Babylon
Page 1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Afterword
About the Author
Also by Camilla Ceder
Copyright
‘It is important to distinguish between envy, jealousy and greed. Envy is the spiteful feeling that someone else owns and enjoys something desirable – the envious impulse is to take it away or destroy it [. . .] Jealousy is based on envy, but affects at least two other people; it concerns principally the love to which the subject believes he has a right, but which has been taken from him [. . .] Greed is a violent and insatiable desire to possess something, above and beyond what the subject needs and what the object can or wishes to give. On the unconscious plane, the main aim of greed is to hollow out the breast completely, to suck it dry and eat it up.’
Melanie Klein, Love, Guilt and Reparation
1
Gothenburg
‘I didn’t plan it all in advance. Somewhere in my mind I had a picture of his new Volvo covered in bird shit. But I didn’t think it through: If I tip a bucket of prawn shells over the car, it will be worth significantly less in the morning. The paintwork will be scratched. The dried-on shit will be almost impossible to remove. I didn’t think like that. I just did it. I just tipped the shells over the car.’
‘The window on the driver’s side wasn’t properly closed.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You told me the window wasn’t completely—’
‘Yes, I pushed some prawn shells through the gap too. I’ve told you that already.’
Rebecca Nykvist fiddled irritably with a feather she had pulled out of the armchair. Birger Warberg followed her movements as she extended her arm and allowed the feather to drift slowly to the floor, where it disappeared into the carpet’s pattern.
‘You were the one who brought this up again, Rebecca.’
‘Of course I knew I wasn’t doing him a favour. The whole point was to make life difficult for him. But it wasn’t planned. I’d had a couple of girlfriends round. We’d eaten prawns. I’d been talking about Magnus and how he’d let me down, I’d drunk a fair amount of wine and . . . I was bloody furious. I did it on impulse, I’ve told you so. I’ve said it over and over again, and it was a long time ago. I don’t see the point in digging it all up now.’
‘I thought it sounded like something you’d described before, in some way.’
‘Something? In some way?’
‘Now you sound annoyed.’
‘Sorry. So what are you getting at?’
‘You behave impulsively when you feel under pressure. You’re jealous. I think it’s significant that you’ve brought up the business of Magnus’s car in relation to your fears about Henrik’s fidelity. And that you are possibly . . . how can I put this . . . underplaying your own part in the story.’
‘I am not underplaying anything!’
Rebecca raised her voice. ‘How could I? I had to spend hours going over the whole thing with the police; it was like a murder inquiry. And besides, the little bastard got the whole fucking car resprayed at my expense.’
‘I still believe I can see a connection. You talk about your fear of being treated badly by Henrik, just as you felt you were treated badly by Magnus . . . ’
‘Was. Just as I was treated badly by Magnus.’
‘ . . . and at the same time you are trying to work through your fear. To deal with your insecurities. But recently you have gone from acknowledging that your jealousy is a significant problem to questioning whether what you did to Magnus and Georg was in fact wrong. Whether Magnus and Georg had done something to deserve your rage.’
‘It’s cruel of you to bring up what happened with Georg. That was ten years ago, Birger. It’s old news. I’ll say it again: how could I underplay the situation? I was barely allowed to keep my job, and I had to give up everything I found fulfilling.’
‘Old news, then?’
‘Isn’t our time up soon?’
Rebecca glanced over her shoulder. A wry smile crossed her freckled face.
‘I see you still have that clock. I thought we’d agreed that it’s not healthy in a therapeutic environment. You know I find it distracting.’
‘I might be wrong, but I think you’re afraid of your own volatility. Of your impulsiveness. I think you’re afraid that your anger will bring destruction. Figuratively speaking.’
‘Oh, figuratively speaking. Thank you very much. I am a psychologist as well, you know.’
Rebecca got to her feet.
‘Three minutes left. I don’t think we’re going to make any more progress today.’
Rebecca ran her hand through her curly red hair and headed for the door, her high heels tapping loudly as she walked.
2
She still hadn’t fitted a new lock on her mountain bike. Having lost the key and cut off the old lock, she didn’t dare leave the bike in front of her house. They were like magpies, whoever they were. Instead she pushed the bike into the passage between the wall and the tool shed; it was going to be fenced in, but at the moment it was cluttered with rubbish: broken kitchen chairs, a garden hose, old pots. The washing machine that had broken last year; nobody had got round to taking it to the tip.
Rebecca swore as she banged her shin on the rotting stepladder, which was hidden in tall grass.
Henrik was sitting at the computer in the study, concentrating hard. She could see his back through the window. A second later he got up and went into the kitchen.
Even though her shin was throbbing and walking was painful, she still took the longer route around the fence and garden path up to the porch. Having bought the house quite recently, she loved looking at its façade from the street. She imagined she was seeing it for the first time: the narrow, pale-green house in a row of equally lovely, pastel-coloured homes; a picture postcard street in the middle of the city She loved the expensive paving stones, the way the path cut through charmingly overgrown flowerbeds and led up to the red door.
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br /> The first thing they did when they moved in was to buy a red door and a knocker in the shape of a lion’s head. Rebecca knew she wanted to live in a house with a red door and a doorknocker; she had always thought of herself as a homemaker. She had grown up in a fairly large house, and had been spoiled by having so much space. Even though the apartments she used to rent had been airy and attractive, she was never at ease with the fact that other people were living and breathing under the same roof. Sometimes she would lie in bed at night imagining a stranger in the darkness, separated from her by just a thin wall. She had never been entirely comfortable with the thought.
Unsurprisingly, she was the driving force when they started talking about houses and they finally settled on the terraced property in Kungsladugård. The area lay to the west of the city; it was comparatively central and not far from the sea, just like the street in Billdal where she grew up.
She was pleased with how things had worked out. She could walk to work easily, through Slottsskogen Park and across Linnéstaden into the city centre. During their first year in the house she often went down to Röda Sten at the weekends, and would read on the jetties there before gathering her strength and taking the long way home via Nya Varvet and Kungsten. On a hot day she could cycle to the naturist beach at Saltholmen; they could manage perfectly well without a car and still enjoy the best the city had to offer.
Unfortunately they hadn’t been the only ones to see the advantages of the house. She had had palpitations all day while the bidding process was going on. Henrik had remained silent and tense. Since Rebecca already had a well-paid job as staff welfare coordinator at what was then one of Sweden’s largest companies, it was taken as read that she held the purse strings. Now, her post was restricted to an administrative role.
When Rebecca had met Henrik six years earlier, she had realised her ex-boyfriends were almost interchangeable. Like Rebecca, they had all grown up in well-off families and they had all followed in Daddy’s footsteps, training to become doctors or lawyers, with a sense of purpose but also a sense of anxiety. Some of them had been very easy to get on with. Some she had really liked. But when she met Henrik, she fell head over heels in love; he made every other man seem dull. He was proud and quick and excitingly charismatic; artistic and sensitive to a fault. She fell for him, and they moved in together.
They had a good life. Henrik was attuned to the feelings of others. He exuded love, warmth and positive energy. Women loved him for it, as did Rebecca, and a classic situation developed: the thing she loved most about Henrik quickly became one of their major stumbling blocks. His charm made her jealous and this, in turn, made him evasive.
Their friends usually claimed the gender divide didn’t kick in until children came along. The house had been Henrik and Rebecca’s child; it was only when they had an attic, a cellar and a garden on their hands that Rebecca realised Henrik didn’t match up to The Husband she had imagined since she was a child. Her father had always managed to look after both the large house in Billdal and the summer cottage in Mollösund while doing a responsible and well-paid job.
It was clear, she thought, as she gritted her teeth and avoided the loose third step, that the same rights and obligations should apply to both men and women, at work and behind closed doors. From that point of view she was a feminist. But, in recent years she had experienced a creeping irritation at Henrik’s way of shirking traditional male responsibilities.
‘Hello?’
Rebecca kicked off her boots in the hallway and went into the kitchen. An open packet of cheese and half a loaf caught her eye. From the shiny surface of the cheese, she guessed it was a while since he’d eaten.
‘Hello?’
Henrik appeared in the doorway with a smile on his lips which immediately made her suspicious. He looked irresolute for a moment but, she thought, obviously aware of her scrutiny. He blew his long fringe from his face, a gesture so well practised that he owned it. He was wearing a tight T-shirt, no doubt deliberately a little too short, which emphasised his muscular body; given that he never set foot in a gym, he clearly had good genes. Perhaps no one else would call Henrik vain, but Rebecca sometimes thought he had a coquettishness about him.
‘I thought you were going to study today?’
She immediately regretted the underlying reproach. She was still glad to see him. In theory, her criticisms were justified, which was why she still made them, but the feeling remained that she wanted to be with him. That, right now, she was happy to be the one he wrapped his arms around, and no one else. But that feeling didn’t last. As soon as they parted, doubt crept in.
In recent months she had thought he seemed more distant, physically and emotionally. He had been revising in the university library for a couple of evenings each week, and when they were together he either appeared distracted or overcompensated by being particularly nice. Sometimes he simply switched off his mobile when she rang.
He passed her on his way to the sink, where he quickly rinsed out his mug, filled it with water and took a couple of gulps before pouring the rest away.
‘I’m just off. Axel’s waiting, we’re going to work at his place.’
‘When’s the exam?’
‘Monday. But I’ve got an assignment to hand in as well.’
He cut a large piece of the rapidly drying out cheese and popped it in his mouth. She watched his jaws work, feeling her disappointment grow.
‘And I thought you might like a bit of time to yourself.’
His casualness seemed forced. The voice of her therapist echoed in Rebecca’s head. See if you can ignore the signals. Can you decide not to act on a particular feeling immediately?
‘Actually, I’ve had a bloody awful day.’
His eyes darted round the kitchen; he couldn’t meet her gaze.
Rebecca’s problem was that the signals were clear. They were real enough to fuel her jealousy. The other night she dreamt Henrik stubbed her out beneath his boot like a cigarette butt. Yet she knew she had overreacted many times before.
‘Is it method and theory, or whatever it’s called?’
‘Method and Theory in Classical Archaeology. It’s a doorstop of a book. I’d be lying if I said I’d read it from cover to cover, but it does go on. It tells you stuff that’s obvious. I’ll pass the exam, don’t you worry.’
It hadn’t taken long to work out that Henrik was good at starting things but not at following them through. But he had managed to complete half of his modules. Perhaps this was a sign that, after living a semi-adult life of casual jobs and daydreams, disorganised studies and half-hearted efforts to become a jazz musician, he had finally found his vocation. It was only natural that he couldn’t quite go the distance. Rebecca knew, more than anyone, that the road to hell was paved with good intentions.
You couldn’t live other people’s lives for them, but Henrik’s enthusiasm a couple of years ago had been infectious. It had given her hope that one day they would be financial equals.
‘That old saying that someone whispers in your ear before you’re even born and tells you what your role in life will be – I believe in that more than ever,’ Henrik had said after his first module in archaeology. ‘If you’re lucky you find out what it is early in life, but whenever it happens, it feels fantastic.’
Henrik could live by his wits, duping others into believing him. It wasn’t that he was stupid. Or lazy. He still devoured piles of books that weren’t on the reading list, which proved that his passion was real. Unfortunately this passion didn’t cure his deep-rooted problems with authority. He overslept, missed tutorials and seminars, handed in assignments answering different questions from the ones his tutor had set. He complained to Rebecca about the syllabus, the staff (with just a few exceptions), and the faculty as a whole. He made up excuses as though she were his mother, and his aim was to pull the wool over her eyes and not his own. She was all too familiar with the process. He was clearly beginning to tire of the whole thing.
Rebecca tur
ned her back to him and started to put the food away in the fridge.
‘You’re meeting up this late?’ She deliberately kept her voice neutral.
‘I told you, I’m just leaving.’
Henrik fetched Rebecca’s big Marimekko bag from the bedroom. With deliberately purposeful gestures (or so she thought), he placed the book in the bag along with a couple of other reference books and a notepad.
‘I’ve bought a bottle of red,’ she couldn’t help saying. ‘If you’re not too late back, I mean.’
Was he avoiding her gaze?
He paused. ‘I’m not sure. I’ve still got loads to write. And Axel’s asked me to help him with a couple of things he doesn’t understand. I wouldn’t wait up if I were you. I think we’re really going to get stuck in tonight. Get everything out of the way.’
He went into the hallway and opened the cloakroom door. Rebecca hated herself for following him.
‘By the way, have you heard back about your student loan? I can barely afford to pay the mortgage on top of everything else. And I’m sure it’s going to cost a fortune to get the boiler fixed, or whatever we have to do . . . I thought I might watch that film you rented yesterday.’
She was saying anything just to keep him there. Instead of answering, he leant over and planted a cool kiss on her lips, then put his hands on her shoulders and held her away from him.
‘Rebecca . . .’
She sighed.
‘Do we have to talk about this now? Everything will turn out just fine. Trust me.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’ve got to go. But if the worst comes to the worst, I can always earn a bit extra a couple of nights a week. A couple of gigs now and then and we’ll be fine. No problemo, baby!’
The door closed behind him.
Fuck. She walked upstairs slowly, flopped onto the bed and switched on the TV. The window was ajar, and she could hear noise from the street below. Voices and laughter rose and fell; there were footsteps on the pavement. Suddenly she heard the front door open.
She rolled onto her side and put one foot on the floor. ‘Hello?’
‘Sorry, only me. Forgot something.’
She heard Henrik rummaging around in the hallway, then he swore loudly as something fell on the floor and smashed.