Shadow

by Karin Alvtegen

  Louise lowered her eyes. Then she looked at him with the hint of a smile, neither spiteful nor indulgent.

  ‘Admit it! Admit you have someone else!’

  ‘No, Jan-Erik, I don’t.’

  He didn’t believe her. He knew she was lying in order to cast herself in a better light. But then she continued, and the words shattered his brilliant conclusion.

  ‘If you only knew how much I wish I did have someone else.’

  He clenched his fists, letting himself be attacked by images of how his territory was about to be stolen. He would have to witness the invasion, incapable of repelling the attack. For ever more unwelcome in the very domain he sought to defend.

  ‘You are Ellen’s father and you always will be. I don’t want to hate you, Jan-Erik, but I will if I stay here. I was at Alice’s today. You know, I’ve never seen her so happy before, now that she believes she’s about to die. I realised that I’m starting to become just like her, and I don’t want that to happen. And you’re becoming more and more like your father with each passing day.’

  Her insult cut straight to his heart. Rage came rushing in from every direction to staunch the leak and prevent what was inside from flowing out and drowning him.

  ‘If we share custody of Ellen you’ll see her every other week. The two of you will finally have a chance to get to know each other.’

  His throat hurt. A lump was blocking his vocal cords. He pushed out the chair and got to his feet, left the room and pulled his suitcase from the hall cupboard. In the bedroom he threw into it whatever clothes he could grab. On his way back through the living room he stuffed in some bottles without bothering to look at the labels. The only thing that mattered was how much was left in each one.

  She was still sitting in the chair. He saw her legs as he passed on his way to the front door.

  With his hand on the door handle he finished the conversation.

  ‘I’ll sleep at the house tonight. When I come back tomorrow you have to be gone. If there’s anything else you have questions about, call my lawyer.’

  31

  With what right?

  Kristoffer pulled another length of books off the bookshelf.

  With what right was everything taken from him?

  Another gulp burned his throat, but like a rejected lover it refused to come to his rescue. The image of Jesper was scorched onto his retina, refusing to be dissolved by the solvent he was pouring into himself.

  He had rung Jesper’s parents and received confirmation of his death. Two days before they had found him in his flat. A police report had been filed and a search had been launched to find the masked man. What crime he might be charged with, the police couldn’t yet say.

  Another length of books crashed to the floor, and when he was finished with them he knocked over the bookshelf too. Gasping, he looked around for something else he could pull over. Nothing could be allowed to stand, pretending to be whole. All these books at his feet that he was ploughing his way through. Written by smug scholars who had fooled him into thinking there was a logic to existence.

  He raised the bottle to his mouth. The liquid he’d been longing for ran down his throat, but all he sensed was a shrill ringing in his ears.

  He turned to the desk and swept the computer to the floor. The screen went blank and he gave it a kick to make sure that it would never light up again.

  Jesper was gone.

  Jesper had left him.

  Jesper was dead and had taken with him all that he had meant to Kristoffer. The closest thing to love he had ever dared feel.

  Outside the window, Katarina Church still stood there. The branches of the trees were still attached to the trunks. No windows were blown out in the surrounding buildings. And down in the cemetery someone was walking as if the air were still fit to breathe. Only in his flat was the catastrophe apparent. The rest of the world seemingly intended to go on as if nothing had happened.

  He was gone. Would never exist again. All that he’d had ahead of him would never happen now. His brilliant power of observation had in the end been beaten by cynicism. Evil had been permitted to triumph.

  Exhausted, Kristoffer sank down in a chair. He sat there, listening to the sound of his own breathing. The involuntary repetition. The prerequisite for his survival. The instinct to keep himself alive.

  Gratefully he felt it take over. The feeling of liberation when his brain went numb. When he was no longer capable of comprehending the depth of his pain. Why weren’t human beings born this way? With their blood spiked from the start with a small percentage of alcohol. With the defence mechanism disconnected and the soul in a state of peace.

  Was survival really so important that it outweighed all suffering?

  He took another gulp from the bottle. On the desk before him lay a letter. He had picked it up from the hall when Jesper was still alive. Having a reason to reach out his hand felt like an achievement. Sender: Marianne Folkesson. He tore open the envelope. Inside was a note and another letter.

  I found this in Gerda’s flat. See you at the funeral.

  Yours truly,

  Marianne

  A white envelope with his name on it. Written in a flowing script.

  To be delivered after my death.

  He opened the envelope lethargically and began to read.

  32

  ‘Iplan to ring Ellen and tell her about this. You’re not going to convince her with a bunch of lies that this is all my fault!’

  ‘I have no intention of doing that. Jan-Erik, please, don’t ring her tonight. She mustn’t find out by telephone. We have to sit down with her and tell her face-to-face.’

  ‘No chance. I’m not going to help you cover up your sick decisions. You’re going to have to do it yourself.’

  ‘Jan-Erik, please…’

  But he had slammed down the receiver, and as he’d threatened to do, he rang Ellen’s mobile.

  ‘Ellen? Ellen, this is Pappa. I just wanted to call and tell you what’s happening before your mother beats me to it and deludes you into believing a bunch of lies. She’s decided that the two of us should get a divorce, that we won’t live together any more. She says you should live with each of us every other week, but I think you should just stay with me. We’ll stay in the flat, you and I, so she’ll have to manage as best she can. You should know that she’s the one who decided all this. I tried to talk her out of it, but she’s only thinking of herself. But we’ll stick together, Ellen, you and me.’

  It was Louise’s fault that Ellen had cried on the phone. Louise’s fault that he was drunk and wandering about in the dark like a lost soul in his childhood home.

  The heating was turned up all the way, but nothing could prevent the cold from eating its way in. He didn’t want to be here, walking about among all the memories that saturated the walls. He hated this house down to the tiniest piece of it, hated every nail and every board that held its walls together. The atmosphere penetrated his skin and spread through his veins. He wanted to fight yet there was no one to hurt, scream yet there was no one to scare.

  By God, he would show her! Even if she had bewitched his father to write her into the will, he was the one who would continue to manage the funds. He would raise the fee for his lectures, invest wisely in an account out of the reach of her greedy fingers, and work out a way to transfer all the copyrights exclusively into his name. He would see to it that her share of the inheritance would be as small as possible, and he would have his plans ready for the day the old devil finally died. Louise’s brief triumph would rapidly turn into bitterness when she realised how much she had lost.

  He stopped outside his father’s office. As usual, his body involuntarily hesitated before stepping over the threshold. His eyes were drawn to the lamp hook, but he looked away at once. Annika had also let him down. She was one of those who had left him.

  He looked at the cupboard. It was in there he would find the solution. There must be unpublished texts he could use as a tribute after Axel Ra
gnerfeldt’s death. The income would replace the part of the inheritance stolen by Louise.

  He went over and opened the door. Darkness welled out and he picked up the pocket torch that was still lying on the desk. At the entrance to the cupboard he stumbled on the black rubbish bag. Furiously he tore it open and went back to the office, where he emptied the contents on the floor. Papers flowed out over the carpet. He squatted down but lost his balance. Sitting on the floor he ran his hand through all the documents, and a tiny spark of excitement unexpec t edly came over him when he discovered a thick manuscript. Something his pappa had discarded, but which would probably be considered good enough in Jan-Erik’s eyes. There was a little note attached to the title page, and he scanned the lines.

  Axel, the hours that have passed have not been lonely. You are still with me in my thoughts. Since I’ve had a hard time getting away I thought I’d just send you my book anyway. I’d be grateful to have your wise views on it. No one else has read it (as you will see, it’s far above Torgny’s head). My book longs only for your lovely eyes to read it.

  Your Halina

  P.S. I’m so glad that we finally met! H

  He swore to himself. The lover again. Everywhere in the cupboard she kept popping up as if she’d rented part of the space. Without much interest, he was leafing through the handwritten pages when a sudden sound made him snap to attention. It didn’t come from inside the house, but from somewhere nearby he could hear a rhythmic, ringing sound. He put down the manuscript and got up from the floor. Outside the window it was pitch dark, and he hurried to switch off the overhead light so he could see better. Nothing moved in the dark garden. He took his pocket torch and went through the darkened rooms. From each window he peered out at the yard, but nowhere could he find an explan ation. He could see nothing from the living room, nothing from the dining room, nothing from the kitchen. He opened the door to the room where Gerda had once lived, went over to the bureau and looked out of the little round window above it. Something was moving outside. A black silhouette on the lawn way over by the bushes. In the spot where the greenhouse had once stood but which on his return from the States had been turned into a flagstone patio. He stood still and watched until his eyes adjusted to the dark. Only then did he realise what the sound was; the blade of a shovel hacking at the flagstones.

  At first his mind was blank. What he saw could not be explained. But in the next moment he was overcome by rage that someone was destroying their patio. He switched on the pocket torch and directed the beam of light at the person moving outside. The black silhouette became a man, and when the glare focused on him he turned to face the light. Jan-Erik recognised him immediately. The foundling who was going to inherit from Gerda Persson.

  He opened the window.

  ‘What the hell are you doing out there?’

  The man didn’t answer. He turned his back to Jan-Erik and kept digging.

  ‘Do you hear me? If you don’t stop I’ll call the police!’

  He got no reaction.

  Jan-Erik slammed the window shut and went out to the hall, put on his shoes and a jacket, and made sure he had his mobile in his pocket, in case he had to ring for help. He flipped the switch for the outside light but nothing happened. Annoyed, he slammed the door and stumbled down the stairs and across the lawn. The light from his torch played over the ground, and he avoided the bushes and unweeded flowerbeds until the light reached the hole that Kristoffer had dug. The flagstones lay spread about under a layer of dirt.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing? This is private property, and if you don’t stop right now I’ll call the police.’

  Kristoffer sniffed and wiped his hand across his face before he resumed digging. Jan-Erik reached for the shovel, but Kristoffer knocked his hand away.

  ‘Did you know the whole time?’

  Jan-Erik shone the light at the young man’s face. His eyes were red and swollen, and tears were running down his cheeks. Kristoffer put his hand up against the blinding light and then continued digging. Jan-Erik was baffled. The absurd situation, the intruder’s obvious mental instability, Louise wanting a divorce, all the alcohol he had downed: everything was a maelstrom. He lowered the torch, suddenly exhausted.

  Because he didn’t understand. Nor did he know if he really wanted to understand, really wanted to know why the foundling who was Gerda’s heir was digging a hole in their garden.

  Kristoffer stopped and took a folded piece of paper from his pocket. He held it out across the hole to Jan-Erik, who was incapable of raising his arm. He was about to contract a deadly virus; a chronic disease that would never leave him.

  Kristoffer shook the paper at him.

  ‘Read it!’

  Now it would be proved. That this stranger standing in front of him was his half-brother. That yet another part of the inheritance would vanish to someone who hadn’t lifted a finger to deserve it.

  But that didn’t explain the digging. The dread awakened inside him was unthinkable.

  The paper was burning his fingers. In the light of the torch Gerda’s flowing handwriting took shape, curling along the lines like an ornamental work of art. At a quick glance it all looked so harmless. But slipped in under the innocent surface he understood that something terrible was hidden. If he allowed the words to form into sentences, something would be destroyed that could never be restored.

  To the sound of earth being shovelled he began to read.

  My dear Kristoffer,

  I don’t know whether it’s the right thing to do to write this letter, but I blame myself so much that I just can’t leave it be. I believe I’m doing this to try to put right what I was once forced to take part in. Many years have gone by, but not a day passes that I don’t think about everything that happened, and now I’m old and can feel that the end is approaching…

  Why does the eye follow the line that it doesn’t want to read? Why does the brain interpret the words it doesn’t want to understand? With each word he read, something was lost. Silently the secret had slunk after him through all the years. Disguised behind their misleading behaviour his parents had allowed him to build his conceptual world and his life on something that had actually never existed. Underneath the gilt cover was nothing but a hole. The very root of his existence was pure fantasy.

  …and the morning after the terrible event, I found you in the woodshed. Mrs Ragnerfeldt was in bed and had taken a sedative, so she knew, and still knows, nothing. Mr Ragnerfeldt didn’t know what to do, but then he told me to drive into the city and leave you somewhere where someone would find you, and I didn’t dare refuse. I saw all the evil happen, but I was brought up in a home where I was taught not to talk back to my superiors. I hate that man for everything he’s done and for what he made me do…

  ‘But this is total madness. Gerda must have been struck by dementia. Anyone can see that. You can see that someone senile wrote this, can’t you? She claims all these things about Axel Ragnerfeldt. Don’t you know who he is? You have to understand, it’s totally impossible he would do something like that!’

  Kristoffer stopped, breathless with exertion.

  ‘So your sister didn’t kill herself?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you read all of it? About why she did it?’

  Something heavy and impenetrable slammed down inside him. A defensive wall surrounded his soul. A few seconds passed and by then, without even realising it, he had taken sides.

  ‘My sister was run over by a car!’

  … outside Mr Ragnerfeldt’s office there was a broom cupboard. From there I could hear everything that was said in his office, and sometimes I stood there listening, because it seemed easier to bear if I understood what was going on in the household. I know it was wrong of me, but that’s what I did. Some months after Mr Ragnerfeldt received the Nobel Prize, the writer Torgny Wennberg came to visit, and since I knew he had known your mother, I was afraid he had revealed everything and I would be held responsible. I listened in the broom cup
board and heard when…

  In front of him Kristoffer had fallen to his knees. Jan-Erik shone the light from the torch down into the hole and felt the horror spread through his body. Kristoffer had found what he was looking for. All at once Gerda’s words were confirmed and could never be denied again. Jan-Erik turned off the torch to make what he’d seen in the hole disappear.

  ‘Turn it back on!’ Kristoffer yelled. ‘Turn it on, I mean it!’

  Jan-Erik turned on the torch, suddenly afraid that someone would hear them.

  For a long while Kristoffer just sat there breathing hard and staring down into the dark hole. Time after time he wiped his nose on his sleeve, and his wet cheeks glistened in the faint light.

  ‘You never abandoned me.’

  Jan-Erik needed something to drink.

  With difficulty Kristoffer got to his feet.

  ‘Do you know what a survivor is?’

  Jan-Erik didn’t reply. Everything that had mattered before now had suddenly been obliterated, and it was impossible to comprehend what had taken its place.

  ‘A survivor is someone who does something so unique that the memory of him always lives on. Someone like Axel Ragnerfeldt was to me. But if it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to make sure that he goes down in history as the fucking bastard he is.’

  Inside himself Jan-Erik heard his own voice. The words he had repeated so many times in the spotlight. My father realised that our actions are like our children; they live on, independent of us and our will. Joseph Schultz and my father belong to the minority who realise that the reward for a good deed is the very fact of having done it.

  His lectures were over. Never again would he stand on a stage and feel the flood of applause. Never again would he see the respectful glances when he mentioned his surname. From here on he would carry the name like a disfigurement. He would never get his literature prize from the Nordic Council. Louise would never regret that she’d left him.