Shame

by Karin Alvtegen

  She locked the bathroom door behind her and stayed in there until she was sure that the unpleasant little person had gone.

  But her back did hurt, she couldn’t deny it. The pain was always there, and it had been more pronounced lately. But never in her life would she consider undressing and letting herself be examined by someone who would touch her body.

  The letter lay there. For days and nights, consuming every molecule of oxygen in the flat and making Maj-Britt long to get out of there for the first time in ages. She was incapable of throwing it away. She could see that it was a thick letter this time, considerably thicker than the first one. And it lay there like a reproach and shrieked at her day and night.

  ‘You have no backbone, you fatty! You can’t resist reading me!’

  And she couldn’t either. When the refrigerator was empty and the pizza delivery had closed for the night, she had no more defences. Even though she didn’t want to read a single one of the words that Vanja had written.

  Hi, Maj-Britt!

  Thanks for your letter! If you only knew how happy it made me! Especially hearing that you and your family are doing well. Yet another sign that it’s the voice of the heart we should listen to! The last time I saw you, you were pregnant and I remember how you suffered at having to go against your parents’ will when you married Göran. It makes me so glad that everything worked out and that your parents finally saw reason. No one should die without resolving matters, it’s so hard for those who are left behind. If you only knew how I admired your decisiveness and your courage and I still do!

  I often think about our days growing up. Just think how different our situations were. At my house it was always a mess as you recall and we never knew what sort of state my father would be in when (and if) he came home. I never said it straight out, but I was so ashamed in front of the rest of you and especially you. But I also remember that you always wanted to come to my house to play, and you said you had a good time there, and that made me so happy. I have to admit I was a little scared of your parents. They talked a lot about the congregation that you all belonged to and how strict the rules were. At my house there really wasn’t anyone who talked about God. Something in between your house and mine would probably have been best, at least as far as spiritual nourishment was concerned!?

  Remember the time we played ‘doctor’ in your woodshed and that Bosse Öman was there? We must have been ten or eleven, I think, weren’t we? I remember how scared you were when your father discovered us and Bosse said that the game was your idea. I still feel ashamed that I didn’t take the blame myself that time, but we both knew that you weren’t allowed to play games like that so it probably wouldn’t have done any good. It was such an innocent game, the kind all children play. You weren’t at school for several weeks after that, and when you came back you wouldn’t talk about why you’d been gone. There was so much I didn’t understand because our families were so different. Like that time several years later, it must have been when we were teenagers, when you told me how you used to pray to God to help you take away all the thoughts you didn’t want to have. We all thought about boys at that age so I probably didn’t understand how you suffered, I must have thought it was just a little odd. And you were so beautiful, you were always the one the boys were interested in and I was probably jealous of you because of that. But you prayed to God that He would crush you and teach you to obey and …

  Maj-Britt dropped the letter to the floor. From the depths of everything she had forgotten, the nausea came rushing in like a berserker. She wrenched herself up out of the easy chair but made it no further than the hall before she threw up.

  7

  You’re a doctor. You can handle this. Tell them anything!

  Twenty-three expectant faces were turned to her. Monika’s mind was a blank. Only one memory erupted like a boil from the nothingness and made all invented fantasies impossible. The seconds passed. Someone smiled encouragingly and someone else sensed her torment and chose to look away.

  ‘If you like we can skip to the next person now and you can speak later. If you would rather think about it for a while, that is…’

  The woman gave her a friendly smile, but being pitied was more than Monika could stand. Twenty-three people were thinking at that moment that she was weak. If there was anything she had devoted her life to, it was to being regarded as the exact opposite of that. And she had succeeded. She heard it often. How colleagues on the job said that she was so capable. Now she was sitting with twenty-three unknown people and had just been granted special treatment because of her weakness. Everyone in the room viewed her as an ordinary, second-rate person, incapable of carrying out the task that Mattias had executed in such a brilliant manner. The need to reclaim her position was so strong that it succeeded in conquering her indecision.

  ‘I only hesitated because the memory I thought of also dealt with an accident.’

  Her voice was steady and deliberately a bit indulgent. Everyone’s gaze turned back to her. Even those who had turned away in discreet sympathy.

  The woman who was subjecting her to this had the bad taste to smile.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. The point was for all of you to free-associate, and often it’s the strongest experiences that come up first. Please, tell us whatever you like.’

  Monika swallowed. Now there was no turning back. All that remained were tiny corrections to the truth if she couldn’t bear it.

  ‘I was fifteen years old and my big brother Lasse was two years older. He was invited to a party at his girlfriend Liselott’s house while her parents were away, and since I had a small crush on one of his friends who was going too, I managed to convince him to let me come along.’

  She was aware of her own heartbeat and wondered if anyone else could hear it.

  ‘Liselott lived some distance away, so we decided to sleep over. Our mother probably wasn’t entirely aware of what went on at parties like this, that we drank a lot, I mean. And even if she suspected it, she wouldn’t have thought that my brother and I would be involved. She had quite a high opinion of us.’

  There was no danger yet. So far it was possible to meander cautiously alongside the truth.

  Because so far, it was possible to live with it.

  ‘Some of the kids took a sauna that night. Quite a lot of drinking was going on, and afterwards no one shut off the sauna heater.’

  She paused. She remembered it so well. She even remembered Liselott’s voice although it was so long ago now and she never heard it after that night. Monika, could you go down and turn off the sauna? And she had said yes, but all that beer was whirling round in her head and the boy she had had a secret crush on for so long was finally showing some interest and she’d promised to wait there on the stairs while he was in the bathroom.

  ‘Then all of us who were staying over decided to go to sleep. There were three others besides Lasse and me. We slept wherever there was room to lie down, on sofas and beds and everywhere. Lasse slept upstairs in Liselott’s room and I was downstairs.’

  Her newly won boyfriend had gone home. Lasse had already fallen asleep in Liselott’s room. Monika, dizzy with infatuation and beer, went to lie down on the sofa right outside their closed door.

  On the second floor.

  On the hallway at the top of the stairs.

  She had never admitted to anyone where she had slept that night.

  ‘I woke up around four, I think, because I couldn’t breathe, and when I opened my eyes the house was already in flames.’

  The terror. The panic. The terrific heat. Only one thought. To get out of there. Two steps over to the closed door but she hadn’t hesitated. She simply rushed down the stairs and left them to their fate.

  ‘There was smoke everywhere and even though you think you can find your way around a house, it’s a whole different matter when you can’t see a thing.’

  The words gushed forth in a desperate attempt to finish this task as quickly as possible and escape.

&nbs
p; ‘I crept over to the stairs and tried to go up but it was already burning too fiercely. I tried to scream to wake them but the noise of the fire was deafening. I don’t know how long I stood there by the stairs trying to climb them. Time after time I was forced to retreat a couple of steps and then try again. The last thing I remember is a fireman carrying me out of there.’

  She couldn’t go on. To her dismay she could feel herself blushing, felt the colour of shame spreading across her cheeks.

  She had stood there in safety outside on the lawn and watched how the heat made the glass in Liselott’s window explode. As if turned to stone, she had slowly but surely realised that he would never get out. That he would remain inside in the trap she had set. She had stood there, alive, and watched the malicious flames destroy the house and those who were left inside. Her handsome, happy big brother who was supposed to be so much braver than she was. Who never would have hesitated to take those two steps to save her life.

  Who should have lived instead of her.

  And then all the questions. All the answers that even then were distorted by her despair over the truth. She had been sleeping in the living room on the ground floor! Liselott had promised to turn off the sauna heater! Weeks of terror that one of the kids who had gone home might have heard her promise to turn off the sauna or seen her upstairs on the sofa. But her statement was allowed to stand unchallenged, and with time it had become the official story about what happened.

  ‘What happened to your brother?’

  Monika couldn’t get the words out. She hadn’t been able to then either, when her mother came rushing across the lawn with only a robe over her night-gown. The top floor had collapsed and the firemen did their best to extinguish the flames that refused to be brought under control. Someone had called her and she had rushed out and jumped into her car.

  The clearest image that remained in Monika’s mind was her mother’s face when she spat out her question, her eyes wide with terror because of what she already knew but refused to comprehend.

  ‘Where’s Lasse?’

  It was impossible to answer. Impossible to utter the necessary words. It couldn’t be true, and as long as nobody said it, it was still not reality.

  She felt her mother’s hands on her shoulders, the fingers making her sick to her stomach as her mother tried to shake an answer out of her.

  ‘Answer me, Monika! Where is Lars?’

  A fireman came to her rescue and it only took him a couple of seconds to say the words that made everything irretrievable, that meant nothing would ever be the same again.

  ‘He didn’t make it.’

  Each syllable slashed down between then and now, irrevocably. The past, so unsuspecting and naïve, was forever sliced away from the future.

  And that was when she saw it. She could sense it in her mother’s eyes as she stood there in her night-gown, desperately trying to protect herself from the merciless words. She saw what would become the greatest sorrow in her life, and what she would spend her whole life trying to change.

  But never could.

  Her mother’s grief over Lasse’s death was deeper than the joy she was able to feel that Monika was still alive.

  8

  ‘And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.’

  She opened her eyes. It had been her mother’s voice. She pulled her hand close and was disgusted by what she smelled. As soon as she could, she got up and went to the sink in the bathroom, washed herself with soap and let the hot water rinse away the sickening vomit.

  It was all Vanja’s fault. Her letter had opened up small channels that Maj-Britt could not control, small trickles of thoughts that she didn’t want to deal with sneaked in, and she wasn’t able to keep them out. As long as the threat had come from the outside she could master it with her old tricks, but now it was coming from inside, and years of defence were levelled, leaving the battlefield wide open.

  Impure thoughts.

  At an early age they had come to her, she never understood from where, suddenly they were just there inside of her. Crawling like black worms out of her brain and making her want things that were unthinkable. Sinful. Maybe it was Satan tempting her after all, the way they said. She could remember it now, what they had said.

  She didn’t want to remember!

  Suddenly she was being forced closer and closer to the screen that protected her, and when she got close enough it was possible to make out details on the other side, details that shouldn’t be allowed to exist. Trickle after trickle came seeping through the tiny channels, piecing fragments of memory together into a whole. Fragments that rooted out everything she thought she had managed, once and for all, to forget and leave behind her. Next to the words that Vanja had written they had wound their way into her consciousness. No one would fight by her side this time. Her parents were dead, and their Jesus had abandoned her long ago.

  She had prayed and prayed but never managed to share their faith; God had not wanted her prayers. She gave up everything to show her obedience and to be embraced by His love, but He never answered. Never showed her a single word or sign that He was listening, that He saw her struggle and her sacrifice. He silenced her because she was not worthy. He rejected her and left her alone with her filthy thoughts.

  She went into the kitchen. There was a little left of the meat she had seared, and she cut off a piece and placed it on her tongue. The meat was seared just on the surface. When she leaned back in bed again she let her saliva soften and warm the morsel of meat before she closed her eyes and swallowed.

  A brief moment of pleasure.

  Several times she had woken with her hands over her crotch, and the shame she felt was blood-red. Why had she been born in a body with such sick desires? Why had their God not been able to love her? Why had He punished her parents when she had been willing to sacrifice everything?

  One night she hadn’t awakened until it was too late. She had woken up in the midst of her shame.

  And her mother had spoken to her in her sleep.

  They saw what she had done.

  A large hall. She sat on a chair and the water all around her was back. She couldn’t move. There was something wrong with her right leg, something about the leg made it impossible for her to escape. A noise frightened her and she looked up. He was standing right in front of her in a black suit, he was so enormous that she couldn’t even see his face. She wanted to flee, but there was something about her right leg that prevented her. Behind him lay a severely wounded man on the floor, and his white clothes were cut to ribbons. Blood gushed from spike holes in his hands, colouring the water red, and he looked at her and appealed for help.

  The voice of the huge man boomed like thunder.

  ‘Jesus died on the cross for your sins, because your hands seduced you and because of your unclean desire.’

  She heard sounds behind her. People had gathered, they were there because of her, because of what she had done. Their eyes burned into the back of her neck.

  ‘There are three forms of love – our love for God, God’s love for us, and erotic love, which turns us away from God.’

  The water was seeping in from all sides. Her parents sat some distance away with their hands folded. They looked up adoringly at the man who was speaking, beseeching him for help.

  ‘The shame of desire is that it is independent of will. Virtue demands complete control over the body. Do you understand, Maj-Britt?’

  Her name echoed between the walls but she could not reply. Something was suffocating her. People behind her whom she could not see were placing their hands on her head.

  ‘Before the Fall, Adam and Eve could propagate without desire, without the lust that has now been forced upon us; their whole bodies were under the control of the will.’

  The water was continuing to rise. The wounded man on the ground vanished beneath the surface and sh
e wanted to rush over and help him, but she couldn’t. Her leg and all those hands held her back. Soon her parents would vanish too; they would drown because of her, because she had forced them in their despair to come here for help.

  ‘You must learn to cultivate and nurture your relationship with God, to cleanse your filthy soul. A true Christian refrains from the damnation of sexuality. What you have done is a sin; you have strayed from the true path.’

  With a mighty noise the walls came crashing down and the room was completely filled with water. Her parents sat quite still in their grief and let the water wash over them. She could no longer breathe, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe.

  When she woke up she was lying on her back. She tried to roll over on her side but her body prevented her. The big pillow had slipped onto the floor and she was abandoned, trapped by her own weight. Like a beetle on its back she tried in vain to regain control, but the strain used up the last oxygen in her lungs. She was going to suffocate. She would die here, outwitted by her own body, the body that all her life had been her prison, both thin and fat. Now it had won. At last it had won what it wanted and conquered her, forced her to yield and give up.

  They would find her here. That Ellinor would discover her tomorrow and tell the others that she had died lying in her own bed, suffocated by her own fat.

  Shamed forever.

  With one last effort she managed to roll over on her side and then fall to the floor with a hard thud. Her left arm was trapped under her but she didn’t feel the pain, only the relief when air found a narrow passage down to her lungs.

  Saba barked uneasily and wandered back and forth. Saba. Dear Saba. Her faithful friend who was always there when she needed her. But now Saba could do nothing. Maj-Britt would remain lying here until Ellinor came, but at least she wouldn’t be dead.