The Black Path (31 page)

Back on the street, Sven-Erik sighed.

“I feel sorry for some people.”

“Sorry? For him?” exclaimed Anna-Maria. “Do me a favor!”

“He’s a really lonely person. He might be a lawyer earning a ton of money, but he’s ill and there’s nobody to shop for him. And that apartment, was that a home? He ought to get a cat.”

“So he can put it in the washing machine or something? A guy who beats up women, sitting there feeling sorry for himself because she would have left him anyway. And a couple of slaps—no chance. Oh, no! Anyway, what about something to eat?”

Inna Wattrang drives through the iron gates on the way up to Regla. It’s the second of December. She parks outside the old laundry where she lives and prepares to get out of the car. It’s not easy.

She’s driven from Stockholm, and now she’s here her arms feel weak all of a sudden. She can hardly manage to put the car into reverse and get the ignition key out.

She doesn’t really know how she got home. Jesus, she drove in the darkness following the red rear lights of other drivers. One eye is completely closed, and she had to keep her head tipped back the whole time in case her nose started bleeding again.

She fumbles for the seat belt in order to undo it, but discovers that she hadn’t put it on. She didn’t even hear the pinging noise that usually reminds you.

She’s stiffened up; when she opens the car door to get out, she feels a sharp stabbing pain in her chest. And when she takes a sudden deep breath because it hurts, it’s even more painful. He’s broken her ribs.

She almost has to laugh, because she’s in such a mess. She clambers laboriously out of the car. Hangs on to the car door with one hand, can’t manage to straighten up, stands there stooping, taking short jagged breaths because of her cracked ribs. She rummages for her door key, hoping her nose won’t start again; she’s very fond of her Vuitton purse.

Where’s the fucking key? She can’t see a thing. She heads for the black wrought-iron lamppost over by the side of the house. And just when she’s in full view under the light, she hears voices. It’s Ebba and Ulrika. Mauri’s and Diddi’s wives. Sometimes they take the boat over to Hedlandet and meet up with some other “little wives” for wine tastings and girly dinners and quality time without the kids. When they get back they usually cut across Inna’s yard, it’s the quickest way. She can hear them giggling and chatting.

They’ve had a nice evening too, thinks Inna with a wry smile.

For a moment she considers trying to make her escape, but what a sight that would be. Limping away like Quasimodo and disappearing into the shadows.

It’s Ulrika who notices her first.

“Inna,” she calls out, a slight question in her voice; what’s going on with Inna, is she drunk or something, why is she standing there in that odd, stooped position?

Ebba pipes up next.

“Inna? Inna!”

Their footsteps, hurrying across the gravel.

Masses of questions. It’s like being trapped in a closet with a swarm of bees.

She lies, of course. She’s usually very good at it, but right now she’s a bit too tired and battered.

She whips up a quick story about being attacked by a gang of lads in Humlegården…. Yes, they took her wallet…. No, Ulrika and Ebba are definitely not to ring the police…. Why not? Because she bloody says so!

“I just need to go and lie down,” she says. “Can one of you get my bloody key out of this bloody purse, please?”

She’s swearing instead of bursting into tears.

“Lying down can be dangerous,” says Ulrika as Ebba scrabbles in the purse for Inna’s key. “Did they kick you? You might have internal bleeding. We ought to ring a doctor at least.”

Inna groans inside. If she had a gun she’d shoot them, just to get a bit of peace and quiet.

“There’s no internal bleeding!” she snaps.

Ebba has found the key. She unlocks the door and puts the light on in the hallway.

“But here’s your wallet,” she says, taking it out of the purse with a strange expression on her face. Now they’re in the light, they can see clearly what a mess Inna is in. They don’t know what to think.

Inna forces a smile.

“Thanks. You’re both…really sweet…”

Shit, she sounds as if they’re a couple of teddy bears, she can’t find the right tone, just wants them to go.

“…we can talk about this tomorrow, I just really need to be on my own now…thanks. Please don’t say anything to Diddi and Mauri, I’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

She closes the door in their shocked little fawnlike faces.

She kicks off her shoes and hauls herself slowly up the stairs. Roots around in the medicine cabinet, takes some Xanor, using her hand to scoop water from the tap so she can swallow them, then Imovane; she doesn’t swallow those, but sucks patiently until the shell dissolves so they’ll work more quickly.

She wonders if she can make it down to the kitchen to fetch a bottle of whisky.

She sits on the edge of the bed and flops back, tasting the bitterness in her mouth as the Imovane kicks in. It’s quick. Everything’s fine now.

The outside door opens and closes, rapid footsteps on the stairs, Diddi’s voice:

“It’s only me.”

He always says that. He always opens the door and walks straight in with those very words. And since he got married it makes Inna feel like his concubine, with her own residence.

“Who was it?” is all he says when he sees her. The blood on her shirt, the swollen nose, the split lip, the closed eye.

“It was Malte,” she says. “He got a bit…he kind of lost control.”

She smiles at him, as mischievously as she can manage. There’s no possibility of laughing with her ribs like this; they’re still hurting, despite the painkillers.

“If you think I look bad, you should see the cream carpet in his bedroom,” she jokes.

Diddi tries to smile back.

God, he’s got so boring, thinks Inna. She wants to throw up all over him.

“How bad is it?” he asks.

“Getting better.”

“Let me look after you,” says Diddi. “Is there anything special you want?”

“Ice, I’m going to look like shit tomorrow. And a line.”

He brings everything she wants. He gives her a whisky too, and she starts to feel pretty good, under the circumstances. She’s not in so much pain now, and the whisky is making her feel warm and relaxed, while the cocaine is keeping her head clear.

Diddi undoes the buttons of her shirt and carefully eases it off. He dips a flannel in warm water and washes the blood from her face and hair.

Inna holds a pack of ice wrapped in a tea towel against her eye, and tries out a few Rocky Balboa lines:

“I can’t see nothing, you got to open my eye…cut me, Mick…you stop this fight and I’ll kill you…”

Diddi sits down between her knees and slides his hands up beneath her skirt. Unfastens her suspenders and rolls down her stockings, kissing the inside of her knees as he does so.

His fingers move upward again, caressing her inner thighs. They are trembling with desire. Inside her panties she is sticky with another man’s sperm. It’s incredibly sexy.

They usually laugh at her boyfriends, he and Mauri. She really does meet the most unlikely men. Where does she find them? He and Mauri often ask themselves that question.

Stick Inna on a bare rock out at sea, and some old guy in a wig and a dress will come sailing along, filled with dark desires that Inna can fulfill.

Sometimes she tells them all about it. To amuse them. Like last year, when she texted them from a luxury hotel in Buenos Aires. “Haven’t been out of the room all week,” it said.

When she got home, Mauri and Diddi were standing there like two expectant Labradors, hoping she might throw them a bone. “Tell us, tell us!”

Inna had laughed and laughed.

Her boyfriend had been a ship spotter.

“He travels around visiting the world’s biggest harbors,” she’d explained. “Books into a top hotel with a view of the harbor, and sits there all week writing down details of the ships. Close your mouths while I’m talking, there’s good boys.”

Mauri and Diddi had closed their mouths.

“He films them too,” she’d gone on. “And when his daughter got married last year, he showed films of ships coming into and out of various harbors all over the world. For twenty minutes. The guests were moderately amused…”

She made a hesitant gesture with her hand to illustrate the wedding guests’ level of interest.

“What did you do?” Mauri had asked. “While he was watching the ships.”

“Well,” she replied. “I read a whole load of books. Mostly he just wanted me to lie there and listen while he talked. You can ask me anything you like about tankers, though. I know lots.”

They’d laughed. But Diddi had thought with love that this was his sister. For her, everything was okay. She found her slightly peculiar companions. She loved them, found them interesting, helped them to make their dreams come true. And sometimes it was all completely harmless.

In fact, everything was harmless in her eyes.

We’ve always played innocent games, thinks Diddi as his fingers seek out Inna’s vagina. Everything’s okay, as long as you don’t hurt anyone who doesn’t want to be hurt.

He longs for the feeling that used to surround him. The feeling that life is as fleeting as the ether. Every moment exists right now, and then it’s gone. The feeling of being a wide-eyed child, gazing at everything in wonder.

He loses that feeling with Ulrika and the baby. He can’t really work out how it happened. How he ended up married.

He wants Inna to give him back that sense of being lighthearted, carefree. He wants to feel weightless, to float in life as if it were the sea. To be washed up on a beach. Wander along it for a while. Find a beautiful shell. Lose it. The tide takes him out again. That’s how life should be, exactly like that.

“Stop it,” says Inna crossly, pushing his hand away.

But Diddi doesn’t want to listen.

“I love you,” he mumbles against her knee. “You’re amazing.”

“I don’t want to,” she says. “Stop it.”

And when he doesn’t stop, she says, “Think about Ulrika and the little prince.”

Diddi stops at once. Moves a little distance away from her along the floor, placing his hands on his knees as if they were porcelain ornaments, each on their own pedestal. He waits for her to pacify him, to pour oil on troubled waters.

But she doesn’t. Instead she digs out her cigarettes and lights up.

He sulks. Feels rejected and upset. Suddenly he wants to hurt her.

“What is it with you?” he asks, his voice making it clear that she’s a hypocrite.

He’s always loved his women, and a few men, with tenderness. He’s never understood all that business of violence and treating them mean. But he’s never felt the need to defend his point of view. If a partner wanted that kind of thing he’s always declined politely, but wished them much pleasure. He even watched once. Just to be polite. And possibly because he didn’t have the energy to get up and go home.

But Inna. She’s done most things. Look at her now. So what is it with her?

He asks her the question.

“So come on, what is it with you? Is it only the perverted stuff that gets you going these days? Do you need to be slapped around like some bloody drugged-up whore?”

“Stop it,” she says, with something tired and pleading in her voice.

But by now Diddi is almost at his wits’ end. He can feel that he’s really losing her. Perhaps he already has. She’s disappeared into a world populated by smelly old men with peculiar desires; his mind is filled with pictures of big, musty apartments in the expensive areas of Europe’s capital cities. The still air carries the smell of layers of dirt from the drains and the toilets in the big bathrooms. Apartments where the heavy, dusty curtains are always kept closed against the sunlight.

“What is it with you and disgusting old men?” he asks, deliberately filling his voice with revulsion.

“That’s enough.”

“I remember when you were twelve and—”

“Stop! Stop it, stop it!”

Inna gets up. The drugs have taken care of the pain in her body. She drops to her knees in front of him, takes his chin in her hands and gazes at him with sympathy. Strokes his hair. Comforts him. While her soft voice says the most terrible things.

“You’ve lost it. You’re not a boy any longer. And it’s just so sad. Wife, kid, house, cozy dinners for two, invitations to country houses, it really suits you. And your hair’s thinning. These long, stringy bangs are just pathetic. You’ll be combing them to cover your bald head soon. That’s why you always need money nowadays. Can’t you see it for yourself? You used to get everything for free. Company, coke. Now you’ve turned into a buyer.”

She gets up. Takes a drag of her cigarette.

“Where do you get the money from? How much do you go through? Eighty a month? I know you’ve conned the company out of money. When Quebec Invest sold and the value of Northern Explore fell. I know it was you that fixed it. A journalist from
Norrländska Socialdemokraten
rang me and asked a whole load of questions. Mauri would go crazy if he found out about it. Crazy!”