Drowned (17 page)

We are drinking tea, Gabriel has laid out a proper little tea party: scones and small jars of jelly, he seems elated, he talks about how good he thinks it will be to get away from here for a while. He doesn’t even know if he wants to come back for the summer anymore, he says, he’s wondering about renting out the house, going abroad instead, staying somewhere for a long time and doing some writing.

“Sweden is too small for me,” he says with a laugh.

I make an effort to smile in response.

“You can come and visit me, of course!” he says.

“Where will you go?” I say, I can hear how thin my voice sounds. He doesn’t appear to notice.

“To France, probably. Or Italy, I’ve hardly spent any time in Italy … except when … well, except when I was there with Stella. Have you?”

I shake my head.

“I’ve hardly been anywhere.”

I had gotten used to the idea that Gabriel would be living in Stockholm, I’d started to like it, to like the thought that he would be there when I needed someone who understood, without my having to explain and defend everything. I’ve even thought about sleeping with him in Stockholm too, but now that evening back in the summer feels much too close again, the evening after he had kissed me for the first time and it seemed to me that it was all a game to him. Perhaps it still is. And it still isn’t a game to me, however much I might want it to be, I knew that the very first night I lay next to him in bed, when he had fallen asleep and I was lying there listening to his breathing and I felt safe, for the first time in an eternity. It has never been a game to me.

I have to blink away the tears, I can’t keep crying all the time, over everything, crying is all I have done
these past few months, I have cried until I was sick, or until I fell asleep through sheer exhaustion, my body weary and heavy, shaking, feverish. I have to stop crying at some point.

I pick at a tattered price ticket on the record sleeve, look at the photo of the band on the back. The lighting is dramatic, they all have spiky hair and jackets with huge shoulder pads, they look deadly serious, even now after twenty years, even though I should think most people who see this picture will be laughing at them now.

“What did you look like in the eighties?” I ask Gabriel, changing the subject.

He laughs, he doesn’t seem to have noticed that his comments about moving abroad have upset me.

“Oh, I was young and handsome in the eighties. And I wore some terrific jackets.”

“And did you have a terrific hairstyle?”

“There was nothing wrong with my hairstyle.”

He smiles.

“I’ve got some photos somewhere … if I can find them. And if you’re interested?”

“Sure.”

He gets up and pulls out several drawers in the large bureau in the living room before he finds what he’s looking for: a pile of large black photo albums. He flicks through them to sort out the chronology, then hands me the one he has decided is the earliest.

“That must be eighty-two, eighty-three, something like that,” he says, sitting down beside me on the sofa again, looking over my shoulder as I open the album and smile at a very young Gabriel in a striped jacket and narrow black trousers. There are pictures from a party at the beginning, Gabriel says it was when he first moved to Stockholm and started studying. In one of the pictures he has his arm around the shoulders of a blonde girl with a lot of black makeup around her eyes, in another he is kissing her. On the next page they are standing in a square in what looks like southern Europe, the buildings in the background are beautiful but shabby, the facades flaking, the palm trees casting long shadows across the cobbles in the square, Gabriel is screwing up his eyes at the camera and the blonde girl is wearing big, dark sunglasses.

“That was in Spain,” says Gabriel. “Her name was Åsa.”

In the next album Gabriel’s hair is a little longer and he is dressed almost entirely in black, he sits smoking at café tables, some in Stockholm, some in Copenhagen, Paris, Rome, he did a lot of traveling at one time he tells me, sometimes with a friend but usually alone, one album later it’s ’88, ’89, Gabriel has moved to Paris, he’s wearing a white shirt and a black jacket, his hair is even longer, he’s usually unshaven and there is a beautiful
young woman next to him in many of the pictures. She has long dark hair, straight and shiny, dark eyes, a coat that is tightly belted around her waist, it has a big fur collar, she is smiling at the camera in almost every picture.

“That’s Adèle,” says Gabriel, and I nod.

“She’s very beautiful.”

“Yes. She is.”

He gets up again, goes over to one of the windows and seems to be looking out, even though it’s too dark outside for him to be able to see anything but his own reflection. He places the palms of his hands on the windowsill and sighs.

“It must be ten years since I last looked at those pictures.”

I turn the pages, they’re having a picnic now, it’s summer. Adèle is sitting on a blanket and smiling at the camera, she’s wearing a striped vest top and a white skirt. Then there are several party pictures, Gabriel with a cardboard fez on his head and a glass in his hand, grinning, Adèle sitting cross-legged on an Oriental rug.

“Are you okay?” I say.

Gabriel shakes his head over by the window.

“I don’t know. It just feels like such a long time ago. I feel … old, I guess.”

He turns and gives me a wan smile.

“I think I’ll have another cup of tea,” he says. “Would you like one?”

“Yes please.”

He disappears into the kitchen with our teacups as I carry on looking through the album: Adèle’s birthday, she is laughing and blowing out the candles on a cake, I try to count them and I make it twenty-two, Gabriel and Adèle on a balcony, she’s in a toweling robe and there is a plate of toast in front of her, Gabriel and Adèle on a jetty, it looks as if it’s somewhere in the Swedish archipelago, birch trees in the background, Gabriel has rolled up his jeans and is unshaven, he looks tired in the bright light, suddenly significantly older than in the pictures in the early albums. Then Adèle getting ready to go out somewhere, trying on shoes in front of a full-length mirror, she is wearing thick eyeliner and a black dress, I peer at the picture. The dress has narrow shoulder straps, it ends just above the knee, it looks expensive. I know that it is lined with soft silk, that it is embroidered with tiny black beads even though you can’t see them in the photograph, I know it feels cool against your body when you slip it on, I know that the fabric is thin but falls beautifully thanks to the weight of the beads.

I swallow. Gabriel places a steaming cup of tea on the table in front of me, I jump, quickly turn the page, but change my mind and turn back.

“This …” I say, I realize as soon as I begin to speak that I have no idea what to say. “This is the dress.”

I point at the picture of Adèle, Gabriel frowns, looks at me inquiringly.

“The one you had in the closet? The one you said you’d bought for Stella?”

I look at him searchingly, his face is expressionless.

“The one you told me to put on … you remember?” I say faintly, but he shows no indication of understanding what I’m talking about. He puts his teacup down next to mine.

“It’s not the same dress,” he says.

I point to the photograph again.

“But it is, I can see that.”

I’m convinced that I’m right now, my voice is stronger.

“Why did you say you’d bought it for Stella?”

“It’s not the same dress,” Gabriel says again, he looks a little annoyed now, but mostly tired, weary. “It’s very similar, you’re right there. But it’s not the same.”

I get up from the sofa.

“I’ll go and get it, then we can compare.”

He shakes his head.

“Sit down, Marina,” he says. “I don’t even have it anymore.”

“What?”

“I took it to the charity place with the rest of Stella’s things.”

“But why?”

He shrugs his shoulders.

“Did you want it?”

“What are you up to?”

He looks at me, he really doesn’t seem to understand what I’m talking about. He’s a good liar, I think, maybe even better than me, but then he is a writer, that’s his job.

Gabriel hums along to the music, looks at me.

“Don’t you want your tea?”

I shake my head.

“And you don’t want my company either?”

I feel revolted, almost nauseous.

“No,” I mumble, I am already halfway to the kitchen, leaving him sitting by the table in the living room.

But when he comes upstairs later and gets into bed I have to cuddle up to him once more, I went to bed before him, I lay and read for a while, thinking that I would fall asleep before he came up, and if I hadn’t fallen asleep I would pretend I had, I would sleep with my back to him. But then I smell him and my stomach contracts, the scent of vanilla, and I have to move closer, lay my cheek against his
chest and feel the calmness spreading through my whole body as I listen to the beating of his heart. He tips my face back and kisses me gently and then I begin to cry, and he wipes away my tears and puts his arms around me and I want him to kiss me again, so he does, more hungrily this time, he kisses my cheeks too and his lips taste of salt and I cling to him.

“I don’t want you to go and live in a different country,” I whisper. “I want to be with you.”

I am still crying, he strokes my hair, it feels like the evening I arrived, that very first evening on the sofa when he consoled me and I fell asleep with my head on his chest.

“Of course we’ll be together,” Gabriel murmurs. His hand has slid down over my hair and down my back, down to my thigh, he is stroking it in a way which is both soft and firm at the same time, up and down, slipping under my nightdress. I am aroused by his touch even though I am still crying, my head suddenly feels tender, feverish, I hold him tightly. Secrets bind people together, I think, perhaps he has also realized that now, that guilt is like a tie, that we are joined together now, his kisses taste more strongly of salt and suddenly I can barely remember why I am crying anymore, I am aware of nothing but his hand against my thigh, of
course we’ll be together, I think, who else would we be with.

Every day the same mist, the same rain. We go to visit the palace, it’s Gabriel’s idea. At first we were just going to go to the nearest little store to buy food, something we needed for dinner, tomatoes and basil and more satsumas for me, but then neither of us wanted to go back home.

From a distance it looks like a stage set, or a silhouette, the palace with its two wings highlighted against the flat pale-gray sky, the avenue of trees, the trees in the park, black and wet, the mist hanging like curtains in the air. Gabriel hasn’t been there since that first fall with Stella, I think of what she said about coming back at the same time of year. It is a different season now, with rain that never stops, mist that never lifts. Gabriel holds my hand as we walk along the avenue, the stones on the ground crunching beneath our feet, the gravel is wet and dark, mixed with the remains of thousands of chestnuts and their outer shells. His hand is warm, it feels big in mine, I squeeze it hard, thinking it is like a promise, even if there is no one there to witness it.

The café is closed now, no one comes here on a weekday at this time of year. There is a notice
advertising a Christmas market on the weekends, there is straw outside a little shed by the entrance, perhaps someone sits in there making traditional decorations like Christmas goats and sheaves of wheat for the birds and stars made of straw to hang on the tree, but the only sign of Christmas is the Advent candles in the window of the palace, they are lit when twilight begins to fall. We wander around the gardens for a while, a man who is putting up lights in a tree nods to us, it occurs to me that he thinks we’re a couple, I wonder briefly if he recognizes Gabriel. Most people around here seem to recognize him, perhaps the man in the garden thinks I am Stella, I am wearing her raincoat. I squeeze Gabriel’s hand harder, he squeezes back, looks at me and smiles.

I ought to go out walking more often, I think as I pull the raincoat hood more tightly around my face, I would like to go somewhere else for once, but there is nowhere else to go: across the fields or along by the forest, but that only takes you down to the lake, and I don’t want to go there. And yet I head in that direction, turning off to the left of the gravel road instead of the right, as you would do if you were going to the lake; I find myself surrounded by wet, dark pine trees, battered by year after year of wind, they have
been unable to grow tall and straight but have been flattened down instead, grown short and strong, they look almost stylized, like something from a symbolist painting. They look out of place among the beech and oak, the needles crunch softly beneath my feet, sodden and shiny, the roots of the pine trees by the path are also shiny, slippery with the rain. There is a faint aroma of pine resin in the air, the last time I smelled it was in the summer, the scent of warm forest, summer forest, when I had been down to the lake, and when Stella and I had been there, on the path through the forest.