More Bitter Than Death

by Camilla Grebe

  Jovana Stagovic, social secretary, Youth Group

  Office meeting.

  Elin has a stack of invoices in her lap and doesn’t look happy. She came to work this morning with hair that was suddenly red instead of black, and her usual black clothes had been replaced with a retro 1950s-style dress and Doc Martens–style boots.

  “Well, but then who needs to approve these invoices?” she asks.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Sven says tiredly. “As long as it’s one of us. You can’t just pay them. You’re simply going to have to understand this.”

  Elin blushes and looks down at the table without answering.

  Aina shoots Sven a chilly look and puts a motherly hand over Elin’s. Aina soothes, “Come on, Elin. It was only a thousand kronor. Let’s forget about it now.”

  Sven starts in again, “Swedish Address Registry Inc.? How could you be so freaking stupid that you paid that? Anyone with half a brain can tell that’s a scam.”

  Sven runs his hand through his unwashed, graying hair and I smell the scent of sweat spreading through the room. Both Aina and I are nervous that Sven is in a tailspin, that he’s drinking too much.

  I think about the conversation he and I had a few weeks ago when he said he was done with love and alcohol, that he wasn’t going to touch the booze again. I note that he didn’t keep that promise very long. But that’s how it goes, right?

  “Sven,” Aina warns.

  “We should take it out of your pay,” he continues.

  Elin drops the stack of papers on the floor with a thud, flings her hand up to her mouth as if she wants to stop herself from saying something, and then rushes out of the room.

  “Well, that didn’t go very well, did it? Just because you have problems doesn’t mean you can take them out on other people,” Aina says calmly, but there’s a harshness to her voice, a sharp tone that reveals she’s on her way to getting really upset.

  “My problems have nothing to do with this,” Sven protests.

  “Your problems have everything to do with this, and you know that,” Aina replies.

  “Oh, really? Well, I’m not the one attracting crazy people with guns to the place!” Sven exclaims.

  “Hey,” I say, since even I am growing weary of Sven’s bad moods. “It’s not like that was our fault.”

  Sven mutters something about Vijay.

  “What was that?” Aina says. “If you have a problem with us working for Vijay, then just say so instead of sitting there mumbling.”

  “If you hadn’t stubbornly insisted on helping him with this study, then all this stuff would never have happened. If you ask me, he’s only working with you guys to make himself feel important.” Sven’s voice is quiet but hostile, and yet again I can smell his sweat from all the way across the oval table.

  “You know as well as we do that we need this money,” Aina says.

  Sven shuts up and clenches his jaw, then picks up his moss-green corduroy jacket, which was draped over the back of his chair, and walks out just as suddenly as Elin had.

  Aina and I exchange looks.

  * * *

  Ever since Hillevi was shot, Sven has been openly hostile toward Aina and me. It’s as if he blames us for what happened.

  He never liked Vijay. Vijay is successful, a full professor even though he isn’t even forty yet. Vijay is everything that Sven wanted to be but never became, a constant, nagging reminder of his own shortcomings.

  “He reeks,” Aina says.

  “Yeah, I noticed that. We have to talk to him. This isn’t working anymore. He isn’t even keeping up with his own personal hygiene.”

  Then the phone rings. I pick it up and glance at the display but don’t recognize the number.

  “Answer it,” Aina says. “It’s not like we’re going to be able to have our meeting now. Everyone is so emotional today.”

  “Do you mind getting it?” I ask. “I want to go talk to Sven.”

  Aina shrugs and nods.

  * * *

  Sven is sitting in his desk chair in his office. His light is off and in the darkness I can see the glow of the cigarette he’s smoking, even though we agreed he couldn’t smoke in the office.

  Slowly the outlines of his furniture become clear in the darkness. Stacks of paper are scattered across the floor. Plastic bags and empty McDonald’s wrappers cover his desk. A chair is lying on its side in the corner, presumably tipped over by the weight of his blue coat, which is lying on the floor nearby.

  It smells of cigarette smoke and something else, rotten food? Old cheese?

  “Oh my God, Sven—” I say at the sight of the squalor.

  He doesn’t respond, just takes a drag from his cigarette, brightening the orange cinders.

  I squat down beside him and put my hand on his arm, feel it tremble through his damp wool sweater.

  “I had no idea that . . . it was this bad,” I tell him.

  Slowly he leans forward, lowers his chin onto an empty Big Mac wrapper. Sniffles loudly.

  “I miss her so much. Why does love have to be so hard?”

  And I don’t answer, because what is there to say? Instead I run my hand over his thick, wavy hair and leave the room again, just as quietly as I entered.

  Aina is sitting across from me in one of the cramped booths at the Pelican. A big, frothy beer sits in front of her on the dark, scratched wooden tabletop. I’m having a soda, which I actually wish was a beer, or better yet, a glass of wine.

  Aina greedily downs her drink while I sip cautiously.

  “I’ve called everyone in the group—” she starts.

  I nod and look around the room. A mixture of hip, young Södermalm residents, ordinary workers grabbing a drink on the way home, and the obligatory drunks who devote themselves quietly and purposefully to their drinking.

  The dark, lacquered wood panels reflect the gleam of the candles. Through the beautiful old windows I can see a few frozen Södermalm residents passing in the darkness.

  Aina nods at me over her beer.

  “They want to have a few more sessions. I think they want some kind of closure. Besides, I think everyone needs to talk about what happened.”

  “Well, then I guess that’s what we’ll do,” I say. “Oh, hey, um . . . there’s something else.”

  Aina looks up, concerned. “What?”

  “Malin came to see me at my house,” I tell her.

  “She went to see you at your house? Why?” Aina looks at me, shocked, puzzled.

  “To tell me something. Did you know that Susanne Olsson was one of the people who gave her rapist an alibi?”

  “The same Susanne Olsson? The woman that was murdered?”

  “The very one.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Absolutely not. I was at the police station too, talking about this.”

  “The police station? Why?”

  “I assume it’s because they think Malin might have some sort of motive to kill Susanne, at least in theory.”

  “Oh my God, is that what they think?” Aina asks.

  “The officer didn’t say that straight out, but obviously they have to look into her now.”

  “But the killer was a man, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know. I just thought you’d want to know.”

  “Do the other women in the group know about this? Does Kattis know about this?” Aina asks.

  “I shouldn’t think so. Malin had a really hard time talking about it.”

  Aina says, “I did say that Malin was disturbed, didn’t I?”

  I study Aina, sitting there across from me, her jaws clenched, her arms crossed in front of her chest, and say, “You know sometimes I think you can be a little . . .”

  “What? Say it. Harsh?”

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  I feel the heat rush to my cheeks. Suddenly losing all desire to drink my soda, I push the glass aside. I don’t want to talk about Malin anymore, don’t want to think about all the stuff that has happened sinc
e she and all the other women in the group came into our lives. So I ask, “How are things going with that guy of yours?”

  Aina relaxes, lowers her hands onto her knees, smiles a little. “That guy of mine? I don’t know . . . But it’s good. You never thought you’d see this day, right?”

  There’s almost something triumphant in her voice. I shake my head, thinking that she’s right, that I actually doubted she was capable of having a long-term relationship. “I’m happy for you.”

  She smiles uncertainly and looks at me with those big gray eyes. “To be honest—”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s a little creepy to surrender yourself to another person. I mean, what if something happens to him?” Her eyes cloud over.

  “Well, duh, that’s the point, isn’t it?”

  “And, uh, by the way, what’s up with that?” Aina asks, pointing at my soda, which is sitting next to me, and I realize she suspects something, that maybe she has for a while. Aina knows me so well, knows that I would never drink anything other than wine after six o’clock. Knows all the excuses I use to get myself what my body needs.

  I look at her. She looks serious. “You’re not . . . Are you really?”

  And I feel a smile involuntarily spreading across my face.

  “No way, that’s great,” she says, and then leaps up, leans over the table, practically knocking over her beer in her hurry to hug me, and I breathe in the honey scent of her hair that I know so well.

  “Sometime this spring,” I say, almost breathlessly.

  She is still smiling but quickly sits back down again. “So wonderful, really. But, uh, what’s this going to mean for the office?”

  I stare at her blankly. That thought hadn’t even occurred to me yet. Compared to the life that is growing inside me, the office has seemed distant and unimportant.

  “The office?”

  “Uh, yeah. What are we going to do with your patients? Because you weren’t planning to keep on working as usual, were you?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “And then there’s the rent; if you’re not working, Sven and I are going to have to cover that on our own. Or what were you thinking?” A wrinkle appears between Aina’s eyebrows and she looks worried.

  “I haven’t really decided what I’m going to do yet.”

  “Elin isn’t exactly free either,” she continues, as if she hadn’t heard me.

  Suddenly I’m filled with a quiet disappointment: what for me is a life-altering event is mostly a practical consideration for Aina. I look at the glass of soda sitting next to me on the table and think about how I would give almost anything for a glass of wine.

  Just one glass.

  That night I dream about Hillevi again.

  She’s sitting next to me on the bed and the moonlight is like silver in her hair. Instead of the beautiful black dress she was wearing the last time I saw her, she’s wearing a white linen slip. Near her waist a reddish-black spot is growing dangerously large, and I smell the sweet odor of her blood.

  She’s barefoot and her pretty little feet are dirty, as if she’d come in from outside, had been walking along the shore.

  She looks worried. Those dark eyes wander over my body as I lie, paralyzed under the covers.

  “It’s your fault,” she says. “It’s your fault your fault your fault your fault.”

  And I can’t say anything because my throat has closed up from fear and sorrow. I want to touch her, offer her my hand, my body, as comfort, the only comfort I can give her, but my limbs won’t obey.

  She pauses for a bit, gazing out my window at the moon and the sea resting heavily around the rocks, studying the frost on the windowpane, contemplating its fernlike pattern.

  “If I hadn’t come to see you,” she whispers, moving her hand to her stomach, and I see the blood turning it red. “If I hadn’t come to see you, I’d be with my children now, wouldn’t I? They need me. What’s going to happen to them now?”

  Her eyes, black and dull like coal, look at me. I scream and scream, but no sound comes out. Instead I feel how her cold blood spreads around my body, forming a little pool on my mattress.

  “Promise me you’ll help my kids,” she says, and suddenly the paralysis abates and I realize I’m nodding at her.

  She gives me a quick nod back and then is gone.

  The hill leading up to Söder Hospital feels unusually steep and hard to climb. Two elderly ladies with canes pass us quickly and continue at a rapid clip toward Sachsska Children’s Hospital. I’m able to do less and less. It’s as if I’ve come down with some sort of serious illness. The midwife promised me it’s just pregnancy, that this is normal.

  That everything is normal.

  Markus is in high spirits, eager, talking nonstop, skipping around from topic to topic: work, Christmas, his parents’ house in Skellefteå, where his dad is installing geothermal heat. I respond to him in monosyllables, trying to listen, but I can’t focus. My thoughts keep going back to the last ultrasound I had at Söder Hospital. To that somber, unapologetic doctor. The news that the baby was so severely deformed it couldn’t survive.

  The unthinkable.

  What was supposed to be Stefan’s and my first moment with our unborn baby turned into a nightmare of Latin words, diagnoses, attempts to explain why—why our baby was deformed, why our baby wasn’t going to be able to survive.

  Now here I am, walking that same path with another man, the same sidewalks, same buildings, same shiny, gray façades. Everything is the same, and yet the world is different.

  Markus has stopped talking and looks at me attentively. He looks so hopelessly young, with his long hair messy and wet from the rain, which continues to fall without stopping from those heavy clouds above us.

  “Is this hard?” Markus’s eyes are full of worry and compassion. I’m touched and I appreciate it, but at the same time I’m having trouble dealing with his supportive attitude. I don’t want to think of myself as weak and needy.

  “Yeah, a little.”

  We enter through the glass door on the side, the one that leads to the women’s clinic. The woman at the reception desk asks if we’re here for an ultrasound or a delivery. My unease intensifies. My heart is pounding hard and fast in my chest and I feel like I’m having trouble breathing, getting enough air. I really want a glass of wine. Of course that’s impossible. No wine at all, that’s the promise. No wine, no alcohol. Not even a beer.

  We take a seat on the government-issue chairs in the waiting room and I look around at the other people here. A very pregnant woman is eating an apple and reading a magazine. She has her shoes off and her feet up on the chair across from her. Her feet are swollen and I’m surprised she can even walk on them. A young couple is sitting with a child on their laps reading books. The child points to something in the book and then laughs in delight. The parents look at each other and they laugh too; their intimacy is palpable.

  A tall woman in green hospital scrubs comes over to us. Her dark hair is combed back and held up with a tortoiseshell hair clip. She has a thin leather choker around her neck with a black charm that looks African. I wonder if she’s a radiologist or an ultrasound technician or a nurse or a midwife. Are all obstetrics nurses earthy and alternative? Do they prefer to be called midwives and teach breathing techniques and natural childbirth coping mechanisms, or do some of them support hospital births and pain medication?

  The woman introduces herself as Helena and explains that she is going to perform today’s exam. We follow her down the corridor into a small, stuffy exam room. It’s so cramped there’s hardly room for three people. The room is warm, too warm. My struggle to breathe gets worse and I feel the panic taking over.

  I lie down on a table covered with crinkly paper and pull my jeans down a little. Markus sits in a chair by my head.

  On the wall in front of us is a screen.

  Helena explains in great detail, like a teacher, what the purpose of the ultrasound exam is, that they’re looking at
the fetus’s organs, and after that they’ll measure the head to determine its age and growth.

  “Is this your first child?” Helena asks, smiling as she smears clear goo on my abdomen, unaware of the weight of her question.

  “It’s my first child, so I’m a novice,” Markus says, coming to my rescue. “Why are you putting goop on Siri’s stomach?”

  He continues to engage the midwife in small talk while I close my eyes and focus on my breathing. I try to concentrate on being present, ignore the anxiety. I hear Helena’s voice, hear her describing what she sees on the screen, which is turned toward her and away from us so we can’t interpret or misinterpret the pictures. I hear her words, her calm voice. I hear, but I can’t put what she’s saying together into anything comprehensible.

  “And then maybe you’d like to take a peek?” Helena carefully touches my shoulder and I open my eyes. The screen in front of us is on now and showing a black-and-white image. Suddenly the white part turns into a body. Uneven shadows turn into a torso, arms, and legs. A little head appears on the screen. I can’t hear what Helena is saying anymore. I’m just looking at the baby who’s moving, impatient, nervous.

  “I’m measuring the head and the femur to determine the approximate age. It looks like you’re in week eighteen.”

  Helena smiles, and looks at me to check if that’s what I had thought. I realize I haven’t said a word since I introduced myself to her.

  “Week eighteen?” I’m surprised. Almost half the pregnancy is over without my hardly even being aware of it. I haven’t told anyone besides Markus and Aina, not my parents, not my sisters. I was so sure that this pregnancy too would end in pain and loss that I tried to pretend it didn’t exist.

  “Week eighteen,” Helena repeats, looking down at her keyboard and entering the numbers. Then she looks up again. “That means you’ll be parents around the twenty-eighth of April next year.”