The Viper

by Hakan Ostlundh

  “For good. It’s over. Ended. Just like that, from one day to the next. Pretty amazing, huh, after ten years?”

  She still sat there silently, as darkness enveloped her. The second hand on the kitchen clock was preparing to spring forward another step. A faint electric impulse was on its way down a wire.

  There it jumped!

  How long could she remain silent? Dumbstruck, she must be allowed that much, right? Not for too long, though. And then of course it was not simply a question of answering, but also what she answered, and the tone of her voice. She would have needed a score to follow, and at least two weeks to prepare. But instead she sat there, like an idiot, struck by the proverbial bolt from the blue.

  The second hand took another leap forward.

  She was an idiot, not just like one. Of course this day was bound to come. She had known that all along. Nothing could have been more certain.

  Three seconds. Her time was up.

  “Arvid!”

  Perhaps she wasn’t an idiot after all. For a moment she was quite pleased with herself. His name, spoken a little lingeringly with a slight gasp. Of course the latter was caused mostly by her having completely lost control of her breathing, but it sounded good, as if joy had taken her breath away.

  “I’ve been so busy here that it hadn’t really sunk in till now … It’s going to be damn nice to come home. And the best thing about it is that from now on I’m completely my own man. I don’t ever have to work another day in my life if I don’t want to. We can live where we like, do as we please. I will never have to be away like this again, that I can promise you.”

  “That’s just incredible.”

  Joy, joy …

  She had to struggle to understand what he said when he continued. It was as if the sound in the receiver faded out, just like the light in the room had done. When Kristina finally understood what time he had to be picked up in Visby and had hung up the phone, she didn’t dare get up. If she just remained sitting there she would survive a little while longer, but if she got up she would fall straight through the floor, be swallowed up by a vast blackness, and disappear forever. Which perhaps wasn’t such a bad alternative, when she came to think of it.

  But she wanted to live.

  Who the hell was she really? She had known this day was coming after all, and yet she had chosen not to see it.

  She leaned forward with her hands clasped tightly in her lap and her eyes squeezed shut in order to block out the feelings that were flooding her breast and screaming catastrophe.

  “I’ve behaved like a fucking ostrich,” she whispered to herself.

  Suddenly realizing that she actually looked quite a lot like one, sitting there doubled over with her eyes closed, she straightened up and opened her eyes.

  She looked out over the big, spotless kitchen, self-consciously old-fashioned in style, but actually brand new and patinated at a cost of over ten thousand crowns per cupboard. She had chosen that kitchen, negotiated the price, supervised its installation, caused a fuss over a door that would not close properly, saw to it that it was put right, and the price knocked down. And the rest of it: tiles, stove, fan … She had had time to take care of all that. Though naturally always with Arvid’s consent.

  She’d had years to prepare. She could have planned everything down to the smallest detail and then just disappeared one day. What was it that had made her stay? Was it that she didn’t think it could be done or was she just stupid? Sure, he kept her on an allowance so she didn’t have much money to speak of, but she could have put some away. If she had started … say two years ago, back when those thoughts first began to take shape, back when she and Anders … She would certainly have been able to save four thousand or so every month. That would have amounted to nearly a hundred thousand in cash. How many times hadn’t she dreamed about it, even made plans to escape. No! A new, secret identity … But had she lifted a finger to actually put any of it into action?

  She started to cry, but transformed her sobbing into a cold, contemptuous laugh. She was laughing at herself. She deserved it. She could have been on her way by now, but no.

  Of course Arvid would have realized something was amiss as soon as she didn’t answer the way she was supposed to, but she’d have been long gone before he’d be able to do anything about it, perhaps in another country, with a hundred thousand in cash that would leave no trail. And with a new name, new personal identity number, new hair color … He wouldn’t have had a chance of finding her.

  What was going to happen now? She and Anders? She would have hit herself if she could. Given herself a good hard slap across the face. For Christ’s sake, she was forty-seven years old, a grown-up several times over. What was wrong with her?

  Anders! she thought, she had to call Anders.

  Anders. She almost started crying again at the thought of him. She had gotten her life back, but she had carelessly gone and lost it again. How could it have happened? How the hell could she have been so … well, what? Stupid? Useless? Ineffectual? Spineless? Blind? It had been so strong—for two years she had been so filled with not just love and passion, she was only too well acquainted with those two sentiments, but also happiness, trust, and even … hope.

  Suddenly she felt her chest seize up and she went completely cold. It was as if she had opened her eyes anew, even though her eyes were already open. She got up and wheezed loudly as she gasped for air.

  Was it really that simple, was that really how it all fit together? Had she shut herself away in love yet again? Like an animal in a cage, grateful and content, not to mention obsessed with her daily supply of fodder, unable to see and think beyond the bars that imprisoned her?

  She staggered toward the front door as fast as she could. It felt as if her windpipe had been laced shut and her heart had stopped beating. Gray spots began to dance across her field of vision. Was she about to faint? No, she thought. I’m not damn well going to faint. What kind of a fucking solution was that? Was she really that pathetic? Was that the sort of person she was? No, that wasn’t her, she wasn’t going to be like that. Not any more. She kicked the shoes that were lined up so neatly in the entrance hall, including Arvid’s brown calfskin oxfords that he hadn’t put his feet in for months, desperate to find a release for her rage. The shoes flew in all directions and the shelf on which they stood was knocked askew.

  She struggled for air. It was easier to breathe after her outburst. She staggered up to the door and managed to get it open. Fresh air streamed in toward her. Perhaps it wasn’t too late yet. If she scraped together all she had; cash, jewelry, that Kosta Boda vase that had been valued at seventy thousand just last year; she could put that in her bag, too. Could she sell the car, or would that get the police onto her? Was it in his name or hers? She realized that she didn’t know. She hadn’t even managed to find that out.

  But what difference did it make? No point in whining about it, or looking back. Better to focus on her current options. Pack a suitcase with clothes, jewelry, and that damned vase. Take the car to the mainland and sell it in Stockholm, then on to … It was shortly past two. She could be in Stockholm in seven hours if she took the boat that left at a quarter to five. When did the car dealerships open? Say, ten o’clock. By eleven tomorrow morning all that could be taken care of.

  She came out onto the front steps, took a few paces forward, filled her lungs with air, she was almost breathing normally now, stepped down onto the freshly laid footpath. And stopped.

  She froze in midstep, and stared at the viper that lay coiled up on the warm limestone pathway a little more than two meters in front of her.

  3.

  Things can change when you’re gone for a long time. Time waits for no one.

  Emrik Jansson, however, did wait. He stood on the narrow stretch of paved road with the black tires of his bicycle lined up on the gray band of gravel along the shoulder. His long, white beard was yellowed with nicotine around his mouth, as were the fore and middle fingers of his right hand
. He gripped the handlebars tightly with both hands. He had stopped biking over a year ago. These days he only used the bicycle for support. Better that than one of those four-wheeled contraptions you always saw the old biddies at the home wandering around with. You had to accept your fate, there was no getting around that, but you could do it with a little more decorum. He was eighty-seven years old, so there wasn’t really much to say on that score. He was heading downhill. Singing his last refrain. Whistling his evensong.

  A small dragonfly with an iridescent blue abdomen came buzzing along the road in fitful flight. Emrik Jansson followed the dragonfly with his gaze until it vanished out across a field. There was nothing wrong with his eyes. But his legs were unsteady and his hearing wasn’t too good.

  His hand trembling slightly, he reached laboriously into his inside jacket pocket and took out a pouch of tobacco. He unfastened the tape seal, rolled open the pouch, and inhaled the aroma of moist rolling tobacco. Inside the pouch lay three ready-rolled cigarettes he had had the foresight to prepare ahead of time. Trying to roll one while holding onto his bicycle was more than his strength and coordination could handle. He took one of the cigarettes, put it in his mouth, and returned the pouch of tobacco to his inside pocket before pulling out a plastic lighter from his trouser pocket and lighting his cigarette.

  Emrik Jansson awaited Arvid Traneus’s return with a certain trepidation. According to what he had heard it wouldn’t be today. But you couldn’t always trust the grapevine. Rumors. There had been a lot of talk over the years about Arvid Traneus and his long trips to Japan. Every so often, somebody would pop up claiming to have it on good authority that he was supposed to be on his way home, but then he didn’t show up and it all turned out to be just talk. Or else he really did show up, only to leave again just a few days later.

  This time was different. Word had it that he was coming to stay for good.

  That’s what Emrik Jansson had heard when he’d popped into his neighbor’s the day before yesterday to buy some potatoes. That was how it worked. When you couldn’t see something with your own eyes, there was always someone else who had the facts. And it spread. In simple phrases, said in passing. It wasn’t gossip exactly, but subjects came up, names were named.

  He heard a tractor approaching behind him. The driver slowed down and rolled past the old man with the bushy white beard who, despite the heat and the strong sun, was dressed in a thick black woolen suit. Beneath his suit he wore a slightly yellowed shirt that had once been white.

  Emrik squinted toward the driver’s cab of the green tractor and slowly raised his hand in greeting. He got a wave back. It was Magnus Hjälmrud from Kauparve, the eldest son of Hans-Göran. Emrik Jansson had taught him in school the last three years before retiring. But that was not why he remembered him. He remembered all of them. His mind didn’t need any extra support. Not yet anyway. He remembered every student that had passed through the little community’s school system during his roughly forty years as a teacher. He knew their names and what years they had been in his class. And if they lived close enough he knew the names of their children and parents and where they lived. He saw them drive by on the road. How they came and went. Weather permitting, he could spend hours slowly shuffling back and forth along the road. It was his self-appointed task to keep track of people and in doing so keep track of himself.

  He had also had Arvid Traneus in his class. Arvid, his cousins, and his eldest child. He had seen them almost every day since they finished school. Those of them who were still alive, that is. He saw them, followed them, saw cars arrive and drive off again. Comings and goings that did not mean much to most, those who did not have the time to reflect on it and remember.

  But Emrik Jansson did have time and he remembered. Today he was spending his time waiting for Arvid Traneus. But also for something else, it had to be said. Something else. He sighed heavily and looked up at the sky. Not a cloud, he thought to himself, not a single dark cloud on the horizon. But he could see them nonetheless.

  * * *

  HE WAS TALL and wan, standing there with his left hand shoved deep into the pocket of his washed-out black jeans. He had burrowed his chin down into the collar of his dark-blue tracksuit top, the zipper pulled all the way up. He had recently celebrated his thirtieth birthday at Norrtälje Prison. If celebrated was the right word for it. Turned lay closer to the truth. He had turned thirty. Nobody had cared, he barely did himself. He was out now, and that was the main thing.

  The wind knocked the ash from the cigarette he was holding in his right hand and sent it dancing off in an ascending spiral along the quayside and on out over the Baltic.

  He had called up an old friend, yesterday to be precise, and they had started to talk about Stefania. He had started to talk about Stefania. And it was then that his friend had mentioned that Arvid Traneus was coming home. At least that’s what he had heard anyway, that whatever it was he had been doing over there in Japan, it was over now, and that he was coming home to Levide.

  “Bullshit!”

  That was his first reaction. His second was that he didn’t want to know about it. What the hell did he have to do with Arvid Traneus anymore? But something else had already begun to stir inside him, that soaked up that information like a bone-dry sponge soaks up water. Inexorably it started to grow, plans took form as if by themselves, demanding his attention. And he listened, of course he couldn’t stop himself from listening to that voice, and the more he listened the more obvious it seemed to him that this was something that had come to him as some kind of gift. That it was as if fate, which seldom, if ever, had anything good to offer him, had tapped him on the shoulder and given him an opportunity.

  He let his gaze slowly drift from the sea to the big stacks of timber behind the sawmill’s chain-link fence. The sea breeze had stiffened over the afternoon and his shoulder-length strands of hair were tossing about in the wind.

  He took a deep drag from his cigarette. What the hell had happened? Nobody smoked anymore. When he had lighted a cigarette at the ferry terminal, people had glared at him as if he were a junkie who’d taken out his gear to shoot up. He had apologized. Of course he knew about the ban, but it wasn’t second nature to him. Once he was standing there with a cigarette in his fist it just didn’t occur to him. Perhaps he had apologized a little too loudly and profusely; he had felt that people had avoided looking at him, moved away a few yards, held on to to their children more tightly. Perhaps not. It was probably all in his mind. The feeling that he stood out, that he didn’t quite know how to behave to blend in with ordinary people.

  He tossed his cigarette over the edge of the pier. It was crazy his being here. Completely fucking crazy. Just two days after being released, he had boarded a ferry back to the place he had once promised himself he would never again set foot. “Over my dead body,” he had sworn.

  “Guess we’ll just have to see about that?” he told himself out loud.

  He was there now, and he was there for one sole reason. Arvid Traneus. He had no plan, no idea what might happen. All he knew was that he had had no choice. He had been compelled to get onto that ferryboat.

  He had really believed that he had succeeded in forgetting Stefania, that she was gone from his mind forever, but during the years in prison she had stubbornly clawed her way back into his head. The very first time she had appeared in a dream, and he had woken up shocked and dismayed. After that she had remained in his thoughts, sporadically in the beginning, and then with ever-increasing frequency, until she never gave him a moment’s peace. Not even for a single day. That’s how dead she was.

  He abruptly turned his back on the sea and started to walk away; his emotions battling inside of him. One moment an intense feeling of joy at being on his way, a searing fire like a lodestar in the night; the next moment a cold wind that caused him to shut his eyes and see himself from the outside, making him shake his head in doubt. And then the heat and the light again that with each powerful wave grew a little stronger at
the cold wind’s expense.

  4.

  The ground rocked beneath his feet. A twelve-hour flight from Narita to Heathrow and time had virtually stood still. His stomach growled and he took a big bite of the egg-white omelet he had ordered at one of the restaurants in the dimly lit transit hall. Gloomy as a November afternoon.

  An egg-white omelet, steamed broccoli florets, and a few stray chickpeas dribbled with lemon-herb oil. No food for a man, but experience had taught him to eat carefully on long-haul flights. But there were other reasons for it as well. He had been forced to start watching what he ate. He had gone up in weight somewhat. It didn’t bother him much, he didn’t mind being overweight. But the scrawny little doctor that the fine print on his insurance policy stipulated that he visit every six months, had looked up from his test results and peered at him with a furrow of concern between his eyebrows.

  He had two fixed times a week at an exorbitantly exclusive tennis club and had made radical changes to his eating habits. He hadn’t amassed a fortune just to come home to Gotland and die. No, he had no intention of ending his life prematurely with his head in a pot full of mashed potatoes, butter, and caviar.*

  He had indulged in a beer. Alcohol was another thing he usually avoided on long-haul flights, but now he had made it all the way to London on his final trip back from Japan. He had not come home to die, but nor had he come home to live as a monk. For him it was the perfect time to have a beer, even if it was only morning in London.

  He had a tendency to become greedy. They had been too greedy where Pricom was concerned, that he had to admit. To himself, if not to anyone else. But when an opportunity presented itself, it was hard to resist not picking the bone clean. Pricom’s collapse might even be disadvantageous to his employer. For a company to disappear completely from the market created uncertainty, and that was never a good thing. To just take a substantial piece of the pie instead, as much as one could handle, and leave the rest for Pricom to bravely hang on to, would no doubt have been the ideal solution. But now that’s not how thing’s turned out. No one blamed him. Everyone was satisfied, and it would take a while before any negative effects began to appear. By that time, they would have forgotten his name and he would cherish his fortune on the other side of the globe. In this world, everyone’s gaze was firmly fixed forward.