Some Kind of Peace: A Novel

by Camilla Grebe

  Suddenly everything was spinning. I wanted to get away from all this decadence, away from all the bodies, all the flesh and desire. All the emotions that I had to exert so much energy to restrain.

  The filth, the sweat, and the stench of the crowd oppressed me with renewed vigor, and suddenly the people in front of me seemed to flow together to create a single large organism. A stinking, moaning, passive amoeba of human urges and desires that encircled me as I sat helplessly, with a cigarette butt between my fingers.

  I got up and shakily left the place: disgusted, nauseated, and without looking back.

  The evening has turned into a black, late-summer night, and the air around me is damp and raw. My house rests like a sleeping animal between softly rounded rocks and pine trees forced to their knees by the wind. I hear the sound of the sea as I jog along the narrow gravel path toward my door. I have to remember to install some kind of lighting outside.

  Inside the house I follow my usual routine. I turn on the lights and make a quick visit to the bathroom. In the kitchen I pour a glass of wine, serve myself a bowl of canned soup, and sit down at the table to go through the day’s mail. An electric bill, an invitation to a workshop, a statement from the bank.

  Among the mail on the table is a high-quality gray envelope. I tentatively feel the thick, textured paper and let the envelope rest in my hand to feel its weight.

  My name and address are printed in black ink. The handwriting is neat and regular. I have saved it for last because it looks the most intriguing. Perhaps it’s an invitation, or a letter—a real letter. I slowly open the envelope. A photo falls out. For a few moments I study it with interest without grasping its content. Then I understand, and a wave of uneasiness spreads through my body.

  It is a picture of me.

  I am wearing my linen outfit and sandals and seem to be in a hurry as I cross Medborgarplatsen. The picture must have been taken recently.

  On the back, someone has written, “I’m watching you.”

  Date: August 24

  Time: 2:00 p.m.

  Place: Green Room, the practice

  Patient: Peter Carlsson—first visit

  “I thought I would start by informing you about how an assessment interview is done and what happens next.”

  “Okay. I understand.”

  I observe the patient in the chair before me. A handsome man approaching forty. He is well dressed and looks kind of… expensive. His shoes are polished and his nails manicured. He doesn’t fit the description of my usual target group.

  I describe the procedures, the two to three assessment interviews, the treatment structure, and information about payment. Peter Carlsson nods, listens, and appears to be concentrating. Despite his controlled manner, I sense he is nervous. I guess that he would not be here if he did not feel he absolutely had to.

  Just as I inspect Peter Carlsson, I can tell that he is assessing me. Taking me in, my face and my body.

  “Are you really a therapist, I mean, that is… you look really… young.”

  I’ve heard that question before. My appearance is sometimes a disadvantage in my work. My patients often expect to see an older woman and are surprised when they see me. Maybe I have to work a little harder to get them to accept my relative youth, which seems to signal inexperience.

  “Yes, I really am a therapist,” I answer, trying not to look irritated. “But now I want to talk about you. Can you tell me what makes you want to get treatment? During our phone call you mentioned obsessive thoughts and anxiety. Can you describe them in more detail?”

  “Okay.” He nods again and looks out my window. “So, I guess I’ve always been a little prone to anxiety. Worried.”

  He meets my gaze to confirm that I’m listening and that I understand him.

  “When I was a child, it was important for me to do things a certain way, not to step on cracks in the sidewalk, to leave my clothes in a particular order in the evening. It was nothing strange, really, I think many kids behave like that, but the difference is that I never grew out of it. Or, I grew out of that sidewalk business, but there were always new rituals.”

  “Did you have any thoughts about what would happen if you didn’t perform these actions?”

  Peter looks at his nails, inspects his manicured hands.

  “Well, that something would happen to my parents maybe. Especially after my grandmother died.”

  “Your grandmother died?”

  “Hmm, she was… special… she was very close to us children. And she was pretty young, too, only in her sixties. She seemed so invulnerable.”

  Peter falls silent, and I see that he is losing himself in memories of his dead grandmother.

  “What happened?”

  “Cancer,” he answers shortly. “And after that the world was, like, never safe again. Do you understand? Everything I believed to be fixed and anchored proved to be… transitory. My childhood changed after that. It wasn’t that I grew up too quickly or something, but it was different. The conditions of my existence changed and these rituals became a way of trying to hold life in check. I became afraid that something would happen to my parents, that everything would be even more disrupted. I was worried they would get sick, or get in a car accident, or whatever. I started watching over them, always wanted to know where they were and what they were doing. I had meltdowns whenever they left the house. Although it settled down after a while, it’s like those rituals are still there. Routines.”

  “In what way did they change? What were they replaced with?”

  “Other things,” Peter says hesitantly.

  I try to make a quick mental summary of what Peter has told me so far. What he is describing sounds like classic compulsive actions or rituals. Fairly common in childhood, this kind of behavior is often not of clinical significance. It’s part of a child’s normal development. For Peter, however, the grief and fear in connection with his grandmother’s death seem to have made the rituals persist into adulthood.

  For many individuals, compulsive thoughts and actions are strongly associated with shame. You are ashamed of your thoughts and fears, and of your inability to control them. Many times you behave according to rituals that those around you may think strange and odd, and so you do everything you can to conceal them. Often there is a fear of losing your grip or going crazy. And I can sense this fear in Peter. I can see it in his gaze, which avoids meeting mine, and in the slight redness in his face. It is so hard for him to tell me, to break the silence and talk about what I guess he has kept hidden from others since childhood.

  “Have you sought help for these difficulties before?”

  Peter only shakes his head, thereby confirming my suspicions.

  “Tell me about the other things that worry you.”

  I want to signal that what he is admitting doesn’t surprise me, that I have heard similar stories before.

  “There are thoughts about hurting someone.”

  He looks down again and slowly brushes away some invisible specks of dust from his pant leg.

  “Hurting someone?”

  “Uh, it started when I got my driver’s license. I had thoughts that I might run someone over with my car. A child, perhaps. Some poor person who had the bad luck to cross my path.”

  He makes a grimace and looks profoundly sad.

  “And I couldn’t let go of that thought, I started thinking that I really had run over someone, without noticing it. I would drive back in my car to look. I would get out of the car and walk around searching for signs that I had injured someone: broken branches, blood on the sidewalk, a body. Sometimes I’d see a stain on the street or something—an oil stain, maybe—and I simply had to find out what it was. I’d get down on my knees and sniff the stain. Scared to death that someone would see me and think I was strange. Out of my mind. And then, when I was done searching and hadn’t found anything, I still would not believe it. I was forced to go another round, and another.”

  Again, Peter falls silent, his face torment
ed and pinched.

  “What did you do?”

  “I stopped driving,” he answers very quickly. “It was too difficult. I didn’t drive for almost ten years.”

  “And what happened after ten years? You started driving again?”

  “I had to drive Dad to the hospital. We thought he’d had a stroke. It was Christmas Eve, there were no taxis available. Chaos at nine-one-one. The ambulance was delayed. Mom was going crazy, screaming and crying. Everyone had been drinking except me. Somehow it just worked. We drove to Sankt Göran and I didn’t even think about running someone over. I just wanted to get there.”

  “And then?”

  “And then it worked. Driving, that is. The thoughts didn’t come back. Although by then I had other thoughts, of course.”

  Again, Peter falls silent. This time there is something different about his silence, and I can tell that we are starting to approach the reason he is seeking help right here and now. I also sense what I believe is hesitation; his thoughts are circling around something he doesn’t want to talk about. I glance at the clock. Our time is about to run out, and before the session is finished I want to give Peter a brief description of compulsive illness and explain that he can be helped.

  I also want to give him some self-reporting scales to fill out for the next visit. If I press him too much now, he will start to open up, but we risk being forced to end the session before he is through talking—without my being able to give him adequate information on how he can work through his issues, and I don’t want to subject him to that. I decide to guide the session toward more practical matters instead and wrap it up.

  “Okay,” I reply. “I understand. And next time we will focus more on just those thoughts. But now I would like to talk about what you’ve told me so far. Are you familiar with the term ‘obsessive-compulsive disorder’?”

  Now that the day’s patients have gone, calm starts to settle over the office and I feel exhausted. The day was packed with appointments and an administrative meeting with Aina and Sven about the division of new cases and a final reminder about the practice’s annual crayfish party. The fast pace didn’t leave any time for my own thoughts. But now the fear and concern that I have tried to keep out of my mind since this morning come back and hit me with full force.

  Who is secretly taking pictures of me? I try to think rationally and keep my anxiety in check. This is a joke, someone is playing a prank on me.

  No one wishes me harm.

  I’m just being paranoid.

  But at the same time, there is another voice inside me, one that says that perhaps I have good reason to be worried. Several times this summer I had the unpleasant feeling of being watched while I was alone at home. Many late evenings I went up to my darkening windows and observed the garden, but it was always empty, extending peacefully and silently around my little cottage.

  But what do you do when you receive an anonymous envelope with a picture of you?

  Should I call the police?

  Should I tell Aina?

  Should I install an alarm at the house?

  Lock myself in and never go out again?

  I immediately reject the first idea. The police probably think this type of incident is a hair above kittens in trees on the danger scale. Putting alarms in the house and locking myself in feels like an overreaction. Only Aina remains. The problem with Aina is that I don’t know how she will react. What I fear most is that she will worry too much, and I am sick and tired of wearing out my friends with my grief, my dwelling on things, and my anxiety. At the same time I realize that I would be angry with Aina if she withheld things from me just to spare me. So what can I do? Wait and see what happens? I decide that this is the wisest strategy. Perhaps it is only a prank after all.

  I hear Marianne rummaging around at the reception desk and call to her. “Stop working, your workday is over!”

  Marianne stops rustling papers, and I hear her steps as she approaches the kitchen.

  “You look tired, Siri. Shall I make you a cup of coffee?” she asks in her usual caring way.

  She turns her broad, sturdy back to me and takes two blue ceramic mugs out of the cupboard. I decline the coffee. The fact that I have employed a secretary is hard enough to handle. That she should make coffee for me to boot feels ridiculous. I can make my own coffee.

  I watch Marianne as she stands with her back to me, arranging the instant coffee and the electric kettle. We live such different lives. Marianne is more than ten years older than me and had her children early, soon after the age of twenty. Now both sons have left home. The older has a tech company with a friend, and the younger is studying at the Royal Institute of Technology.

  Marianne has had two marriages, one with the boys’ father, which lasted a few years, and one with a man who is referred to only as “Patrik the Pig.”

  Patrik the Pig and Marianne were married for ten years before the most classic thing happened: He left her for his secretary. When Marianne first started working with us, she came across almost as a caricature of a man-hating, rejected woman. Yet behind her bitterness lay enormous sorrow. Presumably, the destruction of her second marriage was much too painful to face, but nevertheless, she ventured into a new relationship. Last spring, Marianne met a new man. She doesn’t say much about him, which is not unusual considering her previous experiences. But now there is a certain Christer whom she mentions at lunch and in the break room.

  Aina’s theory is that Christer and Marianne live in some sort of asexual symbiosis, a partnership that is more about golf, theater, and weekend trips than passion. One morning in the break room, Marianne declared out of the blue that she had “gotten over that thing with sex,” which felt “liberating.” Aina rolled her eyes and smothered a giggle, whereupon Marianne sniffed, offended, “Well, maybe you ought to consider it too…”

  My relationship with Marianne is rather unclear. I don’t really know what I think about her. She is competent; keeps the patients’ records, sends notices, and takes care of other practical tasks. Work at the practice has gotten easier since she started. At the same time, I can’t stand her meddling and cloying mothering. I often think she treats Aina and me like two little girls who can’t blow our own noses. She has a desire to dominate and take over, and sometimes, though she means well, she tries to advise me regarding various patients, which drives me crazy. If in Marianne’s eyes Aina and I are little girls, then Sven on the other hand is God. As the older male, he is the king of the practice and must also be treated as such. His records are typed up the fastest and his letters are the first ones in the mailbox.

  “Siri, you really ought to go home. You’re running yourself ragged.”

  Marianne looks sincerely worried and I am immediately ashamed of my thoughts. Her consideration is genuine and I am sitting here thinking unfair, ugly, mean things about her.

  “I’m just going to finish up a few preliminary notes,” I answer, trying to look happier than I am.

  “You know, Siri, you are important to the practice and to your patients, but you’re not doing us any favors by wearing yourself out. Go home! Or go see a movie, or have a glass of wine with a girlfriend. Do anything except sit here. It’s a beautiful summer evening and you’re sitting here and… polishing your notes. Go home!”

  She looks so stern that I start to giggle. Marianne’s concern suddenly feels welcome, and a feeling of warmth spreads inside me. I get up from the chair and push it in by the small table.

  “You’re right, I will go home now. And you’re right—I am hopeless. I’ll go home. Rent a movie and eat candy.”

  “Good girl. We’ll see you on Saturday,” she continues. “At the crayfish party. It’s going to be so nice—and I’m bringing Christer.”

  Marianne pats me almost tenderly on the arm with her chubby hand, which is covered in liver spots, and I wonder for a moment if I’ve been wrong about her.

  Maybe I’ve just never taken the time to find out who she really is.

  A boat
horn cuts through the stillness, car doors open and close, and a moment later there are voices. I’m in the kitchen, looking out over the bay. It’s time for one of the year’s social gatherings. Like at most offices, my colleagues and I try to boost the team spirit with parties and dinners: Christmas lunch in December, summer lunch in June, and a crayfish party at the end of August. I don’t know if these activities really bring us closer, or if the others, like me, see them simply as a necessary evil. Hours to be endured to please other people.

  A couple of times I didn’t show up, blaming a cold or a sudden onset of migraine. Tonight that’s impossible, since the crayfish party traditionally takes place at my home. I do as I always do. Endure, despite the slight unease in my stomach. Tomorrow the party will be in the past and I will be on to the next thing.

  I set the table with my old, chipped china set, napkins, and colorful paper lanterns in the twilight, as the water in the bay quiets down in the warm August evening, and think that this fits the cliché of a Swedish crayfish party.

  Sven and Birgitta stand outside on the gravel drive, loaded down with bags of groceries and clinking beer bottles from the state liquor store, Systembolaget. Marianne stands behind them, with a tall, thin man with brown hair and goatee. Christer. A small bonus of work parties like this is the opportunity to meet people’s significant others. And I cannot deny that I am curious about this Christer, who has gotten Marianne to take a chance, to gradually soften and become more emotionally capable of opening up to a potential partner.

  Maybe I’m jealous, too.

  We exchange names and pleasantries while secretly taking stock of each other. I sense that Christer is observing me much in the same way that I am observing him.

  Creating an impression. Drawing conclusions.

  Marianne comes up to us and Christer immediately encloses her hand in his. I feel sympathy for this man. He radiates a peculiar mixture of confidence and nervousness, and seems to be most at ease in Marianne’s presence. There is something gentle and a little vulnerable about him, even though he discreetly wears all the accessories that indicate success: an expensive watch, a well-cut blazer, casual, good-looking shoes. I want him to feel welcome and try to convey this with a smile. He, in return, looks grateful, and the tension in the air slowly starts to ease. Marianne seems to pick up on this, and her slightly stiff posture changes to outright pride: He’s mine!