Box 21

by Anders Roslund

  Ewert Grens sighed. He parked the car, turned the engine off, but stayed in the driver’s seat until it was impossible to see out and the raindrops were a steady flow that obscured everything. He couldn’t be bothered to move. He didn’t want to. Unease crawled all over him; reluctance tugged at whatever there was to catch. Another week had passed and he had almost forgotten about her.

  He was breathing heavily.

  He would never truly forget.

  He lived with her still, every day, practically every hour, twenty-five years on. Nothing helped, no fucking hope.

  The rain eased off, allowing him a glimpse of the large red-brick villa from the seventies. The garden was lovely, almost too carefully tended. He liked the apple trees best, six of them, which had just shed their white flowers.

  He hated that house.

  He relaxed his grip on the wheel, opened the car door and climbed out. Large puddles had formed on the uneven tarmac and he zigzagged between them, but the wet still soaked through the soles of his shoes before he was halfway there. As he walked, he tried to shake off the feeling that life ended a little with every step he took towards the entrance.

  The whole place smelt of old people. He came here every Monday morning, but had never got used to the smell. The people who lived here in their wheelchairs or behind their Zimmer frames were not all old. He had no idea what caused the smell.

  ‘She’s sitting in her room.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘She knows you’re coming.’

  She didn’t have the faintest idea that he was coming.

  He nodded at the young care assistant, who had come to recognise him and was just trying to be friendly, but would never know how much it hurt.

  He walked past the Smiler, a man of about his own age who usually sat in the lobby, waving cheerily as people came and went; then there was Margareta, who screamed if you didn’t pay attention to her and stop to ask how she was. Every Monday morning, there they were, part of a photograph that didn’t need to be taken. He wondered whether, if they were not lined up and waiting one morning, he would miss them, or whether he would be relieved at not having to deal with the predictability of it all.

  He paused. A quiet moment outside her room.

  Some nights he would wake, shaken and covered in sweat, because he had clearly heard her say Welcome when he came, she had taken his hand in hers, happy to hold on to someone who loved her. He thought about it, about his recurring dream and it gave him the courage to open the door, as he always did, and enter her space, a small room with a window overlooking the car park.

  ‘Hello, Anni.’

  She was sitting in the middle of the room, the wheelchair facing the door. She looked at him, her eyes showing nothing remotely like recognition or even a response. He went to her, put his hand against her cold cheek, talked to her.

  ‘Hi, Anni. It’s me. Ewert.’

  She laughed. Inappropriate and too loud as always, a child’s laughter.

  ‘Do you know who I am today?’

  Another laugh, a sudden loud noise. He pulled over the chair that was standing by the desk she never used, and sat down next to her. He took her hand, held it.

  They had made her look nice.

  Her fair hair was combed, held back with a slide on each side. A blue dress that he hadn’t seen for a while, that smelt newly washed.

  It always struck him how bafflingly unchanged she really was, how the twenty-five years, wheelchair-bound years in the land of the unaware, had left so few traces. He had gained twenty kilos, lost a lot of hair, knew how furrowed his face had become. She was unmarked, as if you were allowed a more carefree spirit that kept you young to make up for not being able to participate in real life.

  She tried to say something as she looked at him, making her usual gurgling baby noises, which always made him feel that she was trying to reach him. He squeezed her hand and swallowed whatever it was that was hurting his throat.

  ‘He’s being released tomorrow,’ he told her.

  She mumbled and drooled and he pulled out his hankie to wipe away the saliva dribbling down her chin.

  ‘Anni, do you understand? From tomorrow, he’ll be out. He’ll be free, littering the streets again.’

  Her room looked just the same as when she had moved in. He had picked out which pieces of furniture she should have from home and positioned them; he was the only one who knew why it was important for her to sleep with her head to the window.

  Already on the first night she had looked at peace.

  He had carried her in, put her in the bed and tucked the covers round her slender body. Her sleep had been deep and he had left her in the morning when she woke up. Leaving the car there he had walked all the way to police headquarters in Kungsholmen. It was afternoon by the time he had arrived.

  ‘I’ll get him this time.’

  Her eyes rested on him, as if she were listening. He knew this was an illusion, but because it looked right, he sometimes pretended they were having a talk the way they used to.

  Her eyes, were they expectant or just empty?

  If only I had managed to stop.

  If only that bastard hadn’t pulled you out. And if only your head hadn’t been softer than the wheel.

  Ewert Grens bent over her, his forehead touching hers. He kissed her cheek.

  ‘I miss you.’

  The man in the dark suit with the gold tiepin, who usually spat on the floor in front of her feet, had just left. It hadn’t helped this time to think of Klaipeda and have no body, only a head. She had felt him inside her; it happened sometimes that she couldn’t shut out the pain when someone thrust themselves into her and ordered her to move at the same time.

  Lydia wondered if it was his smell.

  The smell she recognised reminded her of the men who sat with her dad in that dirty room full of weapons. She wondered if it was a good thing that she recognised it, if that meant that she was still somehow connected to what had been back then and which she longed for so much, or if it was just breaking down even more, that everything she could have had, and that was now so far away, was being forced deeper into her.

  He didn’t speak afterwards. He had looked at her, pointed, one last time – that was all. He didn’t even turn round when he left.

  Lydia laughed.

  If there had been anything between her legs, she would have been aggrieved that his bodily fluids had filled it and she would have felt him inside her even more. But she hadn’t. She was just a face.

  She laughed as she lathered one part of her body after another with the white bar of soap until her skin was red; she rubbed hard, pressing the soap against her neck, shoulders, over her breasts, her vagina, her thighs, feet.

  The suffocating shame.

  She washed it away. His hands, his breath, his smell. The water was almost painfully hot, but the shame was like some horrible membrane that would not come off.

  She sat down on the floor of the shower cubicle and began to sing the chorus of the children’s song from Klaipeda.

  Lydia Grajauskas.

  Lydia Grajauskas.

  Lydia Grajauskas.

  She loved that song. It had been theirs, hers and Vladi’s. They had sung it together loudly every morning as they walked to school through the blocks of flats in the housing estate, a syllable for each step. They sang their names loudly, over and over again.

  ‘Stop singing!’

  Dimitri shouted at her from the hall, his mouth close to the bathroom door. She carried on. He banged the wall, shouted again for her to get out of there fucking pronto. She stayed where she was, sitting on the wet floor, but stopped singing, her voice barely carrying through the door.

  ‘Who is coming next?’

  ‘You owe me money, you bloody whore!’

  ‘I want to know who’s coming.’

  ‘Clean up your cunt! New customer.’

  Lydia heard real anger in his voice now. She got up, dried her wet body and stood in front of the mirror that hung above the sink, put on her red lipstick, pu
t on the nearly cream underwear in a velvet-like material that Dimitri had handed to her that morning, sent to her in advance by the customer.

  Four Rohypnol and one Valium. She swallowed, smiled at her reflection and washed the tablets down with half a glass of vodka.

  She opened the bathroom door and stepped into the hall. The next customer, the second of the day – a new one, someone she’d never seen before – was already waiting on the landing. Dimitri was glaring at her from the kitchen, watching as she passed him, the last few steps before opening the front door.

  Before opening it she made him knock once more.

  Hilding Oldéus gave the wound on his nose a good hard scratch.

  The sore on his nostril wouldn’t heal. It was the heroin: whenever he shot up, it itched and scratched. He’d had a sore there for years now. It was like it was burning; he had to rub, rub, his finger digging deeper, pulling at the skin.

  He looked around.

  A crap room at the welfare office. He hated it, but he always came back, as soon as he got out there he was, ready to smile for a handout. It had taken him one week this time. He’d been brown-nosing the screws at Aspsĺs prison. Said ‘Cheerio’ to Jochum. He’d been kissing the big boy’s arse these last few months; he needed someone to hide behind, and Jochum was built like a brick shithouse. None of the lads even thought of messing with him as long as he hung out with Lang. And Jochum had said ‘see you’ back. He only had one bleeding week left. (Hilding suddenly realised he’d be out tomorrow. A week had passed: fuck, it was tomorrow.) They’d probably never meet up again outside. Jochum had protected him for a while, but he didn’t do drugs and people who didn’t just sort of disappeared, went somewhere else.

  Not many people waiting here.

  A couple of gyppo birds and a fucking Finn and two bloody pensioners. What the fuck did they want?

  Hilding scratched the sore on his nose again. They were just taking up time, a crowd of losers getting in his way.

  It was one of those days, a day when he was all sensitive. He didn’t want to feel anything, mustn’t, and then one of the days from hell hit him, when he knew, felt, felt, felt. He needed a hit badly, had to get rid of this crappy feeling. Had to get some fucking kit. But all these bloody awful people were sitting there, in this crappy room, holding him back. It was his turn now, fuck’s sake, it was his turn.

  ‘Yes. Who’s next?’

  That fat old cow opened her office door again.

  He hurried over to her, his jerky movements propelling his thin body forward. Everyone could see that here was another young person, not even thirty yet, whose childish face somehow blended in with his punctured junkie skin. He was heading somewhere, but it certainly wasn’t life.

  Hilding scratched his nose again and realised that he was sweating. It was June, but raining non-fucking-stop, so he was wearing a long raincoat. It didn’t let any air in or out. He should take it off, but couldn’t be arsed to. He sat down on the visitor’s chair in front of the bare desk and empty bookshelves. A nervous glance round the office. No one else there, no other fucker. There were normally two of them.

  Klara Stenung settled on her side of the desk. Klara was twenty-eight, the same age as the heroin addict facing her. She had come across him before, knew who he was and where he was going. She knew the type; she’d worked as a social worker’s assistant in the suburbs for two years, and then at the Katarina-Sofia office here in the city for three years. Thin, stressed out, noisy, just out of prison. They came and went, disappeared for ten months at a time inside, but always reappeared.

  She stood up and reached across the desk. He looked at her hand. He looked at it, considered spitting in it, but then took it in a flaccid shake.

  ‘I need some cash.’

  Her eyes met his; she didn’t say anything, just waited for more. He was on her books, filed away. She knew everything about him. Oldéus was just like the rest. No father, not much of a mother, a couple of older sisters who had done what they could. He was very bright, very confused, very lost. Alcohol at thirteen, cannabis at fifteen. By now, he was on the fast track. Smoked heroin, then started to inject. First prison sentence at seventeen. Now, at twenty-eight, he had been inside ten times in eleven years, mostly for burglary and a couple of times for dealing in stolen goods. He was a petty criminal, the kind who had waved a bread knife at the assistant in the late-night corner store and then hung around outside the shop for the first dealer to come along, bought some kit and mainlined in the nearest doorway and couldn’t understand it when someone in the shop pointed him out to the police when they turned up. He still didn’t get it when the police bundled him into the back seat of a patrol car and sped off towards the station.

  ‘You know the answer. No money.’

  He twitched nervously in his chair, rocking backwards and forwards, nearly losing his balance.

  ‘But I’m just out. For fuck’s sake!’

  She looked at him. He shouted, he scratched his nose and then the sore started to bleed.

  ‘I’m sorry. You’re not registered. As unemployed, or as a job-seeker.’

  He got up.

  ‘You fat cunt! I’m fucking skint. Fuck’s sake. I’m hungry!’

  ‘I understand that you need money for food. But you aren’t registered so I can’t give you any money.’

  The blood dripped from his nose on to the floor. It was flowing fast and the yellow lino was soon covered in red. He hurled abuse, of course, threatened her as well, but never any more, it never got worse than that. He was bleeding, but didn’t fight; he didn’t have it in him and she knew it. It didn’t even occur to her to call for support.

  He slammed his fist on the top of the bookshelf.

  ‘I don’t give a fuck about your fucking rules!’

  ‘Whatever you say. You still won’t get any money. All I can do for you is give you two days’ worth of food vouchers.’

  A lorry rumbled past outside the window, the sound pushing its way up between the solid buildings that lined the narrow street. Hilding didn’t hear it. In fact, he heard absolutely nothing. The stupid old slag in front of him had been banging on about food vouchers. And since when could you get fucking kit with food vouchers? He stared across the desk at the fat woman, glaring at her big droopy tits and fucking pathetic necklace of big round wooden beads. He burst out laughing, then shouted and knocked over the chair, kicked it into the wall.

  ‘I don’t give a toss about your fucking tickets! I’ll have to find the fucking cash myself then! Fucking cunt!’

  He almost ran through the door, through the crappy waiting room, past the Finn and the two gypsy slags and the old buggers. They all looked up at him, didn’t speak, sat in silence, hunched up. He shouted at them, fucking losers, and something else that it was impossible to make out in passing, his shrieking voice breaking up and mixing with the blood dripping from his nose, which marked a trail down the stairs, out through the main door and all the way along Östgöta Street, towards Skanstull.

  Not much of a summer.

  Windy, rarely above seventy degrees except the odd morning with fleeting sunshine, otherwise the rain fell steadily on the rooftops and barbecue covers.

  Ewert Grens had held her hand for as long as she let him, but after a while she became restless, the way she did when she had laughed enough and her babbling was done and the saliva no longer dribbled down her chin. So he had hugged her, kissed her forehead and said he’d be back in a week, always in a week’s time.

  If only you had managed to hold on just a bit longer.

  Then he got into the car and drove back across Lidingö Bridge on his way to see Bengt Nordwall, who now lived in Eriksberg, some twenty-odd kilometres south of the city. Ewert was driving far too fast and suddenly saw himself, as he often did, behind the wheel of another kind of car. The police van he had been in charge of twenty-five years ago.

  He had spotted Lang on the pavement, just ahead of the van; he knew that he was wanted, so he did what they had done so many times before, drove up alongside the running man while Beng
t pulled the door back and Anni, who was sitting nearest the door, grabbed hold of Lang and shouted that he was under arrest, as she was supposed to do.

  She was sitting in that seat, nearest the door.

  That was why Jochum Lang had been able to drag her out.

  Ewert blinked and swung off the road for a moment, away from the queue of stressed morning commuters. He switched off the engine and sat very still until the pictures faded from his mind. In recent years, the same thing happened every time he visited her, the memory pounding inside his head, making it hard to breathe. He stayed where he was for a while, ignoring the idiots with their horns, just waited until he was ready.

  A quarter of an hour later he pulled up outside his friend’s home.

  They met in the narrow suburban street, stood together and got wet while staring up at the sky.

  Neither of them smiled very often; it could be their age, or maybe they had always been the kind who rarely smile. But the impenetrable greyness and the wind and the pouring rain were too much; you had to smile because there was nothing else you could do.

  ‘What do you think about all this, then?’

  ‘Think? That I can’t be bothered to let it get to me any more.’

  They both shrugged and sat down on the rain-sodden cushions on the garden sofa.

  Their friendship had begun thirty-two years earlier. They had been young back then, and the years had passed quickly; they had less than half of their lives left.

  Ewert looked at his old friend. The only one he had really, the only person he talked to outside work, the only one he could bear to be with.

  Bengt was still in good shape, slim, lots of hair. They were roughly the same age, but Bengt looked much younger. Maybe that was the effect of having young children. They forced you to stay young, as it were.