The Friend

by Joakim Zander

  Agneta asks the car to stop outside Saliba Market.

  ‘That’s the address,’ she says. ‘They don’t really use street numbers here. Just say Armenia Street, near Saliba Market to your taxi drivers, okay?’

  Agneta unlocks the door to a stunning art deco apartment with mosaic flooring and a small balcony, facing out onto the street and the bullet holes and then finally the harbour and the sea.

  ‘I’m sure you can take care of yourself from here,’ she says. ‘You seem like a resourceful young man.’

  Jacob’s chest swells when she says that; it almost feels like he might float right off of the ground with pride. Resourceful. Sure, despite her promising, impressive name, she’s only an assistant. But if she sees it, won’t the others see it too?

  21 November

  Sankt Anna

  The snow is heavier now, the flakes no longer fluffy and light, but small, hard, and mean. They don’t melt where they land on the grey grass, the grey rocks, the grey fields that surround Sankt Anna’s old church in the Östergötland archipelago. Instead they form drifts and layers, small slopes against stone fences and tree trunks, windswept embankments leaning on the stone walls of the small church.

  Klara Walldéen is squatting with her back to that church, and she turns up her face now to the snow, closes her eyes, lets it fall on her, lets it melt on her eyelids and forehead. It flows down her temples and cheeks, in under the collar of her navy blue coat, down along her neck and collarbone, under her black dress. She lets the snow be the tears she can’t cry.

  ‘Your grandma said you were out here.’

  Klara is startled, opens her eyes, and almost loses her balance. She puts her hand down on the cold, muddy grass to keep from falling. Gabriella stands in front of her, thick red hair in a tight braid, a dark coat, dark tights, funeral attire down to the minutest detail. With some effort, Klara straightens up, gets to her feet; she can feel the cold, sticky mud on the palm of her hand.

  ‘Damn, you scared me,’ she says. ‘I didn’t hear you.’

  Gabriella’s arms are around her now, pressing her in towards the scent of jasmine and citrus.

  I want to smell like a garden by the Nile, Gabriella had said when she bought this perfume for the first time at NK in Stockholm many years ago, back when they were still students. Klara still remembers how she laughed at Gabriella’s ironic, almost irritated facial expression.

  Now Klara lets her arms hang down by her sides, doesn’t have the energy to lift them, doesn’t want to put her dirty hand on Gabriella, so she lets herself be held, lets herself be enveloped by Gabriella’s warmth.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Klara,’ Gabriella whispers.

  Gabriella’s lips are cold against Klara’s ear. Klara presses herself closer to Gabriella, pressing her face past the collar of Gabriella’s coat until it’s resting against Gabriella’s soft, warm neck. And Gabriella just pulls her closer.

  And then, at last, Klara starts to weep.

  Ten days since Grandpa died. Two months since he took her out on his boat with a thermos and a net, fished his flask out of his pocket and poured a large splash of his homebrew into his cup while insisting that Klara did the same.

  ‘Just this once, Klara,’ he said. ‘I know you don’t drink any more, but today we’ll both need it.’

  She’d already seen the glances passed between grandparents when she’d visited a few months before, right before summer. Noticed he’d lost weight, his cheeks looking sunken, and they kept mentioning trips to Norrköping or Linköping for ‘errands’. But these were errands she didn’t ask about, signs she didn’t want to interpret, an all-too-simple puzzle she refused to solve. It would have been easy to disappear into the chaos of London, to bury herself in work at the university. To just focus on her job, finding a way back to a normal life, and not drinking. But when they asked her to come home for a weekend in September, she knew.

  There was no wind that Saturday morning; the boat was still, and Klara took a sip of her coffee, grimaced, then swallowed the whole cup, burning her tongue and the roof of her mouth in the process. And while the liquor flowed through her like a wave, she met her grandfather’s eyes.

  ‘How long?’ she said. ‘How long do you have?’

  But she didn’t cry. Not when he told her the cancer had spread and was aggressive and they found it too late, though that probably didn’t matter, and it would have ended up the same. She didn’t cry when he told her he’d refused treatment, because it was useless anyway, would only buy him a few months of vomiting and pain at the most. She didn’t even cry when he sat on the bench next to her and held her close just like when she was a child, when he and Grandma were raising her on the outskirts of the archipelago.

  ‘My time has come, Klara sweetie,’ he’d said. ‘What do I have to complain about? I’ve had a long life with your grandmother. And when we lost your mother, we got you. Sorrow and joy.’

  He grabbed her chin and looked at her intensely with those bright blue eyes.

  ‘Don’t be afraid of any of it,’ he said. ‘Not sorrow, not joy. You have to learn that, my heart. Do you promise? Will you remember?’

  Klara didn’t understand what he meant, could barely hear his voice. But now, at last, she knew. Now as she stood here in the snow, in the arms of her very best friend, she knew.

  ‘You can’t hide,’ she whispered. ‘You can’t hide from it.’

  And then she starts to weep. No words, almost silently, against Gabriella’s neck.

  She doesn’t know how long they stand there, in silence, the snow falling hard and fast around them.

  ‘I should have got here sooner,’ Gabriella whispers after a while. ‘I can’t even imagine… You grew up with them, with him. Out here. And now he’s gone. It…’

  ‘Shhh,’ Klara says and pulls back, freeing herself from Gabriella’s arms. She puts a finger on Gabriella’s lips and cradles her cheek; her palm still caked with cold, stiff mud.

  ‘You came,’ she says quietly. ‘You’re here now. You’re always here, Gabi, even when you’re not.’

  Gabriella turns her face to Klara. ‘He was like a father, your grandfather,’ she says.

  Klara nods. ‘Perhaps more,’ she says. ‘Grandpa and Grandma. I didn’t get to have any parents, but what they gave me…’ Klara shakes her head and closes her eyes. ‘I can’t even say what I mean,’ she says. ‘And now he’s gone…’

  She turns to Gabriella again, opening her eyes.

  ‘But there’s relief as well. He wasn’t made for the life he led in his final month. He was meant for wind and boats and seabirds. Not for hospitals. He hated it all so much, Gabi. So damn much.’

  Gabriella nods. ‘Your grandma seemed to be doing well when I saw her?’ she says. ‘Like you. I mean, under the circumstances. Composed.’

  Klara nods. ‘They’ve known about it since last spring,’ she says. ‘She’s grieving, but I think she’s also relieved.’

  ‘They knew about the cancer? But didn’t they tell you?’

  Klara nods, feels snowflakes melting and flowing down her cheeks. ‘They always knew there was no cure,’ she says quietly, barely more than a whisper. ‘But, well, you know.’

  She turns to Gabi again.

  ‘They didn’t want to burden me. They probably thought I wouldn’t be able to bear it. And maybe they were right. I wasn’t doing so well. As you know. Last summer. Or before that.’

  She shakes her head, and Gabriella pushes Klara’s long black bangs to the side and tucks them behind an ear. ‘I like this new, shorter hair on you,’ she whispers. ‘If I wore my hair like that I’d look like an old lady. But you look so glamorous, like a movie star. Very Natalie Portman.’

  They stand in silence after that, facing the stone fences and grey fields, the bare trees, and in the distance not visible from the church, but somehow ever-present, the sea. Eventually, Klara turns back to Gabriella again and lays her head on her shoulder, her nose brushing against the cold skin just below her ear. ‘
I’m feeling better now,’ she whispers. ‘Despite Grandpa. Despite the grief, I feel better than I have in years. Everything that happened in the summer with the riots and the Russians and Säpo. I thought I was going to collapse, Gabi.’

  ‘But you didn’t,’ Gabriella says, leaning her head against Klara’s.

  ‘I didn’t because you stepped in,’ Klara said. ‘Because you took care of everything. The journalists and morning shows and all that attention. That’s why I didn’t collapse.’

  ‘Ah,’ Gabriella said, shrugging her shoulder a little. ‘You know what? I thought it was kinda fun.’ She glances down at Klara. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t say that out loud? I mean, what happened was terrible. The riots in the suburb. The Russians. Säpo just letting it happen. The whole thing. Sickening. But revealing it all, being there telling the world about it indignantly and fighting for what’s right… I loved it.’

  Klara smiles and meets her eyes. ‘I know. I always knew you’d be good at that kind of thing. You love being the centre of attention, you little drama queen.’

  Gabriella pushes her gently. ‘Weren’t you the one who was just thanking me? And now you’re gonna give me crap?’

  ‘You’re always saving me,’ Klara says quietly. ‘You always show up and take care of everything.’

  Gabriella throws a quick glance at her before turning back to the fields. There is something in that movement that surprises Klara, something that doesn’t quite match the usual, solid Gabi, who mumbles something that’s almost drowned out by the wind.

  ‘What did you say?’ Klara says.

  Gabriella turns to her again with a quick smile, but only on her mouth, not in her eyes. ‘We should go in,’ she says, looking away. ‘You don’t want to have to sit through the service completely soaking wet.’

  But Klara knows that wasn’t what she had said. Slowly fragments of words penetrate Klara’s consciousness: ‘Maybe you’ll have to save me soon.’

  Is that what Gabi said? But before she can ask, the first car arrives in the snowy parking lot. Gabriella turns to her with a strained smile on her lips.

  ‘Come,’ she says. ‘We have a grandfather to bury.’ And immediately she freezes with panic in her eyes. ‘God, that’s terrible, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be so…’

  ‘Literal?’ Klara says.

  She giggles and stands up. Gabriella laughs quietly behind her hand.

  ‘Such bad taste,’ she whispers. ‘I’m sorry. Seriously, so sorry.’

  But Klara takes her by the arm and leans against her shoulder.

  ‘You’re right,’ she says. ‘We have a grandfather to bury.’

  5 August

  Beirut

  Agneta has other tasks to deal with and no time to babysit a new intern, so she excuses herself and disappears with echoing steps down the stairwell towards the street. It leaves Jacob feeling a mixture of disappointment and relief.

  None of this is turning out like his fantasies this summer, but at least his apartment is beyond anything he could have hoped for.

  Besides, it feels good to be on his own. He opens the double doors to the noise of Armenia Street and sees Agneta climbing into the Volvo. She turns up to him and waves.

  ‘I forgot to tell you to talk to your upstairs neighbour about the generator,’ she yells. ‘There’s a note on the table in the living room. Electricity can be a problem. Call me if you can’t figure it out.’

  And then she’s gone. Jacob sits down on one of the plastic chairs on the balcony, lets the heat and smog and the cacophony of honking traffic and loud voices wash over him. This is his home until Christmas. This city. This apartment. For a moment he feels no joy or satisfaction at all, just a sense of rootlessness that steals over him, empties him until he’s gasping for breath with his eyes closed.

  He’s alone. As alone as he felt in Uppsala in his shabby sublet room on Rackarberget during the first few weeks of his new life there. After everything he’s gone through to get here. And for what? For this emptiness and futility? He takes out his phone and finds Simon’s text message.

  It would be so easy to answer. To write: ‘Yes, babe! When are you coming to visit?’ To just let go and let everything he still feels for Simon bubble up. Maybe it would grow? Maybe it’s enough to live a life in a tasteful one-bedroom in the inner city of Stockholm. Simon would get a job at some museum or art auction house. Jacob would work as an analyst at a PR agency. Or maybe he could build a career at a ministry that would include short trips to Brussels. Maybe he would even tell Simon the truth about himself.

  Maybe, maybe, maybe.

  But he knows that’s impossible, that’s not the life he’s striving for. There’s more out there. Bigger missions. His heart pounds.

  He swallows heavily and forces the emptiness down deep inside. With a few quick clicks, he deletes Simon’s message. And with a few more, he deletes Simon from his phone.

  *

  It’s dark by the time he realizes he forgot to ask the neighbour about the electricity, which is just as unreliable as Agneta indicated. When he does reach Alexa, which is apparently her name, using the number the French diplomat left on the kitchen table, she tells him nobody will be able to fix the generator until tomorrow morning.

  ‘But come up to the roof,’ she says. ‘There’s a terrace. And wine.’

  The lights don’t work in the stairwell either, so Jacob fumbles forward using just faint light spilling in through the open windows on each landing. It gets dark so fast, not at all like Sweden. He didn’t even notice the dusk, and it’s no later than six.

  Light suddenly returns to the staircase with a burst of yellow and a humming light bulb, just as he’s pushing a wrought-iron gate onto what has to be the shared roof terrace.

  ‘Ah,’ says the voice from the phone somewhere in the darkness. ‘Praise be to the utility company! The power is back on.’

  Jacob takes a couple of hesitant steps onto the roof. In front of him the neighbourhood of Mar Mikhael stretches out and down towards the harbour. Dim lights in windows, broken walls, and loading cranes and then a vast darkness that has to be the Mediterranean.

  ‘You must be Jacob,’ Alexa says. ‘Welcome to Beirut.’

  She steps out of the shadows and before Jacob can say a word she’s kissed him on both cheeks and put a glass of red wine in his hand.

  ‘Is this your first visit?’

  Jacob nods slowly and looks at her. She’s probably ten years older than him and about his height. She’s not exactly overweight, more like solidly built, with a halo of dark, curly hair that she has pulled back from her face with a wide reddish scarf. She’s wearing a long, green dress and sandals.

  ‘Let me guess,’ she says. ‘This is your first time in the Middle East? You’re shocked and just a little worried about all this mess?’

  She laughs and tilts her head to the side. Jacob’s mouth goes dry, and he can feel his face flush. She’s treating him like a child, like some raw, naive newcomer. This is not what he imagined for his first evening. He expected an embassy, not electricity flickering on and off, not some rooftop with this woman.

  Alexa laughs and puts an arm around him.

  ‘Drink, habibi,’ she says. ‘It’ll pass. When you’re done drinking, you can help me carry up the food. It’s better not to think.’

  Jacob drinks a glass, then one more and then another, while helping Alexa transport plates and dishes up from her apartment. It’s her farewell party apparently. She’s going to start working at a youth centre in the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila in southern Beirut next week. While they set the table, she tells him she’s from France and Morocco and that she’s lived in Beirut for almost five years.

  ‘I started as an intern at the Red Cross,’ she says. ‘Putain, what a bunch of whores. Watch out for diplomats, baby.’

  She stops and puts her hand to her mouth.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean… Well, you’re just an intern? You still have some time to reconsider.’

  But J
acob laughs. He doesn’t care, he just wants her to keep talking in an English that blends Arabic and French and flows like a wild river of swear words and strong opinions. Every word she speaks lessens the emptiness inside him. With every glass he drinks, he feels more inspired.

  The terrace slowly fills up with people in jeans and dresses speaking a hundred different languages. Alexa lights the candles standing in empty wine bottles from the Beqaa valley, and they flicker in the breeze. Somebody manages to get a small generator running and a string of naked incandescent bulbs are strung along one wall. A stereo is plugged in and Arabic pop mixes with The Weeknd and Rihanna. Jacob fills his glass and his body starts to feel lighter even though he’s so confused, he barely even remembers how to speak English any more.

  But for once, it doesn’t matter. For once he might just be able to let go and fall into or rise up to something he doesn’t totally understand, but which makes his head feel lighter, his heart beat harder, makes him move faster, with greater intention and direction.

  This, this is why he left everything he knew behind. This was why he went to Uppsala. This is why he reads foreign newspapers and studies political science, and this is why he has to take that damn statistics exam and learn Arabic.

  This roof is the kind of place he’s longed for, searched for without even knowing it. This is the adventure. This is where it happens. This is where you become someone else. He’s so close to blurting out this ridiculous idea that he decides to drink a glass of water and sober up. It’s only his first night, he has to keep it together, not be seduced by cosmopolitan magic; he has to keep his eyes on the prize, the embassy, make a good impression there.

  But right now he feels so happy in the company of the foreigners here, the anonymity, maybe even the safety of it, secure in the insecurity, in the uncertainty. So instead of water he grabs a beer out of a barrel, where it is lying on ice, just like in a movie. He thinks: Fuck it. That’s just how this night will be. One night. Then focus.