The Believer

by Joakim Zander

  Yasmine focuses her gaze on the traffic and the decaying concrete in front of them.

  “So what did you do? Photoshop them?”

  Brett shrugs, drumming happily on the steering wheel.

  “Well, what was I supposed to do? What you sent me wasn’t enough for them to start a project with you, as you may have noticed. That was clear from the start. I gave the pictures you sent to a client who does photo editing and asked him to make it a little bigger, if you know what I mean? Paste the pictures into other contexts. Nothing all that strange really. He owed me a favor, and I knew what they’d want. The same thing that everyone in this industry wants: trends, new things that pop up in different places simultaneously. Ideally, an American angle, and preferably something they can relate to directly. Like Manhattan. They want rebellion and youth. Something a little dangerous, but not too dangerous. They’ve been looking for a way to make money off all of those demonstrations this summer, the protests and riots, antiglobalization and all that shit. And that symbol was simple enough. The cat was a bit dirty, maybe, but it gave it a little edge. Those people love edge.”

  He laughs and leans back.

  “Voilà, as you Europeans say. Now you have a week to do whatever you want. But you better send me something after all I’ve done.”

  11. LONDON—SUNDAY, AUGUST 16, 2015

  FROM THE ELEVATED railway tracks leading in from Gatwick, London still looks like the future, the horizon filled with diamond and cobalt, skyscrapers, twisted and self-confident, sparkling in the early evening darkness. But beneath the futuristic skyline, streets and alleys meander like stairways at Hogwarts, always in a different direction than the one you’ve been promised. Overcrowded, dirty, and smoggy. Pale faces under the yellow light of the bus ride home and a bag of chips for dinner. Underpaid Ukrainians and Greeks jumping out of the way for Chinese limousines. London is Dickens remixed by an oligarch.

  Klara Walldéen is sitting at the window, letting the city pour over her again, streaming in through her temples, into her skull, her skeleton, until even her heartbeat changes pace.

  It’s a relief to be back. Three days at her grandparents’ in the archipelago is all she’s capable of at the moment and not a second longer. She has to make an effort to sit still, to stay seated while her grandmother carefully pours boiled coffee into thin porcelain cups and serves freshly baked cardamom buns. It’s as if her body can’t handle it anymore, as if her brain is too fast for Aspöja, and this morning she counted the seconds until it was time to go duck hunting with Grandpa. She felt like she needed it—the concentration and anticipation, the calm and explosion.

  But as soon as she was headed out in the boat with her grandfather’s basset hound, Albert, facing the wind in the bow, his small eyes full of anticipation, her discomfort began to grow—with each rock they passed, with every ripple on the calm, beautiful sea. Memories of that Christmas out among those rocks and islets a little more than a year and a half ago washed over her again. The storm that drove in over Smuggelskär, where she and Gabriella hid out in Bosse’s old barn from black ops soldiers who were hunting them down and planning to murder them.

  And before that. Brussels and Paris. Mahmoud calling her with a voice so unlike the one she remembered from Uppsala. How angry she’d been at him. She’d nicknamed him Moody, her first love. Maybe her only true love, who betrayed her, but came back to tell her why, and because he needed her again.

  Then that snowy evening in Paris. She still remembers the smell of spilled wine in the grocery store. Soundless bullets twisting around them. Mahmoud’s heavy hand in hers before she realized he was hit. The small, round hole in his forehead. The blood spreading across the cold floor. The moment she decided to run, to abandon him, to survive.

  And then, just days later, the American who suddenly banged on the door of the barn in the middle of the storm out there among the islands of the Sankt Anna archipelago. Her father, a word that she found difficult to accept.

  Within a few days she saw the love of her life and her previously unknown father die in front of her, in her arms. How do you get back to yourself again after something like that?

  Grandpa had sensed it, the atmosphere around her, and when he stopped the boat at one of the small islands they’d been going to on mornings like these as long as Klara could remember, he put his arm around her, pulled her close to him.

  “How are you these days, little Klara?” he said.

  But she couldn’t take it, couldn’t stand that he was worried. Her grandparents had worried enough about her in recent years. They’d seen too much of her lying in bed in her old room the first few months after it happened, and then worried too much when she took on Mahmoud’s doctoral work on war crimes and finished it. She saw their pride when the book was published with both her and Mahmoud’s names on it, but what she felt most was shame—it wasn’t really her work. She couldn’t escape the thought she’d stolen something from Mahmoud, pulled it out of his dead hands, and presented it as her own.

  And she couldn’t escape the fact that everyone was coddling her. Lysander—Mahmoud’s supervisor—who managed to convince her that her name should be on the book; told her she’d edited and written more than most coauthors. It was true: she’d worked twelve-hour days for almost a year to put it together. Yet still it felt like theft. And they were all coddling her, tiptoeing around her. Nobody seemed to realize she’d failed to protect the ones who died. Why were they so kind to her, why make things easier for her?

  Like Charlotte Anderfeldt, who arranged for her to work on her PhD in law in London and made sure she received a scholarship to finish Mahmoud’s book in London. Or Gabriella, her best friend, who pulled her out of bed and persuaded her to keep working.

  She hadn’t earned their help and patience.

  So she shook off her grandfather’s arm and gave him a shaky, hollow smile.

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “Just a little tired, it’s early. Come on, let’s go find our spot.”

  And when she started to head toward their usual place, she could feel her grandfather’s eyes on her back, feel his worry and curiosity and willingness to help. It made her angry. She wanted to turn around and scream at him, scream at them all: Leave me alone for fuck’s sake! I’m nothing. Less than nothing. I’m a traitor, a murderer! Somebody who doesn’t know anything. Let me be! Don’t love me!

  And when they were in place, sitting in silence, invisible among the bushes with the sea glittering in front of them in the early morning sun, it gave her no peace. Not even this, not even here, doing what she had always loved more than anything else.

  But then Albert started barking, and seconds later the reeds rustled and six woodcocks fluttered up and out of the bay. There, in that moment, only that moment, the weight of it lifted, leaving Klara empty and alone, with no history or future. She aimed her shotgun, held it still until she was sure, and pulled the trigger. Once, twice. The recoil hit her like a wave, and her head felt light and clear.

  But by the time she lowered the gun that wonderful emptiness had disappeared.

  Albert came back with the woodcock in his jaw, and her grandfather gave her an approving pat on the shoulder.

  “You certainly can shoot, Klara.”

  He took the bird out of Albert’s mouth and patted him as well, gave him a treat from one of the pockets of his oilskin coat.

  “Coffee?” he said and smiled at Klara.

  “Irish coffee?” she said and regretted it immediately.

  He looked at her with new concern in his eyes.

  “A little early for that, don’t you think?”

  Klara put the rifle over her shoulder and started walking back down toward the boat.

  “We should probably get going,” she said.

  She gets off the train at Blackfriars and flags down a cab. She doesn’t have the energy for the Tube or bus tonight.

  “Shoreditch,” she says. “Navarre Street.”

  She feels the taste of red wine
in her mouth, loves that harshness, looking forward to the taste of a cigarette when she gets out of the cab.

  She drank a glass at the airport and then a small bottle on the plane, which she nursed as slowly as she could to avoid the shame of having to order another one. It’s Sunday, and she worked on the report all day Saturday and half the night out on Aspöja without a single glass. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day, so she surely deserves another glass tonight. Just one or two, it’s not even seven yet.

  “By the way,” she says to the driver. “Do you know that bar Library? On Leonard Street.”

  The Library is half full when Klara arrives, which suits her. It’ll be full soon enough—Sundays are just like any other day for the bar’s freelance clientele. Pete, the bartender, winks at her when he sees her, and she goes over to the bar, waits for him to finish pouring some locally produced IPA for two “creative” men with beards, striped shirts, and baggy shorts.

  “How’s it going, Klara?” he says and puts a glass on the counter in front of her while reaching down to grab a bottle of red wine.

  “Okay, I was in Sweden over the weekend, just got back.”

  She nods toward her carry-on and laptop bag standing next to her on the floor. Pete fills her glass and waves her off as she fumbles in her purse for her wallet.

  “It’s on me. Glad you came straight from the airport.”

  He pauses and his expression changes.

  “If you help close up later I’ll offer you a drink at my place too.”

  Klara takes a sip of wine and looks at his tousled blond hair, his clear blue eyes, his collarbones and toned shoulders, which are clearly visible through his thin, white T-shirt. She remembers, or barely remembers, three clumsy, drunken, and unsatisfactory nights at his home in recent weeks.

  She shakes her head.

  “Not tonight, Pete,” she says. “But thanks for the wine.”

  By ten, the bar is full, and Klara feels drunk. How much did she drink? Obviously more than she’d planned to, and with each sip of wine her mind feels emptier and lighter. With each glass, it’s easier to relax, to let go of the past, to let go of the job and the stress and the bullshit. But tonight, she must have misjudged, because her head is spinning, and she’s regretting that last glass. Like a fucking rookie.

  “I think I . . .” she says to the dark-haired photographer she’d been flirting uninhibitedly with just three minutes earlier.

  “I think I have to go.”

  He looks surprised, as if she’s joking. What’s his name—Martin? Not that it matters.

  “I have to go home,” she says, and is relieved she isn’t slurring.

  Her bags and then air.

  “I can take you home,” says the man who might be named Martin.

  Klara shakes her head and waves her hand.

  “I live around the corner,” she says. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Are you on Facebook at least?” he says against her neck as Klara winds her way among guests and out into the still warm London evening.

  The air is stale, smells of exhaust and frying oil. The last few weeks have been tropical, and Klara’s head starts spinning faster and faster. She tries to take a few steps and discovers she can’t really focus her eyes. It feels as if the buildings are moving in her peripheral vision.

  Slowly she starts to head toward home, and dread overcomes her. Damn, is she really going to be hungover tomorrow? So incredibly stupid. She cuts across one of the small streets that lead to Great Eastern Street; after just a couple of yards, she thinks she hears footsteps behind her. She stops and turns around. Nothing. It was probably the wheels of her rolling carry-on. Suddenly overcome by fatigue, she forces herself to start walking again, speeding up her steps, relieved that she lives just ten minutes away.

  But as soon as she starts moving, she hears footsteps again. Now she’s sure of it and glances over her shoulder without slowing down. The alley is dark and flanked by beat-up brick walls covered with graffiti. Intoxication makes it seem as if the concrete is rocking back and forth. But in the middle of the asphalt, between the walls, she sees the silhouette of a man. He stops when she sees him. She stops too.

  “Martin?” she says.

  The concrete spins and shakes beneath her, and she finds it difficult to focus. The man raises his arms and says nothing. Klara stumbles, takes a few steps forward, then squats down onto all fours. Her head is buzzing. The asphalt beneath her looks like the sea, the concrete like rocks in the archipelago. The waves around her move, as if breathing and swaying, as if she’s still in her grandfather’s boat. She turns away from everything moving and transitory, tries to focus, while her nausea grows. But it’s in vain; the red wine and nuts she ate force their way out of her. After she vomits, she rolls onto her side and closes her eyes. In another universe, unfolding outside her closed eyes, she hears a whisper, feels hands pulling and pressing. Then darkness. Warm and silent and black.

  12. STOCKHOLM—MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 2015

  IT’S MORNING IN Stockholm, Yasmine realizes as she pays her taxi outside of Story Hotel on Riddargatan. The clock on her cell phone says morning, but her body has given up and now exists outside any earthly concept of time. Thirteen hours time difference between Tokyo and New York. Another six hours’ difference with Stockholm. She feels both heavy and ephemeral, equal parts lead and helium.

  For a moment she holds her breath as the taxi driver swipes the card. It’s the first time she’s used it since the meeting, and the last few days in New York feel like a dream, so she can’t be sure it will work.

  But the card reader accepts it, and she totters out into a warm late-summer morning, stumbles through the automated reception and up to her—according to the website—“bohemian” room, where she falls headfirst onto the sheets, not even bothering to take off her shoes.

  When she wakes up, the light is streaming through the thin curtains at a different angle, and she turns over to check the time on her cell phone. Just after twelve; she slept for two hours. It feels like a whole night, and yet her head is full of sand and her body restless. It’s strange to be back, even if this hotel room with its raw, untreated walls and minimalist decor doesn’t feel like Sweden, or at least not her Sweden. She gets up and goes to the window, looks out over the mix of clean, bourgeois modernism and elegant fin de siècle architecture on Riddargatan, and down toward the Östermalmstorg subway station and Birger Jarlsgatan. Not her Sweden either. But Fadi must be somewhere out there, she thinks.

  “I’m coming, habibi,” she whispers quietly. “Don’t disappear again.”

  She draws the curtains and goes into the bathroom. The face in the mirror makes her wince. It’s not exactly a black eye, more like the right side of her eye has swollen up, and a bright purple sunset is radiating from her temple. No wonder Brett bought her a pair of cheap, huge sunglasses at JFK. At the same time, she’s thankful for that eye, thankful for the vague, throbbing pain, thankful for what the swelling has done to her face, what it’s done to her. It’s concrete and unambiguous, an etching, an obvious and simple symbol to turn to when regret or remorse or doubt sets in. She picks up the cell phone and centers her face as close as she can to the viewfinder and snaps a picture. Never again.

  Sitting on the bed, she opens the message from her mother. Looks at the dark picture of Fadi, twisting and turning it. Trying to get the pixels to line up, trying to make them add up. It’s him, she thinks. It must be him.

  She closes the picture, but doesn’t close the message from her mother. How long ago has it been since she spoke to either of her parents? She left four years ago, but she’d hardly said a word to them for several years before that. She stayed out when they were home and made sure she only went home when they were out, when she knew only Fadi was there. All she remembers is their tired faces, their long stares, their harsh words, and hard fists. And now? She shakes her head. Tomorrow. First, there’s somebody else she has to see.

  Slowly she scrolls through her Swedish phone
list. So many names and so many years since she’s contacted them. People who were her whole world, who she grew up with. Parisa and Q, Malik and Sebbe, Bilal, Red, Soledad, Henna, Danny, Amat. Math classes and after-school programs, weeds in the playground, the mast in the woods behind Valgatan where they climbed until they almost touched the stars and fainted from the height. Day drinking at José and Mona’s when their parents were in Chile and their uncle ended up in the hospital, hanging out on the square and smoking under the kitchen fan at Miriam’s. And then the studio, but she can’t think past that. It doesn’t matter. She takes a deep breath. She has no other option, she has to confront it. She scrolls through the names in the phone until she finds what she’s looking for.

  He answers on the first ring, must have had his phone in hand.

  “Shoo, this is Igge.”

  Yasmine swallows an impulse to hang up. She forces herself to breathe calmly and musters her courage.

  “Ignacio,” she says. “It’s me. Yazz.”

  There’s silence on the other end of the line.

  “I know,” she says. “It’s been a long time. I . . .”

  “Where are you, len?” he says.

  His voice is exactly like she remembers it. Large and full of space, big enough to disappear inside of.

  “I’m home again. In Stockholm. Where are you?”

  He laughs.

  “Ey, what do you think? I am where I always am, bre. I’m no international traveler, right?”

  “Are you working? Same place?”

  “Like I said, Yazz, same ol’ shit. What about you? You’re in Stockholm now?”

  He sounds surprised, almost taken aback. No wonder.

  “Yes, I’m in Stockholm. I got in just now, this morning.”