The woman looked anxiously at her husband as if Elv y and Hagar were offering them a vaccine against a ravaging disease and she sensed that he was about to refuse it.
And sure enough, the man shook his head angrily and walked past Elvy and Hagar, opening the front door.
‘I think it sounds a lot like a threat.’ He used his hand to indicate that they should leave. ‘But good luck to you. There are plenty of lost souls.’
Elvy and Hagar stepped out onto the landing. Before he had time to shut the door Elvy said, ‘If you change your mind… my house is open, always.’
The man slammed the door.
When they were back out on the street again, Hagar poked her tongue out at the house and said, ‘That didn’t go too well.’ She glanced at Elvy, who was holding her palm against her forehead, and asked her, ‘What is it?’
Elvy closed her eyes. ‘My head feels so strange.’
‘It’s the thunderstorm,’ Hagar said and pointed up at the sky with the tip of her umbrella.
‘No… ‘ Elvy laid her hand on Hagar’s shoulder, steadying herself.
Hagar grabbed a hold of Elvy’s arm. ‘What is it, dear?’
‘I can’t quite…’ Elvy smacked her hand against her forehead. ‘It’s as if… something else comes in. Another voice. That thing I said… “my house is open”. I hadn’t been intending to say that. The thought hadn’t occurred to me. It just… came.’
Hagar leaned forward, examining Elvy’s head as if she might find some kind of entrance to it, but she saw only the band-aid. She pursed her lips and said, ‘Think of the disciples. They suddenly found they could speak in any language. Getting a little inspiration, that’s no more extraordinary than Mary appearing to you, now is it?’
Elvy nodded, and straightened up. ‘No. I suppose not.’
‘Should we keep going then?’ Hagar nodded at the house, where the man was now staring at them through the window. ‘They were just dry old sticks in there.’
Elvy smiled weakly. ‘The Lord has performed greater miracles than bringing buds to dead trees.’
‘There we go,’ Hagar said. ‘That’s the spirit.’
They walked on.
Bondegatan 18.30
Flora was sitting at the computer when her parents got home. She had logged onto a Christian chat forum and had presented a satanist’s argument on the zombie issue, describing how black masses were being celebrated in her congregation in Falkoping in order to hasten Beelzebub’s arrival. It had been the most fun in the beginning when the others still believed she was a devout evangelical who had seen the light. Or the dark. Now they were trying to lead her back on track. She had gone too far and lost them, however, by the time the front door opened and Margareta called out, ‘Yoo-hoo! Is anyone home?’
Flora wrote, ‘Goodbye. See you in hell,’ and logged out. Theil she sat with her fingers resting on the keyboard and waited for the rustle. There it was. The rustle that always announced her parents’ return from a trip. The shopping bags.
‘Yoo-hoo!’
Flora closed her eyes, imagining her mother and father submerged in a sea of multicoloured plastic balls. There was a hiss as their heads disappeared beneath the surface. She would have liked to put on Manson and block out their voices with a wall of guitar, but she was interested to hear how her mother had taken this thing about the dead. Elvy had rung and told her that Margareta had called from London, and had therefore been informed. Flora wondered how she was taking it.
Sure enough, the kitchen floor was covered in plastic bags with English boutique logos. In the midst of it all, Margareta and Goran were unpacking, Viktor waiting with ill-concealed impatience beside them for his battery-powered watergun. Flora crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the doorpost. Margareta’s gaze landed on her.
‘Hello darling! How have things been?’
‘Fine.’
The question was asked as usual. Bright and perky. No hint that anything out of the ordinary had occurred, so Flora added, ‘A little dead.’
A smile flashed across Margareta’s face and away, like the lash of a whip as she searched through a bag. In the corner of her eye, Flora saw Goran give her a sharp look. Margareta got hold of a box and held it out to Viktor.
‘…and this is for you.’
Viktor frowned and opened the box, taking out an intricate statue of Gandalf and turning it in his hands. His disappointment was enormous. Flora saw the price tag on the box: 59.90. Pounds.
‘They only had ones that looked like real ones,’ Goran said and held out his hands. ‘So it… ‘
‘What ones that looked real?’ Viktor asked.
‘Rifles. And when you pulled the trigger there were sounds like from a real rifle. And it… we didn’t think you should have it. So it was this instead.’
‘What do I do with it?’
‘You can put it in your room. Don’t you want it?’
Viktor looked at the statue. His shoulders slumped.
‘Yeah, sure. Course.’
Margareta had started to rummage through a new bag, and said without looking up, ‘And what do you say?’
‘Thank you,’ Viktor said and gave Gandalf a death look.
Margareta got up with a new box that she handed to Flora. ‘And here you are. Isn’t this something you’re supposed to have?’
The thing she was supposed to have was an iPod. Flora handed the box back to her.
‘Thanks, but I already have one.’
Margareta pointed at the box without taking it.
‘But you can fit… ‘ she turned to Goran, ‘was it two hundred?’
‘Three hundred,’ Goran said.
‘… three hundred records in there. Everything.’
‘Yes,’ Flora said. ‘I know. But I don’t need it. I have mine.’ Silence fell. A plastic bag crumpled up with a sound like a sigh. Flora savoured it. Not everything can be bought, no, not everything can be bought. Goran smacked his hands together.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘that both of you are incredibly ungrateful.’
‘Don’t you know what’s been going on?’ Flora asked.
Margareta shook her head: Don’t talk about it now, and Flora pretended to misinterpret the gesture.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘last night at around eleven… ‘
‘Have you had anything? To eat?’ Margareta interrupted and finally took the box out of Flora’s hands. Without waiting for an answer she raised it in Flora’s direction. ‘Should we sell this then, or give it to someone else, is that what you want?’
Flora watched her mother’s compressed lips as they opened for a second
second, let out a tremor in her lower lip, then closed again.
I could feel sorry for her. But I don’t want to. ‘Keep it yourself,’ Flora said.
‘What for?’
‘I don’t know. Phil Collins.’
Flora went back to her room and closed the door. Her head was sticky with guilt, anger and fatigue, all in a thick mixture. She put Portrait of an American Family on the stereo to try to blow it away, air it out. She lay on her bed and allowed herself to be pierced by the vibrations, Manson’s voice a salve for what hurt, a pinprick for what had gone to sleep.
When the first song had blown away the worst of it, she skipped forward to ‘Wrapped in plastic’, lay back down on the bed and closed her eyes.
The steak is cold, but it’s wrapped in plastic…
Flora floated away in a vision of all of Stockholm wrapped in plastic. Plastic over the sidewalks, a thin film across the water; when you tried to dip your fingers in the water the only thing you felt was the bulging plastic. Plastic over people’s faces, liquid plastic to protect us from bacteria. A little dog rolling along in a bubble of hard plastic.
The volume dropped and she opened her eyes. Margareta was standing at the foot of her bed, arms folded.
‘Flora,’ she said. ‘As long as you live with us…’
‘I know. I know.’
‘What is it you know?’
Flora knew the routine. The whole program. How you behaved, how basically every young person we know behaved. Clean behind your ears, plug yourself into the iPod, listen to Coldplay; let Avril Lavigne whine you into conformity. Take what you’re given, be a little grateful. And give something back.
She wasn’t going to bite. Not this time.
‘Aren’t you going to talk-about it?’ Flora asked.
‘About what?’
‘About Grandfather?’
Margareta’s arms rose… and fell…and rose again as she took a few deep breaths.
‘What do you want me to say about it?’
Flora looked into Margareta’s eyes and saw terror. Not her problem. She rolled over to face the wall and gave up.
‘Nothing. Bring your psychologist,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘I said: bring your psychologist. Leave me alone.’
She felt Margareta’s presence behind her for a couple more seconds, then it left her and slammed the door.
The little man…
That was what frightened Margareta.
Six months ago-after coming horne from a talk at I he Youth Psychiatry Service Margareta had forced Flora to attend – Margareta had sudden;y opened up and started to talk about her father.
‘I can’t take it,’ she said. ‘I can’t handle that vacant stare, the way he doesn’t say anything, just sits there.’
At that point she had not been to visit her father for several months.
‘And all the time,’ she went on, ‘all the time, it’s like I’m imagining that inside my father, somewhere inside his head there’s… a little man… a little man who thinks clearly and looks out onto the world and he’s accusing me, he’s thinking: Why doesn’t my daughter come to see me? He’s sitting in there and waiting and… But I can’t handle it.’
And Flora sensed that her father was one of the main topics of conversation between Margareta and the psychologist she saw once a week (twice a week when Flora had been doing the most self – cutting).
Even back then, Flora had thought it would have been better if she had just dragged herself out to Taby. But Margareta believed in psychology. She thought it was possible to become whole. That if she worked her problems out conscientiously, one by one, she would finally attain a state of harmony. Possibly also a diploma. Every problem had a solution except for those that did not.
And what could you do about them? Ignore them! Little men in your head? No such thing. Not worth speaking or even thinking about.
Now the little man had come out. Now he was walking around with vacant eyes. Now the pointing finger of accusation was waiting for Margareta at Danderyd.
But it was an insoluble problem. Therefore there was no problem.
It did not exist.
Flora skipped back and raised the volume.
The steak is cold, but it’s wrapped in plastic.
Yes. Come to our house. The steak is cold, it may even be rotting, but now we have wrapped it in plastic, we promise that you won’t smell anything. Stay a while.
Gladwrap.
The thunder that started rumbling half an hour later interfered with her internet connection. Flora tried to call Elvy but no one answered. When she called Peter, he answered on the first ring.
‘This is Peter.’ His voice was low, almost a whisper.
‘Hello it’s me, Flora. What is it?’
‘The police. They’re cleaning house.’
Even though his voice was electronically flattened, Flora could hear the hatred in it.
‘Why?’
There was a crackle on the line as Peter snorted. ‘Why? I don’t know. They probably think it’s fun.’
‘Did you manage to save the scooter?’
‘Yes, but they’ve taken all the bikes.’
‘No.’
‘Yes. I’ve never seen so many of them. Eight SWAT units and a van. They’re driving all of them away now. All of them.’
‘What about you?’
‘No. I can’t talk any longer. Have to keep quiet. See you.’ ‘Sure. Good…’
The connection was broken.
‘…luck.’
Kungsholmen 20.15
As the first flash of lightning split the sky above Norrmalm, David was standing in front of the freezer staring at a packet of frozen raspberries. The rumble that followed a couple of seconds later stirred him from his trance and he stuffed the raspberries to the back, taking out a bagged loaf of bread.
Roast’n Toast. Best before 16 August. When he bought the bread a week ago everything was normal; life a sequence of great or not-sogreat days to pile one on top of the other. He shut the freezer door and lost himself in the bread instead.
How long?
How many days, how many years before even one good memory would be attached to a moment after Eva’s accident? Would that ever happen?
‘Dad, look.’
Magnus was sitting at the kitchen table, pointing out the window.
Fine chalk lines blinked on the blackboard of the sky and the claps of thunder that rolled in shortly afterward did not appear to have anything to do with it. Magnus counted quietly to himself and said that the thunder was three kilometres away. Sheets of water slid down the window.
David took a couple of rock-hard slices of bread from the bag and put them in the toaster for Magnus’ evening snack. He had burned the spaghetti sauce for dinner and neither one of them had eaten much. Later they had watched Shrek for the fourth time and Magnus had downed half a bag of chips while David drank three glasses of wine. He wasn’t hungry anymore.
The house shook with detonations that were drawing closer. David managed to coax Magnus into eating a piece of toast with cheese and marmalade, and a glass of milk. He alternated between regarding Magnus as a machine that had to be taken care of, and as the only other life that existed on this earth. After the wine, it was the latter view that had started to dominate and he had to hold back tears as he looked at his son.
Magnus went off to brush his teeth and at the instant he disappeared from view, panic started to burn in David’s stomach. He drank the dregs of the wine straight from the bottle and leaned against the kitchen table, watching the lightning.
After a minute Magnus came back and stood next to him.
‘Dad, why does the light move faster than the sound?’
‘Because…’ David rubbed his hands over his face. ‘Because… good question. I don’t know. You’ll have to…’ He broke off. He had been on the verge of saying: You’ll have to ask Mum. Instead he said, ‘You should go to bed now.’
He tucked Magnus in and said he was too tired to tell him a goodnight story. Magnus asked him to read one instead, and he read the one about the leopard that lost a spot. Magnus had heard it many times, but always thought it was funny when they got to the part where the leopard counted its spots and discovered that one was missing.
This evening David lacked his usual storytelling verve. He tried to act out the leopard’s consternation, but Magnus’ dutiful giggle was so pitiful that he had to stop, and simply read the story as it was written. When it was over they were both quiet for a long time. When David made a move to get up, Magnus said, ‘Dad?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is Mum coming back here?’
‘How do you mean?’
Magnus curled up and drew his knees up to his chest.
‘Is she going to come back like how she is now and be dead?’
‘No. She’ll come later. When she is well.’
‘I don’t want her to come here and be dead.’
‘She won’t.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
David leaned over the bed and kissed Magnus on the cheek, and on the mouth. Normally Magnus would make trouble-want to play the Angry Game, make funny faces-but now he just lay still, allowing himself to be kissed. When David stood up Magnus was lying with his brows knit. He was thinking about something
, wanted to ask something. David waited. Magnus looked him in the eye.
‘Dad? Are you going to be all right without Mum?’
David’s jaw froze. The seconds ticked by. A sensible voice at the back of his consciousness shouted at him: Say something, say something now, you’re scaring him. Finally he managed, ‘Go to sleep, buddy. Everything is going to be fine.’
He left the bedroom door open, went to the bathroom and turned on the bathwater, hoping that it would drown out the sound of his sobs.
He had imagined Eva dead many times. Tried to imagine. Wrong.
Many times the thought of Eva’s death had been forced upon him. Yes. Because things happen, you read about them in the paper every day. Photographs of roads, lakes, some nondescript forest glade. Someone had been in a crash, someone drowned, someone was murdered. And he had thought. A life of emptiness: routines, duties, perhaps eventually a bit of light from somewhere. But now, when it had happened, of course the worst pain came from things he had not been able to imagine.
Dad? Are you going to be all right without Mum?
How could an eight-year-old say that?
David sat on the floor with his head bent over the bathtub where the water was slowly rising. Maybe it was wrong of him to hide his grief from Magnus. But Eva was not dead, he was not allowed to grieve. And she was not alive, so he could not hope. Nothing.
He turned off the water, pulled the plug and walked out to the kitchen and opened a new bottle of wine. Before he had time to pour himself a glass, Magnus came out wrapped in his blanket.
‘Dad, I can’t sleep.’
David carried him to his and Eva’s bedroom, tucked him in again. Magnus almost disappeared in the big bed. He used to toddle in here when he was little and woke in the night. Here was security. David lay down next to him, his hand on his shoulder. Magnus squirmed in and sighed deeply.
David closed his eyes, wondered, Where is my big bed?
He had been afraid that his mother would have seen the morning news, but she had not, so when she called in the afternoon and exclaimed about the evening’s events he let her talk for a while and then said he had no time. Both she and Eva’s father had to be informed, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it just now.
Handling The Undead Page 18
