Some Kind of Peace: A Novel

by Camilla Grebe

  “Okay, give me his information. I’ll make sure Sonja checks him out.”

  I give Markus a slip of paper with Peter’s full name, address, and personal identity number on it. We sit in silence and look at each other. It is hard to recreate the mood we were in before we started this serious conversation. Markus hesitantly strokes my cheek. Then he waves a waitress over and orders two more beers.

  “Have you thought about Christmas?” he asks, abruptly changing subject.

  “Christmas?”

  “Christmas. Five days from now. What are you going to do?”

  I imagine sitting with my parents, sisters, brothers-in-law, and nieces and nephews in Mom and Dad’s brick house in Huddinge. It’s impossible. I don’t want to go. I can’t.

  “I just want to stay home.” The answer came out quickly, before I had time to remember that I don’t have a home right now.

  “You can’t stay at home, Siri.”

  Markus sounds as if he’s losing patience with me, as he drums the snuffbox lightly against the table.

  “I can stay in the apartment.”

  The thought of Christmas Eve alone in the little studio apartment on Kungsholmen does not feel all that terrible. I don’t really care about Christmas anyway. I can watch TV shows and drink red wine.

  “I have to work, so I can’t be with you.”

  Markus looks worried, which annoys me. I don’t need a nanny. I have lived alone for over a year, spent a Christmas without Stefan, and don’t need to be taken care of the way Markus thinks I do.

  I shake my head. “It’s okay. I’ll manage.”

  “Have you talked to your mom and dad?” He looks doubtful.

  “Yes, of course I’ve talked to them, but we aren’t going to celebrate Christmas together. We send Christmas presents to each other. That’s enough.”

  His concern is touching, but it also provokes me. Markus picks up on my feeling. Perhaps it’s his keen perception that makes me feel so strongly about him.

  “Sorry, I don’t mean to pry, I’m just wondering: Have you even told them what has happened?”

  “It’s complicated…”

  “Maybe I’m dense, but how is it complicated? A crazy murderer is after you and you don’t even tell your family because of some sort of misdirected consideration? If I were you—”

  “Yes, but you aren’t! Stop treating me like a child.”

  I don’t mean to shout, but without realizing it, I have stood up and raised my voice loud enough to stop the conversations at the tables around us. “Bitch,” I hear one of the tipsy regulars mumble from a table near the bar.

  Without saying a word, I grab my coat and bag and rush toward the exit. “Merry Christmas,” another drunk says, just as I open the door and disappear into the darkness.

  He lived on Narvavägen, right next to Oscar’s pastry shop. Breaking in was ridiculously easy. All I needed to do was wait in the street until an old lady with an overweight, limping poodle came out through the main door. I ran and held the door open for her. She smiled gratefully and with small, uncertain steps disappeared down Strandvägen.

  The next challenge was his front door. I had brought tools and quickly got to work. It took less than three minutes to get the flimsy door open. And I didn’t even have to try too hard.

  Inside, the apartment was in semidarkness, but I still recognized the silhouettes of designer furniture: Jacobsen, Aalto, Lissoni. The guy had taste. There were also expensive electronics everywhere. Otherwise, the place was almost clinically free of personality. If I hadn’t known that someone lived here, I would have thought the apartment was uninhabited.

  I found his home office, which had a desk with three black-and-white lithographs above it, a chair, and a bookshelf. Carefully, I pulled out the chair and climbed on it so that I could inspect the bookshelf. This was the perfect place. Easily accessible for someone looking for something but a spot not immediately visible when you entered the room. I decided to leave the book there.

  Then I sat down at the computer, took out the list of sites, and got to work. It was easier than I had expected. Much easier.

  Aina calls it cleaning up.

  She gathers all the handwritten patient records, a few invoices, and a letter from the tax authorities into a heap on her desk. In the process, an old packet of gum gets swept up as well.

  “There, I’m just going to put this in the safe,” she says, walking out to the reception desk, the stack of papers under her arm.

  I sigh. I don’t have the energy to raise the issue of her carelessness. I decide to let it rest. Aina comes back and sinks into her office chair, leans back, and looks up at the ceiling.

  “I’m so damn tired today. You know. Three depressed patients in a row. You almost start having suicidal thoughts yourself. What if they’re right? What if life really is meaningless? What if they’ve cracked the code, seen the truth, unlike the rest of us?”

  Aina grins, takes a ChapStick out of her desk drawer, and starts moisturizing her plump lips.

  I look down at my wrinkled linen skirt and hesitate. “Listen…”

  “Hmm. What?”

  Aina is still rubbing balm on her lips.

  “Sven.”

  “Sven what?”

  “What do you think about Sven?”

  The room goes silent. Aina nods slowly and looks absently out the window.

  “What do I think about Sven,” she repeats slowly, emphasizing every word.

  She looks at me with her clear blue eyes.

  “You know, I really don’t think it’s him anymore. I think Birgitta is angry at him. Because he made a pass at you. And at others. It’s her revenge, that’s all, not giving him an alibi.”

  “So you don’t think he… uh, is offended because I rejected him and so on?”

  I try to sound like I’m joking, but I can hear that my voice sounds fragile. And I know that it could break at the slightest provocation.

  “Offended? No. I think it’s more like it whets his appetite to be rejected. Sven is, well…”

  Aina trails off and seems to be thinking about something. She is still holding the ChapStick in her right hand, drumming it lightly against the desk.

  “It’s like Sven is turned on exactly because you aren’t interested. Do you understand? Once you’ve given in, he’s not interested anymore.”

  It takes me a few seconds to take in the full meaning of Aina’s words. I look at her sitting there behind her white desk.

  And I can tell that she sees that I finally understand.

  Her neck blushes red like a tidal wave. She looks down at the floor.

  “Shit, Siri. It was only one time. It just happened, you know.” Aina’s voice fades away.

  I feel a growing sense of despair. Aina and Sven. Sven and Aina. My best friend and my colleague. My best friend and Sara’s murderer?

  “Damn it, Aina.”

  I don’t mean to shout, but the words had to come out, couldn’t be stopped. Too late now.

  “Oh, don’t act like such a prude, Siri. It didn’t mean anything. And it doesn’t change anything, does it? Really?”

  Aina looks me directly in the eye. Her voice is hard. There is no guilt, no shame in her voice, and she doesn’t look away as she gets up and throws the ChapStick on her desk.

  Then, taking her time, she saunters nonchalantly out of the room.

  Date: December 20

  Time: 4:00 p.m.

  Place: Green Room, the practice

  Patient: Charlotte Mimer—final session

  It is time for Charlotte’s final session, something I always try to do with my patients, regardless of how the therapy has gone. It’s important, both for me and for them.

  “Maintenance?” she asks, looking up at me.

  “We psychologists call it that. It refers to the methods used to maintain the healthy behavior that has been learned during therapy and prevent someone from regressing into unhealthy behavior or trains of thought. In your case, it’s importan
t for you to continue keeping your food diary and recording all the emotions that surface in connection with eating. Pay particular attention to any tendencies toward emotional eating: consolation, anxiety relief through avoiding food or vomiting, and so on. Well, you know all that.”

  Charlotte nods slowly and tilts her head to one side. She always does this when she is thinking about something. At the corner of her mouth, I see a hint of a smile. I don’t know if she thinks I sound funny or if she’s simply happy about her progress and the fact that her therapy will now be over.

  “So I’m… healthy now?”

  “Healthy or sick… it’s hard to label it. We can at least agree that your behavior and your emotions about food and eating were not healthy when we first met. Now you’re feeling well, food and eating play normal roles in your life, occupy an appropriate portion of your awareness, of your time. And even if you had an experience of total loss of control in connection with quitting your job, you managed that, too. Didn’t you? You are at least as healthy as anyone else, if you see what I mean. And, perhaps most important of all, you now have the tools to keep you from falling back into compulsive behavior and thought patterns; it’s just a matter of using them.”

  I wait for an answer, but there is none. Charlotte’s gaze has drifted away. It has wandered out the window and on toward the pale-gray December twilight that slowly envelops Medborgarplatsen. I can see a streak of gray above the temples and in the parting of her well-brushed hair. She has no makeup on today and, despite the gray hair, she looks young. The pearls around her neck signal class and something else, perhaps a conservative attitude, or maybe this is simply how one must look in her industry, an accessory as obvious as a man’s tie. I don’t know the codes in her world; I cannot decipher the signals.

  “If you look back, Charlotte, do you think the treatment has worked as you had hoped it would?”

  Her gaze is still fixed on some invisible point beyond Björn’s Park, but I can see that she is starting to come back. Slowly, she gathers herself and brushes her hand over her black wool skirt with a slow, precise motion.

  “It was easier than I thought. The eating part itself was easier than I thought,” she corrects herself, suddenly looking right at me. I understand what she is referring to.

  “And if the eating part was easier, what was harder?”

  “That’s hard to explain.”

  Charlotte raises her hands as if to indicate an invisible object in the air in front of her, as if her hands can help her define what she cannot verbalize.

  “It’s like this,” she begins tentatively. “If we’re going to be honest, and in here we should be…”

  She laughs and makes a sweeping gesture through the room, from the window to the box of Kleenex on the table.

  “I’m really a pretty square person.”

  I shake my head and open my mouth to protest, but she raises her hand to silence me.

  “Yes, of course, I’m a square. Capable. Obedient. For just those reasons, I think this type of therapy has worked so well for me. A program to follow, exercises to be done. It suits my disposition, you know. It was… easy. The hard thing was… losing control. For the first time in my life, I didn’t know who I was. The hard thing was that when you are as sick as I was, it’s like the illness becomes a part of you. You could perhaps say that you become the illness. It becomes the mask through which you see the world.”

  “Your persona?”

  “My what?” Charlotte looks at me, perplexed.

  “Nothing. Do continue.”

  “Well, I mean that even if it, the illness I mean, is hidden from others, you yourself still know. And when it goes away it’s like there’s nothing left. There’s a… hole, you don’t know who you are. But you have to fill that hole, that vacuum has to be filled with something else. You have to create a new Self. It’s been hard. And I think that’s what made me… That’s when I started behaving incongruously. Does that sound strange?”

  “Not at all. I would say that you are describing an extremely normal reaction in these kinds of cases—even if it takes many different expressions. How do you feel now?”

  “Do you mean, have I filled the hole?”

  “Have you?”

  “No. But I’ve started to accept it. Maybe it’s not really a hole, maybe it’s just an imagined vacuum. Like the hollowness that arises when you remove a tumor or a sick part of your body. A phantom hole… And I no longer believe I’m going crazy. On the contrary, sometimes it feels like I’ve never been as sane as I am now.”

  Charlotte smiles and for a moment looks completely calm.

  “But I’m going to be honest…”

  “…and in here you should be…”

  Charlotte smiles and I can tell that she is grateful that I am being playful.

  “It was probably not just what happened to your patient that made me break off the treatment. I felt that I was losing control and it was uncomfortable for me to continue. It was easy for me to change my behavior. To change my eating habits. But changing the idea of who you are… that’s really hard. I’ve been thinking quite a bit over the fall…”

  “And?”

  “And it feels like I can only take one change at a time. Not force anything. Sometimes I actually miss it.”

  “The eating disorder?”

  “Of course I don’t miss being sick, but I can feel a sort of… emptiness, a sense of being lost. I feel that hollowness and it gnaws at me a little. Then there is another issue too: I no longer have any excuse not to take hold of my life. New job, you know. Love… or lack of love. I get completely exhausted when I think about everything I still have to do.”

  I think for a moment.

  “Work and love. Love and work: The goal of therapy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Freud said that, he called work and love the goal of therapy.”

  “I’m not big on Freud.”

  I smile at Charlotte.

  “Just take one step at a time. And listen…”

  “Hmm.”

  “You can call me whenever you want.”

  We both sit in silence for a while, looking out the window. It has gotten so dark that I can see my own tired reflection in the windowpane. I get up and move over to the window. Slowly, I rest my forehead against the cold, smooth glass so that my breath forms two damp patches under my nose. On the square below, business is in progress as usual. The market sellers are offering straw goats and pigs, door wreaths of spruce branches decorated with red apples and other ornaments. Christmas is approaching inexorably.

  “Are you okay?”

  Charlotte sounds sincerely worried. I stretch and turn toward her.

  “Absolutely, I was just thinking… it’s almost Christmas.”

  “Uh, and?”

  Charlotte looks confused; a wrinkle has formed between her eyebrows. I try to smooth over my odd behavior.

  “What will you be doing for Christmas?”

  “Well, I’ll see my dad and work a bit. Write dutifully in the food diary. And then I’m actually going on a date.”

  “On a date, how nice.”

  “Hmm. Don’t know if I’ve told you this, but I met a guy at that watercolor class I took at the Folk University. You know, on Götgatsbacken. We’ve gone out a few times, I assume it’s too soon to say anything yet… but it feels good.”

  Suddenly, I am struck by an inexplicable concern. My stomach knots up and I move my gaze from the crowd on Medborgarplatsen to Charlotte’s calm, well-groomed figure. She looks perplexed and I realize she can sense my concern.

  We say good-bye. It is always sad when patients finish. Sometimes it’s as if I forget why they are really here, that they are paying for my time, for my services. That they actually don’t just want to see me.

  “Take care of yourself,” says Charlotte, giving me a light hug; it is as if she embraces me without touching me. An ethereal being through and through.

  “And listen”—she tilts her head
to one side—“good luck with that… person who’s following you.”

  She looks at me for a long time.

  “Uh, they’ll probably arrest him soon,” I say, because I don’t want her to worry.

  A smile flashes on Charlotte’s face but disappears as quickly as it came and is replaced by a curl at the corner of her mouth that makes her look a little… condescending. As if she feels sorry for me and despises me at the same time. She opens her mouth, hesitates, and then says something that surprises me.

  “And how do you know it’s a he?”

  She says this in a light, gentle tone, making it sound as if she is commenting on a new car or rattling off the ingredients for a recipe. There is absolutely nothing charged in her tone of voice, and nevertheless my hair stands on end. She turns and quickly leaves the room.

  It is the day before Christmas Eve. For a week now, the temperature has been well below freezing and has transformed Götgatspuckeln into a gigantic glistening tongue of ice that pedestrians must move across with careful, tentative steps. A light snowfall buries the city under a dangerously beautiful, temporary white carpet that dampens all sounds. My collar catches the snowflakes, and as my body heat transforms them into droplets of water, the moisture makes its way farther toward my neck and down between my shoulder blades in small rivulets. My hands have turned into two stiff, unmoving clumps that I constantly have to massage to keep them from going numb. It is the price I pay for my own stinginess; paying hundreds of kronor for new gloves when I already have several pairs back at the house does not seem reasonable.

  In the stores, Christmas shopping is at its peak. Expensive goods change hands while I silently pass outside the display windows. At the lamp store, blinking multicolor Christmas lighting shares the space with bright elves who bow in time to some inaudible Christmas song. And everywhere, there is resolute expectation in the eyes of everyone I encounter. They do not radiate joy or excitement but rather a kind of strained decisiveness as they move purposefully between the stores, forming small lines and sometimes large streams. Streams of consumers, I think.