Some Kind of Peace: A Novel

by Camilla Grebe

  “That’s correct.”

  “I’ve reviewed the report, it was done by our colleagues here at the Nacka police department.”

  “Yes, that’s possible. I can’t recall exactly…”

  The investigation into Stefan’s accident is unclear and vague to me. I know that it was done, I know that it concluded that his death was an accident.

  That’s all.

  “Strange that your husband should die in a diving accident, and now one of your patients is found dead by what at first appears to be drowning, near your house.”

  Sonja’s voice is neutral. Her face gives me no clues about what she’s getting at, but I feel discomfort growing inside me, building up like a cumulus cloud on a hot summer day, and I’m suddenly afraid of throwing up in her tidy office. All over the Kinnarps furniture and the notepads.

  “Where are you headed?”

  My voice is a hoarse whisper, and even though I try to sound attentive, unaffected, I understand what Sonja is trying to provoke in me. Markus looks uncomfortable, avoids meeting my eyes, and I wonder what happened to the kind police officers who took care of me in such a gentle and considerate way just a few days ago.

  “I’m only saying that this is a strange coincidence. A strange fluke. And police officers don’t like flukes, you understand?” Sonja says, not letting me out of her sight.

  “And?”

  “And what do you have to say about that?”

  “That I don’t know what the hell you want from me. Do you think I murdered Sara? Or what?”

  As soon as I have said the words, I know I have let myself fall into Sonja’s trap. She looks at me, still with a deceptively neutral expression.

  “Well, what do you have to say about that? Did you do it?”

  Date: September 18

  Time: 4:00 p.m.

  Place: Green Room, the practice

  Patient: Charlotte Mimer

  I have moved Charlotte’s scheduled appointment. I don’t want her to risk running into a former colleague while she sits in her therapist’s waiting room. In the meantime, I’ve also realized that I can’t keep Peter Carlsson as a patient. I simply cannot listen to his fantasies any longer. In another situation, I could have maintained my professionalism. But given what’s been going on in my life, it’s impossible.

  “I’m serious!”

  Charlotte looks at me intensely and steadily. The new Charlotte. Changed. She is showing sides of her personality I have never seen before.

  “I really think I’m going crazy. Insane. I have no control anymore. Do you understand? No control.”

  She strokes the leather Mulberry purse in her lap. I’m sure it’s an original, unlike my own unused one that has been sitting in the closet ever since my parents gave it to me after their trip to Thailand last winter. Her nails are carefully manicured, her hands look small and neat. Her hair is perfect as usual, and it occurs to me that her hairstylist probably charges a higher hourly rate than I do.

  “I’m going to end up like Aunt Dolly. Crazy.”

  “Aunt Dolly?”

  “Oh, she’s just an old relative. She went completely nuts. Started shoplifting with another old lady. Oh, my God, completely nuts. What if I end up like her?”

  • • •

  Charlotte’s entire appearance signals perfection and control. Everything except the nervous stroking of her purse. That, and then the phrase she repeats over and over: no control, no control.

  “Stop!”

  I look at Charlotte. Imperatively. “You have to explain what happened. What is happening. Otherwise, I can’t say whether you really are going crazy.”

  I smile carefully to show that, of course, I do not in fact believe that there’s any way she is going crazy. She seems to understand my subtle signal, because she immediately appears to calm down. Her hands come to rest on the coffee-brown calfskin. She takes a deep breath and then slowly exhales.

  “I did a strange thing. A damn strange thing.”

  The cuss word sounds alien and incongruous coming from Charlotte’s mouth. It doesn’t befit the preppy woman sitting in front of me. I nod to show that I’m listening and wait for her to continue.

  “My boss. You know I’ve told you about my boss. That I was mad at him. That I couldn’t talk with him about feeling passed over without sounding like a whiner—the kind who nags about discrimination and quotas instead of focusing on performance.”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, I…”

  Charlotte stops herself and looks at me. She’s trying to gauge whether I’ll be able to take in the facts she’s about to reveal.

  “I hacked into his email.”

  “You hacked into his email?”

  I repeat Charlotte’s words slowly and immediately feel stupid and dense. What she is telling me seems like such foreign behavior for her that I have a hard time understanding her words.

  “I hacked into his email. He was at a conference, some forum in Denver. I don’t know what. I was working late and, well… it just happened.”

  “It just happened?”

  Again I repeat her words and feel silly. I know we all do peculiar things when we are under stress, but what Charlotte is telling me is so baffling I don’t really know how to react.

  “Yes, it just happened. It was actually quite interesting. As it turns out, he is having an affair with one of the younger accountants, a girl who reports to him. So he’s fucking a direct report. Rather clumsy. But even more stupid to keep that kind of evidence on your work account.”

  She smiles. A crooked, almost twisted smile, and for a moment I don’t want to look at her. Something in her eyes frightens me.

  “I thought about forwarding the email to his wife, but that would have been completely unhinged. I mean, I really would have to be crazy to do it. And I have no reason to harm him personally. You know that. I feel I’ve been wronged professionally, not personally. At any rate, in his in-box, I found an unread email from one of our biggest customers. An urgent one. It contained the draft of a contract and requested a quick reply. I knew he had been waiting for the draft. So… so I deleted it.”

  She laughs and shakes her head fervently, so that her brown hair twirls around her pretty face. For a moment, Charlotte looks so delighted that I get scared. A cold, clammy feeling suddenly spreads from my belly up my body. Who is this person sitting across from me? Who is this woman? But as quickly as the feeling started, it is gone, replaced by the therapist’s clinically clear-sighted mind-set. Of course Charlotte feels like she’s losing control. No, not losing it—letting it go. And it’s about time.

  Perhaps she senses what I am thinking. I notice that her features harden.

  “I did say that I was going crazy. That I have no control over myself anymore. This is pure madness. It felt good in the moment. Right when I was doing it: Delete. Gone. But then came the anxiety. I packed up my things and ran from the office. I forced myself to go in the next day. Scared to death of the consequences of my behavior. And do you know what’s ironic?”

  I can’t think of a good answer so I just shake my head.

  “The mail server crashed the next day. All unopened mail was lost. So my trespassing went… unnoticed. I can’t believe that I had such luck. And I can’t understand how any of this could have happened at all. How I could do such a thing. It’s just crazy. I have no control anymore, Siri!”

  She looks away, her jaw clenched and a resigned, slightly absent look on her face. She is no longer focusing on me but is staring out the window toward the twilight slowly settling down over Medborgarplatsen.

  “Do you know what I saw on my way here?”

  “No,” I answer truthfully. How should I know?

  “Well, there was a woman walking on Götgatan, she seemed about my age. Talking on her cell phone, laughing. But… there was blood running out of her nostril.”

  I am looking at Charlotte but don’t know how to react to this.

  “Well, I know it was just a no
sebleed, but I couldn’t help thinking—”

  “What, Charlotte? What were you thinking?”

  She rubs her palms together and looks down at the floor.

  “I thought that’s the way it is…”

  “What do you mean?”

  As she squirms in her chair like an eel, she seems reluctant to answer my question.

  “I mean… you’re walking along, you’re happy… maybe, or in any case… content, you think everything’s fine. But it’s not.”

  I lean toward her, wanting to hear the rest.

  “It’s not fine. Not really. Somewhere, you’re bleeding. Without knowing it. Maybe you have a tumor in your belly growing big as an orange while you’re walking around ignorant, grinning. Maybe right then your husband is screwing your best friend… The point is…”

  Charlotte swallows and I notice her lower lip trembling lightly.

  “The point is… the point is, that’s what life is. That you can never count on anyone or anything. That everyone is basically… selfish. That life itself is… unpredictable. And silly little me, I’ve been so damn naïve, I only just realized this now.”

  Tears are running down her cheeks. She looks at me imploringly, her voice is small and fragile when she speaks again.

  “You have to tell me the truth, Siri. Am I going crazy?”

  As I step into his office, Sven is twirling around on his beat-up office chair. With a little imagination, one might call it retro-trendy: IKEA, late seventies, the mustard-colored fabric hanging in long tatters down toward the floor, exposing the foam rubber stuffing, which swells like bloated dough through the tears in the fabric. He has taken his shoes off. I don’t know why, but I hate when men do that. On the airplane, at the office, on the bus… their stinking socks, everywhere. Sven does not seem to notice my disapproving look. He makes a gesture toward the only chair in the room that isn’t cluttered with notes, reports, and books.

  “Siri, sit down.”

  His tone is friendly, but I can tell that he’s had a long day; there may even be a hint of irritation as he removes his reading glasses and rubs his face.

  “Damn, I should have tidied up… but…”

  He pauses and observes me as I sit on the old wooden chair across from him.

  “How are you doing, really? Can you sleep?”

  All these questions: Am I sleeping? Am I drinking? How does it feel? Really?

  “Thanks, everything is fine.”

  I can tell that he doesn’t believe me, but who cares? That’s not why I’m here.

  “Listen, Sven…”

  “Hmm.”

  He looks at me as he takes out his pipe and starts filling it. We had all agreed that he would not smoke in the office, but everyone knows that he does it secretly anyway. Sometimes you can smell it all the way in the stairwell. He has apparently decided that it doesn’t matter if I see him smoking today. Maybe he feels his behavior is excused now that I am officially a drunk driver.

  “Can you… can you take Peter Carlsson on as a patient?”

  Sven shrugs and lights the pipe.

  “Had enough?”

  “Yes.”

  It’s a relief that he understands me immediately and doesn’t demand any further explanations. But of course he knows about Peter’s problems from our weekly meetings.

  “Yes, sure, I can do that. I see no immediate problems.”

  I am grateful, but I’m not sure how best to express it. It is also a little awkward to be alone with Sven for the first time since his unwelcome advances in my kitchen during the crayfish party.

  “Something else.”

  I try to focus, to carefully formulate what I’m going to say. I want to address what happened at the party, to get it out of the way, but I am not sure how to begin.

  “The crayfish party?” He waits for me to confirm.

  I nod. “The crayfish party.”

  “Yes, it was really unfortunate that Birgitta had to see that.”

  I am shocked. Perhaps I had expected an apology. Or an excuse. But not a comment on his bad luck because his wife caught him while he was groping me. He makes it sound like his assault had been something we had both enjoyed. I wonder whether this really is how he remembers the encounter. If it justifies his behavior by making me an active participant.

  “I see. So what did Birgitta have to say?” I ask sarcastically.

  “Yes, yes, wouldn’t you like to know, huh? You’re all the same.”

  “What do you mean the same? Who?”

  “Women. Are. The. Same. All women. Curious. Gossipy.”

  There is something dark in his eyes now. He blows a puff of smoke between us and reaches for his cell phone, signaling that our conversation is over.

  I stand up, surprised at how uncomfortable I suddenly feel, surprised at how he has humiliated me. Has he?

  I stand in the doorway for a moment, but he twirls a half turn, and with his back to me, enters a number on his phone.

  Her house was like an aquarium at night. It lit up the whole bay from where it lay, nestled between the rocks. I looked at the house and the house looked back at me with its shining yellow, always indifferent eyes.

  From my place on the ledge—still warm after the sunny day—I could follow every step she took, but she could not see me as she wandered from room to room with a large flashlight gripped firmly in one hand and a glass of wine in the other.

  A few steps behind her came the other woman, her shaggy blond hair pulled back in a loose bun. One of her breasts almost slipped out of the tiny tank top she was wearing, and my stomach clenched. She turned slowly to face the window, and for a second I could see her straight on. She ran her tongue luxuriously over her upper lip and smiled, as if she could read my mind.

  Now I was close, maybe two yards from the window. They were standing in the kitchen, scooping cat food into a bowl. Soon she would set the bowl out on the steps, hoping the cat would return. The next morning, she will bring the bowl back inside, with just as much food in it.

  I slowly backed away and retreated to my simple campsite beyond the large, round rock. I lay quietly in my thin sleeping bag without falling asleep until the sun painted warm yellow streaks on the bare cliffs.

  And suddenly she was with me again: Her glistening hair was present in the dew-covered leaves of the forest in the light of dawn.

  Like reflections of the sun.

  I caressed it with my gaze.

  Her skin was present in the trunks of the slender chalk-white birch trees, shamelessly bent over by the autumn storms. And her blood was mine. At one time, we were one and the same, two incarnations of the same being, of the longing for life in itself.

  Now there’s only absence.

  Everything I do, I do for Her. To bring justice where no justice exists, to give meaning to what is meaningless. This is all I can do. I know no other way. I never had a choice. This insight grants me consolation. It frees me from any guilt.

  Aina and I are lying on Lasse’s Ass, listening to the waves lapping against the big rock. The September sun is pleasantly warm, even if it takes two sweaters to sit outside and not feel cold. We are hungover and stuffed with aspirin. We had a late night. It’s as if all the horrible things that have been afflicting me are compelling me to cling to superficial things. A safe, predictable place of refuge in my own chaotic life. That’s why I spent the whole day yesterday flipping through old fashion magazines and reading endless features on hair removal, protein diets, and other meaningless articles. Aina and I ate an irresponsible amount of chips and, as usual, drank far too much wine.

  We are slowly starting to get on each other’s nerves. Even though she is my closest friend, I know that it’ll soon be time for her to go home. My little house is starting to feel cramped and claustrophobic. So we decided that Aina will go back to her place today. Maybe my solitude isn’t always self-imposed, but I appreciate it anyway. In the corner of my eye I notice Aina close her eyes and smirk.

  “What are you th
inking about?”

  “I’m thinking about… Massoud.” She laughs and continues slowly. “And… he has no clothes on!” She laughs again, louder this time.

  “You are a slut,” I answer primly.

  “Nah, I’ve just taken on the sexual initiative.”

  Aina laughs as only she can, chortles, and stretches out on the rock like a cat.

  She always has a new boyfriend. It’s pointless for me to get to know them, since they are all quickly and mercilessly replaced by a new candidate within a week or two.

  “Go for it, girl,” I say, amused.

  “What are you thinking about?” Aina wants to know, a more serious tone slipping into her voice.

  “Have you ever wished you were someone else?”

  “No, not really.” Aina shrugs. “Have you? Do you?”

  I hesitate. “Sometimes I wish I was a little more like you.”

  “Ach, cut it out. And what is it exactly that you would want to be? Dyslexic or slutty?”

  “I wish I didn’t take everything so seriously. That I was”—I search for the right words—“more easygoing, I guess.”

  Aina sits up on the rock and observes me in silence.

  “Siri, dear Siri, I know that you don’t like it when I say this, but because I’m your friend, and friends should speak the truth, I’ll tell you anyway. You really ought to go to a therapist and talk about this!”

  I sigh. My head feels too heavy to start a fight, so I answer, tired, “It’s really not that bad. These days it gets dark by the time I come home from work and I get by anyway.”

  “I’m not referring to your fear of the dark, and I’m not talking about Sara Matteus. I’m talking about Stefan’s death. You need to come to terms with it.”

  I tense up involuntarily and answer much too fast. “I’m over his death, you’re the one who always brings it up.”

  “Only because you refuse to acknowledge what happened, which makes it impossible for you to move on.”