Then it was like she suddenly lost patience.
“What do you want me to say?! How am I supposed to explain this to you? There aren’t any easier words! I’m just bad at…”
“Rewarding yourself?” I said.
She said nothing for a long time.
“You need to learn to Experience,” I said.
She laughed.
“Like you?” she said.
“Like me,” I said.
“Hmm. And look where that’s got you…”
The windows were open while we talked. The night outside was still and warm. Nothing but the sound of a party in the distance. Funny how you can always recognize the sound, no matter how distant it is. Young people, perhaps thinking of going off for a swim in the moonlight, maybe staying up all night. Getting hold of some wine or beer and falling asleep together in a park somewhere as the first light of morning started to appear.
I asked if she sang, and at first she sounded irritated, as if she thought I was making fun of her. But when I said she had a good voice for jazz, and that it would be exciting to hear her sing, she laughed and said she’d think about it, that she didn’t know much about jazz, and that there was absolutely no way it was going to happen that night. I don’t know how long we talked to each other, but my cheek was starting to feel very hot, and I had to switch the phone to my other ear. It felt odd hearing her voice on that side.
“I think you should go to bed now,” I said.
She laughed.
“Well, I tried that, but someone called and woke me up.”
“So why do you always answer?”
She didn’t say anything to that.
“You don’t have to pick up,” I said.
She still said nothing. But I could hear her breathing softly. Perhaps she was lying down. It felt like she was. I imagined I could see her in front of me, lying on her side, more or less the same as me, with the phone pressed against her cheek, her eyes closed.
“You’ve handled this really well,” I said. “The other day I thought you’d written a really nice report about me. I’m very happy with the way you’ve dealt with me. I feel both informed and well looked after.”
I heard her take a deep breath.
“Yes,” she whispered. “But you’re happy with so little…”
I pressed the phone closer to my ear.
“I think you deserve to switch that phone off now,” I said.
Silence.
“If you don’t want to talk, I mean…”
Another long silence. I put the phone in my other hand and carefully brushed some hair from my hot forehead.
“But if you do want to talk to me,” I said, “we can do that. I think that would be lovely. I really like talking to you. But if you’d rather not, that’s fine too. But I think my case has been dealt with now, to put it in professional terms or whatever it is. You just have to hang up and go to bed. I wouldn’t think any the worse of you if you did.”
She didn’t make a sound. But she didn’t hang up.
I lay down on the sofa and put the phone to my normal ear again.
“In The Bridge,” I began, “close to the end of the film, it’s so moving. They see each other in a café. Well…”
I wasn’t sure if I should describe the scene, but something in the atmosphere, now that we were just sitting and listening to each other’s silence, led me to carry on.
“They were lovers before…but they haven’t seen each other for several years, for the entire duration of the war. Then suddenly, one day…She’s there in the café and he just happens to pass by. There’s something going on, I think they’re both due in court…They can’t let on that they know each other. The atmosphere is strained. Neither of them dares to speak. They’re about to go to court. They’re on different sides of the case. She’s there with her family, who are the accused…He’s there to give evidence against her brother or uncle or something. He catches sight of her from the square outside. And, as I said, they haven’t seen each other for…actually, I’m not really sure. I don’t remember the rest of the film that well. But it’s been a while, anyway. Quite a long time. Several years. And suddenly there they are. He’s standing. She’s sitting down. Yes, that’s it. She’s sitting at a table in the café. And suddenly they catch sight of each other. They look at each other. Neither of them says anything. Neither of them does much at all, in fact. There’s no big reaction, but rather the reverse: almost no reaction at all. But it still means so much. It’s like a perfect example of a really good film scene. If you watched it out of context you wouldn’t understand a thing. You’d just see two people staring at each other. Not even that, in fact. Because they really don’t do much. They look at each other and realize who the other is. I think he looks at his watch at one point. He realizes that there’s still plenty of time before the trial starts. He decides to sit down on the spare chair at the same table. And, well, a worse actress could have made a right mess of it by overacting and trying to show her old infatuation, anxiety, anguish or excitement, sadness, anything at all. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t move a muscle. Yet we still know exactly what she’s feeling. And that’s precisely why we know. They sit there for a long time, on either side of the table, next to each other, but both facing away. Watching people go past in the street. She raises her cup of tea or coffee or whatever it is at regular intervals. His arm is resting on the top of the table. He’s holding a packet of cigarettes and turns it every so often, standing it on end, then laying it down again. At one point a waiter comes over and takes an order, and then an old man comes over and talks to her. Presumably a relative. We don’t hear what they say because there’s music throughout the scene, but he’s probably telling her it’s time to head off to the courthouse. Once again, a less talented actor could have spoiled things by acting out too much anxiety or angst or whatever. But the man just sits there.
“Once the other man has left they just go on sitting like that, facing away from each other. Him with his arm on the table, holding the packet of cigarettes in his hand. She’s still holding her coffee cup. Suddenly he lets go of the cigarette packet and moves his hand a couple of centimeters toward her. Neither of them says anything. They both seem fully absorbed in watching the street. Gradually she moves her hand toward him, and for a moment the backs of their hands touch. One of her fingers trembles slightly. He takes a breath. Her little finger nudges his. That’s all. It’s so well done. It’s so sensual. I mean, bloody hell, I can feel myself shiver just describing it.”
Maud let out a laugh at the other end of the line.
“It sounds very good,” she said.
“I know, it really is!” I said. “It’s bloody brilliant!”
She laughed again.
—
We carried on talking until early in the morning. The sun rose slowly above the rooftops and shone its rays into the apartment. Birds twittered as Maud talked more about her work. She revealed that she was hoping to get a position on the distribution committee, in phase two, when all the money was going to be shared out. I understood that she had been aiming for that the whole time, that that was what motivated her. I ended up listening to long descriptions of how the redistribution process would work, and tried to ask interesting follow-up questions.
We played a quiz on the subject of “me.” Maud was unbelievably good at it, even if I suspected that she was cheating and looking at her files occasionally, although she claimed she was lying in bed and didn’t have any professional material at hand.
“It’s been a while,” she laughed. “But I really am in bed now.”
“Good!” I said.
We talked a bit about Roger, and Maud wondered if he was really a particularly good friend, and I had to explain that he did have his good sides, even if it was hard to spot them at first glance.
At some point in the early hours of the morning I asked if I could have her cell phone number, so my calls wouldn’t have to be redirected to her, but she said that was agai
nst the rules, they weren’t allowed to give out any private numbers.
“They’re very strict about that,” she said.
Eventually the early birds began to emerge from their doorways down in the street. I could hear their rapid footsteps. The street cleaners drove around, and slowly it got warmer and warmer inside the apartment as we carried on chatting about all manner of things. We debated, laughed, disagreed with each other, fell silent, listening and waiting for the other to speak, the way I thought only teenagers did, and I could feel my head getting more and more fuzzy. The conversation became increasingly fragmented. I lurched from one emotion to the other. Laughed and cried. Lay there quietly and listened. Argued calmly at times, and held long, vaguely philosophical monologues. Every now and then I would lose my train of thought and stop abruptly in the middle of a sentence. Maud just seemed to get more and more giggly. It was nice to hear her like that. I began to worry about how she was going be able to cope with a day’s work when she hadn’t had any sleep, but decided not to broach the subject in case it led to her hanging up, because I didn’t want that. Not now, when we seemed to have crossed some sort of line and anything seemed possible. Besides, she was a grown woman. Anyway, what did I know? Maybe she was on some sort of flextime. She certainly gave the impression that she was perfectly capable of looking after herself. Considerably better than me, for instance.
I might have dozed off on the floor for a nanosecond. Perhaps Maud did as well. I felt tired, but in a good way. Drowsy, almost like being drunk. Every so often I would make an effort to pull myself together, and when Maud finally began to hint that it might be time to end the call, I got it into my head to try to summarize what I had meant to say at the outset.
“Okay, well, er…” I began, letting out a big yawn. “So, what now, then…? Do you think it would be feasible to…? I mean, it ought to be possible to correct my, er, E.H. score?”
I barely managed to get the sentence out, and Maud just giggled at me.
“Hmm…you mean change it?”
“Yes?”
“Based on what you’ve told me tonight?”
“Yes?”
“Hmm…No, I’m sorry.”
—
We sat in silence for a while, and eventually I couldn’t help laughing too. It was all just too much. I rolled onto my side and ended up with the phone pressed between my cheek and the floor.
“Oh, what the hell!” I said, and sighed. “I don’t know. I suppose my life isn’t that bloody awful.”
“No?”
Now she sounded both amused and surprised.
“Well,” I said, “I mean, it depends entirely on what expectations you have, doesn’t it?”
“I think it sounds pretty good,” she said.
I sighed again.
“Yes, but ten million kronor? Come on, I’d have thought you’d get a bit more for that sort of money…”
I got up on my knees, looked out through the window, and caught sight of the potted plant on my neighbor’s balcony. It was barely recognizable. The leaves were drooping over the edge of the pot, and there was something brown sticking up from the middle. I went and got a glass of water from the kitchen and tried to reach it with a few quick throws. Most of the water missed, and I wasn’t sure if I was doing any good at all or just making the situation worse for the poor plant. I lay back down on the floor, took several deep breaths, and suddenly felt a fresh wave of tears rising up inside me.
“And I can’t help thinking about Sunita,” I said. “It seems so incredibly tragic.”
“Sunita?” Maud said.
“Yes, it was all a long while ago now, but I still find myself thinking about it the whole time. It still hurts…”
Instinctively I put my hand to my heart. As if she could see me. As if it could somehow emphasize the pain I felt.
“Sunita?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s Sunita?” Maud said in an entirely different tone of voice.
“Sunita. She was the great love of my life. We could have—”
Maud interrupted me.
“Hang on. We don’t have any information about…”
“What?” I said.
I rolled onto my stomach and leaned my elbows on the floor. Down the line I could hear her get out of bed and tap at her computer.
“I haven’t got anything about a Sunita,” she said.
I got up on my knees, rubbed my eyes, and tried to think straight.
“You’re kidding?!” I said. “You mean to say that you’ve managed to miss Sunita?”
I stood up, my body felt sluggish. Every step I took seemed jerky, like an ultra-rapid film sequence. But I couldn’t help feeling a glimmer of hope. Had they really missed Sunita? Was it even possible that they hadn’t taken account of the greatest sadness in my life? Maybe there had been more mistakes.
“She broke my heart, for God’s sake,” I went on, in as reproachful a voice as I could muster. “That’s affected my whole life. There’s not a day goes by without me…I mean…Have you really not taken that into account?”
I could hear Maud’s breathing speed up as she clicked between various documents.
“Er…Not as far as I can see.”
“Holy shit,” I said. “No wonder the invoice ended up being so expensive.”
“When was this?” she asked.
I wondered if she was typing on her laptop. Had she logged in from bed? Or was she taking notes the old-fashioned way with pen and paper?
“1998,” I said. “To 2000. January 5, 3:25 p.m. We first met in ’97, but didn’t start seeing each other until the following year. Okay, hang on a minute, something like this has to be taken into account, even retrospectively, surely?”
I heard her moving at the other end.
“You’re sure you’re not getting mixed up with some film you’ve seen?”
“Are you kidding?” I said. “This is the biggest tragedy of my life.”
She tapped at her computer again.
“But this has to be taken into consideration!” I said.
I was pacing up and down in the apartment now.
“This could…Bloody hell!” I said.
She was breathing hard. I could tell things were serious this time.
“Yes. I think it would be best if you came back in again,” she said.
On my second visit to W.R.D. a man came down and met me in the vast entrance hall. Everyone seemed extremely troubled by the mistake with Sunita. I was assured that a thorough internal investigation would be carried out, and led to believe that such occurrences were extremely unusual, and that it must have happened because she was a foreign citizen and the relationship hadn’t been registered anywhere, as well as being kept secret from family and friends. Correspondence with their South Asian office hadn’t been entirely without friction, and the systems there probably needed to be reconsidered. It had long been a problematic area.
On the way out of the lift by the reception desk on the eleventh floor I was met by an older woman in a jacket and tight skirt, who made a rather girlish impression in spite of her age. She smiled and tilted her head as she spoke. She had a little scarf tied round her neck, a bit like a flight attendant. She thanked me for my cooperation and promised compensation for the intrusion into my working hours. I didn’t mention the fact that I had simply swapped shifts with Tomas, who wanted all the extra hours he could get before he went off on holiday to Torremolinos. It was no problem at all. He had told me I could have the following day off too.
The woman in the scarf handed me an unwieldy bundle of forms, which she told me to fill in before the meeting. She led me through the open-plan office to the far end of the building, to another small room with glass walls. In one corner was a plant that looked like it was made of plastic. She pulled out a chair for me and asked if I’d like anything to drink while I went through the paperwork.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Some water, perhaps?”
“Still or sparkling?”
>
“Er…sparkling.”
I sat down on the chair and began to fill in the forms.
The questions were concentrated around the years 1997 to 2002. I made a real effort to answer as truthfully as possible this time, and not exaggerate.
After a while the woman returned with a bottle of mineral water, a glass, and a coaster. She put them down on the table a short distance from my papers.
“I’ll be back shortly with a bottle opener.”
I thanked her and went on answering the questions as best I could.
—
It got quite warm in the little room when the sun came out, and I had to take off both my jacket and sweater and sit there in just my T-shirt. I checked a few times to see if I could smell sweat. It was much quieter in there than in the last meeting room—presumably at the expense of any ventilation. Every so often I looked around to see if I could catch a glimpse of Maud, but then I remembered that they had said something about her working down on the second floor. Anyway, I had no idea what she looked like. Even if I imagined that I’d know who she was as soon as I laid eyes on her.
The woman in the scarf stayed in the vicinity the whole time after she’d brought the bottle opener. As soon as I was ready with one of the forms she would come in and get it. Otherwise she stayed outside the room. At one point Georg appeared and exchanged a few words with her. They both looked in my direction and I nodded slightly, but he showed no sign of returning my greeting.
After an hour or so inside the stuffy room I started to get tired. The questions were of various sorts: Describe an event. What happened first? What did you do next? Option 1, 2, or 3, and so on. There were various scales I had to make marks on. Circles and semicircles that I had to fill in or tick in the appropriate place. The questions kept probing into greater and greater detail. And into increasingly peripheral events. In the end my head was spinning and I was no longer sure if I was describing the truth or just a fantasy. How much of this had actually happened, and how much had I constructed in hindsight?
I tried to remember as many setbacks as possible. I made sure to give high points to anything related to pain and suffering.
The Invoice Page 8