Stockholm Noir

by Nathan Larson

  To forget the sight of the young woman whose eyes were numb with pain as rebar pierced her body was, however, impossible. Being impaled must have been excruciating. After a couple of hours in a cold sweat, making fruitless attempts at falling asleep, Berit got out of bed and carefully walked down the creaky stairs. She didn’t want to wake Thea. Thea was a writer and so easily disturbed that she really shouldn’t have had tenants. Thus Berit and Thea scarcely talked to each other, which was fine with Berit; she was a recluse herself. In any event, the blinking blue lights from the bridge abutment must have troubled Thea’s sacred nocturnal slumber, for there was light coming from the kitchen.

  As Berit stood in the kitchen doorway she heard a gruff voice. A moment later she met his piercing gaze. She couldn’t stop the feeling throbbing through her genitals nor the glow that rushed up, making her face flush. She suffered a “little death” and had to hold onto the doorframe. Rafel stared straight into her innermost self. Berit excused herself and poured a glass of water before shamefacedly padding back up to her room in her nightgown. Maybe it wasn’t so strange that Rafel sat in Thea’s kitchen. He and Thea had been childhood friends in the red-hot seventies, she’d mentioned it once when he’d come by to borrow some tools from the shed. But running into him twice that day still seemed odd.

  The dying girl’s gaze and Rafel’s expression in Thea’s kitchen revolved over and over in her mind, and for some peculiar reason she felt guilty, though it was unclear of what. Certainly it was irritating that Rafel brought her to orgasm simply with his eyes, but he probably hadn’t noticed anything.

  She didn’t manage to fall asleep until after the early-morning trains had started rumbling over the nearby bridge, and only slept for a short time. She woke abruptly to the shrill sound of a crow cawing while it peered through her window. The day was cloudy, fog still thick over the little yard outside the house. Rafel’s car was nowhere to be seen.

  The walls of the room seemed to be closing in on her, as if wanting to push her out. After a quick shower, she got dressed, hoping that the hectic pace of her job at the hospital would make her feel normal again.

  On the way to work she kept looking over her shoulder. She felt persecuted, which in a way she was, persecuted by the images in her brain. The obsessive thought of putting herself in the impaled girl’s place wouldn’t leave her. Had it been deliberate? Had the girl seen the iron rods hidden in the fog? If she’d chosen to die, wouldn’t there have been easier ways? Berit stopped on Skanstull Bridge and scouted the accident scene. Dying should be simple, like walking over a bridge. Dying ought to be a slip out of the material world, not something to get stuck in, not being racked by rusty iron spikes, as if life and matter wanted to leave a last reminder of their harshness.

  * * *

  That evening, when Berit came home to Brovattnet, Thea was so sociable that Berit almost suspected something was up. She had intended to go to bed right away and reclaim her lost night of sleep but was instead treated to roast beef and potatoes au gratin and a full-bodied red wine. Thea held forth on the hardships of being a writer and the necessity to sometimes sweep all this aside and to eat and drink well. Despite her youth, Berit knew that effusive cordiality almost always disguised ulterior motives. But the food was delicious, and it definitely beat what she might otherwise grab from a sausage stand. Not until cheese was served and a second bottle of wine uncorked did Thea’s real purpose emerge.

  —Why, yes, she said, and pushed back her oat-blond, shoulder-length hair. As a writer I have a well-trained sense for the unsaid, almost as if I possess a sort of X-ray vision sometimes. Somehow I can hear what others are thinking.

  Then I hope that you hear what I’m thinking, Berit reflected, namely that your opinion of yourself is way off.

  —Exactly, Thea laughed, sensing Berit’s skepticism in her silence. You think I’m up on my high horse, and I understand. Nobody is particularly thrilled when someone comes along and says she has the ability to read their mind. But to the point: you’re pining for Rafel.

  Berit stopped chewing; she felt as if she’d just swallowed an ox.

  —No harm done, Thea continued, and moreover you’re not the only one. That’s where I was heading. I don’t know if you know about Cozmo LSD.

  Berit remembered what the dying girl had rattled out: Cosmos. Or was it only Cosmo?

  —It’s spelled with a z, Thea said, and it is—or was—Rafel’s professional pseudonym. So you didn’t know; there’s scarcely anyone else who does. He was always made up to be unrecognizable when he was onstage. I took care of all communication with his record company. He was quite successful, on the top of the charts awhile too.

  —What did the music sound like? Berit asked.

  Thea went into the living room and came back steeped in echoing gloomy harmonies sung in Swedish in a serene and plaintive voice. But without a doubt Rafel’s voice. A shudder went through Berit.

  —You look perplexed, said Thea. I can understand. That’s not the immediate picture of Rafel when you see him, am I right? But don’t we all have dual personalities in some regard? Thea turned off the music and refilled the wine glasses, then continued: Cozmo LSD later changed his name to Cozmo Limited under pressure from the record company. But Cozmo’s cult status grew along with the piles of fan letters, which I also took care of. Rafel never appeared onstage as himself, he avoided publicity, and for every performance that the record company demanded of him, he grew increasingly afraid of being recognized as just another mortal, so to speak. But his status grew alongside his shyness, and at one concert some girls climbed up on the stage, Rafel fled, and the throngs of fans followed the girls’ example; in the ensuing panic, several fans were badly trampled and had to be taken to the hospital. A sixteen-year-old girl died of injuries. Afterward Rafel decided to back out and kill Cozmo Limited. Through me he sent out a press release and then more or less went underground.

  Thea lay her hand on Berit’s and her voice spoke softly.

  —I saw your face when you caught sight of Rafel last night. But you must give up your dreams of winning him. You have to stop persecuting him.

  —Persecuting? Berit inhaled, now more furious than ashamed. With flushed cheeks she stared down at the table and grabbed a corner of the red-checkered tablecloth. Wanting to jerk it away so that everything fell to the floor.

  —Sorry if I’ve upset you; you must honestly be shocked by what you witnessed last night, Thea continued with her insufferable insight. Surely you wonder if Rafel has asked me to convey this to you, but first you need to understand the background. As you know, Rafel and I have been friends since we were very young and lived in a collective. He can seem sullen and tough but he’s a sensitive soul—which naturally is an attractive combination to everyone but himself. Through music he found an outlet for his vulnerability, but after the death at his last public performance he was terribly shocked. He feared his own power of attraction, thought that it was cursed. All the yearning fan mail from ragged kids didn’t help either—many of the letters had suicidal undertones and I didn’t know if I should forward them along to the police.

  Now Berit understood why Rafel appeared so troubled after the incident. Thea said that the young woman who’d died at the old factory was really a stalker who’d harassed Rafel for years, drowned him with letters, and finally succeeded in ferreting out where he lived. Afterward she’d snuck around the area, on the lookout for her idol. Berit wondered why Rafel hadn’t reported the girl to the police, but then Thea explained that Rafel saw himself as a citizen of the world and loathed the authorities’ surveillance of people. To report a person to the police went against his strongest convictions; but now the cops were going through all of Hammarby with a fine-tooth comb, directing their abuse at those who’d chosen to live outside the system, which is why Rafel had asked Thea to give the voluminous fan mail from the dead girl to the police.

  —So perhaps you understand, Thea concluded, that Rafel is terribly shaken by what’s happen
ed. He needs to be alone and he can’t deal with any followers right now.

  —You can tell him that he shouldn’t worry, Berit said brusquely, and got up. Besides, I never thought he was all that special.

  Thea offered a maternal smile that lingered as Berit grimaced at her reflection in a nearby mirror. Her embarrassment was written all over her face.

  * * *

  The next day the suicide howled from the headlines, as the papers caught the scent of a “pop star.” While there was no commentary from the pop star himself, there were plenty of photos in the archives to run. Moreover, selections from the dead girl’s fan mail had been leaked to the media and were there in print, so every Tom, Dick, and Harry, as well as noted experts, could expatiate on this dangerous idol worship.

  The following day the media machinery around Rafel and Cozmo Limited went into even higher gear. Hack journalists had uncovered another suicide that had taken place some years before, which could also be linked to Cozmo Limited. One of his songs was titled “Death Is a Friend,” and parallels were being drawn between it and the Werther effect. Rafel was no longer a “pop star,” now he was a “death star.” The two suicides were swept together with the accidental death at the concert. There was also a glut of new details about the earlier suicide. The girl had fallen from Skansbron, a drawbridge she’d clung to when it was raised, then lowered herself down into the narrow lock where she’d drowned. Both suicides had occurred in Rafel’s neighborhood, and both girls had written numerous fan letters to him. Both of them were outcasts and came from dysfunctional families with absent fathers and maladjusted mothers. They could have been Berit.

  In the hunt for scapegoats, no culpability fell on either heredity or environment, rather on the death cult that was allegedly being marketed by Cozmo Limited. This caused various public figures to warn against the media’s anti-intellectual orientation and simplified reasoning which could establish breeding grounds for artistic censorship. Indeed, all the hullabaloo about the “death star’s” victims seemed to end with the question of artistic freedom. When no sexual infractions could be connected to the deaths, despite all the hype, the story lost its steam. Nevertheless, the record company was delighted when Cozmo Limited started climbing up the charts.

  But Rafel consistently kept clear of publicity. It was Berit who sensed his presence—on the way home from work his car would glide alongside her for a stretch before he stepped on the gas and drove away; in the garden he snuck around like a fox. If Berit went strolling along the water below the stretch of woodland, he would unexpectedly step out of the little shipyard in his oilcloth coat and stop to watch her, as if she were a wild animal. And at night he wandered around in her dreams.

  But then he disappeared, as if he were suddenly swallowed up by the earth, and only remained in the echo chamber of her mind.

  * * *

  One hazy Sunday afternoon Berit decided to resume her promenades on the wild side. She wrapped her long leather coat around her—the weather was unusually mild for this time of year, even though the deciduous trees’ naked shapes told of winter’s approach. She walked by the thermal power station, moved along the canal with swift steps, trembled a little when passing the shuttered lightbulb factory—she hadn’t set foot there since she’d seen the young woman pierced by the rusty iron bars. When she reached the flat slab of concrete she saw that it was covered with flowers, lanterns, stuffed animals, photos, sketches, and other expressions of love. A poster hung on one of the iron rods. A poem painted in graceful handwriting hung from it. Berit read:

  Who were you?

  A guest a thief

  or the missing wing?

  You came like light,

  like fire, like a rush,

  and said you were no one.

  Now you’re the blues.

  Now you’re dead.

  Now you’re only an angel,

  but my angel is death.

  Death is my friend.

  Bullshit, Berit thought as she marched toward the ghetto of small workshops—the place she’d first seen Rafel. The ground between the shacks was muddy, a clucking hen ambled around, farther away a mongrel was barking, and here and there came the clattering of tools and machines. Berit inhaled the peculiar mixture of smells—oil, gasoline, earth, marshy ground, garbage, and smoke. This was the way her father smelled when he’d surprised her outside school, before he’d disappeared for good. The only thing I can teach you is this: Always be on guard. Believe only what you see with your own eyes. That’s how he’d spoken, and Berit had tried to follow his advice. But he hadn’t explained anything about love or carnal knowledge. She tramped on, her pulse quickening.

  Guitar notes pressed through the cacophony of welding irons, grinders, and sledgehammers. Berit was drawn toward the music—she wove her way along the oil drums, the tarps hanging on their lines, the sheet-metal hangars, and the barracks, until through the darkness and fog she caught sight of a brightly colored trailer beside a clump of trees. Lanterns shone softly from branches around the trailer. It was idyllic, like a fairy tale. The sound of the guitar was stronger now; a voice began to sing, a voice that was powerful and yet as soft as a caress. And there was Rafel sitting on a stepladder, singing to the red-violet trailer with bright green decorations that looked like snakes or plants with twining tendrils. Berit stopped ten meters away and listened.

  They were the same words she’d read on the poster at the scene of the accident. But when Rafel sang it with his sensual and full-bodied voice, it didn’t sound banal at all. His voice wound itself around Berit and made her stand up straight, as if rooted to the spot.

  When Rafel let the last chord fade away, he got up and went into the trailer, quickly returning without the guitar. He walked straight toward her, his long wavy hair flowing over his broad shoulders, his oilcloth coat open, his hips swinging freely.

  Rafel said nothing at all when he stood half a meter from her, nothing when he bent forward with parted lips and beautiful, half-open eyes.

  Never had Berit been kissed in this way. It wasn’t only the sugar cube that dissolved between their tongues and made the kiss sweet. Never had a tongue been so soft and rubbed so easily against hers. No lips had so encircled hers and been as easy to meet as his. And somewhere down in his throat lived a singing voice that could take her to the end of the earth.

  Rafel led her to the cliff that dropped down into the black water. Behind them rose a group of high-rises on the fringes of this no-man’s-land run wild. From there, occupants could look out over streams and bays and the entrance to the harbor. There the inhabitants of this Venice of the North could huddle up in their houses, gaze out wistfully through their windows, and dream of the far-off summer when they could sail away to the archipelago’s flower baskets.

  Rafel and Berit stood on the edge of the cliff. They saw the cars’ headlights creep along the highway like glowworms, saw the glitter from the floating pleasure palaces on their way east, and the gossamer shimmer from the buildings of the city center. It was an amazing view. A wide cloud of mist covered Stockholm like a blanket of whipped cream, and above it the spires of various churches stuck up like candles on a cake.

  Berit thought she saw everything as it was. The sky sparkled with a warm fluorescent sheen, and beneath her feet purple and green brooks billowed below the precipice to join the pitch-black canal in a beautiful paisley pattern. It was exactly the same pattern as her father’s scarf. The paisley scarf was one thing he’d cherished, it was always around his neck, even after he’d begun his life as a homeless wanderer.

  Rafel walked back a few steps.

  —Do you want to be my friend? My personal angel? he asked in a rasping yet sonorous voice, as if singing the phrase.

  —Angel? Berit repeated, and imagined she saw the thick white fog spread a pair of wings.

  —Death’s angel. Death alone is our friend.

  The words flew away and dissolved before she’d caught their meaning. Instead, other words rose within h
er. Always be on guard. Believe only what you see with your own eyes. She turned around right as the tall figure came rushing toward her, and quickly threw herself to the side. The thick blanket of fog seemed illuminated from within, the light so white that she was blinded. And there—in stark contrast to the fog—was the sharp outline of a big black bat that immediately vanished. Only contours remained, like a piece removed from a completed jigsaw puzzle. She caught the fleeting impression of a hard wind blowing through the hole until the fog closed around it, erased it.

  Berit was still sitting on the cliff. The cars’ yellow eyes swept forth below on the main road, but with growing distance until everything went dark. She realized that she was freezing, got up, pulled her coat more tightly around her, and slowly walked one last time through the motley, messy neighborhood where she could once dream herself away from ostentatious civilization. The lights from the shacks and workshops were off, the fires no longer burned. One solitary man with a halting gait walked forward in the rubbish, occasionally bending his neck toward the ground, like a pecking bird. A murder of crows flew from the spot where Berit had first seen a young person die. The poster with Rafel’s lyrics was still there. The first line went right through her: Who were you?

  Now she knew.

  But death wasn’t a friend. And Berit was no angel.

  * * *