Some Kind of Peace (42 page)

Silence.

I can no longer feel the biting cold. The man who once was someone’s father, the man who murdered Sara and fried meatballs in my kitchen, now lies quietly in the snow, his head resting in a pool of steaming blood. I vomit blood—or is it red wine?—onto the wall of the shed and sink to my knees. Slowly, I crawl through the snow toward the pier. Every movement is laborious, and I notice that I am leaving sticky traces of blood behind me in the snow.

So weak, I’m not able to make my way into the cottage. Crawling on all fours, I slide a few yards out onto the ice. I dig my fingers into the snow and try in vain to pull myself forward. My body feels numb and my jaw no longer hurts. For the first time that night, my head suddenly feels clear—it is only my body that is no longer able to function.

I lie on my back and look up at the sky. It is the most beautiful sky I have ever seen. Millions of stars glisten in all the colors of the rainbow against the saturated black background, and the snow does not feel cold and hard anymore but soft and welcoming. I think about a poem Stefan wrote to me on a wrinkled piece of paper what feels like a hundred years ago, about how darkness is necessary for the stars to be visible, and suddenly I realize that darkness does not frighten me anymore, it embraces me gently, soundlessly, and infinitely.

It could be so idyllic.

•  •  •

From my soft bed on the ice I can see my cottage surrounded by snow-covered wilderness. All the windows shine invitingly, and despite the dense darkness, I can make out a thin thread of smoke rising from the chimney up toward the clear Christmas night. Not a trace of the violent
struggle that just played out outside the house is visible, there’s not a sound—only a faint clicking noise from the ice under this aching body that no longer feels like it’s mine.

Much later, it starts snowing. Large flakes float soundlessly, covering my face. I glide in and out of a drowsy sleep, and it is then, when the snow comes, that I sense him lying down beside me. Stefan rests his chin against my neck and wraps his arm around my waist. We say nothing, only look silently at the stars and at the falling snow.

It smells like honey.

I feel a warm body next to me and, although I haven’t yet opened my eyes, I know who it is. I take a deep breath, fill my lungs with the aroma of honey, and look. The room is white, I see the metal bed and the egg-yellow latticed blanket of the county hospital on top of me. Aina’s hair tickles my nose. She must have noticed that I’ve woken up, because she turns toward me and strokes my cheek. I try to speak, but some kind of bracket—or cast—around my jaw makes it impossible.

“Shh. Don’t talk. I found you frozen solid on the ice, princess. You were supposed to call at ten o’clock and thank me for the present, weren’t you? When you didn’t call I got worried. Finally I drove to the apartment, and when you weren’t there I knew right away where you had gone.”

Aina looks sad.

“I should have known what you intended to do. That you can never be trusted, you hopeless person. It’s over now anyway. He’s dead as a doornail. Markus and your parents are on their way here. I’ve chased away the other police officers for the moment.”

Then she sees my eyes resting on the red roses stuffed into a small vase on the crooked nightstand and nods silently, stroking my hair.

“They’re from Markus. He made me buy them.”

Now she lies down again, close beside me on the roomy hospital bed, and I feel her damp breath against my throat as she rests her head against mine. I don’t want to talk at all, just lie quietly with my nose in Aina’s yellow honey hair.

“I know we haven’t always been that close,” I start, then hesitate a moment and rub my hand against my jaw, which still aches and locks sometimes.

I am searching for the right words, and when I think I have found them I continue.

“Maybe we’re too different to be really close friends—you know, different goals in life, different experiences and ways of approaching people. I know I haven’t always shown you the appreciation you deserved, that sometimes I’ve been irritated for no reason and even barked at you on some occasions.
Good Lord
, that was really stupid and unprofessional of me. But you should know that if there is anything I have always felt for you, it’s respect. Respect for the work you’ve done, always meticulously, on time and without errors. Respect for your consideration and sympathy. Respect for the life you’ve lived, with everything that child rearing, separations, and striving for independence must involve.”

I think a moment and study the white room before me with a sink and a steel chair as the only furnishings.

“Well, I have to admit that sometimes I thought you favored Sven. You know, his patient notes were always transcribed first, his calls were the most important to make, and his office was cleaned every day, even though that wasn’t even part of your job description. But all that is so long ago now. When these kinds of things happen you reevaluate your life a little, don’t you? Focus on what’s important, let go of all the old stuff and… how shall I put it… see the good in your fellow human beings. You want to thank them because they’ve been there for you. It’s that way for me, anyway. And I guess that’s why I came here. To thank you for all the help and… maybe to say I’m sorry you didn’t always get the appreciation you deserved.”

I get up and look at Marianne, still unconscious on the hospital bed
with her mouth half open, her chin resting slackly against her chest. If I didn’t know it was Marianne I wouldn’t recognize her, she is that changed. The curly, blond hair has grown out long and dark, her skin looks thin and paperlike now, a tube has been inserted in one nostril, and there’s some kind of monitor on her index finger that looks like a clothespin and spreads a reddish glow on her hand.

I get up slowly and leave the room, without turning back.

A few months after Stefan’s funeral I was alone in our house, without Aina by my side, no longer under my family’s watchful eyes. It was a gray day. The hazy, dirty light that flooded the room gave it a worn, pale appearance that made it look like the summer cottage it really was. A temporary residence. At any rate, a completely hopeless project, from a practical point of view.

I had the vague notion of cleaning up his things—throwing away what was no longer needed, sorting through what would be given away, and saving what might be useful sometime in the future—but that proved to be harder than I thought. His newly ironed shirts and jeans were hanging in a row in our common closet. Why throw away perfectly usable clothes? Who could I give them to? I decided to leave the clothes untouched for the time being.

I moved on to the desk. It was still in the same state as the day Stefan died. No one had touched the worn desktop or blown the dust from the pile of papers stacked neatly in the far right corner. I ran my fingers over the rough surface, creating deep tracks in the dust. Resolutely, I went out to the kitchen and got a damp cloth, carefully moved the stack of papers to the floor, and started wiping the desk with long, sweeping motions.

The drawers were full of neatly organized stacks of paper. Carefully, I removed the contents of the top drawer and set it on the now clean, damp surface of the desk. Balance statements from the student financial aid office, bills, and tax documents were sorted in the pile. On each piece of paper there was a note:
TO BE PAID
or
FOR TAX RETURN
. I shook my head. It was not like Stefan to be so pedantic and tidy. The next stack, labeled
IMPORTANT PAPERS
, was also inexplicably well organized. Insurance policies, the contract of sale for the house, account statements from the bank—all of our life and household together recorded in a stack of papers.

I fiddled aimlessly with the documents, looked at the numbers that
showed what we owned without seeing or understanding their significance. It was so good that everything was here, it would make things much easier for Dad, who was going to take care of all these financial matters, I mused, before my train of thought was interrupted by something else: a sinking concern, a fleeting feeling. Like a wrong note in a well-composed piece of music, barely audible but still perceptible. There was something that didn’t add up here. Stefan was never this neat. I had devoted a considerable portion of our years together to keeping track of his papers and things.

I opened the bottom drawer. It contained only one piece of paper. A thin, crinkled, handwritten note with grease stains on it—it almost looked like wax paper—carefully folded down the middle and addressed “To Siri.” The dim room suddenly felt stuffy, and I got up to open one of the French doors. The cold, raw air filled my lungs and I heard the screeching of the gulls, intrusive and sharp as I supported myself against the doorframe.

With fumbling, shaking fingers I unfolded the paper. It was a poem.

Don’t be afraid of darkness,
for in darkness rests the light.
We see no stars or planets
without the dark of night
.
The darkness of the pupil
is in the iris round,
for all light’s fearful longing
has darkness at its ground.
Don’t be afraid of darkness,
for in it rests the light.
Don’t be afraid of darkness;
it holds the heart of light
.

“Welcome, Siri. I know you’re a psychologist, so I assume you are already familiar with how an assessment interview works. So I suggest we skip the formalities and that you tell me why you are here.”

“I’m here because I have an unprocessed trauma that I would benefit from talking about.”

“In your past?”

“My husband took his life a couple of years ago, or at least I
think
he took his life. I have always preferred to think of it as an accident. And there is no real evidence that has confirmed that it was suicide.”

“That’s not completely unheard of where suicide is concerned.”