady. He laughed softly and shrugged.
“Okay. You’ll get it back. Soon.”
Then he kissed my neck, embraced me from behind, slowly ran his hands over my breasts.
“I want to fuck you again, you rich slut.”
PETER
Manfred leans over the body, seemingly unaffected. His gaze slides from the neatly stitched incision across the chest and abdomen to the deep wounds on the forearms.
“So she put up quite a fight?”
The coroner nods. Fatima Ali is in her forties, originally from Pakistan, educated in the US. I have worked with her several times before. Like most coroners, she’s precise to an almost absurd degree and terrified to speak in overly strong terms. But I trust her. She has never missed anything. And there seems to be nothing her big dark eyes and dainty hands recoil from.
“She has crush injuries on the back of the head and on the face, and a total of eighteen cuts on the forearms and palms. Mostly on the right side, suggesting that she was attacked from the right.”
Fatima leans forward, spreads the edges of one of the deepest cuts on the arms, which exposes the red flesh, and points.
“Look here,” she says. “The wounds are
deepest in this direction, so the perpetrator is probably right-handed and stabbed like this.”
She raises her hand, encased in a blue rubber glove, and makes a sweeping motion toward Manfred, who instinctively steps back.
“Can you say anything about how long they fought?” I ask. Fatima shakes her head firmly.
“I can’t say for certain. But none of these injuries are the cause of death. She died from the injuries to the neck.”
I lean forward and look at the woman’s head, resting on the stainless steel counter. Brown hair clumped together with dried blood. Well-shaped eyebrows. And under them a shapeless mass of flesh and tissue.
“And the injuries to the neck?” I ask.
Fatima nods and wipes her forehead with the back of her arm. Blinking under the bright lights, as if they are irritating her eyes.
“She received numerous stabs and cuts to the throat. Just one of them would have been enough to kill her, but the perpetrator seems to have been determined to also remove the head from the body. The spinal cord has been severed between the third and fourth vertebrae. It would have required considerable force to do it. Or stubbornness.”
“How much force?” Manfred inquires, and leans over the head, too.
“Difficult to say.”
“Would a woman or a weaker person be able to do this?”
Fatima raises her eyebrows and crosses her arms across her plastic apron. “Who says women are weak?”
Manfred fidgets a little.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know what you meant,” Fatima says, and sighs expressively. “Yes, a woman would be able to do this. Or an elderly person. Or a young, strong man. That’s your job to figure out.”
“Anything else?” I ask.
Fatima nods and looks down at the pale body.
“I would say she’s between twenty-five and thirty years old. She is 172 centimeters tall and weighs 60 kilograms. A normal body composition, in other words. Healthy, fit.”
The smell in the room is starting to make me nauseous. I’d like to think that I’m hardened to it after all the years, but there’s something about that smell that you never get used to. It’s not exactly bad, more like a mix of week-old flowers and raw meat, but I feel the urge to get out of there. A sudden longing for the cold, fresh air outside.
The Ice Beneath Her Page 6
