More Bitter Than Death (11 page)

She stares at me. Her eyes reveal what she’s feeling: sympathy, compassion, fear, sadness, solidarity. This ties us together. We’re not just patient and therapist now. We are connected by our experiences. Kattis cautiously rests her hand on mine. It feels good, comforting. I let it stay there.

“Am I interrupting?” Aina asks.

She is standing in the doorway to the conference room. Her cheeks are red and her long blond hair is hanging freely over her old leather jacket. I see surprise in her eyes and something else, something unidentifiable, maybe anger. I pull back my hand, hide it under the table. My cheeks flush and shame spreads through me.

“We’re just finishing up. Something happened, that’s all,” I say.

“Okay, so . . . what happened?” Aina asks, leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed in front of her chest.

“Uh, I think I’ll just be . . . going now,” Kattis says, grabs her purse, and stands up to go. She squeezes past Aina and continues toward the front door, where she pulls off the blue shoe covers and tosses them into the basket reserved for used ones. She grabs the door handle but then turns around and looks at me, knowing that Aina can’t see her face. She rolls her eyes and then smiles, almost conspiratorially. I can’t help but return her smile. A second later she’s gone.

“What was all that about?” Aina says, still in the doorway, looking both irritated and curious. “I mean, holding hands with a patient in an empty office? Are you looking to replace Markus with her, or what?”

She smiles faintly, but she doesn’t look happy at all. Just angry, and there’s another emotion that I can’t quite put my finger on.

“It’s not what you think,” I say. My voice is unexpectedly shrill. It’s the voice I use when I argue with Markus, and for a brief moment I have an out-of-body experience. I don’t seem to get along with anyone anymore.

“Okay, so what is it?” Aina prods, in an almost mocking tone, as if we were in some kind of prescripted drama.

“Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on? Seriously, Siri, I find you holding hands with Kattis, here in the office on a Saturday. That’s a little weird. Last week you stayed late to comfort her after our meeting. What’s going on between the two of you, really?”

And suddenly it hits me, the emotion that Aina is having, the one I couldn’t put my finger on, that hint of a feeling not quite visible on the surface, lurking beneath her words.

Aina is jealous.

Marek jogs down the stairs of the dilapidated apartment building with his iPod on. Sinewy and indefatigable, his skinny teenage legs drum along as he runs—soccer legs, shoplifting legs, legs that can chase flocks of seagulls by the water for hours.

On each floor he sets his little bike basket down by the stairwell, grabs a stack of flyers, and runs to the end of the hall and back, delivering them. Today the flyers are from the grocery store ICA, which is having a sale on Falukorv sausage and diapers, and from a real estate agency, as if anyone would actually want to buy a place in this decrepit building. He’s also handing out postcards from H-I-A Allservice, which offers cleaning, carpentry, and painting services. That one he delivers for free as a favor to his second cousin, Bogdan, who occasionally gives him some work. Bogdan usually pays him well, so he doesn’t mind helping out.

He reads the names on the apartment doors as he works his way down the hall: Svensson, Holopäinen, Skogsjö.

Marek is going to buy himself a computer with the money he earns, and use it to play World of Warcraft with his buddies. He has been using a computer at the school library, and you’re not allowed to play any video games or surf any pages with chicks on them there.

He started on the top floor and now he’s down to the third. The pistachio green walls are sprinkled with tiny black and white dots.

Uzgur, Johansson, Rashid . . .

A little sign on the Johanssons’ door says No Flyers, Please. Marek brushes his sweaty bangs aside, selects a copy of each flyer, rolls them up, and stuffs them through the mail slot. It snaps shut again with a bang.
No flyers.
Some people think they’re so damn special. He decides to give them some extra flyers. Take that.

Second floor.

The bulb in the overhead light is burned out. Faint light is coming in from the stairwell, and from a green flickering liquor store sign just outside the window.

The names on the apartment doors are hard to read.

Lanto, Tarek, Olsson . . .

But wait . . .

Olsson’s door isn’t closed. Light is peeking out.

Marek checks the door. The chain isn’t on.

His first thought: Maybe there’s money in the apartment, or jewelry, electronics, or something else that could be stolen quickly. Then: Shoplifting at the grocery store is one thing, breaking into an apartment is something totally different. He realizes that he shouldn’t do it. Not alone at any rate, maybe if Kevin and Muhammed were with him, but not alone.

He squeezes the flyers in his hand. Where should he leave them? In the mailbox? Or should he just nudge the door open and leave them on the floor inside the apartment?

He decides on the latter. If he puts them in the mailbox, the door might click shut and lock, and for some reason he doesn’t want that to happen. After all, someone seems to have left it open on purpose. Maybe someone is just running an errand and doesn’t want to get locked out.

At eleven o’clock at night?

He slowly pushes the door open, smells the faint scent of cigarette smoke and something else, something sweet, organic, hard to place.

He peers into the dark space. Way off to the left, light streams from another room. The kitchen? Marek can just make out something next to the floral doormat: a purse. There’s a wallet in it, sitting right on top. It’s open, like a book, and it looks fat, as if it’s stuffed full of bills.

It’s more of a whim than something he plans. He quietly bends down and takes it, like picking an apple from a branch.

Shit, so heavy. How much is in here? Enough to buy a little weed from Nico? Enough for a computer? More?

His stomach flutters with excitement.

Just as he’s stuffing the fat wallet into the pocket of his hoodie, he sees the feet.

The flyers sail like origami birds, landing silently on the linoleum, and he watches the white H-I-A Allservice flyer slowly turn red.

He jumps back, yanks the earphones out of his ears, and that’s when he hears it. A faint scratching sound, like fingernails on wood. It’s coming from inside the lit room and he knows he shouldn’t follow it, his whole body knows the only thing to do is run away from here on the strong legs he was blessed with.

Because deep down he already knows something awful happened here, that the woman lying like a shapeless sack in front of him didn’t just faint or have an epileptic fit. Still he doesn’t hesitate, just looks down at his new chalk-white sneakers, carefully steps over the body, over the big pool, avoids the red, sticky stuff. Goes toward the kitchen. Hears the music from his iPod like a distant buzz as the scratching gets louder.

She’s sitting under the table, partially covered in blood. Crayons are strewn around her and she’s drawing carefully with a blue one. He notices that every inch of the paper is colored and he wonders how long she’s been sitting like this.

How old can she be?

Judging from her size, maybe four or five years old. She’s about the same size as his younger brother Tomek, who’s four.

Carefully, he reaches for her, strokes her shoulder, and she looks at him, her blue eyes locked on him.

“Hey, pal,” he says, “You have to come with me now.”

She is not a victim.
That’s all I can think when Hillevi starts talking.

She’s sitting straight, wearing a plain black dress, opaque tights, and brown men’s boots. There are drops of water in her short, black hair, and she’s wearing wine-red lipstick.

So beautiful, so perfect, like a doll.

And yet he hit her. His name is Jakob and he’s her husband. She says she loves and misses him. She says she respects him.

*   *   *

The next time we meet at the office, it’s a gray, overcast fall day. As usual we sit in a small circle looking at each other curiously, the vibe in the room almost upbeat. Aina and I have set out coffee and mineral water, and we sliced up a loaf of braided cinnamon bread from the bakery.

One chair is alarmingly empty.

Kattis’s.

I try not to worry about why she didn’t come, not to think about what might have happened. I try to ignore the image of the man with the shaved head whose name is Henrik.

*   *   *

Hillevi offered to tell her story. No, not offered, insisted. She was adamant.

Her hands are resting confidently on her knees, no nervousness, her green eyes calmly addressing Aina.

“Jakob and I met when we were teenagers, in the church youth group. I was . . .” She thinks for a second, looks up at the fluorescent light, which casts a cold, white gleam over the room. “So young. I was so young.”

She smiles again, and there’s nothing bitter in her smile. It’s warm and beautiful and perfect, like everything else about her.

“So we’ve been together pretty much our whole lives. We grew up together, got married, had a family.”

Then she falls silent for a while, as if she’s searching for something in her memory but can’t quite access it.

“How was your relationship in the beginning?” Aina asks.

Hillevi smiles faintly and looks down at her well-groomed hands, at her short, dark-red nails. The lone, thick silver ring.

“It was fantastic. Isn’t it always in the beginning? We were so in love. We are so in love.”

Something sad comes over her now, but it only lasts a moment. Then she’s back to looking just as composed as before.

Aina nods and asks, “So when did things go south?”

“After Lukas was born, our oldest son. A child changes a relationship. It brings up a bunch of stuff from your own childhood. When you become a parent, it makes you reevaluate your own childhood, your own parents, you know? Jakob had been beaten when he was little. He comes from a well-to-do, unbelievably old-fashioned family. Children were supposed to be seen and not heard.”