Kate said, blurrily, “Typical Swedes. They bottle up all of their emotions, but then they explode.”
I lay back down. I don’t know what Axel was raging about. I couldn’t hear him very clearly and in any case he was yelling in Swedish. But Tilda was simply screaming, on and on, like a demented soprano in a Verdi opera.
After more than five minutes of this, I sat up again. “Do you think they’re okay? Maybe we should knock on their door or something, see if we can calm them down.”
“Leave them,” said Kate. “It’s none of our business, is it?”
“But listen to Tilda! It sounds like he’s murdering her!”
“Gideon, it’s nothing to do with us! We’d only embarrass them!”
I lay down for another three or four minutes. Axel stopped shouting so loudly, but now I could hear Tilda sobbing. “Jesus,” I said. “What are we going to say to them tomorrow? ‘Have a restful night, did you?’”
At that moment their bedroom door opened again, and Axel shouted out, “Du djävul! Du demonen! Lov henne ensam!”
This was followed by a catastrophic crash, like a huge wardrobe falling over. Tilda screamed again, and kept on screaming.
“Come on,” I said, and vaulted out of bed. I opened our bedroom door wearing nothing but my blue stripy shorts. It was totally dark in the corridor, but Kate switched on one of our bedside lamps. Axel and Tilda’s bedroom door was half-open, so I crossed over and knocked on it, and called out, “Tilda! Are you okay? What the hell are you guys doing in there?”
Axel gave a hoarse, desperate-sounding shout, and then Tilda came rushing out of the bedroom, screaming. She was wearing a long white nightgown, but the collar had been half ripped loose, and her sleeves were flying in ribbonlike tatters. Axel tried to seize her arm and I tried to grab her, too, but she pulled herself away from both of us and went running barefoot along the corridor, still screaming.
“Axel!” I shouted at him. “What the hell is going on?”
Axel didn’t answer. All he did was stare at me wildly, as if he didn’t even know who I was.
I went after Tilda. She had reached the hallway, and was flinging herself from one side to the other, colliding with the walls. It looked as if she was being thrown around by an invisible assailant, because she was hitting the walls so hard that she was bruising herself, and she crashed into one of the side tables, too, so that a lamp toppled onto the floor, and its glass shade smashed.
“Tilda!” I said, and managed to take hold of her wrists. “Tilda, you have to calm down!”
“What?” she said. Her eyes were darting from side to side, as if she were terrified.
“Tilda, I don’t know what the problem is, but you’re really going to hurt yourself!”
She babbled something in Swedish, breathless and hysterical, like somebody begging for their life. Then she suddenly dropped onto her knees onto the floor, pulling her arms down so that I lost my grip on her wrists.
“For Christ’s sake, Tilda!”
But she ducked to the left, and then to the right, and then she half rolled and half scuttled away from me on all fours, like a wounded animal. She made it to the front door before I could catch her, opened it, and ran along the landing to the spiral staircase.
“Tilda!”
She threw herself down the stairs so violently that I really thought she was going to break her neck. I went jumping down the stairs after her, three steps at a time, but she still managed to make it down to the hallway before I could catch her.
She tried to open the door to the street, but it must have been double-locked. She hammered on it in frustration, but it still wouldn’t open. Her eyes wild, her chest heaving, she turned around and faced me.
“Inte röra jag!” she shrilled. “Vill du höra?”
Then she clenched her fists and screamed louder and higher until my eardrums sang.
She screamed on and on, until suddenly the mirror on the wall beside me cracked all the way across, and then the glass lantern hanging from the ceiling above me burst like a bomb, and I was showered in sparkling fragments. I lowered my head and covered my eyes with my hand.
The screaming abruptly stopped. I took my hand away from my face and looked up. Tilda was gone. The door to the street was still closed, so she must have run back upstairs. I followed her, panting with effort. The apartment door was open, and I could see Kate standing in the hallway.
“Are you all right?” she asked me. She looked up, and said, “Your hair is all glittery.”
“Glass,” I told her, picking some of it out. “Tilda screamed and the lantern broke.”
“It’s all right. Tilda’s in her bedroom.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe what she had just said to me.
“Tilda’s in her bedroom, Gideon. Everything’s fine.”
“But you must have seen her as well as I did. She came running down the corridor in her nightdress, and started to throw herself all over the place. Look—she knocked over that lamp.”
The lamp was back on top of the side table, although its shade was badly bent and it was missing several pieces of colored glass. But Kate said, “It’s been like that ever since we’ve been here.”
“Kate, I know what I saw. Tilda broke it only a couple of minutes ago.”
Kate said, “I know she did. But she’s in bed now. And we ought to get back to bed, too.”
She reached up and carefully picked some more pieces of glass from my shoulders. I looked into her eyes while she was doing it, and they had that smoky lack of focus, as if I were a window and she could see right through me.
“I need to see Axel and Tilda,” I told her.
“I don’t think you should disturb them. They’re quiet now.”
“Maybe they are. But I still want to make sure that Tilda’s okay. She was throwing herself around like a rag doll. Then she broke the lantern, and the mirror, too.”
We walked along the corridor together, until we reached our bedroom door.
“I’m telling you, Kate. Lanterns and mirrors don’t shatter by themselves.”
“All right,” said Kate. She went across to the Westerlunds’ bedroom door and softly knocked. There was no answer at first but then she knocked again and Axel opened the door. He blinked at us unhappily.
“Yes? What is it?”
“We wanted to make sure that you and Tilda were okay, that’s all.”
“Of course we are. Are you going to keep us awake every night, while you’re here?”
“We’re sorry,” said Kate. “Gideon’s a little stressed, that’s all. He’s been working very hard and he just moved.”
“Well, I have a very important conference tomorrow, and I would rather try to sleep, if that is okay with you two.”
“For sure,” I told him, although my voice was shaking. “Sorry for disturbing you, okay?”
Axel closed his bedroom door, but before he did so I glimpsed Tilda sitting up on her pillow, staring at us. There was something strange about her face that really disturbed me. It was oddly out of focus, as if she had moved her head while having her photograph taken.
But there she was, no mistaking her. Somehow she had managed to run back up the spiral staircase into the apartment without Kate noticing her, and climb back into bed without Axel noticing her either.
* * *
Kate switched the light off. We lay there in absolute blackness for a while, listening to the faint sounds of early morning traffic, and the deep throbbing of a car ferry, crossing the harbor.
“That settles it,” I said. “I’m leaving tomorrow. Are you going to come with me? I can’t go through another night like this.”
Kate put her arm around me. “We can’t leave, Gideon. We’re going to Drottningholm Palace tomorrow, and the day after we can go to Uppsala.”
I eased myself free from her. “I’m sorry, Kate. I’ve had enough of the Westerlunds for one lifetime, thanks all the same. I want to go back home. There may be people in New York who are ju
st as crazy as the Westerlunds, but at least they don’t appear in two places at the same time.”
“Please, Gideon. I’ve told you how much I need you to stay.”
“Sorry, sweetheart. I’m leaving. I don’t know who’s real around here and who isn’t, and that seriously scares me. I don’t even know if I’m real anymore. Am I real? Somebody chased Tilda down the staircase, even though Tilda never went down the staircase, and if it wasn’t me who chased her when she didn’t go, then who was it?”
Kate kissed me, six or seven times. “You’re tired. You’re not making sense.”
“Nothing is making sense. And that’s exactly why I’m leaving. Are you coming with me?”
There was a very long pause, during which I could feel Kate breathing steadily against my shoulder. Then she said, “All right, then. We’ll leave. But can I ask you one favor?”
“It depends what it is.”
“When you fly back to New York tomorrow, can you make one stopover on the way home?”
“A stopover? Where?”
“Only one night. Two at the most. I’ll have to call and find out first.”
“Where, Kate?”
“London. I have some old friends who live in South Kensington. I’d really love you to meet them. And we can take in some of the sights you missed. Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, the London Eye.”
“Hold up a moment. You said when I fly back to New York tomorrow. What about you?”
“My ticket’s nontransferable. But it’s okay. I’ll meet up with you at my friends’ house, when you get there.”
“Why don’t you come with me on my flight? It won’t cost much.”
“No, no. That’s okay. In any case, I’ve arranged to see some more people here in Stockholm before I leave.”
“What people?”
She tapped the side of her nose. “Don’t be inquisitive. They’re just business acquaintances, that’s all, from Bleck magazine. And they’re all women, so you don’t have any reason to be jealous.”
“Okay . . .” I said, reluctantly. Then, “These friends of yours in London . . . do they fight a lot?”
“No . . . they’re devoted.”
“Do they run and up down their apartment in the middle of the night?”
“Not that I know of.”
“All right, then. London it is.”
Kate kissed me again. “You’re an angel, do you know that?”
I stroked her hair. It was so dark that I couldn’t see her at all, but I could feel her breathing. I thought about what my life had been like, before I met her. Could I really go back to it?
“I’m not an angel,” I told her. “I’m just a musician. But I don’t want this to end, that’s all.”
Sixteen
The next morning I slept late again. I didn’t open my eyes until a quarter after nine, and when I sat up I felt as if I had a hangover, with a hammering headache and a mouth that felt as if it had been carpeted. I climbed out of bed and drew back the drapes. There were low gray clouds hanging over the harbor, and the smaller sailboats were jumping up and down at their moorings as if they were trying to break free.
I pulled on my navy blue chinos and my white turtleneck sweater and went through to the kitchen. There was nobody there, so I went along to the living room, calling out, “Kate?” But there was nobody in the living room either. No Kate, no Westerlunds. The whole apartment was deserted.
I went back into the kitchen and opened up the blue ceramic coffee jar to make myself a mug of coffee, but the jar was empty. I opened up the fridge, to see if there was any orange juice, but the fridge was empty, too—just as it had been when I first arrived. There was no food in any of the overhead cupboards either. Not even a can of beans.
I stood there for a long time feeling as if I had woken up in a parallel universe. Maybe I needed to go back to bed, fall asleep and try waking up a second time.
A seagull landed on the ledge outside the kitchen window, and tapped on the glass with its beak, as if it were trying to warn me to leave. It stared at me beadily for a few seconds and then it flapped away.
I returned to the bedroom. It was then that I saw the pale blue envelope lying on the floor. It must have dropped off the quilt when I climbed out of bed. I picked it up and tore it open. There were two Yale door keys inside, and a handwritten note on deckle-edged paper.
Darling Gideon—
Your flight AY5927 leaves Arlanda at 11:45 AM. Collect your ticket at the Finnair desk. We are staying with David and Helena Philips, 37 Wetherby Gardens, London SW5. See you there later!
Love,
Your Kate
I sat down on the side of the bed. I leaned over and smelled the pillow that Kate had slept on, but it had retained none of her fragrance at all, as if she had never been there.
I always used to wonder if people who were going mad knew that they were going mad. But at that moment, I seriously felt that I was losing my sanity. I felt as if the carpet were sliding away from under me, and the whole room was shrinking like a dollhouse. What gave me the deepest sensation of dread was the knowledge that there was no turning back. If I was going to find out what was happening to me, and why I was seeing two Elsas and two Felicias, and a drowned girl dragged out of the harbor, and visions of Tilda hurtling down the stairs, I would have to follow Kate to London, and face whatever visions she wanted to show me.
Maybe “David and Helena Philips” would scream at each other in the middle of the night, and run around their apartment breaking lamps when in reality they were still in bed? Maybe I would find their children floating in the Thames?
But I urgently needed to be reassured that I wasn’t suffering from some kind of breakdown. Kate had told me I was capable of seeing things because I had “resonance,” but what did that really mean? Maybe it simply meant that I was mentally exhausted and out of my emotional depth, and that I needed a long rest, and a course of diazepam.
Most of all, though, I had to see Kate. I had to talk to her, and touch her, and hold her close to me. She had left no perfume on her pillow but she had left the memory of her perfume in my mind. Without her, this apartment seemed cold and completely empty; and outside the window, the city of Stockholm seemed as two-dimensional as a picture postcard. I had never felt such a physical need for another person’s presence.
I looked at myself in the dressing table mirror. I looked tired, and foxy-eyed, and different. I thought: what if I didn’t follow her? What if I simply flew nonstop back to New York? I wasn’t sure that it would finish our affair, not immediately; but I would be letting her down in the meanest way possible; and I would either be showing her that I was lacking in nerve, or that I wasn’t really interested in helping her friends, or both. I doubted that our relationship could survive for very much longer if I treated her like that.
I admit it, yes, I was lacking in nerve. Wouldn’t you be? But I loved her too much to risk losing her, no matter what she asked me to do. How could I go on seeing her every day at St. Luke’s Place, if we broke up? How could I sleep at night, knowing that she was directly underneath me, in bed with the hairy, orange-tanned Victor?
I packed my shirts and my sweaters, and left the Westerlunds’ apartment, closing the shiny black door behind me. Outside, on Skeppsbron, it had started to rain, and it was so gloomy that it could have been evening, instead of morning. I managed to hail a taxi, and ask the driver for Arlanda airport.
Along route E4 the serrated pine forests looked even darker and lonelier than ever—forests where even your happiness could get lost—and as I sat in the back of the taxi and stared at them through the rain, I promised myself that I would never come back.
But if you make a promise, you’re making a prediction. And when you wake up in the morning, you can never tell for sure what the day is going to bring you, or even if you’ll still be alive by nightfall.
* * *
It was raining heavily in London, too, as the black taxi inched its way over Hammersmith Flyo
ver and into Earl’s Court, with tall Victorian apartment blocks on either side. But I was feeling less depressed. I had flown to England with a men’s choir from Helsinki that had sung boisterous Finnish folk songs all the way. I had jotted down two or three of the choruses for possible TV jingles, especially “Isontalon Antti”—“Big House Andy.”
“This is it, mate,” said the taxi driver. He pulled into the curb outside a massive tawny-brick house with white-painted pillars and a porch that looked only slightly smaller than Washington Square Arch. I paid him and probably tipped him too little because he stared down at the coins in his hand as if I had spat on them.
“Isn’t that enough?” I asked him.
“No, mate, that’ll do. Wouldn’t like to see you go short, would I?”
I had never understood British humor (if that’s what it was) so I said, “No, I guess not,” and left it at that. I climbed the steps of No. 37 and peered at the doorbells. There were four of them: one for each apartment. Three of them carried neatly written name cards, except for the first-floor bell, which I assumed was the Philipses’. I pressed it, and I could hear it ringing: but just like 44 Skeppsbron, there was no reply.
Taking out my two Yale keys, I opened the front door and let myself into a high-ceilinged entrance hall, with black-and-white tiles. On a gilded Regency-style side table, there was a fan-shaped vase containing a huge arrangement of orange gladioli. At the far end, a tall mirror showed a wet American jingle-composer wearing a black raincoat.
The door to the Philipses’ apartment was on the left, just past the spray of gladioli. I let myself in, calling out, “Hi! Hello? Anybody home?” as I did so. I knew that British people weren’t legally allowed to be armed, but it was better to be circumspect than have your head blown off.
Inside, there was a smaller entrance hall, with doors leading off it on all sides. Two of the doors were open. Through one of them I could see a library, with rows of bookshelves and foxhunting prints on the walls. Through the other, a large yellow-painted kitchen, with a long pine dining table, and French windows that looked out onto the garden, where two stone cherubs stood dripping under a leafless pergola.
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