Friday evening at the Chinese restaurant. The round, steel-rimmed clock on one wall looks completely out of place among the rice paper lamps and golden dragons. It says five to nine. The guys are leaning over their beers, losing themselves in the landscapes depicted on the placemats. The snow continues to fall outside.
Virginia stirs her San Francisco a little and sucks on the end of the stirrer that has a Johnnie Walker figure on the end.
Who was Johnnie Walker? Where was he walking with such determination?
She taps her glass with the stirrer and Morgan looks up.
‘Giving a toast?’
‘Someone should.’
They had told her about it, everything that Gösta had said about Jocke, the underpass, the child. Then they had sunk into silence. Virginia let the ice cubes in her glass clink, looked at how the dimmed ceiling lights reflected in the half-melted cubes.
‘There’s one thing I don’t get. If all this that Gösta says really happened. Where is he? Jocke, I mean.’
Karlsson brightened, as if this was the opportunity he had been waiting for.
‘Exactly what I have been trying to say. Where is the body? If you’re going…’
Morgan held up a finger in front of Karlsson.
‘You do not refer to Jocke as “the body”, understood?’
‘Well, what do I call him? The deceased?’
‘You don’t call him anything, not until we know for sure.’
‘That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to say. As long as we don’t have a b…as long as they haven’t…found him, we can’t.’
‘Who’s “they”?’
‘Who do you think? The helicopter division in Berga? The police, of course.’
Larry rubbed one eye with a low clucking sound. ‘That’s a problem. As long as they haven’t found him they aren’t interested, and as long as they aren’t interested they won’t find him.’
Virginia shook her head. ‘You have to go to the police and tell them what you know.’
‘Oh yeah, and what exactly do you think we should tell them?’ Morgan chuckled. ‘Hey, lay off all this shit with the child murderer, the submarine and everything, because we’re three merry alcoholics and one of our drinking buddies has disappeared and now another of our drinking buds tells us that one night when he was really high he saw…does that sound good?’
‘But what about Gösta? He was the one who saw it, he’s the one who…’
‘Sure. But he’s so damned unstable. Shake a uniform at him and he’ll collapse, ready to be admitted to Beckis. He can’t take it. Interrogations and shit.’ Morgan shrugged. ‘No chance there.’
‘But do we really do nothing?’
‘Well, what the hell do you suggest?’
Lacke, who had downed his beer while the conversation was going on, said something too low for them to hear properly. Virginia leaned towards him and put her head on his shoulder.
‘What did you say?’
Lacke stared into the foggy ink-drawn landscape on his placemat and whispered, ‘You said. That we would get him.’
Morgan thumped the table with his hand so the beer glasses jumped. Held out his hand like a claw.
‘And we will. But we need something to go on first.’
Lacke nodded like a somnambulist and started to get up.
‘Just have to…’
His legs gave way and he fell head-first across the table. The loud crash of fallen glass made all eight restaurant patrons turn and stare. Virginia grabbed Lacke’s shoulders and helped him up in the chair again. Lacke’s eyes were far away.
‘Sorry, I…’
The waiter hurried over while frenetically rubbing his hands on his apron. He bent down to Lacke and Virginia and whispered furiously, ‘This is a restaurant not a pigsty!’
Virginia gave the widest smile she could muster while she helped Lacke get to his feet. ‘Come on, Lacke. We’re going to my place.’
With an accusing look at the other men, the waiter quickly walked around the pair and supported Lacke on his other side to show his patrons he was just as concerned as they that this disturbing element be removed.
Virginia helped Lacke put on his heavy overcoat, elegant in an old-fashioned way—which he inherited from his father who had died a few years earlier—and ferried him to the door.
Behind her she heard a few meaningful whistles from Morgan and Karlsson. With Lacke’s arm over her shoulder she turned to them and made a face. Then she pulled open the front door and walked out.
The snow was falling in large, slow flakes, creating a space of cold and silence for the two of them. Virginia’s cheeks turned pink as she led Lacke down the park path. It was better like this.
‘Hi. I was going to meet my dad, but he didn’t show up…may I come in and use the phone?’
‘Of course.’
‘May I come in?’
‘The telephone is over there.’
The woman pointed further into the hallway; a grey telephone stood on a small table. Eli remained where she was outside the door, she hadn’t yet been invited in. Right next to the door there was a cast iron hedgehog shoe wiper with prickles made of piassava fibres.
Eli wiped her shoes to cover her inability to enter.
‘Are you sure it’s all right?’
‘Of course. Come in, come in.’
The woman made a tired gesture; Eli was invited. The woman seemed to have lost interest and walked into the living room, where Eli could hear the static whining of a TV. She had a yellow bow on one side of her head. On the other side the bow had pulled loose into a hanging length of ribbon, which ran down her back like a pet snake.
Eli walked into the hall, took off her shoes and jacket, lifted the telephone receiver. Dialled a number at random. Pretended to talk to someone. Put the receiver down.
Drew air in through her nose. Cooking smells, cleaning agents, earth, shoe polish, winter apples, damp cloth, electricity, dust, sweat, wallpaper glue and…cat urine.
Yes. A soot-black cat stood in the doorway to the kitchen, growling. The ears back flat, fur standing on end, back arched. It had a red band around its neck with a little metal cylinder, probably containing a slip of paper with the owner’s name and address.
Eli took a step towards the cat and it bared its teeth, hissing. The body was tensed for attack. One more step.
The cat retreated, pulling backward while continuing to hiss, maintaining eye contact. The hate pulsating through its body caused the metal cylinder to tremble. They took each other’s measure. Eli moved slowly forward, forcing the cat back until it was in the kitchen, and then she closed the door. The cat continued to growl and mew angrily on the other side. Eli walked into the living room.
The woman was sitting on a leather couch so well-polished the light from the TV was reflected in it. She sat bolt upright, staring unstintingly at the blue-flickering screen. On the coffee table in front of her was a bowl of crackers and a cutting board with three cheeses. An unopened bottle of wine and two glasses.
The woman did not seem to note Eli’s presence, so absorbed was she by what she saw on the screen. A nature program. Penguins at the South Pole.
‘The male carries the egg on his feet so it will not come in contact with the ice.’
A caravan of penguins swaying from side to side moved across an ice desert. Eli sat down, next to the woman. She sat stiffly, as if the TV was a disapproving teacher who was telling her off.
‘When the female returns after three months the male’s layer of fat has been all but used up.’
Two penguins rubbed their beaks together, greeting each other.
‘Are you expecting someone?’
The woman flinched and stared without comprehension into Eli’s eyes for a few seconds. The yellow bow accentuated how ravaged her face looked. She shook her head quickly.
‘No, help yourself.’
Eli didn’t move. The picture on the TV screen changed to a panorama of the southern parts of the former
Soviet Georgia, set to music. In the kitchen the tone of the cat’s miaows had turned into something…beseeching. There was a chemical smell in the room. The woman was exuding a hospital smell.
‘Is anyone going to come over?’
Again the woman flinched as if she had been woken up, turned to Eli. This time she looked irritated, with a sharp furrow between her eyebrows.
‘No. No one’s coming. Eat if you like.’ She pointed with a stiff finger at the cheeses. ‘Camembert, gorgonzola and roquefort. Eat. Eat.’
She looked sternly at Eli, and Eli helped herself to a cracker, put it in her mouth and started to chew slowly. The woman nodded and turned her gaze back to the screen. Eli spit the chewy mass of crackers into her hand and dropped it onto the floor behind the armrest.
‘When are you leaving?’ the woman asked.
‘Soon.’
‘Stay as long as you like. It’s all the same to me.’
Eli moved a little closer, as if to see the TV better, until their arms touched. Something happened to the woman. She trembled and sank together, softened like a punctured coffee packet. Now when she looked over at Eli it was with a mild, dreamy gaze.
‘Who are you?’
Eli’s eyes were close to hers. The hospital smell wafted from the woman’s mouth.
‘I don’t know.’
The woman nodded, reached for the remote control on the coffee table and turned off the sound.
‘In the spring southern Georgia blooms with a barren beauty—’
The cat’s beseeching miaows could now be heard very clearly but the woman didn’t seem to care. She pointed to Eli’s lap.
‘May I…’
‘Of course.’
Eli shifted slightly away from the woman, who pulled up her legs and rested her head on Eli’s lap. Eli slowly stroked her hair. They sat like that for a while. The shimmering backs of whales broke the surface of the water, spurting out a fountain of water, disappeared.
‘Tell me a story,’ said the woman.
‘What do you want to hear?’
‘Something beautiful.’
Eli tucked a tendril of hair behind the woman’s ear. She breathed slowly now and her body was completely relaxed. Eli spoke in a low voice.
‘Once upon a time…a long, long time ago there was a poor farmer and his wife. They had three children. A boy and a girl both old enough to work together with the adults. And then a little boy, only eleven years old. Everyone who saw him said he was the most beautiful child they had ever seen.
‘The father was in villeinage to the lord who owned the land, and had to work many days for him. Therefore it often fell to the mother and her two oldest to look after the house and garden. The youngest boy wasn’t good for much.
‘One day the lord announced a competition for the families that worked his land. Everyone who had a boy between the ages of eight and twelve had to enter. No reward was promised, no prize. Even so, it was called a competition.
‘On the day of the competition the mother took her youngest to the lord’s castle. They were not alone. Seven other children accompanied by one or both parents had gathered in the courtyard of the castle. Three more came. Poor families, the children dressed in the best clothes they had.
‘They waited all day in the courtyard. When it was starting to get dark a man came out of the castle and told them they could come in.’
Eli listened to the woman’s breathing, deep and regular. She slept. Her breath was warm against Eli’s knee. Right below her ear Eli could discern the pulse ticking under loose, wrinkled skin.
The cat was quiet.
The credits for the nature program rolled on the TV. Eli put a finger on the woman’s throat artery, it felt like a beating bird heart under her fingertip.
Eli braced herself against the back of the couch and carefully pushed the woman’s head forward so it leaned on Eli’s knees. The sharp smell of roquefort cheese drowned out the other smells. Eli pulled out a blanket from the back of the couch and draped it over the cheeses.
A soft squeaky sound, the woman’s breathing. Eli leaned over and held her nose close to the woman’s artery. Soap, sweat, the smell of old skin…and that hospital smell…something else that was the woman’s own smell. And beneath all this: the blood.
The woman moaned when Eli’s nose brushed against her throat, started to turn her head but Eli gripped the woman’s arms and chest with one hand, held the other one firmly around her head. Opened her mouth as much as she could, brought it down to the woman’s throat until her tongue pressed against the artery and bit down. Locked her jaws.
The woman jerked as if she had received an electric shock. Her limbs were flung out and her feet hit the armrest with such force that she pushed away and Eli ended up with the woman’s back across her knees.
The blood spurted rhythmically out of the open artery and splashed against the brown leather of the couch. The woman screamed and waved her hands in the air, pulling the blanket from the table. A waft of blue cheese filled Eli’s nostrils as she threw herself over the woman, pushing her mouth against her throat and drinking deeply. The woman’s screams pierced her ears and Eli let go with one arm in order to be able to place a hand over her mouth.
The screams were muffled but the woman’s free hand went out to the coffee table, grabbed the remote control and banged it into Eli’s head. The sound of plastic breaking as the noise of the TV came on again.
The theme song of ‘Dallas’ floated out into the room and Eli tore her head away from the woman’s throat.
The blood tasted like medication. Morphine.
The woman stared up at Eli with wide eyes. Now Eli perceived yet another flavour. A rotten taste that combined with the smell of the blue cheese.
Cancer. The woman had cancer.
Eli’s stomach turned with revulsion. She had to sit up and let go of the woman in order not to vomit.
The camera flew over Southfork while the music rose. The woman wasn’t screaming any more, just lay still on her back while the blood pumped out of her in weaker and weaker spurts, streaming down behind the sofa cushions. Her eyes were damp and remote as she met Eli’s gaze and said, ‘Please…please…’
Eli held back her impulse to be sick, leaned forward over the woman.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Please…’
‘Yes, what is it you want?’
‘Please…please…’
After a while the woman’s eyes changed, stiffened. Became unseeing. Eli closed them. They opened again. Eli took the blanket and covered her face with it, sat up straight in the couch.
The blood was palatable even though it tasted bad, but the morphine…
There was a skyscraper of mirrors on the TV. A man dressed in a suit and a cowboy hat got out of his car, walked towards the skyscraper. Eli tried to get up out of the couch. She couldn’t. The skyscraper started to lean, to turn. The mirrors reflected clouds that floated across the sky in slow motion, taking on the shape of animals, plants.
Eli burst out laughing when the man in the cowboy hat sat down behind a desk and started to speak in English. Eli understood what he was saying, but it was meaningless. Eli looked around. The whole room had started to lean in such a funny way it was strange the TV hadn’t started to roll away. The cowboy-man’s words echoed in her head. Eli looked for the remote control but it lay in pieces strewn across the table and floor.
Have to get the cowboy-man to stop talking.
Eli slid to the floor, crawling on all fours over to the TV with the morphine rushing through her body, laughing at the figures that dissolved into colours, colours. Didn’t have the energy. Sank onto her stomach in front of the TV with the colours dancing in front of her eyes.
A few children were still sliding down the hill on their Snowracers between Björnsonsgatan and the little field next to the park road. Death Hill, it was called for some reason. Three shadows started out at the same time from the top and some loud swearing was heard when one of the shadows
was forced off course into the forest, as well as laughter from the other two as they continued down the slope, flew up from the dip at the bottom and came to rest with a muffled clatter.
Lacke stopped, looked down into the ground. Virginia carefully tried to shove him on with her. ‘Come on, Lacke.’
‘It’s just so damned hard.’
‘I can’t carry you, you know.’
A snort that was probably a laugh, that became a cough. Lacke dropped his shoulders, stood there with hanging arms and turned his head towards the sledding hill.
‘Damn it, here there are kids sledding, and there…’ he gestured vaguely towards the underpass at the far end of the hill that the slope was on, ‘…that’s where Jocke was murdered.’
‘Don’t think about that any more.’
‘How can I stop? Maybe it was one of those kids who did it?’
‘I don’t think so.’
She took his arm to put it around her neck again, but Lacke pulled away. ‘No, I can walk on my own.’
Lacke started gingerly down the path. The snow crunched under his feet. Virginia stood and watched him. There he was, the man she loved and whom she could never live with.
She had tried.
It was during a time eight years ago when Virginia’s daughter had just moved away from home. Lacke had moved in. Then, as now, Virginia worked at a local grocery store, ICA, on Arvid Mörnes Road above China Park. She lived in a one bedroom apartment about three minutes’ walk from the store.
During the four months that they lived together Virginia never managed to figure out what Lacke actually did. He knew something about electrical wiring and put in a dimmer on the lamp in the living room. He knew something about cooking: surprised her several times with well-made fish-based creations. But what did he do?
He sat in the apartment, went for walks, talked to people, read a lot of books and newspapers. That was all. For Virginia, who had worked since she left school, it was an incomprehensible way to live.
Let the Right One In Page 16