Handling the Undead (38 page)

The match sailed through the air and Flora screamed, 'Look out, get away!'

At the instant the match landed, Death lifted her head and met Flora's gaze. They were identical to one another. There was nothing forbidding or dark in her eyes, they were simply Flora's eyes. For a second they had time to look into each other, share their secrets. Then the petrol exploded into fire and a wall of flames bloomed between them.

The guys stood frozen, staring at the bonfire. The highest flames stretched up almost to the rooftops, but after a few seconds the fumes had burned away and the fire took hold of the fuel itself; a sputtering crackle as hospital gowns and flesh charred.

'Come on, let's get out of here!'

The young men watched the fire a moment longer, as if to imprint it on their memories for good, then turned and jogged away from the yard. The one called Markus, his torso now bare, paused for a moment, looked at Flora and raised his index finger. But if he was planning to say something, he decided against it and followed the others. After a couple of minutes their minds were out of her reach.

The flames died out. Flora knew from the stillness in her mind that Death was gone. She walked up to the bonfire-no more than isolated little flare-ups and a strong, cloying smoke now, billowing up into the sky. Maybe it was because the dead had so little flesh, so little fat, that the fire hadn't really caught.

Everything was black. The doubly dead lay curled up with their elbows against their sides and their fists sticking straight out, as if boxing into the dark. The stench that rose from the heap was nauseating and Flora pulled a corner of her jacket over her nose and mouth.

They were dancing a moment ago.

Her chest filled. Grief, as deep as an abyss. The opposite of that wondrous awe she had felt for the dance of the dead. Grief for all humankind and its paths upon the Earth. And the same thought that had gripped her then returned now, in a different light:

This is how it is.

Norra Brunn 21.00

David had let Sture talk him into this and was already regretting it. As expected, Leo had cancelled him. There was a message on his answering machine that he had not listened to. He got a beer and went to join the others in the kitchen. A condoling silence. The jokes and laughter from just a moment ago died away.

This was not the place for serious conversation. If you couldn't joke about it, it didn't get said. The comedians were all, as individuals, regular people with the same capacity for sadness and joy as everyone else, but as a group they were a flippant lot, unable to handle anything that could not be expressed as a one-liner.

Right before the show was about to start, Benny Melin came up to him and said, 'Look, I hope you don't ... but I have some stuff about all this with the reliving.'

'No, no,' David said. 'Do your thing.'

'OK,' Benny said and his face grew lighter. 'It's such a big thing, it's hard not to get into it, you know.'

'I understand.'

David saw that Benny was on the verge of trying out some of his material on him so he raised his glass, wished him good luck and backed away. Benny grimaced faintly. You didn't wish someone good luck, you said
break a leg
or something and David knew it, and Benny knew that David knew. To say good luck was very like an insult.

David went to the bar. The staff nodded to him but no one came up to talk. David downed his beer and asked Leo to pour him another.

'How's it going?' Leo asked as he poured. 'It's going,'

David said. 'That's about it.'

Leo placed the beer on the counter. There was no point answering the question in more detail. Leo dried his hands on a towel and said, 'You'll have to give her my regards. When she's better.'

'I will.'

David felt that he was close to tears again. He turned away from the bar, toward the stage, and sank half the glass greedily. Better now. Now that he was left alone and no one had to pretend that they could understand any of it.

Death makes us strangers to one another.

The stage lights went up and via the ghost mike, Leo wished everyone a warm welcome and asked them to put their hands together for the evening's host, Benny Melin.

The place was full and the clapping and whistling that accompanied Benny up on stage gave David a twinge of longing to be back here, in this real world of unreality.

Benny gave a quick bow and the applause died down. He adjusted the mike stand-a little up, a little down-and the microphone ended up in the same place it had been from the start. He said, 'So, I don't know about you, but I'm a little worried about this thing with the Heath. A suburb full of dead people.'

The room was silent. Tense with anticipation. Everyone was worried about this thing with the Heath; maybe there was a new twist to the whole thing that they hadn't considered.

Benny wrinkled his forehead as if contemplating a difficult issue. 'And the one thing I'd really like to know ..’

A rhetorical pause.

'Is the ice cream van going to want to drive there?'

Relieved laughter. Not funny enough for applause, but not far off.

Benoy went on, 'And if it's going to go there, will it sell anything?

'And if it sells something, then what?'

Benny waved his hand through the air, sketching a screen that everyone was supposed to look at.

'Just imagine. Hundreds of dead people lured from their homes by .. .' Benny started up a rendition of 'Greensleeves' and then quickly switched to being a zombie staggering along with outstretched arms. People giggled and when Benny groaned, 'Popsiiiic-eeeel, Popsiiiiceeeel. . .' the applause came.

David downed the last of his beer and slunk out behind the bar.

He couldn't handle this. Benny and all the rest of them had every right to joke about something as current as this, in fact they were obliged to, but he didn't have to listen. He walked quickly through the bar and out of the doors onto the street. A new round of applause fired off behind him and he walked away from the sound.

The painful thing was not that they were joking about it. There had to be jokes, jokes were necessary if people were going to keep living. The painful thing was that it had happened so quickly. After the ferry
Estonia
sank, for example, it had taken six months before anyone tried to say anything funny about ferry salvage or bow doors, and then without much success. The World Trade Center had gone much faster. Only a couple of days after the attack 'someone said something about the new cut-price alternative Taliban Airways, and people had laughed. It had been far enough away to feel like it wasn't really happening.

Apparently the reliving fell into the same category. They weren't real, you didn't have to have any respect. That's why David's presence had been hard for the other comedians to take; he made it real. But in the end that's what the reliving were to them: a joke.

He slunk past the tightly parked cars that lined Surbrunnsgatan, seeing Balthazar's headless body wriggling in Eva's lap, and wondered if he would be able to see the funny side of anything ever again.

The walk from Norra Brunn had exhausted his strength. The hastily downed beer sloshed in his stomach and every step was an act of will. Most of all he wanted to curl up in the nearest doorway and sleep away the remaining hours of this horrible day.

He had to lean up against the wall in the entrance and rest for a couple of minutes before going up to the apartment. He did not want to appear so pathetic that Sture offered to stay. He wanted to be alone.

Sture did not offer. After reporting that Magnus had slept the

whole time, he said, 'I guess I should go home now.'

'Of course,' David said.

'Thanks for everything.' Sture looked searchingly at him.

'Will you manage, then?'

'I'll manage.'

'Sure?'

'I'm sure.' He was so tired, his speech was starting to sound like Eva's; he could only repeat what was said to him. They parted with a hug, instigated by David. This time he let his head drop onto Sture's chest for a few seconds.

When Sture had left he stood still in the kitchen for a while, staring at the bottle of wine, but decided that he was too tired even for that. He went and checked on Magnus, regarding his sleeping child for a long time. He had fallen asleep in almost exactly the position David had left him in: his hand under his cheek, the eyes slowly sliding under thin eyelids.

David crawled gently into bed, slipping into the narrow space between Magnus' body and the wall. Was only planning to lie there for a couple of seconds and look at the thin, smooth shoulder that stuck out of the blankets. He closed his eyes and thought ... thought nothing. Slept.

Tomaskobb 21.10

When Mahler stepped ashore on the nearest island he saw the marker. It was fashioned from bleached boards and he had missed it in the dark. The inlet lay straight in. He climbed back into the boat, started the engine. It roared, sputtered and died.

He waggled the tank, pumped in new fuel and this time the engine ran long enough for him to reverse away from the island before it died again. He leaned his arms against his knees and stared in among the islands, velvet blue in the summer night. Lone trees stuck up from low islands, silhouetted against the sky like in documentaries from Africa. The only sound was the distant engine vibration from the passing ferry.

This isn't so bad.

He preferred recognising his surroundings to having fuel. Now he could at least see what was in front of him. With the oars it would take about half an hour to the island, gliding over the still water. No problem. If he just took it easy it would be fine.

He placed the rowlocks in their holes and set to work. He rowed with short strokes, breathing deeply in the mild air. After a couple of minutes he was in a rhythm and hardly noticed the work. It was like meditation.

Om mani padme hum, am mani padme hum ...
The oar strokes pushed the sea behind him.

When he had rowed for perhaps twenty minutes he thought he heard the call of a deer. He lifted the oars out of the water, listening. The sound came again. It was no deer, it was more like ... a scream. It was hard to determine which direction it was coming from; the sound bounced between the islands. But if he had been asked to guess he would have said it came from ...

He put the oars back in the water, and started to row with longer, more powerful strokes. He did not hear another scream. But it had come from the direction of Labbskar Island. Sweat broke out across his back and his calm scattered. He was no longer a meditating person, just a damnably effective motor.

I should have got fuel.
..

Thick mucus collected in his mouth and he spat at the engine. 'Bloody shit-engine!'

But it was actually his fault. His, and no one else's.

To dispense with mooring the boat, he rowed straight to the shore and crawled out. Water seeped into his shoes and they sucked at the soles of his feet as he walked up to the hut. No lights were on; the house was simply an outline against the deep blue sky.

'Anna! Anna!'

No answer. The front door was closed. When he pulled on it there was a strong resistance until whatever was fighting him gave up. He jumped and put his arm up to shield his face, thinking there was something coming at him. But it was only a loose broomstick that fell forward and clattered to the ground.

'Anna?'

It was darker inside and it took a couple of seconds for his eyes to grow accustomed to it. The door through to the bedroom was closed and on the kitchen floor there was a ... heap of snow. He blinked as the snow pile began to take shape, became a blanket and then Anna, who was sitting on the floor squeezing the blanket. 'Anna, what is it?'

Anna's voice was just a hoarse whisper from a screamed-out throat.

'It was here ... '

Mahler looked around. The moonlight pouring in through the open door did not help much and he listened for sounds in the other room. Nothing. He knew how afraid Anna was of animals and sighed, saying with irritation, 'Was it a rat?'

Anna shook her head and said something he could not make out.

As he turned from her in order to go into the other room and check, she hissed, 'Take this,' and pointed to a small axe lying on the floor at her feet. Then she crawled across the floor with the bedding in her arms, pulled the door shut and sat down with her back against the door post, one hand on the door handle. The room became pitch dark.

Mahler weighed the axe in his hand. 'What is it,  then?'

' ... drowned ... '

'What?'

Anna forced her voice to get louder and croaked, 'A dead man.

A corpse. Someone who drowned.'

Mahler closed his eyes, retrieving his memory of the kitchen; visualising the torch on the counter. He groped his way through the dark until his fingers closed around the heavy handle.

Batteries .
..