It crunches as she chews.
Tilda picks up a blue crayon and starts carefully coloring in what’s going to be the sky. The drawing already has a house, their house, with a red car out front, the one they’re going to buy when Mama gets another job. Through the window, the weak gray light of the fall afternoon filters into the kitchen, painting the room in a dark, depressing palette, but inside her tent it’s dark in a cozy way. Only a dim light seeps in, enough for her to see the paper resting on the floor in front of her and make out a hint of the colors of the crayons.
A steady stream of music from the radio, interspersed with commercials.
Commercials are when they talk, that much Tilda has understood. Commercials are when Henrik goes and pees out all the beer he’s drunk. Commercials are also when Mama goes out and smokes on the balcony, but when Henrik’s not home she smokes everywhere. Even when there isn’t a commercial.
The knocking is gentle and considerate, as if maybe it wasn’t knocking but just someone absentmindedly drumming lightly on the wood door as he or she passed the door of the apartment.
Tilda sees her mother light another cigarette, leaning over the sink, seeming to hesitate.
Then the knocking becomes pounding.
Thump, thump, thump.
And there’s no longer any doubt that someone is standing outside the door, someone who wants in. Someone who’s in a hurry.
“I’m coming,” her mother yells, and slowly walks over to the door with her cigarette in her hand. As if she had all the time in the world. And Tilda knows that’s so, because Henrik has to learn to wait. Everything can’t always happen at once, can’t always be on his terms. Mama’s told him so.
Tilda finds a light-yellow crayon she thinks will make a good sun and starts drawing a circle with round, sweeping motions. The paper crumples a little and when she holds it down with her other hand a small tear starts up in the right-hand corner. A crack in the perfect world she is so carefully creating.
She hesitates: Start over again or keep going?
Thump, thump, thump.
Henrik seems angrier than usual. Then there’s the sound of the safety chain sliding off and Mama opens the door.
Tilda searches through the crayons, which resemble grayish-brown sticks in the darkness under the kitchen table, as if she were sitting in the woods under a spruce tree playing with real sticks. She wonders what that would feel like; she’s almost never been in the woods. Just to the playground downtown and there aren’t any trees, just thorny bushes with tiny little orangish-red berries that the other kids say are poisonous.
Then she finds the gray crayon. Thinks it will be a big, dark cloud. One swollen with rain and hail in its belly, one that scares the grown-ups.
From out in the hallway she hears indignant voices and more pounding. Muffled thuds on the floor, as if something were falling over and over again. Sometimes she wishes they would quit fighting. Or that Mama would throw out those yellow beer cans, the ones that make Henrik grumpy and irritated and tired.
She lies down on the floor so she can peek out from under the tablecloth. They’re screaming now and something is wrong. The voices don’t sound familiar. Henrik doesn’t sound the way he normally does.
The hallway is cloaked in darkness.
Tilda can sense bodies moving around out there but can’t figure out what’s going on.
Then a cry.
Someone, she now sees that it’s her mother, falls forward headlong onto the kitchen floor. Lands flat on her stomach with her face down, and she can see a red pool growing where her mother’s head is lying. Mama’s hands grab hold of the rug as if she wants to cling to it and she tries to crawl back into the living room while something small, shiny, and glimmering-gold rolls into the kitchen from the hall.
Someone—the man—is cursing out in the hall. His voice is deep and sort of rough. Then footsteps come into the kitchen. A figure bends over, snatches up the small object.
She doesn’t dare stick her head out to see who it is, but she sees the black boots and dark trouser legs that pause next to her mother’s head, hesitate for a second, and then kick her, over and over again in the face. Until her whole face seems to come loose, like a mask from a doll, and red and pink goo gushes out in a puddle on the rug in front of her. The black boots are also covered with the goo, which slowly drips down onto the floor, like melting ice cream.
It gets quiet, except for the music still coming from the radio and Tilda wonders how it can be possible for the music to just keep going and going, as if nothing had happened, even though Mama is lying there on the kitchen floor like a pile of dirty laundry in a sea of blood that’s growing by the second.
Mama’s breaths are drawn out and wheezing as if she had taken a sip of water that went down the wrong way.
Then Tilda watches as her mother is dragged out into the hall, inch by inch. She’s still clutching the little kitchen rug tightly and it slides along with her, out into the dark.
The only thing left on the cream-colored linoleum floor is a sea of blood and pink goo.
Tilda hesitates for a second but then continues to color in the gray storm cloud.
STOCKHOLM
TWO MONTHS EARLIER
Vijay’s office—an infinitely large desk, where every last inch of the desktop is covered with paper. I wonder how he can ever find what he needs among thousands of papers, folders, and journals.
His laptop is perched on top of a stack of what look like essays, a superthin Mac. Vijay has always been a Mac person. Next to that, there’s a cup of coffee and a banana peel. A tin of chewing tobacco is half hidden under a memo from the chair of the department.
“Have you started chewing tobacco?” Aina asks, giving Vijay an incredulous look and contorting her face in disgust.
“Hm . . . I was forced to,” Vijay says with a smile. “Olle objected to the cigarettes, but he puts up with the chewing tobacco.”
Aina shakes her head in sympathy and says, “Too bad. And here I was thinking we should grab a cup of coffee and take a cigarette break in that biting wind out there, you know, for old time’s sake and stuff.”
All three of us laugh, remembering for a moment how we used to stand together in the pouring rain, the snow, the broiling sun, season in and season out, sharing cigarettes and coffee. Back when life was less complicated. Or maybe it just seems that way now that those days are behind us. Now that what was once “now” is in the distant past.
Aina, Vijay, and I are old friends from back in our student days, when we all studied psychology together at Stockholm University. Aina and I decided to do clinical work after we finished our degrees. Vijay decided to go the academic route and get a PhD. Now, ten years later, he’s a professor of forensic psychology at our old alma mater.
I study him: his black hair, now graying at the temples, his bushy mustache, a wrinkly blue-and-white-striped cotton shirt. He doesn’t look like a professor, but maybe that’s how you’d describe the Professor Look: the lack of any common stylistic denominator. What do I know anyway? I don’t know that many professors. Well, no matter how little Vijay looks like a professor, I can’t deny the fact that he’s aged, just like Aina and I. We’re older, possibly wiser, or perhaps just more tired and mildly surprised that life didn’t turn out the way we thought it would, back then.
“It’s not like you’d have to twist my arm. Maybe we should go have a smoke. Olle’s at a conference in Reykjavik so it’s not like he’d know.” Vijay picks up his tobacco tin and starts absentmindedly picking at the label. “But,” he continues, “that’s not why I asked you to come, to discuss my nicotine habit, I mean.”
Aina and I nod in confirmation. We know that Vijay asked us here to discuss an assignment and we’re grateful for that. Psychotherapists suffer from economic downturns just like everyone else and a long-term contract from a publicly funded institution would
be most welcome.
“So, it has to do with a research project in which we’re going to study how effective self-help groups are for women who have been victims of violence. The target group is women who are at risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder, but who for whatever reason don’t want to receive traditional treatment. The project is a collaboration between the municipality of Värmdö and Stockholm University.”
Vijay has put on his professor hat. His eyes gleam and his cheeks are flushed. He is passionate about his work, doesn’t view it as a job, a source of income, but as a lifestyle and perhaps also as something that gives his life meaning. Plus, he can’t deny that it does wonders for his ego, being the expert, the most knowledgeable.
Vijay is often quoted in the media, commenting on various crimes and their presumed causes. It would be easy to psychoanalyze him, to think that his attitude stems from a need for revenge—Vijay, the put-upon immigrant, doubly marginalized because of his ethnic origin and his sexual orientation, but that is far from the truth. Vijay’s parents are both well-to-do academics who came to Sweden on research grants and then stayed. His being gay was never an issue for his family. There were three other brothers to supply his parents with all the grandchildren their hearts desired. They viewed Vijay as eccentric but quite successful.
“If this is self-help therapy, where do we come in?” Aina asks, interrupting Vijay’s pontificating and forcing him to stop talking, something he isn’t that fond of doing.
“I’m getting to that, if you’ll just bear with me.” He pauses, opens his tobacco tin, stuffs a pouch of snuff under his lip, and then proceeds. “The idea is for you guys to run the pilot study. Test the manual, take a peek at the psychoeducational portions, see if anything needs to be added or removed.”
“Psychoeducation and self-help, that doesn’t sound like cognitive behavioral therapy,” I think out loud. Aina looks doubtful, and Vijay is smiling calmly.
“It isn’t CBT, not strictly speaking. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be effective,” Vijay says. “You guys know that there is far more demand for trained psychotherapists who use a CBT approach than there are psychotherapists. This is one way of allowing more people to participate in different interventions that we know are effective for post-traumatic stress disorder and trauma. We simply want to make this type of approach available at a lower cost. Besides, there’s a point to self-help groups, especially for people who have been victims. It gives them a sense of . . . of being in control, maybe. Empowerment. Well . . . you know.”
“Empowerment?” Aina asks, still looking skeptical and glancing over at me, looking for a sign, some indication of my take on this.
“How is it structured?” I ask. I’m curious and want to hear more about how they envision the plan will work.
Vijay explains, “Eight sessions, two hours each time. Each session will start with an instructional portion, reactions to trauma, men’s violence against women, information about common symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, topics like that. Then there will be a less structured portion; people can talk about their own experiences and listen to other people’s stories. The group leader’s role is to facilitate the discussion, make sure that everyone gets a chance to talk and that no one becomes too dominant. After that the leader will give a homework assignment, maybe to reflect on how their lives changed after the traumatic event or coming up with new goals for how they want things to be, what they lost, and what they think they can recapture, reconquer perhaps, and then how they’re going to do it. You’ll receive a detailed manual, but you’re free to improvise. Afterward, you evaluate the sessions together and offer opinions on the content. Everything will be documented. It’s important to remember that this is a self-help group, so your input level has to be just right: it should have substance and help them but you can’t get too involved. It’s not psychotherapy, and the program won’t be run by psychotherapists; the group facilitators will be women who themselves have been subjected to violence at the hands of men . . .”
Vijay cuts himself off and suddenly looks embarrassed. I know what he’s thinking and what he’s about to say.
“I, uh, Siri . . .” Vijay stammers, “I’m not asking you to do this because you’ve been a victim, but because you’re a hell of a good psychologist and psychotherapist, quite simply. You and Aina, you’re good, damn good.”
“But the fact that I was the victim of violence in addition to being a psychologist and a therapist, maybe that doesn’t hurt?” I ask, studying Vijay, watching him weigh the various alternatives. I know him well enough that I have some idea what he’s thinking. Tell it like it is or smooth it over? Pretend like nothing happened and that I’m the same person I was before, or concede that what happened, the fact that another person tried to kill me, actually changed who I am?
“Does it bother you?” he asks.
He looks hurt and anxious. I contemplate his question. Does it bother me that Vijay thinks my personal history makes me better suited than someone else to do this job? I realize it doesn’t. My personal experience is still with me, but it doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s no longer an open wound. I think I have control over my reactions and my ability to relate to what happened.
“No, it doesn’t bother me.”
The mood in the extremely cluttered office changes so suddenly that it’s impossible to ignore it. A calm wave of relief seems to spread through Vijay and Aina, and I realize that they must have discussed this together in advance but that Aina hadn’t wanted to sway my decision. She just wanted to give me a way to bow out of Vijay’s offer without losing face. Vijay leans over and strokes my cheek in an unexpectedly tender gesture.
“Siri, my good friend. I’m so glad you’re here.”
I am surprised at this sudden sentimental turn but touched by his sincerity all the same. There’s no doubt that he means what he’s saying. Aina looks me in the eye, raises her eyebrow almost imperceptibly, and I’m forced to look away because I know I’m going to start laughing and I don’t want to hurt Vijay’s feelings. Instead, I turn toward him and cock my head to the side.
“Enough said. Can we talk money now?”
Rain that never ends, that refuses to let in sun or cold. It falls quietly over the waterlogged fields around my cottage, slowly dissolving the contours of what was once my lawn, which is now under water. A few isolated tufts of grass stick up here and there, like wisps of unkempt yellow hair. The path between my house and the little outbuilding, which contains a bathroom and storage room, is full of gaping holes where the black mud sucked hold of my rubber boots.
Inside my house it’s warm and dry and whenever I glance at the front door, I’m filled with that strong, primitive sense of joy at returning to a home that is actually mine, that keeps me—and sometimes also Markus and my friends—warm on these stormy autumn nights, a simple but sturdy wood construction.
Markus doesn’t live with me. I don’t want us to move in together, I’m not there yet. Maybe I value having my own space too much, maybe I don’t think we could handle all the compromises that a truly shared life would require.
Who am I trying to kid?
The truth—which hurts so much I only take it out occasionally to inspect it in the light—is that I’m incapable of loving him for real. Asking me to love him is like asking a man with no arms to tie his shoelaces; it doesn’t matter how much I want to. I can’t.
I fear there’s no room in my soul for him.
Not yet.
Stefan.
Still present, by my side night and day, when I work and sleep, when I’m making love to Markus.
Am I being unfaithful?
Most people would call that thought absurd. I mean, you can’t be unfaithful to someone who’s dead. And, heaven knows, if anyone would have wanted me to be happy, it was Stefan. He would have wanted that for me.
No.
It’s about my
own inability to connect.
There you have it.
The only things that reveal Markus’s existence on the days when I’m on my own out here are an extra toothbrush in the bathroom, a drawer of briefs and XL-sized T-shirts in my dresser, and an ultraslim laptop, which he claims he needs for work, although if truth be told I’ve never seen him do anything besides play video games and surf the web on it.
Even though we’ve been seeing each other for almost a year, I still haven’t gotten over the fact that we’re so different. If anyone had asked me way back when, a long time ago, what I was looking for in a man—my ideal man—I could have gone on at length on the topic. He would be intellectual, read books, be interested in social issues.
Now I can coolly observe that I have found a man who is as far from my romantic ideal as you can get: policeman, athletic, doesn’t share any of my interests, not interested in reading, mostly likes to sit in front of the computer when he’s not working out. I think he votes liberal even though he’s from northern Sweden, but I don’t actually know. We never talk about stuff like that. Actually, we don’t really talk that much. We just . . . are. We share this cottage and those rocks along the shore. We share life, which moves leisurely along this long, drawn-out, dark fall. We share each other’s bodies with an intensity that is sometimes frightening, and which stands in glaring contrast to our more tepid, impartial everyday conversations and practical undertakings.
Sometimes I think that he serves the same purpose in my life as a pet—it’s nice to have someone else around. Maybe that sounds awful? But the opposite is also dreadful: requiring of life that a man—any man—should live up to a romanticized ideal, that he should share all my interests. It would be arrogant to demand something like that from life, from another person.
He’s also way too young for me, ten years too young to be precise. I decided a long time ago to ignore this fact, to convince myself that age is relative. And if I’m being honest, I enjoy it: the idea that someone—who is so young—actually wants me.
Strangers: An Exclusive Short Story Page 5
