Babylon (33 page)

At the beginning of their relationship, she had felt pride when other women responded flirtatiously to his banter and to the glint in his eye. Oh, how she wished things could have stayed like that for ever! Before the petty irritations of everyday life tarnished the unfettered desire that had brought them together. Before Henrik and his women – and it didn’t matter whether they existed in real life, or just in her mind – dug a hole in her trust. Before –
Hey, presto!
– she was back in her dark place.

Back searching pockets and bags, checking messages. Spitting out accusations. Retreating with humiliating apologies.

Axel had colluded with Henrik over his sordid affair with Ann-Marie. The very thought of all the times Henrik had cycled off, allegedly to study at Axel’s, or have a beer with Axel, made her face burn. On an
impulse she decided to keep on walking, faster, to confront him about that telephone call.
Sorry, Rebecca. I don’t know anything
.

Axel was down by the bridge now; he took a couple of tentative steps as though to reassure himself that it would hold. He then strode purposefully to its mid-point, where he stared down at the stream of speeding traffic.

He’s thinking of jumping was her first reaction. She placed a hand on the railing.

A lorry drove past, drowning out her greeting. The exhaust fumes were suffocating.

‘How are you?’ she said eventually, and regretted it at once. The question should have been directed at her. She had lost her life partner.
She
should be the one standing on a bridge staring down at the Tarmac.

But she would never jump, and the thought made her soften. She was the strong one here, irrespective of what had happened; she had the dignity of a grieving person. Not a pathetic victim. She convinced herself that sorrow had given her crystal-clear vision. That the contours of the world around her were particularly sharp. Grief gave her the right to be frank. ‘You’re not thinking of jumping, are you?’

His face was half turned away, his forearms resting on the railing.

‘Here?’ he said. ‘No.’

‘It’s not high enough anyway,’ she said.

She wasn’t sure whether her comment was an attempt at black humour, or merely factual.

‘But the chances of getting run over are pretty good.’

A smile flickered across his mouth but failed to reach his eyes. In those eyes she could see fear.
Is he afraid he’s going to jump against his will?
she thought.
Or is he afraid of me?

‘How long had
you
known? About Henrik and Ann-Marie Karpov?’

Once again he leant over the abyss. ‘All along. Right from the start.’

She nodded.

She’d thought about drawing a line under it all, moving away from her house and all the memories of mistrust within its walls. She could rebuild herself somewhere else. When she was advising others, she was usually dismissive of fresh starts.
Stay where you are and do better
was an attitude that guided other people out of crises. But the idea of starting all over again was so tempting.

50

At night, he would have palpitations. Then he would go for a walk and calm down. For a long time, he had been a fragment of his former self. During that difficult year in the clinic – after Carla – he had even tried praying to the Father, unsure whether he meant his biological father or a father in heaven.

He had always struggled with the idea of faith. He was used to questioning things that could not be factually proven; he had been a student for a long time, if not a particularly successful one. But he had been brought up to believe that being a healthy person required a strong faith. You went to church because that was just what you did in the village. The image of his father came to him again, this time sitting in his pew wearing a pullover and tie. Callused hands that made the thick hymn book look so much smaller than it was. Across the aisle sat the woman his father used to meet. He would sit beside his parents, knowing that his father knew that he knew, that his mother knew that he knew that she knew, an endless cycle of humiliation. The humiliation was too much for him.

He was glad that his father hadn’t set foot in the hospital, many years later, that he had chosen not to sully the memory further. That he had allowed his misunderstood son to retain a modicum of self-respect.

Because with Carla he
had
tried to do good. He had only wanted to talk to her, nothing more. To reach the woman who wanted to call herself his girlfriend; his plan involved mutual reflection and, of course, an element of punishment. The first missionaries had seen things in much the same way. They too found that the only way to chastise lost souls was to teach them the true faith, to suppress their sinful tendencies with appropriate punishment. Good is praised. Evil is punished. In schools these days, children were spared the consequences of their actions; another sign of the country’s spinelessness. And it would be the country’s downfall.

He had liked her, in the same contradictory way he liked Annelie. Behind Carla’s self-destructiveness he had seen a frightened little girl – not unlike the boy he had once been. In many ways she too was a victim of the world; its vapours had wrapped themselves around her body in the form of the colours she smeared on her face, the vulgar clothes she wore to draw attention to her body. Peeling away layer after stinking layer would be like seeking out a diamond in a piece of blackened rock, then polishing it.

He had failed, not least because of his own inadequacy. He didn’t have the courage of his convictions. Back then he too was like an unpolished stone. He wanted to do the right thing, but lacked the maturity, the understanding, the method or the means to achieve his goal. And she hadn’t made it easy for him, after all. She had refused to listen, she hadn’t been interested in the idea of reflecting on life. And he hadn’t yet learnt to handle his anger, the fatal flaw that made him act without thinking, time and time again. He
had
acted without thinking.

In the confusion after he had let Carla go, the psychologist in the clinic had told him that the only way to move on was to forgive himself.

As time went on, he tried to regard the farce as a good father regards his offspring when they do wrong: with understanding. With a stern but amused tenderness.

He had felt compelled to hold on to Carla, since she refused to listen. Patiently waiting for a moment of insight, room for mutual understanding where she would see why he had had no choice but to deprive her of her freedom, just for a few days.

The lines scratched on the inside of his wardrobe door marked the number of days that had passed since he had left behind everything: Home and Church. His intended career, following in his father’s footsteps. He would never be able to return to his former life. And yet he carried on counting the days. He had learnt one thing from Carla: his soul was divided, with competing impulses pulling him asunder.

But the liberation he had felt after he had cleared his house was indescribable. It made the possibility of forgiveness a reality. The road ahead may not be straight, but it was possible to start again.

51

Gothenburg

Beckman regarded herself as a grounded, unsentimental person. She was familiar with every phase of pregnancy, and theoretically aware that the foetus was the size of a thumbnail, encased in layers of protective membranes, body and skin. There was no way that the movements she thought she could feel were the child in her belly.

She was always ravenous these days, and had shovelled down a tray of sausage and mash from a kiosk on her way from the station to Kungsladugårdsgatan; the fact that she was on the move might help her digestion. She was sitting on a bench by the paddling pool, which hadn’t yet been filled, with her hand on her belly. The harbour wasn’t far away, and a flock of screaming gulls circled above her head; one of them swooped into an open bin, grabbed a half-eaten tray of mash and took off again.

A woman in her forties sank down laboriously beside Beckman, her belly round and taut, a supporting hand at the bottom of her back. Beckman didn’t realise she was grinning foolishly until the woman glanced back at her.

‘Is it your first?’ She pointed at Beckman’s still flat stomach. ‘Your first child?’

Embarrassed, Beckman moved her hand away. ‘No, I’ve got two girls.’

‘Oh, how wonderful! I’d love to have a daughter, but of course I’ll be just as happy if it’s a boy.’

‘Is it your first?’

‘Yes! At long last. I’ve been trying for years, and just when all the papers were in order for me to adopt, I fell pregnant. Apparently it happens all the time – your body relaxes and suddenly decides to cooperate.’

‘You must both be delighted.’

‘Yes. Well, I am. I’m on my own.’

‘Are you allowed to adopt as a single parent?’ Beckman asked, then realised her question could be misinterpreted. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that, it’s fantastic. I just didn’t know.’

‘It’s fine. Yes, certain countries allow single people to adopt. But I was nearly too old.’

Beckman quashed her impulse to ask the woman about her circumstances; perhaps she too had fallen pregnant by an ex-husband. But she realised it would be absurd to start asking questions. They didn’t know each other. And even if this woman was in the habit of sharing her life story with all and sundry, Beckman certainly wasn’t.

And yet the stranger’s contented smile encouraged her. For the first time in months, the thought of an uncertain future didn’t feel like a weight on her shoulders. It was foolish and impossible; inappropriate, even. But Beckman allowed herself to think irrationally, and the effect was liberating. She knew that feeling wouldn’t last; of course she would go through with the abortion. But, for the time being, she turned her face up to the sun and closed her eyes.

The clock on Kungsladugård school was telling her it was high time she went back to the office. Tell was on holiday, the investigation had come to a halt, and she remembered that she had wanted to pick up the girls a bit earlier than usual. Drive out to Saltholmen, buy some Thai food and eat it on the rocks. Gaze at the sea. She couldn’t remember when she’d last had the energy even to think about such exertions.

As she wished the other woman good luck, she realised that she really meant it. She felt a crazy, unexpected wave of happiness. She was delighted by that imagined movement, by the fact that she was a woman, she was strong; by all the strong, hard-working and competent women in the world. Suffused with this feeling she set off towards the car park. There would be no trip to Saltholmen today; she still had paperwork to do. You couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks. Karin Beckman would behave as she always did: duty would come first.

52

Stenared

Tell was secretly pleased about the rain that was bucketing down. Their short holiday would soon be over, so they might as well take it easy now they were back home. A lie-in, delicious food, a good film . . . but Seja was disappointed by the weather.

When he arrived at her cottage after a brief trip back to his apartment, he was astonished to find that she had suddenly acquired two sheep, which were now grazing behind the house. He was actually lost for words.

‘I know what you’re thinking, Christian,’ she said as soon as he reached the top of the slope. ‘I did it for Lukas, so that he doesn’t feel so lonely.’

‘So where is he now?’

‘Summer grazing. It’s not good for horses to spend too much time on their own. And I’ve always thought I’d like sheep.’

‘Who the hell gets two sheep for the fun of it?’

‘I do!’

This morning the ragged sheep were standing underneath Lukas’ shelter, staring miserably at the rain.

As usual it had only taken a day or so before the thought of time off made Christian restless. It always did. Pacing between the living room and the kitchen he stared out at the rain, which was turning the ground in front of the stable into a muddy porridge where the well-trodden grass had grown sparse. If it carried on like this, the footbridge over the marsh would be submerged, and they would have to take the long way round to get to the car.

Seja accepted the fact that their holiday was being washed away. She even said it would be good for the plants. She made the best of the situation, drove down to the library in Olofstorp to borrow books, then curled up on the sofa to do some reading and writing.

Later, she put on her wet-weather gear and announced that she was going to visit Lukas; she asked Tell if he wanted to accompany her, but didn’t seem particularly surprised when he declined.

Left alone in the little house he couldn’t help but wonder. It was as if their moods were always at odds. He was contented when she was restless and vice versa.

They got to Haga at about two o’clock, and he suggested a stroll around the town. They stopped for a beer and ran across the square, where people waited gloomily in the shelter by the tram stop and the raindrops bounced off the cobbles. They ate fillet of pork with potato gratin, washed down with whisky and a bottle of red wine.

They chatted about ordinary things and had a nice time. And yet a familiar, unpleasant thought crossed his mind:
Is this how it’s always going to be?
He had drunk far too much, which was why he dared to articulate this feeling now, in front of Seja.

It wasn’t that he was unhappy with her, with life. Nothing was
wrong
. It was that he hadn’t come to terms with the fact that they were settled, with the idea that
this is it
. As if the fact that this beautiful, intelligent woman actually wanted him was a trial by fire.

His gratitude was always at odds with his fear of being trapped.

He had blamed past girlfriends for not fitting in with his life, for not accepting him for who he was, for wanting to change him. But of course it had never really been about them. Deep down, he knew the problem stemmed from his own fears, and yet he just couldn’t shake them off. He was set in his ways and the fact that Seja did not demand the same promises others had, made absolutely no difference to the way he thought.